A/N: Thank you so much for all of the follows, favourites and reviews. I've pretty much finished writing the last chapters now, and I hope to get it all uploaded before I leave for vacation next weekend.
The sun was beginning to set by the time they got back, but Daryl set up a workshop in the front yard. He put together the crib, toy box and high chair, leaving the chest of drawers to assemble in the bedroom once he could do it without waking anybody up. Carol helped him to arrange the mattress and sheets, and he carried the crib carefully up the stairs.
He opened the door slowly, hoping to catch his girls, his girls, still sleeping. He wasn't disappointed. Beth had wrapped herself around Daisy, cradling the baby to her chest. They looked so peaceful curled up together.
He took a step into the room and his bad ankle gave out, sending him and the crib crashing into the door frame. The noise woke Beth and Daisy instantly. Beth shot up into a crouch, knife at the ready, while Daisy tucked herself behind her mother, grasping at her waistband. Daryl was simultaneously proud of her incredible instincts and sick that she had needed to develop them at all. He should have been there to protect them. Once she realised where she was, Beth instantly sheathed her knife and relaxed back down onto the bed.
"Is that Judith's crib?" she said, pulling herself off the mattress and moving to inspect it. "It's beautiful."
Daryl hauled the cot into his arms again and deposited it next to the window. "Nah, we went on a run. Jus' built it." Beth beamed up at him. "Wait here, got some more stuff."
It took several trips to bring everything upstairs, and when he was finished it seemed that every surface was covered in baby stuff. Daisy was sat on the bed in the middle of a fort made of clothes, happily bashing two wooden blocks together. Beth slowly spun around to look at everything. "You got so much stuff," she said, her voice full of awe.
He shrugged, cheeks tingeing slightly pink. "She's my daughter."
The smile she gave him in response was small, but so sweet that for a moment he thought she actually might feel the same way about him as he did about her. She stepped towards him and put her palm to his cheek, running her thumb along the scruff on his jaw bone. He leaned into her touch and closed his eyes, breathing in deeply. He felt her shift, pulling a bit at the back of his neck as she reached up onto her toes, and she pressed her lips to his. It was the first time she had kissed him since their reunion, and she seemed almost hesitant, the movement of her lips soft and uncertain. He mentally kicked himself. He still hadn't told her how he felt.
He pulled away and took her hands, meeting her eyes intensely. On the way back from the baby store he had gone over and over what he wanted to say to her. But now that long speech and all those fancy words had disappeared from his brain. "Beth," he said, his voice annoyingly quiet and unsteady, "I love you."
He was waiting to see the reaction on her face, but she immediately threw her arms around his neck and burrowed her head into his shoulder. "I love you too," she mumbled into his shirt.
The past two years had been hell, but Daryl would have gone through two hundred years of hell to hear Beth say she loved him back. Her admission seemed to release a dam in him. He loved her, and now he knew she loved him, and she always wanted him to talk more, and he wouldn't deny her anything she wanted ever again. Everything he had wanted to say to her since he left her in Atlanta spilled out of him, spoken into her hair or murmured into her ear. "I missed you so much. These two years… I just been existin'. You're all I ever thought about. 'N I never wanna be away from you again. That time we spent together was the best thing to ever happen to me, 'n I jus-"
He pulled back to look at her, and wiped away the tears rolling down her cheeks with his thumb. Staring into her beautiful blue eyes, her cheeks lightly flushed and a small smile parting her lips, he had no doubts. "Beth, I know what it's like to regret not doin' things. I don't ever wanna feel that way again." He stuffed his hand into his pocket and pulled out the rings he had taken from the walkers. Palm up, he held them out to her. "Marry me?"
She didn't say anything for what felt like forever, just wordlessly stared down at his hand. Daryl began to panic. Part of him was relieved to have finally said what he had been wanting to say for two long years. Another part of him, a part of him that was rapidly increasing in size, knew that this was exactly why he never told people how he felt; they tended to throw it back in his face. But then she slowly reached out, picked up the larger of the three rings, and began slipping it onto the ring finger of his left hand.
"Don't you want a ceremony or somethin'?" he asked. "We got a priest an' a church here."
Beth smiled up at him as she pushed the ring over his first knuckle. "I love you Daryl Dixon. I've spent two years tryin' to get back to you, and now I'm here I don't wanna go another second without bein' your wife." The ring hit the end of his finger and he looked down. He should have been panicking, he knew that. It was not a well thought out decision – cutting the rings from those walkers and proposing to Beth had both been done entirely on impulse. In any case, he had only planned on proposing today, he hadn't thought they would get married then and there. And now, with almost no consideration at all, he was someone's husband. But he didn't feel any fear. Maybe it was because he wasn't just someone's husband, he was Beth's husband. And he had done enough thinking over the past two years to know that he had never wanted anything as much as he wanted her. Or so he had thought at least, until Daisy came into his life. Now he wanted both of them. They were all he needed to be happy, and he knew damn well that he could never be happy without them.
Daryl realised that part way through his internal monologue he had begun saying it out loud (apparently talking was an easy habit to fall into once you started). What he was saying was as good as any other wedding vows, he supposed, so he grabbed the two rings left in his hand and slipped them onto her finger.
In many ways marriage was meaningless at the end of the world. It had no legal standing, and there was nothing actually stopping either of them from walking away if they wished to. Somehow it meant more though. They both knew what was truly important, how fleeting life could be and how crucial it was to hold onto the good things. Daryl had no doubt that he would stay with Beth for the rest of his life and, as unbelievable as it was, knew that she must have felt the same to agree to be his wife.
Beth stretched up onto her toes again until her face was an inch away from his. "You may now kiss the bride," she whispered. So Daryl did. He wrapped her up in his arms, one hand cradling the back of her head and the other curled around her waist. He had probably said more words to Beth today than he had to everyone else in the last week combined. But it still didn't feel like enough. He was never good with words, and would definitely never be able to do justice to explaining the way he felt about her. He tried to pour all of his love into the kiss instead; maybe if he couldn't really tell her how much he loved her, he could make her feel it.
They broke apart, foreheads resting against each other for a moment before she burrowed her head into his shoulder just like Daisy had done. He could have stayed like that forever, wrapped up in Beth watching their daughter over her shoulder. Daisy gave him a gummy smile and then blew a spit bubble. It was kind of gross, but also kind of perfect. And for a man who had never considered anything in his life perfect before, today was turning out to be a pretty good day.
"I must smell somethin' awful," Beth said. Daryl wasn't going to lie to her: she smelled of walker guts and sweat. But that represented the things she had fought and all the miles she had run to get back to him. So he really didn't care. And besides, he figured that he had got way too used to living within the clean walls of Alexandria.
"'Ve smelled worse," he said, truthfully. "We got hot water though, if you want it."
Beth's mouth dropped open. "Are you sayin' that I've been here for hours and no one bothered to tell me I could have had a hot shower?" She didn't wait for his response before scooping Daisy up from the pile of clothes and disappearing into the bathroom, turning on both the shower and bath at the same time.
Beth and Daisy were in the bathroom for over 45 minutes, and when she finally opened the door steam came billowing out to flood the bedroom. Strictly speaking they were supposed to keep their showers shorter than that to save energy and water. But Daryl would happily take cold showers for the rest of his life if long, hot showers was what she wanted.
"I feel almost human again," she said as she emerged, Daisy balanced on her hip. Her damp hair was braided down her back, and all the scrubbing she must have done had left her skin looking pink, like strawberries and cream. Rosita had dropped some clothes by until Beth had chance to put together a wardrobe of her own. Although they fit, they didn't look quite right on her. The shorts were too short for Beth, and even the top button on the shirt was still too low. But they beat the clothes she had arrived in, which were worn near transparent in places.
All thoughts of what Beth looked like evaporated when she shifted Daisy in her arms though. Beth had probably had over a hundred outfits to choose from for Daisy. But of all of them, she had picked a pale yellow onesie with 'Daddy's Little Girl' emblazoned in glitter across the front. Daryl almost hadn't taken that one, assuming Beth would think it was stupid, or that maybe he didn't have the right to dress her in clothes like that after being in her life for less than a day. He had shoved it to the very bottom of one of the piles, and yet somehow Beth had found it.
He wrapped his arms around both of them, breathing in the smell of clean and soap and - now that there was no walker blood covering it up - the distinct smell of Beth that he would have recognised anywhere. "I'm so glad we found you again," she said. He squeezed them tighter.
"C'mon," he said eventually, reluctantly letting go of Beth and lifting Daisy out of her arms, "Dinner'll be just about ready. Reckon they're all too excited to see ya to let you stay up here much longer. 'N you both need to eat." He paused at the door. Beth was staring down at her left hand, rotating the diamond back and forth so it caught the light. He cleared his throat and she grinned up at him. "They're gonna wanna hear 'bout everythin'. You a'ight with that?"
Beth thought about it for a minute and then nodded. "They're family," she said simply.
"Good," Daryl said, "I wanna hear about it too."
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