Donna's wife

One could watch the sun rise and set and it was beautiful, every damn time. That was the dirty thing about this place; it was too good at acting innocent before stabbing you in the back—and Donna could almost fall for it every single time. She’d watched the sunrise from the kitchen window after a long night staying up in case the fire started up again, busying herself with chores; tidying the kitchen, organising the pantry, washing dishes.

The last thing they needed right now was people going rogue and setting things on fire, least of all her own people. It was enough that Kenny, Dale, Jade and Kristy were going out foraging in the middle of an impromptu winter, all because Jim fucking Matthews had gone on one of his stupid excursions and thought he’d struck gold. Finding Tabitha shouldn’t be his priority right now, his damn kids should be. The kids she had to look after now and reassure they wouldn’t be orphans by dawn. This was a bad time to have to worry about a new arrival, one who she’d proudly proclaimed they wouldn’t have to worry about, and it would be easy to blame Lisa for stirring things up, but no, it wasn’t easy. Lisa was her responsibility and she deserved the same grace every new arrival before her had been granted. It wasn’t her fault that she got trapped here at the worst imaginable time. If anything, Donna had failed her, and she’d have to make up for it somehow—not only to avoid another wildfire.

“Can I have—” Victor started, then stopped abruptly and looked around the kitchen. “It’s different.”

Donna hadn’t heard him coming down and startled, but caught herself quickly. She’d spent almost a year hiding in holes in the ground from monsters every night but still jumped when someone walked in on her—the irony.

“Yeah, I, um, spent the night tidying,” she told him, leaving the window and approaching him. “You’re up early. What’re you lookin’ for?” 

“My-mh peaches.”

“There’s not much left, Victor… You sure you wanna have them now?”

“I want peaches.”

“Okay, then,” Donna said calmly. Victor was restless, which was never a good omen. He had instincts regarding this place none of them could understand and a lot of them disregarded as the musings of a lunatic, but Victor was not that. “I’ll go get ‘em for you.”

“Okay,” he said expectantly.

Donna went into the pantry and took one of the last four canned peaches out from a box she had hidden for Victor behind other supplies. In the beginning, little else other than those canned peaches could calm his meltdowns until Donna had learned how to talk him down. She missed those times in some twisted kind of way, when it was just day-to-day survival and not whatever this mess was. Trying to get out of here no matter how many lives it would cost. The pretence of normalcy, her little kingdom, the bonds they all shared.

“Here you go,” she said, giving the can to Victor.

“Hm-thanks,” he said, taking the peaches into both hands, holding on to them tightly. He looked at the label for a long time, hesitant.

“Something wrong, sweetheart?”

Victor turned his head from side to side as if stretching his neck to work out a kink, working his lips. “The trees,” he said finally, “they—they’re upset.”

“You mean the fire? You’re worried about the fire?”