Beth writes a thank you note to no one on their second night at the funeral home. Dinner has been a pleasant affair so far, filled with light-hearted conversation and comfortable silences. He'd carried her into the kitchen again - seemed to have been carrying her around everywhere these days - to a spread of peanut butter and grape jelly and diet soda long gone flat. She'd smiled back at him then, maybe even giggled a little. It amazes her sometimes, just how much things have changed between them since the night they set the moonshine house on fire. Well, Daryl's definitely changed - all kind words and warm glances and careful touches telling her he cares for her in his own gruff sort of way; and, okay, maybe a part of her has changed a little, too - back to the old Beth, the Beth who would sing and smile and hope and allow herself to cry for the people she cares about.
He clears his throat then and she looks curiously at him. She'd never actually considered it before, only heard of it being whispered behind his back on the rare occasion that she'd been assigned to laundry duty back in the Prison; but here, in the soft, flickering candlelight, she realizes that his is a handsome face made even more beautiful by the rare half-smile he tries to conceal.
"I'm going to leave a thank you note," she tells him, matter-of-factly, watching the way his eyes shift over her before going back to his meal.
"Why?" he asks.
"For when they come back," she explains. "If they come back. Even if they're not coming back, I still want to say thanks."
Daryl looks thoughtful for a moment, meets her gaze with something that resembles uncertainty. She's never really seen this side of him before, has gotten used to the Daryl who seemed so sure of his actions and decisions.
"Maybe you don't have to leave that," he tries to say it nonchalantly. "Maybe we could stick around here for a while. When they come back, well, we'll just make it work. It may be nuts but maybe it will be alright."
And there's something in there – in his tone, in his eyes – that makes her heart skip a beat, for some reason. She ignores this in favor of smiling teasingly up at him.
"So you do think there are still good people around."
He looks away from her then, a bit embarrassed, which makes her smile even wider. There was something quite endearing about his shyness that she couldn't resist pushing the issue.
"What changed your mind?"
He shrugs, still not looking at her, examines his bottle of jelly a little bit too closely.
"You know," he mumbles.
"What?" she insists.
"Mm-hmm."
"Don't 'mm-hmm'; what changed your mind?"
She isn't prepared for the look he gives her, would never have been able to prepare herself for the way smoldering cobalt eyes meet her own shocked blue, and it scares her - the rawness, the intensity, the unbridled honesty of the emotions reflected in his eyes. It scares her, and for the first time in her life, she finds herself truly afraid she could hurt another person. It terrifies her because she wouldn't know what to do with a man like Daryl Dixon; wouldn't know how to deal with this broken, beautiful man and his scars and the heart she is being so freely given. It scares her and it thrills her, makes her want to lash out because she's never felt so young and helpless and out of her league.
"Oh," she says, instead, would've said more if the dog hadn't come, if the walkers hadn't come and he hadn't told her to get her shit and run. She wishes she'd realized it earlier, and maybe she'd just been too blind to see all the signs that were there, but now all she could do is run and pray and hope that he makes it out alright.
She is too distracted by the noises in the house that she barely registers someone sneaking up on her until there is a pain in her head and a gag in her mouth and she's being forced into a car by some stranger and all she could think of is how this couldn't be happening, not now, not to them.
An engine roars and she hears him yell for her – "Beth! Beth!" – and she cries back at him, for him; thinks, almost deliriously, that maybe she should have kissed him when she had the chance – for Beth may not know how to deal with a man like Daryl Dixon but something tells her that maybe everything would work out fine if she just gives herself a chance at loving him.