She's silent for a while, staring into the fire while he smokes. He doesn't need to say nothin', he knows she'll come out with it when she's ready.
It's the first silence they've had together that doesn't feel charged. He's still anxious, antsy, especially since she's come to sit next to him, her shoulder awful close. But he doesn't feel like he can't look at her; it feels like before, for once.
"I was thinking about Gabriel. I know you don't want to hear about him, but he wasn't a bad guy."
Daryl sighs, because it's not that. He could be a fucking saint, and it wouldn't matter. It's all jumbled inside him, wrapped up in an angry red bow. Coulda been anyone, he thinks, and he'd still want to kill the motherfucker. Because he took her. Left Daryl runnin' after that car, desperate, so fucking desperate just to know she was alive and to have a chance to fight for her. Because he hadn't really had faith, hadn't truly believed in the things Beth had said to him until he'd seen she was right. The second he'd seen Maggie- hell, the moment he knew Rick was alive- he realized she'd been right all along and he'd been the one so fucking wrong.
It's that she got lucky- and he can't forgive himself for what could have happened if it had been Joe that found her.
He pushes the toe of his boot into the dirt near the fire. "Ain't that I don't want to hear."
It's all he can manage right now. She gives him one of those looks, and he tries to hold it, to encourage her to keep going, tryin' to tell her he's here, goddamnit. He just doesn't know how. He gets shy in his inability. He swings his head back to the fire.
From the corner of her eye, he sees her turn her gaze away too.
"You remember the dog?"
He grunts. Does he remember the dog. If not for the damn dog, he never woulda gone to that door without at least a goddamned weapon.
"His name was Jack. I thought it was a boring name for a dog like him. A survivor. He had mange, he was anemic from fleas and malnutrition. Probably had heartworm, too." He's watchin' her face now, just glad to be able to listen to her, without all the rage in his head screaming at him to hurt something. He can almost pretend nothing's changed since they sat on that porch of the moonshine shack and talked. "Gabriel would try to pick all the ticks off every night.
"I kept thinkin'," she keeps going, softly, so softly, "about Rick, and the pigs... We were starvin'. Ain't as good at huntin' as you, and even if I was, he wouldn't let me. Wouldn't let me leave his sight. He thought he was savin' me. ...And I kept thinkin' about you. What you would do."
She sighs this time, readjusting her feet underneath her. "You and Rick, you do what you have to do. So that's what I did. But your squirrel tastes better than a dog with a name." Her smile is brittle when she glances up to him, and he can tell she's trying to gauge him, too. She's worried about his reaction.
All he can think is, that is what he woulda done and he's proud of her, fiercely proud for her ability to do it. For her backbone. For her fire. For not givin' up. But- he wishes she'd never had to. He thinks of her skinning a pet dog. Calling it to her lap, pushing her gentle hand over the slope of its dirty head, then slitting its throat. It makes him close his eyes against it, hang his head a bit. Wishing he'd been there to do it, away from her, in the woods. And then lie to her and say he'd gotten a fawn.
She continues on, trying to change the subject, like she's ashamed. He hears it in the way she rushes forward. "He wasn't a bad guy. Wish- wish things had been different for him."
The heaviness in her voice gets to him. He may have wanted to kill the man, but they all carried the burden of putting someone down. He thinks of Sophia, he thinks of Beth's mother. He thinks of Dale and Andrea- hard memories. Merle. He tries to clear his throat. He says the same thing Rick said to him, "Ain't on you Beth. Some people- some people ain't like us."
"No, some people ain't. Once, he'd done what he had to- like Rick said that day, to the Governor, the worst kinds of things, to survive, and he couldn't come back from that."
"Some people can't."
"We did."
He thinks of Rick, the cop he'd met outside Atlanta, this miracle good ol' boy who'd just woken up from a coma, woken from the dead, and found his wife and kid. He thinks of the girl Beth would have been Before Walkers, a college girl, maybe a lounge singer, maybe a waitress, maybe a teacher, mother. He thinks of watching Rick struggle against Carl's coldness, his trauma. He thinks of Hershel's neck severed. He's gruff when he asks, "Did we?"
"We're alive." Her eyes are so intense, so alive when she looks at him, like she's drunk on moonshine and tellin' him she'd be gone, or he'd be the last one standin', or that it'll kill you- here- and it makes his breath catch. "We're different, but the world is different and we're here. We made it."
He can only nod, and try to believe her.