The Day Will Come When You Won't Be
Enemies With Benefits masterlist
Word count: 5k
Chapter warnings: descriptions of everything that happens at the Negan lineup. If you can stomach that, everything else should be no problem.
The Saviors seize a hostage.
You should have never gotten on the truck.
But what could you have done, really?
“Got a new group out there givin’ us trouble, and I’m in the mood to settle some shit. Wanna come?”
He stood lent against your doorframe just 4 hours ago, the Virginian sun still streaming in from the tiny crack of wall you called a window, and he had that grin twisting his features. You’d been through enough of those looks to understand that, when it morphs his face, he’s not asking, and your skin had risen into those insistent, memory-laden goosebumps that come like Pavlovian instinct, forcing you to leave the scratchy linen of your sheets and pad across the frigid cement of your room.
In 10 minutes flat, you were dressed and loading into the seat you’re in now, and 5 minutes later you were peeling out of that hell-hole, a nonchalant humming coming from the man next to you as he taps his thumbs on the steering wheel, one half of some long forgotten rhythm muffled slightly by the leather of his glove.
You keep your eyes on the flashes of trees as you ride on gravel roads. You don’t want to look at him. Or at the mirror, where you would see Arat and the bat resting next to her. You’re not sure if you can, souvenirs of its violence painting the metal wire. Knowing what will be happening once each checkpoint reports back, you’re not sure you could even handle the look of any of them.
It’s been months since you’d been forced into those 4 suffocating walls you’d refused to call home, and though you’ve lost a lot of yourself, your fear of Negan lingered no matter how much you’d wanted it to evaporate and disappear like the parts of you before it. It’s been months since he held that goddamn bat against you, but it doesn’t matter. That fear ignites at the worst times, knotting up your stomach.
You loathe it, but you’re powerless against it.
Maybe you hate that fact more.
There seems to always be an ever-present smirk on his face whenever it comes to ‘settling shit’, the promise of making a show of his unwavering power dangling in front of him and ramping up his excitement with each passing moment. You can’t remember how many times you’ve sat in this seat - the last group was a while ago, you think, the place with the huge house at the top of that hill - but as Negan’s hum changes into a whistle, that stupid overwhelming fear shoots through you, taking over your body for a second and banging your knees against the door when you flinch away from him.
The knock reverberates through the truck, the enclosed space doing you no favours when you take a sharp inhale at the pain, but the whistling stops, the crush of asphalt and the squeak of his leather jacket taking over as he turns to look at you.
“Oh, c’mon. Loosen up, princess. It’s not like this is your first time.”
You bite the inside of your lip to keep from responding to his poorly hidden double entendre and that stupid nickname which has wormed into his vocabulary. It was a joke - at least it was when it was a throwaway comment from Sherry after she had one too many sips of cheap vodka - but Negan seems especially inept when it comes to how close he thinks he is to you. He had pinpointed it and insisted upon it being some playful replacement of your actual name, and every fucking time he said it, you feel your blood start to simmer.
But you know what happens when you upset him.
He makes a show of it in front of the furnace, and you remember the pain which tears through you, but in private - a handful of Saviors for insurance and away from prying eyes, in front of his own stovetop and his squeaky cupboards and his hidden drawers - that’s what terrifies you.
Actually, no. What scares you is the fact he can do all that and then act like it never happened.
He’d greet you in the morning like he was greeting an old friend, and just go on with his day.
“Keep your eyes on the road, Negan.”
Arat scoff does little to hide her smile - neither does he, an upwards curl of his lips before he turns away to do just that - and you let out a breath, shifting in your seat in an attempt to regain your bearings. It’s like walking on eggshells, each time you talk to him.
He’s volatile.
One day he’d brush it off with a laugh, but some days he would pin you into place with a look, and you’d go to bed with one more bandage than you’d had the night before. But he’s mellowed out since you’d first met him; either old age is taking its toll or he’s become comfortable in the status quo he’d hammered in with swings of Lucille and burnt faces by the iron.
“Well, shit, who pissed in your cereal this morning?”
You let the question linger, and Negan peels into the gravel-faced clearing before you can let silence fully steal the space between the three of you. He slams the brakes as he turns into his spot, and it sends your body forward. You barely have time to lift your hands to brace for the stop, but you manage enough, your forearms pressing against the dashboard.
“Whoops,”
He pulls the keys from the ignition then, pulling a laugh from his chest before you hear a click from between the two of you, and he gets out, resting his arms against the top edge of the truck before leaning in with a wide smirk.
“Guess you should’a worn your seatbelt.”
Asshole.
You’re not sure at what point your abrasion had distorted in his head into banter, but, frankly, it pisses you off. It pisses you off because he couldn’t be more obvious with the fact he doesn’t think of you as a threat. As far as he’s concerned, you’re some angry chihuahua he’s ultimately got control over. Angry as all hell, but harmless at the end of the day. The more you think about it, the more it pisses you off, and though your mouth opens in the beginning of a retort, Simon’s static voice breaks through before you can form anything further.
The group reached checkpoint C first.
“Pass me that, won’t you?”
Grabbing the walkie-talkie from the cupholder, you chuck it at him without another thought, turning to open your side’s door as it hits his chest with a thump, and he even laughs at that, not missing a beat before the push-to-talk is engaged and his voice rumbles into the microphone.
They reach a second checkpoint not much longer, the chained-up rotted soon after that, and radio silence follows after they reach the wall of burning trees. It must have freaked them out - it was Simon, after all, whose voice was the first and last they’d heard. They would have had to have known something was coming at this point, even if his presence at the flames was purely by chance.
Sooner or later, they were gonna get sloppy. They were gonna get nervous - get desperate, and slip up - and they have no fucking clue what’s in store for them.
As the sun inches under the horizon, you sip nervously from your water bottle, the carabiner attached to its lid tinking against metal as your hand shakes. The Saviors had started getting into position just after sunset - an order that was barked by Negan echoed by Laura when she’d decided they were moving out a little too slow - but you’re stuck in place, your heart pounding in your chest and a lump in your throat that you can’t get down no matter how hard you try.
You’re leant behind a car, Arat sat in the driver's seat as she absentmindedly toys with the safety on her pistol, and you’re thankful for the Virginian night. It hides the shaky breaths visible from the chill after an unfamiliar RV pulls into the clearing, and it hides the flash of panic that crosses your face when Simon pulls out someone you can’t quite make out in the dark.
It’s starting.
You don’t know how many people are in the group. You’re sure Negan has told you - that big mouth of his never quite shuts up between the orders he gives you and the monologues he considers ‘conversation’ - but you never listen.
It can’t just be him, though, you’re sure of it. One man can’t have caused him to go all on the offensive like this.
Negan’s sat in that red-lined RV now, a short conversation with Simon wrapping up with a wolfish grin shot in your direction before slinging Lucille over his shoulder and waltzing into the open door, and you clip your water bottle back onto your belt, rubbing your temples to try and forget it.
It feels so pointless, every time you’re dragged to one of these stupid confrontations. You don’t even do anything here. You don’t grab automatics to ‘get shit done’ - you don’t douse cut-down trees in lighter fluid or tie up the infected for some sick psychological torture - you’re just some spectator in all this.
Every time Negan looks at you like that, that expression wiping across his face like that night you’d first met him, it’s like a taunt. It’s like he knows, even without making you kneel next to the squelch and crush of a head, that he can make you break out in a cold sweat and make you remember the fear that coursed through your veins when you had been.
You hate that he’s right.
When you hear the first few whistles, your hair stands at the back of your neck, and you try to blink away the first few tears threatening your vision. The Saviors are close - they have to be, even grouped up, whistles can’t get that loud - and as the two tones get even closer, you close your eyes and lean forward, putting your head between your knees as you prop yourself up against the trunk of the sedan.
It was only a matter of time before they were caught.
In the position you’re in, you urge your bloodflow to your brain in hopes that maybe - just maybe - it’ll work well enough that it won’t make you think of the first time you’d heard those sounds. You hope that it’ll melt the ice lining your muscles, but you don’t have to hope any longer when the lights of the parked cars turn on, breaking you out of your spiral with the momentary flash of white as you squint your eyes to adjust to the brightness.
Despite the pain at your temples when you stare into the lit clearing, you’re thankful for it. It reminds you you’re here, not in a long-buried memory, and though you hate being here, you hate being there even more.
But you know this weirdly settled thankfulness won’t last long. As you watch them get onto their knees, whatever’s left of your morals are screaming at you to do something try to stop the way Negan swings open the door and waves Lucille like he’s at some pissing contest, but you know it won’t do anything. You know you can’t do anything.
You’re not sure if savior complex is the right word for what you’re feeling, but it feels funny when you’re in this type of situation.
There’s always an illusion of help - that maybe if you screamed loud enough or just spoke some stubbornly-ignored reason, you could be able to stop him - but you know you can’t. As the first bash of Lucille breaks skull, you know there’s no way to stop him. He swings and swings and swings, and it’s so silent save for the group’s sobbing and the constant thunk of his strikes.
You’re not close to them at all - the length of a car and several people separate you from the group - but you can see them well enough when you turn your head, your heart hammering against your ribs when you recognize that one of them is a kid and one of them looks so pale that she might pass out at any given second. The headlights illuminate them like some sort of demented spotlight, Negan’s shadow distorting across their bodies and their bloodshot eyes as he lingers the bat in front of one of them for too long.
You know what he’s getting at - he’s testing their fear, he’s testing how much more he needs to push before they crack and run back to their community with their tails between their legs - and you remember when you were there, a different type of acquiescing running through your mind. You knew you couldn’t do anything when you were the one knelt on hard ground. You knew that there were too many guns pointed at you and there was too much violence in Negan’s eyes.
The only people who would act on that impulse would be the stupidest people in the-
Holy shit.
The only people who would act on that impulse are here. Or, at least one of them was.
He swung at Negan - that man who had blood running down his chest and blood covering his hands - made hard contact with the corner of one of Negan’s cheeks, and though he’s subdued in almost an instant, you can’t look away. An odd sense of fascination keeps your eyes glued to the scene in front of you.
You don’t remember the last time anyone’s swung at Negan - let alone at a lineup - and you can’t help the spark of a long-forgotten hope that sparks within you.
He’s brave, that much is obvious.
But still, he’s stupid as all hell, held down to the ground as Dwight points a crossbow at him, staring straight at the barrel of it like a trapped animal, and you watch them drag him back into place, a sick feeling crawling into when Negan rises back to his feet.
You know what’s coming. You were on the receiving end of this once, too.
You know defiance gets you nothing except another grave to dig.
And though you’re expecting it, your hands balled into fists at your sides as if to somehow cushion the consequences of not looking away, you still recoil when Negan brings Lucille down on a different man.
It’s different, this time. This man doesn’t use his last bit of consciousness for a well-deserved ‘fuck you’ to Negan. He uses it to tell someone that he’ll ‘find her’ - holds on to his coherence and fights the rushing blood and pain to try and get out more - but he can’t, Negan’s voice filling the space with a mock of sympathy.
Then he swings again, and your stomach feels like it’s folding in on itself, rushing up your throat and through your lips. You turn back away from the scene, hoping that it’ll erase you from whatever the hell is going on, but it doesn’t and in a split second, you’re throwing up. Everything you’ve just seen finally catches up with you and you’re really throwing up, but nothing is coming out except pieces of a granola bar and the ocean of water you’d tried to calm yourself with.
It hits the line between the gravel and the sparse grass, and you take a step back to avoid it, but nausea hits you like a wave and makes you stumble. The trunk of the sedan stops you from moving any further, and you place a hand on it to steady yourself before taking a step to the side and then another, leant forward with your arm in front of you until you can brace on a tree.
Jesus Christ, did you really manage to forget the reality of this? Did you really manage to forget how the air smells when it’s tinged with this much fresh blood? Or how fucking haunting the sound of so many people crying is?
It seems you have - at least, you forgot how overwhelming it was - and you’re not sure if you’re furious or happy that you have.
But now you remember. You remember kneeling and your ribs stinging with each breath you took. You remember the smell of your friend’s blood coming from right next to you. You remember the way your eyes burnt from all your crying and the way your chest hurt with each sob that ripped through you. You remember it all, down to each blade of grass.
Stop overreacting.
There’s always that voice in you that berates when moments like these happen. It curls its lips up in disgust at the fact you’ve let yourself become so terrified, and you loathe yourself for it, a reminder of how it had all gone wrong that day and how you’d let it. It speaks tenfold, the image of that man even just trying to swing at Negan sharpening its words to a point and cutting you with its disappointment.
Even though you try to convince yourself you’re not there anymore, it all feels so real that you can’t help but spiral.
God, you’re such a fucking-
“Hey! Hey, y’alright?”
You’re not sure how long you’d spent lent on that poor tree, the intensity pulling you from reality, but it doesn’t matter because, when Arat places her hand on your shoulder, you flinch away, stumbling on your shaky legs. It feels like it’s been ages - your mouth is cotton and your ears are ringing - but it can’t have been long, the sun barely starting to rise.
“Yeah, fine. Great. I’m great.”
Wiping your mouth with your sleeve, you ease yourself back into a stand, blinking hard before looking around and ignoring the suspecting squint of Arat’s eyes. You’re pretty far out, a couple meters past the closest vehicle, and when you spot the pistol strapped to her thigh, you can’t help but wonder if you could just go.
If you just reached down and took it - if you just concentrated enough pressure to one spot at the side of her head - would she be knocked unconscious, giving you the opening to run?
But you know you can’t. Well-aimed pistol whips barely knock people out as it is, and you haven’t eaten anything substantial since the day started. There was no way you’d be able to do it. The second you bolt, Arat would tackle you. Even if you knocked her out, you wouldn’t make it far, your legs would give up as if they knew he would end up finding you.
He always does.
“Here, eat this.”
A tiny plastic packet is pressed into your palm before she steps back, grabbing your arm and dragging you back towards the clearing. With the darkness ebbing away, the headlights have been turned off, and you can see everything without its blaring harshness.
The scene looks even sadder in natural lighting - tracks of dried tears and slumped shoulders lined up one by one - and all of them refuse to move their heads from where they’re frozen.
But one of them is missing.
Leaning against the sedan, you rip open the packet with your teeth, your fingers still lacking feeling from what Arat had caught you in just moments ago, and you try not to look at the center of the clearing as you force down the crackers.
It’s then when you notice the RV is gone, and it’s then when you realize Negan’s gone too.
It doesn’t take long to connect the dots, and when you finally glance back over to them, you finally figure out who’s missing.
He’s the leader, then - curly hair and fur-lined jacket.
Break him, and everyone falls in line.
The sun comes up soon, lighting the clearing through the gaps between heavy-set trees, and the RV peels in not long after. You watch with the same pit in your stomach when Negan pulls him out by the back of his collar, and as he yells his demand of him to chop off his son’s arm off - as he stops him before he really does it - everyone knows that, whatever Negan had set out to do, he must have done it.
Dwight loads the man who punched Negan into the van he’d come out of - and he shifts his weight when he gets in, swaying like an animal trying to escape - and you find yourself curious about him. You watch as Negan leans in just a foot away to talk to their leader before rising back onto his feet, and you learn that the man’s name is Daryl.
And as much as you hate agreeing with Negan, he really does look like a Daryl.
“We'll be back for our first offering in one week. Until then, ta-ta.”
He throws their axe over his shoulder, a nonchalance in his gait, and he’s quick to hop back into the truck he drove over, letting out a theatrical sigh as if to say ‘all in a day's work’ without actually saying something. Though, knowing him, he’d probably love it if his voice carried for a moment more.
You contemplate where to go as you watch everyone start to disperse - if you’d asked, would Dwight be willing to let you sit shotgun in the car he’s keeping Daryl? Or should you follow to wherever Arat is going and try to figure out a way to thank her for the saltines that have settled your stomach for the time being? - but you don’t have time to move your feet before you hear a familiar voice calling your name and banging against the car roof.
“Get on in, princess.”
Negan sticks his head through the driver’s seat window, and you pull your lips into a line before taking a deep breath and turning your feet in his direction. He’s looking at you with an easy smile, but you keep your eyes on the ground instead, walking behind the wall of cars to mitigate some of the embarrassment you feel at any type of association with Negan.
You look over at the group before pulling at the passenger side handle, and some of them are looking back at you. The woman who had spoken up is studying you, so is their leader and the kid and two of the other women, and you feel shame course through you at their glares. You tear your eyes away from them and blink harshly before hitting the seat, and you slam the door shut, taking a deep breath as you refuse to look at Negan as he barks orders through the open window.
You watch them as all of the Saviors loads back up, and you can’t stop yourself from wondering if this was what you looked like on that night, too. Was this what you would have looked like on that soccer field if he hadn’t taken you before the sun rose?
You can’t blame them for it, though.
Because it’s your fault for letting him push you around like this, isn’t it?
Because you’re so scared of being out there alone, you’d do anything to survive, wouldn’t you?
Because he’s scarred you enough times for you to think like that, hasn’t he?
Swallowing hard, you try to stop that stupid voice from running by pulling your legs up to your chest and tapping a lazy rhythm onto your shin. It’s comforting. It reminds you of the world before - when you’d slaved over schoolwork to it playing mindlessly out of your old cassette player - but also of how things were before you met Negan, its tune playing through that rusty old vinyl player you’d dug up.
You hadn’t heard it since.
“Hey, your little… blegh, during the shit that went down, you alright?”
Your eyebrows meet in the middle of your forehead as you turn to look at him, trying to figure out if there was some hidden motive behind what he’d just said only to conclude that there doesn’t seem to be.
“Yeah, fine. Doing great. Don’t worry about it.”
Your face relaxes as you speak, and you shake your head to try and convince him to drop it. Turning back towards the window, you study the trees as they pass by once again, and it feels like you’re back in yesterday, blurs of green the same way they’d been when he’d driven you to the clearing. There’s some peace to be found in the colour, but he breaks it before it settles.
“Go see the doc when we get back.”
It turns out that your response just wasn’t convincing enough for him, so he tells you what to do, and you think about how this is always how it is with him. You think about how it’s never a suggestion - how you never get a say - and how it’s always an order you’re just expected to follow.
Guess you’re clocking into your shift earlier than expected.
“You got some boyfriend I don’t fucking know about or something?”
Scrunching your nose at his digging, you give him a curt response - ‘I’m not pregnant, if that’s what you’re implying’ - and when he speaks again, you can hear the way a corner of his lips turns up.
“You haven’t been screwing around?”
You don’t dignify him with an answer.
Instead, you let an emptiness linger as you chew at the inside of your cheek, wondering if you really should say what’s hanging on the tip of your tongue. It could get you in trouble - no, it could get you in a shit ton of trouble - but you do it anyways, some feeling gnawing at you to take a hint from that Daryl guy and just be brave for once.
“You didn’t have to kill the Asian guy.”
The silence that follows is deafening.
“I let you get away with a lot of shit, y’know that?”
Then panic comes - it drips slowly, down from your hairline and stings from your forehead down to your chin - but you stave it off before it can shake your voice.
“I’m just saying that you-“
He interrupts with a raise of his gloved hand, the pieces of dried blood on it cracking with the open and close of his first, and for that second where you think he might hit you, you flinch away by instinct, pinching your eyes closed to brace for it.
It wouldn’t be the first time he’s done it, but the impact never comes.
“If you were one of the limp-dicks out there, I would’ve thrown you in a cell for questionin’ my goddamn authority.”
Instead, he places his hand back on the steering wheel with a small smile, his words making you let out a breath, and you find yourself listening more intently than you care to admit.
“But that’s why I like you, isn’t it, princess?”
Your jaw strains at the stupid nickname, but the playfulness that’s wormed into his words makes your tensed shoulders relax just the slightest.
“Pullin’ me back and really putting shit into perspective when that shit needs it. I like that, keeps me in line. It shows you’re really lookin’ out for the future of this place.”
It takes all the strength in you not to scoff, but some of it slips out, a tiny huff followed by a twist of your lips, and it doesn’t take a genius to understand that it’s definitely not a smile. There’s no doubt in your mind that he knows you’re not looking out for the Sanctuary or the Saviors when you find the courage to mouth back at him. Why else would he keep dragging you out to shit like this?
It’s to keep you in line, you’re sure of it. It’s to keep you in line as if reminding you of that night would keep you locked in your room and stuck where he wanted you. He’d dragged you back to the Sanctuary one too many times for him to just not care about you anymore.
“It was just- it was just unnecessary, Negan. If you liked the balls on the guy who punched you, you could’ve just taken him and left and ended everything there. You didn’t have to kill the Asian guy or do any of the stuff you did afterwards, either.”
The breath that escapes his mouth as a barely-audible whistle, his frown oddly approving before he questions you. His voice isn’t condescending or accusatory, you don’t think, but there’s a dangerous edge to it, like something could go wrong if you answered it wrong.
“You know what they did, right?”
But you don’t have the right answer, so you just don’t say anything.
“They ambushed the whole fucking satellite station! Killed every one of them! The blood’s on their hands, so I would say it was pretty fuckin’ courteous of me not to cut off their dicks and kill every last one of ‘em, wouldn’t you?”
You can’t find the words to refute that - not when his voice rises enough for the vibrations to run through the car and work their way into your bones, or when he gestures with that same gloved hand that’s done more than its fair share of things to hurt you - but even if you did, he gives you no time to respond, anyways.
“So you still wanna debate morals, princess? ‘Cause I don’t think you understand the whole damn scope of what they did.”
His voice drops down, but it doesn’t hide his irritation, and you swallow down the spit that’s made home in your throat. Nobody told you what that group did, but you think you know why, biting down the smile pulling at your cheeks.
They’re the only ones to have tried it and done it successfully.
“Yeah, I guess I don’t.”
The rest of the drive is silent.
