He is more awkward now than he'd been since he hit puberty.
At least at the prison, he'd felt none of this current, an electric one, making him twitch every fucking time she was in his periphery. Now, he finds himself reaching toward her like he would have when they were alone together, to hold her arm, or bump her shoulder, then immediately pulling away, too fast, like an ass. He keeps his distance, but catches himself staring at her too long, over the fire, from across a room that always feels too small, while she's sleeping. He knows others must of caught him, too, just didn't say nothin'. Instead of feeling like they're allowing him some sort of dignity, by not saying anything or making a deal of it, he just feels anxious. Like they're just too afraid to give him the shit he clearly deserves.
It's been a little over a week. They've moved from place to place, slowly, just barely inching northward while Rick argues with Abraham about plans and what's going to happen and what needs to happen and all that horseshit.
He focuses on clearing houses. On scouting. On collecting. On keeping everyone safe. On destroying or vandalizing every sign for Terminus they come across. He's happy not to be such a leader again. Happy he can focus on filling bellies and killing walkers. These are the things he knows.
These things keep him from looking at Gabriel, or Beth. Keep him busy and distant, without being a jackass. None of it makes him feel better, only more tense, only more like there's something building, like a storm.
They don't avoid each other, but she gives him space, and he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing.
He's at a loss when he overhears an argument between Beth and the Father, in the dark in a strange house. The Father was twittering, worrying. Saying it was better when they were alone, safer. People were dangerous. It makes Daryl's jaw sore with the irony.
Then Beth's voice, "It's your choice. These are my family. I know what I'm doing. No one will force you to stay. No one will hurt you. But I'm never leaving them again." She sounds like a edge of a sword when she says, "Not ever."
But he doesn't want to hear her convince him to stay.
He's at a loss when, two days later, Father Gabriel is bitten trying to get Tara, with her still aching knee, away from a walker.
Beth is the one to take care of him, warning off Rick with such a sad, resolute look that it strikes Daryl in the fucking gut.
He wants to, but he can't look away when she lurches her knife into the softness under his chin.
When she pulls the knife loose, it seems her whole tiny body hunches, all vertebrae and the shakes. She rests her hands in the dirt, fingers still gripped around the knife, leaning, sucking in air. When she stumbles from her knees, upright, she doesn't face them until she's wiped the blood on the blade onto her jeans.
It bothers him that when she finally does come around, she goes to Rick, she asks him if he'll help her bury him. She isn't crying. She doesn't.
He winds up stalking off, the inside of his skin feeling itchy. He tries to distract himself. Setting up perimeters, clearing sheds, building a fire in the backyard of this house they've decided to stay at for now. He watches out of the corner of his eye as Rick and Beth work on the grave; she's picked a spot under a large tree, on the edge of what used to be the lawn. It bothers him enough that he leaves Maggie and Sasha in charge of skinning and cooking, and gives Rick a slap on the shoulder, gesturing for his shovel.
Rick eyes him for a moment, long enough for Daryl to nod, and then the shovel is his and Rick's off to find Carl or Michonne. Beth stops her digging to wipe at the sweat on her brow, to look over at Daryl. He can tell, she is thinking, she's trying to figure something out. She's just furrowing her brow at him, making him uncomfortable. Feelin' like she's trying to see right through him again.
So he goes for the dirt. He could pretend he was just giving Rick a break, but even he knows that's not it.
The thing is, he thinks, that there's just too much between them now and they don't know how to talk about it. At least, he don't. Father Gabriel, and her being taken. What happened while they were separated, and how they've changed. All the other eyes in the group, suddenly on them, it feels like. The conversation they'd never been able to finish, and what it meant for them.
He can't suss out his feelings, can't find their common ground again, and bleakly, he thinks it was easier when they were alone. She would have come to him, because there was no one else. And he could have dug for her, and touched her arm, and given what little he could. Now, he's just flustered, frustrated, unable.
But he can dig. And he does, until Beth clears her throat with his name. When she says, "It's big enough."
It is. He'll be deep enough that the walkers won't smell him, tear him back up, eat him.
He shoves the spade into the ground, leans on it, while she pulls herself from the hole and gets her feet under her. She wipes dirt off her hands, rubs her sleeve over her cheeks. She says, "You didn't have to help."
Daryl squints up at her, trying to figure out how she could still sound like little Beth from the prison even with how different she is now. Changed.
When she finally stops fiddling with her dirty hands and clothes, when she looks up to realize he's been starin' at her, he won't let her drop the eye contact now. Like in that house, when he held it there, that gaze of hers.
He feels frustration, over so many things, but he's surprised when the words don't come out mean: "Come to me for this. Understand?"
He can't be sure she does, but she's still staring, like she did when she said Oh at that old table in the funeral home. Her face doesn't go slack this time, with surprise and revelation, but she understands something, that much he can tell from the look on her face.
She eventually nods.
She tells him, "Ok."