Otis had himself a rough day, but by the time night comes around, Beth can't find it in herself to feel bad for him. Otis doesn't understand. She can't make him understand. She's not even sure precisely how she managed to convince him to stay quiet about Sophia, for even a day. He was so baffled, he cornered her twice during the long, hot day and asked, 'Why can't I just break it to them that the girl is one of them now? That she's in the barn? They've got a man out there looking for her right now—for no reason! Her mother is worried.' All, really good points, but Beth beat him back, subdued him with nothing but her own conviction. Can't do it. They can't deal with it. She said she'd tell them, but it had to be in the right way. She just needed a little time.
I'll tell them myself. Gently.
But it couldn't wait much longer. Like Otis had said, it didn't make a whole lot of sense to let them keep worrying and looking. Daryl was going to get hurt, be laid up for a couple of days. She didn't want him to have to go through that this time.
Seeing him again cinched it. She couldn't stand to let him get hurt.
She knew it was stupid. It would maybe even scare him, but she couldn't help it. He didn't know that in another life they'd been so close. He didn't know how close they'd come to being the last woman and man standing and how… it had been okay. They were happy. Against all odds.
He didn't know that she'd been snatched away before she could thank him for looking for her, for finding her.
That was a different world. In this one, he didn't know her and it showed in his stormy face, as she couldn't look away from him. What if she never got the chance again. What if it just ended. Just let me hold onto you, once more.
He did. However nervous and confused he obviously was, he didn't push her away. That was the most she could ask for, right now.
Sneaking out to the barn after dark, Beth can't dwell on that little victory from earlier in the day. She can't think about anything that might make her smile. Tonight's work is too grim to allow for that.
It's gotta start tonight. The problem is, she knows how hard this will be, for Daryl and Carol especially.
"I remember. When that little girl came out of the barn, you were like me." She'd said those words to Daryl in that other life. She doesn't want to be the one to cause him to feel that way, but they have to know the truth.
Her daddy has a hard truth to learn as well, but she's not sure she'll be able to teach it to him. She's got the plan in place. She knows each step she has to take. She let Daryl search in vain for one day and return with nothing but a Cherokee rose to comfort Carol. She left Carol stranded in uncertainty for one day. She let her father keep his illusions about the walkers, for one day.
Tomorrow, everything will change, and she'll have to deal with the consequences.
Carl is still laid up in bed. Her daddy is still tentative about letting Rick and his group camp out. It's all so delicate and she'd forgotten that. She's used to everyone as a family, encountering them as strangers is jarring, and in many ways… painful.
When Sophia, and mama and Shawn came out of that barn, it changed us. It showed us how broken we all were. Made us see how much we needed each other. But it was too brutal. Too hard on them, especially for Carol, Daryl and her father. She couldn't allow that again. Maybe it had worked out alright last time, but that didn't mean she could let them suffer through it again, not when there might be a better way.
The compound bow handles a little differently from the crossbow that Daryl was teaching her how to use, but in many ways it's easier. Loading it isn't like deadlifting a hundred and fifty pounds, for starters, and something about the way it aims makes her feel more in control. She still wants lessons, when Daryl is ready to talk to her, but for now, a little impromptu practice doesn't seem like a terrible idea.
Shane takes night-watch. Someone ought to put together a schedule so that he doesn't end up out there every night. Looking back, Beth feels sure that a lack of sleep definitely contributed to his alarming behavior towards the end. She moves quickly on light feet, keeping her bow and arrows tight, sticking to the shadows.
Keeping a look out for walkers doesn't require as much vigilance, since they're loud, especially when they smell the living and get excited. He shouldn't be looking so closely into the night for a little creeping thing like Beth and her new compound bow. She slithers close to the structures like a rat, moving only when he's definitely looking the other way and climbs up into the loft of the barn, silently.
The crowd of walkers below are quiet too, filling the air with a stinking, warm rot. She doesn't see her brother, her mother or Sophia right away. She loads the first arrow and tries not to look at any of them too closely. Doesn't want to recognize her friends and family and neighbors if she doesn't have to. They're dead. It's not them. Aim for the head and fire, that's all. She breaths out real slow as she lets the first arrow fly. It finds its mark with a low whistle and the first walker drops.
Noticing her, the small herd starts to get restless, begins making their way towards the ladder into the loft, moaning and groping the air.
Her hands shake slightly as she nocks a second arrow, but they go steady as she exhales again and lets the arrow fly.
She hasn't got enough arrows to put one through each of them. Even if she did manage to get right through the brain stem every time, she'd still have to climb down there eventually and use a knife on some of the walkers. About halfway through her quiver, her hands begin to shake too violently for her to strike accurately. Sweat pours down her forehead, and she feels ill from the stench in the air and from the effort of not looking directly at the tall red-headed walker that has fought her way to the front of the little horde in the barn, and the stocky walker right next to her.
Sophia hangs back, too small and fragile to stay close to the group, she keeps getting knocked back, even as she pushes forward.
I gotta do it. But even as she takes aim at her mother's head, Beth's hands lose their strength. This is the real reason it had to be tonight. I've gotta do it. Her mother and her brother were in there for weeks, rotting and hungry, because they wouldn't end it. Because they all deluded themselves into thinking that they were just sick. Her elbow slips into a wide bend, she trembles as she tries to force it straight.
Beth wants to end it for them. She wants to put them to rest. She doesn't even know how many walkers she's killed, but putting an arrow through her mother's head was never going to be easy.
It's gotta be me.
Beth cannot go through that again. Why did she think this would be easier? Why had she thought that slipping in here in the dark would be any less of a nightmare. Her mother always had strong arms, strong from carrying her children, from working, from guiding. She'd held her with those strong arms just a day before she got bit, reassuring her that everything would be alright.
Now, her mother reaches for her with hands like claws, her head careless falls to the side as though her neck can't hold her up anymore. Her eyes are averted and lifeless, streaks of unnatural color twist underneath her pale, waxy, undead flesh.
The first arrow misses her entirely, and strikes the ground, bouncing uselessly. She hadn't even put enough force behind it to make it stick. Beth takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes. She should have thought to bring headphones and her old cell phone. She needs something besides the moaning to listen to. She needs to block this out, experience as little of what she is doing as possible.
The second arrow goes through her mother's shoulder.
The sweat on her hands won't allow her to hold the bow steady, by the time she's wasted every single arrow from her quiver, her cheeks are wet and she can barely see. Her chest aches. Her mother looks like Saint Sebastian, but she's still moving, though slowly, pinned to the ground inside the barn. The other walkers converge around her, hiding her from sight as they sway closer together. They clamber to get to the ladder that none of them can climb.
At the top of the ladder, Beth rests her head on her knees and weeps.
It was always going to be bad.
Somehow, this thought is not reassuring. It doesn't make it any better that she either knew, or should have known that putting her mother down would feel about the same the second time as it had the first. If anything, it made it worse. Forced her to experience it all over again, and then some. Knowing it's the right thing to do doesn't make it any less than hell.
But I can't even do it. Beth hasn't felt this small since she woke up in that hospital. Grief always has a way of making her forget her strength. That's why she tried to push it away. Tried not to cry anymore. She can't think about all she's overcome. About her victory yesterday with Otis and Carl. She can't even think about this second chance, this blessing she has to set things right. All she can think about in this moment is how helpless she feels, watching the Governor execute her father, how close she came to killing herself the first time she lost her mother and brother.
Shawn stands over their walker mother. Sophia is still struggling to make it into the pack. Beth managed to put down half a dozen of them, but it's not enough.
I can't do this alone.
We'll find her.
Flowers bloom all along the trail. Flowers for lost children.
For dead children.
There's more than enough dead in the world. This one should be alive. This little girl is alive. Daryl knows he should sleep. After searching all day today and staying up all night searching before that, he should sleep now. He should be exhausted.
He is exhausted. But that doesn't seem to matter to his body. He stares at the roof of his tent, head a mess, back all twisted and neck sore from holding his head up. He wants to crumble. He wants to keep looking, but he knows that he'll start to see things if he doesn't get some sleep.
Every time he forces his eyes shut, they slowly drift back open without him even noticing, until he's staring at the roof of the tent again, thinking about flowers and all the children who get lost.
A shadow appears on the side of the tent, a curtain of long hair brushing against the frame before the door zips open. Daryl sits up, clutching his dagger, though he's fairly confident it's just Andrea or Lori or—
"Daryl, you awake?" murmurs a soft voice that he's unaccustomed to hearing. It's the little blonde offensive tackle.
"Beth?" that's what T-Dog said her name was, but he hasn't had the chance to use it yet.
"I'm sorry to bug you," her voice is thick and she sniffs. Has she been crying? "I need your help with something."
"Uh… yeah," he grumbles, starting to climb out of his tent, as Beth backs away from the door to allow him space. He wasn't going to be able to sleep anyway.
"You'll need your crossbow," she whispers, voice shaking.
He falters at that. "Everythin' okay?"
For whatever reason, Beth doesn't want to lie to him. Her face tries to stay serene but can't manage it. Sparkling tears shine out of her stricken eyes; staring at him in the dark she takes a long pause and a deep breath before she says firmly, "I just need help."
Trusting new people still doesn't feel right. For that matter, trusting anyone is kind of a bitch. All the same, he follows her, crossbow over his shoulder, staying quiet and stepping lightly as they span out wide away from camp, hoping to avoid being spotted by Shane. She's taking him to the old barn.
Why me? He wants to ask, but somehow he feels like even if she did give him an answer, he can already guess what it would be. Rick and Shane have proved that they have an opinion about everything, and aren't content to just go along with someone else's plan, even each others. T-Dog is still injured, and whatever is going on it's got to be something her own people wouldn't be happy about, otherwise she could get her sister or Otis or even her father.
She asked him, because somehow she knows that he's less likely to argue with her. Maybe he should argue. Maybe he should ask questions, rather than just following orders like a good little soldier. As Beth reaches the barn and begins to climb up into the loft, he stops. Once she's up, she turns back and when she doesn't see him climbing, she hangs down, looking at him questioningly in the dark.
"What's this about?" He grips his crossbow a little tighter, watching her deceptively sweet face, framed by all that falling golden hair.
Beth's shoulders slump a little, her hands go limp against the top of the ladder. "I think you better climb up here first. I'll explain." She disappears inside the barn.
Maybe it's more curiosity than a real desire to help her out, although she does seem genuinely distressed. He pulls the strap of his crossbow over his head and climbs the ladder with a single backward glance at Shane's silhouette on the top of the Winnebago.
The second he crawls inside the barn, the smell of death hits him sharp in the face. "Fuck," he grumbles, getting more used to it by the day, but it's never quite pleasant.
"Shhh," Beth puts a finger to her lips, she's sitting a few feet away, still back far, away from the front of the barn.
Then he hears it, moaning, struggling and shuffling. He crab-walks over to where Beth sits with her legs crossed, holding onto her ankles as she stares straight ahead, into the depth of the barn, where the stench and the growling lurks. He wants to demand to know why there seem to be walkers locked in this barn, but she said she'd explain.
"My dad doesn't believe they're dead," Beth whispers, not turning her head to look at him.
Holy shit. He thinks back to earlier, when he noticed Maggie and Hershel having their little psychic conversation, right after Rick implied that they oughta put Sophia down if they found her and she was bit.
"He thinks they're sick," Beth says a little more firmly, looking at him straight on to make sure he understands. "Somebody's gonna have to explain it to him. Not me. He won't listen if it's me. Not yet."
"…You tryin' to say that your daddy has been keeping walkers in the barn? Instead of putting them down?" No wonder this girl's been 'having a rough time' as her daddy said. No closure.
"I ran out of arrows," she reaches across the floor and reveals a compound bow and an empty quiver. "Gun's too loud. There's too many of them left."
As bizarre as this revelation about the farmer's unfortunately flawed perspective on the walkers, Daryl feels a strange sense of relief to know that the only reason she came and woke him up, rather than someone else is because he's a bowman. Strange relief. Strange disappointment. "I get it, now. I'll take care of it." He starts to rise up but she snatches him firmly by the wrist.
Her hand is warm and he can already feel the slight caress of her palm against his pulse as she draws her hand up his arm just a little, changing the gesture from capturing to comforting, effortlessly, "That's not all," her voice is smaller. "Otis finds other ones out in the woods sometimes, when he's hunting. He brings them back for my daddy and puts them in here."
"Okay?" now he doesn't get it anymore.
"He found a little girl the other day."
Feeling nothing but the cold and hearing nothing but the shuffles of the walkers, Daryl lets her words sink in, with all their implications.
Beth's penetrating eyes won't leave his, she stares straight through the dark, into him, waiting for a reaction.
He realizes he can still feel that warmth around his forearm. He wrenches out of her grip.
"Daryl—Daryl, I'm sorry," Beth's voice breaks.
"Might not be her," he snaps back, more vicious even than he meant, though he wasn't trying to be gentle.
"It's her," Beth puts a hand on his shoulder.
What is it with this girl and all the touching? He glides out from under her hand, drops his crossbow from off his shoulder and loads his first bolt, feeling colder as he heads towards the edge of the loft. He stations himself near the steep steps, looking down into the mass of writhing bodies, he doesn't take more than a second to find the first head that needs a bolt. He can see the neon flashes of color from Beth's arrows. She already did a good chunk of it for him, but he makes short work of the remaining walkers, besides a few stragglers, all tangled up underneath the pile of fallen corpses at the foot of the stairs.
There she is.
When he understood that Beth was saying that Sophia was dead, was one of them and locked in here, he'd felt right away that she was telling the truth and that he'd find Sophia down below, but seeing it for himself is still a crushing blow, right to his heaving chest. She's caught, tangled up and stumbling around her thin ankles, the large walkers crisscross on top of each other where they fell in a small pile surrounding the grounded rung of the ladder.
Beth's trying to say something, but Daryl won't hear it. He moves away from her, down the ladder and drawing his dagger, vaguely aware of her fingertips brushing his back. He makes a beeline towards the girl. He grabs a handful of her mangy hair in one fist as he bring her eye onto the blade of his dagger.
Sophia goes limp and he feels his knees give out beneath him, sinking into the tangled limbs of the dead and letting her fall to the ground, his knife still stuck in her head.
How long he sits there, Daryl can't tell. He can't really hear anything besides the pounding blood in his skull, can't feel besides the cold and the grit of walker filth on his palms. He doesn't even mean to look up, but at some point he sees Beth moving the bodies aside to get to one final walker struggling beneath the others.
Her face looks serene and untroubled, in sharp contrast to the turbulence Daryl feels, the shuddering waves of chilled sorrow and hot rage, warring over his flesh. She stoops down, looking at the red and grey mess with such sorrow and such deep love, tears resting in the curves of each eye without falling. She wields her dagger deftly in one hand, the blade glints like cats eyes in the dark gore-spattered barn. Knowing what it means but feeling too overwhelmed to save any pity for her, Daryl looks away, all the same he hears the sickening bite of the knife as it breaks through the skin of the walker's temple. Who is she? Probably her mother, though she seems a bit young for Hershel.
Beth takes a long time to look up at him, her lip trembles.
For whatever reason he's overcome with another wave of thunder, not as loud inside his skull as when he first saw Sophia, but still sharp, and heavy. "I want you to stay away from me." It is so easy to take anything he feels and twist it into anger. So simple. It doesn't even matter that he knows he is doing it. It's easier. It is infinitely easier than looking at Sophia.
If she's hurt by the gravel it his shaky warning, Beth hides it well. "I still need your help." She stares at the bodies, head down, unable or unwilling to meet his gaze.
What are they supposed to do with the bodies?
"I can clean this up, but I need you to talk to Shane and Rick. Tell them what we did. Get them and…. the three of you need to explain to daddy. Make him understand."
Why should he do this girl any more favors? The last one is still filling his lungs up with icy cold. He can barely see for this fire. As if able to read his mind, her shoulders slump, without looking up she pleas, voice going very soft, "please."
"Why can't you talk to your dad?" He can hear the aggression in his voice, but he can't subdue himself, not yet, still too raw.
"Because when my daddy sees what I've done, he'll think I murdered my mama, and I just can't see his face when he believes that."
BIG thank you to everyone who's been leaving reviews, I'm sorry I got so busy I haven't been able to reply to them this time. Real life decided to happen all at once J I've been so overwhelmed by the response from you guys! You are all SO SWEET! I'm so happy you're enjoying the story so far, and I'm sorry we've gotten off to a bit of a slow start, I'm hoping to start updating regularly very soon, but for now we've just a short angsty chapter.
More to come very soon!
Glass – Thompson Square
