DEAD SOULS | twd x spn

04 | promise?

THE FIRST TIME Lottie had had a taste of adulthood, she was twelve. John had been gone for an entire week, leaving Dean to hold down the fort, to take care of his younger siblings. Except Dean had gone out one night. She remembered him standing at the door with his gun in hand, as he told her that he'd be back soon, and to take care of Sammy.

He'd been gone for hours when Sam came wandering out of the bedroom, tiredly rubbing his eyes as he asked if dad had come back yet.

"No, not yet," she said softly, opening her arms for him to join her on the couch. "But he'll be back soon."

"Promise?" He asked, peering up at her from where he was tucked into her side.

She smiled, before gently pushing the hair out of his eyes. "Promise."

"Where's Dean?"

"He's─he went out," she said. "He'll be back soon."

John lied a lot, and so did Dean, both of them desperate to shield Sam from all the horrors of the world. It was that night that Lottie finally understood why they had to lie. They lied to protect Sam.

When Dean refused to follow Negan's demands, she lied to him too. She told him that she would be alright, that she could take care of herself. As she followed Negan into another room, she sincerely wished that somebody would lie to her right now, that somebody would hold her and tell her that she would be fine.

"Welcome to my humble abode." Negan announced, as they entered some kind of living quarters.

"What do you want?" Lottie asked, watching as he sat down on a couch, gesturing for her to sit in the seat across from him.

"Well, for starters, I want you to stop scowlin' at me like that."

"What do you expect?" She shot back. "You threatened my life and you took my brothers."

"Your brothers are fine," he waved off. "Sam? We're just gonna have to see if he can handle the pressure. But Dean? He's a fighter─a soldier. He was born for this shit."

"Then what do you want with me?"

He smirked. "I saw the way you were keeping Dean under control. I need you so I can keep him in line."

There was a moment of silence before Negan spoke again, dragging his fingers along his beard.

"When we were in the woods," he started. "You called me dad. Now, was that like a 'calling the lunch lady mom, 'cuz she cuts the crust off your sandwiches' kinda thing, or do I look like your old man?"

Lottie wished it was the former. She wished that Negan looked nothing like John and that her calling him 'dad' was simply a knee-jerk reaction to him saving her life. But it wasn't. He looked exactly like him. When she looked at him, she saw John─an incredibly twisted version of him, but him, nonetheless. "Who are you?"

He leaned back on the couch, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. "I'm Negan."

"My father wasn't like you," she said, shaking her head. "He was a good man."

"Was?"

"He's dead," she confessed. "He traded his life for Dean's."

"Shit," he said, clearly surprised. "You got any other family outside of your brothers? You got a mom?"

"Nope. She died when I was two years old." Lottie didn't remember anything from the night that Mary was killed─she could barely even picture her mother's face─but she'd seen what it had done to Dean. She'd seen the anger burning behind his eyes, felt the pain practically radiating from his chest.

She'd also seen what Mary's death had done to John. He'd become so obsessed with finding the demon that killed her that his own children had become invisible to him. He only ever paid attention to Dean to tell him to look after their brother. And Lottie? Well, she may as well have faded from existence.

She didn't blame John though for his absence in her life. He was a broken man, a grieving husband. The days that he was gone, she would remind herself that he was out saving people. She would remind herself that he was getting closer to finding the demon that killed their mother. It would've been selfish to demand John's attention, because he was helping people, and he was getting justice for Mary. That was all that mattered.

"I'm sorry about your folks," Negan spoke quietly, his gaze softening. "Losing both your parents is─well, it can't be anything less than shitty."

"If I'm going to cooperate with you," Lottie said. "I need you to promise that you won't hurt my brothers."

"Fine," he huffed. "I promise."