Beth has no idea what to expect with seeing more than a glimpse of Maggie again. Seeing her huddled in that half-circle in front of the maniac with the bat was terrifying. Trying to imagine how to greet Maggie when Beth knows that her sister gave up on her long before the mistaken identity led to everyone thinking she was dead? It makes her angry, even all these months later.
The conflict makes her stomach lurch uneasily in ways that morning sickness never has. In the end, what propels her forward isn't any hope of sisterly affection, but the knowledge that if she holds a grudge, her child might not know their cousin. Maggie's child isn't guilty of its mother's behavior.
Hilltop's infirmary is tiny, obviously meant to be a temporary mobile unit like half of the community's buildings that FEMA brought in. Both beds are occupied, with Abraham resting in one, although he is awake and listening to Sasha read. Maggie is lying on her side in the other, facing away from the entrance, with Glenn resting his head so he's facing Maggie on the pillow, so it's Abraham that greets Beth and Carol first.
"It's my lady knight come to see me again!" His speech is less slurred than on the ride here but has a quality to it that Beth assumes is from good painkillers. It's also… colorful, but since Sasha laughs, Beth figures it's a good sign.
"It's good to see you're doing well, Abraham," Beth tells him, tugging the dark cap off her hair and letting her ponytail fall free.
Glenn's head snaps up and he nearly tumbles to the floor. "Beth?"
Beth makes it to Maggie's bedside before Glenn grasps the reality of what he's seeing. He shakes Maggie's shoulder as Beth reaches the foot of the bed, feeling a need to put space between herself and her sister for now. Maggie shifts, turning enough to see Beth. Her eyes are bloodshot like Glenn's, and just lifting her head seems to be as much energy as Maggie can muster.
"Hello, Maggie."
"Can't be Beth," Maggie mutters, blinking and shaking her head. "Beth died."
"If it makes you feel any better, I thought all of y'all were dead, too."
Beth manages a weak smile for Maggie and Glenn both, but Maggie just drops her head back to the pillow. Her frame looks too thin, too fragile, giving Beth an unwanted flashback of how their mama wasted away so fast under the virus. Maggie has bruises and scratches from being manhandled by the Saviors but otherwise seems physically okay except for the IV providing both hydration and antibiotics.
"Beth died," Maggie insists.
Their audience looks horrified, but Beth waves Carol off when she starts to come closer. Sighing, Beth goes around the bed so that she's next to Glenn and places a hand on his shoulder. "Do I seem like a ghost or hallucination, Glenn?"
He swallows hard and shakes his head. Although he's still got Maggie's hand in one of his, he reaches out with his free arm as hesitant as Tyreese and Sasha had, pulling her close for a one-armed hug. "How?"
Eventually, everyone will know the story so Beth can stop repeating it, but she keeps it simple for now. "I got free of the car when they hit a deer and ran. Later on, I found Shane, and we got to Terminus after y'all escaped, but we thought you didn't. That Mary woman lied to us."
The horrible monster Mary had become must have been delighted in doing one last awful thing when she couldn't victimize them. Beth has never been more glad that Shane didn't give her the last wish of not being allowed to turn.
"Beth's from the community Eugene's been talking to on the radio, Glenn. The one down in the Caribbean." Carol's finally given in to the urge to approach, but she stops behind Maggie on the opposite side of the bed. "It's somewhere safe for us to go. For the kids and for Maggie to have the baby."
Maggie's turned her face into the pillow, crying softly, and Beth gently detangles herself from Glenn's hug. "She doesn't need the stress right, so I'm going to leave for now. I'll come back in a day or two."
She starts away from the bed before remembering the rings on her chain. Unhooking it, she eases Glenn and Maggie's rings off and holds them out to Glenn. "I scavenged everything I recognized from Terminus."
"You've been wearing them all this time?" he asks, staring at the rings like they're small miracles themselves. His hands shake as he slips his own ring back on.
"Yeah. Same with Daddy and Mama's." Refastening the chain, Beth looks at Maggie and sighs. Maggie isn't alone, with Glenn faithfully at her side like he's been since the farm. She'd envied them their sense of duality, of being together, but not anymore. "Maybe seeing that will help her think I'm real."
"Of course you're real," Glenn says. "If you weren't, we wouldn't be here, would we? Not all of us. I saw you with that bow, even if I didn't know it was you."
Beth shrugs, uneasy with the statement. "Carol still would have saved you. She just had extra help."
Unable to stay in the room where her sister won't even look at her, Beth makes her exit before anyone else can stop her. She needs Shane.
The Alexandrians can't stay long at Hilltop, despite it being after dark. If they didn't get all the Saviors, then the smaller community is more at risk than Hilltop, with half their able-bodied fighters here. When they leave, Shane's people going along, a Hilltopper named Jesus travels with Carol, designated as the negotiator for Hilltop and the Caribbean, since Hilltop's leader doesn't want to leave the safety of its walls.
It's a quiet and short trip through the dark countryside, and at the other end, there's work to be done. The original prisoners from the group that tried to block Alexandria's gate have two additions that survived Carol's attacks on separate groups they came across looking for Rick and the others. Luuk offers the assistance of his Marines, and he and Carol set up a paired set of guards for the remainder of the night.
The rest of the Marines volunteer to be added to the watchtower overnight shifts, but Carol declines Shane and Beth. "For tonight, I think you're needed at home," she tells them both.
Home here turns out to be a nice enough house with four upstairs bedrooms. Carl shares a room with Andre, Judith shares with Sophia, Daryl and Michonne share one of the remaining rooms, and Carol and Rick the last. Shane considers commenting about that surprising bit of news, but he's not going to risk upsetting anyone.
For all that Alexandria is struggling for food, they do have a good supply of both water and electricity. Carol orders Rick and Carl to go shower, while she organizes something to eat, since none of them had supper. Shane isn't surprised when Beth gently shoos Carol to take a seat at the kitchen island, asking where supplies are and improvising a big pot of oatmeal and tipping in a package of dried fruit and nuts from Shane's pack. Sophia fetches bowls and spoons, while Shane takes a seat next to Carol and is glad he doesn't have to try to quietly explain that Beth needs to keep busy, especially with Judith in bed asleep.
Daryl and Michonne hover, but Daryl's at least holding quiet, and Shane isn't going to stir trouble between him and Beth. He'll tell her later, but not while she's tired and stressed. She hadn't cried when she'd told him what happened with Maggie, but the weary acceptance is almost worse as she curled against him in the SUV back to Alexandria.
"We need to send someone to the Tranquility come daylight and get the supplies we brought," Beth tells them. "After all this, the kids would love having some tropical fruit. It's not fresh, precisely, but it was canned the week before we sailed."
"What kind of fruit?" Carol asks. "It's hard to imagine banana trees just right off your porch like Shane described to us."
Beth smiles, chasing the tiredness away from her face. Shane wishes she would sit, but he knows she won't, and at least oatmeal is blissfully quick to cook. Sophia hovers, fingers reaching out almost involuntarily to brush against Beth's back as if she has to reconfirm that Beth is real.
"Pineapple, grapefruit, tomatoes, and papaya. Oh, and some marmalades. Plus veggies and fish. We were only planning for a boost for Alexandria, though."
"Hilltop isn't hurting for food in general," Carol says. "And Jesus says the other community he hadn't told us about is also doing well for food. Just us. I haven't been here long enough to really turn things around."
Jesus had gone off to borrow Aaron's guestroom for the night, and Aaron had also offered beds to the Luuk and the rest of the islanders. But the knowledge of yet another farming community that had been subject to the Saviors is more clues towards finding out if they've all been eradicated. Plus there are the survivors Carol left behind in Georgia to make the trek north to return a teenager to his family.
That jars his memory. "Carol? When y'all came north, did you happen to come by Richmond?"
Everyone's attention is on him in an instant, even as tired as they are. Beth cuts the heat under the pot on the stove and turns just as Carol nods.
"How bad is it there? We're supposed to see if Beth's mentor's family survived by some miracle. What was the place called, Beth?"
"Shirewilt Estates."
"Oh my god. That's where Noah is from!" It's Sophia who exclaims excitedly, grinning. "You just missed him and his family. They're at Hilltop now."
"Noah Rolle?" Beth's exhaustion disappears entirely. "Please tell me Noah's last name is Rolle?"
Carol nods, looking between Beth and Shane. "It's not all good news, though. His father died down in Georgia, so it's just him, his mother, and his twin brothers. They escaped the Wolves attacking, and she managed to lead about a dozen people north until they crossed paths with Jesus one day."
"That just shows this was meant to be, everyone crossing paths," Beth says. "What are the odds that y'all would find Noah and his family, and I'd find his grandfather going the opposite direction? And then Eugene would get bored and fix a radio? Someone's got to be watching over all of us."
Beth's faith has wavered at times, Shane knows, but he can understand why she would see it as a sign of a true higher power. He doesn't think he could manage, not with the world as it is, but he also can't exclude that something seems to send a lot of miracles their way. It feels selfish to wish there had been more, especially after holding Judith for the first time today.
Footsteps on the stairs warn that Carl's on his way down, the movement too fast to be Rick. The teenager makes a beeline for Shane, wrapping his arms around him. "I almost thought it was something I imagined, until I heard Beth talking at the top of the stairs."
"We're both real, Carl. I promise you that." Smoothing a hand along Carl's back, he is at the right angle for seeing Rick making a slower way down the stairs. He has Judith in his arms, rubbing her eyes sleepily and whimpering.
"She woke up crying for Beth," Rick explains, passing the toddler to Beth without any hesitation. Beth peppers Judith's face with kisses, making her giggle tiredly.
Sophia starts dishing up bowls to everyone now that Rick and Carl have arrived. They're too many to fit at the table really, so Carl goes and tows an office chair from somewhere and parks it between his father and Shane. With Beth on Shane's other side, Shane gives up any attempt at eating with his right hand and bobbles with the left while reaching out to toy with Judith's foot. She doesn't know him, not yet, but he can't stop marveling at how well she remembers Beth.
Carol eases the conversation by asking Shane questions about Montserrat and the surrounding islands, which he answers as best he can. Even a couple of months in, there's still more to learn. He's just finished his food when it occurs to him that Beth brought her camera.
"Hey, Carl? Can you go rummage in that extra bag of Beth's? Not the backpack with the medkit, but the other one. Look for the digital camera."
It's late, and they're all tired, but showing off Beth's pictures gives everyone a lot of hope. Sitting with Beth on the couch, Judith drifting to sleep while clinging to Beth like a baby sloth, with Carl on Shane's side and Sophia on Beth's, this is certainly not how he thought their day would end when they woke on the Tranquility this morning.
His gaze meets Rick's, where he's sitting in an armchair with Carol perched on the arm, Shane smiles, and to his delight, Rick returns it easily, gaze dropping to Judith's fingers curled around Shane's thumb without any sign of upset. That's a conversation they have to have, Shane knows, but it can wait. Tonight he's together with his girls, and Carl and Rick are alive and well.
That's plenty for one night.
By the time Carol slips into bed next to Rick, it's past two a.m., but she's damn glad Shane thought about Beth's photo record of the months she was gone. Seeing Beth's adventures with her so brightly happy makes Carol feel like she can truly breathe again after months of grief and feelings of failure that she didn't find Beth in time.
Rick shifts as soon as she's settled, curling his taller frame so that he can nestle against her shoulder. They've never gone back to separate beds after she started sharing a bed to keep his nightmares at bay, not even during his mishap with Jessie. She'd offered, after Pete's demise, that maybe Rick should consider it, but he'd refused with enough panic that she dropped it quickly.
It didn't take words to explain that Rick enjoys sex with Jessie, but home seems to have become where Carol and the children are. Somewhere along the line, his mind has separated sex and intimacy much like Carol's had, and it saddens her. She would have liked to see him find someone who fits all of his facets, much like Daryl has with Michonne. At least Jessie seems content with the arrangement, even babysitting Judith on days like today when all the family is snatched away.
Running her fingers through his curls idly, she hums, thinking of those pictures again. It's obvious that Shane's the photographer for many, and she wonders at what point Shane shifted from protecting Beth in honor of those lost to being in love with Beth instead. It's hard to tell without seeing him pictured as well, but there's no doubt once someone took those wedding shots near the end.
"The island looks so pretty," she says at last. Rick isn't falling asleep even with his ear closer to her heartbeat, so she might as well share her thoughts.
"Looks like those pictures they would put in cruise photos back before. Wouldn't know they weren't on vacation in the others. Glad they had that."
So is Carol. Nothing makes up for any of them thinking the others were dead, but at least Beth was safe, and Shane's admission that he would have done anything to help her recover led them to a literal paradise.
"Do you think Luuk is right that they won't object to what I did at the outpost?"
She almost doesn't hear the question, Rick pitches his voice so low. He sounds lost, and she tightens her arm around him. "I think so. We'll take them to see the place. Let them look at those awful Polaroid trophies."
As much as she hadn't liked the idea of the attack on the Savior outpost, and events since proved that Hilltop's information was direly incomplete, she has a hard time conceiving of any of the people there as innocent. Even if they didn't participate in the atrocities the psychopaths among them did, the mere fact that those men were comfortable enough to openly post photos of torture and murder tells her as much as the attempts at conversation with Molly, Paula, and Michelle did.
Few of the Saviors are redeemable, and she's wary of just leaving the prisoners behind. Granted, no one outside of Carol's trusted people knows what island, and she doesn't see these marauders managing not only a boat but navigating that far south, but it is still a risk. Reminding herself of the protections Montserrat has, she concentrates on Rick's worry.
"If they won't let some of us go," she says softly, knowing he'll hate what she's about to say. "Then we send the kids and deal with our own consequences."
It will kill her to send the kids away, not just Sophia, but she'll do it in a heartbeat for a better life if the choices she's made ban her from the island. Her hands aren't just bloody now, but stained a deep crimson she'll cope with for the rest of her life. To keep her family alive, it was worth it.
To keep the children alive, she'll give them up.
Rick makes a choking noise, but he doesn't object as she expects. She can't see his eyes in the dark room, so she shifts around, dropping to where she can rest her forehead against his. "I followed your lead to that place, Rick, just like you followed mine to Grady and to here. Whatever comes, we'll face it together."
If things had gone differently, if Deanna hadn't had the stroke the night that Pete killed Reg, maybe Alexandria wouldn't have been backed to the wall, not yet willing to trust Carol's leadership after her playacting at sweet housewife. Rick's terror of yet another threat lurking near their family had been contagious to the Alexandrians, and Carol can't really blame them.
Today could have gone so very differently, but they'd gotten lucky, gotten reinforcements. Everyone is alive, and that's all she's asking for today.