AN: Hope the wait wasn't too long. Can't say when the next chapter will be up. As always, feedback is appreciated more than you know. Hope you all are well, thanks for your continued reading! xx

"Fuck! Fuck!" Daryl paces, agitated and riled, out of his head. Behind him Beth doubles over and is sick. Michael's face, ashen, grey, already sunken in and hollow, is cut open by blood. Viscous and gruesome Daryl's knife sticks forsaken in the impaled skull. "FUUUUUCKKK!"

Beth's involuntary convulsions over, she lifts her flushed hot face to face once more the too real horror. As the shock wears off, their eyes travel reluctantly back to him. There he lies, broken and crumpled on the ground, abandoned, like everything he ever was, ever thought, ever did never mattered. Now he's just another corpse, fallen on a path. His body, lurking in wait, had been slumped over itself, now they see: his previously broken leg is bent back unnaturally from a secondary trauma – whether sustained before or after death is indiscernible. What killed him is the ruthless knife slash to his throat.

Shakily her fingers reach out to him; ruefully Beth makes contact across the divide with another friend who's been lost and turned. It's inevitable, this end. Whether through violence or otherwise, it lies in wait for them all. She's reconciled herself to it. She's lost all her family to it, save for Maggie – and maybe by now her as well, but nothing cuts the cruelty when it stares her in the face as it does now, when she can touch the loss.

He's cold, and the gash in his neck gapes open in its hateful blackness. Helpless and too late, her hands fall to his chest. Lifeless. Michael. Her palms, gentle with reverence and remorse, linger in the thickness that spilled from his mortal cut. So much blood. She moves her hand away; the gash he wears is straight and quick. So clearly the heartless blade never hesitated in it's strike, held heavy at the hilt.

For the first time, in a long time, she finds herself near tears. "Michael…" Beth's attention does not leave him. "Why would they do this?" Her eyes fail to focus on anything to make sense of. "Why take them and then—"

"His leg," Daryl grumbles miserably. "Couldn't keep up, they ended it."

"They left him to turn…" Beth touches his face, still boyish though horribly altered. "How long? How long has he—?"

"We could still be hours behind. More." Daryl steps back, away from the thing that this morning had been Michael. The goofy kid who'd made that camp their home. In stepping back Daryl's foot catches on something, unstable and teetering beneath him. His weight tilters and he turns to stabilize. Daryl shines the light as he does, then he focuses, and freezes. The light shudders in his grip. "—Beth."

At his urging Beth wipes her eyes and turns. The light is poor and she must squint to see what he does. "Oh, no—" Still looking, Daryl hasn't moved. The callus gunshot, direct through the brow, is truly terrible. "James…"

The name spoken releases Daryl from his wounded stupor; he sniffs and looks away, wiping at his face. "We're too late."

Daryl turns away, he cannot take the carnage. Sunken hearted, Beth drops to her knees before the body. James– who had been a friend, something close to a brother to both of them; who had fought for more than a year beside these forest brothers for a different kind of life from what the rest of the living world seems to be descending into. He'd risked everything to get back to his family at the start, to get them out; when his own family shrunk to just he and John, he grew a new family with trust and faith; he'd worked with Peter and the others to set a path for their survival. And for so long it had worked. Unsteadily she raises her fingers to shut his blank staring eyes. Daryl kicks hard at a tree.

Somberly her eyes slowly follow him. "Daryl… They're still out there. The others."

"They killed them, Beth. Whoever these people are – they take our guys, they kill Mike f'r not keepin' up, shoot James when he fights back." Daryl paces, distraught. Motionless Beth watches him process, letting herself mourn. In the minutes that pass them she regrets all the decisions and moments of the day that had brought them to this. Could they have stopped it? What sequence of choices could have seen this day ending differently? Daryl stops the pacing. "Beth—" he looks from the bodies of their friends to her. "We can't. I'm sorry."

"We can't not. We have to get them."

"They're still hours ahead of us; they killed two 'f us already. Beth, we can't do everything. I got to keep you safe." Like he knows that won't be enough for her he adds, "Can't cover that much ground to close the gap."

"They're out there, Daryl," she repeats stoically. Can there be another argument? In silence she looks once more at the altered Michael; she kisses her hand and presses it tenderly to James' leg, then she rises, hitches her pack, and staunchly takes a step forward.

Daryl reaches and grabs Beth back. "No." He tugs her back to him. "We ain't going no further."

"Daryl…" she whispers, her voice cracked with pain and conflict. They're on their own again, the two of them — their prison family somewhere out there, seemingly lost forever, now five more as close to family gone and taken. She needs to fight for them. Ten rounds and six arrows. They have ten rounds and six arrows Peter Simon John Rob and Tom do not have to help themselves. How can they abandon them? John left them that gun, how do they not keep going? These five took them in and made them family, how do they not pursue and fight?

"They c'n make it." Daryl's voice is leaden and unmoving. It's never been his nature to give up on things. "They killed Michael and James, but if they wanted t' take 'em all out they could've done it in camp. They c'n survive." His gaze deftly avoids falling on James, "We gotta move."

Shifting past her, Daryl's calloused steady hand slips across her belly as he moves, and under his touch Beth caves. They cannot journey further; the child she's carrying that makes them three and not two has already determined this. Protecting the group means something different now. If this child is to be born, to be given a chance, the risks they take will be weighed differently. Family, again, has been redefined. The child they bring into this world needs a world in which people still fight for one another; but the child needs to be born. They'd made that call already.

But this loss, this turning away, is terrible. It is gut-wrenching, and debasing. It is not who they have survived to be. Not since the near-surrender of Michonne to the governor, not since they watched Hershel Greene struck heartlessly down, had there been this sort of loss, this sort of wretched bleakness that could be stopped if only they could act. So much of this new life they have no control over; too often they are rendered pathless, left only to react. But in this— they could keep going, though into what they cannot know. And Daryl is right, it is likely the others may live, and likely also any ambush they could stage may cause more harm than good. And they may yet escape on their own. And there is a child, still invisible to the world, to think of. And another family still out there to survive for. And going forward promises no certain outcome.

Daryl steps forward and, as compassionately as he is able, wrenches free his knife. "Come on," he mutters wretchedly, wiping it clean. "Le's get started." Robbed of animation he tugs at Beth to pull her with him. She follows, hating the steps, as does he, that distance them from friends and home. Above them the sky drags, heavy and thick. The dampness hangs on them, like the smoke does, like their pain does. This new path they cut is hard. Every new one forged gets harder, confirmation of the truth they drill within themselves: nothing lasts. In the black night sweat mixes with tears and dirt and ash and blood, and trails down the valleys and crevices of his face and hers. Daryl shoulders the crossbow, wipes at his eyes, and gives her pack a soft shove. They don't say it, but they know they can't go back. The camp is behind them now; there can be no returning. Tightening her pack, Beth steps away from another self-constructed life, one more home lost to violence. Somewhere near, the forest rustles with the sound of advancing walkers. It's time, and they move. Daryl leads the way briskly; through the shadows they cut back across their path and push deeper into the woods, leaving the river behind them.