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BabySlothXYaoi- Love that you loved it! I'm gonna miss Noah... I debated keeping him around but alas...
I wake up before Mikey does. A dim light is spilling through the squared windows of the garage door, hitting the digital clock on the CD player that reads, '6:15.'
I groan, my back stiff and my arms numb. I flop ungracefully off the pool table, somehow managing to be careful enough not to wake up Mikey. I switch off the CD player by his head; a weird static sound coming from it now that the CD is out of sad and angry songs.
I leave 105 through the front door, planning on going back to my room, hoping Carl isn't awake yet. There's a tugging pit of guilt in my stomach for leaving him alone.
Rosita stops me outside 99 before I can sneak inside. She pulls her dark hair into a loose ponytail as she approaches me.
"Morning," I smile wearily at her. She doesn't return it. Instead, looking worried. "What is it?" I ask, starting to feel anxious.
"It's Sasha. I think she spent the night in the tower."
"Fuck."
"Yeah," Rosita nods. "Abraham's up there now, and nobody's seen her."
"Her rifle... is it-"
"I already stopped by the armoury," Rosita cuts me off and nods, "she never checked it back in."
"That means she's out there," I deduce. "Outside the walls."
Rosita nods, looking gloomy.
"I was just going to grab Michonne." She pauses, looking at me hard. "I know you don't go outside the walls anymore... but-"
"I'll grab my hammer," I tell her without missing a beat. "You get Michonne, and I'll meet you guys at Olivia's?"
"This could take all day," she tells me. "No one knows where she's gone."
"I've got an idea," I tell her.
Rosita nods, and I turn on the spot, hurrying into 99.
When I enter the house, I'm met with total silence. I breathe out, and relief trickles into the air. There was a slight worry in the back of my head, the image of Maggie staying up all night just to catch me on return with glares and scorning words.
I sneak up the stairs, careful to avoid the last two since they squeak. I open my door just enough to slide through, again, aware that at a certain point, it starts to creak and come alive.
Carl is still asleep. I'm careful as I lift my sleeveless jacket off the back of the desk chair where I'd left it to dry yesterday. I reach over the chair, grabbing Ty's hammer from the desk's top, gritting my teeth as the heavy metal drags and grinds against the wood. Carl doesn't wake up, and I slip the tool under my belt. Then I'm on my hands and knees, crawling into my closet and fishing through comics that Carl stashes here, not finding what I'm looking for, a long time since I've seen it last. I huff in frustration, pushing aside a box labelled Summer Clothes. Suddenly I find what I'm looking for, stuffed away behind the box at the back of my wardrobe, My SOB holster, a thin layer of dust coating its leather hide.
When I reach Olivia's -my jacket and holster equipped- I check my watch.
6:36.
I can't see Michonne or Rosita anywhere, so I knock on Olivia's door.
Enid answers it.
"Hi?" she says, looking me up and down, sounding tired and confused. She's sporting a baby-blue dressing gown with red striped pyjamas underneath, her hair sitting in an untidy bun.
"Need my gun," I tell her, walking in after she steps to the side and gestures for me to.
"Okay," she yawns, not seeming particularly interested.
"Is Olivia here?" I ask as we arrive at the armoury, watching as Enid slides the doors open after unlocking them with a key hidden in a green vase planted on a small side table.
"Nah, she left to speak to Deanna. Something about Glenn and Nicholas not being allowed guns anymore."
"Right," I say, burying my confusion and curiosity.
Enid grabs a thick notebook wrapped in a black leather binding. She flips through, "What do you need?"
I almost ask for my berretta, but catch myself when I remember Carol has it.
"Erm," I stammer. "Anything's good, really."
"Okay... how about Glenn's?" she picks up Glenn's silver Colt. "Since he can't use it anyways."
I shake my head, the idea of using Glenn's gun feeling weird, like using someone else's toothbrush.
"I'll just take something light."
Enid stares at me, eyes squinted. "Look, I know nothing about guns." She hands me the inventory book. "Pick yourself."
I run my finger down the extensive list of small arms. "One of the Glock G29's will do."
Enid, who had been picking her teeth with a fingernail, takes the book back, looking at what I pointed out. "Oh, yeah, we've got like, nine of them."
I nod, and Enid goes to the far end of the room.
"I just put bacon on," she tells me from the closet as she grabs the gun I requested from the footlocker next to the one I stole from the last time I was here. "Want some?" she asks, handing the Glock to me when she emerges, marking it in the book.
"You have bacon?" I ask.
"Yeah. Canned bacon. Do you want some?"
"What the hell is canned bacon?"
"It's bacon," Enid shrugs an annoyed pair of shoulders. "Do you want some?"
"Like... bacon in a can?"
"Oh my god, Rhys," Enid rolls her eyes. "Do. You. Want. Some?"
My face scrunches up at the thought of it. "I'm good, thanks."
Enid shrugs, her dressing gown tassels bouncing. "Want your rifle too?" she gestures to it, hanging from a rack of similar-looking rifles on the wall.
"Sure."
Once Michonne and Rosita show up and check out guns for themselves, I sling my watch-rifle over my shoulder, noticing Michonne doesn't have her sword. We leave Alexandria through the main gate, Minnie on guard duty, same as the last time I left this place, over a month ago.
"Where exactly are we going?" Michonne asks me, getting annoyed when her pink cardigan snags against a tree branch. A small tear, appearing on the arm.
"Just a bit further," I tell them. "Sasha was practising out this way last time I went out after her."
A stick snaps somewhere in the distance, all three of us jumping and pointing our guns in different directions as the sound echos through the tall, slender trees. Pillars of bark keeping quiet. When nothing growls or shoots at us, we relax.
Rosita's arms drop to her side, "It's the first time I've been out since we've been here," she admits.
"Me too," Michonne sighs.
"I think that's a good thing," I tell them, pushing the Glock under my belt with my hammer since it's too fat to fit in my holster.
"It is," Rosita agrees with me.
I guess she meant what she said last night about this place.
"I don't know," Michonne shakes her head as the three of us continue walking, more cautious than before.
"After Eugene," Rosita says, "after finding out he lied... I was screwed up because I lost something." She turns to Michonne, stopping the walk again. "You seem screwed up because we found something."
Michonne bites her lip, squinting a passive-aggressive look at Rosita, letting it hop to me a few times too. "Noah's dead. And I think-" she stops, catching herself on a word, shaking her head again. "I just feel like I was asleep in there."
We start walking again. I want to tell Michonne that I felt the same, that it got better for me. But I don't. Maybe because I don't think it's relevant. Or perhaps just because I don't reckon that Michonne wants advice from a fifteen-year-old.
"You were trying to forget," Rosita tells her finally, "so you could try."
Michonne lets out a deep breath, then a missable smirk, "I don't want to forget."
"So don't," Rosita rolls her eyes and flaps her arms like a frustrated butterfly, "but that doesn't mean you have to give up."
Michonne stops us again. But Rosita is the one to speak.
"You didn't bring your sword with you. That's not nothing."
Michonne looks as if she's about to snap back but then hesitates, something inside her agreeing with Rosita.
Getting impatient, I start walking again, slightly surprised that the other two follow my lead.
When we get to the spot where I'd found Sasha before, she's not here. Only a walker, slumped dead over the stump she was leaning against the last time.
I'm about to apologise for the dead-end, but Rosita approaches the walker. "This was just killed." She points at the blood still dripping from the walker's skull.
Michonne takes a look.
"Shot through the back of the head," she mumbles.
A few feet away, another walker lies dead, the same wound as the last.
"Back of the head."
Michonne sighs like she understands something I don't yet.
"She's hunting them."
-Carl's POV-
"Hungry?" Maggie asks me when I come down the stairs of 99. She's bustling around the messy kitchen, searching through draws.
I can smell something that makes my mouth water; my nose and eyes search desperately for the source. I spot a pot of broth stewing over the cooker's heat, so I nod to Maggie's question, scratching my eyes and yawning as I sit down at the kitchen counter. "What is it?"
"While up in the tower," Maggie says, "Abraham saw a chicken- a wild one... Just wandering around."
"So?" I tilt my head at her, not sure what that has to do with it.
"So... now we've got chicken soup." Maggie pours some of the steaming soup into a bowl, placing it in front of me.
It's piping hot, and I burn my tongue on the spoon. My words come with a lisp. "Wouldn't it have been better to keep it... for the eggs?"
Maggie chuckles. "Abraham did not think that far ahead."
"Where's Glenn?" I ask, taking another go at the spoonful, blowing on it this time.
"He's gone to talk with Nicholas," she answers ominously, cutting a couple of slices of bread off a dry looking loaf.
"Talk?"
"Talk," Maggie affirms. She butters the slices, putting them on a small plate and sliding it to me. Then she sits down opposite, watching as I blow on the soup after managing to burn my tongue again.
"Not eating?" I ask.
Maggie shakes her head.
"No," she hums.
I put the spoon down, giving up on a direct assault, ripping up some chunks of bread to dunk instead.
"Noah?" I ask her as she sits with her elbows on the counter, chin rested in her hands.
"Yeah," she nods into her hands, frowning, looking sad. "It's just hard right now."
"Why?"
"Well," Maggie sighs, "I told him he was one of us at the party- family."
"He was family," I say over gentle sips of soup.
"I know. Just feels like when we point that out, we lose someone. First Bob, now Noah."
Not sure what to say, I just take a big bite of soupy bread.
"Rhys still asleep?" Maggie asks me, looking to the stairs.
Uh-huh," I mumble over the bread.
Maggie stares me down, a slight smirk on her lips.
"You're a bad liar," she says.
"I'm not lying," I urge, definitely sounding like a liar.
"I know I'm not his Momma," Maggie sighs deeply, "I just worry about that boy."
"Me too," I agree.
I hesitate.
"Does he ever talk about me? I mean, us."
Maggie appears to find the question highly amusing. "Why?"
"No reason," I sink back into the soup.
"He does on occasion," Maggie tells me. "Not so much anymore, but every now and then."
"Why doesn't he talk to you about it anymore?"
"I imagine because he'd rather talk to you about it."
Maggie gets up once I've finished my bowl, telling me to scram and let her get to work on some plans Deanna has her on. I thank her and leave 99, planning on heading home until I spot something.
Enid, climbing over the wall.
I follow her without thinking.
Above the wall. Into the forest.
"Carl. I know you're following me... again. And you're going the wrong way."
Enid's gentle voice comes from every direction, bouncing between the trees like a pinball machine. The part of the woods I've followed her to is dense and muddled.
"You knew?" I call out to the voice of the forest.
"You're very loud," she responds.
I feel insulted, then I step on a twig and literally hear her point.
"Can you go back?" Enid calls out again.
I check behind a tree that sounds particularly loud, but nothing is there, another tree speaking instead.
"To be honest, you scare me."
"You shouldn't sneak out by yourself," I tell her. "Two people just died... Tara might not wake up."
Suddenly Enid appears, stepping out from the quietest tree in the forest. "Oh, come on." She rolls her eyes at my words. "People always die. You know that."
I shake my head disapprovingly. "We should go back."
"Why?"
Sick of her not listening to my reprimands, I ask a question of my own.
"What do you do out here anyways?"
"Same thing as you." And with that, she lets off at a sprint. Disappearing between trees. Before I know what's happening, my legs take over, chasing after her.
