WELCOME, READERS! I started this story just after the airing of the back half of season 4 (still maybe my favorite block of episodes) to explore what *might* have been had Beth not been kidnapped during the siege of the funeral home and she and Daryl had been left on their own to continue their odyssey toward 'home'. I'm very grateful you've found this page and have chosen to give it a try.

Having narrowly escaped the undertaker's house, Daryl and Beth have been on the road for close to two months. Every place they've found to hold up in they've eventually had to abandon or flee. Either low on supplies or compromised in security, it's been rare for them to stay more than two nights anywhere. And all this time they've been moving and searching they've been on foot. Not once has there been enough gasoline for them to siphon to fuel a vehicle. Their feet hurt, their bodies ache, their skin's burned. They're undernourished and exhausted, but they're making a go of it, trying to keep one step ahead both of danger and despair, looking for a place they can call safe. By this time they've got a tent, a sleeping bag, a couple of flashlights, a couple more handguns, and a cache of pecans. Not much, but better than when they'd started. Most nights they're still camped outside.

They've been moving west, and for now are camped upside the Sawhatchee creek, in which Beth currently stands, ankle-deep, trying to hook some fish. Up the slope, Daryl's behind her, straddling a fallen log and cleaning and loading the guns. Beth splashes some water on her face and neck, feeling the cool drops drip down the back of her shirt. The refreshment of it only lasts a second; there's no escaping the oppressive humidity and heat. She can feel her shoulders are burning again. Georgian summers can be miserable, with little relief from the heat and the heavy stifling air, but she does not look forward to another winter on the road. The chill was impossible to shake, and the icy rigidness in their muscles made it difficult to run. They need to find something, someplace. There has to be a place. They cannot go on like this indefinitely… They will find something, she tells herself. They will be okay. Safe.

"Any luck?" Daryl calls to her from up the bank where he works.

Beth turns back and sees him squinting at her; she shakes her head. "Uh, uh." For maybe the hundredth time that day, she wipes the pooling sweat off her brow with her tanned forearm. Beth studies the ripples in the water, "The caddis are hatchin', they're not bitin' on what I've got."

Daryl scratches his temple with a revolver, "Shoot, those fish 've had it ea-sy. Nobody catchin' 'em f'r close t' two years? They gotta be teamin'. We'll get 'em; they're just a little self-satisfied right now, gotta take 'em down a notch."

Beth turns back to the water, smiling a little at his easy blustering. When she glances back over her shoulder she catches him still squinting in her direction. As soon as spotted, Daryl drops his head and returns to the guns. After two hours already of not a single strike, Beth reels in her line some and sets the rod securely in a piling of rocks to hopefully do the work for her. Rinsing the heat and the stiffness from her hands as she stoops to submerge them in the cool fast-running water, Beth savors the bite of the icy current as it pulls and drags on her ankles and wrists. Knowing she'll find little relief from the heat under the thin and shifting shade of the trees, she tries to internalize the river before eventually standing upright to dry her hands on her jeans and head back up the bank to camp. Daryl doesn't look up upon her return, just keeps at his task, and so she busies herself with setting the camp straight, sorting their meager supplies, checking their water.

Eventually, she rises from where she'd been kneeling and crosses closer to him. Standing over him, less than two feet away, Beth speaks his name, "Daryl?"

In answer, Daryl barely glances up from the gun he'd been cleaning, "Hm?" Beth only stands there, as though waiting for something. She purses her lips and she looks at him. It takes a moment longer for him to register she's expecting his full attention before she'll say more. To appease her, Daryl slows his work and lifts his eyes to meet with hers: Her eyes are wide and full of something. Daryl stops and watches her; she only half looks like herself. On the alert now with the dismantled handgun still held in his grasp, Daryl rises, "What? Greene?"

Beth only shakes her head, she does not have the words. Daryl would dismiss her and turn away but he sees she's intent, and so he waits. Beth looks down, watches herself take a step toward him, then lifts her eyes and looks at Daryl as she draws closer, intentionally closing the gap between them. What she does next she isn't certain where she's gotten the confidence to do it, but she does do it, and she is not afraid to do so: Beth reaches out, and takes his unsuspecting hand in hers. It would be a simple enough thing to do, if it were done in friendship, camaraderie, or comfort, but those are not what moved her hand to his. Daryl watches, his jaw set, his gaze stark, like it isn't actually happening to him. Lightly Beth tugs his hand toward her and holds it bravely to her hip. She lifts her face up to his. Young and steady, she is open, and bright, and waiting. But Daryl does not move. He doesn't do anything — he allows his calloused hand to remain in hers, but his expression is unreadable. Daryl's stoicism once had intimidated Beth, but no longer. She knows him too well to be frightened by him. By now she's spent more than a year of her life with him, and in these past two months, he's been her only companion — her teacher, her cohort, her comrade, her friend. He's seen her cry, he's heard her dreams, and in return, she's had both from him. They are honest with each other, with no artifice between them. Beth wakes and Daryl is there, Beth falls asleep and Daryl is there. Her life now is bound with Daryl Dixon's, and she does not regret it. The trust her family had put in him, that Rick had and Carol, the entire prison community, it was not undeserved. She knows him. Has spent the last two months watching him, listening to him breathe, fighting beside him, eating beside him, surviving beside him, parsing his grunts and rumblings for meaning. She knows him. And now Beth is there, lifting her chin higher, bringing her pink mouth ever nearer to his.

The creases around his eyes deepen as Daryl looks down at her unmoved, "Whut 're you doin'?"

Beth's large blue eyes roll at him. "You know," she reminds him with the faintest trace of a smile. "Daryl, you know."

"Naw," he shakes his head brusquely, "uh, uh. It ain't right."

"Why not?"

"That's not what this is."

Beth's brow creases, "What do you mean?"

"I'm the chaperone," he spits gruffly. "'Member? 'Mr. Dixon.' Right?"

She smiles slowly at him, "I didn't mean it like that."

"Your dad," he throws at her. "Maggie."

"What about them?"

Daryl glances at her, not liking the open directness with which she's addressing him, liking neither the expectant guileless air the delicate flutters of her natural blink seem to take on in this moment. He shouldn't have to be explaining this. They shouldn't be having this conversation. This was never the arrangement. "… It's just," his head shakes soberly, "not whut this is."

"Daryl," she says softly, groundedly trying to reason with him.

Under the earnestness of her attention Daryl's getting twitchy, he can't even look at her. "Com'on now…" his arm swings in agitation, his rough country boy drawl brushing her off, discounting everything she's said as damned foolishness. Anything else he might have argued is interrupted when she rises on her toes and intrepidly kisses him. Beth kisses him lightly, like she's ready for him to push her off any moment, like she knows it'll be hard for him to take. Daryl doesn't push her back. He does not return the kiss. He makes no move at all. Daryl is stolid, and anchored in place, cut off from the world. It's not that easy to reach him.

When she pulls back she smiles at him, a little mocking smile telling him she isn't sorry and she may well know one thing which he does not. "You don't always have to be the good guy. Daryl Dixon."

"Hmph," Daryl breaks his eyes away from her and brushes the kiss off with a few heavy-footed paces. Dismissively he swings his arm back at her, grunting, "It's not high school—"

"It isn't?" she counters flatly. "You mean, I'm not going to miss homeroom?"

"Shut up." His eyes roll, then he moves toward her with regulated aggression, "You forgotten where we are? What we're up against?" He's sneering now, in that way that he does, in that way that isn't quite cruel, but can cut if a person lets it, "You don't go 'round kissin' people 'cuz you're bored."

"'Bored'?" she echoes with acerbic incredulity. "Yeh," Beth Greene scoffs. "I'm 'bored'. We're on the run all the time. We've lost eh'vrybody else, you say n'xt t' nothin'—" Beth watches him blink and the creases around his mouth tighten. She shakes her head at him; there's so much he doesn't get. "I'm not bored," she repeats. Then the dimples appear as her dour expression settles, "You're dumber than you look."

Daryl's head turns to her fiercely, he looks at her through narrow slanted eyes. Biting his tongue, he appears as though he could shout at her, but instead, he huffs a rancorous sigh, waves her off and steps away. He isn't prepared for this confrontation. Brooding and stormy, Daryl shoulders his bow. "Gonna check the snares," he mutters, not bothering to glance in her direction. "You good on ammo?"

"No," she insists, again demanding his attention, "Daryl." Unwillingly he stops; his turbulent eyes flash to her before he looks away again. "You don't g't to walk away."

"You wanna check 'em?" he retorts hotly, gesturing crossly to the woods.

"Daryl."

"Stop it, Beth."

"No." Beth's watchful eyes blink. "I'h 've seen you. Lookin' at me." Her long lashes hold his eyes to hers.

"No," he grumbles, shaking his head. His life with Beth he'd never scrutinized, it just is. He lets it be. Certainly, he adores her, but they're not this, what she's suggesting. Blindsided, the ire in him rises.

"But," she smiles, not the least dissuaded, "you have."

"Whudd'ya want?" he throws at her, leaning in with a posturing rage. But underneath the affronting glare, Daryl's face softens as his eyes fall on her, his true friend, and Beth feels the shift between them. She hasn't arrived at this juncture on her own. There have been moments. For two months there have been moments, small, and quiet, but there, comprised of guarded watchful looks, and the lingering of a familiar touch, of the softening of tone, and the certain blinking of an appraising eye. For some time, since when she couldn't say, it's been there between them, buried beneath survival and heartbreak, beneath life on the run and the roles they've each played since well before the farm. Sensing the shift, Beth waits, and then, though nothing in the outside world has changed — it's still as dangerous and as ugly, in this singular moment it does seem as though the world has stopped, and everything becomes about the space between their lips, and the dwindling distance closing between them… The lock between their eyes does not break. She is not wrong, his eyes have found her in his gaze and tarried there, but he'd never before considered the nature of this seeing. In the instant, with her this close and this available before him, Daryl feels his world breaking open into impossible and confounding unexamined possibilities. His eyes open anew, see what he never had, what he'd never looked to find. It isn't mere passion, though indisputably it's there. What it is is a recognition of truth and a sort of seeing into himself. And looking there, what he's found, is her. Beth. Charged with unleashed energy, Daryl bites down on his tongue, taking her in; her lashes mutely flutter. Daryl's eyes narrow as his face tenses, suddenly alight with this new knowing and burning and licentious in thought—

Beth wets her slightly parted lips and blinks her consent. And then Daryl's hand is at the back of her head, feverishly pulling on her ponytail, grasping her neck, holding her face in position with his, and then his mouth's on hers, kissing her with intemperate passion.

Overcome and unrestrained, Daryl kisses her hard, though he'd never intended to do so at all. They're not supposed to be together — she's still just a kid, different from him in pretty much every way there is. But the feeling of her at last in his grasp— He can't let go. Beth wraps her lean arms around his neck, stands on her toes, runs her fingers through the long rough tangle of hair at the nape of his neck, and she holds him, like it'd one day occurred to her she'd been longing to do.

Daryl Dixon had frightened her when she'd first met him, when he and the others had shown up at the farm with their guns and his crossbow. As a group, they'd spent an entire winter on the road together, and yet they'd barely talked, certainly not about anything more than food, shelter, formation, walkers. At the prison, he was 'Daryl Dixon': fearless and a leader. He spoke little, he didn't bullshit or second guess. He was reliable, and he made the group strong. They were family, but they had not been friends. Sometimes they spoke, sometimes he came to see Judith, but he was always far away — there, present, but distant. Daryl knew every person at the prison, but he was only friends with Rick. And Carol. And Maggie and Glenn, maybe. And her dad. Would've been with Michonne, if she was around. But not with her. Daryl fought for, survived for, acted for, the group. Never just for her. Never for her first.

And Daryl never had been on her mind. Not in the way that lingers, and fascinates. Never before now. He'd made her hate him when they'd first escaped together, but it hadn't lasted, and suddenly Daryl was real. Daryl was her kindred comrade. On the road with her, just the two of them on the run, he is more than the muscle, more than a guardian, more than her only remaining companion. Daryl is—

Alarm cans jangle on the perimeter rope — their breakaway is immediate. With deadly force Daryl pulls the knife from his belt and jumps on the thing, pulling it to him as he drives the blade down into the skull. "Douche bag," he grunts as he kicks the thing backward.

Behind him, Beth whispers, "Do you see any more?" Daryl glares into the distance, his feet apart, ready to move, his knife poised in ready anticipation, "Naw," he shakes his head. "Don't think so." His tensed muscles relax and he lowers his knife to his side, "Think we're goo—" Turning back to her he stops.

Beth too has lowered and sheathed her weapon, but more than that she's removed her shirt. She's standing there across the camp from him, small and slight, both sunburned and pale, and so, so pretty with her mess of golden hair and her worn and graying bra, and— his, for the taking. Beth watches him seeing her. He blinks, and, ill at ease, his facial muscles twitch imperceptibly. They've been on the road together for months, by now he's seen her in various stages of undress, but it all had been blank nothingness, innocuous and utterly un-stimulating. The difference now is she's showing him, inviting him to see her. The air in the woods hums with frustration and yearning and doubt.

Almost bashfully, like he hadn't a moment ago been capable of ravaging her, Daryl's eyes lift unassumingly to her. She does not flinch under his gaze, and the feeling that fires a feral charge coursing through his chest. Rueful with desire and electric anticipation, Daryl bites on his lower lip as he eyes her, still inert, at the precipice of action. Her solemn certainty is cruelly stirring. Beth laughs a little smile, "Daryl, it's okay."

Instinctually Daryl surveys the woods around them: he neither can see nor hear any sign of a walker. When he looks back at her, she's still smiling at him, that little sparkling dimpled smile of hers. She hasn't turned away or disappeared. She is not leaving him. The pangs of wanting are deep and brutal as he fights against them. Daryl hadn't counted on ever feeling this way again. It'd been years.

For years now he's been keeping busy: killing walkers, looking out for the group, hunting, going on runs, sitting on the council. Just, getting by, trying to find a moment to breathe. Anything else, anything resembling a real life — a life beyond survival and losing people, and doing whatever a body can do not to lose people — was let go. Women had not been on his mind. While all around him people had been pairing up, Lori 'n Shane, Lori 'n Rick, Glenn 'n Maggie, Tyresse 'n Karen, Beth 'n … It never crossed his mind. It was hard to justify sex as a priority with the world having gone so completely to shit.

But now she's there, Beth Greene, standing right there in front of him, with all the same losses, with all the knowledge of who he used to be, telling him to take a chance. She's inches away from him, telling him she isn't going anyplace, telling him to have some faith. There're reasons not to. There're things that'll be made harder by this, but Daryl stops thinking, and he takes her small fresh face in his hands and he kisses her, intensely, and Beth reciprocates.

In his arms, Beth pulls her knife from her belt and drops it to the ground. When she is able, she breaks away from his kiss, and with wide, watchful eyes tugs open his shirt and vest. Breathless and struck, he watches as she ventures close, kissing his collarbone and neck. Feeling her soft mouth on his skin as his chest heaves, Daryl brushes his lips to the top of her lovely head. And then again her lips find his, and with her hands in his, she pulls him down with her to the forest floor. "Beth—" he breathes, "y' sure?" Beth kisses him and nods. Time and the world both have aged her, and there in the grove, enwrapped by the brawn of his arms and the strength of his character, she acts with intention and her eyes open. And Beth sees Daryl Dixon. He is not a man to be feared, he is a man to be rallied behind, to travel with. To befriend. To love.

Buckles and holsters and zippers and buttons are grappled with and undone, and fervidly Daryl takes this young woman in his arms, lifting her to him, and covering her completely. "Be-eth…" Softly she catches his mouth with hers, and lets herself be taken in by him.

...

Spent and satiated, Daryl rolls onto his back, and they lie in the summer grass with the late afternoon sun beating down on them. They breathe, and catch their breath, letting their heart rates slow to normal. Beth's fingers travel to find his, and finding them she takes his hand. "Man," he exhales.

In time they rise and dress. Beth shoots a walker with his crossbow, and Daryl heads out to check the snares. Few words are exchanged.

That night, as Daryl's cottontail roasts over the embers, Beth sits motionless by the fire holding her knees to her chest, listening to the crickets and the sparks in the fire crackle. With the camp set, the fire lit and well-supplied, the meal cooking, their weapons already amassed and sorted, and nothing remaining to keep him distracted and busy handed, Daryl wipes his palms on his pants legs, and summons it in him to sit beside her, purposefully close, though it does not come naturally. Having spent nearly the span of his life staving off those who would get too close, Daryl'd become adept at avoiding intimacy and mostly evading being touched altogether. He hadn't looked for this with Beth, but nor had he sought out a second family or this life on the run, and still, they'd come to him. Daryl feels her breathing beside him, feels the warmth and pull of her small frame so near to his own. Visceral recollections of her slight body wrapped and entwined with his flood his senses. So close. So alive. So her. As vivid as the memory is, it feels impossibly unreal that it should have happened. Moving forward from here feels just as impossible, as does even just sitting there so intentionally close beside her. But not sitting there — not being there to sense the nearness of her, to catch the firelight glinting in her eyes, or how the wisps of her hair frame her pensive features — has been rendered unthinkable. Irrevocably. A moment or two more and his arm wraps around her shoulder. Her skin is warm, and somehow, despite the filth of the woods and travel, she smells sweet to him. When under his touch she leans into him, Daryl pulls her in closer so that once more he might feel her body beside his. Huddled together, they sit in silence, watching the low flames flicker and spark. The nights are still warm, frustratingly so. Summer has not broken. They lose themselves some then, staring wordlessly into the fire. In time, Daryl's gruff voice breaks the silence of the Georgian night, "Never done tha' b'fore."

Over her shoulder Beth sneaks a wry look in his direction, "No-o," she partially smiles. Though she would believe it not a common practice of his, Beth knows enough not to believe his 'never'.

Daryl's brow cocks jauntily in answer, "Ain't no flower, if that's whut ch'ya mean."

"I'h know," she affirms, affably turning her face toward his. Beguiled by her and all he's come to recognize he feels for her, Daryl grants himself the allowance to admire the way the fire's glow brightens her face and alights her soft curls in a golden halo. Beautiful. "You're old," she smiles again, her dimples deepening as she provides weight to her earlier assertion.

Daryl smirks gruffly. "I am?"

"Mm," Beth nods innocuously as she smiles again into the blaze before her.

There's no denying he's close to double her age, and no use in claiming having been this long on the run hasn't taken its toll, but she hadn't meant it as a tease, only as evidence for his claim. So, Daryl drops it and lets his arm slip from her shoulder to her waist. He risks a quick glance at her. "You," he murmurs, "ev'r done that? B'fore?"

Now it's Beth who looks at him. "With Jimmy?" she clarifies. "Zach?" She had not. Beth had not been chaste, but she had never done that. Before, when life was still normal, she'd always felt as though she had more than enough time ahead of her. She hadn't been sure she wanted to — all the way. Not yet, not at sixteen. Then after the turn, with so much stripped violently from the world, it hadn't seemed so urgent. And with so many then living on the farm, and with she and Jimmy ever under her father's watchful eye, there never seemed to be the time or place for it, not without the risk of being intruded upon. Anyway, there had been more important things to think about and so many things that needed doing. So too at the prison, what with Judith, and work duty, shared walls, and cellblock curfews. She'd spent stollen time with Zach to be sure, tucked into the backseat of his Charger, or hidden in some private nook of the prison. It'd been fun, the time she'd spent with him, a release from the pressures and drudgery of the prison, but though she was nearing college-age, something had held her back. Of course, there had been the scarcity of contraception to contend with, but also something more. Perhaps it was that although the world was hardly recognizable as itself, she hadn't been ready to give up on that part of herself, the part that let things matter, that deemed things special and worth something; the part that was thoughtful, and reflective, and still believed in waiting, that'd started feeling a future was still possible… At any rate, she never had, not all the way, and the thought of having done so with either of them, now feels not outlandish but remote, as though from a different life. She can't help but question now, What had those boys truly known of her? Jimmy and she had started going out after a class project in American history threw them frequently together. Zach and she because they were the right age; because he made her laugh and because it was something to do to occupy their thoughts and their time that wasn't death. But neither boy knew her. Not the true her. For weeks now, as they've traveled roads and trailed rivers, warded off the dead and despair, it's seemed to Beth as though perhaps no one in the world has ever truly known her except for Daryl. Maybe she'd never fully known herself.

Daryl shrugs his response, he wouldn't venture to assume. She and Jimmy both being sixteen when he'd met her, it's difficult to know if then she had been 'too young' or 'old enough'. And Zach had been later still; they'd seemed pretty tight. Beth too shrugs lightly, doubting Jimmy would even recognize her now. Staring into the glowing embers, her eyes flutter in long, heavy blinks as softly she gives her answer "… Not all of it."

Daryl swipes his free hand at the grass, and pulling up a long blade sticks it between his lips. His jaw twinges. In the silence that settles between them, Daryl lets his head drop back and he looks up into the quiet stillness of the emerging stars. "… It's good," he concludes finally. Muttering, Daryl clears this throat, "Good there 're still firsts." With his words lingering about them, Daryl chews on his blade of grass and sneaks another glance at her, "Ones y' want, I mean." The world now is filled to the brim with unsought for firsts.

Beth's fingers reach out and find his, and in the solemn darkness, she holds his hand as they stare side by side into the blaze. In time, Daryl ducks down and kisses her bare shoulder. Under the cover of night but in full view of her, he speaks the words he didn't know till now he had. "I'h love you, Beth. An' not 'cuz you're the only person I know's alive in this world."

Her artful fingers grasp tighter to his. "I love you, Daryl Dixon," she breathes. Secure in this truth, Beth leans against him, resting her head against his shoulder. "M' dad loved you. He did. And Maggie an' Glenn." The fire spits and flickers. "You're my family." She doesn't have to find his eyes to tell him this, family is the truth they've both been living.

His arm around her tight and his hand in hers, Daryl listens for walkers, and thinks about their universe of two and of the touch of her lips against his. "G't some sleep, I'll take this watch."

Original Post's AN: Thank you for reading! There is more to come but this will be a fairly short piece; I'm predicting 3-4 chapters in total, but we shall see... Feedback and constructive criticism are very much appreciated.

Thank you for giving the first chapter a try. This is definitely a Bethyl story (one that's clearly skipped over the two months of slow burn), but I hope too it is a story of survival, resilience, and family. I would say making it through chapter 8 will give you a taste of the story's tone and style. If you decide to stick around for the long haul, I would LOVE to hear from you along the way or when you've gotten caught up. Hearing what works and what doesn't, what you've enjoyed or had you worried, what seemed off course or was something you'd argue against, or what could be altered or improved in some way, is such a TREMENDOUS help as I continue writing. Feedback, well-intentioned concrit, and hearing what's kept you reading through these chapters, or even just hearing about your reading experience, keeps the writing going and makes for great connections with readers.

I try my best to publish edited and polished chapters, but I know I miss things. Always feel free to point out any big or minor errors in need of correction, I am always open to edits.

Continued readers are treasured, and new readers are so welcome! *Warning, updates may be infrequent and pop up in spurts, but this story will NEVER be abandoned until its descriptor reads 'Complete'. I love you for sticking around during dry spells!*

New readers: While chapters 1 & 2, and on occasion subsequent chapters do contain some M-rated adult scenes, such moments do not dominate or dictate the text, and I hope work instead to serve the story and the characters. This is just to say, if love scenes aren't your thing, they're less frequent in this story than the first chapters might lead you to believe.

Thank you for being here! ~ JB