He runs. And runs. And runs. His lungs burn, aching with the chill of the approaching autumn. His heart pounds with the beat of his feet upon the pavement. Leaves crunch, crawl, and scatter around his steady tread. The darkness eventually gives way to light as the sun rises somewhere to the east. He keeps putting foot in front of foot. Getting nowhere. Falling even further behind the farther he gets. The road continually looms ahead before silently disappearing into the morning fog.
His feet fail him. Slowing. Stopping. Giving up because they can go no further on this journey at the moment. But his head, his heart keep chasing. The crossbow he always keeps at his side falls. It clatters in the morning stillness echoing off the emptiness that surrounds the crossroad he's found himself at. His trusty fucking crossbow can't help him now. Traitor.
As his knees tremble, he gives into their shake and collapses, gasping for the breath he's not even sure he wants anymore. The throb in his lungs subsides allowing his thoughts to drift beyond the physical struggle of continuation. Now he starts to see her face - her messy hair and that stupid, silly braid she was constantly fixing over and over again. He sees her smile through her tears. He sees those earnest, hope-filled blue eyes cutting him deeper and sharper than Michonne's sword. Again, his breath leaves him.
He shoves her back. Tries to force her into the place he keeps all the things he can't let himself think about. That pit of bleak despair that he hides away yet remains buried beneath every single day of his miserable life. That fucking sunken chest that is brimming with his failures and his guilt and his weaknesses. One more blonde girl won't matter. After all, she's tiny compared with the rest. Small and sweet and bright and gone, gone, gone. He'll be able to sweep her away with hardly a moment's notice.
Except, he remembers. She's heavier than she looks.
He wonders if this is why Merle lost himself beneath the haze of substance abuse. Could pills and powders help him now, too? Was Merle right all this goddamn time? Had he let Rick and Carol and the others…had he let their pretty words tease him, coax him into a false sense of safety, of family? Had he let…her…had he let her push him over that final ledge? The one that leads to the ghosts of smiles and laughter and happiness? The one that leads to the ephemeral mask of love? The one that dangles the shiny, fake, plastic things in front of you until you've thrown yourself off a fucking cliff? The one that kills you in the end - a death that you choose willingly, even hopefully, drunk on the haunt of emotions?
Clamping that dark place down, his mind goes hollow. He focuses on the brisk wind that bristles across his neck, drying his sweat-soaked hair with her gentle, biting touch. All the warmth that's invaded his defenses over the past couple of days folds in upon itself, fluttering against all the places deep inside that he doesn't ever give name to out loud. The mechanical inflating of his lungs takes hold, and his body returns to its former strength. The memory of her soft little hand and searching fingers disappears with the soft click of a distant lock.
When the men surround him, he stands in the middle and stretches himself inside the body he knows so well. The creak of his knees, the throb of his knuckles, the guarded stance of his shoulders hug him close as he finds himself back at the beginning. He stares across at the man who could be so many others he's known. Father. Brother. Self. He almost hears Merle's laughter and goading coming from within this mirror of a man. This he knows. This he understands. This place where there is no time for silly games and the burning of pasts not yet dead. Pasts that find us wherever we go. Even at the end of the goddamn world.
"Name's Joe."
But in the pause before his muttered response a glitch bleeds through. Before he can get his own name on the tip of his tongue, another escapes from the hollows of yesterday.
He blinks, "Daryl."
For just the tiniest faint of a second, his breath held an entirely different thing. A spark. A fire that, once lit, refuses extinguishment.
Beth.