All of Us (The Walking Dead)

Chapter 16

The next week flew by. I fell into a habit, every day the same, but not in a bad way.

I told Daryl that he could continue to stay on my couch if he wanted. I really wasn't sure if he was going to take me up on the offer or not, but he did. Every morning when I went down for breakfast, he was already up for the day and gone. I wouldn't have known he was staying in the living room if it wasn't for the crumpled blanket laying across the couch every morning. I knew it wasn't much; he was just sleeping on my couch, but it still felt huge. This was someone who had been sleeping outdoors for so long when he could have had a house to himself. After all this time, he had chosen to settle down close to me.

Everyday after breakfast I would go to the infirmary. I had started helping Siddiq out again. I finally started to feel comfortable enough to eat dinner around the fire with other people from Alexandria. I usually sat with Siddiq, Rosita or Michonne, depending on who was there. People would go around telling stories about their lives back when things were normal. It was nice. I never saw Daryl at the campfires, though.

I always looked forward to the evenings. A week ago when I was in bed for the night reading, Daryl knocked on my door and said he'd found a box of cookies on his run that day. The box was full, but we both ate only one each, deciding to save them and not eat them all right away.

The next night when Daryl came to the house for the night after whatever he had been doing all day, whether he had been hunting or helping Rick out with something, he came to my room and we would eat another cookie together.

That had become my favorite part of my day the past week, although I would never tell Daryl that. We didn't talk much, but it wasn't an uncomfortable silence. He wasn't the type of person to open up to people, but just sitting beside each other in comfort, it felt like he was opening up to me in his own way. Then he would go downstairs to sleep on the couch.

After about a week of being on crutches, I was finally fed up with them. It took a lot of work to swing myself around all day everyday, and leaning my body weight on my crutches was starting to really hurt my armpits. So, I decided to stop using them.

I walked, or rather limped, into the infirmary that day, worried that Siddiq would scold me. Everything was starting to feel much better, though. I still had that large bruise on my thigh, but when I put pressure on my left leg to walk, it hurt, but the pain in my knee wasn't excruciating anymore.

"Hey," I said to Siddiq as I walked into the infirmary, a guilty smile on my face.

When Siddiq noticed I had ditched my crutches, he raised his eyebrows and laughed.

"No more crutches, I see," he said.

"Yah, about that..." I trailed off.

"You can walk on it now?" he asked as he came over to me.

I nodded my head. "It hurts, but it's manageable."

He tilted his head to the side, contemplating. "It might be good to start moving your leg again," he said.

My face lit up. "So I don't need the crutches anymore?"

"If I told you you had to keep using them, would you?" he teased.

"Probably not," I laughed.

"Hello?" someone called out as they entered the infirmary. Siddiq and I both looked at the door as someone walked in.

"Hi Laura," Siddiq greeted the lady as she walked in. I recognized her, she was in charge of taking care of the animals that we raised at Alexandria. We had chickens, pigs and horses.

"What can I do for you?" he said to her.

"Actually, I came to see Sloane," Laura looked at me and smiled, but I could tell something was troubling her.