Not drawn out over long quiet hours crossing long endless miles, the day passes them quickly. Beth and Daryl complete the dugout bottom of their hut, but the roofed structure will have to wait for tomorrow. Killing rounds are made, as they are twice daily; pairs of two moving in stealth through the woods, taking down as many as they can, quiet, and easy. This stretch of the woods, as the boys had said, doesn't have many walkers, and they work vigilantly to keep it that way. They draw them away when they can, with a wide variance of tactics, kill them offsite from their camp — keep the corpses, the smell, and the traces of their occupancy out of sight, away from their base — but not all kills can be so orchestrated, and at times they still have to scramble to keep the upper hand; they are not safe entirely from close calls.

In the fading light, James stands watch while the others eat, all but Peter who didn't make it through the day and dragged himself back to bed several hours earlier. They settle around the low burning fire and serve out the stew in the collection of mismatched mugs they keep in camp. Beth blows on the hot broth and reaches her thin fingers around the warm mug, letting its heat seep into her. She smiles, and sips, and watches the sun lower below the tree line. Beside her, somewhat removed from the circle around the fire, Daryl leans back against his pack, keeping to himself, quietly letting the conversations happen around him. In the time he's spent with this group Daryl's instinctual alarms have been appeased, he feels all right about them, but still, he is resistant to fall in with them. This is not his family.

Daryl's getting used to them – these kids are smart, and they can take care of themselves, but none among them is Rick Grimes. There's no replacement for Glenn Rhee or Carol Peletier. They're friendly enough, for strangers. They plan ahead, they seem easy going, don't hold a grudge; they brought him and Beth into their camp, it's enough to earn them a tentative alliance, but they're not family. Nothing close. Daryl doesn't want to go it alone, keep it just Beth and him forever, he knows they can't sustain that without end, and he'll take the boys of this camp on as allies, but still he's only willing to give his full trust to Beth. In one form or another, they've lived over a year together. Fought hunger, fought battles, fought degradation and despair together, killed hundreds of walkers. His joys have been her joys. Her father tended him when he was shot and pierced through. He rescued her sister. They'd lost the same homes, traveled the same roads, known the same fears and losses, and if all of that didn't make her family, slowly, gradually, imperceptibly, through all that, their parallel paths merged, and melded, and in the crucible that is the road, without a larger family about them, they were forged together, inextricably.

It is he and Beth, not he and Beth and these lost boys. Not yet, anyway. Trust has always come slowly to him, and now – all things as they are – it comes most unnaturally. All that comes innately in a person to ready them to connect – to have faith in people, was beat out of him and abandoned at an early age; it had taken a long time to feel one of the group from Atlanta, it hadn't been easily done. And afterwards, as newcomers were added, he had the judgment of others he relied on to help him — Rick, Glenn, Hershel, Carol. Having them helped the trust to come easier, even when he was out on the road bringing in groups and people on his own. But they're all gone now; now he has only Beth and himself. And now, when it comes down to it, other than himself, it feels like it's still just Beth he can trust. But still, something in him's allowing him to give this a chance. If that something is closer to caution or to trust he cannot yet say, but if he never trusts anyone again other than the girl at his side, how far will they get? It's for her sake he withholds his faith, but it is for her sake also that he must at some point let his guard down, and let that faith find a foothold again in something larger than themselves. They need a group. He knows they need a group.

Daryl slurps his stew, then wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes drift over the camp as the others talk, and at some point he speaks up, breaking his own settled silence, "How long it been this way? Jist you? No...?"

"'Grown-ups'?" one of them finishes for him. The word sounds strange in the boy's mouth, they don't talk this way, they don't think this way anymore. It's been too long, too long with just them, and each of them has grown and aged. 'Grown up' 'adult' 'kid' 'boy' these are external words that long ago lost all meaning here. They are still sons, sons that no longer have parents, but they are not boys. Not in their eyes. Boys do not survive in the wild on their own, not for any sustainable length of time. Daryl nods, and he receives his stoic reply– "Early on."

"You been in these woods this whole time?" Beth asks.

"We dip into towns, the highways," Rob says with his mouth full of broth. "When we need to. Grab what we can."

"Buildings might be safer," James adds over his shoulder from where he stands watch at the creek bed, "but anything 'safe' someone else'll come along and claim."

Beth and Daryl know that story. It's become a universal truth. It pushed them onward every time their fatigued bodies demanded that they stop. When safety is all that everybody wants, how can any place be safe...?

What's left of the stew is eaten, they drink water from canteens and pull their sweaters tighter. "This spot is good," Daryl remarks, "but walls 're better. Thick walls. Nothing'll keep the walkers out—" he means the camp "—if they come big e'nough an' fast enough."

A few backs in the company bristle, they know their setup's limitations. They haven't suffered the losses they have carelessly. They've learned, and they've adapted, and they've made contingency plans and exercised forethought. These boys, most of them anyway, James Peter and Rob especially, were not unfamiliar with the woods before they came to them. Daryl Dixon is not the only Georgian son to know the land. This group is tactical and they don't welcome being condescended to.

Michael scratches at the back of his head, and looks at the older man with a bit of a boyish smirk, not insincere, but cognizant of their own errors in judgment, "We thought about livin' in trees," he waits as Daryl raises his brow in sardonic humor, watching the kid shake his head with a wry self-deprecating smile. "Didn't work."

"Yeh," Daryl scoffs dryly. "Wouldn't think so."

Here then the conversation splits and fractures, and turns to other things. Daryl digs into his food, keeps his head down, and listens to the falling night. Beth, her nerves calmed through the uneventful passing of the day, talks some and chats. Daryl takes a swig of water.

At some point John looks at them, nodding at Daryl and Beth, "Where're th' two of you headed?"

Beth doesn't answer, she looks to Daryl; this can be a touchy subject. When he doesn't respond she answers for them without further reference to him. "We're looking for our people." Daryl's dull eyes flash toward her. He hadn't expected her to say that. It's been months since they'd made any mention of looking for Rick and the group. But of course she has been. Of course Beth is looking, always looking, expecting to find them or some sign of them in the next town, or the next, around the next turn or the one after that. He looks also, or course he does, always keeping his eyes open, and Daryl hopes too, she isn't alone in this, he'll never stop looking for signs of their lost and fractured family, but he hadn't thought that's what she'd seen them doing all this time. He'd thought they'd been barely surviving. And while they still both look for patchwork signs that would piece together a family — a katana blade, a pocket watch, a sheriff's hat, riot gear, a knuckle-slotted Bowie knife, a gurgling baby girl, a Colt Python — he doesn't expect to find them, not the same way she does.

"We're headin' to the water," Simon says, the wistful glint of a smile lighting his boyish features, the youngness of the fifteen-year-old showing through here. "In time." This doesn't seem exactly like an actual mission so much as a ritual – something to talk about and think about, something to soak up the long hours of nothingness. "Get us a boat, float out to sea." Daryl scoffs unwittingly. The kid looks at him, "What?"

Daryl doesn't bother to mask his incredulity and skepticism, "You think that'll work."

"Yeah," the boy answers. "I do."

"How's that?" Daryl patronizes easily with his age and experience helping to find the kid amusing.

"No body-eaters for one," the fair-haired boy answers as though it should have been obvious.

"They can't swim?" Beth asks, curious. All eyes glance at her. "Do you know that, or are you j'st guessin'?"

"How could they swim?" Rob puts it to her.

"What'll you do for water?" Daryl asks evenly. "Can't drink seawater. It'll kill ya."

"So, we'll go to a lake," Mike says, taking up Simon's part in this.

Daryl could let it drop, but he doesn't. "Which lake? They gotta have boats. 's gotta be wide 'nough nuthin'll get at ya." He scratches at the scruff on his chin. "Guess you'd have to worry about pirates then. If you can get a boat guess someone else can too. And what about lightning? Can't be on a boat in a lake in a summer lightning storm."

Everything stops, all five guys look at him to see if he's for real. They look to Beth. With nothing else to say and nothing else to diffuse the moment, Tom chooses to smirk, "He always like this?"

...

With the others retired to their beds Daryl again stands watch. With his knife and a revolver, the night vision goggles left for him if he wants them, Daryl stands with his back to the camp, senses alert, waiting. Beth, who had refused to occupy a hut at the others' expense now with all returned to camp, sits wrapped in her blankets by the fire, watching the night with him until sleep takes her over.

Beth pokes at the fire, sunk down in it's pit, walled in by stones to keep it out of view; she speaks in a hushed whisper so as not to be heard by any who may still be awake, "You didn't have to talk to him that way, you didn't have to destroy their plan."

Daryl glances back at her. "That weren't no plan."

"Maybe not," Beth concedes. "But it was his dream. And it didn't cost you nothing to let him keep it."

Daryl shuffles his feet and eyes her across the dark strip of earth between them. "Dreams'll get you killed. I did him a favor."

Beth scoffs and shakes her head. "You didn't do that as a favor. You did that so he'd be as miserable as you are. You need to get some sleep Daryl."

"Hey," he whispers sharply at her, jerking his head in his direction, "come over here."

Beth looks at him, then gathers her blankets around her tighter and rises and crosses to him. When she reaches him she doesn't look at him, she climbs a stone and balances on it beside him, looking into the dark wilderness, waiting for him to speak. In time Daryl turns his head towards her, and looks at her. "You think I'm mis'rable?"

Beth hesitates to look at him, but her eyes do lift to him in time. "Daryl."

"Whut?"

Beth shakes her head. "Nothing." He's carrying too much, she sees it. He's taken too much on as his own, and it's keeping him on edge and perpetually cynical. It isn't his fault, and she knows he'll come around in time. She misses his smile though, that wicked boyish laugh. She misses sleeping beside him. She's glad to be where they are, but there's something in her that misses her life with just him, their secret quiet world of just them.