All I Ever Will Be

Chapter Eight - Unspeakable

His footsteps echoed loudly through the hallway, mimicking the pounding in his heart. How long had he been gone now? The maze was more confusing than he remembered it. He was sure he'd mentally remembered every twist and turn, but had ended up in another dead end.

"Fuck!" he said, pounding on the wall that wouldn't budge. Backtracking two turns, he finally found the open door and he ran inside, stumbling into to the circular room he'd left earlier. Instantly, he looked to the door where he'd left Beth behind and his breath caught in his chest. The door was wide open, keys hanging in the lock.

"Beth?" he cried, his eyes widening. He didn't wait for her response, running to the door frantically.

At first glance, the room was unchanged since he'd left, but looking to the right near the door of the bathroom, the man he'd seen earlier passed out on the table, laid on his back, unmoving.

Daryl instinctively nocked an arrow in his bow, holding it level and aiming it at the body. He walked closer towards him hesitantly. "Beth?" he called out again, hoping to hear her voice, but was met with silence.

The man's face was almost unrecognizable, covered with blood - whether it was his own or someone else's was yet to be determined. His nose was crushed with the skin around it turning an alarming shade of purple. As Daryl came closer he saw that the side of his head was concave and bleeding. Did Beth do this? He brought his foot up to touch the body and was met with no reaction. He waited for a minute, watching his face, looking for a sign of breathing, but there was none. He was dead.

Daryl aimed his bolt at the man's brain and shot, watching the head of it disappear into his skin. He let out a deep breath he'd been holding, then glanced around the room, looking for a sign of life. The bathroom caught his attention and as he looked at the doorway, he saw two small feet sticking out.

"Beth?" Daryl cried, lunging into the bathroom, throwing his bow to the side and landing on his knees on the concrete. She was laying on the floor, her eyes wide open, looked disoriented and empty, focused on the light in the ceiling above them.

"Beth?" Daryl said her name again, feeling anxious. He grasped her shoulders gently, helping her to sit up. She looked at him then, her eyes wide and terrified.

"Daryl?" she asked, as if she was unsure if it was really him.

"You okay?" he asked, looking her over. Her body and new clothes were splattered with blood. She'd made no move to remove the splatter from her face, but a steady stream of tears had cleared their way down her cheeks.

"I'm not sure," Beth said blankly.

"What happened?" Daryl asked. "Are you hurt?"

"I think I killed that man," she said, bringing her arm up to point outside the door. It was shaking so violently that she gave up, letting it fall limply to her side.

Daryl shook his head. "Don't you worry 'bout that," he said. Her hair was a mess, tangled with sticky blood and sweat, clinging to her face. He took a steady finger and tucked some of the loose strands behind her ears. "Beth, are you hurt?" He needed to know.

She shook her head no and trembled slightly. "Did I kill that man?" she repeated in a whisper, her eyes darting to the door, then back to Daryl.

He hesitated, not wanting to lie to her. She was so fragile, so very broken in this moment. He felt lost and uncertain, not sure what to say or how to help. "Yeah," he responded softly, sitting next to her on the damp tile. He pulled her into his arms gently and she let him, the back of her head on his chest. It was only then that he realized how violently she was shaking. "Tell me what happened."

She let out a sob then, and began to weep. He let her cry, not saying anything, just holding her in his arms as she crumbled. She needed to release the emotion - it would be the first step to overcoming what she'd done no matter how essential it had been. The burden of killing another human being, taking a life, it was an overwhelming pain that never truly went away regardless of the circumstances.

The night he shot Dale after he had gotten bit at Hershel's farm, it was something Daryl still dreamt about. Dale's wide eyes pleaded with him to do it, an act of ultimate kindness, but after it was done he carried an emptiness with him that would be there for the rest of his life. He remembered the grief and anguish that flooded through his body - only to be released the next day with Shane, Andrea and T-Dog when they went out to take care of the walkers beyond the farm. It was a relief like no other.

He had, of course, become numb to it over time, more so than he liked to admit, but it was the way the world was now. If a threat appeared, he eliminated it. If someone needed to be put out of their misery, he would help them on their way. But not Beth. Beth was so innocent. So good. So bright. For her to have to kill another human being - it was something he couldn't quite wrap his head around.

"He came into the room," she said slowly, so softly Daryl could barely hear her. "He was drunk - or something. He stumbled in. Thought it might have been you. I didn't move as quick as I should've. I just thought," she trailed off. "I didn't even hear him comin'. He knocked me to the..." she hesitated, shifting in Daryl's arms. He could tell she felt uncomfortable. "He knocked me to the floor and pulled off my pants," she said, sounding tormented. She stopped then, her tears and emotion overwhelming her and Daryl squeezed her knowing what she was going to say next. "He got on top of me," she managed to splutter out.

"Beth," Daryl said, interrupting her, not sure how to make it better. He wanted so badly to take that pain and make it his own, but he knew he couldn't. Instead, he stroked her hair - something he'd never done before to anyone. He didn't quite understand it, but her body relaxed at his touch.

"I got out from underneath him and ran," she said, turning her head so that their eyes met. "I grabbed the lid and swung it." He felt her hands wrap around his upper arm, her fingernails digging into his skin as she shook with sadness. "I hit him with it," she sobbed. "I didn't give up - I hit him with it over and over and over. I killed him. Oh my god," she was unraveling as she spoke. "I killed him! I didn't have a choice."

"Beth," he breathed, stroking her hair still, letting his fingers make contact with her scalp. "There was no other way. You had to. You were survivin'. Fightin'," he said forcefully, wanting her to understand. "You did what you had to do."

She was quiet then, still trembling with grief and they sat there for a while, neither of them moving. Daryl wanted to make things okay for her and this was the only way he knew how. She felt so tiny against his chest, but the guilt of the pain she was feeling was smothering him. He knew it all too well and wanted to make it better.

"C'mon," Daryl said, after a long while, helping her to stand. "Let's get you cleaned up."

She nodded, moving to get up from the floor. Daryl left the bathroom to find something he could wipe up the blood with. He settled on tearing apart the bloody bedsheets from the mattress, trying to find the cleanest part to run under the water. Once he'd torn two good pieces, he returned to her in the bathroom. Beth was standing at the sink, her shoulders trembling. She was gripping the sink so tightly that her knuckles were white.

Daryl took the torn rag to the sink, coming up behind her. Reaching around her body, he turned the spout on which spluttered and spit out a slow stream of water into the sink. Daryl wet the fabric, turned the sink off and pulled Beth around gently to face him.

She was staring at him now, her face blank and bloody. He avoided her eyes as he carefully started wiping away the blood from her face. He worked slowly, making sure he was getting every stain out of her skin. He was suddenly so aware of how large and clumsy his hands were and how heavily he was breathing. He took in every detail of her face as he cleaned away the blood, noticing how she kept her lips slightly separated in between steady breaths. She kept her eyes on him as he made his way across her face, over her ears and down her neck.

Although he was meticulous there was still blood in her hair that he couldn't remove with the towel. "You might want to wash out your hair," Daryl suggested, breaking the silence.

She nodded. They were standing so close now that he could feel every breath she was taking. The situation made him uncomfortable in his own skin, and all at once he wasn't sure what to do with his arms, his fingers, his eyes - she was looking at him and wasn't moving away. Did she really want to be this close to him?

"Thanks Daryl," she said sincerely, and then without warning she leaned forward and kissed him gently. Their lips collided so quickly he almost wasn't sure it happened. It was like an electric shock to his mouth and he sucked in air quickly, surprised and unsure of how to react. She pulled back, looking down at the floor, her hands reaching back to rest on the rim of the basin.

He wasn't sure how to react. Wasn't sure what it meant, but his lips were on fire. She was the softest thing he'd ever tasted. He stared at her for a minute, broken, beautiful Beth, then came to his senses and left her to the bathroom, not wanting to make the situation any worse than it was already.

He moved into the next room, his mind swimming. She had kissed him. Why? He touched his own lips, chapped, surrounded by hair from his beard, curious how he might have felt to Beth and wondering what it meant. He knew people did strange things in moments of crisis, but he still couldn't help but wonder.

He didn't have time to ponder further though. The thought was stripped from his mind instantly, as a voice started screaming through one of the closed doors in the outside room.