Title: All He Needed to Hear
Description: Gratitude. Forgiveness, both received and offered. Love. In the end, there are only a few things we ever really need to hear.
Author's Note: I have no idea what this unbeta'd mess even is…
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine… as evidenced by how OOC they probably are.
Daryl Dixon had never believed in monsters until they started to walk the earth.
In his youth, there'd never been time for such childish fears as goblins or ghouls. Not when the human beings he knew were so very bad enough.
Daryl Dixon hadn't ever believed in heaven, either. Not until he got there.
And even then it took a while.
At first he thought he was just dreaming, in that feverish half-life way that accompanies an extended knock-out. After all, one minute he'd been fighting an encroaching herd, back-to-back with Aaron, and then the next, it seemed, he was alone and displaced.
A new sky, suddenly clear and blue, hung above while a dusty dirt road stretched out before him. It curved and then sloped down slightly, before rising up to meet a familiar farmhouse looking clean and bright in the distance.
The barn he'd last seen consumed in flames stood restored somehow, worn but sturdy, to his right. He started walking, still convinced it was all but unconscious imagination, but finding no reason to not play along. He moved with purpose but not haste, passing the area where the group's tents once stood, the shade of the tall surrounding trees reaching for him. So, so long ago that time seemed. Before his companions had become his family. Before he had fully understood who it was he could become, in the fresh start offered by the end of the world.
Though muted by both space and wind, he startled at the sound of a door slam. Eyes looking to the house, he nearly froze as a slender frame moved to lean against the porch rail.
It was at the sight of Lori Grimes that he briefly thought, for the first time, maybe this was more than mere dreaming.
As he quickened his pace slightly, he assessed the woman who he'd never expected to see again. Her eyes were intent on him, and a light, lazy smile pulled at her lips. She looked not only alive, but healthy. A warm glow bloomed on her cheeks, one that had been long missing when he'd seen her last – after a winter on the road and an advancing pregnancy and all that lay broken between her and Rick, and Carl, had left her pale and dim and tired.
She looked, physically, as she did when they first met. She also looked happy in way he'd never seen before.
He stopped before he reached the first step, but didn't say anything. Closer now, he could see that Lori's smile had a knowing edge.
"It is real good to see you, Daryl."
Her tone caught him off guard. Unhurried and casual, her greeting sounded as if they were close friends who'd just gone a bit longer than usual between visits.
"Where am I?"
The question wasn't exactly what he wanted to ask, but he didn't know how to phrase it any better.
"I think you already know." Lori's eyes narrowed briefly as she studied him closely for a moment, before continuing dismissively, "But that's more for one of the others to tell you anyway." She straightened then, and made her way down the porch steps to stand in front of him.
"We weren't sure who else would be coming, but I'd hope you would be. And I told them I wanted to speak to you first."
If she was aware that none of what she was saying made any sense to Daryl, she didn't act like it.
Squaring her shoulders and fixing him with a gaze he thought, disbelievingly, appeared full of admiration, she spoke next with a deeper sincerity. "Thank you, Daryl."
All of Daryl's renowned stoicism evaporated in a flash, leaving his face openly confused.
"For w-"
"For taking care of them. My family. For holding Judith when Rick couldn't, and letting Carl see how loss can make a person strong. For being the brother my husband needed, after betrayal and bad luck had broken him down. I failed them, in so many ways, long before I left. But I've been watching, and I'm so grateful for all the ways you didn't."
Though Lori's voice sounded thick with emotion, her face remained open and at ease. Without even a trace of awkwardness, she raised her hand to gently rest on his shoulder and Daryl was struck with the mothering quality of the gesture.
"You're a much better man than I gave you credit for when I was alive. And I thank you."
She smiled at him again, something kind and genuine and in the back of his mind Daryl thought on how this, much more than the living person he had met, must be the woman Rick loved. He was still at a loss, in the face of her gratitude and a growing overall sense of uncertainty, but while he couldn't manage a smile to match hers, he did hold her eyes a moment as he nodded in acknowledgement.
However touched he was by her sentiments, though, he also sighed quietly with relief when her hand fell away and she took a step back. Then, moving off to his side, she began to head away from the house, towards the barn. A few feet from him she looked back over her shoulder, the knowing spark back in her eyes. "You should head on in, now. He's waiting."
She seemed to laugh lightly at his bewilderment, though he didn't actually hear the sound, and then kept walking. Daryl watched her for a few moments, mentally trying to find his footing. Things no longer felt like a dream, but they didn't seem all-together real either. Lori Grimes was dead. But that hadn't stopped her hand from feeling warm and solid on his shoulder.
He heard a slight rustle come from inside the farmhouse and turned his head back to the door. He couldn't make anything out through the screen, or through the slightly ajar front window, but he had to admit his curiosity was piqued. Who was waiting for him?
He climbed the steps and made his way into the house with his natural hunter's quiet, but still before he'd even had the door closed behind him a familiar voice called out from the sitting room off to his right.
"Come on in, son. And have a seat."
He stepped forward and turned through the room's entryway, and almost stumbled at the sight before him.
Hershel Greene sat in a large armchair, his once missing leg propped up onto a cushioned ottoman and a tall glass of iced tea on the table at his side.
Unbidden, his mind contrasted this with the last time he'd seen Hershel, in his last tragic moments, and the memory felt to Daryl like a punch to the throat.
Feeling short of breath, Daryl struggled to make his eyes take in the older man who he had respected so much, and instead focused on the droplets of condensation he could make out on the side of that glass.
"It's all a bit disorienting, I know. But you really should sit down. That chair," Hershel nodded to the matching arm chair positioned on the other side of the end table, "is more comfortable than it looks, I promise."
Gaze now on the carpet, clean under his wrecked and mismatched boots, Daryl did as Hershel asked and sat down. He perched, awkward and stiff, and though he could feel the man's eyes on him, he didn't turn to face the old vet.
"Daryl." Hershel's voice was gentle, but held the authority of a kind father.
He knew what the man wanted, but without even meaning to, Daryl shook his head subtly.
"Daryl, look at me."
A moment of stillness and silence passed as one man's patience and another man's stubbornness warred in the sunlit room.
Finally, still hiding as much as he could behind the shag of his hair, Daryl lifted his head and looked to his side.
"I'd like very much to tell you that you have nothing you need to be forgiven for, especially not by me. But I think I know you well enough to understand that would fall on willfully deaf ears."
Hershel ducked his head slightly, trying to meet Daryl's eyes more directly.
"So I will say this to you instead: You are forgiven, son. For whatever it is you think you've done to wrong me, for whatever is keeping you from lookin' me in the eyes; you are forgiven. You couldn't have saved me, and you couldn't have saved her."
With a gasp so sudden Daryl wasn't sure the sound was his until moments later, his leather-clad shoulders slumped inward and a rapid well of tears blurred his sight. Daryl shook his head back and forth as he felt the wetness on his cheeks and chin.
"Nah, I…I could'a done—." There was another gasp that sounded pathetic to his own ears. "I should'a done more."
Daryl felt simultaneous guilt and shame, for letting the man down then and for losing his composure now, but Hershel's voice remained calm and almost-tender.
"There was nothing else to be done, and you already did more than any man should have ever had to do. You are not responsible for the deeds of others. You did not fail me once while I was on earth. Do not disrespect me now by suggestin' I'm a liar."
Forcing a breath that stifled his tears, Daryl took a moment to think over the words of pardon hanging in the air.
He had felt fault and regret for so long, he had no idea how to feel absolution. He almost bristled at the idea now, that forgiveness was even possible. But Daryl had never known Hershel to say anything he didn't mean, and he admired the old man too much to fight him.
And even if this was but delirium and illusion, Daryl had to admit he was grateful to see Hershel Greene again.
In what felt like an honest-to-God act of bravery, Daryl once again lifted his head and, shaking it to move the bangs from his eyes, he looked straight into Hershel's grey-blue stare.
The look held, and while Daryl couldn't have translated it into words, he understood what passed between them. Slowly, beneath the white mustache, Hershel's lips pulled into an affectionate smile.
Then he moved to lift his glass of tea and tilted it slightly towards Daryl, his eyes now twinkling almost mischievously.
"You know, you could use a drink yourself – you're lookin' mighty ragged. My Annette's recipe is the perfect amount of sweet. I think maybe you should head into the kitchen to pour you some."
Feeling a weird prickle at the back of his neck, Daryl looked towards the hallway that led to the Greene's kitchen as a sudden bang and an accompanying curse sounded from the other room.
Barely hearing the soft chuckle of Hershel now behind him, Daryl slowly followed the previous noise with what seemed like his first hints of trepidation since entering this delusion, or whatever it was. He'd know the sound of that obscene oath anywhere, but he couldn't believe it. It was on a whole other level of unbelievable than Lori, than Hershel.
He hadn't dreamed of Merle in months.
He hadn't dreamed of Merle, alive, in years.
"Don't go trying to sneak up on me, baby brother. I ain't no buck you're hunting."
The rough voice, tinged in mocking but not bite, sounded to Daryl just as it had whenever Merle was reasonably good-tempered, and reasonably sober, from their rambling, wandering lives before the turn. He moved into the kitchen and found his brother grinning, even as he lifted his thumb to suck at the sting, and leaning against the sink as if he belonged in this space, in this place he had never been.
"You wouldn't think it'd be a thing up here, but damn if that smash didn't hurt like a bitch." Merle glared at a cupboard above the sink, apparently the culprit for his injury, before nodding towards the bottle of whiskey on the counter. "I'd recommend somethin' a lil' stronger than that piss-ass tea gramps' drinking…but, i's up to you."
While the roughened man before him looked and sounded like Merle, the freedom of choice he spoke of was entirely new to Daryl. In his entire memory, Merle had never once suggested Daryl was capable or allowed of making any real call for himself. He wondered what kind of games his subconscious was playing.
He didn't move and watched wordlessly as Merle shrugged, and then uncapped the bottle to take a swig of the liquor.
Merle held it out again in offering when he was done, but Daryl still didn't move or speak, partly in renewed confusion, partly in fear (though of what, he wasn't sure).
The older Dixon only grinned wider before making a show of looking about the kitchen.
"Ain't surprised you picked this place. Never lived anywhere worth comin' back to, did we?" Merle paused to take another drink, but continued on before Daryl figured out how to ask what he was talking about.
"I didn't show up here at first, myself. Ain't never been here in my life, so why would I? But eventually I wandered this way, somehow, and caught one look at Mrs. Officer-Friendly and that's when I knew I was just waiting anyway."
"Waiting for what?" Daryl's voice rolled over the frog in his throat as if it were a mountain of gravel.
"You."
Another drink, longer this time, as Merle's head tilted back slightly though his eyes remained on Daryl.
"'Course I had no idea why, when I showed up. Thought first I was waiting 'cause I was still pissed at ya. Then after a while with just Skinny Minnie, and then the old man, I was sure I's just being punished."
Merle took his longest drink yet, and when he finally placed the bottle back on the counter, Daryl noticed just how low the liquor had gotten.
"But, after she showed up…well, Ol' Merle got some clarity, you might say." Merle's expression was expectant, as if he what he'd just said was supposed to have meant something, but at Daryl's still blank and cautious look, the older man let out a loud, almost-disbelieving laugh. "Shit, you still got no idea what's going on here, do ya?"
Daryl narrowed his eyes in response to what he knew to be a rhetorical question. Merle always had liked the power trip of knowing something his audience did not. And as Daryl's accompanying frown deepened, his brother muttered, "Well she's sure as shit gonna have her work cut out for her," before sweeping the bottle back up for a last drink.
"Look, I'm just going to come out and say it because I'm starting to think I'll never feel drunk enough to not make it awkward as hell; I'm sorry, Little Brother. Fuck if I aint really and truly sorry."
The same weird prickle fled down Daryl's neck and spine and he let out a scoffing laugh of both surprise and discomfort.
"The hell you talkin' 'bout?"
"Don't play dumb; we both know I've done more than enough shit in my time worth apologizin' for. I could say I was sorry I did such a shit job of protecting you at the beginning, when the ol' man would get going and I'd just worry about getting myself gone, leaving you behind. I could say I's sorry for blamin' ya for splittin' after the whole damn world went to shit, as if I didn't know's my own fault things went down in 'tlanta the way they did. But all that ain't what I'm sorry for – as much of an asshole that might make me."
"Merle –"
The start of Daryl's awkward protest was smothered by the first authentic Dixon glare he'd seen from his brother since he'd entered, as Merle rushed to talk over him with the resolve of ripping off a band-aid.
"I'm sorry I was the dick always holdin' ya back from being who you's supposed to be, the kind of man who ends up in a place like this. I mean, hell, you's always the sweet one, Daryl."
His name, simple as it was, sounded weird in Merle's voice. So rarely had his big brother used with any amount of sincerity. And while he'd never really blamed Merle for the life they'd had before the dead claimed the world, he couldn't pretend his brother was wrong.
He had loved Merle, even when he didn't like him very much. But he'd never known what it was to not hate himself until after his brother was gone.
So he held his hand out for the liquor bottle, a redneck acceptance of an apology. And when Merle laughed at the slightly pained face he made as the whiskey unexpectedly burned down his throat, a sensation far sharper than anything he had ever felt in a dream before, Daryl knew his brother understood.
He coughed just a little, mostly out of embarrassment, as Merle came forward, still laughing, to slap him on the back.
"Ah, hell. She'd said you could still hold your liquor."
This time the prickle was more like the lick of a flame, and it ran across his shoulder and down his arms to the very tips of his fingers.
"Who?"
His throat closed up as the question passed his lips, and suddenly his palms felt damp as the room spun about him.
"The one you're here for, baby brother," Merle smirked. "Listen."
Softly, then, from through the back door, Daryl heard the sweetest sound he'd ever known and almost dropped to his knees.
"And we'll buy a beer to shotgun, and we'll lay in the lawn, and we'll be good."
Slowly, almost in a trance, Daryl made his way out and onto the back stretch of porch, feeling brutally unprepared for seeing exactly who he had hoped with all his heart to see.
Turning his head, he nearly wept at the sight of her. Blonde hair shining in the daylight, face free of all wounds, Beth Greene sat atop the porch railing, bare legs stretched out in front of her, the hem of her white sundress fluttering ever-so-lightly in the breeze.
She stopped singing when she saw him, and a blinding smile seemed to instantly take over her entire face. But there was not an ounce of surprise in her eyes, just joy.
"Hey."
He had to swallow three times before he mustered a "Hey" in return.
And it sounded so ridiculously casual; as if he'd never chased all night after her, as if he'd never felt the limp weight of her lifeless body in his arms.
He expected her to speak again, but she seemed to be waiting for him, her smile as encouraging as it was beautiful. He wanted to step closer still, maybe even reach out for a light touch to see if she'd feel as real as Lori had, but he also feared that the dream, hallucination, answered-prayer that was this trick of his mind could be ending any time now, and he refused to move in case it'd make her disappear.
Again, he asked the question, and while it still wasn't what he really meant, it felt important all the same: "Where am I?"
Flouting the very notion of impossible, Beth's beaming grin somehow grew wider and more beautiful. "You're where all good men go, in the end."
She was speaking, but her words rolled along like a song.
"Didn't ask for a damn riddle, Greene."
Beth laughed, and it twisted his stomach painfully with how perfect it sounded.
"Well, that's what you get for being stubborn and not seeing what's right in front of you. You know where you are, Daryl Dixon."
And she was right, deep down he did know and suddenly two words went screaming through his mind with more clarity than any thought he'd ever had before.
"I died."
Her smile finally fell, and with heartbreaking kindness in her eyes, Beth nodded.
He took a shuddering breath, and looked away from her, out over the back fields of the Greene property, this otherworldly version of the most idyllic place he'd ever seen. Struggling not to cry again, he wondered if the tears he fought were of sadness or relief.
"So much for last man standing."
"Guess I underestimated your self-sacrificin' nature when I made that prediction," she narrowed her eyes a little, almost playfully, before softening her voice, "but I was at least right about there being good people left. Aaron appreciates what you did for him, even though he already misses you something awful."
At her words, a crystal-clear memory rushed at him, powerful yet strangely distant, as if it was someone else's life he was watching. In the midst of the fight he'd recognized the no-win situation, and with bittersweet resignation he had shouted over his shoulder for Aaron to get back to Eric, to the others, as he charged forward to fight the hoard.
He now recalled having seen Beth – backlit by candles, eyes wide with realization – in his mind's eye at the last.
And that memory made the idea of his dying slightly easier to accept. It was enough for him to finally make his way closer, Beth's eyes trained on him as he moved and a slight inviting lift to her lips. Nudging her booted foot as a hint, he waited as she daintily swung her legs off the rail and then sat down on the vacated space.
Now that he had acknowledged the truth, his thoughts were firing off rapidly trying to grapple with all he did not know. He had so many questions.
Was this really heaven? He'd always thought it a fairy tale, a lie. He'd never considered anything like what he was experiencing here. This was so much like the world he knew, but now that he was really looking, there was also a new luminescence, an intrinsic glow to every fleck of space. He felt like there were more colors to be seen, and every detail seemed to call for his attention and then leave him in awe. Even the air he breathed seemed different, delicious. And if they were all dead, why was he even breathing? Why could he still feel so much? Like the heat radiating off Beth's forearm this very moment, as it rested a few inches to his side.
"What happens now?"
He didn't look up at her face, instead fixing his gaze on their hands resting on the rail. He wasn't conscious of movement, and yet it seemed the distance was narrowing until he felt the soft brush of her little finger on the edge of his own.
"Now, we get to just…be. I don't understand all of it yet. I know I'm here because this is my home, but also because I knew you'd find me here. And that was what I wanted most. I was in the world, the real one…and then I wasn't. I was here. And I quickly realized, even as I first hugged my mama, my daddy, Shawn, that this place could never be my heaven unless you were here too."
Daryl watched as her hand fully covered his, squeezing with gentleness he couldn't imagine another soul even being capable of, and then slowly tilted his head to meet her eyes. Without even blinking, he flipped his palm over beneath hers, pressing it up against her own, sliding his fingers between her delicate ones, and relishing an entirely unfamiliar absence of fear as he told her everything he possibly could with his eyes.
"You 'ere right, 'bout good people. And right about somethin' else too: I missed you so much I di'n't know how to keep goin'…"
"I know. I was watchin', and this place…hurt doesn't hurt the same, but I still felt it. I felt your sorrow, and your shame. I felt you tip-toe towards givin' up. And I wished I could leave this place, this safe and beautiful place, and get back to you. But then, you found a way to go on, and I watched that too. I couldn't take my eyes off it."
He felt a warmth in his cheeks at the admiration in her voice, the pride in her eyes. "I guess heaven don't got TV, huh?"
She bumped his shoulder like a playful scold, but then kept leaning in close, her voice dropping to a whisper. "We watch the people we love, Daryl. That's how we make it until we can be with them again…"
His breath caught.
"…and I look in on Maggie, of course, and Glenn. On sweet lil' Judith. On Rick and Carl, Carol and Michonne. The whole family I left behind, who I hope to see here too someday. But, mostly, I watched you, because….because I've never loved anyone, in life or after, the way that I love you."
Despite being seated, he felt a whoosh of weightlessness and exhilaration, like he was falling, fast and from a great height. He heard the sea in his ears and felt a hummingbird where his heart should be, and he though hadn't heard those words since he was very small, it felt like releasing a held breath to hear them now, from Beth Greene, in what he was now certain must be heaven.
The sensation was the purest bliss he'd ever known.
He slowly then settled back into his body, this new-old vessel that seemed more than flesh and bone in a way that couldn't understand, and realized he'd left her words hanging in the air, rather than catching and cradling them with the care they deserved.
Just as he opened his mouth to finally respond, he heard her add, "I think we all get to be brave in the afterlife, and I just wanted you to know."
"You's always been brave, but you don' need to be for this." He shrugged his shoulder slightly so she'd lift her head as he shifted to look her in the eyes once more. "You know why I'm here, Beth Greene."
He looked at her, and she looked at him, and while the heavenly day continued on, for all that passed between them they could have been back in that funeral home, on the cusp of a chance rather than eternity.
"Oh."
And this time, that word was just a beginning.