DEVILS ♛ C. G. 〖 #wattys2018 〗

T W O / E I G H T

WE HIT 30K AND I MIIIGHT BE CRYING ♥️♥️♥️♥️

SOTC: Tomorrow Comes Today — Gorillaz
• don't think I'll be here too long •

April blanched. Her skin, pallid, white as an envelope.

"What is she doing down there?" She hissed.

Her eyes immediately went to Carl's face. His socket gleamed wet with blood, the iris of his intact eye remaining still, but just as fractured as she had seen him on the day she stole him.

He was trying to hold it together. But she could see him beginning to panic, blood rushing from his skin. He ran a nervous hand through his hair, which looked almost black in the dimness. "It's going to be okay. We'll get her out of this."

"There's an iron," she shook her head. "I've seen this so many times before. He's going to fry her face."

"What?!"

April squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip. "It's disgusting. Dad takes a hot iron and drags it across the convict's face. That's why her head is shaved, so he can... pull the skin farther."

Carl looked like he was about to hurl.

She turned back to the show floor, and to where Elle was sitting so calmly. She tried to repress images of a mutilated version of her best friend's face.

"Your dad," Carl remarked, pointing.

April felt her heart drop down through the floor. He rose from his position at the fireplace. Slowly strut to the center. As he walked, the Saviors around him each fell to a knee, slowly rippling outward until even April and Carl were pressured to sit as well, if not to blend in.

"How is everyone doing tonight?" Negan asked his audience, raising his hands, Lucille gripped to his right. April could have sworn it was dripping blood.

At the crowd's murmur of affirmation, he gave a close-lipped smile that stretched from ear to ear. "I can't say I don't understand the grimness. But tonight shouldn't be a cause for sadness. We are serving justice!"

A slightly louder roar from the Saviors.

"He likes to play with the audience's emotions," April whispered. "Retain a sympathetic connection. It's all a performance, you see." She nodded at the ceiling, where a large factory light fixture hung like a pendulum. "All the light is focused at the center. Kind of like a monologue. Or, like, a boxing arena."

"Tonight, let's start with this woman in the chair." His expression never wavered. "She has committed a real crime today, the likes of which I have vowed to banish from under this here roof."

April's gut plunged to her feet. What could Elle have done to deserve the iron? It seemed so outlandish to her.

"This woman...," he started, slowly pacing a circle. "...is an adulterer."

There were a few intakes of breath from the crowds. April turned to Carl, knitting her eyebrows as her stomach overturned in her chest. Elle's expression didn't change—it was one of indifference, like she was saying "so what?"

Then Negan stopped, gave a curt laugh. "And the clincher?"

He scowled. It was almost vulgar.

"This adultery was with one of my wives."

For that singular moment, everything tripped.

Carl didn't breathe. April didn't breathe. They were caught between breaths, where the body is granted oxygen but has not quite yet released its emissions. An imbalance, a fault, where a singular cellular interaction snaps into place and is then frozen.