A/N: This is kind of a story within a story. I really wasn't sure how to approach it. Hope it's okay.

The Walking Deth - Part IV

Here and Home - Chapter IX

While You Were Gone

I had died and gone to heaven. Either that or the blood loss and the pain had made me go completely delusional.

In the haze of my mind, it sounded like Daryl had called out to Glenn, and Glenn had called out to Daryl. Then it sounded like muffled laughter and cries of excitement, then multiple footsteps slapping against a surface and growing louder as they approached.

"Beth?" The astounded voice of my brother-in-law called.

I wasn't sure I wanted to return to reality. To return to the pain that was ripping through my pelvis or to Daryl's fearful expression, tight lips, and wide eyes that looked at me as if I was a ghost already. But I had to see if the voice I was hearing was more than just my imagination.

I forced my heavy eyes open and turned my head towards the voice, focusing in on the dark almond shaped eyes.

"She looks like hell." His voice sounded kind of hollow and echoey and distant, but it was definitely Glenn.

"Glenn?" His name cracked and caught in my throat. I tried to reach out to touch him, just to confirm he was real, but my arms felt so heavy and stiff and so cold ─so very cold─ I just left them by my sides.

"Maggie…is she…"

A wide grin spread on Glenn's face. "She's fine. She's great!"

A flutter of hope and happiness and relief drifted through my body, momentarily taking my mind of the pain.

My sister was alive.

I wanted to ask about the others ─about Judith and Rick and Carl─ but I couldn't gather the energy to speak anymore, so I just focused all my energy into making forming a smile.

Someone with strong and firm arms gathered me up, tucking me inwards and I pressed my face into the heat of their body and inhaled the scent of them. It was of sweat and leather and blood and all things Daryl.

"What the hell happened to you two?" Glenn asked, ducking his head in front of me and touching a hot hand to my face, and then looking down towards my back where Daryl's hand was supporting me. "What the hell happened to your hand?"

"Ran into the wrong people." Daryl's chest rumbled as he spoke. "And if we don't get a move on, we might be runnin' into 'em again."

"We better make this quick then." Glenn said as he disappeared from view.

"Take her to the car." An unfamiliar voice called. "Then we gotta get the crib."

I turned my head, as far as I could manage, towards the voice, to see the shadow of a figure in the darkness. When the fogginess in my vision had cleared I caught the little light there was in the room reflecting off a pair of eye glasses. The man who was wearing them had dark skin, with a slight build similar to Glenn's. His hair was in long matted coils like Michonne's, but shorter, and bundled behind his head.

The stranger looked down on me with his face twisted in concern, then up to Daryl.

"I'm Heath by the way."

Daryl grunted in response, and then Heath's face disappeared as I began to rock and sway against Daryl's body. The light in the room got brighter, and then squares of light began to float past me as I was carried through the hospital corridor.

"What's up with her, man?" I heard Glenn whisper as if he didn't want me to hear.

"She's been shot. In the gut." Daryl replied with a grunt as he shifted my weight.

A muffled and anxious groan came from somewhere behind me, from where I imagined Heath was walking. "We've got a doctor back at home. A good one."

I felt Daryl's hands clench against my thigh and back, and he murmured something under his breath.

"We've got everything there!" Glenn added excitedly.

The light suddenly went so bright I had to squeeze my eyes shut. Judging by the sudden swell of cool air, and a light spray of water over my skin I concluded we were outside, and it was still raining.

"The place we're at, it's a real sweet deal. We've even got our…hold on a minute."

I heard a wet squelch, a groan and a muffled thud.

"Thought we got 'em all." Glenn said between heavy breaths. I heard another groan and thud as I assumed another walker was being taken down.

"There we're none last time we were here." Heath said with a grunt, and then another wet squelch and thud followed.

"This place. Is it far away?" Daryl grunted with a hint of strain in his voice. He had been carrying me off and on for hours now. I knew he would soon be grumbling about how an old man like him wasn't cut out for that kind of work.

"On the south side of Washington." Heath informed us in a casual voice that made me think the few walkers had been dealt with.

Daryl made a thoughtful mumbling sound. "That'll do."

Negan's hotel had been far out to the East. On the few times I had gone out, they hand bothered to check out the south side. It was possible Negan's man wouldn't know to look for us there.

The initial glare from the light had abated now, and I could see I was being carried towards a red pick-up truck with something large and lumpy under a tarpaulin in the tray.

Glenn opened the passenger door, and Daryl ducked his head down under the frame sliding in and then shifting me on to the worn and cracked leather seat.

"I gotta help 'em with somethin'. Won't be long." He said as he pressed the handle of his knife into my hand.

Struggling to wrap my fingers around the grip, I nodded and turned my head as far as I could to watch him close the door and disappear from sight out the window.

I sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of my breathing, trying to ignore the ache and burn inside me, and wondering if everything that just happened was real.

After everything we had been through, I didn't even know how to respond to something good happening for once. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, or scream at the top of my lungs. If I had the energy, I would've done all three.

There was a clunking and scraping and as the truck rocked from side to side. I thought maybe walkers had gotten to the truck, and I fumbled around for the blade that had slipped from my grasp. Then the door was pulled open and Daryl slid in beside me, lifting me under the arms and pulling me onto his lap.

He crooked his neck down, kissed me on my temple and whispered in my ear. "You're gonna be a'right, girl."

And for the first time all day, I believed him.

Glenn slid in on my other side, and smiled at me cheerfully while giving me a reassuring squeeze on the knee, then turned his head out of the window and into the rain.

"You alright out there?"

Heath grumbled a response, sounding not too impressed that we had taken his spot in the dry cab of the truck.

There was a whirr and then a rumble and the truck trembled and shook to life.

"We were so worried about you guys." Glenn said, as the truck lurched forward, and he spun the wheel around, his eyes fixed forward.

"What happened? We got back and you we're all gone." Daryl asked with a hint of irritation in his voice.

We had never really discussed how we felt about being left behind. I had always assumed it must have been something important. Life or death. Daryl must have been hiding anger about it for some time. He had always had issues with abandonment.

"What happened to us?" Glenn asked in an incredulous tone. "Why didn't you wait like I said?"

"You didn't say nothin'."

"No. I left you a note."

"You what?"

"On the floor of the garage, in huge letters, written in white chalk. 'wait here'."

"I never saw no..." Daryl choked on his words, swallowed and then sighed. "I had a lot on my mind that day. Didn't look for no notes." He added quietly.

We both had a lot on our minds that day. Daryl was usually very observant, but he had made mistakes before when he had been distracted.

"We thought maybe a herd had come through, or marauders or…I don't know…"Glenn chuckled lightly to himself. "I mean we knew you would be okay, as long as you had each other."

Daryl's hand gripped firmly around my shoulder. "Where'd you go anyway?"

"Well, it's one hell of a story..."

I was sure it couldn't have been more hell than our story, but I closed my eyes, nuzzled into Daryl's warmth and allowed myself to be lulled into a daze by the gentle rumbling of the truck as I let Glenn's words paint a vivid picture in my mind.

"On that day, several months ago now, back at the gas station parking lot. It was like a war zone. Everyone was yelling and gun shots were crackling through the air. My chest was still hurting from where the bullet had hit the Kevlar. I was still struggling to breath, but I had to fight on.

The Termites seemed to be everywhere, calling from all angles. Taunting us, saying what they were going to do to us. It turned my stomach, because I knew they would be true to their word if they ever got hold of us.

We thought we were winning at first, we had the numbers on them, but they had taken us by surprise, and some of them had crept up behind us while we were focusing on Gareth.

Maggie had been right beside me, but we were moving between cars trying to shake off the gun fire, she got left behind at some point. Next thing we knew the Termites had a hold of both her and Tara, and were dragging them through the middle of the firing zone, kicking and screaming and struggling. We held our fire of course, not wanting to misplace our shots.

Gareth gagged them and bound them and forced them back into the car, all the while telling us in explicit detail what they planned to do to them."

I swallowed hard as I listened to the story of what happened to my sister. I was filled with concern, but Glenn said she was fine. That she was great. I was sure whatever had been done to her, she had recovered from it.

"I wanted to kill them." Glenn cried furiously, his jaw clenching and bulging in remembered anger. "But they used the girls to cover the windows, to shield themselves. Then that young guy, Jason, remember him? Well he tried to grab a hold of the car as they got in, got shot in the chest. We were in such a panic we didn't even take care of him. Make sure he stayed down. The kid did good. But we were all too distracted to send him off the way he should have been.

We all raced back to the mini-vans ready to follow. Abe wanted to leave 'em, but of course I wasn't having it. We were gonna split into two cars, but then Eugene came down, said he wasn't going anywhere without Maggie and Tara. Abe was real pissed, but he had no choice. Eugene was his life's purpose. So we gathered all our shit up. That's when we realised you two were gone. We didn't know what had happened, thought maybe you had been run off by walkers or more of the Termites, but we knew you would be together. We knew you would be okay. That's when I wrote that note for you." Glenn turned to face Daryl with a grim and sincere look on his face. "I'm sorry we didn't wait, but I didn't want to lose sight of Maggie. They already had a head start."

"Yeah I get it." Daryl grunted, while squeezing my shoulder. I knew he would have done the same if I had been taken.

"So we all got in the vans and followed them down the road. They had a good lead on us, but with no other cars on the road it wasn't too hard to follow their trail.

We followed them all the way back to this old weather worn church, paint all cracked and faded, windows all boarded up, hidden out in the middle of the woods. We thought we could take 'em there, but as we approached we realised there were more of them there.

Remember Dean and his buddies? They were there. They were with them. It was real messed up.

So we had to hang back a bit, scout the area, try to find a way in.

I went in by myself first, climbed up the porch, over the shingles and watched them through one of the stained glass windows up on the top.

I saw them. Doing terrible things to Tara."

Glenn's eyes dropped down and he swallowed hard.

"She didn't make it. She didn't survive what they did. It was for the best. No one would want to live after having that done to them.

I smashed in the windows and started firing down like a mad man. They returned fire, and I would've been done for, but then Rick and Abe were bashing in the front door. Michonne, and Rosita took the back. Bob and Sasha got anyone who slipped past.

We rounded them all up into the middle of the church. They tried giving us that old line of doing what they needed to survive. But we weren't falling for it this time, and they knew it.

I asked them about Maggie, and Gareth, he looked up his eyes all dark, and his face twisted into a sickening sneer.

He told me they had already done her. The same way they did Tara."

Glenn's eyes dropped from the road again, and he gently shook his head from side to side.

"We did terrible things. I was so angry…about Maggie…I made Gareth eat his own…"

Daryl interrupted, sparing us all from hearing the details. "It don't matter, man. We've all done things. They brought it on themselves."

"Yeah. Well, once we were done, we set that church on fire. It lit up like the sun and turned the night sky into a sea of orange and red.

I was a real mess. I don't even know how I ended up there, but I ended up back at the motel, crying out for Maggie. We spent that night there. I didn't sleep though. I sat up all night staring at the horizon, waiting for dawn, wondering if I would see a glimpse of Maggie's soul on the pathway to heaven. And when dawn came, at the moment the sun's rays first touched the earth I saw a golden chariot appearing."

He chuckled to himself.

"A church bus. We didn't know who it was at first, thought maybe it was Termites we had missed, we were ready to battle again, but the bus pulls up and a priest hops out, and then Maggie gets out behind him, unhurt and fully intact, but covered in black soot. She ran to me with tears streaming down her face, leaving clean trails through the ash. She was wailing uncontrollably... well maybe it was me that was wailing… someone was definitely wailing.

Turns out Tara had provided a diversion so that Maggie could slip her binds and escape. They caught on to it as Maggie was trying to sneak out the back door. She was able to get back down into the church undercroft, where she ran into the priest who had been living at the church.

He had been in a hidden room the whole time, so he took Maggie in, and they stayed there listening to the screams and cries from above, and then to the gunshots. It was the smoke of the fire that eventually drew them out. Then Maggie convinced the priest to leave, and they made their way back to the motel, and to us.

We waited there for two more days for you, hoping you had just gone out on a run.

On the second day Abe was getting real restless. He started packing up one of the vans, and telling us to give up and move on to Washington.

He was on the upper level of the motel arguing his point with Rick when things started getting heated. Eugene stepped in between the two and Abe grabbed hold of that radio he was always carrying around. The one he said kept him in contact with Washington.

Abe was yelling about saving the world and having a duty to human kind, Eugene was grabbing at the radio and next thing we know it's flung out of Abe's hand and falling to the ground below. It shattered into a dozen pieces of plastic and metal and wire.

I was standing downstairs when it happened. I went over and examined the smashed pieces of radio. It was just a cheap piece of crap kids radio. The kind you use to talk to your buddy in the kitchen when you're in the bedroom. Eugene had picked it up from a toy store. He had been lying to us the whole damn time."

Daryl's body tensed up against me, and then he gave a muffled groan of disapproval. I however, didn't even feel the slightest bit of disappointment. Although I had tried to hold on to hope that Eugene's story was true, there had always been a little bit of doubt within me. And now that I was with Glenn, and soon to be with Maggie, I wasn't concerned about Washington at all.

"Yeah I know right? We didn't even need to leave Georgia.

It turns out Eugene was just a computer programmer. A nerd, who got all these save the world ideas from playing a dumb game. He lied about everything so people would protect him and keep him safe.

Abe was real angry, understandably. He threw him around a bit, I think he even wanted to kill him, but Rick talked him down. We discussed going back to Georgia, and then we thought if you guys hadn't come back, you had probably gone on to Washington without us.

So we took off to Washington, having to make a few stops to camp and get supplies along the way. The roads were so blocked up, it took us two days to get there, and when we did we saw the whole place was surrounded by walkers.

I have to admit we kind of gave up at that point. We camped in the surrounding towns for a while, trying to find a decent place to stay, but we had to move about when herds roamed through.

We had the sense we were being followed for some time. A few times I had been out on runs and seen a shadow, or heard something shifting behind me. So one day everyone packed up the vans and took off, but Rick and I stayed behind, hidden. These two guys come out on road bikes and tried to tail the vans, but we run 'em down with this hatch we had repaired.

We knocked them out and tied them up. When they came back to their senses, they insisted they were scouts and they had been watching us to see if we were good people. We were more worried if they were good people, but by that stage we were weary, we were out of food, almost out of gas, and we thought we had nothing to lose.

And that's how we wound up at this place."

Glenn lifted his hand and pointed out the window.

I struggled to lift myself, but my arms were too weak and simply shook like Jell-O. Sensing my struggle, Daryl tugged me up by the shoulders so I too could see what he was gawking at with his jaw hanging low.

We were approaching a huge wall, which scanned forever in both directions. A large iron gate was being rolled open by two heavily armed men.

Beyond the gates was a quaint little town, with brightly coloured two story homes, surrounded by neat and manicure gardens. Children were laughing and playing in the street. A man was walking his dog. A woman was pushing a stroller. Everyone was acting as if the turn had never even happened.

Glenn turned to us, beaming as he examined the expressions on our faces. "Welcome to the safe zone."

All I could do was stare as the car pulled up into a parking lot beside the wall. Stare at the homes, and the gardens and the children, and the way everything was so perfect. And then all I could do was stare when Glenn got out and was greeted by my sister, looking clean and well groomed, and glowing with health.

Glenn spoke to her for a moment and then she looked over towards me, squealed, and ran to the car with her arms flailing excitedly.

Daryl pushed open the door as she approached, and she gave him a quick hug and kiss on the cheek, before tossing him out of the way.

"Oh good lord in heaven, I knew it! I knew you were alive." Maggie tugged me into her chest and squeezed me so hard I thought I might burst.

Then someone else was touching me, poking and scratching my thighs, and licking my face. I turned towards the mud stained white matts of fur and single good eye of a dog.

"Mix!" I choked, reaching my hands out to him carefully; afraid he might pop and disappear if I touched him.

"I knew when we found him, you couldn't be far away!" Maggie went on, as she rocked me back and forth in her arms.

"Where…where did you find him?" I mumbled.

"He was hidin' out in a dumpster with a couple o' kids."

"Kids?" I squeaked, my blood freezing in my veins and my heart turning into one huge iceberg.

"Yeah. This smart mouthed little boy and a mute girl."

I gripped onto Maggies arm and used every ounce of strength within me to pull myself up. "Get me out of here I need to see!" I squealed.

Maggie grunted and groaned as she dragged me out of the truck, and into Daryl's waiting arms.

"Did you hear what I heard?" I asked, looking up to him.

His face was hard and pale, his eyes staring over the top of my head. I followed his gaze towards the neat and green lawn of one of the homes that fronted on to the main street. There was a boy standing there with a football under his arm. His piercing blue eyes stared out at the pair of us, no longer shadowed by the dark hair that was now cropped short. Beside him was a little girl, with bronze skin and golden curly hair blowing and tangling in the wind.

Austin and Winnie.

A/N: It was so hard not to give out spoilers when everyone was angry at me for killing all the children...(okay I may have given out a few to my more anxious readers)

Thank you for all the lovely reviews! I do read them all, sometimes I only respond to them in my head though :/ I appreciate every single one of them :)