Thank you, everybody; you all are the *best*, even when the story falters. Thanks so much for your time and thoughts and responses!
Waiting for them once they've climbed the stairs, once they've returned and turned the knob, are the mattresses. Left behind and empty, now rendered surplus, they lie there as reminders of the new emptiness of the space. Once crossed over the threshold, they three just stare at them, feeling all the more the absence they represent.
"We'll get rid of 'em," Daryl grunts, moving further into the room and shrugging off the bow and his outer layer. Neither Simon nor Beth can quite take their eyes away, a strange fascination harnesses their attention to where their friends ought to be. "Hey—" he nods at them both, "we're okay."
Simon nods first. "Sure." He pushes his hair back and nods again. "Course."
"Greene?" Daryl's looking at her, waiting on her.
"Yeah," she nods. Absently her hand travels to her waist. "We're okay." Her voice is soft telling Daryl what he wants to hear, but not fragile, and not without at least partial conviction.
"Three's enough," Simon asserts gamely. "We keep this town, we wait for rain; we've got this."
Daryl pats him on the back as he moves past, "Good man." He hands Beth a bowl of nuts and wild greens. "Here. Eat."
Beth looks at him, then accepts the dish with resignation. Chewing slowly, her eyes scan the room, now changed to her in some way. "How long will we stay here?"
Daryl stops his work on butchering the two squirrels they've come back with; he looks at her pointedly. "That's whut you're thinking?" Simon's looking too, he's been counting on this place. Not aware of it, not meaning to, he'd been counting on the stability of the apartment and its modest comforts. Despite Beth's initial proscriptions against longevity, he'd come unknowingly to rely on it.
Beth shrugs, as though she hasn't just said something that could shift their whole reality. "We never planned for this to be forever."
"Why?" Simon questions.
"Now?" Daryl's eyes falter on her, on the subtle curve beneath her sweaters. "This a good time?"
"I'hm only saying we should talk about it." She sets the still mostly-full bowl aside. "I c'n travel now, I'm fine. Further on it'll be harder. Much harder after it comes."
Simon looks from her to him. "Why would we move?" Understanding there may indeed be better situations out there to find does not diminish the risk of giving up what they are already assured of. He's not that kind of gambler. Holding onto things is hard enough from the start, without adding deliberately throwing them away.
Daryl drives the point of his blade into the cutting board, "We'll talk about it," he mutters. Placating her with an outstretched hand, reddened some with animal gore, Daryl's compromise bypasses Simon and the seasoned logic fueling his would-be counter-arguments.
Simon knows, above all else, Beth's safety is Daryl's priority. He knows also though that Daryl chagrins to domineer over her, to decide things by just his call alone, stifling her voice. He may in the end often win out over her, and he doesn't shy from ordering her about in small domestic directives — much more noticeably so since the expectation of the baby: 'eat this' 'don't lift this' 'get more rest', but he's loath to not consider her needs, her priorities, her experiences. Simon is certain his own voice carries full weight within this group, but Beth is to whom Daryl intently listens, even when she's saying nothing.
"He back, yet?" Returned from an in-town water run, Simon passes Beth and unloads three plastic gallon jugs on the kitchen counter.
Nestled into an armchair pulled up to the kitchen table, Beth looks up from the book she's marking, annotating, and highlighting, and shakes her head. "Mm-mm." That morning Daryl had taken up the crossbow and headed into the woods to hunt. He was hoping for some big game, something they could smoke and make last. He's been out for hours, but she isn't counting minutes. Success or no, he'd sworn to be back before sundown and Beth is trusting to his abilities and his word, and not allowing the hours passing to penetrate her peace of mind. There's another hour yet before the sun will disappear; there's plenty of time between then and now. Pen in her mouth, Beth turns her page.
Eyeing her as she earmarks the page, Simon fishes silently through his pockets to covertly place two small objects on the table in front of her before crossing the room to sink into the sofa and tug off his boots. Beth glances up from her notes, looks to the unassuming objects left just within her reach, then looks to him. Kicking at his boots, he nods at her with a quiet smile. "I know you been collectin' 'em." Some time ago Beth had started collecting timers and travel alarm clocks. More than that she's also been breaking the musical mechanisms out of music boxes. She hasn't said why, hasn't even said she's been doing it, she just keeps a small sling-shoulder duffle bag full of them. Beth eyes the two offerings on the table, a kitchen timer and a windup toy that shuffles and bleeps. She looks, but says nothing. "Don't know what you want with 'em, but," he peels off his outer layer, "you'll get every one I find."
Beth's slender fingers reach out to touch one of them, grasping it just a little closer to her on the table. "Th'nks."
"Uh-huh," he nods again. Rising up, he glances back at her as he crosses to the kitchen for a drink, rubbing his hands to warm them as he does. "Somethin' to do with th' baby?"
Beth's river eyes fix on the mechanism she holds onto. Her nod is small. "Mm-hm."
She knows, once the baby's come, there'll be no keeping it from crying, not all the time. Babies cry. All babies. Hers will be no different. Every soul still living has had to learn and to adjust; but though the children born in these times will never know another way of life, they are not born knowing this one. They are not born knowing what they have been brought into. Avoiding noise and keeping silent and still will not be innate, it will not be bred by the times. Beth intends to keep her child from becoming a target, from endangering itself and from endangering the family. If an alarm, or a music organ or any noise-making thing that can be thrown, can help to misdirect or to obfuscate her child's cry, Beth will see it done. It may be futile, but she will try. She's never discussed the strategy with Daryl, as he's never discussed with her the supplies he's been working at storing up, formula and powdered milk for one. She knows he's been doing it, but she won't make him admit to it, won't make him face what doing so might portend.
"Y'know," he starts, chewing at the last of the jerky and pausing to look around the room, "we could probably soundproof these rooms some. Blankets, foam insulation, whatever. We could prob'ly reduce the sounds coming out of here by a lot. Wouldn't hurt with th' temper'ture either." With new eyes Simon surveys the walls, already thinking in terms of materials and practicalities. "Don't know what we'd do about the windows…" Though she's hearing him, Beth doesn't make an answer. She drinks her chamomile tea and turns another page in her book. Unfazed, Simon pulls out the chair beside her and takes a seat. Silently he drums his fingers on the table, then he looks at her. "You really want to leave?"
Marking her place with her highlighter, Beth closes the book, sets it atop the table, and gives him her attention. "Nothing lasts."
"In'nt that a dark outlook for a parent?"
"Th' least permanent thing we have is shelter."
His clear eyes stare at her, taking measure of her headspace, of the considerations and experiences fueling and directing her. He swallows. "So, you're calling quits, b'fore it's called on us, that it?"
Beth blinks. "There've got to be communities out there. Settlements. You believe that, don't you?"
"Yeh, sure." He tries again, a little less flippant, "I'mean, yes. There havf'ta be. But, you know," he looks at her, "Beth," again he drums his index finger on the tabletop, "there's a reason we chose not to seek those places out." She looks at him. "You say nothing's as impermanent as shelter? Nowhere 's that more true than a place filled with people, supplies, armaments. A body's got something they want to hold onto, someone else is going to want it too. Right?"
Beth hadn't been looking for a reminder of the prison and its fall. She's been focusing on her child, on her delivery. Not at the forefront of her mind are figures like the Governor or worse. She doesn't think he's wrong, but more and more she's feeling that this place is not her home. It may indeed be what he said: a sort of taking control of a circumstance she can't truly control, but, there's something pushing at her to go. She does not think this is the time to stop listening to herself. Instinct pulls them through.
"What's Daryl's thinking?"
Her head shakes. "He's thinking it over; quietly."
Simon guffaws in an uncensored burst. "Daryl? 'd never peg him f'r quiet."
Beth nods appreciatively but speaks no word against him. Her fingertips reach and pivot her mug in place. Searching, her eyes rise to his. "You're against it wholly?"
He's got no other move to make but shrug. "I trust you. If you leave, I leave with you."
She touches his hand. "We'll decide together. Promise."
With a quick jerk, Simon shifts the hair out of his eyes. "Not worrying 'bout that." He's not a couple, not part of a twosome, but these people are his, these two and their expected child. Even their extended absent family will be his, should they ever find them, just as they two had been fully taken in by his own group. Simon lives with fear, he harbors shadowy doubts, but being forsaken, or overlooked, by Beth Greene or Daryl Dixon is not among them. His trust in them as a group is implicit at this point. And, if they go, if they feel that need – for whatever reason, he will join them. Leaving behind what they've got for nothing more than stark chance is not the move he'd advocate, but he'll go, if they do. He leans against his chair. "Everything we've done here, we c'n do again somewhere else. We bring the hardware, we can do it again." He nods at her. "Do it a hundred times if we gotta."
"...There's no endpoint." With some distance, Beth echoes something Daryl once said to her, shouting at her in the shadows of a town burning down around them in the wake of being robbed and terrorized. There is no finish line, no point at which this all will stop. This is life; even finding their family will not change that fact.
"No," he confirms. "This is what we get. Gotta live the life we've got." The kid bites at his thumb. "We're not miserable."
"No," she smiles for him. "We're not."
"Got friends. Got family. Got books. Got a baby coming."
"We're okay," she grants.
"Hey—" he asks for her attention. "When this happened, you didn't ever imagine you'd be doing what you're doing now," he nods at her waist, at the birthing book she's so acutely combing through. He doesn't need confirmation that she's years from where she'd started, he knows this to be true. It's not from the scars she carries at her wrist that he knows it. Collectively, the whole world had been blindsided. For some time no one could conceive of salvaging from this world of biting tearing death any semblance of normal life. No one thought of finding love, or bearing children. He remembers Daryl's account of the CDC exploding, of the people who died within, unwilling to stage a fight. He remembers, too, all the folks he'd seen give in. But survivors need more than just another breath, and after time the living found ways to let life take root again. And somehow now here they are, living lives and making life.
"No," she agrees. Even when stripped bare Beth wears the evidence of her crisis of faith. It marks for her the distance she has come. "I'h think—" she starts, her dimples setting as she reflects, "I'h forgot, 'bout everything that came before us. All those people, all those wars, the famines, the diseases, the degradations and inhumanity, slavery an' cruelty, and that through it, humanity survived." Idly her thumb runs through the book's thick edge of page corners. "Daddy used to call it a plague. At the start. Said we've always been afraid of what we don't understand."
"It's not a plague. Not like others."
"No," she affirms. "And it isn't what killed my father, or got my sister taken hostage, or shot dead so many of our friends." Her hand moves softly to her child. "... And what's out there hasn't taken us. So that's a choice we have." Beth's blue eyes flutter to him, "Right?"
In answer, he nods emphatically. "As long's there's life, then you've got to live."
"An' we're doing that." It's nearly a question how she says this, but only nearly. Beth believes in what they're doing, in who they are.
Simon winds the plastic toy but does not release it to play through. "Very best we know how." Lifting the mechanism from the table he taps it absently in his hand against the tabletop as it whirrs and chirps in place.
These moments of running and stockpiling and ransacking and fighting, of fortifying, defending, traveling, and searching, these things strung together compose the architecture of their life. It is not a matter of surviving so much, of getting so far, of enduring just enough, of starting over some number of times; this way of life is all they'll ever know. They must make of it what they can, and each remind themselves from time to time they are not in a game of biding time. Now is what they have, a future is what they fight for, and lives worthwhile live in the shapes of burdens shared, griefs and fears known and understood, labors shouldered together, shelters warmed with companionship, laughs that can't be held in, and hopes for an anticipated child. It is truths told, hands held, eyes open to realities, and spirits bolstered. It is change and adaptation.
"Beth," he leans in, "you think there's something out there we'll find? Somethin' we won't regret?" He can't not think of Michael's ashen face, cravenly distorted from its natural self, the cutthroat gash letting out all his life's blood. He thinks of James, the gaping bullet hole that struck him down and left him lifeless. He thinks of his remaining brothers, vanished into unknown wilderness, into unknown terror.
"When we had been in the prison for some time—" her glance flutters to him "—when we had not just water and food but bedding and changes of clothes, and books and art supplies and gardens, I started to feel like we were home. I started to think that we were safe, that we could have that life forever." Silently he listens, too familiar with this train of thinking. They'd always been prepared to surrender the forest camp, to leave it behind if they had to, but he'd always thought they'd be together, move on from it together. He'd believed in their self-created isolationist bubble. "I don't expect that anymore. We can't have that. We c'n have li'ife. We c'n have family. We can't have permanence. This place won't last forever. Maybe there's a settlement to join, someplace strong, maybe there isn't. We won't know if we don't look, we can't find anyone or be found if we stay hidden. This place—" by this she means the apartment, this abandoned town they've claimed "—isn't here. Like you said, we c'n build this anywhere. Only th' next time we'll have water."
"'Keep learnin',' is what you're saying."
"'Keep learning. Keep moving.'"
Simon shakes his head with a wry grin of acquiescence. "Guess I should be packing my shit." She looks at him. "No way you're not gonna convince him."
His smile is goodnatured, but she does not return it in kind, she has none of his certitude on this point. "He's more fearful than he lets on."
Still with a trace of a smile, Simon takes measure of this. "In'nt that true for all of us?"