From the bedroom, all hear the distinct unlocking of the outer door, followed by its closing. "I pissed him off," Bonnie says, to no one in particular.

"No," Beth answers. "He's all right."

"Well," Walter clears his throat and bridges the awkwardness left behind in Daryl's wake, "maybe we'd better call it a night. Get some rest." He pulls the junk into a tighter circle out of the way, and people pick out the few items of value they'd contributed. Using his knees for support, Walter rises stiffly from the floor. "I expect tonight we'll be sticking to our own, but I'll bet in time the ladies will take one room, and the men the other."

"No," Beth answers plainly as she moves about the room collecting the bowls and spoons to scrub clean.

"Once we're all used to each other, I mean."

"No," is all Beth says again. "Y'all have empty canteens? Bottles? We c'n pour in boiled water to help heat the covers. T'morrow we c'n move in better pads, or mattresses; g't a warmin' brick each, m'ybe some hot water bottles." They hand over what they have and she takes them and a light into the bathroom to fill up along with their own.

In the shuffling and the sorting of gear into the front room and the laying out of bedrolls in relative darkness, Bonnie finds occasion to duck her head toward Simon's. "They together? Her and him?" Simon looks to where Beth and Daryl had been. He nods. "Out there," she says leaning in in confidence, "I thought maybe he was her dad, or an uncle 'r something."

Simon shakes out a crumpled blanket for one of them. "He's not her dad."

"She your sister?'

Simon glances at Beth who's turning down and heating her own bed. Though he knows full well what she looks like, still he looks again. Are they similar? While both fair, her hair is darker than his white-blond. While her features are round and childlike, his young features are sharper and more angular. They are of an age to be siblings, and though they are indeed family, not the kind that was meant. "No." He shakes his head.

"And none of you knew the other before?"

"No."

Bonnie's upper lip rises in a semi snort. "I think hearing your all's story is going to be good."

"No, Ma'am," he says solemnly, tucking in a near-scalding canteen beneath the covers of the bed he's helped her make, "there's little that's good."

"Didn't need to say it that way," she grants with genuine feeling. "And didn't need to be 'ma'amed'," she tells him – just as earnestly, but with a touch of wry camaraderie. "Ever."

"Noted," Simon nods.

"Guess," the woman in her late thirties says, raising her tattooed arm to rub down her short strip of hair, "we all take some getting used to."

Simon shrugs, "Considering what's out there, I think we're doing all right."

In the poor light he doesn't catch the distant glaze that crosses over her, but he can hear the shadows his words cast in her deep and raspy voice, "You're right, kid." Soberly, returning from her momentary lapse into darkness, Bonnie nods. "Good day."

"Good enough," he snorts in equal to her earlier wryness. "Now," he nods at her pack with a bit of a glint, "if you've got cigarettes or coffee anywhere in there, Daryl'll love you. An' that'll be a great day. Y'got both, even better."

"He's a tough nut to crack, isn't he." Again she asks a question, that really isn't a question at all.

"Think we've got some Sanka," Walter offers doubtfully from behind.

"Yeh," Simon sort of chuckles, heading back to his own room, "I don't know what that is, but by the sound of it, Daryl's not going to like it."

…

On the building's first level Daryl checks the security of the front door. Uncompromised. He looks through the shadowbox double-peepholes, installed specifically to work with the night vision goggles. When he's satisfied all is quiet on the other side, he circumvents the trip riggings and moves up to the landing to sit by his lonesome at the top stair.

He neither looks up nor stiffens when he hears the footsteps approaching. Over forest undergrowth, river stones, asphalt, or wood floorboards, he knows the sound of Beth Greene's approaching step. He learned it, and then he came to love it. Daryl waits, running a length of rope through his fingers, knotting it and tugging it free, letting her come to him. Carrying no light of her own, Beth meets him in the dim above the darkness of the stairwell. She sits beside him, looking into the black. "Ev'rything quiet?"

She didn't need to ask; the scene speaks for itself. But she did ask, and so he does nod. "Yeh."

Quietly Beth picks at a tear in the knee of his trousers, pulling lightly at the fray, piece by piece. "What do you think of them?"

Daryl keeps the cut of rope moving in his hands, twisting it and coiling it. "They're okay." Beth is impressed by his generosity in this given his perceptible dearth of it over the past hour. "Handled themselves well in th' streets. Didn't balk too much at having guns trained on 'em all that time."

"Still though," Beth says, her head tucked quietly in her palm, her eyes turning to him, "you don't like them?"

Daryl looks at her. He studies her in the near darkness, and she, in turn, tries to trace the thoughts as they come to him. There's a slight gesture of a shrug. "She's okay. She's quick. Thinks things through. She's got a mouth."

"You have a mouth."

There's a momentary flash of a smirk sparking from his otherwise austere countenance; aspersions from her, spoken with that sweet drawl, from those lips he so loves, often strike him with the weight of a caress more than a censure. "Thought I's too quiet."

In silence his elbow nudges her, and Beth shifts in answer, and presses her lips to him, just above the bend of that elbow. "You have your moments," she speaks softly into his thick sleeve. Daryl nearly answers, but he does not. His rough hand lifts and strokes her hair. "… And the others?" she prompts, bringing them back to the matter, all the while heeling her face to be nearer to his touch.

As close to him as she is, Beth feels rather than sees his head nod in consideration. "He's all right. A'little stiff. Seems decent. She's…" and there's a change someway in his voice here "… I'dunno."

It's not lost on Beth what about the third member of this group would rouse in him such a reticent response. Soberly, Beth leans her head against his shoulder. "Will you sleep?"

Daryl sniffs, tugs at his beard. "Don't think they're dangerous."

Beth breathes him in, absorbing him as she rests herself against the upright solidness of his frame. "I agree." Her eyes strain then to find his, "You aren't worried?"

Breathing in deeply, Daryl turns so that he can see her— "Are you?" He doesn't ask so that he might reassure her, he wonders if he's missed something she's picked up on.

It's still unfamiliar to them to have to debrief after the fact on things now; for so long it had only been he and she – living through each moment together, reacting, if not in unison, then in concert with one another. "I'h think they mean well. I'h think new people take time." In the darkness she lets her words linger. "I'h think we're lucky to have them, and things could have gone a lot worse."

Daryl knows this to be true. He doesn't like to say who he'd hoped it would be, breaking through that brush, but less does he want to tell her what he feared. Another day ends without them being made whole, but it is a day ended without gunfire, and one that has left them a little stronger than they were when they awoke. "Yeh." Daryl lets the rope hang slack from his hand. He shifts some again than to look at her. "You like 'em?" he grunts.

"They're not family," she answers needlessly, her slight hand reaching until she finds his to wrap into. Daryl's sturdy fingers effortlessly meld together with hers. "We needed people."

"We did," his low voice rumbles. There they let the conversation lie. Beth's finger traces the length of his thigh, traveling over punctures and tears in his weather-beaten trousers. Daryl releases her hand to run his fingers down the back of her head. Like magnets her hand finds his other. Fingers lace, and link, and mingle. Her head drifts again to his shoulder, nearer, oh so near to him. "Daryl…" she seems to breathe.

"Hi," he mutters into her hair. Fractionally, at the rate of glaciers or land plates moving, they bend, and give, so that at one moment their mouths are some distance from each other, and then in another, with virtually no ostensible movement, their lips are one another's, sweetly, mutely, temperately, meeting in communion. They kiss for some length of time. Fading into one another they lose their grips on breathing and their mastery of solidness. Around them the world fades as they zero in on each other. Tongues coax, lips press, and kiss, and wordlessly whisper, and love. Bodies cling to one another quietly, hands caress, holding faces, clutching hair.

"You're cold," he says into her cheek where his lips brush and press. "You should go in." Her eyes still closed, Beth kisses his face, pressing soft lips to his brows, his cheeks, his eyelids, his mouth, lingering there, in his suspended company.

When once again her body shivers at the cold, Beth rises. Stepping to move away, Beth then stops, and turns back. "When we were out there—" she begins, and Daryl's hooded eyes look up to find her "— I thought—" She does not finish. "I hoped—"

"Yeh," he grunts darkly. "I'know."

Their eyes meet, and they let the silence speak their thoughts for them.

Standing there, Beth can't quite conjure the words... "I've been waiting for people, Daryl... I jus'—"

"Mm-hm." He knows. He knows exactly. In time he speaks, his gnarled voice warm like amber, and hard in its conviction, "Beth, them bein' who they 're," he looks at her soberly, "means you were right. Means there're still good people out there; the boys—" he blinks somberly, repressing their lost and altered faces, "these folks." It isn't often he speaks to her in this manner, but now he looks at her with great meaning, making his point, "Beth, your bein' right means our people out there got a chance." Though not his intention, his words strike her bluntly. Of a sudden, her throat is tightly knotted and a blockage compresses her chest. Intensely she feels her longing, and her aching for what is missing. Unplanned on tears swell. Struck so intensely and unawares, she's surprised by the weight of her own reaction; after all, she's been living with this for months. "Right?"

Fighting through it Beth nods, sniffs, brushes back tears. She forces a needless smile, her eyes sparkling brightly from the tears. "Mm-hm."

"M'ybe t'night," he offers. "M'ybe ev'ryone's sittin' back, eatin', givin' some new group a chance..."

Beth's face crinkles in a total capitulation to emotion. Through lingering tears she holds him in her eyes. When she finds her voice, her words speak as true as she ever had in her life. "I'h, absolutely love you."

Daryl stops motionless. He looks at her in stillness, even his blood barely moving. "... Beth—" Words fail him. His heart fails him. The distance of yards between them collapses in the grave intensity of their twosome. "Words don't—" His eyes on her, Daryl clutches at his shirt chest. "You're ev'rything I've got."

Beth's hand remembers the swell obfuscated beneath layers of flannel and wool. She sniffs, and she grounds herself. Beautifully and messily Beth smiles, and sparkles. "I'm all yours." There is no brashness in her saying this; it's neither cute, nor charming, but rather is deeply, and sincerely felt.

Daryl blinks, and then from force of habit looks away, breaking their glance. "Get some sleep."

"Yeah," Beth nods. She turns.

"Hey," his warm, rough voice calls her back. Beth turns again. "You did good today."

Beth looks at him. "It was Simon."

"Naw," he shakes his head. "You did this, you made this happen."

"Simon stepped forward; it was he who first lowered the gun."

"It was you who said to ask the questions." Daryl looks at her. "You're old man — your dad, Beth, Hershel —" still he cannot speak the name easily to her "– he'd be proud."

Beth blinks. Her lips set. She looks away and then back. "Are you?" She doesn't mean proud exactly. "Daryl," she speaks his beloved name so softly, "Are you all right?"

The tracker didn't see that coming. His sky eyes narrow and fix on her. "Mm-hm."

"…Honestly? If you're not all right, I'm not."

"We're good, Greene." Daryl nods for further assurance. "You're all right."

"… We couldn't last on our own."

Daryl Dixon nods again. "I know." Finally, he bucks his wrist at her. "Go'on."

This time Beth does leave – him to his solitude, she to the apartment, the others, and bed. When she slips back into the apartment she thinks it must be Hadeel who's tucked so small into the sofa. On the floor – further apart from each other than what she'd expect from a group – lie Bonnie and Walter in bedrolls. "Goodnight, Beth," Walter's voice comes from the darkness.

"G'dnight," she answers softly, as she treads lightly past. Beth slips into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.