Fic: Turning Point, Part 1
Mar. 19th, 2013 06:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cassandraoftroyTitle: Turning Point
Fandom: The Walking Dead (TV)
Rating: Teen/PG-13
Warnings: References to torture
Spoilers: through S03E14, "Prey"
Characters: Milton, Andrea
Pairings: pre-Milton/Andrea
Chapter: 1 of ?
Word Count: ~2600
Summary: Milton struggles with his increasing awareness of the Governor's cruel and erratic behavior, but finds it difficult to reconcile himself to a course of action -- until he discovers the Governor's newest secret.
"Unsettled" was perhaps an understated way to describe his mental state; Milton hated lying, both because the implicit social contract of people living in a civilized society made honesty a moral mandate, and because he was never any good at it. Lying, outright or by omission, required a certain level of interpersonal expertise that usually eluded him. It had been a mistake to mention the fire that had destroyed the captured biters to Philip; he should have pretended ignorance until the other man brought it up himself. He couldn't predict how Philip – no, how the Governor – would react to that knowledge, and it frightened him.
Milton sat down at the small desk in his office and opened the drawer where he kept his notebooks. He removed them carefully, keeping them in chronological order, and set them on the desk in front of him. Reaching into the apparently-empty drawer, he removed the false bottom that concealed one more notebook, which as yet had only a few of its pages covered in text. It was important to keep a record, to remember, but some things were not intended for public consumption. This record had become more of a personal journal; he'd started keeping it after the attack by the prison group, when things at Woodbury had... changed.
He opened to the page where he had last left off. The text would be incomprehensible to anyone else; he'd used a cipher that he had developed in his spare time in college: a hodgepodge of Greek and Cyrillic characters mixed with astronomy, calculus, and electrical engineering symbols. It had been a sort of in-joke among the lab group he'd worked with, a way of leaving messages in public that would confuse anyone else who saw them. It even had characters to represent spaces and punctuation marks, so that would-be code-breakers couldn't use the usual tricks to crack it. To anyone who didn't know the cipher, his notebook was filled with nothing more than string after string of nonsense.
After the last couple of weeks of practice, Milton was fluent enough in the code to write nearly as quickly as he wrote in standard English. I recognize less and less of him now. I fear this world, and recent events, have irreparably twisted the man I knew. He is understandably distraught over the death of his daughter, but when he asked me about the spark of identity remaining in the biters, I couldn't help but wonder, why then did he decide that we never allow our own to turn? Is it cold pragmatism, or mercy? Are we murdering our friends and neighbors, or sparing them a fate worse than death – and if the latter, why did he keep poor Penny in her tortured state?
He shook his head, frustrated with himself. I'm getting away from what's really bothering me. Trying to avoid thinking about it, I suppose. This whole business with the prison group is wrong. It would be one thing if they were simply marauders, but after the meeting yesterday, we know they're simply trying to survive, and would be content to leave us alone if we let them. I'm not sure whether it's Philip's need for revenge against Michonne, or whether the attack on Woodbury has made him feel threatened, but there is little of rationality or humanity in his decision to slaughter them all. There is little of Philip in that decision; I would like to think that the man I knew didn't have this sort of ruthless brutality in him. I don't know what to do.
For several long moments he stared at the page, but the thin blue college-ruled lines simply waited expectantly, as if they knew what he would say next. He fidgeted with his pen, reluctant to commit himself to the words – as if the ink on the page would make them real, rather than phantoms of thought that could be brushed away with a little distraction. Milton sighed. I'm afraid of him, he admitted to the journal, to himself. The Governor. I can't predict him anymore; I never would have anticipated the way he accosted me physically when he realized I'd told Andrea his plans for the prison group. I'm afraid of what he might do, now that he knows I set that fire. I'm afraid of what he'll do to Andrea, if he finds her tomorrow. I'm afraid of what he plans to do to her friends at the prison, and to Michonne. And I'm afraid that he's really been like this all along, and I just didn't let myself see it. What else has he done, that I just looked the other way and didn't notice? What's he going to do next? How do I stop it? CanI stop it? What will it cost me to go against him?
He nearly put down the pen in disgust when he realized what he was thinking. I feel helpless to oppose him, but I suspect that what I'm even more afraid of is not being helpless – that there is something in my power to do to end this, because that would mean I was ethically obligated to do it. This time he did put down the pen. His shoulders slumped; writing those short paragraphs had been as draining as one of the twenty-hour days he used to spend working in front of a computer screen, with only short interruptions for the bathroom, the microwave, or the coffee machine. But despite his exhaustion, he felt restless; putting his thoughts into words had done little to ease the unsettled feeling that plagued him. Carefully he packed away his journal into the secret compartment, then settled the false bottom over it and replaced his other notebooks in the drawer. He rose and left his office, heading for the back door that opened onto the alley where he hoped to pass unobserved.
Almost without conscious decision, Milton found himself moving toward the isolated building that he had shown Andrea earlier that day. The memory of that place was like a cut on the inside of his mouth: the more he prodded it, the more uncomfortable it became, but he couldn't make himself leave it alone. He had to step quietly as he traversed the second-floor catwalk with the vent that overlooked the... room. He still wasn't sure what he expected to see there that he hadn't on previous occasions – some macabre detail that would underscore his former friend's deteriorating psychological condition, or a chilling reminder of the horrors to come that would steel his will to act–
Andrea was strapped into the chair. Her body was rigidly still, as though she feared that the slightest sound from her would summon the monster that had bound her there. For a moment, Milton was frozen with her, as deprived of the power of movement and action as she was. His mind completely rebelled at the scene before him, refusing to accept or comprehend what he was seeing.
She was still wearing the same clothes Milton had last seen her in a few hours ago. The jacket and boots seemed bizarrely out of place on a woman strapped into a dentist's chair, but their presence meant that he hadn't done anything to her yet, at least. There were no visible restraints on her limbs; the gag he could see over her mouth must have also been holding her in place against the headrest of the chair. That meant she couldn't move her head – she couldn't see him. He had been silent when he came in; she would have no way of knowing he was ever there.
You can't keep looking the other way. Shame burned in his cheeks at his own cowardice. Andrea had been right; he'd been ignoring signs and letting himself believe that everything was fine for far too long. He headed for the stairs.
The Governor wouldn't be here; he wouldn't have left Andrea alone if he planned to stay. If he was saving her – Milton shuddered at the idea – for after the prison group was dealt with, he would be off making other preparations. There were plenty of loose ends that needed the Governor's attention: making ready for the massacre tomorrow, handling the conflict with the new group, and dealing with Milton himself. He knew the Governor wouldn't let the matter of the fire pass without comment. But the point was, he wouldn't be here. Milton doubted there would be guards, either; it seemed to be the Governor's intention to keep Andrea's presence, and perhaps the entire torture chamber, secret even from Martinez.
When his shadow crossed the gap in the door, he heard Andrea's muffled gasp, and the slight scrape of metal against metal. He pushed the door open. Her eyes were wide and staring, but when she registered that it was him, and not the Governor, her body relaxed slightly. He didn't speak until he was right beside her, and then only in a whisper. "I'm getting you out of here. This is wrong." The head restraint prevented her from nodding, but she made a soft sound through her nose in acknowledgment.
She was handcuffed to the arms of the chair; he hadn't been able to see the steel bracelets from his earlier vantage point. No doubt the Governor had the keys. Milton would have to improvise to release her. He glanced at the table behind the chair, where the two of them had watched the Governor almost lovingly array a variety of medical implements, and tried not to think about the uses to which the other man had intended to put them. The bone saw would likely be strong enough to cut the chains holding the handcuffs together. The head restraint would be simpler, so he reached up to unfasten that first. Beneath that band, a strip of duct tape held her gag in place. He tried to peel it off slowly, to minimize the pain of pulling away the adhesive, but as soon as he had a firm grip on the edge of the tape, Andrea yanked her head to one side, tearing the tape free. She spat out the cloth that it had held in place. "Thank you," she whispered. "Hurry. I don't know where he went."
He nodded. "I doubt he'll be back right away, but... I'm not sure I know him as well as I used to." He was already moving. The roll of tape had joined the surgical tools on the table, and he picked it up and pulled off a strip before slipping the roll around his wrist. He wrapped the piece of tape carefully around the chain of the cuff binding her right wrist; the tape would help hold the saw blade in place so that it didn't slip on the smooth surface of the metal.
If the rate of Andrea's breathing, and the pulse he could feel in her wrist whenever he gripped it to better position the saw, were any indication, she was every bit as nervous as he was. All of Milton's attention was on the task at hand, leaving Andrea to act as lookout – though there was little point in that role, as there would be no time to hide Milton's presence or the rescue attempt if anyone approached. But either their luck held, or he was still able to predict the Governor's actions with some accuracy after all, because they were not interrupted in the solid twenty or thirty minutes it took him to saw through both handcuffs. She scrambled clear of the chair as soon as her first wrist was free, which actually made it easier to cut through the second chain, as she could pull it taut to provide more support for the saw blade.
"I mean it, Milton," she said when the grating of metal finally ended, "thank you for coming for me. I don't know what I would have done otherwise."
He shrugged, turning away from her to find a place to set down the saw; it seemed perverse to put it back on the table with the rest of the torture implements. "He told me he hadn't found you. I didn't even know you were here until I got here... I'm not even sure why I came."
She placed a hand on his shoulder and turned him around to face her. "Well, I'm glad you did. Now let's get out of here."
"Right," he agreed. "The gates are all still under guard, but most of the Governor's men are preparing for tomorrow. There should be a gap where you can sneak through."
"Where we can sneak through," she interrupted him.
Milton shook his head. "I told you, Woodbury is my home, for better or worse. I wouldn't know what to do with myself anywhere else." He looked down at her wrists, where the severed chains from the handcuffs still jingled. The noise could give her away when she tried to escape; he pulled another strip of tape to wrap around her wrist and muffle the sound.
She shook off his hand, reaching out to cup the side of his face and forcing him to meet her gaze. "Milton, it's not safe here anymore. Maybe if it had just been you telling me about the Governor's plans before, he would have let it slide, but now? He'll kill you for helping me escape. You can't stay."
"What would I do?" he demanded. "I'm a researcher, an observer, not a – a warrior! And your friends aren't going to trust someone from Woodbury, someone they perceive as the enemy."
"I'll vouch for you," she promised. "When I tell them how you helped me, they'll know they can trust you."
"And then what? What will they ask me to do?" He didn't like how unsteady his voice was. "The Governor is wrong for planning to butcher them, but I'm not going to betray the entire town to these people. There are innocents here, too."
She gave him an earnest smile. "They're not like that. Rick and the others, they just want to be left in peace. Once the Governor is gone, they'll leave Woodbury alone. Maybe it'll even be safe to come back then, if you want to. But right now, it's not." Her expression turned solemn again. "Please, come with me. It'll be okay."
"But my research..." he protested.
"You can't research anything if Philip kills you."
The uncompromising way she said it shocked Milton out of his indecision. She was right; it wasn't "the Governor" that would be upset with Andrea's escape, and take his revenge on Milton – it was Philip. He'd been trying to think of them as separate entities, different personas with distinct motivations and goals, but that was just another way he'd been refusing to see what was in front of him. Philip wasthe Governor, and every atrocity he committed belonged to the man he knew. Philip would kill him if he stayed. Milton nodded. "All right."
Andrea took the cleaver from the display of torture tools, and Milton held onto the roll of duct tape so that they could improvise armor against biters on their journey. "The gun he insisted I take yesterday," Milton suggested. "It's back at my apartment, along with my research notes and records."
She frowned, considering the idea, and her fingers shifted on the handle of the cleaver. Even he could tell that she wanted the gun. "It's too dangerous," she finally said, reluctance clear in her tone. "We need to get out of here as quickly as possible, before somebody spots us or notices we're missing."
He sighed; those notes represented almost a year of research, and he was unlikely to find the resources necessary to replicate most of his experiments at this prison. If they would even allow him to continue his studies. "If you're sure," he temporized.
Her decisive nod put an end to the question. "Let's go."
Fandom: The Walking Dead (TV)
Rating: Teen/PG-13
Warnings: References to torture
Spoilers: through S03E14, "Prey"
Characters: Milton, Andrea
Pairings: pre-Milton/Andrea
Chapter: 1 of ?
Word Count: ~2600
Summary: Milton struggles with his increasing awareness of the Governor's cruel and erratic behavior, but finds it difficult to reconcile himself to a course of action -- until he discovers the Governor's newest secret.
"Unsettled" was perhaps an understated way to describe his mental state; Milton hated lying, both because the implicit social contract of people living in a civilized society made honesty a moral mandate, and because he was never any good at it. Lying, outright or by omission, required a certain level of interpersonal expertise that usually eluded him. It had been a mistake to mention the fire that had destroyed the captured biters to Philip; he should have pretended ignorance until the other man brought it up himself. He couldn't predict how Philip – no, how the Governor – would react to that knowledge, and it frightened him.
Milton sat down at the small desk in his office and opened the drawer where he kept his notebooks. He removed them carefully, keeping them in chronological order, and set them on the desk in front of him. Reaching into the apparently-empty drawer, he removed the false bottom that concealed one more notebook, which as yet had only a few of its pages covered in text. It was important to keep a record, to remember, but some things were not intended for public consumption. This record had become more of a personal journal; he'd started keeping it after the attack by the prison group, when things at Woodbury had... changed.
He opened to the page where he had last left off. The text would be incomprehensible to anyone else; he'd used a cipher that he had developed in his spare time in college: a hodgepodge of Greek and Cyrillic characters mixed with astronomy, calculus, and electrical engineering symbols. It had been a sort of in-joke among the lab group he'd worked with, a way of leaving messages in public that would confuse anyone else who saw them. It even had characters to represent spaces and punctuation marks, so that would-be code-breakers couldn't use the usual tricks to crack it. To anyone who didn't know the cipher, his notebook was filled with nothing more than string after string of nonsense.
After the last couple of weeks of practice, Milton was fluent enough in the code to write nearly as quickly as he wrote in standard English. I recognize less and less of him now. I fear this world, and recent events, have irreparably twisted the man I knew. He is understandably distraught over the death of his daughter, but when he asked me about the spark of identity remaining in the biters, I couldn't help but wonder, why then did he decide that we never allow our own to turn? Is it cold pragmatism, or mercy? Are we murdering our friends and neighbors, or sparing them a fate worse than death – and if the latter, why did he keep poor Penny in her tortured state?
He shook his head, frustrated with himself. I'm getting away from what's really bothering me. Trying to avoid thinking about it, I suppose. This whole business with the prison group is wrong. It would be one thing if they were simply marauders, but after the meeting yesterday, we know they're simply trying to survive, and would be content to leave us alone if we let them. I'm not sure whether it's Philip's need for revenge against Michonne, or whether the attack on Woodbury has made him feel threatened, but there is little of rationality or humanity in his decision to slaughter them all. There is little of Philip in that decision; I would like to think that the man I knew didn't have this sort of ruthless brutality in him. I don't know what to do.
For several long moments he stared at the page, but the thin blue college-ruled lines simply waited expectantly, as if they knew what he would say next. He fidgeted with his pen, reluctant to commit himself to the words – as if the ink on the page would make them real, rather than phantoms of thought that could be brushed away with a little distraction. Milton sighed. I'm afraid of him, he admitted to the journal, to himself. The Governor. I can't predict him anymore; I never would have anticipated the way he accosted me physically when he realized I'd told Andrea his plans for the prison group. I'm afraid of what he might do, now that he knows I set that fire. I'm afraid of what he'll do to Andrea, if he finds her tomorrow. I'm afraid of what he plans to do to her friends at the prison, and to Michonne. And I'm afraid that he's really been like this all along, and I just didn't let myself see it. What else has he done, that I just looked the other way and didn't notice? What's he going to do next? How do I stop it? CanI stop it? What will it cost me to go against him?
He nearly put down the pen in disgust when he realized what he was thinking. I feel helpless to oppose him, but I suspect that what I'm even more afraid of is not being helpless – that there is something in my power to do to end this, because that would mean I was ethically obligated to do it. This time he did put down the pen. His shoulders slumped; writing those short paragraphs had been as draining as one of the twenty-hour days he used to spend working in front of a computer screen, with only short interruptions for the bathroom, the microwave, or the coffee machine. But despite his exhaustion, he felt restless; putting his thoughts into words had done little to ease the unsettled feeling that plagued him. Carefully he packed away his journal into the secret compartment, then settled the false bottom over it and replaced his other notebooks in the drawer. He rose and left his office, heading for the back door that opened onto the alley where he hoped to pass unobserved.
Almost without conscious decision, Milton found himself moving toward the isolated building that he had shown Andrea earlier that day. The memory of that place was like a cut on the inside of his mouth: the more he prodded it, the more uncomfortable it became, but he couldn't make himself leave it alone. He had to step quietly as he traversed the second-floor catwalk with the vent that overlooked the... room. He still wasn't sure what he expected to see there that he hadn't on previous occasions – some macabre detail that would underscore his former friend's deteriorating psychological condition, or a chilling reminder of the horrors to come that would steel his will to act–
Andrea was strapped into the chair. Her body was rigidly still, as though she feared that the slightest sound from her would summon the monster that had bound her there. For a moment, Milton was frozen with her, as deprived of the power of movement and action as she was. His mind completely rebelled at the scene before him, refusing to accept or comprehend what he was seeing.
She was still wearing the same clothes Milton had last seen her in a few hours ago. The jacket and boots seemed bizarrely out of place on a woman strapped into a dentist's chair, but their presence meant that he hadn't done anything to her yet, at least. There were no visible restraints on her limbs; the gag he could see over her mouth must have also been holding her in place against the headrest of the chair. That meant she couldn't move her head – she couldn't see him. He had been silent when he came in; she would have no way of knowing he was ever there.
You can't keep looking the other way. Shame burned in his cheeks at his own cowardice. Andrea had been right; he'd been ignoring signs and letting himself believe that everything was fine for far too long. He headed for the stairs.
The Governor wouldn't be here; he wouldn't have left Andrea alone if he planned to stay. If he was saving her – Milton shuddered at the idea – for after the prison group was dealt with, he would be off making other preparations. There were plenty of loose ends that needed the Governor's attention: making ready for the massacre tomorrow, handling the conflict with the new group, and dealing with Milton himself. He knew the Governor wouldn't let the matter of the fire pass without comment. But the point was, he wouldn't be here. Milton doubted there would be guards, either; it seemed to be the Governor's intention to keep Andrea's presence, and perhaps the entire torture chamber, secret even from Martinez.
When his shadow crossed the gap in the door, he heard Andrea's muffled gasp, and the slight scrape of metal against metal. He pushed the door open. Her eyes were wide and staring, but when she registered that it was him, and not the Governor, her body relaxed slightly. He didn't speak until he was right beside her, and then only in a whisper. "I'm getting you out of here. This is wrong." The head restraint prevented her from nodding, but she made a soft sound through her nose in acknowledgment.
She was handcuffed to the arms of the chair; he hadn't been able to see the steel bracelets from his earlier vantage point. No doubt the Governor had the keys. Milton would have to improvise to release her. He glanced at the table behind the chair, where the two of them had watched the Governor almost lovingly array a variety of medical implements, and tried not to think about the uses to which the other man had intended to put them. The bone saw would likely be strong enough to cut the chains holding the handcuffs together. The head restraint would be simpler, so he reached up to unfasten that first. Beneath that band, a strip of duct tape held her gag in place. He tried to peel it off slowly, to minimize the pain of pulling away the adhesive, but as soon as he had a firm grip on the edge of the tape, Andrea yanked her head to one side, tearing the tape free. She spat out the cloth that it had held in place. "Thank you," she whispered. "Hurry. I don't know where he went."
He nodded. "I doubt he'll be back right away, but... I'm not sure I know him as well as I used to." He was already moving. The roll of tape had joined the surgical tools on the table, and he picked it up and pulled off a strip before slipping the roll around his wrist. He wrapped the piece of tape carefully around the chain of the cuff binding her right wrist; the tape would help hold the saw blade in place so that it didn't slip on the smooth surface of the metal.
If the rate of Andrea's breathing, and the pulse he could feel in her wrist whenever he gripped it to better position the saw, were any indication, she was every bit as nervous as he was. All of Milton's attention was on the task at hand, leaving Andrea to act as lookout – though there was little point in that role, as there would be no time to hide Milton's presence or the rescue attempt if anyone approached. But either their luck held, or he was still able to predict the Governor's actions with some accuracy after all, because they were not interrupted in the solid twenty or thirty minutes it took him to saw through both handcuffs. She scrambled clear of the chair as soon as her first wrist was free, which actually made it easier to cut through the second chain, as she could pull it taut to provide more support for the saw blade.
"I mean it, Milton," she said when the grating of metal finally ended, "thank you for coming for me. I don't know what I would have done otherwise."
He shrugged, turning away from her to find a place to set down the saw; it seemed perverse to put it back on the table with the rest of the torture implements. "He told me he hadn't found you. I didn't even know you were here until I got here... I'm not even sure why I came."
She placed a hand on his shoulder and turned him around to face her. "Well, I'm glad you did. Now let's get out of here."
"Right," he agreed. "The gates are all still under guard, but most of the Governor's men are preparing for tomorrow. There should be a gap where you can sneak through."
"Where we can sneak through," she interrupted him.
Milton shook his head. "I told you, Woodbury is my home, for better or worse. I wouldn't know what to do with myself anywhere else." He looked down at her wrists, where the severed chains from the handcuffs still jingled. The noise could give her away when she tried to escape; he pulled another strip of tape to wrap around her wrist and muffle the sound.
She shook off his hand, reaching out to cup the side of his face and forcing him to meet her gaze. "Milton, it's not safe here anymore. Maybe if it had just been you telling me about the Governor's plans before, he would have let it slide, but now? He'll kill you for helping me escape. You can't stay."
"What would I do?" he demanded. "I'm a researcher, an observer, not a – a warrior! And your friends aren't going to trust someone from Woodbury, someone they perceive as the enemy."
"I'll vouch for you," she promised. "When I tell them how you helped me, they'll know they can trust you."
"And then what? What will they ask me to do?" He didn't like how unsteady his voice was. "The Governor is wrong for planning to butcher them, but I'm not going to betray the entire town to these people. There are innocents here, too."
She gave him an earnest smile. "They're not like that. Rick and the others, they just want to be left in peace. Once the Governor is gone, they'll leave Woodbury alone. Maybe it'll even be safe to come back then, if you want to. But right now, it's not." Her expression turned solemn again. "Please, come with me. It'll be okay."
"But my research..." he protested.
"You can't research anything if Philip kills you."
The uncompromising way she said it shocked Milton out of his indecision. She was right; it wasn't "the Governor" that would be upset with Andrea's escape, and take his revenge on Milton – it was Philip. He'd been trying to think of them as separate entities, different personas with distinct motivations and goals, but that was just another way he'd been refusing to see what was in front of him. Philip wasthe Governor, and every atrocity he committed belonged to the man he knew. Philip would kill him if he stayed. Milton nodded. "All right."
Andrea took the cleaver from the display of torture tools, and Milton held onto the roll of duct tape so that they could improvise armor against biters on their journey. "The gun he insisted I take yesterday," Milton suggested. "It's back at my apartment, along with my research notes and records."
She frowned, considering the idea, and her fingers shifted on the handle of the cleaver. Even he could tell that she wanted the gun. "It's too dangerous," she finally said, reluctance clear in her tone. "We need to get out of here as quickly as possible, before somebody spots us or notices we're missing."
He sighed; those notes represented almost a year of research, and he was unlikely to find the resources necessary to replicate most of his experiments at this prison. If they would even allow him to continue his studies. "If you're sure," he temporized.
Her decisive nod put an end to the question. "Let's go."
