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"What are you looking at, Will?"
As first impressions go, Will took one glance between the blinds, before motioning Abigail to be on his six. Keep Jack and him in her scope as they go out and meet their visitors.
Beyond the heady buzz in his head, he sees Alana in his periphery, taking away the trailer's only source of light with a practiced huff of humid breath.
The sky is still dark, the morning dense with shadows, and thirsty with the hum of Georgian mosquitoes. It's not the first time they've been approached like this, and it certainly won't be the last.
Jack's shoulders are taunt, muscles tightly wired, with the shotgun braced against his shoulder.
These men are cocky and dangerous.
From this lighting it's difficult to make out the faces of the incoming triad, only their statures. And even that is tricky in the thick foliage around them. Will's spine burns with a coiled energy, something angry, thick, and calculating in the back of his throat.
It doesn't surprise him that the first shot rings out half a breath after Jack purposely scuffs a tree branch. It's a damn accurate shot. But revealing as well.
With half an eye on Jack, Will observes the band, and strips down the formation until he locates the leader, and the break. Eyes lingering a bit on the later.
He jerks his chin to the left, and hears Abigail pull the trigger, a sharp accurate bullet that ends a life, and prevents its reanimation.
It's simple afterwards, and it could be simpler still, but Will wants to confirm something.
Jack's always been the more capable grappler, but Will is quick and his eyes perceptive and haunted. The man hardly fights him either, bringing up his arms with a placating gesture. Answers Will's jostling with a near sheepish shrug. There's a lingering scent of second hand smoke.
"You gave away your own group." Will stares him down, noting the strange collection of features- straight nose, high cheekbones, and thin lips. Untrustworthy eyes.
The man sighs theatrically, and with not just a bit of exasperation. "You caught me."
Will presses his arm harder across the bared throat, irritated at the cheek and slack composure. It's one of those sure signs that he'll be caught off guard, whether it's in the next second or the next minute. His only consolation is Jack and Abigail's gunpoint trained securely on their last survivor. Alana filing away every bit of interaction.
"Why?"
"They made a poor life decision."
Easy as dropping a coin.
Jack shares a look with him, and there's stark warning in his eyes. Will knows that look. Recognizes it as the same one Jack gave Alana when it was Will in this spot, awaiting judgment.
"You nailed their coffins," Jack comments darkly, gun still cocked in his hand.
Will feels, more than sees the man shrug, sinewy muscles shifting beneath his grip. He notices that whoever this person is, he doesn't perceive Jack as a threat at all. Doesn't perceive Abigail as one either, from the way Will caught him stealing a glance toward the trailers.
He himself, could barely see the head of the rifle tip.
The only threat the man registers is Will himself. The bare rub of taunt skin against chest, uncomfortable pressure on the larynx, and a hard bruising lock hold on the legs. It seems he's more fascinated with Will, eyes scanning his face with a keen interest. And what he finds there must be terrifying.
Will does something he knows he'll regret. He lets the man go.
Jack frowns at him, but Will shakes his head, and steps away, keeping his back to Abigail.
The man coughs to the side before sitting up slowly, rubbing fingers around the tightness of his throat. He stares at Will for a long few moments, before a grin twitches across his mouth.
"If you come near us again, I will shoot your head full of gunpowder." Jack presses, voice brutal and honest. He's angry too- doesn't understand Will's impulsive decision.
The man doesn't reply, only flicks his eyes over to Will again, and Will does the second thing he hadn't thought he'd do that morning: throw the gun back.
A perfect toss, and catch.
"Matthew Brown." A sardonic bow and flourish. And then he disappears, an obnoxious swagger that doesn't belong to him.
Will keeps watch until the last of Matthew disappears back into the thicket of trees. He wonders if it's the comfort of a known monster that stayed his hand. Or that he might be calling in this favor in the months to come.
The encounter dims in his mind the very next week when the walkers overrun their makeshift home, and they're on the move again.
Killing doesn't come naturally to Will, not the way it's become second instinct to Abigail, and a gritted but thoughtless necessity to Jack. Will sees too much, and the dead are just as much a part of him, as he are to them. There are days where he wakes up, and finds it hard to shake off the cries of a muffled child, and the easy tearing of soft flesh.
It's something that perhaps only Alana understands- the way she'd found him, milling among the walkers, unseeingly. She sees him as the man who'd chased his dogs into whatever safety the woods could offer, boarded up his house, and stopped living for himself.
But Matthew, as short as the encounter was, he saw Will differently. As a man who could take to killing like a fish to water. And yet, restrains himself.
"You should talk to her", Jack tells him one night. Will couldn't sleep, so he'd joined Jack on the sunken porch for his watch.
"I tried."
Jack turns to him, and in this light Will can see the wrinkles and grey stubble absent a year ago. He's a sturdy man, with robust arms, and a mean shoulder throw, but in the quivering morning hours, Will can see fine veins of glowing fractures.
"I didn't take you for a man that gave up so easily, Will."
Will quirks his lip without much humor, and stares out into the sunrise bleeding poppy and citrus across the East.
Jack wipes at the muzzle of his shotgun with a dirty rag, more for something to do and occupy his tired eyes. My Bella, he'd confessed to Will once, stroking the side of the heavily nicked gun barrel. I'm not going anywhere without her by my side.
And when the time comes, she'll be the one to take me there.
In ways, it was the greatest blessing that she'd left his life back then. Quiet and at peace, oblivious to the world on the tipping cusp of civilization and anarchy.
Will wonders what became of Winston, and the rest of them. He hopes they're in a better place.
Abigail has taken the kill from Will more times than he can count. Sometimes she spends all afternoons scrubbing the blood from her hands, and the front of her favorite green hunting vest.
It's mercy that she gives Will. It's also mercy that he can no longer accept, not as her friend, nor her father.
Matthew comes to them, as an odd man out. An unsettling variable that destroys their symmetry, and compatibility. He's also the one that rebuilds them.
As second impressions go, Will keeps his mind deliberately blank this time, watching the familiar figure cross into his vision during their time of starvation.
He looks much like them, or any other survivor since The Turn, jeans ripped in enough to see scratched thighs, elbows covered in grime, with a permeating stink of sweat and the dead. The same light blue button shirt, muddied at the collar, and dark hair curling longer than it did months ago.
Matthew Brown, he'd called himself.
Dropping the game by Will's feet, Matthew makes to back away without even a word of explanation.
It feels like a favor repaid.
Will realizes a balanced equation means it'll be unlikely that they cross paths again. Down the road is a permutation of possibilities, and none of them lead Matthew back to them.
An albatross, he thinks, remembering the tale of the old mariner. An omen of fortune, unless struck.
In the dead of the night, Will wonders what hurt those two men inflicted on Matthew, and if they deserved worse than the clean departure Abigail and Jack gave them.
"I followed you." Matthew answers when Alana eyes him and the offering with wariness. But Will knows those words are meant for him.
You are worth following.
Jack and Matthew come close to blows on a supply run. It's not about how poorly Matthew handled the unexpected attack from hidden walkers. It's about how Matthew's mouth splits into a cavernous grin, and the way his spine arcs down low, thrilled by how effective his makeshift weapon is.
Deadly, and paced, with shadowed green eyes, Jack realizes it wasn't the apocalypse that made Matthew. He made himself.
He wonders what that says about Will as well.
Alana wears a thigh holster, tied together from strips of a ripped shirt. Will had once been caught staring, a momentary lapse of attention and the rare flicker of libido, but he's never done so since.
It hadn't seemed appropriate, and in hindsight was rather callous of him. Between the two of them, they'll never be able to sort through the muddled waters of attraction, and each day they only drift further and further away from that possibility.
It's almost as if a single touch could untangle their lengthy silences, but a single touch could also turn into a crossfire of shouting and blaming that the precarious world around them isn't sturdy enough to take.
Abigail gives them the illusion of parenthood, but Will can only offer to teach her how to fish, and bait. The rest, he's still learning himself.
Matthew gives himself away, bit by bit, but even then, the sum of his parts don't produce a whole photograph. Even as he sets Alana's dislocated shoulder- the perks of having an ex-orderly with them- he will confess his sins into Will's ear when they are far and apart from everyone else.
I like this new world, he says, unapologetic, into the wet heat of the evening. I've never felt this free before.
And Will knows, in the old world, the likes of Matthew belong quarantined and hidden from the public, with locks and cages, and electric wires.
In the old world, Matthew is the kind of man that Will dreams about, and slips into the minds of- tasting every crime for their signature, and harnessing every dark spiraling thought until they are his.
But here and now, Matthew is more than the sum of his parts. In this walking circus parade, he is Will's seeing glass, and the balancing weight of his mind. His guiding wings.
It doesn't mean Will allows Matthew's hand to fumble its way into his pants though. Skinning himself across the wrist over zipper, and finding a bare hint of warm skin.
It does mean that he presses their foreheads together, and brings the hand up to his stomach instead- where his pulse is loud and thundering.
When they come upon a road sign that marks in capitals the nearby presence of a sanctuary, Matthew snorts, and walks on. Will lingers by the sign, and traces the words with his eyes, memorizing the block font.
Alana looks longingly at the sign, but she too knows that there's no sanctuary left. What they have is all that they have.
They walk away from sanctuary, but sanctuary will find them. It's only a matter of time, Will thinks. And from the edge of Matthew's gait, and Abigail's tightening of the shoulders, he surmises that they know just as well.
In a world without sanctuary, any proclamations of its existence are built on the hooks, lures, and rib cages of humans. Much like fishing.
"What are you looking at, Will?" Alana asks him as they're walking, cautious and quiet, along the railroad tracks. The crunch of their shoes against the rubble is startlingly loud in this world.
Will doesn't know what he's looking for. Planes, maybe. Air traffic, the hum of commercial airliners that make transportation so easy and thoughtless. It's a strange thought to think there won't be another flight during his life time. Or perhaps, he's just looking in the wrong direction.
It's a world where stars are their lamp posts, and each word resounds more so than it ever did. They can only recall the finger lengths that extend between Georgia and Virginia, and then the fine eye lash routes to the elusive Alexandria Safe Zone.
In this time and place, he's asking questions without answers. Be it with Alana, or Matthew.
Will had once said he'd never connected with the concept of family, and it's still true. The idea of parenthood, or partnership. But as they walk along the rusted strips of metal, unknowingly in arrow formation, he knows whatever they have together is more than mere attachment, or safety in numbers.
It's in the grudging way Jack trusts Matthew with his back, and the curl of Alana's hand over Abigail's slim shoulders. The tentative warmth in Alana's eyes, and seamless interaction between Matthew and himself.
Family.
"An albatross."