Move dust through the light to find your name

[forthedog]

It's been cool but now it's warming again; the Realm had had its own cycles and so had the Island, and now he's learning this place. He knows summer when he feels it, even without the calendar on his phone, and summer is coming fast.

And somehow he feels like it's going to be a bitch of a one.

He spent the last night in a bar--an honest to God bar with AC/DC blasting from an ancient jukebox in the corner, and at least it wasn't the bar he'd found Sam in--and his opinion of it had improved slightly when some change in his pockets had bought him a couple of Pixies songs. He had taken some shots, lost track of them. Thought in a bored kind of way about seeing if the blonde a few seats down the bar with the extremely low-cut top and the extremely fake tits would take him home.

Realized how easily boredom can blend with anger. Paid his tab and wandered back to the apartment, alone, sometime around three.

Now he's got a hangover--nothing especially bad but just enough to make everything else seem slightly more shitty than usual. And he's in the park, which is probably not the best idea, but at least he's not close to the burn scar of the World Tree and whatever's growing there now. He hasn't been back since the fire. But he thinks he might be edging around it, in his mind and in space, looking for a way to return. He hasn't yet decided to his own satisfaction how much of this is simple masochism.

He's still not sure how much pain is actually necessary for healing.

On the path, no one else in sight, he whirls suddenly and slams his fist into the trunk of the closest tree. Pain daggers up his arm and makes his eyes water, but it's sharper and realer than the ache in his head and the deeper, harder ache in the center of his chest. His knuckles are bleeding in a few places and he stands there, sucking at them, not surprised to find the metal taste of it comforting. Blood. It always comes back to blood.

Neil is in his blood. Like poison. Or like a drug that, once injected, needs to keep flowing through the heart in order to keep the body alive.

Fuck.

Comments

[forthedog]

"He's had enough chances," he murmurs, and all at once he decides that he's not going to tell her about the first time, about being pinned against the wall and thinking that he might actually be seconds from death and wanting it, hungering for it, because at least then he'd be able to rest and things would be ultimately simple again. He's not going to tell her that. Not now.

Not least because now he's pretty sure death isn't that simple anyway.

He looks over at her again, head slightly tilted, curious. "Do you trust me?"

[uncannyaim]

"I do."

The answer comes simply, which doesn't really surprise Andrea. Ever since the dead began to walk, she's gotten good at picking and choosing, deciding who to trust quickly. She hasn't been wrong, not since Thomas and even he wasn't necessarily a person she trusted. He was just someone she didn't think to be wary of.

"Something about fighting side by side with a person that does it," she says, although she remembers Dexter, too. The way he turned on Rick. Mike isn't like Dexter, he isn't like Thomas, she trusts her own instincts on that one.

[forthedog]

"Doesn't always," he says. He doesn't know how long it had taken him to really trust Hobbes, doesn't know exactly when it happened--not that it had been about fear of being turned on so much as fear that he might get both their asses killed. "But it helps."

He sighs. "You probably shouldn't. But thanks anyway." And that had been why he had kissed her, he realizes, or at least some of why. Some of it had been the craziness of the moment, the proximity of her, the shine of her hair and the strange fascination of the scar down her cheek.

But some of it had been the way she'd been kind to him when she'd had no reason to be so, when almost everyone else hadn't been.

[uncannyaim]

"You're welcome," she says, rather than comment on the rest of what he's said. Maybe she shouldn't, but she does all the same and unless he decides to go the same route as Thomas and try to cut her face open, she isn't too worried. There are plenty of ways for people to break trust and most of them aren't going to end with her dead.

"What about you?" she asks, looking over at him. "Do you trust me?" It's not a question she asks often, but now that they're talking about it, she's curious.

[forthedog]

"Yeah," he says--no hesitation, no time to think about it. He doesn't need any. Trust has never come easy to him, and that hasn't changed even with the memories, but some people, he just knows about.

And even when he hadn't necessarily trusted Hobbes to save his life, he had always trusted him to try so hard.

"You were... good to me," he says, looking down at the path ahead and feeling unaccountably awkward. "When you had no fucking reason to be. That's not all of why, but it's part of it."

[uncannyaim]

When he says it like that, Andrea has to stop and think about it. About herself, about how she reacts to people regularly and she decides the way she treated Mike isn't unusual for her. Traveling with Rick and the others made it hard to trust people, but with the exception of Abraham, she's always been right about those she chooses to pull her gun on.

Most people don't deserve it. Most people, even back there, are generally good, just trying to get on.

"So if I'd pulled my gun on you the first time we met, this would be a bit different now?" she asks, but she's smiling when she says it, teasing. She's glad, then, that she didn't.

[forthedog]

"Maybe," he says, returning a smaller version of the smile. "Maybe fucking not. I dunno. But it helped."

He shrugs again, looking back ahead of them. That blackened hill is still somewhere close by, but now he can feel it receding, and the knot between his shoulderblades is easing as it does. "Sounds like you been through some unbelievable shit. But you still act like a human being, treat people the same. That's not nothing."

[uncannyaim]

It reminds her of something she said to Rick once, the words uttered with complete sincerity. All I have left is you... all of you. You're the only things left to remind me of what I can be. "People matter," she says, one shoulder lifting in a shrug. "I mean, what the hell was I fighting for, living for if not for people? I'm more careful than I used to be, but... my friend Rick... he went through the worst of it, I think, after the dead started to walk. He lost his wife and his new born baby, he just... he said once that we were the walking dead."

Andrea shakes her head. "I didn't want to be that. I never want to be that and the only way to keep myself from that is to remind myself that people matter."

[forthedog]

If it were Hobbes saying this--if it were Tom saying it--or any number of other people, he might roll his eyes at this, huff out a laugh. Okay, sure. People matter. I'm sure telling yourself that makes all the fucking difference.

And yet when she says it like that, given what he knows now--and that's not all of why.

"You really remind me of someone sometimes," he says, not quite smiling. Feeling an ache working its way through his chest. "She never fucking talked, but... yeah."

[uncannyaim]

Glancing over at Mike, she only studies him for a moment, wondering who she was to him. The person she reminds him of sometimes. It's strange to think, especially with how much he reminds her of Rick sometimes, but she smiles eventually.

"I hope she was a kickass woman who didn't take shit from anyone." she says, because that's the type of woman she'd like to be. It's the kind of woman who was able to keep people alive, she thinks, and that's important to her, even now.

[forthedog]

He laughs, briefly unguarded, and it feels good. It feels better than anything has in a while. And for a moment--just the barest fraction of a moment but it's definitely there--it's almost like he can feel Florence's hands on him again.

Not healing. Just there.

"That's exactly what she was. Is." He pauses, and his smile turns distant and fond. "She's this... human in a world full of fucking monsters. And somehow she always loved 'em all." Even the ones they had killed.

Maybe especially them.

[uncannyaim]

"Then I'll take that as a compliment," Andrea says, because she sounds like the kind of woman she'd like. Something that she strives to be, more often than not, although she knows she definitely falls short when it comes to loving everyone. There are plenty of people she can't love, plenty of people she still wishes pain upon, but she tries. Most of the time, she tries.

"How do you know her?" she asks curiously. His world sounds about as bad as hers does. A world full of monsters. It's something she's definitely familiar with.

[forthedog]

"She saved me," he says simply. There are all kinds of details that could illuminate it, lend it nuance, but that's really at the core of it. That's ultimately all that matters.

He lowers his head--not ashamed, but suddenly feeling naked. Exposed. Raw. "I was gonna have her killed and she saved me. Everything changed after that."

[uncannyaim]

"Sounds like a rare kind of person," Andrea says. If someone had been trying to kill her, she knows what she would have done and it wouldn't have involved saving of any kind. That's the hardest thing, she thinks, trying to forgive the people who've hurt you the most. Or the ones who have even only wanted to hurt you.

It's not something she saw very much of in her own world. There was never much saving going on, especially if it wasn't something you knew, but Alexandria had been different. For a little while, she'd believe that there were still good people out there.

[forthedog]

"She is." And he's all but sure that he won't see her again, at least not here. The Island, maybe. But this place doesn't feel that kind.

He's still ready for this place to take.

"So yeah, it's a compliment."

[uncannyaim]

"Good," Andrea says, then turns to Mike with a bit of a grin. "It was mostly a compliment when I said you reminded me of someone I was traveling with." She's teasing, but it's true, too. Over time, she'd grown to trust Abraham almost as much as she trusted Rick and although they'd never been that close. He was a good guy, strong, smart, gruff for the most part, but incredibly caring when he thought no one was looking.

She's sometimes still surprised by how much she misses him.

"He was a Sergeant, I think," she says. "Titles like that sort of didn't matter anymore, but he was still wearing his army clothes when we first met him."

[forthedog]

"Has a way of sticking with you," he murmurs. Even when he'd tried to forget. Even when he'd tried to make other people beat it out of him, it had stayed. Army. Guard.

"Mostly." He shoots her a faint smile. "Sounds like it comes with some qualifiers."

[uncannyaim]

"Abraham could be a real dick sometimes," Andrea answers, then laughs, because even when she says that, she can't keep the fondness out of her voice. "I think I told you, the first time I met him, I had my gun on him. He took it away from me and hit me with it. He and Rick had this weird, prickly relationship at first and Rick... he saved me. So I was on Rick's side."

But he'd grown on all of them. He'd proven himself to be loyal and protective. "But he was a good man. He had my back."

[forthedog]

"A dick, but not all the time." He laughs again, a little wry, but he's more pleased than he's really showing. It's not exactly an unflattering comparison, it seems like.

And Tom would probably agree with it.

"Sounds like just about the best I could do. So thanks."

[uncannyaim]

"In terms of the people I knew? Yeah, Abraham's just about one of the best comparisons I could make," she says honestly. Sometimes it still amazes her, the people she'd ended up with. Glenn and Maggie, who were sweet and kind and somehow still so normal in the fact of everything. Abraham, Rick, men who were fighters. Willing to do anything.

But then, she'd turned into that type of person, too.

"So do you feel better?" she asks. "Than when you did when you were punching the tree?"

[forthedog]

"Yeah," he says. He lets out a breath and scrubs a hand down his face--shit is still fucked up and probably will be for the foreseeable future, but the finer edges of hysteria have faded back into the shadows.

"Feel almost human again." He pauses. "Thanks for that, too."

[uncannyaim]

"Yeah, my soothing presence is like balm for the soul," Andrea says with a completely straight face, then laughs, unable to hold it for long. It's exactly the type of thing she would have said to Dale, once upon a time, exactly the sort of thing that would have made him laugh.

"And how's your hand? I'm less good with hands," she adds.

[forthedog]

He glances down at it again, grimaces. It had felt profoundly dumb immediately after he'd done it and it's not improving with time, though at least it's unlikely that he'll have to explain it to anyone. One more perk this place has over the Island.

Fewer people to give a shit.

"It'll heal," he says, and shoots her a tight smile. "I've had way fucking worse."

[uncannyaim]

"I'm not sure if I could be relieved or concerned," she says dryly, but she knows what he means. And if it's not broken, then it will heal on its own, so she leaves it alone, figuring Mike will know best if he needs a doctor to look at it.

"At least there's a hospital here if it gets infected," she adds. "I know I wasn't on the island long, but I have no idea what they'd do there for a major infection."

[forthedog]

"They never could do much for anything major," he says, gritting his teeth slightly as memory floods him again. It does that sometimes--manageable background baseline and then spikes of it intense enough to almost make him dizzy. Like PTSD, he thinks, and almost laughs.

"I spent enough time in that fucking clinic. I know."