Author's Note: *Drops chapter* *Quickly runs before someone sees me and decides to murder me for taking so long to update*
A special thanks to Kitcat1307, whose review encouraged me to post this piece sooner rather than later. Thank you!
Disclaimer: Hey, you there! Nothing in here is mine.
Beth tried her damn hardest to not notice.
She would focus on the task at hand — which was to grab any food worth taking with them from the already ravaged shelves in front of her — ignoring all distractions in front of her. Under no condition, would she allow her persistent eyes to wander towards the bare chest in front of her. So, Merle wasn't wearing a shirt, Beth could deal with that. It was not a big deal.
He had been wearing one when they had decided to walk closer to the road, in an attempt to find either a functioning car or somewhere to get food — preferably both. 'Cause although Daryl made sure no one went without something to eat, they could all agree that it would be nice to eat anything that hadn't been alive minutes before or had proper seasoning on it. However, before they could find either, the uncomfortable but familiar noise of the walking dead interrupted their otherwise silent walk.
Beth would've been happy letting Daryl get rid of them at a safe distance. There was only three; he could have handled it. Merle, however, saw it as an opportunity for Beth to test her limits —, which both terrified and excited her. Perhaps it was a sign that Merle was finally ready to begin to regain a little bit of his routine from before, even if it was just by ordering Beth to kill zombies.
Beth's skill was at the exact level one could expect from a girl who had killed a single walker in her entire life — which was terrible, to sum it up. The walkers were slow, which did work to her advantage, but the smell of blood made them quite eager to get closer to Beth. The knife in her hand felt much lighter and useless than before, and she couldn't help but wonder for a second if it would even penetrate their decomposing skin or simply crack at the slightest pressure. It was ridiculous to think so, she knew. The problem was not the knife — it was her.
Before, Beth had fear and anger going for her, which made the adrenaline pump through her body giving her the courage needed to kill. Now, though, she was required to kill in cold blood, in a proficient manner — as a test. She could feel the intense gaze of the brothers burning on her back, carefully watching her clumsy moves. They would step in the second Beth faltered — and that was a comforting knowledge.
Beth was almost convinced she wouldn't be able to move at all and that she would end up playing the damsel in distress once more when the walkers finally came close enough to be a risk to her continuous living condition and Beth felt the unmistakable drive to carry on breathing hit her hard. Perhaps the threat wasn't quite so real as she made it up to be in her mind — after all, she did see Daryl with the crossbow in his hands already — but it felt that way to her, nevertheless. Her heart was beating fast, her palm was sweaty around the handle of her knife, sweat was pooling in her forehead. She would do what needed to be done.
Breathing fast, Beth raised her hand and...
She snapped. One second she was fending off the walkers, and in the next, the voices were screaming inside her head. She could hear Merle broken shouts as some guy made loud threats at him, she could hear herself screaming in desperation as Daryl's body crumbled to the ground, but most of all, she could hear Jonathan. Him telling her how generous he was, how pretty she was, how Daryl was dead, how much he could hurt her... they never stopped but kept getting louder and louder, overwhelmingly fast.
Look at this pretty face.
Shut up. Shut up.
Shut up, bitch.
She was not there; she was not there.
Don't think you can fucking ignore me.
Despite all efforts, Beth couldn't convince herself. There were hands — disgusting hands touching her, and she wanted it to stop. Needed it to stop.
I bet you could do something so much better with those lips.
Scream for me.
She had a knife, Beth suddenly remembered.
Good.
She pushed the body away, launching forward to stab where she could. She would not be held prisoner again. Never again.
They kept getting closer, but she kept fighting back.
Get away. Get the fuck away.
It was bad because it wasn't a terrible nightmare; it was horrible because she could faintly see the walkers laying on the ground as she stabbed a body over and over again; it was terrible because she didn't want to stop; and it was definitely mind-numbing because in the front and center of her mind was Jonathan's face, bright and clear. His shaggy dark hair, his mocking black eyes, his stubble which never seemed to grow, his crooked nose, his overgrown eyebrows, his hideous scar on his bottom lips, that constantly pulled his mouth sideways in a way which made it look like he was always upset.
Beth wished his image wasn't so vivid — like a mark that had been branded on her insides.
Why would he not leave her alone?
"I think it's dead now, kid," Merle's voice once again cut through the dark cycle of thoughts running inside her mind. It still took her a minute to realize he meant the walker beneath her, though.
"This one is," she said, noticing how coarse her voice was. Had she been screaming?
Beth looked down at her hands and realized she was filthy. She managed to get covered in blood and guts — her hand still resting on the open abdomen of one of the walkers she butchered. Its insides were completely exposed — bones and organs spilled all around her, like a sick CSI murder scene. Her knife, still held tight in her hand, was dripping a disgusting marron blood down.
Beth had made a mess of killing three damn walkers. Apparently, she had no middle term; it was either a terrified stillness — where she couldn't even get close to the walkers without trembling like a child — or an out-of-control killer, who threw her body into the fight with no regards to her own safety.
"Snap out of it," Daryl ordered, looking around. "We need to leave. Now."
"Yeah, kiddo," Merle agreed, shrugging out of his jacket and taking off his shirt. "Our presence is not a secret to no one after that."
His tone suggested that he was unconcerned by the possibility of unwanted attention, even though Beth knew that couldn't be the case, not with him. And when he waved his shirt in front of her face, clearly offering her something to cover the scraps of fabric that had once been her own shirt, it was also done with what could only be a carefully constructed easiness. Merle was not that chill, had never been careless about safety.
"Shit," she cursed under her breath, using all her remaining energy to push her knees and get up from her position on the ground. It was time to go; she would have to compartmentalize the feelings for now.
If she chose to ignore the voice whispering in her mind that it had been her shitty job at compartmentalizing that led her to snap when faced with a dangerous situation in the first place, well, nobody needed to know it. She would deal with it, somehow. If Daryl and Merle could do it, so could Beth.
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It was strange, Beth decided. Talkative and friendly were hardly words she would ever use to describe a Dixon. If asked, Beth would probably go with taciturn, secretive, or deadly. However, in the past days Daryl had, for lack of better terms, acted as her shadow — wherever she went, there he was. And it wasn't like Beth had been used to huge levels of privacy before, of course not, but even for two people walking together through the end of times Daryl was excessive in his hovering. Perhaps it was his way of saying he didn't trust her to be by herself without causing trouble or getting killed — and in that case, fuck him — but to Beth, it looked like he was trying to...connect.
She hadn't thought much of it when he started to follow way closer behind her than before, or when he began to try to force her to sleep at night despite her long rants in protest. However, when he approached her to teach self-defense moves, Beth nearly pinched herself. Not that she refused, gods no, but it was surprising. She had been itching for something to do with her time, other than the self-blaming Beth had gotten so used to by then. She knew better than to approach Merle with it, though. If he thought she deserved to learn how to defend herself after all the shit that went down, then he would've offered a long time ago. No, Beth understood that she had fucked up her chance, and had tried to take it like the woman she was trying to be.
Daryl creeped-up on her that day, when she was attempting to wash off the heavy grime from her body in a far too cold river and sat on a rock until she finally noticed him there. She didn't know how long he sat there, watching her like a pervert, but when she did notice him, Beth almost died from surprise alone.
"Oh my gosh," She said, jumping back and nearly drowning in the process. "What are you doing here? I'm naked!"
Beth didn't know why she had felt the need to point out the obvious, but she did.
Daryl barely raised an eyebrow at her spectacle.
"If I had been someone else, you'd be dead eleven times before you finally noticed I was even here," He pointed out, like the annoying prick Beth was discovering him to be.
"Yeah, well," She shrugged, trying to remain underwater even while moving her upper body. She didn't know how much he saw, but she surely wasn't going to offer more voluntary.
"Is that what you have to say? You don't care?" He asked, his reproof as clear as the water surrounding her.
"What would you have me doing? I'm not turning into the queen of the apocalypse overnight," Beth pointed out, trying to imagine she didn't sound as bitter as she thought she did. "Not everyone can be a Dixon."
Not that she wanted to be one. No, Beth was glad to be a Greene. Happy, happy.
"You could at least try," Daryl stated, as if he was a damn genius for that ridiculous point. "And quit standing there like an idiot. If you're done, get out of the water."
"I'm not leaving while you're standing there!"
"You couldn't muster an ounce of concern for your life but will fight me over nakedness?"
"I-well-I..." Beth stuttered in surprise, unable to come up with a good enough excuse to protect her body from Daryl.
Her Christian uprising played an enormous part in her shyness, even if she denied almost all of the teachings from her father recently — it all seemed irrelevant in face of all that she had seen and lived. Yet, somehow, she could nearly hear the words being whispered into her ears: a woman's body is for her husband's eyes only. Daryl wasn't her husband — he would never want to be.
Beth's inability to communicate like a normal human being seemed to frustrate Daryl, 'cause he frowned deeper at her.
"Get out of the water," he proclaimed, before picking his crossbow up from where it rested beside him and jumping from the rock he had been sitting on to walk away.
For some reason, the noises he made reminded Beth that she was by herself, naked, in the middle of the woods, taking a bath. She didn't even have her knife in her hands. What if someone was lurking around waiting for Daryl to leave so they could assault her?
"Wait!" She cried out, unconsciously stepping closer to the land.
It didn't register that the possibility of someone being out to get her was highly unlikely or that her movement exposed her entire upper body all the way to her stomach. All she could think about was the prospect of having to fend for herself while weaponless in those woods.
"What?" He asked, turning around to face her once more and instantly going over her exposed body with his eyes. It didn't surprise her — Daryl's eyes missed very little.
If he found her request ridiculous and pathetic — which was safe to assume he did — Daryl never showed it. Instead, he just nodded in agreement, like Beth had asked for a completely rational thing, and sat back down where he had been seconds before, making a show of taking the crossbow off his back and holding it in front of his body with both hands, dangling it on his knees.
And, just like that, Beth could breathe easily once more. Daryl was there; he would take care of everything.