Here's that ZA one shot I was telling you guys about in my last piece of writing. So glad to get it out because right now this couple are inspiring so many pieces that are clamouring inside my head and it's a relief to pull one more out of the pile. I literally have several documents full of mismatched dialogue and scenes, of which make no sense because they are for several different pieces and I can't remember them all if I don't write them down. It's actually pretty scary because I haven't had this kind of muse in years but I'm enjoying it so much and it's all because of you guys. I'm shit at replying to reviews but every one means so much to me, every favourite and follow for a story or myself makes me beam and inspires me. Thank you to all old and new readers, you mean the world to me and so does your support for my writing. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own The Walking Dead or any of its characters. I simply own the plot and make no profit from this piece of writing. I also do not own any of my cover images, they were downloaded off the internet and credit is due to their creators, who are awesome. I have no beta as usual and I doubt I ever will, I enjoy solely writing my pieces and letting you guys be the judge.

Beth's eyes blink open and everything hurts. Head, back, feet. Then she remembers, like she does every time she wakes up. A download of information, her life for however much time has passed since Dawn released a bullet into her brain. She has to remember it all again, rehash it from the beginning. They left her at the hospital, her family. She wasn't buried, wasn't given a funeral. They left her with the doctors. The first day she opened her eyes -everything bright and raw, tilting on its side and swaying until she threw up- she was told that her family had left her and her heart had broken open.

They buried everyone. Said goodbye to every person they loved, but not her. Why? Beth had been told it was because they were asked to let her stay, to be kept. To be cut open and reused. Like an organ donor, for future emergencies. She'd been shot in the head, so she wouldn't turn upon her death. Perfect. She'd felt bitter resentment upon her waking but as the days mulled on the anger dissipated and the gnawing need to find her family ate at her very bones, driving her to insanity and pushing everything else out. Everything was fucked up. Her brain was broken and everything was missing something.

She'd had a horse before the world went to shit, but she couldn't remember its name, gender, the time she spent with it. She knew her own name, the people who had left her behind, but finer details hurt her to try to remember. Her birthday, for instance. Bigger things than that, too. The time after the prison fell was destroyed, obliterated in the darkness of her mind. Running, aching thighs. A candle. A jar. Fire, leather. Wings. Picture puzzle pieces that she couldn't make fit together, couldn't make any clear sense of despite how hard she tried. She spent a while driving herself crazy over it until she realised it didn't matter.

She had to go. She had to find her family or what was left of it. She didn't know how, but she did. The people at the hospital didn't try to stop her, perhaps having learned from their mistakes, because if there was one thing she did remember, it was her time in there. Not a full picture but fuller than anything else she had.

She left, and she found them.

Beth groans and rolls onto her side, her body tucking in on itself. It's late and she's been asleep a while, longer than she usually sleeps. The house she shares with Maggie and Glenn is quiet and she knows she's not going to be able to sleep anymore despite it now being the time to do so. With a sigh, she gets up and sticks her feet into her boots. She's as quiet as possible as she makes her way downstairs and into the kitchen, hunting for food.

She's starving but she manages to find leftovers and decides to eat it outside, her cheeks hot from sleep and the house stuffy. The moment she's on the porch, she knows she's not alone and she turns sharply to the swing, finding Daryl there.

"Oh," she gasps. "Didn't know you were here."

"Sorry," he murmurs as he flicks a cigarette away he was smoking. "Just got back."

"With Aaron?" She asks as she sits on the steps and starts to eat.

He nods, stretching out on the swing and popping his joints. "Yeah. Here was closest."

She hums around her food. She doesn't know why he's explaining himself, he stays here as often as he stays anywhere else. He hadn't taken a place of his own the others tell her, and since he often goes out with Aaron he just crashes wherever he pleases. He seemed hesitant to continue staying at Glenn and Maggie's when she got here, but something must have changed his mind. Watching him now as she finishes her food, Beth's stomach clenches. It's been a couple of days since she's seen him and she's been worried. She doesn't know why and she can't question it, she's just allowed it.

She knows there's something between them that she can't understand and she wants to, she's just been avoiding it, avoiding him. The way her body feels all the time, whenever she's lay in bed or looks at him, it's a question she needs to be answered. The only problem is that she's been a coward, but for some reason, right now is the moment she feels like she needs to get it off of her chest, to address the issue.

She can't just rush in though, so she puts her plate aside and nudges her chin at him. "Can I have one'a those?"

Daryl doesn't seem surprised at her new found habit, but he hesitates before he digs in his pocket for his battered pack and pulls one free. He stands from the swing and walks to sit beside her, offering the cigarette. Beth takes it, sticking it between her lips as he flicks the lighter and lights it up. She takes a few hearty drags and draws courage.

They're silent for a while as she smokes and then finally she can't bare it any longer. "Daryl, I… I gotta ask you summin'."

He grunts as his affirmation and she draws tighter on the cigarette before she carries on. "Did we… when we was runnin', after the prison, did we have sex?"

He jerks away as if she slapped him, eyes wide and from the corner of her own she can see his hands are shaking. "Wasn't like that, Beth. Ever."

She frowns and everything in her head rings, her fucked up brain trying to reform images that have scattered into all corners of her mind. "Never?"

Daryl shakes his head and takes the cigarette she offers him, feeling too sick to keep smoking. Besides, he looks like he needs it. She looks away after that, staring into the street, no embarrassment present that she can find in herself, just confusion. She doesn't understand. She's sure she remembers… something. A feeling…

"I could swear… you… we…," She struggles, her tongue thick and heavy, as useless as her brain.

Tears sting her eyes and she glances away, her hands clenching in the fabric of her cardigan. She remembers so much and she remembers nothing at all. The brush of his rough fingers, the light of a candle, a jar of moonshine, drawing in the very light of the moon and flinging it back to her as she looked into the glass. Flames, something about the way she said a word, but she can't remember what the word is, was, why it was so important.

"You didn't want to?" She finally asks.

Daryl's fingers tighten on the cigarette his holding and for a moment he delays by taking another drag and slowly releasing the smoke, like a dragon gathering the heat in his belly before it breathes fire. "Didn't say that."

"So you did?" She frowns, her head kicking up harder, struggling.

He taps ash harshly, knocking the cherry out so that he has to relight the cigarette. "I didn't say that either. Beth, c'mon, it don't matter."

"It does matter." Her reply is sharp, hot in her breast. "My brains fucked, Daryl, everythin' matters."

He stares at the cigarette hard before he finally glances at her, though it's only through the fringes of his hair. "We… we were close. I dunno, Beth, it was only us. But we weren't fuckin', alrite?"

"Because we didn't wanna, or 'cause we wouldn't talk about it?" She challenges and from the way he squirms she already has her answers.

A sigh of relief escapes her and she closes her eyes softly. Finally, something makes sense. They all told her when she found them again, told her that she travelled with Daryl, that she was with him when she was taken. She knew, vaguely that she had been. She remembered the prison going down and running. So much running. Never ending, never stopping, never breathing. But her brain got fucked up and everything was fragmented, destroyed. She remembered running, she remembered never stopping, she remembered blood. But not whose blood it was or why it was staining her hands, how it got there.

She imagines it was walkers -no one's told her otherwise- but it's still an awful thought. No finer details, no memory. Just blood and running, never stopping, never sleeping. No air. No tears on her face but internally she was screaming. Screaming for Maggie and her daddy, for Rick, Carl, Michonne, everyone they left behind. It's just that when she woke up she didn't know who the second part of her 'they' was. Who had she run with? Stayed alive with? Who was that person, beside her for all those terrifying days? Except the moment she saw him, she knew. She didn't just suddenly remember, that shit doesn't happen, but she could feel it.

A thread of something between them that hadn't been there at the farm, in the prison. She'd never looked at him and felt that way, the look in his eyes too... the guilt that stained his face and the relief, the honest to God tears that dripped down his cheeks… She knew, and every day since that day she's felt it, like a missing limb: how much she misses him. Her brain can't help her and it doesn't tell her why but she knew deep in the core of her that something had happened. Something had transcended between them in their time alone and now every time she's alone she's thinking of someone, feeling lost.

Thinking of him and all the nights they must have lain together, protecting each other. There was no memory to back it up and there still isn't, but her body craved the warmth of another then and it still does now, her fingers clawed at the open space whenever she woke as she still does and even now her cunt is wet and throbbing, searching for someone who was once there, or so she thought.

She slept in small quantities until she realised she was sleeping in shift patterns. Every five hours, she was awake. Waiting to swap shifts with someone else, go on watch. Except through all those beliefs and all that pondering, through all the swimming she partook in the deep recesses of her fucked up mind, she wasn't sure.

Now she is.

Now she knows.

"I wanted too, so did you." She's firm as she says it and her hands release the fabric of her cardigan, believing it.

Daryl goes still. "You remember?"

"Yeah, no. Kinda, I dunno." She gives up for a second and presses closer where they're sat on the porch. "My body… my body misses you. I thought that we must have, the way I feel…"

Daryl shudders and flicks his cigarette though it isn't down to the filter yet. "We didn't, Beth."

"Did you want to? Please, Daryl, I gotta know. I'm going crazy. Please." She's desperate and it's even more pathetic when she curls her fingers in his shirt.

She can't remember when she got so close and Daryl looks as surprised as she feels. There's no movement until he closes his hand over hers. She seeks his eyes and for once he meets her gaze unflinchingly. "I wanted to."

She gulps, tipping her head against his. He makes a pained sound in his throat but she doesn't pull away because she can't stop now that she's started. "Did we… fall in love? Did you love me?"

She keeps her eyes clenched shut, too cowardly to see the expression on his face, but she doesn't have to. She remembers the very first moment he saw her, alive. Scars on her face and fat, purple bruises down the left side of it from a fight with walkers she had to tumble down a dip to escape. That look. If her brain is too fucked up, too weak to remember who she is, it's at least powerful enough to always remember that.

Daryl's hand on the back of her neck makes her gasp but she still keeps her eyes shut, her lips parted. He cups her tight, crushing their heads together. "I's so close, Beth. So close to bein' there, I wasn't sure. We… the moonshine, it started… an' I lost you, I watched you die, an' I knew."

She's trembling and she doesn't know when it started but it won't stop. "You knew… you knew you loved me." It's not a question, just a whisper.

A whisper that blows the world apart.

He breaks, breaks right apart in her hands and he's sobbing, pulling her down to his throat and squeezing her, rocking her, crying away his horror and his joy and his grief, letting it all go. "I carried you, all the way down. All the way. Carried you an' you was dead an' I listened to Maggie's screams an' you was dead, Beth. You was dead." He's moaning the words and suddenly she's crying too, rocking back and forth with him.

"S'okay. I'm here, now," she whispers brokenly.

Except it's not true and they both know it. He remembers and she doesn't. He knows why he fell in love with her and she may crave him, ache for him, miss him when he's not around but she doesn't know why. She's broken and it's possible she'll never be fixed, never have back that time they were running together. She could ask him and he would tell her, run by every detail, every minute they spent together, every situation they got into. She's pretty sure he would remember every conversation if there was ever a lot of talking and he would be able to tell her that word that's just out of reach.

The word she knows changed everything and yet she doesn't know it. She could ask him all these things and she could know them if she really wanted, but they wouldn't be hers. He can tell her but she'll never remember. Tears of frustration bleed down her hot cheeks and she pulls away from his embrace, sniffling. Daryl twists, turning his face to the moon, no doubt trying to gain as much composure as she is.

It's not like him to cry and she's seen it twice now since she came back. She wonders if she saw it when they were running, if he unmasked himself in such a way that they couldn't help but fall in love, stripped bare with only the other to witness it. It's a while before he'll look at her again and when he does Beth is gazing out across the street at the silent, dark houses. She feels his eyes like a touch and it makes her shudder. She feels it again, that insistent pulling inside her that seems to end with him of which made her believe they had been intimate in the first place.

Without him having to touch her or even say anything in a sexual manner she can feel a wetness gathering between her thighs, uncomfortable in her underwear. She's had sex before, lost it at only sixteen to a boy from school and then later had sex with Jimmy, who she was with for long enough to do it a few times. It's not something she's ever been afraid of, but something she used to be prudish about. Jimmy barely saw her naked body, insecurity wrapping like a vice around her chest until she nearly had a panic attack at the thought of having sex in the light.

She couldn't see herself giving a damn anymore, after all she's been through. With scars, cuts and bruises littering her body, how can she ever care about her breasts? But really she thinks if she was ever to have sex with Daryl, she would be comfortable, relaxed. Fragments are all she has to work with anymore but she has a little shard settled into her brain, a little picture of a back lined with scars.

She knows it's Daryl's back and she can't remember how she would have ever seen them -which was another reason why she believed they had slept together- but now she thinks it must have been through bathing. Close quarters and having to be on watch for each other must mean she caught glimpses of him undressed. As Beth thinks this she realises that he must have seen her too. At least some of her. Maybe all of her and since she's opened this can of worms she decides to follow through.

"I remember… your back. Bathin', I think. I remember the scars on it."

Daryl's silent in the face of her admission and she can't sense that he's unhappy with what he's heard. Maybe he looks at her scarred face, at the neat little star crater in her brow, at the cut slashing her cheek and the awful bruises, her split lip, and maybe he can't find it inside himself to feel ugly when she's worse. Fragmented and scarred and broken.

"Did you ever see me? Naked, I mean." Beth does look at him now because she doesn't expect him to lie but she'll know if he is by the look on his face.

He doesn't lie though because he nods, quick and hard, not looking at her. "Didn't mean to."

"Did you like it?" She's ruthless now and he doesn't like that, she can tell, but it's another thing that was broken open when her head was and she died in that hallway.

He's struggling and his tongue is moving around like he's searching for the words. Finally, he heaves a breath and clenches his fingers together in his lap. "Yeah, I did."

They both fall silent again until she stands with her plate. He glances up at her, making no moves to leave or follow and she jerks her head towards the house. "Stay with me tonight."

"Beth-"

"Please." She cuts him off and she feels raw, split open. "I miss you. I've missed you."

Daryl's eyes flutter shut and she watches the fight happen on his face, his body wound tightly in indecision. The easy thing to do would be to leave. To walk away from what this was, what this is, what it could be. To treat her like she died, which she did, but to not embrace the woman she was reborn as. It would be easy to leave, to walk away but Daryl Dixon has never taken the easy path. He stands, staggering like a drunk though she knows it's under the weight of what's coming. Of the people they were and will never be again. Beth turns her back on him and goes inside, quiet as she deposits the dish and climbs the stairs.

She can't hear him behind her, but she doesn't have to. She knows the choice he made, the path he's going to walk down because she lost him and he lost her and like she'll never remember who they were, who she was when he fell in love with her, he'll never get back the girl he lost, the one whose skull burst open in a hospital hallway and he misses her, has missed her, so he'll take what he can get now. She'll always be fragmented. Patched up with bits and bobs, parts of who she was before the world ended, parts of who she was before she took a bullet and parts of who she's yet to become.

Everything is perceived in before and after, its just that before applies to a lot of separate things now and she'll always be made up of separate parts of herself. When she reaches her room she stands for a moment, gazing at the blankets sprawled on her bed and turns to face Daryl as he quietly shuts the bedroom door. He knows what this is and so does she. They strip, almost simultaneously because what does it matter? Her small breasts and their combined scars, their vulnerable flesh. What does any of it matter when her head blew apart and he carried her broken body? They strip and its automatic, nowhere near sensual or sexual.

Except it is because she's broken and so is he and that's beautiful. They're not smooth or airbrushed, they're not perfect and the ugly is what makes them radiant. His flesh is destroyed. She can't see his back but even his chest is covered, new scars on top of old scars. His knuckles ruined, scraped red and raw, his arms covered in bruises, a new black eye that for some reason she's only just noticing. He stares as she stares and she knows what he'll see. Lean, thin body, dressed in cuts and bruises, small hips and breasts, her hip bones and rib bones only a couple of forgotten meals away from standing out in sharp relief.

Ratty blonde hair that doesn't fall in anything pretty like curls or waves when she releases it from its ponytail, but more like clumps of tangled, knotted hair. She's a mess, she's ugly, but for him, she's beautiful and she can live with that. Beth's the first one to crawl on the bed and he hesitates but as she settles in and holds the blanket open for him, he slides under with her, his body hot and skin rough against hers. She settles into him, all his hard edges moulding around her until she's pressed to his side.

"This what you want?" He rasps because of course, he knows.

She nods, her hand smoothing down his ruined chest and her fingers dipping into his hip bones, the creases of his thighs. "It's all I've wanted since I woke up."

They both know she doesn't mean from sleeping. He makes a sound, like he may reply with words but as her hand wraps around his hot, hard length, he breaks off into a whimper, leaving human behind and embracing animal. She works him hard, patience long forgotten with that other girl, the one that bled out of her. His hand closes around hers, guiding her unpractised fingers, his calloused thumb pressing against hers and shifting it so that she swipes her own thumb over the head of his cock, which she can't see because of the blanket, but which is wet with what she assumes is pre-cum.

His hips roll, fucking her hand and he shoves the blanket down, groaning her name until his body tightens beneath her. Beth sighs with satisfaction as he cries out softly, trying to mute his sounds so as not to wake Glenn and Maggie, his hot, thick cum spilling over her knuckles, his thighs and belly. He's panting like he's ran a mile, his muscles now as loose as they were tight prior to cumming and she releases his softening cock, lifting her wet hand.

Daryl grips her wrist as she looks down at it. "M'sorry. Should'a said summat."

Beth shakes her head, pulling away from the patch of the blanket he grips to wipe her hand clean after he wipes himself. Instead, she takes her fingers in her mouth, hesitant as she swipes her tongue along her sticky fingers, tasting him like she's never even tasted herself before.

Daryl groans softly. "Jesus, Beth."

She's on her back before she knows it, his head buried between her thighs and she can't separate whose sounds belong to who because they're both moaning, both enjoying it as much as each other. His fingers press into her as his tongue circles her clit, pressing and pressing on something that winds her stomach tight like anticipation. His licks are broad and playful, enjoying what he's giving her and she absorbs it, lets it pulse through her bloodstream and up to her broken head, fill the empty gaps with the pleasure he's giving her until her hips become frantic on Daryl's fingers and against his tongue, bouncing and grinding in equal measure.

When she cums it's an honest to God mess, so wet that she soaks the sheet beneath her like a spilt glass of water and Daryl makes sounds like he's cum right along with her, like he feels everything she does. In the aftermath, he scoops her up in his arms and they lay together, looking out at the moon through the glass of her window. It makes her think of that fragment she has, that vision of moonshine that pulled the moon into itself and reflected it back to her, filling it with glittering magic that she swallowed down soon after, burning her throat. It makes her think of the moon in all the campfires she made, travelling back to her family, back to him.

She's broken, she was blown apart and pieced back together like Frankenstein's monster and there's holes in her, pieces missing. She may never get them back, never know which piece of her Daryl fell in love with, but the one thing she can do is offer one of the empty spaces for him to fill, pour his love and his memories and make her whole.

She's fragmented, but he wants to piece her back together, and she'll let him.

Just a little side note to say: I don't know how organ donation would truly work in the ZA, but I needed a reason for lack of burial and this is all I could conjure up. Who cares though, right? As long as our favourite girl comes back, we'll believe anything.