Angela wept quietly to herself, and Lucille couldn't tell if it was from pain, relief, or fear. She stopped crying when she stopped breathing, and Lucille was nearly suffocating from the iron stench of blood. Old war instincts cropped up in her mind, told her to be alert, to go out there and protect the living. But some feeling that was older than that – ancient even – told her to stay and wait. Angela's corpse twitched.

Crawling forward, Lucille laid her hand across Angela's forehead. "You're not finished yet. The battle isn't over. You don't get to leave yet." Almost bitterly, Lucille added under her breath, "You should have asked them to kill you, Angela."

And then Angela the Valkyrie was staring Lucille in the eyes. "What?"

At first Lucille only stared at Angela, taking in how this woman's armor was different. It was pure white, almost ghostly, and trimmed in gold that matched her wings. Lucille almost hated her armor in comparison; almost. "You're a Valkyrie, Angela."

"That's what he – it – she – they – whatever told me." Angela was taking it surprisingly well.

"What else did you learn?"

"The rules." Angela's brow furrowed. "How it works. But… I don't know why."

Lucille's lip curled, jealous that this woman didn't have to flail in the dark like she did. "I don't know why either."

Angela reached out and touched Lucille's shoulder comfortingly. "It's okay. I know what I have to do."

Both Valkyrie rose to their feet. "You won't stay here."

"No," Angela agreed, eyes flicking towards her corpse on the ground. The eyes were open now, staring into nothing. "We can't be around our bodies for too long."

Narrowing her eyes at Angela, Lucille bitterly asked, "Anything else he told you?"

"Every Valkyrie is different, Lucille. He said don't be angry at me for that."

Lucille shoved Angela hard and it felt good to have her hands connect with something solid. Touch starved, Lucille shoved Angela again until there were both outside the tent, cool air whistling through their armor that glowed in the light of the campfire and stars. "Get out of here! These people are mine!" Lucille turned away before she could draw her sword against Angela. "I need to make sure they don't stumble in your tent by mistake. I need to keep them alive."

She didn't wait to see if Angela would leave. Instead, Lucille tapped the man with the baseball bat, linking herself to his weapon. He stood and they walked the perimeter together. Dwight had already come back, and they were eating rabbits together, pretending that Angela's corpse was growling in her tent. Once everyone else had gone to bed, Lucille made the man with the bat go in there and put Angela down.

That felt too good to do.

They left the next morning, and no one confronted the man with the bat about what he did, but Lucille knew that they knew. Unable to fly, Lucille walked among them. She wished she knew the area better if only so she could try to lead them somehow, but Lucille was never an outdoorsman. Unlike before, now when they traveled they were completely silent, afraid that talking might lure out more corpses.

But Lucille didn't have to be afraid of being heard, and she talked to them freely. "I died," she announced to them, bumping her shoulder against the man's with the bat. She phased right through him and quickly corrected herself before she could fall over. "I died from cancer and I became this to protect people like you."

Lucille looked around her, scanning the faces of the people she's chosen to protect and the surrounding area for corpses. "I should have stayed with Negan to protect him, but he could be dead now. My Negan is strong, though. He wouldn't die. He'd make it. He was always stronger than me."

There was silence as Lucille let her words hang in the air. Then she continued, "He was stronger than me because I was broken. I know I was broken." She swung her sword, shifting her shield in her grip. "I don't think I'm broken anymore. All the blood in this world doesn't bother me anymore like it should." Lucille shook her head. "Survival means desensitizing, I remember."

Staring ahead, she watched how Dwight and Sherry lead the group. They were walking side by side, but apart from each other, too, with an obvious gap between them. Lucille snorted and pushed forward until she was standing between them. "You two aren't in love, not like Negan was with me. Now that was real love. He did everything for me. He put up so much of what I did, and I did the same for him. Negan had other women, and I turned a blind eye. I let him have them. I wanted him to leave, but he never did because he knew that I wanted him to stay with me more."

Glancing to her left at Sherry and then glancing to her right at Dwight, Lucille sighed. "I know true love when I see it. It's pure. It goes beyond this life, I'm sure of it. Your love isn't real. I know love, and it's a battlefield. You fight for it all your life, and you have it, you fight to keep it. And you fight with each other." Smirking, Lucille said to herself, "You don't just make love with each other, you make war."

Her words fell on deaf ears, and Lucille wasn't sure if she knew what she was saying anymore.

Time passed, though, how much time Lucille couldn't be sure. No sleep made all the days blend together, and Lucille became obsessed with protecting this small group that she had. They were walking by a farm, picturesque in its beauty at the end of the world as though it was untouched, when Lucille heard something. She was still walking, unable to fly, and on alert she drew her sword and shield and dashed ahead.

Hidden by a copse of trees was a tall man taking a piss. Lucille didn't drop her guard; she knew people could be a threat, too. She waited for her group to catch up, lifting her hand and making Dwight aim the crossbow. "Who the hell are you?"

The man cocked his head, but didn't turn around, waiting until he was finished. It made Lucille crack a smile in spite of herself. "Damn, a guy can't take a fucking piece without being threatened?"

Familiarity stirred in her heart.

Turning around finally, after he tucked himself away, Lucille was staring her husband in the face. He looked exactly the same if only a little thinner and a light dusting of stubble. But he was healthy and… happy, which was more than Lucille could hope for. Negan smiled, and Lucille breathed out his name, "Negan."

Negan held out his hand to Dwight, "Hi, I'm Negan."

Lucille rushed to Negan and leaped at him, expecting him to catch her. Instead she phased right through his body and her wings flapped to keep herself from falling. She was flying now, floating high, and she twirled and swirled around Negan, infatuated.

"You're okay, Negan, you're alive. I've missed you, I love you." Lucille reached out to hold his hand, to grasp his chin, to put her palm over his sternum and feel his heartbeat. Her fingertips tingled as she phased through him, and her heartbeat fluttered all the same as if she was really touching him. "I won't leave you again, Negan, I promise. I'll protect you with my life. Everyone else can die except you, baby, all except you."

She clung to him as much as she could, eyes only for him as Dwight made a face and politely refused Negan's hand. They offered him a chance to join the group, Sherry the one to make the proposal, eyes wide and thoughtful. Lucille didn't notice, enjoying Negan's warm look in return, believing it was only for her, though, he reacted to none of her touches so far. Negan took up the rear of the group as they moved along, trailing after the man with the bat.

"Nice bat," Negan complimented.

"Thanks," the man grunted.

Lucille only heaved a deep sigh of love.

Since Negan joined, Lucille neglected her other duties. She didn't accompany anyone other than him, didn't patrol the campsite, didn't keep an eye out on anything. Negan's weapon of choice was a knife, and Lucille wished she could use her powers to caress it lovingly as a means of ingraining herself closer to Negan. He had become a new temptation for her, something else that drove her wild. Lucille was sure that she was going crazy now, Negan always out of her reach.

For now, she could tolerate it, but then one night while Lucille sat in Negan's tent while he slept, feigning that his head was resting on her lap rather than the pillow, Sherry unzipped Negan's tent and slipped inside. Immediately, Lucille pulled her sword and grasped for Negan's knife. She didn't trust Sherry a bit.

"Negan," Sherry cooed and ran her hand over his chest.

"Sherry," Negan woke up and though Lucille eagerly shook the knife, Negan never reached for it. "You finally ready to get fucked by a real man?"

Lucille shook with rage and helplessly watched. She pushed her way out of the tent, unable to interfere. She felt like the ground was going to swallow her up – she wanted the ground to swallow her whole.

Still able to hear Sherry's muffled moans and Negan's quiet, familiar grunts, Lucille went to the man with the bat and sat guard by the lowlight of the campfire. Dwight was on perimeter control tonight, Lucille knew. Sherry wouldn't have dared enter the tent otherwise. Lucille felt cold as ice, like she corpse she knew she was.

The next morning, Sherry sidled up to Dwight's side during breakfast, and Dwight shared half his food with her even though Sherry already ate her share. Lucille burned with rage.

It was not a one-time experience. Habitually, Sherry carefully divided her time between Dwight and Negan. Lucille became acclimated to it, and eventually it didn't bother her anymore. If anything, she thought back to when Negan had his other women. Lucille was dead; she couldn't satisfy his needs anymore, this would have to do. All Lucille could do was watch out for him.

However, if she cared less about Sherry's safety, then so be it. But Sherry hardly needed Lucille's protection when she had both Dwight and Negan looking out for it. It made Lucille's heavy stomach churn, but at night she satisfied herself by lying over Sherry's body, pretending it was just her and Negan doing what lovers do. Every morning, Lucille was left more bereft than before, shameful and most of all feeling stupid and crazy for thinking that Negan would still pledge himself to her.

Then one day, this little group fell into the hands of another group. At first there was nothing to fear, and the people clamored to camp together believing safety in numbers. In the middle of the night, though, Lucille stroked Negan's forehead and nearly leaned down to try and kiss him when gunshots rang out. Both she and Negan ran out of the tent, and there the man with the bat was dead, and the new group had one of their women on her back.

Lucille knew what was happening. Negan did, too. He flew into a rage and tackled one man to the ground. "You fucking animals! You raping pigs! You want to fuck someone? How about you try and fuck with me?"

Adrenaline flooded Lucille and she rose off the ground. "Kill them, Negan. Kill them so I can damn them. Men like that aren't men. They don't deserve to live." And as soon as Negan took up the dead man's bat, Lucille felt like she came alive. She imbued herself in the bat and helped him swing true and hard. Skulls cracked and the iron blood refreshed her rather than terrified her. Lucille wanted to laugh at the irony that it took death for her to grow into something not broken anymore. Instead she made Negan swing again and again. She wanted more.

After that, Negan became firmly established as the leader and Sherry officially left Dwight. Lucille was proud of Negan, and when Negan took some barbed wire from the fence they were camping by to wrap around the weapon, Lucille fell in love with him more. He would whisper to the bat and croon loving things. "Lucille, my beautiful girl," he'd say, "you make my dick hard, baby girl." She was enraptured watching him rut his erection against the handle of the bat, and when he came she could've sworn that she did, too.

Soon Negan established a community at an abandoned factory he affectionately dubbed The Sanctuary. His men were the Saviors. Lucille considered herself to be the angel on the battlefield as Negan's Valkyrie. He had a knife and iron that he used for punishments, but Lucille had no need to be jealous. He used the bat he named after her to execute his opponents. Every time he did that Lucille would soar higher, feeding off their damnation. By now her feet never touched the ground anymore and she was in a state of near bloodlust constantly. It felt too good and so much like being alive. She relished it; and she was proud of that man Negan became in order to keep others alive. In her heart of hearts, Lucille could relate.