Before
She remembers arguing with Dawn. Which time it was, she can't sort out, but she knows they fought about something that day.
Remembered falling. And pushing. She might have fallen that day but she distinctly remembers pushing some as well. Down the elevator? She knows she and Noah went out that way. Maybe she's mixing things up.
She remembers the feel of a gunshot, the ringing that shatters your eardrums and makes your vision go blurry for a second. Just one. So different from the many that've been shot in the years since the world fell.
There's memories of waking up Carol too, except sometimes she's putting the wrong syringe in the IV and instead of waking up she starts seizing. Except Beth knows that's not right, it was Trevitt who died as a result of her trust in the doctor, not Carol. Carol woke up slowly, battered, and then all at once too quickly as they had to move her.
A breach; there was someone in the hall.
NowThe thing about head trauma, at least in her experience with it, was that the memories of just before the event did not always come back to her in a linear fashion. If they did at all.
Remembers fog, or gas, surrounding her, blocking the light. Blocking her shot and her swings. Blocking theirs. She remembers plunging her knife into a mobile head - living or reanimated she couldn't be sure.
There was a voice that called out for her. One she should know, does know. Daryl.
Beth's eyes finally popped open against a harsh light as she pushed out a puff of air. It took a moment for her vision to focus as she lifted her head to see aged stone walls and a cage of steel bars ahead of her. She blinked a few times and sat up, noticed that she was laid on a barely cushioned cot, hands untied. They must have not seen the point in it. A mistake she promised to make them regret.
She turned her head at a slight movement off to her side, someone locked inside the cell to her right. Whoever it was was also laying down with a blanket pulled over them, and she didn't get a chance to look more closely as a voice pulled her attention.
She didn't know if she was really surprised by the owner of the voice or not at this point..
"Elizabeth," the voice drawled. "You're finally awake. Good," the English woman said with her signature smile. It always looked more like a grimace to Beth, as if the older woman hadn't had much practice smiling earnestly. "Now we can finally make some progress."
The woman was on the opposite side of the cage's bars and looking exactly the same as she did the last time Beth had seen her: brown hair pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck, black overcoat, and a pretentious look on her face. The only difference was a few streaks of grey hair near her brow.
Beth blinked once more and set her face in a stern deadpan, as she pushed away all worries of Daryl and his whereabouts. She couldn't think about him and put on her Councilor's mask.
"The guards checked you over before throwing you in the cell. Have a run in with the acidic ones, did you? I've heard the burn is incredibly painful." Beth stayed silent but a scream rang out from another room somewhere in the building. It didn't sound human, and she tried not to let the worry show on her face. This was not the time or place to give away any emotions. Her eyes narrowed as two gunshots were fired in the distance.
Lieutenant Colonel Kublek merely spread her grin further across her face. "I am wondering…," she started. "What are the chances that you'd find yourself running to the same part of Europe that I did? How did you manage to cross the Atlantic, Elizabeth?" When the blonde did nothing but continue her stare, she continued. "No matter. I'm much more interested in how you connected with the Union of Hope." Beth focused all her energy into keeping her face still. "The American man you were brought in with has been causing problems here for awhile, did you know that?"
There was shouting down the hall that echoed within the stone walls of whatever building it was that they were in. She couldn't understand the mumbled French, but she used the interruption to turn the conversation around. "How exactly did you come to be here Lizzy?" The only way Beth had been able to pay the older woman back for insistently using her full name was with the childish nickname. "You fled so quickly after the coup you designed fell apart."
"I have family here," the British woman confessed easily. "I realize you may not care about familial ties," she said, attempting to insult the younger woman. "But they do still matter to some of us."
The blonde gave a small smirk. "Didn't you send your own daughter off on a suicide mission?" Kublek's frown was instantaneous, but the English woman's attention was suddenly pulled away as a flurry of footsteps filled the open doorway. A uniformed man entered and said something to the lieutenant colonel, who barely threw a glance towards Beth before leaving the room to deal with whatever was happening down the hall.
Beth took the chance to stand and look around the room for anything she could use, weapons, keys, anything. There was nothing outside of the cells other than a desk and an empty chair, and a hook where the keys should be, so she turned her head towards the other cell and immediately took a step back.
Staring at her like she'd seen a ghost was none other than Carol Peletier.
The two just stared at each other until another gunshot rang out against the stone, making them both jump slightly. Neither of them gets a chance to say anything before Kublek quickly sweeps back into the room. "Apologies," the Brit said without any actual remorse. "The man you came in with wasn't keen on being used in Dr. Laffleur's experiment so I helped him along. He didn't need to be alive to participate anyway."
Beth whipped her entire body around to face her. "What did you say?"
Kublek smiled widely at her reaction. "So he does mean something to you," she said matter-of-factly. "I can't remember the last time I saw any kind of reaction like that out of you, Elizabeth."
The blonde was panicking, not concerned about what she could be giving away in the least. She couldn't have actually meant it…right? She could be bluffing. She had to be. "Where. Is. He." she ground out.
The older woman only smiled wider. "I knew I'd heard his name before when Marion mentioned it, but I couldn't place where I'd heard it until I saw that you were brought in with him. He was on your list, wasn't he?" Beth grit her teeth and imagined all the ways she was going to enjoy hurting the woman in front of her. "I know you instructed them to keep it a secret, but once we convinced Beale to come to our side, he was more than willing to give us details about you." The blonde sneered at her as she spoke the next words. "Daryl Dixon," the woman enunciated. "Who is he to you?"
Out of the corner of her eye, Beth could see that Carol had also straightened up at Daryl's name, and was closer to the bars than she'd been before. The former Councilor growled. "If you've hurt him–"
Kublek chuckled. "You'll what, Beth? This isn't like the CRM. There's no one here to save you, no one to back you up. The only reason you're even still alive is so that our scientists can study your immunity. Something that should've been done from the start. So selfish," she looked down at the younger woman haughtily. "Hiding behind the Republic when you could've been saving lives–"
"We were working on a cure and you know it."
The brunette gave an audible laugh at that. "Oh please, between you running off to avoid your feelings every other week and the Council's insistence on keeping things as normal as possible there was never going to be any progress. Not without sacrifice, and you weren't willing."
She was maybe a little too close to being right so Beth focused on what was making her the most angry, most concerned. "Where's Daryl?"
Kublek grinned again. "Marion wanted to kill him, but I convinced my cousin that he'd be more useful in getting you to comply. As long as you're agreeable, he'll be fine," she warned. "Be difficult and I'll personally take out my frustrations on him." Beth bit her tongue in an effort to stay quiet, anger radiating off her in waves. The English woman simply smirked once she realized she'd won. "Dr Edwards has been sent for, I assume you remember him?" She didn't wait for a response. "We'll get started once he arrives."
With nothing but a glare from the younger woman, the Lieutenant Colonel walked from the room, slamming the outer door. Metal slid against metal as a key was turned in the lock, and the former family members were left alone.
Carol wasted no time. "Edwards? From Grady?"
Beth spun towards her and nodded. She'd aged of course, but Carol still looked exactly like the maternal figure she'd looked up to years ago. "He's been in France for years apparently. We caught him a few days ago. Rick took him back to The Nest."
"Rick's here too?" the grey-haired woman asked, eyes wide.
She grinned, nodding once more. "And Michonne."
Carol blinked a few times before she smiled back, half a laugh leaving her lips. "Oh, they're so screwed."