I think I liked you better when you didn't have a knife in your hand, Peaches

Lucille

It was a warm evening, and the last of the sun's few rays danced across the parking lot, where the fences filled with walkers, shimmered in the late-summer haze.

Negan tugged Blake out here by the hand, dragging her over towards the high chain link fences, where several men in dirty clothes wrangled the dead, trying to goad them, as best they could, into position, while the blonde figure of Dwight stood by the gate watching them.

He glanced up as Negan and Blake approached.

Blake's heart pounded.

Negan hadn't stopped since they had left his hallway, coming all the way out here, never halting, not uttered a word to her. She could tell he was seething. But was he angry enough to feed her to the walkers up ahead?

She gave a worried frown suddenly tugging at his arm once again.

"Stop!" she uttered demandingly, in a loud, yelling voice of utter frustration, pulling her hand quickly away from his. "Stop..."

Negan suddenly paused on the dusty asphalt, and rounded on her, his already dark eyes blackening.

From here Blake could make out every line that seemed to litter his tanned and bearded face.

Her breath suddenly hitched in her throat.

"Please...just let him go," she uttered in a desperate tone, feeling almost ashamed of herself as the words slipped out of her mouth. "I'll stay here....I'll be one of your wives....i-if that's what you want..."

She trembled, her green eyes filling with tears, as they dropped from Negan's face, instead staring down at the ground beneath her feet.

"...just let him go back to Alexandria if that's what it takes...please. Please just let him go...."

It took her a long moment or two to finally stare back up at Negan....feeling so small and pathetic right now.

Because that was what she was. Practically selling herself to save him.

For what other person would try and defend someone who had done so much damage to them?

But Negan's tongue reached his line of straight white teeth irritably, and he looked down at her hard.

"You know what, Peaches," Negan suddenly muttered, his voice warmer than Blake had expected. But there was no hint of a smile. "If you were anyone else I wouldn't have thought twice about feedin' you to those dead pricks over there."

He gestured with his head over to the fences, almost sparkling in the warm sunlight.

Right now it felt like it was just the two of them alone in this world...everyone else around them seeming like a hazy blur to Blake, as her heart thudded inside her painful ribcage.

Blake breathed hard and Negan let out a hard puff of air, running a hand down his bearded face tiredly.

"Doll-face I'm gonna ask you this once, and only once," continued the dark-haired Saviour suddenly, his lips fixed into a grim line. "You sure he's what you want? What you really want? Some fucking asshole who shoved you down a flight of fuckin' stairs and treats you like shit?"

His words were stark and hit Blake hard, like a blow to the stomach.

"Because if you do this. If you want me to let. him. go," Negan quickly continued, pointing a finger at her. "Then you've got to go too....you understand that? You gotta make a decision."

Blake stared up at Negan with wide staring eyes.

There was no way she had expected that, ever.

She could go back to Alexandria. Both of them. They could just go....if that was what she wanted....