For my biggest supporter, a good friend, a wonderful writer-Jessie. I know you hate this character but I hope you will enjoy the tale I want to tell.
And in a split second, he was back.
Not that he was ever gone, really.
The Governor, aka Phillip aka Brian had not been fully recovered from the man that he'd became. Rather, he had went into remission.
A rather dark, depressing, lonely self-exile, to be precise.
But as soon as he took the first swing at Martinez, he knew, even though he tried (not hard, but still he tried) to fight it, the darkness that was once the Governor of Woodbury returned, with a vengeance.
It wasn't exactly as if he were proud of what he'd done. But like with any addiction, after you relapse the first time the rest of them seem to follow quite easily.
And really, wasn't that his true problem- an addiction to power?
But now, after doing everything that he had done, there was no doubt in Phillip's dark, angry state that the Governor was back.
Was he ever really gone?
For a long time, he'd tried to convince himself that it was all a fluke, all a mistake. Anyone would have done if they had been in his shoes. The problem was, no one else was in his shoes and somebody had to step up to the plate. What the people wanted, needed really, was a leader; was it his fault that they naturally turned to him?
The simplest, easiest reason for him becoming who he was was simple; the zombie apocalypse. No one had even dreamed of anything happening the way it had, and of course, no knowledge meant no preparation.
It was every man out for themselves, it seemed.
But he saw things a little differently. People were inherently needy by nature; food, shelter, protection, and even more importantly, companionship. Now more than ever, as he'd become a surrogate father to a little girl who quite reminded him of his beloved Penny, it was clear that even he wasn't immune to those needs.
But he couldn't-wouldn't- be anyone's servant or errand boy. He'd had too much of that in his former life, his real life.
At work, he'd been passed over for promotion to some twenty-something kid with a college degree and boyish good looks. The kind of guy everyone wanted to be around, to be. But not him. Phillip had done his time both in the real world and in his company. The slight that might not have bothered your average Joe sure as hell bothered him.
Then again, he'd never been your average Joe.
Smart- Mensa level, some had said, a decent looking guy, a way of talking to people (that would sure come in handy at the end of the world!), nonetheless he'd had a hard life. Beat by his father on a near-daily basis, he couldn't understand why people didn't listen to him, didn't hear him, didn't notice that he was only a child in desperate need of salvation.
Eventually he grew up, got a job of his own, took care of his own family. But he never forgot his past, who he was and what his family would have him believe about himself.
So now, when opportunity presented himself to be a man of means, a man of great importance, he leapt upon it. Who wouldn't? Everyone deserved to feel special, at least once in his life.
But now, with a new family, a new group, new responsibilities, one would think that the governor would finally be at peace with himself.
If it were only that easy.
TBC