The Gift

by BirdieDixon

A few months into their stay in Alexandria, Glenn finds Daryl on watch and gives him an unexpected gift. Feeling alive for the first time since Grady, he returns to the Greene family farm to learn more about the woman he loved and to try to figure out how he can possibly live without her.

10. Chapter 10

Hello dear readers! Must be some special holiday magic in the air because I managed to get this one out pretty quickly. (At least by my standards!) Hope you enjoy it and thanks again for reading. Your hits/comments/kudos and general support me a lot to me. :)

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As hard as it had been, Daryl had eventually forced himself out of Beth's bed the day that he'd read Pride and Prejudice.

He'd like to have thought that it was his sense of propriety that had made him do it, but really it had been his need to take his antibiotics: those precious pills that she'd guided him towards and the miracles that he refused to squander. If it hadn't been for that, he would have slept there all night. He'd felt so comfortable there - had felt so connected to Beth there - that he hadn't been able to resist the lure of returning. And, since reading that book had provided him with what he'd felt was an acceptable context for doing so, it was a model that he'd decided to follow.

Every day, he would pick a volume from Beth's bookshelf and spend the morning reading it.

As he had with Pride and Prejudice, he'd imagine those hours as shared experiences. As times when he and Beth had done the same thing in the same place and maybe, just maybe, had the same thoughts while doing it. And that was incredibly intimate to him, but the intimacy was softened by the innocent and largely cerebral nature of the activity. By the fact that he was simply reading a book on top of the covers in broad daylight. It had felt acceptable to him in a way that lying in her bed just for the sake of it never would have. That getting under the quilt or actually sleeping in her bed never would have. Because those acts would have felt like he was solely being intimate with her body. And, while that would have felt incredibly good, it would have also felt incredibly wrong. But the books changed that. He found the intimacy of lying in her bed profoundly physical, but reading gave it a spiritual element -a psychological element - that made it seem like he was connecting with the totality of her. Like they were just sharing stories on a lazy day and enjoying each other's company.

And if they happened to be in a bed, so what?

It felt acceptable and it felt good and he looked forward to it every day. It had been his pattern for about a week now and, with dozens and dozens of books still left on her shelf, he imagined that it would be his pattern to one extent or another for quite some time to come. He was nearing the end of his course of antibiotics and almost back to feeling completely better in terms of his general health. His hand continued to be painful and, while he'd regained most of his dexterity, he still lacked a lot of strength and wasn't up for many tasks beyond the basics. Nevertheless, he knew it wouldn't be long before he was in good enough shape to return to the task of securing the farm and get back to hunting - or, at least, trapping - to fill out his rapidly dwindling food supply. Still, he didn't plan on giving up the reading. He might not always be able to devote his whole morning to it, but he'd find a way to fit it in every day. It was part of his life now - part of their life now - and he truly cherished.

Despite the fact that, like Pride and Prejudice, he rarely cherished the books.

And, at the beginning at least, he hadn't cherished them at all. He'd eventually realized that he'd only really had himself to blame for his disinterest, though. That he'd been going about things all wrong. Beth hadn't made any notes in Pride and Prejudice, but some of her other presumably assigned books had had a few comments in them - mostly just highlighted passages, but sometimes a few scattered words as well - and he'd gone for those first because he'd been drawn to that visible evidence of her. Drawn to that concrete evidence of those being her books: the very ones that she'd held in her sweet little hands, marked up with her sweet little hands, and read with her sweet little eyes. And he'd hoped that those highlighted phrases and scattered words would offer some personal insight, too. That they'd provide some window onto her mind or onto her heart.

That he could have another little conversation with her again.

So, he'd read The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird and a couple other classics and, though he'd found them an improvement over good old Jane, he hadn't truly liked any of them. And he hadn't found Beth's little comments or highlights illuminating, either. Actually, they had been illuminating, but not in the way that he'd hoped. All her notations had made it abundantly clear that she really had read those books as assignments and that she'd been studying them as a result. She hadn't been enjoying them. She hadn't been reading them for pleasure. Her notes had been the notes of a reader who was solely preparing for a test or a paper. They hadn't revealed anything about her except that she'd been trying to remember pivotal plot points in preparation for some kind of evaluation. She'd been reading them dutifully just like, on some level, he'd been reading them dutifully.

And he hadn't wanted to share a dutiful experience with her.

He'd wanted to share a good experience with her. And experience that she'd wanted to have.

So, a couple of days ago, he'd switched to the books on her lower shelf and started reading her volumes about animals. He'd read all of the ones about mysterious creatures long ago. All the ones that he'd found truly compelling in their own right and would have wanted to read no matter what. But he'd always been interested in nature and had found the last two volumes informative and, at times, honestly engaging. He didn't really have any use for the information that they'd contained, but - as long as he could do it on his own terms - he'd always liked learning. And he really liked learning about things that Beth had been interested in. Learning facts that had rattled around in her head or captured her imagination. He'd started out with a book about dogs because it had reminded him of one of their last conversations together - that conversation where he'd learned about his future savior Stopsign - and it had felt so much better than those stodgy classics. Had felt so much more like her and like him and like them.

They weren't Virginia Woolfs, after all.

They were real wolves.

They were fiercely devoted creatures of the forest who valued family above all else, not elite intellectuals who dined with fine society.

The switch in content had made the activity even more intoxicating and feel like even more of an indulgence. And, since those twenty-four stitches no longer threatened him and he'd gone through more of Beth's room than he'd liked, he'd stopped giving himself twenty-four Beth points a day and had returned to his original ten. Still, he was determined not to be too greedy. So he'd been using his points on the Beth units that he'd considered the least potentially revealing: her dresser drawers. With the exception of the top two - either of which could contain her underwear and maybe other private items - he'd assumed that the other drawers would be nothing but clothes. And, so far, he'd been right. The three that he'd investigated had just been tops and pants and he imagined that the others would be no different. And that seemed to balance out his use of the bed - balance out all that added Bethness - because those things didn't tell him that much about her. Maybe if he'd known more about fashion, he'd thought, he might have picked up on something more. But, to him, pants were pretty much pants and finding eleven pairs of Beth's in her bottom left-hand drawer hadn't helped him understand her much better than an empty drawer would have.

That being said, he still took a great deal of pleasure in going through her clothes. On a very basic level, he simply enjoyed touching things that had once touched her. It made him feel like a bit of a creep, but he'd sometimes run his hands on the insides of the fabric - the part that had been in contact with her skin - and imagine that he was touching her in some phantom sort of way. Not in a sexual way, but just in a way that connected them on the closest possible level. On some atomic level. He'd even imagined on a a few occasions that some of her skin cells might have been trapped in that denim or that corduroy. That he might really and truly have been touching a part of her. That made him feel more disturbed than just touching the inside of the fabric did, though, so he'd try to shake off those thoughts as soon as they arrived.

(They might have been disturbing, but those thoughts weren't entirely new. He'd considered her skin cells before when confronting the dust in her room: that thin layer of fine powder that coated every inch of the place. He didn't know if it was true or not, but he'd remembered hearing that household dust contained a lot of dead skin cells. And there had been times, random moments here and there, when he'd run his fingers over some surface - to pick up an object or just to touch something of hers - and he'd get that dust on his hand and wonder if there was a little piece of her in there. Some tiny, long-discarded speck of her skin. Some fragment of her DNA. The building blocks of her very life. The first time the thought had occurred to him, he'd surprised himself by rubbing his dusty hands together: grinding the powder into his skin, rather than wiping it off on his pants. And that had become his habit ever since. Though he rarely thought about the DNA element of it anymore - rarely allowed himself what he considered a desperate and unhealthy train of thought - he still performed the action the thought had precipitated. If they'd gotten dirty in her room, he never wiped his hands off on his pants.)

So, there was a tactile appeal to her clothes and there was a visual appeal to them, too. Though she'd aged several years since that had been her wardrobe, she hadn't really grown. Maybe she'd put on some muscle tone or maybe she'd shed a small amount of pre-apocalypse fat - if she'd had any to spare - but all those clothes would have fit her and he could easily picture her in them all. Liked picturing her in them all. Clothes had never been the kind of thing that he'd paid any attention to - on himself or, really, on anyone else - and he didn't have a particularly creative mind when it came to that kind of thing. The stories inspired by the objects in her room had occasionally brought out surprisingly vivid images of specific outfits - sundresses and short shorts and even bathing suits - but for the most part she existed in his mind in cowboy boots, tight jeans, and some nondescript top. It was basically her uniform and, while he really loved her uniform, he also really liked imagining her in something different from time to time.

Something that wasn't mildly tainted by the knowledge that she never should have been the kind of girl who wore a uniform.

It had perfectly suited the woman who she'd become - and he would always love it for that - but he wished that she hadn't had to become that woman. That she hadn't lived in a world where she'd had to wear the same thing day after day. And where those things hadn't been determined solely by what was available and by what fit. He'd never thought of her as someone obsessed with fashion - and her room had more or less confirmed that - but she'd been a creative person and, unlike him, she wouldn't have chosen to limit herself to one outfit for all time. She wouldn't have wanted a uniform. And her drawers gave him a way to get her out of that uniform. To dress up his favorite model in the kind of clothes that she'd deserved to wear - the kind of clothes that she'd clearly, at one point, wanted to wear - and to do it with very little imagination on his part.

His greatest enjoyment came from the game, though.

His new favorite game that he'd play for hours and hours.

His new favorite game which he uncreatively called Remember When.

He'd been telling himself stories about her objects since the days when he'd still lingered in her hallway. Since before he'd even entered her room, he'd spun tale after tale about her things. And, despite his fears, those stories had never stopped coming. They were an integral part of the whole experience of going through her things and every item had at least one origin story attached to it. And often many more. Her clothes were somewhat different, though. They didn't strike the same fantasy chord that her mason jar full of rocks or her spool of thread with the googly eyes or her ceramic fairy with the chipped wing had. They didn't make him imagine where she'd gotten them or why she'd treasured them or what had appealed to her about them. They didn't inspire those kind of stories.

But the did inspire stories.

Lots of stories. Wonderful stories. His favorite kind of stories.

The stories that lay at the heart of Remember When.

It had started with her engraved wooden ring. The that one he'd imagined carving for her as an engagement ring: spinning a tale complete with a proposal story and a delightfully graphic post-acceptance celebration. A tale that he'd related to her - at least in its more innocent form - as if it had been real. As if he'd been recalling a memory. He'd asked her Remember when...and then proceed to recount the happy event. And it had been such a satisfying experience that he hadn't been able to keep himself from doing it again. From inserting himself into the stories behind her objects. Imagining himself making them for her or giving them to her or even her giving them to him.

He'd imagined giving her that mason jar full of rocks after an all-too-brief sexual encounter with an apology and a promise that next time he'd really rock her world.

He'd imagined her making the spool of thread with the googly eyes as a toy for Judith, who'd found it weirdly terrifying, leading Beth to jokingly give it to him for protection instead: a totem to frighten off any potential foe.

He'd imagined giving her the blonde fairy because it reminded him of her magic and imagined her doing something pretty fucking magical to him in return that caused the fairy to get knocked over and acquire that chip on its wing.

And, most of the time - like the first time - he told her those stories. He'd start off with Remember when...and then tell her his tale. Their tale. The tale behind the object that always brought them together. Sometimes the game would become too explicit to be vocalized - or, at least, to be vocalized in its entirety - but, for the most part, talking to Beth was a critical part of it. Part of what made it so fun.

Part of what made it seem so real.

He could play Remember When with anything, but with her clothes he could only play Remember When. For whatever reason, those stories really were the only stories that her clothes inspired. He could picture her wearing them in all sorts of places in her old life. At school, at church, at parties. He could picture those scenes quite well, but he couldn't form any attachment to them. Couldn't flesh them out with a narrative that had any meaning. He couldn't become invested in a story behind her wearing a pair of jeans with a torn knee to muck out the horse stable.

That just didn't do anything for him.

But he could become invested in a story about admiring her wearing those jeans before they became torn. A story about watching as she tore them. A story about trying to hide his happiness at seeing the newly exposed skin while she lamented the damaged garment. A story about always grabbing her knee every time they sat down from that point on. A story about pretending that he was just doing that to keep her bare flesh warm. A story about her pretending that she believed him.

He could get into a story like that.

Sometimes the stories would be set in the real world - in the new world - in a fictitious but still fully-apocalyptic environment. They'd be set in the world that they would have lived in if he'd never opened that door. In the world where she'd never been taken and they'd built a life together - just the two of them - surviving against all odds while civilization crumbled. Sometimes they'd have made a home - have settled somewhere and be safe and sound - while other times they'd be making it in the woods: maybe not so much living on the run, but definitely living on the move. No matter what, though, they were always together and they were always happy.

"Remember when you found this in that huntin' cabin?," he'd asked her over a fitted green sweater that he'd found in her bottom right-hand drawer. "We'd just taken out that bunch of walkers and you was all covered in shit, but you didn't have nothin' to change into. Figured I was just gonna have to give you my shirt - which, you know, was always a good look on you, so I didn't mind - but you wanted to search the cabin first. See if you could find somethin' else. Didn't wanna leave me without a shirt."

"'Course I knew it was 'cause you couldn't handle the sheer manliness of Daryl Dixon," he'd teased her, finding the notion of her being attracted by his bare chest ridiculous. "But you said you just didn't want me bein' cold. Tryin' to hide behind that kindness you're always fakin'. As usual."

"Didn't think you'd have any fuckin' luck, though," he'd informed her, returning to the plot. "'Cause we was in the goddamn boonies and the guy that owned the place had been like 300 hundred pounds or some shit. Coat on the back of the door looked like a goddamn sleepin' bag. But then I hear you make that little girly squeal of yours and you come out of the back room with this sweater in your hands. Lookin' brand fuckin' new and the only fuckin' lady's thing in there. No idea why he had it. Woulda thought he was a cross-dresser, but it never woulda fit him."

"Fit you like a fuckin' dream, though," he'd laughed, picturing it vividly. "You put that thing on and my jaw fuckin' dropped. You'd been wearin' that goddamn sweatshirt for weeks. That bulky grey one that was way too fuckin' big for you. Fuckin' hated that sweatshirt. Fell down past your ass. And you know it ain't right to keep somethin' like that hidden. Lotsa bad shit in the world, girl, but that's straight up evil."

"'Less it's my shirt that's hidin' it," he'd amended with smirk. "That shit's okay. But that's the only fuckin' exception. That's the exception that proves the rule. And the rule is: your ass shouldn't be hidden."

"And this sweater definitely didn't hide your ass," he'd told her with another light laugh, knowing it would have been totally true. "This sweater didn't hide much of nothin'. Covered your skin but, fuck, that was just about all. Finally got to see what'd been lurkin' under that devil sweatshirt all those weeks. Funny part was, I'd been wantin' to get you outta that sweatshirt that whole time, then I see you in this sweater and all I could think 'bout was how I could get you outta it, too."

"Remember when you let me do that?," he'd asked her before drifting off into silence, the narrative taking a direction that could only be continued in the privacy of his mind.

Sometimes the stories would take place in the old world, though. In a world before walkers and Governors and funeral homes. In some ridiculously fictitious old world where somehow they got together despite all logic indicating that they never, ever would have. It was a world where he took her to the movies and out to dinner and bought her flowers on the way home from work. In a world where he had a stable job and supported her and provided them with a comfortable life. In a world where they had a good home and where the refrigerator was never empty and the power was never shut off and where Beth never worried about her safety or security. In a world that he'd never lived in but would have loved to have lived in with her.

And, in that world - in the world where they weren't alone, in the world where there were other men with leering eyes - the rules about her ass were different.

"Remember when we got into a fight over these?," he'd asked her about a pair of black velvet pants that had an inseam with one of the shortest zippers that he'd ever fucking seen. They had to have say insanely low on her hips and, even on a girl as slender as her, had to have been tight as hell, too. "Got that bonus at work for fixin' up all them bikes early. Beatin' the deadline on that contract. And I wanted to take you out to celebrate. Do somethin' nice for you. 'Cause you always deserved it, but you'd especially deserved it then. I'd been so busy and hadn't enough time for you. You always understood that shit, but I always fuckin' hated. Hated when I was late for dinner or had to leave before you got up."

"So I wanted to do somethin' nice and you always wanted to go dancin;," he'd told her, imagining as being the kind of thing that's she'd have liked to do. "Fought you on that forever but I figured a man's gotta give in sometime. Especially if he's up against Beth Greene. So I told you I take you to that little bar that had that band and that I'd dance one dance with you. Once dance with you after five beers. That was the deal."

"And you was so excited, I felt like a jackass for not agreein' sooner," he'd said, thinking of all those times that he could have made her happy and hadn't. "Felt like an asshole, 'til you walked out wearin' these pants. Plannin' on wearin' these things to a fuckin' bar. Said you just wanted to look nice and you fuckin' did. Looked way too fuckin' nice to be dancin' in a bar. Way too nice to be shakin' that ass of yours where any man could . Fuck, where any woman could see it. Your ass don't discriminate, girl. It's a goddamn beacon for everyone with a pulse."

"And there was no fuckin' way I was takin' you out like that," he'd informed her with a laugh, because it would have been true."No fuckin' way I was gonna spend all night guardin' you like a bulldog and starin' down every man in the joint. Wouldn'ta been no point anyway. Wouldn'ta been able to dance 'cause the band woulda seen you in these and forgot every damn song they'd ever heard. And I tried to tell you that and you just laughed. Thought I was jokin'."

"But I was serious as hell and we got into a dumbass fight over it," he'd gone on, able to clearly picture such an event. "Or, really, I got into a dumbass fight over it and you kinda let me. Let me blow off my jealous little steam. 'Cause you thought I was overreactin', but you knew how crazy that shit made me. How crazy I got thinkin' 'bout other men dreamin' 'bout you. And you didn't think they did. You thought some of 'em mighta thought you was pretty but you didn't think they dreamed 'bout you. But I knew you was wrong, girl. All of 'em dreamed 'bout you. And they definitely woulda dreamed 'bout you in these fuckin' pants. Man wouldn't stand a chance with you in these fuckin' pants."

"The Pope woulda dreamed of you in these pants" he'd laughed and shaken his head. "Woulda made up some bullshit 'bout bein' given an eleventh commandment that said Thou Shall Always Covet Beth Greene when he saw you in these fuckin' pants. Make wantin' you his holy fuckin' duty."

"So I put my foot down like an asshole and told you to change," he'd told her, because he'd firmly believed that's what he would have done. Or, at least, what he would have been tempted to do. "And you refused. Told me it was your ass and you could dress it up however you wanted. And that was like a red flag to a bull, girl. "Cause you're all independent and shit, and I love that 'bout you, but you know I thought your ass was mine. Least, I fuckin' wanted it to be mine and those pants would make any man think your ass was up for grabs. Fuckers at the bar wouldn't be thinkin', 'Hey there's an independent girl who dresses her ass however she wants.' They'd be thinkin' 'Hey, there's a girl without a man who's dressin' up her ass just for me.'"

"And it was supposed to be this nice night and suddenly we're at a fuckin' stalemate," he'd continued. "'Cause you wouldn't change and I wouldn't take you to a bar like that. And I was startin' to feel like shit 'cause I didn't know what to do. I tried to talk myself out of it, you know? Put that shit in perspective. But I just couldn't. Just couldn't get over the thought of men lookin' at you dressed like that. Watchin' you dance dressed like that. And you'd been so excited and I'd felt like I'd just totally fucked it up. Fucked it up 'cause I was an insecure pussy."

"And you could see I was strugglin'," he'd said with a soft smile. "'Cause you always fuckin' could. And then you told me flat out that those pants weren't comin' off 'til you got your dance, so if I wanted you outta of 'em I better get to steppin'. And then you walked over and turned on the stereo, put on that Patsy Cline you always loved, and held out your hand. Asked if you could have this dance, like I was the belle of the ball. Couldn't fuckin' believe it."

"But, of course I could, 'cause you're you," he'd corrected with a light laugh. "Told me you only wanted to dance with me. That you didn't need to go to a bar or hear a band. Didn't need to do it in front of anyone. You just wanted to dance and the kitchen worked fine for you. Joked and said you liked it, too, 'cause the ladies wouldn't be lookin' at my ass, neither. As if that were a fuckin' worry."

"So we danced to 'Crazy' in the kitchen," he'd gone on, lost in the dream. "Slow danced while Patsy sang. Or, really, shuffled 'cause I couldn't dance for shit. But I couldn't keep my hands of you, neither, so I couldn't complain none. Weren't a bad situation to be stuck in and I couldn't believe I'd fought you on it for so long. Dancin' with Beth Greene while she's wearing sinful fuckin' pants that show off the ass that she's lettin' you touch ain't a bad way to spend an evenin'."

"So we danced for the rest of the album and then you told me that I'd held up my end of the deal" he'd said, eyes closed and getting to the best part of an already really enjoyable story. "I'd given you your dance, so now you'd be willin' to change. And then you looked at me with that devil look of yours and asked if I had any requests. And I told you 'nothin'' And you got confused, like I meant I didn't have no requests. But that had been my request. I wanted you in nothin'. And you laughed and asked if I'd been tryin' to dance the pants off of you. And I laughed and told you 'yes' and asked you if it'd worked."

"Remember when you said that it had?," he'd asked her in conclusion: once again drifting off into the parts of the tale that couldn't be uttered out loud, but would live vividly in his head.

There was an element to Remember When that was unbearably sad, of course. There was a part of him that hurt every time he told those stories. There was a soul-deep ache that came from visiting those dream worlds. From envisioning a life that never was and never would be. And those stories felt so real that there was an ache that came from that, too. A phantom loss of phantom memories. Conversations and kisses and so many things that had never happened but whose passing he still mourned. He'd play the game and sometimes find himself grieving the inability to return to moments that had never occurred in the first place.

That kind of sadness was just a permanent presence in his life now, though. His constant companion. Sometimes it was screaming in his ear and wouldn't let him be. Sometime it was just sitting silently by his side. But it was always there. Always there with him. And the joys of Remember When were worth the pain. The delights of the dream world were always worth the rude awakening.

And he looked forward to revisiting every day.

And, having just spent the morning reading a book about the history of dog domestication, he was ready to revisit his dream world again. Ready to open up that fourth drawer and play Remember When. As he has with the others, he pulled the entire drawer out of the dresser and placed it on the floor: sitting down cross-legged in front of it. To his surprise, it appeared to be mostly socks and a few tank tops or some other kind of flimsy clothes. He'd really expected those things to be in one of her top drawers. In one of the drawers that he'd also worried would contain her underwear and had deliberately avoided because of it. So, that had definitely been the second drawer from the top and he was puzzled as to why she'd organized things that way. He'd gone through enough people homes to know that that was kind of unusual, but he didn't have much time to think about it before his attention was caught by something even more surprising. Or, at least, even more unexpected.

A small cigar box.

It was the first thing that he'd come across in her dresser that hadn't been clothing. And, again, while part of him had anticipated finding things other than apparel in her dresser - had anticipated finding various stored and maybe even secret objects - he'd always thought that those would be in the top drawers, too. In the drawers that were generally filled with people's most intimate or treasured items.

He'd been excited to play the game, but the box was far more compelling. Especially given the fact that the topic of that particular day's Remember When was apparently going to be Beth's socks. (Though he would, eventually, play the game even with those. Imagining giving her the pair with the mice on them because she squeaked every time he pinched her ass. Imagining calling her little mouse to tease her and, in his own inartful way, come on to her, too. But that would all come later.) He reached for the box and just held it in his hands for a few moments, trying to imagine what might be inside. He knew one thing for sure, it wasn't cigars. That hadn't been Beth's private humidor. There might have been a story behind the box, but he didn't think it was any indication of its contents.

Whatever it was, it was obviously personal. Personal enough for her to store it in the dresser that probably only she ever went through, rather than leaving it out on the bookshelf or on her desk or someplace where other people might see it.

Where other people might open it.

He wondered, not for the first time in her room, whether he should open it. Whether that was fair. He'd pretty much crossed all those lines long ago, though, and the inner battle was brief and largely for show. He was definitely going to open it. He'd have opened it no matter what, but - for some reason - the fact that it was in that second drawer, and that it was with something as mundane as her socks, made him feel like it was slightly less intimate than it otherwise could have been.

Less of a violation than if it had been tucked in the back of the top drawer with all her bras and panties.

Lifting the lid, he saw what appeared at first to be just a random collection of objects: a ticket stub, a folded worksheet of some kind, an origami flower, a small pencil from Fast Lanes Bowling Alley, and about a half a dozen other things. The folded worksheet took up a big portion of the box and he picked it up to see what was underneath and, when he did, he knew exactly what all those seemingly random things were. Knew that they weren't random at all.

There was a picture of Beth and Jimmy.

He had his arm around her and she was wearing his jacket: his Senoia Chiefs jacket with a big #18 patch covering the upper part of the sleeve.

Those were all of Beth's mementos of her relationship with Jimmy. That was the place where she'd stored all those little treasures that her boyfriend had given her or that reminded her of their special moments together. That was her box of blissful memories. The happy artifacts of a young girl in love.

Or in like, anyway.

He didn't know if Beth had actually loved Jimmy. She'd obviously liked him well enough to date, though, and he knew that she wouldn't have done that without a significant regard. She'd liked him. And, judging by the look on her face in that picture, she'd really liked him.

She'd really liked being his girl.

And he'd really liked it, too. The kid looked so fucking happy. He looked like he'd just won the lottery and he hadn't even know that he'd had a ticket. Like he couldn't believe that he had his arm around Beth Greene and that she was letting him do that. Beth Greene was wearing his jacket and smiling. And Jimmy was over the goddamn moon about it. Though he was at an age where it would have been expected, he wasn't trying to play it cool.

Or, if he was, he was doing a piss poor job of it.

He seemed comfortable, but he didn't seem casual at all. Didn't seem like he thought that the moment was no big deal. He was honestly even more handsome than Daryl had remembered - even more of a tall, strapping, young farm boy - and probably could have had his arm around any number of pretty girls. But he didn't look like he felt that way. He didn't seem cocky and he didn't seem like he thought that Beth Greene was just a pretty girl.

She was Beth fucking Greene and he was wearing his fucking jacket and he clearly couldn't be happier.

Daryl really would have thought that that picture would have upset him. Deeply upset him. He hated thinking about Beth and Jimmy. Hated thinking about her being happy with someone else and that photo was such stark evidence of that personal nightmare. There she was being touched by another man, wearing another man's clothes, smiling at another man's affection. He would have expected it to bring out the worst of his jealously. The worst of all those thoughts that had kept him from opening her diary: unwilling to read about her being someone else's girl.

Staring at the two of them, though, that jealousy didn't come. Or, at least, it didn't come on as strongly as he would have imagined. It didn't overwhelm him. Because Jimmy was just this happy fucking kid. Just this good kid who was thrilled to be with Beth Greene. And how could he hold that against him? He'd thought about how young Jimmy had been before, of course, but always in a twisted sense that had made him feel inferior to a teenager. He'd never really thought about it from the purely objective sense that he really had just been a kid. A kid not much older than Carl. A kid who had been lucky enough to meet an amazing girl and had had the balls enough to go for it. To try to make her his.

And, honestly, what could he really do but respect that?

If he'd been an entitled dick about it, it would have been a different story. But he hadn't been. And Daryl didn't need a picture to know that. Herschel never would have allowed them to date if he hadn't thought he'd been an upstanding boy and he certainly never would have let him live under his roof if he'd thought his daughters had been in any danger. Not just in danger of being hurt, but in danger of being disrespected or treated with any less care than they deserved to be.

No, Jimmy had been a good and decent kid who'd just happened to be lucky enough to catch the eye of Beth Greene.

As he started to go through the box, his opinion of Jimmy continued to improve and he could see why Beth had liked him. And that jealousy that he'd harbored for so long began to turn into simple envy. He was no longer angry at this kid for having what he'd never had - no longer mad a Jimmy, in some sick and unfair way, for taking something that he'd wanted to be his - he was simply disappointed that'd he'd never had it for himself. Simply disappointed that he hadn't had that kind of relationship with Beth.

Disappointed that she didn't have a cigar box full of memories of him.

Disappointed in a way that wasn't Jimmy's fault at all.

Because, the thing was, so many of the items in that box would have been the kind of things that he'd have wanted to be in her fictitious box of theirs. A fictitious box filled from memories from that pre-apocalypse dream world that he envisioned when playing Remember When. He saw himself in the Jimmy contained in that box. Saw something about the kind of boyfriend, the kind of husband, that he would have wanted to be. The kind of boyfriend, the kind of husband, that Beth would have deserved.

The movie ticket stub was such a simple and perfect example of that. It was from a film with a title that he didn't recognize, but could identify right away as an unquestionable chick kind of movie that no guy would ever want to go see. Jimmy had taken Beth, though, because she'd wanted to go and he'd wanted to make her happy. He'd wanted to be with her and, if she'd wanted to see some horrible trash about bridesmaids or wedding planners or some shit, then that's what they'd do. Because spending time with her had been more important to Jimmy than seeing the movie and Daryl would have felt that way, too. He'd have watched every tearjerker ever made - every stuffy costume drama and girl power movie ever produced - if he could have done it with Beth by his side. If she'd have wanted to go and she'd have let him go with her, he'd have been there.

Gladly.

The folded up worksheet made him appreciate the kid far more, though. Unsurprisingly, the two had apparently gone to the same church and the paper had obviously been some kind of Bible study assignment or something. The page had a piece of scripture written at the top that was followed by several paragraphs analyzing its meaning. And the subject of the quote, and of the entire lesson, had been gratitude. The importance of appreciating God's many blessing in life. At the bottom of the page, there had been ten blank lines and above them the statement I am grateful for... The kids had obviously been meant to list all the things - or at least the top ten things - that they'd appreciated in their lives. And after the prompt I am grateful for…, Jimmy had written a list that was entirely about Beth.

1) Your laugh.
2) Your smile.
3) Your voice.
4) Your terrible sense of humor.
5) Your wonderful sense of humor.
6) Your friendship.
7) Your kindness.
8) Your cuteness.
9) Your willingness to date me.
10) YOU! YOU! YOU!

He'd really wished that he'd written Beth a list like that and couldn't help himself from finding it incredibly sweet. Like just the kind of incredibly sweet thing that Beth had deserved to hear. She'd deserved to make up the full top-ten list of things that someone was grateful for. She'd deserved to have someone feel that way about her. And she'd deserved for them to be those things. Clearly they'd been in church, and Jimmy had known his audience in Beth Greene, but Daryl couldn't help but think that a lot of lesser guys would have given her a different list entirely.

1) Your tits.
2) Your pussy.
3) Your ass.
4) Your mouth.
5) Your legs.
6) Your hands (when they're on me.)
7) Your trust (because it's easy to exploit.)
8) Your kindness (because it's easy to exploit.)
9) Your hotness (because I can parade you around like a trophy.)
10) Your willingness to let things be all about ME! ME! ME!

Few men would probably be dumb enough to write that, but most men would be assholes enough to think it. And he knew, in his heart of hearts, that Jimmy hadn't been one of them. Sure, he'd been a teenage boy and had undoubtedly lusted after Beth, but his comments about her other areas of worth had obviously been sincere. Daryl knew that because Beth and Herschel had both been good judges of character and he knew that simply because he could see it in the kid's face. And because he could feel it in his bones. And because he could feel it in the way that Beth had treasured that paper.

Jimmy had been a good fucking kid who'd liked Beth for all the right reasons.

And he'd known that he'd been lucky that she'd like him back. He'd known that he'd been lucky to have her. Daryl's impression about his lack of cockiness, his lack of entitlement, had been proven right by that list. By one of Jimmy's top-ten things that he'd been grateful for. One of his top-ten blessings from God.

9) Your willingness to date me.

He continued to go through the box and everything in there seemed like a token of genuine affection. Objects that seemed to demonstrate that, while he'd wanted more than her friendship, he had really seen her as a friend, too. Had known her and cared about her. He'd given her that origami flower. Which was an obvious romantic gesture, but the fact that it was made a paper - was something that would forever be in bloom - was a real Beth gesture. Something that really spoke to understanding her personality. So was the small piece of old wood on which he'd written with a Sharpie you go to Dave's party with me? It had taken him a second to put that one together.

Would you go to Dave's party with me?

He'd been asking her out by appealing to her own lame sense of humor. The same terrible sense of humor that he'd expressed such gratitude for. That same terrible sense of humor that Daryl had enjoyed so much with her Eiffel Tower puns.

Fuck, he kind of liked Jimmy.

Not just because the kid had proven his worth, but because the truth of the matter was that it had taken Daryl almost two years of living with Beth every day to fall in love with her. A love that he'd never told her about. A love that she'd never felt. And, staring at the contents of that box, he realized that he might actually be a less selfish man than he'd thought because he didn't want to imagine her having gone her whole life without ever feeling loved. Romantically loved and desired. And the fact that she'd gotten that from Jimmy hurt him, but it would have hurt him more to know that she'd never gotten it at all.

And now Jimmy's charred corpse was lying in the wreckage of Dale's burned out RV. Standing guard over the remnants of the destroyed barn. He'd died the day the herd hit and, while Beth had certainly mourned his passing, there had been no ceremony to mark the event. No public words spoken and certainly no funeral. He'd been sweet on Beth Greene, he'd made her smile and he'd made her feel special, he'd felt lucky to know her and to be with her, and his death had gone largely ignored.

And, while that was more or less the way of the world those days, that didn't make it right. Didn't make it the kind of ending that Jimmy had deserved or the kind of ending that Beth would have wanted him to have. She'd have wanted him to be buried, she'd have wanted him to have a headstone, she'd have wanted him to be remembered.

Because he'd been important to her and because she'd just been that kind of girl.

It was remarkable how his feelings towards this kid - this teenager who he'd long seen as a humiliating romantic rival - had changed with just a handful of objects. Just a few items that made him seem like more of a real person - and a good person - than he'd ever seemed before. Jimmy wasn't just a pretty boy with a set of strong hands that had once touched his girl. He was a good guy who'd made her laugh with lame jokes and then thanked God for that beautiful laugh and the terrible sense of humor that had triggered it.

After lounging in Beth's bed all morning, he still had plenty of energy left and the sun remained high in the sky. He closed the lid on the cigar box, put it back in the drawer, and returned the drawer to the dresser: unwilling to leave her room in a state of disturbance. He was going to go out to the barn and see if there was anything of Jimmy left to bury. He knew that there wouldn't be much, but there might be some scorched bones that he could gather. Some small part of Jimmy that he could still show some small sign of respect to.

He knew his hand still hurt too much to dig a grave right then, but that didn't mean that he couldn't investigate the situation and, maybe, collect the remains. And he felt really compelled to do that. At that particular moment. Perhaps it was because he'd been stuck in the house for so long and it was a good excuse to get outside. But, more than likely, it was because it felt like something that he could do for Beth. Something that he could do for her now that she was no longer around to do it for herself.

He grabbed a plastic tub from the downstairs closet that the Greenes had stored extra blankets in and, after emptying it, went into the laundry room off the kitchen and picked up a small hand broom. Despite having spent a great deal of time cleaning up the property, there had been certain areas that he'd avoided and the barn had been one of them. There had been no need to go out there and it was just a blackened monument to death. It was the starkest visual reminder on the farm of the destruction that had made them flee and he'd had no desire to visit it. The grass had grown high and it took a bit of effort for him to fight his way to the shell of the camper. And, when he finally got there, he was seriously disappointed.

And pissed.

Incredibly pissed because he'd wanted to do this nice thing and, just like they'd fucked up everything in the world, the walkers had ruined it. There were charred bones in the wreckage, of course, but there were far, far too many. Without even fully investigating, he could see at least four skulls, five femurs, and dozens of other random parts. And there was obviously no way to tell Jimmy and his killers apart. No way to know which of those bones, if any, were his. And, as much as he wanted to bury Jimmy, he didn't have the heart to bury him in a plastic tub with a pile of walker remains. That didn't seem respectful: that seemed like tidying up. That seemed like taking out the trash.

He looked down at the little broom in his hand and thought, yeah, it seems just like taking out the trash.

And he couldn't do that. He wanted to be a kindly undertaker, not a garbageman. He let out a low growl and a fuck of frustration and started to head back to the house. He hadn't eaten since a really light breakfast and didn't want to go back to Beth's room while he felt like such a failure, so he went into the kitchen to fix himself some lunch. Eating some of his last remaining food - a can of soup that had once been cream of chicken but was now just a mealy mush - he tried to think about what else he could do.

If there was any other way that he could do right by the kid.

Halfway through the borderline digestible meal, he realized exactly what he would do. He'd bury that box. He'd bury that box of memories because, while the existence of the objects inside were a testament to how much Jimmy had cared for Beth, the fact that she'd saved them was a testament to how much Beth had cared for him. That box showed that Jimmy had been incredibly important to Beth Greene and Daryl couldn't think of a better thing to be remembered for than that. A better thing to have stand as a monument to your life. If Beth Greene had kept a box like that of his things - a box with a piece of fletching from the first bolt that she'd shot from his bow, a bone from the first squirrel that she'd gutted after he'd showed her how, those hairpins that he'd gotten her and later destroyed - he'd have wanted that box to stand in for his body. If he didn't have a one to bury - an, honestly, even if he did - he'd want them to bury that fucking box in his grave.

So that's what he was going to do. He was going to bury that box in the graveyard that they'd made for Annette and for Shawn and for Sophia. And was going to make him some kind of headstone. A grave marker with his name - his full name that he'd learned from that worksheet - and maybe something nice, too. Something Beth would have liked. Something that would make it clear that he'd been appreciated by the girl who he'd appreciated so much. The girl who'd been all ten of the top-ten things that he'd appreciated in his world.

Jimmy Wilkinson
She was grateful for you, too.

He wondered if it'd be wrong to put words in Beth's mouth like that, To presume to speak for her. But he thought that her actions had pretty much spoken for her already and her general character had as well. Even if she hadn't fancied herself in love with him, she surely had to have been grateful for his friendship. For his affection and his regard. He figured that he had plenty of time to workshop the idea, though. It'd take him a while to build something and the inscription would come last anyway.

He continued to run through potential options when it suddenly - and painfully - occurred to him that he'd never thought about doing that for Beth. There he was thinking about all the things that he could do to memorialize Jimmy of all fucking people, but he'd never once thought about building a monument to Beth. He'd built his little dresser shrine, of course, but that was just for him. That wasn't really for her. And it wasn't permanent, either. When he went back to Alexandria, most of those things were going with him. There'd be no lasting monument to Beth Greene on the farm. Just a room full of her things that, to anyone else, would just be a random room full of a random girl's things.

A room that would never be a temple to anyone ever again.

He hadn't been able to bury her and that had always haunted him. It bothered him on principle because he'd known that she'd thought that funerals were important. She'd have wanted one and he'd wanted to give her one. And it bothered him in a deeply visceral way, too. It upset him to his core that her body was lying sealed off in some ambulance. That it hadn't been returned to the earth. He wasn't sure if he believed in an afterlife - and he definitely hadn't for most of his days - but he believed in nature. He believed in the process of decay and regeneration. And, while he absolutely refused to think of her body rotting, he would have taken comfort in the notion of her energy being re-absorbed into the soil. Into it providing fertilizer for beautiful flowers that would bloom. Blooms that would provide pollen for bees. Bees that would turn that pollen into honey. Honey that would be eaten by some forest critter with a quick paw and a sweet tooth. He liked the idea of some of her vitality and beauty and wonder still continuing to thrive and pulse in the world. And that hadn't happened. She hadn't gotten a burial and she hadn't gotten a funeral, either.

And he couldn't change the first part of that, but he could do something about the second.

He could give her a funeral. He could build her a tombstone and lay her metaphorically to rest next to her mother and her brother. And, just like Jimmy, he could bury something in her stead. And he knew exactly what it would be. Her diary. That book that captured the most intimate and personal parts of her. That book with all her beautiful thoughts recorded in her beautiful hand. He'd bury that because it represented her the most and because it would give him the chance to finally do right by her. He hadn't been able to protect her in life, but he could guard her secrets in death. He could make sure than no other soul ever came along and poured through her innermost thoughts for light entertainment.

And to make sure that, in his weaker moments, he didn't do it, either.

He'd finished his soup and started heading towards Herschel's workshop. He wasn't ready to start building anything yet, but he wanted to know what tools and materials he had to work with. And he didn't want to wait because he was excited. Truly fucking excited. Ever since he'd seen that picture of Tommy Greene and the porch swing, he'd wanted to make something beautiful for Beth. Make something beautiful for someone beautiful. It had been part of why he'd spun the tale about making her that engagement ring and what had kicked off the entire game of Remember When. And, while a tombstone was the last thing that he'd want to be making for her, it was something. It gave him the chance to do what he wanted - what he needed - to do.

To make something lasting and lovely and worthy of her.

Looking around the impressive, if slightly run-down, workspace, he was pleased to see just how many supplies he had at his disposal. Lumber and plywood and small sheets of metal. Nails and screws and bolts. There were all the expected raw materials, but also plenty of other items he could potentially use, too. Old parts from farming equipment that, outside of their intended context, where just whimsical shapes with their own odd beauty. A piece of a broken stained glass window that glowed even in the dim room and contained several rich colors: the most dominant being that all-powerful green. A box full of old house numbers - the kind used to mark an address - in various styles which, given his recent numerical obsession, he could easily imagine finding a way to use meaningfully. He'd been in that workshop before, looking for tools and supplies to fix up the property, but he'd never looked at it with those eyes. He'd never seen everything that was really in there and he'd definitely never thought about how he could use those things beyond the most utilitarian of purposes.

He started going through the whole room, pouring through drawers and cabinets and a seemingly endless amount of cardboard boxes. That hadn't just been Herschel's workshop, it had been Tommy Greene's, too. And probably Granddaddy Greene's as well. And, though the men had clearly taken a certain amount of pride in the space and kept it orderly, it obviously hadn't been overhauled or cleared out as it had passed through the generations. It seemed like there was a hundred years worth of items in there ranging from the clearly useful to the once useful to the dubiously useful to the what the fuck is this?

But they all sparked his imagination.

The dream of making Beth that engagement ring had being appealing on many levels, but it had had a particular appeal because it had been something that he'd actually thought that he'd have been able to accomplish. While he'd always been a creative problem solver, he'd never been creative in any artistic sense. Looking at that ring, though, he'd sincerely believed that he could have brought that kind of artistry to bear for Beth. That she would have been able to inspire that in him. Given him that kind of vision. And he'd been right. Going through all those objects in the workshop, his mind was whirling with ideas of things he could do for her. Concepts and memories that he could try to incorporate into the design. Pictures and words and symbols. All the different ways he could attempt to capture Beth's beauty and her spirit. All those things that had made her special.

All those things that had made her her.

The first thing that he knew was that, like that phantom engagement ring, he was going to include flowers. He was going to carve flowers for her on the finest, sturdiest piece of wood that he could find and he was going to coat it with some of that shellac in the can in the corner to preserve it for as long as possible. He'd wanted to bury her body in the earth's rich soil and have her stunning energy reveal itself to the world again when the Spring blossoms bloomed above her grave. That dream was gone, but he could bury her thoughts and her feelings - he could bury her spirit in written form - and he could make sure that flowers were always in bloom above it. Winter, Spring, Summer, or Fall, she would always have flowers above her grave.

And those flowers would truly be hers he decided.

The flowers that would have bloomed above her literal grave wouldn't have been any normal flowers. They would have been flowers that contained the very essence of Beth Greene. And the flowers that he would carve would be the same. He'd pick flowers that meant something. Flowers that symbolized all the most important and most amazing aspects of her character. He'd never known it before investigating her room, but flowers apparently had all kinds of different meanings. Almost every flower had some quality it represented or some message it was intended to convey. He knew that because Beth had an entire book devoted to the subject. It had caught his attention because it had an odd name and he'd been curious about what it had been referring to.

The Language of Flowers

He'd only flipped through it enough to see what it was, but he was going to study the fuck out of it now. He was going to go through every picture and every description - every legend and historical anecdote - and he was going to pick the perfect flowers for her. The flowers that symbolized kindness and compassion and strength. Loyalty and friendship and faith. Beauty and humor and grace. Hope and vitality and love. He'd never be able to capture Beth in words, but maybe he could capture her through the beauty of nature.

Words.

There would have to be some words, though. He'd send his own private message to her in the language of flowers, but there would need to be a message that the world could understand, too. Something other than just her name. Something other than a generic epitaph. Something other than Beloved Daughter, Sister, and Friend or May She Rest in Peace. And, while he imagined that he'd be debating his choice until the last moment, he could only think of one thing that would be appropriate. One thing that truly captured who she'd been and captured it in a way that he knew had meant something to her and, without question, meant something to him, too.

Beth Greene
She Brought Great Joy and Happiness to the Lives of Others

That fortune from that fortune cookie that she'd saved in that box of buttons. That fortune from that fortune cookie that had had his birthday as its lucky numbers. That fortune from that fortune cookie that had inspired her love song. That fortune from that fortune cookie that was so profoundly true. It had told her You Will Bring Great Joy and Happiness to the Lives of Others and it had been right. That's exactly what she'd done with her precious little time on earth. That was exactly how she should be remembered and, he thought, how she'd want to be remembered, too. She'd been a joyful and giving soul and would have wanted that to be her legacy.

He thought about her song and how she'd adapted that fortune for that critical verse. That verse that contained both that message and his birthday.

You'll bring great 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 skies above us,
Seven, twenty-four, sixty-nine

And he imagined how he might adapt his original epitaph, too. How he might take inspiration from her song and say what he really wanted to say about her. The full and complete truth.

Beth Greene
She Brought Great Joy and Happiness to the Lives of Others
And I Wish She Had Been Mine

As deeply as that appealed to him, he knew that he'd never do it. That memorial was going to be about her, not him. He couldn't insert himself into her eternity like that. Even though he meant it with all the humility in the world, he was afraid that including it would be an arrogant thing to do. Arrogant to act like Beth would want to be remembered for being loved by Daryl Dixon. He still liked the first line, though. He still thought that it was fitting and appropriate and needed to be incorporated into whatever he created.

He was about to start going through a small cabinet hanging on the wall - the kind with lots of tiny drawers that was meant to house nails and screws and such but, given what he'd encountered so far in the workshop, he knew could really be housing anything - when he noticed a dusty photo taped to the adjacent pinboard. It was a picture of Herschel standing next to a tractor with a young Maggie in the seat pretending like she was driving. She was beaming at the camera with pride and he was beaming at her with the same expression. It was a delightful little shot, but he it didn't make him happy to see it at all. It made him feel like an asshole. Like a totally thoughtless asshole.

Herschel.

Fucking Herschel.

He hadn't thought about him, either. Herschel hadn't had a burial. He hadn't had a funeral. His body and his detached head had just been left to rot or be eaten outside the prison walls. He'd been reduced to parts and his family had simply fled. Daryl had no idea what Maggie had done to mourn her father, but his other daughter had been forced to mourn him in virtual silence: her only companion basically ignoring her tears. And when the worst of her grief had passed, and Daryl had finally realized that he loved her, Herschel had gotten a handful of wildflowers and a few seconds of quiet reflection beside another man's grave. A pathetically brief and impersonal ceremony - if such a word could even be applied - conducted over the remains of different Beloved Father.

And he deserved so much more than that.

He'd been a great man who'd raised a great family and he deserved to have his life memorialized. He deserved to be laid to rest - at least symbolically - next to the people who he'd loved. On the land that he'd loved. To be on his farm with his wife and his children for eternity.

He deserved to come home.

Unlike Beth and Jimmy, Daryl had no immediate idea about what he'd bury in Herschel's place. What object he could inter that would best represent the man. He had a whole house full of things to consider, though, and he imagined he could come up with something. And that would be a good project. A good tribute in its own right. To give Herschel the respect of devoting time and thought into making the right choice. And he figured that, even if he got it wrong, Herschel would still appreciate the effort. He'd appreciate that he'd tried, because he was Herschel and he'd just been that kind of man.

Which was exactly why he needed to be honored and remembered.

Turning away from the picture, Daryl started rooting through all those tiny drawers and investigating all the objects inside: evaluating them both for their utility and their aesthetics. Trying to imagine how he could use each item either constructively or decoratively. And, as he went through, he started thinking about what he could write on Herschel's grave. What inscription he could use other than that Beloved Father that had been forced upon him at the funeral home. Something that he would have liked. Something that expressed something about who he'd been or what he'd believed.

There was the obvious temptation to choose a quote from the Bible. Something capturing the beauty of life or the nature of the sweet reward that lay beyond it. Something uplifting and powerful and with the kind of spiritual depth worthy of a man like Herschel. It was tempting both because it was conventional - in the sturdy, timeless sense that he thought that the man would have appreciated - and because Herschel had truly been a man of faith. He'd been a man of faith in a world where faith was tested every day. He'd believed in God and had held fast to his beliefs even in the face of Armageddon.

Daryl didn't know any scripture, though. He'd never gone to church or studied the Bible. He imagined that he could read it now - he certainly had the time - and try to find something appropriate. But he questioned whether he would get it right. He might have never read the Good Book, but he knew that the Bible was no Pride and Prejudice. It wasn't a light and easy read. It was challenging and had challenged far greater minds than his. For fucking millennia. And he worried that he'd misinterpret something because of that. That he'd find a quote that seemed beautiful and right, but that was actually insulting or wrong. A quote that he'd think were the heartfelt truths of a holy man but, had he understood the story better, would have known were actually the smooth-talking lies of fallen angel.

He wasn't just worried about his own literary interpretation skills, though. He wasn't just worried that he'd get a quote wrong because he lacked the intellect to get it right, he was worried because he knew that there wasn't just one right way to get it. He knew that, before the world fell apart, people argued about the meaning of God's good word all the time. There wasn't only one way for Christians to read the Bible and he had no idea which kind of Christian Herschel had been. Not in a way that meant anything to him. He knew that he'd been Southern Baptist, but Daryl didn't know what the central tenets of that denomination were or how it would have impacted his interpretation of that text. For all he knew, they thought one of Jesus's disciples was the Devil in disguise and, with his luck, that'd been the disciple he'd choose to quote.

So, as he moved on to explore yet another fucking cardboard box - a box whose contents were a mystery but which had once contained a space heater that was so old that he was sure that, if the rules still existed, it'd have violated every known fire code - he abandoned the scripture idea entirely. He started to think about his own memories of the man instead. Of their times together and what he'd witnessed. What he really knew and thought was worth knowing about Herschel.

And the first thing that he thought was that he'd been a tough son of a bitch. He'd held fast in hard times and been brave in a way that a man in his seventies really shouldn't have been. But there was no way that Daryl could put He Was One Tough Son of a Bitch on Herschel's grave. Merle would have appreciated that kind of a tribute, but Herschel definitely wouldn't have. He wouldn't have wanted that to be the summation of his life and he wouldn't have wanted that written forever next to the graves of his wife and children.

And that was fair, Daryl thought, because he'd been so much more than tough. He'd been a deeply kind and compassionate man. A healer and a doctor who'd have sacrificed himself for his patients if he'd had to. Daryl thought about how he'd tended to people during the outbreak at the prison. How he'd put his own health at risk in order to make sure that everyone else had been cared for. How he'd told them all about the veterinary college and instructed them on exactly what to get. How he'd volunteered to go - had wanted to go - but how Daryl had had to convince him not to.

Sooner or later, we always run.

And Herschel hadn't been able to run. His leg - or lack of a leg - would have jeopardized the safety of the whole group, so he'd reluctantly stayed behind. While that whole exchange had been quite literal at the time, he realized now that it had been so metaphorically true, too.

Herschel hadn't run.

He hadn't run and he hadn't hid himself away. He'd stood his fucking ground. He'd been a solid man, a dependable man, a pillar of fortitude in a crumbling world. When times had gotten tough, he'd been there. He'd never shirked his responsibilities. He'd never left a friend or a family member behind. And, even with with a sword to his neck, he'd held his head high. He hadn't even run away in his mind. He'd stayed present until the brutal end: facing his own death with an honesty that Daryl could only hope to aspire to.

And that, he thought, was exactly what he could say. It was just three simple words, but Herschel had been a simple man and he thought that he might appreciate the brevity.

Herschel Greene
He Never Ran

Part of him worried that that might be interpreted as a cruel joke about his leg, but he figured that no one else who ever read that would know that he'd been an amputee. And, if Herschel or anyone that had loved him could read it, they'd understand the sincerity behind the expression. They'd know that it was heartfelt, because they'd know that it was true.

They'd know that Herschel never fucking ran.

When Daryl had first rolled up on the property and seen all the damage that the herd and time had wrought, he'd been excited by the idea that he could fix things up. That he could leave the farm in better condition than he'd found it. And it had been a compulsion of his ever since. He'd done tons of work on the house and on the land. Work that he'd known, deep down, hadn't really needed to be done. Though his efforts had provided some measure of comfort and security, they'd ultimately been meaningless. It didn't really matter if there was a branch on the roof or a downed section of barbed wire in the West field.

At the end of the day, it didn't really matter.

It mattered like hell that the Greenes were remembered, though. That mattered more than anything left in Daryl's world. Building memorials for Beth and for Herschel was nothing like building a fence to protect an access road. It wasn't a practical act that, actually, wasn't really practical at all. It was a spiritual act that was, in fact, deeply spiritual. Deeply meaningful.

And he wanted to do it so fucking badly.

Wanted to do it far more than he wanted to fix up the property and he wanted that on a level that he wasn't even able to understand.

The sun was setting, though, and he didn't have enough light to keep exploring the workshop, so he decided to head back into the house to think more about the projects that lay ahead. He was going to go into Beth's room and start reading The Language of Flowers by lantern-light in his second favorite place under her window. Other than the first night, he hadn't allowed himself to lay down in her bed in the evenings. That still felt too intimate and too close to the notion of sleep and truly sharing a bed. Sharing it in all the ways that he wanted to. The window would be fine, though, because it was the book that was important. He wanted to find a way to capture her spirit - capture her beautiful spirit in all those beautiful blossoms - even more than he wanted to lie on her bed. He was so looking forward to it that he practically sprinted the short distance from the workshop across the yard and up the front porch: racing to get his hands on that book.

And he was so focused on that goal - and so used to his solitary little existence - that he had no idea that he was being watched as he moved.

No idea that his hurried journey towards horticultural enlightenment was witnessed by someone sitting quietly in the shadows of the distant treeline.

….

Beth Greene shared a lot of similarities with her father. They had many of the same qualities and characteristics. Had the same faith and the same beliefs. Had the same hopes and, sometimes, the same humor. They had a lot in common, but there was one trait that they didn't share.

Herschel Greene never ran, but Beth Greene most certainly did.

Beth Greene had run from Grady the first chance that she'd got. She'd run like a bat out of fucking hell and she hadn't once looked back. She'd run like the Devil had been chasing her because, as far as she'd been concerned, he had been. Or, at least, he could have been. The officers at Grady could have been coming after her and they were as good as the Devil. And, if that Devil had been after her, she'd been determined to make him catch her first. No, she hadn't been about to let him catch her. She'd make him shoot her speeding body in the goddamn back. She hadn't been willing to stop and she hadn't been willing to turn around. Not even for the Devil.

Because Beth Greene fucking ran.

She hadn't planned to, though. At least, not when she had. She still wasn't fully recovered from her brain injury - still wasn't fully ready to be out in that brutal world alone - but the opportunity had presented itself and she hadn't been able to resist taking it. She'd spent months trying to come up with a way to escape and every scheme that she'd devised had had huge risks. They'd all been both physically dangerous and, no matter how hard she'd tried to get around it, had all relied on some degree of luck. Most often, a very large degree of luck. They'd all been exactly what they were: the strategies of the truly desperate.

Last ditch efforts to live a life worth living or to die trying, knowing that the second outcome was the most likely one.

But then last week had happened and everything had changed. There had been a flu going around the hospital for days and half of the officers and orderlies had been completely laid out by it. Unlike the outbreak at the prison, it hadn't been life-threatening, but it had been severely incapacitating for everyone who had taken ill. With half the staff - voluntary and otherwise - out of commission, a lot of jobs had been tasked to people who had never done them before or had simply been ignored entirely. All those protocols and patrols that had been keeping her prisoner had started to crumble.

The machine had been breaking down.

And then one night, as Daryl had been trying to force himself out of her bed after reading Pride and Prejudice, the machine had stopped functioning completely. Probably not for very long, but for long enough. Long enough for her to know it was her best and only real chance to escape.

Long enough for her to make a run for it.

A team of officers who had been working security outside had gotten attacked by walkers and, despite being painfully understaffed, some of the few remaining cops on duty had been sent out to help them. Grady was still a terrible place to be for the prisoners, but after Dawn's death a new camaraderie had developed among the officers and they'd left their posts to go and aid their fallen brothers. (One of whom had been in a relationship with one of the cops on the ground, which - Beth suspected - had probably also factored into the decision to go.) Whatever the rationale behind the rescue mission had been, though, it had provided her with an entire side of the building that was unguarded and with no one who'd be looking for her for a decent window of time. And there had been so much confusion as to who'd been performing what roles, that she'd imagined that - even when the officers returned - it would still take them awhile to notice that she was missing.

So, despite still having a limp and not having assembled any provisions for the journey, she'd run. She'd grabbed a laundry bag from the linen closet, walked into the room of one of the sleeping patients, taken his uneaten food off of his tray - an unopened tin of fruit, a pudding cup, and single-serving size of insanely stale cereal - and thrown it into the bag. She'd looked around for anything that she could use as a weapon, but the people that ran Grady hadn't been fools and they'd kept most of those things under lock and key. No scalpels, no needles, and - because of her - no scissors. She'd finally settled on the small fire-extinguisher fastened to the wall, figuring that she could bash someone's brain in pretty good with that. It probably wouldn't be enough to kill them, but it would definitely do some damage and maybe give her a chance to get away. She'd thrown it in the bag, too, not wanting to draw attention by walking the halls with a shiny red fire extinguisher and assuming that she'd have been able to swing it at someone just as effectively in the bag as out of it. Slinging the whole thing over her shoulder, she'd walked out of the room as casually as possible, like she really had just been heading off to the laundry room to do another mundane chore. But, instead of heading to the laundry room, she'd headed completely unnoticed to the Eastern stairwell. One of the only two doors into and out of Grady: a door that was constantly guarded but - because of miraculous series of events - wasn't.

And in less than two minutes, Beth Greene had been breathing fresh air for the first time in ten months.

And in less than two seconds, she'd been forcing her lungs to take in every atom of that fresh air that they possible could as she'd run her heart out through the darkening streets of downtown Atlanta: determined to get as far from Grady as possible, as fast as possible.

No looking back.

She'd only been looking ahead and she'd only been looking out for two things: walkers and signs for I-85. She still had gaps in her memory, but she'd thanked God every day for the almost three months since she'd first remembered the way home. She'd remembered Senoia long before that, but she'd had absolutely no idea how to get there. They'd kept local maps in the officers workstation, so she'd known that there had been a way to find out. But she'd had no legitimate reason to ever be in there, so finding that information had always been a risk. A risk of getting caught where she hadn't been meant to be and an even bigger risk of them figuring out why she'd been in there in the first place. So when she'd remembered the first road trip that she'd taken with Maggie after she'd left for college - when they'd driven to Atlanta together, just the two of them, to see an afternoon concert in the park - she'd started to cry. Both because it had been such a fond memory and because she'd been the navigator. She'd been jealous that she couldn't drive yet and so had thrown herself into the role of road guide. And she'd remembered the route clearly. She'd remembered it clearly because it had been so easy that she'd been disappointed that so little navigation had been required of her.

They'd taken Main Street to GA-74 North to I-85 North. That had been it. Three steps and 40 miles and they'd been in Atlanta.

And all she'd had to do was reverse that. She didn't know if she'd ever known how to hotwire a car, but she definitely didn't know how to now. She'd have to make the trip on foot - which meant that she'd be too exposed and too vulnerable to literally take those roads - but getting to I-85 had been her first mission.

Find the highway and find some way to follow alongside it under cover.

After running for what had felt like an hour, but had probably only been ten minutes, she'd finally seen that beautiful blue sign highlighting the upcoming exit for I-85. And, if she hadn't been a creature of pure adrenaline at that point, she would have fallen on her knees and wept in joy. But she hadn't. She'd hadn't cried - she'd barely even smiled -and she definitely hadn't slowed down. If anything, she'd started running even faster.

Faster than she'd ever thought possible, a fire extinguisher bouncing against her back with every pulse-pounding step.

And that had begun the journey that had taken over a week. Or, at least, she thought it had been over a week. Keeping track of the time hadn't been her highest priority. It hadn't been a priority at all. Finding food, finding water, finding a real weapon. Those had been her priorities. Steering clear of walkers and Grady officers and Governor wannabes. Those had been her priorities.

Not falling on her limping ass from exhaustion because she hadn't walked farther than the length of a hospital hallway in almost a year. That had been her priority.

And it had taken everything she'd had to make it. She'd gotten lucky raiding a few homes: scrounging up some canned goods and a wicked meat cleaver for protection, along with a real backpack to keep her meager possessions in and a large bottle for storing water. She'd outfitted herself out reasonably well and felt like, for having started with nothing, she'd ended up with more or less everything that she'd needed to make the journey. It had pushed her to her limit, though, and by the time that she'd crossed over a backroad that she'd recognized as belonging to one of her neighbor's farms, she finally had broken down and cried. Collapsed by the side of that road and cried tears of relief and happiness. Tears of fatigue and tears of fear.

Tears because it had all become real. Truly real. She'd been about to come home again and she'd had no idea what she was going to find. She had one chance - one chance - of ever finding her family again and the farm was it. If they weren't there, she had nowhere else to look.

No place other than the destroyed prison that she'd known there was no way that they'd have ever gone back to.

And that had been terrifying. Terrifying to know that her dream was either going to be realized or it was going to be dashed, but one way or another, the dream was going to be gone. She wasn't going to be able to live in a world of hope anymore. She was going to live in the real world. And, as she'd sat by that backroad crying, she'd prayed to God - for the thousandth time - that those worlds would be one and the same.

As she'd neared the property, it had become immediately clear that someone had been there since they'd fled. Someone had settled there. At some point, at least, and for quite awhile. She'd walked inside the treeline and had been able to see hundreds of neat yards of barbed wire and straightened fences: things that she'd known had been destroyed by the herd. Or, at least, things that she'd thought that she'd known had been destroyed by the herd. And there were barriers in places where she'd been almost positive there hadn't been before, too. There were rows of wooden spikes and fortifications against key access points to the property. She'd gotten excited when she'd seen those. She'd gotten excited when she'd seen the spikes because they had reminded her of the ones that they'd used at the prison. She'd tried to temper her enthusiasm, though, by telling herself that it was a pretty basic defense method and that a lot of people probably used them. Plus, the section that she'd been able to see had been at most half-complete and that hadn't seemed particularly encouraging, either. Finishing it wouldn't have been that big of a project and she hadn't been able to imagine her family leaving it undone. Which, in her mind, had indicated one of three things: she'd just happened to catch them on the very day that they'd decided to make that a two-day project (which seemed really unlikely), her family had been there at some point but they'd been forced to leave in a rush for some reason (which seemed painfully likely), or her family had never been there at all and that was someone else's handiwork (which seemed the likeliest of all.)

The only way to know for sure was to watch the place. To sit in the woods and to see who, if anyone, came out of the house.

So that's what she'd been doing for the past couple hours. She'd been sitting and watching and she hadn't seen a damn thing. She was in a trance staring at a completely unchanging scene when, suddenly, a man ran from the workshop, dashed across the yard and up the front porch: charging right through the front door like he owned the place. It had all happened so quickly and unexpectedly that, by the time she really registered what was happening, he was already in the house.

In her house.

So someone was still living there. Someone was still living there and she had no clue who it was. She'd been too far away and too zoned out to pick up any detail and he'd been too fast for her to see his face. She'd only seen enough to know that he was a relatively large man with dark hair and that he'd seemed fair-skinned. And there were a few people in her family who fit that description, she thought, but probably half of the living male population fit it, too. That could have been Sheriff Rick Grimes from King County and it could have been Officer Matt Reynolds from Grady Memorial. She knew that it wasn't Officer Reynolds. Her mind failed her at times, and she lived in fear of being found, but she wasn't crazy. The point was the same, though.

That could have been anyone.

That could have been anyone and she silently cursed the fact that there was no way to get closer to the property without being seen. No way to investigate the situation any more without taking an unacceptable risk. There was nothing she could do but continue to watch and wait. Watch and wait and hope that the mystery man showed himself again. And that, this time, he strayed farther from the house. Or, at least, lingered long enough for her to get a good look. Long enough for her to know if that really was her house that she was staring at.

Or if it was his house now.

Because if it was his house now - whoever he was - Beth Greene was going to run like hell again.

---

Yay! Daryl's in her house thinking about how to make her a great tombstone and she's in the woods thinking about who the hell's in her house. Nothing but a big empty field separates them now.

Finally, right?

I think that this story has more than run its course and I'm pretty sure that a lot of you feel the same. So, I won't say whether or not the course of true love will run smoothly here, but I will say that it will run quickly. I've made some mistakes with this and I'm really ready to move on. Try to take the lessons I've (hopefully) learned and start something new. Something better. So there will be one or two more chapters and that'll be that. We'll close the book on this book that probably should have been about a third shorter if I'd had any editorial sense or known what I was doing! :)

Thanks for reading and for hanging in there with me on my rocky maiden voyage in writing fiction! For my American readers, I hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving, and for my non-American readers, I hope you have a Happy Fourth Thursday in November! It's a really big deal for us and - if you can believe it - we eat even more than we normally do! Really good stuff, too. So, if you can, eat something nice with someone you care about and think about something that you're thankful for this Thursday. It's fun thing to do no matter what country you're from! :)