Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: AU that fits in sometime during Season 5 where Beth and Noah both escaped Grady in "Slabtown" and Gareth wasn't part of the Church showdown where Rick and the others laid waste to the rest of Terminus. This vaguely fits in sometime in between "Slabtown" and "Consumed." Due to some vague allusions on the part of Gareth this could be considered as a very loose companion to my Gareth oneshot: "Breadcrumbs(concerning psychological bureaucracy)" but by no means do you have to read it to understand this fic.
Warnings: Beth/Gareth, featuring evil!Beth. Adult language, mild sexual content, mature content, mild torture, blood, guts, gore, violence, masturbation, torture voyeurism, allusions to cannibalism and other related insanity. Told in Daryl's point of view.
Kiss me (twist me) but remember to make it hurt
Chapter One
There is something about the bizarre that clumps people together. Draws 'em. Don't matter if it's a car crash or some poor bastard getting CPR on the sidewalk, you can always guarantee there will be a flock of gawkers takin' the whole thing in. Probably with fucking cameras, too. It had been like that when the house had gone up, taking his Mama along with it, lighting up what felt like half a county of people as they milled and whispered. Their weighing stares and welling tears hadn't done much for him at the time, he'd been too numb to process 'em. But later, when the singe of fire gradually faded, taking his Mama's scent out of the clothes he'd carefully squirreled away just to be close to a part of her, they only made him sick.
Which made right now pretty fucking ironic considering he was the one doing the staring. Watching through the trees in the sable-dark, still not quite sure how to figure through the odds of practically stumbling right on top of them. Trying to find some semblance of the girl he'd been kicking himself over losing for near two fucking weeks in the face of the predator that stood – sleek and highlighted by a roaring fire in the center of the clearing.
And while the details of the thing weren't important, he figured that the feeling, sunk deep in his gut like a bleeding sore, was as close as he could get to describing how he felt as he watched the heel of Beth's boot come down hard. Snapping with a brutal crack across over the black kid's busted leg. Her expression transported, like pleasure and joy all wrapped up into one as the twisted fuck beside the fire laughed.
"You know, when my Daddy was younger he used to raise cattle," Beth began softly, speaking clear over the kid's cut off howl of pain. Watching with morbid interest as her prey squirmed furiously, dark eyes rolling. Showing blood-shot whites as Beth turned, sending Gareth a slither of a smile before turning her attention back to the lump, breathing – winded – on the ground at her feet.
"He had a small herd, but it was prize winning. People were always callin', needing our Steers. He got into Dairy eventually, more for the challenge than anything. We didn't need the money. But Daddy liked the smell of living things," she continued, voice syrupy sweet and unforgiving as she balanced the end of his fucking buck knife carelessly in her palm. Crouching down in front of the kid they had trussed up by the tree like a hog for slaughter.
"But sometimes a calf was born wrong. Sometimes one of the older ones trampled it by accident. Sometimes there wasn't anything you could do but put it out of its misery," she added, tone like velvet. Lending credence to a sleeping malice he could practically feel -dripping cold down his spine.
"He always sent me back to the house when Otis did it. But I could still hear the screams. You know how similar the sound is to a person screaming? Sometimes you could close your eyes and just imagine it…" she murmured, self-indulgent eyes fluttered closed, head tilted so that her hair, loose and wild with humid-curls sheathed in front of her face.
Gareth shifted from his seat by the fire. Chuckling darkly before leaning forward, elbows to knees as the firelight danced shadows across his face. "Butcher or cattle. It's nature, Noah. Human nature. Animal nature. The weak die. The weak always die. That part hasn't changed."
Noah just glared, silent and sweating around the gag stuck firm between his teeth.
"You almost got us killed you know," Beth remarked, blue eyes slitting despite the china-doll smile that remained fixed on her face. "Back at Grady. Out on the road. Pathetic. But I made you believe it though, didn't I? That we were in this together. That I was really going with you to Virginia. Don't worry, if it makes you feel any better I have had lots of practice. Pretending. Lying. Hell, even my own Daddy never knew."
The callouses on his index finger flirted with the trigger of his crossbow as Beth pointed the knife right between the kid's eyes, ghosting the sharp of it – feather-light and barely there – from nose to chin. Flirting with the cracked plush of his lower lip as Noah let go of a baseless sound. Something that might have been a whimper if he hadn't been so caught up in keeping still.
"Then you tried to run when Gareth told us about his community. About what happened there. Why he is out here now, alone. That's rude you know," Beth told him, running the knife down the vulnerable slope of his neck and down across his chest. Sending the top button pinging off into empty space. "After he fed us, protected us when your gun jammed. I expected better from you, Noah. Really, I did."
He got hung up on it. Losing track of himself in favor of just watching. Forgetting where he was and how fucking close he was from probably a full out brawl as he tried to make sense of what his brain was telling him. But the instinctive denial had been all too fleeting. Shifting right into damage control and an odd, rolling sort of betrayal that immediately had his hackles up.
"Do you have any idea what it's like? Hiding? Lying? Surrounded by people but always feeling alone? Forced to wear this mask, day in and day out just so your family can keep thinking they know you? No. You don't, do you? You can't see it. You don't know," she breathed, shaking her head, pushing a fraction of a millimeter deeper with the knife so that a fine line of crimson started soaking through the white of the kid's shirt.
How the hell had he missed this shit? For fucks sakes, how had any of 'em? Maggie and Hershel? Glenn? Rick? Carol? Christ. It didn't make any sense. Beth was- well, Beth! She was sweet and young and stupidly trusting. She sang all the damned time and had practically been attached to Judith's fucking hip ever since Lori-
"You don't know and you never will. People like you think we're wrong. Broken. They made us feel ashamed of what we are, made us feel like we were lesser. That we needed pills, therapy, blood tests and psychiatrists. But you're wrong," she firmed, eyes shining. Glittering like the manic part of a fever as she caught Gareth's gaze and held it.
"They were wrong. We're strong. We're the ones that make it now."
The gag creaked. Straining as Noah muffled something. An insult, a curse, maybe even a plea into the filthy cloth. It was worse when his eyes shifted, realizing that the fucker by the fire was staring back at her with something close to worship.
He bit down on the inside of his cheek until his mouth was flooded with his own red. Swallowing thickly as the inside of his lower lip started drowning in it. Realizing quite suddenly that he had no idea what to do. What could he do? What would Maggie do? Rick? Or, more to the point, what could he live with come sunrise?
"I don't have to pretend anymore. I am free. We're free," She hummed, shaking back a thatch of long, corn-silk hair as the knife dipped lower, pausing in the v of the kid's groin like she were making some sort of fucked up promise. "Out here, on our own? That's all we've ever wanted. The right to just…be."
How the fuck was he going to tell Maggie? Hell, any of 'em. They were never going to believe it. Shit, he barely could! He could already picture it, the excuses they'd make, trying to make sense of it the same as he was. Maybe she was just pretending? Maybe she didn't mean it? Maybe it was a play that the kid was in on? Maybe this was the only way she figured they could get little Terminus' guard down? But he knew. It was that shiver of truth that went bone deep, like when you saw someone's true face for the first time. She was an actor inside her own skin and she'd fooled them all.
"But you?" Beth remarked, pressing the toe of her boot into the soft of the man's wounded leg. Drawing out the question as the kid groaned, her sickly smile not even so much as wavering an inch. Only widening, luxurious and rich as Gareth palmed himself through the stiff of his dirty jeans. "You're just…meat. Slow. Lumbering. Broken down…meat."
"Dawn was right you know, you'll never make it out here. You aren't meant for it. And shhhh, that's okay," she soothed, acting like Noah's struggles to lean away from her were something else entirely. Oozing violence like the whip-crack of an exploding shell.
"Don't worry, we both know how to make it quick…clean…if you're good. You are going to be good, Noah? Aren't you? For me?"
A/N #2: Thank you for reading. Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! – There will be one more chapter, stay tuned.
