A/N: It's been a while since I've written a Bethyl one shot... I blame my other chapter story (Give Me Love). That one soaks up a lot of my writing time. But then I saw that Daryl and Carol kicking ass episode and then the look on Daryl's face when Noah said Beth... I melted and died and then I just had to write this Bethyl reunion fic :)
"Some dance to remember, some dance to forget..."
Hotel California by Eagles
The sunlight brushes against her face like the lightest wind in the morning when the sun is still barely there. It's afternoon though and sunset is near and the taste of freedom is so very sweet. She hears her companion following behind her and she puts her game face on and stares hard and stern and serious across the space where she watched Noah escape a little over a week ago.
There's a dozen walkers between there and where she is but nothing will stop her now; no one will stop her.
Her shirt is half ripped and there's blood pouring out of the wound on her face. The stitches are probably all gone or mostly gone by now. But it doesn't matter at least not right now anyway.
She draws level the gun in her right hand and aims at the walkers in front of her. She catches a glimpse of the cast encasing her hand and sees it dripping with her blood and soaked through. She didn't notice it before when they were running; she doesn't even know where the blood is coming from. But like she thought a second ago about the wound on her face she puts that aside and she pulls on her focus and looks ahead.
She takes a deep breath and pulls the strings of her life and will and determination to get out of here and she moves. She tightens the grip she has with her left hand around that knife and she holds it with its sharpest point facing the space in front of her.
"Stay back," she tells the woman behind her, "Stay behind me."
"There's at least a dozen, Beth," the woman tells her.
"There's no other way," she mutters under her breath and buries the knife into the first walker.
She looks behind and sees the woman following close and she looks back ahead again. She clears a path for them and every walker that steps into the circle of her safety she kicks or shoves with the entire weight of her body. That's what he taught her and that's how she's going to survive this.
She buries the knife deeper with every walker she reaches and pulls it back out with equal ferocity. There's walker blood on her arms and her hands are shaking. But the adrenaline keeps her going and the five bullets in her gun kill at least three. But the walkers seem to pile on and on and her hair is swinging in every direction. She keeps with it though and throws her eyes from walker to walker and maintains that safety circle around her and the woman behind her.
"There's too many," the woman shouts behind her.
"We can do this," she shouts back as she buries her knife into a walker's head and shoves her right arm into another.
The shove is enough to send a few of them stumbling and it gives her ample time to quickly glance back at her companion. The woman looks battered and bruised and brow still swollen and leg still limping. She feels moderately bad for putting them in this situation but they've come too far to turn back now. She throws her focus back in front of them just in time to stab another walker and shove another and repeat.
But at the very last second there's a group of three of them and one outweighs her no matter how much of her weight she throws into her kick. It grabs onto her foot and bends and she swears she's gone and this is it. She tries to raise the gun and knife but she doesn't do it in time and before she knows it she's falling backwards from the way the walker has a hold on her leg.
"Beth!" Carol cries out her name and it all happens so quickly.
The knife that was in her hand slid away when she fell and when she tried to brace herself for impact. All that she had now was the gun in her right hand and she lifts that and stares up at this walker and pulls on the trigger but nothing happens. She glances at the gun and at the walker and those teeth are getting closer to her by the millisecond.
"Beth!" she hears it in the distance and she swears it sounds like his voice.
But it can't be it; they aren't here right now. Carol is here with her and nobody else. But then she sees it as clear as day when the sun escapes the horizon and blankets over the land. The turning point in her life and the final realisation that everything she hoped and dreamed and wished was going to come true. A bolt shoots through the wind and through the waves of walkers and right into that walker's head with the pointy end coming to a stop as it sticks out in front and in between that walker's eyes.
She stares it for a good solid moment and is completely at a loss of action and words and everything really. She lays there as if that's the only thing she knows how to do and she stares at the bolt. Seconds pass but it sure feels like an eternity to her.
Carol is beside her in an instant though and pulling off the walker and there are footsteps thundering the pavement and shouts and calls. Carol helps her to stand and when she finally does she sees them; all of them. He catches sight of her in midst of burying the end of his crossbow into a walker's head. Time just stops for her and for them and him and she is sure that she is dead now.
"He loves you, you know."
Carol's words echo in her head now and it takes her right back to that moment they spent sitting in Dawn's office. Twenty seconds later after that and then she buried that knife into Dawn's head and kicked off this entire escape.
Everything speeds up again and he's moving and looking away and shoving and kicking. It's only then that she realises that whilst Rick, Tyrese, Sasha and Noah clear the walkers around them it is Daryl that's working to clear a path to her. He's mowing each walker down as if his life depends on it and the determination is etched into the very creases of his face. His lips are pressed together and he's altogether and right there in front of her.
Carol's leaning into her and she's leaning into the woman too and the walkers have long forgotten about them and are now focused on the others instead. She stands there still and unmoving and he catches her eyes every other second and before long he's right there in front of her and there are million things she wants to ask.
She only manages to murmur his name before he engulfs her and Carol both into his arms. Carol squeezes out of it before long though and disappears somewhere to the side of them. She presumes the older woman sought to relieve herself from the man's tight embrace. The sudden void of empty space forces him to connect his other hand behind her, effectively circling her in his burley arms and there isn't any other place she wants to be right now.
She stares at the sky and she keeps her arms around him too and she is so relieved and can see everyone standing there behind him and Noah too looking pleased to see her that she only just realises that he is crying. He is chanting his apology in her ear and with every single 'sorry' he says his voice sounds huskier and coarser.
This is so unlike him and it feels so strange but yet so right to be held by him. She can't even begin to make sense of this but the safety she feels and the warmth that runs free in her veins right now pales in comparison to everything she has ever felt in her life.
They're in the truck an hour later and he drives for the better half of it while she sits in the back. It took him a while to compose himself but when he did he was all business and moving and leading them with Rick away from the hospital. He spoke more and had looked at her more frequently than he ever had before.
"How…what…makes you say that?" Her question echoes in her mind now; the very same one she asked Carol when they were in Dawn's office.
"Anything broken?" she hears Rick asking Carol and she looks over to see the man looking over the older woman's wounds.
She sees the way Rick's hand brushes over the older woman's face; the way he studies her wounds and applies those band aids as if he's touching some delicate soft flower. She says nothing and keeps silent and only stares.
"No," Carol tells the man, "Only a dislocated shoulder."
"What happened in there?" Rick asks now and she turns away and pushes herself to a stand. She doesn't want to relive it right now.
She sees a small window separating the front of the truck where the driver and passenger seats are and the back of the truck. It doesn't take her many steps to get there and when she does she sits herself down on one of those crates and leans back and can smell the cigarette he's smoking drifting in. She looks to the back of the truck and sees Noah sitting there with Tyrese and Sasha. He offers her a comforting smile and she returns it with a smile too.
"We're almost there," he murmurs and she turns to her side and leans her aching shoulder against the divide and glances at him through the little opening.
She nods and keeps her eyes on him for a moment more before she looks out to the road ahead. She sits there with him in silence for a while and minutes and maybe even days and years could pass and they'd still be there. But her heart beats faster and yet calmer when she is there and so close to him and she doesn't know exactly why. There's a certain comfort he brings to her now even though he isn't doing anything and is too preoccupied with driving. There's a longing too and a pull of something much greater and filled with deeper meaning that draws her to him. She wonders if he feels it too and when she looks she catches him looking at her through the rear view mirror.
"I ran," he starts and looks back at the road and then continues, "Until I just couldn't."
He looks back at her through the rear view mirror and she looks back at him and says nothing for now.
He throws his focus back to the road and continues, "Tracked it right up t'an intersection," he pauses and she sees his fingers drumming against the steering wheel, "And by then the rain had come, washed the tracks clear away…was nothin' left f'me t'follow."
He looks at her again and she sees the honesty in his eyes and the openness and it's nothing like she's ever seen in his eyes before. He turns his gaze back to the road a moment later though.
"All because of a dog," he murmurs lowly now.
"'s not your fault," she tells him softly and thinks about that night again.
He keeps silent after that and she keeps quiet too and stares at the road. The trees are green and the sky bright and blue and it looks like a perfect summer's day. But then she hears him draw in a breath and she returns her gaze to the mirror to see him looking at her again.
"Y'were right 'bout what y'said, Beth," he starts off softly and pauses for a moment before continuing, "I missed you."
She lets her lip curl into a warm smile and she sees him smile too. It isn't awkward or strange and the air around them feels so still but yet right. She stretches a hand through the window and she places it on his shoulder. He doesn't pull back from her touch. She feels instead the tension melting away from his muscles. She feels weeks of agony and days of running and everything in between that she's missed.
He looks back at the road after that but then she sees him shift and sees him keep a hand on the steering wheel and move the other and slide it over hers. He presses her hand down and interlocks a few fingers too and though it isn't new for them it's different and within it she feels a promise. She feels what she began to feel in that house and in that kitchen that night so many weeks ago now.
"I missed you too," she tells him softly and sees him look at her through the mirror again.
The look she sees in his eyes is one she has never seen before in all of the time she has known him. It's a look that keeps her there; a look that is so warm and so pure and so real that it throws her guard down and leaves her completely vulnerable and she's okay with that. She lays her soul bare for him to see too because in his eyes now she sees his soul as well. She sees his heartache and pain and the horrors he has seen in his life that has made him the man he is today.
She doesn't know what tomorrow has in store for them; doesn't know if they'll live through the next five minutes or the next decade too. But that's okay and that's alright because though her daddy isn't here anymore and that Maggie is someplace else with Glenn, she is here with Daryl. She will always be here next to him.
She has made it home. There isn't a house or a building or a place that's waiting here.
Home is everywhere and anywhere that she is with him.
end.