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The group is fairly well off here, in this solid brick house. When Terminus turns out not be what it seems, they don't stay long. Still they're thankful it's given them a common destination, a way to find each other, and everyone is happy for Rick, who has his baby daughter back, and Maggie and Glenn, back together against all odds. They've all changed in the months they've been separated. Carol seems so much older than they remember her. Michonne is happier somehow, less guarded. Carl is just about fully grown, more man than kid. Powerful bonds have been formed amongst the groups that fled the prison together. Sasha, although overjoyed to see her brother, still sticks close to Bob most of the time, to Tyrese's sometimes annoyance, even though he spends most of his time close to Carol.
The last of the prison survivors to be found are Daryl and Beth. The group is already a few weeks settled in the big house, as they've come to call it, when Rick and Tyrese, out on a run in a beat up Chevy truck, find the pair walking near the highway. They can't quite believe it's Daryl for a moment, looking at each other and then to the straggly man with the crossbow and leather vest. It's a few beats longer before it dawns on them that the woman standing next to him is little Beth Greene, who peeks out from behind strands of dirty yellow hair with a grown woman's face that reminds him of Carol's – bright joy and sadness co-existing in the same expression.
They're all together, then. They're a family, and somehow whole despite all the people they've lost. It's a new quilt they've sewn together, rearranging the patches so there are no gaps, and it's a smaller blanket but stronger for it, with tighter seams. For a few weeks, at least, it seems perfect. Then one afternoon, Beth, playing with Judith in the yard, doubles over in pain and everything threatens to unravel. At first it's concern, but then panic sets in, as they see the blood soaking her jeans. The women instinctively form a circle around the bleeding girl, shutting out the men, taking her upstairs. Away. The men wait downstairs around the kitchen table, listening Beth's pained cries and the women's muffled voices.
No one knows quite what's going on. Least of all Beth, who is gushing blood from her vagina, in too much pain to be embarrassed that she is splayed out, naked from the waist down on someone's bed. They're all terrified and unsure, trying to soak up blood with rags and towels, looking back and forth to each others' puzzled faces.
It's Carol who figures it out first, who sees a haunting familiarity in the scene, and who thinks to gently ask Beth if it was possible that she was pregnant. The room pauses at this, all action halted. Then Beth, eyes wide with fear, nods a yes that everything clicks into place. She's on her hands and knees, making a rocking motion when she delivers, the placenta and fetus and impossible amounts of blood flowing out of her, soaking through the towels they've placed beneath her. It's obvious immediately that the baby is dead, and too underdeveloped to survive anyway. Beth is fading in and out of consciousness, her skin bone white. Carol cuts the cord, wraps the little one in a towel and moves it aside, as they do their best to help Beth. Seconds turn into minutes, and she has a pulse, but it's weak.
Sasha comes down the stairs first, slowly, sadly. The group of men in the kitchen look at her expectantly. “I think she's gonna be okay,” she says, and there's an audible outtake of breath, a visible relaxing of tense shoulders.
“Thank god,” whispers Rick. Tyrese reaches out to hold Sasha, and she leans into him, but keeps her arms held away to the sides. They're caked in blood and she's trying not to get it on his shirt.
“What the hell happened to her?” asks Glenn, irritated. Scared. Confused. Sasha blinks back tears, opens her mouth to speak, but footsteps thundering down the stairs draw everyone's attention. Maggie appears, and she's got even more blood on her than Sasha. It's on her shirt, the front of her pants, her arms to the elbows. In her hands a small bundle. A bloody kitchen towel folded in on itself. Her eyes are wild with anger.
“I'LL TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENED TO HER!” Maggie screeches from the bottom step, the sound echoing off the walls. “YOU GODDAMN WELL HAPPENED DARYL DIXON!”
Her anger brings out her Georgia accent, and she's stripped away to her barest self, a primal scream. “YOU ALMOST KILLED HER! YOU ASSHOLE! YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE! SHE'S 16 YEARS OLD! YOU BASTARD! HOW COULD YOU? HOW COULD YOU?” She's across the kitchen and she's inches from Daryl in an instant. He looks at the floor. Doesn't answer. “I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOUR FACE AGAIN, YOU REDNECK ASSHOLE!”
She's screaming with all her might, directly into his face, and he stands there, with a pained look. She shoves the bundle at him and he hesitates, then accepts it from her, unsure. “TAKE YOUR BABY AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS HOUSE! NEVER COME BACK.” She says 'baby' in the way someone might say garbage or shit, with utter disgust. There are tears streaming down her face and Glenn is pulling Maggie away now, urging her to go be with Beth, leading her up the stairs, away from the shocked and confused faces around the kitchen table. He gives one glance backwards over his shoulder to Daryl, and it reads disgust.
Daryl is now sobbing. True, gut-wrenching sobs as he stands there, cradling the towel in his arms. The others are recovering, gathering themselves, doing the math. Rick scrubs his face with his palms, glances sideways at Daryl with a look of disappointment. Carl, sitting at the table, stares down at his hands, which have clenched into fists.
Carol has silently come down the stairs and she leans back against the wall, arms crossed. She stares at Daryl as if she isn't sure who he is.
“It was a late miscarriage,” says Sasha after a moment, her voice almost too quiet with Maggie's shrill cries still in their ears. “She was maybe 4 or 5 months along. But she's so thin. She. . . .” She wants to tell them that her body just couldn't take it, that she was too weak to carry the child to term, but she doesn't know that, not really, so she moves on. “She lost a lot of blood. We though we were going to lose her there for a while, but she seems to be okay now. Her pulse is weak, but it's steady and getting stronger. She'll be okay. I know it. She's a fighter.” And, of course, she doesn't really know that either, but she says it anyway, because she wants it to be true. She needs it to be true.
“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” mumbles Daryl pitifully, tears streaming down his face. Rick looks torn for a moment, but then steps closer, and puts a comforting hand on the other man's shoulder.
“It's gonna be okay,” says Rick, more to the group as a whole than Daryl. “Beth will be alright. We'll get through this. It's gonna be okay.”
“I wanna see her,” says Daryl, looking to Rick for an answer. “I need to see her. Please.”
“I don't think that's a good idea right now,” says Rick. Everyone just sort of stands there frozen, biting back questions, silent save for Daryl's soft sobbing.
Michonne comes down the stairs with a shoebox. “I – I thought this might do for. . .” she says quietly, not finishing her sentence. She holds it open in front of Daryl, and he hesitates, then places the bundle inside. It seems weightless, as if there was nothing at all inside the small towel. Michonne sets the box on the table, lids it, pulls Daryl into a tight embrace. “I'm sorry,” she says, her own eyes filled with tears. Daryl clings to her, holds her tight, his hands fisting in her t-shirt, face buried in her shoulder.
“I didn't mean. . . I didn't know. . . I'm sorry,” he babbles.
“I know, sweetie, I know,” whispers Michonne, stroking his hair. It's only then that the others' eyes begin to soften, their anger fading into pity.
The grave is small, and marked with a cross. She is too weak to walk, so carries her, bridal style, down the stairs and across the lawn, to mourn by the freshly turned earth. She doesn't cry. She doesn't even speak for what seems like hours as they sit silently on the dewy grass.
"He's better off this way," she whispers at last. Daryl nods in polite agreement, but only hours later, when he's alone in the woods, turning her words over in his head, does the pronoun register: He. A boy.
Then the days all run together. They're punctuated with loss, with sorrow, with moments of something akin to joy. They survive. Daryl hunts, keeps to himself, treads softly on relationships that are stretched to the breaking point. He goes on. His own son, who never took a single breath, is buried in the Georgia soil.