"Pack him up, I'm framing him on my wall tonight!" He cocked his gun, letting the empty round fall out. As he walked pass me, he smirked and leaned closer. "Looks like I won..."
"What about the rules?" I asked, walking quickly by his sides to prevent him from moving any closer to my brother. "You said if I find him first, we bring him back to camp. Those were your terms Negan, and you're not respecting them!"
"If you look closely into your brother's shoulder, you'll notice one of my bullets, so technically the capture was my move." He tried to shove me aside, but I stood my ground and stayed in front of him.
"You never mentioned capturing him. Your exact words were-"
I couldn't finish my sentence as he brutally shoved me on the ground, cutting me off. I fell with a heavy thud into the dirt, scratching my palms on pebbles. "I know damn well what I said, but you know what else I know? That you're not the one in fucking charge here, but I am." He hovered above me, towering me with his full height as I tried to scramble to my feet. "And you better remember that the next time you think you can fucking boss me around. You're nothing to me, Violet, and I'll have no fucking problem bashing your brains in if you keep being a pain in my fucking ass." I just kept still, my chest going up and down really fast from the fear he was inducing in me, and I found none of my courage and wit left to stand up to him once more. I felt like a tightrope walker who'd tried to walk too fast and was swaying dangerously because of it: one false move, and I was done for. "Get back to the truck, now," he commanded, and I complied without another word, making sure not to make any eye contact. "Load him up, we're leaving."
The ride back was even more silent and awkward than when we got there, because I couldn't even look his way in fear of crossing him again, and yet I could feel the tension inside the vehicle like it was physical. Maybe it was the faint creak his gloves made as he gripped the wheel tightly, or the way he would huff in annoyance every now and then, but something in his attitude discouraged any attempt on my part to engage a conversation, so I just mindlessly looked at my dirty skinned palms. We both minded our own business for a while, until his gaze shifted from the road to me, as I was still picking at my hands: he swiftly snatched one of my hands, and I gasped as I pressed my back to the door.
"You'll show that to Carson when we get back, it ain't nothing serious." He let go of me, focusing back on the road, and I held my wrist as if it could fall anytime. "What's up, you don't remember how to fucking speak? I thought talking back at me was your biggest fucking talent?" He snickered, but I still had my throat tied and was not able to utter a word. "Loosen up, Violet, God damn it! You're not dying today, if that's what's holding you back from fucking talking."
"That's only mildly reassuring." I finally managed to articulate.
"So you do talk!" He joked, throwing quick glances at me to see I was still not looking his way. "What fucking got into you?"
I huffed, and kept looking away. "I don't… I never know which way the wind blows with you. You'll just treat me like I'm nothing one second, then care for me and try to make small talk, and I don't know- I don't know how to be around you."
"The wind blows whichever way it fucking needs to, Violet, simple as that. As to how you have to be around me, that's up to you to figure out: I don't want to loose the wayward gal I picked up on the road, but if you're gonna be sassy with me in front of the others, then so help me I'll fucking beat your ass into next week. I know you're smart enough to understand that, darls."
I scrunched my nose at the nickname, and he picked up my mood swing immediately, grinning widely and patting my leg. "That's more like the sassy little shit I welcomed."
He said nothing else during the whole trip, but I could feel the mood had considerably lightened up inside the vehicle, at least on his part. Despite the way things were going, I was still hoping I could get him to listen to me when we got back to the Sanctuary. I shifted in my seat again, this time a bit more comfortably and more towards the driver than towards the window, and put my knee up against my chest with my foot on the seat.
"Why sit like that unless you're twelve years old?" He muttered, more to himself than to me, but I jumped on the occasion to sass him. Maybe if I made him loosen up, the discussion would be more open and easy later in the afternoon.
"Who are you, my dad?" I raised my eyebrows jokingly, and he smirked.
"Only if you're into that sort of things, darling." My cheeks turned a hot pink, and I had to look away so he wouldn't catch my embarrassment. Of course he did, and roared with laughter. "Two can play this game, Vi, and I'll have you know I'm better than you at it." His laugh died out, but before the silence could settle once again in the vehicle, his face turned stone cold again. "Enough with the fucking comedy show, let's get straight to the point." At the sight of my surprised face, he rolled his eyes. "How fucking dumb do you think I fucking am? Just cut the crap and tell me in the least whiny way possible what the fuck you want."
I grasped what courage I had left, and spat out the sentence I had been polishing in my head for so long: "Please reconsider Julian's death penalty. He means more to me than you can imagine, and I'll do all it takes to make you change your mind."
"If I remember correctly, I took a mental note of something you would never do, under any circumstances." Of course he had to bring up that moment. "What changed your mind?"
"I'm still working on my options." My answer was ridiculous. It made my cheeks turn a hot shade of pink, but Negan didn't say anything of it and we didn't speak any more until the Sanctuary.
As soon as the truck came to a stop, Negan jumped out and commanded that my brother be taken to the cell block without any contact with me or anyone. I tried to go after him, but Negan caught me by the arm:
"You do not talk to him. You do not visit him. If you get within 10 meters of this block, you will fucking regret it and so will he. Now it's up to you to show me why I should spare him, Vi."
He left me with that threatening sentence, and I silently went back to the dormitories to find Ben. As expected, he was still there, sitting on his bed and weaving some straw he had probably pulled out of his bedding.
"I found him, Ben. You don't have to worry anymore." It was not what I should have said. It was not what he needed to hear. In this moment, it seemed like nothing I could've said would've made him feel any better, so I just pulled him into a hug and let him cry on my shoulder as long as he needed. I almost cried too, but held myself back from showing my true colors to Ben: if someone was the pillar of this family broken by tragedies, lies and ploys, it was me. It had always been, and it would always be, no matter how treacherous my brother had been and no matter and weak we were all becoming.
We would keep standing until I decided to bend.
We had resisted to oppression ever since the world had fallen. Looking back on it now, it was a miracle that we had gone this far without major problems and injuries, because we had narrowly escaped conflicts with groups far more powerful than us more than once. The Saviors hadn't been our first lethal encounter, but they were a new form of threat we could've never been able to fight if we tried. And if there was one thing we had learned by living among them, it was that they couldn't be overpowered, especially not by two underfed teenagers and a starved young child.
I had stubbornly refused to see it, but we couldn't beat the Saviors at their games. They would keep us at the Sanctuary until our last days, holding us down with our own fears. I couldn't beat Negan at his own mind game. He had been around the block before, probably with blockheads who feared little like me, and he had gotten them all under his control. He'd had the high ground from the moment we had met on that parking lot, I just understood that very late. I couldn't have known it when he first enunciated it, but his offer wasn't negotiable. It had never been.
Everything struck me one morning when I was working in the fields with Leah and Ben, a week after Julian's escape and capture. It was a very hot morning, and any kind of physical effort was like torture for my aching muscles, which hadn't been properly fed in what seemed like decades. Long gone were the days when my legs would lightly spring me off the ground in the most glorious of grand jetés, or when one of my feet could support my entire weight. Nowadays, both feet were barely enough to keep me standing.
Next to me, Ben was picking at the ground, his tool probably too heavy for his tiny body: since Julian had been imprisoned, Ben had started working in the gardens with me so he could get some points. He suffered from the heat a lot, but he never complained and did as he was told without a word. He stopped to wipe his forehead and breathe, and I suddenly noticed just how red his face was under that large hat of his and how quickly his chest was rising and falling.
"Ben," I said, "is everything alright?"
He looked my way, and I just had the time to see the emptiest eyes he had ever had before he fell face forwards, right into my arms.
"Help!" I called, but nobody moved. They all glanced towards the guard, then back at their work in fear and shame. Leah was the only one to react, letting her basket down and rushing to help me.
"He's still breathing, but his pulse is very weak," she said after checking his neck.
"We have to take him to Carson's now," I told her, picking my brother up with startling ease. He couldn't have weighted more than 55 pounds, which almost made me tear up.
"Get the fuck back to work, you two!" barked the guard, standing up so he could see us.
"My brother passed out, we're taking him to the doctor." I tried to walk out of the gardens, but he stopped me on my way.
"Leave him there, and get back to work. He'll come back when he's rested enough."
"Are you fucking retarded? He needs to see the doctor now!" My voice was increasingly loud and urgent, due to my anxiety level rising up. "I have no obligation to be here, let me through."
As he wouldn't bulge, I passed Ben into Leah's arms as she tried to sneak past him.
"Who the fuck do you think you are, bossing me around like that?" He shoved me, but I stood still, balling my fists. "Now get back to work you little slu-"
I didn't even see the hit go, but I did feel my fist connecting with his jaw in a powerful uppercut and the hot pain seething through my arm. For a second, I worried I had broken my hand against him. He toppled to the ground immediately, and people gasped at the impact of his body crashing down. I looked around, ignoring the gazes on me, and gestured for Leah to come with me as I sprinted out of the gardens. The guard wouldn't be out too long, and I didn't want to be around when he would come back. We ran through the Sanctuary, passing by the dormitory building on the way, and I stopped when I spotted Negan's unmistakable frame through his window.
There was no way to beat the Saviors. There was no way to save my family from them.
Not unless I became more powerful than all of them.
It broke my heart, but I knew what I had to do.
"Violet!" called Leah, a few meters from me with Ben still in her arms.
"You take care of him," I told her, "I have to do this right now."
She shook her head in confusion, but left running as I shooed her away.
"Fucking come back here you bitch!" the guard I had previously knocked out was already wide awake and he didn't look too pleased. I saw him break into a run, his fists balled and his jaw set, ready to beat me as soon as he would catch me.
So I ran, straight to the dormitories, and I climbed the stairs two by two, deploying the last forces I had been hiding somewhere, until I reached Negan's quarters. As the guard came into view, I went to open the door but the handle resisted me.
My heart stopping cold in my chest, I realized it was locked, and so did the guard, who smirked satisfactorily.
"You look so fucking stupid right now, you little bitch," he mocked me, standing only a few feet away from me now, taking his sweet time before he beat the living shit out of me. "How'd'you think this would turn out, uh? How can you still think you'll be the winner here?"
He probably didn't mean them to, but his words weren't only alluding to my dead-end situation, they were summing up my existence in the Sanctuary. From the day I arrived, and until the day I would start turning to dust underground, I would never be the winner.
"I will never stop trying to be."
He stared at me, and laughed cruelly, before kicking me in the stomach. As I crumpled to the floor in pain and coughed, he crouched next to me still laughing.
"People like you can't win this war." He grabbed me by the jaw, forcing me to look into his cold eyes. "You think you're strong but you're fucking weak. You're a disease to this community and a parasite in our working chain. No one'll regret you if you die. No one'll even notice that you and your brother didn't turn up for work tomorrow, after I kill you both."
"Don't- you dare."
"Or what?" Before I could answer, he forced my head to the ground by stepping on my hair, and raised his other foot in the air, right above the nape of my neck. "I'll see you in Hell."
There was a distinct crack, but when I opened my eyes I was still alive. I looked up, my head free again, and saw that the door had finally been opened, revealing just the person I needed in this moment.
"Would anyone care to explain what the flying fuck is going on here?" asked Negan, his piercing gaze shifting from the kneeling guard to me sprawled out on the floor. He helped me up, and motioned for the other to get up as well. "And what's your name?"
"Timothy, sir."
"Timothy- can I call you Tim? Alright Tim, I'll need a fucking explanation right away before I start imagining things I don't fucking like." There was no point in the guard saying anything, as Negan had understood immediately exactly what was going on. Maybe he had even heard the whole thing from behind the door.
"I heard her fall down sir, and I thought I'd help her get up, but I'm uh, very clumsy, and uh, I stepped on her hair by accident sir." He had lost all of his attitude in the blink of an eye, and now he was looking anywhere but at the leader. I almost felt pity for him: Negan was just torturing him like a cat plays with a mouse before it eats it, and just the same he would kill Timothy after he was done telling lies.
"You heard her fall down! Of course! What acute fucking hearing, ain't it Violet?" He was still holding me up, balanced against his hip. I nodded. "Well Tim, I think your presence here is no longer required. I'll make sure she doesn't fucking fall again, rest assured. Now fuck off."
"Yes sir." The guard scrambled away from us, but before he could go down a flight of stairs Negan had fired a bullet in the back of his head. It all happened so fast that before my mind could process the gun being pulled out, Timothy's body was thumping down the stairs, spilling blood from his cracked skull everywhere. I put a hand in front of my mouth, not so much as a shock gesture than to prevent myself from being sick, and I hid my face in Negan's shoulder where I would not smell or see any blood.
"Come on now, let's get you inside darling." He helped me until the couch, where I collapsed immediately. My heavy eyelids tried to close, but I shook myself wide awake.
I had an important announcement to make, and I would make it.
"I'd really fucking love it if you told me exactly what led up to me fucking shooting one of my guards, Violet. I'm fucking amazed at how good you are at being in trouble, honestly."
I tried to speak, but my voice died in a croak.
"And what the fuck happened to you Violet? I stop looking at you for some time and you fucking turn into skin and bones?"
"I acc-" Again my voice died before I could finish, and I coughed.
"Come again?"
"I ac-cept… your proposition."
There was a bit of stunned silence, while he was either processing my sentence or thinking of something witty to answer. As the silence stretched and became really awkward for me, I went to say something but he just silenced me by moving closer to me, crouching to my level.
He said nothing, but the look in his eyes covered all the information, revealing the disbelief and actual joy he was probably feeling right now.
He put his hands on both sides of my face, his thumbs stroking my cheeks so softly, it was hard to believe he was actually commanding them; how could he have shot a man in cold blood with those same hands, it was above me.
Negan, I realized it now, was not just cruel. He had his sides, like everyone else, and only he decided which ones he would show and which ones he would hide. The man everyone knew and that I had seen almost unintermittently since my arrival was probably only 80 percent of his personality. But underneath the brute, there were also those 20 percent of good man which were hiding to protect themselves. I had seen glimpses of that good man, for example when I had blacked out near the fence and he had taken me in, but the smug and brutal side was blocking the way the rest of the time.
I knew the good man was in there too, as he brought my face closer for an impossibly gentle kiss like I had never received and would never receive again.