a_littlefaith | (no subject)

(no subject)

When it comes to her own music, Beth is of two very different minds.

There's a part of herself that knows she's talented. She can write thoughtful lyrics, she can set them to interesting, intelligent melodies, and she can play nearly any instrument. Her voice is both sweet and powerful, something she can hear when she listens to herself after she's been recorded. But at the same time, she has terrible insecurities about it all, convinced she's only fooling herself, and all of this will never amount of anything resembling a career.

But here she is. This is an album, it's her album, fully finished, and it sounds good. Not only that, but people are buying it. They want to spend money on this.

Beth plays a short set, not wanting to overwhelm herself, then mostly just talks to people at the release party. It's still crazy to think they're here for her, but everyone is really friendly and happy and supportive. It relaxes Beth and by the time she realizes someone is staring at her, it's nearing the end of the party. A lot of people have left already, the bar has emptied out a bit, and she's standing alone near the stage door, off to the side and out of the way, so she can put her guitar away.

Her corners her there.

She's been watching ever since she realized he was looking at her, but only out of the corner of her eye, thinking there really wouldn't be anything to it. Guys are weird sometimes, she's used to that. It's the memory of Gorman that she's not used to, not yet, even less used to it than she is the memory of her own death. There are things she's dealt with and things she's ignored, and as he corners her in that tiny hall just beside the stage, a shiver runs up her spine and she tastes green apple candy.

Turning, Beth flashes a quick smile and tries to get past him. "Sorry, I just gotta-"

"You were really good up there," he says, stepping closer to block her way. "You've got a great voice. Great look, too."

"Thanks," she says, trying to stay bright. Her mouth is flooded with the taste of that candy Gorman had pushed between her lips and she tries not to taste it. It isn't real, she's only imagining it, but it's sweet and sticky and she licks her lips, trying to force the taste away.

"Yeah," he says, putting his arm against the wall so there's nowhere for her to go. She doesn't even have her knife. Just the guitar behind her, barely a weapon at all, especially in a space as small as this. "You're really pretty, you know. Would it kill you to look at me?"

Beth glances up, sees Gorman, no matter how impossible it is, and glances away.

"I really have to get goin'," she says, her voice coming from far away. "But thanks."

"Hey," he says, pressing closer to her. She can feel his breath on her cheek, on her neck. He's so close and she can see Gorman's face and taste the candy and she wants to scream. "C'mon, stay awhile."

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Beth doesn't mean to and she doesn't want to, but she feels Blue's arm around her shoulders and stiffens anyway. After remembering Gorman, she'd put it all aside, forced it into a place where she didn't have to think about it because she hadn't wanted to acknowledge all the other things that had happened to her beyond her death. That part had been the worst, so she'd chosen to focus on that.

But she should have known better. The rest isn't going to just be ignored because she wants it to.

"I'm sorry," she says, knowing Blue will have felt the way her shoulders tightened up. "I'm sorry, it's not you, it's- air, yeah. Air sounds like a real good idea right now."

Blue does feel Beth tense, and she drops her arm almost immediately, a little annoyed at herself for not having thought that touch could be a bad idea. And even more annoyed that this is a thing they have to think about, that they all have to be conscious of all the time.

"Don't be sorry," she assures her, "it's okay, whatever you need is okay." She keeps them walking toward the exit: she must still look a little murderous because the remaining crowd kind of parts to let them through.

Outside the air is chilly and quieter, and she steers them both toward the edge of the building. "What an asshole, jesus. Has he ever come by before?"

That's a good question and Beth searches her memory for his face, but every time she tries, she only sees Gorman. Eventually she has to shake her head, not because she knows for certain, but because she can't see anything besides Gorman. She can't taste anything beyond that awful green apple candy.

"I don't know," she says. "I'm really not sure, I just keep... I keep seein' this... this other guy. From before. From-"

She can't find the words, but she wants to say them. She wants to tell Blue what happened to her in those weeks before her death, but she has no idea where to even start.

"I just need a sec," she says, exhaling slowly.

Blue's indignant rage expands in her chest from a focused anger to a more hypothetical salt-the-earth encompassing whoever this other guy from before is. It's worse, in a way, because she can't lay hands on whoever it was that hurt Beth, then, that made all of this worse. But it's also not her fight, and she takes a long breath, slowing her heartbeat, and keeps her mouth shut for once because she's not helping anything that way.

"I'm sorry," she says, quietly, and maybe she means for asking too many questions, and maybe she means for what happened, or both. "Take your time, okay? We can stay here as long as you need."

Beth nods slowly, taking a few more deep breaths as she leans back against the wall behind her. As she does, she realizes it's been so long that she's not even sure what Blue knows about her life before and what Beth's never thought to mention. Georgia is as far away from her now as it can get and although she misses her family and the people she'd left behind all the time, the life itself seems like it happened to someone else much of the time.

"The world ended," she says after a second. "Where I'm from. I told you that stuff, right?"

Now that she's had a second to calm down, she thinks she had. She'd met Blue in that awful other version of Darrow, after all, where she'd had to be hard again, had to fight.

Blue nods, slowly. "Not everything, but some of it. Zombies, right, sort of?" The first time they'd run into each other, it had been Beth herself as a zombie (or something like it) that had been after her, dead and feral and wrists-slit, horrible. She hadn't known her well, but you didn't have to know someone well to help them get away from something like that. She'd been watching everyone she loved die over and over at the time. That place had been awful, though it had brought some of her favorite people into her life.

It feels like ages ago, and not long at all. A different era, definitely. It's sometimes hard for her to remember not everyone has experienced those weeks of terror and dark as part of arriving here. Most of what Darrow's thrown at her since then hasn't beat that, except the parts that were straight from Henrietta.

"A different kind than Ellie's, but the same end of the world."

Beth nods and takes another breath before she says, "People are... they take advantage of stuff like that, y'know. Even with the end of the world and all the walkers around us, they still hurt each other. There were these people livin' at a hospital and they'd go around and hit people with their vehicles. They'd do it on purpose so they could take people to the hospital and basically use 'em as slaves."

She shrugs and says, "I didn't realize at first that they'd been the ones to hit me. My wrist was broken and they'd put it in a cast and I thought they'd helped me, but they... there were cops livin' there, too. I feel like I'm not makin' any sense, but these cops, they were keepin' the peace, only they were also- they were raping the women there. Not me. Never... never me. I stopped it before it even really started."

Blue nods as Beth starts, pressing her lips together. She's met so many good people here, but she knows too how terrible people are. How many people had been killed just in the pursuit of power in Henrietta? And that didn't even come down to plain, sexist violence.

As Beth goes on, though, Blue's eyes widen and her brows furrow. "Jesus."

She is rambling in her anxiety a little, but not so much that Blue can't follow. Keeping the peace, only also raping the women there. Sounds like cops. Maybe it comes with her general territory as one of the only black, Latina girls in a small southern town, but she doesn't trust police. Power again: it's always about power. That particular flare of anger passes as she focuses in on what Beth's saying, though.

Even really started doesn't sound good, but Blue's not going to push on that right now. That's not what matters.

"I'm really fucking glad you did," she says, but adds, "God. I can't imagine living in a place like that, having to worry about that, too, with everything else. That's -- Beth, I'm sorry."

"One of the girls there killed herself," she says. "She couldn't take it anymore."

And as someone with scars on her wrist, Beth can't blame Joan for that. She'll never blame her for that. They hadn't known each other very well or for very long, but Beth had gotten the sense that Joan had been stuck at Grady for some time and with someone like Gorman on the staff, she can only imagine the horrors she had been put through. She'd needed to escape and so she had.

"But no one had found her," she continues. "She was just lyin' on the floor in one of the offices and I went in there to clean up and she was there, but then Gorman came in and he... I hit him with a jar. Hard. I left him there with Joan as she was startin' to reanimate. I hope it hurt when she ate him."

Blue feels like she's been punched in the gut, somehow, even though this isn't her memory, it's nothing she could imagine having experienced. It doesn't feel like she deserves to feel clawed into. But that can't override empathy -- something that, after being the normal one living with psychics, with someone who could literally access memories via touch, she always finds herself a little surprised to realize she has a lot of. Usually by being overwhelmed.

She lets out a little huffed breath, and her eyes go wide as she realizes where the story is going.

"I do too," Blue nods, voice icy, then slows down. "Gorman -- one of the cops, I guess?"

Beth nods and says, "The only one I ever really interacted with at all besides D- besides their leader. He was worse than she was, though, even if she was pretty awful, too."

She should have scars from the things Dawn did to her, the beatings she'd put Beth through. She remembers these things, the broken wrist, the stitches under her eye and high up on her forehead. The way Dawn had reopened those wounds when she'd struck Beth repeatedly. There should be scars, but she has only the memories, not the physical evidence.

"She was lettin' them do it, though," she says. "When I confronted her, she denied it, but she knew. She just didn't wanna think about it."

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