Title: Left and Leaving.

Summary: Angsty BETHYL AU in a non-za setting. One shot…for now. So as a one-shot this little piece is pretty angsty, I do intend to follow it up with a concluding chapter that will be more on the happy/hopeful side. I've been dying to dip my toes into some Bethyl AU stuff and this little sadness just came out of me. I just really like the idea of exploring who Beth could be in a world that didn't end, how some things would still stay the same.

It has never been uncommon in their house for the shrill ring of the telephone to echo into the middle of the night. Pregnant mares and ill farm dogs have no concept of time and her daddy has never had any concept of the word no, not when it comes to anyone in need be it human or animal. Beth always wakes at the sound of the telephone, blinks into the dark while she listens for the click of the receiver being placed back in the cradle and her daddy climbing the stairs again. Sleep has usually pulled her eyes closed again by the time he pulls on his boots and gathers his bag. He doesn't worry over leaving her alone in the big farm house, King County is still the type of place where folks don't worry over locking their door, especially folks like Hershel Greene. He's always back at the breakfast table by the time she wakes again.

Sometimes the calls are from Atlanta; from her sister crying and hiccupping on the other end of the line. Beth knows these calls because her daddy doesn't hang up the phone and she picks up the handset in her room, the one she begged for and isn't supposed to use after 6pm. She palms the speaker and listens to Maggie beg their daddy for forgiveness, drunk and sobbing and scared and sounding so much farther away than an hour and a half's drive.

"I'm so sorry daddy, you must be so disappointed."

Maggie with two dead mamma's worth of a broken heart and the trouble with the drink engrained in her DNA. Maggie who's failing out of Georgia Sate but that's just something else they don't talk about. Sometimes she begs their daddy to come get her and he does, dresses and leaves and drives through the night because if Maggie's dorm room was on the moon instead of Atlanta, he'd build a rocketship just to make sure she was tucked safely back in her own bed.

Beth thinks tonight is one of those nights because the conversation has carried on far too long in strangely hushed whispers for it to concern an animal in need. Except she hears her own name on daddy's tongue and him saying the word son over and over. She sits up on the edge of the bed and her lungs feel tight the way they did the first time she ran track after that spout of bronchitis in the 8th grade. That day she saw black spots before the world went foggy and when she woke up it was Shawn and Daryl on their knees beside her while the coach shouted for someone to run and call 911. Three years before he'd ever kiss her or take her hand but watching his blue eyes watch her that day she'd known exactly what they were.

Her room is still swallowed in dark but she eyes the outline of her dresser and thinks of the photo buried in the third drawer under her sweaters. The one with oil stained fingers sprawled playfully in front of their faces so you can barely make out their lips pressed together.

When her daddy pushes open her door and flicks on the light he doesn't seem at all surprised to see her sitting there, blinking back at him.

"Beth," he sounds kind of sad and hesitant dressed in his silly matching pajamas with his white hair awry on his head, "you have a phone call honey."

The clock blinks 2:14 AM at her and of course it isn't Jimmy waiting for her on the other end of the phone. They both have the senior awards assembly in the morning and early dismissal for prom and the responsible, star first-baseman would never wake her father up in the middle of the night.

Her daddy never calls Jimmy son.

She glances at the cordless on her end table but her daddy stops her with a glance that reminds her that rules still apply. Mamma's died and people left but there was still no talking to boys in your bedroom.

She throws on the oversized US Army hoodie that Shawn sent her in the mail. Shawn who ran but called it enlisting, Shawn who can't take the silence of the house and the heaviness in all their hearts and can't look Beth in the eye so he sends packages from different states and texts her at odd hours that he hopes she doesn't hate him.

Shawn who sent Daryl away, all red faced and clenched fists while the two of them stood boot toes touching and Beth tried to slither between the anger.

"Guess I just been like a stray to ya all these years," if Daryl had wanted to sound angry then it had only come out sad, "good enough to throw scraps to but don't let it get too comfortable in the house."

"You ain't wrong Dixon," she knew Shawn hadn't meant it, knew he knew Daryl like the sun freckles on the back of his own hand.

Her daddy stays at the top of the stairs while she descends them with bare feet. The phone is off the hook on her mother's writing desk, the one thing out of place among the stationary and daily devotional books and collection of absconded pens from diners and banks that they haven't dared move in eight months.

When she finally presses it to her ear there is nothing but a quiet hum of white noise. Eight months since her Mamma scribbled grocery lists at the desk and 10 months since she's seen Daryl Dixon.

"Hello?"

He doesn't speak but she recognizes the pattern of his breathing, has an internal recording of the way it sounded when they sat in silence on the back of his truck bed watching fireworks at Sellers Pond and pretending not to watch each other.

"Say something," she whispers, already exhausted with the conversation and betrayed by her own body because her stomach is working itself into knots and he hasn't even spoken.

He starts to mutter something, gruff and hesitant but he swallows it down.

"Daryl Dixon," her voice carries and daddy puts one foot onto the next step as if there's anything he can come rushing down to save her from. As if there's anything tangible to chase away besides the voice of a boy he once refurbished a second-hand bicycle for, some gangly kid with two black eyes who followed his son home from school one day and never really seemed to go home after, "don't you dare call here in the middle of the night and not speak."

"Beth," he's crying. She can picture him, knows him well enough to know he's got his forehead resting on the glass of a phonebooth or whatever wall is closest and probably has a half-smoked cigarette behind his ear and he's crying, gnawing at his thumbnail and hunching his shoulders so nobody sees, "I fucked up."

"Ain't no such thing as a mistake that can't be mended," she hears her voice but it's her mamma's words and the noise her daddy makes would be a chuckle but it's too sad.

"There is," he disagrees, "can't fix none of it."

"You can," she whispers back, disagreeing with him like always. Had they ever agreed on one damn thing? Probably not.

"I don't even know where I'm at. Merle….it ain't right the stuff he does Beth."

"So get on a bus," she pushes, "just get on a bus and come home Daryl."

"Ain't got a home, member?"

"Course you do, this is your home. Me, I'm your home."

She's wearing Jimmy's class ring on a string around her neck and it isn't right of her to say things like that. Everyone knows though, every soul in King County and that probably includes Jimmy himself, knows that Daryl Dixon is her deal breaker.

"I know I hurt you Beth, I hate myself for it. Ain't right how much I think about you."

"If I don't hate you than you can't hate you," she reasons over the croak settling in her throat, "And I'm the boss ya know."

"Too good for me girl," he sighs over a half-hearted chuckle and then she's angry.

"Is that what you called to say?" she hisses and can't stop the tears anymore, "woke me up to try to make some more decisions for me?"

"I called to tell ya I love ya."

She wants to scream. Wants to smash the phone into a thousand pieces and maybe take a hard swig of something and get lost for a second like her sister tends to do.

She wants to tell him that her mamma is dead and he wasn't there, that Maggie and Shawn tucked tail and followed his trail out of town and left her there alone in a big house with her daddy still forgetting not to set a plate for his wife at the breakfast table.

She wants to tell him some people don't get to quit and run when things get hard. Maybe everyone else, but not her. There's jobs to be done, life to keep on with.

She wants him to know that being with Jimmy is nice because Jimmy shows up, he keeps promises. He doesn't set her insides on fire but it's ok because she can count on him.

She can't tell him any of it though, she can't because it will kill him.

"I know you do," she whimpers instead, "I love you too."

She hears something in the background, a door opening and a brief stream of music and then the voice is familiar, hoarse and harsh like it's coated with broken glass.

"Beth I gotta…"

"No," she begs, "Daryl just stay on with me. Tell him to go away, why can't he just leave you alone?"

Merle Dixon had been drowning his entire life and when his baby brother jumped in to save him all Merle had done was pull Daryl down by the ankle after him. And somehow Merle calls this love, calls it protecting.

"I can't Beth. I'll…I'll call again when I can ok?"

"Daryl please just stay on…"

He hangs up before she can get another word out otherwise. If she were to fold at the knees then her daddy would be there to catch her.

She can't though, instead places the receiver back in it's cradle and swipes at tears with the backside of her hand. There's jobs to be done and she doesn't get to run away, not her.