A/N: Ah! I'm so glad you all liked the last chapter! I was worried, I'm not going to lie. I'm also really excited that you guys are digging the interactions with the other characters. To be honest, Carol is one of my favorite characters on the show; I just don't feel like she's a good romantic fit for Daryl. She's a bit older, and they come from the same side of the tracks, so they definitely make great friends, in my opinion. I'm glad that Daryl has her to keep him grounded on the show. I would like to kind of begin forming that same friendship between them in my story, just because I feel like Carol was a lot of the reason Daryl released a lot of his demons and tried being a good man to begin with. Like the episode when she tells him that he'd done more for her little girl in two days than her daddy had done for her in her whole life... You know he had some feels in that one. Or when she tells him he's every bit as good as Rick and the other men; then he rolled over and pretended to ignore her, but you could see him soaking that in. That was the episode I fell in love with Daryl Dixon, because I could tell no one had ever said anything so kind to him in his life. I want all of that reflected in this AU, so that's where I'm channeling it from. =)
I also had a reviewer remark that she was surprised I didn't have more reviews because the story was so good, and I was extremely flattered by that. BUT, I published this thinking it wouldn't get a lot of attention, so the amount of feedback I've already gotten has blown my mind. I'm not greedy- the reviews I get from all of you after every chapter is more than enough to keep me happy and writing, no worries! ;)
So, thank you to everyone who reviewed, favorited, and followed the story in the last 12 hours, (and over the course of the entire story, for that matter.) It made me turn to my computer in my down-time today, and now I have another chapter for you. I'm excited to show you where I'm headed with this. I think you'll like it.
Anyway, without further ado, I give you chapter 11.
P.S.- I was literally falling asleep while trying to get chapter 10 posted last night; it was 3 a.m. and I'd been up for almost 20 hours with no caffeine and lots of walking around. So, when I finally read the chapter myself this morning, I noticed a couple of spelling errors that will bother me forever. I apologize! I'll try to get these finished sooner in the day so that I don't let things like that slip through the cracks. I feel like a misspelled word sometimes pulls you out of the story; like when CDs would have scratches on them and skip in the middle of the song. Fuckin' annoying.
Chapter 11
Daryl made his way through the aisles with a shopping basket in hand. So far, he only had a package of plastic silverware and a bag of chips in there; he hadn't had an appetite in a couple of days, ever since the night at the bar when he'd screamed at Beth. He'd gotten what he wanted from her, but the victory hadn't been sweet. Now he was just as he had been before stumbling upon her in the woods; alone and aimless.
His usual Saturday hunt that morning hadn't gone as planned, so he grabbed a package of ground beef to hold him over until he could get some venison next weekend.
He was headed for the refrigerated beer aisle when he spotted two women discussing some fruit. One woman was the older woman from the bar, Carol; and the woman she was talking to was undeniably Beth. Even though Daryl couldn't see her face, everything about her was intimately familiar to him; the shade of her light, golden blonde hair, and the way she carried herself, her brown cowboy boots that her tight-fitted jeans were tucked into; her ass. She was even in that bomber jacket from Halloween night, and the hand she was holding the strange-looking fruit in had red painted fingernails.
As soon as she put her fruit in her basket and began to turn, Daryl ducked into the aisle closest to him. He couldn't face her; not now.
He stood still; eyes glued to the end of the aisle, hoping she didn't spot him frozen there if she walked passed him.
Instead, he heard her laugh from the other side of the shelf he was against, and he leaned his forehead on the cold metal, listening to the sound of her voice from the safety of his cover.
"I definitely like the name of this one," she said, showing whatever she had to Carol, because she chuckled quietly in return.
"Who gets paid to think up these names?" He heard Beth wonder out loud. "The lipstick colors are just as bad."
"Speaking of getting paid," Carol said, "Have you figured out what happened to your last paycheck, yet?"
He heard Beth sigh, and she responded, "Nope. I called over to my old apartment this morning while you were in the shower, to see if my tenant had gotten it in the mail for me yet. She hadn't though, and promised to call as soon as it came in. When I talked to my old boss on Friday, she swore they'd sent it out a week ago; that they'd cut the check and mailed it the Monday after I was let go. I worked only a block from where I'd lived; it shouldn't take my money that long to get there."
"I wonder if they had it addressed to your cabin and it got lost on its way down here?" Carol suggested.
"It's possible," Beth responded. "My boss had been very adamant to know where I was going to be at when I started working remotely, so they had my new address; but all of the other paperwork that was sent concerning my termination had gone to my old apartment in Chicago, so it wouldn't make sense for the check to get sent off to the Georgia address."
"If you need money, I could…" Carol started, but Beth cut her off.
"No, definitely not. It's very sweet of you to offer, but I still have a savings account I'm feeding off of for now, until I find something new. I would just be less anxious with the last check deposited into the account; I'd feel like I have more time to job-hunt." Beth laughed a little, putting something back down on the shelf.
"Where are you looking for jobs at?" Carol asked.
Daryl, who'd been just enjoying the sound of Beth's voice, suddenly found that he'd been craving that knowledge, too. He'd been the one to separate them and insist they went their different ways; for her to leave him alone to rot. As painful as it was to see her and bump into her every now and then in town, though, he certainly didn't want to imagine her moving out of the cabin and leaving altogether.
He had been planning to move, that was true; but he figured he'd leave with the comforting knowledge that Beth would still be living in her beautiful little cabin, surrounded by friends, eating in the diner, and even driving her bright green Jeep into his old shop for an oil change every couple of months. If she left, he wouldn't know where to picture her. He wouldn't know what new things she wore, or where she liked to eat. He wouldn't be able to imagine her reading a book in her favorite chair, because he wouldn't know what her new place looked like. It would drive him crazy, imagining her somewhere else in the vast world, never to be found or seen by him again.
"I don't know," he heard her say; her voice sounded further down the aisle. "I've been checking out all of the different ad companies in the major cities; Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles, Dallas. Cincinnati, too, since that's where daddy, Maggie, and Glenn live. I don't know if I'd really want to be back there again, but I do miss them a lot. It wouldn't be terrible."
As she spoke, Daryl imagined the places she'd said. New York? Dallas? Cincinnati? He couldn't picture her in any of those huge cities. Then movement caught his eye and he stood up quickly, wrenching his forehead off of the edge of the shelf.
There stood Beth, in the mouth of the aisle, frozen and staring right at him.
He was at a loss for words. Carol looked back and forth between them, but stayed silent.
"What're you doing here?" Beth said quietly.
"Shoppin', what's it look like?" Daryl asked, agitated at being caught eavesdropping on her.
Beth raised her eyebrows and looked around her at the merchandise on the shelves before looking back at him skeptically. "You're shopping here? For what?"
Quickly, Daryl looked around him, for the first time taking note of which aisle he'd ducked into. He was surrounded by feminine products. The whole aisle was tampons, pads, feminine wipes- whatever those were, and birth control tests.
He opened his mouth to formulate an excuse, when he looked back at her; and then stopped and really looked at her. She was different somehow. Her loose hair was straight, which he hadn't seen in awhile, and she was wearing a blue knitted beanie on her head. Those changes were small, and normal, though. Something else was off about her.
As they stared at each other, he frowned, realizing what it was. She was wearing make-up, and lots of it. Beth always looked beautiful, but she'd always been very natural about it. He'd doubted, with how light her skin and hair was, that her eyelashes could be naturally so dark, or that her lips could possibly be that shiny and pink on their own; but he'd never seen her all gussied up the way most women were when they wanted attention from men. Today, she wasn't quite overboard, but the color of her face was different, and he could tell she was wearing it on pretty thick.
Finally, she fidgeted under his scrutiny, looking to her right, shifting her balance to her other foot, and that's when he noticed it; the swelling. The entire left side of her face looked a little puffier than the right, and when she looked away from him, he could see that the white of her left eye was also fairly bloodshot. Then, the same as when staring at one of those 3d puzzles where hidden images slowly unveil themselves, Daryl finally noticed a huge splotch of discoloration immerging from under her skin-toned make-up.
A bruise, he realized. The whole left side of her face was fucking bruised.
He dropped his grocery basket and strode towards her. She looked startled, but stayed glued to the spot as Daryl got right up into her space and put both of his hands on her jaw, encompassing most of her face, turning her head so he could get a better look at the damage.
She closed her eyes and the expression on her face was pained. She probably didn't want him touching her, he realized sadly. He didn't blame her; even before he'd been such an ass to her, she didn't need his dirty hands all over her lovely skin. He released her and stepped back, face reddened by his lack of control when it came to her.
"Damnit, who did this?" he said, shoving his hands in his pockets to keep them off of her. She opened her eyes to look him over, fidgeting uncomfortably, unconsciously putting a hand over her bruised cheek where he'd touched her.
"What makes you think someone did anything?" she asked, too innocently.
"You've been punched 'n tha face," he said, his voice raising. He swallowed and focused on keeping his temper down. He stomped down on the images threatening to overtake him; of some asshole putting his fist in Beth's eye. And he was pretty sure it was a man, too. A woman's hand would have been small enough to hit Beth right in the eyeball, and it would have looked a lot worse than her cheek and brow-bone.
"You can't know that," she said quietly, not doing a good job of disputing his claim.
"I've been punched 'n tha face 'nough times ta know wha' it looks like afterward," Daryl said, staring her down.
"It's none of your concern, Daryl," Beth said, averting her eyes and attempting to walk passed him.
He stepped to the side, blocking her escape. "The hell it ain't! I shoulda… I shoulda been there to protect you. To do somethin'. I still can, Beth. Tell me who did this." He hoped he didn't sound as desperate to her ears as he did to his own.
"You could've, but you weren't," Beth said, smiling sadly. "You made your choice, Daryl. What happens to me is of little consequence to you now, and I definitely don't need you running around town beating people up over me. We're done, remember?"
He said nothing; what could he say? They both knew how bad he'd fucked up. Those were his exact words, too; we're done. He could feel his chest constricting with the weight of what he'd done to them, of what had happened to her after he'd managed to chase her off; of what she'd endured when he wasn't around to do anything to stop it.
"But at least there's a silver lining to all of this," she said sweetly; her optimism in the face of adversity never ceased to amaze him, and he found himself drawn into her light once again.
"And wha's that?" he asked softly, looking over the rest of her face; he would probably never get over how beautiful she was. He'd also never forget just how sorry he was, for all of it.
"You don't give a crap about anything," she said without batting an eye, "so at least you won't lose any sleep over it."
The air left him like he'd been punched in the gut. All the sweetness and humor he was used to seeing was absent from the expression on her face now as she stared at him; and right then, he knew what the worst feeling in the world was. It was the complete and utter indifference of the only person in the world you gave a damn about.
Turning to Carol, Beth said kindly, "Go ahead and finish up in here. I'm going to head over to the stand and get the vegetables we'd talked about." Her eyes flickered back over to his, and she said, "Have a nice day, Mr. Dixon."
As she strode passed him, her coconut scent lingering in the air, he recalled the afternoon in the shop's parking lot when she'd bitten her pink lip and called him Mr. Dixon in such a way that he'd felt himself harden in response to her. This time had been nothing like that. Her tone was formal, icy, and void of any familiarity. He'd never felt like more of a piece of shit in his entire life. Right then, he felt more like his da' than he ever had before.
Daryl swallowed, trying to dislodge the lump that had formed in his throat. He deserved every bit of her derision, and he knew it. That didn't make the experience any easier to live through, though.
As Carol ducked her head and tried to walk away from him, Daryl caught her by her upper arm. "Wait," he said. "Tell me wha' happened."
The older woman's eyes shifted around, glancing from thing to thing like an animal backed in a corner. She glanced at his eyes once, but looked away just as quickly. He gently released her arm, holding his hands up in front of him to show her that he meant no harm.
"Please," he said gruffly.
"I can't tell you," she said softly, her eyes beginning to fill with tears.
"I jus' need to know wha' happened to Beth," he said. "It'll kill me, not knowin'."
Shaking her head, she looked down at her hands, fiddling with the small, dull wedding band on her left finger. "I can't. You'll… you'll hurt him."
"Damn righ' I'm gonna hurt 'im," Daryl snapped, causing Carol to flinch back from him. He cursed his temper and tried for a more even tone. "So it was a man tha' did that to her face."
"Yes," Carol said, tears spilling down her cheeks. "But you don't understand. He wasn't after her, not at first, she just… she got in the way, and it all happened so fast. He's real sorry, Daryl… about all of it."
Well, that answered that. Ed fuckin' Peletier; Carol's very own husband. Daryl shook his head, jaw clenched, as the anger swelled up inside of him. He's gonna be real sorry, Daryl thought.
"Please," Carol said, laying her hand on his forearm. She looked at him desperately, like she could read the retribution that was on his mind. "He was just mad that I'd lied to him about going out with the girls. He'd had a few drinks-" Daryl chuckled humorlessly, interrupting her. He remembered what it meant when his da' had a few drinks.
She looked down again, wiping her cheeks on her sleeve. "Anyway, when he came at me, Beth stepped into the middle of it. You know her," she said, laughing a little. "Out to save the world, one damaged soul at a time."
He caught the double-meaning of her words as she looked back up to his face. He wondered how well Carol and Beth really knew each other. What had the blonde told this woman about him? As though seeing the curiosity warring with his attempt at seeming uninterested, Carol smiled a little at him and said, "She thinks the world of you, you know."
"Not after Thursday nigh'," he said quietly, thinking back on all of the horrible things he'd screamed at her. Before that night, she'd seemed to have some kind of skewed idea that he was a decent person; that he was normal, and had been raised like everyone else. But he wasn't, and the only thing he could do for her was drag her down into the depths with him. Beth deserved better than that. She deserved better than him.
"I wouldn't be so sure," Carol said, echoing his quiet tone of voice. He felt like they were telling secrets in the bowels of a library instead of standing in the middle of the tampon aisle at the super market.
He wanted her to elaborate and quit being so damned cryptic, but he wasn't sure how to ask without seeming too eager. So, he said nothing.
"You hurt her," she said quietly, "probably worse than getting hit in the face, if I'm being honest. Her expression was crushed when she came back into the bar that night."
Daryl remembered how stoic she'd been when she had reached out and squeezed his wrist, probably knowing he wouldn't have accepted something as intimate as a hug from her. You're gonna miss me so bad when I'm gone, Daryl Dixon, she had promised. And he had. He had regretted that night ever since, but only because he knew she was the best thing that'd ever happened to him. Living with the regret of not being a better person for her was better than living with the regret of ruining her, though, and he felt the pain was justified.
He just hadn't considered that doing what he did would really make her feel bad. She liked teasing him and smiling at him and making him squirm, but he'd always figured it was just the fun of doing it that she enjoyed, not necessarily him or his company. She had her pick of much better men than a Dixon, so the idea that he was hurting her so much with his actions had never really crossed his mind.
Daryl realized as he looked back at Carol that he'd gotten lost in his thoughts. She just stood there, staring at him with a knowing look on her face. "Any other girl would probably work on moving on, but Beth is different. She's forgiving and kind, and she can see a goodness in you that most people can't. She's defended you when other people told her you weren't worth her attention, and despite everything, I've never heard her say one bad thing about you."
Daryl raked his hand through his hair, feeling anxious and sick to his stomach. He'd done what he thought was right; he'd chosen to live with those consequences. Hurting Beth in the process hadn't been part of the plan, though. And now he had this stranger telling him things about Beth that he felt like he should've known about her all along. Of course she was forgiving and kind; of course she wouldn't just let him slip through her fingers and leave him to fall off of the face of her world. She was a better person than that, and not for the first time, he feared her goodness would be both of their undoing.
"She has forgiven Ed, too, you know," Carol said so softly that he almost couldn't hear her. "I love him, he's my husband. Despite everything he's done, I still love him. I don't want to see him get hurt. What he did to Beth wasn't right, but she's forgiven him for what he did to her, and we're trying to move on from it. Please," she said, tears beginning to form in her eyes again as she stared at Daryl, determined. "Please don't go after him. Just let it go."
He said nothing, willing himself not to give in to what he knew was the truth. Beth probably had forgiven the asshole, but it didn't mean Daryl had to. He needed to break his knuckles on Ed Peletier's fat, drunk skull. The coward didn't deserve forgiveness, or an ounce of Beth's kindness. But then, neither did Daryl, and yet, she'd given it to him on many occasions. He suddenly felt as though, even if he wasn't a good man, it's what Beth deserved right now. He could at least pretend to be one, just this once.
Taking his silence as permission to finally leave, Carol turned away from Daryl.
"Wait," he said, sharper than he'd intended.
Carol turned back to look at him, waiting; a few tears leaking out onto her cheeks.
He clenched his jaw shut, as though he could physically force his next sentence from coming out. "I won't touch 'im," Daryl said stiffly, hating himself as the words rolled off of his tongue. "If Beth… if she wants ta give 'im another chance; if she wants ta forgive 'im an' forget it happened… Then, jus' this once, I won't go after 'im."
At his words, Carol's eyes widened slightly, she looked shocked at his concession. Then, she smiled at him, a genuine smile, and thanked him profusely.
"If I find out he so much as looks at 'er funny from now on, though," Daryl warned, his face hardening, "he'll wish he'd ne'er been born in this shithole. Am I clear?"
"Yes," she said. "Thank you, Daryl."
He grunted at her, feeling like the biggest prick in the world for not going after Ed. For Beth, he reminded himself. It's what she'd want.
As he reached down and picked his grocery basket back up, Carol said quietly, "She was right about you. You're one of the best."
He wasn't; he was far from it. But for Beth, he could try.