He'd been so loud.
Beth was still coiled at his back, her frame wrapped around him in a gaunt hug. He'd been so loud, he realized. Shouting at her the way he had, the cacophony bouncing off the moonshine lean-to and into the stagnant lush of the woods. He's be so loud that he'd woken himself up - slammed a damn door open in his mind with such force, it'd kicked his head into his chest and tears from his eyes.
He really believed they were gone. Rick. Michonne. Even Little Asskicker, herself. And the only hope he'd had, as he ran away from his second home that had burnt to the ground, was she'd be in the bend of the tree-line waiting for him.
Every rustling bush, every slender gray expanse of bark - the parched branches of his heart bent damn near to breaking when he'd look to find she did not wait for him amongst the swelling trunks as he'd hoped.
So Beth sang. And led him on childish adventures. And he watched her cry and it made him angry to think that he hadn't yet lost enough in life to lose all sense of self-preservation. And he wondered why he lived with such a sense of self-importance when the only person who'd ever found him to be of worth was not there when he needed her.
He wanted to hate her. Hate the way he felt even a fucking moment of dependence on her.
But there was no room for that now. There was just Beth's warmth at his back. And the cold exhale of his last vestiges of hope, breathed out like smoke into the pitch night.
And the absence of Carol's silhouette at his feet.
