Chapter Text
Carl has a new appreciation for his dad that he never had for him when he was eleven years old, running around the prison demanding to be allowed his gun and shoot walkers through the fence, begging to go on dangerous runs instead of staying inside. He had always thought this dad must've just been being a buzzkill, not letting him do all the fun stuff, but now that he knows what it feels like to watch a kid that you love slaughter walkers like it's no problem, he gets why his dad never let him out of his sight if he could help it.
Watching Judith slice through a walker's skull makes him feel a sick mix of pride and guilt. Because she shouldn't have to do this, they should be handling this, but Michonne and Carl both agreed that she should at least be ready for a fight, because there could be a war coming, and war doesn't care that kids are too young for battles, the world doesn't care that they've just hit double digits, the world just takes and takes until there is nothing left to take from.
Judith breaks her way back into the military-esque lineup. A planned-out attack for if they ever need to fight ten walkers at once every couple minutes. Carl thinks it's stupid, to think Alpha would send a herd with just a few walkers every time, he doesn't think they'll ever actually use this tactic in battle, instead, they'll be scrambling to fight, just to survive. They're not a militia, not many of them are trained, they're just people to have to fight, they never learned how to use guns or arrows the proper way, they taught themselves to fight like kids teach themselves to walk, because they had to.
"Archers!" Aaron yells. Yumiko and a few others draw their bows and fire at the seven walkers, hitting their heads and sending them falling back. Jerry and Ezekiel man the door of the rusty boat where they're holding the walkers for their training days. They've done this exercise already today, yesterday, and the day before. But at least Jude and RJ get to see the ocean, and get to swim under the careful watch of Carl with a rifle in case one of the walkers pops up from the water.
Carl isn't paying much attention to the training today, he wasn't yesterday or the day before either, he's memorized the steps he takes, the hits he throws, and the way he swings. It's muscle memory at this point, and he allows his mind to wander as he waits for his cue, for his body to react to it before he does, for him to be moving before he even realizes he is. He's not worried about being distracted. It's not like he can get bit. It's not like it'll do anything to him.
"Open ranks!" His body moves but his mind stays on his stomach, on the healed bite wound that everyone ignores. His body swings against a walker and its head falls to the sand, his arm thrusts out and caves a head in two pieces with his axe. His mind catches up with him as he runs back to the formation, as the shields close around him and the dead begin to spill from the door that's fallen off its hinges, taking half the wall with it, releasing a much more likely storm of walkers. It's only 20 or so, nothing Carl couldn't handle by himself but he goes out there anyways, only half listening to Aaron's commands as he slaughters the walkers like he's been doing since he was ten years old.
It's hard to think that he's twenty-two now. He doesn't feel twenty-two. He didn't feel twenty-one either, or nineteen or eighteen. He didn't feel older, he always just felt like a kid playing pretend, wearing clothes too big for him and a hat that would never fit and using a gun like most other ten-year-olds wouldn't have to. Twenty-two isn't a special age. It's not twenty-one, where he badly faked taking his first drink in front of his friends even though they all knew he had gotten hammered at Rosita's birthday party a couple of months ago. It's just another age, another day that doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of anything. He turned twenty-two yesterday, and he still feels ten years old.
"Enid still not talking to you?" Cyndie asks when their training session ends, they're walking back to Oceanside, Carl keeping a careful eye on Judith and Michonne in front of him.
"The most I've heard from her in a year is her telling me not to talk to her, so no." It hasn't been a full year. Eight months. Rosita had Coco just a little under a month ago, and they had all been ecstatic that it went well, with no issues. Carl will still always worry that something would go wrong again, that another girl would live to not know their mom, but with Michonne and Rosita he had been safe. Carl held Coco the day she was born, and so did Judith and RJ, who asked if Coco counted as their sibling too, and none of them had the heart to tell them no.
"That's... god that's awful. I'm sorry Carl," Cyndie says earnestly, swinging her spear over her shoulder.
"It's not. I deserve it," Carl grumbles, he kicks a seashell and it shatters on impact, he winces.
"You didn't kill Allison, it's not your fault what she did. None of it is your fault." Carl wants to believe her, but he can't seem to let himself believe that. He could've killed Alpha, he should've. He shouldn't have let Lydia in, but he can't imagine a life without her now. Lydia, who's quiet to a fault and thinks she'll get slapped whenever she talks to Michonne too loud, who hides in the backyard under the lemon tree because she's more comfortable outside than in.
Lydia who can fall asleep on the dirt but not in her own bed. Lydia who will stay up all night listening to him talk. They had grown close, and fast. It seemed like Carl and Judith were the only people who would actually talk to her, and since all the houses were full and no one would allow Lydia to stay with them, she joined their household. She lived in the spare bedroom that his dad had once joked would be another baby's room. It's undecorated mostly, and has a small desk with a stack of books that Lydia is trying to read through, and some figures and knives stored away in drawers. Her bedsheets are plain and unassuming, and you wouldn't think anyone lived in there at all.
"I know it's not. I know that. But I still get why Enid is taking it out on me," Carl shrugged. He did get it, Enid lost everything that night, her son lost a mom, and she lost a wife and the person she had loved.
"She shouldn't. It's been... such a long time. I don't blame you for Rachel. Rosita doesn't blame you for Tara. Yumiko for Luke. It's not fair to you," Cyndie laid a gentle hand on his shoulder that he felt the urge to shrug off, but instead, he let the girl comfort him.
"Everyone grieves in different ways. We'll... we'll be okay soon. Maybe."
"Do you want to be okay?" She asks.
"I want her to be my friend again. I want us and Siddiq to meet up with you again. I want us to be family like we used to be, but I'll give her the space she needs."
It's quiet for a few beats, just the sounds of the dirt crunching under their feet as they break through the light woods and into the main area of Oceanside, where the noises burst at them, people talking and skinning fish left and right, sharpening tools and manning their small gardens. Oceanside mainly grows herbs and grains, trading them with the other communities for fresh fruits and vegetables, trading fish for beef and chicken, colorful seashells are traded for wood carvings, and spears traded for knives and arrows.
"Carl!" It's Judith, running toward him with a worried look on her face, carrying something floppy in her hand, and she collides into his body with a thump before pulling back. "Carl! The— look!" She shoves the floppy thing into his face.
It's a walker skin. It's a whisperer's mask.
Carl surprises himself by choosing to stay back in Oceanside while the others ride out to monitor the perimeter for any sign of the whisperers. He says it's so he can watch after Judith and RJ, but by the way his mom is looking at him, they both know it's a lie, even if he doesn't know why he's lying in the first place. Truth is, he just didn't want to go out there.
Things had changed since the fair, they had lost so many and Carl had gained Lydia in the process, Lydia who didn't know how to be a kid and who Carl was practically forced to relearn it all. They watched old animated films on VHS with his siblings and he taught her how to play board games with them that she never won, except for UNO, she was unfairly good at UNO. Helping Lydia recover, and move on from her mother and the abuse she suffered made Carl remember how much of his own childhood he had missed, how much of it he had pushed away because his mind was too filled with battle strategies and ways to better the community.
Even in the years since Alexandria became truly peaceful, Negan locked away and RJ finally born, he didn't let himself relax. He threw himself into taking care of the community because he knew one day Michonne wouldn't be around to do it, the world would take her from him too, maybe not soon, but eventually. He spent all his time with his siblings and only let himself have very rare moments of solitude and childlike happiness when he thought he really deserved it, and that wasn't often. But even with the threat of war on the horizon Lydia had made him feel like a kid again, she had made him feel that peacefulness his dad had fought so hard for, that new world his dad had died for.
Maybe it wasn't Lydia herself, more it took him helping another person gain back their childhood for Carl to realize he needed to too. He needed to remember what it was like to be a kid before he grew too old to remember, before he began acting like a child at twenty-five.
The kids are building sandcastles on the beach, and Carl is pulling in an empty fishing line with Kelly and Connie, and a few other Oceanside girls.
"Kelly!" He shouts, she's about to step into a jagged rock poking out of the wet sand, but she just keeps going.
"Kelly!" He shouts again. Then again, until he just moves and shoved her lightly, getting her away from the rock before pointing it.
"I— shit. I'm sorry," Kelly says, and although it isn't a big deal, shouldn't be, they both know it is. She's tearing up a little and Carl doesn't know what to say to comfort her, doesn't know how to tell her that they can fix this because they can't.
Kelly has been losing her hearing since before Carl met her, but her hearing seems to be rapidly fading the more time goes on, and when there are too many sounds it's like she can't hear any of them anymore, getting drowned out in the sea of voices. He had been learning sign language from her and Connie and any books he could find so Kelly could at least have someone else to talk to. He brought up the idea of his mom of the communities at least learning the basics of sign language so they can communicate.
Which had Connie and Kelly teaching almost everyone in Alexandria the basics, different signs for danger and walkers, and a myriad of other basic things they may need going forward. But Carl never half-assed anything, and went about visiting the Hilltop as often as possible to learn from them, he teaches himself when he's back at home, signing to the mirror and mimicking what he remembers. Kelly appreciates it, they both do.
"Hey, it's alright. Next time I'll just shove you," he knows she doesn't like talking about it, but they can't ignore it forever. "Is it getting worse?"
"Yeah. It's... it's getting worse. When there are too many sounds... it's like I just don't hear anything," Carl reached a hand out, wiping a stray tear from Kelly's eye and then pulling back, giving her a comforting smile.
"Fuck, Kelly. I'm sorry. It'll be okay. Everyone's learning sign, you'll be okay."
"It's not that. Who— who's gonna translate for Connie? She'll be even more isolated," Kelly stressed.
"I think Connie can handle herself perfectly fine," he says teasingly, and Kelly gives him a trying smile. They're close now, closer than he expected them to be, they were around the same age when this all started, and they grew up the same, always on the run and never really safe, but Kelly was out there for longer, yet she had never lost her spark, never lost her sense of self or humanity.
"You're right, we'll figure something out, thank you."
Carl leaves, wandering off the beach after the net is pulled in to find his siblings. They were the same as they always had been, happy and energized all the time, playing in the streets and riding their bikes. RJ was becoming more and more outspoken, albeit slowly, he was getting better at talking to other people, letting himself ramble. But he was still the quietest kid Carl had ever known, keeping to himself in his room like Carl used to do when he was his age.
They tried to keep them out of the war, tried to keep them ignorant to anything going on, but much like Carl himself at that age, Judith refused to just ignore what was going on, she wanted to be a part of it, wanted to save people and fight of the whisperers like him and their mom were doing. But there was nothing to fight, so they agreed to let Judith come to training sessions and practice with her sword, with their dad's colt python and other things before pushing her away to safety when the real fight actually came. Carl is glad that RJ doesn't have any interest in fighting in the war, he would rather play with cars on expertly built race tracks than use a gun or a sword.
"And the Brave Man rode the horse very, very far, trying to lead the gigantic herd away," Judith recites. A story long told to her over and over again for the past few years. It makes Carl flinch to hear her talk about him. He tries to ignore his dad being gone entirely some days, tries to ignore that they all lost a father. But some days it's impossible. He meets Michonne's eyes across the tree line and they both silently stalk over to the kids.
"But after a while, the horse got scared and ran away, leaving the Brave Man all alone. So the Brave Man walked all by himself to the bridge. Remember how he built the bridge for all his friends?" Carl tries to ignore the stinging in his eyes, he squeezes them shut for a moment, just listening to the bustling of branches and faded voices of everyone else.
"Yeah! I remember," RJ responds.
"Well, the millions of walkers followed the Brave Man onto the bridge, and on the other side, all his friends were waiting. The Brave Man couldn't let the walkers reach his friends and hurt them, so he blew up the bridge, and all the walkers fell into the water and he saved all his friends. The end."
It's a simplification of the story. It's always a simplification when they tell Judith about what happened. No one told her why it happened, no one told her that Daryl and Maggie are the reason why he found the hoard in the first place, why it was redirected, and why their dad couldn't get home. No one tells her how horrifying it was for everyone, but she knows, she just knows.
"Did the Brave Man go to his friend's house after that?" Sometimes he forgets how young RJ is, how, compared to everyone else, how sheltered he is. He's never fought a war, he's never lost any family that he remembers.
"No. He died and went to heaven," Judith says sadly. Carl knows that Judith remembers him, that she has flashes of her dad and vague memories that she can't piece together, but she's getting older, and one day she won't remember the sound of her dad's voice, the way he looked at her with all that love in his eyes. She won't have any solid memories of him at all, one day Judith's mind will take her dad from her, and Carl's not ready for that day.
"Will he come back someday, like the walkers?" RJ asks.
"No, not like that," Jude sighs. "But people, like the Brave Man, are never really gone anyway. He lives inside our hearts and makes us brave, too." Christ. Carl thinks he might cry, but he approaches them swiftly, shoving his tears away and looking at their beaming smiles when they see him, and it makes it all feel better for a moment, making him forget that their dad isn't here anymore.
"Hey!" He says as Michonne approaches, hugging RJ from behind and smiling, she blows a raspberry on his cheek to watch him giggle and Carl settles into the sand next to Judith on her small chair, leaning his head on her shoulder. She huffs in mock annoyance but throws her arm over his shoulder and smiles.
"Mama, I didn't like it when the Brave Man died, why did he do that?" Carl can feel Judith tense up under his head, and he tilts his face to kiss her cheek lightly, throwing his arm around her shoulders too. She's small, like he was when he was her age, he wonders if she'll spring up like a weed when she's eighteen like he did, or if she'll stay small forever.
"Well...there are some people that you love so much that you would do anything for them, just like I would do anything for you and Carl and Judy," his mom is fighting back tears and they all know it, but they don't bring it up.
"And my dad?" RJ asks, voice small.
"Yes, of course, your dad. Alright. Bring it, Grimes hug," she teases, and Carl practically drags Judith across the sand to Michonne, letting her wrap one arm around the both of them, the four of them smushed together and Carl never wants to leave. For a moment he can remember the way his dad held him, the feel of his hugs, and how comforted he always felt by them, he wonders if Judith will remember the feeling of their dad's hugs, wonders if RJ will always mourn something that he never had, so Carl squeezes him tighter, hoping that his hugs can be the comfort that RJ will never get from their dad.
There's a loud boom from the sky that makes Carl flinch, his hand going to his gun, but when he looks at the sky he thinks he sees a meteor shower, a large flaming ball of something rocketing through the sky down toward the earth.
"Is that a meteor shower?" Jude asks, he and Michonne push the kids behind them and stare at it, confusion etching across their faces.
One of the members of Oceanside runs out to them frantically, "Michonne, Carl! Eugene's on the radio. He needs to talk to you now."
Lydia thinks this is stupid. She doesn't need to learn how to read, especially now, why would she ever need to learn how to read? It's not like anyone sends her letters, and she can talk perfectly fine, she's been told she has the vocabulary of a 12-year-old by this 'teacher' in front of her whose name she's forgotten already, and she has half a mind to grab her staff and give her a thwack on the head for every time she made Lydia feel like an idiot around a bunch of kids almost half her age.
"'Yes, the girl said. I have rec...'" it's a jumble of letters that she knows individually but doesn't know together, they seem to blur together as she reads over them.
"'Received,'" a girl cuts in from her side. Gracie. Aaron's daughter. Aaron was the one that Carl trusted who didn't have an arm, instead having a metal prosthetic going up to his elbow, and he could switch out the hand part with different weapons. Lydia was scared of him, as she was of almost everyone here, they all hated her except for Carl. Maybe Judith and RJ too. She slams the book closed and tossed it on the table, the loud thumps resonating throughout the church-turned-school.
"I've gone my whole life without reading. I don't see the point in learning how to do it now," Lydia grumbles, pulling at the sleeves of her long red shirt. She picks at the threads and rubs her fingers over the ribbing on the hem, it should comfort her, as it normally does, when the walls are too much, when she wants to breathe the fresh air again. It doesn't help.
"It'll open a whole new world for you. And you're picking it up so quickly. You're a natural." Says her nameless teacher. She's dressed like a 50's housewife and smiles all fake like one too. Lydia wants to hit her again. She had never considered herself particularly violent, but spending months in a place where everyone hates you, treats you like you don't even exist on a good day, and like you killed their partner in front of them on a good day makes her want to be violent.
"Nothing fucking natural about this," she snarls, the teacher flinches, opening her mouth to discipline her or tell her not to talk like that around the ten-year-olds she was shoved into school with. The door creaks open, revealing a few of the people Carl would consider an inner circle, Tyreese and Eugene, Laura, the blonde with the neck tattoo that Lydia thinks is pretty sometimes when she's not glaring at her like she wants her dead.
"We need the room," Tyreese explains, and Laura looks at her, one eyebrow arched, eyes angry.
"Should she be here for this?" Laura asks.
"I don't want to be," Lydia snaps, she stands up almost violently, her chair crashing behind her and she grabs her staff, stomping out and pushing Tyreese's shoulder on the way just because he was in her way and because she could. Because Tyreese would tell Carl since she was his responsibility now, and Carl would just laugh when told and say that Lydia is of course going to lash out every once in a while.
She stomps outside, and just the fresh air makes her feel instantly better. She's always liked the outdoors more than the inside, because of how long she had spent out there, sleeping on dirt was more comfortable than a mattress she could sink into. She forgets to shower because she never did out there, she didn't know how to wash her hair and had to have Michonne teach her all the steps for when she does take a shower. Her room feels suffocating, the four walls seem to be shrinking in on her, coming ever closer to crush her between them.
She practices with her staff in the garden because it always calms her down, swinging it around makes her feel a little less insane some days, the rhythmic movements memorized by now, her body moving before her brain can process it, an easy dance of sorts that makes her mind quiet for a moment, narrowing in on the feeling of the wind between her staff, the whoosh as she twirls it through the air.
"Hey, kid. Everything okay?" It's Negan. Lydia has heard plenty about Negan from Carl and others alike, whispered secrets and stories that may or not be true. He used to burn people's faces off, he had a harem of wives and a baseball bat covered in barbed wire he called Lucille that he used to bash people's heads in.
She knows all those stories to be true. Lucille was used to kill Glenn and Abraham. Lydia never knew them and never would, and she wasn't inclined to care that they died at all until she heard the way Carl talked about them, until she heard how Carl cried over Glenn's death and how brutal it was, how sometimes he can't do certain things without being reminded of it. Judith wanted to learn to play softball, and the second she picked up a bat Carl had a panic attack over it and they threw the bat in the basement to never be touched.
Glenn's death seems to weigh heavily on the whole Grimes family. Judith and RJ call him Uncle Glenn even though neither of them has any memories of them, Carl says Glenn was like a brother or a cool uncle to him, that Glenn was Rick's brother. That Glenn was close family like Rosita was close family. Lydia hates Negan on that principal, hates him because he made the only person she gives a shit about hurt.
"Fine," she snaps. She hopes she sounds like she doesn't want to be talked to, because she doesn't. She hopes he listens. "Exactly the same as it was minutes ago."
"What was the big meeting for? And why are folks givin' you the side eye?" She glares at him. She doesn't like the way he talks.
"Fuck off," she snarls, already walking away. All the Grimes are at Oceanside today, so there's no one home, she can grab something to eat and stay in the backyard until they come back, grab a lemon from the tree in their backyard and squeeze the sour juice into her mouth.
"Watch your back kid!" Negan calls after her, and she remembers something Carl had done to Negan before, so she lifted her free hand up and showed him her middle finger. Carl said it basically just meant 'fuck you'. Fitting. She heard Negan chuckling behind her, and she wanted to spin around and smack him across the face with her staff. No one likes him anyways, it's not like she would get in trouble.
"This is crazy. We can't do this," Magna stresses. But Carl knows they have to. The satellite, as Eugene had explained over the radio, crashed right over the border, starting a huge forest fire on Alpha's land. If they didn't deal with it the fire would spread to Oceanside and burn down their forests too, possibly even their houses.
"We don't have another choice!" Carl shouts, he throws on a makeshift backpack filled with water so he can spray the fire out. They're all preparing the best they can, but they're not firefighters, they're just people who have to survive.
"If we get caught on their side of the border, that's it, that's war."
"It's a fire. Fires spread. It'll wipe out Oceanside if we don't do something," Carl stresses, he drops his weapons into a cart minus his machete, and checks around him, Carol and his mom have their hoses too, large metal backpacks strapped to them.
"Michonne, are we doing this?" Yumiko asks.
"We don't have another choice."
They begin to run toward the fire, across Alpha's invisible borders, and into her land, the land that used to be their hunting grounds, used to be the woods where Carl took Judith out to train with some walkers. Woods that Carl had spent his days in before, reading comics with Enid or laughing with Beth under the trees. Taken right from them.
No one really realizes how hot fires actually are until you're next to them, when Alexandria had burned down he had been shocked by just how hot it was, even far from the flames it had felt like he was standing in them, maybe because he had a fever and was slowly dying from an infection, but the flame lick at his skin even now, heating him down to his bones. People are barking orders that he can't seem to hear over the crackling flames or the indistinct shouting and snapping branches.
Parts of trees are falling all around them as Carl sprays his hose at the flames, banishing them down, but it's not enough, he quickly runs out of water and rushes back to get more, but he's not quick enough, none of them are. There's not enough water and they don't have enough energy, he's coughing by the time the sun begins to rise on the horizon and they're out of water by then, waiting for Ezekiel and Jerry to return with more, people have buckets just waiting to be filled and the fire still storms on, licking up trees and sending flaming branches down to their feet that they stomp on and then pat their pants down so they don't catch on fire too.
Carl's surprised by how long it takes for the walkers to arrive. Maybe others have been dealing with them, he doesn't know for sure, and all he can feel is that bone-deep exhaustion that comes from doing nothing but running back and forth for hours. He doesn't want to fight, but his hand goes to his machete on his waist and pulls it out like second nature, and he gets to work, his body moving before his brain, reacting before he can even think about it.
A slice right across the scalp, one through the eye, blade in the middle of the face and wretched through their rotting brains, pinning another to a burning tree and watching as it all lights on fire, the flames licking at the rotting flesh, cresting a worse smell than Carl ever thought he could imagine. He slits another one's through while holding its stringy hair, the blood splurts all over the flaming walker, the fire fizzling out. Blade right through the brain, and he tosses it to the ground, but just as he moves he sees another one coming from his peripheral, the dead zone in his vision he can't see because of his eye, it's too close, he wasn't prepared, but it gets stabbed right through the eye with a spear he made, and the spear is ripped out of its socket and the body falls.
Enid. Enid Rhee, with a speckling of walker blood across her cheeks, hair pulled back, the first time he had been this close to his former best friend in months.
"Thank you," he says breathlessly.
"Behind you," she responds, and he turns, slashing blindly, cutting right through its head, but when he turns back to talk to her, Enid is gone. Replaced by Siddiq and Lydia rushing at him, weapons brandished in their hands. They fight together, the three of them, Lydia stabbing with her spear, quick and bold jabs to strike them down, Siddiq slashing at them with a long sword Carl had crafted for him, he wasn't much of a fighter, but you had to be to survive, so he fights, and Carl fights alongside them until all his muscles ache and then he keeps fighting until he drops to the forest floor, and even then, he keeps fighting.
Carl slept until dinner time the next day, almost everyone did. But instead of eating dinner with everyone else he and Lydia wrapped their food up and went on a walk together, to the edge of the cliff where Carl had been shown Alpha's herd all those months ago, where he had seen more walkers than ever before all together, groaning and chomping at anything that came near.
The valley was empty, deserted before them. Where the walkers had once stood was just dirt destroyed by thousands of footsteps. He doesn't know how they had never noticed when she took her herd, he doesn't know how they haven't spotted where she has hidden them this time. He feels like an idiot for not having someone on lookout, someone to watch for any moves she may make. But that had been months ago that they disappeared, and after the dust settled it seemed like everyone would rather believe that Alpha moved on rather than just lay low for the time being. None of them believe it, they all know there will be a war, but there's nothing they can do about it now. Carl had been ready for once since he brought Lydia home, but it was not about just her anymore.
The war is bigger than just her. It's about their people, the people Alpha slaughtered in cold blood, the people that she killed and made Siddiq watch, it's for the blood she spilled and the rules they don't want to follow. They don't want another war, they shouldn't have to fight again, but they will, because they're the good guys, because they have people and a home to fight for.
"I don't want to stay in Alexandria anymore," Lydia says.
"You're not leaving," Carl responds instantly.
"Everyone hates me," she says.
"I don't hate you."
"You're the only thing keeping me there."
Carl wraps one arm around her shoulder, pulls her tense body closer to him and after a moment she leans her head on his shoulder.
"Then I guess you're staying."
Notes:
I hate summaries so much . but I am very excited to finally start working on this I have some very exciting stuff planned for this <3
Chapter Text
The first small hoard comes right after the sun turns from pink to blue and just after Carl had gotten out of the shower. His mom was making breakfast he could smell from the top of the stairs and he could hear his sibling's excited chatter from the table, and Carl figured today would be a good day if RJ was happy enough to be talking so much, especially this early. They normally never got up this early, just when the sun began to rise, all of them except Michonne were late sleepers, but something compelled the Grimes that morning to wake up with the sun.
Halfway through breakfast with half a piece of bacon in his mouth does Aaron radio Michonne about an incoming herd of about twenty walkers. Michonne sends a small group to deal with them and says Carl can't go because they're having breakfast as a family. Carl lets her be right and stays with them. After he cleans up the kitchen he finds Lydia soaking up the sun in the garden in front of his blacksmith studio and says good morning to her before going inside. After an hour of being inside does his radio crackle with Aaron on the line again, saying an even bigger hoard is coming toward Alexandria.
Carl tries not to panic, walkers can herd naturally and have for years, and they always will, but some part of him worries that this is something bigger than just a natural herd of walkers.
By noon is when they can no longer keep them away from the walls. It brings all of them to the open gates where they set up traps and leaves them all stabbing with handmade swords and spears and staffs and watching their bodies crumple. They had never had a hoard this bad come so quickly, and never in waves like this before.
"Would your mom do this?" Carl asks Lydia, who shakes her head.
"She would send them all at once," she stabs into another head and wretches her staff from its skull, Carl keeps stabbing his own spear in, finding it easier to use than a sword. It reminds him of the prison, standing at the gates for hours on end getting his daily exercise in by stabbing walkers through the holes in the chain link. He remembers doing it with his dad, how they would talk for hours, and when their shift ended they would go to the gardens and talk for hours there too.
He misses the prison sometimes, and he doesn't know why. Maybe he misses when they were all together, when he wasn't surrounded by people he didn't know that well, when Maggie and Glenn were there, when others were alive, when Judith was just a baby who couldn't run off and get herself in trouble. But he doesn't miss how drab it was, how his back ached every time he slept on those thin mattresses and how he spent all his days outside because the prison was just depressing and colorless, Alexandria is miles better, but he misses days spent farming with his dad in the prison yard. He stabs through another walker head and wonders if maybe that one was his dad, it looked nothing like him, but Carl doesn't think that after all this time his dad would be at all recognizable.
He stabs another with the end of his sword, both hands on the handle, his arms and shoulders are aching, his spine is tingling at the base and his head seems to be throbbing in a mix of overstimulation and annoyance at all of this. He doesn't want to have to run off and have a meltdown, but he knows if he keeps this up, working under the sun and sweating through his shirt and jacket he'll have one eventually, but his people need him, so he slices a few heads off and stabs through eye sockets and hopes that soon this wave will end.
It does by well after lunchtime. He directs people to drag the bodies away from the gate, not hopeful that another herd isn't coming, and they can barely stab the walkers over the pile of their bodies anymore, they'll need the space. Lydia helps him drag a few bodies away from the mess, they don't have an area big enough to start a huge fire and burn them, so they stack them haphazardly away from the gate until they can do something about them.
"Carl," Lydia says worriedly, she's peaking around the gate, looking a mix of shocked and nervous, and Carl follows her line of sight, finding a woman standing there in the road, watching them carefully, in a whisperer mask. Lydia hides behind the gate wall, "she can't see me."
"Tyreese!" He yells, unable to take his eyes away from the woman in front of him, the much bigger man comes up behind him, "Take her back inside, hide her from sight." Tyreese nods warily, and Carl watches out of the corner of his eye as he herds Lydia away, using his large body to cover her small frame. Carl takes multiple steps toward the woman, brandishing his axe in his hand, gripping the handle.
"Where's your leader?" She demands, eyeing him up and down. Michonne was taking a well-deserved nap that Carl forced her to take.
"You're looking at him," Carl says, voice near a snarl.
"North border. Now." She responds, uncaring. Carl had never seen her before, and he tilts his head at her thoughtfully.
"Call off your fucking walkers," Carl demands, hoping he sounds anywhere near as intimidating as his dad.
"Not ours."
"Bullshit," Carl curses, and it's her turn to tilt her head, watching him beneath her mask. He hates their eyes on him, the way the whispers stare between the slits of the dead's faces. He wonders, and not for the first time, if his dad is one of them, if one of these people is wearing his dad's face like a mask, and he wonders if he'll ever know.
"Not us." She says harshly again. "Go to the border, lay down your weapons, and wait."
"For what?" He demands.
"For her."
The meeting room is bustling with conversations, people talking over each other and borderline yelling over each other as they all argue over the whisperers. This is the only thing Carl hates about Alexandria sometimes, how he has to listen to other people, how he has to take in other people's feelings when they're not his people. They are, everyone in Alexandria is, but they're not his people, not the ones who would lay down their lives for him, not the ones who he fought alongside to get here, who keep fighting with him. It's exhausting sometimes to have to listen to them argue, when most of them have never been on the road like they have, to listen to them spew bullshit that will get them killed because they don't know any better. Carl is so tired of the bullshit.
"All right!" Michonne finally yelled, quieting down the arguing into a simmering of whispers among the crowd, before it faded to silence under her icy glare. Carl was sitting between Rosita and Michonne at the council table, like he always was, like he has been since the council was formed and Michonne said he had to be on it even though he was only 17 and was running away at least once a week to hide in a cabin in the woods.
"Is this your mother?" Michonne asks Lydia, who's curled up on a rickety old wooden chair, no one is sitting next to her, they're at least five feet away, keeping their distance like they have been for the past year, even though Lydia has done nothing but prove her loyalty to this place time and time again.
"No. I don't think it is," Lydia says quietly, seeming to hate all the eyes on her, all their judgmental stares. He wants to hide her from them all, protect her, and sweep her away so they can spend the day in his room teaching her to read or make clay beads that they attach to threads of twine for necklaces.
"Why does she want to talk with us?" His mom questions. Lydia stares at the table, jaw clenching as she thinks of her next words.
"You crossed into her land. Again. You have to answer for that," she mumbles.
"We don't have to do anything. We could just not go." Carol butted in, and Carl sighed deeply through his lips, rolling his eyes. He knows she can see, and he doesn't care.
"That's a shit idea, Carol," he says harshly, he can see the flicker of a smile on Lydia's face as she stares at the grain of the table. He wants to smile back, but he doesn't.
"We're already under attack!" Carol snaps back.
"It isn't her," Lydia says, voice cracking. "If she wanted you dead, she'd send the horde. All of it, not just a few waves at a time." Lydia manages to sound just a little more assured of herself.
"Maybe she's trying to wear us down first," Carol spits.
"Or, as I relayed to you all at the beginning of this meeting, there's plausible reason to believe that the satellite and fire..." Eugene cuts in uneasily, like he always is.
"I don't want to hear about the fucking satellite anymore Eugene," Carl snaps. He knows he can't blame Eugene for the fact that Aloha caught them in her land, but they stayed longer for that damn satellite and got nothing out of it other than spare parts that Eugene won't tell them about. He wants someone to blame, it's easier to blame others than to know that it couldn't have been prevented. They could've just left Oceanside to deal with it on their own, but Carl couldn't stomach that. He knows it's his fault Alpha caught them, just like them going over the lake, just like taking Lydia, bud he doesn't want to admit it.
"My friends died trying to save yours and their heads ended up on spikes!" Someone shouts.
"The Highway men want justice!" Another yells.
"Yeah! Yeah!" A chorus of voices shouts. This is why he hates communities, this is why sometimes he wishes he was still on the road, in a group of maybe fifteen people max, where he didn't have to listen to others like this.
"So all I want to hear from you is that you're gonna take a dozen of us to meet these freaks at the border and that we're gonna take that lead bitches head off!" A grisly-looking woman shouts, and Carl can feel the eyes rolling to the back of his head.
"We cut it off! And then we'll put their heads on spikes!" Gage screams, and Carl thinks about getting up and punching him when Siddiq's chair scrapes to the side of him, the other side of Michonne, his face his flush and sweaty, eyes glazed and unfocused, and Carl knows the look all too well. He can barely hear his mom and Siddiq talking over the screams of their people, but Siddiq lets himself out of the meeting room, light flows through the open door before it slams shut, but even that's not enough to quiet their screaming. Carl thinks his head is gonna burst under the sound.
He slams his hand on the table before he can think any better of it, his ears are ringing, but everyone silences and Carl almost wants to smile at it, at the command he holds over them, that they listen to him. But he doesn't have the energy, he wants to leave, he wants to go join Siddiq outside and twirl the bracelet around his wrist or tape on his arms until his head quiets and his skin doesn't feel so prickly.
"I saw tens of thousands of walkers when Alpha showed me the hoard. This situation is not getting solved by just 'cutting that bitches head off' as you so eloquently put it," he gestures a hand to the burly woman who recommended that. "You cut off her head and it'll just grow back, her people won't stop just because Alpha is dead. Understand?" There's a slow murmur among the crowd, and Carl almost collapses back to his chair, he doesn't really his exhausting this morning has been, he's surviving on three hours of restless sleep, half his breakfast, and a cup of water from hours ago, and he wants to sleep until he's dead.
Michonne looks at him, concern in her eyes, and he pointedly ignores her gaze. He doesn't want her to see him like this, even though she has a hundred times, he doesn't want any of them to see him as weak, so he crosses his arms, sits up a little straighter, and hopes to God no one notices how he's leaning like he's about to pass out from exhaustion.
"So..." Michonne says carefully, directing a look toward the burly woman. Carl can't think of what her name is, he doesn't know all of them anymore. Maybe Jasmine. Maybe Maya. He doesn't care. "What's your plan for taking them out?"
The woman freezes for a moment, face going pale and eyes wide.
"Oh, that wasn't rhetorical," His mom snaps, and despite his exhaustion, he finds the corners of his mouth tilting upward.
"I don't have one," the woman mumbles, and Michonne clicks her teeth, leaning away from her.
"Ah. Does anybody else?" She stands up, looking amongst the crowd of faces Carl has begun to realize he's forgotten, their faces blur together like they used to with the kids at school. He doesn't know all their names, he doubts he could guess their favorite colors or their hobbies, it's a weird feeling, to live among people he doesn't know well anymore. Sometimes he forgets that these people don't see him as an ally or a friend, they see him as a leader, as some type of Mayor or something. They think he's above them, he doesn't know why the thought suddenly unsettles him. He wants them to know he's in charge, but the idea that they may resent him for that makes his stomach churn.
"If she sends that horde, that's it!" Another voice shouts.
"Right now, all she wants to do is talk. And we are going to listen. Now, while we are doing that, everyone here needs to focus on what's coming in from the north and the south." Michonne commands. She has this way of making the whole room feel what she does, feel her anger and vitriol, she has a way of commanding everyone around her with ease that Carl doesn't have, Carl has to fight to be heard, has to fight not to be treated like that kid that a lot of them remember him being.
"We're tired. We are on edge. And it is going to get worse before it gets better. But we aren't gonna get through it at all if we do not act as one." Michonne finishes, and not soon after does everyone not in the inner circle shuffle out. It leaves just their friends now, his people, including Lydia, who looks like she would rather be anywhere but here, and Carl gets it more than he would like to admit. He can't have it both ways, he can't want to be a leader of this place and hate leading, hate that he has to yell to be heard and still doesn't get enough trust and attention as Michonne.
"Three objectives means three groups. Tyreese will take point in guarding the gate against the northern wave... while Aaron will take some troops and handle the southern wave, breaking it up before it hits the wall. That leaves us, and the border," Michonne explains to the group. Carl can barely find himself paying attention. He wonders if he would ever be able to lead this place like she does, wonders if he'll ever need to, if people will ever look at him and see more than a stupid kid with a big heart and a body full of unused rage. He wonders if he wants to be seen as anything but that.
"Unarmed," Carol reiterates.
"You're really going there unarmed?" Tyreese asks, concerned.
"We don't have a choice," Carl says.
It's dark when they arrive. The light blue sky the color of his eyes had long since faded to an inky black and star-filled night. One thing about the apocalypse is that there's no light pollution, and Carl can see the stars anywhere, the sky is littered with them, and he thinks this moment would almost be peaceful, a grassy hill and a sky full of stars with his family, if not for the memory of his friend's heads on the likes that are still sticking up from the ground in front of him. They're the marker of the border, the way to show them that the Whisperers meant business, and Carl hates looking at them.
He remembers pulling all their heads off the pikes, remembers sliding his knife into the base of their skulls one by one and matching their torn-apart bodies to their heads, wrapping them up and carrying them back to The Kingdom until he collapsed under his own exhaustion on the floor. He didn't shed a tear, Carl didn't think he could anymore, he can't remember the last time he cried over anything, maybe it was Daryl, or maybe it happened after that day, when Lydia tried to hurt herself, he doesn't remember, but he can't remember the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach when he walked up this hill before.
He lowers his shotgun to the grass beneath their feet, next to him Michonne lays down her katana, Rosita her machete, and Carol just stares at Henry's pike. He drops his axe and machete too, having forgone the sword but unable to part with the rest of his weapons. His gun lays secured in the waistband of his pants, the cool metal pressed into the small of his back, tucked away just in case. He's not stupid enough to use it, not unless he needs to, but he's also not stupid enough to not bring a gun.
"You alright?" Rosita asks Carol, and Carol shakes her shoulders like it'll make the memory go away, and Carol shrugs her bow and arrow to the ground and nods.
"Need a minute," she mumbles, Carl can barely hear her over the whipping wind in his ears. He can hear walkers growling in the distance, and through the thin fog he sees them appear, herded by Alpha and her people, the unnatural but almost perfect way she walks, but it's not natural, she's stiff and unrelenting, she looks like a fake, and it makes Carl feel some sick sense of pride that Alpha isn't as good at playing dead as she thinks she is.
She rips off her mask, shoves it into the hands of one of her people, and stalks toward them, her face is still covered in grime not unlike the last time he saw her face to face. Over a year ago at this point, her face was ashy and her lips cracked and dirty. Lydia used to look like that, her hair used to be so knotted she couldn't run a brush through it, and her skin had seemed to be permanently stained with dirt, but Lydia wasn't like this anymore, she wasn't like Alpha anymore, she wasn't forced to be.
"There was one rule between our people," Alpha says when she reaches the other side of the pikes. His whole body shivers, he can't feel anything except the gun against his back, he could end it now, he's fast, a good shot, she wouldn't see it coming, he could just shoot. But it won't end anything, it'll just start something else. "One law. Stay where you are. Yet you disobey."
"That fire would've destroyed your land," Carl says carefully, and Alpha's eyes snap to him, her head tilting unnaturally, he looks him up and down and studies him.
"Fires nature is to burn, boy. We have no conflict with nature." She comes closer to the pikes, but never goes over them, she's not like them. She keeps her word to her own twisted set of rules she has forced upon them. She's not like Negan either, who disobeyed his own rules for the fun of it, just to shock them, who always changed the rules.
"It could've wiped out one of our communities," Michonne cuts in, looking warily between Alpha and him. "We were not gonna sit back and let that happen. You can understand that. We crossed one time."
"Three times," Alpha says.
Fucking shit. Fucking fuck. They're so fucked.
"During the f*re, you walked my land, and during the winter storm, you walked my land. During your search along the river, you and the man with the metal arm walked my land. That's three times. We are always watching." Carl sometimes thinks he's more afraid of Alpha than he ever was of Negan. Negan killed Glenn and Abraham, but he pretended to feel bad, Alpha didn't even pretend to feel bad for murdering over a dozen of their people, she smiled in their faces and taunted them like they were children and she was a playground bully. She didn't feel remorse for any of what she had done, any of what she will do.
"What did I tell you about crossing my border?" She asks, her people's guns click, safeties turning off. Carl wonders if he shot her right now if they would make it out alive, or if her people were trigger-happy and would fire immediately. "You have to be punished. But... I consider context. There will be no bloodshed this time."
None of their blood anyways. The jury is still out on Carl spilling hers all over this fucking hill.
"So what do you want?" Carl snarls, Michonne places a hand on his shoulder, he can barely feel her through all the fabric of his clothes, he feels dizzy, he hasn't slept well in days, and barely ate anything since the sun began to rise, and feels like he could drop any second now.
"Land. The creek that winds into the valley. That is your new southern border. We will mark the new border to the north," Mark the new border, Carl feels his gut clench again, wondering just how she'll mark it this time. She said no bloodshed, and Alpha doesn't go back on her rules, so Carl tries to calm his beating heart, but he can't stop the spin of his head and rapid beats of his heart.
"That'll cut off our hunting grounds. We don't have to stand here and listen to this..." Carol says angrily, and Carl just wants to tell her to shut up and be grateful that Alpha didn't try to kill them tonight, and he feels stupid for it. His gun weighs heavily in his waistband, pressing against the small of his back uncomfortably.
"Carol!" Michonne snaps angrily.
""To this"... what?" Alpha inquires, sticking her head almost through the pikes, just a few centimeters off. Carl wonders if he would be allowed to kill her if she stepped over the border, if Alpha would admire him for following her rules.
"To this bullshit." Carol hisses. Carl rolls his eyes. He doesn't like any of this either. He wants Alpha dead, all of them do, but they need to play the long game here. He realizes how much he sounds like his dad with Negan, how they just need a plan, and how back then Carl tried to kill Negan himself, then begged for his dad to keep them all alive. Carl doesn't know what he wants to do now, he doesn't know if he wants to be the peacekeeper everyone seems to think he is, or if he wants to be that teenage boy with too much anger for his small body that makes rash decisions and went to kill Negan all on his own and only ended up singing him a fucking song. Maybe he can be both, maybe he can be neither, but Carl can't think about doing much of anything right now besides sleeping.
"Come on. We're done." Rosita places her hands on Carol's shoulders, pushing her away from Alpha. "Let's go."
"We're not." Alpha commands. "Not until this one lowers her eyes to my feet."
Carol looks her dead in the eye.
"You should fear me," Alpha says.
"I don't. I look at you and feel nothing at all," Carol says. Carl's vision suddenly feels blurry, and he thinks he might pass out soon, which isn't good, but there's nothing he can do to stop that.
"Is that right? The blonde boy...screamed your name just before we took his head." Fuck.
Carol pulls a gun from her waistband, and his dazed mind Carl thinks she must've somehow stolen it from him. Rosita all but tackles her, slamming the gun from her hand and holding her around the chest, holding Carol back from just attacking Alpha all together, Michonne stands in front of them too, placing a hand in front of both of the women. Carl feels unsteady again without his mom near him, dots are growing in his vision.
"I apologize...for my friend." His mom spits out. "We have not slept. And you know what she lost."
Daryl and Henry. Her husband. Her whole family. There was once a time when Carol might've considered any of them her family. Not anymore.
"I forgive you. Mother to mother," Alpha placates, and Carol looks about ready to lunge, so Rosita pulls her back more like she's restraining a wild dog.
"This is my land now. You better run." Alpha says.
Carl swipes up his weapons and straps them back into their places before folding himself into Michonne's shoulder as they walk.
He says, "Michonne, I think I'm going to pass out."
Carl does pass out, at least twice. He doesn't remember the journey to their small campground in the forest, but he does wake up with his head pillowed in Rosita's lap, her brushing away his hair from his sweat-slicked forehead and smiling sweetly down at him.
"Chonne, your chico tonto has woken up," Rosita teases, and Michonne turns away from the tree she was just staring at and settles down on the log next to them, Carl doesn't try to move, feeling a little too content with the both of them.
"What happened, Carl?" Michonne asked worriedly.
"Just haven't slept. I think. Not well, not for the last few days." He never does when his dad's death anniversary is near. He wonders if she remembers, sometimes he wonders how he remembers, his body seems to know before him, reminding him every year before he even realizes the date is soon, his dreams become nightmares filled with the sounds of explosions and walkers with his dad's face. "Didn't each much either, was in the sun fighting all day, just tired."
"We made you soup, peque," Carl smiles softly at Rosita's words and rises to accept the can from Michonne's waiting hands, it's wrapped in a towel so he doesn't burn his hands on the can, and when he brings his lips to the edge and slurps up the broth he sighs. It's nice and warm for the cold weather, and he finds himself chugging it down, not realizing how hungry he had been. He accepts water from them and accepts being squeezed between them on the ground between their log seats.
Rosita had become family to them. Like real, honest to god family. She grew close to Michonne fast. She lived with them and took care of Judith when Carl couldn't get out of bed and Michonne couldn't stop working. She helped with RJ when he was born and held Michonne's hand through her labor. While parts of their family had fallen apart, Rosita solidified herself in the Grimes family, as some unnamed member of their little family. Judith and RJ called her Tia Rosita, but Carl thought of her as something more akin to a sister. He didn't need a label for it, he just loved her like family.
A crack sounded through the forest, the telltale sound of gunfire, the rushing of footsteps, Carl was up immediately, pistol from his waistband in hand and running despite his spinning head. He was still exhausted down to his bones, but the exhaustion faded away as the panic set in, as he skidded to a haunt next to Carol, who was waving her gun around like a woman gone mad.
"What the fuck happened?" He yelled, and Carol took a step back as if startled at his outburst.
"Whispers. Three of them," she huffed out as Rosita and Michonne joined them, weapons brandished.
"Walkies on. Split up... north, west. We'll take east. Capture! Do not kill!" Michonne commanded. He was jealous of how easy it was for her to do that, how when she said it his feet immediately started moving as directed, and then he began to run.
They find their way to a school, sans any whisperers. Carol has been acting strange since she got back, and Carl can't exactly blame her for it. Daryl and Henry died almost a year ago, it's going to mess her up, but she's popping pills and staring out into space as if daydreaming a lot. It's strange to watch her be so docile one moment and violent the next. When they arrive at the school she offers to take watch and Carl says he'll patrol, Rosita offers to go with him, so together the two of them flick on their flashlights and walk through the messy and spider-infested halls of an old middle school.
"So. How's Coco doing?" He asks. He hates small talk.
"I don't think you want to hear about the pooping habits of my 5-month-old," she jokes. It's still a weird feeling, that Rosita is a mother. It's not like he had never expected it, but change has always been hard for him, and seeing less and less of her toward the end of her pregnancy and even less of her afterward was jarring. She used to be a constant presence in his life, always in his house and joking with him, he had never gone a day wideout seeing her unless he left the walls. To know she was just a few houses down but not see her the entire day took a while to get used to, but Rosita is a fighter, and she was back on her feet soon enough, Tyreese taking care of the baby. He was a lover, she was a fighter.
"How's Siddiq doing then?" He asks. He doesn't know. Not really. Siddiq won't tell him anything about how seeing his friends getting slaughtered in front of him affected him, but he knows that Siddiq and Rosita had always been close.
"I was gonna ask you that," she says, she kicks an empty can of corn down the hall and they both wait. No walkers.
"Why?"
"He's not exactly talking to me about that kinda stuff," she huffs.
"But you two—"
"Aren't together anymore," she cuts him off. He knows this. Of course he does. Siddiq and her had been off and on for years, and the last time they were on she got pregnant, and before she realized that she seemed to finally accept her feelings for Tyreese, and they'd been dating for a little over a year now. It complicates things, having your boyfriend and the father of your child living under the same roof, and on top of that having the man that's been in love with you for nine years taking care of your kid too, it must be an awkward mess that Carl is happy he can avoid.
"I thought you two would end up together, always did. But you and Ty... you guys love each other an awful lot," Carl observes carefully, he opens a locker and peers instead, finding what he thinks is a rotted apple and the skeleton of a rat.
"We do." She agrees. "But—"
"Oh there's a but?" He teases, and Rosita shoves him playfully.
"But sometimes I think... My feelings for Siddiq never left." She rubs a hand down her face. "Sorry, I shouldn't be telling you about any of this."
"Why, 'cause I'm gay and you think I won't understand?" He asks, Rosita doesn't seem surprised by his admission at all. It's not a secret, it's just never come up.
"No, because I've known you since you were like... eleven," she rolls her eyes.
"Twelve, actually. And I can be your completely unbiased third party in your love triangle... square..." he teases, and she groans loudly before laughing.
"Don't even bring up Eugene right now," she whines.
"I didn't say anything about Eugene!" He jokes.
"You're awful. Awful, awful, boy." And Carl resists the urge to cackle before he calms himself down, and they both fall back into a slow step next to each other.
"Do you want more kids?" He asks suddenly.
"What?" She asks.
"I'm helping you here, answer the question."
"Yes... Yeah, I want more kids," she says it like she's just now realizing that's what she wants. It reminds Carl of his dad and Michonne, and again he lets his thoughts drift to if they would've had more kids, if he would have more little siblings to love.
"Okay, close your eyes," he says as he steps in front of her. She looks at him with a brow raised, and Carl stares back.
"Carl, what are you doing?" She asks exasperated, he walks backward in front of her.
"Close your eyes," he repeats, "just trust me, this is something my mom used to do with me all the time."
"At least I know you're not gonna kill me," she jokes.
"Rosita," he deadpans.
"Fine," she huffs, but closes her eyes. They keep walking, and Carl looks behind him to make sure the hall is clear.
"I want you to imagine your kids. How many, what they'll look like, their names, and tell me," he commands. He remembers when he would have a hard time deciding between two options, and his mom would hold his face, her thumbs pressed lightly over his eyelids, and ask him questions to help him make what he thought were end-of-the-world decisions when he was nine.
"A lot. I want... a big family. All my friends did, all my cousins had multiple siblings, I only had one older brother and he died in the Marines, I want my kids to have siblings," She says sadly, deep in thought, Carl can see her eyes moving brandy her eyelids, imagining the world in front of her.
"Siblings are good. Every kid needs a sibling." He observes. He doesn't know who he would be if he wasn't an older brother. "Now. What are their names?"
"Alejandro. Meite, after my mom. Inés. Mateo, for my older brother. Catalina."
"That is a lot of kids," he teases. He never knew that about Rosita, that she wanted some big family. "Who do you imagine having this family with? Who do you see being there when you give birth, changing their diapers and giving them lessons, who do you see?"
"I see both of them," Rosita says, almost miserably.
"Rosita—"
"No. You don't, you don't get it. I see both of them." She opens her eyes, they're glossy, he didn't mean to make her cry. "When I imagine myself growing old, when I dream of Coco growing up, I see them both, I see them both teaching her lessons and her calling both of them dad. Some nights it's just Siddiq, sometimes just Ty, but most of the time when I imagine my family I imagine both of them, I imagine kids, more kids, with both of them, I imagine growing old with them."
Carl doesn't really know what to say to any of that. He supports her, it's none of her business, and he knows Siddiq still loves her, and clearly, Rosita still loves him, but the jealousy burns his chest.
"Well good thing neither of them are going anywhere. You can... you can love them both, Ro."
"Doesn't mean I can have them both," she grumbles.
"It doesn't. But it also doesn't mean that you can't have both. Just talk to them. They love you more than anything, and they're already killing the co-parenting thing, sometimes I see them together and I think they're gay dads," Carl jokes lightly, and Rosita snorts.
"Thank you, niño. For helping me. It means a lot, I think... I think I will talk to them," Rosita smiles softly.
"You know, just 'cause I can't speak Spanish doesn't mean I don't know you're calling me a kid all the time," he pokes her in the rib and she laughs, slinging her arm around his shoulders. She's shorter than him now, and she's half leaning on his much taller body. Carl remembers once when he hid behind her back at the church.
"You'll always be a kid to me, niño," she says teasingly, threading the hand wrapped around his shoulders into his hair and ruffling it up. There's a sudden crack through the hall, gunfire, and the moment is broken, and they're running as fast as they can to the sound of it.
The gym doors break off their hinges when they shove them open, falling to the ground in a loud boom, and in the middle of the gym is a mess of dead bodies, dead bodies that Carl hopes are walkers, and on top of them, groaning in pain, is Carol.
Carol will be fine, he's told by Siddiq and Dante when they're done patching her up, and Carl, who's ready to pass out just leaning on the porch, walks himself home, he's exhausted down to his bone, but when he looks back and says goodnight to everyone he sees Rosita talking to Siddiq, and his heart warms a little. He only wants what's best for all his friends, for his family. He groans in pain as he walks home, feeling achy everywhere. He needs to sleep for a few days to even feel better again, like a bear going into hibernation.
When her gets home he wants to just flop on the couch and call it a night, sleep until his body won't let him anymore, but his routine overpowers his exhaustion, and he trudges up the stairs, feet lagging behind him. He checks on RJ first, the boy is still as board and faces toward the ceiling, his chest rises and falls under his Star Wars comforter that Carl got for him on a run after Eugene got RJ hooked on the movies.
He checks on Judith next, finding her all spread out, brown hair everywhere, and her body half off the bed, but sleeping nonetheless, alive and asleep. Carl feels his shoulders loosen from how anxious he had felt, and he finds himself checking Lydia's doom too, just to make sure she's okay, but she's not there, and while if this was his siblings he would immediately freak out, he doesn't then, just opens his own door and sees a lump under his forest green duvet.
"You're in my bed," he observes dumbly.
"It's comfier than mine," Lydia says back.
"Because it's mine?" He asks.
"Maybe."
He takes off his jacket, strips his shirt so he's just in a plain tank top, pulls off his boots and chucks them somewhere, pulls down his jeans, and grabs shorts, he makes sure his gun is on his bedside table before he slips into bed next to Lydia. He doesn't care that she's here.
"How was it?" She asks.
"Your mom is a psycho," he yawns. Lydia doesn't smile or laugh, just nods.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be, we're not just the sum of parents," he says drowsily, he thought he would be out the second his head hit the pillow, but Lydia lays a hand on his face and rubs her thumb down his mess of scars.
"I'm sorry," she repeats.
"For your mom?"
"For everything. Everything you've ever gone through." He knows what it means. She doesn't blame herself for it, that would be stupid, but she's just sorry he had to go through it at all, and sometimes he wishes he could feel bad for himself, but he knows he needed to go through it.
"I'm sorry for everything you've ever gone through too," he traces the pad of his thumb over the scars on her arms, wounds inflicted by her mother and herself. She pulls her hand away and then locks her hand with his, pressing their foreheads together softly before pulling back, and Carl lets himself finally sleep.
Notes:
i am well aware it has been ages since i updated 😭 im sorry, but i was rly dreading writing this chapter for some reason and i finished it and i was like 'oh i actually like this' so. worried for no reason . but this fic & my grimes no za au r my top priorities to finish rn! ive also began mapping out the s11 rewrite WOOHOO
fang out <3
Chapter Text
The Grimes family makes Lydia feel alienated. She knows Carl would never want her to feel that way, and that Judith and RJ wouldn't even know how to make her feel sidelined in their home, but sometimes she thinks that Michonne wants her to feel like she doesn't belong. She can't say that she disagrees with her sentiment, she knows that no one in Alexandria trusts her or even likes her besides Carl. Maybe his siblings now. They like when she makes brownies and cupcakes with them.
The Grimes family makes her feel out of place, she lives with them, in the room next to Carl's that she's barely in and across the hall from Michonne, who doesn't check on her before she goes to bed like she checks on her children. Lydia doesn't know why it bothers her. She isn't Michonne's. She isn't anyone's. Carl checks on her before he goes to bed, he checks on RJ first, then Judith, and if Michonne fell asleep before him, he checks on her too, then her. It makes her stomach feel light and fuzzy, all floaty, good. Carl makes her feel good, with soft smiles and comforting touches that Lydia doesn't know what to do with.
Carl is different than anyone she had ever known. He's a walking contradiction. He is nothing but kind to her, she can tell he's physically trying not to treat her like glass, and she appreciates it more than he could ever know. Carl seems to know when she does feel like glass though, and when she wants him to know that, when she needs extra hugs like padding a box of expensive glass. He is kind to his family, he is all smiles and laughs and jokes, his heart is bigger than his head and he uses it more too. But he is also cruel when he needs to be, outside his house, he is deadpan and rolls his eyes, he snaps and picks fights for reasons Lydia cannot name, and no one bats an eye. That's just Carl.
Carl is the only thing that truly makes her feel welcome in Alexandria. She has tried to leave before, after Gage threw a dead rabbit at her feet and called her names that she knew were cruel but didn't know what they meant, left in the dead of night thinking she would never be found. Not 50 feet from the gate did Carl grab her by her jacket and drag her back to Alexandria, eventually she just went willingly. She had grown attached to the boy, and as much as Alexandria suffocated her, she couldn't leave him behind. She didn't think she could stomach never seeing Carl again.
Dinners are the worst. Throughout the day Lydia spends her time outside, hiding among the sheets and ignoring Negan as he tries to talk to her, she listens to old records and CDs Carl has on a pack that clips to her parents with headphones. She trains in the backyard of the Grimes home and spends time in the gardens watching the bees buzz around their flowers. She catches worms in the dirt and remembers that she doesn't have to eat them any more because she's not with her mom anymore, so she tosses them in the soil and lets them give nutrients to make their food better. She can pretend that she doesn't live on the outskirts of a family, like she doesn't share a house with a woman who doesn't trust her around her children but trusts Carl's judgment more.
Michonne is almost always gone by breakfast, Carl handles it. He says he almost always does except on days when there's nothing to do. Mornings are good, she eats with the kids and Carl and listens to Judith recount her crazy dreams, and nods along enthusiastically because she doesn't know what to say to a child who told her that in her dream she rode an undead pony. RJ doesn't talk much, but he's kind. When he does talk to Lydia he doesn't ask about her mother or the whisperers, he asks her stupid things, childish things, like what her favorite race car is (she didn't know, after being shown them she picked a red one with green detailing), what her favorite color was (either forest green or pink), and what her favorite dessert was (peanut butter chocolate brownie cups, her dad's specialty.)
Dinners are when she has to be there, when they all have to be there, sitting in the candlelight and talking about their day, and Lydia doesn't have much to say at dinners, she zones out, letting muscle melody bring the food to her mouth that she can barely taste while her mind whirls with old memories so she doesn't have to make new ones. In the beginning Michonne would try to get her to talk to her, and Lydia would look down, poke at the Brussels sprouts on her plate, and just not answer. Michonne stopped asking questions eventually.
She knows Michonne doesn't like her. She can't blame her for that either. She lost people that day with the pikes, family, Carl had said. Like Enid had lost her wife too. The mother to her daughter that had never got to be. Enid doesn't talk to Carl anymore, and Carl doesn't even talk about Enid anymore. Michonne brings her up, says he should try to reconcile, and Carl will scowl, and Lydia wants to shout that Carl doesn't have to reconcile for anything because none of this is his fault, but Carl just says that Enid doesn't want to talk to him, and Lydia keeps her mouth shut.
She knows that Michonne doesn't like how close Carl and her are, that she doesn't understand it, and neither does Lydia. He's not like Henry, she doesn't like him like she thinks she likes Henry, he makes her feel different, makes her feel safe and secure, and if she wanted to hope, maybe even loved. Carl's like a warm blanket on a cold day that wraps around her just when she needs it and pulls away when she gets too warm, before she even knows too. Carl knows her better than she knows herself sometimes, as much as she hates it, he seems to always know what she's feeling and thinking, giving names to things she couldn't.
Things have been getting worse with her mother making herself known again, with her pushing their borders further in and threatening their people. The people who had somewhat let her live have gotten crueler, the people who got bored of tormenting her finally had just gone right back to it. The people who stopped glaring or looking away when she even left the house have started up again, people glared without shame, they whispered things under their breath that Lydia couldn't hear but knew were bad. The world outside the house, with the fresh air and the trees and the gardens were supposed to be her safe space, but now they've plagued it even more. It's worse than before. She hates it.
She tries to smile at Siddiq one night when she's stepped outside after dinner to calm her anxiously beating heart, and he looks at her like he's horrified and turns away. Siddiq had been kind and courteous. He was a friend of Carl's, the one who had been there to tell everyone what Alpha had done, who had twisted her cruel torment into a story of family and love. Her mother would've hated it, and just the thought made her smile. He hadn't straight up ignored her, but kept his distance nonetheless, and she could understand too. She has her mother's face, and she wonders if sometimes when Siddiq looks at her if he sees her mom, sees her slaughtering his friends.
"Come on!" Carl shouts from the porch. "RJ wants to watch Star Wars!"
Lydia smiles and turns back to the porch, going inside.
Sage won't stop crying. It seems like all she does anymore is cry. No one in the Barrington house has the nerve to tell Enid that her screaming baby is keeping them up all night, none of them want to look her in the eye and say maybe it would be better if someone else took care of her, or if Enid moved to a trailer so fewer people would be awoken by her cries. Enid rocks her almost frantically, trying to feed her with a warmed-up bottle of formula that she just won't take, because she just keeps crying, she won't stop crying.
Enid had just wanted to start a family, she wanted to help that baby that the whisperers left behind feel what she used to feel with her parents, what she had felt with Maggie and Glenn, but she won't stop crying. Sage hates her. Enid can't blame her, some days she can't get out of bed and someone else has to take care of her all day, and Enid hates herself for it. She can pull herself out of bed when someone has a cold but can't for her own daughter? She's pathetic.
It would be easier if Allison was here. They could take turns like the parents in the movies, Allison would get up in the middle of the night when Enid was too exhausted and take care of her and Enid could do the same for her, Allison would peck her forehead before calming Sage down. They could have been a family, a small but happy family. Enid had thought that she could finally get what she wanted this whole time, a family that she had been fighting for for years that had gotten taken from her time and time again. The first, when her parents died out there, again, when Glenn got his head bashed in, and again when Maggie, Beth, and Hershel left. Her entire family had been gone for years, at least Beth was back now, but she's so different it makes Enid feel like she didn't know her at all.
"Sage, please," she whispers desperately as she rocks her, but she just won't quit, she keeps up her screams and wails and Enid feels like she could just give up right now, that maybe she should just give her back to Earl and tell him that he has to take care of her because she can't, not without Allison. But she holds Sage closer, nestles her head of curly hair into her neck, bounces her like she saw Maggie do with Hershel, and shushes her softly, ignoring how her tears grate on her ears and how much she wants to be anywhere except near a crying baby.
Sage doesn't quiet, she just keeps wailing. Enid slides onto the floor, her back pressed against the bed, the base of her ponytail makes her head ache and she ignores it. She keeps bouncing and lets her mind drifts, thinking of how much easier things would be if Allison were still here, if she woke up and the woman she loved was in the bed beside her of cold sheets and ruined dreams. She knows that babies will always cry no matter who is there to take care of them, no matter what, but at least she would have Allison there to help her through it, they could take turns and joke about it in the mornings and find the best way to quickly calm their daughter down.
"Do you wanna walk, baby?" She asks gently, brushing away some of the dirty curls on her head. She remembers when she first met the baby, after Carl traded Lydia for Alden and Luke and Connie came running in with a baby and Magna had to explain to her that the whisperers just left her out there to die. After the chaos had calmed down and Carl stalked up to his bedroom in the Barrington house to mope did Enid finally get to give the baby a checkup. All things considered, she had been healthy, a little underweight, but healthy. She's not underweight anymore, she's a chubby little thing with fists that tug on her hair, she likes chewing on things, people's fingers mostly, the ends of Ezekiel's locs whenever he holds her.
"C'mon. Let's go for a walk," she quickly straps the crying baby to her chest with an elaborate long scarf of mismatched materials sewn together by Connie for her. She had taught her how to strap Sage to her chest and back for when she needs to work, and tonight Enid holds the girl close to her chest and secured her tightly there. She's still crying, but softer now, and Enid can't help the same on her face. When she makes her way downstairs she finds Ezekiel sitting on the steps.
"Need any help?" He asks softly. She thinks for a moment.
"No," she says. "I think we're okay."
She can see the stars when she steps outside. She remembers nights when she and Carl would look at the stars together and he would tell her about all the constellations and what they had meant, cliche, but fun to learn and pretend she would remember any of it. She doesn't know what the stars mean, she just knows that they remind her of Carl, and that's enough.
She misses him, more than she wants to admit. She misses his laugh and his smile and the way he joked with her and how much they talked even just over the radio, the stories that they would trade and the little wooden figures he would carve for her and the knives he gave her. Carl had been her best friend since they were fifteen years old, and now they haven't talked in almost a year. Carl had grown farther apart from everyone after his father died, spending more and more time outside the walls, not even in the community, just in the woods, she guesses, but he always came back, he always visited Hilltop with stories of his little siblings and food he shouldn't have been taking.
Enid doesn't blame Carl for what happened to Allison. Maybe she never did, maybe she had just been mad and needed someone to blame it on so she blamed it on the boy who brought her head back and said he had killed her. She knew it was Alpha, knew that it was her fault, that Carl just wanted to protect those who need protection, just wanted to protect Lydia, that it's not his fault, but it felt like it then. It was easier to blame Carl instead of Alpha, because at least she knew she could make Carl hurt. Enid couldn't hurt Alpha, she had never been much of a fighter, but Carl? She could hurt Carl easily, and it was just as easy to hurt him. It didn't make her feel better, to direct her anger toward the only other person she had left, but it meant she felt something, like she so desperately wanted to.
She doesn't hate him, never did. But Carl for sure hates her now, and she can't even blame him for that, she would hate her too. They haven't had to see each other, and she's been ignoring him like the plague because she doesn't know what to say to him to make it better, to fix what she had done.
Sage has stopped crying, her head is pillowed in Enid's chest and she's sleeping softly, secured in the wrap, but Enid stays outside for a little while, until she hears a sickening crack, and before she realizes what's happening one of the trees from outside the wall is falling down, taking a panel of the wall with it, Sage is crying in her ears again and Ezekiel is rushing out there asking if she's okay, to which she nods in shock and immediately gets to work as the others come out.
"Oh, my God! There are people in there. My brother!" Yells a girl, who Enid knows to be Piper, new. Sometime in the last six months she and her brother arrived.
"Hey, stop! Stop!" Alden shouts, giving Piper a big push away from the rubble of the houses and fallen wall. "Everyone, get back."
Piper scowls, stomping over to him, but Enid steps in front of Alden, wailing baby's cries piercing the air.
"Alden's right. Too many of us jostling around in there could bring the whole thing down on their heads. You guys, get the horses out of there." She says to some people whose names she wishes he could remember right now.
"The baby will draw more," Magna tells her, and Enid nods, rocking her softly.
"I'll take her!" It's Beth, her blonde hair pulled up in a bun and still in her sleep clothes, "I have experience with this." Beth takes her gently from her and rushes back to the Barrington house, and Enid finds herself missing Sage's warmth already.
"Enid, we need you in the infirmary," Yumiko commands.
"Of course," then she's running, the infirmary door swings open and she props it open so no one has to worry about it. They don't have enough beds for all the people who might've gotten crushed by all the rubble, but Magna is going to use some of the trailers for the people. Enid starts preparing anything she might need, pulling out anti-inflammatory meds and pain meds, and any remedies she might need for medicines she doesn't have, and she doesn't have to wait long at all before her first patient comes.
It's Piper, holding her little brother Kai close to her chest. He doesn't look too bad, but his ankle is bent unnaturally and he's bleeding from his forehead, Piper lays him down gently and pulls back her dyed blonde hair hastily, and gnaws at her lip.
"Will he be okay?" She asks. Enid nods, a broken ankle is something she can handle with ease, but his ankle doesn't look like it'll heal well any time soon, if at all, maybe in the world before, but here she doesn't think she'll be able to get him back to the way he used to be. She checks his pupils and makes small talk, making sure to keep him awake while his sister holds his hand, squeezing occasionally.
"Mild concussion. The ankle bone has completely snapped," Enid explains. She's wiped the blood from his forehead but Piper keeps wiping down his sweat-slicked skin.
"What does that mean?" He asks softly, she realizes how young he looks, maybe as young as Enid when all of this started, eleven or twelve, it makes her heart ache uncomfortably.
"It means... we have no choice but to amputate. I can't set the bone, not when it's completely snapped." It's quiet for just a few moments, or Piper looking at her so furiously Enid thinks she might jump over the bed and snap her bones instead.
"You've done this before, right? They've all lived?" She asks.
"Yes. They've all lived. Unless the infection had already spread. But we don't have long." She tells them. Kai nods, gripping Piper's hand tighter in his.
"Do it," he says. She looks to Piper, who gives her a curt nod. Enid grabs what she'll need, including a clean axe to make this less painful, make it quick and easy. She gets what's left of her supply of numbing medication and injects it just above the wound, but it'll hurt either way. She gives him a clean towel to bite down on and Kai grabs both of his sister's hands in his, squeezing his eyes shut. Enid checks over all of her materials, everything she may need, he'll need a blood transfusion eventually, but Enid herself is a universal donor. She raises the axe, trying to stop her hand from shaking as Piper holds him still, and she swings the axe down.
Carl didn't do with his mom and sister to Hilltop when she told him what had happened. A tree has fallen through the wall and a few people were injured, but the bigger worry was all the walkers that would be coming in through the wall before they could fix it, and while Michonne had asked him to come he said no. He didn't know why, maybe because Enid was there and he would rather do anything except deal with that, or maybe because Lydia was here and the way the other Alexandrians were treating her was getting worse. But he stayed behind, and spent the morning in his goggles working on some knives in the blacksmith workshop.
A war is coming. There's no denying it anymore, Alpha is not an enemy that they can live with, and while he doesn't know if his mom agrees with the sentiment, he knows that no matter what there will be a fight, and he intends to be prepared. So he spends more time outside the walls searching for scrap metal, he takes some from the destroyed ruins of The Kingdom and melts it all down, forging arrowheads and daggers and swords and spears and anything else they might need to fight a war. He has crates full of daggers and drawers full of arrowheads, a bunch of spears locked away in a closet that if he opens will send them all tumbling down on him.
When he does finally let himself out of his blacksmith quarters which used to be a house that partially burned down during Negan's attacks he forgets to put his glasses on, to cover the nasty scar from his eye across his face. It's a bright summer day, and he debates spending a day reading in the sun with Lydia or playing in the park with RJ, maybe both. The sun warms his pale bare arms and people smile as he passes by, ignoring the hole in his head. He knows that most are still used to it, that there's so reason for anyone to find him disgusting, they all have scars from this world, but that doesn't stop him from wanting to hide it most of the time.
"Hey, Lydia!" He hears a voice yell. He never hears anyone call for Lydia but himself or the kids. All the kids seem to like Lydia. But it's just Gage, holding a rucksack up to his head like a mask.
"You think Mommy will take me in?" He jokes, before pulling the sack away, "Oh, right. No. She... She kicked your ass out. Now you're just a freak."
That wasn't even clever. He's just an asshole. Carl stomps over to the three teen boys he's facing, and he remembers their anger, understands what they're feeling, and maybe when he was their age he would've done it too, he probably had, but this is his best friend they're talking about, someone who isn't the cause of what happened to their friends.
"Gage!" He shouts, Lydia flinches, looking up at him with her big brown eyes, she scowls, just a small thing at him, and Carl grins. "You and your little buddies are on stable duty until further notice, you hear me?"
"You're not in charge!" One of the boys shouts.
"We both know I am," Carl responds. "Stable duty. Now. Tell the guys working there they get the week off!" He grins, watching as Gage barely contains his anger before stomping off in the direction of the stables, his little friends reluctantly following after their ringleader.
Lydia is gone when he turns around, but he can see her not too far away, her brown hair whipping in the wind, arms crossed over her chest as she heads in the direction of her favorite place to hide when things get to be too much, the clotheslines, but recently Negan has been working there, and Carl has asked that she stop going, for her own sake.
"Lyds!" He yells, she whips around, she's pissed at him, and Carl doesn't understand why. "What did I do?"
"You don't need to defend me!" She spits. "Now they think I'm weak."
"What did I say about that? We're all weak sometimes, it's okay to be." Carl says softly, but Lydia just scoffs at him. Sometimes Carl forgets how mean Lydia can be, how beneath all that wariness and silence she can be cruel, just like him.
"I don't want them to know that," Oh. That makes more sense.
"I'm not sorry for defending you. You're my best friend, friends defend people when assholes like that talk to them like that, alright?" Carl asks, he places his hands on Lydia's folded-up arms, and she looks up at him, she's so much shorter than him so she has to crane her neck up a little.
"Don't do it anymore," she demands.
"No can do, your my best friend, it's my duty." He shrugs in what he hopes is a joking way, and judging by her scoff and lighthearted eye roll, he did.
"At least they won't bother me, they'll be too busy shoveling shit," Carl laughs then, and after a moment he lets her go her own way, probably to the clotheslines, and he heads to the house, wanting to make lunch for RJ and Lydia.
"You looking for a job, kid?" Negan asks when he spots Lydia, hidden away from the rest of the world in the mess of clotheslines and sheets that billow softly in the wind. She sets the worm she was playing with back on the dirt, watching as his eyes follow it. She doesn't like him, Carl tells her that she shouldn't.
"Don't talk to me," she responds, and stares back down at her jeans, they are stained with dirt on her knees, a small hole forming from a piece of gravel she must have fallen on.
"Do you let Carl control everything you do?" Negan asks. She scowls and picks at the grass on her pants. Carl doesn't make decisions for her, she doesn't like Negan, she doesn't care that Negan understands what it's like to be an outsider, because Negan deserves to be treated like one, she doesn't she reminds herself, she isn't an outsider, she belongs here. Negan terrorized these people, she didn't.
"It's your third visit in a week. You keep it up, you're gonna find some socks with your name on 'em," Negan continues.
"I don't come here for you," she spits at the man. She shouldn't antagonize him, he's violent and unpredictable and she isn't as good of a fighter as she pretends she is. Carl says that half of being a good fighter is just pretending you are so that no one will want to fight you in the first place.
"But you come here for something. Heard what those assholes said about you today, you don't deserve that."
"I don't care what you think I deserve," she tells him hotly, and he just laughs at her.
"I'm tryna be nice here, kid, and you can't even give me that?" He's making fun of her, and she hates it, hates that he gets on her nerves, hates that he might actually be right.
"What do you want from me? Are you trying to get a rise out of Carl? Because that's not gonna work." Lie. It absolutely will work. Anything and everything about Negan makes Carl riled up, he despises the man, hates that he's let out of his cell now, and that he's even alive at all.
"If I wanted to get a rise out of your little boyfriend I would be a lot meaner to you. I'm trying to give you advice."
"You think I want your advice?" She scoffs. She doesn't know everything that Negan had done, but she has a pretty damn good idea of the level of torment he had inflicted on Carl and his people. He killed men that Lydia had never known named Glenn and Abraham, Judith and RJ call him Uncle Glenn, he was like family to Carl, and some nights he wakes up screaming his name hoarsely and then crying until his eyes dry up. Abraham was close to Rosita and a woman named Sasha, Tyreese's sister. The both of them mourn him every day, he was their family. Negan took that from them, like Alpha took Enid's family, like she took even more of Carl's with Jesus and Tara.
"I think my advice is better than running and hiding," he remarks. "Look, they are trying to get a reaction out of you. They wanna see you upset. Don't give that to 'em. Screw 'em."
A sheet is suddenly torn down in front of her, and Lydia flinches before realizing it's just Carl, she didn't even hear the heavy thump of his boots, but he's there now, vicious and angry.
"Carl! If it isn't my favorite little badass," she hates the way he says it, like Carl is his. It makes her stomach churn as she gets up and goes behind Carl. She doesn't need his protection, but that's what friends are supposed to do for each other, so she takes it because it's not like she's ever had a friend before.
"Stay the fuck away from her Negan, you hear me?" Carl says viciously, and Negan just laughs again.
"Loud and clear, Grimes. Loud and fucking clear."
Carl tugs her away, and Lydia lets herself be pulled away because she doesn't want to be there either, she doesn't like Negan being in that spot, that place that she went to when she wanted to be alone and have time with her thoughts.
"Can you take Negan off laundry duty?" She asks, and at Carl's confused look, "Like you did with Gage. Can you switch them?" She doesn't have to explain why, Carl knows, he always knows.
"Yeah, I'll switch them. I'll talk to my mom and Aaron, and put Negan in the gardens permanently. Or better, just back in the fucking cell." Carl tan a tired hand down his face. He looked exhausted from the day, like he had when he saw her mom for the first time in a year, she doesn't think he'll drop as he did before, but he looks like he wants to.
"Thank you," she mumbles gratefully, following his steps back to the Grimes house.
"You're welcome. I was looking to tell you I made lunch, pasta salad," he smiles and they continue their walk in silence. Maybe she should be mad at him, for continuing to fight her battles for her, she wants to be mad at him, but she can't help but feel grateful that he even wants to, that he wants to fight for her at all. So she goes home with him for lunch, already knowing what she'll do to get back at Gage and his friends later. They think of her as a monster, so she'll give them a monster.
Carl's halfway through a very intense game of uno with Gracie and RJ when Rosita finds her way toward them, she doesn't look outwardly stressed, but Carl can tell she is.
"We need your help in the mess hall," she says quietly, sternly. And shit, Carl doesn't know why they would need him specifically, so he sets down his cards and tells the kids he'll back quickly and follows after Rosita.
"What the hell happened?" He asks.
"Lydia skinned a rabbit in front of Gage and his guys," Rosita responds as the door to the mess hall opened, revealing exactly as she had described. A crowd had formed around the table Lydia was at, where she was carving into a rabbit with ease, slicing away the bits that she can't eat and the ones she can into two piles on the table. Gage is the only one still sitting, wiped blood on his cheek and staring in horror at the girl in front of him. Margo and the other guy who was bullying Lydia either are standing, whispering amongst themselves.
Everyone looks at Carl when he comes in. Everyone knows that Lydia is Carl's responsibility, that her actions reflect upon him and all that bullshit. They want him to punish her like she's a child, but if anything Carl is a little proud of her for finally standing up to him.
"Carl. Look what she's doing!" Margo shouts, Lydia doesn't even look up at him. Carl rakes her eyes over her.
"Preparing a meal?" He asks sarcastically. He can see the barely concealed smile on Tyreese's face.
"She's slaughtering an animal!" Margo says desperately.
"Margo. We're serving venison today. Do you think that just comes out of thin air?"
"She could at least do it in a kitchen."
"This is a mess hall. She can prepare her food wherever she pleases, just like the rest of you can but choose not to do." Carl says pointedly, Tyreese isn't even trying to hide it anymore. "Now that that's cleared up, you don't all need to watch her, do you? No. Go back to your tables and eat your lunch, I assure you the rabbit will be cleaned off the tables like the rest of your meals."
Rarely anyone sits back down, they just rush out, dispersing like a puff of smoke, and Carl lets them go as Gage gets up from the table and stomps out, slamming the door to make himself known. Carl would have known anyways. He sits down across from Lydia, who seems very intent on getting all the meat off the rabbit hide.
"You still hungry? I could've made sandwiches too," he says, and she cracks a smile at his words which also has him smiling.
"Didn't want them to think I was weak," Lydia murmurs, she's successfully separated the entire hide in one piece from the meat, sets it apart from her two piles of bones and meat, and tilts her head at it.
"Then I came along," he teases.
"Then you came along," she agrees. "Always saving the day." She flicks more pieces of fat from the rabbit.
"Do you think you can turn the hide into something?" She asks gently.
"If you get more I can make you a hat," He tells her.
"Is this your way of saying I can skin more rabbits in the mess hall?" She's teasing him, and Carl accepts it easily.
"This is me telling you please don't. It's impossible to get blood out of these tables," she grins at him, he forgets his much he likes seeing her smile. Maybe they shouldn't be smiling over a dead rabbit and bloodied hands and horrified people, but they are anyways.
"I'll lay a towel down next time," he snorts.
"Then you've got yourself a deal."
Carl has grown a fondness for being outside at night, whether it be his childhood love of stars and the constellations that he can never forget, or maybe because he had just spent so much time outside anyways, he had grown to find comfort in the inky night sky and the smattering of bright stars that splattered across the sky. He tilted his head against the tree he was under by the graveyard and traces the constellations with his finger in the sky, Lydia was around here somewhere, up way later than either of them had any right to be, but Carl could tell just when he laid his head down on the pillow that he wasn't going to have a good nights sleep, that he was going to dream of the dead again, so he didn't sleep.
He hasn't been doing a lot of that lately. His dad's death anniversary is in less than a week, seven years he's spent without him by his side. Carl knows that one day, if he manages to live long enough, that he'll have spent more time without his dad than he did with him. The rest of his family has, they had only known him for such a short time, nothing compared to the memories Carl holds on to before.
Sometimes, on the occasions when the pain is just too much to bare, when their emotions roll over them in waves they can't contain and their memories aren't enough to make them okay with the fact he's never coming back, they'll ask about him. Michonne says she wants to hear about his childhood, but she really wants to hear about Rick, so he tells her stories of his dad taking him to baseball games and bouncing him on his lap, of how his dad reacted when he came out and was nothing but supportive, how his dad loved him more than he loved anyone. Michonne looks at RJ and Jude a little more sadly during those days.
Rosita asks straight up, Tyreese Siddiq, and Tara, they used to ask for a story about him, before. He would tell whatever came to mind, whatever hurt the least to repeat. But he keeps the memory of his dad close to his chest, he gives away a few stories and holds the rest to him because his dad is his, the memories belong to him. He's selfish when it comes to his family, and when it comes to his dad, like if he shares the memories he'll forget them all, and if everyone knows about their shared moments they won't mean as much.
It's a quiet night, everyone's asleep, and the cricketing of the cicadas has seemed to quiet tonight, there are no stray cats out but he can hear the soft clicking of crickets and leaves brushing against each other in the trees. The walls are littered with Graffiti.
Silence the Whisperers
A scream pierces the air, breaking the calm he had almost fallen asleep to, and he's up before he can hear another shout, and he knows immediately who it is. Lydia is screaming, and there's the sickening sounds of flesh hitting other flesh, fighting, Lydia is fighting someone, and before he can really think he's running toward the sounds, toward the clotheslines where Lydia hides and his whole body aches in protest. He's tired and drained and he hurts everywhere, but Lydia needs him. Friends are supposed to protect friends, and he had failed miserably so far.
He doesn't feel anything but anger, can't seem to see past a clouded red haze in his mind as he grabs the first weapon-shaped thing he can find, his hands smooth down on the wooden handle and at the base before he rounds into the clotheslines and finally sees what's happening. Three people, Margo and Gage, and someone he doesn't care to recognize, beating the shit out of Lydia. He doesn't need to see anything else, doesn't think anything else as he swings his wooden weapon at the person closest to him, it sends Margo sprawling to the ground with a pained scream but he barely registers it, swinging again at the unnamed boy. Gage jumps away from Lydia, falling to his back and pawing at the grass.
He'll deal with him later. For now, all he can feel is his fury as Margo stands up again and shouts something he can't hear over the rushing in his ears. He feels like he's drowning as he swings the weapon again, hitting her in the side of the head, and then he just keeps hitting her, swinging the weapon as hard as he can until she stops moving, and then he keeps going, she's not alive. She hasn't been for a while. Carl doesn't feel anything. Someone shouts again and he swings behind him, sending the boy sprawling on the ground, he raises the weapon again and swings it to his head, not hard enough to kill. He wants to. He doesn't.
"Carl!" Someone screams, and through his haze, he knows that it's one of horror, and when he looks up from the bloodied mess of the boy's face, finally realizing that he can feel hot blood staining his own cheeks, he sees his family. Rosita, Carol, Tyreese, Siddiq, and Aaron, staring in horror at him as he holds the weapon in his hands. As he killed one person and was making good work in another one. He hadn't even gotten to Gage yet. Their eyes drift down his hands to his weapons as Carl's eyes drift to everyone else who had found their way outside, a large crowd of people forming around the mess of bodies. He sees Negan. Even he looks a little scared. Carl doesn't know why that affects him more than the way Rosita is looking at him, looking at what he's holding, Carl follows her eyes, staring at the weapon he had grabbed in his rage-induced haze.
A baseball bat. He was holding a bloody kid's baseball bat.
Lydia is crying, his haze is gone. He drops the weapon and also falls to his knees, finally giving in to his exhaustion as he crawls over to her, he thinks he might've dislocated his shoulder, but he ignores the shooting pain going up his arm to gather Lydia into his arms like she's a scared little kid, she feels like one, trembling and crying in his arms, face buried in the bloody mess of his shirt and her hands balled into his fists on his flannel, she's trying to talk but Carl thinks that he's shushing her, his bloody hand is running through her hair, the stickiness staining her locks.
"It's okay Lydia," he murmurs softly, but nothing feels okay. None of this feels fucking okay. The looks on their faces paint themselves on the back of his eyelids when he closes his eyes. He shoves his face into her hair and lets himself cry too, for her, for himself, for the people— family, who had to see him like that. He can feel hands on him, hands trying to pry them apart, and he holds her closer, holding her tighter because no one is allowed to take her from him. He's the only one who cares about her, she didn't do anything wrong.
"He didn't do anything wrong," Lydia's pleas sound over the rushing in his ears.
"I know," a foggy voice says, male, maybe Siddiq. "We have to take you to the infirmary." Her hands grip tighter. Carl doesn't remember the details of how it happened, but it feels like when Carl opens his eyes again Lydia is getting her forehead stitched up and Tyreese is making him remove his flannel. Carl won't let him wipe the blood from his face though. It's just his family in there, none of them look at him, and no one speaks, they don't dare to, because speaking would mean talking about what happened out there, talking about what he did, acknowledging that he did it at all. He bashed a woman's skull in with a baseball bat and he doesn't feel bad about it.
"You can't be in here!" Rosita yells, and when Carl looks up from him and Lydia's interlocked hands he sees the unnamed boys' parents. Lucas. His name was Lucas. Carl thinks it was. He doesn't really care.
"You killed my son!" The woman wails. Oh. He had killed him. Carl thought he held back. Guess not.
"What a shame," Carl murmurs. He doesn't know why he says it, but her face goes red like a tomato and she screams something incomprehensible again, so Carl says, "I didn't mean to."
"You murdered my boy in cold blood!" His dad yelled, and Carl let go of Lydia's hand, rolled his aching shoulders, and stood up on shaking legs, feeling like any second now he would just collapse from exhaustion.
"He was wailing on a girl," Carl says, as calm as he can manage, his voice steady like his mom's.
"She is a whisperer, for all we know she deserved that!" The woman shrieks.
"Then so did your son," he says simply. Rosita places a hand on his chest like he's going to attack them while Tyreese and Aaron hold back the crazed parents from actually attacking him, he doesn't feel anything, and he doesn't know why, he doesn't even feel the rage anymore, just a sinking pit of emptiness filling in his stomach.
"Let's all calm down," Carol advises carefully, sharing concerned looks with the other members of his family. Carl wants to get out of here, wants to go home and check on his brother and go the fuck to sleep.
"You're protecting a murderer!" She screams.
"From you," Tyreese responds. "If you attack him he will fight back, and you're not winning that fight."
He doesn't feel like fighting. He feels like passing out and hoping that tomorrow he wakes up able to feel anything.
"He needs to be punished," the woman sobs, digging her head into Tyreese's arm on her chest, holding her back from attacking him.
"He needs to be put down, just like he did our boy, but you won't do that, 'cause he's a fucking Grimes," the older man snarled.
"You fucking fuckwads can go fuck yourselves!" Carl shouts, Rosita gasps and Lydia pulls on his tank top but he moves closer, as close as Rosita will allow. "You're son can go fuck himself too, or rot in hell for all I care, attacking an innocent fucking girl for no reason! He got what was coming to him, and I don't regret it one single bit, the only thing I regret was not finishing the job."
The room is eerily quiet. Everyone is waiting with baited breaths for someone to snap, for Carl to go into whatever rage he was in before, whatever had shocked him from his calm. Carl looks at Siddiq, he looks scared of him, Carl wants to feel bad about that, but he doesn't feel anything at all. He grabs Lydia's hand, pulls her up gently, and lets her grab onto his tank top with her other hand too.
"Kill me if you want. Hang me or shoot me. Make that decision and consider my vote with the majority, just know you won't survive this war without me," he pushes through the mess of bodies and stops at the door. "Goodnight," he says softly, and the cold air welcomes him as he steps outside.
"Enid, we need you out there," it's Piper again, who's been sticking close to her side and helping her with other patients since her brother had fallen asleep and been carted back to the Barrington house. Enid knows she's staying out of a need to repay her debt to Enid in some way, but Enid likes the company, Piper is a little younger than her but older than Henry, and she's a good person, better than most, even if she doesn't act like it most of the time. Her dark blonde hair is falling from her haphazard bun and brushing against the spikes on the shoulders of her vest.
"With the walkers?" Enid clarifies. She had never considered herself a fighter, not like Michonne or Carl or even Rick, she could shoot a gun just fine but Carl was better, she was afraid of cutting herself with a sword. She preferred to stay on the sidelines during a battle, preferred to protect the wounded than get herself killed out there.
"Everyone's okay. We need more hands" Piper sounds almost desperate, which isn't a tone she's known the girl to take often. She's headstrong and confident, maybe even a little overconfident at times, she can't garden for shit but she's a hunter like no other, bringing back more deer than they can eat.
"Fine. I'll be there." Enid makes another pass over her patients, ensuring that they're all not going to die if she steps away for just a few moments and grabs her bow and arrow set that hangs on the wall. Maggie had taught her what feels like so long ago, and Enid hopes she can remember how to actually fire it.
Outside is chaos, the rest of the women are in the throws of fighting, Magna slicing through walkers with her blades and Yumiko using a sword, her sheath of arrows is empty. Kelly and Connie are firing from opposite sides and Piper is in the thick of it all, twin sai's in her hands as she slices through them. Alden and Beth are fighting too, spears stabbing into their heads, but it's not enough, there's too many pouring in.
"I'll cover you!" Dianne shouts, and Enid nods, Dianne fights off the walkers coming toward them as Enid climbs the fallen trees and steadies herself as best as she can, she draws an arrow, points it at two walkers standing so close, and fires, the arrow pierces both their skulls. Piper gives her an almost wicked smile before she keeps fighting. Enid fires at the ones coming in through the fence, but there are just too many to fight off. Maybe if they had Tara and Jesus here, maybe if they had guns, or if the Alexandria team had arrived yet.
Enid curses when she runs out of arrows, she hadn't missed once but there's nothing she can do now except go into the fight. She's scared too, thinking of the patients that need her and her daughter that should be comfortably sleeping under Naya's watchful eye. Then the gates burst open, revealing two horses and two carriages heralded by Michonne and Ezekiel, who jump down and join the fight immediately, swords swinging and slashing. Another woman with a bow and arrow joins her and hands her a full sheath, and together they begin to fire.
Judith is there too, fighting alongside the watchful eye of her mother, and Enid knows it's silly, but she can't help but be a little jealous of the girl. The girl who can fight walkers with ease, who isn't scared of them or of anything, who can stand there and fight like she was born to do it, Enid could never do that. She's afraid. She can stand back here, away from their prying hands and agape mouths that killed her parents, and fire from back here. She shoots down two walkers coming up behind Judith and the girl gives her a grateful smile, and Enid knows that she doesn't have to be a fighter like the rest of them, she can just be a protector.
The wall is eventually dragged back up, people hastily putting the screws back in and securing it with more metal panels given to them by Alexandria, Enid, and Connie had quickly ran up to the watch posts and shot at any walkers who were getting in the way. Her arms ache now, Dianne is collecting the arrows they can still use. Enid feels exhausted down to her bones, she hasn't slept since almost two nights ago, Sage keeping her awake most of the time, and with the fight and all the people she had to take care of, she hadn't gotten a wink.
Michonne says Siddiq will be here tomorrow to help her and that she has Siddiq's nurse Ava watching over the people in the infirmary tonight, tells her to get some sleep, and she wants to, but no matter how exhausted her body is, she just can't shut down. So she takes a quick walk around the ruins of Hilltop, the people who had gotten some sleep moving the bodies into piles to be handled after the sun rises. She finds Piper outside of the infirmary, arms crossed over her chest, a bag of weapons to her side, and head tilted downward, to anyone else it would look like she was sleeping, but Enid knew better.
"Kai still okay?" She asks. She hates not knowing, but Michonne told her to relax, to let Ava handle her patients so she could sleep.
"Yeah, Ava says it's crowded though. Won't let me stay with him," she goes for nonchalant, but she just sounds angry.
"Do you want me to tell her to let you in?"
"Nah. It's okay. I need... I need the fresh air anyways, clears my head." Enid realizes how little she knows about any of the newer members of their community, it's like anyone who had come in the last year blurred together in her mind, muddled memories mixing with others.
"You don't owe me anything, you know that right?"
"You saved his life," Piper whispers, sounding like she was trying not to cry.
"That's my job," Enid smiles.
"It doesn't have to be," Piper looks up at her, eyes glossy. "You chose to do this. You didn't have to, you could be like everyone else and ignore the fights and the wounded but you chose to take care of the sick and wounded. To lose them and put them down and deal with grief-stricken loved ones. All while balancing a goddamn baby. That's... sometimes that's braver than fighting."
"Thank you," she says sincerely. The words don't feel like enough, nothing she can say would be. Piper had said everything she needed to hear tonight.
"Anytime, Enid." She smiled lazily, half a smirk toned down by her exhaustion.
"Get some sleep, doctor's orders!" Enid yells as she walks back to Barrington house.
"You're not on call tonight!" Enid smiles on her way inside.
The next morning Michonne and her crew head to Oceanside, sans Eugene, who wants to help fix the wall with them. Michonne says Siddiq will be here soon and begins to pack everything up, Enid helps, with Sage strapped to her chest doing as much as she can. Oceanside had called them on the radio last night after the chaos of the wall and Carl killing someone to say they had found something that may mean the whisperers were in their land, and while it could be nothing, it also could be something.
Enid did not get the full gist of the Carl killing someone thing. It had been a passing mention by Magna, 'Are you sure you don't want to head back to Alexandria, on account of your son killing two of your people?. Enid had flinched, almost not believing her, but when she saw the steely expression on Michonne's face she knew that she was telling the truth, Carl had killed two Alexandrians last night.
"I think she'll be needing this," Michonne says lightly, grabbing Sage's fallen bucket hat from the dirt and dusting it off, she gently lays her hat back on the gurgling baby and smiles. She wonders if Michonne is thinking about Judith or RJ when she sees Sage.
"Thanks," Enid says gratefully. She wants to ask about Carl, demand to know what happened last night, but she doesn't have the right to know. Lost the right to know after she treated him like shit for the past year, ignored him, and scoffed whenever he talked to her. Ignored him like it would bring Allison back.
"No problem. You fought well last night," Michonne compliments, and Enid feels herself blushing.
"Piper said they needed me," she says sheepishly.
"We did," Michonne rubs her hands together a little awkwardly. "So does Carl."
Her head snaps up. "What?"
"Carl needs you. He needs his friend. I know you blame him for what happened. Carl’s heart is too big for him, he was doing what he thought was right, and he didn't get Allison killed. Alpha did, because he wanted to protect a girl who needed protecting. I hope you understand that."
"I do. I don't blame him," Enid admits. It's the first time she ever has our loud, not just in her letters that she never sends to him. "I haven't for a while, but he hates me already. It's easier this way, Michonne."
She doesn't look too pleased with that answer, eyebrow raising and eyes narrowing. "No. It isn't. My son, he's... he's having a rough time right now, I was only hoping that he would be able to have more friends in his corner. He deserves that much."
"Why did he kill those people?" Enid demands.
"They were going to hurt Lydia. He lost control. Tyreese... he said that it looked like Carl didn't even know what he was doing until it was all over."
"He did the right thing then," Enid says like she's trying to convince herself it's true. "Thank you, for what you said Michonne. I should get back to my patients."
"So what's my punishment? Death by fire?" Carl asks when Tyreese steps through his front door, Tyreese scowls like he doesn't think he's funny.
"Vote was unanimous. You're not getting punished for it at all Carl," Tyreese tells him. Carl blanks.
"I killed people."
"Trust me, we remember."
"And I'm getting off scot-free? Just like that?" Carl asks.
"Just like that," Tyreese agrees. "All that we ask if you don't do it again, yeah?"
"Wasn't planning on it, if I'm honest," he says truthfully. He doesn't feel any better than he did last night. He still feels exhausted despite sleeping well into the afternoon with only a few nightmares, he still doesn't really feel much at all, vague unspecific emotions course through him but nothing strong enough to hold on to, he can feel the love he feels for his brother when he made him breakfast, but it's dulled by an all too familiar feeling inside of him.
When Tyreese moves to leave he puts a hand on his wrist, "When you see Siddiq, can you tell him to come find me?" Tyreese nods and goes on his way, and Carl sighs into his hands.
He just has to clean up graffiti. Maybe they know that the memory of their faces is punishment enough for what he did. Whenever he closes his eyes he sees their horrified stares as he held the baseball bat in jittery hands. He didn't know it was a bat, he wasn't paying attention, he just wanted to hurt them. Their funeral is tonight, Carl doesn't think he's going.
He needs to bring Negan his breakfast, the eggs and toast are cold just as Carl likes to deliver them, he stomps down the stairs and swings open the door, but when he looks in the cell he doesn't see Negan sitting there, he sees Lydia.
"What the fuck are you doing?" He drops the food onto the ground and goes to the lock of the door, which isn't even locked.
"I let him out," Lydia murmurs.
"You've been with me all night," Carl shoots back. He opens the door just as Lydia turns to him. Her face is puffy and bruised from the beating she took last night.
"Let him out this morning," she responds.
"You're not stupid enough to do that," Carl joins her on the bed, draping his arm over her. "Where is he?"
"He was gone... when I came down. I was gonna let him out. I feel safer... in a cage." Carl sighs deeply, laying his head on her shoulder. As if the last twenty-four hours couldn't get fucking worse.
"You don't belong in a cage Lydia. You belong with me, in my house, by my side, I can make you feel safe, can't I?" He asks.
"Yeah, you can," she admits softly after a few moments.
"Exactly. So get off his nasty bed and let's go search for this asshole," he pulls her up, she takes his hands gratefully and lets him pull her up.
"You don't look okay anymore," she says thoughtfully, rubbing her thumb over his face.
"I'm exhausted, and I don't know why. I don't feel anything." He admits.
"You feel too much," she replies.
"Not anymore. I don't know when I stopped," it's a scary thing to admit, that his big heart seems to have given up on him.
"You've loved too much, drained it all up," she teases lightly. "Don't worry. It'll all come back, you can't escape feeling forever. I've tried."
"You don't have to try anymore," he grabs her hands tightly in his.
"I won't. You have to promise to try and feel again too," she presses her forehead to his. "Carl who doesn't feel is like a day without the sun."
He says, "I promise, we'll learn to feel again, together."
Notes:
Carl my poor depressed little meow meow who's done nothing wrong ever . what he did to gage and Margo did come right from the comics in the whisperer arc, but he was protecting Sophia then .
also sage is baby Adam . I could not in good conscience let Enid name her kid ADAM. if I did name him in the last book I'll change it later, hope u enjoyed !!!
fang out <3
tobyoby on Chapter 1 Fri 19 May 2023 01:18AM UTC
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fangrot on Chapter 1 Sat 20 May 2023 02:57AM UTC
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BrutallyDazai on Chapter 1 Fri 19 May 2023 07:42AM UTC
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fangrot on Chapter 1 Sat 20 May 2023 02:55AM UTC
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BrutallyDazai on Chapter 1 Sat 20 May 2023 09:58AM UTC
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R0tt1ng_br41nz on Chapter 1 Mon 22 May 2023 01:42AM UTC
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tobyoby on Chapter 2 Tue 06 Jun 2023 01:23PM UTC
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fangrot on Chapter 2 Wed 07 Jun 2023 11:40PM UTC
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fangrot on Chapter 2 Wed 07 Jun 2023 01:42PM UTC
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BrutallyDazai on Chapter 2 Thu 08 Jun 2023 07:05AM UTC
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Ehagan on Chapter 3 Wed 07 Jun 2023 02:23PM UTC
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fangrot on Chapter 3 Wed 07 Jun 2023 11:36PM UTC
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fangrot on Chapter 3 Wed 07 Jun 2023 11:37PM UTC
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BrutallyDazai on Chapter 3 Thu 08 Jun 2023 07:09AM UTC
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tobyoby on Chapter 3 Wed 07 Jun 2023 05:34PM UTC
Last Edited Wed 07 Jun 2023 05:35PM UTC
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fangrot on Chapter 3 Wed 07 Jun 2023 11:41PM UTC
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thisgirljustwannaread13 on Chapter 3 Tue 26 Aug 2025 03:38PM UTC
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