Not a super long one (the next one will likely be of similar length) but I thought I'd try to post a little something. Please hang in there with Beth, it won't be like this forever. Happy reading and, once again, happy 2020! Thanks so much for reading!
"Hey," the low voice rumbles in his ear as the light touch nudges at his shoulder. "Sy." Simon stirs slowly, groggily pulling himself from a deep and distant sleep. His eyes open but his mind still feels heady with sleep. The teenager shuts his eyes closed, breathes in deeply, and on the exhale reopens his eyes. "Y'good?" They keep their voices low and hushed.
"Yeh," Simon nods, rubbing at his mop of hair beneath his wool cap. "Man, I was gone." He rubs his eyes and works at the unpleasant business of withdrawing himself from the cocoon of his bedding. "It been quiet?"
"Mm-hm. Took out two strays, easy. Nuthin' else." Daryl glances toward Beth. "She ever wake?"
"I knocked out, dunno." Simon's crouching now, shifting around Daryl to make it to the door. "How you feeling?"
"Like I been shot up an' cut."
"Th'nks for takin' those hours."
"It's quiet out there. Stand watch a couple hours, then get some rest b'fore sunup. Coal bed's burnin' pretty good. Switch out a heat rock evr'y so often; it ain't too bad." Daryl hands over the crossbow.
"Got it," Simon whispers.
The zipper squeals as he unzips the tent to step out then rezips it closed behind him. Carefully Simon walks the distance to the fire, just barely visible from even so short a distance. The embers glow and dampen like a breathing thing, and Simon takes care not to look too long at it for fear of being lulled unwittingly back to sleep. He sets the heat stone he brought with from his bed back into the coals and pushes out another to let it cool some before lifting it to hold. With the crossbow slung over his shoulder, Simon looks around. In the seat Daryl'd occupied sits the night vision goggles, beside them a pile of handmade dowels Daryl must have spent his watch sharpening into points. There's a tarp strung vertically in a tight half-crescent around the chair and the mouth of the fire pit, creating a sort of wind blocker and heat pocket between the trees. More than cold, Simon guesses Daryl was tired and looking for occupation.
Still standing, he dons the goggles and twice over conducts a full perimeter scan, straining his senses to detect anything amiss. Satisfied, he removes the eyewear and his several layers of blankets. Breathing in deeply twice, Simon commences with twenty quick-paced jumping jacks. He pauses then to conduct another full area survey before dropping to the ground to do thirty consecutive pushups. His breath puffs out in cold bursts as he uses his arms to pump himself up and down, never minding the pebbles and grit digging into the balls and pads of his hands. Thirty times he strains and straightens his arms, pushing the weight of his straight-framed body over and over in quick succession. Finished, with his heart rate up and his body warmer, Simon stands and reclaims his layer of blankets and heated stone. Now more alert, he takes up the watch, thinking once again of Rob. Wisecracking smartass irreverent Rob was always on him about his slight lean frame, always goating him to bulk up, even before the change, back when Simon was only twelve and Rob was still just fourteen. Back when they were neighbors not survivors.
In the woods, Rob had never been the biggest among them, it was James who was the tallest and most already like a man, but Rob was compact, angular, and well-built. It had been he who got them all doing calisthenics, not for need — by both age and necessity they were fit already — but for frame of mind. Tired? Do fifty push-ups. Fed up? Take a run. Need to clear your head? Walk the slackline. Pissed off? Chop firewood. Robby had that way about him of taking the long view of things. He always had. Even given his quick temper, he never let himself get caught up on little things, or too tangled in the now.
Simon sniffs through the cold. Thinking of one brings on thoughts of all of them, and Simon sits in the dark, thinking of his friends, wondering if any of them are still alive, and if so, where. On his own, this late at night and in the dark, there are better thoughts to be thinking, but there's little risk he'll fall asleep while thinking of his lost forsaken comrades. He remembers them and the things they said, the ways they helped each other, the things they did to occupy their days. He invokes the different tones of their laughter and shades of their faces. He revists them, and the home and world they built together, the fraternal grief they gave each other, and the resilience they found in one another. Tonight he does not dwell on how it ended. He does not let the scent of the fire take him back to the day he lost them. For this night, he relieves himself of the heavy burden of what-ifs. Sharpening the unfinished dowels, Simon wards off thoughts of guilt. He can't let every thought of his friends shadow with regret. Shifting his weight, Simon breathes the crackling night air in, and harnesses his memories to the good times.
Inside the tent, Daryl tries to fall asleep. Out there on watch his eyes were nearly leaden. He's no less tired now but he's agitated, unable to find his peace. Beth's there beside him, three feet away at most, but not in his arms, not slowing his breath with the rhythmic pacing of her own. She hasn't slept curled into him, not intentionally, since they left the apartment. He doesn't know if she wants the space, or if she's trying not to coddle him in his recovery, or it's merely been the circumstances, but he doubts the distance is doing either of them any good. Fed up and missing her, Daryl throws off his blankets then with some trouble shifts the bedding and himself to be nearer to her. Laying his head at last beside her, he adjusts blankets and sleeping bags until she's right there, able to be held. Exhausted and in pain, Daryl bends himself around her, pulling her close. With stillness his breathing steadies, and his coarse frozen hand finds the swell of their child. His chest constricts. It's been days, days since he's touched her here, days since he's thought about the baby beyond matters of safety and provisions — not as an actual child. One who might have her eyes and his hair, Hershel's smile or his mother's nose. When things get rough, the baby becomes this sort of abstract albatross of vulnerability and responsibility. When he gets too far removed, he sometimes finds himself losing sight of the fact he'll one day have a son or a daughter. A child his not just to protect but to raise. A little human person to laugh with and to teach, to wrestle with and to snug. Daryl drifts asleep, finally not thinking of danger or armaments but with visions of dimples and tiny hands, of baby gurgles and sweet-smelling heads. In his slumber his body slackens, releasing the pain and the tension he carries, but he does not let go of her.
…
Morning comes late to them. If they had intended to make an early start for the road it did not happen. Simon had crawled into the tent sometime between four or five in the morning and they three slept soundly for hours more. When finally they do wake and rise, the sun is well appointed in the morning sky, suggesting it's maybe as late as nine. Beth is not there where she had been. Daryl rubs the sleep from his face, takes up his holstered belt, and rises, stiffly and with difficulty, to find her and start the day. Simon follows after, first to relieve himself, second to give the remnants of the camp a thorough going over. Daryl finds Beth seated on the ground beside the morning fire she stokes and feeds.
"Mornin'," he greets her, his voice dry. His fingers lightly stroke the tangled mess of her hair as he hobbles stiffly past, his directive also to take a piss.
Somewhere concealed within one of the tents, Simon can be heard rifling through the collective clutter of what's been left behind. "Beth—" he calls to her. "Come're." First giving the fire another good stoke, Beth does rise to join Simon in whichever tent he's called out from.
He looks up when her shadow crosses the entrance and she pulls back on the nylon flap. "Take a look," he tells her, a smile on his face. Beth does, and what she sees is a weekender bag filled with baby gear. She stands there, moving no closer to the mess of a family's hastily packed supplies. "I grabbed th' formula already," Simon tells her, energized by this find. "Don't know what else here is worth keeping and what's not; thought you would." He's still sorting through the windfall, unawares she's not had the reaction he'd expected. "There're a couple diapers," he itemizes. "Wasn't sure if you'd think it worth the bulk to pack 'em. A pacifier, diaper cream, lotion, more blankets… Pajamas." A rubberized squeak sounds as his hand passes over something. "A toy."
Beth remains motionless. Before, when it had been for Judith, Beth hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about the children that first had claim on the items Daryl and the others sourced for her. Judith's needs were immediate and theirs were past. With Judith right there, crying and cooing and eating and pooping, smiling those little smiles and nuzzling that way she did when she slept, all the rest faded into the background of all the other countless faceless deaths the world has claimed since the change. It was the only way they could go on. It still is. Beth knows this. But, still, it's not the same. Judith isn't here. This other baby, the one all these things were meant for, isn't here. And just like them, her own child is not here. The promise of life is not the same as life, and in the absence of it the shadows of those gone loom larger. Conscious that he'd only meant to be helpful and his intentions were the best, she cannot muster the gratified reaction he'd been after. Beth stares. Unable to look away. Unable to get past it, she lingers there, conjuring the faces of so many children and mothers now so unfairly long gone. She's transfixed.
"Hey," his gnarled baritone means gently to break through her absorption. Unnoticed till now, he's been standing there just beside her. Daryl lighty brushes the back of his index finger along her arm. "Beth," he murmurs, trying to urge her from her stupor. "Time t' eat." She doesn't move. Quiet as she's been for days, he'd expected neither animation nor resistance to his coaxing. Tugging softly at her sleeve, Daryl leads her away from the tent, back to the fire and the circle of warmth it radiates in the sunshine of the morning.
Daryl sits with her, she again on the ground, holding her legs to her, he beside her in his chair, letting his bad leg rest. He hands her a warmed plate of bread, sardines, and canned carrots. They've not been opening their canned goods, instead reserving them for when nothing other can be sourced, but Beth hasn't been eating, and he's trying to tempt her as much as he's trying to get her some needed nutrients and something at least a little hydrating. She accepts the plate from him, but it just balances untouched in her hold. Daryl gives her a minute and then his brow crosses. "Com'on," he grunts, pressing more roughly, "enough. You gotta eat. Drink somethin' too." When his words have no effect in badgering her into action he takes a different tack. "Can't stop livin', girl. Think about Hershel. Merle. Otis and Patricia, James and Michael. Andrea, T—" Daryl ceases listing. "— All the people we knew who died tryin' to live. You owe it to them." His eyes quicken as steadily he watches her. "Your dad'd never want to see you quit. Maggie neither. What am I gonna tell 'er," he hounds, "when we finally meet up and you ain't with me no more 'cuz you quit eatin'." Beth hardly flinches, and Daryl changes tone again, walking the line between empathy and acute frustration. "Look'a me—" he instructs. Though Beth's glassy eyes never shift, Daryl still means to make his point: "Shot up, cut up, I ain't quitin'." Irritated with his ineffectiveness, Daryl rises and lets her to herself. He paces unevenly some distance away, letting her have her space. But he cannot keep it up for long. This behavior — while maybe understandably reached — is not acceptable. It's not how they survive. It's not who they are, who she is. It's not something she gets to indulge in long. Once more Daryl's temper gets the better of him and he turns back, advancing toward her with renewed accusatory malice and wide swinging gestures and finger-pointing. "You think about all those hungry nights we spent just wishing f'r food. Remember th' worms? Eat, Greene. Cowboy up and eat." But Daryl can't shout long at a person who's not all there. Defeated, he exhales, recognizing his anger and frustration won't be enough to break through. His voice drops then, and stiffly he lowers himself to his knee beside her. "Can't watch you waste away, girl." Blinking, Daryl waits, looking for her to acknowledge him, or at least to demonstrate she's still there. He'll take a shift or change in her expression, anything to convey she's still in there somewhere, not wholly retreated from the world, or from him. But though in time, as if in slow motion, her wide eyes do turn to him, it's hardly her who's looking back. He's not looking for a smile, or that damned twinkle she gets in her eyes. She can keep her cherubic dimples for another time, but he needs to see her. The girl who doesn't back down. The girl who once sang as they readied for war. The girl who lost her father but wouldn't quit trying to save the little kids. The girl who wasn't too timid to shout him down, calling bullshit on him when she saw fit to.
That girl, who's tough and resilient, isn't there looking back at him. It's been days since he's seen any show of her, not in all the time they spent in the barn nor after. The emptiness in her calls to mind for him another barn… Daryl hadn't been around to see it, but he knew Beth'd been left in a stupor after Shane and the rest, including himself, set siege to Hershel's barn. After what had been her mother got hold of her, Lori had described her as 'catatonic'. Is this that?
Daryl hadn't thought at this point he'd ever see this in Beth. Not after surviving Hershel. Not after losing the forest camp and nearly losing the baby. But the mind is not a puzzle to be solved, and a breakdown, if that's the word for it, can be a culmination of everything. Daryl trusts that the daughter of Hershel Greene can come back, that she can surface. She did once before. Rick did. It'd been Beth who'd buoyed Daryl from the darkness, first after the prison, then again after their encounter with the bandits. People can come back. He just has to reach her.
Dary's calloused hand stretches out to touch her. Ever so softly he brushes wisps of hair from her face. His words come low and gentle, "If f'r no one else," his tone lowers again, intimate, plain-spoken, honest, "if not for you or f'r me, you've still got t' eat." He means the baby. He means that this isn't a choice. He means to say that as much as she matters to him, as much as he needs her to take care of herself for herself, it really isn't a choice that's solely hers any longer; something he knows she believes just as strongly somewhere deep inside herself. In the end, it's not only about her, and it's not about him. For all this time, through all these battles, they've been fighting for a future, and now that future is their child. And Beth. And this family. And if she's lost sight of it for the moment, then like she once did for him: he'll stay the course for all of them until again she can do it for herself. Daryl takes hold of the dish of food and with no more words shoves it toward her, then walks away.