- BETH WAS DEAD. AND everyone didn't know how to handle the news. The funeral was completely silent besides Gabriel talking about things that neither Zoe nor Nate could listen to, and the funeral wasn't something that anyone expected to have to deal with when they had been surviving, living. They all knew what their next plan of action would be, and that was to follow through with what Beth wanted - she wanted to help Noah find his family, the family that he had been ripped away from by Dawn and her people. Nate didn't mind following along with the plan, if it meant that it would please Beth if she was looking down on them, and if Zoe and his brother were happy, then he would do anything, that, and they had to move away from the church, the town where the people of Terminus found them and killed Bob.. Too many bad memories were held here, and he knew for a fact that they could find somewhere much better if they just searched some more, he didn't want to give up.

If they had any chance at finding another home like the prison, Nate didn't want to give up, and he knew that Rick was the same, too..

Noah had been in bits since Beth had died, he felt like she died because of him, that it was his fault, but it was the opposite, and everyone in the group hated how he thought that. Not one person blamed him for Beth's death, not even Maggie, yet he blamed himself every single day that went by. A few days passed where they had taken some time to rest, to try and get through what had happened to their group, to Beth, but Noah just couldn't, he couldn't get past the blame and the guilt, no matter what anyone said to him. After a few days of grieving, a few of the group members had gone out to try and find Noah's family, the ones who he hadn't seen for a while, and the ones that Beth wanted to find for him.

Zoe and Nate didn't go with them..

Normally, they would jump up at the opportunity to help, but with the situation that happened with Beth, Zoe couldn't stand the thought of leaving Maggie without Glenn, and Nate just didn't want to leave Zoe behind, either. He knew why Glenn had gone with Rick and the others to help fine Noah's family, because he was a strong asset to the team and he didn't want to leave Rick without Daryl and Nate, and he also knew that Maggie was in safe hands with Zoe. Although, nobody knew how to help Maggie, her sister was dead, there wasn't anything else they could do to change that, you couldn't bring back the dead, no matter how much you wanted to. Time passed after the group left, and everyone still felt like walkers just roaming around with nothing left to live for, with people dying left right and centre, there wasn't much that could be done, and everyone was starting to feel the effects of Beth's death even more, the more time went on. Zoe felt like that, too, like nothing else truly mattered anymore, like no matter what any of them did, someone would always die, or someone will always get hurt.

They didn't find Noah's family.

They found a dead end town full of ghosts and they lost another one of their group in the process, one of the good ones, and one that never deserved an ending like he did. Tyreese - someone that Zoe and Nate didn't necessarily know very well, but someone they knew they could count on, especially when times got rough and they needed someone to watch their back; Tyreese was someone that everyone trusted, and his death had been another knife in the gut for everyone, so much so, they the silence had grown even more quiet than before, and no one knew what to do anymore. Staying at the church wasn't the right call to make, everyone knew that, so they set off not long after burying Tyreese and Beth, and not so long after that, did they run out of food and water.

Nate sat opposite Zoe in the woods, in complete silence, waiting, and seeing of there would be any animals that would walk into their eyesight, any animal that they could hunt and cook for the group. Two and a half days they hadn't eaten, and it was beginning to take a toll on everyone involved - not having food, but having water, was something that they could live with, it wasn't something that they wanted to live with, but they could deal with it. When the water eventually ran out, was when things started to go downhill for the group, as well as Zoe and Nate, everyone loosing their energy more and more every single hour that went by with no food and no water, and they knew that soon enough, they wouldn't have enough energy to keep up, and they would eventually wither away because of it.

Nate and Zoe had never truly experienced hunger like this before, they had always been quite lucky when it came to food and water, they had always had a place they could call home, that they had a healthy income of things to keep them going, but this.. This was a different feeling all together, and they both didn't know how much longer they could keep up. An hour, the couple had sat facing each other, just waiting, waiting for anything to make a single movement, but nothing came up, no matter how much they wished and prayed for something to happen.

It had been like this for three weeks, driving, waiting, hunting, finding nothing - it was getting tiring, and no one knew how much longer they could do it. "Should we call it?" Nate asked lowly, looking up at the girl he loved to see her staring into the distance with a blank look on her face. He had caught her doing this a few times in the past few weeks, and it worried him that he couldn't exactly do much to help her - loosing Beth and Tyreese in such a small amount of time had been a huge hit on the group, and people were still trying to get through it, including himself and Zoe. But he was just better at hiding his emotions than Zoe was, he was better at pretending that everything was okay, and better at blocking out the bad things that had happened in this life.

Zoe didn't answer at first, the girl merely staring ahead still, before eventually nodding her head at her boyfriend, seeing in the corner of her eye, Nate pull himself up off of the ground and hold his hand out for the girl to take. Using all of the strength she could, Zoe pushed up off of the ground and grabbed Nate's hand, helping her the rest of the way - she didn't know how he could have so much energy, still, after not eating for so long. After keeping her hand held around his, she eventually let go with a sigh, beginning to walk back towards where the rest of the group were waiting - every other day, the group would take it in turns in heading out towards the forest to check for any food, but no one had been having any luck and they eventually ran out of food and water after finding nothing.

Nate watched Zoe as she walked towards the road again, and he hated how much the girl had changed since Beth had died; after having so much hope that they would find the girl and everything would be okay, everyone had believed it, but after her body dropped to the floor, the hope had completely dried out, and something inside of everyone had completely shattered. He felt the same, like nothing truly mattered that much anymore, but he held up a front, not wanting Zoe to feel the way he was feeling; if one of them had to be strong, it would be him, and he didn't want to let himself go. Zoe hopped over a log before glancing back at Nate, a distant look on her face, "How long do you think we can go?" She asked him, pausing in her steps as he stepped over the same log and stoped next to her.

"Probably a bit longer next time, I think we should try.." Nate began to explain, when Zoe shook her head at his words, sighing.

"You know what I meant." Zoe stated, knowing that the man just didn't want to talk about the fact that they hadn't eaten in a few days, and it was getting hard to keep going on without any food or water in their systems. Nate had been avoiding the whole conversation about their problem, and Zoe knew it was because he hated the fact he couldn't keep them well fed, but they both knew it wasn't his fault, and she hated it.

Nate sighed at her words, knowing that the last thing he wanted to do was to tell his girl that he didn't think they could go much longer without food or water, they didn't have enough energy to go on for much longer, especially if they run into any trouble. "I don't know." He said, not wanting to admit that they couldn't go much longer.

As they reached the road again, they saw the rest of the group waiting for the return, and they both couldn't face the fact that they had been unsuccessful yet again in finding any food - the pair hoped that the others had found something to bring back, but they highly doubted it. When the others saw them approaching with nothing in their hands yet again, knowing that once again, it was another day with another failure..

The car ran out of fuel, and they had none left from the church, so the group had to finally walk, something that the had all been dreading since they had all started to go hungry. Hardly anyone spoke anymore, not having the energy to do so, and not even having anything to say to one another, not since they had all left the church. During their time walking along the road, a large group of walkers began to follow behind them all, walking just a little slower than them so they couldn't sleep with them. Zoe and Nate walked closely side by side with Carl carrying Judith besides Zoe and Maggie besides Nate, their footsteps small and slow, and their eyes half shut from exhaustion - the sun shining down their n them caused sweat droplets to run down their foreheads and down their faces.

The heat wasn't helping any of them, and it made it even worse, and the group of walkers were following behind them, making it impossible to stop: since Rick had told the group to leave them alone  to preserve their energy, they couldn't do anything about it. Within the next few minutes, Rick had sorted out a plan to get rid of the walkers that had even trailing behind them for hours - as much as Zoe wanted to help, she and Nate both knew she barely had any energy, much like everyone else, and Nate didn't want anything happening to her, so much so that Rick agreed, annoying Zoe to no end.

Zoe hated when they treated her like that, but in the moment, she truly did not have enough energy to argue, so she took Judith from Carl's arms, and watched anxiously as the other half of the group made their way across the bridge to lure the walkers over and push them down the hill and away from them all.. Sasha was currently a loose canon, however, and Zoe didn't trust her one bit - she was angry over her brothers death, and she could only imagine the pain the woman must be going through because of it, but she would never endanger the group like Sasha was. So, when the girl watched Sasha fall out of line and begin to kill the walkers then she wasn't supposed to, wasting hers, and everyone else's energy.

Either way, when the group made it back to them, she was relieved. But with the hunger still affecting everyone, no one truly had the energy to celebrate or even say anything, so they simply carried on walking again, praying that somehow, along the way, they will find some place to finally rest.

During their time walking, not once had they found anything worth scavenging, and nothing even worth stopping for, and Nate thought that it would be the same, when a row of untouched and old cars sat in the middle of the road, waiting for someone to come along and pick at them. Nate doubted that there would be anything in any of the cars, but he followed Zoe towards a car and watched as she peeked through the windows to check it there were any walkers in there. But when the girl completely froze on spot, Nate's heart stopped as he watched the girl stare into the car with a blank look on her face - he didn't know what was in there, but he knew that it couldn't be good.

"What is it?" He asked, holding up his knife as he slowly approached the car, having a feeling that there was a walker stuck in there. However, when the man finally peeked through the window, he, also froze at what was inside - a baby carrier with blood splattered all over it, something that no one ever wanted to see. Nate sighed, placing his hand on Zoe's back, "Come on, you don't need to see this." He mumbled, pulling the girl away from the car as her face was still blank, trying to come to terms with what she had just seen. He knew that it reminded Zoe of Judith, and what could happen to the baby any day now - it shouldn't be something Zoe should think about, especially in a time like this when they were in trouble.

Zoe didn't know it would affect her so much, but the thought that it could have been Judith suffering through something like that, or how her life would be if the world wasn't the way it was today. It brought many thoughts to her mind about having kids, and the fact that it would never happen - her mother having Judith was a complete accident in its own, and making sure that she was safe and happy was the most hardest thing to keep up. In the future, it hurt to think she couldn't have a family of her own like she had always dreamt of when she was a little girl.

The girl blinked, and all of a sudden, a Nate wad standing in front of her with an anxious look on his face at how she was acting. He knew that it couldn't be just because of the car seat in the car, it had to be because of something else, and that it was eating her alive - Zoe didn't exactly want to tell him what she was thinking, as it would just make him feel bad, but she also didn't like to keep things from him; they told each other everything, and she would be betraying him if she didn't say anything to him about her thoughts. "If the world never ended up the way it did, do you think we would still be together?" She blurted out, Nate being unsure of what she was getting at.

Nate looked around at everyone else looking inside some of the cars and pulled the girl further away as he didn't want anyone listening into their conversation. "I like to think that we would have found each other and end up with one another." He admitted, as Zoe nodded slowly, something else bugging her, that he wanted to know about and help. "What's wrong? Why are you asking this now?" He asked, knowing that this thought had never exactly crossed his mind before, not like Zoe, who had clearly thought about it before now.

Zoe looked down at the ground, unable to look up at him with these thoughts running through her mind - she had never thought about having children in this dat and age, with the world being like it was, but she had never thought about wether or not Nate would still want them, and she didn't want to stand in the way of that wish for him. "Do you think that if the world didn't end, we would have ended up happy? With a family of our own?" She asked, knowing that she just couldn't hold it back anymore, she had to know what he thought about all of this.

Nate sighed, running a hand down his face as he hated how she had just worded that, "We are happy. We're together, that's all that matters to me right now, okay?" He told her, not exactly wanting to talk about having a family right now when they were all on the brink of starvation, still having no luck with finding any food or water to keep them going on any longer.

"I grew up believing I would start a family of my own one day, that my mum would live to see my children grow up, that Carl would be the best uncle any kid could ever have. And then the world turned to shit, and that belief was destroyed." Zoe begun, as Nate was shocked at her words, having never heard her talk so much about having a family before today. They had always just focused on the moment, but right now, it proved that this wasn't the case with Zoe. "I know Judith wasn't planned, that she maybe shouldn't have been brought into this world, but what about our kids? Can we even subject a child to this life knowing how hard it is to keep Judith healthy? How do you even keep going on knowing that we can't be a family, like how we should be?" She carried on, a few stray tears falling from her eyes as Nate's heart broke into two pieces.

"Hey." Nate whispered, instantly wiping the girls tears away with his two thumbs, the girl instantly relaxing at his touch and leaning into him, the man stroking her hair back as he lent his chin on the top of her head gently, "Don't think about any of that right now, okay? Think about how much I love you, and how I would do anything for you. If you want a child, I'll give you a child, I'll give you anything you want to make you happy." He explained, as Zoe was about to interrupt and claim that she didn't want a child if he didn't want one.. But he carried on before she could, "Of course I think about how life would be with us if the world didn't go to shit. I think about it more than you believe, I want kids, I do, and I do believe that we will find a home where we will be able to do so. But right now, I like to take the days as they come, think about us in the moment, Zo. We're alive. We have good people surrounding us, and we're surviving. Which is more than we can say about a lot of people." He explained, as Zoe slowly nodded at his words.

She never thought that maybe he would be thinking about the same things as she was, she didn't know how long he had been thinking about having kids and when they would do so, or even if they could, and it made her feel a lot better that he had the same goals as she did. "You think about these things, too?" Zoe asked, her heart warming as Nate nodded at her question, because of course he had thought about starting a family with her. "I love you." She cried, having never felt this way about anyone before, she couldn't believe how lucky she had gotten by finding Nate, and she couldn't be more grateful at having him by her side.

"I love you." Nate replied in an instant, the two smashing their lips together and feeling like they were moulding into one person.

The one thing that Nate wanted to do was propose, he wanted her to officially be his, but it just wasn't the right time.. He was going to do it one day, he just.. Didn't know when the right time would be.

But he would wait forever for a girl like her.