The landscape changed the further they went. They ran, desperate, knocking into trees and through bushes; scrubbing away tears. Ivy's throat stung from the smoke and she didn't know if Beth could still hear the gunshots and she didn't want to ask.
There had been a single moment when they had stopped to rescue a single bag stowed away beneath an old, fallen tree that Ivy had turned to look at the black smoke in the sky, the bit of prison still visible from beyond the trees. She had clung to the strap of the backpack and looked at the damage, up at the reflection of everything Ivy had ever been. "I'm never coming back," she had sworn to the wind and the prison, feeling everything slip away.
Beth had been confused when Ivy pushed her into the woods, searching with confusion for old visual landmarks. The few days with Carl felt like they happened to someone else and Ivy had gotten lost in the process, turning in circles and backtracking when walkers came out of the brush until she saw the behemoth of an old tree knocked over, those roots twisted as they tried clinging to the dirt.
"I hid a few," Ivy grimaced, shoving her arms through the straps and adjusting the weight of it. A spare flash light, a couple cans of soup, a can opener, and three spare pairs of socks wasn't much to start out with. "I don't think I remember where the others are."
One of the bags hid beeswax candles and a lighter. A tarp folded down, a knife sharpener, a box of crackers. Everything Ivy had ever wished for during the winter when they had nothing. "You did this alone?"
"With Carl," she confessed, trying to ignore the swift glimpse of betrayal on Beth's face. "We went out of the tombs a couple times to make drops, just in case."
Beth spun around when a walker came out of the bushes and barred her teeth as she smashed the butt of her gun against it's head. It was an older man, clothes worn to tatters, one foot bare. She tried to keep her cry quiet but Ivy caught it, the sound broken glass and a burning barn, a sword swinging down. The walker went down to his knees, slumping sideways and Beth struck again, wild. "He killed my dad," she bit out. "He hurt him."
No one was owed a good death anymore but Hershel should have had that. He had been kind, a light in the darkness. And the Governor extinguished it in a single cut.
"We have to keep going," Ivy whispered. That walker was silent now but the woods were bristling with others. She didn't know if the shooters would start branching out of the prison and comb the outer edges to look for survivors to put down. They lost because they hadn't killed the Governor that day and he knew that. He wouldn't make that mistake.
If she had taken that shot on the catwalk instead of freezing up, maybe it would be different.
But she had a coward's heart, ice in her veins. Glenn had pulled her down when she failed to squeeze the trigger.
"They're all dead."
"Don't," Ivy snapped, brittle. "Don't start that. You didn't see their bodies. They could be out there right now."
"You don't know that!"
"Your dad is dead. And I'm sorry. But he would want you to keep moving, to find something better. And this sure as hell is not safe."
"Maggie went after Glenn. I never saw her get out of the cellblock and he wasn't in any condition to fight. They're still back there," Beth kicked her foot against the walker. The body rocked to the side and a wedding band glinted from his stiff hand. "She was looking for him."
Ivy looked away from the two missing fingers, the old bite mark on the wrist. "We went into that cellblock and never saw them. She wasn't in there. Do you think Maggie would have been stopped? The bus was gone and they had to leave so now we gotta find them."
Maggie would still be alive. Glenn, Sasha, Rick. She hoped Oscar would have survived it.
Ivy refused to think about Daryl. If he was alive, he would be fighting. If he was dead, he was still a liar.
'I'd be fine if you died,' she let herself lie bitterly. Ivy would survive because he had taught her enough to keep going. Everyone was going to die at some point and now she was alone again, a familiar ghost to old trees, a spectator at the remains of a life.
"Where do we go from here?" Beth asked, turning away from the man. Her shoulders, despite the heavy burden of grief, straightened a little. "We never planned for this."
They were all under the same sky and sun and it made her almost sick feeling that distance. Lori's grave was in their shadows and no one would be tending to that scrap of memory anymore. "Away from here. Away from where Woodbury is. We keep going until we gotta stop, okay?"
Beth shoved her hair back from her face and nodded, mouth a thin line to hold back her screams. She started to lead through the long grass where the trees spaced out a little bit more, boots leaving prints in the dirt where it was soft. Ivy followed, her own shadow, leaving behind a home they had forged and fought over, the pieces that made them a family.
.
They were hollowed out by grief. It wasn't the same as traveling with a bigger group, splitting tasks and extending help to ease the load. Together they were a dangerous mixture of rage and panic, holding each other like their lives depended on it.
Eventually trees and branches turned into a road where it was easier to walk without jabbing at the ground with a stick to check for old bear traps. They followed the forgotten vein of pavement until they found houses, choosing to keep going. Their wounds were fresh enough that the idea of building a home into an abandoned house hurt even more.
Beth was afraid to sleep and Ivy couldn't let herself, so they laid on their backs beneath stars and rethreaded their loved ones with the light. Lori's star, Sophia's, Merle's. A walker girl's.
Hershel's burned in the centre of it all.
When Ivy was little, she always used to crawl under her bed when she was afraid. Most her childhood had been spent there, curled between dust bunnies and old, forgotten things. Her mom used to leave plates of food on the carpet to try and entice her to abandon her spot but Ivy clung to the security of it, hiding away where nobody could ever reach her.
It had been a profound betrayal to have grown to big for that space.
That was when Ivy started learning the woods outside their little house. That was when she learned to watch for her father coming home from the bushes where he never looked, checking for how the door slammed shut, the way he parked the truck. If it was good day, she would hurt less. If it was a bad one, she knew enough not to come inside.
Ivy does everything she has to do to keep Beth going. She keeps them walking even when their legs burn from it, she keeps pushing a bottle of water into her hand, keeps holding her up when she buckles. They don't have a home to push for anymore. Ivy can't cry about it, can't scream about it, can't talk about it.
They don't find any signs of the living out in the world and Ivy doesn't leave behind any signs that she was here.
The worst part was knowing how badly she wanted to feel safe again. To belong to someone. But Ivy knew that a place like would never exist. So they avoided the houses that looked like homes because they couldn't go backwards, couldn't afford to sink into pliancy, into the lives of what had been left behind by someone else.
So they mapped out the roads. Kept their feet moving, kicking loose stones back and forth as they walked. A shadow beneath the sun, paired in blackness.
Dirt lanes eventually evolved into gravel, transformed into ribbons of asphalts. Lone houses merged into suburbs. Eventually nothing became a town. They kept going until Beth froze, gazing up at a sign of a siren painted in green. "I went to one of these once, on a field trip."
Ivy blinked, confused. Her hair was tangled and her fingers caught in the snarls, shoving it into a loose bun with a scrap of fabric holding it together. "What?"
"It's a coffee shop. My home wasn't big enough for one but on the way back from Atlanta the bus driver stopped."
The shop looked untouched. Dust streaked the windows and the door was locked. Ivy rapped her fist against the glass and waited, watching for movement. The Starbucks sat in the middle of an empty parking lot with a police cruiser parked out front, dead leaves scattered everywhere. It reminded her of the money left behind at the little strip mall with Glenn, that awful day Merle first showed up in her life.
After a while of nothing Ivy paced around the side of the building, gazing up into the little drive thru window. "I bet I could fit through that."
Beth hummed, wedging a stick through the gap and jiggling, splitting the window upwards. "Need a lift?"
"Yeah," Ivy agreed, jumping up to get her hands through the space, clinging to the counter as Beth pushed at her feet to help up. The metal bit into her hands and she ended up falling forward, graceless. "Fuck," she swore, knocking against a counter.
"You okay?"
"Yeah! Just banged up a little."
The room was empty. The air was stale and her limited hearing heard nothing. No rasp of a walker, no shuffle of footsteps. But Ivy still circled the area the way Glenn would, ducking into the backroom and circling the supply shelfs to check for any silent dangers. When she was satisfied she went back to the front door and unlocked it, swinging the door wide open with a flourish. "Welcome to the Siren."
Beth hadn't laughed since the prison fell. They had been mostly silent, unsure of how to speak. Ivy's monster had come back but the monster had killed Beth's father. Their grief was twinned and it ached to speak of it.
"All the good stuff needs power, but I bet we can find something."
They sauntered around the counter and dug around, slinging green aprons around their necks and tying the strings together. The espresso machine was covered in dust so they ignored it, fixing their attention on the unopened boxes of juice mix below the bar. "Could use this?" Ivy said, holding up a thing of peach flavour. Beth had a carton of lemonade in her hands and she shook it before cracking the seal.
"Grab those cups."
They served up wild concoctions of lemonade mixed with peach and raspberry, sitting cross legged on the counter as they clinked the plastic cups together. It had been so long since Ivy had tasted sugar like this. That night with the bonfire felt like a thousand years and she missed it so much it burned, Hershel with Beth, Daryl right beside her.
He hadn't lied then.
That memory was untwisted.
Beth gently placed her cup on the counter beside her and frowned, considering the silence before breaking it. "This world is cruel. I don't want to be that."
"I don't think you have to be. Some people just let it happen, get comfortable with it."
Daryl could have been like Merle was, the hand of someone awful. But he had picked a different way to live and be and that meant something.
"I just don't like this part of surviving. Leaving places, over and over and over again."
Ivy grimaced, feeling her heart wrench. "I miss the way it started out. I thought everything was over and then Daryl found me. And then, it was the farm."
That back porch, finding herself in patches of sunlight. Small roots of hope before they were torn up like an old tree left dead in the woods.
"We can't keep doing this. We gotta figure this out."
"I know."
"We never made a plan. That was something we never thought we needed."
It was luck on the highway, luck that had worn itself into a thin groove that eventually died. They managed a winter, they managed a war over a prison. Now they had nothing. Ivy didn't even know how to start looking for anyone, didn't even know who could have survived the fall.
"We might end up getting separated," Ivy realized. "If things get bad."
"I know. There's no where to left to run to. Just all these places."
"Could use this as a home point?" Ivy said, but realized how hopeless the little coffee shop was. It had so little. They couldn't even start a fire without flooding the room with smoke. "We need something, something anyplace would have."
"A church. My daddy would have picked a church. Any community has one, they're practically everywhere down here," Beth's mouth flinched as she remembered Hershel. "Paper, pens. Could leave notes."
"Okay. If the worst happens, we find the nearest one and wait."
"Yeah."
Ivy swirled the juice in her cup. "Would you rather ice cubes even if it meant hurting your teeth every time you drank something, or to always drink lukewarm? Even in summer?"
It was game they had teased out, pushing back the silence. "Ice cubes. I miss cracking the trays. I miss it in sweet tea. Would you rather the comfiest pair of boots in the world, but you'd have a permanent stone in the left one, or would you rather be stuck bare foot?"
"Why the left one?" She scrunched her face up. "That's so specific."
"C'mon. You gotta answer the question."
"Ah, fine. The boots. I could learn to live with that stone."
Beth laughed, topping up her drink with a bit of water to cut the lemonade. There was a tiny cut just above her one eyebrow from where a branch of thorns had caught her when they ran through the dark that previous night, trying to outrun a pack of walkers. The blood had crusted black and it looked strange on the girl who had once painted Ivy's fingernails aqua blue.
"How about," Ivy faltered, looking at the blood. "If you had to choose between a month of perfect happiness before a lifetime of misery, or being just miserable forever if it meant that you could never die... what would you pick?"
That bonfire, that night when Oscar baked a poor man's peach cobbler. All the good parts that made it easier to keep breathing.
Beth's laugh vanished. She considered the choices carefully, weighing grief with more grief. "Happiness. I'd want happiness, if we were all together. Just so we could get it right for a bit."
"We're gonna find Maggie."
"What about Daryl."
Ivy flinched, unprepared for the lance of pain that shot through her. Beth hadn't mentioned him since they abandoned the prison and it still drove fresh agony through her. "I don't know."
"He lied. I didn't think he would, but he did."
"I thought he still saw me beneath everything. That I was getting better and that he believed in me. But he lied."
Beth shook her head lightly. "I don't think that was actually the problem. I think you were looking for when he'd fail you."
Ivy shut her eyes and tried not to think about the few times she baited him, waiting for a reaction. One of the first things she had done at the farm was steal a gun and show him, making him teach her. She never knew how thin the line between safe was from not and it scared her, the divide. "It's always easier to run away," she said, swallowing some pride. "So you don't feel it."
"He was afraid you'd kill yourself. Or you'd die trying to kill him."
"You on his side?"
"No. I say be angry at him. But don't hate him. He's your dad, Ivy."
The tender note in Beth's voice broke away at the stone of Ivy's heart. "I just... Daryl lied about him."
"I saw him, that night. He carried you into the prison and you were covered in blood. I thought you'd been shot. That he was carrying a body back," Beth said. Ivy listened. "You never saw that part. He couldn't make the hurt go away, just watch the parts that came after."
"I didn't think he'd find me. I was in this place where it felt like we were underground. Just, a dark room. The Governor."
"He was gonna take off all on his own. Michonne showed up and it was like a light switch went off in his brain, anything to figure out a way in."
Daryl always had a habit of finding her. In the woods on that solo hike back to Woodbury and on the road when Merle let her go. It was like a string connected her to him. If he hadn't pulled her out of a closet, Ivy might have been someone else. Ivy Lane, instead of Dixon.
"I miss him," she admitted. "I miss him and I keep looking over my shoulder to check if he's there, because I want to yell at him. I want to tell him what an asshole he was and I want him to just be there."
A small part of Ivy was afraid that Daryl would see her in the exact same way that she saw herself. That it would be enough to shove him in a different direction, make him abandon the effort.
"We just have to keep going then. Until we find him and Maggie. They're all out there," Beth said, narrowing her eyes as she leaned over and looked into the parking lot. A walker dressed in a police officer's uniform was stumbling in circles after a plastic bag. "I think I have an idea."
.
Beth whipped the cruiser out onto the road with confidence, sending up a spray of loose gravel before she straightened out. Ivy screeched, clinging to the arm rest. "You can't fucking drive!"
"I got my license, like, months before the world ended. Legally I can drive. I had the paperwork to prove it!"
She gunned it, pushing the cruiser until it was nearly flying. "Did they see you do this behind the wheel?" Because Ivy had enough faith to believe that the system had been designed to keep loose canons off the roads. Rick was a horrifying outlier, but Beth seemed to painful deliberate in her tight turns.
"Nah, my brother taught me the right way to drive after I got the license."
With one hand, Beth fumbled for the radio. She deftly managed to weave between three capsized cars and press the CD out to examine it with a sharklike grin. "Silver Springs! Did you ever listen to this before? It's amazing."
Ivy helped her adjust the volume so Beth would keep both hands on the wheel. Once the music started blaring from the radio she couldn't hear anything else so she just relented, leaning back into the seat while her friend tried to defy physics by getting all four wheels off of the ground. She could recognize the music as Fleetwood Mac but not every lyric connected in her brain. Some of the pitch was lost on her and she spent time filling in the blanks of what she couldn't make out, lost in the wave of old music blasting from the speakers.
After a while she rolled the window down and tossed the Starbucks cup into the ditch, rolling the memory up tight so she wouldn't forget it. Ivy was still angry enough she could hit Daryl but a little part of her wondered if he would somehow see that cup and connect it with the illusion of a lost daughter.
He would have survived. A bullet to the head had merely knocked him over. A tank and a ragged army wouldn't have finished him. Daryl would have held the ground until the others could clear the danger. He was the last man standing, the last man fighting.
But, he nearly died in Woodbury holding that line. Ivy wasn't sure if she could afford to put faith in him.
Beth drove and ate of miles with quick speed, pushing the gas pedal until it was almost flush against the floor of the car. She looked happier in control of the wheel and it was a little bit like the old Beth, the girl that existed before the bad things kept happening. After a while she tapped her hand against the dashboard to catch Ivy's attention to the low gas light.
"Run it until it's empty?" Ivy offered, shrugging. She didn't know how to siphon gasoline from cars.
Beth stoically reached over and fiddled with a few switches until the cherry lights began flashing on top, soundless. She kept going until the car groaned and fought her, slowing down until it was a mere crawl of a wasted vehicle. "That was fun," Beth stated, almost to herself, leaning back into the drivers seat. The music was gone, the lights were burnt out. "I forgot what it was like, going nowhere and ending up somewhere."
Ivy checked their bags in the backseat and frowned. "We need water. The bottles are getting pretty empty."
They could afford to starve but hydration was a necessity, especially with the heat of the sun. Beth had gotten the car thoughtfully onto the side of the road. All she could see was trees and more trees but the ditch ran deep enough. Water might have collected further. Beth pointed to some of the smaller trees growing. "Look, those are black cherry trees. I bet I could pick some."
"I'll hike up a bit and see what I can find."
They rarely separated. Even at night, they pressed their backs tight together and slept warily. "I've got those containers from the store. When I fill them up, I'll come after you."
Beth had her knife tucked into her belt with her shirt pulled behind the handle. It made it easier for drawing up. Ivy's own switchblade was in her hand and she nodded, shoving the door open and setting off.
Potholes riddled the road. Beth had swerved to avoid most of the nasty ones but a few had caught her anyways, sending her cursing as they were jarred from the indent in the pavement. Someone had swept their way up this particular stretch of road, Ivy realized, with spray paint to draw around the holes. The white was fairly faded and she kept going, tucking herself against the line of bushes before their was a break that she could slip her way through.
The ground was spongey beneath her boots. The steel toes made her stride a little heavier and she knew Beth would keep her eye out for the tracks. A few times the other girl had been forced to grab Ivy and make her stand still when she wasn't aware of the noise she was creating as they went through the woods.
Out here, alone, she could admit that she was afraid of what she couldn't hear. How much more she could lose. Bob had said that it might get worse and the damage wouldn't be repaired. The ringing sometimes left her off balanced and irritable and the muffled silence made her tense.
The growth looked green, painfully green. Ivy twisted to check her trail to make sure she hadn't picked up any stragglers and kept going until she saw the bank of a creek push up a few feet from some wild berries. Water splashed soundless over the rocks and she had to bend, reaching down to patiently fill the bottles.
She twisted the caps secure and stood up, brushing dirt off her knees. And then she froze, breathing in a musky scent of sweat and old weed. Someone grabbed onto her and pulled her backwards, making her stumble over long grass and someone else's feet. "Fuck!" She spat, dropping the bottles and trying to swing around to get loose. "Get off of me!"
It was a man. He was laughing. His entire chest rumbled and it wasn't the same as leaning against Daryl's arm when he laughed. It was wolfish, the kind that went with yellowed teeth and hands that wanted more. His arms clenched around her and she saw that room; that table; that butterfly.
Beth had the gun. Ivy had lost her own in a tangle with the undead that nearly took her with it before Beth dragged her by her shirt. All she had was the pink switchblade.
And, Ivy thought dimly, herself. She had done this before. It hadn't been enough in the end, but her hands had managed the game of violence; swinging a chair, cutting with a knife. Ivy had fought with her teeth and nails until they broke her down into pieces.
Daryl would want her to fight. He would never find her again if she died out here, nameless in the woods.
She slammed down one foot with her bodyweight and crushed the top of his foot. Tiny little bones fractured from the force and his grip shattered. Ivy spun around and shoved hard, getting one hand on the knife in her pocket and flicking the blade open. The man was howling and she didn't hesitate, slashing across his chest and then behind his knee. Her instinct was her mother's instinct, to run and hide away from the violence, but Ivy had been taught of the perils that came with dropping her guard.
"Fuck you, you little bitch!"
She scooped up one metal water bottle and smashed it against the man's mouth so he couldn't speak. He cried, blood a language that she understood, and she drove the bottle down again and felt in dent from the force of her anger.
After, Ivy took her knife and cut his throat. It was a clean, good cut that was so different from her first kill. Cleaner than Hershel's. He was silent and Ivy pushed back, sick from how quick the fight had ended. The man hadn't expected her anger and she hadn't been prepared to know how violent she could be.
Broken bones, broken teeth, broken skin.
She cleaned her blade off with the man's dirty shirt and took off, feebly clinging to the water bottles. Ivy stomped loud as she ran, trying to get back to road faster when a scream wrenched free from the distance. 'No, no, no.'
Beth was on her back with someone pinning her down and she was fighting him, trying to brace her forearm against his throat. "Hey!" Ivy shouted, hurling a water bottle at him. It thumped him on the side and caught him by surprise and Beth managed to twist, rocking her body up to the side and shoving him off.
They were pressed up tight against the police cruiser and Ivy skidded to a stop when she saw Beth get up and slam the door open, catching him in the face. She did it again and again until the man was limp, face bruised and gummy looking from the force of it. Beth looked at her wildly and blanched. "Did they get you?"
Ivy looked down and saw that she was smeared with the other man's blood. "This isn't mine."
Not this time. Her scar across her ribs ached. Her scar on her wrist burned,
"We need to get out of here. If they had friends out here, it won't take them long."
The man was still breathing. It was a horrible, rasping breathing, but Ivy let Beth pulled her away, fumbling for their bags and water, pushing blind into the woods to protect them from view. "I think I saw something up ahead," Ivy panted, stumbling over fallen branches. They were leaving tracks but they didn't have time to hide their passage. They need to run as far as they could before the rest came back.
Some people were cruel. It helped knowing a few that weren't. Glenn and Oscar had simply been good, straight down to their bones. Rick had been gentle that night at Woodbury when she confessed to giving away their location. And Daryl had been kind, making sure his arm never held so tight that it hurt, watching her for any bits of fear.
Those men, though, were shadows of the devil. They looked for cruelty. Beth and Ivy looked like easy targets and they had gone after them and it was to their ruin.
If the one survived, Ivy hoped he would find his companion's body. Let that hurt sear through.
Train tracks broke through the woods. Beth nearly tripped on the loose stones as they staggered to a stop, looking at their options. "They won't find out tracks if we follow," Ivy decided. "Keep in the woods and they'll eventually catch up."
"Which way do we go?"
One way led back down the highway they had driven up. Ivy pointed in the opposite direction, stepping up the steep bank to walk across the planks of wood and metal. "Away from here. We gotta keep going."
.
They kept walking. The blood dried and Ivy had to force herself not to look at it. The problem with following train tracks through the country was that there was little for shelter. Twice they got lucky with bushes of grapes but Ivy didn't remember which ones were poisonous beyond those two clusters.
They walked until they were hungry and kept going, tripping across the boards and into each other's shoulders.
The sun didn't relent and they were in constant fear of what could be following. Eventually a road broke the tracks and they stopped, considering options. "Hey," Beth said, gravitating to a map posted. It showed train routes that cut across Georgia in different colours and she put her finger on a red dot where they both stood.
Someone had written over the map: Sanctuary for all. Community for all. Those who arrive survive. A marker was planted near the centre of it all. "Terminus?"
"End of the line?" Beth guessed weakly, adjusting the straps of her bag. "Think these signs are in other places?"
The tracks cut everywhere. Ivy gazed at the snarl of lines and tried to sort out where the prison had been. "If they are, Maggie's seen them."
"And Rick and Michonne. Daryl."
"They're out there. We're gonna find them."
They were days away from Terminus. But a direction fuelled desire in her, pushing her in the direction. Ivy planted her hand against where the marker was and shut her eyes, remembering everything. "I want to go home. I don't know where home is, but I want to go back," she told Beth, thinking of Daryl.
"Then we find it," Beth decided. "No use standing here."
Ivy dug out her switch blade and looked at it. It had been her mother's before she stole it, right before her mother took off. It had kept her safe and given her a blade to recognize and understand; Daryl patiently sharpening it for her to keep it serviceable.
Even if she went blind, Ivy would have known this knife.
Daryl would have known it just as well. She had tried stabbing him with it when they first met. He had found it with Michonne, he had found it left on his bed after Merle took her.
He knew her and he knew this knife. Ivy flicked the blade out and looked at the dried blood. "Then we go," she agreed. Ivy drove it through the sign and left it sitting right over where Terminus laid.
'I'll meet you in another place. Just be there. Just be looking for me.'