Hello dear readers! Thanks so much for all your support for the last chapter! I especially appreciate all you folks that took the time to comment and let me know that you were okay with the slower placed reunion. I hope that I don't make you regret that because, writing this, I realized that it really couldn't be the final chapter either. I was hoping to wrap it up here - a nice even dozen - but it didn't work. So, there will be one more chapter to this story...so, once again, please bear that in mind as you're reading this and getting worried about the pacing. :)
Thanks so much for reading! Hope you enjoy...
She wanted honesty and he was going to give it to her. As hard as it was, he was going to do it. He just needed to take a second - try to figure out where to even begin - and while he took that second, Beth started talking again.
"It helps, I'll go first, okay?," she asked him gently, tilting her head in that way of hers. That single move that she could somehow use to signal so much. Confusion. Humor. Thoughtfulness.
Sympathy.
"What?," he replied automatically, puzzled by what she would need to be honest about.
"I'll go first," she repeated, sensing the pressure he was under and hoping to alleviate it a little. "With the full and complete truth. The painful honesty. I'll go first. I'll say that, sitting in those woods all night, I honestly thought that you were going to be a random stranger. I honestly thought that I was going to have to run again and I honestly thought that I wouldn't make it on the road alone in this condition much longer. And, as terrifying as that was, I honestly kind of hoped for that...Eventually, I honestly kind of hoped for that…"
She took a deep breath, remembering the terror of the night before and trying to steady herself for what she was about to admit. Something that felt truly awful and shameful to her. Something that was a poor reflection on her character and a side of herself that she didn't like.
A side that she suspected, with horror, was new.
"Because I thought that, if you weren't a stranger, you were going to be Glenn," she explained after a beat, unable to fully look him in the eye. "Figured that's why you were in Maggie's room all night. And I honestly didn't know if I could handle that. Handle being stuck in this house with him and his grief. Living with him in that kind of pain. That's how shitty of a person I must have become, because I honestly didn't want to be in that situation."
He was horrified for her. Horrified that that had been her experience and horrified that she clearly felt so distraught over it. She hadn't wanted to be trapped in a house with her mourning brother-in-law. She hadn't wanted to live all alone with his despair and she thought that that made her a shitty person.
He thought that just made her a person. An incredibly normal person.
And it killed him because he knew that she thought that she'd escaped that fate. She thought that, by finding him there instead, she'd avoided that uncomfortable situation. But he knew that she hadn't. She'd just walked into a different uncomfortable situation. She wasn't going to be stuck alone with a grieving man, but she was going to be stuck alone - at least until they could get to Alexandria - with an insane man.
With a man who's delusionally in love with her.
She'd glossed over the part about him being in what she'd imagined was Maggie's room all night, but he hadn't. He'd heard that part loud and clear. Beth's sudden reappearance had driven all thoughts of The Language of Flowers out of the window, but he was vividly reminded that he'd spent the entire night in her room working on her memorial. That was the kind of shit he was going to have to tell her.
And, really, was that any less uncomfortable than finding a grieving Glenn?
At least she wouldn't have had to worry about a grieving Glenn looking at her when she bent over or misinterpreting her smiles or thinking thoughts she didn't want him to think.
Beth hadn't been able to really look him in the eye as she'd spoken, but she'd definitely been able to look him in the face and the pained expression that she saw overcome him only confirmed her worst fears about what her thought process said about her. About the kind of person that she was and, maybe, about how much she'd changed. He clearly thought, as did she, that that was cowardly and cruel of her. Awful not to want to do everything you can to be a comfort to someone you love.
And that hurt her terribly - his respect meant more to her than anyone's and she was sure that she'd just lost some of it - but she was committed to push forward anyway.
Partly because she thought that it might make things easier on him. Maybe it wouldn't be so hard to tell her the terrible news when he realized that she was kind of a terrible person now. Or maybe it would make him feel better about whatever sins he believed he'd committed to know that she'd committed sins, too. But mostly it was because she wanted him to know - to truly know - how genuinely relieved she was to have found him. He thought his solitary presence there was going to break her, but it had saved her.
It wasn't a wound, it was a bullet dodged.
It was one gut-wrenching bullet that she actually had fucking dodged and he needed to get that.
She needed him to get that.
"I couldn't handle the thought of you being Glenn," she repeated, getting ready to lay everything out as starkly as she could. Really make him see her reality, even if it cost her. "And that wasn't because I couldn't handle the thought of losing Maggie, it was because I couldn't handle the thought of seeing Glenn like that. So, until I saw your face, I was honestly kind of hoping for a stranger. Even though that meant I was probably gonna die on the run."
Fuck, he thought.
She'd rather have died than have been in that situation. She'd rather have fucking died.
His stomach literally clenched at that. Not only because it underscored how much she didn't want to be in an emotionally charged environment, but because it also highlighted just how fragile her health was. She'd said it earlier and here she was saying it again: she thought that she wouldn't make it on the road much longer. She wasn't fucking ready to be out there. She wasn't ready to be out there and he was about to tempt her to take a thousand mile journey. He was about to resurrect all their family and friends - all those loved ones who she thought were dead - and tell her that all she had to do was survive another month on the road to see them.
And he was going to make her rather die on that road than live another day with him in that house.
Beth could see that he was troubled by her truth and she didn't blame him one bit. She was troubled by it, too. But, in her mind, she'd finally arrived at the good part of the story. The part where he saved the day. The part where she could relieve him of his anxiety. The part that she'd admitted her selfish thinking just to get to. And she wanted him to hear it for the good news that it was, so she forced herself to meet his gaze.
She looked him straight into his pained eyes and smiled a small, but genuine, smile as she continued.
"So, honestly, Daryl," she told him, emphasising that word so that he would believe that what she was about to say was as important of a truth as any of the others she'd just shamefully spoken. "Finding you here? With tomato soup and fruit cocktail? My life's looking pretty good to me right now. And, no matter what you say or don't say, it's gonna keep looking good. Because I'm prepared and I'm ready to look ahead. To move forward. I'm alive, I'm free, and I'm at home with my best friend..."
She stopped suddenly, instantly self-conscious for having referred to him as her best friend. His surprise at hearing that was undeniable and she couldn't help but think that he wouldn't want to hold that title. But that didn't change the fact that it was true. He was her best friend. He was her best friend if for no other reason than he was pretty much her only friend. Truth be told, she didn't really have any friends at all.
And that wasn't because they were dead.
Even when their whole family had been alive and together at the prison - even when life had still been some post-apocalyptic version of normal - she hadn't had any friends. Maggie was her sister and, no matter how close they were, that didn't truly count. Carol? Sasha? Michonne? They'd liked each other. They'd gotten along. But they hadn't really been friends.
And, admittedly, she hadn't really been friends with Daryl, either. Not in a classic sense. But she'd wanted to be. She'd wanted to be his friend and she'd always looked almost desperately forward to when he'd come and visit Judy. Always looked forward to giving him the day's rundown and telling him about their favorite little girl's latest accomplishments.
To her embarrassment, sharing those stories with him had always been the highlight of her day.
Judy had been her whole world at the prison - taking care of her pretty much her one and only role - and she'd shared those stories with everyone. Shared them because she'd wanted to and because they'd been basically all that she'd had to talk about. But she only ever really looked forward to sharing them with Daryl. She'd often felt guilty over the fact that, whenever Judy had done something new or funny or noteworthy, her first thought had always been about telling Daryl and not about telling Rick. She always had told Rick, of course. But when Judy successfully built her first stack of red plastic cups, she hadn't said, "Daddy's going to be so proud of you, Judy!"
She'd said, "Daryl's going to be so proud of you, Judy!"
And part of that had been a painfully accurate reflection of Rick's distant parenting, but most of it had been a reflection of what Beth herself had cared about. When Judy had stacked those cups, Beth hadn't thought about how Rick's eyes would shine with pride. She'd thought about how Daryl's eyes would shine with wonder. She'd thought about how she'd get to see him happy - even if he could only show that happiness through those eyes and, maybe, a small grin - and how good that would make her feel. How great it was going to be when he came back from a hard day working the fences and walked into her cell - walked into that cell that she often felt so trapped in and acted like it was a relief to be there - and she could share sweet news.
Share something positive and hopeful and good.
She hadn't deluded herself into thinking that he actually saw her as anything other than Judy's babysitter. Hadn't thought that he'd considered her a friend any more than he'd consider anyone else in the prison a friend. She'd imagined that he saw her like she saw Carol and Sasha and Michonne: just a decent person that he was living with now. He was a grown man, after all, and she hadn't thought that he'd had any desire to truly establish a friendship with a teenage girl.
But she'd considered him her friend nevertheless.
A friend by something other than default.
And that might have been ridiculous at the time, but now that it was really just the two of them, she tried to shake off her embarrassment over having made that declaration. They were all each other had and they were friends, she told herself. In a world that was starkly divided between friend and foe, they were most definitely friends. That was undeniable. And, in a world where they were the only friends they had, they had to be best friends, too. That was just language. That was just logic. So while she'd shut her eyes briefly after the words had escaped her mouth, she quickly opened them again and looked back at him as she spoke in conclusion.
"So, as far as I'm concerned, everything is going to be alright," she told him firmly, completely unaware of how many times she'd said them to him in his dreams and how many more times that he'd hoped that she would. "Honestly."
It took everything he had not to start weeping again. Not to start crying at hearing her voice those words. She'd called him her best friend and told him that everything was going to be alright. And that was so beautiful that he wanted to cry. And it was so horrible that he wanted to sob, too. So horrible to know that she'd once valued him so highly and he was about destroy that. He was about to show her how he hadn't been a good friend to her at all. How he'd robbed her of almost every piece of privacy that she'd had. And how everything wasn't going to be alright because she couldn't trust him anymore. Couldn't trust him to be her friend that just loved her and cared for her. Couldn't trust him to not want more from her than she wanted to give.
Everything wasn't going to be alright at all.
Everything wasn't going to be alright at all and it was all because of him.
He fought back those tears, though. He fought back those tears because there was one thing that was more important than all of that. One thing that was more important than everything that he was feeling. And that was correcting her mistake. Correcting her mistaken belief that their family was dead. He'd allowed that to go on for far too long. Far too fucking long and he had to set her straight on that. He had no idea how he'd tell her everything else, but he knew he had to lay out that basic fact first.
"Fuck, Beth," he started, unsurprised that to have such an unpoetic beginning. "You got it all wrong, girl. You got it all wrong and I'm so fuckin' sorry. They ain't dead. I get why you thought that, but they ain't. They're fine...least they were the last time I saw 'em. Maggie, Glenn, Judy, Rick, Carol...fuckin' everyone. We lost Ty and Bob, but that's it. Everyone's alive, Beth. They're safe and they're good. All of 'em."
Daryl might have been doing everything he could not to cry, but Beth wasn't. She'd been stunned at first - completely and utterly stunned - but her eyes had reacted before her brain could catch up and, by the time she'd truly processed what he'd said, tears were already streaming down her face.
They were alive.
"Judy's even fuckin' walkin'," he told her with a smile, wanting to focus on the good news for as long as possible. Feed her as much joy as he could. "Girl's toddlin' like a straight-up toddler. Got a fuckin' motor on her. Used to need shit to help her, you know? Like to steady her and all? But she don't need that no more. She can go wherever she wants to go. Don't need no one's hand or nothin'...Wants it sometimes. 'Cause she sweet and all. But she don't need it. She's hardcore."
Beth couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe that Judy was alive and thriving and that, for once, Daryl was the one giving her the rundown. He was the one telling her the latest accomplishments of their favorite little girl.
Their hardcore little girl who had a fuckin' motor on her and was walking now.
"Holy shit, she's walking?," she asked rhetorically, her Grady-acquired vulgarity coming out in her surprise. "She's alive and she's walking? Our Judy?"
Daryl didn't know what he liked more: hearing Beth say holy shit or hearing her call Judith our Judy. He knew that she'd used the word our to refer to their family as a whole, of course, and not to her and him. But he'd still liked the way that it had sounded. Liked being a part of an our that included her.
Even if it happened to include a lot of other people, too.
"Yeah, our Judy's walkin'," he repeated back to her, enjoying saying it as much as hearing it. "Walkin' and gettin' into all kindsa trouble. Can't turn your back on her for a fuckin' second or she'll tear the whole goddamn house apart...Was gonna say she's turnin' Rick's hair fuckin' grey, but he was goin' in that direction already. But, I swear, she might even be turnin' Carl's hair fuckin' grey."
"Carl?!," Beth exclaimed, shocked to hear his name. Daryl had said that everyone was alive and, she supposed she should have put that together, but she wasn't really putting anything together at the moment. It was all so unexpected and overwhelming. "Carl's alive, too?"
"Yeah, Beth," he answered with a slight twinge of pain in his voice, her response reminding him just how oblivious she still was to everything. How much he still had left to explain. "Carl's alive. And he's good. He's… he's been through a lot but he's strong, you know? And he's grown like a motherfucker. Shot up like a damn weed. Kid's almost as tall as me now. Still skinny as hell...not like in a bad way or nothin'. Not like he ain't healthy. He's just... he's just Carl."
He was smiling again by the time that he'd finished that description and so was she. She could so picture that. She could so easily picture a lanky teenage Carl. It had been less than a year since she'd seen him, but she knew from her own youth how transformative that year could be. She remembered that Shawn had gone from being shorter than her mother to taller than her father in the space of a single Summer. They'd joked that they'd actually been able to see him grow in real time and her mother had even called him her bamboo boy. And it wasn't difficult to imagine Carl following that same path. To see his wiry form standing shoulder to shoulder with Rick: sharing the same height but differing in weight by about forty pounds of muscle.
She could picture it, but she didn't know where she was picturing it.
If they were alive, then where were they?
"Where are they?," she asked him, voicing her thought out loud. And as soon as the question left her mouth, her mind caught up with something he'd said earlier. With those words and with his beard and with her entire impression of him having been alone on the farm for awhile. "And what do you mean they were okay the last time you saw them? When was the last time you saw them?"
Well, this was it, he thought.
Here we go.
"They're in Alexandria," he told her, rubbing the hand that so desperately wanted to touch her picture for comfort against the back of his neck instead. "Haven't seen 'em in 'bout four months. Fuck. Maybe five? Haven't really been keepin' track. But it's been awhile."
That was the truth. He really didn't know how long it had been. It was also the truth, though, that he knew exactly how many days it had been since she'd supposedly died and he knew exactly how many days it had been since she'd supposedly died when he'd first hit the road. It would be pretty easy to do the math and figure out just how long he'd been gone, but he'd never bothered to and he didn't bother to now.
"Alexandria?," she asked, completely confused. She didn't know if she was supposed to recognize that name or not, but she didn't. She didn't know where that was at all.
"Virginia," he replied, shaking his head as he realized his mistake. Of course, she didn't know where Alexandria was. "Right outside D.C."
She had a million thoughts go through her head at once, but one burn brightest of all and she surprised them both by laughing. Laughing that new forest nymph laugh of hers and tilting her head in that way that was humor and confusion and disbelief and everything all rolled into one.
"So you finally got out of Georgia?," she asked him cheekily, remembering their fateful game of I Never at the moonshine shack. "I never imagined you telling me that."
He let out a short bark of a laugh. Not because it was funny, but because it was such a joy to know that that memory - that shared memory - survived in her mind.
And because he was eager to grasp onto any distraction from the hard conversation that lay ahead.
"Never imagined me tellin' you that, neither," he replied and searched his mind quickly for the rules of that damned game. "Guess that means none of us gets to drink, right? We're equally unimaginative so we gotta stay equally sober? Told you it was a shitty game."
"Yeah," she laughed lightly, recalling his initial impression of the activity. "It's kind of a shitty game...I always liked Christ, You're Loud much better."
By the way that she'd said Christ, You're Loud, he'd known that she was doing an impression of him but he had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. And, for a brief moment, he worried that maybe neither did she. Worried that she might be remembering something that had never happened or, at least, had never happened with him. That she might have cast the wrong character in this mental story: imagining him playing someone else's part. Before he could go too far down that road, though, Beth continued talking.
"It was a game I used to play when we were together after the prison," she explained, sensing his confusion and completely understanding it. She was sure that she'd never told him about this before. She'd never told him because it would have ruined the game. "You always used to complain that I made too much noise. You're like a ninja, you know? But I'm like a normal human being and I actually make noise when I walk in the woods. Leaves crunch beneath my feet. I don't hover over them like you do. And you always used to look over at me and just say Christ, you're loud...Actually, most of the time you'd just mumble it under your breath. But that was like your mantra. Christ, you're loud. And that was like my little game. I would count how many times you would say it in a day. Try to make it as few as possible...I wasn't very good at it, though, I think my record was three."
She was laughing by the time that she finished describing her post-prison pastime and he was frowning. He'd been willing to jump onto any diversion from the story that he had to tell and he would have normally loved to have had a window onto the inner world of Beth Greene, but the world he'd just glimpsed through that window was so awful. So deeply upsetting to him.
She thought it was funny, but there was nothing funny about it at all.
He'd been so constantly critical of her that she'd made a fucking game out of it. Every day, she'd woken up knowing that he was going to criticize her for the same fucking thing in the same fucking way and she'd never once given him shit over it. She'd just made a game out of it and tried to see how infrequently she could earn his scorn.
And her record had been three times.
His record had been three times. Because that's what that really was. That was his record of how he'd treated her and the best he'd ever done was only faulting her for being too loud three times in one day.
And the worst part about that - if there was, indeed, only one worst part about that - was that it wasn't even a fair criticism. He thought of her as being loud, but she really wasn't. She wasn't particularly quiet, and she certainly wasn't as stealthy as him, but she wasn't really loud. And she had very rarely been loud enough that it had actually been a problem: a risk of attracting walkers or scaring off game. He'd just been so unbelievably aware of her. He'd been so fucking aware of her and her movements and it had just been easier to chalk that up to her being loud. To pretend that she was noisy and drawing attention to herself through her actions. He honestly didn't remember saying Christ, you're loud all that often, but he believed that he had. And he imagined that, most of the time, he'd really been saying something else entirely.
Christ, you're walking too close to me.
Christ, you're walking too far away from me.
Christ, I can fucking hear your hips swaying and it's killing me.
Christ, I want you way too fucking much right now so could you PLEASE stop reminding me that you're here.
He'd been overwhelmed by her constant presence and he'd had no idea how to handle that. And, apparently, he'd used that as his outlet. He'd adopted a little vocal tic in the form of a perpetual putdown.
And he'd gone to that well, at minimum, three times a fucking day.
Beth stopped laughing when she saw that Daryl wasn't joining in and felt guilty for having brought up her little game. She hadn't really known why she'd mentioned it at all and, judging by the look on his face, it had definitely been a bad choice. She realized too late that it could have come across like she was complaining about their time together. Like she'd thought that he was overly critical of her and that she'd chosen now, for some ludicrous reason, to dredge it up.
Rather than get into that, though, she took it as a sign that they needed to get the conversation back on track. She still had so many questions - had more questions now than she'd had before - and she could assure him that she'd had fun playing Christ, You're Loud later.
"So how did you all end up in Virginia?," she asked, returning to the narrative of their miraculously living family. "And how did you all end up together? How did you find them? After...after I got taken, I'd hoped that somehow you'd find me, you know? But I never expected you to show up with Rick and all them. How did you do it? How did you find each other?"
Those questions were good, he thought. Those questions were easy to answer. Well, not easy. The story of how their family came back together and made their way to Alexandria was rather complicated, but it wasn't personally revealing. It wasn't going to expose him and it wasn't going to harm her. That would come later. That would come with the story of why he'd returned.
But the story of how they'd gotten there, he could manage.
"Chased after the car that took you," he told her, maintaining a death grip on the can of fruit cocktail. He hated revisiting that night even briefly, but he figured that he needed to start at the beginning. And he also wanted her to know that he'd tried. He'd failed, but he had fucking tried. "Chased after you all fuckin' night, girl. All night and all day. Ran 'til I hit a fuckin' fork in the road. Hit a goddamn crossroads and I just...I just collapsed…"
He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath and then continued to tell her the rest of the tale. He told her about being found by Joe and his Merry Band of Assholes and being recruited into their travelling show. He told her how they'd come across Rick, Carl and Michonne and how, after the dust had settled, the good guys had somehow walked away. He didn't mention that he'd tried to offer up his life for theirs because it had been an impulse decision that he'd long felt some guilt over. He'd been willing to die and abandon the search for her and, though he still didn't know how else he could have handled that situation, it bothered him. He also left out the parts about Rick biting out Joe's throat and Carl almost being raped - figuring those details were needlessly awful - and simply let the term evil fucks and his complete lack of remorse when reporting the men's deaths speak for itself.
He went on to tell her about meeting up with some of the rest of their family, plus a few new friends, at Terminus. As he had with the New Year's altercation with Joe, he sanitized the Terminus chapter of the story: simply saying that they had been held prisoner there and that they'd managed to escape with Carol's surprise assistance. He left out the part about Carol being banished and allowed Beth to assume, as everyone else had, that she'd just been separated from the group after the prison attack: though that had been more about streamlining the narrative rather than protecting Beth from the grisly truth behind what had really happened to Karen and David. He imagined that he'd tell her all that eventually, it just didn't seem like the time. And that led neatly to the joyous reunion with Judy, which helped any questions that might have arisen about Terminus and that ugly chapter dissolve into the cheerfully teary background.
Unfortunately, the next portion of the tale was the part about searching for her again. Chasing that car with the white cross. Coming back to the church to form a rescue party after Carol had been taken. Kidnapping the Grady cops and trying to negotiate for her release.
Watching her get killed.
And that chapter was so hard to tell. So fucking horrible to revisit and relate as series of events that used to end with and that's when you died and now ended and that's when I left you for dead. Beth didn't seem bothered by it at all, though. She just seemed truly engrossed in the story and so he tried to focus on that. Focus on the goal of informing her - filing in all those gaps that she deserved to have filled - and ignoring all the emotions it stirred up for him. It had taken everything that he'd had, but he hadn't cried and he'd been able to meet her gaze at least half of the time.
He considered that a victory and was proud of himself for remaining so in control.
Beth's impression of his performance had been completely different, however. She'd watched him battle to stay on top of his emotions - struggle to keep those tears at bay - and had been truly surprised to see him so upset. She'd been caught off guard by the despair in his voice when he'd talked about fruitlessly chasing after the car that had taken her and by his obvious guilt over being sidetracked by Joe and those evil fucks. And, while he'd thought that he'd hidden it well, his pain over what had happened at the hospital had been absolutely palpable: a living thing in the room that she swore she could practically see pulsating at his side. He'd even reached his hand up as he were going to clutch his chest at certain points throughout the tale, though he'd always stopped himself and returned his grip to the can of fruit cocktail instead.
And that had been incredible to witness.
She knew that Daryl wasn't an unfeeling person, of course. In a lot of ways, he was actually one of the most sensitive people she'd ever known. But she'd never seen him display so many of those feelings. Other than his breakdown at the moonshine shack - and their earlier reunion in the field - she'd never seen him so overtly emotional. The story he was telling her was remarkable, but hearing him tell it - watching him tell it - was almost just as fascinating. At first, it had felt like she was seeing a new man, but she'd quickly realized that that wasn't it at all. She was just seeing more Daryl than she'd ever seen before. There wasn't anything new about the sides that he was showing her, she was just seeing them much more fully. She wasn't catching them in quick peeks and fleeting glances, she was staring at them head-on.
And she was completely mesmerized by the experience.
After leaving Beth's supposedly dead body in the back of that ambulance, Daryl was relieved to return to the less traumatic aspects of the narrative and recount the family's trek to D.C. He explained how they'd tried to get Noah to Richmond in her honor and was unsurprised by how moved she'd seemed by that effort and how disappointed by the unsuccessful outcome. He decided on the fly to leave out the fact that that had been the point at which they'd lost Tyreese. He'd died on a mission made, in part, in her name and he didn't want her to think that that meant she'd played any role in his demise.
She already knew that he was gone, so he figured the details didn't matter.
He then told her how they'd headed to D.C. in search of some semblance of government or community and had eventually been found by Aaron and brought to Alexandria. He told her about how Rick was a sheriff again and Maggie was a mini-mayor and Carl was by far the coolest kid in town. But he had friends his own age and maybe even a girlfriend, too, and he didn't seem to mind being the resident teenage badass.
As much as Daryl had hated the place, he did his best to paint a pretty portrait of that surreal suburbia. Tried to play up how safe the community was and how nice the homes were - with running water and power and sewage - and how well everyone had settled into their new lives there. He dwelled on it for awhile, both because he wanted to assure her that the people they loved were comfortable and secure and because this was the last good part of the story.
The last bit before she learned what her best friend had done and how everything wasn't going to be alright.
The last bit before she started wishing that she'd found a mourning Glenn instead.
"So, it's a real home," he told her in conclusion, though he'd never actually seen it that way. "Can't compete with no prison or nothin'. But, if you're one of those normal people that likes a normal fuckin' life, it's good. It's good for them. They…they miss you like fuck, but they're happy there."
"Why weren't you?," she asked automatically, sensing he'd come to the end of his speech and unable to remain silent any longer.
She had so many questions. So many questions and she'd been silent almost the entire time that he'd spoken. There had been a few Oh, my gods and I'm so sorrys and Are you kiddings?, but other than those spontaneous utterances, she'd stayed quiet. He'd obviously been struggling to tell the tale and she hadn't wanted to break whatever spell he'd been under. She'd never seen him so emotional before and she'd never seen him so plain talkative before. She'd never seen him throw himself into a narrative and tell a story like that and she hadn't want to interrupt him. Still, it had been clear that - no matter how hard he tried to spin the tale of Alexandria being a magical place - he hadn't liked it there. Maybe everyone else was truly happy - she didn't think he was lying about that at all - but he hadn't been.
He'd hated it there.
She was sure of that.
"What?," he asked her, so accustomed to her thoughtful listening that he'd had no idea what statement she'd been reacting to.
"Why weren't you happy there?," she explained, trying to catch his eye though he seemed to avoid her gaze as soon as she'd restated the question. "Why didn't you want to stay in Alexandria? Why did you leave?"
He couldn't help the sigh that escaped him upon hearing those questions. Couldn't help the way he looked away from her and tightened his impossibly tight grip on the can of fruit cocktail. He'd already exhausted himself by getting to this point in the story and he had even started yet. Hadn't even gotten to the hard part. And there Beth was, perceptive as fucking ever, cutting straight to the heart of the matter. She'd seen through his charade and had known that he'd despised Alexandria. She'd seen that and now she wanted to know why.
And he started to give her an answer.
And answer that was true, but wasn't the truth at all.
"Fuck, girl," he told her after a deep breath. "You know that kinda place ain't me. Wasn't built for white picket fences and that shit...I'm supposed to be livin' in Cell Block C, you know? Not on Cherry Blossom Lane or whatever. Ain't supposed to be livin' in a place like that. House with fuckin' granite countertops and stainless steel appliances and fancy shit I don't even know what to call. Was never meant for that life. I didn't like it. And it didn't like me."
This wasn't what he needed to be telling her - it wasn't really the reason why he'd left - but he'd felt compelled to tell her all the same.
"None of those Alexandria fucks were gonna miss the squirrel man," he said, referencing her earlier description of him in comparison to the fictitious Jacques. "They wanted an eclair man and that ain't ever gonna be me."
She could absolutely see that, of course. Could see how he would be uncomfortable living some parody of an upper-middle class suburban lifestyle. She had a hard time imagining him even using a knife and fork, so the idea of him feeling awkward dining in a neatly appointed breakfast nook or some Martha Stewart-style kitchen seemed perfectly reasonable to her. And, while he'd depicted the people there as kind, he'd also obviously considered them coddled. Soft. Elitist. And she could understand why he wouldn't have felt welcome among them, either. Or, even if he had felt welcome, why he wouldn't have appreciated that reception. Why being embraced by that community wouldn't have been something that he'd have desired.
That didn't really explain why he'd left, though.
She didn't think that Daryl had ever really felt particularly welcome or at home anywhere. She was pretty sure that he was far too accustomed to feeling awkward and out of place and, honestly, largely unwanted. And, as much as she was confident that he was still human enough to be hurt by that, she also thought that he'd long ago accepted that as part of his life. She didn't think that he had some dream world that he was striving for and that Alexandria had somehow failed to measure up to. She didn't think he'd ever had a dream world at all and, even if he had, she was sure that that dream world would have died years ago.
Right along with everyone else's.
So why did he really leave?
It wasn't because they didn't appreciate the squirrel man.
"So you came all the way back here because you just didn't like it there?," she asked incredulously, making it clear from her tone and that all-informative cock of her head that she didn't believe that for a second. "You left everyone behind because you weren't an eclair man?"
Despite every argument that he'd made to himself upstairs, there was a knee-jerk part of him that just wanted to say yes. Wanted to stick with that story and leave it at that. He couldn't, though. He'd already known that and her response had made it undeniable.
She knew there was more to it.
She fucking knew.
"Alright, Beth," he told her after a beat, forcing himself to look her in the eye. He'd never considered this strategy, but he found himself talking before he even had a chance to fully think it through. "You said you wanted the painful fuckin' honesty? This is the point of the painful honesty. This is the point that could hurt you for no fuckin' reason. I'll tell you the truth, girl...Told you I would and I will. But this is your chance, okay? This is your chance to back out and just know that I came back 'cause I wanted to. I came back 'cause I wanted to and you found me and everything can be alright. Everything can still be alright if we just leave it here."
He seemed so tortured. He seemed so tortured by whatever truth he was keeping from her and she wanted to just let him off the hook. He'd said that this was her chance, but she couldn't help but think that it was really his chance. This was his last chance not to say whatever it was that he didn't want to say.
She wanted him to say it, though. She really wanted to know why he'd come back to the farm and she couldn't help but think that part of him wanted her to know why, too.
So, she pushed.
"Is that what you want?," she asked gently, holding his gaze despite his attempts to evade it. "Do you really want to just leave it there?"
If he did - if he really and truly did - she'd let him. She'd let it go. Her family was alive and she was safe and at home with Daryl and, if the price of that was a little mystery, then she'd be willing to pay it. She'd give him his mystery if that's what he really needed.
But her curiosity wasn't going to let her give it to him without a bit of a fight.
And he couldn't give her that automatic yes that she was looking for. Because she'd been right. She'd known him even better than he did. He didn't really want to leave it there. As much as he wanted to avoid this conversation, he had to have this conversation. He had to fucking tell her.
He had to.
"No," he sighed after a long pause, his eyes dropping to the suddenly hypnotizing can of fruit cocktail. "I think...I think we fuckin' should leave it there. Think you ain't gonna like what I've gotta say. Think it's gonna make shit hard when it don't have to be. But...fuck, if I don't tell you. it's the same as fuckin' lyin' to you. Same as fuckin' lyin to you and I don't wanna do that no more."
His phrasing struck her, of course, and made her wonder what he'd lied about to her in the past. That wasn't really the issue, though, and she decided to stick to the topic at hand.
"So don't," she told him with a small smile, though she knew he couldn't see it. "Don't lie to me. Just tell me the truth and we'll handle it, okay? Even if I don't like it, we'll handle it. I promise."
He'd been fighting it since he'd started talking, but he couldn't fight it any longer. He started to cry. Not profusely. He wasn't weeping or sobbing. But a few errant tears escaped him when she said we'll handle it. When she said it twice.
We'll handle it.
We.
She called them a we. That could have been a simple function of English - a you plus an I equals a we - but it hadn't felt like it. It hadn't felt like a casual pronoun. It had felt important. It had felt meaningful. It had felt like the first time that he'd seen we scrolled in her beautiful handwriting in that Pablo Neruda poem that now decorated his dresser shine. And he felt like everything that he was about to say was going to snap those two precious letters in half. Was going to completely shatter that we that he loved and needed and wanted so much. But his silence would break it, too. Or, at least, rob it of all its value. It would make it a mere pronoun.
A simple function of English.
And he couldn't have that, either.
"I lost it when you died, Beth," he told her and then almost laughed at that word choice. It implied that he'd gone crazy, but he hadn't gone crazy at all. He'd saved that for much later. "Didn't lose my mind...just lost everythin' else. Nothin' fuckin' mattered to me anymore, girl. Nothin'. I was...I was like a fuckin' walker, you know? I had one purpose. One goal. All walkers wanna do is eat and all I wanted to do was keep our people alive. That's it. That's all I cared 'bout. That's the only thing I fuckin' cared 'bout."
He'd said that last part so emphatically - wanting to fully convey to her how mindless he had been then - but the strength of his voice implied a certain level of zealousness that hadn't been accurate at all. He shook his head and let out a dark huff of a laugh.
"Honestly, I barely fuckin' cared 'bout that," he amended and then felt the need to amend again. "I mean, I did. I did care 'bout it. But that's just...that's just 'cause I'm fuckin' programmed to, you know? I'm the fuckin' squirrel man and that's what I do. That's who I am...but that's all that I was. For months. That's all that I fuckin' was."
He almost laughed another grim laugh as his mind flashed on a memory from that horrible chapter: a memory of him literally being the squirrel man. He'd killed several of the little rodents and was in the process of dressing them when, out of nowhere, he'd almost started to cry. He'd always had respect for the lives of the animals that he hunted, but that afternoon he'd felt a wave a true guilt because it had hit him that he had killed something better than him. Those squirrels with their little walnut sized brains had had richer lives than he'd had. They'd wanted to find mates and have babies and raise families. They'd wanted to store nuts for winter and prepare for the future. They'd wanted to sleep in warm patch of sun on a nice day and scamper about in the trees.
They'd cared if it fucking rained or not.
They'd had a spark of life that he hadn't had and he'd taken it from them. And he'd felt terrible about that at a point when he hadn't thought that he could feel much worse about anything.
God, that had been a dark time.
"And I thought 'bout you," he went on after a moment lost in his squirrel man memories. He'd been looking at her for the first part of his speech, but saying this he had to look away. Had to turn his gaze back to that can of fruit cocktail. "Thought 'bout you all the fuckin' time. And I just missed you so much. And life was just…just empty. Just so fuckin' empty without you, girl. You were dead and I was the ghost. I was the ghost and I was just... gone."
She was absolutely shocked to hear the her death had affected him like that. Shocked to hear that he'd missed her so much and thought about her all the fuckin' time. She honestly hadn't thought that anyone would have been particularly distraught over her death. Her parents would have been, of course, but they had already passed on. And she imagined that Maggie would have mourned her, but - until a few minutes ago - she hadn't known if Maggie had ever even heard that she'd died.
Fuck, she hadn't even been sure that she'd survived the prison.
Maggie was strong, though. She was accustomed to life in a brutal world and, even if she had been the brunette who the orderlies had seen screaming in the Grady parking lot that day, Beth hadn't believed for a moment that her sister wouldn't get past her death.
And, probably, pretty soon.
As for the rest of them - the people who she'd known had been aware of her death, the people who had been in the hallway that day - she thought that they all would have moved on really soon. Rick? Carol? Daryl? They had all lost people far closer to them than she had been: spouses, children, siblings. And they had all seen far more traumatic things than a girl getting shot in the head, too. She hadn't thought that her death had been a life-changing event for any of them.
She hadn't thought it had been a life-changing event for anyone but her.
And, sitting there listening to Daryl talk about it, a large part of her still resisted that idea. Thought that his breakdown after her death probably hadn't been about her death at all. That if Carol had been the one shot that day instead, the outcome could have been the same. It had been obvious that he'd left out the worst parts of the story about what happened with Joe and at Terminus. He'd clearly gone through all kinds of hell between the time that she'd been taken and the time she'd supposedly died. And a part of her couldn't help but think that he just might have snapped that day no matter who had been killed.
She'd just been one death too many.
But an even bigger part of her wasn't processing that element of things at all. Because she remembered Daryl in the days after the prison fell and he'd seemed much like this ghost he was describing. She had a sense of what he might have been like in those empty months and she was trying to brace herself for where this story was leading. For how this behavioral change had caused him to leave all their family and friends behind. How it had fed into some destructive thinking or catastrophic event that had made him leave a safe and secure home - abandon the holy grail of the end of the world - in order to come back to her farm.
She'd told him that they'd handle the truth even if she didn't like it. And, the more he spoke, the more worried she became that she really wasn't going to like it at all.
She was going to hurt for him. She was going to hurt for him terribly because she already was.
Just seeing him like that, she already was.
"I never really left Alexandria, girl, 'cause I never fuckin' lived there in the first place," he continued after few beats, finally able to drag his eyes away from the fruit cocktail and look at her again. "Passed my fuckin' days there, but it weren't livin'. It weren't a life. I was just killin' fuckin' time. Takin' care of business. Bein' the fuckin' squirrel man."
After keeping it in vicious check the whole conversation, his hand now had permission to reach over to his pocket: grabbing hold of that talisman that he wanted for comfort but needed for her to understand the next chapter of the story.
"And one day Glenn comes and gives me this," he told her, laying the photo down on the table between them. He set it down but he couldn't bring himself to completely pull his hand away, so he left it resting there with his index finger lightly brushing up against the side of the frame. Maintaining just the smallest amount of contact for reasons he didn't fully understand. "He gives me this and I saw your face again and I just...I just fuckin' knew I had to come back here. I had to come back here. I was never meant to be in Alexandria, girl. Was never meant to be there and I saw your face and it was just like a fuckin' beacon callin' me home. I just...I couldn't have this be all I had left of you. Couldn't have this be all there was. I just..."
He'd come back to the farm because that picture had just been so fucking inadequate and having her sitting right across from him - living and breathing in all her beautiful three-dimensional glory - brought back every ounce of the gut-wrenching insufficiency that he'd felt that day in the tower. That anger and that loss and that grief all flooded his system in a rush - his system that was already overwhelmed by that entire conversation - and he wanted to jump out of his fucking skin.
His skin that was too hot and too tight and, fuck, it was just all too much.
He shoved himself away from the table instead and started pacing back and forth like a caged animal.
"That was all I had, Beth," he said when he could finally bring himself to speak, stopping his frantic movements to point a desperate and shaking finger towards her picture. "Do you see that? That little piece of fuckin' plastic? That's what you were. That's all that you were. You were just that little piece of plastic. I was a ghost and you were that little piece of fuckin' plastic. And the only way outta that...only fuckin' solution to that was to come home. Come back to the farm. That was the only thing I could do. I had to...I had to have more of you than that, Beth. And I couldn't be a ghost no more. I just couldn't do it..."
The part of her mind that had been denying that his breakdown had truly been about her couldn't deny it any longer. The pain and rage and disbelief in his voice when he'd talked about her being reduced to a piece of plastic was like nothing she'd ever heard before. And she'd heard a lot of people talk about a lot of losses. A lot of heartache and grief and railing against the injustices of God and the universe. But she'd never heard anyone sound like that.
And this was coming from Daryl Dixon.
Daryl Dixon talking about her.
And that seemed like the end of the story, too. That was the story. This horrible shoe that she'd been waiting to drop had, apparently, just dropped and it was this. He'd left Alexandria because of her. Because he'd been empty and lost and, one day he'd seen her face, and decided to return to the farm where he could have more of her than that little piece of plastic.
"You came back because you missed me?," she asked him, her tone fully reflecting all the surprise and wonder she felt at that notion.
Christ, she was so sweet, he thought. So sweet and so kind and so trusting. She just thought that he'd missed his friend and he was going to have to tell her it was so much more than that. He was going to have to tell her it was so much more than that when she was already completely caught off guard by that revelation. Her disbelief at the idea of him missing her that much hadn't gone unnoticed and it only made what he had to say next so much harder.
He gripped the back of the chair that he'd once been sitting in - literally bracing himself for what he was about to say and ignoring the pain that throbbed from placing so much pressure on his still healing left hand - and took a deep breath.
"I came back 'cause I love you," he told her, forcing himself to look her in the eyes. To look at her beautiful confused face: her head cocked to the side in that baffled bunny expression that he'd teased her about having during his pretend wedding proposal. "That's the painful honesty, girl. I love you and I'm sorry 'bout that. I'm fuckin' sorry 'cause I know you don't want me to. Know you don't wanna be stuck in this house with some crazy man that fuckin' loves you...But I do. I can't fuckin' help it. I love you, Beth. I'm...I'm in love with you. And that's why I came back. That's why I'm here."
He dropped his gaze and Beth was grateful for the reprieve. Grateful to have a moment to collect her thoughts after that declaration because it had left her head - and her heart - completely spinning.
I love you, Beth.
I'm in love with you.
Before she'd gotten shot, she'd have felt nothing but pure joy upon hearing those words. Those words would have been everything that she'd ever wanted to hear and she would have been climbing across that table to throw her arms around Daryl's now slumped shoulders. Pull him into the fiercest embrace and declare with unabashed glee that she loved him, too. She was in love with him, too. And, even though he'd grown up in a place as ugly and uninviting as that moonshine shack, she'd have traveled hundreds of miles to visit it, too. She'd have made that exact same pilgrimage if he'd died because she thought the idea of him being reduced to a little piece of plastic was unacceptable, too. Horrible and awful and so grievously wrong, too.
Because Beth Greene was very much in love with Daryl Dixon and had been for a very, very long time.
But that was precisely the problem.
Because, in those first hazy months after she was shot, she'd actually thought that they'd been in a relationship. She'd remembered his face and his voice and his loping stride. She'd remembered how she'd felt when she was around him: somehow both safe and nervous, secure and excited. She'd remembered him standing in the doorway of her cell and looking at home there. She'd remembered drinking with him on a moonlit porch and singing for him someplace beautiful.
They'd just been flashes and impressions but they'd meant so much to her. They'd carried so much weight in her damaged mind and she'd assumed - completely and unquestionably assumed - that he'd been her boyfriend or maybe even her husband. She hadn't been sure of the formality of their arrangement, but her memories had seemed to span across a wide period of time and multiple locations and she'd firmly believed that, whatever love they'd shared, it had been long-term.
Long-term and mutual.
And that belief had sustained her during that earliest, roughest portion of her recovery. When she'd felt trapped in her body and in that room and with those people - when nothing had made sense and everything had seemed dark and hopeless - Daryl had been what had kept her going. He'd been the reason that she'd fought to live another day. Because every day could be the day that she remembered their first kiss. Every day could be the day that she remembered what had happened when he'd finally stepped through that doorway to her cell or what had happened when she'd stopped singing that night or what kind of drunken passion had overtaken them when they'd stumbled off that porch.
But those memories, of course, had never come,
Instead, she'd remembered that when he'd stepped past the doorway to her cell it had been to put his arms around Judy and not her. She'd remembered that the spark that she'd felt between them that night on the porch has set the shack on fire in a very literal way. That wood and drywall and dilapidated furniture were the only things that had burned that night and they'd stumbled platonically off into the woods rather than tumbling into some bed. She'd remembered that she hadn't stopped singing for him in that beautiful place because they'd fallen into each other's arms.
She'd stopped singing because she hadn't wanted to sing him a love song for fear that he'd hear the longing in her voice. That he'd discover her feelings for him.
Feelings that he hadn't reciprocated at all.
That had been the most traumatic memory. That had been the one that had made her pulse pound and left her gasping for breath and had made a legitimately concerned orderly come in to check on her when the monitors she'd still been attached to had set off all kinds of bells and whistles. Her world had been so fragile then and it had all centered around her memories of this man and she'd remembered, in an instant, that the man who was her world hadn't cared for her much at all. Hadn't cared for her as anything more than a friend, at best. And that all that nervousness that she'd thought had been her butterflies of love had been her anxiety over that love being discovered.
Of being exposed as a stupid girl with an unwanted crush on a man who was so far out of her league it was crazy.
A man who'd never looked her way until she'd had a cute baby in her arms and had only been her partner because they'd been thrown together in the gruesome aftermath of a horrible crime.
A man who'd just been stuck with her.
So, while she knew that she still had some gaps in her memory, she had absolutely no doubt that Daryl Dixon had not been in love with her when she was alive. That everything he was saying to her - though it clearly felt real to him now - hadn't been real then.
He hadn't loved her.
He hadn't loved that girl in the photo he was so upset about.
He hadn't.
She had no idea how to express that, though. Had no idea how to say that he didn't really love her. He'd called himself a crazy man and, while she didn't think that he was truly insane, she did think that he was deluding himself about this. That he'd concocted some story about her - about them - that had offered him a way to escape Alexandria. He'd been miserable and desperate and he'd wanted a way out. And chasing after the dream girl in the photo had given him the license to leave. Had given him an explanation for his despair and an excuse to abandon his friends and his family.
"You were in love with her?," she asked him, pointing at herself in the photo.
"What?," he replied, finally lifting his head up. He'd been preparing himself for her response, but he wasn't expecting that.
Of course, he was in love with her. What part of that hadn't been clear?
"The girl in this photo," she said, looking him dead in the eye. "You were in love with her? Me? Before I died?"
"Yes," he answered on a sigh that was half confusion and half exhaustion. He was so wrung out after getting to this point in the tale - after finally laying everything bare - and he didn't understand her questions. He was naked and exposed before her and she was acting like she still wasn't seeing him.
"No, you weren't," she said softly, dropping her gaze from his. She couldn't look him in the eye as she said this. She didn't want to destroy the lie that he'd told himself: both because she didn't want to do that to him and because she didn't want to do that to herself. She was still in love with him and, even though she knew it was the truth, she wasn't relishing hearing him admit that he didn't love her in return.
But it had to be said.
"You didn't love me then, Daryl," she went on, still staring at the photo for some sort of emotional protection. "You didn't love me at the prison and you didn't love me afterwards. I don't know when you think that changed, but it wasn't...It's not real. You don't really love me."
It had never occurred to him that she wouldn't believe him. Admittedly, he hadn't had much time to think about it, but - even if he'd had years to prepare himself for this conversation - it would have never once entered his mind that she would doubt him. He could have easily spent his entire life imagining different ways that she would say that she didn't love him, but he never would have considered her saying that he didn't love her. He never would have imagined her questioning that. He could tell by the sadness in her tone, though, that she wasn't questioning his sincerity. She didn't think that he was lying to her. She just thought that he was mistaken. That he was misinterpreting his own feelings.
And, though that shocked him at first, he quickly - and painfully - realized that it was completely reasonable. This was the girl who he'd manhandled and compared to a dumb college bitch. This was the girl who hadn't played him My Good Fortune because she'd thought that he'd mock her for singing a love song. This was the girl who'd made a fucking game out of how much he'd criticized her for a fault that wasn't really a fault at all.
A girl who he'd criticized simply because he'd wanted her too much and hadn't know what to do about that except blame her for reminding him that she existed. Blame her for every twig that her impossibly tiny feet had snapped. Blame her for a sound that had been like a starting pistol in his brain and had made him want to slam her up against the nearest tree and coax a completely different set of sounds out of her entirely.
Christ, you're loud.
"I do love you, Beth," he said gently, his voice rough and filled with regret. "Was really fuckin' shitty at showin' you. Was shitty at showin' you 'cause I didn't want you to know. 'Cause I know you don't love me and I knew it would just fuck things up. But I do love you, girl...And I loved you before you died. Loved you before you were taken...Loved you for a long fuckin' time."
He could tell that she still didn't believe him, but she remained silent as if trying to process it all. Her gaze was still on the photo and he suddenly felt far too looming and large and domineering standing over her, so he sat back down in the chair and grabbed a hold of the can of fruit cocktail.
"Don't know when I fell in love with you," he told her, overcome by the desire for her to believe him. He'd wanted to hide this from her for so long - from the moment that he'd first realized it, he'd wanted to hide it - but something about the sadness in her voice made him need to convince her. "Probably loved you for awhile before my dumb ass caught on. But I knew I loved you the day you found that fruit cocktail at that cabin. Remember that?"
She did.
She hadn't remembered it until fairly recently, when they'd gotten a case of canned pears at Grady and it had triggered a recollection of standing in front of the pantry at a random cabin, but she did remember that day. Seeing those cans of fruit cocktail - cans that she'd so strongly associated with the comfort of her childhood - had given her hope in the bleakest of hours. She'd been able to hear the whole Greene family debating whether it counted as fruit and it had felt like her father - who'd argued the no side as strongly as she'd argued the yes - had been watching over her when she'd needed him the most.
Like his spirit had been taking care of her while his headless body had lay rotting in a field.
She would have never imagined that that moment had held any significance for Daryl though and, overwhelmed by his revelation that he had indeed loved her when she was alive, the best she could do was nod in response.
"Was the worst fuckin' week," he reminded her, as if they didn't both know all too well. He then had to laugh slightly thinking that that hadn't been true at all. They'd still been together then. The worst weeks had actually laid ahead. "Least I thought so at the time...Was the worst fuckin' week and you found those cans and you just smiled like you'd found a fuckin' unicorn, you know? Like everythin' was beautiful and magical and good. Even though it was tough as fuckin' shit. You smiled and I thought, fuck, I wanna see her do that every day...Took me a second to realize what that was. 'Cause I ain't never felt like that before. But I finally put it together. Like, fuck, I love this girl... I fuckin' love her, you know?"
"Seriously?," she asked in almost a whisper, completely stunned by his recounting of that scene. Completely stunned to learn that, as she'd been standing there looking for some shred of hope to cling to, he'd been standing there thinking fuck, I love this girl.
That was the moment Daryl Dixon had fallen in love with her.
That was the moment.
How could that possibly be true? How could he possibly have loved her then?
"Yeah," he told her, grinning slightly despite the awkwardness of the situation. Grinning simply because it was such a fond memory and because Beth Greene always was cute when she was confused. "Why you think this was in my room and not the kitchen?... 'Cause I was never gonna eat it. Weren't fuckin' food to me...reminded me of you. Reminded me of that day. That's why I kept it."
She had absolutely no idea what to make of that story or of the man sitting in front of her. This chatty, emotional, open Daryl Dixon with a beard halfway down his neck and tears shining in his eyes. This grizzly mountain man with a foul mouth and a greeting card heart.
Weren't fuckin' food to me.
Reminded me of you.
Reminded me of that day.
It would have seemed like a dream come true had it been a dream that she'd dared to dream at all. She'd escaped Grady without a scratch, made it safely home, and found Daryl Dixon there waiting for her with open arms. Giving her a piggyback ride and warm tomato soup. Telling her that their friends and family were all happy and secure and thriving in a stable community. Telling her that he's in love with her and that he has been for almost a year.
He's been in love with her since that day.
It would have seemed like a dream come true, but it wasn't. And that wasn't because she didn't believe it was true - she actually did believe that Daryl Dixon had fallen in love with Beth Greene that day - it was because she knew that she wasn't that Beth Greene anymore. And it was obvious that he wasn't that Daryl Dixon, either. She'd been shot in the head and endured almost a year of captivity and he'd gone through his own tortured journey, too.
They weren't the same people they'd been that day at the cabin.
"I've changed," she told him after a moment, forcing herself to look him in the eye. "I'm not...I don't know if I'm still the girl you love."
"Course you've changed," he told her immediately, somewhat surprised that was the direction she was taking things but, for once, not struggling to find a response. "Got shot in the fuckin' head, girl. Had to survive that all on your own. Fight your way back and fight your way home. 'Course you've changed."
She was taken aback to hear him basically vocalize her own thoughts. Taken aback not only by his immediate understanding but by his tone. When voiced in her head, those thoughts had sounded so desperate and so sad, but out of the mouth of Daryl Dixon they'd sounded so harmless: like simple facts of the universe that everyone accepts and no one is bothered by.
The sky is blue, water is wet, and you've changed.
"But that don't change how I feel 'bout you," he told her seriously, but then let out a small laugh and shook his head. In the spirit of honesty, that had to be amended. "Actually, it kinda fuckin' does...Never told you how much you impressed me, but you did. Impressed the hell outta me. Already thought you was strong...but makin' it through this year? Goin' through what you went through to get here? Gettin' back to where we're having a conversation at your family's fuckin' dinner table? That's so fuckin' badass, girl...I've known some tough motherfuckers in my time, but you take the cake with that shit."
"You thought I was strong?," she asked him somewhat awestruck. She'd be hard pressed to pick one element of that conversation that was the most shocking, but she found the idea that he'd thought that she was strong - in the past tense, in the old incarnation of herself - almost as incredible as the idea that he was in love with her.
He hadn't needed the reminder, but the surprise in her voice regarding that assessment painfully underscored how much he'd kept from her and the impression that that had left her with. He hadn't wanted her to know how much he'd liked her - and later loved her - and so she'd barely had any idea that he'd liked her at all. That he'd valued and respected her.
He had the chance to correct that now, though, and he was definitely going to take it.
"Yeah, I thought you was strong," he told her confidently, looking her dead in the eye. He wanted to do this right - to show her all the respect that he never had - so he decided not to just give her the easy compliment. Not to just leave it at that, but to really explain himself. "We're doing the honesty thing and I'm gonna be honest with you, I didn't always think that. Took me a long time to see you for what you are. You...you gotta a strength that's all your own. It's a special kinda strength and I'm a special kinda dumbass so it took me awhile to see it. But I saw it. I really did... And I see it even more now. Which, I gotta tell you, I didn't think was fuckin' possible. But there you go. You're even fuckin' stronger than you were...any idea how amazin' that is, girl?"
She couldn't believe that he was talking to her like this and she couldn't help the blush that flooded her cheeks at the praise. She would have appreciated any compliment from Daryl Dixon and she would have appreciated being called strong by anyone, but having Daryl Dixon call her strong was on another level entirely.
'You see this?," he asked her, showing her the still healing cut on his left hand. She let out a gasp when she saw the damage, but he continued talking before she had a chance to reply. "Cut myself makin' some spikes to secure the road. Bled like a stuck pig and it hurt like a bitch. Was here all by myself and it got infected. And I had to go into town and try to find some meds, knowin' I was weak. I was sick and weren't at my best and... I was scared out of my fuckin' skin that day, girl. Was fuckin' terrified that I come across a group of people or some Governor fuck or just some random shit that I couldn't handle 'cause I was weak."
She was horrified to hear that he'd gone through that, but she had little time to process the reality of his injury. All she could really focus on was his comment about being afraid - of being fuckin' terrified - and the ease with which he'd just admitted it. He'd felt weak and scared and he'd just told her that like it was nothing.
"And you got shot in the fuckin' head," he went on, getting to the reason why he'd told her this story: to convey the stunning contrast between their experiences and his amazement by her. "I had a cut on my hand and had to make it one fuckin' day out there by myself and I was scared...Not sure how long it took you to get here from Grady, but I know it was longer than a day. So, yeah, I think you're strong as hell...Stronger than me. 'Cause I don't think I coulda done that. Don't think I woulda survived what you survived."
"God, you've changed," she practically gasped, her voice full of wonder. She hadn't meant to say that, but it had been all that she'd been thinking and it had escaped her nevertheless.
"Yeah," he replied automatically, knowing it was absolutely true. He had changed. He'd changed in so many ways since he'd last seen her. "Changed a lot….Think some of it might be for the better, though. Least I hope so anyway. Been...been tryin' to be a better man, you know? Tryin' to learn from all the shit I did wrong…"
He didn't want to think about the ways in which he might have changed for the worse. The ways in which he'd lost touch with reality and deluded himself about so many things. He wanted to focus on the changes that he hoped she was referring to. On the good changes.
The changes that he'd made for her.
"Did a lot wrong with you, Beth," he told her after a beat, his voice laced with sadness. "Never treated you right and I know that. And I wanna change that. I wanna be good to you…"
She'd been kind in glossing over whatever discomfort she was feeling regarding his unwanted declaration of love, but - as much as part of him wanted to let the matter go - he felt like he had to revisit the topic. To let her know that the differences she was seeing only went so far. That she didn't have to fear that this new Daryl Dixon - this crazy man that loved her - had completely lost his sense of place in the world.
That he didn't understand what their relationship was and would always be.
"But that's all that's gotta change, okay?," he said firmly, forcing himself to hold her gaze. "Nothin' else. I know...I know it's gotta be awkward knowin' how I feel 'bout you. I know that ain't what you want. But nothins' gotta change between us. I don't expect nothin' from you at all...I never fuckin' did. That's why I never said nothin', alright? So don't...don't worry 'bout hurtin' my feelins' or lettin' me down easy or whatever…'Cause I'm a dumbass, but I ain't that big of a dumbass, you know? Never thought for a second that you'd be into me."
He'd sounded so serious and so sincere and so thoroughly convinced of her lack of interest that, despite the emotional weight of the moment, she burst out laughing. He'd said something to a similar effect before - back when he'd first told her that he loved her - but she'd been so focused on his feelings that she'd ignored the fact that he'd felt that they were unrequited. That part hadn't really registered with her at all. And she couldn't help but laugh at the fact that this was the man who'd she'd believed might have been her husband - had spent weeks happily and gratefully believing was her husband - and he didn't think that she would ever be into him.
Not for a second.
And then she felt terrible because, judging by the look on his face, Daryl had taken that laugh as confirmation of her disregard. He'd flinched slightly and turned his gaze back to the can a fruit cocktail and she wanted so badly to take it back. But she couldn't. She couldn't retract the laugh, but she could try to explain it.
"I'm sorry," she told him, unable to hold back a small smile that she hoped didn't undercut her statement. "I wasn't laughing at you. I was laughing at...You really didn't think that I'd be into in you? You're...you're Daryl Dixon. Of course, I'm into in you."
She felt somewhat guilty for downplaying her feelings like that. He'd exposed himself so much to her and all she'd done was say she was into him. She might have only been nineteen - or, actually, now maybe twenty - but even she heard how juvenile and insufficient that sounded. He'd chosen that phrase first, of course, but that didn't change how wrong it seemed. Because he might have chosen that phrase, but he'd said the L word, too.
He'd said that, too, and she wasn't ready to do the same.
He'd been willing to risk that. Willing to risk loving her when she didn't love him back. He might think that she was the stronger person, but she knew that he was the brave one. She didn't have that strength in her, no matter what he thought. She still didn't know if Daryl Dixon would truly love the Beth Greene who she was now - if she'd live up to the ideal of this woman that he had in his head - and she couldn't put her own love on the line without that.
Because, in her mind, she'd already lost his love once.
She'd lost it that horrible afternoon at Grady when she'd remembered that she'd never had it at all. And she couldn't go through that again. Couldn't make a declaration that would seem to seal a covenant between them when she wasn't sure who they even were.
Beth thought that it was inadequate, but it was more than Daryl ever thought that he'd hear and he was absolutely stunned. Even though she'd never ever been so cruel, he hadn't been able to stop himself from replaying her words over and over in his mind searching for any signs of sarcasm.
Of course, I'm into you.
He didn't see how there could be any of course about that. He couldn't imagine that statement being honestly spoken out of the mouth of any woman, let alone out of the mouth of Beth Greene. But he also couldn't see how she could have been mocking him, either. She hadn't been mocking him at all. He looked back up from the fruit cocktail again and, seeing her sweet smiling face across the table, there was no doubt in his mind that she'd meant that.
She'd fucking meant that.
Of course, I'm into you.
He couldn't think of a single response to that revelation - and she couldn't think of a follow-up - so they just stared at each other in silence for a few charged moments. It didn't take long for Beth to become overwhelmed by the intensity of his gaze and the reality of the situation and, feeling like a true lovestruck teenager, she buried her blushing face in her hands and let another light laugh.
Her laughter soon died, though, as the darkness allowed her to start thinking clearly again. She began to put all the pieces of their conversation together and see the true enormity of what Daryl had said.
Of what he had done.
He'd been in love with her when she was kidnapped, he'd been in love with her when she'd been killed, and her death had driven him to despair. He'd forced himself to get their family settled somewhere safely but had left them - and all that precious security - behind to come back to live alone on her farm. To find more of her than just that picture. And he'd been living there for months. And now she was back. Against all odds, his long lost love was back from the dead.
He'd said that he never expected anything from her, but how could he not?
Really, under those circumstances, how could he not?
She didn't think for a second that he had been lying when he'd said that. She firmly believed that, had she told him that she only loved him as a friend, he would have made some joke about that being a sign of her good taste - or, maybe, in this new version of himself, made a sincere comment about his gratitude for that friendship - and then he would have never brought it up again. But she hadn't told him that she only loved him as a friend. She'd hadn't given him the response that he'd been anticipating. The response that had created his lack of expectations. She'd admitted that she had feelings for him, too. Sure, she'd copped out and minimized the extent of those feelings, but it had been enough to change the dynamic between them. Enough to stun them both into silence. Enough to make him look at her like that.
Look at her in the way that made her have to bury her face in her hands.
He'd sacrificed literally everything for her and now she was going to have to tell him that she wanted to take it slow?
She had no idea how to do that, but had no idea how not to, either. As much as she wanted to, she wasn't ready to climb over the table and kiss him like her old self would have done. There was a part of her that screamed that life was short and time was precious and she didn't have a moment to waste. That she should risk it because they might not have a tomorrow. They both knew that all too well. But a bigger part of her screamed that their love was too precious to waste, too. Too precious and too wonderful to screw up because they rushed into things.
Because even their friendship was too precious and too wonderful to screw up because they rushed into things.
She'd thought it was true before, but she definitely knew it now: Daryl Dixon was her best friend. He was the best friend she was ever going to have. Someone who'd chase night and day after a fucking car to find her. Someone who'd mount a rescue mission to save her. Someone who'd avenge her death and mourn her loss for the rest of their life. He was the best friend she was ever going to have and she couldn't risk losing that. And, if they tried for something romantic and failed, she had no doubt that she would. She'd be the dream girl who let him down - the girl who he'd sacrificed everything for for nothing - and it would kill her. Maybe he'd be mature enough to handle that, but she wasn't. She knew that. Even if he never held it against her and did everything he could to stay her friend, she wouldn't be able to stay his. Not like they were now, anyway.
Not even close.
So they had to take it slow. Get to know each other again and make sure that this was what they both really wanted. Even if it was just a few days, she thought. They didn't have to take forever. Just a little bit of time to adjust now that their worlds had been turned upside down. She still wasn't sure how to say that, but the silence had gone on too long and she felt compelled to start talking anyway.
"I can't…," she stumbled, her face still buried in her hands. She wasn't ready to look at him, but she took a deep breath and forced herself to at least speak openly. To say everything that she'd just been thinking. "I can't lose you as a friend, Daryl. I want...I want to be more than your friend, but I can't lose you as a friend. I can't screw this up...so I need us to take it slow, okay? Make sure I'm still the girl you think I am. Make sure this is still what you want."
After she got that out, she finally had the courage to look up at him again and watched as a stunning kaleidoscope of emotions cascaded across his face.
He'd known that she'd been serious when she'd said that she was into him, but that hadn't prepared him for the little speech that she'd just made. He couldn't believe that she really wanted to be more than friends. And, not only that, but that she was worried about risking their friendship to get there. She'd just expressed the exact same dilemma that had kept him silent about his feelings the whole time that she'd been alive. The same predicament that had paralyzed him for so long, that had made him criticize her instead of compliment her, that had made him run for that fucking funeral home door.
I want to be more than your friend, but I can't lose you as a friend.
I need us to take it slow, okay?
That request pleased him and pained him in equal measure. He loved hearing her refer to them as an us - especially now, especially knowing that she really did mean something by it, that it wasn't just a function of English - but it killed him to think that she felt like he was going to rush her into anything. Killed him because it was so untrue and because it was so incredibly logical. He was the crazy man who'd traveled a thousand miles to go through her fucking closet, after all. Of course she'd think that he'd want to haul her off to bed the instant he got the green light.
And he did want to haul her off to bed that fucking instant. His bed. Her bed. Or forget the bed altogether and just take her right there on the table. He did want that.
But not really.
Not really because he'd been given a miraculous second chance to do right by Beth Greene and that didn't involve hauling her off to bed as soon as he could. When she was still recovering from a bullet wound. When she'd just spent God knows how long on the run, spent all night thinking her family was dead, spent all day hungry and tired. When she wasn't sure of his feelings for her. When she thought that there was a chance - even a fucking chance - that he didn't really love the woman who she was now.
When he hadn't earned it at all.
He didn't really think that he could ever truly earn her affection, but he'd certainly never done anything to deserve this Beth's regard. Not this real, living, breathing, beautiful Beth in front of him. He'd never told this Beth about all the ways that she impressed him and amazed him and inspired him. He'd never told this Beth about all the different and wonderful things that she made him think and experience and feel. He'd never apologized to this Beth for all the things that he'd done wrong. He'd been trying to do better by his spirit Beth for months, but he'd only been doing better by the real Beth for a couple of hours now.
And the real Beth Greene was not the kind of girl who you hauled off to bed after being a halfway decent fellow to for a couple of hours.
So, he wanted to take things slow, too. Both because he shared her reservations about damaging their friendship and, far more importantly, because she deserved that. She fucking deserved to know that the man she was with really and truly wanted to be with her. That he loved her for who she had been and for who she was now.
And he knew that he did love who she was now. He knew that all of the essential elements of Beth Greene - all those things that made her her - were still there and unchanged. He had no doubt about that at all. It wasn't important that he knew that, though, it was important that she knew that. And he really wanted to say something about it. He wanted to alleviate any needless anxiety she might have about possibly disappointing him. Assure her that he'd love her no matter what. But now that she'd felt like she'd had to request to take things slow - now that she'd demonstrated that she was feeling under some kind of pressure - he didn't know if he should. He worried if he tried to push her into believing that he did indeed love her - the her who she was now - that she'd think that he was trying to push her into doing something about that love.
That he wasn't okay with taking it slow.
Once again, the silence between them had gone on too long and he knew that it was his turn to end it. He had no idea how to do that, so decided to just go with honesty since it had seemed to work pretty well so far.
And with teasing, because that always worked pretty well, too.
"Honestly, Beth," he told her, his mouth quirking into a small grin on saying that word. A word that now felt like it's own kind of game. "I'm glad you said that. Was worried you was gonna wanna rush into shit. You know, since I'm Daryl Dixon and you're so into me and all? Thought you might not be able to keep your sweet little hands off me. But I'm not that kinda guy. Just 'cause I'm stupid in love with you don't mean you don't gotta romance me a little. Wine me and dine me some...And I gotta romance you a little, too. That's how it works, right?"
His silence following her statement had made her nervous, but his response made her laugh delightedly if for no other reason than it was so completely unexpected. Daryl saying that he was stupid in love with her like he said it every day. Talking about needing to be romanced and needing to romance her in return.
It was just so ridiculous.
So beautifully, wonderfully ridiculous.
He was absolutely thrilled to hear her laugh, but part of him became concerned that she might think that he had only been joking. In typical fashion, he'd leaned more heavily on the side of teasing than on the side of honesty and thought that she might not have understood what he'd really meant.
"Seriously," he said, interrupting her laughter. His tone hadn't been stern, but it had been just as serious as his use of that word had implied and it had caught her attention right away. "I'd wait ten years to hold your hand, girl. I never...I never thought I'd fuckin' see you again. Never thought I'd get to talk to you again. So this...this ain't somethin' I'm gonna be impatient 'bout. You don't need to worry 'bout that. 'Cause I don't wanna fuck this up neither. And I wasn't lyin' when I said I wanna treat you right. I wanna…"
He stumbled, unsure how to end that sentence. He knew what he wanted her to have. He knew what he wanted to give her. He just wasn't sure how he was going to do that. He didn't know how to express what he wanted because he didn't know how to conceive of their relationship unfolding in any real world way. This wasn't a game of Remember When. This wasn't one of his stories. This was real fucking life. And, in real life, he'd never thought that they'd be going anywhere, so he struggled to figure out what going slow would actually look like.
What did he want to do to move their relationship forward? Move it forward in a good way? In the right way? In the way that she deserved?
And then it came to him. An idea that, for the first forty years of his life, he would have considered the most pathetic idea imaginable but, for the remaining years, would always consider one of the best ideas that he ever had.
"I wanna court you," he told her, finally able to finish that sentence with a smile. If reading a romance novel was one of his life's biggest surprises, then actually using the knowledge that he'd gained from it was beyond a shock. But that's exactly what he wanted for her. For them.
A period of courtship.
And not because it was romantic, but because it was practical. It placed boundaries on their physical intimacy, but allowed them to be intimate in other ways. Ways that would still be consisted with friendship if she decided that she wanted to stop it there. Ways that, hopefully, she wouldn't regret when she realized that she actually wasn't that into this crazy man after all.
Because that really was the likeliest outcome, he thought.
More likely than not, she'd decided that he wasn't who she thought he was or hoped he would be. She'd come to her senses and realize that she deserved so much better than him. She'd realize that whatever fleeting appeal he had - an appeal that he couldn't even begin to understand - didn't withstand scrutiny. When she saw him for who he truly was, she'd decide that they'd be better off as friends. And that was going to disappoint him. At this point, it was going to disappoint him terribly, but he'd get past it.
At least on some level, he'd get past it.
He'd get past it because, at the end of the day he'd be happy to be her friend. Happy just to have her in his life at all.
But it would destroy him to be her regret. To be her mistake. It would destroy him to know that memories that he would no doubt continue to treasure would be things that she'd want to forget. That she stored them in a dark corner of her mind and tried to keep them hidden away. And a chaste courtship would decrease the chances of that happening.
It would allow things to progress without letting them go too far.
"What?," she laughed in surprise. Teasing about romance was one thing, but saying that he'd wait a decade to hold her hand? That he wanted to court her? She couldn't help but briefly wonder if she was still in a coma at Grady. If any of this was really happening at all.
She knew that it was, but it was still so surreal.
"I wanna court you, Ms. Greene," he repeated his smile widening even further when he remembered to address her correctly. "You're a lady and I'm tryin' to be a gentleman and I wanna court you. All nice and proper. We'll keep everythin' old-fashioned. Your job'll be to rest up and get better and my job'll be to treat you right. And we won't do nothin' Jane Austen wouldn't approve of. Nothin' her fancy pants couldn't write 'bout, okay?"
"Jane Austen?," she asked on another laugh. She hadn't thought about that name in years, but - aided by the context of their discussion - she recognized it right away. And it was name she'd never thought she'd hear come out of the mouth of Daryl Dixon.
Maybe she was still in a coma at Grady.
"Yeah, me and Jane go way back," he told her with a laugh of his own, delighting in her surprise and thrilled to be able to tease her about this like he'd once dreamed of doing. "Pride and Prejudice is my favorite fuckin' book. Can't believe you didn't know that...See? This is why I need to court you. So you can get to know me better. I ain't just a pretty piece of meat, girl. The squirrel man's got a brain."
He tapped his temple for emphasis and she laughed her forest nymph laugh again.
God, she loved this side of him.
Loved seeing him joking and laughing and happy. Happy because of her. Happy because of them. She loved this side of him, but she barely knew it at all. She never seen him like this before, so she said the only thing she could think to say in response.
"I definitely need to get to know you better, Mr. Dixon," she agreed wholeheartedly, latching on to their game of propriety and calling him by his formal name. A name she had no idea how much he loved to hear. A name that, he imagined, it would be part of his courtship duty to inform her of how much he loved to hear. Of what it did to him to hear.
In some Austen-approvable fashion, of course.
"That mean I got permission to court you, Ms, Greene?" he asked her grinning, knowing that she'd just agreed to that but wanting to hear her say it anyway. "'Cause you know a gentleman don't do nothin' without a lady's permission…"
"Yes, you can court me, Mr. Dixon," she said beaming, wanting to laugh again from her joy but too overwhelmed by that joy to do anything other than smile. "I'd be honored to receive the attentions of a man such as yourself."
She said that last bit cheekily, trying hard to remember the way that people used to talk back in the olden days, but she'd meant every word of it.
She was absolutely honored to be at the center of Daryl's attentions.
Honored and terrified because she didn't want to disappoint. She didn't want to let him down. But she supposed that was what their courtship would be about. If she did let him down, she'd let him down slowly. In little fits and starts. And that would be a heartache, but it would be manageable. They could get through it. They could still stay friends if they never stopped being friends in the first place
If they didn't jump off that cliff until they were both entirely sure.
He'd heard the humor that she'd infused into that statement - had known that she'd been playing their new game - but her reference to receiving his attentions still struck him. He looked at her and thought about all of the attention she really did need right then. He'd fed her - temporarily - but she needed so much more. She needed a shower and a fresh change of clothes - her own clothes from her own closet - and she needed to sleep.
She needed to rest and recuperate.
And he needed to fucking hunt if he was going to be feeding them both.
"Alright, girl," he said, nodding his head and laying his hands flat on the table like an executive making a decision. "Well, you know I think you're a fuckin' badass and you don't need Mr. Dixon takin' care of you or nothin'. But, if you're gonna give me the honor of courtin' you, I'm gonna give you all my attentions, okay? So why don't you let me escort you to your room? You can clean up and get out of them scrubs. Climb into that big bed of yours and get some sleep. And I'll go see if I can scrounge us up somethin' better than canned shit for dinner…"
He didn't want to leave her so soon - didn't really want to leave her ever - but he knew that there was almost nothing left in the cupboard now. If he couldn't catch something in the next hour or so, he could at least lay a few snares to see if he could trap something overnight.
They needed that - she needed that - and there was really no way around it.
"I'll just scope out the woods in back," he assured her, though she didn't look at all concerned by his proposal. There were a hundred open yards in front of the house - the hundred open yards that she'd crossed to come back home - but the woods abutting the back of the property were closer. "I...we almost never get walkers. Definitely not near the house. And you're the first person I've seen since I've been here. But I'll be in shoutin' distance the whole time. You need anythin', you just call for Mr. Dixon and I'll come runnin', alright?"
She loved that plan.
As much as she wanted to spend every minute being charmed and courted by this new Daryl Dixon, she was exhausted. She was exhausted and she felt thoroughly disgusting, too. Grady had been a prison and a horrible place, but she had always been clean there. She'd had running water and soap and fresh scrubs once or twice a week. It had been a luxury that she'd grown used to and she was no longer accustomed to being the filthy creature she was now. She had walker blood on her clothes and on her skin and in her hair. She was greasy and sweaty and just plain gross and she was eager to rinse all of that away.
To watch all the horrors of Grady and the road slide down the drain - her drain in her own bathtub - and be forgotten forever and ever.
"I think that sounds like a fine idea, Mr. Dixon," she told him with a smile, forcing herself away from the table. She held out her arm out in a crooked position - an invitation to interlock their limbs in proper fashion - and continued, "Will you guide me upstairs?"
He was at her side before she'd even finished vocalizing the request and didn't even try to suppress his grin when they interlaced their arms.
"Right this way, Ms, Greene," he said with all the gallantry he could muster, looking down into her smiling face - so unbelievably close to his now - and wondering how on God's green Earth he got lucky enough to have this moment.
They walked in companionable silence up the stairs, both lost in their own wonder at this amazing turn of events and neither wanting to break the spell they seemed to be under. As they neared her door, Daryl was overcome by a sudden wave of relief that he'd always made a point of leaving Beth's room undisturbed. Of putting everything back where he had found it. There were some missing objects, of course, but nothing would appear out of place or ransacked. He planned on telling her that he'd gone through her things - assuming that she hadn't connected the dots on that already - but he was so glad there wasn't any physical evidence of his activity. He'd violated her privacy, and he was going to have to admit that, but he'd never disrespected it and he hoped his treatment of her room made that clear.
And that, when everything was out in the open, that difference would be as meaningful to her as it had been to him.
When they got to the door, he stopped dead in his tracks. It was so strange to think that that room was no longer going to be his domain. That he no longer had the right to go in there. That everything that space had represented was, in a way, gone. Her room wasn't his shrine anymore. It wasn't his temple. It wasn't his emotional and spiritual retreat.
It was Beth Greene's room again.
Really and truly her room.
And Mr. Dixon had to stay on the gentleman's side of the threshold. He was back to being stuck in the hallway. He chuckled at that. Chuckled that he was back to where he'd been at the beginning, but in the best possible way. In a way that was better than he could have ever imagined.
No matter how insane he'd have gotten.
"I'll just be gone for an hour or somethin'," he told her, reluctantly disengaging their arms and stepping away. "And when I come back I expect to find you sleepin', okay? All tucked in with visions of sugar plums dancin' in your head. That a deal?"
"It's a deal," she agreed readily, unable to stop her eyes from quickly darting over to the bed in question. Her bed. That bed that she had slept in since she was old enough to have a big girl bed and that was calling her even more strongly than the shower.
She was about to make a comment about how incredible it was to be standing in that doorway again after all those years, but he began talking first.
"Will you…?," he started to ask her, but cut himself off quickly: flinching when he'd realized what he'd almost said. He hadn't been thinking and it wasn't until he began to form the words that he'd seen how his question could have been misinterpreted.
"What?," she asked curiously, cocking her head in that way of hers.
"Nothin'," he told her, trying to shake it off, and started walking back towards the stairwell. "You holler if you need anythin'."
"What were you gonna ask me?," she pushed as he got to the top of the stairs.
He sighed and hung his head briefly before turning back to look at her. He hadn't wanted her to get the wrong idea, but he had really wanted to make the request, so he somewhat nervously took the opening.
"Will you leave the door open a crack? After you get into bed?," he asked her, unable to stop the blush from coming to his cheeks. "Just so I can check on you. Don't wanna...don't wanna bust in on you with the door closed, but I'm gonna wanna make sure you're good. Settled, you know?"
He didn't want her to think that he was a creep that wanted to watch her while she slept, but he knew that if he came home to a quiet room and a closed door he would worry. Worry whether she was alright. Worry that he'd imagined the whole thing. He would be tempted to be the creep that watched her as she slept, of course, but he wouldn't give in to that. He wouldn't linger. He just wanted to be able to see her when he got back.
She was touched by his concern and by his obvious embarrassment and she couldn't help but tease him lightly out of her sheer happiness.
"Well, I'm not sure if that's entirely proper, Mr. Dixon," she said with a smile, bringing her hand to her chest in a parody of a scandalized Southern belle. Then added cheekily, "But since we don't have a chaperone, I guess we can get away with it."
A small part of him was concerned that she already felt like he was pushing her to do something that wasn't entirely proper, but most of him was confident in her humor. And all of him knew he was in trouble. If that was a taste of the game they were going to be playing, he was in serious trouble. Beth Greene standing in her doorway, glowing golden in the afternoon sun, and teasing him about getting away with something improper because they didn't have a chaperone?
How was a man supposed to handle that?
He'd only ever consciously flirted with phantom Beth before and she didn't flirt back. Well, she did - in the context of his beloved stories - but that was in a voice that was, ultimately, his own. In a storyline that he controlled and was prepared for.
He didn't have to think on his feet.
And, in that moment, he really couldn't think at all. Couldn't think of a witty retort or even a sincere reply. All he could do was stare at her in awe: in complete disbelief that this was now his life.
She was now his life.
Really and truly.
"Girl…," he said, just to say something, and ran a hand through his hair. "We do got a chaperone. And his name is Mr. Dixon's Honorable Intentions. So go get ready for bed and don't test him, alright? 'Cause he's strict and I don't wanna get on his bad side."
That was true. He'd never forgive himself if he rushed her into anything and planned on listening to everything Mr. Dixon's Honorable Intentions had to say. He was going to follow his every instruction to the letter.
Even if Beth Greene could tempt the Pope to sin.
When she was barely even trying.
That's what really killed him. It hadn't even been that flirtatious of a remark. Might not have even been truly flirtatious at all. It could have easily just been innocent teasing. And it still made his heart race.
"Don't worry," she assured him, with mock sincerity. "If he gives you any trouble, I'll protect you. I've been told I'm a bit of a badass."
She laughed at that, probably thinking it was ridiculous, and he laughed at it knowing that it was completely true. She really was a badass and she could probably protect him from a lot of things.
But not from Mr. Dixon's Honorable Intentions.
No one could protect Daryl from him.
He shook his head and, once again at a loss for words, simply pointed at her and told her to get. She nodded her head, giggled lightly in agreement and disappeared into her room and he waited for the door to shut before he started heading back downstairs. He went into the kitchen and grabbed her photo off of the table and put it back in his pocket. He had the real thing now but that didn't diminish the value of the picture and, for the rest of his life, he would always have it with him. He gathered his bow and his bag with his snares and other supplies and headed towards the front door, pausing there for a moment finding it so hard to leave.
So hard to leave her behind voluntarily. Especially knowing that she was, in some ways, vulnerable.
He also knew they were largely safe, though. The chances of anything happening if he left were incredibly slim, while the chances of her going hungry if he didn't hunt were one hundred percent. He stayed with his hand on the doorknob for a long minute, waiting to hear her turn on the shower to signal that she'd started seeing to her needs: to signal that she was doing her part and now it was time for him to do his. But it didn't come and he started to feel uncomfortable lurking downstairs listening for evidence of such personal activity. Listening for the sound of her, basically, getting naked and soaped down and all kinds of things that he shouldn't be listening to or thinking about.
So he forced himself to head out the door, trusting that she was more than capable of getting herself settled. He needed to hunt while he still had light and he needed to be the gentleman that didn't listen to her shower. Stalking off into the woods behind the house, he'd never been so happy that he could hunt more or less mindlessly because he'd never had so much to think about before: so many life-changing things to process and plan for.
Beth Greene was alive and she could be his if he did this right.
There was a possibility - an incredibly distant but real possibility - that every dream that he'd ever had could come true. So he couldn't fuck it up. He had to court her like a gentleman. He had to do something that no Dixon had ever done: truly earn the love of a good woman. And he only had the next hour or so to work on his next move.
Or, at least, that's what he thought.
In truth, the first big act in the courtship of Beth Greene was already underway and it was the reason why he hadn't heard her turn on the shower. Because last night hadn't been like other nights and, for once, Daryl hadn't left her room undisturbed. He'd left all of his notes and sketches and plans for Beth's memorial strewn across her desk: pages and pages of his reflections on her laying there waiting for him to return to in the morning. When Beth had closed the door to her room, she'd taken a moment just to look around the place and it hadn't taken her long to spot the mess of papers. And, while she hadn't remembered if they'd been hers or not, a quick glance had revealed the true author of the work. Her tired and filthy body might have longed for a shower and a bed, but no physical comfort could compete with the allure of what was written at the top of one of those pages and her curious mind had her sitting at her desk chair in a matter of seconds.
Beth Greene
She Brought Great Joy and Happiness to the Lives of Others
He'd heard her song.
She had no idea how, but he'd heard her song.
She started going through page after page, completely overwhelmed by the portrait they painted of her. By the biography Daryl had been writing in the language of flowers. By the virtues and qualities that he seemed to believe that she possessed. By the snippets of memories and thoughts that he'd tried to capture. By what he'd been trying to do there. By what he'd been trying to do for her.
It was beautiful, she thought
He was beautiful. He was absolutely beautiful.
She really couldn't screw this up now.
Yeah, I know. How long can I drag it out, right? Sorry they're going to be taking it a little slow, but I'm still determined to wrap this up by the end of the year, so we WILL get there. I promise. :)
And I know there were a lot of things that they didn't discuss, but the chapter had gotten way too long and I thought, realistically, they wouldn't cover everything in one conversation...especially when she's exhausted from being on the run and they've talked about so much already.
Anyway, I still feel like shit, so I'm going to end it here! My early Christmas present to you: a shorter AN. :)
Thanks so much again for reading and for all your reviews/favs/follows/etc.! Your support means so much to me. Hope you have a wonderful week!
