[fic] show me what this life is for
Title: show me what this life is for
Author: badboy_fangirl
Fandom: The Walking Dead
Characters/Pairings: Daryl POV; Daryl/Beth, with appearances by everyone else.
Word Count: ~3700
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 / Post-episode 4x10 "Inmates."
Summary:
Author's notes: Title lifted from Imagine Dragons' song "Round and Round."
Previous Chapters: In the same universe as Blue Jean Beauty Queen and Cool, Like James Dean. I wanted to post this before the new episode, but it just didn't happen. This is obviously AU from tonight's new episode. BUT OMG, TONIGHT'S EPISODE. SO GOOD.
He can feel her watching him, her eyes trained on him in a way that makes confrontation inevitable. He spends his patrol time imagining what he'll say to her when she approaches him, because he knows she's gonna.
Everyone else is oblivious; happy to be reunited, happy to have a place that feels safe, at least for the time-being. He figures they'll have a pow-wow soon, him and Rick, to decide if this is where they're gonna stay, but so far they've been welcomed in real nice.
He feels like a fucking idiot that a part of him was happier on the outside, when it was just him and...
No. No. They ended that; he was a jackass about it, but Beth was unbelievably grown-up and kind to him. And she's gone right back to being what she was before all of it. Well, not really, because the sadness around her eyes about Hershel's still there, but she sings to the baby and takes Carl with her on walks, unaware of how the boy looks at her. Daryl figures he's only aware of it because he probably has the same look on his face, but beings that he's not a 12-year-old he does everything to school his features back into pre-prison-break Daryl. Before he knew what it was like to have her arms around him like that and before he couldn't fucking sleep at night simply because she's not next to him.
It's fine; he takes the night patrol and falls into an exhausted sleep in the early morning just as the light's coming up, and he's fine. Everybody's back together--well, not everybody--but a lot of the ones he cared about. Minus Glenn, of course. That's what him and Rick need to talk about: going to find Glenn, 'cause they gotta do it. For them, for Maggie.
For Beth.
He sees how she takes care of her sister, just all the gentleness and sweetness, and he knows he'd have a lot more of it directed at him, if...
Carol's back with them, and Daryl had never been so glad to see anyone in his life, not even his blood kin, come to think of it. But she's always paid too much attention to him, and before he can get a grip on what he's gonna do about Beth, he knows she's seen too much.
So he avoids her, which is fucking stupid. He figures it's all the sex him and Beth had that had depleted his brain cells and it's a good thing that he's not in charge of anything super important right now, because he'd probably get them all killed.
Cooper, his patrol buddy, is a nice guy who managed to keep his own woman alive, so he picks up on what Beth means to Daryl right away, even though Daryl denies it. He has the occasional moment where he wants to talk to the guy about it, but he just can't bring himself to do it. It would all eventually come around to the fact that he was there the day Beth turned 18, when they actually found a box cake in the prison pantry and Rick and Carl managed to make it without any oil. It came out kinda flat, but it had been edible, and Beth beamed like a ray of sunshine while they all sang to her.
That had been three months or so before the prison was attacked. Daryl had turned 33 on his last birthday, but he was a whole lot closer to 34 now, and, yeah, he might be from fucking Georgia, but kids were kids. And girl kids were even worse. And he shoulda never touched her once, much less all the touching he did, and for how long he did it (every fucking day, as much as he could like she would vanish if he didn't keep his hands on her all the time). Not to mention how he let her do so many things to him because she'd look at him with those eyes and whisper, "I wanna try something," and he literally felt powerless to resist her.
Not that he even tried, if he's being really honest.
The sad part was, other than the initial resistance he put up to her the first time she made a move on him, none of those thoughts entered his mind again. The Beth Haze enveloped him and he forgot everything else except keeping them alive so that he could keep on living in The Haze. It wasn't until they got reunited with their friends, until he saw her cradling Judith to her breast, that all the reasons why it was a bad idea came back.
Sometimes he thinks those thoughts must have flashed across his forehead in capital letters and Carol had read every single one, because he knew she knew. He kept waiting for her to say something, but she didn't, or hadn't yet, anyway, and it's killing him.
Or maybe what's killing him is being right next to Beth every day; having her shoot a smile his way, or having her fingers brush his when she hands him his portion of dinner, but not actually claiming any of her actions as his when it feels like they belong to him. Even though he told her no, even though she complied, 100%. She simply went back to being the sweet thing she'd always been, but in a much less intimate way.
Yeah, it's definitely that, that's what's killing him.
He comes back to camp about a week after they've settled in, and Carol's waiting for him. It's actually a relief, and he smiles at her, because, finally. It can start. Or end. Or whatever. Maybe Carol, who had been banished for despicable behavior, would banish him, and he could just wander off, and forget all the other stuff.
"Let's go for a walk," she says, her voice soft.
He could say he needs sleep, or any number of things, but he doesn't. He just nods and follows after her, away from the main sleeping area.
"You okay?" she asks once they're walking in synch, side by side.
"Yeah, yeah," he replies, rubbing a hand against the back of his neck. "I'm okay. You?"
She gives him a small smile. "I'm good. I'm guessing Rick doesn't think it matters anymore, what I did to Karen?"
Daryl shrugs. "We haven't talked about it, but I think he's just so glad Judith's alive, he don't really care about anything else right now." He's silent for a beat, then adds, "And that's the way it should be. Bygones are bygones. There's a lot of stuff none of us would do if the world hadn't gone to shit."
Carol makes a sound of agreement in her throat, and then she looks at him out of the corner of her eye. "You mean...like you and Beth?"
He didn't intend to set her up so perfectly, and he'd already made up his mind he wasn't gonna lie about it, not to Carol, but it's only when she asks him that he really understands. He woulda wanted Beth, apocalypse or no apocalypse. But, probably, at least he hopes, anyway, he wouldn't have actually done anything with her if they hadn't been left alone. Maybe. Possibly.
"Right," is all he offers along with another shrug. "But that's over," he says quietly.
Carol chuckles. "Yeah, I can tell it's over. Or at least you're trying to make it be over. That doesn't actually make it over." They've come to a small clearing, and Carol stops, lowering herself to the ground. She pats the grass next to her. "Pull up a seat, friend."
He sits down beside her, but can't seem to make his eyes come all the way up to hers. She eventually reaches over and tips his chin up so he has to look at her. "She's head over heels in love with you, Daryl. You don't get to just say 'stop' and stop it."
He jerks his head away from her touch and smooths his sweaty palms down the length of his jeans, to his knees. "It was...wrong. And Beth knows it. We agreed, her and me. We agreed to just go back to how it's supposed to be."
"How is it supposed to be?" she asks, and Daryl feels genuine confusion well up in him. This is the conversation he expected to have with Beth--or rather, the fight he thought they'd have that she didn't really let him say most of the things he wanted to say. But Carol's tone shows him she doesn't want to fight, either. She just wants to know.
His suspicions are suddenly raised. "Did Beth hit you up to talk to me?" he demands, looking very closely at her expression.
Carol's eyes go wide and she shakes her head. "Good lord, no! She hasn't said a word to me; she never would, of course. I just know the two of you, I can just tell. You lost your poker face somewhere out there." She gestures to the world beyond them. "I keep waitin' on Maggie to notice, and she will, soon as she stops crying for Glenn."
She puts her hand on his arm, stopping his nervous leg rubbing, at least on one side. "Daryl. Seriously, who says it's wrong? If you love each other..." she trails off, just looking at him. There is so much tenderness in her expression that he can feel his throat closing off in a painful way.
This isn't what he expected at all. He can't really wrap his mind around it. He blinks and clears his throat, but he still doesn't have words.
Carol squeezes his arm with her hand. "Maybe in the old world, it would have mattered to someone, but fuck them. If it matters to anyone here? Double fuck them. There's only so much happiness to find in a world like this; I don't think anyone should get to dictate the terms of it. I've thought about it a lot--when I was out there alone, I had a lot of time to just think, to consider what I'd done. What level of wrong was it? Or was it wrong it all? In what way was it wrong? And the conclusion I came to, well, I don't think Rick'd like it, but I kept his baby alive, so maybe he isn't so wrapped up in those details."
She smiles a little, and then keeps going when Daryl remains silent. "The Walkers coming is the best thing that ever happened to me." She puts her hands up in a calming gesture when the shock he feels must come over his face. "We've all lost people, and losing Sophia was the worst for me, it was, but I wouldn't even be a person who could survive that if everything that came before hadn't happened. I would still be with Ed; I'd be teaching my daughter that it's normal to let a man beat me. No, as much as I'd give anything to bring her back, to have another chance with her, I'm glad that when she went, this," she points at her chest, "was the mother she had, not that other woman who was too afraid, too weak, to stand up for herself." She puts her hand on his arm again. "Don't be afraid to be happy, Daryl. Just. Don't."
He looks away from her face, mostly because he can still feel emotion choking him, and he's terrified that tears might appear in his eyes. But he's also moved, touched deep down inside by her words, by her conviction.
It takes a long minute or two, but he gets control of himself. Slowly, he gets to his feet. "I'm gonna go back, get some shut-eye. You coming?"
Carol looks up at him, smiling softly. "No. I'm gonna stay here for a bit. Think about what I said," she says, some bossiness in her voice.
He cracks a smile at her, even though it feels wrong on his face. "I will."
When he wakes up around noon, their group is mulling around in the general vicinity where they've taken up. It sort of reminds Daryl of the cafeteria in high school, at least the two years he went, and how the jocks sat with the jocks and the art geeks sat with the art geeks.
(And the hillbillies sat with the hillbillies.)
He doesn't know what group they are, but they keep to themselves, even though there are plenty more people, and probably some worth knowing. Truth is, Daryl doesn't want to know anyone else, not now. Cooper is as far as he'll take it, because he believes in pulling his weight, doing his part, but he isn't looking to mingle.
It hurts too much when you lose those people, and sometimes it hurts when they're right next to you.
Rick's handing the baby off to Beth just as Daryl approaches and Beth does a double take when she notices him. "Hey, Daryl," she says cheerfully, hefting Judith up on her hip.
"Hey," he replies, trying his best to make eye contact but not look too long. "What's on the menu for today?" he asks.
Beth gestures over her shoulder. "There's some berries over there, and a little bit of fish."
"Where'd we get fish?" he asks, following her pointing finger.
"Your friend, Cooper. He brought some down, said you'd traded some squirrel to him?"
"Oh, yeah," Daryl says. With his early morning conversation with Carol taking up all the space he had in his brain for thinking, he'd forgotten all about the swap he'd made the night before. He pops the berries in his mouth and throws Beth a wink. "Thanks for saving me some."
She blushes and turns away, and he thinks the jig is up because even though the two of them are trying, he never winked at her before in his life and she sure as hell never got red in the face like that. They really suck at acting like everything's fine. Rick clears his throat and says, "It's probably time we had a group meeting."
Daryl's gaze jumps to Rick's, but he realizes all the sheriff means is what Daryl's been wondering about for a few days now: what are they gonna do about finding Glenn. He doesn't seem aware of Beth's averted gaze, or Daryl's mental berating of himself.
"Yeah, I been thinking we need to get a scout party together, see if we can track Glenn down," Daryl offers and Rick starts nodding.
"We need to figure out who's best to send," Rick agrees.
"Well, I'll go, of course," Daryl volunteers.
"No!" For maybe half of a split second, he'd actually stopped being completely focused on Beth's presence, but her loud cry draws his eyes, and Rick's, back to her. Carol and Maggie, who are standing a ways off chatting, glance over and then come walking towards them.
"What's the matter?" Maggie asks.
"You can't go," Beth says, her grip on the baby tightening so much that Judith makes a little whining noise and wriggles in her grasp. "You can't leave," she pleads, her voice cracking and tears standing up in her eyes so fast Daryl feels a bit winded.
"Nothing's been decided, Beth," Rick says placatingly. He reaches a hand out to her, but she jerks away from him and closes the distance between herself and Daryl. She holds his gaze intently, and he wants to look away, needs to look away because he can feel the eyes of everyone else on him, but he's fucking paralyzed.
"We're gonna have a meeting and talk about it. Everybody," Rick says. "Decide what's best, together."
Beth just shakes her head and Daryl wants to tell her to knock it off (or maybe that he loves her), but luckily he can't say anything because his tongue is suddenly thick and glued to the roof of his mouth. "No," she says again, this time in such a low whisper, it's just her mouth forming the word, and him watching her lips move, and fuck.
He finally swings away, breaking the spell or whatever the hell it was. 'Course now, he's got no appetite for fish, or any other thing. The berries have turned to sawdust in his mouth. He chokes them down anyway.
"We'll have the meeting tonight, around supper," Rick goes on. "Let's make sure everyone's back here, then, okay? I'll make sure Carl and Michonne know. Carol, you find Tyreese and Sasha and Bob."
"I'll make sure the girls are here, too," Carol adds, because even though Rick doesn't want Mika and Lizzie included like Carl is, Carol has no problem with it.
"Everyone back here at dusk, then," Rick says. "Okay, Daryl? Beth?"
He risks a glance at Rick, but avoids everything around Beth by about three feet. "Yup," he says with as much practiced casualness as he can muster.
"Sure," Beth says, her voice stronger. Then she turns to Carol. "Can you take the baby?" she asks. "I need to go--" She doesn't say where, she just dumps Judith into Carol's arms and takes off running toward the river.
Maggie's gaze follows her sister and Daryl sees her start to move that direction, but Carol puts a hand out to stop her. "Let her go," she says calmly.
"Why is she so upset?" Maggie demands, eying Daryl suspiciously. "We were just talking about it last night, so she knows we're gonna go. At least some of us."
"I don't think she wants Daryl to go," Carol says pointedly and he cuts her a look to shut her up. Of course, she doesn't. "She's worried he might get hurt, or worse."
"Well, yeah," Maggie says, a tone in her voice that implies it's all inevitable, one way or another. Then she pauses, for just a second, and looks over at Carol. Then she glances back at Daryl, and he shifts uncomfortably, dropping his eyes to the ground. "Oh," Maggie says. Just oh. Not, are you fucking kidding me, mother fucker? which is still what Daryl expects someone, somewhere to say.
"Oooooh," she says again and Daryl can't control himself. The understanding in that one word makes it impossible for him to not own it, and he fixes her with a stare that he hopes seems defiant even though he feels like he's begging for approval. (Approval he doesn't even know if he wants, because he knows it's better for Beth to be without him.) But Beth's sister is no longer looking at him, instead she's gazing off in the distance, in the direction that Beth went as she ran away. "It all makes a lot more sense, now."
"If you really want to go, you better get that straightened out by tonight," Rick says matter-of-factly. "I don't want us spending the whole time arguing. I want us deciding what we're doing and then getting it done. So somebody needs to go talk to her."
Judith lets out a loud peal of laughter, seemingly out of nowhere, her little baby hands patting Carol's cheeks. Everyone looks at Daryl again.
He shrugs and mumbles, "I'll do it," as he stomps off.
Beth is sitting at the end of a long dock, the wooden structure on this peaceful end of the river that seems to be the only thing left in creation that hasn't fallen into decay. Daryl knows it well, since his nightly patrols carry him down here every day.
She hears his footsteps coming long before he gets to her because she glances back at him. She doesn't, however, keep her gaze on him, and he can see her wiping the tears off her face as he nears her.
He pulls a rag from his back pocket; it's not classy like having a handkerchief, but it's better than nothing. He squats down next to her and hands it to her. She takes it without comment. She wipes at her face and then sniffs, and it sends spasms of pain through his chest cavity.
"Sometimes you make me so mad," she finally says.
"I know," he replies, only because he doesn't know what else to say.
"I can only be cool so long, you know. Eventually I'm gonna crack. We can't all be James Dean."
He looks at her profile because she still hasn't put her eyes on him. What? He has no idea what she's talking about.
"You're cool, Beth. You've got the coolest head of any of us," he says, and he means it.
She throws him a look from the corner of her eye. "I never asked you for nothing, you know. Not one thing. At least not one thing I wasn't willing to give back. So here's a question for you. If I say I wanna go with Maggie to look for Glenn. Are you fine with that?"
He can feel the trap of it, the quick argument that could ensue from it. It's not because Beth's not capable; he would easily take her as his patrol partner. Girl can handle a knife, and she's not afraid, in some ways he'd say she's braver than he ever dreamed of being. It's just, the things she's not afraid of are different than the things he's not afraid of.
She finally turns to look at him, her eyes locking on his and he knows his mistake is too great already. He's taken too long to answer; she knows what he thinks, so even if he says words he doesn't really mean, she's gonna know they're false.
So, he tells the truth. "No."
Her lips quiver into a triumphant smile, but it quickly collapses when tears trickle down her cheeks. "Don't go, Daryl. For me. Don't go." She doesn't touch him, she doesn't do anything.
She's just Beth. And he fucking loves her. So, he should run, as far and as wide as Maggie's grief will take him.
That night, when Rick asks for volunteers to go with Maggie, Tyreese, Sasha, and Bob raise their hands.
Beth slides her fingers through his, and he lets her, 'cause it's dark and no one can see anyway.
...part four...
Author: badboy_fangirl
Fandom: The Walking Dead
Characters/Pairings: Daryl POV; Daryl/Beth, with appearances by everyone else.
Word Count: ~3700
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 / Post-episode 4x10 "Inmates."
Summary:
Author's notes: Title lifted from Imagine Dragons' song "Round and Round."
Previous Chapters: In the same universe as Blue Jean Beauty Queen and Cool, Like James Dean. I wanted to post this before the new episode, but it just didn't happen. This is obviously AU from tonight's new episode. BUT OMG, TONIGHT'S EPISODE. SO GOOD.
He can feel her watching him, her eyes trained on him in a way that makes confrontation inevitable. He spends his patrol time imagining what he'll say to her when she approaches him, because he knows she's gonna.
Everyone else is oblivious; happy to be reunited, happy to have a place that feels safe, at least for the time-being. He figures they'll have a pow-wow soon, him and Rick, to decide if this is where they're gonna stay, but so far they've been welcomed in real nice.
He feels like a fucking idiot that a part of him was happier on the outside, when it was just him and...
No. No. They ended that; he was a jackass about it, but Beth was unbelievably grown-up and kind to him. And she's gone right back to being what she was before all of it. Well, not really, because the sadness around her eyes about Hershel's still there, but she sings to the baby and takes Carl with her on walks, unaware of how the boy looks at her. Daryl figures he's only aware of it because he probably has the same look on his face, but beings that he's not a 12-year-old he does everything to school his features back into pre-prison-break Daryl. Before he knew what it was like to have her arms around him like that and before he couldn't fucking sleep at night simply because she's not next to him.
It's fine; he takes the night patrol and falls into an exhausted sleep in the early morning just as the light's coming up, and he's fine. Everybody's back together--well, not everybody--but a lot of the ones he cared about. Minus Glenn, of course. That's what him and Rick need to talk about: going to find Glenn, 'cause they gotta do it. For them, for Maggie.
For Beth.
He sees how she takes care of her sister, just all the gentleness and sweetness, and he knows he'd have a lot more of it directed at him, if...
Carol's back with them, and Daryl had never been so glad to see anyone in his life, not even his blood kin, come to think of it. But she's always paid too much attention to him, and before he can get a grip on what he's gonna do about Beth, he knows she's seen too much.
So he avoids her, which is fucking stupid. He figures it's all the sex him and Beth had that had depleted his brain cells and it's a good thing that he's not in charge of anything super important right now, because he'd probably get them all killed.
Cooper, his patrol buddy, is a nice guy who managed to keep his own woman alive, so he picks up on what Beth means to Daryl right away, even though Daryl denies it. He has the occasional moment where he wants to talk to the guy about it, but he just can't bring himself to do it. It would all eventually come around to the fact that he was there the day Beth turned 18, when they actually found a box cake in the prison pantry and Rick and Carl managed to make it without any oil. It came out kinda flat, but it had been edible, and Beth beamed like a ray of sunshine while they all sang to her.
That had been three months or so before the prison was attacked. Daryl had turned 33 on his last birthday, but he was a whole lot closer to 34 now, and, yeah, he might be from fucking Georgia, but kids were kids. And girl kids were even worse. And he shoulda never touched her once, much less all the touching he did, and for how long he did it (every fucking day, as much as he could like she would vanish if he didn't keep his hands on her all the time). Not to mention how he let her do so many things to him because she'd look at him with those eyes and whisper, "I wanna try something," and he literally felt powerless to resist her.
Not that he even tried, if he's being really honest.
The sad part was, other than the initial resistance he put up to her the first time she made a move on him, none of those thoughts entered his mind again. The Beth Haze enveloped him and he forgot everything else except keeping them alive so that he could keep on living in The Haze. It wasn't until they got reunited with their friends, until he saw her cradling Judith to her breast, that all the reasons why it was a bad idea came back.
Sometimes he thinks those thoughts must have flashed across his forehead in capital letters and Carol had read every single one, because he knew she knew. He kept waiting for her to say something, but she didn't, or hadn't yet, anyway, and it's killing him.
Or maybe what's killing him is being right next to Beth every day; having her shoot a smile his way, or having her fingers brush his when she hands him his portion of dinner, but not actually claiming any of her actions as his when it feels like they belong to him. Even though he told her no, even though she complied, 100%. She simply went back to being the sweet thing she'd always been, but in a much less intimate way.
Yeah, it's definitely that, that's what's killing him.
He comes back to camp about a week after they've settled in, and Carol's waiting for him. It's actually a relief, and he smiles at her, because, finally. It can start. Or end. Or whatever. Maybe Carol, who had been banished for despicable behavior, would banish him, and he could just wander off, and forget all the other stuff.
"Let's go for a walk," she says, her voice soft.
He could say he needs sleep, or any number of things, but he doesn't. He just nods and follows after her, away from the main sleeping area.
"You okay?" she asks once they're walking in synch, side by side.
"Yeah, yeah," he replies, rubbing a hand against the back of his neck. "I'm okay. You?"
She gives him a small smile. "I'm good. I'm guessing Rick doesn't think it matters anymore, what I did to Karen?"
Daryl shrugs. "We haven't talked about it, but I think he's just so glad Judith's alive, he don't really care about anything else right now." He's silent for a beat, then adds, "And that's the way it should be. Bygones are bygones. There's a lot of stuff none of us would do if the world hadn't gone to shit."
Carol makes a sound of agreement in her throat, and then she looks at him out of the corner of her eye. "You mean...like you and Beth?"
He didn't intend to set her up so perfectly, and he'd already made up his mind he wasn't gonna lie about it, not to Carol, but it's only when she asks him that he really understands. He woulda wanted Beth, apocalypse or no apocalypse. But, probably, at least he hopes, anyway, he wouldn't have actually done anything with her if they hadn't been left alone. Maybe. Possibly.
"Right," is all he offers along with another shrug. "But that's over," he says quietly.
Carol chuckles. "Yeah, I can tell it's over. Or at least you're trying to make it be over. That doesn't actually make it over." They've come to a small clearing, and Carol stops, lowering herself to the ground. She pats the grass next to her. "Pull up a seat, friend."
He sits down beside her, but can't seem to make his eyes come all the way up to hers. She eventually reaches over and tips his chin up so he has to look at her. "She's head over heels in love with you, Daryl. You don't get to just say 'stop' and stop it."
He jerks his head away from her touch and smooths his sweaty palms down the length of his jeans, to his knees. "It was...wrong. And Beth knows it. We agreed, her and me. We agreed to just go back to how it's supposed to be."
"How is it supposed to be?" she asks, and Daryl feels genuine confusion well up in him. This is the conversation he expected to have with Beth--or rather, the fight he thought they'd have that she didn't really let him say most of the things he wanted to say. But Carol's tone shows him she doesn't want to fight, either. She just wants to know.
His suspicions are suddenly raised. "Did Beth hit you up to talk to me?" he demands, looking very closely at her expression.
Carol's eyes go wide and she shakes her head. "Good lord, no! She hasn't said a word to me; she never would, of course. I just know the two of you, I can just tell. You lost your poker face somewhere out there." She gestures to the world beyond them. "I keep waitin' on Maggie to notice, and she will, soon as she stops crying for Glenn."
She puts her hand on his arm, stopping his nervous leg rubbing, at least on one side. "Daryl. Seriously, who says it's wrong? If you love each other..." she trails off, just looking at him. There is so much tenderness in her expression that he can feel his throat closing off in a painful way.
This isn't what he expected at all. He can't really wrap his mind around it. He blinks and clears his throat, but he still doesn't have words.
Carol squeezes his arm with her hand. "Maybe in the old world, it would have mattered to someone, but fuck them. If it matters to anyone here? Double fuck them. There's only so much happiness to find in a world like this; I don't think anyone should get to dictate the terms of it. I've thought about it a lot--when I was out there alone, I had a lot of time to just think, to consider what I'd done. What level of wrong was it? Or was it wrong it all? In what way was it wrong? And the conclusion I came to, well, I don't think Rick'd like it, but I kept his baby alive, so maybe he isn't so wrapped up in those details."
She smiles a little, and then keeps going when Daryl remains silent. "The Walkers coming is the best thing that ever happened to me." She puts her hands up in a calming gesture when the shock he feels must come over his face. "We've all lost people, and losing Sophia was the worst for me, it was, but I wouldn't even be a person who could survive that if everything that came before hadn't happened. I would still be with Ed; I'd be teaching my daughter that it's normal to let a man beat me. No, as much as I'd give anything to bring her back, to have another chance with her, I'm glad that when she went, this," she points at her chest, "was the mother she had, not that other woman who was too afraid, too weak, to stand up for herself." She puts her hand on his arm again. "Don't be afraid to be happy, Daryl. Just. Don't."
He looks away from her face, mostly because he can still feel emotion choking him, and he's terrified that tears might appear in his eyes. But he's also moved, touched deep down inside by her words, by her conviction.
It takes a long minute or two, but he gets control of himself. Slowly, he gets to his feet. "I'm gonna go back, get some shut-eye. You coming?"
Carol looks up at him, smiling softly. "No. I'm gonna stay here for a bit. Think about what I said," she says, some bossiness in her voice.
He cracks a smile at her, even though it feels wrong on his face. "I will."
When he wakes up around noon, their group is mulling around in the general vicinity where they've taken up. It sort of reminds Daryl of the cafeteria in high school, at least the two years he went, and how the jocks sat with the jocks and the art geeks sat with the art geeks.
(And the hillbillies sat with the hillbillies.)
He doesn't know what group they are, but they keep to themselves, even though there are plenty more people, and probably some worth knowing. Truth is, Daryl doesn't want to know anyone else, not now. Cooper is as far as he'll take it, because he believes in pulling his weight, doing his part, but he isn't looking to mingle.
It hurts too much when you lose those people, and sometimes it hurts when they're right next to you.
Rick's handing the baby off to Beth just as Daryl approaches and Beth does a double take when she notices him. "Hey, Daryl," she says cheerfully, hefting Judith up on her hip.
"Hey," he replies, trying his best to make eye contact but not look too long. "What's on the menu for today?" he asks.
Beth gestures over her shoulder. "There's some berries over there, and a little bit of fish."
"Where'd we get fish?" he asks, following her pointing finger.
"Your friend, Cooper. He brought some down, said you'd traded some squirrel to him?"
"Oh, yeah," Daryl says. With his early morning conversation with Carol taking up all the space he had in his brain for thinking, he'd forgotten all about the swap he'd made the night before. He pops the berries in his mouth and throws Beth a wink. "Thanks for saving me some."
She blushes and turns away, and he thinks the jig is up because even though the two of them are trying, he never winked at her before in his life and she sure as hell never got red in the face like that. They really suck at acting like everything's fine. Rick clears his throat and says, "It's probably time we had a group meeting."
Daryl's gaze jumps to Rick's, but he realizes all the sheriff means is what Daryl's been wondering about for a few days now: what are they gonna do about finding Glenn. He doesn't seem aware of Beth's averted gaze, or Daryl's mental berating of himself.
"Yeah, I been thinking we need to get a scout party together, see if we can track Glenn down," Daryl offers and Rick starts nodding.
"We need to figure out who's best to send," Rick agrees.
"Well, I'll go, of course," Daryl volunteers.
"No!" For maybe half of a split second, he'd actually stopped being completely focused on Beth's presence, but her loud cry draws his eyes, and Rick's, back to her. Carol and Maggie, who are standing a ways off chatting, glance over and then come walking towards them.
"What's the matter?" Maggie asks.
"You can't go," Beth says, her grip on the baby tightening so much that Judith makes a little whining noise and wriggles in her grasp. "You can't leave," she pleads, her voice cracking and tears standing up in her eyes so fast Daryl feels a bit winded.
"Nothing's been decided, Beth," Rick says placatingly. He reaches a hand out to her, but she jerks away from him and closes the distance between herself and Daryl. She holds his gaze intently, and he wants to look away, needs to look away because he can feel the eyes of everyone else on him, but he's fucking paralyzed.
"We're gonna have a meeting and talk about it. Everybody," Rick says. "Decide what's best, together."
Beth just shakes her head and Daryl wants to tell her to knock it off (or maybe that he loves her), but luckily he can't say anything because his tongue is suddenly thick and glued to the roof of his mouth. "No," she says again, this time in such a low whisper, it's just her mouth forming the word, and him watching her lips move, and fuck.
He finally swings away, breaking the spell or whatever the hell it was. 'Course now, he's got no appetite for fish, or any other thing. The berries have turned to sawdust in his mouth. He chokes them down anyway.
"We'll have the meeting tonight, around supper," Rick goes on. "Let's make sure everyone's back here, then, okay? I'll make sure Carl and Michonne know. Carol, you find Tyreese and Sasha and Bob."
"I'll make sure the girls are here, too," Carol adds, because even though Rick doesn't want Mika and Lizzie included like Carl is, Carol has no problem with it.
"Everyone back here at dusk, then," Rick says. "Okay, Daryl? Beth?"
He risks a glance at Rick, but avoids everything around Beth by about three feet. "Yup," he says with as much practiced casualness as he can muster.
"Sure," Beth says, her voice stronger. Then she turns to Carol. "Can you take the baby?" she asks. "I need to go--" She doesn't say where, she just dumps Judith into Carol's arms and takes off running toward the river.
Maggie's gaze follows her sister and Daryl sees her start to move that direction, but Carol puts a hand out to stop her. "Let her go," she says calmly.
"Why is she so upset?" Maggie demands, eying Daryl suspiciously. "We were just talking about it last night, so she knows we're gonna go. At least some of us."
"I don't think she wants Daryl to go," Carol says pointedly and he cuts her a look to shut her up. Of course, she doesn't. "She's worried he might get hurt, or worse."
"Well, yeah," Maggie says, a tone in her voice that implies it's all inevitable, one way or another. Then she pauses, for just a second, and looks over at Carol. Then she glances back at Daryl, and he shifts uncomfortably, dropping his eyes to the ground. "Oh," Maggie says. Just oh. Not, are you fucking kidding me, mother fucker? which is still what Daryl expects someone, somewhere to say.
"Oooooh," she says again and Daryl can't control himself. The understanding in that one word makes it impossible for him to not own it, and he fixes her with a stare that he hopes seems defiant even though he feels like he's begging for approval. (Approval he doesn't even know if he wants, because he knows it's better for Beth to be without him.) But Beth's sister is no longer looking at him, instead she's gazing off in the distance, in the direction that Beth went as she ran away. "It all makes a lot more sense, now."
"If you really want to go, you better get that straightened out by tonight," Rick says matter-of-factly. "I don't want us spending the whole time arguing. I want us deciding what we're doing and then getting it done. So somebody needs to go talk to her."
Judith lets out a loud peal of laughter, seemingly out of nowhere, her little baby hands patting Carol's cheeks. Everyone looks at Daryl again.
He shrugs and mumbles, "I'll do it," as he stomps off.
Beth is sitting at the end of a long dock, the wooden structure on this peaceful end of the river that seems to be the only thing left in creation that hasn't fallen into decay. Daryl knows it well, since his nightly patrols carry him down here every day.
She hears his footsteps coming long before he gets to her because she glances back at him. She doesn't, however, keep her gaze on him, and he can see her wiping the tears off her face as he nears her.
He pulls a rag from his back pocket; it's not classy like having a handkerchief, but it's better than nothing. He squats down next to her and hands it to her. She takes it without comment. She wipes at her face and then sniffs, and it sends spasms of pain through his chest cavity.
"Sometimes you make me so mad," she finally says.
"I know," he replies, only because he doesn't know what else to say.
"I can only be cool so long, you know. Eventually I'm gonna crack. We can't all be James Dean."
He looks at her profile because she still hasn't put her eyes on him. What? He has no idea what she's talking about.
"You're cool, Beth. You've got the coolest head of any of us," he says, and he means it.
She throws him a look from the corner of her eye. "I never asked you for nothing, you know. Not one thing. At least not one thing I wasn't willing to give back. So here's a question for you. If I say I wanna go with Maggie to look for Glenn. Are you fine with that?"
He can feel the trap of it, the quick argument that could ensue from it. It's not because Beth's not capable; he would easily take her as his patrol partner. Girl can handle a knife, and she's not afraid, in some ways he'd say she's braver than he ever dreamed of being. It's just, the things she's not afraid of are different than the things he's not afraid of.
She finally turns to look at him, her eyes locking on his and he knows his mistake is too great already. He's taken too long to answer; she knows what he thinks, so even if he says words he doesn't really mean, she's gonna know they're false.
So, he tells the truth. "No."
Her lips quiver into a triumphant smile, but it quickly collapses when tears trickle down her cheeks. "Don't go, Daryl. For me. Don't go." She doesn't touch him, she doesn't do anything.
She's just Beth. And he fucking loves her. So, he should run, as far and as wide as Maggie's grief will take him.
That night, when Rick asks for volunteers to go with Maggie, Tyreese, Sasha, and Bob raise their hands.
Beth slides her fingers through his, and he lets her, 'cause it's dark and no one can see anyway.
...part four...