Chapter 29
How to be a Smartass
Once arriving back home, I climbed the stairs to my room and began to unpack my things. I hadn't been there for longer than two minutes before I heard trucks rolling through the gates. Curious, I glanced out my window to see the Saviors rolling into town and Negan jumping from the leader. Dad greeted him but it looked like he wasn't the one Negan particularly wanted to speak to at the moment. A rock dropped in my stomach and I stepped away from the window, conscious of who he probably wanted to see.

For some reason, my hand began to itch just then, and I became uncomfortably aware of the blood under my skin and the threat it posed towards me. If Negan found out…

The thought froze me where I stood.

Could he already know?

He couldn't have. Surely, he couldn't have.

I swallowed nervously when Carl opened the door to let me know about our present "company" and that I was being asked for.

He must have caught the look of fear across my face just then as he paused in concern.

"You okay, sis?"

I swallowed again and nodded. "Y-yeah. I'll be right down."

The sudden realization of what I was hit me at that moment and I felt a tangible dread overpower me just then. What would happen if Negan knew what was inside of me? I tried to convince myself that he couldn't possibly know that, though, and that he was calling for me, simply because he knew about the attack, no doubt, and wanted to see if I was still alive or not. That's what this was right here. Nothing more. There was no call to be this terrified. No call…

When I worked up the nerve to go downstairs, I spotted Negan leaning back in one of our wicker patio chairs with two of his men leaning against the beams of the porch; his guards in case one of us tried to attack or kill him.

"Judy, you're alive. Thank god."

A cold sweat had grown on the back of my neck and I nodded in greeting towards him, afraid my voice would come out as a squeak if I tried to talk at all.

"I bet you're wondering why we're early for our pickup this week."

For the third time in barely ten minutes I swallowed uneasily. He didn't know—he couldn't have.

"Well I heard about that little misadventure you had the other day and wanted to see if you were alright."

"I'm fine," I said immediately, feeling guarded and insulted by his feigned concern. He didn't give a crap if I was okay or not. This was just some sick game he was playing with me.

"I'm glad to see that." He had a box in his hand today, wrapped in green paper and tied with a ribbon. "I heard about your near-fatal injury and brought you a little get well—,"

"No thank you!" I snapped before he'd even finished. Whatever it was, I sure as hell wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of accepting it. I didn't want or need anything he was offering. There was always a price to pay for his so called "charity" and I would never let myself fall into his debt.

I saw his eyes widen in surprise as if I'd physically slapped him, and his voice lowered dangerously with my rude refusal. "I'm sorry, but it sounded as if you actually said no to me." Those words and the tone of that statement sent a dangerous sort of thrill through me. "You could at least wait to hear what it is I brought you before shutting me down like a cold little stuck-up."

I didn't say a word to that but fixed him with an unwavering glare, unmoved by his insult. He growled when he saw I would not be moved on this, and tossed the box he was fixing to give to me back towards one of his men.

"Fine. Be that way." Whatever good mood he'd been in before getting here, evaporated with my instantaneous rejection. He leaned back in his chair and gaged my appearance, studying me as if he were trying to decide what he wanted to do with me now that I was here.

"I came a long way to make sure you weren't dead or comatose, but now that I'm here, I'm not sure why I fucking bothered. Still, while I've got you here, we might as well have a little talk. Sit."

With his command, I took the seat furthest from him, but maintained my glare. Even with my heart pounding with anger, that tremendous fear that rose up the moment he rolled into town still rested beneath it.

I was uncharacteristically nervous. But really, my unease was completely ridiculous. I'd been in this position countless times before and so far, nothing had happened to me. I knew how to handle this monster well enough. Yet even with that in mind I couldn't ease my hammering pulse.

This time felt different than those other ones for some reason. Who was I kidding? It was different. I was uncomfortably aware of the blood under my skin and the way it crawled through my veins, almost like I was the one infected instead of the rest of the world.

Maybe, in some ways, I really was.

It certainly felt that way. I felt in even more danger as I sat beside this lunatic, knowing full well what lied inside of me; the answer to it all—the thing everyone wanted. I kept scratching at the back of my hand, nails digging into the skin till I'd scratched it near raw.

Negan noticed my unease and unsurprisingly addressed it.

"Something wrong, sweetheart? You seem very… on edge."

"I'm fine." I snapped quickly, before he had barely finished.

"You itch or something?"

I stopped scratching at my hand and folded it under my opposite arm, looking away quickly. "No—yes! It's just an itch!"

"That so? You need something for that?"

"No. I'll get something on it later."

"Don't scratch at it too much or it'll scar. Speaking of scars, that bear mauling you took the other day. I'm sorry I wasn't here for it. Bet it'll scar real good; I mean, if you're into that. Does it hurt bad?"

"No." I said simply. That was a lie, though. It was still sore and I took care to keep from leaning against anything or laying on my back. Even now, I hunched forward, rather than sitting against the back rest on the porch chairs.

"That's going to be a kickass scar when it's all healed up and I'm definably going to want to see that when it's all—"

"I'M NOT TAKING MY SHIRT OFF FOR YOU!"

I bellowed it so loud every person surrounding turned towards us immediately. The look on Negan's face was one I had never in my life imagined on him, and had it been on any regular day I would have bust a gut laughing at his deer-in-the-headlights expression. Everyone in the vicinity was looking at him with mixed expressions of horror and appall even from a few of his own men. For the first time, he looked very uncomfortable.

He played an uneasy smile, trying to wave it off as a joke to the concerned passersby. "Heh-heh, that's not what I said. Kid's just jumping to conclusions."

It took a while for them all to dispatch, but some shouts and barks from his men to move along, eventually got the citizens to thin out again.

"Jesus, what's wrong with you today?" Negan said turning back, looking deeply offended by my behavior as if I were the one out of line. "I come here concerned and worried about you, eager to give you something that I was really excited about and all you're doing is acting defensive and ungrateful."

"We…we pay you, not the other way around." I answered uneasily. In the back of my mind I considered maybe I should have been a bit politer to him. If I could put up a somewhat civilized pretense then maybe he wouldn't think twice about leaving that much sooner. Of course, I didn't want him to start enjoying himself here and think he was beginning to be welcomed. Ugh… what was I supposed to do exactly?

Negan looked at me after those words and leaned again back in his chair. "I suppose you do now, don't you?"

I didn't answer to that, refusing to look at him while I sat there and fidgeted. My mind was busy with other thoughts. Too many things were crowded in my head to manage paying attention to him and his idle talk. He used the silence to sit there and study me. The intensity of his glare made the sweat on my neck grow more and more profound until he spoke once more.

"Other than your snaps, you're pretty quiet today. Normally you're a much better conversation than this. What's on your mind?"

"Nothing…"

His eyebrow rose, by that announcement. "Has to be something if it's got you so tightlipped."

"Maybe I'm just not very talkative right now." I wish I could have left it at that but the bite in me wouldn't be stomped down no matter how hard I tried to squash my hatred. "Or maybe I'd like to get this over with as soon as possible so you'll leave already. I don't know how it's so hard for you to understand that you're not welcomed."

"Don't insult my intelligence! I know perfectly well I'm not fucking welcomed and you should know that I don't give a shit if you don't want me here or not. I'm getting what's due to me and you're not going to say a word about it, understand you little brat?"

My mouth pressed tight and I fumed with rage. I hated him so much.

"You know it's probably going to be a while wait till they're done loading up. So why don't we play a game."

"I don't like games." My stomach twisted up at the idea. I just wanted to get this over with already.

"Everyone likes games."

"I'M NOT LIKE EVERYONE!" I shouted, feeling panicked. The moment the words had stumbled from my mouth I heard the mistake in the statement and tried frantically to revise it. "I-I mean I am! I am like everyone else! I'm completely normal, I j-just don't like games!"

"Okay, okay then!" Negan held up his hands defensively and looked at me like I was completely losing my mind. "Don't go crazy on me, kid."

"No one is crazy, I'm just interested in different things!"

"Alright!" He snapped at last. "My god, don't have a conniption. Seriously, what's with you? I've never seen you this wound tight. I mean, you're wound tight, sure, but not this much." He leaned against his chair. "You're probably the single kid I've ever met with a stress level high enough to give you a gallstone. And now that I see you, you look like shit. Don't you sleep? If you're so fucking worried about… whatever it is you're worried about, maybe I should be as well. So, what is it? Is it about your scar?"

"Would you forget about the scar already? What's with you and scars? Do you have some kind of fetish or something?"

"K-keep your voice down." He said, glancing around and catching sight of several citizens stopping again to look towards us in concern. "I don't need you blowing this out of the water."

At that moment, my dad seemed to materialize from the porch, looking angry as he stepped up behind my chair. It looked like he'd been lingering close by in case things started to look threatening.

"Your supplies are loaded." Dad announced, resting a hand on my shoulder protectively. "If there's nothing else—"

Negan shot to his feet by that and stood right up to my father, straightening to his full height and looking severely more dangerous than I could remember him ever being at that moment. "I'll leave when I'm fucking good and ready to leave, prick! Don't fucking interrupt me ever fucking again! Judy and I are having a conversation, so butt out already."

Dad fixed him with a defiant stare, looking deeply reluctant to leave me alone with him again.

Negan stepped up to him, looking like he was one insolent word away from ripping my father open. My gaze traveled to the massive bowie knife on his belt and the sight of it filled me with a new terror. At once my memory jogged to what that knife had done to Spencer and my concern for my dad spiked.

"D-dad, it's alright. I'm alright. It's just talking."

Even with those words, Dad didn't move so much as an inch, keeping his gaze fixed against Negan's while a smile slowly grew on the taller man.

"Listen to your little girl, Rick. She knows what she's doing… probably." His last word made my dad more disinclined than ever to leave my side and I could tell by that protective glint in his eye that if I didn't do something soon to get him out of here, Negan was going to do his utmost best to deal out a new horrifying trauma.

"Dad, please. I'll be fine." I pushed him a little away, trying to prompt him to turn around and go. It took two shoves but eventually he chose better and took his leave, lingering out of sight just in case.

"Smart move, Judy." Negan said, looking down at where I remained seated in the chair. "Apparently, you're not as dumb as you act. You obviously remembered what I'm capable of and it's a damn good thing you did, otherwise there would have been another mess you people would need to clean up."

I fixed him with a glare, letting his insult roll off my back as easily as rain. "Were you really going to kill my dad?"

"Hmm… Well I'm not sure." He lowered back in his chair, considering my question. "Five months ago, I would have said no. But these days something tells me his usefulness is starting to run out."

I didn't like those words. Not one bit.

"My dad—"

"Before you fire back with some clever comparison between your dad and I involving his usefulness verses mine, I want you to take this opportunity to think." He said the words carefully and delicately, like they were the most important lesson I would ever hear from him. "I know you're smart and all, but sometimes you don't have a whole fucking lot of commonsense. If it weren't for that trait you'd be charming the hell out of me, instead of pissing me off a whole fucking lot. I don't want to have to traumatize you—not yet at least. So, I'm going to give you a bit of advice; show some fucking manners to me, or I'm going to be taking a whole fucking lot of my frustrations out on these nice townsfolk. I know you'd do pretty much anything for them by now, and if you can wander through death infested woods without batting an eye, you can show your benefactor some measly bit of courtesy once in a while."

My lips made a furious angry line across my face and I fumed in outrage, biting back my next words with reluctance.

Negan saw the struggle on my face and seemed to get an idea just then. "You know I've occasionally noticed a few kids around town that seem a bit new to me. Now normally I don't pay a whole fucking lot of attention to kids, but these three seem to just really stand out for some reason. I think they're siblings, I mean I assume so, but I'd rather not make assumptions. You wouldn't happen to know them by any chance?"

A horrible feeling entered my gut with those words as a terrible feeling entered my gut about whom he may have been talking about.

"I—I don't think I know which ones you're talking about. I… don't get along with kids around town."

"Oh, they're pretty hard to miss. There's three of them, Latino, one's a little boy with a missing hand, the next is a girl with a messed-up lip, and the oldest is probably your age."

I tried to school my features, but I couldn't help my hammering heart. "Yeah, I know them."

"Do you now?"

"Well, yeah. It's not a very large town, after all."

"Well why don't you tell me a bit about those three."

"Why are you suddenly interested in them?" My fear was taken over by defensiveness as I thought hard on ways to divert his attention from the Waifs.

"I want to know about all the newcomers."

"You don't even care about the original tenants. This is just some twisted way for you to try then fail at mindfucking me again."

"Oh, using grown-up words now, are we?"

"Oh, ran out of good comebacks now, have we?"

"Ohh burn!" A snort of unexpected laughter burst from one of the men standing nearby and Negan turned towards him, fuming that one of his men would dare laugh at my retort and not his. The man's mouth promptly snapped closed when he caught Negan's expression and he looked away, embarrassed.

It was difficult hiding my smirk for that.

Negan sneered, "Why don't you just copy someone next time? Oh wait, you did."

"You're just mad because it was funnier when I said it." I retorted, forgetting momentarily about the danger I was stepping in by baiting him.

"No one was around when I said it."

"No one would have laughed if they heard you."

Another snort from the same man and Negan growled through his teeth. "Roger, would you stop laughing at her fucking quips. You're encouraging her."

Just to show them just how much they were encouraging me, I added with sass, "You better watch out, Roger. He might bend you over his knee, he threatened to do that to me one time!"

This time both the men turned away sharply, their hands flying to their mouths as they struggled to hide their conjoined snorts of mirth. I saw the vein on Negan's neck bulge and his face turn scarlet as he turned to the two, growling low, "Leave us."

I caught the final words one of them muttered to his partner as they stepped off the porch. "That kid is nuts!"

"Oh my god, I can't get the image out of my head."

Now that Negan and I were alone we face one another with identical looks of challenge.

"You're real fucking lucky I like you so much kid, but my patience only goes so far." There was danger in his tone and I immediately assessed that all humor had vanished with his words. "You just made me look like a fucking idiot in front of my men."

"I think you give me too much credit."

That comment seemed to ignite his fury once again as he rose for the last time from his chair and towered over me.

"Alright you smartass little termite," his hands gripped the armrests, leaning far too close into my personal space and making me shrink against the backrest, igniting the sores on my back and nearly brining me to tears with how much is stung. "Next week I'm gunna be back here, and since you're so keen on holding the short end of a give-take relationship, you're going to use that smart little head of yours to find me something real fucking incredible. I don't want fresh goods and I don't want dead animals. I want something that'll really fucking surprise me. If you don't deliver I think I'm going to have to take one of those new little Latino tikes with me back to the Sanctuary till you do find something that meets my demands."

A terrified rock dropped in my stomach with those words. Before I even had time to process the whole of that threat he was already stomping away and climbing into a truck.

"Load up boys, we're headed out."

The sounds of the engines as they drove away seemed almost deafening this time around.

Something real fucking incredible? I thought with anxiety. There wasn't anything I could give that was incredible. Nothing except…

I looked down at the scratches on the back of my hand, conscious of what lay under the flesh and pumped through the raw blue veins. There was a building terror that if all else failed to keep the Waifs out of Negan's attention I may have had to give myself up to ensure their continued protection. If there was one thing I was bound and determined to do, it was that I would never let them fall into the hands of people so heartless ever again.

Author's notes: Oh boy, stuff is really starting to go down now! Will Judith need to reveal the full extent of her condition in order to protect the Waifs? Who knows? I guess we'll find out in the next chapter.

On a different note, you guys would not believe how hard it was to write this chapter. I'll once more begin posting regularly again and like I promised, I've started a small collection of drabbles and little stories to go with this main one at the moment entitled "Elf Tales and Drabbles" (not that great of a title I know). For anyone who would like to submit a prompt I'm open to any ideas that you guys suggest.

And like always, your encouragement is always appreciated, so leave a review of what you think about this new development and I'll see you next week.

Luv ya lots!