Wouldn't Kill You to Have a Little Faith, a walking dead fanfic

**A/N: This is a one-shot, and another attempt at a Coda fix-it. It's dedicated to all the members of Team Delusional on tumblr: I may not be a part of your ranks (because it hurts too much to hope), but I admire all the symbolism you find, and I wish that something like this could really happen on the show.

(FYI: This is a reunion fic, not a death fic, so if you're worried about character death triggers... don't be!)

Every time he sees her, she is bathed in light. Not from above, not from around her, but from within. She glows, like the angel she has always been, like the angel he wants to believe she was now. In life, she had cast that glow on him for such a brief period of time, and yet it had been enough to spark something within him. Some tiny little flickering flame that burned away the darkness bit by tiny bit, burning it down the same way they had burnt up that house full of memories. Until he'd carried her limp body in his arms and felt her weight drag him down, step by step. Until he'd dug her grave and covered her in dirt, with his own hands. Until that flame had gone out, just as she had.

He wants to believe that she has gone to a better place. He wants to believe that she has been given the halo and wings that she had deserved in life, living in a world that did not deserve her, good and pure as she was.

He wants to believe, but he can't. Because instead of being up there, she is with him down on earth, haunting his every step, refusing to let him give in to the darkness even though he desperately wants to.

01.

The first time he sees her is the same day he buries her. Maggie's endless sobs have driven him from the camp, like daggers clawing at his own grief and turning it to anger instead. Leaving was his best choice, when the only other option was to scream at her, rail at her, tell her that she didn't deserve to cry for the sister she had abandoned, the sister she had spared no thought for until Daryl had found her, and lost her.

Alone in the woods, he sinks to his knees as if the weight of her body in his arms is dragging him down again. His crossbow tumbles to the dirt and he looks at it through blurry eyes, remembering the way she'd caressed it with awe the first time he'd placed it in her hands. She'd held the same way he did; with respect, with admiration, almost with love. He'd never found anyone worthy of holding his bow, until her.

Now she would never hold his bow again. The memory of her words echo in his mind. Pretty soon I won't need you at all. She'd been right, hadn't she? Where she is now, Beth Greene has no need of a man like him. A dirty man, a broken man, a no-good rotten useless man who hadn't been able to keep her safe, hadn't been able to protect her, hadn't even been able to save her life. He wasn't worthy of her, and he wasn't worthy of any of this.

You're gonna miss me so bad when I'm gone, Daryl Dixon. It was too much, because missing her was like missing the sun. First it was just darkness, but then cold, endless cold, and no more life, and nothing worth seeing or touching or feeling anymore.

You're gonna be the last man standing. He'd never thought that the idea could hurt him so much, but it did. What's the point of still standing, if there's no one left at your side? What's the point, if there's nothing left to live for.

Maybe that was it, then. Maybe he had nothing left to live for. Maybe he should just stop trying.

"Daryl Dixon. You stop that right now."

Her voice echoes all around him and he knows it can't be real, but he looks up anyway and there she is. She's glowing from the inside, radiant, angelic. She's wearing a sundress, some white and yellow thing he thinks he saw her in once back at the farm, before everything went completely to shit. Her hair hangs loose around her head, except for one little braid dangling beside her cheek. She is there and not there, glowing yet pale, half-faded standing in front of him; except for her eyes. They're as blue as they've ever been, like the noon sky on a cloudless day or a bright pop of cornflower against the green grass, and they're fixed on him like they can see right through him.

She's always been able to see right through him.

"You can't give up, Daryl. You can't give up hope."

He curls his fingers into the dirt and growls, low in his throat. Why not? Why can't he give up? So many others have given up before him so whydoes he have to keep going? Why does he have to keep fighting if there's nothing left to fight for?

"Because there is." She takes a step towards him, and a breeze he can't feel ruffles her dress and makes her hair flutter in wisps around her face. "There is plenty to fight for. There's Judith, and Carl, and Rick, and Carol, there's our family. There's good people left in this world, Daryl."

His own words reverberate through his mind: I don't think the good ones survive.

"They do. You did." She takes another step towards him, and he swears he can feel the glow that radiates from within her, like sunshine on his face. "You're a good man, Daryl Dixon. Keep that alive. If not for yourself, than for me." She leans over and all he can see are those big blue eyes shining out at him. "Please."

His eyes press shut for a long moment, but when he opens them, she is still there, and now there is a hint of an amused smile on her lips that he knows he's seen before. "Get up, Daryl. Come on. Get up. For me. It's not time to give up, yet. You have to keep fighting." Her voice wraps around him like light made tangible, hugging him, pulling at him, reassuring him.

Wouldn't kill you to have a little faith.

With a low grunt he pushes up off the dirt and rises slowly to his feet, scooping his crossbow up and holding it loosely at his side as he watches her stand up straight and smile at him. "Good. You have things to do, Daryl Dixon. Come on."

She turns and begins to walk away, and he has no choice but to follow after her. Even as she begins to fade, he hears her bright voice call back, "I'll see you soon, Mr. Dixon. And don't punch my sister. She's a brat, but she's hurting almost as much as you are."

02.

He doesn't see her again for several days, and her absence causes the darkness to wrap it's cloak back around him once more. He doesn't give in, but there's no real purpose to his steps as he follows behind the group, letting Noah lead them to some supposed safe place in Virginia. With each mile closer they get, he loses hope again, loses that little flicker of light that flared briefly into being again when she appeared to him.

He nearly gives in when they reach the border between Georgia and North Carolina, and then there she is. She stands on the other side of that invisible line. Today her hair is pulled to the side in a little braid, and she's wearing jeans and a perfectly crisp white cardigan. She smiles at him, and holds out her hand and murmurs, "I've never been out of Georgia."

The group is ahead of him, having crossed the line with no difficulty at all. None of them look back, and he's glad, because he doesn't want to know if they can see her or not. Maybe he doesn't want them to see her. Like this, she is his, and he can drink her in until he's had his fill.

"Come on, Daryl. Let's cross it together."

So he takes her hand and steps over the line, and when he is two feet into North Carolina, outside of Georgia for the first time, she is still with him. She even laughs at the look of surprise on his face. "I don't have to go anywhere just yet. We can walk together... for a little while."

And they do. Daryl lingers several feet behind the group, but he's not alone. She walks beside him, keeping step with him, and if he looks only at her he can almost pretend it's like it was before, when it was just the two of them and she was safe. (Alive.)

"This place you're going to... I don't think it will be so bad." He looks over at her, but doesn't speak. He never speaks, because he doesn't need to, with her. She always understands. "I know you think nothing can be good again, Daryl. But you should have a little faith." She raises her fingers the tiniest bit apart, and murmurs, "Have a little faith, Daryl. Just a little."

How can he have faith, when she is the only faith he's ever known? He has never prayed to any god the way he prayed to Beth, to her goodness, to the hope of her being alive.

She looks into his eyes and breathes out in a whisper, "You look at me, and you just see another dead girl."

Daryl shakes his head, and the denial in his eyes is like fire.

And she smiles.

This time as she fades away, he hears her voice in the air all around him, whispering: ""We look not at what can be seen, but we look at what cannot be seen. For what can be seen is temporary. But what cannot be seen is eternal.""

03.

The words haunt him in the days to come. He knows they're the same words that Father Gabriel spoke over her grave, but now it's her voice that echoes through his mind as the group drives North in stolen cars running on borrowed time. What sticks with him the most is the emphasis she had placed on the words.

What can be seen is temporary.

Like his visions of her, there only long enough to fire that spark within him once more; to keep him moving, keep him surviving, keep him living against all odds.

But what cannot be seen is eternal.

He struggles to understand what this means. What isn't he seeing? What is he missing besides her; her smile, her warmth, her laugh, her singing? He thinks about asking Father Gabriel, but he cannot bring himself to do it for fear of being laughed at, or worse, for finding out that the words mean nothing at all.

Besides, he's spoken pretty much to no one since he lost her (failed her), beyond grunts of agreement and understanding. Rick had tried, Carol had tried, but no one could pull him from his darkness.

Except Beth.

The third time he sees her, it's in a dream, and he follows the sound of her voice as it echoes through the fog in his mind.

"And we'll buy a beer to shotgun, and we'll lay in the lawn, and we'll be good..."

The fog dissolves into a clearing in the woods. She lays out on a blanket of brilliant green grass, and the white dress she wears is as stark against it as her pale skin and that soft but warm glow that comes from within her. Her blond hair is loose, arrayed around her head like a halo on the grass as she smiles up at him with strawberry-pink lips.

"Come lay with me on the lawn, Daryl."

He can never say no to her, so he lays down on the grass beside her, his weary bones settling with a groan as he stretches out his legs and rests one arm beneath his head and the other over his stomach.

"Did you ever look at the sky and try to find shapes in the clouds, as a kid?"

Of course he never had. He didn't have a childhood like that. He had the sort of childhood where he looked at the stagger in his father's walk and tried to find the shape of how drunk he was, tried to guess if tonight he would end up on his knees with a belt against his back, or if he'd go to sleep only with the lashing of angry words ringing in his ears.

"I know." She speaks softly, but he can always hear her, as if her words ring in his mind. "Look," Beth whispers, pointing up at the sky, "Look."

In the sky above them the sun shines brightly, almost equal to the glow of the girl laying beside him. As he watches, dark cloud roll in, building wisp upon wisp until thunderheads blot out every inch of blue and stifle the brilliant rays of the sun. Thunder echoes through the skin, rippling through his old bones and setting up an echo of pain within him, pulsing to the rhythm of his aching, broken heart: Beth, Beth, Beth, Beth, Beth.

He is just about to close his eyes when she whispers from beside him and all around him: "Look."

Her voice compels him as always, and he looks, even though the pain is burning his eyes with the threat of tears. He watches, and there is a break in the dark thunder clouds above, just a tiny break, and a ray of light shines through to pierce the darkness. From beside him, her voice softly fills the air as she sings: "You gotta hold on, hold on..." For a minute the ray of sun fades, and then in a flare of brilliance it pierces through again, brighter this time as the sun fights free of the clouds. "You gotta hold on." Her words echo all around him, sinking into his bones and chasing away the weariness as he stares up, riveted to the sight of the thunderclouds retreating, fading away to let the sun have it's due again.

"Take my hand, I'm standing right here..." Her voice trails away and he feels the pang of loss and turns sharply to look at her. She is half there and half not, fading into the grass, but her piercing blue eyes are fixed on him and for just one moment he swears he feels the light graze of her fingers across his hand as she croons, "Gotta hold on..."

And she's gone, again.

04.

They're staying in some run-down old hotel just at the top of North Carolina. Rick says he thinks they'll be in Virginia tomorrow, maybe. Daryl almost just grunts in reply, but then he remembers his dream, remembers the sun fighting it's way out from those clouds and instead, for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, he grunts, "Okay."

Now he is walking down the long hotel walkway, crossbow in hand, checking for walkers, and he hears her laugh. It echoes through the air down the long hallway, curling tendrils into his heart that embrace him like warmth little hands and tug him into looking up. He sees her for just a moment, bright-light and blue eyes and a sunshine smile, and then with a flutter of her pale yellow skirt and a soft haunting giggle, she disappears into one of the open doors.

He doesn't hesitate to follow her. He only slows when he comes into that doorway and realizes she isn't alone in the room. The Father is there on his knees at the foot of the bed, a bible open in front of him. Daryl still doesn't know what to make of the man. He's never been one for religion, or prayer, and he still isn't. He also isn't one for cowards and so far, that's all the Father has proven to be.

But Beth is there. She's sitting cross-legged on the bed, her skirt fanned out around her knees and her fingers toying with the pretty white blouse she has on. She looks at him and smiles, and gestures to the man who is kneeling in front of her like he's worshiping her, but doesn't even know it.

Daryl can understand that. He had been praying to Beth Greene and the hope in her eyes for days before he'd realized the truth of the matter, back at the funeral home, ages and ages ago now.

"Ask him." Her voice rings in his bones and he takes a step into the room as he hears her begin to whisper, "We look not at what can be seen..."

It's been so long since he's spoken that his voice is even rougher than usual, as he grinds out, "Hey."

The Father looks up, startled, jumping and then settling, albeit cautiously, when he sees who it is. "Can I help you?"

"Been wonderin'." His gaze shifts briefly to Beth on the bed, and she nods, encouraging him to go on the way she always did. The way she did that night on the porch, her face flushed with moonshine and her eyes so bright, and open, just willing him to open up and spill out the darkness inside. "Bout them words you said. For Beth."

He sees something in the man's eyes. Sorrow? Understanding? As a priest, it cannot be the first time he's had to deal with a man's grief, even before the world became what it is now.

"We look not at what can be seen, but we look at what cannot be seen..." The Father repeats the words in a hesitant, questioning voice, as if to confirm what Daryl is asking. He doesn't seem to hear Beth behind him, echoing the words in that bright voice of hers.

"Yeah. That. Was wonderin'..." He scuffs his foot on the ground and furrows his brow, but even when he's not looking at her he can feel her encouraging him. "What it's from. What it means, an' all."

The Father picks up his bible and rises to his feet, though he doesn't open it. "It's from Corinthians," he explains, as Beth tilts her head and smiles up at his back. "It's about having faith, and understanding that God's power, his treasure, can be trusted even to something that is fragile. It says that even though we suffer, and face hardships, we have to have faith. Even when we feel like we have nothing, we must still have faith."

He blinks, and Beth is standing now beside the Father, light shining in her eyes as she whispers, "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed."

The Father's words echo hers as he recited nearly the same lines. Perhaps seeing something in Daryl's eyes, he takes a step closer to the man, holding his bible close to his chest as he recites: "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day."

Beth moves with him, her glow shining around both her and the preacher as she recites the words along with him: "For this light momentaryaffliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison."

The two of them together is almost too much, voices twining in the air, vibrating deep in his bones, but he stands his ground as they finish: "We look not at what can be seen, but we look at what cannot be seen. For what can be seen is temporary. But what cannot be seen is eternal."

Beth moves past the priest and comes towards him, and his gaze turns to follow her. In the moment she brushes by him, Daryl swears he can feelher light radiating, warming his bones again. The scent of strawberries fills the air around him, and the look in her eyes warms him to his core until she moves past him into the sunlight and disappears.

He turns to Father Gabriel, and says simply, "Thank you."

05.

They reach the walled-in town of Alexandria a week or so later, and she is sitting next to him in the truck when it happens. The people riding in the back of the truck don't seem to notice when she appears, a vision in an all-white dress, her hair blowing in the breeze from the open window.

"It's almost time," she murmurs, as she looks over at him.

He doesn't want to wonder what she means. Almost time for what? For him to forget her? For him to move on? For him to stop seeing her, finally, as he dreads will happen each day he goes without her shining vision?

"Almost time to start again."

She only brings up more questions than she answers, really, but that's nothing new. He can see the gates in the distance, can see Rick in the lead slowly to a crawl as they approach, and guards begin to open the doors to meet them.

"Stay with me." It's the first time he's spoken aloud to her, since the night she was driven away while he frantically screamed out his name. "Please." It breaks him to form the word, to beg for something he knows she cannot give him.

"For a little while," she whispers, and then she is right beside him, the heat of her fitted against his side and warming his skin, sinking down through his muscles and into his heart. She stays with him like that as he waits, as he watches the men up ahead talking to Rick through the open window. It's only when Rick begins to drive through the gate and Daryl moves to follow, that he feels her warmth begin to recede.

"Beth-" His voice breaks on her name as he tastes it on her tongue, remembers it rough and broken and shouted from his lips; Beth! Beth! Beth!

"Soon." Her whisper surrounds him, wraps him up in his warmth the way her arms did so long ago when she held him tightly and pressed to his back and let him cry out his pain like no one else has before. "Have faith, Daryl. For me. It won't kill you to have a little faith."

She is gone by the time he drives through the gates, but he can still faintly scent strawberries in the air around him, a lingering reminder of her.

06.

They have been in Alexandria for two weeks now, and he has not seen her once since they came here. He wonders if it's a test, if she is trying his faith some how.

He wonders if she is gone for good, despite her promise.

He wonders if he is mad, to put so much faith in what is likely a dream a best, and a hallucination at worst.

He wonders if maybe the walls of this place are too confining for her light to shine through and find him.

The first time they offer him a chance to guard the gate, he takes it, because it means a chance to step outside the walls for the first time since he last saw her. He stares at the road from where he stands on top of the wall, wondering if he'll see her there waiting for him. But for hours, the road is empty, and he thinks maybe she really is gone. Or a part of him wants to think so, anyway. Only a part. Cause this time, that tiny little flame of hope within him refuses to go out.

When she finally comes, she isn't alone. A man walks beside her. He's a sturdy and muscular black man, strapped down with weapons, a bag heavy on his back. She walks side-by-side with him, and he is struck by the fact that for the first time, she is not in white. She wears jeans, like the ones she once used to wear, only even more dirty and torn. Her t-shirt is dark green, and there's a stain on it that looks like blood, and her the ponytail she has her hair in is a bit tangled and messy. But it's her. He knows it's her like he's always known it's her, because it hits him like a punch to the gut every time.

He only vaguely hears Rick crying out something beside him, something like 'Morgan?'. Whoever Morgan is, he doesn't care. All he wants is a chance to see that vision one more time, to drink in her warmth, even if it is all in his head.

When he pulls open the gate, the sun is setting behind her, and she glows. Her hair shines with that light, the same light that has always radiated from within her, and he just stares at her, drinking in the sight. He wants to run to her, but he knows no one else can see her; he knows they will only see him running to nothing and think that he's finally snapped.

Then beside him, Rick utters one shocked, stunned word. "Beth?"

And everything freezes. Time slows to a crawl, the sounds of the town behind him fade to a distant buzzing in his ears, and he looks at her andsees her. She's standing right in front of him, drinking him in like they're in a desert and he's a mirage, which is ironic because all this time, she's been the mirage to him. But now it's different, he can see that it's different. She's dirty and there's blood on her clothes, and her lips are slightly dry and peeled and he can see them now, scars on her cheeks that were never there in his visions, dark lines marring a face that is no less beautiful than he remembers.

What he can see most, though, is the other scar. The new scar. A round red mark right on her forehead, where the bullet had gone in. The last time he saw it, blood had been dripping from it across her face to pool on the floor and she'd been dead in his arms; at least, he would have sworn to that then. But here she is. Standing there. Staring at him, with that scar on her face.

His head turns slowly to Rick, because it can't be what he thinks it is. Maybe Rick is sharing in his delusion somehow, maybe it's another dream. But Rick breathes out again, "Beth?" And he hears her laugh in response, all choked off but real, real, god she's real, and he is sinking to his knees in front of her, begging her with his eyes.

Daryl doesn't speak, but he doesn't have to. She crosses the distance between them and doesn't pause until he reaches up and wraps his arms around her. He can feel her warmth beneath his arms and hands. He presses his face to her stomach and it's tangible and touchable, and it's real, and she's alive.

He's crying, tears staining the fabric of her shirt, but it's okay because she's crying too and he can feel her tear drops falling onto his head and it's just another reminder that she's here and she's real and she's alive.

When he finally manages to speak, all he can choke out is, "How?"

Her fingers curl into his hair and she sinks to her knees in front of him, resting her forehead against his, their noses grazing as she looks into his eyes with that wide blue gaze, and murmurs, "I told you. I'm not just some dead girl, Daryl Dixon. I'm strong." She sighs out a breath against his lips and adds in a whisper, "Sometimes you ust gotta have a little faith."

The sun is setting around them, and he can hear people gathering behind them, chattering, calling out her name, but he doesn't let go, and neither does she. Soon they'll have to, but right now all that matters is the two of them kneeling there in the dirt, holding each other close.

And that little spark of flame within him has flared like sunshine again, and already he can feel the darkness burning away.

(FYI: This is a reunion fic, not a death fic, so if you're worried about character death triggers... don't be!)