A/N:

This fic was a really random, sporadic thought that popped in my head after waking up. Had to write it!

I was recently informed that Kirkman joked about giving Negan the last name 'Smith' because he doesn't always make up last names for characters. So…just for shits, (in this fic only) Negan's last name is Smith. Comic-based as per usual for me, but it goes seriously AU. TW for suicidal themes.

The day Maggie came to kill me, and the night I tossed my Lucille facsimile into the flames, and watched her burn… I thought it was a new beginning. A reset button.

The next morning I awoke, stiff and fuckin' chilled by the ashes of the fire. I saw the barbed wire, black and twisted, among the unburnt remnants of wood.

Gotta say, my newly awakened heart tore right down the middle . This wasn't a beginning. This was the fucking end.

Every memory of the hospital room flooded back – I could even smell the cloying sterilization, hear the beeps that counted down the seconds of my Lucille's life.

Now and then, over the years, I've had odd pains in my body. I'm gettin' old. An ache like shackles on my wrists. A soreness in my ankles, a stinging and heaviness running up the veins of my arms. The pain was here now and I fucking cried, not just for the inconvenience of it – but for everything – every fucking thing.

Why couldn't Maggie fucking kill me? Why couldn't she grant me -

Mercy? Guess that's simple enough. I never gave her any. I ripped her heart from her chest, and I fucking laughed as I did it.

So. It's up to me. I'm gonna have to do what I tell everyone else – be fucking brave. Adjust your balls, square your shoulders and put some fucking spirit into it, you cowardly fucks! The filthiest, dingiest pot in the room calling out all those kettles.

Is taking your life really bravery? I'm not fucking sure. All I know is I had a few fucking rounds left in that shotgun. It took me a while to set up. I sat in the house. But I hated that fucking house. I sat by the fire, but the wire was depressing me. Now there's a laugh.

Finally, I sat by Lucille's grave. The sunflower was on its last legs as well. I guess it was selfish of me to do this in front of Lucille's eyes, but it isn't like she's really here.

"Goodbye, cruel motherfucking world. Toodle-fucking-Loo."

Jesus Christ. I laid down by the fucking flower pot, laughing and crying and dribbling fucking snot and tears all over the ground. Finally, all I was left with was a cold emptiness deep in my chest. I felt fucking scoured of everything, a pumpkin with all its guts scooped out.

When I looked at the gun, I felt fucking nothing. When I looked at the grave. Nothing. Nothing. I'm nothing. There's nothing. Just the pain roaming my veins and a cloud of white noise in my head.

I picked up the shotgun and propped it under my chin. I took a deep breath, living in the moment. This is my last breath. This is my last heartbeat.

My last memory.

I wanted something good. The best moment. So yeah, it was kind of cheesy, I guess, but who gives a fuck when you're about to blow your brains out the top of your skull. Have all the cheese you want.

I pictured my wedding. The moment I pushed the veil from Lucille's face. My heart banging against my ribs. Hoping I wouldn't pop a boner in front of the small collection of our family and friends. Shit… I was melting too much to ever get hard.

I paused my memories on her face. Dark hair curling about her blushing cheeks. Those eyes only for me, looking at me like I was the most important thing in the world and even then I was still so terrified I'd never be good enough for her. But here she was, laying those sweet lips on me.

"Fuck…" I whispered, much to the chagrin of the priest. "Fucking hell. I love you, Lucille."

"I love you, Negan."

Freeze it.

The one moment of perfection.

The one -

I pulled the trigger.

The end.

Light flashed in my eyes. Fucking bright. I squinted and tried to shield them, but I couldn't move my arms. My wrists burned.

I've fallen to fucking Hell, haven't I? I must have. I fucking screamed.

"Lucille! Lu…Lucille!"

There was a garble of voices. Men and women – no – demons. My veins throbbed and stung in my arms…they're sucking my blood, they're stabbing needles into me – and -

"Lu…cille…" I got so sleepy. A heaviness fell over me.

"I think he's coming back around."

Somebody smacked my cheek with a gentle hand. Gentle demons, that's a good one.

"Can you state your name?"

Don't they already have all this information? "Lucille? Is she… no. She's not here." For some reason, saying that made the tears break from my eyes. That fucking bright light keeps flashing. If I knew offing myself would lead to this bullshit, maybe I would have stayed alive and just found a fucking stash of drugs or alcohol to numb the pain.

"No, sir, I'm afraid your wife isn't here. Can you state your name?"

Polite-as-fuck demons. Damn.

"Sir? Do you know your name?"

"N-N-Negan."

"Good. We've given you a drug to calm you, Negan. You're going to sleep for a while."

Well, maybe I'll get my drugs after all. And they've got the good shit in Hell!

"Mr Smith?"

Fucking cocksucking dammit. That light was in my eyes again. I woke up, groggy. My head, though, felt remarkably clear. Maybe that's what happens when your brains vacate it.

"Mr Smith?"

I blinked. The light receded, revealing itself to be a pen flashlight, held by an older woman who's still pretty fuckable.

Hell was a complete letdown. I expected some cool caverns, jutting stalagmites (or are they stalactites?), bubbling pools of lava and the smell of egg-farts.

Maybe this is hell, though. MY hell. A sterile room with a bed and an IV pole, a wall-mounted TV switched off and a privacy curtain drawn. My fucking stomach dropped. I don't want to be here.

Three people stared at me. The fuckable flashlight woman. A tubby male doctor. Some fucking rent-a-cop.

"What the fuck is this? Where the hell am I?"

Fuck-light exchanged a glance with Rent-a-Cop. "Do you remember anything after Officer Grimes brought you here?"

"Rick brought me here?"

What the goddamn shit? He must have found me. My suicide failed. These are his people and… and…

I'm alive. Fucking shit. For the first time, I noticed my wrists were restrained on the bed railings, and they're wrapped in bandages. Another bandage covered my left forearm and my arm ached terribly. When I shifted my legs, my ankles were bound too.

"The restraints are for everyone's safety, Mr Smith. We don't wish you to harm yourself or others."

"I ain't harming shit. Why don't you get Rick in here? He can explain why the fuck he didn't leave me to die – again."

But Fuck-Light merely repeated her question.

I sighed. "He exiled me from Alexandria. Maggie….she came to kill me. For… what I did to Glenn. But…she didn't. Said I had to live with what I did." I stared down at the heavy restraints on my wrists. If they thought I was going to put up a fight, they were wrong. I'm a fire out of oxygen. "So…I tried to do it myself. I fucking failed, obviously, and haven't you fuckers figured this out already?"

There was a long, long pause. "We're still working out the exact details of your story, Mr Smith."

"Negan." I haven't used my woefully generic last name in years. How the fuck do Rick's people even know it?

"Mr Negan. The good news is you seem to be getting back to lucidity."

I slumped back on the bed. Good news? I wanted to be dead. That's funny. My arm killed like a motherfucker but I didn't feel any head pain at all. "Why does my arm hurt?"

They exchanged looks again. I sighed, staring around the room. The shitty hospital paintings. Why would they bring me to a hospital anyway? A clipboard with information for the nurses. Maybe I'd been out of it so long the world had been put back together again. Leave it to Rick Grimes to fix every-fucking-thing.

A calendar showed a running horse.

"You ever gonna switch that thing out? You're behind by a good few years."

More glances exchanged.

"I think we need to up his dosage, Mr Shaw."

A month had passed. I'm released from the hospital, signed off as being clear of wit. I don't know about that. I don't know about any-fucking-thing anymore, but I have to pretend.

I've been reset.

The beginning.

I let myself into my….our… house. Fuck-Light – Dr Renee – followed behind me.

"I still can't believe this shit is real, sometimes."

"You've suffered a major trauma, Negan. It will still take time to reorient yourself."

Part of me wished to go back to Alexandria. I would have stayed, knowing. I would have set down that shotgun and left…found another group… been a Savior again – but not in the same way. I would have really helped people.

Guess I can still do that. I can move away, find a life in some other place.

"You have my number. You feel anything is wrong…if you feel like you're going to harm yourself…call me." Renee's hand was warm on my shoulder. I think she might be having something more than just doctorly concern for me. What can I say? Even for a complete mental case….I'm still a sexy motherfucker.

I did move, several months later. Leaving D.C. for Georgia. I kept Renee's number, just to assure her now and then that I'm still alive, and I'm trying to move on. Maggie didn't grant me mercy – so I'm trying to grant it to myself.

I got a cheap apartment and a job as a substitute teacher – hoping I could move up to a permanent position at some point. For now, I survived off Lucille's life insurance and what we'd put away during our marriage. I had a few casual dates, but I didn't tell them about the true woman in my life, the woman who will never leave my heart. I don't tell them what her death had done to me. I don't tell them about the monster that lurked in my subconscious. But it turns out, I'm not as bad a man as I thought I was.

But I still cheated on her. And she still died. Maybe because of me. Dr Renee has told me, repeatedly, that I did not cause Lucille's cancer. Deep inside, I don't believe her.

So. Here's the facts, Jack.

My Lucille was sick with cancer. As she slowly succumbed to her illness, I blamed myself more and more. The guilt ate me alive. I felt like it wasn't just her death approaching…but mine too. Only, unlike her, I wouldn't get the relief of non-existence.

At her deathbed, I didn't sleep. I didn't eat. I was delirious.

The wall-mounted TV was always on. Lucille liked the background noise. They kept playing a news story about a man who took drugs that made him go crazy. Bath salts, they said. He stabbed somebody and began to cannibalize their body. He fucking ate them – like a fucking zombie right out of the movies.

I barely noticed it. Background noise. Right.

Another day went by. My head swam and my breathing was heavy and I knew it was coming and I was so fucking afraid. The world was ending for me. What did I have when she left?

Another patient was wheeled into the adjourning room and I heard the wife crying over her injured husband. A victim of a violent mugging, they said. Mr Glenn Rhee had been brutally beaten with a baseball bat and his survival was questionable.

But that was just background noise.

And then, Lucille left me. She died as I drifted into a brief slumber. Again, I had failed her. When I jolted awake, she was gone. I cried and screamed and felt like I was dying with her.

And she came back. The flatline turned to beeps again, but it was only to rattle a few last breaths, her frail hand clutching me, her mouth gaping behind her oxygen mask – and then…

She was gone. And I fell to shit along with the world - and I fled that place and never came back -

No. That's not what happened.

Dr Renee said I had a…'psychotic break.' I went wild. I tried to shake Lucille awake. I screamed that she was still alive. Yet…she was dead! She was coming for me! I bit my own arm, they said. I tore my flesh. I threw the nurse against the wall when he tried to touch Lucille. Lucille's all I have! You can't fucking take her from me!

They had to call security. And then the police.

Rick Grimes was the responding officer. He took me to a secured mental facility.

They drugged me, monitored me, waited for me to come out of my stupor. I was in it for days, unresponsive. My mind retreating deep inside.

"You dreamed up a whole world," said Dr Renee. "Where you still held onto Lucille, but didn't have to confront her death directly. You lived out fantasies about being a powerful man who kept others alive. But your attempts to escape reality couldn't last. Because your mind began to heal, to surface…and you started to feel the grief and the guilt again. You felt like you deserved to die. When you killed yourself in the fantasy…you were brought back here.

You were brought back…to start your life again. To move on, despite it all. Because you don't deserve to die, Negan."

Part of me wants to go back. But there's nothing left in that world for me. I have no place there. Part of me wants to die. For real this time.

But I don't.

The day Maggie refused to kill me, and the day I killed myself…

I got my new beginning. And I'll be fucked if I fuck it up again.

A/N: Alrighty then. Well, this fic was really such a random thought I got right after waking up. It's a play on the cliched 'What if the Walking Dead is just Rick dreaming in his coma?"

Well…what if the Walking Dead was just Negan having a psychotic break after watching his wife die?

If you enjoyed or found this fic even the least bit entertaining...please leave a comment. I don't get much feedback and it's quite discouraging. Your comment would mean a lot to me, however brief. I also don't mind (constructive) criticism. :)