Last One Standing ~ TWD Daryl Dixon

26

Jo

It was my turn to keep watch. I always took the night shift when I could. There was something about it that was peaceful. Daytime at the prison was now a chaotic rush of people and opinions and needs. But night watch was just me and the stars...well, and the Walkers. But in the last few months we had secured the area surrounding the prison and had managing them down...mostly.

As the sun came up I watched Rick emerge from the cell block. There was no gun on his hip and in the last few months he had seemed to lose his edge. He had stepped back from the day to day decision making of the group and had focused himself solely on his field and pigs. He was on the council but as far as I knew he never attended meetings. He tucked a single earbud in his ear to tune out the sound of the walkers at the fence while he tended his fields. He was doing his best to forget.

I shook my head at his naivety. It had been almost six months since The Governor and Rick was convinced it was all over, that he could become a farmer and everything would be fine. I shifted my weight and the leather on the sheath of my kukri sighed. It was a comforting sound, as was the feel of my other knives pressing against my body beneath my leather jacket.

Rick paused in his work with the hoe and bent down to lift something out of the dirt. Even from this distance I could see that when he stood he had a gun in his hand. He turned towards the line of walkers at the fence thoughtfully, ejected the clip and tossed it and the gun in his wheel barrel with the weeds. Then he calmly picked up his tools and went back to work. I shook my head.

"Jo?" I flinched as I heard a voice behind me. I whirled around to face the man behind me. He was one of our newer additions, I was pretty sure his name was Charles.

"Sorry," he said in a cautious tone, holding his palms up towards me. He flashed me a friendly smile. "Didn't mean to startle you."

I frowned at him and let my hand drop from the grip of the knife I had considered drawing. I smiled back at him mainly because it was the polite thing to do and with so many new people around I had been working on improving my social interactions. "No worries," I assured him with a cheery smile.

For some reason my cheery smile only seemed to make him more uncomfortable. I frowned again but didn't bother with anything else. I didn't know him that well, Daryl had brought him in about two months ago. He had been on watch and fence cleaning rotation to help out but I hadn't had much contact. But then I didn't have contact with many of the new people. It bothered me that my reputation seemed to proceed me. I hadn't had an episode or a panic attack in months which meant someone had warned him about not startling me.

I had a few guesses, but the most likely culprit would be Carol. In the last six months she seemed to make it her personal mission to take me under her wing. Sometimes it was obnoxious, but sometimes it was nice to know someone cared.

"Nothing to report," I mumbled as I left the cage, careful not to bump into him and make him even more uncomfortable.

"Hey," he called after me, a shy smile on his face. "Carol is cooking up some BBQ venison for lunch. See you there?" He actually looked hopeful, was he hitting on me? I couldn't tell anymore.

I nodded cautiously. "Yeah I'll be there, I'm on mess," I replied.

"Great," he said brushing aside his dark hair. "I'll see you there."

I frowned as I walked away.

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Jo