Note: Okay, so is it just me or is Carl looking extremely scrumdiddlyumptious in season 7? ;)
I sat in the window bay seat, the dark purple curtains drawn up around me like a blanket as I peered out of the smudged glass. These men would take everything we owned, everything we'd worked so hard to build. It would all be gone in the blink of an eye. Just like my older brother, Glenn, had. I blinked back the tears that pricked my dark brown eyes in an attempt to push the memory away. But it never left my mind - even after days had passed.
It still kept me up at night. I squeezed my eyes shut and sighed before opening them and gazing out the window again. But that wasn't the matter at hand, today. No, it was about our livelihood and how it was being stolen. Stolen by him - Negan. That one word made jolts of fear run up my spine at all the prospects of what he could to us if we didn't obey him.
I was scared, sure but...I wanted to fight him. He had no right to take this from us. He had no right to be here at all. And now, as I peeked out through my safe haven of curtains, I noticed Negan sitting with Olivia...with a gun pointed to her head. It made my blood boil. This was our town, not his.
Why can't Rick just stand up to him already?! I thought to myself. I untangled myself from the drapes and shoved the material angrily back at the window. None of this was fair! A deep chuckle broke me from my reverie.
"What did that curtain ever do to you?" Carl laughed behind me.
His shaggy brown hair fell over his bandage, the ends just touching the shoulders of his plaid button-up shirt. A smirk was plastered across his face, sending butterflies flying around in my stomach. I turned away from him to glare back out the window. That was one thing that remained the same. Even after my grief had slightly subsided, my silence did not. I still hadn't talked to anyone after Glenn's death.
Not even my boyfriend, Carl. A sigh emitted from his lips but I stayed stock-still where I was. I heard his feet pad across the carpet and stop just behind me. His strong arms wrapped around my waist and he rested his cheek against my straight black tresses.
"Please talk to me," he mumbled, his voice muffled by my hair, "I need you to talk to me,"
This time, I was the one to sigh. I shook my head 'no'. I wasn't ready yet. I wasn't ready to get back to normalcy with Carl - to be happy again. Not without Glenn. I didn't deserve to be happy if he was gone.
Carl sighed as if he knew what I was thinking.
"It wasn't your fault, you know. It-" he started and cut himself off, trying to find the right words, "It wasn't anyone's fault but Negan's. Besides...Glenn would want you to be happy,"
I nodded and turned around in his arms to face him. Gazing up into his ocean-blue eye, I felt the sadness ebb away. I pushed a strand of his auburn-brown hair away from his eye and smiled for the first time since it had happened.
"I love you," I choked out, my voice raspy and dry from my long bout of silence.
Slowly, he began to smile. He leaned in close to me, his hair brushing across my forehead.
"I love you too," he whispered against my lips before pressing his own to mine.
Soft plump lips glided across mine and all reason left my mind. All of my reasons for keeping silent and not accepting life without Glenn slipped away. Carl was right. Glenn wouldn't want that for me - not for any of us. I broke away from Carl then and looked up at him.
"They need to die," I said, my voice suddenly turning hard, "They need to die for what they did,"
Carl nodded and intertwined our fingers.
"And they will. None of this will go unpunished. I know what dad says - that we need to play it safe and that there's no way out of this. But he's wrong. We're going to get revenge. For Glenn and for Abraham. They think we've backed down but we haven't. This is just the beginning. They're messing with the wrong people." Carl smirked before placing his lips back on mine.
"They're messing with the wrong people."
Those words resounded in my mind. He was right - they were. And we would get our revenge if that's the last thing we do.