I had planned on this story having twenty chapters but with the last chapter and this chapter, I have said everything with this story I wanted to say so I have decided to end it after this one. Thank you so much for reading and commenting and loving this story. This was my first feature-length Daryl/Beth story and I have a few more ideas for others. I hope you like this final chapter. Thank you again!

…

Chapter Nineteen.

He moved silently, crossbow aimed and at the ready. The woods around him were quiet. He heard a faint rushing of water, a squirrel chattering above in a tree, the leaves blowing in the slight breeze. He heard it all and yet, he was able to tune it out, focusing only on the doe standing through the brush, sniffing at the ground, nudging something with her nose.

He had been tracking it all morning and his finger poised over the trigger, waiting a few more minutes as he continued watching it. His heart seemed to slow down in his chest as it always did right before he made a kill; as if his heart didn't want to make too much noise, pounding away and scaring anything off. Everything about him was quiet and still.

The deer's head lifted then, her ears flicking, and Daryl perked his own ears, listening for what had gained the deer's attention. He heard rustling. Still quite a bit away but he looked back to the deer and knew that she would take off if the rustling grew closer – and it was.

Daryl looked back to the deer, lining the bow up with her side, and he pressed the trigger, the bolt flying through the air and making contact with its target. The deer fell with a heavy thud to the ground and Daryl stepped from the bush, approaching his catch. He took the bolt and returning it to the bow, he then slung the strap over his head. He crouched down and ran a light hand over the deer's neck, feeling the animal's pulse slow and then her black eyes dulled and she was gone.

The rustling grew closer and without turning towards it, Daryl took his knife out, standing up slowly. He didn't necessarily have to turn around. He knew what it was without needing to see. The rustling grew louder and then he heard the snarls. And when the walker pushed itself through the brush, snarling louder when it saw Daryl, Daryl turned towards it and flung the blade, watching as it sailed and sank straight into the walker's head. The walker fell with a satisfying thud of its own and Daryl went to collect his knife again, wiping the blade on his thigh before returning it to its sheath.

He heaved the doe over his shoulders and pausing another moment, making sure he heard nothing else, he turned and began heading through the woods back towards the station.

Winter was nearing an end and spring was almost upon them, the days not as cold or short. They were still at the station and from the look of things, they weren't going to be leaving anytime soon. They had gone on more runs, had gathered more materials and had fortified the fence around them. The ground was softening and Rick, with the help of Carl, had begun planting the seeds in the dirt behind the station – rows of beans and tomatoes and cucumbers. And with the nights not as cold anymore, Daryl and Beth had moved out from behind the counter and had set their tent up outside at the back corner of the yard.

Judith was walking on her own now, toddling around, occasionally falling, and on one of his runs, Daryl had found a kids' plastic slide to bring back with him, now set up in the yard and her delighted laughter could be heard for hours as she played on it.

It was almost feeling like a home though Daryl never allowed himself to think that. They all patrolled the fences with unwavering dedication and never let their guard down entirely. Their side of the mountain seemed to hold true to what he had said months ago when he, Beth and Michonne had first found this gas station. Walkers couldn't climb for shit and the ones they seemed to have run-ins with were walkers of the people who had used to live on this mountain and were still wandering around.

When they went on runs, it seemed as if there were more and more walkers and runs were getting to be more dangerous. And choosing a spot in the middle of nowhere meant they had to drive further when they needed things. It had been a fight between them but finally Beth had agreed that she wouldn't go with him on the runs anymore and would stay at the station where he would know she was as safe as she could be. He hadn't said it but she had gotten it. Beth always got what he never said. He didn't want her on the runs with him for one reason. He knew he could handle herself but he would never not protect her and having her out on runs with him, he wouldn't be able to protect her as much as he liked. When she was done yelling at him about how ridiculous he was being, she looked at him and realized something about him that no one could ever say he was. He was scared.

As he came through the trees, coming upon their station, Maggie was walking along the fence and when she saw him with the deer, she hurried to get the front gate for him. She and Glenn had been back with them for a couple of months now but he still hadn't said much to them past his usual grunts and mutters. They still both tried though.

"That obviously went well," she smiled as he stepped through the gate and she closed and locked it again behind him.

He nodded and didn't say anything as he carried the deer off to the side of the station, needing to clean it and get the meat to Carol. Lil' Asskicker was on her slide, chattering to herself in her language that no one understood – though they all acted like they knew exactly what she was saying – and Beth stood nearby, hanging wet clothes on the lines they had strung up. She smiled when she saw him and he dropped the deer onto the ground.

"I'm going back to the creek in a little bit to wash another load. You need me to wash anything?" She asked.

Daryl shook his head. "After I'm done with this, I'll come and keep 'ya company."

Beth smiled at that and then watched as Judith climbed the small steps at the back of the slide and then threw herself down, laughing with endless amusement as she flew and landed face down in the dirt. Beth smiled and laughed softly and Daryl smirked to himself as he sat down, taking his knife out, and Judith ran to the back of the slide to do it again.

"Bet, Bet, Bet!" Judith exclaimed to Beth, running to her.

Beth's name was the only word she could speak at the moment though they were all working on her to get to say others, too. Carl was determined to have his name be the second name his baby sister learned. Judith then went off onto a baby babble tangent but Beth understood perfectly, smiling and bending down, hoisting her up in her arms.

When Beth carried Judith into the station – needing a fresh diaper – Daryl began to clean the deer. He had tried to do this away from the toddler and hide it from her but when she began walking, she began appearing everywhere, always slipping away from whoever was watching her at the time. Daryl was worried seeing the blood and insides of the animal would scare her but Judith was a child of this new world. Blood and guts didn't even make her blink and she watched with wide-eyed fascination as he worked.

He was already planning on teaching her how to do this when she was older.

"Hey," Rick said, coming around from the back of the station towards him, pulling off his dirty gloves from having been digging in the dirt.

"Hey," Daryl said, lifting his head to look at him but his hands never stopping their work.

"Need to go on a run," Rick said. "You, me and Michonne, I think."

"What do we need?" Daryl asked.

"I want to try and find some more gas, maybe a lantern or two. Carol asked for a couple of buckets and Beth was talking to me about getting one of those little toilets for Judith. It's about that time we start potty training her," Rick said.

Daryl nodded to all of it as he began to carefully work on the deer's stomach. "When do you wanna leave?" He asked.

"When you're done with that," Rick said, turning his head when they heard tiny feet.

"Bet!" Judith exclaimed happily and came running for him.

Rick smiled and caught her, lifting her up. "Daddy, Judith. Daddy," he said and Judith giggled, pulling on his beard.

As he carried her away, Beth came to stand next to Daryl, making sure she didn't block the sun, and he tilted his head to look up at her. She smiled at him and bending down, she brushed some hair, damp with sweat, from his forehead. He had had Carol cut it a few weeks ago, knowing Beth didn't really like it as long as it had gotten, and he admitted that his head felt a bit lighter with it shorter.

"Going on a run in a bit," he said and she nodded as if she already knew. "Need anything?"

She was quiet for a moment, thinking it through. She then shook her head. "I don't think so. Where are you headed?"

He shrugged. "Not sure. Took us a couple hours to get to anything last time."

She nodded and was quiet then. She sat down on the ground beside him, leaning her back against the wall behind them. He was quiet, too, working and cutting and cleaning, and Beth hummed a quiet song, her eyes closed and her face tilted up towards the warming sun. When he finished, he peeled off his dirty, bloody gloves and putting them aside, he came to sit beside her, his back against the wall, his legs stretched out along next to hers. Beth rested her head on his arm and he rested a hand on her thigh. They still didn't speak.

This was one of his favorite things about being with Beth. They could sit together and be quiet and not feel the need to fill the silence with chatter. Daryl was quiet. He always had been. As a kid, being quiet so he didn't set his dad off by being too loud. And as a hunter, being quiet as he tracked his dinner in the woods. Most of the time, he didn't see the need for talking. Most people who talked didn't say anything important anyway.

When Beth had first come back, she had been so quiet – not wanting to talk to anyone, wanting to curl into herself and never open herself up again. But then slowly, she began to emerge again and Beth slowly returned, piece by piece, and she was quiet, still, but now, it was because she chose to be – not because she was lost in her mind, dealing with a trauma no one was able to help her through. Now, Beth could sit with him and be quiet and it was a comfortable quiet – one they had developed and perfected in all of their time together.

He had to clean this mess up and get the meat up to Carol and then get himself ready to go but he found himself reluctant to leave this spot. It still amazed him sometimes how hard it was for him to leave Beth's side. They had been together for a while now but they still kept it to themselves for the most part. Everyone knew they were together. That was no secret. But few had seen them do anything more than this. Small shows of affection and nothing more. None of them ever saw them kiss or hug and they saved all of those things for the nights when it was just the two of them in their tent. They weren't looking to be the next Maggie and Glenn with their relationship.

Relationship. That still made him smirk a little. Sometimes, he would stop and look at Beth and wonder what the hell he was doing because sometimes, this with her didn't feel like him at all. And with the old him, it wasn't. He knew the difference now.

He had only told her he loved her once. That time in the kitchen, mumbling it for her ears and her ears only, and he wondered after that if she expected to hear it from him all of the time. It had been hard enough for him to say it that one time, having never said it before to anyone. But one time was enough for Beth and she knew. He knew she knew without him needing to tell her with words. He was pretty sure everything he did showed her. He hoped it did.

And it took him a while but he finally realized that he had been in love with her for a long time now. He always went back to that night in the funeral home and her face and his mumbling and her oh. He wondered if that was the night he had really fallen for her. He knew it was the first night in his life he had ever had his stomach flutter around.

Beth moved then, lifting her head. She looked at him with a soft smile. "I need to finish hanging up the laundry." He nodded and she didn't kiss him but she lifted a hand, brushing hair from his forehead again. "You'll come and see me before you go?"

He nodded and lifted a hand to her cheek, his thumb sweeping across her scar. "You know I will," he told her.

She smiled faintly and then pushed herself to her feet. He watched as she crossed the yard to the lines and reaching into the basket beside her, she resumed her work. Daryl sighed softly and putting his gloves back on, he began work again on the deer, gathering the guts and the rest of the deer's body together in a pile to burn and gathering the meat up in another pile to take inside.

By the time he was done, Beth was no longer at the laundry lines and he saw her at their tent, gathering the blankets from inside to take down to the creek to wash them.

"Headin' out," he said, approaching her, holding onto the strap of his crossbow over his shoulder with one hand.

She sighed softly and nodded, looking at him. "Be careful," she told him as she always did.

"You know me," he said, a hand sliding over her hip.

"Exactly," she laughed lightly at that. "Be careful and come back to me."

She had never said that to him before and he looked down at her as she looked up at him. He swallowed and nodded his head slightly. His hand lifted from her hip to her cheek and he stared into her eyes and at the scar and then into her eyes again.

"Don't go to the creek 'til I get back," he said.

"I have my knife," she reminded him but he just stared at her, not about to be budged on this. Their side of the mountain was quiet, yes, but he didn't worry about walkers with her as much as he did other people. People were the ones who took her from him last time.

He just kept looking at her and didn't say anything and Beth nodded slightly, agreeing.

Daryl brushed his thumb across her scar. "See 'ya in a bit," he said and she nodded again.

He didn't kiss her but his hand dropped down to her hip and gave her a squeeze there before stepping away. Beth didn't say anything and he could feel her eyes on him as he made his way to the pickup truck where Rick and Michonne were already waiting.

…

It took them a lot longer than Daryl had thought it would and by the time they drove back up the road, it was well after dark. Glenn and Tyreese were on watch and opened the gates for Rick to drive the pickup truck through. Daryl hopped out from where he had been sitting in the back bed and they all began carrying what they had gotten inside.

His eyes were quick to scan for Beth but he didn't see her – not downstairs or upstairs in the apartment. He set down the box holding the potty-training toilet and then headed back downstairs, heading outside. There was a soft glow of a lantern coming from inside their tent and when he unzipped the flap, he peeked in just to make sure that it was Beth; as if he expected it to be someone else.

Beth was reading a book and she put it down when she saw it was him. "Hey," she gave him a soft smile. Daryl grunted his own greeting and crawled in, zipping the flap up behind him. "How'd the run go?" She asked.

"Alright." He set his crossbow aside and came to lie down beside her. "How were things here?" He asked.

"Quiet," she said and then smiled a little. "We all use that word so much now."

He nodded and didn't say anything and Beth lifted her book and returned to reading. Quiet. She was right. They used that to describe so many things nowadays. The night, the day. It was quiet now on the other side of their tent, on the other side of the fence. Daryl laid there and listened to her breathe softly beside him as she read and a part of him was getting used to peaceful nights like this. If he wasn't on watch, he was in this tent with Beth. They had the station where everyone else was but this tent, it was their home where it was just the two of them and didn't have to worry about anyone else. He had never had that before – a home he didn't mind coming back to; a home he actually had difficulty leaving sometimes.

He turned his head and looked at her as she read, her eyes fluttering across the words on the page. The lantern gave a soft light across her face and he knew she knew he was looking at her but she kept reading and didn't ask him about it.

She had been just a kid on the farm – young and kept ignorant to the world outside of the farm. And then she had screamed and cried that day of the barn massacre, something inside of her crumbling when she was faced with the truth in the form of her dead mom walking.

He remembered Lori coming to him, telling him that Beth had fallen into some kind of shock and could he please go find Rick and Hershel to bring them back. He had been pissed, the sight of a walker Sophia still too fresh in his mind, and he had lashed out, not caring about Beth or anyone else. And just a few days later, he heard Beth had tried to kill herself.

The farm fell to a herd and the survivors met on the highway. Beth had been clinging to Hershel, crying, she being the only one crying with what they had just all been through and survived. That winter, as they moved from place to place, trying to find somewhere longer than a couple of days, he had begun to notice her a bit more – which still wasn't that much since he had never paid attention to her before. She was young and he noticed that she was pretty and every time she sang softly, he found himself stopping whatever he was doing to listen to her words.

It had been a hard winter and he had hunted as hard as he could to keep them alive. And then, they found the prison and so many things happened so quickly, it was hard to remember them all as they all swirled into one big blur in his brain.

But he remembered Beth. Her cradling Judith and taking care of her, singing songs in the darkness and reminding Maggie time and time again that she wasn't a little kid anymore. He remembered the way she smiled and laughed and blushed and even with everything going on in the world on the other side of the prison fence, there was Beth on the inside of it, being pretty and making them all believe, along with Lil' Asskicker, that maybe things wouldn't be shit forever.

And then the prison fell and was gone to them forever and it was just him and Beth of all people. He vowed to himself as she sat across the fire from him that he would keep her safe. He would keep her alive no matter what. He may have failed the rest of their family at the prison but he wasn't going to fail her.

He had, of course. She had been taken from him and as he ran and then collapsed at the fork in the road beside the train tracks, he had felt like something else was taken from him. Something he didn't understand and couldn't identify. He had never felt it before and now, just as quickly as he had it, it was ripped from him.

And he didn't feel it again until he found Beth again and saw her and was able to always look and see her there.

Finally, not able to ignore it, she turned her head and looked at him. "What are you doing?" She wondered and gave him that soft smile of hers that punched him all over his body.

He shrugged a little. "Just tryin' to 'member things 'fore you," he said.

She set her book down. "And how was it before me?"

"Not worth 'memberin'," he shook his head.

She shifted to him then and rolling onto her stomach, she draped herself over him, her chin on his shoulder, face directed up towards his, and his thumb traced her scar.

"Still hurt?" He asked.

"Not as much as it used to. I've found myself kind of liking it," she admitted. "I look at it and it reminds me that I made it. I'm just not another dead girl."

"You were never that," he said and she laughed softly then because she didn't believe him.

"With your scars, you're a survivor, too," she told him. "You made it, too. We both made it so we could be here in this tent, just like this, with each other."

Daryl wasn't too sure what to say to that so he didn't say anything. His thumb left her cheek and his hand slowly slid back, curving around the back of her neck, touching her soft skin and seeing her eyes darken slightly from his touch.

She turned her head and kissed the inside of his arm. "I love you, too," she whispered.

He sat up, which forced her to sit up, too, and his hands framed her head, holding onto it, pulling on it gently. And she smiled before pressing her lips to his. He kissed her, immediately feeling hungry and only wanting more. He turned her and guided her down onto her back, her hands clutching him and pulling him down on top of her.

He felt her cool hands sweep up beneath his shirt and he didn't stop her or even tense as her light touch fluttered over his scars there on his back. He pressed down against her and kissed her a bit harder, opening his mouth against hers as if he was trying to crawl into her mouth and live there for the rest of his life.

She whimpered his name softly as her hands went to the button of his jeans, her teeth nipping gently at his lower lip, and Daryl shrugged out of his vest and jacket before his own fingers went to the zipper of the hooded sweatshirt she was wearing that evening. He kissed her again and again and both of their lungs were burning and they were panting but neither stopped. Her fingers gripped clumps of his hair, holding him to her, and his hands swept down the sides of her body and in that moment, being able to breathe was pretty low on the list of things he cared about.

Rick had asked him earlier on their run how things were going for him and Beth. He asked how she was and how he was and at the time, Daryl hadn't been too sure how to answer it.

But now, Beth whispered his name and her hands slid up his chest to the sides of his neck and she was making him feel as if his blood was burning and he knew exactly how he was. He had never really felt it before but in that moment, he knew exactly what it was without mistaking it for anything else.

In that moment, with Beth, having her back here with him, Daryl Dixon was happy.

…

The End.

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