Author's Note: My greatest fear is that people will become bored. What are your thoughts so far?

Paint the Silence

Chapter Nine

"You have to take her," Daryl told Rick, standing out on the front porch of the house they had become to call home, as fucked up as it was. Thinking they could actually find a place where their days wouldn't be just surviving.

He felt defeated in every sense of the word.

Rick was looking out to into the tree line, the river that was beginning to unthaw and flow again behind the house – the expansion of woods behind them. The half ass holes they had dug and covered up to help with keeping walkers out – the half constructed fence that he had been working on before the winter hit.

Everything about Rick was off.

"I will." Rick sighed, defeated. The woman who had curled up into a ball at the end of their couch deserved anything but going back there, though Daryl wasn't sure how else to handle this situation. How else to keep these so called Saviors away. Away from Beth. "You're not coming."

It wasn't a question per say, it was more of a statement. A fact that had been figured out.

Daryl didn't say anything to that, he didn't know what to say. He had been loyal to Rick since the beginning of this – he had stuck with the man even after he had handcuffed his brother to that damn rooftop. Rick had never let him down, had never wavered his trust. They'd been through so much together – since the very beginning.

But he wasn't going with him, and that meant that somewhere along the lines, his priorities had changed.

Rick may need him, but Beth needed him more.

He needed Beth.

"You an' Beth?" Rick asked, finally looking back to him, his eyes travelling up and down his body. He felt self-conscious all off a sudden, thinking about what Rick would tell the others. How they would react, what would they say now that they weren't joining back with the group again? Searching for their family had been their main concern, until it wasn't anymore.

They weren't walking back into the battle zone, they were done with the fighting – the need for more.

"Nah," Daryl shook his head, trying but failing to keep eye contact with the man that he was realizing he didn't know anymore. "Ain't like that."

Rick nodded faintly, though his eyes didn't seem like they were there with him. They looked so far off, so dark that they once again were engulfed by silence. It was quiet for so long that when the man who he used to consider his leader, his brother spoke up, he hardly heard him.

"Here." Rick passed him a crumpled frayed paper, and when Daryl looked at the map that had safe routes marked in green and routes where there had been trouble marked in red, he didn't know what to say. "Stay as far east as you can. I'll take care of Negan."

When they were readying for Rick to hit the road, leaving the house on the cul-de-sac, Rick promised the woman a safe place back in Alexandria. There were walls and there was a community of people trying to rebuild what used to be. She was hesitant, she was scared and she had turned to Beth with pleading eyes.

"You can trust him," Beth whispered, putting a tentative hand on the shaking woman's shoulder, who she had suited up in a fresh pair of warmer clothes curtesy of the woman who had lived here previously. "Rick is a good man. He's going to do as he says."

And she had nodded back at her, because the woman really had no choice. She couldn't stay here, and though there was strength in numbers, Beth and Daryl had decided that they were going to go at this alone. No one, besides their family now, knew of their existence. They were free to pick up and start over, where Rick and this woman had fights yet to battle.

Beth pulled Rick in close to her, and though he returned the embrace, Beth could tell he was stiff and rigid with grief and nerves. She didn't let herself dwell, however, before she handed over a piece of paper that she had tied up with a bit of purple ribbon she had found in long forgotten Christmas decoration boxes.

"Would you give this to Maggie?" Beth asked, standing back and watching as Rick rolled the hand written letter around his hands. "And… and please tell her that I'm sorry?"

Rick nodded, and embraced Daryl quickly before they were off.

"What do we do now?" Beth asked, feeling a little out of place in the house that they had become to know as home. It didn't have electricity like Rick said Alexandria had, it didn't have running water or a propane stove.

They had found candles, kerosene lamps. They'd scavenged food and lived off the land the best they could, with the winter still hanging on for dear life. They'd brought back cast iron pans they used over the fire, they had a bathtub that still drained properly, and they went on trips to neighboring houses to bring back whatever would be useful to them.

Never had they had had so much – not since the prison.

The tears pricked her eyes as Jade nudged her way in between the both of her feet, nuzzling her head along Beth's shins. "Where do we go?"

Daryl watched on, watched on silently as Beth began to break down; began to grieve for the home that they had come to love. The home that they didn't think they'd have to leave so soon – not when everything had been going so great.

And he caught her, thankfully, when she teetered into him. "Daryl?"

But he didn't know how to respond.

It was two days later when he was looking around for one last time.

They'd repacked their old backpacks, of which they kept packed with essentials regardless to be on the safe side, and Beth had packed a third smaller bag that she had found in the linen closet for Jade. There was no way that they were able to keep everything they had collected – no way that they could lug around everything that had been useful to them on their backs.

Daryl knew that they were already pushing it when it came to travelling heavy, and he didn't want to risk anymore weight on their backs in case they had to run. Which would happen at some point, he was sure of it. There was no way to be out there without it.

It being fighting, scavenging, surviving, running. The list went on and on.

Beth was fretting, and although she hadn't said much about it, he could tell. The way she was fluttering around, probably checking the three bags for the twentieth time was even setting him on edge now. Neither of them wanted to do this, and found it ridiculously heartbreaking that the world had continued on while they had been living here.

They had been so convinced that it was over – that they had finally found a place to just be. That maybe it hurt knowing the world hadn't stopped for them, more than leaving this random house.

He strapped on his backpack, strung the cats pack on his belt and grabbed his crossbow, throwing that over his shoulder too. He walked over to the china cabinet, where they had started to keep their collection of weapons, and filled each pocket. There was no way that he was leaving any of that behind, and even decided that he was going to take the axe.

"A'ight." He breathed, glancing around one last time. He grabbed an extra blanket too, because if he knew her as well as he thought he did, she would definitely need it by nightfall. "You ready?"

Beth came out of the kitchen, her own backpack now strapped onto her, the size of the pack seeming to swallow her small frame. Strapped onto her front was a baby carrier, and Daryl was anxious to see how this was all going to unravel.

There was no way in hell that Beth was leaving that cat behind, and he had searched almost twenty houses in the small town before he had found what she had sent him out to look for. Of course, she had asked him to cut a small tail hole in the bottom, but he tried to push thoughts of Judith away all the same.

"Okay," she breathed, her hands trembling slightly. "Let's get Jade in, see how this is going to go."

The cat was in no means pleased that it was being strapped into a baby carrier, and Daryl felt the stinging on his hands and arms from the claws it had bared. Though when Beth began a tune, the cat was looking up at her and it seemed like all was forgotten as it quieted, settled down into what would be the safest way possible.

Now the violence sleeps inside
Abandoned feelin' for just a piece of mind
Paint the silence
It's the reason why your teethin' side irates me
Paint the silence

They were on the road for what he figured was close to an hour, before she spoke up.

"So, what's the plan?" She asked, because she hadn't been concerned about that for the last two days. She had been preoccupied with preparing them to leave, in making it look like no one had lived there throughout the winter.

The cat had long ago accepted that they were starting on a journey, and started to lazily lick at its paws as if this was just some sort of vacation that they were on. Beth rubbed its head every so often as to assure it, and Daryl still couldn't believe the affect the petite woman had on everyone and everything.

"Going to try an' find a car to get running," he explained, the sun overhead beating down hotter than he had expected. Spring was on its way, and that meant that there would be more traffic – walkers and humans alike. "Rick said to stay east."

And he didn't really have anything else to go by, other than that.

"I think we should look for a cottage," Beth revealed, her voice nothing but a whisper as she paused to allow him take out a walker that had started to amble behind them. The cat had a minor freak out at the sight, but it wasn't anything that Beth couldn't soothe. "Like the moonshine shack. Away from everything else."

He nodded, because he'd been thinking along the same lines.

They walked for five days, camping out in whatever shelter they could find come dark.

The snow that had been seeming to melt back at the cul-de-sac house was back with vengeance, the further north they travelled. He was staying far east, trying to direct them in what he imagined would be a diagonal path.

It was cold, and Beth had the extra blanket he had thought to grab wrapped around both her and the cat that had by now accepted the carrier, who sat patiently with super alert eyes. The cat was actually a great tool in surviving – it seemed like the cat was always much more aware of pending danger than her human counterparts were.

The cats ears would stick to its head, and its back would curl as much as the carrier would allow it – probably one to two minutes before a walker would stumble out, ambling after them. It always took Beth a moment to calm the cat down again before they continued on, but Daryl wasn't complaining.

About a day ago, the air had changed. Daryl had picked up on it, the further east they were travelling. He was trying to keep track of the state they were in – if he even dared to call them states anymore – but it was hard due to the fact that most of their travelling was within the trees. They stayed far away from popular highways, sticking to walking a little ways in, following older and much less travelled roads. Following Rick's map, trusting him fully and completely.

The only thing he desperately wanted to do was outskirt Washington, where Rick had crossed a huge red 'X' through, though he knew that it was almost impossible if they were going to continue on their journey east. Yet he didn't dare venture any further west, trying to push the thought of Glenn's death from his mind.

There was no way in hell that he was letting anything of the sort happen to Beth.

Right now they were travelling on the outskirts of the Mt Vernon Trail, and when they came to a clearing, it was clear to see why the air had changed.

"Wow," Beth breathed as she quietly crashed out of the trees behind him, taking in the expanse of the view that laid out in front of them. The water was blue, so blue that it was sparkling. It was beautiful, breath taking. "I've never seen the ocean before."

And that had Daryl reeling because neither had he.

Never been out of Georgia.

He wasn't familiar with the landscape here, he wasn't familiar with any of it. The only thing that he was going by was that there most likely wasn't any housing on an old running trail, and that if they found something around here, that they would take it.

He'd had to take out a few roaming walkers that had the remains of bicycle helmets, but other than that it seemed pretty desolate. They hadn't seen anyone or heard any kind of human life on this journey as of yet, and they were both thankful for that.

Beth gasped audibly. "Daryl, look!"

And look he did.

TBC

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