While my very bones ache inside me, at this exact moment, the odd feeling of cold burning in the crook of my right elbow is most irritating. I raise my arm and poke at the skin above the offending IV site, the source of the discomfort. It's boggy and tender to the touch.
"You gotta leave that alone, Darlin'." Negan's voice is gentle but scares the crap out of me. I hadn't realized he was right behind me. He crosses over to crouch in front of me in an instant.
"It's infiltrated," I grumble as he pulls my hand away from the offending wound that woke me from what had been an incredibly deep sleep.
"It's what?" My arm flops like a rag doll's when Negan holds it out to examine it with lines of concern between his brows. "Doc," he snaps his fingers and Dr. Carson joins him at my bedside."She says it's in-- what did you say it was?" His words are harried and urgent, discussing a life or death matter.
"It's infiltrated," I clarify.
The doctor nods. "Let me take a look."
I let my elbow lock so I don't have to waste energy holding it up while Dr. Carson evaluates the skin. He sets it back down beside me on the bed and closes the roller clamp of the IV tubing. "You are correct," he tells me. "I'll prep for a new line."
I told you so.
"What the fuck does that mean, doc?" Negan demands. "Is she hurt? Is she gonna be okay?" I weakly tug my arm away as he pokes at the IV.
"Infiltration is a common complication of IV's. It means the fluid meant to go in her vein is leaking into the tissue. I only have her on basic fluids with dextrose, besides a little discomfort, Rori will be fine," the doctor explains as he secures a rubber tourniquet around my other arm in preparation for a new line.
"Rori is right here," I mumble. It's strange being spoken about and poked at like a science experiment.
"I apologize," Carson replies soberly with a glance at Negan. "But you know who you are. That's an improvement over the last day,"
"Does that mean she's really awake?" Negan nudges my shoulder as if I wasn't just talking. "She knows her name. She knew that tube bullshit. Is she getting better?"
The needle stings as the doctor guides a new catheter into a vein along my forearm. "Do you know where you are right now?" He asks me, not giving Negan an answer just yet.
"Unfortunately." No one seems to find that remark very funny. "The Sanctuary."
"Do you remember what happened before you fell asleep?" Tape secures the new line in place.
I open my eyes to the strange scene of the infirmary, only it's not where the infirmary once was. Maybe this is an old storage closet of sorts? The Hold? Barely half the supplies from the old hospital trailer line the walls with no organization whatsoever. A single IV pole and stretcher fit inside the room. Between Negan, and the doctor both at my bedside, it's incredibly claustrophobic. I have no clear memories of how I got here and only blurs of the days before that. "You smelled horrible," I tell Negan. I remember that clearly. Not that I cared in the midst of the relief of not being alone during what I thought were my final moments.
No one takes it upon themselves to fill me in on the missing pieces to my memory of the last few days. But, I would be lying if I said it mattered to me. It's both a disappointment and a relief to still be with the living. I may be alive, and mentally intact, but physically the days of dehydration and lack of nutrition have taken a heavy toll. I'm told it's a miracle I didn't go into labor from the dehydration alone.
I'm physically weaker than I have been at any point in recent memory, including the days just after being brought to Sanctuary the first time. Everything hurts, movement, breathing, even shifting my weight in the hospital bed takes more effort than it has a right to. Even with the assurance from Dr. Carson that I am making a smooth recovery, I feel closer to death than I ever have before. I don't know how much fight I have left in me at this point. How many times can a body be pushed to the brink, especially while gestating a child, and be expected to keep going?
I am overcome with exhaustion to the extent that I don't put up a fight when Negan insists that my recovery be continued in his living quarters rather than the makeshift infirmary. After I proved I am reliably able to take food and hydration by mouth and keep it down, I no longer need the IV support. It makes room for the doctor to see other casualties from the battles with more pressing needs than mine. That's at least how I justify it to myself.
It's for the benefit of patients, I reiterate in my mind when Negan slips one arm beneath my knees and wraps the other around my back, tucking me against his chest to lift me from the bed, more resources for the others. As we walk above the tatters of the remaining safe portions of the Sanctuary, I'm doubtful there would've even been a wheelchair available if I'd insisted on one. The carnage can only be described as what I am certain the aftermath of a tsunami would look like. If the water were actually, reanimated corpses. "The dead did all this?" I ask.
"It's always the living. The dead fucks were just a damn clever means to an end."
It would require more energy than I have to expend to ask for further details.
As we enter Negan's personal quarters, I can't help but think back to the first time he'd brought me here. The circumstances were so very different, yet my heart aches for it to feel the same. I allow myself to lean into the comforting delusion that I'd envisioned before passing out. Negan came for me. He was here. I was safe. It's impossible to entirely block out the warring anger towards him for bringing me back to this place after all I'd done to escape it. I don't know that I can ever get past all of the pain that came from his betrayal in the weeks before I left. But for now, the delusion is comforting and requires less energy to cope with than reality.
I allow him to set me gingerly on his bed. Our bed. "Is there water?" I ask him
"You're thirsty? I can have some brought up."
"To bathe," I clarify. "I'm disgusting."
He runs his hand over the back of his neck awkwardly. "I had them uh-- get you cleaned up, when you were out of it." He says it as if learning this might upset me.
It is somewhat embarrassing. I know I'd definitely made a mess of myself despite trying to maintain some sanitation and keeping the obligatory bodily functions to one corner of the room. But by the end, I know I'd vomited on myself, and wouldn't be surprised if I'd urinated or emptied my bowels where I'd laid as the end started closing in. At least I'm not still covered in the filth.
"My hair still feels gross." I touch my fingertips to the matted back of my head. I wish I'd had the good sense to braid it before laying down to perish. It's doubtful that in my current state, I'll have the stamina to get the tangle out without having to cut at least some of it.
Without another word, Negan departs to the bathroom, where evidently the running water to his space is still functional. He turns on the water and sets up a chair in the shower.
He is gentle as he works conditioner through the matted curls, slowly making his way through the layers with painstaking meticulousness. I shouldn't let this happen. God only knows how much more indebted to this man that allowing him to take care of me like this will make me. But at least, even in the silence between us, he is being kind. He always treated me best when I was at my most vulnerable.
My eyelids grow heavier when he finally manages to get the matting cleared and begins to wash the heavy coating of grime out of my hair. How long has it been since the last time I'd allowed him to wash it for me? I don't even remember.
"Rori?" Negan pauses his massaging the suds through my scalp.
"I'm not asleep," I mutter. "it just… feels nice."
He continues, working longer than required, and makes the effort of towel drying my curls. He even attempts to clumsily braid my hair into a long plait so it won't get so knotted when I go to lay down again. When he's finished, I finally do feel clean again, and am on the verge of sleep. He carries me back over to the bed and settles me into my old side of it.
I wince from a sharp internal jab to the ribs as he does. Negan acts like he wants to touch me, his hands hovering like he wants to feel for the source of the pain, but is afraid to overstep as though I hadn't just let him play pretend salon for me. "It's just the baby," I explain. "He likes to push up with his feet, and nails me in the ribs with his head."
Negan's brows furrow. "He?"
I shake my head. "I don't actually know the gender. I didn't let Carson tell me."
He nods. I wonder if he'll demand Carson tell him later, if he'll take that from me too.
"The ECV didn't work." I tell him. I'm sure the captive doctor kept him appraised of the breech positioning of the baby and what we had tried to do about it. "We were going to try again when all the," I gesture vaguely, implying the gun shots, the destruction, "chaos, happened here."
"It's still feet down?" He eyes the swell of my abdomen as if it were a bomb waiting to go off inside me, like it were a threat he could do nothing about. I don't know why he's acting like it matters to him.
I nod. "There's still a chance he could turn himself. But at this point, there's no telling when he'll come. We may be out of time."
The muscle in his jaw tightens but he nods.
There's barely a word spoken between us in the following days I spend recovering in our old bedroom. Besides helping me with basic tasks or moving me around when I need assistance, Negan doesn't touch me. He doesn't ask to share the bed with me and I don't offer. But he does move the reclining chair just behind the door. He sleeps with Lucille in his lap, facing the entrance each night.
By the fourth day of loafing around in bed, I am able to eat everything that's brought to me on meal trays, and move my own self around the room. Braxton hicks contractions become more recurrent and more intense. A particularly bad set has me requesting Negan to send the doctor up here to check if I'm in the beginning phase of labor or not.
"He's dead." Negan's tone is clipped.
That would explain why Carson hadn't checked on me in several days. Well shit. That isn't good. "What happened?"
"He tried to escape with a fucking priest."
The doctor ran off with a priest. It sounds like the set up for a bad joke. And I guess it is. "That sounds about right," I laugh bitterly because what else is there to do about it? Surviving all this way only to still die in childbirth seems like a fitting enough punishment to atone for all my sins. It's only unfair to the child really. I'd actually grown slightly accustomed to the idea that maybe I would get to meet them after all.
Another day passes with a growing increasingly tense silence between Negan and I as I no longer rely on him to be my caretaker. The distance between us is silent, hollow, and maddening. I'm surprised Negan hasn't kicked me out of his home again, now that I am at least mostly functional. That he shows any concern about me or the child is perplexing, when he said it himself that this kid was a 'whole lot of not his problem.' I don't know how I'll manage to pay for all the extra resources I've been using, if the points system even still exists amidst the aftermath of the battles.
"Can I be assigned a room?" I ask him as Negan sets up dinner for two on the table in his room instead of bringing the meal to me on a tray to eat alone. "I'd take the one I shared with Molly back. I could afford that one on points."
Negan looks to me like I am dense before shaking his head in disbelief. I suppose after escaping Sanctuary, I'm not trusted to have my own space. It makes sense. But I don't know how he expects me to repay him if I'm expected to also be a well kept prisoner up here.
"Eat dinner with me," he offers instead. "No funny business."
That's what he'd said the last time he'd manipulated me into sharing a meal with him. My eyes narrow. My stomach twists with wary anxiety. Does he want my service as the doctor back in the wake of the second Carson's death? Is this a precursor to being punished for my escape to the Kingdom? I genuinely don't know what he wants from me at this point. Wasn't being left to die in a fetid room, alone for days, a punishment enough?
The entirety of the meal is eaten in our newly characteristic, tense, silence. I keep waiting for a snide remark, or a crude attempt at a joke, the first words of some kind of narcissistic monologue to kick off from this man's mouth as we eat. But it never comes. I've never known the man to be so quiet as he has this past week. I do my part to keep the silence in our company as well, not even looking up from my plate until I'm pushing crumbs around with my fork so as to keep up the pretense that this isn't awkward as hell.
I set my fork down as I lean back in my seat, resting my hand atop the roundness of my belly, and take a deep breath. The discomfort of feeling like a stranger with someone who knows you with immeasurable intimacy is like a strangle hold. "I don't know what you want from me," I admit heavily as I finally look up to meet Negan's deep brown gaze.
He says nothing. It's exhausting, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"I don't want anything from you. I mean, I do want-- You don't-- Fuck." He sighs, frustrated and unable to form the correct thought he's aiming for.
"Thank you," my tone is dry as I speak. "That definitely clears things up."
Negan frowns as he briefly massages his brow. He seems flustered, nervous. Never in my life did I think I would live to see the day the Savior leader fumbled for his words. He sits back with a deep breath of his own. "It doesn't fucking matter what I want, Rori. You don't owe me shit."
My brows pinch. Maybe he didn't die in the battles thus far, but that still leaves room for a brain injury. "Did you take a hit to the head?"
"What?" He looks at me as if I am the one who is suddenly reversing the entire philosophy I live by.
"You're not making sense," I clarify. "Nothing about anything that has happened since you brought me back here has made sense. I don't understand it."
"Understand what?"
"It's always been about what you want," I snap. "But, now it doesn't fucking matter what you want? Every single moment before I left it was, 'you owe me your life. You owe me everything.' Now, after a week of being waited on, hand and foot, it's, 'you don't owe me shit?' Forgive me for feeling a bit bamboozled."
This bastard has the audacity to look ashamed. "I was wrong," he replies stiffly.
Now it is my turn to feel lost for words. I open my mouth to speak but stunned confusion steals my voice. Negan is admitting he was wrong? Wrong about what? My brain damage theory seems increasingly plausible.
The beast of a man appears to shrink further into himself as he continues. "I know you didn't let Daryl go."
"Well, I could've told you that. In fact, I did. Multiple times." My pulse quickens in my chest as I fight to keep rising emotions in check. This argument is one I am loath to revisit, to be reminded of the fight that spelled the beginning of the end to all the tenuous peace I had found in this place, to the life I had found with this man.
Negan's expression becomes one of deep pain and regret. It only serves to make it increasingly difficult to stuff down my sorrow. Don't say it. Do not say it. Please don't say what I think you are going to.
"Rori, I am so --"
"No." I snap, cutting him off as deeply repressed anguish floods my veins, burning hot behind my eyes. "Do NOT finish that sentence with the word, 'sorry," I warn him. "I hope you are sorry. You absolutely should be. But you don't get to sit there and pretend like you have the right to tell me after everything that happened, after everything you put me through, that you're sorry."
I didn't know it was possible for a man of his stature to look so small. "I know."
"No you don't. You don't because this is what you do." The very thought brings forth a bitter laugh. "This is what you have always done since the very beginning, Negan. Every single time you crossed the line, or used me, or hurt me, or put me down, you come back and it's always the same story. 'I'm sorry.' As if those words could ever be good enough to make up for what you did to me."
His glazed expression drags up to look at me. "I would take it back a fucking thousand times if I could." his voice is thick.
"Which part, Negan?" The burning in my eyes gives way to hot tears. I push away from the table and stand, turning away, unable to stomach looking at the insulting contrition in Negan's face. "The part where you had me dragged in front of the entire sanctuary, calling me a liar while you pretended you were going to further mutilate my face, with an iron? The part where you manipulated me repeatedly and bribed my best friend into spying on me for your stupid little witch hunt? Or the part where you degraded me, where you made it clear just how pathetic you think I am? You yourself saw what I went through before this place, first hand. You were there in the woods. You saw. You knew what I went through and you mocked me for it. Do you know how cruel that is? You called me a cum dumpster, Negan."
The silence hangs between us as the dam breaks for me. No amount of compartmentalization can contain the grief that drowns me as everything I had wished I could say for months rises to the surface, crushing me under the weight of his betrayal, his disrespect and dismissal. All the months of rebuilding my strength, my confidence, my hope, it had been a farce to serve Negan's own gain. All my worth had been limited to the service I provided Negan's ego, as a symbol of his goodness. The moment I stopped being a pawn and started being a challenge was the moment he'd made it clear how very small and worthless he had found me.
But in the end, whose fault was that? Who had allowed this man to dictate my very worth as a person? There is so much hurt between us, it feels impossible to put it into words. But beyond the hurt, there is so much more. Anger. Rage, truly is what it was. I was hurt by Negan, heartbroken by all I had lost. But beneath it all I am angry. I am pissed beyond belief at this man, and myself. It's an amalgamation of unending anger that fills me as I turn back to the man whose regret could never be enough to cover what he did, no matter how many days he plays nursemaid for me.
"You want to know something funny? All of that stuff, everything that you did, is actually not anything compared to how fucked up it was that any of this happened to begin with. And that one isn't on you. It's on me." He looks lost, uncertain with the shift I've taken.
"I never should've fallen in love with you. I knew what you were. I could feel it in my gut from the very beginning that you were going to destroy me, and I let you anyway. So, I guess you were right about that at least. I am weak. But it wasn't being captured or raped that made me that way. I didn't have a say in that. But you? I chose you. That's what makes me weak. And what makes it even more pathetic is that somehow, despite everything you've done, I still love you. And being in love with someone who ruined your life and never even cared about you to begin with, hurts more than I could ever describe."
Negan lets me speak uninterrupted, absorbing blow after blow without question until my last words which seem to ignite something in him, overriding his ability to silently take it, drawing him into this one sided fight.
Negan slams his palms down on the table, tipping it over with the force as he stands. "Fuck no." He snaps, striding over to me and forcing me to look at him with his hand gripping my chin. It's been a long while since I have seen him this angered by anything,
"I am a piece of shit," he sneers, jabbing his index finger into his chest, owning each statement. "I am disgusting. I am a cocksucking motherfucking bastard son of a bitch."
His anger seems to pale and his voice thickens as if speaking around a knot in his throat. He takes my face in his hands and wipes a tear from my gnarled cheek. "I am every bit the monster you think of me, Rori. But I never pretended to care about you. I did care about you. I still care about you. I just did a piss poor job of showing it."
I scan him for any hint of falsehood in his expression, but I'm unable to find any. This is the most stripped down, vulnerable face of the Savior leader I have ever seen. His words ring true, but they leave me more confused than ever.
"Then how-- why did you do this to me?" It's an all encompassing question.
"I'm a fucked up man, Rori." Negan allows his hands to fall from me, creating space between us. He shakes his head as if wishing he had a better answer for me. "I'm the guy who fucked around on his wife when she was dying of cancer. There's no why. There's no how. It's who I fucking am."
"You didn't have to be," I breathe. "You could've been different with me. You told me you wanted to do it right with me." He was my second chance. I was supposed to be his.
Hell must've frozen over because once again, Negan doesn't have anything to say. He can't look at me. He rights the table, and starts to pick up the mess that had been our shared meal, now spilled across the floor. His broad body is slumped as he does, the pain between us seeming to settle like a weight on his shoulders. It's the nearest to broken I have ever seen him look.
"I miss you," I choke."I miss you so much. Things were never easy, but they were good. I'd give anything to have that again, even just for one night." Admitting it, feels like reaching an outstretched hand across an endless chasm.
The words might have well been another dagger into Negan's broken spirit. My anger was easier for him to tolerate. It is simpler to be hated than to be missed. "I'm--"
"--DON'T say it." I cut off his apology once more. Does he have to ruin everything? I don't want his 'sorry'. I want my pathetic delusion. I want him to step into it with me just for this moment. "You owe me, right? Then, please don't say you're sorry. Don't ruin this. Let me have one night where I can pretend things are good again."
I can see the silent battle behind Negan's eyes.
"Please," I beg, my voice quivering. "Let me remember how it felt to be happy."
I fully expect Negan to turn away, to make the moral choice for once, and deny me the relief of catering to my delusion. But this man has never been one to err on the side of the ethical.
My skin is aflame when his palm envelopes my cheek again, this time with deep tenderness. I melt into his embrace as Negan wraps his other arm around me, the palm of his hand resting in the curve of my back, pulling me close. His smell brings back a flood of memories, feelings of safety, of home, of promises yet unbroken.
Negan threads his fingers through my curls, tilting my face up towards him. Butterflies flitter back to life inside my stomach when he presses soft lips to my forehead, to my cheek, and beneath my jaw. I breathe a whimper, feeling a rush of heat as his stubble and warm breath tickle against my neck.
"I've missed you so fucking much, Darlin'."
The anticipation more than I can handle. I seek out his lips with my own in a kiss that feels as though my very life would cease the moment we parted. The taste of his tongue on mine is as intoxicating as the low groan that escapes his chest when I run my fingers through his hair and drag my nails down his back. I have ached for a kiss like this with every fiber of my being.
I touch my fingertips to my swollen lips, catching my breath when Negan breaks us apart. No, not yet! Please don't take this from me so soon.
But instead of moving away from me, he drops to his knees and raises my shirt up above my belly. His rough hands smooth along the taught skin and our child kicks out, wriggling inside me at his touch.
"You never looked more beautiful than with my child inside you," he says before he kisses and rests his forehead on the roundness of my stomach. His eyes fall shut when I run my fingers through his hair.
I see the look on Negan's face when he eventually stands and I don't think I'm alone in allowing myself to believe this delusion, if only for tonight.
He pauses with the hem of my shirt in his hands, a last moment of waning restraint. "You sure you want this, Rori?"
"Please," I beg. I don't know if my very heart could continue to beat if I relinquished this fantasy so soon.
That single word is all he needs to hear.
My world begins to spin into a whirlwind of color as clothes are tossed away with no regard. Every nerve ending in my skin is aflame for his touch. I can't take in enough of him. Our tongues can't taste enough of one another.
After an eternity of aching, he settles with his back against the headboard and guides my hips down against his. Only then does it feel like enough.
My head falls back with a moan as we move in unison. Finally. Nothing in the world could feel so good, so right.
The angle is just right, my most sensitive spots grinding against him, my very core filled wholly by him over and over again. It's a slow careening towards a cliff, and then all at once pleasure courses through my body. I break the rhythm, moaning against his lips as I find my completion. From the throbbing inside me and the warmth beginning to spill out, it's evident I wasn't alone.
Negan helps me lift off of him and neither of us pay mind to the mess when we find ourselves tangled in bed. My head rests on his chest, listening to the sound of his heartbeat.
As Negan traces circles on my back with his featherlight fingertips, reality slowly begins to drown out the afterglow like a cold tide creeping in. I push it away as long as I can. I want my delusion. I don't want real life.
"I know you don't want to fucking hear it," Negan breaks the silence as he smooths his hand over my hair. "And, you might still want my balls on a platter for saying it. But I am sorry, Rori. I know it doesn't mean shit when I've said it a hundred times before. I won't bother to insult you by asking your forgiveness, but I want you to know how fucking sorry I am."
"I know you are." I murmur against his chest. It doesn't eliminate the pain he caused, and I don't forgive him for it yet. I don't know that I ever will. But I do believe that he is genuinely sorry it happened.
"I need you to know I never meant for you to be harmed by bringing you back to Sanctuary," he continues. "I didn't involve myself when we first brought you back because I figured I was the last sorry fuck you'd want to see. I didn't want to hurt you more by forcing you to be around me. It was enough for me to know you were safe and I could provide for you and the kid."
Since it seems we are both being frank with our admissions at this point, I divulge some truth of my own. "They tried to get me to betray you at Alexandria."
His hand stills on my back.
"They tried to get me to, but I didn't. I couldn't. Even after they told me about the pickups, how you killed that woman's husband in front of her, and beat their other friend to death. Even after all of that, I couldn't betray you because I knew they'd kill you." I shake my head slightly at my own selfishness, my true weakness. "Even after everything you've done, I still couldn't make myself be the reason you died."
I lift my head from his chest to look him in the eyes. "As much as I'd like to pretend, there is no going back for us. We can't undo everything that has been done. But maybe we could make a different way forward." I offer up my pipe dream. "We could run away."
Negan shakes his head dismissively. "There's no escaping from the fucking inevitable, Darlin'."
I'm not ready to let it go so easily. I tug Negan's hand down and rest it on my stomach to feel the baby kick. "The three of us. We could make it. We could start over and make a third chance for all of us. The war. The hatred. These communities. We could run away and get away from all of it. Find a place of our own. Just us three. You could choose us. We could be enough."
It would be enough. If he was just willing to leave this part of our history behind, maybe we could forge ahead and move past all of this. We wouldn't need it if we were on our own.
He looks at me with pity in his eyes. "I can't do that, Rori."
"Can't? Or won't?"
His silence is an answer in it's own right.
Shame suddenly makes me hyper-aware of my nakedness. A sick feeling pools in my stomach.
Embarrassment entirely replaces any semblance of pleasure as I pull away and get up off the bed. Disgust begins to churn at the stickiness between my legs. It's pure humiliation to be rejected so definitively.
"I'm going to shower," I say, without daring to look back. "Please don't be in the room when I come out."
"Rori." I can hear the disappointment in his voice.
"This didn't change anything." Even the most beautiful game of pretend will never be more than that. "Please," I beg.
That single word is all Negan needs to hear. He doesn't press the matter any further.
The bedroom door clicks shut as I climb into the shower. Tears mix with warm water as it flows over my face.
