a_littlefaith | (no subject)

The apartment looks amazing, so at least there's that.

Beth has put a lot of work into the decorations, the lights and the tree. There are wrapped gifts under the tree, most of them for Judith and Carl, and there are cookies and candies and chocolates on the table. The rest of the apartment is more or less the same, she doesn't have a lot of extra money to be buying Christmas place settings or anything like that, but she thinks she's done a good job regardless.

And it's a good thing, too, because she's not sure dinner is going to turn out the way it's supposed to.

It's not bad, not from what she can tell, but it's just not very good either. Nothing is burned or overflowing, nothing is undercooked and nothing looks like it might possibly poison someone accidentally. But she's tasted everything and it's all just kind of bland.

The only thing this dinner has going for it is dessert, which is apple crumble and the one thing Beth did learn how to bake from her mother. It's still in the oven and it smells delicious and she's sort of hoping no one will notice that cinnamon and apple is the only smell in the apartment when they arrive for dinner.

She doesn't say anything about it, not to Daryl, but she sits down at the piano and plays a soft, melancholy song, something that's got no place at a bright, cheery Christmas dinner.

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She's done some cleaning up and the others are talking by the tree when she sinks into the chair beside Carl, pulling her legs up and wrapping her arms around them, her chin resting on her knees. "Sorry the turkey sucks," she says, because it does. It's bland and boring, nothing at all like the turkey her mom used to make for Christmas, and she knows the rest of the dinner isn't much better. She'd tried, she really had, but Beth's getting to the point where she might have to admit that she doesn't know a thing about cooking.

Or maybe she's just no good at it.

"I know it does, so you don't have to be polite," she tells him. "My mom was always so good at this stuff and I knew she'd teach me eventually, but..." She trails off and shrugs. But eventually had disappeared the day her mother had died. Carl knows that. He knows it better than anyone.

He'd thought he wanted to be left alone, but when she sank into the chair beside him, he felt a coil of tension in his chest unravel, and he let out a shaky breath.

"It's better than canned beans and squirrel," Carl said, cutting her a look, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.

"I don't think my mom was a great cook. She tried, but..." He shrugged. "She should be here. It doesn't feel right, doing this without her." And he knew she could say the same thing about her mother. About Maggie. About all of them.

"My mom, too," she agrees quietly. "And my dad." And all the others. Maggie and Shawn. Andrea and Dale and Carol and Tyreese and everyone who's missing, but shouldn't be. Even the ones who aren't dead, who might still be back there, pushing on toward some kind of survival. They should be here, too. She doesn't understand why they get to be the ones who live in this place without walkers and the rest have to stay back there.

"It's not the same without them," she says. "I know."

But she had tried anyway. And she thinks there are some areas in which she succeeded. Daryl is happy in a way she's not sure she's ever seen before. He's quiet about it, but she can see it. And Judith might not really understand everything, but she'd hugged the giant squishy elephant Beth had bought for her to her cheek and that's good.

"It kind of feels-- I mean, don't get me wrong, I think this is great. You did... You did a really great job. It's just," he pressed his lips together, not only struggling to find the words, but not wanting to hurt her feelings, when he'd do so much to make the meal nice for them.

But if anyone would understand, he knew it would be Beth.

"It just feels a little like we're trying to pretend like everything's back to how it was. Not just today. This whole place, you know? It's like everyone wants to pretend."

She nods, because she understands what he's saying and it might even be true of a lot of people, but she doesn't think it's true of her. Of any of them. She doesn't think they're pretending; she knows how much they're still missing, what's been taken from them, she remembers all the loss, sometimes as fresh as it was the very first day it happened. They all do. Especially on days like today.

"When we were in the prison, those first couple of weeks, I was afraid to trust it. I started feelin' like maybe it was easier to be afraid than to hope for somethin' good and I know it all went bad, but... Daddy looked at me one day, my bag still packed, my gun still always right there and I didn't even ask him, he just said, If you don't have hope, what's the point of living?" She's chewing her lower lip and she shrugs, looking over at the tree.

"If I go back there, if I go back there and God forbid, somethin' bad happens to me, I go back knowin' I made the most of the second chance I got. But I still remember." She looks back at Carl and smiles a little. "I just wanna be sure I get everything outta this place that I can and if I live here for the rest of my life or if I go back there, I can still be proud of myself either way."

"I get that," he nodded, because maybe he wasn't ready to live that way, not completely, he still understood why she needed to.

"I know you haven't forgotten. It's just... I don't know. It's hard to trust any of this. That it's even real."

It didn't feel real, on days like this. He was still waiting to wake up from this great dream, into the nightmare of the real world.

With a grin, she reaches over and pinches Carl's arm. Not hard, just hard enough, then waits for a second to see if he wakes up. Or if she does. Even if she wants to trust this place and really try to be happy here, it's not impossible that something like that might happen.

"Well, we're still here," she says, as if pinching him is some kind of perfect test. "I know what you mean, but I think I'm just... I think I'm scared of wastin' it," she admits. "Even if it's not real, I still feel like it is. You're really here and I'm really here and I can taste this bland turkey and I can play the piano, so even if it's not real, it feels like it is."

"Ow," he laughed, jerking away from her and rubbing at the sore spot on his arm. "Okay, okay, I get it. You're right. Even if it's not real, there's not really any point in wasting it."

Spearing a piece of turkey with his fork, he took a bite, chewing thoughtfully. "It's not that bad," he decided, barely keeping a straight face.

"Shut up," she says, laughing. She's not really insulted, though, because she's pretty sure this day is going to be a relatively good one regardless of the state of her turkey. There are still gifts under the tree and the lights are sparkling and even though they're all missing people, they have each other. Which is important. "You better be nice to me or you won't get any of the apple crumble I made and I might not be much with turkey, but my mom did teach me how to bake."

Then she tips her head toward the tree and says, "Won't give you your present either." And she's pretty sure he'll like it. She'd found an entire run of a new comic series, something not from their world, something written in Darrow, and it's only twenty issues so far, but the guy at the store had promised her that it was amazing.

"Yeah, you will," Carl insisted, shoving another forkful of turkey into his mouth, because it really wasn't that bad. It didn't really taste right, and it was sort of dry, but he'd learned not to be picky.

"Thanks. For doing all this. It is kind of great."

"Yeah, I will," she admits, because they both know it's an empty threat. She smiles a little and leans back in her chair, her arms still around her knees.

"Thanks for comin'," she says. "Wouldn't be much of a Christmas without family, no matter what I did." And she's glad the others are here in Darrow, more than she can say. She'd get along alone if she had to, but she's glad she doesn't have to. She needs these people.