Dad and I come back into the prison through the tombs, nice and quietly, and my plan is to slip into my cell and think things through for a couple of days, but that goes down the drain pretty fast. Sitting outside of my cell is Carl, back against the wall, legs stretched out. When he sees Dad and me, he gets up slowly, sighing like it hurts, and looks me straight in the eye. "We need to talk."

It's his no-nonsense tone. The kind he uses when, as far as he's concerned, there's no option other than the one he's giving you. I shoot a begging kind of look to my dad, but he only nods and says, "You heard the man." Then he's going upstairs, leaving me alone with Carl for the first time in a long time.

I want to run. Dart into my cell and pull the curtain, block out Carl and the world with him. But I don't think I'm supposed to do things like that anymore. So all I do is say, "Not here."

We wind up on the catwalk, in spite of the cold, in spite of the tearstains and the bad memories. Clouds are beginning to roll in and cover the late afternoon sun. Maybe it'll snow some more. Maybe I could try and enjoy it this time. After all, snow is one of the things that made Carl my Carl.

But is he even mine anymore?

We both stare out at the courtyard, at the field. At the things that lie beyond the field.

"My dad kept saying you would get better," Carl says after a minute of silence. "He said you just needed time. Like he did with . . . with my mom."

You can hear it, if you listen close. The raw pain in his tone. It still hurts him, what happened with Lori, I know it does, and I figure it always will. But what he doesn't understand is that it's different with me, with me and my uncle, because it was my –

But Dad says it's not.

Can I really believe him, though?

Carl's not done.

"But you've just gotten worse. And I don't want to give you more time, because . . . because I don't know what'll happen to you if you keep getting worse. But probably something bad. Maybe . . ."

The temperature's dropping, because of the clouds. Yes, because of the clouds.

Carl turns to me. "I know something's been going on these past few days. You need to tell me what."

"I don't need to do anything."

"Yeah, you do! That's what you and me do, Sydney, we . . . We tell each other these things!"

I back up, walk a few steps away from him, spin back and say, "So, what? What, you want me to – you want me to spill my guts out 'cause, 'cause it's what I'm s'posed to do? 'Cause it'll make you feel like everything's right in your world?"

"No, I want you to spill your guts out because you're my friend."

The thing about snow is that it comes with an almost unnatural-feeling silence, the stillest, hardest kind of silence I've ever experienced. Silence before, silence during, silence after. As Carl's mouth closes, I realize that we've put ourselves in the first moments of this silence, and I feel like we're in a picture, frozen, and that scares me, because I don't want to be frozen like this. I don't want to be trapped as this person with these arms and this relationship with this boy who gives a damn.

"You won't like what I have to tell you," I whisper.

He moves to me and his words float off in puffs of mist as he says, "Tell me anyway?"

He's stopped trying to give the orders. He knows I handle requests better. He knows. Maybe that's why I begin to unzip my jacket.

"Don't freak out, okay?"

He's confused for a while, watching me take off my top two layers. And the confusion doesn't go away as I pull my arms out of my overshirt sleeves, it's just joined and maybe overpowered by shock and – and some horror. Only I can't stop now. I hold my arms out, palms upturned, so he can take it all in. Let him take it all in. It's what he thought he wanted. But I make myself watch his face, too, I can't turn away, I can't leave him alone in this.

He reaches out, almost touches an arm, but then changes his mind. "You . . ."

"Yeah."

He looks for a long time, eyes going from one arm to another, and then his gaze hits mine hard. "How could you do this to yourself?"

And I think I must have heard wrong. "'S'cuse me?"

"We spend most of our time trying to keep stuff from hurting us, and then you just – you just do this to yourself? Like it doesn't even matter?"

I drop my arms. "There's a hell of a difference between this shit and walkers."

"Yeah! You didn't cause the walkers!"

"I told you not to freak out!"

"I didn't know you –" I think he's used all his words then. He heaves out those mist breaths and can't seem to decide where to look now, it's all awful, isn't it, my wrists, my arms, my face. And now, now I feel exactly how I felt when Beth found out, vulnerable and bare, only, because it's him, it's worse. I want to get my clothes, cover up and shrink, but my body won't do it, it doesn't even feel cold, it's not feeling much of anything.

"It got bad," I hear myself try and explain. I'm rasping, the way my dad does, only it doesn't sound strong and right when it comes from me. If anything, it makes me sound smaller. "I was hearing things. Feeling things . . . Carl, my – my uncle, my mom, all of that shit – the goddamn Governor, I just – I just wanted it to stop . . ."

"You could have talked to me!"

"Quit yellin' at me! I'm – I'm talkin' to ya now, man . . ."

He's looking out at the field. I swallow, why won't he look at me? "I don't think I want to keep doin' it," I say before my head has time to think about if that's true or not. But those words catch his eyes again, they catch them and keep them, and eventually he talks.

"Does your dad know?"

I nod. "He found out last night."

"Are you in trouble?"

"I don't know. I don't think so, I think . . . I just, he told me I'm not gonna do it anymore, so . . . I don't really know what that means."

"It means don't do it anymore."

"You think it's that easy?"

"Since when do you need anything to be easy?"

Since everything started being so damn hard, that's when.

Carl's bending down, picking up my shirt. I let him help me into it, then into my jacket. My fingers fumble getting the zipper up and then my head's found its way to Carl's chest. I see a snowflake on his shoulder and I pick it off, let it melt between my fingers. "How 'bout we go out into the woods and get lost? Find a thicket? Eat dove and hide from walkers?"

"I'd rather take Silver and make our way to Florida to see if Disney World's been overrun."

"Will there be dog food?"

He's leading me to the door. "Yeah. And Snickers bars."

And I'll love nothing alone.

We can't just disappear like that, though. We have too many people here who think they need me and really do need him. And Carl, he's one of the people who thinks he needs me and I sure as hell really need him, so I pull his arm tighter around me and let him get me inside, to the warmth. Should probably get as much of that as we can. I have a feeling it'll be a long winter.

The End