I'll Be Gone (Prologue)

by MaxTheWitness

Summary:

What would happen if Carl was left with Negan for five of his teen years?

Or;

Rick seemingly dies during the Savior attack and leaves his little one eyed orphan with no other choice but to join them.

Chapter 1

If Carl had to choose the worst day of his life before that day, he would have said something about the prison falling.

About losing Judith and his mother all too close together, the gunfire, The Governor's tanks, Hershel, and all the fear he felt until he heard his dad’s voice call out for him and they reunited with his baby sister a few days later.

It had been such a relief to hold the little girl in his arms and feel his father rest his head on both of theirs, kissing and soothing, telling them everything was going to be okay and that he’d never leave them again.

But on this day, there were no hugs or sweet reunions.

As Alexandria burned before his eyes, Carl Grimes watched the smoke billow up from houses and into the sky, even higher than the towers in Atlanta had been. His already limited vision was reduced even further by the smoke, unable to see more than six or seven feet in front of him as he stumbled about with his gun in his hand and his face tucked into his elbow, dodging the growling walkers in a daze, smoke filling his lungs.

A few walkers stumble his way and he has no choice but to engage with them, drawing his knife to slash and stab until they aren't moving anymore, crushing a skull with the sole of his boot as he looks at the neighborhood around him, ears ringing so loudly he can’t hear himself thinking.

It’s pure devastation. The wreckage of yet another community so full of hope, all the sacrifices people made to keep it going rendered useless in the face of the Savior’s cruelty.

Then he sees it.

His father stumbling about equally disoriented by the fog, his hand iron grip around his axe, his signature brown leather jacket with a fur collar wetted with blood, reflecting the light of the flames. Carl thinks he calls out for him, although he can’t be sure, because he can’t hear himself over the noise around him and the ringing in his ears.

Then he runs, smiling and shouting for him with outstretched arms.

It reminds him of the day they reunited in Atlanta. The summer heat making his hair mat and cling to his face like his father’s is now, his mother’s hands on his shoulders telling him that it’s over, it’s finally over, because they’re all together again and they always will be. —Carl’s not stupid, he knows if his dad hadn’t rounded the corner that day she would have given up and said something about moving on, but Rick did survive. He always does.

The only difference between that day and this one, is that his mother isn’t there to hold him back and walk him through these next few moments.

Rick turns around and Carl stops in his tracks, his heart skipping a beat.

Cold, dead, milky-white eyes stare back at his single blue one, his father’s battered form turning around to face him in a daze. Carl pulls his gun on him without hesitation, but when his finger touches the trigger he realizes the gravity of what’s happening.

Rick Grimes is dead.

The walker stumbles closer by the second, its jaw snapping with twisted hands reaching out to grab him with a grotesque insatiable hunger, determined to get a taste of the same boy he would’ve done anything to protect.

Both of his parents are gone, he realizes, eye wide with terror as it feels like the world folds in on itself. There’ll be no more happy reunions, no more hugs, and no stories of the world before told by his dad to Judith at bedtime, no family dinners, nor kisses on the head. This is it.

He hears the snarling all around him, getting closer every moment he wastes watching something he knows can never be changed, but Carl doesn’t know what he’s doing until it’s already done.

He loosens his grip on the handle of his pistol and spins it around by the trigger, aiming the barrel down at the ground, the base aimed towards his dad as if handing it over to him.

The walker doesn’t look down at it, but the meaning is all the same. Carl can’t do this without his dad. —He just can’t handle it, and like when the prison fell and Carl was sure Rick turned, he’d rather give his life to him than have to be alone with the memories of their family.

It terrifies him to picture their last embrace, the sinking of unrelenting teeth on his neck —his arms, his stomach— every soft part of his body that his father had adored now turned to nothing but feed to something unrecognizable. It’s inhumane. It scares him. So he stops thinking. He closes his eyes as his father’s shadow swallows him whole, when suddenly he feels leather wrap around his face like a muzzle, the metallic smell of blood and something like black licorice stinging his nostrils.

Negan, he knows instantly, but the panic doesn’t truly set in until he hears the shot and sees the blurry figure of his father fall limp on the ground.

He screams, trying to claw and kick his way out of the man’s arms so he can check on Rick, but Negan covers his eye and begins pulling him backward, shouting at some of his men.

One of them approaches Rick’s corpse and skewers his head with a squelch, eliciting another pained scream from his son, a few more helping the same man load Rick’s limp body into the back of a pickup. —Presumably, to hang him on the fence as a warning, just as Negan promised the group of Alexandrians.

A few other men come into view in the fog and Carl is sure he’s going to pass out.

They’re dragging more mangled people, only this time Carl knows the Saviors weren’t the ones to kill them. These bodies have been burned to a crisp by the bombs and feasted on by walkers that wandered inside because of the noise. —The few he can recognize through the physical trauma; Siddiq, Aaron, and someone he’s certain could only be Michonne. His best friend, his mother, yet again ripped from his arms, only this time he didn’t get the chance to say goodbye.

The sight rips any fight he might have had left in him and Carl goes limp, sobbing as Negan forces him to his feet and all but drags him towards one of their trucks.

The man gets in before him, then yanks him in afterward to give him the window seat to watch the wreckage burn. —He’s saying something, Carl realizes, but he can’t understand a word of it as the man goes on with a sadistic lilt in his voice until another man gets into the driver’s seat of the truck and suddenly, they're moving.

The truck doesn’t jerk, but Carl’s stomach still lurches with disgust.

This doesn’t feel real to him. It can’t be real, he decides. He’s going to wake up soon in his empty room, lying on the pile of blankets he calls a bed and realize it was all a terrible nightmare. Then he’ll go downstairs and see his dad and Michonne flirting over coffee —a sight he used to roll his eye at— but now he’ll join them and they’ll all laugh about how ridiculous his dream was. Rick would never leave him like this. Michonne would never leave him like this.

It took the radio switching off for Carl to realize it had been playing music in the first place, some relaxing song on the guitar that doesn’t at all match the storm of emotions he’s feeling, or the rain starting outside, but now that it’s gone— now that Negan’s turned it off and started futzing with the dials he feels sick.

There’s not enough air in the car, it’s too hot, and he doesn’t have enough room being smashed against the truck door to make room for the other two men in the front seat with him. Two men who played a massive part in destroying his entire life and killing the people he holds dearest, killing his dad, and then they took yet another thing away from him. His death.

He wanted to die with the rest of his family, but instead he’s here stuck in a truck with Negan, being dragged back to The Sanctuary.

Carl is roughly aware his breathing is too quick and ragged, but he can’t help it, he doesn’t know what to do. He has no control.

His hands come up to grasp at the hair in front of his face but stop short at his eyes, finger nails harshly digging into the skin above them and dragging downward until his empty socket starts to leak a steady stream of blood onto his lap.

The image of his father’s corpse falling after Negan’s shot and the smell of cooking flesh enter his mind, memories of Terminus and the line up flashing until he gags and reaches for the door handle.

“Jesus! What the shit?!” Negan exclaims, barely catching the door in time to prevent the kid from throwing himself out of a moving truck. He turns and looks to the driver with a glare. “Slow the fuck down will you? Don’t tell me you’re too stupid to see we’re having problems over here.”

The second the truck stops moving, Negan releases the door and lets Carl spill out onto the ground in a messy heap, vomiting and crying on his hands and knees. He balls his fists up against the pavement in desperation, and the man can see his socket is steadily dripping blood onto the ground.

Carl doesn't know why Rick managed to survive the hospital in Atlanta, the farm, then the Governor, that wave of illness, the cannibals at Terminus, the Saviors more than once, just to die on him now. What was the point in any of it? Why come this far just to get bitten and die in one of the dumbest ways possible?

“C’mon kid, at least cry a little.”

Negan’s own words pick that moment to come back and haunt him, as he’s watching a poor orphaned boy cry about the father he just watched die for a second time. —The same boy who’d been forced into a position where he had to shoot his own mother to prevent the very sight he’d just seen.

Negan may be a lot of things, a sadistic murderer, the owner of a twisted harem, but there are certain things he just won't stand for, and seeing a kid hurt like this is one of them. He even took back the insults he spit at him when it came to his empty socket because he hadn’t meant to make him cry… his tears were just a welcome bonus.

“Kid,” Negan hesitates for a moment, working his jaw, then walks towards the sobbing heap on the ground with a grimace. “Alright, fuck it. Come on, Carl, nice and easy,” He soothes, reaching down and hooking an arm around Carl’s waist to force him upright.

He doesn’t fight him, but he can’t stop crying as Negan begins holding him by either shoulder.

“Listen to me,” The man starts, giving him a grave look. “You’ve been to The Sanctuary before, you know how the fuck it works. If you show up there— lookin’ like this, crying and trying to hide yourself and shit, they’ll tear you apart.”

Carl nods, but there’s no real emotion behind it, the man can’t even tell if he’s really listening to the words he’s saying. The little serial killer that busted into his home with a machine gun isn’t the same boy he’s seeing in front of him now, this one damn near cowers at his voice.

“It won’t matter if I want them to or not, that’s just what will fuckin’ happen,” He says, tightening his grip. “If you want any chance of seeing any of those people —your people— alive again, you need to pull it together by the time we get there… I need you to pull it together, because for some reason when Rick’s not around, they all look to you.” He pushes the boy against the side of the truck with a metallic thud to emphasize his words, before setting a hand on his head and helping him back inside, this time purposefully giving him the middle seat so that he can’t open the door again.

It could’ve just been his nausea, but Negan wouldn’t put trying something like that past him after watching him essentially offer himself up to Rick’s reanimated corpse.

The truck starts moving and the driver turns to the other man over Carl’s head, passing a walkie to him.

“Gavin and Arat got back first, they want to know what they should do with the bodies and the hostages,” He explains quietly, returning his focus to the road.

“Fuck, okay,” Negan grunts, holding the walkie up to his face. “Gavin, put the bodies on ice and make sure they’re well taken care of, clean all the shit off of ‘em too. Just make sure they’re recognizable for our little demonstration.”

“And their people?” Arat asks impatiently.

“Take one of them and…” Negan hesitates at the sight of Carl’s weak glare, his one eye drooping with exhaustion. “Nevermind, put G.I. Joan in a goddamn cell, and the priest up in a room on the worker’s floor. —One that locks from the outside… Then you’ve got the rest of the night all to yourself.”

Negan feels more than sees Carl lean into his side, too tired to keep fighting any longer.

“Oh, and Gavin?” Negan says in a more threatening tone, eyes flicking over to the boy at his side. “Wake the doc. He’s got one hell of a patient on the way, but it’s just a check up.”

“Uh, you got it,” The other man answers.

Negan nudges the boy a few times but he doesn’t move, instead coughing and clutching his side like breathing is hurting him. Go figure, considering the amount of smoke he inhaled trying to get out of that damn place, but it still manages to make him feel bad.

He knows he can't offer much comfort with the pressure of his followers watching, but they already know he has a soft spot for the kid and the driver is a pretty devout Savior, so Negan offers half of his leather jacket up to Carl by wrapping it around his shoulder and pulling him in closer.

“Do not pass out on me,” He mumbles. “I won’t carry you. You’re too damn old for that shit.”

Another tear slips down Carl’s cheek, his eye closing tightly, clearly in no mood for Negan’s brand of callous humor.

“Remember what I said, Carl,” He warns, voice growing sharp and serious once again. “This needs to stop before you set foot in The Sanctuary, or I will personally watch them hang you on the fence by that pretty little neck of yours until the birds peck at your brains through that gnarly badass scar.”

Carl doesn’t respond, so Negan turns his attention back to the road.

This lasts for a while until he finds that his mind repeatedly drifts back to the day Carl broke in and gunned down his men, trying to recall what song it was that he said his mom used to sing to comfort him at night. —Shit, what was it? Marry had a little lamb? Twinkle twinkle little star? Goodnight, my angel?

It was something so sweet and innocent it clung to his mind like cement for days after the fact, because Negan couldn't get the image of a smaller version of the badass before him, lying in a real bed and being tucked in by his parents, when there weren’t monsters outside, and he had a whole face.

You are my sunshine, he remembers suddenly, when he realizes that he’s been quietly whistling the tune to himself since he re-entered the vehicle.

Even though it wasn’t a choice he made, it must have been the right one for this situation because Carl hasn’t shifted once since he started. —He’s relaxed, his breathing is even, and most importantly, he hasn’t tried to kill Negan on whatever self sacrificial mission led him to The Sanctuary the first time.

Chapter 2

Notes:

I upped the chapter count to three!

At first Negan wasn't really sure what he wanted from Carl.

It started like most things for him. Part of a smooth formula he learned was easy to follow once you’re in a position of power. Intimidate. Teach. Convert. —But somewhere along that road he found himself making more observations than necessary, following him around and trying to learn more about him in general.

When he demanded to be shown around the boy’s house and they entered his room, he saw the stack of comic books laying bedside and picked one up.

“You like these?” He asked, tongue in his cheek, raising his eyebrows to taunt him with the nerdy material.

Carl didn’t say anything back, glaring at him from the other side of the room with his arms crossed. —And boy, did he do that a lot in the beginning.

Sometimes it got on Negan’s nerves just how unwilling Carl was to submit like Rick did, but he had to admit that he also respected the hell out of it. It had to be tough watching his only male role model go belly up like a domesticated fish after a week in a new tank, but the kid stood his ground.

“I’ll get you some more,” Negan offered, rocking back on his heels before starting to pace the bedroom floor. “I’ll even get some of my people to draw you new ones if you can do one thing for me, kid...”

He knew he got his attention. The kid’s eyes raised to make eye contact and shone with interest at the prospect, but he still didn’t budge, knowing Negan would ask him for something in return.

“Stop wearin’ that fucking eyepatch, it’s ridiculous,” Negan finished, motioning with two fingers for him to follow him out of the room and to the next.

Carl didn’t accept his offer.

Which made a whole lot more sense a few weeks later, when he saw Rick pull Carl into their house in the middle of a collection.

It was an odd gesture. Rick usually liked to be able to see what the other man was doing to his property —and to his people— so him leaving made Negan wonder what was so important he'd risk leaving the big bad wolf running rampant in his home.

He'd toyed with the others for awhile, but they were only so much fun. Even less fun after he'd taken the genius away and ordered them to kill Olivia. All of which left Negan no choice but to seek the most entertaining people out— the Grimes.

The house was dim when he entered, but Negan followed the whispering he heard to the kitchen where he saw candlelight.

Rick was at the kitchen counter, preoccupied with a set of tools, visibly only half listening to what the boy was saying.

But the real sight to behold was Carl.

And once he saw him, he couldn't stop looking at him.

He wasn’t wearing his bandage. His features were soft and open while he spoke to his dad with a fond smile, going on and on about something that clearly wasn't related to their current situation. He looked like a regular kid. Negan could barely see the scar on his face. In the dark it looked more like a void, an absence that wouldn’t be missed, and without that pathetic bandage, the kid seemed comfortable for once. He was even standing more relaxed.

But when Rick finally looked up at him and his faint smile dropped, his dad’s eyes averting almost as fast as they had settled on him, Carl started to look sensitive.

“Your bandage,” Rick interrupted, his face on the precipice of displeasure.

Your bandage, as if that flimsy piece of gauze was something integral to Carl’s being.

Carl stopped talking, eye wide, and took a wounded step back, his fingers reaching up to gently touch the edge of his socket as he hung his head so that his hair would cover his face, smile dropping.

“There’s some upstairs in the bathroom. I noticed you were low so I restocked,” Rick added, still refusing to look at his own son and instead busying himself with the tools before him in a borderline neglectful manner.

Carl pressed the heel of his palm into the cavern of his face, looking absolutely ashamed of himself for presenting his bare face to his own dad.

“Thank you,” The kid replied hoarsely, voice devoid of gratitude.

It was almost as bad as when Negan had forced Rick to thank him on that first collection. Only this time, it was his son.

Suddenly Rick dropped what he was working on, still avoiding looking directly at Carl as he gave him a buddy pat on the shoulder and walked away.

While Negan certainly found the situation entertaining, a certain sense of anger washed over him as he watched Carl climb the stairs to go wrap his face and hide.

He still isn’t sure how he managed to restrain himself from snapping Rick’s neck, but maybe he should have. At least if he had, Carl wouldn’t have seen his own father turn.

Negan demanded he take the bandage off and made sure to hold extra eye contact with the kid that day, despite how confused it seemed to make him. The longer he stared into his eye like a regular person, the more uncomfortable Carl seemed to be, as if he couldn’t understand why anyone would just want to look at him.

Negan realized most people didn’t, aside from the samurai chick, but the more he saw of her the less he saw of her with Carl. —She started turning the kid down to go hang out with Rick and leaving him behind more and more.

Soon he noticed Carl was left isolated pretty much every single time he showed up for collections.

So when the day finally came and he saw Rick stumbling towards Carl through all the fog and destruction, he was sure the kid would inflict all his built up resentment on him. Finally steal back some of that joy— his childhood, his self confidence, his best friend for christ’s sake, by taking it out on his rotting corpse.

No one would question it… Mostly because a lot of people had already died and wouldn't be around to ask, but also because Rick was already gone. What harms a few more marks on his body going to do?

Negan grinned, bearing all his teeth until he saw Carl let the gun droop.

He wasn’t? He wasn’t.

The realization that Carl was giving up yet another piece of himself, his self sacrificial nature running so deep he’d actually let the man consume him if there was nothing left to fight for, hit him like a truck and he quickly rushed out of the bushes to pull him away.

Negan believes Carl is the future with everything in him, even though he probably wouldn't say that out loud. —Kids like him are the reason you have to fight for everything you’ve got. He has a heart of solid steel even after so much violence, he’ll say he wants to kill you even if it makes him sick to his stomach to think about, and he’ll cry for the sake of mercy on his enemies…

He is everything Negan isn’t.

Everything he should have been before when he had everything in the palm of his hand with Lucille, and everything he wishes he could be going forward even though he knows he can't change.

But without Rick… who’s going to guide this stubborn fourteen year old into adulthood and ensure his survival? Who’s going to teach him what it means to be a man and how to make the right decisions when all the decisions lead to the same dead end? Who’s going to teach him to lead, when Negan knows for sure, this kid belongs in a position of power?

It was only years later, when Carl was standing on the roof with him overlooking the Saviors and the workers that Negan would realize something fundamental had changed within him in his time in Negan’s care.

Something broke, and he wasn’t sure Carl would ever get it back.

“I’d rather live than survive,” He’d say, letting his weight rest on the railing they both knew might snap at any moment and send him plummeting to his death. “Do you think that’s strange?”

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of I'd Rather Live Than Survive