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If you’d have asked Maggie Greene ten years ago who in the world would be good enough for her sister, you’d have stumped her. No man was good enough for Beth Greene, so far as Maggie was concerned. Beth had felt the same way about her, Maggie knew, until Glenn came along.
In the old world, Maggie had just about tolerated Jimmy, figuring that Beth’s interest in him would wane as she got older. Besides, he was such a goody two shoes that he wasn’t likely to get her into trouble. Didn’t have it in him to get her out of trouble neither, mind.
But then the world had gone to shit. Daddy would have frowned at the language but Maggie figured that shit by any other name would still be just as shitty. Besides, Daddy was gone. And now there were just two Greenes standing. And that was against all odds.
Maggie stood on the front porch of the ranch, hands wrapped around the warm and boozy drink someone had pressed into her hands a few minutes ago. Everyone seemed to celebrating these days. It was almost hard to believe the stuff they’d gone through in the last decade or so. Now that things had finally settled down, Maggie absentmindedly knocked on the wood railing for luck, maybe they deserved some fun.
The sun was just dipping behind the trees and there was a real bite to the air tonight that suggested that winter was on its way at last. The bonfire was blazing away and voices were already high and light, the homemade alcohol working fast. Maggie caught a glimpse of her sister’s white blonde hair as she wrestled her daughter, Maggie’s niece, into a coat, laughing at her petulance. Maggie felt a lump in her throat.
Both Maggie and Beth had changed since the sickness came, more than ten years ago, but Maggie was sure that Beth had had the steeper learning curve. Just sixteen when the shit had hit the fan, Beth had spent her life that far in shelter: too afraid to drink in case she upset Daddy, too Christian to mess around with boys, too protected by her older brother. Maggie had been at college, not able to be the bad influence she was sure she was supposed to be.
To be fair, Maggie thought, though, Beth hadn’t been the only sheltered one. When things started to get bad, Maggie had jumped in her pick-up outside her sorority house at UGA and gunned it all the way home. Even when they realised things were going really bad, they’d believed that they could all come back from it. Maggie still felt a little sick about how close to danger they’d been, with those walkers in the barn.
They’d tried not to let anyone in. Hoped that things would blow over and life would continue on as normal, they’d have learnt their lesson, might attend church a little more regularly. But then Rick’s group had muscled in, to the farm, to their hearts. It was a good thing they had.
Maggie caught sight of Glenn now, tottering out of their building; their daughter sat precariously on his shoulders. Maggie half laughed, half tutted to herself. She would need to talk to both of them again. Annabelle was getting too big for Glenn to be carrying around. It’d be just his luck to be killed by toting their kid around, once things were finally looking good.
Maggie always felt conflicted, whenever she felt just how lucky she’d been to find Glenn, and she knew others in the group who had settled down felt the same way. How could you rail against the injustice and horror of this new life if it had brought them together? The walkers and this brave new world had made heroes out of everyday Joes like them.
Glenn waved at her, and Anna too, both of them beaming. Maggie raised her mug at them: I’ll join you soon. The pair headed off to the fire and Maggie wondered where their son was. She scanned the crowd and found him where he usually was: shadowing Judy and her friend Olive.
Judith was nine now. Hard to believe, Maggie thought, that such a happy, bubbly girl could have come from such brutal beginnings. Maggie made out Beth keeping an eye on them too and again wondered how she had come to this, somehow overtaking her older sister in her duties.
After Jimmy died, Beth had been alone for a while. Any other time, Maggie was sure she’d have had a string of boyfriends, and all the drama that came along with them. Instead there was just Zack. To be honest, he hadn’t left much of a mark on Maggie, an anonymous, good-looking boy. A footnote in the family’s history books: the first of Beth’s post-apocalyptic boys.
The last, in fact, boy that Beth would mess around with. After that it was only men. Then again, it occurred to Maggie as she swept her eyes over the surprisingly old crowd, maybe it was only the men that survived. Zack’s death had also been notable for ushering in the beginning of Beth’s “no crying” policy. A scary stage, so far as Maggie was concerned.
Beth had always been, if not emotional, a little soft. Prone to weeping over road kill, crying at both the sad and happy moments of children’s films, avoiding sad films themselves like the plague. So it was alarming when Beth was dry-eyed when the boy she’d been canoodling with for a couple on months was ripped to pieces.
Maggie had known Beth was still in there, though, as she watched her give comfort to Daryl in what should have been her moment of grief. Maggie wondered if she’d had an inkling then of what to come: how Beth had slung her thin arms around Daryl’s unmoving form, moulding herself to him, only easing when he relaxed into her. Maggie had been on her way to see if Beth needed any comfort but had melted back into the shadows when she saw the odd twosome silhouetted in the doorway.
Maggie hadn’t been there when the no crying policy came to an end, gathered it must have come when Beth and Daryl were on the road. The two of them didn’t get to grieve the death of their father together for weeks. Fingers entwined as they sobbed for the gentle Hershel Greene, in the middle of the night when the loss was strongest.
In fact Maggie had thought she had lost her sister in the prison. Maggie felt ashamed whenever she thought of the days immediately after the fall. She had escaped by the skin of her teeth with Bob and Sasha, hadn’t seen where Beth had gone, except into the smoke. But she had known which direction to look for Glenn. It hadn’t been intentional, the reprioritisation of husband over sister, but it had happened nonetheless. Beth had shrugged it off, though Maggie suspected it stung. Daryl had been a little less quick to forgive. Maggie would spend the rest of her life making it up to her sister, she knew.
Maggie hadn’t given Beth enough credit, enough faith. That softness from before had been hiding a steel underneath that neither had known existed. Not only had Beth survived, she had survived alone, something that almost no one else here could claim. Maybe only Rick and Daryl, Maggie scoffed at the irony.
Maggie had missed another important development in her sister’s life, too. When she had been reunited with Daryl in that awful boxcar, she’d known immediately that something was wrong. Daryl wasn’t exactly social at the best of times, but he had been downright furtive. He’d avoided her completely, hard in a space fifty feet by ten.
He’d managed it for a whole day. Probably in part because Maggie wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what he had to say: felt that familiar tightening coil of icy terror in her gut whenever she thought of it. Whenever she thought of her little sister. Then they’d escaped. A blur of smoke and blood and flesh that her mind skittered away from, even now, years after the fact.
It was only as they picked up the pieces, dragging their wounded with them from Terminus that she caught the glance between Rick and Daryl and knew that her period of blissful ignorance was over. Daryl had caught her lightly by the elbow and the two of them had slowed their pace until they dropped a ways back from the group.
“This is about Beth, isn’t it?” She asked, at last, when it became clear Daryl might never find the words.
He had nodded, mutely, before he gave her the basics. The coil of terror had lessened just the smallest bit. Beth was alive. But alive meant she could still hurt. Between the two of them and Rick, who was sticking to his no man left behind policy, they had convinced the others that they needed to at least find out what had happened to Beth. What if, Rick had asked them, she had been taken to another Terminus? That had convinced even the unyielding Abraham.
They had found the hospital not long after: a place of a terror different but no less potent than Terminus in the end. Beth still bore the scars, both physical and mental, Maggie knew. But by the time the group had gotten there, the place was already in chaos, overrun thanks to a breakout. It would take them a while to credit it to the formerly meek Greene girl.
The group had found a boy, Noah, who knew of a Beth with the white blonde hair, who had escaped to find her family, some days ago. The last he’d seen of her was her melting into the trees. Daryl had torn off into the forest almost before the young man had finished talking. But the trail had turned cold.
The group had had to keep moving, even if it was in the wrong direction. Maggie had felt numb with grief, images of her sister dying alone in the woods haunted her. Rick had nearly had to knock Daryl unconscious to get him to come with them. He’d have been happy to keep roaming aimlessly, like Heathcliff.
They had started heading towards Alexandria, a place Noah had heard being discussed as a safe place in the hospital and close enough to the capitol to appease Abraham.
A few days into their route they had stumbled into a clearing where Beth had whirled onto them, dropping like a wild thing from the trees, knife drawn with a feral look about her. Maggie hadn’t even recognised her as her sister to start with. But when Beth saw the faces in the crowd, her face relaxed, weapon falling to the ground with a soft thump.
Maggie had fallen to bits with relief, moved towards her but was to be cut up by Daryl who moved forward quickest. More shocking had been seeing her coltish sister bolt to Daryl’s arms, tacking him to the ground just as effectively as Tyreese had ever done for the Falcons – his words.
Maggie had known they’d gone through a lot, but watching the two of them together, she dimly realised just exactly was coming. She and Glenn had looked like that, not so long ago, when they’d reunited in the tunnel.
She should have let them have their moment, but she hadn’t seen Beth in so long, and she needed to see those big blue eyes she’d inherited from Dad, and she found herself over the pair of them. Daryl had even hugged her – a real first – a testament to his joy.
They’d dusted themselves off and marched, heads high on to Alexandria and beyond, after it’s collapse. The safe zone hadn’t paid off. Too full of too many people they couldn’t trust. People who had been too sheltered for too many years of the world going to hell.
Maggie huffed out a breath full of air to cloud up in the cold air as she took in their home. They’d gotten lucky, once again. She knew it, though it didn’t feel like that a lot of the time. They’d found family members, met loved ones, and somehow kept finding places to call home. And finally, they’d ended up here, a place to stay forever: a few more weeks on the road, travelling south, had brought them to the ranch. It was the kind of place that children drew: all red and white wood, built to last. They weren’t exactly sure where on the map it was, and no one really cared for state lines these days.
The Ranch, just like everything else, had seen better days. But the fences weren’t past saving, there was a big house and barn and fields for miles, all behind the walls. It was a miracle, Glenn told her, that the place was empty, that they found it just in time, his hand hovering above her belly like it had done so often those days. How they kept it a secret at all was beyond Maggie, considering how goofy Glenn had been.
Maggie and Glenn had been blessed with twins not long after they arrived at the Ranch. Everyone joked that she had timed it perfectly, excusing her from the hard work of setting up the new home. The birth had gone as smoothly as anyone could have hoped for in the new world. Beth was holding one hand, while Glenn clutched at the other. Carol delivered babies Hershel and Annabelle Greene-Rhee into the world, smiling all the while.
Once the Ranch was fortified, the fields sown, people started to relax in a way Maggie couldn’t even remember from the prison days. Relationships started popping up everywhere. Carl started seeing a girl they had brought with them from Alexandria, Abraham and Sasha dated (though it didn’t last long), and Beth and Daryl made official what everyone had been hoping for. There was never an official announcement. They just sat together for every meal. Daryl got surly and protective whenever someone said anything about Beyt. Beth apologised for him, made him softer, and reined him in.
Babies started springing up for others too. Everyone had been too busy for the first few years, just staying alive, but now people were thinking about the world ahead. People moved around, marrying. Carol married the doctor of the township nearby, had children quickly after.
And that brought her to the crux of the sadness Maggie felt when she looked at Beth. Baby Olive, though she couldn’t really be described as a baby any more, was sleeping in the Big House, behind Maggie, but Beth had never gotten so lucky.
A year or two after Beth and Daryl had made things official, Beth had let slip they were trying for a baby. Daryl had nearly died at the embarrassment – and Maggie nearly died laughing. But nothing happened. Maggie guessed there might have been early miscarriages, noticed periods of gloom over the pair. Then, after almost two years of trying, one seemed to take.
Maggie had been so damn excited that she could hardly bear to be away from her sister. That combined with Daryl’s nervous hovering must have driven Beth up the wall, though she never said anything. They lost the baby, though and it never happened again after that.
Maggie knew that Daryl had fretted over Beth’s health – she lost a lot of blood that time, gave them all a scare – and she was sure that Daryl would always choose Beth over children. With Judy, Maggie guessed Beth could live with that, if not celebrate in it. She and Maggie never talked about it, though, and Maggie had felt too self-conscious to bring it up herself, with two bouncing children around and another on the way at the time.
Beth’s lean and rangy frame wasn’t built for motherhood, it seemed. Maggie got a lump in her throat whenever she thought about it. Beth never complained: after all, she had Judy. But Maggie knew that in the Old World her sister would have married a nice man, maybe a banker or a lawyer, and they’d have seen a doctor and somehow Beth would have had a child of her own. But not here, not now. This world had taken that from them.
Instead, Beth had turned her focus to Judy and the Ranch. They had tried to name it, but nothing seemed to stick like the obvious, though Beth and Rick had pushed for “Amnesty”. After all, they argued, the Ranch marked a turning point for all of them.
A new committee was formed, and Beth gradually floated to the top of it. Elections were held. A committee chair was picked: Beth. Rick, was chosen as Sheriff, both long past due and a running joke. Maggie had been sceptical at first, applying the Old World logic of a young person not being the best choice for authority. But Beth’s wise words in meetings had Maggie forgetting at times that Dad had been dead for years. Daryl served as elder statesman, a hero amongst the camp, a legend even.
Maggie saw Beth pop out from the far side of the flames, greeting a small group of newcomers. No one ever took it for granted that Beth was good at what she did. They’d always needed a moral centre. For a while it seemed to have been the old man, Dale, though Maggie had never truly known him, then Daddy and now smiling Beth Greene. You’d never have known, Maggie thought, from that smiling face, what she’d really been through.
Maggie wished that she could say that Daryl had been it, the last man standing. But she couldn’t. There weren’t any happy ever afters in this new world, not really. That’s not to say that they weren’t happy. No group of people ever appreciated or revelled in joy so much as the Ranchers did. But there was something fleeting about it. Things were getting a little steadier, a little less scary, and every time they thought they were safe, immune, a new blow would come, knocking them almost breathless with the loss. And so it was with Daryl.
It was pretty much a given, as Glenn had pointed out, that Maggie was never going to approve of any man from Beth, but she’d gotten pretty damn close with Daryl. He’d earned it, too, in the end. A routine run, down to a mega mart for the last of the laundry supplies they knew were there. The two had gotten pinned down by a small herd – one of the last the Ranchers had ever seen – and Daryl had told her to go, he would lead them away.
Daryl had to have known Beth would be spitting with rage when they got back to the Ranch, but she’d also known that he was never gonna stop putting his life on the line for her. That time he paid the price. He met with Beth at the rendezvous and Maggie could just imagine the flare of relief that her little sister must have felt when she saw her man staggering over the horizon. How quickly it must have guttered out when she saw the bite wounds. He lasted just long enough to hand her the bow, to die in her arms.
Maggie didn’t quite know what happened next, but Rick had told her that Beth had put him down. Given that it took her another two days to get back to the Ranch and her hands were bloodied, her nails torn, they guessed she had buried him out in the woods, where he was home at last.
Maggie fretted constantly over Beth those few days. Being her sister meant never letting go of certain things, certain ideas, and no matter how much it wasn’t discussed or how it was brushed under the rug, one of those things was that Beth had once tried to kill herself.
Rick had found her slumped at the gates and had carried her home. She’d slept for almost two days straight, wan and as pale as the faded sheets she slept in. Maggie hovered. Braiding her hair, talking, crying, bringing her trays of food with blunt knives. But Rick and Glenn had been right, Beth still wanted to live. And Maggie was amazed at the strength of her sister all over again, kept her eye on her husband and wondered if she could keep going without him. Even if only for the sake of their children. She couldn’t be sure any more.
As it turned out, there would be one more man in Beth’s life – hopefully the last. If you had told Maggie ten years ago that the world was going to be overrun with the walking dead, that her father would lose a leg and then his head, that she would marry a pizza delivery boy or that her little baby sister would not only bury two of her beaus but demonstrate a real, concerning preference for men almost twenty years her senior, she’d have had you committed. Funny how things turned out.
Maggie hadn’t seen it coming. Sure, she’d known that Rick and Beth had a friendship unlike anyone else in the group, but that was to be expected. It was hard to be parents without a certain closeness, and Maggie would never deny that Beth was mother to Judith Grimes.
Even back in the prison days, Beth and Rick had had a certain rhythm and familiarity that came from their routine: Beth picking up Judith from Rick in the mornings, letting him sleep in, the girls visiting him where he worked, bringing him lunch. They spent hours rocking the child back and forth between their arms in the early days, feeling out what worked for Judith, for them.
But Maggie had never even considered there was anything more sinister than a necessary partnership between them. Maggie wondered if her Dad had seen it. He had always been pushing the two of them towards each other but Maggie assumed it had been because Rick needed help and Beth was seeking some kind of purpose in her life. But then, Maggie’s little voice had told her, Dad had married Annette, some twenty years his junior. It cast a weird light over things that Maggie wasn’t sure she was entirely comfortable with. She shook the thought off.
The only weirdness she’d ever really noticed between Beth and Rick was the way they behaved when they were greeting newcomers and traders at the Big House, even when Daryl was alive. The dusty trail led from the iron wrought gates straight to the front of the big house. It must have been the main residence, once, but it was used now for trading, guest housing and as the infirmary. And occasionally by overworked mothers who needed somewhere to let their children sleep in peace.
Rick, as the Sheriff of the Ranch, was always there to shake hands with people and keep an eye on things. Beth had somehow fallen into a similar role, smiling and talking to people, making friends. She’d always been good at that, Maggie thought, as she watched Beth continue her circuit around the bonfire, smile never wavering, even as she grabbed a hold of their misbehaving children.
Visitors had assumed, as they met the toothsome twosome, happy to welcome strangers with welcome arms, that there was something between them. Particularly when they clocked Judy. The two had even flirted sometimes; Maggie had sworn they had, all private jokes and wide eyes. She’d confronted Beth about it once, so fond of Daryl by that stage that she was ready to rip her sister a new one. But Beth had denied it, rolling her eyes at her sister.
“There’s nothing there. You’re crazy.” She said. But Maggie had persisted until Beth had cracked a little.
“It’s nothing. I just think,” Beth had hesitated, paused in doing the dishes as she figured out what to say, “I think he’s just a little lonely. It doesn’t mean anything.” Maggie had been struck by what Beth said. She couldn’t say that she’d really given a thought to Rick’s loneliness, but she’d guessed it made sense. After Lori, Rick had been alone for a while before Michonne came along. No one was sure quite how deeply the two of them had felt about each other, but it had all come to a sudden end at the fall of Alexandria. Poor Rick had been alone ever since. Maggie had left it alone after that.
To Rick’s credit, though, it was only after Daryl died that Maggie or anyone else – Beth included, she reckoned – that realised there might be something real there. After all, the only person who might miss Daryl as much as Beth was Rick. Everyone had heard the two friends refer to each other as brothers, but it was only after the younger man’s death that everyone could see how deeply Rick had meant it.
Rick spent his days looking after the Ranch as normal, checking in on Beth every few hours, but for those days, weeks afterwards, it was like the lights had gone out behind his eyes. He would slip up every so often, like everyone did, tell Tyreese to put Daryl on certain duties, or ask where his friend was, unthinkingly. The silence that followed was always stunned, no matter how many times it happened. Rick would trudge out into the darkness on unnecessary patrols, moping in the dark.
It had put people on edge. There weren’t many walkers these days, but you never knew. Beside, he was more likely to be hit by one of the less experienced sentries. Beth had caught sight of him leaving the ring of light that surrounded the main buildings one night and asked where he was going. When she found out, she had run after him, Daryl’s bow across her back. There was the sound of an argument somewhere out in the gloom, then hushed words. When they walked back into the camp to sit down for a drink with the others, no one mentioned it and Rick had stopped his suicide strolls.
Beth and Rick had settled into a routine as watch partners and as the leaders of the Ranch, with hardly a shift going by that they weren’t both on. They even lived in the same house, the biggest of the private ones, that had been built for Rick and Carl and Judy. Beth hadn’t been able to face living alone in the small cottage that she and Daryl had made. Carl had wanted to move out to his own place, so Rick offered the spare room and it had made sense for the weird little family unit to live under one roof.
Maggie couldn’t pinpoint exactly when Beth and Rick’s relationship had changed. She should really ask Beth, she chided herself. It had been Carol that had been the first to notice. It seemed that she had gained a better perspective of the group dynamics now that there was a little distance between her and the rest of them. She had moved to be with her handsome doctor and their little boy in Atlas, a couple of miles away. She came back to the Ranch a couple times a week, less than when Daryl had been alive.
Carol’s a-ha! Moment had come after she’d been away for a few weeks, recovering from the birth of her second son. She and Maggie had been jawing away as Carol showed off the baby, when the older woman had caught sight of Rick and Beth sitting in the rocking chairs on their porch, passing back a glass between them.
“Well,” Carol had said with a smirk, patting baby Dixon on the back, “That’s interesting.” Though she wouldn’t elaborate when Maggie asked what she was talking about.
Carol had kept dropping little hints after that about how cute the pair were when they were fussing over Judy, had encouraged Rick to help Beth with the horses. It seemed she had been laying the groundwork for everyone else, too clueless to see what was coming.
Just like with Daryl, Beth hadn’t given any kind of formal notice of her new relationship status. Sometimes Maggie really missed Facebook. She’d seen them at one of the usual Ranch bonfires, canoodling on a log. Maggie couldn’t help but laugh at the memory: Glenn rushing the twins away as she started cussing and stomping at the ground. It was only the look of bliss on her sister’s face that had stopped her from going over and shaking Rick by the collar. Maggie had felt all the wind come out of her sails at that look. It had been a couple of years since Daryl had made her smile like that.
Maggie tried not to compare Rick and Daryl, at least not in the context of their relationships with Beth, but it was hard sometimes. Daryl had looked at Beth like she was the only thing in the world worth saving and that was a hard thing for Maggie not to love in a brother in law. Rick had other things in his life, his son and daughter. But then, there was something grown-up about the love that he and Beth shared, a practical one, borne from friendship and respect. A complete family unit, formed both in an instant and in years. Daryl’s love for Beth was spelt out in tiny gestures and held hands when he thought no one was looking. Rick’s in easy affection, arms around shoulders, wide smiles across fields and constant touching.
As though summoned up by Maggie’s musing, she watched Beth as she stepped easily into Rick’s arms. A manoeuvre that seemed effortless, as though done thousands of times before. The man wrapped his arms around her as they surveyed their little pocket of the world, his chin dropping to her shoulder, letting her prop him up.
All that mattered, Maggie supposed, as she knocked back the last of the hot rum mixture, was that Beth was loved and loved in turn. And after all they’d been through, nothing meant more than that. And now Beth was twenty-eight. Or twenty-nine. No one could seem to keep the years or ages straight these days. Maggie was a grand old thirty-four or so, though she liked to round down. Best to get into the habit early. It was hard to remember that they were still young. They were the elders now, the last real generation who would remember the Old World. Even Carl, only in his early twenties, was forgetting things from before.
Maggie stood up straight from her lean, her back crackling as she stretched, as though debating her belief in her own youth. Beth’s head tipped up as she caught sight of Maggie. The blonde untwined herself from Rick. Maggie tried to wave her off. Didn’t want to bring her sister down. She couldn’t tell why she was so damn pensive tonight. But Beth brushed by her usual admirers until she got to the porch, pulling herself up and climbing over the railing. She smiled widely, like she always did, her cheeks flushed from the cold or the alcohol, and stumbled over to Maggie. Her sister’s long arms wrapped around her and Maggie could smell smoke and Rick’s cologne – God knew where he got that from – in the halo of her hair. Beth’s bony chin dug into her shoulder until Maggie laughed.
“What’s this for?” Maggie asked as she returned the hug. Beth pulled her head back to look at her levelly.
“You looked like you needed it.” She said.
“Thanks, sis.” Maggie tucked some of Beth’s unruly hair behind her ear. It sprung back almost immediately and Maggie felt another rush of love for her sibling.
“What were you thinking about?” Beth asked.
“Our lives.” Maggie said with a snort.
“Yikes.” Beth laughed. Maggie scanned the field and took in the laughing, naughty children, their loving husbands. And somewhere out there in the gloom, the great world beyond and all the terrors in it. She looked at her sister again.
“Tell me about it.”