Too Good to be Bad | Negan |

46 - I'm here to thank you

'We should leave too.'

'I'm sorry, were you not in the same room as me just now?' Alex hisses at me.

'I was. Do you really want to keep living here under the thumb of these... psychopaths?'

'Stop it, Lara', Jody says urgently. She's barely said a thing all throughout dinner. The interrogation has shaken her terribly.

'I'm serious', I say, keeping my voice hushed. 'He would have killed you, Alex. Over nothing!'

'We can't leave', Alex retorts, glancing over at Priya, holding Karishma. She's looking down at her child with a troubled expression, but raises her head when she feels Alex's eyes on her.

'I agree with Lara', she says. She was shocked when we told her what happened. I'm just glad they left her out of it. 'Ever since we got here, Kieran has been locked up and had his nose broken, Nikolai has lost a finger, Lara almost got killed in the staircase, and I'm not even talking about her crazy deal with Negan, and you just nearly had your throat slit. We're not safe here. We can handle ourselves out there.'

'Seriously, stop talking about this', Jody says. 'I am not risking my daughter's life out there. We are safe here. Everyone just needs to stick to the rules.'

'We stuck to the rules', I spit back at her. 'Others broke the rules, for good reason, and we almost got killed for it.'

Jody grabs her plate angrily and motions for Samantha to get up from her chair.

'You keep talking about leaving, you're only making things worse. I'll have to report you if you mention this again. I won't hear another word about it.'

And with that, she leaves. I frown as I watch her go. If it was up to me, we'd leave right now. The only problem is that Kieran isn't here.

'So what, we're not allowed to leave?' I say agitatedly, turning back to the table. 'We're not prisoners here, are we?'

'Technically, anyone's allowed to leave', Derek says. 'If you get permission. But if you do, you won't be allowed to take anything but the clothes on your back. Everything here belongs to the Sanctuary.'

'We brought stuff here, it doesn't belong to them.'

'Doubt they'll let you take it.'

'It doesn't matter', Alex says. 'Even if we get permission to leave, you and Kieran won't. You're supposed to stay here for at least a year right?'

'We've worked hard enough to compensate for trying to steal from him.'

'You really think he'll see it that way?' Alex asks, raising his eyebrow.

'So we don't ask permission, we just go', Katarina says. 'We don't take anything. Will they really bother going after us?'

'They will', Derek says defeatedly. 'Jody's right, we shouldn't be talking about this. It's enough to get us into trouble.'

'Fine', I snap. 'We won't talk about it. Here.'

Derek smiles a little at my unwillingness to give in, but his smile quickly disappears again when Max mentions our friends on the run.

'Do you think they'll make it?'

'I hope so', Alex sighs. 'If they found out about it just before they started to question us, they must have had some time to put some distance between them and this place. Assuming they left last night. You really didn't know?' he asks me.

'No. Sherry asked me to speak to Negan. I didn't think that would go anywhere and it didn't. So I went to tell them and they must have left after that.'