A few warnings before you read this fic:
1. This fic is not fluffy. It's miserable
2. It depicts self-harming and serious mental health issues. Yes it's problematic.
3. It in no way depicts something I want to happen. It's about seeing if I could do it and pushing myself as a writer.
4. I don't own anything
So after all that, good luck.
I heal my wounds with grief
And dream of you
And weep myself alive
~ HIM
"What are you doing?"
It's her. He's not surprised. She does this sometimes. Turns up out of nowhere. Sits with him. Pretends this is normal, that everything's okay.
He'll be doing something, not even thinking about her inasmuch as he ever isn't thinking about her and suddenly, there she'll be, stepping through the veil and into his world like it's no big deal, like there's a place waiting for her here and she's claiming it.
Like everything didn't fall apart in that hallway in a hospital at the end of the world.
So they'll sit and they'll talk and she'll say all the things he can't and his heart will stop this business of breaking, if only for a moment.
Sometimes she's so real he almost believes she is. She'll hum old songs his Ma used to sing, songs she couldn't possibly know. Vivid, vibrant and so close he imagines he can hear her pulse racing, blood pumping through her veins.
Other times she lingers on the periphery. Fluttering. Nervous even. Like she's not sure she's welcome. Like that could be a thing.
(He'd say she's nuts because, well, she is and a bullet through the brain doesn't change that. But if he did he knows it would lead to a bunch of questions about what it actually means to be nuts and he's pretty damn sure he'd come up short. In light of current events and all.)
But she's not fluttering. Not this time. This time she's sitting at the table across from him. She's bold and bright and the afternoon sunlight, streaming through the window, gleams golden against her hair.
It doesn't surprise him - these impromptu visits. They used to. They used to make him think he was losing his fucking mind and there was a time - a long, long time ago - when he railed against that. But not now, not anymore. Because now he's come to understand that there's a perverse logic to this, a twisted and yet somehow calculated pragmatism to the way his crumbling psyche tries to reorganise all the pieces and fit them back together in an order that makes some kind of sense.
"Daryl?" he glances up at her, away from what he's doing. She's beautiful. All bright eyes and smooth skin, silver earrings and glittering bracelets creating a sparkling kaleidoscope of light and colour between them; dustmotes swirling and dancing in the sunshine. He swears he can smell lilies and beneath that the earthy scent of her flesh.
God girl, please stay. This time. Just this once.
He knows it's all kinds of fucked up. That this is not "healing" or "feeling" in the way maybe someone say like Aaron would see it. There's something very broken in all of this. And he's not sure he wants to fix it.
She says his name again, soft this time, coaxing almost. He feels like a small child being asked to show his crayon scribblings to a teacher. His picture. His art. He can't say no so he holds out his hands to her.
Here, here is my work. Take it and do what you want with it.
It's his vest, leather soft with age but hard with grime. Worn and torn and smooth under his calloused hands. A contradiction. He guesses the same could be said of him.
She tilts her head to the side, brow furrowed. Her hair still has that single braid. Her face still has those double scars.
She runs her fingers over the left wing where he's ham-handedly started to unpick the stitching. The frayed material stands stiff and torn, adorned with years of grit and death.
"Why?" She asks.
He shrugs, ducks his head, mumbles. He can swear he feels the leather move as her fingers glide across it even though that shouldn't be possible.
"Don't mmhmm," she says. "Why?"
"Tore," he says. "Crashed the bike. It ripped on the road."
She nods, sits back in the chair. He tells himself it didn't creak when she did.
"You don't wanna fix it?" She asks. "Maggie could do it. Carol…"
He shakes his head, pulls the vest back into his lap.
"Don't need em, just gonna tear more."
She nods again but her frown deepens, blue eyes turning to ice, sharp teeth worrying her bottom lip. There's a question coming. A question and an answer.
Who's Daryl Dixon without his wings? A nothing, a nobody.
"That isn't true Daryl," she says softly and he wonders if he said it aloud, if it even matters if he did.
He looks away, doesn't answer and starts to pick at the stitching again until another section of dirty fabric pulls free. The leather he uncovers beneath is darker, harder, not faded and beaten. White wings now replaced for black. Devils for angels.
He runs his fingers over the tiny holes left by needle and thread. They're not too noticeable, haven't damaged the leather too much. It'll be okay.
He tugs again. Almost there. The wing comes off entirely, a single thread attaching it to the vest. He reaches for the knife at his waist, its sharp blade gleaming, little ivory hilt delicate and pretty, and slices through the cotton, tosses the frayed wing onto the table, just in front of her. She leans forward to peer at it, hair falling in her eyes, rigid scar across the porcelain of her cheek. And that other scar - oh god - that little starburst high on her forehead that took every goddamn thing away and gave only grief and despair in return.
God girl, why did you have to leave me?
He starts on the next wing.
"You're taking both?" She asks. Her voice is tight now. Worried.
He nods.
"Why?"
(You know)
He doesn't stop. He slices through the thread, quick, even strokes.
"Can't be an angel with only one wing girl," he says.
Ludicrous.
He was never an angel. There's some things even he can't pretend are real.
She sighs, fingers the material again, running her hands down the lines of each feather, back up again, tracing their outline against the wood of the table.
"What is it?" He asks and it's fucking out-of-this-world ridiculous that he's so comfortable with this, that he can just talk to her like he once did, that she's as fucking real to him as all the rest, maybe more real in some ways.
She shrugs. A little hitch of her shoulders.
"Just dunno if it's you without the wings," she says. "Dunno what's going to protect you now."
He snaps another thread, it seems louder than it should.
"Don't need protection girl."
"Never relied on anyone for anythin'," she whispers.
He wonders sometimes when this happens where she starts and he ends. How much of this is his memory of her and how much is just him. It's not that he doesn't know what this is. He's broken, he might be crazy, but he's not stupid. It's not like she's telling him anything new, anything he doesn't know or hasn't thought of. By nature of what she is, she can't. But sometimes - god sometimes - this is just so fucking cruel. Because he knows he's losing it, knows he's falling deeper and deeper into that haze of blurred edges and lost voices and yet his mind is somehow still razor sharp and ready to strike at all his weak points, rub salt in his still gaping wounds. Killing him slowly, exquisitely, with infinite care.
He's always known something dark exists inside him, something insidiously cruel with teeth and nails, some twisted little scorpion that stings hard and fast and then retreats back under a rock to watch everything fall apart. He knows because he's seen it come out to play. Seen how vile he can be.
(You lost two boyfriends and you couldn't even shed a tear.)
(I never cut my wrists for attention.)
(You never gonna see Maggie again.)
And now that scorpion has turned on him. And maybe it's not truly vicious. Not yet at least. But it's toying with him, batting him about, like an errant child torturing a fly.
Pulling his goddamn wings off.
A while ago, he forgets exactly when because the days all blur into one now, Aaron tried to get him to talk to someone. Not about this. Not about how he sees her and talks to her and it's like nothing changed except for the smooth porcelain skin of her face. Not about that. But about Beth all the same. About why he's so eager to get away all the time, why he's always willing to be the sacrifice, the martyr. About how he'll come back from fights and runs and find bruises and cuts and scrapes on his body and not remember how they got there. How he'll find cigarette burns on his hands and know exactly how they did.
It didn't work. The shrink was nice enough at first. Blonde, friendly, scared out of her fucking mind. She asked the right questions, said the right things. He gave the wrong answers and didn't say enough things. Her approach though, that was interesting enough to make him really wonder how good a shrink she was. Platitudes and war-cries, cutesy slogans and meaningless truths which weren't truths at all.
She told him she could work with him and he said he didn't want to, told her to save her breath and shrink her own fucking head and she could start by getting rid of all those stupid cliches she had stored up in there.
She told him she knew it was hard, that grief is hard. That losing people was cruel and senseless and awful, and boy did she know that they'd all lost someone… So he got up and walked out.
Because if he hadn't, if he'd stayed, he would have said "Beth. Her name was Beth" and he would have let it loose on the world. Said her name into the haze and lost it, wouldn't have been fast enough to shove it back in his mouth. But he didn't say it, didn't free her.
Because he's selfish, because he wants to keep her for himself.
He never went back. He doesn't know which one if them that comforts more.
And now Beth is here. Not glimmering, not glowing. Not snapping in and out of existence like these things are wont to do. She's just there. So real that he could disappear in the lie forever.
"You sure you just wanna trash these?" She asks again.
"S'broken girl," he cuts through more thread, eases the second wing away from the leather.
"You can fix broken things Daryl," she says. "It's hard and it's slow and sometimes it takes a lot of work, but you can fix them."
He stops, looks across the table at her, at how solid she is; real enough that he can smell her, that he can feel the air move when she does, the tap of her boots on the floor.
"Not me girl. Maybe you. But not me."
She smiles, and it's so fucking sad that he nearly up and goes to her, kneels on the floor at her feet.
"I think you could Daryl. I think you could fix it."
She's not here. He knows she's not. That she's never set foot inside this house, this place. And he has to wonder why some fractured and overwhelmed part of his psyche is railing so hard against cutting off his wings. Why it means so damn much.
"It'll be okay," he says resuming his work, pulling at the small embedded thread with his fingernails, trying hard not to damage the leather any further. And maybe it will be. After all it's just fabric, something old and stained. Dark even. A stark difference to rich cream colour they used to be all those years ago when he found the vest lying in the bottom of a charity store junk trunk.
"I don't know," she says. "Are you sure?"
God girl, I'm still here ain't I? I lost my Ma and then I lost Merle and then I fucking lost you too and somehow I'm still here. I don't think a few scrappy, discoloured fake wings are gonna change that.
"They ain't fake Daryl," she startles him again. Sometimes he forgets that he doesn't need to speak out loud when she's here.
Sometimes he forgets everything.
"They ain't real," he says. He's almost done. He's taken most of it off, just a few feathers near the tip clinging on for dear life.
"You think I'm not real," she says. It's a statement, not a question. And she just sounds so fucking lost that he puts everything down and is halfway reaching for her hand before he can stop himself. But she jerks away slightly, like she always does when this happens. He knows what that is too, his broken fucked up mind trying to preserve the fantasy, trying to keep her here.
Touch her and she'll disappear and she might not come back.
And if he was healthy and stable that would be the right thing to do. End it now. Send her away. Unbreak his mind. But he sees her for fuck's sake. He sees her clear as day and even if he didn't want her to be here, didn't miss her so much every goddamn hour of every goddamn day, didn't carry the weight of that with him wherever he goes, the very fact that he sees her is enough to tell him that whatever has fallen apart inside him - whatever has torn - can't be mended. It needs to be left alone to fester or cut out completely.
And he doesn't know how much of himself would go with it. How much of him is even left.
He pulls his hand back, lets it rest between them, flat on the table. Scars and dirt and ink. Tanned skin, calloused and worn.
"No Be-, no girl. You ain't real." He says it gently, there's no need to be cruel. He's done that enough. He can be kind. Even to his own fantasy.
It's so fucking tragic though. Sitting here watching her, seeing her eyes fill with tears, imaginary or not. It could be worse. It could be like those first times he saw her when he raged and screamed and threw things at her. At her and through her.
Why did you leave me girl?
He asks and he knows the answer won't make sense. It can't. Because he doesn't know why she's gone. Because he should have got her back, because he was meant to save her. He was meant to win this time.
If you want God to laugh, tell him your plans.
He just never thought God wouldn't be on her side.
But still.
Why girl? Why?
He doesn't want to say they could have had it all. He's old and wise enough to know that's a platitude as empty as any the shrink vomited out at him. They couldn't have had it all. But they could have had something. And something is better than nothing. But maybe nothing is better than this. He doesn't know. That's one of the problems with a fractured mind, a broken vision of the world. Reality stops mattering all that much.
She doesn't answer. She can't.
Instead she plays with the wings. Dainty little hands turning them over and over. He wonders what this would look like to someone watching from the outside. If the wings would just be lying on the table, discarded, forgotten, or if they'd be suspended in the air, turning seemingly of their own volition.
He knows the answer. But sometimes it feels so good to pretend.
"Seems a shame though," she says, holding them up together, shaking them a little and if he squints it looks like they're flying. "Shame to lose it."
He nods. He tries not to choke. Not to sob.
"Can I have them?"
You can have whatever you like girl.
She smiles and for a moment he allows himself to believe she is really there. That she made it, that she survived, that she did all those things she said she could. And it feels so good.
"Thanks," she says quietly.
God he misses her so much. The hole inside him open and gaping, sucking in everything that's good and innocent, everything that makes all of this worthwhile, stripping him piece by piece, bone and sinew, veins, flesh. Taking it all. He tries to find the room for it, to make some place where he can store it, close it off and stop it from consuming him.
But he can't. Some things you can't make room for. Some things are just too big.
He doesn't know if she knows that.
And suddenly Aaron's at the door, knocking gently on the wood, calling to him to get his lazy ass downstairs. It's Eric's birthday and they're having a thing, because here in this safe zone they have "things" - parties, get-togethers, functions - and he fucking hates them but they're apparently routine. Traditional. How they all delude one another into believing everything is okay and they can have a normal life. And then they all drink themselves stupid when they can't keep pretending anymore. But then again maybe he shouldn't be so judgy about delusions.
"You need to go?" She asks and he nods.
"Got a thing."
Birthdays, picnics and summer holidays.
She bites her lip and for an awful moment it looks like she's fighting tears again.
"I wish I could go with you," she whispers.
Oh god my girl, so do I.
And before she breaks his heart again today, he clips her knife to his belt and forces himself to walk out of the room and not look back.
xxx
Drink. Talk. Drink again. It'll all be over soon. It doesn't matter. Especially when it does.
xxx
When he comes back later, a little too drunk to feel much of anything, a new and brighter cigarette burn on his hand, the wings are gone; his table empty except for a few tiny threads and his vest with its newer darker marks. Angels replaced with devils.
He wonders where they are. If someone came in here and cleaned up, took them. But his head is swimming and his hand his aching and he falls into bed and doesn't dream. And when he wakes up his mouth is cotton wool and his flesh has blistered and festered like his mind and his heart, and he doesn't think about it again.
And for a while after that he passes for okay, even though he's not. He goes with Aaron to recruit, he kills walkers, he saves people. He finds food and supplies, reinforces the walls and fences and even sets up a rotation with Abraham to make sure the guard posts are always manned. He watches Rick spiral out of control and Carol fight her demons and he's not sure she wins. Judith grows exponentially and it's hard to believe how little time has passed since the world ended and then ended again. She doesn't visit. He doesn't feel the need to hurt himself or anyone else. That evil little scorpion goes to hide under his rock, likely biding its time, but he's grateful for the reprieve. Maybe he gets stronger while it does too. Maybe there's a cosmic battle at the end of all this.
The battle for Daryl Dixon's soul. Yeah, he can be melodramatic if he wants. He sees ghosts, visions of dead people. He's earned it.
It's a good run but like any it comes to an end. It's her birthday, she would have been 20. So he takes a bottle of moonshine and goes into the woods at night, puts another cigarette out on his hand and tries to burn her out of him and into him and fuck, he just doesn't know anymore. And the pain slams into him, rushes through his nerves and feeds that void inside, if only for a moment. And then he's falling and spiralling and all he wants to do is run off into oblivion after her. And he remembers her asking what's going to protect him when that happens.
Beth. Her name is Beth.
And he's not surprised to hear her singing, something low and sweet, something he doesn't know, something his Ma never sang. He's also not surprised to see the scuffed toes of her boots standing in the leaves in front of him. But he can't bring himself to look at her, to let her see this. So he doesn't. He lets her leans in close - so close that he can feel the heat of her skin - and he focuses on her pulse jumping in her neck, the way the muscles in her throat work and he wonders how his imagination can be so vivid. How he sees so much and also so little. But he closes his eyes, falls into the lie as she tugs the cigarette out of his fingers, nicotine stained and older than he cares to admit, and crushes it with her heel. He feels her breath against his face and wonders if this time she'll touch him and everything will disappear.
And then she does and it doesn't.
She runs her fingers through his hair, down his cheek and her turns his face and kisses her palm, and leans into her because she's so warm and so solid. It's not real, he knows this. He also knows that this is a turning point, and he wonders what it means and how far he's fallen.
And then she's gone, her warmth and her skin, and he hears her walking away, boots crunching on the autumn leaves and he opens her eyes to watch her, to see the moonlight glinting off her cornsilk hair, those tiny earrings, the beads at her wrist.
The long ivory expanse of the wings down her back.