The cell was damp and silent. Food sat on the floor in front of him. Negan sat on the small, wooden platform that was his bed. Blankets and a handmade mattress covered it. The mattress wasn't much. Just blankets sowed into more blankets in order to give him something to lay on. Rick told him to be thankful he even got a bed. Negan only laughed. Being thankful was impossible without Carl. Rick should understand that.
"Eat." The only word that had been said between them in a half an hour. Michonne had taken it upon herself to watch him, make sure he ate and drank. She didn't understand that this wasn't a protest. Negan was just tired. The only person that would kill him was being kept away. Starvation was his best way out. "Now, Negan."
"How did he die?" Negan whispered, looking at his hands. It had been a month since they locked Negan up. Carl died about a month and a half ago. "I cared about him, ya know, he meant something to me, too." Negan looked up at her. Tired. So, so tired. "Carl didn't deserve it."
"He didn't." Michonne replied. Her arms were crossed over her chest, her eyes narrow and trained on Negan. Trained on the only thing that seemed to matter to anyone. Negan and his misery. "But you don't deserve to talk about him. He was good, Negan, better than you, better than all of us."
Negan nodded. He knew that. Every day he would tell Carl that. "I didn't deserve him, but I still miss him. You wouldn't understand." She wouldn't. The love they had for Carl was so, so different. "I just miss him."
"Then you can live with that. Without this war... things could have been okay. Hell, Negan, maybe if you didn't bash Glenn and Abraham's skulls in, he would be alive. Maybe if you did one thing different-"
"Stop."
"No!" Michonne shouted, her fists falling to her sides. "You get to be as miserable as the rest of us! You get to ask yourself "why" and constantly question every choice you made from the time you met him until the time he died! Because god knows..." She took a deep breath. "Maybe that one thing could have changed it all."
Negan looked at his hands. Instead of hos stomach feeling empty, it felt sick. If he tried to vomit, all he would do would be gagging. He hadn't eaten in days. It would kill him sooner or later. "When we first met... I knew he was special."
"Don't start with that. We all knew he was special. But no, you don't get to say it. You almost bashed his skull in, Negan. He almost became another fucking walker and that is on you!" Michonne was standing inches from the cell door. If Negan wanted to, he could reach through and kill her. But he didn't. "Maybe if you would have, he wouldn't have suffered!"
"I didn't kill him... I..."
"You were a coward. None of us killed him. But this world and the shit we put into it, all the good and all the bad, that killed him." Michonne closed her eyes and tried to calm herself. "We couldn't even protect the children, Negan. And that is on all of us. He was trying to be an adult-"
"I loved him." Negan whispered. For a moment, he hoped Michonne didn't here. "We... we were in love. We were happy." He closed his eyes, picturing Carl's face. He did that every day. The risk of forgetting him was too scary. "Every day on the radios... he would call and ask about my day-"
"I don't care." Michonne replied. "We lost the same child. That does not make us friends or family. That does not make what you have done okay. All it means is that we are both stuck with losing another person."
"I didn't want to love him." Negan continued. "It killed me. Loving him. He was so good and so... so young. I tried to stop but you can't control your feelings."
"And your actions?" Michonne asked. "If you loved him, why did you attack us? His family? Why did you set his home on fire, Negan? Don't you dare think you are the victim."
