Holy crap, guys, this one turned out longer than I expected! Just a warning, this chapter goes to some really fucked up places. Like the whole thing is just all kinds of dark, so just be aware of that. Gina is a...complex character, to say the absolute least, and couple that with Negan and you've got a whole melting pot of crazy. Anyway! So the chapter title is "Over the Love" by Florence and the Machine, and oh my god, I can't believe how perfect that song is for Gina. As always, thank you all for your support and reviews, you guys are the best. Let me know what you think!
14. Over the Love
Alpha
That she never let anyone into her truth.
That was the biggest lie.
~m~
Two years earlier, by approximation of moon cycles
She was good at hunting, but sometimes the only way to fill your belly was to scrounge like a cur. She accepted this with the same bitterness of a child accepting a new stepparent. She was lowly, dethroned, a psychotic cast out into the wilds of a kingdom that had once belonged to her.
She wandered from town to town, skittish of people, a creature whose shadow they saw only by moonlight. She ate what she could get- leftovers from someone else's tin can, rotten fruit, raw animal flesh.
Six months after that night in the rain, the night she and Mason were separated, she tasted human blood for the first time.
She'd found a little liquor store in a strip mall, not far from an abandoned prison. Well, not abandoned. Dead ones roamed the yard in blue jumpsuits, forever incarcerated. There was no way anyone was getting inside, not least without a shit ton of effort. She decided to avoid it. Besides, a liquor store was better.
She made a beeline for the Grey Goose, stuffing a large bottle in her bag and then hiding the rest behind some cheap tequila. She planned on getting absolutely shitfaced. It had been a while, though she'd craved it every night, the fluid forgetting. She'd just been so intent on surviving that she couldn't afford it. Tonight, however, she was full-fed, close to a stream if she needed water, and far enough away from people that she could set up a few traps and not worry about it.
At least, that was her thinking before she heard the shriek.
The sound was both animal and human, and it brought her surging to her feet, clutching the bottle as a makeshift weapon. It hadn't come from far off. Whatever had made the sound might not have been human, but she sure whatever caused it was. Alive or dead, it didn't really matter, but she couldn't stay. She gathered her supplies and raced out of the store, vowing to return as soon as possible.
They were there in the middle of the road, silhouettes writhing under the full moon. The man was lank and scraggly, dressed in a patchwork of filthy clothes. The girl couldn't have been older than six and looked just as ragged. The man held her by her arms but the girl but up a hell of a fight, screeching and kicking her legs, shaking her head like a rabid dog.
Gina froze. Every instinct screamed to run, that the girl needed to learn to fend for herself. That was the world now. The weak died out.
"Come on, sweetheart," the man grunted. His voice was greasy. The voice of a cockroach. "Be a good girl now."
The girl threw her head back and spat in his face.
The man bared his teeth in a hideous grin. "Yeah, fight me, bitch. I like that."
Gina took off at a sprint. The man didn't see her coming until it was too late. She barreled into him without hesitation, knocking him on his ass, and the girl went tumbling.
"What the fuck?"
His hands reached for her throat, but the fury was on her. She slammed his arms away and grabbed his throat instead, squeezing tight enough that her ragged nails pierced his flesh. Panic made his eyes bulge. His fists beat at her, catching her hard in her ribs, her shoulders. It took several of these before he finally managed a swinging blow to her temple.
She felt it, but separately. Like the part of her that held pain receptors had detached from the rest of her. Mostly it was the impact that sent her flying, the sheer frenzied force behind it. She rolled across the pavement, scraping open her skin. All the while, her eyes wide, taking in the whirl of inky trees and stars paled by the moon.
She lay there for a moment, dazed. The girl crouched on all fours at the edge of the road, her hair hanging like a dark curtain in front of her face. The man lurched toward her, streamers of blood trailing down his neck.
"Get over here now, or I will cut that pretty head right off your shoulders."
The girl didn't respond, just glared at him with eyes like onyx. She didn't flinch when he stepped closer, but her gaze glinted briefly at Gina and the violence in them was clear.
When he lunged for her, she didn't flee. She jumped right into his arms, snarling and clawing at his face. But though she had successfully taken him by surprise, Gina knew all too well that he was too strong for the girl to take on for long. Already the man was seizing her wrists. A moment later, he cracked his head against hers.
Silently, Gina gathered her feet under her and ran- all fours, like a wolf- until she skidded into the man. He stumbled forward. Before he could recover, she grabbed his right leg and sank her teeth into his Achilles.
Blood filled her mouth. The man screamed and tried to rip away but she held on tight, wrapping her arms around both legs to snare him. Flesh tore with a thick ripping sound. She felt the hardness of the tendon between her teeth and chewed.
Eventually she let go, shoving him away. He fell immediately to his knees, wailing with agony. Spurts of red shot from the wound like a perverse fountain.
Gina grabbed him by his mangy hair and slammed his face into the pavement, over and over and over, until it was no longer recognizable as human. Until it looked exactly as ugly as he really was.
When she finally looked up, breathing heavily, spattered with blood, her eyes fell on the girl. Sprawled at the edge of the road, she looked unbelievably small, the fire and spite stripped from her tiny frame.
Gina almost considered leaving her there. The man was dead. The girl wasn't. She was strong enough to recover, and wild enough to keep going. That's what Gina had been forced to do.
But...she was so small...
And for the first time in a long time, Gina felt a kinship with the girl. An understanding.
The world had tremendous teeth. But no one ever seemed to realize that you could bite back.
She picked the girl up- god, she weighed next to nothing- and carried her into the woods.
~m~
The girl slept all night so Gina kept watch, stoking a small fire. It was really no more than embers, just enough to cast a tiny circle of light, but she couldn't risk more than that.
Slowly the forest molted out of its night shadows and into the murky gray of early dawn. Gina sniffed absently at the vodka bottle, letting it burn at the back of her throat. Soon, she thought.
Out of nowhere, something rammed into her from the side, shrieking like an enraged cat.
Though the girl couldn't have weighed more than thirty pounds, she still managed to bowl Gina over. Her nails cut deep, dragging again and again down Gina's face.
"Get off me!" Gina snarled. She could have easily dispatched the girl, but something in her kept her from doing so.
The girl continued clawing at her skin. Blood welled. A bead of it dripped into Gina's eye. With a furious roar, she snatched the girl's arms and shoved her away. The girl tumbled to the ground and sat there, glaring resentfully.
Gina rubbed the blood from her face. "You little shi-"
The girl lunged again, headbutting Gina in the stomach. Little fists pummeled her. One of them caught her sharply in the liver.
Shaking with rage, Gina grabbed her by the throat and slammed her into the ground. The girl kicked and struggled, tried to pry Gina's hand away. And all the while, the malice never left her eyes.
"Listen up, you runty bitch. Don't piss me off and I won't kill you."
The girl jerked, trying to sink her teeth into one of her fingers.
"Hey!"
Gina flattened the girl into the leaf litter, only barely suppressing the urge to throttle her. She leaned down until they were nose to nose.
"I am alpha here!"
The girl fell still. Her unnerving, sooty eyes seared through Gina's, but she said nothing. And there, there was that understanding again, that primal darkness like an echoing cave.
She waited until she was sure the girl wouldn't launch another attack and then released her. The girl scrambled into a crouch, watching without blinking as Gina returned to the fire. There was a long silence, broken only by the snap of the fire.
"You got a name?" Gina finally said.
The girl remained silent. Gina began to wonder if she was mute.
"I'm tempted just to call you Little Shit. Names are bullshit unless they represent you."
She thought for a moment and then smiled a bit.
"I'm gonna call you Feral. You like it? Don't say anything if you think it's a good name."
Of course Feral said nothing. Gina sat back, looking pleased with herself.
"My name's Gina, but I fucking hate that name. It's short for Regina but I hate that even more. It was my mom's name. Dumb floozy bitch... It fit her though. I mean, when you picture some drunk, white suburban mom siphoning booze at ten in the morning, don't you automatically think some name like Karen or Debbie? Ugh. Regina."
She paused, raising an eyebrow at the bottle in her hand.
"Guess I couldn't help inheriting some things from her though, eh?"
God, she wanted a drink.
"I did everything I could to live down that name. My full name was Regina Margaret Stanton the Third. Fucking puke, right? And like...okay, so my mom made my dad dye his hair because it was 'too ginger'. Like, what the fuck? I never understood as a kid why she had everyone convinced I was blonde, too. I just thought it was one long game of make believe or some shit. When I got a little older, though, I figured it out and started refusing. Left my hair as it was like a big, frizzy red fuck you. God, she hated me for that.
"That was part of why I loved Mason so much. She saw me as I was. She never expected anything more or less."
Briefly, very briefly, a real smile touched her face.
"Mother Dearest, of course, loathed Mason, which was another reason I loved her. It was partly because Mason came from poverty, but it was also because she was so much better than my mom. Like she actually gave a shit about things that mattered, and couldn't have cared less about our great Stanton legacy. You know, she cried when my chinchilla died? I didn't even cry. She just cared. I didn't think people really did that."
She laughed a little, a short, bitter sound. "That sounds really pathetic, doesn't it? 'Oh, boohoo, all of the people I ever interacted with for thirteen years were vain elitists.' Could've been worse. The first person who ever kissed me was this white supremacist asshole twice my age. He was twenty-two and I was eleven but yeah, it totally could have been worse. Mom got me drunk at a party that same year so I would flirt more, so all the men could see me and think, 'What a fine specimen, look at her lineage, I'll have to breed her with my boy.' But yeah it could've been worse. She could've just slapped some makeup on me and put me out on the street corner. It could've been worse. I should consider myself lucky!"
She didn't realize how hysterical she'd gotten until she was screaming. She sat hugging her arms over her chest, clawing notches into her skin, while the echo of her voice rolled away through the trees. Feral watched her without speaking, wary and wild. Though she'd already told herself not to, Gina opened the bottle of Grey Goose and drank deep. It seared her throat like acid. She wished it would eat her alive.
After several more sips, she shook her head. "Why the fuck am I even saying this shit? You're a goddamn kid. Besides, it doesn't matter. This is a new world, right? New life."
~m~
They stuck around the liquor store for a few weeks, Gina leading the way from campsite to campsite in a drunken stupor and Feral trailing after her. Gina was willing to babble about anything under the sun, so long as it didn't matter, and Feral was willing to listen, so long as she didn't have to reply.
There was nothing cuddly about the girl, but Gina liked that. She didn't think she could stand the little brat if she were like most kids. Fucking clingers, the lot of them.
Inevitably the night came when she was more hungover than drunk. She made a half-assed fire and collapsed next to it. Her emotions roiled with her stomach.
"God fucking dammit, why do I do this shit?" she groaned.
Feral regarded her curiously, using a stick to roll an ember back and forth along the ground.
"You'd think I'd try to stay away from booze because of my mother and all that... But fuck me, alcoholism runs in my family. You know, I'm the one that started Mason drinking. She'd never tasted liquor until I came around. Her mom didn't keep it in the house, something about her dad...? I don't know. I'm fuzzy on the details. Mason never really liked to talk about him anyway.
"Me and her met in ninth grade after I successfully got myself kicked out of private school. She was so awkward and timid. Always kept to her books and her goddamn iPod. But I corrupted her."
She said this last with a triumphant grin. Her teeth glinted wolfishly.
"We snuck out a lot. The first night we ever did I brought a bottle of whiskey and by morning she was puking in the gutter. I taught her how to stand up for herself, how to fight. She always had that spark in her but she kept it muzzled. She was tormented by this...insecurity. Like she deserved the abuse."
Please, Gina. I'm sorry. I can do better.
Gina shut her eyes, digging her nails into the skin of her thigh. "Her dad left when she was young, I know that. Apparently he didn't want a daughter. Something like that, I don't know. So I think that fucked her up quite a bit. She didn't think she was good enough for anyone."
You're all I have and I can't even rely on you.
She barked out a laugh. "I should've gone into psychology. I wanted to, isn't that funny?"
But not to help people. No, it was easier manipulating them.
"I wouldn't have made a good therapist, though. People's problems, their weaknesses...they just disgust me. It pisses me off just thinking about it, even my own. Get over it or kill yourself, you know?"
You should do it, Mason. You deserve it.
"Anyway... The first time Mason and I fucked- oh, excuse me. Made love. That's what she called it. The first time we made love, we did it in the woods by this creek, and when we walked home that night we kept getting all these weird looks because we were covered in mud and sand and trash. But Mason didn't care. She just laughed and held my hand and..."
She paused, swallowing around the sudden lump in her throat.
I love you, too, Mason... You're the only one who can hurt me.
"But none of that shit matters now," she growled. "We...Mason's not around anymore. I don't know what the fuck happened to her but that doesn't matter either. Survive or don't, right? If she couldn't make it, that's her problem. Hey, you know what, kid, I really need some sleep. Kick me if there's an ambush or, like, a bigfoot or something."
Feral didn't say anything but she perked up, eyes darting about as Gina curled up next to the fire. The world spun in nauseating circles but sleep came anyway.
~m~
Gina slams the door behind her and shoves Mason onto the bed. Mason blinks at her. Desperation. Despair. Her expression makes Gina horny but she refuses to fuck. There is too much anger in her, too much hatred.
"Please don't be mad at me, Gina," she pleads. Her words are slurred. Drunk.
Gina holds the bottle out to Mason, commanding her to drink with her eyes. Mason obeys, all her movements jagged, sloppy.
"I told you to be there," Gina growls. "I told you I needed you."
The party had been full of Mommy's old college friends, sorority pledges, Ivy League douchebags. Without Mason there as a buffer, as a middle finger to the boys who only wanted her because she came from money, she'd nearly gone apeshit. She'd nearly burned the goddamn place down.
"I know, I'm sorry. But my mom...she...my dad I guess showed up at her work today and, like...when she came home she was literally in tears and I had to stay. I've never seen her like that, Gina."
Fury boils in Gina's stomach. She wants to slap the pathetic look right off Mason's face, but she doesn't. Because manipulation is a subtle art.
So instead she sprawls next to Mason, arranging her expression into one of hurt. "I needed you, Mason. You're my girlfriend."
Tears well in Mason's eyes. "Please, Gina. I'm sorry. I can do better."
"You're all I have and I can't even rely on you."
"No, you can. You can. Please."
Gina blinks wide, anguished eyes. "How do I know that? Mason, do you know why my mom wanted me at this party? To use me. As bait. You're the only real person I have, but..."
Mason grabs Gina's hand. In her other hand she grips the liquor bottle, tight enough that the tendon in her wrist stands out.
"Gina, I am so, so sorry. I really didn't mean to leave you. I love you so much."
Gina tips the bottle toward Mason's mouth until she drinks. She lets a few well-timed tears trickle down her cheeks, and she hates each one but the pain on Mason's face is worth it.
"I love you, too, Mason. That's why I'm so hurt right now. You're the only one who can hurt me."
She watches Mason drink until she is no longer coherent, watches the anxiety, the darkness, build in her like storm clouds.
It is therapeutic to spread such pain. A release from her own darkness.
Gina drinks, too, until the room whirls. She is so powerful, so triumphant.
At some point, she does not remember when or how, she ends up with a knife from the kitchen. Mason is slurring tearfully that all she ever brings is pain. Her father left her mother because she was born. Her mother is alone because of her.
Gina hands her the knife.
"You should do it, Mason. You deserve it."
The cut on her thigh is the longest. It will scar the deepest.
Afterward, Gina cups Mason's glistening face and smiles. "You do deserve it. But you can be better. I can make you better."
~m~
Gina shuddered out of sleep with a strangled sob. She clutched at her arms, dragged her nails down her skin until she was sure was awake, sure she was real.
It was still dark. The fire was down to embers, but they shed enough light to contour Feral's face in moody red. The girl stared warily as Gina struggled to catch her breath.
Some of the details had been skewered clumsily together, dream-jarring, but they hadn't been a lie. She remembered that night. She really had guilted Mason into getting shitfaced. Finessed her into self-harm. Because she could. Because she was full of pain, because that was all she was, at her most basic, and she hated it all, she hated everything...
"Survive or don't," she whispered to herself, because there was nothing else. Nothing else to consume now except the most primal ammunition.
"Alpha."
At first, she didn't register that the girl had spoken. She was just so used to her not speaking that at first she assumed it was a voice in her head.
But Feral stared her down with a look that was half-challenge, half-reverence.
"What?" Gina croaked.
Feral pointed at her and repeated, "Alpha."
I am alpha here.
Slowly, the hysteria subsided. She blinked down at her arms, where she'd drawn her own blood.
She thought of the cut on Mason's leg and curled her lip in disgust.
"That's right, kid," she said. "I am Alpha."
~m~
For months, they traveled in circles around the place where they'd met, returning occasionally to the liquor store at Gina's insistence. Feral remained almost entirely mute, choosing to speak only when a real need arose. But Gina didn't give a shit. The girl was good company, though she never lost her cool vigilance, nor the sudden, savage bursts that would suddenly take hold of her.
The day they came back around the prison was the day Gina realized it had been a year and a half. A year and a half since that night in the rain, her brutal rebirth. She was subdued all day, enough that Feral expressed concern in the only way she knew how- by catching a rabbit with her bare hands and offering the bleeding flesh as a gift.
"Thanks, kid, but I think today I'll just stick to casual starvation," she said.
Feral eyed her curiously for a moment, but when Gina made no move to take the rabbit she tucked into it herself. She was a bloody mess by the time they reached the prison fence.
Gina paused, struck by the sight of the empty yard. Well, not empty. There were cars, and a gate made from some kind of salvaged metal, and a garden.
A garden.
There were people there.
She leaned forward breathlessly, looping her fingers through the chain link. Someone had actually managed to clear the cold bodies. It must have been a big operation. They must have been absolute warriors.
Feral grasped the fence, too, but her eyes were on Gina, scrutinizing the play of emotions on her face.
"I just wanna see who's in there," Gina said. "To see if we need to scram."
Or to see what she would have to do to take what they had.
They lurked outside for hours, examining the fence for weaknesses, keeping to the trees so no one could spot them. She watched a young Asian guy trade places with a short-haired woman in one of the watchtowers. She watched a fierce-looking woman with dreads ride out on a horse, a sword strapped to her back. She watched a white-haired man limp out to the garden, trailed by a flint-eyed man and a boy who resembled him too closely to be anything other than his son. Others worked in the courtyard, building things, cooking things.
Living.
A surge of jealousy overwhelmed her. Why should these people, most of which did not look very impressive at all, get to exist in such an ideal place?
As she was thinking this, a figure stepped out of the prison. And her heart stopped.
No.
It wasn't her. It wasn't.
Except it was.
"Mason..." she breathed.
She watched as Mason crossed the prison yard, a fire poker strapped to her back. Gina's fire poker. She made her way over to a pretty blonde girl that Gina had dismissed earlier as walker chow. The smile on her face seared a hole through Gina's chest.
She watched, stricken, burning, as Mason wrapped her arms around the blonde girl and kissed her.
A moment later she was running, racing through the trees to put as much distance as she could between herself and that prison. She was only distantly aware that Feral kept up surprisingly well, bounding, as she sometimes did, on all fours.
When she finally collapsed, she could barely feel her own body. It wasn't numbness that had a hold of her, it was agony. It was a cataclysm upending her atoms.
"She's alive," she gasped.
She was alive.
Living.
Planting gardens.
Kissing other girls.
Like Gina had never existed.
The pain cut rivers through her, but as she crouched there, shuddering, it began to solidify into something else. Something beyond rage. Something like vengeance, but with sharper teeth.
"That bitch," she hissed.
She would make her pay. She would make her suffer. She would carve her into new shapes until she knew, until she truly understood, what it was to bleed.
~m~
Weeks turned into months while they watched the prison, kept tabs on everyone there, learned all they could. There were somewhere around thirty people in their group, and some of them were indeed fighters but most of them, Gina thought, had only made it this far through luck.
She was constantly scheming, trying to think of ways to take the prison, to kill Mason's people and leave her to rot. But the simple fact of the matter- a fact that she only grudgingly conceded- was that she was just one person. Feral was Feral, and she was as angry at the world as Gina was herself, but she was a child. Short of a miracle, there was no way they were getting in that prison without help.
The night she accepted this was the same night she met Beta, and afterward she could not help but believe that by some divine right, some cosmic justice, she would bring those people to their knees.
~m~
"What's your name?"
"My given name was Owen. But now I think it's time for a different title."
"That's funny. I was thinking the same."
A flash of movement and there she was with a shard of glass at his throat.
"I really don't have any reason not to scrape the skin from your bones. Maybe you should get to work convincing me otherwise."
"Because this skin hides what I truly am. It allows me to move through a world that is unprepared for me."
"And what are you, truly?"
"An apex predator."
Her eyes glinted, moonlight off the edge of a knife.
"Me, too."
~m~
He hadn't come to Georgia alone but those that had accompanied him were already dead. Three men and two women, all too weak to survive.
"But there are more of us," he told her. "Back home, in Virginia."
"So why come here?"
"To take things," he answered simply. "We move around a lot, but we always come home. In the end."
And that was that. A day-long campaign and she would have her means to revenge.
Scoring the gasoline for the journey was surprisingly easy- Owen's expertise in the matter was impeccably ruthless- and in no time they were on the road. Feral entertained herself in the backseat, tearing holes in the upholstery with the pocketknife Gina had given her. Gina herself sat up front with Owen, fishing casually for hints of who he'd been before. But he was as guarded as she was, and they danced around their answers without ever really learning anything.
Halfway there, he heard Feral call her Alpha and immediately adopted it as her new title. And she felt it settle into place then, this new self that she'd become.
~m~
The Wolves, as she took to calling them, were easy enough to convince. A place with walls, food, people to brutalize. It was seduction. The only rub, she explained, was that the prison pack had firepower, a lot of it from what she could tell.
"We might be able to take them if this were the only issue, but with their walls and precautionary measures I think it would be smarter to go in with our own munitions," she said.
They all looked to Owen- Beta, as she thought of him- for confirmation. This didn't concern her. Manipulation was her art form. It seemed only fitting that she accept a role as chief in the shadows, the clandestine puppet master.
"We will take a few days to scout out everything we need," he said, and a whisper of anticipation rippled through the pack. Not all of them would survive, she knew, but the payout would outweigh the loss.
She and Feral split from the pack soon after, eager to get started.
"We're looking for guns," Gina told her. "If you see anyone with a gun, don't attack. Find me first. I don't have the time to pick shrapnel out of your dumb ass."
Feral loped away with a resentful sniff.
Not thirty minutes later, she heard the screech. Gina darted for the sound, drawing a machete from her belt.
She found Feral hanging upside down from a tree, a bright yellow rope noosed around her ankle. The girl thrashed and swiped at the trap, screaming her incoherent fury.
"Hey!" Gina barked, rushing forward to clap a hand over Feral's mouth. "Shut the fuck up."
The girl bit her palm.
Gina snarled and yanked her hand away. "I should let you hang, you little shit."
But she swung her machete anyway, snapping the rope from the branch it was tied to. Feral tumbled to the ground, still twitching with agitation.
"What the fuck is this shit?"
Gina and Feral whipped around as a man loomed out of the trees. Immediately she raised her weapon.
"I wouldn't do that, ginger snap."
The voice came from behind her, a lanky man with a dark mustache and a handgun aimed at her forehead. There were others, too, she realized, surrounding them. Fifteen or more, it looked like. She gritted her teeth. Little bitch had drawn her right into a trap.
The man who had spoken first strolled toward her. His face was quirked in a smile that made her think he never felt anything but confident. Over one shoulder was draped a baseball bat, one wrapped in barbed wire. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of it.
"Well, lookit what sweet lady Fate has set on our plate," he said. "Cherry cordial and a little bite of whiskey. I'll be god-fucking-damned."
He stopped less than a foot from Gina, who refused to move or show any sign of weakness. Feral lurked at her side, growling quietly.
"And who might you be, Raggedy Ann?" he asked. His voice was dark and smoky, and in it she heard all the promise of violence.
She fixed her jaw, glaring directly into his eyes.
He chuckled. "Someone's forgotten how common decency works. Well, my name's Negan. And you are...?"
Still she remained steadfastly silent.
"See, I don't think you realize how disrespectful you seem right now, so I will give you the benefit of the doubt." He leaned closer, and the smell of cologne startled her. Who the fuck wore cologne these days? "But I do not tolerate disrespect. It's one of my pet peeves. Now. You tell me your name, or Lucille here will be making introductions with this demon spawn."
He lowered the bat until he could touch it to Feral's cheek. Gina stiffened.
"Alpha," she growled.
"I'm sorry, Alpha? You're yanking my chain, matchstick."
"You asked and I told you. My parents did a lot of drugs. Think they were loaded when they named me."
"You don't say."
His eyes glittered. It was obvious he didn't believe her, but he moved the bat from Feral's face.
"Well, ain't that just a kick in the nutsack," he said. "How about your friend here? Her parents loaded, too?"
"I don't know what her real name is, she never told me. I call her Feral."
"With jacked up names like that, you two must make quite a pair."
He examined them for a moment, and something in his face made Gina want to run. All the men around them- and they were all men, she realized with cold dread- watched with dead expressions.
"Come back to our not-so-humble abode," Negan said. "Let's see what kind of pair you really are."
"Thank you, Negan," Gina said coolly. "But we have other places-"
"I'm sorry. I guess I should have made myself clearer." He tossed the bat in his hand, adept and casual. "Come with us, or I will fucking kill you."
Her blood burned. She wanted so badly to cut the prick's face open, to carve him like a goddamn jack-o-lantern, but one glance at Feral and she knew she couldn't.
I never should have taken you with me, she thought. I should've left you in Georgia.
"Well I'm glad you cleared that up," she said. "Under the circumstances, I would be delighted to see where it is you fine gentlemen call home."
Negan grinned. "'Atta girl."
~m~
The week she spent at the Saviors' compound was illuminating to say the least. It wasn't because they had kitchens brimming with food, or sheds bristling with weaponry. It wasn't that there were so many of them, men and women, all of them well-fed and capable.
It was the power. Negan wasn't leading a group, he was fostering an empire. There were prisoners. There were so many guns it made her dizzy.
And it was the guns that convinced her to play the game. To befriend him as a fellow apex predator.
By the end of the week, they'd hammered out the details of their agreement.
In exchange for weapons with which to take down the prison, she would return to act as a liquidator until he felt she paid off her debt.
"Feral will stay here with me, as insurance," he'd added. "I have plenty of guns. What I'm loaning you isn't even a drop in the bucket. It's the principle of the matter, you dig it? So if you decide you want to welsh on our deal, it really won't be me who loses anything. But I will bash her skull in like your granny's finest china."
It killed her that this bothered her. She never should've let herself get attached.
You're not, she thought. It's the principle of the matter.
She was a fine liar, just not to herself.
~m~
The firefight was impressive. The prison pack put up a good fight, she had to give them that, but Eye Patch Dude had too much artillery. Heavy artillery. As in a fucking tank. She had no idea who he was or what his beef had been with Mason's people, but it must've been good.
The Wolves were upset by the loss of the prison, but with the fences down there was nothing they could do. Drawn by the din of battle, the dead invaded quickly, scattering the survivors.
Mason got out, with that blonde bitch and the guy with the crossbow. Gina followed them for three days until they were separated by a herd of walkers.
She watched from the shelter of the forest as Mason returned, haggard and broken, to the prison yard. Even from a distance, her agony was obvious. Luminous.
Good.
But despite this victory, there were still so many fine lines to tread.
That night, Beta convinced a small group of Wolves to stay behind with him and Gina while the others returned home. They left the guns behind, a contingency that none of them would ever realize was Gina's. Beta was the only one who knew, of her time spent with Negan and the deal she'd scratched out with him.
"I want what he has," she told him. "If you'd seen it, you would, too. We can dismantle his empire when the time is right, but until then the others can't know."
Frustrated by the loss of the prison, it was too easy to picture them jumping in half-cocked, hungry for blood they'd been delayed in spilling. Without the proper planning, Gina knew exactly how it would end.
Luckily Beta wasn't an idiot. He knew how to play the game.
They allowed themselves enough time to keep tabs on the survivors, to watch in disbelief as they reunited, as if some hand of fate were guiding them back together. They watched the group scramble to rescue Mason's girl from the hospital in Atlanta.
They were there when the archer carried her bleeding body out. They were there to watch them bury her.
Only that night did they call an end to it. Though Gina wished to stay, to bear witness to the utter grief that Mason had become, she knew she had to return to Negan.
When they were far enough away from the prison pack that the sound wouldn't reach them, they shot each of the other Wolves in the head.
She left it up to Beta to decide what to tell the pack when they returned to Virginia. He certainly couldn't tell them the truth, the real reason he would be returning alone and weaponless.
Among other things, Negan would want his guns back.
~m~
"That is fucking hilarious."
Gina glared across the desk at Negan. "Side-splitting."
"Oh, lose the sour mug, cherry bomb. Sounds like these people drew the short dick."
"Don't you mean stick?"
"I think dick is probably worse. Anyway, isn't that what you wanted?"
"Dick? Sorry. Carpet-muncher."
Negan grinned. "I'm gonna need those guns back by the way."
"And I'm gonna need my demon back," Gina replied. "Your guns are out in the trunk of my car. Where's Feral?"
His eyes glittered. "Oh, you are gonna love this. Feral! Why don't you come out, princess."
A door behind him opened, and out stepped Feral. The cloud of filth that usually enveloped her was gone. She was dressed all in black- her dress, her boots, her scarf, her little leather jacket. Her wild hair had been tamed into a ponytail. She looked like a miniature assassin.
"You gave her a makeover?" Gina said flatly.
"I did more than that. I offered her a job."
"What the fuck kind of job could you offer a six year old?"
"Seven."
Gina glanced sharply at Feral, whose face was dark with dislike.
"Birthday was last month."
"Oh. Well, why didn't you say anything, kid? Woulda stuck a couple candles in some raw squirrel flesh."
"I don't think you recognize, copper head, what a gold mine this kid is," Negan said. "This girl is ruthless."
Something about his voice set her on edge. She narrowed her eyes.
"Yeah. But she's a kid."
"Exactly."
~m~
From the trees, Feral looked exactly the part she was cast to play. She was artfully belied for the role- ragged pink dress, bare feet, smudged with blood they'd robbed from a cold body. Crouched in the middle of the road, she almost had Gina convinced that she was as helpless as she appeared.
They didn't have to wait long. Negan had said this was a place his mark frequented often, and indeed twenty minutes after arriving they saw the man coming down the highway.
Feral started crying, pathetic little whimpers that sent an unexpected pang through Gina's chest.
The man paused when he spotted the girl. He drew his gun and approached cautiously, but when Feral turned her tear-stained face to him he stopped again.
"Hey, there," he said.
Feral flinched like she meant to flee.
"No, no, it's okay," he said gently. "I don't wanna hurt you. It's okay."
Slowly he advanced. After a moment, Feral sniffled pitifully and held her arms out to him.
Immediately he hung the strap of his gun over one shoulder and swept her into his arms. "It's okay, honey, it's okay."
Soothingly he stroked her hair. Feral played him like a fiddle a few seconds more, burying her face in his chest.
Gina saw the knife flash as Feral swung it around and drove it deep into the man's back. The hit was wickedly precise, snapping the gun strap and allowing the weapon to clatter to the ground. The man cried out and dropped Feral. She landed on all fours, swiped the gun and fired a few clumsy shots into his legs.
The kickback was enough to send her to her ass but the man fell, too, clutching at his bleeding legs. Negan emerged from their hiding place, chuckling. Numbly Gina followed.
"Thank you, Feral," he said, taking the gun from her. Reverently she blinked up at him and Gina flinched, stung.
The man trembled as Negan approached, fear and pain and anger muddying his expression.
"You...you son of a bitch-"
Negan held up a quelling finger. "Go ahead and cry if you want, but don't shit your shorts. I want them, and when I'm done with you, you're going to hand them over. Nicely. With an apology for the name-calling."
He slammed the butt of the gun into the man's temple. Then he leaned back in this way he had, like he thought something was particularly funny.
"You see it now, don't you, Red? People will give up anything for a kid in need, including their better judgment. Now help me get this pussy in the car."
~m~
She tried to make a case for Feral's safety. Putting her out as bait for strangers was as bad as feeding her to the cold bodies. But Negan had belittled her concern.
"Relax your tits, cinnamon. Someone'll be right there with her the whole time. I ain't letting anything bad happen to my cold-blooded princess."
And so bitterly it dawned on her that she was trapped. Even without needing to pay off the guns, he still had her. Feral was the only thing she felt attached to in the world anymore, the only living, breathing thing that had any meaning.
She was careful to keep the Wolves and the Saviors separate. She lied to Negan about how many there were because the less he knew, the better. It didn't stop her from enlisting their help in whatever errands he had her running that day.
Weeks passed in this manner, her resentment mounting. Each day, Feral grew more and more attached to Negan, following him around like a puppy in that goddamn all-black outfit. By the third week, Gina could no longer reach her.
The night Beta informed her of Alexandria, she took out her emotions on an unfortunate woman who happened to cross her path, severing each limb before finally killing her.
Then one day, Negan's wing man, Simon, invited her on a run. She might not have agreed except that it was another one of Feral's gigs, and she couldn't help hoping that she might be able to sway the girl back to her side.
The mission was standard. Deck Feral out in tattered clothes, make her look as frightened and helpless as possible, and wait for the fish to bite. They made their play in the woods that day, not far from a small camp that Simon claimed their targets inhabited.
It took about an hour of waiting before anyone wandered over, a teenage girl with a scar across her face.
She halted when Feral started crying. There was something blank about her expression, something carefully composed...
It was the face of a liar, Gina realized.
In the same moment, something cold pressed against the back of her neck.
"On your knees, bitch."
Suddenly Scar-face wasn't alone. Two men rushed out of the trees to flank her, one of them seizing Feral by the arm. Immediately she started struggling, whipping around to sink her teeth into the man's hand, but the other man was there to restrain her.
A trap, she thought dizzily. The people had known they were coming and had played them perfectly. A man held a gun to her head and another held a gun to Simon's, and they had Feral, they had Feral just like she'd goddamn predicted...
"I said on your knees."
Burning with rage, she obeyed.
Suddenly a flash caught her eye.
Feral had managed to rip her arms free and in her hand was the knife, the pocketknife from Gina. Quick as lightning, the girl slashed Scar-face's throat.
"NO!"
The man who screamed kicked Feral in the stomach, and while she lay curled in pain snatched the knife from her.
"You little bitch!"
The other man lifted her by her arms. The man with the knife grabbed her by the hair, exposing her throat.
She started struggling then, the whites of her eyes like bones against the grime.
She stretched her arms desperately in Gina's direction and Gina jerked forward with the same anguish.
"Gina!"
But the wail cut off with a gurgle, and suddenly there was red weeping from Feral's neck, and suddenly red was all Gina could see.
A scream ripped from her chest, but there was nothing human about it. She whipped her head back into the groin of the man behind her and the gun went off, catching the murderer in the shoulder. She was distantly aware that Simon had taken his opportunity to break free as well but it didn't matter.
Feral was gone.
And the only thing left to tether her to the Earth was vengeance.
The world blurred. Later she would remember only vague impressions of breaking bones, of frothing at the mouth, of blood filling the air like mist. In that moment, one thought drowned out the rest, dominated it all.
I am Alpha.
I am Alpha.
I am Alpha.
She was nothing more, and nothing less.
~m~
Now here she sat, at the edge of the grave where Feral had given her flesh to the soil.
She had a new face. The Chemist- Eugene- had burned her old one.
Negan hadn't seen her in many passes of the moon, something like five months. He probably thought her dead. That was good.
After Feral, she had returned to him, cradling the girl's tiny body to her chest.
She had knelt there at his feet, dripping red from head to toe, and faked her sincerity flawlessly when she told him that she wanted to go on serving him.
"I have nothing left," she'd said.
And he'd replied, "No. There is always more."
There was. She'd known it then but she hadn't said so.
Never again would she give him a piece of her. Never again would she give a piece of herself to anyone. Gina was dead. She had either been a lie or the truth, but it no longer mattered.
She was Alpha now. She was fire, moonlight, wolf's teeth.
Soon, she knew, the Alexandrians would cross paths with the Saviors. They were strong enough now that they probably thought they could put up a fight.
She supposed she was counting on that.
NOTE: Okay, so, this chapter I think was a bit different from previous chapters in that there was an element of kind of gritty intrigue to it (or something lol). Hopefully it wasn't too much, there was just so much I needed to fit in that I felt so scattered writing it. Anyway, next chapter I will return to our family in Alexandria, and it will likely be a lot lighter to counterbalance this grim fuckery lol. Until then, much love.