A/N: Welcome to my newest story. This first chapter is very dark and may be very hard to read for some since there are some suicide triggers and character deaths. So if you decide to skip this story I will understand. Please let me know your thoughts on the story, I have a couple more chapters lined up and want to make sure the story is on the right path for all my great readers.
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SECOND CHANCES
Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.
Paul Theroux
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CHAPTER 1
BANG.
There was a sudden blinding white, followed by the darkest black. And then nothing, there was absolutely nothing.
Nothing.
It was a concept, this nothingness that surrounded her, that came to Beth in a sudden wave of understanding. It wasn't an idea one could understand or even try to comprehend until it had happened to them. The absolute end of everything. The end of you, the world, of the future and the past. Abruptly everything was nothing… nothing was your new everything.
Beth was dead; she was nothing. Beth knew she had died… or at least she thought she understood she was dead. She couldn't feel anymore. She heard no sounds and could see none of the world she had just suddenly left. But somehow Beth knew what was happening. She just knew.
Dawn was pleading, her sputtering words escaped her frowning mouth as she tried to explain the accident that had just taken Beth's life. Daryl was pulling his gun with a face crumbling in hurt. There was another blasting gun shot and it was over. She was dead. Dawn was dead. Noah would be safe. Rick would make sure Noah would be leaving with her group and family.
Her rescue party of family and friends were standing in shock, some of them openly weeping. Beth couldn't see them or hear them exactly but she knew it was true all the same. She just knew it. It was the same way that Beth knew Daryl had folded her limp form into his arms as he carried her body away from that awful, cursed place. She couldn't feel it as she was raised up, but Beth knew his strong arms held her body tight to his chest. His chest hitched under his breaking breaths as Daryl carried her down the stairs and out into the brilliant light of day. Beth could feel none of this, could hear nothing, but it was all happening and she knew it was the truth. It was all her fault and Beth knew it.
Maggie was screaming, her shrieks of grief and agony piercing the quiet, heavy air. Glenn held his wife, his own cries muffled against her. Michonne was as stoic as ever except for the tears streaming down her face. Sasha's eyes were glazed over, looking dazed. Tyreese, Carl, Judith, Rick and Carol were all there. Her whole family was there. They were safe, they were alive, and Beth knew she had screwed up.
She was dead.
She was gone.
She was nothing.
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There was nothing, dark and endless. Then fierce whiteness came surging forward and hurtled her into existence again.
Her breath came with a fearsome force, surging back into her empty lungs. A rush of air burned Beth with a dire hurt, stealing her voice and stopping her from crying out in agony. Her teary eyes blinked back against the scorching pain.
The pain made Beth realize she wasn't dead anymore. She was alive… wasn't she?
No.
She was dead. At her core, Beth knew she had died. She had sensed it as her life left her body in an instant, never even feeling her body as it crumbled to the floor at Grady Hospital. She was dead. She had died. And here she was breathing… again?
There was glass in her hand, the cold shard against her palm. Her tear-blurred eyes saw a familiar sight, one that made her heart ache. Beth was at home on her family's farm. She was in the bathroom; the blue tile was all around her. She didn't know what was happening. She was dead and then she was breathing. She was alive, but Beth still felt so empty and hollowed out.
The pounding at the door jolted her, sending another shock to her system. Beth heard a voice, she thought it was Lori and she was calling Maggie's name. But it couldn't be Lori, the woman was dead. Beth was dead. They were all dead.
"She's in there. I heard glass," Maggie said desperately from the other side of the bathroom door.
And then Beth knew when she was. She didn't take the time to try to understand, she didn't want to understand. She couldn't, Beth just couldn't let her mind explore the possibilities of what was happening to her. She was dead. Beth knew she was dead.
The voice that used to be Lori's was at the door. It asked, "Beth? You all right?"
Beth shook her head violently, willing this not to be happening. Tears were streaming down her face and she found it hard to breathe, to take in anymore air into her body. She was dead. Lori was dead. Her father was dead. Her mom was dead. Shawn was dead. T-Dog was dead. Patricia and Jimmy were dead. Otis was dead. Zach was dead. Bob was dead. Lizzie and Mika were dead. Andrea was dead. Dead. Dead. They were all dead.
"Don't do this, Beth, don't do this. Open up, please," her sister pleaded with her. Maggie didn't understand. She never understood why Beth had locked herself in the bathroom the first time. How could she? Maggie had never died.
"I left her with Andrea," Maggie told the other dead woman, Lori.
Lori asked in a rushed voice, "Where is the key?" Lori was dead. She just didn't know it yet. Beth might as well be too. She didn't want to see it again. Beth didn't want to watch Maggie emerge from the bowels of the prison clutching the bloody bundle to her chest. She remembered how her sister's face screwed as Maggie tearfully let Rick know his wife's fate. Never again did she want to see the emptiness of Carl; no child should have to do what he was forced to do. She couldn't. It was all too much.
"I don't know," responded Maggie, her hand shaking the door knob.
And then Beth knew she didn't have much time. She couldn't do this again Beth thought rashly, live that life of running, hiding, and watching loved ones die in horrible and meaningless ways. Beth wasn't going to force herself to live that way again. She was dead. She was supposed to be dead. It hurt; every memory and sensation flooding back to her hurt too much to bear. Her head, her heart, and her body were buzzing with the pain.
Beth pressed the glass hard against her wrist, blood welling up from the wound. It hurt but it was dull compared to everything else that was happening to her.
"Beth, honey, please open the door. I'm not mad. I'm not mad, Beth." Maggie was speaking to her in quiet desperation. Maggie would never accept Beth's chosen path. She was strong and brave and breathing. Her sister wasn't dead… not yet.
She cut again, slicing deeper and harder than before. Before? She had done this before, in a past so distant it was almost nonexistent. Beth dragged her makeshift blade along her other forearm deeper than she thought she dared to go. The pain was unreal and echoed what was at her soul. Blood poured out of her wounds, dripping to the floor as she looked up at the broken mirror to see her fractured self.
The two women beyond the door were moving, shuffling around loudly. Beth staggered forward, her hands going to grip the porcelain sink before her. The blood caused her grip to slip and she stumbled, falling hard to her knees. Red stained the white porcelain and her clothes, her blood flowing steadily out of her body. Her mind was swaying and swirling, the sights in front of her started to fade to gray.
What did it matter? Beth knew it didn't, none of it. It was either now or it was later. Either way she was dead. Beth had to keep telling herself that even though her body was betraying her and taking a giant hitching breath, she was still dead. Her death wouldn't matter to anyone. Her mother was gone and her father would be following soon. Beth knew Maggie had never looked for her after the fall of the prison. She knew it. Beth wasn't sure how or when or why but she knew she had been lost and no one had even bothered to look for her. She was weak. She was nothing. She was gone and then she had been dead.
Beth knew she didn't matter to anyone, not really. No one cared. She wasn't sorry she had done this, choosing to end her life before more awfulness was forced upon her. There was no reason to live. She meant nothing to no one.
Daryl.
He had cared. The certainty hit her as his name echoed in her head again. Daryl. During their time together, it was true she had gotten him to care. They had time together? It was all getting hazy but there were memories flooding her as she let her body fall hard against the cold floor. Visions of their time together that changed with the pounding at the door behind her.
Their fight at the shack.
Her awkward and frantic embrace.
Their burning salute to the past.
The flower at the graveside.
His request for her to sing for him.
The look shared between them as their eyes locked.
Daryl had cared. He had searched for her. The blackness was taking her, leading her back to the nothing. Daryl. The bathroom door busted open, allowing white light to pour in.
In an instant Beth knew it. She had messed up again. Maggie was screaming her name again, rushing forward to take her sister into her arms. There was so much blood, slick and wet and warm. She heard Lori shouting for help; it was amazing how loud the dead could be. None of it mattered. It was already done; the fault lay completely with her.
Beth was dead. Again.
She was gone.
She was nothing.
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Beth was dead... but this time there wasn't nothing. This time there was her anger, balled and twisted up at her center. Some of her wrath was directed at the world filled with walkers. She was equally pissed at Dawn and the perverse system at the hospital. Her emotions teetered from disappointed to enraged at her sister, Maggie, and her abandonment. Mostly, however, Beth was just furious at herself. She killed herself… twice. Once at the hospital on a stupid and impulsive move. And then again, a repeat of another low time in her life, when she gave into temptation and the lure of death.
She was dead… and then she wasn't. It was as if she opened her blue eyes from a blink; a blink that lasted an eternity and a fraction of a second at the same time. She was alive and not at the hospital and not at the farm. It was then, even before she recognized her concrete surroundings that this whole, strange experience was about second chances. For some reason and somehow, Beth was being given a second chance at life for a second time… or a third? Or had it been more? It didn't matter, Beth realized. What mattered was the fact that she wasn't dead… at least not yet.
Blinking her eyes rapidly a few more times, Beth looked around herself. When was she? Was it too late? The thoughts flooded her mind as her location became apparent to her. The prison walls surrounded her; the dank and dreary building actually lifted her spirits for once. Beth could hear voices around her, familiar ones from her extended family and refugees from Woodbury.
An explosion erupted outside the walls, shaking the foundation of the prison. Screams filled the air as Beth steadied herself from the shock. People started running in all directions as she made her way outside.
No! Her mind shouted as the understanding of when she was came rushing to her. The Governor was attacking for the second time and he had her father. Beth knew she needed to stop it; she needed to set things on a different path. She had one chance before to change her path and had not used it wisely. Beth wasn't going to waste this chance now.
Beth raced to the fence, taking her place next to her sister. The scene was playing out before her just as it had done before. She didn't want to see her father die again. Beth didn't know if she could bear to watch it again, her whole body starting to tremble. She wasn't dead. Her father didn't have to be dead either.
She clutched the weapon in her hands, her fingers twisting along the hard, cold metal of the rifle that had found its way to her grasp. Beth had done nothing last time. She had believed Rick could save them, her father and Michonne. She had hoped the Governor could be reasoned with, that the bloodshed could be avoided. Beth had prayed.
This time Beth knew better.
Rick was talking at the fence line. His voice was loud but calm and steady as he addressed the aggressing army at their gates. Her father and Michonne were on their knees, their hands bound behind them. Hershel's eyes were focused on his daughters. He knew.
Beth raised her rifle, taking aim at the crazed man with an eye patch as he tightened his grip on the sword.
"What are ya doin'?" questioned Maggie, her sister's voice wavering.
Aiming carefully as she had been taught, the way Daryl had instructed, Beth ignored her sister. The sister who hadn't looked for her the last time the prison had fallen. The sisters had been lost to one another but it had been more than that. Somehow, some way, Beth knew Maggie, the closest person in the world to her, hadn't even thought about looking for her. Beth hadn't been Maggie's priority, not her star to search for.
All communication had ceased in the spectacle before her, and Beth knew it was going to happen. The Governor arched the blade high in the air, the metal flashing against the bright sun. Beth released the breath she hadn't realized she had been holding and pulled the trigger.
The bullet hit the large man in the shoulder, spinning him as the sword came slicing down. The air was sucked from her lungs as the blade lowered, the steel striking her father. Blood spurted forth, red spewing out as her father's neck and chest were carved open.
There would be no change, no second chance, Beth realized. A scream escaped her as her heart broke, watching her father's death and his lifeless body falling forward. Maggie was still next to her, her agony bellowing out. How many times was Beth going to be forced to hear the anguish and pain pouring from her sister? A life-time's worth for the mistakes she had made? Was this her fate for dying, for not making the world right? Beth didn't know if she could stand the hurt-laced screams of sorrow from her sister again. Her own cries now mingled with Maggie's.
Beth didn't have to endure or wonder long. Gunfire erupted all around them. A bullet came flying at her from the opposing camp. She felt no pain again as her head rocked back, the slug burying deep into her brain. The rifle dropped from her hands, falling to the dirt at her feet.
She was dead again.
She was gone.
She was nothing.