Oh-kayyyy, so this is like really angsty and quite dark, more than Wrong. I'm sorry but it was 3AM and in the quiet of the early hours I was looking at the moon and then this happened. I actually really enjoyed it as it came to a close and found a loophole that allows this to be a sort of prequel to Wrong. Anyway, I don't know how done I am with angst, it might be a thing I've fallen into for a bit but I'm definitely thinking of having some smutty fun. What do you guys think? Another chapter of Adult or Good Girl or something else? Let me know! You guys are awesome as always and enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own The Walking Dead or any of its characters. I own this plot and make no profit from this piece. I also have no beta and all mistakes are my own.
Wake up.
Wake up and stand.
Wake up and stand and try.
Try to be normal, try to be the same, try to be that girl that's bled out, spilt ink on a white floor in a white hallway. Wake up, stand, lift muscles, move them. Wake up, look at the pieces of her skull like the broken shell of dropped eggs. Wake up, stand, look at her skull and her crimson blood. Look at it all, look at her life bleeding out her. Look at them crying, look at the scene, look.
Look at him.
Sobbing, bent on his knees and cradling her broken head, trying to piece it back together again, her blood flowing between his thick, scarred fingers and over his lap, staining his clothes, staining his skin. He'll never wash it off. He'll never be clean again.
Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.
Try. Beth, please girl, try.
Wake up, look at it, deal with it. Stand, pick up her skull, glue them back to her flesh, piece them together, make them work. Make them hold, stick together. Wake up, and stand, try. For him. Be that girl, be his girl. Try.
Beth.
Okay, she'll try. She's already trying, she's trying so hard. Okay, she'll try.
Beth. Beth, wake up. Beth!
Wake up and stand. Pick up the pieces of her shattered skull, mop up her spilt blood, wipe away her splattered brain. Fix it. Wake up.
"Beth."
Her eyes open. Blue on blue. Daryl, hovering over her. Worried. Tight mouth, wrinkles prominent around his eyes. "Daryl," she croaks.
"Yeah," he whispers, crouching over her.
She sits up, looks at the fire. It's dark, the crickets barely singing and her face feels hot after being near the flames. Her eyes turn back to him and they're dry. "Your turn for watch. Sorry, I'm fuckin' exhausted."
Beth nods; frowns. "'Course. No, of course, go to sleep. It's my turn anyway."
He nods and crawls over to his pile of blankets. "You know when to wake me," he mutters.
She nods. She does because she's done this before. This is a piece of her life, the puzzle that it became and she should have known that when her head exploded it would get flung away, and that she would try to get it back, secure it, ensure it didn't get lost. She's dead, she's dying and she's reliving her life. She sits, in a body that was her body some time ago, looking at Daryl's back and wondering why her brain chose to show her this, let her have this before she goes, slips from this world and fades into another, if there is another. Maybe heaven, like daddy said. Maybe God hasn't forsaken them yet.
Then she remembers. Of course. It's this night. This one, quite a few hours from this point and as she remembers it, events begin to speed up, pushing her through a barricade of time, a thick membrane, until there she is, underneath him, naked, him buried in her and sweating, panting, head between her breasts. It's this night. The very first time. Her very first time. It wasn't what she expected, what she had planned for herself when she was young. For one thing, it wasn't her wedding night and for another it wasn't in a bed larger than any one person would ever need, bathed in the glow of candles. Instead, it was this. This, what she's relieving.
Her very first time.
On a forest floor, by a dying fire, she's pinned under the weight of a man who is twice her age and very much damaged and not just from the life they've both shared together, but from a before. A time before the world moved on and left them behind and she wants to tell him. Right now there's nothing more in the world that Beth wants to do than tell him that this is her second time here, the second time to visit this night. That she's dying, that this beautiful moment ends, that their time together ends. She wants to tell him, warn him, put him on a path so that none of it happens.
So she's not taken, doesn't die in Grady fucking hospital. So that they don't lose each other, that they don't lose this. But she can't, because her mind may be giving her pieces of her life to look back on, but that's all it's doing. She can't talk, she can't move. She can only be at a first point advantage as the same events replay themselves. Internally, she sobs and externally, she does very much the same when Daryl presses deeper, his cock hot and thick inside her. She moans, lifting her legs higher, tightening around his hips and locking at the ankles, trying to hold him in place, trying to keep him inside.
"Beth," he gasps, lifting his face to gaze down at her.
The moon is high over his right shoulder and as she looks at him she takes it in too. She doesn't respond and neither does he, reaching down to her clit to circle it softly, his mouth falling to her nipple. His eyes fall shut but hers don't and she watches the moon. The first Beth, the one who has only witnessed this night once, who is yet to die, to come back a second time, is simply watching it for the sake of watching. Her nerves are alight with sensation, which distract her, and so are the second Beth's but now, being here a second time, she thinks of how white and waxy the moon is, like a rose petal.
She thinks that white roses represent new beginnings and she thinks it's fitting, that it should be hanging there, so white and full, over the first moment she felt truly alive again, over the beginning of their love story. Foreshadowing what was yet to come, the love that was yet to turn her upside down and the death that was yet to take her in a hallway the same colour as that moon. She thinks of witchcraft, of magic, of goddesses. She thinks of a powerful being who draws her power on the moon and wonders if someone up there chose this moment. Chose this moment full of life and sensation and heat, to decide her ending, to decide that her light would go out.
She lies under the moon and Daryl drives his hips into her, filling her over and over in her hot cunt with his aching cock, moaning in her ear as her fingernails claw down his back. She stares at the moon as her neck strains, as her stomach tightens and then as she cums. As she screams, as she explodes like her skull in that hallway, the moon explodes too, the light cracking open so that thick, red blood spills out like discarded petals and rains down on them.
Wake up.
Wake up and stand and try. She's back. She's back in the hallway and she's still cradled in Daryl's lap and she's bleeding everywhere. In the blood are lumps of her brain, pieces of her skull. Moments of her life. They play like a video, moving down the hallway in a river of red, colour and motion dulled beneath the crimson. She sees her life in a broken reel, flashing and speeding towards all her time with him. Her face is hot with tears but when she looks down at her, it's hot with blood. Why can't she wake up? Why can't she stop this? Why can't she get on her feet and chase after those pieces of her, put them back where they belong?
Why is her body giving up on her? Why can't she have him? All she wants is him. She turns back to face him, still cradling her empty shell. Runs. Skids in the shower of blood staining him and lets it stain her. Lets it soak her knees and her hands as she cradles him and he cradles her. "I'm here, Daryl. I'm trying. I'm trying to wake up."
Beth, wake up.
Her eyes open. Thin light through a window. Pain, hot and sharp in her wrist. She glances down and sees an angry, red line slashed there. Glances up and sees Maggie and she's in bed. In bed at home.
The farm.
Maggie's concerned eyes. "Want some more pain meds?"
Beth nods because that's what she did before and even though she's here for the second time she can't change that. Maggie leaves and she stares. Stares hard at the line on her wrist that she hasn't seen look like this for a long time. Now on her wrist, on that girl's wrist, dying in the arms of the man she loves, in that hallway, the line is thin and white. Here it's new, healing. Painful, throbbing. She stares and she thinks, stupid. You're so stupid you dumb little bitch. She wanted to die, did she? Wanted to end her misery? Well, she's getting it now. She's fucking dying now. Maggie comes back with the pain meds and they're strong enough that she falls asleep.
Wake up.
Wake up, and stand. Try. She's jolted. Glances up and sees that man, whose name doesn't matter. Tells Daryl to get up. Tells Daryl to walk. Daryl does. Staggers to his feet with her broken body while her broken soul follows him, stumbles in her slippery blood, hangs on to his arms, where her dead body is lying. Clings to him, cradles him as he sobs over her, as he carries her down. Down, down so far. Is this where she goes to hell? For all those bad things she did, all those people she killed? For allowing lust and sin to rule her, to ruin her? Like daddy always said it would. Is that where he'll let her go? But there's a door, there's light.
She hesitates to go through, thinking this is it. He leaves with her body and she leaves this Earth, this world. She steps through but it's not another world, just the same broken one and they're all broken. This group, broken under her death, their names who she can't recall because all that matters is him.
"Daryl," she whispers, reaching for him again.
Her fingers lay across his wrist and he shivers and she wonders if he felt her. Then there is someone who matters because Maggie. Stumbling to the floor, screaming. Crying and screaming and rocking, insanity setting in and holding firm. Her sister, her big sister. Broken. She has to go. She can't stay. The world is not made for her anymore and she can no longer be witness to its destruction.
She has to go.
She has to wake up.
"Beth?"
Her eyes open but she's nowhere that she recognises, nowhere she's been before. She glances around and her eyes find a woman. "Beth? Wow. You survived. Edwards! She's awake!" The woman shouts over her shoulder before she turns back to Beth. "It's okay, Beth. We're gonna get you back to your family. To Maggie... And Daryl."
Daryl… Maggie… names she recognises. She's sure, she just wishes she could remember where from. She wishes she could remember how she knows them. This is disorientating, her head is killing. This is surreal, too bright, this world, this woman telling her about a family and a bullet and that she's survived.
This is like a dream, and she wants to wake up.