Sometimes i think I'm reading in between the lines a little bit with DCC and Carl specifically because there's just something about Carl's wanton regard for his own safety and his relationship with his mother and how that's going to effect his relationship with Dounut i just aaagh
Like obviously Carl's already suvivor's guilt maxxing pre- dungeon. He deeply deeply desires connection and community and family, but he doesn't feel close to even the most prominent people in his life (Bea obviously but also Sam, who he's been friends with since before his mom died and even lived with for a time after getting out of state care). Like I think he's more deeply connected to any of his circle in the dungeon than anyone before. Like he immediately! picked up on Bautista and Katia dating but couldn't see his own girlfriend was cheating on him for years lol
Which exacerbates his martyr looking for a cause deal. He's always like "well if a sacrifice has to be made a sacrifice it should be me" and when he realizes in Bedlam Bride that he is now too important to sacrifice because he's a warlord, it's nothing but a deep and aching grief. He does not want to be the one who keeps soldiering on on the face of all this death. And if it came down to it he would unquestioningly die for Dounut because he cannot bear that grief. He talks a big game about having to keep going when their friends die but the entire universe knows that if Dounut dies he's done.
Because as much as the narrative shies away from naming it as such, Carl feels and treats Dounut as his daughter (I don't wanna get into it to much here but their relationship is paralleled with Dounut's relationship with Mongo, and Miriam's relationship with Prepotente, both of which are more explicitly parent/child). And so I keep coming back to what Signit said near the end of Butcher's Masquerade, about how Tina wants the same thing she does, the same thing Carl does: Tina wants her mother back. I'm convinced that, had he known, Carl would gladly choose to endure years more abuse at the hands of his father, if only his mother was alive and with him.
So I think a major part of the end of this series is Carl having to make a very deliberate choice to save himself, even if it means Dounut suffers for it. Because his mom made the other choice, and he knows it was the wrong one. His sacrifice needs to be bearing Dounut's pain with her, rather than trying to save her from it. Continuing to live and suffer is the harder choice, but it's the one he has to make.
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