Author's Note

Hello! Just a note to say this is a multi-chapter. Have a number of chapters already written - just adding.

Thanks!

"Really? Not even once?" Beth's voice rose with disbelief as she bounded excitedly along beside him, her plait swinging from side to side. Clearly, she was enjoying her newest game of finding out new things about Daryl. In this particular game, her fixation was on what he wore 'before'.

"Nope." He answered staring straight ahead, crossbow in front of him in his hands but lowered and walking with a smoothness to his step that Beth still hadn't quite mastered, even after months on the road together. Walking in the unbearable heat, he was as shiny and slick with sweat as she was, but after a good day finding a good haul, neither of them were letting it bother them.

"OK… what about chinos?" She asked, with a twinkle in her eye which she tried to mask with a straight face. He didn't answer, but the slide of his eyes to the side to look at her and a slight rise of his eyebrows showed he knew when he was being teased.

"Not even a salmon sweater?" This time, she couldn't even try and keep a straight face at the picture she was imagining and she finished the question with a high ringing giggle. As she laughed she skipped slightly ahead of him and started walking backwards facing him as if she didn't want to miss his reaction. She got what she was hoping for as he snorted at her question before could help himself.

"Told'ya before. This. This is exactly what I was wearing 'fore the turn." He smirked, looking straight ahead past her as he walked knowing how easy it was to wind her up during these little games.

"Bullshit! I was there when we found you those boots!" Beth playfully jabbed him in the ribs before she turned back to face the road and skipped ahead, earning a roll of the eyes from Daryl.

"Girl, don't you know we're in the middle'a nowhere? With dead people out to eat us? Last I checked, it ain't a time to skip." He called after her, frowning as he continued his same measured pace along the dirt road, which they had found about two miles back. They had discussed all the possible things it might lead to and all the pros and cons before taking a joint decision to follow it.

It had been like this since about three months after the prison fell, which judging by the beating hot summer sun, was around a year ago now. They now made all decisions as a partnership, talking through all the possible risks and outcomes if they were about to do something big. Even with Daryl's style of being brief and to the point, Beth found that these planning and strategy conversations had helped her to learn how to survive in this world and gave her the confidence that she deserved to be there, surviving by Daryl's side.

Even so, it was conversations like today's which were her favourite, where she teased Daryl to the end of his patience about something, usually trying to paint a picture of him 'before' that contradicts as much as possible with the rough and ready Daryl that she knows now. Right after the prison, she never would have dreamed of playing this game. The Daryl she knew then would have believed she was mocking his past and probably would have left her then and there.

Over time though, things had changed. Daryl had come to learn who Beth really was; that she was good to the core and would never ever do anything to hurt anyone. He had come to like her self-assurance around him and looked forward to conversations like these ones where she tried to push the boundaries with him. He had taken to making it his mission to try to keep a straight face, masking over the sense of anticipation he felt when she kicked things off with her first question.

Sometimes, he caught himself thinking about how much he liked that it was just the two of them. With a year since they'd lost their group, he'd all but given up hope of trying to find them. While she passionately insisted they were still alive out there, the day they agreed their priority was surviving and not searching a few months back, he knew she'd near enough given up too.

And it's not like in that time they hadn't considered joining another group. Hell, they nearly did once, back in the winter when Daryl had felt a sense of desperation creep in after they'd spent three days walking non-stop in the biting cold in search of shelter. A young man had caught them both off guard while they were sat shivering next to a pathetic looking fire, too cold to have fully been on alert to what was around them. The stranger's promise of an abandoned gas station with warmth and food sounded too good to be true and, when he suddenly grabbed Beth by the hair as she walked beside him, turns out it was.

Within a beat of the strange man grabbing her, before any of them had a chance to work out what he planned to do next, Daryl grabbed him and rammed a knife into his throat. Without a word to Beth he'd grabbed her hand and ran them for miles at a punishing pace in the other direction, with Beth protesting the whole way that there probably was never even a group so they had no need to run now that the man was dead. Even so, they decided after that they didn't need a new group and got good at disappearing into the trees at the sound of any voices.

Daryl had to stop himself from physically shivering as he remembered that winter, the fear of freezing death and each day bringing a new struggle of finding food and shelter. He frowned to himself, thinking about how in a few months time they'd need to do it all over again.

Today though, things were better. They'd eaten well last night in an abandoned hunters cabin and Beth had squealed with delight when she'd found a brand new camping tent, still in it's bag, tucked under the bed. Strapped to her backpack now and bouncing lightly as she walked ahead of him, both of them knew it wouldn't keep out the walkers, but having something that could pass as a shelter in an emergency was better than nothing.

Beth began to slow her walking just as he did, both of them noticing at the same time the trees starting to thin out on either side of them. Beth took up her position beside him and she looked up at him expectantly for instructions, immediately adapting her tread so it was barely audible like his. He couldn't help his chest warm with pride at how well she had become adapted to this life. With a short sharp tilt of his head, they both shifted their course slightly, now treading cautiously off the path and into the woods as they came up to the clearing.

Crouching down among the undergrowth close to the treeline, they both peered over the bushes at a small, tin-roof church with a few haphazard old gravestones to the right accompanied by some walkers milling around, with the whole yard surrounded by a shoulder height wire fence. Beth thought about how it looked like a cliche scene from a horror film, only the dead in today's world hadn't risen out of old graves but out of friends, family and neighbours instead.

She shivered slightly at the thought before feeling Daryl's warm hand on her shoulder, catching her attention as he crouched in front of her. Again, this was another thing that had changed. Daryl was still Daryl in that he took everything way too seriously and he wasn't touchy feely, but he didn't think twice now about giving her a nudge or tugging lightly on her ponytail when he was trying to get her attention. Beth sometimes wondered what the rest of the group would think if they could see how in tune they'd become with each other. Daryl used to be a lone wolf and she, the weakest member of the group, but now they'd become a team, depending on each other to survive.

"What d'you see?" He said in a low, gravelly voice, looking directly at her instead of the scene beside them. He did this all the time now, letting her lead; getting her to give her opinion of the situation first before asking her what she thinks they should do next.

She stretched her neck up to give the scene one last look before crouching low again to face him. "Five walkers - looks like the fence is high enough so they've been stuck there since they turned. Could also keep other walkers out although obviously wouldn't hold back a herd. No clear damage to the church so could be weather proof and while I can't see from here, I reckon it'll just be a window, not a door that backs onto the woods out the back. Easy for us to get out, not easy for someone else to get in unless we hear 'em. The path from the road was difficult to spot, so I don't think anyone'll stumble across it and we can even set game traps nearby in the woods."

She looked at him and paused for a moment, while he stared back at her expectantly, waiting for her to say more. She hesitated before continuing, "I think we should follow the treeline round the back and check in the window for people, before taking out the walkers in the yard. No point in wastin' energy on five walkers if the building's already occupied."

He smirked at her and before she had a chance to interpret what that meant, he stood suddenly, started walking silently round the treeline and looked back impatiently at her when she didn't immediately follow. She rolled her eyes and muttered, "ass" under her breath but just loud enough for him to hear before following him.

Having been with him on the road for so long now, she knew just from his posture when Daryl sensed real danger, or when he felt there was no threat but was still on guard. Today was the latter; he walked silently on his feet, holding his crossbow aimed and ready as he crept towards the window but she knew from the lack of tension in his body that he wasn't expecting to find people inside. She felt the same; as soon as she saw the walkers within the yard she guessed, like she imagined Daryl had too, that any people camping out in the church would have taken them out.

Beth noticed that the fence went around the front and two sides of the church, but joined the building on either side, leaving the back exposed. While she didn't like it, it meant Daryl could peer in the glass and if there was a threat, they could make a quick exit without being penned in by a fence. While she covered him by keeping watch in the woods, she saw him out of the corner of her eye stand on his tiptoes to look carefully into the high window before lowering his crossbow and turning to her. He shook his head, before tilting it towards the walkers to the side of the church who still hadn't noticed their arrival.

Now facing him with her full attention, he pointed at her and held up three fingers before holding one finger onto the palm of his other hand, telling her in the sign language they'd created that she should go first to take three of them out. He pointed to make it clear that he thought he didn't think they needed to enter the yard, effectively picking them off from over the fence.

With the fence keeping them safe and only five walkers to tackle, Beth didn't bother to wait for him to tell her the rest of the plan and started to walk round the outer perimeter of the fence, dragging her knife along it as she went with no need to be quiet anymore.

As expected, the walkers responded immediately to the noise, and started stumbling towards her. She looked impatiently at their grotesque features and thought idly back to the time when killing them used to bother her and how the thought of five, on the other side of a fence, used to terrify her.

Just as the first one got close to her and she held out her knife ready, a bolt shot right through his head, splattering her jumper with blood.

"Daryl!" she cried furiously and spun around to face him. Having clearly also decided that walkers behind a fence weren't a threat, he had his crossbow raised and was smirking down the sight line as he took the next one out.

With this one even closer than the last, neither Daryl or Beth were expecting that the force of Daryl's bolt would cause a large piece flesh to explode from the walker's head, smacking Beth directly on the side of her face with a decidedly loud squelch.

Daryl lowered the crossbow slightly and locked eyes with her, eyes widening in shock as he realised he may have taken it a little too far. He continued to stare, eyes still wide, as she felt the piece of flesh slide slowly down her face and drop the floor with a final, loud splat. It didn't go unnoticed by Beth that his initial look of horror was disappearing and he was doing his very best to stop the grin that was appearing on his face.

After holding his gaze for a second longer still processing what just happened, Beth turned away from him, stabbing the final three walkers in the head in quick and purposeful succession and with a lot more ferocity than necessary.

As she leaned over with her hands on her knees to catch her breath, Daryl's boots appeared in her sight line and she stood up to face him. Hands on her hips and standing up straight to yell at him, her curses died in her throat when she saw how he was looking at her, still with the ghost of that goddamn smirk on his face, but with a look of uncertainty as he held out his rag for her to wipe her face.

She snatched it from him, still mad and turned away from him.

"Huntin' jacket." He said quietly. Beth immediately turned back to face him and couldn't help her eyes lighting up willing him to continue. "I had a huntin' jacket that I wore all the time. It was warm and soft sheepskin. Merle gave it t'me. Probably lifted from somewhere. Made me forget the seasons, even when I was out in the woods and there were nothin' but snow."

She smiled widely at him and the picture in her mind. This was why she played these games. These small little snippets of Daryl that he gave away so rarely helped her build a bigger picture of the man she'd been spending every second with the past year and every time, they made her warm to her companion even more.

In step with each other, they started walking towards the door of the church. "Rain boots… did you ever wear rain boots?" she asked excitedly. And just like that, all was forgiven.