The Same Moon
Apr. 10th, 2014 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
riotheclownI wrote this thanks to a great prompt over at walking dead t.v. It has grown to over 3,000 words! As a warning, it starts out with a reference to rape. Some of this I posted already at walkingdead-tv. I am sorry to take the character of Beth there but I think it was on everyone's mind in the scene where we saw the car speeding away with her, a captive of who only knows... That said, I think Beth and Daryl answer questions that they could only ask each other and her ordeal is the beginning of Daryl knitting together the self he should have been all along. I hope that writing this I have not offended anyone. Rape is the most heinous of crimes, but it is a more frequent one than we tend to acknowledge with lasting damage. It is not my intention to minimize the horror of it or glorify violence in any way...
Warnings: R
word count: 3000
pairing: Daryl, Beth
Tumbling, tumbling, tumbling.
Beth didn't know how but she was glad there was no more pain to be felt, she was far away. Somewhere off in a distance a mental note taking of accumulated damage to her body was taking place.
It was like algebra class. She would sit in class and drift off while some other part of her took notes.
Punch to the face, punch to the stomach, dislocated shoulder while being dragged, abrasions to the back, wrists, cuts from broken glass, repeated penetration of her vagina, anus, some tearing, another punch to the face, some tearing to the scalp while being dragged by the hair...
"Solving inequalities with one variable...What is the value of X? Beth?"
"This is a compound inequality Sir. X is less than the group and equal to or greater than zero. "
"That's right. So how do you determine the value of X."
"I know it."
"So? What are you waiting for?"
The monster had painted the hallway and the stairs and the bed with her blood. Thinking there was no life left in her he had hauled her back downstairs, on the way to finishing her off and dumping her body outside to turn, he had one more go of bloody violence...
"Beth, what is the value of X?"
With her good arm she reached for a piece of broken glass, cutting her hand as she griped it she held on and thrust it deep into the monster's side. He cried out and rolled off her. She was pleased to find that time was slowing down allowing her to see that the knife he had kicked out of her hand was still lying on the floor. She rolled over twice grabbed it and sent it deep into his belly as he lunged at her. The weight of him falling drove it the hilt as she pushed him off her. He was moaning . She took his own knife from its holster and drove it into his ear. It was a lot harder than she remembered.
"X is not a fixed point. It is an arch."
She drew the knife back and watched the blood droplets in slow motion arch across the room.
The class was standing on their feet applauding, smiling. This isn't real. I SUCK AT ALGEBRA.
"But you came up with the solution all on your own. "
She looked at the class. Their youthful faces decomposed in front of her.
"It's time to get out of here Beth" Maggie's voice told her.
She pushed the body of the monster towards the door, turning it over and retrieving the knife. With renewed vigor she thrust it in the head of the walker that fell on top of it and then the next. She pulled a shirt that was half fallen off the dead zombie from it's now unanimated arm and put it on. She would go to the forest. The equation had clearly graphed the path she should take. She would wait for Daryl. He was the variable.
***************
Daryl looked over the seat at her stretched out in the back of the Plymouth. A Plymouth! A gas guzzler. They'd be lucky to get 20 miles on what they had in the tank. He wasted a lot of time and gas driving around, getting lost on back roads before he finally found the funeral parlour. He tracked her bloody foot prints to the hollow in a tree. She was curled up like a fawn sleeping almost naked except for a rank oversized shirt and two knives gripped tightly in each hand.
The knives had become part of her. One hand had fused to the handle with her dried blood. He had had to coaxed her gently into to opening it. He had had to reassured her over and over that the she did good but that she had to let go now so he could help her. He had lifted her carefully, aware that he could not help but jostle the bruised and broken parts of her body. She had smiled.
Beth had smiled.
He had no doubt that her wounds were numerous. She had fought like crazy. He had seen the evidence. It was a relief to get her to the car and drive away. He didn't want to think about what had happened to her in that place.
After a few miles he stopped the car and got in the back and took a rudimentary look at her injuries. She wasn't bleeding too much from anywhere, a bit was good, it would clean the wounds of bacteria, better than he could do without alcohol or hot water, but she wasn't bleeding so much that she was in any danger.
Hershel had taught him basic triage, and he had his own experience with recovery as a kid. She 'd be okay. Daryl thought of Beth's father, Hershel. It was just as well he hadn't lived to see this. He frowned and wiped his eyes with a fist, pounded his forehead a few times and coughed, shaking off thoughts of all who had been lost.
She was nightmaring, mumbling. "Maggie told me it was time to go. I was in math class. That's how I knew... I had to wait for you. You were the variable. You were what I had to solve. "
He could never fathom this girl, that was for sure. She was a mighty force and crazy out of her mind but somehow she made more sense than anything in his whole life. He knew he'd go crazy too before he'd ever give up again. "Yeah, well, I never learned nothing good in school."
"I used to think math was a waste of time. " Beth mumbled.
She was such a kid. A lump formed in his throat and he had to push it down. He wrapped her legs in his coat and pulled a dirty blanket around her followed by a piece of plastic to insulate the heat and keep her from going into shock. He raised her feet and slid his back pack under them. Let his hand rest on her legs for a moment.
"I'll get you home Beth."
"The farm. Yeah. But you stay for dinner Daryl, okay?"
He got back behind the wheel. The farm. Why not? At least it was a destination.
******************
She had been sleeping a lot. He was being quiet.
It had been a couple of days, him checking things out, looking for food. There were plenty of apples on the property at least. There were squirrels having a party with so many lying on the ground. No trouble picking them off, enough for a few meals for sure.
Off the kitchen was a sunroom with a pot bellied stove. He took a chance and lit a fire, boiled some water on it. He made "tea", it was just mint. It grew around the back steps. That stuff would take over a garden if you let it, but it smelled nice, good for tea...
The rest of the hot water he put in a basin and brought to front room where Beth was sleeping on the settee. He coughed and cleared his throat, partly to wake her and partly because he had a constant lump there. It would be some time before he could say her name out loud. He felt like he needed to wait. She hadn't said much. If he said her name it would open something, a conversation.
She had to talk when she was ready.
He was aware of them living in separate time zones. She was wandering around the house at night while he dosed on the floor by the front door. She was sleeping during the day while he checked the perimeter, picked mint and cabbage and hunted squirrels.
She look so small and broken. The bruises had gone techni-colored, third day's always the worst. He found a bit of vinegar and added it to the water to help bring down the swelling, stop any infection. Her face was like an overripe tomato. Her eyes swollen to slits. She didn't look Beth.
She opened her eyes but didn't move for a while, just looked over at footstool where he'd placed the basin and a cup of steaming mint tea.
Daryl grunted, "Take your time. The water's still real hot. Some towels there and I brought you some clean clothes ..." and he left her to herself.
He went out the back and let the screen door slam behind him. When she was ready, she would talk to him.
What he didn't know was how he would manage to listen. Things were always on the edge of one storm or another, the one coming or the one just past and the familiar thing, the thing he had learned, was to do just about anything NOT to talk about it.
When he was a kid he even loved the old man for making some dumb ass joke, or Merle chasing him and hauling him around, scaring him and making him laugh so that nobody had to talk about what happened, a beating or a letdown or something that for normal family would have been a tragedy. He found out early that for whatever reason, maybe just because his last name was Dixon, nothing much good was coming for him. He was okay because he said he was okay. "You okay?" was about the extent of concern anyone ever showed him.
But she was different. Wasn't she? Didn't she show him? She was someone who, when something bad happened it was like snow in July. It was something that you had to talk about because it shouldn't have happened. That's what bad stuff was for her.
For him, good stuff was snow in July and home was...
But he could wait, look after things, stay sharp, not get sloppy. He would take it if she had to talk about it. And if he could do that for her, he could say her name again.
Inside, Beth had begun to wash. She couldn't reach her back where the broken glass had cut her. Daryl had seen to it the first night, flash light in his mouth and careful checking to see there was no embedded glass, it had stung but it was a far away sensation and she was just grateful. He was so gentle with her. It wasn't how she had imagined being undressed by him. Somehow it put a lid on all of those teenage fantasies. She didn't feel anything that way for him anymore and she had a sense that he would always see her body this way, something broken, fragile and unable to bare passion.
Passion. If anything was wrung out it was that. She didn't want to see what she looked like in his eyes. He really wasn't a very good liar and his face when he looked at her was pinched.
She took to wandering in the house at night, went up to the bedrooms and touched the things that nobody chose to take, glass figurines and feather boas and costume jewellery. When she smiled it hurt her face so she tried not to. Could she have ever been "passionate" about such stuff? It was all dress up, pretend. It wasn't real, probably never was.
Back to washing, the water felt good.
Daryl chopped the wood, made the fire hauled the water. He could be so quiet but she noticed he was never really ever not moving, even when he was just sitting or sleeping. He was like a big cat, you could almost see his heart beating from across the room. So they didn't stay in the same room much. Right now he was probably sniffing the air, scratching the ground, waiting to pounce on a squirrel. This made her smile again. Ouch.
She pulled on the clothes he brought her. She liked that he picked them. They were the ugliest. If she had chosen she might have picked something "pretty" and then felt loathe to wear them. "Like mutton dressed as lamb" was the expression her Gran used to use. She limped to the window. She could see a moon rising. It was still day light out.
"We're both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We're connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me.”
"You're up." Daryl said. She hadn't heard him come in, nor knew how long he'd been standing there or whether he had heard what she said.
She nodded at him approving the three squirrels he held up.
"Dinner's squirrel and apple sauce like my mom made, except this 'ill taste like shit."
She nodded again and returned to looking at the moon.
******************
Daryl was sleeping on the floor by the front door of the farm house they had been squatting in. Another week had passed since he brought her here.
She watched him sleep on his back with one arm resting on his chest the other on his bow. She'd watched him from the settee as he was kicking off the blanket she had insisted he take. He kicked as if discharging some clawing Walker.
He slept with his boots on. Of course. She smiled. He had dreamt like a cat dreams of a mouse. Sometimes he opened his eyes briefly to sniff the air and then fell back asleep.
She knew he was a light sleeper. She had to wait a good hour after he lay down before she would get up and start to creep about the house. The night was easier for her awake. Waking up in the darkness she might find herself back... so she crept about like a walker all night.
During the days when she wasn't sleeping, when they were together she would sometimes notice Daryl glancing at her furtively. She imagined he was waiting for something besides the bruises to fade on her face that would signal it was time for him to ask her what had happened in that house. She knew it couldn't be easy for him. He cared for her so the last thing he wanted to hear about was her suffering. But perhaps he thought he had a duty to listen. Just as she had pried open his history to get at his pain, he was going to do the same, thinking there was a need to open the wound to the air, for it to heal.
She was standing in the young woman's room, the woman who was a daughter to the people who had slept in the next room. Maybe she had been in college and just came home for holidays, but they kept her room and all these things they thought would make her happy, just the way she liked them. Beth was standing in the dark before the mirror, holding a blouse the young woman had left behind, not a favourite, or too immature for college. Unaware, she had started to tear it in her hands..."If I talk about it, you will disappear Daryl. If I talk about it, I'll be in that place again. I didn't know a place like that existed. When I go back the only one there is the monster. But it has two faces and one of them is mine."
Daryl spoke to her from the doorway, "It's not. It's not your face. That's what they do, try to make you think you're the same. But you're not Beth. I know. Everyone who ever loved you knows." He came up and held her. She could feel him convulsing with pain, or perhaps it was her. It was hard to tell as they held on to each other.
***********
She had managed to sleep that night. He was on the floor next to the settee. Neither of them wanted to take a bed upstairs but he insisted on sleeping on the floor next to where she was so that when she woke with the nightmare she told him about he would be there for her.
She didn't wake up until dawn and neither did he. This degree of comfort shocked them both. And they were coy almost shy. "I'll get some wood going in the stove for breakfast."
"Let me guess, squirrel for breakfast?"
"Yup."
Later that morning, they sat at the table in the kitchen for the first time. Until that morning they occupied only the front hall and living room. Until that morning they were just waiting, afraid to unpack or settle too much.
Beth felt better than she had since arriving. She looked at Daryl digging into his food and said, "I'm sort of sick of squirrel."
Daryl looked at her without expression and after shovelling in another mouthful of the squirrel and applesauce stew said, "Yeah well 'mostly sick of squirrel' was my nick name for years..."
Beth looked quizzically at Daryl. "I can't imagine you with a nickname!'
"It was 'Mostly'. My mom called me... The story was that I was sick and she was fussing over me so I guess I thought I could get her to make me something special. I said I wasn't sick, I was 'mostly sick of squirrel' She thought it was so funny she kept saying it over and over. After that I got called 'Mostly'."
"Mostly." Beth said, trying it out. "I like it. I can't imagine you being a kid but I bet you were cute."
"Shut up and eat your squirrel." Daryl said, half kidding. He could see she was doing better. He could hear it too.
"You shut up, Mostly!" and she threw a piece of meat at him. "Did you really eat squirrel that much?"
"Naw. That was just my mom's idea of a joke. She called any stew 'squirrel'." Daryl stretched and pushed his chair back from the table. They were getting comfortable in the house.
"She's sounds like she was funny."
"Well, I didn't think so when I was at somebody's house and they gave me stew and I called it squirrel. That got a laugh! I was so pissed at her, making me look stupid."
Beth looked at him closely. They might be joking now but they were from totally different families. She wanted to go back and hug the six year old Daryl who was on his own, in so many ways, from such a young age.
He went on, "She was alright. She never hit me or nothing, did her best. It was just she like to joke. Drove my old man nuts. Just stupid really the way she'd get at him but it was her way I guess. We all had our way of getting back..." He shrugged. "You going to finish that squirrel or what?"
"I'm done, Mostly."
"I wish I'd never told you."
"Oh you'll get over it, Mostly..."
"Beth?"
"Yeah Daryl?" She could see he wanted to be serious.
"We have to leave here. We got to think about finding the others, if there are any of them left, you know..."
"I know. I was thinking the same thing. I'm good now. I can travel." She smiled at him. She believed Maggie was alive and they would find her. Daryl had found her. The thread that connected them was true. It couldn't always been seen, but like the moon, it was the same for each of them.
Warnings: R
word count: 3000
pairing: Daryl, Beth
Tumbling, tumbling, tumbling.
Beth didn't know how but she was glad there was no more pain to be felt, she was far away. Somewhere off in a distance a mental note taking of accumulated damage to her body was taking place.
It was like algebra class. She would sit in class and drift off while some other part of her took notes.
Punch to the face, punch to the stomach, dislocated shoulder while being dragged, abrasions to the back, wrists, cuts from broken glass, repeated penetration of her vagina, anus, some tearing, another punch to the face, some tearing to the scalp while being dragged by the hair...
"Solving inequalities with one variable...What is the value of X? Beth?"
"This is a compound inequality Sir. X is less than the group and equal to or greater than zero. "
"That's right. So how do you determine the value of X."
"I know it."
"So? What are you waiting for?"
The monster had painted the hallway and the stairs and the bed with her blood. Thinking there was no life left in her he had hauled her back downstairs, on the way to finishing her off and dumping her body outside to turn, he had one more go of bloody violence...
"Beth, what is the value of X?"
With her good arm she reached for a piece of broken glass, cutting her hand as she griped it she held on and thrust it deep into the monster's side. He cried out and rolled off her. She was pleased to find that time was slowing down allowing her to see that the knife he had kicked out of her hand was still lying on the floor. She rolled over twice grabbed it and sent it deep into his belly as he lunged at her. The weight of him falling drove it the hilt as she pushed him off her. He was moaning . She took his own knife from its holster and drove it into his ear. It was a lot harder than she remembered.
"X is not a fixed point. It is an arch."
She drew the knife back and watched the blood droplets in slow motion arch across the room.
The class was standing on their feet applauding, smiling. This isn't real. I SUCK AT ALGEBRA.
"But you came up with the solution all on your own. "
She looked at the class. Their youthful faces decomposed in front of her.
"It's time to get out of here Beth" Maggie's voice told her.
She pushed the body of the monster towards the door, turning it over and retrieving the knife. With renewed vigor she thrust it in the head of the walker that fell on top of it and then the next. She pulled a shirt that was half fallen off the dead zombie from it's now unanimated arm and put it on. She would go to the forest. The equation had clearly graphed the path she should take. She would wait for Daryl. He was the variable.
***************
Daryl looked over the seat at her stretched out in the back of the Plymouth. A Plymouth! A gas guzzler. They'd be lucky to get 20 miles on what they had in the tank. He wasted a lot of time and gas driving around, getting lost on back roads before he finally found the funeral parlour. He tracked her bloody foot prints to the hollow in a tree. She was curled up like a fawn sleeping almost naked except for a rank oversized shirt and two knives gripped tightly in each hand.
The knives had become part of her. One hand had fused to the handle with her dried blood. He had had to coaxed her gently into to opening it. He had had to reassured her over and over that the she did good but that she had to let go now so he could help her. He had lifted her carefully, aware that he could not help but jostle the bruised and broken parts of her body. She had smiled.
Beth had smiled.
He had no doubt that her wounds were numerous. She had fought like crazy. He had seen the evidence. It was a relief to get her to the car and drive away. He didn't want to think about what had happened to her in that place.
After a few miles he stopped the car and got in the back and took a rudimentary look at her injuries. She wasn't bleeding too much from anywhere, a bit was good, it would clean the wounds of bacteria, better than he could do without alcohol or hot water, but she wasn't bleeding so much that she was in any danger.
Hershel had taught him basic triage, and he had his own experience with recovery as a kid. She 'd be okay. Daryl thought of Beth's father, Hershel. It was just as well he hadn't lived to see this. He frowned and wiped his eyes with a fist, pounded his forehead a few times and coughed, shaking off thoughts of all who had been lost.
She was nightmaring, mumbling. "Maggie told me it was time to go. I was in math class. That's how I knew... I had to wait for you. You were the variable. You were what I had to solve. "
He could never fathom this girl, that was for sure. She was a mighty force and crazy out of her mind but somehow she made more sense than anything in his whole life. He knew he'd go crazy too before he'd ever give up again. "Yeah, well, I never learned nothing good in school."
"I used to think math was a waste of time. " Beth mumbled.
She was such a kid. A lump formed in his throat and he had to push it down. He wrapped her legs in his coat and pulled a dirty blanket around her followed by a piece of plastic to insulate the heat and keep her from going into shock. He raised her feet and slid his back pack under them. Let his hand rest on her legs for a moment.
"I'll get you home Beth."
"The farm. Yeah. But you stay for dinner Daryl, okay?"
He got back behind the wheel. The farm. Why not? At least it was a destination.
******************
She had been sleeping a lot. He was being quiet.
It had been a couple of days, him checking things out, looking for food. There were plenty of apples on the property at least. There were squirrels having a party with so many lying on the ground. No trouble picking them off, enough for a few meals for sure.
Off the kitchen was a sunroom with a pot bellied stove. He took a chance and lit a fire, boiled some water on it. He made "tea", it was just mint. It grew around the back steps. That stuff would take over a garden if you let it, but it smelled nice, good for tea...
The rest of the hot water he put in a basin and brought to front room where Beth was sleeping on the settee. He coughed and cleared his throat, partly to wake her and partly because he had a constant lump there. It would be some time before he could say her name out loud. He felt like he needed to wait. She hadn't said much. If he said her name it would open something, a conversation.
She had to talk when she was ready.
He was aware of them living in separate time zones. She was wandering around the house at night while he dosed on the floor by the front door. She was sleeping during the day while he checked the perimeter, picked mint and cabbage and hunted squirrels.
She look so small and broken. The bruises had gone techni-colored, third day's always the worst. He found a bit of vinegar and added it to the water to help bring down the swelling, stop any infection. Her face was like an overripe tomato. Her eyes swollen to slits. She didn't look Beth.
She opened her eyes but didn't move for a while, just looked over at footstool where he'd placed the basin and a cup of steaming mint tea.
Daryl grunted, "Take your time. The water's still real hot. Some towels there and I brought you some clean clothes ..." and he left her to herself.
He went out the back and let the screen door slam behind him. When she was ready, she would talk to him.
What he didn't know was how he would manage to listen. Things were always on the edge of one storm or another, the one coming or the one just past and the familiar thing, the thing he had learned, was to do just about anything NOT to talk about it.
When he was a kid he even loved the old man for making some dumb ass joke, or Merle chasing him and hauling him around, scaring him and making him laugh so that nobody had to talk about what happened, a beating or a letdown or something that for normal family would have been a tragedy. He found out early that for whatever reason, maybe just because his last name was Dixon, nothing much good was coming for him. He was okay because he said he was okay. "You okay?" was about the extent of concern anyone ever showed him.
But she was different. Wasn't she? Didn't she show him? She was someone who, when something bad happened it was like snow in July. It was something that you had to talk about because it shouldn't have happened. That's what bad stuff was for her.
For him, good stuff was snow in July and home was...
But he could wait, look after things, stay sharp, not get sloppy. He would take it if she had to talk about it. And if he could do that for her, he could say her name again.
Inside, Beth had begun to wash. She couldn't reach her back where the broken glass had cut her. Daryl had seen to it the first night, flash light in his mouth and careful checking to see there was no embedded glass, it had stung but it was a far away sensation and she was just grateful. He was so gentle with her. It wasn't how she had imagined being undressed by him. Somehow it put a lid on all of those teenage fantasies. She didn't feel anything that way for him anymore and she had a sense that he would always see her body this way, something broken, fragile and unable to bare passion.
Passion. If anything was wrung out it was that. She didn't want to see what she looked like in his eyes. He really wasn't a very good liar and his face when he looked at her was pinched.
She took to wandering in the house at night, went up to the bedrooms and touched the things that nobody chose to take, glass figurines and feather boas and costume jewellery. When she smiled it hurt her face so she tried not to. Could she have ever been "passionate" about such stuff? It was all dress up, pretend. It wasn't real, probably never was.
Back to washing, the water felt good.
Daryl chopped the wood, made the fire hauled the water. He could be so quiet but she noticed he was never really ever not moving, even when he was just sitting or sleeping. He was like a big cat, you could almost see his heart beating from across the room. So they didn't stay in the same room much. Right now he was probably sniffing the air, scratching the ground, waiting to pounce on a squirrel. This made her smile again. Ouch.
She pulled on the clothes he brought her. She liked that he picked them. They were the ugliest. If she had chosen she might have picked something "pretty" and then felt loathe to wear them. "Like mutton dressed as lamb" was the expression her Gran used to use. She limped to the window. She could see a moon rising. It was still day light out.
"We're both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We're connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me.”
"You're up." Daryl said. She hadn't heard him come in, nor knew how long he'd been standing there or whether he had heard what she said.
She nodded at him approving the three squirrels he held up.
"Dinner's squirrel and apple sauce like my mom made, except this 'ill taste like shit."
She nodded again and returned to looking at the moon.
******************
Daryl was sleeping on the floor by the front door of the farm house they had been squatting in. Another week had passed since he brought her here.
She watched him sleep on his back with one arm resting on his chest the other on his bow. She'd watched him from the settee as he was kicking off the blanket she had insisted he take. He kicked as if discharging some clawing Walker.
He slept with his boots on. Of course. She smiled. He had dreamt like a cat dreams of a mouse. Sometimes he opened his eyes briefly to sniff the air and then fell back asleep.
She knew he was a light sleeper. She had to wait a good hour after he lay down before she would get up and start to creep about the house. The night was easier for her awake. Waking up in the darkness she might find herself back... so she crept about like a walker all night.
During the days when she wasn't sleeping, when they were together she would sometimes notice Daryl glancing at her furtively. She imagined he was waiting for something besides the bruises to fade on her face that would signal it was time for him to ask her what had happened in that house. She knew it couldn't be easy for him. He cared for her so the last thing he wanted to hear about was her suffering. But perhaps he thought he had a duty to listen. Just as she had pried open his history to get at his pain, he was going to do the same, thinking there was a need to open the wound to the air, for it to heal.
She was standing in the young woman's room, the woman who was a daughter to the people who had slept in the next room. Maybe she had been in college and just came home for holidays, but they kept her room and all these things they thought would make her happy, just the way she liked them. Beth was standing in the dark before the mirror, holding a blouse the young woman had left behind, not a favourite, or too immature for college. Unaware, she had started to tear it in her hands..."If I talk about it, you will disappear Daryl. If I talk about it, I'll be in that place again. I didn't know a place like that existed. When I go back the only one there is the monster. But it has two faces and one of them is mine."
Daryl spoke to her from the doorway, "It's not. It's not your face. That's what they do, try to make you think you're the same. But you're not Beth. I know. Everyone who ever loved you knows." He came up and held her. She could feel him convulsing with pain, or perhaps it was her. It was hard to tell as they held on to each other.
***********
She had managed to sleep that night. He was on the floor next to the settee. Neither of them wanted to take a bed upstairs but he insisted on sleeping on the floor next to where she was so that when she woke with the nightmare she told him about he would be there for her.
She didn't wake up until dawn and neither did he. This degree of comfort shocked them both. And they were coy almost shy. "I'll get some wood going in the stove for breakfast."
"Let me guess, squirrel for breakfast?"
"Yup."
Later that morning, they sat at the table in the kitchen for the first time. Until that morning they occupied only the front hall and living room. Until that morning they were just waiting, afraid to unpack or settle too much.
Beth felt better than she had since arriving. She looked at Daryl digging into his food and said, "I'm sort of sick of squirrel."
Daryl looked at her without expression and after shovelling in another mouthful of the squirrel and applesauce stew said, "Yeah well 'mostly sick of squirrel' was my nick name for years..."
Beth looked quizzically at Daryl. "I can't imagine you with a nickname!'
"It was 'Mostly'. My mom called me... The story was that I was sick and she was fussing over me so I guess I thought I could get her to make me something special. I said I wasn't sick, I was 'mostly sick of squirrel' She thought it was so funny she kept saying it over and over. After that I got called 'Mostly'."
"Mostly." Beth said, trying it out. "I like it. I can't imagine you being a kid but I bet you were cute."
"Shut up and eat your squirrel." Daryl said, half kidding. He could see she was doing better. He could hear it too.
"You shut up, Mostly!" and she threw a piece of meat at him. "Did you really eat squirrel that much?"
"Naw. That was just my mom's idea of a joke. She called any stew 'squirrel'." Daryl stretched and pushed his chair back from the table. They were getting comfortable in the house.
"She's sounds like she was funny."
"Well, I didn't think so when I was at somebody's house and they gave me stew and I called it squirrel. That got a laugh! I was so pissed at her, making me look stupid."
Beth looked at him closely. They might be joking now but they were from totally different families. She wanted to go back and hug the six year old Daryl who was on his own, in so many ways, from such a young age.
He went on, "She was alright. She never hit me or nothing, did her best. It was just she like to joke. Drove my old man nuts. Just stupid really the way she'd get at him but it was her way I guess. We all had our way of getting back..." He shrugged. "You going to finish that squirrel or what?"
"I'm done, Mostly."
"I wish I'd never told you."
"Oh you'll get over it, Mostly..."
"Beth?"
"Yeah Daryl?" She could see he wanted to be serious.
"We have to leave here. We got to think about finding the others, if there are any of them left, you know..."
"I know. I was thinking the same thing. I'm good now. I can travel." She smiled at him. She believed Maggie was alive and they would find her. Daryl had found her. The thread that connected them was true. It couldn't always been seen, but like the moon, it was the same for each of them.
