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 Twelve
That night there was a light knock on the door. Waking him so easily he was more or less aware that he'd never fully drifted off to sleep. He didn't question it. He simply felt his way across the nightstand, grabbing his knife and glasses as he eased himself out of the blankets without waking Paul. Wanting to get to the door before they had the opportunity to do the job properly as the man grunted and flopped over onto his side of the mattress.
He answered the door without thought, Chest bare and jeans only half buttoned up as Michonne took shape in the hallway gloom. More or less aware that Rick and Daryl were in the shadows behind her. He forced a blink, clearing the sleep from his eyes as he stalled for time. He probably should have expected this. Maybe he had. Maybe he just hadn't been conscious of it. Letting it burn slow in the back of his mind like a pot on perpetual boil.
He looked at her for a long moment before making a decision. Knowing from the look on her fact they weren't here for Paul, but for him. Just as much as he knew that this was something he had to do. Something that that had been building behind the scenes ever since he's heard Paul's voice filter in through the open window of his lab. He glanced back into the room as Paul slept on, restless in the sheets he just left. And for once, he was glad of it. This was something he had to do alone.
"Not here," he murmured softly. Ignoring the understanding that lilted softly in the back of her eyes as she caught a glimpse inside. Stepping back into the hall enough that it gave him room to lean back and snag a shirt before tossing it over his shoulder and easing the door closed behind him.
He slipped the shirt on without turning, using the moment to reorient himself as he focused on the elegant, hand carved mahogany of the door in front of him. Taking a moment to run his hand through his hair and slip on his glasses. Knowing they were taking in every line, every scar, the muscled thin of the flesh over his ribs that'd never gone back to its accustomed softness after all those months on his own. All of it was bare to their eyes. Their judgement. Every bit of him that was suddenly on display in a way that would have crippled him not that long ago. Back when he'd viewed privacy and solitude like currency he wanted to build, not spend.
He led the way through the darkened wings. Avoiding the creaking floorboards. The windows where the sentries would be facing. Anything that would give them away. Not sure if he could handle the addition of anymore ears, anymore faces, well meaning as they might be. He'd barely been left alone since what'd happened earlier - the others were on edge. Over protective.
It would have warmed him if the emotions hadn't been so misplaced. The man's whose throat he'd cut back at the burning house would likely beg to differ. He wasn't the one that needed protection anymore. But they did. The people here. Paul had been right, they needed people like Rick and his group, now more than ever. Especially if this Negan was stepping up his campaign. He wasn't blind to how it worked. The claim that they'd been short changed - whether true or false - was a gateway to taking advantage and he knew it. But this, Rick and his people, could be the edge they'd been looking for.
They settled in the cozy, brick-layered dark that had originally been part of the kitchens before the remodel. Puttering around quietly as he heated up some water and set out mugs for tea. Not bothering to ask if they wanted them. The night was cold and central heating was a pipe dream most of the time lately. You stayed warm however you could and you didn't say no to a hot drink. That was just how it worked.
He found himself unable to avoid the parallels to the first time as he slammed campfire-tin mugs of generic red rose, barely steaming onto the table without ceremony. Remembering that moment around the table with Andrea, Phillip and Michonne. When he'd had his tea press - perfectly steeped every time - and a cupboard full of expensive herbal teas he'd collected before the infection like they were some sort of awful indulgence.
He lifted his eyes with an exaggerated flick. Looking from the three of them to the mugs and then back again as they steamed pleasantly. Bare and blunt, but honest. It took another tense half-second for him to realize he was still standing. Forcing his knees to bend, one after the other as he sat down in the chair bordering Michonne and Rick. Well aware, even as he settled himself against the backrest that it was a tactical decision. Designed to make him feel small, crowded, cornered.
Less than ten months ago, it would have even worked.
He breathed unevenly until the moment broke and all three of them slowly reached for their mugs. Drawing them close to their chests as the warmth radiated from the beaten up metal.
The silence was an animal waiting for the right moment to strike. But still, he just sat there, searing his fingers against the side of his mug, allowing it to approach.
Eventually it was Michonne who broke the silence.
"What happened to you?" She asked, long hair hanging down over her shoulders, providing a contrast with the steam.
He warmed his hands around his mug as the corner of his lips twitched sardonically. Threatening to complete the expression before he forced it to heel.
"The same thing that happened to you, I would imagine," he remarked simply. The words placid and without weight despite the sharp looks he got in return.
He knew what they were thinking.
We aren't the same.
You aren't like us.
And they were right, of course.
He wasn't like them anymore than he was like Paul - like anyone at the Hilltop. He was unique. He'd adapted late. Alone. Without anyone else to help him learn or have his back. He'd taught himself. There had been no other option. He'd found his own niche in this world and used it to his full potential. He'd survived. Others like him - better than him - hadn't. And that was something he had to live with. Something they all had to live with.
But he also knew what they weren't saying.
What they were fishing for.
"You survived out there, on your own?" Rick stated, less a question than it was an accusation. Calloused palms clenching slightly around the dented-smooth of his mug.
The archer took it a step further with a diverse sound. Kicking at the table so that the tea in his mug was in danger of slopping over the sides as he crossed his arms over the back of his chair. Closed off and clearly suspicious.
"Last time we saw you, you could barely handle a paper cut," Daryl snorted.
A mirror image of himself, ten months old and painfully out of place slanted into view on the other side of the room. Watching him with a bland, deminitive expression - pencil and notebook in hand as he faced who he was - who he'd been - unflinchingly. Biting down on the inside of his cheek until he tasted tapped iron when Phillip - no, the Governor - took shape behind the image of his old self. Expression looming, dark and wicked. Standing out like a metaphors- something obvious and targeted as his old self remained completely unaware of his presence behind him.
Not when the barrel of a gun gleamed. Not even when the safety clicked back and the governor grinned like a snarl. Peppering his skin with red as the old Milton crumpled to the floor without a sound. Clutching as the fractured hole where his heart had been.
He shook his head, the motion so slight he was able to pass it off by leaning forward and picking up his mug. A lot had changed since then.
"Things change," he echoed, forcing his eyes away from the ghosts - hallucinations - whatever they were as he took a careful sip from his mug. "People do. I didn't think I could. But I did. I had to."
"How long?" Michonne asked.
"I lost track," he admitted. Remembering his notebooks and the solace he'd found in them in those first few months. Finding a hopeless sort of purpose in scribbling everything down. Everything that'd happened. Everything that was happening. "From my records and what Paul told me later, it was at least five or six months. I avoided the cities - towns. I didn't trust."
"How did you find this place?" Rick asked, expression evolving slowly as his mug curled steam into the chilly air.
"I didn't," he answered, smiling small. "Paul found me. Twice actually. He wouldn't let me go. I didn't want to admit it for a long time, but he saved my life. Bringing me here."
"Ain't what he says," Daryl grunted, fingers spraying out like a muted snap before edging back to the warmth of his mug. "'Cording to him you up and saved him.
Salted the earth and all that."
"Negan and his men aren't the only threat we've faced here. Your group does not get the sole distinction of being a target for calamities," he pointed out, slightly prim. Pushing back the sensory memories that jostled to drag him back down into the events of that night. "Besides, one could consider it as returning the favor."
"He says his friends call him that. Jesus. You don't," Michonne broke in, ushering the room to quiet.
"He isn't my friend," he answered simply, refusing to make a face when he scalded his tongue on the next sip. Temporarily forgetting about ambient temperature when the weight of the eyes finally started to wear on him.
"No," she murmured thoughtfully, gaze appearing to soften a fraction. "He isn't. Is he?"
He didn't know how to reply to that, so he didn't. Uncertain of what the silence was saying for him but content to let it all the same.
Paul was used to his silence. To the moments where words weren't needed but he found himself responding all the same as the man's lips grazed a path down his skin. A mess of grazing stubble and tickling how hair until his fist catch itself in the thick of it. Keeping the both of them grounded as his hips jerked up and up and Paul's swallowed around him, groaning.
"What happened, after Woodsbury?" Rick asked after a long moment. The break in the silence dangerously close to a mercy kill as he cleared his throat and leaned forward in his chair. Finding himself almost grateful for the distraction despite the subject matter.
"After the meeting things...devolved." he allowed, considering his words before he voiced them. "The truth is he used us and we let him. All of us. We were deliberately blind until it was too late. And for good reason. What he became? It wasn't what he was. I'm not making excuses for him. But he was my friend - the only one i really had to be honest. I was in the room when his wife died - head on Collison before all this - I looked after Penny, his daughter while he figured out the funeral arrangements. By the time he was ready to take her back, the first reports from the CDC were just coming out. After that it was like looking at a stranger."
He remembered the genial smile that had never quite seemed right whenever he asked about something in private that the Governor hadn't chosen to say aloud on own of their council meetings. He remembered the quiet way things were dealt with behind the scenes and how it was Merle that always seemed to be the one the Governor was talking to in the back alleys.
"What he was doing? What he was really doing? Andrea made me see it. After that everything happened fast. When I confronted him, I couldn't reach him. So I did what I had to. I did what I could. I tried to buy some time. I set fire to the pits and told Andrea to go. I couldn't leave- not yet. She said she was going to bring back home- get the others back. And I believed her."
Across the table the groups expression darkened. Shifting almost restlessly as Michonne stared at him unblinking.
"She tried to get back to you, but he went after her, captured her and brought her back. He had me by that point. Tortured both of us before he finally brought me in to where he had her. Told me to kill her. A so called test of loyalty," he shared with a light smirk. Knowing now, just as he had then, that it had been so such thing. He had been dead either way."
His knees twinged like a sympathetic echo as he remembered falling across the concrete on his hands and knees. Glasses missing and blood dripping down his face as Andrea look down at him in horror. Mouth moving with the syallables of his face was the governor wrenchedhim upright. The change in gravity disturbing as he swallowed thickly stomach trying it's best to turn inside out as the taller man shoved him deeper into the room. Taunting him with the verberating echos.
"I don't know how but I got him. I grazed him with the knife he gave me to do it with and he fell backwards. Long enough for us to get out. We ran- we just-"
He broke off, unsteady. Knowing he was giving something of it away as his hand curled into a brutal fist of top of the table.
"We were headed to the prison when we got surprised by a herd."
He already hated himself for not saying it. How it was his fault. How Andrea died because of him. He'd lived and she'd died because she made a choice she couldnt have possbily he hadn't even been able to give her an out as they'd torn into her. She'd felt it. Every bite. Every tear and fountain of blood that had gushed up while he'd slumped unconscious at the bottom of that gulley ravine. Safe and whole.
She'd felt every second of it.
But Rick just nodded. Like he'd given them something precious anyway. Elbows on the table, a mess of long-limbed grace and lethality.
"We can all change. Some of us don't get the chance. You did, and you did something with it."
It took him a moment to realize it was a compliment. But that just made it worse. Realizing that now more than ever he needed to-
Andrea's ghost flickered into being across from him. Hands planted across the old grain wood as she leaned over the table. Blue sleeves rolled up, and blond hair loose. Looking at the others with a soft, heartwrenching smile before foxing him with that look she had. The one that reminds you that-
He took a deep breath. Flattening his palms on the table as he looked at each of them in turn before he spoke.
"There's something you need to know. About- about Andrea."
Michonne came to him before they left the following morning. Joining him on the wall as he took his turn on watch.
A deal had been made. Terms met. And now they were leaving with half their food stores upfront. It wasn't a deal he would have made. It was risky and foolish - even as far as Gregory was concerned. Half sure Negan's little scheme, along with his wounds, had rattled him up more than a bit considering the man was usually more stingy with their food stores than he was ever the opposite.
"She would have been proud, you know that don't you?" Michonne murmered. Feeling the warm weight of her beside him - not touching but close enough that he swore he could tell the difference in the air - as they stood together. "She would have been happy you made it. Made it here. I know she would have."
He watched the distant trail of smoke from a far off fire a long time before he answered. Playing a game with himself as he tried to pinpoint the location through terrain alone.
"You were right to leave," he said after a moment. Realizing that in the same way she had that his words were not meant to wound. "It might not have felt like it after everything- but it was."
It was her turn to be quiet then, taking in the growing dusk as her katana rustled against the leather holster between her shoulder blades.
"We both got a second a chance, in different ways," she countered. "That's what it means to survive. To learn how to deal with it. And what to do with it. Andrea would have agreed with yours."
He sat out there for a long time after she left. Until the sun gradually set and Paul was beside him and lacing their fingers together. Content to say nothing as the stars slowly edged their way out of an inky black sky and made a mockery of ancient nightmares.
He wasn't consciously aware of the moment when he wrote Paul down on paper.
But in hindsight, whenever that was, that was the moment he wanted him to live forever.
To endure.
To be remembered long after they were both gone by someone else – someone curious and perhaps with the ability to make difference – to read through his notes, his journals and discoveries – and to internalize the shades of people they'd once been. And for him, as they moved together, sweat-warm and tripping over the words neither of them could bring themselves to say out loud - tangled inside each other's skin - there was no better sign of intention than that.
A/N: Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – This story is now complete.
