They find a piano in one of the rooms with an open casket, an almost surreal sanctuary in this place of bones and ghosts. It's her voice that leads him there and he surprises himself by asking her to keep singing when she notices him. She looks at him strangely for a second, maybe two, but continues with the unfamiliar words and foreign melody in that soft, quiet way of hers that makes him believe, makes him dare hope, makes him want to stop running and make the best of what he could here... with her. He feels as though he's been running his entire life and this right here was the only time he found himself standing still long enough, wanting to live in the moment forever - could pretend that the entire world hadn't gone to shit and this was just one of many peaceful evenings spent between them; hates himself a little bit for sounding so trite and delusional even in his own fucking head.
He tells her the next day, though, as she writes that thank you note to no one, after he'd carried her in on careful limbs; tells her that maybe it wouldn't so bad to stick around for a while. She looks at him then, really looks at him with those wide blue eyes, asks him what changed in that fairly innocent tone, as if she had no idea at all.
Then the walkers come and she gets taken and he just knows he shouldn't have told her to run, should have kept her in sight; barely stops to pick up her discarded backpack before running after the speeding car with all his might. He keeps screaming her name until dawn breaks, until his voice breaks, tries to ignore how his carefully pieced together heart was beginning to break once again; doesn't care who hears him, would face a herd of walkers and the Governor's fucking army all over again because it just couldn't happen, not under his watch, not to Beth - Beth who had smiled down at him as he bandaged her ankle and sang for him so beautifully by candlelight; sweet Beth who had held his hand, had felt so right in his arms and damn, was he so fucking stupid to have let this happen.
He runs till morning, would have run forever if that is what it takes to get her back because he knows now that Beth was not the only good thing he's got left in the zombie apocalypse, she's the best damned thing he could ever have in his entire life and he should have expected something like this happening because no good thing ever lasts, least of all for someone like him. His legs give way beneath him and he has no choice but to go tumbling down, an exhausted sobbing mess of a man.
He'll find her, he tells himself, amid the grief and the desperation and the hurt. He has to – he swears so hard, he may as well have carved the words on his own fucking skin - and when he does, it would take another damn apocalypse to make him ever let go.