A/N: Like so many, I'm absolutely devastated by the MSF. I haven't written fic in a long, long time, but I couldn't stop myself. I loved Beth, and Bethyl, so much. I'm in mourning for all the could-have-beens. This is it for now, but I might do a string of alternate universe one-offs. All the different places and ways that Beth and Daryl could meet or be together.
It had been five days since Beth. Five days, and Daryl still had done little more than grunt affirmatively or negatively at Rick and Carol if they asked him a question and eat and drink when forced. Not actual physical force, though it came close to that. Rick boxed him in a room in a house that they stayed in on the second night and said he wasn't leaving until he drank the bottle of water and ate the bit of meat and canned corn that they found. He did it again on day four.
Maggie wasn't doing much better, but it turned out she had reason to take care of herself. As they buried her sister, she sobbed out to Glenn that their baby would never know any of her family. She didn't get to tell Beth she was going to be an aunt. Sasha and Tara offered weak congratulations, but no one knew how to react to this latest bit of news.
At least Glenn could persuade her to eat and rest when they had the chance. She had reason to. Daryl had nothing. The family all tried to reach him, but nothing work. Rick finally tried to get him to connect to Judith. He never could deny his Little Ass-Kicker anything. But Daryl took one look at her and his face froze before he walked out of the room.
They kept moving. Slowly, but still heading north. If nothing else, they thought they could get Noah back to his people in Richmond. The fire truck had been abandoned the day after Beth died, so they continued on foot.
As they walked down the road, Daryl blankly kept an eye out. He could still kill walkers, but Rick was even worried with that. He fought sloppily, completely disregarding his own safety. For the first time since leaving the CDC all those years ago, Rick didn't trust him to have his back. So, he kept him at his side, knowing his brother needed someone keeping an extra eye out for him.
Carl walked on Daryl's other side. He knew his son had tried to talk to Daryl a few times already. Rick remembered how Carl had followed Beth around like she hung the moon when they first reached the prison. He had to be hurting, too.
They walked along in silence for over an hour, when Carl broke it. "Beth was teaching me and Patrick physics when we were at the prison. Just the basic stuff, for the most part. She had taken it in school and really liked it, and thought it might be useful for us to know how the world worked."
"That was nice of her," Rick smiled.
"One day, Patrick started asking about sci-fi stuff. Could transporters work, how about phasers, could light speed be achieved, and she had no idea. But she did start talking about alternate realities. And she thought that it could be real. That there were hundreds of thousands of universes all going on at the same time and that we were all doing different things in each of them."
"Sounds like her," Glenn said from behind them.
Rick glanced back, and saw that Glenn and Maggie followed them closely.
Maggie glanced up. "So maybe, somewhere, Beth is walking with us."
Carl nodded. "I think in a lot of different somewheres Beth is walking with us. In lots of them, we're still at the prison, or at the farm, or there wasn't an outbreak at all, and she's in college."
Maggie released a shaky breath and smiled, probably for the first time in a week. "Good. She always wanted to be a music teacher. That needs to be happening somewhere."
Rick risked a glance at Daryl, but to his disappointment, saw that his expression hadn't changed.
Later that night, Rick found Daryl out on the porch of the house they were squatting in. He sat next to him and nodded to Abraham who was on watch. Abraham moved farther away, out of earshot, and Rick was thankful to him.
"It's been a week, brother. You got to come back to us now."
"I'm right here."
"No, you aren't. In body maybe, but your head ain't here."
"Don't wanna be here. Don't wanna be anywhere."
"She wouldn't have wanted this. She wouldn't want you giving up like this."
"She wouldn't want to be dead, neither. Guess no one gets what they want."
Rick couldn't argue with that. He leaned his head back against the wall. "Guess not."
Another week went by, and Daryl expanded his responses to actual words, but not much more than that. Another week, and Rick finally felt he could leave him alone outside. Another week after that and he'd eat and drink without prompting.
But he didn't engage with anyone. He looked angry about ninety-five percent of the time and absolutely lost the other five percent. Rick didn't worry about him killing walkers anymore, but he did worry about how savage his friend had become when dealing with them.
He didn't know how much longer Daryl could go, as angry at the world as he was.
As it happened, he wouldn't have to wait long to find out.
The two of them went out hunting while the rest were securing a farmhouse they came across. Rick silently followed his friend as he tracked something, Rick wasn't sure what. Daryl raised hand and Rick stopped just as Daryl shot something rustling in the leaves. He walked forward and pulled out a raccoon, an arrow through its head.
He tossed it back to Rick and was reloading his bow just as four walkers came staggering through the undergrowth. Immediately he dropped one with an arrow to the head and pulled his knife out to take out the next one. Rick dropped the raccoon and pulled out his own knife, going after the third. Daryl pulled his knife out of the second walker and Rick expected him to immediately go after the last one, but he looked up after taking care of his walker to find Daryl backing away from it, face crumpling.
Rick approached the walker and understood Daryl's reaction. It could have been Beth. Same height, same size, same age, remnants of blonde hair gathered in a ponytail. He put her down quickly and turned back to his friend.
Daryl was stabbing his knife into the ground over and over again, crying. "She should be here."
Trying not to cry himself, he stood next to his friend, stroking his hair. "I know."
"I don't understand."
There wasn't any explanation that Rick could give, so he just stood next to his weeping friend, giving him what comfort he could.
Daryl didn't suddenly become better after that, but Rick noticed changes all the same.
When Judith crawled into his lap, he wouldn't immediately pass her off to someone else. He'd hold her, and kiss the top of her head, let her play with his vest. When someone would mention Beth's name, he wouldn't leave the room, at least not right away. He started spending time with Noah, teaching the kid to hunt, to track, to fight.
It was about six months after she had been killed that Rick finally felt that he was starting to get over it. Rick wasn't foolish enough to believe that Daryl'd ever get over her completely. He didn't know what exactly had passed between the two when they were alone on the run for those two months, and he had a feeling that if he asked, Daryl wouldn't be able to explain it. But he recognized love when he saw it, and Daryl had loved Beth deeply.
Then one day, when Maggie, Glenn, and Carl were playing what they called "Universes" – coming up with stories of what their alternative selves were doing at that very time – they had an unexpected person join the game.
"I'm driving my old truck, 'bout half an hour south of Macon, and there's Beth on the side of the road, hitchhiking like that trusting fool girl would," Daryl's gravelly voice rumbled.
Maggie actually stopped walking and turned to him, uncertain. Glenn stared. Carl smiled, and so did Michonne. Everyone else almost seemed to be holding their breath.
"And then what?" Glenn asked. The only one brave enough to do so.
Daryl shrugged. "I pull over. Ask her what the hell a girl like her is doing, hitchhiking on a damn back country road. Don't she know what kinda trouble she could get into?"
"What does she say?" That from Maggie, whose uncertainty melted into a grin.
"Tells me she can take care of herself, and then opens the door and climbs in, bold as anything. So I ask her where she's headed and she tells me she broke up with her idiot boyfriend and is walking back to town so she can get the bus into Athens. Turns out, I'm going up to my uncle's fishing cabin in the Natahala, so I offer to drive her the whole way."
Carl was smiling broadly by this point. "Does she accept?"
"She takes a good, long, hard look at me. Stares so long, I get uncomfortable and decide to just dump her in the nearest town but before I can tell her, she says 'okay'. That's when I realize the girl may be crazy so I ask her."
"You ask her if she's crazy?" Tara laughed.
"Yeah. Say, 'What's wrong with you, girl? You nuts? You don't just go around accepting rides from red necks in trucks. You're like to get murdered, doing dumb things like that.' And she just smiles and says, 'You got kind eyes, what I can see of 'em. You would do no such thing.' So, we take off, headed for Athens. She turns to me as we start off. 'I'm Beth. Beth Greene.' 'Daryl Dixon,' I nod at her. And we ride off together."
And even though Rick knew it was a game, just for a second, deep down, he felt it happening. Could see it as plainly as Carl standing in front of him. And he wished that universe's Daryl and Beth all the best as they drove off into the sunset.