They got ready to go on a big run. Glenn had made that evident when he and Maggie were arguing all through the prison about her going. She was pregnant and that deemed her unable to go if you asked Glenn. But Maggie was stubborn. Rick ultimately sided with Glenn, and so did everyone else. Maggie should stay here, within the prison fences until the baby came. Daryl could already tell that Rick was going to put that as the utmost importance, the memory of Lori forcing itself onto him. Rick wasn't going to let her go on any more runs no matter what, not while her unborn child's life was at risk.
He had made up his mind. And that was the end of that story.
After a long and emotional speech to her on Rick's part, Maggie caved. She would stay there and help Beth with fence duty. Glenn wasn't too happy about that either but it was better than her being outside the prison. He took what he could get. A wise decision on his part.
For the particular run they were going on today, Daryl had found this huge store that was filled with items days ago. The problem was that there had been walkers galore that were fenced in around the area. That was nothing that a boombox couldn't handle. Hopefully by this point all the walkers tore through that weak fence that held them in and went for the noise that had been strategically placed miles away.
So instead of Maggie going with them, she was substituted with Zach. Daryl, Sasha, Bob, Glenn, Michonne, and Tyreese were all waiting and waiting and waiting on Zach to get his ass outside so they could go. Everyone got impatient. Michonne stared down the door with her arms crossed over her chest and this blank expression on her face like it was her job. Daryl started to consider leaving without him if he didn't get his ass moving and get outside within the next minute. A cranky Michonne is not a fun one to be around.
Finally, Zach opened up the prison door and ran over to them. It was about damn time.
"So good of you to bless us with your timely presence, Zach." Michonne said, keeping her tone sharp, not moving from her stance.
"Sorry. I wanted to say goodbye to some people first. I didn't think it would take so long." They all went silent. Zach scratched his head and added, "You know, just in case."
Yeah, he did know. They all did. They knew there was always going to be a chance of them not coming back, not getting to say goodbye to the people who they cared about. How nice of him to remind them all.
"Look at you all dressed up to go on a run," Sasha acknowledged Zach's clean looking clothes. "Looking like a stud."
Zach put his hands up. "If only I had a dime for every time I heard that."
Lizzie passed between them with a few towels in her hands. "You'd have a total of ten cents," she smirked.
"Oh!" Sasha cooed, her jaw dropping. "Nice one."
They all bursted into a fit of laughter.
Lizzie, who probably weighed no more than eighty pounds and was just under five feet tall, could put someone to shame where they stood with only a few words. She looked innocent enough, but her smart and sarcastic remarks could chew right through someone.
It's funny, really. How someone so small could be so quick with her words.
"Very funny, Lizzie!" He called after her. Lizzie turned around and stuck out her tongue before she ran back inside. "Do you see that? That's what I get for being in the cell right next to her. The girl is a little devil, I tell you."
"Lizzie? No," Sasha denied. "She's an angel when she wants to be."
"We're wasting away the day here. Let's get going." When Michonne said something, people listened. There was no other option. "We've got a long drive."
They all head for the two cars that they were taking out for the run without furthering the conversation.
"Hey, Daryl!" Zach strode up next to him. "I have my guess for today."
Daryl smirked at him. Zach never let up about asking Daryl what he did before the outbreak. He had made into some sort of game—one guess per day and Daryl would answer honestly if he guessed correctly (only Zach would never would be correct so Daryl doesn't lose sleep over it).
And truth be told, Daryl didn't mind it that much. The guy had some sort of imagination. He didn't know how Zach came up with half the guesses that he did. But then again, he was taking a shot in the dark.
"Alright, go ahead."
Daryl waited as Zach narrowed his eyes on Daryl. "Okay, so I was thinking about this last night when I was going over all the other possibilities that I ruled out before. And I think I have a really good guess this time."
Daryl motioned for him to continue.
"Private Detective."
Daryl snorted. "Nope."
"Damn it!" Zach loudly cursed. "One day I'm going to get it."
Daryl rolled his eyes and pulled open the car door. "We'll see about that."
—
The ominous clouds should have been an indication of how the day was going to go.
Zach was dead.
Dead.
Gone forever.
Zach's death ate away at Daryl. A lot of internal distress came about after he watched Zach have his neck bitten into by a walker and then a roof collapse over top. He hadn't deserved to die, at least not in that brutal way. No one could have saved him, he knew that. But that didn't stop the guilt from working its way into him.
He had liked Zach, he really did. After Beth had told Daryl that she sent him packing, he found that he rather enjoyed Zach being around with his witty humor.
Daryl had been withdrawn the entire ride back to the prison. He was in the backseat of the car while Michonne drove and Sasha sat in the front passenger seat. No one spoke a word. No sound came out from any of them. All he could hear was the purr of the engine as they sped home with a car full of items that took from the store.
Daryl had stared out the window the entire time, replaying how Zach died in his head. The vision of a walker coming out from behind a stack of boxes and grabbing Zach by the throat was plaguing his mind. So much blood had come out of the kid, more than Daryl thought possible.
The look on Zach's face.
The realization that the roof was about to go.
The feeling of despair when there was nothing they could do.
They couldn't even bring his body back to bury him. That was another hit to the gut.
They had been doing so well lately and no one had lost their life until now. Now the cycle would repeat. They make silly mistakes, let their guard down the littlest bit and people die.
Daryl felt like a failure at this point.
—
As they pulled up to the prison, Daryl almost wanted to turn around go somewhere else. They were coming back with one less person.
Daryl ejected himself from the car once it had pulled to a stop. He wasn't going to be like Sasha and Michonne, who had remained in the front seats with blank expressions on their faces. He needed to get out.
Rick knew something was off when Daryl found him. Daryl told him about the death and Rick acknowledged it by giving Daryl a brief nod.
"The others?" he asked.
"Outside."
Daryl went straight to his cell after that. He needed to be alone. Away from the rest of the group, especially the members who had also watched as Zach's life come to an end. A painful end. Yes, it had been quick and in all actuality that is all anyone can ask for now—a quick ending. But it was still haunting to him, to think about the look of agony on Zach's face.
He stayed in his cell for a long time. Long enough for the day to turn into dusk. He kept thinking about how things had gone so well recently and all that had come to a tragic halt today.
They should have been more careful.
They should have checked for walkers twice.
He should have kept an eye on everyone.
Daryl laid on top of the covers of his bed. He had one arm extended above his head so that the back of his hand was rested on his pillow, his thumb placed on the top of his head. The leg that was closest to the side wall was bent up at the knee as the other one was straight out next to it. He was that way for a while, staring at the top bunk, not moving his stare anywhere else.
He closed his eyes at one point, putting his arm over his eyes to block out any remaining light that was coming through the windows. If only it could be that simple to block out the memories.
"Daryl?"
Daryl took his arm off of his face to see Beth holding onto the bars of the front of his cell. He adjusted his head so that it was more turned to her, his hand moving so that it was placed on his ribcage.
"I heard about what happened. Michonne told me. Are you okay?"
Daryl opted to stay silent. No words came to mind that he could say. He didn't know where to start, didn't know how to say that he felt like shit. Daryl had been in charge of the run and Zach had died on his watch. Yet another one of their own.
The cycle, he reminded himself. The cycle never stops.
That's the whole point. It's never-ending death trap, this world is. It liked to play this game where people could start to get comfortable with the way that things were, comfortable with the surrounding people, and then it yanked the rug out from under them and laughed as the scrambled to pick up the pieces. Laughed as the world left people distraught and overcome with grief.
"I'll take that as a no," Beth concluded, walking over to his bed.
She sat down on the edge of the middle of the bed. "There's nothing you could have done differently. It's not your fault that he's gone, Daryl. It's not your fault."
"Keep tryin' to tell myself that," he remarked.
"And you don't believe it?"
"We all should have been more alert. I should have been watchin' his back."
"Daryl," Beth breathed. "Don't do this to yourself."
"You know how he kept asking me…'bout what I did before the outbreak?"
Beth nodded her head, turning her body to him. She rested one hand onto the bed and cocked her head to the side. He wondered if she knew he was about to make a confession.
"Every day he'd ask. Come up with something. He was so damn determined to get the answer. I hated it at first but then it got interesting." Daryl sighed and leaned his head back onto his pillow so that he stared back up at the top bunk, his hand finding its way underneath his head. He couldn't look someone in the eyes and say what he was about to. "I wasn't anyone. I was driftin' around with Merle. Did everything that he told me to. Fucking stupid of me, I know. I was nobody. Nobody important."
Beth reached out towards his ribcage and took Daryl's hand in hers, enclosing his hand into her grasp. "You're someone now," she told him. "That's what matters."
She was so understanding that Daryl is caught off guard. He thought that he would have seen some form of disappointment in her eyes when he captured her glance but there was none. Not a trace.
Beth glimpsed down at how her hand has holding onto his. Her palm was resting over top of the back of his hand, over his knuckles, her fingertips grazing the inside of his palm. He retracted his fingers backwards against his shirt and put them over top of her own, his fingers feeling the smoothness of her nails.
"Whoever you were before isn't the person you are today." Beth smiled down at him, eyes gentle and a warm face. "You are so important to everyone here, Daryl Dixon. You need to remember that."
Daryl didn't know what to say. Beth always had a way of making him feel better. She made him feel like he mattered. That was something that he never had before. Not something he expected now, either.
"Move over."
He did what she told him without thinking about it first, moving over so that Beth could bring her legs up onto the bed. She laid down on her side, resting her head on Daryl's chest. No woman has ever done that with him; he had never allowed it to happen.
But, again, Beth was different.
This felt different.
Her hand stayed enclosed around his. He didn't move his hand away; not a single part of his being wanted him to remove it. He was captivated by how soft her hands were in his rough and calloused ones.
"Don't blame yourself for what happened," Beth whispered, repeating her earlier statement. "No one can afford to beat themselves up about things they have no control over. I don't want you to do that to yourself, Daryl."
Beth let herself settle in. She moved in the little way to get comfortable, her head nestling in on his shoulder. He resisted the urge to stroke her soft hair with his other free hand. She looked peaceful like this, with him.
To anyone else, it would seem like this was a regular thing for them. It felt so natural to be like this with Beth.
He should have felt weird about this, having her so close. It was almost like he tried to force the uncomfortable feeling and awkwardness onto himself.
It never came.
That's when he knew. Daryl knew that his feelings towards this girl had gone deeper than he initially thought.
A/N: Don't even ask me how I got this chapter out so fast. I got such lovely comments on that the last chapter that it got me inspired. I should really be studying for my final week of class but I couldn't resist writing!
Also, this is getting redundant but I have to express to you all how much I appreciate you sticking with the story and giving me feedback! I've gotten a lot more people who are following the story lately and I am so thrilled about that. You all are some of the best readers a girl could have :)