Chapter Text
May 15th 2013
Lucille doesn’t move, and she doesn’t answer when Negan asks how her day was. Lucille is a rectangular block of black granite. She has ‘beloved mother, wife, daughter, and sister, taken too soon’ carved into her sleek, pristine surface. Lucille is graceful artistry, yet a mere shadow of what she once was.
When Negan talks to her, he strains his ears in hope of a response. She can’t hear him, yet he feels compelled to talk because the stillness, far from the main road, and the mild temperature act as sensory deprivation. Even past midnight in the gloom of the singular streetlight in the near distance, he feels it’s his duty to fill the silence.
But everything he says feels hollow and forced. There’s no rapport, no Lucille teasing him about his petty feuds with colleagues, no banging of pots and pans as they cook together, no hand in his, there’s just an empty cemetery and Negan sitting on a picnic blanket by his wife’s grave. His conversation with no one trailed off minutes ago. The lack of response was getting awkward. The dregs of his fourth beer feel unappetizing and he considers calling an Uber back to his lifeless house, where he has more silence to look forward to.
But the nothingness of the night is interrupted by a gradually increasing something. Dirt shifting and leaves rustling followed by the occasional twig snapping. Negan throws a glance behind him, then scans the rest of the cemetery. “If anyone’s plannin’ on haunting me, I’d rather you do it where I can see you.” He says quietly. “And please at least be hot.”
When he hears a groan, a jolt of fear runs up his spine. Negan’s stiff legs creek in complaint as he hastily rises to his feet. The flashlight on his phone is bright enough to light up the surrounding area, but it doesn’t reach the graves on the outer edges. Images of mountain lions and bobcats flash through his mind as he pulls out the switchblade he carries in case of emergencies or the life insurance people. The uncertain sound soon becomes discernible footsteps. Negan identifies a direction, in which he points his knife and light.
Tipping into view is a scrawny male figure. Negan shouldn’t have watched World War Z on the plane to Lucille’s parents’ place last week. As he gets closer, Negan can make out a young man with hair down to his shoulders, completely naked except for thick layers of dried mud covering most of his pale body. Confused, Negan shines the light directly at him for a better look, causing him to squeeze his eyes shut and throw his hands over his face. The boy comes to a stop behind a grave; the only means of covering himself.
“Hey, fellah…” Negan says cautiously, eyeing the stranger with suspicion. He grabs the corner of his picnic blanket and takes a careful step towards the boy. Negan looks at his boots while the kid clumsily lunges for the blanket and wraps it tightly around his waist.
Negan himself has fallen asleep here a couple of times and woken up in the early hours to the groundskeeper’s boots scuffing the gravel near his face, so he feels for the kid. Maybe he lost the most important person in his life too, and is trying to connect with the decay below their feet. Why he’s chosen to do that naked, however, is what Negan fails to understand, though he has his theories when he looks back up and sees the kid swaying in the breeze and looking around distantly. “I’m startin’ to get the feeling you’re less of a grieving relative and more of a college kid who got absolutely fuckin’ obliterated last night and doesn’t know his tits from his elbow. I’ve had some wild nights in my time but I gotta admit, you got me beat… what was it, one too many vodka shots? A dare? Hazing gone wrong?”
The boy is simply staring at him from beneath his muddy hair. His voice is hoarse and halting but not slurred like Negan assumed, “I don’t remember how I got here…”
Sensing something wrong, Negan takes pity on him. The lack of memory and underwear are giving him an unsavory picture of what may have happened to this boy, and it makes him feel sick to his stomach. But he pushes that notion down, because the most likely scenario is a night out gone wrong. “Alright, kiddo. I’ve been there. Lemme take you somewhere warm while you sober up,” Negan nods to his truck outside the gates, and the two begin walking. “You got a name?”
“I’m…” the boy seems to be searching. He frowns. “My name… I don’t remember. Why don’t I remember my own name??” The small part of his face not covered in mud looks horrified. Striking blue eyes search Negan’s as if he has the answer.
“A good night out’ll do that, believe you me. At a certain point, your name kinda slips away… the fact that you’re a widower slips away too.” Negan says bitterly.
“Is that why you’re here?”
Negan raises his empty beer in answer, and clinks his wedding ring against it. He hasn’t been eating and it’s beginning to get loose.
“…I’m sorry.”
“I’m used to loss, kid. Just a part of life. Love doesn’t stick around. I lost my first and I’ve lost my last - and I know she was my last ‘cause I’m done with love now. I’m not trying that shit again, not when losing it... hurts like this. Never again.” The kid lags behind a bit when he says that, “it’s okay, I’m not gonna drive into a ditch. Not while I have a passenger.”
“You’re gonna drive me home and then kill yourself…?” The boy starts walking again, wincing whenever his bare feet land on jagged stones.
“Jury’s still out on that.” Making the choice to at least put some good out into the world before he leaves it, Negan grabs two more blankets from the trunk and hands one to the stranger. He drapes the other over the passenger seat, and the kid hops in, wrapping the new blanket around his head like a hood against the mild chill of the night air. Negan, dressed in blue jeans and plain black jacket, thinks about offering the jacket, but decides against it.
Oddly, the kid doesn’t smell like alcohol or sweat, he only carries the gritty scent of mud and leaves with a hint of pine needles. Pine trees are dotted around the edges of the cemetery - the roots of one even dug up a body after many years of growing unnoticed - so the pleasant scent of pine only reminds Negan of his darkest moments.
When Negan looks over, something about the boy’s bright blue eyes takes him by surprise. There’s an offputting familiarity he can’t quite place. He notes those strangely familiar eyes piercing him like knives as if he, too, is coming to a similar conclusion. Negan asks, “you okay?”
The kid sniffles a bit then clears his throat. “You remind me of someone… but it doesn’t make any sense.”
Negan nods and gives a curt smile, “you’ll be fine after some food.” He leaves it at that. The kid seems to have more to say, but no words with which to say it, and after a moment he leans back in his seat and stills.
When Negan’s phone rings on the way home, he takes it out of his pocket and hands it to Carl, “answer that for me,” but he sees the boy stare at it dumbly, waving his fingers over the screen with seemingly no recognition of what to do. “Big green button, honey, can’t miss it. It’s a swiper, not a tapper.”
The kid fumbles with it and it picks up.
“Hey, I saw your truck outside the graveyard a few minutes ago. You should get some sleep.” A woman’s voice says kindly.
“Oh, hey Laura. I’m just leaving. Found a college kid who had a few too many, I’m gonna make sure he gets home.” Negan leans towards the phone while he’s driving because the boy didn’t put it on loudspeaker, “first he needs to remember where home is.”
“Righty-oh. Well, have fun babysitting, and call me if you need.”
“Appreciate it,” Negan says automatically before she hangs up.
“This is some advanced tech you got,” the boy marvels at Negan's shitty old phone. “What a neat little gadget.”
“It’s only the iPhone 4, pretty sure I’m a bit behind.” Negan shrugs, “do you remember anything? Name, address? Mental hospital?”
“I didn’t crawl out of a nuthouse,” the boy says snarkily, “...probably.”
“That doesn’t fill me with confidence,” getting tired now, Negan struggles to keep his eyes open and on the road.
“I think I know this road.” The kid is peering out of the window into the darkness. Various landmarks flash by in the headlights, “I used to ride my bike to elementary school here.”
Negan uses him as a means of stopping himself from falling asleep at the wheel, “me too. Granted, probably a couple decades before your time, kid.”
“You need a shower.” Negan informs the stranger as he lets him into his house. “My stepson - former stepson I guess - has some clothes here. He won’t mind.”
The boy leaves mucky footprints through the house and into the bathroom. Negan leaves him in there while he grabs some clothes from the spare room. When he goes back in, the kid hasn’t made any move to start the shower.
“Uh,” the boy mutters, looking only marginally less lost than he had at the cemetery. “I’ve never used one like this before. Geez, this is confusing” Negan leaves the clothes on the sink and comes up behind the kid, reaching over to start the shower up. When it’s at a nice temperature, he instructs the boy on how to turn it back off, and leaves the room. He hears the mystery audibly marveling at the switches and lights in the bathroom while he’s showering. Strange kid, he thinks while microwaving two spaghetti ready meals.
This muddy amnesiac is a welcome distraction from his life, and Negan finds himself tapping his fingers on the countertop and watching the bathroom door in anticipation of his return.
Minutes later, he hears the familiar sound of the hairdryer start. It acts like a gut punch because he can almost imagine Lucille is in the bathroom instead of this random cemetery kid. She always put so much effort into her hair, and it always paid off. When she lost it, she grieved. The wigs Negan helped her pick out weren’t the same.
The bathroom door opens before Negan can dry his eyes, and what he sees rips the air right from his lungs.