[DISCONTINUED] FIND YOU ( T. WALKING DEAD )

- XVII.

Elijah stood to his feet. He wondered how they'd go through the process of examination and treatment in a room with no furniture, but before he could voice his doubts, the older man turned and stepped out of the cell. "C'mon," he beckoned, recognizing Elijah's hesitancy to leave his cell.

Head hanging, Elijah haltingly followed the older man's orders. How could they put him in a cell, lock him in, just to let him go a day later? It seemed futile. Being a prisoner was not a foreign concept to him; this surely didn't feel like imprisonment.

The older man began to hobble down the aisle. Slowly, Elijah followed, his eyes scanning every inch of the environment surrounding him. To the natural lighting flooding into the cellblock, to the sheet of dust blanketing the concrete floors, to the rusty railings of the second floor. A prison wasn't exactly an ideal home, but Elijah could see the appeal. It just needed some decorating.

Elijah's wandering eye found their way to the entrance of the cell at his side. It wasn't much different than his, aside from the bunk bed and other furniture. However, Elijah couldn't pay any attention to the discrimination; his attention was too focused on who was in the cell. A young boy sat on the bed, hair falling to his eyes and an oversized hat on his head. (He didn't want to jump to conclusions, but he speculated to himself that this kid was Jack's younger brother.) In his arms, a swaddled baby cooed, one of her tiny hands wrapped around his finger.

They had a baby.

It'd been far too long since he'd seen one. There were kids in Woodbury, of course, but a baby? Elijah presumed they were extinct by now. A weight found its way to his chest, faltering the rhythm of his heartbeat for a moment. He couldn't tell if he was sad, happy, scared, or something in between. (Something he was certain of, however, was a feeling of loss. Seeing the baby reminded him of everything left behind in Woodbury. Everything valuable to him - abandoned. Including Jack.)

Before Elijah could be caught gaping at the newborn, he decided to continue following the old man. He was led into another cell, where he was urged to sit on the bed. The older man cleared his throat. "I used to be a veterinarian," he explained, sitting down in front of Elijah. "Never really had to take care of people until this whole thing. Now, it seems like it's all I do."

"Yeah?" Elijah hummed for the sake of a reply. He didn't want the old man to feel like he was talking to a wall.

"What about you?" the old man inquired. "What'd you do before?"

Rolling his shirt sleeve up to reveal the slice in his skin from the graze of a bullet, Elijah answered hesitantly, "A barista, of all things... I guess I don't exactly have medical knowledge, but I can make good tea."

"That's never a bad thing," the older man joked as he leaned in to examine Elijah's wound. His steady hands reached out to poke and prod at the gash, but Elijah flinched away the second they made contact. "I don't think you'll need stitches," he said, "but I'll wrap it for you. How are you feeling?"

"I'm okay," Elijah answered. "The pain's not unbearable."

"I suppose we've all been through worse," was the reply. Elijah gulped, his eyes glancing down to where the man's other leg should've been. Flashes of the pike through Randall's leg and how swollen and bloody his face was after he was brutally beaten flashed through Elijah's mind. Additionally, he was reminded of all the winter nights he spent tossing and turning because of his broken ribs. Aside from focusing on the fact that he was now surrounded by the people who orchestrated his torture, he decided to just nod and mumble an agreement.

As Elijah's wound was being tended to, it fell silent. More than anything, Elijah was just uncomfortable. He wanted to go home, even though his home was a place as barbaric as Woodbury. He missed it. He missed the cleanliness and the structure and the domesticity. He missed his couch and the way Jack would curl up on the other end of it, instead of sleeping in her bed. He missed her, more than he probably should have, but he also missed their home.