Chapter Text
Carl Grimes is dying.
Sitting on a rotted log with trees all around him, he can’t quite wrap his head around it, and he wonders if anyone ever does. If it’s even possible to ignore that voice in the back of his head that’s shouting No, no, no—not me.
Because after everything he’s been through, how can this be the end?
He survived everything the world has thrown at him—got shot twice, lost an eye, killed more walkers and people than he can count. Now, the walker bite on his stomach burns like hell, and he knows there's no surviving this.
The fever’s starting to set in, and his pistol feels cold and heavy in his hand.
He doesn’t have long—he knows that, knows that this is the end—but the only thing he can think of is still How could this happen to me? He always thought that it’d be a person that would kill him one day—some asshole like the Governor, like those cannibals at Terminus, like Negan.
Not a goddamn walker bite.
Carl knows better than this—should have been better than this. But a single second is all it takes. He’s seen it happen before, too many times—to friends and family, or to people he was glad to see dead—but he never thought it would happen to him. And maybe he should have, but he could take care of himself, and he thought that was enough. When he woke up this morning, death was the last thing on his mind.
But that’s just how it goes, right? Everyone’s fine until they’re not.
Carl stares blankly out into the woods.
He put on a brave face for his dad, but now he’s shaking—shoulders hunched in a pain that’s more than just physical, breaths coming in short, ragged gasps.
Carl’s afraid. He’s terrified, and who wouldn’t be? But he’s angry, too—at himself, at the world, at that fucking walker that bit him. He doesn’t know whether he wants to scream or cry, but if he does either, he knows he’ll never stop. He remains silent instead, lips clenched so tight that it hurts.
His dad left, but he’s still close—Carl doesn’t want him to hear any more than he has to. Rick will never see his son this broken, slipping off the log to kneel defeated on the forest floor. He won’t bear witness to his son’s cries, his screams—won’t hear him rage against this unfair tragedy, this sick joke.
Because how his dad will remember him? That’s the last choice he has to make, and Carl chooses to stay strong. He chooses silence, chooses to bear his pain alone so his family doesn’t have to.
'People are gonna die,' Rick once told him, and Carl wonders if his dad ever considered the possibility of his son dying before he did.
He turns his gaze downward, fingers tightening around the dark metal of the loaded gun. This pistol saved his life so many times, and now it’s going to be the thing that ends it.
How’s that for poetry?
If he were a different person, he might have prayed, but Carl only scoffs bitterly at the thought. If God exists, He must be a cruel and twisted son of a bitch, to let the dead walk and the world fall apart, to let children die and monsters live.
He raises the gun to his temple, and his right arm disappears into the blind spot of his missing eye.
He looks up at the trees, green leaves blowing in the golden afternoon light.
It’s the last thing he’ll ever see.
He takes in one last breath—despite his best efforts, his vision blurs, and he’s blinking back tears.
Carl rests his finger on the trigger, and a memory comes unbidden to his mind. He can practically hear his father’s voice, and maybe he’s starting to hallucinate, but he listens to his words anyway: ‘Never put your finger on the trigger unless you mean it, Carl. Don’t ever aim a gun at anything you don’t mean to shoot.’
He doesn’t want to mean it, but he has no choice—he has to do this, because there’s no way in hell he’ll let himself become one of them. A walker.
Carl steadies his hand one last time—
Dad, Judy, I love you.
—and pulls the trigger.
.
.
.
Carl opens his eyes—his first thought, blinking dazedly upwards, is that he has eyes. Plural.
For a long, stunned moment, he just stares, taking in the sight of a green tent ceiling in beautiful, gorgeous, three-dimensional clarity.
And then he remembers that he died.
His next moments are a panicked, frantic blur—disoriented. That’s the word his dad used to describe how he felt at the start of everything, waking up into a world gone to shit.
Disoriented.
Carl can’t find a better word either as he scrambles upright, flinging blankets off himself with too-short arms, stumbling outside on too-short legs. His hair’s shorter, too—no longer falling in his face like he’s used to.
He hasn’t had it cut this way in years, not since—
“Carl?” a familiar voice calls, and it takes him longer than it should to place it. But then he does, and he whirls around so fast he almost falls over.
Because he’s staring at a ghost.
When Carl speaks, his voice doesn’t sound right either, but right now he’s too shocked to care.
“Mom…?”