Nothing Left to Burn [DISCONTINUED]

Chapter 7 - On the Tip of Your Tongue

"What do you mean you think you remember?" Negan asked seriously as he stared at Aven, who was staring straight through him as memories ran through her mind like her life flashing before her eyes. "Talk to me, baby. What do you remember?" She quickly held her hand up to prompt him to stop talking, and he obliged to let her focus.

"I...I remember driving down this road in this direction at night time, sitting in the passenger seat..." she began, trying to explain the blur of images racing through her mind. The view of the Sanctuary down the road before them was like the first domino, triggering a flood of other vague memories in her mind. One triggered another which triggered another and they were coming and going too quickly for her to focus.  A feeling was rising like a nausea of the brain, like all the memories were coming up fast, about to break through the barrier. But as quickly as that feeling arose, it died down, leaving Aven mentally grasping for the memories as they fell back into her subconscious and out of mind.

"No, no, no, fuck!" she spat, slamming her hands against the dashboard in frustration. She gritted her teeth, growling at her own failure. "I fucking remembered. Fuck, I fucking lost it!"

"Lost what?" Negan asked, puzzled. "Was that it, what you remembered? Just driving towards the Sanctuary?" He didn't bother to hide the disappointment in his voice. He was hoping for something much more climactic than the simple memory of a car ride.

"No, fuck, there was more and now it's gone!" Her voice rose to a rough shout as she continued to hit the dashboard.

"Well...shit, that's something though!" he said, trying to console her. "We definitely drove down this road at night and if I was driving you were there in the passenger seat, so-"

"Shh," she hissed, waving him off. "Shut up." Negan almost snapped back at her for being so rude, but he bit his tongue. It was clear from her squinted eyes and tightly pursed lips that she was trying hard to remember something, and he wasn't about to get in the way of that if she needed him to shut up.

"We came this way during the day too?" she asked after a long pause, her voice quiet and unsure.

"Yeah, plenty of times," he replied gruffly, still trying to ignore how curt she'd just been. It's not like she cursed him out but he was still hurt that she wasn't overjoyed to see him like he was to see her. He was feeling less confident by the moment and it dawned on him that he was no longer the man she fell for. Aven swallowed hard, her eyes darting back and forth between nothing as she struggled to hold down a fleeting memory to solidify it in her mind.

"Tell me about it."

"What the fuck do you mean?" he asked.

"Tell me about when we drove down this road." He shook his head, entirely confused by the request. There wasn't much to tell: they drove down the road to get back to the Sanctuary. She apparently knew that already. "I remember coming this way when the sun was up too and I was in a bigger car in the passenger seat and I think there were more people. Tell me about it, any time that happened."

"Fuck, I don't know, that happened a few times. We went on some runs and if I was driving you sat there. I usually had someone else drive when I went out but I didn't want you packed like a fuckin' sardine in the backseat with people touching you. I didn't trust those pricks."

"What's inside the walls? What...what's the entrance like? It's a gate?"

"You remember the fucking gate?" he gawked, almost insulted that she remembered something so minuscule but couldn't remember him. "I mean, yeah, it's a fuckin' gate. The whole place is surrounded by chain link."

"What else? What's just inside the gate?"

"It's like a big industrial yard. There was metal piping everywhere and some big vents coming out of the ground that we never used. Lots of people moving around during the day. You could see where we kept the other cars and bikes..." Negan stopped, tipped off by the increasingly defeated look on Aven's face that his description wasn't helping.