CONQUEST • Negan

Lemonade

Enduring the adrenaline numbed pain of a blazing hot iron shoved into my shoulder blade was one thing, but watching a whimpering, blubbering man plead for mercy and piss himself as Negan pressed a larger iron into the side of his face, with the same casualness he might express while stamping a letter, was something else entirely.

The scent of singed flesh invaded my senses, twisting my gut with dizzying disgust and ripping me from the present. I recoiled into the memory of a scolding metal 'N' branding my flesh, almost sizzling down to the muscle; a memory I had tucked away into the back corner of my mind and had thus far expertly avoided.

Negan spun the act of ironing a man's face into some kind of lesson for his people, a reminder for them of the value and importance of following the rules of the sanctuary. Secretly, I knew there was a part of him which enjoyed it. Not the brutal act itself, or the infliction of pain on another—though I couldn't deny the possibility of Negan being a bit of a sadist—but the power and fear birthed from publicly disfiguring a man. I saw the exhilaration in the swell of his chest and the spark of arrogance in his eyes. It was a slippery slope to get addicted to the violent sort of influence Negan had obtained. I knew this because it was the same addiction that addled my father—my addiction gene being passed down from him—and once you learned to thirst for the attention and the reverence, it was a hard grave to dig back out of before you turned into something twisted and beyond human.

But Negan had already dug his grave. He was beyond a monster, though everyone one was these days, I suppose.

This was how he bought the loyalty of his people, their respect and devotion. Who else was willing to go to such lengths to deliver a message to the masses? Only a madman could concoct such a vicious punishment.

Now, we were in Negan's room—the harsh scent of scalding flesh still lingering in my nose—hostage to his company as he flicked through paper work, languidly lounging on his couch across from us.

He was softly grinning to himself, either delighted by our rising disgruntlement or from having company at all. Negan seemed to be a lonely man, and a major attention-seeker, so his amusement was likely a concoction of both.

I didn't oppose the peace and quiet, if I was being honest. It was a pretty rare thing to come by these days, even rarer a thing from Negan, who must've held some type of world record for the most words spoken without breath. The man loved a good monologue. But his silence was oddly comforting—unsettling, but comforting.

Over the last twenty minutes, Negan's gaze had briefly snapped up to me at least fifteen times, as if his focus hadn't been on the paperwork at all, his mind already occupied on thoughts of me as he likely plotted his next way to piss me off. There had been a wicked smugness curving his lips when he found that I had been watching him, too. It couldn't be helped. The man was great to look at and I wasn't exactly going to stare at the damn wall.

With a heavy sigh, I pushed up from the couch to move to Negan's bookshelf and browse for something to read while he blanked us for his own amusement. His stare followed me across the room, a heavy presence lingering on the back of me, a chill scuttling down my spine as he intently watched my movements without any care for subtlety. I knew it wasn't apprehension that forced his eyes to trail me, but his obsessive interest.

Carl scoffed and my cheeks blazed. Poor kid. He really didn't deserve the mental strain of being mixed up in all of this. The sooner he got home, the better. My only concern was if Negan had any intentions of even taking the kid back to Alexandria, and I hadn't yet worked up the nerve to poke the bear by asking. I dreaded his answer and what I might have to give to him to persuade him to return Carl to his dad in one piece. But, I was willing to exchange whatever I must, to see that Carl was safe.