Chapter 46: show me where to look, tell me what will I find

"You didn't ask me if I was ready."

Daryl shifts on his back, looks over at her where she's lying on her stomach, braced up on her elbows, toying with a blade of grass. She has one leg bent back with her foot in the air, bobbing gently, and it's yet another thing she's doing that should be childish and almost is... and isn't. She turns too, hair spilling over her shoulders and all down her bare back, completely unbound now except for her braid - and even that is starting to look a little messy.

He simply gazes at her for a second, in no hurry to answer her, his head pillowed on his bent arm. The sun is still flooding into the clearing, pooling on the grass, making everything glow sharp around the edges.

"You didn't say you were."

"But you didn't ask," she persists, half smiling. She reaches out and tickles his nose with the grass, darts her hand away when he bats lazily at it. "I dunno, I just figured... Guys would ask. About that."

"You think I'm in some kinda hurry?"

She cocks her head, shifts her gaze down to her hands, teeth worrying a little at her bottom lip. She doesn't appear worried herself. Not exactly. She just appears thoughtful, her brow furrowed. "You just..." She sighs, and suddenly she seems a little reluctant, and maybe he should be worried but he's not, and not just because he doesn't think he has the energy for anything other than what he's doing right now. Watching her. Watching her think.

"Stuff about girls... girls my age. And older guys. There's this idea that you'd be takin' advantage of me or somethin'. Tryin' to push. Y'know? Push stuff faster. Tryin' to get somethin'." She looks up at him again, smiling far less than half but smiling all the same, and gives him a tiny shake of her head. "You've never done that. Like... Ever."

He frowns. He gets what she's saying, of course he does. He knows about that story too, and he knows what people think, and he knows in his bones that it's the primary reason why no one can know about this - especially not her family, whatever else they might think of him now - but at the same time he honestly doesn't get it. How someone would do that. What's going through their minds, to look at someone and just see this thing you can take. What's going through someone's mind when they hurt someone like that.

He knows it, but he doesn't understand.

"Why the fuck would I?"

"Well, I'm pretty hot. Just for one thing." She giggles and rolls a little closer to him, dropping the blade of grass and laying her head down on her arm, her fingers tracing over his bicep. "Someone else would. That's all. I think someone else would." That smile is still toying with her lips, and there's something behind her eyes that startles him even as it mirrors him.

Something like wonder. Quiet and deep.

"You're a good man, Daryl Dixon."

He didn't have any idea what to say to that the last time and he doesn't now. No idea at all. None. He starts to look for a response and gives up almost immediately; what do you say to that? When a girl like this says that you're good?

Nothing overblown, which he would immediately reject. Nothing literally unbelievable. He's not amazing. He's not incredible. He's none of the words he applies to her in his mind, all of which he thinks are entirely appropriate and in no way, shape, or form hyperbole.

He's good. Simple and real. Good. He's a good man.

And right now he believes her. He does.

He gives her a small, crooked smile. "Didn't have no rubber anyway."

"You mean you don't carry one all over?" She grins and digs a fingernail into his arm, and he swipes at her again, catches her hand, threads his fingers through hers. It feels so natural to do that now. It feels like he's been doing it for years.

She holds onto him for a moment, looking at their joined hands, and her mouth twists just a bit. "That's somethin' else. Some guys... They're jerks about that. Becca, friend of mine at school, she broke up with her boyfriend 'cause he wouldn't wear one. Told her it didn't feel good." She hesitates and her gaze flicks back up to his. "Does it? Feel different?"

He shakes his head. "I dunno."

"You never did it without one?"

"No."

She strokes her thumb along the outside of his, quiet for a few seconds. "Ever want to?"

This is a very odd line of questioning. But he doesn't mind it. Once he probably would have. Once, when he was first getting to know her and her many odd questions, he probably would have brushed her off, told her to mind her own fucking business. But she's asking him these things now, and he's looking back and he's...

Seeing. He's looking back at everything and he's suddenly paying attention.

"I never cared," he says softly. "Never cared about it. Never meant anythin'."

"Really?" She frowns slightly and studies him, very close, and not for the first time he wonders just what exactly it is that she's seeing, that has her so interested like this. "Why not?"

"Just didn't." He studies her right back. She genuinely seems confused, which he's not sure what to make of. He knows that she has no silly romantic illusions about anything - or she doesn't seem to - and of course she's always thought it would mean something for her, and for her it was certainly reasonable to think so. But for him, assuming it would mean something for him...

He hasn't even had a girlfriend.

"How many times you been... Y'know. Been with someone?" She flushes a little and it's hard to keep from smiling at her again. For someone who just got done asking him to let her watch him come, let her make him come, let her get right up close and personal with it, that she would be blushing over this question is the best combination of funny and profoundly cute.

Cute. Jesus. Cute never used to be a word he applied to anything.

"I dunno. Not that many." He gives her hand a little squeeze - not entirely sure why except that he wants to - and looks at her, briefly distracted when a breeze sends light dancing and dappling across her shoulder and arm and breast. He feels like he should add something, make things a little clearer, and maybe he also feels some kind of vague need to confess.

He's confessed a lot to her. She does contain some spark of the divine.

"I never really wanted to. Never really liked it."

Now she seriously looks confused, and he thinks he does get why. There's what he did to her, with her, how it appears he made her feel, and every time with her has been good. Even if he hasn't been inside her. Especially since he hasn't been inside her. He never would have believed, before, how much you can do with someone with just your hands.

"Why didn't you like it?" She huffs a laugh. "I thought... Everyone likes it."

"Guess I ain't everyone."

"No, you're..." Concern flashes across her face, not intense but there. "Daryl, I didn't mean..."

"Relax. 's fine. I know I'm fuckin' weird." He releases her hand and tugs lightly at a strand of her hair, and she flushes a little deeper, and he wants to drag her against him and kiss her some more but he can do that in a minute. For now...

Well, for now he actually wants to talk. Wants to. And who the hell knows how long that's going to continue.

"I didn't like 'em," he says after another moment or two of silence. He fumbles around for the words, the truth, and there it is - simple, really. He already knew. "The people. I just..." He pulls in a slow breath, and the air is fresh and cooling and he can still smell her - sun on her just like the grass. "I didn't wanna be with 'em. I didn't even know 'em. Not most of 'em."

"So why did you?" She asks it softly, and her eyes are very big.

"Felt like I had to."

"You don't have to do anythin'." She lays a hand against the center of his chest and pushes nearer, her head on his shoulder, angled enough that she can look up at him. "Anythin'. Not with that. Daryl... You should only do it when you want to."

He arches a brow at her, his fingers combing into her hair. It sounds so easy when she says it like that. And maybe it is. Maybe he's just been making it hard. Or letting people make it hard for him, and maybe he always had more choice about that than he thought. "That simple, huh?"

"Yeah. That simple."

She looks very serious. Almost solemn. Once he might have laughed at something like this, but he doesn't want to. At all. It doesn't seem like something to laugh at. It feels like something touching him, cracking him, breaking him open. Something else that's always been true but that he couldn't even conceive of. That he didn't have to. That he didn't have to do anything that made him feel wrong like that.

That if he had wanted to wait like her, wanted to just put the whole thing away until it felt right, he should have been able to. Even if it meant waiting until now.

"I want to," he murmurs, slides his fingertips over the weaving curves of her braid. "With you."

"Me too." She turns her head and presses her lips slowly against his shoulder, near his collarbone, and he closes his eyes and sighs.

And for a little while no one says anything except the trees, who whisper continuously to each other as if they have a lot of opinions about everything that just happened and are really into sharing.

"That's the other thing, though," she says finally, lifting her head again. At some point she moved even closer and now she's almost half on top of him, hand higher on his chest to make a pillow for her chin. "What we're doin'... We're already pretty much there. I mean..." She glances down at him, at herself, and laughs. "Well. Y'know. Maybe it's stupid, to keep this one thing. Say I'm not ready for it. Maybe I should feel stupid. Like one more thing shouldn't matter. Like it shouldn't be this big deal."

Abruptly she's solemn again, lifting her other hand to touch his face, the ridge of his cheekbone, pushing his hair out of his eyes. "But it does matter. To me. I dunno why, but it does. And you... You don't make me feel stupid for it."

"I don't think it's stupid," he whispers. And he doesn't. Maybe once he thought there were rules for this, but she's tossed him into the deep end of a pool he had no idea was there, and all the rules are gone. He's just swimming.

He doesn't think anything she could want like this would be stupid. It would be what she wants. That's all he would need to know.

"I'm not a virgin, Daryl," she says softly, still tracing the lines of his cheek, his jaw. "I dunno what I am."

He covers her hand with his - not stilling her. Feeling her fingers, small and slender and fine-boned, feeling how they move against his skin. He's watched those fingers strum a guitar, run across the keys of a piano, make music out of nothing, and he's watched her touch him, stroke him and play with him until he's falling apart in her hands, and it's new. He's new. It's his first time. There's never been anything like this before. She pulled him free from something and now he's in that deep water, and maybe he should feel like he's drowning, but he doesn't. He lost the shoreline a while ago but she's here with him, her hand in his, and she's not going to let him sink.

She's going to help him.

Looking up at her with the sun soaking into her, so warm, radiant in every sense of the word.

Girl.

"Me neither."

She smiles at him. "You just are."

"Beth..."

She presses up and tugs him down, finds his mouth with hers, her lips and her tongue, and she swallows whatever else he was going to say. Which was probably nothing. He doesn't need to say anything at all.

All he needs to do is pay attention, and be idle, and be blessed.

He doesn't realize he's been crying until he feels the tears cooling on his face, until he feels her kissing them away.

Of course they have to go. They always have to go.

But they don't rush as they gather things up, pull clothes reluctantly on, and he finds himself watching her dress with the same kind of attentiveness he might have watching her doing the exact opposite. Watching her bare skin vanish under her panties and bra, her jeans, her shirt. He feels an odd urge to go to her, dress her with his own hands, and he beats it back because he has no idea what to do with it, and because he's not sure, even now, that it's something he should actually attempt.

He's not afraid of her anymore. But he's still finding his courage.

She tries to comb her hair back with her fingers, restore it to some kind of order, and laughs when she realizes there's no way it's happening. He already has the crossbow slung over his shoulder and he watches her for a few seconds, finally shakes his head and pulls her in. This is easy, this feels right, and he tucks a couple strands of hair behind her ear and kisses her brow.

"I'm a mess," she murmurs, lips moving against his neck, and every word sounds like it might break into another laugh.

"Yeah, pretty much. Nothin' you can do."

She tilts her head back and beams up at him. "You're a mess too. You always are, though."

He doesn't know that he'd argue with that, but he gives her ear a sharp little pinch and a tug, and she lets out an indignant squeak and swipes at him. He catches it on his arm, and it takes every last iota of his willpower to keep from grabbing her and tossing her back into the grass and following her for another round of the whole thing.

Instead he steps away, hand on her back, and lets it go.

"C'mon."

The shadows are long by now but there's still a fair bit of daylight and no real need to hurry. Without meaning to he finds himself slipping back into the quiet walk from before, tracking without really tracking anything at all, and she walks just as quietly beside him. But after a few minutes of moving through cool shadows, catching glimpses of birds hopping and tossing themselves from branch to branch, something grabs him, curls a hand around his attention and tugs, brings him up short. He stops before he knows he's going to, and Beth almost stumbles over him.

"Daryl, what-"

He drops swiftly into a crouch. "C'mon down here."

When he glances up at her she's clearly bemused, head cocked, but she follows him down and peers at the soft earth. "What is it?"

He shoots her a tiny smile. "You tell me."

"Oh." A soft little breath more than a word, and she's quiet; like he's discovered he can, he feels her attention, her focus, its keen edge. What he's showing her isn't honestly all that subtle, and in fact she could probably have spotted it on her own. But she didn't. He did. And now he's going to see what she does with it.

She reaches out toward the small twin depression, though she doesn't touch it. She moves her hand as if she's outlining it in the air, her fingers curving, and when he lifts his gaze to her face her lips are moving very slightly, silent until she speaks.

"It's a deer."

"Yeah." Without thinking he lays a hand on her back, feeling the lift and fall as she breathes. "How old?"

"I guess..." She bites her lip, eyes narrowing just a bit. "Pretty fresh?"

"Yeah. Know how you can tell?"

She looks up at him and hesitates, clearly waiting for him to speak, but when he doesn't she looks down at the tracks again, and this time she does lay a fingertip at an outer edge. "The lines are sharp," she murmurs - almost to herself. "Those points..."

"Good. So which way was it goin'?"

She gestures ahead of them. "It's the path we were walkin' earlier."

"Yep. How d'you know that?" Shivering warmth all through him, and it's not about wanting her, not about what they did in the clearing; right here, right now, that might as well not even have happened. As with the bow, he's watching her expand herself, move into this space, discover what a new part of her can do. See things and know what she's seeing. Be in the world in a way maybe she wasn't before.

His father never felt this. Or if he ever did, it had been so withered and stunted that it never found the sun.

"The sharper ends. They're pointed that way."

"Otis show you this?"

"No." She's not looking at him now, and the half absent tone hasn't left her voice. It's that focus again, that near-trance. The stillness and the ease with which she located it inside her. It's the ruins again; his mind tumbles back there and he thinks about how perfect she looked in them, how much she belonged, how perfect she looks here too. She has her place and he has his and they've shared, crossed those borders, and now he's wondering if the borders in question were ever there at all.

If they've always been here together. Occupying the same space.

It's a deeply strange thing to think. But today has been strange.

"So." He lifts his hand and straightens slowly up, scanning ahead. The tracks continue - of course they do - but he's not going to nudge this in any particular direction. Might be enough for her that she's seen them, identified them, been right about them. Might be enough for today. "Whaddaya wanna do?"

She glances at him, brows raised - you kidding me? "I wanna follow it."

He grins. He didn't actually expect her to say anything else. "Alright."

He doesn't have to tell her to stay to the side of the track. That's something else, and honestly what he expected - it's the kind of thing she might know simply by instinct. But he sees her eyes too far down too much of the time, and after a few minutes he touches her arm.

"Eyes up. You don't wanna just see the track right under you. Remember, you wanna see everythin'."

"So it's not just the tracks? The hoofprints?"

"No. That broken branch you saw?"

"That was it?" She gestures at the tracks and he hears a tight little thread of excitement work its way into her voice. "What we're followin'?"

"Could be. Could not be."

"You don't know?"

"No." He pauses briefly and tilts his head back, closing his eyes and scenting the air. What she said before, it's all still there: growing things and dead things, moss and water and soil. The way dust smells when the sun warms it. "Sometimes you just ain't sure."

"What d'you do then?"

"You follow your gut. You got instincts, you gotta listen to 'em. You gotta learn." He looks down at her, reaches out and strokes her hair back from her face. She's eager, gaze sharp, lips parted enough that he can see her teeth, and he's not thinking about a doe anymore. He looks at her and he sees a little she-wolf. Little predator, all delicate strength, potential speed.

"You're an animal," he murmurs, and she leans into his touch. "Just like them. We forget that, but... Y'are."

"You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves." She says it in a whisper; he knows it's another poem and he smiles.

Something about this still feels like a dream.

"Keep on trackin'."

She turns away from him and she does.

Her estimation was right: it's a fresh track, and it's not very difficult to follow. The shadows continue to lengthen but it feels like time is slowing, like they're not moving through it the way someone else might be. Again, like the ruins: this is a place apart from everything else, and it's not a single place; they made it between them and they're carrying it now. She moves steadily, pausing now and then to look around, and after a while she turns off the main path and follows a thinner one that passes through stands of ash trees, hardly visible at all, and he says nothing about it but the wave of pride he feels is almost overwhelming.

It takes him a bit to realize what it even is. He never felt it before he met her. Pride in anything. Pride in himself. Maybe once, but that got killed pretty early on and it never returned.

"Think it's gettin' fresher." She glances at him. He's been running his fingers over the scruff at his chin as he watches her and he doesn't pause, doesn't even look at her directly, but he guesses she can probably see the edge of his smile and she knows she's right.

They crest a little rise and look up, and there she is.

He stops, puts out a hand to halt Beth, but she's already stopped, staring, and when he smoothly falls into a crouch she follows him.

It can't be the same one. Yet he supposes it probably can be. These woods, this territory - it could very well be the same as the doe he saw. Those faint remains of white speckles along her flanks - now fainter still - and that awkward youthful grace, the warm hues of her hide where the sun touches it. Like when he saw her, she's grazing, nosing at the leaf litter and pausing now and then to raise her head, ears pricked.

He left his bow cocked - habit - and it's also habit to have it immediately in his hands, lowered but ready to lift and fire. Beth's gaze snaps down to the bow, up to his face, and she doesn't speak but he can read her frown.

Do you have to?

He looks at her for a few seconds, then shakes his head and sets the bow aside. No, he doesn't have to. He doesn't want to. What would he do with it, anyway? With Beth's help he could probably haul the carcass back to the truck, get it butchered somewhere or find a place to do it himself, but it seems like a lot of trouble.

And he doesn't want to. And not just because she would prefer he not.

The doe keeps grazing - doesn't seem to have any idea they're there - and Beth watches, clearly captivated, still and tense and breathing slowly. Naturally she's seen deer before, probably hundreds of times, and so has he, but it was different then and it's different now. Even if he can't say how. Can't say why.

But he sort of feels why. Feels it deep. That gut he's supposed to follow. Those instincts he's supposed to listen to.

She's very close to him, just in front of him. Moving smoothly, trying not to move at all, he slides his arm around her and tugs her backward into the hollow his body makes. She lifts a hand and lays it over his forearm, presses against him and sighs softly.

"You found her," he whispers in her ear - not sure why and not fully sure what he means, because it's not just the obvious. Not just the surface. "All you, Beth. All you."

A little shiver runs through her and everything in him tightens and melts simultaneously, and it's confusing, but by now he's mostly comfortable with being confused. He has to be. It's just going to keep on happening.

For a while they stay there, quiet and motionless and watching. The doe wanders through patches of sun, noses, keeps grazing, and he's more and more certain that it's the same one. Her spots have faded, she's a little larger, but there's something about her, about the way she moves. The way she is. Those instincts again, scratching at him, whispering that he's right. That he should trust. That he should trust himself.

He thinks he can.

At last the doe lifts her head a final time, her ears twitch, and in response to nothing he can identify she turns and leaps away into the underbrush, tail up and bright, and she's gone.

It's like coming out of a dream. They stir against each other, separate just a bit, and he pushes his hair back from his face and glances around. Not long until dusk, now. They've been in the woods for hours.

He touches her shoulder. "We should get back."

"Yeah." She nods, shakes herself a little and straightens up. As he does the same and looks her over, he detects slight melancholy in her. He's sure. She smiles at him but it's not a wide smile, and if it's sweet there's a bitterness around its edges.

She doesn't want to leave. That makes him happy. Even if it's bittersweet as well.

They walk back to the truck in silence.

Like usual - now - he stops at the oak tree and pulls over, and what begins as a glance at her turns into something more lingering when the last of the reddish sunlight falls over her hair and makes it into tangled strands of fire. She's looking ahead but then her attention drops to her hands, and she seems to be considering something, her brows slightly drawn together.

He'll wait. He doesn't have to push. She'll come to it when she's ready. And right now, the unknown of whatever it might be doesn't worry him.

Finally she looks up, meets his gaze. There's a quality to her eyes that's at once warm and hard - determined. She's decided something.

"Be here tomorrow night," she says softly. "Midnight. Okay?"

He nods, doesn't hesitate. Okay. He doesn't have to ask her. He doesn't have to know. It's enough that she wants him here. That's all he needs.

"Alright," she says, even softer, and she touches his jaw and leans in, kisses him for a long, sweet time. Long enough that when she pulls back the last of the sun is curving above the horizon, shimmering in the high streaks of cloud.

And he does what he was wanting to do, what hasn't felt right until now: he lays his fingers against her face, strokes her cheek, and his forefinger finds the edge of her cut and runs lightly along it. Carefully. Feeling its rough texture, the ridges of the stitches. He doesn't expect her to hate it, to be annoyed with him, but he thinks she might flinch. Might even ask him to stop.

But instead she closes her eyes and hums deep in her throat, closes her hand over his wrist and keeps him there. Like she wants it.

Like it feels good.

They both know when it's time for her to go. No one has to say anything. She climbs out of the cab, and when she starts back down the road toward the farm she doesn't look back. That's normal now, that's how it always seems to go, and he watches her, because that's normal too. And after he can't see her anymore he stays there a while longer, radio on low, thinking. Mouthing words silently. Practicing.

give me a word, give me a sign

At some point he'll have to say them. At some point he won't have any other choice.

Note: lyric snatch is from Collective Soul's "Shine", little poetry scrap is from Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese".