I couldn't resist adding Beth's POV, so this is now a three-parter. Do I have any idea what I'm doing? No. Am I totally out of my element? Yes. Am I doing it anyway? Yes. I pray this flows well with Part One, I pray you enjoy.
The alarms start at six o'clock on a Monday in early October. She's making dinner, listening to an old Mazzy Star album on her iPod, but the blaring whirringmakes her tear her headphones out and move to the nearest window. When she pushes the curtain open, she's confused. The sky is calm, the sun just about ready to start its arc downward.
It isn't tornado season.
She thinks they must be testing the systems, like they sometimes do, and moves back to the cutting board.
But they don't stop. And something about this situation is making her back prickle with fear. She's never been afraid on the farm, despite its wide open spaces and acres of isolation; even when everyone either died or left or caved in on themselves. She's felt uncomfortable, suffocated, sadness dull enough to drown, and pain sharp enough to dismember. But never fear.
Now, as the sirens blare on and on, she's acutely aware of how alone she is. Her daddy went out a little after lunch, which means he won't be back until morning, and she feels so deeply unsettled that she throws her uncooked food in the fridge and moves to the living room.
It's still an open space, but it feels cozier and safer, and she thinks she's being a baby, but she turns on the TV just for the comfort of background noise.
The sirens are blaring and the TV is throwing the sound of static into the mix. The grey, shaky light of it hits a picture of her family and she's quick to change the channel. Except MTV is static, too.
.
Once, when she was maybe ten, she got her first bad grade. A spelling test that she'd forgotten to study for; the teacher had marked the paper with a scary red D and a note to please show her parents. Beth was a good student, so used to her parents' praise of her intelligence, and hadn't known what to do. She'd hid the test in her bag, thrown the bag on the couch, and went about her weekend.
She'd left her bag in the open too long, and when she heard her name – her mama's voice, heavy on the Elizabeth in anger, she'd known she'd been found out.
She knows it's dumb, knows she's lived through so much worse than a stupid failed spelling test and the punishment that came after. Still, the sinking that she'd felt in her stomach, the change in body heat from hot to cold so fast it'd left her sweating, the way her head hadn't been able to catch up with what was happening all those years ago…it's the only comparison to the fear she feels now.
Something isn't right, and she doesn't know what it is, but the TV is throwing wicked shadows over portraits of a family she doesn't have any more and her insides feel exposed in how strongly they prickle and she's sweating so bad she doesn't realize she's crying.
But the body can only do one of two things – fight or flight, and several minutes later she realizes she's doing neither. There's nothing to fight here. So she grabs her keys and drives.
.
The radio doesn't work either, so she settles for a caseless CD after realizing she's left her phone and iPod on the farm.
It isn't enough to drown out the sound of sirens, but she isn't alone once she hits the main road and a very small part of her calms at that.
She drives to a little league baseball diamond in the heart of town and parks her car. It's not chaotic out here, more excited than anything else, and she finds some sense of adrenaline in that as she fast-walks past the growing crowds meandering out of buildings. Everyone's looking toward the sky, like a twister is going to form before their eyes; people love storms, love disasters, too, until they actually hit.
But she doesn't have time to wait for a twister that won't happen, and as fast as the adrenaline rush hit her it's gone, replaced by the exhaustion that usually follows her panic attacks.
She's here to find her daddy, and while she knows this strip of road houses his favorite bars, she doesn't know which one he's at tonight. So she starts at the first, and when he isn't there, the second, then third.
This day is weird, some Twilight Zone level stuff, and being in these bars in the daytime, with its patrons and keeps a little riled up because of whatever is happening, is making everything very surreal.
After her mama died but before she'd tried to kill herself, she'd had a problem day dreaming, getting caught up in the double vision of how she saw the world – what was going down, and what was going down in her head. It was easy to get lost in her mind and she'd have to remind herself: I am Beth Greene; I am seventeen years old… to feel any kind of centered at all.
She does that now, murmuring to herself as she pops in and out of bars, trying to stay grounded in the here and now, trying to find her daddy and maybe find out what the hell is going on.
When she leaves the last bar, still fatherless, her feet kind of give up, and she finds herself slowing until she abruptly stops. She stops and stands in the middle of a street she's been down a million times and just looks. The sirens are blaring and the bars and shops have emptied themselves out into the streets; a group of kids are playing tag, there are people propped up on curbs sipping beer…
And she wonders if she's crazy. Wonders if she's the only one who feels even the slightest bit off about this. Wonders if she's in her head again, imagining the blaring being worse than it really is.
She decides it doesn't matter, and heads back through the crowds, slower this time, until she's in her car. She doesn't cry; doesn't have the energy for it, and something about the last few minutes of her life doesn't really call for tears. But she's worried about her daddy…she's been doing a piss poor job of caring for him these last few months, and she's known for a while he was going to drink himself to death, but not being able to find him tonight of all nights is just…she's worried. That's all.
But there's nothing left to do here, so she lets the ignition rumble to life.
.
When she gets to Dale's Pit Stop, it's locked up, lights shut off. So, there goes that idea. It's quieter on this street, in that not so many people are around, but she was really hoping to at least find her uncle.
Sometimes, Beth forgets herself. Forgets she's eighteen and unpolished, but it's all she can be as she mumbles half angry, half annoyed to herself a string of complaints consisting mostly of literally, and ugh. She doesn't know what to do, but the sun is setting and that damn siren just keeps going; she restarts the CD, and turns it up to an obnoxious level she's never even touched before, just so she doesn't start feeling alone again, so she can act like she isn't afraid.
She considers that her daddy could be home, then considers in almost the same thought that he's definitely not home. And thinking about being back there is just…not happening.
And then, she thinks of Daryl.
And she laughs at herself, alone in her car, because it's just like her to think of the most obvious thing last. She doesn't know what's going on, doesn't know where or her daddy or uncle are, doesn't even know if he'll be home…but she knows that armchair would be really comforting right now.
.
When Beth knocks on his door, the sun is gone and the sirens seem so much louder. She's trying to quell down the fear nagging at her at the idea of him not being home, when the door opens.
"Girl…" He's been drinking, she can tell, in the heavy slur of his voice. And he's definitely surprised to see her, but he steps back immediately, and she doesn't smile and she can't forget about her daddy, but she feels a little lighter stepping past him and into his apartment.
And then she notices someone on the couch, someone whose eyes are fixed acutely on her; dangerous eyes and a dangerous smirk, like a snake, she thinks. The smirks sneers wide, a play at a friendly smile, something that looks scary on the large head it's fixed to.
His brother.
"Whadda we have here, baby brother," and the scraggle of his voice, serious and mean, sets her right back to the heavy fear and discomfort she's felt since sirens interrupted Fade Into You hours ago.
His eyes leave her for Daryl for a split second, Daryl who's standing so close she could grab his hand or kiss his lips or any of the other things she'd thought about doing when she got here. She know he's going to do it before it happens, and then he does it - pulls a cigarette from his pocket and lights in right there in the apartment. And when she glances up at him, he's glaring at his brother, harder than he's ever glared at her.
It's tense, silent except for the siren.
"Answer me, boy," and Beth realizes his brother was being nice earlier; that this is what mean sounds like, that this is a voice that breaks and hurts and forges anger and steel.
And Daryl is reduced to something small, something she feels in herself – like when she thinks she's doing better only to wake up feeling dead the next day, only to realize that for all the strives she's made, she's still mixed with a little weakness at her core.
He's not wilted, he's not afraid; the anger his brother evokes is obvious, and instead of making him bigger, scarier…it shrinks him down. Just a little.
"Her name's Beth," he says like he has to, and like he hates that he has to. But his voice is so relaxed it surprises her. She expected snarling, expected the terse way he'd spoken to her the first day they met. This, she thinks, definitely isn't his first rodeo.
It's mercurial the way the oldest brother changes face – he melts his tension, shows less teeth in his smile.
"Well tell her to sit down, then."
.
It's weird, being here with his brother, Merle. She sits in the armchair, but finds little comfort in it. The sirens still blare, and the TV here isn't working either. So, there's sitting. She can tell she's interrupted their evening – Daryl from his drinking and Merle from his…she doesn't see any drugs but she thinks he's high on something.
So, there's sitting. Her in her chair, the brothers on the couch. There's no talking, save for the random comments Merle makes, mostly to himself.
She's uncomfortable, she realizes.
It isn't the first time she's come over since that Thursday in his truck, when she made herself kiss him. Sometimes, she comes by to escape home, but sometimes she comes just because she wants to. She comes over and they watch crap TV and make out until they're tired. Or they cuddle. But she knows she shouldn't use that word, because it would set Daryl into an outrage; they lie down with one another on his stupid, lumpy couch, and maybe there's a fair amount of giggling on her part.
And in doing those things, in being so close to his face…she notices things. He's not young, maybe not even aging well. His eyes are often times sunken in and the hairs in his beard are sprinkled with grey. The skin around his neck is starting to sag, and wrinkles are sketching a home into his face.
And he drinks a lot. Not like her daddy, not dangerous, but he likes his beer. He drinks a lot, and he smokes even more, and he doesn't exactly keep his place clean.
And she's find with all that, really fine. He can be older than her, he can drink and smoke and leave his socks around his living room. She likes him, and it's never made her uncomfortable.
Until now. Because she's eighteen years old, and instead of waiting these sirens out at home with her family, or being unaware on some college campus somewhere like everyone else she graduated with, she's in an apartment with two grown men.
But she can't go home. This was her final destination, and she's made it and they've let her in, and she'll sit in her armchair quietly until they both pass out if she has to. She'll stay in this apartment, comfort be damned, until those sirens cut it out, and then she'll make sure to never come by when Merle is home again. She likes Daryl, and that feels like a crime with his brother around.
.
And so the night passes, until Merle slips off to sleep.
And suddenly, Daryl isn't so drunk anymore.
"C'mon, you ain't sleepin out here." He's heading to a hallway and she's following, until they're in a room that makes her heart ache just a little.
Spartan isn't a good word, but maybe sad is. It's a small room, in a small apartment, and there's a bed, and a pile of clothes and shoes in a corner. And that's it. No desk or drawers or bed frame. Beth thinks about Daryl, a lot, but she's never thought about where he sleeps; she's never imagined how he wakes up in the morning, or how long it takes him to pick out an outfit for the day. And now she's looking at him and looking at his room, and…it hits her again, how different they are. How different their lives are. How she has a big, pretty sleigh bed, and a bookshelf and a desk and this and that, and Daryl sleeps on a mattress on the floor with all his clothes a toss away.
She thinks she's starting to understand, at the very least, his grouchiness.
But she follows him in, because, she's starting to realize, they're getting kind of good at following one another.
He's unceremonious about it, acts like she isn't there. Shuts the door, takes his socks off, then his pants, and moves around her for the edge of the bed. So, it's Daryl, in a sleeveless flannel and his boxers, getting ready to have a smoke. And she's still standing by the entrance, and she's still fully dressed, and the only thing her brain is processing is how much paler his legs are than the rest of him.
This is weird, this entire day. Still. But she's not uncomfortable, not right now. Because they're alone, and she's used to that. He's smoking lazily and looking out the window, and he would glare if she said it aloud, but he's got his thinking face on. Maybe he's thinking about the sirens and maybe he's worried, maybe he's thinking about the girl in his room.
Maybe he's thinking about cats. It doesn't matter.
She takes off her shoes, no socks because she was in a hurry to get out the house. Her jacket, her jeans. Her bra, shirt still on like she learned in the locker room, because if she's going to sleep here, she's going to be comfortable. Maybe she should be embarrassed by her underwear, an old pair, or the hair on her legs. Maybe she should be nervous, or apprehensive. But, it's been a weird day. So, she isn't.
When she sits down cross legged beside him, wiry blonde hairs peek out from both sides of her underwear. He notices, and when he opens his mouth, she thinks it will be to tease about that. Instead, "Why'd you come here?"
He hasn't asked why since the first time, when she showed up in her sleep clothes, equally unsure about being in his space.
She looks out the window, sees what he sees (another apartment building, a few lights on).
What she likes about being with Daryl is that she's never disappointed in herself. She never feels like the old pieces of her are clinging on, fighting not to be abandoned. She never feels like she has to smile or has to laugh or has to do anything. She likes to do those things. She'll always be a hugger, a laugher, a romantic with her head in the clouds.
But she's different now; sees things for what they are a little more, for what they aren't. She doesn't have the same boundless energy as before.
And that's okay. With Daryl, that's okay. She can come to him, be with him, when none of the pieces of old Beth want to come out to play, when she feels morose and contemplative and deeply, deeply sad. She can be with him when she's giggly or pushy or high or low, and it doesn't matter. Because he never knew her before, but he gets her now.
And because he can't be disappointed in who she is now, neither can she.
Because he lets her sit, and think, and construct answers to questions. And he's patient with her. Another cigarette, thinking face hit with the light from one of three windows in his apartment.
"I didn't have anywhere else to go," she's not too loud because he wasn't; following him. She scooches along the bed until she can lay out, back to the mattress, feet against the wall, head in his lap. It's new, being so close to him there, and for a few seconds he tenses, but then he calms and it feels natural. His thigh is warm under her hair, and she can smell him like this – beer, cigarettes, sweat, but some of his deodorant; he smells solid and strong. It makes her nuzzle down a little to feel his heat on her neck; it sparks something slow and hot in her stomach.
"The sirens creeped me out, so I left to find my daddy. Couldn't find him, so I went to work because I thought my uncle would be there. But he wasn't. So, I came here. I would've called, but I left my phone at home on accident."
She doesn't have to explain herself, not really, and that's not what this is. She's relaxed, feels like she's talking to Maggie before Maggie abandoned her. She's kicking her toes against the wall and getting sleepy, despite the noise of the siren still blaring.
He doesn't give her words, instead she gets a grunt and hand on her head.
It's not until he's tossed the rest of the butt out the window, shut the lights out, and pulled the comforter over her that he speaks.
"Glad you came. Thought some shit might be happening…don't know where you live, so."
He likes her, cares about her; she knows this, but it's the closest he's ever come to saying it. And it's special, she thinks, that they can be together in the dark like this. Comfortable with one another in a way that proceeds the time they've spent together; comfortable in themselves and trusting one another with the people they may be.
She grabs his hand, kisses his neck, and falls asleep.
.
It isn't the press of his cock against her ass or stomach that wakes her. It isn't Merle pounding on the door, or sunlight filtering through the windows, or an untimely phone call.
It's her bladder, full and making her hot. Her bladder wakes her, but the tail-end of a scream that knows no reservations gets her out of bed.
It's a curious thing, disaster. It's exciting in the buildup, if people are so lucky to have one. Something big to come out of the ordinary, to disrupt lives for a little bit. Something to talk about later, stories to be over exaggerated and romanticized. Running on adrenaline and finding the high in that, feeling the laughter that bubbles up out of disbelief.
This is disaster, Beth is sure, but she feels no adrenaline, no excitement. She's confused.
There are no more sirens. There's no fire or gunshots or…anything. Just a person, lying on the sidewalk. It's…she thinks they're dead, assumes it was the person screaming earlier. She doesn't know, she's only ever seen dead people in their caskets.
There's a person, dead. But there's someone else, and for all that he could be weeping into the corpse's neck, Beth knows he's biting it; it takes some time, as things do immediately after waking, but she's certain. She's watching someone eat someone else.
.
The next few hours happen like this:
She wakes Daryl, wakes Merle, forgets about her bladder as fires do start and gunshots do ring.
She squeezes in his truck between the two brothers, both confused but alert. Stone faced, maybe worried.
She directs them through town, the beginnings of a horror story, to the farm. It's empty. (She thought it might be. But it's a little worse than not being able to find your mom in the grocery store - when people are eating corpses and starting fires and you don't know if your body can handle another panic; maybe that grocery store is the size of Georgia and you're feeling more than a little weak, more than a little scared).
It's a crapshoot, deciding to try for Atlanta. What they know is this, Senoia is going to Hell and they don't understand why. They don't know where her daddy or uncle are, but her brother and sister are in Atlanta. And they aren't the only ones trying to get out.
It's strangely quiet for the horrors happening in the streets as they try to get through and out. It's quiet, but people are eating people, right on sidewalks and in parking lots and inside cars. Merle clicks the lock in place, for the third time, and Daryl starts another cigarette. The windows are rolled up, for obvious reasons. The smoke is thick, it hurts being trapped like this, waters her eyes that stare ahead of her and around her at her home. At the quiet chaos so different than that of the day before, at the fear in people she's known.
She doesn't understand what's happening. She doubts anyone really does. She doesn't understand how this happened so suddenly, why it's happening at all.
It's quiet in the truck, has been since she suggested Atlanta. Her head hurts with it, spins itself in circles with questions and theories that have no option for outlet. She's scared. She hopes Maggie or Shawn will be home; worries in the back of her mind that she won't remember how to get to their apartments. She hopes her daddy is okay, sleeping in someone's guest room, oblivious as usual.
She hopes the National Guard comes in and does what they can. That Obama gives a speech and the country mourns for her town and that the whole thing will be over soon. She hopes that, someday, people will find a way to over exaggerate this, to romanticize how they got out.
That it will become history. Like disasters do.
.
It becomes rapidly apparent that this is not blowing over.
Getting to Atlanta is a crash course in dealing with traffic with two Dixon men. Which means there's a lot of cussing and frustration and hitting the dashboard. Merle might need a hit. Daryl ran out of cigarettes an hour outside of Senoia.
But there's no getting into Atlanta. Her heart can't slow down and her stomach is cold. If the little horrors of her hometown were terrifying, then she doesn't have a word for this. Because the city is nothing but a blockade of cars, some already deserted. The outline of a city she'd once dreamed of is hazy with smoke and cop sirens blare and helicopters fly overhead (and for all she thought apocalypses started at night, it's only about noon).
The brothers are tense. There's nothing to do. They're surrounded by countless cars, and despite a crossbow Daryl'd slung between his legs hours earlier, they aren't equipped to deal with whatever this is. There's nothing to do, and they wouldn't know what to do if there were.
Every time one of those things stumbles by their truck, snarling and janky and desperate, her breath hitches and she has to fight back tears. Daryl's taken to chewing on his thumbnail, maybe to replace the nicotine, but he squeezes her knee, tight and painful, when she gets afraid.
Until Merle can't take it anymore, the waiting and her fear, says fuck it, and opens his door.
Daryl's face twists into an anger and frustration that's new to her. He smashes his fist into the glove compartment and she watches his chest rise and fall rapidly and violently.
His brother is a goddamn dumbass sonuva bitch.
Daryl is scared, his eyes shift and jump around and he's clutching his crossbow hard. Still, he gets out to follow his brother. And despite those things being out there, she gets out to follow him.
.
She's beginning to understand a lot more about the brother's relationship after Daryl leaves the safety of the truck to follow Merle.
It's not like she really has time and a clear mind to think about it, weaving between cars like they are, trying so desperately not to puke in fear when she hears a scream or thinks about those things roaming between cars, chasing and eating people.
But she thinks about it in small snatches – how much older Merle seems to be than Daryl. How, despite Daryl having a job and barely passable social skills, he lives in the conditions that he does. The way Merle talks to Daryl, and the anger it sparks…the obedience that follows.
She's sweating profusely. She's terrified and clutching Daryl's hand hard enough to make her own ache. Her lungs burn and her legs ache. She wants to cry, and she wants Merle to stop running so they can stop running.
He'd follow his idiot brother to the end of the world, because that's all he's ever had.
It's an epiphany she has maybe a mile into running up the highway, through cars and over dead bodies and around those things. As they literally follow his idiot brother through the end of the world.
.
Eventually, she can't take it anymore. She can't run anymore, no matter the fear. Her lungs are about to burst and her tears are mixing with her sweat.
"Daryl, I can't." She's barely breathing, gasping and swallowing desperately as she tries to talk.
"I can't run anymore." He doesn't stop. In fact, he yanks her hand harder to keep her running. They're barely trudging through the woods, still after Merle, who'd hopped a divider between the highway and the wilderness what seems like a long time ago to Beth.
"Daryl, stop!" Maybe she sounds panicked, maybe he can't breathe either (for the ungodly amount of nicotine and tar built over his lungs, she's surprised he can run at all), but he stops. Very slowly, like he's trudging through mud, like his legs are made of metal.
"I'm sorry, I just can't breathe. I can't run anymore." This is to his back, to the crossbow slung over it. It looks odd. It looks heavy, and she never even knew he had a crossbow. Never even knew that was legal. But he shoulders it like an extension of himself, and she watches it rise and fall with his breathing, watches his bare shoulders heave, too.
Her mind is telling her she's a quitter, that there are things out there very much trying to kill her. But it's quiet in the woods, though unsettling in its open spaces.
Daryl turns to her, and he looks as terrified as she feels. It makes him look tired, but his eyes are scary. Maybe, she thinks, he knows about survival. Maybe this isn't all that new to him.
When he tells her they can rest for a little before he starts tracking his brother, it's like she's talking to a different person. He's generally gruff, and she's never thrown off by it. But there's been a gentleness behind his voice, behind him, since the night he took her away from that party. He talks to her with a smirk fighting at the edge of his lips, a shifting in his eyes that so often replaces laughter.
Now, there's nothing. He addresses her like she's nothing. Not with anger or annoyance or frustration. Just…she's not a child, and she refuses to let this throw her over the edge, but she can't let go of the small, immature whisper that maybe he doesn't like her right now.
They don't have time for her to think like an eighteen year old.
They rest. They're deep enough into the woods that the sounds of chaos don't reach them, but she can't feel calm. Those things are fast, and the thought of them brings terror and paranoia; it mixes sourly with the frustration that her body needs this breather. She regrets never taking gym class seriously.
When their breathing evens out, Daryl stands and pulls her up beside him; he's quiet. They don't run, there's nothing following them.
It's odd to watch him, this Daryl that seems nothing like the man she knows. He's angry, she can tell. But he's calm in the woods, in that he's not chewing at his thumbnail or tapping at anything or expelling ceaseless energy in one tick or another like he seems to do…always.
He's calm and he's quiet, and he's looking at the forest floor and walking like he has any clue where they're going, where Merle is. Maybe he does. Maybe there are whole parts of Daryl Dixon she knows nothing about.
.
They find Merle where the trees begin thinning and the grass gets thicker. He's sitting down like a little boy, like's he's been patiently waiting for them to catch up. Of the little she knows about him, Beth doubts Merle ever does much patiently.
"You get any of our shit, or you just run out here bare-assed baby brother?" It's almost sarcastic, and Daryl must take it as being rhetorical, because he doesn't answer.
Beth wants to snort – no, they didn't grab anything from the truck, (though they didn't really grab anything from the apartment), because they'd been too busy chasing after him.
Everything Beth thinks, Daryl is able to say with his face.
Merle isn't perturbed, as she's realizing must be his nature; he smiles like a snake again. She doesn't trust him when he does that.
"Not to worry, baby brother. Took you and jailbait so long to get here, thought I'd do a little scouting."
Neither of them takes the bait, asks what he's found in his scouting. Daryl's face looks painted on, like he's heard this sort of thing twice too many times before; he might be good at hiding his frustrations, were in not for the twitching of his hands, the rapid movement of his chest.
"There's a group, pitiful as all shit, less than a mile south from here. They ain't got much, but they got more than us. I say we act friendly, show up with the Girl Scout you got on your dick, and rob 'em for their shit when the time's right."
(Here's the thing – Beth knows, probably when Daryl does, that this is the plan they'll follow. She knows because he's gripping her hand to pain. She knows because his eyes are saying no. She knows because he answered his brother in that apartment and he followed him into the woods and just like she knows her own name, she knows Daryl does what Merle says. He's the toughest person she knows, intimidating and powerful, but at the end of the day he's someone's little brother).
Still, it's like meeting someone new, this one a slightly different Daryl than the one she met tracking through the woods, when he asks Merle how many people are in the group and when he wants to approach.
It's like getting the breath knocked out of her, because she doesn't want to do this. She doesn't want to do this, and she hurts because she knows he doesn't either.
Maybe Merle is a shitty brother. He must be, to not feel the resignation rolling off Daryl. He must be selfish and self-centered and self-absorbed, she decides, to call all the worst shots for someone who would do anything for him.
Of all the people to be stuck with, she's angry that she's stuck with Merle Dixon. But, in the detached lilt of his voice, in the hand still gripping hers, Beth figures Daryl isn't too happy he's stuck with Merle, either.
And she thinks of her luck, of his, that they got stuck with Merle together.
.
Getting into the group is easy enough. There are only seven of them, and they're all as panicked and afraid and confused as anyone else she's seen since leaving Senoia.
They're happy to see new people, people who are alive and sane, and they immediately open up the circle in which they'd been sitting to allow room.
Beth thinks they must have all found one another while trying to get out of their cities, or running through the woods, save a woman and little boy who must be mother and son. She thinks they're all trying to group her in, somehow, with Merle and Daryl.
Merle and Daryl, who let her lead the show. She does all the talking and laughing, forced as everyone else. She asks if they know anything, and they don't. Which, yeah. She assumes no one is going to know anything, ever. She asks them if they know the Green's – Hershel or Maggie or Shawn, but they all shake their heads; then everyone's passing around names. Again, no one knows anything. Ever.
She sits between the brothers during introductions, during questions, and eventually meals, and then as the sun is starting its decent. And she can hardly think through the panic that starts again - please God let us be okay out here. Please God let those things stay away from here. Please God, keep me through the night so I may see tomorrow - that just yesterday she was making dinner, and just yesterday those sirens started, and just this morning they fled.
She can barely think it, but once she does she feels drained for all the energy it took, all the fighting through fear it took to get a little observation like that out. But now there are no observations, save the light disappearing and the people bedding down. She wants to know how they're all so fearless. She wants to know how it could possibly be that she's the only one with a throat tights and hot with tears, the only one desperately afraid.
She wants to know how long a person can stay awake before exhaustion takes them.
But there's Daryl, and even though Merle had gone to sleep with all the others, he's sat beside her. They've been quiet, her with her fear festering in her mind. And she thinks, maybe, that he's worried. That he's been thinking. She thinks again, briefly, about just yesterday – that he'd sat thinking and smoking in his bedroom. And he had been worried earlier that day, about her; about being able to find her if those sirens ever amounted to anything.
He's worried now, too, she decides. No cigarettes, but his thumb in his mouth, tearing away at the nail. His other hand, free of hers for one of the first times all day, clutches the crossbow between his legs.
"You gonna sleep tonight?" He doesn't look at her when he asks, keeps his eyes straight ahead to the part of the clearing they'd walked through hours earlier. But when he talks, he sounds like himself. Like Daryl at Patty's on a Thursday nights; like Daryl in the truck's cab, half of a chuckle before he cuts himself off.
She might never know what relief feels like again; still, she thinks she sags with it at hearing him address her like himself. At hearing him sound so familiar, after a day of running and crying and meeting all the different faces of Daryl Dixon.
She looks at his profile. His ears stick out through the length of his hair. It makes her smile, maybe just a little bit.
"I probably can't. I'm afraid I won't wake up if I do." He doesn't say anything to that, doesn't move. She's learned that doesn't mean he isn't listening.
"Are you gonna sleep tonight?" It's dumb, but she nudges his shoulder with hers, like they're out camping and she knows where her family is and corpses aren't eating the living. She doesn't feel relaxed, but she doesn't feel completely panicked for the first time all day.
He grunts, definitely doesn't even get close to a smile; all the same, he sways til his shoulder bumps against hers.
"I'm stayin up so all these dumb asses can sleep without getting ate up." He's worried, and tired too. He's a good man, Daryl is. Puts people above himself even if he doesn't realize it, even if he bitches the whole way through. He's a good man, and maybe he has a soft spot for people that can't care for themselves, like his brother and this group.
And maybe her.
Except, no. Because he tolerates his brother, and he's tolerating this group and he's really not too happy about either. But he likes her, hasn't tolerated her for a while. And she thinks, maybe, he likes her because she tries for herself; yes she can be weak with him, but she can be strong, too. Never asks him to carry her, never asks him to trudge through life supporting her weight simply because she won't.
He has a soft spot and he lets it take up all his energy, all his ability to say no, to look the other way.
She moves across the dirt until their knees touch and puts her head on his shoulder. It's almost instinctive, the way his thumb leaves his mouth and goes to her hip. They fit well together; they're good together, and she's afraid, terrified, but she's awake, and she's not going to let him sit up all night alone.
"You don't have to worry so much, Daryl. It'll be alright."
It's bullshit. She's surprised he doesn't have anything to say about it.
He squeezes her hip and pulls the crossbow to rest across his lap. They could wake Merle and take everything, try to get away in the dark and find a safer place. They don't; it's the first night they keep watch.
I spent a fair amount of time agonizing over this chapter, and I know that if I don't post it now, I never will (last night, I thought, "maybe I'll just delete the whole thing and start again").
I know the direction of the story might not be what some of you wanted or anticipated, but I'm getting a very clear idea of what I want to do with this. I also know this might not feel like it fits so well with Part One, and for that all I can say is writing Beth, especially as someone who coincides with the way Daryl thinks of her, is a lot harder than I ever anticipated, but it seemed worthwhile to observe things from her stance. (Also that writing the start of the apocalypse in an honest way is just beyond me). I promise Part Three we'll be back in Daryl's mind, and I'll wrap this thing up all neat in a bow.
Thank you for reading, reviewing, and following. You are really the best xx