Summary: Life at the Sanctuary. Sunny tries to be content but Negan has other plans for her.
Sunny sat on the sofa in her room, a blanket draped across her lap. She turned the page of the novel she read, marveling in the sophisticated societal structures of the Regency Era. Would any level of civilization exist again? Would there come a time when survival was not the only focus of everyone's lives?
She rubbed the slight curve of her stomach. Her pants still fit but just barely. Soon she would have to start wearing the maternity jeans Negan had found for her. One thing at a time, Sunny. Don't think about anything but today. There was nothing she could control but what was in this room. Everything outside it was variabled, dangerous. It was better to stay here where things were safe.
She knew now that Negan had been right. She was safe in her ivory tower. She should be content. She did her best to ignore the growing restlessness she felt railing against her own complacency.
She was exhausted and sick for the first month after she returned. It was easy to let herself be babied after facing the realities of the world and of the consequences of her actions. Once she was feeling better, he had offered her the freedom she had so fiercely fought for, but did she really want to face people? Would they judge her if they knew who she was? Would they treat her differently? Would they hate her? How could she ever make genuine friends here?
Negan walked into the room. He saw his wife snuggled into the corner of the couch. Where he always found her. He was worried about her. She had been quiet, submissive even, since she returned. She greeted him with open arms every evening. Their sex life improved once the morning sickness eased, and she was now insatiable. Everything he thought he had wanted. But he missed her spirit.
She hadn't asked for a job. Hadn't argued or hinted at wanting more than the small corner of the world he had carved out for her. There was only one thing she asked for since coming home.
He'd come home to find her curled up, watching a movie. She smiled when he entered the room but it didn't reach her eyes. He knew something was on her mind and asked her what she was thinking of.
"Well, I was just wondering," she said, hesitantly, "if the next time you went to check on Sherry if you could grab my Sesame Street DVDs?"
"I don't think muppets are high on the list of things we need, sugar." He could see her shoulders sag. She wasn't going to try to get her way. She was just going to accept his judgment. "Why?" he asked.
"I thought it would be good for the baby. For education, but also to see what the world was like before. I loved it when I was a kid. So much I bought it for possible future offspring. I used to think the theme song was my song and they sang it just for me. But it's okay, we don't need it. Not really. There are more important things going on right now."
Negan sighed. "Next time I go isn't for a while, but I'll get those DVDs for you and the baby." He gathered her up, holding her against him. If giant fucking bird and colorful puppets made her happy, then damnit, that's what he'd get. Anything to yank her the fuck out of this funk.
A Sunny, who blindly did what she was told, was sad. There were no locked doors, but she stayed inside. It was alarming, to say the least. What was she still scared of? Him? The others? There had to be more going on but any time he asked she just said she was happy where she was.
He had been trying to get her out. Encouraged her to pick a job, any job. She could do whatever she wanted. But she threw his old argument back at him that she didn't want to deny anyone the opportunity to earn points. And she would smile, telling him she didn't need anything else but to be with him. But he could see the worry and anxiety in her eyes. She wasn't happy. She was hiding.
"Sunshine," he called to her, earning a quick glare. It was the only rise he could get out of her these days. And it was worth it to see some of that fire spark.
Sunny put her book down and crossed her arms. Regretting ever telling him the truth, but after a playful conversation last night she finally had the ammunition needed to tease him back. "Yes, daddy?"
He stopped in his tracks, his brows furrowing. "I told you not to call me that anymore."
Her lips curved into a teasing grin. "But you used to love it." She stood and stretched before approaching him.
"That was before I was going to be an actual fucking father. There is a damn good chance this kid is going to call me that, and I just can't fucking deal with it right now."
"Then stop calling me Sunshine, daddy." She reached her arms around his neck, standing on her tiptoes.
He gave her ass a playful smack. "I will throw you over my knee right now, little girl."
"And I will count every spank, daddy," she said, nuzzling against his stubbled neck.
He groaned and pushed her away. "Okay. Okay. You fucking win."
"Of course, I do," she said. She slipped on her shoes, protecting her feet from the cold hard floors in the room.
"So, I've been thinking about everything you said…" Negan walked through the bedroom doors to the office.
Her head cocked to the side as she followed him. "Everything I said? When?" Her anxiety spiked suddenly, heart racing, stomach plummeting. She thought they had to come to some sort of an agreement since her return. What else was there to think about?
"When you told me about the fucking ants and grasshoppers. You were right. We need to start becoming more self-sufficient. Thinking long fucking haul instead of short term."
"Oh, well that's good." She was, honestly, surprised. She never thought he would take what she said to heart.
He turned and ran his hand up and down her arms before taking her hands in his. "I'm glad you think so because you're gonna tell us what we need to do." Took a step back and then another, pulling her towards the door.
She tried to dig her feet into the floor, pumping the brakes, but her shoes only squeaked against the tiles. "What?! Negan, I can't. Can't I just tell you, and you tell everyone else?"
He kept them moving to the exit. "Nuh-uh, sweetheart. You are the survival expert. Tell me you didn't spend your childhood listening to your dad rant about how to survive the end of the fucking world."
Sunny wanted to slap the smug smirk off of his face. He knew very well she had spent her childhood that way. They had talked about their pasts extensively in the last few weeks. Finally, they were being open and honest. She knew about Lucille and about how he spent the beginning of the end and became the man he was now. She knew the good, the bad, and the ugly. As many horrible things he did, he had done a lot of good too. But right now, he was the devil.
Her father had indeed loved to lecture them on the best ways to circumvent society. Everyone else would be looting stores for short-term solutions, but he knew exactly what he would do to ensure their long-term survival.
"You don't need me to say all that. Who would listen to me anyway?" She struggled to get her hands out of his grasp.
"Everyone. I've created a small council of Saviors and civilians. They will all listen to your ideas because hell if any of them know what to do. You, princess, are the bridge between them. Married to the big bad boss man but one of them."
"I don't know." She hesitated at the threshold as Negan held the door open for her. She hadn't passed over it since she came back.
"Well, you have until we get to the conference room to think about it. Everyone is already waiting." He tugged her arm, sending her tumbling through the doorway. Seeing her still hesitate, he said, "You need to get out. We can't make this a community without you. I don't want our baby growing up in this depressing shithole. It's up to us to make it better."
She thought about their baby. They deserved more than just these two rooms. She knew what it was like to grow up isolated. She had always wished she had been more involved in the community growing up. She had co-ops and field trips with other homeschool kids but there weren't things like football games or fancy proms. She had friends, but she still felt very alone in the world back then. She didn't want that for them.
Taking the first step, she nodded. "Okay, let's go."
Entering the conference room, she noticed a few familiar faces sitting around the long table. Simon's mustache spread into a toothy grin and he waved at her. Dwight nodded behind his stringy blonde hair. Ava from the kitchen crew looked nervously around the room, her eyes widening when she saw Sunny walk in escorted by Negan.
"Sunny, you know Simon and Dwight. I have a sneaking suspicion you know Ava. The badass right there is Arat. We've got Arnold from the gardens. Camila and Lenny from the commissary." He pointed to everyone in turn. "This is Sunny, my wife. She'll be heading up this little task force with me. Anyone have any problems with that?"
Glances were cautiously thrown around the table. It was well known that Negan's wives in the past were no more than decorations. None of them had ever contributed to life at The Sanctuary in a meaningful way. Most of them still didn't, preferring to live off the generous point settlement that Negan gifted them when he kicked them to the curb. Everyone here could see now why he had, but no one would have the gall to speak of it outside of their own skulls.
"Let's get down to brass tacks." Negan held a chair out for Sunny before sitting next to her. "We all know that supply runs are coming back with less and less. We've cleared most of the small towns around here. The big cities are still infested."
"For now," interjected Sunny.
All the air in the room seemed to disappear with the audible intake of breath from the other members sitting around the desk. No one dared to interrupt Negan. They all waited, their lungs refusing to exhale until Negan looked down at his wife.
"For now?" he asked. He leaned back in his chair, amused at her audacity, but clearly waiting for her to explain herself.
"Well, yeah. Eventually, the walkers will decompose to the point where they aren't really a threat anymore. They can't survive forever."
This was true. "Still going into a big city will be a major risk and undertaking. Until then we need to find ways to be more self-sufficient. What we need to do is assess what our immediate needs are and how to go about filling those needs without relying on scavenging."
"What about the other communities under our protection?" asked Dwight. The animosity between the groups they took from and the Saviors always benefited the Saviors. If they continued to take from the other groups without truly needing the scavenged items, mutinies would mount faster than they could quash them.
"Nothing will change until everything is set up. If we get a good thing going, we'll figure something out." Negan knew his Saviors wouldn't take kindly to letting the groups go. They got off on terrorizing them. If he didn't give them an outlet it would turn inward. The promise of being on top of the food chain was what kept them in line. He had to tread carefully.
"Well, what do you suggest, boss?" asked Simon. He looked to Negan and his pretty young thing next to him. If he didn't know any better, he'd say the old man was going soft. But so far, he'd never led them wrong.
"That's where this fucking group comes in. Sunny here's an expert in this kind of planning. She's gonna help us take stock of our situation at present and help us figure out where to fucking go from here."
All eyes were on her. Take stock, right. "The first thing we need to do is inventory. We need to know what we have and what we've used so that we know what items are high priority. Things in high demand in the commissary." She looked at Lenny and Camila then turned to Ava. "We need to know what ingredients and food stocks you use the most. Meals that you make the most, that feed a lot of people. We need to know what we need to learn to grow and make ourselves like flour, oats, canned goods…"
Ava started writing notes down on a battered notebook. "No problem. We can get that info pretty easy. We keep good logs to cut down on thievery."
"Good." Sunny turned to Arnold who pushed his taped glasses up his nose as soon as he came under her scrutiny. "For the gardens, we need to make sure we are collecting seeds and starting new plants as much as we can. Our goal is to go from gardening to farming when we find the space and we're going to need to be able to plant and transplant as soon as possible to expand how much we can grow."
Arnold just nodded. "Um…"
"Yes?" asked Sunny.
"How do we do those things? We've always just used packets of seeds from stores." He looked ashamed of this fact but he, like many others, had never had to grow anything prior to any of this. He was manager of a grocery store before...food just showed up on trucks, and they put it on the shelves. No one ever wondered how it was grown, processed, and packaged. It was just the magic of modernization.
"I'll come give you guys some lessons-the kitchen too because we shouldn't be throwing out seeds from fruits and veggies before we cook them. I can't be the only person here who knows about gardening."
Arnold spoke up. "No, plenty of people gardened but only as a hobby. Mostly flowers or failed vegetable gardens. It's different when it's about survival. Everyone is too scared to speak up for fear of getting in trouble if something goes wrong." He cast a sideways glance at Negan before quickly lowering his head.
Negan's brows furrowed. He could tell by the way Sunny's shoulders stiffened he'd be getting an earful later. They'd already discussed the way he ran things. He knew she didn't approve but since her return, she said nothing about changing the lives of the workers or how the other groups viewed him. He wondered if it bothered her. If she thought less of him but never sought the answers outright.
Dwight turned to Sunny. "What are the Saviors going to be doing during all this?"
Sunny thought for a moment. "We still need people to fight walkers and to scavenge. But what we need now is knowledge and equipment-"
"Tractors aren't exactly going to get us anywhere anymore-"
"No. That's why we need to start looting museums. Getting as many old tools as possible to reverse engineer what we need. Wagons, spinning wheels, looms. We need books on farming, carpentry, hunting, animal husbandry, anything and everything we can to learn how to provide for ourselves."
All eyes were on her. Skeptical and leery. She swallowed her self-doubt. Negan wouldn't put her front and center if he didn't believe in her. She had to believe in herself.
"If we're lucky," she continued, "there will be some livestock that have survived. Cattle, horses, goats, sheep. If we can find them, we can breed them and use them.
"We have to plunder every craft store we can. Sewing machines, thread, all the fabric we can find, yarn and needles, all the books we can find on sewing, knitting, and crochet. The clothes on our backs will wear out. We need to learn to make more.
"We need school supplies. Books, writing tools, paper, desk. We need kids to have a basic education. We also need to be able to record what we're doing. What works and what doesn't. We need to start training everyone to be a jack of all trades. No one can hoard knowledge if we're going to move past survival and back into civilization." She finished her speech and took a deep breath, readying herself for pushback. It was a tall order but these things needed to be priorities before it was too late.
"Well that's all fine and dandy, but just how are we supposed to find all these places? Where are we supposed to look for livestock?" Simon asked with a smirk. " Gas is precious. Can't waste it driving over hill and dale hoping to spot a cow, and we can't exactly google that shit?"
Negan glared. Simon was lucky he was so useful. That bordered on disrespect and Negan didn't want to lose his right-hand man, but fuck if he would tolerate much more.
Sunny laid her hand on Negan's forearm. "I thought someone your age would remember phone books?"
Negan laughed. He knew his kitten had claws. He should have expected her to be able to handle herself.
Simon's bushy brows met in confusion. "They still made those?"
"Yeah. And maps too. Maybe someone can teach you how to use one. Corner stores, ice houses, gas stations, government buildings...should have them. If we grab some from the surrounding areas then we can find what we need." Sunny waited. Waited for them to laugh or to tell her she was crazy.
Dwight, Simon, and Arat cast dubious glances at one another. Negan knew getting them on board was key to keeping the rest of those fuckers in line.
"Is there a fucking problem?" Negan asked.
"No, boss. Just wondering where we're supposed to grow all this food and keep all these animals," Dwight stated. It should be clear to anyone that a factory in a concrete jungle isn't the best place to start a farm. How did Negan expect this to work?
"Well, we'll have to get some farm outposts won't we?" Negan countered.
"If we divide and conquer, we'll split our numbers, and we won't be able to protect what we have against outsiders." Simon's voice was firm. He knew what would happen if they took their eyes off the other groups. As soon as they let up, those groups would retaliate.
"If we don't branch out, there'll be nothing left to protect in a few years," Sunny said.
Negan stood, his chair scraping against the floor. "She's right. There are risks to every god damn thing in this fucking life. But the biggest is doing nothing. Do you have any better ideas? Because the status fucking quo isn't good enough anymore. If anyone has any fucking problems they can come see me. I'll deal with them."
No one spoke. Eyes shifted between the peoples seated around the table but no one moved to argue.
"Everyone knows what they need to do. We need inventories, phone books, and maps to start making plans for runs. I want updates in 3 days to see where everyone is at. Dismissed."
The group of people shuffled out of the room, muttering and whispering amongst themselves as they filed out of the door leaving Negan alone with Sunny.
Sunny sat back in her chair, her hands absently rubbed the small curve of her belly. "Well, that could have gone better."
"Could've gone a lot fucking worse too." He leaned down and placed a hand over hers.
"I don't think they liked my ideas very much. I'm not sure anyone will listen…"
His voice lowered as he envisioned his people breaking ranks. "They'll listen if they know what's good for them."
"I don't think threats are the best way to win them over." She didn't want to create more strife and she certainly didn't want Negan to have to get into any kind of altercation on account of her.
"Sometimes it's the only way. You don't word your pretty little head about that though." He pulled her up out of her seat.
Sunny crossed the threshold into the hallway, turning towards the way they came to return to their room. Negan spun her around and led her in the other direction.
"Where are we going?" she asked. She had already talked to a room full of strangers to a tepid at best reaction. She wasn't sure she wanted to do anything else.
"Just trust me, princess." He kept walking. She needed a distraction. Something fun that would keep her thinking of other things.
She knew there was no point in arguing. He was a man on a mission. What that mission was though, she would have to wait and see.
He stopped outside a door with a window in it. Sounds of laughter and music were muffled through the wood. Peeking in, Sunny saw a room full of kids doing what looked like the Hokey Pokey. There were several preschool-aged children engaged in the dance, a handful of toddlers just happy to be moving, and several babies in swings and bassinets.
"What are we doing here?" she asked. She stared in awe of the small figures smiling and giggling and spinning. How long had it been since she had seen a child? Or heard their tiny little voices? She had never stopped to wonder if their baby would have actual friends their age. She was just trying to survive the pregnancy and giving birth.
Negan opened the door. "This is your new job. They always need help here no matter how many people we have available so you won't be taking any points from anyone else. So no more fucking excuses. You wanted a job and now you have one. Well two, you're also in my committee. Shit three, you have to teach people how to collect seeds and can food too." Was he putting too much on her shoulders? Or not enough? She needed to feel useful and be kept busy. She was not an idle person by nature. He knew that much. He wanted her to be happy and healthy. Getting her involved seemed like the best way to do that. The busier she was the less time she had to be in her head.
Sunny looked up at her husband. She shook her head and laughed, wondering how they had reversed roles so quickly. Here he was dragging her out of the nest while she tried to claw her way back in. But perhaps he was right. She did need to get out. This was her home. These were her people, and she could help make a big difference. She had to make this world a better one.
He walked over to the two women who were in charge of this motley crew of ragamuffins. It did not escape Sunny's attention that they all scattered. Some running to the teachers, others just huddling together. She would have to do something about his image. Fear was the tool he used to keep people in line but hope was the one that would help them build a future.
"Ladies, this is Sunny, my wife. She will be assisting you a few days a week. She has experience with kids and homeschooling. So, tell her what you need and will see what we can do." He lifted Sunny's chins with his gloved finger. "I'll leave you here for now. Someone will be here shortly to escort you back to the room when you're ready." He gave a nod to the women and turned to leave. It was better for the kids for him to not linger much longer. Let them get back to their day. He knew their parents must have told them to stay away from men like him and they were right.
Sunny watched him leave, shutting the door behind him. The kids peeked around to see if the coast was clear. The woman who had been leading them in music started singing and clapping again to brighten their spirits. In no time at all, they were all smiles again.
"Hi, I'm Aracely," said the woman with a baby on her hip. She was older than Sunny. Maybe mid-thirties. Her hair showed signs of what once was probably a beautiful ombre amongst her long curls that were clamped in the vise-like grip of the infant. "That's Dominique. So, you've worked with kids before?"
"Yeah, it's been a while but I've helped with kids before. I used to help at church and stuff. Never had younger siblings though." Sunny picked up a fussy baby from a bassinet and gently swayed her body side to side, rocking him until he quieted.
"Looks like you're a natural. It's good to have more help. These kids have been through so much. I can't imagine what it's like as a child in a world like this."
"It must be scary," Sunny admitted. When she was a child, monsters were only real in stories and movies. To the kids now, they will never know anything else. She looked around the room there had to be something they could do to make their world a little happier.
As she spun slowly, movement at the door caught her eye. The blonde with the neck tattoo Sunny had run into when she had tried to sneak out was outside. As their eyes met, the blonde just shrugged with a wry grin and went back to keeping watch. Sunny rolled her eyes. Of course, she would be her bodyguard. I guess she was better than the multitude of hardened Saviors Negan could have chosen.
"So, tell me. What could we do to brighten this place up?" Sunny asked her new colleagues. She took her small charge to a changing table. Grabbing a clean diaper and some wipes, she unbuttoned the onesie he was wearing.
Dominique smiled as she blew bubbles for the kids to chase and pop. "I have some ideas."
Notes: Thanks so much for reading! We only have a few more chapters left (3-4). I'm trying really hard to keep my momentum for this story going but my magpie brain is eyeing my shiny other WIP. So if you like this story let me know, help me stay on this path. lol.