He had been having thoughts.
He tries to hold on to Beth, but he's bitter, and he hears Merle in the back of his head, repeating his own words, The good ones don't survive. He thinks that's why he's still here, trudging behind people like Joe and his group- minus Len, these days- and Beth is gone. Family, gone. Him standing alone, with those fuckers.
When he toed through the copse of trees, toward Joe and the guy he'd been hunting, he'd been thinking about how far he could get before Joe thought about catching up to him. He was thinking about a good way to hide to let them pass him by. He was thinking about where he'd go from here, where he'd look for the car, if he'd look for it.
He hadn't once thought that he'd cross paths with ghosts.
His next clear, distressing, thought was that Beth was right all along. He's saying something to Joe, he's not even in the cover of the trees anymore and he's not sure when that happened, when his feet moved, he's got his hands out pleading, it's almost a relief when they start beating him.
He understands fists. More than all these feelings he's had since that moonshine.
Later, after the men are dead, all of them, twice over, and the sun has risen, he sits next to Rick and tries. Tries to apologize. Tries to hear Rick when he says it ain't on him.
But Beth is, and he can't- he can't even speak of it, he tries. He tries to explain it to Rick, but he knows now. He knows he was wrong, and she was right, and all his wasted time and mistakes are killing him.
Since he'd seen the Terminus sign, he'd been thinking, he'd have to check it out. Maybe that car drove right up to Terminus' gates with Beth. It may not truly be a sanctuary for all, like Joe said, but if there was a chance... He'd follow Rick there.
And when Glenn, and Sasha and Bob- shit, Maggie, when Maggie steps out of the shadows of that train car, he knows what he has to do.