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Carl sneaks over the walls.
For the past few weeks he’s been under the false impression of his stealth, but there’s no undetectable way to scale huge metal panelling. That’s how you know, in part. The other part is, of course, that his designated climbing section is in direct view of your bedroom window.
You haven’t followed him: he’s never been the type to need protecting. But that doesn’t mean you haven’t wanted to. There have always been so many secrets between you two, an intangible web of memories and nightmares under lock and key, utterly unbreachable. Dark things, the kind you both stuff away to collect dust. But you’re too curious to let this become one of them, especially since his affinity for wall-hopping has sprouted at the expense of spending quality time with his closest friend — you, obviously.
This morning, Carl sneaks over the walls. Minutes later, you do too.
As soon as you orient yourself, picking your gaze up from the ground and letting it roam the open forest, you think you understand. No walls, no suburbia — just the world as it’s meant to be. An endless stretch of ice blue above. Hard-packed dirt beneath your feet. Wind which rips with unapologetic impoliteness, not yielding to the courtesy demanded inside the safezone. It’s intoxicating, but you can’t drink it all in just yet. The too-audible scuff of Carl’s hasty steps is an easy enough trail for you to follow. Where he’s going you can’t begin to guess, but finding out is a better way to spend your morning than scouting for wayward walkers, babysitting Judith, or pretending to give a shit about useless intra-community politics.
Into the woods it is, then…
Making efficient use of the stealth skills he’s refused your offer to train him through, you trail him silently, weaving between trees and wading through berried bushes. At a trilling stream, you leap and alight with a quiet plash; as branches droop lower and lower, you bend and jostle beneath them.
Silently, you curse the walls for culling too much of your stamina from you; by the time you’ve crept behind him for about five minutes, an ache begins to swell in your calves. But luckily enough, as soon as the pain strikes, Carl pauses in a clearing. It might be to take a breather; he’s not just been walking, but powerwalking, as if he’s been assigned an urgent mission to arrive at this clearing as soon as possible. But when shrugs off his backpack, it becomes clear. This log — furred with moss and home to tiny, warbling critters — is his destination. He slumps down against it, his haste obviously having beaten the breath out of him, and lugs his bag onto his legs. He tugs open the zip and procures a comic book and a canteen.
You didn’t know what you expected, but it wasn’t this. Maybe a clandestine lover from a warring faction, or an ancient entity he’s promised to sacrifice his soul to? At these ideas, you almost let slip laugher. You’ve been devouring too many of Olivia’s crappy, guilty-pleasure novels recently, which isn’t your fault: there’s not much else to do in her house, and Enid is plenty entertained when you read them aloud together and assume passionate, animated voices. But he’s no chosen one, nor a romantic dreamboat doomed to star-crossed love. He’s Carl Grimes. Of course he’s coming out here to read comics.
"Isn’t, like, your bed a more comfortable place to read those?" you say, emerging suddenly into his clearing.
At your voice, Carl’s hand flits to his gun, which is mildly insulting, but he soon squints up at you with his one working eye and places his hand back on (you cock your head a little, squinting) the latest issue of Wolfman.
"You shouldn’t be out here," he hisses; you see traces of something feline in him in the way he bristles, bites, bares his defenses. It’s kind of endearing. Too many things about him are endearing lately.
Not his stubbornness, though. Never his stubbornness. "By that metric, you shouldn’t either."
You wander over to him, swivelling your head around at this place. It’s definitely a clearing, complete with all the usual clearing commodities. Some grass, some weeds, those yellow flowers that Carl once told you would make you wet the bed (which is a myth, by the way, because although he practically stuffed one up your nose, your sleeping bag was perfectly dry that night, thank you very much). Content in your assessment of this perfectly normal clearing, you sink down beside him in the mud.
"I can take care of myself."
You scowl, but only for the trees to see. "And I can’t?"
God, you don’t know why he has such a hard on for this place. Bark needles muscles in your back that you weren’t even aware existed before it started exploring them, and the mud is way too moist under your ass. It’s insufferable, almost as insufferable as him, because you’ve saved his ass on too many occasions for him to act as if you’re now some incompetent idiot.
He doesn’t look up at you from his comic, gaze glued to
some dude currently biting another dude. You know, classic wolf stuff. "You know that’s not what I meant." His tone approaches cutting territory, but it’s not yet sharp enough to draw blood.
It’s always been fun to push his buttons. "I don’t," you retort, maybe more grating than necessary.
Finally he slaps his comic down onto his thighs and turns to you. Where you’d expected his face to split with a scowl, he frowns. That pinches you. Hard. "Why are you being so difficult?"
You? Difficult? You laugh without any remorse for your harshness. "Says the one hopping over walls so you don’t have to hang out with me, skipping out on crop duty so you don’t have to work with me, and, you know, generally pretending I don’t exist."
"Thats—" The noise that leaves him is more hiss than sigh and he almost flinches away from you, but you don’t reel your words back in. Since the day he lost his eye, they’ve been growing, the roots watered every day he spent avoiding you. You won’t cleave this plant — not when it’s grown so tall, so defiant, so desperate to be seen. At last, he shakes his head, picking absently at the bark. "You wouldn’t get it."
Of course he knows what’s good for you. It’s entirely him to dictate you, order you, assume you. "I don’t care if I’d get it or not Carl," you say. You find yourself looking up to the sky, maybe subconsciously asking whoever’s up there to bless you with the patience to put up with Carl’s bullshit. "You’re avoiding me. Tell me why."
Carl turns to you, head bowed, eye stuck on the slice of bark between his bitten nails. Still, he makes no move to talk.
"Tell me." You raise your voice enough to get his attention. When he looks up, you shoot him a pointed gaze with the intention to pin and flay. "I don’t want this to be another unspoken thing between us, Carl. I’m so fucking tired of secrets."
In a fraction of a second, his eye widens. There’s still a trace of vulnerability in the wet blue even after it shrinks to its normal size. He’s a veteran of the game you initated; pinned and flayed by his stare, you have no choice but to listen.
"You liked Ron," he states.
You want to laugh, but there’s something else here. Rarely are you allowed to witness that glint in his eye — hurt. Last time you glimpsed it, it had been in both. You’d comforted him, warmed him, like always.
Once, maybe twice, you’d done the same with Ron.
You’ve been trying not to think about him recently, but self-control has never been an aptitude of yours, and it’s not as if Carl’s been around to distract you. So you’ve been thinking, toiling, missing. It’s not been easy, and it’s not easy now, with his name between you like this.
When was the last time you even heard his name?
The thought is an ice-cold shock of water that drenches you raw. It’s like his whole family is the next Bloody Mary or something. There are reminders they existed, sure — their graves marked with sloppy crosses, their names in black on the walls — but not that anybody had known them. No stories, no memories, no four syllables passing from anyone’s lips. It was strange and it was scary but it made things easier. You could pretend you didn’t know them too. Didn’t know him. But you know now that this had been another lie on which you’ve been fattening yourself.
"I did," you say with more emotion than anticipated. All these years out here, you’ve lost so many people, and here you are choked up over some stupid, sheltered dead boy. Shit, you’ve gone soft.
Carl must catch your agony. He averts his stare, shame writ in the deep furrow of his brow. Shakily, he inhales. "Ron is dead because of me."
"Carl—"
"I knew he wanted me and my dad dead. I knew. I could’ve stopped him and he wouldn’t be dead."
All your stony pride and indignation melts. You should’ve known. You should’ve been less selfish. You should’ve asked or told him or just done something. And you’ve definitely gone soft, because here you go with the hypotheticals. It’s guilt, because Carl is the kind of good to which guilt is practically tethered to. He’s accumulated too much of it over the years, so much that you’d be forgiven for thinking he likes it. There’s an endless list of tragedies that line his heart; Ron is just another name on top of names now and goddamnit, you should’ve known.
But your anger, for all its heat and flame, will do no good here. He’s like… a cat spooked, or something. You arch your voice into stability which lingers too close to softness, asking, "Where is this coming from?"
He squirms in place, kicking up woodchips with his boots. "You… Liked him, in that way." he says. Still refusing to meet your gaze, he lifts off his hat and rests it on his discarded comic book. "I messed it up."
"He shot your eye out and you’re seriously more concerned about a crush?" All your softness is gone, replaced by an incredulity which feels a little too mean, but you can’t help it. His capacity for guilt is so surprising that it’s comical, sometimes. Yeah, you liked Ron. But you liked Carl’s other eye a whole lot more.
Tentatively he glances up at you, his one eye ashine with hope. You expect another borderline-whisper, but his voice steels as he adjusts himself. "It’s not just—" He rakes a hand through his hair and sighs. "I care about you, okay? You were happy because of him."
"Carl, Judith is safe. You’re safe, our family is." Maybe you were, just a little, but that’s not for him to know. You scoot closer to him, hipbone meeting hipbone, shoulder knocking against shoulder. So quick you almost miss it, his arms shudder with a tap against yours. "Shit is good. That’s why I was happy." But beside you, he remains unmoved. You figure he’s earned your truth, raw and unfiltered and disgustingly sappy. "I guess I did like him, but he became an asshole to me the moment I saw him follow you with that gun."
This time it’s no lie. Ron was… You did like Ron. He was the one to reacquaint you with normality; he taught you that it can be possible to wield kindness even when you’ve weathered insurmountable violence. You’re not mourning the Ron with the pistol: you’re mourning the Ron you knew before that moment, sweet and funny and at times endearingly naive. The Ron who Carl killed? You feel nothing for that Ron. Nothing.
"I care about you too, you know." You chance a glance across to Carl to find him staring at you with the rapt attention of a dedicated student. Shaking off the warmth that infuses you with, you fasten your eyes back on the treeline. "Way too much to let some sheltered asshole mow you down."
Though it’s your own joke, and barely amusing at that, you laugh. Carl almost does too; his lips twitch up into a pretty smile, teeth almost peeking through. You flash another glance to the unnamed deity upstairs, silently thankful for them having lifted this one burden from Carl. For his own happiness, you hope it’s capable of ridding him of the others too.
When your laughter mellows into the gentle chirrups of cicadas, you press your knee into the triangular hollow between Carl’s calf and thigh. Even as light slates across his face, his expression remains inscrutable. "You’re not mad at me?" His voice almost wobbles into a mumble. He flicks away the piece of bark he’d been fiddling with.
One of these days he’ll be the death of you, always with the obvious questions, irritating assumptions. But you hope not; he already has too many strikes against his heart. You scoff. "Did you even listen—"
"Are you mad?"
When it comes out, your voice is tinged with incredulous laughter. "No. I’m a hundred percent not mad."
"Okay," he says with a final puff of air.
"Okay," you finish, a little too warily. You boot his ankle — lightly, obviously — and extend a pinky. "Friends again?"
He laughs, rubbing the back of his neck, and regards your pinky with a dubious eye. "Always," he says, too softly, before braiding his pinky around yours. You pinky-shake on the matter, at last laying it to rest.
Carl splays open his comic again. One page rests on your thigh, the other on his. For better visibility of course, you shuffle closer, but once again your back is scraped by bark. Fuck. If Carl doesn’t kill you, this place certainly will. "On one condition,” you propose. He thins his gaze. "Only if you promise to find a better reading spot. This place sucks ass."
This time he really does laugh, beautiful and unfettered and kind of like a chain of hiccups. "What’s wrong with my log?" he asks, as if that’s even a question — as if there’s anything right with it.
"Everything. Literally everything."