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, sexual content, slow burn.
Scintilla
Chapter Seven
It was months later and well into winter when he pulled into the Hilltop. Pleased to be back from a week long courtesy call to their newest neighbors - helping them get the electricity going in their camp – and was automatically looking around for Paul when Doctor Harlan pulled him aside and told him that Paul was two days late from a three-day supply run.
Gregory sighed like the entire conversation was undeserving of his time and patience when he cornered him by the gates. Exhaling a volumous plume into the cold that spoke of petty irritation when he stood squarely in the man's path. Hackles rising under the privacy of his skin as the man held up a hand to stall him.
"Look, I know you're still new around here Mr. Mamet," the man sniped formally. Putting emphasis on the first part like he didn't have more degrees to his name than the man had uncapped teeth. "Jesus can take care of himself. If we spent our time and supplies sending out search parties for people who are in all likelihood just moseying along window shopping, well, that's manpower and supplies we just won't see a return on. It isn't practical. You can appreciate that, I'm sure."
"It's been almost three days," he pointed out, blunt and apologetic as Andy, Harlan and Crystal listened from the sidelines. "It's below freezing long before nightfall. Has been for weeks. What if he's hurt? Trapped? Unless he's in a position where he can help himself – which, if he was, he should have been back by now – he won't last long without help."
Out of the corner of his eye he watched the other three twitch and exchange glances.
"Paul – Jesus," he corrected, remembering that he was virtually the only one that still insisted on calling the man by his given name. "Is an asset. I may not have been here long, but I know that with places like this, you protect your assets. The same as you would out there. That isn't sentiment. That's logic. It makes sense."
"Consider it this way," he countered, speaking right over the man's attempt to break in as he forced his gaze to fall on the other three in turn. Making sure he met their gaze as Harlan, Crystal, Andy stared back at him with various shades of discomfort. "Can we risk losing the best recruiter and fighter this place has over a tank of gas and some manpower?"
Gregory merely frowned, perturbed.
Unfortunately, that was about as far as he got on the matter before he was summarily dismissed. Forced to watch the older man walk away with Kal and Craig in tow. Muttering about the burdens of leadership and 'thinking beyond the moment' towards the 'bigger picture' as his nails bit into the blunt of his palms.
He felt something dark rise in the back of his throat. Thick and pervasively slow as he stood there in the middle of the compound and tried not to let his anger show. Remembering a time when anger, true anger, had been almost foreign to him as he sucked in a breath and held it. Glasses chill and threatening to fog across the bridge of his nose as the season's first real skiff of snow slowly started to fall.
All in all, it didn't exactly lend itself to the example of a good omen.
It took him until nightfall to realize what it was.
Fear.
Only for the first time in a long time it wasn't for himself.
He was scared for Paul.
The next morning, he started planning. He squirreled away three days worth of supplies and the half-box of bullets he'd saved from various supply runs since coming to Hilltop. He made sure he was quietly visible at dinner with the others, scribbling away at his notebook, just like always.
Gregory barely spared him a glance.
It was almost too easy.
But then again, Gregory had never been the one he'd been worried about.
Andy stopped him at the rear gate like he'd been waiting for him to pull just that. Giving him a clear up and down- taking in his backpack, machete and winter gear before shaking his head and sneaking a glance up at the dark windows of the manor.
But instead of calling him out or taking him in to see Gregory, the man just sighed and tossed him the keys to the Jeep parked close to the gate. Knuckling the back of his head like an anxious tell before the fog of his breath hazed out, pearl-white and possible between them.
"There'll be hell to pay when Gregory finds out, but just- just bring him home."
The shocks on the right front side creaked and groaned every other bump and tease of the brake. Just another worry that was collecting dust beside the treacherous road conditions and the near blizzard on the other side of the windshield. There were chains on the tires, of course, but judging by the slide every time he turned the wheel the amount of good they were doing on an unploughed road was negligible.
This was perhaps the stupidest thing he'd ever done.
And yet, he kept driving.
He spent the time trying to discern what else was wrong with the Jeep – distracting himself as he squinted into the blowing snow. He stopped when he reached at least ten potential problems. Realizing that at the very least it was negating the point. And at the very worst, only making his anxiety rise all the higher.
His only saving grace was that the majority of the snow wasn't sticking. Blowing in white-out wisps over the blacktop. It was the black ice you had to watch out for. Someone three miles back had learned that the hard way. Not Paul, but someone else. A stranger. He'd checked. He had to. The walker belted in the front seat still had the crumpled picture of a smiling woman and two children frozen to the bloody skin of its free hand before his knife sank home and ended it good.
He had the route Paul planned to take, so he stuck to the usual roads. Hoping to find him broken down on his way home or- at worst, laying low in one of the safe houses they used for emergencies. Only he wasn't. There was no sign of Paul at all and soon he had to hunker down himself. Sleeping fitfully beside a small, hearth-bound fire in the last safe house on the list. Watching the reflection of the flames dance across his eyelids as his brain buzzed with muted, anxious energy. Waiting until first light to start all over again.
By the third day he was low on gas and looking down a fork in the road. The signposts were sleeted thick with icy snow. One of them was familiar, a direction that he and Paul had gone more than once. And the other was not. He had to make a choice. Statistically he would be more inclined to choose the path most traveled. But considering he was not Paul, he had to take into account other variables.
Like the man's complete lack of survival skills in the middle of a blizzard, apparently.
He sighed, rubbing at his eyes as he ignored the chill of his breath pluming out in front of him. Knuckles clenching and unclenching around the steering wheel as the sun-bleached rubber threatened to crack and twist. Feeling the cold of the outside leech into his bones in real time before he slammed the gearshift in reverse. Skating on no traction for a handful of beats as the action translated into frustration and acrid fear.
He hid the Jeep under an awning tarp behind the garage of the nearest house before setting out on foot down an unfamiliar road. Finally understanding what Andrea had said all those months ago. That when you knew what you were fighting for, the rest was remarkably simple.
Paul was important.
Important to Hilltop.
Important to him.
Those were the facts.
Now he had to figure out what to do with them.
If they both got out of this alive, that is.
A/N: Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – There will be more to come, stay tuned.
