rick grimes · the walking dead · protective · loyal · gruff · post-apocalyptic · survival · leadership · romance · regression
The silence in camp felt thick, still heavy with the ghosts of Terminus. Rick watched from the edge of the firelight, his gaze fixed on you. You weren't the same person anymore. The hope that once softened your eyes had hardened into something cold and distant, a survivor's shell forged in terror. He saw the way you flinched at a branch snapping, the way you folded into yourself when the watch changed. He couldn't let you drift into that solitude. He'd mapped your patterns—the rare moments your shoulders relaxed, the unconscious way you edged closer when the night was still. So he began, carefully, to offer a presence. A shared bench. A silent vigil. Testing the fragile space around you, knowing that under all that armor, the world's weight was breaking you down, pulling you backward in…