Author's Note: Guys, I know it's been too long since my last update, and I apologize. I don't ever want to abandon this story, as it is my baby and the first story I've ever written.

Please, don't give up on me yet! I'm still here, and I'll keep updating as fast as I can.

Anyway, enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own TWD nor anything related to it.

Walking wasn't a particularly difficult task. Under normal circumstances, Beth wouldn't have minded the hours they were in the woods. However, she thought tiredly, when you had to walk for miles and miles for days and days, nonstop, it was unbearable. She never complained, though. Beth had learned her lesson, in the worst way possible. Compared to the room she was locked in for the past two weeks, walking in complete silence under the Georgia heat, hungry and tired, seemed like a small blessing.

What worried her was Daryl's wound. The bullet wound was deeper than what she had anticipated, and she had no means to do anything about it. She had sewed it the other night, in the truck, and that was all he let her do. She remembered it perfectly...

When Merle came back with the water, Beth quickly did what she had to do. One thing she did know about the brothers was that they didn't like being taken care of, so she only had a small window of time to help Daryl before he became too uncomfortable.

The thread was the wrong kind, and the needle was pretty bent, but it was all they had, and it would have to do. So Beth washed Daryl's wound as best as she could and grabbed the bottle of cheap whiskey Merle handed her — not even stopping to question where that had come from.

"This is going to hurt," She warned as she was pouring, to distract him.

His face had frowned terribly, but other than that he hadn't uttered a single sound of protest. Which kind of freaked Beth out. What kind of life had Daryl lead, for that to feel not worthy of a scream?

She sewed very slowly, but it was unavoidable. She was working under crazy circumstances and her hand was still hurt from before. It was better to do it carefully than to screw Daryl's leg even further.

She tried not to stare at his underwear, or any other part of him that wasn't his wound, but it became increasingly difficult as the time passed. So she focused twice as hard and ignored the part of her brain that screamed that this would be the only chance she would ever get to see this much of Daryl.

"Did your father teach you how to do this?" Merle asked from behind her, maybe tired of the silence.

"Yes and no," She answered, grabbing the shirt they were going to wrap Daryl's leg with. "I watched my father work a lot and, as a naturally curious person, I asked a lot of questions. Eventually, he got tired of my never-ending questions and signed me up for a first-aid summer course, and that was where I learned to do this."

She ripped the shirt and began wrapping the leg in front of her.

"You know this is going to scar, right?" She asked Daryl when she finished her job.

"Yes," He said to her. "But, what is another scar?"

And that made her curious about his other scars. Daryl's past was a mystery, and Beth loved mysteries.

Lost in the memory, Beth almost didn't notice they were stopping. Getting ready for the night, she noticed, looking at the fast darkening horizon.

"We need to decide where we are going," Daryl broke the silence, sitting on the ground with his back against the trunk of a big tree. It was interesting for Beth to notice how the brothers always played it safe, sometimes compulsively so. They never moved without a backup plan — even the smallest movements were thought through.

"Yes, the winter is coming, and we need a permanent place to survive it," Merle agreed, moving to light up a fire with an easy that only came with familiarity. "I want something as far away from the major cities as possible."

"Won't that make it more difficult for us to get food?" Beth asked, merely curious. After the last time, she doubted they would vote anything, and she wouldn't dare to intervene with the decision either. If they decided to live in a hole in the ground, that's where she would go, no questions asked.

"It will," Daryl confirmed, skinning the squirrels he had hunted without even looking at it. "We'll need to stock up food, a lot of it. It shouldn't be so difficult, though, with only the three of us. I'm more concerned with finding a defendable place before the snows begin."

"What about something on a mountain?" Merle suggested. "It would be harder for the walkers to go up, with the snow. And arrows are the perfect weapon for hitting people at a distance." He added, looking at Daryl's crossbow.

"It won't be easy to find a house like that around here," Beth stated, helping Daryl put the meat on the fire. "There aren't a lot of mountains that aren't covered in forest."

"You know one, though," Merle pressed.

It wasn't a question.

"I do." She said, opening the map Merle passed to her. "This three." She pointed to three different places. "They all have houses in them."

She desperately wanted to suggest something but didn't dare — it would be safer to see them all anyway.

"Just say it, kid. You look constipated," Merle said, impatiently.

So she gave up. Not interfering wasn't her thing.

"This one," Beth pointed to the mountain that was the furthest away from them. "There's only one house built there, and it's a decent house where an old friend of my father lived. I don't know if he's alive, but it would be an adequate place, I suppose."

She tried to ignore the connection to her father. He was dead or living another life away from her; it wouldn't do for her to keep hanging on to the past. It didn't mean it wasn't painful, though.

"It a little further away then I'm comfortable." Merle expressed, pursuing his lips. "There's a lot of chances for problems on the way."

"Look," Daryl pointed out. "This other one is in the same way, almost. We could head towards there and see how it is. If we don't find trouble, we stay there, if we do, well, is nice to have other options."

And so, just like that, it was decided, they were headed towards the closest mountain first. With nothing else important to say the group ate in silence and got ready to sleep. Beth took the first watch, again, knowing she wouldn't be able to get a good rest regardless of how much she tried. So she chose to let the brothers rest as much as they could, it was the least she could do.

The truth was, nighttime was always the worst part of the day for Beth. It didn't matter how little she slept, even if she only ever got half an hour, the nightmares came swinging. It was somewhat ironic that in a world filled with the undead, Beth bad dreams were always caused by a human. Jonathan was smiling in all of her dreams, mocking her despair with his happiness... and he was alone, always alone. He needn't another person to make Beth cry, and Jonathan had been very aware of that.

He would tell stories to her, although she never asked for them, and they were always about the things his men did to Merle or to Daryl's body. The psychological torture was the worst, in her opinion. At least when he was hitting her there wasn't time to think about all the rest, it was just the pain and the willingness for it to be over...

Beth sat on the forest ground, for the rest of the night, trying to convince herself that Jonathan was dead and she was free.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

The next day came faster than Beth would've liked. Even if she didn't exactly sleep; leaned against a tree and gazing at the empty forest, she could almost trick herself into believing the world was a good place.

But, unfortunately, the sun didn't ask for permission to rise and neither did Merle. So Beth got up and began walking again, knowing this was only the beginning.

If they hadn't run out of gas — and, therefore, still had a car — things would be much simpler, but life was never simple or easy in the apocalypse and Beth no longer waited for luck to be on her side. It was a long distance to cross — almost two weeks if they carried on walking at the pace they were and did not run into any trouble whatsoever. Beth knew that if they made it to somewhere safe before the winter, they should count themselves lucky.

She was lucky to be alive; Beth reminded herself, she didn't have the right to complain.

Beth also didn't dare to mention her training to Merle, much less to Daryl. She was painfully aware of how much trouble she caused them; it would be surreal to ask for more help than what they were already giving her. Nevertheless, she made an effort to observe how the brothers behaved in relation to everything, with a dedication she never applied to anything in her life. If Daryl moved, she watched his feet; if Merle chose a path, she tried to see his reasonings; if they killed a walker with a knife or a crossbow, she memorized their movements as best as she could.

Beth was so in sync with the brothers moves that she caught herself, more than once, copying their actions subconsciously. The youngest Greene knew that they both knew what she was doing, and most likely thought she was pathetic. But no one spoke about it, so she continued.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

As the week passed, the trio settled into a routine that worked for all of them. Daryl stopped limping after Beth took out his stitches, Merle's bruises began to fade, and he stopped having so much trouble breathing, and Beth's hand and face didn't hurt so much anymore. No one was perfect, but they somehow managed to make it all work.

They didn't run into any humans, which was great as far as Beth was concerned. In the world they lived, humans meant trouble. But they did see the walkers, plenty of them.

And, more than anything else, she paid attention to the walkers, knowing it could make a difference someday. Beth learned how fast they walked, how far away they could smell blood and how much noise one had to make to call their attention. It wasn't an exact science, but it gave her some comfort to know she understood how they worked.

Beth forced herself to watch all that happened around her, no matter how gruesome it was or how much she wanted to avert her eyes. That was the new world, and the only way to survive in it was to fill her mind with those images to protect herself. She made the decision to be a survivor, so now Beth had to prove she could be one.

AN2: Beth still has a long way to go, but she's learning.

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