She didn't know how to describe the way the archer was staring at her. There was relief, yes, but something else - like loss, or horror, or fear. Like maybe the girl he remembered was no longer the woman standing in front of him. Good, she thought, take a long look.

"Put it down," Daryl said gruffly.

"What?" she asked, not understanding, still high off the fight. The restless ball of anxiety that had been eating away at her had loosened - almost disappeared. She felt like she could breathe again. "Put... down?"

"The bone, girl!" he growled. "Put the damn bone down."

"Worked," she said with an easy shrug and dropped it on the ground. She wiped her bloody palms on her jeans, but it did little to clean them as the pants were caked in the same.

"Y'got everyone worried 'bout ya," he said.

"Ha."

"What's funny?" he asked, offering her knife to her hilt first.

"Everyone," she said. "Not Morgan. Not worried."

"Well maybe he oughta be!" he snapped back.

"Take care... of... myself," she said, raising her chin, planting her fists on her hips. "Dropped knife. Made knife. Can take care of myself."

"Ya can't be runnin' off like that!" he shouted. "Y'could've died! Don't you get that? We don't go past the walls alone!"

"You did," she responded, starting to walk back towards the fences.

"I been alive a lot longer than you, girl," he said. "I seen more. I done more. I know more."

"You... left for dead?" she asked sharply, whipping around to stare at him. "Shot in head... left by... family? You buried... still breathing? Wake up with... stranger? Everything missing?"

"... Beth," he said, his voice pained and small in a way that she had never heard it before, "we never..."

"Not Beth," she growled, pushing bloody strands of blond out of her face. "Beth... stupid. Beth gone. You... and Maggie... and everyone... let it go. Let her go. She's dead. You left... her."

Daryl didn't say anything the whole walk back - what was there to say? When they got into Alexandria, Beth pushed past her sister, and Rick, and Morgan and headed into her house. There was a long moment of stunned silence as everyone looked after the small girl, trying to reconcile all the blood with her survival instead of demise. Then suddenly Maggie walked towards him, eyes burning with questions.

"What the hell happened to her?"

"I found her," Daryl said, "she killed a bunch of walkers. She said it made her feel better."

Daryl thought it was best to leave out the part about the dropped knife and the bone. The older Greene didn't need to worry more than she already was. And even if he wanted to, he wasn't sure how to convey just how far Beth was from everything he thought he knew about her. How changed she was. She was always tough, but she was never... this.

He heard himself so clearly in the echo of her words. It made her feel better to kill walkers. He remembered how far down he was when he needed that kind of release. How in pain he was - how scared he was - how alone he felt. Like he had lost everything. And he could remember her standing there, whole and covered in expensive clothes, and how the blood splatter had ruined it all - made her look like she wanted to cry. She had been the light that had saw him through that time, but who was going to see her through? Him? He could hear Merle laughing.

"She's always been a good fighter," Morgan said, walking up to the duo. "It calms her down. She usually doesn't take off on her own, not in a while, but things have been hard for her here."

"Maybe she oughta stay with Glenn and I from now on," Maggie said.

"She isn't going to like that," Morgan pointed out.

"What do you think, Daryl?"

"I don't know," he said. "I just... I gotta get hunting and I promised Aaron I'd help him today. Already late."

"Daryl!" Maggie called after him as he walked away.

"I don't know, Maggie!" he shouted. "You're her sister. I ain't nothin' to that girl."

"You have Maggie spooked," Glenn said, standing outside the bathroom hallway, waiting for his sister-in-law to emerge.

"Didn't mean... to scare," she responded, toweling off her hair. "I needed... to clear... my head. Think with... the hole it would be... easier."

"Do you not like it here?" Glenn asked.

"Don't... trust it," she said.

"None of us do, but we're trying to fit in. These people need us. They haven't been outside since the start."

"Don't remember... the start," she said. "Just... this."

"I know this is a stupid question after all you've been through, but is something wrong?" Glenn asked. "Something must've pushed you over the edge to have you take off like that and come back looking... well, you know..."

"Daryl," she said quietly.

"He can be a little short with people sometimes. He took your... when we thought you were... he took it really hard."

"No," she said. "He didn't... do anything. I just... he's... it."

"He's it?"

"He's... it," she said, not feeling like further clarifying. How would she explain that Beth... that she... had held onto just one memory. One thing. And it wasn't her family, or the farm Maggie talked about - it was a burning shack and their shoulders almost touching. How could she tell her sister's husband that all she could remember were those few inches separating her and Daryl? That she could still feel them in her sleep, wanting to close the space between them, trying like hell to get closer?

There were no words, and if there had been once, Before, they had long since left her mind.