A/N: Hi lovely Bethylers. Thank you so much for the kind words about my dog. I have been missing her so much… :(

I made it to 76 reviews this week so I am going to post TWICE this week!

This chapter is a Daryl chapter and is shorter than I expected, I cut it into two chapters because I didn't feel like it flowed well with the next one. Chapter 11 is going to be LONG and will be another time jump—we get to see a lot of Beth developing into the strong woman we saw through Daryl's eyes in chapter 1. The much-awaited Bethyl reunion is slated for chapter 12 or 13 so it's coming soon!

Thanks all for your patience and continued support by following/ favoriting/ reviewing/ reading. Special shout out to: Heidi191976, Tania Ibarbia, SarahCullen4, Emberka-2012, walkingdeadlover38, NicoleTheresa1,DarylDixon'sLover,moriahhh, SixJay, Panda Blitz.

Companion song: "Widower's Heart" by Trampled by Turtles

Disclaimer: I do not own or have any rights to the characters/plot of TWD series. I am just a fan exploring the marvelous, macabre world Robert Kirkman created.

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Chapter 10: Time

Daryl had never been around many people. Even before the end of the world he mostly lived on his own, only venturing into crowds at the occasional bar with Merle. After the walkers decimated the population, there weren't really any people around to anymore but somehow that was when he found himself constantly surrounded by people. The farm, the prison, and now Alexandria. Only Alexandria was filled with strangers instead of just his family.

So he avoided the big gatherings that Deanna held because they were stifling, too many people and too many walls. Instead he would volunteer for watch duty or just ditch it altogether without bothering to make an excuse.

The job as a recruiter was the best job for him for several reasons. Searching for people gave him a purpose, distracting him from his grief, and allowing him the freedom to get outside of the gates and away from all the stares.

At first people gawked because they were scared of him: a surly, redneck that carried a crossbow through their safe little town. He couldn't blame them since he basically growled anytime someone came near. Then they stared because he was dirty like mud on their perfect white linens. Soon enough, he did clean himself up. It was a small defeat; showering. The last time he had showered, a real shower, had been in the prison while their family had still been whole, with Hershel, Tyreese, Bob and Beth. Giving in to a shower in Alexandria , willingly confining himself into a tiny, tiled box in such a vulnerable state was something he only did once he truly trusted a place. Plus, showering and changing in order to fit in with the community made it feel… permanent.

However, after he was clean and in a new, unbloodied shirt the stares changed. Daryl was an observant man, so he saw the interested looks that many women shot in his direction. It was similar to when they brought all those people back to the prison with them. His job with Aaron meant he found new people again, "saving" them as most would say, and it also gave him the chance to bring items scavenged from the outside world. Plus, he was one of the only people who still went outside the walls to hunt and bring in meat. The farm eventually had chickens and pigs but it took months to raise them in order to get any meat.

All of these women just annoyed him though. They flirted with him and tried to "thank" him in various ways that would have made pre-apocalypse Daryl dropping trou before he could even finish a breath. But now it disgusted him. They only liked him because of what he could give them or do for them. None of them actually knew him. Hell, most of them hardly even tried to speak to him. He wondered sometimes if this was what it had felt like to be rich before the turn. Shallow women throwing themselves at you because of the diamonds and houses you could give them, without actually knowing shit about you.

Either way, suffice it to say that Daryl was very much alone still.

But this was unusual in Alexandria. Even Carl had a girlfriend. Deanna had been obsessed with repopulation so she regularly and adamantly encouraged people to get together. At his regular meals with Aaron and Eric they called her "The Matchmaker." After she stepped down and let Rick take over, it only left her more spare time to try to set people up. Luckily, she had given up on Daryl already.

The process of Deanna resigning and Rick taking over had not been simple. He had killed Pete the doctor, Jessie's husband and a dad of two boys. The community nearly exiled him after that. There were a few factors that worked favorably for Rick. First, the rest of the family would have surely followed Rick if he left. And the rest of the family had already become indispensable to the community: Glenn for the supply runs, Sasha for defense, Abraham for construction. Second, no one liked the idea of exiling two children. Judith and Carl would not be separated from their father and only callous monsters would send an infant and a teenager outside the safety of the walls.

These were the reasons why Rick wasn't banished. But the reason people made him the leader was the way in which he handled The Wolves.

When the men rolled up to the front gates and asked to be let in, Daryl was instantly suspicious. On a recruiting trip with Aaron he had seen the fresh walkers with W's carved into their foreheads. Daryl was certain that those people had been intentionally murdered. The one girl that had been tied to a tree and starved to death still haunted Daryl's nightmares. Deanna had turned them away, merely telling them to be on their way like a solicitor who came to sell magazines on their doorstep. Rick, sharing Daryl's suspicions, warned her that this was a bad idea but she didn't listen.

So when The Wolves came back, just like The Governor, Rick and the prison group were prepared whereas the native Alexandrians were not. The Wolves were looking to eliminate the people they deemed "unworthy" of this new world. Daryl saw red when he remembered the woman tied to the tree and left to starve to death or be helplessly torn to pieces by walkers. The rest of that day had been a blur of bullets and bolts flying and blood splattering. They took out The Wolves but some of them penetrated the gates and killed seven Alexandria natives who had been behind the wall from the beginning and had no idea how to defend themselves. The subsequent days were filled with terror and more bullets in order to take out the walkers that had been attracted by the noise of the fight. Deanna's lapse in judgment and Rick's preparedness meant the community had been willing to switch leaders. Deanna stayed on as an advisor and they formed a kind of council like at the prison, but it was clear that Rick had the final word on things now. Such as instituting defense lessons, creating a permanent position in the sniper tower, regular guard duties at positions along the wall and regular checks of the surrounding woods.

Time elapsed slowly without Beth. Each minute ticked by slow enough to feel a lifetime worth of sorrow.

Daryl remained in action at all times, trying to stay distracted and busy—going on recruiting missions, supply runs, hunting trips multiple times a week and taking on wall duty whenever he was in town. He still didn't think of Alexandria as "home" like most of his family. It wasn't permanent; nothing in this world was anymore. Eventually the walls would fall and they would move on again. What was the point in getting attached? He had done that once before, gotten attached to Beth, and she was ripped away from him.

He was afraid that if he stopped moving, the dark cloud of loneliness would catch up to him. Daryl remembered that there were five stages of grief. The elementary school counselor told him that when his mother died. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. But this, like most psychology mumbo jumbo, was a bunch of bullshit. Grief came back in unexpected waves. Gripping him every time he had to go into the Alexandria library where the piano was, or when he saw someone else trying to calm an inconsolable Judith, or at night while he slipped between dreaming and consciousness.

This was the worst. Not only because of the nightmares; the ones where he watched helpless as Beth was kidnapped, or when she was shot, or ones where she replaced the girl tied to the tree dying of starvation. And not just because of the sweet dreams; the ones where he watched Beth smiling up at him after killing her first rabbit, or the dreams he would never admit to anyone where they lived in a normal world where they ate dinner with their kids. It wasn't just the dreams but the emptiness of the bed and the silence in the room. While they had been alone for weeks after the fall of the prison, Daryl and Beth had gotten used to each other's presence. Her slow, peaceful breathing of sleep comforted him like nothing ever had before, as if just knowing she was near stilled his anxieties. There had also been one night that had been so cold that she snuggled right up against him in order to draw on his body heat. But it had been her who had radiated warmth though his entire body, like his heart was pumping molten gold. One morning, he had woken up and found that his head had been pillowed on Beth's legs. She was on watch and must have come over to him while he slept. That had been the most well rested night of sleep he had gotten since the dead started roaming the Earth. Waking up with her hand laying softly on his shoulder and seeing her face lit up by the morning sun had been breathtaking. Somehow those nights were permanently stamped in his brain and he still found that occasionally he would subconsciously reach for her in his sleep before waking up and remembering that she would never be next to him again.

/

Time continued to pass, the only evidence of anything changing was the continued growth of Judith: her first steps, first words, the little drawings Rick hung up throughout the house, her ability to tell "Uncle Daryl" stories about what happened while he was gone on a recruiting trip.

About a year after Beth's death, Maggie came to him one night while he was carving new bolts in his room. He had a dream about Beth the night before and he had woken up screaming—his housemates knew Daryl well enough that they just ignored these nights and he was grateful for that, he didn't want people trying to comfort him.

Maggie knocked lightly on his slightly ajar door and he raised his eyebrows at acknowledgement and in a silent invitation for her to come in. He sat in a chair by the window that looked out over the street. Maggie always looked so clean and put together these days. She had a neat little clip in her hair, a clean white blouse with flowers on it and she walked around the house barefoot. All of these things contrasted so completely with the Maggie he used to know. Daryl remembered the girl that had helped the men clear the prison; dirt and blood all over her, jeans tattered, and a wild look in her eyes. The fact that she was barefoot—not ready to run or flee from danger at a moment's notice—was the greatest difference between that old Maggie and the one that was an Alexandria resident.

She sat with one leg tucked under herself on the edge of his bed. Maggie didn't say anything for a few minutes, allowing him to adjust to her presence.

"I still miss her too," she began looking down at the hardwood floor between them. She didn't need to say who 'she' was, and didn't need to ask him if he missed her. Everyone could see that Daryl wasn't the same after Beth's death. "Can't believe that it is summer again… means it's been a year since we left Atlanta."

Daryl remained silent, not knowing where Maggie was going with this conversation.

"Her birthday was July 7th, I think it's comin' up soon. She'd have been 20 this year, it's crazy to think about my baby sister not bein' a teenager," she smiled a wide grin then. "Although, she was probably the most well behaved teenager in history. Don't even think she ever even skipped a class in high school."

The corner of his lips lifted slightly at this. He could imagine Beth sitting in the front row of class, eagerly taking notes while a teacher lectured. It was easy to picture because he had spent so much time in the very back of classes, watching others and listening to the teacher instead of burying his nose in his own notebook.

"I know that's hers," Maggie nodded her head towards the knife in his hand that he was using to whittle the bolts. It was Beth's knife that Carol had given him after she died. "Carol gave me somethin' of Beth's too."

She pulled out a little green book that had been tucked in the back of her jeans. Daryl instantly recognized it and his eyebrows shot up in surprise. It was the journal that Beth was always writing in. She had been writing in it the night that he came to tell her Zach died, she used blank pages for kindling after the fall of the prison and she had been writing a thank you note to the funeral home owners the night she was taken.

How the hell is that here? He thought incredulously.

He sputtered incoherently, "Wha—Is that…? How…?"

"Don't know how it's made it all the way here. She must've had it on her when she ran from the prison and then it must have been in her pocket when those assholes kidnapped her. Carol said that Beth gave it to her to stash in her pack when they were getting ready to leave the hospital," Maggie answered his fragmented questions. "Daddy would've said it was some kinda miracle really that somethin' like this stayed with us for this long."

She finally glanced up at Daryl then, her green eyes sharp and bearing into his soul. Maggie was clearly looking for something in him. Although he couldn't tell what it was, she seemed satisfied after a moment and the corners of her lips turned up again.

"I was curious. About what happened when y'all left the prison… what it was that changed you so much. So I read it." Daryl narrowed his eyes at her in disapproval and Maggie had the grace to look ashamed. "I know, I know. I am a terrible person." She rolled her eyes at his snort of agreement. "If it makes ya feel any better when I read it I realized what a terrible sister I had been to her since this all started."

Daryl thought about this. He remembered how she had completely written Beth off as a lost cause after the fall of the prison; Daryl heard about the notes written in walker blood along the railroad tracks and her willingness to go alone to find Glenn without a thought for her sister, and he remembered how even after he told her that Beth was alive she still left for DC. Daryl had been mad at Maggie for a long time for her actions, but staying angry with her didn't bring Beth back. Plus, it was clear that Maggie placed enough blame on herself—she was weighed down with guilt, same as Daryl. She didn't need anyone else to add to her burden.

"She knew that ya loved her, Maggie. And she missed ya… told me as much," uncharacteristically consoling as he remembering Beth talking about her family on the porch of the moonshine shack.

"Thanks for sayin' that," she wiped a few small, shimmering tears that rolled down her cheeks.

She pulled herself together and nodded at Daryl. "Anyways, I thought you should have this. You… you're family, Daryl. And I know that you… um… that she was important to you," she stood up and handed him the green leather book. He held it as softly as he would a fragile baby bird.

Maggie was standing over him now and he looked at her hesitantly.

"Ya sure 'bout that?" he asked.

"Yeah, Daryl. It's what she would've wanted… I know that for a fact." Maggie gave him a huge smile and patted him on the shoulder lightly for a second, knowing his aversion to touching, before leaving the room.

Daryl put the journal in a drawer next to his bed, feeling like a kid caught with his hand in the candy jar—guilty for even considering reading it. He was honored that Maggie gave it to him and there were days where his curiosity burned to know what Beth said to make Maggie think it was what Beth would have wanted. Occasionally, he pulled it out and would stare at the little green binding, letting it comfort him knowing that it held some of her most intimate thoughts. However, he never made a decision to read it or not. He couldn't decide if it was better to know what Beth felt, if it would crush him more to discover she hadn't felt the same way… or if it would be worse to know she had felt the same and neither of them had done anything about it. Daryl couldn't decide which was worse so the diary sat in his drawer, collecting dust.

/

A/N: THANKS FOR READING! Beth's diary will come into play later on in the story ;) Chapter 11 is going to be LONG and there will be another time jump—we get to see a lot of Beth developing into the strong woman we saw through Daryl's eyes in chapter 1. I will post again in a few days so make sure to follow this story so you don't miss the update!

The much-awaited Bethyl reunion is slated for chapter 12 or 13 so it's coming soon lovelies. ;)

PLEASE review/ follow/favorite. I love to hear any feedback you have!