Warning: This chapter contains some graphic violence as well as mentions of rape. Please read with care. 3

Daryl wakes from a shallow sleep to the frosty morning air touching his face, and the sound of quiet singing.

"Swing me way down south; sing me somethin' brave from your mouth."

He doesn't open his eyes, and he keeps his breathing slow and steady in case she's watching him. She'll get shy and quit if she knows he's listening.

"I'll bring you pearls of water on my hips, and the love in my lips, all the love from my lips."

Beth trails off and hums a few bars, making a soft whining sound like she's imitating a fiddle or an electric guitar solo. A smile tugs hard at the corner of Daryl's mouth, and he opens his eyes just a slit to see her.

She's crouched a few feet away from where he lies, still wedged under the rocky outcropping of red dirt they'd found the night before. She's out from under it now, sitting in a slice of morning sun.

Puffs of steamy breath swirl around her head, illuminated by the slanting light. On the dry, flat creek bed where she's hunched, she's spread out the contents of both of their backpacks before her. The pillar candle and jar of peanut butter from the farmhouse, ammo and spare handguns, hunting stuff, a few forks and spoons, and dozens of miscellaneous bits and pieces they've picked up along their way like magpies. She's organizing things, taking stock, and humming to herself all the while.

It's a cool, clear day; Daryl can see a few wispy white clouds drifting in the blue sky beyond the bare treetops, but that's it. Good weather for what they'll have to do today - hunting.

"Mornin'," he says, sitting up, his voice hoarser than a bullfrog's croak. He coughs a couple of times, trying to clear the congestion from his lungs.Fuckin' smokes. He'd kill for one right now.

Beth turns and smiles at him, eyes bright. The sadness that had shadowed her face the night before is gone.

"Mornin', Daryl," she says. "Hope you're in the mood for peanut butter, 'cause that's all we got."

He scoffs, and moves over to sit beside her. She hands him a spoon and the jar of peanut butter, and they eat in silence for several minutes, passing the jar back and forth.

Daryl's thinking about their surroundings and which way they ought to go to find some game when Beth gives a little yelp and her shoulder slams into his. She grips his knee with one hand and flaps her other arm, brandishing her peanut butter-covered spoon like a weapon.

"The hell?" Daryl says, his face flushing.

"Sorry," she says, breathless, as she turns to him. Her eyes are wide with alarm. "There, um. There was a spider. It must have - it was on myshoulder." She shudders hard, grimacing.

"You afraid of spiders or somethin'?" he asks, trying not to smile.

"Yes," Beth says. She arches an eyebrow at him. "Go ahead. A farm girl in a world full of walkers, scared of a little spider? It's hilarious, Maggie used to bug me all the time about it. Go on, laugh all you want!" She grins as she says it, her cheeks flushing bright pink.

Daryl scoffs. "Ain't gonna laugh at you."

Beth gives another shudder and rolls to her feet. "Now I got the heebie-jeebies," she mutters. Popping the peanut buttery spoon in her mouth, she shakes the dirt off her jeans and rubs her hands vigorously up and down the baggy sleeves of her black hoodie. Stretching her arms over her head, she shakes her hair out and pulls it back up into a high ponytail at the crown of her head. She pops the spoon out of her mouth and drops it in her pack, completing the series of movements with practiced familiarity, like a dancer.

She's gotten so accustomed to living rough.

Daryl looks down, licking the last of the peanut butter off his spoon. They divide up the gear Beth had spread out on the ground. Once they've packed up, Daryl hands Beth his crossbow.

"C'mon," he says, tipping his chin. "We gotta get us some kinda dinner, or else it's gonna be peanut butter again."

"Yessir, Mr. Dixon," Beth says, grinning and hefting the crossbow into the cradle of her arms.

She doesn't ask him which way they should go, doesn't look to him for any kind of direction at all. She just walks down the dry creek bed, downwind from where she's headed, scanning the banks for signs that an animal has passed through.

Winter's coming fast, now. The days are short and the woods have turned dark and dull, dead and frostbitten. They have no shelter and next to no food, no family or friends. Nothing but the things they carry, and each other.

As he watches Beth bend down to examine some tracks in the dirt, a sense of calm settles over him and, for a moment, his worries fade to a background hum. He remembers how he felt at the funeral home, weeks ago, coming home empty-handed from hunting, annoyed and worrying, always fucking worrying, and how calm he'd felt the moment he walked in the front door and saw her there. Beth hadn't been doing anything special; she'd been sitting on one of the uncomfortable-looking, fancy sofas in the parlour with her injured ankle elevated on a green velvet cushion. She was reading a book, unbothered by the preserved walker lying in its coffin only a few feet away, like the guest of honour at some kind of endless wake. She'd just looked up from her book, smiled at him, and softly said, "Hey, Daryl."

We can do this, he'd thought, looking at her there, safe and comfortable and happy enough. We can stay right here for the rest of our lives.

That same calm, knowing feeling fills him again like air pumped into an old tire, as Beth turns back and smiles at him, crossbow in her arms. It didn't work out, last time he felt this way. Most things don't tend to work out. He knows it. But that doesn't seem to stop him from believing in it, even if it's just for this moment, and he begins to walk towards her, splashing in the creek water.

They can do this. They can stay together and live.

They can stay together for the rest of their lives.

"Do you miss your bike?"

It's late afternoon and they've had no luck hunting. The deer tracks Beth found by the creek were too old and they lost the trail a couple of hours later in the woods. Daryl's been leading for about the last hour, now, and Beth's been lobbing random questions at his back for about the same amount of time.

"Wasn't my bike. It was Merle's," he says, stepping over a gopher hole.

"Okay, do you miss Merle's bike?" Beth says, a hint of exasperation in her tone. Daryl tries not to smile.

"Nah," Daryl says. "Miss havin' a bike for damn sure, but that was more Merle's style."

"Did you have your own bike? Before?"

"Mm-hm. '83 Harley Sportster. Wasn't so chopped up as Merle's."

"Cool," Beth says. There's a brief pause where the only sound is their feet stomping through the dead grass and weeds. "I have no idea what that means."

"I come across one like it, I'll be sure to show you," Daryl says. She laughs, and his stomach responds with a little dive, like topping the first hill on a rollercoaster.

They maneuver around a large fallen tree, and on the other side find a small abandoned campsite. A water-stained green and grey tent is half-collapsed between two oak trees, sagging between them. Nearby, a makeshift fire pit overflows with burnt pieces of wood and charred tin cans. The rest of the site is scattered with plastic coolers and knapsacks, but before Daryl can look to Beth to see if she wants to investigate, she's striding over to the tent, her knife in her hand.

Daryl goes to her side, and they stand outside the tent for a beat, listening for walkers within. Everything is quiet and still but for a couple of crows cackling to each other nearby.

"Cover me," Beth whispers, reaching for the zippered door to the tent with her free hand. Daryl holds his crossbow up, pointing it over her shoulder. She unzips the tent and takes an abrupt step back into him, clapping a hand over her nose. The smell hits him an instant later. Rotting flesh.

"Damn," Daryl says, trying to get a look around her. Beth crouches down, and Daryl sees there are two bodies in the tent, both of them half-rotted away by maggots and beetles. They lie side-by-side, what's left of their heads by the door. There are two pistols lying on the tent floor, one by each body.

He swallows. It's not hard to understand what happened here.

"Oh," Beth murmurs, leaning over the bodies. She stands shakily and turns away.

Daryl's about to ask her what her problem is when he glances down and sees something catch the light on one of the bodies' chests. Grabbing his handkerchief and holding it to his face to mask the smell, he bends down and looks closer. There's a pendant around the neck, a long silver chain and a flat circle of tarnished silver. Stamped in the middle of the circle are curlicue words: Little Sister. Daryl looks at the other body beside it, sees an identical chain disappearing under the ragged shirt still clinging to the bones. He tugs on it and the pendant slides into his hand: Big Sister.

They lie close, their arms twined together.

Daryl stands and turns around slowly. Beth's a few feet away, her back to him, her knife still clutched in one fist at her side. Her hands are shaking.

He turns back to the tent and stares at the two sisters for a moment longer before bending down and drawing the zipper back up, closing them in once more. They could probably use the spare pistols, but they don't need them, exactly. When he turns around, Beth's walking away, moving around the fallen tree and carrying on the way they'd been headed. Daryl watches her for a moment, then hefts his crossbow back over his shoulder and follows her.

Beth doesn't say another word for the rest of the afternoon.

"I guess that's it, huh?"

Daryl looks up at the sound of her voice. He's in the middle of cracking open the shell of a large snapping turtle to get at the meat inside. It was all they'd been able to catch that day, Beth spotting it lurking in the shallows of a stream when they'd stopped for water. The thing'd been a real pain in the ass to kill, and he's got the scratches on his forearms to prove it.

Beth had been stringing up the alarm around the camp they've made for the night, and she stands staring down at the length of rope in her hands, at the empty juice containers and hubcaps rattling together like a sad windchime.

"If we stop moving, find a place…" Beth says slowly, then trails off. She's looking away from him, chewing her bottom lip, and he can tell there's something she doesn't want to say.

"What?" he asks.

"If we stop movin', we're givin' up on findin' 'em," she says, looking up to meet his eyes, her gaze even. She juts her chin out a bit, like she's bracing for a punch. Daryl knows she's waiting for him to call her an idiot, remind her they're all dead, or good as.

Daryl considers the possibility, just as he has many times, that some of the others escaped into the woods like they did, got scattered like glass from a busted window.

It's possible. Daryl doesn't like to think too much about possible. He hasn't for a very long time; after all, what good had it ever done him, to believe?

"Ain't givin' up," he says, after a moment. "Just tryin' to keep livin' long enough to see 'em again."

Beth looks back at him for a long moment, then down at the hubcap in her hands. If he didn't know better, he'd say the soft expression on her face at that moment is gratitude.

She doesn't say anything more about it as Daryl finishes butchering the turtle and she secures their camp. He slides the meat onto stripped, sharpened sticks, and sets them carefully across the little pit that contains their fire.

Beth comes and sits beside him to wait for dinner, her boots to the fire, her black hoodie pulled up over her head to guard against the settling cold. Daryl chews his lip, wondering if they can chance a bigger fire once the meat's done. It's getting damn cold at night, every night.

"I know I probably shouldn't, that it probably makes things harder," Beth says after a while, once the gamey-fishy scent of roasting turtle meat begins to fill the air between them. "But I think about them a lot. Everybody."

Daryl doesn't answer her. He reaches instead for his knife and one of the busted bolts in his pack, wanting his hands busy.

"That baby," Beth says softly. He glances over at her, and a tiny smile plays across her mouth. "She could drive you nuts but she really was a goodbaby, wasn't she? Considering, you know," she pauses, shrugging her shoulders awkwardly. "Considering everything."

He nods, trying not to shut her down, trying not to prevent her from saying whatever it is she's working up to. He doesn't want to think about any of them, least of all Lil' Asskicker. He's barely allowed himself to think of them in all the weeks since they ran from the prison, and he doesn't intend to start now.

"I always wanted kids," Beth continues, and something trembles deep in her voice. She takes a breath. "I always wondered - who would they be, you know? Not would they be President or go to Mars or invent something, but like - would they have my same nose? Would they like strawberry ice cream or chocolate? Would they be adventurous or a homebody, or would they be afraid of thunderstorms, or…" she trails off, turning her head slightly so the side of her face disappears from his view. She takes another shuddery breath, and Daryl's stomach rolls over.

"I just wonder if she -"

"Beth," Daryl says, his voice little more than a rasp.

"I wonder - I can't help it, I just - I keep wondering what happened to Judith," she whispers, looking back at him. Her eyes are wide and wet with tears. "Where'd she end up? Why couldn't I find her and the other kids? Why -"

"Don't," Daryl says. For his own sake or hers, he's not sure. Beth turns back to the fire, her face obscured by her hoodie. Neither of them speaks for a few moments, and Beth leans forward to adjust the turtle meat over the low, hot flames.

"Do you believe in heaven?" Beth asks him, when she sits back. She glances at him. When their eyes meet, he shakes his head.

Beth smiles. "I get that," she says, poking at the fire absently with a stick, sending up a little plume of sparks. "I do, though. I believe in heaven. Not like, you know, harps and angels and clouds and stuff. Not like what I thought when I was little. It's more like… I don't know. Maybe we'll all see each other again, someday. Someplace else. Someplace… better."

Her eyes shine with tears as she looks at him, smiling to herself at whatever visions of reunion and harmony fill her brain. "I need to believe it, you know?" she says, her voice wavering and her smile trembling.

Daryl nods. He understands; he just doesn't believe in it himself. He can't. But Beth does. Somehow, she still does.

She sighs hard, swipes at her damp cheeks with her hands. Without a word, she shifts and curls up at his side, resting her cheek on his thigh, her hand cupping his knee. There's a hole in his pant leg there that wants patching, and he can feel the heat of her bare palm on his skin.

He should probably give her a shove, he supposes, push her away, tell her to quit being so soft. He places his knife and the bolt he'd been repairing on the ground, and lets one hand rest on Beth's upper arm. She smiles and moves closer, her fingertips pressing into him through his pants.

Daryl's head falls back against the tree trunk behind him, and he lets his body soak up the warmth of hers against his. Lets his hand stroke her arm. Lets her take the comfort she somehow seems to find in him.

She didn't know. She couldn't. She didn't know how he huddled next to her at night, listening for the fall of even the finest little pine needle. Nights when he could have heard a mouse a mile off. Nights trying to figure out where to go, what to do, how to keep her safe.

She doesn't know he'd do anything for her.

"Well, well, well. Ain't this cozy."

Daryl's on his feet in an instant, crossbow in hand, Beth scrambling up beside him, but it's too late.

A tall man with grey, curly hair steps over the rope stretched between the trees. Two more men step silently out of the shadows behind him. They're ragged looking, but seemingly well fed enough, armed with rifles and knives and bows. Their eyes take stock of the meagre camp, roving impassively over Daryl and Beth like they're not even there.

Daryl knows that look. That hungry, measuring look. He'd seen it enough times in Merle's eyes. He remembers the last time he saw it, when they stood in the woods outside Atlanta, heads bent together, Merle's face stretched in a shark-tooth grin as they worked out how they were going to rob the camp.

Daryl knows that look much too well. He's seen it many times, and it's never led anywhere good.

"Name's Joe," the grey-haired man says, crouching down by the fire and holding his palms up to warm them.

Beth's arm brushes against Daryl's, and the glance she slides his way is heavy. He doesn't look at her, keeps his crossbow trained on the man.

"Listen," Daryl says, trying to keep his voice calm, angling his body in front of Beth's, "you can see it's just us here, and we don't got nothin' worth takin'. Take that turtle meat there, if you want, but that's all we got."

Joe smiles, looks at Beth. Daryl watches the man's eyes track from her feet, up her legs, lingering on her body, to her face. An icy, sick sensation squirms in the pit of Daryl's stomach.

"Nothin' worth takin'?" Joe laughs. "Well now, brother, you know that ain't true."

Beth yelps as another man grabs her from behind. Panicked, Daryl reaches for her but he's grabbed from behind as well, and the crossbow is knocked from his hands. He tries to tell her to run but a punch to the gut sucks the wind out of him and he drops to his knees, gasping.

The man holding Beth hauls her away from Daryl to the other side of the fire, beside Joe. Beth struggles in his arms, dragging her feet and yanking at her arms to free them from the man's tight grip. She's frightened, but one look at her face and Daryl can tell she's pissed off, too.

"Easy, honey, easy," Joe says, laughing softly as he stands upright. He laughs like they're all just good friends hanging out at the bar. Daryl's stomach rolls over. One of the men holding Beth unbuckles the two belted holsters on her hips, removing her gun and her knife. His hand must linger too long on her ass as he does it, because Beth's head snaps around, fury in her eyes, and she thrashes, trying again to pull herself free.

"Don't touch her," Daryl grunts, struggling against the arms holding him. "Don't fuckin' touch her -"

"Now, fella, here's the thing," Joe says. "There's two ways this can go. We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way."

"What's the easy way?" Beth asks. The man has his arms wrapped around her neck and her waist as her hands grapple at his forearms.

"Shut up, Beth, don't -" One of his captors rears back and punches Daryl in the side of his head. Pain explodes there and his ear rings, nearly drowning out the voices around him.

"The easy way is Len fucks the girl first," Joe says, tipping his head in the direction of the grinning, dark-haired man with the bow, "on account of how he saw her first. Then the rest of us fellas fuck her."

The men chuckle together, a dark, hollow sound, and the bravado drains out of Beth's expression. Pale fear replaces it, her face turning ashen in the firelight.

"What's the hard way?" she asks, her voice smaller. Her hands have gone still against the man's arms, her wind-chapped fingers pink with cold.

The barrel of a gun presses into Daryl's temple, hard, and Beth's gaze shifts from Joe to him. Her eyes are wide and dark in the firelight. She stares at him for a long moment, her brows drawn together and her mouth a flat line, her nostrils flared like a deer's when it cottons on it's being hunted.

Daryl sees the moment she decides.

"All right," Beth says, nodding. Her gaze slides away and she looks directly at Joe. Her hands drop from the man's arm, forming fists at her sides. She straightens up and pushes her shoulders back. "If you don't hurt him."

All Daryl can seem to see are her hands. Her ragged-nailed, calloused, tough little hands.

Joe claps his hands together like they've just made some kind of great deal. Daryl's stomach plummets to around his knees and he hears himself shout something. He thrashes wildly, struggling to break free. One of the men holding him whips the butt of his pistol against the back of his head with a bony crunch and stars explode in front of his eyes. For a moment everything is darkness and trailing lights, and he feels consciousness fade out and back in again.

Beth's shouting something, he can't hear what, and the men behind him are laughing. Joe's laughing, too, and then Beth is walking away with the dark-haired man, disappearing from the circle of light thrown by the campfire.

The men drag him to the fire and dump him in the dirt at their feet. The five of them warm themselves there, over the fire that Beth herself built, her hands angling glass and mirror, carefully coaxing a sunbeam into a flame.

Daryl's head spins, black spots swirling at the edge of his vision. He clings to consciousness, straining to hear Beth's footsteps as she moves off into the brush, as he gropes frantically for a way out of this.

Joe takes the turtle meat from the fire and bites into a piece, passing the rest to the other men. Daryl thinks of the way Beth eagerly tapped his arm when she spotted the turtle lurking in the weeds, of the grin on her face when Daryl caught it. The meat is gone in seconds.

"She's sweet," one of the men sitting beside Joe says. He's cleaning under his nails with the point of a large knife, talking without looking up. "Needs some meat on them bones, but we ain't particular."

"Long as there's somewhere warm to stick it," one of the standing men replies. He's short and ugly, with long, stringy hair and mossy teeth. They all laugh.

"Shame she ain't a virgin," the man restraining Daryl says, punching him in the shoulder like they're old friends. "Pretty crafty, scoopin' that little thing up. You kill her folks, or you just find her tremblin' in the road, all by her lonesome?"

Daryl says nothing, just stares into the fire. The woods around them are silent; he can't hear Beth's footsteps anymore.

"Hope she don't complain much," another adds, when Daryl doesn't reply. "I hate it when they complain."

Joe reaches over and grabs some of the firewood Daryl had split hours earlier, when they made camp. When Joe tosses a stick on the fire, a shower of sparks crackles upwards, rising into the night sky like fireflies.

Daryl watches the sparks and thinks of Beth's eyes in the candlelight, the way they glow. The way she seems to reflect so much light.

What changed your mind?

He wonders if she can still see the fire, right now. If the light can still find her through the trees.

The smoke stings his eyes.

"What's your story, partner?" Joe asks, then. Daryl meets his eyes over the crackling flames, but doesn't answer. Joe frowns. "Hey now. Ain't no cause to be bitter."

There's a sound like a thick branch snapping from somewhere in the woods. It snaps once, then twice. Silence falls.

"That's a handgun," one of the men grunts. They all get to their feet, weapons drawn.

Daryl sees a flicker of movement beyond the glow of the fire; a streak of light disappearing behind a tree.

Joe stands, staring out into the darkness. "Len, you good?" he shouts.

There's no reply. A prickle of awareness climbs up Daryl's spine, standing his hair on end. Something's not right. Or rather, something's different. Something's changed.

A gunshot rings out from only a few feet away, and Joe tumbles into the bushes behind him, his arms flung out in surprise.

Daryl doesn't hesitate. He shoves himself back into the man holding him, sending him sprawling into the dirt. The man's head hits the tree trunk behind him with a crack. Daryl scrambles for the man's rifle, ripping it from his hands and pausing to kick him viciously in the gut and chest. The man tries to shield himself, blocking his face with his arms. There's scuffling behind Daryl, grunts and shouts, and the snap of a handgun discharging again.

The man at Daryl's feet grabs for his legs. Daryl yanks his foot loose and kicks the man again before standing back and pointing the rifle down, discharging it in an explosion of gore in the side of the man's head.

"You little bitch."

Daryl turns to see Beth standing on the far side of the fire, hands clasping her handgun, her arms pointed like an arrow at the short man, the last of them. He's pointing a shotgun at her; the others lie in bloodied heaps in the dirt, unmoving.

Daryl barely registers the standoff before he's raising his own weapon again, pointing it at the man. The man looks over at him, his expression shifting from aggression to fear as he realises he's outnumbered. He drops his weapon, holding up his hands.

"Listen, man, just -"

Daryl pulls the trigger, hitting the man between the eyes and spattering a halo of blood on the trees behind as he falls to the ground.

Beth stares at Daryl across the fire, the gun still gripped in her hand. She gives a strange, choked-off gasp, and drops the gun to the ground.

"It was in my waistband," she says flatly. "They didn't check."

Wary of the gunfire attracting walkers, Daryl grabs his crossbow and pack off the ground and slings them onto his back. He grabs Beth's, too, and her holsters, which lay half under one of the dead men lying in the dirt. He takes a quick look over the bodies strewn around the campsite, and sees the compound bow the dark-haired man had been carrying leaned up against a tree. Striding over, he grabs it and the spare arrows beside it.

Daryl tosses Beth's pack and her holsters to her, taking her by surprise and hitting her in the gut. She blinks and frowns down at herself for a moment before she straightens up and pulls the pack on.

"C'mon," Daryl grunts, jerking his head at the woods. He turns and heads toward the waxing moon hanging low in the sky, not waiting for her to pull herself together.

He stomps ahead through the dark woods, shoving tree branches out of his way, not bothering to hold them for her. He hears her following him, her steps heavy and slow.

All right, if you don't hurt him.

There's still good people, Daryl.

All right, if you don't hurt him.

I don't think the good ones survive.

All right, if you don't hurt him.

They walk for about an hour. Neither of them speaks. Daryl leads thoughtlessly, stomping through the underbrush, venting his rage on the trees and the dirt. He has no idea where to go, he never really has, and right now in the darkness he has no real idea where exactly they are.

"Daryl?"

Beth's tentative voice stops him in his tracks. He huffs out a few breaths, then turns around to look at her. Pale-faced and wide-eyed, she stares at him like he's a stranger.

"What?" he snaps.

"Can I have some of your water?" she asks, her voice a soft rasp. "I'm all out."

He glowers at her. He reaches behind and grabs his water bottle off his pack and tosses it to her. She catches it, taking a small step back from him, like she's afraid of him. Good, he thinks, and the anger that's been coming to a boil inside him for the last hour erupts.

"The fuck were you thinkin', huh?" he barks.

"What?" she asks, staring at him, her brows drawn together. Her eyes are dull, stunned.

"I said what the fuck were you thinkin', goin' off with him? The fuck was I supposed to do, huh? Sit there and listen to you - god damn it!" He spins around, clenching his right hand into a fist, and punches the first thing he makes contact with, the trunk of a poplar tree. The skin across his knuckles splits, and the pain feels good, feels right. It spurs him on.

"How'm I s'posed to protect you, you go off doin' stupid shit like that, huh?" the words are pouring out of him now like a flood, like vomit. Beth's mouth hangs open and she looks stricken, but he can't stop. He doesn't want to, not when his heart's still pounding like it's gonna burst out of his chest, not when men like them can just walk right up and take her. "I can't protect you! You get that? No shit you ain't gonna make it, pullin' dumbass moves like that so I can't even -"

"Shut up!" Beth shouts suddenly, her voice tearful and shaking. Daryl's mouth snaps shut. Beth throws his water bottle to the ground with a soft thud. "Are you seriously mad at me? This is all somehow my fault? I ain't mad at you 'cause you couldn't take on six men on your own! I was tryin' to keep 'em from killin' you, 'cause they were gonna rape me no matter what either of us did! But I could live with that as long as when it was over,you were still there, you asshole!"

"Fuck, Beth, you shouldn't -"

"How come you're allowed to lay your life down for me but I can't do the same for you, huh?" She raises a hand and for a moment he's sure she's going to hit him. Instead, she shoves him hard in the chest and he actually stumbles back a step. "How come?"

"They were gonna kill me anyway!" Daryl snaps, taking a step back towards her.

"So what did I do wrong, then?" Beth asks, shoving him again, this time with both hands. Her face is screwed up into an agonized scowl, tears shining in her eyes. "You jerk! I did what I had to, same thing you woulda done, and now you're being so - screw you!" She stutters to a halt, gasping, and then she flips her hand up and thrusts one defiant middle finger in his face. She stands there in front of him, red-faced and fierce, glowering and mad as hell, and the anger that's been driving him for the last hour drains out of him in a rush.

Beth went with that man, with no certainty that she'd be able to fight him off, to save Daryl's life.

What she was willing to accept as the cost of saving his life makes his gut twist. All that anger is gone, and what's left behind in his hollow chest is shame. Hot, burning shame.

He's an idiot. He's an asshole. He hates himself for it.

"Shit," he mutters, still staring down at his feet. He has to look at her, he knows. He has to face her. There's no stomping away from this. He lifts his eyes to find her watching him closely. Her anger seems to have disappeared as quickly as his - she watches him with a look he can only describe as hurt. He's hurt her.

"I'm a dick," he says, his throat tight. "Dumb fuckin' asshole, you know that, shouldn't listen to nothin' I say."

"Stop," Beth says tiredly, shaking her head at him. "Just say you're sorry, and mean it. That's all."

Daryl stares at her for a moment, chewing his lip. She watches him with those wide blue eyes, still hurt and swimming with tears, but filled too with unwavering kindness. She's already forgiven him, whether he can say the words or not. But she oughta hear them; she deserves that much.

"I'm sorry, Beth," he says, forcing himself to meet her eyes. He swallows hard. "I was shit-scared. Took it out on you. Ain't right and I'm sorry."

"Okay," she replies, nodding. Her hands grip her upper arms like she's trying to cradle herself. "Please don't do that to me again, storming off and yelling at me. It's really mean."

Daryl nods and looks down. He knows it's mean, knew it when he did it. He wanted to be mean.

Blowing out a deep breath, he wonders if he'll ever get to truly leave his old man's house.

When he looks up again, Beth's still watching him. Their eyes meet, and she shakes her head, and suddenly her face crumples and she lets out a sob that sounds like it's wrenched from her by force.

Daryl doesn't hesitate; he reaches out and pulls her to him, wraps his arms around her. She goes easily, falling into him and wrapping her arms around his torso. She presses her cheek to his chest and she hugs him, hard, harder than he would have guessed she could, her arms tight around him. He can feel her hot, gasping breath through his shirt as she shakes in his arms. She rubs her cheek against the flannel of his shirt, and with a sickening lurch of his stomach, he gets that she wants him to comfort her. Still. Even though he'd said all that mean shit to her. Still.

"I'm sorry," she mumbles, then, shaking her head. "I didn't know what else to do."

"Don't gotta say sorry, girl," he replies, tucking her head under his chin. "You don't got a damn thing to be sorry for."

"I was so scared, Daryl," she whispers, "I thought they were gonna kill you and I would have done anythin' -"

There's a hard lump in Daryl's throat and his eyes sting, and all he can do is hold her close and press his cheek to her matted hair.

"You did good, Beth," he manages, brushing his fingers down the long fall of her ponytail. "You did real good."

Her arm loosens and she reaches down to nudge his fingers with hers - he gets the hint. Their fingers interlace. She sighs roughly and pulls back to look at him, her tear-streaked cheeks shining even in the gloom of the forest.

"You okay?" she asks him, tilting her head. "For real?"

He looks down at their clasped hands, and in a rush he thinks that he'd like to kiss each of her fingertips, starting with those precious fucking middle fingers.

"Mm-hm," he says, dropping her hand and taking a step back from her. The soft crease between her eyebrows deepens, but she says nothing.

They stand that way, in the blue clearing, listening to the silence pulse around them. There are no bugs now, no sticky, buzzing swarms of mosquitoes or flies, no crickets rasping - nothing. Even the nightbirds and the other creatures that hunt and creep at night have gone quiet.

The only sound is her shallow breathing, and his.

"We gotta get outta here," she murmurs eventually. She's quiet a moment, then turns to him. "Don't we, Daryl? I mean - that's it, right?"

He's thought about it before, plenty of times. Ever since finding himself stuck outside Atlanta with his brother and a bunch of frightened strangers. He wanted to ditch everybody but Merle and head north, up around his old neck of the woods. That's where he wants to go now - back to the mountains he wandered on his own when he was a kid, where there were fewer people to begin with.

No one can make it alone. He believes that, believed it for a while now. He's found whole new ways of believing it since the prison fell.

But people are dangerous.

"Yeah," he says, finally. "Yeah, we do. What I said's true - I can't protect you. I know you can handle yourself, but we ain't gonna last out here. We gotta get away from people. We can't stay out here forever. We gotta find some place and secure it. Make it strong. See if we can…" He trails off. He doesn't know what happens after that. He can't allow himself to even think what happens after that. But what he does picture is Beth on the sofa at the funeral home, smiling at him over her book, welcoming him home.

there'd be birthdays and holidays and summer picnics

It's too much. He puts it away.

Beth exhales harshly, but says nothing. Watching her knit brow as she looks down at the ground, he knows what this means to her. It means giving up the faint hope of finally finding some sign of the others. It means no longer sticking to the area. It means going wherever they need to go.

It means moving on.

He waits for her to refuse.

"Okay," she says. Her voice trembles. She blinks back her tears and nods, a determined lift of her chin. "So - north, right? It's away from Atlanta, away from people. With the mountains and all, maybe there aren't even that many walkers up there."

It's a relief to know they're on the same page, that she's come to the same conclusions as him. He doesn't know what he'd have done if she insisted on staying.

Well. He does know. He'd have stayed too.

"That for me?" Beth asks, pointing at the compound bow in Daryl's hand.

"Oh, yeah," he says, passing it carefully to her. "For you."

"Thanks." She slings it over her shoulder. "You gonna show me how to use this thing?"

He nods, and she smiles. They look at each other in the moonlight. Beth exhales, blowing loose strands of blond hair out of her face.

"North, huh?" She looks up at the moon in the sky and blinks. She glances back at him, a faint smile on her face. "No time like the present."

They go north.

Note: The song Beth's singing when Daryl wakes up is "Truth No. 2" written by Patty Griffin, as performed by the Dixie Chicks.