Disclaimer: I don't own The Walking Dead. Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.

Authors Note #1: For imorca because she tagged me on tumblr and literally just said: "Milton x Jesus, tho" and here we are because I am an entire trash can, apparently. Set in an AU where Milton escaped Woodsbury with Andrea in season three instead of staying, but lost Andrea before they could get to the prison and ended up on his own in the wild. Everything basically follows canon, but Milton is on his own until around the time when Team Family discovers Alexandria where in fix his comes across Jesus.

Disclaimer:Grief/loss/healing, depression, adult language, canon appropriate violence, blood and gore,

Scintilla

Chapter Two

He was only vaguely aware that at some point he'd passed the state-line out of Georgia. Maybe even two. Not this it mattered. He was following a trail of decay. Rooting for scraps that even other survivors had thrown away as the seasons changed and the air grew colder.

But it wasn't until the truck he'd managed to get started a few days back finally ran out of gas - coasting him as far as the sign that welcomed people to the city limits of Washington, DC - that the reality of it really hit home.

He was somewhere bordering Virginia and Maryland.

He'd criss-crossed through a state and then some.

Jesus.

He sat there for a while, beside a burned out visitor's center and a graveyard of abandoned cars. Listening to the putt-putt-puttering of the engine finally giving up the goat as a group of walkers, around half a dozen strong, started trickling in from all sides. Stumbling through the blowing trash as exhaustion rippled over him like a familiar skin.

He leaned back in the seat with a sigh. Fingers scritch-scratching idly through the stubble on his chin. Able to see the very tip-tops of distant sky-scrapers wavering distantly in the summer haze as he let the heat sink through his layers. Lulled by it as a handful of walkers milled in front of the blown out windows of the building beside him. Drawn by the noise as the walkers closest snarled loud into the exaggerated quiet.

He didn't look.

Worse, he didn't even move.

He just stared out the cracked windshield into the sky-line and tried to remember the last time he'd had a moment to just look. To think about something beyond the wreckage. Something other than how he didn't sleep more than three hours at a time anymore. How he just wanted everything to stop.

He closed his eyes. Feeling the sting of salt building behind them.

Expelling stale air into the dusty-closeness as the walkers shuffled closer….closer.

If he stayed like this it was blue skies for as far as he could see.


He waited until the last possible moment before grabbing his pack and slipping through a gap in the growing herd. Swinging it securely onto his back as he cut down those nearest with his machete. Wishing, more than anything, that someday he'd be brave enough to keep his eyes closed.

To let it be over.


Not long after, he was teaching himself how to collect rainwater in plastic bags tied to the low branches of a pine when a small group – a family of five – crossed through the green not twenty meters away.

He was belly down in the moss before he'd even thought the action through. Grabbing his pack and supplies as quietly as he could as he watched them look around. Pointing at a hollowed concave in the terrain almost directly opposite his camp as he hissed out a breath. Already resigned to leaving the plastic bags behind as he tried to figure out how to leave without being spotted.

But it was the low, warbling cry of a newborn that made him stiffen in place.

That made him revaluate and understand.

They weren't here for him.

In fact, while part of him didn't think it was possible, by all accounts they had bigger problems.

"We need to stop," one of them piped up, supporting an exhausted looking woman who was already half stumbling. Carrying a squalling bundle wrapped in a blanket as a newborn's hungry cries rushed out to fill the intervening space. "She shouldn't be out of bed, let alone running. Not after-"

He pushed his glasses further up his nose with his thumb and forefinger, automatically trying to piece their story together as he squinted through the foliage. Straining to hear what was being said as one of them passed the woman a canteen. She drained it with an assenting nod. Shaking the drops from the rim as his own parched throat ached in sympathy.

"You know we didn't have any choice," another replied, older, male. Perhaps the leader as his voice wafted up from a mess of overgrown, dirty blond hair with nothing but a bloody piece of pipe for a weapon. "We can stay here tonight, try our luck in town in the morning for supplies. But no noise, those walker kills were fresh. Whoever did that might still be around here somewhere and I don't want a confrontation when we just have the clothes on our backs, understand?"

He slipped away sometime in the interim. Leaving a grocery basket of what he could spare along with a note about a medical supply store with a child care section he hadn't had any need to raid on the outskirts of their camp before dawn filtered through.

He could have stayed.

They could have helped each other.

But after what had happened – after Phillip - he didn't trust people anymore.

He cared.

But he didn't trust.

He couldn't.


At one point he passed a sign advertising a new housing development.

Affluent.

Self-sustainable.

Alexandria.

He headed towards it without giving it much thought. Wondering how picked over it would be. Or if it had anything to offer at all considering it seemed to be a development that had still been in construction when things ended. Thinking it might be a decent place to hole up overnight at the very least as his worn soles scrape-scraped across the trash-strewn blacktop.

The wall, however, brought him up short.

He paused, wavering in place as the sound of laughter filtered through the reinforced metal slates. He inhaled, smelling- food. Real food. Cooked food as he blinked into the idealism of it all. It didn't seem real. He swallowed, then swallowed again when the smell of- god, was that pasta? – wafted through the stillness. Mouth thick with saliva as he wavered closer, tempted.

He chewed on the inside of his cheek.

He hadn't eaten in days.

He actually thought about it.

Standing just off to the side of those big metal gates.

He thought about walking up and knocking.

About staying.

Settling.

About trying to live again.

His fist tightened around the strap of his pack as he peered through a thin gap in the metal.

Absorbing it in fractions as he tried not to hyperventilate into the rusting edges.

There was a blonde woman talking to a brown haired kid, leggy, almost a teenager.

A boy with dirty blonde hair playing with a boat on a small inlet pond.

A tall man with construction gloves talking animatedly to an older man with greying hair.

Two men curled up together on their back porch, kissing long and slow.

He jerked himself away when a voice sounded, female and authorative.

"Spencer, have Aiden and Nicholas reported back yet?"

He thought about it.

About what it would be like to sleep in a real bed.

Eat real food and sleep behind strong walls.

But Woodsbury had left a bitterness in his mouth that refused to fade.

And ultimately, he didn't have it in him to try.

Not yet.

He kept walking.


Weeks passed like that.


A/N: Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – There is more to come, stay tuned!