In a few days you were up on your feet, your need to survive driving your fast recovery. As soon as you could sit up without nearly fainting and you could bend your fingers without much pain you started taking patients. Mainly burns and cuts. You kept your head down while working, adding to your intimidating reputation. They didn’t realise you were just trying to conceal yourself while looking for familiar faces. You rarely left the medical bay, even when it was icy cold.

Carol checked on you regularly, seemingly incredibly concerned for you. It almost pained you to suspect her to be out to get you. Luckily she seemed convinced that because you had been alone for so long that you’d take a long time getting used to the walls. Maybe she figured out that you were just biding time for leaving again.

“Are you okay?” Laura pulled you from your thoughts. You looked up suddenly, nodded, and went back to your reading. All these patient profiles from the previous physician were thorough. “Why would Emmett be this detailed with extremely basic medical care” you tought, then again he was a captive here just as much as you were. He probably had nothing better to do. “Are you sure? You look so serious.” She continued. You looked up to her. She was lying on one of the beds chewing on a piece of hard plastic. Having to keep a watch on ‘The New Doc’ would’ve been extremely boring.

“Just a lot of reading” you sat up and stretched your arms, not realising how long you had sat hunched over the hand-written pages. “Doctors have horrible handwriting and this guy sure likes to drag his point out”

“How bad is it?” She asked. You lifted the profile of another patient and followed along with your finger.

“The left Thenar has suffered tremendous infliction resulting in the loss of elasticity and possible avulsion of the tissue” You read aloud in a dramatic voice

“What?” Laura said, taking the plastic out of her mouth for a moment

“He pulled the muscle in his thumb, possibly tearing it” you flopped the paper down, rubbing your forehead.

“And all those pages are full of that shit” Laura pressed. You sighed with a nod.

“I never thought I’d be grateful to have done AP english.” you sighed

“Okay smart ass no need to show off” Laura chuckled, chewing on the plastic again.

“Please,” you sat back in the chair “My old man made me do it. ‘You already speak english so it should be a breeze’ he said”

“Those kind of parents?”

“You’re familiar?”

“Yep” Laura sat up, hunching over her now crossed legs. “My dad was a lawyer. Mom was an accountant. They kept pushing me to over achieve”

“Bet they weren’t happy with that” you spoke, pointing to your neck to reference Laura’s tattoo. Her hand went over it instinctively.

“I had already skipped town with my boyfriend before I got this.” She laughed. The smile melted away as she slowly stroked her neck. “Hadn’t seen them since. Probably dead.”

The room got a lot more quiet. It was crazy to think you both were so close in age but had gone through so much hell in the same world. But Laura was a saviour. You were Negan’s kid. If you were to be friends it would have to be at an arm’s reach.

The momentum changed when Carol arrived in, holding a small tray with cookies on them. The smell told you they were fresh. Your heart wanted to tell her to get out, but those cookies smelled too damn good.

“How’s the hard work going ladies.” she spoke with a cheery voice, setting the tray down in front of you. You were on it instantly. You took a cookie with you as you limped over to lock the door to the medical bay. “Any news?” Carol whispered

Carol had asked you and Laura to investigate the uprising of Negan supporters in the Sanctuary. Well, mainly Laura since she would know more people in Carol’s eyes. The payment, cookies. Though Laura would probably do it for free. She enjoyed the new peace that came with being aligned with the other settlements.

“Just the usual hot-heads” Laura sighed. You limped back to your chair.

“They like to complain to me.” you gently sat down. You’d only been back walking without the full splint for a couple days now but the clunky half splint on your lower leg wasn’t exactly walker friendly. “‘You should’ve seen how great we were when Negan was running the place’ and other shit”

“What do you think of it?” Carol asks you seriously. You suck the sugar off your fingers happily.

“He mustn’t have been that good if he’s not in charge anymore.”

They had their little meeting then as Carol was leaving you piped up,

“How’s the bridge team?”

“No.” Carol retorted quickly as if speaking to a child. “You are not going out there how many times do I have to tell you.”

“I could help-”

“You’re needed here Y/N” she spoke firmly.

“Yes, mom.” you groaned from your chair, earning a laugh from Laura. Carol left quickly.

“Why do you wanna join the bridge team so badly?” Laura asked through a mouthful of cookie.

“I miss the fresh air, I guess” and there’s more chances to get away from you all.

That evening you were restless. Normally it was the pain that kept you up late but it also exhausted you. You got out of the medical bed you’d claimed as your own, one of three that outfitted the med bay. You limped your way out of the medbay, not bothered if you woke Laura. The bathroom was down the hall so she would just assume you had to pee, especially since you had taken the torch dedicated to midnight bathroom visits. Being the medic gave you the luxury of a torch instead of matches and a candle.

It hurt to climb up so many stairs, with both your wounds and the cold seeping into your skin, but you’d be tired by the time you came back down anyway. You walked onto what used to be Negan’s floor. Your ‘family’s’ floor. You’d wanted to see it for a while now, out of curiosity more than anything else.

You first went to your father’s room. Pushing the door open you felt a burst of cold air whip around you viciously. The room has been stripped of its furnishings, right down to the carpets. Taken away to be burned most likely. The windows were shattered, the bullet holes in the ceiling giving away the method. It was so completely devoid of any sign of human life one would say it always had been. You closed the door and continued onto the parlour where the wives would spend their day. This room didn’t have windows but the room was still completely void of any of the glamour that once adorned it. The only remnants was the wall paper which was peeling off due to the damp.

The image of the forgotten rooms didn’t stir emotion in the way you thought they would. You imagined getting overwhelmed with emotion, but you felt nothing. No that wasn’t right, you felt a loss. Not a loss of the grandeur you had gotten to enjoy in captivity, not a loss of the fake smiles from your many ‘mothers’. You felt a loss of your father. You mourned the man you had called your father, and the idea that all that was left of the memory of him were these halls where cowards bowed to him. You felt an overwhelming realisation that the man you called ‘Pops’ had died long before ‘Negan’ formed.

Your final destination was your room. You figured it would also be empty but your room was a bit away, down the end of a hall few knew how to get too. You’d had more roaches as visitors than people. Your father had chosen it for you so the ‘common nobodies’ wouldn’t see you easily, another measure to keep you safe.

It also worked the other way as you round the corner and see a light coming from what used to be your room. The hall was lined with offices and storage rooms you knew you could dive into if someone appeared so you turned off your light and walked down the hall gingerly on your feet. You were now only a couple feet away from the door when you heard voices coming from the end of the hall, from what used to be your room.

“I still can’t believe they put this bitch here to keep an eye on us. That fucking redneck was an ass but atleast he didn’t pretend to be all fucking nice”

“It’s probably a play to get us to relax. They’ve got us locked in this factory and don’t give us nearly enough food, and they won’t let us go to the other settlements”

“We’re prisoners. They said they only wanted to lock up Negan but now we’re all starving.”

“Enough of your bitching.”

They went on to talk about how many people were on their side and their efforts to get weapons. They clearly had no idea you were listening. After all, what kind of idiot is gonna climb up over ten floors for no reason. Other than sentiment perhaps. It sounded like there were about four people in the room, but they spoke like they had a few under their influence. They were looking for weapons and a means to get back at ‘Rick and his posse’.

“We’ll bring them that bitch Carol’s head on a spike for them.”

“What about the bridge? We got people working there for food.”

“And then what? They’re just gonna keep extorting us for slave labour or let us starve.”

You were so drawn in by their words that the door opening startled you. You charged from your spot into an open room, a storage closet of a sort. You knew it was too risky to close the door so you stood against the wall next to the door. They walked along the hall bantering loudly. You sidestepped deeper into the room, knocking something with your foot making a loud metal sound. The voices stopped and you instantly froze, holding your breath like your life depended on it. A light shun into the closet, then the other way.

“Probably just a rat” one of the voices spoke. “We can set some traps and stew it for dinner”.

They continued down the hall, their steps growing faint a minute or so later. The adrenaline began to subside and the pain from the recent strain on your leg made itself very apparent. You stepped out of the closet and walked down the hall to your old room. Maybe they left some evidence you could use to barter for your freedom.

You opened the door to your room, only illuminated by the moonlight coming from the window. Unlike the other rooms, your room hadn’t been completely ransacked. The mattress had been taken off the frame but the metal skeleton remained as well as the rug under your bed. Other than that it appeared empty. You turned on your torch to get a better view.

On your bed frame lay what had to be near a hundred dead wild flowers. Your breath caught in your throat at the site. You moved and sat on the bed frame, the metal sending a chill up your body. You placed a hand on the dry stems and something hit the ground with a thump. You moved to look under the bed as quick as you could, reaching under the bed you cut yourself on something sharp. You moved your torch on it and grabbed it again, this time from a less dangerous end.

Under the bed you pulled out the knife that had your name engraved on it. The metal shun bright in the light as if lovingly polished until it’s inevitable abandonment. You hadn’t realized you had begun to cry until a tear fell onto the blade and began to fill the engraving.

~Tag List~