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THEN.
With the threat of imminent death in countless forms — reanimated corpses with an insatiable hunger for human flesh, sadists under the rule of a sociopath with a personified baseball bat and indoctrinated children shepherded by an utterly inhumane woman — looming over his shoulders for the past four years, Tariq had almost forgotten the everyday dangers of the old world. Cuts and scrapes. Influenza.
Thankfully, Brodie, Judith and baby RJ had avoided the sudden outbreak (as had Trudi and Michonne) but the same couldn't be said for Freya, who'd spent the past week in the infirmary, battling acute bronchitis.
Siddiq said that she'd be one of the few to recover without medication — acute bronchitis was capable of getting better on its own. But the others. . . The elderly whose deteriorated lungs had contracted Pneumonia, and the workers who ignored their symptoms until it was too late; they were now six feet beneath the freshly uprooted soil in the graveyard.
It was hard not to pinpoint blame in a situation like this, but Tariq was trying his utmost not to, because he didn't know the full extent of Leo's suffering. He didn't see it go down, he heard it from the perspective of two furious onlookers, and it would be foolish to assume that those recollections were without bias.
What he did know, though? People were dead because Leo took the medication that Freya had told him over and over they would soon require. There was accountability to be placed, and place it Freya had. Tara making her great escape with Aria in tow had been the final straw for the leader of Alexandria. There were more rules than people now.
Alexandria was a borderline authoritarian community now. Drastically far from what Rick and Carl had envisioned, but they weren't here and Freya was. The simplicity of the matter was clear with the provided context. She wasn't her father nor was she her brother, she was something different. Better or worse? It didn't matter. She was keeping them alive and in Tariq's opinion, there was gratitude to be shown for that. It wasn't an easy role to fill.
The painstakingly familiar scrape of wood against asphalt wove a grimace onto Tariq's sealed lips. He swallowed thickly and spared a glance down at his cane. Eugene had been kind enough to craft it for him (with the help of Scott and the insistent Trudi) and whilst Tariq was thankful for that, he detested the thing, it made him feel an unparalleled hatred.
A soft hand, considerably smaller than his own, curled around his spare palm, and he looked down to find Brodie smiling up at him. "Are you okay?"
