Chapter 86: I'm beyond your peripheral vision so you might want to turn your head

Yet again, she comes over well after he gets home - not as late as before but a good bit after eight. She wasn't there when he ate dinner at the farm; she stayed in town with friends, went back to Becca's house with her to establish presence. Left when it seemed safe. And when she knocks and he opens the door and she pushes inside, it's not as frantic as the last time she did this. She's still on him and they still end up tangled on the bed, clumsily fucking only halfway naked and laughing and having to adjust their bodies more than once to avoid muscle cramps. It's fast, over in minutes, and they sprawl all over each other, coming down, slipping out of their clothes and wrapping around each other, and even with their previous speed there's a slow, lazy quality to everything. They don't have as much time together this weekend but he feels like they have all the time in the world.

Around nine-thirty they pull apart, he gets beer from the fridge, she orders pizza, and they eat it naked in bed, and he licks sauce off her fingers and then a few other places, and it tickles her more than anything else and she clutches at him and giggles fiercely.

She drinks her beer like she's an old hand and it's entirely unremarkable, casual and unhurried, and he watches her wrap her pretty lips around the neck of the bottle and he thinks about what a bad influence he is, and that makes him grin. Which makes her ask him why. Which leads to some playful verbal dodging. Which leads to her setting her beer down and tackling him, and they barely miss getting pizza all over the sheets as they roll and wrestle and laugh some more, and when that turns to more slow, easy kissing and slow, easy grinding a part of him slips back and reflects on the fact that this is the sweetest thing he's ever fucking known, the sweetest thing he expects to ever know.

This is the pinnacle, this thing he has with her. The apex of joy. After this, without this, things could only go down. Which is okay.

Because he's had it. Nothing can truly take this away from him.

Making each other come with their hands this time, and more sprawling. She lies on top of him, chin resting on her hands resting on his chest, and just looks at him for a while, and he looks back, weaving his fingers into her hair.

He doesn't need her like he did. It never hurts anymore, not that way. He steps away from her and he feels whole. But he's still so lost in this. She's lost with him. And he's looking at her like he's searing her into his mind.

So he won't forget.

And that's when the thump comes from downstairs, the loud, angry sound of a man's voice, another thump, something breaking, and he's already on his feet before he knows it.

Because somehow he already knows what it is.

He turns back to the bed. Beth is sitting up, odd shadows thrown across her and her eyes wide and bewildered - but focused. Sharp. She stares at him, and the voice comes to them again - words he can almost make out. Not just angry; there's a vicious quality to them that he recognizes. Like the syllables are meant to be blows in and of themselves.

Yes, he knows this very well.

"What-"

"Woman downstairs." He's lunging for his clothes, starting to dress so fast and so clumsily he's practically tripping over himself. No boots; it'll hamper his ability to move as quietly as he wants. He's lost track of the time but it has to be late - ten? Eleven? Doesn't matter. What matters is what he does next. "She's here gettin' away from her husband." He looks up at her in the act of sliding on his belt and her face is all comprehension, and he knows he doesn't have to say anything else. She nods.

She's also reaching for her own clothes, and he realizes that he's not the only variable up here, that he and Carol and Ed won't be the only variables down there, and all at once part of him is back on the broken pavement bank of that sudden and nightmarish river, reaching for her, her fingers slipping out of his.

He can't protect her from everything. And whatever anyone might think looking at her, she's practically a grown woman. But another promise he made then, one of his few, was that he would never again see her in danger because of him.

"You stay." He lifts a hand, points at her. At the bed. "Stay here."

She stops in the act of pulling on her jeans and her face darkens. "Daryl, I'm not-"

"Stay." Through his clenched teeth. He's turned away from her now, strapping his knife onto his belt, going for the crossbow in the corner. He whirls back to her; her jeans are on but her upper body is still bare, and he hopes maybe he's gotten through. "Call the cops. Tell 'em home invasion. Make it sound like it's you in trouble." It might not get them here any quicker than mention of a man possibly about to kill his wife. Then again, it might.

He's an expert on certain things that he wishes so much he had no knowledge of. But maybe right now he should be grateful.

Either way, what he is grateful for is that she's nodding again. And she looks like she means it, and she's going for her phone.

He could use the inside stairs. But no. For a variety of reasons - many having to do with surprise - no. He's most of the way to his front door when her voice comes from behind him and halts him for a second.

From below, more shouting. Carol's voice now in the mix, though lower. That's good.

"Are you gonna kill him?"

He glances back at her. Her face is pale, grave, but utterly unafraid.

"If I have to."

Which leaves things rather open to interpretation.

Moving silent as he can, silent as if he's hunting, he pulls open the door and slips out.

There were times - more and more of them as he got older - when he thought about Doing Something.

He had fantasies of running away, desperately vivid ones, but they weren't his only fantasies. Not at all. Lying in the dark hurting, or sprinting into the shadows among the trees, or cowering and hoping the drunken storm would just pass over him without emptying itself onto him, he thought about doing more than running and cowering and trying to protect his head and vital organs.

He thought about fighting back.

He could. There were weapons in the house. Will Dixon was a staunch believer in the Second Amendment - not that Daryl isn't also, to be honest, at least in a decidedly apolitical way because he doesn't give two shits about politics but sometimes you just need a fucking gun - and owned guns. Plural. And he didn't keep them locked up or unloaded, and he taught his boys to use them, in his own violent style of instruction. Daryl was shooting a gun from the age of seven. He wasn't afraid of them and he knew what they could do to living things. Because by then he was also being forced to kill, and then no one had to force him, and even if he didn't like it he wasn't afraid of that either.

He knew how to shoot a gun. He knew where at least one was, at all times. He knew how to use knives; he knew where those were too. Had one of his own. As he crashed into a terrified and painful adolescence, he was beginning to learn to use a bow, discovering that he had a special talent there.

Will Dixon taught his sons to kill, and to be good at it. Not people, but Daryl was possessed of a powerful imagination, and he imagined that taking down a buck and taking down a human probably weren't all that different in the end in terms of the process.

The man must have believed himself immortal.

Or might not have cared.

He fantasized about fighting back. He fantasized about shoving a gun into his father's face, pistol-whipping him, stanced with the bow in his hands and ready to send a bolt straight into his father's forehead. Pulling a knife on him. Stabbing him. Killing him, but also hurting him, because he deserved to hurt, because he deserved at least a small taste of what he had been dishing out for years.

Protecting his brother. Protecting his mother. Saving them. Not being a hero - because he never thought that way about himself at any point in his entire life; it seemed and seems antithetical to everything he is - but simply ending it. Making it stop. For the family he loved - a twisted, poisoned, fiercely intense love that he never felt for anyone again - and not having to watch them suffer anymore.

Then he was alone. And he thought about protecting himself. As it got worse and worse, he thought about it more and more.

But he never did. Never. He left, but he never once truly fought back, not beyond a few pathetic attempts with his fists. Something stopped him. He has no idea what it was; he knows only that it was strong enough to destroy most of his deepest instincts of self-preservation.

He thought it was weakness, not fighting like his fantasies. He thought it was weakness, to be unable to murder his father in cold blood. He thought the lack of ice in his veins made him weak.

As with so very many other things now, he's no longer so sure.

The stairs are freezing against his bare feet but he hardly notices. He's not tracking but his brain is doing something very similar, that kind of hypnotized hyper-focus - minimizing the sound of his passage down the stairs, making himself as light as possible, every sense open and hungry for everything it can drag into itself. The voices - closer now, the man's voice still much louder, but he can still hear Carol, and she doesn't sound like she's in pain. Angry, scared - yes, he can hear those things. But if she's been hurt, it's not bad, and she's not being hurt this very moment.

The stillness in the night, beyond and above those sounds. The weight of the bow in his hands. This is awful, and he might have to do something he really, really doesn't want to do, but a sliver of this is almost comfortable.

Down to the walk and around the house, keeping himself low, quick and quiet. He glances up as he passes the living room windows, heading for the porch; the curtains are drawn and there's light, but the light is at a weird angle, and after a second or two of pondering - still moving - he guesses it's because a lamp has been knocked down.

If it looks like it makes the most sense to go in the front, he'll go in the front. If it doesn't, there's the back - which might very well be locked, but he'll worry about that if and when he has to.

But the front door is open.

Not much. Not so much that it would be visible from the street. But enough. It's an advantage, and in a dim way he's grimly pleased about it.

The porch steps creak as he pads up them, but softly enough that he's comfortable no one will hear him. Bow ready but lowered, one hand on the knob, and he pushes it smoothly inward.

The light is indeed weird, and it does indeed appear that a lamp has been knocked down and the shade knocked askew - or off, he can't tell from the front hall. He's wondering how the fuck Ed got in, given that he can't imagine Carol would willingly allow him to enter, but he glances back at the door and the edge of it is splintered, the chain lock ripped loose and dangling.

More yelling from the living room. "-stupid fuckin' bitch, can't believe you'd fuckin' dare, you're gonna be so fuckin' sorry when she's back here-"

And Carol's voice. Strained, shaking, but level. Barely audible. "She's not coming back, Ed. She's not ever coming back. Doesn't matter what you do here. You're never going to see her again."

"She's my blood. She's mine." Something else breaking - pottery of some kind. China.

"No one's yours, Ed. Sure as shit not the way you were starting to put your hands on her." Carol's voice twists up into thin, fine contempt. "Or did you think I didn't notice?"

And all the tense calm in him disintegrates and a red mist descends.

She didn't tell him that part.

It's stupid. He's stupid. It doesn't seem stupid, and in the seconds he watches himself act he understands that the stupidity may very well lie within the thoughtlessness, not the outcome. But regardless, it's like he blinks and he's in the wreckage of the living room, fallen lamp and splintered chair and overturned table, what looks like a couple of broken decorative plates against the far wall, and Carol backed against it - bleeding from a split at the corner of her lower lip but not cowering. Standing straight, her own tense calm still clearly in place. She hadn't been kidding before, him or herself.

She's scared, yes. But more than anything she's really pissed off.

And Ed. Ed is just a man, he knows that too, but in the fallen light and the shadows it's hurling around the room, he's a grotesque hulk in a bulky winter coat, somehow both too large and small, piggish. Daryl can't see his face but what he can see is utterly hateful, the set of the man's shoulders and his upraised fist, hateful and so fucking familiar, and the bow is up and Ed is in his sights.

Little bit of pressure and he dies.

"Don't fuckin' move."

To his credit, Ed has the sense to do as he's told. Then again it's probably just shock, and shock won't last. Daryl would love to believe he's not too stupid to push his luck here.

He would love to believe that.

"You ain't got no part of this," Ed says, not turning. Beyond him, Carol's gaze is locked on Daryl's face, pale and tight. "Dunno who the fuck you are, but this ain't nothin' to do with you."

"Think you're wrong 'bout that." It has everything to do with me, you disgusting prick. "Turn around. Slow."

Ed doesn't move. Then he does, and when his face comes into view somehow Daryl isn't in the least surprised.

The man is ugly. Not in an overt way, and not in a frightening way - his face is pudgy, sagging, and he looks like a sullen, surly child more than anything else. In fact once many years ago he might have been good-looking, and what makes him ugly is the childishness, the meanness in him and the offense, the clear sense that he feels he's entitled to all of this and Daryl is indeed intruding on something he has no right to interfere with.

And he's scared. Under it all he's scared. But he's trying not to be, trying not to let it show, and there's something about that visible effort that makes Daryl uneasy.

This man is stupid, and stupid in a way Will Dixon never was.

Ed looks at the crossbow, looks at him, pulls his lips back in a sneer. "You gonna shoot me?"

"Ain't gonna promise not to."

"Who the hell is this cocksucker, Carol?" Ed glances back, a furtive jerk of his head. "You fuckin' him, you cheatin' slut?"

"What if I was?" She's moving now, edging out from behind him and making her way toward Daryl. "Wouldn't be any of your fucking business, Ed. Not anymore."

"You're my wife."

"Told you. No one is your anything. Sure as hell not me. Not for much longer, anyway."

Ed's gaze flicks from her to the bow to Daryl's eyes, to her again. Still furtive - crafty. Not smart, but sly. Motherfucker is staring down a bolt to the head and he's still looking for an angle. "Everything I did for you all those years. Provided for you. Made it so you didn't have to work a day in your worthless life. And this is how you repay me."

Carol reaches Daryl, stops at his elbow. She's not looking at him, or the bow, but Daryl can see her face in the periphery of his vision, and more than anything she looks weary. Almost bored. "Shut up, Ed. Just shut the fuck up. I literally could not possibly care any less about you right now. You might still have a couple of minutes to walk out of here. Not that you're smart enough to take them."

It's not that Daryl has never seen this in her. He has. There's nothing surprising about it. But seeing it now, in a small and quiet way he's almost awed. Because he never saw this anywhere else. Never saw his mother like this. She never could have done it.

She was too ruined inside.

But he narrows his eyes. "He ain't goin' nowhere."

"Daryl, please." Still tired. She shoots him a look - brief but all the weariness in her voice is in that look. "He used to be my husband, let me-"

Ed might be stupid, and Ed might be a revolting porcine bully of a man, and Ed might be a sick fuck who was putting his hands on his own daughter. But Ed is also fast.

Faster than he appears. Much faster than he should be. That alone is his advantage because of Daryl's sheer surprise, and Ed ducks beneath the line of fire, lunges, catches Carol around the waist with a hooked arm and slams her into Daryl. The air bursts out of his lungs in a pained grunt and he stumbles back, groping one-handed for her shoulder as she stumbles too, the bow rendered practically useless. He scrambles to disentangle himself without knocking Carol down, shoving past her and trying to bring the bow up again, and Ed is whirling by the living room entranceway and reaching into his coat pocket, and Daryl knows what Ed is going for before he even sees the gun beginning to emerge.

Fuck, this stupid fucking idiot is actually going to make him kill him.

Or something much worse is going to happen. Because Ed is fast.

"You filthy whore," Ed snarls. "I'll show you-"

The crack sounds so loud that for a split second Daryl is certain Ed has pulled the trigger. But the gun isn't even aimed, and he stands there, wavers, and his eyes cross and roll back and he crumples with bizarre, nearly ponderous slowness, blood starting to run down the side of his neck.

Behind him, flushed and furious and unutterably beautiful with the branch in her hands pulled back to take another swing, is Beth.

He stares at her. She glares down at Ed. He has no idea what Carol is doing.

She nudges Ed with the toe of her boot - Ed twitches and moans thickly, so he doesn't appear to be dead - and looks up at Daryl and over his shoulder at what he vaguely presumes is Carol. "Are you alright?"

He should answer her. Answer her and then go to her, haul her against him, hold on tight and be so relieved that this didn't end the way it might have. Instead he lowers the bow, his hands trembling slightly, and drags in a breath, and when his voice comes out it's strained, hard-edged. Threaded with anger. "Thought I told you to stay back."

This time the full force of that glare is on him, and it's considerable. Suddenly he feels about two feet tall. "You're welcome."

And sirens, rapidly increasing in volume.

He's trying to process everything, the crossbow still lowered at his side. What happened here. What's going on. What this is going to look like to an outside observer - probably exactly what it fucking is, which is good - and what they're going to have to do next. Carol moves past him in silence, going for Ed, and he sees her and Beth lock gazes and something pass between them that he can't define.

The bow might not be something he wants to be found with. It might be awkward, even if Ed tells all about it later on. There are a couple of weapons here that should be dealt with, actually.

Carol is one step ahead of him, dropping to one knee and plucking the gun out from under Ed's limp hand. She handles it as if it's a dead rat. She looks back up at him, nods at the bow.

"Stash it in the basement."

There isn't much else to do but what she says, so he does that.

The police cruiser is pulling up outside by the time he comes back. Beth has leaned the branch in the corner but she's not far from it - something he notes with approval, whatever else he's feeling about that whole deal. Ed doesn't look as though he's going to be fully conscious for a good long time, and given how much he's bleeding from the gash on the back of his head, he'll be lucky if he gets off with only a pretty fun concussion.

Branches and head wounds and concussions. This is also sort of familiar.

Carol has placed the gun on a side table a safe distance away and is holding a kitchen towel to the back of Ed's head. She's doing this with no affection, no sense of care - really no emotion whatsoever, and Daryl suspects that she's doing it far more for the sake of the floor than this man who had the audacity to think of her as his wife.

Knock on the door; the quality of the sound and then the voice announcing itself as belonging to the police reminds him that he never fully closed it.

Beth steps away from her place close to the wall, bends and touches Carol's shoulder. "I'll get it."

She goes.

Carol looks up at him. Still tired, yes - of course she is, and even more so than she had been. There's a flat quality to her expression that he doesn't much like, and her lip is bleeding sluggishly, but otherwise she seems all right.

He moves over to her, drops into a crouch. From the front hall comes Beth's voice in quiet conversation with two distinct others, both male. But it's all distant, and all he can see for now is the blood at the corner of her mouth, streaking down to her jaw.

Perhaps she's forgotten about it.

He reaches out, unthinking, and lays his fingertips against her chin, gently tilts her face so he can see her better. She doesn't resist, her eyes slipping halfway closed. It's really not all that bad, and his relief must be visible, because she smiles tightly. Very small. Trying not to stretch her lips.

"He hits hard, but he has lousy aim. And he's slow."

He ducks his head, hand dropping away, and just then the two police officers walk in, trailed by Beth, and the whole thing begins.

It's not really very complicated, in the end. Neither man seems interested in making it more than it has to be. One of them - dark-haired and broad with a bit of a swagger - takes care of cuffing Ed and dragging him upright, smacking him into enough muscle tension to get him out to the cruiser, while the other takes Carol aside and talks to her. Of the two, he seems to be setting the pace and the approach, and his approach is calm, his voice low and level, and when he speaks to Carol it softens without being condescending. He shoots Daryl a look, a nod, and the message is fairly clear.

Stay put. Gonna talk to you.

Daryl mostly makes it his business to keep out of the way, and Beth is doing the same. It's awkward for so many goddamn reasons, standing in the wreckage of this living room and this evening, standing close but still at a safe distance from each other, not speaking. He has no idea what to say to her. It's clear enough that she's annoyed with him, but she doesn't seem actually angry. She's watching Carol, arms crossed over her chest, and now and then her attention flicks to Ed, and when that happens her face chills.

He's opening his mouth to say something - fuck if he knows what - when she gets there first, speaking without looking at him.

"My grandpa beat my grandma."

He blinks at her.

In some universe there might be a correct response to that

"Beat Daddy, too." Her mouth twists sharply, almost wry. "Beat just about everybody he could get his hands on. I never knew him." She pauses. "I'm glad."

Words continue to refuse to have anything to do with him. But he's starting to wonder if that might not be a good thing. Because maybe he doesn't have to say anything right now. Maybe that's not what she's expecting, not what she wants. Maybe he shouldn't say anything.

"Daddy said somethin' when he told me about it." She takes a breath and she does look at him then, and her eyes are clear and strong and they pierce him.

The door fell open
and I knew I was saved
and could bear him

"He said some men don't earn the love of their sons."

Nothing. The officer talking to Carol seems to be finishing up, is glancing at the two of them. His face isn't unkind, but there's a sharp quality to his eyes that grabs and holds and cautions against fucking-with. So this might be yet another awkward thing, this conversation. Then again it might be fine.

A brush of something against his hand. Warm skin. Beth. Her fingers. "I'm glad you were here," she says softly, and moves away toward the kitchen - into which Carol is already vanishing - leaving him and Officer Friendly to regard each other in gauging silence.

Daryl doesn't like cops. Never has. He's never had any reason to like cops, and many reasons to dislike them. They've either been a pain in the ass, obnoxious, trying to fill monthly quotas, outright crooked and fucking with him and Merle and everyone they used to surround themselves with simply for the pleasure of it, or they've been useless. They were never going to help him. Never going to help his mother, Merle, anyone. Not poor white trash like them; poor white trash beating on each other was just the order of the day.

He feels no specific dislike for this particular cop. He seems fine, for what it's worth. He seems like he might be decent; he feels decent. But Daryl still doesn't like cops.

Ed Peletier is in their car and hopefully won't get out again anywhere but into a cell for a good stretch, so he should probably get the fuck over it and talk to the guy.

"Seems pretty straightforward," the officer says, coming toward him. "But why don't you give me a name, tell me what happened."

So - carefully and using as few words as humanly possible - Daryl does.

He lives in the apartment upstairs. He was aware that Carol was in the process of separating herself from a husband who liked to use her as a punching bag. He heard the noise, came down, found the front door open. Found Ed inside. Confronted him, the man started to pull a gun-

And there's the matter of Beth. He doesn't know what Carol said - or didn't say - about Beth. And this might not be anything worth getting freaked out over, because Beth is eighteen and there's no reason to assume that this man or his partner knows her or her family...

But there is the matter of Beth.

He's spent the last four months lying. A man who has never liked lying, never been very good at it, he has nevertheless spent the last four months living an enormous, elaborate lie, and just because it's a lie by omission, that doesn't change the fact that it's a fucking lie.

And maybe it's better to lie to as few people as possible right now.

"She came in. Girl in the kitchen. Got him with that branch over there, he went down. That's all."

The officer is taking all of this down, pen rustling softly. "Who's the girl?"

"You gonna talk to her?"

"For a couple minutes, yeah." The pen stops, lowers, and Daryl is grabbed and held by those don't-fuck-with-me eyes. "Who is she, Mr. Dixon?"

Who indeed.

"Her name's Beth Greene," he says, and he may or may not be leaping off a cliff and dragging her with him. "She was upstairs with me."

The pen still isn't moving. "What's her relationship to you?"

He has no fucking idea how to even begin to answer that.

"She was with me," he repeats - simply. That simple. Nothing else is presenting itself.

The officer doesn't move, doesn't speak. Just looks at him, and Daryl looks back. The eyes - a bright, clear blue not entirely unlike Beth's - are what they are and are saying what they're saying, but he's not intimidated by them, and he doesn't think he's meant to be so. This man isn't interested in throwing any weight around. He merely wants to know things.

"Alright," he says at last, and the pen resumes its swift passage down the page. "Hope you'll forgive me for asking, Mr. Dixon, but is she over sixteen?"

Yes, he can forgive that. "Eighteen."

"You know I can check that."

"I ain't an idiot."

"No, I don't think you are." Once more the pen stills and this time it does so with an air of finality, underlined when it and the notepad are lowered. "Anyway, like I said. Seems pretty straightforward."

Daryl nods. But there's no relief in the conclusion of this, and after half a second's thought he realizes that it's because he doesn't want it to be concluded. Not yet. Not when he hasn't done something. Not when he hasn't made as sure as he can that this man understands what straightforward actually consists of. He trusts Carol to be clear, to be blunt, but he still can't let it go.

And he has his own side of this. Regardless of what Officer Friendly thinks of him, what he's about to do might be the stupidest thing he's ever done. But a long time ago he told Beth that when you didn't know, when you couldn't be sure, you looked to your gut, to your instincts, and you trusted them.

So.

"He was gonna kill her," he says quietly. "He was gonna kill her, probably me. Or he was gonna have a good fuckin' try. That girl, she saved our lives." He steps the tiniest bit closer, dropping his voice even more. "She ain't supposed to be here. Ain't doin' no one no harm, she just... She ain't supposed to. She's a good girl. Please don't make her life hard."

The officer is silent, face utterly impassive. It's out now, there's nothing else to be done, and there's no sense in pleading and he wouldn't plead anyway. But he takes a breath, looks the man in those clear, keen eyes, and puts everything he is into the words.

"Ain't got nothin' to do with what happened here tonight. Please."

Nothing. Daryl waits.

At last something shifts in the man's face. Not softens, not exactly, but he's no longer wearing a cool mask, and what Daryl sees there solidifies it for him: this is a decent man. This is a man who's not out to hurt anyone he doesn't have to.

"I can't promise it won't come up," he says, voice as low and quiet as Daryl's. "But if it does, ain't gonna be 'cause of me."

Daryl hadn't let out the breath he had taken. He does so, and what floods him still isn't exactly relief, but it's something close to it.

"Turns out she's a minute under sixteen, I'll nail your ass to the wall."

The corner of Daryl's mouth twitches upward. That's about all he can do.

"I'm gonna go talk to her, then." He reaches into the pocket of his jacket, searching for something, and pulls out a small white card. "Not sure why we'd have any reason to speak, assuming this is all what it seems like, but if you need to get in touch with me, that's how."

Daryl takes the card. He devoutly hopes he'll never have to talk to this man again. But he supposed it's still good to have a name.

"Thank you for your help, Mr. Dixon."

The officer leaves him to look down at the card. After a moment there are voices in the kitchen.

All at once Daryl is very, very tired.

He pockets the card and turns in place, surveying the mess. Then, mostly because he's not sure what else to do, he starts to clean things up.

This could have ended so much worse. It technically still might not end well. But he's not worried about that, not about what he said. For what that was worth, it went about as well as it possibly could have. He believes what the man told him. Every instinct in him is in agreement about that being something he can trust.

He doesn't like cops, no. But Rick Grimes might be okay.

The broken things obviously won't be fixed. Not here, not tonight, and the splintered furniture and broken plates are a lost cause. But by the time Grimes leaves and the cruiser pulls away and the house is quiet again, he's cleared away most of the larger broken pieces and set the overturned things upright. For the smaller stuff he'll need a dustpan.

He should go into the kitchen anyway. He hasn't heard anything much from that direction since the front door closed.

Carol is there, seated at the table, a blood-spotted towel in front of her. Beth is standing at the stove, setting a kettle onto a burner. She tosses a glance over her shoulder as he comes in and gives him a minuscule smile. He can tell she's still annoyed with him. At least a bit.

Carol is crying.

Not hard. Not loud. Not weak. Not ugly, not wracked with shaking or sobs. It's a loose, low-key kind of crying, folded hands in front of her face almost as if she's in prayer, and he recognizes it immediately. Intimately.

It's release. It's what happens to your body when you let something go.

He goes to her, sits down next to her. He's close, but he doesn't reach for her, and he doesn't speak. She'll reach out, when she's ready. If she wants to.

Beth leans against the counter, one hand in the pocket of her jeans and the other combing loose hair back from her face. "Everything's fine. He didn't have a lot of questions for me."

"Me neither."

They're using very few words to talk about a number of things.

"He seemed alright," she says. "He seemed... good."

Daryl nods.

And then there's more silence for a while. Beth makes tea, brings a mug of it over along with the sugar bowl, cream from the fridge - moving right in, Daryl notes, not unlike how she has upstairs, but this is different. She's doing this because she has to, because someone has to, because right now someone needs to take the situation and hold it until Carol can pick it up again and take it from here. He watches her do this, this girl many people would still consider a child, and he knew she was strong, thinks he might know it better than anyone except her, but what he's seeing here is stunning.

No fear, no hand-wringing, no angst. No uncertainty. She's identified a job that needs doing and she's doing it, and she's doing it with all the care in the world for a woman she's known for all of a single ugly fragment of an evening.

Because that's what she does. That's who she is. There was never anything else she could have done.

I'm glad you were here.

Gradually Carol's tears dry up and she straightens, wipes at her eyes, picks up the mug and drinks - no cream, no sugar, and taking big, deep swallows. And at last she sits back, hands curved around the mug, and looks at him. At them. The light in the kitchen is bright but not hard, and it smooths her out. Somehow she looks a little younger.

Or maybe that's not the light at all. Daryl knows what vampires do to you. Real ones.

"I'm alright," she says, and he knows she is. "He's..." She laughs, a dry puff of air. Nothing more than that, but a laugh all the same. "He's nothing. He's just... He's nothing. He's nobody. He's just something I'm putting away." She stares at the mug in her hands, her brow slightly furrowed. "I knew that before. But I really know it now."

"You gonna press charges?"

She gives him a tight smile. "I'm going to crush the bastard. Any way I can." She lets out a long breath and closes her eyes. "Then I'm going to Indiana, and I'm going to take Sophia and we're going to start over."

"Good," Beth murmurs, and Carol opens her eyes, reaches and closes a hand over the beaded leather crosses on Beth's wrist.

"Thank you." She reaches out with her other hand, and when her fingers close around Daryl's he squeezes. "Thank you both. I..." She shakes her head. "That's all. Just thank you. I don't really know what else to say."

"Don't gotta say nothin'."

"No. I don't." She cocks her head to one side, shifting her gaze to Beth, and suddenly she looks thoughtful. Thoughtful, and a little wondering. "I don't have to do anything now. Except get through this. Then..."

And she laughs again, and the laugh has some voice behind it. She's behind it. "Figure out how to live in the world."

They offer to stay with her, finish cleaning up, but she brushes them off. Her tears have dried up, and not only does she seem all right, but Daryl thinks she might seem more all right than he has since he's known her. She says she'll clear away the rest of the debris and really she would rather do it alone. Take her mind off things for a bit. She might not sleep much. And that's all right too. She has some more thinking to do.

"We'll be up there, you need anything."

She takes his hand in hers again, standing in the hall by the stairs, and reaches up to tug his head gently down and press a kiss to his brow. "I know."

Another smile for Beth, warm and small. Then they take those stairs and leave the wreckage behind, climbing in mutual silence and in that mutual silence returning to the room.

The silence persists for a few minutes. Beth heads to the bathroom and he hears the water running, hears it splashing into the basin. He makes his way over to the kitchen, pulls the whiskey out of its cabinet, takes a swallow and then another. He's exhausted, but he's not sure how much sleeping he'll do tonight, either. The adrenaline has long since seeped out of his blood, but what it left behind is jittery and a bit fractured. He saw something tonight he honestly never thought he'd see.

And he Did Something. Finally. And he wasn't alone.

That girl, she saved our lives.

Footsteps in the hall. Beth, returning, and when she enters the room she makes a beeline for the kitchen, plucks the bottle out of his hand and tips it back. She makes the same face she did last time, but she swallows, eyes closed in her own species of almost-relief, and leans back against the counter that serves as half divider, facing him.

The silence lingers for a moment. She's looking at him, her expression difficult to read. He bites at his lip, takes hold of a center, finds some words. The words he owes her, that feel right.

"I'm sorry. 'bout down there. What I said."

She rolls a shoulder. "You were scared."

"Yeah, but-"

"You were scared, and that's okay. But Daryl... You can't protect me. I mean, I figured you'd know that. I'm not a kid, I don't need you to. Figured you'd know that too."

"I do." Suddenly he feels beseeching, sounds it in his own ears, is sure he looks it. "But Beth... You can't..."

She frowns a bit and sets the bottle down on the counter beside her. "What?"

"How much you remember? The flood?"

She frowns harder, but it's clearly because she's taking some internal stock. "I... Not a whole lot. I guess... I remember bein' in the water, I remember you grabbin' for me. Pullin' me out. I remember I was cold. I remember I couldn't breathe, and then I could. I think I remember you carryin' me. Lights and sirens, people yellin'. Why?"

"I saw you go down. I grabbed for you the first time and I lost you, and I saw you go under. What you did, your wrist..." He drags in a tight breath. This is kind of awful, it's kind of hard to look at her - her face going simultaneously dark and pale - but he doesn't have to try for the words. They're just coming. "Yeah, they all saw it after, but no one was with you. No one saw you do it. You didn't say, anyhow."

"No one was with me," she says softly. Barely more than a breath. "I was alone."

"I know it ain't the same, I know that, but I... I did see it, and swear to fuckin' God, Beth, I thought you were dead. Got you outta the water and you weren't breathin', and I thought it all over again. Then they took you away and I didn't know where you were. It was hell. It was fuckin' hell."

He's honestly not sure he's ever said this much to her in one single stretch. Not even when he came to her and told her what he could, about him and Merle and about everything. And she's just looking at him, in her pale ineffable silence.

"If you got hurt tonight, if you got... Think about that. Just think about it for a sec." You. Me. What it would do. Having to explain to your goddamn family. Knowing it. That it was me who put you there, that I might as well have done it myself. "Havin' to live with that." His voice drops. Shakes a little. But his eyes remain dry. "Bet your ass I was scared."

For another long moment she says nothing at all. As for him, he's run out of words. There just aren't any more. So he pushes away from the counter and leans forward, takes the bottle, leans back again and lets it flow down his throat.

He doesn't want to get drunk, no. But he doesn't really want to be sober, either.

He's just setting it down again when she crosses the distance between them and curls her arms around his waist and presses her face against his chest. Everything in him loosens, trembles, and then his eyes are stinging after all as he wraps her up and lays his cheek against the crown of her head, breathes her in. Beyond her, half obscured by the tousled golden cloud of her hair, is the space they've been sharing - rumpled sheets, a half empty pizza box, half empty beer bottles. Happiness and light.

Everything started so simple. Relatively. Got complicated so damn fast.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry you were scared. I'm sorry I made you scared." She lifts her head, tips it back and looks gravely up at him. "But when you told me to stay, you didn't let me choose. I know you didn't want me to get hurt, but..." She sighs. "I told you. I'm not a child. If something happens, if it's bad but I think I can help... It's not your choice. It's mine. I'm not like you, I know I don't look like much, but I made it, and you don't get to save me. Not like that."

He nods. There is quite literally nothing else to do.

Except then he lifts his hands and frames her face, and he hurts, aches, and he's still so afraid, because she's right. He doesn't get to. He can want to, he can try, but he doesn't get to. He pulled her out of the water, but she went in for the boy, she chose to do it, and if he had tried to stop her...

It wouldn't have been his choice to make.

"I love you," he breathes, and she smiles, and it's a little sad. Just a little.

"I love you too." She leans up and kisses his mouth, light and almost chaste, but he can feel the ferocity behind it. Because she is not and never was a goddess and she doesn't need to be. She's strong and brave and beautiful and absolutely terrifying, and he loves her more than he knows he will ever love anything in his entire life. "If you love me, you'll let me choose."

So he will.

"You're not like me." He says it in a whisper, can't manage any more than that, and he strokes her cheeks with his thumbs and somehow he can still breathe. "You're more."

He pulls her back in before she can answer and parts her lips with his, gentle and almost delicate, and he kisses her for a while. She tastes like whiskey and pizza and very decent beer, and for a time he manages to forget everything else. And of course they end up back in bed, and like the kissing there's something almost delicate about it, how he settles between her legs and lifts her thighs high on his hips, moves slowly inside her until she's trembling and rolling her body up, pushing him back to give her space to reach between them and send herself over and take him with her.

And it's good. It's very good. But after, lying in the dark with her curled close and so soft and warm, stroking her hair and watching her eyes dart beneath her lids in whatever dream she's found, he's gripped and held - like Rick Grimes's eyes - by the feeling that this was yet another kind of goodbye. To an illusion to which he was clinging without really knowing it - and maybe to something else.

He's not a child. Neither is she. Those days have been over for a long time. The good days happen, are happening, but they'll never be like they were.

That's all right. But it's also true. And doesn't he have words for this? Not his own, but they fit.

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.

Note: Poem bits are Mary Oliver's "A Visitor" and "In Blackwater Woods".