20; A JERK OF ALL TRAINS (season nine, episode twelve)
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DESPITE IT BEING Henry's bright idea for them to sneak out in the middle of the night alone and hunt for a group of masked sociopaths with only a staff and five arrows with an unskilled archer - Enzo was the one that had to lead the way. He had more experience with being out in the woods.
It made him feel a little proud. There was finally an advantage that he had over Henry. Something that his friend wished he possessed, as opposed to Enzo hopelessly pining after Henry's vast skillset. It was a nice change.
"How do you actually know this is the right way?" Henry asked Enzo, pushing his arm against his mouth to hide a yawn.
The sun was upon them now, lustrous and blinding, beating down on their jacket-covered backs. It was a stifling morning, uncomfortably hot. They both had sweat patches under their arms that had seeped through their shirts to the clearly awful fabric of their tattered jackets. Enzo's hair was sticking to his forehead, and he felt the urge to punch a tree.
"See these patterns?" Enzo crouched down and pointed to clusters of scattered leaves and clumps of upturned dirt. "They're zig-zagged. Walkers - and the people pretending to be them - they don't walk straight. It's like a. . . rumble, you know?"
Henry quirked a brow. "Stumble?"
"Yeah, that's it. A stumble." Enzo stood back up and continued his walk, picking up the pace a little. "And I know it's the herd 'cause there's so much dirt uprooted. They're, like, clumsy."
"Daryl taught you this?"
"Yeah. He's always talking about how when he's gone, I'm going to have to know about it all. But that's dumb, 'cause he's not going anywhere, and if he did. . . I'd just take Dog and go live with Rosita and the baby."
Henry nodded slowly. "My Dad says that I'll take over when it's his time. 'The Prince becomes the King.' I don't know about that, though. It just seems like. . . a lot. All of those hard decisions on me? I'd hate it."
"But you'd get to send people to the dungeons and hang them," Enzo gushed, eyes wide with excitement over the historical stories that Eugene used to tell the kids around the campfire at Alexandria - before Freya gently reminded him that the children he was traumatising were under twelve. Enzo missed those days a lot. They were fun.
"We don't have dungeons." Henry snorted and shook his head. "We also don't hang people - well, Maggie did once but it's not a common practice. My Dad believes in second chances."
Enzo ducked under a low-hanging branch and held it up for Henry. "Daryl doesn't."
Henry crouched a little to avoid his head skimming the protruding twigs. "I didn't either. During the war with the Saviours. . . my brother was killed. I killed one of the men that were there. I was just eleven and I shouldn't have - I mean, I don't, like, regret it but when I look at kids now, like you and Aria, I get why my parents didn't want that for me."
