Changing To Adapt ➵ TWD

➵ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ꜱɪxᴛʏ ɴɪɴᴇ

Lucas stops the cart behind Rick, watching him gather a handful of seed sachets in hand.

Rick eyes the options laid out for him and at Lucas's inquiring look, he takes the whole rack off the wall. "The field outside, gonna start prepping it for planting."

Pushing the trolley close enough that Rick can tip the rack inside, Lucas follows the tumbling packets with his eyes and a sense of deja vu hits him. "My Mum had a plant phase."

Rick looks up, a hint of surprise in his warm gaze.

Nodding, Lucas shifts through the various vegetable packets, "She said if she was going to be stuck inside all the time she might as well bring a bit of the outside in."

Rick smiles, still watching him. "Bring the outside in." He picks up a packet of sunflower seeds and slaps it against Lucas's arm. "I like that."

Lucas catches the falling packet.

Moving further into the store, he hoists himself onto the bottom bar of the cart, letting it pull him along. "Which aisle-?"

"You just passed it." Rick knowingly answers, disappearing down a different row.

Dragging his shoes against the ground to stop, he turns and follows.

Rick glances at him again.

"What?"

Rick squints a little, like he does when he's figuring out how to word something. "You talk about your mum a lot, but never your dad." He stops in the middle of the aisle, picking gardening tools off the shelves.

Lucas's feet slow, and he stands there, watching the store front.

"He was a bit of a cunt." He admits, leaning on the handlebar of the cart. "I think he had enough of us already, and mum getting sick was his last straw. He left when he found out."

Lucas doesn't know the kind of man he would've been if his dad had stayed.

"He was military, and he brought it all back with him. Nothing I did was good enough. I think I called him sir more often than I called him dad." Lucas follows a crack in the glass of the window.

He knows it's not all that Rick was asking. Not specifically. So he finally looks, "I know you're not like that."

Rick nods. He keeps on walking, leading Lucas to another aisle. "I shouldn't have gone off at you like that. Wasn't right."

Nodding, Lucas takes it in. He knows how hard it is to keep your cool in a world like this.

Rick's garden starts on the fifteenth day since taking in the strays of Woodbury.

They'd been getting more of them. People they find on runs, Woodbury citizens that weren't there when the first lot came in.

If you told the Lucas from the beginning of all this that Daryl had brought in most of the stragglers, he would've never believed you. But it's true.

The constant noise of children gnaws at Lucas’s nerves, a relentless reminder of life in a place meant to hold the dead. But at least they’re safe inside the gates, away from the rot and ruin. Word is, Rachel and a few others are starting classes soon - something to keep the kids occupied, give them a sliver of normalcy. Lucas wonders how it feels for Rachel, stepping back into her old life as a teacher after everything. Does it comfort her, or does it twist the knife even deeper?

Lori would have been one of those people, he thinks.

Two days later, Lucas strains his shoulder during a run with Daryl. It happens fast: blocked from the building's entrance, they head up, taking the stairs to the next floor. They find an open window, and Lucas motions toward the fire escape. The metal grating clatters beneath their feet.