CONQUEST • Negan

Whiplash

Clodagh patted me on the back, violently snapping me from my wandering thoughts. "Ye good? Yer spacing out again, D." Her brow furrowed as she studied me.

"Yeah, I'm—" I took a deep breath and smiled, rolling my shoulders back. "Yup, all good." I scooped my hair up, tying it into a high ponytail.

It was getting long again. I'd have to cut it soon. Vanity was a luxury and a danger. Too much hair gave the dead some handles to yank you with—a hazard not worth risking.

"Ye were distracted all session. Yer thinking about him, aren't ye?" Clodagh wiggled her brows at me, playfully nudging my hip.

I rolled my eyes and shook my head and suppressed a grin at her antics. I didn't want to encourage Clodagh's odd obsession with me and Negan, and the hate she misunderstood for chemistry. But it was nice to have a normal, casual conversation with another girl for once—even if we often failed the Bechdel test. Not my fault. All hers.

The girl was a fucking menace, and I liked that about her.

"No, Clodagh, I'm not." I answered, flicking her up the side of the head for asking me about Negan again.

...I was thinking about him. Send me to fucking hell, I hadn't stopped thinking about him. It wasn't my goddamn fault. Son of a bitch had been haunting my dreams. Here I was, the clown for believing for even a second that some distance between us would bring me some damn peace. Nope. Sure, I'd been headache free for the last five days without his constant fucking yapping in my ear, but my nights were becoming sleepless; the moment my eyes closed he was there, waiting, doing things to me I definitely shouldn't enjoy.

"Sure yer not." She snickered and waved to the rest of the girls as they gathered themselves up and moved back inside. Turned to me again and ran a judgemental eye down my face. "Why ye blushing then, Dice?"

"Fuck you, bitch. I'm not blushing." I flipped off, rolling my eyes.

Dwight pushed up from the steps just as the girls passed him, finishing up his lunch break. It was time for Daryl's routine 'timeout', as Scarface called it.

I wasn't sure, but I think the guy was trying to do us both a solid, bringing Daryl out exactly five minutes after I started my training session every day, and walking him slowly to the fence, giving us both a chance to see each other.

"Right, time to go back to your hole." He reached the gate, beckoning Daryl forth. The walkers riled up from the noise.

I stopped my trek back to the doors, freezing to watch Dwight drag Daryl back inside the compound. Clodagh watched too.

"Keep walking, ladies, there's nothing for you to see here." Dwight stomped past us, hand bunched in Daryl's collar, the crossbow he had claimed as his own, aimed at Daryl's back.

I ignored Dwight's orders. He didn't push it.

Daryl looked at me through the long, dark hair clinging thickly to his forehead. His face remained bloody and bruised from whomever had battered him up, though the swelling was going down. Daryl clearly hadn't been offered a wash in the last two weeks, though this wasn't something Daryl would mind. I often had to blackmail him into taking a damn shower just so he would stop stinking out our home.

He nodded. I'm good.

I nodded back. Still surviving.