Waitin'

They had gotten out of Terminus, but he still hadn't found her.

Everyone seemed to notice that something was off with him, and most of them kept it to themselves, but the more he turned inward, the more Carol was on his ass about it.

He snapped at her more than once, but she kept pushing. Finally, he had enough and turned on her one evening when they were setting up the security lines for camp.

"Just what tha fuck do ya want me to say, woman?"

Carol shook her head. "I want ya to tell me what happened with Beth."

"Not a damned thang," he answered honestly. "We never had tha fuckin' time for nothin' to happen. One minute there was a chance, and tha next minute she was gone."

That seemed to finally register with her because she reached out and hugged him softly. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

After several seconds of silence, Daryl curled his arms around her and squeezed her back. "Me, too."

The weeks and miles ran together, but he would remember the day he stood at the Georgia state line forever. The rest of the group passed over the imaginary boundary, and he stood there, feet planted, unable to move.

It didn't seem right or fair that they were leaving her behind like that, but there wasn't a damn thing to go on. Not one other car with a white cross to be seen. He took a deep breath and willed himself to move forward, not for himself, but for her.

The first step was the hardest, but every step after got easier.

He wondered if it was because he left something of himself back in Georgia where he left her.

Alexandria was a shithole.

Not really.

It was okay.

The group split in half and most of the old group stuck together, except for Maggie and Glenn who went to stay with the newer people.

Daryl would sit and watch them, and they way they interacted with the other people. He wondered if Maggie realized she had replaced Beth with Tara, or even Rick with Abraham.

It was such a seamless transition for them to make, and Daryl figured it must have been easier than the alternative, which was sitting around thinking about how badly everything went wrong.

"Did Rick tell ya that they got beer here?" Carol asked and sat beside him.

"Yeah," he mumbled and slipped the book he had been thumbing through under his pillow.

She had been doing that a lot lately, coming in and checking on him, trying to get him out. She had seen the book a few times before, but she never brought it up. Why would she, though?

He sometimes thought he was stupid for even taking the book from the library they had spent the night at anyway. Who carried a book on surviving child abuse while there were walkers eating people alive? This new world shouldn't have afforded him time to get over his shitty excuse for a father when some people hadn't even had a chance to say goodbye to theirs.

"Didn't ya wanna try any?" Carol asked and handed him the extra one she brought with her.

"Not really," he said but took the bottle anyway. "Never liked beer all that much."

"Whiskey?"

Daryl smirked. "Bourbon."

She made and face and stood up. "I know it's hard, but ya gotta get outta this room when ya don't gotta work, Daryl. She wouldn't have wanted ya to waste away."

He slammed the beer down on the bedside table, anger surging through his veins, and glared at her. "Ya don't know what tha fuck she would've wanted. Prolly for me to find her instead of takin' off and runnin' up here."

Carol sighed heavily. "Daryl, she's dead." His skin crawled at her words. "She's probably been that way for a long time. Ya don't need to go down with her."

"Get tha fuck out." His voice wasn't even his own. He sounded cold and hallow. When she didn't move, he stood up and hollered, "I said get tha fuck out!"

With a little shake of her head, she turned and went out of his room and softly closed the door behind herself.

He felt the tears prick his eyes, but he would be damned if he cried anymore. He didn't deserve to shed tears over her. He didn't deserve a way to let the pain out after how he had failed her.

Daryl turned and picked up the bottle of beer and stared at it for a second, remembering her smiling face all drunk on moonshine as the flames flickered in front of them, then he launched the bottle across the room, shattering it against the wall.

For the most part, everyone stayed away from him after that. Rick would check in on him occasionally, but even Carol kept her distance.

He stopped reading his book, but he kept it on the nightstand so he could punish himself a little more for not seeing it through.

All Daryl did was work the wall, hunt, and sit in his bed. When he got really lonely, he would reach into his pack and pull out Beth's journal that he had found on the side of the road that night.

He hadn't even realized that she had wrote in it when they were at the funeral home, but the first time he had read the last entry, his heart seized up in his chest.

It's a lovely place. Someone took really good care of it, and I want to stay. I think Daryl does, too. We could be happy here.

I think we could be happy together.

His thumb traced along the words right before he closed his eyes.

Happiness was a fucking joke.

Winter had set in and Daryl was pulling the night shift on the wall. No one else wanted it, and everyone else had family to get back to. Only the ones that couldn't get out of it were there with him.

He was the only one to volunteer.

If he worked at night, he missed the rest of the group who was active during the day. He figured if he gave it enough time, he could separate himself from them so that they wouldn't even look for him the day he went off into the woods and didn't come back.

The light at the gate flickered, letting him know that someone was approaching. If it went out completely, it meant walkers, but this was a standard deal.

People who had been on the road, probably a family, more than likely starving half to death. They would get ushered inside, warmed up, fed, put in a house, and given a job. Then all would be right in their in little world.

He shouldered his bow and said, "I'll go down and make sure it's okay."

The younger man that was on watch with him, nodded, happy that he didn't have to leave the warmth of his thick wool blanket.

Once he was down the ladder and walking to the gate, he moved his crossbow to his side. There was always the off chance that something could go wrong, and he liked to be prepared.

"Just tha two of ya?" The gate guard asked.

Daryl moved from the shadows as the visitor spoke. "Yeah, just me and tha young lady."

He snorted and shook his head. It wasn't uncommon anymore at all to see people hook up to survive.

"Name?" The guard asked.

"Morgan Jones," the man said strongly and waved his arm behind him toward his traveling partner.

The name seemed familiar to Daryl, but it was almost like the knowledge hung on the outside of his memory. He knew it, but he couldn't grab it.

"Beth. Beth Greene."

Her voice caused his muscles to lock.

"Where'd y'all come from?" The guard asked and waved them into the light of the lanterns.

"Georgia," she said quietly as she walked out of the darkness.

The moment the firelight glinted off her hair, he stumbled forward and hit his knees, all the air gone from his lungs. Every single person turned to stare at him, but when she caught his eyes, she gasped and took off running toward him.

"I thought I'd lost ya," he whispered into her shoulder. "I ran and ran, but I couldn't find ya."

He didn't remember what happened with Morgan or where he was taken to for housing, he just gripped Beth's hand, afraid she would disappear and led her back to the house he shared with the others.

They were all asleep, and he walked her right into his room.

Once inside, she looked around and shook her head. "Haven't ya been here awhile?" He nodded. "Where's all your stuff?"

Daryl shrugged. "Don't need much." He cleared his throat as she walked around the room. "What happened?"

Beth looked over at him with a sad smile. "Just some bad people who thought they were good."

That was the first time he noticed that scars on her face, one slashing across her cheek and the other over her eyebrow.

"What tha fuck?" He crossed the room and touched her face. "Who tha hell did this?"

Beth closed her eyes. "She's dead now. I didn't pull tha trigger, but I certainly set her up for it."

"Huh?"

"Walker," she said quietly. "Another girl had killed herself in her office, so I sent her right in and walked tha other direction and got down an elevator shaft then out into downtown Atlanta."

"What tha fuck," he whispered and leaned his head against her shoulder. "Atlanta? Ya were in tha city?"

She nodded. "They took people that they thought were weak and made 'em indentured servants, I guess ya could say. We did tha most menial jobs ya can think of. Then somewhere along tha way it turned into somethin' worse for some of tha women." He jerked his head back to look at her. She just shook her head. "Not me, but it was close. If it makes ya feel better, I knocked him out with a glass jar full of suckers and then that walker chewed out his throat."

"Then ya sent another woman in there?" He asked, confused by everything that was going on.

"Yeah." She nodded and stepped away. "I found Morgan a few weeks later."

Daryl nodded. "Y'all ain't together or nothin', right?"

Beth laughed and looked at him like he was insane. "Nah, Morgan's a really good man. He's a bit off, but very kind. He told me he was lookin' for Rick, and I asked if I could tag along."

She went and sat down on his bed, leaning back against the headboard.

"Who do ya stay here with?"

"Rick, Michonne, Carol, Carl and Judith."

"I told ya that ya'd find 'em," she said with a grin. For a second it slipped before she asked, "Maggie?"

"She's at another house with Glenn. They met some people after tha prison, and they stick with them now."

Her brow furrowed, but she didn't ask anything else. She turned and looked to her right and tilted her head. It took him a few beats before he realized what she was looking at.

"Oh, Daryl," she whispered and looked up at him. Immediately, his defenses went up, but Beth scooted closer to him and laid her had on his chest as she hugged him. "That's a big deal."

"Don't really wanna talk about it," he muttered as he tried to unclench his fists.

"Ya don't have to," she whispered.

After a couple of minutes of squeezing the life out of him, she let go and laid back on his pillow. With every second he let himself get lost in the sight of her, each breath he took felt like a real one, and the weight on his chest seemed to ease up.

"What've ya been doin' while I was gone?" She asked with her eyes closed and a small grin on her lips.

"Just waitin' and doin' what ya said I would."

"What?" Beth opened her eyes and looked at him, but he just shrugged and looked away. "C'mon, ya cain't leave me hangin' like that."

With every ounce of courage he had, he looked her right in the eye and said, "I missed ya really fuckin' bad."

She didn't miss a beat as she reached out and took his hand. "I missed ya so freakin' much while I was gone."