Chapter Four
Daryl Dixon had only felt true heart-clenching fear twice in his life.
Once was when he'd been nothing more than a kid – ten, maybe eleven – wet behind the ears and naive. He'd been sitting in the living room of the old run-down trailer house that he called home, his brother, Merle, off running around the neighborhood with whatever friend he happened to have that week, when his father had busted in through the front door.
The old man hadn't been able to stand up on his own, much less walk in a straight line, and his eyes had been red-rimmed and glossed over. Daryl had known immediately that his father was shit-faced drunk. It had been a regular occurrence around the household – both his father and Merle had a habit of showing up drunk and disorderly on a regular basis – and he'd shrunk back into the old, faded sofa and hoped that he wouldn't be noticed.
He should have known better, though. His father had the eyes of a hawk, even when drunk, and he'd sneered when he saw his 'kid son' huddled up in the corner.
"What're ya' doin', boy?" The words had struck true fear into his bones. His eyes wide as his father took one uneven step after another towards his small frame on the couch. He couldn't answer. He just closed his eyes and prayed that whatever was fixin' to happen would happen quick and that his father would stumble off to bed and forget about him. "I asked ya' a question, boy. Ya' better fuckin' answer me when I ask ya' a question!"
Daryl had flinched and scooted further back into the couch if that was even possible. "I was just readin'."
"Readin'? What in tha' hell are ya' readin' fer?" The old man stumbled forward, eyeing the library book before he snatched it from his sons hand.
"School..."
"Ah, ain't no need fer none of tha' bullshit. Just useless. Dunno why ya' even go anyways. In fact, ya' ain't." The drunk man smiled ear to ear, showing off his yellow cigarette smoke stained teeth. "No more school fer ya'. Yer gonna stay 'round here and help me."
"But, dad, I have to go to school." He should have known better than to protest.
Whop.
Daryl's own library book came down across the side of his head.
"Don't you fuckin' pop off at the mouth to me, you worthless excuse of a kid. I make tha rules 'round here and you ain't goin' to no damn school."
Whop.
Whop.
Whop.
"Are you fuckin' listenin' to me?"
Daryl shrunk even farther into the couch, his arms coming up to shield his head from the abuse.
Whop. That time it wasn't the book but the older mans hand.
"Yer jus' like yer fuckin' mother was. Good fer nothin'." Whop. "Goddamn kids – dunno why tha' fuck I ever had 'em. Should'a raised hogs instead." Silence.
And then he heard it. The soul-crushing sound of his fathers' belt being unbuckled. No. He lurched forward off the couch, trying to run anywhere, go anywhere but there, only to be jerked backwards by the collar of his t-shirt.
"WHERE THA' FUCK DO YOU THINK YER GOIN'?" POP.
Daryl cried out as agonizing pain flooded through his body.
"YER GONNA THINK TWICE 'FORE YOU RUN FROM ME AGAIN!" POP.
POP.
POP.
POP.
Daryl didn't remember much after that but waking up in a puddle of his own blood in the middle of the living room floor.
He never read another book again.
Daryl fucking Dixon had finally lost it.
He'd finally lost his fucking mind.
In the middle of nowhere, on the one year anniversary of Beth Greene's death, he'd finally lost his mind.
That was the only explanation, he decided. It was the only logical explanation on why he was sitting in the middle of the woods staring at a girl he'd watched die with his own two eyes.
"And I thought Rick was the crazy one," He mumbled softly, his eyes never leaving the blonde haired, blue eyed girl lying next to him.
How? He wondered. How was the girl he'd carried from the hospital, the one he'd swore was dead – the one he'd been grieving over – here? She had taken a goddamn bullet to the head. Nobody could survive that, not in this day and age.
Unless ... you had a working fucking hospital.
Unless … you had a fucking surgeon.
Daryl's face blanched as the guilt began to consume him from the inside. He'd been the one to hold her – he should have noticed that she was alive. A breath, a pulse, something. He'd been the one to shove her, what had seemed lifeless, body into the trunk as the herd had swarmed them. He was a fucking idiot.
He stood, his mind racing as he pulled another smoke, his last one, from the pocket of his jeans before quickly lighting it.
She's real.
He knew she was real and that she was there and she was breathing.
It didn't tell him why she was here, or how she got here, or how they had just so happened to bump into each other in the middle-of-nowhere Virginia on the anniversary of her death but he was comforted by the fact that she was real and she was there in front of him.
He hadn't touched her after she'd passed out, afraid that if he did then she would disappear into thin air and he would have to come to terms with the fact that all of this was his imagination. That he had broken beneath the stress and realization that today was the one year mark. So, he'd gingerly pulled her blanket out from inside the ratty backpack she'd been carrying and tossed it over her still form.
It'd been hours since then, though as the sun was just starting to reach the horizon. Hours since the girl he once knew so well had violently started shaking, her eyes unseeing as she clutched onto herself and rocked back and forth. He'd been panicked as he'd realized that he had no clue what was going on and he'd only felt relief after she'd passed out.
A Beth Greene meltdown wasn't something that he knew how to deal with. Not when he wasn't all that sure that he wasn't having a meltdown of some sort himself.
He began pacing back and forth, the cigarette clutched like a lifeline in between two fingers of his right hand as he chewed on the fingernail of his thumb. How was the rest of the group going to take it, he wondered.
Maggie'd probably burst into a fit of hysterical crying, blubbering at the mouth of how much she'd missed her little sister and how she couldn't believe she was alive. Everybody else, he guessed, would give her a small smile, maybe a hug, before they welcomed her home and let her have peace of mind.
Not Maggie though, he knew.
No, Maggie would make her presence well known. Probably make the whole affair awkward and all about her.
Daryl grimaced. That girl really got on his nerves sometimes.
His eyes wandered back to the sleeping form on the ground, reassuring himself that she was still here and not a figment of his imagination. He almost wished that he didn't have to take her back – that it could be just the two of them, again, like it had been after the prison fell. But he knew that he'd never deprive Beth Greene of her family. That knowledge sunk like a rock into his gut.
He was going to have to share her and the thought stunk.
A soft moan interrupted his thoughts and his eyes immediately flew back to the form on the ground. She was awake and sitting now, her eyes blinking rapidly as she tried to focus on her surroundings. She was clutching the side of her head, again, as if she had the worst headache in the world. She looked lost and lonely – that was, until her eyes landed on him. And then she looked as if he was a Walker himself.
"Who are you?" She asked, her voice holding a timbre of fear.
Well, shit.
His body stiffened. "You don't remembe me?" He asked softly, staying rooted to where he was. He didn't want to move for fear of frightening her even more than she already was.
Memory loss?
So inconvenient, he thought bitterly.
Beth shook her head, tendrils of long blonde hair falling from her ponytail and into her face. Her eyes were wary, her bottom lip sucked into her mouth and her right hand was now resting on the hilt of her knife that was still tucked into the hip of her jeans. "Who are … you? Tell me..." She demanded again.
The words were short and it seemed as if she'd rolled them over in her head a million times before they'd actually escaped her mouth, but he listened patiently. He understood that she probably had some minor issues. A few he'd already encountered.
Memory loss. Slow speech. Temper tantrums, he thought with a chuckle as he remembered back to her foot stomping show from earlier when she's gotten flustered.
"Names Daryl. I found ya' about a quarter of a mile from here earlier, you were fightin' with some walkers and I helped ya' out."
She pondered his answer, her head cocked to the side like she'd always used to do when he gave her something to think about. His stomach turned at the familiarity. The first familiar thing she'd done since he'd found her.
"Daryl."
He nodded.
"Nice … to meet you. I'm Beth." She said before flashing him a wide smile.
"I know," He said simply. "I knew ya' before -" He motioned towards her head.
Her smile quickly disappeared as her hand flew to the small scar, her forefinger tracing the outline. "We had a … conv-" she stopped, "We had a … talk earlier didn't we?"
He grimaced inwardly. Obviously big words were a problem.
"Yup."
"Oh...sorry." A sad expression now crossed her face as her mind wandered. "I … have problems … thinkin' sometimes..."
"Nuthin' to be sorry for. Ain't yer fault."
"Actually … it is. Got myself shot. My fault." Her eyes were looking at him, but he could tell that she was seeing things that weren't there. Her mind was probably trying to fill in the white spots in her memory, he figured. A bullet to the head had to do some damage.
He didn't say anything. He couldn't figure out how much was too much to tell her and he didn't want to overstep any sort of mental boundaries that she may have. Hell, she'd flipped out for no reason earlier and he really didn't want to have another one of those episodes.
Instead, he took another drag from his cigarette before motioning towards the can sitting by the fire. "Food should still be good if yer hungry," he bent to pick his crossbow off of the ground. "I'm gonna go see if I can catch somethin', give you some time alone."
He gave her enough time to nod before he disappeared into woods and out of her sight. Once he was far enough from the campsite, he let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding and he felt his body physically relax as he leaned up against the nearest tree. He was tired, his body running on adrenaline and shock, and he could feel his belly grumble with hunger. He'd saved most of the can food for her. He needed to find some food.
As he pushed off of the tree and searched for any sign of animals, he wondered how much of her had been impacted by the accident. Obviously most of her motor skills were fine; she'd been fighting those walkers just as easily as anybody else and her eyes seemed sharp and focused. Except when she had that freak out earlier, he reminded himself. The only thing that he could tell was wrong was her memory and her speech, though he was sure there were bound to be more. The brain had to be a complex thing.
His eyes caught the sign of a trail and he quickly bent over to examine the markings. Rabbit. Not too long ago. Decent size. His belly growled again at the thought of fresh meat and he stood, his hunting once again on the forefront of his mind.
Step by step, he followed the trail and he easily found the dark-haired rabbit in the foliage. One quick arrow and it was done.
Minutes later, he was edging the camp again, rabbit in hand, and he paused, bouncing back and forth on his feet, struggling to get a hold on his thoughts. "Get a grip, Dixon," he told himself before heading back into camp.
He came face to face with a bewildered Beth, her body stiff and her knife poised to kill. Her face crumpled into a smile when she realized that it was only him and she quckly fastened the knife back on her hip. "Thought you … were one of them." She motioned to the body on the ground – a completely decayed Walker lay on the ground, a stab wound directly in between the eyes. Obviously she'd been busy in his abscense and he grimaced at his own foolishness. He shouldn't have left her alone. Just because old Beth could take care of herself didn't mean new Beth could.
She's been takin' care of herself for a while...
The thought didn't sit well with him.
"Got dinner." He held out the rabbit and allowed himself a small moment of happiness when her pretty blue eyes lit up and a genuine smile stretched across her lips.
Fuck, he'd missed her.
The second, and last, time Daryl Dixon had truly felt heart-clenching fear been outside of a church, over a year ago, when he'd caught a glimpse of a white cross on the back of a speeding car and her bag lying haphazardly on the ground.
A/N: Hi, guys. I just want to give a quick thank you to anybody that's made it this far in the story and hasn't given up on me.
I haven't had a chance to edit anything – though I'm sure I'll make my way through it eventually – so, please ignore any mistakes you find. Or shoot me a friendly message and I'll correct them.
I'm not fond of Authors Notes so I doubt I'll be putting many unless absolutely necessary. So, again, thank you for giving this story a chance – even if it's awful.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything from The Walking Dead. If I did, Beth would still be alive (She is alive!) and well on the show and making cute little Bethyl babies.
That's enough for now.
XOXO Courtney