AN- I just wanted to thank everyone for the lovely feedback for that last chapter! I've been looking forward to your reactions to that scene since I updated this from a one-shot and you all did not disappoint. Thank you all so much!

Chapter Thirty-Eight

It took a while for everyone to calm down from the shock and excitement of their sudden reunion and it took even longer for Beth to stop crying. Daryl attributed at least part of her sudden resemblance to a leaking faucet to the pregnancy hormones because he had never seen her cry like that when she was happy. Honestly though he almost felt like joining her. No matter how long he stared at everyone's all too familiar faces he still felt as though none of this was actually happening. He had long since stopped believing that they would ever actually find even one person from the prison that seeing all of them nearly dropped him to the ground with surprise.

The shock had him and nearly everyone else so far out of their senses that none of them even considered the danger they were putting themselves in from their exuberant reunion until a man with a mullet suggested that they get off of the road before they drew anymore attention to themselves. At that point Daryl was just helping a still teary eyed Beth off of the ground and he had to agree it was probably for the best. They had made far to much noise in their jubilation, this section of road would not be clear for very much longer.

As such their small band of survivors joined with the much larger one inside of the cramped vehicles. None of the Winston group even protested when the others began to drive in the very direction that they had just come from. Daryl had ended up in the bed of the pickup truck sandwiched between Michonne and Beth and across from Maggie and Glenn who could not seem to stop smiling. The noise of the trunk drowned out any attempt at conversation so they all spent the drive staring at each other in dismay.

The ride only lasted for roughly twenty minutes before Abraham pulled into the lot of an extremely rundown motel. For a second Daryl wondered how they had manged to miss seeing it the night before but when he thought about what might have happened had they not spent the night in that truck he found he no longer cared. It was well worth the stiff feeling in his body to be back together with his family.

The cleaning sweep of the motel felt more normal to Daryl than anything he had gone through in a long time. These people knew his hand signals, they knew how to have each others backs. He never once worried about turning his back on one of them because he knew that they would not put a knife in it. The sweep went by much faster with this group than any Daryl had done in a while.

The motel cleared out of walkers, all twenty of them filed into one small room, everyone immediately trying to grab a spot on one of the two beds or the rickety chair in the corner. Daryl and Beth entered last and as such grabbed one of the short straws of having to sit on the floor. Seating arrangements were the last thing on Daryl's mind however as he sank down next to Beth and surveyed the people around them.

For a moment no one spoke, it seemed as though no one truly knew where to begin. Finally Tyresse leaned forward and clasped his hands across his legs.

"Do you two want to go first or should we?" he asked curiously, everyone eager to know what had led everybody else to be on that small slice of road at that exact moment.

Daryl turned his head to look at Beth who stared at him with wide eyes. In that moment everything they had been through suddenly hit him like a wall and he shook his head quickly. He was not quite ready to relive all of their memories. Nor, if he was being completely honest, was he ready to tell their friends that they were married and expecting a child. It wasn't that he thought that they would be upset or judgmental of them or that he wanted to keep Beth and him a secret. Daryl just did not want them to worry about Beth just yet, they had all only now been reunited. He wanted to give everyone at least a few more minutes of peace before the anxiety sank in.

Beth smiled at him as she nodded, squeezing his hand tightly before looking at the others. Even though Daryl knew that no one else could see their hands due to the positioning of their bodies he still felt a sudden irrational urge to blush. He was used to touching and being touched by Beth in front of people who knew about them but none of them were her sister. Daryl was sure that Maggie was going to figure out that there was something going on between them before they even said anything themselves just by the way that he knew they looked at each other. Daryl supposed that it might actually be better that way if she had some time to get used to the idea. Might help lower the shock of it all.

"There's so many more of you. Your story is likely to be much longer so why don't you start?" Beth suggested as she let go of Daryl's hand and drew her legs to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. Her large shirt was pulled tight at the motion and for a moment Daryl saw the hint of the baby bump in her stomach before Sasha began to speak, effectively pulling his gaze away from his wife and back towards the group.

"We didn't all get out together." she began as everyone who did not already know the story began to lean forward in anticipation of their tale. Sarah, Luke, Molly and Roland did not know all of their back story but they knew enough to understand that whatever had happened to these people had led to Daryl and Beth giving them up for either dead or gone. They looked just as curious as everyone else in the room.

Sasha went on to explain the small groups that had gotten out together or met up soon after the prison was overrun. Her, Bob and Maggie. Tyresse, Lizzie, Mika, Judith and Carol. Michonne, Carl and Rick. Glenn, Tara, Eugene, Rosita, and Abraham.

Others began to tell their own parts of what had happened to them. Tyresse very quickly told them that Lizzie and Mika were dead. He did not go into very much detail but Daryl did notice that he exchanged a very heavy look with Carol. All of their stories had one very common element to it.

They had all headed to Terminus.

"Where were all the signs?" Beth asked curiously as she leaned forwards, as though being closer to the people telling the story would make it easier for her to hear.

"They were all down the railroad tracks." Maggie explained as she peered in surprise at her sister. "You really never saw one?"

Beth shook her head mutely as Daryl admitted what they were both thinking. "We found some bodies by the tracks first few days after. Didn't go near the tracks again." He felt a twinge of guilt at this admission. If he and Beth had just been brave enough to keep going in that direction would they have had this reunion that much sooner?

"That's probably a good thing." Bob sighed as the group continued with the story. It did not take long for Daryl to agree with that statement.

It seemed that while Beth and him spent the winter in the relative safety of an isolated farmhouse nearly all of their family spent it locked in a train car by a group of people who had intended to use them for food. No one asked how the group knew that was what their intention was, it was plain from their faces that they knew it to be true.

They had only managed to escape, mostly uninjured, due to what Daryl put down to severe dumb luck. The train car they were in was not locked from the outside, it simply had a sniper pointed on the doors at all times. After what everyone assumed was a little over a week (although there was some arguing on the exact number of days) they had eased open the door as they did everyday to be greeted only by silence. There was not the usual sound of bullets ricocheting off of the side of the train. For whatever reason the sniper was not watching them at that moment.

Rick and Glenn had used this moment to slip out of the train car and over the fences behind them into the woods. Before entering Terminus Rick had buried a bag of guns outside of it, a severe lack of trust that ended up saving everyone in the cars life.

They had returned with the weapons to the car, shooting the now in place sniper down before they approached. Now armed, and far more dangerous than anyone in Terminus was likely expecting, they managed to escape virtually unhurt.

The same could not be said of Terminus's residents.

No one wanted to go into very much detail about what had happened in their shootout, Michonne simply said that it was a 'bloodbath'. A few of them had gotten shot in the process, the worst being Abraham who took a bullet in the thigh and one in the side leaving him unfit for travel for a few months. Sasha told them all proudly that if it had not been for Bob's medical background Abraham would have very likely died that day.

Carol and Tyresse had been traveling to Terminus with Judith at this same time, they had been around the outskirts of the camp on a day when there was a severe amount of gunfire. No one knew if it was from the day that Rick, Carl and Michonne were herded into the train car or if it was from the day of the bloodbath. Either way Carol and Tyresse had had no way of knowing that it was their friends involved and so they had turned around and left.

They had traveled around aimlessly, not really knowing who to look for or where to try. One night they ran into a strange couple who asked them to give Judith over to them for 'safekeeping'. When they refused they were knocked unconscious, awakening to find Judith gone. They were still hunting for her when the others had found them.

While Beth and him were just learning about the pregnancy and joining up with the people still with them now to chase down the dream of their own sanctuary their friends were in the middle of hunting down a child. Daryl had not realized before how relatively easy his and Beth's journey had been when compared to the others.

Judith was found unharmed of course, as well as several other children. They helped the children return to their own camps before moving on again, to a destination no one had yet stated, Daryl did not want to interrupt them to find out where it was they were all planning on going, he knew that they would tell him eventually. He felt a bit guilty that while they were busy reuniting lost children with their families he was simply keeping watch on a fence to a town he thought would be where he rose his own family.

"We'd been on the road again for about a week when we saw the sign." Rick informed them, his eyes staring at them in the intense look Daryl had forgotten he had.

Clearly the mention of a sign was supposed to mean something to Beth and him. Daryl's brow crinkled in thought as he tried to think of what he could be talking about.

"It was how I knew you were alive." Maggie whispered, bringing to the forefront of Daryl's memory the metal billboard he and Beth had written their names on under the single word 'alive'. "I saw that sign and I just knew you two were still out there."

"We kept looking for you for a while. Scanned the area for a few weeks." Carol said as she peered at them intently. "I don't know how we missed you."

Daryl shook his head in surprise, when he had them write their names there it had only been to help give Beth some hope. He had wanted to leave a marker that at one point they had existed, he had never truly thought anyone they knew would see their names there and feel that hope as well.

He was pulled from his thoughts as Beth whispered. "We didn't stay by the sign."

"So where have the two of you been?" Carl asked as he stretched out on his stomach and stared at the two of them expectantly, clearly eagerly awaiting their own tale.

Beth opened her mouth to begin but Molly cut her off before she could say a word.

"Wait where are you all going?" she raised her eyebrow in question and Daryl felt himself nodding along. He had been wondering why the group had kept pushing on instead of trying to find a safe place.

"DC." the small Hispanic girl said as she leaned back against Abraham's wide chest.

Daryl felt his eyebrows raise in surprise and he turned to look at Beth who stared at him with an equal expression of wry disbelief.

"How ironic. That's where Daryl and Beth were originally planning on going when we ran into each other." Sarah said conversationally as she helped Roland fish one of his cars out from where it had rolled under the bed.

"You guys were going to DC?" Glenn asked in surprise as he looked over at them. "Why?"

Beth shifted uncomfortably, clearly not wanting to tell them she had picked their destination because of a spoon. Daryl opened his mouth to ask them why they were so intent on getting to DC when the other new girl, Tara, spoke.

"Why didn't you keep going?" she asked from where she sat on the floor.

Daryl and Beth exchanged a loaded look, both knowing that now was the time to tell them. He was just fishing for the words to best explain themselves when Roland cried out happily.

"They wanted to find a doctor for the baby!"