Watch Me Fall, a walking dead fanfic

A/N: So I decided to write this one a little differently. To be quite honest with you I wrote most of this on a plane to and from a funeral and it tinged the theme of this story. I have several things in the work but this was written nearly in one piece (two six hour blocks of good old fashioned plane ride), hence why I'm posting it. C&M and Traps have chapters in the works. If you've read some of my other things you know dark and dirty is what I do, call it a form of therapy. Here are my warnings before you go any further. TW: Self-harm, suicide, pain of loss, angst. This is rated M for dark themes of harm, both physical and emotional.

I decided to take this in a different direction. We all know that Beth is Daryl's light in the dark. I know I tend to write him in a better place than what we see on the show and that's because my timeline for him is always a little different. It's my headcanon that he left early and had time to get...better, for a lack of a term. This time around they're going to be the light for each other. I put Beth in a dark place because I wanted to see how they could draw the other out of the dark. I wanted Daryl to be Beth's light as well having Beth be Daryl's. I hope you enjoy the read but know that it's going to be different from anything else I've written about these two. I wanted to see a different dynamic. I'm working on the line break issue. Promise.

~LA

"C'mon! It'll be fun!" Amy's voice cut through the silence of the library like a knife. The two blonde, blue eyed girls were sitting in a deserted section of the library surrounded by nothing but books. The pair were close enough that people often mistook them for siblings rather than roommates, just two young punks trying to make their way as fledgling adults. Amy's blonde hair was liberally streaked with all the colors she could put in, a riotous kaleidoscope of color that was offset by a black tank top and shorts. Beth was a touch more subdued, only the ends of her long blonde hair were blue with black at the very tip. Her reasoning was that she could cut away the end of it if something went wrong with the color. She, too, was wearing a black tank top and shorts that hugged her figure and with the entire back being lace the top was surprisingly helpful in the baking Atlanta heat. The only makeup she was wearing was a dramatic black wing tip eyeliner that made her eyes pop.

"Fine." Beth rolled her eyes. "Fake ID or real?"

Amy's reply was prompt. "Fake. As if we'd go with the real ones. Usual deal, Deth." Her nickname had started out as a joke. The RA had spelled her name wrong on the door label and it had stuck. Amy and Beth were well matched; both had been afraid of being stuck with a 'normie' girl. Instead they had found each other. And now a month and some into their freshman year they were inseparable; if they weren't in class they were together. One of the boys on the floor had suggested they were romantically involved and Beth's wry response was that it certainly would have been easier; they wouldn't have to wade through and discard the idiot college boys. Nobody here was good enough for either of them.

Beth had been a good girl straight up until her mother died when she was fifteen and while she had kept up her grades she had become a "handful". She'd been sneaking out, not coming home, bringing home boys she knew her father would hate only to ditch them after a few weeks, drinking, smoking, and drugs (she drew the line at pot; she couldn't afford to start an addiction) but it was the only way she felt okay. The official term was 'self medication'. Despite all of this she had graduated at the top of her class and won a scholarship to Emory, which was where she was now. College was freeing; she didn't technically have to do a damn thing if she didn't want to. There would be consequences if she didn't but being able to skip a class or two was freeing. She did well academically because it was the only way to get where she wanted to go; med school. Amy's sister was a civil rights lawyer down in Florida and her folks had encouraged her to choose the same path but Amy wanted more. She wanted to be a pediatric surgeon, the best of the best, saving lives of children and giving parents hope. Beth just wanted to make a difference, she had a dream of going into trauma surgery. Maybe she could make a difference, save somebody's mother. It was going to take dedication and a lot of time. The process to becoming a surgeon was long and time consuming but it was something that needed to be done. The loss of her mother was her burden to bear, the legendary cross. There was nothing anyone could have done. A man had fallen asleep at the wheel and crossed the median, hitting them head on. Her mother had died; there was no brain activity despite how hard the doctors tried to fix her. Her father had pulled the plug after four days. It was what her mother would have wanted but...she couldn't shake the feeling that she should have done something, seen the car, jerked the wheel, anything to change the outcome. But she hadn't. She'd been asleep against the door at the time of the crash; she and her mom were coming back from seeing a late-night movie.

Beth and Amy frequented the Atlanta underground scene as much as they could. Sometimes that meant a house party. Sometimes, like tonight, it meant sneaking into clubs and bars in the city. Beth looked at her friend over the book she was highlighting. "Who's playing anyway?"

"Some group called 'Insert Band Name Here' along with Silverdust and some no-names as an opener. Guess they couldn't pick a name. They've apparently been on the circuit for a while we just haven't heard them. Yet." Amy shrugged. "Hey it's not like we had anything to do tonight anyway."

Come seven the two were standing in line armed with fake ID's and water bottles full of vodka, cash tucked securely into one of those little screw cap pill containers on the rings that held their keys. Amy was a wearing a short black skirt and a studded belt looped twice around her hips over a black t shirt. Beth was wearing a pair of faded black shorts over a pair of torn up tights, finishing up with a black t-shirt she'd bought at a Thrice concert. She'd cut the sleeves right off and the also modified into what was now a crop top that reached the bottom of her ribs. She had left on the tour dates and cut the fabric right underneath. Beth and Amy were hanging out on the side deep in conversation as they sipped at the vodka in their bottles, scoping out the crowd. The opening band sucked. They were bad enough that people were sitting on the floor waiting for them to finish. By the time the real band showed Beth and her counterpart were well on their way to drunk, letting the music fill their hearts as they plunged into the crowd with relish. The band was good. Very good. The music was typical, angry and full of resentment that Beth understood only too well. Cheaters. Liars. Abandonment. Suicide. It was music that echoed Beth into her very soul.

Memories were surfacing; like how her boyfriend (the one who swore he loved her) had cheated on her while she was in the hospital. It had been right after the accident that killed her mother and left Beth with scars physical and emotional. There were two on her face, a dislocated knee, a torn ACL and the resulting surgery along with enough emotional turmoil for four people. Apparently that had been enough to make him stray. She'd been single and angry ever since, closing herself off from everyone and letting only a chosen few into her inner circle, especially after she attempted suicide a year out from the accident. She had spent her entire Christmas of her junior year in a psych ward, two and a half weeks until they had deemed her 'safe' to come home. Beth hid it from her classmates and what was left of her friends, taking that burden alone. Somehow she was still here and yet sometimes she wished she wasn't. It was one of her darkest secrets, something that only Amy and the therapist she saw twice a week knew. The scars on her wrists had faded some with time and several rounds of laser treatments but they were still there. Part of her wanted them to stay like this; visible enough that she could be reminded every day of how damn strong she was. She had beaten all of this shit and come out on top, standing tall and angry but with that taste of victory on her tongue. It was a hollow and bitter victory, one that left her mouth dry and chalky and her soul twisted up with pain and anger. Her father told her once that God always had a plan. Beth wasn't so sure. Part of her wished it had been she who died instead of her mother. She felt so lost. Even now, even after all three years from the accident, two from when she tried to kill herself. She believed the best in the world but she didn't trust it; she might not again. Not truly. Life was too fragile and people too unreliable for her to trust completely ever again. It was why she wanted to be a doctor. She wanted to save lives, restore hope, bring back light into the dark, make sure that she changed lives since she had been given not one, not two, but three chances at life. She thought that it might be the way to make sure she never, ever forgot what hope could do. Her surgeon, the one who had fixed her knee after the accident, told her that hope was the most powerful medicine they had. When Beth had confessed doubt the man had put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. "You'll find it again, Greene. I have faith in you."

The singer slash second guitarist was...hot. In a dark, angsty, kind of way. The best way. Shaggy brown hair hid what color his eyes were as fingers moved over the strings on the neck of his guitar. His bassist was a woman, which surprised her. It wasn't exactly common to find a woman playing for a packed house in a punk band. Her features were strong and her skin was dark, dreadlocks flowing down her back as her fingers picked out the baseline to the song, white teeth gleaming in an elated grin you can't help when you know you're on point. The lead guitarist had sharp features and an impeccable jawline and a voice that rounded out the songs and added depth. From what she could see of the drummer he was slight with dark hair. Between the distance and the vodka it was about all she could see. There were certain lyrics that stuck in her brain even through the haze and she could still hear them even after she left Amy at the bar to go outside and have a cigarette.

It was in the dark of the alley that she met the singer. In truth she hadn't realized she had been chain smoking outside, one after another as she tried to sort through the complex emotions that the music had stirred in her heart. For an alley it was remarkably clean; perhaps because it doubled as a side street during the day. Beth was sitting against the brick of the building when a man approached from a side door and gave her a startled glance. His expression turned even stranger when he realized she wasn't rushing up to greet him. Some sort of strange mixture of relief and disappointment.

Whatever. Beth ignored him entirely and and remained where she was, brooding into the dark and watching the smoke curl lazily into the sky as she sat in shadows. It was always bright here; sometimes it felt like the city never slept at all. The next band must have gone on because the heavy sound of guitars filtered through the thick and humid air that gave the sound a muffled quality. She was so wrapped up in her own anxiety as she kept looking at the way the pale scar across her skin caught the yellow light filtering through the dark that she didn't hear him approach. Her attention flicked over towards the man who had crossed the alley and taken a casual seat next to her as though he had some sort of a right to it.

"Gotta light?"

She'd expected his speaking voice to be deeper. She was wrong. Beth threw him a scathing glance. "No. This is my last one. If I lose this I'm out until I find my friend."

"I'll give it back. Promise."

Up close she could see his eyes; blue and intense. The kind that made women lose themselves in their depths. Beth wordlessly handed over her lighter and watched him until he gave it back, slipping into the pack of cigarettes and turning her attention back towards the way her smoke burned on the exhale. She'd read once that cigarettes were the slowest form of suicide as the toxins spread into the corners of her lungs and reached every crevice. Beth was content to sit in silence and brood and it seemed as though the singer was as well. Time passed as they smoked together in silence. She'd almost gotten to a point where she was relaxed when his voice shook her back to the real world and snapped those shields of hers right back into place.

"You got a name?"

The question threw her and she snapped at him. She didn't mean to be rude, not really, but her fear put up a block around her that she couldn't control or break free from. That isn't fair whispered the voice in her mind. Maybe he wrote the songs. Maybe he could understand. Maybe he could be an ear just for tonight. After all,what were the odds she would see him again? Beth shrugged. "I'll trade you my name for an answer." That seemed to startle him. Good. She didn't give him a chance to decline. "You write those songs you played?"

The stranger gave her a measuring gaze and answered her carefully. "Some. Rick writes. So does Michonne. Glenn can't at all, but he's the most talented drummer in the city so we let it slide." Every name but his, but that hadn't been part of the agreement so she shrugged, pulling her hair over her shoulder and taking another long drag of her cigarette, oblivious to the way his eyes raked over her sitting form.

"My name is Beth." Short and to the point, but Lord he was handsome. Ruggedly handsome, and he moved like somebody born and bred in the country. She knew that because that was how she moved, too, with that same effortless grace that only comes when you grow up with room to run.

His questions continued. "You got a last name, Beth?"

"Not one for pretty boy, wanna-be rock stars to know. I'm not your kind of girl. Trust me." Another drag, smoke vanishing as a breeze came through the alley and picked up wisps of her hair creating a golden halo around her head for a moment before it vanished under the delicate hand that smoothed them back into place.

"What, I can't find that out for myself?" Daryl had pushed too hard. Beth tossed her cigarette down the alley with a spray of sparks and stood.

"No." She left him sitting in the dark and watching her retreating back.

Daryl was often told he was angry, sullen, and closed off. Since the group started getting a following he'd been accused of being cold and distant, even arrogant, by fans. But he wasn't arrogant. Cold and distant, yes. Angry and sullen, yes. But he was just a mechanic. He had left his past and his baggage behind when he'd moved to Atlanta. Now he was just a mechanic who worked on cop cars and sang for a band. That was how he'd met the band, through work. Rick and Michonne worked in the same department of the Atlanta PD. Apparently they had been in the academy together, working their way up the ranks and watching each other's backs the entire time. Glenn worked part time at the garage and part time delivering pizzas. Between the four of them they knew just about everybody on the scene. The group had been together for the last three years and had gone from playing parties to playing bars. Now people paid to see them. There was even a chance they could go big. Yes, they were certainly older than a lot of other bands but their sound was original and their combined life experiences gave them rich fodder for song after song.

Daryl was sure he hadn't seen this girl at any of his shows before. He would have remembered her; the girl was pale skin and blue-eyed ferocity with curves he that he wanted to ran his hands over. Lust. That was all it was. Lust and the fact that she clearly didn't want to be wanted. The blonde hadn't thrown herself at his feet like some girls he'd met and it made him curious. Curious enough to dig around, anyway. Daryl lit a second cigarette off his first and pulled out his phone with his thumbs racing across the screen sending message after message, reaching out to all his people across the scene with what information he had. There wasn't much to go on. Her description and the name 'Beth', assuming it was the right name. He hoped it was the right name.

It didn't take long for the what little information there was to start coming in. It seemed as though nobody truly knew who she was. They knew her face, and the name of her friend (Amy) but they hadn't been involved in the scene long enough for anybody to know who they were or where they had come from. They'd been seen frequently for the last month or so but stuck together like glue, nobody knew a damn thing other than they had just shown up one day and just kept coming back to shows. They brought their own booze, their own weed, and their own cigarettes. They never shared but they also never bummed off anybody, either. They were a little island of self-sufficiency that was nearly impossible to maintain in this lifestyle. This was not the straight edge scene and it was fairly easy to bum a drink, a cig, or a hit off just about anybody. Folks here were generous. He'd heard referred to as 'weed karma' and 'cigarette karma' because when everyone was generous everybody was happy. And yet for every show and party they'd gone to...either they were mistrustful or picky. Or both.

It was just enough information to drive him insane. Maybe one of the others would know something about them. Or...Daryl considered about asking Rick to look her up in the system but he didn't even have a last name. All he had was a blonde girl with an injured soul. Oh, he could feel that hurt the second he'd walked through the door to the alley. That swirling cloud of anger, resentment, depression, and that undefinable sadness that creeps through your body and makes it impossible to function. Daryl knew that entirely too well. Perhaps that was why he wanted to know her. Perhaps it was because he was a kindred spirit. Beth's scars told him a story. The ones that divided her face, the ones on her wrist, the one that ran down the length of her knee and the one that was right under it. He had seen them, too. Well, if they frequented shows as often as people seemed to think, he would run into her again. It was just a matter of time. He could be patient enough.

Daryl had been right when he'd thought it was just been a matter of time but he'd been wrong about the venue. He ran into her not at a show but at an open mic. He had his guitar strapped to his back and spotted her signing in at the bar. When he lined up and signed his name in an untidy scrawl he saw hers penned in a neat, flowing hand. Beth Greene. Now he had a name.

Beth had taken her seat with her guitar within arms length, watching the other performers. This was her secret joy. She had been performing secretly for months. Her blonde waves were contained in a fishtail braid and she was wearing a simply black jersey dress that fell to her knees and her scuffed up converse. Then she spotted a familiar face in the crowd; that pretty singer from the show a few weeks back. Beth would be lying if she said she hadn't thought about him; about the way she wanted to run her fingers down those muscled arms, brush the hair out of his eyes, kiss him until she lost all idea of who she was and why she was hurting. She wanted to lose herself in him and that...that was dangerous. There wasn't room for another hurt in her life. She'd never survive another catastrophe and that was exactly what he represented. If she let down her guard around him (and oh, did she want to) she would be setting herself up for some pretty serious heartache. Men like him, men with women panting after them, were rarely faithful. Besides, what would a guy like that see in her? It wasn't worth the risk. The voice in the back of her head whispered to her again. Maybe he could be a friend...maybe you dismissed him out of turn. Beth shook her head to clear her thoughts and settled back into her chair as he took his spot in front of the mic and introduced himself, fingers moving across the strings in a very different style from what she'd heard before. Now she also had a name. Daryl. It suited him, she thought, rugged and rough around the edges, fitting right into his music and down to the way he played. The notes seem to resonate out of his acoustic and fill the room with palpable emotion. This somehow seemed more personal, more intimate, than the show she'd seen him play. Beth didn't realize she was leaning forward in her seat, eyes fixated on him as he sang. She hadn't known how mournful and sorrowful he could sound, the depth of pain in his voice that ripped across her heart and made her want to hold him, to stroke his hair, to tell him it was alright.

I want you

Yeah I want you

And nothing comes close

To the way that I need you

I wish I can feel your skin

And I want you

From somewhere within

It feels like there's oceans

Between me and you once again

We hide our emotions

Under the surface and try to pretend

But it feels like there's oceans

Between you and me

I want you

And I always will

I wish I was worth

But I know what you deserve

You know I'd rather drown

Than to go on without you

But you're pulling me down

It feels like there's oceans

Between you and me once again

We hide our emotions

Under the surface and try to pretend

But it feels like there's oceans

Between you and me

I want you

And always will

It feels like there's oceans

Between you and me

The man's eyes were closed and when the song finished he bowed briefly before leaving the stage and headed straight to the bar. There wasn't time for her to wonder about him because pretty soon it was her turn. The MC called her name and there wasn't time to back out. She wouldn't let him ruin this for her. The lights of the stage were a comfort even as she adjusted the microphone to her height and plugged her guitar into the amp she'd brought with her. This was something she knew how to do. Music was her solace; that best friend that never left you behind or let you walk the dark of the world alone. She'd left her acoustic behind a long time ago. It sat in the corner of her dorm room gathering dust; she was a different person now. Maybe one day she would pick it up again. Maybe.

Once she started...it was that feeling you get when something is just right. That sweet feeling when you knew that you nailed it, when you could feel the flux of the crowd.

There are no cities, no cities to love

It's not the city, it's the weather we love

Atomic tourist

A life in search of power

I found my test sight

I made a ritual of emptiness

There are no cities, no cities to love

It's not the city, it's the weather we love

Wanna walk to, walk off

The edge of my own life

A doomed town, a bright flash

My body is a souvenir

There are no cities, no cities to love

It's not the city, it's the weather we love

There are no cities, no cities to love

It's not the city, it's the weather we love

It's not the weather, it's the nothing we love

It took so long for me to see it

Hope's a burden or it sets you free

Wandered through the void of you

Wandered through the void of me

I've grown afraid of everything that I love

There are no cities, no cities to love

It's not the city, it's the weather we love

There are no cities, no cities to love

It's not the weather, it's the nothing we love

It's not the weather, it's the people we love

There was applause as she unplugged and carried her gear away and went to the bar, passing over her fake ID and getting a double whiskey, no water, no ice.

Daryl was watching her as she took her drink and her gear and went to a table in the back, settling with her back to the wall and a small smile of accomplishment. He'd been toying with the idea of speaking to her since she'd gone up to the microphone. Well, why shouldn't he? He still wanted to know who she was. Not just her name, Daryl found himself wanting to know all about her. It took him by surprise because after his fiance had left he'd shut out all but his friends. He'd stopped eating, showering, functioning. He'd missed a week's worth of work before Rick dragged his ass out of bed. He'd jumped off the roof of his apartment building a few weeks later. The last he remembered before hitting the pavement was that this had been a mistake, that he wanted to live, that he wasn't ready to die. Not yet. The doctors had said it was a miracle, that he should have died from the trauma. Instead he'd gotten a year's worth of physical therapy for a broken leg and arm. Nobody knew how he'd survived. Nobody questioned it. Daryl shook himself free of the past and shoved it deep into a box in the corner of his mind; he'd promised himself he wouldn't dwell on it. He grabbed the neck of his beer bottle and worked his way through the crowd to sit down next to her, lounging out before clearing his throat.

"So. Beth Greene, huh?" He was rewarded with a frosty glare. "C'mon, I'm not a bad guy. Just...talk to me. I'm not asking for anything other than a conversation."

"Why?" Beth couldn't keep the suspicion out of her voice. "What reason do I have to trust you?" She took one sip, then another, and then another as she watched his face. His reply rolled across her brain.

"You don't have to. I'm not asking you to." Daryl's voice had a trace of frustration. "I'm just asking for a conversation."

"No." There wasn't any venom in her voice this time around, just plain old heavy hearted quiet. "I'm sorry. I can't, okay, Daryl? Can you just leave me alone?" The girl swallowed thickly and stood and finished her drink, leaving with her amp in hand and the guitar case over one shoulder.

His name rolled so sweetly off her tongue and it left Daryl with a strange desire to hear her moan it against his ear as she moved under him and dug her nails into his back. Lust. That's all it was. Plain, old-fashioned lust. If only he could believe it. Daryl left his half-empty beer on the table and followed her, finding her outside with a cigarette. This time he had his own lighter. He hated to push but she was an enigma. She was an unknown quantity and that was what drove his interest. The fact that she kept pushing him away and refused to allow him to get close to her at all, even for a brief conversation.

"Why won't you talk to me? You don't even know me. What happened to you that makes you push everybody away?" Daryl's voice crossed the space between them, bridging the gap. This time she was defeated. He could see it in the hunch of her shoulders, the way she cringed away from him, the way her eyes were on the ember of the cigarette between her fingers instead of meeting his own, the way her voice dropped and he had to step closer to hear her at all.

Beth shook her head. "I know you. I know all the people like you. You talk to a girl, get her involved, get her to love you, and then leave when she isn't pretty anymore." The words were pouring out of her mouth and she couldn't stop them, not now, not when they'd been locked away for so long. "You leave when you're done, with no regard to anybody else. You find the next girl and go with her, and you don't give a shit about the damage you leave behind. You don't care about the girl in the hospital bed, the girl left behind after you cheat and lie, the girl who has to face a funeral alone. You don't care about anything at all!" Her voice was now an anguished cry and she threw the cigarette into the street and whirled away to face the dark, trying to hide the way her shoulders were shaking and tears were threatening. It was when she felt his arms pulling her into a hug that she lost it. Perhaps it was because she wasn't facing him, just pulled to his chest and held as she cried in the dark of the street. She allowed herself this for the first time, crying for girl she'd once been and the loss of her mom, crying because she would never be the same again. She was crying because she felt broken inside and couldn't figure out how to put the pieces back together again. Maybe she couldn't do it because she was trying to do it alone. But how was she supposed to trust anything at all? People left all the time. They walked out like Jimmy, they died like her mom, they distanced themselves like the people she had called her friends. They left her alone. So deeply scared and alone. Beth allowed herself to mourn the loss of what had been her entire life, crying in the sidewalk and being held by a man who was little more than a stranger. A man who seemed persistent in his desire to talk to her even after she'd been cold and rude. Daryl hadn't expected any of this. They were so alike, she and him. Daryl found himself spilling his own story before he could stop himself, trying desperately to prove to her that he was safe and that he understood.

"I get it, Beth." Daryl's voice was quiet as he held her in his arms and felt the hot splash of tears on his forearm. "More than you think. I grew up in a house where nobody cared about me at all. My mom died when I was a kid, my dad was a drunk and a dick. Nobody even noticed when I left town. Nobody even cared. This girl...she ripped out my heart and tore it to pieces a few years back. Four years down the drain. Four years and an engagement and she threw it all away. Moved out when I was at work, left behind a fucking note and her ring saying she'd found somebody else, that I wasn't enough." The words were bitter and pouring from his mouth before he could stop them. He'd seen her scars. He knew that pain intimately. "I jumped off a roof, Beth. I survived. I don't know why. All I know is that I'm here." He held the girl to his chest and felt the way she turned and buried her face into his shirt and cried. This, this intimate moment between two total strangers, was what got him through the days. Maybe there was hope for them both. "I'm just asking to be your friend, Beth. That's it. You don't need to trust me if you don't want to. Let me earn it. And if you don't think I make the cut...I'll leave you alone for good."

Daryl held her as she turned to face him and buried her face in his chest, wrapping his arms around her in solidarity. "Just let me try to be your friend." People started to file out of the door but they remained where they were in the shadow of the building, injured soul to injured soul. "Can you let me try? You can't close everybody out. It'll poison you. Let me give you my number. It'll be your decision to text me or not."

Beth took a moment to step back and turned around, wiping under her eyes to clear the smudges of eyeliner from under her eyes before she could face him again. She dug her phone from the pocket on the front of her guitar case and handed it over without a word. Daryl watched her walk away with knot in his stomach. He had tried. He desperately wanted her to text him but he also didn't expect it. There was something about her that he couldn't understand, this desperate need to protect her, to make her smile, to heal the wounds that were still so fresh. There was so much of her story that he didn't know, so much he wanted to know.

Daryl wasn't a man of faith but he found himself sending out a prayer in case SomeOne was listening, a prayer that she would send him that text message, that she would reach out to him. He couldn't explain his attraction to her or why he felt like he had to keep her...safe.