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

Just three words

The world was stifling and dark now.

Negan knew that he was dreaming but somehow everything felt so real.

He was in the baseball cages at the school he used to work in, taking swing after swing after swing...and yet nothing was working and the blackness, the endless darkness, just kept on coming.

His chest was constricted...

....tight...

....his breathing ragged inside his throat, his eyes flickering this way and that, looking for a way out.

But the blackness soon dissipated and Negan found himself there...again....beside that hospital bed he knew so very well.

He felt those angry and pained tears slosh down his cheeks now, as she pressed his face into the bedsheets...

...Lucille's bedsheets.

She was still there, but she felt so distant to him now....her face just a memory, fuzzy and almost forgotten.

He didn't know how long he remained there for. Seconds....minute....years.

His heart utterly aching.

And it was only when he looked up, that he found himself no longer at the hospital bed any more...

...instead, he was hanging over the steering wheel of a truck.

It was dark outside now, with rain lashing at the windscreen, as Negan eased himself up into a sitting position...

...jumping in fright just as the passenger-side door to his right was flung suddenly open.

Negan turned his head, hearing his breaths in his ears, coming hard and fast.

But a sudden warmth suddenly seemed to flood his entire body as a recognisable figure suddenly hopped up into the cab of the truck beside him, dressed in a slinky white dress that seemed to cause her to glow, pure and bright in the darkness now.

But it was not Lucille...but another person now...

...her.....

...Blake.

She turned to him now, smiling, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

And for the first time he noticed that she was holding a large basket full of fuzzy, ripened peaches in her lap, as she pulled the door closed behind her.

"It's raining really badly out there," she said to him in voice that sounded far away. But considering she was just in a short white dress, she looked perfectly dry now. "Can I stay in here with you tonight?"

And Negan felt himself grin now, in this dream-world, his worries and cares seeming to drift away, as she shuffled closer to him, handling him just a single peach from the basket on her knees.

"I'm not her," she said suddenly, sounding far closer now, placing the warm fruit into his hand. "But I am yours."

Negan looked down at the peach for a long second, turning it over in his hand admiring it, before he looked up at her again.

But she was gone....only blackness there now, surrounding him, as he found himself in the batting cages once more...

..his eyes once again drifting down to the peach in his hand but it wasn't there any longer..