"That redneck? Are you fu.. Are you serious, Bethy? Him?" Jimmy said, pacing back and forth the Greene kitchen.
Beth gingerly rubbed her face. "We both knew we weren't soulmates, Jimmy. Not with all my marks. It's not like I expected him to pop up out of the blue on my front yard, for Pete's sake."
"Are you just leaving me for him, then?" Jimmy blurted out, face red with embarrassment.
"Jimmy—no!" Beth said. "No, it's not like that with Mister—with Daryl. We don't even know each other. I just.. I think it's best if we cool things down. That's all." After the night before, sitting with each other in her bedroom after her attempt, she wasn't sure where she stood on whether to call him Mr. Dixon or Daryl.
"And now they got some kid, tied up in the barn, and you know what your man is doing to him?" Jimmy spat, pacing.
"Jimmy!" Beth exclaimed, never seeing him act this way.
"He's beating him for information. Who knows what that prick is capable of. I don't trust him, Beth. And after all he's put you through, you shouldn't either." Jimmy headed out of the door. "Just thought you should know your soulmate is a lowlife thug."
Daryl rubbed his raw knuckles, alone at the camp. He had beaten that boy down pretty damn badly to get what they needed. His stomach was in knots, thinking about how old the kid was. He was just a kid.
But no one was safe anymore, not in this world, not with the men that Randall kid was describing. And no one else had the stomach to get the information out of the kid, so they all looked to Daryl, because, face it, they knew he'd do the dirty work.
"Daryl?" Her soft voice called across the way, causing Daryl to squint up. Daryl had already felt her coming the moment she stepped out the front door.
"Brought you some lemonade." She said, a glass in her hand and a bundle of a towel in the other. He grunted, taking it from her, looking down, somehow hoping she didn't know what he had done. But they all knew. Most of them wanted it done, but that didn't change Daryl's paranoia that he was still the bad guy in the situation.
"And.. Some ice. For your hands. Felt'm inside the house." She said, voice quieter this time. There was a long silence before Beth sat down, cross legged, holding the ice in her lap.
"If you're here to give me some sorta speech about what I did, I ain't about to here it." Daryl snarled. "So why don't you go be sweet on everyone else and give lemonade to someone who wants to talk." Dale had already tried to head-shrink Daryl earlier and all it did was piss him off more.
"Ain't here to talk about nothin'. Just wanna get away from everyone, same as you." Was all she said.
Daryl scoffed. "What, life isn't all you dreamed of on the prairie?"
To his surprised, she laughed. "Not since y'all showed up. Just tryna get acclimated to it still is all."
"Acclimated," Daryl repeated with a tiny chuckle. "Hell, that's one way to put it."
"Before.. The barn." Beth said slowly. "I shot a gun for the first time. Better late than never. Could use some work still, you know. In case anything happens."
"Pretty sure your paw is gonna kick us out soon anyway. You'll be back to keepin' them geeks in the barn." He muttered, taking a drink of the sweet lemonade.
What he said struck Beth and he bit his tongue back to apologize.
"I should get back inside. Daddy wants me on bed rest after yesterday. Just wanted to.. Say hi." She stood up and dusted off her pants with her free hand, ice still in the other. She placed it beside him.
"My hands still tingle. Maybe you'll feel like icin' 'em. Sooner rather than later, though." She lingered next to him, searching for words.
Part of Daryl wanted to bark at her to leave him be, that he didn't need any of this, not now. He looked up at her, her closeness burning into Daryl's body.
"You got somethin' to say?" He snapped. "Get back in and lay down."
Beth opened her mouth, shocked, but said nothing as she rushed back into the house.
Daryl didn't know how to be around her.
Her. Beth.
Deep inside, crawling out, was this rawness that he had never felt before. A connection towards someone he had never had, the closest thing he could compare it to was havin' Merle. But that? That was dependency. This? This—he had no idea what this feeling was.
It wasn't like he was her boyfriend, they weren't goin' steady, they weren't anything but a couple of strangers who just happened to meet when the world ended. But as many times as he told himself that, he knew it wasn't true. They were tied by the fuckin' universe.
He felt like he could talk to her. But Daryl didn't know how to talk. Not just to pretty girls like her, but to anyone. His guard was too high.
He mostly wanted to avoid her as much as possible, but he'd be lyin' to himself again if he said he didn't like how he felt when she was sittin' with him outside with lemonade, offering ice for his busted hands. And that's what was worse.
He had just met his soulmate, and his first impressions weren't exactly the best. Why the hell did he even care if she knew he beat the holy living hell out of that kid? Everyone else did. He did what needed to be done. But whatever this shit was that was toying inside him didn't want her to see him as the monster he really was inside.
When Dale died, they all gathered to pay their respects for the man that had always smiled kindly Beth's way.
But after that, everything seemed to happen too fast. Rick's group moved into the house. Randall got loose. Shane died. A horde of the undead attacked the farm and they had to flee.
Beth lost Patricia in her arms, escaping the burning remains of her farm, sobbing over watching her aunt die, pulled away into a truck with Lori and T-Dog.
As she cried in the back on her truck, she prayed silently that the fact she didn't have any soul marks- no bites, no scratches, no nothin' meant one of two things—that Daryl got out alive.
Daryl looped around the farm a few times as he watched vehicles leaving, the horde taking over, the fire drawing them in, trying to catch a glimpse of who was in which car or who made it, finding Carol.
"Did you see Beth?" Daryl said as she climbed on his bike. "Beth, did you see her?"
"I don't—I don't know, she was with Lori and Patricia!" Daryl cursed under his breath, deserting the remains of Hershel's farm.
Luckily, Rick's group all had the same idea to meet back up where they left supplies for Sophia at the highway, and that's where he found her again, embracing Hershel.
Rick was speaking to him and he made a small crack about Glenn's driving, accidently grabbing Beth's attention. She took a step away from her father before lunging at Daryl, throwing her tiny body at his frame and embracing him tight.
"Oomph—damn, girl, I'm okay." He told gruffly, trying to mask his own relief and the electricity pumping through his veins at her touch. He patted her back, giving her a half-assed hug. "You alright?" He said quietly, and she just held him tighter, letting out a soft sigh.
It was a long winter for all of them. Beth had never experienced anything like it before. Rick was in charge, doing the best he could. Beth picked up survival skills she never would've been able to think of on her own, and she thanked God every night for her new family.
That's what they became. A family. They looked out for one another. Took care of each other.
She very quickly lost of comfort of personal space, but honestly? She didn't want to be alone anymore. She needed everyone. She needed Maggie, Lori, Carol, to hold her when she cried over the traumatic loss of Patricia and losing Jimmy. She beat herself up for the first few months on how they ended things, and dreamt of walkers tearing him to shreds in the RV some nights.
Beth and Daryl didn't speak, but that wasn't to say they didn't communicate. She'd catch him staring at her, or the other way around, and at first, both of them would quickly look away. But after a while, they kept each others gaze for a few moments. That overwhelming feeling of a soul mark that would burn through Beth's entire body when she was next to Daryl wasn't so overwhelming anymore, it was more like a warm hum that vibrated at all times, now, and she was used to it.
When they traveled and would be next to each other, he'd place his hand on her back so gently as he passed that it was a like a whisper, making her unsure if it even happened at all. It was such a quick gesture, the soft reminder to her that he was there, or passing her, was all Beth needed during those hard months.
But then they found a prison. A place they could call home.
The first night at the prison, in the yard around the fire, Beth noticed Daryl not-so-sneakily leaving the group to find a spot to sit farther out near the prison.
After singing a song for Daddy and the group, she excused herself with a bowl of food and quitely found herself next to Daryl.
"You left before the squirrel was done." Beth said, lowering herself onto the ground next to him, feeling him radiate beside her.
"Didn't feel like be there for the campfire sing-a-long." He muttered, but took the tupperware bowl and scooped up the meat into his mouth.
Beth blushed at the comment, embarrassed, but didn't let it phase her retort. "You meanin' to tell me you weren't a boy scout?"
Daryl snorted, "Ain't nothin' in boy scouts I didn't learn out in the woods. Survival guide my ass."
Beth giggled. "I guess you're right. You know more about any woods than anyone else I ever known."
Daryl shrugged, continuing to eat. They sat in silence next to each other for a while.
Beth couldn't get over how comforting his closeness was. Even through all the hardships they had endured these past seven months, she felt like no matter what, they could handle it. Together.
Not just because of Daryl, but because of everyone else, too. Rick was a good leader, even if sometimes she questioned if they were making the right decisions; she knew in her heart that what he was doing was all in the best interest of them finding this, this prison, even though they hadn't known it at the time.
But having Daryl? It was a small reminder that good things were possible. What a miracle, she often thought, that she was to finally have him in her life. Even if it was just platonic between them; there was no rules or code to soulmates, she had realized. Those fairytales her momma told her when she was younger, they did come true for some people. But what she wasn't told was that sometimes your soulmate could just be a constant good in your life.
(She'd be kidding herself, though, if she hadn't wished for more. But it didn't take more than one conversation with Daryl Dixon to know that he was a closed off man, among other more crass things others word use to describe their first encounters with him. He had a lot of barriers, some that were naturally broken because of the fact they were soulmates, giving both of them a certain familiarity with each other that they've never had with anyone else—but that didn't make him any less of a guarded man. Beth, being hopelessly hopeful, told herself that if it was meant to be more than this, it would happen when it was time.)
"We haven't had a real chance to talk in a while," Beth commented after a long silence. Daryl stiffened next to her, wiping his hand on his pants.
"Ain't like we ever talked much to begin with."
"Never had the chance. All the runnin' we've done, we all had our jobs to focus on to survive. Not much time to shoot the shit, y'know." Beth defended, rolling her eyes at the last comment.
The swear sounded odd to her, not that she hadn't sworn before. Her momma and daddy raised her proper, she didn't swear around her 'elders.' But she still was a twenty (was she twenty-one now? Her birthday was in the middle of spring.) and she'd picked up her fair share of swears to add to her vocabulary, along with other things, after years of taunting from the boys in high school. (And, of course, her big brother Shaun, wasn't exactly a saint behind closed doors. Beth had always been closer to Shaun than to Maggie, just because of the closeness in age, but didn't really lessen her relationship with her sister.)
Beside her, Daryl choked on the bite of squirrel he was eating, coughed a few times and cleared his throat.
"Didn't know you were 'loud to cuss." Daryl said lightheartedly. In response, Beth gave him a playful nudge to his shoulder, muttering some sort of shut up that was barely heard by either of them. The smallest bit of contact sent Beth's body into tingles and warmth, and she knew Daryl was feeling the same, and they sat quietly until they were able to regain self-awareness.
"What I'm tryna say is," Beth finally said, mustering up all courage, peering at his face in the darkness. "Once we get settled, figure out how to make this place work, I don't see any reason we can't spend some time together."
Daryl wasn't able to keep her gaze for longer than a moment before looking away. "Guess not." He said gruffly.
Beth grinned, knowing that kind of response was the best she was going to get from him. It was basically Daryl's way of saying he was fine with them talking.