He doesn't go far, doesn't have to. They were used to speaking softly, and carrying big sticks, this group. Twenty long paces, thirty, and it's the kind of silence that isn't dangerous, too empty or too full, and nearly pitch dark.
The problem is, he thinks, legs slung over a log, digging his knife into the soft wood, is that he can't put that thought out of his head now.
It's not like they all didn't know, what could happen to women out here. He knew better than most, since before the world really went to shit. Watchin' his mama and dad. Sometimes, when he was angrier, he used to think that maybe being burnt down was probably the best out for his mom. Then Merle, he was no peach to the ladies. He toed the line.
But Beth had always been... insulated. Protected. At the farm, hell, he'd barely seen her, really. Wasn't till on the road that winter, brushing her up on her gun skills, finding her a machete, watching her stuff cans in bags while scouting the horizon (lookin' like an owl with those big eyes with the bite of fear in them), holding hands with Lori at night sometimes, watching the way she'd pick mighty slow at whatever they had to eat, like trying to prolong the experience of eating once a day. Sometimes, slipping a piece to Carl instead of putting it in her own gut. That was when he'd actually noticed her there, as a family member. As someone to protect, like Sophia had been and Carl and the baby on the way.
At the prison, she stayed in the walls. She could handle her own, enough to work the fences, to hold the guns, to be trusted. But mainly, she walked the halls, rocking Judith, singin'. Still, so safe. Still a child.
And when it'd been just them, he'd never... never even truly considered it. He just... wanted to touch her hand again, feel her skin, listen to her talk, for fuck's sake.
Most men weren't like him. He stabs and grinds the knife particularly hard into the log, digging a trench into the heart of it. Now that the thought, bad men and small girls with breakable bones and bruisable skin and souls, rape and violence, sex and Beth, it's in his head now and he'd feel so much better if he could just put a fist into Father Gabriel's throat or make his thoughts about Beth pure again, clean again, like they were at the funeral home.
The things Gabriel could have done to her won't stop gnawing at him, and neither would the past.
He hears her coming long before she even gets there. He knows her tread. He listened to it in silence for weeks. She was like a doe in the woods, sometimes moving with so much grace it takes your breath from you, sometimes all knees and jerks and false starts. He knows he's not ready for this, for whatever sort of this it winds up being, the first time they're alone, with only each other to look at. He feels a strange feeling, like terror, clench his stomach.
But then she flicks aside a branch, dead leaves still clinging to it, and she spots him, and even he ain't dick enough to tell her to go away, to leave him alone. Doesn't mean his fist doesn't tighten on the knife handle, making the rougher parts bite into skin. Doesn't mean he don't start after the log again, as if he's gonna saw the damn thing in half with just a bowie knife.
"Hey," she says, but not casual, not like at the fire. She ain't trying to hide her apprehension now, her confusion. He hears it all without having to look at her.
He makes some sort of noncommittal noise, focusing on the wood under his hands and blade and ass. Seemed safer than staring straight at the goddamned sun. Especially when he was still so fucking mad, at this Father Gabriel, at Joe and Merle, at his mother and his dreams, but mostly at himself.
He listens to her adjust her feet, the leaves crackling underneath her cowboy boots. More worn for the wear than they'd been when he was with her. She'd need new boots before this winter hit.
"What do you want?" He doesn't really mean to be a dick, but it just comes out in his discomfort. In his roiling frustration. He knows he can't avoid her forever. He doesn't think Rick will let him keep his tent at the edge of the group like he'd done at the farm. Suddenly he thinks of Maggie and Glenn, too, and realizes they'd not let him retreat either. Neither would Beth, that's why she was fucking out in the woods here, trying to draw him back.
He wasn't ready to come back.
"You mad at me, then?" She doesn't quite sound piqued, or hurt, but some weird middle ground.
He just throws her a look, a Don't be fucking stupid one. He can't maintain it for long even when he looks wide over her right shoulder and not directly at her.
He swears he can almost hear her spine stiffen, in the moments that follow. It's one of the silences he hates, too full, much too full. Her voice doesn't even shake this time, maybe it's because she's not drunk on her first moonshine, when she demands, "Daryl. Look at me."
He does actually try. His body's reaction is to follow her command, his head turns, but his hair's- thankfully- in his eyes. His eyebrows raise up, but his eyes can't. He can't get much farther than her kneecaps before his gaze jumps away again. He lurches up in frustration, his knife left in the gouge he'd made. He takes a couple steps, he wants to roll his shoulders and try to loosen them, but it feels like he'd be giving something away, saying too much.
Her voice is whisper quiet, but it seems just as loud as when they were screamin' at each other. "I made it," she says, hushed, strong. Echoing that fight, like she could read his mind. But instead, she continues, "Don't you wanna know how?"
"No." He feels himself lose a little bit of his control. Doesn't want to hear the words coming out of her mouth. Doesn't want to think of the look on Carl's face, after that fucker with Joe, doesn't ever want to see it on Beth's face. It would be his fault. "Not if you're expectin' me to sit around a campfire and sing a fuckin' song with him."
She crosses her arms, but he can't tell if she's trying to protect herself from the venom that's inadvertently in his tone, or if she's just upset. He can't tell. He feels like he's slipping, like he's turnin' into the man she told him he couldn't be anymore, and he wishes he could just beat some walkers into a pile of blood and rotted brain and feel better. It won't make any of this any better, or else yesterday he woulda been damn near chipper when he'd finally returned.
The fact that he can't rely on his only methods for as long as he can remember has him spinning to face her, giving the eye contact she'd wanted in the first place. But this time it comes with a pointed finger, and livid hiss, "If he put his hands on you, even once-"
"I woulda killed him." It cuts him off, and takes him aback, because for a second she has a hunter's look in her eye, but she's talking in that girlish voice of hers, the kind that belonged in school cafeterias and the church social. She shakes her head, like she sees she's said something, something that makes him react. She tries to perk up, she has something like a smile on her face, but not quite. Like she's trying to convince him that the way she'd said that didn't feel like a loss of something, somehow. Like it ain't no big deal. "But I didn't have to. He's- he ain't like us. He ain't a survivor, Daryl. I just-"
"Told ya I didn't wanna hear-"
"I thought of you. What you taught me. Used it. Hid more than you would," her smile is slight. "But I made it. Did what I had to."
He doesn't know what to say, or to do. He's not sure what he's thinking, neither, and so he just stands there. His hands down by his side. Staring at his boots. Breathing a little heavy.
Eventually, she turns to go with a whispered, "Fine," and he waits. He already knows he's going to follow her, just not so close. Not on her heels, like the junkyard dog he feels like, aching for any bit of kindness showed to him. It feels like he'd be admitting to something.