This is set around the end of 5/02, what I imagine could have happened had Daryl been there for Abraham's DC or bust speech.
"I won't go without her."
His voice seemed to ring in the still air, as though it bounced and ricocheted off of the old wooden walls of the church. Daryl's words seemed to echo in his own ears as he rose his head and met Abraham's deep frown with hardened eyes.
No one said anything for a moment as the two men openly glared at each other. If this was going to come down to a battle of wits or fists Daryl knew that he would win either one, no matter who his opponent was. When it came to Beth Greene Daryl would battle the devil himself for the chance to find her. Sergeant Abraham fucking Ford was not going to be the thing that kept him from her. At this point, anything that stood between Daryl and Beth was expendable.
The tense silence and their staring contest was shattered by a whisper, in a voice that cut Daryl to the core.
"Daryl." His head swiveled slowly to see Maggie shaking her head sadly as she stared at her hands folded in her lap, not even willing to look at him as she drove the knife further into his heart. "We don't even know where to look."
And that was all it took. One sentence, seven words, spoken by the person Daryl knew Beth missed the most. The one who she cried for at night when she thought Daryl was asleep. The one whose name she whimpered in the darkness like a promise of light to come. Beth had always been so certain that she would see her sister again, as certain as she was that the sun would rise each morning even though it never gave her any such guarantees. Beth had never stopped believing for one second that she would see Maggie again but it seemed her older sister did not share the same faith.
He hadn't realized how hard he had been clinging to the slim branch of hope that Maggie would join his search until it snapped in his fingers and he fell, hard and fast to a place where he thought he had long since left behind.
Daryl hadn't realized he was standing until his feet were already underneath him and he was towering over everyone but Abraham, who was standing in the corner and glowering at him for interrupting his save the world speech.
"Are you fucking kidding me Greene." It did not come out as a question but as a growl, hissing past his lips like a feral living thing. Glenn rose his head, mouth already falling open to defend his precious wife but he didn't speak fast enough.
"You're not even gonna try to look? You're just gonna give up on her? Just like that?! She mean that little to you?!" It was as though Daryl had no control over his mouth, his words. The dam within him had broken and every bit of anger and pain he had felt since Beth had disappeared seemed to be flooding out of him in his desperation to make the others understand, to make them see.
Going to DC might save the world but if Beth Greene wasn't with him, there wasn't a world worth saving.
They were all staring at him, eyes wide and mouths clenched or dropped open as they watched him in various shades of shock. Either they hadn't seen the change in him after his time with Beth or they hadn't realized what it meant. Daryl had thought what he felt for Beth was painted across his features but perhaps his friends just didn't know what to look for in his face, or it had just been there all along. Either way he could tell that the new ones, the ones who had never known Daryl and Beth to be two separate planets merely orbiting around each other could see it now. He could see their understanding as they looked at him.
"She never gave up on any of you!" he was screaming now, as though his volume was why they weren't understanding. He glared openly into each of their faces, the glare that only Beth herself had ever been able to withstand. "I did." Daryl threw the words at them, hoping that his obvious pain and guilt at his failures would make them feel something, anything. No one seemed to want to look him in the eye but like a car accident on the side of a road no one could tear their gaze away. "I would have just walked away if it wasn't for Beth! Y'all do whatever the hell you want. I'm going to find her."
He turned his back on them then, didn't spare a single glance back as he grabbed his crossbow and stalked out of the front doors of the church. Daryl didn't need them, he would rescue Beth on his own. Wherever she was he would find her.
He would find her and they would run away together and never look back.
Except of the course they wouldn't. Beth would never walk away from her family like that, not if she had even the slightest bit of hope that they were alive. Never mind that they couldn't be bothered to lift a finger to help her, she would find them.
Daryl was at the edge of the yard when he heard the door to the church open again. He heard the hurried footsteps but he didn't bother to look over his shoulder. He didn't need to know who followed him because knowing that would only show him who didn't. He didn't know what he was going to tell Beth if that wasn't Maggie trailing along after him.
They continued on in silence, nothing but their breath and each other's footsteps to fill the empty space between them. Daryl realized after a few seconds that there were two people on his tail but he still could not get himself to see who it was. He didn't look back until the light of headlights illuminated the road and threw the shadows of two figures down on the pavement in front of him.
Daryl turned to watch the church bus pull up beside him and Maggie and Glenn who walked only feet behind him, eyeing him with looks of equal weariness and guilt. The metal doors opened with a groan of rusted hinges and Rick stepped down the stairs to meet his eyes, as steely and confident as ever.
"We'll find her." He offered nothing else as he stepped back to let them onto the bus but those words were a promise enough. Daryl had known Rick Grimes long enough to know that when he said something was going to happen it did. He stepped onto the bus feeling as though a weight had lifted off of him. Together they would find her.
Abraham glared at him from the driver's seat as he made his way up the steps. "Once we find your girlfriend you both help us get to DC."
Daryl may not have been military but he knew from Abraham's voice that was an order and not a request. He bristled at anyone giving him a directive but if it meant he had more help with Beth, well he would do whatever it took.
He nodded curtly as he slid into the seat next to Rick and if anyone noticed he didn't correct the term of 'girlfriend' they didn't say anything within his hearing.
Finding Beth was nowhere near as easy as getting everyone to decide to help him find her. They had no starting point and for the first week they had no sign of where to even begin looking. Daryl had to pointedly ignore the death glares Abraham was giving him more frequently with each passing hour.
It was physically tolling him not to give up hope, for her being alive, that they would find her. The ghost of her voice constantly flooded through his brain, urging him to keep going, to keep looking, to keep hoping.
He would try to imagine what it would be like when they did find her, but he never settled on one possibility. Daryl assumed that someone was holding her so he imagined that it would be bloody and that he was going to have kill some people. Or a lot of people.
But in any scenario he had concocted he had never imagined one as simple as the truth. Daryl was not expecting for her to simply stumble out of the bushes onto the road where he stood, wearing dirty blue hospital scrubs with an equally disheveled boy behind her. He was not expecting her eyes to widen and then light up like the sun when they fell on him.
He did not expect her to run to him, or his bow to fall from his numb fingers. Daryl always thought she would run for Maggie first but she didn't, but that was likely because she hadn't seen her sister where she sat on the bus steps, because Beth had yet to tear her eyes away from Daryl.
Daryl had thought he would be the one to rush at her, that after so long of being away from her he would want to close that last bit of distance as fast as possible. But his feet were glued to the floor and it was Beth who did the running, who flung herself into his arms as he took his first real breath since she had been torn from him.
He had tried for so long to come up with something to say to her, some way to tell her what she surely already knew. How he clung to hope, for her, because of her. How he never stopped believing for even a second that she was alive. How he had planned on moving hell or earth to find her. How he loved her.
But just as his feet would not move his mouth would not open and all Daryl could do was wind his arms tighter around her as she pressed herself into his chest. He barely heard the voices of the others, the exclamations of joy and surprise or the questions directed at her companion. All Daryl could hear was her breath warm in his ear, all he could feel was her heartbeat pounding fiercely against his chest.
And it was that that got the words to finally strangle themselves out of his throat in more of a gasp than an actual sentence. "I knew we'd find you."
Her arms were tight around his neck and her lips were warm against his ear as she whispered "So did I."