Disclaimer: I don't own The Walking Dead or The Addams Family. Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: Crossover with the Addams Family, because fuck logic, that's why. Set in a post 7x01 AU. Could be a considered a sequel to my other work in this au/crossover universe: "Family Values (and the wonders of biology)." – In this AU Maggie goes back to the Alexandrian after a brief overnight stay at the Hilltop.
Disclaimer:Grief/loss/healing, depression, adult language, canon appropriate violence, blood and gore, Eugene goes ham. Please keep in mind that this story will be dark and a bit sadistic in that 'Addams Family' way.
Ruin me (like every good tragedy) with the sharp of your teeth
Chapter One
He swallowed the grit that'd settled between his teeth as Negan and his group pulled away, leaving them in the pluming dust and silence. Feeling the particles grate against the worn enamel of his teeth as he forced the building, animal rage that was threatening to burst out of him like a vengeful artery to bide its time.
Which only really left him with one option when it came to self-expression at this point in time. He willingly inhaled the iron taint on the inside of his palms as he pressed them against his face. Rocking slightly as Maggie and Rosita wrenched the air with terrible, hiccuping sobs even he couldn't find beautiful. Not this time.
Grief was contagious.
It was an infectious disease that lived, breathed and bred in salt-tainted humidity.
It tasted like an imbalance of ph and restless softness.
It looked like loss and felt like something worse.
And uncharacteristically, he hated it.
It wasn't the deaths themselves that bothered him. Not really. He'd grown up on a steady diet where the flirtation with the other-side - both in terms of himself and the occasional enemy - was always a tantalizing possibility. Death had been something he and his family had always courted - respecting the idea from afar. Satisfied with the fact that someday was not merely a given, but when it came, an event meant to be savored.
But not them.
Not like this.
Not Abraham and Glenn.
They'd been his.
Worse, there'd been a distinct absence of virtue to each of their deaths.
A gross senselessness even he couldn't find it in him to embrace.
It had been wrong.
Inelegant and sickly.
He'd never met the cusping flirtation of a death where the outcome had been so unsatisfactory, no less two in one fell swoop. It had been undeserved and ill-timed. And he'd dealt with his fair share of raging sadists, thank you very much. Even his Great Grandfather Red-Hand Lutitus would've known better. Negan had turned what should have been a bittersweet parting into something to fear and rail against. Not savor. Not embrace. But hate.
Negan would pay for that offense.
Amongst others.
For the first time there hadn't been another option.
There'd been nothing he could do.
Not without the risk of more cost, at any rate.
By the time the Saviors had surrounded the RV, Negan's people already had Glenn, Daryl, Rosita and Michonne in chains out in the front of the crowd. Incentive for his good behavior, he supposed. And of course, it'd worked. He'd paused and they'd converged. Beating him over and over as he swallowed the pleasure-pain and instead gave them what they wanted.
He gave them what they expected with the sharp of his cries and his weak pleads for them to stop. Oh, please! Stop. Stop! I don't- I won't try nothing. I promise. All the while catching glimpses of the others - horror-drawn and struggling - through the sea of enemy legs.
It wasn't his fault.
Distantly he was aware of that.
But hell if it didn't feel like it.
By the time they limped back to Alexandria the rage building in the back of his mind needed an outlet. He was a swirling vat of poisonous, acidic color that needed release. To sink into something solid and metallic. Something he could take his time corroding and taking apart.
They'd lost Abraham. Glenn. And now Daryl.
Only Rick was still trembling.
They were all still trembling.
It reminded him, perhaps a bit too honestly, of the difference that existed between them. They were human. Breakable. Fragile. He was not. Not completely. He'd worked so hard to keep that part of himself hidden. To blend in and curtail some of his more obvious proclivities. At first it'd been a game, attaching himself to Abraham in the form of a well-needed lie. Only to have it evolve into something more. Becoming part of this distressingly normal little family, despite all odds. They didn't know he wasn't anything other than what he appeared. They didn't know what he was capable of. That he might have been able to stop it. Maybe. If he'd allowed himself to risk showing the same people he'd come to care about his true nature.
They'd been right all along.
He was a coward.
But perhaps it was better that way.
Better for what came next.
He bared his teeth into the dark. Thinking about all the exquisite ways he could tear the man apart with his bare hands. Knowing that no matter what happened, he'd be able to get close enough to do it. The man didn't know him. Not yet. But he would. Soon. Until then he was the best and the worst kind of invisible.
Mother had always said he'd been the smart one.
He waited until everyone had turned off their lights and were pretending to sleep before he grabbed his pack – the dusty one he kept under the floorboards in the very corner of his room - and slipped through the gates into the welcoming dark.
There would be nothing particularly satisfying about what he was about to do.
Not with the cost that'd already been paid.
But he could ensure those deaths wouldn't be in vain.
It was the least he could do, after all.
It was time to get to work.
He had enough self-awareness to know the first part was a lie.
He was going to enjoy this.
For better or worse he wouldn't be what he was if he didn't.
That was the perverse trade off to raw ability, he supposed.
He'd give Negan this much, his main compound was actually not only remarkably hard to find, but also to gain entrance to. Undetected anyway. It took him half a week to locate the main stronghold. From there on, that's when the hard work started.
He ended up pulling something worthy of Hollywood to get inside. He stopped a wagon caravan from a fish farm that was bringing their semi-weekly tribute and took a chance.
He asked them who they'd lost. What Negan had taken. He asked them how long they'd been making this same journey and what Negan and his people would do if they had a bad month. He asked them if they thought things would ever stop. Ever get better. Then he unzipped his bag and showed them why he thought he could win.
The woman leading them just nodded. Looking at him with drawn, dead eyes that'd seen far too much before sending the three men with her into a grudging flurry of activity inside the middle wagon. He gave her his thanks and he told her if he failed they should go to Alexandria. That it would be safer there. She wouldn't. She didn't have the right smell to match the second, marginally deeper incline of her head before he clambered inside. But the words felt right leaving his lips anyway.
By the time he was safe inside the compound, tucked inside a storage room that was brimming over with every kind of food Alexandria could ever need, night had fallen and he was exactly where he needed to be.
A/N: Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – There will be three more chapters, stay tuned.
Reference: We all know that those in the Addams clan aren't exactly normal. They love the idea of death and all morbid things. They can survive electrocution, massive explosions, like – anything really. So, I turned that into a biology thing. They are faster, stronger, more able to survive things that normal people generally wouldn't last a lick on. And they often look the part: Cousin It, Fester, Lumpy Adams, etc. In this crossover the idea is that Eugene is a distant relative of the Addam's Family.