a/n: wowowow, the feedback on this has been amazing! thank you so much to everyone to reviewed, favorited, or followed this story, it's so welcoming for my first time writing for twd :)
still rated a hard T.

metamorphosis / ch.2
instability

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The first time the four of them run across one of Maggie's messages is two days after Beth approached Tyreese at the tracks. Judith's formula is running low, but Beth is pleased to see that Carol has taken the initiative in easing Judith onto solid food. As limited as healthy, baby-friendly foods are in the middle of the woods, it's a little more easier to come by than formula. The group takes a detour down a road in hopes of finding some kind of small town or subdivision that hasn't been completely ransacked. It's a risk, but Carol notes their path so they can find their way back to the tracks.

Tyreese's even gait stutters as the women follow in line behind him. Carol slides up beside him as he stops, eyes scanning the road ahead for any kind of trouble. "What is it, Tyreese?"

"That building," he starts, voice deep and rumbling like thunder. "It's got Glenn's name on it."

Beth's eyes slide up from Judith's face, her gaze locked onto the building. She quickly follows Tyreese and Carol as they move closer to inspect. The worn out building says: Glenn, go to Terminus. Maggie, Sasha, Bob.

Just the sight of her sister's name causes Beth's heart to contort inside her chest. Scenes flash through her head: Maggie's scream torn from her throat as their daddy is decapitated, Maggie insisting we've all got jobs to do, Maggie's retreating back as she goes to fetch Glenn from the prison. Her imagination gets the best of her, and Beth starts seeing Maggie's deteriorating body, limbs scattered around the forest floor, eyes white and lifeless, her skin cold and bloody.

Beth flinches and gasps when Carol places a gentle hand on her upper arm, rearing back while clutching Judith painfully to her chest. The infant whines against her skin as Beth's wild eyes meet Carol's, and the older woman's stare is calm yet concerned as she slowly lowers her arm.

"Are you okay?" is all Carol asks.

Beth knows she's alright. She's supposed to feel relief because Maggie, Sasha, and Bob are alive, not the heavy weight of suffocation and the oh-so-familiar ache of a hurting heart.

"Fine," Beth squeaks out, her chest constricting. "Fine."

The blonde tries to focus on anything else other than the bloody letters on the wall, but suddenly she's back in her cellar again, ghost hands running up and down her thighs, under her clothes, over her body. Beth feels the sharp pain of the first time she was raped, she tastes the sweat-soaked rag they gagged her with. She feels the chains agitate the raw skin of her wrists, but her slick hands soaked in the young man's blood easily slip out of them. She can imagine the texture of the old, rusted nail in her palm, and she sees the red seep through his teeth as she pierces the young man's skin.

Beth looks down, sees Judith in her imaginary blood-soaked arms, and she screams.

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Rick's newfound dedication towards farming leaves Beth to watch over Judith more than usual. His mornings are filled with hard labor, his afternoons with planning and strategy, and his evenings with fortification and defense. He stops by as much as he can, even if only to press a kiss against Judith's forehead, but it's still something. Beth doesn't mind. As frustrating as children can be, there's something soothing and familiar about taking care of Judith.

Winter fades into spring, and Rick keeps on farming. Sometimes Beth takes Judith outside to play in the grass as her father works, and Judith tempts her father with endearing giggles, loud, vague syllables that are beginning to form fragments of words, and tiny outstretched arms. It's a sight no one can resist, and Rick is no exception.

It's one of those extraordinary spring days where Beth feels like she can almost smell summer in the air when Rick throws down his hoe and seats himself down on the blanket next to her. Judith crawls towards her father with a bright, toothless grin, and Rick chuckles quietly. "This is their best age," he says, helping Judith into his lap. "They only get more complicated from here."

"Was Carl like Judith?" Beth asks conversationally, marking her place in her novel with a dog-ear fold.

Rick guffaws loudly as he throws her a wide-eyed look. "Carl was crazy. Always climbin' into things, gettin' in people's way."

"Kinda like now, huh?" she jokes.

"Yeah," Rick affirms after a beat of silence. "Kinda like now."

Beth glances at Rick, and his eyes are downcast, looking at Judith with a small smile. "It's real sweet how you treat Judith," Beth comments. Rick looks up at her with an eyebrow quirked, his lips parted lightly. "Even after everything that's happened. She's lucky you're her daddy."

Bashfully, Rick shakes his head, stroking the downy top of Judith's head. "Nah, I'm just being her father. Ain't nothin' special about it."

"Sure there is," she insists. "You don't act like there's anything different when it comes to her. She's living just as good of a life as she would have before the walkers, and that's thanks to you."

Judith moves for one of her toys, and Rick reaches out and grabs it for her, depositing it into her lap. Judith bounces happily, and Rick sighs. "She ain't got a mother. I wouldn't say it's as good as before."

There's silence for a while. Lori is hardly ever mentioned nowadays, especially not around Rick. Beth still feels pangs of sadness and longing occasionally when she looks at Judith and sees Lori's eyes. Beth fiddles with the torn edges of her paperback while Rick silently entertains Judith.

"My best friend in fifth grade didn't have a mama," the blonde starts, eyes locked on to a nearby dandelion. She feels Rick look at her. "She died when my friend was three. Drunk driver t-boned her car one night. She never knew her mama, so she never understood the pain of her being ripped away," Beth's voice cracks towards the end of her sentence. She can see Andrea's scythe cleaving into her mother's corpse's head; she can see the blood running from her own veins as the mirror shard clatters to the floor.

"Beth-"

"No," she says forcefully, breathing deeply to push the sadness away. "My friend never knew how it felt. And Judith won't either. She might wonder, she might get sad, but she's never gonna hurt like we do."

Beth looks up then, and Rick's eyes bore into hers; she shifts nervously under his gaze. It is powerful and loaded and Beth doesn't feel like decoding the message, trying to understand how Rick feels, because Rick's pain, suffering, and coping mechanisms are things she'll never understand, and she'll never try to because it's not her place. Rick's eyes seem to focus in on her, and he breaks the stare by looking down at the wiggling infant in his lap.

"Carol told me that Judith almost said 'mama' to you the other day," he says, voice almost a mutter.

Beth reddens. "She didn't. Could've been sayin' anything, really."

"You ain't gotta feel guilty about it, Beth," Rick laughs a little. "You're all she knows."

"How would Judith even know the word?" Beth replies, tone defensive. "I sure ain't callin' myself that around her."

Rick shrugs and glances up towards the prison. "I wouldn't know. Judith sees more people some days than I do. Half them Woodbury folk thought you were her mother the first time they saw you."

Sasha runs through Beth's mind then, as well as the confused look on the woman's face as Beth disclaims Judith as her own. Beth feels a trickle of guilt in her abdomen. The thing she has tried to avoid from day one is right in her face: she doesn't want to replace Lori. She doesn't want to seem like the mother of Rick's child. Beth has never once considered herself Judith's mother. She is her caretaker, her guardian, someone who loves Judith, but she is not her mom.

Her face must tell all, because Rick speaks up again. "Even if you don't think you're her mother, you're the closest damn thing she's got."

Beth wants to cry.

Judith looks up from her toys and sees Beth across the blanket. Gurgling, she drops her toys in the father's lap and reaches out towards Beth, throwing her little body towards her. Rick steadies Judith and lifts her out of his lap and towards Beth, a small, reassuring smile on her face. "Go on," he says.

With a large exhale, Beth chuckles and brings Judith closer to her body, the infant snuggling into her shoulder. Rick stretches his arms and pushes himself up again, grabs his hoe, and waves at Beth as he returns to his farming. She whispers her relief to the wind.

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The quartet's rushed camp is inside the building that Maggie painted her message on. As the sun sets, Tyreese clears out the inside of the building, which was mostly barren save a few useless farm machines and ransacked shelves. He drags the three walkers out to the nearby woods, and takes first watch outside the building. Carol sets up Judith's palette inside, soothes the baby until she sleeps, then looks across the room at the other woman's back.

Beth can feel Carol study her, but she keeps her silence. She knows that her bloodcurdling scream from earlier had terrified Carol and Tyreese, but she couldn't help it. She had been honest to God fearful of herself.

"Beth," Carol starts quietly, her voice closer than it was when she was calming Judith. "We need to talk about what happened."

"I don't want to," she whispers.

Carol's fingers brush Beth's shoulder, and she flinches involuntarily. "No, I don't want to." Her voice is lighter than air.

"Sweetie, it's necessary-"

"No," she hisses, her voice laced with frustration, sadness, and confusion. She throws a heated gaze over her shoulder — maybe anger and intimidation would make Carol leave her alone — before turning her eyes back to the splatter of blood she's been studying on the ground.

With a sigh, she hears Carol's footsteps echo on the concrete floor. The door groans as she pushes open as silently as she can, and it screams when she closes it behind her. The crickets chirp into the silence, and Beth buries her head in her knees. Unwillingly she pushes herself off the tractor and sits on her palette beside Judith, her eyes scanning the infant's precious face.

She hears Tyreese's deep voice first. "It okay in there?"

"No," Carol responds, and Beth can sense her expression in her tone. "She's shut down completely."

"I ain't never heard someone scream like that," Tyreese says so quietly that Beth has to strain to hear it. She wishes she didn't try.

Beth thinks they're through until Carol speaks up again. "She's gone through something terrible," she says, her voice wavering as she speaks.

More silence, then Tyreese speaks. "I know."

"She won't talk about it."

"Then give her time," he replies, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.

Carol laughs bitterly. "She's mentally unstable and we're travelling with an infant. If something happens and she's with Judith and she gets triggered, God knows what will happen. You saw her scream. What if we aren't there next time?"

"You tryin' to say Beth would hurt Judith?" Tyreese questions, his voice rising in a question. "She loves that child more than anything. She wouldn't hurt her."

"I'm not saying she would hurt Judith, Tyreese. But she forgets her surroundings. She could draw attention to a walker or people and she could get both her and Judith in trouble."

Beth squeezes her eyes shut, praying it would tune out their conversation. Carol thinks she's a danger to Judith, a liability. The sad part is, Beth thinks, is that she can see it. She's going to lose her mind, and Judith's going to go down with her. It makes her disgusted with herself, disgusted at the fact that she is making Carol and Tyreese take care of her when she's all fucked up and a danger to them all. Beth briefly entertains running off by herself, but she knows Carol and Tyreese would just go looking for her, and that's not any better than what she's doing to them now.

"Just treat her the same, like there ain't anything different," Tyreese grunts. "She's gotta heal, and she won't be able to if you treat her like she's damaged."

"But what if she-"

"Damn it, Carol!" Tyreese slams his hand down on the side of the metal walls, and it echoes throughout the building. Beth's eyes shoot towards Judith, who remains peacefully asleep. She lets out a breath she didn't even know she was holding. "You can't make everyone's decisions for them, woman. It ain't your place, and you know that. Let Beth deal with her issues in her own way, not yours." Tyreese's hostility shocks Beth, and in that moment she knows Carol and Tyreese must have faced something together. She senses the changed dynamic, which is inevitable when you're thrown with someone all alone in the middle of nowhere.

Daryl appears in her head, and she misses him. She wishes he was here because she has never met someone who understands her as well as he did. Beth knows that if Maggie was here, she'd be yelling and screaming at her just like the time she found out she had a knife hidden under her pillow. She tries not to think about either of them, because she doesn't want to start thinking about corpses and screams just yet. As Carol enters the building again with a sigh, Beth closes her eyes and tries to steady her breathing. She counts until she falls asleep, her body curled around Judith protectively.

Beth dreams about Daryl.

She's in the funeral home, fingers dancing over the keys on the piano, her voice fluttering in the air. Daryl is to her right, all stretched out and relaxed in the casket with his hands behind his head. There's something peaceful and comforting about the moment, because Daryl is the last person she would have expected to indulge in her singing, but it gives her a warm feeling in her gut that she doesn't quite feel like thinking about yet.

Folky favorites drift through the room, memories of her beside her mother on the piano back at the farm being entertained in her head. For some reason, she doesn't feel sad as usual when thinking about her mother, and Beth attributes it to the strong presence at her back, making her feel empowered, confident, and extremely comfortable. After her fifth or sixth song, she chances a backwards glance at the man in the casket.

He's stiff and straight in the casket, his arms back by his side, eyes slid shut. Beth thinks he's sleeping, so she scoots off the bench as quietly as she can and crosses the room towards him, a small smile dancing on her features. Daryl looks so different when he sleeps, so young and handsome, so relaxed. Beth traces her fingers over a faded scar on his cheek.

When wax and makeup dollop on her finger, her spine goes hard and she freezes instantaneously. She lets out a little yelp, and his eyes fly open; they're no longer blue and beautiful, but they're white and yellow and dead, haunted.

Beth manages to jerk awake with only a gasp, her eyes wide and mouth open. Carol turns around with Judith in her arms, bottle in the infant's mouth.

"Morning," Carol says carefully, hesitating only a moment. "Nightmare?" Beth nods.

Carol clears her throat. "Tyreese is out looking around before we take off. There's bound to be something nearby, with all this equipment." The blonde stands, popping her limbs and taking a drink of water. She doesn't meet Carol's gaze, opting to pack up camp instead.

Thankfully, they do find a town nearby as they travel down the gravel road. In the course of the day, the four of them manage to gather plenty of formula for Judith, a change of clothes for all of them, food, and a few jugs of water. Renewed and relieved, the group reaches the tracks again right before sunset. Carol skins and cooks a meager squirrel alongside some canned food they had scavenged while making a bottle of formula for Judith, who yawns and shifts in Tyreese's arms.

"I'll take first watch tonight," Beth offers, eyes glued on Carol.

The older woman glances up from her work. "You sure?"

"Yeah," Beth assures. "I've got nothing else to do."

Tyreese thanks her while he bounces Judith in his arms. Beth desperately wants the comfort of Judith in her arms again, but she doesn't trust herself and it makes her sick. She can tell that Carol and Tyreese are keeping Judith away from her; they've been passing the responsibility between the two of them all day, ignoring Beth's halfway extended arms and her hopeful gaze. It hurts, but Beth accepts it, because it might be for the best.

The moon rises, and the rest of her companions sleep. Beth plays with her knife for a while, twisting it and turning it in the light of the fire, alert of all the noises surrounding her. Beth sits in silence for a few hours, Tyreese's soft snores accompanying the crackle of the fire. On the other side of the tracks, Beth hears twigs snap and she sees a walker amble out of the trees. She waits for a moment as it wanders around aimlessly, entertained by the fireflies and the wind until she's sure it's isolated. Glancing around her camp quickly, she decides it's safe before crossing the tracks to take the walker down.

As quietly as she can, she creeps up on it. When she's ready, she throws herself in the walker's path and impales it through the skull, it's moan shattering the silence of the night. With her hand still wrapped around the hilt of her knife embedded in it's skull, she briefly glances at it's face.

She almost stumbles backwards, it takes her by so much surprise. The walker is almost identical to the man she killed back at her captor's camp. Everything about the walker's cold, only slightly decayed face reminds her of the young man that whispered into her ear, buried deep inside her and taking away her innocence one fuck at a time.

Quickly, she removes her knife from it's skull and backpedals away, watching the walker's corpse crumple to the ground. Shaking her head and breathing heavily, she crosses over the tracks again to the camp, her bloody knife in her hand, splatters on her face. She sits back down in her spot by the fire, staring into the flames, trying to burn her memories out of her head permanently. Before she knows it, she's sobbing, her breath coming out in strangled, terrorized gasps.

Beth doesn't hear Carol get up until she's beside her, peeling the bloody knife out of her hand gently. Beth looks at Carol and sees a person who sympathizes, a person who cares and worries for her for the first time since Daryl. With a shuddering cry, she buries her head into Carol's shoulder as the woman holds her against her chest, stroking her back and whispering soothing words in her ear.

She falls asleep with her head in Carol's lap, the older woman's fingers combing through her hair. Tyreese finds them the next morning like that, and he doesn't say a word; he smiles, gathers Judith in his arms, and asks what's next.

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After two more days, another sign for Terminus is on the tracks. Maggie has left another note to Glenn, and Beth touches the letters of Maggie's name with a frown on her face.

"Does she think I'm dead?" Beth asks.

Carol frowns as well. Glancing at Tyreese, she sighs and puts a hand on Beth's shoulder, urging her back on the tracks. "You'll just have to ask her yourself."

Beth thinks back to the conversations her captors had about Terminus, and she chews on her thumb anxiously. The idea of her sister in a trap, alongside Sasha and Bob, unnerves her. She wonders what Daryl would think about the sanctuary.

"Something the matter?" Carol asks.

The blonde snaps out of it. "No, I'm alright."

She runs her fingers over the hilt of her blade in a nervous gesture. Beth's eyes flicker over the slogan on the wood one last time before she follows Carol and Tyreese. Sanctuary for all. Community for all. Those who arrive, survive.

"Sanctuary," she mutters to herself. "Sure would be nice."

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a/n: incase you haven't figured it out, this is a slow burn kind of fic. feedback would be appreciated, thanks so much. xx