When he finds her (when she finds him) it is not her hair that he will recall, hours later, while he is sprawled out on the warm earth of their campsite.
Nor is it her eyes, those big spikes of blue that seem to have a physical touch about them, reaching out, warming you in your blood. He does not yet recall the swoop of dirty skin below her collarbones, the breath that is pushed out of her lips when she sees him. The girls that she has saved – young, younger than her, and far more frail – stand behind her, prepared to fight yet again another man, another threat. Some have knives, guns, while others hold only each other, too tired to do anything else.
No, it is Beth's hands that Daryl will remember as he lies next to the campfire, a few feet from the mouth of the communal tent that the girls have occupied for the night. Although there were several tents available for them (everyone in Daryl's group having offered their own) the girls had stuck close to Beth, some having reached out to her as she walked toward the largest tent. Having returned from the river with replenished canteens, Glenn had reached out to one of the girls, her long red hair waving behind her in dusty braids. He had barely brushed her shoulder when she screamed, batting away Glenn's hand and rushing to Beth's side at the front of the group.
Beth didn't blink as she turned around and swallowed the screaming girl in her arms. Her hands ran down the girl's braids again and again, gently rubbing her fingertips into the scalp, over the shells of her ears. The girl's screams subsided into whimpers, then into nothing at all. Beth took the girl's hand into hers and walked into the tent, the others shuffling inside behind her.
Glenn had looked back at the rest of the group with his hands at his sides, as though afraid to move. The canteens were scattered on the ground at his feet, dark pools of water shifting dirt into mud. Behind him, Daryl heard Rick (because by now, he knew that man's footsteps as well as his own) walking toward the canteens, picking them up and settling them into the crook of his arm. Daryl stooped to pick one up, and the sound of metal and rock ricocheted in his head, like a sneeze in a dark movie theater.
He and Rick had placed the canteens just outside the tent, resting them on the ground and walking away quickly, like food to an animal you're not quite sure of yet. After having walked over to the tent several times and retreating, Maggie shook her head and pulled closer to Glenn, who muttered something about "time" and "the right moment." Evening had come and gone, and not a sound was heard from inside the tent, though at some point a pair of arms had reached out and pulled the pile of canteens inside. Daryl wanted to get them some food, though he didn't have the faintest idea how to do so without disturbing the pall that had entered the camp along with the girls. He was heating up the venison that was leftover from earlier today though, just in case. He sat staring into the fire, watching the meat turn from a soft pink to brown.
She appeared next to him suddenly, her elbows resting on the faded denim of her jeans. She didn't look at him, but neither did she seem to look at the fire. Instead, her eyes shifted from one end of the camp to the other for several moments before finally resting on the communal tent. She cocked her head to the side as if listening and, seemingly satisfied, faced the fire. When she spoke, it was less a whisper and more like a soft scratching in the night, like the sound his mom's old record player used to make when it ran out of songs.
"Who's on guard tonight?"
Daryl had to look up to remind himself, even though he had been the very one to choose who took which shift. He cleared his throat, which sounded louder than intended in the dark pocket of night.
"Tyreese and Carol. Then Sasha. Then Abraham."
Beth looked up at him for the first time since entering the camp, her forehead creasing in pale lines. Between them, her fingers rest along the top of her – his – knife, the tip of her thumbnail jutting into the dark leather.
"New guy," he added. "He's ok."
She removed her hand, but her forehead remained creased in thought.
He wanted to tell her that she was safe, even sounded it on his head. You're safe here, Beth. You 'n the girls. But the words sounded fake, like those flowers they had found at the funeral home. Like the promises he had given her and – god, he sighs – meant to keep before that car sped down the road with her inside. It was this final image that pushed the words out.
"Beth…when we were..." His words are clumsy in his mouth, and he feels stretched thin, as though his body and his mind are no longer connected, despite years of threading the two together in the darkness of the woods. To stalk prey. To escape.
But what am I hunting now? he wondered. He glanced over at Beth, the muscles of her arms curving down her skin, her hands – those damn hands – stronger than he remembers them ever being. The hair that shifts down her back as she shakes her head from side to side, stopping his questions, her eyes not meeting his.
Daryl looked back at the fire, his mind offering little by way of conversation. From behind him, his ears caught the sounds of a girl's cry, then an answering shhh and the muffled slide of fabric. Beth, having looked up at the sounds, rested her head on her crossed arms. Daryl had the urge to run his fingers along the slope of her neck, beneath her tangled hair. Instead, he cleared his throat and reached for the now blackened venison.
"You eat today?"
Beth looked up, resting her chin on her arms. "I'm…not really sure, honestly."
Daryl grunted a response, pulling a sizable chunk of meat off the fire. Skewering it with a reasonably clean stick, he held it out to Beth, who reached out without really looking at it. He glanced down, then set the meat back on the fire.
"You got some …" he offered, gesturing to her hands. He'd wanted to say dirt, but he knew blood when he saw it. Had seen it his whole life, back before it was everywhere, before a day brimmed with the cutting up of bodies. Back before he realized that eyes could be deadened by more than just alcohol and drugs and hate.
He cleared his throat and took a rag out of his back pocket, pouring some water on it. He was startled by the memory of a bloodstained Rick on the side of the road, and tried not to think about why.
Beth was staring down at her hands, her fingers folding in on themselves, turning them into fists that tightened and shook from the force. Daryl could hear her breathing quicken over the crackling of the fire, her head moving from side to side until her hair was a mass of yellow streaks in the night. His own breathing matching hers, Daryl quickly shoved the damp rag over her fists, kneeling on the ground in front of her and holding her hands in his grasp.
He said her name – how many times he can't be sure– and felt her still above him. When she opened her fists, he saw that her nails had dug into her skin, half moons chipping away the sheen of red on her palms, her fingers, her wrists. Daryl unwrapped the rag and began to wipe her hands down. He didn't notice that she had rested her forehead on his until she spoke, a whisper of breath against him.
"I'm so tired, Daryl."
She shifted her knees, effectively pinning Daryl in between her legs. He continued to run the rag over her hands, the water cleansing the blood away until he saw the long, red gashes underneath, the cuts deep in Beth's pale skin. He stopped his ministrations and brought his thumb up to the curve of his mouth, running his eyes over the new scars, the embedded results of self-defense, of struggling to get out, get back. Daryl could feel a pulsing behind his eyelids, and fought back the bile leaping up in his throat for what this woman had to do come this far. By this point, Beth's head had fallen to Daryl's shoulder, and her next words were muffled by the collar of his vest.
"I can hear them, you know. Like they're all stuffed in my ears. Those men. Want me to go crazy I guess." She laughed, but it was hollow, only a breath of air on his neck. "It's probably working."
Daryl responded by leaning forward and running his finger down the braid that had somehow survived within the mess of blond tangles. He closed his eyes and, taking a slow breath, placed Beth's hands at the bottom of his flannel shirt, pausing only a moment before he began to push them upwards, underneath the cloth. He heard Beth gasp the moment she realized what he was doing and began to pull her hands back. Daryl held firm, holding her by her wrists until she began to slowly run her hands along his lower back, his shoulder blades, over the scars that crisscrossed the skin there. She stretched her palms out, her hands burning like a match, like a shack burning down to embers.
"Gotta put it away," he breathed into the shell of her ear. "'Fore it kills us."
A rustle of tents would break them apart in the early moments of dawn. But for a few hours, there was only the feeling of scarred skin thawing out in the night and the fast pops of a dying fire.