Signalfire

*rubs hands together* here we go.

This was a drabble that I considered making longer, but I kind of like it the way it is :)

Daryl wasn't sure when the exact moment he knew he loved her was. He wasn't sure there ever had been one. No lightbulb moment like in the movies when he looked at her and screamed I love you. He knew without any speck of doubt, it in the way his eyes always managed to find her when they were fighting walkers, in the way he knew every curve and line of her body like it were his own, in the way she said his name like it was the only prayer her lips could utter. He recognised every gasp of breath for what is was, felt the way his body reacted when she wasn't by his side. Hell, he'd felt it for those long weeks when he'd thought her lost to him.

He'd been empty, adrift, disoriented without her to keep him straight. Worse off than before the world had gone to shit. Because even losing his brother hadn't even come close to the thought that Beth was out of his reach.

He thought it had come to him gradually, through the moments they had been together, both intimately and also forcefully. Beth Greene had him in every way possible. She had his body, she had his back, she had the very epitome of who he was as a person at her fingertips to strum and play as she pleased. And he would let her. Anything she wanted, anything that made her happy made him happy.

He wasn't sure when along the way she'd become the embodiment of who he wanted to be. Beth Greene looked at him differently to everyone else who had entered his life. He wasn't a disappointment, he wasn't a pussy. He was good. She looked at him like he was the sun, and though he knew he'd never fully understand what it was she saw in him to make the lines of her face soften whenever her eyes met his, but he liked it.

Daryl wasn't sure how he'd lived before her, but maybe he hadn't really been living, merely surviving wasn't the same thing. Putting one foot in front of the other, his crossbow drawn and ready for anything that might cross his path. He hadn't expected it to be her.

She was his partner, his anchor, his lover, his friend, his compass, his light. The beacon of hope when everything else had seemed lost, an angel sent to him in his darkest hour.

She was everything.

Let me know what you thought!