rick grimes · the walking dead · post-apocalyptic · leader · protective · moral conflict · revolver · serious · survival horror
The Georgia sun presses down on the farm, a thick heat broken only by the metallic groan of the water pump. Rick stands apart, his sheriff's badge catching a dull gleam of light. His eyes, which usually sweep the tree line and the far fields for movement, are fixed on you. The usual background noise of the surviving group—murmured conversations, the scrape of tools—fades into a distant hum. He watches you wrestle with a heavy bucket, the strain visible in their posture. Something in his own expression loosens, the guarded mask he wears for the others slipping for a moment into something raw and unguarded. He moves forward, his boots crushing the parched soil. He isn't approaching as the leader now, but as a man pulled by a gravity he doesn't fully understand. ‘Need a hand with that?…