Hello beautiful people! This one is a bit late, I haven't even seen the latest episode (which is super surprising) because I've been trying to catch up on reading for the four essays I have coming up so my pace will inevitably slow down- however, then it will be Christmas so….!

To the wonderful criticism I have been thus far given, thank you and I'm sorry I'm far too impatient when it comes to proof-reading. I know I miss a lot of mistakes in my haste but I hope you will forgive me. :D xxx

Running

From the prison you can see out across the empty plains of nearby Georgia. The woods stretched wide and the tangle of grey roads were slowly being reclaimed by the landscape. The same road that had led them there. Hours upon hours of watching this landscape from the tower and even longer traipsing across it in hunt of food and supplies should have been enough to give them a head start to survival. But Daryl's head was jumbled, the sharp focus he had earlier maintain was slowly slipping into the natural panic he felt whenever the 'homes' he and merle made turned into nothing. This was just the same. He cursed himself for investing in himself. It had never done any good.

But for now he was running alongside her. She was panting heavily, and ugly look of fear driven exhaustion on her face- as it should be. She had a thin knife clutched in a clenched fist, he had another blade and his crossbow. It wasn't enough. But at this point four solid walls wouldn't feel like any protection either. She kept up at least, the leanness lending itself to a swift grace, her determination boring into the far away tree line.

Merle used to run, he ran from everything. His home, the law, his own conscious reality. Daryl had been dragged halfway across Georgia and back in pursuits of a 'fresh-start'. Nothing in his cared enough to ditch out of the mobile lifestyle, to settle somewhere and get to know people. His own family preservation seemed stupid, nights at the prison he considered what he had missed in the old world by reflection of the new. Now he was sorry he hadn't run when merle asked him to. It was painful to leave, each step felt like he was once again turning his back to a constructed dream, and crumpled and destroyed as it currently was, it still struck a chord.

He was leaving the last place he saw his brother alive. He was leaving the vast majority of his family. Leaving Hershel and probably Rick. He was leaving the manmade haven where he was appreciated. One foot in front of the other as he chose to leave.

The fields fell out before them, her stumbling fall setting his own preoccupied mind into hitting the ground gruffly. It was here the exhaustion hit them. All his energy seemed to leave him, the will to keep going extinguished to nothing without the momentum to keep him going. Besides him she breathed heavily, either dry sobbing or winded from the fall he didn't know. He knew he had to get up, to get her up. They had to keep running. But his body was lifeless, sprawled on the ground with the moans of walkers coming in close.

He could die here.

He could lie here and wait. Eventually one of these sons of bitches would find him and do the deed. It would all be over. He wouldn't be tired anymore, he wouldn't hurt all over and be stuck inside his own head as the desperation took over and he became the pathetic excuse of a man merle used to say he was. None of that had to happen.

His feet found purchase and he pulled himself up, rolling his shoulder so it clicked ominously. He shook his head to dislodge any further thought, deciding that it was better for him to stop considering his own self-pity and that he had to be alert to the further afield dangers of the real world. His head was sufficiently out of the cloud for maybe a minute, as he took down a few walkers, observing the general area and considering what the best strategy was going to be. Plan flicked through his head, a flame of warmth flickered in his chest, purring with the need to construct and follow a plan of some sort.

Then he saw her. And once again his mind flickered to the annoying sentiments of his panic. She was a literal representation of everything that had changed him. She was the home that he had lost, sprawled out on the dirt with tear tracks and mucus cover her pathetically. She was a feeble and weak dream, something he had taken time to invest in. Only he didn't want to invest in it anymore.

With a heavy heart he called her name, her eyes caught his. They were dead of emotion, shiny with the remainder of tears but the general appearance of her was one of exhausted emotion, a core numbness. Sitting up seemed to take it out of her. The long grass smell tickled his nose in the cold wind as he waited for her crackling joints to stand up. He offered a hand. The small warmth of it felt like a burning strap around his palm, forcing him to pull back his hand as soon as she had to feet beneath her. He missed the reproachful look by turning around and walking briskly away for her to catch up, the offended hand wrapped around his crossbow strap like it might protect him from the radiating guilt she had branded him with.

God, how she must blame him.

He was aware, far too aware, that he was forcing a young girl across unknown parts of a state he knew next to nothing about either. She had lost everything and he had had nothing, on the face of it, to lose. He couldn't give her compassion or soft words. No, he was cold and stoic. And she hated him.

Nowhere in Daryl's mind did he consider that he had saved Beth, that she was grateful to him pulling her out the crazed stupor of her own sadness so that she hadn't died. Inside her chest the thoughts of a home they had yet to make fluttered; where she and Maggie could put her father's teachings to good use. And Daryl would help her find her sister and the others, they would rebuild and that was all down to him. It was the childish, girlish thoughts of this hope that kept Beth a pace behind Daryl for the next few hours.

Her own mind was buzzing with a central optimism, whilst his shut down the path ways to pessimism. He built a small fire as she read the cursive script of a diary that no longer held any truth, allowing the words to curl and burn in justified equality of the truth. The smell of fire, its ashy liveliness seemed reflective of her family's farm, the smell of a burning barn and now a burning prison. Perhaps it's the way memory works. That destructive powers, like flames, only reminded her of places they had lost and not the dozens of harmless campfires she had smelt when making food. It strengthened her resolve. Their next home would not burn down.

They made their camp. His resolutions as strong as hers, but backed by a ferocity only years of stubbornness brings forward. He grew weary of entreating hope, deciding that he had let him down too oft now. She was too happy to encourage the painful thoughts, which hit his conscience like splinters.

''We should do something'' and ''We have to find the others''

He had remained silent too long, lost in his own hopelessness. He had her to look after and as far as he was concerned he was the last one left. They couldn't go around wasting time and energy to find dead people, there was no one left for him.

''Daryl please-''

He may not have heard it. It was so quiet that he pretended he didn't, getting up and walking around the fire as if checking the area. The space and his pacing gave way to her giving up, her hair lay in the dirt, evoking a strange anger within his stomach, her shoulders and knees pulled into her chest cocooning herself from the world. He wished it were that easy for him to sleep.

Still her hope burned him. It branded him a coward so he decided the only thing left to do would be to stamp out the candle entirely, no matter what harm that might do.