BLOODLETTING PART 1

Natasha broke through the treeline, right under the sun's glaring rays that momentarily blinded her. She looked panicked and breathless, sweating right through her shirt with her jacket nowhere to be seen. She fixed her eyes on a field out in front of her and saw a white farmhouse standing on the other side.

"Is that it? Is that it!" Natasha screamed at Otis as Rick rushed past her, carrying his limp son in his arms that was wrapped in Natasha's jacket.

"That…that's it. Hershel! Talk to Hershel! He'll help your boy!" Otis, the hunter that accidentally shot Carl, was out of breath and wheezing from how much running they had to make to get here. Shane wasn't going easy on him either and was forcing him to his feet each time he fell, shoving him forwards to continue running.

Rick proceeded to run through the field as his lungs burned and legs wobbled. His face was flushed red and tears and panicked swelled up in his eyes as he struggled to hold Carl's limp body close to him. He ran straight for the house just in time to see people flood out and step onto the front porch. There were at least three women and two men. One of which was elderly.

"Was he bit?" the elderly one asked first, already assessing the situation before Rick even got to the front steps.

"Shot, by your man," Rick said in a single short breath. He was nearly out of strength when this family stepped down and ran up to him. "He said to find Hershel. Is that you?" he asked, practically begging and crying all over again. "Help me! Help my boy."

The family helped Rick and Carl inside just as Natasha finally caught up. Shane and Otis were only a couple of feet behind her when she slowed her pace just before getting to the front steps, not yet daring to go inside. Natasha didn't want to see what had become of Carl. Dead or in agony. Instead, she just walked up the first couple of steps and listened to the voices inside the house, scrambling about and trying to gather all they could in a short window.

It was a couple of minutes later when Rick finally stepped back outside. He was by himself but held Natasha's blood-soaked jacket in his hands.

Natasha bit down on her lips and approached carefully. "Is he alive?" she dared ask, studying Rick's catatonic face that was covered in his own son's blood. He said nothing to her though and didn't even look her in the eyes when he gave her back her jacket. Her fingers coiled around the fabric, and she immediately flinched when she felt warm blood. It was so jarring that she accidentally dropped it on the floor. "Rick," she said again, but like before, he was silent.

Rick tried to rub the sweat off his brow but ended up only smearing blood on his face. Warm and slick blood. Carl's blood. Rick still didn't even react, and his eyes appeared hollow and dark. Like the lights were off in his head and no one was home. He probably didn't even realize that he was painted in red.

Shane finally caught up after a second and slowly walked up the steps towards Rick. He was gentle with his words as he took out a cloth and began to wipe the blood off Rick's face. "It's okay. It's okay," he whispered and gave the rag to him.

Rick blinked somewhat of a conscious back into his eyes and stared down at his hands. He acted like he wanted to say something, but the grief came out faster than the tears. He held the rag tightly in his hands and turned to head back inside, Shane and Otis following close behind. Natasha was going to head in with them but stopped abruptly. She held back and just stared at the doorway that appeared more like a spiraling pit of endless darkness. She blinked a couple of times, but it just didn't go away, and the sounds from inside were only getting louder and more incohesive. Wicked and maddening. The illusion and sounds only stopped though when she looked to the ground, staring right at her green jacket that was covered in blood. Soundless…but no less suffocating.

"Suffocating out here…suffocating in there. It really doesn't matter." Natasha tightened her jaw before heading inside the house, which was no longer abyss-like.

"You know his blood type?" she heard Hershel ask.

"A-positive. Same as mine," Rick answered weakly.

"That's fortunate. Don't wander far. I'm gonna need you." He looked back towards Otis. "What happened?"

"Your man was tracking a buck, I'm sure," Natasha answered for them while walking into the room. Her eyes glanced over to Carl and shuddered a bit when she saw how pale his body was. In Natasha's eyes, it looked like that bullet had de-aged him somehow, making him look smaller than he actually was. He looked closer to nine years old instead of twelve. "Carl was standing to the side of the deer…so your guy didn't see it. Bullet went through and hit him," she said.

Hershel nodded quietly and looked back to Carl, pressing a rag closer to his body that was growing redder with every second. "The deer slowed the bullet down, which certainly saved his life, but it didn't go through clean. It broke up into pieces. If I can get the bullet fragments out…" he let his words trail off.

Natasha frowned. "How many pieces would it be?"

"I'm counting six."

The catatonic look on Rick's face slowly began to subside as realization took hold of him, drowning him further into agony and despair.

"Lori. She… My wife doesn't know. My wife doesn't know," he began mumbling till his words became nothing but an incohesive whisper.

Shane and Natasha quickly took him out of the room.

"Why did I let him come with us? I should've sent him with Lori." Rick mumbled to himself while sitting down at a table with Shane and Natasha.

Natasha felt her face twitch and her stomach clench. "Rick, you also didn't know that this was going to happen. It was a one in a billion chance."

"I gotta agree with Nat on this one," Shane said. "If you start that, you'll never get that monkey off your back."

Rick wasn't as spacey as he was before, which was an improvement. He was still quite jittery though and was clearly still on edge, like any moment now the world could collapse in on itself. "A little girl goes missing, you look for her. Simple. You said, 'Head back.'"

"It doesn't matter what I said," Shane said.

"Carl got shot because I wouldn't cut bait." Rick huffed and dropped his face into his hands.

Natasha leaned back in her chair and pressed her knees against the table. "Rick, if Carl is anything like you…then he'll pull through no matter how hard it'll be. He's young…but that doesn't mean he'll die easily. Kids bounce back."

"A bullet wound is…"

"Is something someone can recover from," she corrected before he could even think of finishing that sentence. "Do you know how many gymnasts I've seen break bones in their bodies? Totally shatter them. And do you know how many of them were able to come back? Your boy will pull through." she assured while looking him in the eyes, voice exuding confidence with not a trace of doubt.

"Rick." Everyone looked up at the voice and saw Maggie, one of Hershel's daughters quickly walk in. "He needs blood."

They all got up at once and followed her inside. Carl was awake but he was screaming in bloody murder while Hershel stood over him. He had tweezers in his hands and was digging them into Carl's open wound to try and pull out one of the shards. Just the sight of blood alone was enough to make Rick and Natasha freeze up.

"You hold him down," Hershel called to Shane.

Natasha's face went white in an instant, almost as ghostly as Carl was. She backed up against the wall and watched as carl tried to thrash around, screaming, and crying until his voice went out. It was hard to tell who looked more horrified. Rick or Natasha. Either way, she didn't stick around and left the room.

She walked outside and stood at the top of the porch, and her eyes immediately caught sight of her jacket that was right where she left it, no less bloody than it was before. Natasha breathed in deeply before reaching down and carefully picking it up. She walked over towards a water pump that was nearby and tossed it down right under it so she could try washing the blood off. She didn't want to toss it away because that jacket had saved her life on numerous occasions. It was good quality material that truly meant life or death to her now.

"Are you alright?" Natasha picked her head up and saw Maggie walking up behind her.

Natasha grumbled and hunched her shoulders. "No. Not really. It's just…I really don't want to see Carl in that state. That's it."

"You have kids?" Maggie asked, walking around the side so she could see her.

"No, but I used to work with them at my old job. I was a gymnastics instructor," Natasha said while scrubbing the fabric to try and get the stains off.

"Sounds like something kids would be hurt all the time doing."

Natasha laughed a bit, just a small half-hearted chuckle. "More than you believe. I've seen kids around the same age as Carl doing things like backflips all the time…And sometimes they'd land wrong. Breaking something in their legs or arms. There was always a pause…before the kid would start wailing. But it's because of it that I gained a quick reaction time. Saving their falls before they could get really hurt. It's probably why I saw Otis before he took the shot. He didn't see me though because of my jacket. But this time…I just couldn't react quick enough." Her words seem to drift off after a while as she stared down at the water that fell off her coat, running red before clearing up.