Days, and I hadn't told anyone else what I'd partially revealed to Daryl. I thought about telling Dale, but I remembered how difficult I'd found it, so I chose to keep it a secret.

I picked my way through the pile of rubbish we'd made at the side of camp so that I could get through to the creek, which lay on the other side of it. I tiptoed through the mound of discarded bandages and water bottles until I finally reached the clear blue expanse of water. Lori and Carol were elsewhere doing I don't know what, but Shane was sat by the sandy white rocks at the far edge of the creek, but I couldn't make out what he was doing over there. I stood still for a few seconds, absorbing the beauty of the chasm we were in surrounded by yellow, jagged rocks. The rocks cast shadows which loomed daintily over the void that was filled with rounded boulders and miniscule pebbles, cooling the areas that were bathed in shadow. I slowly began to plod towards Shane, trying to keep myself cool by skirting around the outside to stay in the shadowy areas. I must have been about 20 yards from Shane when he looked up from what he was doing and squinted through the sunlight at me. I could make out now that he was cleaning his knife off in the creek, twisting and turning the blade so it reflected the sunlight and glinted menacingly, blindingly. I smiled at him and kept walking until I was right next to him, then I threw myself down on the ground and sat next to him.

"Hey." I greeted him, trying to strike up a friendly conversation. Shane was one of the few members of the group that I hadn't really spoken to, and so I was relatively keen to get to know him a little more...seeing as I was trusting him with my life several nights a week and all. He observed me for a little while then replied.

"Hey." He said warily. "What brings you out here then?" he inquired. He was right to inquire, it did seem a bit odd that I just randomly sat with him and started conversation.

"Just wanted to say hi." I grinned. He just looked at me, so I tried to keep the conversational ball rolling.

"So you built that ledge, huh?" I asked cheerfully, and thankfully his whole demeanour changed and he smiled at me.

"You mean that ledge you're scared of?" he said through slight laughter. I didn't want to be offended by it and stop the conversation so I just went along with it.

"Yeah, the ledge I'm a bit scared of...only a little bit." I agreed, I wasn't about to let him know I hated it, otherwise I wouldn't be on watch ever again and would therefore join the glorified dishwashers. There wasn't anything wrong with them; I just knew I would have hated it. Shane looked at me again, this time with more kindness.

"Don't worry, it's hard when you're scared of something. You can't just be scared of walkers all the time, you don't automatically forget all the fears that you had when life was different either." He told me wisely. He was right, the fears I'd harboured since the outbreak were ten times worse than my fear of heights.

"It might be easier to just...redirect my fear." I admitted to him. He looked confused, so I tried to explain.

"It's easy to hold on to my sorta irrational fear of heights- it's not even the fall that'll kill me, it's the landing- but if I can ignore how scared I am when it comes to heights I can put some of that fear back into being scared of walkers...they're more likely to kill me." I swallowed, terrified at the thought of being mauled to death by a walker. Shane shook his head.

"Sure, you could do that. Wouldn't that be like losing part of you though?" he quizzed. I just stared at him, carefully choosing my words.

"Yeah. Yeah it would. But it's like choosing the best parts of you...the parts you get to keep." I told him. We smiled at each other for a moment as we both contemplated this strange concept of selecting the good parts of a person and discarding the rest. Unfortunately you've got to take the bad with the good, and the bad part of me was the bullet that was still firmly holed up inside me...not my irrational fear of heights. I looked at Shane who had occupied himself once again with cleaning the knife. I opened my mouth to say something when he turned around and looked at the area behind my head and leapt to his feet in one swift action, leaving me sat confused on the floor.

" 'Scuse me." He murmured, marching off to the trees behind me, leaving me feeling confused and a little indignant. I turned to look at him go, and then my confusion melted away faster than soft snow under the burning heat of the sun. A walker was stumbling towards us both from the trees, its bulbous eyes fixed determinedly on me. Shane marched towards it and in a single movement swung his knife down through its brittle cranium and ripped it out, bringing with it a red jet of blood, turned black by the sheer amount of time it had to decompose and rot. It crumpled to his feet, and when it was laying in the dirt, he brought his heavy duty army boot down through the corpse's head, splitting it like a coconut, the blood dribbling out like macabre milk. He turned back to me and sniffed hard, disgusted by the events that had just happened.

"So much for cleaning this." He said mumbled, flicking the blood off the blade. He'd just stopped me from being eaten and I owed him one. I stood up and walked over to him, upon reaching him I took his knife out of his hand.

"I'll do it, don't worry." I told him, smiling. "You did just save my ass after all." He looked at me gratefully nodding, and we resumed out sitting position next to the water. I began cleaning the blade immediately. He watched me intently, as if I would spin round and bury the blade in his chest even though I had absolutely no desire to. We spent a few minutes in silence, sitting in the aftermath of the attack, until finally I broke the quiet.

"Lori told me you were in the city when the soldiers went in." I said quietly. He wasn't expecting this and looked up at me in shock, before nodding hesitantly. I gave him a sympathetic grin before I resumed speaking.

"I know what it was like." I said softly, thinking it would make him feel better. Shane then threw me a look even dirtier than some of the ones Daryl had thrown my direction over the past few weeks.

"You have no idea." He snarled shortly, lifting his hand to his face and biting his already too short nails. I smirked at him and then refocused my eyes on the blade I was cleaning.

"Why do you think Daryl calls me gunshot?" I softly asked him, still smirking. He looked up at me guiltily before lowering his hand from his face and resting on the ground next to him.

"Sorry, I had no idea..."he trailed off, still looking guiltily at me. He turned his head away from me and looked out over the water, and I copied him.

"Where were you?" he asked me, already knowing the outline of what happened, he just needed filling in on the details. I paused before I answered, reliving my first memories of the outbreak in my head.

"At work. In a department store. They filed in and just starting spraying the bullets at the people...didn't have time to hide..."I confessed. It was the first time I'd told anybody proper details about what had happened, other than telling Daryl I'd been shot by a soldier. We stayed in silence for about 5 minutes after I'd told him, until I finally stood up and handed his sparkling clean knife back to him.

"Thanks for taking down the walker." I thanked him, before beginning my trek back up to the campsite to regroup with everyone else.