Author's Note: This was a much needed breather from my other story "Rebirth" that I'm currently buried in writing a pretty intense chapter for. Obviously I own nothing, as much as I wish it were otherwise! I hope that you enjoy this one-shot as much as I enjoyed writing it! Please leave your feedback as a review, everything from compliments to criticism is eagerly encouraged and accepted! Thank you always!
My vision is foggy as my eyelids float open. The sweet sensation of air flowing into my lungs, stretching as they fill to capacity for the first time in an eternity, overwhelms me to the point of tears. The sharp shooting pains that had accompanied every waking moment for the last year and a half are gone. I stretch out my arms and legs, savoring the sensation. My body feels strong, restored. Joy radiates through me as I run my fingers through my beloved dark hair, I'd always worn it long until the cancer stole it from me. I can't help but smile.
"Death isn't so bad, I guess." I recognize my voice again, clear and youthful, so unlike the rasping wheeze it had become in my final days. I make myself sit up, throwing my legs over the hospital bed, flexing my calves and wiggling my toes before I place them on the hospital floor.
My heart sinks as I hear a quiet, choked back, sob coming from the crouched figure beside my bed. "Oh honey," I whisper, "please don't cry for me. I feel so much better now. I'm strong again, see?"
I do a goofy little twirl in my hospital gown, the kind of silly dance move that I'd always used to pry a smile out of him when he was in one of his moods. When he doesn't move at my words, doesn't laugh to see me dancing again, it hits me. This is what it is to be dead.
His shoulders, always so broad, hunch over his large frame, moving ever so slightly with the wave of his sobs. He's leaning up against the counter next to my bed where they'd always prepared my medication cocktails and pain killer punch. One long leg extends out from his body, and the other curls up to his chest, he holds his head in his hands.
He looks up for a moment, putting his hands on either side of him, lifting his face that is painted with profound agony. I'm amazed as I look at him. My high school sweetheart, captain of the football team, once so carefree and youthful looks so tired and broken.
His hair, once an entirely deep brown, wavy, rumpled mess that always pissed off his mom is streaked with grey and slicked back handsomely, tidy. The mischievous smile, at one time ever present on his smooth skin etched with dimples, is smothered by parted downturned lips surrounded by a field of salt-n-pepper stubble. Chocolatey brown eyes that used to make me swoon are sunken, dulled, and shiny with unshed tears.
I love this man so dearly. My first kiss. My first time. My solemn vow "til death do we part". It all rests within the shattered heart of the man in front of me.
I know he can't see me, but I have to do something. I walk over to my devastated husband and sit in his lap. I try to wipe a tear from his cheek. The action does nothing more than frustrate me with the limitations of a dead person; I can't help him. Tears are dripping from my eyes now too, painting warm lines of sorrow down my cheeks. I rest my head on his chest, like I have done so many times before, listening to his heartbeat, borrowing his warmth, taking in the familiar, deep, masculine smell of him.
"I'll never let you go, Lucille, I'll never let you go." His words are more painful than a thousand years of cancer.
He doesn't see me, he doesn't feel me, and he doesn't know I'm here as I sit with him for hours whispering over and over words that fall on deaf ears. "Your Lucy is here... Don't cry for me, my love... I'll always be with you, Negan… I'll always be here..."
I plop myself down on a rock next to my husband and watch his methodical motions. The leather clad arms reach into his torn up bag, retrieving a spool of wound jagged metal.
He pricks himself a few times as he slowly, deliberately, wraps the barbed wire around our old Louisville slugger. I'd always imagined him teaching our future sons how to play baseball with that bat.
Round and round I watch him wrap, each strand of the wire laid lovingly against the wood in a tender yet violent embrace. Finally, he tucks in the end of the wire, holding out the bat to admire his handiwork.
"You look lovely tonight, Lucille." His voice cracks as he says it, a single stray tear swelling over and escaping. He quickly swipes it away with a leather gloved hand.
Through the moonlight that breaks through the trees, I can see his face change as he gazes upon his new Lucille. The muscle of his jaw twitches, his shoulders square, and the soft toffee of his gentle eyes is drowned in a deep darkness that I have never seen before.
"Please. Please, Negan. Please don't do this." My cries echo the sobs of the people around me. I stand in their midst, adding my silent voice to their pleas.
"Nobody scream. Nobody moves, or that gorgeous little girl gets a goodnight kiss from Lucille, and then we'll give it another go." He's pacing around like a stage actor in a one man show, voice jovial and projecting over the small, sobbing, group of people. Not one of them calls his bluff. He's never killed before.
"Please Negan, this isn't you. This isn't who you're supposed to be. This isn't the man I loved."
He raises his beloved Lucille up above his head, and I almost think I see a hint of reservation, guilt maybe, flit across his eyes. It's gone as quick as it came, and the bat flies down with a sickening crack upon the middle aged man's skull. The cylindrical indent it leaves in his skull makes me retch. What a pleasure it would be to release my horror through vomit.
The sloppy crack of the bat continues for what feels indefinitely. Though the temperature is balmy in the afterlife, I shiver with an internal chill of revulsion at the sight of the bloody slush that has replaced the innocent man's head on the forest floor.
"I hope you have a thing for redheads!" He swings the bloody bat at a woman who has fallen to all fours in the ground, clearly the wife of the deadman, covering the weeping widow in her husband's blood. "Take a look at my lovely, Lucille! She's such a dirty girl!"
His words make me wish I could vomit for a second time tonight.
I can't watch. I curl up in the corner, unable to escape the sounds of a strange woman calling out my husband's name.
I know I wasn't his first time, but he was mine. I remember how special that night was. Two seniors in high school, tipsy from the wine coolers he'd bought with a fake ID, a prom night reservation at the Holiday Inn. It was awkward and a little painful, but it was absolutely perfect. It was nothing like the emotionless, carnal acts my husband shares each night with a rotation of random women.
I can't help the sob that wrenches itself from my body when I hear the lust in his voice as dirty words spill off the lips I loved to kiss each night. I loved the way he'd wrap his arms around me, even when they smelled of another woman's perfume. I loved him entirely, the sinner and the saint.
In unison they reach completion with a cry that pierces my cold dead heart. As they revel in the afterglow, I weep silently at the hollowness inside my soul.
"Goodnight my sweet Lucille," he whispers as he lays his beloved against his bedside table. I kiss him gently on the forehead as he flips out the light, praying that maybe this time he'll feel the soft caress of my love.
I watch him drift off to sleep, watch the cold, hardened shell that he wears each day slip away as slumber overtakes him. With the soft huff of each breath that escapes his lips, he becomes more and more the sweet prince I fell for so long ago. These silent hours of darkness in my endless eternity are all I live for anymore. The phrase makes me chuckle.
I stroke gently along his face, as a quiet snore breaks the silence.
As much as it hurts, as much as I hate the man he's become, I know he needs me, and so I'm trapped. I lay down next to him, nestling into his embrace, tucking myself into his arms. He needs me, and so I stay.
"I'll always be with you, Negan. I'll always be here."