Title: Something Along the Way
Summary: And one day we may find heaven.
Character(s): Carl Grimes, various, others mentioned
Notes: Terrible summary is terrible. First TWD fic, so please leave some concrit! Post-series, potentially AU. Off-screen character death. Title from "Tonight" by Kings of Leon, as is the following quote.
Disclaimer: Characters/TWD are not mine!
I don't know
just what is leading me
or if time is on my side
He doesn't feel like he's twenty years old.
At least, he thinks that's how old he is. It could be a little older—probably is, and regardless, no one looks their age any more. Beth, only a few years older than him, looks older than Maggie ever did.
That observation sends a cold feeling through his gut, and Carl straightens up from where he's got two feet firmly planted on the rotted wooden fence that he's had to fix who-knows-how-often. Next to him, Beth sits on the moist wood, both of them watching Judith roll around in the field before them. It's spring, and he is almost positive his sister is nine years old; Beth agrees with him, on the days their conversations are less about surviving and more about living. Those are few and far between, however. He won't let it be.
It's been that way for a good five winters, since Rick—Dad—threw himself in between a bullet and Carl.
Carl doesn't remember much besides screaming at his bleeding father before shooting the man who did it between the eyes. He did the same for Rick, too, and the only noise that ever makes it past that final flicker of memory is Judith's cries.
Tyreese was the last to go; that might have been thanks to Carol, who lost her own life saving his from a horde that had them cornered. Rick had been dead two winters by then. Daryl wasn't right for a long time after that, and six seasons after Carol went—longer than Carl or Beth had expected—he sacrificed himself to make sure the someone got Judith, always called Lil' Asskicker by the man, somewhere safe. Tyreese didn't die with glory, didn't die saving anyone. At least, not that they know of. Went out hunting one day and never came back, had left before the sun had risen; Michonne went out to look for him and when she returned she was covered in black blood, only shook her head when Beth asked. Judith knew better than to mention anything at that point, maybe seven years old already with eyes like Michonne had had, when they first met her, those long years ago.
She's out there—refuses to leave Judith with just one of them. No one knew how to feel about the idea of safety in numbers, not when there was so little left in the world. So they take turns; Michonne out hunting or Carl and Beth, together. Michonne was teaching Judith how to use a knife, Beth, a crossbow. It's the only useful thing of Daryl's they have left, besides a tattered wing from his vest that they use to wrap the aforementioned weapon with. There aren't as many walkers left, if they're being honest, but there's enough to have kept them on the move fairly regularly.
They've been settled in West Virginia since Tyreese went down, though, their first winter in what was once Sissonville just mild enough for them to scrape by. Beth's already started the garden, Judith eager to help, while Michonne finishes up the renovations on the roof. Carl feels the wood beneath him squelch, bending slightly underneath his weight, and makes note to fix it again. Before him is wilderness, sloping hills making a beautiful view. They're set high on a hill, fenced off though it may be, and Beth, in between her household chores, shoots an occasional walker using the crossbow from the porch. Michonne's usually the one to pull out the arrows, given how Beth can't quite deal with inclines anymore. Her ankle never healed right after the horror that was at Terminus, so besides the nasty limp she has there's an ache that comes with the wet winters.
Sometimes, when they aren't so caught up in themselves, she'll let Carl rub the pain away with his thumbs, will stroke his hair as if they had ever had a chance in the first place. Carl had his first—and only—woman far too young and he isn't sure if Beth ever had a man; but he remembers her boyfriends and the way her eyes would flash between the men of their group, always on edge. He doesn't know what it means, but sometimes when she lets him sit near her, he can pretend that they could have had a life worth living, in a different lifetime.
"Judith," Beth calls out, and it pulls him out of his reverie. He glances down at her, then to where Judith has looked up from playing in the grass. They're past the perimeter of their home, but from this vantage point there's nothing but green, nothing but an abandoned town to look at. "It's time to make dinner," Beth says, and begins the arduous effort of standing up. His sister bounds towards them, easy, and Carl thinks about playing at playgrounds with his father, of his mother's mashed potato recipe, of Shane playing catch with him. Shuts that thought process down, quick.
Meanwhile, Judith climbs over the fence back onto their land, waiting nearby to catch Beth's hand as she does the same, albeit with less speed. They carefully make their way around the house, ever mindful of Beth's ankle. Carl, still half turned towards them, makes a final sweep of the hills before jumping down from the fence himself. He ignores the beauty of the sunset, the light casting shadow as he walks back around the house.
Michonne walks in as Carl is helping himself to raw ramps, ignoring Judith's huffs with a smirk he's pretty sure he learned from Shane. Time has healed most wounds from before their time in Terminus, except maybe regarding the life that Carol had led before everything. She's hard to think about, no matter the circumstance, and so Carl for one tries not to.
He tries not to think about a lot of things.
"What's cooking?" Michonne says, smiling, and she's got both hands behind her back. Judith looks up at her from where she and Beth are counting peas, preparing dinner while also getting their daily lessons in. Carl usually practices her math with her, Beth spelling, and Michonne history. The latter's lessons end up teaching everyone else, too, but Beth has the best understanding of science out of everyone, especially considering how long she'd been on the farm. Without her, Carl's sure they'd have starved; there was only so much he grasped while they were in the prison.
"Whatcha got?" Judith says, smiling right back at Michonne. She's missing a single canine, and it breaks Carl's heart in all sorts of ways to be the one to watch her grow up.
"You tell me," Michonne says, still not showing them the game she's caught. He sees red flesh peaking out from the bundle of plastic Michonne's got it wrapped in, and Judith opens her mouth just as his stomach growls.
Beth gives him a funny look and he just shrugs. Michonne shakes her head at him, as amused by his antics as she's always been, before she says to Judith, "Giving up so easily?"
"No!" Judith exclaims, "Um. Is it. A bird?"
"Nope," Michonne says, and Carl wonders if they're getting blood on the floor, "anything else?"
Judith ponders over this for a moment, no doubt trying to remember what their last meat-including meal had been: two rabbits that Beth had snared just past the fence a few days before. She's been talking about looking for snakes, lately, and given how much fuller the protein makes everyone feel, Carl's been thinking over the idea far more seriously than he would have if, say, they had more ways of hunting.
"Possum?" Judith says after a moment, and Michonne positively glows. She raises both arms to brandish the aforementioned meat at them, her hands expertly pulling the plastic back with one tug. It's skinned already. Judith grins again; she's a smiley child, usually happy, though Carl fears the moodiness that gripped him when he was just a few years older. Granted, puberty is supposed to be a struggle, which combined with the death of the nation probably only exacerbated that period of his life, but Carl worries anyway.
"Yum," Beth says, only half sarcastic, and pushes back from the seat she's in to grab a knife for Carl. He stands up, taking the animal from Michonne while she steals a ramp for herself. This time Beth gives her a look, which she shrugs off with a roll of her shoulders.
"Hunting builds up an appetite, Miss Greene," she says, before tucking herself behind Judith, whose standing rather than sitting in one of the three chairs inside the house. Only two are matches, but the third is far more comfortable. Beth only ever relinquishes it to Judith; otherwise, it's first-come-first-serve. Carl likes making Judith huff with anger; it reminds him of Lori, lets him know there's a piece of her in the world that doesn't make him sick to think about. She looks more like Rick, though, her eyes having lightened to the same shade of blue and her hair as dark as his had been. But she's got Lori's smile. Beth's even said so.
Carl mulls over what's left of their group as he slices meat off the opossum's body. He's the last of the original Atlanta group. Beth from the farm, Michonne from Woodbury, Judith from the prison. All of them from Terminus, not that it saved Glenn that day. Or Maggie, a year later, after she'd lost the baby and saved Beth from yet another rogue group that tried to take them. The living were who should be feared.
He wonders if Bob and Sasha ever made it past the mess that was DC; by then, their group had been saying goodbye to Abraham, even if Rick didn't want to. Things were tough, and the times start to blend together if Carl thinks over it. He doesn't like to talk about the past anymore. When Daryl was—before Carol—when they'd been reunited, briefly, Beth and Daryl had been able to spend hours together just talking, Carl watching from afar. Carol would look at them with something just a bit stronger than fondness, would wrap an arm or two around the younger woman as she relearned to use her right foot. Judith had learned to crawl, and to walk.
They'd been a family.
Now, all that's left was Carl and Judith, Beth and Michonne. He can't think about the circumstances that lead the others into and out of his life; he can only admit that they existed, briefly, and now they didn't. Won't think about what they learned from each other. Their deaths are just facts, just a part of life that is inevitable. Like everything else they've come to know.
The only one to ever smile so freely was the youngest of them, and Carl couldn't begrudge her that. She hadn't seen what turned them into the people they were now—at least, she couldn't remember it. He's glad for it. Tyreese had mentioned something about—what was it—Lizzie, from the prison, and it was just terrible, to think of Judith there to witness it, to hear it.
Carl heads out towards the side of the house, so he can put the meat out to smoke. It should be good by morning, maybe lunch. There's maybe five pounds of meat; Carl does bad math in his head to decide that lunch is probably the best option, and by the time he's back inside the cabin the sun is halfway past the horizon. Michonne has just started her history lesson in the kitchen, but Beth is in what was once the sitting room, now converted into a half-bedroom for whoever's on watch at night. There's a gasoline lamp sitting near her, and he sees the tattered cover of a book in her hands. He can't quite decipher the title, and he worries about needing glasses for a half-second before Beth shifts, setting the book aside in order to sit up.
"You wanna sit?" she says, motioning to the space next to her, and Carl doesn't bother answering, just walks over and plops right next to her. She moves just a bit, so they're not falling into one another, before just tilting her head to watch him.
Carl rubs a palm over his jaw, where he can feel the stubble coming in. "What d'you need?" he says when they've been sitting in silence, Michonne's voice occasionally interrupted by Judith's questions in the next room over.
"Nothing," Beth says, and then, when Carl raises his eyebrows at her, "do you think we can settle here?"
Carl scratches at his neck, says, "I thought we already had." Beth looks unimpressed.
"Carl," she says, like she would if she were scolding Judith, "this isn't a home."
"It's as good as we've got," he says, a bit hurt. He shifts, just so that they're better facing each other. Beth doesn't look any younger in this low light, and he can already see the hint of gray strands that are beginning to show up. Ten years of death will do that to a person, he figures, and wonders what he looks like. There are no mirrors in the home, save for one in the bathroom that's slick with dust and grime. No one's had the heart to clean it off yet, and no one will until maybe Judith demands to see her reflection. Even then, they're content to use murky mirrors when getting water from the river.
"I know that," Beth says, "but we can make this better."
"We've been here all winter," Carl says, "and it'll be our second summer."
"I know," Beth says, "that doesn't mean we gotta keep acting like death is out the door."
Carl just looks at her. She lets air out through her nose, glances towards the kitchen. "Carl Grimes," she says seriously, voice low, "we have been acting like nothing but starving animals since—since the—since Terminus." He winces; she does, a little, too. No one likes to be reminded of what came after the prison fell. The before is okay. It's what happened as they fell apart that makes everyone try to forget. Or, it would, if there were anyone else left.
He says, "We're alive, aren't we?" and Beth shoots back, quick, "We sure as hell ain't living!"
Carl stares at her, trying to keep his voice as low as hers. "What's there to live for, Beth?" Carl demands, "There still isn't anything alive besides us and maybe—maybe—other survivor's besides us. That's not even a close to a guarantee."
"It doesn't have to be," she snaps, "but we're sitting here taking it day by day instead of—"
"What else do we do?" Carl says, and he hears Michonne pause for a split second before continuing her lesson just a bit louder. No doubt Beth's already spoken to her about this, but he can never be sure with Beth. Or himself, most days.
"Live," she says, "that's all I'm saying." He shakes his head at her.
"I don't understand—"
"Carl," she interrupts, "just listen. Let's. Let's do what we did with the prison. Build a home here. We can't stop being prepared, no, but we can make life a little enjoyable. Let loose a little bit."
"There's three of us," Carl says, mouth slow to shape the words, "and Judith. I can't let my guard down, ever. I've got to keep her safe."
"Like we don't?" Beth says, "Carl, I'd lay down my life to keep any one of you safe, and the only reason I'm cooped up taking care of Judith day in and day out is because of this damned ankle. Carl," she says seriously, and she keeps saying his name, like she's trying to keep his attention, "Carl, you've got to let go."
"Of what?" he says, pulling away from her. She just shakes her head at him.
"We don't have to keep fighting," she says, "it's not us against the world."
"No," he says, "but it's us against the walkers, and that's a hell of a lot scarier than anything else. We've been living like this for years, Beth," he says, pauses; "and it's barely given us a life to live. What are we supposed to do, stop shooting them down? Try to have fun? Be friends?"
"We can't live in fear," she says fiercely, "we can't hide away and become living—we can't just live to die, Carl. You're so caught up with what's happened, with what happened to Ri—"
"Isn't that the point of living?" Carl says, and his voice is colder than he means for it to be. At least, he thinks it is. He can't let her say their names, won't let her remind him of everything they've lost. Can't give it meaning. "What's the point of all this, if not to just die? We've seen it happen. We're just waiting for it. There is no point, there never has been."
"You don't really believe that," Beth says, real quiet, and she's probably thinking of her father, of her sister, the little baby that never made it to term. The words won't come.
"Christ," he finally says, and then walks back out the door under the guise of a final perimeter check.
By the time he gets back in the sun is completely set. He's marked all the points of weakness he finds in the fence, and decides to start fixing them immediately the next day. Judith is done with her lesson and sitting with Beth, listening with rapt attention while a story is read to her. Carl ducks into the kitchen, where Michonne sits in the most comfortable of the three chairs, the old table clear of food and whatever other props she uses when she's teaching Judith. It seems like she loves learning, but given that her "schooling" is absolutely nothing like what Carl ever experienced, well. It's all variable these days.
Michonne motions to the seat opposite her with her chin, and Carl takes the seat graciously, legs splayed to mirror her position.
"Fence alright?" she asks him, and he says, "Decent. I'll start to switch out the bad sections tomorrow morning," and she nods approvingly.
"We got enough lumber for that?"
"Think so," he says, picks at the table with his thumb. They sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes. The house smells just the slightest bit humid; they'll have to open up the door for a couple hours in the morning, else Beth will have more trouble than usual. Sometimes, Carl swears his joints are swelling on him earlier than they should be. Michonne just says it's the price to pay for living.
"She's right, you know," she says now, and Carl looks away from the table to glance at her face. She, like Beth, seems to be going a bit gray, but it's hard to tell with her dreadlocks. She's as pretty as when they first met, though, still as close to a best friend as he's ever had. If it weren't for her, they'd have all been dead a lot earlier. He doubts she really needs them, wonders why she's still around. She says, "You listening, Grimes?" and he shakes his head, trying to clear his mind.
"What are you two talking about?"
She sighs, cracks her jaw. "People have died, Carl," she says, and he thinks of Sophia, Maggie, Tyreese. "Do you see what you're doing?" she says, "You're not living anymore, you're just surviving. That's fine for you, sweetheart," and she smiles a little. He remembers the flash of her teeth as they walked on train tracks; "but your sister deserves more. Beth deserves more. I wouldn't mind a happier home."
"This is our home," he says, and she shakes her head at him, looking grave.
"This is a house," she says, "that we are living in. But you don't seem to be living here with us, Carl."
"What the hell are—" he says, voice not without heat but mostly clouded with confusion.
"Listen to me," Michonne says, and she leans forward, an elbow on each knee. She chuckles a bit. "Do you get it?" she says, "they're dead. They're all dead, and even if they aren't, there's nothing we can do. I need you to be here, in the now, if not for Judith then for yourself."
"Everything's for Judith," he says after a solid minute of silence, and his voice is a croak. She looks so much like Lori.
"I know," she says, voice soft, "but you've got to live, with us, with me and Judith and Beth. We're alive," she says, and reaches out, shakes him by the knee. "We're okay. But you need to be too."
"I—" he starts, and she shakes her head at him.
"Did you cry?" she says, "when your father went down? I saw you shoot him the way you did the man who shot him."
Carl doesn't say anything.
"When Glenn—or Maggie, or Carol, or all the other people who have been taken from us—did you let yourself grieve, Carl?" she says, and she's still gazing softly at him.
"Did you?" he says, anger coloring his tone even as he feels himself turn cold, "When your—when—"
But she knows what he's saying, shakes her head. "Not for a long time," she says, "and it barely kept me alive. You know that. You saw that."
"Michonne," he says, and the breath in his voice is weak. She sits up, starts moving closer.
"They're gone, Carl," she says, "they're gone and we can't lose you to the past. We've got to learn, and we've got to use that knowledge. You need to use it."
He takes a breath that rattles in his lungs, looks down. Feels the tears well up, and just as Michonne wraps an arm around his shoulders they fall. He shakes.
"It's okay," he hears Michonne say, and all he can imagine are Carol's shouts, Glenn saying Maggie's name, Sophia's growls. Remembers Christmas with Rick the year he got the best bike available, the day Daryl taught him how to skin a rabbit, Hershel refusing to hide from the disease. Patrick with an arm around his shoulder, Karen smiling brightly during dinner, Merle trying to get the group's attention.
He thinks of family, and it doesn't feel like he's lying to himself when he does.
The sun is barely rising when he gets up the next morning. Beth is asleep in one of the rooms with Judith, Michonne on the second watch. She's silent as he moves through the living area. He doesn't say anything, either, before moving aside the tiny barricade that they use in lieu of lock. The original one had been too rusted to serve anything by the time they got to the cabin; Beth hitched up with twine and rope to make a pseudo-lock, and every night she and Judith block it with pieces of lumber and jangling pieces of plastic and metal. It's a decent warning system, if nothing else, and Michonne just watches as he carefully moves everything back to its original spot, taking a few tools out with him when he finally moves onto the porch.
The sky is slowly shifting from its purples to the pink streaks of morning, and Carl pauses for a moment, hands on his hips. His jeans are caked with dirt and not much else; no walkers for miles, hopefully. The pocket of his flannel is hard to the touch though, and he presses a palm to it, the browning photo of a family before Judith. He wonders, for a second, if she'll ever ask what their parents looked like, before bending to grab the lumber and knife, mind a thousand miles away even as he makes the fence safe once more—for Judith, if for no one else.
A/N: Guessing Carl was around twelve, thirteen years old when Judith was born, and so is about twenty or twenty one years old at this point. Using this guesstimation, Beth is about twenty four or so, and Michonne roughly ten years older. I honestly have no idea how old anyone is at this point; Danai Gurira is flawless though. This is terrible and I'm sorry I just wanted some gen!TWD fic augh.