Good Things
Chapter 1
AN: This is the first chapter, to see if there is any interest. I don't really have a specific idea of where this is going. It will be AU, where the prison does not fall and Beth is not killed by Dawn, that much I do know. Let me know what you all think :)
If someone asked him to explain what he had been thinking, he wasn't sure that his thought process at the time would make sense now. But maybe it would. In all his life he had never had anything good. Before the turn things had been bleak. Full of beatings in his youth, and following Merle around dealing drugs and scraping by in his adulthood. Things hadn't gotten decent for him until meeting Rick and discovering that he could become his own man, and that man could be a good one.
Sure, he still shyed away from physical contact and too much attention, but he didn't flinch when he did something nice for someone any more. He had stopped looking over his shoulder looking for his father, or Merle, ready to hurt him over showing what they deemed as weakness. He had learned that he wasn't weak, and that being a decent person wasn't bad. It was empowering.
So when she had come to him, all glowing with goodness and wanting him of all people, he hadn't been able to turn her away. He had immersed himself in her and soaked up her golden light and had felt loved for once in his life. And because he had liked it so much, he had told her they had to keep them a secret. He wasn't willing to give her up for the uprising he was sure would greet them if they were found out.
She was sweet little Beth Greene, and he was Daryl Dixon. They wouldn't understand. They would think he was forcing her, and they would force them apart. Just because the world had gone all to hell didn't mean people had stopped butting their nose where it didn't belong. He was technically old enough to be her father.
Her happiness was being noticed though. There was speculation about who might be causing it. The running leading guess was Zach. It was strange to hate a kid that young, but he did. Every time Daryl saw the kid strutting around following Beth he wanted to put his fist into his face. But then Beth would look up and give him that small smile meant only for him, and he kept walking pacified. She wasn't interested in Zach. She wanted him.
They had been seeing each other for two months now, secretly, and Daryl wondered if he should approach Hershell. He wanted to make Beth happy. He was starting to see how the suspicions of who was making her happy was getting to her. She still smiled brightly, still floated around as if on her own cloud that wasn't in the middle of this hell of walking flesh eaters, but there were starting to be bags under her eyes from being up at night with him just being together.
Chewing on his thumb as he kept his watch shift Daryl's mind wandered over the question again. Would trying to do the right thing, what would have been expected before the dead rose, ruin everything they had now? Would Hershell shoot him the second the words came out of his mouth? Even worse, would they make him go and leave Beth behind? He would rather cut his own arm off than do anything to make her cry. He cringed slightlly, habit nearly 35 years old still telling him that he was a pussy for feeling that way.
No, he thought. Being a pussy was making her keep hiding what they were, what they had. He would approach Hershell as soon as he was relieved from his shift. He would ask the man's permission to marry her, to make her happy in public and not hide anymore. He could only hope the man said yes.