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[kaizenwaus]

five hundred sixteen days gone

The worn off denim did nothing to protect the woman's knees from the sand and small stones that made the gravel adorning the forest's ground, not even shifting her weight from one knee to another would ease the pain of her skin fighting not to break. Although all the stinging on her skin and burning on her muscles was nothing compared to the fear and uncertainty that surrounded the clearing.

Everything was... Perfectly set for this exact moment. Almost as if they had taken their time preparing this area for this. The woman could imagine the bald man with the thick mustache cutting down trees that morning, meanwhile the blond man with the burnt face cleaned everything off as well as he planned how to lure the group to this location. Then one of them had to tell the rest of their friends about the place and the time to meet up, and they had to decide the formation of all their vehicles and the armed men. If that had been the case, they did a good job. The scene was, in fact, quite... Intimidating.

The group of survivors, sinners of innocence and naivety, were on their knees, forming half a circle in front of the motorhome that Eugene had been driving just minutes ago. There were also a couple of cars and other vehicles on the sides, their headlights dazzling the survivors and their engines loud in contrast to the silence of the night.

Behind them stood the army of men and women that called themselves the Saviours, each of them holding a firearm if not two. In front of them there were only three men: the bald man with a distinctive mustache, the blond dude with a burnt face, and... The man. The boss. The leader. Negan himself.

He looked just like Sierra had imagined him: disgustingly smug. He wore dark pants, with a leather belt hanging way too low to be comfortable. It was a cold night, so he also wore a leather jacket with a red scarf around his neck. All of this paired up with leather boots and his weapon of choice: a baseball bat.

This bat, whose name was Lucille (as the man had introduced her), had barbed wire around the top of it, which seemed kind of useless against the undead but was incredibly painful for the living.

Eenie...

After introducing himself and the bat, the man explained the reason why they decided to meet up on this beautiful starry night. He paced from one end of the line of survivors to the other, swinging his bat around as he talked and talked and talked...

The survivors were sweating, the bravest ones looking around frantically to find a way to get out of this situation, but the man did not even let them finish a thought as he laughed loudly or got too close to someone with Lucille.

Meenie...

It was nauseating how free and careless he was, walking around as he sang this stupid little song for kids. Even though he was intimidating, Sierra truly questioned if the man was capable of killing one of them randomly. Deep down she thought this was just his little show, that his random pick was going to be a core member of the group: Rick, Daryl, Michonne, or even herself, she thought. There was also the possibility that Negan only wanted to weaken the leader by killing someone close to him: Carl or Michonne.

Would he really pick someone randomly?

Miney...

Sierra wanted to think a human would not be able to murder someone in cold blood, without a true motive. There was a motive, denying it would be straight up lying, but there were a fair amount of people in this line up that did not participate in said killing.

Questioning human behavior in the context of a literal zombie apocalypse was somewhat difficult if they were trying not to be hypocrites too, so maybe he was going to do as he said. Maybe, as he sang and as he pointed randomly at different survivors he was truly picking someone to kill. Maybe, for him this was just a game.

Mo...

The wielder of the named bat stood in front of Carl, causing everyone to cringe at the thought of the teenager becoming this psychopath's victim. But they were able to breathe again as the man continued his game – ironically, considering that if Carl was not the one tagged then the odds of being of them just rose.

Catch...

Rosita.

A tiger...

Rick.

By...

Eugene.

His toe...

Daryl.

My mother...

Michonne.

Told me...

Glenn.

To pick...

Aaron.

The very best one...

Maggie.

And you're...

Sierra. Negan left his bat staring at the blonde for a few more seconds than anybody else before her, he even bent down to stare right at her, taking in the hateful look the woman was giving him. Without breaking eye contact, the man smirked, winked at her and took blind aim with his bat as he sketched the last word of his song: it.

Abraham.

"Anybody moves, anybody says anything..." the man started speaking with a smirk on his face after he looked at who Lucille had chosen, slowly and almost teasingly walking away from the blonde woman to face his victim "Cut the boy's other eye out and feed it to his father, and then we'll start"

The bravery and strength with which Abraham presented himself to his soon-to-be murderer was highly admirable. The red-haired man refused to be submissive to the man's inflated ego, he could not forgive himself if his actions fed that man's grotesque and disgusting attitude. Much to Abraham's dismay, this façade only made Negan both flattered and challenged, making him want to prove what he could be able to do. To prove how much of a cold-blooded killer he could be. How much he truly did not care about their lives and only about what they could do for him.

"You can breathe, you can blink, you can cry..." the man chuckled, firmly gripping his beloved bat and lifting it up slowly "Hell, you're all gonna be doing that"

Abraham was standing straight, subtly giving his most recent lover the hand signal they had translated to "I love you" as she silently broke down before everyone. On the opposite side, his ex-girlfriend could not even watch the scene. Watching the man she had learnt to love standing tall on his knees, keeping eye contact with the monster that was about to end his life. Not everyone was able to watch, it was not only Rosita (his former partner) that looked away into the distance as tears streamed down her face. Others, who were not as close to Abraham as Sasha (his lover) was, also dared to watch as Negan cruelly attacked the man.

Gasps, sobs, cries... Those were the noises that took over the crickets as the bat was smashed against Abraham's skull. The echo of the hit was painful, you could almost hear the metal spikes digging into his skin, the blood gushing down his face, Abraham's incoherent mumbles as he tried to speak his last words: "Suck... My... Nuts"

Negan laughed at him before hitting him again, this time harder and leaving him on the ground. He even taunted him, repeating his last words as he looked to his followers to further enjoy his mockery of the victim. He hit him again, and again, and again, and again... He fully raged at the corpse, letting all his anger out on the innocent man's man until his red hair was too faded with the blood to point it out. In Negan's head, this was his revenge for all the Saviors Rick's group had murdered.

If the roles had been reversed, Sierra would not have considered this enough of a punishment. But her perspective of the situation could not let her think too much about it, at least rationally. Her mind was occupied by the little drops of blood that had fallen on Rosita's face, or how Sasha just had to witness the death of her lover very much like she had to a few years ago (without all the cruelty, surely).

The violence and helplessness surrounding the scene were too overwhelming for the woman to be able to have any other thoughts that did not involve wishing for Negan's death or planning how to murder him and his entire group. It was not only overwhelming for her, but also for everyone and everything around her. It was visible, palpable... So noticeable that not even the undead (or walkers, as Sierra had grown accustomed to call them) dared to approach the small clearing in the forest. Not even the walking dead dared to interrupt Negan's moment, his superiority and control over everyone else scarily good as well as incredibly infuriating.

Sierra's stomach was growling in disgust, her breath going faster, her heart pumping what felt like lava in her chest... She bit her tongue, pinched the skin on her wrists to keep herself from fighting back or talking back to him.

"You guys, look at my dirty girl!" the man yelled, showing off his bloody bat and swinging it around in the air – bits and pieces of Abraham's something flying off, until he just pointed the weapon at Rosita, who still could not dare to look at it "Sweetheart... Look at this"

Her eyes were fixated on the red tinted gravel, too shocked to even register tha taunting words of the man responsible for it. Negan enjoyed the state she was in, he watched her and smiled at how miserable she was and how powerful that made him, continuing his tormenting: "Oh, were you together? That sucks!"

Each word that left his mouth was one more log of wood thrown into the fire growing within Sierra. Her chest was growing tighter, her heart pumping faster and her skin getting hotter... Her whole body became a bomb, the clock showing how many seconds until it exploded being each and every word Negan directed towards her friend.

"But if you were, you should know there was a reason for all this" he laughed.

Ten seconds. Ten more cruel words is all she needed...

"Red -- and hell, he was, is, and will ever be"

The blonde woman growled in an animalistic way as she jumped off the ground and lunged towards the man, grabbing him by his crimson scarf to hold him in place and punching his face with her other hand. She was fisting the scarf so hard that he did not even move one inch, his neck and jaw taking all the pain and movement. Before she could land another hit, two of his men grabbed her from behind and pulled her away from him, attempting to tackle her to the ground.

Attempting.

Sierra managed to avoid being immobilized by the two Saviours, pushing and punching them until one of them was knocked out by the motorhome and the other one was in a headlock.

She heard Rick calling her name as a warning, while Negan frowned at her in pure and raw anger. He huffed, and she watched. Everyone watched, holding their breaths, as Negan and Sierra stared at each other in a silent war.

"Let him go" a man behind her talked as she felt a crossbow she knew too damn well pressed against the back of her "Or this will be the last thing you do"

She looked briefly towards her found family, all of them scared of what was about to happen to either them or her. It was Carl that slightly nodded to her, letting her know that the best thing she could do right now is listen.

Very slowly, she let go of the man and raised her hands in the air. The man walked away from her, holding his neck in discomfort, meanwhile the man behind her kicked the back of her knee and grabbed her hair to make her look up at Negan.

"Who do you think you are?" he spat angrily at her, almost in a whisper.

"Your worst fucking nightmare" she smirked.

As soon as those words left her mouth, she was hit by the consequences of her own actions. Lucille collided against her cheek with almost superhuman strength, breaking her skin with the force of impact and the barbed wire dragging against her flesh. It was such a strong blow that Sierra fell to her side, barely managing to collect herself with her hands.

"That!" Negan spoke to the rest of the group while pointing at the injured woman with his bat "That is a no-no! That whole thing! Not one bit of that shit flies here!"

His words reverberated against her skull as her heartbeat moved to the bleeding wound on her face, her whole vision turning red and in her ears growing an uncomfortable ringing. Someone close to her, probably the man that threatened her with Daryl's crossbow, dragged his unconscious colleague away from the motorhome – thus leaving a clear path for Sierra to crawl under the vehicle and hide as Negan ranted.

"Now, I don't know what kind of lying assholes you've been dealing with... But I'm a man of my word. I already told you people, first one's free, then what'd I say? I said I would shut that shit down!"

Sierra was halfway under the motorhome when someone dragged her out by her ankle, exposing her torso and dragging her skin against the gravel. The man turned her around, making her face him as he pointed the crossbow to her head. She blindly tried to cover her face, her hands clumsy as her vision was deprived of focus and other colors beside red, still she was able to see the blond man with a burnt face speaking to her: "Where do you think you're going?"

"Please..." she whispered, struggling to speak as her mouth filled up with her own blood.

"You've got guts, lady" Negan looked down at her, before turning to the blond man "Dwight, load her up, I like her"

The man, now known as Dwight, grabbed the woman by her hair and dragged her towards a black van. She kicked her legs and yelled in pain, in way too much pain to try to put on a façade in front of the Saviors. In a desperate attempt to avoid being taken, she went to grab... Something. Her left hand flew to the floor, trying to grab some kind of anchor that would keep her from being abducted.

But it was the anchor that found her. Glenn's hand went over hers and gave her a reassurance squeeze, too fast to be noticed by anyone else besides them. She knew what it meant. She knew it was a silent promise, an oath to her that she would not be held against her will too long – and he was going to make sure of that.

Dwight threw her in the back of the van rather aggressively, making her whole body ache more (if that was even possible). She used the last bit of her strength to lunge towards him, but her fist was met by the van's doors being closed right in front of her.

"Feisty, just how I like them" she could hear Negan talking to her people, dwelling on his own gain and the group's loss of a great asset "She's mine now, so... Back to it!"

Sierra only managed to hear a loud thud, similar to the sound of Lucille crashing against Abraham's skull, accompanied by gasps and a woman crying out: "No!"

She hit the van's doors in frustration, hearing the suffering of her friends combined with her own physical pain becoming too much for her, until she eventually felt herself give up to the blood loss and overstimulation. Her knees got weaker and she could no longer hold herself up, her stomach growled as her chest heaved, her heart finally relaxing and her face going numb. She brought her hand up to her open wound, feeling the wetness and roughness of blood mixed with gravel against the tips of her fingers – perfect cocktail for an infection, she thought.

Her back was resting against the van's walls, feeling how they vibrated from the noises coming from outside. She tried to fight off the tiredness that overcame her, but her eyelids seemed to have grown independent from her brain's orders. Slowly all the tension left her body as she felt herself weighting more as she let go... Pain and life threatening anemia made her shut her body down to a comatose state, the last words she was able to register from outside echoing through the van's walls:

No exceptions.