Chapter Text
Carl Grimes survived two bullet wounds. The third time, he was luckier. He stirred from the warm nothingness, sleepily blinking open two whole eyes.
Much luckier, he thought as he gazed at his mother’s body, one he last knew bloodied in death but that now rose soft in slumber. Maybe it should have been hard to adjust back to a full field of vision, but it felt natural in a way the weight of gauze never had. He wondered if he would have to relearn how to shoot a gun, or if his aim had miraculously recovered.
Maybe he wouldn’t need it. His eye was healed. There must have been no injury in heaven, no sickness or disease. With every body left behind on earth, to rot or to walk, and with the souls all set free, how could there be any more cause for violence? He felt oddly sorry to Carol, as he found himself replaying every instance he'd ever denied heaven to anybody.
Then he looked down at his child sized hands and wished he'd been a little less hasty. Glancing around at his surroundings for the first time, his confusion only grew. This was the tent from the beginning. Before his dad returned–before the first walker raid that had killed Amy and Jim, before the CDC, before the prison, before Terminus, before Alexandria. Before Negan.
Carl bit his lip. It couldn’t be hell, if his mother was with him. She died too early on–didnt have the chance to acclimate, to do any of the horrible things required of this new life. Any of the things Carl himself had done before he was even a teenager.
Maybe he was stuck in a dream and it would all dissolve again soon. Didn’t the brain live on after death, for a while at least? If this was his life flashing before his eyes, it made sense that it would start here. The Carl from before the outbreak had been dead a long, long time, he reasoned. And soon the reborn Carl would be too. In all likelihood the staticky nothingness he'd risen from was just moments away.
To pass the time, Carl stared at the shadow of a shield bug crossing the side of the tent. He wondered for a moment why there were bugs in heaven–or why he could remember this scene so clearly and not be able to conjure up his mother's face.
It already felt like an eternity. His mom was asleep still; he’d have liked to replay her voice one last time, but it had been so long…it must have been lost for good, unreachable even in the last dredges of his subconscious. Regardless, he resolved to make the most of it.
He willed his dad to come ducking under the tent flap, Judith on his hip, Michonne close behind them. It wouldn't be awkward to have both his mothers there, he thought, if it was all in his head. He tried to call up the warmth of Enid’s hand on his own. He hadn't gotten to say goodbye to her, and he regretted it. It was one regret of many.
He waited. His family didn’t appear in the tent. The tent didn’t disappear. And eventually, his mother began to stir.
He realized, as she did, that he must have been in an in-between place, trapped in the minutes before and after death. His mom would wake any minute and explain to him that she was an angel, or perhaps some other psychopomp–a word he learned from Enid while flipping through a few scavenged Sandman issues–and then she would take his hand and guide him to the afterlife.
A shrill cry split the tender air, ripping him out of his reverie and shoving him bodily towards the door. Someone was screaming, clear and ribbony, like a child. Judith, he thought, with mounting horror. Where were his sneakers? How could there have been a time he was stupid enough to sleep shoeless? He finally located them, and shoved them onto tiny feet, but the screaming had already stopped. He lunged for the door anyway, scrabbled for the zipper with a kind of desperation he’d seen in men half dead. A sharp tug at his wrist had him lunging backwards, teeth bared in warning.
He met his mother's wide, searching eyes. Her chest heaved, but she wouldn't relinquish her grasp on his hand. He couldn't catch his breath.
But they were breathing. It was like he'd never killed her. It was like he'd never killed himself the same way.
Falling into her arms felt like dying all over again. How fucked up was he, he thought, that even now he couldn't bring himself to sob. Lighten up. At least cry a little. Ironically, Carl could have laughed. He didn't want to think about Negan now. Or ever again. Grinning, he realized that at the very least, now he wouldn't have to. As he pulled his face from his Mom's hair, smooth in its inky, dull curtain, he wondered if this was what it was like to be born.
The tarp wobbled, sending the poor shield bug to the ground with a reedy thwap. It might have been the whole sky falling and the heavens with it, as far as Carl was concerned, because the head that poked in wasn't Dad, or Michonne, or Daryl. It wasn't even someone he'd grieved–Glenn and Beth would've been a more than welcome sight.
“False alarm,” said Shane, with a resigned grimace. “Sophia had a nightmare.”
Lori exhaled at once, shoulders slumping. She kept her grip tight on Carl's shoulders–she was no less vigilant in her relief–but she kissed the top of his head all the same. His eyes stuck to the shield bug twitching on the floor. He'd died on his back too, erratic like that, and aching. He didn't know if bugs could feel fear but he did know people had been afraid of them once, until the world ended and they had real things to worry about.
Could Shane have made it to heaven? Carl mused, finally making his way outside. Maybe. Shane was truly despicable, for reasons his mother would never verbalize, and for whatever happened on that trip that saved Carl’s life but took Otis’. In other ways, though, he was really not much worse than the little future serial killer who once hid in a truck with a machine gun in some misguided, suicidal revenge play. He'd adapted, much like everyone who would survive would have to adapt. And if this really was an after, then that was proof that there was forgiveness for Carl, even after everything. The thought was a comforting one.
Then he caught sight of Ed–Sophia’s disgusting father–and felt his blood run cold. Ed and Carol Peletier, standing right in front of Sophia, like nothing had ever happened to any of them. Ed might as well have been the dirt under Carl's shoe, but Carol was supposed to be alive. And Sophia–at peace, in a better place–sobbed frantically, clawing at her mother's worn blouse.
“There was a traffic jam,” Sophia said. She must have been ushered outside sometime after she'd stopped screaming. For something warm to calm her down, he guessed, noting the small bowl in her hands. “The RV broke down and I hid. But then there was a–a walker, under the car with me.”
Carl had never listened to anyone so intently in his life. He tilted his head to better get his bearings; he felt unbalanced, without his hat or bandages, and somehow blinded by his regained sight. The stiff humidity of dawn made his ears ring. But amid the cicada buzz and dove song, the rest of the camp seemed to mill about undisturbed. Taking advantage of the easy hours before the Georgia heat turned everything queasy, the women set up to wash the clothes while the men tried to look busy. They had no idea what was coming, Carl thought.
“It was just a nightmare,” Carol soothed, but it seemed her daughter was as unimpressed as Carl was.
“Mama, but it felt so real. I was running through the woods. My feet hurt. I dropped my doll. I could feel her fall–I had to go back for her, but I wasn't supposed to…”
“You were supposed to stay by the creek bed,” Carl finished without thinking.
Sophia nodded. “How did you know that?”
Carl wished he knew where he was. Then maybe he'd have a response that was true, or at least honest. As it was, it was all he could do to answer as vaguely as possible. “I had the same dream.” His words washed over the camp, swallowing everything in their wake in a sticky film of unease.
“Well, that's something then,” Carol said, unfazed, sweeping her daughter’s hair back with a steady hand. “See? It's alright to be afraid. Everyone's in the same boat, baby.”
“Who saved me, in your dream?” Sophia asked, meeting his gaze head on.
Nobody, he thought. “My Daddy,” he said instead.
A vein jumped in Shane’s jaw, the only sign of life on his stony countenance.
“I’d believe the young’uns,” said Jim, wandering on by with a shovel. Sweating. “I've been having them dreams too.”
Carl's eyes were still locked on Sophia's, but her gaze was following that damn shovel.
"How many do you think there'll be this time?" He asked.
"Is zero too much to ask for?" Carl wanted to throw up. He was going to have to scratch the Heaven theory. And probably the Currently Dying theory too. The Dream theory was...plausible enough. So he'd wait until he and Sophia could be alone, and check if their stories lined up. If they did, then they would have to figure out if anyone else remembered too.
"Zero what, baby?" Carol asked.
"Squirrels," Sophia groaned.
"We wish Daryl would bring back anything but! I miss cheeseburgers," Carl grinned, realizing where this is going. In the months without Sophia, he'd nearly forgotten her best qualities, the things that made her such a great friend to him during a time when a friend was desperately needed. These qualities included a quick wit and an incredible poker face. Carl resolved to let her handle much of the lying in the future; he had a bad habit of mouthing off at people with weapons trained on him.
"Mmm," Carol smiled, looking relieved. "I miss fries."
"I miss ice cream," Carl continued, because he wanted to say something and because it was painfully true.
"I miss eating fries with ice cream," Sophia said, leaning into her mom. "At the diner around the corner from my school."
"What kind of ice cream?" he asked, trying to get her to cheer up some more.
"Hmm. Banana split. No, wait! Mint shake."
"Gross. I'd rather eat squirrel."
She chuckled, wiping at her cheeks. They looked dry to him, so she must have been trying to get at the salt that stuck there. In the morning light they looked almost like deep creases, or scars. It was like being stuck in a flip book with the transparencies all spliced together; like experiencing the infant and the elder all at once. Sophia had never seemed older than this, laughing at a joke she shouldn't have been able to understand. But now, having seen his own teenage face, and knowing none of those same marks on Sophia, she'd never looked more like a child.