Chapter 3
Beth had given up trying to sleep through Dawn's bickering halfway through the night. She got up and cleared camp, deciding to see what hunting in the dark would procure before pulling away entirely; she strapped her bow to her back and took off in to the woods. She didn't get too far before a small herd found her and she went running and stumbling back to the car. She tore off down the road so quickly she nearly wrecked due to roaming Walkers in the night. Dawn belittled her for thinking the woods at night was a good idea, reminding her yet again of her weaknesses. So Beth just blast the music and pressed down harder on the pedal.
The driving was a blast, and speeding to get there even faster was quite possibly Beth's favorite part of her travels; and after a while she was able to drown Dawn out, but the closer she got to Richmond the more worry and fear nibbled at her from the inside out. Her family thought she was dead. What if they no longer had a place for her? What if they thought she was just as useless as before and try to domesticate her all over again? What if they think she is weak…
She tried to think better of her family, she tried to tell herself they would never do that to her. That they had always seen the potential in her and would not be surprised to see the end result, right? She tried to. But the thought of only being allowed to be Judy's caregiver all over again was already making her go stir crazy.
Beth drove silently and without music as she persistently chewed on her bottom lip. She valiantly tried to ignore the knots and dips in her stomach, but the more the miles rolled beneath her the more it began to feel like jumping frogs in her tummy.
What if they didn't even recognize her, she thought to herself, catching her reflection in the rear view mirror. And then there she was; Dawn's smirking ghost in the back seat.
"Starting to feel like maybe that bullet should have killed you, huh?" Dawn's ghost asked her, "Instead of it being the one time in your pathetic existence that you tried to be strong."
Beth's grip tightened on the steering wheel, a muscle twitching in her neck as she ground out bitterly that she is strong.
"I put up with you, didn't I?" Beth inquired to the back seat with a raised eyebrow.
Dawn snorted, "'Put up with' and 'Stand up to' are two different things, Bethy," the ethereal being responded. "If you had any real strength to you, you would have taken me out when I slapped you in the face and popped those stitches. The First time. But no, what was it you did? Oh yeah," the brunette with the too-tight bun chuckled malevolently; "you stood there and stared at me in dumbstruck horror."
"Would you just shut the hell up already?!" Beth screamed out to the empty space surrounding her in the car. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as tears burned in her eyes, begging to be released. The edges of her vision were beginning to pulse and blur again, the walls of Gorman's car closing in on her just as Gorman had himself. She could feel his fingers grazing against her skin again, lifting up her shirt. With a strangled sob the car with the white cross on the back windshield came to sudden stop on the highway. Beth burst from the car like an injured Hawk being re-released into the glorious wild exploding from its cage; she clawed at her chest and tried desperately to drag the crisp cool air around her into her lungs, but all she could feel was the panic and pain she was drowning in. Beth threw herself to the ground and dug her fingers into the dirt as far as they could go, she clutched to Mother Nature and begged her to take it all away, the pain roaring to life in her chest, the ache in her bones and tremble she could feel running the length of her. Beth begged any deity that was listening to remove herself from her own body, even if it meant killing her right here on the spot. She still felt trapped; still felt confined in the car, in Gorman's arms, in Dawn's little bubble of Hell she had called Grady. Still felt trapped in her coma…
The thought she might actually still be in her coma crossed her mind, and it sent her over the edge. Before she even knew it was what she had planned to do, Beth sat up and pulled the knife from her thigh, she lifted the sleeve of her jacket and dragged the blade across her arm, just above the healed scar on her wrist. The blade moved with little resistance and she lifted it to draw a second line just beside the first. Her hands fell back into her lap as she stared at the trees in front of her. She didn't see them, she didn't see anything; Beth let the darkness consume her vision while she literally bled the sickness taking over her out through her arm. She let the blood flow freely from her, taking it all with it, until the darkness faded, until she could hear birds chirping again, and feel the breeze on her cheeks and the sun kiss her lips. She blank several times and willed her eyes to adjust, to see the world she sat in once again. Blinking several times down at her arm, Beth finally realized what she had done and cursed herself. She stood and tried to ignore the way her legs shook a little like jelly and that it seemed the colors around her had somehow grown more vibrant, instead she focused on the bag of medical supplies she had in the trunk of the car. She pulled the bag towards her and opened it, bringing her arm up closer to her face, she examined both cuts. Neither was deep enough to need stitches. This time. But they were deep and still bleeding. And they'll turn into scars, she realized with a heavy sigh. She poured water down her arm and cleaned herself up, bandaging the cuts and wrapping it all up. She leaned on the car and sighed, rubbing at her forehead again.
The Hell is wrong wit' ya, Greene?
"I screwed up." She whispered back to him.
Yer damn right ya did, now git back on tha' horse an' come find me.
A few hours back into the swing of driving and Beth realized she had been a lot closer to Richmond than she thought; passing a sign for Petersburg was a blessing all on its own, even despite the gas light having popped on with a ding about 5 miles ago, it meant she could make it there tonight. Especially if this car was anything like the others her group had used, it could have anywhere from 20-30 miles left before it would stall on her. So with a giddy feeling rising from somewhere deep in her belly, Beth drove on as quickly as she could. Once again thinking of the various ways her group would react to seeing her again, to seeing her alive; the excited laugh that Carl would give her along with a big, brotherly hug. The soft fatherly eyes of Rick and the sweet peck to the forehead he would bestow her, with a 'Hershel would be so proud,' sort of statement. The instantly open and awaiting arms Carol would hold out for her. Glenn's wide faced grin and hair ruffles with a 'missed ya, kid.' She smiled, eyes drifting to the bandage on her arm. Why was she so afraid that her family would not instantly take her back, in a friggin' heart beat? She felt so selfish for her break down earlier, they deserved better from her than this cutting crap, again. She promised then and there on the highway that it would never happen again. She promised she would never again seek out the cold dead comfort of a blade to her own flesh.
She just passed into Richmond and was a few miles from the Neighborhood Noah had talked about so much to her when the car sputtered and shut off, slowly rolling to a stop even before she parked it. Beth sighed and climbed stiffly from the car, stretching as she moved to the back of Gorman's car to pull all her supplies from the back of the trunk. She was too excited to set a camp, she had maybe two hours of daylight left and was fairly certain she could walk the rest of the way there in that time. She pulled the two large duffle bags out of the trunk, one large bag of food, a bag of medical supplies, her crossbow, the spare bolts for both crossbow's, and the shopping bag of odds and ends such as what she used to string up noise makers. She immediately set to work consolidating the duffle bags into one, leaving behind mainly the extra clothes she didn't deem necessary and the hygiene she felt was not detrimental to her survival, despite whatever sorrow it caused her to leave it beside the car on the road. She pushed the empty duffle bag and spare bolts into the first duffle along with the bag of medical supplies and put the plastic bag of random bits in the food bag. Putting the strap of the duffle bag over her shoulder first, Beth then pulled the book bag of food onto her shoulders and held her crossbow in her hands. She took a deep breath and started walking, telling the butterflies to calm down, we're almost Home.
She walked quickly, avoiding any walkers so she wouldn't even have to waste the time it would take to put them down. She did decide she would stop to shoot the occasional squirrel or rabbit if she saw one, but she was just too excited to see her family to go any slower than she was.
She missed Maggie so, so much. She was so worried about her after the prison, about how she would have been holding up after seeing their Daddy like that… All Beth could think about was crashing into her sisters arms and finally, finally having the cry she has been holding in for… for too long. The thought of finally being able to reach out and hold Maggie's hand again when she needed that familiar contact, that touch that reminded her of her momma and daddy and Shawn and being a little girl; it had her throat tightening. Even seeing Glenn again and being able to tease him had her on the brink of tears, she just missed them all so very much. Carl and Judith, Rick, Michone, Carol, Sasha… Daryl…
Thinking about it all was seriously making it difficult to breathe and she knew she needed to focus on anything else, so Beth dragged herself from that bubble.
And then she was there, in front of it all.
In front of the great big nothing Noah's community had become.
Beth's bow clattered to the ground and she herself collapsed beside it shortly after, staring through her heartbreak at the empty houses and spots of decaying bodies on their lawns. The air rushed from her lungs, her muscles trembling, her sobs growing hysterical. She brought her knees to her chest, biting into her kneecap to silence herself as the large tears leaked from her cerulean eyes. She rocked herself gently, thinking of her momma. Thinking she will never see her again. Thinking she may never see any of them again.
Dawn laughed in the background, "This is your legacy, Beth! Death! Don't you see? You are not supposed to be here, Beth! Just give up!" The ghost sighed and sat beside the shattered girl, murmuring on about various methods of suicide well the blonde fell off to lala land.
Beth didn't know how long she sat on the ground like that, she didn't know how long ago the sun had set and moon had risen and how long she had managed to stay hidden from the dead. But a twig snapped behind her and, just like a doe in the forest, she was suddenly on her feet and alert. She had brought her knife up to her chin and her fist at the height of her shoulder, eyes darting through the shadows. She found nor heard anything, but still felt like something there was watching her. She figured perhaps it had been a walker stuck on something. What she did know was that she needed to get off the street and somewhere safe. She needed to shelter herself and let the nightmares she knew would haunt her tonight have their way. So she sheathed the knife and collected the crossbow from the street, walking into the dead town she had stared at blankly all night.
She curled up in the passenger seat of the car, watching Daryl intently as he cleaned the grime from beneath his finger nails. He puffed on a cigarette dangled loosely between his lips and pretended he wasn't watching her watching him. She was smiling softly and perfectly content with the warm silence that surrounded them. When he finally finished and put the knife away, Beth reached out and tugged at his finger, pulling his hand closer so she could weave her little fingers into his and press her petite palm to the warmth of his own. He watched her intently but did not pull his hand away, instead, his fingers gave a belittling twitch as they slowly began to close around her hand, his thumb tracing back and forth against the softness it found there. She was just sitting up to shift herself closer to him when the first few walkers slammed their bodies into the frame of the car, then more and more walkers, limbs and faces and teeth snapping against the glass windows all around them. Beth screamed and Daryl tensed, both panicking and trying to find a way out, but they were surrounded entirely. Daryl stared mutely at the steering wheel column, chewing on his lip. Beth saw him and knew, in her bones, she knew; he was going to leave her. He was going to save her, sacrificing himself.
"No. Don't you dare! No, no, no. NO! You are not doing this to me, Daryl, absofuckinglutely not!"
He lunged over the middle of the car and caught Beth by her face, one hand sliding back into her hair and pulling her towards him, he crashed his lips breathlessly over hers and kissed her possessively, thickly, passionately. He poured all of it into this kiss, every drop. Pulling back, he grazed his thumb over her lip, "I love you," he whispered roughly before swiftly popping the door open and exiting the car, vanishing into that bottomless darkness and leaving Beth to sob uncontrollably alone in the car.