Hi! This story is back. :) Hope you enjoy it!
13.
The moment he heard the scream from the main block, he knew she has to be somehow involved. It was a shame, really, because for the past four days she got along with the women quite well. She did all the work she was told to do, without objecting and, according to Carol, she wasn't much of a bother. Sure, she caused some awkward moments at the beginning, like when she bluntly asked about the intimate relations within the group and even threw in a few of her own speculations, some accurate enough to make the atmosphere uncomfortable. And although Carol hinted to her such sensitive themes were bound to create tensions and are better left undiscussed, she promptly retorted that hiding one's affection for another person would be utterly unproductive when living in the now or never era and went on asking about him. He was in the same room that afternoon, sharpening his arrows in the corner and pretending he wasn't interested in their conversation although he was listening in to every word she said. When she asked if he was sleeping with somebody and, since none of the women responded, remarked, with a wicked grin, it would be a big shame to leave such a potential unexplored, Beth, who sat at the same table with her and Carol, stormed out. It was a sign for him to intervene, before things went any further. He locked her into the detention room for the rest of the day as a precaution, avoiding himself a conversation with her, fearing it might lead in the direction, which was no less uncomfortable for him than it was for the others.
After that little incident the women didn't talk to her much and she kept more to herself to avoid being locked up again. She asked a couple of times to be moved to another working post, specifically to go patrolling with him or going on rounds with him. Carol made it clear to her, they weren't running an employment service and that she doesn't give a damn about her working preferences. He laughed inside, when she complained to him, with an utmost offended voice, about Carol not being flexible at all. He sided with Carol of course, as inside the block she was at least safe.
He would still lock her in at night and sleep on the other side of the bars. They would talk sometimes, or rather she would talk. She told him a little bit about her life in Japan, about her fencing teacher – the man that brought her up after her parents' death, and about her research at the university, which eventually brought her to the US. She even described to him some interesting patterns in animal behaviour, which, she pointed out, could now be well discerned in behaviour of humans as well.
He liked listening to her. She was obviously smart, school like smart as her social skills were definitely questionable, and she must have been well skilled in sword, considering she trained from her childhood and from what he saw down in the corridor on that fated day. But apart from that he still felt all he got was just very surface information, and that he didn't know her at all. And neither did he trust her. She asked him questions too. He told her very little or responded with one-syllable words and after a few attempts she stopped asking. What could he have said about himself anyway, he had nothing to be proud of.
During the day he felt okay leaving her in Carol's care. Niko didn't like it, he could see that, but she complied. She'd get used to it with time, and more importantly, others would get used to her. He wanted her to stay, and for that he needed others to let her stay. As far as Rick was concerned, she was still on probation
But now Beth screamed. He recognized it was Beth when she screamed for the second time. He prayed in his mind it was just a spider or a mouse, or even a walker, anything that was not Niko's doing.
He rushed in and found an odd scene. Niko was sitting at the table with his back towards him, Carol pale and her eyes wide open stood still besides her, and Beth paced back and forth in the middle of the room.
As soon as Beth saw him she rushed towards him and snug under his arm. She was trembling. "She's crazy…she's crazy…" she kept whispering.
He held her by the elbows, gently pushed her away and walked to the table. Only then he realized there was another person sitting across Niko. The arms hung limply at his sides, while his head rested on the table with the left side of his face turned upwards. A pencil with a rubber eraser at the end stuck out above the punctured jelly of his left eyeball and a few red drops were spattered over the table in the vicinity of his head.
He never saw Frank with such a tranquil expression on his face before. The left corner of the mouth contorted slightly upwards, it looked almost like he was smiling.
What goes around, comes around, Niko's words reverberated in his mind. He didn't expect it would happen so soon, or in such a way, and by the look of it, neither did Frank.
Any comments, opinions, reviews, speculations would be awesome! Thanks! ;)