It's a mad mission, under difficult conditions;
not everybody makes it to the loving cup.
It's a mad mission, but I got the ambition;
mad, mad mission, sign me up.
- Patty Griffin, "Mad Mission"

Beth drives.

The devastated city looks different up close. What she'd seen from the roof of Grady prepared her somewhat for the extent of the damage, but not for the intimate horrors she finds along the freeway.

She keeps her eyes straight ahead on the road until she can't. Then, she looks until she can't.

It's an exhausting drive, finding her way out of the city, navigating collapsed bridges and pile-ups of cars and trucks. She has to backtrack and reroute herself twice, until she decides that the freeways are a no-go and instead makes her way to the edge of the city via winding side streets and suburban parkways.

Beth drives past houses and schools and football fields, churches and outlet malls and gas stations. Everything is crumbling, burnt out and abandoned. Everything is green, mossy and mouldy, slowly being swallowed by the encroaching woods. She passes hundreds of billboards that dot the landscape, their ads peeling and waving in the breeze like tattered flags.

There are corpses everywhere.

Most are old, from the early days, picked clean and bleached dry by the sun. But they still wear clothes, they're still buckled safely in the seats of their cars, they still face forward. They still have hair clinging to their skulls, still have fillings in the teeth exposed by their gaping mouths.

Beth makes it as far as the South Carolina border before she finally has to stop. She stands next to the truck and vomits on the cracked pavement, heaving bile and saliva until it hurts to swallow. She sits down in the shade of the truck, her back against the front driver's side tire.

In a way, she's glad the horror can still disgust her, devastate her. She's glad it hasn't yet become commonplace. Acceptable. She knows now what happens to a person when it becomes acceptable.

Eventually she stands, wiping sweat from her brow. The sun is sinking into the horizon, so she starts the truck back up to find a place to camp for the night. She chooses a sheltered spot on the banks of the Savannah River, off a side road leading to a rest stop.

She sits in the dark cab of the truck with her booted feet up on the passenger seat, eating dry ramen noodles from their plastic envelope, licking the fake shrimp flavour off her fingers. She hums "Coat of Many Colors" to herself as loud as she dares, which isn't very. The stars and moon hide behind a cloudy sky, and it's utterly dark.

She sleeps with her gun in her hand.

In the morning, the truck won't start.

Beth hammers away at the ignition, listening to the engine grind and choke, before shrieking in frustration and tossing the keys across the cab. She sits in the truck for nearly an hour, watching the sun come up and the mist rise off the river. When she tries the ignition again, the engine doesn't even respond. All she hears is the click of the battery.

Beth takes her pack and slings the rifle over her shoulder, sticks the handgun in its holster. She stands there, staring at the dead truck, and sighs.

"Well, truck," she says, placing the keys on the hood and giving the vehicle a conciliatory pat, "you tried."

Beth consults her map for what must be the hundredth time before folding it into a palm-sized square and tucking it into her bra.

She crosses the bridge spanning the Savannah River, and starts to walk into South Carolina.

A flock of gulls rises from the river and takes to the sky, their white wings bright in the morning sun.

"Across the field where the crick turns back by the ol' stone road, I'm gonna take you to a special place that nobody knows, baby get ready, oooooooh!"

Beth sings.

She sings every song she can remember. She sings entire albums from start to finish. She sings her favourite songs over and over and over.

There's no one to tell her to quiet down. No one to tell her enough's enough. No one to say keep singin'. But she does. It's what she wants, the sound of her own strong, clear voice rising out of her to hang bright in the air.

She walks through the woods, close enough to the highway to keep it in sight as her route marker, but far enough back that if anyone comes along, it will be easy to conceal herself among the trees.

Not that anyone's come by. She hasn't seen a living soul since she left Grady, and that was two and a half weeks ago.

"Rock me mama like the wind and the rain, rock me mama like a southbound train, heyyyyyy, mama rock me!"

When she happens upon a little blue bungalow set back on several acres, an old Chevette up on cinderblocks in the yard, she takes the time to check it for supplies. There are two walkers inside the house, and she manages to take them out with only one bullet each from her handgun. She doesn't find much that's useful aside from a few cans of peas and stewed tomatoes. Instead, it's something completely useless that captures her attention in the dingy living room off the kitchen.

Sitting atop the old tube TV is a lime green plastic ashtray in the shape of a bikini top.

Beth lets out a surprised giggle at the sight of the ugly thing. She claps a hand over her mouth to stifle it, but she can't - she doubles over, hands on her knees, and laughs until she cries, until her stomach aches and her head throbs.

She stays there that night, after securing the entrance with chairs and cinderblocks. She eats the peas and the tomatoes for dinner, and stretches out on the moth-eaten brown and orange velour couch to sleep.

Her last thought before she falls asleep is that she can't wait to tell Daryl about the ashtray.

In the morning, she stands in the yard next to the rusty Chevette and watches flames engulf the house. If the universe is going to send her a sign, she's more than happy to send one back.

Beth walks down the long gravel driveway, back to the highway, and she sings.

"My travelling companions are ghosts and empty sockets, I'm lookin' at ghosts and empties, but I've reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland!"

When Beth finally does encounter another person, she wishes she hadn't.

Walking through the woods one afternoon, she hears voices ahead, up by the highway. She pauses, listening carefully. The words themselves are indistinct, but Beth's sure she hears more than two voices. None of them are raised, though, so she proceeds carefully, sticking to the woods.

She edges closer to the voices, soon finding the source. She crouches behind a large oak tree, twenty or so yards away from the small group of people gathered in the road. A woman and a man stand next to a blue SUV, close together, apprehensive. In her arms, the woman holds a squirming toddler.

Beth leans forward just enough to see the other people standing near them. There are three of them; men, she thinks, although it's difficult to tell. They're filthy, dressed in clothes little better than rags. Beth would feel empathy for them, except there is something in the way they stand facing the couple that unsettles Beth. A twinge in her stomach that stays her hand, keeps her from calling out to any of them in greeting, keeps her crouched behind the tree.

There's something not right about these people. Something off. Something dangerous.

The man by the SUV is speaking, holding something out with one hand to the others, blocking the woman's body with his own.

One of the others turns to speak to his companions, and Beth can see there's some kind of strange mark on his forehead. It could be dirt, but Beth doesn't think so. It looks almost like a brand, or a scar.

Then, without warning, one of the men in rags pulls a hatchet from his belt. He lifts his arm, swings it through the air, and buries the hatchet in the woman's collarbone.

Beth bites her fist to stifle the shocked shout that threatens to leap from her throat. Pulling herself back behind the cover of the tree, she squeezes her eyes shut and wraps her arms around her knees, trying to make herself as small as she can. But she can't drown out the sound of the man's grunts, of the hatchet striking wet crunching bone over and over and over, of fists meeting flesh, of the toddler's shrill screams abruptly silenced.

Run, she thinks wildly, her heart pounding, I have to run.

Beth stumbles to her feet and she runs for the deeper cover of the trees.

Beth runs without pausing, without looking back. She runs until her awareness has narrowed to the pounding of her boots on the ground, the hammering of her heart.

She runs until she is soaked in sweat, runs until her thighs feel like they are made of concrete, until they stiffen and she stumbles, falling against the trunk of a tall tree.

Panting, she leans on it for a moment, gripping the solid bark beneath her fingers.

A twig snaps nearby, and she bolts.

She keeps running.

It gets harder to sleep. Even when she finds small, secure hiding spots at night. Even when she finds a hunter's blind high up in a chestnut tree. Even when she finds places with deadbolts and boarded-up windows.

It simply isn't safe to sleep on her own.

She dozes in short spurts, her rest fitful and painted red by ugly dreams. Lack of sleep saps her energy. Fear makes her dull and slow, even as she grows more anxious, even as she stares up at the bright stars at night and strains to hear twigs snapping in the woods around her.

Beth feels tight all over, like a tuned piano wire.

The hypervigilance costs her dearly - a dizzying migraine drives her to a one-room hunting cabin just north of Falls Lake that's small and sturdy, easy to secure. She sets snares in the woods and hides inside the dim, gloomy cabin, her jacket covering her head to block out even the faintest light.

She finds a small rabbit in the snare the next morning and she skins it on the porch, blood and tufts of downy fur clinging to her hands. She rubs dry grass between her palms to clean them as the rabbit roasts over the flames of the fire she hardly dares to build in the yard.

The sight of the smoke floating up into the sky frightens her. She sees what others might - a beacon indicating there's a person camped here. She stamps out the flames as soon as she can. She devours the meat quickly, spurred on by hunger and fear, and throws the carcass into a nearby ravine.

She tries to stay the night in the cabin but the fear that someone has seen the smoke becomes too great, panic sounding like alarm bells in her head. She leaves when the moon is high and bright in the sky.

The dark stillness of the woods soothes her, and she keeps walking.

Beth thinks she might be disappearing. At times she wonders if she already has.

She hasn't seen another person since those ragged, vicious men on the highway. She finds evidence of people, plenty of it, scattered clothes and old campfire pits and tattered tents and empty cans of food. She tracks footprints in the dirt, trying to discern the story of what happened, wondering what Daryl would see there that she's missed.

But she doesn't see anyone living. No one cruel or kind. No groups or lone travellers. Just her, the highway, the birds in the trees, and the occasional stumbling walker.

No one to notice or care if she should die.

Beth thinks about that a lot. Not the precise mechanism of her death, be it walkers or people or disease or injury or a blood clot choking off her fragile brain. No, she simply pictures her own absence, the empty space she'd leave behind. Her departure from this world going unnoticed, like fading into nothing.

After all, if everyone who once knew her believes she's dead, and if they themselves are dead, then it's possible she's already been forgotten, wiped from the memory of the world.

"I'm here," she says one day, to the indifferent green woods. "I still exist."

Beth scavenges an old car by the side of the road, picking through the trash in the backseat. That's when she sees something written in the grime on the rear window. Someone's initials, she supposes, drawn in the dust by a finger: J S S

Before she leaves the car to its slow, rusting consumption by the forest, Beth adds something of her own to the dirty window.

BETH GREENE WAS HERE

She arrives on the outskirts of Richmond.

Following Noah's descriptions and everything Officer Shepherd told her, she finds the place with the walls. It's there. The walls still stand.

But everyone's gone. There's no one left living in this place.

Beth stands in the middle of the street, looking from house to house for some sign. Anything. Some indication that her family came through here, some inkling of where they went.

There's nothing. Nothing but a lone walker up the block, dragging one broken leg behind it as it lurches along.

Eventually Beth starts moving from house to house on one cul-de-sac, looking for supplies, trying to keep her rising panic from overwhelming her. She opens drawers and cupboards and ignores the way her chest has tightened, her breaths shortening to anxious little inhalations. She moves automatically, shoving tins of sardines and packets of take-out ketchup into her backpack.

She doesn't look at any of the dozens of framed pictures that decorate the walls, or go into any of the bedrooms. She can't stand to.

She tries to leave the last house on the cul-de-sac, and she finds she cannot. It's as though she's paralyzed, one hand resting on the brass doorknob of the thick wooden front door. She stares through the diamond-shaped window at the empty street, at the apple tree in the yard. She orders herself to open the door and walk through it, but her body's become disobedient, ignoring her commands completely.

It's strange; there's no immediate danger, but whole body is telling her that there is. Everything in her urges her to run, and yet she cannot make herself move. She trembles, her hands shaking.

Beth's breaths shorten and she starts to sweat, her shirt clinging to her skin beneath her jacket. Her stomach churns and her head throbs; it feels like she's going to throw up and shit herself all at once. She's more frightened than she's ever been in her life, and at once she's convinced she must be dying.

When she wakes, she has no idea how much time has passed. She has no recollection of lying down on the sisal welcome mat, of curling into a tight ball, her back pressed to the door. Her hands are clenched in fists beneath her chin, and it takes several minutes before her fingers will loosen. Her whole body's drenched with sweat, her face wet with tears, and she sits up slowly, leaning back against the door.

Beth stares down the hallway, into the bright kitchen at the back of the house. She watches the sunlight move across the tile floor, watches the dust motes drift through the slanting shafts of afternoon light.

She wonders if there's any point in getting up at all.

Eventually she does, though, sometime later. She stands. Her legs wobble and ache. She doesn't make herself find a reason to stand, she just does it. She pulls her backpack and her rifle on, makes sure her handgun is secure in its holster.

She leaves the house, closes the door behind her.

The reason for the community's abandonment becomes clear when she walks down the sidewalk, out of the cul-de-sac and onto the main road. Down the street she sees a sizeable herd - at least a few dozen walkers - shuffling aimlessly around a small playground.

The walkers bump against each other, snarling distractedly, jerking their rotting bodies into each other as they wait for a fresh source of food to appear.

Beth stares at them, wondering if this herd devoured her family. Wondering if they're now part of it.

Something powerful pulses through her, makes her head throb. Her chest is tight with it, and suddenly she wants to scream, to rage, to thrash violently against the brutal unfairness, against the ugliness. She's felt it before, that horrible day the Governor attacked, when she stood and watched as the man took Michonne's sword to her father's neck. She thinks she's felt it other times, but the memories don't come to her.

Those memories are gone, of course, along with everything else.

Without pausing to consider the wisdom of her actions, Beth hoists the rifle into her arms, aims, and fires at the herd, pelting them with bullets. The power of the weapon shoves her backwards, knocks her aim off. She manages a few headshots but most of the ammo gets buried in the walkers' rotting bodies as they turn towards her, jaws snapping and arms reaching, stumbling forward.

The barrel clicks, empty, and Beth swings the rifle back over her shoulders. She turns, then, and runs in the opposite direction of the herd. These walkers are fresh and move relatively quickly, and Beth curses herself for losing her temper. Stupid. She should have just walked away.

There's no time to secure something as large and penetrable as a house, so Beth looks for a car. She finds one in a driveway halfway up the block, a silvery-gold Honda with the driver's side door hanging open.

Beth dashes to the car, pausing when she sees the corpse slumped in the driver's seat. She grabs it under its armpits and pulls hard, groaning at the weight of it. It's the body of a big man, and even in its present state of decay, it's heavy. She hears the herd approaching, and panic races up her spine.

"Come on, you bastard," she curses, bracing a foot against the car door frame and pulling with every ounce of strength she can muster. The body budges, finally, tumbling out of the car and on top of her, a wave of stench hitting her like a slap to the face. Beth scrambles out from under the body, grimacing when she sees the maggots all over its back, all over the car seat.

Heedless, Beth throws her pack and the rifle into the car and climbs in. She slams the door shut behind her, clambering over the filthy seat and into the backseat. She slides down to the floor as the first walker hits the car, scraping its broken teeth against the glass, its eyes clamped on her. Others follow it, rocking the car with their bodies as they struggle to get at her.

She clutches the rifle to her chest and pulls an old beach towel on the seat over top of her, blocking out the light.

There's a lump in her throat that won't budge. She flinches each time a walker throws itself against the side of the car. They scrabble against the metal and glass, but not even the terror is enough to wash out the sorrow.

"Hold on, hold on," she whispers to herself, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to remain completely still. "You really gotta hold on. Take my hand, I'm standing right here, and just hold on."

Just hold on.

The walkers move on. It takes hours for the herd to grow disinterested and to wander off, drawn away by noises in the woods at the edge of town. Beth stays put long after their growling and shuffling has faded. By then it's dark, so she closes her eyes and tries to sleep, but she cannot.

She stares dry-eyed at the ceiling of the car and thinks of her family, of their corpses, of their yellowed eyes and snapping mouths.

She thinks of Daryl, fighting 'til the end, imagines him defending the others. Thinks of the night they spent in the trunk of that car, walkers all around them, thunder crashing overhead. How she was so frightened, so frantic, yet all it took to keep her from losing her mind was to glance over and see how still and steady he was as he held his crossbow, ready to defend them both.

Beth misses him. She misses him so badly she has to shove the thought of him away from her. It's too much.

Eventually the morning dawns, grey and cool, and Beth sits up, pushing the ratty old beach towel off her. Her mouth is dry and her head throbs. She needs to find water.

Beth leans into the front seat, trying to avoid the maggots still writhing on the rotting upholstery, and tries the keys in the ignition. The only response is the faint ticking of the engine trying to start on a dead battery. She sighs. A small plastic potted flower is affixed to the dashboard, its petals bobbing slowly up and down in a cartoonish dance, powered by a tiny solar panel on its base. Beth reaches forward and peels it off the dashboard, the adhesive patch on its bottom giving way easily. She tucks it inside her backpack, next to her dwindling supply of ammo.

Shouldering her pack and her rifle, she leaves the car. It's brisk outside, mist still hanging in the distance in every direction. Beth walks down the street until she sees a rain barrel tucked against the shady side of a brown bungalow. She goes to it, and is pleased to find that the screen on top is intact; the water should be relatively clean. She pops the screen off and leans over the barrel, looking at the crystal-clear reflection of herself she sees staring back at her.

Her face is filthy. Her wounds and bruises have healed. Her hair's growing back in soft waves, shaggy around her ears, a darker blond than before. Her cheeks are sunken, her eyes dark and serious.

But she's there, shimmering on the surface of the water. She's still alive.

She dips her water bottle down into the dark barrel, fills it, and drinks.

Beth downs two full bottles standing there, and fills it once more before she leaves. She walks down the quiet, tree-lined suburban street, no sign of the herd. She keeps walking until she passes through a gateway in the walls, sidestepping the dried blood that paints the pavement.

She walks a while longer, the houses fewer and farther between as she goes, until she approaches a meadow beyond an old rail fence. She ducks behind some bushes there to relieve herself, the water having run through her at a quick pace.

When she's finished, she goes and stands by the fence, staring at the meadow and the woods beyond.

She doesn't know what to do next. She has no idea where to go.

Beth looks down at her feet, swallowing the anger and the sorrow that swell suddenly inside her.

Why is this happening?

Why didn't they stay?

Why didn't they take me with them?

Why do I have to do this alone?

A sob catches in her throat, and Beth clutches her elbows, tries to hold herself. She wants to lie down. She wants to cry until her eyes burn. She wants to quit.

A bird calls nearby, a flute-like melody that fills the still dawn air with song. Beth turns her head and listens as the same call rings out again, clear and true. She stirs, her legs still stiff from spending the night on the cramped car floor, and follows the sound down the fence line.

At the edge of the woods, perched on a fencepost, is a bright bird, its feathers yellow and brown. A meadowlark, she thinks, when he opens his sharp black beak and sings again, a little dart of steam leaving his mouth in the crisp morning air. He cocks his head in her direction, his shiny bead eyes watching her warily. He shakes, ruffling his feathers out before stretching his neck long and singing a slow, sweet version of his little tune.

Then, he opens his wings and takes flight, disappearing across the field and into the woods beyond in a flicker of yellow.

Beth stands there for a long time, staring at the spot where the meadowlark perched to sing his song. Eventually she looks around her. There is nothing for her here, and she can't go back - she just can't.

She takes a shaky breath, and walks back up to the highway, and carries on towards the northeast.

Beth walks for the better part of a week before she encounters another person.

She'd happened upon a small town that was not much more than a service station, a post office, a couple of stores, and a diner at a crossroads. She's emerging from a house on one of the side streets, examining the can of crushed pineapple she found in the kitchen, when someone clears their throat.

In her surprise and rush to get at her handgun, Beth drops the can of pineapple, and it clanks noisily down the front steps.

A man stands on the other side of the chain link fence. Beth guesses he's in his 30s. He's tall, though not a very large man. Short, curly brown hair, blue eyes. The strange thing about him, though, is that his clothes and his face are clean, as though he's washed them recently.

Beth squares her feet on the creaky porch, clutches the handgun in both hands, and points it right at his chest.

"Hello," the man says. He raises his hands. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm a friend."

The man has a kind face, and Beth wants to trust it.

She can't. But she wants to.

"It's all right," he says, keeping his hands raised. "I get it, I'd be cautious too. You'd be crazy not to. It makes sense. But I don't mean you any harm. Honest. I only want to tell you that there's a place - a community - that's safe. I can show you pictures."

"Pictures?" Beth asks, suspicious. Her hand tightens on the grip of the handgun. "How do you have pictures?"

"We found a camera a while back. One of the guys took photography in high school, so he set up a darkroom, developed them for us. I can show them to you. They're in my pack."

"Where?" Beth asks, half out of interest and half trying to call his bluff. Everything he's saying sounds too good to be true, and if there's one thing she's learned from the mess her life has become over the last two years, it's that the old cliche is painfully accurate.

"The pocket at the front," he replies, turning his back very slowly towards her in invitation. "Go ahead."

Beth stares down the barrel of her gun at the back of his head for a long moment, chewing her bottom lip.

There are still good people, she thinks. It's harder to believe now than it was for her back then. She'd managed to convince Daryl, somehow. Now she feels like she can't even convince herself. She weighs the decision a moment longer, watches as the man glances back over his shoulder, his expression slightly nervous.

Nervous, yes, but guileless. Kind. Open.

Lowering her weapon but keeping it grasped in her right hand, Beth walks down the steps. She crosses the small yard and comes around the fence to stand by him. She unzips the pocket, and inside is a dog-eared yellow envelope. She extracts and unfolds it, opening it to reveal several grainy black-and-white photos. The first shows a tall steel wall, reinforced by long beams. Much stronger than the deteriorating chain link and tree trunks of the prison's defences, she notes. The next photo shows a suburban street that looks like something out of an issue of Southern Living, all wide white porches and clipped lawns. Beth can't help it, she scoffs.

"Is this for real?" she asks, incredulous.

"Yes," the man replies, turning back to face her. "I know - it's hard to believe. Most people feel that way when they first see it. Hard to believe anything like that could have survived. But it has."

Beth hums noncommittally and moves on to the next photo. A group of small children are playing in a grassy yard surrounded by a pristine white picket fence. There are playground toys all over, a sandbox and a slide, and to one side, almost out of frame, she sees the indistinct figure of a gawky teenage boy holding a toddler in his arms.

The boy is wearing a sheriff's hat.

Beth gasps, her pulse pounding as a surge of adrenaline jolts abruptly through her. She looks up to see the man watching her curiously, his eyebrows drawn together.

"How - who is this?" she rasps, her throat dry. She thrusts the photo at him, bending it in her tight fist.

"Why?" the man asks, his voice quiet. He's the cautious one now, eyeing her somewhat warily.

"Who is this?" she repeats, grabbing his sleeve. "Is this a trick? Who are you?"

"Do you know him? Do you know that boy?"

"Yes," Beth replies, nodding, wishing her voice wouldn't shake in front of this stranger, wishing that tears weren't forming in her eyes. "Yes, I know him."

The man eyes her a moment longer. "That's Carl Grimes, and his baby sister, Judith."

Beth lets out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and she doesn't care at all now when her tears overflow and slide down her cheeks.

They made it. They survived.

The man is scrutinizing her, his head tilted. He looks her over, his eyes lingering on her forehead.

"What's your name?" he asks, slow and careful. There's something tremulous in his look, something scared but hopeful too, and just like that, Beth isn't cautious anymore. She isn't scared. Not at all.

"My name's Beth," she replies. "Beth Greene."

"Oh my god," he says, shaking his head, astonished. "But you - they said - Oh my god."

"They?" Beth prompts him, grabbing his other sleeve. The gun and the photos have fallen away, she's dropped them; all she is aware of is this stranger's face, the look of disbelief there, the tears in his eyes.

"Beth Greene," he repeats, giving a little bewildered laugh and smiling at her, smiling so wide that Beth knows deep in her bones that she likes this man, that he's a good person, that he's a friend. "It's wonderful to meet you, Beth Greene. My name's Aaron."

"Hi, Aaron," she grins, feeling foolish, and then she's laughing too, laughing and crying all at once, trying to think of where to begin with the barrage of questions she has for him, but all they can do is stand there and grin at each other.

"I've heard so many great things about you, Beth," he says, shaking his head, "and I know a whole bunch of people who are going to be thrilled to see you. Beyond thrilled."

"Who's there?" she asks, desperate and terrified to find out.

"Maggie's there," he replies, and Beth laughs out another sob, gripping his jacket harder in her clenched fingers, "and Glenn, and Rick and Michonne, Carol and Sasha, Abraham and Rosita and Tara and Eugene, and Gabriel, too," he says. Beth is surprised to hear Carol included, and she doesn't know all the names, but she doesn't care - she knows if he's including them with the others, they must be family, too. Aaron pauses, tilting his head at her. "Daryl's there."

"Daryl's there," Beth repeats, her heart constricting painfully. She closes her eyes as more tears squeeze out and she feels like she might float right off the ground with elation. Daryl's there, Daryl's there, Daryl's there! "Of course he's there. I told him he would be," she says, and Aaron huffs out a laugh, and Beth knows then that Aaron is a friend of Daryl's, too.

"What about Noah?" she asks. Aaron's expression falters.

"We lost him on a run not long after they arrived. Glenn was with him. It was… I'm sorry."

"Oh," Beth breathes, the punch of sadness taking the wind out of her sails. "I really hoped… Oh."

"I know," he says. "I wish I could tell you things aren't still incredibly dangerous, but, well." He gives a hapless, sad little shrug.

"Can you take me there?" Beth asks, then. "How far away is this place?"

"It's not far; you would have gotten to us on your own, soon enough," Aaron replies, smiling again. "I've got a car, but I'm guessing you're gonna want to go with Daryl."

"With Daryl?" Beth frowns.

"He can't be too far away, I'm sure. We're supposed to meet up soon, so -"

"Daryl's with you?"

"Sure," Aaron replies. "This is what we do. We go out looking for people. Anyone who's out here, looking for shelter. We're recruiters."

Beth shakes her head, astonished. Daryl Dixon, out recruiting strangers? She can hardly believe it, except that somehow she absolutely can, and the thought warms her from the inside out.

They may be nuts, but maybe it'll be all right.

"Come on," Aaron says, smiling. He's excited, too. "Let's not waste any time."

Aaron starts to walk back in the direction he'd come, towards the centre of the little town. They walk up the tree-lined street side-by-side, Aaron keeping his long strides slow to allow Beth to keep pace. It makes her smile; she likes him already.

"His bike's been acting up," Aaron says. "We've got a designated meeting point here for when we get separated on runs, though. We'll check for him there."

"His bike?" Beth asks. "He's got a bike?"

"Yeah!" A pleased smile steals across Aaron's face. "We had the parts and the tools but no one who knew how to put a bike together. Then we met Daryl."

Beth grins, remembering how Daryl mentioned the loss of his brother's motorcycle more than once after they were forced to leave it behind, remembering how he looked the first time she ever saw him, when he came roaring up the driveway at the farm in front of that old RV.

He must be so happy, she thinks, and her face aches from grinning.

It's surreal, walking beside this stranger, knowing that she's about to finally see Daryl. Her family. Her friend. The man she once thought she might spend the rest of her life with, however short a time that ended up being. The man who once pinned her in place with such an inscrutable look of fearful tenderness that she's still trying to figure out exactly what she was to him.

Her stomach is a riot of activity and her head throbs, and soon Aaron doesn't have to shorten his strides at all, for Beth is practically jogging in her hurry to get to their destination.

"He's going to be so excited to see you," Aaron says. "I mean, not excited. He's been very… Well. He hasn't said much about it, but you kinda can't miss it." Beth's tempted to ask Aaron what he means, exactly, but as they pass the diner, he continues. "Poor guy. I would have liked to prepare him, to be honest, but - "

They round the corner and his words falter. There on the sidewalk in front of the service station, crouched down beside a motorcycle, his back to them, is Daryl. The angel wings on his vest are almost as dark as the leather now, but it's him, head bent as he fiddles with something on the bike.

It's too much. It's suddenly far too much for her, seeing him there, after months of wondering, weeks of hoping against all reason, and Beth tries to say his name, but all that comes out of her is a sob.

Daryl's on his feet in an instant at the sound of it, turning around, and Aaron's shouting something to him, but Beth doesn't hear it, doesn't care, because she's running then, running to him, her boots pounding on the pavement as her legs eat up this last distance between them that still feels too great. His face is a pale shocked blur as she crashes into him, knocking him back a step when she throws her arms around his neck and smashes her face into his collarbone.

He freezes for a moment, arms at his sides, and then a sound like a choked gasp escapes him and his arms are around her and he's holding her tight, clutching the back of her head in his palm, panting for air next to her ear, lifting her right off her feet.

"Beth," he breathes.

Beth tries again to say his name, tries to say something, but she can't; all she can do is weep as she grips the leather of his vest tight in her hands. Burying her face in his neck, she breathes the familiar smell of him, that sweat and leather and ground-in cigarette smoke and fresh air smell that reminds her of the funeral home, of the day he carried her through the tombstones.

"How?" he whispers, and his tone is something she's never heard before. She cannot place it, cannot name the emotions it holds inside it.

Beth shakes her head, unable to speak. She pulls back enough to look at him properly. He's aged even in the months they've been apart; he looks tired, his hair long and lank, hanging all around his face like a dark curtain. His expression is stunned, thrown, and it feels like maybe he's trembling. Like maybe they both are.

"I made it," she says.

Daryl just stares at her, his gaze drawn up to her forehead. Absently, his hand leaves the back of her head and she feels his thumb brush against the little round scar above her eyebrows, the bullet wound he watched Dawn's gun make. He inhales sharply and pulls his hand away, takes a step back from her, removes himself, and the moment is gone.

Beth senses Aaron hanging back at the periphery, allowing them as much privacy as he can, but he clears his throat then.

"We should go," he says, his tone apologetic. Beth looks over at him as he gestures up the road at several walkers milling around the service station. "Anyway, I don't think we need to find anyone else on this trip," he continues, smiling gently at Beth.

Daryl looks up and nods at Aaron. He glances back at Beth, and he's cagey, like when they were all still strangers and he would come into the farmhouse and stand there looking so uncomfortable he seemed ready to leap out the window just to get away from all of them.

"You wanna go in the car, or…?" he tips his chin in the direction of his bike.

"You," Beth replies immediately. "I wanna go with you."

Daryl squints and pulls a strange sort of face that's almost a grimace, and he nods.

"Well," Aaron says, his eyebrows raised, "see you back home."

Home.

Daryl nods again, then turns away to swing his leg over his bike. "Hop on," he says, staring straight ahead, not looking at her.

Beth climbs gingerly onto the seat between Daryl and the rack that holds his crossbow, scooting forward against his back. She winds her arms around his waist, and jumps when Daryl kicks the bike to a start. She's never ridden a motorcycle before.

"Y'good?" he asks, looking over his shoulder at her.

"Peachy," she replies shakily, embarrassed by the way the bike unnerves her. The corner of Daryl's mouth quirks up, and he faces forward once more. He waves some kind of hand signal to Aaron, and Aaron returns it. They speed past the small herd of walkers by the service station and pull out onto the highway, heading north, Aaron driving along behind them.

The bike rumbles between her legs and the wind whips tears from her eyes, shrieks in her ears as she clings to Daryl's waist. He leads them down the winding road, leaning carefully with each curve. Beth feels herself start to relax, feels herself lean with him.

Beth thinks of him carrying her across that cemetery, carrying her down the hallway to their "white trash brunch," carrying her out of Grady. Now he's carrying her home. Home.

Beth thinks of the night she was taken, all those months ago. She remembers the glow of the tealights and the scent of grape jelly, and the way Daryl brought his chair around the table so they could sit side-by-side.

She remembers how it turned tense and odd, how he looked at her like maybe there was something he wanted her to know but couldn't say, like maybe she scared him a little.

She remembers "Oh."

Beth lets her head fall forward so that her cheek is pressed against the hard plane of Daryl's back, the leather there hot from the sun.

She holds him tighter, turns her head to press her nose to his back, tries to tell him without words all the things she's wanted to tell him every night since that one in the funeral home.

I know.

It's okay.

Me too.

Daryl's hand leaves the handlebar and finds hers against his stomach. He wraps his fingers around hers, and holds on.

The credits for the songs Beth sings are, in order:

Coat of Many Colors - Dolly Parton
Fishin' in the Dark - Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Wagon Wheel - Old Crow Medicine Show
Graceland - Paul Simon
Hold On - Tom Waits