Walking Dead 1. before

**Signs**

_A Beth-centric two-shot. Snapshots of Beth's life before and after the fall of the prison, but ultimately focussing on her search for Daryl and her wavering belief in God. __Companion story to For Blue Skies, but can be read separately._

Part 1

* * *

><p>Beth Greene's diminishing belief in God is a long and arduous process.<p>

As a young child, she remembers her mother dressing her in her best clothes, a smile on her pretty face, and the feeling of her own small hand in her father's bigger, more calloused one as he led her to the car and drove the family to the church in town every Sunday. She remembers the priest as a kindly, smiling man in a pristine white robe; remembers the lilting voices of the mass singing hymns from music sheets during sermons. She'd felt God so strongly in her presence there - some benevolent parent welcoming his children with open arms; no sins gone unforgiven, no prayers gone unanswered.

She'd felt God in the way her mother would teach her to ride the horses in the field. She'd felt God in the way her dad would tuck her in at night after reading her bed time stories. She'd felt God in Maggie's rare smiles and in the sound of Shawn's laughter; felt God in the love and warmth that was the Greene farm and the happiness that dwelled inside it and because of it.

* * *

><p>Beth still believes in God when she is fifteen years old, and the dead rise and begin to walk the earth<em>.<em>

"_Thy dead shall live; my dead bodies shall arise,"_ she had whispered, bible in her hands as she perched on the edge of her bed, horror flooding her veins. _"Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast forth the dead." _She had slammed the book shut then, still safe in the house she had lived in all her life, and returned the bible to its special place on her bookshelf – out of sight, out of mind, and yet years later Beth would still be able to recite the verse word for word.

How could she deny God now, when Isaiah 26:19 was coming true before her eyes?

* * *

><p>The first fracture in Beth's belief comes when her mother and brother are bitten.<p>

"They're just sick, Bethy," her father reassures her, but his hands are shaking in her own and his eyes shine with unshed tears. "There's a cure out there, sweetie, we just have to keep them safe for now."

Maggie sits on the dirt ground, back against the barn door, head in her arms.

It's a test, Beth tells herself. Why else would God do this to her family if not to test their faith?

* * *

><p>The fracture splinters into something a little bigger when she is sixteen, and the policeman with some undecipherable sickness in his eyes comes back to the farm without Otis. There is no time for the fracture to heal; no time to let her faith in God comfort her, for four days later the same policeman unlocks the doors of the barn and all of the sick they had been keeping there pour out.<p>

Her mother and brother are among them, and in one terrible moment she realises they are not her mother and brother at all. Mouths gape open, eyes rotting in sunken faces; decaying arms outstretched towards them all; guns firing in retaliation – and of course they're not her mother and brother – of course they're not merely sick, of course there's no cure, they are _dead_, because how could those she stands side by side with possibly be willing to shoot these people down if all they are is _sick?_

Gunshots scream through the air as her mom and Shawn fall to the ground. Jimmy pulls her into him, tries to pull her face into his chest and shield her from the sight but she struggles against him. She has to see. She knows, deep down, that this is a moment she can never come back from.

The gunfire stops.

Tears stream down her father's face. He kneels on the dirt ground, and Beth is struck suddenly by how small he looks. How _defeated._

Maggie is beside him, hands on his shoulders, and despite the grief on her face there is no shock there – just a terrible sadness in the way her eyes fall on Annette and Shawn's bodies, and Beth thinks maybe Maggie knew all along.

She hears a quiet, rasping breath. What must once have been a young girl, ten or twelve years old, maybe, slowly emerges from the barn. From the terrible silence that hangs in the air and the unwillingness to shoot her down, and then to the way one of the women runs towards her – grief etched in the features of her face and the pained cries that tumble from her lips – it can only mean one thing.

One of the men reaches her before she can get any closer. He wraps his arm around her waist and stops her, and she falls to the ground and he with her; she sobs, she beats the ground with her fists, she grieves so openly that she can only be the girl's mother, and Beth's belief in God wavers just that little bit more.

The man with her is stricken. She can tell just by looking at him. She'll wonder later if he was the girl's father, but it quickly becomes apparent that he and Carol are not together. Despite this, the look on his face is one of such profound despair that she cannot help but empathise.

"_You were like me,"_ she'll tell him two years later, when she is eighteen and not quite so shy, and they have lost everything but each other. Moonshine fuels his anger, and moonshine fuels her reaction to it. _"And now God forbid you ever let anyone get too close."_

But for now, sixteen year old Beth sobs for her brother, and moves in an instant to cradle her mother in her arms, and how could God take them away from her like this with no intention of giving them back? How could that benevolent, omnipotent God she loves so much tear her mother away from her, only to turn her into an empty monster who tries to devour her daughter the instant Beth touches her body?

* * *

><p>The next crack in her belief, strangely enough, saves Beth's life.<p>

It has been eight days since her realisation that her mother will never hold her again. Eight days since the realisation that she will never hear the sound of her voice, singing in the kitchen when she thinks nobody is listening, and that her mother will never again brush her tears away or make her laugh. It's been eight days, too, since it struck her that Shawn will never make fun of her again; will never be annoying and overprotective about her potential boyfriends or make her smile anymore. She'll never see them in this life again, and things have got to be better in the life beyond this one, surely – because isn't that what heaven is? Isn't this what that kindly old priest had taught her in those sermons all those years ago?

_We'll be together again_, she thinks, as the first shard of the broken mirror slices into her wrists – so sharp she doesn't quite feel it at first, until the slow sting gradually increases in intensity and _this hurts._

_God will bring us together in heaven, _she whispers in her mind like a mantra, trying so hard to ignore the sharp sting of the air against her wounds, squeezing her eyes shut against the blood falling from her wrists and staining the bathroom floor. _It has to be better than this._

And then it comes – another crack in her belief, a fracture in her faith that goes deeper than those little splinters she'd felt before. _What if it's not?_ it whispers insidiously in her hear. _What if it's not better? What if there is no heaven?_

She drops the mirror shard with a gasp; her hands bloody, horror flooding her heart, and screams out for Maggie.

* * *

><p>The crack deepens when they lose the farm. Something in her breaks when Patricia's hand is torn from her own, and when she learns upon regrouping with the rest of her people that Jimmy didn't make it, and Andrea is gone. They are all infected, Rick tells them, and how could that loving God she believes in so strongly turn his back on his own children?<p>

The crack in her faith splinters into more fissures as the winter months drag on and they scavenge for food and shelter for over half a year – she has lost track of days, but is reminded of the grim passage of time by how far along Lori is in her pregnancy. She's due, painfully so, and Beth's secret despair only deepens.

But then, one day, they find a prison. Something like hope flares in her chest, and she could cry from the warmth flooding her senses as they sit together in the expanse of grass within the prison perimeter; not quite inside yet, but all together, all safe. Maggie joins her in her singing and in that one moment, Beth finds God again – finds God in the way she always used to find Him in Maggie's rare smile, and in the quiet strength of her father beside her.

A few days later, when they have moved in to their cell block, she unpacks her bag and finds that notebook she'd found months previously, tucked safely at the bottom.

'_Hey, I know it's been awhile,' _she begins, pen scraping against paper – the sound so comforting that a grin breaks across her face, '_and I'm going to be honest. I forgot about you. After the farm, we were always moving. But something happened…something good, finally. We found a prison. Daddy thinks that we can make it into a home. He says we can grow crops in a field, find pigs and chickens, stop running, stop scavenging. Lori's baby is just about due. She'll need a safe place when it comes. The rest of us, we just need a safe place to be. I woke up in my own bed yesterday… My own bed, in my own room. I've been keeping my backpack, keeping my gun close. I've been afraid to get my hopes up, thinking we can actually stay here. The thing is, I've been starting to get afraid that it's easier just to be afraid. But this morning daddy said something. 'If you don't have hope, what's the point of living?' So I unpacked my bag, and I found you.'_

It's a small gesture, she knows, but if writing it all down can make it real, then she will. Beth knows now that her daddy's right. They have food now, and shelter. They have beds to sleep in at night, and most importantly, they still have each other. And now that God is here with her again, arms outstretched and giving her all the hope she needs to survive in this world - who is she to deny Him?

'_So I'm going to start writing in you again. And I'm going to write this down now, because you should write down wishes to make them come true. We can live here. We can live here for the rest of our lives.'_

* * *

><p>It only takes eleven days for Beth's belief in God to begin to crumble again. Lori dies in childbirth, and Rick finds T-Dog's body in a corridor of the prison. Carol is missing, though when she is found by Daryl the next day Beth will learn that T-Dog died saving her.<p>

Her faith is cracked now more than ever. In her arms she holds a tiny girl who will never know her mother, and it's sadder than she has words for. This girl's father has lost his wife, and her brother has lost his mother, but this baby will never have the chance to know her at all.

A few years later, when Judith is four years old and Beth finally finds her again, the auburn haired girl will toddle towards Beth with her arms outstretched and cry for her 'mommy.' Something in Beth's chest will ache, a guilty lump will form in her throat, but she'll pick the little girl up and hold her tight anyway, eyes squeezed shut against her own joyful tears because really, Judith was always hers.

But seventeen year old Beth, standing in a dank prison cell with a tearful baby, feels her faith in God slip just a little further away at the injustice of it all.

"We all got jobs to do," her dad had told her earlier, mouth set in a grim line, a terrible grief in the air between them but there was defiance in his voice. Her dad won't let the world beat him, and neither will Beth.

"We all got jobs to do," she whispers to the unnamed baby, and when dark grey eyes peer up at her curiously, Beth knows that God or no God, she can never let anything happen to the motherless little girl in her arms. Besides, who is she to say there is no God when this precious thing lives and breathes and stares up at her like this?

* * *

><p>God diminishes just a little bit more in Beth's eyes when the Governor attacks that first time. Maggie and Glenn are back and Daryl will return to them before the fight is over, but the terror she feels for her family when the Governor and his soldiers descend upon the prison is indescribable. When the dead pour from the van and infest the courtyard, she's almost certain she will die, or worse – she's scared that Judith will die, or that Carl beside her will be killed, or that she'll lose Maggie all over again after so very briefly getting her back. Beth breathes again when it's over, but it's only temporary because <em>what if they come back?<em>

They won't, but he will – just over half a year later, and he'll rip her entire world out from beneath her.

But eight days after that first attack, Carl kills a boy. He doesn't do it in cold blood, but he shoots him down so detachedly, so _easily_, that the crack in Beth's faith in a higher power only deepens. What kind of God can take her only real friend and turn him into someone so unrecognisable? What kind of God can put this boy through so much and just let him snap under the pressure?

* * *

><p>The fractures in Beth's faith lie still and dormant for a long time after they defeat Woodbury and her people come back to the prison alive. Andrea isn't with them and something in her sinks, but others come back. All the innocent civilians and misled soldiers alike, saved by Rick and Daryl and the others. Her belief in God stops wavering and stills again, confident; and for the first time since they encountered the prison she feels something like hope threaten to spill out over her fear and fill in all the splinters of doubt in her faith in God.<p>

Beth begins to see God in a new way. God took away her mom and her brother; He took Jimmy from her, He took away Patricia and Otis and Lori and the others. But He gave them to her in the first place, too, didn't He? Beth sits cross legged on the balcony of one of the watch towers, Judith asleep in her lap and Daryl on watch somewhere beside her, and thinks maybe it's enough just to have lived in this world and to have been lucky enough to know the people in it.

She gets to know Zach, but doesn't ever really love him. The tragedy is that she knows she would if she would only let herself.

Before the outbreak, Zach had been a college student, studying to become a veterinarian. He'd been born and raised in a town not so far away from the Greene farm. He'd grown up learning to ride horses and harvest crops; he'd had a mother who had died at the beginning of the outbreak and a father who had died when Woodbury had been overrun by the dead, and he had loved them dearly.

Despite the world they live in now, Beth thinks she and Zach would have met anyway. It seems almost inevitable that they should have; they have worlds in common with one another, had lived within mere miles of each other, and whenever he playfully ruffles Beth's hair or looks down at her with a grin on his face before pulling her mouth towards his, it seems impossible and ridiculous to Beth that she could ever have not known Zach in any world.

But Beth knows now that God can take away just as easily as He can give.

"You gonna say goodbye?" he asks her one day, tone light and teasing but with a hint of desperation just beneath the surface.

"Nope," she replies cheerfully, but a storm builds in her as she walks away.

Because it's better he remembers her like this.

Because she knows, this time, he might not come back to her.

Because she knows that if she were to turn around and run to him, and throw her arms around his neck and tell him that she'll miss him, and _goodbye_, that their last kiss will taste like grief. It will taste like dark oceans.

And so she doesn't, and he doesn't come back.

"I don't cry anymore Daryl," she says later, face dry, and the saddest thing is that she's telling the truth. He's looking at her so solemnly, and she wonders what he sees in her face when she says, "I'm just glad I got to know him, y'know?"

"Me too," he replies, but the faraway look in his eyes when he looks back at her and the cracked whisper of his voice worry her.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

"M'just tired of losing people, that's all," he replies quietly.

Beth moves on instinct. Her arms wrap around his waist and her head finds a spot between the crook of his neck and his shoulder, and though Daryl barely moves to reciprocate the gesture, the firm hands on her elbows anchor her to the world.

"I'm glad I didn't say goodbye," she tells him. "I hate goodbyes."

He tells her he does too, and even as she pulls away and looks up into his face, trying so hard to decipher what she sees there, his hands loosen on her arms but don't quite let go.

God gave her Zach for a short while, and then took him away. That's just life in this world, Beth has grown to learn. The bad makes her appreciate the good all the more. Zach is gone, but God might just have given her something else in return.

* * *

><p>Beth's belief in God shatters to thousands of pieces when the Governor attacks for the second and final time, because there is nothing in heaven or earth that can give back what God has taken from her now.<p>

She cries with Maggie beside her as Michonne's sword is swung down against her father's neck – she screams, she rages, she dies. She dies and is reborn, so suddenly, as someone else altogether.

She fights. She carries a gun in her hands and she shoots at the evil in the world. Beth doesn't know if she believes in God anymore, but she believes in the devil standing before her; this man who has ripped her daddy out of her life forever, who has made certain that she'll never see the crows feet in the corners of his twinkling eyes as he smiles, or hear the quiet strength of his voice or watch him grow older, watch him become a grandfather and pass peacefully, surrounded by the people he loves.

Walkers descend upon them. She loses Maggie. She can't find Judith. She runs everywhere, looking, but she's too numb to think clearly anymore. Just as an alarming nothingness begins to settle within her, she runs into Daryl.

"We gotta go Beth," he says, and together they move.

They run through the ruins of what was once their home. And as they escape their last safe place, Beth feels for the first time, and with her entire being, that God is nowhere.

* * *

><p>Something changes in Daryl when they leave the prison, and where once it would have made Beth despair, it now incites a strength in her she never imagined she'd be capable of.<p>

He doesn't speak for days, but his eyes howl. They scream. He mourns in silence, sitting on a log in the dark of the forest they've found themselves in, staring into the fire she'd built and yet looking straight through it. Beth tears out the pages of her diary – _we found a prison – daddy said – we can live here for the rest of our lives _– and throws them in the fire. They have lost the prison, but she refuses to believe they have lost everything.

He hasn't looked at her once, and the grief she feels gives way to frustration.

"We aren't the only survivors," she tells him. "We can't be. Rick, Michonne – they could be out here. Maggie and Glenn could have made it out of A Block."

He isn't looking at her.

"You're a tracker. You can track. Come on. The sun will be up soon."

She wishes he would look at her.

"Fine!" she says angrily, and he still won't look at her, and she stands on her feet and grabs her knife. "If you won't track, I will!"

Beth finds a goal; something to distract her from the terrible sense of emptiness in her chest, while Daryl ignores her but ultimately follows her anyway. Their interactions continue this way for a while, even after they find the bodies of the survivors they'd been tracking by the side of a road, and Beth lets her despair wash over her briefly. She gets up again, and finds a different goal.

"Screw you!" she yells at him, flipping him her middle finger as she tries to walk away. "I'm not staying in this suck-ass camp!"

Her goal this time is to find a drink. To Daryl it's stupid; to her it's _something_. It's a piece of some life she might have had in a different world, and she knows with alarming clarity that all the odds are stacked against her – that sooner rather than later she will die, so why not be frivolous just this once rather than lay down and cry?

But the cup is dirty, and Daryl says peach schnapps is no good.

He takes her to a moonshine house instead.

And when his misdirected anger subsides, and when her arms loosen around him and their inebriation begins to wear off, she tells him he can't depend on her for anything. And yet, in that moment, she knows she depends on him.

_"Pretty soon I won't need you at all,"_ she'll tell him a few weeks later as he teaches her to track with his crossbow, but even then she'll know the words are a lie.

But for now, the moonshine house burns before their eyes – everything they used to be is engulfed in flames, crumbling. He has changed, and so has she. Beth doesn't believe in God anymore, and where once it would have carved a hollow ache within her, she finds now that she doesn't care.

They don't need a God. They only need each other.

* * *

><p>Beth spends the next few weeks in a state of bliss. There's still danger wherever she and Daryl go – she's happy, not blind – but something within her stops and settles, and she realises she hasn't felt so light since the first few days after they found the prison.<p>

There are still good people in the world. She feels it in her bones; feels it in the way Daryl trains her to hunt with his crossbow and gives her a serious piggyback when she injures her ankle.

"I don't think the good ones survive," Daryl says, but when they find the funeral home he tries to feed a stray dog and listens to her sing. When Beth wants to leave a thank you note for the absent inhabitants of the house, Daryl shrugs. Their 'white trash brunch' is laid out on the kitchen table before them, and in the dark of the kitchen the tea candles cast a steady orange glow against the features of Daryl's face.

"Maybe you don't have to leave that," he tells her, and she looks up at him in surprise. "Maybe we stick around here for a while. They come, we'll just make it work. Maybe... it may be nuts, but maybe we'll be alright."

She can't help the strange warmth that seeps into her bones, or the way the corners of her mouth tug upwards involuntarily and split a grin across her face. "So you _do_ think there are still good people around," she announces triumphantly. Daryl shrugs, and her smile only grows wider. "What changed your mind?"

He glances at her and then looks down at his jar of pigs' feet. He looks up at her again before avoiding her gaze.

"Y'know."

He seems shy all of a sudden, and it's such a strange sight that Beth almost laughs at the wonder of it. She's seen Daryl Dixon slaughter walkers and cry in her arms, and the thought of him being unwilling to reveal something so trivial to her has her giddy with curiosity. "What?"

He looks up at her again briefly, still chewing on his food, before he shrugs and makes a dismissive noise in the back of his throat.

"Don't _'mmm-mmm'_," she imitates, but something sparks in the pit of her stomach and her smile drops ever so slightly. The feeling rises in her, a suspicion born in her mind and _why else would he be acting like this? _"What changed your mind?"

He doesn't say anything, but he doesn't look away again. He holds her gaze, eyes boring into her own, and she realises that all of that grief she had seen in him is gone. Those eyes that had howled, had _screamed_ upon leaving the prison don't hold any of the pain she'd once seen there. That sorrow is gone; not merely pushed down, or hidden from her – it is gone completely, and she knows that she has done that for him.

"Oh."

She did.

She changed his mind.

There isn't time to tell him – _tell him what? She doesn't know _– before they hear a bark from outside the front door again, and Daryl grunts awkwardly that he'll give the damn mutt one more chance. She's left staring up at him as he stands up and walks out of the kitchen door, her heart crashing against her chest like a tidal wave, and then –

"BETH!"

Her heart stops, frozen; her blood turned to ice in her veins as she grabs his crossbow on instinct – "BETH!" – and moves as quickly as she can, limping on her ankle towards the front hall and throwing Daryl's crossbow to him. "Run! Run!" he shouts as she stumbles back towards the kitchen desperately as he clumsily follows behind her – she hears arrows slicing through flesh as she searches frantically for an exit. "Beth, pry open a window!" Daryl yells. "Get your shit!"

He's moving away from her, leading the dead away and away and _away_. Her heart leaps into her throat and simultaneously plummets to the depths of her stomach – he's getting further and further away from her, and there's an ache tearing through her chest at the sight of his retreating form.

"I'm not gonna leave you!" she screams out to him, and tries to run to him but she can't; there are too many of them, swarming, and her ankle won't take her there fast enough.

"Go out towards the road!" he shouts back, and she can't see him anymore but there's a promise in his voice. "I'll get you there!"

A sob rises in her throat but she turns around and pries open a boarded up window anyway; grabs her backpack and slings it over one shoulder before hoisting herself up on to the ledge and dropping down onto the grass below. Her ankle snaps beneath her and a cracked scream of pain escapes her lips despite her best efforts; she doesn't merely limp now, she hobbles - drags her left leg behind her as she crawls.

She has to get to the road, because Daryl will get her there. He'll find her. _He'll be there._

Pain erupts in her head and her eyes blink through the sudden blurriness of her vision. She thinks she must have hit her head, but hands grab her under her arms and hoist her up.

In her confusion she smiles. He got here before she did, somehow. He's found her. Her eyes slide shut and she welcomes the darkness encroaching on her, because she's safe with him.

Beth doesn't believe in God anymore, but she believes in Daryl.

* * *

><p><em>(AN: Hiya! There's a second part on the horizon; I felt that if I didn't separate it then it would be a behemoth of a one-shot and maybe too long-winded a read. Anyway, this story goes hand in hand with my previously published story For Blue Skies, which focusses on Daryl's search for Beth after they're separated in Alone. If you feel like reading it I'd be soooo grateful, but it's not necessary for understanding this story or the next part of it. Though, it will give you spoilers for what happens next. ;) Thanks so much for reading and for any reviews. Bye!)_


	2. after

**Signs**

_Beth Green's diminishing belief in God is a long and arduous process. A Beth-centric two-shot. Snapshots of Beth's life before and after the fall of the prison, but ultimately focussing on her search for Daryl and her wavering belief in God. Companion story to For Blue Skies, but can be read separately._

Part 2

* * *

><p>Gabriel Stokes believes in God.<p>

"I had to take you," his voice swims through Beth's ears. She awoke some time ago in the back seat of a long car, alone except for the car's driver. Her eyes can't quite focus, but she can make out the black of his hair as his head rests on the back of the driver's seat and the dark skin of his hands on the steering wheel. Her brain is foggy but she can hear the deep rumble of his voice. She cannot move. She can only stare, blankly. It reminds her somewhat of the moonshine she and Daryl had drunk – Daryl_, Daryl, where is he?_ - but nothing so good, nothing so beautiful and perfect, because this is terrifying. This is horror.

"I had to take you," he says again, softly, but the more her eyes focus on his hands, they begin to look wrong. "I had to save you," he turns to smile at her reassuringly, but there's a sickness in his eyes – it reminds her of Shane when he came back without Otis; when he opened the barn door and she saw her mother and Shawn and her dad is dead too now and there is something wrong with his hands, Maggie is gone and Judith and Daryl, _Daryl..._

_...and there's something wrong with his hands..._

Her thoughts run away from her inside her own head, and she feels as though she is running through quicksand in her attempt to catch them again. They win, escaping her, while she foggily tries to blink through the alarming nothingness carving a hole in the centre of her being.

"God will forgive me," he whispers, and it becomes a mantra; it becomes alive, filling the car, suffocating the air around her and Beth cannot move; cannot escape it. "God will forgive me, God will forgive me, God forgive me, _oh God_ – God forgive me..."

God becomes the monster in Beth's delusion.

* * *

><p>When Beth next opens her eyes, she is in hell.<p>

The hospital is clean and sterile and white, but human monsters roam the halls. Nurses with syringes and a police woman who does not hesitate to smack her hard in the face when she tries to escape.

They're trying to do the greater good in this place, and – "You are not the greater good," the woman says coldly, eyes like steel and her voice like ice. Two nurses and a doctor pin her down, stick a needle in her arm, and when she next opens her eyes she is restrained on a bed, a drip beside her with some purple coloured substance she'll never be able to determine.

There are others like her. Six including herself in this one room, two rows of three. Each and every one of them pumped full of that purple liquid.

Weeks pass, and she feels herself fade away. Needles and wires go in and out and in and out of her, and one day she makes the mistake of glancing down and seeing the polo shirt she'd stolen from the golf club covered in her own blood. A portion of her abdomen is fully open, intestines red and bloody and exposed. She faints, and when she awakens the wound has been cleaned and stitched up.

She lies dormant, watching only from the corner of her eye, as gradually the other five die one by one. The nurses stab their heads with knives coldly and methodically.

"26 announced dead at 17:54. Status: failure."

"28 announced dead at 01:33. Status: failure."

She doesn't believe in him anymore, but she prays to God to save her. She screams out to him in her mind, tears falling to her ears as she stares at the grey tiled ceiling. She begs and pleads and bargains – she promises she'll never doubt him again if he can only pull her out of this nightmare and bring her back to the funeral home, back to Daryl, back to whatever life they could have had there.

But where she used to feel God's presence as a little girl; where she would feel the warmth and benevolence and love of His soul brushing against her own – there is nothing. God doesn't answer her, and she sinks further into the depths of a hole in the world.

* * *

><p>When 24 foams at the mouth and reanimates almost instantly, Beth sees the nurses inject his body with something else; a syringe filled with green liquid.<p>

It screams.

She's never heard a walker scream before, and something deep inside her snaps.

Beth abandoned the notion of a God months ago. She doesn't believe in any god, but she believes in hell.

Beth believes hell is empty, and that all of the devils are here.

* * *

><p>One day, 27 dies but doesn't turn.<p>

"27 announced dead at 22:01. Status: success."

Not long after – minutes and hours and days run into each other now, and Beth can't be sure exactly when – one of her leather wrist restraints begins to wear away from the strain of Beth's absent-minded tugging, and snaps free.

She stares at in shock. The torn blue leather looks back at her, taunting; her wrist wriggles experimentally, before her arm slowly rises; painfully, at first, but then in the air with conviction. Something like hope sparks in her chest before flaring full force back to life, and for the first time since she burned down a moonshine house in what feels like another girl's lifetime, she feels truly alive again.

_What would Daryl do?_ She thinks, and scrutinises the objects around her.

There's a bloody scalpel lying on a tray, not too far out of reach.

She cuts herself free, movements sluggish at first, but she doesn't know when the nurses will come back and it's now or never. Beth takes her first steps towards the door and into the adjacent laboratory, stripping out of the bloodstained yellow polo shirt and faded jeans and into a clean pair of blue hospital scrubs.

She feels remorse as she cuts through the nurses and doctors with a short sword she'd found in a locker, and feels even greater remorse as she kills those poor things in their beds. They groan and writhe and stare up at her, eyes rotting in sunken faces, and she can't help the apologies that spill from her lips or the sorrow that falls from her eyes as she puts them out of their misery. The police woman is nowhere to be found in the hospital, and for that Beth is grateful.

And as she tentatively opens a side door and takes her first steps outside; as the sun beams down on her from clear blue skies and she breathes fresh, clean air into her gasping lungs, Beth wonders if God hadn't answered her all those months ago after all, when that leather wrist restraint had first started to wear away without her noticing.

* * *

><p>She finds her sister's name on a train route map some weeks later, and she cries from sheer joy at the mere syllables of something familiar.<p>

'_Glenn,'_ she makes out; it's written in blood, faded from sunlight and age, but it's there, just barely visible, and a grin breaks across her face. _'Go to Terminus Maggie Sasha Bob'_

A laugh tumbles from her throat and spills out unbidden from her lips.

Maggie, Sasha and Bob are together. Her sister made it out of the prison. Her sister is alive somewhere in the world; her beautiful big sister with her rare smiles and bossy attitude, and Glenn will see the signs and go to this place, this Terminus, to find her.

_Daryl._ Hot tears form in her eyes and leave clean streaks on her grimy skin as they roll down her cheeks. A strange sound mingles with her laughter, and Beth doesn't know if she's laughing or sobbing, happy or mourning. If Daryl has seen these signs, he will have gone there. He will have gone there looking for their family, and because he'd have known that if _she_ had seen the signs, she'd go too, and he'd go for her.

Her first goal had been to find Maggie and Judith and the others. Her next goal had been to find a drink. Her newest goal is to find her way back to Daryl.

Beth follows the tracks for days, one foot in front of the other, and does not stop.

* * *

><p>If there is a God, Beth hates Him.<p>

There's a roaring in her ears as the train tracks come to a halt. She slows and stops, heart sinking, before a broken in wire fence and blackened ruins. There are no signs of life but the shuffling steps of the undead as they limp across the concrete and around the ruins of what once must have been so large a red-brick building; now reduced to burned out rubble, only two charred walls still left standing at the farthest side of the enclosure.

"No," she whispers, her voice breaking the terrible silence of the graveyard before her. "No!" she says louder, angrier, feet moving one in front of the other and suddenly running. "NO!" she screams, the short sword she'd stolen from the hospital locker room slicing through one walkers head and in the next breath stabbing through the head of another; neither are Daryl or Maggie, and she spins on her feet to look at the others.

There are too many for her to count, and she can't anyway like this; not with this screaming inside her head and this terrible grief flooding her senses. She swings this way and that, stabs through rotting flesh, kicks at outstretched arms and ducks and dives and runs – looks into every face before she drives her blade through them, because she has to know that this one isn't Daryl, or that one isn't Maggie, or Glenn, or any of her family who could have escaped the prison.

Eventually only three remain, and when the third last lunges for her she stops, legs refusing to move, tears spilling down her cheeks as a hollow ache settles in her chest.

Bob has been dead for a long time. She can tell by how far his skin has decayed, flesh withering away to almost bone. His eyes are so far rotted that all that remains of them are the sunken hollows they had once shone out of.

If she had to guess, Beth would think that Bob has been this way for at least two years.

She sobs just once, her heart wrenching in her chest, before she drives a knife into the side of his head and wraps her arms around his rotting form as it crumbles to the ground. She lowers him down gently, not caring about the unbearable stench of decay that clings to her nostrils and slides down the back of her throat. She lays him down carefully and stands to face the two remaining walkers. She kills them before they can descend on her, and silently promising to come back for Bob's body, she walks on tired legs through the ruins of the main building.

Horror carves a hole in her chest; settles, makes a home there.

There are dead here, but they lie on the concrete ground, still and unmoving. All are so badly burnt that they would have had no chance of coming back as walkers. Some are mere skeletons, flesh melted from their bones.

There are no faces left, and so Beth can't decipher who they used to be.

But they're dead. She feels it so acutely; a truth that exists deep down inside of her, rising to the surface and pushing a scream from her lungs. They're dead. Her family is gone. They lie here before her, mere shells of the people she knew, and her knees slam against the concrete, her face cast up to where a ceiling used to be, and she screams long and hard at the grey morning sky.

"_You ain't never gonna see Maggie again!"_ he'd shouted at her once, drunk and angry and grief-stricken, and she hadn't believed him then but she does now. Maggie will never boss her around again, or sit quietly and comfortingly with her in times of grief – she'll never wrap her arms around her again, she'll never see the bright green of her sister's eyes and the way they'd shine whenever they shared a secret joke.

She sobs, chest heaving, cries echoing in the blackened ruins around her. Judith. _Judith._ She'll never see her little girl grow up, never hear her first words or see her first steps. She'll never hear the bright sound of her tiny laughter, or fall asleep with Judith's light weight in her arms ever again. Her screams catch against the immovable lump forming in her throat, her chest burning with something so unbearably painful; her lungs try and fail desperately to fill with enough air.

Daryl's supposed to be the last man standing, but he's not standing here with her – he isn't here, never will be again, and at the realisation her grief grows heavier, sharper, sadder. It's deep and dark and all-encompassing; a hurricane that started turning sometime after they found the funeral home and she lost him that first time, but she's never faced up to it like this before – hasn't been able to admit to herself that Daryl Dixon was always just a man, just a human, and that he can die too.

She and Daryl will never stand in the same space, walk the same paths or breathe the same air ever again. He'll never irritate her with his gruff replies, or make her grin in joy, or make her heart crash against the walls of her chest like a tidal wave. He'll never finish teaching her how to track with his crossbow, and he'll never listen to her play piano in funeral parlours or carry her in his arms to the kitchen table.

He'll never give back that happiness that was taken from her. He'll never know how incredibly happy he had made her in those few short weeks they'd spent together; he'll never restore the joy he'd carved into the centre of her being, that joy she'd lost when she woke up in that car and he wasn't there. They'll never finish that conversation they'd begun in that dimly lit kitchen - she'll never get to tell him that she understands him; never get to tell him that _he changed her too_. They will never be together again, not ever, and the weight of the realisation crashes down on Beth until it's almost impossible to breathe.

If she could rip through the fabric of the world and grab on to him, just for one minute, just for one moment, it might be enough. If she could wrap her hands in that old, worn leather vest and breathe him in, just for one minute, and hear the deep rumble of his voice as he forms the syllable of her name just one more time, she'd give entire worlds and her whole soul and everything in between.

Beth is once again caught in the limbo between believing in God and being certain He was never real. But if God exists, Beth hates Him with every fibre of her being; hates Him with every atom of her existence.

"_I hate you!"_ she screams, tears streaming to her ears as she yells to the sky. _"I hate you! I hate you!"_ Her fists beat against the concrete at her knees, knuckles snapping painfully, blood flowing from the cracked fingers of her left hand. _"Give them back!"_ She howls, her voice scratching and roaring in her throat over her sobs. _"Give them back! Give him back! Give him back!" _She screams once more – a pained, inhuman sound tearing from her lungs, long and sore.

Her fists eventually uncurl, bloodied hands splaying on the concrete as she folds in on herself, her anger giving way to the unspeakable grief settling in her chest.

"I hate you," she whispers, head in her arms as she takes just this one moment to lay down in defeat; the cold stone ground soothing against her tear-stained cheek. "I hate you."

* * *

><p>Beth's not sure how long it takes her to bury Bob's body, or for exactly how long she locks herself in the lone jeep left intact in the docking bay; but when she wakes up, she knows she's firmly back to not believing in God again.<p>

Rain patters heavily on the windscreen, and she holds two of her empty water bottles out of the window just for something to do. Her last goal – to find her way back to Daryl – had failed. Her new goal is to fill these bottles back up with water. It's small, she knows, but she needs to do something. Something to distract her from the terrifying nothingness filling within her. Anything to take her mind away from the void in her heart where the prison used to be.

She has to survive, Beth thinks, because there's nothing after this. There's no God, and there's no heaven, and this life is as good as it gets. Letting herself die at this point would be useless. Daryl and Maggie would say the same – _Mom would be ashamed to learn she'd raised such a coward _– so she wipes away her remaining tears, puts the lids back on the water bottles, and turns the key in the ignition.

* * *

><p>There are enough full petrol canisters in the back of the jeep that when Beth stops to aid a hitchhiker a week or so later, the car is still running smoothly enough to take her to Washington D.C. It was a decision she'd made on a whim, remembering a White House engraved teaspoon she'd found at the golf club, lifetimes ago, and she figured it was as good a direction as any.<p>

When she sees the man on the side of the road, she's careful. She begins to slow down; coming to a stop far enough away from him that should he prove to be dangerous and run at her, she'll have time to go into first gear and drive away.

The man stops too. He turns back to face the car, incredulity in the tired features of his face, and when she calls out to him, tears shine in his eyes.

"How many walkers have you killed?" she calls out, and he blinks.

"What?"

"How many walkers have you killed?" she repeats, and his brows furrow. The corners of his mouth turn downwards slightly, and there's something so hauntingly sad in his expression that Beth's heart clenches in her chest.

"I don't know anymore," he calls back, keeping his distance – Beth knows he's doing it so as not to alarm her. "I lost count."

"How many people have you killed?" she asks, and the regret on his face is so profound that she wishes she hadn't asked.

"Two."

"Why?"

"They were caught in my traps," he replies, his voice thick with sorrow. "I thought they were walkers, and I shot them down."

She doesn't need to pry anymore. She can tell from the grief etched in the grim lines of his face and his slumped shoulders that he's not a bad person.

"_There are still good people in the world, Daryl,"_ she'd said once, two or so years ago, and if Daryl could believe her back then, she can still believe it now.

"Want to come with me?" she asks, and he blinks at her in surprise.

"We don't even know each other."

"I'm Beth," she calls out, and can't help the full faced grin spreading across her face at the sound of another human voice; at the prospect of another living, breathing human being to talk to. "Now you know me. What's your name?"

The corners of his mouth tug upwards through his thick beard. He looks back at her through brown eyes, before hoisting his backpack further up his shoulders and walking towards the jeep.

"Morgan."

* * *

><p>Morgan doesn't believe in God anymore either.<p>

He and Beth take turns driving the jeep for a long time. There's a map in the glove compartment, and when Morgan simply shrugs when she tells him that she's been heading to Washington and doesn't put up a fight, they continue to follow the lines on the map. Some road signs still exist in good enough condition to aid them, but for the most part they've been crashed into by other vehicles in the years since the end of the world, or splattered with blood so much as to make them unreadable, or simply rusted with age.

They make runs sometimes, when the gas begins to run low, or the emptiness in the pits of their stomachs becomes too debilitating to ignore. They raid a home department store at some point just as the cold begins to set in, and Beth cracks a smile when she can finally throw away the thin, tattered blanket she'd been carrying since the hospital, and exchanges it for a real comforter.

She wraps herself in it now, sprawled between the two back seats of the jeep, Morgan sitting at the wheel, wrapped in his own comforter. They always take it in turns to sleep in the backseat, while the other keeps watch in the front.

"Morgan?"

"Hm?" His head is turned out towards the window, and though she can't see his face, she knows that he has that faraway look in his eyes again.

"Morgan, do you believe in God?"

He doesn't answer for a long time, and she thinks he may have drifted off to sleep. Beth doesn't push him and instead closes her eyes and tries to let that beautiful, blissful pull of sleep wash over her and take her away from this place, just for a little while.

In her dreams, everyone is at the prison. Sometimes, Beth will open a door leading to a cell and find herself in the funeral parlour, candles casting a warm, orange glow over the seats and the piano she moves to sit next to. She walks in, Judith bouncing on her hip, and finds Daryl there. She finds him in the coffin; not dead - _alive_, looking at her, speaking to her.

Sometimes she finds him in the watchtower. Sometimes she finds him in a rundown shack; a burning, acrid smell hanging in the air between them and mingling with the joy of seeing him right in front of her, alive all along. Sometimes she finds him in her old bedroom on the farm, sleeping in her bed. In her restless dreams, she always finds him.

She can't find him when she awakens. Something terrible and unmentionable has separated them so far that she can't reach him, can't even feel him in the world anymore. In the mornings she blinks away the remnants of her dream, shakes her head free of the feeling of him resting on her fingertips, and carries on with the familiar dull ache that she's carried in her chest for what must be well over a month by now.

"I don't anymore," Morgan's voice breaks the comfortable silence, and Beth opens her eyes to glance over at him. His head is still trained towards the window and the dark surrounding them outside it. "I don't believe in God anymore. I believe in people." His head shifts in her direction, but his eyes don't seek out hers; instead he looks towards the empty passenger seat beside him. "I believe in people like you."

She's a little stunned, unsure how to respond, and instead lets him go on.

"I believe in people like you, and people like my friend who might still be alive out there. You stopped and pulled over for a complete stranger. I could have been anyone, and you wanted to help me anyway."

"I wasn't totally selfless," Beth interjects, a small smile on her face though Morgan can't see it. "I asked you those three questions first, 'cause I had to know what kind of person you'd be."

She sees him nod, thinks she sees a smile in the crinkled corner of his eye. "You were right to. What's the deal with those questions anyway?"

She feels a short, sharp ache in her heart at the thought of Rick, and tries to shrug it off. "Just a system my friend came up with, when we were all a group. It was how we worked out whether to bring other survivors back to the rest of us or not."

"Smart person, your friend."

"Yeah, he was." There's a finality in her voice that she thinks Morgan must have picked up on, because he doesn't ask her about Rick again.

"I had a son," he says, and she looks up at him in surprise. He still isn't looking at her, but she can see that faraway look in his eyes again. Before it's always looked pained and full of sorrow, but that look now seems content and peaceful on Morgan's face, and she wonders what's changed it. "He'd be around your age by now. Maybe just a couple years younger. How old were you when this all started?" he asks her absently, turning to look at her.

"I was fifteen."

He nods slightly then, turning his gaze back to the window outside him. "Duane was twelve. Fifteen when he turned." He's silent for a while before he speaks again, and when he does Beth can hear how thick his voice suddenly sounds; a strange mix of sorrow and pride forming a lump in his throat. "If he were still here, I'd like to think he'd be someone like you."

She's taken aback. It's the most personal thing Morgan's ever said to her. In the last few weeks they've been surviving together, he's never spoken so much in one night, and she feels that careful barrier they'd built between them chip away brick by brick.

"I've done bad things," she whispers, eyes suddenly prickling with heat. To say it aloud is to give a voice to the guilt that's been twisting and turning within her since she escaped the hospital. To accept Morgan's blind praise is to deny the terror in a young nurse's eyes before Beth separated her head from her shoulders; it's to pretend the scientist who begged for his life never existed.

It's to act as though she never ran from the prison without Judith securely in her arms. It's to ignore the fact she failed her little girl.

Morgan turns to look at her then, faraway look disappeared and brown eyes strong and unwavering as they seek out hers.

"Bad people don't stop to help a tired old man on the side of a road," he says sharply, and Beth looks up at him, hot tears forming in her eyes. "They don't run around trying to keep him alive all through fall to winter. Good people sometimes have to do bad things to survive in this world now. It doesn't make you any less good, or any less brave, or any less kind." His voice catches in his throat, so subtly that Beth might not have noticed if she wasn't clinging on to his words like a lifeline. "Duane would be someone like you by now," he says, eyes glistening in the light of the moon beaming through the window. "I'd be proud if you were my daughter."

A weight lifts and disappears from somewhere deep inside her, and some indiscernible flood of gratitude rises in her chest. "Thank you," she whispers, the tears falling from her eyes, and when she reaches out to place a hand on his shoulder, he grips her hand with his own before pulling her into the first hug she's had in years.

She doesn't believe in God anymore, but Beth believes in people like Morgan.

* * *

><p>It feels strange when she steps foot in a church again for the first time in years.<p>

She stands in the doorway, Morgan beside her with a steady hand on her shoulder. She shifts nervously from foot to foot, standing on the precipice of wanting to believe and not quite letting herself. There's a sermon in session. A kindly looking young priest reads from a bible, and the mass sit in the pews, listening with bowed heads.

And there's something so achingly familiar in it all; in the deep oak of the wooden pews, in the hushed tones of the congregation, and for just one moment Beth closes her eyes and imagines Morgan's hand on her shoulder is her father's – and when she does she is ten years old again, and the world is clean and bright and endless with possibility. Maggie and Shawn and her mom are sitting in the pews somewhere, and God is here with her, guiding her home from some long journey. God can answer her prayers here. God can forgive her sins.

But Beth opens her eyes, and her father is dead, and Shawn and Annette are too, and she'll never see Maggie again. The world is twisted and ugly and unfathomable, and God is not here. Her prayers cannot be answered. Her sins are unforgivable.

Alexandria is everything Beth knew of the world before it ended. In this town, children run and laugh on sidewalks and in the play park safely nestled between two houses. Couples hold hands as they walk down streets, unperturbed by the dead surrounding them outside the guarded walls, and families laugh and eat and sleep inside their homes. There are food stores, a medical clinic. There's an armoury in case of emergencies. There's no currency here; everyone expected simply to contribute and do their fair share.

When Aaron found Beth and Morgan on the road to Washington D.C. and brought them to the Alexandria Safe Zone, it turned out to be everything she could never have imagined. When she took her first steps inside its walls she was stricken by that terrible, awful, beautiful feeling rising within her – that wonderful sense of hope she'd felt when they'd found the prison, that hope she'd felt when she saw Maggie's name smeared on a train-line map.

And she tried to be wary. She did. For the first two weeks, she and Morgan didn't leave each other's sight. They'd been cautious of the town and its inhabitants, suspicious of Aaron and his partner Eric, distrustful of Douglas, the safe zone's leader. But in the end, Beth's gut won. There were still good people in the world, she knew, and Morgan had told her as much himself. And they stayed.

Because there's something good in this place. Something good in the people and their families, something good in Douglas and the others and how they look after everyone here – something good in the way Aaron and Eric risk their lives to bring others back here, back to safety, back _home._

And yet, Beth's never been to the church before now. Hasn't been able to let herself think about God since she lost the prison and her family, or since she drove away from Terminus with her hands bloodied and empty, or since she found Morgan and forced herself to focus on the living instead of the dead. She can't allow herself to entertain the notion that God could rip so much away from her and yet be responsible for all of the joy and security and wonder that is Alexandria.

If she lets herself believe again then she'll only be disappointed when she loses Morgan, or the safe zone is destroyed by walkers or by a man with an eye-patch and a tank, or when she's taken away in a long black car and forced to start all over again.

Morgan nudges her slightly, and when she inclines her head to look up at him there's a small, knowing smile on his face that she's come to know well. "Go on," he whispers, nodding his head towards the pew furthest to the back of the church, mere feet from her. "I'm right behind you."

She moves quietly and slides into a seat, Morgan moving in to sit down beside her.

Maybe God's here, and maybe he's not. But she can't bear the thought of never letting herself believe again.

She closes her eyes and lets the priest's words wash over, inhales the faint scent of polished oak, and try as she does, she can't quell the warmth spreading through her chest and tugging on the corners of her lips.

It feels like coming home.

* * *

><p>One day, suddenly and startlingly, Beth finds God again.<p>

That day begins like any other. She wakes in her own bed in her own room, pulls on a pair of worn black jeans and a sweater. It's winter again, and when she looks out of her window she sees grey skies and a light morning mist. The green grass of the small park is faded, turned silver with frost, so she steps into sturdy grey winter boots and seeks out the puffy, fur-lined white winter jacket and knitted hat hanging on the nail on her wall.

She looks back to her bed, groaning inwardly. She misses the warmth of her thick sheets already. Beth takes just a few seconds to glance at the rest of her room, a smile growing on her features despite the dread of going outside into the chill air. There are clothes strewn haphazardly over a chair in the corner, a small bookshelf against the farthest wall. Her collection is sparse, but she adds to it when she can – she'll pick up a book or two if she comes across them on a run, or sometimes Morgan will surprise her with them if he comes back from his own.

She found a bible a few months ago, tucked beneath a pillow on the bed of a long abandoned house some miles away. She's yet to open its pages and glance at the words – she knows them already, can still recite Isaiah 26:19 in her head word for word – but it's a small comfort to her whenever she sees it there in its special place beside her fantasy novels and Jane Austen books.

It's Beth's own place, this room – Spartan, really, with just her small single bed, the lamp, the chair and her bookcase, but it's her own corner of the world and she'd never trade it for anything bigger or better. It's still strange to her sometimes that she even has this room to call her own – in this house she's shared with Morgan for just over a year now, in this town where humanity somehow thrived in the face of all outside adversity. She's never felt more humbled or more grateful.

She shuts the door behind her, quietly making her way downstairs. Morgan's still sleeping in his bedroom; she can hear faint snores, and on his day off she'd rather he rested.

She cuts a slice off of the loaf of bread she'd baked yesterday and takes it with her for lunch, not feeling particularly hungry so early in the morning, and sets off to work.

Beth works in the armoury. On the days she isn't on a run with some of the other Alexandria inhabitants, she's here; cleaning weapons used on the run the night before, taking stock, making sure everything works smoothly. To her perpetual surprise and amusement she's become renowned throughout the safe zone as something of a survival expert. She shrugs inwardly, acknowledging that perhaps she does know a thing or two about weapons, and pretends her heart doesn't clench strangely whenever she lays her eyes on a crossbow lying dormant on the end of one of the armoury shelves, or the sight of her own short sword hanging on the wall beside it.

The daily routine check never takes long, and an hour or so later she's closing the armoury door behind her and locking up, swinging the set of keys into her back pocket, intent on going home to read a book, or maybe annoy Morgan for a little while.

"Beth? Beth! Come and meet the newcomers!"

Something tightens in her chest. She knows without turning around that it's Olivia's voice – the young, cheerful woman in charge of the armoury – and that more survivors have arrived.

It's not that Beth resents them. She doesn't. She only resents that unstoppable spark of hope that flares back to life inside her whenever a new group arrives, and then that dull, painful ache when she realises it's not her group. It's stupid, she knows. Beth knows that her people are dead, that she'll never see them again – knows they'll never walk through those gates and greet her, but even after all this time she can't extinguish the longing that rises in her, or the soul-crushing disappointment when she rests her eyes on a woman that isn't Maggie, or a man that isn't Daryl.

She turns on the spot to make her way towards Olivia and welcome the new group, and stops.

There's a woman there. Her brown hair is longer than it used to be, and her tall, lean frame is thinner, but Beth knows the green of those eyes, even with this sixty feet of space between them – she _knows_ those eyes; had looked into them almost every day for the first seventeen years of her life. Her mouth hangs open, Beth's own expression of shock mirrored there, eyes glistening with tears.

There's a man just a little behind the woman, off to her side. He looks a little thinner too, but beneath his long sleeved shirt his arms are still strong and lean. His hair is too long now, falling into his eyes, but she knows the blue of them – oceans under stormy skies, knows the way they used to make something within her twist and turn like a hurricane whenever she'd look into them too long. They stare back at her now, and all at once her heart crashes against the walls of her chest like a tidal wave. His facial hair is thicker and scruffier than when she last saw him, but on top of the dark long-sleeved shirt on his broad shoulders is the familiar sight of his black leather vest, and in the loose grip of one of his hands is the crossbow he'd tried to train her with; that crossbow that had saved her and their family so many times.

She sees Rick and Carl and Michonne; a little auburn-haired girl in the woman's arms, and when Beth's eyes fall on Judith's face a sob escapes her throat, her eyes burn, her heart swells in her chest from longing. Her little girl, her little Judith has been alive all along, even when Beth couldn't find her at the prison; even when Beth thought for all this time, all these _years_, that she had failed her. Rick and Carl and Judith and Michonne – and _Glenn_, he's here, moving to stand beside her sister, he's alive – and Sasha and Tyreese and _Carol_. There are others she doesn't recognise, but it doesn't matter. Her family are here. They're alive.

Daryl looks lost. He opens his mouth as if to speak, but the words seem to die in his throat before he can give them a voice. There's a deep seated grief in the way he looks at her, but second by second she sees something else in his expression – a spark of hope in the way his eyebrows furrow, in the way he tilts his head to one side, questioning, and then disbelief, and when the corners of his lips turn up into a soft smile and then a full faced grin, Beth sees sheer joy.

His face says everything, and she loves him too. It's not an earth shattering epiphany, or a life changing realisation. It's more of a quiet, comforting understanding; an unwavering strength. She'd always known, really – ever since the night they'd burned down a moonshine house together and flipped their middle fingers to the world. Ever since she'd woken in a car to find him gone, and ever since she'd walked miles on weary legs to find him, and even after that – even when she thought him dead. She loves him, she knows, and to see him here before her like this again only reinforces that. She can't help the tears that burn in her eyes and flow down her cheeks; she tastes salt in the corners of her mouth but can't wipe them away; she can't close her eyes for even a second – she has to savour the sight of him here, of them _all _here, alive and breathing and _here._

"Beth?" her sister breathes, and when she casts her eyes back to her sister she sees Maggie's face crumple as tears stream from her eyes. Beth goes to her instinctively; slowly at first, one foot in front of the other, but Maggie lets out a heart-wrenching sob before running towards her, arms outstretched, Beth's name spilling from her lips like a mantra. Before Beth has time to breathe she's being crushed against her sister, strong arms encircling her in a tight grip, her shoulder wet with Maggie's tears.

"You're alive," Beth breathes, arms moving to wrap around her sister, and she cries from sheer joy. "You're alive!" she laughs through her sobs, and when the others move towards them, she only cries harder. "You're all alive. You're here."

She finds God again. She finds Him in her sister, clinging to her and crying on her shoulder. She finds God in Glenn when he moves to stand beside them and she pulls him into their embrace, finds God in his surprised laugh and the tears shining in his eyes. She finds God in all of her family around her, still alive, still breathing, when Beth had abandoned the hope of ever seeing them again.

"Mommy!"

It's a happy voice, loud and vibrant and child-like, and when she turns Judith is wrestling her way out of Michonne's arms and running towards her on small, stumbling legs. "Mommy! Mommy!"

Guilt flares in her chest, then – guilt that Judith will never know her real mother, guilt that Michonne has been so readily cast aside – but when she glances towards Rick and Carl and Michonne, they're smiling, beaming, and Beth feels her heart expand with a sudden rush of longing. She gently breaks away from Maggie and runs towards Judith, tears streaming from her eyes and her smile splitting her face as she scoops the tiny girl up in her arms and clings on to her.

"Hi Jude," she whispers, eyes squeezed shut against her tears, Judith's small arms encircling her neck. "I've missed you so much."

"She was always askin' where her 'mommy with yellow hair' was," Rick says, and when Beth opens her eyes he's standing beside them, eyes red as though on the verge of crying himself. He raises an arm and pulls Beth into a one-armed hug, Beth's arms still around Judith, and kisses her on top of her head. "She never forgot about you," he tells her, and Beth's chest aches with something like grief as her sobs grow in intensity, her small frame wracked with sobs. "None of us did."

"I can't believe you're all here," she says through her tears. The image of the corpses that had littered Terminus has been burned into the back of her eyelids for over a year, and now it finally escapes – her grief leaves her, her horror is quelled somewhat. "I never thought I'd see you again."

Michonne comes to her, and Carl, and then Carol and Sasha and Tyreese. There are four others she doesn't recognise who stand respectfully to the side; two dark haired women, a large man with red hair and another with a mullet hairstyle, and she makes a note to speak to them later and get to know them.

They're standing around her, asking question after question, and she can't help but feel a little suffocated. Beth has been alone for so long, with only Morgan as real company, and to suddenly be surrounded by loved ones brought back to her by some miracle is overwhelming. It's jarring. She's happy – she's so happy, she's brimming with joy, but in some aspect it's uncomfortable and unfamiliar. She feels like an insect trapped in some container, giants peering at her through the lid.

Her eyes rest on Daryl, standing off to the side awkwardly, staring back at her. The myriad of voices around her fade to silence in her ears. That restlessness in her soul stops and settles. He's keeping his distance outside the circle of their family, and she knows instinctively that he's doing it out of uncertainty. He doesn't know where he stands with her after all this time, and it both amuses and saddens her that she can read him like a book, but that he doesn't understand how much she needs him; can't look into her face and understand just how much she needs him beside her, to reach out and feel him beneath her fingertips and know that he's really here.

She kisses Judith on her forehead before placing her carefully in Rick's arms, and when she gently pushes her way through the small crowd gathered around her and walks towards him, the questions stop altogether. She feels eyes on her back but it doesn't matter; she sees Daryl stiffen at the sight of her approaching but it doesn't matter.

"Hi," she says, nervous smile twisting into a full faced grin, and when she buries her face in the space between his chest and his shoulder and wraps her arms around his torso, his arms engulf her immediately. His face rests on the crown of her head, and though Daryl doesn't say anything Beth can feel the drips of something wet and warm falling into her hair and trickling down her neck. His hands are a vice grip; one clutching a hip and the other clutching the space between her neck and her shoulder, arms crossed over her back. She closes her eyes and concentrates on the sharp rise and fall of his chest against her cheek, and Daryl is _alive_ and breathing and living in her arms.

Something in the world clicks back into place.

God is here, to her, again; her prayers answered, her sins forgiven. All of the bad she has done has lead to this. All of her sorrow and grief and anger have been worth it. Everything has brought them here, and she'll never again take any of it for granted. She feels that long-forgotten warmth build within her; that blinding faith restored to her, come back to greet her like an old friend.

She thinks of her daddy and the way he would hold her hand as they walked to the doors of the church back home; of the sound of her mother singing; of Shawn playing tag with her when she was a little girl and the thought of Maggie standing mere feet from her now, together again at last.

She thinks of Rick and Carl, and the miracle of their little girl being alive against all odds.

She thinks of Maggie and Glenn finding each other at the end of the world, only to find each other again after being torn apart.

She thinks about Daryl, wrapped around her like this, and of how sure she'd been that she'd never see him again.

If Otis' finger had never slipped on his trigger, ever so slightly off aim, and had never shot Carl all those years ago then she would never have met Daryl at all. She'd have died when her farm was inevitably ambushed by the herd, unaware and oblivious as to how one person can save another so completely.

Daryl rests a hand behind her head, then, and angles her face up to meet his. His face is wet with tears, gunmetal blue eyes rimmed with red, and the look he's giving her is so profoundly beautiful that Beth's heart swells in her chest. He smiles back at her, a laugh rumbling from somewhere deep within him, and his happiness is so contagious that Beth wants to grab on to it and tie it around them both and float away with him.

"I missed you so bad when you were gone, Beth Greene," he whispers, and leans forward just slightly to place a soft, lingering kiss on her forehead.

And it's enough for Beth to believe in God again.

* * *

><p><em>(AN: And that's that! I'd wanted to get this posted before the premiere, due to having already written Bob off since I was so sure he was a goner, but since this story is so obviously AU after a certain point anyway I decided just to take a little more time on the ending. I'm not religious in the slightest, so this has probably been one of my more challenging stories to write, but I've had so much fun and can't wait to write another Walking Dead fic. Thanks so much for reading, reviewing, following or favouriting - this has been a pure joy to write!_

_Hope everyone enjoyed the premiere. Know I did! Bye bye. Thanks again. :) )_


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Walking Dead, Angst, Hurt-Comfort