Ch.8

Daryl looked at her and sighed. They had managed to convince her to go back upstairs, but now she was sitting by herself, completely distancing herself from everyone and everything. She wasn't happy; he knew that, but there was no way in hell he was going to just let her leave. He didn't care what she had done, what had been done to her, or what she would end up doing; she was staying here, she was a part of this family, and he wasn't going to let her leave.

Bending down he grabbed the familiar black backpack, the one that he had been carrying with him since he had found it. He had been holding onto it, waiting to let it go, praying that he would be able to let it go. He hadn't wanted the weight of that backpack on his back, but he had carried it. It had been his reminder of her, of his unspoken promise to her that he would find her.

Daryl slowly walked over to her and gently dropped the bag down beside her before sitting down and filling the empty space next to her. She looked at the bag and then to him, but he couldn't tell what she was thinking. It was funny, but in a sad way. Her face used to tell him everything. Even before the prison, during the time they had been on the road after the farm, he had been able to tell what she was thinking just by looking at her. She hadn't hid her emotions; she had expressed them, which he had come to admire. But the girl sitting next to him now was closed off, keeping her emotions to herself, not wanting anyone to see.

"I made everyone go back to the funeral home once we got out of Terminus," Daryl said, his voice gravely as he pointed towards Beth's bag. "It was still on the ground, so I grabbed it. Told myself that I'd give it back to you when I found you."

Beth didn't say anything, but she managed to cast a quick glance at the bag before looking forward again, away from Daryl. He was getting the sense that she wanted to be left alone, but he didn't want to leave her alone. He suddenly had the immense fear that as soon as he left her she would try to sneak away again. So he stayed sitting beside her.

"I put everything back inside of it. You're journal's in there," he said quietly.

She looked at him for a moment and then looked away again, still not saying anything. Shit. Did she think that he had looked at it? He hadn't. He had wanted to, but he had resisted the urge.

"I didn't read anything in it," he reassured her. "I put everything in your bag and snapped the button…it hasn't been opened since," he said quietly, studying her face, looking for any signs of a reaction. "I was thinkin' that maybe you could start writing in it again. You know, maybe it would help ya' sort through your thoughts or somethin'."

"I'm not that person anymore," Beth mumbled.

"What d'ya mean?" Daryl asked confusedly.

"I'm not the same person. I was just a silly kid back at the farm, the prison…writing in that journal was just something I did, thought it'd take my mind off of things, make things better when they were bad."

"You seemed happy when you were writing in it. Maybe if you write in it now it will help."

"Nothing I do will get me back to the person that I was before I was taken," Beth whispered quietly, her voice solemn. "That person's long gone, disappeared forever," she whispered after a long pause, her voice even quieter than it was before.

"Change isn't always a bad thing, Beth."

"Maybe not. I guess it just all depends on how you've changed."

Daryl looked at her for a moment, not saying anything, just taking her in.

"How have you changed?" he asked, his voice hesitant, hesitant to hear the answer.

"You'll find out soon enough."

Daryl sighed and leaned his head back against the wall, mimicking the way that Beth was sitting. Neither of them was looking at the other, their eyes looking at the blank, dingy wall across from them. But they were both listening, listening to each other, listening to the long pauses that dragged out after the other spoke.

"You can tell me. I mean, if you're so sure that I'll find out, then why not just tell me now?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"If you want to tell me."

"I can survive now…I know how to survive."

"And that's a bad thing?"

"It is if you've had to do the things that I've done to survive."

"We've all done bad things, things we'd rather forget, things we wish we ha-."

"No. You don't understand," Beth said, cutting Daryl off from finishing his sentence. "I know that we've all had to do bad things. I know that everyone else here has taken somebody else's life. I know that we have to kill to survive and that some people deserve to be killed for what they've done. But what I've had to do to survive and what everyone else here has had to do to survive is completely different."

"Why do you think that?"

"It just is."

"I don't believe you. 'It just is' isn't a good enough answer."

"To make you understand I'd have to tell you everything, and I'm not in the mood to tell you everything."

Daryl nodded, knowing that he had already pushed Beth far enough in his questioning.

"I still want to leave," Beth said after another long pause in the conversation.

"Yeah, and I want a world without walkers. But that ain't happenin' anytime soon, and you're not leaving."

"You're not going to want me here. I tried to warn you guys, but you're not listening to me. Just give it a little bit longer and then you'll see…you're going to be wishing that you had let me leave."

Daryl sighed heavily. "None of us are going to be wishing you had left, Beth, no matter what."
And the silence started again. And neither of them looked at each other. Daryl looked away from the dingy wall and scanned the room with his eyes. Nobody was doing much. Everyone was settling in for the night. There were a few quiet conversations taking place, but nothing else. But he noticed how every few moments the others would quickly look at Beth before looking away. He guessed that they were all checking to make sure that she wasn't trying to leave again.

"Terminus was a bad place, wasn't it? It wasn't a sanctuary."

"You saw the signs?"

"I saw one of them…" Beth said quietly, and Daryl got the sense that there was more to the story.

"Is that where you were heading?"

"No."

"Why didn't you go there when you saw the signs? All of us did."

"Because it was a bad place."

"How'd you know that if you never went there?"

"I heard that it was bad."

"From who?" Daryl asked quietly, even though he figured that he already knew the answer.

"I just heard about it," Beth murmured quietly.

"It wasn't good. It was all a trick to get people to go there. After the funeral home, after I chased the car that took you I ran into this group of men," Daryl said, looking at Beth.

Beth slowly turned her head and looked at Daryl. He guessed that she had probably been wondering what had happened to him after she was kidnapped. And maybe if Daryl told her, maybe if he told her everything that she had missed, maybe it would get Beth to open up about what had happened to her.

"The men were assholes, but I was at a crossroads. I didn't know which way the car had gone. So I went with them. Figured it was better to be with a group than to be alone…safety in numbers. Turned out that they were trying to find Rick since he had killed one their men. When we found them they almost killed all four of us."

"All four of you?"

"Yeah. Rick was with Carl and Michonne."

"How'd you get out of it?"

Daryl smirked. He remembered Beth asking him that same question on the porch of the moonshine cabin. After that huge fight they had had that was fueled by a drunken asshole, built up rage, and a simple teenage drinking game. Things had changed between them after that.

"Rick tore the guys throat out with his teeth," Daryl said simply, shrugging his shoulders. "We ended up killing the others. Then we went to Terminus."

"What happened when you got there? Was everyone else there?"

"Yeah, they were all there, but they were locked up in a train car. Turns out that the people there liked to eat human meat. They locked us up with the others. Everyone was there. Sasha, Bob. Abraham, Tara, Eugene, Rosita. Glenn, Maggie…"

"What about Carol and Tyreese and Judith?"

"We met up with them after we got out of Terminus."

"Oh…"

"Getting out wasn't that hard. They had someone come with food everyday. Didn't take long to overpower the man and get his gun. Then we ran. Ran into Carol and Tyreese a few days later."

"What'd you do after you got out?" Beth asked quietly, looking away from him.

He knew that this was her way of asking if he had really looked for her. He knew that she wanted to know how serious he had been about looking for her.

"As soon as we got out I started looking for ya', Beth. I promised Maggie that I'd find you. Abraham wanted to go to D.C., but he said he'd help us look. I didn't know where to start, so I went to the funeral home, tried to look for any clues that I could've missed that night. But there wasn't anything to go on. A car doesn't leave the same kind of tracks that an animal in the woods does."

"Didn't think that it would," Beth mumbled.

"I chased that car all night, Beth. Even when I couldn't see it anymore I kept chasing it. And then I couldn't run anymore, couldn't even walk. So I just sat down in the middle of the road," he said, his voice hinting at desperation, the desperation he had felt when he had realized that she was gone. "What happened to you Beth? Where did you go?"

"You probably don't want to know the answer to that," Beth said quietly, trying her best to keep her voice even, but failing to keep the waver out of it.

"Maybe I won't like the answer, but I need to know."

And it was the truth. He needed to know. He needed to know who had taken her. He needed to know what had happened between the time he had told her to run and when he had finally made it outside. He needed to know what had caused her to shut herself out from everyone else.

"Please, Beth," he said, his voice begging her. "I've been going through every scenario possible. Ever since you were taken my mind has been going wild, wondering what happened to you."

Beth scoffed. "Every scenario? I'm sure none of the scenario's you've imagined come close to the truth."

"Then tell me the truth…"

Beth leaned her head back against the wall. She was ignoring him. She was shutting him out, refusing to answer him. He wanted to push her, try to get it out of her, but he didn't. Instead he leaned back against the wall again. Minutes passed, minutes that seemed like hours, and neither of them spoke until Beth surprised him and broke the silence.

"I listened to you. I grabbed my bag and went out a window. Went to the road, had to dodge a few walkers. But running's kind of hard when you have a messed up ankle," Beth said, laughing sadly. "And you kind of need to run to get away from someone trying to take you."

Author's Note: This chapter was mainly dialogue, but I feel that it was very important. It was all Daryl and Beth, no one else. And it's kind of the first time they've held an actual conversation since they've been reunited. And Daryl tried to get it out of Beth, he tried to get her to tell him about what happened to her, but she still isn't budging.

Please review and tell me what you think!