Chapter Text
Aspen doesn't know what makes him come to, but he suspects it’s the deep muscle pain in the back of his neck from where it is pressed into the back of a chair, and he shoves his head up off the back of the chair to look around.
He doesn’t look at the people in the room, pointedly ignoring them in fact, and studies the room around him.
He’s in a warehouse, a red brick warehouse, that has multiple windows that are frosted white with hard water stains, with some covered with dingy white sheets. The room is empty, aside from Aspen’s chair, but some of the walls have graffiti of all pretty colors.
Aspen liked graffiti, Mama always let him-
“I apologize for the unpleasant greeting.”
The voice is southern, a Georgian-ring to it like his Mama’s, and the man carries himself like a leader. He’s closest to Aspen, crouched down with one leg in front of the other, and has salt and pepper hair with a full, gray beard and mustache. He’s dressed in black, tactical pants, and a tight black shirt.
Standing a few steps behind him is a dark-skinned woman, whose dark dreads that disappear behind her, who had a very closed off aura to her. She’s dressed in a wool, knitted sweater and dark washed jeans, and her eyes are staring at Aspen with a guarded precision.
A few paces away from the woman, against the wall farthest away from Aspen is an all too familiar man. He only met him once, when he was ten, but he would recognize the motherfucker that his Mama dog walked for years anywhere. Negan is older, graying in the beard and hair, and he’s staring at Aspen like he’s seen a ghost.
There are two more people in the room, towards the corner of the room where the far wall and wall to Aspen’s left meets. The man is leaning against the wall to Aspen’s left and staring at Aspen. He has dark, long, wavy hair that reaches his shoulder, and a scar over his right eye, down to the upper portion of his right cheek. The man is dressed in brown hunting pants, which match his worn brown boots, a black long-sleeved thermal shirt with a mangy vest over it.
The woman next to him, who is standing up straight and avoiding Aspen’s eyes, doesn’t look very old even though she has grayish-white hair that reaches a couple inches past her shoulder. She’s dressed in layers of warm clothes, but just from the way she’s holding herself, Aspen can tell she’s uncomfortable with this situation.
“Can I ask your name?” The same man, the man from the south, asks, keeping his warm eyes on Aspen. “I can go first, I’m Rick.”
“Aspen.” He replies, watching Negan’s eyes grow even wider. “You fucked up today, Rick.”
“I don’t think my group did anything wrong.” Rick disagrees, “You’re a little young to be talking like that don’t you think, Aspen? How old are you?”
“I’m fourteen.” Aspen replies, and watches as they all physically recoil. “You think-You think physically taking me from a home I was in, knocking me out, and dragging me to a place I don’t know, isn’t wrong, Rick?”
“You’re not-You’re not fourteen.” Rick chuckles, his eyes scanning Aspen. “You’re not fourteen, right?”
“No. I am Fourteen.” Aspen laughs, “But Negan knows that, doesn’t he?”
All of the eyes in the room turn to Negan, whose head falls forward and he groans quietly.
“I fucking knew it was you, Kid.” Negan groans, “Rick we need to have a word. Outside.”
Aspen starts to laugh, a semi-maniacal laugh, pulling his legs up the edge of the seat and laughing into his knees.
“You’re all going to die!” Aspen giggles, “Mama is going to kill you all. Everything you’ve built. All of your families. You’re all going to die!”
“Rick. A word.” Negan snarls, shoving himself off the wall and heading past Aspen. Aspen continues to laugh into his knees, until he knows he’s alone in the room and his eyes fill with tears.
The door slams shut behind Daryl, nearly catching his heels, leaving the group in the cramped stairwell outside of the room they confined Aspen in.
“We need to take the kid back.”
“We can’t just take the kid back-.” Michonne disputes, tilting her head at Negan in confusion. “Like he said, he’s a child-.”
“That doesn’t matter.” Negan cuts in, “We need to take Aspen back. His mother…His mother will destroy the commonwealth. She will come for the children. Everything you have will go up in flames. All we need to do to prevent that is return the kid.”
“How do you know that?” Carol asks, wrapping her arms around herself. “How do you know his mother?”
“She..” Negan lets out a shaky breath, “She destroyed the Saviors a few years before we met, and she did without killing nearly as many as we lost in the war. I found Aspen hiding in a shopping mall on a supply run, and I took the kid. He was ten or eleven then, and he tried to put up a fight but I made my men drag him back to The Sanctuary. He kept yelling about his Mama, and yelling for him Mama, but we just ignored him. Then, some of my men on the walls went missin’. Then a whole classroom of kids went missin’. Then my bullet factory went up in flames. Then she somehow got in my room.”
Everyone could tell that Negan’s being truthful, but they all are genuinely amazed by how absolutely unnerved Negan appears. He’s the closest to the farthest wall of the stairwell, his hands are in the pockets of his jacket and he’s avoiding their eyes.
“She killed my wife, Mavis.” Negan says, and the shine of tears in his eyes is palpable in the low, orange light of the stairwell. “She had her disemboweled. Spread out across the bed, but left her head untouched. She came back, but she couldn’t move because Maggie had her nailed down to the bed. Mavis was-Mavis was my wife. I was her husband. It wasn’t like my other ‘wives’, No, Mavis was my wife. But I took her kid, I understood. She was just protectin’ her baby.”
Negan takes another shaky breath, reaching up to scrub at his face once, before straightening his spine and looking at them once again.
“She was still in my room.” Negan nods, “Had a gun against the back of my head the second my knees hit the floor. Mavis was the only person she killed. The men and kids turned up at one of my warehouses. She asked for her kid back and even though I wanted nothing more to kill her, I understood her. She threatened me, said if I touched her kid again, she could blow my entire compound up. She-.”
Negan drags his jacket arm up, revealing the white bandage that always covers from his left wrist to left elbow, working his fingers under the bandage and pulling it off his skin. Carved into his skin messily, spanning the entire space between his wrist and elbow, is the name Maggie.
“She carved her name into me ‘as a reminder to not fuck with her’, and set the room on fire as she left. She found Aspen and left and in the year or so after that, she would pop up at random times, setting my fucking buildings on fire, taking a kid or two and returning back unharmed a few days after, sometimes stuff in my room would be fucked up or I’d find a dead animal on her pillow. She’s not to be fucked with, Rick. I guess she lost interest or they moved on, but that shit stopped. You don’t want to start this shit again.”
“What’d she look like?” Daryl asks, “Maggie? What’d she look like?”
Everyone aside from Negan understands what he’s asking, but no one else will say it. They don’t talk about Maggie, it’s an unspoken rule amongst the group that’s been together since the prison. It only brings heartbreak every time they reminisce about her, and they cannot talk about Maggie in front of Carl if they want to prevent a months-long spiral. Daryl doesn’t talk about her, but Carol knows that he sleeps with one of her old sweaters in his pillowcase. Rick will include her in his number of children when asked, because she’s his oldest, but tries to not discuss her outside of that. Michonne’s the only person he’ll discuss her with, late at night when he’s thinking about how he ‘failed her’, and even those conversations are getting further and further apart.
“Young. Didn’t even look old enough to have a ten year old kid. Didn’t focus on her eyes. Dark long hair with bleached ends.” Negan listed off, “Small.”
The description is so vague that it really could be anyone, but Daryl’s heart skips. Anything that reminds him of Maggie does that to him.
“Southern. Real southern honestly.”
None of the adults get to process that information though, because the door to the bottom of the stairs is ripped open and feet are thundering up the stairs swiftly. They don’t move, or speak, until the owners of the feet appear at the landing of the staircase below them.
“Dad.” Carl pants, his eyes full of terror, Connie and Rosita close behind him. “The kids are gone.”
“Fuck!” Negan yells, and Aspen’s unhinged giggles are barely muffled by the door between them.