TIES THAT BIND | Negan Smith

3. All of Them

"Fuck!" Athena roared, throwing her arms out and sweeping all of the glass from the counter onto the floor in one fell swoop, not even bothering to watch it all shatter onto the floor before she rounded on her heel, "Every single one?"

The man before her was shaking violently, his eyes wide and all of the color long since drained from his face. But she didn't show the slightest bit of empathy for his terror, not as rage and fury bubbled up inside of her and spilled out.

"Th-they're all dead." He confirmed, not even being able to keep his voice from quivering.

She was seething. She was furious. She needed to find those responsible for killing forty of her Saviors.

They had been slaughtered like animals in their sleep. People had broken into one of the outposts on a hunt for blood and killed every last one of them.

There had been some others outside of the outpost, apparently, that had taken some hostage into an abandoned building not too far off, but they as well as the backup that had been sent had been found either dead or burned alive.

Someone had killed her people and they were going to pay, of that, she would make with complete certainty.

Negan had left a couple hours ago, whilst the woman had evidently still been sleeping, ordering the others not to wake her, to go check out the scene.

She had only just woken up and received the news, the petrified man no doubt having been the one to draw the short straw amongst those that had actually been informed of the events that occurred in the dead of the night.

"Woah, there, Thea darling, I leave for a little bit and you're so worried about me that you break all of our things?" Negan strolled in, Lucille swinging on his shoulder, voice laid back and smile smug. As if he hadn't just been investigating the murder scene of their people.

"Leave." The blonde woman ordered without so much as a glance in the informant's direction. The man, in turn, wasting no time scrambling out of the room and into the hallway, closing the door of the co-leaders lounge behind him.

She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, not giving way to his charming smile as he leaned his beloved bat against the back of the couch and shrugged off his leather jacket, "Well?" The question was asked tensely, her eyes narrowed- seemingly bracing herself for the worse of whatever Smith was going to say.

His composure faltered and a sigh left his lips while he ran a hand down his face, "Not a damn trace of whoever had the ballsack to raid our outpost." Came his reply, "There was even a shootout, but I couldn't find signs of any of them being injured or killed." His jaw ticked, "Feel free to call me crazy, darling, but I have a mighty strong feeling that these people might have had something to do with our men being blown to smithereens a little while back."

A silence stretched on for a moment, Athena's jaw locked and deep contemplation resting on her features before her eyes finally flickered up to meet Negan's, who was already intensely looking at her, "We need to find whoever did this."

For once, the man didn't bother cracking a joke, simply nodding before striding across the room until he stood right in front of her. He made sure their eyes were locked when he spoke next, his hands coming to rest gently on either one of her arms, giving a slight squeeze of reassurance, "We will, and those sorry assholes will pay for what they did. You and I will see to that."

As her blue eyes locked with his brown ones- a flicker of warmth passing through them- she nodded slightly, believing his every word. Knowing that he would never do anything to lie to her.

.·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .

"Found 'em."