Chapter 45
A Little Pain
Eventually Negan showed up, strutting inside with that walk that was uncouthly full of himself and appeared somehow very off balanced in my opinion. Why on earth did he walk like that? He looked completely inept, not smart, not cocky—he looked like he was drunk. It was embarrassing to be seen with him in general, but even more so when he was walking like that.

He greeted his wives before coming towards me and it took all of my self-restraint not to growl.

"Hello Judy."

My teeth scraped together, grinding and drowning out his words while I rose to my feet. I paused only while he studied me.

"What?"

He frowned, glancing briefly at Frankie behind me. "There's hardly any change. And why is her hair wet?"

Because there was a sudden downpour from the rain cloud over me.

That's what I wanted to say at least. Only I didn't say that, knowing if I let myself, that comeback would not result well for me.

"She wasn't that eager to have it styled. And even if she was there isn't a whole lot I can do with her hair." Frankie explained. "It's just too short to really shape."

"Well that's another thing that'll need to work on then. At least she's clean. I was sick of seeing her in those ratty clothes."

My teeth clenched with this conversation and I glared furiously. The way they spoke in front of me was as if I was no longer in the room. I think I finally had an opinion on this woman; I hated them both.

Negan's next words were directed to me. "Well, I hope you're hungry, kiddo."

"I'm not."

I was.

He ignored my tone. "I'm sure once you smell what's been cooking you'll find your appetite. I requested a special dinner tonight."

Another special dinner? I was appalled. There were people starving and he was eating like this every day? It put a whole new meaning on the words greedy asshole.

Was I going to have to have dinner with him every night? I didn't think I'd be able to endure that and I definitely wouldn't be able to keep my mouth shut during it. Once in a while—a long while—maybe. If it was only once in a while, then I guess I could stomach that crap. It was just a little pain I had to get over with. Just a little pain.

I followed him back to the same room as the first dinner, my fists clenching and unclenching repeatedly the whole way. In a desperate move, I tried taking slow steady breaths—an act meant to calm me down, though apparently unsuccessfully. It wasn't missed by Negan.

"Calm down, kid." Negan said as we took our seats. "If you remember your manners through this meal then there's nothing you need to worry about. I'm not planning on mutilating anyone today. So, relax."

He's lying, I decided. I refused to look at him and chose to glare at the table, pursing my lips tightly.

The food came in at that moment and I tried to maintain my breathing through my mouth with little success once again. It all smelled uncomfortably heavenly. The sight alone made my mouth wash with saliva.

It looked like beautiful roasted pork ribs marinated in a barbeque sauce, fresh green beans fried up with walnuts and pepper, cheesy twice baked potatoes, and buttery rolls.

My eyes went large at the sight of it all, but my resolve quickly snapped back. It was still too late to amend my hungry expression and Negan caught sight of it before I could conceal it.

"Are you hungry now?"

I tried not to look at the food and continued my tactic of breathing through my mouth. In desperation, I attempted a different sort of trick. It was a technique I learned during our more wanting times back home, when there was the bare minimum of food to go around for everyone.

At those times when I was desperate for more, I'd imagine the most disgusting things fathomable and turn my appetite against me. It was something Rosita had suggested.

In that moment, I pictured the foulest things my mind could invent: The smell of sour milk, maggots wiggling under the flesh of a walker, a booger taco, ants crawling over a dead bird, Dad and Carl after eating onions.

There were onions all around the roast… and sautéed garlic and mushrooms, too.

I could feel my stomach clawing in my body and inwardly cursed myself for not thinking to fill up during lunch. Crap—why hadn't I done that? Yeah, I had been pissed off, but I could bare the wives' company over Negan's much easier and his satisfied smirk at seeing me openly craving for something made this situation ten times worse.

"Would you like some roast, Judy?"

I didn't answer him and took a roll, deliberately nibbling it and resisting the urge to cram it in without a second thought.

Negan looked displeased with my reaction. "So, the silent treatment and a hunger strike? Is that your idea of trying to get back at me?"

"No." I answered. "I'm just not very hungry."

"That seems to be very typical with you."

"I'm not used to having very much. You should know! You take most of it, and some of us need to save some for others."

"Well no one you need to save this for here. So, fill your plate and eat up. You need your strength."

"Gee, I didn't realize not having an appetite was against the rules. And that lady told me all about the rules today."

"She did, did she? Well then you understand your position here."

"Yeah, she said I had certain privileges that'd let me throw my weight around and lord over others if I felt like, but I have standards. Just because I hate all of you doesn't mean I'm going to act like you."

He glared, feeling the sting of my insult, but it didn't look like he had a decent enough retort for that.

I continued to nibble on my bread at a deliberate pace. I had heard once that eating slowly could sometimes trick your body to think it's fuller than it really is.

Without warning, Negan grabbed my empty plate, taking me entirely by surprise. Despite my objection, Negan took it upon himself to pile it up, giving me a bit of everything. After there was a daunting amount of food on it, he replaced it in front of me and leaned back.

"I know you want to get this over with, so here's the deal," He threatened. "You're going to sit there and the longer you wait to clean your plate the longer you have to stay here with me and talk. And you will clean it if we have to sit here all fucking—,"

Before he had even finished I dove for it, intent on devouring it all and getting this dinner over with before I had to be there a moment longer than necessary. I made it fast, hardly tasting the food and doing my best to keep it down no matter what.

That was much easier said than done, though. Negan had purposefully piled it to capacity, probably knowing perfectly well that there was no way I could finish so much, but I still shoved it in anyways. It looked like starving myself for the day seemed to work in my favor for once.

It was all uncomfortably rich, and the quality of it all did not sit well with my much humbler pallet. I braced myself though, refusing to throw up a perfectly good meal and sure as hell not in front of this maniac—again.

Negan fixed me with a disapproving look. "Jesus, slow down. Give yourself some time to taste it. A lot of work went through making this meal, the least you can do is enjoy it."

I didn't respond to those words, besides scooting my plate forward and announcing through a full mouth, "Oo'm done. Oo'm goin'."

"No, you're not."

I swallowed what was in my mouth hastily. "You said—,"

"You're only done with the first course. You still have dessert."

"What? No, no, no, you said clean my plate. Well it's clean now and—oh no… I feel woozy." I hunched in my chair, holding my stomach where it was acting up and feeling an enormous wash of nausea hit me from out of nowhere. The food I had scarfed was obviously not sitting well with me one bit.

No! No freaking way am I going to hurl in front of him… again! I thought stubbornly, bowing my head on the table in distress and holding my mouth. Well if anything dared come up again I was just going to swallow it back down!

Oh god… I regretted so much. But it would pass. It was just a little discomfort after all. Just a little pain.

"See? That's what you get!" Negan lectured, seeing my reaction. "For that you can just sit there till I'm done, now."

"Stop altering our deals! And you'll take forever on purpose." I moaned, my face still pressed to the wood.

"I'll take my regular amount of time."

"I just want to get this over with, already. Let's be real, you don't want me here anymore than I want me here."

"I didn't have you clean up and wear something relatively decent just so you could rush off in barely three minutes."

My head rolled over the table to glance up at him, "You're the one that offered that deal. Excuse me if I planned to take advantage of it. Are you trying to tell me you wouldn't have done the same?"

"No."

"Liar."

With that word, he reached for his beverage and took a slow pondering sip before saying, "I don't lie, Judy. You do."

I retracted from that statement, insulted as well as stung. And yet as much as I wished I could deny it, I could do no such thing, because his words were actually true. I did lie. I was a liar. And Negan, whom I hated more than anyone in this entire world, yet for all his faults—he actually did not lie. There was no time I could recall where the man had blatantly lied to my face. Even while I frantically searched for an occasion in which he could have, none came to mind.

"Ah… and I'll bet right now you're frantically trying to come up with a time where I've blatantly lied to you, now." He deduced, carving off a piece of rib. My stomach grew even more distressed by how unsettling it was to hear him read my mind. "But unfortunately, you can't think of any."

"So, you haven't lied to me." I scoffed. "That doesn't mean you haven't to other people to get what you want, or to do what you want, or to make others do what you want!"

"Let's not pull out our track records, right now. Otherwise, I'll need to remind you that you pretty much lied to everyone you ever knew for years. You had some secret magical power that could have helped them much more and had you decided to trust them instead of skulking in the shadows like a sneaky, little rat, you could have ultimately saved countless of innocent lives and possibly ended all this madness by now."

Those words hit me worse than the ones before and my head snapped up angrily.

"I—I didn't know. If I knew I would have come forward so much sooner. I only thought that maybe they—the walkers—just didn't like me is all."

"Seriously?"

"Yes seriously! And I didn't come forward sooner because I knew you would find out about it one way or another and I'd be dragged here against my will and I'd never see my family again because, god forbid, someone has something that you don't have and you can't restrain the damn narcissist in you for five minutes to let me so much as say a proper goodbye to my parents or to pack some freaking underwear, at the very least!"

The look on Negan's face looked restrained, angry, and irritated all at the same time, like he was trying very hard to be patient with me. "I know this is an adjustment—"

"No, this isn't an adjustment! This is kidnapping and incarceration! You say you're not some shady child snatcher, but you are! You snatched me up from my home and my people and—"

"ENOUGH!" His fist slammed the table with an oddly loud BANG, silencing me mid-rant. My mouth closed and I watched his face contort with controlled anger. "As I was saying, I know this is an adjustment, but you'll start over like we've all had to do at one point or another. You'll adapt and in time you are going to look at this place as home and I promise you'll be given a much better life here."

"I won't!" I nearly shouted, slamming the table myself now in stubborn resolve and open disgust at the idea. "I'll never be at home here! This isn't a better life—this is a prison, for everyone who lives here!"

"You're angry right now. Believe it or not I can understand that," He said, then his face became frighteningly dark. "But let's get something straight right now; those people you used to live with are no longer your concern. They are no longer your family and no longer your responsibility. Your home is here now. Rick is no longer your father and—"

"YES, HE IS!" I screamed audibly, surprising Negan to silence and cutting off his building threat instantly. "HE WILL ALWAYS BE MY FATHER! I don't care what you say! I don't care what ANYONE says or does! Don't you get it?! YOU DISGUST ME! ALL OF YOU! None of you are ever going to be my people and I am never EVER going to be one of you! I'd rather be an orphan than be one of you! I'D RATHER DIE THAN BE ONE OF YOU!"

A terrifying hush fell between us as the statement hung in the air.

It didn't take a genius to tell that what I had said was way, way out of line. The moment it was out and I took a moment to gage the expression on the man's face, I instantly wanted to shove the words back in my mouth. The vein on Negan's neck looked prepared to pop and when he rose up from his chair like a growing tower of wrath, everything in me screamed to flee. Despite my instincts, though, I remained rooted to the floor, paralyzed right in my spot. I saw the fire in his eyes blaze bright and his hand had locked over my arm before I could escape.

"You'd rather die, huh? Well… I'll bet I can think of a way to make you change your mind about that." He dragged me towards the door and marched me out, pulling me along the halls till we reached a secluded and much less inviting part of the Sanctuary (not that the Sanctuary was inviting to begin with).

We ran into the Savior I recognized as Dwight and Negan promptly ordered him to follow. "You got your keys for Mr. Daryl's cage on you handy?"

My heart leapt in my throat at the mention. "Don't you hurt my uncle, you SICK EVIL MONSTER! Don't you dare!" I shouted at him, openly fighting and hitting at his hand to try and work out of his grip on me.

Dwight said nothing but turned and followed his boss till we came to a rusted metal door. The Savior unlocked it without a word and I was dragged inside to find Daryl sitting on the floor, still wearing the dirty sweat clothes as before. His eyes switched back and forth from me to Negan and instantly on guard at the sight of this new development. There was a clear expression of fear that crossed his face, before it seemed to snap to one of acceptance.

Whatever fate Negan had in store for Daryl, he was openly prepared for it. He had suffered so much by his hand that perhaps now he suspected he would finally, finally be released from this hell.

Negan threw me to the ground, where I hit hard on my side and crumbled in a heap in the corner furthest from my uncle.

"Well Daryl-boy, we've got a big problem on our hands." He announced in a way that seemed more as a boast than a dilemma. "Judy, doesn't want to behave herself around here. I've given her every chance to do so and I've treated her as nothing short than a guest of fucking honor, but it looks like she doesn't want to fall in line. Now I know this was going to take some time to get used to. I wanted to give her that, but I don't think she's planning to make it very easy on herself, so I need your help."

Across the tight room, my eyes met with Daryl's and I saw us both fearfully gulp at the same time.

Negan went on. "I have this nasty suspicion that she's just going to keep being difficult and keep pushing at me, so it leads me to believe that I'm going to need to straighten her out. Now you've been good lately, and it's awfully unfair to punish someone for something a little brat has done, but I don't really see what else I can do. You remember what it was like during your first few weeks here. You were a fucking lunatic. Always fighting, always trying to escape. It was annoying. But then we had that little incident, you remember, right?"

I glanced over at Daryl's face, wondering what Negan meant by that. With the mention of said "little incident" Daryl's face betrayed complete panic, reminded just then of some terrifying unseen memory.

"I don't want to have to do that to Judy, but I don't think she's going to get the message as easily otherwise. Which means I may have to resort to something a bit more extreme. I considered throwing her to my men and let them see what they could do about it. I know a few of them would probably be pretty into it. What do you say? Would she get the message then, do you think?"

Daryl's head seemed to shake back and forth with those suggestions.

"I'm seeing a no, but I don't know what else to do really. I think I'm at my whit's end. If you have a suggestion… Oh wait, I know!" Negan strolled over to Daryl and yanked him up to his feet, dragging him out of the cell.

"DON'T YOU HURT HIM! Don't you dare fucking do it!" I shouted at him while all three of the men pulled out of the room, slamming the door and locking me inside where there was nothing but complete darkness. I slammed on the door frantically, shouting and yelling till my voice was almost hoarse. Frightened furious tears escaped me as my mind leapt to all the terrifying things Negan was doing to Daryl and I scrambled for a threat to make them stop. "I'll—I'll curse you! I'll do it! Do you hear me? I'll curse you into unimaginable pain till you shrivel up and die. Damn my soul otherwise, you hear me!"

I banged on it for a while longer, trying to force it opened unsuccessfully. After a few minutes, the door swung loudly again and I backed up to find all three men standing there, Daryl in front of Negan and Dwight taking up the back.

When I took in Daryl's state I was relieved to find he was unharmed. His face though, did not hold that same ease. In fact, it looked as though he were in pain some other way. There was something dark behind his expression, something broken and defeated.

Negan shoved him in the shoulder expectantly, his voice deep and cold. "Well… go on."

Before I had time to respond, a rock-solid force slammed into me, knocking me immediately off my feet. My body dropped hard. My breath whooshed out of my chest and as much as I tried, it wouldn't come back. It felt like I was being squeezed tight, but there was nothing constricting me. I coughed and opened my eyes to see a pair of feet stepping back towards me. A fist grabbed the collar of my shirt and hauled me up. Fire lit my cheek and I spotted Daryl's free hand backhand me ruthlessly before whipping back to strike the other side.

My eyes burned with tears and I tasted blood. His fist slammed once more into my side and I choked, trying to force air back into me. I lost count of the times his fist made contact with my body. Sometime during it all, the nausea I had been feeling before resurfaced and the dinner I'd inhaled came back up, making an awful mess on the floor. He only stopped long enough for me to finish hacking and coughing before his hands were on me again. I heard whimpers escape me but I didn't say a word. I didn't ask him to stop or beg. Even while he did it, I had figured out why. Daryl did this now only to keep anything worse from being done. I was sure of it. Yet it was hard to imagine worse in that moment.

Once or twice I caught sight of his face and the sheer agony on it. I could practically hear his thoughts in the franticness behind that gaze.

Tell me to stop! I want to stop! Please tell me to stop!

I wasn't sure if it was me who he wanted to say those words or Negan. Maybe it was both.

I felt an iron grip grab my wrist at that moment and then a sharp turn, a pop, and pain was all I could feel anymore. I could hear myself screaming louder than I had ever screamed in my life.

Had there been words coming out of my mouth over the screams? I couldn't tell. I just wanted it all to stop.

Then it finally did.

I shivered and curled into a ball, protecting my vital organs as I lied there on the ground with my useless arm. I wasn't sure if Negan had given the word or if Daryl just couldn't stand to raise his hand again. My mind could only concentrate on the pain wracking my body.

Words were thrown around me, but I couldn't respond to them. Static filled my ears over the voices and paralyzed me where I was. I knew I was in shock but there was nothing that could be done to bring myself out of it. I couldn't make myself unfurl from the little ball I'd wrapped in.

It's safe in the ball, just stay in the ball. I thought.

I saw a boot enter my vision and I cringed away, tightening up and trying to make myself smaller as I trembled in shock and trauma.

"Ah fuck, I was sure she would ask you to stop much sooner. Did you have to break her arm like this? Jesus, Daryl."

Somewhere in the back of my mind I heard Negan tell the other two men to leave for a moment while he had a word alone with me.

Looking up at those piercing eyes I suddenly forgot how to breathe and when I finally remembered I didn't dare try. My heart pounded in my ears and there were no thoughts in my head but the ones he put there. I snapped my gaze away from him suddenly. I didn't want to look at him or that smile, I didn't want it to be the last thing I saw. Instead, I focused on a smear of blood splatter on the floor. I focused on the shape and color of it, seeing the outline of something in the ominous red.

A beetle, I decided. It looked just like a round little beetle.

"Let's get you to the infirmary."

With those words and when I saw his arms reach towards me I flinched away instinctively.

"N-no! Don't touch me! Stay away from me!"

In response to my terrified aversion of him he pushed past my retraction and gripped my face in his hands. His momentary gentle tone dropped entirely and I was petrified. I froze instantly, cautious not to say anything or do anything this monster didn't agree with.

"Don't you ever fucking try and escape from me." He growled, and bared down on me more like some primal monster than a man. "Now try and gather every bit of brain power you have in that head of yours and listen to me, before I do something else so fucking distasteful."

I swallowed and listened to him, conscious that these could be the most important words I ever heard in my life.

"I don't like seeing you this way and I didn't like making Daryl do that." Negan said lowly. I tried to turn my gaze to focus on the beetle blood drop while he continued, but he squeezed hard and brought me back to focus on his dark eyes. "And I fucking KNOW he sure doesn't like it, either. I think I might just have broken him all over again with that display. You on the other hand… who can say for sure? You push me so fucking far, sometimes I wonder if you're just a glutton for pain. So, let's try this again."

His hand curled harder around my chin, turning it up more so that I was staring right into his leering face. At the sight of it, my terror spiked, building larger and larger with every word he said.

"Now, I just convinced Daryl (your so-called uncle) to beat you fucking senseless. I only told him to do it long enough till it took you to wise up and tell him to stop, but since you didn't, he was pushed to take it that far. But when I heard that pop, that was when I realized I had to step the fuck in, before you let him kill you. Just in case, you haven't figured it out by now, if I can make him do that to you I can make anyone do pretty much whatever I want. If you're still not convinced, then test me and I'll throw you to some men who are really fucked up. I wonder if they'll be anything left of you afterwards."

Without realizing it, I began to tremble at the thought and my breathing hitched. It was painfully terrifying to realize how powerless I was next to him. He saw it and maintained his look of disapproval as he continued.

"And if you couldn't tell, I didn't enjoy that. Not one fucking bit. It doesn't make me feel more of a man to beat a defenseless little girl and it sure as fuck wasn't something I wanted a family member to do to you. But I don't know how else to spell it out. I never wanted to hurt you, not for an instant. At first, I wanted to beat Daryl senseless, or I could have gone back to Alexandria and kill a few of those assholes to get the message across, but something tells me you would have held it against me much longer than anything done to you personally. Look me in the eye and tell me that wouldn't have been worse for you."

I swallowed, terrified by how well he seemed to read me. It was truly traumatizing what he'd done, but I would bare it, if it meant any others I cared about would be spared of such harm. My voice was wobbly when I spoke again. "Y-yes. That would have been worse."

Even when Negan had predicted it, my words were apparently not what he'd been hoping for once again. The words seemed to revolt him somehow. "I have never, in my entire life, seen a person who was so ready to be used by others, to either be put up on the front lines like some sacrificial goat or drained dry till there was nothing left for her to give. What the hell is wrong with you? You call it protect and serving your people, I call it being taken advantage of.

"You've got this unhealthy tendency to leave your own wellbeing for the very last concern and I think that's fucking disgusting. When I heard about how eager you were to be used by others, family or not, I couldn't even believe it. You're just a fucking kid and you've been brainwashed bad enough to believe that your life and wellbeing is somehow less than theirs. What sort of people would make you feel like that?"

"N—not brainwashed." I struggled to say through the pain and tears in my throat. "M-my ch-choice. I decided it…"

"Was it really your decision? Are you completely sure about that?"

"Yes." I said immediately. "Th-they never wanted me to, but I did it anyways. You c-can't manipulate me to think differently! They're my people and I love them and I'm prepared to do whatever it takes for them."

"Well then pay close attention to what I'm telling you." His voice lowered a whole octave before he continued. "This was a warning; a small demonstration. I let you carry that pain this time because I knew you wouldn't want that any other way, as much as it disgusted me to my very core that it was done to you in the first place. So, unlike you, I don't give a real shit about any of the other poor suckers you're willing to die for, which means killing one of them to put you back in line would be no skin off my back, but the next time you test me beyond my limits—the next time you say you'd rather die than be one of us, I'm taking Daryl aside and I'm going to skin the message right out of his hide and then I'll go down the line of people in Alexandria and make sure you don't ever forget your place around me. Do I make myself clear?"

With every word he said, my terror of him only built more and more, forcing trembles and tears alike straight out of me.

I couldn't find any ways to refuse him, so with shuddering breath, I nodded.

"Good. Now do not move a muscle and. Don't. Fucking. Kick. Me."

With those words, a shiver coursed through my body when Negan bowed down and picked me up.

I froze again. My body became rigid and for a few minutes I understood what it must have been like to be truly petrified. Never in my whole life had I known what it was like to be completely at someone else's mercy. I couldn't move or breathe or think past the arms that encircled me so much like a trap. I just held still, not wanting to antagonize the animal any further.

He carried me all the way to the infirmary and the entire way I stayed like that; too afraid to do a thing about it.

The doctor looked startled at the state I was in but seeing Negan carrying me, he did not ask what happened. Instead he distracted himself with mending me. It looked like my arm hadn't broken after all, only dislocated. He gave me a shot to relax the muscles and block the pain for when he popped it back in and I would need to wear a sling for a few days. From there, it was all downhill. It was patches and bandages after that. All the little pains in me, a split lip, bruises along my torso and face, blood in my mouth—the rest was just… a little pain.

Author's notes: I was really, really conflicted about posting this chapter, and wondered if there was any way I could omit Judith's beating, but it's pretty important in later chapters so I really couldn't find a way to cut it without screwing with a whole lot of other plot points. So, with a heavy heart, I kept it. I wrote that scene a long time ago and didn't really know if I was going to use it or not. But then some things happened and my mind somehow found a way to connect all these plot devices without actually knowing how I did it.

That was a seriously intense scene and Negan's developed a whole new level of psycho-abuser. He's trying a method of brainwashing and manipulation here, both with Daryl and with Judith. I'm not sure if either really knows that's what he's doing but Judith's initial instinct is to fight him at every chance, so even if she doesn't know that's what's going on, she's not going to make this easy for anyone.