…

Chapter Two.

There was a weight on his chest.

It wasn't a heavy weight and it wasn't enough to keep him from breathing or moving but it was definitely there. He didn't think he was imagining it. It took him a minute or so to finally get his eyes to open and when he did, the first thing Daryl Dixon saw was that the weight on his chest was a cat. The black and brown striped cat blinked at him and seemed to be asking, "You alive?" Daryl honestly didn't know if he had an answer for that.

Was he alive? Where the Hell was he? Where did this cat come from? And if he was still actually alive, why was he? The bullet in the shoulder wasn't a kill-shot but running and losing blood, Daryl had felt himself grow weaker with each step. He kept pushing though he didn't know where he was going and wherever that was, he didn't know if he was going to make it. He needed to clean his shoulder but he didn't know where the Hell he could do that. So he kept pushing him to get somewhere because if he passed out, he'd be walker food. But that was what happened. He came from the woods and felt himself collapsing into the grass before he could get himself safely inside one of the houses he saw.

He knew he wasn't dead. The cat sitting on his chest was proof of that. Past the cat, Daryl saw the familiar nylon material of a tent. He was in a tent. What the Hell was going on? He tried to move and the cat stepped down from his chest. He took his time, stretching his body and tail out, before walking out, not giving Daryl another look. As soon as the cat was gone, Daryl forgot about it. There was just too many other things about this whole thing that needed his attention. He wasn't wearing his tee-shirt. He was lying there, in a tent, without a shirt on. Where the Hell was his shirt and who the Hell had taken his shirt off? It took him another moment to manage to get himself sitting up and he looked to the shoulder where he had been shot. There was a dull ache but it wasn't excruciating. There was a white square bandage on the front of his shoulder and he touched it with light fingers.

Whoever had taken off his shirt had seen to his shoulder. They obviously had to take it off to do that. There was something underneath the bandage – something that made him want to start scratching his shoulder and not stop – and he knew he probably shouldn't but he did anyway. He picked at one corner of the bandage and began to pull it back so he could see what else had been done to him. He guessed he couldn't really believe that someone had actually helped him. No one helped anyone in this world anymore. And even before the dead started walking, people didn't help other people then, too.

"Don't do that."

Daryl's eyes flew up and he saw someone kneeling on the ground outside of the tent, watching him trying to peel the bandage off and giving him the fiercest frown. It actually made Daryl drop his hand away from his shoulder. He looked at her. For some reason, he hadn't been expecting a woman to appear. How the Hell had she gotten him here? Was it just her or were their others? It couldn't be just her. For one thing, she didn't look old enough for it to be just her. She looked like she still had "teen" attached to the end of a number. Her skin was a little bronzed from clearly being out in the sun for an extended amount of time and her blonde hair was back in a ponytail. She was clean. It sounded weird but that was the first thing Daryl noticed about her – after her ridiculously young-looking face.

It was a big indicator to what kind of person he was dealing with if that person was dirty or clean. If the person was dirty, chances were they were out in the wild and they were unpredictable. Violent and hungry, a person who lived out here for too long forgot what they were and they were more dangerous than walkers in some ways. And a person who was clean had been behind fences for too long and had forgotten all about how dangerous things were.

Daryl honestly didn't know which of the two he preferred since he fell into both.

His eyes dropped down to the young woman's hand. One was hovering over the knife's handle that was at her side in a sheath. For some reason, he didn't doubt that she would use it on him if he gave her reason to. Right now, he wasn't going to try something. Not yet. He had to find out what she had done to him before he got a better understanding of this person and where he was.

He tensed when she leaned over with her other hand and reached to his side, expecting to find his own knife or his crossbow but he had neither. His eyes began darting around the tent, searching for them, but he didn't see them. His eyes then flew back to the woman and he narrowed them.

"I wasn't going to leave you armed. I don't know you," she read his mind.

She peeled the bandage back – slowly and gently – and shuffled into the tent on her knees so she could get a closer look at his now-exposed shoulder. Daryl looked down and tried to get a look too. It was a mix of golden and black and there were neat, tight and black stitches sewn into his skin.

"What is that?" He asked.

"It's a salve of honey and activated charcoal," she answered and Daryl moved his eyes from his healing wound to the woman's face. He didn't ask but he guessed she could tell what he wanted to know. "Honey lasts forever and it's also naturally antibacterial. And activated charcoal helps fight against systemic infection. I put some in the wound, too, before I stitched it shut. Since I have no idea where that bullet in your shoulder came from, I didn't want you getting toxins in your blood. I couldn't help you with that."

"Why'd you help me at all?" Daryl had to wonder. She shrugged and didn't answer. That was fine. He had other questions, too. "Where the Hell you find activated charcoal?"

She finished her assessment and then gently pressed the bandage back over the healing injury. "There are still things in stores that people don't know they need." She brought herself back away from him and knelt again right outside of the tent. "You need to eat. You've been out for two days. When you go to the bathroom, go outside the fence. I don't need you peeing near my food," she said. And with that, she brought herself up to her feet, turned and walked away, leaving Daryl alone again.

Just as he opened his mouth to yell at her that he needed a shirt, something flew into the tent and practically smacked him in the face. A shirt. He frowned a little as he tugged it on. A plain black men's tee-shirt that was soft and actually smelled like soap of being freshly washed. It took him longer than it should have since he hadn't used his legs for two days apparently but he managed to pull himself from the tent and get himself to his feet. When he did, froze.

"What the fuck?" He couldn't stop from asking himself as he looked to what was around him.

His family wasn't religious in any sense of the word but his mom had still liked the stories. When he was a little kid, she always read to him the story of the Garden of Eden. When he got shot, how the Hell did he wind up in the actual place? He felt like Dorothy walking out of her house into the colored land of the munchkins. The back of the one-story all-brick house was in front of him. There was a wooden deck where there was a table with two benches and then down two steps, there was a fire pit with a roaring fire – a pot, an iron kettle, a flat pan and a wire rack over the flames. There was a clothesline with various things of clothes hanging, drying in the sun and flapping in the breeze. And then there were the crops. This woman and whoever lived here with her had definitely worked their asses off. It was still early summer so nothing was massively big or tall but there were green sprouts planted in neat rows, covering practically the whole backyard. Other rows were just dirt with nothing sprouting but Daryl did't doubt that something was growing there, too. It had been a long time since Daryl saw a setup like this.

There were a couple communities he traded with – he gave them fresh meat and they gave him bars of soap or other foods – and even those communities didn't look as impressive as this. They tried but growing enough crops to feed a group of people was not as easy as just sticking seeds in the ground. It took some skill and talent and this woman and whoever else lived here had it.

The tent was right up against the far-back fence and Daryl listened to her. He found the gate in the fence and stepped outside to pee a bit away. He could see why these people picked this spot. The mountain to the back of them offered them more protection as did the woods. And of course, having a backyard surrounded by a solid wood fence was a huge plus. The dull ache in his shoulder was steady but it was stitched and that disgusting salve seemed to be helping against infection. He still had no idea why that woman and anyone else here with her had helped him. Daryl couldn't say that he would do the same. He knew he wouldn't. Helping people was too risky. How did this woman and anyone else here know that now that they had saved him and his shoulder, he wouldn't turn right around and kill them now?

Back inside the yard, Daryl made sure the gate was closed securely behind him. The woman was kneeling at the fire, fixing something on the flat plan, and the cat was sitting on the bottom deck step, licking his paw. The woman lifted her head and pointed to the table on the deck.

"Sit. You need to eat something. I've managed to get water down your throat without you choking but now that you're up and moving, you need to eat."

Just thinking of eating something, Daryl's stomach let out a growl and he headed for the deck. He looked down to her at the fire to see what she was doing and when he saw, he stopped in his tracks. He blinked at what she was making over the fire and he couldn't remember the last time he saw anything remotely like it. The communities he went into had tried but hadn't managed.

"How the Hell you doin' that?" He asked.

"They're not going to be good," she answered without lifting her head. "The box was probably too old but it was the "just-add-water" kind so I figured I'd give it a shot. Do you want strawberries added to yours?"

Again, he blinked. "Yeah." He didn't even think about that. He knew strawberries could grow wild but it honestly had been a Hell of a long time since he had had any.

"Go sit," she said, still without looking at him, keeping a close eye on their food cooking.

The cat stopped grooming itself and watched Daryl with close eyes as Daryl went to the table as the woman told him to. He sat down on one of the benches and felt useless like he always did if he wasn't doing something. He had never been the sort to just sit around – not like Merle or even the old man. Those two had probably been some of the laziest guys in the world. Daryl had always liked moving. He supposed if he was always moving, it would make him a harder target for his old man. And if he was always doing something and occupying himself, it was easier to keep his mind off of his own shit life. He couldn't just sit here when that woman did everything.

But as he sat there, he started to feel himself feeling drained. Just from getting up, going to the bathroom and walking across the yard to this table. He reminded himself that he had been shot but still. He didn't like the feeling that he could be on his ass any time after doing so little.

The woman appeared at the table, holding two plates and she set one down in front of Daryl. He stared down at the two massive pancakes with strawberries and he could still hardly believe in what he was seeing. He then looked to the woman as she sat her own plate down across from his and disappeared inside for a moment through the sliding patio door before returning just a moment later with two white plastic cups, each with water in them. She didn't say a word as she sat one of those cups down in front of him before sitting herself down on the opposite bench.

"Thanks," he said and she lifted her eyes to look at him. "For my shoulder and for… Can't believe you made pancakes."

"They're not going to be good and I don't have syrup," she said again. "It's impossible to keep a steady temperature over an open fire like that and the mix is old so…" she didn't finish.

Daryl didn't believe her. She had made pancakes with strawberries. Even if they tasted like absolute garbage, it would be the best garbage he would have eaten in the past few years. Not to mention that his stomach was absolutely empty after two days and he needed to fill it with food. They began to eat in silence and the cat jumped silently up onto the table. With a smile, the woman stroked him on his head and down his back, the cat arching its back into her palm. Daryl watched her and was, again, almost taken aback at how fucking young she looked.

"Who else is here with you?" Daryl asked once he had practically inhaled one of the pancakes. She was wrong. It was one of the best things that he had ever tasted.

Her eyes left the cat to look at him. He could see her body grow tense at the question and her hand began to lower to her knife. Immediately, Daryl knew why she had reacted like that. It was the question someone would ask when they were scoping something out. He would want to know how many people there were so he knew how many he would have to take out before taking everything for himself.

"I didn' mean it like that," he shook his head. "I was jus' wonderin'."

She was still staring at him. "It's just me and the cat."

Daryl was glad he wasn't eating because he might have choked at that. Just her? This… girl had done all of this. He couldn't stop himself from looking behind him – at the crops spouting out of the dirt – and then his hand went to his shoulder where there had been a bullet and now, there were tight stitches in its place. Just her? She had managed to drag his body in here and perform surgery on him and keep him alive for two days while he was out cold? Just her who was growing all of this food and cooking pancakes? Who the Hell was she? There were plenty of adults – actual adults – left alive in this world who couldn't do most of these things.

He looked at her and wanted to ask her how old she was because how old could she possibly be? And not only that but how did she get to be on her own? He could guess but still… girls who looked like her and were as young as her didn't make it that long in this world.

"'m Daryl," he finally let her know.

She gave a nod and her hand went back to stroking the cat's back. Her body seemed tense but her hand was no longer drifting down to the knife at her side. "Beth," she said. "You'll sleep in the tent. You steal anything, I have your crossbow and I can figure out how to put an arrow in your back." Daryl was silent but he didn't doubt that she could figure it out pretty easily. "I'll check your wound a few more times but I think you should be good enough to leave in two days." Beth's hand paused on the cat's back and she looked to him again. "You'll be leaving in two days."

Daryl gave his own nod and began to get to work on his second strawberry pancake. He didn't put up an argument at that. Why would he? He would leave in two days if he was able to. This was her place and it was clear that she was prepared to take care of herself to keep it that way. Daryl wouldn't fight for it. He didn't want it. He'd leave in two days and continue on his way.

…

THANK YOU! Everyone is so amazing. When I think no one wants this couple anymore, you all respond so warmly to this new story idea I have. Please read and comment! I might just keep the rest of the chapters from Beth's POV but I'll see.