Title: Shoelace Signs (2)
Word Count: 2633
Universe: Post-Coda divergent.
Rating: General
Brief Summary: Three weeks after finding Beth alive they've rejoined the group, but Daryl is still worried about Beth and whether she's really, fully there.
Notes: The prompt I got for this was about Beth seeing her scars and thinking they're ugly. It's a sequel to the previous ficlet I posted, Shoelace Signs (1), but can be read as a stand-alone.
It had been three weeks since he had found her. Three weeks since he'd tracked her through the woods, three weeks since he'd found her curled up on the floor of that abandoned hunters cabin with a bullet wound in her head. Three weeks since he'd pulled her into his arms and held her trembling body and felt a wave of gratefulness so strong that it would have brought him to his knees had he not already been there.
Some part of him had wanted to just stay like that. Just the two of them, making it on their own, without the people who hadn't cared enough to find Beth- not just once but again, and again. The people who had dismissed her over and over, had failed every time to believe that she could be alive.
But in the end, he'd taken one long look at her; a bullet wound in her head and blood dripping down her cheek, and he knew that this, at least, they couldn't handle alone. So they had gone back to the group. He could still remember the shock on their faces when they'd seen him coming out of the road with her in his arms. Her moving, alive, looking over at them with a tremulous smile on her lips despite the fact that she knew none of them had come after her the way he had. That was Beth, though. Always hopeful.
Or at least, she had been. Before the hospital, before the wounds she'd gotten there both inside and out, before the added blows of realizing how little faith her own family (her own sister) had in her. And lately, he'd been worried. Every day it was like he could feel her drifting away and it filled him with terror. The relief that she hadn't died was still there, but it was all wrapped up in that same fear, because what if… what if that gun-shot had taken her away from him after all? What if it had started the process, created a figurative hole inside of her from with all that hope and goodness and sweetness was escaping day after day, until her soul just drifted away.
The group soldiered on, but he knew Beth didn't feel like a part of it. He could see the way she always stuck to the edges, the way she hung around behind them or off to the sides, just out of their reach. He saw the way she would duck away from touches and hugs— especially from Maggie, who didn't seem to realize that her sister wanted nothing to do with her over-wrought affection.
The only one she would let near her was Daryl, and even that wasn't like it used to be. Sure, she was sit against him, even lean into him at night when she slept. (In fact, it was the only way she would sleep, at his side.) But she was just so quiet. Not quiet in the way they'd sometimes been before, when it was just the two of them striding silently through the woods following tracks in the dirt or patterns in the leaves. This was an uneasy quiet, an empty quiet, the sort of quiet that came from the distance in her eyes, the cloudy haze he saw in them the few rare times she would look up and meet his gaze.
He was losing her. And it terrified him as much as it fueled him. He had come too close, he had almost lost her so many times that he knew what it would do to him if he lost her for real. It wouldn't just bring him to his knees, it would bring him to his end.
He couldn't let it happen. He refused.
So he kept his eyes on her, because that was all he knew how to do. He didn't know how to help her. He didn't know how to fix her. The irony was that sometimes he would think… Beth would know. Beth would know just what to say. Beth would know whether to talk, or listen, whether a hand down a back was needed, or a soft reassuring embrace. What was he supposed to do when the one person he knew was best at helping others heal was the one who needed that same help? He wasn't her, and he never had been. All Daryl could do was bide his time and watch her, even though seeing her drift away was eating away at him inside with guilt and helplessness.
They were staying for the night at the first abandoned house they'd seen in weeks. The plan had been to stick to the woods away from the roads (away from people), but eventually they'd had to drift closer to formerly populated areas just to try and find supplies. Of course having an actual roof over their heads wasn't bad either. The only problem was that they were all on top of each other in the small home and while most of them didn't mind these days (for some people, the closeness was just a reminder that they were together and alive) he knew it wasn't the same for others.
Like Beth. He had been watching her most of the night as she stood off to the side, flinching sometimes when someone came too close or tried to draw her into the group. She watched them at with that same distance in her eyes, that same terrifying emptiness that he only saw fade a few times, when she would look up and meet his eyes and for just a moment he would see something flicker in them. Something familiar. Something that told him all hope wasn't lost, not entirely.
Daryl knew she was aware of his eyes on her, so when she slipped away from the group, he didn't hesitate to follow. If he'd thought she truly wanted to be alone, he might have let her, but that last flicker of her eyes to his drew him towards her. He followed the sounds of her footsteps and the faint flashes of her blonde hair in the dark hallway as she made her way through the small home and into what looked like it had once been a spare bedroom, judging by the small pull-out bed and single dresser that it contained.
It was there that he found her, standing in front of the mirror that hung above the dresser. Her gaze was fixed down on the wooden surface as her fingers curled over the edge. Daryl didn't say a word, not at first. He just came up behind her slowly, letting her hear his footsteps to give her time to stop him if she wanted. When she didn't stop him, eventually he came to stand just a foot or so behind her.
The silence seemed to stretch on, but Daryl didn't break it. He didn't want to, would have even if he had been the talkative type. This silence was hers to break, though he wouldn't have pushed her if she'd chosen just to stay quiet still like she had so many nights in the past few weeks when all she'd done was sit down beside him and lean against him and just curl up there in silence, never saying a word.
Tonight though, was apparently different. "I'm afraid to look." She hesitated a second and then turned to glance over her shoulder at him. "In the mirror. I… I've never seen… not since everything at the hospital." Realization dawned as his gaze roamed across her face; still as sweet as always in his mind but permanently marked now by the scars across her face and the white bandage that covered the healing wound on her forehead.
He wasn't sure if she wanted or needed him to reply or not. The silence lingered and her eyes held his and in them he could see that shift again like something akin to need, and he just desperately wanted to be able to give her whatever it was she wanted, whatever it was she needed. "You don't have to look," he said roughly.
"I think maybe I do." Beth's voice was hoarse from disuse, but she still had that soft sweet tone he had grown so used to hearing day after day. "I need to see… who I am, now."
"You're Beth." Daryl spoke as if it were the most obvious thing in the world because to him, it was. No matter how she'd changed, she was still the girl he'd always known. The girl he'd believed in, the girl he'd cared for, the girl he'd…
What changed your mind?
Oh.
"But what if I'm not?" She breathed out the words in a whisper and he saw her fingers clench hard around the edge of the dresser. "What if I changed, but for the worse? What if I don't even recognize myself anymore?"
He knew of course that she didn't just mean physically. Beth was afraid that she didn't know what sort of person she was anymore, who she was, who she had become. She was hiding that fear well, wrapping it up in the more superficial fear of the changes to her face, but he knew. It wasn't just because he'd tried to hide away like that himself in the past, tried to hide from who he was afraid he had become, afraid of what being a Dixon meant. It was because he knew her. He'd never realized just how well until he'd lost her, but Daryl Dixon knew Beth Greene. And he refused to let her be lost, not just to him but to herself.
Daryl came up behind her slowly until her back was lightly pressed to his chest. For a moment she leaned back and both of them sighed almost in unison at the closeness, the nearness, the familiarity of each other. Then his hand lifted, his fingers sliding gently under her chin, and as he turned to guide her face towards the mirror he murmured, "Look."
For a moment, he thought she'd keep refusing. She turned but her eyes stayed shut and he stayed balancing on that edge, that line between helping and pushing. He could only bring her there, he wouldn't push her before she was ready. But she was strong. Beth Greene was the strongest woman he knew, even if she didn't always believe that, and sure enough after a moment, her eyes fluttered open.
All he could do was watch as her gaze shifted across the dusty glass of the mirror. Daryl saw her gaze tracing first the thick dark scar that marred the apple of her pale cheek and then up, to the matching one slashed above her right eye. He saw her tremble as she found the bandage that covered the wound on the left side of her head, hiding the bullet wound that they all knew would leave another scar.
And he saw, for the first time since that night at the moonshine shack (that's how stupid I am) when her big blue eyes began to water despite the fact that her attempts to keep from crying had every inch of her tense and trembling. "I look like… a monster."
"No." He bit back the urge to growl the word, but it came out no less firm and almost rough with the intensity of his belief in it. For one moment he let his heated eyes find hers, and then he breathed out a sigh. "You look like a survivor. You look like… Beth." Already she was shaking her head at him, and it was too much. He could stand seeing her like this so full of doubt when she was always brimming over with hope and maybe this, finally, was the breaking point for him. Maybe it was what finally pushed him past his inability to find the right thing to say or do, because he no longer cared what was 'right'. All he cared about was banishing the tears and doubt and fear from her eyes.
One of his hands came up to rest on her hip and the other reached around again, sliding across her shoulder and up to gently cup her chin from behind as he murmured, "You… you're beautiful." He leaned in so closely that his nose was buried in her blonde hair as he rested his lips near her ear and murmured into the safety of their intimate nearness, "You're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. That ain't never changed. Your scars, they don't make you a monster, Beth. Just like…"
In front of him she swallowed hard and breathed out in a whisper, "Just like yours?"
Of course she knew. He'd never showed her them on purpose, but of course Beth knew. She'd gotten a glimpse once, back at the farm when he'd been injured and under her father's care, and during their time on the road together it had been harder to hide things like that, no matter how hard he tried. And he had told her things, things he'd never told anyone else before her. So she knew, because she was Beth, and she just saw him.
"Yeah. Like mine." He offered her the faintest quirk of the corner of his lips and then added, "'Cept I ain't near as pretty as you."
"I'm not-"
"You are." He gently turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. His hand cupped her cheek and his thumb brushed over the scar there, running the rough pad of it across the permanently marked flesh. "Beautiful," he whispered as he looked into her eyes. He hesitated for only one second and then leaned in to press his lips to the scar on her forehead, covering it with the warmth of his lips before he whispered out against her skin, "Beautiful."
Only when he drew back and saw a hint of that same warmth in her eyes did he turn her gently back to face the mirror. "We all change, Beth. We can't help it and yeah, some of us change for the worse, but you? Never. Never you, okay? You will never be a monster." He felt her lean back against him and as the tension eased from her body he rested his chin on the top of her head where it was lightly tickled by her soft hair. "You're strong and brave and good and just about the prettiest damn girl I've ever seen. You're Beth."
Her half-shut eyes fluttered open to meet his in the mirror, and for the first time in weeks, he saw her. All of her, bright and present in those big blue eyes, every bit of cloudy distance vanished as she breathed out, "I'm Beth."
"Yeah you are." And there was nothing else that needed to be said. Nothing else that needed to be done except to stand here with her, holding her, as long as she needed him. Eventually, he even stopped worrying that the light in her eyes would fade away as he watched. He should have known better. Despite everything, she really was the strongest woman he knew, but if he needed to whisper her name a hundred times to keep reminding her of that he would.
(And he did make a good start that night, when they ended up curling up together in that small bed just so she could keep the warm reassurance of his arms around her, and he helped her to sleep by kissing across all of her scars and whispering her name again and again, like a prayer, like a benediction, like a reminder to both of them that she was right there, alive, and not a monster. Not drifting away. Not lost. Just Beth.)
