Title taken from The Psychedelic Furs "The Ghost in You"
This is my first Daryl/Beth fic - there might be more.
It's been days…weeks…months now, and the memory of her has only gotten sharper. He don't know how that's possible, but it is. He remembers her face better than he remembers his own - her smile, the flash of her grin when she teased him, the shine in her eyes, burned against the back of his eyelids like a tattoo. She had a way of sliding under his skin, past his defences, until she was part of him, part of the very marrow of his being. And each breath without her, each step away from her, he seems to be further away from himself.
He knows he ain't the same, traveling on this road to nowhere with his new family, a hollow tin man who somehow managed to find – and lose – his heart at the end of the world. Rick knows, of course. It's not something they need to talk about, but it's there in the concerned look that flashes his way whenever the bright blue of the day fades to the dusky blue of evening, the blue that's the same color as her eyes, or when Darryl takes just a second longer than normal to put a bolt through any blonde female walker that stumbles their way.
He s'poses Maggie knows as well. It's not like he told her anything, other than that Beth was just gone. Rick might'a told her the rest; he don't know, but Maggie never asks. He appreciates that about her – when Maggie is walking beside him, not saying nothing but missing Beth with him, he feels like maybe he ain't so alone.
He is though. Alone. Lonely. He ain't never missed no one the way he misses that girl. He wonders how she knew – "You're gonna miss me so bad when I'm gone, Daryl Dixon" – and, in his darker moments, he wonders if he's cursed. He don't want to be no Lazarus, wandering the world killing things that are already dead, losing his family along the way, and remembering all the different ways he failed her - "You're gonna be the last man standing. You are."
He sometimes think he should just end it all. Stop fighting and lay down and let the dead get him, but he knows he won't. He can't. Because she could still be out there, still alive, and as long as there's a chance... The hope she gave him, just before she disappeared…well, he ain't got no choice but to keep on moving forward, with his family, and hope that one day he'll see her again.
He don't really believe that will ever happen, in the rational part of his mind that knows that good things aren't for him. He ain't stupid. But it don't matter how much he tells himself this, don't matter how much he don't think he believes – his heart keeps on beating her name.