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

Healing

Negan's thumb drifted over Blake's forearm as he lay with her on their king-size, as the hours passed them by.

His dark head was propped up against their large oak headboard, as Blake lay with her head resting against his chest, his arms tangled around her body.

She hurt all over and over the past few difficult days it was as though every fibre of her body was screaming, yelling at her. Her stomach was cramping, she was bleeding a little, and she still felt as tender and weak as she had done three days ago. Though it was not the physical toll that pained her the most, but the emotional one.

Blake had miscarried twice before. She had lived through it, grieving but still getting on with her life as best she could. And yet now this time, it was almost like, for a moment as though she had lost all hope.

Even now she still felt devastated. Her entire being so desperate for that child she would never get to see walking, talking....doing all the things she had planned for them.

It was an indescribable kind of loss and one that Blake had so far been unable to cope with. So she had cut herself off. Not wanting to talk to anyone, to look at anyone...a hollow feeling filling her from the inside out.

She felt empty, disgusted with herself for being so weak.....so useless.

And there was a guilt there where there hadn't been before. A shame that came with the loss of, not only her own child, but Negan's too.

She had been embarrassed that that had happened to her. Raising horrible questions and worries that no person should ever have to ask themselves-

Would this have happened to another woman Negan had tried to get pregnant?

Was there something wrong with her?

Did this make her any less of a woman?

But here and now these horrible and twisted thoughts were subduing little by little as she sat here with Negan.

For he had sated that shame, that guilt.....promised her that she wasn't the one to blame. And it took that earnest convincing, for her, after days, to finally believe him.

For her to begin to heal again.

And Mia had helped with that too.

Blake loved the tiny girl with all her heart and it had made that heart expand, hearing the baby girl call her Mommy for the first time.

And despite it being a bittersweet thing to hear after the events of the last three days, Blake was still happy.

She shifted against Negan slightly, causing him to give a small, contented huff into her ear.

This was a stark contrast to the moment they had shared here just a few weeks ago upon finding out that Blake was pregnant. And the sorrow that came with those memories would threaten to burn through her were it not for the presence of Negan beside her now.

Fuck. If it were not for his words, she would have run...left this place and all the memories it held for her.

Just as she had done with Alexandria.

Blake had just wanted to get out, unable to breathe or speak or even open her eyes without the scarring memory of losing her baby for the third time welling in her mind.

And in that moment, the thought of Mia or Negan hadn't even crossed her mind, her only focus on leaving and nothing else.

But Negan had dragged her out of that swelling bad place as swiftly as she had fallen in, and she realised then that she had been a fool to try and shut him out all this time.