A/N: Part 2! Finally! Sorry about the very long wait but here it is! I have around 5-6 more AUs lined up, waiting to be finished/published so please review and leave me comments so I can see what you're thinking of these universes so far. I've been planning all of these stories for ages now, and if it seems like I'm slow at updating, it's only because I'm easily distracted (usually by you people on tumblr lol so you only have yourselves to blame, really) and quite picky about what I publish. Again, please review and tell me what you thought of this! x.
It wasn't nearly late enough for the sun to have set. If he had to guess, it couldn't have been later than five; but the thick fog and light but insistent rain had darkened the afternoon and Daryl could just barely make out the outline of Hershel Greene's plantation house. He'd lived there for over a year and it was still the Greene's house. Not his. No matter what the papers said. His house was just south of the grand, white house he was currently walking towards, at the end of the Greene's land; a tiny dark shack with a leaky roof and an old raccoon holed up underneath the porch. Sometimes he'd spend the night there, always feeling just slightly out of place in the big house.
He'd spent a majority of his life roaming Hershel Greene's lands, working on his farm for a living since he and Merle didn't have the labor or resources to actually work the lands they owned. He rarely ventured inside the house; it wasn't his place to be inside, wandering the same halls and rooms the Greenes did. Now that he was to call it "home", everything felt so much more breakable, so much more delicate beneath his hands with the knowledge that everything Hershel Greene had worked his entire life for was now at his disposal.
His youngest daughter included.
He gripped the strap of his crossbow a little tighter at the thought of her. His wife. Never in his miserable existence did Daryl Dixon ever imagine a wife would be something he'd have. And if in his wildest dreams he'd imagined it, the last person he would have put in that place would be Beth Greene.
He'd been drifting around with Merle for years before he went back to Georgia. The only memory he had of Beth was one of a young girl, no older than fourteen and not likely someone Daryl paid too much attention to. Years later though, when his father died and he went back home, that young girl that went by him unnoticed was all he could think on during the years before the war. Bright blue eyes, flushed cheeks and blonde curls moving across her face with the wind that day he'd seen her again for the first time.
He'd been building Hershel a barn when a soft voice spoke to him. He vaguely remembers her saying something like "awfully hot out here. You must be thirsty", but he couldn't know for sure. He'd looked up at her and even back then, before the war and before she settled in next to him every night when he'd taken a bullet to his side, he'd felt his breath catch at the mere sight of her.
He should've known he was a gonner back then. Shoulda known it wouldn't just go away because hell, it'd happened just that morning. When she'd walked into the study with sleepy eyes and her night gown falling off her shoulder and his hands had itched to be on her. He'd been holding himself back for months and little by little his resolve was slipping; to where he contented himself by grabbing her arms and planting a kiss on her forehead before running out. Daryl had felt like his heart might give out. Probably from the knowledge that she was so beautiful and, technically, his.
But she wasn't. Not really.
He dropped his crossbow in the shed behind the house with a little more force than necessary and then made his way towards the house with heavy footsteps as feelings that he could only describe as guilt and just a little bit of anger built up in him again. Guilt at knowing that there was a girl beyond the walls of that house that he'd forced into a life with him. Anger, at himself no doubt, that he'd so easily played into his selfishness and jumped at the opportunity to have her in his life. She was all light to him. She'd given him back his life both figuratively and literally when she'd nursed him back to health after the war. And ever so slowly, as the months passed and she bared his name and they lived under the same roof, he could see the light in her fading. He could see the results of his selfishness and how he'd taken a good thing and clutched to it too hard.
He was ruining her, like his daddy had told him he did to things, and he was surprised she was there at all every night when he came back. He was surprised she was still around after months of them hardly speaking. At the very least, he thought bitterly, he'd refrained from touching her. If he did everything else in their relationship wrong, he wanted to know that he never had and never would force himself on her. He'd already married her when she didn't want to. He would never touch her that way if she didn't want him to. And he already knew that she never would. He might not be the best man, but he could give her that.
He might have slammed the door a little too hard as he walked into the house, consumed by his thoughts.
"Oh!" the maid squeaked with a jump just as she ascended the stairs, "Mr. Dixon. We didn't expect you back so soon."
Daryl grunted and half nodded but his attention was drawn to the suitcase the maid clutched in her hand.
"Where ya takin' that?"
The young girl hesitated and looked up toward the stairs, giving herself away immediately but Daryl wanted to hear it, wanted the confirmation of what he was already thinking.
"You best answer me, Girl."
"Mrs. Dixon told me to bring it up. Didn't say for what." She bit her lip and waited, ready to flinch at her master's oncoming anger, but Daryl only stepped forward and snatched the case from her hands, stomping up the stairs and taking them two at a time.
He didn't bother knocking, for the first time since he'd been living in the Greene's home he simply threw the door to "their" bedroom open and stepped inside to find Beth standing at the open wardrobe, staring in contemplation.
"You goin' somewhere?"
She flinched at his voice and turned abruptly, flinching again when he threw the empty suitcase on the bed and she stared at him with wide, almost fearful, eyes.
"You're back."
"Ain't what I asked." There was a part of him, a pretty big part actually, that was telling him to keep his head, to watch his temper. He'd played this scenario in his mind a hundred times. Some times he'd imagine she'd walk up to him and tell him she was leaving; she was tired of being tied down to him and the miserable life he'd subjected her to. Other times he imagined he'd come home one day to an empty house and, if he was lucky, a letter.
Every time he imagined, he thought that he'd quietly accept it. Because he deserved it, and she deserved better. He didn't know what to do with any good, nice thing thrust into his hands; apart from breaking it. Standing in that room he never slept in, with an open suitcase just a few feet away, there was selfishness. A part of him that didn't want to let go of this girl he didn't deserve. That selfishness and panic rose up into anger pretty quickly. Anger, he figured, was an emotion he was familiar and far more comfortable with than whatever name the feeling that was making his heart pound and chest ache had.
"It's ok, you know." Her quiet mumble focused his eyes back on her, as she looked down towards the floor.
"What is?"
She hesitated for a moment, but eventually took a few steps forward and even like this, when he felt he must have looked frightening to her, he took a step back.
"If there's someone else. I understand that this," she waved her hand between them and finally met his yes. "probably ain't what you wanted. To get stuck with me. I can go."
Daryl felt his breathing creep down in the moments he took to simply look at her; to let what she'd just said sink in and he was surprised at how even his voice was when he spoke again.
"The hell are you talking about?"
Beth bit her lip, "Patricia said that it happens a lot. Mistresses and all that."
"'S that what Patricia said?" He squinted at her and began pacing, wondering how the hell this had all changed so much, so quickly. Just minutes ago he was sure Beth was done with him and now he was entertaining a blame for something he'd never even done. He knew Patricia had raised Beth from the moment her momma died, but Daryl wouldn't hesitate to put her out on her ass if she was putting ideas into her head.
"You can say it, Daryl," Beth insisted as she watched him pace around the room. "I've made my peace with it. Shane Walsh is seeing someone too and-"
He snapped then, brought his hand from his mouth where he'd been chewing on his nail and took two long strides towards her.
"I don't give a damn what Shane Walsh is doing!"
She flinched but Daryl could still see the resolve in her eyes. She didn't get it. And her lack of faith in him angered him; not that he'd ever done much to earn her trust, he also didn't think he'd done anything to earn this.
"Is that what you think of me? Huh?" He was just shy of yelling but leaned down to speak inches from her face; the closest he'd ever been to her, he realized.
"I ain't seeing no one," he spat. There was a beat and the relief on Beth's face was obvious, even to him, but by then he was too fired up to let it go. "If that's what you think of me, you might as well just go then."
She started to stutter something out, an apology maybe, and she made a reach for his arm but he snapped it away from her, turning his back and falling onto the edge edge of the bed, head in his hands.
They were both silent for several minutes, Beth completely still where she stood in the center of the room.
"I was doin' it for you," she spoke quietly when she finally said something again. "You ain't happy here. I know."
"You don't know nothin'" he mumbled, but with no real bite behind his words.
"I know you don't want to be here. Can't even stand lookin' at me so you're never even here. I thought, after a while, it'd be alright. We could make things work. But you...you don't want this and I don't blame you 'cause I know you only married me because you gave my daddy your word. But you didn't have to. Not if you were gonna be miserable with me."
She began to move and Daryl stiffened, thinking it might be towards him but she only walked over to the large window on the wall opposite him, staring out into the darkness and talking to the fields below them.
"To be honest, I might not be able to do it much longer either. I know it ain't your fault that you don't want this. But...I don't think I can eat at an empty table again."
There was another long silence as he tried to turn words over in his head; tried to give voice to his thoughts and he realized why he'd been avoiding Beth for 8 months. Being forced to tell her the truth; to tell her anything that might scare her away gave him too much to lose. His mind wandered to the suitcase sitting behind him on the bed and with a deep breath, he figured he was close to losing her anyway.
"I ain't got the...the words to say shit like this," he said quietly.
"Why don't you try?" She urged.
He watched her at the window, her head lift and her shoulders square but she still didn't turn to look at him and when she spoke, she only tilted her head just so. It was better, he thought, to not have to say what he needed to say while looking straight at her.
"There's no one else Beth. Never has been. Just hearing you say that; that you'd think that of me. I ain't like that, you know. I'd never do that to you." The words were tumbling out ahead of his brain, much easier to let them go when he didn't have to say it to her sweet face and blue eyes. "I told you: I don't got the words to say it. 'Probably say it all wrong anyway but there won't ever be no one else. Not for me. Not since that day when I was building the barn for your daddy and you brought me sweet tea or water or something -don't even remember what it was you gave me, I just took it. If you still wanna leave you can," he said quietly "but all this: it ain't your fault. None of it. It's on me."
"All those things you said; about me not having a choice. I did. Could'a just gone back on it when Merle and your daddy died. But I didn't."
"Why didn't you?"
He let out one bitter laugh as he looked down at his hands.
"'Cause I'm a selfish bastard. 'Cause the idea of being here, with you...how could I not want that?"
There was a pause as she considered this and then a sigh.
"You don't act like you do."
"That's only 'cause the moment we walked out of that church I noticed how wrong it all was. How I made you do it. Me, Otis, your daddy, Merle. You ain't never got a choice in it. I couldn't look at you knowin' I did that, couldn't pretend shit was fine when it wasn't. When you didn't wanna sit aroun' and play house just for my own sake."
She turned to face him then with an earnest look on her face. They were both so much calmer now; nothing like the fury he'd felt moments ago, and the pained look in her eyes.
"Daryl Dixon, when I said I'd marry you I didn't do it for my daddy, or the farm or anything else. I did it because I wanted to. Because I thought we'd have a good life together. I hoped, anyway."
"Yeah," he snorted, "and I just went and messed it all up, huh?"
She gave him a sad smile and began walking towards him, stopping when she was directly in front of him and it was his knees that prevented her from going further.
"We can fix it, right? If you want to..."
He could sense the storm had passed when he looked up at her, when a small hopeful smile graced her face and he allowed himself to really believe that maybe they could.
"You think I wouldn't want to? Beth, you're..." he let the thought drift off as he failed to find the right word to describe what exactly she meant to him.
"Your wife," she finished for him. When he looked up at her, she smiled.
"Yeah," he agreed but after a few seconds she reconsidered.
"You know, I suppose I'm not properly your wife, yet." She let the sentence linger until Daryl understood and he blushed furiously.
"It's alright," she assured him. "We got time, right?" He nodded at her, too embarrassed to form any words. She placed her hands on his shoulders when the silence dragged on and he didn't dare break her gaze when her hands moved down his arms.
"Besides," she declared, leaning down to be leveled with his face, "we could always start with just this,"
Daryl had thought about this moment often, about what her lips might feel like against his. He thought about it more than he really thought he had a right to, if he were being honest with himself. Nothing he imagined when he was bedridden and she sat near him in the candlelight as she read, the flames caressing her face just so to let him think of a world were he would reach over and let his lips trace the shadows the flames created, came close to the feeling of actually having her there, his lips on hers and his hands in her hair. When that had happened, he didn't seem to remember but at some point his hands had found a home tangled in her blonde waves and he was pulling her closer, letting her step between his legs to close the distance.
She'd just made the sweetest sound against his mouth, and he swore he only pulled away to try and find a better way to this; one where they were closer, preferably, when the door was unceremoniously pulled open.
"Oh! Mr- I didn't realize-" Patricia stood in the doorway looking dumbfounded, staring at the girl she'd cared for since she was a toddler standing between Daryl Dixon's legs, their faces inches from each other and her skin flushed. "Dinner's ready," she merely said after having decided that she was staring for far too long and quickly left the room. It seemed Patricia had been wrong about her employer after all and that night, for the first time in a very long time, Beth Greene didn't have dinner alone.