Hello again, dear readers and lovely people! As usual, I want to thank you all so much for your support last chapter. Your comments mean SO MUCH to me and I'm sorry that I'm so terrible about responding to them. It's part of a whole spectrum of things that I struggle with - what could only very charitably be called quirks - but please know that your kind words mean the fucking world to me. I'm just a deeply flawed person that can't get their shit together enough to tell you that.

I've written an insanely long endnote to this piece, so I'll try to save your patience for that. Until then, I hope you enjoy the next chapter in our little saga...


It was infected.

It had only been a few days and it hadn't hit his whole body yet, but there was no denying that his hand was infected. The skin around his sutures had turned scarlet and swollen and the simple act of making a fist was becoming a rapidly increasing struggle. Not just a struggle to fight through the pain, though the piercing sting of the movement was definitely a limiting factor, but a true mechanical struggle as his deep tissue and joints were growing stiffened and inflamed. He'd tried to keep it clean, but had used up almost all of the antiseptic when he'd first stitched the gash, and had been relying on the last of his standard soap to serve as disinfectant. He'd been hopeful that it would be good enough - he'd certainly been less responsible with wound care in the past - but was unsurprised that it hadn't been. The knife he'd sliced himself with had probably been covered in all manner of microscopic filth, tiny particles of squirrel guts and walker brains, and he could have easily gotten something lodged in the cut, too. He imagined he might have a sliver of wood from the spike he'd been sharpening buried somewhere in all that angry flesh.

Something festering deep inside.

Regardless of the underlying source, the implication of the situation was as undeniable as the infection itself. He'd have to find antibiotics. He'd have to leave the security of the Greene home and its surrounding woods - his home, his woods - and head into town. And he'd have to do it soon. He'd have to do it before the fever set in and he got too sick to mount the effort. And, far more pressingly, he'd have to do it while he still had enough grip to control his bike. He'd foreseen how his injury would hamper him with the crossbow, but days had gone by before he'd considered how it would effect him on his motorcycle. And he'd felt a rush of true fear when he finally did. Felt a wave of almost paralyzing fear when he'd realized that the immobility of his hand was going to make it incredibly hard, and incredibly painful, to control the bike. It had been a terrifying thought because he had no other way to attempt the mission. He didn't have a car and the expedition would be practically impossible on foot. He was going to be searching for an incredibly scarce commodity and he'd have to cover a lot of ground before he found it. He'd have to cover a lot of ground before the search could even begin: the Greenes were miles from their nearest neighbor and many of their neighbors could say the same thing.

If he couldn't ride his bike, he'd be fucked.

Which is why he'd taken off for Senoia as soon as he'd realized how his injury would quickly rob him of his only means of transportation. It had been mid-afternoon and, though he'd known he was getting worse by that point, he'd previously resolved to postpone the trip until the next day: to start out fresh in the morning with the maximum amount of light. He'd thrown that plan immediately out the window, though, when he'd realized that he might wake up unable to flex his hand. That he might wake up lacking the strength or dexterity to work the throttles on his bike. In a panicked rush, he'd tossed some essentials into his bag - including the can of fruit cocktail which he'd felt compelled to take with him for some reason - and headed straight out the door.

He'd avoided the historic downtown and its quaint family pharmacy entirely, assuming that everything commercial had probably been well-looted already. That'd been his experience pretty much everywhere and he had no reason to believe Senoia would be any different. His only hope was going to be someplace residential. He wasn't going to find medicine in a drugstore, he was going to find it in someone's bathroom. And, though he had years of practice at clearing abandoned houses, he'd rarely done it alone and he really hadn't been looking forward to the experience.

He'd been dreading it.

Well and truly dreading it. He was far from his fighting best, but it wasn't the near certainty of encountering trapped walkers that concerned him. He was still pretty confident that he could handle the undead. It was the living that he was worried about. It was the other survivors that terrified him. The other survivors who he knew were out there. Somewhere. The Greenes had had a muddy squatter, Daryl had been a muddy squatter, the world was full of muddy squatters and they could be squatting anywhere. Anyone could be fucking anywhere. And they could react in any possible way if stumbled upon. React in any possible way - any entirely unpredictable and incredibly dangerous way - if discovered.

His injury might have made him realize the perils of being alone, but accidentally intruding on a group of strangers was not the way he wanted to solve that problem.

Other than paying close attention to his surroundings and looking out for any signs of habitation, though, there really hadn't been anything he could do to eliminate that risk, so he'd just had to face it. Senoia had once been a sweet little town, but - like all towns - it had its less desirable parts and he'd started his search there. (He didn't have any prior knowledge to work with, no understanding of the place that told him exactly where to go or which streets to take. Like some strange homing pigeon, he'd just always had an inner radar for locating the lower-side of town.) He figured that anyone trying to set up home those days would either stay out of Senoia entirely, which would definitely be the smartest option, or choose a higher quality place where they'd at least be living somewhere nice. If someone was willing to take the risk of living in a once-populated area, he'd reasoned, they'd probably settle down in the beautiful old Craftsman not the ugly aluminum doublewide. It definitely wasn't bulletproof logic, especially considering the fact that the seedy side of Senoia was still pretty decent (better than any place he'd ever lived), but it had been the best he could come up with in terms of an avoidance strategy.

Riding the bike had been as difficult as he'd imagined and he'd already been tired and in pain by the time he'd begun to sweep the first house. He hadn't found any medicine inside, but he hadn't found any walkers or any squatters, either, and he'd considered that a good enough start. And it had ended up being pretty indicative of the rest of the block. He'd gone through eight more houses and had only encountered three walkers, all of which he'd dispatched with quite easily, and seen no signs of the living. Seen no signs of any antibiotics, either. Thanks to Merle's sexual recklessness and the outbreak at the prison, he was confident that he'd recognize the names of any viable prescription and none of the bottles he'd discovered had contained what he needed. It hadn't been a total loss, though. He'd found a couple pints of whiskey and a fifth of gin, which he'd been more than happy to throw into his bag, some extra bandages and a partial tube of Neosporin. He was pretty sure that the Neosporin wouldn't do him much good at this point, at least not on its own, but he figured it couldn't hurt either and was grateful for the find.

By the time he hit his tenth house, the sun was beginning to set and he was starting to get deeply worried. Worried because he really didn't want to be doing this in the dark and worried because he couldn't imagine not having to. He'd only searched one street so far and, for all he knew, there wasn't a single tablet of amoxicillin left in all of fucking Georgia. At best, he had a lot of houses left to explore before he found what he was looking for and he couldn't go home until he found it. He couldn't go home and start the search again in the morning, couldn't wait for fresh light, because he might not be able to do it in the morning. Because he wouldn't be able to do it in the morning. He knew that now. It wasn't a possibility, it was a certainty. The way his hand laid heavy and throbbing at his side, he knew his grip would be gone in twelve hours. His grip would be gone, he wouldn't be able to ride, and he'd be stuck on the farm.

Dying.

Dying and wondering if it was too late to try to cut off his own hand. Too late to follow in Merle's footsteps one last time.

And he wasn't going out like that - no way in hell - so there was nothing to do but push on. Nothing to do but keep looking. The pain in his hand was so intense that he'd kept his crossbow on his back, unable to properly wield the heavy weapon, and was relying on his knife as his sole means of defense. Standing on the porch, he banged on the door with the butt of the blade to rouse the attention of any walker inside and waited a few moments. In the silence, he reached for the dog tags that hung around his neck and brought them to his lips: kissing them quickly for good luck. It was a ritual he'd never performed before this trip, but something he'd done instinctively at the first house he'd raided and had repeated at every stop since. He wasn't sure why he did it. Maybe it was because it was just too painful to press his palm to his chest, to touch her photo in his breast pocket, as he normally would have done and manipulating the necklace had simply felt more manageable. Maybe it was because he was on a mission, a true fucking mission, and there was something about the symbolism of that that called to him. Something that made him want to connect to her as a soldier, as a fighter, as a survivor. Like so many things about his relationship to Beth and her objects, he didn't understand it, but he went with it all the same. Even if it was only for an instant - only for that brief second when that cool metal touched his dry skin - the action comforted him and he needed all the comfort he could get.

After waiting a sufficient period of time, and hearing no movement from inside the building, he went ahead a kicked the door in. It was a prefabricated home made of lower quality materials and, to his tiring body's relief, the frame cracked on the first blow and the entry was easy. It was a small house - just two tiny bedrooms, a bathroom, and a open living room-kitchen - and he began to search the place quickly. As he'd come to expect, there was nothing of value in the medicine cabinet. Plenty of makeup and skincare products, but no actual medicine. He dutifully searched the nightstands in both rooms, which had clearly belonged to a mother and her teenage daughter, but didn't find anything there, either. He hadn't really thought that he would, but he wasn't about to take any chances. As he was leaving the girl's room, he noticed a track uniform balled up on the floor and realized that she'd gone to the same high school as Beth. Every teenager in Senoia probably had, he imagined, but it still struck him as meaningful somehow. He found himself hoping that the girl had survived, that she and her mother were out there thriving somewhere, and was surprised by the depth and sincerity of that desire. In that moment, gazing at that long forgotten uniform, standing in their abandoned home, he truly cared about those strangers' well-being. It really felt like it mattered whether or not they were alright. It really felt like it mattered whether they were alive and safe and together.

It does matter.

He left the bedroom and headed towards the kitchen, his last hope for the house. He was walking past the refrigerator to get to the cabinets nearest the sink, which he'd learned over the years was where a lot of people kept their daily medicine, when something in his peripheral vision caught his eye. A flash of gold. He took a step back and turned to face the fridge, which was covered in a wallpaper of photos and coupons and takeout menus: plastered with layer after layer of relics from a by-gone world held precariously in place by dozens of overburdened magnets. It was a crazy quilt of pure clutter, but he didn't see any of that. He didn't see the stained recipe for banana nut bread or the track team practice schedule. He didn't see the dentist appointment reminder card or the invitation to Caley Michael's Sweet Sixteen party. He only saw one thing. He only saw that flash of gold.

He only saw Beth.

There in the midst of all that chaos, in the middle of that mad jumble of family ephemera, was a photo of Beth. It must have been taken just a few months before the turn because she looked almost exactly as she had when he'd first met her on the farm: definitely still a teenager in the truest sense, but very much a Beth he knew. A Beth he really recognized. She was with a dark-haired girl with glasses, a girl who was in most of the photos on the refrigerator and had clearly been the daughter of the home, and they were both laughing. They had their arms slung around each other's shoulders and their heads thrown back in almost identical poses as they shared an obviously joyful moment. He was so caught up in the sight of Beth, so taken aback by her sudden presence in that kitchen, that it took him a moment to realize that the girl she was with was the same girl from the photostrip on her dresser. Her glasses were different than the cat-eyes that she'd worn that day and the new frames had altered her appearance, but it was definitely her. That was Beth's friend from the photobooth.

That was Beth's friend's house.

He really couldn't believe he was standing in Beth's friend's house. A house that Beth herself had probably stood in many times. She might have had sleepovers in the bedroom he was just in. Done homework at that kitchen table. Grabbed an after-school snack from that very refrigerator. And that just seemed crazy to him. Sure, Beth had probably had a lot of friends - and Senoia was a pretty small town - but it still seemed incredible that he would have stumbled upon one of their houses on the very first block he raided. It just seemed impossible that he could be standing there, hand throbbing and desperate for a miracle, staring at her beautiful, laughing face.

How could he not take that as a sign?

How could he not take that as a sign that she was with him?

He reached up and took the photo off of the refrigerator, carefully excavating it from the surrounding materials and trying his best to keep the whole mess from sliding onto the floor. There were plenty of other pictures of the friend if someone ever came looking for a memento of her, he figured. No one else needed the one with Beth more than him. And he really needed it. Not just in general, but especially that day. He need it so badly and he could have easily lost himself in that photo, lost himself in the magic of finding it, in the sense of connection that it gave him, and just stood in that kitchen until the sun went down. He knew he could have done that, knew he halfway wanted to do that, but he also knew it was the last thing in the world he could afford to do. He didn't have any time to waste. He didn't have any time to contemplate. Any time to get dreamy or meditative. He had to focus and he had to keep moving.

So, with one last glance, he slipped the photo into his pocket and continued on his search.

Reverting back to his original path, he headed towards the sink and when he opened the adjacent cabinet he took in a sharp audible breath. A true gasp. Because there amongst the juice glasses and the vitamins was an almost full orange prescription bottle with the word Clindamycin stamped in big, black letters on the label. He didn't recognize that particular name, but he knew that suffix. Mycin. He knew that drugs ending -mycin were antibiotics. And when he saw the rest of the label, when he saw who the drugs had been for, he burst out laughing. He laughed harder and louder than he had in ages. Laughed from the very depths of his soul. Laughed because he was so relieved to have found what he was looking for. Laughed because he was so grateful to have be given that second chance. Laughed because he knew who had given him that second chance. Laughed because he knew exactly where he was, who that girl was, and because there wasn't a doubt in his fucking mind that Beth was indeed with him.

STOPSIGN ROSENBERG
CLINDAMYCIN, 150mg Caps
GIVE ONE CAPSULE TWICE DAILY, WITH FOOD

Stopsign Rosenberg. A dog. Beth's best friend's dog.

That wasn't just Beth's friend's house. That was Beth best friend's house. And her best friend's dog was going to save his life.

Beth telling him about Stopsign had been one of the very last conversations they'd ever had and it was a vivid and deeply treasured memory. The prospect of seeing that dog at the funeral home had gotten her excited and she'd started talking animatedly and at length about what wonderful and intelligent animals they were. As both the daughter of veterinarian and a girl from a rural town, she'd had a seemingly inexhaustible amount of dogs stories and facts at her disposal - trivia from books and anecdotes from her own life - and she'd eagerly shared them all. And he'd listened just as eagerly. In part because he'd been genuinely interested in the topic, but mostly because he'd simply been interested in her. Interested in whatever she had to say, especially when she was saying it with such enthusiasm. With such delight.

And she had been truly delighted. Truly delighted to talk about dogs. And the dog that had made her smile the most, the dog whose antics she'd been the most thrilled to recount, had been Stopsign. She'd been thoroughly convinced that he'd been the greatest dog ever and had admitted, with an absolutely adorable amount of self-admonishment, that she'd sometimes been jealous that he'd belonged to her friend and not to her. It had been the only time she hadn't looked happy that whole conversation - because she'd been disappointed in herself for her perceived selfishness - and that had only made him love her more. Marvel at her more. Marvel at the goodness of someone who would feel so guilty about occasionally coveting their friend's dog that it would still bother them years after the end of the world.

(Later that night she'd ask him what changed his mind about good people. It was shit like that that changed his mind.)

As Beth had told it, Stopsign had been given to her friend, Molly, when she was in kindergarten to help ease her through her parents divorce. Her mother had wanted her to have something positive in her life during the rough transition - a happy addition to balance out the sad subtraction - and had thought a puppy would be an excellent choice. Molly had wanted one for years, so she'd gotten her the little mutt at the pound and, in an act she'd later regretted, she'd let Molly name him. And Molly had named him Stopsign. For reasons she'd refused to share at the time, and then later completely forgot, she'd named him Stopsign. (Adamantly one word, not two.) And despite the absurdity of the name, Beth had insisted that it had been the perfect moniker for the animal. Stopsign had been a Stopsign. Not a Jack or a Spot or a Charlie. He'd been a Stopsign, through and through.

Among his many endearing qualities, Stopsign had had a touch of the wanderlust and had made a lifelong habit of escaping the yard: going on endless unsanctioned adventures all across Senoia and even points beyond. The result had been countless instances that were either incredibly funny or deeply embarrassing, depending on your perspective, of one of the Rosenbergs roaming the streets shouting Stopsign! at the top of their lungs to the complete bewilderment of those around them. Beth had been enlisted in many of those search parties, too, and Daryl remembered laughing as she'd recreated her own parts of the stories. Remembered laughing at the picture she'd painted. Laughing at the image of this achingly wholesome-looking girl behaving in a totally deranged way: her sweet face full of concern and confusion as she cried out desperately for a road marker.

And, the way he was feeling now, he wanted to cry out, too. Not out of desperation, but out of joy. He wanted to shout Stopsign! to the fucking heavens. He wanted to shout the name of his savior over and over and over again as loud as he possibly could.

Stopsign!

Stopsign!

Stopsign!

Stopsign had made his girl happy for years. Stopsign had given him one of his last memories of her laughter. Stopsign's almost totally untreated infection was going to save his life. Stopsign had proven that, as usual, Beth had been fucking right - Beth had known her fucking shit - because Stopsign was, without a doubt, the greatest dog ever.

Greatest. Dog. Ever.

Stopsign!

Stopsign!

Stopsign!

While his mind skipped like a broken record, repeatedly calling out that one name, his body got to work. The instructions said to take the medication with food and he hadn't eaten since breakfast, so he started rooting around in the cabinets to see if his new favorite family - the lovely lady Rosenbergs - had anything edible left behind. He had some dried rabbit meat in his bag, but he knew he'd barely be able to stomach it and saw no reason to deplete his own resources if he didn't have to. The cupboards were mostly bare, but he found two granola bars and a can of peas and it might as well have been Thanksgiving dinner. The peas seemed like the easiest to digest, so he dug a can-opener out of a nearby drawer and started to basically drink them straight out of the tin. They were already so mushy that he barely needed to chew and he just wanted to get the stuff into his system as quickly as he could. The antibiotics were expired, so they'd likely lost some of their potency, and the prescribed dosage was for a much smaller animal, so he took four capsules out of the bottle instead of the recommended one. He honestly thought he could have taken more, but he figured he should at least ration in the beginning. Give the things a chance to work before he went all in. He downed the pills with the last of the peas and, in an unconscious gesture of respect to the Rosenbergs, walked over and put the empty can in the trash rather than simply leaving it on the counter as he normally would have done.

The fading sun was slung low on the horizon and he wanted to be on the road before it got dark, so it was definitely time to go. As he headed out the door, he stopped and looked at the refrigerator one last time. Stopsign had been a beloved member of the family and pictures of him were scattered throughout the appliance's crazy collage. Scanning the mass, he found an especially adorable one of the young mutt swimming in a pond, holding a stick in his mouth and looking like the happiest creature on Earth. As with the photo of Beth and Molly, he figured that there were enough other pictures of Stopsign that the Rosenbergs would understand losing just one, so he retrieved it from the pile and slipped it into his pocket. His desire to have a memento of the animal was a reflection of the kind of sentimentality that he'd never known until he fell in love with Beth, but that he was becoming increasingly prone to. Increasingly compelled by. And increasingly willing to accept. Stopsign had mattered to Beth, he mattered to Daryl, and he deserved to be remembered for that. So, even though taking the photo was something an older version of himself - the man he'd spent almost his entire life being - never would have done, he didn't even question doing it.

When he got to the door, he stopped and took a parting look at the house: a house that had been a stranger's when he'd entered it, but was now the home of Stopsign and Molly Rosenberg and the scene of so many of Beth's childhood memories. That home had been such an important part Beth's life and had suddenly become such an important part of his life, too. That home had saved his life. That family had saved his life. That family had loved his girl and they'd saved his life and he almost started to thank them for it. Almost started to tell to them thank you for the medicine and for loving Beth Greene. Almost started to tell them that he was Daryl Dixon and that he loved Beth Greene, too. Almost started to tell them about the funeral home and how they'd laughed about Stopsign and that he'd remember their sweet mutt until the day he died. He almost started to tell them, but speaking like that felt too much like talking to the dead. Felt too much like he'd be addressing their spirits and he wanted to believe that their spirits were still in their bodies and that their bodies were still walking around. Walking around and smiling and sharing stories about their beautiful old friend Beth Greene. So he just nodded his head sharply instead, as some kind of farewell salute, and tried his best to close the door he'd broken as he headed back outside.

The walk back down the street felt epic and he almost lost the entire contents of his stomach, including all four of those precious pills, when he finally grasped the handles of his bike. The pain was so intense that it made him nauseous and his mouth pooled with saliva as he fought back his urge to vomit. It'd been less than four hours since he'd last been on the thing and he was shocked at how much he'd deteriorated in that short period of time. After taking a few steadying breaths, he reached around awkwardly into his bag and pulled out one of the bottles of whiskey he'd pilfered earlier. It was probably the worst thing he could do for his nausea, but it was the only thing he could do for his pain, and he gulped down the fiery liquid like it was water. Though he'd once had an incredibly high tolerance, he hadn't had any alcohol in months and was hopeful that its numbing effect would hit him hard and fast. He put the bottle back in the bag, wincing at the task and once again trying to calm his rolling stomach, and returned his gaze back to the handlebars: those simple rods of metal that were both his salvation and his doom.

That was his ticket home, but it was going to be one shitty fucking ride.

His long stretch of (often lamented) sobriety was indeed having its reward, though, and he felt the tension in his body start to loosen as a soothing warmth soon worked its way through his veins. In terms of volume, he'd probably ingested more whiskey than peas and he was definitely beginning to feel it. He flexed his hand experimentally at his side and, while the movement was still agonizing, the pain was a little more distant than it had been before. A little easier to detach from and ignore. And that's really all he needed. He didn't need to feel good, didn't need the pain to disappear entirely. He could fight through pain as long as he wasn't being incapacitated by it. As long as it wasn't making him want to vomit and pass out ten doors down from the Rosenbergs. As long as it wasn't stranding him at the end of Westmoreland Avenue, on the edge of Senoia, miles from home with the night closing in. As long as it wasn't that kind of pain, he was alright and the whiskey was rapidly bringing him that mild deliverance. Kissing the dog tags one last time for good luck, he turned the engine on and, silencing the screams shooting up his arm, he sped off down the road.

When he was well outside of town, but still fairly far from home, he gave into the impulse he'd had since he'd first found the antibiotics. He was drunk on memories and alcohol and the sheer joy of getting a second chance at life and, speeding down rural Route 89, he shouted Stopsign! at the top of his lungs.

He shouted Stopsign! and he laughed and he swore that he could hear Beth laugh, too.

...

It wasn't until he got home and dumped his bag on the kitchen table, truly dumped it because his body was exhausted and he'd just let it fall right off his frame, that he remembered that Herschel hadn't allowed alcohol in the house. He heard the bottles clink together inside the bag as they collided with the table's surface and the sound of it - a sound he could so easily associate with his father's drinking, with Merle's drinking, with his own drinking - brought that completely forgotten fact instantly to mind. Since he'd come to the farm, he'd tried so hard to be respectful of Herschel. Of his whole family. He'd tried so hard to be respectful of their home and of their values. To live a life that would be up to their standards or, at least, be close enough that they would recognize his intent. That they would appreciate the effort. He'd been eating with a fork for fuck's sake and he really didn't want to disappoint them now. He felt bad enough already, he really didn't need to fall into a pit of drunken self-loathing because he felt like he'd betrayed the Greenes.

His hand hurt something evil, though, and he knew that - even if the antibiotics worked fast - he was going to be in pain for awhile. And the booze was all he had for that. It was the only thing he had to get him through the agony to come. The only thing that promised him any relief. And he really fucking wanted it. He could unashamedly admit that to himself. He really fucking wanted to drink his pain away. Unlike so many of the other times in his life when that sentence had been true, though - unlike so many of the times in Herschel's life when that sentence had been true - the pain he want to drink away was a very literal, physical pain. He wasn't trying to drown his sorrows or numb his grief. He was trying to cope with a true medical problem.

A red and swollen and excruciating medical problem.

Surely, Herschel would understand that. Actually, there was no way he wouldn't understand that, he thought. There's no way he wouldn't understand the difference and no way he wouldn't see it as meaningful. Herschel wouldn't want him to suffer just so he could maintain the purity a dry home. He'd been a compassionate man, a physician, and he wouldn't have denied Daryl a painkiller just because it happened to come in a form that could be abused. A form that he happened to have struggled with personally. He wouldn't have done that and Daryl breathed a huge sigh of relief as he began to unpack his bag: very deliberately placing the alcohol in a tight grouping with the antibiotics on the table as if to highlight its medicinal intent.

Staring at the tableau before him, his head swam with the events of the day. Well, the events of the day and the liquor and the pain and the sheer exhaustion. His head swam with it all. It was just too much to take in. By all rights he should still be out on the streets of Senoia, flashlight in his mouth and fear in his heart, searching for medicine. He shouldn't have found what he needed in an afternoon, on the very first street he went to, like he was running a normal errand back in the old world. Like he was just popping down to the drugstore to pick up his prescription. Just swinging by Rosenberg's Family Pharmacy for some antibiotics and a bite to eat.

Oh, and can we interest you in a picture of the love of your life, too? Those are on special today in our refrigerated aisle...

It shouldn't have worked out that way. It was too unbelievable, too stunning of a coincidence. Too stunning of a coincidence to be a coincidence. He knew that already, though. It hadn't been a coincidence at all. It hadn't been a coincidence and, even though it shouldn't have worked out that way, it had to have worked out that way. That was exactly what was supposed to have happened. He was supposed to have found Molly Rosenberg's house, he was supposed to have found that picture of Beth, and he was supposed to have found Stopsign's medicine. He was so fucking sure of that that he almost wondered if he was supposed to have gotten the infection in the first place just so that it could all unfold.

That half-formed thought was supported solely by the booze, though. He had no doubt that his infection had just been bad luck. But finding the medicine hadn't just been good luck. It hadn't just been a rare and wonderful stroke of good fortune. It had been meant to be. Meant to happen.

Meant to happen because Beth had wanted it to happen.

She'd wanted it to happen and somehow she'd made it so. She'd guided him every step of the way that day. She'd been the one that made him finally realize how his hand was going to limit him on the bike. She'd been the one that put the fear of God into him and made him start the search right away. She'd been the one that steered his path through the streets of Senoia. She'd been the inner voice, the intuition, that he'd followed straight to Westmoreland Avenue.

He really and truly believed that.

Believed it with everything that he had.

And that felt so good. Felt so fucking good to know, to really know, that she was with him. That she was watching out for him. He was alone and in pain, but he felt cared for. He felt cared for in a way that he almost never had. Cared for in a way that could only be improved upon by her actual physical presence.

He allowed himself to take a few more swigs of whiskey, placing the bottle carefully back next to his pills, before grabbing the can of fruit cocktail and heading upstairs. At the top of the landing, he paused for a moment, briefly considering - for the very first time since staying in that house - heading straight to bed. He sensed Beth's presence so strongly, he almost felt like he didn't need to stop by her room first.

Almost.

But he did, so after a couple seconds, he took a left and headed towards her door.

"Thanks for savin' my ass today, girl," he said, grinning slightly despite his pain. He leaned against the doorframe, resting all of his weight on the shoulder of his good arm. He wasn't going to go inside tonight - this was just going to be a quick stop - but, even so, he could barely keep himself upright. "Know that was you out there. Told you you can't fool old Daryl Dixon anymore. I know your tricks. Know your magic when I fuckin' see it. And you sure as shit were workin' your fuckin' magic today. Sprinklin' your little pixie dust all over the place. Swear to God I'm gonna find fuckin' glitter when I change my damn bandage."

Just mentioning his bandage made his hand throb and he sighed heavily before continuing, "Wish I could visit with you tonight, but I'm fuckin' beat, sweetheart. Feel like shit. Know you know that. Know you know that and I know Nurse Greene would tell me to get my sick ass to bed. Tell me to go curl up under them covers down there and let those pills you got me work their wonders."

"Almost said work their magic," he laughed lightly, shaking his head. "But you're the only fuckin' magic here, girl. Pills are just fuckin' science. Ain't nothin' special 'bout that. Glad as fuck to have 'em, don't get me wrong. Glad as fuck you got that shit for me. Just that science ain't got nothin' on you. Science ain't even playin' in the same league as Beth Greene."

"Ain't no one playin' in the same league as Beth Greene," he added with a smile. He pulled together the last of his flagging reserves and lifted his body away from the doorframe, supporting his full weight only through the most focused of efforts. "Alright, I'm headin' off. Can't take it no more. Love you, sweetheart, and I'll see you tomorrow. And thanks again for lookin' out for me. Fuckin' needed that and you came through. You always come through, girl…."

He was slurring his words heavily near the end there and didn't so much finish his thought as simply run out of energy to continue speaking. Turning back down the hall, he stumbled slowly towards his own room: desperate to get to bed but unable to do so at a speed that reflected the urgency. Stepping gratefully through his door, he headed straight to the dresser where he returned the fruit cocktail to its home and, reaching into his pocket, added the photos of Beth and Molly and Stopsign to what would be their new home, too. His shrine back in place, and even more bountiful than before, he was officially done for the day and he collapsed straight onto the bed.

Onto, not into.

He'd planned on taking his boots off and getting under the sheets once he'd gotten a second wind, but that never happened. He slipped almost instantly into unconsciousness where he remained - blissfully numb to the world - for the next twelve and half hours.

...

When he finally woke up, he was neither blissful nor numb. He was in agony. And he was on fire. It was a good thing that he'd never climbed under the covers, because he was burning like a furnace and drenched in sweat. He wanted to get up and strip out of his clothes, get some water down his parched throat and cool himself down, but he couldn't move. He clearly hadn't changed positions even once during the night and he was completely frozen: his muscles locked by a fiendish combination of fever, disuse, and pain. It felt like every cell in his body was directly linked to the cut on his hand. Like he could feel each infected stitch piercing straight through to his toes, his hips, his chest, his fucking pancreas. To his fucking gallbladder. Piercing straight through to parts he never knew he fucking had. Infected stitches were just fucking everywhere.

Everywhere.

And the only thing he could think, once he could finally think at all, was that Beth really did save his life. If he hadn't left yesterday, if Stopsign's antibiotics weren't already waiting for him downstairs, he'd be done for. Absolutely done for. Just going to the kitchen seemed like a massive expedition right now, there was no way he'd be going to Senoia. Even if he had a map right to the Rosenberg's door, he couldn't get there today.

Today would have been too late.

Today wasn't too late, though. Today wasn't too late because Beth had saved him and all he needed to do was pull himself together and get downstairs to take his pills. She'd worked all the magic she could, it was time for him to do his part. He began moving in microscopic increments, trying to ease himself into the struggle, but it was horrible and he knew he just needed to get it over with. Bite the bullet and throw himself out of bed. So, taking several quick pants like he was gearing up to take a punch, he rolled onto his side, sat up, and dropped his feet to the floor in one swift, dizzying movement. Trying to keep his momentum, he started to strip down but soon realized how hard the formerly simple actions were going to be working essentially one-handed. By the time he'd gotten out of his vest and both shirts, he was sweating even more profusely than before and his body was howling in protest. The room air felt good against his hot sticky skin, though, and he savored it as he took a few more deep breaths preparing for the next phase of the battle.

The heavy canvas-like fabric of his cargo pants felt suffocating and he'd never wanted out of a piece of clothing more badly in his life. Even the most gore soaked rag he'd ever worn seemed more inviting than those fucking pants did at that moment. His hopes of freeing himself were cruelly dashed, however, when he remembered that he still had his boots on. He could untie them - they'd last been laced when he'd still had a decent grip and the double-knots were a bit tight, but he'd still be able to get them undone with one hand and enough patience - but he knew he wouldn't be able to re-tie them. Once those knots came undone, they'd probably stay undone for days. He was optimistic about the antibiotics, but given the amount of swelling and pain in his hand, he imagined it would take awhile for him to get his dexterity back. And he couldn't be stuck in that situation. Things were dangerous enough already, he couldn't be stuck facing shit barefoot or wearing his boots like unwieldy slippers. They had to stay laced, which meant the pants had to stay on, and he chanted fuck repeatedly under his breath as he begrudgingly came to accept that broiling fate.

He forced himself to his feet with a groan and tried to ignore the spinning in his head as he started to the long journey to the kitchen. Navigating the stairs felt like an elaborate circus act, which he performed to what would become the day's soundtrack of muttered curses, and he was desperately relieved when he finally reached the bottom. He grabbed the pills off of the table and walked straight to the sink, where he immediately poured himself a glass of water and was, for once, absolutely delighted by the freezing cold temperature of what came out of the Greenes' tap. The icy liquid felt like Heaven to his dry throat and he followed up the first quickly downed glass with another, tossing in the precious medicine on his final greedy gulp. Even though it was the last thing he wanted to do, he knew he needed to eat. He wasn't exactly sure why he needed to take the antibiotics with food, but he was going to follow those directions. It felt like Beth had pulled the strings of the entire universe to get him those pills and he wasn't about to jeopardize her hard work because it made him a little queasy. Since every option seemed equally unappetizing, he decided he'd make a meal of the Rosenberg's granola bars. Just the thought of the dry rough stuff made his stomach churn, but they at least reminded him of Beth. It kind of felt like he'd be eating something that she'd prepared for him and the part of him that needed to be nursed and care for that morning really liked that idea.

He made it a true breakfast of champions and chased down the dusty cereal bars with shot after shot of whiskey. It wasn't until he'd completely polished off the last of the previous day's pint that he realized that he should really be rationing the booze. He still had two bottles left, but he also had a lot of healing ahead of him, and he needed to make it last. Fortunately, he already had a decent buzz going by then and rather easily forgave himself for the oversight. He resolved to limit his drinking to half a bottle a day, which would get him through the next four days and - he hoped to hell - the worst of it.

If he wasn't doing better by then, he figured, his problems would probably be too big for the alcohol to touch anyway.

He grabbed the bandages and the Neosporin and forced himself away from the table, heading back over to the kitchen sink to clean his wound. When he removed his old dressing, he didn't find any of the glitter he'd teased Beth about: just a vicious tapestry of black thread and reddened flesh. The only good thing about its appearance was that it immediately relieved him of any concerns he might have had that he was acting like a pussy over his condition. Being this sick would normally make him feel like he was acting weak and unmanly, but the sight before him provided a strong defense against such self-criticism. He wasn't being a little bitch about this. That shit was fucked up and it was no fucking wonder he felt like hell. His hand would have been right at home on a walker and, looking at it, he was actually kind of proud of himself for handling it as well as he was. Until, that is, he started to wash it off under the sink and began to cry. It wasn't a full body sob, wasn't even really crying necessarily, tears just started pouring out of him like the water from the tap. Like that was just his body's natural response. Like it was something it just had to do. It wasn't enough to make him feel like a pussy, but it was definitely enough to rob him of any fleeting sense of stoicism on his part.

Finally finished, he smeared some of the Neosporin over the cut - tears still streaming down his face, but in slowly thinning rivulets - and wrapped his hand in a fresh bandage. He'd been working mindlessly through the horrible task, losing his capacity for higher thought temporarily to the pain, but as he stood there at the sink - panting heavily and trying to pull himself back together - he couldn't help but think about how nice it would have been to have had someone to do that for him. How nice it would have been to have someone else to tend to his wound.

How nice it would have been to have Beth to do that.

The last time he was injured in that house he'd had a whole group of people looking out for him. An entire group of people who'd had his back despite his surliness and his general lack of any real demonstrable gratitude. And so many of those people were gone now. Almost all of those people were gone now. Not just gone from his life, but gone from this world. Maggie was the last living Greene and Rick, Carl, Carol, and Glenn were the only other ones left from the the old farm days. He shook his head in a literal - and what turned out to be quite painful - attempt to knock those thoughts loose. He really didn't want to start heading down that mental path. Really didn't want to start thinking about everyone he'd lost and how much different - and how much worse - things were this time around than they had been the last.

Didn't want to think about how last time around there truly had been a Nurse Greene taking care of him.

A real Nurse Greene in real flesh and blood. A sweet and shyly smiling girl who he'd basically ignored, but who'd made sure he had enough to eat and had seemed sincerely interested in his welfare. Had been sincerely interested in his welfare. He knew her well enough to know that now. She'd been a young girl in an apocalypse - she'd seen her mother and her brother's walking corpses get locked into her family's barn, had her home invaded by strangers, and basically watched her whole world fall apart - and she'd still cared about the health and comfort of the random redneck down the hall. The dirty old man who'd taken over the spare bedroom and barely spared her a second glance.

She should have been a selfish teenager too caught up in her own understandable grief, her own unbelievable losses, to give a shit about some rude asshole leaching off her family's kindness. She should have been. She should have been, but she couldn't have been. She couldn't have been because she was Beth and Beth fucking cared.

She'd cared.

And she still cared. He tried to tell himself that. Tried to remind himself that he had medicine flowing through his veins right now because of Nurse Greene. He still had her in some way and that really had to be good enough. It really had to be good enough that she'd saved his life from beyond the goddamn grave.

It really had to be.

It wasn't, though. It wasn't even close to good enough. He wanted her in flesh and blood and he wanted her with him. Like pretty much everything he'd ever wanted in life, though, he couldn't have that, so he had to settle for what he could get instead. He gathered up everything he thought he'd need for the day - the whiskey, the pills, and some food - in case he couldn't make it back downstairs later and started to head up to Beth's room. He needed to be close to her. Needed to feel her comforting presence. He needed to think good thoughts and her room was where good thoughts grew best. Bloomed brightest.

Well, there and in his bed at night.

It was daytime, though, and in his mind there was still steam rising off of his mattress from his fevered night's sleep, so Beth's room was the only place he wanted to be. It felt like his first journey to her door, the one that started all the way back in Alexandria, had been easier than that trip from the kitchen and he gratefully collapsed into her chair as soon as crossed that enchanted threshold. Since he'd injured his hand, he'd felt an increased aching for Beth's presence, so he'd stuck with the precedent he'd set when he'd first had the accident and given himself twenty-four Beth points to spend in her room each day: one for every now-infected stitch in his hand. That typically allowed him to open multiple Beth units and stretch his exploration out across the entire day - those long days when he was now basically stuck at home - rather than limiting it to the nighttime as it had been back in the old ten-point, pre-injury era. It was a pattern he planned on continuing and, sitting at the chair, he decided her top desk drawer would be his Beth unit for the morning. Normally such a choice would be fueled by some sort of strategy or speculation or spark on his part, but that day it was based on pure convenience. It was simply the closest and easiest place for his wrung out body to investigate.

When he opened the drawer, he was surprised to encounter the first thing in Beth's room that he could truly call clutter. He'd learned over the years that pretty much everyone had a junk drawer and, apparently, even Beth hadn't been immune to that aspect of human nature. And, at first glance, her junk drawer looked just like everyone else's, too. Had the same collection of mundane contents he'd seen in so many other homes: lots of loose pens, partial rolls of scotch tape, a pair of earphones, a few chargers, a tin of mints, a couple pairs of scissors, a deck of cards, and so on. As he'd come to expect, though, he also spotted a few things that were out of the ordinary. Things that seemed strange or special or simply her somehow: a pack of mustard seeds with Have Faith! written on them, an old silver baby rattle, a small wooden turtle, an empty spool of thread with googly eyes and a Sharpie smile, and a tape measurer shaped like a snail. There was more, too. So much more. The drawer was absolutely stuffed and there was a bounty of odds and ends to uncover. There was so much to dig through and explore, but his search came to an immediate halt when his eyes fell upon a homemade DVD. A homemade DVD with a title that made his breath catch in his throat. A title that made his heart stop and his head spin.

Cumberland Arts Academy - Summer Program Audition

The funeral home. Here it was again. Here it fucking was again. Those final days, those last conversations. First Stopsign and now this.

Now Cumberland.

Fuck.

Beth had told him about Cumberland, a music school outside of Atlanta, the night she'd played piano in the mortuary viewing room: serenading him to his delight, and her imagined tolerance, as he'd watched the concert from his disturbingly comfortable casket. She hadn't played the instrument in years and, while it hadn't diminished his enjoyment in the least, her lack of practice had been apparent. She'd stumbled at multiple points during every song and had simply abandoned some pieces halfway through: smiling and shrugging in defeat. She'd eventually started playing one piece that had been different, though. Unlike her previous efforts, it had been clear from the beginning - even to his totally untrained ears - that she'd had complete confidence in it. She'd played it fluidly and easily and had even looked that way while doing so. She'd been tense at times during the other songs - shoulders tight or head crooked awkwardly in concentration - but, on that tune, she'd looked completely natural and relaxed.

Graceful.

And it had been a lovely little song, too. A sweet and gentle melody about lounging on a riverbank that had been both musically and lyrically simple. Almost childlike, but in a classic kind of way. Like a lullaby. He'd never heard it before, but he'd really liked it. Loved watching her play it. And he'd been struck by the difference in her performance. He'd imagined that it must have really meant something to her for her to have known it that well and he'd wanted to ask her about it. He'd always had a habit of phrasing things poorly, though, and he'd been especially off of his game that night - lying in the softest bed that he had in years and being seduced by the siren song of the girl he secretly loved - so what he'd ended up saying had actually sounded, at best, like a backhanded compliment.

You played that better than you played the others.

As soon as he'd heard the words come out of his mouth, he'd been mortified. Mortified and truly angry with himself for fucking up what should have been a nice moment. She'd done something special with that song and he'd wanted her to know that he knew that - that he'd heard it and he'd seen it and he'd known that it was special - but he'd totally fucked it up by pointing out the mistakes she'd made on the other pieces and insinuating that it had merely been the lack of error that had been notable about that one.

He'd fucked it up.

Or he would have fucked it up if he'd been talking to anyone other than Beth Greene. Any other person would have rightly taken offense or been hurt by the comment (assuming they'd given a shit what Daryl Dixon thought at all.) But Beth was Beth and Beth had just laughed. She'd laughed that beautiful laugh of hers - a laugh more beautiful than any song - and agreed with him wholeheartedly.

I know, right? She'd said smiling, twisting around on the bench and peering back at him in the casket. I kinda cheated there. I was getting a little frustrated that I kept forgetting everybody else's songs, so I figured I'd just do one of my own. They're not nearly as good, but at least I can remember them.

He'd been shocked to learn that it had been her composition and, as a result, he'd failed to respond right away. Which, yet again, had made him feel like an asshole. As if the silence had been his confirmation of her assessment: that the song wasn't as good as the others. She'd already turned back to the piano, presumably preparing to start another piece, when he'd finally been able to string some words together. He hadn't bothered to try to go back and rephrase his initial statement, knowing he'd probably just mess that up as well, and had focused on the revelation about her songwriting instead. He'd told her that it was really good and that he had liked it: not expressing the sentiment nearly as well as he'd wanted to, but at least doing it clearly enough to make his point. He'd told he that it was good and then he'd asked her when she'd written it. When she'd written it and why. Which had been somewhat of a bold move for him at the time. He'd been so terrified of her discovering that he was in love with her that he'd rarely made such direct personal inquiries. That had been a magical little night, though, and somehow he'd been able to be bold.

And that's how the discussion had turned to Cumberland and their Summer school for young artists. She'd desperately wanted to attend the program, which had focused on music composition, and she'd applied for it just a few months before the turn. As part of the process, she'd had to submit recordings of four original songs and the sweet tune that she'd just played so self-assuredly had been one of them. She'd told him that she wasn't very good at songwriting - laughing and saying but you heard that already - and that she hadn't done very much of it. That had been why she'd wanted to attend the program in the first place, but also why she hadn't had any existing pieces to submit to the school when she'd gone to apply. So she'd written that song about the riverbank, and three others, specifically for Cumberland.

He'd been so impressed with that. So impressed with her ambition. As she'd explained the quality of the program and the full extent of the application process - which had included not only the recordings but written works and live auditions as well - he'd realized that he'd never put that much effort into anything in his life. Not in that kind of way. He'd done much harder work - harder in a true, objective sense - but never towards things that hadn't needed to be done. Never towards things that went beyond basic physical or psychological survival. Even his devotion to hunting - which was the closest thing he had as a comparison - had deep roots in personal necessity. He'd never strived for something simply to make himself better. And that had been her ambition: simply to make herself better. To learn more and to gain a skill. She hadn't wanted to be famous. She'd just loved music and she'd wanted to be better at creating her own. And he'd really admired that about her.

And he'd admired her even more when she'd told him, with true conviction and only a hint of regret, that she'd been positive that she wouldn't have gotten in. The end of the world had silenced the selection committee forever, so she'd never know what their final call would had been, but she'd been convinced that they would have rejected her. She'd had very little experience and it had been a highly competitive program and, realistically, she hadn't thought she'd stood much of a chance.

But she'd applied anyway.

She'd written and recorded those four songs. She'd composed her essays. She'd gone to the auditions. She'd done all the work- put all her heart and soul into it - even though she'd been fully expecting it to come to nothing.

He'd been so amazed by that. He'd been so completely amazed by her character. And so completely unable to articulate that to her. He'd had no idea how to tell her what he thought about that story - and certainly no idea how to do it without revealing far more about his feelings for her than he'd been prepared to do - so he'd just asked her to sing the other three songs instead. He'd made a joke, as he so often did when he didn't know what else to do, and said that he was thinking about opening up his own music program Mr. Dixon's Caterwaulin' Academy and that she could be the first to audition.

She'd laughed delightedly at the suggestion, so much so that he'd been worried that she was going to write off his request solely as a joke, but then had proceeded to get all serious: looking him straight in the eye and introducing herself as if she was truly a studious applicant eager to get into his school. She'd gone through a brief little patter about herself and her background and why she wanted to attend his academy and it had all flowed so naturally that he'd known she'd been doing it more or less from memory. That that had probably been almost exactly how she'd presented herself to the Cumberland folks all those years ago. She'd gone on to play two more songs: one about the changing leaves of Fall - which he'd suspected had been symbolic and had held some deeper meaning - and one about a lonely robot who becomes friends with a honeybadger and is lonely no more - which had seemed totally surreal to him at the time but, having seen her childhood drawings, now seemed perfectly fitting. And, just like the first one about the riverbank, they'd both been sweet and simple. They'd clearly been the works of someone new to the craft, and someone who'd probably never be a star, but they'd been good.

They'd been good and they'd been hers and he'd absolutely loved them.

After she'd finished playing the robot song, and thoroughly enjoyed his bemusement over it, she'd told him that she was getting tired and was going to head off to bed. He hadn't been ready for his concert to end yet, though, He'd really wanted to hear the fourth song that she'd written and his desire was strong enough that, somehow, he'd actually managed to vocalize it. He'd actually asked her to play the last song for him before she went to sleep.

Gotta finish the audition, girl.

And, to his surprise, she'd blushed. She'd blushed and she'd said that she'd rather not. He'd been expecting that she might turn him down due to exhaustion, but it had seemed like she'd been demurring out of embarrassment. And that had totally baffled him. He hadn't been able to imagine why she wouldn't want to sing a song for him that she'd performed for strangers. A song that clearly hadn't been too personal or too poor quality or too whatever for the Cumberland people to hear. He hadn't understood it and hadn't been able to stop himself from pressing her for a reason. And she'd just blushed even more and, shaking her head rather emphatically, said that he wouldn't like it. He'd tried to assure her that he would, that he'd liked the other ones, but she'd just laughed nervously and insisted that he wouldn't. Looking at the piano in order to hide from his gaze, she'd told him that it was girly and sappy and that he'd think it was stupid.

I've already got the whole damsel-in-distress thing going with the twisted ankle she'd tried to joke I don't need to make it any worse by singing a silly love song

That joke had hit him like an arrow to the heart. Pained him terribly. (Still pained him terribly.) He'd been so hurt for her, and so angry at himself, because of the kernel of truth behind it. Or the kernel of perceived truth behind it. The fourth song had been a love song and, though that knowledge had actually thrilled him, Beth had thought that he'd make fun of her for it. She'd been afraid that he saw her as too soft - which he'd known had been an insecurity of hers already - and she'd assumed that he'd take a love song as further evidence of her weakness. And that had killed him. It had killed him that she'd thought he'd dismiss her like that. It killed him that she'd thought he'd belittle her for any reason, but it particularly stung him that she'd thought he'd look down on her for something written from her heart. That he'd deride her over a love song. He'd been crazy about her by then and there was really nothing she could have done to earn his ridicule - to earn anything but the most good-natured, the most adoring, of teasing - but, even if there had been, singing a love song that she'd composed would have been the last thing on that list.

As usual, he'd had no way of explaining any of that to her, though. He'd been caught in the same familiar trap: stuck between the words he didn't know how to say and the words he wasn't willing to say. The only thing he'd been able to think of to do that would really show her that he cared, that would be the true act of a friend, would be to let it go entirely. To set aside his interest in hearing the song and not press her to do anything she didn't want to do. As much as he loved watching her blush as a general rule, she clearly hadn't been enjoying it herself in that moment, and so he'd done his best to try to put her back at ease. To laugh it off with her.

But not to agree with her.

Well that's a fuckin' shame. Don't hear a lotta love songs at Mr. Dixon's Caterwaulin' Academy. Woulda livened up the school dance a bit. We mostly play ditties 'bout moonshine and squirrels and, believe it or not, lotta folks don't find that romantic.

At his teasing words, her nervousness had disappeared immediately and she'd laughed again - a true laugh that hadn't been used to disguise embarrassment or concern - and he'd known that for once that night he'd said the right thing. It had been so good to see her comfort, her happiness, return that he'd continued to joke with her as he'd gotten out of the casket and helped her to bed.

On the bright side, our mascot does happen to be a lonely robot and a song 'bout him findin' a friend's got school spirit written all over it. That's a right crowd pleaser there. So, you can be selfish - be the greedy little girl you are - and keep your love song to yourself if you wanna. You still passed the audition. Got a full scholarship to the Academy. Betcha you'll be our valedictorian, too. Play your card rights and I'll getcha one of 'em fancy caps.

That had been the last truly good night of his life.

That had been the last night he'd seen her successfully off to sleep and woken up to her the next day. The next night she'd been abducted and his world had fallen apart. They'd spent the evening together before it did, of course. That evening with the thank you note and what changed your mind? that he replayed and rewrote every day in his head. But that night that she'd played the piano - the night of Cumberland and The Ballad of the Sad Android - had been their last real night together. The last one with a beginning and a middle and an end where they were still together and happy and safe.

And he couldn't believe that he was holding the soundtrack to that night in his hand. That he had a recording of those songs, those wonderful fucking songs, and that he could hear her play them again. That he could see her play them again. Just the thought of seeing her do anything - hearing her sing anything - brought tears to his eyes, but the idea of watching her sing those songs made him practically weep. He was already operating under a heavy cocktail of whiskey, fever, and pain and the introduction of such strong emotions to that mix simply overwhelmed his system. Unable to do anything else, he just held the disc in his good hand and cried for a few solid minutes.

He wanted to watch the DVD right away and almost lost it when he realized that he couldn't. The Greenes had a working generator, but it wasn't running at the moment. He'd been fine with using a lantern for light and hadn't seen a need to use the electricity for anything else. He'd gone without power for years, before and after the turn, and was perfectly comfortable with that as a lifestyle. Until now, of course, when he wanted to scream because he couldn't just put that disc in their DVD player and watch it. And he couldn't just go outside and start the generator, either. It was a relatively simply solution to his devastating problem, but it wasn't simple then. He probably couldn't even drag his ass out there and back and, even if he could, getting the thing running was a two-handed job and he definitely couldn't pull that off. If he hadn't been feeling so ill, or so drunk, maybe he could have maintained a better hold of the happiness he felt from simply having the DVD at all. Could have held onto his wonder at possessing that miracle, despite knowing that his full enjoyment of it had to be postponed. As it was, though, he was overcome by a sense of loss - a sense of having her so close, yet still so completely out of reach - and it gutted him.

He laid his head down on her desk, using his good arm - still clutching the DVD - as a pillow, and let himself have a moment to wallow. Even though he knew the desire was more driven by his emotional pain than anything else, he was in enough physical agony to justify drinking some more and, after a few minutes, he decided to do just that. Raising himself up, he set the disc down and reached for the bottle of whiskey. He took several shots, too upset to feel guilty about his motivations not being purely medicinal, and just stared at the shiny DVD. She was trapped inside that thing. She was trapped inside there and he couldn't get her out. She was right there - right fucking there on the desk - and he couldn't get to her.

Actually, she was right there on the fucking laptop.

The DVD wasn't sitting on the desk, it was sitting on her laptop: a laptop that ran off of a battery and that might actually fucking work. Despite having mentally poured over every inch of her room, he'd honestly never given her laptop any real thought. He'd never owned a computer and had never really regarded them as particularly useful objects. And, since the world ended, they'd lost their value in everyone's eyes. They were just worthless plastic rectangles that decorated people's homes. Incredibly dull sculptures that had once been popular for some inexplicable reason. And that's exactly how he'd seen her laptop - or rather not seen it - until that moment. With those fresh shots of whiskey racing through his veins, though, he finally saw it for what it was.

For what it had been and for what it could be again.

Trying not to get his hopes up, he pulled the laptop towards him and awkwardly opened it. If the computer could have run off of the heat of his gaze, it would have come alive with the glare he gave that power button. His eyes burned a hole in that tiny circle as his hand slowly crept towards it until his finger was within striking distance. Taking a steadying breath and chanting please, please, please in his head, he closed his eyes and pressed the button.

And the machine roared to life.

The sweet mechanical melody broke through the sound of his own mental begging and his eyes snapped open just in time to see the screen flicker on: revealing a glowing image of Beth, Molly, and Stopsign in the back of an old beat-up pickup truck on a some gorgeous, sunny day. Though he didn't have a lot of experience with computers, he knew enough to know that people often used personal photos as their desktop backgrounds and imagined that, objectively, there was probably nothing remarkable about the fact that Beth had chosen one of her and her best friend to be hers. It was probably perfectly understandable - maybe even perfectly predictable - but it seemed completely spectacular all the same. Given everything that had happened, everything that had brought him there, it seemed so significant - so deeply meaningful - that he spent several moments transfixed by it before he remembered to check the computer's charge. Not being that familiar with the machine, it took him a few frustrating attempts to figure out how to do that, but he eventually discovered that he had two hours and four minutes of battery life left on the laptop.

Two hours and four minutes of Beth.

Twenty-four stitches in his hand.

Even though he wanted more time, something about that seemed right. Something about that numerical symmetry warmed his already whiskey-warmed blood. Settled soothingly in his belly. Something about it seemed powerful and, like everything else, meaningful.

His hand was shaking with excitement and inebriated instability and he tried the best to steady his movements as he took the DVD out of the case and put it into the drive. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was scratch the damn thing because he was wreck. He managed to load it into the machine without incident and, fortunately, the computer's video player opened up as soon as it recognized the disc and he didn't have to waste any precious battery life trying to find the program. If he'd had endless power to spare, he'd probably have been frozen by nerves - overwhelmed by too many emotions to actually press play - but he didn't. He had two hours and four minutes and he wasn't going to waste a second of them. So as fast as his fingers could fly, he navigated a mouse for the first time in years and clicked on that little triangle.

That magical little triangle that was going to bring his girl back to life.

And, as soon as the video started playing, the tears that had temporarily ceased once again began to flow. There she was sitting at the family piano downstairs looking sweet and beautiful and radiant. She was wearing a modest, vintage-style dress that made her look like a Fifties housewife in the most endearing way. It was a deep navy blue and one of the few dark items in her closet. He'd appreciated it on the hanger and had imagined that it would have looked gorgeous against her pale skin, but actually seeing it on her put his imagination to shame. It was stunning. And her hair was, too. He'd almost exclusively seen her wear it in a ponytail, but she'd worn it loose that day and it flowed in soft waves down to her mid-back. It was achingly feminine and he adored it. As for her features, the audition had been recorded just a few month before the turn, just a few months before he met her, and she looked just like the young girl he'd known then. She was wearing make-up, though - just a little on her lips and around her eyes - and the effect made her appear a bit older. While she didn't look like the nineteen year-old he'd fallen in love with, he imagined that someone would believe that the Beth in that video had been nineteen. A very youthful-looking nineteen, but nineteen nevertheless. It was a somewhat strange effect: seeing a version of her that he'd seen but never seen. It was strange, but the strangeness was nothing compared to the beauty. The undeniable beauty of her at any age and the undeniable beauty of being able to see her living and breathing again.

As she began to speak, he could hardly make out her words over his sobs, but he didn't have to catch it all to know exactly what she was saying. He'd been right. Her patter to him at the funeral home had been straight from her Cumberland audition.

Hello. My name is Beth Greene and I'm from Senoia, Georgia. I'm sixteen years old and I've been playing the piano for over ten years, but I've only recently started writing my own songs. I want to go to Cumberland because I believe it's the best place for me to learn and grow as an artist and I want to thank you for considering me for your program. I hope you enjoy the performance...

It was sensory overload. Seeing her. Hearing her. Hearing that voice that he'd thought he'd never hear again. That voice that he'd secretly feared that, one day, he'd forget. Hearing that voice saying those same words that they'd said so long ago. So long ago when the same girl, but a very different girl, auditioned for a different academy entirely.

Auditioned for him.

It was sensory overload. It was all too much, but he still wanted more. As she began to play the first song, the presumably symbolic one about Fall leaves, he cursed the computer's poor speaker quality. He should have been happy to be hearing her through a fucking soup can, but he wasn't above being greedy in the moment. He didn't want to hear her precious voice distorted in any way. It seemed like a crime. Not a crime against him, but a crime against her. Her beautiful voice was being assassinated by those speakers and it felt like a sacrilege. In a merciful flash, he received his sonic salvation when he suddenly remembered seeing that pair of earphones the drawer. He grabbed them with a speed his ailing body resented him for and hurriedly plugged them into the outlet. Putting them on, he was instantly overwhelmed by the presence of Beth's voice deep inside his brain. He'd been hoping to hear her more clearly - and he was - but it wasn't the clarity that shook him. It was the intimacy. It was so intimate to have her singing right into his ears. So intimate that he stopped sobbing, stopped crying entirely, as she fully invaded his senses and he fell completely under her spell.

She was inside his head - truly inside his fucking head - and he was gone.

His whole world was her voice and that screen and aliens could have landed on the front porch and he wouldn't have noticed. Or cared.

He was absolutely mesmerized by the lovely girl in the video. The lovely girl and her lovely song. She was so pure and gentle and sweet. Her voice, her face, even her body language, all radiated warmth and kindness. She was taking this audition seriously, but she was still having a joyful time. Finding her happiness in her music. A happiness that could be heard as well as seen and that he fucking defied the Cumberland people not to have been enchanted by. She might have thought that she hadn't stood a chance, but watching her perform, he couldn't see how anyone could have turned her down. She might not have had the greatest talent, but she had a spirit that was magnetic.

And she was just so fucking charming.

She wrapped up the first number and introduced the next piece as a song I wrote for someone I haven't met yet. The title was My Good Fortune and it was her love song. The love song she'd refused to play for him and which he'd always assumed had been written about Jimmy. Or at least about a crush of hers or something. He'd honestly tried really hard not to dwell on the origins of the piece because he knew that it hadn't been written about him and, selfishly, didn't want to think about it being written about someone else. Though it was unfair, the idea of her writing a love song for another man hurt him and, with that introduction, Beth had once again eased his pain. Relieved him of his suffering by revealing that the song was just a work of fiction.

If she had told the committee some story about a real person it was written for - said it was for someone specific like Jimmy or someone enigmatic like the guy I love - it would have eaten him alive. He would have sat there and listened to that song over and over and over again, because he'd never be able to stop listening to her sing anything no matter what it was, but he would have pictured her with someone else every time he did. Pictured her in love with someone else every time he did. In love and happy and delighted by another man. Another man who probably wouldn't have been a man at all. Another man who would have probably been a teenage boy: a fact which would have only sickened his jealousy and made him feel even more pathetic for it.

But Beth was Beth and it seemed that there was nothing that she couldn't manage to make him feel better. Even speaking to him across the space of years, speaking to him through a message in a bottle that had been sealed before she'd even heard the name Daryl Dixon, she'd found a way to soothe his soul. Her love song wasn't about another man who had captured her heart.

It was just a dream.

It was her dream and, as far as origin stories were concerned, that was pretty much his dream come true.

He thought it was his dream come true, anyway. Thought it was the most he could ever hope for. As he sat there and listened to her sweet voice, with its intoxicating blend of fragility and strength, sing the first few verses of her heart's song, he thought it was damn near perfect. Her hypothetical love was a good man who didn't have faith in his own goodness and didn't believe that they'd be good together. Beth spent most of the song trying to convince him that he was special and that their love could be special, too. That it was magical and they were meant to be. He thought it was funny that she'd imagine having to persuade someone to be with her, but - if she had - he was sure she would have succeeded. The song wasn't necessarily great art, but it didn't matter. Any doubts a man might have harbored about loving Beth Greene couldn't have withstood that melody.

He was so enraptured by her tale - so caught up in her sweet, if totally unnecessary, persuasion - that he was absolutely positive he'd misheard the last verse. Positive that the he'd hallucinated it while in some kind of a dream state. He rewound the video and replayed the last few seconds, listening to every word, watching her lips form around every syllable, in stunned disbelief.

You'll bring joy and happiness to the lives of others,
And one lucky day you'll be mine,
Then we'll sing our sweet song to the stars above us,
Seven, twenty-four, sixty-nine

My Good Fortune. She'd called it My Good Fortune because of that fucking fortune cookie. That fortune cookie with that message - you will bring great joy and happiness to the lives of others - and with those numbers - those supposedly lucky numbers that were his birthday. His fucking birthday. That fortune cookie was so incredible, so patently impossible, on its own and had now somehow found a way to make itself even more insane by serving as inspiration for her love song. Her goddamn love song. That fucking fortune cookie had put his birthday in her hands, told her it was lucky, and she'd put it in her love song.

She'd put his birthday in her love song.

The love song that she'd written for a man she hadn't met yet.

How the fuck was he supposed to process that? How the fuck was his mind - a mind swimming with whiskey and fever and pain and grief and jubilation and sheer blinding love - ever supposed to process that? Was he honestly supposed to chalk all that shit up to coincidence? Act like it's just an incredibly unlikely series of events? Or was he supposed to believe that it was fucking fated? Was he seriously supposed to go so far as to believe that Beth wrote him a love song before they'd ever met? Believe that he was her good fortune? Believe that they were the ones who would have been special together? They were the ones with a love that was magical and meant to be?

Because that would be truly delusional, right? That would be literal madness. That would be thoroughly unhinged.

Right?

Beth was halfway through The Ballad of the Sad Android and almost done with her audition by the time he was able to break away from his racing thoughts. Place a temporary halt on all those endless and unanswerable questions about the meaning behind that song and the state of his own sanity. He forced himself to get out of his own head. To let himself out and let Beth back in. Let that voice that still sung so sweetly in his ears fill him completely and push everything else aside.

When the video finally ended, the weight of the silence - the nothingness - that followed was so crushing that he couldn't restart the thing fast enough. And that time, when he watched, he really saw. He really focused. He tried to absorb every little detail of her performance: every move that she made, every word that she spoke or sang. He studied her hands and the way that they danced across the keyboard. He noted the way she smiled dreamily as she delivered certain lines and the way she closed her eyes as she sung others, seemingly lost in the moment. He hung on every word of My Good Fortune, trying desperately to memorize the lyrics so that he could analyze them later and just as desperately not to analyze them then, to stay present and with Beth. To have hers be the only voice in his head.

.Okay, that's it. Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate you giving me your time and considering me for your program. I hope you have a wonderful day.

It seemed so fitting that the last words he'd hear her speak would be well wishes. Well wishes for a group of strangers. It had been an act of common courtesy, but her I hope you have a wonderful day felt anything but common. It felt sincere and kind and warm.

It felt like Beth.

He wanted to watch the video again - wanted to watch it on a constant loop day and night - but he knew he needed to ration his power. Until he got better and could get the generator going, he only had a handful of views left. (And there was a dark part of him that whispered that, if he didn't get better, he wanted to be able to watch that video a few times on his way out.) Despite knowing that, he was still tempted to watch it one last time, but when he saw that he had an hour and twenty-four minutes of battery life left, he knew he had to stop.

That number again.

Twenty-four.

Everything was repeating. Everything was cropping up again. Stopsign and Cumberland. Those last conversations and those songs. That fortune cookie and his birthday and that number. He quickly turned the laptop off and felt like he'd witnessed a death when the machine went silent. When it transformed back into a dull sculpture again: losing all of the beauty and animation that electricity and, far more powerfully, that Beth's presence had brought to it. He was left staring at his own reflection in the laptop's darkened screen and he closed the thing as fast as he could, completely unwilling to look at himself. It was too much reality. He didn't want to see that haggard, tear-streaked face. Didn't want to see that man. That man who was sick and alone and so deeply uncertain. That man who had so many questions about his own fate. About the nature of fate itself and its specific dealings with him. With Beth. With them. With whatever the fuck was going on. That man who had all those questions and fucking looked like it, too. He didn't want to see that man and was grateful when he heard that laptop snap shut.

He took the earphones out and ran his good hand through his sweat-soaked hair, slowing coming back into his body - back into the room - after his temporary escape. And it wasn't a happy return. It was a hard landing and he felt truly awful. His was unsurprisingly still running a fever, probably burning even hotter because of the whiskey, and was especially sore for having held himself in basically the same position for the full forty minutes he'd been staring at that screen. Even though he knew it would be brutal, he forced himself to his feet and stretched his arms high above his head, trying to loosen his cramped muscles and restore his circulation. It seemed like all of his blood filled and then fled from his head at once, though, and he felt dizzy from the rush. He pulled himself back from the brink of fainting, grasping edge of the desk for support.

He needed to lie down.

He needed to lie down but he didn't want to leave Beth's room. He didn't want to go back to his room, and he wasn't quite sure if he could make it there regardless, so he just decided to curl up on her rug instead. He had the fleeting impulse to grab the nightclothes that were still lying on her floor and ball them up and used them as a pillow. But even if he could have brought himself to do something that he would consider mildly creepy - and he probably could have - he couldn't bring himself to disturb that scene. Those clothes were resting right where she'd last stepped out of them and were such vivid evidence of her being alive - really alive and taking action - in that space. He couldn't touch them. So he just took a few steps, gracelessly collapsed on his knees, and maneuvered himself until he was on his back: pillowless but grateful just to be lying down.

He closed his eyes and his mind once again started racing. Racing with all that haggard man's questions. And, as usually happened when he was in her room and lost in his head, he started talking.

"What the fuck are you doin' to me, girl?," he asked her, his words soft and somewhat slurred. "You know that's my birthday, right? I know you didn't know it then. Know you didn't know it when you wrote that and I know I never told you. But you fuckin' know it now, right? Wherever you are. Wherever the fuck it is you are. Where you get to learn all the secrets and work all the magic and control the goddamn universe. It was in that little handbook you got when you took over there, right? Told you old Daryl Dixon's birthday. I know it was. I know it was and I know you know."

"So what are you doin' to me, girl?" he asked her again, bewildered.

"What the fuck am I supposed to do knowin' that's in your love song? 'Cause you fuckin' know I want it to mean somethin'," he admitted freely. "You know I want it to be for me. You fuckin' know that. Just like you know goddamn everythin'. You fuckin' know I want it to be for me. You know I wanna be the man you were singin' 'bout."

"Christ, I woulda loved to have been the man you were singin' 'bout, sweetheart," he repeated, his drunken mind switching gears: moving from his questions about the meaning of song to his sheer appreciation of it. "Woulda wanted to be that man no matter what, but especially with that song. That was a good fuckin' song, girl. Really good and I ain't just sayin' that. Told you I woulda liked it that night and I was right. Shoulda believed me on that one. Shoulda believed me and played it, 'cause it was really good. Woulda loved that…"

Thinking about her playing it for him that night started his mind racing in a whole new direction. He hadn't considered the ramifications of that before and they began to pour out of him now.

"Fuck, girl," he exclaimed in wonder, though in his weakened state the exclamation was barely above a whisper. "What the fuck woulda happened if you'da believed me? What the fuck woulda happened if you'da played that song that night? 'Cause, shit, there's no way I coulda heard you singin' those numbers and not have said somethin'. Not have fuckin' reacted to that. Was a total fuckin' dumbass then, trying to act like I didn't love you. Was a total fuckin' idiot, but there's no way I wouldnt'a mentioned that was my birthday. No fuckin' way. Even if I had fuckin' wanted to. Even if I had done my dumbass best I wouldn'ta been able to keep my mouth shut 'bout that. Woulda been too fuckin' shocked. And you'da seen it all over my damn face. Woulda pestered me 'bout it 'til I told you and I'da fuckin' told you."

"And then what the fuck would you have done, girl?" he mused further, his heart beginning to ache as he slowly grasped the full extent of that missed moment. "What would you have said? Told me you found 'em on a fortune cookie and they were your lucky numbers? Know how crazy I thought that was when I found out. Know how crazy and impossible that all seems to me. So how the fuck would it have seemed to you? You always believed in shit way more than I did. Always thought things meant somethin'. Thought they mattered. Saw meanin' in all kinds of shit. So how the hell would you have seen that?"

He was crying again by that point, understanding the true enormity of that lost conversation. He had no idea what would have happened, but something would have happened. Something would have happened. Something that would have cemented the idea that they belonged together in his mind and that might have even planted the seed of that idea in her mind as well. Something beautiful. Something good. It would have been a special moment that either changed the trajectory of all the other moments to come - maybe even spinning off into a path where she never got taken at all - or simply made their last night together even better. Even sweeter. Even more precious of a burden to carry around in his heart forever.

He grieved that missed opportunity. Mourned that moment that had never taken place. And hated himself because he knew it had been entirely his fault that it had never taken place. If he'd been more honest in his regard for her, in his respect for her, she wouldn't have felt so self-conscious. Wouldn't have feared him judging her. She would have played her song unashamedly and everything would have been different.

But she hadn't - because he hadn't - and he had to live with that now.

Alone.

"What did I do to you, sweetheart?" he asked her, his teary voice heavy with exhaustion and regret. "And what the fuck are you doin' to me?"

...

Beth Greene wasn't doing anything to Daryl Dixon.

Fate might have been working him over pretty good. Or maybe it was that God he didn't believe in. Or just the inescapable fact that improbable things do indeed happen. Coincidences occur. Whatever it was, whoever or whatever was weaving the web he was caught it, it wasn't her.

Because, no matter how strongly he might have felt her presence, Beth Greene wasn't a spirit that watched over Daryl Dixon. She wasn't a benevolent ghost that haunted her childhood bedroom and whispered sweet stories in his ear. She was a living, breathing person that roamed the halls of the hospital that had both saved her life and held her prisoner. She was well enough now that she was, in fact, Nurse Greene - or as close to such a thing as Grady allowed - but she wasn't looking after Daryl Dixon, she was looking after the injured officer in room 514.

It had been nearly nine months since she'd been shot, the length of a pregnancy, and she thought it was fitting that it had taken her that long to feel like a real human again. Her brain injury had been devastating and she'd had to relearn how to do almost everything. Even her memories had been mostly gone at first. She'd woken up, days after the attack, unable to control her movements and barely able to recall her own name. After months of rehabilitation, that period that she now considered her gestation, she'd slowly regained most of her abilities and many of the details of her life had come back to her. She still had major gaps in her memory - black holes of various sizes that dotted her auto-biographical landscape - but she was confident that she knew what mattered. Knew who mattered. She knew her family: both the one she was born to and the one she'd assembled over the years.

And she knew that they thought she was dead.

Which haunted her. Made her feel forgotten and even more trapped in that hospital than she already did. They'd already come and tried to save her once. They'd tried to save her once and they'd left her supposedly dead body behind. Left it in the back of a seemingly abandoned ambulance when walkers swarmed them and they'd had no other choice. No other way of, at the very least, preserving her body and keeping her from being pulled apart. She knew that because it had been witnessed by officers and orderlies alike from five stories above: some of the same people who were later shocked to find her still alive when they came to use the ambulance the next morning. She knew that and she knew that it only meant one thing.

No one was coming to save her again.

If she wanted to get out of there, and she did, she was going to have to do it on her own. But she wasn't ready yet. In a bond that neither of them would have wanted to share, she too had problems with the grip in her left hand. And the whole left side of her body in general tired far easier than the right. She was still dragging her leg behind her by mid-day and that was just from the mild effort of making rounds at the hospital. She wasn't ready to be out there yet, but she would be soon. She was fully human now and she was getting better everyday. In a few months, she'd be able to break out of that place. In a few months, she'd be strong enough to do it. And when she did, she knew exactly where she was headed. The only place she wanted to be and the only place she thought she had any hope at all of finding the family that had long since written her off for dead.

As soon as she could manage it, Beth Greene was going home.


WARNING: EPIC AUTHOR'S NOTE

Yes! She's alive! She's alive and I feel so conflicted about telling you that. And about not telling you that. This whole thing's been a really demonstration of the perils of being a first time writer (and not planning ahead.)

When I first decided to extend this from a one-shot into a longer story, I had it in my mind that Beth was well and truly dead. I wanted to do a piece that explored Daryl's grief and dealt with the reality that we were given by TWD, because I hadn't really seen that done at length before and I thought it would be interesting.

Well, as you all know, there's a reason that most writers don't explore that avenue: because it's sad as fuck. I tried my best to come up with ways for Daryl to truly heal and move on - because I do think that, in real life, that's possible - but I'm just not good enough of a writer to make that happen. The only way I could make him happy was to bring Beth back and I really wanted to make him happy. (I have enough real people in my life that I let down, I don't need to create people to disappoint!)

So, I decided she had to be alive. But, since we're seeing this from Daryl's POV, I assumed that her survival should be revealed to the reader at the same time it was revealed to him. And I operated under that assumption for several chapters before I realized that that was probably one of the reasons why everyone was bailing. Like Daryl, they believed Beth was dead and, like me, they couldn't see a way for that story to have a happy ending. Didn't wanted to invest in something that was such a downer. So, I wanted you all to know that she was alive and this chapter felt like the right place to do that (since it leaned really heavily on the idea of her being a spectral force.)

And now I'm totally worried about that.

I worry that some of you will be disappointed that I've opted to take that somewhat cliched route and will wish this had stayed a more believable piece. And I worry that those of you who are happy Beth's alive are just going to want me to cut to the chase and get to the reunion already. Which isn't going to happen. She's still got some recovery ahead of her before she can make a break for it (surviving that bullet wound is pretty ludicrous to begin with, so I gotta make it a little realistic by at least having her struggle with it a bit!) And Daryl still has some things he needs to go through on the farm. Discoveries he needs to make. And I worry that all of the emotion of that journey will be completely undercut by the fact that you now know that Beth's alive. I find it hard to believe that you'll be as moved by his experiences now that you know that his grief will end.

Ah!

Should I have told you sooner? Should I not have told you at all? (Don't answer that! It's too late now.) I really feel like I fucked up this aspect of the story, but as I said earlier, I've never done this before and it's kind of just grown like its own gnarly weed. Doing its own thing.

Oh well.

Thanks for reading my gnarly little weed (and my ridiculously long explanation of it)! Hope you're not too disappointed and that I see some of you again for Chapter 8! Have a wonderful week! :)