It got to the point that Cindy could tell when he'd had a rough day, and when he came in for the night, her eyes would be on him as she tried to assess his mood. And once she had determined that he was exhausted and stressed beyond what he could bear, she would be on him, asking what she could do to make him feel better. He couldn't help but smile then; it was really sort of cute, the way she got when she thought there was something she needed to do, and usually he would just ask her to sit with him. The look on her face whenever he told her that just spending some time together was always so sweet it made the day almost worth it.

Whatever was going on between them, he was doing his best to make it feel genuine and to forget the real reason she came to him in the first place. When he didn't think of himself as a replacement for Negan, when he didn't think of her as a replacement for Sherry, their relationship wasn't a bad one and he could actually be a little bit happy about things.

One night, she didn't listen when he said he just wanted to sit with her, and she insisted that she could do a little more for him. "I want to help you relax a little at least," she said. "Here, take your shirt off, please."

"What for?" he asked, but he shrugged off his vest and shirt before she answered. She gestured for him to turn away from her and he did, and then she rested her hands on his shoulders and began to dig her fingers into his sore muscles.

"I'm pretty good at this," she said, "and you look like you could really use it. You've got a lot of tension." She kneaded at his shoulders and earned a low moan from him as she did so.

"Yeah, I bet I do," he replied. "It's been a hell of a day."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Oh, it's just the same old bullshit." He sighed, leaning back into her touch.

"You've never really talked about it before, though," she said. "What all is going on?"

"It's just...I don't know. It's hard work and I'm having a hard time adjusting to being a leader. Sometimes I...I just don't know if I'm cut out for it," he confessed.

"But what do you mean? You've done great so far!" she protested.

"Maybe, and maybe not. All I really did was help the other groups take down Negan, and then I rallied everyone against him so that made me the leader by default. Nobody chose me for this, and all I was trying to do was get him out of here so things could be better. But now that the dust has settled from all that, I really have no idea what the fuck I'm doing."

"I think you're selling yourself short."

"That's sweet of you," he said, "but you don't really see how much I'm struggling out there. People will approach me and ask what's next for us, and I have to make shit up, try to be vague so they don't know that I don't know. I'm still negotiating terms with the other communities, but I don't really want to tell everyone how that's going."

"Well, how is it going?" she asked, working her hands down his back.

"It's alright, I guess. Rick knows he can trust me, after all I did, but it's the people backing him, and the people backing Maggie and Ezekiel, who aren't too sure. Just because I wasn't loyal to Negan doesn't mean everyone wasn't, and they aren't all so willing to trust the Saviors after everything. Can't say that I blame them, but..." He gave a deep sigh. "If we can't get something worked out soon, I'm afraid they're gonna start thinking we aren't worth the trouble, and who knows what'll happen then?"

"Do you think we'll get cut off completely?"

"Maybe, or maybe they'll try to separate us or wipe us out...I don't think any of the other leaders would let it come to anything that extreme, but after what this group put their groups through before...I mean, shit, it's hard to tell. I could just be worrying for nothing, but it's a lot on my plate even without worrying about what everyone around here thinks about me."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know there was so much going on...I wish there was something I could do..."

Dwight smiled despite himself. "It's alright, Cindy. You do plenty just by sticking around. And...thanks for listening to me too. It's nice to get some of this off my chest and all."

"You know I'll do anything you need me to, even if it's just listening." She continued to massage him and he leaned forward slightly so she could go ever further down his back, working out knots of tension and making him moan again and again. Really, how could he complain about having a pretty girl to massage him and listen to him complain when he got home? What was he doing, pining after someone who he had ruined his chances with for good when he had something to move on to?

He still knew that their relationship was entirely based on her bullshit sense of duty to him, and that if he hadn't taken over after Negan, Cindy would have never spared him a glance, even if she now could look him dead in the eyes and tell him that she was attracted to him, even if she didn't even to seem to notice his scar, she still didn't understand what real relationships were built off of. She believed that she loved him, but what she thought was love was not. That definitely played a part in why he hesitated, but even without all of that, he still struggled to let go of his own past.

He wondered if he'd ever be able to move past that and to fully accept that Cindy was there, and stop caring about what her reason was for staying with him. It was the end of the goddamn world and here he was, being picky about someone who claimed she'd do just about anything to make him happy, as if he could just go out and find anyone else to spend his life with. He didn't have anything to complain about.

~X~

Things were going better with Dwight, and Cindy was grateful for that, though she still wished he would tell her what she needed to do for him to consider her his wife. It was very nice, living with him and being able to talk with him and sleeping with him every night, but each day that she spent with him, she found herself wishing more and more for him to make things official.

Her job, her place, the thing she was best at, was being her leader's wife and doing whatever he needed of her. That was what brought her to Dwight in the first place, and that was why she had stayed even when he had tried to convince her not to. She knew that she was here because she was supposed to be, but something had changed since the beginning. Now, she wished that Dwight would call her his wife both because of her purpose and because she really just wanted him to.

She loved him because of who he was and what he did for her, just as she had Negan, but she often felt that there was more to that. Eileen had always loved Negan differently than she, or the others did, and Eileen had been there for him for more than just fulfilling her job. She had ultimately died because she couldn't let go of him and move on to the next job, and now Cindy was starting to think that she might love Dwight in the same way that Eileen had loved Negan.

It was hard to imagine it, but if Dwight were no longer the leader, she couldn't imagine herself moving on to the next one, and she had always had that weird feeling when she thought about him bringing other women into their home. She had never been jealous with Negan, but she was sure that she would end up jealous with Dwight, and she wasn't sure she'd be okay with ever having to leave him. It was selfish of her, but she couldn't help but think that her feelings for Dwight went a bit farther than just doing what she needed to do for him.

A/N: Eileen, you horrible, crazy, bad influence. I hope to upload a story I wrote about Eileen and Cindy meeting for the first time, cos it shows how much of a bad influence she was.