A/N: I haven't written for them in quite a while, and I really, really miss them! Here's the next chapter. Of course, I'll have plenty of time to catch up between now and when the show resumes on February 8th. :) Enjoy!

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Olive quickly wiped the sweat of her brow with the back of her hand, her legs now running on auto-pilot. She had been running for so long it was almost like her legs couldn't remember how to walk. Daryl was right behind her, his breathing a bit labored from sheer exhaustion. Still, they ran on, knowing that to stop running would be the death of them.

A clearing by a road brought light back into their weary eyes and, in it, an abandoned car drew their attention. Olive rushed over to it, climbing into the driver's seat to see if perhaps she could start the car. Since the keys had been left in the ignition, she knew it was well-worth a shot.

Daryl automatically kept watch as she attempted to turn the engine over, but it was to no avail. Whatever parts still existed in the engine - if any - were completey dead and probably had been for some time. Exiting the car, Olive could hear the sound of a herd approaching them. The low-volume growls would soon be on them, and, perhaps, they had caught on to the scent of the raging fugitives.

Daryl opened the trunk of the car and gestured for her to climb inside. She did as he requested, slipping into it and helping him do the same. She pulled a bandanna from her pocket, tying the trunk down and pulling tightly. Daryl kept his crossbow loaded and aimed towards the lid's slight gap. Thunder rolled outside once again as the herd surrounded the trunk and attempted to work as a team to reveal the humans hiding out in the trunk.

Scratching hands groped at the metal trunk and Olive pulled tighter, her eyelids refusing to close and catch sleep. Neither of them could sleep anyway with the terrible shaking of the car, the groans of the Walkers, the sounds of thunder, and the impending danger that would surely be waiting for them if they opened the trunk too early.

The night dragged on, passing by in flashes of lightning. The ever-present hiss of the growling, scratching, and groaning from the Walkers just outside pounded into their skulls and embedded into their own undiseased brains like a tattoo until, at last, the night was over.

The sun came out and the storming ceased. At some point during the night, the Walkers had dispersed, giving up on the pair in the trunk and trudging off to find a new, easier to catch for a meal.

Daryl and Olive slowly exited the trunk of the car. Each of them felt their muscles begin to stretch after a tight night of not moving an inch to stay alive. Olive could feel the burn, a pulling on her hip flexors as she straightened up and kept her pitchfork white-knuckle-gripped in her fist as she began to gather up items into a trash bag she'd found in the trunk.

Daryl grabbed a few empty plastic bottles for water while Olive broke the headlights to the car - the shards of glass, she believed, would come in handy for later. Together, they took off down the road, this time at a walking pace as the major threat had passed by some time during the night.

Later that day, they made camp as the sun began to set. Daryl veered off on his own directive, hunting down a squirrel for their dinner. He attempted to kill it several times, but the little one got away from him and, soon, he gave up. He then moved on to a snake that he'd seen slithering by.

Olive was back in their tiny camp tying rope around the small space for the pair of them and stringing the hub-caps along the line to rattle and make noise - it was, essentially, a booby trap rigged for Walkers in case one or both of them fell asleep. Daryl brought the snake back to camp and stripped it down, preparing to cook it over the fire that Olive had just sparked using the shards of glass and the mirror from the car to assist her.

Olive had never gotten used to the taste of snake, really, but it was food and she was grateful to have it. Daryl, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy it immensely.

"Y'know what'd be good with this?" she asked, swallowing her current, chewy bit of meat. Daryl looked up at her, a bit of snake grease on his lips catching the shimmer of the fire's glow. "Whiskey." He snorted and she chuckled as well. "I'm serious, Daryl. I'm thinking Jameson - that was my favorite before."

Daryl eyed her suspiciously, swallowing his own bite before speaking. "What - are ya lookin' to feel somethin' you won't remember?"

Olive shrugged her shoulders, her eyes locked on what remained of her half of the snake. "I dunno. I don't feel much these days."

Daryl paused for a moment, his eyes still on her even though she wasn't currently looking back. "I feel you." Her eyes darted up to meet his and the pair shared loving smiles.

The night was quiet for the most part. Any creaking of the trees was a sure-fire way of waking them up with a start, but no Walkers disturbed their slumber. It was an effortless night, the first one they'd had like that in a very long time. Packing up their wonderful traps, they set off.

Daryl said that he wanted to find some booze for her, so they searched for the nearest locale with such an offering. That was when they stumbled upon Pine Vista Country Club, a green landscape complete with a golf course.

"Golfers like to booze it up," she stated, so they approached the building for the safest point of entry. They wanted to go in through the back door, and as several Walkers - less than ten - stumbled lazily across the green towards the club, Daryl knew they had no other choice.

Entering the building with weapons in-hand, they could see a barricade in the main dining area. Apparently, a group of folks had holed up inside the building, but didn't seem to have lasted for too long. Several of these people had hanged themselves from the rafters in the ceiling and had turned, still growling and making feeble attempts to grab the new, blood-infused bodies below them. Daryl picked up a flashlight from the ground and turned to Olive.

"I think that this was some kinda mass suicide, like a 'drink the Kool-Aid' kinda shit," he commentated, and she nodded, noting the large number of bodies laying prostrate along their path.

The kitchen was straight ahead, so that was their next target as no food or alcohol was anywhere to be found in the main area of the building. The Walkers from the green were now at the door, their hands and bodies trying to break in. Olive glanced beside their path at a room that was full of trash and trash bags, but no clean, unused food to be seen, not even in cans.

A Walker then emerged from one of the corners just ahead of her. Thankfully, Olive was so jumpy these days that she was more than ready to down this thing, and did so with repeated jabs from her pitchfork.

Daryl heard the noise and came running, his mind automatically assuming the very worst, but he was glad to see that she was just fine. They exited the kitchen together and found themselves in a gift shop of sorts. Racks upon racks of clean clothes were before them, so Olive wanted to make the most of this. Daryl took all of the matchboxes he could find and shoved them into his bag. Olive, meanwhile, put a yellow polo shirt on over her worn-out wife-beater, and even grabbed a cardigan to put on over it. They were, sadly enough, the first fresh clothes she had worn in too long.

As she searched the gift shop area for more usable things, she spotted a mannequin that was no longer just that. Half of a woman - the living kind - was rotting away on top of a mannequin's legs. She appeared to be dressed nicely, but she had a sign hanging around her neck with the words "rich bitch" painted across it.

"I don't like that," she mused, and Daryl met her, his eyes scanning the atrocity. "Daryl, help me get her down."

Daryl sighed, shaking his head. "It doesn't matter, babe."

Olive's wide, determined eyes met his and he could tell that this deeply disturbed her. "No, it does matter."

Daryl was softened instantly, having missed that fire in her that he'd come to love so well. He found a blue blanket on the floor and draped it across her to cover her up. She folded her arms across her chest and Daryl met her, putting his arm around her to embrace her and comfort her, but was soon torn away from her when the Walkers from outside broke through and clambered into their immediate vicinity.

Daryl used up all of his remaining bolts - he was running extremely low on them now - and then dropped his crossbow, grabbing a golf club and beginning to batter them down that way. Olive used her knife and pitchfork interchangably, luckily knowing how to do so. The final Walker was Daryl's.

After a few failed swings, the head of the Walker caved in. Oblongata extract projected from the skull and splattered across the cardigan that Olive had just put on. She took that as a glorified symbol - all things that had been nice were no longer nice because of this new world. Casting the cardigan aside, she exited the shop and found the bar. Looking hurriedly through the bottles of alcohol that remained, she was saddened to find that only a bottle of peach schnappes was left.

Daryl marched over to her as she read the back of the bottle and, before she could uncork it, he tore it away from her and threw it down - hard - against the floor, smashing it to bits. Before she could ask why he had done that, he shrugged.

"If ya want a drink, it ain't gonna be no damn peach schnappes," he commented, nodding his head in the direction of the door. Apparently, he was going to lead her somewhere else with booze, a fact that she was not about to reject.

Together they left the country club and ventured back out into the woods, this time in a new area. The trees became heavier, thicker in brush than the other side of them that they had passed through just the previous night. Daryl seemed to know exactly where it was that they were headed, so she followed behind him, careful enough to keep trailing in step with him.

Soon, he led her into a clearing that had a run-down cabin within its close confines. It became clear by the smirk that appeared on Daryl's face that this was exactly where he'd wanted them to end up. Olive followed him all the way around the back of the cabin to a shed of sorts. Upon opening it up, she could see large copper coils and containers, finally realizing that this was once the cabin of shiner. Filling the cabin to the ceiling were wooden crates with mason jars full of pure moonshine.

Daryl grabbed a jar and handed it to her, taking one out for himself before lifting an entire wooden crate and proceeding into the house. He could sense her hesitation and nudged her as she eyed the jar warily.

"What's wrong?"

"My dad always used to say that bad moonshine could make you go blind," she answered, opening the jar.

"Ain't nothin' worth seein' out there anymore anyway."

"I'd like to still see you, Daryl." She winked at him sweetly before chugging down the entire jar. She pulled another jar from the crate he'd brought inside with them. Opening it, she offered some to him, but he kindly declined.

"Not yet. Someone's gotta keep watch for now." He then went to work boarding up the windows to the place while Olive took a look around the one-room place. Trash corroded the floor and cluttered messes of paper and garbage littered the entirely of the dusty place. From the look of things, the previous owner of this cabin had not lasted long after the outbreak, but perhaps it was for the better. The owner was an extremely heavy smoker. Much of the trash consisted of the ashes of put-out cigarettes and of empty cartons.

"Who in the hell would buy something like this?" she asked aloud, musing over a hot pink sculpture of a well-filled bralette. Olive chuckled at the sight, peering into the filled center, heap to the brim with cigarette butts and ashes.

Daryl glanced over his shoulder as he continued to board the windows. "My dad, that's who," he answered, full understanding that her question had been rhetorical even though his answering of it gave much more depth to it all. When he could feel her eyes on him demanding an explanation, he elaborated. "Used to put 'em on top of the TV set, use 'em as target practice."

Olive's brow rose in shock. "He shot things inside your house?"

Daryl shrugged, a now-commonplace movement on his part, she realized with sheer sadness and empathy. "Justa buncha junk anyway. That's how I knew what this place was. That shed out there? My dad used to have a place just like this." He finished boarding the windows and took to pacing the clutter, his eyes bright with the shadow of memory. "Your dumpster chair where you'd sit in your drawers all summer drinkin'..." He pointed to the terribly shitty recliner and she smiled a bit. "...fancy buckets - those are for spittin' chaw in - after yer old lady tells ya to stop smokin'..." He had been pointing to the spitoons by the chair, but then picked up an old newspaper from nearby. "...yer internet." They shared a light-hearted laugh together, the first time they'd done that since the prison. It was then that the snarl of a Walker was heard just outside. Daryl peered out through a crack between the boards he'd used and saw the bastard trying to no avail to get up onto the porch of the cabin. "It's just one of 'em."

"Should we get it?"

"If it keep makin' too much noise, yeah."

Olive handed a fresh jar of shine. "Might as well make the best of it."

Daryl took the jar and opened it before plopping down into the recliner. "Home sweet home." He beckoned for her to sit on his lap, and she did while each took turns drinking. This went on for several hours. By the time each of them were substantially drunk, neither could tell which side of them the sun was on or even that the world had come to an end.

"So first, I say somethin' I've ever done, and if you have done it, you drink," Olive explained, her shine sloshing about in the current jar she was working on consuming, "and then we switch." She chuckled, the sound a bit slurred. "You really don't know this game?"

Daryl grinned at her, considerably loosened up from the alcohol's decided effect. "I ain't never needed a game to get lit before." Still, he was as curious about her as before. "How do you know this game?"

Olive glanced down at her drink. "Used to play it with my brother 'til he'd get out of hand..." Her expression grew darkened at the memory and Daryl decided not to ask her further about it, so he was grateful when she let it go and changed back to her drunken state sans regret. "I'll start...I've never shot a crossbow. Now you drink."

Daryl shook his head impossibly at her antics. "Ain't much of a game."

Olive nudged him with her elbow. "That was a warm-up. Now you."

"Hmm." Daryl took a swig of his shine and swallowed while he thought about his. "I ain't never been outside o' Georgia."

Olive drank to that, backfiring quickly with, "I've never been drunk and done somethin' I've regretted."

Daryl drank in response, shocking even her. Noticing her looking at him and wanting an answer, he blinked. "I've done a lotta things." He stopped for a moment thinking of his next quip to catch her. "I've never been on vacation."

This was also shocking to Olive. "Not even camping?"

Daryl shook his head. "That's just somethin' I had to learn. That and huntin'."

"Your dad teach ya?"

He nodded. "Mmhmm."

Olive took another drink and watched him as she did so. Daryl suddenly allowed his brow to furrow as he pushed her off of him and stood, smashing the rest of his glass against the dust-ridden floorboards. Pacing madly, Olive watched in heartbreak as her love stormed outside with his crossbow and fired at the Walker there, pinning the riled thing to a tree. He then marched right up to it and stabbed it through the skull with his knife.

Olive followed him outside her eyes taking in the sight before her. "What's wrong?" she asked, her voice gentle.

Daryl continued pacing like a wild tiger in a cage, his rage now a palpable feeling in the air around them. "Nothin' is a game anymore, Olive!" he shouted, his voice full of an anger she had never experienced the raw end of.

"I was just tryin' to lighten things up, okay?" she retorted back bitterly, her body wondering why he had just undergone a serious change of heart - besides the alcohol's effects, there was something else in his tone.

"Lighten up what, the fact that everyone we know is dead?"

"You know that ain't true!"

"Do we? The Governor rode right up to our gates. Maybe if I'd stopped lookin'...maybe because I gave up, that's on me."

There it was. Daryl was harboring serious guilt over the Governor's attack on the prison, the one that had snatched their entire group away from them. Olive knew damn well that it wasn't his fault - it was the fault of none but the Governor himself, but she understood his guilt and pitied him, reaching out for him. "Daryl..."

Daryl's erratic breathing turned into a broken cry for help as his eyes welled with tears. The hot, salty liquid poured from his bright eyes and Olive stepped up to him, keeping complete contact with his vision. "...Hershel...maybe I coulda done somethin'..."

Olive shook her head, wrapping her arms around his waist from the front and pulling him into a tight embrace as the pair began to sob, his being tears of regret and hers were of pure empathy. Daryl shook his head as the sobs overcame him and Olive buried her nose into his cheek. His body became limp against hers as he gave into the sadness and allowed his own weaknesses to temporarily take control.

Alcohol became their surest way of relieving the pain and the sadness, so, once Daryl had emptied himself of the stores of sorrow he had been pushing back, he and Olive once again took to the jars of shine left from their previous crate. They took seats on the porch of the cabin, his back leaned against one side of the posts by the stairs and her back leaned against the opposite side.

"Yer lucky yer a happy drunk," he commented.

Olive snickered. "Yep, I'm lucky. Some people can be real assholes when they're drunk." She swallowed another hefty bit of shine.

Daryl nodded. "Like me. I'm a dick when I'm drunk." Olive shoved her boot against his thigh as if to tell him to stop saying things like that. "Merle had this dealer, this janky little white guy, a tweaker. One day we were over at his house watching TV. Wasn't even noon yet and we were all wasted. Merle was high. We were watchin' this TV show and Merle was talking all this dumb shit about it and wouldn't let up. Merle never could." Olive eyed him as he spoke, noticing the sheen that seemed to light up his eyes whenever he told stories from his past. "Turns out it was this tweaker kid's favorite show. He never sees this kid, so he feels guilty about it. He punches Merle in the face, and I start punchin' this tweaker kid hard, as hard as I can. Then he pulls a gun, sticks it right here..." Daryl brought two fingers up to point to his temple. "...and says, 'I'm gonna kill you, bitch.' Merle pulls a gun and starts yellin'. He's yellin', I'm yellin'. I thought I was dead over a dumb cartoon about a talking dog."

Olive smiled a bit, now fully invested in his story. "How'd you get out of it?"

"Tweaker kid punched me in the gut. I puked." Olive snickered and he returned the sound. "We all started laughin and forgot about it." Daryl paused, the laughter soon erasing from his expression altogether as realization swept over him. His eyes met Olive's through the darkness. "Wanna know where I was before all this?" Olive was all ears now. "I was just driftin' around with Merle, doin' whatever he said we'd be doin' that day." Olive's face fell, her heart hurting for him. "I was nobody. Nothin'. Some redneck asshole and an even bigger asshole for a brother."

Olive noted that his tone had changed whenever we brought up Merle. It was clearly still a soft-spot for discussion. She pitied him having been there herself. "You miss him, don't you?" Her question already had its answer, but she wanted him to know that she understood his pain. "I miss my sister - I miss our late-night talks about boys. I miss my brother, weirdo though he was." She paused, knowing that her own pain was probably visible on her face, and judging by the attentiveness Daryl was currently giving her, she knew that her assumption was correct. "I miss my dad. I thought that maybe he'd get to live the rest of his life in peace, ya know? After my mom died, things went south for him and we were all he had. I thought we'd have birthdays, holidays, and summer picnics and he'd get old, and he'd die, but it'd be quiet and he'd go with dignity. He'd be surrounded by loved ones, not being torn to shreds by Walkers." Olive stopped speaking, the tears now flowing freely down her cheeks, the trail of the moisture leaving clean streaks against her skin. She chuckled, the sound emitted conveying a sick kind of darkness. "That's how stupid I am."

Daryl shook his head gently, nudging his boot against her leg. "Nah. That's how it's supposed to be."

Olive shrugged lightly, downing another swig of her shine. "I wish I could just change."

"Ya did."

It was her turn to shake her head, wiping away a couple of her tear trails with the back of her hand. "Not like you. It seems like you were born to live how things are now."

"I'm used to it, things bein' ugly, growin' up in a place like this. Then you..." He paused, making certain to make eye contact with her before he continued. "...you came along and, even though things're still ugly and this world fucking sucks, it sucks less because you. You make things beautiful."

A gentle smile crossed her lips at his sentimentality. "Then you escaped a place like this."

"I didn't."

"Yes, you did."

Daryl took another drink into his mouth, swallowing with a gulp. "Ya know you've gotta keep reminding me o' that sometimes."

"Nope. 'cause one day, I'll be gone."

Daryl's demeanor grew serious. The thought of losing her was not something he wanted to waste time doing as it depressed the living hell out of him to imagine life without her. "Stop."

"I will. You'll be the last man standing. You will." Olive tipped her head back against the wooden post behind her, eyes cast up at the dark sky. "You're gonna miss me so bad when I'm gone, Daryl Dixon."

Daryl could feel tension rising in his body, choosing to consume what liquid remained in his current jar. "You ain't a happy drunk at all."

"I am, just not blind. You gotta stay who you are now, not who you were. Places like this...you have to put 'em away."

Daryl's eyes made a pleading expression towards her gaze. "What if ya can't?"

Olive shifted closer to him, placing the jar aside and allowing her hands to move up his thighs and grip them tightly. She leaned forward a bit, her face boring through his. "You have to, or it kills you..." One hand move up his body and laid flat between his breastbones, just over his heart. "...here." Daryl took her hand, the one on his chest, into his own and leaned into her, resting his forehead against hers. For a moment, they breathed in the essence of the other, reveling in the comfort of the other. "If I could go back, I'd burn that old place to the ground for you."

Daryl thought for a moment, tilting his head just enough to graze his nose against the tip of hers. "We can burn this one." His suggestion took her aback, her body straightening as she perfectly understood his meaning. A grin stretched the corners of her mouth upward.

Together they rose from the porch and raided the shed of moonshine, proceeding to douse the entire house with the staunch alcohol. Gathering what remained of their belongings, Daryl struck a match against the matchbook from the ones he'd taken from the country club. He dropped the lit match against the trail of alcohol they had led outside of the cabin.

Olive grabbed their things and, from a slight distance away, the pair watched the cabin be engulfed with the brightness of the orange flames.

Daryl smiled a toothy kind of expression, the light in his eyes a reflection from the fires that he could feel reverberate into his past and liberate his present.

Olive grinned, glancing beside herself at the sheer happiness of her great love, her heart pounding for the purging of his transgressions. Her hand slipped into his calloused palms, her fingers fitting perfectly into the spaces between his, and she gripped him tightly.

Daryl squeezed the rhythm to the words "I love you" against her hand before he turned his head to look at her, both feeling much happier and at-ease than they had in days. Stooping slightly, his lips met hers with a firm kind of fervency, his way of thanking her for being supportive and of expressing just how much he felt for her.

In a moment, the pair would turn on their heels, backs to the fire, and they would continue on their way. But, just for now, they were quite enjoying the company of the other and the amazing sense of restoration that the vision of a cabin burning to the ground brought to them.