[A/N: I have to apologize for the delay in getting this up. I got a new job last week (which i am pretty damn excited about), but which means i am going to be pushed for time for the next month or so, whilst i transition out of one job and into the next. So, realistically, i reckon i will only be able to manage one chapter a week for the next few weeks. However, I guarantee that this story will not be a fan fiction that fades away into incompleteness. I already know how it ends - I've written part of it - but there's still a bit of detail to fill in between here and there. So i hope you bear with me.

Thank you so much to all of you who took the time to leave me some feedback on the last chapter. I am truly overwhelmed and grateful for the response - because, let's be honest, you've got no perspective on the things you write yourself, so your feedback is more valuable than you know. I am glad you weren't expecting Seth (and that you didn't trust him when he showed up), and that you liked Daryl putting in an appearance at the end. Also, i'm not gonna lie, it just makes me happy that you guys are digging this story!]

There was nothing but the hollow feeling in her chest and the pressure of Daryl's hand wrapped around her arm. Her vision was a blur of tears and she stumbled along blindly, Daryl's hand the only thing holding her upright. She had no sense of where they were going or how long they walked.

Eventually Daryl paused, and Asha sank to the ground as soon as he let go of her arm. He dropped his bow and pack, and then gently levered Asha's pack of her back, her arms limp and pliable. Through her grey haze of grief, she was vaguely aware that the trees had thinned and the sun seemed stronger on her skin. There was pressure on her feet and then her boots were gone.

Daryl tried to take off her glove but she gave an agonised moan and pulled her hand in to her chest. He left it, and pulled her gently to her feet and forwards a few paces.

Asha blinked rapidly as the sensation of wetness washed over her feet. The gurgle of rushing water finally penetrated the fog in her head and she looked up. They were at the river, a river, somewhere, the dancing surface shimmering back at her in the sunlight—its sharp beauty hurting her head and her heart after the events of the last hour.

Cool water suddenly poured down her face and she gasped, looking wide eyed at Daryl. He lowered the water bottled he'd just upended over her head, and wiped his calloused hand gently across her forehead and cheeks, his hand red when it came away.

'Ya can't see yourself,' he muttered, bending to the refill the bottle.

She looked down and all she saw was blood, slick and clotting and covering her, as though she'd bathed in it. Her clothes were soaked and the rivulets of water had left track marks through the semi dried blood on her chest. Around her ankles plumes of blood drifted away like ribbons in the current.

Her stomach churned and she staggered a few steps from Daryl and retched into the water.

Daryl grasped her by the arms and gestured to pour another bottle of water over her. She shook her head, pushing the bottle toward him.

It would take forever to get clean that way.

She staggered into the deeper water.

'Asha,' he called behind her.

She waved him off.

'I'm fine,' she croaked.

As soon as she was waist deep she dropped to her knees and leant back, pinching her nose, until her whole body slipped beneath the surface.

For a moment she was still, feeling the brush of the current across her limbs, until she started to feel as though her body was breaking into tiny pieces and washing away. Then she opened her eyes, looking up at the shifting pattern of the sunlight falling through the water, watching as the water around her ran from red to clear, until her lungs were screaming for air.

Then she stayed there a little longer, letting the burning sensation fill the hollow feeling in her chest.

She closed her eyes again.

Rough hands wrapped around her shoulders and she was yanked cruelly back above the surface. Water streaming down her face, she gaped for air.

Daryl was thigh deep in the water, fear filled eyes pinning her as he pulled her all the way to her feet.

'What the hell are ya doin'?' he demanded, giving her a rough shake.

Asha stared, stunned, as her shell shocked brain tried to process what he was on about.

He glared at her. 'Don't be so damn selfish.'

Asha suddenly realised what he thought she'd been doing laying so long under the surface of the water.

'I wasn't...' she protested. 'I'm not...'

He hissed between clenched teeth and let her go.

'Just keep ya damn head above the water.' He turned away from her, back stiff, and started back to the bank. He hadn't gone two paces before he spun around.

'What the hell did ya think runnin' off like that,' he roared, the corners of his lips rising in a snarl. 'Ya couldn't wait one damn day for me or Michonne to come with ya? Are you so fucking stupid that you didn't think about what was out here?'

She shook, whole body vibrating as his rage hit her. 'There was a storm. I couldn't get back… and then I met...' She snarled and bit the words out, 'that cunt...and he'd seen Nash.' Her shoulders slumped and her throat started throbbing. 'He described him, Daryl, exactly. His face, his spear gun...' Her fingers went to her left arm. 'His tattoo… and he knew his name.'

Daryl squinted at her. 'Asha...I'm sor-.'

'He lied,' she snarled.

'What?'

'He lied. He must have. His story didn't make sense. He said he saw Nash six months ago, that would have been winter, or near enough. Nash's sign in Braysville was from fall, and the one at the farmhouse said summer—so it could only have been early fall a most. Nash wasn't here when that bastard said he killed him.' She leant towards Daryl, her chin jutting out. 'He fucking lied.'

Daryl raked his hand through his hair.

'Ash, think about it,' he said quietly. 'Ya said ya self he described Nash. He must have seen him. And...'

Asha looked at him.

His brows had drawn down and taken half a step back. 'Ya know how hard it is to keep track of time these days.'

'He lied,' she hissed. 'Nash wouldn't have been so stupid as to trust that little bastard. He must have left another sign in town. I just have to find it.'

Even through her anger, the words rang hollow, desperate, in her own ears.

'Ya fuckin' kidding me,' Daryl growled, hands clenched into fists. 'No, Asha, hell no. Ya were chasin' shadows before, but this ain't even a shadow.'

Asha reeled back as if slapped, heart thumping in her chest. 'You don't get it,' she said.

'Well fucking try me Asha, cause I'm tryin' but this is really pushing it.'

She took a long shuddering breath, stillness and perfect numbness suddenly descending on her. 'I need him. Without Nash, I'm just the person who mutilated five people in the most horrible way.'

Daryl squinted at her.

Her voice was dead sounding in her own ears, but her eyes locked on Daryl, watching carefully for his reaction.

'We killed the men who hurt Ren. We hunted them down and left them to turn. But I didn't just kill them. Nash wanted to…to just kill them and be done with it...But that wasn't enough for me.' A muscle leapt in her throat and her face twisted. 'That would have been too good, too easy for them after what they did to Ren.'

She swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. 'My sister wasn't tough. She was such a sweet thing. Didn't have a mean bone in her body. But she was barely coping with this world when those men took her. They broke her before Nash and I could get her back. We followed them as quickly as we were able to, but it wasn't enough.'

The guilt surged in her stomach and she wanted to vomit. Her good hand balled into a fist and she had to look away from Daryl, out across the shifting water.

'Somehow Ren managed to get hold of something sharp and she slit her wrists. They just left her there to turn. She was naked. Newly turned. Body not so rotted that we couldn't see the marks all over her body of what those men had done to her.'

Her sister's long blonde hair had been a muddy, matted veil over her face—and Asha felt again the brokenness inside her as she remembered Ren's perfect features snarling and lunging for her flesh. Asha's hand was clenched so hard it shook, fury balling in her stomach.

Her eyes locked back on to Daryl's.

'I castrated them. All of them. And then I stuffed their bits into their mouths so that the first thing they ate when they turned was themselves.'

Daryl's face was carefully blank, but there was a tightness around his eyes he couldn't hide.

Asha's voice was flat. 'They weren't all dead when I did it.'

His face blanched, just a little, before he got it under control. A spasm of irrational hurt shivered across the surface of her shell of numbness.

She looked down at her shaking hands, voice trembling. 'I'm the person whose own brother was so sick at the sight of her that he couldn't stand to be around her.'

She was afraid to look back at him. There was silence, except for the water gurgling peacefully past their legs.

'What?' His gravelly voice was like iron.

'Nash left me.'

'I thought ya got separated by a herd?'

She could hear the walls going back up in his voice, and when she looked up he had taken a step back and his eyes were like flint. 'Ya lied to us.'.

'No!' She held a hand out to him, shaking her head. 'No. The herd was after. He came back. But right after I...did that to those men, we legged it for a day, as hard as we could. We weren't sure if we were being followed, and...we needed...distance, from that.'

She took a deep breath. Daryl's eyes hadn't softened, but he hadn't backed further away either. 'We holed up in a little cabin. When I woke up the next morning...Nash was gone. At first I thought he was just out hunting but then I realised all of his gear was gone. Except...' her voice shook. 'Except a photo, of him, me and Ren. On our first trip away after dad died.'

The photo swam into her mind, the three of them on a sun drenched beach in south Florida. Ren, their tiny little sister seated on Nash's strong shoulders and holding Asha's hand—all of them grinning the same wide mouthed grin.

Asha staggered slightly in the river before regaining her footing. 'It was his way of saying goodbye. He left, because he couldn't face me after what I'd done. So, I just waited for him.' She tried to shrug it off, staring vacantly at the moving water. 'He came back after a couple days, laden with fish. He'd found the river and we started following it after that. Said he just needed a bit of time to process it all.'

She neglected to say that once she realised he was gone, she had curled into a ball tucked under the stairs in the hallway and just laid there. She didn't eat, and once she'd finished the small amount of water she had with her, she didn't drink. She only moved when she needed to relieve herself, and there hadn't been much need for that.

Sleeping occasionally, but for the most part staring unseeingly at nothing, she couldn't remember thinking anything much at the time. Something in her had broken with Nash's abandonment. With the photo in front of her—both comfort and torture—the survival instinct that had pushed her since the turn had evaporated. She hadn't even had the will to put a bullet in her head. She'd just lain there.

Her whole body shuddered at the memory and her head hung. 'I wasn't in great shape when Nash came back. He basically had to force feed me until I got my strength back,' her mouth twisted, 'after he managed to convince me he wasn't just an hallucination.'

She looked up at Daryl, still standing hip deep in the water, eyes hooded and unreadable.

'He brought me back. I...I was going somewhere he couldn't follow...and i didn't even realise i was doing it at the time. After that, Nash made the big decisions for us.'

What if I fucked up again and he left me for good?

She swallowed hard. 'If he hadn't come back...I need him Daryl. What sort of fucked up person does what i did to those men?' Her face twisted with self-loathing, and she had to force the words out. 'And God help me, I would do it again. They deserved it… I just need him.' Her voice was tiny as she finished. 'You saw what I did to that guy in the woods.'

There was a long pause.

'Looked like ya killed him defending yourself.'

Asha snorted bitterly. 'After I hamstrung him so he couldn't get away and kicked his teeth in trying to get answers out of him about Nash.' She swiped her hand down past the corner of her mouth. 'He would have bled out from the leg even if I didn't slit his throat.'

She waited for Daryl's rejection. For him to walk away and leave her. For long minutes he didn't move, and Asha stayed there, certain that if he left, she would break into a million pieces and drift away with the current. The thin shell of detachment she'd drawn around herself was the only thing holding her up.

Finally she heard the sound of him moving through the water, and his hand appeared in her field of view, holding the red bandana from his back pocket. He pressed it into her hand.

'Clean up,' he said gruffly. 'Ya a fuckin' mess.'

Then he turned back towards the bank.

Asha fingered the cloth, hand trembling. Then, as if freed by the fact that Daryl hadn't immediately left, her shell of numbness shattered and she stumbled and fell to her knees in the water.

'Asha,' Daryl snapped. 'Head above the damn surface.'

She nodded, tears spilling down her cheeks again. She dipped the red cloth in the river and squeezed it out across her face.

Her eyes followed Daryl to the bank, tracing the glower on his face as he pulled off his sopping boots before settling on the grass, arms loosely crossed on the knees drawn into his chest. His eyes were hard as he looked at her over his crossed arms.

Her shoulders hunched a little under his gaze. Part of her wanted to look away, but she was afraid that he would vanish if she did so. She kept her eyes on him as she settled on her knees—keeping her head above the water—and scrubbed the blood off her arms and chest, using the red bandanna as a washcloth. Then she stripped of her tank—careful of her injured hand—before rinsing it thoroughly.

Her eyes never left Daryl's. Somehow, even over the distance across the water, she could see the anger fade out his eyes. She watched anxiously for it to be replaced by disgust, contempt—her heart pounding as she waited for him to lurch to his feet and stride away into the woods.

But he didn't.

Eventually, some of the tightness faded from around his eyes and mouth. The steel in his eyes faded into calm, and some of the tension shifted from his shoulders. She tucked her top and the red cloth into the back of her jeans to stop them drifting away, raked out the braid in her hair and tipped her head back in the water. She exhaled sharply as her eyes left Daryl's, feeling the sudden break resonate through her body. She quickly scrubbed her fingers of her good hand through her hair dislodging the flakes of dried blood, staring at the blue sky.

Then, heart pounding and chest heaving, she yanked her head forward and desperately searched for the blue of Daryl's eyes. He had leant forwards, chin resting on his crossed arms, and his eyes, hooded as they were behind his fringe of dark hair, quickly found hers.

She steadied her breathing.

She was fairly clean, but her clothing was still fairly gross. She recovered her tank and the cloth and then, unbuckled her thigh sheath and awkwardly stripped off her jeans, staggering awkwardly as wet fabric clung to her legs. Great clots of blood trapped by her waistband drifted away. Suddenly embarrassed, she turned her back to Daryl and, making sure she was covered to the neck in water, rinsed herself as well as she could without taking anything else off. Then she stood, pulled her top back on, started out of the water carrying her jeans and knife belt.

The practical mechanics of cleaning herself up had helped clear her mind. The grief at her brothers' death hovered just on the manageable side of incapacitating, but her eyes filled with tears again as the knowledge that he was gone ran through her.

She held onto Daryl's eyes as she walked out of the river, letting the water draining off her body drag away some of her pain.

Some part of her desperately wanted to know what Daryl thought about what she'd told him, but for now it was enough that he was still there.

She sat down next to him in the grass, clamped the waistband of her jeans between her feet and then started twisting them from the other end—twisting with her good hand and clamping the material with the elbow of her left between twist. Daryl tilted his head towards her, still rested on his crossed arms, and watched her wring the water from her jeans.

When she was finished, she spread her jeans out next to her in the sun, and held her hand out to Daryl.

'Now yours.'

'No.'

He was still dripping wet.

'They'll take forever to dry that way.'

'No.'

She glared at him, suddenly frustrated with him out of proportion to his simple refusal.

'Don't be so stupid,' she snapped. 'You're wearing boxer's right?'

He nodded stiffly.

'So what's the damn problem? This is the second time in a couple of days that I've been in my damn underwear in front of you. Doesn't mean anything.'

He grunted. But he stood up, stripped, and handed her one end of his jeans. He kept the other end though and they twisted in opposite directions squeezing the water out.

Asha weaved suddenly as a memory surfaced and Daryl gripped her shoulder. 'Ya alright?'

Asha forced a bitter laugh. 'I used to do this with Nash.'

Daryl squinted at her, a little confused.

'Dad would take us camping, after mum died, sometimes for weeks on end. We'd wash clothes in a tub and have to wring 'em out like this. Then about five years ago, Nash was drifting between jobs and he came to stay with me in the tiny little apartment I was in whilst I finished law school. The washing machine broke. Neither of us could afford a replacement immediately and there wasn't a convenient laundromat. So, for a few weekends we spent Saturday afternoons in the tiny bathroom, hand washing clothes and then drinking beer and talking crap as we wrung them out like this.'

Her mouth twisted sourly and she gave a vicious one handed wrench to Daryl's jeans before letting them go. He shook them out and then pulled them back on.

How could Nash be gone. Really gone.

He was her best friend. The four years between them had been just enough for her to idolise him growing up. She had unashamedly adopted his taste in music and lived in his cast off clothes and followed his lead. Eventually, as they'd gotten older, the four year age gap had meant less and less, until Nash's laid back nature had seen him fall comfortably into following Asha's lead. But the influence of those formative years had never fully faded, and Asha's sense of self was intrinsically tied to her brother's existence.

Nash's absence had left her feeling less than whole, but Seth's words in the woods had ripped half her identity away.

Her mother had passed away too early to be anything other than a vague memory of a warm smile and soft hands. Her life was built on the twin foundation blocks of her father and brother. She knew from experience with her dad passing that the gaping Nash shaped hole in her life would never be filled with anything other than a longing for his company—for something so mundane as sitting in a bathroom drinking beer and wringing out washing.

'I'm gonna have to clean that,' Daryl said gruffly, looking at her hand. It throbbed, and the occasional drop of water still leaking from the neoprene glove was red stained. She grimaced. 'Really?'

He grunted.

She gingerly moved her hand away from her chest and Daryl gently took it in his.

'Ready?'

'No.'

'Every movement as he gently teased off the fingers of her glove sent agony spiking up her arm, until the entire limb was pulsing. She grit her teeth, but she couldn't help the choking groan that rolled in the back of her throat. By the time both gloves were off, her head was hanging, loose hair stuck to her sweating face and breath hissing in sharp gasps through her teeth.

Daryl's fingers felt rough against her still wet skin as he rotated her hand. She whimpered at the movement. The back of her hand was a mass of swollen purple bruising with a half inch long gash where the blade had gone in. It hadn't gone all the way through to her palm, but it was deep and still oozing blood.

'Can ya move ya fingers?'

She tried, wincing as her fingers twitched.

'Jesus Asha, next time try to get ya hand out of the way.'

She half snorted, and touched her chest with the fingers of her other hand. 'Better the hand than where he was aiming.'

Daryl's hands stilled for an instant, but then he was wiping the blood from her hand gently with his wet bandanna and bandaging it in a strip of cloth pulled from his pack.

'It's going to need stitches, and I reckon at least some of the bones are broken. Gotta get ya back to Doc S or Hershel.

She nodded cradling her hand in her lap and pushing her sweaty hair back out of her face.

She expected him to get up, but he stayed kneeling at her side. Then he reached out and lightly touched her cheek, where she could already feel the blood pulsing in the bruise from Seth's blow.

'Damn it Asha, ya coulda died.' The words ground out of him. His bottom lip was folded into his compressed mouth and his eyes were tight.

'I..'

She wanted to be able to say she was sorry, but she couldn't.

'It was stupid I know, but I had to Daryl. Just like you had to go back for Merle in Atlanta.'

Not going had never been an option.

She brushed her fingers against the back of his hand, still held to her cheek. 'But I am really glad you came after me.'

He exhaled long and harsh through his nose and slumped down next to her.

'Ya wanna talk about it?'

In her mind, she her Merle's gruff voice ask the same question as they lay under the night sky at the prison. This time, however, she found that she did. She'd never really talked about Nash to the group in detail before. She wasn't superstitious exactly, but on some level she had felt like if she'd talked about him like he was gone, he would have been.

Now...now she just didn't want to think that she would be the only person left who knew him.

So she opened her mouth, and spilled out everything she could think of about her brother.

She started sobbing, quietly at first, and then uncontrollably—eyes stinging , nose streaming and great hacking sobs tearing her chest apart. Her whole body shook.

Daryl hesitated a moment, and then wrapped an arm around her shoulder. She turned towards his chest, leaning a little awkwardly over his leg, and wailed brokenheartedly into the front of his shirt. He grumbled slightly after a moment and shifted his leg behind her and pulled her closer, so that the strength of his legs and arms were wrapped around her as she fell to pieces against his body.

She wasn't sure how long she cried, and once she stopped she didn't feel the need to move, cheek nestled against his chest, hands fisted in his shirt, as the tears dried on her face.

'What happened?' he asked eventually. 'Rick said ya were just going out to find the next marker?'

'I did, then…'

She filled him in roughly on what had happened, starting with her discovery of half her brother's sign and finishing with the bloodbath in the woods.

She frowned. 'There was something else. I went past a warehouse in town. A group, maybe five or six men, had camped in it. Campfire couldn't have been more than a day of so old.' She shuddered. 'I found a walker, under a pile of rubbish just outside. A new walker, recently turned, beaten to death. It's legs were broken and there wasn't any part of him that wasn't beaten to a pulp.'

She pulled back to look Daryl in the eyes. 'That group did that to him. Dunno why, but...' she shook her head. 'It can't be good. I don't like that they're in our neighbourhood.'

Daryl's eyes were steely as he looked down at her. 'Me either.' He looked up at the sky where the late afternoon was slowly edging towards twilight.

'Don't have time to look for 'em now though. If we don't get back tonight Rick and Michonne are gonna turn the whole camp out looking for us tomorrow.'

Asha hunched her shoulders. She hadn't meant to cause such a fuss. It had all seemed so straightforward when she'd left the prison yesterday.

'By the way,' Daryl growled, 'if ya ever look like doing anything so stupid again, I am gonna lock ya in a cell until ya grow up.'

Asha winced, but nodded.

He scooped his hand under her arm and pulled her to her feet. She caught his hand before he let go.

'I heard what you said before, in the woods,' she said softly.

His eyes narrowed at her.

'You called me baby.'

For an instant, his eyes widened, then he grunted and turned, trying to reclaim his hand. She pulled him back so he met her eyes.

'I liked it,' she murmured, watching the black in his eyes expand over the blue before he tugged his hand away.

'Gotta get movin',' he said gruffly.

Asha nodded, stooping to pick up her gear. She knew better than to push him too hard.

He tugged on his boots, picked up his crossbow, Seth's recurve bow and pack and then turned to face her.

'Now, where the hell is my bike?'

[A/N: So, this is another chapter I am nervous about (hence the second author note at the end of the chapter). Not sure how the detail about Asha's past is going to go down - and because i have been a bit under the pump this week, I am not 100% satisfied with the writing quality in this chapter. Reckon it might get a rework if i get around to a re-edit on this story. So, as always i would love your thoughts!

Bridgetlynn - I get what you mean about the asshole factor, some of the characters on TWD are kinda unlikable at the moment (though i love them too). I think half the problem is it takes a bit of asshole to survive in this world - and, as this chapter shows, Asha (for better or worse) has got a bit of that in her too.]