A/N: Thank you all so much for the response on "Day Zero". I had promised a follow up to it months ago and never got around to it but here it is (finally!). As always, leave a response and tell me what you thought of it. I love reading all of your comments and appreciate them so, so much! -A
Merle would laugh at him right now. Laugh at how he chose to wear the one shirt that didn't have stains or holes in it and wasn't as faded and worn out. He would absolutely howl if he saw him staring into the old, cracked mirror in the shower room, trying to decide it if it was worth it to take one of Rick's razors and shave the scruffy goatee he always wore.
He decided against it.
Ain't gonna do much for yer ugly face anyway, he could almost hear Merle saying to him.
He knew not to take his comments to heart. Even if they were meant to. He'd learned a long time ago to ignore any jabs he had made at him, regardless of the truth they rang with.
He squinted into the mirror, still a little dissatisfied with his appearance. It seemed no matter how hard he scrubbed or how long he stood under the freezing cold shower water of the prison, he still looked dirty, tired and disheveled; not to mention a good ten years older than he actually was. Though sometimes he had to admit he lost track of the days and months since the world had gone to hell. If asked, he responded with a firm 38, but he couldn't be sure anymore. Sometimes he felt older than Hershel; oftentimes, when he looked into Rick's tired eyes, he felt younger than Carl.
Other times, when he closed his eyes in his cell and his mind tricked him into feeling the soft flesh and warm blood, that had once belonged to his brother, covering his hands he felt small enough to crawl next to Judith and cry right along with her. Because she missed her momma and he missed his asshole of a brother; and if the world had been different, neither one of them would have been crying at that moment. Judith: at the top of her lungs as Beth tried to hum a lullaby; him: silently and with occasional sniffling that made him wish his shirts still had sleeves so he had something to wipe his face on.
It had been a while since he had one of those nights though. Granted, he didn't have them often. But with Merle gone those nights had started to creep up on him to take him back to that trailer out in the sticks. Where a snotty faced 12 year old was left alone for longer than he could count until a cop came to his door to take him away because his brother was in jail and his dad wanted nothing to do with him anymore. He'd felt small then; hell, he had been small, but even that old feeling was nothing compared to the ones that haunted him when he felt the small knife tucked at his side that he'd used to put Merle down.
Most of the time he dealt with it the only way he knew how; in silence and in solitude. On watch or perched on the bunk in his cell. It wasn't until the night he thought the gray silence of his cell might swallow him up that he went looking out for a little place that had at least some light.
He didn't find it.
Not like he imagined.
The place he'd found instead was just as gray as his own, but it was still better. It was less lonely; less dark. With little hand-drawn pictures and dried up wild flowers in red plastic cups because prisoners had had no use for glass vases. It had faded yellow sheets instead of the rough gray ones in every other cell and even the air felt less stuffy in there; like there was less people breathing it.
She didn't mind when he invaded her cell.
The first night he went to her there was a silent understanding of why he was there to begin with. She laid in her bunk and he sat on the floor next to her, staring in silence at the board that reminded him of his failure when he had had to put down all three of the men he'd taken on that supply run.
She ended up sliding off the bed at one point, inching close to him and staring straight up at his face and although he didn't stare back, he wondered what she looked at, what she could possibly find to stare at for so long because he knew he wasn't much to look at. He was about to question her, about to growl out that she should stop staring when she put an arm around his waist and her head came to rest on his chest like the first time she'd hugged him all those weeks ago. This time he couldn't flinch. He couldn't move or recoil; he sat stock still, unsure of where to move his hands or if he should move them at all.
That was the night she'd kissed him. She'd looked up at him with the same wide eyed expression she'd worn when she hugged him for the first time but this time she didn't sigh and move away from him with a small shrug. This time she lingered a little longer and looked between his lips and his eyes and even someone as inexperienced as him, could tell what it meant. He told himself to move. To stop her or speak up but much like he'd done all night, he sat frozen on the cold cement floor as she softly placed her lips on his and he let his eyes flutter closed.
There had been many more kisses since that night. Timid and hesitant ones on nights where he was tired of taking out trees to prop the fence of the prison up. He would lay on his back while she propped herself up with her elbow and loomed over him, pecking his lips every now and again and searching his face with wide blue eyes that were asking him a million questions through the eery silence of the prison.
Then there was the less innocent encounters. The night a few walkers had gotten through a hole in the fence and nearly caused a disaster before she and Carl had taken them out. That night she was scared, he figured. She was panicked and running on adrenaline and the moment he entered her cell she trapped him between the concrete wall and kissed him until he was out of breath.
She kissed him that night until an impulse or an instinct he didn't know existed in him took over and he found himself grabbing on to her hips, pushing her towards her makeshift double bed.
Only when they reached the bunks did he realize the situation he'd gotten them into. Only then did he realize that he was suddenly sitting on the bed while a small blonde straddled his lap; with what seemed like light years of experience beyond him.
He found neither the courage to match her lips and touches nor the will to stop her. And so he sat there. Still enough that it took only a few seconds for her to realize his detachment and with a small sigh she slid off of him, coming to sit beside him.
His face burned and he wished he could stomp out like he normally would with any situation that made him uncomfortable; but he couldn't bare to insult her one more time.
It was ridiculous. He was an adult. Many, many years ahead of her but in this one situation she had the upper hand. The very first woman that had ever touched him had been paid by Merle; the rest were in the middle of drunken hazes and even that had been years ago; a lifetime ago, actually. There had never been anything in his life as pure as Beth.
"We don't gotta..." She began; but he cut her off with a nod. "Not tonight." She added with a small smile and when he turned to face her, she pressed a soft kiss to his forehead.
Tonight would be different though. Tonight he was pushing down Merle's voice reminding him that nobody would ever really want him. He was pushing down the voice that sneered and told him she was just waiting for someone younger and better looking to come along.
He was halfway out of the prison showers when he hesitated, not remembering if he'd put on deodorant and so he ran back to put more on; just in case.
"Hey," she said softly when he walked into her cell and shut the door behind him. She'd been writing at the small desk by the door and went back to her notebook immediately, leaving Daryl to shuffle awkwardly in silence.
She had no reason to know tonight would be any different than any of the nights before. He never demanded much conversation; preferred the silence even, and just being able to sit near her while she read or wrote was enough to ease the tension that seemed to be permanently crushing him. She didn't know that the small foil package he'd secretly taken off of Glenn when he was on watch seemed to be burning a hole through his jean's pocket; demanding his attention.
He was at a loss on how to broach the subject. He knew she wouldn't object. That much was clear on her part and it was him she was waiting on. He huffed to himself probably not for the first time because she suddenly stopped writing, dropped her pen and turned to face him.
"Sorry." She vaguely gestured towards the notebook that had held her attention. "Are you tired? We can go to sleep if you want."
Instead of replying, he stared attentively at her with narrowed eyes, trying to talk himself into action. In one large step he was standing over her, and with even less thought he was putting his hands on either side of her face and dragging her up from the chair.
"Not tired." He mumbled before decidedly placing his lips on hers.
It wasn't something that was lost on him; sex. He assumed he knew the mechanics of it; knew how everything worked. In that moment though, he felt a lot larger and clumsier than he'd ever felt with his large hands seeming to grab at the wrong place and Beth would only make a tiny sound before telling him what to do. It was strange, it was embarrassing; and it would have had him running in a second if it wasn't Beth that was holding on to him whispering that it was ok every time he inevitably fucked something up.
That's what she was in his life, it seemed; a sweet, gentle angel that reassured him, stroked his sweaty face and told him everything was fine. Never mind how different they were or how jagged the pieces of themselves seemed to be in broad daylight. In the privacy of her little yellow cell, she was perfect for him and by some miracle he was good enough for her.
He wasn't stupid enough to think he actually deserved her. Her daddy would run him out of the prison with a shotgun in hand if he knew and he would let him because her daddy would be right. He had no business touching or being around Hershel's pretty daughter. Something so sweet and innocent shouldn't be tainted by a dirty redneck like him. Tonight though, he wanted to be selfish and not bring himself to care.
He needed her, he realized. Not in the way he had her tonight, all sweaty tangle of sheets and awkward limbs (his). No, he needed her looking at him with big blue eyes like something he knew he wasn't. He needed her sitting on the bunk with his head in her lap while she quietly hummed an old song to him, he needed her reading a book out loud to him that wasn't actually very good but he needed to hear her voice for the world around him to be ok.
He was starting to understand why Rick lost his mind when Lori died. There were people like him and Rick, who helped you survive, and there were those like Beth or Lori, that helped you live. Daryl started figuring out pretty quickly, even before he'd ever laid eyes on Beth, that there was really no point in surviving if there was nothing to live for.
Beth gave him life. It was a different way than Rick gave him life and purpose within the group. Beth warmed him from the inside out, kept him breathing and took his breath away all at the same time. She didn't look at him with guilt or grief over the lives they lost. She didn't cry anymore and neither did he. She didn't expect him to come in, crossbow swinging, and be a hero. It relieved the tension in his body to know that because he honestly didn't know if he could be a hero at all, he didn't know how much longer people would believe that he was. Beth was different; she didn't need him to save her. She just wanted him there. With her. And that much he could always do as long as she kept him alive the way she always did.
When they laid next to each other, breaths trying to descend to normal and chills spreading through their sweat-covered bodies when a breeze blew into the cell, he clutched to her for dear life, one hand wiping blonde hair out of her face to lay a kiss on her forehead, nose and finally lips. He had no right to be there next to her, holding her and kissing her after she had already given herself over so completely to him but it wasn't going to stop him. He was going to hold on to that life line he had until she deemed it enough (and he desperately hoped that would never happen). She might not need him, she might be too good for him, but he needed her. He needed to stay living.