Title - Bodies And Souls Collide
Chapter title - A Question Of Morals
Author - OblivionsGarden
Genre - Hurt/Comfort/Romance/Family/Horror
Disclaimer - I do not own The Walking Dead in anyway shape or form. I only own the plot points surrounding my oc's, not recognized from the show or comics.
Chapter Word Count - 2355 words.

To: elljayde - Thanks so much for the review and for pointing out I'd been misspelling Lori as Laurie. Honestly it's just because I've only ever seen the name spelled that way but I'll make sure to spell it properly from now on. xx

A/n - Please leave a review, I'd greatly appreciate it. Hope you enjoy, xx (:

WARNING - Talk of depression, self harm and suicide.

"I'm fine, I promise. All I'm gonna do is lay here and sleep, ok? Go get some air."

Beth gave Teddy a reassuring smile as the older girl headed out of the door. Beth was coherent but she wasn't fine like she said she was. Lori had pulled her to one side to tell her that she'd tried to take a knife from her lunch and was talking about wanting to die in her bed with her family. It scared Teddy, she'd never heard Beth talk like that before. She wanted to tell her the truth about her time in rehab but if she was honest, talking about that scared her too. She made sure to leave Andrea and Maggie in the house to keep an eye on Beth before she left.

She wasn't sure where to go. They had enough food so there was no reason to go hunting, Beth clearly wasn't up for training, there wasn't anything that needed fixing that she knew how to take care of... She wondered for a while, appreciating the quiet but also feeling useless until she found Rick. He was coming away from the barn where they were keeping the stranger. He spotted her, slowing to stop.

"I didn't mean for Lori to find out like that." She said, climbing to perch on the top of the fence. "I'm sorry."

"You got nothing to be sorry for." Rick moved to lean against the fence beside her, releasing a heavy sigh. "What you said, about me not coming when you moved... I wanted to but Molly- your mom, she never told me where you were going or that you were even moving. She'd mentioned that she was thinking about it but she didn't say it was definite. I came over on a Tuesday morning to walk you to school like I did every Tuesday and the house was empty."

"She told me that you were working and that you were gonna follow us in a couple weeks."

"I called her parents, he friends, her work... I even spoke to the police but no one knew where you were. She took my daughter away from me and that broke my heart. But I looked for you. I never stopped looking for you."

"We never stopped moving." Teddy's chest felt heavy and her voice thick. "We lived with her aunt for a while... Some old spinster nun. We moved around the south, but always close enough to the same school where her aunt worked."

"What happened?" Rick cleared his throat, sniffing a little. "I'm guessing you weren't with your mom when everything happened."

"No, I was in..." She broke off. Nobody but Hershel knew the truth. "I was in a hotel... Me and my band were on tour."

"You're a musician?" Rick couldn't help but smile at the news. He'd always listened to music with Teddy at the breakfast table. "I wish I was around. I would've come to all your shows."

"Look, this is weird for me, ok? I've spent so long hating you and now I find out I had no reason to, it's just... I'm not gonna start calling you dad and try and go back to how it was cause it can't be like that."

"But we can be friends, right?" Rick held out his hand, a peace offering to start new and keep moving forward.

"Yeah. We can be friends."

It was a little while later, sometime in the afternoon whilst Rick and Shane were taking their captive away from the farm. Teddy was loading her truck, about to go on a run when Lori came running over to her. She closed the truck door and met her halfway, sensing something was up immediately.

"It's Beth." Lori turned back the way she came as Teddy fell into step beside her. "She's cut herself."

"Shit."

Teddy took off running, flying up the steps of the house and into her bedroom. Hershel was already there, tearfully stitching up his daughters wrist. She took a breath and waited outside, closing the door behind her. It was a little while until Hershel came out, a little blood on his hands.

"Talk to her, Theodora. Please."

Teddy nodded, quietly heading back into Beth's bedroom. The young blonde was sat against her headboard, eyes glassy. Teddy climbed in beside her, wrapping her arm around her shoulders.

"I'm gonna talk for a minute and I need you to listen, ok?" Beth nodded, tucking herself into her side. "I get it, wanting to be able to choose how you go out... Before all this, I wasn't on tour like I told you. I was in rehab." Beth pulled back to look into Teddy's eyes. "I checked myself in. I used to hurt myself, alot. It was just how I dealt with things. Then when I was on tour, things got too much and I tried to kill myself. My bass player found me and took me to hospital. I scared myself so I decided that I needed to get help. I told your daddy and he helped me find a nice place that I could get on insurance."

"Daddy knew?"

"He was my emergency contact. My someone to call when I needed to talk... A few days after everything happened he was supposed to be coming to pick me up and I was gonna come stay here a while until I got my own place. I figured it was time to stop sleeping on sofas." Teddy smiled a little, despite the topic. "Funny, last thing I did was try and die and now I've never fought harder to stay alive."

"What changed?"

"People help. As much as I avoid 'em sometimes, they help. They keep me occupied when my head gets messy. I need them. I need you. So I'm gonna be selfish from here on out cause I'm not letting you die Beth Greene. Not today, not ever. You're gonna have to accept that."

"How did she do it?" Teddy asked Maggie

"She broke the mirror in her bathroom."

"Why wasn't anyone watching her?"

"Andrea was supposed to be but she opened the door and left her to it."

"She what?!"

Teddy stormed out of the house, once again on a mission to find Andrea. She wasn't too far from the house, sitting and staring into the distance. She didn't move when she saw the angry brunette, just turned to wait for the yelling.

"What were you thinking?"

"She needed to decide to live on her own."

"She could've done that without cutting herself... Honestly, Andi, I don't get you anymore. Since Amy died it's like you don't give a shit about anyone but yourself."

"Don't talk about her."

"No, I will talk about her! You know why? Because to me, Beth is Amy and I am you. Put yourself in that situation, would you have left Amy to break a mirror and slit her wrists?" Teddy was yelling now and Andrea was set to shout right back. Both were thankful that most of the group were too preoccupied to take notice of them. Most of them.

"That's not the same thing!"

"Isn't it? Beth is mine and Maggie's little sister and we take care of her. That's what family does. Not letting her make a stupid decision that she might not be able to regret later."

"You act like you have any idea how she feels! How I felt! You don't know and you never will."

Teddy was furious. How could she assume anything about someone she'd met just a few months previous. Someone who was so guarded about their past. When it came down to it, Andrea knew nothing about Teddy or her life or what she knew and understood. Teddy stepped forward, pushing up the sleeves of her Henley. Both wrists were littered with small scars, some faded pink, some old and white. But there were two that were different. One on each wrist, running length ways still a dark angry shade of pink. There were still tiny puncture marks were the staples had been.

"I understand perfectly."

She left Andrea alone, once again to think about her actions. Teddy was heading out into the woods to clear her head when she heard a small voice behind her.

"Teddy?" Carl looked more timid than usual as he approached her. "Dad said you're my sister."

"Yeah. Half sister, I guess." She sighed, following him back to camp. "Is that ok?"

"Yeah. You're pretty cool." Carl sat down beside her, glancing down at her arms which were covered by the sleeves again. "Why did you do it?"

Teddy balked, having never been asked so bluntly by anyone other than her therapist. But Carl was just a child and he didn't know that depression and suicide were usually topics that people avoided like the plague.

"I was sad."

"Why?" Teddy smirked at the innocent question, so fitting of his age.

"Because my mom wasn't a very nice lady. And I didn't go to a nice school or have nice friends to play with. And sometimes things get too much for a persons brain and the brain forgets how to be happy. So you think that you can't be happy again and you don't want to be sad forever."

"Oh."

Oh. So simple and so non judgmental. Teddy made a mental note to talk to Carl more often.

"You're are lucky to have a mom like Lori."

"You don't like her."

"We're not friends, I'll admit but she is a damn good mother. Can't fault her there. I mean she raised you and you're pretty cool."

The following day Teddy was doing anything she could on the farm, not wanting to be too far from Beth. Daryl had asked her how she was and Teddy appreciated the fact that he took the time to ask, despite having never had a real conversation with Beth. Carl had promised not to tell anyone about her scars since she still wasn't ready for it to be common knowledge, nor was she ready to start wearing t shirts around everyone. Maybe when the scars had faded more.

Shane and Rick returned with the captive and she knew something bad was going to happen again. She could see it in Shane's eyes that he was too wound up not to snap soon. Dale approached her in the late morning, trying to persuade her that killing the boy was a bad idea.

"I agree with you, Dale." Teddy shrugged. "But I don't have any other ideas so I'm not so sure my opinion is gonna make a difference."

"It will make a difference. A difference between keeping on and the end of this group."

She sighed, glancing down at the barn. She hadn't been down there since the massacre a few weeks ago. For a moment she wondered about trying to talk to Shane, but she knew that he was too far gone. There would be no getting though to him now.

She spotted Carol by herself and felt a pang of guilt in her chest. She'd barely spoken to her since Sophia. She moved over to sit by her, offering a small smile.

"Sorry."

"What for?"

"I haven't spoke to you in so long... If I'm honest it's cause I didn't know what I should say."

"It's alright. At least you're honest about it." Carol smiled a little. "Has Dale spoken to you?"

"Yeah."

"And?"

"And I agree with him, killing the boy is a bad idea but I think leaving him alive and dropping him off somewhere is just gonna bring his group right to our doorstep."

"Option C?"

"You have one?"

Carol shook her head with a sigh and Teddy gave her an expression that said 'me either'. They sat together for a while, Teddy having missed talking to Carol. The older woman was motherly but not in an over bearing, patronizing way. She just cared for people and had a big heart. Teddy just hoped that wouldn't get her killed in this new world.

"Dale, I already told you I agree with you." Teddy stood beside the frustrated man as he tried to convince everyone not to kill the boy. "I don't want to sentence a man to death but I don't know what else we can do. Every other option we have is too dangerous... I'm sorry."

"Anybody else? Are y'all gonna watch, too? No, you'll go hide your heads in your tents and try to forget that we're slaughtering a human being. I won't be a party to it." Dale left, saying something to Daryl as he did.

The group dispersed after the meeting, everyone feeling pretty shitty about themselves. Teddy followed Daryl to his camp, again wanting to be in silence for a while. It was dark out when she finally spoke.

"What did Dale say to you, when he left?"

"He said the groups broken."

"Do you think we were right? To decide to kill the kid?"

"Too late now." Daryl shrugged. "Plus, you didn't decide that."

"No but Dale was right. Not making a decision is killing him anyway. We are broken." Teddy rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hand, fighting off a yawn.

"When was the last time you slept?"

Teddy shrugged as she thought about it. "Couple days ago, maybe. Why?"

"You should sleep. No good hunting with your eyes shut."

"You worried about little ole' me Dixon? You going soft?"

Teddy smirked as Daryl's cheeks flushed a pale pink. Before he could come up with something sarcastic to say in reply they heard loud screaming coming from the middle of the field. They were both up and running immediately, their joke quickly forgotten.

Dale was lay on his back, stomach torn open with the insides pulled out. Teddy dropped to her knees beside Andrea, looking down at Dale's open mouthed expression. Everyone was talking all at once, no one being heard over one another until Andrea begged for someone to do something. This time it was Daryl who ended the suffering.

"I'm sorry, brother."