fandomismylife Hello again hope you are doing well. I'm glad you managed to catch up but don't be silly there is no pressure to ever! Yeah I'm loving writing Enid right now. I think my goal is for Oliver to have endgame love in general. I'm wondering if he maybe isn't even looking for one person in particular but just wants deep connections with people he cares about. I've got whole plans and senarios in my head but it's making them make sense on the page that I'm findindg challenging, so eventually when it comes up I'll see how he feels.
They arrived to the Commonwealth after another carriage ride. It was early and still dark out, so even as they entered the city they couldn't see much other than the huge ominous glowing light that hovered above the skyline. Oliver had forgotten about light pollution. He felt like he was on another planet, one without stars in its night-sky.
Streets became brighter and busier the deeper they went in, however they didn't get far enough to see much before they were escorted into a building with a big sign that read: Admissions Office.
Inside, Oliver and his friends sat in stiff chairs in a nicely-furnished room with a single box-TV set in front of them on a tall, school-like stand. A shoddily-made video with upbeat music and juttery-edited transition-shots began to play. A logo span into view. The same one that was on Oliver's inhaler. The Commonwealth's emblem, he realised. In the next shot, which appeared across the screen in edited cubes, a well-dressed man crossed the screen, his arms open, beaming a wide smile.
"Hello! I'm Lance Hornsby. Welcome to the Commonwealth."
He was crossing a busy street of pedestrians. It looked like a farmers market. Everyone was smiling too much in that bad-acting sort of way. The sound of children laughing was edited in.
"If you're watching this video, you've made it through the rigorous screening process of the Commonwealth community and have been approved to join us."
It was a twinkling transition this time, showing a group of people running happily through a green field, before cutting awkwardly back to Mr. Hornsby. "Under the leadership of Governor Pamela Milton, we are over fifty-thousand strong, with every person specially assigned and curated to the job best suited to their skill set, to keep this community thriving."
More cheesy shots of the community. Oliver was sure some of them were edited directly out of old films he'd seen on movie nights.
"This orientation will give you a taste of what we have in store for you. The future starts here: Community..." A little girl ran up to Lance in the shot and grinned toothily at the camera, his hand on her shoulder.
"...Care-giving..." A shot of him standing beside an elderly couple chatting on a bench.
"...Security..." Another shot of him standing before a squadron of armoured troopers, their batons shining.
"...That's The Commonwealth Way."
As the film ended, a young man switched off the TV and crouched around the stand to gather the cables from the outlets. He wheeled the stand out squeakily. Oliver wasn't sure how much time had passed, but through the building he could hear people chatting in the corridors now, and more distantly, clopping horse hooves outside in the streets.
"Pamela Milton?" Yumiko said, eyebrows up. "Wow."
Oliver rubbed his mouth awkwardly. Princess was trying to hold in a laugh. Quan sucked his teeth, unsettled by the video. Another man came in and handed the six of them an envelope each which enclosed a letter. Eugene opened his first.
"Eugene Porter," he read. "Work Detail, high-school teaching pool. Boarding Detail, Bungalow 13, Sector 1."
Princess, to Oliver's surprise, pulled her old two dollar bill from her envelope. "Yes! Okay. This is a good sign."
Like everyone else, Oliver opened his letter and read it:
'Oliver de Luca
Work Detail: Landscaping
Boarding Detail: Whitmore Motel, Room 6b
Case supervisor: Mrs. Janice Atwood.'
Oliver saw Eugene raise his letter and wave to the Commonwealther in the room, who was now sitting at a desk going through paperwork. "Pardon my gazing of a gift horse in the gullet," Eugene said to him, "but what in the heck are these details meant to convey?"
"Job assignments and housing," the guy said, bored.
"Permanent residency here was not our intent."
The guy shrugged. "If you have a problem with it, take it up with your case supervisor." He went on with his paperwork without looking up at all.
"Wait," Princess said, "what jobs did you guys get?"
"I got security detail," Quan said, and scoffed. "They've got another thing comin' if they think I'll work as a cop."
"It won't matter," Eugene cut in. "We're not here to work. We're here to get help."
"Totally," Princess said. "I was just curious 'cause they gave me retail clerk. Made me wonder if they have a mall here, 'cause that'd be frickin' amazing. I used to love working in the mall."
"They put me in animal control," Ezekiel said. "I imagine all of these are based on jobs from before the fall." He glanced to Oliver and Quan. "And I imagine you two got put on the security detail because you weren't old enough to have had careers before."
"I was put on landscaping, actually," Oliver said. "Guess they don't hire amputees for their military."
"I'd take it." Quan extended his hand. "Mind chopping this thing off so I can get some of that disability immunity?"
Oliver tutted and slapped Quan's hand down, but couldn't help agreeing.
"Yeah, mine isn't really an assignment," Yumiko said.
Eugene stepped over to read her letter. "Looks like an invitation."
"Someone wants to meet and talk about, and I quote, 'opportunities within our great community.'"
"Ooh!" Princess cooed. "Yumiko's fancy! Must be the accent."
"We need to plot a course correction ASAP before these entanglements usurp our Plan A," Eugene said. "I think a multi-pronged strategy would be in order."
"Agreed," Ezekiel said. "I'll see what my case supervisor can do."
"Um, I'm gonna go with Ezekiel. I wanna see more of this place." Princess flicked her bill with a snap. "And I'm feeling lucky..."
"I'm supposed to meet up with Stephanie," Eugene said. "I'll get the lay of the land and the proverbial skinny."
"I can help you look for your brother?" Quan said to Yumiko. She nodded.
"Maybe whoever gave you that can help," Ezekiel said, motioning to Yumiko's letter. He and Princess headed off. Oliver considered going with them, but in all honesty he was feeling too overwhelmed to face the rest of the Commonwealth just yet. The cheesy video guy's words, 'Fifty-thousand strong' were ringing threateningly in his head, so he waved and watched the rest of them leave.
Yumiko stood up and stepped over to the man sitting at the desk.
"Excuse me..."
"Your case supervisor can answer all your questions."
"Yeah, I don't seem to have one of those. Just this letter from the Office of State Affairs."
He perked up, taking the letter from her hastily. "Yes, ma'am..." he said, impressed all of a sudden at what he was reading. He sat up straighter, handing the letter back. "How can I help?"
Oliver and Quan gave each other unsettled looks.
"Well, during processing, I was inquiring about a family member living here, but I haven't heard anything since."
He began rooting through his desk. "I'd be happy to help you with that."
A few hours later, they were following written directions to a bakery on Sixth Street. The streets were lively and the culture-shock hit Oliver viscerally. He couldn't help but notice that some of the people around did a few double-takes at his amputation. He avoided looking at anyone.
Soon they arrived to the bakery. It was beautiful, with painted cherry red window frames and counters, and a sign in the glass over the door reading 'Elodie's Treats – Fresh Baked'. Through the windows they could see shelves on the walls stocked with freshly-baked cakes topped with colourful decorations and icing. The bell over the door jingled as the three of them stepped inside. An old, sweet song was playing from a stereo somewhere.
"I'll be right with you," a voice called from the back.
They waited. The smell was overwhelming and beautiful. Oliver gawked at an array of rainbow cupcakes on a shelf. Quan wandered over to a cake on the wall with fresh fruit for decorations. Yumiko's hands were shaking so she stuffed them in her pockets. They all turned to face the till counter when the man in back appeared, short and stout and young, pulling off a pair of oven gloves.
"Hi, how you doing?" He smiled warmly. "Sorry for the wait. I was just getting a fresh batch of doughnuts out of the oven. What can I do for you?"
"I… I'm actually looking for someone," Yumiko stuttered.
From another back-door, a second man appeared. He was older, carrying a tall white cake with icing-flowers in his hands. Oliver knew instantly that this was Yumiko's brother Tomi and not because of the name tag attached to his yellow and white striped apron but because he and Yumiko looked so alike.
"Cake's frosted and ready, boss," he said to the younger baker, his warm, low, British accent identical to Yumiko's. "Should I run it over to..." He turned to the others. His eyes widened. The cake fell from his hands and splattered across the floor.
Yumiko drew in a steep breath. "Hi, Tomi..."
Tomi's boss gave him the rest of the afternoon off. While Yumiko and Tomi went to a nearby cafe to catch up, Oliver and Quan chose to give them some space. They wandered for a while through the town. Oliver was trying to grow more accustom to the sheer amount of people. The Commonwealth had a real tattoo parlour, with its own piercing studio, and a real barber shop, and a grocery store on the next street. They saw restaurants, laundromats, a hospital, and even found a little optometrist clinic. In the distance, Quan swore he saw the tall lights of some kind of stadium through the gaps between buildings.
"What should we do first?" Quan asked. "While we wait for the twins."
Oliver looked around nervously. They'd walked a long way and still they hadn't reached a wall. The Commonwealth was too big. He hadn't come across any of their friends once either, even though they must've passed three or four hundred people just in these past several blocks.
Quan touched Oliver's elbow and gave him a steadying look.
"Let's go for a drink," he said, like he knew it was exactly what Oliver needed.
"Can we do that?" Oliver asked.
"Let's go find out..."
Making sure they knew their way back to the bakery, they went in search of a bar and found one a few blocks away. It had a row of tall windows instead of a wall, a glass door, and a small, busy smoking area outside with seats and small tables. Through the windows, Oliver saw a narrow seating area inside filled with people sitting at various tables, chatting and laughing and drinking. There was a bar at the back decorated with sparkling glasses, and countless, colourful, bottles of alcohol.
Quan slapped Oliver's chest excitedly. He went in confidently, but tripped on the step, causing Oliver to pull him upright by his arm before Quan hit the floor. A few people turned their heads, double taking at the sight of them. Oliver hid his arm in his coat pocket.
Awkwardly, they both crossed the sticky wooden floor and took seats on two free stools at the bar. It was loud, with the music and the customer-chatter and the occasional scrape of a chair. Too loud for a world where noise was dangerous.
Quan surveyed the colourful liquor bottles along the back bar surface; a murky mirror behind it meant Oliver could see the awed look on his face through it. Finally Quan decided to order two shots of moonshine — to test his and Papa Bear's competition, Oliver guessed amusedly.
The barman was a pot-bellied man with a receded grey afro and small, round spectacles, who gave them both a measuring, unfamiliar glance, before nodding his head and pouring two shot glasses with clear liquid from a corked clay jug. He set them on the counter but when Oliver and Quan reached for them, the barman stopped them and extended his palm instead.
Oliver and Quan stared, confused.
"You need to pay for those..."
"Oh," Oliver said, "we... err… don't have anything to pay with..."
The barman frowned, tutting.
"Is there anything we can drink that won't need money?" Quan asked, like the word felt strange in his mouth.
"Son, the point of selling things is that they got to cost money."
Oliver and Quan were dumbfounded. How were they expected to eat or drink anything if they didn't have anything to pay for it with? Were they going to have to start paying for a place to stay, too?
The barman sighed and leaned on the counter in front of them. "You boys look new here. And I've already poured these out, so here..." He slid the two shot glasses across the counter to them. "Just make sure that the next time you come in here you bring some actual patronage, alright?"
"Oh, no, we're not staying—"
Quan kicked him under the bar stools. "We will, sir, thank you," he said to the barman, who nodded sternly and turned to serve another customer. Quan looked at Oliver.
"Weird."
"Yeah. Is money really that big of a deal?"
"Like trading berries and herbs for moonshine. Only quicker, and up front, I guess."
They clinked their little glasses, tapped them on the table —which was something Quan had taught Oliver back home— and drank the shots in one gulp each.
"Ohh..." Quan grimaced. "Holy fuck."
Oliver shut his eyes, silently savouring the sharp, sweet flavour in his mouth, and in the next moment the shine became so strong that he had to clutch his mouth and ride out the sting until it passed. "Wow. That..."
"Does damage," Quan said, shaking his head. "Jesus. What am I gonna tell Papa Bear?"
Oliver patted Quan's back consolingly.
For a while they sat and looked around at everything. Oliver wiped his stubbly lip. They needed to shave. Most of the men around here looked to have regular grooming schedules. There wasn't a five o'clock shadow in sight. Even the men with facial hair looked neatly groomed. It was strange to watch them all, and it was strange how normal this all seemed to them; paying to drink and sit and talk to their friends. Was this normal before, too?
Oliver felt like he was living in a page from one of his books. It was odd to realise they were mimicking real life for people once though, instead of its own Before genre that everyone saw it as now. Come to think of it, Oliver had never read a book set in a world like the one he lived in. He wondered if the Commonwealth had any new authors in its library. He liked the idea of reading a fictional story set in the real world as it was; an adventure about someone on the road searching for old treasure while dodging hordes, or a ghost story about someone who could see the spirits of walkers before they Turned and was trying to help them with unfinished business. He thought of Nell. She would've made a great author...
At some point a door behind the bar squeaked open.
Oliver turned to look—
He turned to look and in that moment—
In that very moment—
Noah stepped out from the backroom.
Oliver almost fell off his stool. He had to lean over the counter to make sure he wasn't seeing things. But it was Noah, alive and well, with his hands full of so many glasses that they were stacked taller than his head, balanced on top of each other and more dangling down from his fingers from their handles. He didn't see Oliver from behind them all, but instead turned his back to him to hang the glasses up one at a time precariously on their hooks over the bar. He took his time as not to drop any.
Oliver was too stunned to call out. He just took in the sight of him.
Noah was wearing a turquoise durag around his head, a stained dishwasher's apron around his waist under a pale tunic, and had, at some point in the years since Oliver had last seen him, grown a neat, thin moustache above his top lip.
Perhaps it was the whites of Oliver's eyes, bulging out of his head, that finally caught Noah's attention, or Quan's arm, reaching up to point at a particularly huge jar of liquor on a high-up shelf labelled 'Firewater-Mulekick!', but whatever it was, Noah glanced through the mirror behind the bar at them just as he finished hanging up his last glass.
His and Oliver's eyes met.
Instantly, the concentration lines between Noah's eyebrows broke apart and his mouth fell slack. He twisted around, smacking his forehead with his palm.
"What?!" he exclaimed.
Oliver choked on his own breath. He laughed, only it sounded like a yelp.
"WHAT?!" Noah repeated himself, louder this time, already stumbling around the bar counter. "WHAAAAT!?"
Oliver clambered off his stool, barely managing to catch Noah as he leaped into Oliver's hug. They both might've been shouting their heads off for several minutes for all Oliver knew. Nobody in the bar was paying them much attention, though, as it was apparently a place too busy and too social for anyone to question why anybody was cheering and embracing each other.
Finally pulling apart, Oliver and Noah stumbled over each others questions. How are you? How did you get here? How long have you been here? It was difficult to get whole sentences out, and when Oliver tried, Noah was in the middle of asking another question, or trying to answer the last, ending up with them not really saying anything at all and just bursting into laughter over the ridiculousness of it all. They were still gripping each other's shoulders. They hugged again, tightly and roughly. It was mad to see him, this much more grown and this much more hairy.
"I thought you were dead!" Oliver said, laughing it. "You and Heath never made it home. Is he here with you, too? This is so crazy."
Noah laughed nervously. "It's a long story, dude."
"God, man, tell me everything..."
Noah gave a relenting cock of his head. "I… well… I haven't seen Heath since... Well, we lost Tara on a bridge... and then a whole bunch of crazy shit happened… I don't even know how to start."
"Yeah," Oliver said, understanding that and not understanding it at all. His heart ached. "Tara — she told us, back when... God... she..."
"Shit, man. I thought she was a goner. She fell a long way off that bridge. Is she here, too? Are the others?"
"I, uh..." Oliver swallowed. "No, she… Last year… There were these people… Whisperers… they — I saw the whole thing… I couldn't save her. I... couldn't save any of them..."
It was still so fresh — the barn, the screaming, the blood.
Noah winced, like he understood. He squeezed Oliver's shoulders. "Hey, man. A lot's happened. Here, sit. You're with him, right?" he added to Quan, who, until that point, Oliver had forgotten was still sitting there, watching their reunion.
Quan and Noah shook hands, awkwardly, because Quan seemed much less used to shaking hands with people than Noah was. Quan recovered quickly: "You know each other then? Man, it's a smaller world than we thought, huh."
"True that!" Noah said, his laughter catching. He leaned over the counter and nodded to the barman. "Hey, Sigmund, could you get these two a round?"
"I don't know, Monroe, they gonna pay for it this time?"
"Monroe," Oliver murmured to himself. His memory was certainly rusty but he could've sworn Noah's surname was Burton. Where did Monroe come from? Denise and Reg came to mind first...
"It's on me, alright?" Noah waved his hands dismissively. "Come on..."
"Fine," Sigmund said, "but get back to work. These glasses won't wash themselves and you've already had your break. I don't care if it's the queen of Sheba who comes through that door next to see you."
Noah tutted. "Yeah, yeah, one more minute."
Sigmund tutted, but seemed used to Noah's disobedience, however begrudgingly, because he poured two pints of something dark brown and frothy. Noah set a few coins from his pocket on the counter. Sigmund rolled his eyes, took the money, and got on with serving another customer. Oliver thanked him, even though Sigmund ignored him, then Oliver thanked Noah, too.
"Don't mention it."
Oliver blinked at him, overwhelmed.
"Cheers," Quan said, sliding his and Oliver's pint glasses closer to them.
Oliver took his. The glass was cold and wet in his palm. He and Quan drank back several gulps before clunking their drinks down on the bar-top again. Oliver's head span. Not from the alcohol. He had to take a small peek at Noah before looking at him properly, just to be sure he was really there.
Quan cleared his throat. Oliver jumped.
Quickly, he said, "Quan, this is N—"
"Percy," Noah said. "Percy Monroe."
Oliver shut his mouth tightly. Noah gave him a quick but very pointed nod. Oliver looked at Quan, who raised his eyebrows.
"Percy," Oliver repeated slowly. "This is Quan."
Quan grinned and gave a smooth upward nod. "Nice to meet you, Percy. Hey, I saw how many drinking glasses you were balancing in one hand just now. Impressive."
"Eh, wasn't even trying… I can do more."
Quan snickered. "You make the drinks here?"
"No, we just pour 'em. We get the liqueur delivered from the factories all around town."
"Factories," Quan said airily.
"You a brewer?"
Quan squinted. "I thought I was..."
Noah seemed to find Quan's identity crisis funny. He set a hand on Oliver's shoulder and shook it gently. It must've been because Oliver was being too quiet and Noah remembered, even after all this time, that it was a sign that he was privately losing his mind.
"You doin' okay?" he asked him.
Oliver shook his head, then cringed and nodded. "I'm fine. Yes. Thank you. This is good beer. Interesting colour. Yes. Good. Hm." His voice had been getting higher. He wasn't sure he was breathing properly so he took his new inhaler for good measure.
Noah laughed nervously, shaking his shoulder again. "Take it easy, man."
Behind the bar, Sigmund cleared his throat loudly. Noah rolled his eyes, flipped his tea towel from one shoulder over to the other, then cast his boss an exasperated 'I'm in the middle of something!' look. Sigmund shook his head, grumbling something to himself as he poured someone a whisky.
"I have to get back to it," Noah said to Oliver and Quan. "Enjoy your drinks. My shift finishes in a few hours, at six. Could you wait? Or I could meet you somewhere, to catch up — explain?"
Oliver nodded. "I'll be here..."
Noah fist bumped him before returning to the backroom. Oliver drank for several seconds until he smacked his half-drunk glass down on the bar, his eyes watering from the hop.
"You sure you're alright?" Quan asked. "You're acting..."
"I know." Oliver nodded. "This is a lot. I'm having a panic attack. It'll pass."
Quan waited awkwardly. Oliver stared at the counter, clutching his chest and trying to breathe. Eventually, Quan must've gotten tired of their silence because he broke it.
"How do you know Nuh-Percy then?"
Oliver looked at him. Quan grinned mischievously, but gave a dismissing hand gesture to let Oliver know he wasn't going to push that joke too hard.
Oliver had to think backwards. It was difficult, dredging up this part of his past. The year or so of his life spent with Noah, from his arrival at Gabriel's church until his departure at the Satellite station, was so long ago now, and such a long, messy, tandem of memories — some were good, some were even utterly amazing, but a lot was bad and traumatic, too. He explained as best he could, about how Noah —or rather Percy— was an escaped slave from Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, run by a corrupt, ex-officer called Dawn, and how Noah helped Oliver's group after Carol and Beth were enslaved by Dawn, too, resulting in the trade to get them back, and Beth's murder, and Oliver shot in the mess of it — to which, at its mention, Quan pointed to the place on Oliver's chest that he remembered spotting the scar.
He told Quan about them being on the road for a while after he'd recovered, and about them finding Noah's home in Shirewilt, and how a group who called themselves 'Wolves' had slaughtered Noah's entire family while he was enslaved, and how, after that, while on the road with nowhere to go, they all almost died from dehydration by the time Aaron and Eric found them and took them to Alexandria.
Oliver told Quan about how he, Noah, and Carl finally got the chance to be kids again together, with the other kids at Alexandria, where Noah started training with Reg as an architect, as well as his main job as a runner with Glenn, Tara, and eventually Oliver, too. Oliver told Quan about the day they, Eugene, Aiden, and Nicholas had gone looking for the micro-inverters for Alexandria's solar panels, how Aiden didn't make it out and the rest of them barely managed to, and how Oliver was bit, and how Noah was the one who had chopped off his hand to save him from Turning.
He told Quan about months after that, when the Wolves found them, and how they murdered one of their best friends, Nell, who Noah had loved deeply, and how they'd already wiped out the rest of his family... so Noah destroyed them.
"The morning after we first hit the Saviors, at the Satellite Station," Oliver explained, tapping his cold pint glass with his fingernails, "Tara, Heath, and Noah—"
"You mean Percy," Quan reminded, and winked.
"Right, yeah, err… Percy… the three of them left on a run, to find medicine for Alexandria and Hilltop. Tara walked back a few weeks later, alone. But Percy and Heath? Never saw them again."
Quan stared at him. "Until today."
"Yeah," Oliver agreed, sipping. He could feel the buzz from the alcohol easing his anxiety, turning it to just a dull ache at the back of his skull.
"And you never found any clues as to what happened to him and Heath?"
"Tara found a note on a bridge. It just read 'PPP'," Oliver recalled, thinking hard. "That was it... Wait, no, Daryl once mentioned that he found their RV, too. Said he found it with its engine still running... way off route... two years after they... disappeared — actually, he found it the…" His eyes widened. "...the same day the bridge blew up… and Rick..."
He trailed off, lost in the lack of sense it made. The same lack of sense that meant everyone had long dismissed it as a Red Herring, until now.
Quan set his glass down, looking very worried. "Whoa, Oliver, you're seriously bugging out now..."
Oliver felt his eye twitching. He got up suddenly, his stool scraping. Damn Sigmund and damn Noah's shift. Oliver needed answers now. But that was when Yumiko's voice called out to him.
"Oliver! Quan! Thank God I found you. I knew you'd come to a bar!" Tomi was with her. They sat at the bar beside Oliver and Quan. "Good idea coming here, guys. Tomi, what do you want to drink?"
Tomi ordered two ales for himself and Yumiko, paying with notes he had in his wallet. Yumiko caught the original picture of herself in it. He shut the wallet quickly when he noticed. Yumiko's smile faded. She sipped her pint, sighing. Tomi drank his ale, frowning. Oliver couldn't help but sense the awkwardness between them.
"Where're the others?" Quan asked.
"Haven't found them yet," Yumiko said, twisting her nose to belch. "Excuse me... They must still be looking for their case supervisors."
"Good luck to them," Tomi said. "An appointment can take months."
Their mouths fell open in horror. Months? They might as well be here forever at this rate.
"I better go and help them then," Yumiko said, "maybe I can get someone to speed things up for us."
"I'm sure you can," Tomi said tightly.
Yumiko frowned. She finished her drink quickly, then got up to leave.
"What do you think?" Quan asked Oliver, getting up, too. "Come with or stay and wait for your friend?"
"Your friend?" Yumiko asked, frowning.
Oliver didn't have the chance to answer. He saw, through the bar's window, Mercer and several troopers marching across the street towards the building. Oliver pointed. Yumiko turned around. As Mercer entered the building, his small group of troopers waited on guard outside. The bar fell silent as he crossed the room. Even the music was turned off with the abrupt scratch of a record. A few glasses clunked in their rush to be set down. People swivelled in their seats to face away from the troopers.
Yumiko, Oliver, and Quan stood up to face Mercer, ready for anything. Tomi slunk away on his stool and buried his nose in his pint.
Sigmund bustled nervously behind the counter. "Officer Mercer! Erm, can I... get you anything?"
Mercer didn't look away from Yumiko as he said, "No. Resume your duties." Sigmund hovered awkwardly, then busied himself wiping down the sink at the far end of the bar. "Ms. Okumura," Mercer said sternly. "You need to come with me now."
"What for?" Yumiko demanded.
"Your friends are under arrest. They've appointed you as their attorney."
"Excuse me?! What happened? Where are they?"
"They're awaiting trial. Come with me."
Yumiko glanced nervously at Oliver and Quan, then followed Mercer towards the exit, bringing Tomi with her, even with his hesitation. Quan went, too.
"I have to stay here," Oliver called out.
Mercer turned and grimaced. "That's up to you. I'm only here for her."
"Oliver. Come on. I'm not leaving without you," Yumiko said.
Mercer sighed tiredly.
"I'm meeting someone in..." Oliver checked his watch. "...fifteen minutes."
Yumiko widened her eyes, astounded.
"I'm sorry," Oliver said, caught between a rock and a hard place. He was scared that if he left, he would never be able to find Noah again. "I will come and find you as soon as I can. I swear it."
Mercer watched him, then glanced to Yumiko. His lip twitched. He flicked his wrist and instantly a trooper who had been waiting outside entered the building and came to the bar. Oliver expected to be dragged out, but the trooper simply stood by his stool.
"Officer Harris will wait with you until your… 'friend'… arrives," Mercer said, "then she'll escort you both to the Commonwealth Jail. You'll find us there."
Oliver nodded reluctantly. Mercer left without another word. Yumiko and Quan hesitated, but eventually followed him out with Tomi. Oliver waved to reassure them, and soon they were gone, leaving just Oliver and the trooper by the bar.
Slowly, the music and casual chatter returned. The bar felt tense now, though. The customers were much quieter and more subdued, and kept stealing uneasy glances at the trooper, who went on standing beside Oliver like a statue, not even turning her head or shifting her feet or lowering her baton. At least the inner city troopers didn't carry machine guns.
"I can... meet you outside, when my friend gets here... if you'd like?" Oliver offered her.
"Negative," the trooper said. "Orders were to wait here with you."
Oliver blew out through his cheeks, twisted in his stool, and drank the last few dregs of his pint. The wait was long and awkward. Everyone avoided looking Oliver in the eye, and even kept their distance, which was awkward in such a cramped, small place. When people came in and saw the trooper, most left immediately. Some people even began to leave without finishing their drinks.
It was a relief when Noah finally came out from the back-room, steam billowing after him from a whirring dishwasher inside. With his apron hanging over his shoulder, he casually untied his durag to reveal neat box-braids tied back into a small bun behind his head. On his shoulder he had a backpack, which he stuffed his durag and apron inside of in exchange for a thin scarf that he hung loosely around his neck.
He hesitated when he saw the trooper, and exchanged a worried glance with Oliver. Oliver stood up, waving awkwardly. Noah approached around the bar, pulling down the sleeves of his tunic.
He pointed at Oliver's leg. "You limp?"
Oliver hadn't noticed it. He'd been walking around more than usual in the last twenty-four hours. He shrugged. "Broke it, like... eight years ago. It's fine."
"How?" Noah asked, taking another tiny glance at the trooper, who hadn't yet moved a muscle.
Oliver shrugged again. "Somebody tried to kill me."
"Sheesh," Noah said. "I'd hate to see how they wound up."
Oliver made an awkward face, considering he had, indeed, killed the boy who had broken his leg. The image of it was still clear — his knife lodged through the boy's throat, blood gushing, and that scared, disbelieving look in his eyes as he died. He was the fifth person Oliver had ever killed, back in the days when he still kept count.
Again, Noah glanced at the trooper, this time pointing. "What's with the officer? I heard Mercer came in. Something to do with you?"
"I'm not sure yet. I wanted to wait for you. She's taking me somewhere. Will you come?"
Noah hesitated.
"Percy…" Oliver said, desperate, "we... need to talk."
"Yeah," Noah said, "we do."
They both glanced at the trooper this time, then gave each other a nod that very clearly meant not here. Sensing they were ready, the trooper reanimated, turning from stone to flesh again, and without a word, led the way through the bar.
Notes
Bet you thought I FORGOT about Mr. Elevator Survivor! Well, I didn't! Noah (het-hem, Percy) is BACK.
Thanks to VerbalWalker for coming up with Noah's alias, Percy Monroe: 'Percy' after the old man back at Grady (who we both head-cannon was close to Noah and Beth, considering he faked a heart attack to help them escape) and 'Monroe' after Reg Monroe, Noah's former mentor. (Noah's head-cannon surname, Burton, is a reference to the character name they used for his casting call for the show – yes, I know it's weird that I know that, leave me be). Why he uses a fake name will be revealed soon!
Lastly, I know most Commonwealth folk like Mercer but I wanted to show how the lower class folks typically find the police threatening in general. ACAB. Sorry Rosita and Daryl lol
Next one is in Judith's POV!
As always,
Happy reading.