Painted Bodies (Bethyl)

Painted Bodies

A gentle breeze twisted loose leaves against the pavement, littering the road of Alexandria. Loose golden locks of hair brushed against Beth's cheek from her pony tail.

It had been a month behind the walls and yet she still felt uneasy. Anxious. It reminded her of Grady in a sense not the same but still closed.

'Alexandria ain't Grady. It's safe here... I'm safe here.' Beth told herself for the fourth time that day.

Reaching up with the back of her hand she wiped away beaded sweat from her forehead and huffed. Looking across the road towards a house down the road from her. She then saw Rick moving to sit on his porch with Judy in his lap while Carl talked to Michonne.

With a sigh, Beth rolled up the sleeves on her oversized button down jean shirt. Everyone and everything seemed, different. A good different. Almost normal. And Beth, well she was trying. Getting there.

Once she was back with their family, she instantly fell into a routine of helping out in any way she could. Watching Judy. She even went to help teach the kids for school. And Morgan asked for her help gardening. Carol with baking cookies...

Then there was Daryl... Every single time he made his way silently into her mind, her heart thudded a little louder and begun to beat a little faster.

-

Their reunion had been indescribable. She can still recall the moment she saw him. At a gas station.

Stopping to see if there had been anything she could gather. Once inside the gas station, she heard the familiar rumble of a car down a ways. Hiding at the sound of the car pulling to a stop. It seemed to be two men by the way they walked. She then tried to stay out of sight shuffling behind a counter and some boxes.

Accidentally she knocked over a box of empty glass bottles and the men stopped talking and went silent. Shakily she peaked around the corner from where she stood. No one in sight. Just when she was about to make a run for it, out of no where she was shoved against a wall.

The cool metal of a gun pressed to her head causing her to flinch while a warm muscular forearm pressed against her collarbones. Its width going from almost shoulder to shoulder. Beth remembered that she waited for the owner to finish her. The gun causing a sharp pain in the form of a memory. One from Grady.

Ragged breaths then made her look up at the owner. A pool of blue glittered in slits above her. Those eyes. She could never forget those eyes. Not then. And not now.

"Beth..." His strained voice was but a whisper.

The emotion in his gruff voice, dripping with an unavoidable ache. The hand with the gun moved violently away from her before thudding upon the ground. Her throat burned. Her eyes burned. Her heart ached. She didn't even remember her hand and how it made its way to brush the hair out of his eyes and against his cheek.

"Daryl..."

She was yanked against him, and found herself pulling him closer while she inhaled his familiar scent. Leather, pine, and something just so Daryl. Pressing her wet cheek to his vest she felt his lips brushing against the top of her head. She was drowning in his embrace. One she'd dreamt about for months.

Opening her eyes, blurry and wet only to Rick standing beside them with beads of his own tears upon his cheeks. She found them.

-

Daryl. Now he was different too. Not like the others in the group though.

He was always standing at a distance from others. From her. Never too close yet he was also never too far. She knew after two days of being back, he wasn't the same man she came to know all those months ago. He seemed to be keeping his distance. Then a week later he went on a run and was gone for a week.