This chapter is dedicated to fearless-dixon- your review made me laugh so hard and has a permanent place on my 'favourite moments' shelf in my mind palace. (Anyone know where this reference is from?) This chapter does not include the scene I will dedicate to you later on…but here you are anyways!


Beth was attempting to light a small fire in the yard when she saw Daryl returning from the edge of the woods, a few animals hanging from his belt. She turned her attention back to her pile of branches and cursed when she broke a second match.

"Here." He crouched down beside her and managed to light a flame with one of her previously broken matches, beginning the fire with one of the cabin's previous resident's photos. She watched as he patiently waited for the flame to catch, not withdrawing his fingers, though she knew they must have been burning at this point.

"Thanks, I have never been good at using matches."

"Still cleaning up?"

Beth nodded. "This is just the first armful I could carry out. Once I've dealt with the piles then I can go through and wash everything down." Beth eyed his catch. "Are you going to deal with those?"

Daryl pulled one of the squirrels from his belt and set it on the ground between them. "Ever skin one before?"

"Nope." Beth quickly stood, attempting to keep her nose from curling.

"Ready to learn?" Daryl was not oblivious to her attempts to move back towards the cabin and he tried not to smirk at her.

"Well, you're real good at it, and I would just mess it up…besides, there's so much more stuff to gather up yet. I'll just leave you to it." She beat a hasty retreat back into the cabin and spied out the window until she could see that Daryl had finished skinning the four squirrels he had shot.

Daryl finished slicing the meat and set it to cook over their small fire and glanced up at Beth as she returned to his side. "Thought you'd be some big tough farm girl."

"I always made such a fuss and cried so much that Daddy only killed anything when I wasn't home." They fell silent for a few minutes, crouched beside one another. "Funny how it's still easier to stick a blade through the head of something that used to be a person than it is to skin a squirrel."

Her large blue eyes fixed on Daryl solemnly and he rubbed at the hair on his chin before he answered. "They don't feel any pain, they're not really alive. Animals still are, even if we're going to keep on eating them. Aint nothing wrong with not wanting to kill a critter- even one as dumb as a squirrel." He startled when a tiny hand grasped his forearm and squeezed gently and he held still against his natural instinct to move away from the human contact.

"Thank you," Beth smiled over at him and removed her hand quickly, feeling his muscles tense beneath her. She turned her attention back to placing various items into the flames, glancing them over before letting them go into the heat. Old pictures showing the family smiling in their camo, fishing lines baited and ready, a few old dusty Christmas cards, an old newspaper that had began to mold. How quickly the lives of an entire family could be erased; their pictures, memories, belongings quickly succumbed to the flames.

She felt tears sting her eyes and she sniffed loudly and Daryl's head snapped towards her and took in her tears. "I'm sorry, I'm trying not to cry,"

"It's fine." Daryl averted his gaze and held out a dirty red handkerchief that he pulled from his back pocket and Beth gratefully wiped her face, not noticing that she wiped her face with an area of the fabric soiled with black grease.

"Thank you." Beth held the handkerchief back to him and missed the startled look Daryl gave her, his mouth dropping open, before he quickly snapped it shut and tried not to smirk.

They remained in companionable silence as they waited for the meat to cook and then ate it, each taking stock around the cabin and forming plans as to what they wished to do with the space.

"Do you know anything about windmills?"

"No." Daryl followed her gaze up to the old looking windmill behind the cabin.

"If we could some how figure out how to get it running, then we could have a little bit of power."

"First we need to make this place more walker proof."

"How?"

"Thinking we could start diggin' a ditch."

They both scanned the whole of the clearing and Beth tried to keep her expression from displaying her disbelief.

"A ditch…"

"Yeah."

"Around the whole property?"

"Not much point in doin' it only around half."

"Wouldn't we be better to try and start digging a garden or something?"

Daryl felt his patience growing thin. "You got a bunch of seeds I don't know about?" Daryl bit his tongue when her face fell.

"Fine." Beth grumpily stood to her feet and motioned for him to follow suit. "Well if we're going to dig lets do it now before it gets even hotter and then we'll wash up in the crick. Not getting the house dirtier than it is already after I've been cleaning it."

Smirking at her bossiness and at the large black smudge still covering her face Daryl nodded. "Yes ma'am."


I have to admit that I sort of, kind of, definitely do not like this chapter. I have hit a writers block the size of Mount Olympus. Have a general idea of a few things that I want to happen with this story, but no plan as to how to get there. Oh dear!

I know it's annoying when people do this, but any chance you all might want to read another Daryl story I'm writing? It's on my profile, titled "Redheaded Dixon". I know we're all Bethyl shippers, but maybe you'd all still enjoy it...maybe? *cricket, cricket*