#twds6

                                                           𖥔 𖥔 𖥔

You don’t know when it started.

You don’t think you want to know, anyways. Going down that path, remembering and remembering each memory that's soft emotions surrounding it has since then hardened into inauspicious spikes. It’d break you. A bullet through glass.

The group you’re with — the family you found — have accustomed to this life. A normal life. Meals at the dinner table, walks around the block, gardens, neighbors, the whole fake wrap-up. Alexandria was like a drug, lowering your defenses — but oh so addicting.

It was so easy to forget what was outside.

Even he does, and he’s the last person you’d think to. He’s started to fade out of the persona he created for himself. You sit on the floor in his room, eyes trailing every bit that he’s decorated. It’s a piece of himself that isn’t the survivor, the piece that is a normal teenage boy.

“Do you think we can be safe here?” Your words leave your mouth without much acknowledgment from you, a haze setting in on your mind. You need to sleep.

He doesn’t respond, at least for a moment. The flicking pages of Invincible (or Science-dog — you’re unsure what series he’s binging, at the moment) and your mutual breathing is the only thing in the air. He’s processing it — and you know it’s a valid question. You’ve all been asking yourselves that.

“I,” He paused again, “Yes. I — I think we can be. We need to be.” He said, dropping his voice to a whisper at the end.

“But—“

“The prison was safe. I know.” He cuts you off with a nod. He was stating a fact, something you both knew. The prison was somewhere you thought you could forget for a while.

(Maybe more than a while.)

The next week, the conversation starts itself again. You’re not trying to push whatever you’re trying to hear — you’re just nervous.

And he tells you, “I want to be safe. Here, I mean.” and tells you he doesn’t want to be the person he ‘needed to be’ all the time. “It eats at me. I — I don’t know. It’s tiring.”

So, he sheds it. He’s realer, this way. You know he pretends to be tough, be mature, be someone who can be a good shot, someone who can kill if need be, someone who can partially raise his sister, because he’d shot his mother when he was thirteen and his father was busy running a community that was just… incredulously ignorant — all in one.

It’s good. Good for him. He doesn’t look so pained these days. He used to look like he had the world's weight sitting on him, and him alone, breaking himself under the pressure slowly, until there’d be nothing left.

But you don’t think you can shed that persona.

The person you needed to be has long since become the person you really are, and the you who’d put on that shell has disappeared. The line blurred so far that there wasn’t— wouldn’t be coming back from it.

You had been smudged away in the background. You were an artists easel, holding onto each canvas like nothing else — the canvas that was a child, the canvas that was a teenager barely holding on, the canvas that was a cold survivor — and now, you’d have to wait for the circumstances to paint the next one for you.

With the new environment, the new him, and the you who had to keep changing and changing like a chameleon, comes new people.

Everyone is nice. They had to be. They weren’t stained by what happened outside. Didn’t hold the blood of their own and the blood of those who they killed just to keep on in their hands, their nails, their body.

(No matter how hard you scrubbed, the blood never went away. You’d never feel clean, you think.)

Their life had kept impenetrable for years. You didn’t believe in God, never did, but what kind of praying were these people doing to be buried in such guaranteed luck? What was it about them?

Then, there was her. And she sweeps him off his feet. A brisk appearance is all he needs for his presence to follow like a lovesick puppy. You call out for him to “Be safe!” in an imitation of his fathers tone with a chuckle, ignoring the faint burn you feel in your heart. You just ate too quickly.

But, you get it. She’s… something new. Undiscovered. The two of you have long exhausted conversations. You know all about him, while he knows all about you. From favourites to birthdays to whispered memories of before.

(“—And I didn’t have enough frosting, so we gave up and threw the cake at each other.” He says, looking up at the cell ceiling.

You let out an ungodly laugh, and he punches you lightly in the shoulder. “It’s not that funny.”

When you don’t respond, he looks at you, a grin slowly forming on his lips.)

Your time together dwindles. Slowly, but surely, it’s soon harshly evident. You’ll share the occasional hangout. Sitting in silence, doing whatever it was you’d felt to do so at the moment, which had been comfortable once before.

Now, you don’t know what it is.

Days he said he’d swing by your place, he tells you he’d forgotten he’d promised to do something with her. He apologizes over and over, and It’s fine, really, you tell him. It is. It’s fine.

You’re fine.

You hate to be dramatic. Truly, you prided yourself on the way life walked by you, without so much as a word or a thought about it. Sometimes you think that you’re wrong for it, and he does too.

“I think you’re just overcompensating for something.” He says when you tell him, a joking twinge in his voice. You push him lightly, a laugh escaping your throat.

However, he’s right. You pour emotion like a fountain, and the only way you’ve found to cope is to place a plug on that bottle. Let life pass you by.

This was the person you needed to be. Someone who didn’t so much as shed a tear when people were there, then gone. You weren’t trying to be heartless. You were trying to ignore it all.

It’ll explode one day. You know. But you’ll cross that bridge when you get there.

If you get there. You didn’t know if you would be here for long — and if you’d bother to do so, anyways. You’d found salvation now, but who’s to say it would stay? It would soon enough be ripped out of your hands greedily, drunk up by someone who deemed their needs to be more important than your own.

Those thoughts swim and swim around endlessly, tying together thick and bundled, until it’s nearly filled your head, and you’ve got to clear it out. To do so, you busy yourself. Reading books ravenously. You didn’t even like books before. But it’s a quick, and easy way to ignore. Ignore, ignore, ignore.

With that, you find that no one bothers you in your room. A knock or two every few hours, and a light-hearted ‘I’m reading!’ makes for long hours alone. The silence isn’t so much overbearing as it is nostalgic.

You remind yourself to ask him for the Wolf-Man comic you didn’t finish, and when you do so, she’s reading it, splayed across his bed like she always had.

(You’re pathetic, you think.)

(He looks at you from his desk, a questioning look on his face. Your cheeks burn with a light embarrassment that none of them knew for. “I’m looking for Judith, do you know where she went?” You say, pasting on a sheepish smile.)

(You hoped it reached your eyes.)

You woke up in your closet today. The bed is too big, your limbs not nearly reaching the corners. It’s an endless ocean, and there's no hands to pull you out this time. You’re much too used to huddling in claustrophobic and closed space. Pushed against others in an attempt to keep warm.

(You remember. His breath fanning on your neck feverishly, as you pulled him closer to your person. Hands running through his hair, tugging lightly for comfort.

Nothing went further. Most things you did — things that could dare to tread the wall sat between more and the same — never went further. The two of you couldn’t find it in yourself to climb it.)

A wall he liked to climb was one with her. Figuratively, and literally. You see him climb the bars from the view of your window. It’s day after day, at this point, helping each other over and back.

You can’t bring yourself to follow, nor even leave the closet. You begin to take books from the library faster. You return and you take and you read at an alarming rate. This was your normality, everyone supposed.

(Not many knew of the you before it all, and just assumed you were one to read.

Someone knew you weren’t, but he was preoccupied. It was alright. You get it.)

Soon enough, life went on in waves. You grew a few inches. He had a growth spurt, quickly leaving you behind. It was becoming a pattern, at this point.

Michonne asks why she hasn’t seen you with him lately. You paste on a smile, “It’s definitely my fault — I can’t stop reading! I haven’t touched a book in ages, and it’s all too fun.”

Before she can respond (and you know you wouldn’t have liked the answer, as her eyebrows pulled together in a furrow, unconvinced and prying expression in place) you pick up Judith, watching her look longingly at the porch. You might as well get some air, if not just for her.

One day, he catches you by surprise. He asks you to help him with homework. You agree, and it soon turns to comics in comfortable silence, once again.

(You don’t know why. You weren’t complaining, but you really — really didn’t know why.)

And then he apologized. Hushed words in the evening hallway after dinner, murmurs of his stupidity and selfishness. He’s too good to you.

His blue eyes peak out from under his long, brown hair, another apology just sitting on his tongue. His hands tangle against each other nervously, a habit he picked up somewhere along the way.

The silence hangs over you like a cloud, waiting and waiting. And you tell him it’s okay. You tell him, “I never made time. I was caught up.” and he visibly relaxes. His breath drops, and his shoulders look lighter.

His lips split into a grin, reaching ear to ear. You remember what it was about him, the thing that made your mind go in circles and your heart sink up and down.

(And later, you try to forget it all again. You were so close to erasing it all. So close.)

Days go by where you only get a glimpse or a quick patch of conversation with him, and some days where you almost feel like it’s back then, just the two of you in a big, big world.

And you see him again, on the porch, looking out on the neighborhood, he gives you a quick wave.

She appears from the edge of the house, hand clasping into the other that's not waving, and does, too.

You’re okay with it all, really. You get to be his friend, and that’s all that matters in that silly little mind of yours.

You can ignore. You were good at that.

(Ignore the hands that hold each other carefully, cradling eachothers faces in the dark, heads on shoulders, soft words exchanged between them and them alone.)

It was easy. Incredibly easy.

(And it horrified you.)

Topics of her worm their way into your conversation sometimes. He asks, “What the hell did she mean by that?” and you echo a thick laughter. You wonder if he could still tell which laughs were real or not.

You see his eyes when she passes by, blinking owlishly with something you can only call love. His attention trails after her, like she's the only thing left in the world — the only thing important.

So you help him. He asks you why she did what she did. What you think she thought. And you tell all. You explain the ‘intricacies’ of the (not so) average teenage girl.

You’re fueling the fire to a first love thats entirely their own, while you sit on the standby. Your mother always did tell you that one day you’d dig your own grave.

And then, she comes to you, too. It’s a few days before his birthday, and she’s pacing around your room and twisting and pulling and fidgeting with her fingers like the world is about to end.

(Ha.)

Her hands move dramatically and graphically — it’s the most emotion you’ve seen from her. She rambles, quickly and nervously, and she sits down on your bed, now, “I don’t know what to get him — it’s in four days —“ and you’re worried she’ll run out of air and pass out on your bedroom floor, so you dig an edition of Guarding The Globe from inside your closet, placing it in her hands.

She looks at you, wide eyed “What’s this?” She says, though she looks entirely desperate for a solution to her problem, eyes darting on the paper.

You snort, “It’s the issue of Guarding The Globe he’s been looking for, for, like, ages.” And she places the comic on your bed, gently, getting up, wrapping her arms around you. You try not to flinch, and it takes a long moment before she lets go. Her grip is incredibly strong.

(When she leaves, you sigh, and scratch your head, wondering what you were supposed to get him, now.)

They were good for eachother. Two puzzle pieces that clicked, and needed not much else. The kind of people who should be the main characters in a movie, side by side while eliminating every threat that’d come in the way of their love. Partners in crime, accomplices in a murder, their very own Bonnie & Clyde — the whole thing.

And then there were people like you — people like Ron. He was nearly a mirror image of you.

You two were no Bonnie & Clyde, but rather a double edged sword that longed for a user who’d much rather spar.

Your stories were the same, glancing starry eyed at one piece of the couple with a lump in your throat and a foggy mind, but you weren’t the same, because you handled your one-sidedness differently in any way two teenagers could be different.

He didn’t pretend that he could still stay her #1, but you could swallow that pill, even if it took a little pretending. He let his emotions out raw, while yours curdled underneath yourself, for it to burst much hotter, much more caustic, than anything Ron could spit out in a heated moment.

You could see the glare building up in his gaze towards him. Sometimes, you felt that too, watching her touch make his cheeks flush with heat. But you knew nothing came of it.

(But sometimes, you couldn’t help but seeth in your emotions. The bottle had spilled one night in your closet, leaving you an empty mess of a body as crumpled as the papers beside you.)

Maybe that was why you’d become friends.

Friendship was unlikely with someone like Ron. He was brash and charismatic. An extroverted entity with zero knowledge of a many horror outside. A boy.

But he was just that. A simple teenager. Maybe it was the fact you two shared a pair of unrequiteds, quiet feelings, a plummeting heart, or maybe it was just the duality of two teenagers. You’d never know.

Sometimes, the two of you sit in his room (or yours, but the both of you seem all too upset when you see the couple jump the wall with brimming grins) and talk. That’s all you do. Talk.

Ron is a complex person, you learn.

(As complex as someone like him can be, anyways.)

He’s ignorant, sure, watching the outside longingly like it’s some walk in the park, but he tells you, “I feel like a prisoner in my own home. I might as well have bars on my window.” and you aren’t surprised when he tells you his brother did, for a time.

His father is dead, and he’s angry, now more than ever. You can’t help but see yourself in that place, a putrid ball of unearthed anger, sitting in the grief. 

Ignoring it.

You only saw your parents' killer in the mirror — but you were the closest person to knowing how it felt like.

Most days, he’s shaking, a shadow of a person appearing in his expression. You nod and listen and calm the teenager down, and aren’t scared when he punches the wall.

(You’d been that way too, looking at the broken mirror shards in a way that was more than dangerous.)

And on the odd days, he cries. You can make out some of it — “It’s — it’s my fault,” he says between hiccups, burying his tears in your shoulder, “He wouldn’t have done it, he wouldn’t if it wasn’t for…” and he trails off. You don’t need him to finish that sentence to know what he means.

You feel silly, now, listening to Ron’s words. You’ve scorned the boy for wanting so desperately to see the outside, watching his eyes glance at it like he’d just discovered colours — but you now know he’s just been trying to escape.

But there’s the matter of him and Ron, and you know the blonde boy’s anger is soon seething and boiling (much like yours, which worries you, for Ron was never one to wait) to a cold and harsh fury.

“You know it’s not Carl’s fault, right?” You slip out one evening.

You’re tuning the end of the guitar that Ron couldn’t (quite frankly, you couldn’t either, but playing around was fun enough) while he rearranged furniture in his room.

His face contorts into that of a disgusted agony, lips pulled into a shaky scowl, eyes thinned. But he looks at you, on the wooden floor, hands lightly twisting and turning the guitar end.

You aren’t worried about his response, and he realizes you aren’t trying to scold him— or even correct him. You just want to listen. And it makes all the difference in the world.

“You don’t have to answer that.” You say apologetically.

”No — it’s… it’s fine,” He says emptily, hanging a picture of a tree (or a cloud, you’re unsure) above his desk. “I don’t blame him, but,” He says, voice sounding defeated, as if realizing something of great importance, “I don’t not blame him.”

A moment of silence passes, “I sound silly, don’t I?” He mumbles, gazing at the picture.

You look at him, “No. Not at all.”

Ron fidgets with his fingers, “It isn’t his fault. I know that. Deep down. I just — want someone to blame.”

You watch him carefully. He picks up the painting, and flips it upside down (definitely a cloud, now) setting it back on the nail.

”I suppose it’s my dad’s fault. Entirely.” He murmurs.

You blink at him wide-eyed.

The topic isn’t touched on much after that night, but these days, he smiles a little brighter, and doesn’t have very many bad days.

On the other hand, you’re harder to crack. You — you don’t find it relieving to share these things. You feel weak. Vulnerable.

You feel that if you opened that bottle willingly, not waiting for it to burst in a mess of hurt and glass, you’d be softening.

You shook your head, and opted to spill little, insignificant things.

You tell Ron how you wish it was you. It’s a carefully crafted white lie. It mixes the truth and it’s embellishments like paint, pigmented and opaque.

“I’m… jealous, I guess.” You say with a soft shrug that makes you want to roll your shoulders harshly until that pain ceases forcibly.

..You don’t know if you want it to be you, or if you just want him to be alone. All to yourself, like a toy in a sandbox that your mother tells you to share with the other little girl across from you.

But it can’t be that way. As much as you needed him, like he was a rope on the edge, a hand in the water, pressure on a gaping wound — he didn’t need you. Maybe it was better that way.

You knew, that was the kind of people who would survive in this world. Your mother wasn’t someone who could live on after your father, and it resulted in you shooting them point blank.

The dependable becomes the dependent, you supposed, thinking of that time that felt like yesterday.

You weren’t a dependable person then, not really. You pulled the trigger because her hands pushed you to do so, and even then, the only thing that had changed was the fact you’d become a murderer and that you were now an orphan. One and the same.

You had barely held onto the cliff called life — if you could call it living it all — and were just about to let go when the rope came crashing down on you.

“What’re you thinking about?” He says, looking back at his window after taking a glance at you.

“Nothing.” You respond, biting the side of your cheek impatiently, trying to get a knot out of your shoelaces.

It's quiet. Comfortable and not, all at the same time. A mixed medium. You didn’t know if you’d be completely comfortable beside that boy again.

“Am I,” He looks out the window once more, tapping his fingers on the glass with the pads of his finger-tips, “Am I a bad person?”

What?

“What?” You echo after your thoughts, fingers slowing from your shoes.

“Am I a ba—“

You shake your head incredulously, “I heard what you said, — what brought this up?”

He scratched his cheek, “I don’t know.”

You look at him accusingly. “I’ve killed people, [Name], I’ve killed people . Not walkers — people .” He caves.

“So? I’ve killed people. I killed my parents , god’s sake , Carl, we’ve all killed people.”

“I killed that boy, back at the prison. He — he was putting down his gun. He was surrendering . And I shot him .” He faces you fully now, lips pursed painfully. His eyes are rimmed red, like he’s had this conversation before, mulled over it endlessly.

(You always reminded the boy to stop thinking for once. He couldn’t, not without your reminders. It didn’t help much, but you were a distraction. A good one, at that.)

(You supposed that’s all you were, really. A pass time before he’d go off with her. Advice to Ron before he’d go on to Mikey’s. The real fucking manual to his heart, given solely from your own — now in permanent bleeding possession of her.)

“We’ve — Carl, you,” You can’t respond properly. His expression sends your gut off the deep end, heart shattering into sharp shards.

He watches you carefully, shoulders curved in on himself. “You aren’t a bad person .” You finally say.

He looks so small . Shaking in the evening light. So, you do what you’ve done every time before.

Your lanky arms slip around him, gently, like he’ll break, tugging at his brown locks comfortably.

“I’m — I’m going to hurt her. I’m a monster, [Name].” He whispered so quietly you almost didn’t catch it.

“You won’t hurt her. You won’t, Carl. Enid’s,” You try not to take in how sour her name feels on your tongue, “she’s strong. You’re strong. You aren’t going to hurt her .”

He’s warm, under your touch, “You didn’t hurt me. And I’m a hell of a lot weaker than what she’s got going on.”

He lets out a breathy laugh, pulling away from you. His eyes squint with his laughter, teeth showing under his grin.

And it makes your heart absolutely tear into each other. Because you know he’ll never be yours — and maybe you always knew that, but this, all of this, had solidified it. His tears were her’s and her heart was his, and you stood, watching (and fucking making ) it happen.

But you’d grow used to it. You’d grow to live with it. You just had to ignore, pretend, slip on a smile, try to get it to reach your eyes — do everything , because your heart was his — just not the same way round. You’ll do everything, and cheer them on in the distance.

Distance. You’d have to start with that.

But not now. The two of you in his room, moonlight spilling through the glass window, feeling the ghost of his touch under your finger tips — it was everything you wanted to drink in.

It’d last you a lifetime, and it was something you’d lock away into that bottle of everything. It was your moment, and yours alone, hidden in the shade and away from everything else. Your prized snowglobe.

You fidgeted lightly with your fingers, a habit you picked up somewhere along the way.

-