So I'm just going to assume that 809 is going to joss this fic. I don't normally write codas or anything like this for that reason, but I HAD to write this. The past few weeks after 808 have been awful and I've known about the unconfirmed spoilers for like… What feels like forever, but I'm so sad and pissed at the same time. Anyway, this is my way to vent.

This is also my first TWD fic so idk if the characters feel IC. I tried to write this like how the characters speak but idek if it feels right.

I was literally crying as I wrote this. I'd write a few hundred words, start crying, stop, start again, cry some more, stop, start, cry again. Somehow I persevered...

Carl mustered the strength to lift the hat from where it had fallen beside him once that fever had hit full-force. Shakily, he placed it over his distraught father's head and used his hand to brush away streaks of tears from the man's face as the scene and what everything means finally hits Rick. He knows that the hat will probably end up buried with him or hung on his grave which is fine. The hat is just to emphasise these parting words to his father. Carl knows he only has minutes left and it's prudent that his father understand what he's telling him. No one else in this sewer is in the same mindset as Carl is, too focused on revenge for their own various reasons and even those that would agree with Carl aren't people Rick will listen to, really listen to. And they aren't here right here, right now.

"Carl… What…" He knows that his Dad knows what happened, but he clearly can't comprehend what he's seeing. Carl was more stunned than in pain after he felt the bite too, he gets it. It's been a few hours for him. Now he's just resigned. He doesn't want to and he's not ready to leave his family and Enid, but it's going to happen, just like he said on that wall. So now he's got to be strong and fearless as he leaves this world. His Dad needs him.

Carl gives him another sad smile. "It's okay Dad. I'm not scared. Like mom told me before she died, you've got to do what's right. If it feels wrong or easy, don't do it. It would have been easy to forget about him, but I couldn't leave him out there to die. You wouldn't, I know you wouldn't…. At least not…. The person you were before all this. Mom, she told me I'd beat this world. I thought it meant I'd survive this, maybe outlive you. But she didn't. I get it now. So I'm asking you Dad, to remember the way things were, who you were. And that world… show it to Judith, to Maggie's baby, to the kid you rescued from that outpost. That's what I want. A world where my sister isn't being taught that killing is the only option, where we aren't destroying ourselves as the walkers laugh at us. Promise me, Dad. That you won't act like you did after Mom… Judith and Michonne need you."

"I can't… I can't live without you. Not you. I won't do it"

"You couldn't protect me forever, Dad."

"I should've…"

"Going out of the walls, helping people, risking my life to protect everyone. You taught me to do that. I learned from you. You didn't fail me. You inspired me, to do what's right. I just wish you could remember what that is."

Growing weaker, he turned to the others in the sewer. Daryl handed him Judith. The redneck, his eyes and face streaked with tears, leaned down to press his lips into the boy's hair. Suddenly, holding his sister in his arms, it occurred to him that Judith was too young to remember him. She wouldn't know who Carl was, why that school teacher of Carl's was so important to her brother that the name had come to mind that day she was named, or how much he loved her. How much he would have sacrificed just so she could live.

Daryl must have sensed what he was thinking. Of course he did. He was a brother too. "She'll know ya. I promise. When this is over we'll make a statue and a holiday for ya, kid."

"I don't need that." Meanwhile, Rick seemed far away, as if he was somewhere else. Maybe he was.

"Don't matter, gettin' one anyway. Saved these people. You're a hero like your daddy."

"I'm not—"

"He's right." Rosita said.

Tara nodded in agreement. "Your plan saved us, saved everybody." Both women were holding back tears and Carl is struck by how much they've both lost over the past few months. Yet they're still enduring, both of them. He hopes Judith will be like them.

Dwight's looking away, as if trying to give the Alexandrians privacy in the fourteen-year-old's last minutes. Carl tries to get the man's attention. He slowly turns. "When I went to the Sanctuary. I saw what it was like, what he did to you, to your wife, to the others. I wanted to say I don't blame you. For anything,"

Dwight was quiet. Finally, he spoke, voice unsteady. "What? When i tackled you to the ground last month when you went out on your own like a little badass?" It gets a weak laugh out of the dying boy. Carl wonders if that was the idea. "It doesn't matter. It doesn't change anything. Your doctor. Rosita told me that she even saved your life once. I killed her." Tara looks at him and turns back to Carl. He sees anger in her eyes. Carl wonders if she's holding back because of him. Maybe…. Maybe his death will be worth it.

He's starting to get a headache from the fever and he thinks he hears his mother tell him she's proud of him, that it's okay to let go. He swears he sees Hershel and Beth and Glenn and Shane and Dale but the faces that appear to him are blurry. The hallucinations aren't helping the throbbing pain. He tries to focus on Daryl's quiet response to Dwight. "Got people killed too. Maggie's whole family. And Tara's like you, was just fighting on the wrong side. She's ours now. Family." Tara looks down, as if she just now remembered how she met the others in that sewer, people she thought as family.

Dwight's crying too. None of the Alexandrians had spent much time with him other than Daryl and Rosita. Maybe it was just the principle of it, something left over from the old world. Carl knows as much as he wants to deny it, he's only a kid and he's a kid dying in front of his parents—and yes, Michonne is his parent—and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Meanwhile, there's a war going on and he has no way of knowing if the people in the other communities are okay. Maggie, Carol, Enid…

Enid. She'll be devastated when she finds out. He can't remember if he wrote her a letter too or if he brought it with him in the satchel he had. Everything is a blur and his body is trying to lull him to sleep, but he knows if he gives in he won't wake up and he still has some more things to say to those still surrounding him. Especially…

He turns to Michonne. She's already lost one son and now she's losing a second. Carl knows that she's gone through too much already so asking her for this favour will hurt her. But he still asks, because he knows his dad. If he asks his father for this it'll break him, regardless of whatever promise he made to Carl. And Rick needs to be strong enough to fight the Saviours so that they can have their future, that new world that Judith and the others deserve to see.

"You're like a mom to me. Even before…" He glances at a sobbing Rick, indicating what he's referring to. "I… I'm glad Judith still has one. Never thought I'd get to say that." Through his fever he manages to register that Michonne and his dad are holding his hands on either side of him. He squeezes their hands gently, eyelids dropping. He forces them to stay open, but it's so hard to hold on when every part of his body is telling him to give in and rest. "So I need you to remember when I said I'd do it for you. I need someone to do it for me… So Dad doesn't have to." He'd do it himself but he's scared of shooting a gun when the Saviours are still looking for them. And he doesn't think he has the strength to pull the trigger. Everything is so unfocused that he barely sees Michonne's nod. She leans in to hug him. Using whatever strength he had left, he returned it gingerly with his free arm. "I love you Mom." He mutters, and he isn't sure if he's talking to the woman comforting him in his final minutes or the apparition of Lori that just reappeared, to help him let go. He remembers that he once told Carol that heaven wasn't real, but right now he wishes it was so he won't be alone. He doesn't say that.

Instead, he turns to Siddiq after Michonne pulls away. All he wants now is to drift off and let Lori carry him away, but he needs to keep going. "Once, I got someone killed. Or I thought I did. Dale, old guy with an RV. Ever since then… I've thought it was my fault. It wasn't. I realise that now. And this isn't yours, either. I don't want you to think that."

"It isn't." Carl stressed, when Siddiq still couldn't meet Carl, Rick, or Michonne in the eye. "Hey, I'm dying here." That got his attention. "You said something about helping the traveler? Well, I did that. I don't want to die, but if I knew what was gonna happen… Nothing would've changed. Because helping others… That's what we're supposed to do. We lost that somewhere." Carl was quiet for a bit and took a breath as he tried to fight the urge to close his eyes. It was futile at this point. He squeezed his Dad's hand with the strength he had as if to prepare him. He knew that it wouldn't work, but it made him feel better. "You said something at that gas station. My mercy prevails..."

"Over my wrath." Siddiq finishes.

"I like that." Carl says. his eyelids starting to droop as the fever makes him drowsy. He gives in this time, no fight left in him and he feels himself drift off into the unknown. With his remaining strength he repeats the phrase. "My mercy prevails over…. my…." His voice drops off before he can finish the prase and Dwight has to be the one to check his pulse because Rick and Michonne are just frozen in their tears. Dwight turns to Daryl, to Rosita, to Tara. The former Negan loyalist is crying with them as he shakes his head slowly.

And with that, the survivors think about Rick's brutal murder of the man who they think was Gracie's father, about the plan with the garbage truck, about Dwight and Daryl's feud, about that Saviour outpost they killed in their sleep, about Sherry leaving because of the person Dwight became, about Morales and that kid who surrendered, about Rick and Daryl's fight, about Rosita shooting Lucille and going rogue before the war, about selling out Oceanside and stealing their weapons. About how the motivation for this war has become purely vengeance for Denise, for Abraham, for Glenn, for Spencer, for Olivia, for Sasha.

It shouldn't have been about that. They should have been fighting for something they can change. The future, the lives of the children who are forced to live in this world. Judith, Gracie, Henry, Enid, Carl. Even Rachel from Oceanside. They lost sight of that. If they hadn't maybe Rick would've helped Siddiq at that gas station. Maybe Carl wouldn't have gone out. Maybe he wouldn't have gotten bit.

Rick, wallowed in grief, gets it now. It's too late. Now his child is dead. The future, the one person he never wanted to fail. His main motivation to survive in this world. The one thing left from his old life. And it's all because of him. No one can do or say anything to change that.

Michonne somehow finds the strength in her to pull her son—yes, Carl is her son—close to her chest as she tries not to let her mind drift from Carl to Andre and back. She has to be strong enough to do this. She promised. She'll collapse in grief later when she can let herself think about it. She'll probably close herself off yet again. Because it hurts too much, but right now she can't think or feel about anything at all or she won't be able to stab the end of her blade into the back of this teenager's head to honour his last wish. And that's all she can do now.

Once the seven of them and the rest of the Alexandrians finally crawl out from sewer. Dwight, Tobin, Rosita, and Tara dig a grave. They don't want to bring his body to Hilltop. He deserves to be buried in Alexandria, the community he just saved from certain death. They owe him that. Michonne pulls Judith from Daryl's arms just so she can feel something as she watches Rick carry his son. The pre-Alexandria group think it's eerily similar to watching Daryl carrying Beth out of Grady, like the light at the end of the tunnel had been extinguished. Maybe it has.

"Don't be an idiot." Rosita says to Siddiq after he mentions that he should leave. He can't watch this knowing how much he's hurt this group. "Carl died saving you. That makes you one of us, whether you like it or not. Whether we like it or not." He stares at her for a few seconds, looks at the teenager being buried by his father and nods slowly. The kid died helping him, the traveler, to bring him back to these people and give him shelter. And he'll honour that, no matter how reserved he is about causing any more grief for this group who he thinks just lost everything.

Rick steps back and let's the others cover Carl's body. Dammit. The one person he never wanted or even expected to have to watch this for. He'd let the world burn for this kid… but he has a war to win. As he tries to find a way to keep a grip on reality, to keep himself from collapsing and letting the world just have him—at this point he almost feels like surrendering to Negan just so he doesn't have to watch this—he finds himself uttering the words Carl had said in his final breaths. "My mercy prevails over my wrath."

And he remembers his reasons for being a cop, the ideals he wanted to pass on to Carl and somehow succeeded in doing so even in this harsh world.

He remembers what he was like before this.

He remembers his purpose.

I might write a cracky "alternate ending" filled with fourth wall breaking with my favourite OC to make up for this angst. Carl won't die in that version, whatever happens in it. Or maybe he'll just become a warm bodies type walker and play out his comic storylines. Idk. Maybe I'll write both of those versions.