Original Prompt: "There's a month when they can't afford electricity and Daryl is so mad at himself that he can't provide for her but Beth shows him how it can still be beautiful."

Logically, it was a series of events he'd had no real control over. Just a combination of inconvenient things all happening at the same time. The garage he worked at was going through a slow period and had cut down on hours, Beth had gotten sick from one of the kids at the daycare center and had to take off almost a whole week of work (unpaid) and missed her usual gigs singing at the bar in town, not to mention they'd had to fork over money for her medication… and on top of that the truck had broken down and required a costly part that had to be special ordered for him to fix it.

The result of all that was that after paying the rent and the heat and all the other bills, they'd been unable to pay the electric bill this month and their overzealous electric company had shut off the power.

So yeah, logically it wasn't really his fault… but of course Daryl wasn't really thinking logically. No, the word going round and round in his mind all day had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with his own guilt and low self esteem: Failure, failure, failure…

Never mind that Beth didn't seem to blame him. He blamed himself; for not providing better for her, for not finding a better way to stretch their money, for not giving her the best, like she deserved. It was bad enough she was living in this tiny little apartment with him instead of somewhere open and spacious like she deserved, but to add this on top of it all just seemed like even more of a failure.

His guilt didn't consider the fact that Beth seemed to love their tiny apartment. All-consuming, it pushed back memories of painting each of the rooms with her, of the care she took in finding beautiful (but inexpensive) things to decorate the space with or the delight she showed when the sun shone into the living room just right in the morning, or the way she looked so content every day when they got home every evening after work, or the way she lovingly called it our place or our home.

His guilt pushed those things back into the recesses of his mind. It was like a physical, tangible thing, a weight on his shoulders that curled black tendrils around every happy memory and dampened them, hid them away behind stormy clouds and kept only the negative in his mind.

Failure, failure, failure.

He had been in a black mood all day, since he'd gotten the text from Beth that the power had finally been cut off. It was her day off, but he'd gone into work to pick up a couple extra hours; they needed the money, after all. He should have done it sooner, should have fought to keep his hours or gain more, should have tried to pick up spare jobs to earn a bit of extra cash. That way, he thought as he climbed the stairs and slotted his key into the lock on their front door, he wouldn't be coming home to a disappointed Beth, to an apartment shrouded in darkness…

Only when he pushed open the front door, it wasn't darkness he saw at all. It was light. Not the yellowy-white glow of their overhead lights but the flickering orange-yellow glow of candles. Not one, or even several, but at least a dozen of them… probably even more. They were set on every available surface from the kitchen to his left to the living room on his right. He could even see a glimmer of light through the bedroom door across from the entrance where he had paused in surprise.

And standing amid it all, right in the center of the living room, was Beth. She wore a simple blue dress with her favorite brown cowboy boots. Her loose and wavy blonde hair seemed to glow in the candlelight, and a soft smile lit up her face even further as she watched him step into the living room and close the door behind him.

"I knew having that collection of candles would come in handy eventually," Beth said, her eyes lingering on him as he silently shrugged off his leather jacket and hung it on the back of the door. "I mean it's practical of course, but… don't you think it's beautiful, too?"

He turned to her again, drinking her in, hesitating only a moment before he crossed the room towards her in slow steps. But he stopped a foot away, his body still and unwilling to close that gap between them as if he felt unworthy of being any closer to her, of feeling the warmth of her body close to his.

"I think its beautiful," she whispered, looking up at him with that depth in her eyes that he knew meant she had more than just an inkling of exactly how he was feeling right now. How he was blaming himself. "I always thought our place looked gorgeous when the sun is shining through but it's even better lit by candles. We should do this all the time, whether we need to or not."

Perhaps it was that same understanding that kept her from closing the gap between them herself. Maybe she knew he needed to do it himself, or wanted him to do it consciously. Whatever the reason, she stayed where she was though her gaze never left his. "I know you so well, Daryl Dixon. I know all day you've been thinking this is your fault, but it's not. Sometimes, life is just… well, shitty." A faint smile quirked both their lips at the sound of her swearing; a rarity, even if it slipped out more now that she was with him.

"This sucks, but we'll get through it. And it's not so bad you know? These candles are lovely, to start. Plus we've got a gas stove, so we can still cook. I was thinking we could make a night of it." She sounded both excited and hopeful at the same time as she went on, "We could cook the hotdogs from the fridge before they go bad, break out the marshmallows and graham crackers and that bar of chocolate left over from the cookout at the farm last week and make s'mores? Hey… if you want, we can even make a blanket fort and sleep in it! Have you ever made a blanket fort before?"

When he shook his head, Beth's expression softened again and this time when she spoke, it was simple and honest and full of love, "Don't blame yourself, Daryl. I don't. This is just another bump in the road that we'll get through together. Just like we got through savin' up the money to pay the security deposit on this place, just like we got through me gettin' sick, and the truck breaking down… together. There's no way I'd rather get through any trouble I might face than at your side."

He couldn't hold back anymore, couldn't keep that distance from her when her words were exactly what he needed to hear. Daryl bridged the gap between them in just one step. And when she looked up at him and breathed out, "It's alright, Daryl. It's alright," he just wrapped his arms around her, and buried her head against her shoulder as she rose up on her toes and wrapped her arms right back around him.

And in the end, it wasn't the flickering light of the candles that banished the shadows of the guilt that had clung to him all day.

It was her. Beth Greene, and the sunshine of her honest, genuine love for him.

(And yeah, the candlelit living room was beautiful. But it was nowhere near as beautiful as her.)