Author's Note: Okay so like most people I can't handle what happened in the MSF so I wrote this. Please don't come at me telling me how unlikely it is for someone to survive a bullet to the head (it actually is possible) and just let me live in my fanfiction bubble in peace.

Come Back to Me

He kept waiting to wake up, to snap out of this horrible nightmare. For of course it had to be a nightmare, after all of his searching for her this was how it ended?

He didn't even get to say goodbye.

He didn't even get to say hello.

The only thing keeping him grounded in the horrible reality that had become his life was the weight of the dead woman in his arms. Her sister's screams filled his ears but he did not truly hear them over the sound of his own heart shattering as he fell to his knees, cradling Beth's body to his chest as he tuned out everything in the world but her.

But in the end it didn't matter that he didn't hear Maggie's screams, the dead did.

He ignored the sound of metal in flesh as they tried to hold the walkers off. But soon enough people were saying things to him, yelling at him, pulling at him. He didn't respond, didn't move. Suddenly Rick was there, trying unsuccessfully to pull him to his feet.

"We have to go. Daryl there's to many of them." his voice was frantic but Daryl could still hear the pain in it, the tears he was holding back for their sakes. Daryl struggled to his feet, his hold on Beth slipping just slightly as he struggled to pull her body back into his arms.

The dead were swarming at them as they rushed to the dirty firetruck, people began to shoot down the closest ones as they approached in an awkward half jog. They were still yards from the truck when Daryl's foot caught on a broken piece of pavement. He went down hard to his knees, just barely managing to protect Beth's head from slamming into the pavement.

Not that it mattered anymore.

He could see the walkers coming closer but he didn't bother to move away. Daryl hunched himself closer around Beth's still body as he buried his nose against the crown of her head. He hoped that he would be able to smell that sweet scent that was just simply Beth but the only thing that filled his nose was the sharp metallic scent of blood. The growls of the dead were coming closer and only one thought broke through the haze of pain that was his mind, let them come.

A hand was on his shoulder then, pulling him to his feet, shoving him forward. He lost his hold on Beth and he turned to go back for her but Rick was already pulling him into the truck. Daryl heard the roar of the engine and he started to throw himself against the hold Rick had on him but it was no use. Rick wrapped his arms tighter around Daryl until he could barely breathe but still Daryl tried to shake him off.

"There's too many Daryl. We have to go. We have to go." his voice held all the pain that Daryl felt but still he struggled, staring at Beth's slumped body on the pavement, the back of her head wet with her blood that was slowly spreading to the pavement beneath her. He knew that the scent of fresh blood would draw the dead to her like flies to honey and the horrified knowledge of what was going to happen to Beth next filled him as the truck pulled away from the hospital with a lurch.

Everything around Daryl had been reduced to fuzz, a background hum that served only to annoy him. Tyreese had joined Rick in holding him back and vaguely Daryl thought that he was whispering apologies but they didn't register in his mind.

One of Maggie's screams managed to penetrate his brain as she made to rush forward like Daryl was still trying to do as she cried out, "I can't leave her again!" She'd barely made it two feet before Glenn and Tara caught her and pulled her back. She slipped to the floor immediately, gut wrenching sobs spilling out of her as she huddled against them.

Daryl felt the fight in himself go out as the truck began to gain speed and he watched Beth's broken form grow increasingly smaller, wishing she was facing the other way so that he could get one last glimpse of her face.

The truck turned a corner and she disappeared from sight as Daryl let the numbness take over and consume him.

XxX

The first thing she learned was pain.

It surrounded her, consumed her, until there was nothing else. She was certain that everything she was must be made out of this agony that was ripping her head to pieces. Her eyes flickered open only to immediately squeeze shut as the bright light assaulted them. The smallest of whimpers tore itself from her throat at the pain and if she could move her body she would have curled in on herself for protection against the light turning the inside of her eyelids red.

Slowly, carefully, she eased her eyes open the tiniest bit. It was marginally better. It was still too bright but it was bearable. Funny black spots danced dizzily in her left eye as she tried to see her surroundings, to find the cause of her agony.

She could see nothing but her hand, flaked with blood, on the pavement before her. She tried to move her fingers but nothing happened. A frown crossed her features before her eyes scanned the horizon beyond the hand she knew was hers but couldn't seem to control.

The second thing she learned was terror.

Approaching her were a group of terrifyingly mutilated people. No, they could not be people. People did not walk around with gray skin stretched tight over emancipated skeletons, with burn wounds covering half their faces. These were not people they were...

Walkers.

The part of her that seemed to simply know things whispered.

She did not know what the word meant but she knew that the things approaching her, drawn by the scent of her blood, were dangerous. She still could not move her fingers but she found that she could move her arms. She pulled herself along the pavement, her vision going in and out as she tried to put distance between herself and the dead.

The third thing she learned was confusion.

She could not have made it more than two feet before the sound of gunshots filled the air. The sound made her ears ring and she cried out against the pain and the instinctive terror she felt at the noise. Yet still she crawled, knowing that to stop meant to die. And despite the pain consuming her she very much did not want to die.

Hands were on her then and she cried out, waiting for the pain to come as the dead began to bite into her flesh.

Instead a voice reached her.

"Oh my god. She is alive." the whisper belonged to a woman, her voice full of something akin to awe.

The pain in her head increased as the woman started yelling, either not knowing or not caring that each word felt like a knife cutting into her brain.

"Tell Edwards to get ready! Someone grab a stretcher."

She whimpered against the pain the noise brought and suddenly hands were cupping her face. She opened her eyes to meet those of a young woman with brown hair staring down at her.

"It's going to be okay Beth. You're going to be alright."

She blinked back the spots in her eyes as she stared up at the woman in confusion. Who was Beth? Was she Beth?

She felt no particular connection to the word but having a name did not seem to be the biggest of her concerns at the moment. A wave of blackness approached her and she rode it out as more hands closed around her ankles and shoulders.

The fourth thing she learned was hope.

She came to briefly, flat on her back on some form of moving bed.

Stretcher. Her mind whispered as she blinked up at the flickering lights above her. Or perhaps it was simply her vision that was flickering on and off.

"She's alive." this voice was male and sounded almost reverent as a man with glasses looked down at her. Beth, she had decided she would call herself this with the others, blinked up at him and watched as his features seemed to steady in a sudden flash of resolve.

"Put her under. If she wakes up at all during this it's over."

Something was placed over Beth's mouth then and a startled noise of fear wrung itself unbidden out of her throat. The man was looking down at her again as he pulled rubber gloves onto his hands.

"Don't worry Beth. I'll save you."

He must have seen the fear in her eyes, or her doubts at his words, because his next words reached her just before she slipped under whatever gas they had given her.

"I promise."

The fifth thing she learned was darkness.

XxX

Daryl insisted on digging the grave himself.

No one objected, no one even pointed out that they didn't have a body to bury. They just stood to the side and watched as Daryl kept digging down deeper into the earth, hoping that each shovelful would somehow help to ease his pain.

It didn't.

Finally, he gave up on the idea that digging a grave would help him. He stuck the shovel into the dirt on the edge of the grave and pulled himself out of the knee deep hole. Daryl joined the circle of his family and stared down at the empty grave feeling that the hole inside of him was much much deeper.

No one seemed to know what to do, it felt strange to put the dirt back inside the hole with it empty. They needed to put something inside of it. Something to represent Beth.

If Daryl could still feel anything he would have likely felt surprise when it was Eugene, Eugene the liar as he had learned from the faint whispers that managed to worm their way past his numbness, who stepped forward first.

He pulled something from his pocket, a book of matches, and leaned down to place it inside the grave.

The smallest spark of confusion and annoyance hit Daryl before Eugene shrugged and mumbled something which Daryl just barely caught. "She sounded like she had a bit of fire." before he walked away to stand by himself at the outer edge of the group.

It seemed everyone got the idea quickly and at a loss of anything else to do, one by one they stepped forward and placed something in the grave before whispering what it meant. The whispers seemed to be more for Beth than the others but Daryl could not stop himself from hearing them, from clinging to them and the shared memory of her.

A pair of earrings. She always saw the beauty in everything.

A cloth bandage. Hurt is part of the package. But you were worth caring for.

A flower. I would have loved to have met you.

A torn page from a book. For everything.

A necklace and a sob that could barely get out three words. I'm sorry Bethy.

Memento after memento, word after word. Still it was not enough and yet Daryl knew that Beth would be moved beyond words at this memorial. Finally everyone was done and he was the only one left.

He did not know what he could place in that grave that would be worthy of representing all she meant to him. Part of him wanted to just lie down inside of it himself and let the other pour the dirt over him.

Instead he walked forward slowly, his boots at the edge of the grave as he pulled the soiled bandanna from his back pocket.

His knees were on the dirt then as he leaned forward and spread out the bandanna so it covered the other mementos as if it was protecting them. Her voice suddenly rang in his ears like she was right beside him.

It does matter.

Daryl didn't know what he could say to tell her what she meant to him, what he sometimes thought they might be able to have the few times he let wild dreams take him over.

He rocked back on his heels and stared at the grave that looked so empty and yet so full as he finally spoke. Unlike the others he did not bother to whisper as he finally told her. "It was you. You changed my mind."

XxX

She entered a world where only two things existed: agony or blackness.

There were times when she came to only to be hit by a pain so intense she cried out wordlessly. When this happened it usually did not take long for a new drug to be administered into her IV bag, numbing her to the world once again.

Time lost any sense of meaning as her body and brain waged war against her wound, determined to keep her alive.

In the brief periods where she regained consciousness that was not blinded by pain she managed to catch a few snippets of conversation. Most were full of long hard to pronounce words that made no sense to her and that she briefly wondered if were made up before she slipped back into her haze of drugs, but a few things managed to cling to her mind.

"She was lucky."

"If it had been a mere half-an-inch downwards she'd be dead."

"The bullet missed the major parts of the brain although the exact damage it did will be unclear until she wakes up."

The words 'she's lucky' seemed to come up several times in the brief moments she could drag herself into reality. But she did not feel lucky, she felt like pain in human form.

XxX

They continued moving because the alternative was to sit still and wait for death to find them.

Daryl kept his distance from the others, spoke only when necessary and often lost himself in hunting. Everything reminded him of Beth, even the weight of his crossbow in his hands reminded him of how he taught her to use it.

The little bit of sleep he managed to catch was fueled by nightmares of Beth being shot again and again. He woke up screaming more than once, knew his sleep was full of mumbling and thrashing, yet no one mentioned it.

No one said a word but Daryl could see the knowledge of it reflected in their eyes.

He'd never said it aloud but they knew, of course they knew. It was why they did not pressure him, did not push him to talk. Did not offer him the platitudes they gave Maggie about Beth being in a better place, being with their father and other loved ones.

They all knew Daryl was in love with Beth, just as they knew nothing they said would be able to change that or make it any better.

XxX

One day she woke up and the pain was manageable.

The next day it was even more so.

Slowly, ever so slowly, they began to wean her off the pain medicine and various other drugs.

The doctor, Edwards, came in after she had been conscious a few days to sit and talk with her about her injuries. Most of the words were medical, the explanations to complex for her still healing brain to grasp. But Beth began to understand very early on that she was smart and the general idea of what happened stuck with her.

I was shot in the head. It was an accident. Edwards saved me.

The bullet ripped through part of my frontal lobe. Its why I can't remember anything, not even remember being shot.

The memory loss is the biggest side effect of my injury.

We do not know if my memories will ever return.

She still saw black spots in her left eye and while she could now move the fingers of her left hand slightly, sensation had been slow to return to them. Everyday when Edwards came in to check on her he pricked the ends of each of her fingers with a pin.

She felt nothing.

XxX

Noah told them of the safe place he lived with his family in Virginia. At first the others were weary to attempt the long trek for a place that may have been destroyed in the year of his absence from it but at the word 'walls' they were sold.

Daryl followed after them, not out of hope for the dream of safety but out of a loss for what else to do.

He hung back from the rest of the group, unable to be near any of them for very long. Rick sometimes hung back to walk beside him in silence, Judith bundled up in his arms. Neither of them said a word, for really what was there left to say?

XxX

She had been deemed well enough to start being useful.

She did small things at first, things that would not cause strain to her still healing brain.

She folded clothes, washed dishes, swept. Nothing complex, nothing difficult, yet she found that she often had to stop to rest. The cops avoided her and the other wards were weary.

Aside from her daily session with Edwards she spent her days alone without even memories to keep her company.

XxX

Daryl decided one day that he had finally lost his mind.

Beth began to come to him, but in more than just his nightmares.

He started to see a blonde girl everywhere he went, always in the corner of his eye, always just out of reach.

Sometimes he heard her laugh carried to him by the wind.

Weeks had past and still he would wake up sobbing her name.

XxX

Everyday after he checked her vision (which had not improved) and the feeling in her fingers (she could feel the pressure of the pin now just not the pain) Edwards did memory tests on her.

Things had began to come back to her, but they were merely facts not memories. She could remember when the Declaration of Independence was signed, she remembered that walkers only went down from head shots, she remembered the differential equation.

But still she did not remember who she was.

She still did not connect to this Beth they claimed her to be.

XxX

He hadn't even noticed when they first crossed out of Georgia.

But now he was standing frozen at the state line between South and North Carolina and Daryl simply could not get his feet to move.

His own angry words were reverberating inside his head as he tried to unglue his feet from the asphalt.

I ain't never been out of Georgia!

It seemed like so many other things that was no longer true.

The others were looking back at him now, tuned in to the fact that something was wrong. But something was always wrong these days and after a moment many of them turned their backs before continuing ever onward. Daryl could not tear his gaze away from the sign even as he saw Rick approaching him from the corner of his eye. Daryl wished with a fierce yearning that Beth was here, but that was nothing new.

He was always wishing for Beth.

The tingling sound of her laughter reached his ears and he managed to tear his eyes from the sign to see her where she stood a few feet away from him.

Daryl had yet to see more than a glimpse of her, no more than the ends of her ponytail as she darted away from him like they were playing a game, yet there she stood whole and untouched.

Her feet were squarely planted and her hands were on her hips as she considered him with a raised brow. There was no stain of blood on her clothes or in her hair and her wide blue eyes regarded him with a smile that broke across her face like a sunrise.

"You coming or what Dixon?" Beth asked sweetly before she stepped backwards over the state line.

Daryl lurched forward just as she disappeared from view.

XxX

She had learned something concrete about herself, the first thing that felt true to her since the accident.

She could sing.

She did not know many words or songs at first. In the beginning it just came out as soft humming. Wordless tunes flowed from her lips as she folded strangers' clothes or washed their dishes. It took time before words came to her and even then she would often lose herself mid sentence.

It did not matter to her.

The words, the songs, became her memory. They took her over and calmed her far more than any drug Edwards pumped into her system ever did. She became stronger with the songs and soon the wards could stand to be near her. Could put whatever accident caused her injury behind them as they taught her new songs, new words.

Her favorite duet partner was the old man who cleaned the rest of the kitchen while she washed dishes.

One night he was singing a new song, or at least a new to her song, as she washed silverware in captivated silence.

His voice was rich, melodious, and she absorbed the tune and the words to sing later.

The song was haunting and the words were sad. Beth looked down at the soapy spoon in her hand and tried to scrub a bit of congealed food off it as she listened.

"And all I've done for want of wit, a memory now I can't recall..."

The spoon slipped out of her hand and fell silently back into the soapy water as the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

Beth did not even notice she had dropped the spoon because suddenly she was in a different room, holding a different spoon up to the beam of a small flashlight. The words Washington DC engraved upon it shone up at her.

She blinked and the image was gone.

XxX

Ever since the state line Beth only came to him when he was alone. So Daryl started to be alone more.

Sometimes she said nothing, simply sat beside him and watched his hands as he cleaned a kill or shaped an arrow. Sometimes they would talk for hours, about nothing and everything.

He lost count early on of how many times he said sorry.

Michonne found them one day while he was in mid word. Daryl looked over Beth's head and saw her standing there and watching them with her lips pursed.

No, watching him.

It was becoming increasingly harder for him to remember that Beth wasn't really there.

It made no difference, Michonne only looked at him sadly before turning on her heels and walking away.

XxX

She used the cover of darkness to make her escape.

Honestly, she did not know if escape was even the right word for it. The hospital kept a guard on watch at all times but they did so to keep the dead out not the living in. Still no one ever tried to leave and Beth got the feeling that they might try to stop her if she did.

So she told no one of her plan. She began to sneak food and knives from the kitchen. The flimsy knives from the cafeteria would likely be no match against the walkers but she simply could not stand the idea of going out there unarmed.

It took her a week to gather enough supplies, the whole time the words Washington DC branded across her eyelids. She began to have dreams of the city she did not know if she had ever been to. Her mind began to procure more facts for her about the city she now knew was the country's capitol. Visions of monuments and a large white house filled her waking hours.

She used the cover of darkness to flee from the white hospital walls, not knowing why she had to go to DC just knowing she had to follow the only memory she had left.

XxX

The walls were still standing.

That was the first thing to break through the haze Daryl had lived in since that gun went off. The walls were still standing and the people behind them were still alive.

There was a lot of crying as an older woman Daryl knew to be Noah's mother held him tight and sobbed. Nothing else of what was behind the walls left much of an impression on him as his mind was stuck on what had just happened on the outside.

The others had rushed through the fences the second the guards had recognized Noah and agreed to let the others in but Daryl had lingered, waiting.

She appeared silently behind him, the whisper of his name the only thing alerting him to her presence.

He turned quickly, his heart plummeting as he took in the look of immense sadness on her face.

"Beth." his hand was reaching out as he stepped forward but she simply shook her head as she began to flicker before his eyes.

"I can't go in there with you." her voice was a whisper but it stung him like a knife as he watched her flickering form with terrified eyes.

"Don't leave me." Daryl pleaded as he teetered forward a step. His hands reached the place she had been, saying something as she faded from sight. Only the last word of her sentence came to him. Faith.

XxX

It was on the road that she learned the second thing about herself to take to be true.

She knew how to drive.

She had to check several cars before she found one that had the keys still inside and actually worked. At first she had merely pulled on the seat belt and sat staring at the controls before the part of her brain that just knew things woke up and reminded her of what to do.

So she drove.

She drove and she drove and she drove.

She had taken a map from a different car, one she couldn't drive, that she had found back in Atlanta. The route to DC was carefully mapped out before her and she followed it to the exact letter.

Every car she passed she stopped to attempt to siphon gas off of. This was another fact that had returned to her as she drove. The more time she spent in the car on the endless road the more things began to come back to her.

But they were still only about the world and not about her.

XxX

Daryl was unreachable for days.

He did not eat or sleep or really even move.

He had lost her, again.

Now Beth would truly be gone forever.

Everyone tried to get through to him, now coming up with the things he had been dreading to hear since they had lost her.

Beth wouldn't want this.

You need to be strong for her.

Beth would want you to keep living.

In the end it was Abraham who broke through the haze.

"You just gonna give up then?" his words were angry but there was something else behind them, something that told Daryl the man before him had been in this place before.

The thought did not comfort him.

"You gonna put this on Beth? You gonna make her know you gave up because of her?"

Daryl shrugged, feeling as though a weight was resting heavily on his shoulders as he spoke for the first time since he had entered the walls of the safe zone. "It don't matter. She's dead."

The words echoed in his head, again and again.

she'sdeadshe'sdeadshe'sdeadshe'sdeadshe'sdeadshe'sdeadshe'sdeadshe'sdeadshe'sdead

Abraham let out a huff of air so strong his mustache hairs billowed. He stared down at Daryl with a look he could not place: remorse, guilt, understanding. Maybe all, maybe none. Whatever it was he was still glaring at Daryl when he proclaimed words Daryl knew all to well.

"It does matter."

XxX

She nearly hit him at first.

She had switched cars earlier that morning after a tire had blown out and she was heading down another endless stretch of road when something stumbled out onto the street. She nearly missed it at first because it was on her bad side but eventually she saw the figure through the spots that clouded her vision. This was not the first time this had happened and Beth readied herself in case the walker choose to step in front of the car as many often did.

Instead, she was shocked when the man before her rose his hand to his face and pulled the sunglasses off his eyes as he stared at the car bearing down at him in wonder.

He's not dead.

She slammed on the breaks so hard the smell of burning rubber filled her nose.

She did not know why she stopped. She did not know why when the man decided after a long pause where she did not drive away to walk over to the other side of the car and get in the passengers seat she both let him and was not afraid.

He did not question why she was letting him join her and so she decided to stop questioning herself.

Maybe this was the third thing she was learning about herself.

She was a good person.

XxX

He was placed on guard duty on the wall although he also spent a good portion of his days on the outside hunting. He told the others it was because after so long being out there he could not stand being behind the walls all the time.

They did not seem to agree with him but at least they believed him.

Well most of them. Michonne and Rick simply looked at him with knowing eyes and they all pretended not to notice how closely they began to look after him.

Daryl didn't care. He simply spent half his days wandering the outskirts of the fences with his bow in the hopes that outside of the walls Beth would come back to him.

XxX

She didn't believe the man, Morgan, was also originally heading to DC until he showed her the carefully marked out map. Even then she was weary.

But as the days passed she learned to trust him. Began to appreciate having another person around to share the tedious driving and when they finally ran out of gas and had to continue on foot she began to be thankful for having someone to have her back.

She grew to like Morgan, if only for the simple fact that he did not spend the hours by talking about his past which would only remind her that she could not remember her own.

She knew he had seen the circular scar that marred her forehead, the lopsided ponytail that covered up the part of her hair that was only just growing back in. But Morgan never asked her any questions.

He gave her songs though and Beth soon began to join her voice to his as they moved steadily onwards.

XxX

Slowly Daryl began to stop expecting to see her around every tree, that every snap of a twig wasn't her walking up behind him. He began to bring back more game on his hunts as he slowly focused more on the hunt than on looking for her.

But that was only in his waking hours.

At night memories and dreams of Beth comforted him more than any words the others said to him ever could.

XxX

She was ill and Morgan was injured when the stranger found them.

He told them his name was Aaron and that he came from a safe community where they could receive treatment if they wished it.

Morgan made it a point to ask if they would be expected to stay if they went there for help.

It was only until after they had been assured ten times that they would be free to leave whenever they wanted to that Morgan agreed to follow the man back to his camp.

Beth was so ill that she passed out on the way there and only woke up once when Morgan carried her through the fence in the dark.

XxX

Rick was smiling again.

A man, a stranger to all but Rick, Carl and Michonne, had appeared in the street the previous day, calling out Rick's name in wonder.

It was clear to all they knew each other, though to what extent Daryl could not tell. At first the men had simply shaken hands but then Rick was pulling the stranger to him in a brief but tight hug.

That night the group was told the story of how Morgan saved Rick the day he fled the hospital. They mentioned that they met a second time but they did not discuss it much. Daryl understood that was when Carl and Michonne met him though. Morgan told them about finding the church and the note and map addressed to Rick. He had decided to follow it simply because he did not know how to find anyone else he had ever known so he decided to try to find the only one that he could.

Someone asked him about the large bandage on his arm and Morgan explained that he cut it on a broken window the day before Aaron found them.

"Would've bled out before that but Beth managed to bandage it up tight enough to hold me over." Morgan did not seem to notice the hush that fell over the room at the name. Daryl felt something in his chest tighten and then shatter as the man continued unknowingly. "She's pretty sick right now but when she's all healed up I know she'd love to meet all of you."

Rick was still in the process of telling him that they would love to meet this new Beth when Daryl walked wordlessly out the front door.

XxX

It took over a week for the illness to leave her system.

She had to wait another two days confined to the house she shared with Morgan so that she would not spread her germs and cause an outbreak in the small community.

Finally she was granted clearance to leave and join the world that she sometimes spied on through her bedroom window but still she waited. She did not think she could face the world outside this house alone.

She had never seen so many people in one place before. The hospital had not had even a third of this number. The sheer amount of faces made her huddle on the floor of her empty closet, palms pressed tight over her ears as she sang every song she knew in an attempt to calm herself down.

XxX

He was not told until the door was opening that their weekly family dinner would be having two extra guests that night. Morgan was already crossing the threshold of the house and Daryl knew it would be considered to be rude if he left now but he was still turning for the back door, not wanting to see some stranger with her name, when the sound of breaking glass filled his ears.

Daryl turned quickly, his hand already on the knife he insisted on wearing on his hip, when Maggie started running. His gaze followed her to the doorway and there she stood.

Thinner than he remembered, her face more angular and pale than his visions. Her hair was shorter, the ponytail arranged as if to cover up a part of her head. Her blue eyes were wide with alarm and surprise as she looked at them all staring back at her in disbelief and joy.

The others can see her too.

But it was the small circular scar on her face that proved to Daryl that this was real. That she was really here.

Somehow this wasn't a vision and she was really here. And that meant, she was alive.

Beth is alive.

Daryl stood rooted to the spot, unable to move and at the same time unable to tear his eyes away from the girl in the doorway. He was still silently yelling at himself to wake up, sure that this was a dream because it was far to good to be true, when Maggie reached her.

She threw her arms around Beth with a startled sob as everyone began to push themselves closer to the trio in the doorway. Morgan stood slightly behind Beth, the expression of confusion on his face surely mirroring the one on Daryl's.

Beth's startled eyes met his from across the room and it was that which finally broke through to him and suddenly Daryl could move again. He was pushing his way past the others, trying to reach her when Maggie finally pulled away from Beth to cup her face in her hands.

Her voice was filled with disbelief and joy as she whispered, "Bethy...you're alive."

And suddenly Daryl found himself wishing very much that he hadn't moved closer because he saw the flash of confusion in Beth's eyes, saw her jerk away from her sister's arms in fright.

He heard every ounce of terror and confusion in her voice as she huddled against the door frame and whispered, "How do you know my name?"

AN2: The song the old man sings is 'the parting glass'.