This shall be part of a mini-series that's more contemporary for me as it's based of season 4.2, but I'm doing my own thing a little bit xxx
And he ran. And he kept running, though his everything ached and he had nothing at all. An old version of himself would have told to give up, go on alone and deal with the consequences in his unconscious mind for a few weeks. Her death wouldn't have bothered him, because in his head he had tried, but the car had disappeared. There was nothing more to do. But he wasn't his old self, he was who he was. So he ran, and he kept running.
He didn't let himself think about how it was his fault again, just like back at that prison. She told him that wasn't his fault, so he believed she wouldn't think this was his fault either. So even though the sun was coming up and he had literally hells chance on earth of getting her back he didn't stop and he wouldn't stop. Because she had changed everything.
When they first got away from the prison they pulled each other along, barely existing on the broken revenants of their own sharp pain. She wasn't like him, and so she could never understand him. His problem was the opposite he was too exposed and cocooned in his own emotion to get a good enough analysis of hers. Everything she did jarred with him, it was wrong, all wrong. He selfishly and sadistically wanted more that the weak blonde. It sounded harsh, but she didn't deserve to live not like her father or her sister or the others. Beth wasn't close to him, he could have let her go and forgotten about it without a second thought. But now she was here, he felt obligated to keeping her alive, not that he had to be kind to her.
She told him to look for the others, he politely implied a 'fuck off' message in his tone, choosing instead to go back to his default of roaming round the Georgia woods. Only he dragged the reluctant teen with him, not for a single comment considering that she could be right. Find the others was her idea, he scoffed in his head. He focused then only on the green foliage, on food and danger, killing either. Until they got to the train tracks.
It still surprised him the depth of that girl's empathetic nature after losing everyone and everything she had ever had. Gnawed bits of strangers lay in front of her, and she cried for them, probably a little for herself too. And the act stuck in his throat a bit like a sharp knife, making him wonder if that's what he was supposed to do when he saw a mutilated body or two.
She didn't care if he could see her, and that open vulnerability scared a recluse like him. He simply stood there and watched her cry, but she didn't care at all. The pain seemed to replenish her, give her back some perspective and meaning to it all, as if before she was fading into cold numbness like him.
Her shoulders shook, whitish blonde waves obscuring her scrunched up face messily. And he couldn't say in that moment he felt anything much stronger than identification and annoyance. He didn't want to hold her in her arms as she looked like a little child crying over the spilt milk, but these were spilt people, and they never went back in the carton. Jean clad legs shook even with the mixture of exhaustion and emotion. She had cracked the mould of prison Beth.
''I don't cry anymore, Daryl.''
He hated her sweet high tones, the way her name sounded on her tongue. It sounded too innocent and sweet, the way his name sound never sound. Because he wasn't. he was dying inside but he had no way of showing it because she was doing the emotional outbursts for him. he was festering with insane anger at the world, but why shouldn't he be?
It hit him then that he was in flight mode, pulling them away from the pain to wander around as if it would stop him thinking about it. But he hadn't stopped thinking, not at all. She served as a reminder of the humanity he didn't have. Because he didn't want to like people again, not when they could be torn from him so easily. He vowed to never let anyone back into his space, he could be his own everything and eventually the girl would die or join some others to die with them. Only he never expected her to be so frustratingly un-ignorable like that, hadn't accounted for her weaving herself into his fragmented devotion.
He still hated her sometimes, she was bratty and spoilt, in a completely innocent way of the privileged. This world wasn't for the wholehearted bible lovers like her. Her very existence was the antithesis of him. He'd watch her weave herself under and around hanging branches, trying to merge with the woods as unsuccessfully as she did with the apocalypse. He saw that as a weakness. He saw her as a weakness. She was emotion personified. Emotion was weak, emotion was foolish, emotion got you killed. He wasn't scared of anything but he didn't want to die.
And she tried to leave. That hit him like cold, icy water. This little spineless thing was defying him in every way, throwing her snake barbeque out of the pram to storm off for big girl juice. We fuck her, he didn't care. Except Herschel came into his head, and that obligated feeling sunk back in. so he went out after her, watching her deter the walkers with pebbles. Pebbles only work on small groups, stupid girl.
Somehow she got the upper hand, swearing at him and stropping until he was following her around the whole damn place looking for drinks and taking down threats to her life without so much as a bit of gratitude. She coated herself in blood, and then changed. And then he coated her in blood, and he got a glare.
Beth sitting dejectedly at a bar made him realise what all of this was to her. When Herschel flashed in his mind before it wasn't really consequence of thinking they were related and she would be hurting over his death too. But he didn't want that bond with her, or any bond. Maybe, if he got her drunk- then she would let him call the shots.
And it all changed with that fucking game. The moonshine never sat right with him, the environment making him feel like a caged animal- right back into the unrelenting manipulation of his father's control. Except she was his father in this. She had the upper hand, the ability to look down on him. Even though he had saved her fucking life countless times by now, if he had left her she'd be dead within a heartbeat. She thought so low of him. Because he showed her so little of the goodness in him?
It was all too much. He remembered shouting at her, yelling awful things to her worried face. She simply sat there looking up through hurt eyes at him like a broken child. And that only made him angrier, because she was so vulnerable right now, she lost as much as he did but he couldn't have it in him to be nice. So he drank and shouted, just like his father would have done. And in that moment he thought he could do no worse thing, then he did what he did next. He hurt her.
He pulled her arm up, grabbing her around the shoulders to pull her outside roughly. He didn't really care if his fingers left small bruises on her pale arms, the idea in fact excited him in a sick way knowing she'd remember every time she saw them. She would be scared of him and stop being such a bitch, it was as simple as that.
It was her fault the prison fell and the rest of his family were dead. She didn't do anything to help them prepare for the governor. She let her guard down. She couldn't defend herself, couldn't save the lives of the others anymore. And he hated her for it, what's worse he hated her for not being the one who did those things. He did.
So he pulled her close to him, throwing his weapon in front of her, shooting the walker. Looking back now it was another pawn for him to hurt. Beth and the walker were his targets for aggression. Because they were around, because he needed to not be angry at himself anymore. The arrow held it to the tree, and her yellow shirted screams went unheard.
Beth Greene had an insatiable appetite for loving others. This factor wasn't something he was used to, but suddenly he was the one being cared about. His bluff was being pulled out right from under him. She told him that he cared, that she know how he saw her. Just another dead girl. He couldn't deny it, her thoughts were right and he hated how transparent eh was to her. His imposed walls of self-isolation seemed to have met a formidable match in her fiery embrace. And he broke down, letting the pressure of her awkward embrace give him a form of comfort and grounding him to his pain.
That's when the shift began, she became a real human not some person he was dragging along. She was somewhere between existing and being some sick hallucination talking to him. Opting for the latter he gave her a bit of him, hoping it could quell the past he had done. She took it, folded his pieces away and placed them carefully in a padlocked pocket.
He remember her shiny face in the moonlight, still sipping moonshine for the electric high alcohol gave drink virgins for the first time. She smiled sweetly, laughing at her own morbidity and facing it as fact. Only she didn't cry about it, she looked him cold in the eyes and said it all.
''We should burn it down.''
And together they did, laughing at the smell of the moonshine hitting the ceiling. Smiling as they lit the wad of cold hard cash that meant nothing now that they had it, throwing it and watching the place burn down. In that moment of youthful rebellion he was a teenager again, and it might have all been different. Her middle finger was stuck up, the image of awkward uprising, smiling at him for him to join in. so he did. And it felt pretty damn sweet.
What she had over me was myself, he realised. They would walk for hours in almost compatible timings. He began to open up, staring teaching her to work the crossbow and took up telling her random stories of her past in exchange for her own. They still had no purpose, but they walked anyhow. She didn't bring up the others, and he didn't bring them up either.
Daryl and Beth were of the same feather of different birds. Her softness totally negated every part of hi exterior existence. But her temper was just as bad as his was, she could dish his own treatment back to him faster than anyone else ever had. You got her riled up and she voiced her opinions, assertively perhaps not aggressively as he did. But she wasn't afraid, and frankly that's till pissed him off a bit. The fear meant he could win, but there was no fear only sorrow. They were both ignorant of this feeling. Their compatibility fell perfectly into their ability to crate routines of arguments, silence and fun. Cyclical and simple for them both. It was simple to see where they stood now, not for anyone outside looking in, but they could. And that was all that mattered.
It seemed a natural shift, not a necessary burden to give her a 'serious' piggy back to the house. The uncomfortable feeling he got holding her hand at a grave stone came not from the symbolic action of friendship, or closeness, or human contact. But instead it came from her warm dry skin making his own tingly in lit up nerve endings.
The next place they found was big and empty. The unusualness of the clean and trap like structure should have clued him in a lot sooner that this trap was far more elaborate that honey not vinegar. But they remained within the infrastructure letting the trap tick down to its detonation. Because he could almost see a home here with her.
Furthermore her haunting voice filled up the old emptiness of rooms, forcing the piano keys to play slow sad songs. She needed that, and she looked composed, almost reanimated again. Sometimes Beth acted like a puppet, saying and doing only what she was told. Prison Beth he couldn't find in freer Beth. Her marionette strings were severed and she played alone now. So he sked her to, using her release of tension to pull him to another restless rest.
They sat at this white table in the kitchen, eating peanut butter out of tubs and discussing plans. Susrprising himself he suggested they stay, knowing and caring that it would mean a lot to her. Beth wasn't the type to run forever like he was, she wasn't the type to live off the ground and he didn't want her to. For the first time he felt like he saw her, her emotion was what kept her strong out there- she only wanted to find others to have that sense of family and familiarity. He wanted that too, a bit further down behind the self-loathing.
She picked up on this asking him innocently what changed his mind, he didn't have an answer so he simply stared tactlessly until she got it. Her cheeks went pink and it was worth the embarrassment. Instantly forgetting what the reason was for not getting too close to people was again.
And then it all went wrong. And then he was running.
His legs felt like jelly, the road split into two. He didn't know anymore, which way was the way to freedom, and which was the way to her? He collapsed under the weight of himself and it all. Breaking down at the thoughts of her. Her hurt eyes as he told her he never cut himself for attention like she did, the way she still hugged and held him after those awful, awful things he only half-meant and was never meant to say aloud. And then she smiled as he carried her around, the same smile she gave to the idea of burning an entire home down with spirit even though it was the only shelter for miles. Finally that last smile at the table, the seamless beauty of her annoy imperfection that made her so much more human than his flaws made him. Her voice was seemingly detached and next to him. He knew she was out there somewhere, calling his bluff and loving that she was right, even if he'd never admit it.
''You're gonna miss me so much when I'm gone, Daryl Dixon.''