-November-

The first day after the walker breach on the house, Daryl let Beth sleep the entire day. She needed it. Underneath her bravado after leaving the prison, she had exhausted herself. It was obvious in the bruise-like circles under her eyes and the yawns she was trying desperately to hide from him.

He never woke her for her watch shift. Rather, when the sun came up, he pulled the curtains more closely together, so the morning light wouldn't wake her. He crept through the house on light feet, as if he were hunting in the woods.

Beside her sleeping mat on the floor, Daryl left a cup of water and a sleeve of crackers. Mindful of the noise traps they had started outside, he slipped outside.

While Beth rested, Daryl got to work. They did not need another breach, of that he was certain. They hadn't eaten enough of the canned goods to create a larger noise trap yet. With Beth asleep inside, Daryl didn't want to wander far from the house.

So, instead, he busied himself with digging a trench perimeter around the house. Walkers would surely trip right into the holes. The trench would also serve as a fire break, if worst came to worst and one of the storms they had been having caught the forest on fire.

It was slow work for one person, especially in the muggy humidity of the day, but he kept at it. The sun beat down on him with such an intensity that Daryl hardly believed that, come night, it would frost again. He knew it would, despite the heat of the day.

Their last night outdoors had been so frigid that he had given Beth his vest for another layer of clothing. They stayed awake the whole long, cold night, huddled close to the fire.

"The first shelter we find," Daryl had whispered to her, "we take. Understand?"

She had nodded beside him, her teeth chattering in her mouth despite his vest and the fire. Daryl had watched Beth take out walkers—had even taught her to use the crossbow—but he still reserved his doubts about what she would do if confronted with a human opponent.

Beth was still kind, and that was a dangerous thing to be in this world.

They had been lucky to find the empty house that doubled as a funeral parlor. It would serve them well over the winter, and Daryl was not going to let anyone take it from them. Not walkers, not people, nothing.

Daryl worked on the perimeter until he finished the last few feet right before the sun slipped below the horizon. He slipped back into the house, sliding the deadbolt lock into place behind him.

Beth was awake inside. She sat up in her blankets, her hair a messy blond mass around her head. Meeting his eyes over the lip of her cup, Beth took several long pulls of water.

"Thank you," she said, her voice soft yet firm. The same way Hershel spoke when he was serious about something. "But don't do it again."

Her eyes were fierce when they caught his again. He knew that she didn't want him to view her as weak; he didn't, but apparently Beth needed more convincing of that fact. So, Daryl merely nodded. "Okay. You hungry?"

She was quiet for a moment, regarding him. Then she gave nod of her own and threw the blankets off herself. Beth led the way into the kitchen, Daryl close behind. He let the crossbow slide from his shoulder near the doorway.

"Here's your gross jar of pig feet." She handed it to him over her shoulder. "I'll let you eat that on your own."

"I'll try to catch something you'll eat, soon," Daryl promised her. He watched her open a can of green beans for her own dinner. She smiled at him, pulling her knees to her chest while she ate.

"It's your turn to sleep tonight. I'll stay up. We'll fix our watch schedules tomorrow night." She said it with such conviction that there was absolutely no room for arguing.

"Yes, ma'am," Daryl murmured into his jar.

It rained so heavily that, for two days, neither of them dared to go outside. Well, not for longer than it took Daryl to keep rotating all the pots and pans in the house. He collected the rain water in the bathtub, for lack of a better place to keep it.

"We need to find some barrels or something," he muttered, dumping each pot as soon as Beth placed it in his hands from the doorway. "This'll do, for now."

Beth tried not to think about the connotations of drinking water from a bathtub that was probably dirty.

"At least we know we won't die of dehydration," Beth mumbled to herself. Daryl heard her, though. He canted his head to the side, catching her eye.

"We ain't dying, period."

The seriousness of his tone was so heavy that Beth nearly dropped the next pan she passed to him. It took exactly thirty-one more pans to fill the bathtub entirely. She counted. Daryl placed the rest of the pans in the kitchen.

For the first time that night, they used the fireplace to build a fire for their dinner. Using their left-over water, a can of mixed vegetables, and the meat of two blackbirds, Beth managed to make a stew of sorts for them. She portioned it into bowls for them, and they ate on the floor in front of the fire instead of the table, which was covered in pans.

"Maggie used to hate the rain," Beth told him, blowing on a spoonful of her stew. "She liked to be outside too much. Daddy used to say she spent so much time with the horses that she would turn into one."

"We're lucky to have the rain now," Daryl told her. "We'll be luckier still if we get some good snows."

Was this what it was like for him? she wondered. His childhood, she had gleamed from their drunken night together, was not much of anything. He had been forced to grow up too fast, to learn things no child needed to worry about.

"I'm happy for it now, then."

They sat in companionable silence, slurping their stew. The blackbird meat was slick in her mouth, but it honestly didn't taste too different from other poultry. It was certainly better than nothing, and it was a hot dinner.

"Is there a cellar in this house, do you think?"

"Yeah, there's a trapdoor to it in the back bedroom. It's cold as shit down there. The food'll definitely keep."

Beth smiled to herself, honestly proud that their thoughts were on the same page.

Save all the cans, Daryl had instructed her. With her pocket knife, Beth poked holes in the aluminum and threaded fishing wire through. She sat cross-legged in the floor, working in the quiet dimness of the house. They had only been there about a week, but already Beth was getting good at reading the time of day from the shift in light through the curtains Daryl insisted they keep closed.

He was outside collecting firewood. It wasn't cold enough, yet, for Beth to successfully talk Daryl into building a fire indoors. They needed a fire, though, to cook the hare Daryl had managed to catch.

While Beth worked, her hand slipped, catching her skin with the blade rather than the can.

"Dammit," she cursed, just as Daryl came into the door.

"You alright?" He stomped his feet on the doormat, knocking the mud from his boots. When he picked his head up, Beth had already stuck her finger in her mouth to staunch the bleeding.

She nodded up at him, but he dropped his game bag with a dull thud on the floor and crouched before her. "Lemme see."

It was only a little cut. Not deep. Still, they couldn't take any risks. Daryl motioned for Beth to follow him into the kitchen. Neither the water nor the electricity worked in the house anymore, but Daryl spared some of their saved rain water to wash Beth's hand in the sink anyway. He didn't bother reminding her to be careful.

"We don't have to waste our water on this," she murmured to him. Since the close call with the dog the night they found the house, they had taken to speaking in low voices even while inside.

"I ain't gonna have you catchin' your death from a tiny cut," Daryl countered. Despite her protest, Beth made no move to draw her hand away from his. He washed it with water before pouring a little peroxide over top and wrapping a bandage around it.

"I'm bored inside, working on the cans by myself." It came out as a whine. "Let me come out with you. Please?"

Daryl blew his breath. He knew she was liable to follow him, regardless of the answer he gave.

"Stay close to me. I haven't scouted the area much, with all the rains."

It had rained almost every day. Beth had said it was the sky crying for her, because she didn't have the tears left to mourn.

She smiled up at him, taking him by the wrist and pulling him behind her. Daryl blew his breath again. Beth was happy enough, it seemed, to sit in the damp grass and watch him struggle to light a fire with all of the soggy wood.

"Daryl?" Beth asked after he had managed to burn his fingers more times than the twigs and broken branches. Honestly, he was on the verge of quitting when, miraculously, the wood caught enough to smoke and give off heat. Smoked rabbit was going to be better than raw rabbit.

"Yeah?" He rocked back on his heels, feeding the fire paper from an old phone book he had found inside.

"How do you spell your name?" Of all the Greene family members he could have been stuck with, it had to be Beth. Daryl had never much minded her, but sometimes the way her mind worked left him frustrated.

"You know a lot of ways to spell it or what?"

"Well, it could have two r's. Or an e, or a y—two l's, maybe." Smirking despite himself, he spelled it out for her.

"D-a-r-y-l. Why?"

Only then did Daryl bother to look up. From her spot perched in the grass, Beth was carving into the trunk of a tree.

"What the hell do you think you're doin'?" Daryl chided, but he didn't bother to move from his own spot next to the fire to stop her. Instead, he watched her roll her eyes and toss her blonde ponytail in defiance.

"It's practically on the ground, I carved it so low. No one who wasn't looking for clues of people they know would see it."

He couldn't argue with that. So, he fed more paper to the fire while Beth carved. Daryl reached the F's before he had built the fire up enough to really catch. Only then did he put the rabbit over the spit.

Beth, he knew, would insist on putting the meat on the plates from the kitchen. She was clinging to anything that brought any semblance of normalcy…and he couldn't blame her. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the image of Hershel being beheaded by the Governor. Daryl couldn't imagine how bad it was for her.

They ate at the table, just like Beth insisted every night since they had been there. She lit candles with the flint, just like he had showed her, so they could save the matches. Rabbit and wild strawberries he had found the day before made up the plate Beth handed to Daryl.

"It's not so bad here," she said quietly, taking a bite of her food. "You're sure we should stay here? That we shouldn't try to find the others?"

"The weather's changin' fast. Even if the days are warm, the nights ain't." Beth had slept too long each morning—and Daryl had let her—to see how thickly the frost covered the ground before the rising sun melted it away. The land and weather in Georgia were something Daryl knew well. There would be snow on the ground before the month was up, he was sure of it.

Without a roof over her head and blankets to wrap herself in, Daryl was certain the nightly frosts would do Beth in before they caught any sign of their people.

Beth only nodded. "If you think we should stay, we'll stay."

It wasn't so bad. Their house wasn't the only one in the area. While Beth entertained herself with learning the land and gathering whatever foliage Daryl identified as safe for them to eat, Daryl did scavenging of his own. Nearly every day, he brought her something new.

Sleeping bags to help cushion the floor, because both of them had taken to sleeping in the parlor.

Books for Beth to read. More candles. Soap, because she had complained that it had been 'forever' since she had a bath or washed her hair.

Winter clothes for both of them. Thick socks, flannels, jackets. A hat and gloves. Blankets. So many blankets. It didn't occur to either of them to move their set up to a different house, perhaps one that wasn't formerly a funeral home.

Daryl brought food, too, but she was much more interested with the other things.

"Do you have a thing for beans?" Beth asked one afternoon, helping him put away the new haul of canned goods. Cans and cans and cans of beans…at least Daryl made it easy to organize the pantry.

"They're good protein when meat's scarce." Winter. Always thinking of winter.

"Think about that in a few weeks when you're sick of 'em." Though Daryl was taller, Beth insisted on standing on the counter while he handed her cans.

"You think about it when you see flower bloomin' come spring because I didn't let you starve to death," he countered. Beth had never known Daryl to be much of a talker until they ended up each other's only companion in the world.

When all the cans were put away, Daryl held his hand out courteously to help her down from the counter. Beth felt her heart jump at the same time she did.

"There's another storm rollin' in," he told her. "I reckon you could play the piano tonight, if you want."

Because the rain and thunder would drown out the music from the outside.

He joined her in the parlor. On the second day, they had cleared out all the chairs. All that remained was the piano, a few side tables, their sleeping bags, and the coffin. Sometimes, Daryl still took naps there.

This time, though, Beth patted the piano bench, inviting Daryl to sit beside her as she played. At first, she let her fingers roam over the keys without rhyme or reason.

"Do you remember the song I sang with Maggie our first night at the prison?" She asked him without looking up. "It was one of Daddy's favorites."

Beth didn't wait for his answer. Her eyes drifted shut as she began to play.

"Of all the money, that e'er I had, I spent it in good company," Beth sang. "And of all the harm that e'er I've done, alas it was to none but me."

She sang the song in its entirety, her voice taking Daryl back to a muggy summer night sitting in the grass outside the prison. The piano held a melody with Beth's voice where Maggie's once had.

Daryl almost didn't realize the song had ended, even as the piano notes drifted away, until Beth turned toward him. She wrapped her arms around him and laid her head against his chest, her small body shaking. He was so lost in his memories that it took him a moment to realize she was crying.

Belatedly, his arms came around her. He felt how tightly she was holding his shirt in her little hands as she sobbed. Daryl didn't bother to offer her any words; he knew damn well there was nothing he could hear that would have made him feel better after he found Merle.

So, he simply held her instead. Until, after what felt like an eternity, she went slack against him—she had cried herself to sleep. Carefully, Daryl shifted her weight, so he could lift her.

He tucked her into her blankets on the floor, sliding her boots from her feet. Beth, he had learned, hated to sleep in her shoes.

She was on first watch that night, but it didn't matter. Daryl let her sleep, watching the storm rage outside the window instead.

In the hallway, which the pair rarely used, Beth hung up lengths of rope to make an in-door clothes line.

"Yesterday was Thanksgiving," she told him. Daryl sat in the kitchen, twisting lengths of dried grass into braided pieces. He had explained that, should worst come to worst once the snow started o fall, the dried grass would be their backup for fires.

"Little late for me to get a turkey now," he called back to her. Beth smiled as she stood on her tiptoes to hand up one of his shirts. "Shoulda told me yesterday."

Beth had found an old calendar in the house. Using it as a guide, she changed the dates to match the calendar she had been keeping at the prison. She had no idea how accurate her calendar was but having a way to keep track of time made her feel better somehow.

"Do you really think everyone else is doing what we're doing? Hunkering down somewhere for winter?"

"They better be, if they've got a lick of sense."

She opened her mouth to say something else, but a loud thud interrupted her. Daryl was on his feet immediately, crossbow already in his hands. He raised a finger to his lips.

"Stay back for real this time." He barely dared to whisper the words as he slipped past her in the long hallway.

Never mind that I killed nearly as many walkers as you that night, Beth thought to herself. But she did as Daryl asked, not moving an inch in the hallway until he came back.

"It was just the one," he told her, holding the soiled arrow at arm's length. He always did that, she had noticed, until he cleaned it. Daryl went so far as to hold the tips of his arrows over open flames, to sanitize them. "Dumbass walked right into the house. Guess I can't blame him, he didn't have any eyes left."

"That's gross." Beth scrunched up her nose and went back to hanging up their clean clothes. She knew Daryl didn't understand why she insisted on doing laundry, but he brought her creek water and rocks in a bucket anyway, so she could get it done.

"Maggots, I'll bet," Daryl continued on. She was certain he only did so because her disgust was obvious. "Not even they'll eat a walker's brains."

"Life would be a lot easier if they would." Beth peeked around the pair of her jeans she had just hung up. Daryl had reclaimed his seat at the table, hands full of dried grass. His eyes—which Beth has come to realize are very blue—meet hers, the mischievous twinkle in them obvious, as is the smirk on his lips.

Daryl Dixon, who she had long considered to be all hard business, was teasing her.

On Sundays, Beth read Bible verses to him. Daryl knows them all, but he doesn't tell her that. The Bible was one of the few books in his house growing up, and it was the one Merle used to teach him to read.

He knew, without Beth having to tell him, that she was reading from 2 Corinthians.

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

The words Beth read aloud to him had held no meaning to him for most of his life, but he never stopped her. This was a routine she had with Hershel, Maggie, and Glenn every Sunday at the prison. He reckoned it made her feel closer to them, though Hershel was dead and who knew where Maggie and Glenn even were.

Sometimes, though, he couldn't help himself.

"What's Revelation got to say about this earthly hellhole?" He asks on the fifth Sunday of this routine. Beth glared up at him and looked like she might want to throw the Bible at him, but all Daryl wants to do is smile at the grumpy look on her face.

So he did. Which, of course, only annoyed Beth more.

"This is not the end times foretold in the Book of Revelation," she asserted.

"Hell, I guess we're pretty lucky, then, if the world can be worse than this."

Beth fell quiet for a moment. Her eyes scanned the room. They fell on the piano, which was dotted with vases of wildflowers she had managed to find. Daryl, lounging in the coffin as if it were a regular couch. Their sleeping mats, which were beginning to drift together, but neither of them had commented on that fact.

"It's really not so bad here," she whispered quietly after a few minutes of quiet contemplation.

Daryl knew she wasn't talking about the world outside of this house they had come to share.

"No, it ain't."

On the last night in November, Beth felt a hand shaking her shoulder. At first, her sleep-addled brain told her it was Maggie. As she woke, though, she felt the floor boards beneath her bedding and made out Daryl's voice close to her ear.

"Hey, Beth," he whispered, his breath washing over her cheek. "C'mere."

Sleepily, she accepted his hand to pull her up. She took a blanket with her; the air was frigid outside of her bedding. Padding across the floor, Daryl led her to a window. He kept hold of her with one hand, and used the other to move the curtains aside.

"Look," he sounded reverent, almost. "It's snowin'."

And it was. Big, fat snowflakes drifting to the ground in thick sheets. They gave the illusion of peace and tranquility. Beth so wanted to believe that this snowfall, so crisp and clean outside, was the true natural state of the world.

She opened the side of her blanket, offering it to Daryl. After a beat, he moved closer, letting her wrap it around him. Beth rested her head against his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his waist. She listened to his steady breaths, coming as evenly and surely as the snow outside.

"It's beautiful," she murmured against the leather of his vest. He wore it even in sleep, most nights.

He didn't answer her, but she felt his fingers work into her loose hair, twisting the strands around his fingers. The clouds outside began to lighten as they watched the snow drifting to the ground. They were cozy in each other's warmth as the sun rose, bringing them into the first day of December.