[A/N: Thanks reviewers and new followers and favourites! You guys rock.]
'Had a black tattoo, like a band, around his arm here.'
Asha's knees gave out and she dropped to the soggy carpet.
He'd seen him. He'd actually seen Nash
She closed her eyes, swallowing the lump in her throat.
'What was he to you?' the boy asked from across the room.
Asha shuddered. 'When did you see him?'
'About six months ago, maybe a little more.'
She kept her eyes on the ground.
'He was your brother right?'
Asha glared at him.
He waved a hand generally in her direction. 'He looked kinda like you, same nose, and something around the mouth.'
Breathing hard through her nose, she nodded as she pushed herself back to her feet.
The boy nodded to himself.
Asha couldn't help but ask. 'How did he look? Was he hurt? Did you speak to him?'
He shook his head. 'No. I just watched him. Saw him take down a group of chompers. He was…like a warrior from the old testament. Untouchable. God was watching over him I think. But a big guy like that, I figured I didn't need his attention. He didn't hang around either, just painted that sign and kept moving.'
'He was on foot?'
'Yep.'
'What did his sign say?'
'Is your camp far from here?'
They looked at each other in silence as Asha fought the urge to leap across the room and beat on him until he told her what he knew. She saw his lips twitch and expected that some of what she was feeling was showing on her face. She forced it into some semblance of calm—but the facade didn't do much to dampen her desire to smack him in the face.
'If you are lying to me about knowing what the rest of the sign said,' Asha said, slowly and forcibly, 'this is not going to end well for you.'
'If I tell you now, you've got no reason to take me with you.'
'If I take you back, it's not up to me whether you get to stay or not. There's a Council. They'll want to ask you some questions.'
She could ask them herself now, make the call. Of course she didn't really want that responsibility…and so long as he was dangling Nash like a carrot in front of her, she couldn't care less what his answers were. If he confessed to killing a hundred people she would still take him back…at least until he told her what she wanted
'A Council, really?' His eyes shone. 'Must be a lot of you?'
Asha nodded.
'And you take people in?'
Asha nodded again. 'Numbers are the best defence against the deadheads,' she said, watching him closely, 'and other people.'
His eyes glinted. 'Yes,' he said, clasping his hands together. 'Yes, I knew I was right to wait for you.'
'You keep saying you've been waiting for me. What do you mean you've been waiting for me?'
The boy looked out through the broken glass into the rain.
There was no obvious setting sun through the thick grey clouds, but it was noticeably darker than when Asha had been on the street. The wind was blowing with less ferocity, although it hadn't dropped entirely, and the rolling thunder was slowly receding into the distance. The walkers were already less agitated, their attention seemingly on nothing at all and their heads only jerking occasionally at the odd crash of something banging in the wind.
The boy's eyes turned inwards as he spoke, his voice sounding far away.
'God told me you would come. I used to stand for hours in front of that sign, staring at it, trying to puzzle it out, wondering about the guy who wrote it, wondering even more about who was following him. I knew,' he tapped his chest, 'I prayed and I just felt it, that the person who came following that sign was going to take me somewhere. It was God telling me to be strong. I watched everyone who came through town, but they never saw me, never unless I wanted them to.' He looked at her suddenly and his eyes gleamed in the rapidly fading light. 'Most only glanced at the sign, some looked at it for a few minutes, but they all just moved on. People paid even less attention to it after the bottom was torn away. Until you. I'd almost stopped wondering about you, and now here you are.' His voice was eerily soft of the final words.
Asha's hands had tightened around the arrow she still held. 'Just how long have you been here on your own?
'Alone? Since the beginning, almost the beginning.' His shoulders started to shake. 'I've been so lonely. So lonely. But I won't be anymore, not now that you're here.' He looked at her, dark eyes wide and wet. 'You are going to take me with you right?
Asha's shoulders slumped and she sank down against the wall. She struggled to think what it would be like being out here on your own for that long, clearly too afraid to approach anyone who came through the town—except for her due to this strange fixation he seemed to have developed with her and Nash's coded signs. She swiped her free hand down past the corner of the mouth. 'Yeah kid. I'm gonna take you with me.'
His tear stained face split into a huge grin.
'What's your name?' she asked tiredly.
'Seth.' His smile widened. 'What's yours?'
'Asha.'
Asha looked down at his arrow, held loosely in her lap. It was amazing that he'd managed to stay alive so long. She hoped some time in the company of people again was all that was needed to bring him back to normal.
She hoped like hell that he really knew what was on the bottom of Nash's sign.
They were on the road before day break.
Seth—quite cleverly actually—had a car that he kept running by starting it up every month or so and taking it for a spin to keep the engine and battery ticking over. Asha had breathed a sigh of relief when he had volunteered its existence. It took a certain amount of trust to have someone ride pillion on the bike—and Asha's skin crawled at the thought of having Seth that close to her, with nothing to stop him dragging a knife across her throat or stabbing her in the back whilst he sat behind her.
Paranoid maybe, but she still wasn't doing it.
She'd spun Seth some lie about her car breaking down some miles out of town, and had resigned herself to walking at least some of the way back—hoping that Daryl or Michonne would be out soon looking for her and would pick them up—when Seth had volunteered the information about his car.
With that knowledge, Asha had spent a restless night. Seth, after packing up a collection of belongings—which Asha couldn't help notice included all the crucifixes from the wall and a well thumbed bible—had contentedly curled into his sleeping roll, telling Asha that his place was quite secure and there was need to keep watch, and had promptly gone to sleep. He looked much younger asleep, snoring softly every now and then.
Asha had shaken her head—no way she could sleep with a stranger in the same room.
She hadn't even tried. On top of the news about Nash, there was a gnawing pit of anxiousness in her stomach that she hadn't made it back to the prison. Rick and Michonne were going to be pissed, and Daryl… She shuddered to think about how furious he was going to be. She could already see his eyes flashing and jaw rippling...and now she was coming back without his bike.
In all likelihood they wouldn't really start to worry unless she failed to make it back within a few hours of day break—particularly if the same storm had hit the prison. They'd just think she'd holed up somewhere to ride it out. If she got an early start, she could still get back before the sun had been up long, and hopefully avoid being chewed out for worrying everyone.
Instead of sleeping, she had paced Seth's apartment, making use of the bathroom and a towel she borrowed to dry herself up as much as possible, then confirming that the exits and rooms in the apartment were all like Seth had said. She'd checked out his storeroom, noting that it only held spare blankets and clothes—nothing she needed to be concerned about—and then had gathered up all of his canned goods into a pack she'd scrounged from amongst his belongings. She felt his eyes on her whilst she was packing, and turned to see him wide awake, staring at her in the dark.
'It's ok,' he said. 'We should take all the food. There's more in that cupboard over there behind the blanket.' He nodded with his head across the room, then his teeth gleamed in the darkness before he rolled over and promptly started snoring again.
Asha spent the rest of the night pacing between his sleeping form and the front room, watching the dead slowly drift away as the storm faded into simple rain and then eventually into stillness.
As soon as the sky started to lighten, Asha warily nudged Seth awake and they made for the car—a beaten up Ford. Asha held her breath whilst the engine tried to kick over, and breathed a sigh of relief as the engine spluttered to life.
'Told ya,' Seth said, grinning a genuine looking smirk of satisfaction. 'Told ya I kept it running.'
Asha found herself half smiling response. 'Yeah Seth, you've done good.'
His chatter filled the car as they traveled—how many people were at her camp, how long they'd been there, did they pray, was there a priest, did she think he would fit in? Asha rubbed her sandy eyes as she drove, muting his voice down to dull roar in the back of her mind—a dull roar that competed with the throbbing of the headache she could feel building at the base of her skull.
He kept on. It was like the fact that she'd agreed to take him back had freed him to act like a teenage kid again. Either that or he'd been saving up all the words he hadn't been able to say to anyone the entire time he had been on his own—and they were spewing out of him like verbal diarrhea. Asha took a hand off the steering wheel and rubbed her temples.
Just like a teenage kid—except that the little bastard was blackmailing her with the information she needed about her brother.
'Seth,' she finally snapped. 'Shut up man. Until you tell me what was on the bottom of my brother's sign I'm not answering any more of your damn questions.'
For a second his eyes flashed angrily at her before settling into a wide eyed look of shock. His lips compressed into a thin line.
'I just don't want you to leave me behind,' he said, drawing his knees up to his chest and looking sullenly out the window.
Long moments passed, and Asha shifted uncomfortably as the silence thickened. She grit her teeth, determined not to be the one to break it. Then she glanced at Seth, curled up on the seat, hands limp in his lap and face blank.
God damn it.
'Hey,' she said.
He glanced at her before his eyes rolled back out the window.
'Look, you'll get along fine there,' she offered. 'They're good people. Friendly. You're gonna like it there.'
He looked back at her, and blinked a couple of times before nodding. Then his eyes flashed to the front of the car and he suddenly sat upright in his seat.
'Ah, Asha...'
She followed the direction of his eyes and swore violently at the black smoke streaming from under the hood of the car. A quick glance at the dashboard revealed the temperature gauge was well in the red. There was a sudden loud bang and the car lurched sideways. Asha stomped on the brake and they came to a tyre squealing halt just short of tipping into the ditch on the side of the road.
Asha, breathing hard and suddenly wide awake, shared a glance with Seth, who had both his hands braced against the dashboard.
'Fuck,' she breathed.
She turned the key in the ignition, but nothing happened, and she tipped her head backwards on to the headrest behind her for an instant. Then she got out of the car and slammed the door.
The sun had just barely crept over the horizon, the shadows from the trees on the side of the road stretching long across the black tarmac. The earth was still damp from the storm the night before and Asha paused for a second to breath in the rain clean smell of the countryside—trying to suppress her frustration. It was still early, realistically she shouldn't expect anyone to be this way looking for her for hours. Then she rolled her head on her shoulders and took in the mass of walkers spreading across the road in the distance. Not near enough to be immediately concerned about, but near enough that she didn't want to sit in the car and wait around.
Guess we walk from here.
She pulled her compass and the map from her pack on the back seat. They'd passed a crossroad only a mile or so back, she traced her finger along the road they were travelling. That would put them about here. She absently noted that Seth had gotten out of the car and had come around to her side of the vehicle. She carefully angled her body to obscure his view of the map. The shortest route was almost directly north from where they were, they could cut across country for a few miles before crossing back across the road that would take them back towards the prison. She looked down at the compass, taking a bearing, as she rolled up the map.
Seth had already pulled his pack from the car and, bow in hand, was watching the dead creeping towards them across the fields. He might have seemed a kid whilst he was rambling in the car, but his relaxed but ready stance suddenly reminded Asha of the accuracy with which he'd fired that bow from the roof of his apartment. It wasn't an accident he'd survived almost two years on his own.
She pulled out her can of pink spray paint before tugging her pack on to her back.
'What are you doing Asha?' Seth said quietly, all traces of youthful exuberance gone.
'Two seconds,' she muttered, before giving the can a hard shake and spraying on the side of the car: D, M gone cross country. A.
Good enough.
There was a sudden twang from Seth's bow and Asha turned in time to see a walker slump to the ground about three car lengths away, arrow protruding from its face. There were more behind it, but still some distance away.
Seth darted forwards to collect the arrow. 'We should go,' he said calmly.
She nodded, before gesturing with her head towards the woods on the other side of the car—in the direction of the bearing she'd taken from the compass earlier—and they slipped away at a jog into the trees.
[A/N: Any one else pretty excited that they've made it to Alexandria on the show? Haven't seen them have to try to assimilate with another community for a long time - so looking forward to that. But Rick should have kept the beard.]