It looked eerie under the bright fluorescent light. (For a minute, Merle reveled in the knowledge that there even still were fluorescent lights. Let alone electricity.) Like a thrice scabbed over cigarette burn. Picked at and scratched again and again and again, the wound never healing.

Slowly, he rotated his wrist, trying to ignore that little itch, that nagging urge to take another hit.

Clockwise.

Counterclockwise.

Turned and looked at the slight pucker where the gnarly skin closed over bone. Tried to imagine his lost hand, saw his knobby fingers, veins protruding beneath sunburned skin, patches of white hair near his wrist and just after his knuckles. Then he blinked and tried to make peace with the fact that it's gone.

Merle had always been good with his hands. Never been good with people or school but he could do honest work, at least the couple of times he cared enough to try. Losing one hand was like losing half himself. Goddamn Officer Friendly. He'll knock his teeth in if he ever saw that no-good face of his again. Cuff 'im to one of them damn roofs see how he likes it.

He flexed his non-existent fingers.

Alone, one-handed, in the face of the end of the world.

He spat on the linoleum. If anybody could do it, he fucking could. Dixon always came out on top.

Merle could still remember the intense burn of his flesh. Again, he swore vengeance against that blasted sheriff, that no good nigger, hell to all of them at that pussyass camp. Then he wondered about his brother. Sweet little Darleena. Spineless bastard probably never followed through with their plans.

"You should let us patch that up."

Tired blue eyes looked up at the sound of a smooth baritone. Must've been the governor all them damn hussies kept talking about. Pretty boy was wearing pressed clothes and a white pearly welcoming smile that did not seem to reflect that calculating look in his eyes. Merle knew his type. He also knew that he was in no position to be rejecting favours.

"You must be the governor."

"That is what they call me." The man chuckled, but made no move to offer his own name. Douchebag.

A woman wearing a doctor's coat swept past behind the smiling man. She was carrying an armful of bandages and two large bottles of what appeared to be peroxide. Merle barely spared her a glance.

"Do you have a group…?" The governor paused, and Merle realized he was waiting for a name.

"Merle Dixon." He supplied. He thought about lying, but decided against it. Truth was easier to remember, and not like he had anything left to lose anyway. He gave them the annotated version. "Was with my brother and some stragglers from Atlanta. Went to look for supplies back in the city and some cop decides to cuff me to roof and leave me to die." Merle brandished his stump as if it was a trophy. Martinez looked sick. The governor was unimpressed. At that moment, the lady doctor gently took hold of his unsightly stump and turned it this way and that not unlike what he was doing minutes before.

"Is this from one of your group?"

The governor was holding up a silk handkerchief. One of them damn useless girly things Merle used to scoff at. It used to be white but was now burned and stained with grease and old blood. Merle could still remember the shaking fingers that wrapped the soft fabric on his stump, the endless stream of apology as he cursed the owner despite the lightness of her touch and not for the first time Merle wondered what was it about making people uncomfortable that made him so giddy—for lack of a better term.

But this was not the moment to muse about things. Merle blinked and broke his stare with the governor, focused instead on the steady hands now wrapping sterile bandages around were his hand used to be. "Nah. Picked it up from one of them shelves."

"I see." The handkerchief was returned to a back pocket. Merle resisted the urge to follow the movement. "I'm sure you must be tired. We'll get your wounds taken care of. Dinner. A room. We can talk tomorrow."

Merle knew the governor did not believe him.