Apocalypse Orphans

24

Nick had another decent night's sleep and was again the first one up and was again the first one to see to Judith. He changed her and fed her and ignored Merle who was also up as he hummed a tune as he bounced her while sitting in the table.

"Yer good with her? Ye had a younger sibling or something?" Merle asked.

"Or something." Nick grumbled, and then put her back in the makeshift bassenette and went back up to his mattress and started a new sketch of a wolf howling to the moon.



He was half way through sketching when Daryl woke up, but he didn't stop and Daryl just cleaned his bow while they waited for the others to get up.

When everyone was up, they all had breakfast and Daryl pulled Nick and Jay of to the side and to talk to them. 

"Is this about me walking in on you and your brother yesterday?" Jay asked.

Daryl nodded. "Yeah -"

"Wait. If Jay's the one in trouble, why am I here?" Nick asked cutting Daryl off earning a glare of him and Jay.

"Merle came to tell me who it was that beat Jay." Daryl said to Nick. "And that he was one of your foster parents."

"Oh, yeah, Martinez, he was a peice of shit. He had nice enough kids though." Nick shrugged confused as to where this was going as Jay had already told him what had happenned.

"Yes well, due to you knowing the guy, and him knowing you, there is a very large chance that should they try to take the prison, that they will try to keep you guys alive should -"

"So what, you want us to leave?" Nick cut him off, unable to keep the hurt look of his face.

"No. I want you to becareful. We don't know what is going to happen or when. You need to be prepared. You are to protect eachother, and to make sure you constantly have at least one knife and at least one full clip on you at all times. Understood."

The two boys nodded and went up to the perch and they sat down and Nick shuddered before looking at Jay.

"Who would of thought that we would get a cliche be safe parent speach. Esspesially during the end of the world." Nick shuddered again.

Jay laughed, he too finding it a bit hard to belive that someone wanted him, and claimed him as their kid.

"You're a dumbass."

"So are you, Asshat"

The two chuckled, before Nick asked if Jay wanted to play hangman, in which he then pulled out his scrapbook and turned to the back page, where he put 8 dotted lines at the top and got his brother to start guessing letters.

He listed the vowels first, only three of which were in the word, he guessed an S and an L, which were both in the word, but after that, he got the rest rong and lost the round causing him to sigh and ask what the word was and Nick told him it was Squirrel.

They played a couple more rounds, before they had food and Nick went to go be with Judith, befor rocking and humming her to sleep before skillfully putting her in the bassette and walked out of the room only to bump into Rick, and he instinctively flinched and raised his arm closest to Rick to cover his head.

"Sorry Nick." Rick apologised, and decided not to bring up Nick flinching.

Nick gave a quick nod, not knowing what to say before he headed up to his matress on the perch and got ready for bed himself.

He fell asleep quite early, and woke up in a cold sweat, silently panicking, knife in hand. It was easy to tell everyone was alseep and he calmed down slightly. He knew what he dreamt about couldn't be true, it was physically impossible, as Thomas was dead and so wasn't able to make him watch as he beat Jacob, but that small part of his brain, made him get up and walked into Jay's cell.

Jay was fast asleep on the bottom bunk, snoring slightly, just like Nick knew he would be. He let out a slight sigh and slid his back down the doorframe of the cell, so he was sitting on the floor and watched as his brother sleep.

Nick didn't sleep for the rest of that night. He just made sure his brother was okay, and when the sun started to rise, he got up and like usual saw to Judith before starting breakfast for everyone.