They walk through the night, running for stretches, trudging monotonously for most of it, moving in silence. Through the dark hours they come across nothing, only trees, and brush, and uneven terrain unforgiving to unshod feet.

They do not stop, they do not speak, they keep a steady pace. Above them the stars and moon shift, moving through the dark Georgia night as the long hours pass. There's no talk of stopping, no thought of sleep. Neither could close their eyes if the tried, so they keep on. It seems forever ago that they had walked through the woods together, talking and playing one of her childhood word games, two nights in a real bed still hopefully ahead of them, though in fact it was only several hours earlier. So much had changed in that small frame of time. A thing they have come to realize is inevitable, but a fact that is no less jarring each time it confronts them.

They are alive, a thing to be thankful for, but still the night and the journey weigh heavy upon them and their spirits are low and their outlooks dim; the long unmarked path ahead of them is dreary, dismal, and taxing.

They encounter few walkers in the night. Near ten they come across two, a man and a woman, ominously bound to the thick trunk of a tree, held there by tightly wound and knotted synthetic rope, left forever to claw and scratch and snarl into the forest air. They leave them be, passing by without so much as a second glance. Late in the night they found another, a half torso really, dragging itself mindlessly through the underbrush. With a quick thrust, Beth kills it, wipes her blade, and presses on. The only real threat was a skirmish early in the morning, maybe three o'clock or so, when four came at them out of the darkness. They were old and clearly decaying, it hadn't taken much to kill them.

But walkers weren't all they are keeping watch for. Somewhere out there are the eight who fell upon them, and unknown numbers of other heartless, merciless savages. They walk lightly, as he has taught her how, moving without sound, and always on the alert. As the first beams of light break through the darkness their hollow stomachs churn and growl, they haven't eaten since late morning the day before.

"I have to stop." He treads on. "Daryl, I have to stop." Beth does stop, and crumples to the ground. Daryl stops, looks around, then retraces the few steps back to her. In time he squats, and minutes later he sits.

Daryl stares at his feet, at his empty hands, listening to the morning sounds of the forest, birds chirping, the leaves rustling in the light breeze. Though the sky is growing ever lighter the air is still cool from the night, and now sweaty and still his skin grows chilled. His head still aches some from the blow it took, compounded by his intense thirst. Daryl touches his scalp, feeling where the blood has dried and matted in his hair.

When finally he lifts his eyes to her the sight of her, especially in the early light of this new morning, is hard to take. Her cheeks are hollow, there are dark circles under her solemn eyes, she is covered in blood, and her head, her poor head, is pitiful to behold. He watches as Beth twists some, raising her shirts to rub her lower back. What is revealed there turns his stomach. The bruise is massive and deep, deep purple with splotches of red and blue, and outlined in patches of green. How she walked all night with that he doesn't know. Beth winces as she touches it gingerly, tying to manage an angle from which she can see it.

"I wouldn't look," he grunts.

It's a relief to Beth to finally hear his voice again. She looks up, "Is it bad?"

Daryl only blinks, and somberly nods his head. Heavily he pushes himself up, feeling his age, feeling the miles in the stiffness of his muscles and the aching in his back and knee. Beth's eyes follow him. After sitting it's hard to put full weight on his dead raw feet, but he needs to move, rigid and aged though his movement may be. He crosses to her and wordlessly holds out his pipe to her, expecting the knife in exchange; Beth makes the switch and he limps into the wilderness. He didn't need to ask if she is hungry.

...

When he returns he finds her unmoved, sitting upright, sprinkler pipe gripped in her limp fallen hand, looking into nothingness. She looks up when she hears him approach.

"Nuthin'." Again he sinks himself lower to the ground in a squat. He'd kept on the lookout for game the whole night as they traveled, as had she. Daryl had hoped they'd be lucky and spot an owl, but they'd seen nothing. Just one squirrel that had scurried away before the knife Daryl'd thrown hit the spot where it had been. It seems as though they'll be hungry for some time more. "Spotted some turkey tracks. Can't catch no turkey throwin' knives. Wild pig sure. Didn't see nuthin' else." He looks in front of her, nodding at where a fire might have been had she built one while he was gone, "Weren't holdin' out much hope were you."

"Huh?" He nods again. "Oh. Sorry."

Daryl once more drops himself to the ground, lying on his back and propping his head on his arms; there's nothing to cook, and though there's still a chill in the air the sun will warm them soon; a fire at this point isn't worth the trouble. They sit. Beth slowly pulls off her socks, hesitant to see the damage. On top of the blisters she already had are fresh cuts and deep indentations of twigs and stones. She rubs her left foot, but pulling her right foot puts too much strain on her already aching back, so she removes her sweater, balls it up as a pillow and lays herself on her stomach for a rest. It isn't comfortable, but neither would be any other position she could take. Dirt is all they have for the moment, so she'll take what rest she can manage.

As exhausted and spent as they are, neither Beth nor Daryl sleep. There is no perimeter alert line, their stomachs are cruelly empty, and they're still very much wired from the events of the night before and all the hours they were on edge listening to every sound, every snap and rustle of the forest as they traveled, so the best they manage is a light doze, never really giving over to sleep.

Eventually, he's lightly kicking at her feet. Beth stirs, and opens her bleary eyes, shielding them from the sun, now much higher in the sky, watching him jerk his head for them to get moving. Beth rubs her eyes, pushes herself up by sheer force of will, and reaches for her socks.

They head east, the sun high and beating down on their backs. "M'bye we could track them," she says. "Follow them, get our stuff back."

Daryl grimaces, Why is she back to this? "No." His answer is blunt, and he walks on; he is not opening this up for discussion. "We keep our distance. 'f we get lucky we'll never see them again."

Beth follows behind, trying to take some care where her tender feet fall. "We were lucky, they let us go."

"They hobbled us at the knees." He doesn't even look back at her to say it.

"It would have been so easy for them to have killed us. They didn't. I'm grateful for that."

He spins round on her, not believing they're back to this; Daryl's incredulity is confrontational, "You grateful to someone who cut off your hands? Your feet, your eyes? Your ability to defend yourself? To survive? Because that's exactly what they did. We're not following them. Get it out of yer head."

...

When they stop again it's late afternoon. It took them close to a day to reach a stream and they both drop to the bank and drink in huge slurping gulps of handfuls of water. Daryl splashes his face and neck, Beth peels off her pants and steps right into the cool water, faltering as she warily maneuvers over the sharp stones and pebbles, lethal now to her shredded feet. The cool water is piercing, but it's the first relief she's felt all day. Beth wishes the water were deeper, but in the middle the water is about a foot deep, and pulling off her tops and flinging them to the bank Beth sits in the quick running stream and leans herself backwards into it. When the flowing water hits her scalp, moving steadily against her with the current, her eyes roll back and flutter in pleasure, and Beth lies there, letting herself drift afloat in the stream, bobbing just above the rocks and river stones.

Daryl watches her through the corners of his eyes, watching her small hands flutter through the water to keep herself afloat and in place. He observes too her nearly naked body, glistening in the late day sun. She is his Beth still to be sure, and he feels no differently for her, but those things he feels for her seem so far off at present; it is hard to watch her, hard to see her as beautiful in this low flowing backwoods creek after the night they had. She is alive, and not too severely injured, and that should be enough, that should be everything, but it's difficult for him to see her as anything but trampled on. She was terrorized last night, and he hadn't stopped it. He hadn't been able to stop it.

Daryl looks away, down at his own bloody feet. He should be using this time to hunt, but he can't leave Beth so exposed as she is, alone in the river. He'll have to wait till she comes in and has a weapon in her hands. He should have made her take the pipe with her anyway. He glances up at her again, she's drinking more water, then scrubs herself off, then step by careful step makes her way back to the embankment. There, where she sits in her soaked and too large underpants on the pebbly shore, Beth finally, and delicately, pulls off her socks. Her feet are a mess, but it feels good to dunk them freely in the cool creek water. Droplets drip down her drying body as she sits there, slightly shivering, her body stiff partially from their traveling and partially from the icy creek water, waiting for the late afternoon sun to dry her.

She looks up at him when he drops her shirt in her lap. "You should wash your feet."

Daryl shakes his head and handles the knife in his hands, pointing her attention to where he left the pipe at her side. "Heading out."

"We didn't see any tracks out there."

Daryl only shrugs. They've got to eat something. It's been more than twenty-four hours since either of them has had anything but a half stick of chewing gum, and they hadn't been exactly well-fed before that. Daryl heads off leaving Beth to scrub and ring out her tattered socks, after which she lays them out to dry on a large dark rock positioned to have been in the sun all day. She pulls on a shirt and in underwear and a top Beth moves several paces from the embankment to what she's setting up as their camp, and digs two holes and their connecting tunnel. Barefoot Beth gathers kindling and dry grass and leaves. She uses the edge of the sprinkler pipe against a branch to create wood shavings, then methodically adjusts the angle of the glasses lens above the nest of tinder and kindling to catch the sun before it starts to drop below the tree line. After some time she does see a spark catch and she feeds it and lets it breath, adding fuel to it as the tiny flames catch and grow. When the fire is built and thriving, and she's collected enough fuelwood to keep it burning, Beth kneels at the deep mossy roots of the nearest large tree and digs again. She pulls out several worms and holding them between her thumb and index finger pierces them with splinters of wood. Beth then scours the ground and the shrubbery for twigs, lots and lots of thin straight twigs, a ton of them. When she has enough, Beth returns, stuck worms included, to the stream bank.

...

Daryl returns maybe an hour later, maybe longer. He doesn't have any meat. From his pockets he pulls out some leatherleaf berries and elderberry blooms and berries; there aren't a lot. "All that's out there. These're safe." He pulls Beth's hand up and dumps half the pitiful bounty into her cupped palm. "Look'a them. Know what they look like." Beth knows elderberries, he doesn't need to teach her that. "Berries an' blooms are good from both; leaves and stalks 're toxic."

Beth nods, and stores the berries in the turned-up corner of her shirt as she rises from the pile of large green ground leaves she'd collected carefully for some yet unrealized purpose, and walks again to the shore to once more check on the fish trap she'd constructed. There in the shallows is a kind of M-shaped fort-like structure constructed of twigs with a small opening at the center of the M's two peaks. Fish are meant to swim in, but not be able to find the hole again through which to swim out. Inside the trap the worms are still there as bait on their tiny pikes, no fish in sight. She climbs back up to him. "Nothing."

In silence they eat the berries. Their churning stomachs seeming to grow even angrier with the insult of this light and paltry fare. When the blossoms and the fruit are gone, Beth adjust the sticks her socks now hang from as they dry over the fire. "You should wash yours."

Daryl looks at her under cocked brows, then rises, rinses his feet and the bloody rags in the water, rings the things out, and drapes them over a rock near the fire. Crouching, he adds more dry bark to the flames; if it dies out, they'll have no way to relight it till the sun is high enough the next day. And the nights are getting colder. He sits again, and looks at her. "Gonna get some sleep?"

Beth turns her head toward him, looking away from the fire; she blinks, and shakes her head. They sit.

...

Beth stirs, her stomach isn't letting her sleep as she lays curled up near the low burning fire. The stars have appeared, she is exhausted, but she cannot sleep. Her body is crying out for food. True they haven't had much to eat since the prison fell, and she's used to making do with little, but they don't usually go a full day without eating, and the endless walking sometimes catches up with a vengeance. The ravenous clenching of her stomach is making her head light and her body aches from hunger pains. As she lies there, curled into herself, her body brings her to the brink of tears and her mind hazily drifts back to that can of peaches they'd surrendered, and to the tootsie rolls they never got the chance to eat. She thinks of all the food that still may be left in that town behind them, then memories of food begin just to seep into her conscious memory, their tastes and textures so vivid on her tongue ... the deer barbecued at the prison ... the meal of peanut butter and jam she'd shared with Daryl in the funeral home ... then back further, to before... fresh baked bread ... olive oil drizzled pasta with garden tomatoes and basil ... her mother's potato soup... Before she realizes it her body is silently heaving and there are tears trailing down her face. Beth brushes them off and pushes herself up. Crying will not help. In the moonlight of early night she goes back to the river to check the trap. Still it's empty. She crosses back to the large tree and again digs in between the roots. Daryl, who's seated upright tending the fire, keeping the embers alive, watches her.

"Can't eat any plants you're gettin' from the roots of trees." She digs on. "Beth."

"I'm not." She shifts through what she's dug up and with a handful of something Beth goes once more to the stream, rinses off the dirt, and returns to the remnants of their fire, piercing one by one on a long twig the handful of still wriggling worms. Before she thinks too long on it Beth holds the skewered things over the embers. He looks at her, and feeling his eyes on her she looks back. "I can't help it. I need to eat something."

"You balk at mud snake."

Beth looks at him. "This is where we are now."

He knows it is. This is where they are now. "We'll find somethin' tomorrow."

Beth nods. What else is there to say? If they don't have 'tomorrow' the todays they're living become too grim to bear. Tentatively she pulls one from the skewer and puts it in her mouth. She chews. It tastes like dirt. Better not to chew the next one. She swallows, and eats another, offering the stick to Daryl. He takes one, leaving the remainders for her. Beth takes a glance at Daryl, "You done this?"

He knits his brows toward the worms for clarification, she nods. "Mm,mm. Grasshoppers." He bites his thumb, thinking. "C'n also eat crickets. Termites."

"Mm."

In spite of himself he lets out a dry smirk. "Hmph."

Beth throws the cleared stick into the dying fire. She doesn't feel much better, and the lingering taste of dirt in her mouth is unpleasant, but at least she did something. At least she's not curled up and crying. Tomorrow. Tomorrow Daryl 'll catch something, tomorrow there'll be fish in the trap. Tomorrow...

Blinking, he watches her profile, and gruffly clears his throat. "Sorry 'bout your hair."

Beth touches it now, like she's been delaying thinking about it. "... It'll grow."

Through a sideways guarded glance Daryl studies her. "You didn't seem scared." Daryl thinks back to that frozen expression on her face, to her feet spread apart ready to carry her into action, to the way she'd stated her demands. That girl doing those things wasn't the young girl he'd first seen on Hershel's farm, calling them 'Mr. Grimes' and 'Mr. Dixon.' She wasn't the girl who'd sung in the prison yard with her sister the first night there, and maybe not even the girl he'd escaped the prison with. All those elements are still there, Beth Greene hasn't lost herself, like so many other survivors have, but she has changed. She's strong. And the fact that no one expects it from her makes her all the stronger. But still...

"I'h was trying to live," she answers simply. "I was trying to think what you were thinking. Do what you or Rick would do."

Daryl pokes at the embers, "I was thinkin' 'Oh shit'. I was thinkin' 'This time we're really dead.'"

She looks at him. Her soft eyes blink in the darkness. "But we're not dead; and we're still together." Softly, and unassumingly Beth reaches out to touch Daryl's hand. In all the hours that have passed since the confrontation they have yet to touch; he does not receive it well.

Daryl recoils some, and stares into the glow of the dormant fire. Yes, they are alive, but heavy things still weigh oppressive and dark on his mind. He pulls on the ends of his beard, "This can't keep on, Beth. ... You know it."

"I do?" she challenges softly.

His blue eyes are fixed on something only he can see. "... They'll use you against me."

Beth stops and looks at him. "Who will?"

Daryl bites on the side of his thumb, "All of 'em — the world. They'll use you against me." His eyes shut, for a long time. "And I won't be able to stop it." Beth's old words run once more through his head, battering him with blunt force ... 'You're going to be the last man standing...'