**A/N: This is just a one-shot I wrote in response to the episode that aired tonight. I wasn't going to post it other than tumblr, but I thought that this might help for anyone who is sad.
Warnings: Self harm, mentions of past child abuse.
He told Abraham to tell the others he was going to get water. He wasn't. He didn't give a fuck about water. Didn't give a fuck about much of anything these days, not since—
(Blonde hair, shining in the flickering candlelight, the hint of an upturned lip, the soft ghost of a laugh as she-)
—No.
He walked through the woods, following instincts that hadn't failed him despite the fact that he hadn't seen familiar land for weeks; just miles and miles of empty gas tanks and broken down cars and dried up creeks. Somehow his gut still guided him, despite the fact that Georgia was as far away as—
(Just say the first thing that pops into your head.
I've never been out of Georgia.
Really? Okay, good one.)
He gave a rough shake of his head as he stepped out of the trees. There in the distance, a structure broke the endless stretch of green and he paused instinctively. For just a moment he saw another structure, rising out of the foliage just like this. Then he blinked and fire roared behind his eyelids; his ears crackled with the sound of devouring flames that thrust red and orange fingers up, up, up to the sky just as the girl beside him defiantly thrust her own.
Daryl growled and pushed through the brush, but he only made it a few more steps before it became too much. Not bothering to swipe his overgrown hair from his eyes, Daryl rounded the trunk of a tree and dropped his crossbow beside it. His weary bones creaked within his tired frame as he sank to the ground inch by burdened inch. The tree was solid against his back and he used it as leverage to lift his hips and reach into his pockets, drawing out his last remaining cigarettes.
There had been a time when just lighting them and getting that first whiff of the scent would give him relief. He felt nothing, now. It didn't surprise him. He hadn't felt anything since-
(It's been three weeks since Atlanta. I know you lost somethin' back there.)
-No. It had been longer. It had been so much longer since he'd really felt. Since he'd had anything other than a tiny hint of hope quickly crushed, a flame snuffed away like nothing, leaving him in darkness. He hadn't felt anything,really felt anything, since…
(What changed your mind? Oh.)
Daryl raised the cigarette to his lips and took another draw, but he didn't feel it. No easing of the tension, no calming of his emotions. No rush of relief. He felt nothing. Maybe that was it. Maybe he just couldn't feel anything anymore. Maybe that was his punishment, for losing…
(Don't you think that's beautiful?)
He looked down at his hand and lowered the cigarette to it, pressing the hot tip of it into his worn and dirty flesh, hearing the sizzle of his skin crisping away.
And he felt nothing.
Just like he had felt his whole life. Nothing good, anyway. He had felt plenty of bad, day after day.
He had felt the sting of his father's upraised hand and the lash of his belt against his back, so hard it peeled away his flesh and left permanent marks behind. He'd felt his father driving his own cigarettes into his arm, his chest, his back, all the sizzling pain and the burn that lingered for hours after. He'd felt his Ma's nails digging into his shoulder as she swayed in place, so drunk she called him Merle instead of Daryl despite the fact that Merle had been ten years older and in juvie at the time. He'd felt the heat of the fire just ten feet away as the house went up in flames with his Ma inside.
He'd felt the pain of loss, the pain of being unwanted, the pain of knowing he could disappear and no one would even notice, let alone care.
He had grown up knowing what it what the word nothing meant. What it meant not only to have nothing, but to be nothing. To have no one, and to not matter to anyone either.
Daryl had lived that nothing for almost forty years. Drifting, aimless, following a brother he sometimes thought only kept him around to fuck with. Following a brother who might not even have noticed if one day he just up and disappeared, except there wouldn't be anyone there to make sure he didn't kill himself mixing his pills and his booze.
Maybe not. Maybe Merle had cared, in his own way, but Daryl knew that wasn't much more than nothing, anyway.
He knew nothing. He'd never known anything else.
Until her. Until following that bright blonde hair through the woods on a mission, until the country club and that damned peach schnapps, until drinking up moonshine and pouring all the badness out of him until she'd caught it, like that liquor pooled in the mason jars, thrown onto the walls of that rotten home and used to set it aflame. Until weeks in the woods watching her learn to track and hunt, until he'd only been able to sleep with her right beside him. Until her riding on his back, until peanut butter and pigs feet, until her face in the light of the flickering candle, until, until, until….
(You're gonna miss me so bad when I'm gone, Daryl Dixon.)
Until Beth.
Beth, Beth, Beth, Beth.
There was a thickness in his throat that he couldn't clear. It built right along with the stinging in the back of his eyes, the tightness in his chest that seemed to trap his heart, clenching in on it as it throbbed out to the rhythm of her name:
Beth, Beth, Beth, Beth.
And he cried. He cried, because she had been the one bright spark of hope in the darkness, the only good thing he had ever known. He cried because she had been good, and tough, and clever, and smart, and beautiful. He cried because she had believed in him, she had believed that he was worth more than nothing.
He cried because she was gone.
He cried, because he didn't want to be the last man standing, because what did that man get from a world like that?
Nothing.
He cried because he had been so damn tired of feeling nothing and now it was all he had again. And he hated it.
And then, just as he began to pull himself back, just as he dragged in a sharp breath and felt the clenching around his heart ease, he heard it. The snap of a twig behind him, in the woods.
Daryl reached for his bow and started to turn, expecting a walker, expecting one of the group coming to drag him back, maybe while murmuring more bullshit platitudes about what the girl none of them had believed in or even known might have wanted for him.
The last thing he'd expected was this. Blonde hair fluttering in the breeze, faintly shining in the sunlight from above. A hint of pink on the apples of cheeks, the gentle curve of the corners of lips…
And those big blue eyes, fixed right on him.
He dropped to his knees as she stepped towards him and for a moment, all he could think was that this was it. He had died. He must have, right? And maybe that was good. Maybe that meant he didn't have to be the last man standing.
Maybe he could be with her again, now.
Maybe this was better.
And then she spoke. "Daryl. Daryl." He only dimly registered the gun in her hands, or the fact that she was still wearing the same jeans and boots, the same yellow shirt with the grey cardigan over it, only now it was stained across the shoulder and sleeve. He blinked and she was on her knees in front of him and somewhere through the haze in his mind he dimly registered her words.
"I've been tracking you all for weeks, but I never thought I'd catch up. I guess I got lucky, running into Morgan outside the hospital. I told him about Noah, and Richmond. I knew, I knew that you guys had him and that he'd tell you, and you'd go there. And I hoped- I hoped you'd be there, but you weren't-"
He blinked at her, again and again, but she didn't fade away. She didn't vanish in a halo of light, didn't unfurl the wings some part of him had always imagined she deserved far more than he did. He realized as he knelt there, inches away from her, that she was still talking as her hands fluttered around him like butterflies, like she was afraid to touch him somehow.
"We tracked you. Both of us, Daryl, cause I remembered everything you taught me. We followed the road up towards DC, cause Morgan had this map, and then we followed your tracks, when we could. I knew we were close, but I didn't realize we were this close, and I- I just was following my instincts, looking for you or for water and I saw these tracks and I thought- I thought they were yours but then I thought it couldn't be, there's no way, if I get my hopes up it'll just hurt too much and then- and then-"
Her voice broke and for whatever reason, that was what snapped through the haze inside of him. That was what had him looking at her- really looking at her- seeing the scars that slashed across her skin; one across her cheek, one above her brow, and on the other side… a small white bandage. Right where she'd been shot. Right where that wound had been when he'd held her in her arms and carried her down each and every flight of stairs; the most precious burden he'd ever held and at the same time, the one he'd never wanted to hold. Not like that, anyway.
As he stared into those big, impossibly blue eyes, he heard Beth murmur in a choked up, strained voice. "And then I saw you."
And all he could do was breathe out in a voice so ragged, so broken, but filled with the faintest strain of hope, "Beth?"
To his amazement, as she peered at him through eyes now bright with what he could only guess were tears, Beth breathed right back, "Hello."
Hello. He wasn't sure whether he laughed or cried. Maybe it was both. He felt like doing both, in that moment when she finally gave in and lifted her hands to cup his face. He felt like laughing at the brush of her soft palms against his rough stubble, he felt like crying at the warmth of her skin against his own.
Because he could feel it.
He could feel her.
Just like he could feel it when he reached out to touch her and instead she took his hand in her own. Just like he could feel her gentle touch as she lifted his hand and hissed over the sight of the burn mark that marred his flesh. Just like he could feel the brush of her thumb beneath it, and the ghost of her breath so close to his skin as she murmured, "Daryl, why?"
It didn't seem to matter to her that all he could do was look at her and shake his head. "I know," she whispered softly, pain in her eyes as she looked at him.
He couldn't find the words, but then with Beth, when had he ever needed to? When had he ever needed to put what he was feeling into words. Except…
(What changed your mind?)
"You." His voice was so soft, it was almost a whisper, but he took strength from her nearness and the look in her eyes and he spoke again, more firmly this time, answering a question that should have been answered so long ago, "You. You changed my mind."
The smile that curved up her lips was so warm and bright that he could swear she felt that, too, just as he felt the press of her lips just beside the cigarette burn, as she breathed out against his hand, "I know."
"And I did miss you. So bad."
Another kiss, and again, "I know."
He closed his eyes but only for a moment, because he was afraid that if he looked away for too long, she would vanish. But when he opened them again she was still there, kneeling in front of him, holding his heavy, dirty hand in her soft, pale ones and looking at him with those hopeful, beautiful eyes, and in a broken voice he exhaled desperately, "I don't wanna be the last man standing anymore."
She pressed the last kiss right over the burn mark and he felt it all; the warmth, the softness, the faint sting of pain, and the ghost of her breath as she said one more time, "I know." Then she sat up and gently cupped his cheek, and as she looked right into his eyes Beth added, "You don't have to be. I was wrong, okay? You don't have to be the last man standing."
And he felt it again. That flicker in the darkness, the light that banished the darkness and the loneliness and the darkness.
Some people might call it hope, and sure, that would fit. But to him, it had another name.
Beth Greene.