There's a shrill laugh of a child on the air.

The bark of a dog, the gust of the wind through the trees.

Warm sunshine warms Beth's flesh and curls something tight in her stomach, her eyes following the little girl running circles around the dog. Her dog. Her little girl. Their little girl. Beth's blue eyes, Daryl's dark hair and his wicked mouth. From the day Beth brought her screaming into the world, pulling her from between her own legs, her daughter has always had Daryl's mouth. Beth sees a little of her own mama in her there too, in the curl of her mischievous smile or the flash of her eye when she's trying to sass her mama about bedtime.

It's been a long time since Beth used anything as convenient as a calendar, but she made her own. Every day she marked a line beneath the gate that brought her and Daryl to this place. The tree on the other side, the one they climbed has long since grown over it, providing a spot of black shade where Daryl's lies beneath the ground. A sad, nostalgic tugging pulls on her heart and her throat tightens with how much she misses him. Every day she went to talk to him, telling him about the baby moving and about the last meal she caught all alone, she marked her 'calendar'.

Their daughter was born two hundred and forty two days after Daryl died, and Beth has counted three hundred and sixty five days five times since. Five years he's been gone but she hasn't been alone. Her daughter is fun and electric, she keeps Beth busy and laughing. There are still the cold nights. The lonely ones. The scary ones. They haven't lived here as peacefully as Beth would like. There's been trouble, people who have tried to take what she has, tried to take her daughter. Beth swallows softly and stands from the back stoop, heading over to Maggie and Dog.

Dog named himself after turning up when Maggie was three. He wouldn't respond to any names she tried until she called him a dumb dog. That got his tail wagging and because she didn't have the heart to always call him a dumb dog, unless he ran off and terrified her, she shortened it to Dog. He's old, she can see by looking at him, he's going grey around his eyes now. Another sad pang tugs at her. Daryl would have loved Dog and sometimes she likes to wish that he sent Dog her way. He was just a stray who turned up on the front door crying like this was his home before and there was people he expected to save him inside.

Beth only let him in at first because the damn thing was drawing walker attention. There's not a lot of it that gets through her traps but when Maggie was tiny it was hard to find the time to set them, or the courage to leave her alone. Dog somehow made it through them and he brought three walkers with him. Beth nearly died that day and she glared at the dog for many moons after that. It wasn't until Maggie started taking interest in him that she started to love him, and one night when she fought off a living person rather than a dead one, she scrambled up the stairs covered in blood to find Dog guarding Maggie's door.

Right there and then she slid down the door frame and sobbed, hanging onto the dog and soaking its ragged fur. She remembers how much she missed Daryl that night, how her stomach cramped and her heart screamed with pain. A pain that hasn't ever gone away, only hidden behind her ribs, hidden away from her daughter, until it was safe to be set free again.

Maggie glances up as she approaches now and Dog barks in acknowledgement. "Dinner?" She asks immediately.

Beth shakes her head with a smile, leaning to sweep Maggie up into the air where she giggles shrilly and Dog yaps at Beth's heels. "You greedy piggy!" She cries, swinging her down so she's in her arms and exposed to Beth's tickling fingers. "Greedier than Dog!"

"I am! I am!" Maggie squeals with delight. "Again, Mommy! Again!"

So Beth does it again because there's not much in life she can say no to when it comes to Maggie, who frankly, along with Dog, is her whole life. When Maggie's breathless and back on her feet, Beth curls her small hand in hers and swings their arms. "Wanna go see daddy 'fore we get some food?"

Maggie tilts big eyes up at her but rather than the smile that usually beams on her face, her little mouth pulls into a frown. "Miss daddy."

Smiling softly, Beth strokes her plump little cheek. "I know, sweetheart. Me too."

Her daughter often says this, though she was conceived on the day her father died. Beth imagines she misses the idea of him and the person Beth has built him up to be in stories. The gallant hero who saved mommy so many times and fought to protect her. They cross over to the shade and the spot where Daryl rests, kneeling down before the stone Beth engraved. Looking at it always makes her throat slick, remembering how many times she threw up the night Daryl died, how many times she cried herself into that sickness. She cut her hands open engraving it and she sat for a long time after looking at what she had carved with blood dripping between her fingers, soaking the earth.

Daryl Dixon.

Son, brother, friend.

Deeply missed.

It always seems wrong, the words. She keeps looking at them year after year and thinks she'll change them, create something new but she can't think of what that would be. She didn't know she was pregnant the night he died, so it felt wrong to put father and now it feels wrong that it's not there. Maggie hasn't asked about it yet, though Beth knows there's a day she will. Maybe they'll carve the new one together. A smile lifts her face at that, kept there by Dog laying his head in her lap. He whines softly and she believes it's because he feels the dull pain throbbing behind her breastbone. Maggie curls up on her other side and dozes off after a few minutes of Beth stroking her long, dark hair.

"Hey," she whispers when her daughter is snoring softly. "I miss you. I miss you both."

A pinch takes her mouth. Addressing the piece of her that died along with Daryl is always difficult but a part of Beth knows it needs to be said. A girl died with Daryl. A girl in love, a girl who was naïve. A woman was born, a strong, resilient woman who has killed people to protect her family. Who has done a lot of things to protect her family. New scars litter the body of the new woman she is, marks of birth and pain. Marks of survival. The girl who died along with Daryl was smooth, apart from the neat line on her wrist. In her darkest nights, Beth wishes she had finished it that day and cut out all the pain since. Wishes she never did this to herself; that she never loved and lost.

To wish that though, would be to wish Maggie away and that's something she can never do. Maggie isn't Daryl and she never can be but she's a part of him to hold, to keep. She's a gift, a beautiful, lifesaving gift and Beth could never, ever, wish her away.

"I miss your arms at night," she confides to the grass, her vision blurring. "I miss your smile when y'didn't know I was lookin'." She laughs softly, tears spilling down her face. "I even miss you shoutin' at me. Y'know, I missed a shot at this deer the other day an' I could just hear you in my ear. Girl, y'fuckin' blind? Coulda shot that with my eyes closed."

A soft sob escapes her but she tempers it back in as Maggie stirs, curling in tighter to Beth's side, her free hand absently stroking through Dog's fur. "Sometimes I don't miss you at all. Sometimes I hate you for leavin' an' sometimes I'd give anythin' for you to have stayed."

There's no answer but that warm sunshine on her shoulders and the wind blowing her hair. "I hope you're still here with us, in some way. I hope you see."

Her eyes slip closed and cold tears slide down her cheeks. She bends her head and kisses Maggie's soft hair and then Dog's fur. He lifts his head and licks a wet strip over the bridge of her nose, forcing a watery laugh from her.

Glancing back to Daryl's place of rest, she smiles softly. "I hope you see that I'll never stop missin' you. An' I hope you see, that we're happy."

A gust of wind tangles her hair in her lashes and even though it's probably wishful thinking, she takes it as her answer.