*See Author Note At The End* Thanks.

"God knows we're all drawn to what's beautiful and broken."
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

Beth's POV

"1, 2, 3" She could hear Maggie's voice singsong

"Shhh hush little girl, don't scream"...

In her dark haunted dreams she saw the face of a man, with blond hair and ken doll face, the sweet voice was inviting her to stay quiet and she felt shivers running down her spine as the voice lodged itself deep inside her mind, repeating over and over the same phrase.

The face, Beth notice was morphing itself into something else, a man she no longer recognize. The little girl inside the dream couldn't exactly pinpoint what was it about the face, but she was no longer afraid, on a subconscious lever she knew that something was odd, the first face was somehow changing, this was not her beautiful stranger.

She tried to look harder, but as it often happens with puzzles, she couldn't put the pieces together in her mind to recognize the image, this new face that was taking form before her eyes was someone she was familiar with, a person she knew. Where there had been perfectly combed blond hair before, a type of messy shaggy brown color was taking its place, there was none of the soft and sweet baby face but instead, in its place; there was a hard complexion that marked a chiseled jaw and a frown brow. The foreign lips of the man were moving, his lips were forming words, calling her name; but she couldn't hear anything at all, everything was on mute. She was trapped inside her mind, she saw herself from afar, almost as if it was another surreal world. She saw the man's face and it almost looked as if he was pleading her to do something.

For a second time, the face blurred, and in its place she saw the blond again, the beautiful blond with the lovely ken doll face, and he was opening his arms, inviting her to stay, to give him hugs; maybe if she dared, a kiss or more than one. This time she was not afraid, but there was something off about the sight, the vision keep blurring itself, it was as if her mind was TV or a cellphone with a bad reception and couldn't hold one signal or the other. The little girl couldn't quite understand what the blond was saying but like the other face, his lips were mouthing words and his face was gentle and a kind smile adorned his face, in contrast to the fire and vicious look she could recognize in his eyes.

James, her ken doll; was holding his hand out for her, but as faintly as a whisper she could hear in the background her name being called by another person. Beth looked at his hand which he was offering and reach out in order to touch him, she smile and his eyes glint maliciously. She felt herself being shaken up and the vision was once again blurring itself, the man desperate stared looking at his surrounding wildly "Take my hand, sweetheart" he coed his face no longer kind and frowning, his words perfectly clear and demanding.

"I can't" she said in a whisper, her eyes watering as her little hand tried to reach his more bigger one but something, someone was pulling her away.

"Try harder" he shout at the little girl as the vision disappear.

And suddenly she felt someone pulling her up and embracing her, a soft voice was saying her name over and over like a mantra and asking her to stay. The voice resemble a lullaby and she couldn't explain it, but for the second time in a fucked up world and in a short amount of time after having lost everything, she felt safe.

She looked up trying to find the source of the lovely voice saying her name and in its place she saw Daryl's Dixon face talking to her, and then everything when black.

Daryl's POV

Beth was having a nightmare, of that he was sure after changing her bandages and giving her another dose of vitamins and pills she was having a restless sleep. She kept trashing in his arms and his heart beat a bit faster every time, expecting the worst, he would only hugged her harder unable to do anything else and dreading the fact that he might have to use the weapon in his hand he kept clutching harder.

Daryl remembered almost with a hazy mind when he was small child and he used to have a lot of nightmares, mostly kids' stuff, like being afraid of the dark and of the monsters underneath the bed. He would wake up screaming drenched in sweat only to be slapped and beaten by his drunken father for being weak. He would go to bed at night wishing, and sometimes even praying that he wouldn't have a nightmare, most nights he wouldn't sleep at all, developing in time, a sort of insomnia, at least for a while.

He learned to master many things over the curse of his life, how to handle pain, how to inflict pain, defend himself and hide his emotions and most important to never be afraid. Nevertheless here was one thing he could never overcome, the nightmares that came with memories of the beatings his father inflicted upon him. Try as hard as he might, the memories where lodged so deep inside his mind that the most simple of things could trigger them. As such, from an early age he learned not to be afraid of any monster in the dark but rather of the monster that lived in his house.

Daryl snapped out of his memories just in time to hear the loud moaning and feel the wild trashing of the girl on top of him. He could also hear the moaning and snarling of the walkers that where probably already surrounding the car smelling Beth's blood. The noises that the girl was making were attracting more of them and soon enough they could be trapped and he be dammed but after all the fighting and killing he would not die on the trunk of an old car in God knows what place.

With that thought in his mind he did the only thing he saw fit, he tried to wake her up by calling her name, as first he though it didn't worked so, he tried again and again until he saw that for a small fraction of a second she opened her eyes. Daryl took the opportunity to call her name again but this time harder but only response he had was her eyes rolled to the back of her head and her body slumping against him accompanied by the heartfelt notion that she was gone again. He kept trying for a long time and after a while he stared shaking her, because in his mind he knew, he knew that he was somehow losing her and he couldn't bear to lose her too, not after everything that had happen.

He saw her eyes open, unfocused and dazed and as much as he tried she didn't seem to hear him so he hugged her and said her name, begging her to stay. After a few minutes of that, he felt her body tense and then relax, he felt more that saw her face looking at him and her arms holding his arms hard and the she stopped trashing and when to sleep soundlessly again.

He breathed out the air he didn't know he was holding and he relaxed with his body against her. Because she was alive at least for a while more. He didn't knew when it happened but after a while he grew tired, so damn exhausted and his eyes closed of their own volition.

Beth POV

Beth's body felt a bit sore, but there was none of the pain she had felt before she collapsed on the forest. The first thing she became aware of, was the feeling of something equally hard and soft underneath her body. Her eyes tried without much success to asses her surroundings. As she tried to move, strong hands moved down her arms and towards her back in order to pin her down. She ventured her head upwards and saw a male face profoundly asleep with a frown she was familiar with and that happened to belong to Daryl Dixon.

She tried to pry his arms away from herself by raising herself from the awkward and uncomfortable position on top of his body but as she did so her head collide hard with a rooftop of some sort making a loud noise and awaking her companion. She feel something cold and pointy in her neck as she try hard to blink the tears that came to her eyes from the blinding pain inside her head.

"Beth…" the voice of Daryl sounded deep and husky.

"Yes?" she said with her eyes closed while trying to control the loud pounding inside her head.

"We need to kill those things outside if we want to get the hell out of here and I am going to need your help". He said while removing the sharp pointy knife from her neck.

"I need a minute Daryl" she said calmly while opening her eyes and looking at his face.

"We don't have a minute you idiotic girl" he said exasperated.

"What are you…" she stared to said but shut up and concentrate hard in assessing her surroundings and figuring out that they were inside the trunk of car and that said car was moving from side to side almost as if an earthquake was happening.

"You see now?" Daryl said while raising an eyebrow.

She opened her mouth to say something but thought of it better and shiver went down her spine as she heard the snarling and grunting of the walkers.

"What are we going to do?" she asked in a whisper as she felt her face go pale and her chest fill with fear.

"We, as in you and I, are not doing anything, I, as in by myself am going to get us out of here and then we need to move, fast" He said in a voice that leaved no room for options or suggestions.

"How are we…" she stared but then paused and moved her head from side to side in order to clear her thoughts and stared again. "I mean, how are you, going to get us out of here?" she asked sassily. Beth was in no mood to start a fight after he had saved her life, one too many times at that but she couldn't help but wonder what he would do. And second, who did he think he was implying that she was useless in terms of fighting or helping him getting them out of the trunk.

Daryl looked at her once and sigh loudly "I will kill them one by one." He said not taking his eyes off her.

"You can't do that." she stated not really believing him because truth be told there were too many of those things if the noise they were making and the movement of the car was any indication.

"Can't I?" he asked a hint of a small side smile on his mouth.

Daryl didn't let her reply, instead he quickly put his hands on her thighs and she took an intake of breath, due to the surprise. He paused and looked at her frowning while quickly resuming his actions.

"I am sorry" he said looking at her not in the least bit apologetic.

At first Beth didn't understand what he meant, but as she felt his hands going to the upper part of her body did she realized he was apologizing in advance, for what he was going to do to her. Surprisingly enough, Beth was not afraid, in fact she shuddered while looking straight at his face as he moved his hands in her stomach not saying anything. Daryl was looking at her face with a mixture of curiosity and some other emotion she couldn't identify, almost as if reading her body response to him touching her that way. She felt more than saw as he ripped her bandage from her wound and she was almost disappointed when he removed his hands from her. He looked at her with a raised eyebrow and a curious expression but didn't comment.

"Don't say a word" he said in a whisper while he moved both of his hands to the trunk of the car in order to open it from inside. He quickly hold the trunk with both his hands as he put the soaked bandage with blood on the small opening. Beth felt the walkers smelling the item and snarling and grunting as they moved the car even harder than before.

"That's right motherfuckers, smell it and come to me, sick fucks" he shout as if to draw more attention to themselves.

"Daryl I don't think…" she begun but closed her mouth as she saw the deadly look that crossed his face.

He was in the process of sticking a big knife that she didn't saw him take out and plunging it through the opening and killing as he said one by one the walkers that surround them. It took them almost three hours she estimated, to get rid of all the walkers. All Beth knew was that it was already mid-day and she could felt her sweat and Daryl's combine as the exertion to hold the trunk and kill the walkers was taking its toll on him. She could feel his irregular breathing and his arms tense and his muscles flexed and contract as the adrenaline pumped through his body.

Her body was so close to his that almost involuntary she felt a tingly sensation in the pit of her stomach that she couldn't understand. He had his eyes close and his hands by his side but all she could feel was his muscular body underneath hers. Suddenly he opened his eyes and looked at her with the same curiosity as when he was ripping the bandage from her. Daryl's blue eyes were studying her and the trunk was much too small all of a sudden, she felt crowded and embarrassed and she could feel her cheeks blush but she couldn't exactly understand why. A look of concern passed through his face and it was suddenly replaced by determination.

"Don't worry, it's all good; I will fix it" he said in quiet voice.

"What?" she said clearly confused, he had already fix the situation, and there were no walkers she could hear.

"You are bleeding kid" he said in a dark amused voice.

As soon as he said it, she looked down at herself and notice that she was wearing only a bra and the bandage he ripped was hiding a nasty looking cut and the open wound was pouring blood. She hear herself give an intake of breath and glance at him again with a frown.

"Like I say, I will fix it as soon as you decide you are good enough to stand the fuck up" he said in an overly amuse voice that held no laughter in it.

"Yeah well, it's kind of difficult isn't it, with your hand holding the trunk" she replied in a exasperate tone of voice.

He raise one eyebrow in a disbelieving manner and opened the trunk of the car. The first thing Beth notice was about ten or so bodies of dead walkers on the floor. The where piled in front of the car and she had to maneuver and kick at them in order to get out of the car. Daryl was soon behind her stretching his arms and moving his neck from side to side wincing as several cracks came from his body.

"Are you Okay?" she asked while looking at him.

"Yes" he said while looking at her weirdly.

"Oh" she said awkwardly as he turned his back on her to look for some stuff on the car. He turned around with a bottle of something and some bandages and pills in his hands.

"Come here" he said quickly while signaling with his head to the car.

She moved back to him again and sat on the side of the trunk as he quickly inspected the wound with a frown.

"I can barely feel it, maybe it looks worse than it is" she said trying to act cool and collected, because truth be told she barely felt the wound.

"It could be infected" he said casually as if talking about the weather and not about my potential death, due to a nasty infection in a world where there were barely doctors and much less medicine.

"You don't have to be a jerk about it you know" she said with a frown while crossing her arms in front of her stomach and wincing due to the pain of the wound.

"I am merely stating a fact kid" he said while diverting his eyes to her chest momentarily and then to her face with a side smile.

"Of course you are" she muttered in a whisper.

Beth was sure that he heard but maybe he was too busy cleaning her wound to care because he didn't answer and quickly put another bandage on her while looking her up and down again making her feel self-conscious.

"We need to get you a shirt" he commented casually while diverting his eyes to look far ahead on the road.

"Well, lead the way" She said as she tried to keep the blush from her face.

Daryl looked at her for a second time and stared walking towards the city that could potentially be their new home.

Daryl's POV

His morning has been very shitty so far. He had already kill more than a dozen walkers in between the ones that were surrounding the car and a couple of others while walking towards the town. The girl he was with, was suddenly acting strange towards him and for his life he didn't even want to think about what was going through her mind when she looked at him as if trying to see deep inside his soul. He was also worried because they didn't have a place to stay or anything to eat and it was already mid-day, meaning that they needed to hurry the fuck up if they wanted to survive the day.

Daryl was anxious because night time was almost there and they truly needed shelter if they wanted to have any real chance of surviving the night. Yesterday, when he came into the small town he didn't have as much time and calmness as he did now, but he did however pinpoint a building small enough that they could clean of walkers but at the same time taller than the rest of the buildings so that they could keep watch. As luck would have it, conveniently, its front faced the only entrance of the road that leaded to the small town. It was a good vantage point and could be used to keep guard and identify unwanted company.

He looked around for the building, his mind trying to conjure images of it, but the memories came back hazy. Beth walked silently next to him unware of his conflicting thoughts and internal battles. She hasn't so much as said a word to him on their way to the town and every time he looked at her she seemed to be on trance of some sort, lost inside her mind or rather in a way trapped.

The state of mind she was in, only serve to remind him of what he has lost in the fire, in the place he used to call home. The screams of the people he had cared about, the bodies running around, the attacks, the bombing, the smoke; everything. He tried to look inside the prison for Matt, in fact, for everyone, but the fire was blazing in all its glory and he couldn't for his life get pass it without dying in the process. It was unfair this sick twisted game that fate played on him. One day he had everything he once loved, and the other; it was ripped away in the cruelest way. There was a pain inside his chest that couldn't be explained in words, what he felt was a void inside his heart. He would forever be haunted by the images of those he had come to protect and care about dying and especially that of himself unable to do anything about it.

"We need to find food" he said in a feeble attempt to distract himself form the thoughts that haunted him and clearing his head of the heat of the day. He felt the nausea in his stomach from the lack of food and he couldn't for his life figure out, how the girl hasn't once complain about it.

She merely look at him but didn't say anything, she seemed to be far away her eyes looked at him but didn't really saw; he figure she had to be anywhere but there with him. She blinked once and nodded mutely. He couldn't understand how she could be so emotionally unstable. One minute she was sassing him with cheeky comments and talking back at him and the rest of the time she quiet, lost and somehow gone entirely from herself. It was as if her body was a vessel and during periods of time her soul would wander away from her eyes. Daryl knew that there was something really wrong about her, that she felt more than what she let on, that demons haunted her nights and that she was never at peace; but he couldn't bring himself to ask or even to care. It wasn't that he was a cold bastard or a heartless motherfucker but that was the way his father had raised him, no questions asked and no emotions felt. If someone was weak enough to never overcome their fears it wasn't his problem, he had issues of his own.

He realized with a start that they were past the limits of the town and rather deep inside it, and for a second his heart stopped in his chest as he was overcome with a cold dread. Unaware of his actions and lost in thought he has passed the building that they were supposed to make their home and found himself instead, standing in front of a line of burned corpses, more specifically hundreds of corpses and to be quite frank it was a sight. He had seen many horrible things in his life but this was altogether different, hell, he was sure this was a sight he would never forget. The corpses where perfectly aligned and in order of ages, some of the heads where actually moving and the flesh of some of them was still in the body, rotten and not completely burned. There were smaller frames too meaning that some of the corpses were children. The place smelled of death, decay and something altogether disgusting. But the smell was nothing compare to the creepy words on the walls.

On one of the brick walls, in a bright red were the words "WE ARE DOING GOD'S WORK" in a suspicious blood like red color underneath the statue of a Jesus Christ. Bible verses were painted on almost every wall and a symbol of a cross underneath every single message. A priest was on the floor with a gun in one arm and in the other a bible, he had a shot to his head and someone has carved a cross on his forehead. On those burned corpses visible, there was a noticeable cross carved in their foreheads.

He swallow the bile taste that came to his mouth and prepared to turn around and look for the building and get the hell away from that place quickly, because he was suddenly anxious and aware of the twilight as the sun was almost gone. Suddenly he heard a loud clank follow by hard breathing.

"What the fuck are you doing?" he spoke harshly to the girl currently trying to rip a pole from a piece of metal on the floor.

"What does it look like?" she answered completely hysterical. She didn't look at him as she spotted a hatch on top of the head of a walker on the floor and quickly moved to grab it diverting her attention from the pole when Daryl intercept it and quickly made a move to hold her arm.

"We. Are. Leaving." he said slowly as if punctuating every word making sure she clearly understood that there was no questioning his statement.

"No, we are not" she said equally harsh as she looked at him with a look of defiance, while struggling to get out of his grasp.

"Yes, we are, what the hell is wrong with you? What could you possibly try to do?" he asked knowing the answer to his question but wishing that she would state her intentions out loud in order to further reason with her and see the madness behind her actions.

"Killing them" she simply said as if it was the most normal thing on the world.

"What?" he said baffled. He couldn't believe she was actually saying that they should kill more than a hundred walkers that couldn't even move? Fuck no. He didn't fucking think so.

"You heard me. This people, this children, deserved better; and they are not animals" she said looking fiercely at him.

"Listen to me, it is almost night time, I will be damn if I let you do this madness" he said in a low voice fearing the attention that they were drawing to themselves. Two stray walkers were already coming their way.

"Let me? Who do you think you are?" she said in an overly calm voice looking straight at him.

"Listen to me kid, these people are dead, and it's over for them. Do you think someone would care if it was you in their place? We need to go find food right know, so stop with the bitching and move the hell up" he answered equally calmed while looking sideways for potential attacks from walkers.

"I would want to" she said in a whisper her head looking at the floor.

"What?" he asked confused.

"I would want someone to care, like I do" she said with tears in her eyes.

"Al' right, we will do this, but not today, these walkers aren't going anywhere and neither are we, we can do it tomorrow calmly yeah? He said finally giving in.

Because for a second he could clearly see her, beyond her smiles, doe eyes and good girl act, this women, this beautiful lovely creature, was broken in ways he couldn't even begin to imagine, not just by humanity but by the world, even before it came to be just as it is.

A/N:

Hi! I know I been a bit lost, but great news; I AM BACK, for good. Let me begin, with good news, I have all the story plots figure out (*in my mind), I just don't have enough time to sit down and write it all down and it's really hard; because I try; but between college and my job it's almost always impossible. For a while, I even though about not writing the story anymore, for many reasons that are not really important at this point. But as I have said before I believe that when we write, we leave pieces of ourselves in our words and it's that personal. So I keep my promise to you guys that I would never leave a story unfinished and I will try my hardest to update often. And because creativity works in a weird way I will be staring a new story with Jessie & Rick (I will let you guys know as soon as it is uploaded) as main characters so if you like you can go ahead and read it. Also because I know it's been a while I will be updating again before Friday with another chapter that I have almost done for this story, along with the J&R story I mention before. I will be changing the name of this story to PARADOX because I think it fits the plot more accurately.

Comments:

Did you guys notice how in Beth's nightmare James's face morphed into Daryl's? *Spoiler alert for next chapter*. I will be exploring Beth's mind and childhood.

Things are getting a bit hot between Daryl and Beth right? *Smirks* *Spoiler alert*

It might seem as a filler chapter, but believe me it is not. The plot it's beginning to take form and things are about to take a drastic turn so believe me when I say it will get DARK from here on, so I suggest if you can't handle it, do not read it *Creepy burned bodies scene* *Spoilers*

Thanks for everything but mostly for giving this story a shot. Please write to me, because I enjoy taking to you guys and getting to know you. Review/Favorite/Follow, it means the world to me. And drop me a line or two. ;) Thanks babes xoxo besos ~ RomanticForever77