Later, he would look back and see it all through a different lens, their golden time together. He had run after her until his lungs heaved with the effort. He had to slow himself but would not stop. He kept walking until his knees buckled and gave out. He would have crawled if he had just had any single idea of what direction to move. He sat diminished and reduced at the crossroads. On the ruined tarmac, weeds reclaiming what man once called his own, he put his head in his hands. He could not cry, would not weep, knew better than to shout. But he could feel the agony, the wretched wounding on the wrong side of his ribs. She was gone and he was destroyed by her absence.

He had let her burrow herself into his body and curl around his heart and now she had been ripped out of him. He could feel the arterial bleeding-out of every emotion he had ever felt. He had yelled at her that he had never cut himself, but here was the mortal wound inflicted. And he had done it to himself.

Oh, Beth.

Trapped in this Eden. Our walls made of bungee cords stretched nearly past their breaking; the elastic is wearing out, strung with hubcaps and empty tin cans. Inside we are wary of one another. Distanced by our own fears and our secret desires. There are no fruit-laden trees here. The demons growl in the darkness that has engulfed the world. They are lethal and they are ravenous for our living flesh. I look at you across the fire, through the curling wispy smoke, and I must tell myself the truth. I hunger for you, too.

We slay and devour the snake that would tempt us.

It had begun to rain, a slow drizzle and he didn't mind it. For now. But he could feel it building, the electricity of the storm rising lifting the short hairs on the back of his neck. It would come and he would have to take shelter. He was sitting vigil, and the raindrops had begun spattering into the small flames of the campfire and he was loathe to let it be put out. He got up from where he had been hunkered down uncomfortably for the past hour. His back creaked and his knees protested, he shook one foot out, then the other, and grabbed a medium-sized branch from the small pile he had built before sunset. He poked it into the embered bed and his lips tightened at the thought of the risk. He did not want to signal Walkers. The fire flared up briefly and then reduced itself in the cooling air. Good, that was good. He tried to find a comfortable spot again.

He listened to the pattering of the raindrops on the blue tarp above her head and he refused to glance over to see if it was rousing her. He had made a challenge of it. Don't look, don't look, don't look. And he would then reward himself every fifteen minutes with a full glorious intimate minute of staring. Looking until his eyes watered from the effort and his heart thumped from holding his breath. He turned his face and allowed himself to watch her now, the blonde head, the amazing curve of her broad cheekbone, the shell of her ear, the thin shoulder. Everything about her had become a weight behind his sternum, he could feel it there if he pressed with the heel of his hand. It was heavy and wet and it was beginning to hurt him less and that worried him. He had not now nor had he ever ever done a thing to deserve to have this girl here with him at the end of the world. Alone, trusting him, looking at him with the immensely deep blue eyes. He would rather have had Judith squawking in his arms, or Carl sulking and surly, or Carol with all her bewildering Zen koans. If he had had to choose which of the most susceptible of the group would be entrusted to him? Not Beth. It defied everything he had come to expect from life. But that had been before, he reminded himself and then berated the boldness of it. This world might not be a thing like that world but some things were surely going to stay the same, he figured. He was a nothing full-grown man, she was an everything girl on the cusp of womanhood.

That was his minute. He closed his eyes, burning the image of her sleeping peacefully - because she trusted him to watch over her implicitly - on the insides of his eyelids.

So much had been asked of him, so many things required that he had shouldered this in the same way he slung the crossbow across his back. He had put his head down, and kept on moving, and expected her to keep up. He had not been kind but he hadn't been unkind either. She had been so quiet. And he had waited for the tears he thought might come despite her proclamation that she did not cry any more. He knew he had cried more than she had in the last horrible week. And as time captured them and bound them tighter together, he found himself slowing down for her, adjusting to her rhythms, making his pace her pace.

He breathed out hard and heavy. The woods were nature-hushed. The storm was building above his head. Walking pneumonia would be bad because of Beth. He could not abandon her, lay down and gasp for breath, close his eyes and die on her. Someone had put her life into his hands. He could argue worthiness until the cows came home, but the cows were all dead and the homes all haunted by living ghosts and she believed him to be worthy and right now he had to think that counted for something.

He crawled into the tented tarp, settling himself on his back, the crossbow on his chest. They had been physically closer than this inside the trunk of the car. He could allow himself this comfort. The rain heavier now. He punched up lightly against the plastic and a puddle slipped off the side and splashed his face. He wiped it dry, then pressed his square-tipped fingers hard against his eyelids. He listened to her breathe beside him. He timed his own inhalations and exhalations with hers in an effort to keep her sleeping, he did not know that matching the rhythms of their breaths would act anesthesia. He fell asleep beside her.

And dreamed that they were floating on their backs in a pond from his childhood, hand in hand. In the dream he recognized that he was overcome. By a feeling of safety. It was an exhilaration . The world was as it had been once. Long ago. The sky arching above them, the same blue as her eyes. She was smiling. He knew this without having to look at her. He whispered her name, just to taste it on his tongue. She answered and his name in her voice was so erotic that he became instantly hard. And then in the way of dreams, the surface of the pond was whipped to a frightening frenzy, they were fighting for their lives in dark waters, it was impossible to keep their heads above the waves. Something bigger than the mind could comprehend was rising with lightning speed from the black depths, the terrible mouth gaping open to swallow them both.

"Daryl."

Someone was simultaneously hushing him and calling his name. He jerked himself awake and startled at her face so close to his. She shushed him again and he followed her gaze into the grey lit morning, into the undergrowth, through the thin trees. He lifted his head to listen better. Every nerve in his body was strung tight on the spindles of his bones. Finally, long silent minutes ticked away, and her eyes refocused on him and he laid his head back down on the ground and gave his lungs permission to exhale. She went up on an elbow beside him, looking down at him. He pushed the crossbow lower over his body.

"What'dja hear?" he whispered in his gravel rock voice.

"I don't know. An animal, I think."

"Human animal?"

"No," she scowled. "An animal animal. Like a forest animal."

She looked from his hands fast on the crossbow and up over his chest before studying his face. He felt exposed but did not look away.

"You were having a bad dream," she told him.

He nodded sideways. "Yep." Not all bad, just the ending.

"I'm glad you got some sleep, though. You were snoring before that."

"I was?" This surprised him. He knew he hadn't had a deep sleep for weeks.

She smiled and somehow her face lighting up was the sun breaking free from dark clouds and this loosened the tension in his body, he felt his shoulders relax. He wanted to lie there beside her and look up into her face until his eyes formed hardened cataracts. He looked away quickly and began pulling himself up to a seated position. "Time to get up," he said gruffly.

They took turns standing close guard while they each relieved their bodies and there was no awkwardness in this and he marveled at how easily she had adapted to their isolation. To their dependency upon one another. On the short hike back to camp they came upon the snake. She stumbled into his back and he reached out a hand to steady her. There was no hesitation on his part and he felt it was a good sign, he could feed her breakfast.

In the camp, she stirred the coals and together they roasted the stringy meat, he warned her off the rib bone needles, and then walked as far away from her as the small enclosure would allow. Something was drawing him into her waters. She was a wishing well and he wanted to empty his pockets, screw his eyes closed tight, and utter all his longings into her depths. Please please please.

Predictably, his putting distance between them pricked her and he listened, staggered, as she told him she was wanted a drink. An alcoholic drink. He twisted his tongue between his teeth and bit down hard.

The portal to a fresh hell on earth. Traversing deeper into the rotting bowels, the sin is questionable, the punishment unbearable. There is no guide, no hand holding another hand. The descent must be endured alone, each in the solitary skin. There is no looking away, what is seen cannot be unseen. We are the forgiveness. We are the retribution. There is no returning the way we came, move forward, through this doorway, the light is blazing on the other side. Come with me now, leave this behind us.

The flesh is weak. My body wants nothing more than your body. Nothing less. Take my hand, pull me close.

The day had devolved. Every time he looked at her, he surprised himself. He could barely cast his thoughts back to waking beside her beneath the tarp from the dream turned nightmare with a raging hard-on. They had spent hour after hour entertaining one another, goading one another, drinking, yelling, crying. And then she pressed her body against his back, her arms around his waist, and she rocked him while he wept. For her father. For the dead. But not for the living. Not now. Maybe not ever again. He felt the smallest spark of rejoicing for being alive. It was in the very center of his chest. It was fragile and glorious and he knew it was her beautiful mouth, lips pursing while she fanned it to flame with her breath.

They burnt the moonshiner's shack to the ground, dust to dust, return to the earth, motherfuckers. There is no more imprisonment. He turned and followed her into the night and at that moment he knew without question he would follow her wherever she would lead him.

They made another small camp. They worked together seamlessly, quietly, efficiently. And this time he laid his body down beside hers, and their heads were out from beneath the tarp, the stars so close above them that he thought if they burnt themselves out they would drift star dust down upon them, spent fireworks.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"I dunno. I'd have to think about it and I don't really want to."

"I saw this birthday card once, it said something like how old would you be if you didn't know how old you was."

"Hmmm," he was growing used to her seemingly non-sequitur way of talking.

"How old?" she prodded.

"What?" He bit down on his irritation. "What is it ya want to know?"

He could hear the smile in her voice. "How old would you be if you didn't know, you know, how old you was, are."

"I feel a hundred." And he did. "Now go to sleep, girl."

"Have you ever had a hand massage?"

His heart tripped forward against his breastbone.

"Here, give me your hand."

"What for?"

"I just told you. A hand massage. My momma used to rub my daddy's hands every night. They'd get especially tired and all tight on the days he had surgeries."

"I don't need no massagin'."

"You'll like it. And I think you do need it. Shooting your bow today, I didn't know it was so hard on your hands. Here. Daryl."

She wasn't going to take no and he didn't want her to, not really. He sighed and lifted one of his hands up into the air, she reached across and drew his arm down to her body with both of her hands. Her fingers were long and surprisingly strong. She pressed hard into the webbing between his thumb and index finger and he could not help but groan in pleasure.

"See?" she whispered.

He closed his eyes and put all of his consciousness into his knuckles, the back of his hand, his palm, and the thick bracelet of bone at his wrist.

He drifted into a dream. His hands were broken birds, the bones beyond repair, the wings powerless. Michonne who was Beth had him on an unbreakable chain, his hands were gone, his arms lopped off at the elbow joint. She was tugging him to follow her and he was stumbling behind her. They went into a bar and behind the bar, in a wet and filthy alley that smelled of death and decay, three men had her against the wall, clawing at her clothing, kicking her legs wide apart. He roared and broke free of the leather collar around his neck, pulling the men off her, smashing his fists into their faces until their heads were pulverized and his knuckles skinless, the white nubs of his bones shining through his opened flesh.

An owl called through the trees on silent wings of death. He turned in half-sleep, the dreams and the nightmares falling off him and he reached for them as though reaching for a blanket slipping from his shoulders only to discover that he was warm. From the outside in. This roused him completely awake. The middle of the night was edging towards morning. He lay very, very still, letting his mind catch up with what his body already was knowing. She had fallen asleep with his hand in her hands, now tucked between her breasts. She was curled up against him, around his fist pressed to her beating heart. While he was sleeping she had turned, pulling him with her, and his betraying body had followed. His arm over her thin hip, her body curved tight and fast into his. He could feel the sharp unforgiving edges of the crossbow underneath his thigh. And her knife was sheathed and on her belt. They were armed and dangerous but there was a new danger now and it could not be slain with a blow to the head - the killing spot the heart. He breathed in deeply, the smell of her hair, her skin, the nape of her neck exposed to his hungry mouth. He turned his head and breathed out. He wanted nothing more than to sink into dreamless oblivion with her in his arms, but it was the fact of her in his arms that would not allow this.

His spine was strengthening, the muscles in his back tensing. His heart had finally found a steady rhythm, the first time since the world had gone to hell. And if he was honest, and he was nothing if not honest with himself these days, for the first time in all the long years of his life. It was thumping out her name.

He slowly shook his hand free of her grip, letting his arm linger for a moment longer around her body, tamping down the impossible urge to pull her even closer to him, to wrap his arms around her, to wake her with her name groaned out between his gritted teeth, to press her body beneath his and rock himself in the cradle of her hips. Every nerve inside of him screamed out at him as he climbed to his feet. He stood nearly shaking with the effort, rolling his head on his shoulders. He walked to the far edge of their safe haven. The owl called again in the breaking light. He turned and stood guard while she slept.

You are my queen. I kneel before you. Let me kiss the tips of your fingers, your knuckles. I am supplicated at your feet. I offer you my long blade in upturned hands. Take it from me. Lay my sword upon my shoulder, knight me into your service. I would protect you from all who would bring you injury, visit harm upon you. I will die for you. Please, allow me this if it comes to that. I could not bear to see the life leave your eyes.

I am prostrated, on my knees. When I deign to look up at your face, your head is crowned in flowers.

She was heavier than she looked. And that was a true thing in every way now. She was heavy, solid, substantial. She was so much more than what the world saw. She was no longer a girl, there was a womanly feminine weight to her and there was a joyous agony in his body with the feel of her against his back, his hands locked behind her knees, her laughing mouth so close to his ear. He piggybacked her into the cemetery.

When she reached sideways for his hand there was no hesitation. She laced her fingers into his and squeezed and he squeezed back. He wasn't going to let go.

They walked between the headstones, wandering like the world was a safe place. Strolling as though it were an afternoon jaunt. She would linger and change direction, pull him to a stop in front of one monument, then a broken marker, and finally a simple stone that bore two names, same date of death. MOTHER & BABY carved into the marble side by side. She sniffed and he looked at her from the corner of his eyes.

"That's sad."

He nodded. "They're together."

She turned a surprised face and he stumbled away from his mistake. "Inside that grave, ya know. They're buried in the same box."

"What? How do you know that?"

"I just do." How did he know that? He looked far into the distance, the tree line on the horizon, remembering. "My daddy's momma died birthin' his little brother. Baby was already dead, I guess. Probably what killed her, too." He single shoulder shrugged. "He told me that they put him in her arms and buried them together."

He watched her pull her brows down over the beautiful eyes, darkened now with a thoughtful sadness, then brightening the slightest bit. She smiled at him. "I like that."

Relieved, he grinned, the crooked side of his smile rising. "I thought you might."

"I do, though, Daryl."

"I know ya do. You like morbid things."

"No, I don't. I just have respect for the dead," she protested and he watched her look around for more flowers. The cemetery grass was ragged and worn. "Is that morbid?"

He narrowed his eyes at this, looking at her hard but could feel how soft she was making him. He grunted noncommittally.

She continued thoughtfully, "Maggie read a book like that once, in school. She told me about it."

"How's that?"

"The couple, in the book, well, he loved her so much. I mean, he did all these like mean things to her, but still he loved her more than anything. He went crazy when she died. And he made it so that when he died, she already was dead for a long time, his coffin was buried right up against hers. Then the sides of both them were pulled up and," she paused, "he was with her for eternity."

"Um," he had no words for this. "Maggie told that to you?"

She nodded, blushing. "Yeah. I guess she thought it was romantic."

"Bet she don't think that no more."

She looked at him sharply, biting her lower lip. "Yeah. No. I bet you're right." She pressed her knuckles beneath her nose. "What's the point of all this, Daryl?" she whispered and he closed his eyes briefly.

"I dunno, Beth. I guess there isn't one."

They looked at each other across a narrowing space. He wanted to cover his face with both hands. He wanted the earth to swallow him and let him sleep. He wanted things he didn't even know he wanted.

He wanted nothing more than to reach across and hold her face between his hands, pull her to him, bend to her, bring their mouths together and kiss her with his whole heart rising up to meet hers. He had never kissed a woman of his own volition. When he had been kissed, and it hadn't been often, it was always women kissing him. Drunk, stoned, brief, a precursor to the main event. He knew he didn't want that. He wanted to hold Beth in his arms, feel her fingers in the well of his spine, her lips beneath his and kiss her until the world shuddered out its final breath.

It was no surprise later, dozing into a dream while laid out inside the coffin in the funeral home, Beth still playing softly on the piano, that he found himself plunged into the forever darkness of the grave, the edges of the casket close around him. The weight of her in his arms, the locking embrace that had no key.

A dog could mean a companion, a warning system, a warm shape at night, a friendly face during the day. Or if things got bad enough, they got hungry enough... But when he looked over at her, from beneath the shaggy hair falling across his forehead, he could tell by her wide open face that for Beth it was a dog, like, we have a dog. Him, her, a dog and all the old-fashioned domestic sentimentality that used to go along with the acquisition of such things. He scowled. And wished he could have caught the mangy mutt just so she could pull him into her arms, brush out the tangled hair in his eyes, and feed him scraps of scraps. And he wasn't thinking about himself. At all.

We sleep like wolves. Our hearts, our den. Wrapped around one another, snuffling the breath from one another's lungs. Nosing into triple coated skins, the fur soft here, tangled there. Whining, circling circling. Lying down in darkness, safe in the earthy burrow. Curling one around the other.

Protect me, protect me, protect me.

Daryl Dixon had been gifted with a secret. And he would never share it with another soul. He would sooner have his tongue ripped from his mouth, his teeth broken, and his larynx crushed, before the words would spill from between his lips. But he told it to himself in the days after someone had taken her away from him. In the minutes that became hours, the hours days, and every single day that became a night longer than all the years he had lived on the earth. The earth that god had seemingly forsaken. He was forsaken, he knew that for a fact.

They had found refuge in the funeral home. Food and enough windows and doors to the outside that he didn't feel trapped inside. The piano was there. Her fingers graceful and assured on the keys. The sound probably not a good idea but he wanted her to have it as long as he could make it possible.

And there was a small bedroom. More a monk cell than boudoir. Stripped down, a mattress, a plain bedside table, a rug on the floor. But it served. It was in that room that Beth asked him to break her virginity and he let her break the walls that he had built up around himself for all his life. She had taken his hand, led him through the doorway and into the room that only the two of them could enter. Her eyes bigger than ever, her upper lip trembling in the slightest smallest quivering. But he was shaking from the inside out. He had to stop and gulp air, look at her from beneath his hair, bite the inside of his cheek.

He was not made manipulative and he could not have laid a trap that would have caught her even if it occurred to him to try. It had not. He had not foreseen this. He knew his blood had been heating for her for weeks, but her fevered need of him was a surprise. He let her transfuse him with desire. And love.

He thought he should be the one in charge, but it fell away from him and he allowed her to lay him down upon the mattress. He closed his eyes but she urged him to open them and then he couldn't close them again. He had to see her, watch her beautiful face in the candlelight, marvel at how she was offering herself to him and taking himself for her. Her hands were birds, fluttering around his body, her mouth hesitant then bold. She curved her body against his, revealed her skeleton to him in the jutting of her hipbones, the bending of her spine, the long bone in her thigh. She moaned his name, her mouth open, and this calling out to him found him in the dark place he had been lost for aeons. He rose up on his elbows, tugging her body beneath his body, reaching for her face with both his hands, kissing her deeper than he had known two human mouths could reach. Wanting to crawl inside her. For a crazy moment he thought that might be the sickness rising. He wanted to devour her, open her body and cover his body with her skin, cup her beating heart and press his lips to each chamber, drink the hot blood. He reared away from her, her pupils shot, her lower lip caught between her strong white teeth, her eyes filled with an emotion that staggered him. He found her carotid artery with his tongue, laving hard down to the bow of her collarbones. Nursing at her breasts, biting into the hinge of her elbow. She was coming undone beneath him and he never knew such a thing could happen with the juncture of two bodies.

Her name slammed out of his mouth, he slipped his arms behind her back, lifting her up to him, drawing her thin body against his thicker form. The womanliness of her answering the male question he was begging of her. She came with joy and crawled into his lap, crossing her feet behind his back, wrapping him in an embrace that was overpowering. He held her fast, arms tight around her waist, hands spanning her back, fingers bruising into the soft place between her ribs and hips. She reached down for his cock and guided him into her body. He arched upwards, his head falling back into her waiting open hands. Her mouth found his mouth. Her lips answered his lips moving. Their gazes locked to one another. The world became their two bodies.

When Rick's ragtaggle group of survivors had first arrived at the Greene farm, and after the dust had settled, Daryl remembered thinking Hershel's youngest might be touched, or at the least, dumb-witted. The way her family kept their wagons circled around her, their attention of her always immediate and concerned. Later he thought that maybe it was just because she was a girl, and the baby. But now, he knew exactly what it was that they had been protecting. What it was about her that called this fierceness out in others. She carried purity, an innocent joy inside of her. It was a light so strong so white so bright that at times her body seemed too fragile, too human, to contain it. She was out of time and out of place and if she was convinced he would be the last man standing, there was no question in his mind that she would be the woman who kept the last man on his feet. With the sheer power that lay inside of her, blazing out her eyes. She was going to burn the world down and the fields of ash would sprout new life, trees would waken from their charred trunks and reach for the sky again, flowers would bloom and the earth would lay before the two of them fresh and new. And she would hold her hand out, he would take it, and they would walk together into a new day.