Okay so this is angst. Like, probably not as dark and angsty as it could be, but it's as dark as I've got, I think. Even still, it was in my head and it had to get out. Short, angsty, little smutty. Hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: The Walking Dead and it's characters do not belong to me, nor do I make profit from this. Plot is mine, work is mine - no beta and that's that.

This is wrong.

This is wrong and he's wrong and he should stop but he can't stop because she's right here, she's right fucking here and he's lost her once and he can't, he can't do it again. She doesn't even know who he is, not really. She doesn't remember, most likely she never will. He fell in love with Beth Greene and this girl is wearing her face but she's not her. God, it's all wrong. It's all wrong and he can't stop it even if he tried. Because yeah, okay, it's not Beth, it's not but it is. She's got Beth's face, her eyes, some of her scent buried under that rot and decay, the blood, the wood smoke which, he doesn't really think she smells like but which is all he can smell when she's around, from the day they got her back.

It's not Beth, it's not even her smile or her laugh – she rarely laughs, which is not Beth in and on itself – but it's her little body, her golden hair – shorter now. Shaved when they saved her life and growing back- her pink mouth, her blue eyes, her creamy skin. Unmarked but for the neat hole in her head and the scar slashing her cheekbone, red and dark and thick, like she picked it open a thousand times. It's all Beth in appearance even if it's not when she opens her mouth. Even when she can't remember anyone's name or her father, or her sister.

Even when she didn't want to hold Judith because she claimed she didn't like babies and gave Michonne a strange look when asked if she still sings: I've never sang in my life. Edwards, the fucking prick, was the one who saved her. Sent someone to find them, on that hellish road towards Alexandria, though they didn't know it was their destination at the time. He sent the woman after them, the one they held hostage in return for Beth before her skull exploded and her blood splattered Daryl's lips with copper. Said she owed them, said she had to be the one. Be the one to what? To tell them that Beth survived. That Beth's alive.

Then there she was, little angel, climbing out of the back of the car. So fresh, so clean, so goddamn bright compared to him and the rest of them, filthy and starving and exhausted. It hurt to look at her, a sharp point of pain like the crater in his hand, like the skin that sizzled under the assault of the cigarette, a wound he had only given himself earlier that day, trying to feel it. Trying to try. The woman must have had a hell of a journey trying to find them, seventeen whole days of walking between them and Grady though the car might have shortened it. He said that to her, his throat rough and unyielding, barely loud enough to be heard.

A shrug was all he got, she owed them.

Maggie was the first to stumble forward from there frozen semi-circle, until the officer stopped her with a warning. "She's not… herself."

"What the fuck do you mean, not herself?"

"She's suffering from intense memory loss. She knows how to tie her shoelaces, hold a fork, she knows about the dead, she knows the basics and what we've told her. But she doesn't know who she is. She has a vague sense of who that person is and it's not Beth. It's someone else."

He should have known then: how fucking awful this would be but even after carrying her dead body he was still a naive little prick. 'She'll be fine, once she's back with her family.' Yeah, right. 'Not herself' was a fucking understatement. She's created a whole other person for herself, 'a coping mechanism,' Denise said. She allows them to call her Beth because despite her new personality she never conjured up a new name for herself, but she's not Beth and he's pretty sure she never will be again and he hates it, hates her. It's awful, it's sick, he should die just for thinking it but it's there and it's this: why can't she just have stayed fucking dead?

Why couldn't she just let her head explode and stay the fuck down? Why did she have to rise and haunt him, in every physical way she could? Why did she have to come back to fucking life but not bring with her the girl she died as? Why did she have to do that? Why did she have to hurt him so fucking much? She burns him. She burns him when he's just looking at her, but worse is when she speaks and when she talks with a voice that's not Beth's but a mouth that is and so he doesn't let her talk when they do this. He doesn't let her talk when she comes to him in the middle of the night; when she slides beneath his sheets without no clothes.

He's wrong, this is wrong but she's all wrong so why don't they be wrong together? Why can't he do that? Why's he got to be good? Why does he have to keep his hands off this young, beautiful empty shell of a girl he once loved when she fucking resurrected and put her damn self here? And she's cruel, God she's so fucking cruel now because she knows how to play him, she knows how to force him to allow it. The first night, the very first one she crawled in his bed he did say no because he hasn't always been so fucked up, but she knew what to say.

She knew exactly what to say.

"Daryl, c'mon, touch me, I've missed you." Breathy, like she meant it, like he knew Beth's voice is when she's strung up, her cunt wet.

"Fuck you," he hissed. "Fuck you, don't pretend you're her."

"I can be. You want me to be, right? You want me, Daryl. Dontchu?"

He's wrong but so's she, she infected him. She rose with dark magic and she's brought it back with her and now every time she touches him, touches his face, his chest, his shoulders, his aching cock, she infects him too, poisons him and he loses the fight. Like she could only come back to life if she chose some poor fucker to drain when she was walking and talking again. She chose him. She chose him to fuck up, to fuck. Now she does it every night, every goddamn night. Comes to his bed, slides beneath his sheets; touches his cock and impales her hot, soft cunt on it.

Balances her little, rough hands, no longer soft or young, on his chest and guides his hand to her clit to circle, to press until she shudders and cums all over him, tightening over him, holding him in her. It's his cum she swallows, his heart she's chosen to break, his head she's chosen to fuck with. His life she plans to give in exchange for hers. It's him who's being tainted, poisoned. It's him who's wrong, but then he thinks, it shouldn't feel so fucking good.