Okay. This is the first of a season-varied, timeline non-specific series of experiments I did. I have a deep, sometimes embarrassing fascination with anatomy. I think it's absolutely stunning. Every part of the human form is a remarkable miracle and it annoys me that the only focus in writing when it comes to anatomy is often sexual. In trying to subvert that and explore the other highlights of the human body I decided, with my aunt's encouragement, to write a series of scenes set in the Walking Dead universe to do just that. I don't know if I'll post all of them or if there will be more, or what's gonna happen, but if people like these and request more I'll post it. I have a good 14 pages at this point and I keep thinking of more. I wrote these for me but my aunt encouraged me to post them, in case I'm not the only one that thinks this way.

DISCLAIMER: Sometimes timeline gets a little muddled here. I forget details. I've only watched Walking Dead through once so I took small liberties with things like Judith's age etc. I was really just focused on writing the scene.

Beth spent a lot of time thinking. What she was thinking about changed dramatically, but she was always turning something over in her mind.

Before the world died she'd thought about boys. She'd imagined her first dance, her first kiss, and she wondered how hard it would really be to just hit the road and live off of her voice—become the next charming country girl on the front of a hit album.

When the walkers began chewing away at her adolescent daydreams she thought about fear. She thought about decay and death and sickness and how God must be angry, how she must not really be saved, how none of her family must be because the rapture had to have taken everyone else away. She was convinced for months that the horseman pestilence had touched their world because what else could explain such grotesque horror?

For a long time, after her sobbing prayers and gasping begging fell on deaf ears she just thought about death. It was all she saw. All she understood anymore. By the time Rick's group staggered onto her father's property it was looking less and less frightening to die. Seeing the torn, animal-frightened look in their eyes told her everything she needed to know and her last shred of hope went up like a cinder. There was nothing left of the world. She thought about death until she was convinced it was all she wanted.

She didn't realize she was still too scared to die until the blood was covering her hands and dripping on the floor. For days after her attempt she felt the icy breath in her veins as she healed and she knew she would never be able to die by her own hand. She kept thinking about death, but it was because she didn't know what else to think about anymore.

When the farm was taken she thought about nothing but surviving, and she couldn't decide if the change was positive. She wasn't really focused on living, she was just focused on outrunning the bony chill she'd never completely forget.

It wasn't until they found the prison and Judith was born that she started to be able to think about something else. At first it felt like there was very little hope for the baby, and Beth couldn't help but think about how even births in their world were tainted. Judith was only alive because Laurie was dead, and if they couldn't find formula her sacrifice would be for nothing. That cold settled across Beth's shoulders as she stared wide-eyed at the baby Carl was holding and it didn't start to lift until Daryl spoke up.

"No way. Not her."

Those few, determined words bloomed an emotion in Beth's chest so warm and so unexpected that it took her almost an hour to figure out what it was. Hope.

Daryl was only the first voice in the line that was forming up between Judith and the darkness that seemed to control their every move. At the end of the world, children had no place. Sophia's loss had made that clear. Carl's broken childhood showed what happened to those that managed to survive. Was her own life not proof?

And yet. She held Judith in her arms before she had any name at all and watched as Daryl and Maggie left and she decided to hope as well. They'd come back. Not her. Not another one. They were not losing anyone else. She held the tiny life crying out for help, the life Laurie had given hers to bring forth, and slowly she was able to think about what living might mean in their new world.

Not surviving.

Living.

She hadn't been able to stop thinking, but her thoughts were a little warmer of late. A little more colorful, a little bolder.

It was part of the reason she wrote. It helped her make sense of what she'd been pondering for hours.

She fiddled with her pen, wishing she wasn't running out of ink and wishing she had more than one color. Art was something she'd been musing on lately—how it was a shame all those singers she'd hero worshipped had been lost. How there were empty museums and how the stitching on her favorite boots was utterly useless. There was no room for art anymore, and the world was duller for it. She did what she could with her own voice, with the appreciation of nature, with the books in the prison's library, but it was like looking back. All the art they had was for the before. How would they process this era? What would be left behind?

There was time only for the present. The present need for food, for shelter, for warmth. The constant runs and planning and dismantling. She'd stopped thinking of killing the walkers as actual killings. She couldn't think about them that way because then what separated them, really? She was alive. The people who lived in the prison with her were alive. They were the only ones who could be killed or die. Walkers had only to be stopped.

She chewed on the end of her pen and wondered why, even though it had been months, she'd been thinking about the night of Judith's birth so much. She'd been watching Judith grow day by day, but her mind kept drifting back to the relief she'd felt when Daryl and Maggie had returned with the formula. It'd been all the soil her mind had needed to really let hope grow. Judith was going to live. Since then Beth had been climbing her thoughts out of the dark and their newfound home in the prison left enough of her mind empty that she was missing art. She sighed, wishing she could draw, wishing more that they had a piano.

She shut her journal and went downstairs, realizing that she'd probably well overstayed her break from Judith. Carol had other duties to attend to, and she couldn't handle them until Beth took over again. She paused just outside of their kitchen area when she heard the low murmur of conversation. She rapped her knuckles on the door frame and peered in, struck by how much the scene before her reminded her of that night she couldn't shake. Carol was sitting at the table, feeding Judith from a bottle while Daryl stood at her shoulder, the warm quirk of a smile lighting his features. His poncho was even draped over his shoulders, and the freshly cleaned crossbow strapped to his back told Beth he had just come back from a run.

"Hey, I can take her back if you want. I'm sorry…I got carried away and lost track of time," she apologized sheepishly.

Carol smiled and gently pulled the empty bottle away. "That's all right, we were fine." She turned and moved to get up, but Daryl held out his hands expectantly and Carol laid Judith in his arms. He cradled her against his chest and rocked, making fond, quiet noises at her as he moved to Beth.

"She should sleep well," Daryl said softly, leaning forward to place the baby in Beth's arms. Beth took her and nodded her thanks to the archer, trying to decide what had struck her so strongly about the image. Daryl straightened up and brushed a gentle knuckle against Judith's cheek before turning to leave and attend to whatever cleaning or skinning or meat packing he had for the day.

Carol got up and stretched. "I'll be helping Rick in the garden, but if you need me don't hesitate."

Beth nodded, smiling. "I've got her, but thanks."

Carol nodded and Beth went back upstairs, taking Judith to her room. The baby was already sleepy, her eyes barely open and her right middle and ring fingers in her mouth. Beth bent down to settle Judith into her blankets and sat beside her, ensuring the baby was comfortable and sleeping soundly before she let her thoughts wander again. She gazed at Judith and thought about the striking contrast that wouldn't leave her mind's eye.

Daryl holding Judith was like seeing two sides of their lives occupy one space. Her soft skin with his callouses and scars, her innocence with his ragged experience, the weapon on his back and the bottle in his hand. And yet there was something so very similar about them that Beth couldn't quite understand. She tucked a finger under Judith's free hand and watched how she gripped it in her sleep. Everyone always talked about the miracle of birth, of life in an infant's first breaths. Why then, did other lives inspire less awe?

With the way the world had gone any life was a miracle, and that's when it clicked for Beth. She was just as struck with awe for Judith's existence and survival as she was for the hunter who cradled her. Daryl's every breath, the warmth that he used unconsciously to soothe and comfort Judith in her first hours of living, was an amazing gift. How had they all been so unconscious of the marvel that was their own existence? She looked down at her hand, clasped tight in Judith's tiny fist, and thought about how they'd each started that way. How they'd each grown into the people they were now. She thought about what went into not only creating a new person, but keeping them alive and encouraging them to grow. There were so many variables, so many factors, and yet they'd taken everything for granted for so long. Why did it take the herds of walking dead to make her realize what living looked like?

Rick passed by her cell while she was lost in thought, and he paused long enough to settle his fond gaze on his sleeping daughter. He didn't enter the cell, presumably afraid to wake her, but he caught Beth's gaze and nodded his thanks, a genuine, if small, smile turning his lips. The way his strikingly blue eyes lit up in his daughter's presence stayed in Beth's mind long after he'd hefted his shovel and left the prison.

Art. That's what they were. The glow of joy brightening Rick's gaze, the sculpture of bone that stood out under his collar as he lifted the shovel to grow food for his family, the callouses on Daryl's fingers from drawing his bow over and over again—this was the art of their era. They were all living art. And Judith was a canvas all her own upon which they'd each left a brushstroke. Because of the heart pumping in Rick's breast and the heart that had stopped in Laurie's Judith had her own fluttering pulse and sleeping breaths. Because of Daryl's warmth and his gentle touch she was growing, and because of Beth's protective eye and lilting lullabies she was bonding.

Beth had always like to people watch, but the nature of it changed. She started to notice little details, like the way she could tell the person approaching by their gait or the way Carl smirked right before he was going to laugh. The way Daryl had stopped flinching when someone got near him, and the way that Carol felt free to speak up and even tease the others during dinner or work or any time they were all together. She didn't know the whole story, but she'd seen how Carol had been subdued and she'd witnessed the scars on Daryl and she knew they both had broken souls still trying to survive behind guarded eyes.