Poker Face

Chapter 82 - Something In The Way

When Negan awoke, it took everything he had not to start sobbing. In any other situation he'd feel like a pussy for letting his emotions get to him so harshly, but in this case he knew it was warranted. He was just barely alive and at the mercy of his enemies, he'd had an epic fall from grace, and Aven...

No, she couldn't be dead. It couldn't be true. Like him, she survived everything. She always got back up. There was a small part of him that was furious at her for disobeying his orders and leaving the Sanctuary, for putting herself in danger. But it was his own fault for creating the danger and he knew that now. He more than knew it, he felt the guilt through and through from his very core.

He was tied securely to a bed with a tight feeling in his neck that he assumed was a bandage, and he felt eyes on him but didn't open his own, not yet. There was no way Rick was going to let him go waltzing back to the Sanctuary. No, he knew he was a prisoner of war and was going to hold onto his last few minutes of freedom, even if that freedom was simply the ability to hide in the dark behind his eyelids.

He was trying to reason out what he saw just before he lost consciousness. His vision had been blurry and the memory was just as hazy but he knew what he saw, a pair of men dropping Aven's limp body to the ground. But why would they have bothered to move her body at all if they killed her? Just so he could see what they had done? She was in the distance, they couldn't have possibly known he'd see her from there, as he was bleeding out nonetheless.

His thoughts were racing, swirling like a tornado inside his tired shell of a body, and he felt like he was grasping at straws trying to pretend she was alive. She was his second shot at happiness and he threw it away for the both of them. If he had just shut his mouth for two God damn seconds like she said, if he had taken action instead of taunting Rick and the others, maybe she'd be alive. She deserved better than what she got. She deserved better than him but now she had nothing. It was like he led everyone he loved to death.

"We know you're awake," said a woman's voice. He was sure he'd heard it before but he couldn't put a face to it.

"I never said I wasn't," he replied casually, though he was surprised by the weak rasp that his voice was reduced to. How long had he been asleep? How deeply had his throat been cut?

"Good, because we need to tell you some things. And you don't need to open your eyes now, but you're gonna soon." Her voice was soft and quiet but much stronger than his at the moment; it would have been soothing under different circumstances. He opened his eyes to see who was speaking to him. Sword lady...Michelle? No, Michonne. "We're gonna make you watch what happens." Fuck, he thought. Maybe Aven wasn't dead, at least not yet. They were saving her so he could see. They'd probably bash her brains in with Lucille to give him a taste of his own medicine. That would be the nail in the coffin for him, he was sure he'd die right then and there from grief if he had to watch Aven's brutal death, with someone's hands all over Lucille nonetheless.

"And this isn't about who you killed." God damn Rick. He was the last person Negan wanted to hear from, but Negan knew he was in no position to get his way. "No, we've killed people too. This is about what you did to us, what you did to so many people. How you made people live for you, put people under your boot.

"I saved people," Negan hissed, but he was cut off by an intense pain in his throat as Michonne gripped it tightly with one hand. She was softly reprimanded by the face Negan had seen seconds before blacking out, a young man with a dark beard and light brown skin, but it was clear Negan wasn't going to be treated as just any patient. A moment later, the hand left his throat but he felt just as suffocated as Rick and Michonne went on to explain how he'd be used as an example in the new world that Carl imagined, a world where everyone worked together. Negan's job would be simply to exist, to remind people what happens when you mess with the new world order. It was a tough pill to swallow, though Negan didn't yet feel remorse for how many throats he'd forced said pill down himself.