Don't Look Back

by Lupienne

(A/N: A short song-inspired and 'Here's Negan' comic-based story of Lucille and Negan, in the final hours of Lucille's life.)

Everything is so dark
And I know there's something wrong
but I can't turn the light on
In that split second change
when you knew we couldn't hold on
I realized I lived to love you

Save yourself, don't look back.

'Never Go Back' (Synthesis) - Evanescence

You never know where you're going to end up... when your end is up. I used to have this fantasy when I was a kid, that I would live forever like the vampires in my favorite teen novels. As I got older, I figured it would be some random shit out of nowhere – a car crash, maybe a heart attack like the one that had taken my grandmother.

Dying of cancer in the hospital was low on my list of ideal ways to go. But it was the way I got and I guess I was doing a splendid job of it.

I'd said that to Negan once. 'At least I'm doing a great job at something.'

He'd started to cry. And he was usually the one cracking the inappropriate jokes.

Sometimes, in the early days of my sickness, I savored his suffering. He could have all the women who would say yes to him, but not me, not any longer. I was drifting to a place where his apologies could no longer reach.

As I grew weaker over the months, and he was there - through whatever...chemo, cleaning my vomit, carrying me to bed against his strong chest, bathing me when I didn't have the energy...

I forgave him. Or maybe I simply could no longer muster that kind of anger anymore. My well was depleted and his sorrow hastened the drought. Maybe I didn't want to feel ire in the shortened days of my life – I just wanted to love him.

I wanted his pain to stop.

Deep down, I knew my death wouldn't be the cessation of his agony... But I hoped it would be a start. He was adaptable and so full of life. He would endure, and I wanted that with all the meager strength left in my soul.

I'm not sure how long I've been here. On my deathbed, I suppose you call it. At some point, my care was too much for Negan to handle solo, and doctor's orders: he'd brought me here. Sometimes, I thought it'd be preferable if he'd carried me up to the mountain we'd hiked up once. Cradled me under the stars and let me die in his arms. I'd even take our local park, staring up through the rustling leaves. Someplace with open breeze and the sounds of life.

Not this stifled air, these blaring white walls and pea-colored privacy curtains. The sound of machines. The creak of the tiny chair Negan has turned into his guard post. He isn't eating much and I think more coffee flows through his veins than blood.

There's a clock on the wall, the kind with an audible tick-tock. What purpose does it serve? To assure the recuperating patients they can keep holding on? For people like me... to let us know we're a few more clicks away from the pain ending? Hickory dickory dock, do you hear the clock? Hickory dickory dock, your lifespan it does mock. Maybe I'll tell Negan that one later. He likes rhymes.

Sometimes I can't hear it, when they pump enough drugs in to put me into a kind of loopy limbo. But no matter how far out I am, I always remain aware of Negan's presence. His large frame slumped into that small uncomfortable chair. Sometimes he flips on the tv, but never for long. He's always been restless, but he refrains from pacing when I'm awake. His big hands will take mine, his lips will brush them, and he'll talk softly to me. Anything and everything tumbling from his lips... vulgar jokes, our days together, stories about his students, apologies. I would cry or laugh if I could break out of this brain freeze.

Other times, when he thinks I'm unaware, that I'm too drugged up to notice – he bends double and sobs into his hands. Those are the times I pray the minute hand's next revolution will be my last.

It might be an hour later, a day, a year. I doubt it's been a year. My body has distinctly told me: nobody ain't got time for that. It tells me other things too, as my vision grows foggy and my hearing grows sharper. I hear the seconds ticking between the minutes. I hear the blood rushing in and out of Negan's heart.

Your time is almost up, baby.

Am I sad about that? I don't know.

Trapped in limbo, you can't go back. You're over the edge and hanging and there's only one direction left. Forward.

But still... I hear the occasional shriek deep inside me, coming from that part that's still on fire and doesn't want to be snuffed out.

This isn't fair!

I'm too young!

I'm only 40. He's only 37. There's so much more life ahead of us!

Why?

I don't want to die.

I'm scared.

I'm sad.

How can I leave Negan alone? He's going to be lost without me.

I hear these shrieks, now and then. They've faded to a dull mummer. Like me...they've lost their ferocity.

Regret lingers like a bruise. We never took that trip to Ireland. We never went skiing. We never tried that crazy sex position. We never started a family. I denied him of the children he desired, seething in pain over his infidelity. And his eternal childish nature! It both maddened me and kept me mad with love, but didn't inspire my confidence that he could be a responsible father.

Now...I know he could have been, and he would have had a piece of me to hold onto. Now, the regret devours me as viciously as my rouge cells.

I'm not over it. Won't be until the day I die, I suppose. Or the hour. I think I can only expect hours now. But... I've slipped into some cliché phase of acceptance. What else can I do? I don't even have strength left to squeeze his fingers.

I'm so fucking tired. Sleep sounds so good. The deep sleep of no dreaming.

I think I do sleep a little. I nod off, then come back. Negan is hunched over in his chair, his big hand clasping mine. It feels so warm. My hearing comes in ocean waves, carrying his words on the tide. His voice is raw over the whoosh-whoosh of the oxygen machine. I don't think I can breathe without it anymore.

Time to put baby to bed.

"...need you to know... You are everything to me."

My eyes aren't open, but I can see him clearly. His handsome face thrown onto somber lines that do not suit him. The warm cocoa eyes of the cuddliest puppy...wet and red. His dark hair tousled over his forehead, slightly greasy from his inattentiveness to himself, his jaw cloaked in stubble.

He's so beautiful even when he's a fucking mess. I try to open my eyes...but my eyelids feel weighted with stones.

"... I'm a fucking piece of dog shit. You deserve so much better."

Oh, Negan...

His voice cracks. "Did I do this to you? Did I fucking cause this?"

He takes a deep, shuddering breath. I damn this stupor I'm in. I want to frown, to lay a punch on his arm and tell him to stop being silly, that he couldn't cause an illness - he's hardly the Rider of Plague and Pestilence.

He continues on. If only I could kiss him! I'd sternly grip his jaw, lock my eyes to his and tell him to get a grip. Get control of that voice that's cracking and quivering like a child's.

I don't. Can't. I can really feel it now, the way this machine is forcing my lungs to expand with air. There's a dull, burning pain all through my body - made vague by the drugs. I don't know if it's from my sickness...or the sickness of tears I cannot shed.

For a while, there's only the sound of my machines and Negan sniffling up his nose. I'm tired again. I know this machine might keep me breathing, but it's no match for my suicidal heart. That thing is on its last legs now. Like the uproar of an audience turning to a few half-hearted claps.

You and me had a good run, baby. We even found a man to beat for. Just for a while. Some people can't say that. That they had what I had. As flawed as it was.

Things are getting muffled now. Like cotton is stuffed in my ears. I've entered into a cliche. I feel detached from my frail, physical form. Like I jumped up lightly to levitate above my bed. Maybe I'm a ghost now, but I don't think so. The bonds tying meto the body have merely slackened their grip.

That's funny. I'm thinking of myself and my body as two separate things.

Red and blue lights flash outside. Another sound becomes apparent over the beeps and whooshes. Even through the cotton I hear sirens, crashes, screams.

It is strange. Negan doesn't seem to notice it. Maybe it's just me...because my hearing has become so odd. Muted, yet sharper than ever. On the streets below, I hear inhuman moans and growls – but they are coming from human lips. This I know. If I could cry out – I would – as it feels like a hand suddenly grips the back of my bald head, digging claws into my brain. Something inside me... is responding to... them?

You're drugged.

Footsteps rush down the hall. People run by the open door of my death room. Nurses in their bright scrubs. Doctors with their white coats trailing. A patient pushing another in a wheelchair like they are running a race.

You're delirious.

Negan doesn't seem to hear any of it. His head is bowed, his finger lightly trailing up and down my wrist.

You're delusional. You're probably seeing things that aren't even happening.

But I know it's bad.

You're dying.

Yes. But that's not it.

There's something wrong, and Negan is in danger.

Your synapses are firing their last rounds. You should be rifling through your memories one more time and not be thinking such nonsense.

More people rush by the door, and this time, Negan looks up. A nurse dashes in, his eyes panicked.

I did not imagine it. They are evacuating the hospital! Negan snarls as the man grips his arm, urging him to leave me.

"I'm not fucking leaving my wife!"

"She's too sick to move...there's nothing we can do!"

"Get your fucking hands off me!" Negan wrenches his arm free.

The scrawny male nurse wisely backs off. I find myself whisked away by a memory. Some guy putting his hands on me in a bar, and Negan turning his nose into busted fragments of bone and oozing blood. Always my protector. I wish you could have been that devoted to me... all the time.

He'd made it up, I guess. By being here. By staying here, as the nurse flees, and outside the chaos escalates. There's more crashing, like cars impacting. Screams. The flicker of fire added to the police lights. And more of those animal growls coming from the mouths of people.

This is real. There is something really wrong.

That strange pain strikes my brain again. Like claws dug in. Maybe this is what happens when you die. You feel your mind slipping away, gripped in the hands of death.

Negan paces to the window. Whatever he sees transfixes him there for several minutes. He presses his nose to the glass, mumbling profanity.

"Those people. There's something... wrong with them."

Something wrong.

If I could move, I'd be paralyzed with fear. It isn't the dread of my existential ending. I've come to grips with that, even if I'm not happy about it. The fear burns me cold as my husband watches through the window. To see him standing there, confused but unaware, doing such a normal Negan-thing as scratching absently at his butt through his sweatpants.

I know what he doesn't. Something is wrong. Negan isn't safe!

I can't live knowing he isn't safe.

And that is exactly it.

You have to go now, Lucille. You have to say goodbye.

There are often stories of people holding on just long enough to say it. Just long enough to reach some milestone. And maybe I've been doing that too...ready to go, but afraid to let go... afraid...

A boy runs by the room, looking back with his dreads strewn across his face. He sees Negan and shouts a warning. "Run, man! Run!"

Negan huffs a breath in through his nose, his eyes wide. My terrified heart doesn't have the energy to beat faster. My brave man. He hates to show fear in front of others. Except for me, of course. Just a look from me could make him grovel. But now, I don't want to see weakness in his face. He needs to be strong.

I'm so sorry, baby. I have to leave you alone.

I'm afraid for him without me.

But more afraid for him to stay. I let myself sink down into my body. Pain grips my head. I feel the machine expand my lungs.

Negan moves the tv stand in front of the door, then slumps against it. He's breathing hard even as the infernal machine forces me to draw air.

This machine will not hold me back. Nothing will stop me.

I have to go, darling.

Cells die all across my body. Imploding like miniature stars. I feel flushed and glowing, but left ice cold as the warmth fades away. Smoky shadows move in my vision, like I am hurtling through banks of storm clouds. This is so easy once I let go. My body has already forsaken me – now I am forsaking it.

Part of me wishes for Negan to take my hand. But I'm mostly content – glad he's not feeling the life slip from me.

I've heard it said after you die, you can still process information. I'm not exactly...seeing or hearing...or feeling anything physical. But I am aware somehow. I haven't quite left my body, but I've flown to the edge. I'm the shape you see at the edge of your peripheral vision. A flash that is seen but does not exist.

Negan realizes that I've gone. My beatless heart can't ache. Instead, I feel the ache shrouded over me like a veil.

"No," he whimpers. "Lucille. No. Please, baby." His voice dissolves into whimpers and he lays his head across the dead shell, clutching the shell's limp hand. He cries and sobs, his tears turning the body's white polka-dotted gown translucent under his cheek.

Aren't I supposed to be at peace now? Gone?

I feel like I partially am. I do not see the body as mine. It is just an empty husk. So...

Why am I still here?

Negan slumps back against the wall, his bangs falling onto his forehead, cradling my hand in his. His eyes are blankly staring and empty, his sounds of grief ceased, though the tears still slowly ooze down his reddened cheeks.

Why are you still here, baby? Leave and don't look back!

He sits for ages. Light shifts outside the window, and he still sits. My former hand becomes ice cold and stiff in his grip.

Then -

Something wrenches hard at my vessel. I fall further towards the edge, my soul on the precipice. This shit is more jarring than I thought it would be. I had left my body so smoothly before. I realize, suddenly, that I'm not the only thing dwelling in this vessel. There is another unwelcome visitor that has taken up residence. It's not the cancer. This thing is more insidious, and it has lain in wait for me to vacate this shell.

So it can take over. So it can use what it is left of me.

And I cannot go back.

The insidious thing creeps. It takes the helm of my abandoned ship. This dead sailor is along for whatever ride the afterlife brings...and I have to say... I never imagined it like this.

Maybe I'm in hell.

Negan is pulled from his stupor by the world ending outside. Car crashes. Gun shots! Screams of panic, terror, agony. He drops the shell's hand and approaches the window.

His breathing becomes ragged, his fingers pressed to the cold glass. "Fucking hell," he whispers. "What the fucking shit- What is this...?"

Is he real or a fragment of thought... how do I know if this is happening or just the last of my memories bursting across my fading retinas?

It doesn't matter. Reality or dream...I'm stuck here all the same. Some force is holding me in, blocking all my ports of exit. Keeping me in my dead body and weaving itself through me.

"Guhhhh..." A long groan comes from my shell's lips. And up lifts my former hand. No longer mine. Lucille's hand. I don't have enough substance to hold a name anymore.

Lucille's hand is pale and hangs limply at the end of her uplifted arm. Like every cell as been shocked back to life, she jolts upwards in the bed. The motions are so strange. The insidious force may hijack a body but it hardly knows what to do with them – it only knows one thing. I feel it all through the shadow of my being.

Hunger.

A deep, depraved hunger. An addict ingesting the most vile of toxins just for the hint of a fix. My taken body does not breath, but it can smell.

It smells Negan.

His blood calls like ambrosia.

His flesh fills the air with the most succulent aroma.

All I want to do – all IT wants to do...

I want to rip him apart. Consume.

Lucille flails her hand, ripping the tubes and mask free from her nose and mouth.

The better to smell you with, my dear.

Blood flows from the accosted nostrils.

Negan turns – his eyes wide in horror. "Lucille?"

She lurches forward like an electric wire has been shoved in that dead heart.

Heart. I can smell his heart. I can hear it!

ThudTHUDthud A siren song calling.

She lunges, but falls clumsily from the bed. Tubes and wires trail like the tentacles of a sea creature, wrapping around her atrophied limbs. Her face hits the floor with bone-breaking force. Teeth break, and the nose too.

It might not be my body anymore and I might not be capable of it – but I think I would wince. Blood covers her face as Negan panics, hovering around the fallen body.

"Lucille?! Are you ok!?" His voice cracks. "I thought you'd...I thought you were-"

I am! You know I am...you know this isn't right!

ThudTHUDthud. That juicy muscle is getting all worked up. Cycling the blood through his veins and the scent of it oozes out through his pores...she smells all the fluids in him. Lymph and blood and mucus and semen and her mouth burns with thirst.

The aroma of his bone marrow makes my saliva run. I want to eat all of him. Start with his toes and work my way up. Rip off his cock, bury my gnashing teeth into his belly while he screams and screams -

Stop it!

-Oh liver and kidney and spleen, tastes sweeter than a dream-

She lifts her head as Negan draws close. He reaches out.

Yes. Reach out to me.

NO! Don't hurt him!

The horror of her face propels him away. He throws himself backwards, his side colliding with his guard-post chair, his legs drawn up. He cowers from Lucille as she claws for him with her pale, wasted arm. Each nail wants to open his veins.

Give me your fucking heart, baby. The way you NEVER did in life.

NO!

This is hell. I am in hell. I don't know what sin landed me here, but surely I must have been wicked. My screams don't reach him!

Leave, Negan! GO!

He kneels, tentatively reaching forward. Her cold fingertips brush his. His flesh so warm it feels like a kiss of fire.

Please. Leave me. You've done your part. You've stayed with me unto death.

His only saving grace is my shell's limbs are tangled in the wires that formerly kept it alive. She can't lunge forward and sink her teeth into that -

-beautiful jugular vein. I can hear it pulse. The sound of blood is like the whisper of ocean tide.

She wants so badly for him to put that sweet face closer. She will dig her teeth in deep, rip flesh from bone. His eyeballs will explode like grapes on the tongue! The most exquisite meat lies all curled and gray inside that hard nut of a skull. It will take a few cracks on the floor to get to it.

You fucking bitch! You... monster. Get out of my body!

"It's me..." He whispers. "Your husband." His hand waves back and forth before her mouth. Blood and spit drool from it and she snaps her teeth like a rabid dog.

He leans back on his haunches, and if I could still feel my heart – oh I know the pain of it would kill me all over again. His face is utterly defeated, and so sad. Tears streak his cheeks.

Please, baby...go.

He leans in close.

Yes. Come closer!

I reach out as hard as I can, wrapping every fiber of my shadow-self around the dark force.

You will not have him!

The vibrancy of his life utterly blinds. The organic machinery churning inside him is deafening, the scent of his flesh and blood is a draught of madness.

You will not hurt him.

His tears fall onto cold, dead skin. Her eyes flit but her mouth is momentarily still as I clutch onto her hungry jaws with my fading strength. Negan kisses her – Lucille – me. His lips to her forehead.

And then mercifully, he draws away. I cannot hold on any longer.

Water drips from his nose and chin, his eyes swimming in an ocean of grief. He wipes his eyes like a child does, with his hands made into big, clumsy fists. "I'm...sorry."

He stands and turns toward the door.

Save yourself.

He moves the tv stand away, whimpering breaths rattling his throat.

Don't look back.

He walks out the door.

I know I will never see him again.

I never thought I'd be so relieved to be dead.

Some minutes later, the boy with the dreadlocks comes into my room. He is a young one, perhaps around the age Negan used to teach. There is a weariness around his eyes no child should bear.

The shell claws and reaches for him. This is my existence now, then? To ride in the withering depths of my former body...going mad with a parasite's hunger?

"I'm sorry, ma'am. I hope you'll be at peace now."

Maybe not. He raises a fire extinguisher and brings it down towards her head -

A burst of light.

The cage shatters and I fly free.

Light and dark collide, and sleep closes in fast.

I let go. I am unraveled and unbound, turning to particles – everywhere and yet-

Gone forever.

I come back like a black-out drunk. I remember the hospital...but now I'm elsewhere and the time is indeterminate, the space between a mystery.

I've heard it said that energy can never be destroyed. Merely transmuted. I've heard the oceans will exist long after the planet dies...until the sun finally destroys it all. Stars exploding and turning dead...

Stardust glitter that travels the eons.

I'm a part of it all. I know this.

I don't know... how long I will stay... awake.

All I know is...

I feel him.

His presence. He is holding me near.

He loves me.

He is safe.

Time and again, I wake... and he has always kept me close. Perhaps in that hospital room, a fragment of me traveled into him.

"I'll always miss you, Lucille," he whispers.

Perhaps in that hospital room, he left a fragment of himself behind, and he can't help but keep looking back for it.

I can do nothing but reply.

You don't need to look back, love.

I'm right here.

If you enjoyed or found this fic even the least bit entertaining...please leave a comment. I don't get much feedback and it's quite discouraging. Your comment would mean a lot to me, however brief. I also don't mind (constructive) criticism. :)