A/N Hi, this is the first fan fiction I've written in a long time, so please be gentle with me! This fic will be multi chapter, I'm aiming around 100'000 words with around 2'000 words per chapter. I'll update as often as possible but please be aware that I'm 22 years old and work full time so it's not going to be daily or anything like that!
Also, there probably won't be an author's note on every chapter; I find them kind of annoying to read through so I won't subject you to my ramblings. Last thing, I'm English so some of my spelling may be a little different.
Full Summary:
Beth is taken and every time Daryl tries to go and find her something stands in his way, a walker herd, cannibals, claimers, psycho hunters, the list seems endless. Luckily, Beth doesn't need saving, she can save herself just fine.
Basically this is a badass Beth fic with a Bethyl pairing, the whole group is involved and this isn't one of those Beth and Daryl alone in the woods for ages and ages fic. While there will be romance this isn't a 'damn romance novel' and there will be drama and action aplenty!
Hopefully by chapter three you should be able to tell if this is your kind of fic, please enjoy!
Chapter One - Beth
Beth wouldn't have described herself as an angry person. Yes, she had been angry in the past and her temper could only be pushed so far but looking back before the hospital she had never felt rage. In fact she prided herself on being happy, finding the good in a world full of bad. Ever since her suicide attempt back on the farm she tried her best to stay positive even if she sometimes felt a little cut off from her emotions.
In the end it had been pure rage that had pushed her forward and given her the strength to fight.
From the moment she had woken up surrounded by white walls, strange doctors and even stranger police officers she had been pissed off. Even an optimist can only stay positive for so long in the apocalypse and she knew that the bullshit story they had told her about saving her life, her being alone on the side of the road was just that, bullshit. Daryl wouldn't have just left her.
It was a few days after that when the rage took hold. It was when she connected the dots and worked out exactly what was going on in the hospital that the foreign emotion had seeped in and settled at the pit of her stomach.
She hadn't wasted a second. From that moment on she was on the look out for her chance to escape. Even with the anger and if she were to be honest, a fair amount of fear, rolling around inside of her she still managed to keep a level head and think back to all Daryl had taught her out on the road. The trouble she found herself in would require a certain finesse to get out of, different than the countless walkers she had killed even before leaving the prison, she had to be smarter about this.
So she stayed quiet. She watched and she listened. She even made sure to flinch away when people got close, adding a small whimper here and there to really sell the meek image she was trying to portray. It worked like a charm
It didn't take long to connect with Noah after a few meaningful looks and vague suggestions that there was something wrong in their little sanctuary. He wanted out as much as Beth did and again, if Beth were entirely honest she had let out a great sigh of relief knowing that Noah stood beside her. She didn't feel quite so alone.
At first the two new friends stole a few whispered words to each other as they went about their chores, frantically trying to plan an escape under the radar so to speak. With Noah's limp and Beth's busted wrist they knew it was going to be tough. As two weeks turned to three and then three into four Beth started to get the sense that she was in real and immediate danger. Noah sensed it too and he wanted to make a break for it as soon as possible.
Beth disagreed.
"There's too many cops for us to just slip away unnoticed. We need a distraction, we need there to be a couple less cops period." She whispered to Noah when they were mopping side by side down a slightly less used corridor, sending him a pointed look. Noah turned a little green at the insinuation they were going to have to kill.
"We can't stay here much longer, Gorman keeps staring at you." Noah pleaded.
Beth glanced up and down the hallway before lifting her shirt slightly; revealing a plastic knife which she had sharpened to a wicked point. When she met Noah's eyes there was a glint of steel in them and he knew then that he had been right all along about her, she was a fighter.
"Noah, he tries anything with me, he won't know what hit him." She promised in a low, cold voice that almost had Noah shivering. "In fact, him trying something is just what we need, the night he tries it, the night I kill him, that's the night we get the fuck out of here."
That night Noah snuck into Beth's room and after an hour of so of whispered conversation he shimmied under her bed and fell asleep on the cold linoleum. The next morning, before the sun was even up Beth woke him and checked the coast was clear before Noah scuttled back to his room.
From then on Noah's presence in Beth's room during the night was a given, they'd talk in whispers for a couple of hours, mostly discussing what they had managed to steal and stash away but there were also moments of normal friendship too. Commiserating over the lack of fast food, bonding over movies and music and debating the best brand of doughnut were all topics that came up over the week and a half since Noah had first spent the night.
After five and a half weeks since Beth's kidnapping the moment both she and Noah knew was coming finally arrived. It was late when Gorman tried to quietly open the door to Beth's room. The two friends had made preparations for a situation just like that one and as he pushed open the door the small piece of rubber Beth had jammed underneath the bottom of the door squeaked just loud enough the wake up her and Noah.
Beth's hand was dangling over the side of the bed and Noah squeezed her fingers once to let her know he was awake. She squeezed back then withdrew her hand beneath her pillow, clutching the shiv concealed there, all the time keeping her eyes firmly closed. The element of surprise, that's what their plan depended on.
Beth waited until Gorman was right beside her before fluttering her eyes in an imitation of just waking up. She wanted to be sure it was one of the cops and not someone else with more innocent intentions. She registered that it was definitely Gorman and he was reaching down to cover her mouth so she couldn't cry out. He didn't even touch her before she had sprung up and jammed the shiv into his neck, remembering all the times he had gotten too close to her or made inappropriate remarks when no one else was around.
The two of them fell to the floor with a light thud and with her spare hand Beth smothered his face with her pillow, just like her and Noah had discussed, letting her rage finally loose to give her strength after weeks of holding it at bay. Gorman tried to kick his feet to make noise but Noah was there to hold his legs still, his face a stony mask.
Gorman's muffled screams sounded pathetic to Beth's ears if a little sickening and she was glad when he eventually stopped moving. As soon as Gorman was dead the pair sprung into action, they pulled out bags that had been stashed in the ceiling and in less than a minute Noah was checking the hallway was clear before the two of them lifted Gorman's corpse and carried it out.
They had debated the next stage of their plan for hours on end, Beth wanted to let Gorman turn and set him loose on the other cops. Noah agreed that it was a good idea and they deserved it but what if Gorman turned too quickly? He had seen a woman turn in under thirty seconds before and he's also seen it take hours, he argued until he was blue in the face that it was just too risky, too unpredictable. They had only settled it two days prior to the their trap being sprung. Beth had made the decision and proclaimed it not to be up for discussion. It was their best chance.
As it was Noah held a second shiv at the base of Gorman's neck, ready to deliver the final deathblow should he start to reanimate too soon. It was the only concession that Beth had agreed to. Half way down the hall a door opened cautiously on their right and a young woman who Beth recognised as Annie looked out. She gasped when her eyes fell on Gorman's obviously dead body.
Beth and Noah froze, waiting to see what she would do, they had known this to be a possibility but they hadn't managed to come up with a solution should it actually happen. Beth had a feeling that Annie wouldn't be all that upset, she had seen the way Annie shied away from the man. Annie took a tentative step from her doorway and then another, more confident, step in their direction. Then, with a look of smug satisfaction Annie spat right in Gorman's pale face.
"Come with us." Beth whispered, not even giving herself chance to second-guess her decision.
"Ok." Annie said simply, grabbing a jumper from inside her room.
Beth and Noah had originally decided against inviting anyone else into their small fold for one simple, resounding reason. None of the others had any fight in them, it was written all over their faces. The new world outside the hospital had chewed them up and the evil bastards inside had spit them out and now, they no longer cared. The rebellious display by Annie had been the most life that she had displayed since Beth had arrived almost six weeks before. When Beth looked to Noah apologetically he simply nodded his agreement once.
Beth pulled Gorman's gun from the holster at his waist and handed it to Annie before continuing down the corridor to the staff room that the cops had decided was their private lounge. Beth had never even seen inside but Noah had been in once or twice to clean up. There was alcohol, dirty magazines and illicit substances of all descriptions. It was where most of the cops spent the night and it was where Gorman would be unleashed.
They stood by the door and listened to the laughter and crude language that emitted from the room. Just as planned Beth took all of Gorman's weight as Noah grabbed one of the heavy chairs a little way down the hall, when he struggled Annie rushed to help him and Beth was grateful the quiet girl had peeked from behind her doorway just moments ago.
As Noah and Annie made their way back, trying to stay silent Beth felt Gorman begin to twitch and threw a slightly panicked look at Noah, but when he went to put down the chair she shook her head and gestured for him to hurry up whilst manoeuvring Gorman so he was pressed up against the wall, his jaws no where near her vulnerable flesh.
When the chair was situated beside the door the three of them waited with baited breath for Gorman's transformation to be complete. When his jaws began to snap hungrily Noah wrenched open the door and Beth pushed the new walker inside quickly. Noah slammed the door shut and together they wedged the chair in front of the door.
"What now?" Annie questioned calmly as shouts and screams rang out from the sealed room.
"Elevator shaft, that's how we're getting out." Beth explained briefly.
As the three of them ran for the elevator shaft they could hear banging from the staffroom and doors opening around them as people went to investigate. They paid no one much mind until they were hurtling past Dawn's office. Her door burst open and Beth would have laughed at the look on her face under any other circumstance. As it was she barely even registered what she was doing, stabbing into Dawn's neck with the shiv still clutched in her hand.
Beth watched as the annoyance in Dawn's eyes turned into surprise and then terror, as realisation dawned on the sorry excuse for a policewoman, she wouldn't be walking away from that. Still, Dawn frantically tried pressing her hands to the gaping wound on her neck and Beth didn't flinch as she relieved her of the gun at her hip and couldn't stop herself from getting the last word in.
"You let this happen." She said softly in her ear. "This is all on you."
Rage. It doesn't have to be explosive. It can be quiet, it can be ruthless and it can most definitely be deadly.
