ELEANOR . NEGAN

024.

Eleanor had a cigarette balancing on her ear, a glass of lemonade in her hand while she nudged the cell door open with her shoulder. She kept her word, she did come back a week later. The full seven days—not the sad excuse Negan called a week.

She had a lighter pushed in the back pocket of her denim shorts, her arms and chest still on show because it was the middle of summer. Only difference was that her hair was up on top of her head, pieces framing her face as best as they could.

"Been counting down the days to see you, sunshine." He was giddy—it made Elle roll her eyes. "And I love those shorts..."

"Was you always like this?" Negan shrugged. "You wasn't this bad back then... surely not."

"I can't help it, doll. Have you seen a fucking mirror? Goddamn, you're looking hot as shit right now." Negan smirked and walked next to the cell wall, sitting so his back was against the brick and his arm was through the bar. It wasn't to be intimidating, really it was so he could get as close as he could to her.

Eleanor rolled her eyes and sat down besides Negan (she kept a good distance between them because she wasn't ready just yet to be near him). "Keep it in your pants, Negan." He thought for a moment, and she could see the cogs in his brain move about. "Don't go there." He snapped out of it and frowned—he was going to make a gross joke.

With a exasperated sigh leaving her lips, she plucked the cigarette from her ear and put the filter in her mouth. "What do you wanna know, Negan?" She mumbled, her voice muffled as she searched for her lighter. "Not much has happened."

Negan rolled his eyes at her modest words and watched as the tip of her cigarette roared into a flame, lighting the paper as it pulled upwards at each drag. Hm. "What did you do after Rick did the whole... slice my throat thing?"

Eleanor looked up and her eyes went straight to his throat. It was a healed scar, white and jagged, cutting across the small of his neck. Very lucky guy. "I went home, Negan. When I escaped from Simon," Negan liked it when she put the blame only on the tyrannical man. "I didn't get much time to just fucking wait around, did I? No, already up to try and stop your thick ass from doing any worse."

"Was it you?" Negan spoke, out of the blue really. Eleanor was confused. "The guns... was that you? Did you persuade Eugene or something?"

Elle sourly chuckled and took a drag from her cigarette. "Please, me and Eugene barely talked back then. All his choices? Shit, they were his own choices." Then she grinned and looked at Negan with a taunting smirk, "Guess he knew who the bigger team was."

Negan let out a throaty but half-assed laugh. "Bigger team? Oh, I'm sorry, doll, but we all knew that was still me and my people."

She rolled her eyes and rested the cancer stick between her two fingers, her other hand flat on the ground. Elle watched carefully at Negan's movements because overall, he was still a prisoner. But it did make her smile a bit when he'd try and be discreet and nudge his hand closer to hers.

"Tell me, doll. Everything."

Elle looked over at Negan, her eyebrows furrowed and her eyes more small than before since she was squinting them. He was eager to know, she wasn't sure to take it as a friendly catch up or something all too familiar—like breaking down the walls of trust just to hit you from the inside.

"After you, a lot of your people gave up. A lot. Some ran though, and some stayed fighting. Which was stupid, you know, it's pretty alarming that half your guys didn't even have a secondary fucking weapon." She shrugged and exhaled smoke. "The ones who did surrender have been really nice with this whole... community. Laura fits in really well, they're even thinking about putting her on the council."

"What about you, doll?" He smirked. "What'd they say about you?"

Because Eleanor's past job was the army, Michonne and a few other members of the council was stuck on making her lead of each hunt and extraction. Even if her personality contradicted massively with her intelligence, she was extremely strategic and strong and was perfect for the role. They said something about her 'temperable attitude' and her 'potty mouth' and figured it was best to leave the council for the people who were actually... well, saner than Eleanor.

"In short words, I swear too much." Elle rolled her eyes, scoffing. "Which I think is a massive fucking cock up because everyone cusses now, like grow up!" A sound left her lips of belittled anger and it made Negan smile. "But they put me in charge of each hunt and extraction. Daryl was with me, for the hunting but, but he left a couple of weeks ago."

"What'd you mean?"

Elle shrugged. She remembered the conversation, how Carol went out to take Daryl back to Alexandria and he just disappeared on her. "Took to the woods. Rick's..." She didn't want to say death. "disappearance hit people heavy. Michonne the worse, of course, but it hit Daryl like a shit tonne of bricks. You know, they were brothers. And Daryl has never been easy with his emotions."

"And you, sunshine. How did you feel?"

Eleanor remembered the days after Rick disappeared. She was filled with guilt and sadness that she cleared her mind through fighting. "I went out, a lot. Fought some walkers, hit a couple of trees, let my anger out or whatever." It was a problem when Glenn and Tara went out to look for some supplies and saw Eleanor covered in walker blood that was at least three days old. "Guess it was to distract my mind-"

"You do that a lot." Elle looked at him. "Distracting your mind. It's cute to see, unless, you know, it's something serious."

"Right, yeah." She cleared her throat. "Anyways, came back to Alexandria and put my anger into something worthwhile. Helped made the gardens and even fixed up some watchtowers. People wanted repairs on their houses, or sometimes wanted rooms to expand, so I did them. I was given a fucking sledgehammer—I never felt so badass before."

"Damn, doll, you gotta stop before you do some real damage to me." Elle looked over at the man and watched how his eyes stayed stuck to her green irises, and how his much larger hands in comparison basically covered the metal bar while he had one of his knees up to his chest. "What did you do when it hit?"

She knew what he was talking about. "I was never good with my emotions, I don't think. A lot of people scowled me for it, saying something that 'it's the apocalypse, get your hard face on' or something American, I don't know." She shrugged but slowly wrapped her arms around her body. "I was depressed for a bit. I mean, I still did my job, and I still looked after Maya, but I was not doing okay. Forgot to eat sometimes, drink as well—it was just a whole mess."

"Damn, sunshine..." He dragged with a little frown. "Sounds horrible."

"Well, it's whatever. Right?" Deflecting. "Rick's gone now, can't do much about it." Shut up, Elle. She groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Sorry, I don't know why I said that."

He smiled comfortingly. "Ain't got nothing to be sorry about, doll."

"I just..." She hated talking about stuff like this. It rattled her brain. "It makes me feel stupid, when I go emotion-first into something. Pisses me off 'cause I'll get people having a go at me for being fucking human." Eleanor groaned once again. "Sorry, Nelly, I've never been good with this shit. Even when I was a teenager... well, I was more dumb back then."

She remembered her teenage life, and unconsciously, her fingers went to drag across the skin on her thighs. "How 'bout we change topic, doll?"

Eleanor looked at him and smiled with sympathy laced on her lips. But then she stood up, and urgency started to fill Negan. "I should go."

"Ellie, not yet, please?"

Eleanor shook her head, but watched as he rushed against the cell bars, his hands wrapped around the metal. She frowned because it was pathetic but she felt... some sort of sorrow for him. She walked over and pressed a comforting hand to his shoulder.

"See you in a week, Negan."