|WARNING: The following chapter contains depiction of self-harm. Please be aware of your own sensitivities before continuing.|

ANDREA

She waited for him to come to her when she saw the car returning around three thirty in the afternoon. From her vantage point on the roof, she saw all three men climb out of the car with bulging backpacks and let out a sigh of relief. Inside, she woke the children from their nap to prepare them for the needle injection she knew was coming. Not ten minutes later, Milton brought her, Judith, and Oliver the antitoxin and as they all took it, Andrea waited for Milton to speak, to explain something, hell, anything to her about why Negan was inside their walls.

When nothing seemed forthcoming, she took the children into the common area and set them both up with dinner to be watched over by Liddel as she returned to the children's cell where Milton was disposing the needles. She knew he could tell she was watching him, but he was tactless enough to pretend otherwise.

Seeing that she would have to initiate the conversation, she began,"The first time I met you, do you remember what you were wearing?"

"Don't remind me," said Milton, throwing Oliver's toys into his toy chest to clear up the already limited space.

"It was that awful white suit. You made Michonne and me tea—while wearing a suit. You were so—"

"Stupid."

"I was going to say naïve."

"Stupid is more accurate," said Milton distastefully as he smoothed out the bedsheets and fluffed the pillows, a house-cleaning habit he had picked up when he started to get nervous during a conversation. It was a step-up from how he used to freeze over completely and stare blankly, but this action was much more telling and she knew why. This would be a difficult subject to breach, and not just because neither of them had spoken Negan's name in months to try and forget him.

Milton alone had been able to look past Negan's sins and accept that he was honest-to-God sorry for his actions and though Andrea had been conflicted at the time of Negan's departure, she had had far too much time to mull over her own actions and how she had handled herself in front of him. Now that he was back, she had to set the record straight that she wanted nothing to do with him and Milton needed to know that as well.

"It wasn't your fault that Phillip hadn't exposed you to what was really going on. You relied on him to tell you the truth, and he didn't, so that was on him. But you've seen worse things than the dead and you know better now. You know. And you still choose to be merciful to people who don't deserve it, and that's going to get you, or someone you care about into a serious amount of trouble if you're not careful. I don't care what Negan did for us in the past; he was warned to never come back under any circumstances, which includes bringing his son with him. Something tells me that even if he didn't have the boy with him, you wouldn't have shot him, and I can't stand that. I need to know that you'll do what's right for us and not Negan."

"I would never choose him over you, but I need you to trust me for this decision I made. I've killed men for worse things than what Negan did and none of them had a shred of remorse for what they did, but I can't condemn a man or his son with a clear conscience. If he didn't have his son with him, I wouldn't have let him in, this much is true. But I wouldn't have shot to kill. I would have intentionally missed or wounded him just enough to warn him away because he would have done the same for me. Nothing is clear or straightforward with him, so there is no right or wrong answer, but it was my decision and it's been twenty-four hours and everyone is still alive, breathing, and relatively healthy, so there aren't any repercussions yet…but if there are—if there are, I'll take full responsibility. But I won't let him hurt you."

"He won't. He never could, but only physically. What I hate is how he gets inside my head and makes me feel sorry for him when he has no business earning anything less than absolute loathing from me. I don't want to interact with him anymore than I have to because he left here with the wrong impression of what I thought about him and I don't want to give him any ideas."

"I know he has feelings for you and I know you tried to be kind to him but of course he got the wrong impression. I've always known that he was going to flirt with you in a relentless storm, but he's not here to try and seduce you again. He came back for Hershel's help, and he'll leave as soon as he's able. I'll let him know that you want nothing to do with him—"

"No, he needs to hear it from me, so I'll be the one to tell him. I'll also give him that." Andrea took the last syringe from Milton. "I hope you realize I'm not accusing you of caring more about him than your family; I just know you and I know you always try to do the thing that will benefit everyone best with the least amount of bloodshed. You're still trying to be the good guy and if you've come this far by doing that, one small misguided step won't suddenly make you a bigot."

Milton folded a load of socks as he spoke his last piece on the subject. "Letting him in wasn't smart, but knowing that I turned him away and refused to help his son would have been wrong. Having him stay puts everyone on edge, Merle most of all, but if I'd have shot him, I probably would have killed his son right along with him—on accident. So whatever comes, there's options, and all of them have a price. That's the deal you agree to barter with whenever Negan is in the picture."

"Yes, it is."

She headed off to Death Row, mentally prepping herself for the confrontation to come, but she went quietly so that she could catch Negan in the act of being one hundred percent at ease with his actions without fear of being watched or judged. In the waiting room between the hall and cells, she found that whoever had relieved him of his few belongings had set his satchel on the table and as she looked through it, she found several orange bottles with white caps. She read the labels and her heart dropped with every one as she realized how difficult this conversation was actually going to be. As she crept into the cellblock, she saw his son asleep on the cot while Negan finished washing dried walker blood from his neck and wrung out his shirt before hanging it to dry. The white was as pristine as ever, amazingly untouched by the blood that had been deflected by his leather jacket which now hung from between two bars as he paced around his cell, bare from the waist up.

Somehow, she hadn't expected him to be as hairy as he actually was, particularly in the chest area, but bodily hair on a man came as a shock to her anyway because Milton was like a newborn baby in that sense with the only hair to speak of growing on his head. From head to toe, Milton still dressed like someone preparing to give a sermon at the local church where Negan was always in biker garb, so to see him stripped of that jacket, part of his identity had been stripped away as well. In fact, Negan had nearly the exact same clothes he had been wearing the last time she had seen him. The only new addition was the black jeans to replace the ripped ones he had left with. And two new accessories he wore were thin white bandages around his forearms and wrists.

He had cut himself intentionally and no amount of bandages or clothing could disguise that fact. He stopped mid-pace, caught her gaze, and saw where she was staring. He paused, waiting for her to mention his self-mutilation.

"Well?"

"Did you do that before or after your son was born?"

"Before he was even conceived, a few days after you all kicked me outta the prison. Anythin' else you wanna know?"

Andrea blanched. She had never heard Negan use that tone with her before that stated he was angry with her…but she couldn't be bothered to worry about what he thought of her anymore. She had made that emotional detachment and stuck to it. So she held out the satchel of antidepressants to him.

"Trintellix? Sinequan? Why do you have a drug addict's Christmas wish-list in your bag? How many are you on?"

"Who said I was on them?"

"Why else would you have them in your bag? When did you start using?"

"When this didn't work," snarled Negan, holding out his wrists to her. "The next step was to overdose and then I found my new group, had a kid, and started using the pills the way they're supposed to be used and they're working—mostly. I haven't taken my dosage for today and yesterday, though, so unless you'd like to see how fast I can hang myself, hand 'em over."

Andrea offered him his prescription and he snatched the bag from her, taking a pill from at least three bottles and popping them into his mouth. He downed them with a swig of water and caught her staring at him.

"You're used to noble sacrifice, but someone who's contemplating suicide scares you, doesn't it? Especially since it's me and you've never seen me like this, but it's how I started the apocalypse out, so I'm back at square one and you need to stop lookin' at me like that. You give me the cold shoulder the second you lay eyes on me and now all of a sudden you're feelin' motherly? You can't be both; you can't hate me and want to help me."

"You're acting like I betrayed you somehow, like we had something more than we actually did and that I owed you a better greeting, but we were never in a relationship, so you need to stop looking at me like we were. You're the man who fucked up my life and then felt guilty after doing it, so you saved my husband and best friend to save face. You're nothing more than that and for as long as you're here, you need to get that in your head."

"Bullshit!"

Negan came to the bars and if he had reached through, he could have grabbed her, but she stepped back out of his range just in case he decided that putting his hands on her would be a way to make her soften toward him once again.

"It was never 'nothing more', and you know it. I know when a woman has a thing for me and if it wasn't clear to me before, it definitely was those last few weeks I was here. I could've kissed you—I couldn't done so much more with you—and you would have let me because you never tried to pull back. You can lie through your teeth, but you would've let me, if I had."

"No, I wouldn't have. I would have hit you."

"Keep tellin' yourself that, sweetheart."

"Go to hell."

Negan's strong eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. "Really, now? Did we grow so far apart in the last year and nine months that you want me to go pay the devil himself a permanent visit, after everything I've done for you?"

"Does crucifying a man for wanting to live his own life sound more or less justified than having a woman shot down in cold blood for defending the child of the man you murdered for the hell of it? Becoming obsessed with protecting Milton and me doesn't redeem you and everything was repaid when I voted for you to live instead of dying alongside those other Saviors. We're completely square on all fronts, so don't look at me like I owe you something."

"You do, though, based off of that syringe in your hand."

Negan held out his forearm through the bars and Andrea stepped forward to inject him. She cleared and disinfected the bulge of his vein on his inner arm to prep the skin for a puncture. Shoving the needle into his vein, she watched him wince as her lack of gentleness showed. She wiped the area clear with another cotton swab and then pressed a bright pink Hello Kitty Band-Aid to the affected area.

Turning to leave, she was halted as Negan called to her and though he was struggling to put some empathy into his voice, he was at least trying.

"I know what I did, too. Everything I did isn't canceled out by the other things I did at the end to make up for all of my bullshit. But I didn't think you'd hate me if I came back. I was never expecting you to fling yourself at me and confess your undying love, but I can hear it in your voice and I see it when you look at me that you want me dead and I don't know what I did to earn that from you, after all this time. How did I hurt you more when I wasn't even here?"

Andrea couldn't turn back to look at him. "What you did had time to fester in my brain while you were gone. I denied it while you were busy preaching about how you were devoted to Milton and with you constantly saving him, I allowed myself to become blind to what you were and what I knew you were. I gave you signs I shouldn't have, signs that gave you the wrong impression, so whatever you think I wanted from you, I didn't, and I don't."

"Milton told me it was Lexi who shot you—"

"And?"

"And I'm sorry—"

"I don't want your apology. I want my first boy back. Can you give him to me?"

She glanced back at him and Negan was clutching the bars, all but forcing himself between them to get to her. He chewed the inside of his lip in defeat.

"No one else, no one else in my family dies because you think with your dick. Stay away from my children and from me, and if I catch you anywhere near them, I'll kill you right where you stand."

"No, you won't. You know I'd never hurt your boy or Judith."

"Because you'll never get close enough to try. For your son's sake, I don't want to shoot you, but believe me when I say I fucking will if you don't start listening to me for once in your goddamned life and keep your distance. You're not to flirt with me again, or approach my children, or ask Milton to convince me to come talk to you. Hershel said you'll be here for a few weeks, but I don't want to see you again, so don't come looking for me if you're allowed out of this cellblock. I mean it. Stay away."

"I know you've made mistakes you've regretted, so you can't judge me and hate me when I have regrets too. I don't know what else I can do to earn your forgiveness, but let me try. I thought we parted on good terms last time, but when I leave again—if I do—I don't wanna leave this hangin' in the air between us. Tell me what you want from me and I swear to God, I'll do it."

"You want forgiveness?"

Negan stared hard at her, waiting for her verdict.

He wouldn't stop asking for it for as long as he had to be here and Andrea was not about to put up with weeks of dodging around the corner to avoid him or his messengers. And she could lie. He could make that list and beg for forgiveness on his knees and she could say that she granted it to him, but not mean a word of it. He would never know.

"Make a list of every single thing you've done from the outbreak until this very second that cost someone else something dearly, and then apologize for each one of those things to me. That's a start, but until then, if you can bring yourself to be humbled and humiliated by the things you've done, stay away."

"I can do that."

"If you can do it so easily, you aren't repentant enough. You have to be sorry for those things, not just say you are. I'm not just giving you lines as a disciplinary action for some schoolyard wrongdoing; this is how you're going to prove to me that you'd go back and do everything differently or take the place of those people you killed. I'll have someone bring you a notebook and a box of writing utensils and I want you to feel the ache of each individual crime. Wallow in it, remember it. Pretend that you did each of those things to me or Milton, or even your son. I want to see the pain those people felt when I look at you."

"That's a step toward sadism, isn't it?"

"I'm not forcing you to do anything at gunpoint. I'm not hurting you, unlike what you've done to countless people since you felt like the world belonged to you. So write it down or go fuck yourself."

"Fine. I'll write down every last damn detail."

"Have fun."

She swept out of sight before he could say something else and rushed to the water keg outside the gym area where she gulped down one large cup to clear her throat of the blockage that had built up as she spoke to Negan. Random senses were firing from her body and there was only one thing that could quench those feelings.

Judith and Oliver were finishing their dinner and she asked Axel to be on babysitting duty for a few hours, promising to take over for one of his night shifts. Axel enjoyed time with Oliver since there were no male children to shape into capable chess players, so even though Oliver didn't even understand the concept yet, Axel was determined to make a master out of him. He also liked to draw chalk cartoons with Judith on the asphalt in the courtyard, so he had no problem accepting Andrea's proposal.

That left Andrea free to run up the stairs to the children's cell where Milton was finishing piling the laundry in the under-bed storage bins. She snatched at his hand and hauled him with her toward their cell.

"Andrea, what-?"

Shoving him inside and slamming the door shut, she kissed him and the tension in his body let out as he realized what was driving her. Disentangling himself from her for a moment, he asked, "Now?"

"Now," Andrea affirmed. She had known that strange and uncomfortable feelings would awaken within her if she confronted Negan, but she had somehow forgotten what a commanding presence he had and how that presence made the temperature in the room drop by several considerable degrees. Being in the same cellblock as him was enough to make her feel like she needed a shower to cleanse her of his gaze, but more than that, she needed to feel Milton to thoroughly wash away any hold Negan still had on her.

Milton let her take the lead until she could almost forget that Negan was in the same building. She lay facing the wall afterward, letting Milton comb the sweaty hair from her face. She kept his hand planted firmly against her stomach where the scar of her miscarriage remained, running his finger over the raised skin.

"He must have said something to make you angry," Milton observed when they had been laying in silence for a good half hour.

"I'm not having a discussion about Negan in bed," said Andrea firmly.

"Did he mean for it to be hurtful?"

"Milton…"

"If he did—"

"You're not going to hurt him because you don't need to. I just shouted at him and it was a lot to get off of my chest. I needed this, and not just because it's been a few weeks since we last had sex. Just trust me, I'm good now. More than good, actually."

She turned her neck to kiss him and reached back around to his stomach where Merle had stabbed him as a result of trying to save him. And her scar as a result of having Caleb cut from within her—to save her.

Because of Negan.

She hadn't forgiven him then; she'd just ignored the part he had to play in it because it was easier than dealing with it, and because she had had more important things on her mind like staying a step ahead of the Saviors as they began to turn on Negan, and thus Milton. She didn't need to forgive him either. The right was hers to hold this against him forever. It was a battle inside her head to try and be like Milton or like Merle in letting go of or building up her distrust of the man in Death Row but every time she touched the scar on her belly, on Milton's, she felt another stab of fury.

It didn't matter that Negan had eventually become their best ally when the Saviors took to Simon's lead instead; if Andrea had kept Negan at bay from herself and Milton from the start, she would still have her firstborn and Merle would never have been put in situation where he had to nearly kill his best friend.

She wanted Negan gone for good and the man's ankle couldn't heal fast enough.

/ /

That night as she went to go switch out shifts at the tower, she found Merle already out there, walking in measured footsteps just inside the railing.

"Can't sleep?" she asked him.

"Don't wanna. Tryin' t'wear myself out so I'll be dead-tired an' not get the urge t'sneak into Death Row an' kill that bastard."

"You and me both."

"Really, now?" chuckled Merle. "Blondie, y'couldn't kill 'im if he gave you the gun an' begged you to. You owe 'im too much an' y'may not like it, butchoo like livin' life that way: eye for an eye, scratchin' each others' backs."

"That's not how the phrase goes—"

"Whatever. Y'know what I mean. Trust me, though, if anybody manages t'kill 'im b'tween now an' whenever he gets outta here, it ain't gonna be you, no matter how mad he makes you."

"What makes you think he made me mad?"

"'Cause that's what he does. Then he turns 'round an' gives a half-assed apology an' you forgive 'im for it 'cause you got no other choice. Y'live with it, or y'drive yourself mad. Butchoo come t'me if he says anythin' that steps over the line an' I'll go in there and knock out every one've his damn teeth."

"I might just take you up on that offer," said Andrea, touching his arm appreciatively.

Merle continued to walk the circumference of the tower as Andrea watched the road and woods in front of the gate, but besides the nocturnal gathering of walkers congregating at the fences, she saw nothing to report. It wasn't until the dead's raspy moans started to interfere with her hearing that she realized just how many there were.

"Merle, come here and tell me how many you think are at the west fence," she said after about three hours.

Sticking out his fore and middle finger to count by twos, Merle squinted in the moonlight and made a tally, restarting several times as a walker moved and messed up his count. Finally, with his face set grimly, he concluded, "Maybe sixty. More'n I've seen in a long time comin' up to the fence. There must be a herd breakin' off somewhere an' they're tricklin' toward us. We'll have t'set up a patrol in the mornin' t'keep 'em from tearin' the whole thing down."

Andrea reported in to Bob who was at the back entrance and they both agreed to form the stabbing team the following morning that would put the walkers down from the safety of the perimeter cutoffs so that they wouldn't actually have to go out into the throng.

"This is Elliot contacting the prison. Does anyone copy?"

The message came across clear, which was surprising considering the fact that the hand-held radios didn't reach that far and they normally only picked up Woodbury's frequency from their larger radio.

Taking the radio from the port inside, Merle answered, "This is Merle, go ahead, Elliot."

"We were headed your way, but there's a massive herd blocking the road and we're trying to double back to draw them off toward the coast. Keep in contact every half hour in case we need backup, but expect us around seven tomorrow evening."

"Willco, standin' by," said Merle. He and Andrea shared a look of dread.

"How many hiding places does this place have that Elliot doesn't know about?"

/ / /

NEGAN

Writing out all of his major screw ups had been easy enough. Jotting down every inconvenience in between was more difficult. Experiencing them as Andrea had told him to was downright infuriating since he couldn't put himself in those situations again and substitute a loved one in place of the person who was dead thanks to him. How was he supposed to place Milton in the role of a rapist who died from a bullet to the brain as retribution? He had killed a handful of men before ever coming to Georgia because those men couldn't keep it in their pants, so he'd shot them on the spot for attempting such a thing. That meant that Andrea wanted those men included on her damned list and he had no sympathy for those men.

He needed fresh air to clear his head and knew he would get none in his cell, sniffing at the backed up plumbing from his toilet. When Hershel came by to check his bandages, Negan asked for permission to go and sit on the bleachers in the courtyard.

"You remember what happened last time y'all cooped me up inside for too long," he reminded the old man. "I'm just askin' for a few hours of sunlight for me and my boy. I can't go anywhere on this busted ankle, so what's the harm in some sunbathing?"

"You don't seem to understand that you aren't allowed privileges, son. You should be dead, if a certain somebody had done what he promised t'do. I don't agree with the death penalty, but I don't put an ounce've trust in you, so I can't let you ask for favors."

"Then you take my boy outside. He can't lay in here all day or he'll get sick again. You're one of the only people in this God-forsaken building I trust with my son, so if you don't let me out, let him. The sooner both've us are better, the sooner we can be outta your hair, but you can't stab me with a knife and then tell me to stitch myself up without any supplies, capiche?"

Hershel's beard twitched as if he was holding back a grin. "You're the only man I've met in the aftermath that can make the thing I want least sound so appealin'. My son did that to me all the time and I hated it."

"But did it work?" asked Negan, knowing he had the old man right where he wanted him in feigning innocence on his son's behalf when he had an ulterior motive (not that it was a bad motive; he just really needed to get out of this cell for a while).

"If you go outside, you wear the cuffs; those are the terms."

"Clap me in irons then, old timer."

Negan put his arms through the bars and Hershel chained his wrists together.

Out in the yard, Negan was made aware of the presence of the two watchtower guards and the catwalk guard before being set loose to enjoy the sunshine. He let Finely walk around a bit to stretch his legs and then sat down to read to him. He had a battered paperback book of children's fairytales that Finely had heard multiple times before, but his son never tired of them.

After the third or fourth story, Negan's attentive ears caught the sound of short legs making small feet move as fast as possible. He perked his head up to see Milton and Andrea's son waddling across the courtyard with his arms flailing madly in a giggling delight.

As all toddlers did, Oliver picked up speed when he realized he could go faster and as he tore across the way as fast as his squat little legs could carry him, he stumbled, tripped by his top-heavy stature. Still holding Finley in one arm, Negan swooped down and caught Oliver by the back of the boy's shirt, hauling him upright to prevent him from face-planting on the asphalt. As he righted the boy, Oliver looked to be on the verge of tears, but Negan knelt down in front of him and began to shush him.

"Aw, now it's okay, little man. You're okay, aren't you? No owies, right? Nothin' to cry about because you're just fine. And look here, you and Fin can share some fruit snacks, would you like that?"

He produced a bag of cartoon character-themed fruit chews and ripped open the packaging, dumping a few pieces into his open palm and offering them out to Oliver who took three for himself and pushed Negan's hand back at Finley in what couldn't be mistaken as anything but an act of sharing.

"'Atta boy. You and Fin go eat your snacks on that bench now, okay?"

Taking Finley's hand, Oliver led him over to the lowest bench and both boys sat down, nibbling at their snacks and feeding each other the flavors they didn't want.

"I thought he wouldda screamed," said a shy voice from the basketball court and Negan saw Beth step into view with one hand tucked behind the other arm while clutching her sidearm. She was watching the boys with resignation and if Negan wasn't mistaken, wistfulness. "Ollie doesn't like new people, especially new men. He'd scream for hours if Andrea had any man but Milton hold him until he was about seven months old. He did okay with women, but you could see that he wasn't happy. Then he got used to Hershel and Tate, then Bob, Axel, Asher, and he just started to be okay with Merle holdin' him since he saw Merle holdin' Judy all the time. But that kid still hollers when anyone he doesn't know gets too close. It's a good thing, but also bad if we need to keep quiet. So I'm surprised he let you anywhere near 'im."

"Maybe he just recognized that I had a boy of my own, so I couldn't be dangerous. Or maybe he's like his momma and just can't resist me."

"Speakin' of his momma, she told all of us to shoot you if you touched Ollie or Judy."

Negan straightened up and glanced doubtfully at her sidearm. "Even if she did tell you that, you're not gonna be the one to do it, honey."

"Don't call me that," Beth snapped. "I killed some of your Saviors; I could kill you just as easily. You don't mean anythin' to me, but since you stepped in to basically save Ollie's nose and save me the trouble've explainin' to Andrea why you got your hands on 'im in the first place, I'm gonna let this slide with a warning. Next time I catch you near the boy, I won't give you any cute story to go out with. I'll take you to the next room and shoot you so your boy doesn't have to see."

"Well, ain't that mighty kind of you."

His broad smile frightened her and he continued to display it until the boys had finished eating their snacks and found the box of chalk sticks to start drawing with. Beth went to watch them scribble and Negan took advantage of her distracted attention to sneak off to the far east side of the prison yard where several grave markers stood deliberately overgrown with grass, but not weeds. He read the names carved into the markers: Sasha Williams, Daryl Dixon, Wesley Tolle, J. Guerrero, Rick Grimes, Lori Grimes, Carl Grimes, Glen and Maggie Rhee, Thomas Nelson, Caleb Harrison-Mamet.

There was an entire family buried beneath him, plus a married couple. One of these people had been his direct kills: four were indirect. And there was Judith's mother, Merle's brother, Owen's not-quite-boyfriend, and two other names he didn't recognize. The other people who had died in the battle for the Georgian territories must be buried in Woodbury or burned. He knew that the majority of the Saviors wished for their remains to be burned, but those who wanted a burial were not given the honor of being lain to rest within the prison's boundaries. Only Thomas had earned that honor.

And then Milton and Andrea's stillborn son was either re-buried here or he had been given an empty grave so that his parents had something tangible to grieve over.

Negan tore his gaze away from the smallest grave to look upon the one labeled Rick Grimes. What did one say to the bones of the man who never needed to be his enemy, but who he killed anyway, just because he could?

"Hey!" A burly-looking man came barging down the pathway with a Ladysmith drawn on him. "Get away from there."

"Why?"

"You don't ask why, you just do like I said. You got no right bein' over here, especially not standing on a man's grave when you're the one who killed him."

"Would you believe me if I said I was paying my respects?"

"I'd say you've got two seconds or you get two bullets. Move, dickhead."

Negan stepped back, cuffed hands up. "Okay, okay, but I never got your name."

"You don't need it."

"We've met before, but I didn't ask for it then. I'm asking for it now."

"Theodore Douglas, and that's Mister Douglas to you, homeboy. Now get your ass back up that hill and stick with your kid. If I catch you down here again, I'll break both've your legs so you'll have to scoot around on your asscheeks to get anywhere. Get steppin', hands up."

"Okay, I'm a-goin'," said Negan, raising his hands above his head and resting them in his hair as trekked back up the path to where Beth was watching him come back into the courtyard, shaking her head.

"Now you're wanderin' off, thinkin' that I'll babysit your kid?" she said accusingly.

"Knowing you'd babysit him for all of—what was that—a full three minutes?"

"You need to keep better watch on him."

"Oh, honey, you do not want to accuse me of bein' a bad parent right about now," said Negan, bristling at the indignation of even being considered an unfit father after the things he had done and gone through to get his son this far. "You think my son's safety is a trivial thing to me?"

"I think that you—"

"Do you think I need you to answer that question?" Negan cut in. "When you've got a little one with your one-handed boyfriend and walk up to your enemy and invite them to shoot you in exchange for your kid's survival, try me again. Until then, just…don't."

Negan swept in and scooped up Finley, escorting himself back to his cellblock. Beth followed to make sure he did, in fact, return to Death Row, and then locked him into the cellblock. Sometime later after his temper had cooled, Negan was visited by Milton who nodded silently at Finley who was sleeping through a sugar crash.

"How much longer will he sleep?"

"Maybe half an hour, why?"

"What were you doing in the graveyard?"

Negan rolled his eyes. "Like I told Mister Douglas, payin' my respects."

"That's not an appropriate term."

"Hell, man, what else do you call it? Rick's not there; he doesn't care if I go to his grave. I went to reflect and let the Almighty see that I was repentant, and that's not somethin' puny mortals can understand or see. But your man made me get lost because he thought I was takin' a piss on it or somethin'."

"You know that's exactly what your Saviors did to the graves the day you had Simon kill Sasha? They stood above Merle's brother's grave and desecrated on it. No one here would put it past you to do the same because they don't know you and only ever saw the tyrant you were. But I'm here to issue you a warning to not step foot outside the courtyard again unless you're with an escort. Don't forget that everyone has orders to shoot to kill if you step out of line again."

"You think I can forget that? You think it escapes my mind that I could die at any moment from someone's itchy trigger finger and then my boy would be left to your people?"

"I can't make you any promises about what your future holds because your life isn't solely in my hands, but I can give you my solemn word that whatever the outcome, Andrea and I will care for your son as we have Judith."

Negan swallowed his gratitude and paused. It was worth more than he could say to hear Milton promise to look after Finley in the event of Negan's death because Milton had no cause to and this promise beat out all other acts of kindness Milton had ever shown him.

"You might; Andrea won't."

"She will. She doesn't hate your son, just you."

"Thanks."

Looking once more to Finley's sleeping form, Milton gestured for Negan to follow him.

"Come on, leave Finley here."

Still cuffed, Negan was about to ask Milton to release him when Milton did him the honors and pressed a finger to his lips. He led Negan to the center of the prison into a closet underneath the stairs. The door was propped open and lit, but there was a wide hole to clear out the crawlspace under the stairs and in front of the hole crouched a dog.

The dog stood up and bared his teeth when he saw them approaching, but his expression softened when he saw his master. Milton knelt before him and ruffled his ears.

"Easy, Sawyer. He's not here to touch your pups. Go check him out, go on."

He gave Sawyer a reassuring pat on the rump and Sawyer stalked forward, eyes never leaving Negan. Never before had Negan had a reason to fear Sawyer, for the dog took a liking to him instantly, but now, too much time had passed, enough time for Sawyer to forget. And yet, there was hope, for Judith had remembered him.

Hell, he had loved this dog more than any of his own people as soon as he met the dog, and he remembered his fury when Simon had shot the hound for coming to Negan's defense as a truly loyal dog would. Surely, if the dog had been that committed to him, he would remember that Negan was essentially another one of his masters?

Negan crouched, held out his hand palm-up, and waited. Sawyer took his time pacing forward until he was close enough for Negan to touch. Knowing that keeping eye contact was a sign of dominance, Negan contemplated whether or not he should look away and come across as submissive, or challenge the dog. Sawyer's ears dropped and he sniffed at Negan's wrist, hackles still raised. He stepped in closer until his nose brushed Negan's chest and then he lunged, tongue smacking loudly against Negan's face as his tail went mad in large circular swoops of recognition. He whimpered, trying to fit all of himself in Negan's lap as he continued to lick him. As suddenly as he had jumped into Negan's arms, he was gone, disappearing into the crawlspace and coming back out a moment later with a puppy in his mouth. He placed the pup in Negan's lap and went back for another, then lay down beside Negan, resting his head on Negan's hand.

Milton checked in on the mother and then came back out, watching Sawyer gaze fondly at his pups that were squirming around to try and reach Negan's face.

They were definitely part husky, part Sawyer, whatever breed he was (and from his somewhat extensive knowledge of dog breeds, Negan would wager a guess as to say that Sawyer was part cattle dog, part Labrador). One had heterochromia with a dark brown eye and a half-blue, half-brown eye and the other had pure blue eyes. Both pups were chewing on each others' ears, tumbling over one another under their father's close supervision.

"You're going to be here for a while," said Milton. "Scouts report that walker movement is picking up and they're congregating in masses around the prison. It's not safe to leave on foot, so you'll be here, in your cellblock. When you do leave, we'll provide you with supplies, but no weapons other than what you came in with. Also, Sawyer seems to have picked out two puppies he wants you to have. There were twelve in the litter, two came out stillborn, and another died that night. Axel, Bob, Reece, Asher and Beth, and Merle already have claim to one, but there aren't specifics, so you can take the dogs with you when you leave. Until then, you'll be able to do training in Cellblock D."

Petting the soft, fluffy fur, Negan felt a sort of lightness in the air, a dumb happiness that only puppies and kittens could bring. He hadn't seen one in over six years and the type of giddiness that came with holding one was a luxury he didn't think he'd experience again.

"Merle asked for a dog?"

"More or less. He likes Sawyer well enough and Andrea is forcing a pup on him to give him something to do instead of mope when he gets restless. But he hasn't picked one out yet because like I said, Sawyer doesn't let anyone touch the puppies besides me—until now. He wants you to have them. They're old enough to leave the mother."

"I can train them, no problem—but they can't come with me when I leave. It's too dangerous for one man to be on the road with an infant and two adolescent dogs. I'll train them, but they stay here."

"That's your decision, but in the meantime, they go with you back to your cellblock."

Negan raised Sawyer's face to his and kissed the dog's snout. "Good boy." When he stood up to walk away, the puppies waddled after him, excited to explore somewhere other than the crawlspace. They toddled in his wake all the way back to Death Row and then started a play session. Their rambunctious mock fight awoke Finley who started to cry, hungry for dinner.

"I'll feed him while you eat your own dinner," Milton offered. "And when you're done, I want to know what happened to you since the last time."

"You don't wanna hear it," said Negan, handing over a plastic spoon and a pouch of freeze-dried vegetables and gravy. "I'm not lookin' for sympathy and there's not really anything to tell. I left, I had a kid, I came back. Story time's over."

"I seem to recall you making me spill my desires for Andrea over a lasagna dinner after being forced to watch a Disney cartoon while wearing the most ill-fitting clothes I've ever been in. I think asking about what happened to you while I feed your son is more than a fair trade."

"What is it with you, huh?" asked Negan, now annoyed. "Why do you always have to know everything about people? Why do you have to keep prying when they don't want to tell you?"

"I'm asking, not ordering. I've always asked because it helps me understand people. Being observant, watching their actions and expressions—it helps me relate to them because having autism to a degree would otherwise make that extremely difficult. I ask about people's lives to understand them and what drives them. With you, I haven't quite figured it out yet."

Finley messed with Milton's wrist cuff to ask for more food and Milton obliged him, wiping what had promised to become a mess of a meal from Finley's lips. His actions softened Negan's original refusal to share. There was nothing that he could tell Milton that Milton could eventually use against him. Any emotional attachment Negan had to the past year and half was sitting in Milton's lap right now; the rest was just—there.

There were some parts he wasn't going to share, but they had made up less than five days of his absence. Those five days after being run out of Georgia like a wild animal had been the hardest to get through, and what's worse is that he had no way of seeing them coming. Merle had told him to run for it, and he had, not putting enough faith in Merle's word to let him live by chancing a glance back over his shoulder to see if Merle was still watching him.

Almost as soon as he was out of Merle's sight, however, he had stopped, thrown Lucille down, collapsed on all fours, and screamed to high heaven. He had woken that morning prepared to die, accepting it with full closure. He had hugged Sawyer and Judith goodbye and held Andrea one last time, then looked upon Milton as his executioner—and they commuted his sentence to life. To loneliness. Exile.

What in the ever-living hell was he supposed to do now, starting over not just from square one, but from where he had been when they let him out of the loony bin? It was just hours after he had been released that the news first started its coverage of the outbreak and Negan had gone home, taken his bat, wrapped it in barbed wire, and after gathering up some essential supplies, started off for higher ground. He built his empire from the ashes up with a new confidence his older self hadn't allowed him to have.

Was there any hope of rekindling that burning desire to stay alive as a god among what remained of men? Would anyone allow him to become that sort of powerful being again? Or was he doomed to crumble in the ruins of his own mistakes?

He didn't want to start over again. It had taken too long to make the Saviors fear him. It had been too easy to break the trust of the few people worth building it for. Only after he'd hurt them beyond reproach did he see the error of his ways, but he wasn't allowed the option of starting over with them. They had turned him away…and they must have known what it would do to him.

To some small degree, though, they must have cared about him. Or at least, Milton and Andrea had. They were committed to each other, but they recognized the human part of him that wanted to belong to a people and not just tag along or rule above. To be an equal meant that one or more of them had to mean something to him, and for a while, he thought he had belonged to them. He couldn't belong forever because in order for them to move on, he had to move out, and they wanted to give him one more chance at rebuilding his mess of an existence.

He didn't want that chance. If he couldn't get his act together the third time around, he didn't deserve a fourth.

So he had broken into a gas station, gone to the toiletries section, and found a pack of razor blades. In the back of that gas station, he had locked himself in the office and taken the razors to his wrists and forearms. By the end of the third day of sitting on the dusty floor with his skin caked in his own blood, he had used the razors six times on each arm, but never deep enough because he was too cowardly, too much of a pussy to handle the pain. It hurt, and he had hollered and wept from it, but he couldn't bring himself to load the Colt Python Milton had given him. The bullets remained in his breast pocket, but one quick shot was too final. The razors allowed him to test how much he could take and hope that he would slip into slumber and never wake up.

Then they found him.

Chompers had stumbled into the gas station and the people had been struggling to put them down, so Negan donned his leather jacket and run out into the main room, wielding Lucille and taking out the four dead ones. He held the Python on the five living people and they had begged for mercy, not at all learned in the art of weighing a man's facial expression to see if his gun really was loaded (which Negan's wasn't).

It was here that Negan actually began telling Milton his story.

Ray and Aaron, Tori and Pablo…and Hailey. No questions asked, they had taken him in, put him to work helping to defend their small party that had started out with twenty and was still dwindling in population. None of them were fighters, but the man Ray was the only one capable of shooting a gun. Aaron was a nervous man who Negan would have written off as chomper bait years ago, and sometimes his mind would wander in the midst of an important conversation or event. The two teens, Tori and Pablo were dependant on Ray for protection, but at the sight of Negan, they had immediately turned to him as their new leader, which helped Negan take over the group quickly since he had the favor and fear of the teens. He didn't want this group, didn't see a use for them, but he went, because he had nothing.

He was a pig of a man for staying with them because of one fact alone: the way the young woman Hailey was looking at him. He had seen the look on the faces of many women both before and after the outbreak, but had only given in to a few of them, the last being Lexi and he regretted that interaction with every atom in his body, for it had just been a way to let out some of his pent-up load.

These people wouldn't help him with survival if they were barely scraping by themselves, but he needed what the young woman was so obviously going to offer him. They headed for the coast and discovered an abandoned cruise ship that was their best bet at a safehouse that they could hold with so few of them. It was difficult to board the ship, so there would be less of a chance of others being able to come in after them. Ray and Aaron had helped Negan clear and block off the upper deck until they could get to the lower decks. It had taken a solid two days to accomplish this with Negan pulling much of the work and he went to bed in the captain's quarters absolutely knackered.

But she had come to him that night as the others slept huddled in the vault as a way to keep the chompers or marauders out if they swarmed the ship (and it was also a sure-fire way to die if they did manage to lock themselves in without access to the emergency key). A knock on the door, an all-knowing look of equal parts hesitation and seduction, and he had had her right there on the floor. Hailey was young, attractive, and stupid. Wanting nothing but sex when life was precious was a sure-fire way to get killed, but he had abstained himself for so long. Jerking off didn't hold nearly as much satisfaction, even if thoughts of a certain blonde someone had been the dominant image in his mind while he did it. And after he felt disgusted with himself for wanking to another man's wife.

So he had taken her because he was a man, after all, and he wanted sex as much as the next guy. She was a temporary fix to his unscratchable itch, his quench for a certain type of drug, but he didn't see her as he rode her. He envisioned someone else (though he didn't tell Milton this).

She came to him again later that week, but he had pretended to be asleep, and in the meantime, he avoided her by making the ship look undesirable and uninhabitable while cleaning up on the inside. He, Ray, and Aaron set alarms and traps to alert them of any intruders, but since the thing was too high for chompers to scale, their only real worry was other people. He taught the others how to safely put down chompers, but Pablo was terrified, and Tori was a living stick figure, so she couldn't defend herself at all, which was how she had ended up getting bit. Pablo had panicked and Tori put up an admirable fight to keep the chomper off of her when they were clearing one of the aft compartments, but in the end, the bite mark on her shoulder was in a spot that couldn't be hacked off to save the rest of the body.

Negan put her down as she slept that night. No one else had the stomach for it; no one else had ever killed before. Even though losing someone put the group back on numbers, Negan made an executive decision not to take anyone else in. He couldn't afford to carry anyone's dead weight, and Pablo was that dead weight. The teen was not allowed off the ship on any hunting or scavenging trips. He was not allowed a firearm, only a sharpened stave and a kitchen knife. The less damage he could do if he panicked again, the better.

And all the while, Negan couldn't help but notice that Hailey was putting on a very specific type of weight by the rounding bulge to her belly. She insisted on keeping the child even though they had no doctor at their disposal and Negan warned her of all the dangers that rearing a child would entail. She could lose the child and have a stillborn chomper inside of her; she could die from birth complications—but she wanted it, so Negan was resigned to acting as the child's father when it was born. He couldn't begrudge this young woman something that was hers, which was obviously what she had been longing for, why she had come to Negan. She thought that coupling with him would give her the strongest possible child that could survive world's end.

She conceived around a month after Negan had left the prison, and she delivered in the spring of the following year after a hard winter of lean days and restless chomper herds. She chose the name and went through seventeen hours of natural labor to deliver him, but that tender moment in which Finely first entered the world was when Hailey had called for Negan to lay beside her on her bed and hold their son. Besides the fact that they were survivors, reliant on each other for that survival, the two of them meant almost nothing to one another and the birth of their child didn't change that. But Negan did love the boy and had no problem being fiercely protective of him.

They still had lean days, but Negan put in double the effort to find food for his son, trekking out farther and farther on every run to find the necessary supplies so that his boy never went to bed hungry, never had diaper rash, never wanted for anything. All the while he knew that this pseudo-respite couldn't last, that someday he would have to join another group, abandon his current one, watch them all die, or die with them. He wondered how Hailey would react if he asked her to come with him and abandon the other three in the hopes of finding a better way of life for Finley. She wasn't attached to Negan, but she did respect him in how he had taken his role of a father so seriously, so when he finally did ask her, she agreed.

They had planned to leave at night, only Aaron had approached her after she had finished feeding Finley dinner. He never gave any indication that he was attracted to her in any way, yet this night, of all nights, he had come to her asking for sex. She refused outright, playing to the act that she and Negan were technically a couple. Aaron proved how unstable he was when he flew into an irrepressible rage and snapped her neck. The noise had brought Negan, Ray, and Pablo to Hailey's room where Aaron was trying to stuff her body under the bed that Finley lay crying on.

Two steps into the room was all it took for Negan to reach Aaron and smash his brains in with Lucille. He dragged the body to the railing and threw it over the side to where a gaggle of chompers were mulling about. They feasted on his body and Negan set about to wrapping Hailey in a clean white sheet for burial after stabbing her through the head. He took the baby carrier she had always worn and placed it on himself to carry Finley around, refusing to let the boy out of his sight. The next morning as he prepared to leave, he saw that Ray and Pablo had taken off sometime during the night, perhaps in fear of how easily Negan had been able to kill Aaron.

It didn't matter. He was going to leave them anyway. He took the supplies he had stashed for himself and Hailey and doubled up, carrying his son at his chest and the packs on his back, and left the ship.

Seven months following Hailey's death, Finley started to develop a fever and Negan knew his son wouldn't survive on his father's limited medical knowledge. And so, knowing what it would cost him, Negan took a van and drove back to the prison, running out of gas ten miles out and walking the rest of the way with his son's burning fever fueling him to not stop.

When he finished recounting his tale, Negan paused for Milton's interjection.

"So, does that sound like a steaming pile of crap I just made up on the fly, or does it get me a pass into the land of believability?"

"I believe you."

"Then that's all I need. Don't apologize for anything that happened out there. Those people didn't mean diddly-squat to me. But I hope you get it that I'm not lettin' anything happen to my boy. I was prepared to die for him, not even knowing when my last second would be because I didn't know if you really would shoot me on sight or ask questions and then shoot me, but I was ready. So don't think I won't kill for him if I have to."

"I know you will. I wouldn't consider you a good father if you wouldn't. But I do have a question for you: what happened to the Python?"

"It's in the Atlantic. I threw it in after I used the bullets to kill the chompers that were blocking my way off of the ship after it was down to just Fin and me."

Milton nodded in understanding, apparently approving of the final resting place for the weapon that had seemed cursed.

"Milt, Ollie came lookin' for you," called a small, blonde, bearded man who was leading Oliver in by the hand.

"He can come in, it's okay," said Milton, beckoning to his son, but before Oliver could waddle forward, Sawyer zipped past him and bounded into Negan's cell to lick him once again. He approached Finley, ears down, and Finley patted his furry head without fear, for which Negan was proud since his son had never seen a dog in person and only knew from Negan's own words that they were supposed to be friendly creatures, if any domesticated dogs remained.

Finley played with Sawyer's ears in pure delight for a few moments before Milton cleared his throat and said, "Sawyer, with Ollie."

The dog went to full attention and jumped out of Negan's lap, padding over to Oliver who had remained in the entryway. Sawyer gently pressed against Oliver's side as the boy took hold of Sawyer's collar, the two of them walked together with Sawyer keeping steady pace with Oliver's waddle. They came to Milton and then Sawyer stopped, cutting in front of Oliver to keep him from walking any further.

"Is it dinnertime?" Milton asked and Oliver nodded enthusiastically, waving to Finley who waved back and reached for Sawyer's head again. Milton rewarded the dog with a treat and then instructed, "Ollie, go back to your room and wait for me. Sawyer, take him home."

Sawyer nudged Oliver into motion and the two of them started off again, disappearing through the doorway to find Cellblock A.

"Damn," said Negan, impressed. "How long did it take you to teach him that?"

"Ollie or Sawyer?"

"Both, I guess."

"I taught Sawyer to go to Ollie or Judith right after you left. I taught him the commands starting with Judith and then added Ollie once Ollie learned to walk. Both kids know to grab onto his collar and hold on when he nudges against them like that. Sawyer loves new commands, though, so it wasn't too difficult teaching him. Lakota—the mother—has a stubborn streak, so the pups might inherit some of their mother's attitude. You have your work cut out for you with…whatever you decide to name them."

"What names do they have so far?"

"Merle has yet to name his, and a couple aren't claimed by any one human, so collectively we decided on some names, but so far we have Nenana with Bob, Storm with Axel, Onin with Reece, and Wrigley with Asher and Beth. We decided on Mercury and Anchorage for the other two, which leaves your pups and Merle's. And since we're going to be putting them all through similar types of training as the ones from Sawyer's litter that live in Woodbury, we want them all to have vastly different names so that recall won't be a problem."

"Noted. I'll think of somethin'."

"Then have at it. I'll be back to take you on your evening outing at seven."

"I don't have a watch."

Milton took one from his pocket and handed it to Negan. "I took that off a walker a few months ago and got it working again. There's a dent in the side, but it still works. Seven o'clock."

Negan adjusted the watch to his wrist size and looked after the spot that Oliver and Sawyer had been. "What d'you think, Fin, do you like Ollie and the doggy?"

Finley nodded and then squealed happily at the sight of the two puppies still exploring Death Row.

They were pups, and nowhere near as disciplined as Sawyer had been when Negan first got him, but if he could train them to do what Sawyer did for Milton's kids, he might stand a better chance at protecting his son once they left the prison and he would need all the help he could get if he was going to once again face the wide open world of death alone.