I couldn't just wait until October; this ship needed writing so I'm diving in with a kidnapped Beth.

Beth's blonde hair was matted with blood as she leant her head gingerly against the pole beside her. It was throbbing badly, from where he'd knocked her out yesterday and, as she had woken up in the dank, dark room she'd been in for the last seven days, she'd found herself wishing unconsciousness would claim her again. She wanted to feel tough: brazenly plan an escape, break her hand and squeeze her fingers through the handcuffs or yell until she was hoarse and welcome a beating from the masked man upstairs, but she couldn't conjure up the metal. Daryl would be disappointed.

The thought of him made her stomach sink. They'd been so close to feeling safe. They had supplies, clean beds and even a piano and she had him. Daryl Dixon with his crossbow. It's only now, now when she's chained up and starving in somewhere her nightmares wouldn't stray that she realised how safe she could have felt. How safe he could make her feel, how much she could have trusted him. She never would have thought it when she'd met him, when he was just the gruff hillbilly with a poncho and anger management issues, but now she realised there was nowhere else she'd rather be then in that parlour, playing that piano with that man silently listening.

She whimpered from behind the gag around her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut.

They hadn't said anything to her yet. For seven days she'd been ignored, apart from a beating when she yelled or a small glass of water practically thrown at her mouth every four hours or so. They weren't starving her, chucking her some stale bread now and again and they weren't denying her water: they didn't want her dead…yet. They were keeping her for something and Beth didn't want to stick around to know what. The lack of proper food was making her head spin and whenever she even thought about escaping her eyes watered. A faraway thought about Maggie, Hershel, Glenn, Daryl or anyone from the prison sent her dreaming and then reality would hit her and the whole situation would seem impossible. The funeral parlour felt like months ago, and the prison, decades.

Slow, heavy footsteps thumped their way over the wooden boards above her head and Beth's breathing stilted. There was more than one pair of feet.

The gag was wet with tears and she sniffled quickly, scared to make noise as the cellar door was roughly yanked open. Day light streamed in and she flinched away, trying to shield her eyes with her arm but she was pulled back by the cutting metal around her wrists.

"Could have cleaned her up a bit." A gruff voice echoed through the room.

Slowly, Beth's eyes adjusted to the light and she saw someone else stood beside the masked figure she'd come to fear. His face was still obscured but his companions wasn't and as they both walked down the creaking, wooden steps she tried to move back, curl in on herself and away from the tall men before her but the wall stopped her. The unmasked man's eyes roamed over her in the dusty light. His dark red corduroy jacket looked noticeably clean, either it was new, recently looted, or he had a set-up somewhere; a safe place with enough water to waste on washing. His jeans were still muddied though, along with his large black boots that stopped in front of her.

"Wanna check she's…satisfactory." The masked man asked, his tongue rolling over the last word with a smile in his voice.

The other took another step closer to Beth. She let out a whimper as he brought up his hand and reached out for her face, tracing a calloused, muddy finger down her tear stained cheek. She couldn't look any more. She wanted to imagine she was somewhere else but the stank smell of the new man's breath kept her in the cellar.

"She'll do just fine."

She could piece the words together, she wasn't stupid but she was trying desperately to slot them in any other way. Her mind was grasping at something other than kidnapping, slavery and captivity but it was stuck, stuck in a new world full of bad people and walkers. She didn't have rays of hope around her anymore and now her mind was filling in the evil blanks easily. The new man's eyes regarded the bloodied bump on her forehead, blossoming in different shades of purple and green and then turned back to the masked man with raised eyebrows.

"Was that really needed? She looks like she'd be 120lbs wet."

"Still the same price." The other man grumbled resolutely.

"Two oil drums of gas. Twenty cans of beans thrown in for good measure." He said tiredly, seemingly bored of the formalities. "She ready then?" He asked, nodding toward Beth.

She felt like cattle. Maybe they'd get a tape measure and check her measurements she thought before balling again at the thought of his hands on her skin.

The masked man nodded and then reached into his pocket drawing out the keys for her handcuffs.

"One word and you know what happens." He murmured, indicating to her head wound which seemed to throb all the more under his eyes.

He quickly unlocked the handcuffs and as Beth's hands came down from over her head, they tingled and ached, the blood flow suddenly uninterrupted. Taking the gag from over her mouth she opened her jaw wide. She went to feel the wounds on her wrists, soothe them somehow but she was stopped as she was shoved toward the man with the red jacket.

She stumbled and instinctively threw out her hands to break her fall. They landed on his chest and a grin spread across his face.

"She likes you." The masked man chuckled.

Beth took a step back flustered and trembling.

"Not yet but…she will." She shuddered at the words but her brow furrowed as she saw the forced smirk on the new man's face. He looked uncomfortable.

She didn't get to ponder over what that meant for too long, a little yelp escaped her mouth as the man quickly moved and grabbed one of her sore wrists. The pain forced her out of weariness, the closeness of the man heightened her awareness and as he started to drag her up the stairs she spun ideas through her mind. He said she would grow to like her. Perhaps she could earn his trust? Thank him for her freedom and promise to make him happy? Spin some wild story about a group who had her before who treated her worse, maybe he'd want to play the hero? The saviour of the helpless damsel in distress. Make him feel comfortable, underestimate her and then indirectly give her a chance. But that could still mean doing things she wasn't sure she could bring herself to do. She might have to manipulate him, use her body to make him listen. Her knees trembled at the thought of letting him touch her and she tripped up one of the steps.

"She sure is clumsy" The man grunted, tugging her harder until she stood again.

They reached the door and he flung it open, stepping into a disused kitchen, pausing slightly and then heading toward the front door. Beth had been unconscious when she'd been placed in the cellar. The last thing she had remembered was Daryl's voice calling her name and the sight of him desperately running after the car before she had made too much fuss and her captor had to knock her out with the butt of his gun. She didn't recognise this place. She started to follow the man outside and her brow furrowed as she was shoved yet again in the same direction she was already headed. Her fear turned to irritation for a moment and she let out a little huff.

The fresh air hit Beth like a ton of bricks and she stalled, taking a deep breath and tilting her head toward the sun which filtered through the trees around them. She revelled in the sound of the breeze rushing through the leaves and hoped never to go so long without seeing the sky ever again. It smelt like the farm and her heart squeezed.

"Gas is in that truck over there, Simon will wait for you to unload and then take it back to our camp. I'll take this one now" he said, indicating to Beth "get her settled in."

A hand shoved her again toward a muddied Ford and before she could stop herself she shot an annoyed glance at the red jacketed creep beside her. She knew it was stupid the second after she'd done it and her heart skipped a beat waiting for his reaction. A moment passed before he smirked, a kind of pleasant surprise taking over his face.

"Not a boring little mouse then." He chuckled.

She thought it might help her cause, getting him to like her, but even though he grabbed her hand gently, she wished it was rough, more distant, as he led her toward the car. Looking over at the dense wood surrounding them she debated running but she saw the gun on his belt and she was outnumbered and out muscled. Running now would be stupid.

He opened the door and motioned for her to step in. Any other time, any other situation it could be called gentlemanly, here he was just testing her obedience; coolly giving her the idea of freewill when in actuality she had none. His left hand rested nonchalantly on his gun.

She carefully stepped in. The door slammed shut beside her and she heard the men murmur to each other.

"Freenal wants to know if you've got any more girls on your radar. The other ones have settled in nicely."

"A small group found the parlour yesterday, just waiting for the men to let their guard down."

It had been a trap. The safe haven her and Daryl had found was constructed by some evil son of a bitch with a blossoming business of young girls. Swallowing nervously Beth glanced around her, looking for something, anything. Her eyes fell on a cracked half of a CD in the door which she quickly grabbed and stuffed in the pocket of her cargo pants. It was pretty dull, probably wouldn't do much damage - especially up against a gun - but it made her feel safer. She felt like it was a step forward. Something other than luck.

The car sunk as the man dropped himself into the driver's seat. Beth resolutely avoided his eyes, instead inspecting the wounds around her wrists and praying he wouldn't notice the slight bump in her pocket. The engine turned over and then sprung to life. She was grateful; the air had been stale and silent and her breath had started to hitch. A tape clicked in and an old country song started playing. The man swore and shoved his finger into the off switch, missing the first few times as the road bumped his shoulders up and down.

She cleared her throat nervously and tried to calm her breathing.

"Where…where are you taking me?"

She had faltered on the first word but started again. She didn't want to seem weak or unsure, whatever he was planning she didn't want to go back to the scared Beth from the farm. She wanted to own her sinewy limbs from her days with Daryl and hold her own like he'd expect her to. If she found the group again she didn't want to have taken a back step.

The man beside her sighed and scratched at the brown stubble that thickly covered his jaw.

"We have a group." He said after a few moments of contemplation. He wasn't used to divulging but every other girl he'd traded had squirmed and cried and beaten on the windows until he'd have to pull over and put them in the boot. This one was calm and even though he knew she'd try to escape, at least she was saving herself for a likely route. She was clever and he admired it, so much so that she deserved honesty and he felt he should tell her. "Thick walls, plenty of ammo and plenty of men…only three women though."

Her blood ran cold and her jaw clenched.

"Our…leader reminded us a few months back of the dwindling population if you catch my drift. So, we outsourced, found that masked dude back there and the rest is history."

Repopulation. Kidnapping. Rape. How could they possibly think that that was the way to restart the earth? They were back at 0 and they wanted the history books to tell of this? Every ancestor to be a rapist or a victim.

His eyes wandered everywhere but towards her. He'd never felt anything akin to shame about their plan before, but this blonde thing beside him reminded him of his life before all this: a calm drive through the country with a little miss that ended in a sweaty climax beside a hay bale. He knew the turn had changed him but it was easy to be the leery abuser when faced with a victim, he could play that role like it was made for him but what could he do now with this slow breathing, settled girl.

He found himself explaining. Rambling.

"It's not like some kinda dog breeding shit, no one's passed around or anything, they wanted them to settle in eventually…pick someone and get busy."

"Not 'we'?" She asked suddenly. He looked over at her confused so she elaborated, hoping his new found honesty would stop him loosing his shit over hers. "You said they wanted them to settle…are you...different?"

Her voice got quieter and more tentative the further she got through her question and she was worried she'd over stepped her mark.

The man merely coughed, clearing his face, un-biting his lip and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. Any weakness, any soft spot disappeared.

"No." He forced out. "I'm one of them…exactly the same."

Turning a corner, tall walls crept into view. They weren't worried about her knowing where she was. They could have blind folded her or knocked her unconscious but their blatant disregard for her awareness showed an arrogance: the idea that she wouldn't have the chance to retrace these steps, that there would be no revenge from those taken, that they would never leave. They might as well have handed her a map cause when she was inside those walls, they would never imagine her leaving.

The walls were made of bits of cars melded together, some windows cut out and a few rifles sticking through. Slowing down to a stop, Beth's body lurched forward a little and she steeled herself. She wouldn't let this place claim her: she wouldn't allow herself to feel overwhelmed or helpless anymore. There may be no exits or obvious ways to jump the walls but she'd spent weeks on the road, she hadn't been comfy or relaxed, holed up in some Fort Knox filled with meat heads and ammo. She could get out and find the others. Find the man who made her so sure she could do it; prove that his teachings weren't worth shit.

"Welcome home." The man murmured, the hint of a laugh on his breath.

She deserves her 'toughness' but I didn't want it to be too drastic so if you think she's a little wimpy in this first chapter don't worry, she just needs a bit more of a push to realise she can kick ass so that'll be coming soon.

The next chapter will be with our other group: Maggie, Glenn, Sasha, Bob, Abraham, Eugene, Rosita, Rick, Michonne, Carl and of course our beloved Daryl. I didn't think I could do a continuation of 'A' justice so I've taken the wimp's way out and made Terminus into a 'safe haven'.

Please review, I've never written a Fanfic before and I want to do this pairing justice so constructive criticism would be lovely