a/n: i can't say that i have a good excuse for the wait? i lost some motivation, had some familial issues, almost had my cat pass away, and also had to take a good 24 hours to cope with what i saw in the season 5 comic con trailer for this show. i'm sorry for the wait, truly, i hope this chapter kinda maybe makes up for it. maybe. probably won't. expect a long a/n at the end.

metamorphosis / ch.4
we've all done things

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Terminus is not what Beth expected.

It's a ghost town. It's the hollow sound of blustering wind, the smell of charcoal, and abandoned train cars. The group walks around the outskirts of Terminus twice, and nothing changes. It's mid-afternoon when Tyreese leads them slightly away from Terminus, back into the wood so they can talk openly.

"There ain't a living soul," Tyreese sighs, rubbing his hands over his face. They're all frustrated. "Not a goddamn one."

Carol puts her hands on her hips, working her lip in between her teeth before she speaks. "Someone has to be there. Maggie, Sasha, and Bob were days, maybe even weeks ahead of us. We followed their trail. They must've made it."

"Maybe they're inside?" Beth suggests, cradling Judith to her chest. Beth's voice is muffled by the many blankets that keep Judith warm in the brisk, chilly air. "It's almost winter. Why be outside if you don't have to be?"

Tyreese grunts. "True, but there's not even any patrols. Anyone with that much secured land would be stupid to not have any patrols."

"I haven't seen a walker in a mile radius," Carol adds. "Maybe they are patrolling, but we've just been lucky to avoid it."

Silently, the group contemplates their actions. Beth's anticipation has faded into nothing but anxiety and a lurking sense of danger. She prays her instincts are wrong because her sister and her brother-in-law and more of her family are supposed to be there, but she hadn't seen any sign of a human being the entire time she watched. Beth chastises herself for her naïve optimism; she should have known the situation would never be that easy.

Crossing her arms over her chest, Carol furrows her brow as she speaks. "What should we do?"

"I still don't feel comfortable going in there blind," Beth admits. "Not with Judith."

While nodding, Tyreese agrees as he runs his hand over his scruff. "Me neither. This place doesn't feel right. But I don't wanna stay this close to it all night. We'll go back in for a little longer, then we'll hike back out to somewhere we can make camp."

"Judith needs to eat now." Beth glances at the sun. "In fact, it's her nap time too."

"I don't want to waste daylight," Tyreese gently insists.

After a few more minutes of hesitant back-and-forth compromising, the group makes a quick camp and leaves Carol with Judith. Beth is antsy, but it really is the best decision; Carol is more than capable of taking care of herself and Judith. She's the perfect balance between Beth and Tyreese, but Beth gets no consolation from that fact. Tyreese tries to reassure her, but it doesn't help the paranoia that creeps up Beth's spine or the fast, maddeningly anxious hyperawareness that washes over her body.

When Beth sees the chain link fence surrounding Terminus peek through the trees, she tries to focus entirely on her task. Her fingers constantly flit across the hilt of the knife strapped to her belt, and she works her bottom lip as Tyreese tiptoes through the trees. As she follows her companion's footsteps, eyes on the forest floor, she tries not to imagine Carol and Judith alone at the campsite; she tries not to let her horrible, twisted imagination get the best of her again. She hasn't let Judith out of her sight since the child started teething, and her absence hits Beth harder than she thought it would in the form of a stinging pain in her lower body. Beth attempts to fixate on the dried up leaves and the cold brick walls of Terminus. Like before, the 'sanctuary' is desolate.

Through some scraggly bushes and fallen branches, Beth eyes a white door that's slightly ajar. Winter is approaching fast, and Beth can't find the logic behind letting in even more cold air. The prison was shut tight during the winter, but she still remembers an occasional night of bone-chilling coldness that her ratty old blankets couldn't fix. She feels even more certain that Terminus must be deserted, because who in their right mind would—

Suddenly, her face slams into the ground, and there's dry soil and a leaf in her gaping mouth. She feels something wrapped around her ankle and she fights it; she squirms and pulls at her leg, hoping that Tyreese will see whoever's assaulting her and will save her because she has a creeping sense of deja-vu that's borderline pushing her over the edge again. Beth can't even scream because she's numb from her ankle up, but she's afraid to look down at who has her, because maybe faceless monsters are easier to confront in her dreams than familiar countenances.

"Whoa, Beth, Beth, Beth!" Tyreese whisper-yells, sliding down in the grass beside her. His hands are on her ankle and suddenly she's free. Her eyes are squeezed shut but she doesn't hear any kind of struggle, just Tyreese's even breathes as she tries his best to soothe her. "It's alright, sweetheart, you just got caught on somethin'. You're fine. I'm here. You're okay."

Beth cranes her neck upwards from her spot on the ground and sees a gray loop by her ankle. Silently, she sits up and runs her fingers over it before she tugs at it gently. She meets a good amount of resistence, but she pulls a little harder and she can see a strap of some sort buried under fresh earth. Beth's ashamed she didn't notice it before.

Tyreese scoops the dirt off from around the strap, and eventually unearths the object. It's a blue duffel bag, with gray straps, and it's half empty but heavy enough to have something important. "What is this?" Tyreese mutters as he sets it on the ground beside Beth, examining it silently.

While Tyreese stares, Beth leans forward and unzips the bag as quietly as she can. The first thing she sees is a gun, and then she sees—

Arrows.

She freezes instantly, and she feels Tyreese looking over her shoulder. He pulls out the gun, which she numbly recognizes as Rick's, and then lifts the arrows out of the bag slowly.

"Well, I'll be damned," he drawls.

Beth is too busy feeling her joints lock up and her spine stiffen at the sight of the ammunition. Her mind is a whirlwind and nothing is coherent except for Daryl. He was here and it was recent and he is with Rick, and suddenly her earlier concerns transform into something new: how long ago was he here, why hasn't he come back for these yet, who else is with him— Maggie, Glenn, Carl? She doesn't realize she's been muttering his name until Tyreese noisily shifts through the rest of the bag. She sees bullets, another gun, a couple of knives, and some food.

There's a loud bang, and her and Tyreese drop to the floor, the breath knocked out of both of them.

"You takin' A or B today?" a male voice floats through the air. The hair on the back of Beth's neck prickles.

She hears a groan. "B, please. I don't feel like getting jumped again. That last batch was more ballsy than the rest."

Beth is thankful for the vines and dead, rotting plants surrounding the fence and the area around them. Beth cranes her neck up in a very uncomfortable position, trying to push herself as flat on the ground as possible. She sees two heads, and the wind blows and the smell of cigarette smokes reaches her nose.

"The god damned Asian one jumped me the first time, remember?" the same man speaks. "I don't need the samurai lady doing it either."

An overwhelming desire to hop off the floor, jump the fence, and beat the truth out of these two men takes over Beth. She wants to know where Glenn and Michonne are, where Daryl is, because she's been looking for her family for months and she's knowingly inches away from them for the first time in what feels like forever, and she refuses to let this opportunity go to waste. She must tense or move subconsciously, because Tyreese's hands clamps around her wrist, and his eyes are sharp and hard: No.

The two voices fade away, and Tyreese and Beth stay pressed to the floor, waiting in silence for a couple minutes before Tyreese lets go of her hand. Beth glances at the bag and the arrows and Rick's gun; she thinks about Glenn and Michonne, Rick, Daryl. Beth shifts her eyes up towards Tyreese, and she can't deny the heaviness of her bones and the creeping sense of danger.

"What do we do?" Beth whispers. "They have everyone."

"You put your hands behind your head and get down on the ground," a loud voice calls out from behind them. Beth whirls around to the sight of guns and men and danger, and Tyreese immediately slips into a more flexible stance. A gun cocks somewhere from behind her. "Careful now, big boy," the same man repeats.

Beth is frozen. She can't run or fight back, but there's a part of her that remembers chains and abuse and solitude, and somehow that is more potent than the risks. Before she can move a muscle, there's a blunt jab at the back of her skull, and she sees black as Tyreese screams her name.

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The first time she sees her sister and Glenn sneak a moment away from everyone at the farm, Beth has a sinking feeling that things are about to change.

It amuses Beth that one of her primary concerns during the apocalypse, of all things, is her bond with Maggie. Never mind food, water, or protection— that's what Rick, Daryl, and Glenn are for. All Beth focuses on is her family and maintaining as much of a comfortable atmosphere around the house as possible. It's only natural that Beth worries; for as long as she can remember, her siblings have always been there for her. Ever since Shawn died, Maggie was all she had to latch on to. Jimmy, bless his heart (she liked him, she really did), was immature and a little over his head more often than not, and Beth rarely found genuine solace with him much anymore.

Laying in bed, feeling more dead than alive, Beth's mind flashes once again to the rotting and decrepid body of what used to be her mother. She knows that she should feel more than what she does now. Beth understands that she should not feel like life is meaningless, but there is no use convincing herself that she's wrong. She wishes she wasn't so aware of her acceptance, because it does not make her next move easier.

Her attempt at recruiting Maggie was a complete failure, but Beth grudgingly accepts that she should have expected it. Instead, Beth thinks about Andrea— someone who is stronger than Beth, stronger than Maggie— and she ponders the consequences of her actions while staring at the plain popcorn of her ceiling. Maggie would cry, and Daddy and Patricia would too, but hasn't everyone cried lately?

Andrea's words echo in her ears as she pushes herself off her bed and onto wobbly legs. And later, it's Maggie's frantic voice that Beth can't shake while the blood from her wrist runs through her fingers and onto the floor, coupled with the banging on the wooden door and her own shaky cries. It's Maggie saying I'm not mad, Beth in a trembling voice as her skin burns and stings. It's Maggie crying as she screams about Andrea to a quiet Lori, it's her Daddy muttering to himself about her mother as he stitches her skin back together.

But most of all, even when Maggie's cried into her hair and curled up behind her under the sheets, it's that little voice in her head desperately chanting, no no no, I want to live, that she hears loudest of them all.

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When Beth comes to, she immediately flinches, expecting ropes or chains or handcuffs. There's nothing but sheets, blankets, and a closed door, but she is frightened all the same. Her lower abdomen is aching something fierce, and her entire body feels like she's taken a beating. After pulling up her sleeves, she sees no bruises: just old scars and thin, pale skin. Beth's lethargy is extreme, but what scares her is how unexplained it is.

Beth manages to push herself out of her bed and to the door, but it's locked like she knew it would be. Her area is small and cramped with a narrow shaft of light too close to the ceiling for her to reach. It resembles a storage closet more than a room. Beth lays on her palette wearily, and begins to wait.

She can not say how long it is before she hears the first scuffle of boots outside her door, but it is infinitely longer before it finally opens. A young man strolls in, dressed in flannels and denim, and he sits himself down on a rickety wooden chair as he shuts the door behind him. Beth hears the door lock.

The man watches the dust float about the stream of light before sighing and looking at her. He says nothing, and neither does Beth.

"How do you feel?" he says.

Beth does not hesitate a second. "Who are you?"

He raises an eyebrow. "I see we are not into pleasantries. What's your name?"

"Who are you?" Her voice is scratchy, and her eyes are steel. She stares him right in the eyes as he speaks.

"What's your name?"

The way he speaks so calmly irritates Beth, but she tries to control her fear, her anger. "Who are you?" The second she finishes her question, Beth sees the way his jaw clicks, the way he leans forward in his chair ever so slightly. The hair on the back of her neck prickles as he repeats his question much slower, much more enunciated, much more dangerous and threatening.

"Beth," she concedes. "Who are you?"

He reverts back to his familiar tone. "Gareth. How long do you think you have been in here?"

"I don't know," she replies. "Where are my people?"

Gareth's lips quirk, and she feels dread and numbing horror. "You sound just like them."

Beth's panic is overwhelming, and it takes all she can muster to keep speaking. "What have you done to them?" She thinks about Rick, Glenn, and Maggie, about Tyreese, Daryl, Carol and Judith. Dear god— she doesn't even know where Carol and Judith are, whether they're alive out there in the wild, or trapped in a room just like her.

"Calm down, sweetheart," Gareth says. Beth did not realize she was shaking. "They're alive."

Her relief is palpable until Gareth continues speaking. "At least, for now. I'm in here because they staged an escape and killed many of my people. I'm debating on what to do, whether or not I should save them and use them, or if I should just kill them where they stand."

"Use them?" her voice is gaining its strength, but it is still hesitant and soft. "Use them for what?"

Gareth is silent for a moment, studying her face as he contemplates. "Have you ever done something… unseeming, just because you had no other option?"

"I don't want a conversation," she whispers, even though her mind filters through the men she's killed and the blood on her hands like clockwork. "What would you use them for?"

"Food." His answer is quick, simplistically stated, but jarring nonetheless.

Beth's ears buzz, and her mouth falls open a little. "You eat people?"

"We eat people, or we die," Gareth's false friendly demeanor has disappeared. "Like I said, we have no other option. We hunt and we grow food, but we have many mouths to feed. We thrive and we survive. Don't act so surprised, sweetheart. I'm sure you've done your fair share of regrettable things since the world's gone to hell and back."

"Don't eat my people," Beth begs, her voice breathily. She is desperate and her mind is muddled and confused with gory images of limbless family members and just the concept of it all, and suddenly she needs to vomit. Gareth watches silently as she retches beside her palette.

Gareth sighs. Leaning back in his chair, he wrinkles his nose briefly before he continues speaking. "I think I want to kill them. Does that make you feel better?"

"Why are you telling me this?" Beth questions. She thinks she is crying, she can't tell. "Why are you doing this to me?"

He does not respond right away, choosing to sit in silence as she heaves and tries to control herself. Beth's entire hope and motivation is her sister, her people, Daryl, Judith— and this man walks in, tells her he's either going to eat them or kill them, and she feels like it's the end again, like she's back in her bed at the farm with the smell of her rotten mother on her clothes and her skin, where things are meaningless and moot, with a mirror shard between her fingers.

When Gareth speaks again, his voice is lower than before. "My men found the woman and the baby yesterday. I brought her in after your people killed my people at the same time I brought out the man you were with. They all asked about you. They know I have you, Beth. Your sister begged and cried and told me to let you go. Why should I let you go— why should I let any of you go— when you've killed people that might have meant something to me?"

Beth cries, and he kneels down next to her, his face painfully close to hers. "Why should I save them?"

"Because you know what it feels like to lose someone," she says. "Please."

Gareth's jaw clicks again before he stands, eyeing her briefly before turning and barking a word towards the door. Beth faintly hears the lock click and is blinded by the light from the open door, her eyes unadjusted. Gareth says no more as he leaves and shuts the door behind him, the lock clicking once more in finalization. As footsteps fade away into silence, Beth sits in her dimly lit closet, begging and praying to any God out there for her own benefit, hoping that her family survives.

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Beth cries for a while until she can't muster anymore tears and all she feels is the soreness of her body. She pauses to mop up her vomit with a sheet before tossing it in the corner and curling up into the fetal position. Beth sleeps and waits and sleeps some more, and the light in her room fades once before the door opens again. This time Gareth stands in the doorway, a frown on his face.

"Your people and I have made a deal," he says. "Get up. They want to see you."

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a/n: i didn't really enjoy this chapter, but the bridge had to be created. the plot for this chapter has gone back and forth and up and around so many times, which is probably why it's not my favorite? if you haven't seen the s5 trailer, then you are probably confused on the deal that gareth is talking about. if you have seen the s5 trailer, then i am sorry to say that i can't incorporate mentalhospital!beth in here without scrapping this entire thing. even if i was to incorporate it, i'm so uncreative it'd probably turn out like shit :-) pls anticipate cute bethyl reunion next chapter. i'll do my best. i'm sorry to everyone for the wait, and i'm not sorry to those who left me very mean and rude reviews bc sry brah. things happen :*