PROLOGUE
As soon as Rick and Michonne leave the church, a kind of stillness sets in. It settles around us, him and me, like snow, but it settles inside of me like something warmer. Hot chocolate, maybe. The kind my mother used to make for me when the real snow came. It's peaceful, the stillness, and that should be wrong, but it's not. Alexandria burns outside, I hear the crackling, the snapping, I smell the smoke and the death, and I know – even with the stillness – I know that the worst thing that will ever happen is about to happen. I know that, really, I know that, I promise.
It's about to, is the thing. It's about to happen.
It's not happening right now.
No, right now, right now –
The first light of dawn slides into this wrecked room, silver in some places, blue and green and yellow and red in others, crooked patterns of color created by crooked pieces of stained glass sticking up in the broken windows. His face, his body, is patterned with the colors, the colors and the silver. Blue is the color that hits his face, that lights up his face. It's a blue that matches his eyes. Eye. He only has one eye, because he lost the other, he was shot in the other, but he survived that, oh, he survived everything, so much, everything, everything . . .
He's looking up at me. My boy. His skin is pale, splotched with red, shining with sweat, fever-sweat. But even with that, he doesn't look sick, really. No, not in this light, this blue light that fits him, matches him, his eye. He doesn't look sick. And he doesn't look scared. I know he is. But not for himself, mostly.
He has the easy part.
I lie down. On my side. He turns his head as I do, our gazes locked, every second, like they should be. I rest my head on my arm, my right arm. My left arm goes to him, my hand goes to him. Touches his face. Brushes back the damp, tangled hair that he let get too long. Runs down his arm, finds his hand. His left hand. His right is on the other side of his body, holding –
But shh, no, that doesn't matter right now, no, what matters is his left hand, how his left hand wraps up with mine. How two of his fingers fill the space where two of mine used to be.
We listen to Alexandria burn. The world moves around us, just outside this place, I know that, and so does he. Alexandria burns, the world moves, things fall apart. The dead walk. The living do that and everything else. The world moves. And lives and dies.
And none of it matters. Not here, not now. Because he is here and now, and I am, too. We are us. So really, really, what could be wrong? What could be too much?
Later. Later, that will be too much.
But that's later, and later is for me. Now is for us.
One last now, just for us.
So he and I lie here and look at each other, letting the world move. Letting it not matter. Letting the dawn and the stained glass paint us pretty colors. We're okay, he and I. Carl and I, my Carl and I – we're okay.
For just a few moments longer.