She blinks, and her lips press together. "I do."
Despite every misgiving and apprehension she has, their course is already set; they're already upon it. There is nothing else to do but move forward, and to hope. Nothing good assuredly will come of believing all is already lost. All is not lost; there is life here, life enduring and new life beginning. This is the moment in which life is to prevail, over all the rank deprave viciousness around them.
Beth reaches out to him and grips his hand in hers. Fingers cling tightly to one another, entangling in wordless communion. Thoughts drift back to the prison, to their last day there; how far from that life they find themselves now. The shift between them as they've lived as refugees since that day, fostered by the extreme intimacy of life on the road, had been gradual; so slow, it is difficult to look back on to track the change, but this — this moment to that day he'd handed her the carbine rifle, watched with her as her father was murdered, and ran with her from the flames and devastation, marks decidedly the distance they have journeyed. To imagine themselves in this moment fit back into the shape of their old life seems hardly conceivable, and the distance they feel from their old selves begs the question: How have the others faired? If they're alive, and out there in the world, in what ways have they changed? What changes have been forced upon them, what sacrifices of self have been demanded? If they ever should manage to reunite, will their hearts still recognize each other? It's a futile concern — the changes of the road happen in the name of survival. What is left is what matters, and in the case of family, it is enough.
Silently they are thankful their own misadventures have not gotten the better of them. Their road has been long, and it has been perilous, but it has not exacted from them its highest cost. They've been allowed to stay themselves, to become themselves — what life before had, in different ways for each, kept them from being. It is a gift. This development is a complication, but it is not a calamity; it is neither a curse nor a death sentence. When they fled death at the prison they hadn't thought life would be ahead of them. Survival. Everything became again only about survival. Scavenging – for what is nearing three years – though, has taught them well: Take what is given you, make it your own, and live. This child is theirs to fear or embrace.
His hand still tight in hers, Daryl exhales and releases her to sit beside her on the bed. Beth's eyes fall to her lap while Daryl breathes, and runs his fingers roughly through his dirt-tangled hair. "We gotta get this right, Beth." He bites at the knuckle of his thumb while he thinks things through. "We ain't got walls, we ain't got guns; we don' have your dad no more, 'r Carol …" If he'd felt alone with her before, out on the road with nothing, disconnected and without resource, it is nothing to what weighs on him now. They have numbers again — boys — but that is all. There's some semblance of security in the camp, but will it last? Will it be enough? He'd meant what he'd told her, they're going to be all right, they just, they— "We need a plan," he utters heavily.
Tucking her hand beneath his on the mattress, Beth wraps her arm around his and pulls herself closer to him, resting her chin softly on his shoulder. Daryl remains frozen, struck so by all they have now to manage; with this news, everything they've been facing, every challenge just amassed more complications. But there's nothing to be done but shoulder them and be happy for it. Circumstances, he knows, could be much grimmer than the news of a child. A child conceived in love cannot be a thing that stops them in their tracks.
Slowly, stiffly, his bearded chin tucks down atop her head, and guardedly his arms reach round and hold her fast to him. A child... —He won't entertain to think about the other— She'll make it through the delivery; she has to. Her own baby cannot be what brings Beth Greene down. A child born to this world is going to need Beth. Judith had... A lifetime of concerns and doubts would flood in now and submerge him if he let them, but this is the moment Daryl Dixon squares off, blocks them out, and holds his girl, his woman, who's giving him a baby. With her close, he shuts out all the 'What ifs', and thinks instead of a little blue-eyed thing not too far off in their future.
She stays there in his arms, sinking into him, letting him be the one who is strong, letting him be the one who sees things as they should be. She wants a child. She would not have chosen this, but she wants his child, their child. But she has wanted other things in this world, other people, who have been so cruelly ripped away and lost. She had watched Carol, and the other mothers in the prison who lost their children— And there was Judith and all the other kids who'd lost their parents, their mothers. The pain is unspeakable, unknowable even to her who's now lost both loving parents, and maybe, by now, both her siblings. But even still, those kids had had the group, their larger family; they'd had so many eyes and hearts looking out for them. And still, they'd been failed when the prison had fallen. She and Daryl are on their own. If she doesn't make it, who will the baby have aside from Daryl? Who will Daryl have?
She does not wish it undone, but— "Is it terrible?" finally she speaks, pulling away to look at him. Daryl twitches at the implication, but he says nothing. His head hangs, low over himself, like he can't look at her. Like he can't look at himself. He'd found them a place for the night. Fought his way into an infested farmhouse, sealed it up for her to have a place to rest — she would be needing to more and more for some time longer — as he remembers it Lori spent most of her first months sleeping. Not sleeping actually, as being so frequently on the run so rarely permitted it, but he remembers her exhaustion. She got past it with time, but for a while, it would strike her hard and out of nowhere, and it had slowed them down on more than one occasion. But they had had cars then to compensate, and they had had walls. Both advantages Beth and he do not have. They had been on the run for sure, but still, Lori had been insulated. And they had been with family. Beth has these four walls for just this one night, and then a ditch, in a small stretch of land, in the woods. With winter coming, and walkers and killers on the loose. And can they even stay? Ask the boys to take on Beth's care, and the child's? Judith had been born in hell, but Ass Kicker'd lived her short life inside thick concrete walls. What will his child have to protect it when it cries? To muffle its wails as it unknowingly sounds an alarm? He'd told Beth he knows she'll make it through the delivery, but what then? Daryl feels Rick's mania taking hold. Has he shouldered more than he can carry? How is he to keep this girl and her child safe?
Beth's soft quiet voice speaks again, faint, but present in the dimly lit room. She feels the lengths he's going to in his mind to make this all all right. "Sorry." It's almost a whisper, but audible in this quiet house.
A pain constricts in his chest. Never would he want her sorry to have his child, to be a mother. She is young, but she can do this, maybe with a balance of strength and grace absent now entirely from the world save for her. If what they've been fighting for in all these miles, thorough all the heartbreaks, despite all their crippling losses, is to Live, then he cannot have her be sorry when life carries on. She is young yet, still probably not nineteen, by all rights she should be in a dorm room somewhere, getting stoned and making friends and making A's, but that world is gone, that Beth never got to exist, and in this life, death surrounds them every day. Though she is young, and this is not how life was meant to look for her as she grew up on Hershel Greene's family's farm, amidst death this is life taking its natural course, and they cannot be sorry for it.
Without raising his head he reaches out and grabs her, roughly taking hold tightly of the back of her head, pulling her towards him, bending her brow to meet his. He holds her in place while still he processes. It's not for her to say she's sorry. She's never done anything to warrant an apology. Though true, it might have been years, or more, before he would have laid his hands on her in passion, given in to his desire, had she not pushed his hand, but it had surely been there, halfway conscious at the least, and saying what was so was so like she had, and then acting on it, like she had, was more a thing to thank her for than to hold against her. Though he'd held it against Lori initially at the time, out of fear, no apologies are necessary for this coming child. Not to him. It's his baby she's carrying. It's his responsibility by half. If not more. He should have been more careful with her. He should have taken more care. More precaution. Been not so unbridled. But he does not want to go down this road of regret; all there is to do is move on. They have to let some of what happens to them be good. His grip loosens, but not by much. And finally, his head lifts and his eyes meet with hers.
"I love you, Beth," he says gravely. "I fucking love you." His earnestness somehow allays and assuages some of her worry. If he can speak to her this way, if his voice can be this hard, and this even, this stalwart, when facing the realities they are, then he must be resolved in the fact they'll be all right. Not definitely — their footing is ever precarious, but he has faith enough they can make a go of it, that still all is not lost. Daryl's faith — since the fall of the prison and the loss of everyone they love — is harder to come by than once it was; he struggles with it in a way he did not use to have to. When it rises then, defiant and dogged, it is easy to rely on.
Beth twists out of his grip until she's able to see him, and reaches her hand into his, interlocking her small fingers between his. She sits quietly with him, and there she waits, until he can find it within him once more to rise. And to stand. And when he does, she'll be there beside him. Not too frightened of the uncertain future. Which, sometimes, is the most courage one can pray for.
Beth leans into him, and as his body does not give or falter she bends her knees and raises her legs to the bed. They nuzzle some, in closeness and in silence, then Daryl straightens and reaches over for her legs, pulling them out from beneath her and onto his lap. Beth yawns and watches lazily as he undoes the knots in her boots. When the bloodied boots drop to the floor Beth kisses his shoulder then sits back in bed, wriggles out of her jeans and climbs under the covers. Daryl rises, undoes his belt and steps out of his trousers. He pulls off the vest and shirts and slips in beside her.
The sheets are icy, but between them their bodies are warm, heated where their skin touches. Her leg slips between his knees, his arm tucks around her shoulder. They lie there, dumbstruck, and breathing, feeling the heaviness of their hearts beating within them. Beth pulls the covers in closer.
They have this house and these four walls tonight; they try to rest. Tomorrow all the concerns will still be there, all the questions yet to answer; they allow themselves this moment together in safety, like they should have had those many nights ago when he'd promised her a night's stay in a bed. They sink back into the bedding, into the pillows so deliciously unspeakably soft, cradling their weary limbs, their tried spirits, holding them together.
As he holds her, staring up at the dark ceiling, Daryl's hand strokes her back absently, tranquilly. There is no way to shut the glow sticks off so they lie there in their dim fluorescent haze. The repeated motion of Daryl's slow hand on her is soothing, and nestled into him she listens to his heart beat, and to the rough breathing in and out of air into his lungs. She is so tired, but her mind won't let her sleep.
There's a part of her that feels better for having spoken the words, but the knowing only answered one question and left so many more unanswered in its wake. As Daryl said, they need a plan. They need as many plans as they can formulate. They need options and resources and contingencies. Beth shudders as she breathes in deeply, her mind wanders, away from things like walls and weapons, food and defenses, and drifts to people— her, and Daryl, and... the baby... Her baby. Hers and Daryl's...
Moments pass. Daryl's eyelids flutter open and shut several times as he stalls between slumber and wakefulness. The house creaks, in that old familiar way. Outside the whirring hum of the crickets grows louder in their ears as they let the silence of the room surround them. All is still.
"Daryl," she breathes into him with desperate vulnerability, "where are they?"
Beneath the weight of her cradled head Daryl's chest pangs with longing in kind. His voice is dark, and broken when he answers. "Dunno, Beth." He holds her to him; his lips press warmly against her head. "Dunno."
Thanks for reading! You're about halfway through, I'd love to hear from you if I haven't! Happy reading!