AN: Thanks for the reviews last chapter! I really appreciate the support. I mentioned in the first chapter that this story would be a cross between the show and the comics. With Dwight, I'm choosing to follow his comic book origin so he'll have his crossbow. And since I'm following Dwight's comic origins, the same will go for Sherry.

Recently Re-edited: (6/9/19)

Disclaimer: I don't own The Walking Dead.

Don't shatter the porcelain, "it might be worth something someday".

~O~

Samantha stood on the ledge of the Sanctuary's roof, her toes peeking over the edge at the straight plummet below.

The rain had lessened, but the chill remained and the concrete beneath her bare feet was ice cold. From this far up there was a strong breeze that blew her black hair making it weightless as it followed the motion of the wind like two partners in dance. Her dress fluttered around her thighs and brushed gently against the tops of her knees. The wind whistled shrill in her ear as she breathed slow and deep, her heart pounding, feeling in sync with the world around her, where she stood solitary above it all.

She hoped that the longer she stood on the ledge, facing her chosen demise, the easier it would be to step off, the more tempting it would be to pursue the taste of freedom in permanent oblivion - but she was scared.

She didn't want to die, and her mind wasn't so warped that it would twist the reality of what she was about to do into a fevered dream, a whimsical fantasy she could chase off the edge. There was no shielding herself. She could turn her eyes away, but she would have to face the full weight of her decision until her fragile bones met the pavement below.

In her quiet lamentation, she thought back to the epic Roland willow that grew in the backyard of her father's childhood home, where she spent her summers seeking refuge under the weeping branches. They caged her in their heart, the cave forged by their long branches with a shady core that stayed cool even on the hottest days. The tree kept her hidden and the monsters at bay.

Now grown and so far away, an entire country between them, Sam thought back to it. She always imagined that it was the sight where everything she had lost since her childhood had washed up, woven into the grooves of the tree trunk and becoming part of the leaves that protected her. She imagined herself sitting underneath in its cove, leaning back against her literal family tree with a book in her lap. She would close her eyes and hear the rustling of the willow tree in the wind. And among it she dared to hear a faint bark of an old friend, youthful in his call for her to come play, the soft feel of chocolate brown fur underneath her hand, and she allowed the sensations to follow her back on to the ledge.

Her arms hung at her sides while her fingers curled and uncurled in anticipation. Her stomach flipped as vertigo threatened her balance, but she fought against it, adamant that she was going to jump off the roof, not fall off like an idiot. Everything felt so precarious at this height. The tall main building seemed to almost curve inward from her vantage point. Even the slightest increase in the breeze would have her over, she felt. Lighter than air on the edge, heavier than a rock off of it.

The shrill cry of the metal door to the roof stairway behind her pierced inorganically through the surreal air, revealing a greasy blonde with a scarred face. Without a word or command, he had his crossbow loaded and raised in her direction, but when she looked over her shoulder at him with that resolute look in her eye, his mean expression faltered when he realized that she wasn't up here looking to somehow escape the compound.

"Fuck," he cursed, lowering his weapon and reaching for the radio on his belt. "Someone get Carson up here, we've got a code white."

An affirmative from an unknown person buzzed through the radio before a moment of static and Negan's voice sounded out, his voice gruff and not at all happy.

"Dwight, I don't care what you have to do, you keep her right the fuck where she is until I get up there."

The radio feed went dead. The blonde made no move from where he stood by the door. Despite Negan's orders, Sam knew that Dwight wouldn't stop her if she jumped. He wouldn't make a mad dash for the ledge and pull her away, he wouldn't try to talk her down. He would only stand there and watch. If he was just an ounce crueler, she might even think he was capable of pushing her.

Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing, she thought as her and Dwight stared at each other. This was harder than she had anticipated, maybe a helping hand was needed.

Before she could voice the idea, the door swung open again, hard enough to hit the back wall with a resonating bang as Negan and several savior came piling out. Sam turned her head back forward and looked down at the empty space just a footstep away, willing herself to go now, 'this is your last chance', but she still couldn't make her feet move. The leader of the saviors saw her on the ledge and cursed.

He leaned in towards his top man and said something too low for Samantha to hear, the wind snatching the words away. Dwight responded with a nod and raised a hand to grab Lucille as Negan handed her off to him. She heard his boots scuff against the loose gravel of the rooftop as he approached her with easy strides. He chuckled in a deep tone that the wind tossed it up in the air, making it echo out.

"Jesus Christ!" he exclaimed in near hysterical excitement and disbelief. "You've got to be fucking kidding me. I can't believe you almost got away again!"

"If it makes you feel better, it wasn't so much as underestimating me as it was overestimating your men," she told him, still looking over the edge.

"Come on, mouse, don't you think this is a bit of an overreaction?"

She shook her head, "I can't stay here, living in a broom closet or chained to a pole."

"Hey, you brought that on yourself, girl," he said, still walking towards her with his exaggerated swagger. "All of this shit could have been avoided if you had just played by the rules like everyone else. Don't act like you've got any fucking justification for what you're trying to do, so get your ass down here before I drag you down."

Negan took another step closer to where she stood with one arm extended, the hand with the white gauze wrapped around his wrist reaching out to either help her or grab her.

"Take one step closer and I'll jump!" she yelled, wiping away the arrogant expression on his face.

There was several feet of distance between them where he stopped, but she was alert in case he decided to charge her; it wouldn't take more than a second for his long legs to close the space. He was starting to realize how serious she was, and that she wasn't just trying to create another scene to make him look like a jackass. He picked up on the fact that while she wasn't in a suicidal state of mind, she was in a desperate one and was seriously considering jumping off the roof.

"Don't do anything stupid, Sam," he warned in a low voice. "I'm not kidding."

She turned completely around then, her back now facing the drop, the wind still blowing her hair and dress, making the scene just a bit more dramatic.

"Neither am I," she replied.

Dark brown locked with pale blue as the two stared each other down, like two cowboys just before high noon, only here a step forward meant a step back and death would come just as quick as a draw. Negan's face was twisted up into that mean, pitbull scowl that he had when all humor and comic relief left him and he wasn't pretending to be the nice guy anymore.

"I really hate it when people do this," he said after several beats of intense silence. "You think you're going to find peace down there? Because I ain't going to have you put down when you come back as one of those dead bastards."

"I'll do a nose dive, then," she bit back, giving him a sneer.

"I'm not fucking joking!" he snapped. "You'll just become another decoration on my fucking wall, Mouse. A motherfucking waste! That's how this will end for you if you don't get. the fuck. down for there!"

Sam looked over her shoulder again, seeing the deep plunge. Vertigo finally hit with a wave of nausea, forcing her head forward again as she reached up with both hands and buried her face in them. There was a shift in gravity that only she seemed to feel and she let out a miserable groan as the lights behind her eyelids spun like a kaleidoscope. When she pulled her hands away, Negan had taken a few steps closer, though inconspicuous he tried to be. The anger was gone and his face had softened.

"Just, come on down from there and talk to me," he told her. "I'll even send the boys back down if it'll make you feel better."

"Do wherever you want with them, I'm not getting down."

"Fine, we'll just talk then," he conceded, raising his hands in easy surrender. "That's alright by me. I've got nothing better to do right now, anyways. We can just stand up here, shoot the shit and enjoy the view."

He stood with his arms held out, a gesture of peace, looking like a vicar garbed in a clergy robe of black leather, opening his arms and offering salvation.

His sudden complacency was surprising, but Sam wasn't stupid. She noticed what he was doing. Every time he spoke, he would pace slowly back and forth, trying to make it look organic while subtly taking a step forward whenever he changed direction. He was inching his way closer to her. She looked down at his boots, glaring. Negan didn't give himself away even as she conveyed with her own unimpressed expression that she knew what he was up to: the second he drew close enough, he was going to grab her.

"Before you throw yourself over and find out whether the Westboro Baptist Church actually knew what they were talking about, or if they really were just batshit, I've gotta know how you did it this time," he said, smiling in a way he knew was disarming. "How did you get out of your cell?"

"This isn't Fort Knox," she replied. "I jimmied the lock."

"I figured that, but fucking how? Using what? You got a tiny, lock-shaped prick hiding somewhere underneath that dress?"

"Magic - it doesn't matter how, Negan."

"Of course it fucking matters."

He was closer now, only a few feet away, and more saviors had grouped around the stairway entrance. Among them was the tall figure of Simon and the haggard Doctor Carson with his emergency bag in his hand. They all watched, waiting to spring forward at Negan's command.

Sam looked up over their heads, thinking back to that Roland willow. If she hung her head down, she could pretend the greasy tresses of her hair were the leaves.

This shouldn't be so hard. The thought of death sounded more appealing than living in a closet, but she still couldn't make herself move. The instinct of self-preservation wouldn't allow it. She couldn't suspend her will to live for even a second. She pictured the leaves, tried to put herself there in her mind, but all she could hear was Negan's voice in her head, repeating the phrase that made her doubt the role she was playing here.

'it was never my intention for you to get hurt...'

Wasn't it, though?

Her fight had gone when he had revealed his bluff. Even though she had made a fool of him, Negan never planned to hurt or kill her. He told her that, but she hadn't believed him, not until now. He hadn't sounded sincere in his claims until now. He told her that he meant no harm, but an underline threat had always been there, a 'I won't hurt you unless you make me'.

From his unwillingness to cause her harm, she had realized that she had a place here, at the Sanctuary, albeit uncertain and strenuous. Before, she hid behind Negan's cruelty, telling herself that this wasn't avoidable because he was uncompromising, when maybe, perhaps, this was really just a childish outburst of not wanting to accept that she was wrong and that her pain was actually of her own volition, like standing in time-out long after your parents say you can leave just to make a point; "I'll leave when I want to, not because you told me to".

How was she supposed to reconcile that? She had never been so confused as she was now and she rather be dead than this far into her head. It was a dangerous place in there.

"I think I'm self-destructing," she heard herself say out loud, sounding small and helpless.

Sam held faith in herself above all else, but if she couldn't trust herself, then what else was there left to do?

"Oh sweetheart," Negan cooed, not unkindly. "If you were self-destructing, you'd know it. This is nowhere near rock bottom. You're just a little confused right now, no big deal. We all get a little mixed up every now and again, there's no shame in it."

She lowered her eyes down from where they were fixated on empty space and looked at Negan. It felt strange to be higher than him for a change - unnatural. The leather of his jacket squealed faintly as he held out his hand again. She stared at it as if it was a bear trap, hidden poorly under a pile of leaves, while her face twisted up with inner turmoil. Negan only looked on softly at her in calm patience, giving her the chance to make a choice.

"What do you want from me?" she asked, her voice just barely a whisper that would have been stolen by the wind if it were any softer.

The calming smile that he had on faltered for a second when he realized that this was the most emotion he had ever seen stoic Sam express. He felt his hackles raise. He needed to get her down now, he was losing her.

"I just want you to work with me," he said sincerely, "that's all I ever wanted."

Close enough for her to reach for him, he held out his hand once more.

"Take my hand, Samantha."

Her confidence wavered and her hand slowly came up towards his-

"Come on, boss, just fucking grab her!" Simon yelled from the stairway door.

Fury went off like a rocket inside him and he looked over his shoulder, conveying with his blistering expression to 'shut the fuck up'.

The balding man's interruption allowed Sam to shake the doubt casted on her and steel her resolve once again. The leader turned back, opening his mouth to speak, to continue coaxing her off the ledge, but stopped, realizing that his chance of talking her down had just been shot to shit.

She stepped back, Negan's eyes widened in panic.

"Don't-"

Her right foot left the safety of the roof and then her left as she titled backwards.

Native Americans were, in general, religious people. Whether that was traditional native beliefs of the earth or the adopted Christianity, they took comfort in the idea of a higher power. Being the black sheep, Sam didn't share this. Though agnostic on principle, she believed less in God and more in quantum.

The inventor in her, the scientist, the observer who condemned the blind follower, always liked the idea of the multiverse, because to her it was more comforting than eternal paradise with halos and downy wings. Different realities with different courses that your life could have taken based on similar choices and similar circumstances, culminating in different outcomes. Infinite outcomes. Anything she could ever want, ever wish to have happen, has happened somewhere out there in infinite space, to a different Samantha, and she took comfort in that. No matter what happened in her reality, in another the dead didn't rise and she became somebody who was worth something.

Here, as she felt herself tip backwards and her stomach lurch, she grasped to her beliefs like any devote believer for one last moment of solace, come what may.

Somewhere, in another reality, she got what wanted and Negan was a fraction of a second too late. His fingertips only skimmed the inside of her wrist and she fell to her death. Her body dropped like a lead ball and she hit the hard pavement with a bone-shattering thud, snapping and splintering almost every bone and rupturing several organs. She died on impact. The last thing her mind comprehended was wind against her skin and seeing the overcast sky. Laying on her back with her broken limbs sprawled out and dress soaked by the puddle of blood pooling beneath her, her blue eyes stared upwards, unblinking, free of the mortal coil in the hands of death.

But in her reality, he wasn't too late. His hand grabbed her wrist in a steel grip that echoed to the other reality in a mocking call.

He lunged forward, grabbing and yanking her back. The momentum had her falling down over top of him, knocking them both to the ground. Negan had the wind knocked out of him with the weight of Sam pushing against his middle, but his grip on her didn't loosen as he moved to sit up. The dark-haired woman was sprawled across his lap, limp and breathing heavy, the skirt of her dress flared between them.

Using his empty hand, he braced it behind him to balance his weight as he shifted to where he was sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him. Once he felt stable enough, he pulled his arm back and reached to grab Sam's other wrist, keeping her in place on his lap.

Panting from anger, he looked down at her with blazing eyes, his chest heaving. She laid prone on his thighs with a blank expression on her face; she was in shock. She didn't react to the tight grip on her wrists, or the intimate proximity of their bodies. She only stared as silence fell over the rooftop.

The anger gradually slipped from his face, the well-defined frown lines that betrayed his aged smoothed out as his breathing evened out again. His eyes danced across her vacant, half-lidded gaze, a sense of awe creeping in the longer they lingered on this impossible woman.

Perched in his lap, a mockingbird who's flight had been cancelled, he was marveled by her.

Her small frame had him easing his grip on her wrists as snapshots of a buried past flashed irrepressibly inside his head. Looking the way she did, always holding herself in a way that he thought of as dainty, she was like one of those eerie China dolls his mother used to collect when he was a boy.

Those porcelain dolls with painted faces and horse hair. His mother collected them almost obsessively, ordering them from the heaps of doll catalogs that she had littering her sewing room, detailing rare collections with featured pictures of the dolls and their fabricated backstories. She would keep them in the powder-white guest room, on shelves too high for him to reach, and treated them lovingly, as if they were living daughters.

(After she had died, the dolls went to him, along with all her other crap like her clothing, jewelry and books, which he ended up either selling or donating. The dolls he kept, though. He hadn't been particularly close to his mother, but he didn't have the heart to toss them out or sell them, so they went into a box that sat inside an old storage locker of his. Fuck all if the damned things were still there today.)

Only once did she ever let him hold one, her favorite one. Even after all these years, he still remembered the model: french bisque, an authentic bebe jumeau, with dark chocolate hair, rosy freckled cheeks and glossy blue eyes, handed down to her from her maternal grandmother (fuck that old bat). He held it almost like a baby, cradling it, feeling both excited by his mother's faith in him and embarrassed as shit at holding something that was meant for girls. She had a name for it, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember what it was.

He had peered down at its fine features and delicate fame, dressed in its pastel frills and a little straw hat that his mother had weaved herself. He remembered taking one of its tiny hands into his own, fingers so small, like little icicles on the underside of a picnic table, and arms delicate like bird bones. He remembered thinking, in his little, destructive six-year old mind, how with just enough pressure between his pointer finger and thumb, the appendage would snap clean off into his palm.

Samantha had the same pale blue eyes as that creepy ass doll and gave off the same sense of physical fragility that kept him from gripping her wrists too hard, not wanting to break the porcelain.

It was her who finally made the first move, shattering the trance. She began to struggle in his lap, trying to roll off and away from him, but he kept his grip.

"C'mere," he growled through gritted teeth, hauling her up as he climbed back on to his feet.

She continued to fight against him even as he pulled her upright. Her expression was a mixture of frustration and pain with her eyes glossing over with unshed tears. Her cheeks glowed a dark pink, and the pallor of her usually earthy tone bared the knowledge of what she had almost done to herself, and the failure and shame in it. Her skin felt ice cold underneath his, almost like death if he couldn't already feel her pulse engraving itself against the heels of his palms.

The shock had warn off and anger flared anew as Negan leaned in closer to Sam. She tried to pull away, but he only spun her around so that her back was against his chest. He tightened his hands around her upper arms, lowering his head until his chin was almost resting on her shoulder.

"You only die when I say you can," he snarled before pushing her towards Dwight. "Put her back in her box."

The scarred savior stepped forward to grab her, his arms outstretched, but Sam used the momentum of the shove to propel herself past him. Everyone on the roof dropped into a defensive stance once more when she made another break for it. She pushed to get to the ledge again, to gain her advantage back. Though not certain she could make herself step off again, she was feeling desperate enough to try.

However, Dwight had quick reflexes and his arm shot out to hook around her waist, causing them both to spin. She let out a cry of frustration as he used his hold to wrestle her to the ground.

The concrete and loose gravel tore at the skin of her bare feet and ankles as she kicked her legs out wildly, bracing them against the roof and pushing up to try to buck her capture off. Dwight was a scrawny man with not much muscle, and with the young woman thrashing around and fighting as if her life depended on it, he could feel her start to slip out from under him. Samantha could feel it too, and her vigor was renewed, but Negan and the others descended on them.

Disembodied hands wrapped around her ankles, pushing them down, and more joined Dwight's up near her shoulders. She screamed at them with rage and hate as she continued her fight. The pressure on her limbs sucked the energy out of her and her struggles weakened, but she had it in her to pitch her own attack when Dwight's hand came to hold her down by her collarbone and his forearm came too close to her face. With what little reach she had, she lunged forward and sank her teeth into the exposed flesh.

The man yelled out as she bit down as hard as she could. He yanked his arm back, but the move caused her teeth to tear skin as he pulled himself free. The salt from his skin and the copper taste of his blood spilled on her tongue, making her want to gag. She spat out a wad of saliva and blood, aiming for the closest person she could.

"Fuck!" Dwight swore, holding his bleeding arm. "She fucking bit me!"

Negan appeared above her, calling Doctor Carson. The gun-shy physician was next to him in an instant, reaching into his medical bag and pulling out a bright, neon blue water bottle with a picture of the Capitol Building printed on the side. He handed it over to his boss, depositing it in his hand and stepping back out of the way.

Crouching down near her head, Negan held the bottle in one hand while the other grabbed Sam's jaw in a brutal grip.

"Hold her still!," he shouted at his men.

He used his teeth to pull open the stopper as his gloved fingers pried open her red-stained mouth. Ignoring her screams and attempts to close her teeth on his fingers, the older man leaned over and shoved the stopper in between her lips.

She gagged and struggled harder when a gush of water spilled into her upturned mouth, hitting the back of her throat and causing her to choke. Her windpipe rejected the liquid through a series of violent coughs, but despite the sounds of her distress, Negan didn't pull back. He only reached down with his free hand and pinched her nose closed, cutting off her air completely and forcing her to swallow more.

He kept at it until the bottle was almost empty, only letting up when Sam was on the verge of choking to death. The longer it went on, the less she struggled. Exhaustion had her limbs becoming still underneath the hands that held them down and she throat burned too badly to cry out.

When the leader of the saviors finally pulled away, ceasing the flow of the bottle, she let out full-bodied coughs that tore out of her abused lungs as they worked to get rid of the excess water. She coughed until she almost passed out from the lack of air and took in a deep breath. As her chest expanded, the rest of her body fell limp.

The saviors holding her down tentatively removed their hands as they stepped away from her motionless form, as if they expected her defeat to be fake and that she would spring up again.

But she only continued to lay on the ground, breathing heavy as she stared up at the grey sky above with a weak, half-lidded expression on her face. The skirt of her black dress flared out at her sides, still damp. Her hair was in clumps, dank and dirty while her skin was streaked with grim. Her toes felt frozen and the loose gravel dug into her partially bare back, but she didn't move to sit up. Acceptance had set in that her attempted suicide had failed.

The figures on the roof stood and waited - for what, she didn't know. Negan made no demands for her to be picked up and placed back into captivity. He was silent with the rest of them, tossing the bottle back to Carson before leaning against the concrete ledge with his fingers rubbing at his eyes.

Sam didn't realize that she was becoming dreary until her vision began to tunnel. It occurred to her that Negan hadn't shoved an entire bottle of water down her throat because he thought she might be a little parched. There had been something in it that was now making her feel sluggish and intoxicated. She tried to lift her head, but even that required more coordination than what she had right now. Accepting this too, she gave up and let her head fall back down.

Her eyes looked upwards again and stayed there until they slipped closed.

~O~

When the parlor doors swung open, the five women cladded in lingerie moved to stand from where they had been lounging on ornate loveseats, but the doors slamming shut again, and the look on their pseudo husband's face when he stalked past them, had the harem sitting back down.

Negan was in a piss poor mood and they knew to make themselves scarce when he was on the warpath.

He stomped through the decorated room and towards his connected office. He disappeared inside without a word of acknowledgement and slammed the door behind him, making the gaudy crystal chandelier hanging overhead rattle. The wives threw glances between themselves but said nothing as they went back to what they had been doing.

As soon as he was inside the privacy of his own space, Negan set Lucille down against the wall and reached up to claw at his scarf. He yanked it off and threw it to the ground before unzipping his jacket. The heavy leather casing was flung across the room as the man vented his fury towards the objects on and around him. A boot connected with the edge of a coffee table and a particularly obnoxious wallhanging was knocked from its perch, making the wives sitting in the next room jump at the loud clatter.

He raged through his office until the tantrum receded enough for him to remember that someone (not him, obviously, but someone) would have to clean up the mess. Pulling his chair out from his desk, he collapsed into it with a sound crossed between a sigh and a growl. He unclenched his hands, his old knuckles aching at the release of pressure. He reached up to rub at his eyes, massaging them before traveling down and palming his chin and the coarse hair that collected along it.

He had been worried about this, ever since Samantha's lack of activity was first reported. It should have been a welcomed sign that she was finally learning to behavior herself. If it were anyone else then it would have been, but with her it only served as a red flag that maybe she was being pushed too far.

A breaking point could mean different things to different people. His workers were the best kind, most preferable, where all it took was a little pressure to break their spirits to a nice point of subordination. They were broken, but not too broken to work for a chance to live another day, even if that day was shitty.

He could tell that Sam had one of those zero-to-a-hundred breaking points, where it was either she was in charge and in control of herself, or she wasn't and he had a suicidal meltdown on his hands. Those were always a pain in the ass.

Sensible fuckers would chose safety over happiness, because nothing mattered if you were dead, but some idiots would rather die than serve someone they didn't want to - because they were fucking idiots. Sam might like to think she was a practical person, but she was more driven by emotion than she realized. She would've never snuck inside the Sanctuary vents if she wasn't.

It was frustrating because he saw so much potential in her, had seen it for himself in those little journals of hers that read like they were written by a mad scientist trying to construct a death ray. There had been sketches in there - blueprints. Crude blueprints, yes, but of things that would make life in this new world better; windmills and water wheels, solar panels, ideas of recon and salvaging DC's metro system, salvaging the Smithsonians for old models of machines for study and reuse, the reintegration of steampower, and even bee cultivation.

(Christ, he never knew bee wax had so many uses; Sam had written pages on that subject alone. If there was one thing that he had learned from her journals, it was that the woman loved trains and bees.)

Sam had the ideas, and possibly even the vision to see them through, and Negan had the tools and the man power. It was a perfect match. It was goddamn ridiculous that he, despite all of his awe-inspiring charm, couldn't even get her to scoff in his direction. Yes, his treatment of her had been less than stellar, but, not to belabor a point, she was the one who stowed away and stole from him.

A practical person - bullshit.

That little girl was such a walking contradiction, he doubted that she even knew the first thing about herself, much less who she was, who she wanted to be, and who she was going to someday become.

Even through the fumes of death and the unholy apocalypse (supposedly - he hadn't seen Jesus come down from his cloud yet and join the party like he had promised once upon a time - book of revelations my left testicle - so he remained skeptic that this was the end to end alls) -

- even through waves of chaos and madness, Negan could still spot, with eagle-eye precision, a fucking student with their head shoved so far up that they couldn't see where they were going. That was his motherfucking job, ladies and gents, and although he may have been a shitty student himself, a shitty husband, a shitty cars salesman and a shitty person in general - he had been a damn good teacher - a great one.

If he had come about Sam the regular way, finding her on the road and inducting her into the Sanctuary like everyone else, then he would have been all over her. He would've wined and dined her, and she would've been his favorite, but on the night of that storm he knew he had come across something special, something that couldn't, and wouldn't, be wasted by dolling it up and sticking it in the parlor with his other wives to bitch and gossip all day.

With a little direction, Samantha could have it in her to bring about the new world's own industrial revolution.

Or, at the very least, give the Sanctuary an alternative energy source so people could use batteries in their MP3's and huge, monster-dong vibrators like God fucking intended.

Either way, it would be a win for him. He just needed to make sure that she didn't try to fling herself off the roof again, or kill herself some other way, but he was confident that this suicide attempt was just a one-off thing. She had been desperate, beaten down and feeling hopeless, thanks to him. He felt just a tad guilty for backing her so far into the corner that she felt she had to leap from a building just to make it stop. When she woke up again, he would make his case once more, remake his offer and see if he could get her to at least calm the fuck down for a while.

With the rest of his anger finally leaving him, Negan let out a sigh, leaning back in his chair and craning his neck to stare up at the ceiling in thought.

'What the fuck was that doll's name?' he wondered, too tired to think further on what had just happened. It was still too fresh, he needed to let it sit before he could process without getting pissed all over again. 'Martha, Mary? This is going to bug the shit out of me.'

It started with an "M", he was sure of it. Madeline, Madison?

'No, wait - it was Marceline,' he remembered. 'That's what it was. Mother's Marceline, the little southern bee keeper.'

Kicking his feet up on to his desk, Negan rested his hands across his stomach and closed his eyes.

AN: A neat thing about me is that I actually live in Virginia, and even at one time lived in the actual city of Alexandria. Since probably season 2, I've always wanted to write a story using things like the metro system and downtown DC and the National Mall. The idea of the Smithsonian museums has been an idea for a long time, and while I'm not watching season 9, I know the premiere has the characters in "a" museum. I would have loved that scene if it wasn't so stupid, but I digress.

Anyways, I wanted to remind you guys that this story may exist in a timeline where Rick's group never comes to Virginia. I still haven't decided yet. If you would like to tell me your opinion on whether you want the story to be an AU of the show/comics with no Rick Grimes, or if you want to one day see Sam navigate the events of the show, then feel free to let me know in a review!

~Scorpiofreak~