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RHatch89- Glad that you think so!
Note- I truly hate this site's title limit... let me have long chapter titles dammit! I'm putting this chapter's actual title below.
The Next World: Maggie, The Lake, And The Wall.
It only took a day before Carl could leave his bed. But due to several stubborn attempts to get up before he was ready, either Rick or I had to be with him constantly, keeping him distracted with the hope of tomorrow. Rick was better at it than me.
The day Carl finally got home was messy. He tried walking into 99 first, telling me later that he dreamt we'd lived there for years. When Rick explained to Carl that he will be living with Michonne and him in 101, Carl asked, "What about Noah? Do I still have to share a room?"
It took a while for Carl to remember everything, but he did eventually. Still, every now and then I'll mention something and have to wait for the glassy look in his eye to fade and for him to understand what I'm talking about. There were the high parts of him remembering, like recalling the world before the fall, and a kiddie pool that his dad bought him in the summer when he got jealous of the neighbour's pool. The low parts of him remembering were almost too hard to bear. Telling Carl why Shane isn't here. Why Beth can't visit him, and why his mum can't say goodnight anymore. Rick said he thinks Carl's dealing with it all better the second time around.
It's been two weeks now.
I open the door to Carl room and a dart whizzes past my cheek, striking the wall beside my head. I duck.
"Sorry!"
"It's fine," I gasp, winded, the surprise catching me off guard. I pull the red-tailed dart from the wall beside my head and stick it into the board hanging on the back of the door. "We really need to move the board," I say.
"Doesn't really matter." Carl shakes his head, tossing the remaining darts in his hand to the floor and sitting on the end of his bed. "My aim's so bad now that I can't hit it anyway."
"You'll get better. Denise says you need to keep practising," I tell him.
"I guess you're finally a better shot than me now," he tries to smile.
"Doubt it," I shake my head. "You haven't even tried shooting yet... maybe that'll come more naturally."
Carl seems to appreciate the sentiment, picking up a blue tennis ball and tossing it at the wall. He manages to catch it when it bounces back.
"Wonder if I'll be able-" Carl stammers. "-If I'll be able to drive. When we learn, I mean."
I frown at the floor, fidgeting on the spot.
"What?" Carl asks.
"While you were, erm, out... I kinda already learnt..."
Carl's face falls a little.
I try to salvage his smile. "I mean, I'm not great..."
"Who taught you?"
"Spencer took Mikey and me out a few times..." I hesitate, and it's obvious there's more.
"And..." Carl asks.
"Erm, your Dad... Rick took me out, too."
"Oh."
I feel like I've been thrown into a pit. No way out, and Carl, staring at me from the top with a shovel.
"I told Enid I'd meet her," I tell him. I hesitate. "You wanna come?"
Carl thinks about it, looking like he really wants to, but shaking his head anyway. "I'm good... we still going over the wall later?"
I nod, standing awkwardly in the doorway, swinging my weight back and forth as I hold the handle. Carl stands and steps towards me. He moves to where I think he might kiss me. I look away.
"Sorry," I mumble, tripping over complicated words and cruel feelings. "I should get going."
On my way out of 101, I hear Boston playing loudly from Rick's room. I try walking past, but Rick's voice stops me.
"Rhys, you wanna come in here a minute?"
Not seeing many choices, I peek my head around the ajar door to see Rick. He's poking a new hole in his belt with the sharpened point of his knife.
"Morning," I say slowly and quietly.
"Daryl and me," Rick says, putting the belt on when the knew hole is pierced into its leather face. It's a hole that's needed since our food situation has only gotten worse in the last few months, "we're headed out on a supply run today."
"I know," I tell him, nodding along to More Than A Feeling.
I can hear the sound of Carl throwing his PT ball as it thuds against the wall from his room next door.
Rick just bobs his head at me a little. I realise he didn't have a reason for stopping me.
I don't know when it happened... maybe a month after Carl went into his coma; Rick's been friendlier towards me. Teaching me to drive or asking me to accompany him on supply runs. Occasionally I let myself wonder if he became familiar with me because his real son was in a coma or if he actually does care about me. But as I stand awkwardly in his room now, I realise he's talking to me, not Carl.
"Well..." Rick nods, slipping his heavy, silver watch onto his wrist, "If you need anything... clothes, or books... maybe those Big Cat chocolate bars you like... just go find Daryl. He's got the list. We found some peanut butter ones last time, but I know you don't like those."
"Okay, Rick," I nod, hanging by the doorway as I did with the last Grimes.
When Michonne appears behind me in a bathrobe asking about toothpaste, I breathe a sigh of relief and take it as my exit cue.
By chance, I find Daryl on my way to the lake. He stands by part of the old wall that's still being taken down. He's speaking with Denise about medical supplies and something called pop.
"What's pop?" I ask as I pass by, not needing anything for the list, intending to keep going.
Daryl makes a grunting sound to second my question.
Denise rolls her eyes at both of us from behind her spectacles. "I'm originally from Ohio... It's, you know, soda?"
"Right..." I nod slowly, still edging past the two. "We just called it fizzy drink back in England."
Daryl's eyes are frantically darting between Denise and me like he's been caught in a cultural clash that he had no intention of joining. I'm still edging past them, feeling the same as Daryl.
"What if it's not fizzy?" Denise asks, keeping me in the conversation as she looks overly distressed about the dilemma she's thought up.
"Then we call it flat."
"Right..."
"Good luck on the run," I add towards Daryl, waving my hand to dismiss myself from the conversation.
Daryl holds me in it for a second more, saying, "I saw Rick putting a Ronnie Dee CD in the car yesterday..."
I snort at him, shutting up when he looks dire. "Well... double good luck then?"
I find Enid sitting on the sunnier side of the gazebo. It's been neglected in the time that's passed during the expansion. Ivy climbs up the structure's bones, flowers showing their smiling faces along its wood. I have to push through a tone of shrubs just to reach our hidden spot. The only side not surrounded by greenery looks out on the lake's still water. Enid is drawing in a black notebook, something she hasn't made an effort to set down over the last months. I peek over her shoulder and frown when I see that she's drawing me. Only, in her drawing, I have two ears, and she's made the slit in my right eyebrow too big. The more I look, I realise she's also turned me into a dragon, a green-spotted tail draped over my shoulder and fire crackling out my nose.
I sit down alongside her feet, which she has up on the gazebo bench, her toes pointed together.
Neither of us says a word as I look out over the lake. She keeps doodling, occasionally looking up at me, squinting her eyes, then returning to the book.
When the silence becomes overwhelming, I say what she can probably sense is on my mind.
"I think Carl tried to kiss me," I tell her.
She stops, her pencil grinding against the paper until its graphite breaks. She looks down annoyed at it, then shuts the book, tucking it under her and sitting on it. She perches the pencil behind her ear.
"You think?" she raises an eyebrow.
"Maybe he was going for a hug?" I shrug.
Enid shakes her head at me for choosing to be oblivious. "You guys need to talk about it," she sighs.
"I know," I tell her like I'm sick of her saying it, knowing full well she's just as sick of me avoiding it.
"He's still the same old Carl," she tells me.
"Duh."
"Are you still the same Rhys?"
"What do you mean?"
She sits up, her book scooting under her. "If Carl still feels the same about you... then why don't you feel the same about him."
"I do," I tell her, then I slump in my seat. "Carl was so mad at me, Enid. Carl doesn't get mad... but I could feel it. Before he got shot, he told me enough to know. Then he forgot, and I don't think it's fair to ignore how he felt."
"He doesn't feel like that anymore, though."
"Not the point," I tell her.
"Why?" she groans.
"He can't remember how he felt! So it's not fair to forget that."
Enid shrugs. "I think you're wrong. Life isn't long enough anymore to worry about how someone might have felt."
"You two seem to be closer," I shrug, not meaning to sound jealous, the truth being that I'm not. "You guys go over the wall without me more than with me now."
"Well, you've got your patrol job... so we just do it," Enid points out. "Carl hates it in the walls now."
"I know," I look at my lap, putting my hands in it when it feels empty.
"Hey, you two," Maggie's voice carries into the gazebo as she approaches, making us jump. She pushes her way through bushes and shrubs. We frown at her. The gazebo is supposed to be impossible to find.
Enid goes awfully quiet.
"Where have you been?" Maggie asks us, a clipboard under her arm, a roll of building plans in her hand. She combs a leaf from her brown head.
She looks exhausted despite the day being young. A baggy denim flannel is hiding her small baby bump. I've asked about baby names a million times at this point, but Maggie still insists on veering away from her own future, trying to hold together Alexandria's instead.
"You see me at dinner every night," I try to cleverly avoid the question for both of us. The truth being that we've spent more time outside the walls than in over the last week alone.
Maggie ignores what I consider a pretty good misdirect, turning to Enid. "I never see you," she says to her. "Everybody's been working to get this place back together, and you just disappear. Do you sit in your room all day?"
I cringe at how much Maggie sounds like a mother. Enid sounds offended when she tells her no.
"Then where'd you go?" Maggie frowns. "Here?"
"How did you even find us?" Enid asks, expressing her annoyance at the place being discovered.
"Rhys isn't very sneaky," Maggie smirks. "I see him push through these bushes most days."
Enid glares at me.
"Where do you go?" Maggie asks again.
Enid's eyes dance between Maggie, the lake, and the wall. I wonder what she's considering. Telling her about how we sneak over the wall? Or maybe just jumping into the lake to give herself time to think up a lie.
"Nowhere," Enid finally answers.
"You helped Glenn get home," Maggie tells her. "Helped me when I was up in that guard post."
"Yeah?" Enid looks blank.
"So, maybe there are better places for you to go than just nowhere," Maggie smiles at her subtly. "I'm around. Come talk to me."
With that, Maggie disappears beyond the bushes of our secret gazebo, the overgrowing summer plants keeping us safe most days.
Enid looks grave, so I ask her if she's okay.
"I don't want to go out there anymore," she tells me.
"With Carl?"
"At all," she shakes her head. "I'm sick of living on both sides of the wall."
By the time we should probably be eating lunch, four of us are scaling the wall. Enid's up in a matter of seconds, waiting patiently at the top for the rest. Mikey and Carl have joined us, and the two are struggling to clamber their way up the wall. Carl takes his time to think about his sucky-depth perception. Mikey's just taking his time because that's what he's like with most things. I wait at the bottom for them to reach the top. Not really sure why. Pretty sure that if one of them falls, It'll just end in pain for both of us.
Being inside the walls always gives me a warm feeling. Like I don't need to look over my shoulder or focus on my good ear. I really used to hate it. But as I clamber my way up the wall, I try my best to savour it.
When I get to the top with the others, I ask Carl if he's okay. I watch him as he stares down to the ground below with a terrible fear in his eye.
"Yeah," he breaths, "jus' hate heights."
"Right."
Same as up, Enid's down first. Once I'm down, I help the other two, wondering when I was designated the landing pillow. Wishing I wasn't when Mikey loses his footing, tumbling on top of me in a fashion similar to how I imagined. Pain and grunts.
"Sorry, Rhys," Mikey huffs, his foot in my face and his chest crushing on top of mine.
"It's fine," I puff back, thankful when Enid pulls Mikey off me.
Carl makes it down and offers me a hand. I take it, being hauled to my feet before the five of us set off into the forest. Our ungraceful escape is successful as always.
Not far from home, Enid finds a kite tangled in a tree branch. Blue and soaked by forest dew. A crumpled note is fastened to the side of it. I crane my neck to read it over her shoulder, only for Mikey to snatch it away before I can. Enid snatches it back, punching his arm in retaliation.
"What's it say?" Carl asks her, watching all of us.
She looks disappointed. "It got wet. It's all gone."
I confirm her story by peeking again, seeing nothing but rivers of wet ink staining the paper.
"C'mon," Carl tells us all, leading on.
"It doesn't look that old," Enid lets her growing optimism shine, not dropping the note as we all continue.
"Yeah?" Mikey asks, rubbing his shoulder. "Maybe they need help."
Enid agrees. "I mean, we can't read what they wrote, but that doesn't mean they're not saying something."
"Saying what?" Carl asks, sounding doubtful.
"We're not alone," Enid chuckles.
"We knew that," Carl tells her. He sounds like he doesn't agree with her, though. "People died."
I know he's thinking about the wolves. Maybe the walkers too. Now we all are, and the forest shrinks ever so slightly.
"Why are we coming out here?" Enid asks.
"'Cause we're kids," Carl tells her. "It's what they do."
"We're not kids," she sighs.
Are you, um..." Carl asks me when we reach what Mikey likes to call Neverland. Carl has to take a second. One of the only side effects that hasn't left him. He's always forgetting words and stopping to look for them. He smiles when he finds it. "...hungry. Are you hungry?"
"Pfft, you know me, never am," I tell him. "But I think there's a few granolas left in the footlocker."
The footlocker is just one of the features of our home away from home. Neverland seems to have stuck as the name of our forest hideout. A tree log sits beside the footlocker filled with comics and snacks to keep us entertained. Most days, we all sit on the fallen log together, somehow finding a way to all squeeze on.
Carl settles with an Invincible comic and a bag of dried apricots. Enid sits still, perched on the log and trying her best to read the note she found. Mikey checks if the kite still works.
I sit and watch them all, my mind already flying away on fairy dust.
There's a rustle in the woods. It must come from my bad side because I don't hear anything. But when everyone's heads snap in that direction, I put the rest together. Enid pulls Mikey into a nearby tree with a hollowed-out trunk that's big enough for two.
"Hide," she hisses.
I'm waiting for Carl, who's watching with his gun out. He sees people I don't. Both my eyes together, clearly worse than his one.
"It's just Michonne and Spencer," he says, holstering his handgun and sitting back down.
"Why's my brother out here?" Mikey pokes his curious head out from inside the tree.
"Dunno," Carl shrugs, already back to his comic.
Enid steps out of the tree, still holding that note.
I can see she's winding up to something. Her fists are clenched, crumpling the note slightly as she breaths in. The forest breeze catches her flowing brown hair. "I don't want to come out here anymore," she sighs at Carl's back.
Neither Mikey nor I disagree.
I think Carl's reaction shocks the other two, but I know him better. Same as I know them better. I know they expect more. They expect him to show how ganged up on he realises he is. But no. Carl does precisely what I know he will. He does what he did after the prison fell. He stands up, slips his comic and apricots into the footlocker and walks away. Internalising all those emotions that make him want to explode. He lets them swirl inside him like a blizzarding snow globe. One that he always tries to venture alone.
We're not far from home. Certain ivy on particular trees starts to look familiar.
Mikey's testing me on the States. It's something that he's become fixated on over the last few weeks. Desperate for me to learn something from him.
"Columbus?" he asks with a sly look.
"Uh... Michigan?"
"No," Mikey shakes his head, looking disappointed in a way that makes me laugh. "Lansing is the capital of Michigan."
"Right..."
"Come on, dude, you know this one!"
"Tennessee?"
"Tennessee?" Mikey repeats in a breath, shaking his head once more. "Now you're just guessing."
"I was doing that to start."
"Ohio," Mikey finally bursts with know-it-all energy. "Columbus is the capital of Ohio."
Carl stops walking, and I crash into the back of him, apologising when I knock his hat off his head. He doesn't react, staring at something beyond the brush. I follow his gaze until I see it. A walker, stumbling away from us.
Carl pulls his knife and starts walking towards the creature. I pick up his hat that he forgets, dusting it against my knee.
"Carl..." Enid tries to stop him, pointing in the direction of home.
"Michonne's out here," he hisses. "I'm not leaving it."
Mikey follows him. "Yeah, sorry, Enid. Spence is out here too."
Enid and I follow after the boys.
Carl whistles.
The walker turns.
It takes a moment for me to recognise her. Stringy brown hair falling around torn clothes and ghostly skin, disguising the woman we once knew as Deanna Monroe.
I'm watching Mikey as he stares towards his mother, watching as she stumbles towards us. Her dragging feet catch on loose vines and unearthed roots. Her teeth snap with a fierce hunger.
"No..." Enid whispers.
While everyone tries to surface from the shock, Carl starts to coax Deanna in a different direction, telling Mikey at the same time to get his knife out. Mikey doesn't move. He's standing like a sculpture. Still staring at his last parent. A parent that he mourned months ago.
"What are you doing?" Enid hisses at Carl, drawing her knife and stepping towards Deanna's walker. "We should kill it."
"Go home," Carl snaps over his shoulder at her. Shoving Deanna to the ground when she lunges for him.
"No," Enid tells him, raising her blade only for Carl to snatch her wrist, pushing her back.
"This is bullshit," she yells at him. "It should be dead."
Deanna makes it back to her feet, Carl shoving her back to the floor. I'm watching as Mikey looks on. Heartbroken. Watching his mother thrown to the ground with a thud, her yellow-stained eyes void of any love for him.
"You're not killing it," Carl tells Enid a final time.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" she screams at him.
"You wouldn't-" Carl's screaming back, furious at himself when he stutters. "You wouldn't understand!"
"STOP!" Mikey finally yells at them both, covering his ears.
Enid looks disgusted. Turning on the spot, she takes off at a run towards home.
Carl's got his foot on Deanna's chest now, keeping her pinned to the forest floor as she snarls violently in our directions. Her hands clawing at his boot.
I touch Mikey's shoulder briefly, stepping past him and telling Carl to move his foot. Carl hesitates.
"Mikey," I say very gently, "I can do it. You don't have to."
"It should be him," Carl tells me. "Someone that loved her."
"Mikey... it's your mum. You don't have to."
"I can do it," he finally sniffs. Sounding close to tears, none appearing, nevertheless.
I nod, and Carl takes his weight off Deanna, letting her up. She lunges for her son, but Carl catches her arms, holding them behind her back and keeping her stationary.
Mikey draws his knife with heavy hands, shaking as he brings it to his mother's temple. A long deserved rest is given as she goes limp. I grab her shoulders and help Carl gently lower her body to the earth.
"We'll give you a minute," Carl pats Mikey's shoulder, nodding for me to follow him.
Once we're out of eyeshot, I pass Carl his hat back and ask him a question. "Was that for him or for you?"
He gives me a look that makes me feel bad for asking. He takes a second to affix his before answering, but he doesn't get a chance to speak before we hear loud voices back towards Mikey. Carl catches my arm before I rush towards them.
"Listen," he says, pointing towards the voices.
I do, catching familiar tones in the air, hidden behind the shrubs.
"Mikey... is that..." I recognise the stutters as Spencer's voice.
"Mom..." Mikey responds faintly.
"Are you okay?" Michonne's there too.
"I guess."
"You're out here alone?" Michonne asks.
Carl tugs on my arm in the direction of home. "He's-" Carl pauses, frowning at his struggling brain. "Mikey's safe with them," he finally manages.
"Yeah," I nod, following as we travel back to the wall.
A/N
Wow, it's been a while since Rhys has taught people English things!
Hope y'all are enjoying!
Next Time- We take a trip in Carl's brain. Rhys and Carl talk about it.