Chapter 3

Beth looked up at the two story Cape Cod style home and it felt foreign to her. Like she was going to someone's house she didn't even know. From what she saw on the walk over (and it was hard to keep from watching Daryl watching her so she was not able to see much) people were doing well. She observed well kept lawns and she almost fell over when she saw someone walking their dog. She wondered if Daryl thought of the dog back at the funeral home. She couldn't keep the frown from her face when she remembered that night. The night she was taken from him. The night she was bit by one of the undead.

"Hey." His voice was soft but gruff from beside her on the sidewalk, breaking her from her thoughts. He waited until she looked at him before he finished. "It's gonna be okay."

She forced a half smile. "How can you be so sure?"

"This little spitfire once told me that I had to have a little faith." Daryl's eyes pierced her own and she caught his hidden message. At once she had a memory of green grass and his worn bandana, late summer sun beating down on her head and her and Daryl setting out to conquer the undead world. She smiled at him, grateful that he remembered.

Daryl's heart flip-flopped in his chest when she smiled at her own advice being given back to her. It made that same jump every time she smiled his direction. At this rate, he was headed for a heart attack, but he figured his heart had already taken a hell of a thrashing here lately and could likely handle it.

"What do I say though?" She looked up at him, her eyes a deep ocean of stormy blues dancing with a spark of light. "Hey Maggie. I'm alive?"

"I'll go in first and smooth it out for you if ya want." Daryl offered. It was the least he could do he figured. She just shook her head.

"No, I gotta do this." Daryl was reminded instantly of her face set in a fierce determination telling him that all she wanted to do that day was to lay down and cry. But we don't get to do that. He hadn't understood it at the time, her bizarre need to get lit after what they had seen. He could understand the why but he couldn't understand the when or the how. He had never seen anyone so determined to get to something. And he'd never seen someone cry so hard at finally finding it and it not being what they thought it was. Beth had treated finding that drink like finding the holy grail and when it came down to it, it was a huge disappointment. Which with Peach Schnapps, it was that.

Daryl figured that was what finding this place had meant to Rick. To Michonne. To all of them really. They had come looking for the holy grail and all they'd found when they got here was Peach Schnapps. He squeezed her hand that he kept expecting her to withdraw any minute, but she didn't. "Ready?"

She gave him a small smile and nodded, squeezing his hand back. It was strange in some ways and in others it was just natural that she and Daryl had reconnected so quickly. Here she was holding Daryl Dixon's hand like it was nothing.

They climbed the steps to the porch and Daryl eased the door open looking to her once and connecting with her eyes. She nodded back at him. It was time.

Daryl stepped through the door first, their fingers still intertwined. He probably should care what the others would think about this physical contact but he couldn't bring himself to. It was none of their business. Besides Rick knew what he had lost in the hospital hallway that day. Figured Maggie did too. Still thinking about it and seeing it playing out was two different things in his book. And still he didn't care. Beth was alive and she needed him. He wasn't going to pussy out of some hand holding even if his ears were red when they entered the front room.

Everyone's reaction was different, but the first chorus of shocked gasps hit his ears and he felt Beth move closer to him. He tightened his grip on her fingers to let her know that he was there. He heard her breathing from beside him and it was a bit faster than he would have liked.

Beth didn't know how Maggie would react when she saw she was alive. She expected tears, stunned silence, or maybe hysteria but she definitely did not expect her sister to crumple to the floor like a rag doll, unconscious.

"Maggie!" Glenn was crouched down beside her in an instant, pulling her head into his lap. Her eyelids fluttered a bit and Beth could only stare.

If she was shocked by Maggie's reaction, she was absolutely stunned by her own reaction at seeing her sister again. She felt oddly detached from the moment. She couldn't place the feeling exactly. It wasn't that she was angry at Maggie. Yes, it hurt that she had looked for Glenn and had given her up for dead or worse, but she didn't harbor resentment towards her sister. She studied Glenn as he fawned over Maggie, holding her head in his lap on the floor. Her sister opened her eyes. "Beth." Her voice was a hoarse whisper and Beth just watched as Maggie was helped to her feet by Glenn and a brunette. She stood stock still and took in the sounds around her. Maggie was coming towards her and holding her arms out. She heard someone crying; she thought it was Carl. That snapped her back to herself. She heard a baby and she didn't have time to process that it was Judith before Maggie was enveloping her in a hug and Beth should have let go of Daryl's hand. She should have but she didn't want to.

She caught the curious gaze of the brunette whose eyes slid back in place as Beth caught her looking at hers and Daryl's linked fingers. Beth wasn't letting go. Not anytime soon. Maybe not ever. She knew it was ridiculous to have survived everything she had out there beyond the walls but here inside? She felt as afraid and vulnerable as ever.

Maggie pulled back to look at her. "You're alive". The sentence was half question and half statement. She was grinning at Beth and it was that moment that she realized that her sister was pregnant. The soft swell of her belly beneath her shirt was apparent.

"You're pregnant?" Beth stepped back and it was an echo of an earlier conversation, an earlier lifetime when she had expressed the same incredulity as then with Lori. Bringing a baby into this world was a risk. For the baby. For the mother. Gradually over the past year she had come to understand that sometimes things happened that you didn't plan for and they ended up being the best thing ever. Judith had always been a bright spot. She remembered Lori again and wanted to cry. She had been almost like a mother to Beth and maybe she'd know what to do with this mess.

Maggie was pregnant and by the looks of it, she was pretty far along. Far enough that she had probably gotten pregnant at the prison. She had a flash of a memory of Glenn going to hunt for something on a run. She had been convinced at the time that it was a pregnancy test, which was something that she talked to Daryl about on that porch.

That they could have babies for their Dad to be a grandpa and they could have birthdays and summer picnics. That was a silly notion for an even sillier girl. That was all before, when she thought they would be okay. Before she was taken by the Grady cops. Before Dawn. Before O'Donnell. She couldn't quite banish the thought before it slipped into the forefront of her mind. Before Gorman. She shook her head of the eternal cobwebs and forced yet another smile at her sister, careful to keep her eyes above her waist where the obvious swell of her belly jutted out. A flash of something Beth was just beginning to get familiar with ripped through her. She got it now. She got it and the calm she had been feeling was starting to slip away and uneasiness was taking its place.

Everyone gathered around her then and she forced herself to just breathe while she accepted hugs and tried to return them. Daryl had finally had to release her hand and without it she felt a little lost and she couldn't quite make sense of that. She had made it all the way here without him hadn't she? So why then did she feel so desolate without the warm of his skin against hers.

It was Rick's turn and he embraced her and she felt his breath warm on her cheek as he kissed her gently. "It's good to have ya back, Beth." She murmured something back to him because all that was in her mind at the moment was him kissing her on the cheek in that hallway and then everything went blurry for her there. She could hear Daryl's voice beside her but she couldn't make sense of it.

There were a thousand questions that she couldn't answer and even more questions behind all their eyes. And things got even blurrier. She felt like she was in a tunnel and could barely see out the other side.

They all gathered in the kitchen and dining area, people scattered here and there with plates of some kind of stew. Beth declined any. She had started feeling nauseous with the unknown emotion that had taken hold of her.

Daryl's voice from beside her turned her head towards him, like he was her last beacon of hope in this dark tunnel. "You okay?"

Her eyes met his and she knew he saw it; the pain, the fear, the rising panic that she couldn't fight if she wanted to. Something about being safe was chipping away the hard exterior she had built around herself. She had erected a shield when she left that hospital for the last time and now that she was back with family, inside walls, relatively safe from the monsters that roamed the earth, a different kind of monster was beckoning their call and she was nearly helpless to answer.

He could hardly stand watching her right now. She was not the same Beth he knew but how could she be. After what she went through, it was bound to change her. He didn't know how to help her so he did the only thing he could. What he had so long ago when the sadness slipped into place on her features, when she was remembering something painful. They had taken a seat on the sofa after Maggie had finally been led off, crying happy tears, by Glenn. He didn't bother to check to see if anyone was watching because he didn't care. This was Beth and she was hurting. He moved his hand carefully over and slid his palm into hers. Their fingers slid together like they were pieces of a puzzle meant to fit and they did. She looked up at him gratefully and he knew he had to get her out of there. It was too much for her and he could tell she was suffering. He could feel eyes on him and he met Rick's from across the room. He had Judy, bouncing her on his hip. A silent message passed between them. Sometimes he thought his brother saw way more than he let on in his group.

He leaned over to make sure she could hear him over the happy din of their family, rejoicing in the one lost from their pack. "It's nice out on the porch."

Beth looked up at him where she felt so lost and locked inside herself and just nodded at him. She couldn't form thoughts right now, let alone words. She watched him get up from the sofa and he turned slightly towards her and pulled her to her feet and she couldn't process everything at the moment but the one thing she felt as they walked through the door they had entered not ten minutes ago, she felt calm slipping back into place. She took a deep breath.

Daryl led her around to the back side of the porch, away from windows and prying eyes. Beth slid herself to the hard plank boards, finished of course because this was a nice neighborhood they were living in. She rested her back against the house and waited for Daryl to sit down beside her on her left. She looked over at him as he settled, his thigh warm against hers, and he looked like he wanted to say something and in the dim of dusk she could barely make out his pupils where they caught the light.

"Thank you." She whispered. She knew she didn't have to clarify. He knew. She couldn't have sat one more minute in there and it made her almost panic thinking about where she was going to sleep tonight. She had imagined all the way here that she would settle in wherever Maggie was and now that she was here she couldn't help the feeling of loss that had come over her. She hadn't expected to feel this way towards her sister.

Daryl knew she needed to unload her mind and she would. He just waited. She looked out into the darkening night. "This place looks too good to be true."

He looked at her. She was sharp, his girl. His girl? He wasn't sure he could lay claim on her like that. He wanted to though. It felt somehow right, yet he still wasn't sure how she felt by his revelation in that kitchen. He didn't have to wonder if she knew what he meant. The look of dawning realization in her eyes and her 'oh' had told him all he needed to know. "Mmm, I thought so too at first. I didn't sleep inside for the first week." He looked at her and his eyes held an amused glint because he knew she'd get it.

Beth looked at him and studied him for a minute. "What made ya go inside finally?" She liked the teasing glint in his eyes. It reminded her of the last time they'd sat out on a porch, just the two of them.

"Carol." Beth nodded. She had been waiting for him to bring her up. Aaron had told her about how Carol had been accidentally shot by Sasha during a fight against a herd. Carol had been coming back from a perimeter check when the herd hit and she had been killed by friendly fire. The loss of Carol had been impacted even further when Sasha had taken her own life later that night.

Daryl continued. "She told me if I didn't get my ass in the house and take a shower like the rest of them she'd turn the garden hose on me." He smirked at her, even as he felt the tears prick behind his eyelids. He missed his friend who'd kept him in line.

"That's all it took?" Beth smiled at him lost in his memory of his friend and she wanted to reach out and wipe his tears away but she settled instead for reaching over and taking his hand that rested on his outstretched legs. It felt odd and comforting at the same time, Beth's hands resting against Daryl's thigh, close to where their legs were already touching. She released a breath and it finally felt like she could breathe again.

Daryl shook his head at her question and smirked. "Nah. That weren't enough. About a day after that, I was sittin' out here and she came and dumped a big bucket of water on my head."

Beth couldn't help the giggle that slipped past her lips at the picture that presented in her mind. "Oh I bet you were mad."

Daryl nodded. "Mmhmm." He chuckled low and telling the story, bringing up Carol even though it hurt, was worth it to see her smile. To hear that fine tinkling laughter that was so rare in their world now. "Madder than a hornet. But she was right. I needed to do somethin'. I was just kinda-." He didn't know how to describe the empty feeling he'd had on getting here and finding a place where they could just 'be', but Beth wasn't with them.

"Lost?" Beth finished his thought for him. She squeezed his hand. She knew that was all that was needed to convey her sympathy.

Daryl's eyes snapped to hers and he knew she got him. Knew she understood that it was because of her he was feeling that way. He nodded. "Don't feel that way now though."

Beth's breath hitched in her chest at his words and at what they could mean and she knew somehow that he was talking about her. He was telling her in his own way that he was glad she was there. He was happy to be back with her just like she was him. It was like they'd never been apart. "Me either." She whispered and she didn't know if it was right or proper and she didn't much care because all she had to do was lean slightly to her left and her head rested against his shoulder. She thought she might have imagined the quiet sigh she heard coming from his lips and she thought she imagined the way he slightly leaned into her too. But one thing she didn't imagine was the way his lips ghosted across the side of her forehead, right over the place where the bullet had ripped through her skull. Daryl Dixon had kissed her forehead. She smiled to herself. She didn't know what the next moment held but in this moment, she was fine. She was home.

Dum-dumDUMMM! There it is. Maggie is pregnant. So the way we have handled Maggie and Beth reunion is the way I think it will go. Kind of anticlimactic at first then it will build. Beth will be able to process everything. She has a LOT to process. I kind of liked the pace of this chapter even though it was kind of slow, it was right for them. Little moments. Yes, this will be a slow burn because I think that they are just now getting to know each other again. Hope you liked this and hope you like where this is going. Please let us know! Until next time, xoxoxo