A/N: Hi lovely Bethylers! How are y'all feeling now that our favorite couple is reunited?! I am SUPER excited about some things I have planned coming up now that they are back together ;) I know Daryl is pushing her away now, but that will fall apart soon.
Extra special thanks to LadyScarlettDixon, Heidi191976, Emberka-2012, NicoleTheresa1, SarahCullen4, Tania Ibarbia, Reignashii and Guests for reviewing!
Companion song: "For Emma" by Bon Iver
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 14: Arrival
They arrived in Alexandria under the cover of night. That was a good thing because it would allow him the chance to talk to everyone before they saw Beth. To warn them that she didn't have her memory. No one else needed to get punched when they tried to hug her.
Luckily, Holly was on watch at the gate instead of one of the prison group so she didn't immediately inundate Beth with questions.
"Normally Rick does interviews with everyone before he'll let them stay, but I think we can make an exception this time since he already knows you both. I'll take you straight to the clinic so they can check you out before you settle in. Tomorrow, someone can take you on a tour of the place," Aaron explained. Clearly Morgan and Beth had filled him in on the car ride over.
Daryl nodded at Aaron, Rick might want to interview them but he definitely wouldn't kick them out.
"Imma go find 'im. He'll wanna know right away."
Daryl was torn then. Wanting to go find Rick and explain everything to his family but also not wanting to let Beth out of his sight. The solitude of the road had not been relaxing, it had been tormenting. He kept thinking that he was dreaming, afraid when he saw the car that it would be empty. So he ended up riding directly behind the car, staring at the back of her blond head through the rear window to assure himself that he wasn't in fact losing his mind.
Aaron seemed to sense his indecision and looked Daryl right in the eye and said, "I'll stay with them." Then he turned to Morgan and Beth, "You both can stay in my house, at least for tonight, Eric and I have plenty of room and he loves dogs. Then we can figure out a more permanent place in the morning."
Daryl was infinitely grateful for Aaron in that moment. They'd been working together for two years and he had become like another brother to him. He would watch over Beth and also keep her from having to wake up in a house with their family who would surely bombard her with questions and hugs.
He walked with the group all the way to the hospital clinic and kept his eyes trained on Beth until after the door clicked closed behind her. Then he turned and jogged through the quiet streets to enter the house he shared with Rick, Carl, Judith, Michonne, Maggie and Glenn. They were all asleep, not expecting Daryl home until the next day, so he silently crept through the house. He wanted to tell Rick first, then they could figure out the best way to deal with Maggie. The hunter paused outside of Rick's door, he knew that Michonne usually stayed in Rick's room, or vice versa, and he really didn't want to walk into anything… intimate… but he also didn't want to knock and wake Judith, who had a crib in Rick's room. The needs of Lil' Asskicker trumped the possibility of any awkward moment that might ensue so Daryl pushed the door open. He found Michonne and Rick's sleeping forms intertwined under the sheets, but he let out a sigh of relief to see that they were both fully clothed. Daryl figured that Michonne could be in on the conversation as well so he tried to wake both of them up with a whispered "Pssst."
Neither of them stirred.
This spoke volumes about how complacent they'd gotten behind the walls of Alexandria. Three years ago if Daryl had made a noise like that in front of sleeping Rick and Michonne he would have a katana at his throat and a gun aimed at his head in an instant. Now, lulled into security by the walls, they just continued sleeping, blissfully unaware that Daryl was standing just a foot away.
"Hey, lovebirds. Get up, we gotta talk," he hissed louder, glancing over at Judith to ensure he hadn't woken her. The girl had grown from a baby to a toddler so quickly and she had long outgrown the crib she laid in now.
Gonna have to get 'er a real bed. And her own room too since these two can't keep their hands off of each other.
The pair on the bed finally woke and immediately jumped into action, brandishing a knife and a gun. When the initial haze cleared from Rick's eyes, he recognized Daryl. Then shock turned to worry instantly plastered across his brother's face.
"What happened? Who's hurt?" he sputtered.
"Keep yer damn voice down. Everything's fine… but we gotta talk," the hunter replied.
Michonne and Rick shot each other a hesitant glance. And then seemed slightly embarrassed that Daryl had blatantly caught them in bed together. Apparently they didn't think anyone knew about their sneaking into each others' rooms.
"Com' on, let's go downstairs."
When the three of them stood in the living room, Daryl suddenly lost his words. He didn't know how to start. It was pointless to ask the pair to sit down, they were both like Daryl in that way, all of them wanted to be standing and ready for action as soon as they heard bad news.
"On the run... we… I found someone," he begun feebly.
Michonne looked skeptical and Daryl felt certain that the samurai was preparing for the worst.
Rick cut to the chase, "Who?"
"That guy you met at the beginning, Morgan. He tracked us from Georgia, looked for us in DC."
Rick's eyes glinted, happily at first and then he seemed to remember the second time he met Morgan. Daryl hadn't been there but Rick told him that Morgan had completely transformed; lost his mind, shot at their group and stabbed Rick in the chest. The dark looks that clouded both Michonne and Rick's faces told Daryl that they were remembering the same thing.
"He do that to your face?" Michonne's reference to his black eye caused him to scowl. If it was already that noticeable in the darkness, it was going to look like shit in the morning.
"Nah. He seems sane now… normal," he assuaged the pair, avoiding answering who actually punched him. "He's not what we need to talk 'bout anyway."
They all waited in silence as Daryl tried to force the words out of his mouth. Rick and Michonne knew that Daryl wasn't a talker so they allowed him the heavy silence as the words worked their way out of him.
"He was with Beth," he finally blurted out. They stared at him like his sanity was now under question. Seconds ticked by in skeptical silence.
"Err… what?" Rick stuttered.
"It's her Rick. She's alive. I dunno how it's possible, but she's here."
"She can't be, Daryl. We both… we saw her get shot in the head… at point blank range." Rick hesitated, knowing that the words would hurt Daryl. But he spoke soothingly, like you would speak to an animal that was backed into a corner.
"I know. But it's her," he insisted.
Rick raised his eyebrows. When Lori had died, Rick had lost his mind, yelling at hallucinations of her, disappearing for hours in the prison or running outside the fence on his own. Daryl knew that Rick thought this was Daryl hallucinating in the same way. He didn't blame his brother at all for thinking this. It had only been a few hours since he first saw her and he questioned his own sanity more than once since then.
"I know… she was dead… but she's not now," he expired. There was no way to convince Rick until he saw it with his own eyes.
Rick was stunned, probably replaying the horrible moment in the hospital hallway that had haunted Daryl's nightmares, trying to find the loophole that had allowed Beth to live. But Michonne, ever vigilant, had already spotted that something was off.
"So where is she? Why didn't she come here to see everyone?" her voice was low but perceptive. And there was more silence.
"She don't remember anythin'. Nothin'. Didn't recognize me, didn't even know who Maggie was… The bullet messed her up real bad." Daryl's heart shattered at his own words. He hadn't really believed it, thought it was all just a twisted joke, until he said it out loud. Voicing this to two of the people he trusted most in this world, made it real.
The pair could tell that Daryl was barely holding on to the edge of sanity, but they also knew he was not one who wanted comforting. In fact, it was the exact opposite. If they had tried to console him, they would have only been met with a glare and a door slammed in their faces.
"Why don't you go take a shower? Wash those fleas off of you? We can tell Maggie in the morning, I don't want to wake a pregnant woman and endure the wrath of Maggie and Glenn before we know for sure if its her," Michonne suggested, trying to lighten the mood, but Daryl didn't make a move.
"I'll go to the clinic now to see Morgan and… Beth... We'll figure everythin' else out in the mornin'," Rick confirmed in his stern, leader voice.
If both of them were on the same page, Daryl knew that it must be the right decision. He couldn't see anything objectively right now so he would trust their guidance. Daryl nodded and bound up the stairs to drop his bags and try to get some sleep after what was the most shocking day since the one where he had to leave her body in that damn fire truck on the side of the road.
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Rick was skeptical to say the least.
People came back from the dead all the time now, but coming back to life?
Impossible.
Daryl must be hallucinating, like he had done after Lori died. It certainly took Daryl much longer to crack, but then Rick had always known that his friend and brother was probably the strongest person left in this world—which was saying something because everyone who had survived this long was strong.
He figured he would walk into the medical clinic to find a man who happened to be named Morgan and a blonde girl. Daryl didn't actually know what Morgan looked like and Beth… Beth was dead. So Daryl must have been mistaken. The odds that his first friend in the apocalypse had found him after more than four years and across five states were unthinkable.
So he refused to get his hopes up.
It was dark on the streets of Alexandria, street lights and porch lights weren't allowed this late at night so only a few small solar powered lawn lights glittered along the path. However, Rick didn't need the light to find his way through the community and soon he arrived at the medical clinic, which was actually just one of the bigger houses in the community.
Aaron was sitting with his head drooping to the side in the living room that acted as a waiting room but he perked up instantly when Rick swung the front door open.
"Long day?" Rick asked with his eyebrows raised.
He nodded and a smile broke across his face, "Worth it. Just wish I had been there to see that tiny blonde give Daryl a shiner."
This comment made Rick stop mid-stride in his walk through the living room. A tiny blonde could describe Beth, but he definitely couldn't imagine the youngest Greene girl ever getting the jump on Daryl. Beth in her little gray crocheted hat with the flower on it, too-big cowboy boots and a little braid through her pony tail. The picture in his head of her hitting Daryl was comical. This made Rick absolutely certain that the blonde they found was someone else.
"They in there?" Rick questioned, turning serious. He noticed the big dog sitting on alert outside the door and assumed it must belong to the newcomers.
"Yeah," the recruiter said as he relaxed back into the seat again.
After a soft knock on the door, Rick strode into the exam room and what he saw rendered him speechless.
It was Morgan, standing in the middle of the room looking slightly haggard in the way that clearly suggested that he hadn't had a proper shower in a long time. His old friend had a scraggily beard, slightly worn clothing and lines etched so deeply into his face that he appeared to have aged faster than a flower wilts in the Georgia sun. But it was unmistakably him. Morgan's eyes, which had possessed a fire of madness the last time he saw him, were calm and kind —albeit exhausted—just as Rick remembered when they had holed up with Duane in his family home more than four years ago.
The two men embraced in a lung-crushing hug and just as Rick was finding his voice to ask his comrade what happened, his breath left his throat with a whoosh.
The little blonde.
She came out from behind a curtain hung for patient privacy.
Her eyes were ringed in purple circles that were so dark they looked like a permanent fixture on her face. The hollows in her cheeks that used to be round told him she was much thinner, which was saying something since she had never weighed more than 120 pounds soaking wet. The eyes, unlike with Morgan, were the most confusing piece for Rick. They were the right shade of blue, but the tenderness, that used to be constant, was missing. All of these things made her look different. But the things that convinced Rick were the thin, white scars on her face and neck. The scars that Rick could clearly match to the stitches he remembered from the last time he saw her lying dead in that fire truck. He replayed the moment in the hospital when he watched her head whip back as he felt the warm blood splatter onto his face… the pool of blood that had stained the white linoleum floors. It was impossible that she was standing here.
And yet, it was definitely Beth.
Rick had never imagined seeing her again, so he never imagined what a reunion would be like. But if he had, he would have expected a tight hug or even a kiss on the cheek. He remembered after bringing Maggie home from Woodbury, Beth had kissed him on the cheek in a gesture of gratitude before going back to tending to his infant daughter. If he had been expecting a hug, he was certainly surprised when she stared blankly at him.
He had always been a talker, but now he was speechless.
"Beth, this is Rick," Morgan covered the silence in a cautious tone. "Rick, it looks like ya' already know Beth. She won't remember ya' but I have told her plenty of stories and we've been tryin' to track ya' down for ages."
"Hi, Rick. Nice to finally meet ya'… or meet ya' again I guess," she said with a slight nod in his direction, the right corner of her mouth turned up into a tiny smile. Her voice was one thing that certainly had not changed; it was still airy and musical, like if a bird could talk.
Rick chuckled, unsure what the standard procedure was in this situation. "You can't even imagine how good it is to see you… both of you."
The doctor, a tall woman with dark hair named Jean Ortiz, came out from behind the curtain too. Jean had been a doctor in the military before the turn, which meant she was able to both fight and heal. She was an invaluable member of their group—another recruit of Daryl and Aaron's. She also never sugar coated news, a quality that Rick appreciated.
She tipped her head towards the other door; Rick and Jean stepped outside alone.
"They're cleared. Both of them are in pretty good shape considering how long they've been out there. But Beth has suffered severe memory loss. All of her declarative memories: episodic, semantic, autobiographical are all lost from before the bullet wound," he didn't know exactly what these specific types of memories were but he understood the gist of it.
"Okay. So she lost her memory, we can deal with that. She'll get it all back over time right?" Rick insisted. Every movie he had ever seen with amnesia, people got their memory back in the end. She had to get it back. Whenever she saw Judith or Maggie, she would remember.
"There are possibly other symptoms too. She wasn't very open to discussing anything, understandably so since I'm still a stranger, but without a MRI or a cooperative patient it's impossible for me to even guess what the other effects are," Jean paused and lowered her voice even more and her forehead crinkled with the heaviness of having to be the bearer of bad news. "Rick… with no changes in her condition for two years… it's unlikely that she will ever remember anything from before."
These words hit Rick like a punch to the gut. He felt the weight of them, of the responsibility of holding this knowledge. It was like when Dr. Jenner had told him that everyone was infected. Important information that held dire consequences if divulged.
"Did you tell her that?" Rick asked with a tilt of his head. He knew that Maggie, Daryl, Carl, probably even Beth herself, would be hoping that the memories of their time together would return. Diminishing that hope, just like with the news from the CDC, would only hurt everyone worse.
"No. The placebo effect is strong Rick, and her believing she can get better may be her only chance," she spoke softly in order to minimize the blow. But there was no need because Rick had already surmised that much.
When he didn't respond Jean continued, "It's amazing that she made it at all, plus reuniting with your group after all this time, there is a lot to be grateful for. Give them at least a week before assigning them jobs," she commanded with finality.
Then she opened the door wider and spoke to the newcomers again in a normal speaking volume, "Eat your fill here, you both should gain at least 10 pounds. Get plenty of rest, you'll be safe here inside the walls. I'd like to see you both again in a week but you are welcome to come see me at any time." Doctor Jean left them alone then, probably going back to bed in the house next door.
The leader thought about how to proceed from here—sleep first or talk first. The decision was easy, if Beth really had been in the dark for two years she deserved to know the truth now.
"I'm happy you're both here and I will leave y'all to get to bed soon. But first, Beth, I need to tell ya' about the people here," he began.
A small nod was the only indication that she was listening to Rick. This was so unlike the old Beth that would have been smiling and chatting.
"You've got family here. You've got lottsa people who love you and who've missed you for the last two years. But more than that, you've got real blood relatives here… a sister." At this news her eyebrows rose in surprise and her mouth dropped into a little, silent 'oh'. Morgan smiled so big that it made his eyes squint.
"Better than we ever coulda' hoped for, Beth." Morgan grinned as he lightly patted her shoulder.
But she remained silent and stoic. She was so different, Rick's only rationalization was that she must be in shock so he continued delicately.
"I'm sure you can understand how rare that is in this world. And I know everyone's gonna wanna see you as soon as they find out you're back. But who you want to see and when you wanna see them… it's up you," he saw Beth ponder these words and share an inscrutable look with Morgan.
"I'd like to meet them tomorrow. Been waitin' for two years to find y'all, no good wastin' anymore time than we already have," her words were positive and she was smiling now but it was a sad smile that Rick couldn't understand.
"All right. We'll have a family dinner at my house tomorrow and y'all can come. For now, just get some rest."
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A/N: What did you think about Rick's POV? I know next chapter looks like it will be a family reunion but there are some important Beth/Daryl moments first ;)
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