Zedler, M.D. // Daryl Dixon

Chapter Eighty-Three: Alexandria

•eighty-three•

Beatrix

The night went very surprisingly smoothly. I slept through the whole night, for the first time in months. I didn't even sleep that well at the prison, when I had an actual bed. When I woke the next morning, Daryl was already gone. It didn't surprise me, though. He was probably up early, looking around before anyone in the community even had the chance to wake up.

"Good morning, Beatrix," Carol smiles at me from the kitchen.

"Morning, Carol. That smells great. What are you making?" I stand up, realizing that at least half of the group is still asleep.

"Breakfast. We are having pancakes, eggs, and hash browns," she smiles.

"Eggs? They have chickens?" I perk up, excited at the thought of eating an actual breakfast for once.

"They have chickens," she laughs at my enthusiasm, making me a plate of food and sitting it down on the counter in front of me.

"Carol, I'm not sure if you're an amazing cook or if I just haven't had real food in too long, but I would die for these pancakes," I say, my mouth still full.

"Maybe a bit of both," she smiles, slipping an extra pancake into my plate, and I am so grateful for that.

Once everyone else is up, I take my dish to the sink and wash it. It's such a simple task, but it feels so good to be able to do something like that again. After everyone has eaten, I help Carol clean up the kitchen before running over to my house to put on some jeans. My house. I shake my head at the thought, unable to truly understand that I have a house now.

"Are you coming?" I ask Daryl, who is sitting on the porch railing, cleaning his crossbow. "Deanna said to explore today, so we're all going to do that."

"Nah, I'll hold down the fort here," he says, barely looking up at me from his arrows. "I already went looking around this morning."

"I figured you did," I smile, softly kissing his forehead before walking down the steps. "I love you. I'll be back soon."

"I love you," he says as I walk away, following after Beth and the others.

"What do you think of this place?" I ask my best friend, very curious to hear her take on it.

"It's nice. It could work," she smiles as she looks around the place. "They seem nice, and they haven't tried to kill us yet, so that's a positive, right?"

"That's always a positive," I laugh as we walk through the streets of the neighborhood. "Want to check out the pantry?"

"Sure," she smiles and we break away from the group, wandering to where we think the pantry might be, and luckily we're right. We step in to see a nice looking woman darting around the room like a worker bee.

"Sorry, it's restock day!" She exclaims once she sees us standing there. "I'm Olivia. It's really nice to meet you. You're part of Rick's group, right?"

"Yeah, I'm Beatrix and this is Beth," I give her a warm smile as I introduce us to her. "We just wanted to check everything out. This is the pantry, right?"

"Yes it is! We get new food every time a group goes out, and lucky for you guys, Aaron and Eric brought back a ton along with you," her voice seems genuinely happy, like he hasn't been though or seen some shit. I remind myself that she probably hasn't, though. "Did you need any food? I thought they already had your houses stocked."

"Oh, no, we have plenty," Beth smiles back, matching her tone. "We were just exploring. Is the armory here, too?"

"Yes, it's upstairs," Olivia points towards the stairs at the left of the room. "If you ever want to check anything out, you can just come and sign it out. Once you're done outside the walls you just bring it back here. It's pretty easy. It works like that with the pantry, too, except we don't expect you to bring that stuff back when you're done with it. In fact, we'd prefer you didn't."