A/N: Thank you so much for all the follows, favorites & reviews. Special shout out to: SixJay, Emberka-2012, Heidi191976, AinsleyE, DarylDixon'sLover, lupadaisy, Tania Ibarbia and guests for taking the time to leave nice comments. Y'all are amazing!

I had a really terrible week at work (9+ hour days on my feet for 6 days this week and I work everyday from now until Wednesday)… etcetera, etcetera. Anyways, leave me some love after reading to make my week a little brighter! Hope you enjoy the Bethyl fluff in this chapter 3

Companion song: "It was Love" by The Elected

Disclaimer: I do not own or have any rights to the characters/plot of TWD series. I am just a fan exploring the marvelous, macabre world Robert Kirkman created.

**This chapter is long. Sorry, not sorry.**

/

Chapter 7: Numb

Hunger pangs were the first feeling Daryl had in weeks. The van finally ran out of gas so they had to finish the journey to DC on foot but the group had not found any food in two days. Daryl was still in a fog, ambling around as silent and senseless as a walker. But at least he was attempting to be helpful again, he tried to hunt but there were no animals, not even a damn squirrel to catch.

Him, Sasha and Maggie all went out together to look for any type of food or water while the rest of the family stayed by the useless car. Daryl didn't get why Rick had chosen the three of them to go, this was the most morbid hunting party he had ever been a part of. They didn't catch anything; even the riverbed was nothing but cracked dirt. While the girls continued to search, Daryl started to dig. He found a worm and ate it—this was the lowest of the low. He could just imagine the insults his dad would fling at him. The girls were chatting softly about something but Daryl didn't feel the need to contribute to the conversation. He hadn't said much of anything in the last few weeks. Returning to the group, it was clear they hadn't had any luck finding food either.

Who would have thought that in a world full of walkers, hunger would be what did us in? Daryl speculated.

Somehow, from within his anesthetized haze, Daryl noticed the looks that the others in his group were giving him. Particularly Rick and Michonne kept eyeing him like they were worried he might grow another head. It was clear that they were waiting for him to break.

They are too damn perceptive, he thought to himself. Or maybe I am just too obvious.

Thankfully though, it looked like they were taking the divide-and-conquer strategy. Michonne gave Sasha a lecture about "snapping out of it" and Rick approached Daryl one afternoon on the road. They walked silently next to each other for a while. This was fine with Daryl, but he knew that Rick wouldn't stay quiet for long. Rick had his leader face on, the one that he always got before he needed to have "a talk" with someone. It was similar to the face he had when he came to tell Daryl that Merle couldn't come back to the prison, or when he told him about Carol killing Karen and David. However, Rick's face now was softer and filled with a knowing glint. Daryl didn't like it. He frowned at the horizon ahead as the men sauntered side by side.

Judith was in a pack against Rick's chest making soft cooing noises and staring at Daryl. The unofficial-brothers kept shooting glances back at the herd of walkers down the road, making sure that they didn't get too close or too numerous. Daryl counted two mile markers on the side of the road before Rick finally spoke up.

"It's been three weeks since Atlanta…" Rick avoided saying Beth's name out loud and this did not go unnoticed by Daryl. "I know you lost somethin' back there."

Something?

I lost something? He thought savagely.

Daryl was angry at first, thinking that Rick was insinuating that Beth had been his or she was an object that he'd misplaced, like a set of keys. Anger was always his first reaction; it was ingrained firmly in his bones just like all the Dixons before him. But he calmed down. Reminding himself that Rick wasn't being malicious.

However, that didn't mean that Daryl was ready to talk about Atlanta yet, or the hospital or the huge, gaping hole that was left in his chest by the 'something' he had lost there. Hell, he would probably never talk about it, wasn't exactly one for discussing his feelings.

So in order to evade this conversation, he diverted their attention back to something else.

"She's hungry," he said. Judith was always a safe topic of conversation and Daryl was genuinely concerned for Lil' Asskicker. The lack of food, water, shelter was harsh enough on all of the adults so he couldn't even imagine how it was affecting the little one. Judith was truly the last good thing in this world, every time he looked at her he saw Beth caring for her in the prison. The archer wanted to keep the baby safe, now more than ever because he had failed with everyone else.

"She's okay. She'll be okay," Rick said dismissively. Daryl couldn't tell if Rick was dismissing the comment because he wanted to continue discussing Atlanta, or if he was just in denial about how dangerous their situation was becoming.

Probably a little of both, reasoned Daryl.

"We gotta find food and water." He was supposed to provide for the group. He was the one who hunted and who knew the forests. If he couldn't find sustenance and someone else died, that would be on him too. More deaths to weigh on his conscience... more faces to haunt his nightmares.

Rick kept talking but Daryl had stopped listening.

"I'm gonna head out, see what I can find," he needed to get away from these people who depended on him, away from Rick's concerned looks and away from that precious baby that only reminded him of Beth.

"Hey, don't be too long," conceded Rick, knowing that it was useless to try and convince Daryl to remain with the group.

Daryl slipped off into the woods. He wanted to be alone but Carol followed him.

"Ya gonna stop me?" she joked, attempting to lighten the heavy cloud that always hung over Daryl.

Daryl just wanted to get away from the others but he didn't have the strength in him to argue with Carol. She was a stubborn woman and she cared for Daryl, just like Rick did. He knew he would eventually have to endure whatever concerned-parent speech she had prepared so he decided that he might as well get it over with. She eased into the conversation, just like Rick had. Rick had started by talking about the walkers, Carol started by talking about the lack of food. Daryl was observant enough to note the similarities in their approaches to discussing Beth with him. He vaguely wondered if all good parents had taken a class on how to have difficult conversations.

"I think she saved my life."

Daryl froze under the weight of Carol's words. Carol didn't need to clarify who 'she' was. Of course Beth saved Carol's life, she saved everyone she possibly could… she saved Noah… and Judith… and him.

"She saved your life too right?" Carol continued but Daryl could not turn to look at her. She took his unmoving form as confirmation to her question.

"It was hers," she handed Daryl a small knife with a white hilt. It was tucked into a tan sheath and he couldn't help but run his hands greedily over it. Wishing, impossibly, that he could feel Beth's warmth on the leather or that holding something of hers would make her pop right back into existence. It was a stupid idea and Daryl knew that. However, it still felt good to have her knife. He had left his regular knife with her body in that fire truck. Hers would now have a permanent place along his own belt, another small piece of her he would carry around forever.

"We're not dead. It's what you said. You're not dead," Carol put as much conviction in her voice as she could, and he finally met her eyes. "I know you. We're different, I can't let myself—" her voice hitched here and Daryl knew she was thinking of the three girls that she had lost since the world ended, but she quickly moved on, "but you… I know you, and you have to let yourself feel it."

Daryl's eyes burned. After weeks of being numb, just moving on auto-pilot through the world around him, her words seemed to give him permission to crack open the box of emotion he had stuffed deep inside his mind.

It didn't escape him that he had not said anything to Carol during their conversation. But this was normal for him. The only person he had ever truly opened up to, really talked to, was Beth. Carol brushed the greasy hair off of his face. Daryl flinched at this intimate gesture. He was afraid for a moment, always expecting to be hit whenever someone got that close to him. Then she kissed his forehead, just like he had seen Rick do to Judith many times before. This affection was unprecedented for Daryl and he was still uncomfortable, unsure of what to do. But luckily, she pulled away then and walked off back towards the group, leaving him alone with Beth's knife.

/

The dogs came out of nowhere.

Daryl had always loved dogs. He desperately wanted one when he was younger, a companion to care for and to look out for him. But his parents would never let him get one and Daryl thought it was probably for the best. If his dad beat his own sons to a bloodied pulp, Daryl couldn't even imagine the abuse that poor dog would have received. Now dogs made him think, like most things did, of Beth. On their very last day together, he had tried to get the dog inside, that damn one-eyed dog distracted him so badly that he opened the door to a mob of walkers. A small, resentful piece of him blamed that shaggy dog for getting Beth kidnapped. Maybe he didn't like dogs anymore. But at the moment it didn't matter, this pack was going to attack his group and he wouldn't let any more of them get hurt if he could do anything about it. Just then, Sasha fired repeatedly on the pack, killing all three mutts. Daryl ate them without thinking, filling the emptiness of his stomach like he wished he could fill the emptiness in his chest.

/

On the road again, Daryl watched his group shuffling from behind. He could hear Maggie talking to Glenn about Beth—about how she didn't want to believe Beth had been alive, about losing her after only getting her back, about how she didn't want to fight the dark parts anymore.

He understood this sentiment completely, but he was still absolutely, vehemently furious with Maggie.

Part of him, a dark, savage part of him that sounded an awful lot like Merle, was happy that Maggie was miserable. She deserved to be tormented with grief and guilt. When the prison fell she had only looked for Glenn, Daryl heard the story about her leaving messages all across the state for Glenn. Only Glenn. On the other hand, Beth had been certain that Maggie was alive and had begged Daryl to track their family but it was apparent that Maggie hadn't spared a second thought for her little sister until Daryl came to Terminus. Then, even after Daryl told her that Beth was alive, Maggie still left. Went running off to DC with Glenn and a bunch of strangers while him, Carol and the rest of their family scavenged the city and went on a rescue mission.

Daryl was still seething when Glenn turned to offer him water.

"Nah, man," he dismissed rudely.

"Daryl," Glenn insisted with a look of concern on his face. This was now the third person from his original group who looked at him like this today.

What's next? Is Carl gonna come give me a damn puppet show with a moral lesson too? he thought manically.

"Don't." Daryl was mad at Maggie, mad at Glenn for telling her that everything was all right, mad at the sky for not raining. Right now, he was mad at the whole damn world.

"We can make it together but we can only make it together," Glenn's words were unexpectedly serious.

It made Daryl's heart ache because it was something that Beth would have said. And, what's more, he knew it was true. They could make it together. But they weren't really together anymore; they had lost too many people. If their group had been a jigsaw puzzle, it would be missing so many pieces that it would be impossible to even tell what the picture was supposed to be.

Daryl felt his heart pounding in his ears, though he couldn't tell if it was from anger or sadness. "Tell 'em I went looking for water," he grunted at Abraham as he darted off into the woods.

The anger at Maggie and Glenn fizzled out. He didn't care enough, or have enough energy left in him, to stay mad so he succumbed once again to the numbness that had engulfed him for three weeks. If he ran into another person, he wouldn't be surprised if they shot him, believing him to be one of the undead monsters.

Painful thoughts of Beth pestered at him in the back of his brain. Small, but demanding to be felt, like a canker sore in the side of his cheek that he kept accidentally biting. He tried to push the thoughts back and focus on tracking and hunting while he walked.

Until, after a few miles, he came upon a cabin that felt eerily familiar. He dropped onto the ground, staring at the wooden structure and grabbed a cigarette. This was mostly out of habit, but also because the burning in his lungs reminded him that he did in fact have organs and he wasn't as hollow as he felt. The cabin reminded him of the one that Beth and him burned down only a couple months ago. The one where they drank moonshine together. Where he talked openly about his past for the first time in his life. Where he had given up all hope and yelled at the one person who was left in his world. And where he had found it again after her slender yet strong arms embraced him.

As Daryl sat against a tree, he thought on Rick's words from earlier and he realized that Rick was right in a way. He had lost something. Beth had been a light in the darkness that plagued this terrible world. She brought him a sense of hope that he didn't fully understand until after it had been snuffed out in that dirty hospital hallway. It was more than a person that he lost in Atlanta, more than just another family member. But it was also more than just "something." It wasn't something or someone that he lost. It was her.

He had lost her.

The pain in his heart was stabbing and searing, like someone stabbed him with a knife that was on fire. Daryl contemplated his cigarette.

What would it feel like? He wondered.

Physical pain.

Since her death he hadn't felt real, physical pain… he hadn't really felt anything except for fleeting bursts anger or hunger. Daryl wanted to snap out of it, get rid of the hollow ache that had settled inside his ribcage. He just wanted to feel something other than the black chasm he was in, but he didn't know how. Emotional pain was not something he was accustomed to, he had put up thick walls when he was young, which meant no one had ever been close enough to cause him this much hurt before now. He had a long list of shit he was equipped to deal with in this world, but emotions were not one of the things on that list.

And so he pushed the cigarette into his left hand and watched the skin blister under the embers. The smell of burning flesh, now familiar from all the bodies they've burned over the last few years, violated his nostrils.

Daryl knew that it should be painful.

But it wasn't.

He couldn't feel anything, didn't even flinch. No physical pain could break through the layer of emotional pain he was under. Physical pain couldn't even compare to the pain of losing her.

Because he loved her.

I love her, he realized with a shock.

Daryl never even believed himself capable of love. He thought he was too broken, too irreversibly damaged over the years. But he had apparently been wrong. Beth and his new family had slowly, unknowingly been putting the pieces of him back together.

I love Beth, he thought again.

This time there was no surprise in his mind. This statement was an absolute truth. It rang so true in his bones that it made him uncertain of all the other truths he had known all his life, like the sun rising in the east or compasses pointing north.

Now, he looked to the sky. Daryl was not a religious man, he did not have faith or believe in heaven, but she had been religious and she believed in heaven. So for her sake, he believed too. If there is a heaven, he felt certain that Beth had a VIP entrance ticket. For him, the sky held more than the mere possibility of heaven. It reminded him of Beth: the sun of her white hair and the brightness of her smile and the blue, dynamic sky of her eyes that could somehow be both gentle and fierce.

They were eyes that he loved.

Eyes that he would never see again.

I can't love her… not anymore, because she is gone… I loved her. He corrected himself.

And with this thought, he finally broke down and cried.

/

Beth was not contained within the bones of that fire engine back in Georgia.

This was the thought that finally ended his mental breakdown. Beth had permanently altered him: gave him hope, demonstrated what faith was, taught him about right and wrong, showed him beauty within the ugliest world imaginable. In this way, through him, she would live on.

The best way he could think to honor her, to make her proud, was to try and live like she lived. This pathetic, useless sack of bones that he had become over the past three weeks was unworthy of her. He was determined to become a man that would have been worthy of her, or at least as close as he could ever be. She deserved to have a good man love her, and even though he was a dick sometimes, Daryl vowed to try to be better.

He remembered Beth's words in the bar of the country club: "All I wanted to do today was lay down and cry, but we don't get to do that..."

So he didn't.

When he finally pulled himself up from where he sat, he was a changed man. He missed her so much that every cell in his body seemed to ache, yearning to find her. But it wasn't as painful as before. A weight had lifted from him, as if finally realizing that he loved her had relieved him from some of the pain. With the idea that she was in a more peaceful place, a place that was better than the shit left behind on this world, he hiked back to the remaining members of his family.

/

He wasn't worried about water anymore because he could sense the storm coming. The air was humid, signaling the moisture in the air, but that not entirely unusual in the summer. However, the smell was the concrete proof; it smelled crisp and earthy. Daryl had spent so much time outside in his life that he would know the scent anywhere. The last time there was a storm, he and Beth hid in the trunk of a car all night. He hadn't slept a wink that night. First, he knew he had to stay awake to protect her. She was the last remaining person in his family—he hadn't dared to maintain hope that anyone else was alive—and he knew if the walkers got in it would require both of them to even have a chance in hell at escaping. Second, he felt slightly feverish due to her close proximity, and not just because it was so unusual for him to be that close to someone else. Every tiny part of her that had brushed up against him seemed to light him on fire. The air in the trunk felt charged and intense, like either one of them could have emitted their own bolt of lightning.

He tried to shake these thoughts of Beth out of his head right now, he couldn't afford to be distracted. The note "From A Friend" made it clear that someone was stalking his family and they were very close.

When the rain started to fall, everyone else in the group rejoiced, forgetting their new stalker 'friend'. The group began laughing and smiling in unison. Rosita and Tara lay in the road soaking it in, Father Gabriel thanked the lord. Daryl wasn't happy. He was in his own bubble, unable to feel happiness without Beth. He was too consumed by his own thoughts to notice that Sasha and Maggie, his hunting companions from earlier in the day, weren't celebrating either.

All three of them, were lost in their own way… lost so completely that they couldn't even realize that they were not alone in their grief.

Vicious, black clouds were approaching quickly and with a vengeance.

"There's a barn!" Daryl snapped back into action after seeing the panic on Rick's face and Daryl shouted over the thunder. Rick's eyes were huge as he looked desperately over to Daryl for guidance.

The cabin he saw earlier was too small for everyone and too far away, so instead, he led the group to a barn he passed on his way back from the cabin. After settling into the barn, Carl and Judy crashed almost immediately next to the small fire. Daryl wished there was meat to roast. He tuned into the conversation in the middle of Rick telling a story about his grandfather, a war veteran.

Rick's story ended with "…We tell ourselves that we are the walking dead."

Daryl looked around at the group. Really looked at them for the first time in three weeks, taking in their despondent faces. This wasn't helping them, Rick's depressing story and his constant denial—first denying that Shane was a problem, then becoming obsessed with farming to avoid the governor and now his unwillingness to acknowledge what the group really needed. They needed hope, not a story about how they should consider themselves dead already. Daryl had been doing that for weeks and it was a terrible life.

It finally clicked for Daryl. They needed optimism like Beth had given him in the dark days after the fall of the prison. Rick was an excellent leader, but he couldn't do it alone. They were a team, the sheriff and the redneck. They had been since the first mission to rescue Glenn from those vatos in Atlanta.

"We ain't them," Daryl said gruffly, sitting up to put more wood on the fire. Some of the surrounding faces lightened, Daryl saw hope flutter at his insistence that they weren't dead on their feet.

"We're not them. Hey, we're not." Rick backtracked, he seemed upset and surprised that Daryl had contradicted him. But there was also relief in Rick's eyes; hope that his brother was coming out of the debilitating haze and hope at Daryl's words. Rick hoped that his kids wouldn't live their whole lives like they were now, as the walking dead.

"We ain't them," he repeated stubbornly before leaving the circle of people he considered his family. After weeks of being wrapped up in his own depressed world, it was a large responsibility to become the voice of optimism.

It was lucky that he did leave however, because as he walked passed the barn door and noticed through the crack a huge herd of walkers coming straight towards them. He threw himself against the door, shortly joined by Maggie and Sasha, the only two that were not enthralled by chattering with other people, and then eventually the whole group. Even Carl left little Judy crying alone on the ground. Her cries couldn't even be heard over the snarls and clapping thunder outside. As the storm raged, they stayed pressed against the only door to the barn. There was no way out, no other doors. They were trapped. Daryl was scared that at any moment the walkers would push inside or that the sheer pressure of them would break the boards in half and let them come crashing through.

It could have been minutes or hours that passed. Time didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was using every ounce of his strength to hold the doors closed. To protect his family that he had neglected for the last month. When everything outside died down, the walkers pressing on the barn doors suddenly disappearing, people drifted off to various spots in the barn and fell asleep.

It went without saying that Daryl would be on watch. He hardly slept anyways. Rick nodded gratefully at Daryl before scooping up the sweet, tearful baby from the hard ground and cradling her in his arms where he fell asleep. The air was soon filled with the regular breathing and soft snores of his family.

In the silence, Daryl's mind wandered back to its favorite topic: Beth.

His realization from this afternoon still swam inside his head. Daryl was in love with Beth. He thought back to their interactions, trying to piece together when that happened and how it snuck up on him.

He remembered first meeting her at the Greene farm when she had been timid, a sheltered teenager. He hardly ever saw her outside the house. Daryl had known that it was her in the kitchen cooking everyone meals even though his rowdy group had invaded her home and brought a flood of trouble with them. He remembered seeing her in the stable a couple times caring for the horses, feeding them, brushing them and softly murmuring words of comfort to the animals. Daryl wondered now if it was her horse who had thrown him, Nervous Nelly, and what she would have said to him if he had bothered to ask her before he took the horse out. When he had been shot and was forced on bed rest in her family's house, she brought him meals and even gave him a few different books to pass the time during his recovery. They were thoughtful suggestions, it was clear to him that she had specifically picked out books that she thought would appeal to him and even though she didn't know him yet, she guessed well. She brought him "Heart of Darkness," "The Old Man and the Sea," and his favorite "The Call of the Wild." He ended up reading, and enjoying, the books Beth gave him over the weeks that followed on the farm. When Andrea brought him a different book, he grew bored with it and couldn't even remember the title now. Beth, and her books, helped impede the cabin fever that overcame him as a result of being confined to bed rest.

At the time he had told himself that he wasn't watching her, but that he was just observant.

She was more nurturing than anyone he had ever met and this just became clearer the more he got to know her. On the road that winter she cared for a pregnant Lori and checked up on all the others, she couldn't provide them any food or protection, but Beth consoled them and gave each of them items she found in the houses they scavenged. Daryl considered them almost completely useless things: comic books for Carl, lip-gloss for Maggie and a new leather belt for Rick. At the time, he thought it was foolish to focus on comfort items when they were struggling to even feed themselves, creature comforts were something he didn't even have before the turn. Now, in hindsight, he understood that Beth was giving them normalcy within the shitty days where they slept with one eye open and had to constantly be on the move.

One night, while the rest of their family was sleeping in the living room of a random house, Beth came and sat next to him on the floor where he was on watch. They were about a foot away and without saying a word she pushed a full pack of cigarettes towards him. Daryl noticed there were different kinds of cigarettes in the box and he realized she must have been collecting them for some time. He felt the corners of his mouth tug up involuntarily. It was the first time since his mom died that someone gave him a gift. With the dead eating the living it was strange what qualified as a gift, but a full pack of cigarettes was a pretty damn good one in Daryl's book. He glanced over to see the full moon light up her profile. But Beth, in that gray beanie staring at their little family, had still only been kid in his eyes. He reached for the pack on the floor between them, nodded gratefully at her, and he saw a grin break out across her face. She had known him well enough at that point that she didn't expect a drawn-out, exuberant 'thank you' from him. He was also happy that she didn't chatter his ear off like he would have expected from a teenage girl. After a few minutes of comfortable silence, she crept back to her spot on the floor where she laid her head on a curled up jacket.

At the prison, after Judith was born, Daryl saw Beth in a whole new light. Beth became that little girl's mother, caring for her at all hours of the day while Rick battled the ghosts in his head or worked on the crops. Daryl was drawn to the pair of them like magnets: the cooing, defenseless baby and the tender blonde who had transformed from a kid to an adult in record time. Back then, Daryl had just written off this attraction as a primal instinct to protect women and children.

Nights when she had Judith and he wasn't on watch duty in the tower or out on a hunting trip, they gravitated towards each other. Beth's singing drew in Daryl as if he was a sailor under a Siren's spell. If Lil' Asskicker was especially fussy the three of them would pace the halls of the prison together while Daryl rocked the baby to sleep before returning them both to Beth's room. A fervent animal in his chest would growl at him when the two of them were alone in the darkness of her cell, but he always ignored it and sought the solitude of his perch. On those nights he slept more peacefully than ever, something about having ensured that both the girls were safe in bed assuaged the worried animal that normally tore his stomach into knots at night.

Once they were alone, after the prison fell, everything amplified.

When they had been playing that damn drinking game in the moonshine shack, the animal in his chest came back. It was vehemently pushing him towards her, to reach over and grab her, to hold her flush up against him, to run his hands along her body, and whisper all his secrets in her ear.

It scared the shit out of him.

So he reacted in the only way he knew how, by doing the exact opposite of that—he yelled at her, insulted her, threw stuff, tried to disgust her with the walker outside. They shouted in each other's faces and a large part of him admired that she hadn't backed down, didn't cower under his anger but matched him head-to-head. Daryl tried to push her away but he failed miserably because she pushed right back.

The animal inside him had purred contentedly when Beth hugged him, feeling every centimeter of her pressing against his back, her hands gripping his chest and stomach like a life raft in an ocean storm. One second he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, breaking down from carrying the blame for everyone they had lost since the turn, and the next, with her arms around him, everything outside of the two of them fell away. He forgot about walkers, about his empty stomach, and even about the guilt of losing his family. She was holding onto him with such intense need, it confused him. He thought she reached out to him just to comfort Daryl in his moment of desperation, as she would do for anyone, but it felt like she wanted to be close to him too.

In the present time, he realized with a wave of disappointment that he would never get the chance to ask her what she had been thinking that day.

Daryl was definitely not an expert on love. Or really any emotion at all. No one could love Daryl. His father had literally beaten this idea into him. And with the blood that dripped down his back after the beatings, left Daryl's ability to love too. Or so he thought. He had always believed this, and Beth was the only real indication he had that ever contradicted it… Daryl, feeling especially self-loathing, questioned if what he felt for Beth was actually love. He was unworthy and incapable, wasn't he? What if he manifested it all in his head?

That last night in the funeral home still made his heart race. Beth laughing in his arms as he carried her, bridal style, through the house. The soft glow of the candlelight flickering off of her smooth skin looked amazing. He had to keep his hands glued to that jam jar to stop himself from reaching over and running his fingers down her soft, pale cheeks and the curve of her neck. The most breathtaking part had been her eyes though, sure they were a stunningly beautiful blue, but it was so much more than that. They had an ability to see right into his soul. Beth opened him up to the studs with the sheer intensity of her gaze. But those eyes were also soft, understanding, compassionate…

No. He definitely didn't imagine his feelings.

When he remembered their times together and tried to convince himself that she felt something for him too—sidelong glances where here blue eyes seemed to rake over his lips or his arms, Beth biting her perfectly pink lower lip as she contemplated him, small blushes that crept across her cheeks when he accidentally brushed up against her or when she caught him looking at her. What had those moments meant to Beth?

His heart felt painfully raw, like the tender skin that formed after a flesh wound, at the fact that he would never know what she felt for him.

Was it really called love if it was only one sided? If he hadn't even been aware of it while she was alive?

Well, if it isn't considered love, Beth was certainly still the closest I had ever, and will ever, come to it, he thought defiantly.

Each moment alone with her had felt like an infinity. Time actually slowed for them. She moved in slow motion in his mind, the better to appreciate her. And yet, each moment was never enough. Daryl had been such a coward. He should have told her that it was her who made him believe that there was still good in the world. Most importantly, he never should've gotten up from that table. If he had been man enough to tell her or even to kiss her, instead of running out of that kitchen, she would still be alive.

Daryl had racked up a lot of regrets in his lifetime, thirty-five years of saying and doing things he wished he hadn't. But this, the regret he felt for not getting closer to her while she was alive and not protecting her better, would haunt him forever.

/

As the sun came up and warmth seeped into the barn, Daryl saw Maggie stand up. Everyone else was still sleeping off the exhaustion from fighting against the walkers and the lack of calories in their systems. She stared right at him with such determination, but there was also something else, not quite pity or compassion, maybe it was sympathy… and marched over to where he sat.

"You should get some sleep," she said softly.

"Yeah," he knew she was right. Daryl had been awake for almost two days and his eyelids were heavier than lead.

"It's okay to rest now." Now that Beth is gone, seemed to be the unspoken words that should have completed her sentence.

Maggie wouldn't meet his eyes now, looking out at the sleeping group, but when he glanced over at her he could see the lines carved into her forehead. She was sincerely worried about Daryl, just like Rick, Carol and Glenn had been yesterday. And in that moment, with concern written plainly across her features, he saw Beth in her older sister for the first time.

Looks like she'll be living on in both of us. He thought with a small, wistful smile.

Her eyes drifted over to where Sasha slept, sprawled out next to the wall. Even in her sleep, there was a look of pure anguish on her face—shoulders tense, brows furrowed and corners of her mouth pulled down into a frown. Sasha and Bob had only become a couple after the prison fell, and then Bob was killed. Consumed by the walker fever like a scrap of paper in a flame, until he faded into ash right in front of her eyes. Then, less than a month later, Tyreese went the same way. Lost her brother and her partner. Just like Daryl.

At least they both got proper funerals, she got to say goodbye the right way. She didn't have to see her brother as a flesh-eating monster, didn't have to be the one to put him down. And she had weeks with Bob, got to live with the comfort of knowing that he loved her back and gave him a proper grave outside a church. She didn't have to leave the person she loved in a fucking car on the side of the freeway. He thought bitterly.

What does Sasha know of pain? He scoffed.

But this was cruel and he was disgusted with himself instantly. It is not a contest. And as he saw the misery that plagued Sasha, his heart clenched for the woman. He wondered idly if his grief was painted on his face as clearly as it was on Sasha's… and if this was how the others felt when they looked at him. Daryl finally realized that they were the only two in their group to experience loss like this.

"He was tough." He said in an attempt to comfort Maggie. People were supposed to say nice things about others once they died. Plus, it was true. Tyreese was tough—not many people would have even attempted to care for three children who weren't even theirs.

"He was," she replied with a slight nod. But she still seemed troubled by something, eyes clouded and downcast.

"So was she. She didn't know it, but she was." With this, he actually grinned for a moment, remembering Beth's last defiant act. With her dying breath she stabbed Dawn in an attempt to save Noah and the other wards from a place that killed, raped, exploited and tortured people. He also remembered when she got her ankle caught in that bear trap, but even on the ground in pain she fired his crossbow and hit the walker just an inch below it's brain.

Maggie didn't respond. But Daryl preferred the silence. After a second, he handed her the jewelry box he had been working on while everyone else slept.

"The gear box had some grit in it," he said passing over the little wooden music box.

As pissed as he had been at Maggie, he knew that Beth would not have held a grudge and so, in an attempt to be a man worthy of Beth Greene, he decided to forgive her older sister and fix the music box. Plus, when Carl had given her such a frivolous object in an attempt to cheer her up, it reminded him of Beth during the winter they were on the run before the prison.

Little bits of her, it seemed, had stuck within all of them. Each person had their own unique piece of Beth clamped onto their heart and maybe, even if good people didn't survive in this world, fragments of them would.

/

A/N: This was another long one [[[sorry, not sorry]]]. Hope y'all liked the extra little Bethyl flashback bits in this chapter. These were inspired by TPTB who explicitly stated that there are always things going on/interactions between characters that we don't see in the show.

As always, thanks for reading! Please leave me a review/favorite/follow in that pretty, little box below, even the simplest comment makes my heart content.

I have been having a lot of writers block—too worried and consumed by problems in my real life to allow the fantasy to take over—so PLEASE send me your thoughts or ideas on how to get re-inspired.

Next chapter is Beth and Kyle in the fallout after the attack. How does she react to being a murderer? Will Kyle survive the gunshot wound?