MILTON

He knew he was in the right, trying to provide a better future for these people. He had tried to protect them from a source of evil they, in their blind faith, hadn't been able to see. But they would never know his good intentions because of how Phillip was presenting him. He was made to stand atop the wall, his bleeding shoulder causing him excruciating pain as Phillip manhandled him and shook him fiercely so that all of Woodbury stretched out below could see Milton for what he was.

Milton saw the faces of his neighbors looking up at him in disbelief, refusing to accept that Milton was the brains behind the operation, the cause of the many deaths the town had suffered. He could see that so many of them wanted to continue to deny it, but Phillip had solid evidence; the remaining wall guards, which consisted of some volunteers from the crowd, had seen Milton firing at the town while Merle and Andrea escaped. Milton had only given up when he ran out of ammunition and even then, he had to be tackled to the ground by no less than three of Woodbury's remaining soldiers.

Phillip labeled Milton as the worst sort of traitor as he stood bloodied and defeated, watching the faces swim in and out of view since he no longer had his glasses. As Phillip sentenced Milton to a public beating before he allowed any harsher punishment to fall, the crowd cleared a space on the ground below which Milton was led into and given a split second to decide how to defend himself since his wrists were bound together in front of him.

He only had time to see Benson and Crowley among his attacker before they were on him, kicking him everywhere they could reach while the rest of the town stood by and watched, but unlike when Merle and the others had beat Wade in a similar fashion after he assaulted Janine and Nina, there would be no one to fire a shot into the air to call them off. Milton couldn't even let out a scream, for the constant kicks to his chest and stomach knocked the wind out of him so that only a huff of air could come out of his throat. He knew he couldn't ask for respite or show Phillip that he was physically incapable of taking any more pain, but his panicked mind thought he might just die of fear before they were finished brutalizing him.

Miraculously, just when he felt that he would break and beg for the end, the beating stopped and several pairs of rough hands dragged him a short distance to what he could only pick out as the lab door through his battered eyes that had blood dripping into them. His captors weren't gentle in binding him down to the same table he had just been liberated from less than half an hour before, only this time it was chains and handcuffs that restrained him instead of something he could potentially break.

His parched throat reluctantly swallowed some of the blood coating its walls to substitute for water. It hurt to breathe and he was thinking that he may have a punctured lung or a rib stabbing one of his vital organs. One of his fingers had lost feeling, which told him that it was probably broken. Pain came at him from so many places that he didn't know which one was causing him the most discomfort. There was no part of him that he could focus on to keep his thoughts from straying down a dark path.

"Regrettin' it all yet?"

Phillip entered the room, rolling up his sleeves, and Milton knew what was coming, knew he couldn't take it. He strained against his bonds to show Phillip that he still had resilience, but Phillip only cracked a grin at him.

"If I haven't broken you yet, I will. You can believe that."

He took out an old-fashioned barber's shaving blade and freed Milton's left arm from the chains, pinning it in such an awkward angle that Milton feared that the elbow bone was going to snap.

"Now, hold still, or you'll mess me up."

Milton made the mistake of watching the blade make contact with his skin and then squirmed as fresh, piercing pain hit him. The blade carved into his skin like his flesh was the juicy interior of a pumpkin chosen as a jack-o-lantern. Tears squeezed out of Milton's ducts and he screamed as much as his abused chest could tolerate. Phillip's handiwork seemed to go on for hours, but the clock over the door only read five minutes.

Finally, Phillip lifted Milton's arm off of the table so that Milton could see the words carved into his skin that read: "traitor", "liar", and "backstabber" over and over from his shoulder to his wrist.

"Nobody's got sympathy for your kind, even in death," said Phillip as he forced Milton to look at his mutilated flesh. "After you die, you'll turn, and before someone puts you down, they'll know what kind've man you were, and they'll hack you to bits t'avenge the people you wronged."

"You wronged me first," said Milton with great effort, feeling blood dribble out of his mouth.

"I was just tryin' t'prepare you for the real world. You're the one who conspired against me with Merle—Merle—of all people."

"You let the biters in," spat Milton. "Murdered good people. You became power-hungry, paranoid that Merle would usurp you."

"Merle's not fit t'lead shit. Neither are you," Phillip snapped.

"I led the town against marauders who would've raped, pillaged, and killed while you were out playing savior."

Phillip contorted Milton's arm to breaking point once again and Milton cried out. With much fumbling, Phillip freed Milton and pulled him bodily off the operating table to a pole that stuck out of the ground a few feet from the table. He shoved Milton up against it and bound him tightly in place so that Milton couldn't move even if he had the strength to do so. Yanking Milton's head up by the hair, Phillip stared down at Milton with rage and hurt.

"I trusted you, Milton. You were the only friend I thought I had."

"Hurts, doesn't it?" asked Milton. "Knowing that the person you thought you could trust sold you out for personal gain."

"And for what? For Merle and Andrea, two people who never gave a fuck about you as long as they had each other. Some friends."

"He's not, she is. But they're not here, and that's the best I could do."

Apparently, striking out against Milton wasn't enough to appease Phillip's need for bloodlust, for he released Milton's head and barged out of the room, only to be replaced with the one person who could make the situation worse: Becky.

She shut the door behind her and stripped off her shirt so that a black sports bra was all she wore on her upper body. A fresh layer of lipstick had been applied to her face as well as a full beauty makeup as if she had been expecting this. She came forward, knelt down, and then straddled Milton's lap and tilted his face up to look at her.

"You're going to let me do what I want to you and after that, Crowley's going to come in and fuck you raw."

Just like he promised he would. This was it; this was what would push Milton over the edge and now he knew why Phillip had left before administering another blow.

"Don't—"

"You should have taken the offer the first two times I gave it to you because this time, it's going to hurt. But take it from me; your asshole stops bleeding soon enough."

Becky unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants, fighting to get at his flesh underneath.

Milton began banging the back of his head against the pole in the hopes that he would knock himself out or even kill himself before Becky could do anything to him until he felt a hand grab his hair in a much gentler grasp than he expected to make him stop. With stars dancing in front of him in the semi-darkness, he saw a ruddy, basset hound-like face loom toward him, which was definitely not Becky's. His would-be rapist lay on the floor some two feet away with her eyes glossed over in a fog and her throat oozing blood so that it filled the cracks in the pavement.

Tate pressed a finger to his lips and started picking at the lock on Milton's chains.

"Why're you here?" asked Milton in frustration. "I told you to run for it. If Phillip finds you—"

Tate scribbled a hasty note on his whiteboard that read: Knew you'd be back. Waited. Shut up.

"You can't make it with me in tow. I can't walk without help and I'll only slow you down. Please, Tate, don't make this any harder on me than it already is. Get out, find the prison, and tell Andrea…tell her—"

That what? That he was sorry she had been raped as if that would somehow make things better? That apologizing for failing to protect her from Phillip as he had set out to do from the beginning would absolve him of the pain he'd brought on her?

"Just go. They'll find Becky in here and know someone's helping me and if you're still here, they can narrow down their suspects really fast. Please, leave me. For your brother, you have to leave."

Tate spoke. It sounded like he had a massive amount of peanut butter in his mouth, but somehow, he managed to form the two words that made it nearly impossible for Milton to convince him to leave.

"You are."

Honor was not a sense that involved the body, and so Milton could feel it, experience it, without feeling the agony that came from his body. Only a short time ago, Tate was more of a stranger to him than anyone else in town, but he and Milton were very much the same and as the openly-loving and caring man he was, Tate had accepted Milton as his family, which was something Milton could never say he had properly been a part of.

He swallowed more blood before responding. "Then for me, please, find Andrea. Do that for me."

Tate shook his head.

"You have to. You're supposed to live through this. Go now, before they come back."

Tate did something rather strange from Milton's perspective and touched his forehead to Milton's bloody one. He gave Milton's hand a firm squeeze and then he was gone. Milton exhaled and set his head against the pole.

He heard someone come in, shouting about Becky and calling to the others, felt someone trip over his leg and try to get an answer out of him, but Milton's subconscious existed in the netherworld, thinking of where he was going rather than where he currently was. He almost couldn't feel the pain anymore.

A hood was pulled down over his face and then someone was hauling him to his feet and forcing him to try and walk, how long, he didn't know. Doors opened, people whispered, men shouted out commands, and through the hood, Milton thought he could feel the dying rays of sunlight touch him. Finally, he was brought to a halt while he heard the sound of a truck's tailgate being lowered and then his escorts lifted him by his belt loops and threw him in. The side of his face hit the metal interior and instantly, he shivered at the coolness of it.

"You just sit tight, now," said Phillip's voice from somewhere above him.

The truck started off and Milton tried to warm himself by tucking his knees to his chest, but the numerous cuts along his arm seemed to make it easier for the cold to seep into him. His teeth began to chatter and he had to exercise great control to not bite his tongue in half. His extremities were beginning to feel numb, which was the best he could hope for at this point. Perhaps he'd slowly drift off to sleep and then die while unconscious, even if he had to suffer through these last few hours.

But he knew Phillip wouldn't allow him such a luxury.