The Ruins

Chapter 60

"What happened Mal?"

Three little words.

What. Happened. Mal.

Such simple words that didn't have a simple answer.

What had happened Mal? She asked herself. How did you get here Mal? What happened to you? No answers swirled in her head. She had no idea. She had no idea how things had gotten so damn bad.

Mal couldn't find the words, she could feel her mouth open and shut at each attempt to speak. How do you say it? How do you describe years of pain, abuse, and torment? How could she ever summarise what she went through? It was beyond words, beyond description. How do you describe being torn apart and left to piece yourself back together time and time again? How do you describe feeling so alone, so abandoned by everyone around you that you felt like there was no reason to exist?

Did she even want to tell him?

The question encroached on her thoughts, she could tell a lie, she was so used to doing so she could make it believable. She could tell him that she went out and got assaulted by some random scavenger, not great but easier than the reality.

Less questions.

She almost started talking, the lie lingering on her tongue, until she looked up into Negan's eyes. Those eyes. She was expecting them to convey pity, a disappointment that Mal could let something like this happen to her, but all she found was kindness and concern. That was all Negan had ever shown her, he'd only ever been kind to her, never expecting anything in return for it. Time and time again he'd been there for Mal whether the problem was big or small, he'd helped her through it. When no one else was there to listen he was.

Maybe now he'd listen again.

It wasn't that she felt like she owed it to Negan. That she wanted to tell him out of some sense of repaying him for being there. She wanted to tell him because she wanted him to know. She wanted Negan to know everything about her, wanted to explain that there was a perfectly good reason for being so fucked up. That she was someone different, not weak, someone who didn't flinch at the slightest touch. That this thing had changed her, mutated her into someone that she didn't necessarily recognize, being weak.

She knew she had to do it now or she'd never have the courage to do it, everything had been building up to this moment. It was like she was running at a cliff's edge ready to jump off, hoping that Negan would catch her as she fell.

"Third winter season, a couple of years ago... I was fourteen at the time." She started, still unsure where she was going with it. "We went to his usual party givings, let us stayed over, he always does...always gets too drunk to head home so he lets us crash in the spare room. He'd passed out earlier than usual that year so things wrapped up pretty quickly, we all went to bed early, not bothering to ring the new year in or anything." Mal sniffed again, shaking hands raising the tissue that she'd been clinging onto up to her face again as she felt some more droplets of blood fall out. She closed her eyes as the memories filled her, she could remember feeling hungry as she went to bed, she hadn't really eaten that afternoon, too busy playing games with the kids. She wanted to hit her past self as she thought about how she'd gone downstairs to grab a snack, maybe things would have been so different if she hadn't had gone down there or even tried to mainly hurt or kill Charlie.

"I woke up early in the morning, before everyone else was up, I was hungry so I went to grab a snack. Just some peanut butter." She hadn't been able to eat it since, the taste sending vomit soaring up her throat as it sent her brain throttling back to that night. "Charlie... he woke up. Found me in the kitchen, he was still drunk, thought I was some chick. He started saying things, stupid shit, I passed him off as drunk and ignored it. I should have known better. He..."