[M]
Wrecked, and with no words left she holds herself to him. Daryl, in turn, squeezes her small frame to him and buries his face in the soft bend of her neck. He tries in his proximity to her to surface from the misery of their separation from the group. He resists it, as best he can, day to day, but it sinks down so heavy in him at times, when there is an opening – when he isn't vigilant to suppress it. Rick… What's left of her family… Michonne… Carl... Tyreese, Sasha, Bob… Carol. Out there on her own… Maybe with another group by now…
Daryl winces, and shuts his eyes. He pushes it all down – suppressing the emptiness and the not knowing. He battles it back, to contend with another time. It's a luxury, to be in a bed with her – a real bed, at the same time, not running, not on watch, not wounded or hounded, not on hard ground. Safe. He focuses on that. He breathes, and he focuses on her skin on his, on the feel of his body sublimely pillowed in the old bed, on the dark shadows on the ceiling above him, on the walls that surround them. Though he could lose himself in longing for their departed company, in worry and foreboding, Daryl reigns himself in and retrains his focus on the bed they share, on the quiet sound of Beth's breathing as she finally fades into sleep against him. He pulls himself back from a world he cannot control and focuses on her.
Lying there with her and with this new truth between them, his body is rigid, on edge, needing a plan. Moving forward, staying alive, staying together, is as much as they have. Keeping going. He looks at her, where she rests now against him; he chews at his lower lip, worrying it as he thinks. Beth's sorrow just then as she spoke his name, as she spoke of their lost companions, was palpable, weighty. His eyes flash down on her. Beth… Heartbroken and apprehensive, lost and full of reservations as she is, still she's willing to hope. They both were. Are. It's how they know they're still living beyond taking in breath.
Certainty. It's always been his to lose.
He remembers the doubtlessness with which he'd sought after Sophia. It hadn't been a question for him — others' doubt had confounded him, but the world is not what it was since then. Even back then, that early on they'd known, he'd known: People are the enemy. From their first run-in with Guillermo to whoever it'd been who'd raided that old place, executing the elderly and their muscle, he'd known; but though he'd known the world was cruel then in the days of Sophia's absence – had always known how cruel the world could be, even to children – he'd still believed that things would come out all right for her, and her mom, in the end. He'd had no use for others' doubts, for Shane's defeatist callousness, but it hadn't worked out; Sophia had been lost. And so many more have been lost since then. Loss after loss, from walkers, circumstances, fevers and psychos, each pulling him just that much further from that inner part of himself he'd always been able to keep lit, even if meagerly — that light that helped him believe, and that maybe had kept him just this side of bad in the years he'd spent following Merle. Beth has that light, stronger, and brighter, fed by family and by safety her whole young life. Unlike him, she'd had Hershel; Beth'd never had to fuel it on her own. Not till later, not till the change, and their coming to the Greene farm. But now…
It's harder. Every day it's harder. And now, they're no longer living for just themselves. It's bigger now, and with things as they are, the stakes just got steeper, the costs that much higher.
He pulls her arm from her side and rests it on his chest. As she sleeps, as he blinks staring up at the dim ceiling, absently his thumb runs under her beads and threads and ties and over the scars on her wrist. He's never brought it up — her scars — since the day he'd flung it so cruelly in her face. Bastard, he winces. He's a bastard when he drinks. He's a bastard when he isn't careful. He knows this about himself; by this time Beth must too.
His calloused thumb journeys the length of her narrow wrist— Those scars, grisly and mortal, thin as they are, don't belong on her. Daryl does not know that Beth Greene, the girl too scared, too frightened and discouraged to live or to fight; that isn't his Beth, who he's lived with and traveled with, fought beside and survived beside. The other scars she bears — the ones she's gotten since on the road, since the farm fell, since they've been together, like the one just below where her arm starts from her left shoulder — are markers that she's living, that every day she's fighting to keep on living. They're not the same as what's kept obfuscated by bracelets and ribbons. The scar beneath her shoulder she suffered when she fell down into the brush fighting off a walker back in their early weeks in the woods. She'd stepped back, lost her balance on a loose rock and fell backward. The twig that punctured her stuck in deep, but not too. There had been a real fear of infection for some time, but with poultices, constant dressing changes and some hand sanitizer they'd gotten their hands on, she pulled through fine, none at all worse for the wear, save for a lumpy scar no bigger than a dime.
Given his way he'd hate to see her skin marred at all, lovely as it is, but these days the living have scars. Living flesh cuts, and bleeds, and heals. Every scar is another danger that wasn't a takedown. Daryl squeezes her wrist; he'd welcome a hundred scrapes and scars on her if it kept her alive and by his side. Like her hacked-off hair — pretty is hardly the point. And Beth will always be pretty to him. She stirs lightly. His eyes shift and watch her. Daryl blinks; so long as she is breathing, to him she's the prettiest thing in this world.
But the scars on her wrist… He's never given them thought till now, aside from the scorn he'd drunkenly flung at her. They're from a different time — two years back, maybe three by now, when she lost her ma, when Shane had led a firing squad into what she'd believed was still her family; when she really knew they were gone, her mother and the others, when Shane and all the rest of them had shot dead that last shred of hope, her pain took physical shape in the jagged slits cut across her pale skin, making forever visible the pain others quashed down inside themselves. Her small wrist and the raised skin brutally crossing its length testifies the pain they've all felt, the losses they've suffered, the disappointments they've endured, the despair they've battled. Beth had given action to her misery but, lost though she had been, she had not been alone in the pain that drove her.
She'd survived though, cut the despair and despondency out, and recovered from the bleakness of absolute grief. Like the Greene she is, Beth'd inarguably regrouped; she'd shifted her thinking, saved herself, and survived. But first, before that – he can no longer forget – she'd gone into shock, lay catatonic for days, then locked herself in a bathroom and sawed at that little wrist with shattered mirrored glass. She had done it; it's in her. It was. He hasn't seen her stricken so since – not when they lost the farm and Jimmy and Patricia, not after Andrea, or Zach, or the outbreak, not even after her dad. There hadn't been time. She hadn't gotten to cry for Hershel, not properly, not enough; when she broke down over the kids he'd dragged her on, kept her moving. As things get worse – the longer they're out in the world like this – they get less and less time to feel their grief, to own it, only allowing themselves brief interludes to dip down into it.
Their loss of the group haunts them continuously, but so rarely do they allow themselves to slow and really feel it. If they feel it too much — any of it, the loss, the pain, the fear, the despair — if they feel it all the way, all the time, it will consume them, paralyze them, keep them from moving forward, standing upright, seeing clearly. In the shadows of the fallen prison, it had taken Beth to drive it home for him, and she'd needed the same from him, to pull her along, keep her moving when the grief crashed down.
Beyond a point, they could not do it for themselves, but they could do it for one another. It's what they have together, their keeping each other steady; they've been that for each other all these months – solace, grounding, direction, hope. Where one falters the other takes up the slack, but… His fingers stall on her rough skin once more. If this… His chest tightens and heaves— If this thing with them now – this pregnancy – goes wrong somehow… If— If they go through all this, all the danger, all the care, and in the end, their child does not survive… he cannot know what further costs the aftermath of that might exact. That kind of a loss… after what would be months of concentrated hoping…
Through her mess of bracelets, his calloused fingertips touch her raised and ragged scars. He can't think either of them could withstand that, that loss. Him or her. He does not want to think what that loss could do to her, what backward steps it may push her down…
Beth is just Beth to him, has been for so long – strong and fixed and true; steady. But there's a fractured part of him he could let take over if he yielded to it, and for the first time in a long time, he's questioning if she does as well.
It had taken a lot for him to love her — to take that risk, to open up, to let her in; it hadn't been a choice he'd made exactly — by the time it'd presented itself in a way that he was aware of, it was all too far gone already; he had to love her, he did love her. He does love her. What he wouldn't do to spare her, them, any pain he can. All this time, he's done what he could to protect her, to see her safe, as she does for him. She's saved him; day by day they save each other. But this… Whatever danger there is in it, it's too late to do anything, they're in it. All there is to do now is wait, take precautions as they may, and progress hopefully. But still, how well he knows, factors extend so far beyond what they can control with precautions and with hope. He knows she's strong, no question; tough and lasting, more grit-filled than anyone would know to take her for, but all people have breaking points. The strongest will someday break down. Had it not been for her he would have lost himself months ago. When the girl she was two years ago hit that black abyss she'd pulled herself out of it, with Maggie and with Hershel. This time she'll only have him. Will he be enough? Does he have it in him to be the light that she would need?
Daryl knows only that if she does not survive, especially from this, that blackness chasing him those early days out will be a welcome reprieve from a world absent of Beth. With all else lost but his sorry self that could not help enough to keep her breathing, what else will he have but to give in to the bleak absence of light and song and life, and follow after? With her so close to him at this moment, his heart so full of her, there in this shared bed he cannot design any sort of a will to live beyond her; likely a more willing companion into death's never been. Again his thoughts trace upon Lori, and on Rick…
The glow sticks dim, their weak light slowly fading, and the room darkens, suiting his dark and troubled thoughts. It is unlike him to linger in doubt, to court despair and defeat before it is upon him, but never has he been so fully accountable. Never – though he's taken on the care of others for some years now – has he been so fully responsible. He's looked out for himself as far back as memory takes him, but nothing in his old life prepared him for the absolute taking on of others. His was a world of parallel paths but little solidarity. He'd had Merle's back, no question, but Merle hadn't always been around. And, if anyone had been, ol' Merle'd been resistant at best to anything connoting interdependence, or depth of feeling.
This is different entirely. With the help of Carol, Rick, and Hershel, and with the influence of Glenn and all the others of their group, Daryl had opened up. He'd found through them and with them a different way of seeing himself, and it was no longer just about looking out for number one — his family expanded beyond a redneck brother who couldn't help but make trouble for himself, even when the times called for sticking together. Daryl'd taken on the care of others, risking his own life for the well-being of the group, doing what needed to be done to keep everyone alive and going. The role took to him better than he could have thought of it for himself. He was never a leader; he'd been raised a survivor, solo, able to take his hits. But there is a limit. He can be broken. His ma. Merle. Hershel. Isolated as he was coming up, he's been battered and broken down by the betrayals and the losses he's known, but he knows now for certain there is more to lose. Somewhere in his travels, he stopped being able to say he's got nothing to lose. He stopped being the redneck invested in nothing. He'd lost big with the prison fall, but there's precious more to hold on to.
And there are new obstacles facing them he cannot control. Pregnancy, without doctors or midwives, without nutrition and rest, without anything to ease or assist, threatens danger. Danger for her, danger for the expected baby. Things can go wrong. Food is not assured, rest is scarce, exhaustion is common. Difficulties are bound to arise. If she survives, if she does, but no child comes, what darkness might destroy him? What despair might she sink back into? That inconsolable despondency that such a singularly personal loss could bring on in her… What violence might she hazard to do to herself, if…
These thoughts, these dark and ugly fears plague him in the stillness. In the quiet, Daryl cracks his right-hand knuckles. Worry, like this, is new. His days with Beth are no longer 'as good as any' to die. He can't remember thinking that way now. There'd always been in him the drive to live – since a kid, he'd fought to survive – but there'd been with it a freedom in being detached from what he lived among. The things he'd had had been easy to let go of. That'd died out with so much else. Living in danger since he was small had given him balls; living in death for so long had given him things – people – to fight to hold onto.
The soft intake of Beth's slumbering breath whispers in the old bedroom. There's no sound from the floor above; Tom must have fallen right asleep. Outside there is nothing to sound alarm, just the rustling of branches. The night is quiet. Daryl's body lies frozen rigid; it is not his nature to give in this way. It comes unnatural to him to speculate fear and loss, but this night, this quiet night with their discovered secret, has gotten to him, and all the thoughts kept hidden in the backgrounds of his mind until now, they just quietly confirmed for one another.
Now they know. With this, they're taking a stand, mightily waging war on this yet undetermined future of theirs, and Daryl's mind will linger on the risks just until a more realized pressing threat presents itself to battle the present fears away. Daryl will not long indulge the fear, he won't carry it with them all these months they have ahead, but to live in darkness, surrounded by death and loss and danger, sometimes calls on one to examine the dark, to invite it in, to plunge its great yawning depths, and to prove to oneself that still it might be traveled through, still might one traverse the dangers and emerge from them. Death is a certainty. For all of them. It always was; in that one thing, nothing has changed. Death is more apparent now, it holds a stronger presence, and may perhaps be much more treacherous, but in a life lived in death – as assuredly life always has been - death cannot be always hard-jawed looked-past; it must at times, to – at the very least – keep the madness at bay, be picked up, and examined, then put away.
As now he must needs do. Beth is all right. The baby has not been lost – it's so new it's still little more than an idea. Things will not go wrong. She'll not be lost. Come everything Beth will pull through. She is strong. People don't move backward. If darkness comes — though she shouldn't have to, she won't have to — she can take it.
In his arms, Beth breathes in deeply and stirs against him. The feel of her there, in silent slumber is centering, and he climbs out of his head as best he can and focuses on her. He presses himself to her closer. Beth… Beth.
He pulls her in closer, his broad arm wrapped tightly around her ribcage. Holding her, Daryl tucks his face into her shoulder. His lips brush her skin. So warm... She'd apologized earlier, but he feels deeply he's who should be saying he's sorry. He knew better. He absolutely knew better than to let this happen. If he'd had a modicum of self-control they could have averted this. He did, sometimes, muster that discipline that would signal him to pull himself from her, but not every time. Beth hadn't shown much concern for his self-restraint, and the pleasure of finishing with her was so sublime it was a primal urge hard to fight against, more so given he'd only just allowed it to reawaken in him. He'd shut that part of himself down, resigned himself to the mindset that that part of life was gone, but then there was Beth Greene, unlike anyone else. And now Beth Greene is pregnant.
She shouldn't be. Not in this new world, and certainly not in the old. In both, she is too young. In this one it is an incalculable risk — what he doesn't want to call a liability — rendering them all the more vulnerable while out in the wild. A pregnancy. A delivery. An infant. A child. She should not be pregnant. 'Too young' is just the start. Already though that way of thinking is moot — she is not too young because it is happening, and there's no longer any 'shoulds' or 'should nots' left them. If it was indeed preventable is no longer at issue, it was not prevented. An hour hasn't passed and already these things constitute an old way of thinking. This is their life.
He will not apologize — neither while she sleeps nor when she wakes, cognizant of his words. Doing so would only hinder them, only give credence to the fear that this will put them in jeopardy. He can't have them fearing a baby. Certainly not their own. And so while she sleeps beside him, nestled soundly in his arms, Daryl gets his head straight, fixing his mind about this. Looking ahead, looking forward, he summons up what is needed to get by, finding in him the courage to take this too on, and the grace to count it as a blessing. No more looking back, this is the hand they're playing now.
"Mm…" Beth murmurs in her sleep. Her eyes flutter slowly open and closed as she breathes in heavily.
"Shh," he whispers into her head.
"Da-ryl…" the sound of his name as she speaks it in her waking sleep is slow and warm, drawn and heavy like the old generational thread-worn quilt they're blanketed under.
"Y'r alright, Greene," he tells her in tones low and firm. Daryl's steady hand strokes her back slowly, his other takes her hand in his and pulls it up to where he rests it on his chest.
Beth lies with him, drifting in quiet wakefulness, her hand in his, finger running imperceptibly over an old scar on his thumb.
Time passes; slowly or fast there's no way to mark it. They drift, not in slumber but in some mindless quiet middle place. They doze, in and out, off and on, letting minutes feel like hours and spurts of sleep feel like nights'. His hand keeps hers in his, gently folding it and refolding it within his as he sleeps. Their legs entwine, their breathing slows in time with one another's; lips touch skin. Slowly their bodies meld closer together, warmth drawn to warmth, hearts drawn to hearts, heat drawn to heat. The space between them is immeasurable and drowsily they stretch and bend into one another. The exhaustion of their run, the exhaustion of always being on the run, of their news, of their worry, of the world, leaving them tired, and open, and bound ever closer together.
Beth holds her arms around him, around the thick lean muscles of his lower torso, drawing him in nearer; Daryl holds her face, his arm hooked round her neck, brushing back her hair, stroking her sun-freckled face. In the midst of waking sleep lips slowly find each other, magnetized more by nature than conscious deliberate desire. Mouths whisper wordlessly to each other in kisses, languid, long-lingering drowsy kisses, all the while their bodies inch ever closer, entangling intimately. As they shift and move in the darkness their eyes stay shut in half-sleep — they know each other without seeing; they love each other without out words, or looks or noise.
Their progress is slow, like honey; their breathing is steady. There's nothing hurried or even heightened in this time spent in each other's arms, in their hands, in their touch. With slow pulls Beth's tops are pealed off and dropped over the phosphorescent-glowing glass; under such cover, the dim haze just beyond their heavy eyelids fades to blackness. Daryl's hands and lips are drawn to her, immediately she's back in his arms; he holds his head to her, breathing deeply. Her chest lifts and rises in deep steady alluring breaths beneath his rough face, warm with slow-motion cherishing.
His hands find her belly, soft and incurvate as she lies there on her back beneath his touch. His hands linger there, learning her body as it is now in measure of the growth it will undergo. Below her navel his lips touch her, soft, and wet with use, then gradually he's lower, pulling at tired elastic and sleepily finding his way to her, tasting her, letting the slender softness of her pale limbs surround and caress him with tiny fractional quakes and shivers as his tongue and lips build for her a pleasure – centralized low and deep within, dizzying cloudily her dreamy head.
The arousal, the pleasure, the desire, the longing all builds, all mounts, calling them to one another, for fulfillment, for union, but all so stealthily – in quiet, delayed extended stretches of time. Their bodies and the sensations they are capable of eliciting and experiencing are alive and at play, but dulled softly by the senses they never fully call on to awake — each touch, each bend and arc, and taste and tug follows only in response to what came before; it is responsive between them, organic and dreamy, no thought required.
There is no frenzy or rush, no pulsing passion demanding immediacy, to be answered, to be quenched. For one night they have the time, the space, the security, to luxuriate in their explorations of one another, to sleep, and to rest and reconnect and restore. Less than consciously they shut their minds off and surrender to something stiller and secret and longing within them, guiding them to one another. When her first quakes of pleasure subside and his lips return to hers, Beth's fingers grip at the long hair at the back of his neck, and at last he is with her, one, melded as one, her young hips opened and bent to him, her legs wrapped tightly about him, cradling him with such love such care that could never be rivaled, her still-flat torso stretching upwards to his, strong and masculine. Together they move like waves, no exertion spent unnecessarily; they are glued together in that spot, bending and yielding and taking and giving — fluid, endless, constant. Wordless, absolute and assured.
Pleasure builds, comfort builds, desire builds, excitement builds, but nothing shifts, even fractionally, between them; melded so completely are they in that place that binds them. Their hips flex and press, yield and give. Rolling over onto his back, he pulls her small body atop his and still that lock, that seal never breaks. Though his hands reach to touch her, feel her, grip her, guide her, his eyes never open. Though he loves to see her face — loves to see her flushed and breathing above him in moments such as this — Daryl knows who his love is, knows what she looks like – every shadow of her face; he like she remains blind, mindlessly blocking out one sense in a denial heightening the remaining others. Beth lays herself on him, burying her face in his neck, planting soft wet kisses on his neck beneath his jaw, behind his ear. Beneath her, Daryl twists in pleasure and his expression winces and distorts. His solid hands travel the distance of her long thin back and under her touch, her slight weight below her hips, Daryl grips her to him tighter. When an intake of breath stops short and shudders within her, there comes a deep rush and panging in Daryl and he pulls her to him tightly, flipping her over beneath him once more. Every muscle from his ankles to his neck flex and stretch in his efforts to get more completely to her, to meet her in a place so private so secret so safe it can only be known by them two, and Beth gives as much as she is able, opening to him in ways she hadn't known she could and they arch and reach and press and believe and wait and do not breathe do not think do not see only feel and love and trust and then there is a mighty reckoning, an absolute torrent of anticipation realized of love and yearning and faith actualized. Bodies turn stiff and rigid then shudder and implode and collapse into each other in unison.
Daryl sinks into her, never more at peace, never more at home, never more loved. "Sweetheart…" he breathes into her ear.
"Love you," she whispers into his, and their bodies cling to each other tighter. Spent and limpid and messy and tired, they do not move or shift or stir; they lie there, breathing the same air, with the same soft movement of lungs and chests, still as one, still connected, letting each other's re-substantiating bodies fall back into place, come back down to earth, becoming gradually more solid and weighty as the moments slip stilly past them. They would sleep this way, him atop her, her holding him, gratified still by the intimacy of their connection, different as it is though as it changes after completion. When he does pull himself away he takes her arm with him as he rolls onto his side, pulling her against him as he surrenders finally to unconscious sleep.
Breathing heavily Beth holds herself to him, pressing her flushed face against the scars and demons on his back, and closes her eyes to sleep.
The night passes without event. Behind him Beth breathes in deeply, stirring lightly against him. The feel of her slight frame and soft breasts against him, slowly rising and falling as she slumbers, lulls him to sleep, dreamless and quiet. In his sleep, as the minutes and hours pass, Daryl pulls Beth's naked body in closer to his own, letting it blanket him in a way he's never found a way to let anyone else before.
The moon travels through the sky, and in their claimed bed they shift, and sometimes dream. In her sleep Beth reaches out for his hand, and finding it pulls his arm down closer to her; heavily he follows after, drawing himself into her, tucking her in, holding her tight. Daryl sinks into her and into deep sleep, and one more day ending with the two of them still breathing, and still together.
It is a blessing. As few as they've been in his life, he'd think he'd be quicker to spot them. He sleeps with her, his love, with his lips on her skin. The morning will come quickly, sooner than they like, and then they'll be out the door and back at it, and rest and peace count as everything they have when they have it.