So I think you'll notice here that I'm playing fast and loose with the shows timeline. There's some things I want from it and some things I don't, so you'll have to bear with me. I'm not going to hard core go in on the same dialogue either so if things don't look quite right forgive me!
What a fucking day.
As if that nightmare didn't fuck him up good enough and then waking to Beth mirroring his brains messed up thoughts, Rick hauled him out of his pit to go out.
He knows it's because Rick feels sorry for him, stuck with Beth and he hates that. After the uncomfortable silence they all sat in together last night, Rick saw how draining it is being around her but just because he can't handle it don't mean Daryl can't.
Didn't matter the reason, they went on the run. Been a while since he's been on one really.
After the walls went down and they lost Deanna; Rick lost that pretty little girlfriend and her kids, Daryl mostly watched the wall and went recruiting with Aaron.
More people means more hands and he knew how badly they needed a new crew to fix the walls back up.
Looks like all that time he spent avoiding runs came back on him tenfold because they got the rug pulled out from under them today by some smooth talking little prick who calls himself 'Jesus'.
Rick's dealing with him now while Daryl turned tail and headed back to the house because he's been thinking about Beth all day and his arms are fucking killing him.
When he comes through the door, the place is quiet but for the crackle of flames. He frowns into the candle lit hallway.
Power came back this morning but maybe Beth likes the softer light. Denise says it'll be easier on her eyes and reduce the headaches.
He didn't even know Beth had headaches but Denise thinks it's more than likely. He had chance to catch up with her today, before he got home.
Apparently she's been looking for him too, since she heard about Beth coming back. There's not much she can do to help.
Not just because she ain't got confidence in herself but because none of them have seen something like this before.
Besides, it's not like Beth's really suffering at the moment with much of anything, not something solid he can present to Denise for medical opinion or at least not anything she's telling him.
Some flashbacks are normal for amnesia but she told him to watch out for the 'self-harming' after he told her that Beth got agitated and hit herself.
Daryl tried to take her seriously but self-harming seemed like a stretch. Maybe because if he agreed what she was doing was to harm herself, he would have to face the healing burn on his hand.
He kicks off his boots and puts down his bow, rolls his neck on his shoulders and turns the corner to the living room. What he finds stops him in his tracks: confused.
Not confused because he doesn't understand what's happening, but confused because he don't know how he feels about it.
Beth sits crossed legged on a cushion on the floor, her back to Michonne, who sits above her on the sofa with her legs spread to either side of Beth's shoulders, her fingers sifting through Beth's hair.
Except they're not sifting. They're twisting and turning. Plaiting. He saw his ma doing it as a kid but rarely, only when her hair grew out.
Most of the time she had bald patches from his pa dragging her around by his meaty fist in her brown curls.
No one speaks, even though they both know he's here and he's obviously watching them. There's a soft kind of lull to the room.
The fire crackling, a blanket around Beth's legs and Michonne's fingers expertly tugging and twisting and creating braids.
Beth doesn't flinch once, just sits cradling a cup of something steaming and stares into space. His gut tugs a little, wondering if she's okay.
She looks distant, maybe a little too distant like she's out of reach but when his throat is clogged with questions, Michonne looks up at him and gives him a soft smile.
He relaxes back into the balls of his feet but the soft rock on his heels brings Beth's attention up to him. With her head out the way, he can see what she's drinking.
Pine needle tea.
He nearly chokes. Between the braids and the tea, plus every fucking thing that happened yesterday, he's having to battle down the hope that surges in him whenever he sees Beth honouring little things she doesn't understand.
When they were running together, it was warm. Blisteringly warm, but some nights it just wasn't. Some nights it was so cold he couldn't feel his fingers.
He remembers Beth shivering so bad in her sleep guilt was eating him up inside, so he went down to the river bank they were camping by and filled their one flask with water.
Boiled it over the fire as best as he could without burning the flask and then got a load of pine needles to flavour it. Was something he used to have if he stayed out in the woods as a kid.
When he was ten Merle locked him out and it was the scariest night of his life, but after that it stopped being terrifying and started being his safe haven.
Sometimes he would pack his things and run to the safety of the trees around his trailer, until one night a wild dog found him.
Bit him up pretty bad and he had to limp home back to his pa because he had nothing on him to fix himself up. But before that, in the cold nights, he used to make his pine tea.
So that's what he did for Beth and when she woke up that night, they sat and shared it and every cold night after that, she used to ask him to make it.
Daryl clears his throat as she jerks her chin up at him and he jerks his back at her. "Better tea than that 'round here."
"Oh." She glances down at the mug, which she's nearly finished. "Used to make it all the time, before. When I was alone."
It must make his face spasm because she frowns and looks into the fire, turning her head so sharply he watches the strands of her hair slip out of Michonne's nimble fingers.
She doesn't say anything, but her mouth tightens as she gathers the hair back and begins to twist it again.
There's mostly a big mass of hair, but he can already see three quarters of Beth's head has been braided into thick, small plaits.
They almost look like Michonne's dread locks, but they're not tight on her head and they don't encompass all the free spaces of her scalp.
They're more like the braids she used to twine herself and he wonders if she asked for them.
"Rough day?" Michonne asks.
Beth doesn't look up to see his answer, but from the side of her face he can see her eye's darting back and forth in the fire, like she can see him there.
"Could say that. Met some guy out there. Might be trouble. You?"
A small wrinkle appears between her brows. "Rick okay?"
"Rick's dealin' with 'im. Be fine."
She stretches her legs outwards and binds the braid with a strip of fabric. As he looks closer, he realises that there's a pile by her thigh of multi-coloured strips.
Looks like she's using them to hold the plaits in place. The silence isn't tense like he thought but kinda stretches around them.
He wonders if he should go and mull around the kitchen: find something to do; to cook. He wonders if Beth ate yet or at all.
Pine tea is an illusion, makes you feel better when you ain't got no meat to put in your belly but soon the hunger gnaws at your gut.
Just as he's clearing his throat to ask, Michonne slaps her thighs. "Tha's it, m'done."
Beth blinks slowly and glances up, reaching a hand behind her hair to play with the mix of braids and loose curls.
Michonne's hand follows behind her, sifting the strands as her dark fingers trail over the bumps and there's a breathless moment as her finger parts hair and rides over the scar in Beth's head.
Daryl's chest freezes and Beth goes rigid, the beginning of a smile fixing so harshly on her face it pulls at her brows and tightens her forehead. "Thanks."
The one word is so weighted he could be crushed under it, is crushed under it and all of sudden he don't wanna be in the room, don't wanna see.
He don't move though and then Michonne's finger falls away and she stands quickly, moves out of the cage of Beth's body.
"I best get goin'. Check on Rick."
He nods his chin and watches her pass him, to the door and out of it without another word from any of them.
When it shuts behind her he feels Beth's gaze on him but when he turns to look at her she's staring into her half empty mug.
Daryl clears his throat. "You eat?"
Beth glances up and shakes her head, fingers clenched on the mug; nail beds so chewed down he almost winces. "Wanna help me make summat?"
He ain't got a clue why he's offering for her to join him. All he knows is that he's been gone all day and paranoia has been riding him.
Wondering what she's doing, how she's feeling, where she is. If he can just keep his eye on her for a solid five minutes before he forces himself to sleep again, he'll be fine.
Beth looks hesitant and she grips the mug so tightly it's like she's trying to find an anchor there.
He moves to leave, not wanting her to feel like he's waiting on her, or that she has to come with him but he doesn't get very far before she jumps up to come after him, her mug discarded onto the coffee table.
When she stands he stops to wait again and then like an idiot tries to navigate his looming body and hers –small and thin as she is- down the narrow hallway to the kitchen.
Their arms bump together and he notices that even while she flinches, she doesn't edge into the wall or try to squirm by, in fact: she presses closer, their arms riding together the rest of the way.
It ain't like he's been around many women or knows how to be. He never really got chance: spending too much time dicking around with Merle.
But even he isn't frigid enough to get excited by a woman's arm brushing his. Even still, his whole body floods with goose bumps like she's run the pad of her finger over the strip of skin at his waist.
He breathes deep and loosens his chest even as it seizes until they clear into the kitchen and he heads for the cupboards. Carol drops 'groceries' around for him every four days, says she's gotta make sure he eats or he won't.
He never knows what's in the cupboards so he takes a moment to clears his throat before he says, "want spag'etti an' canned meat balls that taste like shit?"
Beth snorts a laugh and he almost stops dead grabbing the can but manages not to. "Can I help?"
"Er', yeah," he grunts, handing the cans over. "Opener's in the draw behind you."
When he's got the pasta he turns to face her, watching her surf through the drawer until she produces the tin can opener.
Makes him wonder how the memory thing works: what she can and can't recall. When you lose your life shouldn't you come back a dumb kid?
No idea how to tie your shoes and shit But Beth ain't. She knows how to be alive, she just don't know how to be a person. Little better than a walker.
He bends for the pot just so he don't have to look at her and when he comes back up she's running the edge of her thumb over the can opener.
His gut twists but it don't look hard enough to cut, the skin still pink and edging towards white.
"How'd you know what I's tryin' to sing earlier?"
He don't like it when she asks questions because he don't wanna lie to her but how can he tell her without her flipping out about associating her to Beth?
Has it not occurred to her by now that she must be? That if all these bits of stories she can connect to, kinda remember resonate with her then there's no way she's anyone but Beth?
Except it probably has occurred to her. It probably is something she's thought of and turned away from in fear.
He don't think he would wanna live up to the expectations of other people just because they claimed they were someone he knew in a time he don't remember neither.
Maybe she's starting to realise Beth was once her and now she has to work that out.
Even still, he ain't gonna lie to her and if he can give her enough trust and loyalty to prove that while she once was Beth, she no longer has to be, not with him, she might feel better about it.
He clears his throat and rips open the plastic, pouring the pasta into the pan just to buy some time. From the corner of his eye he can see her thumb turning white against the blade.
"Used to sing it. Wrote it too, think. Sang it when we was runnin' together, got me to sleep when I couldn't."
She stares at him for a long moment before she whispers, "it's your song isn't it? The one that makes you think about her. About Beth."
He sighs, tired of that time taking over him. "Yeah."
"'Cause you loved her."
Daryl's managed to avoid this question a few times now. In Rick's: 'I know you lost somethin' back there,' and Carol giving him her knife, telling him to feel it.
In the burn on his hand under the heat of his cigarette. In the tears that soaked his face and the haze that barely kept him alive for so long after. He's tired of lying.
"Daryl?" Beth presses.
He clears his throat and jerks his chin into his shoulder. "Yeah. Yeah I loved her. Wasn't enough."
Beth's eyes are sad and he hates it. "Why?"
His face is so hot and his eyes so itchy, throat tight that he don't wanna answer but he forces it out, "'cause she made me. 'Cause she loved the world and it loved her back. Sun shone on her face, wind blew her hair. The trees danced and the grass swayed under her feet. She was…" he laughs bitterly. "Wasn't human. Was summat else. Summat too good. The song, it's right. It's right for her.""
Beth's smile is watery and his eyes dart away, glance down and freeze, gut throwing as he notices the blood pissing down her thumb. "Beth!"
She frowns and follows his gaze, notices her bleeding thumb and drops the can opener with a clang, droplets of blood flying across the counter. "M'sorry."
"Quick, c'mere I gotta first aid kit. Good job Carol made me keep it."
She nods and collapses against the counter, her cheeks bright red. "Gotta clean the wound," she whispers softly.
He was hurringing closer but he pauses a minute to listen, to watch.
"S'not deep," she says, observing her own flesh. "Won't need stitches."
He's pushing it, but he still asks, "how'd you know?" As he takes her thumb, popping the kit and grabbing the sterile wipes.
He don't make it a big thing when he takes her hand, finds it warm. It is a big thing though.
"I… dunno." She swallows and glances away before she looks back at him, spreading her fingers so she has room to work. "Don't tell the others. Please."
He glances up at her under his hair and stares for a moment, knowing exactly how she knows before he jerks his head. "I won't."
She's right: it ain't deep so he just puts a plaster on it, smoothing it down on her skin. Seems that every bit of memory she has always comes back to Hershel.
Is that part of her pushed so far down it's screaming to come up? She has flickers or their time together but she lost her daddy just before that.
When his fingers brush the cuff of her wrist she shudders, their eyes on the peak of scar that shows and suddenly he hopes she don't remember no more tonight.
Beth frowns when he glances up at her and pushes her sleeve down, peering at the silvery white strip of skin under the harsh glare of the kitchen light.
"I was like this before," she whispers softly.
Daryl swallows. "You was sad. You tried to opt out."
Beth's eyes water and he prays to God she doesn't cry because he ain't got a clue how to make her stop. "I don't feel pain. It jus' ain't there. I tried."
He thinks of the scars he saw when he ripped her out the bath and thinks he might be sick.
Her voice is choked when she says, "I ain't never gonna be Beth again 'cause I don't feel anythin'. But s'all wrong. 'Cause I get scared an' sad an' angry but I don't feel this." She waves her thumb at him. "I ain't right."
He shrugs and tries to laugh but it's gritty and choked. "S'cool: no pain. Wouldn't have minded it some decades ago. Hell, could do with it now. Gettin' munched on by walkers looks like a shitty way to go. No dignity."
She gives a watery laugh and it's like it shakes the tears loose so they fall down her cheeks. "Why you so nice to me? How can you even stand to look at me, when I look like her but I ain't?"
He glances down at her, his eyes tracing her face and her wet lashes. "'Cause we had each other's back before an' I still got yours now. You ain't gotta be Beth, you just gotta be alive."
Beth smiles softly and grips his hands, cradling them to her chest. "Not one version of me has ever been worthy of you, Daryl." Her voice drops to a whisper and her eyes are intimate when she says, "I don't know if she ever told you, but there ain't no way she didn't love you back. M'sorry I can't be her for you. The pain on your face when you said those words… when I do certain things. I feel like I'm destroyin' you."
Every word is so painfully accurate it's like she's hitting him between his eyes. He glances down at their hands and prays to God he does not fucking look at her and cry like a little pussy. "It hurt to look at you before, ain't nothin' changed now."
There's movement and suddenly her forehead is pressed to his. "Should I leave? I've been so selfish."
"No," he spits desperately, panic clutching at him. "You don't gotta go anywhere."
He tries to think of something more reassuring to say but his tongue is in knots.
It doesn't matter: shortly after because words are forgotten when their lips slide together and her teeth catch his bottom one, her head tilting to kiss him deeper.