June 25, 2017
- Honey -
Four days.
Negan hasn't come near Honey outside of a single meeting of lieutenants since the night he found out about the baby four days ago. After the late night conversation Eugene had with the drunken man, Honey expected something more than this uncharacteristic avoidance. Negan was gone when they woke, and his absence is noted with relief by Amber and her mother.
The young woman brings a pitcher of pink lemonade and glasses out to where Honey's crew is completing another of the massive concrete panels that will eventually become part of the wall to enclose the Sanctuary. After the thirsty workers have returned to their task, Amber lingers near Honey as she reviews the plans. Glancing around, she asks softly, "do you think he's got some kind of phobia?"
Blinking at her for a moment, Honey's brain disengages from the task at hand long enough to figure out what Amber is talking about. "It's as good an answer as any, to be honest. Figuring that man's mind out would be about as easy as trying to tango with a walker, I think."
Amber giggles before covering her mouth. She's slowly creeping out of the terrified rabbit persona she had when she was first 'gifted' to Honey, now firmly convinced she didn't go from one unpalatable situation to another, but it'll take months or years for all of the damage to heal. "He just left with Simon and some of their men."
Honey reviews the schedule in her head and can't think of anything that was planned for today. With the abundance of food coming in from the Kingdom, they've been able to back off on supply runs. She hopes he's not making a trip to Ezekiel's domain without her. He would be in for a deadly surprise if he tried to take on the wily king even with a full complement of his and Simon's men.
On second thought, that would solve a lot of the problem. There are some questionables in each of the other lieutenants' troops, especially Regina's, but the vast majority of the soldiers she's rated as past redemption are in Negan and Simon's commands. If something happened to Negan, Simon, and the men they took out with them, she could easily take over the Sanctuary without widespread bloodshed.
"Anyone say where they were headed?" she asks Amber, knowing the other woman is preternaturally aware of any discussion or gossip about Negan.
"No. I don't think anyone knows, but they didn't cross the river bridge."
Unusual. Negan's pretty clear on keeping everyone's whereabouts clear, because he's apparently lost soldiers who developed ambition to do their own thing in the past. She's still not sure why Derek's never been punished for violating the rules in attacking Honey's people, but she can bide her time. He'll face Homestead's justice if she doesn't get an opportunity to take care of him sooner. Hilltop will have to settle only for the rest of Derek's little squad.
It's also possible they traveled north or south to a different river crossing, but that would be more subterfuge than she thinks Negan would bother with. Something tells her that honestly, he would probably want her to witness anything he did against her people. The biggest risk with unknown trips is him finding the other communities, but Alexandria's the most likely one, and it's currently reinforced with the best of Homestead's militia.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall if Negan tried to take on Scout and Shane, not to mention her parents and Daryl there, too...
"Well, keep an ear out for me. If anything else comes to light, let me know." Amber nods and heads back to the building. She mingles with the workers now, her own status in an odd limbo that allows her to serve as a liaison for Honey. Once they get this settled, Honey is going to ask Carol to take Amber and her mother to Homestead. They deserve a home like that, or maybe Terminus, where most of the women understand what Amber's survived here.
"Joey!" she calls out to the trainee engineer. The hefty man jogs over, attentive as always. He'd had good status before as one of the few non-soldiers who wasn't deemed a drudge, but now he doesn't live in fear that one screw up will demote him to being one of the living dead on the fence. "Take over here for a few. I gotta hit the head."
"Sure. We're on schedule to start putting pieces into place in a few days, right?" he asks, his happy excitement contagious as always. He doesn't expect her to use the makeshift latrine set aside for the workers, she can tell. "Gavin was asking last night, and I told him yes."
"We are. The only thing limiting us is the cure time for the concrete, and nothing is going to magically speed that up." Each segment of cement and rebar takes a week to dry, before the massive pieces are lifted into place with a crane. The walls will be more like Hilltop's expanded second ring, where Merle used the concrete prefabs intended for freeway construction, than the Kingdom's wood and metal constructs or the original Hilltop palisade. Trying to explain concepts of structural integrity to non-engineers like her fellow lieutenants is like she's speaking Japanese half the time.
As she passes the soldiers guarding the workers as they pour concrete in the field beyond the Sanctuary, she gives the same excuse to Paula that she gave Fat Joey. The redhead just nods, intent on her survey from atop the free standing deer stand they set up for a watch tower. She'll keep the soldiers on point, one of the reasons Honey picked her as her primary squad leader. Guarding workers is boring as hell, but Paula never bitches, and she doesn't tolerate her soldiers bitching either.
She can see Eugene's on the roof of one of the buildings, fiddling with the rainwater cache system, and smiles to herself. The one on their building is why she's walking all this way on a bathroom excuse. Hidden carefully in the exterior of the metal tank that is stationed above her suite is the antenna that provides access to their most prized possession at the moment.
Hidden inside one of Eugene's prototypes is the morse code radio, still the easiest way for them to communicate with the Kingdom in between visits. It takes her a few minutes to hook it to the hidden antenna wire and tap out a warning about the unscheduled excursion. The reply comes quickly, since Ezekiel keeps a twenty-four hour watch on the twin in his watch room.
Somehow, she isn't surprised when Laura falls into step beside her on her way back to the concrete pouring crew. Of the two friendly lieutenants, Gavin's more wary of Honey, and she knows they come as a pair anyway. "Anything I can help you with, Laura?"
The shorter blonde takes a deep breath. "What's going on with you and Negan?"
It isn't surprising that Negan's distance has been noticed. "He has some things to think over, I suppose."
Laura's shrewd side glance makes Honey pause. They're out of earshot of any of her soldiers, but close enough nothing's going to sneak up on either of them. "You're pregnant, aren't you?"
Since Negan already knows, it's not like there's a strategic reason to keep it a secret anymore, so Honey nods.
"He knows, doesn't he? That's why he's acting like he is." Laura sighs. "I never thought I'd see him actually scared of anything."
"What?" Fear hadn't even entered Honey's estimation of what is wrong with Negan right now.
"I don't think anyone else would read it that way, but he's acting just like my brother-in-law did when my sister got pregnant. They weren't married yet, and honestly, I thought the man was going to run for the hills. Given the lack of little Negans in all the years I've known him? He'd be running right back for New York if he wasn't our illustrious leader."
"Would it be a bad thing if he did run?" Honey mutters, half to finally test the waters with Laura, half just wondering if the solution is that simple.
Laura shakes her head. "It wouldn't be, except you'd have to kill Simon, Regina, and maybe a quarter of the soldiers to take over that way."
"Not you or Gavin?"
The solemn look she gets from the blonde is about as pragmatic as they come. "Before Negan took over, we had a series of increasingly out of control leaders, and the last one would make Negan look like an angel. I know he's not a good man by any sense of the world, but he's given us stability and prevented the worst of the excesses that came before him. He was the best choice of the poor ones we had before us, and for some reason, Simon fell into line behind him, and that made us all safer."
Honey knows that Simon is the true danger here, even more so than Negan, because he doesn't even pretend to have any ethics of his own to control his impulses. It's Simon who ordered the slaughter of the men and boys of the community that first alerted the Allies that something dangerous was coming their way. She has plans to quietly remove Simon from the picture before her final move on Negan anyway, but hearing it confirmed by someone who's known them both for years is good.
"Hypothetically," Laura continues. "If Negan does abandon his leadership post somehow, Gavin and I will back your play to take over. Half of Regina's soldiers will as well."
It's all stated in ways that even Negan can't object to. Not a plot to overthrow the man, just a backup plan should he somehow no longer be here to lead the Saviors. It also tells her that Laura's been working quietly in the background, to speak so confidently.
"And the other half?" That Simon's men are a complete loss is a given. They've gravitated to the sociopath for a reason.
The arched brow and sardonic look are answer enough from Laura, but she speaks anyway. "They'd never expect their fellow soldiers."
With Honey's own soldiers added to Gavin's and Laura's, if Regina's will take care of their own cleanup, they'll outnumber Simon and Negan's soldiers easily. The two men may have the most violent fighters among their squads, but that's also a weakness. Simon's men are the least disciplined when provoked, and while Honey seemed to pluck the least wanted from all the other lieutenants, she's drilled her soldiers ruthlessly, and they appreciate being expected to excel.
"Should Negan abdicate somehow, I'll keep that in mind."
"If Gavin and I aren't here when things need to move, Alden's a reasonable sort among Regina's soldiers."
With that final tidbit, casually dropping the name of a traitor among Regina's soldiers, Laura stalks off, body language going back to the tense and wary stance she adopts more often than not. It's not until it returns that Honey realizes just how relaxed the woman was around her. She hopes that's a good sign that Laura's fully on board.
Fat Joey summons her back to the project, but for the rest of the day, she mulls over just how soon she can make her move, now that she knows what her numbers are for sure. There's the baby to consider, because it puts a time limit on everything. She needs to take over before the pregnancy makes her more vulnerable as a fighter, so she can replace the soldiers that will be eliminated with people of her own from other communities.
Brushing a hand briefly across her flat stomach, she makes a promise to her child. Soon. It'll definitely be soon.
- Negan -
It's been a long time since Negan and Simon took out their entire teams together. Nearly eighty men and women, all the most hardened of all the Saviors, makes for an goddamn impressive swarm to clear the old foundry. It's been on their list as a novelty, a place that could be useful but wasn't, until Derek's fucking stupidity accidentally brought them a warrior princess with the heart of a construction foreman.
After he saw the massive fucking gates at the Kingdom, he'd wanted something like that for the Sanctuary, but it was status then. Now? It'll be a layer of protection. If Honey's giving him an heir, couching it in the medieval terms she's so fond of, then why not build a true kingdom of his own for the child to inherit?
The idea of any woman but Lucille carrying his child still makes him want to fucking vomit. Those substitute wives and their silly charts were something he would have ignored if he'd really wanted a child. They'd handed him the damn blueprint, and if they could be paid to marry him, it would have just been a matter of time to find the price to convince one of them to give birth as well.
But Lucille spent years telling him soft tales of how she dreamed of a child with his hazel eyes. Sometimes the child was a boy in her dreams; in others, it was a girl. The rest of the details varied, but it was always his goddamn eyes she wanted their child to inherit. He lost Lucille, along with every spark of good he ever imagined himself carrying when he couldn't honor his vows to her at the end and put her down instead of leaving her walking, but he can make one of her dreams come true.
Fate is visiting him with a child that isn't Lucille's. Hopefully, it'll give him the one damn thing she always wanted.
"Simon!" Negan calls out, breathing heavily as he uses his bat as a graphic and gory walking cane. Walker brains decorate the length of the wood and barbed wire, dripping to puddle on the concrete floor. "Let the damn soldiers finish the fucking mop up."
His second-in-command turns, his expression lit with that creepy ass glow Simon always gets when sanctioned slaughter is part of the day's plans. The world of the walking dead is a fucking wonderland for a man like Simon, whose proclivities for violence now have an acceptable outlet. He is grinning like the crazy bastard he is as he steps over and around fallen bodies.
It would have been easier to shoot them all, especially once Negan's people accessed the stairs leading up to the catwalks, but why deny the most fucking vicious of their soldiers the delight of hand-to-hand? There had been a community here once, based on the dumbass makeshift shelters clustered around the exterior edges of the work floor. But until an hour ago, the only residents of the foundry were nearly two hundred dead fucks trapped inside their own failed security measures.
"Follow me," Negan orders, and Simon obeys. He's always been good at that, less of a leader and more of a follower. Give him orders, and he's the best goddamn attack dog Negan has, highly intelligent and adaptable enough to succeed, but not ambitious enough to put a knife in Negan's back. In the end, Negan's safest from his most dangerous lieutenant for the simple reason that the man doesn't want the fucking headache of actual leadership.
Once they're on the catwalk, they look down on their soldiers finishing up the last of the dead assholes. None of them have to be told to move to the next step, dragging the bodies outside. They'll need to capture some fucking roamers to decorate the fence outside later, but that's work for another day. Negan wasn't risking capable soldiers by trying to use any of these trapped bastards.
"We really gonna put this place to use?" Simon asks, looking around the abandoned equipment. It's not a huge foundry, just a smaller one that specialized in custom work, like the wrought iron that rich fucks liked to have customized for to suit their sensibilities. Something like this is perfect for the Sanctuary's future needs.
"Our walls may all be concrete slabs, but the first thing this place will make is going to gates like that fucked up Kingdom has. Something it'll take a concentrated goddamn military assault to take down." Negan likes the castle wall effect the concrete will have, but he's not authorizing all the massive supplies of rebar and cement just to build in a fucking weak point at the gate.
"You don't think we'll need to move further south?"
The question's an honest one, because the original plan had been to push forward in a year or two, once they'd gleaned all they could from the current cesspool of a place. The climate here is mild enough for their purposes, but further south would be even better. "I think that we've got a perfectly fucking good spot now that has access to another decade's worth of supplies, if we play this right."
Simon doesn't argue, nodding slowly. His attention is still more on the carnage below, especially the walkers that didn't survive in one piece. "Might take us that long just to clear the dead out of DC and Baltimore."
He doesn't sound intimidated by that idea, but more thrilled. Being in a rural area isn't Simon's idea of ideal living, even if he acknowledges that cities are nowhere for anything living to reside anymore. Having an extensive damned killing ground nearby could keep Simon busy and distracted for years.
The problem Negan faces is that Simon is fucking fascinated with Honey's deadly side in a way that he knows will become a problem. How the man will react to the pregnancy is almost too damned impossible to predict. He could be the child's most loyal protector, intrigued to see if the spawn of two such as Negan and Honey would grow up as a natural born killer. But there's the equal risk that Simon could see the infant as a weakness in Negan's armor, something to be eliminated.
It's that fucking chance that Negan will not take, that Simon might try to assassinate Honey before the child is born or to murder the baby once it arrives. He cannot allow that risk, not even for the closest thing he has to a friend in this fucked up world. While the other man's attention is on the scene below, Negan eases his hunting knife from its sheath and before Simon can react to his movement, he thrusts the blade into the man's back.
It tears through kidney and up into intestines, the force of the impact finishing with the blade sunk in the man's liver and probably shredding diaphragm to reach a lung, based on the choking sound that cuts off Simon's shocked shout. To ensure the damage is fatal, Negan twists the knife, rolling the oversized steel to rend Simon's internal organs fucked up beyond repair.
Negan can tell that his once friend is trying to speak, choking on his own damned blood. He doesn't need the word 'why' to understand what Simon wants to know. Leaning against him to reach his ear, body pressed against the other man's in a grotesque parody of romantic entanglement, Negan growls, "I will allow no danger to my child to fucking live."
Simon spits blood, confused as his body fights to survive. When his body relaxes unexpectedly, Negan knows he's comprehended what those words mean. He yanks the knife out of the man's back, letting Simon collapse to his knees on the catwalk as he steals away the handgun from its holster and sticks it in his own waistband.
From where he sprawls against the railing, Simon blinks up at Negan before smiling, a grim, bloody grimace that suits the man as a death mask. He spits blood, the damn spatter hitting Negan's boot as blood from his wound spreads beneath him, dripping through the mesh of the catwalk to the floor below like a crimson rain. "I would have been loyal."
The hoarse rasp is barely audible, and Negan kneels to meet the dying man's gaze, gripping his jaw in the hand not still holding the bloody knife. "I think you believe you would have been loyal," he tells him. "But a child needs more than fucking choosing to be loyal, and you aren't capable of love or true fucking devotion."
Through lips turning blue, Simon manages to get in the last words. "Neither are you."
Negan watches the light fade from the man's eyes, holding the gaze that's firmly convinced they're equally monstrous, until Simon slumps to his chest with one last, gurgling breath. In a gesture he'd deny later, Negan reaches out and closes the man's eyes before using the blade that ended him to make sure he doesn't rise again and easing his body to the walkway. "Maybe you're right. You probably are," he admits quietly even though Simon is beyond hearing. "But I have to fucking try."
Getting to his feet, he eyes the man who'd supported his rise to power among the Saviors before stepping over the now empty shell and walking away.
A/N: While Simon's death was a given even in the show, they did it in such a stupid way for both men. I wanted it to mean something quite different here, especially at a time when Simon had not yet been given reason to doubt Negan's leadership.
Next chapter will be the actual coup.