Eyes Closed [TWD]

°•twenty six•°

"Shut up," I snap, running a hand through my hair as I could faintly hear Michonne and Maggie continue their discourse.

"Oh.. My girl has grown, huh? How long has it been? Rick stops by but I can't really tell days apart. Gotta be over a year now, right?" Negan questions.

"Doesn't matter," I coldly reply.

"You been at Hilltop? Rick said it's going just peaches over there- strongest out of all the piss ant hills," he continues.

I couldn't see him fully. He lingered in the corner of his bed, submerged in shadows.

I stay silent, awaiting Michonne's next move.

"I take it you don't even like me saying daddy-in-law's name, huh? Letting me off scot-free and all. How's Carl? Y'all still my favorite love birds? Or, did daddy-in-law's uh-oh tear you apart?"

Still quiet, I pull over the chair that sat against the wall and sit down.

"You know.. I hear how your momma's dealing.. I think about how I'm dealing.. I meant it when I said I didn't want to tear you two up," he sighs.

"What?" I finally ask.

"You and Carl.. You remind me of me when I was younger. Well, Carl does," he explains.

"Carl is nothing like you," I hiss.

"He is. Not me now, not me then.. Me a long time ago. Before the biters started biting. You.. You remind me of my Lucille."

Lucille.. The bat?

"We got married when we were your age. We didn't know what the hell we were doing. We just knew we had each other and that was fine by us," he recalls, voice sounding whimsy.

Lucille was his wife? Well, I guess the name had to come from somewhere, after all.

Slowly, the pieces he give come together in my head.

If he thought Carl and I reminded him of him and his wife, and he didn't want to separate us- genuinely. Plus, his words of 'how I'm dealing'.

"You lost her," I note.

"I didn't lose her," he denies, "She was taken from me."

"Sound familiar, then, huh? Some narcissistic asshole with a mouth that doesn't know how to stop his ego-"

"Cancer," he states.

"What?"

"She had cancer. It wasn't a person. She was taken by a sickness," he explains.

I inhale and let it out sharply, chewing the inside of my lip.

"You ever see someone go through that?" he wonders.

"No," I answer shortly.

"Good. That's good. You don't need to," he says, his shadow nodding.

"If you know what it's like to have someone taken, why do it to others?" I ask, crossing my legs.

"I guess so I don't have to feel so alone," he laughs.

"Is that why you chose them? Abraham and my dad?" I ask, really not wanting the answer.

"Red, no. Red was just because I wanted to bring down a man at his size," he answers.

"Some sort of power play?" I scoff.

"Exactly that," Negan admits.

He clears his throat while I loathe his next words.

"Your daddy, now.. When I saw him jump up from that line when I dared even put Lucille next to your momma," he whistles.