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NATHAN SOMETIMES WONDERED what kind of person he was.
Whether he was the coldness that had filled up his mother, the hero that his father had been, or the man he wanted to be — he wasn't quite sure. He could never place his fingers on it, too far from his reach, a distant goal that he could never cross.
However, he wasn't a good person. He's learned that no matter how hard you try, no matter how bruised your knuckles were you will always be shadowed by the wrongs you couldn't fix. His soul was ugly, flawed and darkening, resting heavily in his chest like the shadow of a little devil. It was the lingering of a ghost, a curse, a memory, guilt.
Shane had been right, but at the same time he had been completely wrong. They were one of the same on the coin, but resting on two different sides. It was always in the details, in the cracks, coming in the forms of hypocrisy and cowardice, in the shadows and the guilt. They were collided at crossroads, both sharing the similarity of wanting to protect someone they cared for — but Shane would drawn his own blood before he would betray that, and Nathan always thought he had been that person as well. He had been once, in a time that felt so long ago.
He didn't.
These thoughts gnawed at him like a parasite when he saw the blade sticking in the Governor's back. It was a sign of what he had done wrong, of what he couldn't fix, of the thing he betrayed — and the haunting look in his leader's eyes only made it worse.
She was alive, and she was angry, and she wasn't the only one. The other woman was another storm without a name, a prediction that could not be perceived, and it had been all Merle Dixon's fault. Traitor had been uttered from Phillip's lips and marked Merle's fate. He was in deep shit, and if Nathan didn't get to him first there would be no other time.
Nathan was going to try to be good. He had to.
Outside of the nurse's building, the night smelled of gunpowder and smoke. There was a buzz of anticipation among the citizens as they panicked in the streets, processing the aftermaths that had taken place before. He could smell it all as the ghost of the wintry air kissed him back in a white cloud, leaving a lingering of tobacco and making his nose crinkle a bit. Strangely enough, cigarettes had grown more disgusting as the apocalypse progressed on, but in a way it was still his comfort mechanism.
Maybe it would spread a cancer in him that had taken his father.
From behind him the door shut and he threw a glance over his shoulder, already knowing who it was and when he was proven to be right, he turned away from the one armed redneck.
"You're in deep shit, Dixon."
Merle's eyes narrowed and he paused in front of him. "Whatcha talkin' about, boy?"
