Hey all, happy to be back with this story! It's been a long time I know; to the readers who have been here since the start thank you for sticking around, and hello & thank you to all of those who have found the story in the interim! (Those of you who are also reading "Hold On", I have the last four chapters plotted out, but what I have so far is reading flat and underwhelming, so I'm taking some time to think them over; unfortunately classes are starting up again so it may take a while to post again, but hopefully I left off in a satisfactory enough place.) This story has been left on it's own a while too; looking ahead I know exactly where it's going, but I haven't been feeling this chapter so much, or the next, but again, after some months I found myself in the 'if I don't write through it and post something I'm afraid it'll stay unfinished forever' bind. [PS, I have a particular issue with this story that's looming several chapters ahead, if anyone's interested in beta-ing ideas, I'd love an ear, please pm!] Okay, enough preamble.
Beth's pulse quickens, and her face flushes in apprehension, but she remains motionless, readying herself for whatever action will soon present as necessary. Is it his?
If it is Daryl's this is a gift and a warning all in one. What they've most sought has come back to them by chance, but that would mean they're staying and sleeping amongst the enemy. Beth's clear eyes strain, endeavoring to make it out before the distance between her and the weapon closes any further. Should she wake Daryl? He'd never fault her for exercising caution. Isn't it likely it is his? How many crossbows are out there? Obviously more than just his one, though many times since left on the road without it it's seemed as if it were. She could call him, but it might be feigned ignorance is the best card to play for now, till they have more to go on. Daryl's isn't the only crossbow in Georgia… She waits.
The others move forward towards their advancing companions, meanwhile, Beth stays put, tensely standing watch, waiting to see what comes next, what play they'll have to make. She keeps her eyes open, her body ready to move.
Without the plank bridge and without the aid of the rope the two boys weaving through the woods at near full speed bound over the river, in a leap not easily made, one a walker could never manage. Out of breath and flushed they stand, quite pleased with themselves, ready to accept the praises of the camp, for coming back with meat, for arriving back in style.
Both of them, maybe eighteen and seventeen, are strong and lean, and look as though they know what they're about in the woods. They laugh some at their exertion then stop as their eyes fall on Beth. They hadn't expected to find her upon their return. It's been months since they've seen anyone new. They haven't seen a girl in longer.
As they study her, a dirty, battered-looking hairless waif, hollow and hungry, sunburned and wan, she looks back at them, dauntless and unblinking. Even now, as banged-up and road-weary as she is, Beth could make herself sparkle if she chose; with a flash of her laughing smile, the deepening of her charming dimples and a bright flutter of her river blue eyes she could be lovely, beneath the dirt and the sweat and the knife-shorn hair she could be winning; but Beth does none of these things. She watches, and she waits, and she measures their characters as well as she may in these first initial moments, and, just as importantly, scans the weapon so prominently slung across one of their shoulders.
Finally Beth breathes again. It isn't his. It isn't Daryl's. It's smaller, doesn't have the right scope; there are countless things that make it not the missing Stryker that had been taken from them.
She doesn't know if it's a relief or a disappointment. Does the revelation leave she and Daryl any better off than they just were moments before these two's arrival? Are they worse off? There's no supportable connection here with the bandits – they do not have Daryl's bow, but then still his bow is gone, likely by now never to be retrieved. But now there is another crossbow – the first they've seen since Michonne brought the Stryker back from Morgan's stash. It is not Daryl's, but it is a crossbow. It's something … Maybe …
"Who's this?" The one with the bow asks, undoubtedly feeling her ready eyes on him.
"'s Beth," Simon says with a nod. "Pete n' Mikey brought 'er in."
"Or," Peter amends weakly, his voice still scratchy and winded from his beating, "they brought me in."
"Pete—" the piercing-eyed bowman exclaims when he gets a real look at his friend's face. "What the hell?"
Peter only brushes it off and plays it down, "Had a run-in in the brush." He means with the walkers. "Got her out of it, and another."
"Daryl," Beth speaks stoically; she finds Peter's recounting of the details light on the truth but generous on his part where he skips over the beating, and she likes him a little more for it, but though she'd adjusted to the boys in the camp, and though she'd known there were two more coming, still she's on edge with their arrival. It's a lot, all these new people after so long, and these two are all amped-up on adrenaline and carrying weapons. Now, though she'd felt safe all last night, and all this morning, with two more there, she's starting to feel outnumbered. Beth had thought it might have been easier to dissolve hers and Daryl's 'us' into their 'them', but one evening around a campfire and a morning of mundane chores does not solidify a unit. Family is created in strides and trials and losses and triumphs; these boys are a community of their own, a team, a family it clearly seems, and although Beth has been welcomed she has not been incorporated. She is on the outside, currently on her own. "He's asleep," she says, her voice heavy and inflexible. She can't quite identify this reaction she's having, she'd warmed to the others so easily the night before.
"Kept watch all night," Michael contributes on Daryl's absent behalf.
"Guess we have been gone a while," the one carrying a rabbit and a squirrel remarks with a light smirk. His accent is thick, and it isn't Georgian. Beth surmises this must be the one from Missouri. "Tom," he shares.
"Rob," the one with the bow says, greeting her with a bit of a lean in his eye. Beth nods; she withholds a smile. Too many changes. It's too many changes to keep up with – from the road to a camp, from abject nothingness to relative safety, from a world of two to a community of a few, and now more. Yesterday had demanded a lot of readjustments – a lazy morning to an abduction, followed closely by a brutal beating, a walker attack, a tentative truce, and finally a new home and promised relative-safety. Yesterday had been nothing but emotional upheaval from start to finish, and now more readjustments are being called for. No one still living hasn't been forcibly accustomed to sudden changes, but still they take a toll. The boys drop their game from their shoulders. "Where's Jamesy?"
"North traps," Michael answers. Rob nods, and again looks at Beth.
"What took you all so long?" Simon asks while Michael moves in between to retrieve and sort the dropped gear.
"Saw some turkey tracks," the one called Tom recounts. "Followed 'em longer 'an we should've. Nicked two of 'em, but as you see— no bird."
"See a lot of 'em out there?" Peter, who hasn't moved at all all day, asks, not meaning the turkeys.
Rob shrugs, rifling through the camp for some easy-to-access food, "Not too many. We took some out, slipped past the rest." Once more his penetrating eyes land on Beth. "Good to have'ya. Hungry?"
"We had a breakfast," Michael says.
"Good." The one called Tom grins at him, "Feel like cleanin' dinner?" The two returned hunters drop to the ground and rest themselves, picking at what food they're given, leaning back and letting the climbing sun beam down on them.
Simon pulls his knife and gets to work on the rabbit, and, with no compelling reason to fear the two new additions, Beth makes herself useful and lowers herself to her knees beside the fifteen-year-old. Beth pulls her own knife, and skins and guts the squirrel with well-practiced skill.
Tom eyes her absently, "You done tha' be'fore."
Beth looks up from her mindless quick-handed work and looks at him. She nods, and wordlessly she returns to her work. She can't shake it – this feeling. It isn't fear, it isn't alarm, but she can't accept these boys as she had the others. Maybe it's because they're older, more able and athletic than most of the others, but they're all able, all capable, they wouldn't have made it this long if they weren't. She isn't afraid, she knows most likely they're fine – if they're linked with these others, who she'd passed the night with safely. These two'd shown concern for Peter's face, but hadn't reacted in rage; all that bodes well.
As she scrapes and cuts and tugs Beth realizes that in all the time she's honed her skills, her tracking, her hunting, her navigating – reading the road – she hasn't been reading people. Rick and the others had been the first group that stayed on the farm, and she hadn't had any part in that decision. She never actually saw, much less interacted with Randal. Every time the Governor came to their gates he was armed and deadly. The road bandits had presented themselves as dangerous from the start. Who has she ever had to read in this new world? Michonne? Sasha and Tyreese? The survivors of Woodbury and the few people brought in from the road, already vetted by Rick, Daryl, or Glenn? Oscar? Axel? Merle Dixon? Beth moves her knife hand to her forehead to brush away stray hair with the back of her hand, only there is no hair to brush back, the gesture is one of habit she realizes, and not now of necessity. Maybe she does trust too easily... How then, can she know? Daryl would advocate caution, but he too had vetted these boys and deemed them safe. Though they're strangers she suspects they're all right. She just has to get her head right… She's been looking for, hoping for, waiting for a group; she just has to get used to being in one again...
It's the bow. She knows it. First thinking it was Daryl's they had, thinking for a moment she and Daryl had placed themselves in an encampment of the bandits, thinking this whole place was a trap, or a ruse waiting to collapse on them, then realizing it wasn't Daryl's at all, and feeling the simultaneous relief and disappointment of that. It was a lot. She can't adjust herself that quickly, it's left her on edge. And on top of that, she cannot keep herself from letting her eyes drift jealously to the crossbow while she works. Her anxiousness is not from fear, nothing on this little island is making her feel off in that way; it's the being so close to what she wants. They'd been looking for something safe, all those days, all those miles, all those close escapes; she and Daryl had been looking for a place to settle, for decent people to surround themselves with – something close to a home, and after all that time since their ambush, all that heartsickness and despair, to find a bow, not Daryl's but a bow just the same — it's all too precarious, too in flux — so just what they'd wanted, but then not exactly. The group hadn't all exactly welcomed they're arrival, what if these two refuse to let them stay? They have no claim on the bow, she and Daryl; will they have to let it slip away? Beth is not afraid; she is anxious for surer footing. And as she cannot lay claim to the weapon then and there, and she cannot affect a change on whatever vision these two, Rob and Tom, have for their co-oped settlement, she does what she knows she can, and flays and carves the meat.
As Beth and Simon clean and butcher the game, Michael retrieves his shovel and returns to the digging. Rob looks up from his meal, eyeing the still-shallow hole, "What're we buildin'?" There had been no plans for new construction when he and Tom'd left the morning before.
For the first time Beth looks up and considers the hole that's being started. She'd taken it for granted this was something they'd had planned. Covertly she too looks at Michael, and he in turn gestures back to Beth.
"We're at capacity; another hut needs to be built."
"They're stayin'?" Rob doesn't ask this of Michael, he's looking at Peter.
Peter's battered face nods. "We all said so."
Beth straightens up, "That's for us? Daryl an' me?" Michael shrugs.
Michael, Simon, Peter, James in his absence, John in his slumber, they hadn't doubted there'd be no objections from the absent two, leastways they hadn't cared much if there would be — this hole is as formal an invitation to stay as can be made. Permanence, these days, and the sense of belonging to any physical place, comes, it seems, in the shape of a hole in the ground, oddly not unlike a widened grave. Still she is grateful for it. Beth leaves the flayed meat on a rock round the fire pit, wipes her blade, returns it to her belt and rises to cross to the dig site. She picks up the second shovel and wordlessly starts to dig. The others watch. Rob and Tom exchange looks, and Michael nods like he and Peter had known something all along when they'd come across her yestermorning, that she is a person of value, and a benefit to their tribe, then he drops his head and continues to dig.
The two of them, Michael and Beth fall into a rhythm of digging, one shovel striking the hard-packed riverbed silt, just as the other shifts backwards to dump upon a growing pile. Beth is glad for the work gloves Rob had handed her; her feet by now are calloused as hell, but her hands are still raw. If Judith were there… her hands would still be soft to touch her, to touch that pink new baby skin… Beth digs. Beth can keep Maggie alive in her mind, this is not beyond her, but it's hard even for her to know that Judith made it out. And it hurts to think of her little ward... Mindlessly she digs. Her endless walking with Daryl after the prison had been its own sort of coping, of therapy; her body doesn't miss the miles this day, but thoughts, she's finding, creep in, when she isn't distracted enough to keep them out.
Daryl eventually wakes and ducks out of the borrowed hut to rejoin the others. He finds them stoking the fire and preparing fresh game. More onions are being cut, and with them some other sort of root. He spots two new faces, and Beth sweating some as she works with a shovel, digging with the kid they'd come back with, while the others cook and sit about. He strides up beside her and in a fluid motion pulls the shovel from her hands and drives it into the ground himself. He knows not for what he digs, but if they're to stay, him and Beth, he means to work; and he digs in and shovels the dirt behind him, over and over. Beth watches, catching her breath and wiping her brow, then moves to Michael to take his shovel; if this is to be her new home, her new bed, of sorts, with Daryl, their first place to call theirs since the prison, she will build it with him. It is their work to complete. She would have taken it on sooner had she known this was for them: A home, such as it is. Daryl shoots her a look, with so many others around she doesn't have to be doing this.
Beth digs in again, "It's ours," she tells him, glancing at the other huts to clarify her meaning, and she shovels out the loosened crumbling dirt. Daryl nods, and strikes the pointed blade into the earth; it's not his call to tell her what to do.
"You're, Darren?" Rob asks, nodding at the older, gnarled looking newcomer.
Daryl stops mid-dig and looks through his long-hanging greasy hair at the two near-eighteen-year-olds who hadn't been in camp the night before. "Daryl," he mutters. He sees the kid eyeing his split and swollen right hand, undoubtedly making the connection between it and the battered face of his friend. But Rob and Tom say nothing. Daryl wipes his brow, looks them over, then nods at them, "Thanks, for havin' us."
Tom shrugs, and smiles, "'ll take anyone who c'n take of themselves."
"Which, you two sure look like you can," Rob remarks dryly. "Look hard 'nough anyway." He nods at the both of them, "Been on the road?"
Daryl and Beth both look. They blink, and then each of them nods.
"Since the start?"
"No," Daryl's gruff voice rasps.
"Last winter," Beth says. "And the last couple months."
"Just the two of you?"
There's an indiscernible twitch in Daryl's expression. "We got, separated." His choice of wording is for Beth.
It's a small sentence, for their great loss, but its significance is well understood by their audience. The boys nod and turn back to their own business. Nothing of personal depth had been shared in those three words, but still the pain of loss is known by all, and though it was only brushed over, it feels as though these two newcomers, the girl and the biker, need a moment to themselves.
Beth and Daryl dig. The other boys talk some, catching each other up on all that transpired since the hunting trip. Rob takes a closer look at Peter's face. Simon works more on the food with the help of Tom. John, when he wakes, scrambles down the face of the steep ledge to the pool below, strips and jumps in. The river, Beth and Daryl both know, must be cold, but still it looks refreshing.
Daryl and Beth take a break, drop the shovels, cross to the stream, wet their hands and their faces, and take some sips of water. As Daryl lifts his head from the water his neck turns, and his eyes land on it. He sees it. A crossbow. It isn't his. It's smaller than his, but it's a crossbow. He eyes it, then his eyes find Beth's. She meets the look, she knows what he is thinking: Other than family, other than Rick, and Maggie, and all the rest, and safety, this is a thing they've been looking for most. A crossbow – silent, deadly, and with replenishable ammo. Neither speaks a word about it though. Though Daryl's eyes study it covetously, they both bide their time, and take a long approach; for now they've found a place that will let them belong. For now that is enough.