I think I liked you better when you didn't have a knife in your hand, Peaches

On Negan's request

Blake appeared out in the garden again, eyes staring forward, as pale as a sheet.

What had happened up there in Negan's office. It had felt so good, so right, so needed...

But Blake's heart seemed to ache now. For this just couldn't be. It couldn't be that easy to just fall back into his arms. She was still angry, hurting...

She felt like she was drowning now, scrabbling for air....

How the hell could one stupid argument turn into, well, this. With so many hurtful things banded about, that now, could not be un-said.

Blake stepped out into the early afternoon air, placing a hand to a nearby wall to steady herself, swaying slightly as she stopped in her tracks.

But Steve, who Blake barely noticed nearby, glanced up almost instantly, spotting her from across the garden.

"Hey.....you ok?" she heard him utter in what seemed like a voice, oh-so far away, despite him strolling over to her.

The caramel-blonde woman blinked once, then twice, her eyes drifting up to his...trying as hard as she could to snap herself out of it.

"Uh...yeah. I'm...uh, I'm fine," she mumbled in response, shaking herself slightly, as she stared up at the brown haired Steve who came to a stop just in front of her, peering down into her face.

The garden was still busy with Saviours all hard at work going to and fro, but none of them seemed to care about Blake's reappearance in the garden. Only Steve, who suddenly reached a hand out to her cheek.

"Babe, you look like you've seen a ghost," he said, giving her a trying smile, as his digits met with her skin, but Blake flinched away from him suddenly, pulling back.

She blinked a couple of times, as Steve stared at her questioningly, before tearing her eyes away.

"I've got stuff need to finish is all," she said in a quiet voice, brushing swiftly past him and heading back over towards the tomato plants on the far side of the walled lot.

Right now she did not want to deal with Steve.

His arrival here at the Sanctuary had only sought to exacerbate things tenfold between her and Negan. And Blake was not in the mood for his affection right now. All she wanted to do was get on with her work, earn her points, eat, sleep and get up in the morning and do it all over again.

For that was what her life had become here now.

This was no fairy-tale. There was no happy ending for her.

Negan would go back to his old life and Blake would go back to creating what little life she could, in the looming factory building she now called her home.

But without Negan, it did not feel like a home.

Blake felt so conflicted.

Struggling to understand what she wanted right now.

All the things Negan had said to her...scornful...stabbing her through her chest like a knife.

But in that moment that they had kissed, everything had felt right again, all of Blake's troubles and pains washing away.

But maybe that was all she was to him. Maybe that's all she had been. Another conquest. Although thoughts like that, they hurt her. Tearing her apart from the inside.

Blake knew how she felt about the dark-haired Saviour. And feelings like that didn't just disappear overnight.

But she tried think about something else now, bending down and picking up a pair of gardening gloves and shoving them swiftly on, hoping to distract herself with work as best she could...from now until she made a decision on what she was going to do.