
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/4316388.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      The_Walking_Dead_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Daryl_Dixon/Beth_Greene
  Character:
      Beth_Greene, Daryl_Dixon, Carol_Peletier, Glenn_Rhee, Maggie_Greene, Rick
      Grimes, Carl_Grimes, Zach_(Walking_Dead)
  Additional Tags:
      Season_4_AU, Prison_AU, It's_like_a_medium_burn_you_guys, also_i'm_so
      sorry_this_first_chapter_took_so_long_to_write_omg
  Stats:
      Published: 2015-07-11 Updated: 2016-04-22 Chapters: 3/? Words: 2766
****** I will be your Iron Curtain, I will be your Berlin wall (and I will
never fall) ******
by Gorgeousgreymatter
Summary
     He hears her, at night sometimes, when he’s walking the corridors,
     listening to the quiet, even breathing of the people he’s somehow, in
     this fucked up universe, wound up providing for. At the prison, with
     Beth, he’s seen the way they all notice, like they all believe she’s
     got the sun in her hair and sky in her eyes, and Daryl don’t doubt
     it’s the reason half the boys here are clamoring for her.
Notes
     [A/N. Hello. I just caught up with the Walking Dead and these are my
     feelings about Beth and Daryl. There will also be lovely depictions
     of Carol in this because she is also wonderful. I like everyone in
     this bar, but Daryl Dixon especially. I tumbles @ whoinvitedthegadfly
     if you’re curious about my thoughts. Or not. *poof*]
***** I buried a bone, but you don't know him *****
I_will_be_your_Iron_Curtain,_I_will_be_your_Berlin_wall_(and_I_will_never_fall)
 
He’s not used to being around people like them, people who look at him like he
matters; ones that say, “Hello, how are ‘ya, and how do you do,” and all of
that smile-time bullshit. When he was a boy, it was a damn fine lucky day if he
didn’t get woke by the rough heel of a boot, solid and aching to the chest, or
of the stinging slap of the weathered hands of his father smelling like
moonshine and bourbon. And not getting the belt— well that was like fucking
Christmas in July, Tiny fuckin’ Tim and all. God fucking bless us everyone.
//
With the Woodbury residents swelling the ranks of their make-shift home, Daryl
begins to feel the uncomfortably distracting sensation of being stuck in a room
gasping on not enough air—of being squeezed and scraped into a box too small to
hold his bubbling insides. He hunts more than normal, any game he can snare or
shoot: deer, squirrels, possums, and braces of lean rabbits (enough for all
them people to chatter like sparrows when he hauls back carcasses, his boots
trailing blood through the jaundiced grass of the prison yard all the way to
the outdoor kitchens.
                                                                                                                                                              
“Thanks for that deer, Mr. Dixon.”
 
“We sure don’t know what we’d do without you, here, son.”
 
“We sure do appreciate it, what you do here, man.”
 
He wonders if it’ll ever get easier: accepting the handshakes they blindly
offer instead of dodging the blows he’s always learnt to expect.  
 
Being here with these people, with them, is making him think too damn much.
 
So he tries not to do it, most of the time.
//
He’s been preparing for the run at the Big Stop for awhile, and figures now’s a
time as good as any considering the people they had, weather not too bad, not
too many walkers groaning against the fences most mornings. When Michonne comes
back—ambles through the fence covered in walker guts lookin’ straight out of
one of those samurai flicks: the type of film his ma used to watch on grubby
black-and-white t.v, chain-smoking her Pall Malls in the ancient, peeling
sitting chair, from before,it seals the deal in his mind. So he hadn’t been
surprised at dinner that night, spoon scraping harsh against the bottom of her
bowl, when Michonne had looked at him and said, “Tomorrow,” and he’d nodded,
slurped down the last of his stew, and that had been that.
 
It’s the next day, and he’s out in the yard checking the cars and running point
on their supply lists with Glenn. The Korean sits on the bed of a rusted-up
Chevy Daryl’s currently stripping for parts, and it’s as much a surprise to
Daryl himself that the man’s chattering is calm and steadying in its
incessancy, like the hum of an old ham radio, or the ticking of a grandfather
clock: it numbs his thoughts. The day’s a cold one for May, and the back of
Daryl’s shirt is soaked with the morning’s dew (better’n sweat, he supposes),
as he lies under the belly of the truck, goose-pimples crawlin’ all the way up
his neck, socket wrench clenched in his fist.
                Daryl’s dead to the world under here, focused on the puzzle of
wires and pipes, until something Glenn says actually manages to worm its way
through Daryl’s deaf ears and to his brain.
                “I hate that guy,” Glenn says viciously. “Kissing her in front
of everyone like that, in front of all of us. Maggie wouldn’t like it at all.”
Kissing? Her? Who?
“What?” Daryl rasps, right when a fluid line tears under his supposed-to-be-
gentle touch. “Shit, fuck, god-damnit, useless piece of shit, son of a--.” The
curses pour out of him natural as breathing, but when he rolls out from
underneath the truck covered in engine oil and grass cuttings, he wishes they
hadn’t.  
“So that’s what you did before, then? Mechanic? No! I got it: car thief.”
Zach’s voice is as grating as the same inane questions he always asks, but
Daryl brushes them off like the brake fluid he wipes from his face with the
torn rag still tucked into his back pocket. Kid’s been trying to rile him since
he got here, since he rolled up in that fancy-ass car of his with the crew of
frat-boy-crew-cut-cronies.
“That ain’t nice, Zach,” a voice interjects, and it’s a soft one, with a
familiar lilt like a southern songbird.
Daryl blinks. It’s the Greene girl, Beth, and college boy’s got his arm looped
around her slight frame.
Zach’s lips curl in a smug smile before planting a kiss on Beth’s mouth, and he
whispers something in her ear, something that ends with a wink and a squeeze of
her narrow shoulders. She smiles.
 Daryl is suddenly annoyed. “Go round everybody up, kid. ‘Bout time to go,” he
says, and there’s a pause where Daryl lights a crumbled cigarette from his
shirt pocket and slips it into the corner of his mouth, where it hangs,
clouding his face in tendrils of ashy smoke. “You wanted to come on the run, so
go make yourself fuckin’ useful.”
                Zach doesn’t miss a beat, just grins and nods in Daryl’s
direction, “Those things’ll kill ya’, bro,” before turning to Beth expectantly.
“Say goodbye and wish me luck?” And Daryl notes with interest that she doesn’t
say anything back, just kisses the boy quick, and Daryl catches that twitch in
her eye and the way she seems to pull back from the boy’s clumsy, reaching
mouth.
                Daryl’s pretty sure its Glenn making that fake retching sound
from behind him.
Zach’s gone, and Beth’s still standing there watching them both, watching
him, scuffing the heels of the same ratty cowboy boot’s she’s worn since the
Hershel house was overrun. Daryl can see there’s peach-pink fading in her
cheeks, and she’s bitin’ her lip like she’s thinking as hard as he’s tryin’ not
to.
“That guy sucks, Beth, seriously,” says Glenn, shaking his head before heading
off to kiss his own woman goodbye.
Beth smiles again, shrugs, and she’s still watching him like she’s expecting
him to say something, anything, her lookin' all earnest and bright-eyed shit.
So he does, finally, leaning against the cab of the truck, her still scuffing
her shoes and him still smoking his cigarette, but she’s closer somehow and it
sets him on edge, fingers tightening around his dirty hankerchief.
“You two; it’s like a damn romance novel, ain’t it?” He crushes the last of his
cigarette under his boots and curses softly, wishing for another.
                Beth stares at him for a beat too long before offering, “He
reminds me.”
                Daryl says nothing to this, and it’s another second before she
adds, “You know, that we’re all still…alive.” She says it in that way that only
Beth can, as he’s observed over his time with the girl: that there’s some kind
of strange, unknown hope out there for all of them that only she can see. After
all, she’s been the one still singing songs while the rest of them stay quiet
as ghosts. He hears her, at night sometimes, when he’s walking the corridors,
listening to the quiet, even breathing of the people he’s somehow, in this
fucked up universe, wound up providing for. At the prison, with Beth, he’s seen
the way they all notice, like they all believe she’s got the sun in her hair
and sky in her eyes, and Daryl don’t doubt it’s the reason half the boys here
are clamoring for her.
                “Gotta get going,” Daryl finally says, banging his fist on the
hood of the van. Those blues eyes of hers are blown wide open like a window,
and the closeness is off-putting. He ain’t no teenage boy from Woodbury.
                So, when she reaches out, quick and sudden, tugging on some
strands of his hair, he visibly flinches, the contact jarring and less-than-
welcome. She recoils, but doesn’t seem hurt or surprised by his reaction. She
just smiles again, all teeth, before murmuring, “You had grass in your hair.
See you later, Daryl.”
 
So he doesn’t get a goodbye either.
 
She walks away, and Daryl’s heads left spinning all the way to the Big Stop.
 
 
 
***** I wanna hunt like David, I wanna kill me a giant man *****
Chapter Summary
     Honestly I'm just uploading this as parts are "completed." It's
     easier to keep my momentum going if I just post what I write every
     day. That's my new thing: writing every day.
     In the words of Chuck Shurley: WRITING IS HARD YOU GUYS.
I want to hunt like David, want to kill me a giant man
The run is a disaster, just one fuck up right on top of the other, until
they’re all buried deep under a mountain of shit (or a giant fucking
helicopter, to be more accurate). Once Daryl manages to free Tyreese from the
wreckage, they both force Bob out with choking grips on the scruff of his
collar. They’ve all barely managed to make it outside before Daryl fucking
loses it. He shuts his eyes and all he can see is Zach’s bloody, broken, torn-
up face, hear the screams ringing in his head like someone’s fired a gun off
too close to his eardrums.
His blood is already sizzling when he finally looks in Bob’s bag and sees it
empty, save for a single dusty bottle, and then Daryl’s seeing just as red as
the wine sloshing around inside of it. The weight of the thing is heavy in his
hand, and it feels like lead sinking to the pit of his stomach. When he rears
back to smash it to the ground, he meets Bob’s pleading, desperate gaze, and
the sight sickens him. There’s the ugly, naked shadow of Merle in their depths,
back when his bastard brother used to run his mouth off on crank, and the cruel
ghost of his father, eyes like the day he nearly busted Daryl’s teeth in back
when Daryl was eight—the day he’d foolishly poured all the liquor in the house
down the rusty bathroom drain thinking it’d finally get his mama to stop
crying. It hadn’t.
So Daryl’s got Bob backed up against the wall, a strained forearm against the
man’s trachea, pressing hard, before Daryl even realizes it’s the force of his
own body behind it. “Enough,” says Tyreese, all gentle and coaxing, like
Daryl’s some kind of spooked horse. Daryl’s shoulders go slack and he backs
away, snarling in disgust, but still acquiescing, nodding his head as Tyreese
leads Bob away to the car. And the words still echo in Daryl’s head, those
murmuring about choices being made, ‘bout none of them being able to change
nothin’.
It’s grave silence all the way back to the prison, apart from Bob’s quiet,
hiccupped sobs, and Daryl’s bruised knuckles are white from his relentless grip
on the steering wheel.
“I can tell her,” Michonne says quietly, her slim, dancer’s feet up on the
dashboard like she’s just a coed road-tripping on spring break, ‘cept she’s
also still washing rotting guts and walker blood off the bright steel of her
blade. Daryl’s covered in blood too—he can smell it, feel the stickiness of it
drying on his grimy skin. He wonders how much of it belongs to Zach.
“Gotta be me,” is all he grits out, jaw clenched as hard as his fingertips
around the clutch when Sasha waves them through the gates, before they get out
one person less and mostly empty handed. Rick, Maggie, and the others come out
to meet them, and Daryl can see with just a cursory glance that Beth isn’t
among them, and he brushes past the grasping hands and inquiring glances until
he’s lost in the dark corridors of the prison walls. He doesn’t have to look
back toward the yard to know that Rick’s got his head hung low in grief. Daryl
can feel that collective pulse of loss just fine enough alone, in here.
It’s late, quiet, and the cell block could be a tomb if it weren’t for the
shallow, even breathing of the people inside the cells. “Little boxes, little
boxes,” he mutters into the darkness, fingers still fiddling with the tails of
the arrows in his bow. He can recognize most of the occupants by sound alone
now from enough nights of walking the halls, just listening to them: Lizzy and
little Mika, the Samuels girls, who mumble soft and sweet like a pair of
nesting turtledoves while their father snores (as loud as one of the few
Grizzlies Daryl’s ever had the misfortune of crossing). And there’s Patrick,
who sputters and gasps, asthmatic and fretful in his bunk—first time Daryl’d
heard the boy in the night, he’d been certain he’d died or somethin’ from the
way Patrick’s lungs seemed to frantically chase the air. If he shuts his eyes,
Daryl can almost pretend like he’s underwater here, floating in a sea of
breathes, lost in waves. It’s somehow even quieter, here in the fog of white
noise.
There are dim shadows of candlelight cast on the walls at the end of the hall:
Beth’s cell. She may not have been waiting outside for their return, but she’d
certainly been waiting up for something (or somebody). Daryl pauses, almost
like he’s scenting the air, before breathing deep and approaching the grate.
He’s painfully aware of how his boots sound on the ground, the thud of them
akin to him to the snapping of dry twigs in the middle of a hunt. But Beth
ain’t no Grizzly bear, coyote, or wildcat.
She’s a seventeen-year-old girl.
This, he realizes, is somehow worse in its own way.
***** I left my heart to the wild hunt a-comin *****
Chapter Notes
     I wrote this instead of finishing my actual short story for possible
     actual real money. Cuz I'm actually the worsssssst.
Daryl is painfully aware of the heaviness of his footfalls as he peeks into the
girl’s room, his grimy fingers clenching the cell bars like they’re the only
thing holding him up, and maybe they are. His skin feels clammy, feverish, and
in an instant he feels her eyes, gaze both bold and unwavering, snap up to meet
his. In the dimness of the candlelight, her eyes glow, reflective in the
darkness like an animal he’s been trained to hunt since birth.
He says nothing, but he knows she knows, without saying a word. There’s a flush
in her cheeks as she speaks, and her voice is so quiet yet the loudest thing he
thinks he’s ever heard.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she murmurs, and she’s getting off her bunk now, moving
all slow and quiet towards him.
“I fucked up. I let him die. I lost---I,” he stutters, feels backed into a
corner, but the damn girl just doesn’t relent, with her earnest gaze, big
fucking doe eyes.
“I was happy just to know him, I don’t---you know I don’t cry anymore…” she
says, her thin, pale fingers fiddling with the strings of her blouse. She’s
real close now and Daryl can smell her: soap and sweat, the sickly sweet of
baby powder, wildflowers, the same kind that tickle his nose. And he stiffens
when he feels her against him, but he really shouldn’t be as surprised as he is
at the contact. Beth was all warmth and coy smiles, maybe she was used to it--
people just basking in her light.
Daryl always thought she kind of looked like the sun.
Daryl flinched under most people's gaze, save maybe Rick, or Carol, and thought
life in the shadows suited him just fine.
Beth didn’t seem to care about any of that.
“I keep on losing people,” he says, shaking her off finally, feeling the moment
stretching on too long for his comfort. Not like he was used to this kind of
affection. He’d never had his father's, and his mother’s was always taciturn,
all quiet, like she was keeping him at arm’s length for his own good. For his
own protection. Not that it had done shit; the scars on his back were proof
enough of that failure.
“It’s not your fault,” she repeats. It’s like a mantra coming from her, a
little prayer, Daryl thinks. He wishes he believed her.
Her hand’s still on his shoulder. She’s so small. Too small. He finds himself
eying the sharp indents of her collarbone and her skinny wrists, gripping him
tight. She must not be eating enough. He finds this distressing, and even more
so, just exactly how distressing he finds it. His hand finds hers, his palm
huge and rough, blanketing her delicate fingertips.
“Don’t waste your time worryin’ bout me, girl.” He growls, short, feeling
cornered again.
“Daryl,” she starts, but he’s gone, already at the door.
“Quit it, girl. Don’t bother.”
Whatever she was. It’s was too much for him. Too big. Too bright.
He wasn’t ready.
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