"Alright, boys," Anna double checked the knots on the rope again. Their life was already packed away on their backs, the tent and the majority of the tools, food, water, and medical supplies in her worn, over-stuffed backpack. Her oldest boy, Colin, carried a small amount food, water, medical supplies, and his toys in a faded blue backpack. Her youngest's backpack looked much the same except it was a faded red, embroidered with tattered green thread that had lost its shine her youngest's name: Evan. Colin had rippled out the embroidery on his bag a while ago. When Anna asked him why, he said it was because it didn't matter if he lost his bag. No one would return it to him anyway. Anna didn't know what to say to that.
They carried some supplies in their bags not only to share the load, but also in case they were separated. She didn't want to think about that, though, and she prayed that that would never happen. Which is why she triple-checked the knots again. Anna never thought she'd be one of those moms who put their kids on leashes, but she found that in the heated moments where she had to use both hands to fight off walkers or when they had to run, the ropes worked best to keep them all together. No one was ever left behind. And those that were before, they were never forgotten.
"Mom," Colin broke her anxiety-riddled train of thought, "we should go now before it gets too hot." He pointed towards where the sun was already peaking over the ridge. If Anna could pretend for long enough, it would be like she took her boys on a hike and they could stay to watch the sunrise before heading back home and eating blueberry pancakes. But pretending was a luxury.
"Thanks, Colin." Anna straightened up. "Alright, boys," she repeated herself, "let's go." She led the way and felt the tug of the ropes around her hips where Colin and Evan walked side by side behind her. While Colin was a little more alert, Evan was still groggy with sleep, so there would be silence for a while until he started asking questions.
Sure enough, Anna heard Evan pipe up, "Momma? Can we play a game?"
"Please not I, Spy," Colin muttered.
"How about we sing a little song?" Anna suggested, "Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison…"
"Monroe, Adams, Jackson, Van Buren…" her boys joined in. When she had taught them this on the morning car ride to school, she thought she was putting her boys ahead of the curve. But now it seemed pointless to know the names and the order of the presidents. They were all dead.
Once they reached the end of the song, Evan asked, "Momma? Who's the president now?"
How could she explain that there wasn't even a United States of America anymore? "Obama is still president."
"Could I be president, Momma?"
"Maybe someday."
Evan let there be silence for five more minutes as they trudged along, and then he asked, "Can we sing another song?"
"Sure, pumpkin." Anna tried to think of another song. "Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas…"
"California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware…"
This time before Evan could ask, Anna suggested listing the capitals of each state. It was a little harder this time since it wasn't a song, but the boys enjoyed guessing, and much to her chagrin, they were pretty good at it. Since the end, they've travelled so much – Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and finally to Virginia. They didn't necessarily have a set destination, it was just how it happened. Already, her boys have traveled much more than she ever did until she was in her twenties and went road-tripping for universities with her parents. It was funny how the world works out.
"Momma? I'm hungry."
Pausing, Anna looked upwards and beyond the tree foliage she could see a bright blue sky with the sun directly overhead. Definitely the hottest part of the day, and the worst time to travel with two young boys who would only get whiny and she would get just as crabby and sweaty. "Lunch time?" She offered, leading them toward a thicker cluster of trees where the ground was littered with fallen leaves and twigs. There they could sit and eat without having anything sneak up on them, the forest floor their security system and some thick tree trunks against their backs.
She situated Colin and Evan on either side of her, and then divvied out their meager lunch. Anna learned quickly to keep a can opener handy, and she pried open a can of mixed vegetables. In what felt like a lifetime ago, she can remember on the nights where she made a rushed dinner after getting home from work that was mainly white rice, a warmed-up can of mixed vegetables, and pan-fried hamburger meat all dumped together. Those meals always took less than forty-five minutes, something she perfected once she assumed the role as bread-winner along with single mother. Colin never complained, but Evan made a point to separate everything into piles. His carrots could not touch his peas, and his corn couldn't touch anything because he refused to eat it. Now as Anna's spoon hovered over the can, waiting for her turn to eat as her boys dipped their own spoons in and shoveled the mixed vegetables down, she felt terrible for wishing she could get Colin to eat his vegetables. She'd rather he'd have grown up in a world where he'd never have to eat corn if he didn't want to, rather than know hunger pains intimately enough that he ate whatever she put in front of him.
By the time they had finished, Anna's spoon touched metal bottom as she scraped up the rest. Their water bottle was passed between all their mouths, Colin and Evan sucking it down to overcome the sodium taste of their lunch. Anna finished it off, already mentally drafting a list of the supplies they needed to restock. The water could be found at any creek or river, and she'd strain it and boil it pure, but the food was another problem. That meant either lucking out on a cabin or chancing it at a small town for meager scraps.
Not for the first time Anna bemoaned that she was not a hunter, but then again, no one else in her family was either. That was for sport, not survival. But damn, how many times has she crossed a family of deer with her boys and their awe slowly morphed into bitter resentment and hunger? Stopping herself before she could start the mental track of bemoaning life's unfairness, Anna tucked away their spoons and water bottle, but left the can where it was. It was deadweight otherwise, and it wasn't like pollution was a danger to the world anymore. Not really, anyway.
Before she could rouse her boys into walking again, Colin clutched at her arm. "Mom," he jerked her slightly, already rising to his feet but his eyes not on her. "Mom, do you hear that?"
Eyes darting about for any dead, Anna flinched. Then she pricked her ears for listening. There were grunts and shouts muffled by the foliage of the trees, but they were definitely the sounds of the fighting, struggling living rather than the groaning, moaning dead. "It's coming from over there," Colin added, and though she hissed otherwise, he walked towards it. His posture was one of curiosity, like a fawn stretching its neck to full height to catch sight of the predator before bounding off. His rope was not yet taut. Yet.
Standing brusquely, Anna dusted the dirt off her clothes, though it was a useless gesture. She did the same to Evan, who had not yet said a word and chose to huddle at her side. "Well, it's a good thing we're not going that way. We're going the other way." Not that they had a set destination. It used to be that Anna would be on the lookout for roadmaps or tourist brochures on their travels through more unfamiliar territory, but as time went on and the roads became more dangerous for funneling rivers of the dead, Anna took to the forests for more hiding places. "Colin, come on."
"But Mom," he protested, refusing to look at her, "whoever they are, they're alive." Though Colin was a sceptic, his most recent skepticism was the idea that their family were the only living left in the world since they had been alone for so long.
Three months and some four-odd days of the only faces they've seen being each other's, similar not only because both of her boys favored her in nose and eyes, but also similar for the dark shadows under their eyes and the hollowness of their cheeks. Their only expressions were limited to alert fear of the deer and the listlessness of cattle being driven to their inevitable slaughter. Or maybe, that was just how Anna felt, older and therefore more cynical than either of her boys. The last people they saw were not people either, though they weren't the dead yet. They might as well have been. Yet another reason Anna had retreated to the forests seeking haven.
"Colin, please, I'm not going to argue this with you," Anna sighed. She was momentarily distracted when Evan took her hand, his overgrown and dirty fingernails digging into the meat on her skin, or what was left of it. In the odd sense of observational humor she's developed since the end, Anna supposed she was glad for being a little curvier since that has slowly been wilted away as she gave more of her rations to her boys than to herself.
"Momma? Can we go?" Evan reached up his other little clawed hand, this time grasping the hem of her shirt and yanking, a habit he never outgrew from before when he got bored waiting on her to finish up talking to the acquaintances she'd run into at the supermarket.
Smoothing her free hand over his greasy hair, Anna murmured her assurances. "We are, don't worry." She dragged her eyes up again, idly following Colin's rope. "Colin Grant Black, if I have to start counting…" Choking on air since her mouth dried up, Anna stopped once she saw the end of Colin's rope abandoned on the ground. "Colin?" She asked the air, but then she knew what he had done. "Colin!"
Pausing only long enough to scoop Evan into her arms, Anna took off. She didn't think she'd have the strength to carry her youngest, but at the disappearance of her oldest, she had no choice. Following the shouts as they grew louder and more distinguishable as filthy curses from just one man, Anna didn't think about drawing her knife or pistol, or if she could stow Evan away somewhere to come back to. Knowing that shouting for Colin was only worse for the situation, she saved her breath and sprinting, unable to register the pain of her burning lungs or blistered feet when adrenaline coursed through her and blood pounding her eardrums.
Suddenly, she broke through the tree line, and the shouts were no longer muffled. Sunlight momentarily blinded her before her eyes found Colin hiding behind the rusted-out shell of a truck, ancient even from before. She quickly scurried to his side, ducking out of sight of the lone man that Colin was watching so curiously. "Colin," she whisper-hissed, setting Evan down only long enough so that she could draw both boys into her arms. There were so many things she wanted to say, but considering the situation all she could get out was, "Don't you ever run away."
Pushing out of her grasp with a scrappy strength she didn't know he had, Colin motioned with his head back to the man. "Mom, look. He's alive."
Finally, Anna allowed herself to look at the man. At the end of the world, even after the scare of her life with the disappearance of Colin, Anna was not prepared for the man to be – in a word – magnificent. The dusty ground around him was a radius five-feet deep with dead ones. He must have woken them up passing through. His only weapon was a short shovel, but that was dropped as he grappled with the three or four dead ones left, alternatively pushing them away. The man shined with sweat, his shirt damp with it, but there was an iron in his arms and his hair was cropped close to his scalp – not wild at all. Crouched as she was like a raccoon hiding behind a trash can, Anna knew her hair was a rat's nest, and she felt for the first time in a long time something like shame as she vainly wished for a layer of make-up over her face instead of the camouflaging grime.
"Fuck you!" He barked, throwing an emaciated skeleton to the ground, though it only seemed to reshuffle its bones and pick itself back up. "Fucking asshole bitches!"
Hearing him, she should've run away. Any other smart woman would hear that guttural yell and the laced in anger and see his violence and think this is a man who is dangerous, but Anna found herself instead mesmerized. It was his strength, she supposed, or something like that. She hadn't seen such a tenacity, such a vivaciousness in so long. There was a man who knew what it was like to want to live in the face of hopelessness.
"Mom, we should help him," Colin whispered in her ear.
She startled slightly at how close he was, and then immediately chided herself for momentarily forgetting her children. Anna crouched lower, out of sight from the man, and she could think again. Passing Colin back his rope, she directed him, "You're going to retie that. Three knots." While she watched him do as he was told, she pulled her backpack off and stowed it aside, removing the rope from around her waist along with it. "I should've never let you do boy scouts," she groused to herself.
"You didn't let me do boy scouts," Colin corrected her, voice soft. "Dad did. And you withdrew me after a month."
"I'm sorry." Unsheathing her knife, Anna shook her head. "It is handy that you know how to pitch a tent, but I could live without your knot skills, honey." She pressed a kiss to both boys' foreheads. "Stay here, and if he hurts me, hide, and when it's clear, run back into the forest. I will find you."
Before Evan could protest, Anna slunk out of her hiding spot and charged to the man. He didn't even see her before she sunk her blade into the dead one's rotten-soft skull. The dead fully dead now, it was dead weight in his arms as she dispatched the rest quickly. Just as quickly as she finished, she flicked her knife so slough off the excess grey matter and then pointed it at him, a safe arm's length away all that she could manage.
"Well, shit," he panted, and threw off the corpse. "Thank you for that, darlin'."
"You looked like you needed saving," Anna neutrally answered, ignoring the pulse between her legs. How long had it been? Too long. Not quite since before the end, but might as well have been.
He smiled, and his dimples etched themselves deep in his cheeks, white teeth flashing. "You're damn right about that. I was getting tired after the others. Uh." He had the grace to laugh at himself, a sound like ruffled over Anna's skin and raised every hair to quiver. "I dropped my fucking shovel."
"So you did." She tried to sound cold, she really did, but since his smile hadn't dropped, she hadn't succeeded. Why had she stayed and not ran away with her boys?
Licking his lips – and her eyes unconsciously followed the motion – he brazenly asked, "Is there where I'm supposed to drop my fucking panties for my fucking savior, darlin'?"
"What?" Her knife trembled in the air, but she straightened her arm again and resolutely stared into his eyes. His were hazel and seemed to swallow them up as they only got progressively darker.
Laughing again, he explained in an easy-going manner. "I was your damsel in distress, darlin', and you saved me, so you get the prize." He gestured vaguely at his belt buckle, and Anna only allowed her eyes to flicker there before returning to his smug, handsome face again.
If her boys weren't hiding not so far away, Anna would have let loose a thousand and one provocative things, but she couldn't say any of them. Instead, she just shook her head again. "No thanks." She had to leave. "You seem okay, no bites or anything, so I'm just gonna go now. Don't follow me."
"Aw, come on, darlin'. When's the last time you saw someone alive out here? I gotta say, it's been a while since I've seen a friendly face – or one quite so fucking pretty."
Only allowing herself to remove one hand from her knife, Anna self-consciously rubbed at her cheek. When she pulled it away and checked her fingers, they were smudged brown. "Uh huh," she muttered disbelievingly. "Look, you look well taken care of. Like you've got a home. I'll let you go your way, and I'm gonna go mine."
"No worries about that, darlin'. I don't have a fucking home anymore. Uh, it didn't work out. I'm just out here." He had not yet made a move for his shovel, and even though she was only brandishing a knife, since she knew how to use it, he treated it as a serious threat. "What way were you thinking of going? Maybe it's the same way as me. You could watch my back, I could scratch yours. Maybe scratch something else if you'd like."
Christ, she had never thought of whoring herself out for protection, but this guy was treating it like a job. "I'm going that way," she pointed behind him, which is where she definitely wasn't going, but she felt compelled to say something.
His face finally darkened, dropping his smile, "Uh." He pressed his lips together. "Okay. I can't go that way. Just came from there."
"So, there's nothing out that way?"
"No, not for me."
Anna hummed, not knowing what to believe. Finally, though, he broke her silence, sticking out his hand. "Hi, I'm Negan."
Lowering her knife to her side, she made no move forward, still unsure. "Anna."
As it turned out, Negan became her family's shadow. He doggedly refused to leave her alone – literally, and since she couldn't shake him without taking him on in a fight, she brought out her boys and threatened him within an inch of his life if he bothered them. But he hadn't.
Negan maintained a respect distance between them, far enough away that Anna wasn't worried about him grabbing them and pulling a knife, but still close enough that he talked to her curious boys and warned her about where she was going. He seemed to know the area, though she never caught a look of familiarity in his eyes.
As they travelled together, Anna watched him and only grew more curious. Despite their hopeless situation as wanderers, Negan seemed only grateful to be alive. There were moments where a bird would sing or the sunshine would hit his face just right, and he would look around and smile. He reveled in the simple beauty of nature that Anna had grown numb to. It forced her to reexamine her surroundings, and for the first time in a long time, the glass was actually half-full.
Negan was also not completely without his uses. He was good at finding food, but otherwise she had to help him with the simple things like boiling water and making a fire. While her boys slept in the tent, she kept watch until Negan would fall asleep, and only then would she allow herself an uneasy rest. But for an entire week, he hadn't done anything. Maybe it was to lull her into a false sense of security, but the more he stuck around, he became less like a handsome leech and more like a handsome makeshift father figure for her boys. It was surprising how well-suited he was talking to them despite his foul-mouth, which he couldn't seem to tamp down on no matter how often she reminded him. When she asked him, she assumed that he had had children.
His face dropped and a wistful look crossed over his hazel eyes like a ghost. Negan confessed to her, "No, no. Never had the time for my own. I was just a fucking gym coach." He finished it with a wry smile, and though Anna burned with curiosity, she let it go. It was obvious that his hurt was still raw after so long, and she couldn't blame him. She would let him have his secrets so long as he would good to her family. And he was.
No, Negan never grew tired at Evan's constant barrage of questions about things as inconsequential as, "Why is the sky blue?" and he even had answers for most of that stuff, too. After a rigorous inquisition, Colin had even started to open up, asking about survival skills and stories for entertainment. Negan managed to get a laugh out of Anna when he started re-telling The Mummy from memory. Even she had forgotten about that movie. Whenever her boys interrupted, Negan would explain and then keep going, embellishing a few points here and there. She noticed that when the parts of the movie got steamy, Negan would more or less just address her. Naturally, Anna was thrilled with the attention.
She had thought that once he saw her boys he would be deterred, but Negan hadn't dropped his blatant desire for her except to tone it down with her boys around, using key choices and phrases that otherwise flew over their heads though she had the sneaking suspicion that Colin was desperately trying to piece it all together.
Eventually, though, the good times and newness that came with their sudden adoption of Negan faded away again. The nights were getting longer and colder, and the cans they found were often too rotted to try and eat around. Negan was just as useless as she was at hunting, and they were often taunt by the chattering of squirrels and flashing of deer in the distance. And on top of all that, Evan was getting sick.
Over the crackling of their low fire, Anna watched Evan cough again, the third time within ten minutes, she was sure. He was curled up on her lap, the closest to the fire that if it were to flame up it would singe his hair, but shivers wracked his body all the same. Colin was alone inside the tent, keeping away to keep the sickness from spreading, but she was sure that he'd be unable to sleep, too, with how much noise his brother was making in his own fitful sleep.
Negan plopped down across from her and shoved more sticks in the pit to keep it going. "Just cleared away about three walkers," he explained, unhelpfully tacking on, "Evan's coughing is like ringing the goddamn lunch bell for them."
"I know that," she snapped, and then pursed her lips in apology before looking back down at her boy. "I want to help him, but I just…I can't."
There was silence, and then Negan asked, "Did he eat anything?"
"A bit, but it just came right back up. Even the water." Anna smoothed her palm over Evan's sweaty forehead, and tears sprung to her eyes. "I don't…I can't lose him." She kept her voice low, wary of not only the dead, but of either of her boys trying to eavesdrop. "But I suppose losing him to sickness has to be better than…than other things."
"Don't talk like that, you're not gonna lose him," Negan insisted.
"Look at him." Anna shook her head. "All the pharmacies are looted. I know nothing about medicinal plants. God, if only I were some kind of hippy or horticulturist or something, anything."
"You do that a lot, thinking about what could be, and you'll drive yourself crazy. Believe me, I fucking know. But none of that fucking matters. We'll take care of him and he'll pull through. He's a strong fucking kid."
"He's a kid. I… I'm not sure how old, but he's so young." He might've been older than what she thought, but not having a regular diet meant he was smaller than he should've been. With her head bowed over Evan, Anna sniffled miserably, choked up not just from the smoke.
Before her teardrops could fall on her son, she was startled by Negan crawling around the fire pit and wrapping his arm around her shoulders. It was the closest he ever got to her, and he acted like it was the most natural thing in the world as he gathered her close so that she could rest her cheek on his strong shoulder. He didn't say another word, which was unusual for him she's learned in this short time around him, and instead just let her softly cry into his shirt.
It was so rare that Anna ever gets the chance to cry. Even at the beginning of this, she had to be strong for her sons. She didn't have anyone else she could trust for her private time, and it all weighed on her heavily. While she did love her boys, sometimes she wanted time to alleviate her own fears.
…And Negan was giving her the opportunity to do that, she realized. Slowly, her brain started working again as the tide of her emotions receded and her tears dried up in the face of the fire that Negan idly stoked to keep them all warm. The smell of the fire mixed headily with Negan's sweat, a clean and masculine musk and also slightly like dirt. Slowly, Anna's cheeks warmed over, and she reluctantly sat up straight again. Negan shrugged and rolled his shoulders, muscles flexing under his thin, dirty shirt, but didn't seem bothered as he kept his arm draped over her shoulders as heavy as a blanket. His thumb brushed up and down in a slow beat on the revealed skin under her shirt's sleeve, and she never thought somewhere so innocuous could be so sensitive.
"Thanks," she mumbled.
Negan grunted and waved it off with the stick he used to stoke up their fire.
Evan coughed again, and Anna's heart seized in her chest and she held back the sobs from taking over her again.
"What if…What if I can fix this?"
She looked to him with wide eyes, watching the firelight dance boldly across his high cheekbones and flicker in his hazel eyes. "What? Are you suggesting…don't you dare."
"No, no, not that. But what if I could take him to a doctor? Someone who could give him medicine?"
There were a million and one questions aroused by such a hypothetical, but Anna didn't care. If he was feeding her some fantasy, he was only digging his grave.
"If you promise this, and then you don't deliver." She let her statement hang in the air for a moment, among the smoke that couldn't quite break through the tree foliage to the stars overhead. Though she found that she could be vulnerable around Negan, the part of her that was always about putting her child first surged up through her body that a shark breaking the surf. "You have to follow through."
Just like the first time they met, Negan wasn't intimidated, but he did take her seriously. "I will, darlin'. I promise."
With a blink, Anna's rage diminished again. In a quiet voice she asked, "Should we wake them up and get going?"
"No, Anna, it's too dark to see, and with how Evan is, he should get his rest. How about you rest and we'll leave at first light. I promise," he assured her again and squeezed her shoulder. Anna wilted into him, eyes already growing heavy with sleep. As if she were under a spell, she was sapped of her strength and nodded in agreement before her cheek nuzzled back into his shoulder and she did not dream.
Just as he promised, they were up before the sky could shift from gray to blue. Evan's fever had not broken yet, and he was only worse, no better for what sleep he managed to snatch. Anna felt guilty for having rested so well and waking up with her head buried in Negan's lap, her body protectively curled around Evan as he shivered persistently. Evan only managed to walk about ten steps before Negan lifted him into his arms.
"I can carry him," she said, already lifting her arms for the load.
Negan shook his head and hitched Evan up higher, resituating his grip more firmly. "Don't worry about it, darlin'. I won't drop him."
She did not protest.
Their pace was brisk, and she noticed that Colin stuck closer to Negan, his eyes glued on his brother. For today, she had abandoned their connecting safety ropes, figuring there was no point and no time.
"Where are we going?" Colin asked Negan.
"It's a place called Alexandria," Negan explained, though his stride didn't pause. "Nice little place. They've got walls. They grow their own food. They got a doctor, other kids, too." He caught Anna's bewildered and accusing stare, and his lips twitched apologetically into a tremulous smile. "Alexandria has good people. I know them, and I trust them. They'll take you in."
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask, "But will they take you back?"
But then Evan coughed and coughed, and then he jerked his head over Negan's shoulder and hurled. All that came up was some water they managed to coax down this morning and stomach acid with noxious fumes. Anna thought in that moment that her youngest son looked as he did when he was a newborn, and at any minute she expected Negan face to pinch with disgust and pass Evan into her arms as if he were a leaking sack of garbage. Instead Negan's big hand smoothed over Evan's back as he crooned, "Don't worry, buddy. We're gonna get you there, and they're gonna look you over. You'll be fine. You're my tough guy, right?"
"I'm your tough guy," Evan mumbled, reciting it without really knowing the words before he buried his face back into Negan's filthy shirt.
"That's right, you're my tough guy." Negan exchanged a look with Anna, one that held his promise, and they kept going.
Now they no longer traveled through the forest, but on the roads, the asphalt cracked without management and littered with as many leaves to make it just a cleared section of the forest. Still they walked, the hard ground unforgiving, and Anna couldn't think. All she could do was manage her rising panic, helplessly following Negan's lead. She wasn't used to watching anyone else's back besides her boys, and it was strange to do it now, but she let herself gladly fall into it. She had no other choice.
Negan was right. Alexandria had walls and if her boy wasn't sick, Anna would've marveled at them. Without fear, Negan strode right up to the gate and shouted. "Judith! Judith, don't shoot! Let me in!"
Quicker than Anna expected, first a faded brown cowboy hat popped up over the edge of the wall followed by a small, young freckled face of a child. She had to be about Colin's age, but she looked so serious. "I told you if you'd come back, I'd shoot." A shiny silver pistol barrel tipped over the edge of the wall.
"I know you did, kid, but Jesus Christ. Look. I got a family with me. They need help." Negan looked back at where Anna stood with Colin behind him. "Come on, Judith. I know you like helping people. It's the right thing to do, God damn it!"
"I thought you said that bringing people in was dangerous," Judith called back calmly, though Anna wasn't sure if she was processing that right. The little girl was definitely sassy.
"Shit, I know what I fucking said, but please." Negan shifted Evan in his grasp until he held him up like an offering. "He's sick, kid. Let Siddiq look at him."
Judith's bright eyes bounced back and forth between the family and Negan and finally to Evan before she disappeared from sight. Heart breaking in her chest, Anna took that as a sign of rejection and nearly collapsed to her knees until she was nearly jarred out of her skin by the clang of metal on rusted metal. They were opening the gates.
At least four people stepped out, and then Judith followed. Negan seemed to recognize all of them and passed Evan over without prompting to a brown skinned man with kind eyes. "Please," Anna beseeched them, following after the man, "please help him."
"We're going to do what we can, ma'am." The man she assumed was the doctor addressed her, and then they were led inside.
It wasn't until much, much later that Anna realized Negan wasn't with her and Colin in the infirmary. Once Siddiq explained that Evan just had the flu but would otherwise be alright now with the medicine, Anna finally relaxed and stopped to look around her. In one of the spare beds, Colin was asleep, an empty tray beside him signaling his first full meal in a while. "Where's," her voice cracked and she licked her lips for reaffirming, "where's Negan?"
Looking a little contrite, Siddiq said, "He's back in his cell." He spread his hands in a helpless fashion that didn't quite match his words or tone. "It was lucky that he found you. There's a place for you here if you want it. Our Council has already made its decision seeing that your boys are so young and all."
"Cell?" Anna parroted.
"Yes," said a new voice from the door, a woman with a stern face and a sword on her back. "He's Alexandria's prisoner. Thank you for returning him." The woman's face softened once she looked over at Colin and Evan. "I'm glad they're getting better. We have a school they can go to."
Blinking as her brain processed it, Anna surprised herself at the first thing she said. "But Negan is a good man. Why is he in prison?"
The woman's face became stern again, hard as stone. "If he is a good man, it is because we put him in prison."
"Now that he's good, won't you let him out?"
The woman looked at the doctor and then back at Anna. "We'll see if he's good or not."
"I promise you he is." Anna stood, but did not approach, still wary of that sword. "I know I'm new here, but I'll accept responsibility for him. He was in the woods for us for about a week, maybe longer, but he never did anything. I know that's not a long time, but it wouldn't have been hard to do something. Steal our supplies. Kill us. Something. But he didn't. Isn't that enough that he came back here?"
Lifting her chin, the woman rested her palm on the hilt of her sword. "The Council will consider it. But, if he is not good, then you will also have to hold his punishment for your pledge." She shrugged, her first informal act that humanized her more than anything else. "It's how it works here in Alexandria."
"Then I'll follow through on that promise." And those were the first vows she had taken since her marriage. It was the start of a beautiful partnership.