Up The Wolves | Negan

Chapter Thirty-Four: Tomorrow

As the walkers fell onto us, I thought about my mom. I thought about the sandwiches she used to make for me, the lunches she would pack me for school, about all those late nights she helped me with the shit ton amount of homework my school would give me as if it were possible for anyone to do so much in one afternoon. I thought about my dad, and how he was rarely around before all this happened, always working, at the office, going out of town for trips, and how he saved my life time and time again after it started. I thought about the first time I met Negan, and how (considerably) lenient he had been with me from the start, whereas anyone else in my position would probably be dead by now.

And I thought about Echo. I thought about how no matter who's baby he was, he was my son in all senses of the matter. I thought about how much he had grown in the last long months, about his playdates with Judith, and about how there was nothing that was going to keep me from getting back to him. Nothing.

And just like that, we pushed through.

With a few more kicks, stabs, and shoves, we got up the stairs, to the platform, and through that door. And inside felt like a breath of fresh air, until I realized there was nothing in there. No workers, no saviors, no lights, no power, nothing.

"Where is everybody?" I asked, looking around.

"I got a pretty good idea," Negan said, leading us both upstairs, where we heard a ruckus ringing out through the halls.

"Where's Negan?" somebody shouted.

"Gun!" Shouted another, and as if on queue two gunshots rang through the halls, and Negan began to speed up his pace.

"I am Negan!" I heard what sounded like that woman from earlier, "Anyone else want a bullet? Anyone?" the closer we got, the more calm and collected Negan's pace got until he was whistling that tune. Finally, the three of us stepped up to a hallway that held a lot of people, all of whom were kneeling. Gabriel slowly joined them, as did I after a quick eye roll.

"Ah, Regina. Now, why'd you have to go and do that? I am guessing that a lot of you fine folks thought I was dead, chewed up, never to be crapped out again. Well, here's a little refresher on who the hell I am. I wear a leather jacket, I have Lucille, and my nutsack is made of steel. I am not dying until I am damn good and ready. Now if y'all will excuse me, I am in deep need of a sandwich, a shower, and some of that, uh, wilting lion orchid deep-tissue shit that Frankie learned in San Francisco. Hell, I might do it all at once. But after that, we have some serious business to attend to," he monologued and raised that bat so it pointed at Simon, "Like talking to my right-hand man. You see, we gotta figure out how all of this could've happened like it happened. And then... Well, and then we're gonna get back to doing what we have always done. We will save people," he finished and turned to leave.

"Thank you, Negan. Thank God for you!" a woman worker from the crowd shouted, and the man with the already enflamed ego paused, smiled, and looked back to Gabe and I.

"And that is why I am here," he looked to some of his people, "Gentlemen, gently take him to number 2. Gently," he ordered, and a couple of men stepped up to take Gabriel, "Lou, follow me," he said, walking away and not even batting an eye to make sure I followed... And yet, I did. Though, as we walked in the opposite direction of where the men were taking Gabriel, I watched him go, confusion and a hint of fear on his face. But the men did as Negan asked, and they moved him gently.

We walked until we arrived at a familiar room–his room. He opened the door and ushered for me to step in first.

"Showers yours, then mine, then we talk," he said as soon as the door was shut behind him, and began to search through drawers before he pulled out a T-shirt and some baggy pants and handed them to me. I took them, and glanced between him and the clothing items.

"What?" I asked. I was fully expecting to be thrown in a cell, potentially tortured for running away again and helping Alexandria. I was not expecting this.

"I am sure you have questions after all that eavespeeping you did, and it's not like you could get far outside of the walls even if you wanted to," he said and pointed to the door I knew his bathroom to be behind. I didn't question further, simply glad to be able to get the guts off of me, and stepped into the bathroom.

After a quick shower and change, I sat on the edge of his bed while he did the same, and when he emerged from the bathroom he donned a simple white t-shirt, similar to mine, but much tighter fitting on his frame than on mine, and his jeans. He stood at the door and clasped his hands together.

"So, here's what I want to know first. How much did you hear?" he questioned. I licked my chapped lips before replying.

"All of it," my voice was hoarse, maybe from the yelling, maybe from the exhaustion, or maybe from something else. He nodded.

"So? Anything you wanted to say to me? Any witty remarks? Any degenerate names to call me?" he asked. I stared at him for a long while as I considered his questions. Sure, I could tell him he was a horrible man, and an even worse husband. I could tell him he was as useful as a silicone hammer, tell him his wife probably found more peace in death than she ever would've with him in her life, all of which I had thought of before. Things I had thought to tell him when I first met him, and again when he murdered so many of my friends, and yet... I couldn't.

"I... I see you," I managed to say and watched all kinds of emotions flash through his features, "I see you. I don't want to fight anymore."

I thought about the next thing I was going to say to the man before me. This man had held me captive, had ordered others to hurt me, and then ordered others to fix me up. He'd saved my life more than once and endangered it the same amount. This man had hurt my friends, had stolen Sasha's future, the father of Maggie's child, and more of my friends. He'd manipulated communities of people and bent others to his will, and done it all in the name of saving people. And yet, what I said was true. I didn't want to fight him anymore. I didn't want to be the destruction of him, when so much of what he had done was because of what he thought was the right way to go about it. People could have done differently; people had done differently, but just as he'd said in the trailer–you have to show them the way. This wasn't him.

He wasn't a great man, nor did I think he was even a good man, but he wasn't the evil he projected. He wasn't always unnecessarily cruel. That had been what he'd become in all this. He'd changed for the worse once the apocalypse started, but that didn't mean he had to die like it. That didn't mean he couldn't change again. I hated the idea of thinking I could fix him because I knew I couldn't. Nobody other than him could do that, but the more I sat there–the more I looked at the utterly broken man standing less than six feet away, the more I wondered if he knew that. If he knew there was a better way, and that it wasn't yet too far out of reach.

"Tomorrow we can be better than we were yesterday."