Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: I was inspired to this write after I got a delightful little anon prompt in my tumblr inbox that went as follows: "I have a sudden desire to read a fic pairing Tara and Beth. Know what I mean? Eh? Eh? Do you think you could work your magic?" – This is my attempt to do that prompt justice!
Warnings: This story is meant to fit in after the season four finale, during some point in the distant future when Beth has been reunited with the rest of the group and a handful of years have passed. *Contains: adult language, references to PTSD, depression, possible sexual/physical abuse/assault (regarding Beth's ordeal after getting 'kidnapped' in late season four), adult content, mild sexual content, fem-slash, religious references and some vague season four spoilers.
One for the Money (two for the show)
Chapter Three
Tara watched Rosita a lot. It took her a long time and more than a little bit of soul searching to understand how that could possibly irritate her, but it did. She watched her when the woman bent over or when she stretched. She watched when Rosita stripped down to a cut off undershirt on those particularly sweltering days, or when she swaggered around camp wearing a new shirt, sporting a pronounced little wriggle to her step – something clearly meant for Abraham's benefit – only Tara stared all the same.
A year passed.
She was there for Judith's first steps, for her first word, her first flailing fit that somehow resulted in a sentence. She was there for the look on Rick's face when Judith bounced, making grabby hands as she called him "Da!-Da!" for the first time. She was there when Judith made her first unsteady trek unaided, falling into Daryl's arms as the man swooped in and caught her at the last second, grinning crookedly as he tossed her above his head, the sound of her delighted laughter echoing through the still.
They celebrated each and every milestone. But she saved her smiles for Tara, tossing them over her shoulder, trusting the woman to be near as she released each and every one into the wild. Tara always was and she never failed to smile back.
She found it easier to smile on those days.
She had to bite her tongue one night when Tara joined the conversation as some of the guys started talking about first loves and missed chances to 'get some' as Eugene called it, just before the world ended. She'd listened, eager and curious at first, only to have it turn sour in her mouth. Forced to listen as Tara went on in length about some camping trip and a girl who was supposed to be the 'love of her life'. Frankly, the way Tara had tossed a handful of pine needles into the fire, looking wistfully at Rosita's retreating back, had been enough to seal the deal for her.
Her stomach twisted violently as a surge of emotions – ones she hardly dared to contemplate – rose quickly to the forefront.
She opened her mouth, a spray of words balancing on the tip of her tongue before she forced herself to swallow them. The backwash reminded her of jealously. Her hands tightened around the dirty dish cloth, feeling the uncharacteristic urge to snap at her, to sneer something about having to dye her hair brown and cut-off her jeans at mid-thigh just to get the woman's attention, before she got a hold of herself.
What the hell?!
Where had that come from?
But for the first time in a long time, that little voice in the back of her head was dead quiet.
They celebrated Christmas two weeks late that year.
Somehow they'd just forgotten.
Carl took it pretty hard.
The party was half hearted and keenly different. More an excuse to get drunk and pig out on soft toffee and the half box of dark chocolate they'd managed to scrounge for the occasion. But it was warm, close – comforting in its own way.
She supposed it had to be enough.
They didn't talk about anything much either, not past holidays, not the family and friends they'd lost since the beginning. She remembered it was different last year, back when they'd come through the winter more or less whole. They'd shared more then. Back when Lori, Daddy, and T-dog were still alive, back when the memories hadn't seemed to hurt so much.
But this year it was different.
No one asked and no one told.
She tried not to think about what Daddy would think.
The night they lost Sasha and Bob, she set her bedroll beside Tara's. At first she was appalled at her own daring, watching the taut lines of the woman's body tense and release, already laid out and feigning sleep beside her. It made her wonder if she'd gone too far.
But somewhere across camp, Tyreese was crying. His body shaking with terrible, soul-wrenching sobs that sounded so painful – so dry and wrung out, that it made her want to curl into herself, to block her ears and pretend that the sound of someone else's grief didn't make her feel as helpless as she knows they all were.
Any words they could offer him were empty.
She knew that just as much as he.
So they said nothing.
Instead, they sat close and let the man grieve, they let him yell and rage, they let him break his fist against the side of an old brick mill and splinted the wound when he finally slept. They let him stew in his pain, in his fury and coldness. Waiting, patient, for the moment when he broke, when they would sweep in and hold him close – reminding him he was not alone, that they needed him and that losing him would be more than any of them could bear.
She wondered if it would be enough.
So, perhaps, that is why she bit her lip, why instead of pulling away, instead of putting a more respectful distance between them, she inched the thin fabric that much closer. Worrying at the small strip of dirt that separated them until she fell asleep breathing in the smell of sweat and spiced limes.
She woke up the next morning with a face full of wavy brown hair. She woke up to find herself half on Tara's bedroll, hopelessly tangled in both blankets. She woke up to Tara's soft snores and their fingers intertwined under the blankets. She woke up to Tara's warm, soft body curled protectively around hers and for the first time in a long time, she let herself enjoy the closeness.
It wasn't until she was halfway through making breakfast that she realized it'd been the best night's sleep she'd had since the prison. And while she didn't know for sure, she couldn't deny that seeing her reflection without the dark circles wasn't a nice change.
Neither of them said a word about it. But the next night, when she stubbornly set up her bedroll beside her, it was Tara that broached the space between them.
She slept like a baby.
Tara stared in the mirror for a long time after the bandages came off.
She watched their reflections as a trembling hand hovered over the ugly slash, pink and puffy as only a new scar can be. And it was ugly. It came down from just below her left eye and followed the curve of her jaw line. A souvenir from a group of men who'd decided that four women alone on a supply run would be easy pickings – worth the risk of jumping when their backs were turned.
It was long, thick, ropey pink – the type of scar people had plastic surgery to fall back on. It was the type of scar that would have given you public anxiety, that your parents would have put you in counselling or PTSD therapy while they saved up their nickels and dimes to pay some doctor to take you back to normal.
Only Tara didn't have that luxury.
None of them did.
She shivered. Uncertain of what she was waiting for as she stuck close, knees tucked into her chest, breathing in through her mouth as the one-person tent grew sour with the smell of old sweat and antiseptic. The zing was caustic - acrid as it built up underneath her nose, forcing her duck her chin and hide under her collar to escape the worst of it. It reminded her of the barn burning, of scorched grass and her childhood – her home going up in flames.
She watched a shudder ripple down the woman's back, unable to keep from flashing back to the moment where she'd rounded the corner of the mall they'd been combing through. Her Glock had been up and ready, only she'd frozen, mind going blank at the sight of Tara caught, pinned around the neck and kicking at a man who was easily twice her size.
The man's grin turned nasty, more predatory than anything when he'd focused on her, leaning down to whisper something in Tara's ear that made the woman's expression hiccup - twisting into something she didn't recognize as Michonne yelled at him to drop her.
He'd been missing one of his front teeth. That was all she'd had time to register before Tara suddenly sank her teeth into the curve of the man's arm and tore.
She bit a chunk out of the man's forearm, fountaining blood and sinew all down her front as he yelled, backhanding her across the face as he dropped her. Stunned, Tara hit the dirt like a deck of folding cards, palms scoring across the loose asphalt like nails on a chalkboard.
The man had screamed like a stuck pig, loud enough to send both Carol and his friends running. In the end they managed to overpower them, taking them down quick before the walkers came. But not before one of the man's friends – the one with a dirty-brown pony tail and a limp - carved a slice down Tara's face.
Punishment, he'd called it. Only fair after all…
She held her breath, something in her crumbling when the woman's spine stiffened, expression growing hard - distant as she met her reflection head on. She hated everything about it as she watched Tara's eyes go from wounded to vacant. She hated the expression. She hated the exaggerated hollows that had taken up residence below her eyes. The tension in her shoulders – all of it.
She didn't know if it was the right thing to do, if she should just leave and give the woman her space, but she was up and moving before she could stop herself - wrapping her arms around Tara's shoulders and reeling her in – tight but gentle. It was an awkward grip. And just like she knew she would, Tara's spine stiffened, trying to put on a brave front, to reassure her even though both of them knew she was inches away from breaking.
"At least my outsides match my insides now," Tara remarked, forcing a laugh she knew was more for her benefit than anything else. The mirror shook as Tara turned away, her voice so hollow, so brittle that it physically hurt to hear.
And while she didn't quite know what that meant, she knew that her heart had stilled in her chest when she found the mirror, shattered and half-hidden in the weeds beside her tent when they broke camp early the next morning.
It takes a long time for the scar to heal. And when it does, it still comes out ugly.
She got bold after that, more willing to take risks. She began thinking of ways to be near her, bullying Tara into playing Backgammon, trouncing her at Go-Fish and War, offering to give her hair a trim. Anything. It didn't matter anymore.
She refused to let her drift away. Not when they were so close, not after everything they'd been through, everything they'd survived. Tara had been her anchor once, it was only right she return the favor.
For a long time, Tara just humored her, using sarcasm as a shield in the same way she'd once used silence. Any progress she gained was painfully slow and hard won. But she refused to give up. And eventually, after more than a few shouting matches, things slowly started to fall into place.
And if she felt the weight of the other's eyes on them more often than not as the weeks spanned out, well, she pretended not to notice. She had more important things to worry about.
The next few months were worse.
They ran out of gas on a three hundred mile stretch of dead space. Where there was nothing but an endless line of abandoned cars, a narrow two lane road and a closed-in type of wilderness that felt far more sinister than it should have.
There was fresh blood splattered across the blacktop and the lingering, singed-electrical smell of a recent engine fire. The walkers were fresh. The smell of death still had that backdrop of sweetness to it, something she'd come to attribute to new death, before the rot sets in.
A child's backpack sat neatly atop the hood of a Jeep – the one with fresh scorch marks licked across the hood. When she peeked inside, she found canned food and wild crab-apples that were only a few days past edible. Whoever they'd been, they hadn't missed them by much.
The decision to continue forward on foot was all but made for them. Every car half a mile in both directions was either smashed to pieces or in the same predicament they were – all empty gas tanks and busted water filters.
So they started walking.
She had blisters on top of blisters by the time they found a decent place to hole up for the night. It took a week for them to find a car they were able to cram into and by then, everyone's face was host to a pinched, hollow sort of look.
Water was scarce.
Tempers were high.
She gave her food to Judith.
She tried to remember the taste of fresh peaches and cream.
But in the end that only made it worse.
She kept waiting for things to get better.
But they didn't and eventually she was forced to consider something she hadn't let herself dwell on before. Maybe things don't get better. Maybe things are just bad until they get worse.
She couldn't deny that part of her still held out hope for that silver lining. She knew she was setting herself up for disappointment but she couldn't help it. It was her nature to hope. It'd been ingrained in her since she'd been small. She'd grown up with the idea of what goes around, comes around, that the sun will rise to a better sky in the morrow.
Sometimes she tried to think about what Daddy used to say about hard times, but it was getting harder and harder to remember the sound of his voice, even the way his eyes used to light up when he laughed.
Then Judith got sick and everything came to a screeching halt.
A/N #1: Thank you for reading. Please let me know what you think! Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! – There will be one more chapter, stay tuned.