A/N: Hello lovely readers! I have so many excuses for why this chapter is so late but I won't give y'all any of them, I will just say that I am SO SORRY it has been so long. Thank you to those readers who are still following this story and me!
Companion song: "I Do"- Susie Suh
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.
Please review! It has been hard posting a chapter after so long, I would like to know if you all are still interested in this story.
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Previously on The New Normal:Beth was shot in the head and her family, thinking she was dead, left her in a broken down fire truck outside of Atlanta. When she wakes up without any memories, Dr. Edwards and Officer Kyle help her navigate this dangerous world. After walkers rip apart both of her companions, she is injured and alone when Morgan Jones finds her. Beth discovers that the bullet wound has not only stolen her memories, but has rendered her incapable of feeling fear. However, this doesn't make her immune to trouble. She was attacked by strangers and was forced to kill in order to protect herself and her family… but the images of them still haunt her. Following a map that Morgan found at a church in Georgia, they head towards Washington DC in search of Rick Grimes but after over 2 years of searching, and adding a dog named Lucky to their company, they give up on ever finding his old friend.
Meanwhile, Rick, Daryl, Glenn, Maggie and the rest of the family have mourned Beth and settled into Alexandria. Daryl is still heartbroken and out on a recruiting mission with Aaron when he finds Beth alive. And although she has no memory of him, Beth, Morgan and Lucky follow the archer back to Alexandria. But he is avoiding her— she is different, too callous and too distant to be his Beth. The Beth he was in love with really did die in Atlanta. But the rest of the family won't accept this. So Rick orchestrates a "lesson" so Daryl can teach Beth self defense. Things get steamy while they spar, but something happens inside Beth while she is wrapped in Daryl's arms. She scales the wall and runs off before Daryl can ask her what happened.
/
Chapter 18: Need
The scent of the forest was unlike any other. The damp earth combined with the crisp smell of pine leaves with a hint of flowers was rejuvenating. Being trapped within the walls of Alexandria for more than a week had been torture. She was supposed to sign out and use the "buddy system" whenever she left the town and return all weapons when she reentered—as she had been informed when she tried to leave using the actual gate on the first full day she was here—but after what happened with Daryl, Beth needed the kind of space only the woods could provide and she didn't want to deal with paperwork. So, she went over the wall.
She broke into a jog to get away faster, she felt like hunting and game would never come near Alexandria because of the noise. At about 4 miles away, she found a solid maple tree. The branches were scattered and sturdy so she climbed until there was a fork to sit in where she could watch the forest.
Beth already felt a little better in the woods, high up and hidden by the leaves. She felt safer, more in control. When she had been wrestling Daryl and gotten trapped underneath him, she was overcome with a memory. Not of Daryl, but of the other two men who had pinned her down like that: one in a dark pharmacy, the other in the woods near a stream. She had been overcome with a desire to stab Daryl with her knife like she had done to her attackers. But there was a stronger instinct that told her Daryl didn't mean her any harm. Part of her had been comfortable in his arms. Part of her liked it in his arms. The two urges had collided in her mind and she had frozen, unable to follow either command.
She was grateful that Daryl had gotten off of her when he did. It had been too confusing.
Now, she pushed thoughts of him out of her mind.
Or at least, she tried.
As she intensely focused on the sounds of the forest, visions of him kept creeping into her head. His dark blue eyes, the way his arms flexed when he carried his crossbow, and the feel of his hands on her while they were sparring.
Several animals crossed her path, but she let them go—not wanting to kill because it would mean getting down from her perch. She kind of liked watching the animals go about their lives, undisturbed by people or walkers. After almost an hour, a man materialized out of the forest. It wasn't a walker. The figure was virtually noiseless, not even rustling fallen leaves as it walked. She recognized him at once. His bow was nocked and his head swiveled between the ground and the woods surrounding him. Daryl had followed her, tracked her down like prey.
Why doesn't he just leave me alone? I only just got him out of my head and now he's here again. She thought, slightly irritated at both herself and him.
Beth must have been clumsy if he could have followed her so easily. He didn't look up into the tree for her as he approached the end of her trail. But before he could get close enough, she shot an arrow towards him.
It hit its mark perfectly, sticking in the dirt only an inch from his foot.
Daryl looked up, clearly surprised and slightly angry, into her hiding spot. She noticed that his expression softened in relief whenever he saw her.
"I didn't realize that your lessons extended into stalker duty," she sassed just loud enough for him to hear her.
He snorted, "I didn't realize you'd be runnin' away like a damn teenager."
Daryl effortlessly slung his crossbow over his shoulder and snatched the arrow out of the ground in one continuous motion. He inspected the arrow briefly, and then waggled it at her teasingly.
"I've got ten more, can catch plenty of food without gettin' down for that one," she looked away from him and tried to focus on the rabbit trail a few yards away from her tree.
When he didn't move, she looked back at him. Daryl was staring at her with his mouth in a tight line and his eyes squinted. He was squinting as if he was trying to see if he recognized her. She tried not to squirm under his scrutiny.
"Go on now, you're spooking my prey standin' there like scarecrow. Go on back home," she tried to keep her voice steady as she looked directly into his blue eyes.
"Nah, I gotta see these huntin' skills for myself," he chuckled in a way that she never would have thought was possible from a man as stoic as him. Daryl walked over the tree she was in and started to climb it. She couldn't help but notice that he was a lot less graceful in the tree than he was on the ground. It made him less intimidating though, to see that he wasn't perfect. So she was smiling as he settled onto a branch slightly below and to the right of her.
Daryl passed her arrow back up to her, feathers first. And for a long time, the pair just sat in the old maple tree. Neither of them talked and eventually game started wandering around the area again. The silence between them was comfortable and familiar.
She questioned, not for the first time, how well she had known Daryl before the accident. Beth considered asking Daryl but she wasn't certain that he would tell her the truth so she remained mute.
Beth shot three rabbits in the next half hour, but Daryl didn't shoot anything. He merely sat with a bolt ready in the tree and watched their surroundings. She had expected him to make it a competition, to see who could get the most kills, but he surprised her again by sitting and silently observing her skills instead. There was a huge bird that swooped down towards her kills and she shot it through the eye in midflight.
This finally prompted Daryl to ask, "Where'd ya learn to use that bow?"
She considered this.
"Dunno," the blonde responded as she peeked around the trunk towards Daryl.
He lifted his eyebrow at her with a slightly annoyed look and she knew that he wanted more information.
"Already knew how ta' use it pretty good when I first… acquired it," she didn't really want to tell the story of how she acquired the recurve bow—the men attacking her, Kyle being shot, murdering that man with those black-as-coal eyes, leaving an innocent man tied up in the store room… she was still haunted by what may have happened to him alone and weaponless. "And I just got better everyday since then."
Then she thought of something. If she already knew how to use the bow, she must have learned before she lost her memory, like how she had known the word 'walkers' or how she knew to kill them with headshots.
"Didn't I know how to use it before I was shot?" she asked, thinking he must know the answer better than she would.
The man in the ripped shirt peered up at her through his bangs again. "You were learning," he replied evasively.
She narrowed her eyes at him. By this point, she knew the rest of her little 'family' pretty well and none of them used a bow. Only Daryl.
He must have been teaching me, Beth discerned with certainty.
"More of your lessons Mr. Dixon?"
Daryl almost flinched in pain at this comment. But then he fixed his face back into a stony mask as he shrugged by way of response.
They fell into another silence but this didn't prevent the mysterious man from entering her mind. Why had he been giving her bow lessons? It was clear from their 'lesson' this morning that Daryl Dixon didn't actually give lessons to people, as Rick had implied last night. So Rick had created this ruse to push the two of them together… but it wasn't even the first time Daryl had taught her something.
Never before had she wished for her memory back so badly. Maybe if she had her memories she would understand this stranger who seemed to know her better than anyone else, this stranger who seemingly taught her everything she knew that was valuable in this world.
It was probably another hour before a walker finally stumbled into the area. It was going towards a dead rabbit but Daryl easily shot it through the temple with a bolt. She leapt effortlessly down a few branches to land silently on the soft earth. She gathered the arrows and the bolt out of the prey's heads—four rabbits, two squirrels, one bird, and one walker in total. This would be enough to feed several families for tonight and tomorrow. She was tucking the animals into her game bag while Daryl cluttered out of the tree. Before he had righted himself, hands still busied climbing down the branches, four more walkers crashed through the trees towards them.
Beth snapped into action. She killed one with an arrow already locked on her string. That one hadn't even hit the ground before she was already pulling her knife from its sheath and stabbing the second one in the eye socket. The third she ran up behind, knocking it to the ground with a swift kick to the back, as she left it to reach the fourth. It was darting straight towards Daryl, who was quickly regrouping after jumping hastily from the tree. She pierced its brain stem through the back of its neck before the hunter had fully reloaded an arrow. Next she turned to return to the one she pushed over. It was still struggling to get up when she walked over—careful of its reach—and plunged the blade into the top of its skull. It crumpled to the ground instantly.
The quiet made her ears ring. She hadn't even realized how loud their snarls were while she was fighting. Her chest was heaving from adrenaline as she turned in a circle and searched the forest for any more threats. When she turned back to Daryl he was incredulous; eyes wide, mouth slightly open as if he went speechless in the middle of a sentence.
/
"I'm getting good at this. Pretty soon I won't need you at all."
Beth's musical voice played over and over in his head. He remembered that day so clearly—the day he taught her to use his crossbow, the day of the serious piggyback, the day they found the funeral home.
But Beth was right. As usual.
She had been right about so many things but he hadn't even thought about that exact moment until right now. She had been gone… dead… so he didn't think she'd ever used any of the skills he taught her. Daryl had been so very wrong. She not only used what she learned, she perfected it.
Beth definitely didn't need him at all.
He stood and stared at the four walkers she took out without even hesitating. Daryl hadn't even been able to get out of the damn tree fast enough to protect her. She sure as hell didn't need him anymore. For protection or food.
Hanging out with Beth in the tree and at their "lesson" had been fun, it had reminded him of their time alone after the prison fell. Those months that had been spent in waves of silence that grew more comfortable with each passing day or surrounded by Beth's music. The weeks where he learned everything about her, even the rhythm of her breaths. The days that he shared more about himself with her than anyone before. The moments that were slightly awkward because his brain turned to slush around her.
But those were gone now too. Beth was back but she was too different. She was callous, independent, and had an exterior as hard as he once had. Her goodness had been what broke down his walls more than two years ago, but this new woman would not be capable of that.
If not for the brilliant smiles, now much rare than before, she would have been unrecognizable. Particularly in that moment as she crouched, surveying the forest covered in the black sludge that was walker blood, looking fierce and unruffled by the incident.
"Let's get out of here before more are drawn in," Beth finally said after she had finished a slow circle, scouting the area. He remembered how frazzled she had been at the golf course after killing the walker with a wine bottle. Now, she wasn't even short of breath after taking out four walkers in less than a minute. She wasn't even fazed by it.
He had an immense respect for this, even though it was so unlike her.
"Grab yer game, Greene." She wasn't Beth anymore to him. Greene felt more fitting now.
The blonde pulled the arrows out of her prey and stuffed the animals into her bag. They fell into step as they headed back towards Alexandria.
"So when does the babysitting duty stop?" she asked after a while.
"What do ya mean?"
"I mean, when are you gonna stop watchin' me? Following me out into the woods, walkin' by my room at night, watchin' me whenever I come back from runs…" Daryl almost stopped in his tracks. He should have realized she would notice these things. But he had no idea how to respond.
"We used to know each other, right? So when do I get your trust back enough to not be under constant surveillance?" she continued when he hadn't responded.
He breathed a little easier; Beth might have seen him watching but she didn't know the reason.
"It'll stop." And in that moment, he really believed he could let her go.
/
When they got back to the community, they went separate ways. Daryl watched as Lucky came bounding excitedly over to Beth, jumped up and licked her in the face.
He went towards the back fence, intending to actually take watch duty for once.
Climbing up the West Wall ladder, he found that Carol was the one on the post.
"Hey Pookie," she said to him as he squatted down to sit on the wooden planks.
Abraham and the construction crew had built these posts at strategic intervals along the walls after The Wolves attacked. They were simple wooden structures that allowed them to watch the woods surrounding Alexandria. This prevented build-ups of walkers because they would be spotted ahead of time and made it harder for people to sneak up on them too.
He didn't respond to his cutesy nickname, just plopped down on the planks next to her chair. They sat in silence for upwards of thirty minutes. His crossbow next to him, he put his knees up and rested his arms on them. From here, he was totally concealed by the wall; this was done so people could take cover if people began firing on the watch-person.
"Did you go hunting?" she asked when he hadn't said anything.
"Sorta," he grunted back. The hunter wished desperately for a cigarette. As much as he wanted to forget it, the feeling of Beth rolling around on top of him or the vision of her sprawled out underneath him, legs around his hips… it replayed over and over in his mind. The hunter pulled out a cigarette. He had smoked nearly half a pack in the last week since Beth had been back. There were only two left. He would definitely go on the next supply run with Glenn's team to scour for cigarettes.
"Well hopefully you got some good game, I am getting sick of Rick's vegetables this week." He had gone back to farming when things settled down. But instead of using it as an excuse to hide from responsibilities, Rick now did it just as a way to feed everyone. They had a good size garden and others worked in it too.
"So how is it being in a house with Morgan and Beth?"
Carol was never one to beat around the bush. Daryl was used to it by now, and he supposed he could use a second opinion on Beth from someone who used to know her.
"It's alright… weird," he finally mumbled in response. There was no point in lying, she knew him well enough after more than four years that she could always tell. Carol waited for him to continue, surveying the forest and glancing at Daryl out of the corner of her eye.
"She's different. Not herself anymore," he finally finished. He couldn't find a way to explain it further than that.
"Yeah, I've seen it too… Barely talks, reads instead of writes, and doesn't even play with Judy." This was all an accurate summary, though it didn't include everything that had changed.
He just grunted in agreement before closing his eyes and resting his forehead on his crossed arms. That was really all the confirmation that he'd needed. Carol noticed that she was different too. Now he wanted to talk about something else.
"Do you think she really doesn't remember anything?"
"I'm damn sure ah' it," he grumbled. The faded yellow mark on his left eye was certain proof.
"How do you think she survived out there for so long? She doesn't talk much anymore and Morgan steers away from the subject anytime I ask about Beth or what happened. But he must've been there the whole time, protecting her and teaching her everything she knows. I don't know how he had the strength. How he kept them both afloat when she must've been such an anchor. When I last saw her, she could barely even kill a walker through the fence," Carol mused aloud.
He really wished she'd shut up. Daryl didn't want to think about the old Beth—the gentle woman he loved. So he didn't respond in the hopes that Carol would fall into silence.
But her continuing to talk about Beth would have been better than what happened next.
"You wanna distraction? Fool around a little bit?" She suggested, half teasing. But just as Daryl couldn't lie to her, she couldn't hide from him either. He sensed the hope behind her words. She was still as senselessly in love with him as had been with Beth.
Daryl didn't lift his head, and in one instant he remembered the one lapse in judgment he'd had with Carol just over a year ago. He'd had a particularly bad night, haunted by dreams of Beth, which wasn't unusual by any means. But these were not just the regular dreams of losing her. They were dreams of being with her, remembering how unbearably soft her skin was those few times he touched her, those quiet moments together in the darkness after they'd put Judith to bed, the stormy night he'd been pressed up against her in the trunk of that car... and his mind took on it's own imagination from there. He'd woken up hard and feeling starved. He had a desire for Beth that ran deep; it was a thirst that cut him as if she was ice water and he'd been trapped in an endless desert for years. He took a cold shower and he'd smoked the last three cigarettes he'd had at the time.
But he couldn't shake the dreams or the ghost of Beth's hands on him.
So he broke into Deanna's store of hard liquor that she always had out at her stupid welcome parties and he got drunk. Too drunk. After the end of the world, his alcohol tolerance had plummeted so it didn't even take much. Carol had come off of watch duty and was walking back home when she'd found him stumbling around on the streets of Alexandria near the medical clinic. He'd been so distracted that he hadn't even brought his crossbow with him. Carol took him into the clinic to one of the cots since she couldn't carry him back to the house on her own. The combination of sleep deprivation and his beer goggles, mixed with the lingering sensations of Beth in his dreams, had led him into a small fit of insanity. Maybe that was what Rick had felt after Lori died, with the hallucinations. But he saw Carol as if she was Beth in the darkness, and he kissed her. She'd wanted that for so long, hinted at it, even outright asking him for it on more than one occasion. So Carol had seized the opportunity gladly and kissed him back. However, as soon as he ran his hands up to her hair, he snapped out of it. The hair was all wrong, it wasn't long but short. Daryl had pushed her off and ended up leaving for home. Daryl never really thought about that day again. It was a drunken mistake that he wanted to forget.
"Why don't you take a break? I'll finish up your shift here," he grunted finally.
She sighed loudly and it was obvious that she was despondent about his rejection. "Daryl, she's different now. She's not the girl you knew in Georgia. You'll just have to accept that," she responded harshly as she got up and made her way down the ladder.
After he moved into the chair, he took out his rag and his bolts to start cleaning them. He had made several of his own by now but those were never as good as the metal ones. There was never anything left in weapon stores now days so the only way to get new ones was to take them from somebody else… trouble was that not many people in this world carried a crossbow. The repetitive motion helped distract him for a little while.
By the time Tara came up for guard duty around sunset, his thoughts had circled back to Beth again and temptations were running high to smoke his last cigarette.
He sought out Glenn after that and found him walking home from the clinic.
"I'm comin' on the next run," he grunted at Glenn in lieu of a greeting.
"Got a big shopping list or just sick of the walls?" Glenn asked easily, unruffled at Daryl's abrupt interruption of his walk home.
Daryl actually gave a small snort of laughter at how well Glenn knew him, "A little bit ah' both."
"Well we're taking off first thing in the morning."
"Thought it wadn't scheduled for another week," the hunter half-asked.
"Talked to the doc, she needs more antibiotics. Three people on the construction crew got cut up this week and one of them is already showing signs of Sepsis. Plus, I want to find Maggie some prenatal vitamins and stuff," the younger man said with the slightly stupefied smile he got every time he talked about the baby.
"Lil' Asskicker The Second," Daryl said and Glenn smiled wider. They fell into a silence as they rounded the corner to their street.
"She still hasn't told Beth. I thought she'd be excited to tell her right away… but she hasn't even wanted to talk to her," Glenn stated quietly.
Daryl just nodded, "Beth's not the same kid that Maggie grew up with."
"Yeah she is," he stopped short and Daryl followed suit.
Daryl frowned, had Glenn really not noticed?
"She is different, sure. But she's still the same person," Glenn insisted but Daryl was remained unconvinced. His words were nonsense, the youngest Greene girl had just proved that to him in the forest.
"You're just as ridiculous as Maggie! But what do you think Hershel would say?" Glenn was fired up now, yelling at Daryl in a way that would've gotten most people a swift punch in the jaw.
Daryl thought about this. He didn't really know what Hershel would say, the old man always had a way of surprising him. But Daryl could guess that Hershel Greene would have done. He would have accepted his youngest daughter back without a second of doubt. Daryl had great respect for Hershel, he was a good man, stronger than anyone else he'd ever met. And this made Daryl feel a knot in is stomach, he hadn't accepted Beth like he should have.
Before he could respond to Glenn, Rick walked out of their front door.
"Beth's gonna go with y'all on the run tomorrow. Says she knows a hospital nearby that they already cleared."
Glenn smiled wide, "Looks like it'll be a party then since Daryl's coming too."
And Rick shot a glance and a knowing smirk at Daryl from where he stood on the porch. He was just loving pushing Beth and him together.
"Well good, you'll have a strong team then," Rick said with a head nod.
"Great," he said sarcastically, "Now I'm gonna eat some damn dinner and get away from you two smilin' like idiots."
But as he stomped up the porch, he felt a grin tug at his own lips. Maybe Glenn was right, he'd give it a chance tomorrow on the run. While searching for meds and cigarettes, he'd also try finding the old Beth hidden in that new woman he'd seen in the woods today.
/
A/N: What did you think of the Daryl/Carol past? What about Beth liking Daryl? How long can Daryl keep pushing Beth away? (hint: not long ;P)
Next chapter: the group goes out on their first run together, Daryl and Beth get in a fight and someone gets trapped and left behind.
Please review! It has been hard posting a chapter after so long, I would love to know if y'all are still interested in this story. Will post again soon if anyone is still reading!