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

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

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

Scintilla

Chapter Four

"I've been looking for you, you know," Paul remarked after they'd finished the last of the bread and he was heating up more drinking water to fill their canteens. Fulfilling the requirements of his side of the bargain. "Nothing bad I promise. So you can relax. And stop with that look- I get how it sounds. But I have my reasons."

His hand curled around the handle of the collapsible pot. Mentally calculating the temperature of the water and the distance between him and the stranger. Reasonably confident that if necessary he could hurl it across the fire, grab his things and be long gone before the man was in any condition to chase after.

"It's just, I know a lot of people. And where I'm from we're friendly with a few other groups – survivors - and some have put out feelers. Wanting to know if it was one of us that helped them out. Right when they needed it, apparently," Paul explained, watching him. Adding weight to each word despite the light tone he managed to maintain throughout.

He felt the strain under his skin as he fought to keep his face expressionless.

"There was a woman not long ago that got taken in by some friends of mine. She told me about being out on her own. Starving. Sick. She woke up one morning to a grocery bag of medication and food. Enough to get her through the next few days – curbing the fever," the man shared, peeling the empty plastic from the crackers they'd shared into sliver-thin stripes before tossing them one by one into the fire. "Thing is though, she found walkers, dead ones, after the fact. Like someone hadn't just helped her when she needed it, but kept her safe on top of it."

He frowned. Not sure which woman he was referring to. There had been two that he could remember, at least since he'd crossed the border. The other had been a teenager shivering beside a coal-lit fire. He'd waited until she'd dropped off to sleep before he'd left her his spare coat. He stayed distant, making sure no walkers came close overnight before he left just before dawn. She'd been alone, just like him. The details still stuck with him though, no matter how hard he tried he hadn't been able to forget the way she'd been curled up like that. Face dirty, tear-streaked and crusted with dried blood, all indications she'd recently lost someone. But still wrapped through with a sort of desperate confidence in the way she kept her long-knife close, telling him that at the very least she knew how to handle herself. She didn't need him. And he didn't need her. But it hadn't stopped him from lingering - fussing. She'd put up no counter-measures around her camp so in a sense, she'd made the decision to stick around for him. It was a lapse that had irritated him for days afterwards.

She should have known better.

It took him a minute to realize the man hadn't stopped talking. He was still there, stuck on that same topic, listing off examples. The last few months of his life made needlessly exemplary for reasons he couldn't understand. A handful of acts highlighted in living color like there was actual an end point to the man's disjointed ramble.

"Now, I think they're all the same guy, personally. It's all the same m.o."

"Improbable, statically," he answered, the line of his mouth going dangerously thin.

"It's just a theory," Paul shrugged, leaning back until the joints in his spine popped audibly. Giving him the impression of a slim build in peek physical condition, lithe muscle, compact and capable before the man's trench coat pooled back into his lap. "So, I've been keeping an eye out. Thinking, I figure a guy like that – someone who is willing to help out complete strangers - is someone worth knowing. And here you are."

"Here I am," he echoed, tone so flat he could have been coding. Refusing, for once, not to feel like prey as he slowly reached forward and grasped the handle of the pot firmly in his fist. Thinking about it for a long, lingering moment before he finally curled his fingers around the neck of the stranger's canteen and filled it to the brim. Doing the same for himself before he rose carefully. Looming above both the stranger and the dying fire as the wind picked up and the scent of ochre and wet – the smell of the world on the cusp of rain – colored the air with the echoes of change he had no interest sticking around to hear.

"I'm leaving now."

He walked away while the man was still sputtering.


It wasn't until later, when he was holed up in the second story of an Industrial management company. Watching the sky open up between the last afternoon rays as the beginning rumbles of thunder made tracks through the quiet, that he realized his bundle of notebooks was missing from his pack.


"Somebody's got to keep a record of what we've gone through. It'll be apart of our history."

He'd said that once.

A lifetime ago.

Maybe more.

He'd believed it too.

Now those words were gone.

Lost.

All his observations.

All his thoughts.

All his theories and findings.

He was angry enough to be reckless once the weather cleared. Angry enough to circle back and chance running across the man again as he turned the campsite upside down. Wondering if it'd simply fallen out of his pack. If he'd somehow left it behind in his hurry to get from the other man.

But it hadn't.

The man had taken it.

Stolen it.

It took the threat of bitter-hot tears to realize how angry he was.

Standing there in the middle of nowhere with his fists clenched and teeth bared. Hair plastered thick to his scalp with rain water and washed-out red as the green provided no answers. There were no tracks. No trail. No sign the other man had even been there at all save for the half-melted wrappers still curled around the dead-dark embers of the fire pit.

It was the first real emotion he could remember having since-


He'd lost track of the days a long time ago. But it couldn't have been more than half a week after that moment in the woods that he looked up from killing a trio of walkers in a convenience store and found the man – Paul – staring back at him from the other side of the aisle.

He figured his expression must have said it all when the man raised his palms again. Zeroing in on the flash of crumpled white in the right as the man held out his bundle of notebooks like a guilty child.

"I realize I might have come on a bit strong last time around," the man started, expression a fraction more wary than it had been the first time. Watching the slow drip of red puddle across the tiles from the swinging point of his machete.

"You stole from me," he bit off, aggressively quiet as the man winced. Long brown hair tied back in a loose ponytail this time. But still wearing the same clothes, meaning wherever he was from, he hadn't been back. Which meant something worse as far as he was concerned. The man had been watching him. Certainly all this time, but possibly even longer.

"Yes," Paul agreed, not denying it. "I wish I could say I was sorry about that, but I had to be sure. You left in the middle of our chat and I wanted to know if I was right."

His head tilted, the ghost of his old curiosity rising up without his permission.

"Sure of what?"

"That you're a good person. That you're worthy of a good place," the man insisted, twisting his wrist so that the metal clasp on one of the journals caught the light streaming through the dirty windows. "I read them, your journals. I read every single line. I know the difference between truth and fiction and nothing about these were censored. It was all you all the way back to the beginning. And you're still that person. A good person."

"I am not anything," he snapped back, hands fisting as his attention switched from the man's face to the bundle of journals. Those were his private- everything he was, everything he'd been was in there and the man had flipped through them like-

"Is that so hard to believe?" Paul questioned, more forceful than before like he was gaining steam for something. Ignoring his pointed looks when he gestured for the man to put his journals down on the empty shelf and slide them over. "Is it so hard to believe that someone else can see it?"

Yes.

No.

Yes.

"It's time to stop being afraid," the man murmured. "It's time to try. Take a chance. Come with me. We have a place, a home. We could use someone like you. What you were and what you are now. We're building something but it's still rustic. And we don't have a lot of fighters. You know how to handle yourself. And we have an old manor with a hell of a lot of old equipment I know you could probably put to good use."

Hysteria rose like bile in the back of his throat.

He was the eighth deadly sin, freshly forged.

Encompassing weakness with the ability to spread.

Because he was actually considering it. He couldn't help picturing it. For a split second he even wanted to. Then Andrea's face flashed, red-streaked and screaming in his mind's eye and the desire shattered. He recoiled, slamming back against the empty ice-cream cooler set against the far wall.

He couldn't.

"No."

"Why not?" the stranger asked, face expressive and open. But like he actually deserved an answer. Like he fully believed what he was saying. That he was everything he was promising and more and just couldn't fathom why he'd refuse.

"Milton-"

He was already moving past when the man tried to stop him. Pressing his palm against his chest the same moment something inside him just snapped. His fist was a warning sign when it drew back and used the man's jaw as a focal point, surprising the both of them with a sloppy uppercut as he lips curled back into a trembling snarl.

The sensation of blood trickling between his fingers was a makeshift gauge of give and take. An unfamiliar sensation that made him hesitate just a fraction of a beat too long as the man stumbled back, nose bleeding, only to surge forward and turn the tables. Catching him around the waist as the shelves collapsed under them and sent them sprawling.

He flailed out frantically. Feeling the grunt and a surprised explosion of air against his face whenever one of his hits landed. Trying to wrestle his way out of the man's grip. Snarling angry as the scream of rusting metal and clattering corner pins echoed over-loud in the empty building.

He managed to wedge the stranger into a sharp corner and gain the upper hand before the flat of the man's palm caught him solidly in the solar plexus. Collapsing him like a house of cards as he wheezed, struggling to breathe. Only vaguely conscious that it had been a learned move, precise and trained, before the stranger flipped them. Landing astride and trying to pin down his arms as panic flushed a surge of adrenaline through his system.

"Get off me!" he yelled, hoarse and so unlike himself he didn't realize the words had come from him until the ache from his wounded throat throbbed into prominence.

"Stop!" the man returned, breathing hard. Arms braced over his as he caught him by the wrists and struggled to fold them into his chest. "Stop! Stop. Look, whatever it is, whatever it was, it's over. Done. It's time to stop running. Please. Hey- look at me. Milton, look at me!"

But he wasn't listening.

Instead he froze.

Because he was hard.

Pressed up against him like this, he could feel it.

He was so hard his head was almost spinning with it.

His cheeks burned with shame and confusion as the Paul's palms curled gently-strong around the inner of his wrists. Ashamed to say that regardless of the situation, the man, this moment, the strangeness of this entire situation, had stirred something in him he didn't quite understand. Something he'd figured had never existed until right here and right now. And worse, something he couldn't in good faith pass off as adrenaline or normal sexual frustration.

This was something else.

Something more.

He cracked a lid when the man stilled on top of him and the silence grew humid and close. Swapping air as the man looked down at him, blinking and almost uncertain. Not disgusted but honestly looking just as surprised as he was. Expression changing in real time, from calm to understanding and then-

He strongly believed he would have hated that look on anyone's face. But he used the moment anyway and brought his left knee slamming up. Catching him in the gut as Paul collapsed into himself with an inverted yell. Clutching his stomach as he used every second to his advantage and rolled away. Scrambling crab-like before his feet finally met the concrete and sent him half-falling out the door and into the open air.

He ran. Dodging abandoned cars as his bent glasses slid down his nose. Heart thumping like a heart attack in his chest as the desperate need to be awayawayaway screamed through him like nothing else he'd ever experienced. It was a different sort of fear. It was fear saturated in hope and a thousand other dangerous things that masqueraded themselves in soothing colors and familiar notes. Only half conscious he'd lost his machete as he fumbled with his belt knife, trying to get it in his hand before-

Paul hit him running. Sending them careening down into the highway ditch in a tangle of muddy limbs and bared white teeth. He fought. Yelling. Struggling. But he was so tired. He was exhausted and hungry and so worn down that he just wanted everything to stop. He wanted to sink down into the tepid muck and never get up again. He want to lash out and make it hurt. He wanted to live for something more than he was now. He wanted to hide. He wanted-

"I did hear you, you know," the man murmured, soft and quietly as he held him down into the dirt. Easing the fight out of him in inches as he tasted the mineral rich grit of the soil against his tongue. "Everything you weren't saying. Your pain? I know. God, believe me. I know. But you can't let it own you. You're more- more than that pain. More than those mistakes. More than what you fear the most. I promise. Please- let me. Let me show you."


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