Ivy was slumped across the backseat of the car with her wrists bound together to her front with plastic zip ties. They dug deeper into her skin as she struggled miserably against them. "Don't. There's no point in fighting it." Rick warned her, keeping his gaze cool as he watched her through the mirror. "You're only hurting yourself."
Premature loss coloured his skin grey and Ivy hated him for it. She hated everyone left living in the world, hated herself for ending up powerless once again. All that she had left for herself was anger and hatred and they were the only two things keeping her alive.
Plastic cut into her left wrist harder as she stubbornly pulled against the restraint and she started to bleed from the force of it. Everything hurt. A simple cut didn't compare to the bullet that had grazed to side of her head and it had nothing on the impact and force of the river she had nearly drowned in. Oceanside had mended her together the best that they could have but Ivy was doomed to break regardless. Her soul fractured religiously and it was easier to look down and see the visible hurt instead of the invisible scars she was collecting.
Blood stained her jeans. Ivy pulled a little harder, ignoring Rick when he snapped at her from the front seat. The Sanctuary was burning itself into the morning sky and it made her feel small as they slowly crawled their way up to the gate. Rick made her final car ride slow like that was some kind of mercy, showing her everything that was going to be beyond her touch in a matter of hours.
Light flooded the world. It threatened to make her go blind from the brightness of it.
The open car windows mocked her with the illusion of freedom. She wanted more, she wanted so much more it hurt because Ivy was only fated to have nothing in the end.
A truck from the Hilltop was parked inside the fence and Ivy saw people unloading crates with a series of paranoid checks. The fence itself practically moved from the forces of bodies chained to it. Walkers twisted and snarled at them from their posts and they only grew more frantic when Rick held down on the car horn. It screamed the way Ivy wanted to scream; loud, angry. Unyielding.
People dropped bins of produce and looked at them. Rick parked the car at the mouth of the gate, his finger catching a button on the door panel. The Saviours weren't moving. "He won't forgive you," she bit out, savage. "Daryl will hate you. And I won't forget this."
"Daryl's not one of us anymore. This is how it is now."
Ivy futilely aimed a kick at the back of Rick's seat and tried to push herself more upright. He held down on the horn a second time before he opened the door and got out with his hands held upright. "I want to see Negan!"
She had no more power. Everything she had survived had turned into this sharp lash of betrayal.
Doors split open and the devil sauntered out. He called something but Ivy couldn't hear it properly over the sound of her heartbeat racing. "—tomorrow for our little check in."
Someone pulled back the gate. He came closer. And she was back in the clearing, kneeling at the very bottom of a grave, waiting and watching for death to swing.
"I came to make a deal. Right here. Right now." Rick said sharply.
"Oh?"
"You want Ivy Dixon? I'll give her to you."
Interest lit Negan's face up and dread burned itself into Ivy's bones.
Rick opened the back door and Ivy got one good kick before he grabbed her ankle when she tried a second time, yanking ruthlessly to force her out of the car. "Get off of me! No!" Ivy struggled wildly. She had almost made it. She should have seen the end and not the devil grinning at her as he rocked back on his heels. "I trusted you! Don't you dare do this to me."
Rick pulled her upright. One hand held the back of her neck in a sad mockery of Daryl's grounding touch and she tried to twist free. "We need a grace period," he said with iciness. "What we found out there? It isn't even enough for Alexandria to live off of before you go and take half. I'll give you Dixon if we can just have some more time to find the rest."
Negan gave Ivy a calculating look. The bruise was darkening across her temple like proof of Rick's callous ambitions, matching the bullet graze and cuts and scrapes from being dragged along in the water. "Gotta say that I'm not overly impressed with a staged grave. I don't like liars. I really don't like liars. We invested a lot of time and manpower into hunting this goddamned Wraith down just to find out that she's a dead girl still living."
"I didn't have to bring her to you. But I did. I'm complying," Rick sneered lightly, fingers tightening around Ivy's wrist as she tried to pull away. "This is the deal I'm offering."
"Oh, we would have found her in the end."
"But you didn't. She survived the water. She got herself home. You think you would've just found her? No."
"And how exactly did she get back so quickly—"
Ivy stretched the plastic binding taunt and felt the blood run down her wrist from the force of it. "Please, Rick. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what I did, for everything that I said—"
"Shut up," Rick snapped. "This is how it has to be."
She tried to fight him. His hand was so tight on her arm but she swung around, barely, teeth snapping in frustration. "I'll kill you. My dad will kill you. I don't care how safe you think you are, I am going to find you—"
"Goddamn, you've got some fire. Look. Accept it. Hell, even embrace it. You did something and it didn't work out. But you gave a real good effort, kid." Negan cut her off. Ivy's heart hardened with rage as she tried to catch at Rick's collar with her restrained hands. She had made those walls for Alexandria with her own soul. She was just going to break for them now. "You are not what I expected."
Family wasn't just blood, Ivy realized. Family was bleeding out for someone else. Family was the intimate betrayal that managed to slice a person from wrist to heartstrings. If her own heart was as cold as she wished it to be, maybe it would have been survivable.
Ivy wanted to go home one last time. She wanted Rick to drive her back to Alexandria and she wanted her bedroom and apartment, plastic stars sticking to the ceiling because Daryl always brought her back strange bits of comforts. She wanted to find Abraham smoking cigars, she wanted to find Glenn bickering with Daryl in the garage. She wanted to find Oscar. She wanted to find Hershel. She wanted to find Lori. Ivy was nostalgic for all the people who had died and she couldn't ever see again.
"That is shit luck being sold out twice. At least you killed the gutless prick yourself the first time," Negan whistled sharp and the entire audience behind the fence rose up like an orchestra of sharks waiting. "This one just didn't go your way. Man, I did not think you could be this cold. You're a bit of a Judas, aren't you, Rick?"
Ivy had blood all over her jeans. Oceanside had given her replacements and they were already ruined from fighting. The evidence stuck to her skin and it was never going to come off. "You can have Ivy if you leave Alexandria alone."
"One little girl? That's all you want to offer me?"
"I know you, Rick!" Ivy snapped. "Don't forget that I know you. Lori would hate you for this. Your wife would never forgive you for what you're doing!"
Rick shoved her on reflex and she stumbled from the force of it. Negan watched her fall with a vague mixture of amusement and apathy in his gaze. "Don't say her name."
"You know what? I think we'll take the deal. You drove all the way out here to hand deliver this coyote and I'm going to accept it," Negan drawled. His boot nudged her hand and Ivy scrambled away, getting herself onto her knees before she took a kick to the stomach, knocking her backwards gracelessly. "I put in a fuck ton of work figuring your game out, kid. Let's see what exactly my investment got me."
She wrenched awkwardly to try and get back up. Negan grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her upright roughly. "You killed a couple really good friends of mine, you know? That shit was not cool."
Ivy had killed so many people. Her pathetic score was a weight across her shoulder's. One man's death once had her scrubbing her own hands raw to try and clean herself off of the crime. But she knew better now, she knew that the darkness was so thoroughly entrenched inside her heart that she could never be properly cleansed of it. Killing was simply a routine, a habit, and a profession.
"They were easy targets," she made herself say. Negan was right in front of her so she took advantage of the position, kicking hard so she caught the side of his knee. His eyes went wide as he stumbled back slightly before he moved again, backhanding her so hard it was just like hitting the water again with the pure force of gravity. "Easy— kills."
She spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground. The hit had made her bite the inside of her cheek hard enough to bleed. Ivy saw Rick move and she snarled at him through blood and gritted teeth. "You promised me. You promised!"
"The deal is done. You've got what you wanted," Rick scorned. He looked away from her face to meet Negan's. "My people are safe."
Ivy was never going to see her home again.
People were crowding the scene. Every Saviour was faceless to her, flame bright in their curiosity. How many had she watched through the scope of her gun, plotting the exact timing and form to execute? Ivy's knees were still bruised from kneeling on rooftops. Her wrist ached from where a rock had caught it in the wild. Natania had tried so hard to mend the damage but it was all stamped straight into her skin. Negan grabbed her by the neck and she tried to fight him, tried to claw his eyes with her fingers. "No! Screw you! Get the hell—" Ivy seethed, aiming a kick at his ankle, "off of me!"
Pain burst through her bones. Her legs fell out from beneath her and she was part of both the ground and the sky. Simon twirled a little device and she realized that he had tased her. "Well that fixes that."
Ivy had been part of the roads and the woods. Her own history was scattered across the land in a measure of spent bullets and abandoned bodies. And now she was forced away from that comfortable landscape to where she had no power left to fight with.
Her neck and scalp screamed in pain as Negan started dragging her by her hair towards the massive doors of the Sanctuary. The ground tore at her as she struggled to comply and also to resist; a strange combination that came with pain burning right into the fibres of her soul. "Please don't leave," she whispered out with brittle weakness as she saw Rick turn away. "Please."
The Sanctuary revealed itself to her in a matter of pieces. Ivy saw the ground floor first in bursts of faces before the stairwell. Negan forced her to keep up with him, barely giving her the time to sort her feet out properly much less count the floors they went up.
She didn't see Daryl anywhere. A small burst of relief struck her hard. Despite everything, despite how much he hated her, Ivy knew that if she had called for him, he would have tried to get to her. It was easier vanishing into the depths of the Sanctuary without him knowing.
The top floor was marked with wide hallways and rooms that had been decked out with pieces clearly brought in from outside the factory. Negan threw her into a room filled with maps and papers and she recognized some of the assortment from the pieces she had worked off of. A tourist brochure was stretched open on a wall featuring a golf course and a bridge, two sites of her own past interest. She had used a local map for a small community to figure out a clocktower that aligned with the sweeps of bikers passing through.
Ivy caught herself on the edge of the table. Her legs were rubbery feeling and it was a relief to physically hold herself upright and steady so she wouldn't fall down. Ivy pulled her shoulders back slightly and tried to remember Merle and Abraham, tried to remember their relentless fight. Pain merely meant that she was still alive to feel it. She could recover from hurting. Everyone was living until they died.
Negan and Simon blocked the door. "Go get the kid's dad. I think we need to make the lesson stick. Clearly Big Red wasn't enough," Negan ordered someone standing in the hallway.
Numberless dice swung from the mirror in her mind. She blinked and saw swarms of butterflies. "You're nothing," Ivy needled at him. Hysteria and pain made her own voice sound thin. "You just got lucky. And that's a fucking shame."
"It looks like a serial killer. It talks like a serial killer. By God, it might actually be a serial killer," Negan jested darkly. "You have fun running around like some goddamn reaper in the night?"
"Like we're any different," Ivy scorned him. They were twins of the same flame. Ivy simply had more to lose.
"You've lost the fucking game. You're not winning here so take a damn seat before you fall over," Negan barked. When she refused he grabbed his baseball bat from Simon and slammed it down hard across the table. She went bright with the memory of old fear and flinched back, sliding backwards slightly for the nearest chair.
The table was between her and the monsters like a buffer of invisibility. Ivy crossed one leg up to rest on her knee and gently prodded at the lining between her boot and sock. "What do you want with me?" She demanded, jerking her chin up as she glared at Negan.
"She came back pretty quick," Simon frowned. "We were combing the river all the way down and didn't see any tracks coming out of it. Current should've dragged her straight down to the coast. Two days?"
"Well, apparently Dixon can teleport. She's here now. That's what matters," Negan grouched as he tossed his bat into the corner of the room. Ivy's one finger caught the edge of the slender switchblade she had stashed away from emergencies. She focused on working it free as the men spoke roughly with each other. "I was thinking we had some damned army veteran up in the hills."
"She's got a twisted mind. That wire trap? Something dark designed that."
The Governor had given her that darkness. She existed in two places, Ivy realized faintly. Here, and on the farm where she never knew any better. She used to be afraid of fighting. That wild unpredictable nature, the chance of getting hurt.
Now she was simply afraid of losing the fight.
Ivy gently brought the blade out. "What the hell do you want with me?" She repeated herself to disguise to the slight sound that the metal made as it locked into place. Her head tilted slightly as her bound hands twisted around to try and catch the knife with the plastic binding. Rick had secured her tight and it didn't give her much room for failure but she had steadily worked the material as taunt as she could to try and weaken it.
"The hell did you do to that wine?" Negan suddenly asked. "That shitty screw top red?"
She gave him a smug grin to show her teeth. Her dull trick must have caught. "Crushed sleeping pills into it. Figured one of your stupid as shit buddies would pick it up like a prize."
The wine had been a pity offering in lieu of the real prize. It was a relief knowing that it had worked.
"Jesus, I'd love to peel your brain open and see what exactly is going on in there."
The zip tie broke.
Ivy forced her hands to stay locked together on her lap as she gazed up at the pair. "You should've dug my grave up and checked for a body when you had the chance. I figured out your game on the drive back from the clearing. Your people were easy to hunt. It was easy getting even."
Negan's mouth twitched with dislike and she clocked the nerve, pushing a little deeper. "You fucked up, Negan. People are a resource. How many are you down exactly?"
It was strange, Ivy thought, knowing only how to exist when she was about to die. And it was okay. Everything hurt and all she wanted was the relief that came with finally giving in. Her soul wanted to fight and her mind wanted to burn itself out so she no longer had to endure survival.
And it was coming.
"Who exactly was coaching you along?"
Beth, Enid. Rosita's bullets. Maggie's love. Nobody could go it alone anymore. "Nobody. It wasn't exactly difficult. I didn't need to hide behind an army of psychos."
"I'll be honest. I was really hoping to have you up on that fence. You know, with all the other dead pricks? Figured I'd put you to work and let your skin rot beneath the sun. But now? You're a fucking challenge. And I do love a good challenge."
This was the tragedy of living for other people. This was the tragedy of dying for someone else. Ivy had gone through everything for nothing but she had enough to manage a few more minutes. Her body was nothing.
The sun was a star itself burning into the blue sky.
"You're one of mine, now. No matter what you do? You'll always be mine. Say goodbye to Alexandria. Your dad? He's a fucking memory. You killed my people so you're going to replace them."
"Go fuck yourself," Ivy snarled as a ghost of Abraham. "I'm not giving you anything."
Negan slammed his hands down on the table and she refused to allow herself to flinch. "You'll do exactly what I'm telling you to do because you're out of options. Your own people don't want you. This life is all you've got, so buck up and take it!"
Ivy looked at Simon. "You were more intimidating on that bridge. Here? You're nothing."
"Yeah, that bridge. You know who arranged that whole little plan?" Simon ventured with a little grin. "Your dad. Had him up here mapping your whole routine out. He's the one who figured what direction you were plotting, how far you were getting."
Ivy refused to allow herself to feel anything but numbing anger. Daryl could hate her, but he had invented her from nothing. He turned a lost girl into a Dixon and gave her a place to run towards. Anger made it easier to separate her Daryl from whatever was being said between Negan and Simon. "What? You're so bad at reading tracks you couldn't do it yourself?"
Simon moved towards her but the door flew open. "He's not here. Dixon's not on the ground level— we found Dwight in the stairwell," someone barked. "Bad hit."
Now, Ivy thought. History looped itself around her throat like a noose and she let herself swing with it. There were no real consequences anymore.
The only person to suffer was herself.
Ivy shoved the chair out and stood up with a jerky movement. Her legs still felt weak from being tased. "You've got nothing left, you stupid—"
Negan moved towards her and she swung the chair at his face as hard as she could. He fell backwards hard and Ivy dropped the weapon, nearly dropping her knife, moving to try and catch her next target. The man was closest and she dodged his hand just to slash out with the blade, catching his soft stomach with it. She was doomed but also triumphant, content to damage as much as she could in a matter of minutes.
Ivy had never left the room with the Governor.
But she had learned.
She didn't try for the door. The man went down to his knees and she jammed the blade into his throat hard before someone grabbed her. "Let go of me!" She thrashed, one foot catching Simon's thigh. The blood from her wrist looked no different from the stranger's blood. Ivy snapped out her elbow to try and drive it into his face but he slammed her straight down onto the table. "Get off!"
A different light burned overhead. Ivy remembered yellow fireworks shattering into the sky, the taste of gunpowder on the night.
Negan pressed a hand to her throat and she froze instantly. "Where exactly is your father?"
"How should I know?" Ivy whispered. She was going to be a ghost. No butterflies haunted the room except for the one buried deep into her chest, burning along with every heartbeat. "He's just gone."
"Signal Gamma outpost. I want to talk to someone—"
Ivy gave a broken laugh. "We took it all back. You've got nothing to play with. There's nothing left here that matters."
She had memorized the rules to Negan's game. He broke Rick by breaking their group. Abraham was dead. Glenn and Daryl were prizes to be lorded over their heads. Ivy could never undo Abraham's death but she could at least take back two pieces, could reset the board just enough that Negan no longer had the advantage.
Negan's grip on her throat tightened. "Start moving people out. Fallback. They've got this win so let them have it," he commanded Simon with venom. "Because it won't last forever."
"What's the plan?"
"We're all Negan," he snarled. "You're moving up."
Simon's shoulders straightened out. Authority was comfortable across his back. Ivy looked into the shadows of the ceiling and tried to find some old version of herself, the person who she could never be again. "The kid?"
"People are a resource. And I'm betting you'll figure something out."
"Kill me," Ivy rasped. "Kill me, you fucking coward."
But Negan looked down on her with the devil's gaze. "You're going to really be something someday. And I'm almost sorry about that." he told her. His hand slid away from her throat and caught her hair, lifting her head just high enough to slam it down against the table.
Ivy drowned straight into oblivion and knew nothing more.