20; A FAIR AMOUNT OF PROVOCATION
(season two, episode ten)
[TW; attempted suicide]
(it's the beth attempt😕)
TIME MOVED SLOW at the farm.
Only a measly eight days had passed since Lori's car accident, Glenn and Rick's retrieval of Hershel and Randall's grand entrance.
Everything was still the same.
Shane spent his every waking hour goading at Rick — criticising his decisions, keeping a glare trained on his back and openly belittling him.
Freya couldn't stand it for a second longer. If her father and Shane stepped into each other's vicinity whilst she was present, she wordlessly made herself scarce and didn't look back.
Today that wasn't going to be a problem. Both Rick and Shane had left the farm early in the morning — thank god — with Randall in tow. The latter had made a swift recovery thanks to Hershel's expertise and they were now sending him on his way, having made it abundantly clear that he wasn't welcome on the farm.
Beth had woken from her catatonic shock a few days earlier, but sleep had done very little to elevate her ever-plummeting will to live. She was ghost-like — pale, unblinking and only speaking when someone emphasised their unwillingness to leave without a response.
Freya got the impression that the Greene girl just wanted to be alone.
The problem was, leaving Beth on her lonesome in her current state was hazardous. It held an infinite number of potentially devastating consequences and the last thing anybody needed was more loss.
Especially not the loss of someone who still had so much to give to the world.
So, Freya had decided to camp out in a chair at Beth's bedside, only leaving when she knew that a trusted individual — Maggie, Patricia or Lori — was taking her place. She wasn't going to let Beth slip through her fingers.
"Beth?" Freya called out, hoping her words might initiate some movement from the blonde. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry. You know. . ." She released a tired exhale. "For what Shane did, for what you had to see."
Silence had been the expected response, so Freya's heart clenched when an emotionless voice responded, "Maybe it was for the best. Maybe I needed to see it."
Freya swallowed down her surprise, clasping her hands together to calm herself. "No. No, Beth, nobody deserves to see that. Not ever."
"Daddy told me they'd get better. . ." Beth remained perfectly still, glassy eyes locked on the ceiling above. "He said that they were just sick but they weren't and they didn't. They were never sick. They were just dead the whole time. Dead in our barn. It's so stupid."
"He was holding on to hope," Freya stated, feeling compelled to defend Hershel in light of his hospitality. "I'm not a very hopeful person, — ask anybody, they'll tell you — but I don't think your dad was stupid, and I don't think you were either. You didn't want to accept that your family was gone. You wanted to believe that they could come back."
"And they didn't," Beth reminded her curtly. "Ma. . . she tried to bite me an'. . . An' I kind of wish she had."
Freya chewed on the inside of her cheek. That was. . . A lot. Perhaps her pessimistic self wasn't the right person to be posted up by the — evidently — suicidal teen's bedside. "Well, for what it's worth, I am really glad that you didn't get bit."
Beth finally turned to face her. "You want me to live in misery for the rest of my days?"
"You're sixteen, Beth. You've got a whole lot of life left."
"Not in this world."
"You don't know that."
"Isn't it obvious?"
Knuckles gently rapped against the closed door, followed by a verbal call of, "Knock knock." Lori pushed the door open and stepped inside, balancing a tray that held what Freya presumed to be Beth's lunch. The Grimes matriarch set the tray down on the cabinet beside Freya's chair and offered Beth a warm smile. "How about this? You eat up all your food, we'll get you up and outta here and go take a walk. What do you say?"
Beth didn't say anything. She blinked slowly, showing neither refusal nor inclination.
"If not outside then maybe you could just go upstairs?" Freya suggested, figuring it might be painful for Beth to go back outside to the scene of the crime — the place where her mother's face had been mutilated by a rake. "Check in on Maggie. Or steal some of her magazines or somethin'?"
"You're pregnant," Beth stated bluntly, not sparing Lori a glance. Her eyes burned into the wooden cabinet her lunch rested on. "How could you do that?"
Lori's expression faltered slightly but she pressed her lips together, concealing her hurt from the teenagers. "Uh. . . I don't really have a choice."
"You think it'll make a difference?" Beth asked.
Lori nodded. "Of course it will."
"Babies are the future," Freya said, a small smile pulling at her lips. "It'll give us a reason to keep fighting on the days we want to give up. Can't just leave a baby to fend for itself."
Beth lifted her head up. Her big, blue irises shone beneath her heavy eyelids. "But the walkers will get it anyway, so what's the point?"
Freya swallowed down the growing lump in her throat. "Well, we won't let that happen."
"I don't think you can stop it."
"But we can try," Freya told her, glancing to her mother's stomach. "We try until there's nothing left to try for."
And just like that— Beth's head collided with her pillow once more.
It seemed that Freya's uncharacteristic optimism had forced her back into a despondent state.
A guilty conscience lay heavy on the fifteen-year-old's shoulders. She hadn't meant Beth any harm. She was just trying to be positive, look on the bright side for once, — channel her inner Beth, the person she was before her grief took over — and not drone on and on about the multitude of gloom ahead of them.
In all honesty, Beth's words held more truth than Freya was comfortable admitting, but you couldn't just give up preserving the good because there was a high likelihood of evil encompassing your life. Existence had always held that possibility, the world wasn't exactly known for fairness and equality Before either.
Carl, her unborn sibling. . . They were worth far more than Freya's pessimism. She had to believe that there was a point in trying for them — for their future. This was going to be their world and Freya wouldn't rest easy until she knew she'd given it her all to make that world the very best it could be.
Lori placed a hand on Freya's shoulder. "Let's leave Beth to eat, huh?"
Freya didn't protest against that.
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FREYA HATED WAITING, and yet there she was standing against the kitchen counter waiting for something bad to happen with Beth, waiting for her dad to return. Waiting for the world outside to catch up with them.
Beth's words had her thinking about the future more than ever. Could they really be safe at the farm? Could her mom have a safe birth? Would Carl ever get to be just a little boy again?
"She'll be okay," Lori said, walking back into the kitchen with Beth's untouched tray of food. "And so will you."
"And the baby?" Freya questioned, brows pinched together in a worried frown. "Will they be okay?"
Lori sighed softly, placing the tray on the counter. "With Hershel to help, I think so. I mean, nothing is a guarantee, it never was but we're about as safe as we can ever be."
"Maybe you're right." Freya tilted her head in contemplation. "I mean all of the problems here aside from Carl being shot have been caused by Shane or Andrea. So, it's not—"
"Oh, no." All of the blood drained from Lori's face in a singular harrowing second.
"What is it?" Freya asked, heart thumping erratically in her chest by association.
"The knife. . ." Lori took off in an instant, hurtling down the hallway to Beth's room.
It took Freya a minute. Her eyes trailed over the tray, taking a mental note of the items, and then it hit her— the knife was missing.
Likely with the very suicidal Beth.
Oh, god.
Quick as a whip, she rushed after her mother, shouldering her way into Beth's bedroom with the worst-case scenarios playing in her mind — a puddle of crimson ichor, a lifeless body or maybe a reanimated Beth.
What she actually found stumped her more than any of the disturbing possibilities; Beth nestled in bed beneath her comforter, alive and physically well.
Lori was hovering over the bed, her hand stretched out over Beth's resting figure. "Give it to me, sweetheart. You don't wanna do this."
Unsure of whether or not she was overstepping the mark, Freya pushed one knee onto the mattress and leaned over Beth. "I didn't know your mom, Beth. But I can tell from how much you love her that she was a good person. You think she'd want this for you?"
"She isn't here," Beth said monotonously.
"But you are," Freya reminded her, reaching out to place a hand on the blonde's shoulder. "You're still here. All the pain you're feeling? It's because you're still here and I know you don't wanna feel like that anymore but this isn't the way."
Beth pulled the knife out from under her comforter and wordlessly passed it to Lori.
"You stay with her," Lori instructed Freya, forehead creased with worry. "I'm gonna go get Maggie."
Freya nodded, perching herself on the edge of the blonde's bed. She was going to stay there for as long as it took, even if it wound up with Beth hating her in the end. "Tomorrow won't have your mom in it but it will have your dad and Maggie, Jimmy and Patricia."
"Until the day after," Beth choked out. "And then one of them will be gone too."
"You gave me hope, you know?" Freya informed her, remembering the god-awful day of her brother's shooting. "When Carl was dying on that bed, you said you weren't convincin' but you were. I know you think it's hopeless to keep on going, but you bring hope to others. You've got a good heart and that is so rare now. You'd be robbing the world of that."
Beth sighed softly. She rolled onto her side — and it looked as if the meagre action had taken every bit of strength she had in her — and tilted her chin to meet Freya's gaze. "But everyone's gonna die and it's gonna be bad. It won't be peaceful, it'll hurt and we'll feel every second of it. I don't want that, do you want that?"
Freya's heart clenched. "No, I don't. But if I die like that after having spent another year with my family then it'll be worth it."
"What if they die during that year? And you're the last one. Will you feel the same?"
It was an impossible question. How could Freya possibly know how she'd feel until — god forbid — she was in that situation? All these hypotheticals. . . They were nothing more than a nauseating plague of Beth's mind, one that Freya desperately wished she could eradicate. Alas, she could not, and short of rewinding time to take a psychotherapy crash course — there was nothing more she could do for Beth.
Perhaps Maggie would have better luck.
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JUDGEMENT WAS TYPICALLY reserved for the confines of Freya's mind — save for those desperately in need of a reality check — but standing in the gloomy kitchen, tailbone pushed against the counter, listening to the unrelenting back and forth coming from the Greene sisters in Beth's bedroom — she couldn't help but curl her lip in distaste at Maggie's chosen method of handling Beth.
"YOU ARE BEING SO SELFISH!" Screamed the eldest (remaining) Greene sibling.
The outburst evoked an audible wince from Freya. She let her eyes trail up to the ceiling, hoping that the distraction would prevent her frustration from growing any further. It wasn't her place to weigh in on how the Greenes handled things, every family had their own way of coping with hardship.
For example, The Grimes' refused to address the elephant in the room until eventually it launched a stampede against them, they'd have gargantuan anger and hurl the grisly truth at each other before resuming their relationship as it had been before.
It seemed the Greenes were a mix of two responses; volatile outbursts and isolation. Hershel resorted to the latter whilst his eldest daughter assumed the former.
"Where's Hershel?" Andrea asked, drawing Freya's attention to her. The blonde glanced sceptically toward the hallway that led to Beth's room, clearly disapproving of the ongoings.
"Maggie doesn't want him to find out yet," Lori informed, dainty fingers closing around a slice of cucumber. She was always hungry as of late, instead of making her vomit, the baby was made her ravenous. "It's a family affair, let them work it out."
Andrea's brows cinched, she placed her hands on her hips, inching towards the kitchen island. "That's working it out?"
"When Beth stops fighting. . ." Lori swallowed down her cucumber and seized the empty plate, heading over to the sink with it. "That's when it's time to worry."
Andrea shook her head adamantly. "This could've been handled better."
A grimace formed on Freya's lips. "Yeah, probably. I don't disagree with you, but we're lookin' in on it, you know? Maggie's livin' it. I guess you don't really know what you would do differently until you're the one in that situation."
"I have been," Andrea said discourteously, her eyes sweeping over to Lori. "You shouldn't have taken the knife away."
Dishes clattered in the sink, dropped by Lori who had been astonished by Andrea's words. "Excuse me?"
"You were wrong," Andrea deadpanned.
Freya couldn't believe what she was hearing. An incredulous gasp tore out of her lips and her eyes bulged. "What the hell is wrong with you?
"It's like Dale taking my gun," Andrea told her. "That wasn't your decision. She has to choose to live on her own. She has to find her own reasons."
Lori's jaw was clenched so tightly that it was beginning to shake, she rounded on Andrea, furious. "You want me to tie a noose for her?"
Freya nodded sarcastically. "Oh, yeah! We'll get a bucket, a nice strong one so Andrea can kick it out from underneath her."
Andrea rolled her eyes at them. "If she's serious she'll figure out a way."
"Doesn't mean I can't stop her or let her know that I care," Lori responded, wiping her wet hands on her jeans. She crossed the room, settling beside her daughter.
"That has nothing to do with it, Lori," Andrea continued, determined to make them buy into her warped mindset. "She only has so many choices in front of her and she believes the best one is suicide."
"That's not an option," Lori dismissed her. She absentmindedly brushed a hand over the back of Freya's head, as if imagining her being the one in that bedroom instead of Beth.
"Of course it is," Andrea countered. "She doesn't need to be yelled at or treated like a child."
"She is a child," Freya snapped, shooting an incredulous look at the blonde. "Look, Andrea, we get it, okay? You wish you'd been left at the C.D.C. and that sucks — it does — but you don't get to just stand there and criticise every single thing we do. You genuinely think a child killing herself is okay? I'm starting to think you shouldn't be around Carl."
"I came through it," Andrea argued back, unable to defend herself against every other authentic claim Freya had made.
From next to Freya, Lori snorted. "And became such a productive member of the group. Let Maggie handle this her way."
Andrea's face contorted with pure, undiluted rage. "I contribute, I help keep this place safe."
Lori's lips tugged into a smirk. "The men can handle this on their own. They don't need your help."
"I'm sorry w-what would you have me do?"
"Oh, there's plenty of work to go around."
Andrea's hands were replanted on her hips, a clear indicator she was about to let her mouth run. "Are you serious? Everything falls apart. . . you're in my face over skipping laundry?"
"How about shooting Daryl?" Freya suggested, tilting her head toward Andrea. "I mean, that was you protectin' the group, right? And that Walker in the well, you completely shot T down, called him stupid and he was right."
"Those were honest mistakes," Andrea defended herself. "And I don't have to explain myself to a child."
"Right." Freya scoffed at Andrea. "No, you don't explain yourself to children you just encourage them to kill themselves."
"I am on watch against Walkers. That is what matters." The blonde gestured to Lori. "Not fresh mint leaves in the lemonade."
Lori shook her head in disbelief. "You don't care about anyone but yourself. You sit up on that RV working on your tan with a shotgun in your lap."
Andrea's eyes threatened to pop out of their sockets. "Are you kidding me?"
"Look, I went after Rick. I took down two Walkers—"
"After crashing Maggie's car, ever apologise for that?"
Lori heaved a derisive snort. "You're insane."
"No, you are," Andrea fired back. "And you're the one that's self-centred. The way you take it all for granted."
Lori lunged forward, hands on the island, leaning over to get in Andrea's face. "My husband is out there for the hundredth time, my daughter was almost bit and my son was shot. Don't you dare tell me that I take this for granted."
Andrea held her stare. "You don't get it, do you? Your husband came back from the dead, your son too. Your daughter was saved by a shoe and now you've got a baby on the way. The rest of us have piled up our losses. Me, Carol, Beth but you just keep on keeping on."
"You think we haven't suffered?" Freya demanded, her own hands slamming down on the counter, mirroring her mother. "You think just because my dad came back that the mourning we did for him doesn't matter? That because Carl survived, seeing him like that won't haunt us forever? You think seeing Sophia as a Walker being shot like that because your buddy Shane wanted to go opening barns was fun for us?"
"Your family is alive," Andrea spat. "You don't understand. You couldn't."
"We have all suffered," Lori insisted.
"You know what? Go ahead." Andrea's words were thick with sickening sarcasm. "Go in there and tell that little girl that everything's gonna be okay, just like it is for you. She'll get a husband, a daughter, a son, baby. . . boyfriend."
Freya seized the closest thing to her and threw it in Andrea's direction, the blonde had no time to duck so it collided with her jaw. Upon its landing, Freya discovered it was a spoon. "You know Andrea it all makes sense now. You're jealous. 'Cause Shane doesn't want you, and let's be real when he's with you it's not you he's picturing in his head, is it?"
Andrea couldn't produce a response to that, she rubbed the already forming bruise on her jaw and left the kitchen promptly.
Lori sighed softly, turning to meet Freya's stare. "You shouldn't have hit her."
Freya rolled her eyes. "But you're glad I did?"
Her mother pursed her lips. "Well, I won't punish you for it. There was a fair amount of provocation."
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THE TENSION RAMPANT throughout the homestead was so thick that a knife could perforate its insufferable bubble and alleviate the discomfort it concocted within the residents. The only problem was; it was invisible, nobody knew its exact location and swishing blades through the air aimlessly wasn't a particularly favoured activity.
Freya found respite in her mother's presence.
She and Lori were currently occupying the sofa inside the vacant living room, Lori's arm curled around Freya's shoulders, allowing the teenager's head to rest against her chest whilst absentmindedly rubbing her mother's yet-to-swell stomach in the hope her unborn sibling would be able to take some comfort from it.
"I'm worried that Beth's right," Freya confessed in a whisper low enough for Lori to pretend that she hadn't heard anything.
Lori's hand overlapped Freya's, halting the circular motions the teen was making over her stomach. "Me too." She blew out a soft sigh. "But, I don't think that's a bad thing."
Freya lifted her head, eyebrows arching questioningly. "What do you mean?"
"Well, we're scared because we have precious things in our life — precious people," Lori elaborated in a soothing tone. "Fear is. . . It's always gonna be there, baby. You can't avoid it. It's the price of love."
"BETH? BETH!"
The gut-wrenching cry had both Freya and Lori leaping up in an instant. Simultaneously, they took off into a desperate sprint, only stopping when they reached Beth's bedroom.
The door to the en-suite bathroom was closed over — presumably locked from the inside — and Maggie's fists were pummelling against it relentlessly, each movement teeming with the desperation only an older sister could feel.
"Maggie?" Lori called hesitantly, face awash with worry at the emotive situation.
"She's in there," Maggie informed them in a choked voice, bringing her fists to a sudden halt. "I heard glass."
Trepidation struck Freya's stomach like a brick. Glass? That meant she could. . . or that she already had— oh, god.
As if pulled by a magnetic force, Freya found herself soaring to Maggie's side. She joined the woman in banging pressingly against the aged wood. "Beth, come on." Each word was drenched in desperation. "Just open the door. This isn't the way."
A beat passed. And then—
A dulcet sob, even in the deepest stage of depression Beth emitted an unparalleled tenderness. Her soul, her spirit— she was the human embodiment of goodness. The world could not afford to lose such an asset.
"Beth, don't do this," Maggie pleaded, tears glistening in her eyes. "Open up, please."
Lori settled on the other side of Freya, opposite Maggie. She was taking a different approach to the situation. "Beth. . . you alright?"
"How did she even get in there?" Freya asked, dearly hoping that her tone wasn't entirely accusatory — of course, there was blame to be placed here but piling that on top of every other emotion Maggie was feeling right now would be nothing short of cruel.
"I left her with Andrea," Maggie revealed grimly. She abandoned her assault on the door to ransack Beth's dresser instead, searching for the spare key to the bathroom.
Freya shared a knowing glance with Lori. "That bitch. How could she do this?"
Lori paled considerably. The revelation that Andrea was involved had understandably elevated her fear. "Where's the key?"
"I don't know!" Maggie cried, on the verge of trees as her search proved futile.
"Maybe we can break it down?" Freya suggested.
She scrambled backwards until her spine collided with the opposite wall and broke into a run, barrelling her entire body weight into the door — only for it to creak slightly and remain strikingly not broken.
Maggie abandoned her search, accepting that she wasn't getting anywhere with it. She resumed her spot parked at the door and spoke softly to her sister, "Beth, honey, I'm not mad."
Freya rubbed her throbbing shoulder, stumbling on the spot, trying to mask her embarrassment over being so incompetent. "Nobody is — mad — we just wanna make you're okay, know that you're safe."
Not a minute later, a fire poker was clutched in Lori's grasp, and the pregnant woman was moving Maggie and Freya out of her way. She drove the poker into the hinges, pushed down hard and the door swung open with a sickening crack of splintering wood.
Realising she had nowhere to hide, Beth slowly turned to face them. Her pale arm was outstretched in front of her body, a stream of blood trickling from a laceration on her wrist.
She'd tried to kill herself. Tried. But the wound was much too small, she'd stopped halfway, presumably realising that what she wanted to end was her pain and not her life. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay." Maggie surged forward and cocooned Beth in her arms, guiding her through the doorway back into the bedroom.
Freya let out a sigh of relief, smiling tearfully at Maggie as she brought Beth out. "Maybe I am the convincin' one out of the both of us, huh?"
A shaky laugh shook Beth's body amidst her sobbing. "M-maybe."
Without further ado, Maggie ushered her sister out of the room. She'd be taking her to Hershel, making sure the wound was stitched before any further harm could come to Beth.
Freya stepped inside the bathroom, crouching down next to the bloody shard of glass. She held it under the light, squinting to examine it. It was sharp enough to kill, one wrong move from Beth and it would've been over. Andrea had done that. She'd been willing to let a child die just to prove a point. That made her just as bad as Shane. It made sense that they were always going off together. Neither cared for anyone when it didn't benefit them.
Lori placed a shaky hand on Freya's shoulder. "You don't need to be looking at that."
"Beth shouldn't," Freya countered, heaving a tired sigh. Her gaze zoned in on the crimson puddle on the floor — Beth's wrist had been dripping. "We should clean it up before Maggie brings her back. Make it comfortable for her."
Lori nodded, making a beeline for the hallway. "I'll get the cleaning supplies."
Freya traced her thumb over the glass, pushing her calloused flesh against the jagged edge.
It was so easy to just take life — your own, somebody else's. . . It didn't matter who. A single flick of the hand was all it took to claim the existence of an entire being, erase them from the grand design and transport their souls to a void of nothingness. Living. . . That was the real challenge, remaining alive throughout the tribulations of this new world.
Dying didn't send a fuck you to the universe; living in spite of the misery did.
That day Freya Grimes decided she would make it until she couldn't. Whatever the cause of her inevitable death may be, she knew it wouldn't be from her own hands.
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authors note
always remember that life is
infinitely better with you in it<3
next chapter we're losing dale:( i really love him but then we FINALLY get to that shane chapter and I cannot wait to get rid of him...
even if it breaks my baby freya's heart