Delta Dawn.
Delta, noun :
A piece of land shaped like a triangle that is formed when a river splits into smaller rivers before it flows into an ocean.
Chapter.3: River of adversities pt.1.
David walks through the heart of Richmond in silence, his shoulders back, eyes frequently checking his surroundings; stepping around the laughing children playing in the streets and dodging his soldiers on patrol. Tucked beneath his arm he carries sheaf's of papers and thinly covered notebooks, sign out sheets and inventory records covering everything from rations to weapons and all that fell between. His jaw is set tight and his eyes fixed firmly ahead as he continues to move with purpose toward one of the perimeter fences where a team of survivors were busy, seeing to the repair of a breach in their walls after one of the children had happened upon a walker struggling to drag it's mangled form inside the settlement.
With the immediate threat of the undead dealt with, with minor incident, David's tactical mind had then turned itself from combat to trying to figure out just how the breach had occurred. It had quickly snowballed from a simple check of their perimeters -of which two other potential compromises had been discovered, fencing panels not secured or actively sabotaged- to hushed rumours that circulated through the civilians before the whispers and stories began to reach him through his security teams. All of which had ultimately led him to where he found himself now, suspicious as hell and double-checking everything he could find, and now hunting down his brother to share his findings.
"Hold it steady now, Gabe." Javier's words reach David's ears muffled and strained, but the cadence that they dance in is that of good humour. "Atta boy. Now, don't let it slip."
The rhythmic blows, marking each and every hammer strike, bounce through the air as David rounds the final corner. Just ahead he spots both his brother and his son hard at work. The former is on his knees as latter stands hunkered down, bracing a length of wood against a weakened join in the fencing with his shoulders as best he could but still David can see how the positioning slips lower between each of the jarring blows.
"You need a hand, mijo?"
Both Gabe and Javier glance back behind them at the man. Delight dances in the son's eyes just as warm affection softens the brother's as both take in the sight of the last member of the Garcia family striding toward them.
"Nah, I got this, Dad." Gabe fairly swells with pride, excited to show his enthusiasm to his father, although his face falters when he feels the wood suddenly twist in his fingers in protest of the newest strike. His grin falls into a frown as he fumbles with the stubborn board, then he sighs before reluctantly retracting his earlier statement. "Actually, yeah. A hand would be great. Thanks."
Dropping the papers and notebooks beside his brother, David takes up his position on the other side of the wood, bracing it as his son does the same, the teenaged boy's face is still home to an expression of dejection. "There's no shame in asking for help, Gabriel." He speaks softly, his voice low and warm and full of affection as his eyes dart from his son to his brother and then back again. "It takes a big man to admit when his own abilities are not enough. You and your uncle taught me that."
The smile that tugs itself onto Gabe's lips breathes a delighted light into the boys face as he fairly preens himself at his father's compliment while Javier simply chuckles around the nails clenched between his teeth. He plucks one from his smirking lips and lines it up, hammer raised as he side-eyes his older brother. "Don't you be going soft on us, brother. We still need your hard-ass cracking the whip around here at times."
"Not going soft, Javi." David returns his brother's smirk with one of his own, the little rise to the corner of his mouth crinkles his cheek below his dark eyes. "Just grateful to be given a second chance to do things right by people. It's not a privilege everyone gets, especially nowadays."
The little trio continues their work in companionable silence with only the clap of the hammer, driving the final nail home, ringing out loud and clear across the open grounds. Pushing himself up onto his feet and tucking the hammer through his belt, Javier groans as he stretches out his cramping thighs and aching back before his hands settle on his hips and he admires their handiwork.
"Well, it's not pretty and I don't think anyone will be hiring us to build them their dream house any time soon." He claps both his brother and nephew across their shoulders, his pride expressed by the slightest curve lifting the corner of his mouth and worn in the lightest rise of his eyebrow dancing above joyful eyes. "But at least it'll keep the dead out a while longer."
David turns, his hands on his own hips, and swings his boot at the board, his brows tugging low and lips twisting in scrutiny as it rattles against the nails pinning it in place. But it stands firm against the assault and that placates the hardened man. "It holds. That's all we need it to do."
When he turns back, David catches how Javi's attention shifts away from the papers and notebooks that he had deposited on the floor before assisting his family in the perimeter repair job. He also notices the slight frown that puckers between the younger man's eyebrows and the slight tightening of his lips before his eyes shift over to catch David's knowing gaze watching him.
Javi pauses and sighs quietly before forcing a note of good cheer into his words "Hey, Gabe." He cast his gaze over to his nephew, his lips twitching up at the corners when he notes the pride still radiating from the teen's posture and expression. "Can you run over to the infirmary and give Dr Lingard and Eleanor a hand? Carolynne delivered her twins last night and they could probably use all the hands they can get with cleaning up the equipment and taking care of her."
Gabriel's smile seems to grow of its own accord as he nods his affirmation and spins around on his heel and races away. Both David and Javier stand there watching the boy until he rounds the building and vanishes from sight. As soon as they are certain that Gabriel is out of earshot the atmosphere shifts to a more sombre tone.
Javier stoops and gathers the pile into his hands. Shuffling his fingers through the paperwork, his eyes scanning the data neatly scrawled on the sheets and his eyebrows tugging down lower with every new line that he read until the usually casual and easy-going man was scowling at the pile as though it had personally offended him. "Is this everything?"
"Everything recorded, yes," David grunts bitterly. His hands, still on his hips, tighten their grip. His fingertips dig down deep into his thick military pants and bruise his skin as he begins to pace. "I also found some weakened spots in the fences. Missing nails, damaged boards."
Javier's head jerks up, the implications left unsaid scream for his attention, jolting him out of his reading. "Sabotage?"
David doesn't say anything, but the way that he keeps his scowl aimed firmly at his feet as he moves speaks volumes to the younger Garcia. He can see the anger and frustration emanating from the tension in the man's rigid shoulders and stiffened swagger. Can feel the anxiety and fear and betrayal that oozes and hums through the air between the men. Javier turns his focus back to the papers still clutched in his trembling fingers. Pouring himself into the pages, scouring the names and the numbers and cross-referencing them with his own counts. He skim reads, searches and digs until his eyes became unfocused and the words blurred themselves into nonsense.
"This just doesn't make sense." Javier's mind races, his perplexity surging as he finds one name repeated on records that he can't fathom it needing to inhabit. "Why would she-"
"This goes much deeper than we first suspected, Javi." David cuts his brother's words off sharply, though the words are spoken with such neutrality and are so unsettlingly flat and dulled that Javier's blood runs cold and slides down to crush his organs with an icy fist of fear. "It goes beyond the missing rations and damaged fences. The controlled medications; heavy painkillers, codeine, oxy, antibiotics… Morphine. All of the counts are off. Eleanor's numbers are too high while Paul's are too low." He shakes his head as he pushes his hands through his hair in frustration. "And then there's the armoury."
Adrenaline floods Javier's system and soaks into his brain, it pumps deeper into his muscles and pulses through his blood. His eyes snap wide as he stares at his brother, silently pleading for him to be wrong, to not say what he knows is coming next.
"We're missing weapons. A few knives and machetes. Guns. A couple of boxes of ammunition is gone too. They've not been signed out for use, and they're the wrong makes and models to the ones I've cleared for routine cleaning and maintenance."
Javier's thoughts are spiralling out of control with every new word that leaves his brother's lips. Trying desperately to piece together this information into something that his mind can process without his heart screaming its refusal to believe what came as the result. The missing food is forgivable. People get hungry sometimes and their rations weren't exactly generous. Maybe their methods and portions were a little too conservative. They would need to talk with their farmers and their medical personnel and reassess how they calculate their formula to make sure none go hungry.
However, it's the missing medication that concerns him. Moreover, it's the fact that neither one of their medical staff's tallies matches the master count. Paul was a recovering addict so maybe he'd had a slip-up or two. But then, why would his count read lower instead of higher to hide his theft? And Eleanor, she'd not cover for him like that, no matter how much she respects the man for his medical ability, so why is hers the count that's reporting higher numbers?
And then, there's the missing weapons and the name that is scratched onto the list that has no business being there...
There is a strange silence to the air, a stillness that settles over Javier's skin and chills him to the bone. It sends a path of goose flesh racing along his spine. Adrenaline surges through his system so fast that he almost vomits. He can taste the saliva that thickens like mucus in the back of his throat and the beads of sweat that sprung up to now trickle down his brow, burns against his skin as acid.
"We need to-"
Javier's next words are lost beneath two claps of thunder. Each one isn't simply loud, it cracks the air and echoes around his ears, the tall building's magnifying the twisted feeling of vulnerability as the man turns his eyes sky-bound. The heavens are softly blue, not storming greys and the clouds are delicate whispers and not thick tangles. There is no literal storm brewing on the horizon, instead, he finds himself standing helplessly encompassed within the eye of a figural tempest.
David's senses sharpen with the sudden surge of adrenaline rushing through his system. It floods his brain and kicks his combative instincts into gear, dropping him below head hight and diving for his brother's knees just as a bullet whizzed overhead and slams into the side of a building. Beneath him, Javier holds his breath but David is keenly aware of the way his brother's heart is hammering behind his ribs as his own ears strain to hear beyond the ringing inside his skull, attempting to track and pinpoint the trajectory of the shot. No-one within Richmond's walls wastes bullets anymore. There is no more target practice, no warnings fired into the air by the soldiers patrolling the walls. Each crack is a violent announcement of a death, a shot straight to the head. No chances to miss, no chances to turn.
And then came the screams and the shouts. Pistol and shotgun fire punctuates the rising cries of panic and fear. The brothers can hear the roughened barks of the soldiers bringing others to arms just as the first plume of smoke twists and twirls into the skies and the acrid tang burns in their nostrils.
"We need to move, Javi." David's voice is calm and steady as he rolls to his feet and yanks the younger man to his feet. He is a man in complete control of his faculties, a soldier, built for combat and trained for battle, and now the battle is here and he instinctively assumes control. "Keep low, stick to cover and move fast. We head for Gabe in the infirmary."
Javier swallows thickly and nods, even as his belly and bowels clench into fists. He can hear the first stirrings of a crowd moving ahead of them. Dozens of people, most of them unarmed civilians, swarming together to flood the streets. Families shouting and crying, the shrill pleadings of mothers calling for their children and the panicked wailings of said children, confused and frightened and desperately trying to keep up as the crowd grows larger and more dangerous. Turning away from a collective body of safety and into a herd that simply tramples over any and all in their path.
"Alright then, little brother. Move. Now!"
By the time that the Garcia's reached the main streets of Richmond, the crowd had become a mob. A writhing mass of bodies pushing and shoving at each other, stampeding over those who had fallen underfoot and leaving them lying broken and moaning in the dirt. Trying to force and wade their way through the tide of limbs and panic rushing in the opposite direction would be foolish, subjecting themselves to the same fate as those swallowed up beneath the heaving human wave. Instead, the men pressed themselves to the rear of the buildings, their backs bent and heads tucked down between their shoulders as they ran, keeping a barrier of brick and mortar between themselves and the chaos in the streets.
Their progress was slow, agonizingly so. Where every few minutes or few hundred yards travelled had the two men ducking into doorways or diving behind stripped out vehicles to avoid the detection of an enemy masquerading as a comrade or dodging a stray bullet that slammed into steel or brick of soft, yielding flesh. Each and every inch of cover that they discovered -no matter how flimsy- the men took full advantage of until, finally, David paused outside the heavy door that marked the rear entrance to the small clinic. His dark eyes scan the streets as his fingers curl around the edge of the emergency exit, quietly prying the barrier open just far enough for Javi to squeeze through before the soldier himself casts a final glance around and follows his brother inside.
"Okay." David's stern eyes fix on Javier's, his face set in a fashion that would make any one of his soldiers nervous. But not his brother though, Javi finds comfort in the way that David's expression is so carefully calm and calculated. He knows that his brother is assessing the unseen threats and hidden enemies and is formulating a tactical plan that would ensure the highest rate of success and survival. "You go on to the wards. Find Gabe and Paul and anyone else here, and lock yourselves in. Barricade the door with everything you can." His hand reaches to his holster and removes the beretta that he always carries and thrusts it out to his brother, along with the two spare clips and a handful of loose rounds from his pocket. "Take it."
Javier's eyes widen as the weapon slips easily into his palm and the spare ammunition disappears into his own pockets. "David. I…"
"Protect them, Javi." David's face is a mask of impassiveness; unflinching, unwavering and unfaltering. There's not a trace on it to betray his own fear that he hides deep down inside himself, behind his military training and iron will. But he knows it's there, and he knows that Javi knows it's there too. "When you can, get them out. My men will be evacuating civilians to an old community centre a few miles west of here. That's where you'll take them."
There's the sound of breaking glass from the other side of the building. Either their people desperately trying to reach safety or the enemy already setting themselves to the task of looting for medical supplies. Either way, the brother's know they are fast running out of time.
Javier sets his jaw and nods. His brother has given him his orders and his body responds on automatic now. His hands shift, priming the gun in his hand as he shifts his weight on the balls of his feet. "To the community centre out west." He repeats softly, back to the wall and head peeking around the corner as he checks the hallway. "Alright. But, what about you?"
"There's a weapons cache here." David grins as Javi whips his head back around to stare at his brother in disbelief. "I'm a suspicious son of a bitch, Javi. After the shit that went down with Joan-"
"The missing weapons?"
David shakes his head. "These are on my personal count." Down the hall he can hear footsteps moving slowly, carefully, each one tactfully placed. Not from here then. "Time to go, brother. I'll see you at the rendezvous point."
Missing the usual bustle of the medical staff attending to their patients, the clinic is reduced to a silence and a tension that takes a stranglehold on Javier's nerves as he moves as quietly as he can along the halls. At each of the doors he pauses, gun held high as he inches his head away from the wall that his back is pressed so firmly against and peeks through the frosted glass. His finger tensed on the trigger and his eyes check for any sort of movement that might ripple across the sunlight that blades through the gloom inside.
Empty.
So Javier pushes on to the next. Stealing silently from one room to another, until he catches a breath of movement within. It's the sort of movement that's only seen with the peripherals, the kind that floods panic through the body and stirs up the tiny hairs on the back of the neck. It incites the mind to conjure imaginary monsters that lurk and prowl through the darkness, dragging the shadows along with them like tattered rags. Only here, now, the monsters are very real, the dead still walk and caution is more a necessity than a suggestion.
Carefully, Javi taps the muzzle of his gun to the glass. Just loud enough and long enough for it to stir up the quiet scampering of feet and the low hum of hushed voices that he recognizes. "Gabe?"
"Javi?" The teen's voice drifts through the door in a mix of relief and concern. Relief that quickly rises to panic as Javier slowly turns the doorknob and creaks the door open. "No, Javi! Don't!"
The rapid transitions of emotion in his nephew's voice makes Javier's thoughts stall and the rifle muzzle that touches his brow as the door is suddenly thrown wide makes his head spin. But it's the woman, standing behind the armed lackey holding his weapon on him, that sends panic surging through his synapses.
It was subtle, the arrogant triumph that dominated her face; just touching the edge of her mouth as it pushes up and scarcely pouts her lips. It's in the slightest narrowing of her eyes, making the brown colour appear black as her cheek creases, and it's in the tilting of her head as she watches her companion pluck the beretta from the Javi's hand before roughly shoving the man to his knees. "Hello, Javier."
Before he meets the older woman's smug expression, Javi glances over to the far side of the room. Gabe stares back at him in wide-eyed terror even as Eleanor tends to the wounds on his face and, thankfully, there's no sign of Dr Lingard or Carolynne and her newborns. With one less worry weighing on his mind, it's easier for the former baseball star to pull in place the mask of defiance and surety, the sickening fear that twists and coils around his guts never making it to his face. "Hello, Joan."
Joan's smirk curves higher into her cheeks, twisting her features from controlled calm into cruel delight. "It's so nice that you remember me." Her body language screams of that of a cat with her prey caught between her paws, and the lilting sing-song tone that she speaks with is one of intent to drag the torment out. "I don't see your brother with you. That's a shame."
Javier could feel his eyes narrow at the woman's taunting. His fingers twitch and itch as he curls them into fists at his sides, eager to be holding the beretta again, to aim it between the woman's eyes and empty the clip into her skull. "How did you get in here?"
"There are still a great many of those loyal to me among your people, Javi. And they have gifted me so many wonderful things." Her tone turns from mockery to sardonicism as she pads away from the darkened corner, stepping through the golden sunlight that pools into the room from the wide window and phasing into the shadows once more. "But as for actually infiltrating your little haven, well, you have your good friend Eleanor to thank for that."
Stunned, Javier glances over to the named woman. She had turned away from Gabriel now to face him and her eyes hold nothing but contempt in their softly dark depths. Javier can feel how his mouth hangs slightly open and loose as she moves away from Gabe and joins Joan's side, her back to the window and her pretty features silhouetted by shadows. And slowly, reluctantly, Javi's mind finally fits the pieces into place. Her medical counts were high because she was stealing from them. Her name on the record sheets for the armoury, but never on the weapon sign out, because who would suspect one of their doctor's of gun smuggling?
"Eleanor? I..." His throat closes around his words and his mouth is suddenly dry, leaving his tongue feeling as though it has shrivelled up into a prune that sits uselessly behind his teeth. "I don't understand."
"Marianna. Eli. Francine. Conrad. Kate… Tripp." Elenor's voice is low and soft but Javi can feel the anger simmering in her words. "You're a dangerous man to be around, Javi. Your choices end with getting innocent people killed."
Javi's heart plummets to his guts. Sinking faster than a stone tossed into a pond. And every screaming thought inside his head is silenced into denial and grief. "Eleanor, I-"
"It appears that your charms have failed to sway everyone into forgiveness, Javi." There's a hint of victory in Joan's smug tone as she cuts through his words and her eyes dance with the excited light of one who anticipates a great gift. They flick over to her brutish lackey still holding Javier at bay on his knees, her chin tilting up in preparation of signalling the younger of the Garcia brother's execution. "I'm sure-"
The air is suddenly rent with gunshot and breaking glass. There is a flurry of jerking movements as Joan dives for cover, the guard on Javier whirls around with his rifle to his shoulder to return fire and Gabriel breaks toward his uncle. But all Javier can see is the way that Eleanor's body jolts forward, the bloodied fragments of bone and brain exploding from her forehead and scattering themselves amid the glittering glass chip gems.
"Javi!"
The next shot rips through the armed man so fast that it appears as though he had simply stepped back like he needed a moment to collect himself before returning to the gunfight. Instead, his knees fold from beneath himself and he drops, his blood pumping over his chest in pulses that declared the struggled beating of his heart.
"Javi!" Gabe's fists clutch at his uncle's arm, shaking him desperately back into the moment. "We gotta go, Javi! We need to get out and find dad."
It takes a moment, as well as the desperation in Gabe's voice acting as an anchor, for Javier's mind to shut down its unproductive noise and begin to think its way out of this mess. His eyes scan the room for Joan but the woman has long since fled, abandoning both of her now dead companions without a second thought. And then his eyes fall on the dead soldier and the weapons still on his body, David's beretta and the rifle. He's wary, the man is dead but the shot hit his body not his head, it's only a matter of time before he turns. The blood is still red and pulsing out of him slowly, they still have a few minutes. Javier is quick to snatch the beretta from under the man's hip, aim and put the killing bullet through his brain before he relieves the corpse of its rifle and searches its pockets for extra rounds.
Finding the spare magazine, Javi tucks it away as he pivots around to face his nephew. "Alright, buddy. There's probably more of Joan's people coming through the front, so we're gonna go out the window. Just hang back and let me go check that the way is clear, okay?"
"O-okay." The teen swallows down the tremble in his voice and shakes the nervousness from his shoulders. "Alright, just don't get shot."
A chuckle itches in his throat as humour touches Javier's eyes. "Good thing it wasn't on my to-do list." Then is face hardens again into an expression of determination as he hunkers down low and creeps to the side of the window, stepping over Eleanor and suppressing a shudder as her wide eyes, flat and empty, stare up at him without seeing. He presses himself up against the wall and switches from the beretta to the rifle before he peeks his head from the shadows and brings the rifle up in one fluid motion, his finger tight over the trigger.
"Whoa! Whoa, Javi! It's me." Beneath the window with a rifle of his own braced to his shoulder and a canvas bag at his feet stands David. His eyes dart from side to side as a small group of panicked survivors race by, shepherded by one of David's men, who pauses to turn and squeeze off two shots before he tears off after his group. "No time, Javi! Let's go!"
"Everyone's out?"
David squares his jaw, teeth grinding as he growls out his words. "Everyone who wants out." His rifle whips to the side, a flash of smoke and brass exploding from the end as another person falls. "So let's move our asses shall we?"
It takes a few awkward minutes and a few more dead bodies for both Gabriel and Javier to scramble out of the window, avoiding the broken glass still lodged in the frame, their feet hit the ground already in a run with David hot on their heels. As the stocky soldier pulls alongside his family he catches his brother's eye. "Change of plan, brother. My guys have secured the garages. Too many of us are kids or vulnerable, we can't all leave on foot so we take the trucks and get the hell outta here."
The trio wheel around the next corner, feet pounding and lungs aching. Ahead of them, Javier can see the garages with four armed soldiers -their weapons aimed outwards- acting as a blockade as Dr Lingard directs the civilians into six of the trucks. Javi can hear his voice calming the frightened children and panicking parent's, doing his best to keep family units together as he loads eight people and two soldiers into the back of each. Slung across his back are two duffels, crammed to bursting with what Javi hopes to be medical supplies.
Slowly the doctor turns on his heel, his weathered face lighting up as the Garcia family slow to a jog and stumble to a stop beside him. "You all made it out." His eyes shift behind them, face falling, as though he was expecting someone else to be following behind them. "Where's Eleanor?"
"Dead." Is all that David supplies as he brushes past the man and tosses his own duffle inside the drivers' compartment. "Like the rest of us will be if we don't move!"
"What do we do now, Javi? Where do we go?" Gabe's eyes are wide and terrified as he turns to his uncle. The dark orbs hold Javier's own as the man silently inspects the injuries that litter the teen's face. There's a deep purple bruise blossoming on his cheek and a small fissure that splits the bridge of his nose where he clearly took a fist and, from the edge of his lips, a tiny trickle of red tracks down slowly to his chin.
Slowly, Javier inhales, his lashes lowering as he sighs. Though the thin layer of flesh blocks from his vision the scores of expectant expressions and hopeful gazes of his nephew, his brother and the dozens of former Richmond survivors that either huddle together inside the old warehouse or peer from the backs of the trucks in fear and confusion. With little more than the clothes on their backs and a single weapon to every third person, Javier is bitterly aware that every single person is waiting for him to come up with a plan and lead them away to safety.
And that thought terrifies him because he doesn't know. He has no ideas to help them. He has no answers to any of the questions that no one voices but he knows they have. He just… doesn't know.
"Javi?"
His eyelids tighten with rejection and his jaw clenches with guilt, unfair emotions stirring under his nephew's questioning call of his name. He never wanted it, to lead. He never asked for this.
"Well, what's the plan, little brother?" The softness to his brother's gruff voice, the gentleness of his tone, it startles Javier into opening his eyes and snapping his chin over to the veteran soldier. "You've always been better at thinking on your feet."
His face, still hard and serious, is uncomfortably open and Javier can see how David's jaw is clenched tight and moving as he grinds his teeth. But the man is trying. He is making a conscious effort to tether his temper. It's in the way that the muscles in his shoulders tense, the tiny flinches that ripple all the way up to his jaw, betraying his agitation and it's in the way that his fingers dig into his hips where they have settled that has the younger Garcia brother on edge and doubting himself.
Eyes closing and head shaking slowly, Javier inhales a long and deep breath through his nose, trying to desperately cling to the last rapidly unravelling threads of his confidence. "David, I... I don't-"
Whatever he had planned to say next is lost beneath a gasp, stolen from his lungs on a wave of surprise when he feels a firm hand clap down hard to his shoulder, the strong fingers squeezing comfort into his tense frame and his older brother's voice reaches his ear quiet and low and full of conviction. "Wherever you say we go, I will follow you, Javi."
When David's hand leaves his shoulder, Javier feels a little of his tension leave with it, replacing his uncertainty with a little surge of confidence. "We'll find a new home, far away from here. Away from Joan." He glances up, finding and holding David's attention before he adds. "But first, we go to McCarroll Ranch. We go after Clem and AJ."
"Joan?" Clementine's mind is still surging with the perplexity of this revelation. Emotion and resentment both clamouring to be addressed first. Her emotional thoughts compel her to throw herself into his arms. To bury herself into his chest and cling to his shirts and sob in relief that he is alive and safe, and that they can be a team again. That she can trust him, while her voice of resentment hisses at her, tells her that she is foolish and that this man had his people come for hers. That this man is not the same man who had helped her, protected her, only a handful of years ago, that this man was cunning and that she couldn't trust him, not anymore.
She can't decide which path to choose, her logical thoughts that were screaming out warnings that he was dangerous and a liar and that he would tell her anything if it meant wooing her over to fight at his side. Or her heart that whispered soothing echoes of their friendship, reminding her that this was the first adult that had earned her trust so fully since the very beginning of it all… since Lee. Behind her back, her wrists are still bound, but her fingers clench and furl rhythmically with every conflicting thought that batters her defences, frustrated and confused and so far out of her depth.
"But I-" Clementine pauses, licking her lips and swallowing hard against her tongue sitting thick and clumsy in her mouth. "I thought she was gone. I thought she'd either been killed by the herd that broke through Richmond's walls, or that she slipped away and left her people to fall like the snake that she is."
Javi's eyes are still so open and honest, and they still seem able to strip away Clementine's walls with such ease that it's frightening. Her tawny eyes dart away, but he refuses to chase her. Instead, he simply waits for those skittish orbs to flicker back to his, his warm brown irises saturated with understanding. "She still had people inside Richmond who were loyal to her. A few months after you left for the ranch, she infiltrated us and rallied her followers, before attacking us from inside our own walls."
"So you ran? You didn't even try to fight back?"
"She attacked families, Clem. Not just families loyal to me, but the children of her own supporters. Planting the idea that I and my loyalists were trying to either cow or wipe out hers. She never showed her face until she was certain of the distrust and unease and that she had fully divided the people." Again, Javi's eyes hold onto hers. They are so wide and open, as though he felt he had to try to convince the girl that he was not lying to her, and that thought made Clementine's insides squirm uncomfortably.
"She sent people to the McCarroll Ranch. She learned that that was where we were heading, I wanted to try and catch up to you, so she had a group of her people tail us." He bites at the inside of his cheek and drops his eyes away from hers for a moment. Then, as he moves closer, they shift back and the bottom of Clementine's stomach dropped through the floor with how deep into her they peer. "She attacked them. A small defenceless settlement that was little more than a nursery for displaced kids than an actual community, just to further rile her people up against me and mine when we fled."
And just like that, Clementine is hurled back to that night that she reached the ranch in search of AJ and her mind fills with the stench of blood and burning. Her ears ring with screams of pain and fear, and the thunderous claps of gunfire and harsh shouts of fighting. Echos of the most terrifying night of her life jar her thoughts as she is suddenly forced back into the turbulent tides of her past. Her gaze subconsciously drops over to AJ, the boy that she had hurled herself into the fires of hell for as she swallows the thickened saliva that filled the back of her throat as it fled from her mouth.
"Did…" She closes her eyes and shakes away the memories of the big, soft woman sitting crumpled on the floor like a broken marionette. Her bespectacled eyes, wide and fearful and rapidly dulling as they stare vacantly up at her, as bright red blood trickles over her doughy cheek as though she were weeping. "Did the kids all get out or did they di…"
She can't. She just can't bring herself to say it. Saying it would make it real, would make almost losing AJ forever real.
"Most got out. Most are here, actually." Javi admits quietly. "We caught up with the small evacuation party hiding in a supply shed a mile or two out from the ranch. They were waiting for a woman, Helen, to catch up to them with the last of the children, a toddler-" He shook his head slowly. His face creases with sorrow and grief. "-she was already dead when I went back with David and a few others to find her. Shot in the face, and there was no sign of the toddler she was supposed to be bringing."
His shoulders are slumped, both his lips and eyes downcast in a mournful gaze. "We couldn't find him, Clem." He eyes the side of his mud-splattered boot rather than looking at the teenaged girl as he whispers the last words as softly as a breath in a storm. "We couldn't find AJ."
Clementine's gaze slips to the side, watching the young boy scowl defiance at the man speaking without the need to incline her head. Then she sighs, her lashes slipping down over her eyes. "No. But I did."