A/N: A Negan chapter - but not Negan's POV.
Shouldn't be a bad one, but it does contain a reference to Honey and Eugene having a less than conventional sex life.
May 27, 2010
Honey relaxes in bath water run so hot it's nearly burning, allowing the almost-pain sensation to draw away the actual aches throughout her body. She didn't lie when she told the monster who leads this place that her ribs were cracked. It's happened a few times in the past, all the way back to her lacrosse days to training accidents more recently.
The time in that dark hole at least let her assess her injuries and plan, giving her time to grieve. These 'Saviors' may have accidentally done her a favor by the confinement. Like a wounded animal bereft of her pack, she mourned her brothers' deaths - her people's deaths - and wove all that loss into determination to make the people who took them from her pay dearly. Reaching for the washcloth and soap, she begins to scrub away the sweat, blood, and filth clinging to her body like a protective second skin.
It doesn't escape her notice in the least that Negan is taking exactly the interest in her that her kidnappers intended. The man's aware of it at least, little fooled by his own men's wish to turn his attention somewhere new. Parading Honey into the set of rooms that was once the bridal suite to show off his 'wives' made her even more aware of the predator by her side. He may detest the idea of force, because she sensed no untruth in his delight in her extinguishing the life of the inept rapist guard, but he's just more subtle than Dave was.
Unlike the asshole guard, this bastard likes to wear the illusion that his sex partners consent to the act.
Perhaps two of the wives do consent, drawn to power or luxury or whatever reason they don't mind bedding the man, but Honey can't get the image of the youngest one out of her head. Amber is afraid of Negan, barely able to keep from flinching when he deliberately drew her close to him and stared at Honey over her thin shoulder. It will take some subtlety to figure out how to best free the girl from whatever shackles her 'husband' has on her.
Playing along with the madman initially was only to find out the lay of the land and scope out the best way to escape and then lead her militia back here. By now, over two full days since she left Hilltop, the troops will be amassing, Georgia and Virginia both. They've been on the lookout for this danger for a few months now, and twelve of Hilltop's best going missing? That's a red flag for the Virginia communities.
The fact that these bastards killed two Dixons? Half of Georgia is probably camped on Hilltop's land by now.
Honey isn't sure whether her family and her people will assume her dead, and she's not worried if they do. It's not finding her that's important right now, and those who know her best will know she can probably get herself out. Dead or alive, they won't stop until they've removed the bastards from this earth.
But now she has a different problem. Escape and revenge were the easy solution, when she thought she was dealing with someone like the bandits who attacked Terminus or that group of rapists Scout hunted down and executed back when the dead first walked. This place, this false Sanctuary, it's a Woodbury or a Grady. The innocents outnumber the potentially guilty at least twice over.
Whatever monster the man behind the barb wire bat is, Negan isn't a pure bandit. She suspects he's more warlord, gathering those to serve those who wield weapons. It's a perverse reflection of what her own people do, all the way down to the points system set in place.
There's enough military power amassed among the Allied Communities to wipe these Saviors off the map if she got a real estimate of their fighter numbers. Even adding in the civilians here as potential fighters, the Allies could swarm this place and raze it to the ground.
But the problem with going to war is the same that faced them in taking out Woodbury: innocents will die. More importantly to Honey, her own people will die, just like they did the day that Woodbury attacked Homestead. She isn't willing to draw that wrath down on this place yet, not when there are other ways to remove a threat.
This room she's been shown to couldn't be more opposite of the dank little cell. She actually recognizes the resort from the tour the preening peacock took her on, because the buildings are the sort of distinctive that you simply don't forget. All this time they've been patrolling Virginia and even risking DC because the refugees said the man favored cities over countryside, and the bastard is sixty miles north of the Kingdom on the banks of the Potomac in a damned resort in Maryland.
From the balcony of this suite, she can see the bridge across the Potomac and the green growth that retook the national park location between here and the river. Just up the crumbling interstate is a town whose multiple colleges were raided by Ezekiel's people for the knowledge held in their halls and libraries. Her own home is a hundred miles south of here.
They are too fucking close to the ones Honey needs to protect, and she knows that to do what needs to be done, she will have to give up a community to fulfill the illusion that there are serfs willing to serve Negan's lord of the land fantasies. As she washes her long hair, she ponders the risks.
The Kingdom is closest, and Ezekiel's command structure would make it much easier to convince him to play along. The man understands the value of compromise in a way few others do. It doesn't hurt that the Kingdom expanded its original agricultural base and kept at it, and their very playacting at having a King means the entire place feels more like a renaissance festival than any other community in the Alliance. Their soldiers and military might are completely hidden, like a sleeping dragon curled around its hoard.
Hilltop is her home, almost as deeply as Homestead. But like Homestead, hiding what Hilltop is, the military leader of Virginia, is nearly impossible. While plenty of their military caches are hidden away underground, they've shifted to manufacturing. It may be only Industrial Revolution scale with much better working conditions, but there's no mistaking their foundry or refinery for what it is. The acres of fields, orchards, and pastures will do little to hide that Eugene's clever engineering miracles there.
Alexandria is out of the question. Spencer and Aaron do their best, but the small community is always on a knife's edge, and Deanna is too unpredictable to put to the test. The damned woman needs to give in to the inevitable and retire, instead of this no man's land her son directs their community from.
Solomons is equally off the table. It's too valuable a resource, and she doesn't know if this Negan is capable of appreciating the research underway there to try to find an end to the walking dead. Despite tests and predictions swearing that the original hordes will fade away in time, and signs that it's starting to happen seven years later, it doesn't stop their own people from turning.
Every single person Honey knows wants to return to a world where a loved one's death doesn't have to be followed by a blade to the brain. She'll die before she volunteers that island to Negan's goons.
Hilltop or the Kingdom? She isn't Council at Hilltop, by her own choice. Just like Paul, she prefers not to be immersed in the day-to-day details of running a community of over two hundred people. Her brother is, though, and she knows Jazz is pragmatic enough to play along. He could easily convince Olivia, but the others are wildcards.
Michael Fisher sometimes seems to have replaced Gregory as the stubborn force on the Council since the old jackass died. Noah's father will react to the perceived danger to his family more than seeing the bigger picture, and the lingering loyalty to Honey's family for saving his life in Atlanta and his family's lives at Shirewilt won't hold enough sway anymore. Emmett Carson might be persuaded, because the man's training as a surgeon makes him naturally drop into logical thinking. Bertie is too much a school teacher still to want the children of Hilltop on the radar of a man like Negan.
With the possibility of the vote going three to two not to concede to the Saviors' demands for a tithe, she doesn't think she can risk it. The fact that there are nine families at Hilltop in addition to her own who lost loved ones will be something the Council has to consider as well. This will make her a monster in their eyes.
In time, Honey thinks Ezekiel will forgive her.
Draining the water from the oversized tub, she watches the discolored liquid swirl down the drain. It feels worse than decadent to be in this luxury, knowing that the people who provide all the labor are crowded into the old ballroom of the place, sleeping on bunks, cots, and pallets in conditions she wouldn't wish on a medieval serf. Negan let her wander among those kneeling people, seeming pleased as she stopped to examine them at random.
She isn't a doctor like her sister or a nurse like her mother, but no Hilltop runner leaves the walls without at least passing Emmett Carson's medic training. She recognizes the signs of nutritional deficits in all the workers, signs that don't exist in the foot soldiers or ranking Saviors. It was all she could do not to put a fist in Negan's grinning face when she spotted the bleeding gums on most of the twenty-one small children huddled among their parents.
There's no fucking reason on this planet for children to be suffering from scurvy.
Her tour isn't enough to get a true feel for the dynamic here. The cult-like obedience the workers seem to have is frightening. Not one of them hesitated in dropping to their knees when the bastard entered that ballroom. All of them seem cowed, accepting this fate because they don't have an alternative. How to offer them one they can trust is the issue Honey ponders as she refills the tub with hot water.
The foot soldiers are the wild cards. While they knelt and obediently chanted "I Am Negan", it wasn't as fluid. They have better quarters, not quite full privacy, but shared rooms within the three smaller buildings that made up the once more affordable rooms of the resort. But they have soft beds to sleep in, and not one of them showed signs of starvation, just a lack of discipline from the signs they fight when there isn't a ranking Savior in the room.
The lieutenants will take time to comprehend. She already knows she can write off Simon. There's something behind the man's eyes, a sort of leashed feral nature, that tells her he thrives off this unbalanced world. Negan is actually a chain on the greater monster within his ranks, she thinks.
Honey is glad to see the little bastard that led the attack on her people isn't a lieutenant, because it will make his punishment easier. Derek's days are numbered, because he gave the order that aimed a gun at her little brother's head. She might not even have to kill him herself, because the attack on her group wasn't sanctioned by Negan's rules. After all, if everyone died in the coward's ambush, Negan would have to keep searching for communities to support his own, and all they would have to show for the attack would be three truckloads of produce.
Hearing the door to the suite open, she reaches for the knife the guards missed in her belt. Concealed as an ornate handle, few would understand what it is. Eugene outdid himself in crafting it to look like a carved buckle, the delicately etched honeybees belying that they support a two inch dagger capable of punching into any soft and vulnerable point on the body. It's not the only thing they missed other than her garotte.
"Put the fucking tray on the table and get out."
Negan's voice, obviously ordering some underling around. Honey slides the dagger back into the leather of her belt. It won't be needed, even if it would be easy enough to take him out and flee out the window. No one expects a woman to climb the outside of a four story building. Danny would appreciate the use of the skill he taught her, and she can almost feel the young Marine's ghost lingering, but it's not time. Not yet.
"Well, isn't this a goddamned stunning display of womanly flesh."
Leveling her best 'don't be a dumbass' stare at the man standing in the doorway to the bathroom, she wraps the chain for the tub's stopper around her toes and pulls it loose. Not waiting for the water to drain away, she steps onto the mat, reaching for one of the soft towels a worker scurried in here with earlier along with the other bath supplies.
"You prefer your women black and blue?" Honey queries, taking care not to put too much pressure on the bruised areas. Her ribs aren't the only sensitive area from the outnumbered fight she eventually lost.
The asshole actually looks affronted at the implication. "Hell no, Gorgeous. I told you that sort of thing is fucking forbidden here."
It fits with her assessment that he likes to pretend to be something other than the monster he is. "I have a name, you know."
"One you haven't seen fit to fucking share with me yet."
Honey spares a moment to wonder if Negan is addicted to his profanity. She doesn't think she's heard more than a sentence or three without some variation of fuck out of him. Considering giving out something other than her name, considering the bland nature of the legal name and the possibly simpering implications of her chosen one, she wraps her hair into a towel. "It's Honey."
"You've got to be fucking kidding me. Honey? I know you've got the deep south accent and all, Gorgeous, but that's just damned hilarious."
She just arches a brow at him as she retrieves her belt from the pile of ruined clothing. If he forgets that honey is a weapon as well as a sweet, that's his own mistake to make. When she moves toward the door, Negan actually steps back, continuing his delusion that there's a choice to be made here between them. While she's comfortable in her own skin, the meal on the table is for two, and this is not a negotiation she's holding bare ass naked.
"My given name is Hannah," she concedes, pulling on the clothes that came from some masculine stash here. Honey is used to adapting clothing, with her height meaning that scavenged women's clothing rarely fits, and her belt cinches up the extra waistline easily. Someone in their supplies has a sense of humor. Even the underwear is masculine, and they didn't provide a bra. That's fine, since she rinsed hers out in the bathroom and left it there to dry. She wouldn't let the specially crafted garment far away from her willingly anyway.
"I suppose I can understand rejecting that one. That's a fucking boring moniker indeed." He follows as she inspects the tray on the table, which is set up just like it's room service for the resort before the virus ran free.
The obvious implication of the meal for two isn't lost on her, and she uncovers both plates, setting the table just as she would if the world were still normal outside this room. Negan drapes himself into a chair, reaching for a roasted potato with his fingers and popping it into his mouth, watching her with those clever, hazel eyes and smiling lazily. Taking the seat opposite him, she tries her own meal, recognizing the signs of a cook trying desperately to make do with mismatched and irregular supplies.
"You come to a decision yet, Honey?" he drawls.
The emphasis on her name zips along her nerve endings, but probably not in the same effect he intends because her gut roils instinctively from this man. The tone is seductive, and so is his body language. She can admit he makes a pretty picture, probably old enough to be her father but still in good shape with wide shoulders and handsome features. The problem is that Honey already knows what lies beneath the surface of the charming miscreant he's presenting to her right now. In his own way, Negan is as much a chameleon as she is.
"I am no man's possession."
"Is that how you see my wives? Possessions?"
"I could call them something less polite." He'll assume that to be whores, because he's that type of man. She sees them as victims of a world they were never given the ability to survive in. Honey is well aware of the privilege her family gave her to be who she is today.
"They choose not to work for a fucking living. Any of them can choose otherwise at any goddamned time they like." He's offended, charm fading away in what she thinks might be actual hurt feelings.
Back to that overcrowded room where people starve while those like her and Negan have full plates of food - like that's a true choice. None of the trio are soldiers, so that's the only option they face. Starvation or turning their body over to the man who rules their world like a medieval king in ways gentlemanly Ezekiel would never stoop to.
"I have far more value to you than holing up in a room waiting for you to decide you want more company than your own right hand."
Negan laughs, a booming sound that fills the room. "Holy shit, do you fucking ever." Reaching out to the bottle of bourbon that came with the tray, he pours a measure into each of their glasses. "You could return to that boring little village with its crops and shitty living and keep them in line for my lieutenants to visit, if you insist. My patrols will keep the place safe and sound from the dead pricks roaming the land."
"I could." Honey cups the glass, scenting the amber liquid before savoring a drink. The alcohol burns along her throat, providing the first burst of impending pain relief she's had in days. She does believe that he thinks he would set her free to live with her people, so long as she honors the agreement to supply his own. But she recognizes when a man is intrigued by a woman, and his attentions won't stray easily, she suspects.
"Or you could prove yourself worthy of a spot among my lieutenants."
Ah, there it is. That bait, set out there to draw her in. She wonders how often he's been refused, even without the threat of the bat leaned against the bedside table four feet away. Charm can be a deadly weapon in its own right, and Negan has a dangerous wealth of it.
"Not a foot soldier?"
"Come on, Honey, we both know you're no common fighter to follow orders. You're no more capable of bowing your head and listening to Simon or Regina than I am."
It's funny that Negan recognizes that much about her, yet still offers her power. "And they're going to accept me just being promoted to stand beside them?"
"Oh, yes, they will, because they have no fucking other choice." Negan sets the glass down on the table, leaning forward. His gaze is intense, voice dropping low. "My word is the final goddamned word here. They disobey that, and they'll serve the Sanctuary on the fence."
Among Honey's allies, that phrase would mean a demotion to scut work among the guards or workers. Here? Negan took delight in showing her the walker covered fence that serves as a warning to the residents and a deterrent to the roving dead outside.
She doesn't answer right away, although they both know she's understood the choice he was going to offer. The well appointed room with all its old world insulation from the reality outside is proof that he is dangling even more than a lieutenant spot here. Not even Simon, the only one who doesn't kneel to Negan, has rooms on this floor.
It's not just that she's a woman, because there are three other women introduced as lieutenants. It wouldn't surprise her that he's bedded one or more of them at some point, either out of curiosity, boredom, or sheer horniness, but just like the carefully isolated wives, they didn't hold his interest. She doubts she would in the long term either. A man like this isn't capable of that depth of feeling anymore. Whether he was always this way, or the Outbreak shattered him like it did so many others, Honey doesn't know.
Her plate is half cleared, and Negan's picked at his food and spent more time with the bottle of bourbon than he ought when she finally deigns to answer him.
"I pick my own soldiers." She leans over to pluck the bottle from his fingers, dragging her own fingertips against his knuckles as she does so. His intake of breath is unmistakable, and his hazel eyes go heavy lidded as she refills her own glass and takes a drink.
"Granted. Anything else?"
"Once I've earned my place? I want the workers."
"Why the fucking drudges?"
"Because whoever is responsible for them is wasting your best resource." Negan called them that himself, even if he was derogatory in how he views those who can't fight. "And I refuse to work for a man who is so foolish as to let his kingdom rot from within."
"An army marches on its stomach," he replies, surprisingly with no added profanity. When she arches a brow, he shrugs. "I was educated once upon a time. Napoleon's soldiers destroyed their own supply lines for retreat."
"Then you should understand that without those workers, your soldiers are incapable of surviving a single winter, even this far south. They're locusts." It's a gamble, what she's doing here, but being a warrior will only sway so many to her side. She needs the people that Negan doesn't value, because right now, she can win their loyalty with simple human decency.
"Show me the plan, and then we'll talk."
It's not a no. This is a risk both ways, because the man's highly intelligent, and more than that, he's clever in ways she might not be able to predict or outthink all on her own.
Honey finishes the bourbon in her glass and rises, watching as he doesn't entirely relax when she's standing over him. Smart man. That bat may be out of reach, but she doesn't doubt he's got weapons secreted on his person the same way she does. Leaning in and bracing her palms on the arms of his chair, she brings her face in close to his, letting her breath ghost across his lips.
His eyes are a brilliant shade of hazel, thickly lashed, and she allows a slight smile. "That other thing you want from me?"
"Yeah?" His pupils are blowing wide, and she wonders if he understands the web she's weaving. Strangely, she thinks he does comprehend the danger lurking over him right now, and that makes it even more alluring to play this game with her.
"Earn it."
He allows her to walk away, to refill her glass, and to step through the sliding doors to the balcony. As she guessed, he doesn't follow. She gives it a full minute before she looks back into the room.
Negan is standing now, rolling that bat in his hands and watching where her body is lit from behind by the setting sun. The bastard actually bows, so she salutes him with her glass. Returning to the scenery beyond her well appointed prison room, she hears the suite's door shut behind her.
Alone on the balcony, it is the first time she allows herself to think of Eugene, holding the thought of her partner at bay until the bait is offered and the hook set. She doesn't fear he'll reject her for what she's doing here, because she knows his love for her is as unshakable as her own for him. They've never vowed monogamy, keeping their relationship open to feeding both her need for exhibitionism and his need to watch. But she's never once had sex without him in the same room, his consent evident in his enthusiastic voyeurism.
Downing the remainder of the glass, she pitches it toward the river, sinking to her knees and leaning against the balcony rails. The desperate need for her other half to be here, helping in this effort to overthrow a madman and save the innocents under his thrall, eats through her like acid. It's worse than the grief that flickers around the edges of her consciousness, as if half of everything she is lies out of reach with miles of countryside between them.
Leaning against the wrought iron and feeling it bite into bruised skin, Honey prays that somehow, she won't do this alone.
A/N: I wrote two other versions of this using Negan's POV and it sucked like a damn vortex. It finally occurred to me that I was using the wrong viewpoint, and once Honey took over, it ended up longer than most recent chapters.
Trivia point: Honey is the only of the original four Merle offspring that has never had a POV scene.
If you don't recall the chapter in Repair Broken Men where Eugene finally confessed his voyeurism to Honey, this is a reflection that they did indeed move forward with the agreement that they weren't going to be strictly monogamous.
The resort is entirely imaginary, but if you need a mental map, it's near the bridge at Williamsport, Maryland. The Kingdom is near Atoka, VA. Hilltop is at Culpeper, VA. Alexandria is south of Woodbridge, VA, and Solomons is technically in Maryland on Solomons Island. darktidings. atwebpages homestead_ (remove spaces) for an update on each community as of May 2017.