Beth doesn't think her feet have ever ached quite like they do today. She's gotten soft in the time at the prison, because she remembers walking more than she did today back before they found that false safe haven. Discarding her boots, she peels off her socks to inspect her feet.
"You got a blister?" Shane asks, rummaging in his pack. Biscuit is sniffing around the treehouse, looking relaxed.
"No, although one spot looks questionable." She peers at her sore feet, finding just the one reddened spot.
"May I look?" He motions toward her feet.
As much as it seems a little gross after walking most of the day, she nods and extends the problem foot. Shane grips her ankle, inspecting critically, taking the second foot once he's done. "Since you don't have spare socks, you'll want to wash them out best you can and hang them to dry. Wash your feet and let them air for the night and try this."
She takes the bottle, which looks like those empties you buy to carry smaller amounts of lotion or shampoo when you travel. The lotion smells like peppermint when she uncaps the bottle.
Shane stands and retrieves a bucket hidden in the rafters, taking a net bag out of it. He takes the bucket to a rain barrel in one corner. He dips out water and brings her the bucket and the bag. "Cloth, towel, and liquid camping soap in the bag. There's a camp shower at the house, but you can wash up a bit and clean your socks."
"Thank you." She dips the washcloth in the bucket and washes her face, feeling much better than her wet wipe clean up.
Shane nods and goes to lift another bucket out of the rafters. It has camping cookware in it, and he sets a little stove on a piece of sheet metal and feeds it with sticks and twigs as Beth gets her feet and socks clean. Once he has a pot of water set to boil, he pours water into a plastic bowl for Biscuit.
"Gonna go check a garden nearby. There's a camp toilet over in the corner. Put one up here after we got stalled by a herd for two days once. Can you take the water off boil to cool after it boils for at least a minute?"
Beth just nods, and he slips outside, leaving his pack and Biscuit behind. She hastens to make use of the camp toilet while he isn't here, suspecting half of his jaunt outside is to let her have that privacy. She washes her hands in the soapy bucket and looks around.
The supplies he stores say that it is indeed a safe house of sorts. There's everything you would need for a week stuck in the treehouse, including dog food and pee pads. She considers the packets of freeze-dried food, but since he went out to forage, she decides to wait.
Without a watch, she isn't sure how long Shane is gone, but the water hasn't fully cooled after she fell back on counting to time the boil.
"Snagged some persimmons and cherry tomatoes the birds didn't get yet." He passes her a net bag with over a dozen yellow-orange tomatoes and nearly as many ugly, wrinkly fruits. "If you can wash those in the boiled water, I'll feed Biscuit."
She takes a bowl out of the equipment bucket and gets everything rinsed. Shane mixes a can of dog food with something from a pouch in the empty water bowl. Once he's got the dog eating, he sets more water to boil.
"Can go ahead and eat those if you want." He fishes a pouch out of his pack similar to the ones she saw in the supply stash. "Some stuff sprouted on its own from old gardens. Tomatoes, squash, and such."
Beth nibbles on a persimmon. She knows people eat them, but she thought they were tart or sour. These are sweet, in a tastier way than the ration bars she ate earlier. "You haven't asked about anyone."
"Figured you would talk when you wanted to." Shane doesn't meet her eyes, keeping his gaze on the camp stove.
"Your daughter's name is Judith." Beth isn't sure why that's the first thing she says, but maybe it is because she's been raising that baby for the last eight months. It seems like it's more hers to tell than anyone else's.
It startles him into looking up, and the pain on his face makes her regret her bluntness. "She's not…"
Shane doesn't get the sentence finished before he grits his teeth. She watches his jaw clench and feels a surge of sympathy, despite knowing this man killed Otis. He could have left her behind, but instead of being the abrupt, angry man from the farm, he stood there and passed her tissues when she cried.
"She has your eyes, you know. And your smile, what I remember of it. Carl says so." Beth wishes she had a picture, even a bad Polaroid, just to show him. But the few she had like that were back at the prison.
Shane busies himself with pouring boiling water into the pouch and two camp cups. He rubs at the back of his head as he finally looks directly at her. "She's healthy?"
"Growing like a weed. Crawls and gets into mischief. Laughs so much, and it's contagious." Beth feels her breath catch as she thinks of Judith's tiny body asleep against her chest time after time. She prays the baby is safe, since she never found her or Sophia before Daryl forced her away from the dangerous chaos of the prison. "Carl picked out her name."
"Goes well with his. Traditional." His voice wavers, dropping deeper, and he sniffs and clears his throat. "He likes having a sister?"
"He adores her. I think she's his favorite person in the whole world." Considering how unstable Rick became, it's not surprising.
"Good." Biscuit's on alert now, making a small whine as he nudges at Shane. His owner reaches out to rub the dog's broad head with what seems to be long practice.
"Shane?" For some reason, she feels like he should be looking at her. She isn't ready for talking about her daddy yet, but the older losses are easier. He looks up, arching a brow, and his eyes are bloodshot.
"Lori didn't make it." Beth aims for the gentlest tone she's ever used, as if she were speaking to Judith when she's anxious.
When he doesn't look surprised, she guesses he already knew the danger the pregnancy posed. She can't bring herself to tell him the rest, that Lori died of a butchery of a surgery she ordered herself to save her daughter's life. Shane tries to speak several times and finally just ducks his head again without a word.
"Me and Carl and Sophia, we look after Judith. Daryl's the uncle who tries to teach her bad words. Calls her Lil Asskicker. Carol's busy most of the time, but she helps, too."
"And Rick?"
Beth shakes her head when he finally looks back up. "Plays with her sometimes, but he wasn't in a good place for a while. By the time he was better, she was attached to other people."
"You, Carl, Sophia, Carol, and Daryl."
She realizes she missed him adding powder to the camp cups when he stirs one and hands it to her. The sweet scent of hot cocoa makes her fingers curl tightly around the warm cup in anticipation.
"More or less. We got separated when the prison fell. Normally, I would have had her with me, but we weren't expecting the attack. She was with Sophia instead, indoors because she was getting over a cold. Only good thing is I couldn't find Sophia either, and she's smart enough to have run for the woods."
"Girl's maybe fourteen. You think she could keep a baby safe?" Shane asks. His hands are shaking.
"She's kind of like a Daryl Junior now, so yeah. Judith's safer with Sophia than most adults. Daryl and I were searching for them when I got grabbed up."
"Guess once we get back to the house and gear up, we should start where you were living. A prison, right?"
"Yeah. Not the best idea anyone had, but it had a good fence, at least. Kept walkers at bay, even if you didn't have any real privacy living in cells."
"You remember which prison?" Shane picks up the pouch and tests the contents with a spoon before emptying half out into a bowl and passing it to her. He takes a fork to eat directly from the bag.
"West Georgia Correctional." Beth takes a bite of the pasta, which has cauliflower, zucchini, peppers, and broccoli is some cheesy sauce. "Do you know where that is?"
"About forty miles southwest of here. Transported prisoners a few times, back in the day, for court and such."
Beth scoffs, realizing the irony that they wandered for months before discovering a location the damned cop among them would already have known about. "Figures. And Rick acted like it was a surprise Shangri la. Should've been a clue."
"What do you mean?"
"That something wasn't right in his head. No one ever would say something about it, but just kept following like lost ducklings." Not that she has much room to say much, but at least she was a teenager. It doesn't excuse the adults. So she clarifies for Shane.
"We were on the road most of the winter, except when we stayed in these unheated storage buildings."
"Jesus Christ. It snowed a fucking lot for Georgia this winter. I actually headed south a while."
"Did you at least get a sunny beach to hang out on?" Someone should have had one, Beth thinks.
"Yeah. Kept going til I hit the Gulf. Stayed on a boat a while and sailed a bit." Sailing was a skill he gained in the years of being invited on vacations with his much more affluent best friend. Kid with his background would never have learned to sail or ski without a rich buddy.
"Why would you ever come back north?" the blonde asks, looking incredulous.
Shane doesn't mind her disbelief, because he considers the action a bit crazy himself. But the day his mental tally of Lori's pregnancy ran out, he found himself heading back north. She seems sympathetic about the baby, though, so she might understand.
The baby, that nebulous idea of a person in this world that shares his blood, is something he very carefully doesn't think about. Despite his half-hearted search for where Rick might have ended up, he kept thinking of it as finding Rick, not his child.
His daughter, he knows now, and he's angry that he was forced away and Rick didn't fulfill his promise that the baby was Rick's. He doesn't want to think about Lori dying to bring their child into the world.
"It was the beginning of spring, and that reminded me of things."
Beth nods, looking like she does understand. He supposes she's had to grow up faster than a teenager normally would.
They finish their food in silence, and he washes their dishes to put everything away for the next time it is needed. She's trying to hide a yawn, and he feels for the girl. "There's a sleeping pad in that bench seat, if you want something to stretch out on."
She nods and spread it out, taking the thin fleece blanket and spreading it over her slim form. He unties his from his pack and sets up on the opposite side of the treehouse. Night's got a full hold over them now, although the moon isn't so far past full that they're truly in the dark.
"I hate Rick, you know."
Beth's voice out of the dark startles him.
"Why?"
"He refused to leave the prison, to move anywhere else, after we first got targeted by a madman with his own private army. Just kept pissing the man off. Didn't finish him off the first time, so we had an enemy out there who came back."
She pauses, a choked sound he knows is a precursor to crying. Biscuit provides the comfort he can't, because the dog goes to press his sturdy body against the girl's side.
"That madman obsessed with Rick came back, and he beheaded my daddy right in front of me."
Fucking hell. Shane's at a loss for words. I'm sorry seems too damned trite. "I cannot imagine witnessing that."
He truly can't. Seeing your father die is horrible enough, but witnessing a beheading is one of those levels of trauma he doesn't think you ever come back the same from. He can picture Rick being too stubborn to leave a place he's claimed. It's what happened at the farm, before Shane left.
"Just so you understand. I want to find my family. But I also want to shoot Rick Grimes on sight. It's wrong, but that's just how I feel."
"I suppose I can understand the impulse."
Shane can, which probably explains the admission. He can hear her crying, and it sounds as angry as it is mournful. It makes him glad he has Biscuit with him, because the dog is far better than he is at coping with emotions.
When Beth quiets at last, he does get up and offer her a dampened washcloth. Shane makes it back to his sleeping pad when she speaks again.
"Thank you, for not telling me I can't do that."
He sighs, his chest aching with old and new emotions. "Can't condemn you for something I wanted to do myself."
"Is that why you left?"
Shane thinks of the day he just shouldered his bag and headed for the woods. The little pervert's fate was still up in the air, and he knew he could stay and watch everyone die or stay and end up killing Rick when he made a mistake that killed Lori or Carl. Maggie watched him go, that narrow eyed gaze on his back all the way to the treeline. She didn't summon anyone to stop him.
He just kept walking until he hit Atlanta. For lack of any other destination, he went home to King County, but that was worse than simply wandering. That's when he headed south and kept walking until he hit beach. He only knows about the snowy winter because of the last group he traded with.
"Yeah," he says at last, knowing he should probably answer her question. "He was never going to forgive me, and I couldn't forgive myself, either."
Beth doesn't ask why, and he supposes she probably learned enough along the way if she knows Judith is his daughter.
Judith. There's a feeling as if someone's hooked him in the gut. If there's a God in Heaven, his little girl is safe and somewhere with more than a single teenage girl to protect her.
"Can you tell me more about Judith?"
Beth laughs, a quiet, tired sound. But she gifts him with tales of the child he never expected to meet and may never meet. From the newborn in the mail sorting box, to her three solid weeks of colic when she could only be soothed with skin-to-skin contact, to the mischievous imp who crawled early and explores everything.
Finally, Beth drops off mid-sentence into a probably desperately needed sleep.
It takes Shane another hour of staring at the rafters, visions of a little girl with his eyes and mischief combined with Lori's determination to rule her domain filtering through his mind like an old home movie. He wonders if the baby misses Beth as much as the teenager obviously misses her.
Finding her may be a needle in a haystack, but he's got to keep looking. For both Judith's sake and for Beth's, who has earned the right to find her way back to Judith more than he ever has.