"Well, I'll be,"
Her voice stopped Daryl dead in his tracks.
He was already in utter disbelief before he even turned around to face her. Actually, seeing her only stunned him more.
"Being outside of Georgia sure looks good on you, Dixon."
His legs would have given out beneath him if he hadn't been fighting so hard to keep it all together.
"Beth?"
How was she here? The last time he saw her, she was…
"Fancy meetin' you here." She said in her signature southern drawl.
Normally, Daryl would have had some sort of sarcastic remark in response, but he was still working on regaining the ability to form words…or even thoughts, really.
"You know, I always thought Paris was so romantic." Beth continued.
She always knew how to fill in the gaps between their awkward silences.
Daryl looked at the streets and buildings of the city around them, trying to understand her sentiment, but it was lost on him.
"Well, not how it is now, but before, you know?"
He could only offer a grunt as a response.
"I took French in high school. I thought it would make me seem sexy. Knowing what pamplemousse means is all I have to show for it."
He still didn't know what to say, mostly because there was so much that we wanted to say—too much, even.
"Do you want to go somewhere so we can talk?"
Yes—he begged the words to leave his throat, but he could only muster up a nod in agreement. With the cock of his head, he communicated to her that he wanted her to follow him.
He knew a place they could go.
"Beth, how are you here?" Daryl finally managed to ask.
They sat across from each other at a table in an abandoned apartment he found.
"I could ask you the same thing." She retorted.
"It's a long story." He felt like a jerk for being so short with her—especially with her—but he still wasn't one for sharing.
"So is mine." She reminded him.
Sensing that Daryl wasn't going to voluntarily give up information, Beth spoke first.
"Well, how'd the Georgia born and bred Daryl Dixon end up in Paris, France?"
"It don't matter how I got here." He argued.
"It does to me." She replied with force. A force so strong, it shook him to his core.
He had forgotten how passionate she could be, but he wouldn't let her distract him from getting what he wanted.
"Beth, I need to know what happened to you. After all this time, I thought…"
"That I was dead?" She bitterly finished for him. "I guess I don't blame you, everyone else probably thought the same."
"It ain't like that. It was just—odds were—you know," he was rambling and he hated it.
"Well, I always said you would be the last man standing." She smirked.
That statement enraged him just as much now as it did back when she first made it.
But then, he noticed a shift in her expression from snarky to void of any emotion. Something must have just occurred to her.
"Are you the last man standing?"
He knew what she was asking.
"No," was all he said. He didn't dare elaborate and he quickly followed up with a question to redirect her back to talking about herself. "What happened to you out there, Beth?"
"Well," she gave in, "at some point, those assholes who kidnapped me got a flat tire and when they opened the trunk to grab the spare, I took my chance."
Just like Daryl, she didn't elaborate, but he had a feeling he knew why.
Even when it came down to her own survival, Beth never got used to the idea of taking another life.
"After that, I decided to head east. I figured my best bet was to find my way to a port in Savannah. When I did, as luck would have it, I found a group preparing a small yatch to sail. I believe it took us almost two months to get to France."
Daryl relaxed his tensed shoulders.
Beth had found a way to survive, just as he had hoped she would.
"I didn't really want to leave you all behind, but I knew I'd probably die if I tried to get back to you."
She was right. As much as he wished they had been reunited sooner, it could have been all for not.
"I feel stupid admitting this now, but I thought maybe the rest of the world was fine. That it was just us that had the walking dead. Unfortunately, they seem to be everywhere. I guess I still had a lot of growing up to do." She said with a shrug.
"You weren't stupid for thinking that, Beth." He comforted her. "Everything went to shit so fast. We had no news. No communication with the outside world. We had no idea about the scale of this thing."
Beth brushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear and then brought the steaming mug of tea—clutched tightly in her hands—closer to her body, relying on the water vapor to keep her warm.
Daryl caught himself looking around the room in search of a spare blanket or anything to help her, but he had next to nothing.
He could keep her warm—the thought came to mind, but he quickly pushed the idea aside.
"Are you close to the group you have now?"
He didn't know why he asked that or why he even cared to know the answer. Well, he did, he just refused to acknowledge it.
"No, at least, not compared to our group at the prison. It's like I told you after we lost Zach—I can't afford to get attached to anyone else."
It was odd hearing Beth sound so detached, but then again, years had gone by since they were last together—almost a decade. They were different people than they were back then.
Technically, he hadn't heard those exact words from her, but he could tell. One doesn't go through what they've gone through—survive the way they have—without being fundamentally changed.
He knew that best of all. For what little time they had spent together on the run, she had changed him.
He never had a chance to admit it, not to anyone, and especially not her. He had come close at the funeral home, but then everything had gone to hell in a hand basket.
Her lack of an emotional response in this moment truly was surprising to him, but—what he found even more surprising—was how he was handling all of it.
He didn't understand how he wasn't overrun with guilt for not being there for her or with grief for how much she had lost, or even anger with himself for not having fought harder to find her.
"I never blamed you for leaving me, you know?" Beth said, as if she had read his mind.
How forgiveness came so easily to her, he would never understand.
She was always able to see the best in people. Unlike him, he only ever saw the worst. Especially, in himself.
"I should have tried harder to get you back."
"No, Daryl, you were right to stick with the group once you found them." She argued.
"Well, then I should have gotten them all together so that we could have gone out and searched for you." He countered.
"And risk losing more lives? It wasn't worth it." She continued to fight him.
"Don't say that, Beth. You were — are worth it, to me." He corrected himself. "I never got the chance to tell you, but that night, I was gonna say…"
God damn it, even after all this time, he still struggled to say the words he most desperately wanted her to hear from him.
"I know, Daryl. You said it. Maybe not with words, but you don't chase after a car for miles because of what is in the trunk without it meaning something."
She could read him like a book and he was eternally grateful for it.
"Things could'a been different." He voiced his theory while he avoided making eye contact with her. Instead, he chose to stare at his twiddling thumbs.
"They could have, but who's to say, really?" She responded. "I think it all happened like it was supposed to."
"Like how God intended, huh?" He asked.
"Honestly, I don't even know if I believe in God anymore, but that's a story for another time."
Another time?
He hoped that was a promise.
"So," she tugged at the loose threads on her shirt, "are you here alone?"
She was just as stubborn as he was and she wasn't going to give up on getting him to talk.
He decided he had let her wait long enough.
"I mean, I had some help getting here, but yeah. It's…uh…just me."
"And the others?"
He spent their whole reunion debating on how much or even if he should tell her what happened after she was taken. He was still trying to protect her from the pain.
"You can tell me, Daryl. I can take it."
She grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze.
"I know you can, but that doesn't make it hurt any less."
There was so much that she didn't know. So much that would break her heart if she knew.
He heard her take a deep breath in preparation.
So, he told her.
He told her about Rick, Michonne, Carl, and Judith.
He told her about Maggie, Glenn, and Hershel Jr.
He told her everything.
She said nothing throughout, but her body language told him everything she was feeling. From her deflated posture to the fire that sparked in her eyes—he saw her experience it all with every fate he revealed, and by the end, she looked just about as exhausted as he was.
She sighed and pushed back from the table. "Well, I suppose I've overstayed my welcome."
She stood and made for the door.
He realized that she was a running—something he would normally do—but he wasn't about to let her.
He grabbed her by the hand and made her jump. He reminded himself not to take offense to her response. He had caught her by surprise, is all.
"And just where do you think you're goin'?"
She looked at him with curiosity in her eyes.
"You can't get rid of me that easily, Greene. Not when I just got you back." Daryl had no idea where this sudden burst of confidence had come from, but he chose not to fight it. "I'm never lettin' you outta my sight, ever, again."
She blushed.
"Where you go, I go. Plain and simple." He told her.
There were tears in her eyes and blush on her cheeks. "Well, I ain't gonna argue with that." She surrendered.
Several years later….
A young boy with curly blond hair bounded through fields of overgrown lavender.
"Bastille!" Beth called after him. "You better stay where I can see you!"
Daryl came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. His hands rested softly on her plump belly.
He kissed the top of her head and rocked them slightly from side to side.
"He'll be okay out there." Daryl reminded her.
"I know, he's got good survival instincts. Just like his daddy." She said as she turned in her husbands arms to face him and placed a loving hand on his cheek.
"And his moma," he added followed by a chaste kiss on her lips.