Content warning: Discussion of sexual assault and suicide.
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"I told you, Rick. I told you!" Rosita spat, getting in his face where they stood on the porch of the mansion. Eduardo had just been found unconscious in the bathroom after being choked out by Aven and was being taken to the medical trailer by another guard. "She's with him all the way. We had her. She was our chance!"
"Not our only chance," Rick muttered dismissively, stepping back to get Rosita out of his face. "We still have Dwight."
"He could be giving them all our secrets now for all we know," Tara spoke up. "Rosita's right. That bitch tricked us."
"It's my fault," Maggie interjected with a sigh, steering the women away from Rick, who was still grieving and angry. "I took the sob story at face value. I should have kept her locked up."
"Yeah, you should have. She could have killed your guard," Rosita accused.
"But she didn't. That was on purpose."
"How do you know? And anyway, so what? That makes it okay?!"
"It happened, it's done," Maggie said sternly. "She's not our objective, Negan is."
"I'll finish them both off for good when I get my hands on them. She deserves to die, she laughed the night he killed Abraham and Glenn. Or have you forgotten?" At that, Maggie squared up to Rosita, getting back in her face and glaring down at her. She didn't need to speak to Rosita's petty accusation; the woman knew she'd overstepped and the look on her face said so.
"Negan is our target," Maggie said darkly but steadily. "If Aven dies, fine. But if she lives, we'll give her one last chance with the rest of them. I'm not convinced she was in her right mind when she left anyway."
"Of course she wasn't!" Rosita retorted, raising her voice as she stepped back. "She's with him. She's probably just as crazy!"
"She's weak. He's manipulating her."
"No, he's manipulating you."
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"I have a room on our floor for you," Negan told Laura as he pulled the car around the back of the Sanctuary, after imploring the lookouts to keep quiet about his return. "Lay low. We'll talk more tomorrow but for tonight I think we've all fucking been through enough."
"We should all go see Dr. Carson," Aven said, poking at the bruises and cuts on her face. Negan was scratched up from the car crash and subsequent battle with Rick, and Laura's shoulder had been grazed by one of Dwight's bullets and she was barely able to keep her eyes open having not eaten for days.
"Carson's dead," Negan said flatly, earning a shocked and disappointed look from Aven. He scowled back. "Don't give me that look, I didn't fucking kill him."
"Oh...sorry," she replied, her tone mostly unapologetic. "Can you blame me? You killed the first one."
"Because I knew I had a fucking backup. I'm not a God damn idiot. Carson escaped with the creepy priest and fucking got himself killed out there." Negan had ordered the Saviors to bring both Carson and Gabriel back alive; his men conveniently forgot to mention that Carson was alive and well when they found him.
"I have some medical training," Laura spoke up weakly. "I just need something to eat and I can patch us up."
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Negan and Aven lingered at the doorway as Laura settled down in her new room (consequently Tanya's old one) with a walkie and orders not to leave; Negan didn't want Dwight or anyone else seeing her. He wasn't specific but made it clear he was planning some sort of dramatic, typically Negan-esque reveal to Dwight about his betrayal, as well as to Simon. Negan turned to walk back towards his room, but Aven stayed a moment longer, observing that Laura seemed distracted, shaken.
"Did something happen out there?" Aven asked. She didn't usually go out of her way to speak to anyone but Negan, but her time at the Hilltop made her feel especially separate and lonely, and now that she was back at the Sanctuary she felt a little bit more of a connection to the people there. "Did you run into anyone?"
"No, just a lot of roamers," Laura sighed, sitting back on the bed with her knees up to her chest. Aven stared on skeptically, the tension in the room nagging at her.
"You sure?"
"Yeah, it's just..." Laura trailed off with a sigh, shaking her head. "This sucks. This all fucking sucks and it needs to end. It's too much, people getting hurt left and right for what? They kill us, we kill them, they kill us and it keeps going." Laura was furious at Dwight and wanted to see him put in his place, but at the same time she almost couldn't blame him. She knew he wasn't the kind of person to hurt people for no good reason.
"It is too much," Aven agreed solemnly. The two just looked at each other for another moment sadly before Aven turned and made her way down the hall where Negan was waiting for her in their living room. She shut and locked the door and Negan was immediately on her, wrapping his arms around her in a vice-like grip and burying his face in her hair. They stood in silence, swaying back and forth slightly until Negan pulled back to cup her face with one hand and kiss her deeply. They'd only been apart for a few days, but it felt like longer under the circumstances.
"Did they do anything to you?" he asked once he pulled away, now resting both hands on the sides of her face and gazing into her eyes. His eyes scanned over the cuts and bruises on her face that she'd initially claimed were dealt by Jared; he now knew that they were self-inflicted, all part of the show she'd been putting on at the Hilltop. But they still made him angry, a reminder of their enemies taking her by force.
"No, I told you, they were very humane." You could learn a thing or two about how to treat prisoners, she thought, though she realized Maggie's leniency was obviously a mistake on her part. Aven pulled away and made her way towards the bedroom. "I need a shower."
"I'll join you," Negan said dawning a devilish grin, momentarily forgetting how careful he'd been around her before she was taken.
"No, I'll be quick. I just want to wash my hair. You got shampoo in my eye last time." She vanished into the bathroom and turned the shower on, the sound of the water hitting the floor echoing off the tiles. Negan wanted so badly to touch her beyond their kiss, to scoop her up in his arms and toss her onto the bed, make up for lost time and remind her how much he loved her, as though she could ever forget. But he was wary of how she'd been too uncomfortable, too lost in her bad memories recently and didn't want to push her until she made it clear she was ready again. And she'd just made it clear that she apparently wasn't. He stripped off his clothes and changed into a pair of flannel pants, reluctantly accepting he wasn't getting any that night.
Ten minutes later, Aven stepped out of the bathroom. Normally she needed two towels: one to wring out her thick, curly hair and one to wrap around her body. This time, though, she'd already mostly dried off and only had the towel for her hair. Negan looked up from where he sat against the head of the bed and his eyes immediately darkened, slowly raking down her nude body and back up again. Even through his arousal, he was relieved to see no new cuts or bruises, no new scars; just the same ones she'd given him bullshit stories about. He knew the long one down the side of her stomach wasn't from falling out of a tree as a child like she'd said. He knew she didn't want to go into detail about the marks, and the only reason he'd accepted the lies was because he didn't think he could handle hearing the specifics about what happened to her.
"Darling, I think you forgot something," he hummed huskily, biting his lip as she drew closer to the bed.
"Oh?" she replied coyly. "What did I forget?" She crawled onto the bed and sat next to him, her back facing him, squeezing the last of the excess water in her hair into the towel and throwing it aside before ruffling her drying curls with both hands. Negan watched her hair fall over her shoulders and back and reached out to gently trace his knuckles down her bare spine, spreading chills through her body. He sat up further and moved closer to her, gently wrapping his hand around her throat from behind and tilting her head up as he kissed the side of her neck. She sighed at the sensation but gave a grunt of disapproval when his hand trailed down to her breast and then quickly pulled away as though it had given him an electric shock.
"Sorry doll, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable," he apologized, mistaking the sound for discomfort at his touch. "I know you're not up to it."
"Who the fuck said I'm not up to it?"
"I know you've been feeling off lately after what happened at Alexandria, and now after...all this." He knew being locked up and confined put her in a less than desirable mindset; afterall, he'd put her in such a situation more than once. "I don't want to fucking trigger anything again."
"Negan, I'm fine," she cooed, turning fully to lean against his chest and tracing one of his tattoos with her fingers. "Do you honestly think I forgot to use a fucking towel?"
"No, but-" He was cut off by her lips claiming his. His already hardening cock twitched against her leg and by the time she pulled away it stood fully at attention. Her hand made its way down from the tattoo on his chest, over his abs, following the thin line of hair until it dipped under the elastic of his pants. Before she could grip him, he pulled away again, pulling her hand back. He held her wrist tightly between their faces, kissing her knuckles without breaking eye contact. He wanted her so fucking badly but he needed to be sure; last time he'd really tried, she pushed him away, and though he knew she had deep reasoning it still felt like rejection, something he certainly wasn't used to. He briefly examined her stitches which were beginning to absorb into her skin, wondering if fucking her as roughly as he wanted to could cause them to tear. He swallowed hard, struggling to keep his lust at bay.
"Why are you being so weird?" she asked, sensing his abnormal sort of tension.
"Aven...I found you fucking catatonic in the tub last week," he reminded her, the full reason for his hesitation just dawning on him. "You said being touched feels like their hands are on you again." Aven sighed frustratedly and, without warning, she swung one leg over his thighs and straddled him, grinding herself against him and running her hands up and down his chest. "Oh fuck," he hissed, pressing back against her.
"I know what I said. Just trust me," she purred, kissing his neck. "You keep forgetting I'm not as fragile as you first thought I was. I'm tired of feeling weak. You make me feel strong."
"Okay, okay, message fuckin' received loud and clear," he growled as she continued gyrating her hips against him. Suddenly, he grabbed both her wrists and flipped her over onto her back so he was leaning over her. "But if you want me to stop-"
"Shut up and fuck me."
"Yes ma'am."
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"I gotta ask, doll," Negan drawled, lazily dragging his fingers across her bare shoulder as they lay tangled in the sheets of their bed. "Where'd you learn to fuckin' scrap like that? Never really saw you in action 'til today. I only knew you took Simon down those first few days you were here and he ain't exactly inexperienced." He knew Aven was a survivor, obviously capable enough to have lasted alone out in the world, but the skill with which she'd taken down Jadis wasn't something he'd gotten to see from her. Despite the lingering guilt he felt over the fate of Jadis and the Scavengers, seeing Aven in action was more than a little bit of a turn on.
"Tae-kwon-do," Aven replied before letting out a long yawn. "Been a while since I took classes but I was pretty dedicated for a while and never really lost the instincts."
"No shit, how long?"
"Um...ten years maybe? Had my junior blackbelt."
"You're a fucking blackbelt?" he gawked, pulling away from her to observe her expression as though he was waiting for her to crack a smile like it was a joke, but she didn't. "How the fuck didn't I know that?!"
"Never came up," she shrugged. "And I wasn't a blackbelt, I was junior blackbelt."
"What the fuck does that mean?"
"Can't get your blackbelt until you're sixteen. Quit when I was fifteen."
"Well that was fuckin' stupid of you."
"Learned what I needed to, didn't I?"
"I bet you gave that fucker who kidnapped you hell, right? He chose the wrong fuckin' chick to mess with." Usually he was more careful about bringing up her past, but he was excited to hear more about her kicking ass.
"Didn't make it easy for him," she mumbled, backing off the conversation.
"Sorry, doll, I didn't mean to bring it up...Kinda fuckin' proud, if I'm being honest. My girl's a fuckin' certified ass-kicker."
"Clearly I wasn't good enough," she replied, suddenly solemn. "Wouldn't have gotten kidnapped otherwise."
"Hey," he breathed, tilting her chin up towards him and kissing her lightly on the forehead. He gazed into her eyes and was again hit by a wave of anger over what had been done to her. "Don't fucking do that. He fucking drugged you."
"I was there for months. Years of self-defense training didn't do shit. I wasn't strong enough. I only escaped because he died and wasn't there to stop me." She broke eye contact, staring off to the side past his ear, clearly disturbed as pieces of a memory played in her mind. Negan's eyes again darted to the scar on her stomach that mirrored the Lucille tattoo on the other side, and he gritted his teeth over the grim mystery of it.
"You've never talked about it," he murmured, still gently cupping her chin. "You probably need to, you know."
"I can't, the memories are bad enough. I don't want to put them into words."
"You wrote some shit down that one time," he reminded her. "Before you tore all the pages the fuck up."
"I couldn't stand reading them back." Neither could I, Negan thought, recalling the bits and pieces of her frantically scribbled memories he was able to make out. She'd started out writing about being attacked the day he met her, but it morphed into a recount of her time in captivity. Negan knew all the darkness was festering in her mind. If he hadn't figured it out after he'd first locked her in a cell and caused her to go bat-shit insane, it became obvious when he'd found her in a trance-like state in a cold bath that she'd initially run hot. He may have only been a gym coach in the old world, but he knew what PTSD was and had diagnosed her in his mind.
"Negan, why do you feel so strongly about sexual assault?" Aven asked seemingly out of nowhere. Whenever it came up in any context, he seemed to take it almost personally that any human could be so cruel.
"Because it's fucking wrong," he spat, frowning down at her. "How any man could fucking let that shit go, let people be hurt like that, I don't fucking get it. I get killing, killing has its purposes and it always has. But rape is fucking inexcusable. There is no good fucking reason, it's just selfishness. I don't care how horny you are or how small your fucking dick is." Aven could feel his heartbeat had sped up slightly and he was breathing a little more heavily.
"But it seems like there's more to it for you, why you care...Was it Lucille?" They needed to sleep and there were more important things to talk about, but after the previous few days and especially after being taken by Jadis, Negan's emotions and his past were at the forefront of his mind. He found the words coming out of his mouth before he could tell himself what he usually did when people asked about his past, that it didn't matter anymore. Of course it did matter, but like Aven he had trouble talking about it, even the meaningless and most mundane parts.
"When I met Lucille she'd had a couple bad run-ins with some shitty guys," he sighed. "It was fucking rough to see her deal with it but that's not the first time it hit close to home for me." He paused, taking one of her hands in both of his and playing mindlessly with her fingers as she gazed up at him, watching the wheels turn in his mind as he gathered his thoughts.
"The first high school I taught at, my favorite student was this kid Luke. He was a real cool fuckin' kid. Had some problems at home that I talked him through, went through some shit but through it all he got great fucking grades, held a job, and he was my star pitcher on the baseball team, got tons of offers for college. I thought this kid could do no fucking wrong. He asked me about this girl he liked, Victoria, another one of my students, said she wouldn't give him the time of day. I told him to step it up, keep at it..."
He trailed off, pursing his lips tightly in a line and staring off towards the wall. Aven had a feeling she understood where the story was going and squeezed his hand to tell him he didn't have to talk about it. But by now it was too heavy in his heart and on his tongue and he needed to say it. He'd never told anyone after it all happened; Lucille knew but learned not to try to get him to talk about it.
"I told him to keep at it," he continued. "I guess it didn't work but when he talked to me again he was talking like she'd expressed interest in him but she wouldn't act on it. I told him..." He trailed off again, his composure faltering slightly, before picking back up. "Fuck, I told him...then you act on it...be a man, make the first move." His tight-lipped expression slipped into an angry frown as he repeated his own words. For the second time that day, he was struggling to hold back tears. "Victoria was such a sweet fucking girl. Absolute shit at sports but it's not everyone's thing. She..." Again, he struggled with the words.
"You don't have to-" Aven began, but he held his hand up to cut her off and she nodded, waiting for him to continue.
"I was pals with her English teacher, guy said she was one of the best writers he'd ever seen, thought she was gonna end up as a famous author or some shit. But Luke...she just...she wasn't into him and he didn't understand, I guess he'd never had a girl turn him down. He...there was a party...the details were never clear but he locked himself in a bedroom with her and he raped her." He couldn't help it, sitting up and burying his face in his hands, letting out a single, suppressed sob, more of a shuttering sigh. Aven sat up with him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, tearing up slightly herself but pushing the tears away to focus on him.
"She was only fifteen, he was seventeen. But she was so fucking brave, she went to the police that night, she went straight there. She was out of school for a few days until she officially pressed charges. When I heard about it, I...I didn't believe it at first. You know, not Luke, he wouldn't do that. But I knew her too and I didn't think she'd make that up. The only thing I could think was maybe she was drunk and remembering the wrong person. But Luke...he admitted to having sex with her but insisted it was consensual and I just knew he was fucking lying. His parents wanted me to be a character witness for him and I refused, so did some other teachers. It was a conflict of interest and we would never have gone against that poor girl anyway. But before the trial could start, it came out that the police department lost the rape kit they did on her. It was the only evidence she had and he had all his friends backing him up. Before the trial even started, she...she tried to kill herself, slit her fucking wrists and we never saw her again. She dropped the charges and her family moved away." Negan went silent, shaking his head with his face still in his hands.
"Luke just went on with his fucking life, went to college, full-ride with a baseball scholarship. Be a man, I fucking told him. It was my fucking job to steer him in the right direction and I told him to fucking force himself on a girl."
"Negan, it's not your fault," Aven blurted out as soon as she realized he was blaming himself. "That was never your fault, you couldn't have known. You gave him general advice and he forced himself on a younger girl."
"If I had just fucking said something different..." Aven stared at him earnestly for a long moment, trying to find the right words to convince him.
"It's...it's not an isolated incident, Negan," she said softly but sadly. "You know that, right? High school is...I mean, kids aren't saints. Bad people don't just turn bad as adults."
"But Luke didn't have to be bad. I remember what it was like to be a teenage boy. Your dick starts working out of fucking nowhere, telling you to just go fuck anything in sight, but it doesn't tell you most girls won't just hop on it and that you don't just deserve pussy anyway. It's up to the fucking adults to steer kids straight."
"That's society's fault, Negan. Victoria...what happened to her was horrible but I assure you there were other students dealing with similar issues. You can't see inside their minds. I personally think there's a lot that can be said to boys from a young age to make the boundaries clear, but that's in a perfect world where all parents and teachers are perfect and always know exactly what to say to turn a kid into a good adult. That world could never exist."
"But-"
"Did you rape anyone in high school?" she asked knowingly, trying to make a point.
"Absolutely fucking not!" he spat, his brow furrowed, mistaking her words as an accusation.
"And who taught you that, not to rape people?"
"No one taught me," he sighed, catching on to what she was trying to say. "I just knew. It should be common fucking sense but dads raise their sons with their own fuckin' dicks. I just had my mom. She raised me right...or as right as she could."
"You can't save everyone," Aven whispered, bringing up her hand to rest on his cheek and gazing into his eyes, "but you do the best damn job you can."
"What about you?" he asked, putting together the implications of her words. "You've clearly thought about this...Did something happen back then too, in high school?" Aven pressed her lips into a thin line and sighed, keeping eye contact with him.
"It's not fucking easy being a girl sometimes," she admitted after a short silence. "You're right, a guy's dick starts working and he thinks it's just human nature that he's immediately supposed to stick it in someone. And when someone says no, it's like it doesn't fucking compute. Definitely not every guy is like that, I knew a ton of great boys, raised right, respectful. But there were always the guys who just wanted pussy and would say whatever they needed to get it."
"And I'm guessing you dealt with those guys often."
"I dealt with a couple. My first boyfriend called me a conservative prude because I wouldn't have sex with him in the first few months of our relationship. I mean, I was only fifteen and I really wasn't ready, and I knew I wouldn't be ready for a while. But he told me it wasn't fair that I was making him wait. He'd just push and push every day. I'd say no and he'd say 'But you're so pretty!' Like he couldn't wrap his mind around why a pretty girl wouldn't want to put out. Like the reason I was saying no was because I needed him to make me feel pretty."
"I hope you put him in his place," Negan muttered, immediately regretting the words when he saw the almost shameful look in her eyes.
"No," she whispered, her eyes falling to her hands in his. "No, I gave in after a few months." Negan's face again fell into a scowl and he opened his mouth to curse the mother fucker that laid his hands on her, but she stopped him. "It was my choice, I really liked him and I was attracted to him, and with all of his pushing and pushing I just finally caved. And honestly, I usually liked it, but that just showed him that he could get what he wanted. He never stopped pushing even after we broke up, and I always gave in, and he'd always just dump me afterwards. And then..." Now it was Aven's turn to trail off, guilt weighing heavy in her stomach.
"His next girlfriend," she continued, "she was younger than me, even more inexperienced. He'd complain to me about how she wouldn't put out. Eventually they did have sex and I found out later it wasn't consensual. He told her the same thing, that it wasn't fair she was making him wait. I felt like my giving in showed him that he could just take what he wanted from people."
"That's not on you."
"I know that now, just like what happened to Victoria isn't on you."
Neither Aven nor Negan said anything else, each other's words about their past sinking in. Just one story from each of them shed so much light to the other, highlighting just how much there was left to learn. But even with the heavy subjects hanging in the air, they lay back down in each other's arms and soon drifted off to sleep almost blissfully.
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A/N - I've specifically avoided getting political with this story but I will say that this chapter is absolutely informed by what's going on in America right now, as we're considering giving a second accused sexual abuser a seat on the Supreme Court (the first has been seated for almost three decades, and the accusations against the knew guy are more supported and more violent than the first).
Edit: We gave the rapist the job. Shocker.