"Negan, what the actual fuck are we doing?" Aven spat, storming up behind him from the truck. They'd stopped in a clearing on the way back from Alexandria, Negan promising it wouldn't be long and telling Aven to stay behind and relax. She relaxed for five seconds before she saw the Saviors unloading all the mattresses they'd taken from Alexandria and piling them in the field. "Why did you take their fucking mattresses if we're just going to leave them out here?"
"We're not just leaving them out here," he smirked. A few Saviors grabbed canisters of gasoline and began pouring them over the pile.
"Negan, what the fuck?" Aven repeated, just before the mattresses went up in flames.
"Carl stepped out of line, someone's hiding guns," Negan began. "Gotta teach them a fucking lesson."
"Are you hearing me at fucking all?" she hissed, careful not to let the Saviors hear her. "You're just pissing people off-"
"If this was to piss them off I'd have burned this shit at the fucking gates," he growled.
"Then what the fuck are you doing? Stop shitting on people and do your fucking job!"
"Get back in the fucking truck," he muttered definitively, clearly not about to be swayed.
"Negan, you're-"
"BACK TO THE TRUCKS!" he bellowed to everyone to hide his anger. The Saviors reluctantly pulled their eyes from the flames and retreated back to their transports. Aven didn't speak to Negan the rest of the ride home, stewing in anger over his ego and stupidity. When they returned, she hopped down from the truck and made a B-line inside towards Negan's room, leaving him behind to get everyone moving on unloading the trucks.
"You wanna tell me what the fuck that was about?" Negan asked when he stepped into his living room twenty minutes later to find Aven sitting in a chair she'd pulled up to the window, staring out over the yard like she'd done the first few days after he let her out of the cell.
"I already told you," she muttered. "So it's not my fucking problem if you want a fucking uprising on your hands."
"Who said anything about a fucking uprising?" Negan retorted, tossing Lucille gently onto the couch.
"You want me to go through my list of tyrants and dictators who were overthrown because of how they mistreated their subjects?"
"No, that's oka-"
"Mussolini, Hitler, Hussein, Gaddafi," she began rattling off names with a monotone voice. "Ceausescu, Pol Pot. Robespierre, Xerxes if we're going way back-"
"No fucking history lecture please," he groaned, running a hand through his beard. "And you better not be comparing me to fucking Hitler and god damn Saddam fucking Hussein," he growled, putting together the implications of her examples.
"I'm comparing you to leaders who brutally pissed people off," she said, trying to soften it.
"You don't really keep a list of historic rebellions, do you? Because that would be super fuckin' nerdy."
"No," she sighed, frustrated that he was missing the point.
"Doll, I think you're being too fuckin paranoid," Negan said, softening and coming up behind her to begin gently massaging her shoulders. "You need to chill the fuck out. Everything is going to be okay-"
"You better fucking be right," she hissed, pulling away from him. "You better fucking know what you're doing."
"Aven, I'm gonna need you to back the fuck down," he said softly but firmly, leaning down towards her. "You may not have to follow all the rules but you don't get to fucking talk to me like this. You know that's not gonna fuckin' work." She kept her gaze out the window not looking at him, her arms crossed at her chest.
YOU ARE READING
Poker Face
Fanfiction"Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire, but if you do it every time, there'll be nothing left to burn." After months being held prisoner, Aven runs out the door, straight into the apocalypse. For almost two years, she faces the world mostly on...
