A/N: Ah, I got so many great reviews over the holiday! I'm so happy that everyone is enjoying this story! To everyone who has sent me a review in another language, I have Google translated them and appreciate your enthusiasm so much! I think it's very cool that the story is translating so well over to your language and you're enjoying it. Thank you for the encouragement =) I also appreciate everyone who has followed and favorited me and/or the story. You're all just awesome. Which is why I'm doing THIS:

I did try writing today. I tried it a lot, in fact, but with a house full of kiddos, there were lots of interruptions. I didn't get to sit down and really start writing until after they went to bed, which was late because of the holidays. This chapter is beginning to run a little long, (now that my confidence level is up, the rest of the chapters will probably be very large. I have a lot I want to do with the story..!) So I hope no one minds that.

Chapter seven is in Daryl's point of view, though, and it became much, much, much longer than I had ever intended. It's only half done, in fact, but it had begun getting so late into the evening [or, early morning, rather,] that I just can't bring myself to keep going. I feel like I'm going to end up doing a poor job on it. BUT I also didn't want to go another day and leave you with nothing. You've all been too awesome.

So, here I gift you with part one of chapter 7. Something is better than nothing, right? =D Part two will come to me sometime tomorrow, hopefully. And chapter 8 is already written and ready to post because I did it as an exercise before this story was ever actually fully formed in the back of my mind.. so there is that to look forward to soon, as well.

Anyway, enjoy, and as always, I love getting reviews. 3 I hope everyone had a fantastic week, whether you were celebrating a holiday or not!

Chapter 7

He'd never given much thought to what hell was probably like. Most people seemed to adhere to the Biblical version full of fire and brimstone; he'd been told more than once that he was going to burn there for things he'd done in his life. If there was one, Merle would be there for sure, Daryl knew. He'd never really sat down and pondered the idea, though. If there was an afterlife, something Daryl wasn't so sure about to begin with, he never really wanted to consider what was probably waiting for him on the other side. He always figured his death would be just like his life; meaningless and simple. Afterward, what would happen, would happen, and no amount of thought or reflection was going to do much of a damn difference where he was concerned.

But now, as Daryl felt himself surfacing from the darkness, he felt like he had a much better idea of what hell was really like. He was so tired that if there was a word invented for how someone felt when they were more than exhausted, then it would've been used to describe him. He'd heard before that keeping people awake for hours on end was considered a form of torture, and now he could see why. He couldn't fall asleep fast enough to get a full three hours in before Beth was there, making sure he woke up again. His naps seemed to go by in the blink of an eye, and he felt like he'd gotten no rest at all. He'd had plenty of nights where he'd stayed up all through the night until the sun was high in the sky again, and he'd functioned just fine. But that was in his youth. Before he worked 17 hour days, slept restlessly in a haunted trailer, and it had definitely never been after fighting for his life in a river of raging water and a resulting concussion. His body hurt everywhere, and his temple was pounding. If there was a hell meant just for him, it would certainly be something like this: Being in a constant state of tired-but-wired, repeatedly shaken awake by a well-meaning blonde that he couldn't even throttle to make himself feel better, the pain.

Then there was the coconut that permeated everything. That was hell for a different kind of reason, but torture all the same. All around him was her scent, and it was driving him crazy.

He heard his name being softly spoken in the back of his consciousness, and he could feel warm breath playing with the hair on the crown of his head.

Daryl finally stirred, becoming mostly conscious, aware that there was much brighter light behind his eyelids than when he'd drifted off to sleep what only seemed like seconds ago. As his senses began registering, he inhaled an entire lungful of coconut and pine. Soft hands were gripping his bicep gently, and he could feel hair tickling his neck. He got his eyes to open partially, and blinked away the light streaming in between the cracks of the blinds.

The pressure on his arm disappeared, and Beth's hair brushed across his flesh as she sat back, igniting the nerve endings in its path.

"Sorry about the light," she said. Her voice sounded slightly hoarse from hours of disuse, but she seemed alert. "My room is in need of curtains."

Daryl rolled onto his back and squinted at her. "Wha' time is it?" he croaked.

"Nine in the morning," she said, smiling at him a bit. "Seven hours down, five to go."

He grunted humorlessly and sat up in her bed, eyes drawn to the glass of fresh ice water she'd set down on the nightstand. It took him all of three gulps to empty the glass, and he set it back down, quietly wishing for more.

Beth gave him a small, tired smile and took the glass with her as she exited the room. He watched her leave, noting that she'd changed into daytime clothes; specifically noticing the pair of jeans she had on that hung low on her waist and hugged her ass.

Even though she didn't look back or catch him staring, he averted his gaze and cursed himself for being a creep. He had no business checking out her figure; it was Beth. She was his annoying little neighbor, bubbly and mouthy and right in every way that he was wrong. Aside from that, like the asshole he was, he had taken over her bed while she had to sleep curled up in a chair like a damned cat all night. Her sheets were so unbelievably soft that they snagged on every damn cut in his skin, and he could feel the remnants of dried mud beginning to cake off of him; the clean, good-smelling bed he had fallen into last night must've been fucking filthy by now. She'd woken him up gently every three hours as promised, and every damn time, she'd had a glass of cold water sitting on the nightstand for him to drink. She'd never been frustrated with her own lack of sleep, and never even blinked an eye when the iodine leftover from his temple stitches stained one of her pillow cases. She'd just smiled sweetly at him as she put a fresh one on, asking if he was comfortable. She'd been a damned saint to him through the whole ordeal. The least he could do was not leer at her perky ass every time she left her room. And yet, every time, he had.

His shoulder was throbbing in tempo with his heartbeat, and he moved it to see how much range of motion he had with it. Pain immediately shot through his chest and across his back as every muscle even remotely connected to his shoulder protested the movement. Daryl ignored the pain and continued rotating it slowly in different directions, trying to get a feel for what was pulled, what was bruised, and where he could expect the most problems. Working at the shop was a necessity, and while he wasn't looking forward to using his damaged shoulder for an all-day shift, it had to be done. The more loosening up he could do of his muscle until tomorrow morning, the better off he'd be. He hoped.

Beth came back into the room with the glass filled back up with water. She handed it to him as she adjusted the collar of the jacket she'd thrown on. He grunted his thanks and began gulping it down.

"Your shoulder looks terrible," she observed, sitting on the corner of the bed.

"Feels terrible," he responded, holding the empty glass out to her with his good arm extended. It made him realize that she'd sat as far away from him on the bed as she could without teetering on the edge of the mattress. The space she was giving him seemed… off.

As she leaned over and took his glass, she asked, "Would you like me to get you more?"

"Nah. Don' wanna get sick from drinkin' too much water on an empty stomach."

Beth nodded her understanding, but didn't say anything else.

It was then that Daryl realized that the mood in the room was tense. For him, there was always usually tension when he was near Beth. Sometimes she annoyed him, sometimes she frustrated him; most of the time, there was something else about her that just had him all wound up and twisted into knots.

Today, though, the tension was coming from her. He looked her over and realized her shoulders were squared and she had her hands clasped tightly in her lap, on top of her crossed leg. Everything from the way she was sitting to the way she was looking everywhere but him told him that she was upset.

He never could read women real well, never had a girlfriend to try and figure out or anything of that sort. The first girl he'd asked out when he was 12 had just looked horrified and revolted that he'd even spoken to her. He'd learned quickly that Dixons seemed to only attract one type of woman, and they were the same kind that Merle'd be willing to lay hands on, which turned Daryl off of them. They were always the same damn lousy girl, too- loud, rude, insecure, always needing validation, needing love, resolving daddy issues with booze, drugs, and sex. Sure, they all looked different; some were blonde, others brunettes or gingers. Some short, some tall. Some had wide hips and large jugs, others were straight down from shoulders to ankles. But they all had large tempers and big mouths and sad lives. He avoided dealing with them, even as Merle threw some at him as the years went by. Merle thought it was funny and weird that he never seemed to want a woman; to Daryl, they were just nothing. He was always picky about the ones he slept with, but even after the deed was done and he'd gotten his fill, he never stuck around to see what they were like. He knew for a fact, though, that even if he had gotten a lot of experience with women like that, it still wouldn't have been any help to him now. There weren't a lot of women out there like Beth, and certainly none he'd ever have gotten with.

While he didn't get those women, though, he found that he did seem to get Beth to some extent. And if there's anything in the world he understood better than anyone, growing up as a Dixon especially, it was tension and defensiveness. And Beth was definitely exhibiting signs of both.

Despite being able to tell that she was obviously upset about something, he said nothing. He didn't know why she seemed mad, but he figured it probably had a lot to do with all of the grief he'd caused her over the last 8 or so hours. Their conversation after they got back to her cabin had turned into a fight, and Daryl could barely remember what he said to her or why. Vaguely, he recalled her deal with him: if he came inside with her and let her help him, then she'd leave him alone after that.

It seemed like a pretty win-win situation for her anyway. She had no business sniffing around him trying to be buddies; they were from two different worlds and his wasn't a world she needed to be mucking around in. It was best if she just quit grinning at him with her big white smile every time she bumped into him somewhere, and quit trying to eat meals and talk to him. She needed to quit flirting, quit needing his help, quit acting like she thought he was funny, quit staring at him with her big blue trusting eyes, and quit smelling like damned coconut. So, he let her help him like she wanted, and in return, she could go back to being some distant neighbor of his that he didn't really see around much. Maybe it'd get her off of his mind. It was something he badly wanted.

"Well," she said, breaking the silence and cutting off his ruminating, "I need to head out for an hour or so. The pharmacy didn't open until an hour ago, and I also need to… get some stuff. To fix a thing…"

He raised his eyebrow as she tripped over her last sentence. "What thing are you fixin'?"

She fidgeted with his empty glass in her lap, clearly nervous. She stood then, and paced over to her old dresser, laying the glass on it before turning back to him. "Now, don't be mad, alright..?"

He could tell already that he was going to be mad. "Tha'll depend on what you did."

"Well, I just… I'm not good under stressful situations like that. Work, I can cope with. Deadlines, things like that. But medical stuff and injured people? I can't. I panic. I didn't know what to do when I opened the door and found you kneeling on my steps with blood running down your head, soaked to the bone."

Daryl thought back to the moment she'd opened the door, the light spilling out from behind her highlighted wayward strands of golden hair, bouncing off her light skin making her glow. She'd looked like a damn angel staring down at him. He'd definitely been loopy as fuck by the time he made it to her cabin.

"I ran to your trailer to get your truck, and-"

"Yeah, you said you sold yer car? When didja do that, anyway?"

"…Last Saturday," she admitted sheepishly. "The girls followed me to Atlanta to drop it off at a dealership. We shopped and ate, and by the time Lori dropped me off at home, you'd put gravel everywhere. Thank you for that, by the way. I'd walked to your place a couple of times last week, but you were never home. I didn't get a chance to thank you…"

He chucked humorlessly. "Tha' figures. I spend all damned afternoon throwin' gravel in your damn driveway, while you're off sellin' your ridiculous little car, which was the whole problem in the firs' place."

Beth turned and looked out her bedroom window, a frown on her face. "Yeah, I guess that's one way to look at it. Funny how stuff doesn't work out sometimes, huh?"

She sighed, turning back around to lean her butt against the window sill, eyes on her shoes. "Anyway, I got to your place, but couldn't find any keys in your truck. So, I grabbed a rock and threw it through your living room window."

At that, Daryl sat up straight in bed. "You did what?! My fron' door was unlocked, girl! Wha' the hell did you do that for?!"

"I told you," she said quietly. "I just don't think when I'm under that kind of stress. I didn't try the door first, I just… I just grabbed a rock and threw it. I'm sorry."

"You don't think at all, is more like it," he growled at her.

She looked at him then, and he could see that her eyes were shimmering with unshed tears. Before he could think of what to say, she broke eye contact, looking around the sparse room like there was something interesting she hadn't seen in there before; avoiding him.

"Well, at any rate, I'll be back in an hour or so, like I said. You can go back to sleep if you need to." To her credit, her voice didn't shake like she was near tears, and Daryl wasn't sure what to think.

"Don' bother," he ground out. "I'll fix it myself when I get home t'day."

"I guess that makes sense," she said, smiling sadly at him in a way that hurt him a little to look at. "I would probably just make things worse."

With that last comment still impregnating the air, Beth strode through her door, leaving the glass on her dresser. He heard the jingle of keys and then her front door closing, followed by the sound of his pickup revving to life.

"Fuck," he muttered, swinging his feet off the side of the bed.

What the fuck was that all about, he wondered? Sure, she broke his window with a rock. But hell, it wasn't even his place. He was just crashing there until he figured something else out. He hated that damn trailer, and everything in it. He didn't give a shit if the window was broken or not. And the fact that she did it because she was so worried about him that she was in a blind panic, well… that made his anger even more ridiculous. She fucking runs through the cold, wet forest in the middle of the night in what could hardly be considered pajamas, breaks into his place to look for his truck keys so that she can drive him to an urgent care clinic, sits with him through that mess, and then spends the entire night waking him up to make sure he hadn't slipped into a damn coma while he sleeps in her only bed, dirties her sheets, and drinks her offered water. And then he flips his shit when she admits that she's on her way to fix the window that she broke to save his life?

He ran his hand through his hair and clenched it into a fist, tugging on the roots in frustration. What the fuck is wrong with him? He didn't even know why he was pissed at her to begin with.

As he sat on the edge of her bed and simmered, a picture on her nightstand caught his eye. He picked up the small golden frame and inspected its contents. It was a group photo, with Beth standing smack in the middle, wearing a graduation cap and gown, clasping a ribbon-wrapped diploma in one hand. The smile on her face was huge, and nearly identical to the smile of the brunette woman standing next to her. Daryl would have put her at his own age, nearly 30, but it was definitely a sister of Beth's. The other woman had green eyes where Beth's were blue, but both of their eyes were wide and happy, and framed in dark lashes. Next to Beth's sister was an Asian guy in a red sweater. On Beth's other side stood another man, around Beth's age, who looked nothing like any of the rest of them. On his other side was an older man with white hair and a face that had wrinkles from a lifetime of happy smiles. He looked proud as could be, and Daryl would have bet his whole arm that he was Beth's father.

He ran his thumb over the contours of the frame as he took in the scene, feeling out of place and intrusive. He looked up and soaked in her whole room like he hadn't done since he'd been in there. The walls were wood, like the rest of the cabin. In here, they were stained a grey walnut. She had kept the same old dresser that had been in there every time Daryl had spent time in the cabin back when it had been abandoned. The huge rug on the floor was made out of some kind of synthetic animal fur that mimicked the feel and look of a grey wild rabbit, just on a much larger scale. Her bed also had a fake fur on it, and all of the frames and knick-knacks in her room were golden and specifically hand-selected to set the tone of the room to be elegant and rustic.

Then he realized the reason for his anger.

It wasn't that she's broken the window to find his keys, or that she'd sold her car the same day he spend graveling her driveway. It was the thought of her stepping foot in his father's trailer. Beth's room was carefully planned out, decorated with intention, and it reflected her personality perfectly. Warm and soft, but compassionate, like her fake furs. Shiny, elegant, classy, wealthy, organized. Simplistic and easy to please.

And what did she see when she went into his trailer? A TV riddled with bullet holes, everything broken, and nothing of value; furniture that had been abused, laundry that had been neglected. Trash.

That's all there was to that trailer, though. That's all there ever had been to it. It was a reflection of his childhood, and by extension, himself. Broken, abused, neglected; trash. That's what she'd seen of him, and that's why he was mad. Not at her, but at himself. Mad at his da' who'd treated everything in his life like it didn't matter a damn bit. Mad at the idea of her unspoiled beauty even stepping foot in that nightmare where she didn't belong.

He had been right to try to get away from her last night. She didn't belong anywhere near him. He was the one who didn't think anymore. He should've just passed by her cabin last night and took his chances driving himself to the hospital. He would have avoided this terrible feeling soaking through his chest. He was quite familiar with the emotion having grown up the way he did; it was shame.

He got up and stretched his stiff muscles, hoping tomorrow that they weren't any worse. He made his way to the small room off of the kitchen that had washer and dryer connections, finding that she had indeed bought a washer and a dryer already. He was both pleased and ashamed to find that his clothes from last night had already been washed, dried, and neatly folded on top of the dryer. As he pulled them on, he reflected that they felt soft like her sheets.

Thinking about her sheets made him feel like more of an asshole, since they were probably filthy from him. He saw his crossbow lying on her table as he passed back through her kitchen and stopped to run his hand across the top. He appreciated that she hadn't put it outside on her patio or left it lying on the floor. He could even tell that it had been wiped clean and dried, since there wasn't a speck of mud left on the damn thing from the chaos of last night. His crossbow was an expensive weapon that he took good care of, more valuable to him than his truck. The fact that she'd bothered to clean it was more proof that Beth valued things, even if she didn't altogether understand them.

Daryl went back into her bedroom where he gently folded up the faux fur at the foot of her bed before stripping it of the muddied and bloodied sheets. He threw them in the washer along with what he hoped was the right amount of detergent and fabric softener. He always washed his own clothes, but did so at the laundry mat where he threw in an unspecific amount of generic powdered detergent and popped some quarters in to get it started. He didn't waste money on things like fresh-smelling fabric softener, or waste time with things like measuring cups. But, as she had done for his bow without understanding the value of it, he attempted to reciprocate with her sheets. That and he still felt like a huge dick over how he reacted when she told him about his damn window.

As he walked back to her room, he caught a dizzy spell and had to lean against the door frame to stabilize himself as he waited for it to pass. He wasn't sure whether it was the concussion or the lack of sleep throwing his equilibrium off, but he definitely hated the feeling of not having his feet steady underneath him.

He sat down in her fluffy chair, intent to sit and relax for a few minutes before making the hike back to his cabin. As long as he stayed awake for the next 5 hours anyway, he didn't need to stay and let Beth keep an eye on him anymore. He would just rest and then go back to his own life.

Without his permission, his eyes slid closed, and darkness overtook him.