Chapter 4: mine for gold in a heart of lead

She's back with him for the rest of the night.

She doesn't talk much. Really, she doesn't talk at all. She sits on the mattress, and then she sits on the sofa, and the whole time she's writing and doing so furiously - no pauses, no thinking of the right phrase or word, no time to consider what she's going to write next, because there is no thinking or consideration. Just her brain spinning its wheels.

But it's something.

He gets her some painkillers, gets some for himself. He doesn't know about her, but they do help him a little. He unpacks the pack. He takes inventory of the food he grabbed and mulls over the idea of actually storing it all somewhere, then decides that's stupid and just piles it on the counter. He makes a fire. When he does, the endless scratching sound of her pen falls silent, and he turns to see her staring at him, at the tongue of flame he's coaxed into being. Her face is impassive, but he doesn't think it's blankness. He doesn't think she's numb in there. Not right now.

Looking at him and at the fire, her journal clutched in her hands. Closing it, bringing it to her chest. Hugging it, like she suspects that he might make a grab for it. Outside the gray day is bleeding into a deeper gray dusk, and for the present the fire is the only light. It tosses shadows across her face with wild abandon, cutting over her scars and the first hints of lines, making her look like a crone one second and a child the next. Somewhere in between the two is her, but he has no idea where to look.

"I'm not gonna burn it," he says. Low, gentle. He doesn't know if that's what she's thinking, and in fact she might not be thinking much of anything. Much of the time he thinks she's probably a creature of instinct, jerked around by emotions and torn, gauzy memories instead of careful reasoning.

Except for the part of her that maintains that she's dead. That part… He thinks that part has given itself an awful lot of insane thought.

For a long moment she just looks at him. Then, slowly, she releases the journal and lowers it into her lap, opens it, and goes back to writing her endless preschooler's signature.

He goes back to the fire. Builds it up. Returns to the kitchen and starts to make dinner.


She stares down at the plate when he puts it in front of her, and he can tell it's conscious staring. It's staring with weight. She's looking at what he's given her and she doesn't get it, and she's trying to do so. And he's trying not to hope, and as usual he's failing miserably.

Scoops of peanut butter. Scoops of jelly. Some crackers to smear it on if that's something she wants to do. He gave himself the same, and now, sitting beside her and looking at it in the firelight, in spite of the hope he's not sure about it. Not sure he should have. And it's not about her, not because he's worried about her; she might be having a good patch after such a bad one but he would still be surprised if this alone got much out of her. It's about looking down the peanut butter and the jelly and thinking about how he knows they'll taste, and looking at her with her face and hair gone all fire-gold and edged with red, and the way he felt himself looking at her then that night and wanting to say something, no idea what the fuck it was, just looking at her and silently imploring her to understand because he could never say it at all. Wouldn't even know how to begin.

Looking at her with grape jelly still piercingly sweet on his tongue, and her little smile slipping away from her mouth.

Oh.

He'll torture himself if it helps her. He'll do it every waking second.

He gave her a spoon. Moving tentatively now, she uses it. Scoops up some peanut butter, scoops up some jelly, eats. He watches her, his own helpings untouched, and squeezes his hands into painful, biting fists.

She just eats. Mechanical as always. She still might not get it, but she no longer cares. She doesn't need to. What's on the plate in front of her is calories. She's refueling the machine that is her.

He gave her a can of soda. She drinks it with the same mindless instinct to consume.

He doesn't eat his, doesn't drink his. He gets up and returns to the kitchen, tosses the plate in the sink with a sound like breaking - not checking to see if it broke or not and not giving a shit - and grabs a can of chili and cuts it open and eats it cold. He eats it leaning against the counter and staring across the cavernous room at the fire, at her silhouetted against it, head lifted as she gazes into its heart, and he isn't thinking about that. Isn't thinking about anything.

He'll see her blankness and raise her his own.


They're settling into a bedtime routine, of a kind. Face, hands, teeth. There's no reason whatsoever for her to change into anything that could be considered pajamas, but he brought them anyway - two of those loose t-shirts, two of those loose pair of shorts because that was what had been easiest to grab from a looted Walmart only moderately full of walkers - because he wants her to feel human. Eating like refueling, staring dully at a fire, not talking for hours on end - not talking ever until she cracked and made him do so - collapsing into thin unconsciousness in the clothes they wore for days at a stretch, covered in so many layers of grime that it started feeling like a second skin… That wasn't human.

She knew that. She knew it better than anyone. That was why she refused to settle. That was why she demanded more.

So he gets her to wash, gets her to take care of her teeth, gets her to change out of the shirt and jeans she had been wearing. She does all of this with only the barest prompting; she seems to understand what's expected of her now. She goes to her bed without any prompting at all, without a word, and she lies down and curls up facing him and closes her eyes, her face sliding into a smooth nothing-expression different from her usual blankness. He can't tell if she's falling asleep or not, and he doesn't imagine it really matters; he sits down next to her, like before, and he watches her as her breathing slows and the last light of the dying fire stains her skin bright crimson.

After a few moments of silent stillness, he lifts a hand and lays it against the side of her head, combs his fingers through her hair. Her wounded hand is tucked against her chin, the tip of her thumb pressed against her bottom lip.

Her hair needs brushing - it's shorter but it can still tangle. Maybe she'll let him do that, if she won't do it herself. He can get her a brush from the pharmacy, now that he has a better idea of what the situation is down there. He can go back, be more careful. And she should bathe. That might help too. He doesn't know how likely it is that he'll have to push her into that and he's not even remotely prepared to think about it.

He never thought about her like a child. Not really. They never had that option. Even right after the farm, he didn't think about her that way. She was young, she was new to the shit the world had become, but he understands - probably better than most people, or at least it used to be so - that sometimes children stop being children far too early. Sometimes children never get to be children at all. They're walking around in the bodies of children, beaten and burned into old men and women and set into a lifetime of it, regardless of how long that life turns out to be. Carl was a boy, Beth was a girl, but neither of them were children.

She was never a child to him. But he looks at her now and that's all he sees.

This is not how it was supposed to be.

He gets up and goes to the pantry, to the wine rack, grabs a bottle of something without looking at what it is. The crumpled carton containing his last four cigarettes is by his bed; he grabs that too. The clouds are still heavy and low so there's no moon, no stars, and a wind picking up like a storm is on the way, low rumbles so distant they're nearly inaudible. He sits down against the railing, back to it, pushes the cork down the neck of the bottle with the blade of his knife, and smokes and gets slowly and determinedly drunk on what - when he examines it much later - turns out to be Shiraz from a place whose name looks French and which he can't even hope to pronounce.

Smoking. And wine. He doesn't laugh out loud, and he's not laughing on the inside, but he can look at his situation and he can see the logic in the laughing he might be doing, and he can be morbidly glad that he didn't decide to do this in bed.

And anyway, it's stupid. Getting drunk is stupid. Everything is stupid. They're not secure. They're not safe. Nothing here is safe. Everything is a threat. Walkers, bad people, her…

Him.

Safe is a fucking fantasy. So it doesn't matter.

None of it does.

When it starts to rain he grips the top of the railing, hauls himself to his feet, and stumbles to bed.


When she bled, all the color bled away with her.

Watching it flow out. Every step more and more of it, pouring down the stairs around him like a waterfall. Carried her through it; she was heavy but he had to, him, and he snarled at the people - God, can't even remember who they were - who tried to help him. Tried to take her, he thought. Take her away from him. No. His fault, he didn't grab her, knew something was wrong and didn't grab her and pull her back from the edge, and he'll carry her now down flight after flight of stairs as his penance, and it won't ever be enough because no suffering could ever be sufficient to balance this account.

Out into a world painted in grayscale. There was screaming. He couldn't see for his tears. All that color, stormclouds ahead - it should have rained black blood. Looking down at her, head against his chest - dreaming this, had been dreaming it since he lost her, fuck, never could have told anyone. Holding her again. Not like this, though. He's not picky, not difficult to please; he just wanted her to be alive.

But she is. And it's not dark. He's carrying her through a hall of light, a warm bundle in his arms, breath and pulse and blood-beat. Here, with him. He was wrong. He was wrong about everything.

Everything.

Looking ahead at the dark gleam of polished wood, almost blinded. Every step is slow, even, timed with her heart - she's not heavy. This is so easy. This is so right. Finally, after all this time, he's getting it right.

This should come in threes. That number is special. Magical. Talismanic. He carried her to the little White Trash Brunch he so carefully arranged for her, carried her out of the place that killed her, and now he carries her a third time, thrumming with life, and he carries her with very specific purpose.

He knows what it is. Or he will know. He'll see.

Air caressing his skin, toying with her hair, fresh and cool. Sky sunless and white and brilliant. Trees all around them, the world spread out below. Mountains, graceful rounded peaks rolling into valleys. But no color. No color anywhere. All shades of gray, black shadows sweeping across the world, pale trees like furred fingerbones. Everything before and beneath them looks like the humped backs of sleeping dogs. Wolves. Resting now. They're safe, he's safe up here with her, and when he looks down at her she's dressed all in white like a bride, her face tipped up to his, and she's smiling that sweet little smile and reaching up to touch his mouth.

She's there. She's her. All of her, all returned to him. He had faith. He never lost it. He never betrayed her. He never gave up. He never left her behind.

He lifts her above the world and he holds her close and looks at her. Her gray lips move.

It's all right.

It's better now.

He stands at the edge and opens his arms and watches her fall.


Agony and screaming.

The agony is his. The screaming isn't. He sits there, dazed, whirling his gaze around, his arm pounding with pain. The rain is drumming on the windows, still no moon and no light to speak of, but he can make out faint outlines, and he can see - across the displaced furniture and the wide expanse of wood floor black as tar - her, her little form writhing and twisting in the sheets, her head snapping back as another scream tears itself out of her throat.

Words in that, somewhere. Something. A distantly removed part of himself processes that; the rest of him is moving, launching out of bed and flying across to her. Edwards said sometimes she had nightmares, said that they were bad, bad enough to really be more like night terrors, and that she would wake up and not be awake at all, still think they were going on, once fighting a girl who was assisting him so hard she sprained the girl's wrists.

But Edwards never specified what the dreams were about. And Daryl didn't ask.

Should have. Just another mistake. He has no idea if it would help now, but it sure as fuck wouldn't hurt.

He slides onto his knees on the mattress next to her, gropes for her. "Beth. Beth, it's alright, you're-"

She strikes at him - claws at him, digs her nails into his arm and hisses like an enraged cat, and he yelps at the bright, hot flare of fresh pain and releases her and reels back before he can stop himself. For a fraction of a second her eyes are open, her head and shoulders lifted off the bed, and though there shouldn't be enough light to see it, her eyes are blazing, literally blazing, full of fire.

It can't be possible. But a lot of things aren't possible, and with perverse glee they've gone ahead and happened anyway.

It's just for that tiny sliver of time, but it feels like minutes, her seizing his gaze with hers and holding it, strangling it, and his breath freezes his throat, his mouth hanging open and hands useless at his sides. Then she's back to spasming, her whole spine arched into a bow, and he wonders if she's actually having a seizure - not those little brain hiccups but a real honest-to-Christ seizure, which he has no idea how to handle, when she's suddenly reaching for him, groping at his knees, curling toward him and whimpering.

And all he can do is reach back.

She cringes away when he ignores the lingering burn in his damaged muscle and tries to get his arms around her, and hisses again, fighting just as hard as she's clearly frightened. But she's still scrabbling against his hands with her own hooked fingers, and he does the only thing he can think to do: he takes her hands in his, weaves their fingers together and squeezes. Holds on like he's trying to pull her out of high rushing water, sucking mud, like he's caught her just as she's tumbling off a cliff - a cliff, falling, oh my fucking God - and she squeezes back so hard she hurts him, their knuckles cracking together.

As he drops onto his side and faces her, she's back to whimpering, tossing her head as if she's trying to evade something that isn't him, trying to keep herself clear, and there's a name lodged in those heartbreaking little sounds. She's saying it over and over - though he doesn't think it's the only word forcing its way free of her throat and her broken brain - and it takes him a moment or two to get it, but he does. He's almost certain.

Gorman.


He doesn't know when she quiets. He only knows that she does, and that's enough.

He thinks it's possible that he actually falls asleep again, for a short period. It's possible that he doesn't. Nothing feels real. It feels like he never stopped dreaming. He knows he was; he doesn't remember much about it other than that it was terrible, and he doesn't want to remember.

Both of them at once, going through that. He's smiling grimly on the inside.

He watches her for a while, watches her breathing as it slows down and softens. Watches the tension slide out of her muscles, the trembling subside. She's rolled onto her side too, head near his, still gripping his hands. He has no desire whatsoever to let her go. Even though the dressings on her bitten fingers have been half torn off, and they should be replaced.

At some point. At some point he'll do that. Right now it doesn't seem as though she's going to do any more damage to herself. Any more damage to him.

His arm is still sobbing weakly but he's barely aware of it.

Beth, he whispers, and he's not sure why. But as soon as he does her eyes open, and it's only then that he realizes the rain has eased and sunrise is approaching and there's a hint of light bleeding into the sky.

All gray.

"Yes."

"You're…" He hadn't expected her to answer. He doesn't know what to do now. Not that he did before. "Are you alright?"

She just looks at him. She doesn't appear to be blinking. Then, slowly, "What do you think?"

Even less idea what to do than he had already. He swallows, hard. She's still holding onto him. As long as she's holding onto him, talking to him, aware of him and considering him real enough to interact with, things are actually pretty good. Or he hopes so.

Simple. He senses that simple is best here. Simple and true. He takes a breath, and - almost imperceptibly - he shifts closer to her. The room is cool - the fire died down to coals a while ago - but her skin is still dully gleaming with sweat and damp strands of her hair are stuck to her temple and brow.

"I think you're here." He pauses and gives her hands a gentle, careful squeeze. "I think you're safe."

She laughs. It's only a breath, but it's unmistakable, and it's cold. Hard. "You're an idiot."

Yes. "Yeah. I am." Closer. See? Idiot. "But you are. You're safe up here. I swear it, Beth. I swear."

"Don't lie to me."

Not so cold now, nor so hard. Instead there's such a deep sadness, a heaviness in those four words, that he almost can't stand it. Almost can't keep himself away. She sounds like that and all he wants to do is hold her as tight as he can. Pull her into himself, hollow out his fucking ribcage to make a place for her, keep her there, keep away whatever is making her feel like that. When she cried, before, he hated it and he never knew what to do, and he would have done anything if it would have helped her stop. Then he made her cry, or he saw the tears in her eyes even if she didn't let them fall, and he hated himself more than he has ever hated anything.

Then he didn't. For a little while.

"Ain't lyin'." But God, oh God, he is. He's lying to them both and he's doing it with all the determination he can muster, and it's worse than a lie, because part of him - a significant part, the majority - believes that if he lies long enough and hard enough he can make it into something true.

"You are." Still sad. But is that a smile? An awful, twisted smile - he can just see its edge in the gathering dawn. "Do it. I changed my mind. Lie to me, Daryl. Lie all you want."

Then it's her that closes the distance between them, her that shifts roughly forward and into the spoon his body makes, tucking everything up close and pressing against his chest and fitting the top of her head under his chin. She's a little fetal ball, warm and shivering. Her hand curves over the side of his neck and he thinks about her hooking that hand the way she did before, nails in his flesh and gouging deep, cutting into his artery and pumping his blood all over them both.

And he would die, and he would turn, and he would take her.

She's not safe. Not in any sense in which that word could ever be used.

"You're safe," he whispers again, and he wraps her up in his arms.

If she's going to do it, she'll find a way.