Lost in Dreaming
Two
"Need a hand with that?"
This time, he finds her at the prison. He's found her here a few times now, usually in her cell, but to find her leaning against the cool railing of the guard tower is something new.
"What? This?" he gestures at the wooden carving in his hands, and still can't remember what he's carving it into. It glints strangely in the moonlight, like metal. "Nah. S'okay."
"You sure?" Beth asks from directly beside him, her tone light and teasing, but when she turns her head just slightly to glance up at his face, there's a sadness in those eyes so haunting that Daryl gasps inaudibly. "It might hurt someone."
"It won't," he says hurriedly, desperately, because he's suddenly filled with the need to wipe that expression off her face and bring back that bright, sunny Beth he carried to the kitchen table. "It won't hurt no-one," he says, because he needs it to be true. "You're gonna be fine."
She smiles then, big and real, and her eyes shine like sapphires in the light of the moon, hair turned silver. "Okay then, Mr. Dixon," she sing-songs, and when Daryl hears a gurgling noise it's with only slight surprise that he sees baby Judith in Beth's swinging arms. A rush of affection floods his senses. Somehow this picture is perfect, and irrationally he's afraid it won't last.
"When did you get here, Lil' Ass Kicker?" he coos. Judith's tiny mouth smiles up at him, eyes shining with sheer joy.
Beth fixes him with a strange look, then. "She's not."
"Not what?"
"She's getting so big," Beth sing-songs again, and Judith gurgles happily and reaches for the end of Beth's ponytail, tiny fingers grasping.
"What you talkin' about girl?" Daryl laughs, because he's so inexplicably happy at the sight of them here, together as they should always be. "She's still just a baby."
"No," Beth says, fixing him with that look again, and then turns her face back to Judith, the moon illuminating her features and making her look ethereal. "You're gonna be seven tomorrow, aren't you Judy?" she coos. "Aren't you? Yes you are!"
It's just a moment, but he drags his eyes away from Beth's face and looks out towards the forest before them, beyond the perimeter of the prison gates, stretching as far as the starless sky. Beneath that blackness is a sea of the darkest green –the deep, earthy smell of fir and pine trees, and teeming with the sounds of thousands of beasts. He's filled, then, with unexplainable longing so intense that his eyes begin to prickle with tears.
When he looks back Beth's arms are empty, and she's staring out at the forest too. Horror floods his veins.
"Where's Lil' Ass Kicker?" he breathes, and Beth's eyes are rimmed red with tears as she points over his shoulder towards what he instinctively knows is the court yard.
"I lost her there," she says, mournful. "She's not on the bus and I can't leave without her. And Maggie..."
He feels a surge of anger he doesn't understand at the sound of Maggie's name. She's done something terrible and unmentionable, something he doesn't know yet; he knows she's not done it yet because he and Beth are still in the prison, but he doesn't know why that matters. But Beth is crying, so he pushes it away.
"S'okay," he says, quickly, because he can't bear to see her look so sad. He knows, somehow, that Judith is with Rick and the others. "We've got Judy. She's safe."
"Oh!" Beth's eyes dry instantly, her face shines with relief. "Oh. That's good." She eyes him warily, though, and he feels somewhat uncomfortable.
"What?" he says, defensively, and when Beth speaks it's with a soft, gentle evenness – the tone of a mother chastising a child.
"Are you going to stop being mean to Maggie any time soon?"
He looks away from her, to his feet on the grated metal of the watchtower floor. "I ain't mean."
He feels a slim finger prod his chest, and when he looks back up he sees Beth's face looking up at him expectantly. "You weren't the only one, Daryl."
"I know," he says, but he still doesn't quite get it. Doesn't really understand what's happening here, but knows it's important. Knows that he has to be nicer to Maggie, though he's unsure right now what he's so heart wrenchingly unhappy with her over.
Beth nods her head, shoots him a quick wink of an eye, and then inclines her head towards the woods, eyes trained on Daryl's face. "We're goin' out there soon, aren't we?"
"You and me?" He feels a little nervous. He's never spent a lot of time with Beth before.
"Yeah! It'll be fun," she breathes, and her eyes glitter with mirth. "You'll be all grumpy at first, and I'll be all annoyin', but you'll get used to me quick."
"Pfft," he snorts, and shoves her playfully until she squeals. "I ain't grumpy."
"But I was annoying," she smirks. She nudges his side with her bony elbow, and he feels a fond smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he throws one arm around her shoulder, playfully ruffling her hair before giving her a quick kiss on the top of her head.
"You weren't so bad," he says quietly into her hair, humour gone from his voice, and Beth's arm tightens around him.
"Happy birthday, Judy," he smiles as he hands the auburn-haired girl her birthday present. Her brown eyes light up in wonder as she takes the blanket wrapped bundle from his hands.
"Thank you!" she says, smile breaking across the tiny features of her face, as Rick and Carl sit on either side of her on the worn couch in the house they've called home for the last four years, smiles on their own faces.
She's grown now, walking and talking and playing with the other kids in the gated Alexandria community, as if the world outside their fortified walls doesn't exist. She's smart – funny, sometimes, and always with her nose in a book, pronouncing with ease all the biggest words that he'll never know the meanings of. And sometimes – times like now, when she cradles the world's worst-wrapped, smallest gift in her hands and still manages to be so genuinely grateful – sometimes, when she looks up at everyone with that kind, beaming smile, Daryl sees just a little bit of Beth in her, and that makes him prouder than he has words for.
"Mom!" she calls, and Daryl's heart aches just the smallest bit when Michonne breaks away from her conversation with Carol and comes to stand beside him. "Mom, Daryl got me a present!"
"He did?" Michonne asks, and prods Judith's forehead softly as the little girl breaks out in giggles. "That was very nice of him. Nice wrapping paper job, by the way," she jibes at him warm-heartedly.
"Shut up. Not like there's any gift shop around here," he playfully snaps back.
"Can I open it?"
"You go on ahead, Lil' Ass Kicker," he says fondly, and Rick shoots him a sharp look.
"How many times – " he begins, but Judith's squeal of excitement drowns out any words of admonishment her father has in store, and at the sound of her joy a grin breaks out across Rick's own face.
"A new book!" she cries, and holds it out in the air for everyone to admire. "Daryl got me a new book!"
He scratches the back of his neck awkwardly. "Ain't nothin'," he says. "I see you readin' the same books over and over, is all. Just saw it on a run."
"I can't wait to read it," Judith assures him, and stands on small legs to wrap her arms around Daryl's torso. "Thanks."
And Daryl's not the hugging type. Not at all. But he thinks some remnant of his dream last night must have clung to his skin, because with a sudden rush of affection he kneels down to wrap his arms around her small frame. Because, in some way, Judith will always be that baby Beth had cradled in her arms. "You're welcome," he says, voice thick with emotion, and ruffles her hair before letting her go.
There aren't many people at Rick and Michonne's house; just their own group, a few of Judith's little friends and some of their parents. They'll never know the exact day of Judith's birth, but they'll always know the month – March, because of Lori's approximate due-date, and the residents of Alexandria have kept careful count of the passage of time since the outbreak began. It was Carl who suggested celebrating the first day of every March for her, and something always twinges uncomfortably in Daryl's chest when he remembers Carl saying that 'every kid should have a birthday.'
It's much later on, when the kids have gone home and Judith has fallen asleep face first in her piece of homemade cake, that Maggie joins him on the porch.
"Hey," he says, and shifts over enough for her to join him on the doorstep, smoke curling from his half-finished cigarette and dissipating in the evening air.
"Hi," she says, and moves towards him slowly. She's had some wine – they'd struck lucky at a store just a few miles from the safe zone a few weeks ago, and had decided to save it for special occasions – and she sways just slightly when she sits down beside him. "Having fun?"
"Yeah," he replies, and honestly, he is. He's had a little whisky, his first drink since a blonde haired girl told him he'd miss her one day, and burned down a moonshine shack with him – and truthfully, the buzz is nice. Now he's numb in that warm, comfortable way, and not in that hollow aching way he's been for quite some time now. "You doin' okay?" he asks her, and Maggie nods beside him.
"Yeah, I am," she replies, green eyes glittering as she looks out towards the quiet street beyond Rick's house.
They lapse into silence for a while. Maggie with her eyes closed and Daryl smoking his cigarette.
"It was Beth's favourite," Maggie says suddenly, and Daryl doesn't have time to steel himself before the sound of that name, her name, tears and rips anew at the annoying, painful, Beth-shaped hole she's left in the centre of his being.
"The book," Maggie clarifies when he doesn't say anything. "'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.' It was the first book in her favourite series."
He feels a strange swell of emotion at that; a sharp tug that seems to pull his heart from his chest and up, up into his throat, forming a lump he can barely speak over. On some level, it just plain hurts. On another, it's something of a comfort to think that despite her absence, it's almost like he's given back to Judith something of the woman who raised her for those first couple of years. That that baby Beth had loved with all her being finally has something left of her.
"I thought it was a kid's book?" he finally says, and Maggie smiles wistfully.
"She started reading them when she was a really little kid," she says. "About Judith's age. And as the books came out, she'd get older. She grew up with them, really. And by the time the last book came out, she was almost that girl you met on my farm." She fixes Daryl with a watery smile, and her eyes aren't glittering anymore; they're shining with unshed tears.
"I'm sorry," she says, and the tears fall fast from her eyes, streaming from her cheeks and creating a steady drip drip drip on the concrete at her feet. There's a terrible, consuming pain in his chest at the sight of her like this, and in the sense of dread at the subject of the impending conversation, because he just knows. They've skirted around it for too long now, he and Maggie; caught in some endless cycle of not saying her name, of not talking about her – of filling this silence between them with everything and nothing, anything to distract from that old anger in Daryl's heart or the guilt on Maggie's shoulders.
"Don't – " he begins, but she's sobbing now, and he sits, speechless, because Maggie doesn't do this – not ever, not since the day they left the farm behind forever, left her –
"I know you were angry," she breathes, her face wet with tears, and she won't look at him anymore. "I know that you blamed me, even though you never said anythin', and you were right." She gasps for air, and her tears fall faster. "I gave up and I lost her. I didn't look for her. I didn't even try and in the end I deserved to lose her but you didn't – you didn't give up – but I let her be dead."
It's everything Daryl believed for years. It's everything he felt when he carried his girl out of those hospital doors and saw Maggie break down, or when she cried all the way to the farm, or when she told him those nostalgic stories as they buried the little sister she never looked for. It's all the resentment and anger he'd felt when he'd seen her mourn and grieve and fall apart – as though she had really lost Beth, and hadn't merely thrown her away. He had told her Beth was still alive, when even he couldn't know for sure, but still she had left for Washington. It didn't matter in that moment when he'd seen her there, screaming and crying on the concrete of the hospital yard, that she'd come back. That she'd realised her own mistake. Maggie was already too late. And in that moment, he hated her as much as he loved her.
And for years, there has been this disconnect between them – in the way they talk to one another, in the way they fight together like a team but avoid each other when the fights are fought and won or lost. In the way they fill the dead silence between them with small talk, rather than the things that really matter.
And for years, Daryl has missed Maggie. Misses when she was his friend, and not just his family. He wonders, now, if pain and anger are only things that resolve themselves after some great epiphany – or if, instead, they quietly pack their bags while nobody's looking, and silently slink off in the dead of night.
"Do you hate me?" she asks, eyes on the ground, bottom lip quivering, and his eyes feel hot, suddenly. He tastes salt on the corners of his mouth, and before he can stop himself he has dropped his cigarette to the ground to wrap strong arms around her; chest to her shoulder, head resting on hers as she cries.
"I don't hate you, dumbass," he says over the lump in his throat, as Maggie's hands come up to grip his arms like a lifeline. "How could I ever hate you?"
She sobs. "Back then, I thought – "
"I know," he says. "I'm sorry." He hugs her tighter, because he understands now that the rift between them wasn't ever really Maggie. The rift was him all along, angry and desperate for someone to blame. "I was just lost," he tells her. "I'm so sorry."
She cries even harder, but it feels different, somehow; something shifts back into place between them, and a weight he didn't even know he was carrying is lifted.
"What are you crying about now, you drunk-ass bitch?" he mumbles, hastily wiping his own tears away.
She snorts, and shoves him. "I'm just happy. Shut up, grumpy."
"I ain't grumpy," he laughs, and nudges her as they move to stand up.
"But I am a drunk-ass bitch," she says, swaying just slightly on her feet.
"You're not so bad," he smiles, and takes hold of her elbow as they go back inside; back to the warmth, back to their family, leaving his anger out in the cold.
(A/N: I love it when Daryl and Maggie get to be friends. And also any opportunity to mention Harry Potter. Thanks for reading! Review at will darlings. xoxo)
