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beth greene

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She's walked by it more than a dozen times now. The figure seems odd to consider when she's been in Darrow such a short time, but Julia didn't hesitate to go out looking for work, which came about rather easily. With the holidays approaching, every store possible seems to be hiring seasonal workers, and it seems like as good a place to start as any. She has plenty of experience as a shopgirl, and though that may have been some seventy years ago, she doesn't think things could have changed so much as all that. The registers are different, the computers that operate them even more so and entirely baffling, but most of what she finds herself doing is the same as it ever was. The routine of it holds no inconsiderable amount of comfort. It's hardly fulfilling, but neither was it before. She doesn't need fulfilling; she just needs to be doing something, even if that's only just going through the motions of a life like she did after Michael died.

There could be more for her, if she wanted that. Something in her woke up when Donny first dragged her up to sing with him, and the past few weeks, before this place, she felt more alive than she had in well over a year, or maybe more than that. Despite knowing that she couldn't have had any say in showing up here, though, it feels a little like maybe it's time to give up on that dream. She can still scribble her poems in a notebook, still consider that they might make good lyrics. She can go back to singing in a church choir. But losing the band and the chance to compete has been a considerable blow, and in the absence of that, it's easy to chide herself and call it foolish, say that she ought to put the whole thing to bed.

It would be easier if she didn't pass by the music store on her way to and from work each day. Every time, she's tempted to go in and look at the instruments, and every time, it hurts a little to make herself keep walking instead. In the end, she wears down easily. It can't hurt to look, to have something to occupy herself with. Growing up, they always had at least a piano in the house. Her apartment now is empty and inhabited only by her. A hobby wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

When she finally does walk in one afternoon, it's almost surprising how much there seems to be. At least her own choices of instruments are few. She doesn't know where in here or even if she might be able to find a ukulele, but she's in no hurry, instead wandering around slowly, the sight of everything bittersweet as she takes it all in.

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It's a slow day, which Beth technically knows isn't a good thing, given that Mark's entire livelihood is based on the success of this store, but sometimes she likes it all the same. When the store clears out and there's just the music piped through the speakers, that's when Mark looks over at her, rolls his eyes fondly and gestures for her to go do whatever she wants.

Today, after turning off the music overhead, she's seated herself in the stringed instrument room with a banjo on her knee. She's never owned a banjo before and has only started teaching herself a few months ago, but she's gotten the hang of it pretty well, even if her finger picking is still quite slow.

When the girl walks in, Beth's fumbling her way through a song and she stands up from her stool with a smile, still holding onto the banjo's neck.

"Hi," she says. "Welcome to On the Downbeat."

"Hi," Julia replies, a little surprised, though she doesn't know why, to have run into someone. It seemed quiet when she first came inside, sure, but it's still a store, presumably with customers and staff. If they sell this many different kinds of instruments and equipment, she'd guess they must do reasonably well for themselves, too. Maybe it's just that she feels a little like she's been caught, like she's indulging a guilty pleasure, though for a bright, brief time, she managed to make music her career.

The best she can do is shake it off and move on, offering the woman who's spoken a smile, warm if a little self-conscious. "Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I was just— Do you work here? I was looking to see if there were any ukuleles."

"Oh, yeah," she says, moving the banjo aside so the woman can see her name tag. "I'm Beth. Sorry, I just like messin' around a little when there's no one in the store. I can definitely help you, though, we've got just about everything."

She steps back toward the wall and hangs the banjo where she'd taken it down, then nods for the woman to follow her deeper into the room.

"The ukuleles are just down here," she says as she goes. "We've got a pretty good selection and I can tell you which ones are the better brands in Darrow, but I've never learned how to play one myself, so you'll probably know better than I will which ones sound best."

"Oh, it's no problem," Julia says, quick to dismiss any apology. She would probably want to do the same with any downtime if she worked in a place like this. It's probably better for her sanity that she has something that keeps her busy most of the time, but it's still easy enough to imagine. Maybe that's a good thing. Though it's really only been days since she got here, it feels like a lifetime since she did anything musical at all. At least she hasn't started shutting that impulse away so much that it will be hard to get back.

Following Beth further into the room, she glances around, taking in the other instruments on display. "I'm no expert or anything on what will sound good, either. But I haven't been here very long, so I'm... rebuilding, I guess you could say. And I'm Julia." She could have read Beth's name on her name tag, but with her having introduced herself, it wouldn't feel right not to do the same in turn.

"How long's not very long?" Beth asks curiously. It hadn't taken her very long to find the music store either, probably within that first week, but that's so long ago now that she can't completely remember. It's amazing sometimes, to realize just how long she's been here and how much she's changed in the past five years.

She understands what it's like to rebuild, having done it so many times now in so many different ways. Hopefully this first time will be the only time Julia has to do it, but Beth knows Darrow isn't usually that kind.

"It's nice to meet you," she adds as she takes down one of the nicer ukuleles, then passes it to Julia. "Even if it is a little rough, havin' to start fresh here."

"Maybe a week or so," Julia admits, just a little embarrassed about it, though she smiles as she speaks. "I barely even know my way around yet. But I pass by here on my way to and from work, so..." So it's gotten increasingly difficult to resist coming in, until apparently, it's become inevitable. Right now, carefully taking the ukulele from Beth, it's hard to see that as a bad thing. It's barely been any time at all, but it feels as if it might have been a lifetime since she last held an instrument for how detached she's felt from everything over the past however many days it's been.

Though she's half-convinced she's about to embarrass herself, at least her hands seem to remember what she's doing, strumming one chord, then another. "I think this must be even nicer than the one I had back home."

"A week and you've already got a job?" Beth asks, sounding impressed. "Jeez, you're makin' good time of it, that's for sure."

She's not sure how long it had taken her before asking Mark if he needed help around the store, but she knows it was definitely more than a week. It had taken so much time to get used to being in a place like this, somewhere she could eat and shower and where she didn't need to worry that something might kill if her if she were to round the wrong corner.

"Well, if you can afford it, a nicer instrument is always more fun to play," she says, her smile growing. "And that's not me trying to make a sale or anything, I promise. It's just... well, they do play nicer, don't they? I saved up for ages here to get a really good guitar and it was totally worth it."

And now she has Curt's guitars. They're beautiful and they sound divine.

"It's one good thing about it being close to Christmas," Julia explains, sounding faintly amused just in describing it as such. "A lot of stores are looking to hire people for the holiday." In a few weeks, she won't be guaranteed to still have that job, but she can cross that bridge when she comes to it. For the time being, it's enough to have something that keeps her going, a reason to get out of bed in the morning, a way of keeping busy. She could too easily just wind up doing nothing. It's already bad enough as it is that she feels so detached.

With an instrument in her hands, she at least feels a little less so. That has to be a good sign. Sensibly speaking, she should probably be saving her money, but she already has more of it than she knows what to do with, barely able to wrap her head around the effect inflation has had. Everything seems so much more expensive now; she also has so much money, just given to her when she got here, and a paycheck on the way.

"It really does make a difference," she agrees, still self-conscious but a little more sure of herself as she plays a few more chords. "You play the guitar?"

"Guitar and piano mostly," Beth answers, then nods toward she put down the banjo. "But I'm tryin' to pick up some others, too. I'm no good at drums or anything like that, but I'm okay with most stringed instruments."

She's better than just okay with her guitar, but it feels like bragging to say so. She can barely ask her friends to come to her album release party, so she knows she'll never be able to talk herself up to a near stranger. Saying she's okay is as far as she's ever going to get with that.

"I've got a couple now," she admits. "But I inherited all but one from a friend. It feels kinda decadent, but I also can't bear to get rid of them."

"That's impressive," Julia says, brow raising slightly as she smiles. "I only ever picked up a little piano; I mostly just stick with this, or singing." Even then, she'd put it away for a good long time after Michael died, and limited her singing to the church choir. Everything changed overnight, it still seems like. But the career she could have had, the possible victory she and the others were so close to, is a world away now, and that isn't really the sort of thing she can pick up where she left off. At least, it doesn't feel like she could when she barely feels like she's awake.

None of that is something worth burdening a stranger with, no matter how nice Beth seems. It's probably enough to have said that she's so recently arrived, anyway. A transition like that could never have been easy. No one, having already lost so much or not, would be likely to take well to having their whole life just ripped away from them.

"I sing, too," Beth says with a smile. "When I'm not workin' here, that's sorta my other job."

That's something she's comfortable saying. It doesn't sound like she's trying to brag or making herself out to be more successful than she really is. She doesn't mention the album or what she's done so far. She's just a singer, and that's a title she's very comfortable giving herself.

"I went to school for a little while, but I figured if I was gonna try and do the music thing, I might as well do it now."

"That makes sense," Julias says, nodding. She never went to college — never considered it, already with Michael and planning their wedding right out of high school — but it doesn't sound too dissimilar from what happened back home. Though she'd tried to keep her job at the department store as long as she could, ultimately they told her to make a choice, and she chose music. All of that feels like so much longer ago now than is actually the case, a life that might as well have been someone else's. "I sang with a band back home, and we were doing alright for ourselves, but now... Well, they aren't here, I am, and I guess I figured I just had to get my feet under me."

Most of the music she's heard here is nothing like the sort she used to sing, anyway. If a part of her knows that she's given up too easily, it's drowned out by the more sensible voice in her head, saying that she has to take care of herself now, and she might as well be serious.

"That's really cool," Beth says excitedly. "I sang with a band here for a little while, but that friend I mentioned who left me the guitars, he kind of made me see that I was more of a solo act, so I went back to just workin' on my own. He was right, but at the same time, there's just somethin' so great about playing with a group of people."

Curt hadn't exactly been her manager, but he'd still managed her career in a lot of ways. He'd pushed her in the right direction, he'd been honest with her, he'd been hard where he needed to be. She misses him more than she had realized she would.

"I know you're real new, but if you wanna do somethin' like that here, I definitely know some people," she says. "And I know a lot of the owners of bars and cafes where you might want to play."

"You'd do that?" Julia asks, a little surprised and a little touched by the offer. She doesn't know if it's something she would or should act on, but she appreciates it even so. Once — a long time ago, though not as much so as it feels — she might have jumped at the opportunity. She lost most of her sense of ambition around the time she lost her husband, though, and whatever she might have gotten back, it's hard to hold onto when she's grieving again now. Besides, it wouldn't be the same, performing without the rest of the guys.

Maybe it's not an option she should disregard, though. She's grateful to have a job, but it's not a very satisfying one, and, well, a push in the right direction was what she needed before. That might well be the case again.

She lets out an exhale that's almost a laugh. "I don't know that I'd be any good alone, but that's awfully nice of you."

"Sure," Beth answers, smiling. "I know how hard it is, gettin' started, tryin' to figure out where to go and who to talk to. Not that I know everyone, but I've been here for a pretty long time, so I know my way around a lot of it."

Whether or not she'll be good on her own isn't the sort of thing Beth can decide, but she knows other musicians, too. People who want to play, people who are looking for any opportunity.

"You wanna play me somethin'?" she asks, then grins. "No pressure."

"Alright," Julia says, a little flustered, but thinking she might as well. She's still not sure if she will take Beth up on that offer, doubtful of her ability to perform on her own, figuring it's easier to stick to a safe routine, but the store is quiet. It doesn't have to be some big performance. Faltering for a moment as she tries to think of a song — most of her own are probably too sad for circumstances like this — she thinks of home, of memories that are mostly bittersweet now, and settles on one that will do the trick. "This— It's stupid, a friend of mine and I wrote a sort of novelty song about Cleveland, where we're from. It caught on pretty well, though."

With that explanation out of the way, she plays and sings the first two short verses of "I Got a Theory", stopping to feel self-conscious about it only after, a blush rising to her cheeks. "I don't think it plays as well this far from home."

She's got a beautiful voice. Different from Beth's in some ways and kind of similar in others and Beth listens, her head cocked thoughtfully, only smiling and shaking her head when Julia says it doesn't play as well in a place like Darrow.

"We all got things we bring here with us," she says. "It's not stupid at all."

Beth sings songs about the end of the world and first loves and summers in Georgia and no one here seems to mind. In fact, people seem to respond really well, to the point where she's actually making more money than she ever imagined.

"You're really talented," she says.

"Thank you," Julia says, ducking her head, a little self-conscious even now. On some level, of course, she knows that there's truth in that. She wouldn't have found the kind of success she did otherwise; whatever Donny might have thought he owed her, she can't imagine him asking her to join the band if she were going to drag them down. It was too important to him for that, and he was too ambitious. She, on the other hand, stopped thinking about herself in those terms some time ago, the aspirations she'd had when she was younger buried along with her husband. They may have recently started to resurface, but here, she's only felt like a widow and a shopgirl again, until perhaps right now.

"I don't... The band I sang with, we were doing pretty well, but I still don't usually think of myself that way."

"It's hard," Beth acknowledges. "Especially at first. I- I actually only work here part time. I play music the rest of the time and I'm doin' pretty well. I've got an album comin' out in a couple weeks and I make enough money now that I could support myself just with that, but even so..."

She trails off and shrugs. Even so, she's embarrassed to have said all that about herself. They're all facts, it's not like she's claimed to be especially talented, she's only told the truth, that she's found a fair bit of success as a musician, and she still feels like she should be playing it down a little. Just in case someone thinks she's being too arrogant.

"But it's hard to take a step like that," Julia says, nodding in understanding. Back home, she hadn't left her job until she got let go, and even then, she tried to get as much as she could out of her last days there. Granted, they'd also been trying to put aside as much money as they possibly could for their travel expenses, to get them to New York, but without that, or after, she might well have been able to get by doing nothing else. She's just not sure she would have. There's nothing glamorous about being a shopgirl, but that job still kept her going when it would have been too easy to buckle and fall apart entirely. Giving it up would have felt like too much of a gamble.

"This seems like a nice place to work, at least."

"Oh, it's great," Beth says. "The owner, Mark, he's so sweet. If we're not busy, he pretty much lets me do whatever I want, as long as the place isn't a disaster. And he started this program where we teach some music classes for kids who might not otherwise be able to afford it. Mostly piano and guitar, but it's a lot of fun."

Even with the success she's having, she's not sure she'll be able to give this place up entirely. Mark would want her to, he'd tell her to dedicate herself to music, but she loves it here.

"I was gonna be a music teacher anyway," she adds. "So it sorta seems like havin' the best of both words."

"Get a little of everything that way," Julia says with a nod and a smile. For a while, her biggest aspiration had been teaching the children's choir at church; as far away as that feels, she's reminded a little of it now. Even that feels far away now. It isn't as if she has any reason to deprive herself of anything, when she couldn't have had any control over her being here, but singing still feels like a part of a life that's not hers anymore. It wouldn't feel right to go back to it on her own now.

At least, that's what she tells herself. But holding an instrument, having sung even a snippet of a song, she feels more like herself than she has since she first got here.

"Can I hear one of your songs?"

"Sure," Beth says, then wanders down the wall with the guitars until she finds her favourite. It's far too expensive, she'll never be able to afford it unless she gets famous, but she can play it whenever she wants if she's at work.

Sitting down on one of the stools, she makes sure it's in tune before she begins to strum thoughtfully. There are so many songs she can sing, some she's already worked until she thinks they're as good as they'll ever get, others that are still rough.

In the end, she picks a song about Curtis. They're consistently her best ones, the emotion the purest and most true. It's a bit of a sad song, one she's written more recently, but at least it's not as sad as the ones she wrote right after he disappeared.

It's a lovely song, different than most of the music that Julia knows and listens to, but something she can appreciate all the same. The lyrics have a lot to do with that. She doesn't need to know the story behind it to feel like she gets it, most of hers being of a similar nature. Love, the loss of it, and trying to move forward from that have become cornerstones of both her life and her lyrics. She was lucky enough, once, to find someone who could set them to music. Now, that seems like all the more reason to set that potential career aside. It's not something she's cut out to do on her own.

That's all beside the point now, though, and she smiles, a little wistful. "That's beautiful," she says. "Forgive me for asking — I know it might be too personal — but you've lost someone, haven't you?"

"More than one someone," Beth admits with a little smile and a laugh. "But, yeah, this song I wrote about this guy Curtis. We were... y'know, we were only together for a year, but it was a long time comin' before that and I think we were in love a long time before we even realized it. Before I realized it anyway. He was a lot smarter than me."

It's clear in the way she talks about Curtis that she still loves him and sometimes she feels guilty about that. Jason is an amazing guy and she likes him so much. He's sweet and smart and kind, and he deserves someone better than she is. Someone who isn't still in love with her last boyfriend.

"But he disappeared from Darrow," she says. "Like people sometimes do."

"I'm sorry. For your loss," Julia says with a small, bittersweet smile of her own, one that's understanding rather than pitying. "And I don't mean to pry. It's... My husband died a year and a half ago. So some of that sounded, well, familiar." Having been through it, she thinks, it's easier to tell when others have as well, not least when so many of her songs have been about Michael, or about trying to move on after his death. Trying to try to, maybe. For a little while, she thought maybe she was getting there, but showing up here has changed all of that, taken away the chance she might eventually have had with someone else.

That thought, she buries as quickly as she can. The rest, though, is simpler under circumstances like these. She's always hated being a war widow, with how people look at her when they find out and how she's supposed to feel about it, but it's different with someone who's been in a similar position. A disappearance can't be too unlike a death. For her, in a way, Michael did just disappear, anyway, gone somewhere on the other side of the world, her whole life changing in one intangible blow.

"I've written about it, some. I guess it's all you can do, isn't it?"

"No, it's okay," Beth says in a rush. There's something about Julia she just likes right off the bat, something she feels comfortable with and she knows not everyone would just trust their instincts like that, but Beth thinks she's gotten pretty good at reading people after all the stuff at the hospital. She likes Julia.

"And I'm sorry," she adds. "That's awful and... it's hard, isn't it?"

Harder than just hard, but they don't have a lot of other words for what it is. Sometimes writing about it is really the only way to deal with some of the feelings that come along with it. Beth worries sometimes she writes about it too much, sometimes she wonders if it even really helps.

"It is," Julia says simply, nodding. For all that it's nothing she would want anyone else to have to go through, it's easier to talk about it with someone who's been there, too. She's had more than her fair share of pity and sad smiles, people who think they know what it must be like but don't actually have a clue. Instead, there's a sort of shorthand here, a quiet understanding. Of course calling it hard is an understatement. Neither of them needs to be told as much.

She laughs, a soft but largely humorless sound. "Awful and hard, both. The sort of thing you wouldn't wish on anyone."

Even the worst people she's met don't deserve to go through such a hard loss, Beth has to acknowledge that. She would wish all kinds of things on Gorman and even Dawn, knowing how that ended, and the Governor, too, but she doesn't want to think of them losing loved ones.

Even though she knows they had. They all had.

"But music helps," she says with a little smile. "I think sometimes people underestimate just how much it can help."

Even just listening to music has always been her go to when she's in a rough mood. She had spent hours in her bedroom on the farm, listening to albums her father alternately loved and hated, just for how they made her feel.

"They really do," Julia agrees, earnest and without hesitation. "It's the first thing that sort of... pulled me out of the slump I'd been in. Got me living again." She'd been getting by, before Donny came along with his talk of a band and going to New York and making it big, but that was all. Drifting, going through the motions, isn't the same as really having a life. Of course, showing up here, she's wound up back where she started in a lot of ways, but it feels safer for now, when she's lost everything she'd finally managed to rebuild.

"Funny. That feels like so much longer ago than it actually was."

"I know this is gonna make me sound like an old maid or somethin', but time sure does have a way of gettin' away from you, doesn't it?" Beth asks, laughing softly. She knows she sounds like her father when she says things like that, the kinds of platitudes that might seem insincere coming from someone else, but Hershel Greene had always managed to make them sound as if he meant them.

And as if they meant something new, just because he was the one saying it.

"But it's true," she says. "One day you're doin' something new and you look back at memories and they seem to exist in this far off place you can't touch any longer. But then you really think about it and realize six months or a year ago really isn't that far away. It just feels like it... like it's all gone."

"You don't sound like an old maid, I promise," Julia says, letting out a surprised little breath. "I... wrote something saying the same sort of thing once." Maybe it shouldn't be unexpected, but for all the boys who didn't make it home from the war, she isn't really used to talking to people who've been in a similar position to hers. There's something almost refreshing about it, being reminded that it's not just her, hearing words so close to her own coming from someone else. She'd have liked Beth instinctively, she thinks, but it's even truer for that sense of kinship, of understanding.

"That, or we both sound like old maids. Which might be just as likely, I don't know." Judging by her smile, she doesn't really think that's the case, but being a touch self-deprecating about the whole thing has helped her stay sane. "It really does, though, I think. Just passes before you can even realize it."

"I'm okay with that, I think," she decides with a laugh. There are things she worries about, perceptions of others, especially now that she's getting deeper into this entire career as a musician, but when it comes to Julia, it's a little different. They've only just met, but she likes to think they have a connection already, similarities they might not share with others.

"Sometimes it's crazy for me to realize just how long I've been here," she admits. "I was only nineteen when I arrived and now I'm twenty-four."

It's the longest she's been anywhere since the farm. Without Darrow, she doesn't think she'd have ever found something else like this. Nothing in her home would have ever been so stable.

"And five years can seem like a lifetime," Julia says, that much, too, a matter of experience. Five years was long enough for her to go from a wife to a widow, to think she knew what her life was going to be only to have it turned on its head. Maybe in a place like this, it might be a bit more understandable at home, where everyone was trying to go back to the way things were while that, for her, was entirely out of reach. Here, everyone who shows up from somewhere else has had their life stripped away in some regard, which might help a little, but it's still now, talking to Beth, that she feels like she's found someone who gets it, with similar losses behind them.

"It's hard to imagine. Being here for that long. I don't know how you've done it."

In Beth's case, there really isn't any other option, but it's not as if any of them have a choice. Still, for all she's told Julia today, she doesn't think she's ready to start talking about how she died at home, how Darrow is really the only life she has, so she only shrugs and smiles.

"It's not so bad in a lot of ways," she says. "It can be weird and it's different, but a lot of the people here are really good. I'm not sure what I'd do without them."

Of course, if she left Darrow, she'd have no way of knowing what she was missing. The very thought of it all is too much most of the time.

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