You are like the footless bird of legend, my beloved. With naught but your wings you must soar. You have no choice but to fly. You would do well to remember this, my love. When the footless bird lands, it signifies its own destruction.
The touch of her lips against his own – the way she brushed the pads of her fingers across the black art of her own doing carved into his flesh. Negan shuddered a heavy sigh when she took a step back.
Birds of a feather, you and I. That is the meaning behind the footless bird painted across your chest and my back. We have no choice. We do what we must so that we do not perish. It is our nature.
Negan looked to the blade offered from her hand. She smiled at him under the pouring rain, hers beautiful yet terrifying. He couldn't look away from her piercing blue eyes. She would not let him.
Brave men dare themselves to the sword. If you wish to leave, then fight me the way my people know best. The way I taught you. This is my gift to you, from one footless bird to another. A mercy, and a cruelty…
Negan put a stop to the memories of the past before they could consume him and went to the balcony of his small apartment. It was routine for him to come out here. Without the clamor of people, with only the chirping of the early bird, there was Negan. Insignificant before the waking star that was the sun.
Putting a cigarette to his lips, the young man heard the balcony door next to his slide open just as he pulled out a lighter from his pocket. A woman came out. Just as Negan moved to look away, she caught his gaze with her own. Pools of honeyed amber looked kindly upon the man.
She lightly waved to him, a small smile on her face as she took out a cigarette of her own. Negan was a bit perplexed at seeing this neighbor of his. He had never seen her before. The apartment next to his was always empty, but he didn't think too much of it. A new tenant then.
Negan waved back lightly, but he didn't return her smile. He turned away and ignited his cigarette. No words were spoken between the two. In silence they smoked, two strangers lost in their own world and thoughts.
Negan leaned against the balcony and lived in the moment. Even though he did this every morning, he still believed it to be a rare occasion. Watching the rising sun, he couldn't help but be reminded of the past.
So many memories he recalled, all of them a blade that cut him every time he thought back to that period of his life. Somehow some way there was always a memory that brought out new wounds and tore apart scars long healed.
''Nothing soars forever,'' muttered Negan. Of all the scars he owned, it was the scar that marred the ink across his chest that burned something awful. Negan let that pain wash away any emotion he might have otherwise had. He would rather feel pain than remorse.
The acrid smoke filled his lungs. A small stain to an otherwise beautiful start. Bad habits die hard, but it was a pleasure hard to kill for a man with little else.
Negan didn't stay long. He blew out one last puff of blue smoke before snubbing out the black cigarette on the rail. He nodded to the woman as he went inside. The beautiful woman didn't notice Negan leaving. She seemed to be still lost in her own thoughts, her hand clasped tightly on the pendant around her neck as she looked to the dawning sun on the horizon.
Within his apartment, Negan rinsed out his mouth and brushed his teeth. Putting on a pressed suit, the towering man looked at himself in the cracked mirror. He put his fingers to the corner of his lips and forced a smile. The man had nothing to smile for, but he made such a childish act to remind himself of what smiling feels like. What happiness should look like.
A long and slow sigh escaped Negan as he put down his hands. He looked at his reflection once more. Distorted and broken into pieces, he couldn't recognize the person that looked back. The face he saw in the mirror was an unfamiliar one. A stranger.
''Forgive me, but I could not stay. I needed to know,'' whispered Negan. He heard her voice in his mind, as if to rebuke him. Words of the past were spoken against his will.
Time will not heal our wounds, beloved. They will only fester. Mine already feels cold to the touch. It is maddeningly unbearable. And yours? Tell me, does it burn?
Like bell chimes swaying softly in the wind, the young man could hear her laughter still. Negan could never tell what she was thinking, her emotions so well hidden even to him. But when she laughed there and then on that night, he could hear the pain and anger she suffered at his betrayal.
Go then, before I change my mind and kill you. My love for you will not stay my hand again. I will pierce your heart without hesitation, Negan Smith.
The memory of her crying in the rain never left him. The black-haired beauty with frosted blue eyes could never be forgotten. She breathed life into him where he thought none left. She woke him from the long dream.
Negan woke up with hair in his mouth. Bleary eyed, it took him a moment to realize that the woman on his chest wasn't that woman or Lucille.
Maggie…
With a huff, he blew out the strands of hair from Maggie's wild mane and rubbed the weariness away from his eyes. He was careful not to wake her up with his movement, not yet at least seeing as the sun was barely coming up.
Negan curled a brow when he sensed something wet.
Is that – is Maggie drooling?
He angled his head to the side and carefully pulled away the curtain of wavy hair that hid away Maggie's face. What he saw made him smile.
Damn. So she does have a cute side to her after all. If only I had a camera with me.
Maggie was deep asleep, perfectly relaxed atop his chest. Her lips were partially open, a trail of saliva falling onto his shirt and soaking through to his skin. Negan was amused at how her little nose would wrinkle and burrow further into him.
He didn't know whether to compare the woman to a cat or snake. On one hand she coiled her arms and legs around him with such force that he wondered if she was afraid he would abandon her, and on the other hand she would rub her head and nose against him like a feline looking for attention.
Dangerous thing, thinking her cute. Don't forget who she is, what she's capable and more than willing to do.
Negan wiped the smile off his face and chastised himself. Crossing all these lines and taking care of Maggie was the right thing to do, but it didn't mean anything. It never would. He'd never be Maggie's friend, never be someone she could accept and trust.
For all he knew none of what he was doing know would be remembered by the woman. Though she breathed and had her eyes open, for all he knew Maggie knew nothing of what was happening and going on around her.
For the better, probably. What would she think if she knew I was doing any of this for her? How would she feel to know the man who killed her husband in cold blood knew every inch of her skin, left nothing untouched?
Despite himself, Negan couldn't help but gently caress Maggie's long mane of hair. When he had first laid eyes upon her in his prison, her hair had barely touched her shoulders. Now, the length grew past and was starting its way to the small of her back.
It's for the best if she doesn't remember.
Negan had a plan in mind to ensure she would never know it was him, so long as his assumption was right and she was lost in her own world. Once he found her people, he'd take the flare gun stashed away at Sanctuary and use it to get their attention.
There was a pair of walkie-talkies that he had that he would then use. One would be placed near the area where the flare would be shot, and he would use the other to communicate with one of Maggie's people so that he could guide them to a location where they could pick up Maggie after he had made his arrangements.
Place the radio. Fire the flare. Get Maggie to her people and escape before they can ever find out who it was that brought Maggie to them.
I'm not going back behind a fucking cell. I'd rather die, and not without a fight. Unless it's her…only her…
Negan wasn't going to sit and wait for his fate to be decided. He was doing all that he could so that Maggie would come to and make her choice. If she never did then he'd act according to plan, and then she would never have to see him again. None of them would.
''These coming days are your only chance, Maggie. It's just you and me now. If you want your pound of flesh, snap out of it and kill me. Finish what was started all those years ago…'' Negan whispered into the thick curls of her hair, not seeing that Maggie had opened her green eyes and heard every word.
Negan breathed in the scent of Maggie's hair and sighed before closing his eyes. The fragrance of lavender and the mist of rain clung to her, and it brought Negan a calm peace that he hadn't felt since Lucille died.
The things he would have done to keep this peace he felt. To forget and lose himself entirely to the comfort Maggie brought to him. He could keep her, Negan knew he could. Maggie was his purpose, the anchor that kept him grounded and prevented him from making the same decision he had made decades past.
It's a nice thought, but there's nothing worse than a man full of wishful thinking. Maggie isn't mine to keep. She is – and always will be – my enemy. There is no other alternative, even if I wished there was one.
Negan made a promise, and he was a man of his word. He was getting attached to the woman he cared for day and night, and it was hard to recall why he shouldn't be the more time passed.
The truth was that she was caring for him just as much as he was caring for her. He had little time to get lost on his past grievances when Maggie demanded nearly every waking minute and occupied the majority of his thoughts. How to ease her pain, to better care for her. The scar on his chest was all but forgotten when he was with her, and it was only in the silence of the night when he was alone that he felt it burn.
Right now Maggie was the center of his world, and the day will come when she won't be. He knew it, told himself so and chastised himself all the more for getting too attached.
The day will come when she won't be. I know. I always knew… There is no redemption for a man like me. There's no squaring it away this time.
Negan turned his thoughts away from his future and instead to his dreams of the past.
Sometimes – sometimes he dreamed of the past. Of her.
Lucille always had her suspicions that he was going behind her back, confronted him when she heard him say that woman's name in his sleep. He wouldn't do that to her, but Negan could never explain that part of his past to Lucille. She knew some things, but never the whole truth.
He knew it hurt her, and it pained him greatly to see it, but Negan could never bring himself to paint the whole truth.
Lucille was an angel, but Negan was afraid that the look of love in her eyes would turn to fear and disgust if she knew just how stained his hands were with blood. The blood he spilled could fill an ocean, and he feared Lucille knowing that the man she married had such wicked hands. A soul beyond blighted with the sin of killing.
He hadn't pretended when he told her that he was afraid of getting used to it – Killing. Negan was reluctant to even put down walkers because he knew the more he did – be it the living or the undead – the man he once was would make a return one day.
The Savior was my attempt at turning my rage into good for the living. A desperate attempt at pushing away the temptation to simply go back to not caring about anything. But somewhere along the way…
Somewhere along the way that all changed. The good and innocent people he helped and saved were nowhere to be found.
Where did they go?
Communities he helped to secure and build were burned to the ground. Children and their mothers torn to pieces, the smell of burned flesh searing the senses. Men he thought good and just turned lawless as the world fell. Without the rule of law, men became beasts. Everything became permissible so long as one was strong.
Rapists and cannibals, monsters and beasts. He once witnessed a woman slit the throat of her lover over a can of dog food, another beating a man to death for fear that he would take over his position as leader.
The living turned on one another. In fear or lust, greed for power or safety. The atrocities he saw committed were acts only humans could make.
Negan searched and searched, but good people…
…there were no more good people.
They all died while he alone remained, and people like him lingered. Beasts and monsters, and he knew he had it in him to be the monster all would fear.
Why do they all die? Why are they all so fucking weak?!
His mindset warped the more horror he witnessed. The man hadn't been willing to accept the truth, all but refused it when Lucille died.
But the truth of this world is that the wicked aren't punished. It's the weak and the helpless that are. The good and the merciful like Lucille. My angel…
The death of Lucille pushed him off the cliff and into the abyss, but Negan wanted to delude himself into thinking that he was still on the edge – still hanging by a thread. But before he knew it, killing became all too easy. The skills and techniques he thought he put down for good and all but forgotten came back to him like they never left.
Negan's only saving grace was that he hadn't fallen completely. That man hadn't returned. What he became – what the Savior warped into – was just a poor imitation of him.
The Whistler…That man will never return. Not unless I stop caring, put an end to feeling. For all the cruel shit I've done, I still have my humanity. I still feel…
He would never stop loving Lucille. Never stop loving her. And now, he had feelings he couldn't put a name to for the woman who held his life in her hands.
Maggie…
Negan winced. The image he conjured in his mind of Maggie's deep emerald eyes turned to a piercing frosted blue. The face of another woman overlapped.
The two couldn't be more physically different, but their hardened mentality was more similar than Negan would have liked. One was a warrior since birth, refined through hardship and battle. The other a true survivor, tempered through the countless horrors of a fallen world.
And both want to kill me. They share that too.
Negan smiled wryly at the thought, but then sighed.
Decades would pass, and even now he still can't say her name. Be it out loud or in his heart, he just couldn't. What he did was wrong, to her and to the woman sleeping atop his chest. To all three of them, really. Maybe that was the reason why he couldn't get it out of his head, those piercing frosted blue and Maggie's deep green eyes, or those pools of ambered honey that gleamed brightly in the light. All of which that stole Negan's breath away and made his heart ache dully within his chest.
Her, Lucille, Maggie. Negan wronged all three. He broke her heart and abandoned his solemn vows and promises.
Betrayer…
He left Lucille alone when she needed him most and returned too late. She begged him not to leave, and he did so anyways.
Deserter…
And in cold blood he killed Maggie's husband before her very own eyes in the cruelest of ways. A widow to a fatherless son now dead.
Murderer…
There will be blood. For his sins, he will pay. One way or another, the man accepted this long ago.
Negan gently shook Maggie awake – and upon seeing those deep green pools of hers look up at him from where her head rested upon his chest – the man had a thought.
The world may not punish the wicked, but there are those that will. I don't want to lose my humanity again. There is a sickness in my heart, and it years for the cure of silence. It took the strength and love of Lucille and her to make me feel again, and for all that they gave me, I returned it with heartbreak and tragedy.
Maggie, you've given me purpose. You are a balm to my soul, truly. What the Savior should have been, I will be with you. If only until you kill me, or I get you to your people.
The innocent and the weak. The merciful and the kind. They who are punished by the world, the Savior would protect. He couldn't save Lucille, but he had hoped to prevent the same fate from befalling others.
Negan had never succeeded. The Savior became another monster. A lesser version to the man of the past. All his attempts ended in tragedy, but with Maggie he will succeed. Even if it was at the cost of his life, he would make it so. The weight of the world was pushing down on the man, but he tried to carry it nonetheless. One last time...One last chance…and then he can rest.
Lost within his thoughts, Negan failed to see the growing gentleness in Maggie's eyes. His image reflected in her gaze, it was no longer with the intensity of hatred and promise of revenge. The intensity of her emotions for the man still remained, but the emotions themselves were beginning to change. Had changed…
…People change. Things change. The world moves on regardless, but the change is felt even if unseen. Some things when broken, even if pieced back together, will never be the same again. Like a scar, you could say. A reminder of what was. What could have been. What will never be, and what yet may pass.
When Negan first saw Maggie after the fall of Alexandria, he didn't think to hesitate, or to question why he was so set on saving her. Only a few hours had passed after she denied him the mercy of death, so why was he so desperate to keep her safe? Why was he risking his own chances at survival by carrying her through a sea of walkers and slowing himself down in the process?
Please don't leave me like this.
All he saw was the back of Maggie's kneeling figure on that street. Never had he seen her so small, so fragile looking – like the gentlest of winds could blow her over. The woman who had towered over him with rage and fury mere hours before was but a stranger to the Maggie he saw in the distance.
In that moment, he heard a voice in his heart say those words.
Please don't leave me like this.
Written words of Lucille that haunted him day and night were spoken within his heart, given voice by the woman whose husband he murdered.
Negan knew it couldn't be real, but the man thought he heard Maggie speak to him the last words his wife had left him. Something in him broke further, burned fiercer.
And so he ran. Weak and malnourished and haunted by the past, tormented by eyes frosted blue and of honeyed amber, Negan ran despite everything to get to Maggie before it was too late. The world was bearing down on his shoulders, and he pushed himself beyond his limit. Past the demons and the nightmares, further than his body dared accept.
For miles Negan carried her. Day and night he watched over her, tended to her every need. The man washed her, fed her, and clothed her – mindful not to break the fractured glass that she now was. In the coming weeks Maggie became his world. Everything dulled when compared to her emerald green, and he did as much as he could to keep her alive.
But it's not enough. I'm not doing enough!
All he could think of was Lucille's body growing thinner, her luscious hair falling off until there was nothing left. She could barely walk before getting winded. Negan then thought of something similar happening to Maggie. He imagined her growing thin just as Lucille had, able to see the cage of her ribs and the hollowness of her cheeks.
What Maggie was going through, Negan equated it to the cancer Lucille battled with. How helpless he had been then, unable to do anything but watch and hope. It scared him to no end that he might see it repeated.
I won't let it happen again! I won't go through that pain another time of watching the person I love –
Negan blanked. What was he thinking? What was he saying?
I'm getting it all mixed up. Her and Lucille and Maggie, I'm confusing myself and my feelings, right? Right?!
There wasn't enough time to think about it. He didn't want to think about it. Sanctuary. He had to get to Sanctuary before Winter fully set in. He had no time to waste.
Fear of failure spurned him to keep going. Negan began to doubt, and so he pushed himself further – greater than what he thought possible.
I'm not gonna fail. Not this time. Can't.
It was not without cost, however. At some point the pain stopped, and he couldn't feel his feet and arms. His mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton, and his sight began to blur as he walked miles without end carrying and caring for a woman who hated him to no end.
Negan was burning himself out, but he didn't care so long as he fulfilled his promise. None of what he was enduring and doing for Maggie was for penance or atonement. Echoes of an old life haunted him, compelled him.
He saw that woman in Maggie.
Fury and wrath…
He saw Lucille in Maggie.
Pain and sorrow…
…But then he saw just Maggie.
The way her little nose would wrinkle when she was dissatisfied with something, or that charming habit of hers where she would bite her lip. He never caught her in the act, but he knew of it by the little toothmark Maggie left on the cusp of her lip.
It was the little things that he discovered with time that drew him in. Subtle characteristics and hidden traits.
Like the cute little mole hidden away by a wisp of hair on the side of her face, or the unique black dot at the edge of her emerald green pools. How slender and elegant her hands and fingers were, remembering how she could pack a punch with those little fists of hers when compared to his.
How captivating it was to see the slight curve of her lips when he embraced her as the embers faded off in the cold of night. It never failed her to do so when in his arms, how he could look on for hours beneath the moon and stars at her dreaming so peacefully.
What was she dreaming of? He wondered. It never crossed his mind to think it might be about him. Never. He thought maybe that smile of hers was brought about by dreams of her family now gone, or maybe the friends she lost at Alexandria. Maybe nothing at all but the warmth he provided perhaps.
It was everything about her that took him and refused to let go.
And it consumed him in the coming days and weeks. Doing what he did, caring as he did – to gradually know more of her, it made him feel something. Everything.
All that he did and discovered about Maggie, it felt sacred – intimate. Negan could close his eyes and he would see her face pictured perfectly.
When he traveled the long road with her, there were these moments in time when everything deafened and silence reigned. But then before the silence consumed him Negan heard it, Maggie's heart.
The music of life, he thought. Such a simple beat, but nothing sounded more beautiful to his ears. It was divine, and he comforted himself to the sound of Maggie's beating heart.
There in the lake when he held her in his arms just above the water, her naked beauty brought out a reverence in him that he had only ever felt for two other women in his long and bittersweet life.
It was then that Negan knew. When he saw her mane of hair splayed out in the water, the faint light beyond the shroud of leaves bringing out the luster of her emerald green eyes, the naked beauty of Maggie was all but a goddess reflected in his eyes blacker than coal.
All the little things that led to his perception of her changing, it left him shocked. It was then and there at the lake that he realized it, understood that his heart had changed further for Maggie in ways he was barely beginning to comprehend.
Compelled by the past Negan was in saving her, but now…now she consumed him in ways that terrified the man.
Negan could only be a slave to the sight of how she looked that evening. He didn't have the heart to look away as rivulets of water clung to her supple breasts and the hollow curve of her stomach.
Negan took in every detail, helpless to the feelings in his heart that made him do so. From the firm curve of her hips to those pert breasts tipped by rosy nipples hardened to stiff peaks by the cold water and fresh air, to even the tuft of black curls hiding the beckoning shadows between her thighs.
The Apple of Eden came to mind when he looked at Maggie. A physical embodiment of all that was taboo, and all his thirst and hunger that he sacrificed for her slammed into him – red and pulsating like an open wound seeking to be healed. Negan could only swallow emptily, the thought of eating the forbidden fruit all too tempting.
Forbidden for a fucking reason. I don't know how much more of this I can take before I do something stupid.
And it wasn't long before he did. Those lips stained red from the berried he foraged were plump from kissing, an inevitable part of the process to feeding Maggie, but it tested his will and made him indulge just a little before he realized what he was doing.
Flirting never hurt nobody, but Maggie wasn't nobody.
She's Maggie fuckin' Rhee. You made her a widow when she was pregnant. You put a knife through the skull of her son.
Lines were crossed and blurred. Negan did kiss her every night in part to feed her, he did bathe her body and saw and felt every inch of her. He did help her to relieve herself and he did undress her and clothe her, embrace her every damned day and night…but he had no right.
Negan had no right.
I'm not the cure she needs. Never was. I'm part of the cancer that's killing her.
And he needed to be removed. Either he fulfilled his promise and left, or she killed him. There was no other option.
Those emerald green of hers would soon come to haunt him, just as the eyes of that woman and Lucille did now. But until then, they gave him the strength needed to push forward. Those eyes still had the light of life in them, dulled but there, and he would see them shine bright again one way or another.
If it means my death, then so be it. I only hope to see it come true before I go for good. Let me die knowing I didn't fail, so that when I'm in the lowest depths of hell, I can suffer in peace.
Negan hoped, but he doubted the big man upstairs would give him that. Negan couldn't complain. He deserved the worst and then some, truly. For the past before the world fell, and for the sins after.
