293A/N: I know I said it wouldn't be another year between updates, but obviously I'm incapable of estimating how much time I will take between chapters. None of us are surprised, I'm sure. To make up for the long wait, this chapter is a long one and I am already well into writing the next chapter. I had intended on writing both fully and dropping them together as a treat to those who are still coming back, but I didn't want to make you wait any longer. I hope you enjoy!
TW: This chapter does include attempted sexual assault.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything other than Thea Ellis and her storyline. All rights to The Walking Dead remain with Robert Kirkman and Co.
She'd officially been at the Sanctuary for nine days when a shift happened. It was around the end of the day and Thea was in the room she shared with Frankie when the redhead burst into the room, blood painting her hands red and smearing across the white door.
"Thea, we need you." She gasped out; she was panting like she had run all the way up the stairs leading to the top level of the building.
Thea jumped up from the bed, eyes scanning the other woman for the source of the blood. "Are you okay?"
Frankie shook her head. "It's not me; one of the workers got hurt. Negan sent me to get you. We gotta hurry."
While Thea didn't care for the Saviors, she knew the workers at the Sanctuary were not there by choice; they were good people who were forced into servitude to earn their safety. She motioned for Frankie to lead the way; she wouldn't willingly let one of the workers die just because she was unhappy with her current living arrangements.
Frankie raced down the stairs at a speed Thea didn't know she possessed and led her down to the main floor and passed the market into the long hallway of rooms Thea had only visited a handful of times with one of the wives. The infirmary was one of the last doors on the right and she could hear voices talking over each other nearly drowning out the pained groans of whoever had been injured.
"She's here!" Frankie called out as she stepped through the doorway.
Thea wasn't quite sure what or who she expected to see when she entered the infirmary, but she definitely was not expecting to see Kyle laid on a gurney writhing in pain as a couple of other men—Saviors or workers she wasn't sure—held him down. One of the men had his hands wrapped around Kyle's right thigh tightly, blood slowly seeping between his fingers. Negan stood to the side with an angry expression on his face.
She hoped her hesitation wasn't noticeable as she approached. "What happened?"
The man holding pressure on the wound spoke frantically. "We were building—"
"A spear got 'em." The other man interrupted, sending the first a look as if he had almost told the doctor something she wasn't supposed to know.
Not caring about specifics, Thea moved to quickly wash her hands before stepping close to the man holding Kyle's leg. "Okay, lift your hand slowly so I can take a look."
The blood began to flow quicker the less pressure the man put on the wound. Once she could see it fully, Thea cursed under her breath and glanced around the room. "Do we have scissors?"
There was a moment of shuffling before Frankie was handing over a pair of medical scissors. Thea quickly snipped around the rip in Kyle's pants and set the scissors aside to grasp both sides of the hole and tear the fabric apart to create a larger opening to work with. The spear had punctured his inner thigh and had ripped into the femoral artery, which was the source of the bleeding. Kyle would bleed out if she couldn't repair the damage.
Thinking quickly, she plunged her fingers into the wound and clamped the artery between her thumb and forefinger to stop the bleeding. Kyle yowled in pain, squirming on the gurney as if he were trying to get away from her; both men who had been holding him down previously jerked away with similar noises of disgust at her actions.
"Get back here and hold him down!" she exclaimed, trying her best to keep a hold on the artery with the way Kyle was wriggling. They hesitated only for a moment before moving to do as she instructed. Thea looked up at her brother-in-law and gave him a reassuring nod. "You're gonna be fine, I promise."
Once she was sure she had a good enough hold on the artery, Thea turned towards the other woman in the room. "Frankie, can you grab a needle? I need you to thread it for me, please."
The redhead moved around the room until she returned with the items. Her hands were shaking as she attempted to thread the needle, cursing quietly to herself before she sighed heavily. "I-I can't get it."
Thea glanced between her hands in the wound and Frankie's holding the needle. "I can't do both, Frankie. I need you to try or you can hold this artery closed and I'll do it." She didn't want to be rude, but she needed to save Kyle; there was no way she was letting him die before she reunited him with his wife and son.
"Okay. Okay." Frankie whispered, seemingly to herself as if she were trying to hype herself up as she picked up the thread again and attempted to get it through the eye of the needle.
Kyle's leg jerked in her grasp as the man whimpered and she met his eyes again. "Hey, hey, you gotta be still for me, okay? If I lose grip of the artery you'll start bleeding out again."
There was a smear of blood on the right frame of his glasses and his hair was matted to his sweaty forehead, but despite the pain in his eyes he nodded in understanding. She wasn't sure if it was because he trusted her as his sister-in-law or as a doctor…perhaps both.
"I got it, I got it!" Frankie exclaimed, holding the needle out to Thea.
Thea gave one last glance to her brother-in-law's face before she took the needle and got to work.
"You were amazing, I wouldn't even know where to start and you took one look and it was like instinct just kicked in." Frankie praised as the two got ready for bed in their shared room. The redhead was in a pale blue nightgown as she pulled the covers back on her bed.
Thea, who was wearing a pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt, gave the other woman a wry look. "I am a trained doctor, you know. Of course I knew what to do."
Frankie sighed. "I'm just saying that—"
A knock on the door interrupted her and she glanced at Thea before turning to pull it open to find Negan on the other side, his face hard. He met Frankie's eyes and jerked his head towards the hall, indicating that she should leave the room. With one last glance back at the doctor, the redhead quickly disappeared into the dark hallway.
Negan closed the door behind him as he stepped into the room and Thea felt her heart skip with anxiety as she wondered what was going on. Even without Lucille in his hands he cut an intimidating figure.
"Good job today, Doc." He said slowly, leaning back against the door and effectively trapping her in the room. "There's just one thing that's been on my mind."
She tried not to let her discomfort show, but it was difficult not to feel it when a man like Negan had her cornered like prey. "And what's that?"
His hazel eyes narrowed slightly as he took a moment before responding. She felt exposed and uncomfortable.
"How do you know Kyle?"
It wasn't what she expected him to say and she hoped she was able to school her expression enough to not make him more suspicious of her, but she knew the hesitation she took to answer wasn't a good look. Finally, she shook her head slowly. "Who's Kyle?"
The corner of his mouth twitched upwards. "So that's how you're gonna play it, Doc? Who's Kyle?" he stepped forward, but didn't move passed Frankie's bed which was closest to the door. "The man you saved today, that's Kyle. And I get the impression you've met him before you ever came to the Sanctuary."
"I'm not sure what gave you that impression, but I've never met him before. Sorry to disappoint."
He shrugged one shoulder and turned halfway towards the door. "Then I guess it wouldn't matter if I went downstairs and killed him right now."
Thea scoffed. "You won't."
Negan's back stiffened and his head cocked to the side, eyes hard as he studied her for a second. "I won't?" he asked incredulously, as if she had made a grave mistake with those two words.
Up to this point she had been able to speak freely with him, and maybe that would be her downfall in the end. For now, however, she felt confident enough to speak up. "If you cared so little about his life you wouldn't have brought me down there to save him. You definitely wouldn't have taken the time to question me about him either." She shrugged. "You would have just let him die and moved on. But you need every hand on deck right now with this fight against Rick, so killing him isn't really something you can afford."
He was silent for a long minute, staring at the wall before he faced her with hard eyes. "Even if that were true before, there's nothing stopping me from bashing his head in now. You think you know me so well, Doc, but you're wrong. If I'm at war, I've got no use for a man who can't walk. And since you're so adamant you don't know him, I think I'll go relieve myself of the extra burden on my resources."
Shit. Thea's heart leapt into her throat as Negan turned and stomped towards the door. As he reached for the knob, she realized he had been in control of this conversation from the start. There was no way she would have gotten out of this without admitting she knew Kyle and he knew it; she'd all but revealed her hand by pushing back as hard as she had.
"Fuck, okay. Wait."
His hand remained frozen on the doorknob but he stopped and looked over his shoulder at her with a raised eyebrow, waiting.
Although she was now doing it to save his life, Thea still felt anxious that telling Negan who Kyle was would put him in danger. She had no choice, she only hoped it wouldn't backfire more than this conversation already had. "He's my brother-in-law." She admitted. "Cat's husband."
Surprise crossed his face as he let go of the knob and turned to face her fully, the anger in his eyes slowly dissipating.
She took that as a good sign.
"Neither of us have seen him since that first day when everything went to shit. I always just assumed he died, but then I saw him my first day here."
He studied her face for a moment before sighing softly. "And it's just a coincidence that he found his way here to the Sanctuary out of all the other places he could have ended up?"
She was going to have to fight for Kyle's life here, she could tell. "I know how it looks, but coincidences happen. Sometimes they just do. The last time I saw him, Cat and I were on campus waiting for him to finish a test so we could take Henry to lunch together. Things went to shit and I got my sister and nephew out of there. We waited for Kyle for two days before it wasn't safe anymore and maybe I should have waited longer, but my priority was getting my family out of the city."
She was desperate for him to believe her, for him to spare Kyle.
"We heard that they were telling people to go to Fort Benning, so we headed that way but we got separated and then I was…alone for a long time. Daryl and Michonne found me in a pharmacy and they took me in and now I'm here. That's it."
Negan was silent as he continued to study her, and she wasn't sure how convinced he was. It only made her keep talking.
She stepped forward in what she hoped was a non-threatening gesture. "I feel like we've been honest with each other. So, please, believe me when I say this is just an insane coincidence."
The air between them was thick as silence filled the room. Negan's dark eyes were boring into hers and she hoped he could see that she was telling the truth. The silence stretched out for a minute or two before he sighed heavily through his nose and the tightness in his shoulders disappeared.
"I believe you, Doc."
"Are you going to kill him?"
There was no hesitation in his answer. "No, I'm not gonna kill him."
Relief flooded her and she nodded slowly as she sagged back onto the edge of her bed. The stress of begging for her brother-in-law's life only added to the exhaustion she felt after the surgery.
"I'm sorry, Doc. I had to make sure he wasn't a spy."
She didn't reply and he lingered in the room for a moment before turning and leaving without another word. Frankie must have been waiting by the door because she was at Thea's side in a flash asking if she was okay.
Thea wasn't sure how to answer that question. She hadn't been afraid of Negan since he'd killed the men in the boiler room and while she wasn't afraid of him now, she was terrified of what he could do. She wasn't sure how much longer she could play nice at the Sanctuary when all she wanted to do was run. She could feel a shift in the air around her that told her things weren't as simple for her here as she thought they were.
Two days later, Thea was sitting in the lounge with the wives eating breakfast. She had grown to understand these women more, understand why they agreed to be a wife. It didn't sit right with her that Negan had put this ultimatum over their heads, but it wasn't her place to tell these women how they survived.
Frankie was sitting beside her with a plate of food, some eggs and toast. One of Negan's other wives, a young dark-skinned woman named Lauren, sat across from her on the sofa.
"You're with that guy, Daryl, right?" Lauren asked, setting her half empty bowl of oatmeal down on the coffee table between them.
Thea frowned and tried not to choke on the bite of toast she'd just been swallowing. "With?" she asked, unsure how to answer.
Lauren glanced at Frankie and shrugged. "Negan mentioned it once when Daryl brought us our breakfast."
"He came up here?" Thea asked. She'd been under the impression that Daryl had been locked up and tortured for most of his time at the Sanctuary.
Frankie nodded. "Negan made him serve us a few times. Taunted him. He tried to get him to look at us, like he was trying to test his loyalty to you or something." She glanced at the other women who nodded in confirmation. "He kept his eyes on the floor, never talked."
Thea set her plate on the table, uncomfortable with the image she was producing in her head of what the other women were describing.
Frankie's hand landed on her should softly, but before she could speak, the sound of gunshots outside startled them. Thea shared a glance with the redhead before rising from her seat and moving slowly to the window to take a peek outside.
"What the hell?" Frankie asked from beside her.
Down below there were rows of cars parked, each with slabs of sheet metal attached to form a barricade. From where she was, Thea could see Rick and some of the others standing behind the cars. Was this her rescue? Was this the start of the war?
She undid the latch on the window and pushed it open a crack to try to listen.
"Well, shit," Negan's voice filtered through the air. She couldn't see him from where she stood, but she assumed he was on the landing by the door. "I'm sorry, I was in a meeting."
Frankie nudged her side. "Is that Rick?" she asked, her voice cautious.
Thea nodded slowly, not wanting to take her eyes off her people below.
Negan continued. "I see you got your little mudflaps with you. So, I'm not exactly feeling a reason for us to try throwin' lead at each other. I care about my people. I don't want to just march them into the line of fire because I want to play 'my dick is bigger than yours'. It is. We both know it. But, I'm also comfortable enough to accept the fact if it wasn't. I'm certainly not gonna let my people die over that shit…like you're about to. So, Rick, what the hell can I do for you?"
Rick's voice sounded confident when he replied, not at all bothered by Negan's posturing. "Dwight. Your name's Simon. You're Gavin. And you…"
"Regina." One of the Saviors answered.
"Rick, I'd feel remiss if—" Eugene attempted to cut in before he was interrupted.
"No, I know who you are." Rick sneered, not wanting to hear anything from their former companion. "Listen, you five, the Saviors inside…all of you have a chance to survive here. To survive this. Y'all can live if you surrender. Can't guarantee it any time but now. Right now."
There was a long pause, but Thea couldn't hear anything. It wasn't surprising; the Saviors were devoted to Negan and the workers were terrified of him.
"So, they surrender…" Negan called out. "…and you and your little piss patrol doesn't kill them. That sounds like a good deal! What about me, Rick?"
Thea scoffed; there was only one ending to this and that was with Negan dead. She wasn't sure coexisting was possible, not after everything he'd done.
Rick seemed to agree. "I told you. Twice. You know what's gonna happen."
"I do. I do know what's gonna happen. You don't. You have no idea the shit that's about to go down. Let me ask you something, Rick—Do you think you have the numbers for this fight? You don't. Simon." A pause, and then. "What do you have to say to Rick and the piss patrol, Gregory?"
Gregory? What was that asshole doing with the Saviors? Last she heard, he was terrified of Negan and happy to avoid him completely. But maybe…maybe he wasn't as much of a coward as she thought.
"The Hilltop stands with Negan and the Saviors." Gregory called across the courtyard. "Any resident of the Hilltop who takes up arms or who supports this ultimatum against the Sanctuary, or any of the Saviors, will no longer be welcome in the colony."
"And?" Negan goaded.
"Their families will be thrown out and will be left to fend for themselves."
Thea shook her head, feeling her blood boil. She hated Gregory with a passion, and she may even hate him more than she hated Negan. At least with Negan she knew what she was working with; a man like Gregory was harder to pin down.
"Go home now. Or you won't have a home to go back to." Gregory shouted, clearly trying to make his voice sound tough.
Negan sounded smug when he spoke again. "You heard the man. Go back to separating wheat and shit or whatever the hell it is you people do."
From where she stood, there was no movement from behind the cars.
"Doesn't look like anyone's goin', does it?" Maggie called back.
Gregory raised his voice again. "Hilltop stand with—"
"The Hilltop stands with Maggie!" Jesus interrupted.
Thea felt something bloom in her chest; Maggie was in control of the Hilltop and their numbers were growing. They were going to win this.
Frankie's breath tickled her ear as the woman shook her head. "I can't believe they're doing it. Someone is actually fighting back for once."
She seemed to be saying it more to herself than to Thea or any of the other wives, but Thea could hear the hope in her voice. Frankie didn't want to be here anymore than Thea did.
She was pulled out of her thoughts by the rumbling of an explosion in the distance.
"Sounds like shit is going down, Rick." Negan said slowly.
Rick continued to ignore him, speaking to the people near him instead. "You lieutenants…you're gonna have to make up your minds."
One of the Saviors spoke up, but Thea couldn't recognize who it was. "Maybe we could take a time out here—"
"No, this has to happen now. This is the only way." Rick denied. He paused, and then his voice turned mocking. "You're gonna make me count?"
Thea's mind jumped back to the quarry, to kneeling beside Carl with Negan telling Rick he had to chop off his son's hand. It was a startling memory.
"Okay. Okay. I'm counting. Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven!"
Gunshots rang out suddenly, bullets pelting the building. The window she stood at shattered and glass showered her and Frankie as she grabbed the redhead and dragged her to the floor. The wives were screaming, glass continued to break, and bullets were flying. There didn't appear to be any rhyme or reason to the direction of the shots. Thea's ears were ringing as she hunkered down with Frankie and waited for it to be over.
After a few minutes, the firing stopped and Thea heard a car horn honk before another explosion, which sounded closer than the last one. A series of explosions followed, each getting closer to the Sanctuary as gunfire started up again, and then the building shook with one last explosion and Thea knew that the Sanctuary had taken some damage.
As things began to quiet down, she could hear the wives crying around her.
Scrambling to her feet, she peeked out the window again and was disappointed to see that Rick and the others were gone, their cars completely out of sight. There was smoke filling the air, and she wondered what had caused the building to shake and how many of the workers on the ground floor had been hurt or killed in the crossfire.
Thea was pulled from her thoughts by one of the wives crying out in shock. She turned and found Lauren kneeling over one of the other wives, Valerie, her hands pressing against the other woman's abdomen. There was blood pooling out beneath Valerie as she lay completely still.
Thea rushed across the room, kneeling beside the two women. "Let me look, let me look." She coaxed gently, nudging Lauren's hands aside.
The wound was jagged, the bullet tearing through Valerie's intestines and leaving a mess that Thea wasn't sure was fixable in this world. When she glanced up at Valerie's face, she felt her heart drop. The woman's eyes were open as she stared up at the ceiling, a thin trail of blood dripping from the corner of her mouth. She was gone.
"Do something, please." Lauren begged as the other wives huddled around.
Thea pressed her fingers to Valerie's neck and confirmed her suspicions. "She's gone." She said softly, reaching up to close the woman's eyes.
The wives began to sob.
The building was still intact, give or take a few bullet holes and shattered windows. The fences that surrounded the Sanctuary had been taken out completely by the explosions the day prior and now there was a herd of walkers keeping them trapped within the building. It had to be at least ten rows deep, and Thea felt nauseous whenever she looked out the window down at them; she hated the feeling of being trapped with walkers blocking her only way out.
Negan had been missing for several hours after everything went down and for a minute, Thea thought there was going to be an uprising. The workers and the Saviors were at each other's throats, and Simon seemed to be eager to take over as leader. Thea had done her best to stay hidden with the wives, fearing that Negan's disappearance would mean she wasn't protected anymore.
When Negan finally returned, it was with a guest; Father Gabriel had somehow gotten left behind in the chaos and was now a prisoner just like her, although she was pretty positive he wasn't getting a burger and fries for dinner his first night.
Since the compound was surrounded by the dead, they couldn't give Valerie a proper burial. The Saviors took her body away, but none of the wives or Thea knew where they put her. Negan ordered a Savior to stand guard over the wives on the top floor, meaning they weren't allowed to leave the floor at all and were confined to the lounge or their rooms. Thea still didn't like being looped in with the other women as if she was one of Negan's wives, but she didn't fight it; the top floor with an armed guard was probably the safest spot for her to be.
Still, she found herself worrying about the workers. How many had been hurt or killed in the events from the following day? Most importantly, was Kyle okay? The last time she'd seen him had been when she'd repaired the injury to his leg. Negan had taken the doctor from the Hilltop, Carson, and relieved her of her medical duties; she hadn't been able to check on her brother-in-law.
Thea was sitting on her bed when she heard the roar of a truck from outside. She stood and peeled back the plastic covering the window where it had been blown out by gunfire and she could see it. Someone was driving a truck full-speed at through the crowd of walkers. She watched as the truck crushed the as it hurtled towards the building, and then she realized it wasn't stopping.
The truck slammed into the front of the building, sending quakes through the structure. There was a beat of silence and then screaming down on the lower level. Thea rushed for the door, meeting the wives as they exited the lounge. The guard that stood by the stairs held out his arm to prevent them from moving further and they all leaned over the railing to see what was happening.
Down below, walkers were filling the main floor. Workers were screaming and running, some were already being taken down by the dead while others fought for their lives. They were rushing for the stairs, trying desperately to get away but unable to get far as so many of them stacked up on top of each other.
"We have to help them!" Thea exclaimed, trying to move past the guard.
The man's arm didn't budge. "How are you planning on doing that, huh? You got a weapon we don't know about?"
Thea glared. "Give me a gun then."
He only scoffed and rolled his eyes in response. She growled in frustration and moved back to stand by the railing, watching helplessly as the chaos continued down below.
The workers who survived the madness of walkers on the ground level were moved to a safer, upper level. Negan had taken a group of Saviors out after dark to retaliate against Alexandria, and Thea had spent the entire night pacing the wives' lounge in worry as she waited for them to return. What would happen while they were out? Who would get hurt or killed? So many possible scenarios were flying through her head that she couldn't even attempt to sleep.
When she finally heard the trucks returning, it was nearly dawn. She waited in the doorway of the lounge for Negan to come upstairs, arms crossed over her chest to prevent herself from fidgeting anxiously.
She heard him before she saw him, his footfalls on the stairs heavy and slow. As he came into view, she noticed what looked like soot on his weary face and on his leather jacket. His eyes found her and his face fell, a heavy sigh leaving him as he stopped at the top of the stairs.
"What happened?" she asked, eyeing the soot again before meeting his tired gaze.
Negan stepped forward and stopped a few feet from her, although she could tell he would rather go into his room; he seemed exhausted, and not just physically. "Alexandria's gone."
Her stomach dropped and she flinched, taking an involuntary step back. "Gone? What does that mean?" she demanded. Her mind raced with the possibilities, and she feared for Cat and Hank.
"It means we burned it to high heaven, it was still burning when we left." Despite this apparent victory, he didn't seem happy about his words. "But don't worry, Doc, everyone made it out okay."
"How can you know that?"
"Because we went inside the walls and nobody was home. They ran; probably on their way to Hilltop as we speak."
Finally, she understood why he seemed upset. While she was glad to hear that her people had gotten away, she felt a new fear grow as she thought of them outside the walls in the middle of the night. Most Alexandrian's didn't have much experience outside the walls, and walkers seemed extra riled up in the dark. She worried for her sister and nephew, but hoped Daryl and the others would take care of them in her absence.
Taking her silence as his opportunity, Negan turned and moved towards his bedroom door. As his hands began to turn the knob, she took a deep breath.
"Negan," she called, waiting for him to face her. It probably wasn't the best idea to say what she said next, but she wanted him to know where she stood. "If anything happens to my sister and my nephew, you're gonna have to lock me up in whatever closet you shoved Daryl into because otherwise I'll kill you in your sleep."
She waited for him to react badly, but instead he gave her a small smile and nodded. "I wouldn't expect anything less, Doc." He said simply before stepping into his room and shutting the door behind him.
She waited until she heard the lock turn into place before she headed for her own room.
The next day, the Saviors began working to clear the bottom level of walkers and repair the damage caused by the attack.
She was sitting on the bed in her room when Negan came in, a sigh leaving him as if something was weighing heavily on him.
"Thea," he spoke, voice low and straining with emotion.
The fact that he called her by her name instead of 'Doc' snapped caught her attention and she eyeballed the somber look on his face. What was it?
He closed the door slowly. "I need to tell you something."
This was bad, it was something really bad. He must have taken out someone she cared about, but if it had been Daryl he would be gloating. Who did that leave that could cause him to have such a reaction? Cat? Henry? Oh god. She jumped to her feet; her eyes were wide with fear. "W-What?"
Negan looked down at his feet for a moment, before he met her eyes. "Carl's dead."
The breath left her lungs. Of all the options on the table, Carl hadn't even made the list. She had imagined Carl and all the other children outliving them all and being the next generation of survivors. Oh god. Her eyes were stinging as she tried to keep it together.
She felt anger rising in her chest as she stepped towards him with a glare. "You told me everyone made it out. You said everyone was safe." She accused, her throat tight.
Negan took a step forward, shaking his head. His own eyes were shining, though not nearly as much as hers; Carl's death was affecting him too. "This wasn't us. Rick said he got bit saving someone's life."
"Shit." Thea's voice broke, her face crumpling as tears began to flow. Covering her face with her hands, she started to weep. It wasn't too unbelievable that Carl would risk his life saving someone; he was a good kid, he had always done his best to help others. She thought back to the time he'd donated blood when she had been shot. Dying to save someone was very on brand for him.
But still, losing him was so unbelievable and she felt her heart breaking.
Negan's hands landed on her shaking shoulders and she felt him pull her into his chest. For a moment, she didn't think anything about it—she was distraught and comfort was nice—but then she realized it was Negan and she pulled away.
"Don't. Please." She sobbed, moving away from him.
Thankfully, he didn't attempt to touch her again. "I'm sorry." He said instead, sounding like he genuinely meant it. "I really am."
Things began to move fast after that. Eugene was moved to an outpost to make ammo for the Saviors, like the one he made for Rosita, and for some reason Frankie and Tanya went with him. Thea was left alone with Lauren and a couple of other wives she hadn't talked to much.
Thea was beginning to grow antsy. Not knowing what was happening to her people and not being able to get any information from Negan or the Saviors was frustrating. She hated being sidelined and in the dark, and most of all she hated being at the Sanctuary. She wanted to escape, but didn't know how; the longer she was here, the less she felt like she'd ever make it home.
As she watched through the window as a convoy of Saviors left for yet another attack on her group, she felt for the first time that they might lose.
The Saviors came back without Negan. The word around the Sanctuary was that Rick had chased him off and the Saviors had found Negan's car wrecked with no sign of the man anywhere. It was safe to assume that at the very least, Negan was now a prisoner at Hilltop.
With their leader gone, people grew antsy. Some of the Saviors were talking about abandoning ship, while others seemed happy that the man was gone. Simon appeared to be trying to keep things afloat, but the little Thea heard made it seem like he was secretly pleased to be in charge.
With a man like Simon in charge, she worried what could happen to her. Negan's obsession with her had kept her safe here, but now he wasn't around to make sure the other men behaved and that terrified her.
She was sitting in the lounge with the wives when it happened. A short and stout man entered the room, a grin slowly spreading across his bloated face as he eyed the women.
Lauren stood from the chaise and glared at him. "You're not supposed to be up here." She stated in a firm voice.
The man chuckled darkly. "Negan's gone. Rules don't apply anymore, sweetness." He stepped closer to the group and his eyes fell to Thea. "I came for a house call."
Thea stood and made to put herself between the wives and the creep, but Lauren held her back with an outstretched arm.
"You need to leave." She warned him, standing protectively in front of Thea.
The man chuckled again and then moved forward quickly, yanking Lauren by the front of her dress and shoving her towards the couch. The other wives, who had been frozen in fear, cried out in shock as she landed across their laps. He moved towards Thea next, following her steps as she moved away from him.
"Come on, I just want to have some fun." He sneered.
Thea's legs hit the coffee table as she backed away, and she stumbled. He took that as the opportunity to grab her by the arm and yank her forward. He began to drag her out of the room as Lauren and the others scrambled after them.
The man dragged her into Negan's bedroom, ignoring the screams of the wives who were trying their best to get him off her. Lauren was clawing at his hand on Thea's arm and he swung his free hand around to shove her hard against the wall. Thea had enough time to see her head connect with the wall with a harsh sound before she was being yanked into the bedroom and thrown to the floor, a sharp pain in her forearm making her hiss as she attempted to brace her fall.
The door slammed shut behind them and she heard him flip the lock before he pulled one of the chairs over to block anyone from breaking it down.
And then they were alone.
Thea scrambled to her feet, but she wasn't fast enough. The man advanced towards her and grabbed her by the hair, yanking her head back to force her eye to meet his. His icy blue gaze sent shivers down her spine as she flashed back to the prison all those years ago.
"I've always wanted to do it on the boss's bed." He sneered, his putrid breath in her face.
Her blood ran cold as his words hit her like a freight train.
"And now that the bastard's dead, I finally get a chance at his little pet."
She gathered saliva in her mouth and spit in his face, hitting him just below the eye.
"You bitch!" He growled, yanking her hair harder and bringing his other hand up to clap her across the face hard before throwing her down onto Negan's bed.
Thea's cheek was stinging, but she had no time to worry about it as his hand reached for the button on her pants and flicked it open effortlessly. She felt her adrenaline spike as panic coursed through her and she got her leg between their bodies to kick him away from her so she could scramble across the bed to put some distance between herself and the Savior.
He laughed darkly. "That's okay. I like it when they fight."
The implications of that sentence made her eyes prickle with tears, her heart pounding so hard in her chest it felt like it was going to explode. He'd done this to others; she wasn't sure if he did it behind Negan's back or if just before he'd joined the Saviors, but it didn't matter.
He was a monster.
A monster who was between her and the door and currently unbuckling his belt.
He pulled the leather through the belt loops and wrapped it around his hand, leaving the end with the buckle swinging freely. There was a moment of stillness as she stared at the belt buckle, where the only sound was the wives beating on the door and desperately calling her name, and then he was lunging onto the bed, stomping across it and dropping down onto the floor on the same side as her, his boots thumping loudly.
Thea dodged to the left as he swung the belt and she felt the buckle bite into the flesh of her upper arm painfully. She yelped, curling in on herself to get away as she heard another whoosh of air and felt the buckle hitting her in the back.
She stumbled into the small table against the wall and grabbed the gawdy statue that was one of many ridiculous decorations Negan kept in his room. She turned to swing it at him and cried out as the buckle connected with the apple of her left cheek. She could feel the prong break her skin as fire bloomed across her face. That was gonna be a nasty welt; she could feel the tightness as it began to swell.
She only allowed it to phase her for a moment before she swung the statue at him, the base clipping his chin as he leapt backwards.
It only angered him and he roared, charging forward to grab her roughly by the shoulders. He shoved her against the wall, her back connecting with the mirror, a crunch sounding as the glass spiderwebbed. He pulled her forward and then slammed her against the mirror again, tiny shards digging into her skin through the thin material of her tank top as larger pieces fell, skittering across the ground.
He braced his arm across her throat, pinning her to the mirror.
"I can see why Negan liked you so much; you're feisty." He chuckled. "But now it's my turn to have some fun."
Thea brough her knee up hard into his groin, causing him to keel over. She pushed past him to head for the door, but he wrapped an arm around her leg and yanked her down to the floor, rolling her onto her back as he loomed over her.
She could see his chin beginning to purple and she gripped the statue tighter, attempting to swing at him again. He outweighed her significantly and he used that against her, grabbing her wrist and squeezing painfully until the statue fell from her hand.
He straddled her hips and took a handful of her hair again, tipping her head back. She whimpered in fear as she felt how excited this all made him pressed against her stomach. She stretched her arms out searching for something within reach to defend herself with as his hand traveled down her neck towards her chest. She felt her fingertips brush a shard of glass from the mirror.
"Normally I don't do sloppy seconds, but Negan has so many wives I doubt he spent much time with you."
She managed to drag the glass close enough to take it in her hand, gripping it so tightly she felt it cutting into the skin of her palm. With a growl, she pooled all her strength and thrusted the glass into the flesh under his jaw.
The man yowled in pain, tumbling off her as he attempted to grasp the glass embedded in his neck. Thea rolled in the other direction and snatched the statue off the floor. Now that she was free, she felt the anger flood her. She lunged at him where he was still writhing in pain and straddled him the way he'd done her, raising the statue high over her head.
His eyes widened. "Wait, no, please!" he pleaded.
"Fuck you."
She brought the statue down on his face with all of her strength, watching as his nose cracked and blood spurted. She raised the statue again and again, yelling with each blow to his head. She was so unbelievably pissed that she had found herself in this situation again. All because men thought they could take and do whatever they wanted. She was tired of being afraid when a man she didn't know so much as looked at her funny. Mostly she was just pissed.
She kept screaming and hitting him, ignoring the wet feeling of blood splattering over her arms and face. She was blind to everything except her rage. She kept hitting and hitting until she felt the base of the statue hit the solid of the floor, the man's head now a pile of unrecognizable meat before her.
She lifted the statue over her head again but her arms felt like jelly and it tumbled out of her hands, thudding loudly against the floor next to the now dead savior she was still kneeling over. She was breathing heavily, her body shaking from the exertion as she stared down at the mess she had made of the man's head.
Her stomach turned the longer she stared, her mind flashing back to that night in the clearing. She could feel the sticky blood coating her arms and face and it reminded her of how she held Abraham's hand as he died, how his blood had splattered over her with each hit until his hand stopped squeezing hers and he was gone.
Thea shuddered, falling to the side to get away from the body. She crawled on her hands and knees to the wall, and sat against it, drawing her legs in against her chest. Her eyes went back to the body and it was like she couldn't look away as she sat shivering.
"Thea?"
She wasn't sure how long she had been sitting there before she heard her name, it felt like it could have been hours but the blood on her skin still felt wet so it must have only been a few minutes. She flinched, eyes lifting from the savior on the floor to the person standing over her.
"Thea, are you okay?" Lauren asked softly, crouching down before her with her hand outstretched cautiously.
She could see a few of the other wives standing in the room behind her, their faces in various degrees of terror and disgust.
"H-He was go-going to—"
Lauren reached out and gently placed a hand on her knee, interrupted Thea's stuttering. "I know. It's okay. Are you alright?"
She nodded her head slowly, eyes drifting back to the dead man.
"Let's get you cleaned up." Lauren spoke gently, motioning for one of the other wives to come forward. Together they gently eased Thea up on her feet, supporting her shaking frame as they moved towards the door and away from the badly beaten body on the floor.
Later that night, after the wives had helped her shower and cleaned up her wounds, Thea sat with her knees drawn up to her chest on her bed. The wives had given her some privacy, but she'd heard them whispering in the lounge for a while before they'd turned in for bed.
Lauren had gotten the help of some workers to clean up the Savior's body, and it was like nothing had happened; the only evidence was the bruises and cuts littering her skin. But it could have been worse, she tried to remind herself of how much worse it could have been.
Someone knocked lightly on the door, startling her from her thoughts. She called out quietly for them to come in, assuming it was probably Lauren, and was surprised to see it was Negan. He was finally back.
The man's hazel eyes danced over her face, stopping on her left eye where the worst of it was. The prong from the belt buckle had indeed broken skin, leaving a swollen welt with a cut in the center of it, but the worst was her eye itself. The side of the buckle had wacked her lower eyelid, bursting a blood vessel in her eye. Half of the white of her eye was now blood red and throbbing. She'd iced it after her shower, but it hadn't done much.
"Welcome back." She said flatly, eyeing the long cut above his left eyebrow.
He glanced down at the floor before moving to sit on Frankie's bed, keeping his distance. There was something in his eyes as he stared her down, she couldn't quite make it out.
"Thea," he said softly, leaning forward to put his elbows on his knees. "I'm so sorry this happened to you." He sounded genuine, the devastated look on his face growing as he spoke.
She lowered her legs, moving to sit with her feet on the floor to face him. "You know, I don't think you have as much control over these men as you think you do. They didn't even wait for you to be gone a whole day before they started breaking your rules."
He nodded slowly. "I'm starting to think the same thing. I have a feeling someone is pulling strings that aren't theirs to pull."
"Simon." She told him plainly.
Negan nodded again. "Yeah."
He must have been seeing the same signs she had, and she wondered how long he'd been having those suspicions.
Although she was sure he wouldn't tell her, she found herself asking anyways. "What are you going to do?"
There was a long pause and then he sighed, straightening up. "I've got some ideas, but don't you worry about that, Doc." He stood and looked down at her, his eyes softening again. "I truly am sorry this happened, believe me."
She didn't know how to respond, so she just nodded slowly and looked down at her feet.
Negan moved towards the door as he began speaking again. "For now, I thought you might want the company of a familiar face."
Thea frowned in confusion, watching him push the door open wider as she wondered who he could be referring to. Maybe he had brought Frankie back from the outpost so she wouldn't be alone? Instead, she was surprised to find that Kyle stood in the hallway balanced on a pair of wooden crutches.
Kyle's eyes widened when he saw her bruised face, and he moved forward on the crutches to enter the room as Negan stepped aside to make space for him.
"Goodnight, Doc." Negan nodded before making his exit.
Kyle hobbled forward as Thea stood and met him halfway. "Negan told me you were attacked, I was so worried." He said, eyeing her injuries before wrapping one of his arms around her shoulders, the other holding onto the crutches.
Thea wrapped her arms around him and hugged him back tightly, feeling her eyes water. She couldn't be more grateful that Negan had done this for her; she needed family right now.
A/N: It's not all fun and games at the Sanctuary, but it's great to see Thea kick some ass for once. I was excited to get to this point in the story to build more on the Wives and the world the Saviors live in, but I'm also excited to get Thea back home!