Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from The Walking Dead. The characters are owned by Robert Kirkman. Except for Jiao Elizabteh "Betty" Sung.
I'm just writing a story that I want to read. I hope you enjoy it too.
She didn't need a drink. Betty licked her dry lips, her tongue felt thick in her mouth. She did not need a drink.
She stirred her paintbrush around in the water, ribbons of azure swirled in the grey water before dissipating. It looked almost like a slurpee that once had many colors but had melted into grey. Maybe just a tiny sip to wet her mouth. Betty stopped herself. Negan would be here soon.
She leaned in closer to her canvas and refocused on her acrylic beachfront. There was something off about it. She picked up her finest paintbrush and dabbed it in the grey on her palette, and then spread a small line on to the line where the water touched the sand. It didn't have the popping effect she was trying for. She tried to remember the way water would look as it lapped the shore when she'd go beach-combing. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the smell of the air, and the feel of the sand on her bare skin. But beaches were too long ago in her memories.
A cough welled up in her chest, shaking her painful, broken frame, as she wheezed. She couldn't remember anything clearly but the men who broke her ribs, her wrists, fingers, and ankle and more. It was hard not too when she still felt pain from what they did to her. When she closed her eyes, she could remember everything about the mechanics shop where she was kept and tortured. Every muddy footprint on the grey tile floor, every crack in the window, every blonde strand of hair caught in the chain…
Now she was stuck inside this room being tempted to drink her paintbrush water because she was too scared to leave.
Betty threw down her paintbrush in frustration and got off the stool. She walked the length of her studio apartment four or five times, she stubbed her toe on the corner of the table and hopped over to the couch/bed. She plopped herself down. Underneath the cushions she was sitting on something hard. She stuck her hand in the couch and pulled out a bent paperback, Always Be Mindful And Kind; A Buddhist Guide To Self Awareness.
She tore the place apart looking for this book last night. Betty opened it to the page she had dog-eared page. Reading would take her mind off how thirsty she was.
To quiet the mind can be like making water-
Betty threw the book over her shoulder. Her mouth was so dry the inside of her cheeks felt fuzzy. Where the hell was Negan?
Off the coffee table she picked the thing she always read before bed. A folded page ripped from a home and garden magazine. It was a DIY guide to building a wheelbarrow flower bed but scrawled over top of the instruction was writing in permanent marker.
Hi, I'm Negan. What's your name?
Betty.
Her writing was unusually sloppy. Her hands had been shaking so bad, she could barely write her name. No one had bothered to talk to her in a really long time. Mostly they took one look at her uncomprehending face and assumed she didn't speak English. If they did figure out she was deaf, they'd figure it was too much effort to talk to her. But not Negan.
I'm sorry for what's happened to you. These were my men that did this. Come with me and I'll take you to a safe place.
She flipped the page over. The back side was a ad for Dawn dish soap with a yellow duckling on it.
I know you're scared. You'd be stupid not to be and asking for your trust is a lot but I promise no one is ever going to hurt you again.
He wrote that when she had been too afraid to get out of the truck. He didn't drag her out of by her wrist or by the hair. He let her sit inside for awhile and then he made her a promise. A promise that her suffering was over. She didn't have to sit here and wait like a puppy waiting to go for a walk. She could go get something to drink herself.
With a sudden surge of courage, she grabbed her satchel and a pair of flats, tightened her ponytail and walked out the door into the long, grey hallway. She looked over her shoulder so much that she didn't see that she was at the stairs and slipped. She landed on her left side, the corner of a stair pushed into a particular tender spot in her ribs. The pain brought tears but she wiped them away and got back up.
There was nothing to be afraid of anymore.
Betty kept her back against the wall and walked sideways down the stairs, so no one could come up behind her. She didn't see anyone the whole way down, which wasn't exactly a good thing. She had never been down here without being on Negan's heels. She wasn't sure on where she was going in this maze of concrete. She took the first door she saw on the right, it lead out to the catwalk.
Below her were tables full of stuff and things. And people. It smelled like baking. She spotted a table with bottles of water but no Negan unfortunately.
She walked slowly down the stairs. Her heart was beating pretty fast but she wouldn't say it was racing. She kept her eyes fixed on the table with the water into the fray of people. Someone bumped into her but she pushed forward.
There was a man sitting at the table with the water doing a crossword. The man looked up at her as she approached. Betty touched her ear and brought it down to her chin, the ASL sign for deaf. She always tried in hopes to find someone who would understand. The man on the other side of the table just starred at her confused. She reached in to her satchel, grabbed her notebook and fished around for a pen.
One water please. She turned the notebook over to the man.
3 pts. He wrote.
Negan said she could have anything she wanted. For lack of something better to say, she wrote exactly that. The man was now ignoring her so she had to hold it out in front of his face. The man looked back up at her, gave her a sarcastic 'sure he did' look and shooed her away with a flick of his wrist.
She really needed a drink. Betty reached for a bottle. The man snapped to attention and went to grab her. She knocked one of the bottles off the table as she brought her hands up to her face. Now her heart was racing. Go away, his face clearly said. But Betty needed a drink. She looked around but didn't see anything else so she stayed right where she was, on the verge of tears.
A tan woman with blonde hair and a gun on her hip came over. The man became noticeable tense, shying away from the table he had been just about to leap over. The woman grabbed a water bottle and handed it to Betty. Betty wasted no time unscrewing the cap and guzzling half the bottle. It was kind of warm but it quenched her incredible thirst.
The woman made the gesture of writing with her hands. Betty gave her the notebook, the woman quickly jotted something down and passed it back.
Wave me down if anyone gives you trouble. I'm Arat, by the way.
Betty smiled and nodded. With her water bottle and a new friend to stick up for her, Betty moseyed around the other tables. She was riffling through some shirts, her hands on a purple silk shirt when all of a sudden Betty felt like she had been hit by a invisible bull. The air was knocked out of her lungs. She was cold, freezing cold. She was dizzy or light headed. She could barely walk but she wanted to run. She staggered through some curtains, past some beds to the other side of the curtain, curled up in a ball against the wall, and waited to die.
A black leather glove waved at her. Negan was crouched down beside her.
What's going on? His concerned expression asked.
Negan had a really expressive face. It was one of the things she liked about him.
I was really thirsty so I came down to get some water and I just got overwhelmed. Betty wrote down in the notebook and spun it to face him. Negan slid the pen out of her hand.
I bet, poor thing. It's been a long time since you were around so many people.
I'll be ok.
Betty would be now that Negan was with her. The muscle in her chest started to relax and she could breath again.
Negan stood up and offered her his hand. Betty shook her head, and got up on her own. Negan was the only one she trusted but she still couldn't put herself in a position to get grabbed. He pointed to her elbow, his concerned look returning. Betty turned her elbow over. She was bleeding through the sleeve of her painting smock which was really a mens salmon dress shirt.
Betty pointed to the stairs of the catwalk, then walked her index and middle fingers down her palm, collapsing them to communicate her fall. Negan rolled his eyes and shook his head. Betty had always been a little clumsy, a side effect of having under developed ear canals was what the doctors had told her mother, a unfocused daydreamer was her mothers diagnosis.
Outside? Negan cocked his head to the entrance. Betty nodded.
He took off his leather jacket and draped it around her shoulders just like he did on the first day they met. She wasn't super cold anymore but she was still a little shaky. She shrugged her arms through the sleeves. It sounded silly but she felt safer in that leather jacket.
The chickens were her favorite thing and Betty was the chicken's favorite person. When they saw her coming, they'd all run to the fence, hopping over one another. With Negan at the gate, they managed to keep the chickens contained while Betty slipped inside. She crouched down to stroke them. The largest of the flock, a red she named Bernadette or Bernie for short, hopped up on Betty's shoulder. The chicken pecked her ear. Out of the corner of her eye, Betty saw Negan lightly swing his baseball bat at the chicken, probably didn't want her pooping on his coat. But Bernie was not scared off, she flapped her wings, ruffling Betty's hair. She reached over and plucked the big chicken off her.
All of a sudden the chicken all looked the same way. Betty looked too. Three delivery trucks were driving through the gate at the front of the building. Negan held up his hand and jerked his thumb to the incoming trucks. Be back in five, Betty took it to mean as he walked toward the trucks. But she wasn't going to stay here alone and have him come back to her crying with the chickens. She scrambled out of the chicken pen and quickly caught up to Negan.
Men were unloading furniture from the trucks. Betty hid behind Negan. Simon came over, he gave her a smile and a wave, which she returned, before him and Negan started chatting. She wasn't sure how she felt about Simon, he was nice to her and Negan said he was the one to go to if she couldn't find him. It was just the man looked insane.
A large peach rock sticking out of a Budweiser box on the top of a stack in the caught her eye. With Negan still in her sights, Betty hopped into the back of the truck. It was a Himalyan salt lamp. It was out of reach so she pulled on the rolled up rug. A bigger box slid off the rug, Betty caught it before it came down on her head but it was too heavy for her to push up so she was stuck. Her wrists were on fire trying to support the box. The truck jounced as Negan came to her rescue. He lifted the box off of her and grabbed the notebook out of her satchel and quickly jotted something down.
Can I leave you alone for minute without something terrible happening to you?
Betty smiled and shook her head. There was a large amount of evidence that said Betty was not safe without Negan. He smiled.
She pointed up at the salt lamp. Negan handed her his bat and began to moving the stuff to get at the rock salt lamp. He jerked back, knocking in to her. A large wolf spider scurried out from the stack. He motioned for his bat back but Betty kept it, getting a rather annoyed look from him.
Betty's first impulse was to kill the spider too but as a born again Buddhist, she couldn't let it be killed so instead she coaxed the spider on to the bat. The spider ran around the first line of barbed wire but wouldn't cross over. So it had nowhere to go but towards Betty. She tried the bat back to Negan but he didn't take it, crossing his arms with cheeky smile.
This time it was Negan on Betty's heels as she carefully stepped down out of the van.
The best place for the spider would be the garden so Betty tiptoed with the bat, her arm completely outstretched, countering every move the spider made. It was hard to walk with the spider trying to climb up to meet her. It was even harder to walk with her face burning. She didn't need to hear to know Negan and Simon laugh to know they were laughing at her. People probably laughed at the Buddha when he abandon his life to mediate.
As soon as Betty got to the garden, she put the bat down. The spider took a moment to move off, scared like she had been, it ran away in to the leaf litter.
You'll be happy here, she thought. She looked up to the top of factory building, the sun warm on her face. It was a pretty great place.
Betty picked up the bat and pulled a dead leaf out of the barbed wire.
Your idea was better. Lucille doesn't need bug guts on her. Negan must have lifted her notebook as she had been walking the spider.
Who was Lucille? The question must of shown on her face.
Negan pointed to the bat who was apparently named Lucille. It wasn't so weird. Great swords had names in fantasy stories. Betty ran her hand along the smooth wood, feeling…feeling a odd power and fondness? Lucille had liberated her.
Betty's eyes had been closed for a good forty seconds. Negan rubbed small circles in the ball of her foot for another twenty seconds just to be sure. He took his hand off her bony foot. Still sleeping. Hopefully that foot massage would keep her out for a extra hour. He wasn't completely sure on how much sleep she got but he knew it was nowhere near a full eight hours from the amount of new paintings that would be there in the morning. She needed to gain at least ten pounds before Carson could give her sleeping pills though and since that wasn't going to happen any time soon, Negan had to get creative.
It was Frankie's massages that had given him the idea. Negan always slept ten times better after his ginger wife had worked out all the knots and stress in his shoulders and back. The catch with Betty was that she didn't like to be touched. The poor girl had been so abused that any affection was a threat. The most he could do was put his coat on her to keep her warm.
Speaking of which, it was hanging on the back of a kitchen chair and speaking of his wives, which one should he been spending the rest of his night with? He had screwed Frankie until her face was as red as her hair last night so maybe Amber tonight? Amber was kind of a sad sack. Tanya maybe? They did get interrupted this afternoon because of Betty's breakdown. So yeah Tanya it was.
He switched off Will & Grace. He had been Betty's hero of the day for the twentieth day in a row for figuring out how to get the captions on. Very slowly, he eased off the couch, careful not disrupt any one of the twenty-seven pillows. Betty had a bed but she disliked beds as much as being touched.
Betty jolted awake, looking freaked out for a second. She sat up in her nest of pillows and Negan groaned. Well he tried. He couldn't stay here. He didn't have the patience to and he couldn't risk losing his temper on her.
"Uhn." Negan heard behind him as he turned to leave.
Fun fact about deaf people, they were not complete silent. Betty made all sorts of little noises. That little grunt normally meant Look. So he did.
Good night. Betty was holding up the notebook.
Negan was dead inside or so he had thought for the longest time but it turned out he had one last shrivelled heartstring left and the first time he felt it twitch was when Betty was brought in to waiting room of the garage, wearing a small bathrobe, her hair matted, left eye swollen shut and just bruised from head to toe.
He couldn't leave without saying good night. He went back over to the couch but didn't sit down.
Good night, try to get some sleep ok? I'll see you tomorrow.
He dared to pat her shoulder and for once she didn't flinch, just looked at him with those adoring eyes.
Negan was responsible for Betty. It was his failure in leadership that had gotten her raped and beaten. He knew exactly the type of men he sent out to the fartherests outposts and he never thought to check in on them to make sure they were following the rules. She had probably been there for months and if the truck hadn't gotten stuck, sidetracking Negan to the garage outpost, she probably would've died there.
It was more than guilt that tied him to her. Betty was vulnerable, more vulnerable than most. If Negan was going to truly create a society that was civilized, it needed to one where people with disabilities would be safe. Betty was a symbol.