The sound of children's laughter caused Negan to look up from the dark earth he'd been turning and in the direction of the pregnant blonde woman surrounded by kids in the distance. Baby Coco was on her hip - while Judith, RJ, Gracie, Alliyah, little Mariam and Hershel all circled around her. Even Lydia looked on from where she was sitting on the stoop with Elijah. Smiles adorned everyone's faces.
Who knows what the woman had said? She might have been leading them in another game of Simon Says or telling them one of those stories from before things went to shit. Perhaps, it was something said during an impromptu session of their schooling - something she recently insisted on restarting?
It really didn't matter.
All Negan knew was this had to be the most maternal woman he'd ever met. She was like old Mother Hen. Well, had Mother Hen been young and hot as fuck too. Regardless, it was one of the downright sexiest damn things Negan had ever seen - and he'd seen some dick-springing shit in his life.
He'll never forget the day Daryl and his long-lost wife," Beth, showed up at the gates of Alexandria. It was when Negan finally got to lay eyes on the mystery woman from Meridian. He'd probably always recall the way everyone was left utterly speechless and confused. How Carol fell to the ground in shock and then rushed to tackle her - like the girl was her long lost daughter returned from the dead or some shit.
But that was exactly what she had done, wasn't it? Just fucken' resurrected out of nowhere one day like magic.
And while at first she didn't seem like much - just a small blonde girl not even quite thirty yet - it didn't take Negan long to figure out what a big deal this Beth really was.
For one, she was Maggie's real flesh and blood sister - the one that once hung in a portrait over her desk in Hilltop along with all her other dead loved ones. This knowledge explained the widow's weird behavior back at Meridian. He couldn't help but to be happy for the woman he'd probably wronged all those years ago. At least she and her son had someone back - even if that someone could never be Glenn.
But she was also Judith's first mom. Well, after her real mother died giving birth to her that is. Although Judith didn't actually remember, Michonne had told the stories. Stories Negan overheard from his cold jail cell way down in the basement. He knew that this young slip of a thing took that baby in and cared for her while she was just a girl herself. That Beth loved her so much that she would have gladly laid down her life for Judith if need be. The type of Mother's love that transcends all space and time.
And while Michonne would always be her mom nowadays, it didn't take long for Judith to take up with Beth also. It was almost as if the little girl could still recognize a bond buried somewhere deep within her subconscious. Beth was exactly the type of stability that Judith and RJ needed right now anyway. These days you'd find the children trailing behind the pregnant woman as she walked along to oversee her next project or propped up on a nearby table watching her patch people up at the clinic.
Because if Beth wasn't important enough already, she'd gone and became a doctor during that time she was supposed to be dead too. This was something the good people of Alexandria found to be mighty damn convenient. Her vast experience as a surgeon probably made Beth the best physician the town ever had.
Yeah, people swore Beth was able to perform miracles and not just with medicine either. They also relied on her counsel as well, rather or not she even realized it. Negan would be damned if this young woman hadn't instantly impacted the mood around here lately. Somehow, she brought with her hope. The kind that had been missing for quite a while.
"Hey Hoss! You suddenly into little kids or something?"
Negan rolled his eyes when the voice interrupted his thoughts. Acting like he was ignoring the comment, he returned his attention to turning over the dirt.
"Cause I know it ain't my wife you are looking at like that, is it?"
Well, if it wasn't Mr. Motherfucking Hen, himself.
Along with being the luckiest bastard alive at the moment as far as Negan was concerned, this asshole was possessive as shit too - as in would gladly put an arrow in your skull if you so much as thought about it. Not that he could really blame him though. Fuck, he'd be the same way.
Still, Negan wasn't anybody's bitch.
Well, except maybe the blonde's and her older sister's. Truth was, those women were a special breed, filled with just as much fierceness as everything good. Negan was enamored just like everyone else he supposed. He couldn't help but feel this need to protect them - which was insane since both would probably want him dead until the day he actually died.
And of course there were also the children. Those kids pulled on his heart strings too. He would do anything for them - including little Hershel, which was ten kinds of fucked up.
But there would never be a day that he wouldn't poke Daryl Dixon though. Fucker deserved it. Walking around this kind of hell while still getting to put babies into a wife like that. That shit just didn't seem right.
"Just enjoying the view is all," Negan chuckled as he went back to turning the soil. "The sun seems to shine a bit brighter in that direction."
"Is that right?" Daryl responded dryly while slamming another shovel into the rich ground beside him. "Keep looking that way and you're gonna get burned. I'm gonna end up being the only one turning this field if you don't know what's best and that's just gonna piss me off more."
"Oh don't worry about me, Hoss," Negan couldn't help but mock. "Your women and kids are safe - at least from me. Besides, after working the math out in my head a bit, it seems you're the one who likes child brides anyway. I mean, Beth couldn't have been much older than fifteen when you married her, right?"
Negan didn't see the punch that landed him face down in the dirt but he sure the hell expected it.
Laughing, he slowly pulled himself up using the shovel as an aid, brushed himself off, and turned toward the asshole fuming beside him.
"That's alright, man," he offered between breaths of laughter, like Daryl would even think about apologizing in the first place. "Didn't mean to hit a nerve."
"You think shit like that is funny?" Daryl spewed, absolutely livid from the comment.
"There's a lot of shit around here I think is funny, Daryl." Negan chuckled again with a smirk. "I think it's funny as fuck that Rick is still alive and politicking in some far away place where they act like the world isn't so screwed up. It's funny that Eugene, Ezekiel, and that other chick ain't back yet and nobody even knows where to begin looking for them. It's funny that we are planting goddamned edible weeds and fart-a-chokes to feed us and grounding up acorns to make bread. And it's absolutely crazy that any of it is actually valuable enough to trade with Oceanside, But hey, that's the world we live in now, right? At least, ever since those skin-wearing fucks decided to wreck havoc on everything."
Daryl looked at Negan severely, almost as if contemplating showing him just how funny he thought any of it was. Surprisingly though, he seemed to deflate instead. The man just picked back up the shovel he'd been using and roughly shoved it back into the ground again.
"But the most hilarious shit of all," Negan continued with a shit eating grin, slightly disappointed Daryl seemed to calm down. "Is the insane ideal that you - OF ALL FUCKING PEOPLE - somehow ended up talking a girl like Beth into being your wife."
"You better watch your mouth," Daryl warned in a low tone, though Negan didn't miss the slight smirk on his face as he glanced his wife's way. "That woman hears you talking shit, it won't be me that you are going to need to be worried about."
"You don't need to tell me that twice," Negan replied with an exaggerated shudder. "It was my head your darling misses almost tore off, remember?"
Turned out little miss sunshine and lace was also a fighter. But of course she was going to be. Maggie Rhee was her sister after all and Daryl Dixon was her husband. Unfortunately, that also meant that she inherently disliked him. Attacked him the moment she figured out who he was.
But to hell with any bad feelings any of that might have caused. Honestly, it only made the woman all the more attractive.
"You'd be dumb to underestimate her," the man beside him remarked with one of his non-chalant shrugs and kept turning over the garden plot. "I made the mistake of getting really drunk and pissing her off royally just one time. But that was all it took. Before it was over, Beth not only had me firmly by the balls but also insisted on burning the whole house down too. As in she wanted to literally set the place we were at on fire. Crazy as fuck."
"No shit?" Negan looked up in surprise. "What did you do?"
"What the fuck do you think I did?" Daryl paused and looked at Negan incredibly like he had two heads. "I helped her douse the bitch with the rest of the shine and burned that shit to the ground."
Negan bent over in laughter. He'd also heard the stories about how snarly Daryl used to be before and Beth couldn't have been more than an eighteen or nineteen years old girl at the time.
"Attracted every damn walker for at least fifty miles too," Daryl continued with the same smart ass smirk from before. "But Beth just stood there and flipped it off before we walked away. Didn't even bat an eye."
"Wow. Just wow!" Negan bemused, catching his breath. "Okay, so if I am smart, I should steer clear of little Mrs. Sunshine if there's accelerates involved. Highly noted."
"And," Daryl began to point out. "She already considered me family back then. Loved me unconditionally. You, however, don't stand a fucking chance. She already hates your ass."
"So that's the secret then," Negan chuckled as he went back to his work. "That's how you were actually able to snatch her up? Just pissed her off enough to fall in love with you?"
"Something like that," Daryl answered while turning another clump of soil.
"You know I was married once too," Negan offered after a while for no godforsaken reason he could think of.
"Yeah?" Daryl replied, not even looking up though seemingly noticing the sudden change in tone of the conversation.
"I wasn't the best husband in the world," Negan admitted thoughtfully. "Actually, I was a pretty shitty one if I'm being honest. But I did love her. More than I even realized myself."
"You lost her during the turn?" Daryl guessed, briefly glancing over at him.
"No, but not too long afterwards," he confirmed, the sadness of it still raw within. "Cancer. She died while I was out finding the medicine."
He watched Daryl slightly nod in understanding. It dawned on Negan that the man knew all too well what that was like. He couldn't help but wonder what he would have done had Lucille just reappeared one day out of nowhere and seen everything that he'd become. The more he thought about it, the more surreal Daryl's situation with Beth seemed.
"Funny how shit like that changes you," Negan continued in a serious voice. "Believe it or not, I was once a gym teacher before all of it went down. Worked in a school surrounded by children. Owned a home in a nice little sub-division. You know? The American dream."
Daryl snorted beside him.
"What?" Negan chuckled. "Hard to believe?"
"A fucking gym teacher, man?" Daryl straightened up and leaned on his shovel. "You got to be fucking kidding me?"
"Hell, most everybody did something back in the day," Negan countered in frustration. "It ain't like we were all doing this shit before. Why? What the hell did you do for a living?"
Daryl contemplated him a minute or two before once again returning his attention back to their work on the ground.
"Sure the hell wasn't a Gym teacher."
Negan just continued staring at the man dumbfounded. Something told him that maybe he didn't want to know what exactly Daryl Dixon did before everything went to shit.
"All I'm saying is that circumstances forced us all to change somehow." Negan continued. "It's just… well I know my Lucille - the real Lucille - would probably have not approved of some of the choices I personally made. No, that's probably an understatement. She would have kicked my sorry ass."
Daryl paused briefly in response to recognizing the name but he didn't look Negan's way. Instead, he surprised him by speaking again.
"You remember when your dumb-ass thought it'd be a good idea to take me back to the Sanctuary?" Thought I'd eventually buy into all that 'I'm Negan' hoopla?"
He only nodded his response, uncomfortable with the idea of even bringing all this heavy shit up.
"Well that was never going to work," Daryl sighed. "I mean, it might have happened before when all this shit with the dead first went down but there was no way any of that was going to work by then."
"Kind of already figured that out," Negan replied dryly, not knowing where the man was going with any of this. "It wasn't like you ever pretended to cooperate."
"She was the reason why," Daryl continued, standing to face him again. "You see, life wasn't all peachy for me before. The old world had no use for anything I had to offer. It wasn't until after the turn did anybody actually find anything about me slightly useful."
Negan locked eyes with the man in front of him in understanding.
"So when everything went down, I didn't change for the worse like most people," he shrugged again, diverting his concentration back to digging. "I actually changed for the better. That night we burned down that cabin, she told me that I couldn't ever go back. That I had to stay who I was now no matter what. Nothing you or anybody else did could ever make me forget that."
Negan contemplated what Daryl had just said while turning the last little patch of the garden not yet tilled. After lifting the earth one last time, he stood up and studied the young pregnant woman still circled by children in the distance.
"You know, had she been here back in the day, I would have taken Beth for myself." He remarked, perhaps foolishly but he didn't care because it was the fucked up truth. "Probably would have kept her with me instead of the harem and lavished her in gifts hoping she'd give in."
Daryl, also finished by now, threw his shovel to the ground.
"And you would have been walker food too," the man growled in a dangerous voice.
Negan started to exit the garden plot they'd both just recently prepared for planting but suddenly stopped inches from Daryl. He roughly pushed the shovel against the other man's chest.
"I know," he confirmed seriously. "But I don't think it would have been you who killed me."
And with that, Negan simply strolled away.