This is fairly different from things I have written in the past. I was somewhat inspired by (film) noir so you can expect some violence and other shady activities; parts of it are pretty dark but just like Beth, there is light at the end of the tunnel. This will probably be three or so chapters/parts in length.

Hopefully you enjoy it! Thank you for reading. :)

There's a reason this place is the dirtiest city east of the Mississippi. Everything's coated in a layer of filth and dirt and grime. Blood runs in the gutters and there's practically a body in every dumpster. Hell, the sun doesn't even seem to want to come out that much anymore. That must be why it's so damn cold. November isn't even near over.

There's a constant trickle of rainwater from the spout and he wonders how long it'll be before it freezes. His boots are just starting to skim across the ground and he thinks about how many corpses they'll find this winter, frozen rigid and still like popsicles.

A friend of his was found once, a few years back. It was the worst night of his life but he took out some of his heartache on her bastard of a husband. Pummeling fists until he could barely lift his arms and the prick was still as night. There wasn't a second body found that night; he can't call himself a murderer. And Daryl was out of earshot before he could be linked to anything. Sometimes though, he wishes he had just finished the damn job. Nobody would've mourned for Ed Peletier. Not even his little girl, probably.

Sophia grew attached to him over time. There are nights when Daryl doesn't get home until the sun's starting to creep up. He's usually bleary-eyed and heavy-footed by then and the first time he walked in and spotted the young girl curled up on his couch like a kitten, he didn't know what to do. Did he take her home? He couldn't do that, not if her father was there. So he tucked a blanket around her and didn't ask what she was doing there or how she got in once she woke. He never asked and she never told, and that was okay. Because Daryl understands her situation better than anyone else probably could.

When she was younger, she used to make him things sometimes, drawings and such. He figured it was her way of thanking him but she didn't need to do that; it was the least he could do, for her and for her late mom. Her sketches were usually of happy scenes, lots of bright colors and animals and smiling faces. She was pretty damn talented, he thought. Good kid too, the quiet kind.

One late morning he woke up to a few drawings on newspaper, scattered on living room floor. Sophia was long gone, her shoes no longer tossed in the corner and the blanket she used neatly folded up on the couch. Daryl picked up the discarded papers and flipped through them idly; they were a bit more refined than her usual doodles. They were black and white, heavily lined skyscrapers etched over the smeared text on the paper. A flying bird, a seagull maybe? And one of a girl, hair tied back and her hands folded neatly against her chest, like she was reciting a Hail Mary.

Daryl wondered where the colors were, the dogs and horses, the rays of sunshine and happy people. But he figured Sophia was getting older and she wasn't dumb; this place was tough. It wasn't sunny and light-hearted. She must have decided to start accepting it for what it was, as much as it broke his heart some to think of that. She was thirteen, after all.

That was a few years ago.

These days, Daryl keeps himself busy with a few things. He works on cars and such to make a few bucks, but his main focus is on hunting down scumbags. The city is littered with them and in a way, he thinks maybe it was his calling, to try and scrub this place clean as best he could. He didn't take any lives but he got people to talk and some of them he could have shaking in their boots.

He isn't the law but there wasn't much law to rely on these days anyhow. He knows a few lawmen, one of them is good; maybe he isn't all good to his core, Daryl didn't know for sure, but no one seemed to be around here. Himself included. Daryl works with him sometimes, Grimes is his name, funnily enough. Daryl likes to muse that he sucks up the muck and shit himself and internalizes it, leaving the city just a shade lighter, but himself heavier. Darker. And that's why he's called that. Grimes.

Rick Grimes has a few kids and it surprises Daryl to learn that his boy is friends with the Peletier girl. Carl is shaggy-haired and full of attitude; he snaps at his dad regularly, publicly, and while Daryl can't judge the situation completely because he has no idea what the home life is like, Grimes doesn't strike him as the shit for a father type. But that's just teenagers, he reckons.

Carl has a few run-ins of his own, stupid stuff like swiping food from local shops and breaking curfew. All kids rebel in some way, Daryl thinks; he just hopes Carl doesn't toe too far over that line because he knows how messy it can get. His own blood had done the same.

Rick's wife passed a few years ago, giving birth to his youngest. Judith's two or so, all smiles and grabby hands. Daryl finds her joy to be infectious, which is weird for him. While he never fancied himself the type good with kids, he sure has a soft spot for her whenever Grimes has her around the station.

Daryl doesn't work there, not even close, but he likes being around the guy. They make a good team.

Sometimes the two share information and names. And why did Daryl trust him, how did Daryl know he was at least somewhat good? Because he heard Grimes talk about Ed once, about what happened to the bastard years back when someone beat the shit out of him. He never paid for the murder of his wife but that was something at least. "Someone had to put him in his place," Rick had said. That was that.

Rick introduces him to a few other guys in uniform but the one that always seems to be lingering around is his partner, Walsh. The guy's a prick, plain and simple, and Daryl's not too fond of him. He's crooked in one way or another, you can smell it on him a mile away. Grimes has to know too but he's keeping it quiet for some reason. Maybe he's onto something bigger and doesn't wanna screw the pooch. Daryl doesn't pry; the two men have history and he's not about to go digging in their past. That's their deal.

Things at the station are steady, there's a routine. The guys in uniform get a call, murder or muggings mostly, sometimes a domestic dispute. They go to the scene and Daryl patrols in his own way for information. Talks with barkeeps, follows guys down dimly lit streets. He doesn't hurt anyone, he just spooks them a bit. He's good at that, he supposes. It's mainly little stuff that's snuffed out quickly but things have been different lately. Arson and property damage, mainly to sketchy establishments throughout the city, the kind normal folk usually avoid. An ancient, out of commission warehouse gets hit one day and a week later, some dodgy bar known for dealing hard drugs to neighborhood locals. Daryl hears whispers about them both, how they're linked. Someone trying to run out their competition for peddling stuff. People keep bringing up one man in particular, Hershel Greene, and his whole family.

There's a lot of things said about the Greenes and Daryl knows most of it is probably horseshit. Some things are just facts though. Hershel had a temper about him and got in more than a few scuffles back in the day, before he all but disappeared from the public eye. He wound up behind bars a handful of times and must've had some enemies; the way people talk about him and his family, that seemed more than likely.

Maggie has a rap sheet of her own, breaking curfew all the time as a kid and political protests and stir-ups once she was older. Shawn was a con man of sorts, he hustled cards and pool and blew through the cash in no time. He supposedly hawked a few pieces of his late mother's jewelry to feed his gambling itch. So they say. They say a lot of shit. Daryl doesn't know if he buys most of it; the Greenes are modern folklore in this city.

Back in his drinking days, Hershel didn't talk much about his family. When he had, it was mostly vague but positive things, as one would hope from any decent father. Maggie's conviction and Shawn's wit. He mentioned another child of his, a few times (again, so they say). Beth. Some speculated she died young and that's why Hershel drank. Some thought she was just plain made up. And others thought she was stowed away somewhere, locked away in her bedroom because Hershel saw what this place did to his two oldest kids. But the way he supposedly talked about her, this Beth, most of that seemed to be a stretch. If Daryl had to believe anything, he assumed she was long gone. He never saw her, no mugshot like her father, newspaper clipping like her sister, or headhunter poster like for her brother.

Yet people still talked about her, more than any other Greene. Beth Greene, they'd whisper, like she was some other worldly creature. They claimed she was the good one in that family, genuinely so. She was the only one with no skeletons in her closet. But how the hell did they think they knew that when no one had ever even seen the girl? Some claimed to have, the stories passed along like fairytales of how she was there one second and gone the next, and the narrator was just blessed for being in her presence. They raved about her shiny blonde hair and bright eyes, that she sang songs with the voice of an angel like it moved grown men to cry.

It was all ridiculous to Daryl. But she was a symbol, a beacon of hope or a better future or whatever people in this place needed to get through another miserable day. And if that was the case, Daryl was okay with it. Let them spread their tales and muse about this mysterious girl. They even began tagging all over the city in her honor, portraits of a blonde girl, always faceless. Praying or singing or holding outreached hands, as if she's the Messiah or something.

They talk about her and the paintings down at the station sometimes, not to Daryl, but he's got good ears and picks up on a lot he's not supposed to.

"So we're just not gonna try at all to catch these punks?" Walsh spits out one day, stance cocked and angry hand glued to his hip. Daryl's leaning against the back wall, filling out some report for Rick about a rowdy group of guys he found fighting and broke up last night.

"We have some bigger issues on our plate, don't you think?" Grimes tries to reason with him. And he was right. They were hot on the tail of one of the city's newest names in the underground, some ass named Gareth. The stuff Daryl has heard about him has been pretty damn disturbing.

"It's still illegal! People can't just go around vandalizing, doing whatever they want. And we're letting them do whatever the hell they want!"

"Why are you so uptight about this, Shane?" Before Walsh can answer, Grimes' boy, Carl, comes stomping into the room. He plops down at the chair by his father's desk and tosses his large, overly packed backpack onto the floor. "Thought I asked you to pick up your sister and head home today?"

The two get into a bit of an argument, Rick's voice hushed like he doesn't want anyone to hear his obvious struggles of raising a teenaged boy on his own. Carl's just the opposite, all puffy-chest and booming words. People amongst the station go back to their respective tasks. Openly watching Grimes and Walsh go at it is one thing, but everyone there respects Rick too much to ogle at him fighting with his son, Daryl included. He's watching Walsh, rubbing his head like he's trying to polish it up till it sparkles.

"What're you looking at?" he spits at Daryl, feeling his eyes. He doesn't reply and the officer advances towards him. "You know, I always wondered why do you wear this thing. Some kind of joke?" Walsh picks at the open flap of Daryl's vest and gets his hand shoved away, quickly. "You think you're a saint or something? Wannabe cop saving people?"

The angel wing vest used to belong to his brother, before Merle up and disappeared on him. That happened a lot, all through his childhood and earlier years. Merle was always the one getting in trouble and part of Daryl was thankful when he vanished the last time. Must've been nearly two years since he had seen him last. Maybe he was dead, maybe he was on the other side of the country. All he left behind was some stash that Daryl flushed and a few belongings, the vest included. Daryl just liked the damn thing for some reason.

"You're not one of us. You got no right hanging around here all the time like you are, Dixon." Walsh stressed his last name like it was a curse and maybe it was to some people. It did hang around his neck like a ball and chain sometimes.

Hershel Greene's name comes up again one day and Daryl was never too privy to the details, but Walsh and Grimes go out that night and the next morning, the air's heavy. It's all over the news: one of Greene's well known comrades, Otis, dead. Suicide by cop, so they say. Walsh talks about it so vividly back at the station, like it's an epic tale of him taking down a stag in the heart of hunting season. Grimes looks nearly sick to his stomach and that's when Daryl knows something ain't right. But it isn't his place to question, not just yet.

He hits up the crime scene across town, an alley between a speakeasy and some rundown women's home. It's taped off but nobody's there, there isn't much for them to investigate in their minds; the guy brought it upon himself, it was his choice, and if he was one of Greene's guys, well, they believed the streets were a little bit cleaner.

There are still some remnants of footprints and blood splatter, glossy like paint from the bitter cold; he studies them, mapping out the exchange in his head, the angles and placement, how it could have happened. He's so caught up in his head that he doesn't see her just on the other side of the dumpster. It starts sleeting though, as if on cue, and he hears her let out a small sigh.

"Who're you?" he asks, his voice gruff but loud enough to let her know he means business. He doesn't have any authority here but maybe she doesn't know that. Daryl wishes he had thrown on a jacket over his vest; might've made him look more like someone of importance.

She eyes him for a second, as if she's contemplating lying. But by the way pink spreads through her cheeks, he figures she's inclined to tell the truth. "A friend of mine was killed here last night."

"Who are you?" he repeats, his voice colder. She doesn't seem to acknowledge it though.

"My name's Beth."

His eyes focus and adjust on her and no, it can't be, because he was so sure that she didn't really exist. Maybe the girl was lying but something in his gut told him it really was her. Otis was a friend to that family. She really was Beth Greene.

She's not at all what he had imagined, in the few moments where he humored the idea that she was real. He always pictured her as a young girl, ribbons in her hair and knobby knees, pleated skirt with her shirt all nearly tucked in. But she's hardly a kid, she's all grown; lean like her sister and hair full and shining blonde, a clean sight against such a dingy backdrop. Just like the people gossiped about. His eyes scan over her, up and down, and he has to pull out a cigarette, his shoulders hunching forward as he shields the flame from the wind and drizzle.

He watches her push back her damp hair. "You're not a cop."

"Naw," he admits, voice low. She doesn't inquire further but she steps closer and the light from a flashing neon sign above them hits her face for just a moment, glowing orange and pale and so damn beautiful. It's a shame a girl like that is stuck in an ugly place like this.

He smokes in silence and stares at her even though his chin is tucked down. She hardly pays him any mind and he notices the way the snowy, wet slush is matting her hair. The slightest shiver shakes through her body.

"You should get outta here," he tells her, but she cuts him off at the last syllable.

"You're barking up the wrong tree." And with that, she's trudging towards the street, droplets of water flying off the end of her coat and damp, shiny hair fluttering in the wind.

"What'd you mean by that?"

"My family isn't the problem. Everyone in this place seems to think that." He catches a good view of her face then, illuminated with the halo of a street lamp looming over the crown of her head.

She cuts across the street and disappears around the corner; he'd chase after her if his feet weren't encased in cement blocks.

He can't believe he's actually met her.

"You ain't gonna believe who I ran into," Daryl tells Grimes, who's trying to feed a reluctant Judith himself. She swats at his hands every time he brings the spoon near her mouth. It's almost comical and if Daryl ever really laughed, he would have then.

"Who?"

Before he can answer, there's a call coming in over the radio and the station is up and about in all kinds of commotion. Daryl winds up with a baby in his rocking arms and he wonders if by the time she's old enough to buy cigarettes, if this hellhole will be any better. Hopefully not any worse.

Rick looks like he's all set to bust out when he catches sight of Daryl cradling his daughter. The toddler reaches for some discarded cereal on her father's desk; she pinches a piece and feeds herself, much calmer than she was before. Rick scrubs a hand over his face and Daryl wonders if he should offer to look after her. He wouldn't mind, but they aren't really close like that. As well as they worked together, this was so much more personal and he didn't want to cross something he shouldn't.

"Carl should have been here by now..."

"I can stay with her, till he comes." The look on the sheriff's face is solemn but there's a glint of something in his eye that Daryl catches. Gratitude or appreciation, maybe. It's unfamiliar to him.

The station clears out and Daryl picks up pieces of conversations. On the lower west side of town, a slummy housing development was lit up. It reeks of foul play and everyone assumes that it has to be connected to the warehouse and bar fires. A few mid-rank dealers were killed in the blaze which brought on more Greene talk. It's nonsense. What would an old guy like Hershel have to do with the drug world? He hardly struck Daryl as some underground drug lord and his family is in such a public eye position with the people of this city, they wouldn't be able to get away with anything. Except maybe Beth.

Daryl can't shake the girl from his mind. The timbre of her voice, her damn pretty face. The way in which she didn't seem scared or put off by him in the slightest. He thinks on her the entire walk home and he finds himself peeking down alleys and glancing into windows, some messed up part of him hoping he'll stumble upon her. He doesn't and once he's inside his dark apartment, a weight settles on his shoulders. Sophia isn't anywhere to be found and he's glad to be alone for the time being.

The blinds are almost always drawn; he likes his privacy and there isn't anything worth looking at out there anyway. But something has him yanking the cord and letting the crass urban lights seep into his bedroom. His eyes flutter under the harshness and he wonders if he's seeing things but no, he isn't.

Just across the street, near kitty-corner, there's an abandoned brick-faced building. Kids sometimes get busted hanging in there, drinking and fooling around, but it's pretty much forgotten about. It's unremarkable. Except now, just above the line of the roof next door, the wall dons a painting about two stories high. It's a woman, bright yellow hair tied up and back, her face obscure but her hands grasping a burning white candle. There's a faint outline of some lettering around the curve of her head, but it looks like whoever was working on the piece split before they could finish. He knows it's supposed to be her. It's odd, he thinks, how he has such a perfect view of it. Daryl wonders where she is right then.

His phone rings and when he reads Grimes on the screen, he knows it must be something important.

"Daryl." Rick sounds tense and he can hear all kinds of discord and bustle in the background.

"Yeah?"

"When's the last time you've seen Merle?"