He sees signs of her everywhere. A flash of golden hair from behind the trees, a fleeting jingle of bracelets in the distance. But it's not just signs of her that he sees, everywhere he looks, she's there. She's there as a reflection in the stream as he goes to fill his canteen, he stares until the still water ripples her image away. She's there silently watching from the forest as he takes his shift on watch, he throws rocks until she becomes hazy and fades. She's there gazing at him from across the fire, light flickering gently across her face, he quickly stomps it out, leaving the camp in darkness. Soon she starts to talk to him, whispering goodnight into his ear as he falls asleep, leading him with sweet words of encouragement to sources of food and water. He thinks he might be going crazy. He knows he is going crazy.
Tension in the group is high. His tension his high. Bonds are straining, the group is weakening. They can't go on like this. Someone leaves water out for them. Tensions run even higher. Then there is rain. Water pours from the sky. Beth stands in the middle of the road, blonde hair soaked, clothes dripping with water. He stares at her, stares and stares until thunder roars and lightning flashes in the sky. When he looks back, she's gone.
He thinks he won't make it through the night, thunder and lightning crashing, wind whipping, walkers growling.
He fixes the music box. That damn music box with the ballerina that looks like Beth. She sits next to him, singing softly to the tune all through the night. And when the sun rises, he gives the music box back to Maggie, she needs it more than him. She doesn't have Beth with her.
Beth is there leaning over his shoulder, smiling shyly, as Maggie and Sasha lead the man in, lead Aaron in.
Beth whispers into his ear, trust this man. But Daryl doesn't trust this man, doesn't trust this Beth, no matter how real she may seem, no matter how much he wants to believe she's real, that she's alive. But she isn't. She isn't alive.
Beth is alive.
Her eyes flutter open and she wakes to darkness. The air in the trunk is stale as she chokes in a breath full of it. Panic settles into her as she struggles to breathe. She breathes shallowly, breathing but not getting any air. She mutters out a weak cry for help, but no one comes.
She traces the lines on her wrist, trying to soothe the panic in her chest. She is strong, she knows it, knows that she has a strong will to live, to survive. She won't be dying today. Beth surges her body up against the trunk and when that doesn't work she punches at the tail light until her hands are red and raw and the tail light is off. She pushes her arm through the hole and crowds her face as close to the opening as she can, taking in as much air as she can, as much light as she can. Occasionally something up against her arm. Beth passes in and out of consciousness. When she next wakes it is to blinding light. Voices murmur above her as she wheezes out a weak cry for help. She is picked up from out of the trunk, sun warm on her body. The person carrying her jostles her roughly as they run, groans and gunshots echoing behind them. Beth sees a man, a doctor her mind says, checking her pulse as they rush her down a hall on a gurney. She sees the floor as someone prods at the back of her head and the aching in her head turns to numbness as the hole in her head is stitched first in the back and then in the front. She lets her tired eyes slide shut. Carefully placed in a bed, people whisper of miracles into her ears. She hears groans and then screams and then silence. And in the silence she dreams.
The group goes to Alexandria and Daryl goes with them. He doesn't like it in Alexandria, can't like it, not without Beth, not when all that they dreamed about was finding their family and being safe and, well, here he is, safe and with his family, but not with Beth. But he stays, still he stays, and when they are ready to leave, he will be there, more than willing to abandon the sinking ship that is Alexandria. And then the horse dies and he finds himself saddled with friends, friends who care about him, friends that are good to him, and make him feel hopeful, and he thinks to himself, maybe I can go on. He's asked to join Aaron's recruiting team, and he thinks to himself, maybe I will be okay. He's found his family, they've found a home, he's found a home, a home with friends, but he hasn't found Beth, he won't find Beth, because Beth is dead.
Beth dreams. She dreams of a boy, more man than boy yet somehow still. She dreams of a little girl with soft sweeping curls of hair. She dreams of love and family and beauty and hope. She dreams of depravity and immorality and faithlessness. She dreams of death, of flesh eating monsters, of a world torn apart and filled with chaos. She dreams of apocalypse, of Armageddon, of end all.
Beth jerks awake in a hospital filled with white walls as stark as the sheets tangled up between her legs. The still hands on the clock on the wall reads twelve, zero hour. The monitor besides her beeps steadily. Her hands tremble, clutching at the rails of the bed tightly. She lets loose a breath, it was just a dream. It was just a dream.
She tries to call out, her voice rasping after not being used for so long. She calls out, this time her voice scratchy yet in working order. She calls out again. No one answers. She rips the IV out of her arm, keeping in a pained cry. The world is hazy as she gets up, as she pulls on the clothes that were lying on the counter, as she stumbles down the hallways. The hallways are empty, lights flickering on and off. The wall is firm under the palm of her hand as she uses it to keep herself upright. Groans echo down the hallways and somehow she knows that she needs to avoid the source of them, whatever that source may be. She stumbles down twenty-five flights of stairs, shoving through the jammed door on the first floor. Bodies are scattered across the floor of the lobby, torn to shreds, red splattered against the walls. Beth carefully makes her way around the bodies, occasionally tripping over one. Her palm presses against the inoperable sliding door as she rests her full weight against it. A sigh escapes from her mouth, exhaustion quickly catching up to her. She searches the room- twice- before finding a stray gun lying under the reception desk. The gun's safety is switched off and as she weighs it in her hand, eyes closed, a memory comes back to her. It's blurry but she can still see herself and a boy, a friend her brain tells her, running in front of her. She is firing the gun at something, something just out of reach. She fires once, twice, before the glass shatters. She lightly steps through the remains of the door, walking out into the day. The sunlight blinds her and she shields herself from it with the back of her hand. Her vision adjusts and the image in front of her comes into focus.
Beth stands in the center of a parking lot, hospital standing tall behind her, her eyes widened in horror. The sun's rays shine down brightly on her as she looks out past fences at a wasteland, the city is in ruins and she can see fires off in the distance. Everything is abandoned from the cars in the parking lot to the buildings around her, not a soul in the world out there. Some animal out past the fence look up from eating something off of the ground, her mind tells her not animals. They lurch to their feet and the decayed corpses stumble up against the fence, hands desperately reaching through, their groans echoing across the cityscape. The sun shines down on her as Beth mumbles.
"It wasn't a dream."
No, her brain whispers, it wasn't.
Daryl's motorcycle roars to life as he pushes off through the gates of Alexandria, Aaron in the car behind him. It's been three months since Beth died, three months without life and light and love. And as Aaron and he scour the lands surrounding Alexandria looking for signs of life, any signs of life, he can't help but feel as though he's waiting. Waiting for her.
She is different from other people.
Beth quickly finds that the rotting corpses don't mind her, in fact, they welcome her. They are curious, like animals, shambling over and bumping into her gently. They become her friends, welcoming her into their folds. After all, it isn't like there's anyone else for company. She adjusts to their grunts and groans and the smell of their rotting flesh and when they move away from the hospital, Beth goes with them, exploring the city inch by inch. And everything is alright.
But it all changes when they find a person. A little girl, with soft brown curls and blue eyes, and all she can see is the girl from her dreams. The walkers shamble over to the girl, their groans turning excited. The girl's eyes are wide in fear and Beth wants to tell her that it's okay, that they are friendly, that they won't hurt her. But they do, they do hurt her. They grab the girl, ripping into her flesh as the girl lets loose a wild scream. Maybe it is Beth that is screaming. She tries to get to the girl, tries to save her as they tear her limb from limb, but a mass of bodies surround her, all trying to get to the little girl as well. Blood runs down the cracks in the concrete and pools at Beth's feet. Beth yells at them, she screams and rages but all they do is look up at her, pieces of flesh hanging from their mouths before turning back to their meal. When it's all said and done, the walkers leave the little girl, torn to pieces, eyes still open in fright, and shamble away. Beth stands amidst the dead bodies as they croon goodbyes at her.
She drops to her hands and knees, taking in deeps gasps of air, and stares in horror at the torn flesh. Her friends leave and she is glad. She knows now what they truly are. That they are the monsters from her dreams. Beth rocks back and forth, blood stained hands clutching at blood stained knees.
"I thought, I thought that-"
Her voice cracks and tears start to flow down her cheeks and fall as droplets, mixing in with the blood pooled around her.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry-."
Beth whimpers softly, clutching at the dead girl's hand.
"Judy, I'm sorry."
And that's how the man, Morgan, found her. Morgan had been her only company for the past two months as they made their way to DC and now, finally, they were there. They stand on a hill overlooking DC. Beth beams at the city, DC, one of the few memories she has is of it. Or well of a spoon that says DC on it. She reckons that that must've been where she was headed before. Before everything. Before waking up in the hospital, before the strange hole in her head that Morgan says is a gunshot wound, before shit hit the fan and dead people, walkers, started eating the living. Beth fiddles with the straps on her backpack before unsheathing her knife and sliding down the crest of the hill, Morgan following closely behind. She stabs the occasional walker that comes for Morgan as they make their way through the outer limits of the city. Everywhere she looks there is chaos and destruction and death. Shop windows shattered, walls telling of doomsday, bodies littered on the streets. Her heart still aches each time they pass a mutilated corpse, innards ripped out, but she does her best to harden it and move on. Just because they're dead doesn't mean she is.