Title: Shoelace Signs (1)
Word Count: 2850
Universe: Post-Coda divergent.
Rating: General
Brief Summary: The group is forced to abandon Beth's body mid-burial, and they are shocked to find it missing after they finally manage to get back. Despite the group's desire to move on, Daryl refuses to give up, and his faith is rewarded.
Notes: Inspired by some pre-5B theories about what might happen with Beth's body post-Coda, after some preview images came out from S05.E10. Assumed Beth left the hospital in her scrubs without changing, but is otherwise canon.


It had been Daryl who had insisted on going back for her body, because the fact that they'd even left it behind in the first place had been threatening to bring him to his knees with guilt each moment of the full day since they had abandoned her. Beth deserved more. She deserved better than to be left half-buried in a grave, wrapped in a sheet and barely covered in the dirt they'd been shoveling in when the herd had overtaken them.

Of course what Beth really deserved was to be alive and with him- with them at the very least, her family- but he couldn't give her that because he'd failed her, he'd lost her. He'd let her get taken, he'd let her get abused, he'd let her get killed. He had failed her in every way possible and he refused to fail her one more time. He might not have been able to keep her alive but the least he could do was make sure she got buried the way she deserved.

Except when they found their way back, the grave was empty. Well, almost empty. The sheet remained, all covered in dirt and blood and hanging over the edge as if it had been dragged up and left there. But by who? The entire clearing in the woods was a mess of footprints; the shuffling dragging steps of walkers overlaying the old prints of the group from when they'd dug the grave barely a day ago to lay her to rest.

As he stood over the empty grave staring in shock he was dimly aware of the sounds around him; muffled conversations laden with confusion, the rustling of trees, the shifting of impatient feet, all shot through by Maggie's sharp sobs which were painful more from the annoyance they made him feel than anything sort of kindred connection to her grief. (As far as he was concerned, she hadn't earned the right to such grief in any way, shape, or form.)

"Daryl." He felt the familiar weight of Rick's hand on his shoulder. "We gotta go. Herd could come back this way at any moment." The herd had followed them through the forest until they'd found shelter. They'd spent the night holed up in some broken down barn, all of them shoving their bodies against the door in a desperate attempt to keep the herd of walkers from breaking through while thunder and lightening crashed and echoed around them.

It had been Carl who had found the window up in the loft and the ladder propped up under some moldy hay, allowing them all to quickly and quietly climb down the back of the barn and make their way safely back into the woods without catching notice of the shambling herd. Which wasn't to say, of course, that the herd might not find it's way back there. Even after all this time they had no way of knowing what the damn geeks really could sense.

A part of him knew Rick was right; it wasn't safe here. They should go, they should move on. The voice that urged him to just go wasn't one that was filled with hope, though. It was a dark voice, a dead voice. It was a voice that told him to leave this (her) behind, to keep trudging and walking, onward and onward forever... But towards what? What- or who- was he moving on towards, these days? It had been Beth who had kept him moving after the prison; Beth who had shown him that glimmer of hope and goodness in the world. It had been Beth who he'd kept moving for even after, always searching, never giving up on her because she had never given up on him or on their family.

It had always been Beth.

(Maybe it still was.)

His gaze shifted, picking apart the layered tracks that crisscrossed the packed, still-damp dirt... and then he saw it. The delicate press of a sneaker pointing away from the grave and towards the woods.

"I ain't goin'." The gruff words spilled from his lips before he could stop himself, not that he'd wanted to. He turned to Rick, his gaze as steady as he could make it when all he wanted to do was take off after those marks in the dirt. Beth, Beth, Beth. He remembered shouting her name over and over, feet pounding at the pavement as he raced down the road after her and the car that had taken her away from him.

He had given up, then, collapsing to the ground in defeat. He wouldn't give up now.

"I'm goin' after her." He gestured down at the sheet, at the footprint only he seemed to have notice, and when he looked up he saw something in Rick's eyes that almost made him growl. Pity. He hated pity more than almost anything.

"Daryl..." There it was in Rick's voice now as well as his eyes, pity dripping from every word, "She's gone, Daryl. I know it's hard to hear, but she's gone. Either the walkers took her-" From behind them, Maggie choked out another sob. "-or she turned into one herself. Either way she's gone, Daryl. We need to move on. She'd have wanted us to move on."

This time he did growl; a primal, animalistic sound that rose up from deep in his broad chest, surprising Rick enough to make the man step back even before Daryl snapped, "What she would have wanted was for people- her family- to care about her. What she'd have wanted was for us to have fought for her, to have hoped for her, to act even for once like we didn't all think she was just some guaranteed dead girl."

Hearing the echo of Beth's words in his head (I made it and you don't get to treat me like crap just because you're afraid), he whirled on the group and jabbed an accusing finger at Maggie as he growled, "She'd have wanted her sister to put up signs for her after the prison." He swept his gaze around the whole group. "She'd have wanted her family to come to rescue her because they cared, not just because Carol was there and Beth was some convenient presence you could hand a damn weapon to on the rescue mission for someone you thought was more important."

He ignored the outcries, especially the one from Maggie, who in his opinion didn't even deserve the sobs she kept giving. "Cause you know what?" He turned back to Rick and raised his brow. "Beth would have done that for any of y'all. She'd have kept fighting. She'd never have given up. Shedidn;t ever give up on any of y'all, even when every one of you gave up on her." His voice was low and rough and thick with emotion as he ground out, "Well I ain't gonna, alright? I ain't gonna do that to her, not again. I'm goin' after her an' if you wanna come, y' can, but ain't none of you gonna stop me."

Without waiting for the half-assed arguments he knew would follow, Daryl turned and headed off into the woods to follow the tracks that he, at least, couldn't fail to notice.

Though some part of him was disappointed, he couldn't really say he was surprised not to hear anyone follow him. Maybe they thought he'd change his mind and come back. Maybe they thought somehow that he would give up. If they truly did than they didn't know him. He had almost brought himself to the brink of his own death hunting for Sophia; he would grind himself to dust if needed, for just a single sliver of a chance that Beth was alive.

Alive or walker, Beth's footprints were at least clear thanks to the wet dirt left behind by the rain. The prints staggered and stuttered, but that meant nothing either way. A walker would stagger just as much as a girl would if she had been stumbling away from walkers while suffering from a head wound and blood loss and lord knew what else.

For a long time it was just that, her stumbling footprints and the occasional smear of blood, but finally he found something else to give him hope. Five feet passed a trampled bush, he found black shoelaces draped over the low branch of a tree. He didn't even have to close his eyes to see her in his mind; blue hospital scrubs, bracelets on her cast-free wrist, and converse sneakers on her feet, one laced in black and the other in white. Carefully he tugged the shoelace free of the branch and held it in his hand for a few seconds; as long as he could spare in this hunt to pause and compose himself before moving on.

He didn't leave them behind. He wouldn't leave any bit of her behind, if he could help it. Instead, as he strode through the forest following the footprints left by what he could only hope were the same sneakers this had been laced through, he wound the shoelaces around his arm and tied them tightly as a reminder of what he was chasing after.

For all he knew, the shoelace was some crazy coincidence, though to be honest Daryl wasn't the type to believe in coincidences. One black shoelace could have meant anything, no matter how badly he wanted it to be a sign, but a half mile later when he found a white shoelace tied in a sloppy knot around another tree branch, he knew it was more. It wasn't just a coincidence.

It was her. She was leaving him signs.

No, she was leaving him a trail. Whatever state she was in, Beth was aware enough to know that he would come looking for her, that he would try to find her. As he wound the white laces around his opposite arm it struck him hard that even now she still had faith, even now she still believed... inhim.

Daryl didn't think anyone had ever believed in him the way Beth Greene did and there was no way in this hell on earth that he was gonna let her down.

After the shoelaces he found her bracelets, hooked onto branches and dangling from bushes and once, perched on a rock in the middle of the stream she'd stumbled across. By then the sun had begun to set but there was still enough light to see by. There at the stream, he'd not only seen her footprints but the marks of her knees as well where she'd fallen to the ground; maybe to drink water from the stream, or wash her hands and face. By now the water had carried most of the evidence away, but not the proof she'd left behind for him all on her own, the irrefutable sign she'd given him that she had been there, alive, still believing he would follow her.

Thanks to the growing storm clouds above it was fully dark when he finally came to the structure in the woods. Another shed, similar to the one they'd huddled in last night when the herd of walkers had trapped them. There was no moon to light his way but the flashes of lightning from the approaching storm revealed the structure looming out of the darkness of the woods.

He'd pushed himself all day, but he'd more than had the endurance for it. For her, he thought he might have the endurance for just about anything. Despite the fact that for the last half hour he'd only gotten glimpses of her footprints in the brief flashes of distant lightening, Daryl still trusted his instincts. He always trusted his instincts, but especially today, and the final sign she left him proved that he was right to do so.

Wrapped around the handled of the shed door and flapping lightly in the breeze stirred up by the storm was a strip of fabric. He could barely see it in the darkness, but he knew what it would look like if he'd had more light to glimpse it by. Blue, just like the color of the scrubs she'd been wearing when he'd carried her limp body down all those stairs in his arms.

After all this time, after a day spent tracking her through the woods and weeks spend struggling to find her after losing her, it was the sight of that flapping fabric that nearly brought him to his knees, because he knew what it meant. She was in there, inside that shed, not just sheltering for the night but waiting. For him.

He wouldn't keep her waiting any longer. He couldn't, because he just didn't have it in him and the truth was that he had been waiting for this moment since he'd lost her.

Slinging his crossbow onto his back, Daryl strode up to the door and pulled it open to step inside. A flash of lightening lit the interior and gave him his first glimpse of the shed; a big open space, dusty and filled with what he could only assume were now-rusted tools, or perhaps hunting supplies.

Another flash, and there on the ground, scuff-marks in the dust left by sneakers that had grown loose with no laces to hold them shut. He didn't call out to her. He didn't know if he even could because his throat was so tight with both tension and hope that he was pretty sure it wouldn't let him do anything other than grunt or groan.

Step by step he made his way into the barn, his head turning slowly from side to side, peering out under the fringe of his hair for a sign, any sign of her...

A flash of lightning; nothing but a bucket stuck in a dusty corner.

Another flash, and a worrying shadow turned into a pile of furs. Distantly he realized it had been a hunter's cabin, and the irony was not lost on him. He was the hunter, but she wasn't his prey. She was his salvation. She was everything good in the world. She was simply Beth. She was...

There. She was right there. A crack of thunder directly overheard and then a bright flash, and in the far corner of the room he saw her slumped against the wall. Her once-blue scrubs were stained with the same blood that marred her forehead and dripped down her cheek from the wound in her head, but she was there... and she was looking right at him like he was the miracle, or the ghost.

In the time between that clap of thunder and the next he closed the gap between them and dropped to his knees in front of her. Lightning flared through the windows, lighting up eyes that were wide with surprise and yet filled with the same hope he'd seen in the mover and over again, against all odds.

In the silence that followed, she breathed out in a thick, slurred voice, "D'ryl?"

The next thunder clap crashed above loud enough to echo through his bones, but by that time they were already trembling from the relief of having her in his arms and gathered close; no longer limp and seemingly-lifeless but alive, alive, alive.

He didn't even know he was whispering her name over and over again (Beth, Beth, Beth) until her fingers found his lips, the soft pads of them grazing over his mouth to silence him just long enough for her to slowly get out, "Knew... you'd come. Knew you'd... find... me... Wouldn't... give up..."

"Never." His fingers curled in the ends of her ponytail as his hand pressed to her back and held her to his chest. He ignored the twigs tangled within her hair just as he ignored the faint tang of blood on his lips as he pressed his mouth to her temple and held her desperately close. "I ain't never gonna give up on you, Beth. No matter what. Cause it was you, Beth." He drew in a shuddering breath that rattled in his chest. "You taught me to have faith. You taught me there was good in the world." In a whisper against her warm skin, he breathed out finally, "It was always you."

When she finally spoke, it was just to whisper back in a voice thick with emotion, "Oh."

And it was enough. It was more than enough, because this time he wasn't going to let her go. This time he wasn't going to lose her again. Soon they'd get up, soon they'd figure out just how badly she was injured and what she'd to heal her wounds and survive, soon maybe they'd even finish the conversation they'd started so many weeks ago in the flickering candlelight of that abandoned funeral home.

But for now, with the rumble of thunder overheard matching the pounding rhythm of his heart as the bright flash of lightning illuminated the dust motes swirling around them, all that mattered was her in his arms. Alive.

**A/N: This one actually has a second part, or another ficlet in the same 'world'. I will post it for the next chapter!