Bethyl Week Day 1 Prompt – Civil Wars's "Poison and Wine"

Beth stared at the man on the other side of the fire from her, his eyes staring but not seeing the flames as they flickered in the darkness. He had been like this for the past week, ever since the prison fell, never speaking to her, only giving an occasional grunt if she was lucky. He kept his face in a surly scowl most days, but his eyes told her everything she needed to know.

He was hurting but he refused to acknowledge it and Beth had had enough of his surliness, his attempts at isolating himself from her. He was only surviving, they both were, and she couldn't stand it. Part of Beth wondered what the hunter would do if she hadn't escaped from the prison with him. Would he have even bothered staying alive by himself? He clearly didn't think their family had survived, his glance when she suggested tracking them down had told her that much. It seemed to be that he figured there was no purpose in anything now that they had to start all over.

He was just a shell of the man she had seen at the prison. Images of him smiling and laughing with Michonne and Rick, or playing with Judtih, the brightness in his eyes when he would come to Beth and help her with the infant flashed through Beth's mind and she swallowed thickly. She didn't cry anymore, she couldn't, not right now. Daryl needed her to help him through his grief. She could focus on hers after helping him with his.

The next day, Beth's frustration with the man led her words to become poison, biting into his cold exterior. Her flipping him off, making his arm twitch when surprise at her words and actions filtered into his eyes for the briefest of seconds.

"I'm gonna get a damn drink!" she had yelled before stomping off. Now she sat at the bar, crying, her hands fiddling with the bottle in front of her. She had tried so hard to find something to focus on in hopes of it pulling Daryl out of his survival mode while helping with her own loss, and now that she had achieved that goal, she couldn't think of what else to do. She didn't have a job to do, a purpose, and that made pushing her grief back harder.

Her mind thought back to Daryl's anger while killing the walkers in the other room and how she had slowly been seeing brief glances of the man from the prison in his eyes. Beth thought of the five stages of grief and compared them to the hunter as he grabbed the bottle of Peach Schnapps from in front of her and threw it to the ground.

He had gone through the isolation stage, shutting himself off from her and the world while staying in their "suck ass camp." Now he was in the anger stage. Beth jumped slightly as he kicked the door open and nodded with his head.

"Come on," and she nodded, following him as she sniffled and swallowed the rest of her grief.

She knew her purpose, her job now. To be the support Daryl needed to help him through this.

Frustration mounted in Beth as Daryl wrapped his arm around her angrily, turning her roughly and shooting the Walker again, playing with it while he yelled. This was not how she imagined their "Never Have I Ever" ending. She had hoped he would relax and she could ease him into opening up to her. She should have known better. This is Daryl Dixon she was dealing with.

Beth killed the walker, whipping around and turning her words back into poison, sinking them into the man in front of her. She had to fight down her tears as his words stung and cut her open but she was a Greene, she wouldn't back down. She yelled back, throwing his nonchalance to their situation in his face, forcing him to talk, to yell, to release everything. The guilt he felt slapped her though, and she stumbled in surprise at his thinking that everything was his fault because he gave up.

The bargaining stage.

She wrapped her arms around him tightly, piecing him back together as he slammed into the Depression stage.

That night, their words were wine. Smoothing and easing each other as they discussed their pasts, their concerns, their pain.

"I wish I could change…"

"You did."

"You got away from it."

"I didn't."

"You did!"

They left everything dark about themselves in that house that night. Burned their darkness and their grief to the ground. Beth met Daryl's eyes in the moonlight and smiled. He returned the gesture, his eyes bright and hopeful. They could do this.

They could survive, no live, in this world, together.