They walk all night and most of the day that follows, keeping to the woods, away from highways and roads, putting as much distance between themselves and the abandoned car as they can. Just in case someone comes looking.
Beth tries not think about the uniforms.
In the afternoon, they're crossing a shallow creek when Daryl stops in his tracks, cranes his neck, and stares up at the sky. He shades his eyes, turning in a circle, taking in the dome of hazy blue above the treetops.
"S'gonna rain," he says, nodding at her, splashing his way onto the far bank.
As sunset approaches, Daryl finds a little holler full of pines and young birch saplings. He gestures vaguely at the ground at her feet before stalking off, hunting knife in hand. Beth blinks at his retreating back; he wants her to get the fire started. While she gathers kindling and scoops out a patch of dirt to shelter the fire, she can hear Daryl hacking at narrow green sapling trunks with his knife. When he returns, the fire is snapping away at the dry twigs, and thunder rolls in the distance. He's hauling an armload of saplings, and he drops them to the ground beside her.
Sitting back on her heels, Beth heats a can of beans over the fire and observes him. Daryl lashes the saplings together between two tree trunks with long, thin strips of juicy bark, creating a rickety lean-to shelter. An armful of brush and leaves shores up most of the gaps.
"Ain't exactly waterproof but it's better than nothin'," he mutters, crouching to sweep the space under the lean-to of twigs and stones.
Finished, Daryl stands and glances around their campsite, his hands hanging momentarily idle at his sides. His gaze falls on her for a moment, dark and serious, and then he looks away.
Oh.
They haven't talked about it, any of it. Not the car or the kidnappers or what Beth did. Not the dog or the grape jelly or the heavy look in Daryl's eyes when the candlelight flickered and her breath caught in her throat.
That look. She doesn't know what to do with that look.
It rains that night, a steady, soaking rain that falls for hours. Daryl nudges her into the back of the lean-to, the only dry spot for miles.
"I'll keep watch," he says, and sits down right in front of her, his back to her, his feet to their dwindling fire.
Beth stares at the fraying embroidered angel wings on his vest. Her breath is a damp shivering fog before her face. She thinks about the candlelit kitchen, the warmth of that quiet moment, and the artless shrug of his shoulders as he tried to say something and not say something in one inelegant motion, in one pointed look of unexpected tenderness. The pulse of self-consciousness that had shaken her, of awareness that when Daryl looked at her, he saw something important, something that mattered to him.
What would she have done, she wonders, had he found even one word for her as she pushed him, pressing obliviously forward into the dark corridor of his gaze? What words could she possibly have said in reply? Probably no more than what she did say - that minuscule word, that little cupped vowel, all exhalation and uncertainty.
Oh.
She doesn't know. She really, truly doesn't know.
Daryl shifts, rummages in his vest. A moment later the sharp scent of cigarette smoke tickles Beth's nose. It smells warm and dry and hard, somehow, and she shivers.
She falls asleep to the sound of the rain dripping off the trees.
It's unspoken, but they don't split up anymore.
Daryl takes them deeper into the woods in, from what Beth can tell, an approximately northern direction.
The days that follow are a relentless blur of shuffling herds, of campfires too small to push back the darkness, of hunting and hiding and running. Always running.
Beth's ankle heals, but imperfectly. It can bear her weight and she can still run fast. But it aches sometimes at night as the days press deeper into autumn, especially when it rains. Her dad told her once that fractured bones will do that. They heal, weld themselves back together, but they're never what they used to be. The bone remembers the break.
It grows cooler as the leaves change and fall, a crunchy carpet on the forest floor. What used to be the childish joy of fall, kicking through heaps of dry leaves, has become another hazard. Another cruel trick of nature, another way that Beth can misstep, make too much noise and draw death to them.
But Beth steps lightly, barely disturbing the leaves. She has learned to move through the woods almost soundlessly, senses attuned to all those creatures less wary than herself. She learned it by watching him. Daryl. Her stubbornly wordless companion. The last man standing.
Beth starts to wonder if maybe she was wrong back at the stillhouse. Maybe she could make it. Maybe her survival is possible. Maybe she could be there with him, at the end. The end of what, she's not sure.
After all, the end has already come and gone.
All that's left is to keep running. Together.
They fall right back into the rhythm they had before the funeral home.
Beth remains determined as ever to pull her own weight, Daryl sees, gathering wood and water and lighting their cookfire every time they stop to camp. No damsel, she accepts his protection while hungrily observing everything he does, her eyes following him constantly. She sets snares and guts fish and squirrels like an old hillbilly now.
Beth is mouthier than he knew. More brazen and bossy. Or maybe there's something in him that brings it out in her. She questions everything he does. She's always asking why this, why that, how come. She doesn't realise that he has no real clue what he's doing, never has; he's just moving from place to place without direction, surviving one minute to the next. He never was a leader, never wanted to be.
She learns fast, picking up everything he throws down, her keen mind focused and vigilant.
"Is this okay?" she asks him, indicating with her knife how she plans to gut a raccoon she shot.
She asks him that all the time, about near everything she does. The same damn question, over and over. Is this okay, Daryl? Is this okay?
He wants to ask her the same thing.
Is this okay, Beth?
She cries sometimes, now, late at night when they're both playing like they aren't lying awake shivering on opposite sides of their dying fire. Daryl knows she's grieving Hershel, grieving hard. He doesn't know how to comfort her; he never had a dad like Hershel, can't imagine what it must be like to lose him. Never mind the pain of losing everyone else. She's lost more than he has, he knows, 'cause she had more to lose in the first place. Can't fault her for crying it out, even though the sound of her soft sobs, however hard she tries to muffle them, makes Daryl feel like someone's twisting a knife under his ribs.
But she's strong, and her crying doesn't make her any less so. She's strong enough to push through shitty weather, to fight walkers beside him, to smile, to sing songs out loud and unafraid as they walk the woods, to get excited about finding food or a good camping spot. She's everything all at once, strong and gentle, sweet and salty, sorrowful and filled with more joy than he's ever known a person to contain.
She's strong in ways he's not, brave in ways he's not. He never noticed at the farm, or those months on the run last winter, or at the prison. It was easy to overlook. All he saw was the small, blonde space she took up in his world, and identified her as someone in need of his protection. Just another dead girl.
Beth doesn't talk about the night at the funeral home. That night. That horrible fucking night of running and damn near dying and feeling wild with panic, with grief, with the certainty that Beth was gone and he'd never see her again.
He hasn't asked, hasn't pushed, and he doesn't really want to. After all, it's hers. Yet he knows somehow that if things were the other way around, she'd ask him. She'd want to know, wouldn't want him to carry it all on his own. She's done that for him already. Daryl wants the same for her.
Daryl tries a couple of times, tries to figure out how to ask what happened, how to ask if she's really all right. But he can't ever seem to find just the right way until one night, sitting across the fire from her, he gets fed up with himself and goddamn asks her.
"How'd you get away from 'em?"
Beth looks up, startled, and stares at him for several beats before looking back down at the fire. "How do you think?" she replies, pursing her lips, uncomfortable.
It's hard to imagine Beth deliberately hurting anyone, killing anyone. Yet he's watched her hunt, watched her skin and gut their food, watched her take down big walkers on her own.
"Tell me," he says, unsure why he's insisting, only knows that he wants to hear her say it.
Beth doesn't reply, just stares into the fire. After a long moment, she looks at him again. "There were three of them," she says softly. "They were there when I ran to the road, by the car. Like they were waitin' for me. One of 'em grabbed me, punched me, dragged me into the backseat. I was - I tried to get away, but I was so…"
She trails off with a sad, hapless little shrug that makes Daryl feel like someone punched him in the gut.
Beth takes a deep breath and exhales it noisily. "They thought I wouldn't fight, I guess, or that I couldn't, so they didn't tie me up. One of 'em just held me down. They were all drinkin' whiskey, laughin' about somethin'. They got distracted. So I bit the guy's hand, the one holdin' me, and headbutted him, and that was enough for him to let me go so I grabbed the driver's face and jammed my thumbs in his eyes and he swerved all over and stopped the car and the guy in the backseat with me grabbed my hair real hard and kinda shoved me to the floor but that made it easy to kick him in the face a few times and then I grabbed his gun and I - I -" Beth stutters, pauses breathlessly, as though she's simply run out of words.
Daryl stares at her, transfixed by her voice, by the wild look in her eyes. He wishes she'd stop, hopes she never does. She looks up at him, her gaze steady on his.
"I shot him. And then I got out of the car and I shot the other guy. And I left them all for dead. Or worse."
The way she looks at him, then, with her chin stuck out and her expression sad and defiant, pins him in place, like she's daring him to have a problem with it. He wonders how come she doesn't know he'd be about the last person to have a problem with any of what she's done.
"Good," Daryl says, after a long silence. "Fuckers had it comin'."
The corner of Beth's mouth quirks up in a sad little almost-smile, and she looks away from him, back down at the flames between them.
Once, Daryl wouldn't have thought Beth had the stomach for it. Wouldn't have thought a girl like Beth would make it this far. Yet here she is, battered and bruised. Surviving. Willing to fight anyone who tries to harm her, now. He knows she wasn't, once.
"See, you're changing," he says, leaning forward to stoke the fire.
"Yeah," Beth agrees, her tone neutral. She stares into the flames, her arms wrapped around her knees, bare dirty knees under her chin. After a moment, she gives a strange little snort, almost like a scoff. "I guess I asked for it, huh?"
"You said you wished you could change," he says, softly as he can. "Don't mean you asked for that ugly shit to happen."
"I guess," she replies. She falls silent, then, still staring into the fire, and Daryl knows enough to back off. Knows he doesn't have the right words for her, that there are some things you have to feel your way through on your own.
But that's the moment Daryl decides never to underestimate Beth Greene ever again.
Beth has learned how to move silently through the brush by mimicking Daryl, keeping her upper body rigid and her legs free to move fast over fallen logs. They hunt together, him testing her tracking and her bow skills by switching with her frequently and at random, forcing her to lead.
Daryl isn't wild about her learning to hunt with his bow, she can tell. He's tense when it isn't in his hands. His expression is always drawn and he never praises her, just nods tightly when she's done something right. It isn't until she bags her first deer - only a small doe, she knows, but still! - that he cracks, giving her a half smile of congratulations.
Beth is surprised to see that there is relief in his expression, too, like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders.
She realizes he wants her to survive, even if it's without him.
Daryl takes to pointing silently at torn branches and tracks in the red dirt, demanding an explanation from her.
"A fox," she says one bright afternoon, crouching to examine a set of tracks in the red dirt. Daryl graces her with a nod.
"Follow it," he says, "she'll lead us to food. Some kinda food, anyway."
They follow the fox deeper into the woods, no trace of roads or highways anywhere.
"What way're we headed?" he asks eventually.
Beth finds the sun in the sky, follows the slant of light as it filters through the treetops. "East."
"How many miles you think it's been since you picked up the trail?"
"Two," she guesses. He just looks at her. "Three?" He nods.
"You think that fox knows you're comin'?" he asks.
"No," Beth says, feeling how the soft breeze touches her face. "We're still downwind." Daryl nods again, and gestures at her to keep walking.
The fox leads them to an abandoned farm. They spot her at the edge of a hayfield - gone to seed, full of yellowed weeds and the dead stalks of wildflowers. The fox sees them approach, and with a flick of her red tail, dashes away in the direction of the unkempt barnyard, towards a chicken coop with its roof half caved in. It doesn't look like chickens have roosted there for a long time, but Beth wishes the little fox luck anyway.
Daryl breaks the rusted padlock on the farmhouse door. Inside, a thick layer of dust coats every surface. It looks like the house was locked up to keep it safe for its owners' return, but clearly no one ever came home.
They raid the cellar by flashlight, opening dusty jars of preserves and eating greedily with their bare, dirty fingers, packing up as much as they can carry. It's a lucky find; they discover batteries and a box of matches in the kitchen, and Beth finds a black hoodie, the logo of a high school football team peeling off of it. It's too big and smells vaguely of mildew and mice, but it's warm, and now it's hers.
This time, there's no talk of staying put for a while. They rest in shifts, Beth sleeping in a back bedroom, empty except for a spare metal bed in the corner. Daryl keeps watch, sitting with his back to the front door, nailed shut behind him.
Beth's belly aches all night, and she stares at the bedroom ceiling, wondering if the preserves were too old. Wondering how long they can count on finding food other people neglected to take along. Wondering how long it'll be until one of them catches a parasite from creek water, or steps on a rusty nail, or falls through rotting floorboards, or encounters any of the thousands of things that could go disastrously wrong.
When the sun rises, steaming the dew off the leaves, they are already packed and leaving the farmhouse behind, disappearing into the silent woods.
They don't take chances anymore.
Beth pulls the fur from a rabbit she's caught, splits its skin and yanks the pelt over its head like a sweater. It's almost amusing, the skinny little naked dead rabbit, staring up at her. Blood and tufts of hair stick to her hands. She can't find it in her to feel more than a twinge of sadness for the rabbit; she's too hungry. A few feet from her, Daryl is skinning his own rabbit.
There are moments when Beth thinks that she must have died somewhere along the way because the woman she is now feels so unlike the girl she once was. Before. Long ago, now. That girl would have cried and turned away from the ugliness. From the sad and discomfiting truth that survival often requires taking something from someone else.
But Beth has become oddly comfortable with the idea. Things being what they are, she doesn't see she has much of a choice.
"We should figure out how to tan the pelts," Beth muses, stroking the rabbit's soft fur. She thinks of the oncoming winter, of living outside. Georgia is hardly the tundra, but the thought of spending another winter sleeping on the ground makes her apprehensive. "Do you know how?"
"Mm," Daryl grunts in response, flopping his rabbit's pelt so that it lands with a fleshy slap in the dirt beside hers.
"What's that mean?" Beth asks, eyeing him. "Yes, no, maybe?"
"Gotta be settled down someplace for that," he says with a shake of his head. "You need a shed, equipment, space for the pelts to cure." He pauses, wiping his bloody hands off on the thighs of his ragged pants. "We oughta find a town."
Beth frowns. "Like… to live in?"
"Naw," Daryl says, giving his head a shake. "Winter's comin'. We're gonna need better clothes, better supplies." He pauses, chewing his lip thoughtfully.
Beth moves closer to the fire as Daryl arranges the gutted rabbits over the low flames. She pulls her knees up to her chest, hugging them, and a puff of steam escapes her mouth. Daryl's right; they won't be able to make do outdoors without more supplies. Not for much longer.
She peers down at her boots, filthy and scuffed, the leather starting to wear thin in a couple of spots. They used to be beautiful, the dyed leather and embroidery so lovely. They'd been a gift from her parents on her sixteenth birthday. She'd gotten her gold necklace, too, and a book of sheet music for the piano. There was lemon layer cake, and her whole family grinning at her in the candlelight while she made a wish she no longer remembers.
The memory feels like a relic from another world, another life, another girl. And of course, in a way, it is.
Judging by the colour of the trees, Beth guesses her eighteenth birthday passed sometime last month.
"I should find some new boots," she says, her voice disturbing the quiet of twilight that has fallen around them. Daryl looks up from the fire, peers at her feet as the firelight flickers across his face.
"Mm," he agrees, "ain't gonna keep you warm for much longer."
The rabbits cook quickly, skinny as they are, and soon Beth is picking every morsel of meat from the thin bones, cracking them her fingers and sucking out the marrow.
When they finish, they throw the bones on the fire and Daryl places a few more lightweight sticks on top. The fire crackles to life, the flames licking at the bones.
Daryl sits back down, but closer to Beth this time. He reaches into a pocket in his vest and pops something into his mouth. Beth eyes him as he leans back against the log behind them, stretching his legs out in front, his hands behind his head.
"Is that a cinnamon stick?" Beth asks, peering at him. The little brown stick dangles from his mouth like a cigarette.
The only response she gets is a nod as he moves the cinnamon stick to the other side of his mouth, munching away at it.
"Is it good?"
"'S'fine," he says.
"Well… can I have one?"
Daryl slants a look at her. He pulls a plastic bottle from his vest, several brown sticks of cinnamon rattling around inside. Beth almost laughs. He removes a stick and hands it to her.
Beth holds the cinnamon stick in her palm for a moment, then holds it up and places it to her lips. The strength of the flavour surprises her, touching her tongue with bitter, pungent woodiness. It smells much better than it tastes, but there's something satisfying about the strength of the taste, something pleasing about the bitterness.
They stare into the fire as it consumes the remains of their dinner and slowly burns itself down, as they suck on their cinnamon sticks in mutual silence.
"I hope they're keepin' warm," Beth says. An owl hoots nearby and Daryl turns his head to look at her. "Whoever made it out. I hope they found somewhere good to hole up, somewhere safe. Maybe even somewhere permanent. Maybe -"
"Don't," Daryl says, his tone gruff.
Beth falls silent. She knows that hope doesn't work the same way for him that it does for her. It gives her strength to hope, to believe that their family is still out there, that surely some of them must have survived. For her, it helps. For him, she suspects it's only an empty fantasy, and a painful reminder of how he believes he has failed.
"We don't know for sure," Beth says softly, hugging her knees tighter to her chest and resting her chin on her knee. "We don't. Not yet. I like to think about them, you know? I need that, sometimes. Just picturin' everybody sittin' around a fire, thinkin' about us, just like we're thinkin' about them. Maybe they're doin' that right now and we just don't know it."
"Maybe," Daryl says. He shrugs a shoulder. "Ain't likely."
"Yeah, but... What if, you know?"
Daryl nods, says nothing more, and Beth realizes that he has probably never acted on a hopeful "what if" in his life. All that matters is what is. That's the only thing that's real.
Beth exhales, tries to hold on to the faith that keeps her going. The faith that somehow, someday, everything's gonna be okay again. That somewhere, the group of sundry strangers who made a family at the end of the world still survives.
"I'll take first watch," he says. He presses his knee pointedly against her thigh. She glances over and he is looking at her with this soft, uncertain look, like he's trying to tell her something without speaking. Beth smiles. He can be so crude, so harsh, such a dick, and then not. "Get some sleep," he insists.
"Okay," she says. "But promise me you'll actually wake me up to swap this time. You need to sleep, too."
Daryl's only response is a noncommittal grunt. With a gentle roll of her eyes, Beth pulls her pack close to use as a lumpy pillow. She curls up on her side there, her head by his hip. She hears him sigh, and shift, and lean back against the tree trunk behind him.
The last she's aware of as she drifts into sleep is the hooting of a nearby owl and the sharp lingering taste of cinnamon on the tip of her tongue.