Thanks so much all for reading! I am so thankful for your readership and support. Endless heartfelt thanks to reviewers! [Again I've truncated / fast-forwarded a little from my original plan, my hope is this still lands.]
"Florida?" Daryl balks, looking hard at them with unforgiving incredulity. Having pushed back hard from the dinner table he stands there fighting to make sense of what's just been uttered .
The looks on the faces of Bonnie and the two seated beside her are heavy and somber. Soberly she looks at the rough and volatile archer she's grown fond of over the past two months; this isn't easy for them to broach. They've been dreading this– "It was always the plan" —dreading and regretting.
"Since when?" he challenges.
"Going back some time. Long before we found you all."
"And you never said an'thing till now?" he blusters, flinging his arm in their general direction.
"What's in Florida?" Simon intervenes with characteristic grace.
Here Walter takes up the exchange, sucking air in slowly through his mouth before shifting his weight and steadily, evenly taking on Daryl's indignation. "Warmer weather, for one."
"Georgia ain't hot'nough for you?" Daryl vollies at them. Heavily he paces over the floorboards, ticked off that this is happening, pissed that he hadn't seen it coming. He hurls a heated glance in their direction. These three aren't family, but they're trustworthy, and they're something. He'd grown accustomed to them for sure.
"Hurricanes too," Beth adds, and beneath his knit brow Daryl glances at her, paying tribute to her contribution in this campaign they've got to rally against this ludicrous plan.
"So, great weather," he barks, "'specially with all the air conditioning you'll have down there, an' humidity t' rival hell. Anything else behind this genius idea?"
"It's not the weather," Bonnie intercedes with composure.
Daryl looks at her with deadened eyes, "What is it then?" He'd been counting on them, relying on them being there.
Bonnie looks at him, readying him for a surrendering of their reality's truth. "Walt's still looking for his family."
This stops Daryl; his rancor dissipates as he looks from Bonnie to Walter. Caught off guard he exhales, looks away, then looks back with a keen edge. "You think you still c'n find 'em?"
"Daryl—" Beth is quick to chastise. No matter the circumstance, no matter the odds, he does not have the right to ask that.
"Aren't you all still looking for yours? For Maggie, for Rick, for Peter? For all the others?"
"Yes," Beth answers for him when her partner takes too long to. They don't have the right to jeopardize the fragility of someone else's hope, or to not carefully tend to their own.
Daryl shakes his head in bitter consternation, his eyes roll. He hazards the reach, "All three 'f you?"
"Yes," Bonnie nods. "All three of us."
"If Simon was needing to get some place, would you send him off on his own?" These are Hadeel's words, and they're all the weightier for being such.
This time Daryl doesn't need time, he answers quickly and with conviction. "No."
An awkward silence of mutual recognition and resignation settles upon them. The room that had been a home to them all now marks a divide.
"So—" Simon looks from face to face, "this is happening?"
Walter looks at them each in earnest, "You know you are welcome to come. Very welcome."
"No..." Beth shakes her head softly, almost whispering. They will not be joining. They can't leave Georgia. If they're to find what they've lost, they cannot leave. And should it be that those they seek have moved on, inherently Beth and Daryl know they wouldn't have headed south to the panhandle or below. This parting is hard, but if they're set on going, a parting is what this has to be. Daryl, Beth and Simon may not be counting on this apartment for the long term, but they won't be leaving it to get further from where they're going. This is a parting by choice, that is no choice at all.
Daryl's fingers can't keep still through his lasting agitation. "When's this happ'ning?"
There's a beat, a silent moment in which they all acknowledge goodbyes are coming. Walter grips and wrings his hands where they rest on the tabletop. "Soon." It isn't easy to say. "It's been dry," he says. "A dry winter. Town's running out of water, the stream is running low." He looks almost ashamed to be saying all of this. "With things as they are, seems like sooner will be better. And—" he rubs at the raw knuckle on his left ring finger, "time's a factor; it's taken so long to get this far—" He doesn't make mention of the odds this expanse of time is setting him up against, or mention why they allowed for this seven week lapse.
The words spoken, Simon sighs. "Hell, ya'll," his head shakes with remorse. "We'll miss you."
"Likewise," Bonnie nods.
"It's been a privilege," Walter says. "Thank you."
Obligatorily resigned, Daryl returns to the table and leans over to extend his hand to the man seated across the table from him. "Good luck, Man." They shake, and following he clutches Bonnie's hand in a close grip. "All of you."
Softly Hadeel's hand reaches for Beth's. "Our best wishes for the baby."
Solemn and unhappy, Beth tears some; she holds the cool slender hand to hers, and smiles through yet another loss. "Thank you."
"Beth, y'all," Bonnie looks in earnest from her, to Daryl and then to the kid, "we're sorry to be leaving before the birth. We'd stay, if we could."
Beth's head shakes slowly. "Family. We get it." Her dimples deepen, and she nods. "We do."
The room glows warm in candlelight and lantern light; in the burning incandescence and flickering shadows they sit six around the table, long past finishing their meal. They stay there hours more, talking, playing cards, spending the time they still have. A can of peaches is opened, and with it Hadeel mixes nutmeg and cinnamon into leftover rice. Dribbling the fruit over the stand-in pudding she uses Daryl's lighter to heat the sugary surface as best she can; though the effect hardly rivals what could have been managed in times gone by, it's a treat they are happy to savor, and more so to share, in the now numbered hours remaining of each other's company.
"Hey," Daryl nods at Bonnie as at last they break apart and retire for bed late into the night. She pauses in her progress to her set up and waits for him; Daryl steps forward and leans in a bit conspiratorially, "Think you could do something f'r me, b'fore ya'go?"
The morning they set to leave two days later came far too soon. On the day Beth, Daryl, and Simon walk them to the border of town, into the woods, collecting a hare and two squirrels from the snares for their send off. They walk on with them to the far clearing near the drying stream bed, readying to part. It's not clear how they have come to this — not one among their group of three had been hurt, or sick when the six met that evening in the woods; so too they'd had enough food at the time to continue on just as they were. For no apparent physical need had they stopped, but stop they had, and in that time they'd built relationships, and helped to construct a liveable life. From which now they are walking away. Perhaps they'd needed a restorative, perhaps before pushing onward they'd needed some assurance they weren't the only people living still sane, still decent. No worth will come from endeavoring to decipher the wherefores and whys, the leaving is already upon them, and the rest is already in the past. Certainly in the interim of their stay Hadeel's intermittent night terrors had lessened. Whatever it had been that pulled them from the road, it is no longer enough to keep them. They are going.
The six of them, in-hindsight rendered only an ad hoc formation, had spent the last days in each other's company, working together to divide assets, collect food, and ready gear, but when the final moment comes, it is almost counterintuitive to be standing there, finding the words for a purposeful 'goodbye.' Separating intentionally is becoming so foreign the words barely come. "Well," Simon starts, having no command of words better suited to the occasion, "good luck."
Walter nods, "To you too, son." He pulls him in for a quick but sturdy paternal embrace. "Stay quick; stay sharp."
"Com'ere, Kid," Bonnie tugs him to her in turn. Simon smiles genuinely, and accepts the hug, returning it with warmth and boyish charm.
Firmly Daryl shakes Walter's hand. "Hope you find who you're looking for," his heavy voice rumbles in earnest. "Y'r family."
"Same to you, Daryl. Same to all of you."
"Goodbye, Sweet Face." Bonnie grins at Beth. She extends her hand to her, kisses Beth's palm, then presses it to her belly. "Take care of that little one."
Beth smiles, and glistens. "I'll miss you."
Kissing Beth's cheek, Bonnie's eyes are already on Daryl, "You're next." The short woman turns to him grinning. "Bring it in, Dixon." Daryl's instinct is to shy away but he lets slip a slanted smile and gives in to the goodbye. "Take care of them," she tells him.
"Yeh," he grunts. "Be safe out there. And, uh," brushing his face with the back of his hand, he nods at her, "th'nks."
"Anytime," she nods. Daryl smirks wryly; there will never be any other time.
Releasing Hadeel from the hug he'd pulled her into without hesitating to warn her or gauge her reaction, Simon looks at her, unconcerned with her discomfort with eye contact or close proximity. "You're great," he tells her, which isn't exactly any kind of a goodbye, but they're the words that came to him in the moment, and though he's ten years her junior, it doesn't come off wrong.
"You too," she speaks softly, tentatively reaching out to rub his arm. "Simon." The shadowy woman turns then to Beth. Teary eyed they look at one another, softly and quietly. Faces form the shapes of bravely resolute smiles. "Take care of yourself," she says evenly, with depth, and warmth, and edge.
Beth sniffs, and looks away. "You too." She brushes long, thick, dark hair away from her friend's solemn face. Hadeel reaches and fingers a short lock of Beth's blonde hair. "Be strong." She releases Beth and without prelude stretches to place a swift, unprecedented kiss on Daryl's cheek. She speaks no words, and Daryl does neither, only shrinks back some in the wake of this unguarded moment of connectedness.
"Think that must be it," Walter says, shouldering his pack and checking his firearm. "Better get a move on." There are understated waves and nods of finality, and then three turn and travel one way, and three others ready to move back in the reverse direction.
After kicking at the dirt under his feet, watching the figures fade into the trees, Daryl shoulders the crossbow, heaves a breath, and starts on the path back to town. After him Simon turns back too, then finally, when they're several yards gone already, Beth, with her hand at the hilt of her knife, breathes in, sets her shoulders, and follows.
"Keep up, Greene," the battered, raspy voice she loves so well instructs her. They walk on, noting the dryness underfoot as they go, their every step met with the cold crunch and breakage of the thirsty forest floor.
"Hey—" trudging over the wooded ground eventually Simon breaks the settled silence. Daryl glances at him, registering the kid's raised brow, but does not slow his pace just to listen. "There a p'rticular story behind that thanks y'gave Bon?"
More surefooted than Simon, who's scrambling some to scale the incline they're mounting, Daryl glances over to him. Wordlessly slowing his step some, Daryl tugs up his sleeve, pulling it up past his right inner forearm. There, where it's still red and healing, are the bold but airy script letters of 'B.G.'
"Woah–" Simon exclaims in an almost-chuckle. "Tha's new?" he queries needlessly as he looks back to Beth, but still trailing some paces behind them her attention lingers with whom they've parted, those now following a different path than theirs; she's not at all minding the exchange between the two figures ahead of her. Turning back from the covert glance he threw in her direction, mutely Daryl pushes down his sleeve again, continuing on. Simon lengthens his steps to stay apace with the hunter. "I'nt her name 'Elizabeth'?"
Instantaneous to the detection, a streamline of intention and action raises Daryl's bow, directs his aim, and fires, faultlessly striking a squirrel just as it'd meant to scuttle up a tree trunk into the safe cover of foliage. Lowering the weapon, Daryl strides agilely forward to pull the impaled thing free from where it's pierced through. He tugs, "'ve never called 'er that."
Simon shrugs, figuring he sees Daryl's point — a name is what it's made to be, the girl has never been anything but Beth to him: quick, and light, and substantive. Through the holocaust of the new world, only the essential self remains, the rest – the outer selves given or donned for the convenience and harmony of family, community, school, and history – burn away. Beth is like that. They all are — the surviving cores of old selves necessarily cast off in ash. In silence, keeping with his companions, wary of walkers, and of all else that may trouble the woods, Simon walks, making room for buried thoughts to fight their way forward. Once more he breaks the silence, and looks to Daryl. "You worried?" Three is not six. Numbers count now more than ever.
Daryl looks first to him, then glances back at the Beth, still silent, still somber. "Naw," he grunts, affirming this with a resolute shake of the head. Reloading and nocking the bow, Daryl looks again at the kid, then knots the kill into the line at his belt, and scans their path up ahead. His clear eyes fixed forward, the lines about his eyes warmly crease as his jaw sets, "We're good."
Shielded behind his long shaggy lengths of hair, Simon's pale eyes open wide in his fair face, and look to his friend and comrade in weighted earnestness, "Y'mean that?" He realizes there's no justification for Daryl saying this, nor for him believing it, but believe it he can. It's not hard — Daryl's bravado, his sheer will is catching, particularly for someone looking for conviction.
Daryl's voice is strong in his answering, unharnessed by over analysis or shadows cast by the unknowable future. "We got a better choice?"
Updated AN: Eek — did this fall flat and not work? Reviews of confusion don't bode well... Argh. I'd always planned to have the two groups separate again at some point, and though I know some readers never trusted the newcomers (a fitting sign of the times — everyone (including audience members) should exist in a state of suspicion until proven otherwise) I never envisioned them as undeserving of trust. However, kind of feeling the push to move forward in the story I think I might have too-unnaturally brought things to a close. Most of this story is plotted out in story points but some chapters are written when they're come upon — filling in the blanks between, as this one was — and I admit I hadn't had this in mind from the start, or at all really until last chapter. If I faltered here I hope to redeem the story again by the next sequence of several chapters. As this is what I came up with and posted, I think it's what I've got to stick with, but if there are things that could be fixed/tweaked/clarified, I'm all ears! Ugh, thanks for sticking around through tough bits!