Safe Up Here With You Chapter 11: let me off this boat, a walking dead fanfic

Chapter 11: let me off this boat, I'm sick of this ride

He tilts his head back, opens his mouth, and the rain tastes like copper.

Out on the deck, the world is breaking apart. The thunder cracks the mountains. The lightning doesn't stop, refuses to stop even for a second, and the wind screams around him, slams into him, grabs his clothes and his hair and yanks at him. Rakes hail-claws across his face, shoots him with tiny bullets. Trees rocking back and forth, whipped like they're buffeted by constant colliding shockwaves.

He stands there, hand against the railing, and he closes his eyes and lets it happen.

He won't go back in. He's done doing things. He's done trying.

He's making it simple. For himself, for her. Like holding her body in that hallway, feeling himself dying with her, knowing that there weren't any more questions to ask and nothing more to do. Nothing that mattered. She complicated his life so much, made him believe, made him want to have faith, hope, that there were good people and not everyone had to die, that sometimes good things do happen. That it might be all right. That everything might still be all right.

She fucked him up, and then she was gone.

It was supposed to be over, then. Now he stands here and he knows he's started bleeding again, dripping black onto the deck and into the rain, and he was an idiot. It's never over. Things like this don't just end. They don't just let you go. Not until they've bled you dry. Not until they've taken everything.

He was ready to give her everything.

He still is.

He grips the railing, grips it so hard his arm shakes, vibrates through him and into the one she's apparently destroyed. The lightning cuts down across the stone and strikes a tree below; suddenly it's all fire, plumes of flame that refuse to be killed by the torrent. It's beautiful, color scorching its way into a world robbed of everything but black and white and pitiless gray, and he watches it burn with fascination that shivers electric through his core.

They made a fire, him and her. Together. They made a fire and it was good, for the first time in such a long time he felt good, and it was one of the last times too, and he had no idea. Should have, though.

She made him believe, yes; she made him stupid.

The fire burns. He stares at it until it's seared itself into his retinas, until when he looks away it's all he can see. He could go back inside after all, get her - assuming she hasn't used the knife on herself - and bring her out here and show her the fire, curl his good arm around her and watch it with her, and then he could do what he said he was going to do and take them both over the edge, because who the fuck is he kidding? They're not coming out of this together. They're not coming out of it at all.

He doesn't know why he's even still here.

Because you can't stop.

Him and her, over the edge - the last of her pretty things. Everything else down there: the shattered glass, the books, the deer - probably not much more than hide and bones now - and the things he brought her. Those pretty little things, special things that had no reason for existing but to be beautiful, that were supposed to bring her back to him.

He looks down at the cliff face, the trees, the rocks all lit in white strobe. The fire winking in and out. His vision is clearing, and beneath him - seething through the woods, along the road, up the slopes and among the rocks like an oncoming flood, pale and steady as an army of ghosts shedding strings of flesh and hair and skin: hundreds upon hundreds of walkers. Perhaps thousands. All coming for them. Coming up to them.

Coming to her.

Flicker-crack and they're gone. Then there again.

It doesn't matter if they're real or not. They're real enough. They're real in every way that counts.

He turns away, half slides and half falls down to sit on the soaked wood. He's drenched beyond the possibility of getting any wetter. He's in so much pain he can't even feel it anymore. He's lost everything, lost her, and only now does he finally understand.

He closes his eyes. He really should go. Deal with both of them. But he's waiting for something.

Fuck knows what it is.

Here, what it might be.

He gets up. He goes back inside. His knife is at her feet and she hasn't moved. She's sitting there and staring at nothing until she's staring at him, expression still unreadable, there but in no way he has any hope of ever understanding. Nowhere he could ever find her.

He crouches by the coffee table and picks up a syringe, a bottle. Pierces the top, fills it, goes to her and pulls her close, and she doesn't struggle when he slides the needle into her neck. He holds her for a few seconds, and he's sure he feels her loosening, leaning against him, her breath easing.

He lays her back and he does it again. And again, until the last bottle is empty. And he sets the syringe down and sets himself down, lies down next to her and buries his face in her hair, and it's like it should have been, like the car, like that mass of walkers coming up to greet them, and he waits with his hand against her chest, feeling the rhythm it contains slow and slow until he doesn't feel anything at all anymore.

He keeps holding her until he drifts away. Sleeps.

He wakes up to her teeth ripping into his throat. And that's fine.

Also it could be this.

He bends and picks up the gun and goes to her, crouches and leans in, and she doesn't pull away when he presses his lips to the starburst scar on her brow. It's good that it's there - not that he needs a target. But this also feels right, like it's a place made and laid out for him, and he sets the muzzle of the gun against it and squeezes the trigger and paints the back of the sofa with her brain.

And he lowers himself to the floor, lays his head in her lap and the muzzle against his temple, and follows her.

And this is possible.

He bends and picks up the knife and settles himself on the sofa beside her and presses her back so she's resting, so she's comfortable, and he cuts her throat in one smooth move, and with arterial spray there's a good bit more than a few drops of her blood on his mouth.

And then there's the gun.

Then, too, all of this.

He falls on her. Rips her clothes off her, rips them to shreds. Shoves her back and holds her down and plunges into her and fucks her until she's screaming, until he is, fucks her cunt raw and bloody, fucks her and presents his neck to her and keeps fucking her as she tears his throat out with her teeth. Tears her throat out before she can, eats her alive. Jams the gun against her head, jams it into her mouth, squeezes the trigger. Gives it to her and she does it to him. The knife, slashing her open any number of ways, being slashed. Gutted. Needles. Falling asleep inside each other. Floating away on a sea of their mingling blood as the world shatters into red and black and the house burns to the fucking ground.

And.

Going to her. Finding the strength to move his arm, to use it, to lift her and hold her against him. To carry her out the front door into the rain and around and down to the edge, to kiss her so softly, so carefully, to hold her so tight as he takes them both into the air.

Maybe they fall.

Maybe they don't.

Maybe they fly away.

Curled in the strobing dark, screaming his throat into bloody cracks. Slamming his head against the wood, howling at the rain, doubling over and hugging himself even with his ruined arm, retching, dry-heaving. He would have done anything. He would have done anything to save her. He would have died for her a thousand times. She was everything, everything, and she was taken away from him and he would have endured any torture to get her back. If he could have suffered enough to make it happen, he would have. But he's suffering now and it's not doing anything, it's not fixing anything, it's not better, and she's suffering too and she isn't coming back, isn't ever coming back, that girl in there is a shell and always was, and now in his mind he's killing her over and over, killing them both, and he doesn't know when he got so fucking sick except maybe he became that way at the same moment the bullet burst her skull open, maybe that was what did it, broke him just like it broke her, and he can't come back either, they don't get to come back, both of them are too far gone and he did it, it's his fault, it's her fault, they're destroying each other, throwing each other over the edge again and again and again, and he can't make it stop, can't ever make it stop, can't work up the courage to do what he knows he has to do, the only thing left to do, he's a worthless fucking coward and when she was whole she deserved better and even now she deserves so much better than this. Than him.

This is not how it was supposed to be.

We'll try again tomorrow.

And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and it doesn't end. It doesn't ever end. Because they're dead. And this is Hell.

I'm sorry. He is. He won't take it back, any of it, he meant every fucking word, but he is so, so sorry. I'm sorry Beth I'm sorry I'm sorry I didn't want this, not like this, I didn't want it I swear I didn't mean to I didn't I didn't I swear, I didn't mean to do it, it wasn't supposed to be like this, it was supposed to be better.

It was supposed to be better now.

Anything. Anything to make it better, anything in the fucking world. But all you had to do was stay. Stay there and keep your fucking mouth shut. And I died when you left me.

I ain't leavin' you. I ain't never gonna do that.

This is the only place we can be.

You're safe, Beth. You're safe up here.

You're safe with me.

Hands. Soft, small and warm, on his face. In his hair. Cringing back, shrinking; pressing forward on his knees. Curling against it. Shaking. Hurting so much. He doesn't want to be alone anymore. If she has the knife, if she's going to find a way, it's still better than being alone.

Arms circling, enfolding him. She was always so strong. She pulls him close and it bursts his shoulder and arm into screeching pain but he doesn't care; he collapses against her, slumped with his head on her breast, clinging and sobbing and trembling everywhere. She's here and he doesn't care in what capacity, how much of her, what she's like, what she intends to do with him and with herself; he doesn't want to stop her. He's so tired.

He just wants it to be over.

She's rocking him. She's rocking him in her arms and whispering to him, lips against his temple, his torn cheek, his twisted mouth. He can't make out what she's saying but he doesn't need to. Her voice was always like music. It was always so sweet. It's sweet now. He can hear it, listen to it, drift in its flow while she kills him, and it's all right.

But she's not killing him.

She's just holding him, stroking his hair, and the pain is subsiding to a dull pounding. He's soaking wet and cold but she's warm and she's wrapping herself around him, somehow bigger than him now and somehow he's so small.

It's not raining anymore. It's not dark. Out across the peaks and ridges, the sun is lifting itself into a flushed sky. He blinks into the light.

And suddenly he understands what she's saying.

It's all right. I'm here. I'm here, Daryl. I'm not leavin' you. I'm not leavin' you again. I promise I'm not. I love you. I love you and I'm not gonna leave you.

You're safe now.

You're safe with me.