Chapter 9: the fever now consumes us both

What the fuck have you done.

It's a soft voice. Hardly there at all. He brushes it away like a mosquito. It doesn't matter. Somewhere between the day he brought her here and this moment, the world outside this place - that valley and this house on this mountaintop - went away, and all he has is this, and up here none of the old rules apply. Up here, in this secret garden, magic is real and it's not the kind of magic kids hear stories about. It's old magic. Bad magic. Magic with teeth.

She believes they're both dead. Maybe they are. How sure is he that they aren't? How clearly does he really remember that other world out there? How long has he felt like he didn't belong there?

What the fuck have you DONE.

Watching her clean herself up in front of the kitchen sink, ruining yet another towel. She was very good, very proper; she disposed of what was left of the carcasses - threw them over the deck railing - and she made the floor spotless, wiped up everything. Now she's carefully cleaning her arms, face, letting water flow a little way under her fingernails. Picking at them.

He hasn't moved. He can't take his eyes off her.

She got what she wanted. Now it's his turn.

"Who's Gorman?"

He's not surprised to hear that his voice is completely flat. He still doesn't feel anything.

She freezes, her hands still beneath the tap. Absolutely stops dead. He wouldn't have believed it was possible for someone to go so completely still. He can see every muscle in her gone rigid, and only - almost imperceptible - her throat working.

And he knows he's made a mistake. And he doesn't care. Because all of this is a mistake.

She shakes herself very slightly and goes back to rinsing, turning her hands over and over under the streaming water. "He was one of the officers."

"Why're you dreamin' about him?"

"Because," she says serenely, "he tried to rape me."

Oh.

This should enrage him. He's certain it should. This should send his blood crackling into ice and seething into boiling lava. The cold red fog that swallowed him when he killed Dawn - that fog should be returning now. He should want to roar back down this mountain and all the way back to Atlanta, never mind the shit that went down there, never mind all the running they had to do; he should want to charge back into that fucking place and murder everyone he sees without a single iota of inclination to discriminate. Equal opportunity slaughter.

He doesn't feel anything.

"He ain't here," he says softly. It seems like the thing to say. "He can't hurt you."

You're safe.

"I know," she says, still utterly calm. "I killed him."

She cuts off the water, dries her hands and sets the towel down by the sink, turns to face him and lifts her left wrist to her mouth and, very calmly, bites down and jerks her head sideways.

He stares at her, stares at the blood welling up around her lips and dripping down her arm with distant bewilderment. Why the fuck is she doing that? She just cleaned herself up. She was so careful. Why the fuck is she getting it all over herself again?

Then everything inside him breaks open.

This is why he wasn't feeling anything. This is why his mind wouldn't let him feel anything. Because now he does and all that lava is there, blasting through his veins, scorching his muscles and crisping his nerves, and screams lock themselves behind his teeth as he launches himself forward and slams into her, seizing her upper arm and her wrist and trying to yank them both free.

He's not the biggest man. But he's powerful, very, and he's bigger than her, and he's always known that he could overpower her if he had to, and once they got here - yet another detail he hated about this whole thing even as he realized it was a necessary truth - he appreciated it as something on which he might at some point depend.

But she's powerful too. And right now she's flooded by her body's chemistry and pumped to extremity and she fights him with strength he can barely process, piling itself on top of everything else he's trying desperately to ignore so he doesn't just curl up on the floor and - following what's beginning to seem like a very rational example - claw at his own face.

Her wrist is a torn mess, ripped open but difficult to diagnose beyond that as the well of blood obscures everything. She's still so calm, not trembling, displaying no particular expression at all; as he grapples with her he sees her face in flashes, her wide flat eyes, the nothingness behind them. The robotic commitment to fulfilling some deep-seated instruction.

This isn't like when she was biting at her fingers. Her teeth snap at her right arm, carving into herself just above her wrist, and he sees a thin string of flesh strip free and dangle from the corner of her mouth before it falls to the floor. This isn't like before. It's nothing like that. She's not trying to eat herself.

She's trying to die.

"Beth, fuckin' stop it!"

He remembers trying to get her hands away from her mouth before, how he was half sure he might end up breaking her bones. Now he's all but certain he will, because his grip is so much worse, so much more inclined to slip and wrench, with his fingers slicking in her blood and his nails hooking instinctively when she jerks in his hold, jerks and spasms and hurls herself backward with her bare feet skidding on the floor, blood spattering onto them, her jaws opening and closing and opening and closing, lightning finally slashing open the sky through the windows and the whole world dissolving into a sick, screaming dream of red and black.

And hands.

Some of that screaming might be her, but he doesn't think so. Some of it might be him, but that feels just as unlikely. This is the screaming of every atom cursed to be in this space and to be part of what's happening here, every particle and every element that has no hope of escape. All of it is so close, and he's holding her so close, dragging her in against him even as she kicks and writhes and tries with blank determination to turn those champing jaws on him. She's bleeding and he doesn't know how badly, or how badly she's hurt herself and still might, but he knows that she's bleeding a lot and she's hurt herself far beyond anything a bandaid could cure.

And she's not weakening one bit. She's just fighting him. Without passion, without fire, feet planted on the floor despite his attempts to shove her off-balance, surging against him like a swelling wave and just as unstoppable.

She's not going to stop. His shoulder has woken up from the painkillers and is shrieking at him, and she's going to wear him down and she's not going to stop. He's shaking her, jerking her body back and forth, trying to get her loose from whatever has her, but she's dragging her wrists back to her mouth and biting her flesh apart, her eyes that violently tranquil blue.

He releases her. Shoves her away. That finally does unbalance her and she staggers, a flicker of confusion crossing her face, and he launches himself past her toward the pantry. He has no idea how much time he has, but it's not enough, it won't be enough, and he's hauling the pack out from the crevice in which he hid it, ripping it open and fumbling with bloody nerveless fingers for the bottles and syringes.

He didn't want to have to use it.

He knew he would.

It would be fucking wonderful, he thinks as he stabs the needle through the top of the bottle, if he could find that coldness again. It would be fucking amazing if he could stop feeling, because that was the kind of void that you can feel growing by orders of magnitude, that aims to swallow you whole, but he could move within it. He could get some kind of distance. It might make this easier because it might make his hands stop shaking, and if he sends air to her heart he'll do the job she's trying to do with her teeth.

And for the most horrible moment he's ever experienced, he considers it.

It might be kinder than this.

He scrambles backward with the syringe clutched against his palm, somehow locates his feet, makes it to the door and back into the kitchen. She's kneeling just like she knelt over her dinner, only now she's using those merciless teeth to ruin herself, still calm as a Buddha. Zen regarding her own death. He's so fucking angry, so fucking jealous as he grabs her in a bear hug and holds her still with his free hand on her throat, and before she can jerk away from him he plunges the needle into her shoulder and depresses the plunger, forcing honey-colored sleep into her veins.

It happens fast. She struggles as soon as he withdraws the needle but she's already weakening, and in another ten seconds she sags back against him, body softening, her hands going limp at her sides and trickling more blood onto the floor.

And again... He's taking one breath at a time, feeling the house shaking around them, watching that spreading pool beneath and around her. Holding her in the hallway, getting her all over his hands - that had been so hellish and so simple. There hadn't been any more decisions to make. Hadn't been anything else to question. It had all been over.

Was part of him relieved, then? Even a tiny part? A sliver?

He could just hold onto her now, like that. She's not scared. She doesn't feel anything at all. She's not even here anymore, to the extent that she ever was.

He could hold her and just let it happen.

He's moving again, doing so without intending to and only aware of it when he's already up on his knees and reaching for the towel, pressing it against her wrists. Lifting it, staring down and trying to get a glimpse of the damage before the blood covers it again. But it's not coming as fast as he thought. Maybe there isn't even as much as there seems to be. There's no gush, just a slow welling. She didn't manage to bite through her arteries; she would almost certainly be dead now if she had and they would be sitting in a sea of blood instead of a puddle.

She'll probably live.

"Why the fuck," he whispers as he increases the pressure, cradling her against his chest, holding her so tight it's as if he might keep all the blood in her body by squeezing it in. "Why the fuck did you... Why."

But he knows why. Or he knows enough.

He did it. What he said. It's his fault. All of it.

All of it always was.

It's dusk outside and deeper dusk in the house when he finally gauges that the bleeding has slowed enough for him to remove the pressure and pick her up, and he carries her - still boneless, head lolling - to her bed and lays her down. It really isn't as bad as it might have been, and as he cleans the bites out and starts to bandage them he's a little relieved to discover that he's...

He's relieved. He is. He feels it.

She's lying with her head tipped toward the window, her eyes half open and her face still smeared red. She looks dead. He notes this with no particular disturbance, not anymore. Apparently up here it's just a fact of life and at this point if he lets it stop him he'll never get anything done.

What he has to get done now is to clean her.

There's something fated about this. Possibly he's used up all his horror, because when he looks her over again and considers his options, he doesn't feel any. Only weariness. He's trapped. The way above him has been blocked. There's nothing to do but descend.

He still has control. He wouldn't have made it this far with her if he didn't. His brain is fucking with him but it doesn't have the last word, and he can do this.

He's not too far gone.

He leaves her and goes to get wood, the bucket she bathed with, towels. As he builds the fire he periodically shoots her glances and thinks - because he can't help it - about her in the firelight, her bare skin smeared with blood, her eyes wide and glittering as she grasped his hand and pulled him to her. Into her. His fingers, her tight, slick cunt, the beautiful, inhuman shadows of her face.

He always thought she was the one who could speak prophecy.

He's been wrong about a lot of things.

He builds the fire up to roaring, to far more than warm, sets the towels and the soap and the cloth down and the water beside it, and lifts her by the shoulders - so careful - and leads her over to it. He doesn't think about what his hands are doing as he strips her, doesn't think about the skin beneath them. In all their time together he barely touched her, and even since they got here he still hasn't touched her any more than he felt he had to.

Except that's not quite true, is it? The border between the familiar country of must and the far stranger land of want has all but dissolved, and he's having increasing difficulty differentiating between the two. Isn't sure there is a difference anymore.

He wants her back. Needs her back. That's all. The list of things he'll do in order to have that is lengthening, and he's cognizant enough to know that he has no idea where it'll stop.

If she'll come back before he goes too far.

All of this is distant musing. He's slipping back into numbness, and that much might be necessary. But her body is coming into view, bit by excruciating bit - excruciating in the recesses of his mind rather than the forefront - her delicate little breasts, the dip of her waist and the swell of her hips, the small patch of tight curls between her strong thighs. Her shoulders, the line of her neck. Her hands, her bandaged wrists, the tight muscle knitted beneath her skin.

He never saw a woman like this before. Never in his life. Never looked at one this way. Never felt these things. They should terrify him, perhaps more than anything else.

But they also feel fated.

They were there before he ever found her again. They've been there for a long time.

This isn't how it was supposed to be, he thinks as he gently tugs her to her knees in front of him, facing him. He didn't know there was a how and a supposed that came along with it, but this isn't right. Maybe he was supposed to feel this, find her and bring her back and, at some point, let it all flow, let it out and examine it, explore it, maybe offer it to her. Maybe just be with her and never let any of it out. Wanting her in silence. Wanting her that way.

Not like this. Not all this red and black.

She's so sweet and so beautiful and she deserves so much better. So much better than a fucked up man who never could have saved her anyway.

He wets the cloth, rubs soap over it, and starts to wash her.

He could go rapidly, try to get it done as fast as possible, touch her no more than he has to. But naturally he doesn't do it that way, because he's an idiot and because he's set a trap for himself that he can't hope to escape. He takes his time, passing the cloth over her skin and rinsing and repeating, streaking her with pale suds, wiping them away. Those shoulders, those arms, collarbones - working his way down. Cleaning off all the blood, but of course it's more than that; he moves down to her breasts and cups them as he washes her there too - she stained herself through her shirt - and against his palm he feels her nipples hardening into the cool air.

Further down, her waist and belly, her hips, and before he has time to pull himself out of this trance state he's fallen into and ask some very serious and necessary questions about what he's doing, his hand is between her legs - the cloth is a barrier between her cunt and his fingers but even so - and stroking her. Rubbing her. Still washing, yes, but touching her in a way he doesn't need to for that. Curved against her, over her mound, fingertip against the cleft of her lips and the little nub nestled there, pressing, and she stiffens slightly, rolls her hips against his hand and moans.

He stares at her, her skin glistening in the light, all gold and red and black. In horror - yes, he has some left to feel - and in fascination. Her eyes are half closed, lips parted and wet, her breath coming in slow, shallow pulls. This is all wrong, this is so fucking wrong, he didn't even know he wanted it until a week ago and he doesn't under any circumstances want it like this, her drugged and insane and him beginning to feel halfway to the latter, and only a few hours after she tried to bite herself to death. He might as well have done what he saw done so many times before the Turn, gotten her so drunk she can't say no and then... But he could do it. Right now.

He could fuck her.

He knows she wouldn't stop him. Almost certainly wouldn't be able to stop him. He could strip himself, shove her onto the floor and knee her legs apart and drive himself into her. Maybe she's gone, maybe he's not getting her back, and maybe he feels all the worst kinds of helplessness, but he could try to fuck the world into her. If he wanted to.

God, he wants to. He wants to so bad.

He wants to fucking throw up. Because he's sick and maybe it didn't start with this. Maybe he always has been.

He jerks his hand away, finishes with her. Barely touches her the rest of the time. When he's done he rubs her roughly down with the towel and brushes her teeth, washes the blood out of her mouth too, dresses her for bed, and he puts her in it and turns firmly away.

He can still see her, curled on her side. Staring at nothing with fire in her eyes.

He shouldn't do it. He doesn't want to examine his reasons why. But he goes back to the pack and half fills another syringe with sedative, returns to her and injects her. He has to sleep sometime. He can't keep watch all night. And he can't bear to tie her down. And he can't trust her.

Maybe not ever again.

She accepts the needle with a sigh, closes her eyes. Like before, he turns quickly away, goes to get wine. It's not raining now, and he sits out on the wet deck with his back leaned against the railing, a puddle soaking through the seat of his pants, drinking very good Pinot Noir - not that he would know - and staring up at the roiling clouds glowing sickly gray-yellow with their bizarre self-illumination. Deep, monstrous creatures in a very unfriendly sea.

He's not getting her back.

He still has the syringe. He looks at it for a few moments, the gleam of the needle, then flips it over his head, over the railing; he doesn't watch its fall but he hears it clatter on the way down.

Fuck.

Shaking.

Shaking him.

He wrenches himself awake, up; he's still drunk, a bit, and roaring darkness is pressing in on him and he's confused, vaguely nauseated, and once more it feels like the entire house is rocking and wobbling and dangerously close to pitching over and tumbling down the side of the cliff, even though it's silent outside and no wind is howling now.

And a weight on him, pressing him into the bed, a grip on his bare shoulders so tight and so pointed it hurts him - fingers, hooked little fingers, shaking him with strength that would surprise anyone who doesn't...

Who doesn't know her.

She's barely a form at all. She's mostly sunken into the darkness, visible only through a kind of fog that might be in his head or might really be there, and he's not sure it makes any difference. It's her and she's straddling him, breathing hard, trembling. Groping for him. It slams into him, vivid flashes of that nightmare, those nightmares, her skin slick with blood and her hand between her legs, pulling him in with her, demanding. Wanting him. Demonic and beckoning, inviting him to be infernal with her. Inviting him to burn.

He can't. Not that, not now. He whimpers, tries to shove himself up, tries to get enough purchase to scramble out from under her and away - and fuck, she shouldn't even be awake, if what Edwards told him about the dosage is right she should be totally out of it until well into tomorrow morning. But she's here, she's wild and scrabbling at him, and she's gasping something, incoherent - sobbing, and when he manages to push himself up and suddenly he's so close to her, he can feel her tears on his face. Under his thumbs when he lifts his hands and frames her cheeks.

"Beth, what-"

"You were gone," she whispers. "I was there and you were gone, and you were- There wasn't anyone. I woke up and there wasn't anyone and then they were- They were- How could you, why did- They had me, they had me and I couldn't get away, I couldn't get out." She shudders violently, like electricity is running all through her, and now, very dimly, he can see her face, her wide and panicked eyes. "I tried, I couldn't get out, I had the gun but I couldn't get out."

Not the car. She didn't have a gun in the car, unless one was already in there. What, then? What the fuck is she remembering? And it doesn't matter, because she's so afraid and suddenly everything horrible seeping and oozing and crawling into his mind melts away and it's just her, and he has to help her. He has to do something. He has to try.

When she cried before, he couldn't stand it. He would have done anything to make it stop and he never knew how.

"I'm here." His fingers combing into her hair, through it, tugging her closer. Wrapping an arm around her. He hates this, he hates it so fucking much; he never wanted to be the one who had to hold her like this. Not really. Never wanted her to need it, to need him. She was so strong. This is so unworthy of her. But he's here. And that confers upon him certain responsibilities. "You're here too, Beth. You're right here. You're safe, you're with me, it's-"

"I wanna be here." She's nodding into his hands, shivering, still crying. Heaving with it. His chest is cracking open. He's going to bleed everywhere. "I wanna be with you, I wanna be with you so bad... I wanna... I wanna be..."

He can't breathe. All at once she's thrusting herself forward, in his lap, arms encircling his neck and her tears staining his cheeks and her mouth arching over his, hot and wet and hungry, her tongue pushing at his lips. Trying to push them apart.

Trying to get inside him.

He's a stone. Locked motionless, arms still around her but not pulling her close. Not pushing her away. Not doing anything. He dreamed about lying next to her and listening to the wet squelch of her fingers fucking into her cunt, and he dreamed about taking her, his own finger sliding into her, teasing her nipples, the possibility of doing so many more filthy, terrifying things to her. And this is a kiss, just a kiss, and somehow it's so much more than any of those things; it's unlacing his spine, spilling marrow into his blood, exploding the back of his skull. It's a bullet shot into him in slow motion. And all he wants to do is lunge into its path.

So he does.

She wants him open, she wants to be inside him, and he opens to her with a rough groan, bursting from cold stone to flames in the span of a second. His hands drop to her hips and drag her in as he slides his tongue alongside hers - bites at it, sucks, teeth colliding with a muffled clack. Never kissed anyone like this, not even close - barely kissed anyone at all in his entire fucking life, and this is devouring him and he wants to devour her, rocking up to meet her, so hard and knowing she can feel it. Wanting her to feel it.

What he can do to her. What he will do.

Because she's moaning so thick and heavy, rolling down against him in a slow grind, hands tangled in his hair and yanking his head back as she lifts herself over him. He knows what's going to happen now, can see it, feel it like it's already here: she's going to kick off those shorts, claw down his own, get her shirt off over her head, arch into him until he's cupping her breasts with no cloth between them, tweaking her nipples, ducking his head to lick at them as she takes him in her hand and lowers herself onto him and clenches so hot and wet, all Hell under her skin, all blood and bone, red and black, riding his cock like he's a horse she means to break. She'll rip him open. She'll bleed him dry, drip copper into his mouth. Flesh tearing away between his teeth. They'll scream a duet at the night.

They're both dead, so it doesn't matter anymore.

It does matter.

"Beth," he gasps - against her lips, into her mouth. "Beth, stop."

"I wanna be with you," she hisses. She might be arguing but he knows she isn't. Knows she didn't hear him. Or didn't understand. "Daryl, I wanna be with you, let me... Oh God, please let me, be in me, please fuck me, please..."

"You gotta stop." Pushing at her now, taking hold of her upper arms. The words break out between them; he should stop kissing her but his own fucking mouth isn't obeying him. "Beth, you can't, we can't, you need to-"

"I don't wanna stop."

So she did hear this time. She does understand. She only presses in harder, needier, fumbling between them and closing her hand over him, kneading with her palm. "You want this. I can feel it, Daryl, you want it, you wanted it before, the way you were lookin' at me, don't you fuckin' tell me you don't."

I do. But he doesn't. But he does. He shudders as hard as she did, trying not to buck up into her hand, because it's so fucking good, and he just wants to feel good after so much bad, but he...

She's insane.

"No. No, Beth, you-" He shoves harder, squirming, trying to twist away. But she's so strong. "Beth, you gotta. You gotta. Beth, stop. STOP."

He doesn't mean to. It just busts out of his throat like a prison break and it's the same voice as before, when she was biting at her fingers. That quiet steel, coming from somewhere inside him that he didn't know was there. At the same moment he shoves her so hard she goes tumbling backward, trying to catch herself, landing sprawled half on the mattress and half on the floor. He hears the thump, her pained whine, and it's not like she actually fell any significant distance but everything in him dives into cold.

He keeps hurting her. Bites over her bruise and now probably more to match.

Nothing for a second, a second that extends out and out into a temporal prison. He's locked into it. They both are. He sits there and stares into the dark, heart ice in the bottom of his throat.

She's crying again. Softly this time. Soft and broken and lost.

"Beth."

"Why did you leave me?" Nothing more than a choked whisper, and for another lengthy second or two he doesn't fully understand her. "I was so scared, why did you do that? You left me alone." Another moan, but no pleasure in it. No need. He sees her moving, sees her fall, sees her curling on the floor and hugging herself. "I don't wanna be alone, please... I don't wanna be alone anymore."

"You're not. Swear, you're not. Beth..." Lifting himself onto his hands and knees, crawling toward her. Because he can't stay away. Even now, he can't stay away. He's so bad for her and he can't help her, but he can't stay away. He needs her. Doesn't need to fuck her, never did need that. He just needs her. How he has her doesn't and never has mattered.

One thing that truly doesn't.

"I am. You don't want me." Her cheeks glistening. Her eyes, wide and locked on him. They're pools of ink, of oil. Even if there was light, he's certain there wouldn't be any color left. "I wanna be with you and you don't want me."

Don't you dare fucking lie to her. Don't you dare.

"I want you," he whispers. He reaches for her, touches her, and she jerks and whimpers, cringes away from him, and his eyes sting like the points of needles. "I do. God, I want you, Beth. I want you so bad." He hauls in a ragged breath. "But I can't."

"Why not?"

"'cause it ain't right." Because I look at you and I see a child, and as long as that's true I can't touch you that way. Because there is no way in this Hell or any other, no scenario in which you can say yes to me. "And you don't mean it."

He feels her against his hand, pushing into him. Her wet face, nuzzling at his palm like a dog. "I do."

"No, you don't. You think you do. But you can't." He swallows and it burns all the way down. But it's true. All of it is. He doesn't have to lie. "I don't want you like this."

Nothing, then. Just the awful, quiet sound of her weeping in the dark, and she doesn't sound like herself. She sounds like a little girl. A little girl who had a nightmare and doesn't know if she's awake.

Doesn't believe she is.

"Beth. C'mere."

Suddenly it's not difficult anymore. It's the easiest thing in the world. He's not hard now, not burning for her; it's all gone. All that remains is her and the dark in which she's losing herself, and he's not going to let that happen. Even if he can't help her, even if he can't bring her back.

If she's going to fall, she won't fall alone.

Come here. My girl, come here. Come here to me.

She doesn't pull away this time, and he gathers her into his arms, tugs her back onto the mattress and against his chest. He curls himself around her, holds her, buries his face in her hair.

She smells like the soap he used to wash her.

"Ain't leavin' you," he breathes, holds her tighter as a fresh wave of sobbing rolls through her. "Ain't leavin' you again. Never again. Never. Sweetheart, baby girl, I ain't never gonna do that."

Bit by bit the shaking subsides and she goes loose. Limp. He's not sure she's sleeping - then he looks down and knows she isn't. Her eyes are open and glassy, and he watches for a full ten seconds before that faint glisten flickers out - a blink. Possibly whatever gripped her and shot her free of the drug has slipped out of her and she's sunk back into that black water. That's another thing that doesn't matter. What matters is that she's quiet now, soft and warm, and she's alive and he has her.

He has her.

I'm so sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to.

Didn't mean to leave.

Didn't mean to do any of this.

I'm sorry.