I switch back and forth between first person from Beth's POV, and third person omniscient, but it's fairly easy to follow. More trigger things here, so please be warned.
"You sure you don't want your sister here?"
I shook my head at Bob, and watched as he hesitated in the doorway of the bathroom. As the closest thing to a doctor after Daddy died, he'd volunteered to give me a once-over to make sure I wasn't suffering any more than dehydration, and malnutrition.
"Maybe I should get Sasha…"
"Just get it over with," I interrupted him, already unbuckling the heavy brown belt slung around my hips. My jeans went next. As I tugged my shirt up over my head, I heard Bob's sharp intake of breath as his eyes settled on the jagged scar over one hipbone. When I'd wrestled my shirt off of my head, however, he was busying himself with washing his hands in a basin of heated water, turning his back to me in some modicum of privacy.
I hopped onto the counter, my heels banging softly on the cupboard doors, and stared at the doorknob as he started his initial examination. Slowly, his fingers trailed over my head, looking for contusions, soft spots, anything that would signal a head injury. They slid to my neck, and I forced myself to remain still as he pressed against my jaw, my throat, and my collarbones.
"You feel like talking?" His tone was light, unobtrusive, and his hands moved methodically, skimming over the small scars that were left behind on my arms. When he got to my hands, he slowed, and turned them over. He stopped breathing as he inspected first my left hand, and then my right, noticing the start difference between joints and fingers.
My eyes met his and I pulled both hands away, gripping the edge of the counter again. "I like the mountains," I began slowly.
"You were in the mountains?"
I nodded. "I've only been to the ocean twice." I paused, and frowned. "I think."
"You don't remember?"
I closed my eyes and exhaled sharply through my nose. "No," I snapped. "I don't remember."
"Do you remember me?"
I shrugged, noticing how Bob skipped over the scar on my hip, and basically anything covered by my underwear, and went straight to my legs. I let him hold my feet as he bent my knees, and straightened them, and then rotated my ankles. The left one had an echo of heat, and pain, and I jerked when he twisted it just right.
"That hurt?"
"I got caught in a fox trap."
Bob hummed, and crouched down, checking for external damage. "How long ago?"
"How long was I gone?"
"No," Bob replied, shaking his head. "How long ago did you hurt your ankle?"
"Well, how long was I gone? Because it happened the day before they took me."
Bob glanced up at me with uncertainty.
I shrugged again. "Ask Daryl. Are we done?" I slid off the counter as Bob stood, and stepped back. I picked up my jeans, and grabbed my shirt, stuffing them into a bundle under my arm. Slinging my belt over my shoulder, I opened the bathroom door and glanced back at Bob. "Do I pass?"
He didn't say anything, and I shrugged, and stepped into the dark hallway.
She lurked around the place like a ghost, avoiding the light, and day, and sticking to the shadows. She didn't really speak to anyone, though Rick mentioned that he'd had some semblance of conversation with her that first week. She avoided Maggie, but really, Daryl couldn't blame Beth. Maggie hovered, and was impatient, two things that Daryl knew Beth didn't need at this time.
Not much had been discerned about what happened to her beyond Bob's initial physical examination of her. Her fingers had been broken, and Daryl's guts twisted painfully as he thought of all the horrible ways that might have happened. His own pinkie was still slightly crooked from where his father had popped it with a ball peen hammer for spilling paint in the garage. He made a face then. Beth had fought back, and fought back hard. Hell, he had, and he'd only been ten at the time. He remembered being scared, and hurt, and most of all, he remembered being alone. His mama had been up by Cuthbert, visiting her sister, and nobody knew where Merle was. Remembering what he'd learned when Merle had caught his fingers in a fence outrunning Lloyd Campbell's Rottweilers, Daryl had splinted his finger as best he could. Then, he'd hid in a deer blind a quarter mile from the house, holding up for two days, living off of apple juice and peanut butter sandwiches. Eventually he'd climbed down, but his daddy had been too drunk to notice him gone, and too drunk to remember what had even happened. He'd been lucky, he supposed, and had avoided his father whenever he could.
The roughly healed skin around Beth's wrists told him she'd been held captive, and that she'd fought it, too. The scar through her eyebrow was still a mystery, and Bob had muttered something about bigger scar over her hipbone. Daryl didn't want to know about it, and he didn't want her having to relive it by telling someone. Those kinds of scars didn't ever heal all the way. He knew that.
But he also knew how strong Beth was, or had been. After all, she'd been the one to drag his ass back from reverting into the nothing he'd been in Merle's shadow. She'd burned him down along with the house, cremating the last bits of Daryl Dixon before the world went to shit, and reminding him that he was worth something, invaluable to her. Only a select few had been able to do that before she came along: Andrea had died, and at the time he wasn't sure he'd ever see Rick again.
When he'd taken Beth with him when the prison was lost, he had been uncertain about his course of action. The first few days with her had been a trial, with her chirping voice, and little anecdotes, and that damned incurable desire to get a drink. If there was one thing that had been solidified in Daryl's mind during his time with Beth, it was that people were never what they appeared to be on the surface. She had her scars early on, too, and they overlapped, but now it was an angry web, criss-crossing, and playing with her mind. Being alone in a world with living, breathing people was one thing, but being alone where the dead roamed among the living and out numbered them five thousand to one was completely different.
He'd spread a map out on the kitchen table the day after he'd found her, and pieced together the little bits of information she'd given up in her sleep, or in a rare moment of candid speech when she was completely lucid, and understanding of her situation. He guessed she'd been in Tennessee, on the southern end of the Appalachian range. The mention of the mountains had piqued Rick's interest, and Daryl couldn't deny that he was curious about them, too. Would they fare any better in higher elevations than they would down here? Ever since the prison had fallen, no place was deemed one hundred percent safe, but they all worked their hardest to fortify the land they had now, constructing fences and 'alarms', still posting watches, still organizing runs, but always ready to run. He wondered if they'd ever settle. He knew the thought weight heavily on Rick, too.
The real concern, of course, was Beth's state of being, and so Rick had held off on questioning, like he was prone to do, and they all stood back, and watched, and waited for something of the Beth they all knew to come back to them. Daryl knew they waited in vain. The girl they'd known had been cut out and left up in the Appalachians. The Beth that had come home was just as lost, and he was determined to find her, whatever it took.
"Well, there's something I didn't expect to see."
Daryl glanced up from the map he was pouring over of the area Beth had supposedly covered. Rick was seated beside him at the kitchen table, but his attention was focused out the kitchen window. Daryl followed his line of sight, and blinked.
"Huh," he breathed.
Outside, Beth charged across the lawn in nothing but her bra and panties. A bundle of cloth was wedged underneath one arm, and her wide belt was slung over her other shoulder.
"Where is she going?" Rick murmured, already rising from his seat.
"I got her," Daryl announced, already at the kitchen door, and pulling it open.
He slipped down the steps with light feet, and kept his eye on Beth as he trailed behind her. The way she'd come on them in the forest the day before told Daryl that she had learned to read her surroundings. He bit back a curse at that. It was just another reminder that he'd let her down. If he'd been more careful, she wouldn't have had to perfect the basic skills he'd had the time to teach her on her own.
She walked quickly, and with purpose, moving towards the stream that ran along the property and lent to the group's water supply. He had a good idea of what she was doing. Sometimes even he felt crowded in that house, and everyone had their own room. He didn't know if anyone had told her they hauled water in from the pump behind the house, but he figured that even if she did know, it wouldn't have mattered. He slowed as she neared the bank and edged her way down to the waterline, dropping her clothes to one side before she sank to her knees.
"You spying on me?"
Daryl froze, and then bristled, her tone caught somewhere between teasing and accusing. And, at first he hadn't even registered she was talking to him, until she turned and looked in his direction where he'd crouched behind a group of honeysuckles. He quickly stood, and stepped around the bushes, eyeing her carefully.
"No." He winced at his sullen reply.
Beth didn't say anything, and merely shook her clothes out, and inspected the darkest stains. Daryl quickly looked away, knowing that the dirt and blood was ground in deep. He patted down his pocket and came up with the small tin of detergent Sasha had concocted out of lye and ash, and tossed it to the bank beside Beth.
She glanced at the tin, and then picked it up. After opening it, she sniffed the contents, deemed them acceptable, and began scrubbing her clothes.
"Y'know, we gotta lot of clothes back up at the house. Can find ya somethin' t'wear while your stuff dries."
Beth paused, her shoulders and back rigid, and she glanced at Daryl from over her shoulder. "Does my current state upset you?"
Daryl blinked at her reply. Whoever this girl…this woman was in front of him, she was a far cry from the Beth he'd come to know in the short time they'd been together. He shook his head in reply to her question, and Beth went back to work.
"You don't have to hover," she said a while later, as she rinsed her clothes and shook them out, satisfied with her work. "Ain't like I can't take care of myself."
Daryl sighed, sagging against the tree he'd leaned against. "I know."
"So why are you here?"
He pushed away from the tree and began to pace behind her. "Dunno. Just figured…hell, Beth, I don't know." All the emotions he'd been keeping in check since he'd found her in the forest were churning his guts, and he was dangerously close to letting loose all the fear and doubt and anger he'd bottle up since he watched that car tear up the dirt road in the middle of the night. "Why are you here?" He turned the tables on her.
"Washing my clothes," she muttered. "Ain't it obvious?" She stood then, and turned to face him, and her eyes dared him to look anywhere but her face.
Daryl bit his tongue, his jaw tensing with Beth's challenge. He wasn't a fool; something had passed between them in those last days before she was gone. Something more than survival in numbers, more than friendship. When the taillights of the car that took her haunted him at night, he lay awake, listening to the steady breathing of Carl and Michonne, and wondered where he and Beth were headed. He'd had some foolish notions, and some fleeting, but the hot, searing fist that clutched his heart when she'd looked up at him, the short strands of blonde hair framing her face, had told him that those feelings were valid, and hadn't really gone anywhere. The piece he'd felt was missing had slid a little closer into place, but the puzzle wasn't complete.
"Do you not want me here?" Beth continued, her face a mask of indifference.
Daryl pursed his lips. "Don't say that."
Jesus, Beth was a jumbled mess. He could see that, plain as day. He knew the look in her eyes, the defiance in her voice, and the stiffness in her shoulders. It hadn't been that long ago that he'd been plagued by the same things. The actions that had brought her to her current state of being may not have been exactly the same as his, but they were close enough, and that made him sick. Nobody should have to go through what he did – abuse, torture, helplessness – especially Beth. Despite his attempt to keep his eyes firmly within her gaze, they wandered, taking in the way her collarbones stood out, pressing against her pale skin. The skin was marred, too, with grime, and scars, and cuts and bruises he knew would never quite heal. When he saw the curve of reddened, knitted flesh over her hipbone, he swallowed thickly and looked away, out into the trees.
"Damaged goods too much for you to handle, Daryl?"
He growled, and felt his face grow hot. His eyes snapped back to hers. "We're all damaged at this point. I'm sorry…"
Beth sighed, stepping into the water until she was up to her knees. "For what? I heard you, you know." Her eyes grew distant then as she crouched down to the water and sluiced handfuls over her skin. The water had to be close to freezing at this time of year, but she didn't flinch or shiver, and merely looked at her arms as she spoke. "Heard you calling my name, heard the gravel kick up under the car." She looked across the water to him once more. "I tried to be so quiet." Her voice was eerily calm.
Daryl's heart was in his throat, but he didn't say anything, and he didn't move a muscle.
Beth's gaze fell to her hands. "The more I screamed, the more they liked it. The more they did to me." She looked back to the forest, cocking her head to one side. She sounded like she was was talking more to herself, than to him.
She stood suddenly, and waded up to the bank, her bare feet silent over the dead leaves. Daryl stood unmoving as Beth approached, her face turned up to his, her blue eyes sharp, and having seen too much. He let her get close, stand toe to toe with him, her body pressing into his, but it didn't do for him the things it had done before. When she'd wrapped her hands around him all those days ago, she'd been warm, and pliant, letting him fall into her. When she'd taken his hand in the graveyard, when she'd clung to his back as he carried her forward, she'd been smooth, and soft, and she'd smelled sweet. She was air. She'd been light.
Now, she was a pillar of stone: cold, unflinching, and hard against his body. She pressed against him, moving into his space so that her chest was against his, the leather of his vest against the damp and dirt on her skin. He swallowed thickly, his hands curling to fists at his side. She smelled like blood. She smelled like the dark, and like someplace deep in the woods in the shadows of his memories.
"I tried to be quiet," she breathed, looking up at him, her face void of any feeling. Pressing up to her toes, she moved so that her mouth hovered near his ear. "And the whole time you were screaming in my brain."