safe in your skin | the walking dead

daryl dixon / beth greene

it's times like this, when all is going to hell and her old ankle injury throbs with the darkening clouds, that beth allows herself to remember. she doesn't go too far back, 'cause she knows she'd go swimming too far deep in that well and not be likely to surface.

no, beth habitually thinks of only two weeks out of her entire twenty-one years. cinnamon sticks and loose-leaf tobacco and worn leather; she cleaves memories from the people, like a picture torn scrappily in half.

she can think of the others in name, yes, but she won't say his, can't. she's branded by him, anyways, and that's gotta be enough.

OR: it's been years since beth escaped from grady memorial hospital and was forced to survive in a world without the comfort of her found family. one summer outing changes everything.

** also posted on a03 under @themilkteeth