BItter hearts

Chapter 8

Negan’s POV

Weeks passed. Negan didn’t see Y/N again. After she’d come to his cell in the night and he’d made the stupid, jackass move of trying to kiss her, he couldn’t really blame her for keeping her distance. He’d read the signals wrong, got caught up in the nostalgia of it all, the hope that maybe he’d thawed her core of ice, and damn, she’d made him pay for it. It sure was a good thing that he was too old and jaded to want to bring kids into the world, because his balls were permanently damaged, going on the ache that had lasted for days, and his ribs had reminded him of his fuck-up every time he moved. And so, he didn’t move. He sat. Occasionally he stood to stretch his legs. And then he sat some more. The darkness became a companion, and soon exhaustion and the desperate desire to escape allowed sleep to come a little easier.

And then came the morning when his cell door creaked open and Marco appeared, tossing a change of clothes into his lap with a sneer of superiority on his face. He stooped to remove Negan’s shackles, wrinkling his nose in distaste.

‘Get changed. You stink, man.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you keep a guy locked up for weeks on end without so much as a bucket of water to wash in, man.’

Still, he shed his dirty shirt and trousers and tugged on the replacements, rolling his eyes when the jeans ended somewhere an inch or two above his ankles. His old boots were returned to him too, and he pulled those on, the feeling strangely foreign after spending so long with his feet bare.

‘So, to what do I owe this new and exciting luxury?’ he asked as he straightened up from tying his laces, wary as Marco stepped forward to resecure his cuffs.

‘Can’t afford to keep you here like this forever. Around here we work for our keep. Got a job for you.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Hey, if it was up to me I’d put a bullet through your skull and free up your rations for someone else, but Y/N says you work, so you work.’

And so it was that he now spent several days a week on his hands and knees, scrubbing the floors of the corridors and the canteen. It was mind-numbing, back-breaking work. His knuckles bled, his finger blistered from gripping the wire brush he’d been given, and his joints complained each time he folded his long body back down to the ground. It would have been far more productive, he knew, to give him a mop. It’s what he would’ve done had it been his prisoner assigned the task. But, despite Marco’s words, he had a feeling that productivity had nothing to do with this. It was about making him feel small, quite literally putting him beneath Y/N and her soldiers, and so he kept quiet, got on with it, and lost himself in the monotony.

Occasionally, he’d raise his head to see a familiar face, watching him through curious eyes: his men, those that had been brought here after the ambush out on the road, pitying him for the position he now found himself in, he was sure, or else blaming him for their spectacular fall from power. He didn’t notice the marks at first. It didn’t really start to sink in until he began to recognise others, people from the Sanctuary that weren’t fighters, hadn’t been with the convoy on the rescue mission gone wrong. Their skin was unblemished, but they still carried that same look of fear, wary and on edge, and he found himself growing angry as they passed by without a word. There were so many questions. He needed so many answers, and there wasn’t a single soul that could or would give them to him. In fact, nobody really spoke to him at all. He was a ghost.