rag doll | TWD

[62] hostiles and calamities

"If you just fess up...he'll let you out. That's what happened with me."

"Maybe I don't want out. Maybe I just wanna be left in here."

I heard her move to sit in front of the door. It was the same that I had done when talking with Daryl. 

"Now that is bullshit. You remember your first nights here, I'm sure." 

I fell silent as she talked. 

"Negan doesn't want to hurt you. He never did. He wanted to give you what I have here. You could've been just like me." She told me. "After that last show, right before the world went to shit, I tried to call you. I did. I figured after the tenth time, you'd already been killed, or gone on some binder and overdosed in some motel room."

My brows twisted and my stomach dropped as I thought back to that time. It felt like so long ago when I'd woken up, confused, nearly dead in a motel room. 

"Didn't hear from Maggie either. And Marcy...she left before bad got worse. I'd like to think she made it home. It'd been weeks since I'd heard from my family. Figured they'd been dead since the beginning... but my dad and sister, they found me. We went on the road after that. Just the three of us, setting up campsites every now and then. The woods reminded me of the ones from Maggie's farm that one summer. When the four of us went out at o-dark-thirty to smoke weed and write music. Hell, who knows, we might've been close enough to find the farm." 

She stifled a laugh, but I remained quiet behind the door. 

"People came through, JJ. Bad people. We'd just set up camp for the night when this group of men came through, said they were out savaging." 

Katie paused, gathering the words to tell me what had happened. 

"The things they did to me and Jane." She sniffled. "And they- they made our dad watch."

The story. 

Randall. 

It's what he told Daryl in the barn. 

My eyes widened as I realized, but I kept listening. 

"Jane didn't make it. Dad didn't either. But lucky me- I did. They took me with them. Only because one of the younger ones in the group recognized me, said we went to school together. He even went to a few of our shows."

My skin crawled. 

"Think his name was...Randall."

It was. 

"Well, anyway, this group-"

"Why are you telling me this?" I snapped, interrupting her story. 

She sighed, "because I'm trying to get you to realize that we're here to help you. Not hurt you. All of the-"

"Maggie's dead." I stopped her again. This time, she went quiet. "I wasn't overdosed in some motel room; I went to the Greene's. And my brother was there, and his wife, and my nephew and this group of-" I collected my words as my lip began to quiver. "Maggie met Glenn. They got married. She was gonna have a damn baby!" 

"But Negan-" I choked. "He killed Glenn. She was already sick, but that- that's what killed her. The night he died, she did too." 

"JJ, I had no-"

My heart rate increased, so did my anger levels. 

"He was gonna kill my brother, my nephew- he tortured the man I'm in love with. And you have the fucking nerve to come down here after you told him only God-knows-what about me?" My voice raised with each sentence. "I am going to kill him, Katie. And if you get in my way, I won't hesitate to kill you too."