She had seen him staring at her. In fact, she had seen him staring at her more times than she could count. Typically, it would have made her squirm or want to slap a guy across the face but the way he looked at her was different.
Marilyn had been just another member at the Sanctuary. She did her part, contributed and was left alone for the most part. Throughout the work days she would hear others complain about their lives; about the misery, but it wasn't that way for her. For a life in the so-called "end of days", things weren't so bad. Sure the infected roamed around them, but at least it was on the outside of the fences. For a while she had been on the move on foot and things looked uncertain at best. Having just moved from the west coast six months earlier, Marilyn hadn't really established any new, deep relationships when the outbreak had begun.
Negan. He was such a difficult man for her to read. She had studied him many times from afar; his posture, his mannerisms, the way he spoke. The man oozed a confidence that no one dared to tangle with and members of the Sanctuary were pulled to him like gravity. Marilyn had heard words being thrown around about him since the moment she arrived - ruthless, degrading, handsome and sometimes "funny as shit". She felt the terms were a bit contradicting but she held her own, quiet opinions about Negan. To her he was a bit mysterious coupled with a bit of a showoff - again somewhat contradicting.
Marilyn was sure that some of the horrors people spoke of were true. She had seen him in action more than once and his ruthless actions did make her cringe. He burned faces with irons and she had seen the bloody end of Lucille as he walked by her on his way in from a run somewhere.
Negan never spoke much with Marilyn, but the lingering eye contact the two of them made more regularly as the days went on began to feel more intimate than any conversation could. She had stared into his eyes so many times that she could almost give an exact description of what they looked like - a ring of hazel around the pupil surrounded by a sea of green that was far more prominent on sunny days than overcast ones. On overcast days his eyes looked more hazel.
Marilyn often found herself thinking of these things and she had to consciously stop herself. She felt some sort of unspoken connection with Negan, but saying that out loud would have made her look like some weird stalker. Still, she couldn't get it out of her mind that he saw something in her too. She just wasn't sure what that was - or why.
Why? That was another question. There were tons of whys. Marilyn looked around the room he had given her. She had a full sized bed, not a twin. The curtains that hung on the windows were friendly and modern and the people she was close with at the Sanctuary often teased her about what "favors" she must have done to get two windows rather than one... or none. She had a television - another target on her back for unwanted "hate" from her acquaintances. And according to many of the others what she had to do for the point system Negan carried out wasn't nearly as strenuous, life-threatening or toll-taking as many of the others.
"Maybe you're in training to be another wife," her friend Nina had joked.
Marilyn had pondered the thought, wondering what the hell she would say if Negan ever approached her for such a thing. He hadn't; and she had been there for long enough that she assumed he would have asked by now if that was his intention. Whenever the topic came up in her mind, or in jesting conversation she found herself in an odd daydream about it for several minutes until the logical part of her brain lashed out a metaphorical slap in the face for even thinking about it in the most abstract, unrealistic type of way.
Questions still remained, however. Why was Negan so easy on her? Why did his eyes view her differently than anyone else? Why could she somehow see past the mirage, the show, he put on for all to see?
Many times Marilyn had thought about asking him, but she didn't want him to think she was ungrateful. The scene played out in her head like a bad movie with a worse ending.
"Why did you give me such a nice room?" she would ask. In her mind Negan gave a smirk and responded with a sarcastic remark, ending with her being placed into a cold, gray room with a tiny window and a bare mattress having to scrub the floors on her hands and knees all day rather than work out in the gardens.
Part of her knew this wasn't true; that Negan had given her this special treatment for some reason. He had to. If there was one thing she knew for certain about the man is that he had a reason for every single thing that he did. There were no coincidences. He left nothing to chance. He was honest, blunt and did things with a purpose.
What's mine? she thought. What is his purpose with me? She thought of his eyes again - his soul-piercing hazel, green eyes and a shudder ran down her back. A part of it was anxiety, another part attraction to his appeal - all of it was nerves.
Marilyn laid back on her short stack of pillows and let her eyes fix on an old, 90's movie that reminded her of her high school days and tried her best, like most nights, to get the enigma of Negan out of her head. Much to her dismay, and like always, she failed.