Their first night out of Terminus, they spend the night in a strip mall, the kind with the roll-down fences across the store front. They sit in the total dark, not daring to light a fire in even this small of a town. They eat cold canned yams. Abraham has been giving Rick this spiel about saving the human race, and Daryl's noticed even Eugene and Rosita are rollin' their eyes behind his back, but Rick hasn't made any decisions yet.
It seems everyone else is in limbo but Daryl. He knows what he's doin'.
He interrupts their hushed conversation with a quiet declaration of his own. "I dunno what you're plannin', Rick." He can barely look up, it's so hard to say this. The thought of no family again, not staying with Rick... but Rick is looking at him, like he always did, in that way that both made him want to stand up with pride and slink away in shame and discomfort at the same time. Like Rick respected his opinion. Like Rick saw him as a leader, too, not just some lackey. He has to rush on with what he wants to say, "If you wanna go to DC with them, that's ok. I'll meet up with you down the way. I just gotta..."
He trails off, trying to find the words. The words to say that they found Sophia, so they knew for sure she was gone. They found Carol when they'd already buried a grave for her, and knew she'd been alive. He'd found Merle.
He had to find Beth. Until then, he didn't know, and he had to believe she was out there. He had to have faith.
For a second, one tiny second of utter despair, he thinks of finding Beth turned. He thinks of having to shove a knife through her thinner, small skull.
He shudders with the thought. He hears her voice- an echo of Rick's time following Lori's ghost- Can't depend on anybody for anything, right?
He thinks about how, if that's how it is, he'll just stand up and walk until he meets up with Rick and then he'd go from there.
Then he thinks about how that's just like dependin' on someone for somethin', too. And he knows he's going to fail her again.
But he knows he's at least gotta find her first. He fills the silence, finally: "I gotta find Beth. Can't leave her out there."
It feels like the minutes after his decision stretch into fucking forever. It isn't until Abraham mutters, "Oh for fuck's sake," that he thinks to look up at everyone's reactions.
Rick's still lookin' at him. But Maggie and Glenn, then Glenn and Tara, share looks with each other. All these people, god, it suddenly brings a pain to his chest, makes it hard to breathe for a second. The way all these people, strangers from another time, had become a family. Even the ones he didn't know well, even the ones he wasn't sure he liked or trusted yet. The tableaux of it made him wish for Beth all the more, so that she could see it, too. So she could smile that little smile of hers, the one so self-satisfied, so knowing, so old, so like her father. That smile that graced their moments of family and solidarity and love.
Bob, he rests a hand on Sasha's shoulder, and is the first to say, "I'll go with you, Daryl."