Chapter Text
Prologue
The world is living on two years of borrowed time when Daryl Dixon meets eighteen-year-old Beth Greene.
She’s a sad-eyed little thing with a heavily pregnant belly and a blonde toddler clinging to her faded skirt.
The moment the girl enters Mrs. Abernathy’s tacky living room, Daryl turns his head to glare at the eccentric old woman. “Ya ain’t said nothin’ bout another kid. I can’t afford to feed three kids.”
“Oh Alice ain’t Beth’s. She belongs to my youngest grandson and his wife. She wasn’t conceived in sin,” Mrs. Abernathy says.
The pregnant girl’s shoulders slump, and Daryl can’t help but say something.
“Rude fuckin’ thing to say,” he growls at the old woman, wincing when he realizes he just swore in front of a little kid.
Mrs. Abernathy ignores him and turns to the girl. “Beth, this is Daryl Dixon, the man I told you about with the little boy who needs a mother.”
The girl’s blue eyes hesitantly meet his, and Daryl suddenly feels sick as the reality of the situation hits him.
His two-year-old son Jack needs a mother, especially with his new gig as a long-haul trucker, but marrying some scared eighteen-year-old because he has nobody to watch his kid is a bit fucked up. It’s even more fucked up when Daryl thinks about the fact that Mrs. Abernathy met the girl while volunteering at a homeless shelter in Atlanta and has been trying to marry her off ever since.
“Do you really want to marry a stranger?” he asks the girl. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with just—”
“When I met Beth, I told her that if she came to help me with the farm, I’d help her find a nice husband,” Mrs. Abernathy cuts in. “Now, I ain’t saying you were my first choice but—”
“Poor girl probably just wanted a place to stay. Not married off like some kind of—”
“I want to get married,” the girl says, speaking for the first time.
Daryl lookes at the girl in shock. “You do?”
The girl wraps her arms protectively around her swollen belly. “I want my baby to have a father.”
Daryl swallows thickly and nods. “Okay. But that don’t mean ya gotta marry me. I’m pushing forty and—”
Daryl’s argument gets cut off by the girl’s water breaking.
He drives the girl to the hospital and supports her through the birth of a healthy baby girl.
And when Beth shyly asks if he’ll sign the birth certificate, he agrees.
***
Beth Greene marries Daryl Dixon six weeks after her daughter Daisy is born and four years before the end of the world.
It’s a marriage of convenience, her new husband makes that clear from the beginning, but Beth is content anyway.
When she ran away from home, back when she was sixteen and pregnant with the baby she lost, she never imagined one day having her own little cabin up in the mountains.
And when she was dating Daisy’s biological father, she never imagined being married to a man as kind as Daryl.
Beth is happy with her platonic marriage of convenience where she gets to be a respected wife and mother in a tiny mountain community, and her baby girl gets a father who adores her. She loves her new son Jack with all her heart, and she adores babysitting Alice Abernathy for extra spending money. It’s hard to be home alone with the kids when Daryl is away for weeks driving freight, but she has an entire community of women willing to help her. And when Daryl is home, he’s an incredibly attentive father who doesn’t hesitate to help around the house when he’s not busy hunting.
Beth’s husband may not love her, but she knows that she’s his best friend.
And she’s happy with that.
Truly.
At least for a while.
However, by the time Beth reaches the age of twenty-two, being her husband’s best friend doesn’t seem like enough.
So she decides to tell Daryl that she loves him.
She makes a plan to confess her love on their fourth wedding anniversary but—
On the day of her planned confession, the dead start walking.