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Warning: this chapter handles major episodes of depression and suicidal thoughts. There are also references to a past suicide attempt. It gets very angsty and some descriptions are a little gruesome (similar to Beth's dream in an earlier chapter), so I thought I would warn you beforehand.

Of course you're probably all used to this by now because this story does explore mental/emotional health quite a bit, and obviously Beth isn't in a very good head-space at all. I try to keep these aspects as accurate and realistic as possible because I think it's extremely important for them to be addressed and represented. If you're not comfortable reading about these kinds of things, you might want to skim read certain parts or just stop reading if you really don't like it.

As usual thank you all so much for the wonderful reviews! They're always so lovely and filled with interesting thoughts and questions, so keep that up!

Disclaimer: still don't own twd lmao


RUNNING BLIND

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Beth sometimes wondered if there were wolves running around in her heart.

They came out at night and screamed their beautiful, terrible songs to the pallid moon in the sky. Sometimes no one could silence them. Not Maggie, not Judith, not Daryl. So she walked the shadowy streets of Alexandria on her own and wondered if they would ever run away into the night.

Sometimes she went to Effy, who told her stories on the porch of hers and Lilly's house. Her words were sharp but lovely, like a knife, and it was through those stories that Beth learned that Effy's dream had been to become a writer. She'd wanted to write a book, before, but all the publishing companies had long since burned.

Beth thought she still should write one.

People had already accepted the end of the world, but sometimes, when the darkness wasn't swallowing her heart, she wondered if this was just a new world. Another place that would eventually be cleansed of all nastiness and greed. And the people of this new world's future would need to know the truth of how their world came to be. The suffering . . . the hardships . . . the bonds that were forged. It was important that they knew.

It mattered.

It might have seemed like it was the end of humanity, but perhaps it was the revival.

Sometimes she went inside to Lilly, who mostly slept on the couch with Gregg. Beth only went to watch the innocence of the little boy still flickering away like a small flame. Lilly was the oxygen that allowed the flame to keep burning, and as she laid there on that sofa with his small sleeping head tucked under her chin, Beth wondered if she was the oncoming rain that would put out his little flame.

Sometimes she went to Mark and Lisa, who mostly lived in the medical bay now, their baby almost due. They spoke of Matty occasionally, and Beth felt the sting of her failure every time they did.

Mark didn't blame her.

Instead, he blamed himself, but Beth knew every little thing that had gone wrong was because of her. Which was why she was surprised when he apologised to her once. For the way he and Matty treated her when they first met, when they hauled her and her friends away by Dwight's orders.

She'd already forgiven them for that.

Dwight too.

On rare occasions, she went to Dwight. Whenever she could find him, that was, since he seemed to be getting absent more and more these days. Whenever he resurfaced, he'd meet her at the wall and they'd stare out into the darkness, wondering how they managed to save so many . . . yet fall so far.

Morgan was missing quite a lot too, but whenever he reappeared they sat in the zone's chapel and he listened to her play the piano that was next to the altar. The last time she'd played had been in the small church on their way along the coast. It felt like a long time ago, almost like a dream, and she sometimes wondered if she was living in a dream.

She remembered those words he'd said to her on that night so many nights ago.

When ya play, it's like all that vanishes. An' you're just a girl again.

Just a girl.

She would have given anything to be just that again.

Shepherd and Tanaka liked to play cards with her, with them having become insomniacs as well, and she learned that she was rather good at Old Maid and Go Fish. They were missing a lot though too, and they would never tell her where they had gone whenever she asked. Eventually, she stopped asking and accepted the truth.

The truth that all of them vanishing was simply the essence of the dream finally fading.

The dream she'd been having since she was placed in the trunk of the car . . . which was finally coming to its end.

Mostly she went to Edwards.

He spent basically all his time in the medical center, reading up on countless different diseases and trying to connect them to the walker virus.

One night, he told her the story of something happened at Grady, and it made her sad. Except that she was always sad now, so she wasn't sure if what he'd said had actually affected her.

He told her about Hanson and Dawn, and the other officers, and about how it all slowly turned to poison along with the rotting outside. He'd been trying to create an antivirus, and even now he was still trying. She wondered if all that trying would really make a difference, yet still, she helped him, but staring at those blue gleaming plastic tubes made her feel strange.

"Why did you save me?" she asked him out of the blue one night.

She sometimes wondered if he'd felt he owed her. For getting rid of Dawn and to repent for what he made her do to Trevitt.

Repaying the debt he owed her.

Surprisingly, he smiled.

"Because I wanted to."

No debts owed?

No debts owed.

She smiled too.

When she was alone, however, Beth thought of all the people she hadn't been able to save. The ones they'd lost escaping the hospital, and all the ones after. Their faces flashed across the inside of her eyelids when she tried to sleep and the wolves in her head continued to howl.

Percy. Bello. The wards whose names she hadn't known. Alvarado. Licari. Franco. Sally. Tyreese. Matty. Noah . . . The list never stopped growing.

She wondered how long Rick's list was.

Maybe it was so long he'd stopped counting. Stopped remembering all their faces. He must have lost so many . . . killed so many . . . Maybe forgetting was the only way he could cope.

She didn't think she could ever forget them.

Every night she wished to save them, but wishing on its own didn't amount to anything. Not even if you wrote it down. Wishes never came true unless you acted upon them yourself, but it was too late to do anything for them now. It was always too late.

The howling never silenced.

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One night she woke from nightmares yet again and got up, careful not to wake her sister. She crept across the room and closed herself in the bathroom, staring at her reflection in the mirror above the sink. Her skin was pale and shining with sweat, and the flesh beneath her eyes was bruised and tired. She lifted a hand and slowly traced the stitches of the scar stretching from the left corner of her mouth up to her ear. They were uneven and coarse, painting a repulsive great half smile on her face, and she tried to remember what her skin had looked like before the cuts and bruises.

Her hand rose further to touch the headband she had covering that scar on her head, and she pulled it away slowly to reveal the faded circular mark.

She stared at herself.

Thin and pale, with scarred and battered skin stretched tight across her bones, Beth searched for any essence of remaining prettiness she might have had, and found none. All she saw was ugliness, raw and blackened by toxic waste.

She wanted to cry but couldn't.

There was a dull, furry taste in her mouth, so she picked up a toothbrush and squeezed some toothpaste out onto the bristles. The paste was white with red and blue swirling stripes, and they made her feel nauseous. She shoved the brush into her mouth and scrubbed at her teeth, trying to rip away the rotting matter. She scrubbed so hard that her gums began to bleed at the pressure, and when she withdrew the toothbrush from her mouth it was stained with dripping red.

She looked down at the white line on her wrist which was still faintly inked over with the stonewashed letters of ALIVE, and felt sick.

She sat down on the edge of the bath and felt the heaviness of her shoulders weighing her down. She thought she might fall into the tub, but she managed to hold herself there. A distant memory of her, Maggie and Shawn all in the bathtub together surfaced in her mind, and she stared into the empty whiteness of the tub she was leaning against. For a brief second, she saw the water, and the rubber duckies, and the mountains of bubbles that spilled over the edge and onto the fluffy rug by the tub. She saw herself laughing, and Maggie making tidal waves, and Shawn trying to untangle the knots in both his sisters' shampooed hair.

Daddy?

She stopped before her dad could enter the room and felt her legs trembling.

How had it all gone so wrong?

How had they lost everything they could possibly lose?

There was a box of razor blades on the side of the sink next to the toothpaste, and Beth felt her stomach drop at the memory of broken mirror echoing throughout the bathroom at the farm.

She remembered the burning sensation of dragging the piece along the inside of her wrist, tearing open the skin, and the hot scorching blood that came oozing out. She started to feel like she might be sick and tears pricked at her eyes, so she stood up and ran from the bathroom as fast as she could. She ran down the stairs of the house and through the downstairs rooms into the back garden and breathed out deeply as the cool night air washed over her face. She felt the night's gentle caress across her skin and in her hair, and she closed her eyes and pretended she was far away, farther than she could ever go, perhaps beyond the stars and spinning planets.

"Beth?"

She jumped at the voice and her eyes snapped open.

It was Glenn, sitting at the glass table on the patio with a book on his lap. He had a small lamp to be able to see what he was reading, and a steaming mug of something hot.

"Everything ok?" he asked, and Beth stood still, her pulse hammering.

She waited for him to pretend he hadn't seen her but he didn't and just kept sitting there, waiting for her to answer. Several rebel tears escaped her eyes then and slid down her cheeks, and the lamplight allowed him to see them.

He closed his book and leaned forward on the chair, eyes filled with an ocean of concern, and spoke again. "Beth?" he called again, "Are you . . . all right?"

She felt it wrong to run from him of all people, so after some hesitation, she slowly walked to the table and sat down on one of the chairs. She wiped her damp cheeks and bit down on the inside of her unscarred cheek, holding in the lump of emotion that was trying to force itself out.

". . . No," she whispered finally, "I'm not all right."

"What's wrong?"

She stared at his kind and compassionate features and shook her head.

"I don't know."

Strangely, he nodded, like he understood. He couldn't understand though; no one could understand. Her head felt like lead and her heart felt like poison. Her bones were heavy and lined with sickness, and her touch wilted flowers and stole the life from blameless children.

No one could ever begin to understand.

". . . Does it hurt?" he asked gently.

She wanted to laugh. Out of spite. But all she felt was the sadness.

"Yeah," she answered, before casting her eyes upward. ". . . The wounds feel pretty bad too."

Glenn smiled sadly, and for a moment Beth thought that he was perhaps the kindest and bravest man she'd ever known. Always smiling, always listening. He'd given Maggie something she could never give, and at first, she'd envied that, but now she saw that comfort he offered and very briefly wondered if there had ever been a chance she could have had that.

She instantly hated herself for thinking it and stood up, head spinning.

"Beth?" he blinked, confused.

She tried to speak but her words choked her, and she stumbled away from the table towards the path at the side of the house.

"I'm sorry," came spilling out, "About—I mean, for taking your bed. Well, yours and Maggie's bed. You can . . . You can have it back now."

"It's the middle of the night. Where are you going—?"

"Just . . . away. Away from here."

He stood up then as well. "Are you coming back?"

"No—Yes. I . . . Maybe."

She could feel her legs wobbling and before Glenn could say another word, she took off running. Thankfully he didn't chase her, but she still ran so fast the surroundings blurred and warped. She heard her heart beating in her ears and felt a stinging in her stitches. She was alone. She'd never felt so alone. It hurt. It hurt so much everywhere . . . She wondered when the hurting would stop . . .

The pain doesn't go away.

Or perhaps it just didn't.

She ran so fast she tripped and fell onto her front with a loud smack!

Hauling herself up, groaning, she examined herself and found huge rips torn in her jeans and blood oozing out from her skinned knees. She hissed at the pain and pulled herself up, the scrapes burning and dripping with blood. She stumbled along the street, every step sending a trail of fire through her legs until she reached a certain door. Her pulse hammered violently and she remembered the pain she'd felt when she was lying in her bed on the farm after Shane opened the barn doors.

The first true pain she'd ever known.

No one can protect us.

We're alone.

Alone.

The blood from her knees was dripping onto the gravel beneath her feet. She wanted to tear into the ground with her blunt fingernails and release the fires below. She wanted to burn in them, along with the world. It hurt . . . It hurt. . .

Suddenly, the door opened, and it felt like time had stopped.

Beth tore her blurred gaze up and saw the silhouette of Daryl standing on the porch. His outline was uncannily familiar to her, all shapes and lines she recognised, and she hobbled forward like a walker, her hands reaching out towards him.

She saw his silhouette dart forward and down the steps until he caught her in his arms and she sagged against him. She heard the dripping of blood on the pavement and gripped the leather of his vest with her hands. He squeezed her against the hardness of his chest and she felt herself choking on the sadness she couldn't escape. It was like a shadow; a demon. And she knew now that there was no running from it.

Rick was a liar, she decided in that moment. Claiming they got to come back, because, in reality, no one did. He was a liar, and he hadn't been able to save her daddy.

He hadn't been able to save her.

Daryl held her shaking body in the dark and she clung to him like a parasite, sheltered from her own darkness by his. She wondered if he could save her, as he held her. If his demons could chase away her own, bringing back the light that once shone in her soul.

That light could save him.

It could save them both.

But it had been snuffed out. Killed by the bullet like Beth, and this stranger who'd been left behind . . . Her. . . No one could save her.

Daryl picked her up.

She was only half-conscious but she could feel his arms beneath her knees and around her waist, carrying her up the steps of the porch like he had a long time ago. The blood from her knees had leaked all over her jeans and was staining his skin deep dark red. She wondered how much of her blood he'd had on him now, after the hospital, and pressed her face into the dark fabric of his shirt. He smelled of smoke and earth and she could feel the steady thrum of his heartbeat against her cheek. A strong and constant pulse. The heart of a warrior.

Alive.

The letters on the inside of her wrist had almost faded.

Alive.

She wondered how he still was but she was not.

The howling in her heart seemed to grow louder so she closed her eyes and allowed herself to believe they were back in the funeral parlour all those moons ago. She imagined the light was still shining inside her, warming them with its tender glow. Where the sound of the piano was their lullaby.

Perhaps there was another reality out there where that was true. Where things were good and the light could still shine.

She wanted to see Beth.

She wanted to see her.

She wanted to see her face and her smile and her eyes shining like stardust. She wanted to hear her laugh again, a sound that had been so common once that she'd heard it every day. She felt removed from herself, like she was high up in the air watching this shell of a body being carried away. She felt like nothing. Nothing at all.

Why? Why had she done that? . . . Why had she killed her? . . .

Why wouldn't she come back?

A stranger wearing her face.

The stable rhythm of Daryl's heart lulled her to sleep, and she dreamed of a better world where she hadn't died.

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