Thank you for the patience leading up to the big reunion!
History repeating.
Meet people - they die. Meet people - they turn.
Negan's life had become a constant revolving door of death that he was starting to think there was something wrong with all the remaining survivors. How did he continually find a way to survive through them mess when everyone around him fell weakly at the hands of the undead?
He hated them for it. Negan hated them for dying again and again.
An aging couple had taken him in only to be swiftly devoured within days. Another group he found sitting around a fire with and just as soon as he'd learned their names they were gone. It made him resent the human race for their lame attempts at existing in a world so savage. On the same note it made him wonder just how inhumane he had to be to thrive in the way he had thus far.
Maybe there's something wrong with me, he thought.
Negan went over in his mind about his latest interaction with people. It was terrible, he knew, the way he had ended things with the dying woman where he parted ways with her in the Wal-Mart parking lot. He had heard about the fever after the bite that eventually led to the eternal damnation of walking around mindless and blood-thirsty. Ultimately, Negan knew her slow deterioration from the bite on her neck would be unpleasant and painful.
She hadn't realized she had been bit. Their group had been swarmed and like always he fought his way out, using his new favorite undead killer in the form of the wooden baseball bat he'd picked up from his first group of drifters. It was when the smoke cleared and the dust settled that his short-term female companion drew her hand from her neck, calling out his name as blood ran down her palm.
"I didn't know," she claimed, revealing the deadly bite. "I didn't feel it. It happened so fast-"
"Fuck you." Negan was cold; angry. Another one had lost the battle of survival. The fact that people were stripped from the world so easily and rapidly made his desire to form relationships diminish by the hour.
A look of horror filled the woman's face - more horror than when she came to the realization that she'd been handed the deadly bite from their attackers. "What?" She stared at him in disbelief and Negan couldn't help it. He knew was cold; new he was heartless but even for him he'd hit a new low of portraying that he didn't care.
"You're bit!" He screamed in the woman's face, "Go fucking fuck yourself! I'm sick to death of this shit! You let your fucking father die. You let your brother die! And for all that shit you get to fucking die!" Negan huffed a breath, "I'm sick of people. You're all fucking weak. All you ever do is fucking die!"
He'd stormed away after that leaving his traveling companion crying and alone; alone to die in the world that had consumed her.
Negan knew it was an asshole move to say the least but he couldn't contain his rage. The constant feeling of the rug being pulled from beneath his feet just when he'd begun to form some of type of comradery with others felt like a giant joke that the universal was playing on him. That's why when he met Dwight and his group he was cold, demanding not to know the names of his companions he told him not to bother introducing anyone formally.
"If they make it more than a few days I'll learn their fuckin' names," Negan had told him with an emotionless sincerity.
"He's a friendly one," Dwight's wife had commented early on as they stood entwined with one another upon bringing Negan back to the camp.
"He looked lonely. I felt bad for the guy," Dwight informed her.
The camp the group had created was the steadiest one that Negan had come across on his travels, and so almost immediately he attempted to lighten up a bit despite his instincts to maintain a rough exterior.
"I appreciate it," he told the woman, "You guys taking me in."
"Don't sweat it." She gave a smile, "And we've all had people die on us out here so I understand. But, I'm Sherry. Try not to forget it."
Negan nodded and it was then he decided to give their lifestyle a fair chance. They were staying comfortably in a broken-down hotel where he managed a shower and a shave for the first time in weeks. The group provided him stability and a sense of rejuvenation. He began to bond with Dwight, Sherry and the others and established himself within the small assembly of people. They had weapons of all kinds, food and shelter.
It was when the hotel was overrun with a herd of dead ones that the group finally felt the wind taken out of its sails. Negan, himself, had barely made it out alive but their unit made it out in tact and without casualties. On the same note the men and women were left with nothing; nothing but the road and uncertainties that went with it. Their security blanket was gone, leaving everyone's weaknesses out on the table as they stared helplessly at one another.
"What do we do?" one of them asked.
"There's nothing we can do," another responded in a state of utter despair.
The morality of the pack was down. People were questioning one another - questioning their own will to live.
Over a building? Negan thought. He wouldn't allow the people of their legion to crumble because of a building. No one had died. They were all still together and able to thrive as they had prior to locating the hotel.
"We can't clean this place out?" A woman turned to Negan, looking past Dwight and directly to him for answers. "What do we do?"
Negan glanced around at the saucer-like eyes of his counterparts and knew right then where he stood amongst the pack. They were looking to him for guidance and answers. He'd heard them calling his name in desperation when he hadn't made it out of the hotel right away.
They fucking need me, he decided.
"We'll find a better fucking place," Negan vowed, not showing an ounce of fear or defeat. "Let's go. We'll fucking find something." He waved a hand in the direction of the group and slung his bat on his shoulder, "Follow me."
The people of the group didn't hesitate. They grabbed their bags and guns before following at the heels of their new leader.