A/N: Thank you to all the readers who are following this story – it's very encouraging to see it's sparked some interest. Especial thanks to those who have reviewed. I love hearing your thoughts, so please do review if you haven't yet.

Massive thanks to LadyIngenue for her help with pulling this chapter together and making it readable.

I'd also like to mention a short music video I've posted on YouTube featuring Beth and Philip. It's called 'Beth/The Governor – 'You Belong to Me''. The singer, Jo Stafford, features in S3E07 – it's her haunting voice playing on the record player while the Governor introduces Andrea to Mr Coleman. I hope you like the video.

Chapter 2

As Beth and Herschel made their way back towards Cell Block C, the main gates opened and a tank came rumbling up the hill. Beth and Herschel both stopped to watch as it rolled into the entrance yard, shuddering to a halt. The silence that followed was tangible.

'The tank was theirs,' Herschel explained. 'They told us about it when Daryl found them outside the fences. Gave them some leverage for bargaining with the Council.'

There wasn't much that could be more valuable than a tank these days. Beth thought of how the young woman – Tara – and the Governor, must have been stuck inside the vehicle for days, cooped up together for hours on end with that deafening, shaking cage of metal all around them. There would have been nothing at hand to reduce his pain – and he would have refused it had it been there.

'Hopefully we won't need to use it,' Herschel went on. 'It could act as a deterrent; stop others from attacking us, if they ever find us.' He glanced back the way they'd come. 'We have one less invader to worry about, at any rate; the only one who knew about us.'

Beth turned to him, intent. 'You really think he's no longer a threat?'

His blue eyes didn't waver. 'Don't you?'

'I'm not sure. I don't know what to think.'

He smiled, putting a hand on her cheek. 'Good girl. That's a wiser answer than you know. You can make up your own mind. It will take time, but you're smart enough not to rush to conclusions.' He stepped back. 'I'll go and report to Rick now. Let him know what Philip was like.'

As she watched him go, Beth thought about how casually he'd used the Governor's name. She wasn't sure she'd ever be able to call him 'Philip', even to herself.

Then she thought of Maggie, and Glenn; neither of whom knew about the Governor's reappearance. Two days ago they'd both left on an extended supply run, and they weren't expected back for another three days. Beth thought of how Maggie had told her to study hard while she was away. How would Maggie react when she found out that the Governor was inside the prison walls – that the Council had voted to let him in? What would she think when she heard Beth had helped Herschel tend to the Governor?

'Beth.'

She started badly. Sasha was making her way towards her, carrying two crates.

'You look like you could use something to take your mind off things.' Sasha smiled her wry smile. 'Give me a hand with these?'

Gratefully, Beth took the upper crate and followed Sasha towards Cell Block B. She hadn't spent a lot of time with Sasha over the six months since she'd joined the prison community; but she liked her and trusted her. Sasha didn't say much, but when she spoke it meant something.

'What's in these crates?' Beth asked as they came to the supply room.

'Ammo, matches, plenty of tools. No medicine or food, though. We found it all in the tank.'

They put the crates on a long table and started sorting through them.

Sasha glanced up with a wry look. 'How's life as a nurse?'

Beth smiled back. 'Not very eventful. Daddy's been teaching me lots of theory mostly. I haven't had much chance to put anything into practice, yet.'

'Well, if you ever need a guinea pig for injections, you know where to find me. Better not ask Tyreese, though. For all his brawn he's never liked needles.'

They worked companionably for a few minutes. Beth sensed Sasha considering her.

'You just went to see him, didn't you? The Governor.'

'Yes.'

'What was he like?'

'Quiet. Withdrawn.' She hesitated. 'He wouldn't take any medicine when Daddy offered him some.'

Sasha was frowning as she opened a box of matches, checked its contents. 'I voted to take him in,' she said at last.

Beth glanced at her but didn't say anything.

'I'd made up my mind to do the opposite. I like to think I'm too practical to hold onto anger, or revenge. I didn't know him long – and at the time I had no idea about the things he'd done.' She laughed without humour. 'Of everyone here – everyone who joined either before or just after Woodbury that is, Tyreese and I probably have the least reason to hold a grudge against him.' Her face closed. 'But I know people from Woodbury who lost their sons and daughters, their mothers and fathers when he murdered them. So I was going to turn him and the girl away.'

She shook her head as she weighed a box of ammo. 'But I saw him standing there, with that bloodied bandage, I saw the way he held himself. He and the girl looked close to death … And I thought that it must have taken guts for her to come to us and ask for help on his behalf, after everything…' She let out her breath in a long whistling sigh. 'Anyway. I voted to take them in. I won't say any more than that. It's Council business. Maybe I've said too much already.'

Beth didn't say anything, keeping her eyes on the bullets she was sorting through. Though her expression stayed neutral, she couldn't help wondering how the votes had gone. Her father would have voted to let the Governor stay; she was sure of it. With Sasha's vote that would have been two people opting to let in Tara and the Governor, at least for a few days. But one more would have been needed to win the majority. With Glenn away that left Daryl, and Carol.

When Beth tried to imagine which way they'd voted, she came up short.

'Still,' Sasha went on, 'he's blind now. He's no longer a threat.' She looked at Beth, pensively. 'You've had more contact with him than I have. If you were on the Council in four days' time, when we decide whether to let him stay or not – which way would you vote?'

Beth was unprepared for the question. 'I don't know,' she said honestly. 'It's too early to tell.' She picked up a spanner, testing its weight in her hand. 'But if we turn him away, he won't survive long.'

There was nothing to say to that. Sasha gathered up some boxes of ammo and sorted them into their correct places. She leaned a hand on the shelf, her other hand on her hip, her head bowed.

'Back in Woodbury, when we heard how he'd massacred his own people, some of the others ran off and broke into his rooms. They trashed his place – it made them feel like they were hurting him in some small way. Paying him back. And then they found the fish tanks.' She shook her head. 'I couldn't believe it when I heard it.'

Beth felt a chill of distaste, remembering when Michonne had told Rick and the others about the heads; walker and human. Trophies. In that moment the Governor had begun to seem more monster than human.

But when she tried to match those thoughts with the figure sitting so defeated in his cell, she stalled. They didn't fit.

'What was he like? When you and Tyreese first arrived in Woodbury?'

Sasha whistled through her teeth softly. 'He seemed rational, like he had everything in hand. He asked us questions about the prison, and he was very interested in Rick. But he told us to rest before we drew up a map for him, when we were willing to do it right there and then. Maybe he smiled a bit too much. But he had me fooled. And I don't fool easily.' She smiled dryly. 'Perhaps we let our guards down. We were so desperate to find someplace safe.'

Everything Sasha said about the Governor fit with what Beth had heard. She remembered when Andrea had come to the prison. Her insistence that they could work this out: that there could be peace between the Governor and Rick. She'd believed the Governor could be reasoned with, despite knowing about the fish tanks, despite having seen him force Daryl to fight against his brother in the gladiator pit – as the people of Woodbury cheered for blood.

Suddenly another memory came into her mind, vivid and clear. Rick had been talking about how the Governor had pitted brother against brother in a fight to the death. He'd asked Herschel, 'What kind of sick mind does that?' And Herschel had replied, 'The kind this world creates.'

'We're done here,' said Sasha, startling Beth out of her thoughts. 'I'd better get on with a perimeter check. It's my turn.' Her mouth twisted downwards, and Beth pulled a face in sympathy. Stabbing walkers through the fence was never an enviable task.

As the afternoon waned, Beth went to look after Judith, and get some more studying done at the same time. Her father had found a few medical textbooks in the prison library and given them to her to help her understand the basics of anatomy and the practice of modern medicine. He'd given her set passages to read, and would be testing her on them the next day.

Judith was playing nearby with a set of measuring spoons. Her eyes narrowed and widened in alternating absorption and astonishment at the sounds and movements they made as she moved them about. Beth bit back a smile at Judith's latest expression of surprise, then looked back down at her anatomy textbook.

But try as she might to focus on the pages, the words seemed to slide and blur.

In her mind's eye she saw a figure very clearly, a seated figure semi-hunched on a prison bed, so close and yet so far away, both alluring and frightening in his self-enforced isolation. Even when she had been in the room with him she had felt him carefully preserving a barrier between him and all other human beings; even when she had touched his cheek and unwound the bandage from around his eyes.

The Governor was supposed to be unpredictable, violent, arrogant, swaggering and self-obsessed. But the man in the cell had been none of those things. He had seemed to lack all ego, all drive to anything other than to preserve his pain and maintain emotional and physical isolation.

What had happened to him?

Just then Judith gave the measuring spoons a particularly vigorous rattle, making Beth jump.

'Judith!' she said, teasingly, and Judith beamed at her.

'Are you telling me I should be studying?' With a laugh, she turned back to the textbook.

The next morning she listed the major blood vessels she'd learned while Herschel listened approvingly. They both worked on planting a new crop of tomatoes as she talked, keeping their backs turned towards the fences where the walkers gathered. It was a warm, clear day; it would have been almost perfect if not for the muttering and growling that was always just within earshot.

As Beth continued her recitation, Herschel smiled to himself; a warm glow of affection settling in his chest. Over the long winter he'd been worrying about her. She'd been growing emotionally distant, her eyes deadening a little more each time she'd had to turn her 'Days Without An Accident' chart back to zero. But since she'd come to him asking him to train her as a nurse, she'd begun to seem just a little more like the Beth he always saw when he looked at her; the one she'd been before her mother and brother had died and things had started falling apart.

He thought he knew why. Being a nurse gave her some semblance of control. Things wouldn't just happen to her. Not anymore. By helping people, she'd be able to do something; something vital and important.

Her young life had promised to be something so different. He would give anything to be able to turn back the clock for her, to set the world to rights. She'd always had a good voice; people liked to listen to her singing. They still did. Maybe she could have made a career of it.

But then she glanced up and gave him a smile so natural, so tender, that he stopped his thoughts right there. It was no use dwelling on what might have been. What he and his daughters had now, in this place, was good – and he was grateful.

Once the planting was done he and Beth began the walk back up the hill. They were passed by a small group of people from Woodbury, and he caught a mutter about 'the Governor', and a curse as they went by. Glancing at Beth, he saw that she had heard too. Yesterday as they'd left Philip and Tara's cell block, there had been people crossing the courtyard, shooting dark looks at Cell Block A. So far glowering and muttering had been the worst of it, but he was not sure how things would go if the Council decided to let Philip and Tara stay permanently. And then there was Michonne to consider. Only a few days ago she'd taken off to search for the Governor, not realising he was soon to show up at the prison gates.

But of most concern to him was Maggie. In a few days she would be back, and he'd have to face the look in her eyes when she learned that the man she most hated and feared was staying inside the prison walls.

He faltered, his earlier peacefulness draining away.

Then Beth took his arm and squeezed it. 'Don't worry, Daddy. It'll be all right.'

Beth spent the next couple of hours cutting up old but clean sheets to make bandages. Then Herschel came to ask her to accompany him to Cell Block A. Outside the cell block, Herschel asked Carol – who was on guard duty this time – if there had been any visitors since he and Beth had come yesterday.

'Only Rick, bringing food. Everyone else stays clear.' With a searching look at Beth, Carol opened the door for them.

When they emerged into the cell block it was to find Tara and the Governor sitting opposite each other at the metal table in the middle of the main room, a dull silence lying heavy between them. They both looked up as Beth and Herschel stepped in. Tara's dark gaze turned watchful while stillness descended over the Governor's face.

Each of Beth's footsteps rang loudly in her own ears.

'Afternoon, Tara,' said Herschel, nodding. 'Philip.'

Tara nodded back but didn't speak.

The Governor rose to his feet, his hands resting on the table as he stood. He held himself stiffly, apart; Beth sensed that he felt caught out. They had timed their visit earlier than yesterday.

It was still a shock to see the bandage covering his eyes – the bandage she'd applied herself – and to be reminded that his blindness was permanent.

'Herschel,' he said quietly. Then, 'Beth.'

There was a moment's silence. Tara was looking up at him steadily, her eyes narrowed.

'Are you ready to have me take another look at your eye?' Herschel asked.

'Yes.' But he hesitated. Herschel went to his side swiftly.

'Here, let me take your arm.' Then he turned back to Beth. 'Why don't you stay and talk to Tara awhile, while I tend to Philip?'

The two men walked side by side to the cell, one upright; tall and strong but reliant; the other stooped and guiding.

Tara and Beth watched them go. Beth couldn't help remembering those early days after Herschel's amputation in which she'd guided him about the prison block, before they'd found crutches for him.

'He still wants to leave,' said Tara, once the two men had gone into the cell. Her eyes glittered with suppressed emotion. Then she looked up at Beth. 'You can sit, if you like.'

Beth sat down on the bench opposite Tara's, her knees pressed together and her hands clasped neatly. The two young women watched each other carefully.

Tara was a few years older than Maggie, Beth guessed. Something about the set of her chin and her hunched shoulders suggested wary defensiveness. She was still too thin from the long journey to the prison, and there were shadows of exhaustion under her eyes. Just now when she'd spoken about the Governor there had been anger in her voice – something almost like blame. And yet there'd been a fierce loyalty and protectiveness that Beth couldn't help admiring.

After eyeing Beth steadily, Tara spoke. Her voice was quiet, cautious. 'You've lived here six months, right?'

'That's right.'

'And you haven't had any trouble since…' She faded out, glancing in the direction of the Governor's cell.

Beth took a moment to answer. How much had the Governor revealed to Tara about his own past? 'No. No more than usual.'

'There are a lot of you. Did you take in the people from Brian's old community?'

Beth stared. 'Brian?'

'Oh, right. You wouldn't know that name. Brian Heriot. That's what he called himself when we first met him.' She looked down, her arms folded defensively. She spoke with an effort; speaking of the past pained her. 'He just turned up out of the blue. I was with my dad, my sister and my niece, Meghan, holed up in our old apartment. Brian saw Meghan in the window and made his way up to us. He looked like he'd been on the road for months. Another few days would have finished him.'

Beth realised she was holding her breath.

'We let him in – after asking for his weapons of course.'

'He just handed them over?'

Tara raised an eyebrow at Beth's interjection. 'Without a word. He didn't say much for the rest of the evening, either. We gave him the apartment opposite for him to spend the night in. He was supposed to be off again the next day, but somehow he stayed.' Her face creased with emotion. 'He – he saved my life when my dad died. We didn't know that people could still turn even if they weren't bit.'

Beth shivered, imagining the scene. 'How awful. To have found out like that.' She was thankful she had been spared such an experience; that Herschel had pulled through after the amputation.

'And what happened after that?' she prompted gently. 'Did you leave your home?'

'Yes. We didn't want to stay. Brian came with us. We wouldn't have stood a chance without him.' The words seemed to be tumbling out of Tara now. Beth remembered it must have been at least a week since Tara had spoken for a significant amount of time with anyone but the near-silent Governor.

'We set out on the road, in my dad's old truck, but pretty soon it ran out of fuel. Then we walked. We had a bad run in with biters – but somehow we got away. And then we met Martinez.'

'Martinez!' The name was familiar to Beth from stories of Woodbury. 'So he was still alive?'

Tara frowned. 'Yes. He'd started his own community. He let us join; Brian too.'

'Martinez didn't recognise him? Recognise … Brian?'

'He did. But he decided to give him a chance. He saw that Brian loved my sister, and that he loved Meghan like she was his own daughter.'

Beth listened quietly, not quite able to accept those words. But the conviction in Tara's expression kept her from showing any of her doubt.

'We stayed in that camp for two weeks. But it wasn't safe. Biters got in and killed an old man. So we knew we had to leave, find someplace safe. And that's when we heard the radio message.'

Tara had gone very pale; a shiver ran up Beth's spine.

'What did it say?'

'It told us to go to Terminus. That we'd find sanctuary there.' Her voice twisted. 'That we'd survive.'

'Terminus?'

'It used to be an old railway terminal. It's a week's journey north of here. They had maps along train tracks. We didn't trust the radio message, so we prepared an ambush, in case it wasn't a sanctuary at all. We had a tank and lots of fighters. Brian volunteered to go into Terminus and scout it out, and my sister Lilly went with him. Meghan and I – ' her eyes screwed up in hurt – 'we stayed locked up in our caravan. We were supposed to wait there until the place was safe. But we were taken hostage and marched to Terminus while it was still dark. Our walkie-talkie was taken from us – we couldn't contact Brian or Martinez.

'They locked us up in an old train car – and then they took Meghan from me. I was alone in the dark for hours. I couldn't get out. After hours of nothing I heard gunshots, and I knew my people were on their way. I started yelling for help – someone opened the doors. It was Brian. Lilly had run off, looking for Meghan. Brian and I split up to find them.' Her voice heaved. 'I looked everywhere but there was nothing but biters, and the dead. Everyone in Martinez's group was dead – everyone. I found Brian on the ground. He had blood pouring from his eye. When I asked about Lilly and Meghan – he told me it was too late. They were dead.'

Without hesitation, Beth rose and went to sit at Tara's side, taking her hand and gripping it tightly. Tara sniffled and squeezed her hand back. A minute later she was able to continue.

'We ran from Terminus. We took the tank. Later that night he told me about his past; told me everything.' She shivered. 'I nearly abandoned him. But I couldn't. I decided we would go to the prison. From what he'd said the people there seemed to have a good place. I hoped they'd take us in, once they saw what he'd gone through; how he'd never hurt them again.' She smiled without emotion. 'And so here we are.'

'This time you've come to a good place,' said Beth. 'Not like Terminus.' Yet she couldn't help remembering the curses people had muttered earlier, aimed at the Governor. Were the Governor and Tara really safe here?

Tara's smile lost its chilliness, became a little sad. 'I hope so. Your father's been so kind to us – and you have too. But I saw the looks everyone was giving us when we came in. The looks they were giving him.' Then she sighed. 'But what else could anyone expect? After everything he did…'

Beth hesitated. 'And you really don't think he can do those things any more?'

Tara stared. 'Didn't you see him just now? It's not just his eye. It's like he's got no fight left in him.' She drew in a deep breath. 'When he told me the things he'd done – done as 'the Governor' – it was like he was talking about a different person. You don't know what he was like when he found my sister and me – maybe you'll never know. But that man – the man who loved Lilly and Meghan – I could never imagine him doing the things the Governor did. That's all gone, now.' She looked both sad and angry. 'Anyone who doesn't see it is a fool.'

Beth wasn't so sure; but she couldn't help but respond to Tara's loyalty.

'Do Rick and my father know what you've told me? What happened to him?'

'They know about my sister and Meghan. That they're dead – and that he loved them.' She looked at Beth keenly. 'Your father believed me. He can see that Brian's changed.' Then she sighed. 'I'm not so sure about Rick. And he's the one I have to convince. He doesn't know what to do with us. No one does.'

They were both silent for a while.

'Lilly was a nurse, you know. My sister.'

For a second Beth was uncomprehending. A chill went through her. 'She was?'

Tara nodded, looking at her steadily. 'If he holds himself back around you – even more than with your father – that's probably why.'

Beth couldn't have spoken even if she'd wanted to. She had known loss herself, plenty of it. But when she thought of all the ghosts the Governor seemed to have brought into the prison – those more recent ones of the last few weeks, but also those from before, from Woodbury, all of them shackled to him – her chest felt tight.

She remembered how cautious he'd been yesterday when she'd touched his cheek as she unwound the bandage. The last person to touch him like that must have been Lilly.

Just then Herschel came back into the hallway. 'We'll be on our way, then.'

Beth rose at once, grateful for his timing. She said a warm goodbye to Tara, then quickly followed her father back outside, out of that place full of loss and memory, into the uncomplicated warmth of the afternoon.