Chapter Text
When he comes across the rest stop — fashioned in the style of a log cabin, of course — Paul sighs in relief, even though the sky is already greying with the first inklings of dawn. He’s still getting used to hunting monsters that have functioning brains rather than the slow-moving dead, or the mostly not very bright humans constantly trying to invade Hilltop. He parked his own car back there, when the vamps took that narrow country lane into the woods, and followed on foot to avoid being spotted. Once he knew where their nest was, he planned to get back to the car and wait until daylight to return and kill the seven vamps he’d counted. But then another car containing two more vamps and, more importantly, two terrified teenage girls, had pulled up. He’d had no choice but to move in right then, sneaking up and killing the two vamps. Which, as he should have predicted but didn’t because of his own history, the two teenagers had run screaming from the man who had just decapitated their two captors.
It was hard to remember sometimes that in this world most people didn’t know monsters walked among humans. He’d tracked the girls — no need for the tricks Daryl taught him with the noise they made — until they made it to a road and screamed down a minivan driven by a woman looking every inch the soccer mom, who thankfully stopped and fussed over them until they were moderately calm. Paul can only hope that if they happened to go directly to the police, they will be too late to storm the abandoned cabin before he can dispatch the rest of the vamps.
He avails himself of the facilities and, catching sight of his blood-spattered face in the filthy mirror, he cleans the blood from his face and, as best he can, from his coat, and drinks. Safe running water at every tap still feels like a bit of a miracle even after the nearly two years he’s spent here. As he closes the tap, he resolutely also closes the door on memories of that other world. According to the Winchesters, it’s gone. Burned in that temper tantrum God had in which he broke all his toys like an angry toddler. The idea of a God who would purposefully create what Dean (and apparently everyone else in this world) calls the “zombie apocalypse” for his own entertainment is too much for the formerly agnostic Paul. He can’t wrap his mind around the existence of such a being, much less call it Chuck as other hunters do. He also has trouble calling himself a hunter, but that’s a whole other issue. He has the skills — perfected during the zombie apocalypse — to fight monsters, so he does. It’s not like he has anything better to do.
Slightly warmed by the time spent inside, he’s starting to mentally prepare for the trudge back to the cabin now that the sun is up when he hears a rumble approaching. A vehicle of some sort. Big, by the sound of it. He moves to the doorway and watches as the driver steps off the big pickup truck — spotlessly light grey despite the sate of the roads around here — puts the keys in his left jean pocket and comes his way. The silhouette screams “hunter”, with the bulk of several layers of mostly plaid and, now that he can see the man better, the cropped hair and stubble that may as well be a short beard. The idea of approaching this other hunter honestly to offer to team up doesn’t even cross his mind. Paul has always preferred to work alone, and of the hunters he’s met the majority dislike him on sight, so he’s stopped trying to be friendly. He’s always been very strong at self-preservation. Instead, he runs out of the restroom and barrels right into the stranger, knocking the breath from his lungs and lifting his keys out of his pocket in the process.
“Watch it,” the stranger growls with the voice of an habitual smoker, strong hands grabbing Paul’s arms and shoving him away.
The voice is familiar in a distant way, so Paul pays more attention to the hand wrapping around the machete at the man’s side than the vague sense of unease the voice provokes. Paul is sliding into his unthreatening hipster persona, loosening his limbs and experiencing the weird déjà vu that hits him every time he does this now, the situation threatening to dissolve like mist and leave him at that fuel station meeting Rick and Daryl for the first time.
“I’m sorry,” Paul says quickly, infusing fear into his voice, making his eyes bigger, “I’m sorry, I’m —“
He’s going to talk about the monsters in the woods — there’s still time to play this differently if the man admits to being a hunter — when his brain finally registers the man who’s in front of him. Sure, the silhouette is all wrong, with the bulky layers and the fact that he’s actually standing straight and not leaning crazily — plus the man isn’t smiling — but he looks too much like Negan for it to be a coincidence. Paul can’t remember ever fainting in his life — he has the vague memory of a walker moving unexpectedly and himself losing his footing and falling, but that mustn’t have been fainting because he can’t remember anyone mocking him later as his friends would have — but as Negan frowns at him he feels the ground rushing up to meet him as he crumples.
Negan is fast, catching him before he hits the ground, and there’s no flicker of recognition in his face. There should be, shouldn’t there? Paul may not have been as important as Rick in Negan’s mind but he was crucial to winning the Saviors war. He even fought Negan once, one on one, and nearly killed the bastard. Yet Negan doesn’t smile that fucking infuriating smile when Paul is helpless in his arms, doesn’t make a homophobic joke, but lowers him to the ground almost gently.
“Hey, kid,” Negan says, shaking him a little.
The only thought Paul has before reality blinks out of existence is that it’s unfair God allowed only two people to cross over to this world: Jesus and the devil.