There will be more detailed, rated chapter later but I needed this off my chest, merci! xxx
He found her sat in her room the next night. Unlike the torrent of days he would walk here only to pull her into a secluded location, he found himself only seeking her out to know she was there. It was weird that way- their recent activities had barely been happening long enough to call it a relationship of any kind, yet he found himself struggle to see her as the same happy child he did before this started.
Perhaps it was her unmistakable loneliness or that look of needing to be saved, the one that more often than not he would ignore in the faces of those he passed by, that made him need to stop by her cell and acknowledge her struggling to keep breathing. She was lying in bed, the covers pulled tautly over her, but she wasn't asleep. He knew this, unfortunately for finding himself learning what her relaxed face was, and it was that look that he was able to give her that made him have to stop. Though there was till the terrifying thought that she knew more about him than he thought she knew, as he saw in some of her weighted glances, it was impossible to turn and run.
No, Beth Greene wouldn't have run. So, therefore, he didn't have it in him to do that to her. Her quiet acceptance made it bearable too. She was, and this may not be a good thing, the only woman he'd ever had in his bed that didn't ask where the rigid lines on his back were from or why he couldn't let them stay the night. Instead she picked her clothes up, smiled and slipped back to her own cell until the next night or even sometimes the early hours of the morning.
And then it had become normal. He anticipated the rush of adrenaline in seeing her there blonde hair over her shoulder at the door of his cell or slinking around some corner of the prison like a temptress goddess. Everything dies. And so he killed the budding flare of happiness he got from merely hugging her tight and the pain that settled in his throat at touching her self-inflicted pain, he couldn't afford to care about her. So why was he here?
Her eyes were greener from afar than their actual sea-blue colour. And right now they pierced at him like a cats might, but she made no effort to move or show any acknowledgment of him being there. She knew that he knew that she knew. These mind games had to stop. Her awful ability to read him mind like those aliens in old 80's films and silence in everything but her throaty high-pitched moans. It wasn't like they talked much, not anything that wasn't lewd or corrupt anyway. Occasionally when he was falling asleep he would regret that he hadn't given her a 'how was your day?' or a 'are you ok?', these thoughts were becoming regular and ending his reliving his imagination's imitations of what they had just done.
He was in this predicament again when he had so much he wanted to say, but not the motivation nor the fearlessness to do it. Instead he just stared at her pale and passive face, the one she gave to those who didn't know. And he wondered if cutting of attachments with her meant he reverted so easily back to being one of them again. That was the other fear. He had no idea how she had taken this, normally a person guarded their hearts and showed emotion even when trying to restrain it. The panic and distraught emotion of Rick upon losing his wife and wanting to prove he can still leave, Carl's own shielded and guarded rebellion stemming from justified anger, Herschel's loosing of hope and self-berating to keep going. He saw them all, recognised their thoughts but kept them to himself as it wasn't his business. But other than in the throes of passion, when thoughts are evidentially closer to action than emotion, he had no idea what Beth Greene was thinking.
''Thought we stopped?'' her voice was light and yet somehow weighted down with the internal heaviness of its own implication. She wasn't going to let him off lightly for being here, and he expected no less, or he had expected to hear some complaint at his earlier bluntness.
''Seemed weird to not see ya', y'know?'' His own voice was gruffer than imagined, somehow too holding that heaviness she had instilled.
Moving into the cell he sat down on her bed, he felt her feet move back so he could have more space. It wasn't weird for her to accommodate him, but he hated how surprised she looked at his quiet thank you. Better than anybody he knew that a majority of her pain wasn't caused by him, he was the exception actually treating her like a woman not a child, but that didn't validate his taking advantage of her giving nature. Her blonde hair was spread across the pillow and her eyes had flicked back to staring at the top bunk with idle fascination, and suddenly he felt less bad about violating her, at least it gave her something to do than stare and wait for sleep.
Beth had very little in her cell, the morbid reminder of 'days without incident' sign and a few odd books scattered unread across a small wooden table, not like the loaded cells of the Woodbury residents or her sisters. Belongings meant nothing since her own were destroyed in that horrific screaming fire, but he couldn't know that for sure. Her disattachment to things would help her in this world, or perhaps her loss of them had destroyed her.
She nibbled her lip slightly, the quiet acceptance of her stony nothingness was starting to frustrate her, and he could read that in her face and hated how he patted himself on the back for the observation. She used her elbows to sit up a bit, and he looked at how frail and ill she looked when not wearing her mask. The pale skin wasn't an object of beauty when there was no smile, only sickly and pallid, making her eyes seem too dark and her lips far too unnaturally pink. She blinked slowly in lethargic interest, tilting her head at him so the blonde waves fell to the side like some thousand thread domino game.
''Why're you here, Daryl?'' She kept her level voice to that sweet tang and lethargic reality, the one he hated.
''Felt bad.'' He shrugged, biting the skin on the side of his thumb and enclosing his arms a bit tighter.
''Don't then.'' Her cheeks puffed slightly as she exhaled a breath and fell back to her staring. Her hair jumped around her at the heavy landing, and she looked so young he wanted to smile at her naïve view. Once again the flare of colour was in her cheeks, and the unbridled emotion would only last a few seconds before she captured it and his it back in some internal maze so it might never again see the light of day.
She fought to keep her eyes trained ahead, ignoring the piercing attempts at telepathy by reinstalling the cool mask of calmness. He frowned at this, felling like he had missed out on some horrific exception to her view on the world. Now he was just another person, the door had been closed and she had cut him off. It wasn't the first time, his entire life had been filled with people only simply looking at him and then putting up that wall between the two of them, it was prejudice and it was life. But Beth was alone on the other side of that wall, and it wasn't really him that she was shutting out, just the default of his human body.
He moved up, pushing her across the bed nearer to the wall, kicking his shoes off and pulling the covers over himself. He shocked face put him back into awkward embarrassment about the brashness of his own actions. But he knew not acting on impulse right now meant he might never get a second chance at climbing the wall of Beth Greene to breach her isolation.
''I didn't have a good childhood- y' probl'y know that. Worst place I e'er was, but I still miss it sometimes- like to think about goin' home though I know it ain't no good fer me.'' He coughed, staring at the slats of the bunk above as she ran her bluer eyes across his face. And although he hated giving information out, above all his own private thoughts, there was a chance nothing else would work.
She shuffled more comfortably across after a moment of letting the words sink in, eyes lighting up a bit with some form of accepting the need to come back into full consciousness. How long had she been disconnected?
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Beth felt her own focus on her breathing and beating heart deteriorate as she tuned in willingly to anything he had to say. She was afraid. Afraid that listening might make her own formed hatred of him so that she could pretend it was alright to walk away from the one person that let her escape her on catatonic depression or the act of being a fifteen year old happy-go-lucky preachers girl. It was exhausting, and the next thing to go wrong might just end it for her. Childishly she had hoped that tears would have been enough to make him leave, normally the raw emotion seemed to spook him. Unfortunately it hadn't worked, and he was here, arguably less damaged than she was.
He made her think back to the farm. No doubt about how much she loved her old home, the memories and comfort of familiarity that allowed her a different kind of freedom than she was allowed to have in this world. But alongside that the cynicism in her told her how tainted and painful those memories were, how no comfort can be found in mere timber frames, how restrained she was to the life they had all chosen for her. But what did it matter? Her home was gone, it was all gone.
But maybe that's what he was trying to tell her, in his own backwards way. That the place you're from can be filled with the bitter hardships, that made you have a negative side in the first place, but still you will always have a certain attraction to them. Perhaps everyone felt that way, or maybe the two of them were the type to seek out the things that will hurt them. She leant the side of her body comfortably against him, the narrow mattress enforced touching but easing into it would be enough for him to see the white flag of surrender. She could tell by the lethargic and bordering on rational thoughts that it was getting late and her automaton body would throw her into unconsciousness soon. Normally she would try to fight it, telling herself she needed to be awake to help protect Judy or that she didn't deserve the deep dreamless sleeps she got when everyone else suffered vivid nightmares.
There was no denying the fact that it was weird to be next to Daryl Dixon when he was fully clothed and not using his hands to make her dizzy. But focusing on him now she could appreciate his appeal in a different light to the sexual god she had been making him out to be. Fir started he looked anxious about having anxieties, she knew that much was true anyway. He was honest and raw, in this rugged charming way- but still there was decidedly something untameably wild about him. That intrigued her. He had the key to the freedom she somehow desired in her life, and although she may never admit it to anyone she wanted to have that strong independent thing. She wanted to cuss and hunt and be productive, she wanted to be valued. But that was dream too much for the old world, let alone for the new world of repression that she was in.
Drifting off she felt his hot lips against her forehead, the slight shuffling noise of his departure, but it was alright because she was pretty much already submissive to the tranquillity he had given her. It seemed her reliance on him had only displaced form sleeping with him, to needing him to sleep. But it was progress, and progress would and could only bring later change.