IT'S ABOUT TO GO DOWN. Read and review. Love you lots for all of your wonderful support.
Beth's eyes flickered open in the darkness. The bedroom was quiet. The only sounds that broke the silence were the gurgles from Sophia's crib, and the deep rumble of Daryl's even breaths as she lay beside her. Her head rested comfortably on his chest, raising with each inhalation. The blankets had pooled at the bottom of their bed, it was an unusually warm night.
Beth let out a quiet groan as Daryl shifted in his sleep, slinging a heavy arm across her lower stomach and compressing her bladder. Despite the desperate need to pee, she was still reluctant to leave the cocoon of his arms. Slowly, she began to disentangle herself from him, inching towards the edge of the bed until her feet touched the floor. She reached for the soft cotton robe that hung from the bedpost as she quietly slipped out of the door.
As the tiptoed down the upstairs corridor towards the bathroom, she became aware of another sound.
Dripping.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Her first thought was that one of the others had left the tap loose, and made a mental note to scold them tomorrow. Wasting water was not an option nowadays. Every clean drop was priceless and a blessing. She was about to burst into the bathroom before she realized that the door was already ajar, and the bathroom light was on.
"Daryl. Daryl, please. Please help me."
The voice was a whisper. Weak and broken. And it was coming from behind the bathroom door. Beth's mind raced at a million miles a minute. What had happened? Had somebody fallen and hurt themselves? Had someone been bitten? Despite her brain screaming at her that none of these choices were likely or even possible, she still swallowed hard as she placed her palm against the cool wood of the door and pushed it open.
"Are you oka-" the words died on Beth's lips as the steam from the water filled her nostrils, thick and viscous and iron-laced. Blood. So much blood. Beth had never seen so much blood. The bathtub was full of dark red water, overflowing and staining the white porcelain with crimson splatters. A straight razor lay abandoned by the claw foot of the tub, sitting in a puddle of sticky blood that dripped steadily from the hand that hung above it. The hand with the stark white tan mark around its third finger.
Daryl bolted upright in bed as he heard his name shrieked across the landing. The stubborn sheets twisted around his ankles, almost tripping him, as he struggled to his feet and dove towards the source of the sound. He found Beth in the bathroom, her white robe stained a murderous red and her arms submerged into the murky water of the tub, searching for Grace's wrists.
"Daryl! She was calling you- I came in and she… I can't…" Beth sobbed as she yanked her wrists out of the warm water. Grace was mumbling incoherently.
The stench of coagulating blood overwhelmed his senses and he suddenly felt faint for all the wrong reasons. She had been calling for him. She had been waiting for him to find her, nude and bloodied, to save her.
"Grab that hand towel," Daryl slid to his knees besides her, grabbing both of Grace's slender wrists in his own to examine the damage. The cuts that adorned each wrist had traced the scar from her previous attempt. He breathed a sigh of relief as he examined the cuts and found them to be mostly superficial from cutting into her own scar tissue.
Beth returned with two strips of fabric from the hand towel and began to bandage one wrist while Daryl tied the other. Grace began to stir at the sound of Daryl's voice.
"Daryl? You came for me. You saved me," she was mumbling weakly, a delirious smile sliding across her face.
"She's lost so much blood. I can't-" Beth stammered.
"She didn't, Beth. Her cuts ain't deep enough. The water has diluted the blood, made it look worse than it is. She's going to be okay," he assured her gruffly as he tied off another knot a little tighter than required.
"Drain the tub. It'll be easier to get her out," Daryl nodded towards the plug as Beth snaked a slender arm into the red water to yank on the cord. The water began to slurp and suckle out of the tub, leaving a maroon stain on the inside of the bath where Grace's prone body lay.
"Be gentle!" Beth insisted, however her request fell on deaf ears as Daryl unceremoniously reached into the tub and pulled Grace up by her underarms as one would a naughty toddler. She giggled drunkenly as Daryl slung one of her arms over his shoulder. The bandaged hand gripped his bare shoulder firmly, and he gritted his teeth as he realized that he had forgotten to put on a shirt in his haste to help Beth.
It was only after he had deposited her on the couch that she began to regain full consciousness. Daryl stood, stoic and unforgiving, in the doorway of the living room where Grace was splayed across the couch cushions.
"Thank you for saving me tonight, Daryl. I knew you would." Her speech was still a little slurred. Her bandaged hands clasped a tea cup that Beth had filled with a herbal remedy.
"I didn't save you. Beth did."
"But you would choose me over her, wouldn't you?"
Daryl lowered himself wearily onto the coffee table in an effort to prevent himself from lifting her by the scruff of her neck and shaking some sense into her.
"Grace, you're sick." He would take the high road with this one, he decided.
"I'm not sick. I'm in love. I need you-" her voice took on a pleading quality that made his skin crawl.
"Stop it, Grace. You're not well. Mentally, I mean. You've lost everything, so you feel like you've got to belong to someone," he explained, aware of Beth tinkering in the kitchen and keeping his voice quiet to avoid attracting her attention.
"I only want to belong to you!" she replied much louder, her eyes glancing towards the kitchen to see if she had aroused Beth's attention.
"Ain't gonna happen, Grace. I can't do this anymore. I gave you a choice after the run. What you did tonight was… I can't trust you. You've put my family in danger and I'm fresh out of second chances. You need to leave, Grace." There was a tone of finality in his voice that caused her heartrate to quicken a little in fear.
"But… you can't. I'll tell her that you've been fucking me," she burst out, a newfound energetic rage appearing to surge through her veins at the proposition of being thrown out. He had to fight the urge to laugh at her threats. Beth trusted him enough to only believe in the things that came from his own mouth, and after tonight he doubted she would ever put stock in what Grace would say.
"Go ahead. I don't care anymore. I love my wife and my family, and I can't let you do this anymore." He stood up calmly, satisfied with his handle on the situation as he wiped his bloodstained hands on the jeans he had recently pulled on.
"You can't make me leave, Daryl. What are you going to do to me? You're not a murderer." This time, her taunt held some weight. Daryl stood before her, taking in her figure. His eyes darted across the room, where Beth's white cotton robe now lay in a pile on the floor, stained dark red-brown. He remembered the look of fear on her face as she searched for Grace's wrists in the murky bath water, of her strained voice screaming for him.
"Not yet, I ain't. But if anyone threatens to hurt my family? I could be."
Grace's eyes widened in shock at his honest response, but her reply was lost as Beth returned to the living room with another blanket.
"Here, Grace. It'll get cold, this'll keep you warmer." Beth was humming a familiar tune as she tucked the woolen blanket around Grace's body.
"What's the time?" she asked casually, setting her tea on the coffee table where Daryl had sat moments before.
"Uh, still early. Probably only about two in the morning. I'll leave you to get some rest, okay?" she smoothed down a stray hair that had fallen across Grace's face, and Daryl had to fight the urge to slap her hand away. He seized her wrist firmly and pulled her from the room without a backwards glance.
"That poor woman," Beth murmured as Daryl hurried her upstairs, casting backwards glances over his shoulder to ensure that Grace hadn't moved from her place on the couch. He could only grunt in response.
She sighed as they reached the landing, and grasped Daryl's hand firmly to pull him towards the bathroom door instead of their bedroom.
"What's wrong?" Daryl questioned, worrying a little about her mental health following what she had just witnessed.
"Nothing. I, uh – we just need to have a shower before we get back into bed. All I can smell is her blood, and you've got a handprint on your shoulder," she smiled sadly as she reached up to stroke the smudge of blood transferred to his skin from Grace's grip as he had lifted her from the bathtub.
"Good idea," Daryl agreed as he noticed that the tips of her blonde hair were temporarily stained a light beetroot pink from where her locks had dangled into the bathwater. He was certain that he did not want any part of Grace to remain attached to his Beth.
She rested her weight against the warmth of his chest as she rinsed the blood from her hair and arms and watched the stained water swirl down the drain. Daryl nuzzled her neck, catching a glimpse of her own stark white scars that ran horizontally across each wrist and catching them in his hands, pulling them to his mouth and pressing a kiss to each mark. The memory of her own suicide attempt still made his stomach ache, and he had no doubt that witnessing Grace's near miss had traumatized her once more.
"You don't have to worry about me, Daryl. I'm not the same person anymore," her hoarse voice penetrated the comfortable silence between them. How was it that this woman could read every thought that crossed his mind?
"I know you're not. But I can't forget that it happened."
She turned in his arms to face him, wiping the dripping water from his face as she stood on her toes to press a soft kiss to his lips.
"You saved me, Daryl Dixon," she smiled sadly up at him, and he didn't miss the glisten of a tear that fell from her eye and quickly mingled with the water dripping down her own face.
As Beth stepped from the shower, she let out a moan of disgust.
"We still have to clean this up," she grumbled, yawning hugely as she stared dubiously at the bloodstained floor, bathtub and sink.
"We'll get it in the morning," he suggested, bundling her in a towel and admiring her flushed cheeks.
"No. It will be harder to clean by tomorrow. Plus, it smells like pennies in here. It's making me feel nauseous," she wrinkled her nose at the blood-scented steam that filled the bathroom.
"Okay, I'll clean it," Daryl cast a glance at her in the middle of another gigantic yawn. He noted the bags under her eyes, and the anxiety-wrinkle that she always got in between her eyes when she was stressed.
"I'll help, I'll get-" she started before he cut her off.
"You're exhausted. Sophia will be waking you up for a feed in a few hours. Get some sleep, princess. I'll clean it up, alright?" he nudged her insistently towards the door of the bathroom before she finally relented and trudged back to their room, falling asleep almost as soon as her face hit the pillow, Sophia's soft gurgles the last thing that she heard as sleep overtook her consciousness.
Perhaps it was hours, or perhaps mere minutes until she was awoken by the moving shadows against the far wall of her bedroom. She could hear Sophia's soft crying from her crib and her tired body ached at the knowledge she would have to get up to comfort her.
The door to their bedroom creaked open just a little, letting light from the hallway illuminate Sophia's crib.
"Daryl?" Beth's half-conscious brain struggled to focus on the figure entering the bedroom.
"Not quite," replied a familiar Southern twang. Maggie.
"I heard her grumbling from our room. Want me to take her? There's a bottle of formula in the kitchen, that should do the trick," her sister whispered as she bent over the crib to wrap up Sophia in her blanket.
"Thanks, Maggie. Take her teddy bear, too. She can't sleep without it," Beth murmured before sleep consumed her once more.
Daryl immediately felt as though he was working a crime scene from one of those trashy forensic shows that used to fill the cable channels. He managed to wipe up the blood from the tiles pretty quickly, but the red ring around the tub was much harder to budge and it took a great deal of elbow grease and scrubbing before it faded.
It took forty minutes before he was heading back to their bedroom and sliding under the covers. Beth was curled in the fetal position on her side of the bed, her damp blonde curls spread around her head like an angel's halo. He wanted to stay and admire her like this. He glanced up to Sophia's crib to find it empty. Her blanket and the tiny teddy that she liked to hug while she slept was also missing.
"Beth, where's Sophia?" he whispered gently into her ear. She shifted in her sleep as his voice awoke her.
"Oh, Maggie came in earlier. She's gonna keep her for the night," she mumbled, wriggling back into his heated embrace as his arms wrapped protectively around her torso.
"So this means there'll be no five AM wakeup call? I can handle that after tonight," he replied teasingly as he pressed a goodnight kiss to the side of her neck.
Within mere moments, they were both sound asleep. Their breathing rates synched. They were wrapped around each other. They were at peace.