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C A R L

CARL GRIMES ALWAYS THOUGHT that he knew better than to find comfort in this world. The boy lived easily under the premise that nothing good could ever last, so he shouldn't ever expect it to. But the boy was facing every emotional repercussion of getting too comfortable, as he stared down at an unconscious Alice.

With the help of the antibiotics scavenged from the nearby college, she was going to be just fine. Hershel told the boy that her body had been under a lot of stress from the intubation, and that she needed lots of rest for the medicine to work. She'd not been awake for over a day, but the boy continued to watch as her labored chest rose and fell.

Carl secretly wished that the guilt of knowing what happened to Alice's father was the only thing keeping him waiting anxiously by her bedside, but it wasn't. For whatever reason, he desperately wanted her to be okay.

Ever since the girl had lost consciousness yesterday, going limp between his gloved fingers, Carl did everything in his power to aid the situation. That included sneaking Hershel back to his ripened elderberry bush and mowing down a horde of walkers with his father.

Part of the boy was relieved that he'd been too preoccupied witness Hershel intubate Glenn and Alice. But the other part of him felt responsible for everything that'd happened to her.

Carl nearly felt silly for allowing himself to take a liking to the girl. She wasn't so bad after all, and he hated that. He hated that he didn't hate her anymore. And he hated that the girl would soon hate him, again, when she would eventually find out the truth about her father.

The same cycle of thoughts continued to run through the boy's mind as he anxiously awaited her opening eyes for several layers of reasons. But no matter what would happen to him—to them—when she would awake, Carl would just be happy that she ever woke up at all.

The boy sat on the table in the girl's cell, his hands fidgeting with her gun and his lower legs dangling, slightly kicking back and forth. But as his emotions became too much, his kicking feet came to a stop and he ran his tongue over his lower lip.

"I'm sorry." Carl quietly spoke, slowly dropping his gun-wielding hands into his lap. He knew that she couldn't hear him, but he still meant it anyways. "None of this should've ever happened."

Of course nothing bad should ever happen, but that wasn't what Carl was talking about. He should've never happened to her.

Maybe if he hadn't taken her to visit Elliot, she wouldn't have gotten exposed to the illness. Maybe if he'd helped her father, he'd be right here holding his daughter's limp hand through all of this. But instead, after the demise of everyone she'd ever loved, all she was left with was Carl Grimes. He was the one who was undoubtedly there for her, whatever that entailed.

"We could've helped him." The boy sucked in a breath, letting the rim of his hat droop to block his view of Alice. "If I would've known, I never would've—" He trailed off. "You guys could've been here that entire time. You and Elliot wouldn't have had to ration your water—to even have to live at Woodbury."

"Which reminds me," Carl's eyes wandered to his side, glancing over at the full bottle of water that he planned on dripping into the girl's open mouth. That was supposed to have been Hershel's job, but Carl figured that he might as well go ahead since the man had been out with Michonne since early that morning.

Letting out a sigh, the boy grabbed the water bottle from the table, replacing it with the girl's gun. He gently swung his hips from the table, his boots landing on the floor with a low thud. Kneeling next to her bedside, the boy glanced over at her for a few seconds, gripping the sealed cap as he prepared to open the bottle.

He rolled his eyes. "I wish you would just wake up already so you could go back to hating m—"

As if it were a sign from the universe, the cell block briefly but forcefully shook as something loud enough to make Carl's heartbeat quicken echoed out from the front of the prison. Unsettled dust rained down from the ceiling of the corridor, stirring up even more of the boy's wariness.

With a few moments of hesitation, the boy placed the unopened bottle of water down on the floor before taking a reassuring glance at the sleeping girl and heading towards the source of the noise.

☆

As the prison ripped at the seams, Carl's mind seemed to travel where no one else's had. The impromptu plan was for all of the children as well as the sick people to be moved onto the bus. But as the boy hopped up the bus steps and peered down the aisles of coughing people and scared kids, he failed to spot someone who fit in both of those categories: Alice Dunlap.

The boy took a few more overwhelmed glances before turning around and jumping over the steps, back down onto the concrete. He was only a few inches away from taking down both Glenn and Maggie, as the woman hobbled towards the bus steps underneath Glenn's arm.

"Where's Alice?" Carl asked a frantic Maggie. The woman had obviously just come from cell block D, where she went to retrieve Glenn. For a few moments, he received no response as she continued to stare at him with widened eyes. "Where is she?" He demanded.

"I—I don't know." She stammered, moving past Carl and helping Glenn up the bus steps. "Beth was supposed to get the kids."

"She isn't here." Carl shook his head.

Maggie lost all expression in her face, as she turned around, looking to the boy. "What?"

"Beth isn't on the bus!" The boy shook his head, once more, bouncing to a start before running towards the prison. Maggie seemed to have barely heard his words as she turned back around and shoved her way onto the bus, in order to see for herself.

Dodging bullets and narrowly avoiding running into panicking people, the boy made his way into cell block D. He covered his mouth and nose with the collar of his shirt, sheltering his shaky breath from the gunpowder-scented ash in the air.

Carl's eyes scanned every face of the people that ran by him, hoping to find one to be Alice. But as he quickly found himself standing alone in the desolate cell block, he knew that the girl's safety was in anybody else's hands but her own.

Upon glancing to her cell at the end of the corridor, Carl Grimes realized that he and an unconscious Alice were not alone.

He'd barely managed to spot one of the dead creep its way into her open cell—his boots thudding against the floor as he bolted across the cell block. Before he knew it, the boy was breathing in ash as he took fistfuls of the back of the walker's shirt, just before it lurched over Alice's body. He tossed the dead out of the cell, grabbing the girl's gun off of her side table and sending a round into its head before it could stabilize itself.

The walker was fresh. It'd just been killed—presumably during everything that had been going on. Its skin was still warm, and it lacked the typical deathly odor, not having been dead long enough to begin decaying.

Carl allowed himself a few rushed breaths, before he shoved Alice's gun in his back pocket and advanced towards the unconscious girl. The flustered boy stared down at her before kneeling at her side.

He let his hands quickly feel the skin of her face, making sure that she was still warm and alive—untouched from the walker that'd almost made her into a meal. He was relieved upon the normal temperature radiating from her skin, sucking in a breath before standing to his feet. Carl quickly looked the girl up and down, trying to figure out what to do.

"C'mon," With no time to make the decision, the boy began ripping the sheets from her body. "We're going to get you out of here."

Once the dirtied sheets were pulled to her knees, he put one arm under her shoulder-blades and the other under her knees, beginning to pick her up. She was only a foot or so above the mattress before the boy realized that this was not going to work.

As gently as he could, he let her limp body sink back into the mattress. "Damn it."

Carl stood to his feet, sending his gaze traveling around every inch of the cell, trying to find any other way to get her out of there. Seconds continued to pass, every single one of them being more dire than the last. That was until the boy let out a sigh, as he caught sight of something shiny on one of the staircase steps, out in the corridor: the set of keys to cell block D.

Unless the girl were to wake up right this instant, Carl Grimes knew what he had to do.

He knelt by her side, once again, projecting his hushed voice right next to her face. "If you're going to wake up, you have to do it now."

For a few seconds, the boy watched her with wide eyes. Nothing. He slowly stood to his feet, not tearing his gaze away from her.

"Come on," Carl quietly willed the girl—feeling as though she could somehow sense his urgency. "We have to go, now!"

Only allowing himself a split second of remorse, Carl took one last exasperated glance at the girl, before reaching into his back pocket and retrieving her gun. He hastily placed it on the floor of her cell, returning it to the girl with one less bullet in the cylinder.

Carl then ran into the corridor, taking ahold of the set of keys. He gripped onto them as he swung the girl's cell door closed, hearing it churn as it locked. The boy gripped the bars, roughly jiggling them to make sure that the door could not be reopened.

Once it was established that the cell was locked, he tossed the set of keys through the bars, watching as they slid along the floor, slowing to a stop right in front of the girl's gun. Leaving the girl with nothing but a bottle of water, a weapon and a barrier from the dead, Carl Grimes had no choice but to turn his back to the cell block.

The boy made his exit while carrying nothing but the heavy bit of knowledge that the only thing that could save Alice Dunlap had become herself.

☆

One grueling day sulking in his own anger was what Carl Grimes needed to get over himself. While that was challenging enough, there were several things that the boy knew he would never get over.

Many of his loved ones fell with the prison—Judith in particular. As for everyone else, they were as good as dead. Even if they weren't dead, it wasn't like the boy would ever see them again. The unknown, however, was what made Carl the angriest.

Alice Dunlap's whereabouts were the driving force of the boy's turmoil. For the most part, he knew who made it out alive and who didn't. But what he didn't know is if Alice was alive, if she was still asleep, if she was dead or if she'd somehow made it out of there.

The worst part of it all was that his own curiosity was no one else's fault but his. He left the girl. He couldn't carry her. He couldn't wake her up.

His self-blaming had displayed itself through a temporary resentment towards his bloodied father. While Carl didn't agree with the way Rick had been putting off his responsibility as the leader, the boy now understood how awful it felt to have someone else's safety in his hands—to let someone down. He'd let down Hershel, Judith, Alice, and anyone else that he'd lost.

To Carl's own surprise, the girl had now become someone to lose—someone to him. And now she was gone, pending a bodily miracle.

It felt somewhat nice to the boy to dig his spoon into his dry bowl of cereal, sitting alongside his father, after seeming to have wrapped up all of his disturbing thoughts into a neat, metaphorical bow. He now understood the simple fact that he was feeling things, and that acknowledging his feelings was the first step to navigating his pile of losses that would only continue to deepen.

A short, rhythmic knock on the door broke through what was once Carl's clarifying thoughts. The noise sent Carl's gun flying into his grip, and his father's gaze peering through the eye hole of the front door.

The concern in Carl's demeanor only intensified as Rick's immediate reaction to whoever was on the other side was anything but intense. The man slid down the door, landing atop the cushion of the couch as he let out wheezy laughs that Carl could only perceive as relief.

The boy tilted his head. "What?"

"It's for you."

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2254 words
March 21, 2023
11:08 PM

A/N

no bc like where was carl and wtf was he even doing during 4x8 when Rick was looking for him? like he disappeared after Hershel got chopped? he was DEF canonically looking for Alice xoxo

another short chapter while Alice and carl are somewhat separated ! and we get to see what really happened while Alice was having that dream :P I originally didn't have this chapter planned but I knew it needed to be done bc how cute is this?

their reunion is next chapter I PROMISE

also I'm itching to get to season 5... ITCHING !! bc I have so many edits made for the end of s4 that I refuse to post bc I don't want to spoil. I'm BEYOND excited for you guys to see what I have planned. it's so different from my other fic so it's really refreshing to write AAAAAAAHH

☆leave a vote if you blinked while reading this chapter☆