"Hey," Daryl whispers softly, leaning over her in the light of the early dawn, crawling into bed with her, leaning over her as she sleeps.
Beth stirs; she is warm, and her eyes flutter open slowly. She isn't awake enough yet to speak, but her lips form a smile and he tucks her into his brawny arms as he settles down beside her. He's watched the whole night, again, and his body is stiff and chilled and the touch of his clothes on her startles her further awake. Beth shifts and nestles into him, pulling one arm in around her. "Mmm," she breathes.
Daryl's exhausted. Entirely. His mind, his body, utterly fatigued. He misses Beth, misses lying with her through the night. He runs his hand over her hair, stroking her head. "You okay?" he breathes into her forehead. Beth nods mutely, awake, but not ready to speak. "You happy?" He doesn't know what made him phrase it that way, it's not a question he's prone to asking.
"Mm-hm." Her reply is less than audible, so tucked into to her curled body is it.
"Listen," he mutters, "ain't miserable. Y'got that wrong." Beth shifts, and stretches and takes hold Daryl's beard and holds him close while her mouth journeys to his own. He savors her sweet chaste kiss and allows his tired limbs to sink into their underground bed and melt into hers. Above them, the faintest light breaks in the east, but the sky above them is still painted black. The stream runs steadily somewhere behind them, it's been a constant for them for days, weeks, the running of this Georgian river, steady, and babbling, unchanged through time; Beth thinks she never wants to be out of earshot of water again. Their legs entangle and while they still may, while the night surrounds them in cover, and none but Michael is standing on watch, they hold one another, closely, hands intertwining and running the lengths of each other's bodies. They're hardly apart at all during the day, almost always within each other's eyesight, except for when he finally catches a couple of hours of sleep, and they touch in passing, sit side by side at meals, but they do not touch for extended periods of time, and after months together freely on their own, it is a loss to now be mindful of their contact. They venture no further than this, this gentle reconnecting through hands and palms, and soft whispers of lips. Daryl touches her where her worn jeans pull snuggly to her body, thinking of the last time he was with her in that way, just the other morning, just before all of this, only it seems so long ago now. The small of Beth's back arcs as she presses herself closer to him, and together in the early morning, before he drifts asleep and she wakes for the day, they linger in something close to slumber, their bodies warm tucked snugly beneath ground, their faces cool as the morning breeze rolls over them. "Miss you," she whispers so softly into his chest.
"Right here, Greene." He lifts the hand of hers he's got in his and brings it to his mouth. He kisses her hand, then bites at it a little. He's not too dark, not too far gone. He will make this place a home with her. He will smile and befriend the boys who brought them in, and he will come back out from under this cloud, and will start to see some good, and none of this he will do only for her. He will love her, and maybe, finally, they'll find some peace.
...
While Daryl sleeps Beth begins work on the shelter cover for their hut. Simon starts on it with her, using the branches, grass and twigs the boys collected yesterday in anticipation, and twine they have already in camp. If they can get more blankets Beth will consider lining the roof with their silver emergency blanket, but in the end, it may still serve them better as a blanket — easy to grab and carry should they have to evacuate in a hurry.
The work is tedious, and difficult, and requires handiwork Beth is unaccustomed to, but slowly she makes some progress, weaving together a thatch siding for one half of the A-frame roof. She does not work alone. Simon helps, and Michael, and Rob and John throughout the day all lend a hand, sharing what tricks they themselves have acquired in the process of building and rebuilding the camp. James too helps at one point, with Peter when he makes it up. He is recovering, but slowly; his body aches incessantly and breathing still is a chore, labored and strained, as is his vision still from one eye, and his sense of smell, but rest is helping, and Peter's never been one to dwell long on the things that ail him.
They work and they talk. When Daryl rises and joins in the work goes faster. Stories are swapped – the lighter ones mostly, there is some laughter in camp today, and a sense of pieces settling into place. This day is easier; Beth's bright laugh is freer, Daryl's guard is consciously fully dropped, and he's able to see the group as what they are: This could be a bunch of Carls and Zachs. They could all be Carls and Zachs. They are not family – not yet – but they can be relied upon. If they'd meant them harm they would have acted by now, if there was something amiss he and Beth would have already picked up on some sense of it. The boys are generous, but neither crowding nor officious; they do not look at Beth in any kind of particular way – there is no leering or sidewise glances, and Daryl takes it all as he must: the time for caution above all else has passed. He has to make room for more.
Midday Daryl makes the sweep rounds with James moving south-west through the woods while Simon and Tom head north, and Rob and John go east. Michael hangs back in camp with Beth and Peter as she works ceaselessly to build her shelter.
She is glad for this work, frustrating and vexing and unsteady as it is. Though less mobile than hunting or sweeping it feels to her doubly vital, more important and strengthening. To create, to build up — even a thing as humble as this backwoods hut — is an act of bravery, maybe even defiance, and out of brush, and scraps, and reclaimed materials she is building herself and her love a home, reclaiming a place for them in this world. She is not so naïve to look at this place now with thought of forever but she has come to find enough comfort in thoughts of for now and maybe tomorrow.
She has come a long way since her family's generational farmhouse of 160 years, her own spacious sunny room she'd had as hers since she was born. But somehow digging a bed out of earth and making a roof of branches does not feel to her too unrecognizable; it feels essential, and manageable. And if the world at large reached some kind of critical mass that it no longer could sustain itself as it was – too big, too complex, too overreaching, as it seems to her it must have — maybe this is a new life that can be lived — small, and unassuming, and stripped down. She no longer misses the luxuries of her old life, nor even those at the prison; all Beth has room to long for is her missing family, absent in body but not in thoughts and prayers.
Yes, sometimes, when she isn't too tired, and other times when she's past exhaustion, a prayer will whisper itself through her spirit. Sometimes she does still pray, after all of it, all she's seen, and all they've lost, the old words still come, and she holds on as best she can, feeling her father in those moments, her mother, Shaun, Patricia, and all the others cruelly taken, cut down or devoured, and she does not let go until something more immediate presses on her, urging her to action and forcing her back into the present. More time passes now between prayers than once it did, but still, even now, two years and more into this hell, miles and miles journeyed from where she'd started, weighed down with losses upon losses, Beth can still feel the words of the old psalms, and they fall on her heart's ears in her father's gentle voice. This will be her home, for now, and it will be enough, enough for her and enough for Daryl, who never needed anything other than to belong. This tethered roof will shield them from the elements as best it can, and it will revive them to keep on fighting, as best they can.
Michael clambers down the ledge and moves downstream to relieve himself while Beth and Peter, whose breathing is coming easier, work on. Peter's swelling has gone down some, though still, his face amounts to not much more than one expressive eye amidst cut and battered flesh. "It's not working," he says, without glancing up from his slow practiced work.
"What isn't?" From the offhanded way he'd made the remark, he hadn't said it about the thatching.
"Your tryin' to look like a boy," he says flatly. "Spotted you for a girl the first second I saw you."
Beth's eyes rise from her work to him, there's something solemn in her expression when she does. "Wasn't trying to pass for a boy."
"No?" He looks at her through his hooded droopy purplish-green eye, red in some places, yellowing in blotches in others. "That haircut an offensive tactic then? It keep you free from the ghouls' grasp or is it your war paint?"
Beth looks at him, then returns to her work. "Something like that."
"Sum'in' like which?"
She shakes her head; Beth doesn't want to occupy this headspace. She does not choose to dwell on these memories. "It's just hair." She binds more brush and wood together. "It doesn't matter."
Peter looks at her, his hands stopping work completely. "It was long, wasn't it? Long e'nough to be lighter at the ends? Maybe a little curly." He eyes her. "I'm right?" Beth makes no answer at all, spoken or otherwise, but Peter's confident in his supposition, as Peter is confident in all things. He blinks, and studies the poor showing that is what's left of her hair. He nods his head imperceptibly toward the woods, "He do it?"
"No." Her head shakes softly and mutely, and her eyes never lift to find him. No, Daryl did not do this. Daryl, she suspects, still feels pangs of regret and helplessness and rage when he sometimes looks at her, still unaccustomed to the change. It means less to her than to him. They'd survived, the rest of it was only a ponytail. What she lost doesn't matter; Daryl lost his crossbow.
Returned, Michael takes up his place again, dumping down more branches and grasses and weeds he'd pulled on his way, paying no notice to the singular way in which Peter is studying Beth, possibly because his expression is indiscernible given the bruising and the swelling. "… I can't figure you out. 'Beth Greene'," Peter says in rumination, in response to which Michael glances up and also looks at her. "... Your look 's super hard, but you laugh like someone's baby sister."
Michael sees what Peter's getting at and adds to the account, "You kill — whudd'a you call 'em? Walkers? — with precision—"
"You've got the face an' personality of some sort of an angel, and you walk around tough as shit, like you're not afraid of nothin'."
Michael's big boyish eyes look at her, blinking like they do, like he never really fully sees a thing or knows it for what it is the first or second time he sees it; although at eighteen he's tied as one of the oldest in the camp, topped only by James who by now is nineteen or older, Michael will carry the features of boyhood with him for years (provided, he gets those years). "When we—" he glances at Peter to include him in this as well "—saw you that morning, we thought –" He doesn't finish, it already seems so long ago now, but a sliver of a smile anchors his broad youthful face and he says to her, with a bit of relish, "Didn't think you'd be such a badass by the first looks of you."
This assessment fits poorly with her vision of herself. Those words just spoken do not describe her. "Same as any of you," she says of herself, not troubling to look up.
Neither of her companions can come up with any sort of response to this. Peter wheezes, and ties another knot. Michael single-mindedly breaks apart branches as Beth ties off a tight double knot.
"Lemme ask one thing—" Peter speaks, prompting Michael to lift his head, and this time Beth does look up as well. "You love him?" Michael's a little jostled by the candor of his friend, but Beth doesn't seem to be; she blinks earnestly and nods. "This isn't one of those end-of-the-world-survival-arrangement things?" Peter asks her. "Just thought it would be best to ask, in case it was, and there's no one left around to ask."
Brows raised, Michael looks first at Peter, then at Beth, realizing maybe without knowing it he'd been wondering this also.
Beth does not waver. "Is that what it looks like?" She'd never cared to bother to consider what it may or may not look like from the outside, so certain of it is she from the inside.
Peter thinks, about the fury that had propelled Daryl's fist repeatedly into his face, he thinks how his eyes are always on her, how they're never far apart for long, the way she looks at him, how they linger beside one another, their occasional touches, and the disparities in both age and dispositions. He thinks about how she and her companion seem to communicate without words, about how he seems perpetually angry, and she is so, not. Michael thinks about how they don't seem to make decisions without checking in, and how he saw them fight in formation, almost in mirrored unison. He thinks about how the world has changed; he, for example, is only eighteen but he's been one of the oldest people he knows for over a year, and some things that maybe used to matter probably more than don't now. Neither Michael nor Peter know just what to make of this coupling, though they can't deny it does seem to them to work; Peter though doesn't let the matter drop just there yet. Through his destroyed face he looks at her, "If you had parents still around, would they be okay with it?" The question doesn't come from a predictable place, it isn't wrapped in his own judgments and conclusions, he's asking for her, so that she can be asked, in case she's been needing to be and there's been no one there to do it.
Beth looks at him with utter assurance. "Yes."
He nods, and the matter is dropped. "Never bring it up again."