When Negan woke up, he smelled bacon, and he cracked a smile before he ever cracked a yawn. He rolled over, reaching, but his hands came up empty. Time to get up.
He threw on some clothes and left his bedroom, feet automatically leading him to the front door. A quick glance in the kitchen told him that he missed breakfast, but that they had saved some for him in a paper-towel covered plate left on the table. But he had one singular destination in mind and continued on his way outside.
The front door was wide open, letting the daylight pour in and a fresh breeze circulate the bacon aroma all throughout the house. Usually the sign of an open door would be concerning, but Negan didn't feel worried. He stepped over the threshold into the brand-new world bravely.
"Hey, babe," he greeted warmly, voice still slightly raspy from sleep.
Sitting on the front porch steps that looked out over a familiar garden plot where a couple of grey-haired women were on their knees weeding, Elle twisted halfway around and smiled at him. "Hey, Negan."
She didn't move to get up, so Negan moved to sit beside her. None of his joints protested lowering himself, and as he stepped out of the cover of the porch, the sunshine lit up his skin until it was golden. When he turned to look at Elle, eyes only for her, he saw that she had that same ethereal glow, but she had always been beautiful that way.
"I'm surprised you were able to sleep through the ruckus this morning," Elle teased, knocking her knee against his gently. "Phil was very, very cranky." She looked down at the bundle in her arms, only a thick patch of brown hair visible over the swaddle of baby blue blankets.
Running his fingertips over the crown of his son's head, Negan marveled at his perfection in silence. He never thought that he could make something so beautiful, but with Elle, it only seemed right. "I wish you would've woken me."
"You deserved the sleep." She shifted Phil so that he was cradled in her other arm, facing Negan. Her stomach still had the same curve of pregnancy, only slightly deflated now. "You need all the rest you can get."
Tracing his fingertips over the old scars on Elle's exposed shoulder, Negan mumbled, "Well, you need your rest, too, babe."
Elle pulled away. "No, Negan. You deserved the peace from sleep you got." There was a hardness to her voice, and it startled Negan so much that his eyes flew up to hers, concerned. "Because you're never going to sleep again."
In a blink, Elle was standing before him, holding Phil in her arms protectively as if Negan were a walker. Behind her, the garden was burned out to ash, and there was no more sunlight. It was as dark as a storm, but the sky blotted out with smoke. It only grew darker as she continued, "And I'm never going to know rest because of you."
"Elle."
In another flash of searing red light, Elle was gone. She left Phil behind, but he was no longer a baby, approximately Abby's age with his thumb hanging in his mouth as he stared up at Negan in fear. It was night, the only source of light coming from the surrounding trucks' headlights. Phil had Elle's eyes. The house behind him was gone, and Negan was standing. He felt the heavy weight of his leather jacket on his shoulders, wrapped around him like an escapable boa constrictor, the red scarf around his neck cutting off air supply. Lucille was in his hands.
"No."
Another flash, and Phil was almost ten-years-old. They were at the Sanctuary on the factory floor, but they were alone. Phil struggled to hold the white-hot iron in his hand, and he was crying as he hefted it up. Negan was on his knees. And he screamed before the iron ever touched his face.
And then Negan woke up.
It wasn't often that Negan had nightmares like that, but given how frequently he's been seeing Abby and Charlotte, he's not that surprised. All the old feelings and fears from the past were being drudged up again. Also, since he had the tiny photograph seared on the inside of his eyelids, the vividness of Elle had lingered with him.
He was terrible at grief. His way of mourning Lucille – a woman he cheated on and would've have divorced him if she hadn't gotten cancer – was to warp her memory and idolize their marriage, pretending that he hadn't fucked everything up. In his mind, he had built Lucille up like a monument that no other woman could compare to in comparison, even as he forged relationships with other women constantly, seeking companionship, seeking something to soothe his hurt. Hell, he named his favorite murder weapon after her.
Then along came Elle, and Negan made the mistake of allowing himself to feel again. Elle was nothing like Lucille. But that was a good thing. And as he grew closer to her, he let himself believe that they could build a life together, that she would accept him – all of him – including his rules, the iron, the point system, the distance, the responsibilities, the cutting remarks, the persona, the baggage of his past. They connected, and for a while, everything was perfect. There was a golden era of peace. No A.J. No Adam. No Derek. No Charlotte. No Caleb. Food was plenty, and Abby had time to grow.
In that time, Negan let his heart get away from him. He thought he could have it all with Elle, that they could have a baby growing up alongside Abby. Negan had never been so wrong.
He would say that he paid the price for it, but ultimately, Elle was the one who lost it all. The least Negan could do was try to be better for Abby and give her the world that Elle and her parents wanted her to have. It's what any child deserved, but rarely got nowadays.
So, Negan hadn't given up trying to be there for Abby, but he knew had to give Rick some time. His promise was hinged on his freedom, and he knew that escape wasn't possible. Even if he did escape, he would never be able to see Abby again without it being from a distance on the other side of the walls. It was all left up to Rick Grimes' mercy now. When Rick came to visit, he was polite or quiet, and let the matter drop; Rick didn't bring it back up either. Still, there had to be another way to convince him to let Negan out.
As he sat on his bed, trying to figure out a way, Negan heard children screaming. Abby, he thought and rushed to his little window, trying to catch a glimpse. His heart hammered in his chest and he clutched the bars in tight fists as he craned his neck trying to see, wishing that he was out there so he could protect her –
But then he saw Abby's familiar sneakers run by his window, kicking a small soccer ball to other kids. The children screamed again, and Negan realized that it wasn't out of fear, but happiness. He remembered it from the baseball games and gym classes. His eyes closed. It had been so long since he heard children scream for fun.
Abby shrieked again, and her sneakers – the only thing visible of her in his line of sight – hopped up and down. "Goal!"
Smiling to himself, Negan went and pulled his bed under the window so he could kneel on it comfortably, watching them play. There were at least four other pairs of shoes, and Negan wondered which ones Judith's were and who the other kids were. Maybe in another life, those could've been his own daughter's sneakers as he watched her play with Abby and Judith.
Maudlin, he briefly turned away to pull out the little picture again, and he just let it rest in his palm as he watched the sneakers race back and forth, chasing the soccer ball. The image was so familiar now that Negan was sure it was seared on the insides of his eyelids permanently, and he'd be just fine with that. He never wanted to forget Elle's face, or Amy's, or Eric's. None of them. And he missed Vivienne, too, even though she hadn't come to see him. But he wouldn't hold that against her.
As the game started to wind down, Negan half wondered if they were going to be called to lunch and when he would get his. Like clockwork, he was starting to get hungry. But then he watched as the soccer ball sped towards his window and slammed into the glass on the other side of the bars. All of the shoes stopped and then at once rushed towards his window. Negan perked up, waiting.
Once they got closer, he could hear them talking to each other. He couldn't see any higher than their knees, though, and all their shadows had blended together in an amalgam on the ground. Their only distinctive feature from each other continued to be their shoes.
"That's the monster's house," said one little girl seriously. "Daddy told me never to go in there."
Judith, Negan realized.
"Why would they keep a monster here?" A little boy asked, and his voice trembled. "I thought there were only monsters outside the walls."
"That's because Judy's lying!" Another girl sharply accused. "That's stupid to keep a monster there! And I've seen Carl go inside! It can't be a monster!"
Abby, Negan noted with fondness
"Are you saying my brother doesn't know how to fight monsters?" Judith shouted. "He goes outside all the time!" A cowboy boot with a stitched flower design stomped indignantly.
Like daddy, like daughter, Negan surmised with a small grin.
"That doesn't mean there's not a monster in there!"
"Shut up, Toby! I know there isn't a monster in there, because I've seen it," Abby hotly defended Negan, and he found himself smiling at their shoes.
"You're a liar, too! You and Judy are always lying!"
"I'll prove it to you! Let's go inside!"
Negan's stomach flipped.
"I'm not going in there," said the only boy again: Toby.
"Fine. Me and Judy will go, right Judy?"
"I wanna go, too! I wanna see a monster!" said another little girl, who had been silent up until this point. Her voice was shriller than Abby's or Judith's, and most likely, she was the youngest of all of them.
"You're gonna get in trouble," Toby warned, "I'm gonna tell on you."
"If you tell on us, Toby, I'm never gonna play with you again!" Abby stomped her sneaker and then turned away from him. "Come on, Judy. You, too, Gracie! Follow me!"
Negan watched as three pairs of shoes peeled off from the other pair. The girls' shoes went towards the door of his jail house, but Toby's sneakers ran away. Heart in his throat, he turned around and he found himself half-hoping in a childish way that Toby wouldn't actually tell on Abby, Judith, and Gracie. He also hoped that Judith could keep a secret from her father.
The door at the top of the stairs swung open and flooded the base of the stairs with light. Two pairs of dirty sneakers and a pair of cowboy boots dashed down the stairs, and Negan had to give Judith some credit for being brave – but she was a Grimes, so he wasn't that surprised. Then he was staring at their faces instead of their shoes.
Today Abby had her hair pulled back, and somehow, she had a smudge of dirt over her cheek and she had scraped her knee playing soccer. Her red hair was a mop of tangled mess. Judith was a little more put together, and though Negan could've sworn it hadn't been that long since he was put in this cell, Judith looked so much different. Her blonde hair was darker, but still curly, and she had a splash of freckles over her nose. She definitely picked up her style from her brother and her daddy because her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she had a plaid shirt tied around her hips like a skirt. But while both of those girls were rough and tumble, Gracie was not by comparison. Her blonde hair was fairer than Judith and she had bright blue eyes in the dark. She had a white shirt stained by the grass, but was otherwise the cleanest. Negan wondered who she belonged to, because it wasn't any one of Rick's friends he immediately recognized, though Gracie did look somewhat familiar.
Suddenly self-conscious since it's been a week since he's had his bath, Negan swiped at his one week's worth of stubble around his mouth.
"You're not a monster," Judith pointed out, almost like an accusation. Gracie shyly peeked out at Negan from behind her, sticking close.
"Oh, I wouldn't know about that." Negan sat crisscross apple sauce on the floor in front of them, at eye-level now. "You're Judy, right? Hi. I'm Negan."
"How do you know my name?"
"We met a long, long time ago, angel."
Abby's eyes went wide as saucers. "Did you know her mommy like you knew mine?"
Negan remembered what Carl said, and again he was reminded of how easy it was to have people taken away from you. Then he also remembered Rick's girlfriend, and how other people can easily slot themselves into your life and make you whole again. "You mean the samurai, Michonne? She's your mom. Haven't seen her in a while."
"She's a pirate right now," Judith explained as if that made complete sense. "Why are you in here?"
"He's in trouble," Abby explained.
"Just like you three!"
All three girls jumped in surprise, and Negan rose up to his knees before he saw who it was. Charlotte barreled down the stairs with Rick hot on her heels, as fast as he could with his cane. Another man, tall and bearded, was right behind him, and Negan only had a vague impression of him from the war. He wasn't a troublemaker who stood out like Rosita or Eugene.
"I told you not to come down here by yourself!" Charlotte chided. In a flurry of activity, the parents pulled the girls away from the cell as if Negan could snatch them up right then or they could let him out by mistake. Briefly, Negan remembered one of Lucille's ramblings about Beowulf, and how Grendel and his mother would snatch people up and eat them whole. These people really viewed him the exact same way.
"Did Toby tell on me?!" Abby threw up her hands in frustration, yanking her wrist out of Charlotte's grip. Charlotte didn't let that stop her as she stooped her tall figure and scooped Abby up to prop on her hip.
"Gracie, are you okay?" The bearded man knelt, his hands cupped over Gracie's cheeks as he checked her over. Negan wanted to sneer something hurtful, like how he wasn't a dead one yet so there was no need to look for bites, but he only just managed to refrain. Thoughts of Elle held him back.
Calm despite the others, Gracie nodded and threw her arms around the man's neck. Negan quickly had to look away.
"Judith! I told you, you're not supposed to be down here!" Unlike Charlotte, Rick settled for placing his hand on her shoulder, and Negan doubted he could lift Judith up anyway since she was a good foot taller than Abby and Rick's bad leg wouldn't allow it.
Jerking away from Rick, Judith hissed, "You also told me there's a monster in here! Why is there an old man here?"
"Old?" Negan parroted, amused more than he was offended. After all, children were brutally honest, he knew from experience.
"Why is Negan in time-out? If he says he's sorry, he should be allowed to leave, so he can play with us! Don't you want him to play with you Rick?" Abby struggled in Charlotte's grip. "Negan, say you're sorry!"
All eyes fell on him.
"I…" Swallowing nervously, Negan licked his dry lips. This was his chance, but he was so afraid to hope again. It seems every time he allowed himself to believe that things will work out, the rug gets yanked out from underneath him again, and he's left with more blood on his hands and grief to work through. He couldn't bare to be burdened anymore.
"I am sorry for what I did," Negan admitted, voice low and raspy. It wavered with emotion, and he couldn't stop the tears welling in his eyes even if he wanted to. "It…it doesn't matter why I did it. I shouldn't have done it. Vengeance, or whatever. And I understand why you keep me here, but I want to do more. Let me make it up to you, let me help however I can."
"No," Charlotte hissed, venom dripping from every syllable, "Nothing you will ever do will bring back what we've lost."
Eyes flashing, Negan couldn't tamp down his anger in time as he snapped, "Don't you fucking talk to me about loss! I know what that is! Intimately."
"Negan!" Rick barked, and just like that all of Negan's anger was zapped away again. He remembered the children, and he glanced down at them with sad eyes. They stared back with their own eyes wide with fear, shying into their parents' loving arms. Even Abby looked surprised as his vitriol.
"Sorry," he mumbled, and curled his arms around himself. He was tired, so tired, of constantly being beaten down into the dirt. There were times where he didn't want to be alive, where he thought it might be better to die even though he knew he wouldn't be able to see Lucille or Elle again. But since he learned about Abby being here in Alexandria, he refused to let himself feel that way anymore. But it was so hard to fight against that.
"I just wanted to say that I'm sorry," Negan finished lamely, "and, I really do mean that, Rick. And I know you'll never forgive me, Charlotte, but I am sorry." He sighed, and barely resisted the urge to crawl back into his bed. Instead, he remained on the cold, dirty floor on his aching, protesting, creaky knees. Negan waited, but for what, he did not know.
"We," the bearded man spoke up softly, "we should take the girls back outside. Gracie, honey, will you go with them? I'll be up in just a minute." He guided her with gentle hands towards the stairs, and Charlotte offered her hand to help. She had Abby squirming on her opposite hip, but Charlotte managed to wrangle both Abby and Gracie upstairs without once looking back.
Craning her neck over Charlotte's shoulder, Abby called back, "Bye-bye Negan! I'll come see you!"
Somehow, Negan doubted that she'd be able to now. "Bye Poptart."
Rick hesitated to leave, his hand still on Judith's shoulder as she squinted at Negan thoughtfully. "Are you sure you're gonna be okay, Aaron?"
"Yeah, Rick. I'll be fine." Aaron nodded, and both he and Negan watched Rick hobble up the stairs behind Judith, her boots stomping with attitude. Rick shook his head, and then the door at the top of the stairs shut.
Aaron turned back around to Negan. He was very tall, so he made Negan feel very small and cramped on the floor. "Aaron, huh? Did I kill someone you loved, too?" Negan ducked his head, internally cursing the fact that he couldn't hold his tongue. "I'm sorry."
"Why don't you get off the floor?" Aaron suggested, voice level, too kind to be considered neutral.
"What, don't like to see a guy on his knees for ya?" Negan sarcastically quipped, and slowly climbed to his feet. His joints audibly popped.
"No, no I like seeing guys on their knees just fine," Aaron said almost wryly, "but this is just bringing up bad memories."
The penny dropped, and recognition hit Negan full in the face. "You were there that night, weren't you? You just didn't have," he gestured to his face, "all that man-bush yet."
"Yeah, I was there." Aaron tilted his head, studying Negan, and Negan tried to not let it get to him that he was like an ant under a magnifying glass in his own jail cell. "I lost my husband during the war. But I also gained a daughter." He grimaced at his choice of words. "It was a terrible way to gain a daughter, though. Rick killed her father, one of your men, and her mother had been dead for a while."
There was a pause as Aaron allowed Negan to consider that. Negan tried to remember if he knew about any other babies born at the Sanctuary. Really, it was only Abby's birth that stood out to him. She mattered to him more than most, she was his family.
"None of the Saviors wanted her, but I did. She's my daughter, even if she's not mine. Nothing will change that. Is that," Aaron gently phrased his question, "is that how you look at Abby?"
For a moment, Negan didn't answer because he didn't know how. But then he did. "Yes. She lost her mom in…it was an accident. And her dad was one of the men at that outpost that you slaughtered. Elle..." Negan reached for the picture with a sort of desperation, shoving it into Aaron's hands. "Elle was close with Abby's mom and dad. Amy and Eric."
Aaron flinched and quickly explained, "My husband's name was Eric." Avoiding Negan's eyes, he studied the picture closer.
"I'm sorry," Negan said sincerely, "So Elle was like Abby's aunt, and I was close to Elle. She's gone now. Got bit." He closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose until he could speak again. "So, I guess that makes me Abby's uncle."
Passing the picture back, Aaron explained, "I'm sorry about your Eric. I didn't want to do that…we thought we were doing the right thing."
"That's how it always starts. You think you're fucking doing because you don't have any other fucking choice, because those people could be goddamn monsters, but you just never fucking know how wrong you are until it's fucking late." The wind taken out of his sails, Negan returned the picture to its hiding place inside his pillow.
"Have you ever had children before?"
"No." Hands in his pockets, Negan slowly turned back around again. "But I wanted to."
"With Elle?"
"Yes," Negan swallowed the lump in his throat. "And from before with my wife."
"Tell me, Negan, with everything you have done, do you think you would've made a good father?"
Negan gritted his teeth, his jaw clenched and ticking, and his molars hurt so much he thought they might crack.
"No? Do you think you can be a good father now to Abby?"
"I can be, if you just give me a chance."
"I think you'll have your chance, Negan. Just not now. You've been in this cell for a little over three years. The world has gone on without you. We're trading, starting up a school, we've got windmills and bridges and roads. I think, given a little more time, we can find a place for you here somewhere. You're just going to have to wait here in the meantime."
Silent, Negan sat down on his bed. It wasn't the best thing to hear, but it wasn't the worst either. Maybe if the words had been from Rick instead of a stranger they would mean more, but Negan didn't dare to hope.
Turning away, Aaron started up the stairs, but stopped halfway up. "Don't worry, Negan. You'll have your chance to be there for Abby." He was trying to be comforting, but his words left Negan's inside cold as ice, the words feeling false in their empathy. "You've got time."
"Lucille?" Negan started, using his forearm to wipe away the sweat from his forehead. Neglecting to wash his hands first even though he knew that it pissed Lucille off, he reached inside the fridge for a cold beer.
For once not pointing that out except with an annoyed sigh, Lucille looked up from her white mixing bowl of cookie dough. "Yes, Negan?"
Twisting the cap off, Negan flicked it in the trashcan with his thumb and took a swig, finishing with an appreciative gasp before he continued to ask his question. "Do you think we should have had fucking kids?"
Lucille went stiff and very deliberately set her bag of semi-sweet Nestle chocolate chips aside before she took a deep breath and finally faced him. "Why are you asking this now, Negan?" She gestured to herself. "I'm almost forty. And you, you're definitely in your forties," she half-teased, a note of self-depreciation in her tone.
Propping his hip against the adjacent counter top, Negan tilted his head and studied her as he took another long sip of his beer. Lucille's dark hair was piled on top of her head in a messy clip, mainly to keep it out of her face and eyes (and out of the food) as she baked. The cookies were for her choir kids as an award for going to state. If Negan really looked at Lucille, though, he could see the strands of silver in her hair, though he definitely had a lot more than her. There were wrinkles around her eyes – crow's feet, she would call them – but Negan would say there were more from laughter. And she had flour smudged across her cheek, and she somehow managed to get it on her green shirt even though she was wearing an apron.
She would be a great mother.
"Why the hell not, Lucille?" Negan shrugged, non-aggressive despite his cursing. All too casually, he added, "We still have time to be parents."
Shaking her head at him in a way that showed she didn't know whether to be amused or frustrated, Lucille turned away back to her mixing bowl. "I thought the whole point of both of us being teachers was so that we wouldn't be parents. We're raising the teens of the county this way."
After he put his beer on the countertop with a soft thunk, Negan pushed himself off and prowled over to Lucille. His hands snuck around her wide hips, exploring the familiar territory, and he ducked his head down to plant a kiss on her neck. She tasted like flour, and Negan held back to his sneeze. Thankfully, though, she smelled like vanilla, and he rested his nose in her hair. Lucille said nothing about how he was slightly damp from sweat and smelled like he needed a shower.
"Come on, Lucille," he murmured, "don't you want to have a little girl with your dark hair? Maybe my dimples?" His hands cupped over her stomach and then slowly pulled away, maintaining their curved shape. "You'd look so fucking hot." He pressed another kiss to her neck, this time open-mouthed and lingering. "Your titties would get huge."
With a snort, Lucille batted Negan's hands out of the way so she could see the mixing bowl. Using the plastic blue spatula, she folded the chocolate chips into her dough evenly. "Yeah, and I'd get fatter."
"You're not fat, baby. You're beautiful."
"Not mutually exclusive." Lucille pulled out of his grip to reach for her baking sheet. Methodically, she coated every inch of it in Pam so that the cookies wouldn't stick to the bottom. "I just don't know, Negan. What brought this on?"
Shrugging inelegantly, Negan gathered her up in his arms again. With his chin propped on her shoulder, he watched her dollop out equal measurements of the dough. She rolled it loosely in her hands and measure out three rows by four columns on the baking sheet. "I dunno. I just finished up a game of ping-pong with some of the kids, and I just started thinking about it."
"You thinking? Well, that's dangerous," she teased, but she quickly turned her head to kiss Negan's smooth cheek, softening the blow. "You picked a helluva time to start thinking about it now, though."
"Why not now? I know we're not exactly spring fucking chickens, but that should be a good thing, right? We're fucking mature, we have more money." Giving her a brief squeeze, Negan added, "We know we love each other."
Puffing to get some of her hair from drifting in front of her face, Lucille mumbled a small thank you when Negan did it for her with gentle fingers, smoothing down the wispy strands of silver and brown behind her ear. "Let's not start trying for a baby on a whim. Take some time to think about it. It's like you said." She broke free of his arms for the oven, and when she pulled down the door just low enough to sleep the baking sheet onto the top rack, Negan felt the heat scorch his face. "You've got time."
"You mean we have time," Negan corrected her, wandering back over to his beer again.
He missed the look of dismay on her face, just like he missed all the other signs of her early onset cancer, too. He missed the insurance letters, the calls from the oncologist's office, the early mornings spent puking her guts out, the thinning of her hair. Negan missed all of that, but Lucille didn't miss a thing. She chose to ignore the nights when he'd come to bed late smelling like another woman's perfume. She dutifully washed away the lipstick stains on his white tees. She never asked questions, even though she was burning to know their names, or her name.
By the time Negan looked back at her with his lips wrapped around the bottle, Lucille had gotten her face back under control again. "Yeah," she agreed with as much normalcy as she could muster, "we've got time." And she knew she was lying, and it wasn't until so much later that Negan realized she was.