Time froze. The only sound, a single gunshot, made the very air vibrate. Her head snapped back erupting a fine red mist that momentarily gave a rosy tint to the light from the fluorescent fixtures overhead. Daryl reacted instinctively as her body began to crumple toward the scarred linoleum. He raised his pistol and fired then watched in cool detachment as the bitch in the uniform began to fall.
Beth lay on the floor, her arms and legs askew and a surprised expression on her face. A liquid red halo had begun forming around her head. He didn't know what to do, where to look. This couldn't be real. It couldn't be happening. Beth was supposed to walk out of here with them. He looked at Rick whose face was spattered by the blood spray. His expression said more than words ever could. She'd been right there, in their grasp, and now she was gone. It was over.
He could hear the gasps from the people behind him and see the looks of shock and horror on the faces of the Atlanta group just across the hall. This wasn't supposed to happen. This wasn't supposed to happen! He wanted to kill them all, to make them feel the same rage and pain that was wracking his body. He kept the pistol gripped tightly in his fist and pointed directly at the woman in the front of their clique. It would be so easy to just squeeze the trigger, so easy to hurt them. Then he felt Carol's hand on his back, heard her muffled sob. It brought him back into the moment, back into the flow of time.
His gaze shifted back to the frail little body on the floor. The outfit she wore was the same one she'd been wearing the last time they were together. Her clothes had been washed but the bloody stains from the country club walker's exploding skull still showed in splotches across the yellow fabric of the shirt. The boots were so worn down that there was almost no heel left but he could see the scratches on the dirty leather from the trap that had snared her. Her ponytail was, as always, slightly crooked, and curling tendrils had sprung loose around her face. She looked as if she could be sleeping until you saw the blood.
Rick spoke. Daryl wasn't sure exactly what was said and he didn't care but everyone seemed to back down. Guns were lowered. Rick stepped forward to lift Beth, but Daryl moved quickly ahead of him and stooped down to take her instead. He took her hand, still warm, in his own and remembered that sun-filled day in the cemetery when she had first placed her hand in his. A pain as swift and sharp as one of his arrows pierced his soul at the memory, and he quickly swiped away a tear that had managed to escape his tight control.
He slid an arm underneath her knees and another under her shoulders. He felt the warm slightly sticky blood as his arm brushed the puddle beneath her. The last time they had been this close she was riding on him piggy back and he teased her about being heavier than she looked. Now, her body felt shrunken and wispy as if it were made of paper rather than flesh. The light she'd always carried was gone. The light that had shown him the way through the darkness had been extinguished.
He stood with her hanging limp in his arms and began to walk. Nothing around him seemed real. The walls and doors and windows shimmered in his peripheral vision like some kind of mirage. Sounds echoed around him. The only reality at that moment was the pain that threatened to break him in half as he looked down on her face.
It was only as he walked out into the light of the courtyard and heard the keening that the world came back into focus. The pain inside him was made manifest by the sound of Maggie's wailing. He wanted to collapse, fall to his knees and sob, but he wouldn't allow himself to give in. He kept moving until he reached the fire truck where Rick stood holding a faded and worn old quilt. It looked like the one that Beth had on the bunk back in her cell at the prison but he knew it couldn't be the same.
Rick spread the quilt on the cracked pavement and Daryl laid her gently in the center. Maggie fell upon her sister's body the moment his arms retracted. She had the luxury of venting her grief, letting the pain out like lancing an infected limb. Daryl did not allow himself that outlet. He chose to hold his pain inside and guard it like something precious, like he should have guarded Beth. He stood and turned away as everyone gathered around their fallen family member, hugging each other and crying, their shock evident in their expressions and posture.
There was no balm for the pain he now owned. A black hole had opened inside him and there was no light to guide him forward, to show him a way out. The people gathered around Beth now were his responsibility. He would never let his guard down again. He would do whatever he had to do to keep them alive. He'd give his own life in exchange for theirs as he wished he could have done for her.
He moved to the edge of the parking lot and sat down on the trunk of a rusted old Chevy . The sun continued to shine down on them in contrast to the pall of the grief that now hovered overhead. Nothing would ever be the same. He wouldn't allow himself to believe again. Nothing better awaited any of them no matter where they went. There was no magical safe place where they could live in peace surrounded by good people with kind hearts. There was only this – sorrow and pain, fear and loneliness, the fight to stay alive against not only the dead but the more dangerous living psychos like the ones at Terminus. Beth had almost made him believe again with her special blend of fairy dust and big blue eyes. That spell was broken.
The truth of their situation twisted in his gut as he watched the others. He only had one goal now – keeping them alive. Daryl would keep fighting. Laying down and giving up wasn't an option. It was how he was built like it or not. Beth told him once that he was made for this world, that he'd be the last man standing. As hateful a prospect as it was, a part of him knew that it was a possibility. What would he do if it ever actually came to that? He shut his eyes, clenched them tight, and fought to hold himself together. His hands dug into his knees so tightly that he'd find bruises there in the coming days. He realized that Beth had figured him out pretty quickly while they were on the run. He choked back a sob as he remembered her sweet voice on that moonshine soaked night only a few weeks ago. "You're gonna miss me so bad when I'm gone, Daryl Dixon. You will." And he did, he always would.