Walking Dead 1. Tracking

They strike like lightning, hit him like a punch in the gut, a bullet to the head.

"I'm getting good at this," he hears her say, a tad bit smugly after finding her first trail; watches her carefully adjust her grip on his crossbow. "Pretty soon, I won't need you at all."

They echo in his head, deafening screams and soft whispers in turn – _Pretty soon, I won't need you at all... I won't need you... I won't... _- over and over for the eternity of a second. It scares him, how words from the once tiny, waif of a girl - the fragile, innocent creature who has survived against all odds to grow into the strong, beautiful woman he finds himself slowly building his world around - could make him feel so betrayed and confused and completely out of his element.

_I won't need you..._

He vaguely remembers telling her – shouting at her, really – that night at the cabin, about how he'd never really needed anybody for anything in his life, never really had anybody to rely on but himself, and that was what has allowed him to survive. He definitely wants that for Beth - to survive. When all is said and done, there is nothing he wishes for more desperately than for her to make it, with or without him, but the thought of her living her life without him when she was the only good thing he had left in this world gone to hell leaves such a bitter taste in his mouth and a cold, numbing pain in his chest that makes him wonder if there was something in that damn moonshine that messed him up. Then he remembers words spoken as they watched everything burn that night – the porch, the cabin, their past selves – of promises to remind him to be the person he now is, and that's when he realizes that he _has_ started to depend on her, has started to care for her more than he thought himself capable of, and the very possibility of Daryl Dixon ever needing another person more than she needs him.. Well, Merle must be rolling around in his grave laughing.

But he'd given her his knife and he'd given her his bow and maybe, just maybe, he'd given her whatever of his heart he had left to give and it is just too damn late to take everything back. And he hates himself even more because, even knowing that he would still let her go should she not need him anymore, all he wants to do at that moment is to hold her close and keep her safe and never let her go. He barely stops himself from doing so, isn't exactly ready to consider what it would even mean if he just dropped everything and took her into his arms.

"Yeah, keep on tracking," he says instead and just lets her walk away.

A couple of hours later, he wishes he never did.


	2. Running

They find a piano in one of the rooms with an open casket, an almost surreal sanctuary in this place of bones and ghosts. It's her voice that leads him there and he surprises himself by asking her to keep singing when she notices him. She looks at him strangely for a second, maybe two, but continues with the unfamiliar words and foreign melody in that soft, quiet way of hers that makes him believe, makes him dare hope, makes him want to stop running and make the best of what he could here... with her. He feels as though he's been running his entire life and this right here was the only time he found himself standing still long enough, wanting to live in the moment forever - could pretend that the entire world hadn't gone to shit and this was just one of many peaceful evenings spent between them; hates himself a little bit for sounding so trite and delusional even in his own fucking head.

He tells her the next day, though, as she writes that thank you note to no one, after he'd carried her in on careful limbs; tells her that maybe it wouldn't so bad to stick around for a while. She looks at him then, really looks at him with those wide blue eyes, asks him what changed in that fairly innocent tone, as if she had no idea at all.

Then the walkers come and she gets taken and he just knows he shouldn't have told her to run, should have kept her in sight; barely stops to pick up her discarded backpack before running after the speeding car with all his might. He keeps screaming her name until dawn breaks, until his voice breaks, tries to ignore how his carefully pieced together heart was beginning to break once again; doesn't care who hears him, would face a herd of walkers and the Governor's fucking army all over again because it just couldn't happen, not under his watch, not to Beth - Beth who had smiled down at him as he bandaged her ankle and sang for him so beautifully by candlelight; sweet Beth who had held his hand, had felt so right in his arms and damn, was he so fucking stupid to have let this happen.

He runs till morning, would have run forever if that is what it takes to get her back because he knows now that Beth was not the only good thing he's got left in the zombie apocalypse, she's the best damned thing he could ever have in his entire life and he should have expected something like this happening because no good thing ever lasts, least of all for someone like him. His legs give way beneath him and he has no choice but to go tumbling down, an exhausted sobbing mess of a man.

He'll find her, he tells himself, amid the grief and the desperation and the hurt. He has to – he swears so hard, he may as well have carved the words on his own fucking skin - and when he does, it would take another damn apocalypse to make him ever let go.


	3. Changed

Beth writes a thank you note to no one on their second night at the funeral home. Dinner has been a pleasant affair so far, filled with light-hearted conversation and comfortable silences. He'd carried her into the kitchen again - seemed to have been carrying her around _everywhere _these days - to a spread of peanut butter and grape jelly and diet soda long gone flat. She'd smiled back at him then, maybe even giggled a little. It amazes her sometimes, just how much things have changed between them since the night they set the moonshine house on fire. Well, Daryl's definitely changed - all kind words and warm glances and careful touches telling her he cares for her in his own gruff sort of way; and, okay, maybe a part of her has changed a little, too - back to the old Beth, the Beth who would sing and smile and hope and allow herself to cry for the people she cares about.

He clears his throat then and she looks curiously at him. She'd never actually considered it before, only heard of it being whispered behind his back on the rare occasion that she'd been assigned to laundry duty back in the Prison; but here, in the soft, flickering candlelight, she realizes that his is a handsome face made even more beautiful by the rare half-smile he tries to conceal.

"I'm going to leave a thank you note," she tells him, matter-of-factly, watching the way his eyes shift over her before going back to his meal.

"Why?" he asks.

"For when they come back," she explains. "If they come back. Even if they're not coming back, I still want to say thanks."

Daryl looks thoughtful for a moment, meets her gaze with something that resembles uncertainty. She's never really seen this side of him before, has gotten used to the Daryl who seemed so sure of his actions and decisions.

"Maybe you don't have to leave that," he tries to say it nonchalantly. "Maybe we could stick around here for a while. When they come back, well, we'll just make it work. It may be nuts but maybe it will be alright."

And there's something in there – in his tone, in his eyes – that makes her heart skip a beat, for some reason. She ignores this in favor of smiling teasingly up at him.

"So you do think there are still good people around."

He looks away from her then, a bit embarrassed, which makes her smile even wider. There was something quite endearing about his shyness that she couldn't resist pushing the issue.

"What changed your mind?"

He shrugs, still not looking at her, examines his bottle of jelly a little bit too closely.

"You know," he mumbles.

"What?" she insists.

"Mm-hmm."

"Don't '_mm-hmm'_; what changed your mind?"

She isn't prepared for the look he gives her, would never have been able to prepare herself for the way smoldering cobalt eyes meet her own shocked blue, and it scares her - the rawness, the intensity, the unbridled honesty of the emotions reflected in his eyes. It scares her, and for the first time in her life, she finds herself truly afraid she could hurt another person. It terrifies her because she wouldn't know what to do with a man like Daryl Dixon; wouldn't know how to deal with this broken, beautiful man and his scars and the heart she is being so freely given. It scares her and it thrills her, makes her want to lash out because she's never felt so young and helpless and out of her league.

"Oh," she says, instead, would've said more if the dog hadn't come, if the walkers hadn't come and he hadn't told her to get her shit and _run_. She wishes she'd realized it earlier, and maybe she'd just been too blind to see all the signs that were there, but now all she could do is run and pray and hope that he makes it out alright.

She is too distracted by the noises in the house that she barely registers someone sneaking up on her until there is a pain in her head and a gag in her mouth and she's being forced into a car by some stranger and all she could think of is how this couldn't be happening, not now, not to them.

An engine roars and she hears him yell for her – "Beth! Beth!" – and she cries back at him, for him; thinks, almost deliriously, that maybe she should have kissed him when she had the chance – for Beth may not know how to deal with a man like Daryl Dixon but something tells her that maybe everything would work out fine if she just gives herself a chance at loving him.


	4. Lost

It's the little things about her he finds himself remembering, on the road with these people who remind him of who he used to be, who he could have been had he not come crashing into a trailer park after some deer a couple of months after the world had ended. He keeps the little bits and pieces of what he's left of her close, guards them with an almost vicious possessiveness, that he's actually surprised that Len, of all people, picked up on it - Len with his vulgar single-mindedness and annoying sense of superiority; Len who'd unwittingly called her a "bitch" and a "piece of tail" and was a split-second away from losing his head had Joe not interrupted; Len with the gaping hole in his skull and an arrow through his eye socket whom he almost thought to cover with a paint-stained piece of cloth just because he remembers her all too well, thinks of her every passing minute of every single day.

He remembers her songs – soft notes and unfamiliar words that lulled him to sleep as he watched her, captivated with an innocent sense of wonder and the realization that maybe it wouldn't be so bad if they just stopped for a while and tried to make a life together there.

He remembers her words – clings to them as a drowning man to an anchor lost at sea. _"You've got to stay who you are, not who you were," _she'd told him, half-drunk on moonshine and memories and not-quite confessions. And then, in the same breath, _"You're gonna miss me so bad when I'm gone, Daryl Dixon," _as though she'd known even then that this would have happened.

He remembers all her smiles – bright, when she'd suggested they burn the house down and leave everything of their past selves behind them; playful, when he'd suggested that they take only some of the food and leave the rest in the cupboard; teasing, when she'd asked him what changed his mind about there still being good people in the world.

He remembers her warmth – the feeling of her arms coming around him from behind as he allowed himself to fall apart; a steady weight on his back as he'd carried her through the tombs; her hand entwined in his as she leaned on him in their shared grief; the feeling of holding her in his arms as he carried her in the few remaining steps to the kitchen on the guise of impatience when all he really wanted then was an excuse to touch her, to reassure himself that she was real and alive and _his._

But, most of all, he remembers her eyes – wide and clear and infinitely blue, like a cloudless sky in early summer. He remembers the way she looked at him with all the trust and hope and affection he never knew he needed, never knew he could want in his life. And on that fateful night, in the flickering candlelight, he remembers seeing himself reflected in her eyes as he looked back at her, trying to tell her words he couldn't say.

And as he makes himself comfortable on the cold, hard ground with a makeshift pillow of rabbit's feet and wild strawberries, he wishes he had more to go on than memories, a whisper of her name and a promise he'd rather die than break.


	5. Song

"_So we will drink beer all day,_

_And our guards will give way_

_And we'll be good."_

She stares at her hands on the piano keys as the last note of her song lingers a bit before dying out, giving way to the sound of her companion's soft, steady breathing. She could tell he had already fallen asleep, in the coffin that he'd sworn was the most comfortable bed he's had in years. He had come back from securing the house to find her sitting at the piano with the beginnings of a long-forgotten song. He cleared his throat and she missed her note and she almost expected him to get mad at her making such noise. Instead, he made himself comfortable and told her to keep singing. For all the things that have changed between them, it still surprises her, just how easy being with this man had become since the time they'd burnt the moonshine house down together.

She remembers the first time she had sung for their group, the night they'd found the prison. Their bellies were full and their spirits were light, drunk off hope and temporary safety and the promise of future possibilities. She remembers thinking, saying that nobody really wanted to hear her sing – not Carl or Lori or T-Dog, not Glenn whose world then seemed to revolve around Maggie, not Daryl or Carol who were off by themselves in their own little nook, not Rick who had been obsessively patrolling the perimeter of the fence – but that was the first time in forever that her father asked her to sing, asked her to do anything for him, and really, what harm was there in singing a silly little folk song? But then she'd seen the slow, tentative smiles on Lori's and Carl's faces, on Maggie's face when her sister joined her for the last verse, and when Daryl and Carol and Rick slowly began to drift towards their little group, she figured that maybe this may be the one thing she could do for these people that nobody else could.

So she sang in the prison when they'd settled in. She sang, sometimes with Maggie, sometimes to Judith, to her father or Carl or Zach or anyone who would care to listen, about parting shots and rings made from spoons and dreams one had to give up when they're older. And when people began to say that her singing gave them hope, that listening to her sing reminded them somewhat that there was a life before all this, that they could go on living in spite of what the world had become – it started making her feel better, made her feel good about herself again, even if, at times, she still found herself clutching desperately at the carefully placed trinkets on her left wrist, reminding her of that point in her life when she didn't have much of it left - hope, that is; a time when she'd thought the only way she could truly be free would be to die the way she'd wanted to, on her own terms. But there, in the prison, in the sanctuary they've built for themselves, that sanctuary built on tears and sweat and death, to be able to share with these people just a bit of what she'd once thought she didn't have, it gave her a sense of purpose and the will to carry on.

She had never really known Daryl then, though; at least, she didn't know him enough to figure out what he thought of her, much less what he thought of her singing. She'd thought he'd hated it as he said at the moonshine house, during that game of "I Never" that went so horribly wrong. He must have thought it quite naïve of her, even a bit pretentious and delusional, to be clinging so much to whatever shred of normalcy she could get her hands on. But maybe they'd both needed it at that point, a reminder that not all was lost, so he'd asked her to keep singing and she did.

She'd do anything she could for him, really, because, when it comes down to it, she sincerely feels grateful to him – for staying with her and not leaving; for teaching her how to fend for herself while looking after her in his own rough way; for allowing her to get close enough to see the man beneath all the anger and the wounds and the scars. She finds that she likes the man she's come to know – not the hunter nor the survivor nor the reluctant leader – just a man who's brave and loyal and surprisingly gentle; a man who has hurt and has been hurt and is much stronger for it; a man who isn't afraid of admitting that he needs her to remind him that he's no longer anybody but who he is today.

She honestly thinks he deserves so much more than what life and the world has thrown at him, deserves someone who would show him that life is not all about the bad things, end of days or not.

A part of her wants to be that person for him, the person who'd give him what he's never had - frozen yogurt or ponies or trips out of Georgia – and maybe she could become that person given time; but, for now, all she could do for him is lull him to sleep with her voice and her piano and a song about two people who were not quite together, sharing joys and hurts and pains and a beer while pining for a summer that both know may never come.

Another part of her thinks that maybe it could be enough.


End file.
