Beth

"We gotta go, Beth, we gotta go," Daryl says and so she runs.

They run. And run. And run.

Then they stop.

Fallen in a field looking at an increasingly cloudy sky, and birds flying in circles. Their swirls seem chaotic to her as she stares up at them, her heart pounds painfully in her chest and she keeps seeing her father's face as the sword came down and struck at him. The blood blooming and she can't quite reconcile the violence with the serene expression on his face.

Next to her Daryl is breathing heavily and she knows she's not alone. But she feels alone because Daddy is gone, and she doesn't know where Maggie is. What happened to her sister? Did she find Glenn? Did she get on the bus? Where the kids? Where was Judith.

She inhales sharply and tries not think about the baby. But it pushes down at her, and she inhales sharply again feeling the threat of tears. But she doesn't cry anymore, she doesn't cry anymore, because she hates the tears, they'll overwhelm her and they have no place in this world anymore.

"Come on," Daryl says breaking her away from her thoughts. He nudges her arm with his foot before bending down to grab his crossbow. She grabs her diary and wondering how she has that with her of all things.

"Here," Daryl tosses her his knife in it's sheath. She catches it and nods. Her gun is empty, which is just as well, they can more of a liability than a help at times. Too loud, a beacon for walkers. She locks the sheath around her waist, and finds she likes the weight of it — it's security.

Daryl's already walking away. She follows him and focuses on taking one step at a time, focuses on the walking as a way to stop herself from crying.

It's hours later. They made a small camp, both of them sitting on their own sides of a small fire. Neither of them try to sleep. It's been hours she thinks, maybe even a day. Back at the prison she tried to keep track of the days, at least in number.

30 days without incident… She almost laughs. It was a calm before the storm. First Zach and then the sickness, then the Governor rolls right in and takes her away from her family. Killing one and taking the other. Beth swallows hard on nothing but saliva.

Maggie. Maggie has to be alive she thinks. Has to be. She has to be. Glenn too. All of them. Rick, Michonne, Carl. IJudith/i. she looks across the fire at Daryl. He's sitting there. He's just staring, and it's either into the fire or at nothing at all. It can't really just be the two of them? Can it? She shakes her head. Others could have gotten away, on foot, too… run like they did, run into the woods until they were away from the mayhem. The death.

The kids. Someone could've gotten them out. Been with them. They weren't on the bus, so maybe… maybe someone got them out. What if they're out there? She looks at Daryl again and thinks she's lucky, she got out with him — he's strong, he hunts, he… itracks/i.

"We should do something," she hears herself say it as if she's testing the idea out. To see if she is believes in it. "We should do something," she says it louder, believing.

It takes longer than it would if it was anyone but him, but Daryl's eyes shift from the fire to her and she feels bolder.

"We aren't the only survivors, we can't be. Rick, Michonne they could be out there. Maggie and Glenn could have made it out of A Block. They could've…" she stands up feeling more certain. "You're a tracker. You can track."

Daryl's eyes go back to the fire.

"Come on," she snaps. They can't just sit where they are, others could be out there, her sister, Rick, the kids…. If they don't do something now. "The sun will be up soon, if we head out now we can…"

She waits for something from him and wants to shout when Daryl remains silent. But she's decided. She's not going to stop. She knows they have to do this, that it's important. They can find others still out there alive. Because they can't be the only ones.

"Fine, if you won't track. I will." She grabs Daryl's knife and stalks out of the camp.

She needs to do this she thinks as she walks into the darkness of the woods and after a minute she feels Daryl behind her more than she hears him. Because he barely makes a sound when he walks. He's part of the woods around him and it reminds her that she doesn't know how to track. But can it really be that hard? He's giving her no choice but to do it herself.

The sun is slowly rising and she focuses on the land in front of her feet, looking for anything that seems human, that shows that people walked on the earth in front of her and not just animals and monsters.

Time passes and she isn't sure, they've probably walked well past an hour, but she's not going to stop. She needs to do this, she has to look because if you don't look how can find anything? They have to do something, this is a job to do, she thinks. An important one.

Daryl is to her right, walking along and she sees him slow down and bend down. She walks over to see him blowing leaves away from footprints. Human tracks and she feels a swell of hope in her chest as she looks down at them. They're small and her heart clenches a bit, the children.

"Could be Luke's, or Molly's," she says and she hears the hope in her voice. "Whoever they are, it means they're alive." She and Daryl aren't alone.

"No. It means they means they were alive four or five hours ago."

It's the first sentence he's said since they ran from the prison and it pisses her off. "They're alive," she spits out and walks away.

She can see the footprints now for herself and she follows them. They are alive she thinks, alive and breathing. It's on repeat in her brain and she keeps walking because there are footsteps to follow. And her heart stops slamming against her chest, it's easier to breathe now.

The grape bushes rise her spirits more. They found food, whoever they are and that's a good thing. But then Daryl's pointing out smashed grapes on the ground.

"They picked up the pace here. Got out in a hurry. Things went bad."

No, she won't think like that. "Wouldn't kill you to have a little faith."

"Yeah, faith. Faith ain't done shit for us. Sure as hell did nothing for your father."

Beth hates him in that moment as she flashes to her father's death, as her fears for Maggie rise in the face of that. She hates the sadness threatening her but she can't yell at him because she might cry if she does and she won't cry. She doesn't cry anymore. They're doing something good and right here. Why can't he see that, why did he say that? To hurt her?

She glares at him, he's not even looking at her first but she glares at him. And he turns. He looks contrite right away but it's not enough of an apology and the hurt is still threatening the hope she has built up. So she glares, pushing all of it out at her and at him. Because she has a job to do, she's going to find Luke, Molly, or some other survivor, other people who are still breathing.

But after a beat or two she can't even look at him, so she starts picking grapes, putting her anger at Daryl into the action. They dropped their grapes she thinks. "They'll be hungry when we find them."

Soon she feels pressure on her arm, gentle and light. She turns enough to see it's Daryl, offering her one of his bandanas to put the grapes in. She knows it's more than that. It's a silent apology, because why would he ever voice one.

She's angry but she knows he means it so she accepts the apology and wraps the grapes up in the cloth. She notices him walking off, following the trail. He is tracking, she thinks, he's been doing it for her. Even though she's pretty sure he doesn't want to, that she has forced him into this. She supposes that's something but she can't quite feel thankful for it. Probably because she knows she's given little choice. She follows him, forcing herself to focus on her task again, finding other survivors.

"That ain't walker blood," Daryl says after touching some leaves.

She looks at the dead walkers on the ground, but she also sees footprints. "The trail keeps going, they fought them off."

"No. Got Walker tracks all up and down here. At least a dozen of them."

She wants to yell at him, she wants to shout but she doesn't, deciding it's not worth it. He'll see, he'll see when they find them. Then she hears a twig snap and immediately she pulls out Daryl's knife and tenses. She stands in place, looking around, hoping it was nothing more than a squirrel. Listening for the sound of one, and she hears snarling, turns tying to pinpoint where until the walkers tells her by grabbing her from behind. Beth fights, twists and tries to get into a position to fight it but she can't and she loses her grip on the knife and it falls to the ground.

Daryl can't get a shot, so he rushes forward, going for his knife for a second not remembering she has it… he recovers and grabs at the walker, pulling at it away from her and she's finally able to twist out of it's hold. She and Daryl share a quick look, she knows what he wants her to do. She grabs the knife off the ground and Daryl rolls himself underneath the walker, holding him ready for her to plunge the knife into its head.

She hates the sound it makes, the sound of rotted flesh and bone. She hates she recognizes this man from the prison, even if she doesn't know his name, or who he was, he was part of her home. He was part of the life that was destroyed in the blink of an eye. He became a monster and now he is dead and it cuts into her heart.

Daryl thanks her with a nod after getting out from under the corpse. And she briefly wonders why but he distracts her by saying, "Come on." Then he's leading her again, following the footprints and she follows without thought. It doesn't matter this one man lost his battle. Others are still out there, they will still find someone alive.

They find train tracks. At first she thinks it's a good thing, it feels like progress. They found something manmade, something maybe people would follow. Hope swells bright inside her in that moment. Only to come crashing down around her in the next instant. She steps further out of the woods and hears the snarls and the gross squelching sound that is the dead eating the living. Three walkers are bent over remains, fresh blood is thick in the air, copper, the worst smell in this new world.

Daryl kills them and she walks closer and closer. Each step her heart hammers hard in her chest. It is hurting again, with each pulse. It aches and it's laughing at her for thinking she'd find survivers. She stares down a shoe, a kids shoe, Luke's she thinks and it's all gone. All her hope. He's dead, he's gone. In the worst way one can imagine.

She can't shove it down anymore. She stares at that shoe because she can't look at what remains. She tries, she tries to inhale sharply and keep the tears at bay. Tries to stop her body from convulsing but it won't listen the tears sting her eyes like needles and her body shakes against her will.

And she's bawling. She's crying harder than she has since she saw her mother walk out of the barn. She hates it. She hates crying. She isn't supposed to cry anymore but she can't stop herself now.

It feels endless, it won't stop, the pain, the horror of what they found. What her quest turned into to. She isn't sure if the tears are for the kids, for her mother, for her father, Maggie or for herself. Or for something else she has no definition for.

Beth cries and cries. She can barely breathe. She cries until she doesn't.

At some point she finds herself on the ground, making another fire. She's exhausted, hollowed out. Her face is wet and she tears out a blank page of her diary to throw into it a fire. There will be no words for that page, no stupid dreams, no nonsense thoughts from a teenager, because that no longer fits into this world.

Beth closes her eyes and tells herself she is stupid. Yet she hears her father's voice, somewhere in the back of her mind…iIf you don't have hope what's the point of living?/i She doesn't have an answer, is pretty sure she doesn't want an answer, is afraid of the answer she might hear. Yet the question lingers, until she decides to sleep in hopes of finding silence.

Daryl

He watches Beth sleep. He pulls out a cigarette and lights it. He takes a long drag on it and lets the smoke burn his lungs. Feels it and shifts his gaze to the flames in order to stare at nothing at all.

The last twenty-four hours felt like the longest day of his life. The most painful day in his life. Worse than when the world went to shit, worse than when he found Merle snarling after being killed by the Governor.

One eyed bastard took more from him. Took everything. He had something, he had something. Now he's back to nothing. No safe fences. No Rick. No Carol — though that's a different pain, a different hurt and he isn't sure what to do and he doesn't have the time to think on it.

But he has Beth. Beth. He blows smoke out of his mouth and glances at the blonde again. She's out cold and he guesses that's good. Neither of them slept after their run from their home and she cried an ocean for the better part of the day. Tired herself out he supposes, he wonders what its like to be able to do that…

Let it out. Though he thinks she was trying to hold it in. i I don't cry anymore, Daryl/i, he hears it again plain as day. He thought it strange and he thought it brave at the time. He wonders if it was now, or healthy. But what would he know about that?

She's all he has left and he doesn't know what the hell do with her. She's not like her sister but she is like her father. And that hurts, Daryl shifts back to the fire, focuses again on the cigarette in his hands. He let Herschel down, he let Herschel die. He let them all down. Michonne was right and he was wrong.

He can't undo it and now he's alone. Alone with a last chance to not let Herschel Greene down. But how does he deal with this girl, with her… He hurt her today, just as much as she hurt herself. He can't forget her face, her eyes, when he made the crack about Herschel's faith. She looked right at him and it was as hard as slap, she was mad, she was already mad but that was more, that was different.

She didn't breakdown, though, not then but he thinks it was close. But she kept digging in, she kept digging in that they were going to find others, find survivors. He's never seen seen a hope be dashed right before his eyes before. And he'd let her cry, he let her stand there alone and fall into pieces.

He has nothing to give her, to show her, he has no way to bring her peace. Because everyone is gone, all of them, they're alone and he knows it. He remembers seeing her and Herschel, laughing and talking. Herschel looking at her like she was the sun. Daryl watched them, the Greene's, all of them. Watched them being a family, all the that love, all that brightness and smiles. Herschel would beam at Beth and request a song. And she would sing and it felt like there was actual good in the world.

But there wasn't, there isn't and Daryl let himself be fooled, he let himself believe in things that never were. Not even before. He forces himself not to look at the sleeping girl as he wonders if she learned that there is no reason left to sing.