I'm back! I used another prompt from Tumblr that took another unexpected turn, but I think I'm okay with that since I like what came of it. I decided to post this as a second chapter rather than a new story, seeing as it picks up pretty soon after the first left off, and I hope you like it. Enjoy!
The ungodly heat had finally abated, the temperature dropping from the devil's ass crack to something resembling summer on Earth, but it had been replaced with rain. A fuck ton of rain. If not a downpour that just about flooded the Sanctuary, then at least a constant drizzle that kept everything soggy. Where the sun had been relentless a few days before, now it had been hidden behind clouds so long even the memory of it seemed like a tall tale.
As far as Negan was concerned, either Mother Nature was PMSing bigger than shit or was off her fucking meds.
He sat in his office with his feet propped up on the desk, leaning back in the padded chair and staring out the window. He was ordinarily proud of the office, with a bad ass desk made of solid oak, a bad ass rolling chair upholstered in leather with adjustable lumbar support, a really bad ass aquarium that would have held a few tropical fish in another lifetime, some important-looking filing cabinets and an even more important-looking liquor cabinet, some nice paintings on the walls, a dart board, a novelty singing fish for the hell of it, and a couple straight-backed wooden chairs in decent enough shape not to be an eyesore but plain and uncomfortable enough to remind visitors where they ranked on the totem pole. Put together with luxury and prestige in mind, he always felt like a king in his office. Always.
And today he was sick of it. He could blame the weather, the myriad difficulties of running a substantial community, further reports of groups causing trouble in said substantial community, anything he damn well fucking felt like. The simple truth was that he was plain ass bored.
He swiveled slightly in the chair and folded his hands thoughtfully. Maybe he could call one of his wives in and bend her over the desk—Amber was delightfully fuckable the last time she was in his office—or maybe one of his men would be up for a game of darts—Fat Joey had joked about a rematch awhile ago—or hell, he'd even listen to the stupid fucking fish on the wall if it helped pass the time.
Rolling his eyes at himself, he got to his feet and crossed the room to the fish he found at turns annoying and amusing, pressing the button to get the thing flopping and dancing as "Don't Worry, Be Happy" broke the silence.
It was no fucking surprise to discover he was in a mood to consider it annoying.
He turned to the window and stared out through the rain. He had some of the best views in the Sanctuary; walking into the office, visitors could see the fence with its undead guardians and the pariahs tending them, but from his desk in the opposite direction he could see lawn and garden, the life among the dead. Not that there was much to see right now. If anything survived this rain, it would be soggy or rotten or whatever the fuck happened to plants when they got too much water.
He paused as movement outside caught his eye. A cluster of people were out in the garden, ignoring the rain as they went about their work, though whatever that was was beyond him. What kind of yard work could you possibly fucking do when it was raining cats and fucking dogs? He watched them for a few minutes, then lost interest and left the window.
It wasn't until later when he was making a surprise inspection of the Sanctuary—bored the fuck out of his motherfucking mind—that he found the mud and water tracked inside, an ever-widening path stretching from door to—
He froze, dumbstruck. Plants. Plants everywhere. Vines, bushes, even a few of the smaller fruit trees, dug up into pots and buckets and spread out across the factory floor, draining and dripping all over the fucking place. It was a clusterfuck if he ever saw one, and if there was one thing he prided himself on, it was neatness.
"What the fuck is all this shit?" he demanded loudly. "Someone better tell me who the holy fuck is responsible for this, and they better have a fucking phenomenal excuse!"
Four people walked through the doors from the rain outside, two of them carrying a huge bucket with a peach sapling between them and the others hauling smaller pots holding other plants, all of them soaking wet and mud-smeared as they carefully made their way across the filthy floor.
Negan advanced, slipping in the mud. He recovered his balance, but a near miss wasn't going to do shit to improve his mood. Seething with irritation, he approached the little group and said, "Any of you care to explain to me what the fuck you think you're doing, dragging this goddamned mess all the fuck over knowing good and fucking well how I like to keep a clean house and that your housemates bust their fucking asses keeping this place presentable? Anyone?"
All four of them set down their containers and three of them bowed their heads respectfully, looking slightly nervous. The fourth, however, kept her head up and her gaze locked on his face as if not to miss a word of his tirade, and as he got closer he recognized her. Wendy, the deaf gardener.
Well, whatever the fuck was going on, now it made a little more sense.
He stopped in front of all of them, assessing each of them and saving Wendy for last. She was as thin as ever, her rain-soaked clothes clinging to every bone, mud up to her knees and elbows. "How about it, friends?" he asked, watching her for signs of explanation. "It's the wrong fucking weather for gardening, and even I know that goddamn much."
Wendy raised her hands and started signing rapidly, then paused at the blank look on his face and motioned for one of her companions to explain. A middle-aged woman with streaks of silver in her hair spoke. "The rain is flooding the garden. We had to relocate what we could or lose the entire crop."
Well, he supposed he knew that too, though the status was a little more dire than he expected. Some of his irritation ebbed away and he looked around at the plants they had rescued, still dripping water and turning from a healthy green to a strange shade of yellow. The Sanctuary didn't survive on tribute alone, and there were a lot of people to be fed. If they lost what they could grow themselves they wouldn't exactly starve, but there would be a lot more people as scrawny as Wendy. "Have we lost anything so far?"
"There's been water standing in the cabbages since the rain started," the older of the two men replied, "and the seeds we started after the drought will have washed away by now. We won't know about anything we dug up until they've had a chance to dry out a little."
"How bad would you say it is, as it is? Your best guesstimate?"
Wendy immediately gave a thumbs-down.
The seriousness of her expression took him by surprise. "That bad?"
"Possibly," said the young man, barely more than a kid. Holy shit, he could almost have been one of Negan's students, he was that young, yet he looked at least as serious as Wendy. "The entire plot is on a grade. You barely notice it just walking around, but the water all runs downhill to pool at the bottom."
"Into the cabbages," Negan ventured, cocking a finger gun at the older man.
He nodded. "It's not been a problem before, but we've never had it flood like this, either."
Negan looked past them to the rain outside. "Anything left out there you might be able to haul in here?"
Wendy shrugged and the woman agreed, "It's just the cabbages now and the fruit trees big enough to outlast the weather. We'll have to start the seeds over, and there won't be any green beans this season at this rate."
"Well now, honey, that is a damn tragedy," he replied. "Based on what we have, minus cabbages and green beans, are we in danger of imminent starvation?"
Wendy looked poised to communicate something but the older man said, "Based on what I see right here, there's not much chance for half of what we saved. At least half. They've been out there drowning too long, they'll never dry out before they start rotting."
Negan watched Wendy for any sign of agreement; she was watching the other man closely, following every word as it shaped his lips. She turned back to Negan at a gesture from him, and he asked her, "How 'bout it, sweetheart? Is it as bad as all that, or can we do better?"
She looked at all the containers, seeing the drooping vines and puddles of water still draining out of the pots and buckets, and he waited patiently for her to answer, finally raising her hand and holding it flat while rocking it slightly back and forth.
"Maybe?"
She nodded.
"All right, then. What do we do?"
"There's not much we can do," the man replied. "They're all sitting in mud, they're not much better off in here than—"
"Pardon the fucking shit out of me, my friend," Negan cut him off. "I do so hate to interrupt, but what is your name?"
The man paused momentarily before responding, "Travis."
"Well then, Travis, as I said, I hate to interrupt you, but you've already weighed in on this shit show and pronounced it fucked up beyond all recognition, and while I respect your opinion, I still reserve the fucking right to seek another. Wendy here says more can be done, so I'm talking to her right now, and I say one more fucking time, I hate interruptions."
Travis fell silent, bowing his head and looking away.
"Now then, Wendy darling," Negan said, turning back to her, "what's your game plan?"
She carefully spelled it out, keeping to the alphabet and signing slowly as he followed along. They need dry soil. They'll drown soon as they are.
Negan paused, skeptical. "I'd say that's a plan, darling, but it's raining the standard forty days and forty nights and I'm thinking of building a fucking ark as it is, so where on God's soggy ass earth do we find dry soil?"
"Any old hardware or feed store carries potting soil," the kid suggested. "Dirt isn't exactly in high demand, so we should be able to scavenge some."
Negan raised an eyebrow. "I don't know where you came from, son, but you're with the Saviors now," he said, "and the Saviors don't scavenge for shit."
Even in emergencies? Wendy signed.
All right, she got him there. Back when they were first trying to make this pile of bricks work and everything was a lights-and-sirens emergency, they had scavenged their asses off with the best of the vultures and carrion-eaters. They had toyed jokingly with the idea of referring to themselves as the Crows before they rose up in the world—not that that was saying much. So yeah, they used to scavenge like bottom feeders, but there was no need for Wendy to know that.
He assessed the kid and the other woman one more time, taking their stock and thinking seriously. "So I'm to understand it will be a disaster if we sit back and wait for this ass-backward little conundrum to get itself turned the fuck around?" he asked Wendy.
She nodded.
He turned several ideas over in his head before saying, "Tell you what, Wendy darling. Why don't you and—" he glanced at the kid, who answered, "John," then at the woman, who said, "Susan," he nodded once and went on, "why don't you, John boy and Susan get yourselves cleaned up and ready to go, and I'll put a bug in a few people's ears, and they can run you out to any old hardware or feed store and make sure your asses are covered while you get whatever the fuck you need to come back and bail our asses out of this shitpile Mother Nature has seen fit to bury us under. How does that work for you?"
Wendy traded a look with her companions and nodded.
Negan smiled. "Get a move on, sweetheart."
She and the other two hurried away, leaving the older man standing. Negan turned to leave, then called back over his shoulder, "Be a pal, Trav, and clean that shit up. You know how I love a tidy house."
The sun had set without showing its face from behind the clouds again by the time the gardeners returned, going straight to work as soon as they arrived with the precious soil. Negan took no interest in this, though he was fairly impressed to hear Wendy had taken down a dead one that had otherwise surprised the group at the hardware store and nearly taken a chunk out of one of his own men.
The rain persisted and Negan put the problem of growing things out of his mind for the next few days, finding more to occupy his time. There were more stories coming in of trouble in his territory and he had his hands full enough without even thinking about the deaf chick. It wasn't until the rain had stopped at long fucking last that anything to do with the agriculture even came to his attention. And when it did, it came directly to his doorstep.
He had retreated to his office for peace and quiet and was thinking of pouring himself a drink when there was a knock on the door. "It's open," he called, walking to the liquor cabinet.
No one came inside, but a few moments later there was another knock.
"Open the fucking thing!"
No response, but yet another knock.
He slammed the cabinet closed again and went to the door, storming, "The fuck's the deal here, are you fucking deaf or—" He yanked the office door open and laid eyes on Wendy standing in the hallway.
Goddamnit.
He heaved a sigh and held the door open for her. "Wendy darling, I have got to stop making such a fucking jackass of myself around you," he remarked.
She shrugged then mimed writing, and he handed her a pen and a sheet of paper from his desk. Bad timing? she asked.
"On the contrary," he replied. "You can join me for a drink." He went back to the liquor cabinet and poured two glasses of Scotch, handing one to her and motioning to a chair. "Ladies first, doll."
She sat in one of the wooden chairs and he sank into the office chair, lifting his glass to her before taking a long swallow. "What brings you all the way up here, sweetheart?" he asked.
She took a delicate sip of whiskey, then took up the pen again and wrote, We're going to start moving things back into the garden soon, but we should do something about flood prevention while we can.
"That's an excellent idea, my dear," he said, "and while I know as much about gardens as a Catholic school girl knows about blowing dick, I can't stress enough the totality of my faith in your skills."
She smiled and signed a thank you, but kept writing. Runoff ditches would be good, but raised beds would be even better. As it stands, though, we don't have the supplies or the manpower.
"What?" he burst out. "Manpower? Wendy darling, look around you! We've got all the fucking manpower you'll ever fucking need!"
They're not interested in suggestions from the new kid.
"Bull-fucking-shit. The new kid is busy saving their ungrateful collective asses, and they'll learn to be interested if I have to teach it to the whole motherfucking crowd of them."
Something passed across her face too fast for him to read before it was gone and she wrote, We still need supplies. If necessary, we can make do with whatever we happen to find around here, but we can't half-ass it and expect it to work. We need to go on a run, if we go by the design I worked out.
Negan sat staring at her for a moment, unsure what to say. Saviors didn't scavenge? She couldn't send them out with her grocery list and expect anything to come of it? She was the new kid, after all, and while she had more than earned her place among the others, he could expect shit to blow back if it looked like he gave her preferential treatment over his own men. Power was a delicate balance, and he thought she understood that.
He swilled the Scotch around in his glass, thinking quickly. "How much of what you brought out of the rain survived?" he asked.
All of it, she wrote. She seemed to be thinking as quickly as him, adding, The dry soil saved us.
The dry soil from the last time she suggested a run and he decided to trust her. She knew what she was talking about back then and she'd bailed them out of one motherfucker of a jam, and he could only make a bigger ass of himself by not listening to her now. Greater fucking good, and all that shit.
He drained the glass in one swallow and folded his hands on the desk. "All right, Wendy darling, let's see these designs of yours."
It sure as fuck wasn't easy. It took two trips to get everything Wendy needed, one of which almost went bad when a dead one grabbed onto one of Negan's people and a trigger-happy Savior shot the thing even deader; he missed with the first shot and the poor bastard was still in the infirmary with a bullet graze at his temple. As for the gunman, Negan assigned him to teach target practice—as the target. Where not to aim, as it were.
The actual construction was a long and back-breaking process, and Negan was dead certain that Wendy would have lost half her workers halfway through the project if they weren't all scared shitless of him. Not that she was a bad boss, in fact she did more than a fair share of shit herself, but she was stubborn and exacting in her execution and she wanted the same from everyone else. Good wasn't good enough. She wanted results, and Negan, feeling more and more inclined to respect that desire, made sure she got them.
More clouds gathered as they hurried to replace the plants taken during the rain back in the garden, typical gardeners and recruited help alike. Negan's curiosity brought him out to watch as Wendy led the group in replanting the newly-finished beds, and he had to admit it was pretty fucking impressive.
Where there had been flat, albeit sloping, ground were now gently terraced sections of earth, separate beds utilizing scavenged railroad ties as retaining walls, each with a shallow trench leading out and away and connecting into what Wendy referred to as a French drain, a separate ditch below the last bed containing a pipe made of coiled chicken wire wrapped in plastic sheeting and filled with gravel. In theory, Wendy told him, water would run through the trenches in the beds and into the drain, collecting in the giant steel drum dug into the ground at the end serving as water collection against dry spells.
No, it wasn't easy, but it looked like sheer fucking genius.
Wendy brushed most of the dirt off her hands and approached him and he nodded his approval. "Looks like some hot shot fucking landscaper dude did it," he said, speaking as always where she could see his words. "Professional, and damn brilliant."
She smiled, then glanced at the sky where the thunderheads were building up.
"Yeah, looks like we're in the nick of time, Wendy darling. You think it'll work?"
She nodded firmly, then lifted her crossed fingers and he laughed. "It's all right, doll. I trust you."
That John kid staked tomatoes while Susan, the older woman, packed earth around a young peach tree. He didn't know many other names but he recognized a few faces from other bits of work around the Sanctuary, mechanics stabilizing the retaining walls while cooks carried planters back and forth, carpenters working with the mechanics and gardeners with the cooks. It was the most bizarre team effort he had ever seen since their group first came together, all of them united in their anxious glances toward the coming storm.
He looked at Wendy again as lightning flashed in the distance and asked, "Won't the rain do a number on them, right after they go in the ground?"
She shook her head, pointing to the ground and making curling, crumbling gestures with her fingers, then pointing to the clouds and pressing her palms together, and after awhile he understood. The soil was loose now, but the rain would pack it firm.
The first peals of thunder sounded as the last vine went into the dirt and the workers began to collect their tools. Negan strained his eyes to see the rain already falling several miles away, and with the wind picking up the way it was starting to, it wouldn't be long until it hit the Sanctuary.
The crowd started moving inside but Wendy walked back out into the garden, looking everything over and inspecting with care and focus, tiny frown lines appearing between her eyebrows. Negan stood watching her, and fuck if she didn't look like an artist surveying a new painting, deciding if a final brushstroke was needed. She had planned, analyzed and observed everything about this down to the last damn detail, and he wondered what she had done in the old world to keep such fastidious habits in the new.
He approached her and set a hand on her shoulder, nodding towards the Sanctuary when she looked up at him. "Come on, doll, I've got a good view in my office."
She followed him inside as the first drops fell, and by the time they reached his office it was coming down in earnest. She went straight to the window on entry and he followed, listening once again to the steady pattering rhythm of the rain, and it had been long enough since the last storm that he once more found the noise soothing rather than irritating. And it was with pity that he looked at Wendy, unable to hear it at all. It was fucking tragic, is what it was, to live without something as mundanely extraordinary as the sound of a rainfall...but as it beat against the window she pressed her palm to the glass, fingers tapping softly along with the water.
Something about the innocence of the gesture had him smiling before he knew it.
He moved to stand next to her and she smiled briefly up at him before looking outside again, and he followed her gaze to the garden below. Puddles were starting to form, the newly-turned edges of the trenches already looking washed smooth at a distance. Wendy's suspense was contagious, and Negan found himself holding his breath as the runoff slowly followed the channels through the beds to where the plastic-and-gravel contraption lay in the earth. They waited a few more tense moments, staring at the steel drum reservoir, then finally saw it. A modest but steady trickle from the drain, straight where it was meant to go.
Negan turned grinning to Wendy and she looked back with an identical expression. "Wendy darling, you are some kind of goddamn brilliant."
She beamed even wider and gave him a thumbs-up, a silent celebration against the sound of the rain.
Ago yet