Hello, my loves! I'm so sorry to those who read the first version of this chappie I posted. I didn't mean to post that version and so I took it down. I've been in a rut lately and it's been hard to continue this story but I refuse to give up! :D

XOXO,

OceansAria :)

"How are you alive?"

She had been in the community garden a good amount of the day digging up weeds. It was quiet, she was left to her own devices, and no one was constantly side-eyeing her like she was the village weirdo.

Now he was here. Now he was looking at her with narrowed eyes and a pursed mouth, and she knew that it wasn't scorn in the twist of his lips but fear. Concern. Curiosity.

She could tell he'd been itching to ask this question for days. For the entire week she'd been staying under Rick's roof, sleeping in Daryl's bed, wearing Michonne's clothes. For the entire week she'd been eating their food and hiding from Maggie and acting like things were somewhat normal—Daryl had been staring at her with this question in his keen eyes just waiting for her to get the guts up to answer.

Instead of speaking, instead of giving him that long-winded pain in the ass answer, Beth dusted her good hand off on her jeans and took one of his, pressed the fingertips of either one to the scar on her temple and then area at the back of her head where hair was never going to grow again.

Instead of telling him about the four hour long surgery to save her life, or about waking up with hardly a single memory of who she had been before that bullet, Beth took him on the shortcut. She used the word that the doctor and the officers had used over and over, like a mantra. Repeating it whenever her questions went beyond their reach, whenever she wouldn't shut up about who she could've been before.

"Miracle, I guess."

"I found somethin' for ya."

Beth glanced up. It was early morning on her sixth day in Alexandria and she was trying to get dressed - which wasn't easy with only one good hand. Just getting her bra hooked right was a five-minute process, if that.

She was startled (and a little suspicious) to find Daryl standing in her doorway. Or his doorway, if you put it technically. She was still using his room and he was camping out with Carl, since Michonne and Rick shared the big master bedroom at the end of the hall.

"What is it?" she asked.

He seemed hesitant to move further into the room, but he did. He walked over to her and stuck out his hand.

"Got it from the hospital."

"Grady?" gasped Beth. "You were there?"

Daryl's eyebrows scrunched, but his expression cleared just as fast as it had stormed. "Yeah. Went for you."

Beth caught the meaning slowly. "Oh." He'd come to save her. And if the scars upon her face were any indication as to his success rate . . .

But it isn't his fault.

"What is it?" She gingerly took the tiny, tattered book from him and flipped it back and forth in her hands.

"It's your journal."

"My journal?"

"Yeah. It was with your . . . stuff. I kept it." He fidgeted and stuck his hands in his pockets. "Promise I didn't read none of it."

Beth smirked. "Wouldn't have mattered if you did. They're not really my secrets anymore."

He bit his lip and she realized - oh, God, why did I say that?

"Well, uh," Daryl moved back towards the door. "Breakfast is ready when you are."

"Thanks. For, um, everything." She waved the journal lamely.

He stared at her for a fleeting second, blue eyes catching the morning sun from the window, and then nodded and closed the door behind him. Sealing her off from the rest of the house. Closing her personal space bubble and giving her a moment of privacy.

Beth flipped to the first page hesitantly and didn't get any farther than the first line and the date before she slammed the book shut and shoved it in the nightstand drawer.

Sure, the journal could help her remember. It could help her piece together her old life, or it could confuse the hell out of her.

But the girl who wrote her heart and soul into those pages was a ghost now and Beth, new Beth, didn't feel like digging that grave yet.

Weeks passed. Life went on as it always did. Daryl went on scouting missions with Aaron. Rick and Michonne tried to keep peace among the people. Youngins went to school, Maggie worked with Deanna, and for once, there wasn't hell breaking loose.

Beth stayed on. She hadn't spoken to Daryl about it, nor Rick. On the eighth day, when her feet touched the floor and her eyes met Daryl's piercing blue ones across the kitchen island, an unspoken agreement formed.

She would stay. She would work. She would try.

But she was quiet, but not in the old Beth way when she simply didn't have something to say or was lost in her thoughts—quiet in a permanently vigilant way that set his teeth on edge with an emotion he couldn't identify.

She signed herself up for as many tasks as possible during the daytime, only appeared at meals briefly, and supposedly slept like a rock at night, not ever bothering to sit and talk in the evening.

She refrained from picking up Judith, she didn't laugh at Carl's jokes, she never sat behind Maggie and braided her hair like she used to.

She worked constantly. Playtime and make-nice-time weren't on her schedule.

As the days wore on, he believed more and more that he'd found her only to have never really found her.

Other than Judith, who liked to announce her presence pretty early with screams that ricocheted throughout the house, Daryl was usually the first one to rise in the morning at the Grimes' household. Normally he would take a piss, splash his face, and get ready for the day so that by the time Rick was up and about they could head on to their jobs.

He hadn't expected to find Beth in the bathroom, hands clenching either side of the sink like it was her lifejacket, head tucked into her chest. His first worry was that she'd had an episode. His second thought was that she was ill. Instead of rushing to her like he wanted to, he held back and rested in the doorway, watching her back move with every racing breath through her sweat-soaked t-shirt.

"You okay, Greene?"

He couldn't stop himself—Beth was far too important to brush off. Even if it annoyed or angered her, he would always be concerned for her well-being.

She raised her head just enough to look at him through the mirror. Frays of white blond hair stuck to droplets of perspiration on her brow. She took a deep breath and replied on the exhale.

"Just dandy, Dixon."

God she's an even bigger sass-mouth since she got back, he thought. Not moving from his post at the door, he watched as she flicked her gaze from him to her own face, her own reflection, and grimaced at the misshapen circular scar on her left temple.

"Looks like a star exploded on my face," she barked a humorless chuckle. "And these," she traced the two thin white scars on her cheek and right temple. "Looks like a cat clawed me or something, huh?"

This was about her scars. Not vanity, not really. Beth was nowhere near vain. Sure, she knew she wasn't ugly, but she didn't care about beauty. Beauty didn't matter—especially in this world.

This was about how her scars came to be.

Daryl knew how he felt about seeing those scars; mainly it was the first time he saw them that had shaken him to his core. When Beth had looked at him with recognition, familiarity, and subdued warmth to her big blue eyes, he'd wanted to embrace her whether she was a figment of his deluded imagination or not.

But he'd stopped the minute she got close. Because the scars, those three unparalleled demons on her face that were all his fault, all his damn fault, made him see that she was real. That she was different. Damaged, like him. Changed—but for better or for worse? In the few weeks she'd been back with her family, he'd seen those demons thrashing around in her mind, seen them take over her body and make her act out in rash anger.

But she was still Beth.

Of course he didn't find her ugly or unattractive now. Her face was thinner and her body was more angular and powerful than soft and strong, but she was still Beth.

Or new and improved Beth 2.0, as Carl had joked.

"You're still . . ." He trailed off, the words sticking like flies to sticky paper in his throat. "You're still beautiful, y'know."

She turned, her eyebrows knitted tightly together, and looked at him dead-on. He gulped, shifting uncomfortably in his stance. He hated when anyone looked at him so intensely; then he realized that's how he always looked at her, without knowing, of course.

"Stop tryin' to flatter me," she scoffed gently. Crossing her arms over her chest (he realized then that she wasn't wearing a bra and he blushed), she sauntered out the door, brushing right past him, only to stop at her own bedroom door and speak again: "But . . . thanks anyway."

He dipped his head. "Anytime."

On their walk to work later that same morning, Daryl couldn't help but voice the question that had been bouncing around his brain for a while. Not just his, but Maggie's and Rick's, too.

"Guess you're not gonna move in with Maggie and Glenn, huh?"

Beth shrugged. "Why would I? Rosita and Abraham live there too. So does Eugene and Tara. They've got a pretty full nest. I wouldn't want to intrude."

He heard loud and clear what went unspoken: I don't know Maggie or Glenn. Why would I live with strangers?

Even he was technically a stranger to her. But not stranger enough, he guessed.

"Maggie would kick one of them out for ya," Daryl snorted, picturing the dark-haired woman throwing Eugene's stuff out onto the street. "She would do anythin' for ya, Beth," he said in a softer voice, ducking his head.

"Exactly," Beth sighed. "She's a little too . . . passionate about us being a family again."

He could see the rigidness in her shoulders hiked up by her ears, as if she were shielding herself from her sister's advances even though Maggie was nowhere near. He knew that she had accepted Maggie as her sister, accepted that she had actually blood kin in their group. But she hadn't gone further than that. Beth wasn't ready to be apart of the Brady Bunch just yet.

"Does that mean you're gonna stay on with us?"

Beth's eyes went wide and her eyebrows shot to her hairline. In the glowing sunlight of the day, her scars were nearly blurred out.

"Yeah, I guess. That a problem with you, Dixon?"

Daryl shook his head. "Naw. Just wonderin'."

She searched his face for any other motive, and, upon finding nothing threatening, she gave him a tiny, fleeting smile.

"Can I ask you something then?"

"Shoot."

"Will you take me on a run with you the next time you go?"

"Sure," he said. A thrill went through him at the thought of Beth actually wanting to spend time with him other than the mandatory family dinners and the walks to work. "Just ask Deanna for permission."

She nodded and turned to go but he stopped her with a final question.

"What's up with you callin' me Dixon?"

She shot him a sly grin. "What's up with you calling me Greene?"

He shrugged, blushing without conscious. "Just 'cause. I call a lot of my friends by their last names."

"Friends, huh?" Her voice had that oh, really now? tone that he both hated and adored.

He bit his lower lip. "Yeah. Friends."

She left him then, her smile gone, and he couldn't help but think that he had just stamped the seal on a contract and signed his death certificate.

It had hit Daryl too late what she'd really been asking. We're just friends? Had been her hidden inquiry, and he, being a dumbass, hadn't caught on. He wished for a remote so he could rewind time back to three minutes before and he could say, More than that. She was more than a friend to him. She was more than a girlfriend.

What was the word for it?

Soulmate sounded about right.

The following week, she volunteered for the run he was heading up. The group took a truck and he rode in the bed of it next to her, with their thighs touching at the edges and their bodies just barely keeping each other warm enough as to not go stiff. The group split into several smaller groups, and he couldn't believe his ears when she asked to be in his.

With Beth by his side in the woods, memories and reality flip-flopped inside his head. Memories of her light tread and gentle voice back in the days after the prison fell made a smile turn up his mouth to one side, but the reality of her frigid silence in an even colder atmosphere made his stomach recoil. He tasted vomit in his throat, and when John, the third of their group, asked a question, he had to gulp down the bile to answer.

"What?"

"I think I saw deer tracks," whispered John, pointing westward. "I'm gonna split off and follow 'em. Meet y'all back at the truck."

Daryl almost didn't say allow it. Being alone with Beth 2.0 again wasn't something he was ready for. She had sought him out specifically several times but only really when she was trying to avoid getting into an awkward social situation or needed menial help.

But Daryl consented anyway and let John go to track the deer. A full-grown buck would be a good addition to their stock back in Alexandria, and Daryl wasn't going to reject the prospect of fresh venison even just because he was being a chicken.

So then there were two.

"Just you and me then?" he cleared his throat to speak to the girl behind him. Watching his back, as she always had.

"Seems so. Can I take point?"

Daryl shrugged. "Sure."

So they worked like that, flowing just as easily in their every step together as they had before—but there was no sound of Beth's chatter to keep him company, no giggles or smiles to warm his freezing heart. No tiny hand taking his own. No sweet song to fill the emptiness of the woods.

But it was easy, and smooth, and beautiful. Those few hours alone as the day progressed into evening around them felt like an all-too-well rehearsed play that would never end.

"So do you really think I'm beautiful?"

Daryl huffed, adjusted his bow on his shoulder, and shushed her. The squirrel in his sights was the first one he'd seen all day and he wasn't gonna lose it because Beth finally opened her yap.

Beth sighed a little but said nothing more until the squirrel was dead and safely secured on Daryl's belt.

"So?"

"So what?" he echoed.

They'd taken a break on a fallen log after trekking through the woods for several hours without much luck other than that lone squirrel. "I asked you earlier if you really think I'm beautiful," she replied softly, though the teasing tone she'd taken to using more recently with him was intertwined there, just beneath the surface.

It took him back to that night at the funeral home. Back to "So you do think there are still good people." And thinking about that night with all its what-if's was the most dangerous thing Daryl could do.

Blue eyes larger than life, the shade of the ocean at mid-morn, gazed at him expectantly. He saw old Beth in them. Innocent and wise for her young age. But the flash of old Beth fluttered away and new Beth—hardened and no longer a stranger to the grisly edges of the world—reappeared with a flourish.

Daryl took a large gulp of water to stall his answer.

Which was a mistake. The gulp was too big and it hit the wrong pipe in his throat, sending him into a coughing fit worse than any cigarette could.

"Whoa!" Beth patted his back as the coughs racked Daryl's body. "You okay?"

He sputtered, "No pity, remember?"

Frowning, she stopped patting his back and sat back until he could speak again without a cough rattling his speech.

"What? I was just teasin'."

Beth turned her face in the opposite direction, obviously unhappy with his joke.

"Whatever."

Daryl found himself staring intensely at her again. From this angle, he couldn't see her scars and it was almost like their time together before she was taken to Grady Memorial and it was just the two of them against nature.

Reaching out, he touched her hand resting on her thigh. She flinched, realized it was him, and stilled. Giving in to him, she turned her palm face up and tangled her fingers through his, as if to say You're forgiven. There was so much between them that never had to be said.

"'Course I really think that," he answered gruffly, lowly, as if he were telling a deeply buried secret. "Don't say what I don't mean."

She faced him once more and he felt that stirring in his gut. That "gut-feeling" that had him thinking crazy things.

Like that he should just do it—he should just kiss her.

But he didn't. Because his mind, that ever logical bastard, said it wasn't time.

Drawing him from his thoughts, Beth leaned against him and brought his hand to her lips. The warmth she gave spread from his knuckles, up his arm, and down his legs.

"I know."

The group didn't get back to Alexandria until late that evening, and when their feet touched the ground, Beth realized that she hadn't let go of Daryl's hand yet. She realized that on the bone-chilling ride home she'd burrowed into his side for warmth without blinking an eye,

She slid her eyes over to him and swallowed back a tentative smile. Untangling her fingers from his, Beth said, "So I guess I'll see you back at home."

Daryl dipped his head in agreement but didn't release her.

"Um, I need to go. Carol needs me to help her cook dinner tonight."

There was a glint, a near sparkle, to his eye and she felt something shift in her gut.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she laughed uneasily.

"You said home," he mumbled.

"What?"

He was fighting off a smile of his own. Squeezing her fingers a final time, he relinquinshed her hand.

"Nothin'. Never mind."

"Uh, okay. See you later then."

"Maybe you won't," teased Daryl.

Her giggle was joyous and delighted this time. She shoved him playfully.

"Don't start with me, Dixon."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Greene."

The streetlights of Alexandria lit the path to Rick's house for Beth, like little Munchkins leading Dorothy down the Yellow Brick Road.

And, dammit, if she couldn't stop smiling.

She couldn't figure out what was happening between her and Daryl. She hadn't remembered anything else about him, or anyone else for that matter. The past weeks were a blur of endless days just trying to be a functional human being, and though Daryl had kept his promise about helping her, he had never pushed her. Never rushed her head on towards anything that she didn't want. She hadn't touched the journal again, purely because the thought of reading her own thoughts and not recognizing them freaked her out straight to her core.

They had held hands nearly all afternoon. They had flirted. Shamelessly! It had happened off and on - she'd never been entirely sure if he was flirting with her - but tonight had been blatant. If anything, on her end it was pretty damn obvious.

The way he looked at me . . . Oh, she hated herself for being such a giggly, girly mess.

I barely know him.

I barely know myself.

She had been telling herself that several times a day, a hundred times a week. Every time Daryl gave her a gentle smirk, or checked in on her, or simply gave her a hand up, she wanted to pull him closer then shove him far, far away.

I like him and that can't happen.

"Don't fool yourself," she sighed, taking the back steps two at a time.

Carol was waiting for her inside, wrist-deep in tenderized deer meat, pristine sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Though Beth had showered regularly, her borrowed clothes were too big and she refused to wear any other shoes that her tattered, torn and true cowboy boots.

"Hey there. How was it today?" greeted Carol.

Beth shed her jacket and went to the sink to wash up. "Fine. Didn't get much meat wise, but Meghan hit the jackpot on some medical supplies."

"Well, we always need that."

"Yeah." Beth dried her hands on a towel. "So, what do you need me to do?"

"Oh, nothing, sweetheart. You go on and relax. Dinner will be ready soon."

"What do you mean? I thought I was scheduled to help you tonight."

"Yeah, but you're tired. You don't need to stress yourself with your condition."

The anger was quick and fiery, as it always was. She knew that Carol meant no harm. She knew that.

But -

"Do you have a problem with me, Carol?"

The older woman's eyes widened. But not in shock, in mock innocence.

"Why would I have a problem with you, dear?"

"I don't know," huffed Beth, knuckles going ivory against the countertop. "You tell me."

Carol gave Beth a once-over and gestured towards a chair. "Don't get worked up. Sit down before you fall over."

Beth kept the anger under control in her expression but her tone did nothing to deny it.

"Stop treating me like I'm a child! Stop it!"

"Well, that's what you are," Carol said calmly. Sweetly. Sugary sweet.

"I am not a child and I am not your child," Beth growled lowly. She stepped back, stumbled more like it, and tried to take a deep breath. "Where is this all coming from? You've been nothing but kind to me."

Carol pulled her hands out of the raw meat and flicked the remaining tidbits off her fingers without breaking eye contact.

"You may not see it, you may not want to see it, but you're tearing this family apart."

Being stabbed in the stomach would've hurt less. Being shot in the freakin' head hurt less.

"What?"

"You heard me," Carol went on, no longer sweet or calm. Her eyes pierced through Beth's, and Beth could see the wolf lurking behind the sheepskin for the first time in the woman's gaze. "Your reappearance has done nothing but cause hurt. Maggie doesn't know whether to rejoice or to continue mourning. And Daryl - "

"What about him?"

Seething. Dripping, oozing. She felt like she was bleeding out and nothing could stop the flow. Minutes before she'd been on top of the world - now she was in Hell. All of her worst fears were being confirmed.

She was a monster - a beast. Daryl had tried to turn her into the beauty she once was and he had failed.

No.

She had failed.

Carol didn't falter. Didn't ease her tone or her glare.

"You're ruining him."

"Ruining?"

"Yes. Just look at him! He lost someone who meant the world to him and then you show up, give him all this hope and this joy, and rip it to shreds."

No no no no no no no no NO NO NO.

I am not his Beth. He knew that. He KNOWS that.

"Daryl knew what he was getting himself into," Beth choked out, trying her hardest not to sob. Trying not to crumple into the fetal position and never unfold.

"He may have thought he knew what he was getting himself into," sighed Carol. "But you haven't improved, have you? You haven't remembered anything else, and all that does is hurt him more." She shook her head slowly, as if disappointed, and went back to tenderizing the meat for dinner. "Beth meant a lot to all of us, but she was something special to him."

Beth. She. Not me. I'm not her. I'm not Beth.

"Well, what do you want me to do? Leave? I've tried. He won't let me."

Carol heaved another sigh. "No. That won't help him at all."

"So, what then? What would please you?" Beth hissed. Who was this woman to think she had authority over her?

"You could try," said Carol. "Like, actually try to be the Beth we all knew."

"You mean pretend?"

"Yes. Pretend you remember. Pretend you're her." Carol's eyes brightened at the idea. "At least for a while. Until you actually remember. If you do."

"That's insane," Beth sneered. "I can't pretend to be someone I'm not."

Carol gave another smile that send Beth's heart faltering with fear. There was the wolf again - ready to rip her apart if she didn't comply.

"Oh, sunshine," Carol said. "How do you think I've survived all this time in this godforsaken place?"

"You're crazy."

Horrified, Beth backed away. She went for the door - she needed fresh air and she needed OUT - but instead of wood she hit leather.

"Beth?"

Daryl. It was Daryl, back from helping the others with the day's haul. Daryl who helped her. Daryl who kept her calm. Daryl who held her hand and called her beautiful.

"Beth? Hey, hey, hey. Loot at me. What's wrong?"

His hands were warm and strong on her shoulders, keeping her in place as he peered into her eyes and tried to decipher her bewildered look. But he couldn't see the red and yellow polka dots clouding her vision.

"Hey. You okay, Greene?"

"I think she needs to sit down," called Carol. "Get her to the couch, Daryl, before she collapses."

The room spun around Beth as she was scooped into his arms, carried to the next room, and dumped gently onto the couch. He didn't care about her dirty boots and he didn't hesitate to touch her forehead with the back of his palm, proceeding with propping a throw pillow under her head.

"Hey," grunted Daryl. "Beth, look at me."

Her vision was going from multicolored spots to black burning away the edges and she could see, distantly, his hand encasing her useless one.

"I'm gonna be right here when you wake up again," he whispered. "Ain't gonna leave ya."

She smiled deliriously. Taking her good hand, she touched his cheek and his scruffy chin.

"I'm not gonna leave you either."

Then he too was eaten by the darkness.