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Beth was staring at the ceiling when her sister’s voice cut through the silence. Despite the muffled sound, part of her still expected to look up and find Maggie in her cell, asking how she was.
“That’s Beth’s favorite book,” Maggie’s voice drifted through the cement wall between Beth and Daryl.
She couldn’t help but smile—for the first time since the alarm blared and shook everything up.
Beth was feeling Lori’s death deeply. The first time, she’d mourned more for the baby who’d lost her mother. But Beth’s heart had swollen with love for the women over the high-stress experiences they’d endured together. She was cradling Lori as she passed. It haunted the blonde, and the memories made her head ache. Sleep not only eluded her, but Beth didn’t want it to come. Sleeping meant dreaming. And dreaming usually meant dying again, losing her family again, losing Daryl again.
Beth heard Maggie’s footsteps trail away from the pair of cells, and after slipping out from underneath her sheets, she stepped softly toward Daryl’s cell.
“Hey,” she whispered, leaning against the wall just inside of his sheet curtain. He lifted his flashlight toward her face. “You can’t sleep either?”
In response to her question, Daryl shrugged his shoulders. He was exhausted, truthfully, but he knew that no amount of fatigue would shut his brain off for a few hours. It surprised him to have a visit from Beth, though, considering how dinner had ended between them that night.
“’m’alright. Gonna read for a little…”
Sitting up, he rolled a pencil into the binding of the book to save his page and tossed it aside to give Beth his full attention. He patted the spot beside him and waited for the girl to occupy it before speaking again.
Taking a seat on the bed next to Daryl, Beth was able to take solace in just his closeness, the heat radiating from his skin into the space between them.
“You okay?” he asked softly, knowing full well that she wasn’t. If he’d understood correctly, she was there when Lori died—which would be traumatizing enough. His long and walker-filled day didn’t compare to hers. Not at all.
She sighed, thumbing the hem of her shirt absentmindedly. “I’ve been better,” she answered honestly, if not a little sarcastically. “Lori was in so much pain. I know this was probably best for her. But what about Judith? She deserves a mother, you know?”
Beth’s eyes were burning with the hot sting of new tears. She wiped at her cheek in frustration, making Daryl lift his hand hesitantly, unsure of how to comfort her. He wasn’t good with words and even worse when it came to physical consolation, but his hand rested gently against the girl’s back and rubbed soothingly.
“Judith’s got you,” he reminded, and a small smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “She likes when you sing to her.”
Looking across the beam of the flashlight and meeting Daryl’s eyes, Beth looked intensely at the man in front of her. His touch on her back made the skin under her shirt tingle. Lori’s words echoed in her mind. “The way he looks at you . . .” She searched his eyes for some understanding of what he’d said. She hadn’t been singing much since Lori died.
Beth was starting to think Daryl had some sort of understanding of the first time they’d been through this, but he was the only one. “I tried to save her this time. I didn’t want her to die again.”
The silence that followed her words caused Beth to really think about what she’d just said. Exhaustion had lowered her barriers, her reaction time. Daryl might’ve been talking of things he remembered, but she didn’t think he was doing it consciously.
Daryl didn’t have time to register Beth’s words, but they confused him all the same. She didn’t want Lori to die again? Had she died before?
As he looked at her quizzically, Beth kept talking to keep him from questioning her words. “What was Maggie talking about earlier? Someone looking for a child?”
He shook away the puzzling statements as she changed the subject, taking his mind off of it. “Eavesdropping, Greene?” He raised an eyebrow at her in the dim lighting and chuckled. He lifted his shoulders in a shrug again, unsure of what to say. The child in the pantry at that daycare troubled him, but he wasn’t completely sure why. Still, he searched for words to explain it to her.
“Me and Maggie found a daycare on our run,” he began, still rubbing Beth’s back lightly. “Whole thing was turned over, like chaos sent the kids runnin’ in all directions. It’s hard to imagine this…outbreak happening to people other than us, you know? Each person’s got their story of how it happened, but there were kids in that building that watched their friends attack each other. It’s sick.”
Pausing for a moment, Daryl dropped his hand to the area behind Beth and leaned against it, shifting closer to her as he did so. “There was a little girl in the pantry. Turned, eating an opossum, alone. And her parents could still be out there, mourning their loss…maybe they don’t even know she’s still there.”
“They lost their daughter a long time ago Daryl,” the girl shifted on the bed, pulling her legs onto the surface and crossing them in front of her. Now her whole body was facing Daryl, and her hand lined up perfectly with the one that had been rubbing her back, and was now holding him up. She placed her hand over his. “I’m sorry you had to see that. But you can’t carry that weight around. Seeing their daughter turned like that wouldn’t help them, or be good for them. Wherever they are, I’m sure they remember her like she was before all of this happened. Bright and happy.”
Beth looked away for a moment before continuing. “I remember that day on the farm, when I saw my family for the first time since they’d turned. Dad just said they were sick but when I saw my brother . . . he wasn’t really my brother. I wish I believed that he was in there somewhere, that if we just knew the cure we could’ve restored him to his old self. But I just don’t believe it anymore.
Daryl listened intently as Beth spoke about her family, the ones that turned and were kept in the barn before Shane exposed them, but the only thing his mind wanted to focus on was her hand on top of his. The way it made him feel, secure and hopeful. His skin bubbled with goosebumps and it took all his strength not to give way to impulse and kiss the girl beside him.
Finally looking back to him, Beth smiled a little. “All I believe in is us. Our family. You, Rick, Dad, Maggie, Glenn . . . We’ll do what we have to do to survive.”
Nodding slowly, Daryl silently agreed with her. Doing what needed to be done meant a lot more than scavenging for food and artillery. At this point, it was war; war against the walkers and war against the living. You had to do a little killing to continue doing a little living.
“I was on a hunting trip,” he said only to distract himself. “On the way back, we were ambushed by walkers. First time I ever seen them…”
His voice trailed off as he remembered it, how he knew instinctively that his disemboweled father wouldn’t make it whether they got to a hospital or not. Even before he knew how to kill these reanimated people.
“Lost everyone that day. My dad, his friend Buck, and Jess, my uncle,” Daryl continued with a shrug of his shoulders. “Found Merle, though, and then Glenn and his group.”
He forced a smile before lifting his hand and allowing Beth’s fingers to sift between his, interlocking warmly.
Beth squeezed his hand reassuringly, taking in all of this new information he was sharing. Talking to Daryl was the only thing that made Beth feel like her old self again, the one who never gave up, never lost hope. Her smile grew wider the longer their fingers stayed entwined.
"This, this thing, this disease it changed everything. We have to put all that’s happened behind us for now, to survive. And when it's over, we'll be able to remember those we lost in a way they deserve. That book you gave me, it's made me think a lot more about what the world will look like after all this."
Daryl thought about Brave New World, remembered how corrupt the world in that book really was. He didn’t see an end to this, though. Not in the way that Beth was talking about. To him, this was the extinction of the human race. A clean slate for new organisms to grow, a way for the earth to start over. He didn’t see humans rising again to repopulate the cities left behind. All these survivors would die out, and their reanimated bodies would slowly rot away.
“The New World was fucked,” he commented quietly as he rubbed his thumb over Beth’s. “I wouldn’t want that to come out of this.”
He looked up at her and gave her a small smile. “Your book is…it’s hard to get into right now. I’m a slow reader, though. I feel bad for June, she’s lost too much.”
"Yeah, June does lose a lot. But you should know something about Jodi Picoult's books. Not everything is as it seems," Beth shrugged with a mischievous grin. "I remember after Dad finished reading it, we had a long talk about the Gospel, and it brought us closer together. I was glad he agreed to read it. I'm glad you did, too. I hope you don't hate me after it's over!" She laughed boisterously and had to cover her mouth with her free hand to keep the noise from getting too loud.
Daryl found himself smiling as Beth laughed aloud, mostly because it was nice to see her happy after such a grim day. He squeezed her hand tightly and let out a sigh of content. His eyes searched her face and found the curl of her lips, soft and pale pink, stretched across her teeth.
“I could never hate you, Beth,” he whispered, his voice stern with sincerity. Looking up, he caught her gaze and held it for a moment, his fingers closing around hers again. A silence crept in between them and it gave him time to reflect about the night. “So, why didn’t you go pray with Hershel and Maggie?”
Beth fought the urge to recoil from their physical closeness at his words. Her heart had taken a ride on a roller coaster as his nice words faded into an uncomfortable question. She looked away as he awaited an answer.
"My heart wouldn't have been in it. Dad always said that if you just go through the motions. God can tell when you're praising him because you feel like you have to or that you should," Beth shrugged. "It's hard for me to believe in a loving God who would take away Judith's mother. Lori was so close to making it. We all could've used a miracle. There either is no God or he's turned away from us—the whole human race."
She sighed, her heart taking on the same weight it'd been carrying before Beth entered this cell. She'd left that weight on the other side of the sheet that shielded Daryl's cell from the rest of the block. It came back to her now, and felt even heavier.
"Maybe I should read Change of Heart again," she managed a light hearted chuckle.
Again Daryl was at a loss for words. He mentally reprimanded himself for even bringing it up, because he knew nothing about religion himself. Sure, he’d been to church and prayed to someone for his long nights of abuse to end, but it all felt like he was just talking to a void. His faith in a higher being just wasn’t there, and hadn’t been since childhood.
But he wanted to help Beth, the farm girl who clutched the bible to her chest and found solace in its pages. Looking down, he reached for her empty hand and intertwined their other five fingers together as he turned toward her and mimicked her position, folding his legs like a pretzel.
“I ain’t no preacher, Beth, but if your God abandons you when you need Him most, he ain’t no God at all. You may as well call Him Will Dixon ‘cause that’s the kind of bullshit I put up with.”
Beth felt vulnerable in this new position. But she trusted Daryl and his words brought a smile to her face, even with tears in her eyes. She took a deep, shaky breath. "I know you're right, I'm just mad at Him right now. I miss Lori. And every time Judith cries I feel her mother's loss. This world is crazy enough without ever knowing your mother. And let's face it, Rick's not in the best place right now . . ."
“No, he’s not,” Daryl frowned and gently squeezed both of her hands, seeking comfort and support from her now. Rick going off his rocker meant that he had to take charge now as the group’s leader, and he honestly didn’t think he was ready for that kind of responsibility. He liked putting his two cents in and leaving the decision-making up to someone else.
“I dunno what to do about it. It’s hard to keep your place as a friend but still put your foot down as a leader. Can’t bring a grieving man to his senses.”
As Daryl’s voice trailed off, the gurgling sound of a crying baby and the distressed grunt of a boy rang out through the cell block from just two cells down. The cries grew louder as Carl carried Judith toward Beth’s cell, and then finally to Daryl’s cell where she was found.
“Can you help me, Beth?” the boy asked, balancing the baby’s head in the crook of his elbow. “She won’t eat for me.”
Beth looked over her shoulder at Carl and the baby and nodded, forcing a smile to her lips. "I'll be there in a minute," she said firmly. The look in her eye helped him get the hint, and Carl dropped the curtain closed behind him once more.
She turned back to Daryl and met his eyes, finding disappointment painted all over his face. The man squeezed her hands once more, an amused smile playing at his lips. Beth's eyes dropped to their hands, and her heart sunk. She loved caring for Judith, but she almost couldn't make her body move from its spot on Daryl's bed or force her fingers to untangle from his. Beth sighed quietly, and looked into his eyes with an apologetic smile before finally dropping their hands reluctantly.
Looking back as she pulled the sheet open to the rest of the cell block, she suddenly wondered what would've happened between them had no one ever interrupted. "You should get some sleep," she said finally. "Judith will have us all up bright and early."