Hey all! [So boy, was that a frustrating midseason finale! I'm sorry for her fans out there, but com'on now, Jessie and her kids are killing me, ugggh. (Sorry, beyond her nutzo kids I totally resent the Rick-Jessie pairing.) So it's December, and so begins our watch till February, seems like it was just October.] Thanks so much to everyone for all their super kind comments on the last chapters, and for staying with me both through the uncertainty of Beth and Daryl's journey and through the time lapses in posts. So while the last mini chapter may have served as an ending, it in fact was not an ending, and the story moves forward with this little chapter. Happy holidays y'all!
"Daryl," Simon prompts, "you're up. Best song."
Pushing forward on the sun cracked pavement Daryl contributes nothing, neither does he appear to be especially thinking on it. Mutely he walks on, staying in pace with Simon who's beside him, and Beth who's beyond Simon. "Mm, mm," Beth interjects. "There's no way. Too broad."
"Uh, best album then?" Simon reconsiders.
It doesn't matter, what they choose. It's not a zeitgeist they're creating; talking keeps the chill from biting too deeply. Having to work their memories keeps the endless walk from being too long, too monotonous. Prompted to think about music and books and the old world gives them leave to not dwell too long on the dire circumstances they can't pull themselves from. Talking gives them leave to think of life as something other than a thing that ends. Silence lasts only so long, sooner or later it becomes oppressive and conversation finds its way back in. Through the cracks of heartache and exhaustion it sneaks, through the absences of destinations and certainty, and through the voids left by the terrible unchanging awfulness of the world as it is, conversation inserts itself. Perhaps there is no place any longer for idle conversation, but still it happens upon them, traveling with them as they go, bolstering them some, meaninglessly occupying them mostly. Ever there is work to be done and ever there are thoughts to persistently hold onto, but still amidst this they find themselves in need of occupation, of a lighter sort, and thus conversation enters in.
The last town they came to was in ashes – burned by nature, by plan, or by incident no one bothered to discern. There was no food to scavenge, no firepower, no cars, no small game. They moved through without stopping. That disappointment behind them, it's been three nights since last they slept in shelter, and all supplies are running low. They are weary but they press on, trusting they will come to something soon, that the tide will change. Cold as they are, hungry and tired, for the moment no walkers flank them, and no humans threaten; the moment as it stands affords each forward step they take the possibility of relief at the other end. They may find shelter, they may find a running vehicle, they may find food, an arsenal, people. Possibility inhabits the spaces not too consumed by horror, if they can manage to see it as so. Trying not to be drug too far down by the past, and by what darkness surely lies in wait, they give themselves leave to travel with some levity.
"Like—" her browned face creases some as she lends her consideration "—the best thing to wake up to," Beth offers, perhaps a little wistfully. "Or when you're feeling sad but can't say why."
"I'm not sure that exists anymore," Simon counters dryly. "Doesn't even seem like music does…"
"It does," Daryl interjects with a heavy rasp and an understated nod. Two pairs of younger eyes turn to him, but the rugged road-worn archer only readjusts his crossbow strap and treads on, unaware there's a young teenager learning from him, and a girl, only slightly older, left behind smiling at the back of him.
"Wull," Simon takes up the conversation again, "anyway, name something Daryl; it's still you. Music, go."
His lanky hair falls in dark shadows about his face. "Don't know."
"Something," Simon presses amiably. "Name somethin' you like, anything."
Daryl's heavy brow raises and he glances at both his companions in consideration. After a pause he musters up, "Walls."
Simon snorts lightly at the non sequitur, then nods soberly, "Fair e'nough."
"An' the group."
Simon looks, "Her an' me? Is that a 'group'?"
"Y'all," he affirms with a mumble, "an' th' others."
"Walls and people," the boy repeats. Simon sort of grins. "You're not really scary are you?"
In hardened incredulity Daryl's brow spikes, "'m I s'posed t' be?"
"Guess you haven't had a lot of face time with a mirror lately." Beth would have snickered at this remark of Simon's, only she suspects however haggard Daryl's appearance may be, hers must be significantly more downtrodden. Daryl's always worn disheveled well, but she by now must be hollow of face, bruised and cut, shadowy and thin. "Or—" Simon tacks on "—heard the way you grumble. Or seen the way you handle y'rself."
His expression crossed, Daryl grunts and shakes his head. "Along th' way, guess the tiara fell off."
Simon laughs. She smiles. Daryl may buck and growl, Beth knows; he can be fierce feral and violent when occasion calls, and is always agile and able in the midst of action, but looking at him, she knows she does not see what others must. When Beth looks his way, it's the quiet expressiveness of his eyes she sees, the glint of his few escaping smiles. If he's intimidating to others, the rashness of his backwoods bravado, the broadness of his capable shoulders, and the swell of his arms from active overuse, only cut a figure to her that feels like home. The brown hue of his skin and the boyishness of his middle-aged face behind the mask of beard and dirt and hair and sweat endear him to her. Where others look to find hardness she knows it to be strength; where others project callousness she knows his heart's resilience. Simon's jest points to the duplicity that's always been his: Daryl Dixon — for as long as she's known him — has been volatile, on edge and doggedly loyal. His gruffness never precludes his deeply rooted humanity.
She loves him, that stride, that roughness, those wings and his voice. Beth walks, still smiling vaguely at his offhand humor. Things can be all right again; they can make it that way, as long as Daryl's still around.
"Beth," Simon prompts, "you now, name a favorite."
Her hand brushes the small swell of her belly. "Walls sound good." Her voice is pleasant if distant, and never as they travel on through the orange light of the lowering sun does she realize how close her response strikes at Daryl as they walk.
They need walls; of course they do. This world as it stands necessitates walls, always will. But never since Lori and her expectancy had they so badly been in need of them. Lori… Nearly six months she'd gone without walls, marking the length of her time out in the wild on the road, without stability, without certainty. But they had had cars then, through Lori's whole pregnancy. Though they had been on the run, and out on the road, they had had cars and they had had numbers. With Lori it hadn't been up to her to fight for their survival — she had been free to doze in the passenger seat when she needed to, free to allow the others around her to take up her slack. Beth, it seems, will have no such luxury. With no walls, no cars, few weapons and little to go on for numbers, she will have to push on — stay on her feet, battle through it. Hers will not be an easy path, and certainly no one had thought that of Lori's at the time. Easy it had not been, and in the end she had not survived.
Simon is something, he is capable and not nothing, but still he is young, and he is small; he does not make up for the protection of a group. Daryl feels the weight of responsibility fixed solidly on himself. Beth is resilient stalwart and battle tested, Simon resourceful, sure-headed and unafraid, but without his realizing Daryl had taken this group on as his to see through. Indelibly Elizabeth Greene is his partner in all things, but as she takes on the mantel of carrying their child, he finds himself carrying them all. But he can't keep them alive all on his own indefinitely. He knows this. He knows also the effort of doing so nearly killed Rick Grimes. Word games and jokes and innocuous siphonings from the past won't change any of it. There's nowhere they can hunker down, no reprieve to find. They have to keep moving. After Atlanta, after their camp, after the farm and the prison, it's clear: staying still is suicide. Movement means survival, or at least making it another day. But where to take her? And how? And more importantly: What after? After the baby comes, what then? How to keep them alive?
Daryl reigns himself back. They have time enough for that still. The future gapes voracious and unknown before them, better to not submit too early to its pains. Her delivery is still months away, so much will change from now till then; there is the present still to think of. What now? While they're tired and exposed and winter gaining ground? A vehicle would be a start — keep them moving, keep them warm, keep them covered. But after two and a half years of scavengers siphoning it off, not much gas is out there anymore; it's not a replenishing well they're drawing from. Once more Daryl finds himself wishing he'd given a damn about renewable energy and exhaustible resources back when there was still time do something about it. What he wouldn't give for a solar powered vehicle.
"There's a town up ahead," Simon offers up. "I can feel it."
"Yeh?" snorts Daryl mildly.
"Can't not be." Daryl nods sanguinely at this line of reasoning; inevitably there'll always be another shell of a town ahead. "Bettin' we'll find food. Bettin' some ammo."
"That would be nice," Beth reflects. She tightens her sweater about her, and the autumnal wind stirs her hair, dirty and matted and inching nearer to her jaw line. She winces in the temporary chill but neither her countenance nor her expression alter; her hands dig into the cuffs of her sleeves, she smiles faintly into the fading sun, and does not falter in her pace. "Horses," Beth contributes, "I like horses."
Simon glances at her, "Of course you do. That's a thing, right? Girls and their horses?" He looks to Beth and Daryl, "You think there're still any around?"
Daryl shrugs soberly. "Any 't are 're either somebody's or gone t' ground, wild, an' on its own."
Simon considers this, thinking of all the animals left behind to fend for themselves, abandoned in a much more lethal world than the one that for centuries had domesticated them. Never had he felt such a kinship with a quadruped. A quiet settles upon him.
"Hey." Daryl whistles briskly at Beth then tugs at her belt loop to pull her back to him. "Talk t' me." Beth lets herself get caught up in his stride, but though he'd asked her to talk to him, few words are exchanged. Instead his rough hand reaches out and lightly strokes the back of her head, then settles at the nape of her neck. "Hangin' in?"
"Mm,hm."
"Y'hungry?"
"It c'n wait."
"Prob'ly shouldn't."
Beth points to Simon, "He says we're almost there."
That brassy smile she flashes him slays him. Daryl would pull her in to kiss her, but instead he swallows a grin and nods his head. "Lead th' way, girl."