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[dum_spiro]

((OOC: Set in The Walking Dead TV canon, spoilers for Season 5, Episode 1. All are welcome, if you're not canon familiar this is a zombie-overtaken version of rural Georgia, outside Atlanta.))

***

[The smoldering, overrun compound that used to be Terminus is left behind as Carol jumps the fence and lets herself out, taking advantage of the heavy blanket flopped over barbed wire that Rick's group must have used. She ignores the screams of those still living and the inhuman growls of walkers as they feed themselves into a frenzy. It might seem cruel of her, if one was blissfully unaware of the goings-on inside those fences just before the flames and rampaging began.]

[A brief glance at the surroundings, assessing the footprints and parted underbrush (she picked up a few tracking skills... here and there... ) and quickly she determines which way they went. Carol was quite serious when she told Tyrese she has no intention of staying, but first she has to find them. Make sure her efforts were worth it and they all got out, and most importantly reunite Rick and Carl with Judith, Sasha with Tyrese. So she goes, stomach churning despite how calm she'd felt while unleashing destruction on Terminus and its twisted population.]

[She hasn't quite let go of the hope that she won't have to leave, but she's prepared to.]

[Her face and hair are caked with red clay, and she's wearing clothing covered in entrails -- not just spatter, but as though she rolled and splashed inside a fresh, open corpse. In one hand is an automatic rifle, in the other a crossbow. She looks like she's been through a brutal war.]

[She has. She won.]

Comments

screw you timeline i do what i want

[weakshallinherit]

[ It was time to move on, at last, to leave behind his fortified encampment up in Kings County, the place he'd laid to rest his wife, his son, laid to rest the entirety of the life he'd once known. He lost himself there, fell into the depths of darkness, trying to find the path he was meant to take, to serve the purpose he was meant to serve. Clear. That was it. He'd been meant to clear. To make things right.

And then Rick had come back - he'd come back, and he knew him. He knew him, and he was there. Not on the radio, not like he promised, but there. Rick had been right in front of him, his face had been there.

And that was the start of it.

The start of a turn in his path, a way back out the other side of what he'd been through, winding its way through the darkness. He spent a long time down there - a long time - and he wasn't out of it yet. But he was far enough he could see again, start to make out the world around him. And it was time to move forward. So here he was, in the woods. He was far from trusting anyone, those signs they'd put up, but he had to give it a look. He had to see.

He'd been lurking on the edges just in time for all hell to break loose. He watches, making his way along the edge, and that's when he spots her. Looks like a walker, really, but with the weaponry...

His mask is still on as he approaches her, his voice reverberating inside of it. He's ready to grab his weapon, but he hasn't yet. Just ready. ]

You come out of that?

[ It's an even tone, booming but unclear as to whether it should really be taken as threatening, exactly. He's just a man looking for information. ]

that's a theme on this post and I love it

[dum_spiro]

[The mask sets Carol on edge just enough to stop her determined walk through the forest, but the irony is not lost: her own appearance is far more menacing. Considering such, and the fact that she's carrying multiple weapons in plan view, she decides to entertain his question. Because those at Terminus were dangerous doesn't mean everyone is, and if things go that way she's sickeningly well-prepared.]

[That she doesn't answer straight away is due only to the wording the stranger uses, the shape of it sticking in her throat. The last ten days are a series of violent emotional lurches in every possible direction, a bad dream that seems to only get worse. She's hesitant to say whether she'll ever "come out of it."]

[But that's not, of course, what he's asking. Carol slowly shakes her head.] Not exactly. I helped some people get out, but I was never in.

best theme tbh

[weakshallinherit]

[ It's not what he's asking, but it would be a valid question in and of itself. He can't know what's happened to her the past couple of weeks, but he knows this world. He knows what it will do to you, maybe better than most do. He hadn't been out in the world quite as long, but the world had gotten into him.

He stands there a moment, nods, and then reaches up - he releases the closure at the bottom of his mask, and he pulls it off to reveal his face. Just a man underneath - nothing notable about him, really. His scars aren't the kind that are carved into flesh. ]

Deliverance from sanctuary.

[ Certainly, the irony on the word 'sanctuary' is apparent. ]

Your people?

[ It didn't escape him that she said "some people." That's a very different thing. ]

[dum_spiro]

"Yes," she says, with such certainty that you'd think she had something to prove. Maybe they don't all consider Carol one of theirs anymore, but she considers them hers. Family isn't something you can move in and out of as the tides turn.

"Your people?" This man doesn't necessarily seem like he's been in a group, he has that look in his eyes of someone who isn't used to dealing with others... however. For all she knows, the psychopaths running Terminus could have had dozens of people in there, in whatever state. It's not impossible that he was looking for someone, and Carol has sympathy for that, in principle. At least until he gives her reason to stop.

[weakshallinherit]

There, he just shakes his head. He had his people, sure, had Jenny and Duane, still had Duane when Rick came through... but after Rick moved on to Atlanta, there hadn't been many more. None of them stuck around long enough to be their people, just passed on through and off into oblivion. They'd take up one of the houses, hunker down, maybe share introductions or a few cautious conversations but, bit by bit, each house was left, some of them burnt and some just stood as rotting husks of the world that was. And once it was just Morgan, well. He hadn't really been one to let people in for some time.

"Don't have any people. Not anymore."

Somewhere out there might still be those faces he knows, Rick and his boy, the woman that had been with him. Maybe they're still alive. More likely, he thinks, they're not. Nobody lasts long these days, just slipping away around him.

"Every one of them, just-- It's just me. Been on the road."

[dum_spiro]

Carol nods and then says, quietly, "I'm sorry." It's the kind of thing that is understood nowadays but still bears saying aloud, if you ask her. That there isn't anyone left who hasn't lost practically everything doesn't mean she shouldn't be sorry about it.

She shifts the shoulder strap of her rifle, too laden with weapons to carry them comfortably. "You headed anywhere in particular?"

Should she ask him to come with her? Such decisions are risky of course, but so is trusting no one. Look how the people of Terminus turned out.

[weakshallinherit]

He just nods in acknowledgement. She's sure to have her losses, too, he knows, probably more than he's got if she's let other people in. That was the thing he didn't do, the thing that had kept him isolated for so long. You don't reach out, you don't let them in, you just focus and you clear.

"Where my path takes me. I don't know where it's going."

He looks past her then, into the distance, some lingering remnant of the darkness he'd descended into clouding his gaze for a moment.

"There was a man out here. I knew him. I saw him again, he came back. It was months ago he was there, I don't know how many now. Couldn't keep track anymore. I don't know where he's gone. I don't know if he's gone."

The apparent repetition, of course, is in fact two distinct sayings - a matter of location and a matter of survival. Rick had mentioned the prison, but Morgan saw it on his way. That prison wasn't holding anything living anymore.

[dum_spiro]

Perhaps its a testament to their mutual experience with isolation that Carol bothers trying to follow that. Perhaps that's how Carol would sound if hers had been anything resembling a long stretch of time. This man's been on his own for months, and survived... but not entirely intact, mentally.

"Maybe he isn't. Not everyone's gone." Even though it seems like that sometimes.

Carol looks the man over again, he's not all there but he's not the kind of crazy she found at Terminus, that seems obvious. Much ado as they make about the tug-of-war of whether to trust someone, let them in, the reality is that all you can do is follow your gut, take a chance and hope for the best.

"We could look together."

[weakshallinherit]

Not intact, but closer to it now. Months ago, he'd never have moved. He'd never have approached her. He'd certainly never have taken off his mask or managed to get out a few sentences of relatively coherent conversation.

Still, there's that broken look that lingers. At length, his eyes shift back to her and focus again, and he appears to have come back from... wherever he just was. He couldn't tell you if you asked, there aren't words for the places he's gone. They aren't even places. The silence draws on as he studies her a moment, which likely feels longer than it is.

And then he shifts his head back, before he gives one slow and careful nod.

"Morgan."

Which is a start. Not quite an extension of trust, but an indication that he'll consider it. That he's trying to hold onto this, this relative coherence. That he knows he can't just be alone anymore.

[dum_spiro]

That's all she expected; honestly if someone seems a little too trusting, too eager, she'd consider them dangerous. For all the people of Terminus were wrong and deserved what they got, the principle of not trusting strangers is a good one. But that's where it should stop unless you're threatened.

"Carol." She smiles thinly, her replacement of the social niceties that used to accompany introductions. "I was headed that way." She nods in the direction she was walking when they came upon each other. Since Morgan seems to have no place in particular to go, if she understood his words right (which is by no means a given).

/APPROXIMATELY FOREVER LATER. am i still allowed here

[weakshallinherit]

She's interpreted well enough - he has no specific destination in mind, though he'd been warily following whatever hints at survivors he came across as he wandered. It had brought him this far, though his natural caution and suspicion would have held him back from wandering into Terminus even if it hadn't been in flames.

His instincts are sharper again, creeping back from full-blown paranoia and inching slowly closer to a healthier guarded state. He's not quite there yet. But he doesn't get the feeling that Carol is trying to trap him somehow. (Of course, that doesn't mean that if this is an ambush, he wouldn't be ready for it. He's got his own formidable share of firepower with him.)

"Back to your group."

Instincts may be leaning in her favor, but it's still wary, teetering in uncertainty between an observation and a question. Still, she's upfront. Direct. That's worth something.

ABSOLUTELY YES <3333

[dum_spiro]

She nods, with more confidence than she feels. Her intentions and tracking abilities have a fair gap between them, and there's no telling how many others escaped Terminus who are leaving inconvenient paths for her to mistakenly follow.

"That's what I'm hoping." If they should chance upon something less than ideal, she wouldn't want him thinking she led him into it -- not that her word, strangers as they are, counts for much.

Carol waits half a beat before she resumes walking. Any other conversation that needs having they could have on the way.