[fic] lay your hands on the left behind [3/5]
Title: lay your hands on the left behind [3/5]
Author: badboy_fangirl
Fandom: The Walking Dead
Characters/Pairings: Daryl & Beth POV; Daryl/Beth; with appearances by everyone else.
Word Count: ~3500
Rating/Warnings: NC-17 / Spoilers through all of season four.
Summary:
Author's notes: This is a companion/continuation fic to Empty Handed and Holding On. The opening quote for this chapter is lifted from the song "Tell Me a Story" by Phillip Phillips. Previous chapters: [1] [2]
You are the light that leads me
You are the moon that pulls me
He's an asshole.
A dirty, redneck asshole.
Always has been, always will be. No amount of playing house with Beth, or even loving Beth with every breath he takes can change that.
He is what he is, and change is an illusion that no one should ever indulge in.
Because from the moment he sees those kids, he hates them.
He hates every step they're taking away from their group, he hates every second that puts him and Beth further into the woods, away from the safety of open space.
He hates.
And he ain't felt nothing like that in so long. Not since Terminus. He'd forgotten it was possible to burn inside, like he swallowed acid. It wasn't the heat that Beth provoked in him, it was altogether different. It chars the back of his throat. It stings his eyes.
Those fuckin' kids, he thinks, the words ugly, filthy epithets.
And then Beth wraps her arms around him, and whispers her magic words, tells him she wants to make a family with him, and all the awful thoughts abandon him. Hope swells inside him in this grotesque way.
He wonders about being someone's daddy; he considers his own father, who hadn't been much of nothing, and Merle, the piss poor substitute.
But then Hershel swims in his mind's eye, and Rick. He suddenly wants to ask Glenn if he's scared shitless to be a daddy. He wakes up with Beth's hand in his hair and his mouth resting against the inside of a thigh that is carefully covered by her jeans.
He wants to find those kids, just like she said, but he also wants to strip her naked and come inside her with nothing preventing what might happen.
(It's official, he is fucking crazy.)
He rolls his neck and glances up at her. The dawn is breaking, but the sky's not fully lit up yet. She smooths his hair back from his forehad and says in a soft voice, "It's good you woke up, 'cause my leg is dead asleep. Gotta move, baby."
She gives him a gentle shove up and he pulls himself into an upright position as she straightens her leg out, groaning quietly as she tries getting her leg underneath her. He stands as well, helping her get on her feet. She does her little giggle thing, the sound that's been the music of his life these last six months and as she moves into him, he's already lowering his head to put his mouth against hers. He pulls her in tight, hugging her, his hands splayed across the curve of her back and ass, gripping her hard.
When he pulls back, it's just so he can rub his lips over hers teasingly. "Love you," he murmurs, and the tickle of her continued laughter makes the hope inside him not seem so crazy.
"I love you," she whispers, her hands digging into the hair over his neck. She pulls him back for a deeper kiss and shifts her body against his purposefully.
Maybe this baby idea has got them both going, but he's not gonna mention it. Not now. They've got business to tend to.
They eat some fruit and granola, nothing that requires a fire, and then they clean up their camp, repacking their noisemakers and other items. Once everything's put away, the sun is mostly up so they find the source of their trail and start off again.
And, like a miracle that only Beth Greene could pray for, they find the kids less than an hour later.
The stream they'd come to the day before had essentially run parallel with their journey, and Daryl's impressed with this kid. He's smart at the very least, and there's no telling how long he's been on his own, so some of it is probably pure adaptation. On the other hand, what helps them find the kids is the crying baby. But the boy has the baby hanging in the stream, and he appears to be giving the squalling infant a bath.
It's just lucky that out here, the Walkers have thinned out so much.
Beth stops walking and grabs at Daryl's arm to stop him, too. She makes a movement with her hand, and he realizes she wants him to quietly walk around, sort of blocking them in. He gives her a nod and heads away from her. With the stream right there, and the kid standing in the middle of it, there are only three directions the boy could go, and none of them very quickly. Hopefully they can talk him into giving them a chance before he can gather his stuff and take off again.
With no Walkers, Daryl's pretty certain of his ability to catch the kid, but it would be much better if they can just get him to come along, willing.
The kid doesn't see Beth until she's right up on him, but he's waist-deep in the water with the baby in his arms, so he can't really run anyway. From the distance Daryl's away from them and the slight wind that's blowing, he can't hear what she says. She's speaking lowly, calmly, and he remembers the stories she's told him about growing up with horses. Some spooked easily, he knows, having been the victim of one of them himself, but he knows Beth is good with this type of thing.
Like she said, she has a way with wild animals.
She motions to Daryl a moment later, beckoning him closer. He walks quietly, and slowly, so when the kid turns and looks over his shoulder, hopefully he doesn't look like a scary old guy with a weapon strapped on his back.
"This is Daryl," Beth says as he gets near them. "He's my boyfriend," she explains, holding out her hand. Daryl moves forward and slides his fingers through hers so they're standing side-by-side in front of the kid who is watching them with wide, disbelieving eyes.
"If you want to go on, on your own, you can," she continues, her voice soft and reassuring. "But we'd really like it if you came with us. We got a safe place to stay, with no Walkers. You could bring your little brother and you wouldn't have to be scared anymore."
The boy's shaggy bangs aren't hanging in his eyes like they had been the day before; his hair is slicked back, having been washed in the stream at some point. His face is remarkable clean now as well, but a dusting of freckles across his nose and cheeks give him a mischievous look. The baby squirms in his arms, having stopped crying, and slaps at the water with his little hands. He's buck naked and Daryl realizes that's how Beth knows the baby's a boy as well.
"I dunno," the kid mutters and Daryl tenses up. Beth's hand squeezes his tightly, which must be a command to shut up before he can even say anything.
He searches for some patience, for anything that will help him relate to this kid and not just tell him to stop being stupid and come with the grown-ups. When he was that age, would he have listened to any adult? Hell, no. Just like with this kid, there had been no one to trust, no one to depend on.
He glances at Beth. The sweetness of her spirit is displayed so plainly on her face that he feels a rush of love for her that surpasses anything he's experienced before. She has empathy even though she has no idea what this kid has been through, and here's Daryl, the grown version of this human being and he's the one who can't relate?
What the hell did a Walker Apocalypse do for him if it didn't lead him to this moment in time for a very specific reason?
"Look, man," he says, drawing the kid's eyes back to him. "I get it, I do. I was skeptical as all get out when we first hit Washington. I couldn't believe that there was any place safe with any nice people anymore, because all I seen out here was a bunch of assholes who tried to kill me or take my stuff. But then I got there, and saw that it was all true. But I still needed to know that I could leave any time I wanted, and you can. That's why we're out here, looking for folks. So they can know it, too. You come with us, and if you don't like it, you can take off, no questions asked."
The kid squints at him, sizing him up. Eventually he shakes his head. "Maybe for you," he says, gesturing towards Daryl and Beth with an elbow. "But I'm a kid. I get in there, they're gonna put me in protective services, or whatever. I know what it's like. Happened to me before all this started. My mom, she wasn't always around. So the Child Welfare people came around, bugging us."
The baby slaps the water particularly hard, splashing the both of them. The older boy turns and moves back towards the shore. As he comes out of the water, Daryl sees he's down to his shorts, which are actual swimming trunks, as opposed to underwear. He remembers, out here you make do with whatever you've got.
Beth says nothing, and Daryl realizes she doesn't know what to say, and truthfully neither does he. Because the kid's right. If they log them in at Registration, that's exactly what will happen to them.
Because if one thing's true about the new world order, it's that it's easier to keep track of such a small number of people in comparison with the old number.
So Daryl says the only thing he can. "You can stay with us, and if y'don't like it, I'll help y'get out without worryin' about the Welfare check. Deal?"
Daryl sticks his hand out and the kid shifts the baby to his left hip before reaching to shake it. He still looks skeptical, but he shakes Daryl's hand firmly, his grip solid. "You got any food?" he asks as he lets go.
Daryl steps back as Beth starts gushing about what she's got in her pack that he can have, and he watches them silently. Beth offers to hold the baby as the boy eats and she folds a towel she's got into a makeshift diaper. Of course the baby takes right to her, and Daryl has that weird urge to knock her up again pass through him. She glances over at him and smiles warmly, and he knows she thinks everything's gonna be just fine now.
But the kid is still shifty, and Daryl doesn't trust his willingness to come along. He knows all the stuff he did to avoid adults who might have taken him outta his own broken home growing up, and when he reflects on the kid he was, he knows he woulda wanted to trust someone like Beth, but he never would have.
As they sit down on the bank of the stream, Daryl keeps his eyes roaming around the area, watching for Walkers or any other unwanted visitor.
"What's your name?" Beth asks.
Around a mouthful of apple the kid says, "Shep." Then he swallows, dragging the back of his hand over his mouth. "I'm Shep, and this's Jace."
"Hello, Jace," Beth says, lifting the baby up so he's standing on her legs. The baby's wobbly arms reach out and his small fist grabs at Beth's nose. "How old are ya?" she asks, moving in to kiss the baby's plump cheek.
"Thirteen," he says, which kinda surprises Daryl, but then he remembers how it seemed like Carl was a little boy one day and then a man the next when he went through a crazy growth spurt. "Jace is about a year old. I don't know his exact birthday. We were with a group, my mom and me, but they..." Here he hesitates and Daryl swings around to watch his face as he's talking. The boy might be a liar, because lying in a survival skill, so there's no telling how much of what comes out of his mouth ought to be believed.
The kid looks away from Beth, who is listening intently. It's either a lie, or just really hard for him to say when he finally utters, "They weren't nice people, and when some of the dead people came, I was able to hide, because I'm small, in the loft of this old barn. Someone killed one of the dead people--really killed them and they either fell on Jace, or maybe they buried Jace under the dead person on purpose, I don't really know. But the dead ones ate everybody else, including my mom. And while they were busy doing that, I snuck down from the top of the barn, got Jace out and ran like crazy. They didn't chase us, 'cause there was plenty of others to eat."
He takes another loud bite of his apple, his eyes moving from Beth's face to Daryl's and back again. "There were lotsa times I wished my mom would die, but I was still sad when it happened. And I couldn't leave Jace. He's not my brother, but he's just a baby. I couldn't leave him, could I?"
Daryl shifts his gaze to Beth's face, sees her blink back tears. "'Course not," she says gently. "You're really brave, Shep. Jace is lucky to have you."
Something inside Daryl (in the old world, he called it his bullshit meter) tells him that at least that part of the story's true. Shep and Jace are both little white kids, though, and he could have easily lied and said they were brothers. Telling the truth like that makes Daryl more uneasy.
One good truth to get them all to believe four great lies, that had always been his MO.
My momma works a lot, so we're on our own a bit. My brother always makes sure we got plenty of food; our daddy taught us to hunt. We got it lots better than other folks, you really don't need to come around here. Sometimes my daddy drinks, and when he does, he might shoot up the house some. My name's Daryl Dixon, I'm eleven years old, and I don't wanna be taken away from my family.
Twenty-five years later, he's not sure which one was the truth.
"We gotta go," he says, drawing everyone's attention. Even the baby looks up at him expectantly, as though he understands. "If we move pretty fast, maybe we can catch up with our group. They're combing the area for survivors, so they will have moved on, but prob'ly stopped again somewhere."
Shep doesn't argue, he just finishes the food Beth gave him and then puts his still wet clothes back on. Beth asks him if he has more stuff in his bag, other clothes that aren't wet. "No," he answers, tugging his shirt on awkwardly. "I got some clothes for Jace that I picked up on the way, but so far none of the houses I've found have anything that fits me. No big deal, though, they'll dry soon enough."
Daryl can't even reconcile the snapping, foul-mouthed kid of yesterday with this logical one before them. His sense of unease broadens even more.
Beth pulls out a long piece of cloth and hands it to Daryl. "Strap Jace to my front, will you, so my arms don't get tired from holding him."
Shep looks over at her, a small smile curving his mouth. "Wish I'd had something like that. Dragging him around has been so hard! That will make it so much easier!"
As Daryl stands in front of her and she holds the baby so he's facing out, Beth murmurs quietly, "Too good to be true?" and Daryl feels something like relief sweep over him. She hasn't been completely fooled either.
"Yeah," he returns in an equally low voice. "Watch him carefully."
Daryl ties a knot over the baby's stomach and Jace's small hands reach down to pat Daryl's knuckles. He looks back into Beth's eyes and then leans down to kiss her. "He doesn't trust us, not really," he whispers.
She nods.
"Y'all ready?" Beth asks as Daryl steps back.
Shep flashes another grin at them, seemingly impressed with Beth's more pronounced accent. "Where you from?" he asks.
They start walking back in the direction they'd come from and she answers, "Georgia. What about you?"
"Illinois. Mt. Vernon, Illinois. A place that doesn't exist anymore." He keeps his eyes forward as they're walking. "Well, it's still there, but nobody that's alive is there anymore."
Beth moves closer to Shep, putting a hand on his shoulder. He visibly jumps when she does that. "I know," is all she says, a wealth of understanding in two words. "Just wait till you see D.C., though. My first day there, I saw a guy talking on a cellphone, and it was like something out of a movie. It felt like I'd time-traveled or something."
By the time they find a place to camp that night, Daryl has listened to Beth do all she can in the space of eight hours to build a relationship with Shep, and Jace has fallen to sleep against her chest. She tucked his head into the strap of her sling to keep it from lolling the whole way.
Still as they settle down to sleep, Daryl's eyes never leave Shep's shadow. They ain't got much to steal, but what little they do have has to sustain them until they can get back to the group.
The kid lays down on the ground near the campfire and doesn't move at all. Beth wakes up halfway through the night to give Daryl a break and he warns her again, whispering, "I don't know if he'll abandon the baby, but..."
Beth puts a finger against his lips. "It'll be okay," she whispers back.
Exhaustion has Daryl falling to sleep almost against his will, but his dreams are all about a boy with freckles robbing them blind.
In the morning, what wakes him is Jace's soft cries. Beth is cooing to him, saying she wished she had some milk for him, but he eagerly takes some canned peaches she slides into his mouth. He still cries intermittently as he's chewing, almost as if he can't decide if he likes it or not.
Daryl rubs his eyes and looks around. Before he can fully register anything, Beth says, "He's gone."
Daryl jerks himself into a sitting position, and scans the area with frantic eyes.
"He didn't take anything that wasn't his, Daryl. He even left the clothes for Jace." She points to a small pile of things that remain where Shep had been sleeping.
"You just let him go?" he asks. "Why didn't ya wake me?" he demands, not even giving her a chance to speak.
"I let him go because we promised we would, remember?" She says the last word with guarded emphasis and Daryl finally looks at her face. "I was awake when he gathered up his stuff, but I just watched silently as he made his decision. Couldn't make him stay even if I wanted to."
"Fuck," Daryl mutters getting to his feet. He searches the ground for Shep's footprints.
"He kept on the way we were going. Maybe we'll find him again," she says.
Some emotion wells up in Daryl's chest, seizing him in this horrible grip. He almost can't take a full breath, and he wants to punch something really, really bad. Beth sits calmly on the ground, pushing peaches into the baby's mouth. He just whispers more swear words, and tries not to make eye contact with her.
"Daryl," she says, the tone of her voice one he has become intimately familiar with. It's indulgent, benign. It showers him in love and pisses him off at the same time.
"Don't," he says, holding out a finger towards her. "Just, don't." He can't handle her faith-filled lectures at this point, not when they'd come this far out of the way, not when that kid is gonna end up dead anyway.
Beth ignores his command, of course. "We've still got the baby. It's not a wasted trip."
Daryl walks away from her, steps past the noisemakers they'd put up the night before, edges his way just beyond their farcical cove of safety. Tears he can't control leak from his eyes, and he suddenly realizes Shep isn't him; Shep was never him. Shep was always Merle.
And he just lost him, all over again.
...part four...
Author: badboy_fangirl
Fandom: The Walking Dead
Characters/Pairings: Daryl & Beth POV; Daryl/Beth; with appearances by everyone else.
Word Count: ~3500
Rating/Warnings: NC-17 / Spoilers through all of season four.
Summary:
Author's notes: This is a companion/continuation fic to Empty Handed and Holding On. The opening quote for this chapter is lifted from the song "Tell Me a Story" by Phillip Phillips. Previous chapters: [1] [2]
You are the light that leads me
You are the moon that pulls me
He's an asshole.
A dirty, redneck asshole.
Always has been, always will be. No amount of playing house with Beth, or even loving Beth with every breath he takes can change that.
He is what he is, and change is an illusion that no one should ever indulge in.
Because from the moment he sees those kids, he hates them.
He hates every step they're taking away from their group, he hates every second that puts him and Beth further into the woods, away from the safety of open space.
He hates.
And he ain't felt nothing like that in so long. Not since Terminus. He'd forgotten it was possible to burn inside, like he swallowed acid. It wasn't the heat that Beth provoked in him, it was altogether different. It chars the back of his throat. It stings his eyes.
Those fuckin' kids, he thinks, the words ugly, filthy epithets.
And then Beth wraps her arms around him, and whispers her magic words, tells him she wants to make a family with him, and all the awful thoughts abandon him. Hope swells inside him in this grotesque way.
He wonders about being someone's daddy; he considers his own father, who hadn't been much of nothing, and Merle, the piss poor substitute.
But then Hershel swims in his mind's eye, and Rick. He suddenly wants to ask Glenn if he's scared shitless to be a daddy. He wakes up with Beth's hand in his hair and his mouth resting against the inside of a thigh that is carefully covered by her jeans.
He wants to find those kids, just like she said, but he also wants to strip her naked and come inside her with nothing preventing what might happen.
(It's official, he is fucking crazy.)
He rolls his neck and glances up at her. The dawn is breaking, but the sky's not fully lit up yet. She smooths his hair back from his forehad and says in a soft voice, "It's good you woke up, 'cause my leg is dead asleep. Gotta move, baby."
She gives him a gentle shove up and he pulls himself into an upright position as she straightens her leg out, groaning quietly as she tries getting her leg underneath her. He stands as well, helping her get on her feet. She does her little giggle thing, the sound that's been the music of his life these last six months and as she moves into him, he's already lowering his head to put his mouth against hers. He pulls her in tight, hugging her, his hands splayed across the curve of her back and ass, gripping her hard.
When he pulls back, it's just so he can rub his lips over hers teasingly. "Love you," he murmurs, and the tickle of her continued laughter makes the hope inside him not seem so crazy.
"I love you," she whispers, her hands digging into the hair over his neck. She pulls him back for a deeper kiss and shifts her body against his purposefully.
Maybe this baby idea has got them both going, but he's not gonna mention it. Not now. They've got business to tend to.
They eat some fruit and granola, nothing that requires a fire, and then they clean up their camp, repacking their noisemakers and other items. Once everything's put away, the sun is mostly up so they find the source of their trail and start off again.
And, like a miracle that only Beth Greene could pray for, they find the kids less than an hour later.
The stream they'd come to the day before had essentially run parallel with their journey, and Daryl's impressed with this kid. He's smart at the very least, and there's no telling how long he's been on his own, so some of it is probably pure adaptation. On the other hand, what helps them find the kids is the crying baby. But the boy has the baby hanging in the stream, and he appears to be giving the squalling infant a bath.
It's just lucky that out here, the Walkers have thinned out so much.
Beth stops walking and grabs at Daryl's arm to stop him, too. She makes a movement with her hand, and he realizes she wants him to quietly walk around, sort of blocking them in. He gives her a nod and heads away from her. With the stream right there, and the kid standing in the middle of it, there are only three directions the boy could go, and none of them very quickly. Hopefully they can talk him into giving them a chance before he can gather his stuff and take off again.
With no Walkers, Daryl's pretty certain of his ability to catch the kid, but it would be much better if they can just get him to come along, willing.
The kid doesn't see Beth until she's right up on him, but he's waist-deep in the water with the baby in his arms, so he can't really run anyway. From the distance Daryl's away from them and the slight wind that's blowing, he can't hear what she says. She's speaking lowly, calmly, and he remembers the stories she's told him about growing up with horses. Some spooked easily, he knows, having been the victim of one of them himself, but he knows Beth is good with this type of thing.
Like she said, she has a way with wild animals.
She motions to Daryl a moment later, beckoning him closer. He walks quietly, and slowly, so when the kid turns and looks over his shoulder, hopefully he doesn't look like a scary old guy with a weapon strapped on his back.
"This is Daryl," Beth says as he gets near them. "He's my boyfriend," she explains, holding out her hand. Daryl moves forward and slides his fingers through hers so they're standing side-by-side in front of the kid who is watching them with wide, disbelieving eyes.
"If you want to go on, on your own, you can," she continues, her voice soft and reassuring. "But we'd really like it if you came with us. We got a safe place to stay, with no Walkers. You could bring your little brother and you wouldn't have to be scared anymore."
The boy's shaggy bangs aren't hanging in his eyes like they had been the day before; his hair is slicked back, having been washed in the stream at some point. His face is remarkable clean now as well, but a dusting of freckles across his nose and cheeks give him a mischievous look. The baby squirms in his arms, having stopped crying, and slaps at the water with his little hands. He's buck naked and Daryl realizes that's how Beth knows the baby's a boy as well.
"I dunno," the kid mutters and Daryl tenses up. Beth's hand squeezes his tightly, which must be a command to shut up before he can even say anything.
He searches for some patience, for anything that will help him relate to this kid and not just tell him to stop being stupid and come with the grown-ups. When he was that age, would he have listened to any adult? Hell, no. Just like with this kid, there had been no one to trust, no one to depend on.
He glances at Beth. The sweetness of her spirit is displayed so plainly on her face that he feels a rush of love for her that surpasses anything he's experienced before. She has empathy even though she has no idea what this kid has been through, and here's Daryl, the grown version of this human being and he's the one who can't relate?
What the hell did a Walker Apocalypse do for him if it didn't lead him to this moment in time for a very specific reason?
"Look, man," he says, drawing the kid's eyes back to him. "I get it, I do. I was skeptical as all get out when we first hit Washington. I couldn't believe that there was any place safe with any nice people anymore, because all I seen out here was a bunch of assholes who tried to kill me or take my stuff. But then I got there, and saw that it was all true. But I still needed to know that I could leave any time I wanted, and you can. That's why we're out here, looking for folks. So they can know it, too. You come with us, and if you don't like it, you can take off, no questions asked."
The kid squints at him, sizing him up. Eventually he shakes his head. "Maybe for you," he says, gesturing towards Daryl and Beth with an elbow. "But I'm a kid. I get in there, they're gonna put me in protective services, or whatever. I know what it's like. Happened to me before all this started. My mom, she wasn't always around. So the Child Welfare people came around, bugging us."
The baby slaps the water particularly hard, splashing the both of them. The older boy turns and moves back towards the shore. As he comes out of the water, Daryl sees he's down to his shorts, which are actual swimming trunks, as opposed to underwear. He remembers, out here you make do with whatever you've got.
Beth says nothing, and Daryl realizes she doesn't know what to say, and truthfully neither does he. Because the kid's right. If they log them in at Registration, that's exactly what will happen to them.
Because if one thing's true about the new world order, it's that it's easier to keep track of such a small number of people in comparison with the old number.
So Daryl says the only thing he can. "You can stay with us, and if y'don't like it, I'll help y'get out without worryin' about the Welfare check. Deal?"
Daryl sticks his hand out and the kid shifts the baby to his left hip before reaching to shake it. He still looks skeptical, but he shakes Daryl's hand firmly, his grip solid. "You got any food?" he asks as he lets go.
Daryl steps back as Beth starts gushing about what she's got in her pack that he can have, and he watches them silently. Beth offers to hold the baby as the boy eats and she folds a towel she's got into a makeshift diaper. Of course the baby takes right to her, and Daryl has that weird urge to knock her up again pass through him. She glances over at him and smiles warmly, and he knows she thinks everything's gonna be just fine now.
But the kid is still shifty, and Daryl doesn't trust his willingness to come along. He knows all the stuff he did to avoid adults who might have taken him outta his own broken home growing up, and when he reflects on the kid he was, he knows he woulda wanted to trust someone like Beth, but he never would have.
As they sit down on the bank of the stream, Daryl keeps his eyes roaming around the area, watching for Walkers or any other unwanted visitor.
"What's your name?" Beth asks.
Around a mouthful of apple the kid says, "Shep." Then he swallows, dragging the back of his hand over his mouth. "I'm Shep, and this's Jace."
"Hello, Jace," Beth says, lifting the baby up so he's standing on her legs. The baby's wobbly arms reach out and his small fist grabs at Beth's nose. "How old are ya?" she asks, moving in to kiss the baby's plump cheek.
"Thirteen," he says, which kinda surprises Daryl, but then he remembers how it seemed like Carl was a little boy one day and then a man the next when he went through a crazy growth spurt. "Jace is about a year old. I don't know his exact birthday. We were with a group, my mom and me, but they..." Here he hesitates and Daryl swings around to watch his face as he's talking. The boy might be a liar, because lying in a survival skill, so there's no telling how much of what comes out of his mouth ought to be believed.
The kid looks away from Beth, who is listening intently. It's either a lie, or just really hard for him to say when he finally utters, "They weren't nice people, and when some of the dead people came, I was able to hide, because I'm small, in the loft of this old barn. Someone killed one of the dead people--really killed them and they either fell on Jace, or maybe they buried Jace under the dead person on purpose, I don't really know. But the dead ones ate everybody else, including my mom. And while they were busy doing that, I snuck down from the top of the barn, got Jace out and ran like crazy. They didn't chase us, 'cause there was plenty of others to eat."
He takes another loud bite of his apple, his eyes moving from Beth's face to Daryl's and back again. "There were lotsa times I wished my mom would die, but I was still sad when it happened. And I couldn't leave Jace. He's not my brother, but he's just a baby. I couldn't leave him, could I?"
Daryl shifts his gaze to Beth's face, sees her blink back tears. "'Course not," she says gently. "You're really brave, Shep. Jace is lucky to have you."
Something inside Daryl (in the old world, he called it his bullshit meter) tells him that at least that part of the story's true. Shep and Jace are both little white kids, though, and he could have easily lied and said they were brothers. Telling the truth like that makes Daryl more uneasy.
One good truth to get them all to believe four great lies, that had always been his MO.
My momma works a lot, so we're on our own a bit. My brother always makes sure we got plenty of food; our daddy taught us to hunt. We got it lots better than other folks, you really don't need to come around here. Sometimes my daddy drinks, and when he does, he might shoot up the house some. My name's Daryl Dixon, I'm eleven years old, and I don't wanna be taken away from my family.
Twenty-five years later, he's not sure which one was the truth.
"We gotta go," he says, drawing everyone's attention. Even the baby looks up at him expectantly, as though he understands. "If we move pretty fast, maybe we can catch up with our group. They're combing the area for survivors, so they will have moved on, but prob'ly stopped again somewhere."
Shep doesn't argue, he just finishes the food Beth gave him and then puts his still wet clothes back on. Beth asks him if he has more stuff in his bag, other clothes that aren't wet. "No," he answers, tugging his shirt on awkwardly. "I got some clothes for Jace that I picked up on the way, but so far none of the houses I've found have anything that fits me. No big deal, though, they'll dry soon enough."
Daryl can't even reconcile the snapping, foul-mouthed kid of yesterday with this logical one before them. His sense of unease broadens even more.
Beth pulls out a long piece of cloth and hands it to Daryl. "Strap Jace to my front, will you, so my arms don't get tired from holding him."
Shep looks over at her, a small smile curving his mouth. "Wish I'd had something like that. Dragging him around has been so hard! That will make it so much easier!"
As Daryl stands in front of her and she holds the baby so he's facing out, Beth murmurs quietly, "Too good to be true?" and Daryl feels something like relief sweep over him. She hasn't been completely fooled either.
"Yeah," he returns in an equally low voice. "Watch him carefully."
Daryl ties a knot over the baby's stomach and Jace's small hands reach down to pat Daryl's knuckles. He looks back into Beth's eyes and then leans down to kiss her. "He doesn't trust us, not really," he whispers.
She nods.
"Y'all ready?" Beth asks as Daryl steps back.
Shep flashes another grin at them, seemingly impressed with Beth's more pronounced accent. "Where you from?" he asks.
They start walking back in the direction they'd come from and she answers, "Georgia. What about you?"
"Illinois. Mt. Vernon, Illinois. A place that doesn't exist anymore." He keeps his eyes forward as they're walking. "Well, it's still there, but nobody that's alive is there anymore."
Beth moves closer to Shep, putting a hand on his shoulder. He visibly jumps when she does that. "I know," is all she says, a wealth of understanding in two words. "Just wait till you see D.C., though. My first day there, I saw a guy talking on a cellphone, and it was like something out of a movie. It felt like I'd time-traveled or something."
By the time they find a place to camp that night, Daryl has listened to Beth do all she can in the space of eight hours to build a relationship with Shep, and Jace has fallen to sleep against her chest. She tucked his head into the strap of her sling to keep it from lolling the whole way.
Still as they settle down to sleep, Daryl's eyes never leave Shep's shadow. They ain't got much to steal, but what little they do have has to sustain them until they can get back to the group.
The kid lays down on the ground near the campfire and doesn't move at all. Beth wakes up halfway through the night to give Daryl a break and he warns her again, whispering, "I don't know if he'll abandon the baby, but..."
Beth puts a finger against his lips. "It'll be okay," she whispers back.
Exhaustion has Daryl falling to sleep almost against his will, but his dreams are all about a boy with freckles robbing them blind.
In the morning, what wakes him is Jace's soft cries. Beth is cooing to him, saying she wished she had some milk for him, but he eagerly takes some canned peaches she slides into his mouth. He still cries intermittently as he's chewing, almost as if he can't decide if he likes it or not.
Daryl rubs his eyes and looks around. Before he can fully register anything, Beth says, "He's gone."
Daryl jerks himself into a sitting position, and scans the area with frantic eyes.
"He didn't take anything that wasn't his, Daryl. He even left the clothes for Jace." She points to a small pile of things that remain where Shep had been sleeping.
"You just let him go?" he asks. "Why didn't ya wake me?" he demands, not even giving her a chance to speak.
"I let him go because we promised we would, remember?" She says the last word with guarded emphasis and Daryl finally looks at her face. "I was awake when he gathered up his stuff, but I just watched silently as he made his decision. Couldn't make him stay even if I wanted to."
"Fuck," Daryl mutters getting to his feet. He searches the ground for Shep's footprints.
"He kept on the way we were going. Maybe we'll find him again," she says.
Some emotion wells up in Daryl's chest, seizing him in this horrible grip. He almost can't take a full breath, and he wants to punch something really, really bad. Beth sits calmly on the ground, pushing peaches into the baby's mouth. He just whispers more swear words, and tries not to make eye contact with her.
"Daryl," she says, the tone of her voice one he has become intimately familiar with. It's indulgent, benign. It showers him in love and pisses him off at the same time.
"Don't," he says, holding out a finger towards her. "Just, don't." He can't handle her faith-filled lectures at this point, not when they'd come this far out of the way, not when that kid is gonna end up dead anyway.
Beth ignores his command, of course. "We've still got the baby. It's not a wasted trip."
Daryl walks away from her, steps past the noisemakers they'd put up the night before, edges his way just beyond their farcical cove of safety. Tears he can't control leak from his eyes, and he suddenly realizes Shep isn't him; Shep was never him. Shep was always Merle.
And he just lost him, all over again.
...part four...