Hello, dear readers! If you are, in fact, still out there. I'm so sorry that I've kept you waiting and that it's taken me so long to post this update. I know that I said that it'd be a while, but I wasn't expecting it to be a month! I'm still really sick though and life happens. Argh.
I'd also like to apologize for last chapter. I wasn't really happy with it at the time, but - having had four long ass weeks to reflect on it - I really hate it now and wish I'd never posted it. Unfortunately, though, what's done is done. You can't go back, Bob, so we've just gotta move forward.
And, on that front, I was hoping to mount a comeback by writing a great follow-up chapter. But, I'm sorry to say, I didn't really succeed there, either. I did, however, write a LONG chapter...so, if you're fans of quantity, today's your lucky day!
If you're fans of quality, I'm not quite sure what day it is...but we can hope for the best! :)
Thanks so much for reading! Now let's see what our man's up to...
Daryl had done a lot of things that he'd never thought he'd do since the end of the world came around. He'd picked human brains out of his chest hair and considered it a perfectly normal grooming ritual. He'd stood over a rotting corpse in the aisle of an abandoned drugstore and only been bothered by the fact that he couldn't fit all those tampons into the saddlebags of his bike. He'd eaten expired cat food and liked it. Truly fucking liked it and wished he'd had more. He'd done a lot of things he'd never thought he'd do and this was one of the least expected of them all.
He was reading a romance novel.
He was reading a damn romance novel and the only thing that he could say about it was that it was no Fancy Feast. As far as he was concerned, it was the literary equivalent of that supposedly salmon-flavored slime he'd eaten that horrible winter: the only difference being it wasn't an unexpected delight. It really was as awful as it looked in the tin. Just as terrible as the horrid watercolor of an old-fashioned English couple strolling through a park that, somehow, was supposed to entice readers to want to open its cover. He'd spent the entire day reading it, though, and was fully committed to fighting his way through every insipid word. It didn't matter that he wasn't enjoying it -that he'd rather be reading one of Herschel's treatises on transmissible hoof diseases or the mechanics of the horse digestive tract - because enjoyment wasn't the goal.
It wasn't entertainment, it was research.
It had been four days since he'd poured his rambling heart out to Beth. Four days since he'd sat at her desk and said more words than he'd probably ever said in a single conversation and said the kind of words that he'd never said at all. And, on reflection, he'd been embarrassed by the monologue. Embarrassed by the whole situation and deeply relieved that only Beth had heard him, He was glad to have finally expressed his respect for her, but he seriously wished he'd gone about it in a different way. And he'd been pretty quiet because of it. He'd still spoken to her in the mornings and in the evenings, and made scattered comments throughout the day, but he hadn't had a real conversation with her since that morning.
She still completely ruled his thoughts, though, and his exploration of her room hadn't stopped. He'd sleep so much at the beginning that he hadn't always used all twenty-four Beth points each day, but that had been his silver-lining as it just left more for later. Five days into his course of antibiotics, though, he was finally feeling notably better. Finally back to the point where, while he still needed to rest, he could stay awake throughout the day. His hand still hurt like a bitch - hurt in a deep tissue way that Beth's precious aspirin couldn't hope to touch - but his overall health had definitely improved. He wasn't a walking infection pretending to be a man. He was an actual man walking around with an infection.
Just a man with a flu who needed to take his pills and take it easy.
Which is what he'd been doing yesterday and what had led him to the surreal point where he was reading a romance novel.
He'd spent the better part of the day sitting on Beth's bedroom floor, leaning against the wall under her open window, and going through her school bookbag. When he'd first started exploring her room, he'd considered the bag a somewhat lesser Beth unit. It wasn't that it hadn't seemed important - everything in that room seemed important - but it simply seemed less personal than so many of the other units. He just couldn't imagine there being anything particularly revealing in there, certainly nothing that would compare to what she might have kept hidden in her closet or under her bed. It had seemed purely functional, so he'd consistently passed it over in favor of other, more compelling options.
At some point, though, maybe around the thousandth time he'd gone through her box of poems and quotes- the thousandth time he admired the loops and swirls and sheer beauty of her penmanship - he realized that her school bag would probably containing ever more examples of her lovely little hand in action. Long, flowing paragraphs that filled page after page instead of mere sentences on torn scraps of paper and Post-It notes.
And he wanted to see that so badly.
He wanted to see that so badly that it had been the single biggest thing tempting him to open her diary. He'd never stopped having reservations about reading it, but he was constantly fighting the urge to look at it. To thumb through it and drown in that ocean of words. To see that tangible and gorgeous evidence of her. Of her living and breathing and thinking and feeling and taking her beautiful brand of creative action. He'd stopped himself every time, though. Because he'd known that, no matter how hard he tried, he wouldn't be able to simply look at it. He would read it. His eyes would seize on all those gracefully executed words and he mind would be captured. He'd be caught in the web of her thoughts and he'd invade her privacy in way that he just couldn't allow himself to do.
Her school bag was completely different, though. He had no uneasiness about opening it or about reading anything that might be inside. It didn't feel like a violation. He imagined that, more than likely, most of the thoughts recorded in her notebooks wouldn't even be her thoughts at all. They'd be her notes on what her teachers had told her. They'd be facts about the Revolutionary War and descriptions of chemical bonds and all the kind of dry, boring things that had make his already easy decision to drop out of high school even fucking easier. But they'd be in her handwriting. They'd be in her handwriting and he could hold them in his hands and see her - really see her - alive and in motion right before his eyes.
So, after being undervalued for weeks, the bookbag's stock rose and it suddenly became worth a significant amount a Beth points. Eighteen, to be exact. Partly because he couldn't bring himself to make any single unit a full twenty-four - he was still basically housebound and needed more Beth to occupy his day - but largely because the bag had seemed to have priced itself. It'd felt like it had to be eighteen points because on the front pocket of the otherwise nondescript bag there was a button portraying her high school mascot that read Senoia Chiefs at the top and had a big #18 stamped in the middle.
It had clearly been from a sports team and he'd known that it hadn't been hers. Though he'd rarely asked her personal questions, he had asked her once whether she'd played any sports in school because he'd wanted to know what, if any, athletic experience she'd had. What tools she'd had to work with as a fighter. If she'd played softball, maybe a bat would be a good weapon for her, he'd reasoned. Or, if she'd played soccer, she could work on taking walkers down with a kick to the knees before slaying them on the ground. She'd just laughed a little embarrassedly, though, and told him that Maggie had always been the athletic one. Beth had done some community sports stuff when she was little - played the kind of games where no one keeps score and everyone gets a ribbon - but once kids started caring about more than just having fun, she'd stopped caring entirely.
So, he'd known the button hadn't been referring to her athletic endeavors. And, though he'd tried to tell himself that it might have been her way of supporting Molly Rosenberg, he'd known that that probably hadn't been true, either. He didn't remember seeing a number on the uniform he'd noticed balled up on her bedroom floor and, though he didn't know much about track, he'd wondered if runners had even been assigned numbers like that at all. And, even if they had, he'd seriously questioned whether there would have been eighteen girls on a small high school track team.
No, it had most likely been Jimmy who she'd been taking pride in. Jimmy who she'd been encouraging and supporting. Tall, strapping, young Jimmy who'd probably played sports every season and had probably been good at them all, too. Had probably played baseball and basketball and football with equal agility and skill. Had probably been the captain of the fucking team and the go-to guy for every tough play.
Or maybe not.
Maybe tall, strapping, young Jimmy had only played one sport. Maybe he'd taken the other seasons off so he could put that tall, strapping, young body to work in his family's farm. Tending the harvest: being a good son and growing to be a good man. Maybe heads had hung low at Senoia High every spring when Jimmy had marched of the field: leaving the little boys to play their games while he'd labored for his loved ones.
He really resented Jimmy sometimes.
He tried really, really hard not to, though. Tried really hard not to think about him at all. He only thought about Jimmy in those incredibly fragile moments when he came close to reading her diary. When he came close to just giving in. To allowing himself to live in that tiny pocket of moral ambiguity he could create if he started the process solely under the pretense of looking. In those dark moments when he thought that he might be able to let himself invade her privacy because he could argue that it had never been his intention to do so. He knew that he would read it, but he also knew that he wouldn't have planned to have read it. And there were times when he could almost let himself get away with that meaningless distinction.
And those were the times when he'd think about Jimmy. Because he knew that he'd be in there. He'd be a major character in her diary and he knew that there was no way - absolutely no way - that he could bear to read about their relationship. He couldn't read Beth explore her romantic feelings towards another man. (A fucking teenager, which would only make it worse.) He couldn't read her joyfully relate the news that those feelings had been returned. Couldn't read her recall Jimmy's sweet words or his thoughtful gestures or his grand plans for loving her. And he definitely couldn't read her describe the things they'd done together. He couldn't read her swoon over the magic of their first kiss or the thrill of the first time he'd touched her. And, if there was anything beyond innocent fondling in there, he'd probably be sick.
Truly fucking sick.
Because there would be no good outcome there. If she'd liked it, it'd destroy him. It'd destroy him to read about her finding physical pleasure from someone else. And if she hadn't liked it, he'd want to kill Jimmy all over again. He'd be horrified if she'd had a good experience and horrified if she'd had a bad one, because he was selfish enough not to want her to have had any experience at all.
Not with anyone but him.
In one way or another, there would be something in that diary that would hurt him. Something that would hurt him deeply and it would be because of Jimmy. So, he pulled the kid out of in those moments of utmost weakness and he never failed to keep him from untying that green ribbon.
Other than that, though, he tried hard not to think about him at all. Jimmy lived in a little red box that said In Case of Emergency, Break Glass and that's where he stayed most of the time. Which is why, after thinking about it for a few minutes, he'd been able to dismiss the Jimmy connection and view the button as simply a numerical beacon. He didn't see the number 18 stamped on the back of a football jersey, he saw it shining in bright lights on his mental scoreboard. He only saw what it meant to him. What it meant to him in this new world he'd created. In a rare act, he didn't think about what it had meant to her. What it had really meant in the old world that she'd lived in.
The old world that he was, ostensibly, so interested in learning about.
He'd simply looked at the button as a price tag advertising a bag full of Beth for the hefty, but reasonable, price of 18 points and, yesterday, he'd decided to buy it. Spend nearly a full day's wages exploring the joys of Junior year. And, as he'd suspected, it had been worth the high cost.
More than worth it.
There had been three binders in there covering her studies in six different subjects and going through them had been far more interesting than he'd ever imagined. He'd more than succeeded in achieving his original goal: to see extended examples of her penmanship. She'd been a copious note taker and, between them, the binders had been filled with literally hundreds of pages of her writing. Her work had been dated and he'd been amazed, but not necessarily surprised, to see that she'd sometimes filled out five or six pages of notes in a single class period. He didn't remember his own school days very well, but he was pretty sure that most classes took about an hour and he'd thought that it was fitting that she'd written more in an hour than he'd probably written during his entire high school career. Most of the content had been completely dull and impersonal, of course: interesting only because the words had once flowed through her beautiful brain and been captured by her beautiful hands. He'd known that going in, though, and hadn't been the least bit disappointed. He'd still spent hours reading page after lovely page.
What he hadn't expected - and what had kept him pouring through every single word - was that, even in that desert of dry content, Beth had still found a way to assert herself. Though it was clear that a lot of the material had been basically dictation - reflecting both the ideas and the phrasing of her instructor - the pages had been sprinkled with delightful snippets that were obviously her own.
By chance, he'd gone through her history binder first and, before the outbreak hit, she'd been studying the Cold War. Her teacher had outlined, and Beth had dutifully recorded, some of the horrors of Stalinist Russia and he'd laughed a much needed laugh when he'd seen the note she'd made in the margin, right next to the laundry list of the dictator's crimes.
Google childhood. Hardship? Abuse?
One of the most brutal leaders of the twentieth century - a man who'd been responsible for the deaths of millions of his own people - and she'd wondered about his life as a boy. She'd worried about his life as a boy. Daryl knew her well enough to know that. Well enough to know what thoughts, what feelings, had lurked behind those questions. She'd been willing to feel sorry for Stalin. If she'd discovered that he'd had a hard childhood - learned that he'd been mistreated or abused or neglected - she'd have found compassion for him.
And that was so like her. Not just like her to have compassion for the lowest of men, but like her to go out of her way to try to find it. To look for a reason against all odds. Against all evidence. She hadn't known if Stalin had had a hard life. She hadn't known if there was any possible explanation for why he would have done such cruel things, but she hadn't been willing to write him off as purely evil. She'd seen him as a human being. She'd seen him as a man who'd once been a boy and she'd wondered how that then-innocent child had been treated.
His favorite part of her history notes hadn't been seeing a piece of Beth that had been put on the page, though. It had been seeing something that had been put on page and then become a piece of Beth. A piece of Beth's vocabulary and a treasured part of his memories of their time together. Something that he'd always thought was just a personal quirk, but now understood had a completely different, and he thought hilarious, origin.
As part of their studies of the Cold War, her class had spent a day going over the Berlin Blockade: an event he'd actually known a little about because Merle had sometimes had a weird thing for watching war documentaries when he'd been especially high and Daryl had always welcomed the deviation from his normal habit of viewing porn. Beth had diligently detailed all of the American actions to bring assistance to the citizens of the besieged city, including the massive military airlift of food. He'd known that the government had conducted that mission, but until he'd read Beth's notes, he hadn't known that that mission had had a name. And when he'd read that name, he'd laughed so hard his hand had throbbed.
Operation Vittles
It was a funny name in its own right, but that hadn't been why he'd laughed. He'd laughed because that's what Beth had always called their quest for food: Operation Vittles. When they'd been raiding a home or tracking game, they'd been conducting Operation Vittles. She'd sometimes even call him Master Dixon instead of Mister Dixon just to keep up with the military theme, throwing in a mock salute and a cheeky grin.
Looks like we're hot on a rabbit trail here, Master Dixon. Operation Vittles is a go.
Lead the way, Private.
He'd always loved that. Loved the nicknames and loved Operation Vittles. It had always felt so perfect to him. Because it really had been an operation. It really had been a combat mission. And what they'd been searching for - or, at least, what they'd ended up finding and eating - really had been vittles. It was a word that could probably be applied to any manner of food but, in his mind, had always had a decidedly redneck and low-rent connotation. They didn't sell vittles at a Paris bistro, they sold vittles at a roadside diner that scraped its meat off of that very roadside. Vittles were squirrels and pickled pigs feet and unidentifiable jerky.
Vittles were exactly what they'd been looking for.
It had just seemed so fitting, and she was always so good with words, that he'd never even considered that it might have been a reference to something. Never considered that that phrase hadn't been her own. And, while another person might have thought that that diminished it, he'd found that it made him like it even more. It made the whole thing so much more powerful. So much more meaningful. Because it made him a part of an arc that had begun before they'd even met. He was part of a storyline that had started one random afternoon in second period American History when those words first entered her brain. They'd taken root in her mind that day and, years later, a Stalin wannabe would create a situation where she'd plant them in his mind, too. And then, months later, another Stalin wannabe would silence her mind forever and create the situation where he was able to go back to where it all began. Where he was sitting in her room: completing the circle and seeing the moment - running his shaking fingers over the inky moment - when that phrase had first entered her world.
And he'd thought that that was beautiful.
And he'd loved seeing something that was theirs in her handwriting. It had felt so incredibly personal that he'd taken that page out of the notebook and added it to his collection on his dresser shine. He was almost tempted to fold it up and put it in his pocket with his pictures, but he couldn't bring himself to damage it or risk the paper getting ruined if it happened to get bloody or wet. Which it most certainly would. So it went on the dresser next to all his other precious relics instead.
Discovering Operation Vittles might have been his favorite part of history, but there had been plenty of other joys in there, too. Because she hadn't just incorporated the words of others into her own life, she'd also interpreted the words of others according to her own life. She'd seen her world reflected in seemingly random places and the results had also made him smile. As part of her epic history notes, she'd recorded a quote by Harry Truman describing his stance against the nation's emerging foe.
"We have to get tough with the Russians. They don't know how to behave. They are like bulls in a china shop. They are only 25 years old. We are over 100 and the British are centuries older. We have to teach them how to behave."
There was nothing humorous about the President's statement, but what had been so funny to him was the part that Beth had underlined and the comment she'd written underneath the passage.
Tell Maggie she's just like Russia. And tell Daddy he's like America. He'll like that!
He'd loved the idea of Maggie as a brash Russian bull in a china shop. By Dixon standards, she'd undoubtedly been an incredibly wholesome young woman, but he could see how - by Greene standards - she could have been considered a bit of a rebel. A bit too bold and a bit too loud and a bit too forthcoming. Not in a way that had made them love her any less, but in a way that had set her apart from her siblings and challenged Herschel like his youngest daughter never would.
Maggie hadn't been singled out for Beth's historical treatment, though. Her notebook contained a quote originating from the other side of the Cold War divide, too. A quote by Khrushchev that he'd been kind of surprised had been taught to her in school and even more surprised to discover had also struck a familial nerve.
"Berlin is the testicles of the West. When I want the West to scream, I squeeze on Berlin."
In the margins next the strangely graphic statement, she'd made an note that had made him laugh even more than the Maggie one had. Laugh because it was unexpectedly aggressive and because it had made him insanely curious as to the incident that had precipitated it.
I'm definitely not squeezing them, but Shawn needs a swift kick to his Berlin!
She'd become a hell of a fighter over the years - the kind of fighter who real could fuck up a man's Berlin - but at the time she'd written that, she'd have been almost a joke of an opponent. Small and weak and probably unable to even make a proper fist. And the idea of that completely ineffectual girl stomping her feet in impotent anger and threatening her brother's manhood had made him laugh, too. Especially because he'd imagined that, at that point in her life, that's exactly what she would have called it. She wouldn't have been comfortable saying balls or nuts or any of the thousand far dirtier words Daryl would think to use. She would have told her brother that she was going to kick him in his Berlin if he didn't stop doing whatever the mystery behavior was and Shawn would have laughed his ass off at his too sweet little sister. But, since he was a Greene, he probably would have stopped. Because, even though he'd have been completely safe, he'd have realized just how much he'd been upsetting her.
And that wasn't funny at all - and maybe it wasn't even true, maybe it represented an idealized version of his favorite family - but he'd liked the idea of it a lot and it had made him smile, too.
History had been an unexpected boon, but science and math had obviously been less interesting for her. Her notes on those subjects had been far less extensive and there had been no indication that she'd reflected on any of the information she'd recorded. Her personality had still been on the page, though. Just as clearly as it had been with her social studies, only in different ways. Because her lack of interest in that material wasn't just an inference that he'd made based on the skimpiness of her work, it was a fact that she'd made abundantly clear in her own words. The margins of her notes were riddled with reflections on her boredom and her obvious attempts to kill time while appearing like she was still being a good student.
She'd taken pre-calculus and, in a character trait that he couldn't blame her for in the least, she'd found it incredibly dull. And, in her own mild way, had obviously resented even being there.
If you're gonna make me study imaginary numbers, why can't I do it in an imaginary class?
It had clearly been torturous for her and almost every day there would be some reference to the seeming endlessness of the class: often accompanied by a drawing of a clock. A simple circle with two hands and a few numbers that even her artistically challenged self could execute.
If I'm counting the seconds until I get out of here, does that qualify as math?
He'd thought that it was funny that, even as she'd ignored the subject of her studies, she'd kept so many of her comments on topic. She hadn't wanted to be doing math, but she'd often phrase her displeasure in math-related terms. No matter how much she tried to break the rules and disregard her scholastic responsibilities, there had still been a part of her that had stayed in line. If it had been him, his comments would have read fuck this or who cares, but hers had said things like I'd love to solve your problems, Mr. Howard, but I've got problems of my own.
The one he'd like the most, though, had taken up the entire margin of one page of notes: one long column that was a shining tribute to tedium.
It's 2:15
It's 2:15
It's 2:16
It's 2:16
It's 2:16
It's 2:15
It's 2:15 again
How can it be 2:15 again?
It's 2:16
Okay, It's 2:16
It's 2:17
It's 2:17
It's 2:17
How is it still 2:17?
Am I frozen it time?
Am I stuck in a wormhole?
Am I trapped in a dream?
It's 2:18
It's 2:18
It's not a dream
It's 2:18
That one cracked him up because that was pretty much exactly how he'd felt every second he'd been in school. That could have been taken right out of the margins of one of his own notebooks, if he'd been a good enough student to even keep a notebook at all. And he really liked that. Liked knowing that they'd had that in common. That even though she'd been the good girl that had gotten good grades, she'd also felt trapped in a classroom sometimes.
Unlike him, though, she'd made an effort to hide it. Made a very dedicated effort to hide it. On one particularly bad day in chemistry, she hadn't taken any notes at all, but rather written two pages of stream-of-conscious nonsense just to keep her hand busy.
I'm not listening, I'm not listening, I'm not listening and you can't make me. Okay, that was mean, but I'm still not listening. I can't deal with you today, Mr. Percy. You're a good man, but I just can't deal with you today. So look at my hand move. Look at my head nod up and down. And please, please, please, don't call on me. Don't call on me. Don't call on me. I'm writing. See, I'm writing. Orange monkey jungle dance. Hedgehog bowling ball. Flurb. Flippity floppity flurb. Jackrabbit biscuit cutter.
Words, words, words. Words, words, words.
I'm paying such close attention and I'm writing down all your super important words. Corkscrew tap shoes. Sweet mushroom countertop. That's what you just said right? No? Maybe I need a hearing aid. Maybe I should see the school nurse. Can I see the school nurse? Trombone ice cream cones. They taste as good as they sound…
That had gone on for ten paragraphs and he'd absolutely adored every single one. He'd loved that she'd apologized to her teacher and assured him of his good qualities even as she'd ignored him. Even as she'd written something that she'd prayed he'd never read. He'd loved all her ridiculous filler phrases that reminded him so much of her childhood drawings. If he hadn't had all of their titles memorized by now, he'd have easily believed that Orange Monkey Jungle Dance had been one of six-year-old creations. He could practically see it in his head: an unidentifiable mess that would contain no orange and, probably, nothing that even remotely resembled an animal.
He'd read those pages five times and eventually took them out of the binder and added them to his dresser shrine right next to the notes on Operation Vittles. They didn't have the emotional weight of that other page, or of so many of the other objects he'd placed there, but they'd made him laugh and had felt so authentically her that he just hadn't been willing to let them remain in that cold, plastic binder.
Unsurprisingly, given her obvious disinterest in the material, chemistry hadn't been her most successful subject. She had a few homework assignments and a handful of tests in the binder and they showed that she'd basically been a B minus student. At best. There were a fair amount of C's in there, too. And, while Daryl would have been lucky to get C's in school, he knew that - for Beth Greene - that had to have been as bad as it got. He'd flipped through the tests pretty quickly, since they'd been the very definition of dry, but he'd stopped on the last page of one of them when he'd seen something unusual. It was the all-too-familiar red X marking a failed question combined with the never-seen smiley face next to the incorrect answer.
19) A tenth of a mole of pennies contains how many pennies?
What happened to the rest of the mole? And why are you asking me about pennies? We've got an injured animal on our hands, who can think of money at a time like this?
He didn't understand the question at all, but he didn't think that hurt his appreciation of the joke. And, though she'd obviously been being silly, he'd thought there was something revealing about her comment, too. An unintentional window onto the incomparable compassion of Beth Greene. Because, kidding aside, she really had been the kind of girl who would think that money was no object when it came to an injured mole. They were ugly, destructive little animals with vicious claws and too big teeth that most people would consider pests, but he could easily picture Beth running to Herschel with 10% of a mole in her arms and begging him to save it. Telling him that she'd give her entire allowance if he'd only perform some kind of groundbreaking full-body mole transplant. Or sew the remnants of the creature onto a chipmunk and create the world's first molemunk.
If he's just do something, anything, to make the little guy live, she'd give him her last dime.
While she'd clearly struggled with chemistry, she'd excelled at a subject that he hadn't even known that she'd studied: French. Due to the nature of the material, her work in that class consisted mostly of worksheets and assignments - as opposed to the lectures that had dominated her other courses - and she'd gotten A's on them all. Going through her school work had been an almost entirely positive experience, but discovering that she'd spoken French - or, at least, some basic French - had made him briefly, but very genuinely, sad. He'd really wished that he'd been able to hear her say something in a language that he knew was widely considered to be one of the most beautiful. He'd never had that much familiarity with it - and it had definitely been years since he'd heard it spoken - so he hadn't been able to conjure up the general sounds in his head, but he knew that it was highly regarded. He knew that it was the language of love and romance and poetry. It was the language of art and elegance and culture. And, though that normally would have turned him off, it enchanted him when he associated it with her. It seemed entirely appropriate and he had to believe that that already beautiful language would have sounded even lovelier in her sweet voice.
And looking at her homework only further convinced him of that. He'd admired the beauty of all of her writing, but the words that she'd written in French had been especially captivating. Particularly gorgeous. Maybe it had been because he hadn't known what they'd meant and, therefore, had seen them solely from a graphic perspective. His eyes had been able glide across the loops and whirls of her hand without involving his brain at all. Those graceful lines had gone straight to his soul undiminished by thought. He'd been sure that it had been more than that, though. He'd been sure that they really would have been as beautiful to hear as they'd been to look at.
And it had broken a tiny piece of his heart to know that that would never happen.
Even though her French class had been conducted differently than the others, she'd still taken daily notes. And, as with her other subjects, those notes often had little comments in the margins. Unfortunately for Daryl, though, they'd all been in French and he'd had no idea if they'd been personal comments at all or if they'd just been afterthoughts that she hadn't been able to fit in anywhere else.
Every day, though, there had been one sentence written in English in the upper right hand corner of her notes. Or, really, a sentence fragment. Just strange little half-thoughts that he hadn't been able to understand.
like I need a nap.
awful and I want to go home.
so excited I can hardly stand it.
And on and on. Day after day. And before each odd phrase, she'd drawn a equally odd little symbol. It had looked like and upside-down Y with a horizontal line stretching across the middle part of what could be considered the V. He'd never seen anything like it before and had been completely baffled by it: unable to decode its meaning or the meaning of the weird half-sentences.
When he'd finally figured it out, he'd almost lost it. Not because it was funny, but because it was so unbelievably dumb. Such an incredibly dorky little thing for her to do. The kind of thing that he would have found cringeworthy - or, at least, groan-inducing - with anyone else but somehow found charming with her.
The symbol had been her crude representation of the Eiffel Tower and all those little sentences had been her way of expressing her feelings for that day.
Eiffel like I need a nap.
Eiffel awful and I want to go home.
Eiffel so excited I can hardly stand it.
Just like he'd wished that he'd been able to hear her speak French, he'd wished that he'd been able to tease her about that joke. That joke that was so incredibly stupid and yet had clearly entertained her for months. It shouldn't have even been funny once, but she'd found humor in that lame pun day after fucking day. And he would have loved to have teased her about that. Teased her about being so hopelessly - but so delightfully - goofy.
Because it would have been fun and, even more so, because it would have been a really useful tool for him.
He'd always communicated best through jokes. Always felt more comfortable with banter and wisecrack than simple statements of truth, even when he was trying to be completely sincere. Especially when he was trying to be completely sincere. And having a set-up for a joke that began with I feel would have given him so many opportunities to express so many things that he wouldn't have been able to express any other way. That joke would have allowed him to talk about his feelings - his fucking feelings - which were something that he never wanted to talk about and something that she'd definitely deserved to know about. As dumb as it was - or maybe because it was so dumb - that joke was tailor-made for Daryl Dixon and his clumsy efforts to connect with Beth Greene.
Staring at that symbol, he'd found himself thinking about their time in the woods. When he'd been working to build her hunting and tracking skills - training Private Greene for Operation Vittles - he'd taught her several hand signals so that they could communicate without scaring off any potential game. She'd really gotten a kick out of it, for reasons that he never fully understood but had always enjoyed, and had even come up with several signals of her own. Mostly for silly things that hadn't really needed to be communicated at all, but were just her way of staying in touch and having fun. Looking at her basic Eiffel Tower symbol, he'd thought about how easily they could have translated that into one of those hand signals. He'd just hold his hand in an upside-down peace sign and throw his opposing index finger over his knuckles. It'd look like an inverted A, but his arm would be the tower and she'd have known exactly what he'd meant.
And she would have loved it.
She would have loved having inspired her own signal, even if it was in the context of a tease. And he would have loved it because it would have felt like the best of them combined. This perfect combination of his skills - the thing that helped them stay alive - and her simple joy - the thing that made that life worth living. And it would have made the joke even more useful to him - an even easier set-up for communication - because he wouldn't even have had to say I feel. He could have just made the hand gesture, made her laugh, and then said the hard thing while she was still smiling.
He'd been able to see himself on one of their darker days, making that signal and telling her like a failure. He'd been able to see himself on one of their better days, making that signal and telling her good right now. He'd been able to see himself on one of his bolder - probably delusionally bolder- days, making that signal and telling her lucky to be with you.
happy when you smile.
good when you touch me.
like I'll die if I don't kiss you.
How much easier would all that have been? How much easier would it have been to speak in little fragments like that? To say everything without having to actually say everything? To cut the tension out of any comment - good or bad - and to do it in a way that was theirs? In a way that emphasized their special bond? Their unique history and the unique life they shared?
It would have been perfect.
It would have been so perfect that he'd almost been grateful that his hand still hurt so much that he hadn't be able to try it. Hadn't been able to confirm just how good - just how right - it would have felt.
The most exciting subject by far, though, had been the last one he encountered and the one he'd had the highest hopes for. Back in his day, it had been referred to simply as English, but he'd discovered that modern educators had apparently decided to call it Language Arts instead. He'd thought that was totally pretentious but, in the case of Beth, actually pretty appropriate. She hadn't been using English when she'd composed The Ballad of the Sad Android: she'd been employing Language Arts.
Language Arts were responsible for Orange Monkey Jungle Dance and Fancy Raccoons Playing Potato Basketball and Trombone Ice Cream Cones.
That shit wasn't English.
He'd been looking forward to Language Arts because he'd hoped that it would contain the longest uninterrupted samples of her handwriting and maybe, just maybe, examples of her actual writing. Actual compositions and stories and poems. Creative pieces that revealed something personal about her. He'd found a couple essays in her history binder, and a short one in French that he couldn't decipher, but they'd been explanatory works. They'd been her attempts to summarize and explain the Truman Doctrine and the impact of the Cuban Missile Crisis. They'd been purely academic pieces tied entirely to impersonal facts and had revealed nothing about her except that she'd understood the material and had good communications skills. They had been well-written and informative, but there had been nothing Beth about them. And he'd hoped that Language Arts would be different. That she'd have assignments that required her to put more of herself and her opinion on the page.
Language Arts had really been more like literary appreciation or reading comprehension, though. The focus hadn't been on creating her own works, but rather on analyzing the works of others. It had appeared that, for the most part, her class had spent their days reading short stories and then writing their own - even shorter - reflections on them. And, in their own way, those reflections had been interesting. But since he hadn't had access to the stories that inspired them, his appreciation of her commentaries had been severely limited. They'd almost felt like longer versions of her Eiffel Tower jokes before he'd decoded the symbol. The paragraphs had been free floating pieces of a puzzle that he hadn't been able to see. He'd been able to admire their colors and their shapes, but he hadn't been able to appreciate them on any meaningful level. Knowing that Beth thought that Annabelle saw the rusty bird cage as a metaphor for her marriage wasn't particularly illuminating when he didn't know who Annabelle was and why her marriage was so troubled.
Or why she had a rusty fucking bird cage to begin with.
But he'd tried - perhaps foolishly - to derive some insight from them nevertheless. To tell himself that Beth's response to the enigmatic Annabelle was still more revealing than her assessment of the Bay of Pigs. They might have only been a couple of paragraphs and they'd been read completely out of context but, in his mind, they'd at least demonstrated that - even at sixteen, even with the shining example of her own parents - she'd been sensitive to the challenges of marriage. Had been aware of how a woman might feel trapped in a relationship. Lock in to a commitment with a man who wasn't right for her. And that wasn't much, and it wasn't particularly surprising, but it was something. It was more than knowing that she'd understood the Domino Theory or had a shaky, but passable, grasp of parametric equations.
Though studying shorter works had clearly made up the bulk of the syllabus, her class had devoted several weeks to investigating one book in depth. And that book had formed the basis for Beth's longest single piece of writing in her entire school bag: a seven page essay that he'd assumed had been something like a term paper. He'd been surprised to see that she'd only got a B+ on it, but had been intrigued by the teacher's comment written at the top.
Some organizational problems, but overall a thoughtful analysis. Unexpected in places and that's always a nice surprise. Good job!
Flipping through the pages, he'd seen that the teacher had been thorough in her evaluation and had made numerous notes throughout the paper: most of them positive, some of them challenging, and a few that were simple editorial corrections. And looking at that combination of Beth words and her teachers comments had felt like looking in on a conversation that he wasn't a part of.
A conversation that he wasn't a part of but very much wanted to be a part of.
He'd wanted to know what Mrs. Palmer had found unexpected and whether he'd find it unexpected, too. He'd wanted to know what had prompted her to ask But what about Caroline? next to paragraph three. Wanted to know if he'd have the same question and if he'd have an answer for Mrs. Palmer. Wanted to know if he could argue that Beth had had an answer for Mrs. Palmer and that the question hadn't needed to be asked in the first place. Wanted to know if he could point to paragraph eleven and say, See, that's what she thought of Caroline. Get it together, Palmer.
He'd had no idea who Caroline was though and he'd known that, even if he studied every word of Beth's seven pages, he never really would. He'd never be able to play a meaningful part of that conversation. The piece had been longer, and he'd probably be able to pick up more from it than he had with her other works, but the problem had still been the same. He hadn't known the source material, so he wouldn't be able to appreciate the commentary. He wouldn't be able to fully appreciate the way Beth's mind worked. The way she thought and felt and interpreted information.
That essay could have been such a wonderful window onto her beautiful mind, but the glass had been clouded by his ignorance.
And that had killed him. Killed him that he'd had this gift and that he'd only be able to enjoy it in such a shallow way. That Mrs. Palmer, who'd probably had a hundred students and surely never loved Beth Greene, had understood something about her - about her lovely little mind - that he didn't. That he couldn't. It had seemed so unfair that he'd just sat there for a few minutes and stared off into space: trying to calm himself down a bit so that, at the very least, he didn't read the essay in anger. If he couldn't appreciate the content, he'd reasoned, he needed to make sure that he appreciated the experience. That he read each word with happiness in his heart and with Beth, not Mrs. Palmer, in his head.
It had turned out to be a wise move because, as he'd sat there, he'd glanced over at Beth's bookshelf and suddenly remembered seeing all those volumes that he'd been sure that she'd been assigned for school. The classics ones that he'd remembered from his own day and the ones he'd seen in so many other homes. The ones that didn't star the Loch Ness Monster or the chupacabra. He'd still felt fluish and achy but he'd forced himself to his feet and had been standing by the bookcase in record time. And it had been there. Right on the top shelf between The Great Gatsby and The Scarlet Letter.
Pride and Prejudice.
Though he'd had no idea what the plot was about, he'd known from the beginning that it was a romance novel. It was famous enough that'd he'd heard of it and had known it was some kind of epic love story. One of those fancy British ones that they'd made movies about. Those grand period pieces where everyone wore gloves and elaborate costumes and rode around in horse-drawn carriages. The ones that they'd played on public television when they hadn't been airing cooking shows and the war documentaries that Merle had liked so much when he'd been tweaking.
The ones that had made Merle switch back to porn and had made Daryl okay with that choice, despite his fervent desire never to hear another plastic woman yell Harder, Daddy! ever again.
It hadn't mattered, though. In an ideal world, he would have rather read her thoughts on the chupacabra, but he was so far from living in an ideal world that that notion hadn't even entered his mind. He hadn't considered how nice it might have been for the book to be something other than, quite possibly, one of the last books in the world he'd want to read. He'd been too caught up in the prospect of sharing an experience with Beth to care.
Because that was the thing: reading that book and then reading her paper was the closest he was ever going to come to doing something with Beth again. He was going to read the same words that she'd read. The story that had lived in her mind was going to live in his mind, too. The world that existed between the covers of that book was going to be a world that he and Beth had walked through together. A world that they'd seen and studied and shared. And Beth was going to tell him what she'd thought about that world. She was going to speak to him through that essay and tell him about the journey. About what she'd discovered and what she'd wondered about along the way. And, if history was any indication, her thoughts would influence his. He'd see that world differently through her eyes. She'd change his perspective or make him notice something he'd never noticed before. She couldn't initiate a conversation anymore, but that essay gave him the opportunity to insert himself into one that had already happened. To turn back the clock and have one final discussion with Beth.
And if the subject of that discussion had to be a romance novel, he couldn't give a fucking shit.
He'd spent the whole day going through her school work - or what was, to him, the whole day as he was still tiring out by early evening - and had decided to put off reading the book until the following morning. To start fresh when he was at his most alert and could pay the closest attention. When his eyes weren't strained from reading all day and his head wasn't throbbing from the subsequent headache. So, he'd said goodnight to her as usual - throwing in an Eiffel like shit and it's time for bed just for fun - and headed to his room.
Lying in bed that night, he'd imagined sitting in her room the next day - cross-legged in his new favorite perch under the open window - and reading that book. He'd been looking forward to it and had gotten even more excited when he'd realized that there was another point of connection that he hadn't considered before: she'd probably read that book in her room, too. Their minds weren't just going to be in the same fictitious world, their bodies were going to be in the same real world when it happened. They were going to share the same mental and physical space. His sleepy and still mildly feverish mind had become obsessed with that idea and he'd decided that he wanted the similarities of their experiences to be as close as possible.
He'd tried to picture her reading the book and the first thing he'd been sure of was that she hadn't sat cross-legged under her open window when she'd done it. It wasn't a comfortable place to be at all and he'd only chosen it because he was still running hot and liked the breeze and because it was better than the desk, which got even more uncomfortable after awhile. The antique wooden chair was an ergonomic nightmare and he'd only sat there for so long - for all the weeks he'd been in her room - because his other options hadn't really felt like options at all. There was her upholstered chair with the pretty pattern of birds in flight, but that was the home of her stuffed animals and he couldn't bring himself to move them. Couldn't disturb her display. And then there was her bed.
Her bed.
It had always felt completely off-limits, too, but as he'd lay there in that twilight state between sleep and waking it had stopped seeming so untouchable. Because, the more he'd tried to picture it, the more he'd come to believe that that's where she'd read the book. That she'd curled up in that big, beautiful bed of hers and lost herself in a tale of love and courtship. The part of his mind that was still thinking logically believed it because it truly did make the most sense. She would have wanted to be comfortable and there was no denying that her bed was the most comfortable place in her room. But, even though it was logical, that wasn't why he believed it. He believed it simply because he knew her and because he'd felt it in his heart.
She'd read that book in her bed.
She'd read that book in her bed and he was going to read that book in her bed, too.
Though his hand still hurt something fierce, the swelling had gone down enough that he finally had enough dexterity that he'd felt like he could risk taking off his shoes. He'd be able to re-tie them again if he had to and wouldn't be caught sick and barefoot. He could finally take off his shoes and those godforsaken pants and take a far too cold, but desperately, needed shower. He could wash all the sweat and the sickness and the apocalypse off of his body. He could put on clean clothes and fresh socks.
And he could lie down on her bed - as unspoiled as he was capable of being - and imagine her lying beside him.
Imagine them getting lost in the same book on a lazy afternoon. Imagine her gasping at something exciting and asking if he'd got to chapter four yet. Imagine playfully slapping her hip and telling her not to tease the slow-reading redneck. Imagine finally getting to chapter four and finding out why she'd gasped. Imagine looking forward to discussing to with her later and knowing - knowing - that, on some level, he could. He would. He actually fucking would because he had that essay.
He'd lie in the bed where, years ago, she'd done the same and, in that way, they'd be together.
Separated by nothing but time.
So, that's exactly what he'd done. He'd gotten up the next morning and gotten naked. It wouldn't normally have been his favorite thing to do, but after roasting in the same sweat-soaked pants for days - pants that had been dirty long before his accident - it had felt glorious. As had the shower that followed. He'd expected it to make him feel cleaner, of course, but it had also made him feel healthier. Like he really had rinsed some of the infection away. Like he'd finally gotten rid of that sheen of sickness that he'd been wearing like a second skin for almost a week.
He'd felt so good afterwards, so refreshed, that he'd actually considered not putting his own clothes back on. He had a few things that had been washed, but none of them were truly clean and he'd been tempted to grab a pair of Shawn's too-tight sweat pants or Herschel's too-big pajama bottoms instead. Something without stains or holes or embedded dirt. Something that had never had brains or blood or intestines on it.
Something that belonged in that house and in that room and in that bed.
But those things hadn't belonged on Daryl Dixon, though. They hadn't been his. And he'd wanted it to be him in her bed. In his mind, he'd been about to cross a huge threshold. Make a giant leap in intimacy. And he hadn't wanted to do that cloaked in another man's garb. He hadn't wanted to do that dressed like her brother or her father. When she'd been alive, he'd spent the entire time that he'd loved her wearing that costume: posing as a man whose feelings had been purely familial. And he was beyond that fiction now. He was beyond pretending. He was Daryl Dixon and he loved Beth Greene and, even though this hadn't been at all how he'd dreamed of coming to her bed or what he'd planned on doing once he was there, he'd wanted to at least enjoy the honesty - the pure and beautiful truth - of that.
And because he was Daryl Dixon and he loved Beth Greene, he wouldn't feel like he was close enough to her simply by being in her room. Lying in her bed in sweatpants or pajama bottoms would still be too much distance because he wouldn't be able to have her knife on him. He'd have her dog tags, but that wouldn't be enough. He needed the knife. It had been hard enough going those past few days without her picture in his breast pocket. Even with the aspirin, he'd still been too feverish to wear a shirt and he'd felt a sense of panic every time his hand had unconsciously reached for his chest and hit skin instead of cloth. Every time he didn't feel that precious plastic rectangle, his heart would start to race under his anxious palm. Because he really felt like he needed those totems of her. Her knife and her picture and her dog tags. He needed those things on him. He'd temporarily sacrificed the photo, but he hadn't been able to handle parting with any more.
So, he'd put on his own pants - her knife securely at his hip - and headed towards her room. For the first time since he'd taken ill, he'd been grateful for his fever. Grateful he was still so warm that he wasn't tempted to crawl under the quilt. To truly climb into the bed and cocoon himself in her. That had still felt like it would be too much: too much intimacy to force upon her and too much disruption to make to the room that was now her shrine. It hadn't felt like it would be right. But, fortunately, it hadn't felt like it would be accurate either. He'd imagined that she'd probably lied on top of the covers when she'd read the book, too. It had been homework, after all, and she probably hadn't done it late into the night. She'd probably read it after school or on a Saturday afternoon after she'd already gotten dressed and made the bed. And that was the whole point. Or, at least, the point that had allowed him to justify the action.
To replicate her experience.
He'd sat down on the bed tentatively, but it had felt so unbelievably good - so deeply soothing - that he'd found himself on his back before he'd even had a chance to think about it. This big, huge, scary step and he'd taken it without any deliberation. His body had just taken over -silencing his ever-racing mind - and made the decision for him. And, though he often had doubts about his own intelligence, he'd had to admit: his body was smart as hell. His body had known what it was doing. Because if he'd thought sitting on her bed had felt good, lying on it had felt so much better.
So. Much. Better.
He hadn't been able to tell whether it was truly just an incredibly comfortable mattress or whether it was the connection to her that it provided, but he'd felt better lying on that bed than he'd felt since he'd laid in that fucking coffin listening to her serenade him. He might have a had a few happier moments here and there - seeing Beth's photo for the first time, finding Stopsign's antibiotics, watching that DVD - but on a purely physical level, he'd thought that he hadn't felt that good in almost a year.
Infection be damned.
Though he'd known that he wouldn't succeed, he hadn't been able to stop himself from turning his head and briefly burying his nose in her pillow: trying to see if he could detect any of her scent on the fabric. It hadn't been there, of course. It had smelled like nothing really, but in a world that was covered with the stench of rot and decay, even nothing had seemed special. It had highlighted, once again, how this magical little place had been untouched by the nightmare outside.
How this magical little place was its own kind of dream.
And he'd let himself get lost in that dream for a while. Just lying there, staring at her ceiling, and thinking about all those years that she'd done the same. When he'd been thinking anything at all, that is. When he hadn't just been floating in a sea of sensation: just letting himself feel and breathe and be. But after a few minutes, or maybe more, he'd picked up the book and started reading. And from the opening line, he'd been sure that he was fucked.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
It was about a rich guy. In retrospect, he hadn't been surprised. He imagined that romantic heroes were probably rarely poor. Poverty's not exactly sexy and it's certainly no one's fantasy. Still, he'd been disappointed that the male lead was wealthy. Probably some fucking Lord or Duke or some shit. Even though he'd had no expectations for actually enjoying the book, he'd been hoping that he might be able to pretend that it was about him and Beth. That he might be able to see something of them in the characters and imagine it as some bizarre British version of the relationship they'd never had. That opening line had seemed to dash those hopes, though. If it had been about a stable boy or a blacksmith or something, maybe he'd have had a shot, but no Dixon had ever been a man in possession of a good fortune.
No Dixon had ever even known a man in possession of a good fortune.
Still, he'd found the book so boring at first that he hadn't been able to stop himself from drawing parallels between the people populating the world of Jane Austen and the people he knew from his own life. Parallels between him and the impossibly rich hero named Darcy. Parallels between Beth and the impossibly charming heroine conveniently named Elizabeth. And parallels between all the secondary characters that filled out their lives. And that had kept him entertained for awhile. Or, at least, it had helped keep him engaged. Despite what most people would imagine, he actually did like to read but he almost never read fiction. The characters never really came to life for him and he'd found that that problem was especially acute when trying to connect with characters from another country, in another century, in another world. But imagining them as people he knew had helped flesh them out more and added a bit of interest to an otherwise tedious tale.
He'd cast Glenn in the role of the ever affable Charles Bingley: a light-hearted man and loyal friend who was a model of kindness and decency. Glenn had more depth and was less naive than Bingley, but beggars couldn't be choosers and the salient point was that he was the novel's unquestionably good guy. He'd cast Father Gabriel as the loathsome clergyman Mr. Collins: a man supposedly guided by the word of God but who was really driven by his own self-interest. That one had been unfair to the fictitious Mr. Collins, though, because - while he might have been a perv towards his cousin and willing to kick his own family out of their ancestral home - he hadn't let dozens of innocent people die simply because he was too big of a pussy to unlock a door. He'd cast an even more loathsome person in an even more loathsome role and envisioned Shane as Officer WIckham: the consummate liar who'd betrayed the man who had been like a brother to him and tried to seduce his teenage sister for her fortune and petty revenge. That one had seemed perfectly fair and had made him pretty happy. And, when he'd finally found out who she was, he'd delightedly cast Lori as the bitchy Caroline Bingley: the thoroughly useless and completely self-satisfied drama queen who thought she was the elite center of the universe and prided herself on her ability to draw male attention.
That one had made him even happier than the Wickham one had.
He'd felt like everyone in his family had basically accepted him after a while, but he'd felt like Lori had looked down on him until the day she'd died. She'd rarely done anything overt about it - and at times had even been painfully sociable - but he'd known that the sheriff's wife and soccer mom had never stopped seeing him as the kind of lowlife redneck who her husband should have been arresting, not looking to for advice.
So when Caroline mocked Elizabeth for having her most impressive relation be a mere attorney from the obviously low-rent community of Cheapside, he'd had to grin because he'd been able to so clearly recall Lori's reaction when he'd told her the name of the infamously white trash town where he was from. A place he could only assume was the Georgian equivalent of Cheapside. A place Jane Austen would have very aptly named Scumtown or Hickville or Dirtbag Junction. (Or Dirtbagshire, as the case may be.) He hadn't thought about that in years, but he'd been able to remember her politely veiled disgust so vividly. Disgust and odd satisfaction. Satisfaction because he'd proven her right. Proven that he really was the kind of man that she'd suspected all along. He'd have never made the comparison at the time, but it was entirely accurate: she'd looked just like a stuffy British lady in a fancy drawing room turning up her nose at the lowly commoner who'd become her unfortunate houseguest.
She'd looked just like Caroline Bingley.
And when, in the same scene, Charles admonished Caroline for the insult and told her that, even if Elizabeth had enough relatives to populate all of Cheapside, it wouldn't have made her one jot less agreeable, he'd known that he'd cast Glenn correctly in that role, too. Glenn might not have know what to make of him at first, might not have known exactly how to relate to him, but he'd never considered Daryl beneath him. He'd never looked down on him. They'd had different backgrounds and Glenn had been aware of those differences, but he'd never judged him for them. Never acted like it made him one jot less agreeable.
His personality might have made him many jots less agreeable at times, but - to Glenn - his background had never been a factor.
He'd quickly given up any idea of casting Beth as Elizabeth, though, despite his initial desire to do so and their seeming similarities. Elizabeth was portrayed as a delightful and charming young woman - a smart and witty and beautiful girl who was so special and captivating that she'd made a one of the richest men in England fall to his knees and throw aside all social convention to be with her - and that would have been a description he'd more than happily have applied to his girl. But, reading between the lines, he hadn't felt like it had actually applied to Elizabeth that much at all. He hadn't seen her that way everyone else apparently did. He'd thought that she was petty and stupid and inconsiderate. She could be vain and rude and judgmental in a way that Beth never would and, while she clearly wasn't a bad person at heart, he didn't think she was all that great of a person, either.
He'd actually seen a little bit more of Beth in Elizabeth's sister Jane. The sweet and gentle girl who saw the good in everyone, wanted the best for everyone, and fought hard against any feelings of self-pity. But that had been unsatisfying, too. Both because Jane was a relatively minor character and because, in addition to being incredibly good, she was also incredibly dull. She didn't have much of a spark to her at all and, ultimately, seemed pretty shallow: supposedly falling desperately in love with a man who she'd only had a handful of polite conversations with. (And that man happened to be Charles Bingley, who in his mind had been Glenn, so that comparison had additional problems that had made it unacceptable.)
So, casting Beth in the book had been a failure, but he'd realized after awhile that he probably should have expected that. Jane Austen might have been considered a literary giant, but even her fancy British brain couldn't dream up a character as good as Beth Greene. He didn't think that any author could. Any comparisons that he'd tried to make with the many women in the novel - every major and minor role - couldn't come close to doing her justice, so he'd abandoned that pursuit early on: considering it flawed in principle.
Beth was too good to be true and she was too good to be fiction.
After getting past his wealth and good looks, however, he'd had a bit more success in seeing himself in Darcy. He couldn't relate to his privilege or to his pride - that great character flaw that inspired his half of the title - but he could relate to some of the problems that resulted from them. To his sense of isolation and his social awkwardness. And, when he'd described the harshness of his disposition, Daryl had been able to relate to that quite easily, too.
"My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding - certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of others so soon as I ought, nor their offences against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost is lost forever."
Some of those traits had softened a bit over time - largely due to Beth's influence -but for the most part it was all still profoundly true. He had a terrible temper. He could be unforgiving of other people's faults and failures. And he definitely didn't respond well to compliments or flattery. He wasn't moved by people's efforts to sway his feelings through puffery and praise. And if resentment had a face, it'd be the surly mug of Daryl Dixon. The weight of the bow that he kept slung over his shoulder was balanced out by the massive chip that he kept firmly in place on the other. Though the nature of their grudges had been different, he and Darcy definitely bore them in common.
But more than anything, he'd been able to relate to how Darcy had felt about Elizabeth. He might not have understood her appeal, but he'd understood how Darcy had felt wanting someone who he'd thought that he shouldn't. How he'd been twisted up by a love that he'd felt was inappropriate. He'd worried that Elizabeth was beneath him socially, while Daryl had feared just the opposite. That his Beth was too good for him. Too good for him and far too young. But, while the root of the two men's concerns had been different, it was clear that the way it had affected them had been the same.
Those similarities had been so painfully obvious that he'd noticed them from the start. Considering it was a classic, he'd been expecting the novel to be a challenging read, but - in truth - it was incredibly straightforward and required very little analysis. He hadn't needed any literary skills to interpret the short, but powerful, little sentence that so accurately captured their shared predicament. One simple little sentence describing Darcy's feelings towards Elizabeth near the beginning of the book that had struck him as such a perfect summation of his feelings towards Beth at the beginning of his own romantic journey with her.
She attracted him more than he liked.
It hadn't been a complex thought, but it hadn't been a complex truth, either. It had been a very basic truth that had been his reality for months. Months and months when he'd wished that he hadn't wanted her as much as he had. Months and months when he'd hoped that his attraction would flame itself out - would fade and be forgotten - only to find it burning brighter every day. That had been his reality for so long and was still his reality, in a way. Because, if he'd been less attracted to her, maybe her loss would be a little easier to handle. Just a tiny bit easier to take.
Maybe that wouldn't have been the first day he'd lied down on her bed.
She attracted him more than he liked.
He'd been able to relate so strongly to harboring an unwanted attraction and he'd been able to relate to how Darcy had dealt with that unwanted attraction, too. How he'd tried to talk himself out of it and tried to hide it and done whatever he could to make sure his Elizabeth didn't notice. Though there was nothing humorous about the passage, one paragraph describing Darcy's avoidant behavior had actually made him laugh out loud.
He wisely resolved to be particularly careful that no sign of admiration should now escape him...Steady to his purpose, he scarcely spoke ten words to her through the whole of Saturday, and though they were at one time left by themselves for half an hour, he adhered most conscientiously to his book, and would not even look at her.
He'd thought that was so funny because it was such a painfully accurate reflection of his own actions. Once he'd discovered just how strongly he felt about Beth, he'd gone out of his way - sometimes comically and sometime almost cruelly out of his way - to make sure that no sign of admiration should now escape him. And the part about speaking ten words to her in a day had been, at times, completely true, too. Both because he'd generally never been much of a talker and because, like Darcy, he'd been afraid that if he'd spoken too much, he'd have given it all away.
He'd have accidentally tipped his hand.
Those hadn't been the parts that had really gotten to him, though. What had killed him had been the part about Darcy burying his head in a book and refusing to look at her. That part had struck such a hilarious and mortifying chord with Daryl because he really had done that.
He really had done that very thing.
Exactly.
It had probably been a month or so after he'd realized that he wanted her and they'd been in the middle of an unseasonable heat wave. He'd pulled the night shift on watch and, since it had been too hot to hunt, he'd taken the afternoon off and snuck off to the prison library: which was located in the center of the building and, therefore, one of the coolest rooms in the place. He'd been lying on the couch trying to read an exceedingly dull book about the Civil War when Beth had walked in unexpectedly. He'd been facing the door and had looked up instinctively upon her arrival and, when he'd seen her, he'd been momentarily stunned. She'd been wearing shorts - which he'd almost never seen her in - and a tight tank top that was clinging to her sweat-slickened skin.
So much sweat-slickened skin.
He'd never seen that much skin on her. Never seen her so bare. Not since he'd cared, anyway. Not since it had become the kind of sight that would make his heart race and leave him absolutely frozen in place. She'd greeted him with a big smile and asked him how he was doing, but he hadn't been able to handle looking at her, let alone talking to her, so he'd just grunted and turned his eyes immediately back to the book.
And that's where they'd stayed for the rest of her time there.
Which, he'd had to admit with another self-deprecating snicker, had been for more than half an hour.
Apparently, he was even more stubborn than Darcy, because he'd probably ignored Beth - probably pretended like the fall of Savannah was more interesting than the prettiest girl in Georgia - for well over an hour that day. And she'd even tried to engage him, too. Good old Jane didn't mention whether Elizabeth had done that, but his Beth certainly had. She'd asked him if he was enjoying his book, asked him how things had gone on watch, and made a few other comments throughout their time together. And he'd given her a handful of grunts and a couple one word answers in return, but he'd never once looked at her. He'd adhered most conscientiously to his book 'd kept his eyes glued to the volume that he'd barely been reading and certainly hadn't been paying any attention to. Because he'd known that if he'd looked at her, if his eyes had locked in on all that beautiful glowing skin, he'd have been fucked. There would have been no way that he could have hidden his interest in her, so he'd just ignored her completely instead.
Steady to his purpose, as Ms. Austen would say.
Unlike Daryl, though, Darcy had eventually worked up the balls to lift his eyes from the book and propose to his Elizabeth. And the result had been a disaster that Daryl had also been able to relate to. Always the poor communicator, Darcy had made a mess of the entire situation and, in revealing his concerns about her background, had ended up seriously insulting his would-be-bride rather than winning her hand. Elizabeth had insulted him in return and Darcy's response to the attack had read like a transcript of a long regretted conversation that he'd once had with his Beth. A conversation they'd had in the guise of a drinking game in which she'd asked him, with an innocence he hadn't been able to recognize at the time, whether he'd ever been in prison. She hadn't meant it as an insult, but he'd taken it as one. As deep of an assault on his character as the accusations that Elizabeth had leveled against Darcy during his botched proposal. And his response to it had been almost exactly the same.
"And this," cried Darcy, as he walked with quick steps across the room, "is your opinion of me! This is the estimation in which you hold me! "
The only difference was that Darcy would come to regret everything leading up to that moment and Daryl would regret everything that came after. Because Darcy had had the good sense to storm out of the room alone and Daryl hadn't. He'd grabbed Beth and pulled her outside with him, thrown his arm around her throat in an act of physical aggression that would always haunt him and made a gruesome game of target practice with a walker. But that hadn't been the worst of it. While Darcy had insulted Elizabeth's low-breeding and family connections - those social obstacles that'd he'd been casting aside in order to propose - Daryl had gone straight for the jugular and attacked Beth personally for no purpose other than to wound her. To make her hurt like he'd hurt. He'd accused her of caring more about getting drunk than about the loss of her family, compared her to a dumb college bitch, insisted that her sister was dead and implied that she was being an idiot for believing that she'd ever see her again.
The sister who was very much alive and had been a better friend to Daryl than he'd ever imagined. The sister who had stopped herself from asking him if he'd been in love with Beth because she'd known that it would have pained him to answer and had been kind enough to spare him that hurt. The sister who had agreed that her husband should give up his only picture of her - and her only picture of her sister - so that he could have it instead. So that he could have a photo of the woman he loved. A photo that was and would always be his most cherished possession. The sister who had shared a bottle of off-brand vodka and rehashed old prison stories with him on his last night in Alexandria and who had been the last human being that he'd spoken to. The sister who, given the fragility of life those days, might be the last human being that he ever spoke to and the last friendly living face that he ever saw again.
Yeah, that sister.
That dead, dead sister.
Telling the woman you loved that you failed to rejoice in the inferiority of her connections and had reservations about aligning yourself with a family whose condition in life was so decidedly beneath your own was a pretty bad way to kickoff a marriage, but as far as Daryl was concerned his behavior towards Beth at the moonshine shack had been far worse than Darcy's failed professions of love. The guy had been a dick to be sure, but Daryl had been trying to be a dick and that was a meaningful and deeply shameful distinction.
Darcy's treatment of Elizabeth had still been uncalled for, though. And, because it was fiction, he'd been given the opportunity to atone. To apologize and to try to make it right. And, also because it was fiction, it was an opportunity that - unlike Daryl - he'd decided to take. He'd been strong enough and bold enough and brave enough to do the hard thing and put his heart on the line. Propose to her again and express his regret.
And, with the afternoon winding down, Daryl was finally getting to that part of the book. Finally getting to those last few scenes where the flawed hero corrects his mistakes and gets the girl. Those presumably rewarding scenes where the audience earns their happily-ever-after. And, as he read Darcy explain how he'd been affected by his memories of his first failed attempt to win Elizabeth's hand, he thought that he could have said the exact same thing about his treatment of Beth that day at the shack.
"The recollection of what I then said - of my conduct, my manners, my expressions during the whole of it - is now, and has been many months, inexpressibly painful to me."
That was so fucking true. That day haunted him - had haunted him for months -and he wished so badly that he'd apologized to her for it. Apologized to her that day or on any of the other days that had followed. Because, even though his life wasn't fiction and he wasn't going to get his happily-ever-after, he had had plenty of opportunities to express his remorse. He'd had plenty of opportunities and he hadn't taken a single one. Because she'd forgiven him without a word. She'd hugged him and she'd forgiven him and he'd known - known - that she'd known that he'd been sorry. And he'd allowed that to be enough. He'd allowed that unspoken apology to suffice and taken advantage of her goodwill. And that truly haunted him because manhandling her like that and calling her a name like that had been so horribly reminiscent of Will Dixon's treatment of women - had been such a small, but terrifying, glimpse of everything that he'd never wanted to be - that it really had been inexpressibly painful to him.
And, unfortunately, that hadn't been the only time his conduct, manners, and expressions towards the woman he loved had been regrettable. The incident at the moonshine shack hadn't been the only thing that he had to apologize to her for. Hadn't been the only thing that was inexpressibly painful to him about his behavior during their relationship. And he couldn't help thinking about that. Thinking about all those conversations that he'd wished that he'd done differently. All the different changes that he'd wished that he'd had made to his conduct, manners, and expressions. He dutifully continued to read as Elizabeth's family celebrated the delightful news of their daughter's engagement, but half of his mind was occupied by all those other regrettable exchanges.
Or, really, by the most regrettable exchange of them all. The inexpressibly painful recollection that was defined not by the regrettable things that he had said, but by the regrettable things that he hadn't. Their final night together in the funeral home kitchen. That doomed night when they'd shared their last dinner and when his commitment to hiding his feelings - his panicked insistence that no sign of admiration should now escape him - had made him avoid her question about the existence of good people and sent him running towards that fucking door.
His mind was in two different worlds as he read those final chapters, but when he got to one of the last conversations between the lovestruck couple, those worlds collided. Elizabeth brought up a small gathering at which Darcy had basically ignored her and his explanation for his behavior perfectly captured Daryl's problem that fateful meal.
"You might have talked to me more when you came to dinner."
"A man who had felt less, might."
The simplicity and honesty of that response floored him. Brought completely unexpected tears to his eyes. He couldn't believe that he was almost crying over a fucking romance novel, but that line went straight to his soul. Hit him right where he lived and loved and mourned. Because that had been his greatest obstacle to treating her right: he'd felt more than he'd been able to handle, more than he'd known what to do with, more than he'd ever felt before. And all those feelings had paralyzed him. They'd stilled his already reticent tongue. They'd left him unable to speak and, even worse, had sometimes made him speak in ways that he shouldn't have. To say things that should have never been said at all.
He'd known that already, of course. Darcy's response hadn't offered him any new insight, but it had made it seem like a legitimate explanation. Like something that made sense and that normal men - even better than normal men, even heroes in fucking romance novels - also struggled with. Though he'd thought little of the actual book, he knew that it wasn't trash. It was a beloved classic that was taught in schools and made into movies that played on public television. Darcy and Elizabeth were a fantasy couple who had entertained audiences for two hundred years. This man - this man who felt too much to talk to the woman he loved, this man who'd spoken to her insultingly when he had talked to her because he'd been too shitty of a communicator to do better - was fucking loved by generations of readers.
And that kind of blew his mind.
When Darcy said a man who had felt less, might, Elizabeth's response hadn't been well, a real man would have or a man who had truly loved me would have. No, her response had been one of complete understanding and her own supposedly endearing brand of acceptance.
"How unlucky that you should have a reasonable answer to give, and that I should be so reasonable as to admit it!"
Reasonable.
Jane Austen - who he could only picture as a classy lady covered in lace and obsessed with proper English etiquette and the rules of decorum - had thought that that shit was reasonable. And, underneath that horrid watercolor on the cover, the publisher had proudly proclaimed that the novel had More Than 20 Million Copies Sold. So, even if most of those people had thought it was bullshit, that still meant millions of people had thought that it was reasonable, too. Millions of people had accepted that explanation and loved Darcy anyway. Loved him and Elizabeth and envied the untold story that followed the novel's concluding chapter: that happily-ever-after when the perfect couple enjoyed their domestic felicity.
And he was really surprised by how much that knowledge affected him. Was surprised that it even affected him at all. He thought that most people were idiots and, while he'd found a way to make it interesting and taken some personal meaning from it, he hadn't thought that the book had really been any good. He didn't walk away from the experience thinking that Jane Austen had been some great artist or that she'd had any particular insight into human nature. So her opinion on what constituted acceptable behavior shouldn't have meant anything to him. And the opinions of her readers - many of whom had been the kind of people who'd looked at that horrid watercolor on the cover and gotten excited about the gooey delights that laid beneath it - shouldn't have meant anything to him, either. If he thought that most people were idiots, he definitely thought that those people were some of the biggest idiots of the bunch.
None of it should have mattered at all, but it did. For reasons that he couldn't understand, it did. It mattered that Darcy's inability to talk had stemmed from an abundance of feeling and it mattered that people had considered that reasonable.
That Elizabeth had considered that reasonable.
Because, even though he in no way saw her as his Beth, he firmly believed that that would have been her response, too. If he'd explained that his emotions were stifling his speech - without any more detail than Darcy had provided in those seven simple words - she'd have just smiled and laughed. Not a laugh of mockery, but a laugh of realization. A laugh that revealed her happiness with finally understanding the source of the problem and her relief that it hadn't been anything she'd consider serious. Anything negative or worrisome or wrong. A laugh that said You mean that's it? That's all that's bothering you?
A laugh that said You're ridiculous, Daryl. What could you possibly have to fear?
And because she'd been a talker, and because she'd have known that he'd have needed to hear it, she wouldn't have just let her laugh speak for her. She would have made it clear. She would have reassured him and told him it was okay. She would have told him that he didn't ever have to talk if he didn't want to. She would have told him that she wanted him to want to, though, and that'd she'd listen to anything he had to say.
She would have understood.
Just like Jane Austen and Elizabeth and, apparently, millions of people around the world.
She would have understood.
With the newly minted Mr. and Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy happily in love, Daryl closed the book and imagined how it all could have played out. He brought his right hand up to his chest to rest on her dog tags and, remembering going through her French notes notes the previous day, he imagined how it all could have unfolded between them.
Not between Mr. Darcy and Ms. Bennett, but between Master Dixon and Private Greene.
He imagined them together at some point after the prison. At some point on Operation Vittles when he'd been too overwhelmed by his own emotions to speak. Or, at least, to speak properly. To say the things that he'd really wanted to say or that he'd needed to say or that, in retrospect, he knew that she'd deserved to hear. Maybe even that night at the shack. Maybe that night on the porch after his temper had cooled and she'd silently forgiven him. When they'd just been enjoying the buzz of the moonshine and the soft breeze of the night.
He imagined looking over at her and making that Eiffel Tower hand gesture - that signal that would look like nothing more than an A to anyone else, but would mean so much more to them - and simply saying too much. He wouldn't have even needed Darcy's seven words. He'd always been efficient and he could have done it in two. Just that little gesture - that move that would have been solely theirs - and those two little words.
too much.
I feel too much.
And she would have understood. She would have understood what he meant and she would have understood what he was doing. She would have known that he was trying to have a conversation that he wasn't equipped to have. She would have known that he was struggling and that, as usual, he was relying on his hands on his humor to get him through it.
And she wouldn't have just understood it, she would have loved it.
She would have thrown herself into it with the same enthusiasm that she'd always brought to Operation Vittles. She would have seen it as a game - in the best and purest sense - and she would have responded in kind. It would have be Operation Eiffel to her and it could have been the most honest conversation they'd ever had.
And, knowing her, maybe one of the funnest, too.
All conducted in half-sentences that no one else would have understood. It would have been personal in every way because it would have been in their own little code. An indecipherable dialogue that would have seemed like gibberish to anyone else, but would have been so meaningful to them.
He imagined making that gesture that night and saying too much and when he really thought about it - when he ran through all her possible responses - he could only imagine her making the gesture and saying too much, too. She'd had a long history of saying things that surprised him but, in that particular instance, he couldn't picture her saying anything else.
too much, too.
I feel too much, too.
Because it would have been as true for her as it had been for him. Not for the same reasons. He didn't think for a second that her excessive emotions would have been tied up in her feelings for him. But she had to have been feeling too much that night, too. In a week when she'd witnessed her father be decapitated, when she'd lost her home, when she'd been separated from her sister and almost everyone she knew, when she'd been assaulted and yelled at by the only person left in her life - the person who she relied on for her very survival in a very real way - and when she'd been drunk for the very first time in her sweet little life, she had to have been feeling too goddamn much, too.
And he imagined the whole half-conversation unfolding. Imagined their hands dancing and their eyes locking, and probably occasionally darting away, as they sat on the porch and half-talked about everything that was happening. As he tried to half-explain himself and she tried to fully relieve him. Every sentence beginning with a unspoken I feel...
too much.
too much, too.
terrible 'bout what happened.
like it's all in the past.
like you shouldn't be forgivin' me.
like you're easy to forgive.
like you're gonna be scared of me now.
more scared of that ashtray. That thing gives me the creeps.
like a human version of that ashtray.
surprised you identify with the pink.
like green would be more my color, but the point's the fuckin' same.
like the point's fucking stupid.
like you've had too much to drink if you're talkin' like that.
confident you're the bad influence.
sure you're right.
positive an ashtray never influenced me. So I guess you can't be one. Trapped you in my web of words, Mr. Dixon.
more trapped in this fuckin' shack than in your wicked web of words, girl.
like this shack is kinda nice.
like this shack is fuckin' poison. This place is fucked.
like we should burn it down then.
like I didn't hear your drunk ass right.
LIKE WE SHOULD BURN IT DOWN THEN.
like we're gonna need more booze.
He spent a good half an hour going through potential script after script. Considering all the different ways that half-conversation could have been half-written. All of them beginning with too much and ending with like we're gonna need more booze: their own twisted apocalypse version of and they lived happily ever after. His mind was firmly engaged in his own fictitious life, but some part of him obviously still had Pride and Prejudice on the brain, though. When running through one of those fantasy conversations, he had to laugh when he unexpectedly imagined himself saying worse than Wickham: the scumbag scoundrel whose dastardly acts had formed the basis for the novel's central drama and threatened everyone's happiness. It cracked him up not because it was funny, but because it would have absolutely shocked her to hear him make a Pride and Prejudice reference. He could just picture the look on her face when he busted that out of nowhere. And he could picture the fun he could have had by acting like her shock was surprising to him. Like he was a huge Jane Austen fan and that he read those kind of books all the time. Like anyone who would look at him would know that. Like it was obvious.
He liked hunting and motorcycles and nineteenth century romance novels. Just like every other red-blooded redneck.
Didn't she get him at all?
She probably would have apologized for assuming otherwise and he would have found her undoubted sincerity adorable. It would have been crazy for her to believe that he'd ever read that book because he absolutely never would have read that book, but she would have felt bad about making the assumption anyway.
And she would have blushed and he would have been really tempted to make that hand gesture and say like it ain't fair what you do to me.
The idea brought his mind back to the novel and he realized that, while he hadn't really enjoyed the story, he'd clearly been engaged enough that he'd forgotten part of his original pursuit. He'd gotten so caught up in finding parallels between the narrative and the characters and events in his life - and in the basic mechanics of following the somewhat intricate plot - that he hadn't really spent any time considering what Beth might have been thinking about when she'd read it herself. He had her essay to tell him a lot of that, to give him some definitive answers, but he had planned on keeping her in mind as he'd read it anyway. To try to think about how she might have interpreted or responded to each scene. To try to imagine that just for himself and because it would have given him an opportunity to see how well he really knew her. Really understood her. He wanted to have some expectation about what he might find in that essay so that he could test himself.
Test his grasp of the inner workings of the mind of Beth Greene.
Because he really couldn't lose with that. If he was right, he'd feel good. He'd feel validated. And if he was wrong, he could tell himself that she'd been a different person when she'd written that than the girl who he'd fallen in love with. And the girl who he'd fallen in love with always did fucking surprise him, so being wrong wouldn't really mean that much, either.
It was a win/win and a way to make the most of this last strange conversation.
So, he laid there, toying with her dog tags, and tried to imagine what Beth Greene had thought of the world he'd just spent the afternoon immersed in. What she'd thought of Darcy and Elizabeth and the whole cast of characters that now lived so vividly in his head. He wondered whether she'd cast anyone from her own life in those roles like he had. He'd done it out of necessity - out of the need to make the words really come to life - but he imagined that she might have done it simply because she'd been imaginative and perceptive and might have just found it fun.
He tried to think about who she would have picked to play those parts. Who her Wickham would have been. Had there been some infamous player at her school who she'd thought was perfect for the role? The kind of kid who'd thought that he was God's gift to girls and who'd had just enough girls agree with him to make him unbearable? The kind of kid who'd have known that he'd have no chance with Beth Greene but had still come on to her anyway? Looked her up and down in the hallway, acting like she was lucky that he was doing it? And what about the snotty Caroline? Had there been some queen bee mean girl who she'd pictured dressed in those ostentatiously fashionable gowns? Some girl who'd traded in backhand compliments and cruelty disguised as wit? The kind of girl who'd forget a friend in an instant if it meant gaining a boy's attention?
The exercise frustrated him, though, because it highlighted just how little he knew about her life. About all those years - all sixteen of those years - before he met her. Other than her family, he only knew of two people who had been important to her during that entire time: Jimmy and Molly Rosenberg. And while her boyfriend and her best friend were clearly major figures, they didn't come close to representing her whole social sphere. She'd had lots of friends. Lots of friend for lots of years. Not to mention teachers and doctors and pastors and fucking mailmen. Her life had been full of dozens and dozens of people. Dozens and dozens of potential Wickhams and Carolines.
And he didn't know any of them.
And since the only roles he could imagine her casting would be the main ones - picturing Jimmy and herself as Darcy and Elizabeth - he gave up that line of thought. It made him sad and it made him jealous and he really didn't want to feel those things at all. So, he changed gears and focused on the actual substance of the novel and tried to imagine what she'd thought of the story itself instead. What she'd thought of the characters and the drama that they'd put themselves through.
He wondered how differently it all might have seemed through the eyes of a sixteen-year-old girl. He was a forty-something man whose idea of romance had been giving Beth the fattest squirrel, so he knew that he wasn't the target audience for that book. She was. Or, at least, she had been. At that age, she probably had been. Sure, she'd known that marriage could be like a rusty bird cage and that ladies like Annabelle got their wings clipped sometimes, but he couldn't imagine that she hadn't also believed in grand passions and soulmates and happily-ever-afters. Though her notion of what the term meant had unquestionably changed, he imagined that she probably died still believing in happily-ever-afters. She had just been that kind of girl. She'd had a hopeful and loving heart and, though she'd certainly become a realist, she could have never really been a cynic.
It just hadn't been her nature.
So had she been enchanted by the romantic tale? Had she torn through page after page waiting for that final proposal? Had she smiled that beautiful dreamy smile when Elizabeth finally got her man and Darcy expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do? Had it made her sweet little heart happy to read that?
(Because it had made him laugh. He'd really liked the expression violently in love as it captured the intensity of how he felt so unbelievably well, but he'd seriously questioned the quality of Jane Austen's love life if she'd thought that any man overcome with such a passion could express it sensibly. As far as he was concerned, the violent part of violently in love pretty much made sensibility impossible.)
And what had she thought about the novel's star, Elizabeth? This girl that had seemed so childish to him had actually been older than Beth had been when she'd read the book. Older than she'd been when she'd fucking died. How might that have changed things? Had she identified with her in any way? Had she admired her in any way? If Jane Austen and her 20 million fucking readers were to be believed, there was a lot to appreciate and love about her character. Had Beth felt the same? Had she fallen for Elizabeth's charms?
Had she fallen for the brooding Darcy? He didn't like thinking about that part too much, but since he was a fictitious character, it was a little less threatening to ponder. Had her compassionate church-going heart rejoiced in his little tale of redemption? How he shed his pride and conceit and learned humility through the majesty of love? Had her greedless spirit delighted in the painfully obvious moral lesson of the wealthy man discovering that the most valuable possession was the heart of a good woman?
He imagined that she had. That she'd liked that. That she'd liked them. Both characters were flawed, as the title made clear, and she'd have dutifully regretted Darcy's pride and Elizabeth's prejudice, but being the forgiving soul that she was, she wouldn't have faulted either of them for it and she'd have been rooting for them all the way. She'd have been happy that they'd grown to be better people - having firmly believed that they would all along - and breathed a sigh of relief when the misunderstandings between them had been resolved.
He wondered if he was being unfair to her, but he basically believed that she'd have felt exactly how Jane Austen had wanted her feel. The novel had been written as a work of light entertainment, he assumed, not as a nuanced examination of human nature and moral ambiguity. Though good old Jane had deliberately confused things for dramatic effect, there was little doubt what the audience was ultimately supposed to think about every character. There was no question as to who was good and who was bad and who was to be pitied and who was to be praised. It was all pretty straightforward and he honestly thought that Beth would have interpreted the story exactly on those clearly drawn lines. Not because she's lacked the sophistication to read it another way, but because - unless you were an embittered asshole like him - he didn't know if there really was another way to read it.
He'd been so lost in thought that he hadn't realized just how late it was getting. The sun was beginning to set and he probably only had another hour of daylight left. Another hour before he'd have to force himself to climb out of that bed that he never wanted to leave and turn on the lantern if he wanted to read Beth's essay.
And he really wanted to ready her essay.
He didn't want to wait until the next morning. As much as he generally tried to stretch all things Beth-related out as long as possible, he didn't feel the need to do that this time. He'd paid his dues by reading 226 pages of Jane Austen and he was more than ready to reap his reward of seven pages of Beth Greene. So, he took his hand off the dog tags, reached for the paper that he'd left on the nightstand, and began to read.
And, Mrs. Palmer had been right, it was unexpected in places. At least to him. Elizabeth's primary flaw - that infamous prejudice - was intended to be criticized, but he was surprised by just how harsh Beth had been against her character in general. Just how many aspects of her personality and her behavior Beth had found fault with. Since she was Beth, she'd expressed those sentiments in the least offensive - and most voluminous - way possible, but Daryl could have summarized the four paragraphs she'd devoted to the subject in a single sentence.
This annoyin' little girl needs to get her shit together.
It definitely would have been an unfair summation, as she'd clearly put far more thought into her analysis than that -and conveyed her multiple points far more eloquently - but that was more or less his take away and it really made him smile.
What made him smile even more though were the paragraphs that immediately followed those in which Beth explored how Elizabeth had become so flawed and why that was so unfortunate for her. Those paragraphs where she tried to understand and show compassion for the girl who, as he would have said, couldn't get her shit together. As he'd suspected, she seen all of the character's faults - seen even more than he'd ever expected - but she hadn't been able to bring herself to to truly blame her for them. To hold them against her or to see her as any less of a person because of them.
Among other things, Beth mused on how difficult it must have been for Elizabeth to grow up in the shadow of her older sister: the ethereal Jane who's portrayed as the epitome of gentility and grace and the family's most marriageable daughter. She speculated that that had caused her to feel inferior and unhappy and that so many of her actions - her treatment of other people and her views on the world - had been influenced by that. He wasn't sure how true that was, and he definitely didn't care, but he found it incredibly interesting that Beth had seen it that way.
He wondered if she'd been projecting any of her own experiences into that interpretation. If she'd felt like she'd lived in Maggie's shadow. And he realized that she probably had. She almost certainly had. He thought of their fight at the moonshine shack and how she'd accused him of thinking that she was inferior to the other women at the prison. She'd listed several names, but she hadn't listed them all and she'd definitely listed Maggie. He could remember her spitting that out as the final name on the list and, in retrospect, maybe it was like she was saving the most meaningful one for last. He thought back to talking to her about playing sports in school and how she'd told him that Maggie had always been the athletic one. She'd been embarrassed a bit during that conversation at, at the time, he'd attributed that to her being embarrassed over her presumed lack of physical skill. Over the fact that it might have made her look weak and ill-equipped to survive. But maybe it had been more than that. Maybe it had felt like yet another desirable quality that Maggie had and she didn't
And that would all make such sense, of course. Not just because a younger sister would often feel compared to her older sister and feel inferior to her, but because Maggie really was a pretty intimidating person. She was attractive and bold and strong. He didn't know what she'd been like before the turn, but he imagined that she hadn't been that different in the fundamentals. She'd probably always had more confidence than Beth. And she was practical as well. She wasn't a dreamer like her sister, so maybe that had made her seem like she'd be more successful, too. Like she was that brash Russian bull in a china shop that might cause some damage, but like she'd at least make an impact on the world in the process.
An impact that, maybe, Beth wondered if she'd make as strongly.
After giving Elizabeth a thorough - but compassionate - scolding, Beth had had far fewer criticisms to level at Darcy. As with his lady love, she'd made the obligatory mention of his pride, but even in that she'd made pains to withhold her judgment. While she'd tried to understand and even sympathize with Elizabeth, she'd clearly wanted to sympathize with Darcy. Her section analysing Elizabeth's shortcomings had read like a explanation, but her section examining Darcy's missteps had read more like a defense. She'd given him an easy pass on his botched marriage proposal, claiming that it had been an incredible hard thing to do and that people often handle hard things poorly. She'd argued that his insults had, in their own way, been a meaningful expression of his regard for Elizabeth. He'd been trying to be honest and, while that honestly had come out as cruelty, it had been a laudable goal. It had been a sign of respect and, for a man like Darcy, that kind of respect had really meant something.
His intentions had been honorable and he'd been doing the best that he could do.
And the same went for all of his other errors and missteps. She'd seen him as a person who'd always tried to do the right thing but who, like most people, was sometimes wrong about what the right thing was. And in her eyes that had made him mistaken, but it hadn't made him and less admirable.
What really touched Daryl, though, were her comments about Darcy's poor communications skills: that inability to talk, or to talk well, that he'd found so painfully relatable. Though it had been a problem that had plagued him for his whole life - and a problem that had only become worse when he'd fallen for her - apparently Beth hadn't seen it as much of a problem at all.
And she certainly hadn't seen it as a flaw.
Being good with words is either a talent you're born with or it's a skill you learn, but it's not a reflection of your character. It's no different than being a good painter or a good musician or a good athlete. It doesn't reflect anything about who you are as a person. It doesn't even reflect how smart you are. You could be absolutely brilliant and not be able to string a sentence together or you could be dumb as a post and have the total gift of gab. Being good with words pretty much only tells you one thing about a person: they're good with words. So judging Darcy for not being good with worlds seems like judging him for not being able to play the flute. It's completely irrelevant.
And it's completely foolish, too, because most people can't play the flute. Most people struggle to express themselves, especially when they're overwhelmed. Darcy struggles to express himself the most when he's feeling the most and that's pretty much true of most people. People struggle with words when their emotions get the better of them and we've all said things in the heat of the moment that we've regretted. We've all said things that we wished we could have phrased differently or just never said at all…
Even though it was a school paper and, theoretically, she could have been writing what she'd thought her teacher had wanted to read, he truly believed that she'd meant every word of that. He could practically hear her saying every word of that. And it was so wonderful because, if she had said it to him, he wouldn't have believed her. He wouldn't have thought she was lying, but he would have thought she was exaggerating to try to make him feel better. He would have thought that those words were coming from her beautiful heart, not her beautiful brain. That it'd have been kindness not logic, not true belief, that had prompted her to say them.
But Beth had believed that shit.
He knew that she had.
Even that last part, even the part about everyone saying things that they regret at times, he knew that she'd believed. Knew that she'd truly meant everyone and had included herself in that group. That that hadn't been hyperbole. Though he'd completely deserved what she'd said to him at the moonshine shack - deserved that and so much more - he'd known that she regretted some of it. Had felt bad about calling him a jackass. He'd known that it had bothered her and there had always been a part of him that had wondered why she'd never said anything. It had seemed so out of character for her not to apologize for the outburst and it had always tickled his brain as to why she'd never done it. It had taken the incident with Maggie, the conversation in which she'd stopped herself from asking if he was in love with Beth, to make him understand why she'd been silent. Just like her sister, she'd done it out of kindness. She'd known that her apology would have put a spotlight on his words and made it seem like she'd expected an apology in return. And she'd known that he hadn't been able to do that, hadn't been comfortable with doing that, so she'd let the whole thing go. She hadn't apologized, even though her sweet, guilt-ridden soul had wanted to, because she'd placed his needs over her own.
The guy who had manhandled her and yelled at her and had been very much a jackass.
The guy who definitely hadn't deserved that kind of consideration, but got it anyway.
Because she was Beth and Beth understood.
She'd understood him then and, reading everything that she'd written about Darcy, he'd felt like she'd understood him before they'd even met. Like she'd forgiven his faults before there had even been any faults for her to forgive. And she'd never judged him for them. He'd always felt like that, but it was different seeing it in black in white. It was different seeing it as something that she'd written as a blanket statement of truth. Something that she'd thought about and composed and put on paper and submitted for someone else's critique. An opinion that she'd made in print with her name boldly stamped on top. It was like a contract, like a sworn oath, and he was holding it in his hands.
She'd never judged him for not playing the flute.
He turned his head and could see the shiny instrument sitting on top of her bookcase and could so easily imagine her doing the same as she'd searched for that somewhat odd metaphor. It was a strange choice but, in his case, he thought it was so perfectly apt. Her precious little hands had probably been able to navigate that delicate instrument with ease, but his never could. His hands were large and rough and weren't made for such fine work. His fingers would probably cover two holes when he'd want to cover one and strike a discordant note completely different than the one that he'd intended.
Than the beautiful onethat she'd have been able to strike.
But his hands could do so many other things, though. They could shoot a bow and skin a deer and start a fire. They could fix an engine and kill a walker and even diaper a fucking baby. (Thanks to her.) His hands weren't useless. So, he loved that weird little metaphor. It made it seem - in a way that he could really relate to - like communicating truly was just a talent or a skill like any other. He'd never think that she was any less of a person because she couldn't change the oil on a Triumph, just like she'd never think that he was any less of a person because he couldn't play that fucking flute. They were both good with their hands, their hands just happened to be good at different things.
And that was, as Jane Austen would say, perfectly reasonable.
It was almost completely dark now and he knew that he'd need to get up soon. He'd have to leave her bed and return to his own. Go take his evening antibiotics and some more aspirin and get something to eat. He didn't want to move, though. He didn't want to leave his new favorite place, so he closed his eyes and told himself that he'd just take a few more minutes.
Just a few more minutes and then he'd get up.
And when he did, he was going to grab that flute. He was going to tell her Eiffel like learnin' to play and he was going to add it to his dresser shrine. Because he wanted that reminder of her understanding with him and because he really did, metaphorically, want to learn to play the flute. Even if her spirit was the only one who ever heard him. He wanted to learn how to speak better. To say what needed to be said and to say it right.
He wanted to learn to play the flute.
For her.
Yes, I really did just do that to you. I really did just make you read 20,000 words where all a guy did was go through one backpack and read a book. Send me your chiropractor bills because I'm sure I gave you whiplash with all that fast-paced drama and spine-tingling action!
Seriously, I hope that wasn't too tedious. And I hope that the whole Pride and Prejudice thing wasn't a total nightmare. I probably should have cut that down, but it got away from me and I'm a terrible editor. If you aren't that familiar with the book, I hope I wrote it in a way that still made sense. If you are familiar with the book, I hope you weren't annoyed either by my over-explanation or my over-simplification of the story. That was a sticky wicket. (And, really, a wicket I probably should have left alone, but I really wanted Daryl to read a damn romance novel and it happened to suit my purposes, too.)
Anyway, thanks again for reading and for all your comments and support! Your words me SO MUCH to me and knowing that some people are enjoying this story has really meant a lot during a difficult time. Hope you have a great weekend. (And that we find out WTF is going on with Glenn on Sunday! Damn it all!)
And a special thanks to rougequeen69 for sharing her thoughts on Daryl and Beth's bed. I know you didn't envision me having him read Jane Austen in there, but your comments were really helpful.
ALL of yours are. And, once again, I'm sorry I'm so bad at telling you that. But you've all helped me so much. So thanks again. :)
TOTALLY SHAMELESS PLEA AND COMPLETE ABUSE OF THIS FORUM:
Okay, so if you've been reading my author notes, you might remember that I've been sick for pretty much the entire time that I've been writing this story. Among other things, I've been diagnosed with something called costochondritis which is basically like arthritis of the ribcage/sternum. It restricts my breathing and makes me feel like I'm having a heart attack and there's very little that can be done but wait for it to resolve itself on its own. Which is an insanely long process. I'm doing the few things that I can and I'm lucky enough to have good medical care, but it's been a terrible experience and I'm really desperate to feel better…
So I'm wondering if any of you happen to have any experience with this yourself (or know someone who has) and have something you can recommend other than steroids, anti-inflammatories and heat/cold? I'm relatively young, so I can withstand a lot of stuff, even if it's a hardcore kind of treatment.
I feel insanely awkward asking, but I have this forum where you guys read this and I just have this little voice that keeps saying, "What if there's a reason for that? What if THAT'S why you've been writing fiction for the first timing in your ENTIRE fucking life? In this time period that totally overlaps with you being sick? What if that's not a coincidence? What if it's because someone reading this can help you?" I know that sounds nutty, but I'm at that nutty stage of feeling ill. So please let me know if you have any insight. I don't care if it's a prescription drug or telling me to eat three plums a day. If it's worked for you or someone you know, please pass it along!
(Or, if you're like, "You know, my aunt thought that she had costochondritis for years, but it turns out she had FlipFlorp Disease," please pass that along, too!)
Thank you so much! Even if you have no insight at all, thanks for listening to me whine! Be well and, for God's sake, if you can breathe easily, enjoy the FUCK out of it! Because it's awesome. :)
