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wearedeadpool — Haha, you shan't see this response for a long time, but thank you!

-Carl-

"Is it everything you hoped it'd be?"

Dad was grinning. He wouldn't look at the ocean, only the face of wonder I couldn't seem to hold back.

"It's so..."

"Big?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Grey."

Dad chuckled, hands on his hips as he turned to look out at the water. He nodded.

"I suppose."

"It's always blue in pictures," I added.

"That's because people don't wanna send postcards of grey water." He looked down at his boots, grains of sand dusting the old, worn leather. "I suppose things ain't ever as pretty in the real world."

"I prefer the real thing."

Dad chuckled again, putting a hand on my shoulder. "Yeah... yeah, you would."

The waves rolled up the shore. Carl stood with his back to his people, the ocean air blowing warm against his closed eye as he let himself get lost.

He came back to the real world at the thud of a body hitting the sand, a splash of water beside him. Carl opened his eye to watch the walker that had risen from the waves with driftwood impaling his torso fall to Judith's sword. She came running up to him, flicking the blood from her blade.

"Good form," Carl told her.

She smirked. "I know."

"Fall in, you two!" Michonne called from the ranks of people marching up the beach behind them. The parading of feet making the beach rumble.

It was training day. Oceanside had offered their shores to the communities to come and test their spring training against the dead that they had let build up in an old boat shipwrecked on the beach.

Aaron led the shield wall at the front. Shields forged by Earl Sutton from rusted metal barrels with spikes welded to their fronts. Hilltop's smith had helped turn Alexandria's armoury, once filled with guns, to one lined with spears and shields. This is where Carl joined their formation, taking his shield back from Alden.

Just behind the wall of Alexandrian troops, Judith joined where Sasha and Michonne commanded the bulk of their forces from. Men and women from all communities with the strength and courage to wield the weapons Hilltop had been busy forging over the quiet spring.

In the back, Dianne and Jenny were in charge of legions of ranged fighters — a quiver of archers that were stocked well with sharply pointed arrows.

They drew closer to the shipwreck.

Ezekiel and Jerry were already there, ready to open the groaning door that thumped steadily as the dead inside began to hear the march of the living.

Rachel and Cyndie ran ahead to draw the waterlogged walkers that Jerry and Ezekiel released in waves towards the shield wall. The shields opened to let the two back into their ranks.

"And halt!" Aaron ordered from behind his shield. "Drop!"

He, Carl, the shield wall, and everyone else stopped, dropping to one knee and ducking behind the tall palisade of shields. Carl could hear the stretching of rubber from Connie and Kelly's slingshots before seeing through the small peephole in his shield a volley of arrows and projectiles slaughter the first wave of walkers.

"Retrieve!" Aaron barked, the shield wall rising and opening for the archers to run out and return with their arrows.

"And march!" Aaron called again, leading their forces closer to the shipwreck as Jerry and Ezekiel released another wave.

"Formation and halt!"

"Spears!" Sasha roared from behind Carl, and he watched as spears were stuck on either side of every shield, thrusting forward into the walkers when they reached the wall.

One was left slacking. A whoosh of air hit the back of Carl's neck as Alden launched his spear over his head and through the walker's skull, sending it flying back and crashing to the sand.

The third wave reached them just after Alden returned with his tossed spear. Aaron ordered another halt.

"Open ranks!" Michonne ordered. Carl and Aaron stepped aside to allow Sasha and Michonne to lead the charge of melee fighters onto the field.

Magna swung at two with her war hammer, the second clinging to life with it's missing jaw only to be crushed from skull to neck by the swift blow of Luke's saw-bladed mace.

Michonne's technique was like a dance. The brutality behind each gliding swing was graceful as she carved three walkers into the sand before they could even turn a tooth in her direction.

Sasha was the polar opposite of Michonne. If walkers could show fear or turn to run from an unavoidable and savage death, you would certainly see it now. Sasha ploughed forward with her hulking axe, severing a head from one walker as she passed it and then cleaving apart the whole upper torso of another. Carl watched, astounded, as she violently sprinted into a shoulder barge so powerful and well aimed that her third victim rolled clean over her denim-clad back and crashed into the sand where it was forced to wait as Sasha butchered another before finally planting her axe in its rotten face.

Everyone stood a little taller when they saw the door to the shipwreck shake as the decaying wall around it cracked and crumbled.

"It's about to get real, y'all," Michonne said as Jerry and Ezekiel fell back from the door and drew their swords.

"Everyone holds their ground!" Sasha bellowed when she spotted frightened faces amongst their ranks, leaving her axe stuck in the walker's skull to point at them before wiping her brow and retrieving her weapon.

Aaron gave an order for one of their pre-practiced formations, and the shield wall split into three smaller groups to separate the large cluster of walkers coming for them.

"Stay in your formations! Remember your training!"

And everyone did.

The Dead's numbers began to shrink.

Carl thrust a spike on his shield through one.

Jenny let fly an arrow into another.

Judith stuck one through the eye.

Sasha crushed one's head to foul smelling juice.

Michonne slashed the face from the last, and the tide washed it away.

Back at Oceanside, life seemed as calm as their waves. Carl unloaded his pack from one of the wagons and dropped it in a small hut set out for two people by the edge of the community. But Carl had asked for this spot specifically, because even from the edges, you could still see the life. He watched people carry crates of fresh fish between stalls where they stripped the scales and weighed their catches. He smirked at the sight of Luke flirting with one of the Oceanside girls, Jules.

Carl spotted Michonne walking with Daryl and Sasha past some of the new crop fields being laid on top of the sand. He jogged over to catch them.

"Feel like we got it today," he said, bumping fists with Daryl.

"Oh yeah, training was worth the trip," Michonne agreed.

"They couldn't have done much better," Sasha commented, scratching some dried blood from her nose.

"Figured with you training them non-stop through the spring, they'd be better by now," Daryl smirked at her.

"You looking to catch an ass kicking?" she asked him.

He raised his hands in fake surrender, smiling at her. "Tara would have been proud."

Sasha pulled a dejected face. "I hope so."

"It's good to bring the kids also," Michonne said. "Let 'em see the ocean for the first time."

"Yeah," Daryl chuckled. "I know one idiot who would have loved this."

Michonne laughed, bumping his shoulder.

Carl smiled, looking off to where Judith and RJ were playing with Jerry and his kids, marching buckets of sand and shells up the path from the river that led to the ocean, dumping them out on the floor to sort through their treasure.

But that's when Carl saw his little sister's smile drop.

Past Oceanside's borders to the east were where sandy dunes turned to fields of lush green and rolling hills. Trees spread out from dense forests to open spaces that ran along wide highways leading to the bigger cities.

Carl rode his horse down those highways that sunny afternoon, stopping where a power pylon had fallen like some colossus metal titan into the overgrown grass, burying its tangled metal limbs and rubber wires in the length.

Downy Beardy had been recovering slowly since the winter. Open plains like the ones out here were good spots to take him since he seemed to like the space and the quiet equally, and this journey was his first time out since winter. This is where Carl found him, being led around in circles at the end of a long rope in a well-trodden patch of grass by Jenny.

"How's he doing?"

"Better," Jenny said, offering out the lead for Carl to take over after he dismounted from his own steed.

Carl took it, thumbing at the tired rope.

"I think his knees aren't doing great," Jenny said. "If he wasn't an older horse, they might get a bit better with time, but..."

"You think he's too old to ride anymore?"

"No," Jenny sighed. "The stable hands at Hilltop think he'll be alright."

"Good."

"Though," she said, "they're not too sure without the horse whisperer to give his input."

Carl frowned at her, smirking a little.

"Sorry," she groaned. "Poor choice of words."

Carl slumped his head onto Jenny's shoulder, accepting her offer when she asked if he needed a hug.

"Missing him?" Jenny chuckled, squeezing Carl's middle.

Carl nodded but said something different. "They might be back."

Jenny went tense in Carl's grip. Even Downy Beardy seemed to sense it, stopping his trotting in circles to approach them. When he got there, Jenny and Carl pulled apart, Jenny putting her palm flat against the horse's nose.

"It's not concrete," Carl said. "Judith found a mask by the river."

Jenny nodded slowly.

"You came out here to tell me that?"

"I mean... yes, Dianne wants you back at Oceanside since it might not be safe out here right now." Carl grinned. "But... we just got word from the Charybdis. It should be back by late afternoon."

Downy Beardy whinnied softly at them.

Carl chuckled, scratching under his mane. "Yeah, you miss him too, don't you, big guy?"

They made it back in time to catch the leaders meeting in Oceanside's radio room. Sasha told them she just got off the horn with Hilltop and that Aaron was raising Alexandria now.

Carl and Jenny caught the end of it.

"What does it mean? Are they back?" Gabriel asked over the radio.

"We don't know," Aaron sighed. "But Alexandria should go on lockdown just in case."

Michonne suddenly slapped her hand down on the mic button.

"Hold on," she said into the radio. "We don't have evidence to justify that. My official recommendation is that everyone should stay on alert until further notice. Eyes and ears open. That's it."

"Copy that. Over and out."

Aaron stood up with the kind of grim expression that didn't need words to explain itself.

"I appreciate your caution, and I get it, but we do not need to start a panic," Michonne told him.

"A lot of stuff washed up ashore from the recent storm," Cyndie added. "This might not mean anything."

"Or it might mean something," Aaron said calmly. "Look, no one saw Alpha's herd move out, so maybe no one saw them move back in. But if there's a mask... maybe there are other signs of them out there. We owe it to our people to be sure."

Carl could feel Jenny's energy shift.

Ezekiel must have, too.

"Something you want to add, Jenny?" he asked her.

"If the Skin Jobs are out there, we should be out there, too. They made these stupid borders a thing. The least we can do is protect our side."

Carl nodded. "I say we search the nearby borders."

"I'll gather a group," Michonne said. "We'll leave in five."

"I'm-a hang back for a bit," Daryl and Sasha somehow said at the exact same time.

"Yeah," Carl said, "us, too."

Michonne smirked, shaking her head. "Tell him I said hi." She turned to Daryl. "And tell her not to leave again without saying goodbye."

A/N

I truly believe I might be the only person that figured out the name of that damn boat. It's written on the life ring that you only really see in one shot, and it's impossible to read the whole thing... so I strung the few letters I could see together and the only thing that made sense after a bunch of frantic googling was the 'Charybdis' which was a Greek mythological sea monster which fit the water theme. I don't know why I spent so long figuring out the name instead of just making one up, but there you go.