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Keeping someone in the collective memory is good, or at least, that's what most people do. You keep something that used to be theirs so you can have them near you at all times, especially if you were close to them. Still, some people prefer to just have their memories instead of keeping something, but most cultures keep the remains in a specific place like a cemetery. But, should you try to look like them in terms of changing your clothing, starting to use makeup, or just letting your hair grow.
Should you embrace their memory enough to let it be the only reason for keeping a certain look, a certain weight or hair length? Or should you just get over it, let the past die and define yourself how you are gonna look based on how you want or like to look. Would it be disrespectful or would it just be considered an important part of the grieving process to just leave behind your suffering and continue living? Would that person be happy to see you continue or would they be angry or sad at how easily or fast you got over their death?
They say hair keeps memories and that you should cut after something big happens so you don't hold onto your bad feelings but he wanted to remember because the loss of his family was what made him decide to become the person he now was in the first place. But now his hair was proving to be troublesome to say the least, it constantly got in his way and would always be tangled and he had to keep it brushed unless he wanted even more trouble, which in the end was time consuming.
So, his only options were to cut it or to just live with it, the thing is he couldn't cut it because this was the hair his mother once cared for, the hair his father would try to style, the haircut his friends would try to imitate this hair was the last part of him that would have tangible evidence of his family´s existence and so it should be treated as sacred, his family was and their memory was even more valuable than some of his time.
He could remember several times in his life that had proven to be enough to embrace his appearance, but at the same time they should fuel his need or more like his desire to change his look enough to be able to forget about said events, to separate himself from the whole incident and get over the past, to live a new life in a new wrecked world in which his life was shattered from day one.
He remembered Sophia, her shy and bashful demeanor that was surely a result of her parent's attitude, the way her clothes seemed happier than her whole life, how scared she was about everything and her premature death at the hands of the walkers, just to then be shot at by Shane without any kind of shame. He could also remember Shane, how aggressive he was all the time, how he tried to replace his father and most importantly how fast he had become so demented and willing to kill whoever was in his way.
He remembered the prison with mixed feelings because while he did learn a lot of things living there like gardening or even tending to farm animals, it was also the place where he had had to kill his mother, to shoot her right in between her eyes to make sure she wouldn't be back from the grave right after she gave birth to Judith. It was the place where he had first killed someone that he actually cared for. So, while he enjoyed living there, the magic was broken after the governor made sure to destroy the place enough to fill it to the brim with walkers.
So after the fact he hadn't really worried about his appearance because he didn't actually have the time nor an actual reason, there was no food and no mirrors but he was always hungry because he would insist on giving his mother his food. He found the biggest can of chocolate syrup in the world and he ate half of it while waiting for his father to wake up, but the guilt didn't allow him to eat anything for almost a week. Later on in his life he would learn that thinking about food in that way was dangerous but at the moment he thought it was normal because of his mother and every piece of media he watched before the world ended.
He remembered the governor, Terminus, the saviors, Negan. Every single one of them had brought them to their limit and while most of the adults had tried to keep the kids from knowing the worst parts of it all and still he had seen Negan bash Glen´s skull until his eye was out of its socket, he had almost forced his father to cut his arm and at that point he really didn't care as long as he left them go or at the very least live. Still when he thought he had seen or lived everything, someone new and crazier comes into the picture and almost kills everyone.
His father wasn't dead, far from it, he was fighting so hard for all of them to survive every single situation this world throws at them but still he wasn't the person he used to be. He would never be again the man that would cook pancakes every monday just so he would wake up on time for school, he would never take him to a fair again, he would never get him ice cream after a hard day, he would never be the same but Carl had also changed he had had to adapt to this sick and twisted world that forced him to do things that would have been once considered inhumane.
His problem remained, should he cut his hair and look less like his mother or should he just leave it alone or even let it grow even longer, should he let the ghosts of the past rest or continue to be haunted by them. In any case it would be a big change and the middle of another crisis was really not the best moment to make big decisions that could affect his survival somehow, so he would wait this out and for the time being his hair would just be there, untied just combed through.
In some days, this would prove to be the worst decision he could choose, because the walkers would corner him and his hair would become stuck and he would get bit in his torso, it would have been better if it had been on one of his arms or even a leg, he could amputate it and continue on with his life but he didn't have luck on his side. He got away and spent what he thought to be his last days at home trying to make something so Judith could know she had a brother and then he would just disappear and kill himself, his plan included a note explaining his actions but he wasn't sure where to hide it so he would just leave it under his pillow, an obvious place so someone finds it but it would take some time so he would be able to get it done.
He even asked Michonne to do his hair and while surprised she complied and made a beautiful braid crown that after he got out of the walls that surrounded Alexandria he filled with flowers that would dry up and almost rot before he noticed nothing was gonna happen to him. He didn't become one of them, he didn't even have a fever, he was already getting ready to shoot himself when he noticed he felt alright so he decided to wait until the next day and so on until an entire week went by. Just then, he made his way back to his home, to the people that would help him navigate this whole affair and come up with a solution that would work out for everyone.
The people guarding the entrance were surprised to see him still alive since his letter had been found some days ago and a search party was just about to leave to look for him, to try and find him still alive and coax him to return and spend his last days home instead of alone so he could have a proper burial and people can cry at his grave, but he had returned on his own still breathing. His father was notified and he was ushered home where he was told to relax, take a shower and eat something, they would talk afterwards but it could wait until he was ready, then a medic would examine the bite so they could be sure about what had happened and how to proceed.
So he just went to his room and left his duffle bag on his bed, grabbed a fresh set of comfy clothes, and then went on to take a cold shower. He was sure his bag would be thoroughly searched for anything that could be considered dangerous or out of the ordinary because his father was the living breathing stereotype of a worried parent, which meant he was gonna be nosy and overprotective, a mother hen as always. He could still remember how his father would make sure he was doing alright at school everyday and how coddled he felt whenever his father had to drive him to school instead of just letting him walk or take the bus.
Carl was the complete opposite of his father, he didn't like to worry about things because if there was a way to solve a problem then it shouldn't worry you and if it had no solution then it shouldn't worry you either because there is nothing you can do to solve it then. The last time he had actually been really worried about anything, things had escalated quickly and gone south even faster, and he had been bit by a walker who was lucky to catch him off guard. Now all of his actions had already led him here, to a moment in time where someone would have to shoot him and carry the guilt that his death would cause, even if murdering him could be considered by many a merciful and compassionate act that would help him not become trapped in this plane of existence as a walking dead man.
After he finished showering, he went to the kitchen and grabbed a serving of some sort of soup. It was cold and stale, and ate it. Michonne then told him that he could go to his room until the doctor came to look him over. Back in his room he tried to take a nap since he hadn't really had much time to sleep the previous days (because he didn't want to roam the world as a walker and was afraid to die). It would have been highly impractical, but sleep had never come easily to him, so he tossed and turned for a while before falling into a restless sleep, which would make him feel even more tired. When he eventually woke up to the sound of the worst attempt at a muffled conversation he had ever had the displeasure of listening to.
Just some minutes of listening was enough for him to figure some things out. The doctor believed he was a danger to himself and that had lead him to try to run away to end his life but before accomplishing anything he backed down, and while he could see where all of that reasoning came from, he couldn't stop himself from thinking if that wasn't a bit too complex to just commit suicide. As a kid, Carl had never really heard about people committing it, because well that wasn't really an age appropriate subject for him but still he was sure, his mother was, pretty sure that people wouldn't really think it through, wouldn't be ready or would just let themselves follow a stupid impulse in a hard moment and ending things early.
There would always be more time to think about the past, but for the time being, he cleared his head of the thoughts related to a world that no longer existed and continued to listening on their conversation which had taken a slight turn because now they were coming up with a plan on what to do with him now that he was back. For starters he wouldn't be allowed to leave the house for at least a month and he was supposed to inform if his condition worsened. After a while the conversation got boring and repetitive so, he decided to go get the bite checked before anything else happened so he could get over this already.
So he gathered all the courage he could and went downstairs to the living room, at first it was uncomfortable because he just entered the room and said nothing, but in the end, he got the bite checked (finally). It wasn't infected and he would have to clean and rebandage it daily to keep it that way, but other than that, he was fine. So he would just get a scar and a scare out of all of this situation. Still the medic insisted that he stayed at home for the time being, and that he would probably have to go get some sort of Psychological test with an Alexandrian resident that was a psychologist before the collapse.
The first few days were spent sleeping because he had to make up for the days he hadn't slept, when his sleep schedule was fixed he started spending most of his time doing whatever he could and either his father or Michonne would always stay at home even if he found that slightly bothersome, because well he wasn't a kid and he didn't need supervision, but it was understandable since he had basically run away and left some sort of suicide note. He went to the psych test and he would have to wait a few more days for the results. Then he was allowed to cook, still with adult supervision but it was better than just doing small tasks around the house he would make complete meals for his parents and some sort of oatmeal for himself, the same recipe his mother used to do for herself.
After almost two weeks he was allowed to go out of the house but still he had to be with an adult or at the very least another human being, so he started helping Darryl fix his motorbike, help Carol with some of her tasks, hell he even celebrated a mass with Gabriel, and well, life was getting boring since he was used to being on edge most of the time but at the moment he was getting excited about dumb things that he would usually consider absolutely boring and that fact made everything worse since he felt like a child again, they wouldn't leave him alone unless he was supposed to be in his room sleeping. Every object that could be used to cause harm was taken away from him and while it made sense and it was kind of his fault he couldn't help but feel useless and even defenseless.
So he decided to make his own weapons in case he needed to defend himself from any threat, he collected every stick he could get that was wide enough to be sharpened without it breaking and he was able to make a bunch of stakes, but before he could use any of them for literally anything Michonne found them and took them away, he was then scolded for making weapons but in the end that didn't matter much to him since he was going to get better at hiding stuff and so he started again until Darryl decided enough was enough and if he was gonna do that at the only few hours he was actually alone, while everyone else was asleep, then he would never be alone again and so Darryl moved into his room.
They should have known better since Carl was still the kid that had tried to kill Negan on his own, that had insisted on learning how to shoot in the first few days of the apocalypse but most importantly the only kid on earth that was willing to do anything to prove anyone wrong or to at least defy them enough to show how stubborn he was. The first days that he had to share the room he didn't sleep at all and neither did Darryl the only difference between the two of them was that Carl had time to spare since he didn't actually have any chores and could sleep throughout the day but Darryl would get half and hour of sleep daily, if he was lucky. So Carol started to follow him around during the day and whenever he fell asleep she would wake him up and give him any tasks she could think of. After the first four days he couldn't keep himself awake and he started to sleep during the night again, so he had to think of another plan to just be able to beat Darryl in this game he had created.
At some point he got his hands on what Enid had called energy drinks and with their help he was able to stay awake for a week straight, yes, he felt extremely jittery and the nausea was so bad he couldn't stomach anything solid, but it was worth it since Darryl was starting to give up, and he would sleep for an hour or two. Then he ran out of energy drinks and he slept for two entire days and afterwards he was extremely hungry so he decided that while he was capable of staying away for so long it wasn't really worth it in terms of helping him get his goal. The psychologist gave his father his results and now he had to eat with someone so they could make sure he was actually eating, at first it wasn't that bad but then he felt terribly guilty since he was getting fatter and he didn't really deserve the food since he wasn't contributing with anything to the community and so he would eat a bit and the rest he would either put it in his pockets to discard it later or he would literally just lie to get out of that situation.
After they started trading with both Ocean side and Hilltop he was allowed to start helping move the merchandise from one place to another so he felt better about himself because he was now doing something, after their missions he was always tired so he would just get home, eat whatever his dad had cooked and sleep until he was assigned a new mission. He was the last person anyone wanted to fight with, so he could make sure their trades went well and he would usually get some fruit from the trees he found among their usual trails, so he would get to keep eating just enough to not faint while contributing to whatever mission he was sent in.
Through radio, Eugine was able to contact other communities that could trade with, and even with a woman from the US that was living in Mexico at the moment. Once, while Eugine went to the restroom, he was able to chat with her. She was there because her family had thought that a boat would be the best way to survive until things calmed down but since everything was getting worse. She was now traveling around looking for both her mother and brother and he had agreed to tell her if he caught wind of their whereabouts. And while that seemed a bit too optimistic since they could all be dead already, it was the nicest thing he would be able to do for her so he immediately agreed to help. In the end, they reunited and she said they were going to try to return to the US but they hadn't been able to communicate ever since.
Things were looking better now subsequent to the whisperers learning about his presumed immunity to the infection or its origin in a french patogen lab, and had started to disband since it seemed Alpha was all wrong about everything she thought the plague meant, besides they hadn't had to fight as much anymore, still things were getting harder from time to time since they needed a lot more food now that Alexandria's population had increased so rapidly that their trades had to be sped up so they could keep everyone well fed. So he had way more excursions now which meant less time to find or make his own food which in turn meant he had to either eat the food someone else made or stop eating altogether.
He chose the latter because it was actually easier and he could actually use that time in something more useful for everyone, and at first he thought his reasoning was good enough, but then it was pretty obvious that something was going on with him because he started shedding way more hair than usual, he looked tired all the time, he got tired easily and no matter how much he slept he would always feel tired but most importantly, he stopped feeling hungry which was a blessing and a curse all at the same time because well, he could go three days without eating anything but still it made him nervous not to feel any hunger when he should.
His latest mission included Ezequiel and well, that was a surprise because of how little he was allowed to do since they discovered his tumor but he was a welcome surprise since he helped organize the transports while he aided to move the food they were going to transport, but afterwards he was feeling queasy and very dizzy so he took his seat in their tumbrel and hoped for the best. But before they got to Hilltop he felt worse and then nothing. One minute he was getting ready to unload crates of apples and the next one, he was being consumed by the kind of nothingness that doesn't let you go, that doesn't let you wake up.
He woke up a few hours after they arrived to Alexandria and he had been moved to the infirmary by none other than Ezequiel, he had kept it quiet while he waited for Carl to wake up so he could decide what to do about it, because yes, they were going to do something about it. That wasn't up for discussion. He had two options: keep things quiet and accept Ezequiel´s help or try to get support from the rest of his family which would in turn involve telling them about the whole problem and how he wasn't able to deal with it on his own. They already knew but they thought things had gotten better or at least he was more capable of getting enough food on his own.
Neither of his options were especially great but he could try to get better and if push came to shove he would have to come out clean about the whole deal and involve his parents, the safest option was to keep things quiet until he got better or the situation took a turn for the worse. He told Ezequiel about his decision and in turn, the older man was completely honest and told him the gruesome details, how he had been way too easy to carry, how sick and tired he looked all the time, how pale he was and other stuff that he didn't really want to think about. Things had to change fast, at least for a while, so he could continue living.
Progress isn't linear and there had been a lot of setbacks that had almost made him quit whatever he was trying to do, like people finding out, having to stay at home again, not being able to do much on his own and him not caring at all about living anymore, but things were actually looking better, he felt better. The world seemed brighter or at least way more colorful and he could even enjoy the smallest of pleasures like the sunrise or just finding the best apple of the season. Living was worth it even if things could look bad and be scary there is always a way out, every problem has a solution even if it's not always one that will make you happy that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. He would continue to solve each of his problems until there was just one task left, live to enjoy the sunrise everyday.