Thanks to some notes from Nine Bright Shiners (thank you, you rock!) I've gone back and made some edits to Chapter 16, the scene where Beth stabs Blake in the eye. He was a bit out of character and I've tied his reactions in with his back story to make it more believable. Let me know what you think if you check it out!

Also, go check out Nine Bright Shiners' story Too Far Gone, set just after Woodbury. Brian (the Governor) is searching for a safe place for his family, and then hears about a sanctuary called Terminus. *ominous look*

...

The interrogation went on all night. Beth knew because she watched the hands on Commandant Blake's wristwatch crawl onward. She was perched on a small rickety stool with no back to it and her hands were manacled to the table. They were alone.

The questions went on and on, going over the same ground.

What were you doing the night that I stopped Fräulein Mueller in the street?

I was going home.

Why were you so late? You'd finished at the factory two hours earlier.

I had to queue at the butchers. There were a lot of people and not much meat.

Why did arrange a rendezvous with Fräulein Mueller in the street?

I didn't. I lied because I was worried she would break down in front of you or say something rude. She had been distraught since her boyfriend disappeared.

When was the last time you saw Fräulein Mueller?

Not for some time. Two weeks maybe.

Who were Fräulein Mueller's friends?

I don't know. We weren't very close.

You lied for her. You must have be close.

We're not. I was just afraid for her because I knew she was alone.

You were afraid for her because of the Stasi? Why were you afraid? What are you hiding?

Beth blinked hard, wanting to scrub a hand over her weary face. It was close to six o'clock in the morning and she was hazy with fatigue. She had to keep reminding herself that she didn't know Ana's intention to escape over the Wall, or that Conrad had escaped with Daryl's help.

Every hour or so Blake walked about the room, pacing behind her so that she couldn't see him. He seemed to show no ill-effects of the long night and hadn't muddled a question once. She was struggling to keep up.

He was seated before her now, making notes with a slim silver pen in his large hand as she talked. His uniform was immaculate, as always. A different one, she supposed, than the one he'd been wearing when she'd stabbed him in the eye. The memory of the way his eyeball had yielded to the sharp metal wasn't a fond one. Neither was imagining what would have happened if she hadn't stabbed him.

There was a large stack of files sitting to one side of the table. Beth tried not to look at them, sure he'd see a guilty expression in her eyes. Did he know that Beth was involved in Ana's escape? Was he waiting for a slip that would give Beth away, and then he'd produce photographs of her going into the safe-house? Transcripts of her conversations with Daryl? Did he know Maggie and Glenn were implicated too?

Panic rose but she tamped it down, hard. Keep your head, Greene. He wants revenge for the eye. You took his eye and now he wants a reason to keep you in here, his prisoner, so he can watch you rot. He doesn't have anything on you which is why he's fixating on the only thing he does know, that you lied to him about meeting Ana in the street.

When she didn't answer, Commandant Blake looked up at Beth. There was gauze over his ruined eye and a bandage round his head. His other eye was steely blue. He tapped his pen on the pad of paper in front of him. 'Answer the question, Fräulein Greene.'

Beth's chin had begun to sink down on her chest but it reared up at the sound of his voice. She blinked to clear her eyes. 'What?'

He enunciated carefully. 'Why do you have reason to be afraid of the Stasi?'

'Because you took my father,' she muttered, 'and you locked him away.'

Blake was silent for a few minutes, watching her. Then he gathered up his things and left the room.

A few minutes later a warden came in and unchained her from the table. Beth welcomed the cold, hard grip of his hand on her upper arm. She was being taken back to her cell. Finally she could sleep.

…

The sparkplug was ancient and had practically welded itself into the socket. Daryl first tried pulling at it with pliers, then gouging at it with the pointy ends of the tool, and then finally, losing his temper, he picked up a spanner and began walloping it.

'Whoa, Daryl.' He boss strolled past. 'Take it easy.'

Daryl gripped the spanner, breathing hard. Beth had been in Hohenschönhausen for four days. Maggie had heard nothing from the authorities. Rick hadn't heard any rumours at Party headquarters, and didn't want to ask around unless it was an emergency.

It was a fuckin' emergency.

Blake left his flat every evening at five p.m. and came back every morning just after 6 a.m. To sleep, Daryl presumed. Which meant he was interrogating Beth all night long. Sleep deprivation wasn't electrocution or drowning but it was torture just the same.

It wasn't just the worry about her in that place with that bastard that was getting to Daryl. Rick assured Daryl that Blake just wanted to scare Beth. He had no reason to suspect Beth of being a traitor. But she was a traitor, in their eyes, and how long would it be till she started talking just so they'd let her sleep?

…

Beth blinked her eyes slowly, like a drunkard, and her head pitched to one side. A second before the butt of the gun could slam into her kidneys she jolted upright. 'I'm awake,' she gasped, 'I'm awake.' The memory of the pain was almost as bad as the pain itself. There was a soldier standing behind her throughout Blake's interrogation at all times now, to clout her with his weapon if she fell asleep, but she was doing her job for him most of the time.

They hadn't let her sleep in days. After that first night with Blake she had been returned her to her cell, but not to sleep. She'd closed her eyes as soon as the door had slammed shut but a small partition had remained open so the guard outside could see in.

The rifle butt had rung on the metal door. 'No sleeping,' had come the guard's voice.

'What?' Beth had croaked. 'I've been awake all night. I'm so tired.'

'No sleeping.'

She'd sat up, trying to stay awake, but within ten minutes her eyes closed. The rifle butt rang on the door and she started awake. After a while she didn't hear the knocking, but she woke when the rifle slammed into her hip.

It had gone on like that all day, and all the days since. How many had it been? She'd lost count. They let her sleep for about an hour right before the interrogation started again, but it was like a single raindrop in a desert: inadequate and useless.

Blake's face swum before her eyes. He looked the same, night after night. Uniform, gauze, grim face. He must be sleeping during the day so that he was refreshed to question her at night. His eye closed, his head on a pillow in a darkened room. How she hated him for his sleep.

How long could you stay awake before you went insane or died? She'd already started hearing things during the day. People muttering in the corner. Inside the walls of her cell.

'Who is your boyfriend, Fräulein Greene?'

Beth looked up, startled. His questions had followed a distinctive pattern over the course of the interrogations: he asked her about Ana, then her mother and father, then Ana again. Back and forth. Over and over.

Her answers were the same every time. At least, she thought they were. He confused her, repeating back something she'd said but twisting it slightly, seeing if she'd notice. Or telling her she'd said something when she hadn't. Her sluggish mind struggled to keep up, but she'd developed one habit that seemed to work: talk freely about anything and everything he asked about from the time before she'd met Daryl. Deny, deny, deny everything after. And if he got too close to the truth about Ana, fall asleep and let herself get walloped by the guard.

'I don't have a boyfriend.'

Blake reached for a file, opened it, glanced over it, and put it aside once more. 'You were seen embracing a man outside your apartment.'

He gave her a time and date and she struggled to think back. It was probably the day that Daryl had walked her home. The night they'd kissed for the first time and she'd told him she was going to stay with him no matter what. What was he doing? How she missed him. Her heart ached and her eyes began to prickle with tears, so she pretended to fall asleep.

Her back exploded with pain and her eyes flew open. 'What? What was the question?'

'Who is the man you are involved with?'

'There is no man. Whoever thought they saw me must be mistaken.'

Blake clasped his hands in front of him and leaned forward. The one eye glittered. 'Who,' he said slowly, 'is the man you are involved with?'

The atmosphere in the room seemed to Beth to change. This was what Blake was really interested in. Beth wanted to laugh. Shake her head and pity him. But she had too much pity for herself. Unkind thoughts about Hannah bubbled through her mind.

Hannah took a lover while you were in a POW camp, a Nazi, and she exposed her Jewishness to him, by accident, or thinking that he'd protect her anyway. She screwed under your nose even when you were in Berlin. The daughter you thought was yours wasn't yours. Hannah died hating you. No, she died not even thinking about you.

The questions went on and on. When had she met this man? Where had they gone? How long had they been seeing each other? Beth denied everything.

There's no one but you, Phillip. When are you coming home? Please come home.

The stinging slap across her face told her she'd said it out loud.

…

Rick spotted Comrade Walsh coming down the corridor. He was getting worried about Daryl. The man wasn't going to sit tight for much longer. Shane had always had the commandant's ear, so perhaps he knew something about Beth.

'Comrade Walsh, do you have a moment?'

Walsh looked at Rick coolly, with the air of someone who was very busy but could spare a moment for a less fortunate man. Rick's jaw clenched with annoyance. He might have Lori, but he didn't have her like Rick had had her. As a wife. As someone who loved him. Lori didn't love Walsh, he could see it in her eyes. 'I've been trying to track down Blake. He's not at his office.'

Walsh smirked. 'He's interrogatin' a suspect at the Stasi prison. Remember that blonde girl he was with at the birthday party? She didn't take kindly to his advances and stabbed him in the eye. And turns out she had a boyfriend all the while she was leadin' him on.'

Rick tried not to show the alarm he felt. Goddamn. Someone had seen her with Daryl. Goddamn. 'Yeah?' he asked, his tone mild. 'So?'

Walsh shrugged, still smiling, but moving past Rick to be on his way. 'So he's gonna throw the book at her. Anythin' shady in her life, he's gonna dig it out of her and nail her to the wall with it.'

…

'Wassis?'

Beth looked at the sheet of paper before her. It took a few tries to get the words to swim into focus. How many days had it been now? More than a week? A month? She had trouble forming complete sentences and her eyes stayed permanently at half-mast. The walls had people living in them. She'd heard them for days and now she was seeing them too. They all looked like Blake, but they sounded like her sister, her mother, Daryl.

I, Beth Greene, denounce my father, Hershel Greene, and my mother, Annette Greene …

She looked up at Blake, her head listing back and forth. 'Confession?'

'No. It's a declaration to the effect that you won't apply to leave the German Democratic Republic. That you denounce both your parents as traitors. And you pledge your support to the government.'

Beth pretended to fall asleep. She was battered awake in an instant, gasping. There were bruises on her bruises.

Blake slammed his hand against the table top. 'Concentrate, Beth.' It was the first time he'd called her Beth and not Fräulein Greene since the interrogation had begun. She couldn't work out if it was a good sign or a bad sign.

There was a piece of paper in front of her. 'Wassis?'

Blake cleared his throat with irritation and told her. Oh, yes. He'd just said. He hadn't mentioned Daryl or Ana. Had she? She couldn't remember. Questions. Bruises. They all ran together.

'Denounce m'mother,' she mumbled, frowning. 'What if she comes'ome.'

'Comes home?' Blake smiled a small, unfriendly smile.

She'll be arrested, Beth thought. You'll use this as evidence.

Blake looked at the guard and nodded to Beth's manacles. 'Undo those.' And to Beth, 'Sign it, and you can sleep.' Sleep was all she thought about.

He held out his silver pen, the one that had scribbled and tapped the way through the interrogations. His voice was silky, seductive. 'You can sleep in a proper bed, with sheets and blankets. And in a day or so when you've slept and recovered you'll be free to go.'

…