Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten - Neil Gaiman

Beth climbs the ladder to the hayloft of the barn. No one is in view to see what she's doing, which is nothing new. Only Jimmy really cares anymore to pay attention to her comings and goings, and the exasperating blond is mucking out stalls in the horse barn right now. If Beth were a better person, she would help, but it's the one time a day she can do this and not get questioned about it.

The growls from the stalls below are almost worse than the stink. She ties her lavender scented bandana over her face as she pulls the repurposed cooler out from its hiding place behind discarded tools and junk. Opening it, she grabs the first composition book and edges to the railing to peer down.

"Hi, Shawn. I really wish Daddy was right, you know. But I guess we used up our store of miracles with me." The snarling thing that was once her brother bumps around its stall. Uncapping her pen, she carefully notes any changes from yesterday in the format required by her AP Biology teacher all sophomore year for observational studies.

Biting her lip, she flips the pages back to last Saturday, when she took her weekly Polaroid and taped it into the notebook. Sighing, she looks between the monster below and the photo. "Marked deterioration," she mutters. "It's been hotter this week. Maybe heat is still a problem like regular decomposition."

Beth will have to make that a new factor to record, since she didn't think to include it before. The big thermometer outside the kitchen window will work well enough. It's hard to keep up with Patricia's feeding schedule, so that's maybe a factor, too. Maybe the chickens this week were of lesser quality or something. Or sick. She'll have to inspect the flock carefully when she feeds them this evening.

Making the hypothetical notes in Shawn's notebook, she tucks it back in the cooler and reaches for the next one. It's harder to look down this time, which is why she saves it for after Shawn. "Hi, Mama."

The only reply is a snarl, as usual, so Beth compares the Saturday picture to see if the same small leap in decomposition exists. It's actually more noticeable with Annette, maybe because she had long hair. Her thick, flowing hair persisted in being honey gold for weeks, slowly getting dirtier, but intact. But like Shawn, bald spots have shown up this week. Making the same notes, Beth sighs and peers into the remaining two stalls she can see.

These two are neighbors, and she doesn't observe them in as much detail. They're showing the same hair loss, however. She bets the rest, the ones she can't see from the hayloft, are all the same. Crossing back to her stash of notebooks and supplies, she switches them out to record what she can.

Slowly unlacing the leather cuff she has to wear over her left wrist, she inspects the mark of her mother's teeth. It's still a pale, purplish-gray scar, the inflammation of the disease long gone as her flesh knitted back together despite a chunk missing. Touching that indentation on the outer edge of her forearm, she frowns and hastily puts the cuff back in place.

Feeling a little weird, she tugs at locks of her hair. She hasn't noticed any increased hair loss, but she hasn't been looking for it, either. Nothing significant comes away in her hands.

She takes the pink notebook and opens it to make the most boring note ever: Bite still healed, no physical changes. Tucking everything away next to the hidden Polaroid camera that was once her mother's, Beth hides the cooler carefully and heads for the exit. With the coast still clear, she heads toward the house, whistling softly and smiling as Julliard comes running.

The furry Husky/Aussie mix ended up with a unique look of being a spotted wolf dog, with the merle coloring from her mother dominating all the darker areas of her otherwise husky coat and physique. She's been unhappy as summer heats up, with more regulation this year on her having water to play in. Deciding against going to the house, with its overwhelming air of grief, she and Julliard follow the trail down to the pond.

As the dog flounces happily in the water's edge, Beth just flops in the grass and stares at the clouds. Normally during the summer, she would have a dozen things to do, helping her mama. Patricia is nice enough, but she doesn't have the constant need to have busy hands Annette had. The world's come to an end outside this farm, and Beth is suffering the typical teenage malady… she's bored!


Of all the things Shane thought he would end up doing on what has become the road trip from hell, searching for a lost child in unfamiliar woods was not one of them. The groups are separated now, most returning to the highway while Shane, Rick, and Carl continue to search near the church. Crunching leaves and snapping twigs, combined with growls, draw their attention. Positioning Carl between them, Rick and Shane advance, praying they aren't about to find something worse than walkers.

A pair of decayed walkers, one missing an arm, and the other short enough to be either a teen or short woman, are clawing at the base of a leaning tree. At one time, the big tree was upright, like any other oak. But storms or flooding tipped the tree, causing it to lean against a nearby tree. The support of the second tree kept it from completely uprooting, and in the way of old oaks, it kept enough roots in the ground to stay alive somehow.

Prey on the ground lures them more than whatever scampered up the leaning trunk. Both turn toward Rick and Shane, the short one dragging a leg that seems to be losing some of its ligature. Ordering Carl to stay back, Rick reaches down and hefts a fallen limb with a grim expression.

"Flashing back to our Little League days?" Shane teases softly, searching the ground for another. He doesn't see anything, so he shifts his knife out. Neither of them want to fire a gun and find how many others are nearby.

Rick snorts and swings at the one armed walker, hard enough to splatter the skull like a pumpkin. Shane trips the shorter walker to make it easier to plant his knife in its skull, before kneeling to clean the gore off his knife blade on the scrap of t-shirt clinging to the once woman. They both look back to Carl, who looks torn between being grossed out and excited.

"Wonder that they were chasing?" Shane muses, peering up the trunk.

He gets the surprise of his life when a dirty, tear streaked face pops out of the leafy crown. "Mister Walsh?"

"Holy shit, Sophia. C'mon down here, sweetheart." Caught up in the surprise, Shane scrambles up onto the trunk, catching the girl as she loses her balance trying to come down the incline and its rough bark.

She clings to him, sobbing out, "You found me."

Meeting Rick's eyes, Shane grins, enjoying the happy relief on his brother's face. Carl looks excited enough to burst. "We were all looking, Sophia. Everyone has been out in the woods looking, including your mama."

She finally loosens her hold enough to look around, smiling tearfully at Rick and Carl. "I tried to follow the sun like you said, Mister Grimes, but there were two more walkers between me and the highway. I had to run, and no matter how much I looked, I couldn't find the highway again. I stayed the night in a house and started looking again this morning."

A house at least explains why she's wearing mostly different clothes than Shane remembers. While the childish t-shirt is the same, although dingy gray with sweat and dirt, it's covered by a man's flannel shirt. The shorts she wore yesterday have been replaced by worn, oversized jeans that look like they've been hacked inexpertly short enough for her height.

"You did just fine," Rick assures the girl. "I should have taken a lesson from you and helped you climb a tree. Let's get you back to your mama."

Sophia nods, letting go of Shane as Carl comes forward and offers her his hand. The two kids walk along ahead of them after Shane points the correct direction out. Rick keeps his limb, swiping at underbrush idly as they trek through the woods.

"Doubt her mama is going to let her get more than a foot away for months," Rick comments.

Shane shrugs. "Hard to tell. Carol didn't used to be as overprotective as Lori, but this could change her perspective entirely." Plus Carol doesn't have Ed breathing down her neck now.

"Makes me want to get one of those toddler leashes."

The intensity of Rick's declaration makes Shane chuckle. Watching the two kids, he's glad they found Sophia. Losing someone his own age isn't a lesson he wants Carl learning just yet. Maybe he isn't Shane's main responsibility anymore, not with his daddy back, but he's still family.

"Not sure one of those would work any better now than it did when he was a toddler. Remember the time he slipped the leash and hid in the clothing rack at Macy's?"

"Considering Lori had nightmares about it for a week, yeah." Rick chuckles, just as the kids halt ahead of them.

"Dad, come see!"

The men ease forward at the excitement in Carl's voice. The deer is a gorgeous specimen, chewing slowly as it stares back at them. The buck is remarkably calm for a wild animal so close to four people, but maybe they're downwind.

"Can I try to touch him, Dad?"

Before Shane can say it is probably not the best idea, especially with a buck, Rick gives permission. Not wanting to contradict the other man, he watches as Carl edges forward, Sophia reluctantly letting go of his hand. Attention mostly on the buck, expecting him to leap away at any time, Shane glances just beyond the deer.

There's no time to call out a warning, and he's moving before he even completes the mental "oh shit!" The best sign that he's succeeded is the burning pain that rips though him near his left shoulder and down on his belly. It gets worse when he impacts the ground, trying to roll so that he doesn't crush Carl beneath his weight. The boy's scream of pain and the gruesome sound of snapping bone tells him he didn't achieve that goal.

There's shouting and apologies, and Shane fights against the burn in his shoulder and gut trying to drag him unconscious. "Carl," he groans.

Blue eyes appear, hovering above him as excruciating pressure is placed on his belly and shoulder both. From the searing pain that flies like lightning down his arm, it may not have been Carl's bone that snapped. It's not Carl or Rick looking down at him, but Sophia, looking terrified yet determined. "He's okay. Broke his arm, but he didn't get shot," she explains. "Stay awake, Mister Walsh."

Shane blinks, focusing on the tears slipping down her face even as she ignores whatever argument is going on around them. "Wha' they screamin' 'bout?" he slurs. Sophia shifts, skinny arms bare back down to that tattered t-shirt she disappeared in. The flannel shirt she had on must be what she's using to put pressure on his wound… wounds? It's hard to tell anymore, because everything on his left side is ablaze with pain.

"The man who shot you is apologizing, but Mister Grimes punched him when he tried to touch Carl. Says he's an EMT."

Vaguely, Shane wonders if that's why the girl knows to put pressure on the wound, or if Rick told her. They certify each year at the Red Cross, after all. EMT near or not, there's no hospital. He figures his chances of survival are next to none, especially as hard as it is to breathe.

Finally, Rick pops into his line of sight. "Hang on, brother. There's a doctor nearby. We're gonna get you there."

"Carl." Sophia said he wasn't shot, but Shane has to know for sure. He has to know, dammit.

"He's okay. Man's rigging up a split for his arm."

That sends a jolt of guilt through him. Shane is probably twice the boy's weight, and he took Carl down like it was game day. But it is getting harder and harder to keep his eyes open.

"Hang on, dammit, Shane. Don't close your eyes."

He tries to apologize, even as he loses the battle to stay alert, Rick's frantic voice following him into the darkness.


Beth will never even think the word bored ever again. Even as she lay in the soft grass, mind numb for anything to do while she ignored the reality of what lives in the old barn now, others were facing so much worse. When the shouting child runs across the field from the direction Otis left to hunt, Beth is closest.

She intercepts the boy, who has his arm tied to his chest. He is sobbing so hard she can barely make out his words about Otis shooting a man in the woods. In the distance, she sees the others running. "Go!" she tells him. "My dad's the doctor you were sent to find."

Once he runs in that direction, Beth scrambles for the treeline, Julliard at her heels. She reaches it in time to see Otis and a strange man in a deputy's uniform laboring to pull an improvised drag stretcher made from two saplings and Otis's hunting jacket. Both men look like they're about to fall over from exertion, and they're trailed by an anxious girl trotting alongside the stretcher.

"What happened?" she demands, falling in step beside Otis. She knows offering to take over one of the poles wouldn't work, because the man being transported is huge. Not as tall as Otis, but probably as broad in the shoulders. Makeshift bandages that look like a torn up flannel shirt are belted in place at his shoulder and lower ribs.

"Didn't see the boy when I fired at the deer." Otis gasps, sounding so pitifully horrified that Beth's heart aches for him. "Man tackled him. Bullet entered under the collarbone, broke it, traveled through the chest cavity, and at least one fragment exited near the liver. Tell your daddy to prep for shock and blood loss. Think the left lung may have been hit. Gonna need the x-ray."

"Anybody know his blood type?" she asks, already tensing to sprint toward the house. Her daddy is stopped, checking the boy, but Maggie and Jimmy are almost here.

"O negative," the deputy rasps, voice hoarse and cracking. He looks terrified, and maybe he should, because that's like a unicorn to find, even before blood banks became something they can't access.

Beth dashes away, her mind repeating what Otis said. By the time she reaches her father, he and Patricia are hurrying the boy toward the house. She rattles off Otis's report, slowing to their speed.

Hershel sighs, somehow looking even older than he did this morning at breakfast. "Go pull my work truck to the porch, Bethie. We're probably going to need everything I have left."

Task given, she jogs off again, looking back to the wounded man now being carried properly with Maggie and Jimmy each holding one stretcher pole by his feet. She prays she isn't the only one whose blood type matches, because she can only donate so much. He has to live though, because kind, gentle Otis will never forgive himself if this stranger dies at his hands.


A/N: Posting this a few days early as a treat, as it will replace Hell is Furnished in my story rotation when that story finishes in 2-3 days. :)

As requested (on Ao3) by WalkerBethG, also incorporates IfWishesWereHorses Eugene has the cure request.

Shane took the bullet instead of Carl, and because she survived the bite, Beth's no longer as innocent and biddable as she originally was. This will be a brother/sister type relationship, not romantic. Eugene & co will arrive much earlier, looking for the CDC.

Primary POV: Shane & Eugene (Beth as needed)

Pairings: Shane/Maggie, Eugene/Michonne, background Glenn/Rosita, Abe/Carol, No Beth Pairing, Beth & Rosita friendship. Rick & Shane fix-it.

Background & Request: Beth is bitten but immune prior to Rick's group arriving. It is kept secret from the group. Otis accidentally shoots Shane in the woods searching for Sophia. Beth develops mentor/friendship with Shane during his recovery and tells him about her immunity after the barn. Eugene really has a cure, but needs someone who is immune. Eugene's group encountered post-farm, and Michonne & Andre are part of the group. Beth & Michonne mentorship. Abe's kids live. Various strays (Merle, Morgan) show up near end in DC. No Randall, Woodbury, Negan, etc. No Judith. Dogs: Maggie's dog is a merle Australian Shepherd named Noelle. Beth's dog is a Aussie/Husky mix named Julliard.