Author's Note: This is the possible beginning of a multi-chapter story, based on Daryl and Beth overcoming her abduction and what's happened between them. Should I continue this? Ahhh it's been so long since I've written anything for Daryl/Beth, let me know what you think!
Shadows
He wonders who this show is for. Here, at the end of the world, there was no point in putting up pretenses. People hurt other people. People take each other and turn them into the monsters children fear in the dark. But what he's looking at now doesn't have the gruesome honesty of the world he's gotten used to these past few years. This is a play, a fabrication. What's left of humanity is playing their parts, wearing their uniforms, as though the air outside their doors wasn't rancid with the smell of the dead. It leaves him more unsettled than he would care to admit, makes his skin crawl in a way that rotting flesh used to. He rakes his eyes over them all, these robotic people going about their daily lives, and wonders where his stomach for the strange went. And then his eyes meet hers.
She smiles at him slightly, lips stained red in a way he's never seen on her before. Her hair seems much longer than he remembered. It's down now, falling to the middle of her back in simple waves. Gone are the braids and the wild tangles he had once run his fingers through. They've dressed her up, as though she's playing hostess. Her long legs are bare, crossed demurely at the ankle. Her sundress is the color of midnight, a dark inky blue that contrasts prettily with her pale skin. When she realizes she's held his attention, she smiles even wider, teeth white against the blood-red of her mouth.
And he wants so badly to believe that smile. To fall into character, to fill in his role in this parallel universe. But he can see where they missed a spot in the facade. The bruise on her cheek hasn't faded entirely, no amount of powder able to hide the purple blossoming under her eye. He can see the marks on her wrists from where they've held her, welts aligning with the scar she had once given herself. Her veins look like maps under her thin skin, matching the blue of her dress.
And her eyes. Nobody could have covered up the look in her eyes.
Wild, fearful, huge in her face as though she had been awake for days. Rimmed with makeup that she must have smudged in her nervousness to pull this off, this happy little ruse. This was still Beth Greene. That realization scares him - makes all the blood rush to his face, turns his slack hands into fists. What had they done to her?