Chapter 44
The Wild and the Tamed
For the next few hours I remained in my "room" shoved in a corner and folded into a tight little ball. I didn't go near the bed or any of the other things provided inside. At the first opportunity, I tossed away the crimson cloak and left it in a pile on the floor.
Wearing it made me feel as though Negan had his claws in me. I knew he did even now, but that thing made it tangible, made it feel that much more real.
I never thought it would have been possible to be surrounded by the peaks of luxury and still feel utterly uncomfortable.
Negan had left with a demeaning stab to my hygiene before leaving. It was stupid to get carried away by such a pathetic little remark, especially when I'd been insulted much worse long before that, but the words had a strange effect on me. It was the final straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. For the past few days I had tried to keep it together but now that I was alone at last, it all came apart. I had been strong for too long and now it tumbled out of me.
After maybe an hour or so, a knock came from my door.
My head popped up with a start, stunned briefly by the unexpected noise. "Wh—who is it?" I asked trying to disguise my voice from sounding too teary.
"My name is Frankie. I was told to come down here and show you the ropes around the Sanctuary."
My first instinct was to send her away, but I wasn't sure how productive that would be. Yeah, I was upset and I hated everyone here, but it wasn't very smart to stay ignorant about this place. If I was going to overcome something—an illness, a problem, an enemy—then it was best if I knew more about them so I could beat them.
Getting up shakily, I did my best to swat the tears away. I didn't want her to think I had been crying but when I observed my appearance from a vanity mirror I saw what an absolute mess I'd been reduced to. My eyes and nose were puffy and red and I looked pale and trembled frightfully.
"Um… give me a minute." I called back to her. I was relieved to find a sink in the room and used it to rinse the salt and red from my eyes, making me look a bit less like I was losing my mind at least. When I believed it was the best I was going to do, I turned to the door and opened up to find one of Negan's wives standing in front of me.
She was pretty, had red hair that curled at the ends, and wore a black cocktail dress like the others I'd seen from before. She seemed surprised at the sight of me and I suddenly realized I hadn't done that great of a job in disguising my tears like I thought.
"Are... are you okay?"
"Why do you care?" I snapped back bitterly.
"No need to be rude, I'm just trying to help make the transition here a little smoother for you."
My glare narrowed at the idea. As if I would want this to be easy. "I doubt you can do that." I announced.
"Well like it or not, that's what I'm trying to do. The way you take it depends entirely on you. So, if you're going to make it rough, it's going to be rough, if you make it easy, it'll be easy. That's going to take some time to get used to but if you're smart it won't take very long."
"I'm not really known for my smarts." I told her. "And even if I was, I still wouldn't want this to be easy. It's never going to be home."
"Then your stay here is going to be very long. Hopefully you'll change your tune in time. If you don't, it's all just going to get worse and worse."
I raised my chin determinedly, "I'm prepared for that."
She glanced at me with wide, shining eyes. "No, you're not."
From the tone of her voice and the look on her face, it seemed apparent that she had endured her fair share of torment from Negan and the Saviors. What sort of life did they give people here to warrant such an expression? A stab of unexpected pity swelled in me for her.
"Now come along," she told me. "There's a lot I have to show you today, and get your cloak. Negan told me he wants you to wear it."
I grumbled at the thought, picking it up where I had discarded it. "So, Negan wants me to wear my collar, huh?"
"We all wear collars here." Frankie said, tugging at her own black dress. "We're all owned by someone; if you fight against it, you'll just choke yourself. So, save yourself a bit of pain, and give him what he wants."
The idea was abhorrent to me. Giving in so easy? What kind of pushover did she think I was?
I followed her through the corridors till we came to a large mess hall of some kind, which had somehow been converted into something resembling a market and barracks. There were beds and curtains serving as dividers between each to create makeshift rooms of a sort. She walked ahead of me, speaking as she lowered down a flight of stairs and cut through the crowd of people and goods.
"There's a system here." She explained, weaving through it all. "Some people grow stuff, some people make stuff, some people find stuff. You can get whatever you want; cider, bread, cut your hair. Maybe give you a decent hairdo."
"It's fine the way it is." I snapped tugging at my signature side-tail.
"We use a point system here." She went on, pretending not to have heard me. "You're one of us now, not th—"
"I AM NEVER GOING TO BE ONE OF YOU!" I had roared it before I even knew it had come from my mouth. The few words that had come from her had ignited something beastly in me, and the wild thing had snapped out viciously at the mere idea.
Me, one of the Saviors? I'd rather be in hell!
The volume had apparently been strong enough to reach straight to the rafters because everything in the whole hall seemed to stop entirely by that outburst and all eyes turned to me. The moment I realized what had happened my face blazed red and I felt my neck begin to sweat again. Frankie looked stunned speechless along with every surrounding person as she stared at me. A quick glance from her, though, seemed to have reminded everyone quickly of some unspoken threat, because everything suddenly returned to the way it was before, almost like my outburst hadn't occurred.
"You better watch what you say, and get control of that temper of yours." Frankie announced lowly. "There's only one temper I want to worry about and it's not yours. You don't want to be one of us—fine. But there are still rules and a way of doing things here. I'm just trying to tell you how things work, and if I were you I wouldn't bite the hand that feeds you."
"I'm not another trained pet here." I hissed back, "Negan should have thought about that before he brought in a wild animal. I don't need to suffer kindness or handouts from you people. I can feed myself just fine! I never needed to rely on anyone for that!"
Frankie frowned by that comment, looking displeased. "I don't have the authority to make you eat those words, right now, but if Negan were here, he'd make sure they were your last meal."
"Good! I'd be dead in a few days and wouldn't have to see him ever again!"
"Look, honey, I understand you're upset, but having an attitude like that isn't going to get you anywhere in this place."
"I don't want to be anywhere in this place so I don't imagine it really matters."
"Have it your way" Frankie sighed. "Follow me then."
I did so and she led the way through the factory, giving me the tour while she pointed this and that out to me.
"Before I was so rudely interrupted," she continued, "you're one of the higher-ups here, not a worker. They eat shit, we eat good."
By "they" I realized she was talking about the gloomy looking workers that seemed to be everywhere and turned in stunned disgust to hear her speaking of her own people in such a demeaning manner. She didn't see me though and only went on, pointing to someone keeping marks in a notebook. "Write what they did, what you took, how much it was worth and sign your name. That's it. You're at the top of the food-chain here. Unlike them you don't have to earn points. If you see something you want, you take it."
With those words, I knew I wouldn't be doing that. They wanted me to, which is why I wouldn't.
"Fuck that. There's not a single thing this whole place has to offer that I would want." I announced immediately.
"Rude." Frankie lectured. Though fed up with my attitude, she didn't seem particularly offended nor angry about my outburst. "Everyone wants something, eventually."
"It looks like you don't know a whole lot about everyone then."
Her eyes rolled by that and she turned on her heal, merely continuing with the tour. At the end of it was the same room the rest of the wives were conversing in, just as if they hadn't moved the first time I'd seen them.
"I know you said you weren't going to eat but Negan still told me to feed you." Frankie asked. "We're about to have lunch. Why don't you join us?"
"No thank you." I refused immediately. My stomach betrayed me though when it growled loudly.
Stupid bodily functions!
"Do you really want to starve yourself?" Frankie asked. "It's a slow and painful death, plus I doubt your family would want you to do that if you ever wanted to see them again, and with the position you're in, you'll need your energy if you're going to be donating as often as I expect they'll make you."
"Don't you talk about family with me, lady! Negan said I'd never see my family again, so it doesn't look like I have much motivation for staying alive, anyways."
"Negan says a lot of things." Frankie tried to amend. "If you please him, do what you're told, I'm sure there will be rewards in return for that complacency."
"Yeah, right." I scoffed glaring sideways at her. "Sit, speak, shake, roll over. Good girl, here's a treat. I bet you've been trained well, haven't you?"
Her mouth dropped in shock, utterly stunned by my harsh words and unable to think of any response for it. A dark shadow crossed her face and she looked less than eager to speak again to me. I felt almost bad about the harshness of my words, but I wasn't about to apologize for it. Once more it had all been true, and if she couldn't swallow that she had no business talking to me. It certainly looked like she didn't really want to after all, however, she must have been given a set of orders that were not to be disobeyed no matter how much I tested her limits. Her fear of her master seemed to win out over her dislike for me.
"Be that as it may, I've still been told to get you some food. Eat, or all the possibilities of seeing them again really will be obsolete."
My mouth pursed in anger, because despite my resolve she did have a point. My stomach had hurt the moment I left the infirmary, but I had fiercely ignored it. Walking around the Sanctuary made that very difficult, especially when I caught sight of various pickled goods, roasting meat, and steaming pots of soup over fireplaces. My mouth flooded with saliva every time, and despite turning from those sights, the smell of it all continued to taunt me and was far harder to shut out.
"Come on," Frankie led me inside. "We're not such terrible company."
"You're Negan's wives." I spat it like a curse word. It was disgusting. She was disgusting—they all were. It didn't matter what reasons they had to do it; they caved! I had neither respect nor pity for them.
"Yes, but we're not Negan." She countered. "If you talked to us, you'll find we're very different from him."
"He chose to marry you," I snarked, "so there must have been something about you that he liked and could trust and if that's the case, I don't think it's anything I'm going to like!"
"He just likes us for our bodies. It's a… uh… an entertainment thing to him." She settled on, sitting me down at a table with a few of the other ladies. "Come on, honey. You're no good to anyone dead."
I huffed at the thought, remembering back to the walkers that surrounded the fortress. "Not true—I'm pretty sure I'd be a useful doorstop. Or I'd help the others guard the grounds. It'd be real freaky for an outsider to watch a kid chomping away out there."
"You shouldn't say stuff like that." Frankie said immediately, looking stern. "You don't want the wrong person to hear you. Now eat something."
She pushed a plate towards me as two workers came in just then with a few trays of food. There was an assortment of fruit, some cheeses, and a few loaves of bread. The ladies sat at the table and passed it all around, pouring either water or wine to drink. One offered the basket of bread for me, but I didn't take it.
"Eat, honey." Frankie insisted. "You need your strength. I know you're angry but you can still be angry and take care of yourself. No point in starving to death."
I hated her words, mostly because of the truth that was in them. Despite that, I was thankful she was lecturing me and not Negan or one of his other monsters. I wouldn't have obeyed otherwise nor seen the sense in the words; I would have only wanted to be angry.
Sighing in surrender, I took some of the bread offered to me and made a little sandwich out of some cheese. It would have been nice to have some meat with it, but maybe they saved meat for dinner here. It wasn't that easy to come by for others, after all. It was easier for me since I was a hunter, so I had it a bit more frequently than most.
While I sat there, the women surrounding me filled the silence with some uninteresting gossip. I caught sight of the one from the first dinner-Sherry, and our eyes met for the briefest of moments before I snapped quickly away, feeling disgusted again. God, these ladies were pathetic. Was this how Negan expected me to spend my days; holed up with these chattering biddies?
Oh, what fresh hell was this?
I tried to avoid eye contact with her, pointing my gaze towards the window and resting my face in my hand while it propped on the table. It didn't seem any use, though. She appeared highly interested now and neared me as I finished off the last of my bread.
"You're Judy, right?"
"No. It's Ms. Grimes." I corrected firmly while still refusing to look at her. "Only friends get to call me Judy."
The coldness took her aback and she struggled to find her words for a moment. "So… are you really the cure?" With that statement, there was an audible hush that befell the room as the attention turned immediately on me. My face lit up with a blush at so much attention and I continued to keep my gaze from looking back at any of them.
"Who says that?"
"Everyone says that." Another wife said.
"Then maybe everyone just needs to wait and find out." I suggested.
They seemed to get the message that I wasn't looking for conversation right then, and certainly not from them so they wisely decided to back off, returning once again to their usual chitchat.
There was little else to do after lunch and I didn't really want to wander around this place alone (or really, I wasn't sure if I was even allowed to), so I stayed in the room for a few hours, passing the time by brooding in a corner to observe and watch the behavior of the wives and occasionally take mental notes on them.
I stayed in my spot until Frankie called my attention back to her.
"Judith-,"
"Ms. Grimes!" I corrected heatedly, refusing to let even her address me so informally.
Frankie sighed, looking annoyed. "Ms. Grimes, you have to come with me now."
"Why?" I demanded, before moving.
"Negan said he wanted you clean when he sees you for dinner in an hour. So, I'm taking you to the bath and shower." She pointed down a set of hallways. "Down there's the bathroom. You can wash up with the shower or the tub, just be finished in an hour. There's some clothes laid out for you as well."
At the mention, I shied away from the door. I liked the clothes I had on right now. All that I truly owned in the world was what I had worn with me here; he wasn't going to take those, too.
"Why can't I just wear the clothes I have on right now?"
"Because you need fresh ones. So, I'd hurry if I were you. If you haven't noticed by now, Negan doesn't like being disobeyed, nor waiting. Get to it."
It was disgusting how ready they were all willing to please him.
Even so, there were no other options I had, not unless I wanted Daryl to suffer, so I quietly filed into the bathroom. Feeling defeated, I studied it emotionlessly. It was nicer than the bathrooms we had back home. There were fluffy white towels hung out on racks, an assortment of bath salts, soaps, shampoos and conditioners in fancy bottles, old magazines in a basket, and even toilet paper.
Though we'd found plenty during our last run into Washington, it wasn't common among other communities. Normally we all used individual sanitary rags stocked inside little drawers that were marked for their designated users near the can. Everyone was in charge of cleaning and maintaining their own and if you used someone else's, it was NOT cool!
The shower was separate from the bathtub, which was pretty huge. For someone my size, it seemed fairly possible to be able to swim a few laps in it. It probably took forever to fill though, and I didn't feel like waiting for the water to rise all that much. For some reason, the thought of being so exposed in this place, set me on edge. If I could get this over and done with as soon as possible that was preferable.
I found the clothes laid out for me on the counter. There was a white short sleeved button-up shirt and a denim pinafore dress that looked like it reached down to about the same length as my shorts. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting and it'd do in the end. There was even some clean socks and underwear folded discretely between the shirt and dress. I guess they'd let me keep my boots though, since I didn't see any other shoes laid out for me.
I made it fast, hopping in the shower and scrubbing myself down quickly before hopping out again, quick as a bunny.
It all fit well enough, but the dress felt odd and unnatural. I didn't wear dresses very often and I paused a moment to wonder if I had ever worn a dress in front of Negan.
No… only my signature shorts, t-shirt, and boots. Other than that gingerbread costume for the Christmas play (which couldn't really be counted as a dress anyways), there had been no time I had ever worn a dress in his presence.
It wasn't because I was resistant towards dresses, they were just impractical. How am I supposed to work when tripping over a hem all day?
Thinking of that now, I wondered if this had been done on purpose then.
At least it wasn't ridiculously girly. I don't think I'd have been able to stomach wearing it otherwise. Although, if it was a choice between that and going naked, I would take the dress, I wasn't that stupid.
When I came out again, walking down the hall, I heard someone call my name from one of the aligning rooms. I poked my head in to find Frankie inside, apparently waiting for me. Had she been made my designated caretaker, then? It still felt too early to really form an opinion about her, but I was more than sure I despised her. The way she had spoken about her own people eating shit, still grinded on my nerves and my judgment of her was steadily decreasing more and more.
She might have seemed nice, even acted friendly and sweet now, but so did psychopaths, until they weren't anymore.
"You weren't in there for very long." Frankie said, checking the clock. It looked like I'd taken a total of six minutes in there. "Did you clean thoroughly?"
"As thoroughly as I always do." I was quite used to taking fast showers. The hot water back home never seemed to last all that long.
"Come here. Let's do something about your hair."
My said hair hung down around my face in dripping ringlets of tangles while dampening my clothes along my back and shoulders. Around her, I saw a collection of hair accessories, a hair brush, a comb, straightener, curler, and blow dryer. The sight of it all made me cringe away. Looks like she wanted to style it for me, which sounded like a whole lot of unnecessary hassle.
"I can do it." I said, reaching for the comb she had on her side.
"I'll dry it for you."
"It's fine. It'll dry on its own."
"Come on now. If I don't do this right I'll never hear the end of it."
"I don't' see why you bother. It's not like I'm having dinner with the Queen of England here. He's seen me covered in mud, blood, and filth of all kinds before. I doubt any dress or hairstyle is going to change his opinion about me a whole freaking lot."
"Don't be like that. Just make this easy for us both and we can get done with it faster."
"No!" I snapped furiously, making her jump by my force. "That's enough! I'm not going to get perttied up for the likes of him. I'm not going to change myself! Just forget it!" And with that, I took one of the ponytail holders and tied my dripping hair in its signature sidetail. Frankie looked displeased but seemed to understand I wouldn't be moved on this no matter her argument, and so wisely let it be.
It was a long while before Negan came back. Getting done with my shower early had left me with a lot of time doing nothing but watching the wives like before. I sat slouching low in a chair, glowering with my arms folded defensively across my chest. Eventually, though, I got tired of that and just decided to slump right where I was. I couldn't ever remember being so bored outside of the school room. This was the worst.
Was this what I'd be reduced to every day from now on? I didn't think I'd be able to live like this. But if it was a choice between this and dinner with my warden, I'd happily die of boredom.
Author's Notes: There was much more to this chapter but it got to be so long that I had to put it into two parts. After next chapter this story might go on a bit of hiatus while I figure out the next part of this story. We'll be going deeper into the Sanctuary system here so things might get a little darker. Till then, I may post some art or a few more side stories either on my Tumblr or Deviantart account.
It took me a while to decide which wife I wanted to give Judith the tour. I thought about using Sherry, but I kinda feel like she gets enough attention in the comic and the show and Negan does have other wives.
Judith's being kind of a brat in this chapter, but with all things considering, I think she's earned it. Again, she's looking in that same black and white mindset once again and is less than understanding towards any of the wives' explanations for ever deciding to marry Negan. If they caught her on a better day I'm sure she would be much more sympathetic for their situations, but it's really hard to sympathize with people who are meant to be your enemies.