Fic: Turning Point, Part 2
Apr. 14th, 2013 05:02 am![[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: Canon-standard human-on-zombie violence, references to abusive behavior
Spoilers: at least through S03E14, "Prey." We're going AU from the finale, though elements of the last couple of episodes of the season will be incorporated in later chapters.
Pairings: pre-Milton/Andrea
Chapter: 2 of ?
Word Count ~2500
Summary: Milton and Andrea escape Woodbury and find a place to gear up for the road ahead; Andrea reflects on how things went so wrong.
Part 1
It seemed like she was always sneaking out of Woodbury. There was a kind of irony to that, since she'd been the one who was so ready to stay. It was so hard to remember what she'd seen in the town back then, after all she'd seen since. Sure, she knew in the abstract – Woodbury was safe, and comfortable, and "civilized" in a way that nothing had been since before the world ended. Well, other than the CDC, and look how that turned out. But it was a struggle to recall the way she'd felt about Woodbury when she and Michonne had first been taken there; the funhouse-mirror image of the town was too strongly seared into her brain. Woodbury was a sick, rotten place, and she couldn't bring to mind an image of how she'd once thought of it, wholesome and welcoming. The very fabric of the place seemed to agree with that assessment, as the crate she'd dragged over to stand on gave out beneath her boot in a spray of rotting wood splinters.
Milton rolled a steel drum over with some difficulty, and Andrea scrambled on top of it and onto the overturned truck that made up this section of the wall. There was no gate here, so patrols only swept through twice a day to check for damage to the perimeter. She reached down to help Milton fumble his way up beside her, and they looked out over the wall for a moment, checking to see if the area beyond was clear of biters, before descending.
It was the same with Philip – now that the the rotten, twisted core of him had been exposed, it was a struggle to remember how she'd ever found him desirable. The loss of his eye hadn't made him any less handsome, but the vicious, gleeful cruelty he'd shown in that storage building made it impossible for her to see anything but ugliness in him every time she imagined his face. He had enjoyed hunting her down like a rat, terrifying her, savoring the fear in her eyes.
Worse still was the realization that what he'd done wasn't the behavior of a man broken by recent psychological trauma; it was the act of a long-time predator, one who was practiced and comfortable with viewing other people as his prey. This couldn't have started with Michonne taking his eye. Is that what she sensed in him? That he was... wrong? She grabbed Milton's shirt and dragged him into a crouch behind a patch of undergrowth, out of sight of a pair of wandering biters. Why didn't she tell me? She realized the answer to that question the moment it crossed her mind: Michonne would've sounded crazy if she'd tried to convince Andrea that their savior was a psychopath with nothing more than a feeling to go on. But she hadn't been wrong. And the signs must have been there from the start, if Michonne had picked up on them. Why hadn't Andrea seen them?
The two biters had moved on, and Andrea gestured to Milton to follow her as she started to plot a course that would loop back to the road. He caught her arm, shaking his head. "What is it?" she hissed, keeping her voice low.
"There's only one clear road between Woodbury and the prison, and the Governor knows it," he told her in similarly hushed tones. "We can't follow the road."
Of course. That was how he'd found her earlier, after all. Another thing I should have realized. She tried to put the thought out of her head for now. "I can find our way across country; Michonne taught me a few things about orienteering."
Milton's gaze flitted about, the way it often did when he was anxious. "That's straight through a Red Zone. We'll need weapons."
Not for the first time, she thought mournfully about the pistol she'd been forced to surrender that morning, and Milton's gun that they hadn't felt safe enough to go back for. The cleaver she'd taken was their only protection, and that made her feel frighteningly exposed. They had so few resources available to them... "I think I know a place."
"What place?" She noticed him keeping a nervous eye on their surroundings while they spoke; that was good, it meant he had some instincts for danger. She wouldn't have to do this alone again.
Andrea took a deep breath, bracing herself against the memory of those dark rooms with their echoing floors, and the bits of plywood and chain-link that had been all that had stood between her and the man with the shovel. "A storage building. There were tools there, and I'm not sure what else. We should be able to find things to use as weapons, and it should be at least mostly clear." If the Governor had survived that crowd of biters, and any others that were drawn by the noise, then he must have killed enough to cut a path out.
"If it's safe there, I can reinforce our clothing with this to protect against biters," he offered, holding up the arm that still bore the roll of duct tape.
She'd seen his duct-tape armor in action, and it worked well enough to suit her. "Good idea," she agreed. "Let's just pray we don't need it." After another quick scan of the horizon, she led the way forward.
Their progress toward the storage building, already slowed by the need to navigate across open country, was further hampered by having to stop and hide from biters. Andrea was much more at ease with killing biters than with hunkering down behind a tree trunk until they wandered away, and eliminating them was faster. But with only one weapon between the two of them, they'd be helpless if biters surrounded them. Still, there were a few hours of daylight remaining by the time they found the building; with a little luck, they could do what they needed to there and still reach the prison before dark. There was no sign of vehicles, other than the tracks left by the Governor's truck earlier that day; if their escape had been discovered, no one had thought to look for them here yet. Thank goodness for small favors, she thought cynically.
The prospect of going back into that building hadn't gotten any more pleasant during their hike, but Andrea went in first, cleaver poised to take out any stragglers that had escaped the Governor. It seemed quiet. Milton shut the door behind them and they progressed slowly forward through the winding rooms and corridors, peering into shadows that might conceal anything human-sized.
Hanging on a pegboard along one wall was an ax, which Andrea appropriated and passed to Milton. "Think you can handle that?"
"I'm not sure I have much choice," he observed, accepting the ax from her with mingled discomfort and determination. She gave him a reassuring smile.
A steel toolbox below the pegboard contained a number of heavy screwdrivers, which Andrea happily traded for the unwieldy cleaver. Milton found a garden trowel that fit well enough into his pocket, for biters that got too close for the ax.
There were only three surviving biters left in the parts of the building they explored, two of them reduced to a dragging crawl by heavy damage. Andrea let Milton dispatch those with the ax while she took out the third, which still had its feet under it. "I think that's all of them. Did you want to armor us up?" She nodded at the tape he still wore around one wrist.
"Yes, of course." He slipped the roll over his hand and peeled off a strip. "It's probably best if you fasten your jacket at least partway, for better coverage." Milton waited while she zipped the leather partly closed, and then took one of her arms and began coating the sleeve in stripes of tape.
After a few moments, her arm started getting tired from holding it extended. "Would this be easier if I took the jacket off?"
He glanced up at her face. "I can do it that way if you'd prefer, but it's actually easier to do this while you're wearing it. I don't have to keep flipping it over to get at the other side, and I can make sure the tape doesn't limit your range of motion. Is this too uncomfortable?"
"No, it's fine." Compared to what I've been through today, I think I can manage holding my arm out for a few minutes. It wasn't long before he switched to the other arm, and she watched him work to distract herself from the growing ache in her bicep. He was careful, and thorough, but what surprised her most was his gentleness; he didn't jerk her arm around when he needed her to move this way or that, and he smoothed the tape against the fabric rather than squeezing to fix the adhesive.
Shortly her other arm was done, leaving only the torso of the jacket. Milton hesitated. "Um, please don't interpret this as, uh – I just need to put the tape–"
That actually got a chuckle out of her. "Milton, I'm not going to accuse you of trying to feel me up while you're trying to save my life. Go ahead."
He cleared his throat, fidgeting with the tape. "All right. But let me know if anything, um..." At her wry expression, he shut up and went to work. She put her hands behind her head, resting her intertwined fingers against her neck, to give him room to work unhindered.
For all that she'd intimated that his awkwardness was silly, the work he was doing put them in very close contact; Andrea was acutely aware of the proximity of him, the movement of his hands over her back and sides. Still, his touch remained gentle, and as respectful as it could be under the circumstances.
She wondered why his gentleness had come as such a shock to her. I guess I thought that, with this world we live in now, you don't get very far by being soft. You need strength to survive out here. That had been Shane's criticism of Rick, hadn't it? That he was too soft, too gentle, wasn't strong enough to protect them. Shane knew the value of strength. But... The conversation with Carol back at the prison returned to her in a rush. Shane tried to kill his best friend. Even more chilling than that revelation had been the way Carol had described why he'd done it, as if it didn't surprise her at all that he'd commit murder over Lori. As if Shane were the sort of man that Carol had far too much experience with in her life: a controlling, amoral abuser, whose motivations could be boiled down to what he thought belonged to him. Like the Governor, Andrea realized with horror.
When had she become the kind of woman who was attracted to abusers and psychopaths? She'd never dated anyone abusive before the world had ended – certainly no one who had ever been violent. She thought back over her last couple of exes; sure, they'd turned out to be assholes, but they hadn't been dangerous. It had to be some sort of sick coincidence that the last two men she'd slept with had been obsessive and homicidal... didn't it?
It doesn't matter now. She resolutely turned her thoughts elsewhere. Milton's work with the tape was quick and precise, though when it came to applying the strips to her body, his hands became less certain. A couple of times, she caught him in a moment of indecision, torn between trying to fuss the tape perfectly into place and not wanting to let his touch linger on certain areas of her body. It slowed his work a little, and she briefly let herself enjoy the feeling of human contact with someone who wasn't trying to harm her.
But she knew she should try to relieve the tension between them. "This won't get any less weird by acting like it's not," she told him, grinning warmly. "Just embrace the awkwardness."
Milton attempted a nervous laugh, but it came out a little strangled. "I just... I didn't want you to think that – because of the circumstances, that I was trying to take advantage..."
Does he think I'm a damsel-in-distress, ready to swoon into his arms because he rescued me? She glanced away for a moment, trying to keep the amusement off her face. "Milton, I meant what I said before; I'm truly grateful that you came and let me out of that torture chamber. I'd probably be dead by now, or wishing I was, if you hadn't. But I think right now, it's fair to say that we're saving each other. There's no reason for things to be uncomfortable between us; we're in this together. Okay?"
He studied her for a moment, until his expression relaxed and he nodded. "Okay."
Andrea gave him a quick hug, which he returned after only a brief hesitation. Then she stepped back just enough for him to finish taping her up. This time, his hands were more sure against her body, which was not unpleasant, if she were being honest about it. He finished his work quickly, walking around her to assess the coverage of the tape. "That should hold up under all but the most extreme circumstances," he said.
She held out her arms and inspected her armor. It didn't look like much, but she knew the sturdy tape would turn aside human teeth, at least for a short time. "Thanks. Is there enough left on that roll for you?"
Milton glanced down at the tape hanging around his wrist, his expression doubtful. "Possibly, but I'm not sure this shirt is sturdy enough to support it."
"Then we'll have to find something for you to wear over it," Andrea decided. "Let's take a quick look around. Just be careful; there are still a lot of dark corners in this place."
It wasn't long before Milton discovered a bulky canvas jacket, only slightly oversized on him. Under his guidance, Andrea applied strips of tape to his arms, flanks, and back. Despite his precise instructions, she was much less confident in her own handiwork than she was in the protection he'd made for her, and she offered a silent prayer to whomever might be listening that his armor wouldn't be put to the test.
When she finished, Andrea glanced at the nearest exterior window. The light was still strong, but the angle of the shadows was increasing. "If that's everything, we should hurry. We don't want to move overland in the dark."
"The dark," Milton repeated. "I know light attracts biters, but we can't move around inside the prison completely blind. We should look for lanterns, or something." Finding the lanterns, and a handful of road flares, added several minutes to their departure time, but Andrea hoped it wouldn't make too much difference. Winter was well behind them now, and the days were getting longer. When they finally left the storage building, Andrea breathed deeply of the fresh afternoon air, facing into the breeze that carried away the stench of death from behind her. I think we might actually make it.
Fandom: The Walking Dead (TV)
Rating: Teen/PG-13
Warnings: Canon-standard human-on-zombie violence, references to abusive behavior
Spoilers: at least through S03E14, "Prey." We're going AU from the finale, though elements of the last couple of episodes of the season will be incorporated in later chapters.
Pairings: pre-Milton/Andrea
Chapter: 2 of ?
Word Count ~2500
Summary: Milton and Andrea escape Woodbury and find a place to gear up for the road ahead; Andrea reflects on how things went so wrong.
Part 1
It seemed like she was always sneaking out of Woodbury. There was a kind of irony to that, since she'd been the one who was so ready to stay. It was so hard to remember what she'd seen in the town back then, after all she'd seen since. Sure, she knew in the abstract – Woodbury was safe, and comfortable, and "civilized" in a way that nothing had been since before the world ended. Well, other than the CDC, and look how that turned out. But it was a struggle to recall the way she'd felt about Woodbury when she and Michonne had first been taken there; the funhouse-mirror image of the town was too strongly seared into her brain. Woodbury was a sick, rotten place, and she couldn't bring to mind an image of how she'd once thought of it, wholesome and welcoming. The very fabric of the place seemed to agree with that assessment, as the crate she'd dragged over to stand on gave out beneath her boot in a spray of rotting wood splinters.
Milton rolled a steel drum over with some difficulty, and Andrea scrambled on top of it and onto the overturned truck that made up this section of the wall. There was no gate here, so patrols only swept through twice a day to check for damage to the perimeter. She reached down to help Milton fumble his way up beside her, and they looked out over the wall for a moment, checking to see if the area beyond was clear of biters, before descending.
It was the same with Philip – now that the the rotten, twisted core of him had been exposed, it was a struggle to remember how she'd ever found him desirable. The loss of his eye hadn't made him any less handsome, but the vicious, gleeful cruelty he'd shown in that storage building made it impossible for her to see anything but ugliness in him every time she imagined his face. He had enjoyed hunting her down like a rat, terrifying her, savoring the fear in her eyes.
Worse still was the realization that what he'd done wasn't the behavior of a man broken by recent psychological trauma; it was the act of a long-time predator, one who was practiced and comfortable with viewing other people as his prey. This couldn't have started with Michonne taking his eye. Is that what she sensed in him? That he was... wrong? She grabbed Milton's shirt and dragged him into a crouch behind a patch of undergrowth, out of sight of a pair of wandering biters. Why didn't she tell me? She realized the answer to that question the moment it crossed her mind: Michonne would've sounded crazy if she'd tried to convince Andrea that their savior was a psychopath with nothing more than a feeling to go on. But she hadn't been wrong. And the signs must have been there from the start, if Michonne had picked up on them. Why hadn't Andrea seen them?
The two biters had moved on, and Andrea gestured to Milton to follow her as she started to plot a course that would loop back to the road. He caught her arm, shaking his head. "What is it?" she hissed, keeping her voice low.
"There's only one clear road between Woodbury and the prison, and the Governor knows it," he told her in similarly hushed tones. "We can't follow the road."
Of course. That was how he'd found her earlier, after all. Another thing I should have realized. She tried to put the thought out of her head for now. "I can find our way across country; Michonne taught me a few things about orienteering."
Milton's gaze flitted about, the way it often did when he was anxious. "That's straight through a Red Zone. We'll need weapons."
Not for the first time, she thought mournfully about the pistol she'd been forced to surrender that morning, and Milton's gun that they hadn't felt safe enough to go back for. The cleaver she'd taken was their only protection, and that made her feel frighteningly exposed. They had so few resources available to them... "I think I know a place."
"What place?" She noticed him keeping a nervous eye on their surroundings while they spoke; that was good, it meant he had some instincts for danger. She wouldn't have to do this alone again.
Andrea took a deep breath, bracing herself against the memory of those dark rooms with their echoing floors, and the bits of plywood and chain-link that had been all that had stood between her and the man with the shovel. "A storage building. There were tools there, and I'm not sure what else. We should be able to find things to use as weapons, and it should be at least mostly clear." If the Governor had survived that crowd of biters, and any others that were drawn by the noise, then he must have killed enough to cut a path out.
"If it's safe there, I can reinforce our clothing with this to protect against biters," he offered, holding up the arm that still bore the roll of duct tape.
She'd seen his duct-tape armor in action, and it worked well enough to suit her. "Good idea," she agreed. "Let's just pray we don't need it." After another quick scan of the horizon, she led the way forward.
Their progress toward the storage building, already slowed by the need to navigate across open country, was further hampered by having to stop and hide from biters. Andrea was much more at ease with killing biters than with hunkering down behind a tree trunk until they wandered away, and eliminating them was faster. But with only one weapon between the two of them, they'd be helpless if biters surrounded them. Still, there were a few hours of daylight remaining by the time they found the building; with a little luck, they could do what they needed to there and still reach the prison before dark. There was no sign of vehicles, other than the tracks left by the Governor's truck earlier that day; if their escape had been discovered, no one had thought to look for them here yet. Thank goodness for small favors, she thought cynically.
The prospect of going back into that building hadn't gotten any more pleasant during their hike, but Andrea went in first, cleaver poised to take out any stragglers that had escaped the Governor. It seemed quiet. Milton shut the door behind them and they progressed slowly forward through the winding rooms and corridors, peering into shadows that might conceal anything human-sized.
Hanging on a pegboard along one wall was an ax, which Andrea appropriated and passed to Milton. "Think you can handle that?"
"I'm not sure I have much choice," he observed, accepting the ax from her with mingled discomfort and determination. She gave him a reassuring smile.
A steel toolbox below the pegboard contained a number of heavy screwdrivers, which Andrea happily traded for the unwieldy cleaver. Milton found a garden trowel that fit well enough into his pocket, for biters that got too close for the ax.
There were only three surviving biters left in the parts of the building they explored, two of them reduced to a dragging crawl by heavy damage. Andrea let Milton dispatch those with the ax while she took out the third, which still had its feet under it. "I think that's all of them. Did you want to armor us up?" She nodded at the tape he still wore around one wrist.
"Yes, of course." He slipped the roll over his hand and peeled off a strip. "It's probably best if you fasten your jacket at least partway, for better coverage." Milton waited while she zipped the leather partly closed, and then took one of her arms and began coating the sleeve in stripes of tape.
After a few moments, her arm started getting tired from holding it extended. "Would this be easier if I took the jacket off?"
He glanced up at her face. "I can do it that way if you'd prefer, but it's actually easier to do this while you're wearing it. I don't have to keep flipping it over to get at the other side, and I can make sure the tape doesn't limit your range of motion. Is this too uncomfortable?"
"No, it's fine." Compared to what I've been through today, I think I can manage holding my arm out for a few minutes. It wasn't long before he switched to the other arm, and she watched him work to distract herself from the growing ache in her bicep. He was careful, and thorough, but what surprised her most was his gentleness; he didn't jerk her arm around when he needed her to move this way or that, and he smoothed the tape against the fabric rather than squeezing to fix the adhesive.
Shortly her other arm was done, leaving only the torso of the jacket. Milton hesitated. "Um, please don't interpret this as, uh – I just need to put the tape–"
That actually got a chuckle out of her. "Milton, I'm not going to accuse you of trying to feel me up while you're trying to save my life. Go ahead."
He cleared his throat, fidgeting with the tape. "All right. But let me know if anything, um..." At her wry expression, he shut up and went to work. She put her hands behind her head, resting her intertwined fingers against her neck, to give him room to work unhindered.
For all that she'd intimated that his awkwardness was silly, the work he was doing put them in very close contact; Andrea was acutely aware of the proximity of him, the movement of his hands over her back and sides. Still, his touch remained gentle, and as respectful as it could be under the circumstances.
She wondered why his gentleness had come as such a shock to her. I guess I thought that, with this world we live in now, you don't get very far by being soft. You need strength to survive out here. That had been Shane's criticism of Rick, hadn't it? That he was too soft, too gentle, wasn't strong enough to protect them. Shane knew the value of strength. But... The conversation with Carol back at the prison returned to her in a rush. Shane tried to kill his best friend. Even more chilling than that revelation had been the way Carol had described why he'd done it, as if it didn't surprise her at all that he'd commit murder over Lori. As if Shane were the sort of man that Carol had far too much experience with in her life: a controlling, amoral abuser, whose motivations could be boiled down to what he thought belonged to him. Like the Governor, Andrea realized with horror.
When had she become the kind of woman who was attracted to abusers and psychopaths? She'd never dated anyone abusive before the world had ended – certainly no one who had ever been violent. She thought back over her last couple of exes; sure, they'd turned out to be assholes, but they hadn't been dangerous. It had to be some sort of sick coincidence that the last two men she'd slept with had been obsessive and homicidal... didn't it?
It doesn't matter now. She resolutely turned her thoughts elsewhere. Milton's work with the tape was quick and precise, though when it came to applying the strips to her body, his hands became less certain. A couple of times, she caught him in a moment of indecision, torn between trying to fuss the tape perfectly into place and not wanting to let his touch linger on certain areas of her body. It slowed his work a little, and she briefly let herself enjoy the feeling of human contact with someone who wasn't trying to harm her.
But she knew she should try to relieve the tension between them. "This won't get any less weird by acting like it's not," she told him, grinning warmly. "Just embrace the awkwardness."
Milton attempted a nervous laugh, but it came out a little strangled. "I just... I didn't want you to think that – because of the circumstances, that I was trying to take advantage..."
Does he think I'm a damsel-in-distress, ready to swoon into his arms because he rescued me? She glanced away for a moment, trying to keep the amusement off her face. "Milton, I meant what I said before; I'm truly grateful that you came and let me out of that torture chamber. I'd probably be dead by now, or wishing I was, if you hadn't. But I think right now, it's fair to say that we're saving each other. There's no reason for things to be uncomfortable between us; we're in this together. Okay?"
He studied her for a moment, until his expression relaxed and he nodded. "Okay."
Andrea gave him a quick hug, which he returned after only a brief hesitation. Then she stepped back just enough for him to finish taping her up. This time, his hands were more sure against her body, which was not unpleasant, if she were being honest about it. He finished his work quickly, walking around her to assess the coverage of the tape. "That should hold up under all but the most extreme circumstances," he said.
She held out her arms and inspected her armor. It didn't look like much, but she knew the sturdy tape would turn aside human teeth, at least for a short time. "Thanks. Is there enough left on that roll for you?"
Milton glanced down at the tape hanging around his wrist, his expression doubtful. "Possibly, but I'm not sure this shirt is sturdy enough to support it."
"Then we'll have to find something for you to wear over it," Andrea decided. "Let's take a quick look around. Just be careful; there are still a lot of dark corners in this place."
It wasn't long before Milton discovered a bulky canvas jacket, only slightly oversized on him. Under his guidance, Andrea applied strips of tape to his arms, flanks, and back. Despite his precise instructions, she was much less confident in her own handiwork than she was in the protection he'd made for her, and she offered a silent prayer to whomever might be listening that his armor wouldn't be put to the test.
When she finished, Andrea glanced at the nearest exterior window. The light was still strong, but the angle of the shadows was increasing. "If that's everything, we should hurry. We don't want to move overland in the dark."
"The dark," Milton repeated. "I know light attracts biters, but we can't move around inside the prison completely blind. We should look for lanterns, or something." Finding the lanterns, and a handful of road flares, added several minutes to their departure time, but Andrea hoped it wouldn't make too much difference. Winter was well behind them now, and the days were getting longer. When they finally left the storage building, Andrea breathed deeply of the fresh afternoon air, facing into the breeze that carried away the stench of death from behind her. I think we might actually make it.
