HEART OF GLASS¹ ━━ the walking dead ✓

[ 035 ] behind closed doors

Only humans could do that.

Only the Governor.

He was so difficult to pick apart. Usually, Theo was good at that ─ reading people. But the Governor was a closed book, hiding behind a well-manicured facade. The people within the community didn't even call him by his real name, for God's sake. It was almost as if he had two split personalities: one for display, one behind closed doors. The Governor was the mouthpiece, the figurine, Woodbury's God. Philip was his true self, the person he warped into around close confidants, around his militia, or the person he saw staring back when he looked at his own reflection.

Something like that.

Theo couldn't be too sure. He had read people in the past and been proven entirely wrong about them before. It could be the same scenario with the Governor. Maybe he was telling the truth.

Maybe he wasn't.

Theo decided to settle with the latter. Always assume the worst about people: that way, they have no reason to hurt you. And if that made him a pessimist, so what.

"Hey, Theo."

The boy almost jumped out of his skin. Someone had approached him in his moment of deep, tumultuous scrutinisation, and as a result, Theo hadn't heard the soft patter of their footsteps padding across the lawn. If it had been a walker, Theo would have had two seconds ─ if that ─ to gather his bearings and find something to lodge inside of its brain. That would've been instant vulnerability.

He couldn't lose touch with his surroundings like that again. Michonne would skin him alive if he did.

"You okay?" the person asked.

Theo peered up, shielding his eyes from the glaring sun. The figure materialised from a column of blinding golden haze, and Theo recognised it to be Ewan, the nice guy from the youth club. He was clad in khaki shorts, with a plain white shirt accompanying it.

"Oh, hey, Ewan." Theo muttered.

He sank into a plastic chair beside the table of Kool Aid. Ewan instantaneously mimicked Theo's actions, clumsily planting his backside into a second chair directly beside the former's ─ which was pinker than a plastic flamingo. He then grabbed a cup of the Kool Aid from the table and sighed dramatically.

"So . . ." Ewan blurted. He was already awkward, and it hadn't even been thirty seconds. "Cool party, am I right?"

Theo didn't want to put a dampen on the mood, so he just shrugged resignedly, "I guess so."

"My Mom made the pies. She was a chef Before," Ewan continued. He pointed at a short, dark haired woman on the other side of the pavement. She was milling around a small table, sipping on a cup of water, talking animatedly with another woman. "It was awesome, because she used to bring home the leftovers from her restaurant. I miss that. It's nice that we get to have something similar now. . . with the party and the pies, y'know."

No, Theo didn't know.

His parents weren't even remotely similar to Ewan's ─ there was nothing he missed from his past, nothing that made him nostalgic in such a pivotal sense. His mother died when he was young and she hadn't been in his life a whole lot before her death, and his father was a grade-A asshole who spent more time getting drunk than anything else.