There was originally supposed to be only 11 chapters but for many reasons, I've added another chapter to this fic! Yay!
Seriously though, this chapter is miles longer than any of the others and I didn't even get to the good part of Beth's POV yet. Sooooo I really had no choice but to add another one. Hopefully y'all are okay with that!
This chapter is fairly disjointed but I had a lot of time to cover so I hope it's not horrible.
There was very little to be said for being reborn into a world of bright, horrible light, into a body that she did not know. The scent of antiseptic stinging her nose. A voice calling on her to open her eyes. Lift her finger. Wiggle her toes. They asked for her name. Her head throbbed something fierce when she tried to remember it. Their faces swam in her blurry vision that took days to clear. For weeks, the mere act of breathing was as taxing an effort as she could manage. They told her that she would get better. She didn't believe them.
Until she did.
They looked on in awe when she pushed herself up to sit for the first time. As she took her first steps from the bed to the door, her whole body aching the entire time, it seemed as if everyone in the room held their breath. It was an uphill battle from there, but the doctor with weary eyes and very little hair told her that she was strong. That she could make it through. She didn't know why he believed that until the truth came out, whispered in the hush of darkness by a dark-haired teenaged girl in faded blue scrubs who shouldn't have been in her room.
A bullet to the head. Yet somehow, she was still alive.
Later that night, she dreamed of a woman with dead eyes and a gun in her hand. They stood in an otherwise abandoned hallway, silence all around them.
"I get it now," she said, reciting the words as if acting out a script.
The woman lifted her hand, pointing the gun right at her. She felt rooted to the spot, only able to watch. A loud bang shattered the air around them and pain exploded in her head. As she gasped awake, lurching up and startling the doctor that was in the midst of checking her vitals, she found herself speaking for the first time since waking up to that bright light.
"Beth," she said, her voice trembling and hoarse. "My name is Beth."
She got to know their broken world bit by bit, as the days went on and she regained her strength. As hard as it was to believe that the dead were walking among the living, Beth didn't have much of a choice when she saw the proof for herself. Leela, the dark-haired girl that snuck into her room at every chance, became a fixture at her side. Hollie soon followed, with the prettiest red hair that Beth had ever seen and green eyes that reminded her of someone else. Someone that she couldn't quite place in the shattered remains of her memory.
While Leela was all soft smiles and gentle encouragement, Hollie was made of much sharper edges that Beth learned to navigate quickly. They were both younger than Beth. But that kind of thing didn't mean much these days. Not with the shadows that lived in their eyes. Beth got used to the looks that surrounded her each time she ventured from her room. Awe and disbelief from the ones dressed in scrubs. As much as she didn't like it, she understood.
After all, how many people could recover from a shot to the head in the middle of the goddamn apocalypse?
The uncertainty came from the ones in the police uniforms, as if she might lash out and attack them any minute in spite of her slowly recovering body. Beth had to wonder just how complicit they were in what happened to her. She wasn't sure that she wanted to know the answer. Guilt from Dr. Edwards, when he thought that she couldn't see. Complicity. It surrounded her. Even if she didn't fully understand it yet, Beth knew that she couldn't stay. She knew enough of her past to know that she would never have come to this hospital willingly. Dr. Edwards told her that she had people out there. A family. People that she'd been taken from. People who came for her.
People who killed for her.
How could she bring herself to stay, knowing that they might still be alive?
She expected to leave alone yet wound up with a small group at her back. Leela and Hollie, who trusted no one in the world but one another and Beth. An older man named Stanley, who told Beth that she'd done a lot to help a friend of his. Beth didn't remember much about Noah, only able to think of kind eyes when she considered his name, but she clung onto the thought that there were good people waiting out in the world. Dr. Edwards rounded out their group, refusing to leave Beth's side when he was entirely convinced that she might develop other symptoms as she became more exposed to the way the world was now.
He was right.
The first episode happened the night that they left the hospital. Beth killed several walkers on the way out of Atlanta, the first that she remembered taking on, and found herself sitting by the fire that Stanley built while cleaning the hunting knife that one of the cops gave her before she left the hospital. One second, she was wiping the blade with a bundle of leaves. The next, Beth barely felt the knife slip from her grip as everything went dark. Distant sounds reached her, as if she was underwater and trying to hear something on the surface. She saw things in flashes.
A weathered barn.
People piled together, almost all of them sleeping.
A small box with fading yellow paint lying on the hay-scattered ground.
Dirt-streaked fingers closing around the box.
Hands on her shoulders, shaking her out of it. Calling her name through the fog that muddled her mind. She took a deep breath, filling lungs that burned fiercely as if she'd been holding her breath for too long. Dr. Edwards shined a light in her eyes, asking questions that she couldn't quite hear. Beth pushed his hands away from her, feeling overwhelmed by the faces surrounding her. She swayed on the boulder where she sat, a light, dizzy feeling lingering in her head. She opened her mouth to say that she was fine but the words didn't come out the way she planned.
"I love music boxes," she said softly.
The others looked at her like she'd lost her mind.
She was starting to think they might be right.
Beth took to the world easily, surprising them all when she tracked animals through the trees and fashioned snares with a skill that she didn't remember learning. Killing walkers with an ease that she didn't expect of herself. Siphoning gas for the cars they found along the way and scouting abandoned stores and houses for whatever food they could scrape together. She didn't know what made her go north. Only that the others followed without question when she decided that was the only path they could take.
The next time it happened, leaving her with the blurred memory of a clean suburban neighborhood, Dr. Edwards theorized that she must be suffering from a rare form of seizure. The others looked at Beth as if she might be upset by the news. She simply shrugged and continued skinning the squirrel she'd caught with a deft, practiced hand. She'd survived the end of the world and a bullet to the brain. She didn't know that anything could faze her now.
Until they found the man with the map.
Steven Edwards was no fighter, taking down the occasional walker or two but largely remaining out of the way so that he didn't become a liability. Stanley did his best but his old bones moved much slower and he did better at killing from a distance. The longer they spent on the road, coming across larger and larger groups of the dead because going north meant bigger populations, the more Leela and Hollie learned. They took on the dead with Beth in the lead, learning to wield knives, crowbars, and the occasional gun almost effortlessly.
A few days after the weather began to turn from warm to cool, forcing them to seek shelter and better clothing, they found themselves all but pinned by a small herd in the center of a stripped town that offered nothing but a few moth-eaten blankets and cans of food. They tried to fight their way out of it, their limbs growing weary as they took down walker after walker only for wave after wave to attack. She knew that this had to be the end. It was a miracle that none of them had been bitten yet.
With nothing but fragmented memories of the family that she must have loved and people that she barely knew surrounding her, Beth knew she wasn't ready to die. So when she saw a figure seemingly appear from nowhere at all, wielding a sharp-ended staff that he used to carve a path through the hoard that surrounded them, she felt a swell of renewed energy and, mindless of the rotting blood that covered her and the persistent throb in her head, threw herself back into the fight.
By the time bodies littered the ground, they were all half-collapsed with them, managing only to stagger away before looking to the stranger that had come along to save their collective asses. Beth slid to the ground against the brick outer wall of a bank and pressed a hand to her forehead, closing her eyes against the bright sun as she gave herself a chance to breathe through the pain. A gentle hand nudged her shoulder as she heard the distant rattle of a pill bottle and Dr. Edwards introducing them all to the staff-wielding man.
"Thanks Lee," Beth said quietly, offering as much of a smile as she could manage as the younger girl dropped a couple of tablets into her hand.
She used as little water as she could to swallow the medicine that the doctor insisted she take when the pain became too much to handle. Beth couldn't help but eye the stranger warily as Hollie dropped down to sit next to her with a narrowed, suspicious gaze. He seemed quiet, shifting in place as if he wasn't quite comfortable being so near to them. He must have been alone for a while. Beth couldn't imagine it, suffering the world as it was all by herself. She would have left the hospital on her own, if she had to, but a part of her was glad there were others.
"Morgan," the man mumbled in answer to Dr. Edward's question. "I'm heading to D.C."
Beth closed her eyes as she felt a tug deep within her mind, seeing her own pale hands reach out for a silver spoon. Etched into the metal was a building that was underlined by Washington D.C. .
"Another seizure?" Leela asked worriedly as Beth inhaled a sharp breath.
She shook her head, curling her hands over her bent knees to look at where Dr. Edwards, Stanley, and Morgan were now looking over a wrinkled map.
"Rick?" Stanley asked aloud.
Morgan nodded slowly as Beth felt her heart pick up pace for reasons she didn't yet know.
"Rick Grimes," he said solemnly, keeping his eyes fixed on the map. "A good man. Maybe one of the last ones left."
Beth's chest grew tight as she dug her fingernails into her pants, her breaths coming quicker as something pushed through the ache and nearly bowled her over with the force of the memory.
A lean, bearded man wielding a shovel, teaching a young boy the right way to dig into tough soil. His eyes bright with hope. A smile pulling at his lips. Another man with white hair and part of one leg missing below the knee looking on with pride. She loved that man with such a deep, abiding familiarity that he could only be one person. There was a sturdy weight in her arms, cooing softly in her sleep, but Beth's attention remained on the people surrounding her. Not on the fence that kept them safe or the man in the distance crouched next to a motorcycle. Something settled on her head and the boy grinned at her, bright and unrestrained. A laugh rose in her throat as she reached up to adjust the hat.
"There's a new sheriff in town," Rick Grimes said, giving her a wink.
Beth came back to the present with a gasp, finding that all eyes were on her. Dr. Edwards knelt in front of her but she evaded his efforts to question her, rising slowly on shaking legs as she fixed her eyes on Morgan. He stared back at her, equal parts wary and concerned.
"I know that man," Beth said, taking a step closer to him. "Rick Grimes."
Morgan straightened ever so slightly, something flaring in his eyes as he matched her step with one of his own.
"How?" he asked, his voice reflecting the hope that she could see in his gaze.
Beth inhaled deeply, tears stinging at her eyes as she considered her next words carefully.
"He's family."
Whether Dr. Edwards was slowly filling him in or he was picking up on her state on his own, observant eyes taking in everything around him, Morgan quickly fell into the same habit as the others. Getting her to slow down when she started wincing and turning her head away from the bright sun. Reaching for the pills in her pack if he was the closest one to it when she pressed her face into her hands and fought the urge to cry at the pain, knowing it would only make it worse. Catching her if she happened to be standing when one of her episodes came over her.
Beth knew from Hollie how it looked on their end, cause she was the only one who was blunt enough to tell her truthfully. It was almost scary, knowing that she stared blankly ahead for a minute or two while almost constant darkness surrounded her mind, disrupted only by the briefest glimpse of places and people and sounds that she couldn't quite place. They slipped away like water through her hands once she came out of the seizure-induced trance and she found that it was almost impossible to remember more than the tiniest details of what she saw in those terrifying seconds.
The glow of a campfire.
A blonde walker tied to a tree.
A baby pulling at the laces of a dirty pair of boots.
Dark hair and piercing blue eyes.
They were like puzzle pieces that she couldn't quite fit together. Not knowing what to do with any of it, Beth kept those snatches of memory to herself. The others didn't need another reason to worry about her. Not when she felt like she had to take care of them all, keeping them fed and moving. Morgan made it easier to handle the latter, helping her ease the burden of keeping them all alive as he guided them north with the map. Beth kept up her tracking and snares, earning the newest part of their group's interest when she bent over and set up the traps on the forest floor.
"Where'd you learn how to do all this?" Morgan asked one day, looking more curious than anything else.
Beth shrugged, carefully covering most of the trap with leaves.
"The signs are all there," she said, somehow feeling like she was using someone else's words. "Just gotta know how to read 'em."
More memories broke through as they moved along. One night, they shared a healthy portion of rabbit stew mixed with canned vegetables and couldn't help but give into the joy of a full stomach. A single look into Hollie's eyes, lit up with rare mirth, and everything about Maggie came rushing back at once. That delicious stew almost came right back up as her head felt like it was about to split in two. She could hear the others whisper her name with concern, not wanting to bring any walkers down on them by yelling out in alarm. By the time her stomach settled and the memories stopped their brutal assault on her wounded mind, Beth looked up with a smile that split the cracked skin of her lips in spite of the lingering pain.
"I have a sister."
She woke from a dream in the middle of the night while Stanley took watch, sobbing and gasping for air with the taste of sugary candy still lingering on her tongue. The others woke as she scrambled away from them, still feeling those horrible, clammy hands making their way up her shirt. All it took was the mention of a name for Leela and Hollie to exchange an understanding look. They chased away the others, clasping Beth's hands tightly as they sat on either side of her.
"Gorman," Hollie spat his name like a curse.
"There were others," Leela said, her voice uncharacteristically hard and furious. "A lot of others."
Beth felt sick to her stomach at the thought of him doing that to other girls. The dream ended with his cold, gleaming eyes staring into hers. She didn't remember anything after that. Had something stopped him? Or did his hands touch more than just her stomach? Tears spilled down her cheeks without any sign of stopping as she fought the urge to scream.
"He liked my hair," Hollie said, her voice toneless as she lifted her free hand to tug at her long ponytail.
Beth clutched her hand tighter and looked into her eyes, seeing the pain buried deep.
"Holls," she whispered, shaking her head.
"You killed him," Leela said, a fierce look to her eyes as Beth whipped her head around to look at her with wide eyes. "You and Joan. We all knew."
A smile formed on Leela's face, not sweet at all but rather vindictive. Justified. Beth couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that man wasn't alive to do it to anyone else.
"I'm sorry," she said, wishing she'd gotten there before he did any of it.
"You made it stop," Hollie said, her hand falling away from her hair. "Dawn just let it happen. All of them did."
She shot a resentful look to Dr. Edwards, who looked altogether ashamed as he glanced away, knowing exactly what they were talking about.
"No one else even tried until you."
Beth laid curled up with them for the rest of the night, sharing comfort and heat like they had known each other for years.
And the next day, before they set off again, she took her knife to a grinning Hollie's hair.
The town had all the signs of being deserted. Trashed stores with broken windows, all stripped of anything useful. But Beth couldn't quite shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong. The others wanted to stop long before they made it through the town line. Beth had two seizures already that day and they left her with a persistent headache and hands that wouldn't stop shaking no matter what she did. Despite the worried glances they tossed her way, she had pushed on and insisted that they at least find shelter in the town for the night. Now, she almost wished that they had stopped on the outskirts.
When they heard the distant sound of growls, enough to signal at least a small herd, the group slowed to a halt. Beth knew that they'd want to go another way. To avoid the walkers entirely, if they could. But her feet drove her forward, ignoring their hissed out warnings and shrugging off Morgan's staying hand before she drew a machete from her pack. She barely managed to lay eyes on the hoard of walkers before that familiar sickening feeling pulled at her mind, sending her staggering to the ground just before the darkness shrouded her mind.
Everything was shadowed but she could see the interior of a car pretty clearly. The snarling walkers surrounding it mattered to her very little. Her focus settled entirely on one of the men who sat in the front of the car, hunched down and breathing out a slow plume of smoke. She could feel the hopelessness radiating from his dark form, her eyes stinging with tears as he tilted his head back against the seat and shook his head as the other man claimed responsibility for their current situation.
"It ain't nobody's fault," the dark-haired man muttered, his voice low and raspy. "Jus' let me finish my smoke first."
Beth came back to herself, gasping for air and still smelling the faintest hints of cigarette smoke. Dr. Edwards and Stanley tried to keep her from rising, knowing that she always felt weaker in the aftermath of a seizure, as Morgan stood watch with Leela and Hollie. Beth brushed their hands away and staggered to her feet, taking hold of the machete once more.
"We have to help them," Beth said, looking past them all to the surrounded car.
"Someone's in the middle of that?" Leela asked with wide eyes.
"That's why they have it surrounded," Morgan said with a solemn nod, likely having figured it out long before Beth said anything.
Beth clung to the chainlink fence with one hand to keep herself upright, breathing through the shaky aftermath of her seizure as Dr. Edwards worried over her, claiming he'd never heard of a patient having three seizures in one day without serious side effects. She blocked him out, pointing to the open gate not far from where they stood.
"There," she said, her voice sounding oddly hoarse to her ears.
"You should stay back," Morgan said, looking her way.
She shook her head before he could even finish saying it, knowing that she couldn't. Dr. Edwards hovered nervously by the gate as they moved through quickly, keeping a tight formation and killing off the straggling walkers that had given up on the prey that the larger group was after. The hoard was distracted enough by the people in the car to notice Beth, Morgan, Leela, and Hollie until it was too late. It was like falling into a well-memorized dance, slicing her way through one walker after another with the long, sharp-edged blade.
Her body thrummed as she felt herself coming alive in a way that she never had before. At least not that she could remember. It almost felt as if she was nervous, her hand trembling violently as she reached out and yanked open the blood-splattered driver's door. She turned before she could see the person stagger out, making sure they had a brief moment to collect themselves before they had to start fighting too. It wasn't much longer before she heard the shout to run for the gate. Beth spun on her heel and cut through the head of one more walker.
Hot on Leela's heels and making sure that Hollie was somewhere ahead of her, recognizable by the color of her unevenly chopped hair. Stumbling through the gate on tired legs, Beth refused to let herself fall to the ground once more. Not around people she didn't know. Bending at the waist, she braced her palms against her knees and fought to breathe in and out, feeilng not only the exhaustion from fighting but the lingering effects of the episode that came before. By the time she managed to straighten up, one of the men was thanking Morgan.
Her eyes slowly rose from the ground only for her blood to run cold at the sight of a large weapon clutched in the hand of the man who hadn't spoken yet. He leaned against the fence, his head tilted towards Leela and Hollie as they recovered from the fight with an ease born of months on the road, having faced bigger groups than that one. He was ignorant of her eyes, still fixed on the crossbow that he held, until he seemed to grow tense at her staring.
Something tugged hard in the back of her mind as the man turned slowly. Her eyes flitted to his companion, a man with too-clean clothes, curly hair, and kind eyes. Beth couldn't help but eye him warily, wondering if he really was as nice as he seemed. Then she felt the heavy weight of eyes on her. Heard a gasping noise as if the breath had been wrenched from the other man's chest by an unyielding force. She finally looked at him, the wounded, terrified look in his eyes making her feel both confused and breathless. His eyes. Blue and piercing behind a curtain of dark hair.
"You okay, B?" Hollie called out, clearly worried about the staring contest going on right in front of the rest of them.
Beth couldn't bring herself to look at Hollie, much less answer her. Every shred of her attention was focused on the man who stood before her. A man she knew she'd seen before. A man that her broken mind couldn't offer any explanation for. Out of his mouth came her name, choked out in a voice so heartwrenching that it nearly drove her to her knees. Beth took a slow step forward, gripping the machete in her hand as tightly as she could to keep herself grounded. He matched her step with one of her own and soon enough, before she could blink, they were standing mere inches apart.
After another few moments of staring into his eyes, Beth finally tore her gaze away and lifted a slow, shaking hand to the vest he wore layered over a jacket. He stared at her with fear in his eyes as she brushed her fingers over the worn black leather. His body seemed to slump with relief at her touch. She didn't understand. Couldn't understand. If he knew her, if he was important to her, then why couldn't she remember him? Why wouldn't her mind offer her even a single memory of him, apart from the intense stare that he gave her even now? Beth let out a soft sigh before the words crawled up her throat, rising to her lips before she could stop them.
"Who are you?"
What did you think?
Beth's seizures are modeled after Atypical Absence Seizures, which are a real thing. There are a lot of stories about seizures having connection to spiritual, out of body experiences. I don't know if they're true or not but this is fanfiction of a zombie show so why not have some supernatural stuff thrown on in there? So was it a part of Beth, buried deep in her mind that remembers everything? Maybe! I'll let you guys decide what you think. I hope y'all like that particular resolution to the mystery!
Next up, we see exactly how Daryl reacts to Beth's lack of memory. BUT, not from his point of view. It'll be another Beth chapter. Y'all will love it, I hope!