Ain't No Grave
"When I hear that trumpet sound,
I'm gonna rise right out of the ground.
Ain't no grave
Can hold my body down."
There are these things called graves. Cold and deep and dark, they are. They hold the dead and the living mourn over them. Beth remembers when she was little and her dog died, and her father took a shovel and started diggging a big hole under the biggest tree he could find. He digged for hours, until it was deep enough, and then Beth remembers how they put the dog in a wooden box her father made before (a coffin, he called it; she didn't understand its purpose at the time) and then he slowly put the coffin in the hole and he filled it up again.
She asked her father what that hole is, what it means, and her father told her it's called a grave and that that's where the bodies of the dead go to rest. Beth hugged him tightly, then, and asked him to never ever ever go to rest in that hole, and her father dryly laughed.
There are these things called graves.
Beth Greene has never liked them.
"I knew you'd be back."
Something in Beth snaps to those words and she opens her eyes, staring at Dawn. She removes her arms from around Noah's neck, releasing him from the hug. Slowly, she walks over to Dawn, her stare cold and firm.
Beth Greene used to be weak, once. Not anymore.
"I get it now.", she says, a grin gracing her lips and – for a brief moment – there is confusion on Dawn's face. Beth moves, and puts the scissors through Dawn's shoulder.
A gun fires and blood starts spreading through Beth's golden hair, some of it even falling on Rick's face as his eyes stare in horror; and not even a second later Daryl Dixon pulls out his own gun and shoots the policewoman straight in the head, her last words being "I didn't mean to".
Fuck that shit.
Daryl cries, then, looking at the pool of blood by Beth's hand. Carol puts a comforting hand on his arm.
Beth Greene dies, and suddenly the world seems much darker.
(Dark like a grave they now have to dig.)
He carries her body out, then. He holds her so carefully and she is so light, so skinny. She's like a feather and the wind has blown her away to another world.
Maggie falls down to her knees, her lips letting out a scream like a part of her heart was being ripped from her. Glenn holds her tight.
They bury her to the words from the Bible and it's all just so reminiscent of the burial of the Greene family dog, except Beth doesn't get a coffin, and that goes to show how in this world even a grave is a luxury, and that people are being treated worse than dogs.
Maggie wakes up screaming, each night awaits her with a new nightmare and a different imagining of the way her sister died. And each morning, she goes to find Daryl, simply to ask him to describe what happened just one more time.
He does, every time.
(The wounds Beth's death makes are deep, so so deep, just like a grave.)
There are these things called graves. They put her in one.
But Beth Greene has never liked graves, so later – when no one is looking – she uses her bare hands and digs herself out.
