Title: Stitching Up
Word Count: 1363
Universe: Canon Addition/Divergence
Rating: General
Brief Summary: Daryl recalls Beth teaching him how to sew.
Notes: Inspired by numerous recent photos of Daryl where you can see the red thread where he stitched his own leather sleeves to his flannel shirts.
Daryl used to hover outside the doorway to her cell sometimes and just watch her. She had an ease about her no matter what she was doing; whether it was the way she lifted Judith into her arms and cradled her close, or the way she sang and hummed softly to herself while scribbling in her journal.
One of his favorite things to watch Beth do had been something incredibly simple: sewing. Besides caring for Judith and some of the other kids, one of the many tasks Beth took on (and there were far more than most people seemed to give her credit for) was helping to repair the group's increasingly tattered collection of clothing. Every week she'd go down to the laundry or take a walk down the cell-block, collecting clothes with holes or ripped stitches and bringing them back to her cell to repair.
He'd lean up against the railing just outside or sometimes, if he were feeling bolder, he'd stand in her doorway for a bit, propping his frame against the metal bars and just watching her. It was soothing and oddly mesmerizing to follow the dip of that shining needle into the fabric, watching the thread appear and disappear as she knitted together tiny gaps and large rents, or cobbled together spare pieces to form something new and stronger.
(He wondered if she realized that she did that to the group, too. That in many ways she was that needle and thread, coaxing their troubles out of them and stitching them back up, knitting the group together again.)
He brought her all his clothes on a separate day, after a while. He told her it was because he didn't want to bother her by adding to the big pile, but the truth was he liked the chance to stand there and watch her work on his clothing alone, he liked the excuse to spend time in that cell, where the sweet smell of strawberries and baby powder seemed to linger and the air was more often filled with humming or soft sweet singing than the harsher cacophony that filled the rest of the prison.
One day while he'd watched her stitching a pair of leather sleeves onto a flannel shirt for him, she'd looked up at him with those big blue eyes and asked simply, "Would you like to learn?" He'd grunted, but as if anticipating his argument she'd easily gone on, "It's not too hard, and it's a good thing to learn. Could come in handy when you're out there on your own… you don't wanna have to worry about a torn sleeve getting in your way, right?"
When he hadn't responded or pulled back, she'd shifted to perch on the edge of her little bed and patted the spot next to her. "Come here, I'll show you. Like my Mama showed me, only I was much younger then." It was her smile just then that drew him in more than anything else; soft and sweet and sad, pulling him in like a moth to a flame… or perhaps more like a bee to the sweetest nectar he'd ever known.
He'd sat there side by side with her, feeling the warmth of her thigh against his own and the brush of her ponytail against his shoulder as she leaned over to shift the shirt into his lap and showed him slowly how to work the needle through leather and flannel, what pattern to take looping the thread in and out to hold it tightly together and then, after, how to tie it off as well.
For awhile after that, he would join her. Never anyone else's clothes but sometimes his own. He'd sit there in her peaceful space, on the floor with his legs stretched out or sometimes, if he was 'having trouble' with a particular piece of clothing, he'd perch beside her on the bed. But they'd sew together, dipping needle into fabric, knitting together the pieces and closing the gaps as she chatted away or hummed to herself or sometimes, if he asked gruffly or looked at her a certain way, the soft sound of her singing.
It became a thing that reminded him of her in a way that was both fond and melancholy. So many things did, in the days after he lost her. Sewing was a necessity but it was a thing she had taught him, and so it was impossible to stitch a tear in his clothing without remembering the sweetness of her voice or the delicacy of her fingers as she guided the needle in and out of the fabric.
It was also impossible not to remember the way those same hands and that same voice had stitched together the tears and wounds within him, piecing his broken heart back into a whole. He couldn't help knowing that those wounds were the same ones torn back open when he'd lost her; the careful stitches ripped away in one swift, sharp moment, with an ache that even now still lingered.
Daryl sat now on the front steps of the porch of a house too pristine and clean for him to feel comfortable sitting inside of, even now. Even outside he felt out of place, but at least he didn't feel trapped, at least he didn't feel like a mangy flea-bitten cur, 'rescued' and brought back to a home far too perfect for the likes of him.
In his lap he had another flannel shirt, and his tongue protruded carefully from the corner of his mouth as he dipped the needle into the edge of the leather sleeve, making slow stitches with the red thread to sew them together.
He could hear her voice in his mind like it had been all that time ago, soft and close to his ear as she showed him with her delicate little hands how to work the needle into the heavy leather and keep the stitches tight and strong.
"You're not pulling it tight enough."
For just one moment, the words were in his head as well as his ears, and he almost wasn't sure that they were real. But then he felt a warm weight behind him and those familiar small, delicate hands slipped over his shoulders and down across his chest. Kneeling on the porch behind him, Beth leaned forward over his shoulder, her hair brushing his cheek as she peered down at the fabric in his lap.
This wasn't a memory, despite it having an almost dream-like quality to it. She was here. She was real, though this was a fact he had been continually reminding himself of every day since a week ago, when he'd found her in the woods on a run (like a vision in the middle of the woods with an unfamiliar man at her side) and brought her to Alexandria on the back of his bike. She was the same Beth he remembered with the same sweet voice and soft hands, but changed too, in ways that went deep into her core, far beyond just the addition of new scars to her delicate face.
"Your stitches are nice and even," she murmured, reaching an arm out to run a finger across a bright red stitch, "but you have to pull them a bit tighter or that sleeve of yours will start drooping."
Daryl felt a smile tug just briefly at one corner of his lips before he hummed in agreement and began to draw the needle through again, this time pulling nice and tightly.
Her lips pressed to his cheek, warm and real and not just a ghostly memory as she murmured, "Good thing you've got me here to help you, isn't it?"
Though his outward reply was nothing but a hum, it was far more on the inside. Because with each word he could feel those gaping holes within him being carefully sewn up again, knitted back together by her sweet voice and her reassuring warmth. Alive, the needle sang as it worked it's way not only through the worn flannel and thick leather, but also the fragile lining of his heart.
Alive, stitch, alive, stitch, alive.
