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Matthew 6:14-15
: Jesus says that God will not forgive us if we do not forgive others.
 
Clearly, and Gabriel meant this in the most earnest, respectful, kind-hearted way possible,

the Son of G*d had not met Negan.

You’d expect him to be happy with the ‘saving’ of another's life – like Morgan’s airtight rules and that dreary, damp cell. Negan could suffocate his days away and they could pat themselves on the back,

good job, good people, we are better than he was at least!

But honestly, if he was really and truly straight with himself, Gabriel wished, for the sake of the wives,

he’d

been allowed to do it. Why? Because he was already going to Hell. He was already soiled – he’d killed so many, intentional or not. Let his hands be stained so the others’ could be washed.

No one washed their hands anymore.

But everyone was hanging onto something, as much as their pale shifty eyes swore it wasn’t so. And as the unofficial peacekeeper…well…he could sense tension brewing. If his life was for

nothing

then let just this one idea work out – even if they all laughed at him for it

forever

.

Morgan had an easy enough time constructing that cell, but even after the bombing turned paradise suburbia into scorched real estate Gabriel still had a hard time convincing the Alexandrians to let him put his plan into action.
 
The church itself was a brick cube with crude chunks taken out of the walls and a thatched roof. Gabriel had found two beautiful mosaic glass windows in a dark basement somewhere that were frankly

too

large for the actual hole spaces. Instead, he (meekly) requested assistance in sawing part of the roof from an eye-rolling Daryl so the windows may scatter rainbow light in a dappled pattern across the “pews” and “altar.” It was pretty, he told himself,

people like standing around in pretty rooms, even if only for the nice view.

It was making a habit! Not…trying to save any souls, oh, no, no no…

G*d, his chest hurt.

The best part of the church, however, was the confessional he’d managed to construct out of a closet and a few spare boards. It looked pretty legit! The reason he was so proud of it was because, well, no one wanted to help him set it up aside from a baffled Eugene and a sardonically confused Rosita who pointed him where the tools were. He built the thing with his own hands and got half a hundred splinters to prove it.

They’re all probably laughing at me.

No one would laugh as hard as Rick.
 
Sometimes, late at night, Carl would wander. He’d slip out of bed, draping the blanket back over Enid’s shoulders as gently as he could, and rush down the stairs, out the front door, down the porch steps. Nothing but his hat and a pistol. Where the whole world was quiet, where nobody could say a thing.

Deliberately avoiding his family’s house.

Family,

as well as you could call it. As much as that word was worth at this point. He felt like a ghost sifting down those streets, aimless, the pull of reality, something so nameless and unexplainable dragging him forward. A silent chain tied to his wrist, an image that pooled in his nightmares, that clogged like tar.

And the place he always wound up—that staircase that lay above the cells. The demon that lay beneath the floor. The only other in the world that

knew.

Enid was aware of this. She slept about as rarely as he did.

He’d come to her two years ago, tears in his eyes, a tremble in his hands, “Can I stay here, please,” He’d begged, a hand holding himself around the middle, as if he were terrified he’d split in two. Sobs like razors.

The verdict had been announced the following morning. Rick standing up on that stage, every allied community listening, watching, waiting. Carl’s hand in hers, they watched, dreading every word that came from his mouth.

My mercy prevails over my wrath.

What Rick had really meant was,

My moral high-ground matters more.

They’d been living together since. The two twisting and turning in their night, always another wound to start the morning. 
 
The sky was pumpkin-patch orange by the time Gabriel found Carl after a night of insomniac wandering.

He had a recognizable silhouette, hat and long legs. There was something so…tragic about seeing him, really, thin as a rake and with hair well past his shoulders. Gabriel could almost remember when he was that small puppy-faced kid with the hat too big for his head, with two eyes so bright…

Privately, Gabriel had thought,

Isn’t it funny? We’re the only two half blind folks here. We have one good set of eyes between us.

But he would never say that out loud. He was never known for his jokes, even before his life became one.
 
He was jogging slightly to catch up to Carl’s long stride. A dead man’s march, Gabriel would not say it. The boy – man? – did not want to hear it, definitely, but he moved like a Walker. Aimless, shambling, driven by something elsewhere, an invisible string guiding him forward. Gabriel was noticed fairly quickly, and he held out his hand, saying in the brightest voice he could muster,

“Carl! Nice to see you this morning.”

He wondered if now was too early to expect any polite small talk from Carl…well…he wanted to imagine he was on decent terms with him at least. There was no more…malice, especially not after…well. G*d bless their souls.

Carl stopped in his tracks as soon as he noticed, turning to face him, wondering what he’d possibly want to do with him. Doubting he’d be invited to bible study. It took a moment for his vision to focus, Gabriel’s face to clear out of that haziness, like a reflection in moving water.

He wondered if his father had sent him to talk. Rick’s various attempts to get Carl to visit in these last few months had all fallen through—he’d come by to take Judith to their makeshift preschool twice a week, although that had, slowly, become the extent of their interaction.

You should come by for dinner soon,

Rick would say as Judith came out the door, teetering back and forth, reaching for her brothers’ hand.

Maybe,

Carl would respond, ignoring the disappointment that flared up in Rick’s expression,

Come on, Judy, we’ll be late.

“Uh, yeah,” Slowly, uncertain, he shook his hand, returning the gesture. It was awkward, limp, he pulled away just as fast. The lights only starting to come on inside the houses on their cul de sac, drowning the street in white-orange, the plaster of names on the wall just slightly too far away to make out the letters. But Carl knew every one in the order they appeared. “Good morning.”

Gabriel’s mouth twitched into a relieved smile.

Good morning

was a foot in the door. Good morning was not a resistance, at least, not yet. He studied Carl for a moment, the amber light and concaves of his face. Honestly, he was one of the youngest adults in Alexandria, but his age showed on his face. Some people had a kind of permanent lambish innocence about them, or at least pulled the fleece over themselves to hide behind. Himself, his former self, and steely Carol came to mind. Carl however made no effort to do any of that. He looked as dead as you could, while being alive on a beautiful morning.

“I actually wanted to speak with you. You’re very busy. I get it, don’t worry,” he spoke quickly.

I get it.

What does that mean? That Carl is their leaders’ son? Was he acknowledging how busy he was, dodging his father? Surely that wasn’t a full time job.

But carrying on in one's suffering – that was, with no leave, vacation, only overtime.

“Would you be so kind as to join me on a short walk?” Gabriel sidled beside him, peering up slightly. The boy towered, his face in shadow.

Carl thought for a moment, a hand reaching up instinctively to hold his hat down from the wind (which, really, there wasn’t much of). He hadn’t spent much time with Gabriel. Even if he

was

the first to defend him, all the way back after Terminus—

Everybody can’t be bad—

he hardly knew him. It was impossible to tell whether or not this was some kind of game, the way he was always wrapped up in an anxious smile, moving his hands as he spoke like he didn’t know what to do with them, a shrug to dismiss anything he said in advance.

It wouldn’t have been difficult for Rick to get him to come all this way, seek him out. But if that was the case, it would be harder, if not impossible, to reach some kind of agreement. Rick had lost that chance at restoration a very, very long time ago.

You’re very busy, I get it,

he had said.

Very busy, yeah,

Carl thought,

Going to those same steps every damn night, and never mustering up the courage to go inside. To do something about this.

Just the thought of seeing that man again sent shivers down his spine, bile pushing up his throat. The pull of hands, teeth breaking skin, a million painful things he wished that he could tell. The first few times he tried, and he couldn’t, he had told himself,

I’ll do it eventually

.

He never did.

“Why?” Carl asked, bringing his hands together, then to his sides, digging his nails deep into his palms.

‘Why’

took the teeth out of Gabriel. He paused. There was the resistance he expected…but he forced past it, saying in that paper-thin optimistic tone, “There’s something I’d like to show you. Don’t- don’t worry, it’s nothing horrible and,”

He rubbed the back of his neck. The area around Carl had turned icy, as though the hurt inside him materialized into a dip in temperature. Gabriel found himself thinking, somewhat pointlessly,

I should really get a hat sometime, too, I’m cold.

As if on cue, the sun peeked out over the hills and kissed amber the back of his bald head. Carl’s eye shown a yellowish-gray, almost as yolky and far off as Gabriel’s bad one.

“I promise, your-

Rick

has absolutely nothing to do with this,” he said, splaying his hands like he was folding down a sheet. “He…well, it’s been a while since we talked. Different beliefs, all that,”

There was a time when Rick was as christian as they came. When he and Lori put up the red-green lights and the radio that was constantly blaring,

All I want for Christmas is youuuuuuu.

Weeks of elementary school where all the spelling lists were the names of the reindeer - Prancer, Vixen, whatever - and the culmination of gifts beneath the tree. Damn, the old dog Carl couldn’t remember the name of – they used to get him a rawhide on Christmas morning and Rick, baby-faced old Rick, would say, “Santa got it, he’s been a good boy.” It was laughable, now, to imagine the man who put that monster ten feet underground (but not in a coffin) would weigh Santa’s morality in giving a shelter-mutt a Christmas gift.

So. No. Rick was not religious, and perhaps that part of Gabriel was mildly repulsive to him.

Carl crossed his arms, fingers hugging the space below his shoulder. Shivering in the street. He figured, maybe some company wasn’t the worst thing. Anyway, when was the last time he’d really been outside if not alone, torturing himself with false platitudes and memories like leeches.

“Yeah, okay,” Carl heaved a sigh, “Sure.”

(Besides, he thought, Gabriel might be just as lonely.)

Gabriel tried to not seem as though he were idolizing the crumb of attention. They were…bizarre in their way of handling Carl. The farthest from the truth saw him as an extension of Rick. Those closer, a tragedy. Those even

closer

had probably heard Rick, mildly wine-drunk and very red in the eyes, lament about

losing

him. Carl was kind of like an urban legend. Like going on a hike with Bigfoot.

“So, what have you been doing? Like, uh.. how’s the church coming along?”

Gabriel beamed, “Thanks for asking, it’s been good..the interior looks so much better…” he rambled on a bit more, small talk, what a pain it was getting the windows up. It really was proving Carl’s point that maybe he was just lonely, because a second after he was able to catch his breath, the little building poking out of the misty forest path, Gabriel folded his arms in front of himself and said somewhat awkwardly, “Not many folks are feeling very religious. But they came for Christmas, that was nice…” a pause, then awkwardly, “

Were

you there?”

Christmas, a few people got drunk inside the ‘church,’ and to make Judith giggle, they sang poorly remembered carols, mumbling when no one could remember the words. Rosita had laughed really hard when Eugene asked her what

feliz navidad

meant. There was a rat in the tree they’d hauled in from outside and Daryl had killed it with his hands, stealthy as a cat and strong as a bear, single crack to the spine. It made Judith cry and Rick chastised him and the night didn’t really recover after that – everyone went off to be drunk in their own homes.

Gabriel wondered if he’d even stopped by, or if he’d spent the holiday alone.

January frost still crusted the grass.
 
Christmas. Carl hardly remembered that day—Michonne had come by beforehand, a knock on the door Carl and Enid had heard while sitting upstairs on the bed, sifting aimlessly through comics. “

Can you get it,”

Carl had asked her, throwing the book down, lying back with a hand rubbing his eye until he saw patterns. He didn’t want to see anyone, not now, “

Please.”

She did. Carl listened as the stairs creaked beneath her, unmoving except for the hands he had folded over his stomach, like he were already in his coffin. He was having one of the worst headaches of his entire life, the remnants of a nightmare from the small amount of sleep he had managed to get. When she came back, she tried to convince him to go; “

Come on, it’ll be fun, Judith would want you there.”

He told her, if

she

wanted to, she could. She dropped it then.

Neither of them wound up attending. They stayed inside (honestly, having forgotten about Christmas until they were reminded), making a dinner entirely consisting of cereal and coffee, watching DVDs until they fell asleep atop the blankets.

“Uh, no. I didn’t go,” Carl replied, his arms tightening around himself, “Enid and me just stayed in. Watched some movies, you know. Maybe next time.”

“I don’t blame you. It was a party, not really a service,” Gabriel smiled somewhat sadly. He didn’t like the idea of his new church becoming just another spot to hang around in. It was already beginning to smell like that and, well, he just didn’t like it.

Perhaps this protectiveness was what had kept him from opening the door, violating the house of God, not allowing-

STOP.

That’s not true.

Don’t think about that.

S.T.O.P.

The church came into view. The squat building, brand new but looking like a relic from the last century. Gabriel fingered his rosary, smiling a little, like he was relieved it was still standing. He was quiet for a long moment, taking it in, before saying softly, “What do you think?”

Carl stood beside him, nodding, somber. The last time he’d ever step foot inside a church—well, for a service, not a meeting discussing the war a few years back—had to have been very shortly before the walkers first showed up. He’d go with his parents every other Wednesday, but after Rick was hospitalized, shot, after they were told he might not wake up? His mother started taking him twice a week.

Lori would stare at the pastor, her hands balled up in her lap. Holding them together so that nobody could see them shaking. But Carl noticed. He’d lay his head on her shoulder, staring at the stained glass that sent golden beams, not knowing what else to do, wishing he could fix everything for her so she wouldn’t be so sad.

They were christian before all of that, sure. But she read the bible to him before bed in that story-book voice, brushing his hair with her hands like cool water. She prayed before every meal, eyes screwed shut. He heard her crying when they went to visit Rick in the hospital, that blue gown, begging God for him to wake up. Carl wasn’t sure if she even really believed in it, but it was the last thing she knew to turn to.

“It’s nice,” Carl said quietly, his arms falling limp at his sides. Hoping he hadn’t brought him here for some kind of lesson, to convince him to believe in god again. He’d stopped the moment they found Sophia. Hadn’t so much as considered the idea of someone all-loving, all-caring, all-knowing, when his best friend stumbled out of that barn. When Carol sunk to the ground, screaming for her daughter. When his mother cradled his head.

Baby, don’t look.

If God existed, he’d never have allowed that to happen.

“I mean, you worked really hard on it, I’m sure.” Carl spoke, not knowing what else to say.

“I think most people here aren’t very happy with God right now,”

Gabriel wasn’t sure why he put it so plainly. Maybe because he figured Carl could see through the bullshit, or if he tried to decorate it with pretty prose he’d lose his chance at an audience once again.

He clarified. “I’m not mad at them. What sort of God could have let all of this happen?” He waved his hand vaguely, before smiling slightly, sadly, saying, “At the same time, I’m sure people were absolutely thinking that

hundreds

of years ago. During the Cold War, Polio, World War Two…”

But I want to do something. I want to help people, in the only way I know how. Even if we can never forgive ourselves, our Lord will always forgive us.

Everyone was always so guilty.

He remembered selling them out to Alexandria.

His chest got tight.

“I’m thinking of opening a confessional.” He said, thinking out loud, “We don’t exactly have…a therapist, haha. Anyone who's made a mistake would appreciate talking about it. I don’t…even care what they believe anymore,”

Carl understood why someone

would

believe. If you could, it was just easier. He wished he could trust that there was something to fall back on.

But he knew better than anyone, when you were falling, you could pray all you wanted. Nothing was going to catch you. Nobody was coming to save you.

“I think that’s a good idea,” He said, plainly, “Someone would probably use it.”

A confessional. Somewhere you could go, somewhere you could say anything. Nobody else would have to know. Carl thought for a moment, in a desperate lapse of judgement;

maybe, if he did open it, I could…

No. He wouldn’t.

Not even Enid knew—really knew—what had happened. If he couldn’t tell her, he’d never muster up the courage to tell anyone. Even thinking about it for too long sent his breathing into an erratic fit, like he just couldn’t get enough air.

He wouldn’t.

He turned his head away, struggling to catch his breath, hoping Gabriel wouldn’t notice. Wanting to kick himself for getting so worked up,

It was two years ago, get over it. Get the

fuck

over it. Everyone else has.

Gabriel smiled with relief. “I used to run one back at my old church.”

And those secrets were kept locked in a deep, deep vault of his mind. Even though the people they belonged to - the world they belonged to - had long since died, he’d

never

so much as touch those with his memory. It was like a big forbidden hallway, all the doors locked shut.

Eugene might come: he grew up Christian after all. He’s earnest like that. But he might be uncomfortable, not understand how these confessions aren’t going to somehow twist around and hurt him. No one here wants to spill any secrets.

“I don’t think very many people trust me,” Gabriel said with a slightly sad smile, “but I can put up on flyers. Right. I’ll host it every Sunday, after lunch.”

What he meant to say was

after service

but come on, no one went to that.

The flyers. Carl was suddenly hit with an odd pang of guilt, even if it didn’t really matter anymore, that time after Gabriel started preaching again when they’d first come here and Carl and his father had torn all his flyers down.

Well, he

had

tried to get them kicked out…

Carl didn’t think he was like that, though, not anymore. He coughed and cleared his throat.

“You’ve earned your place,” Was all he could think to say, a terrible attempt at reassurance. He probably sounded more like his father than a friend.

“I’d just like to be useful.”

Gabriel paused, perhaps realizing how whiny that sounded. He’d changed in a subtler way but was still a few threads of the coward they all knew him as. What was he doing? Telling this boy all his problems. It should be the other way around…

“Thanks for listening, Carl. I’d really appreciate it if you could tell your friends about this idea,” he said, earnestly, “I don’t want it to become…politically charged.”

Aha.

That’s the reason he was telling him.

Gabriel didn’t really want Rick to know about this, because Rick’s tendency towards paranoia (and chronic habit of being betrayed by people) might lead him to involvement. Spying. Cold War. Making sure no one confessed anything too heinous or dark…

And Gabriel knew Carl would rather die than tell his father about this…

He hoped.
 
His

friends.

Carl wanted to laugh. He supposed he could tell Enid, but she was, probably, the last person who’d want to go. He could imagine her voice now, when he told her, her laugh.

What, go and confess my sins? God stopped listening a long time ago.

Thinking over it made him realize, really, how few people he spent time with these days. His girlfriend and his four-year-old sister, that was about it.

“Uh… Sure,” Carl said, “I don’t have many… People to tell, though. But, I’ll try.”

Gabriel tried to suppress his almost innocent excitement. “Thank you,”

Perhaps he got a better view of Carl or maybe just the implied new kinship between them gave him him the opportunity to be a bit more honest, because he said with genuine concern, “have you been sleeping alright, you look exhausted,”

Carl shrugged, a hand moving to brush his bangs back over the bandage. Normally, he would have said he was fine, don’t worry about it, everything is fine!

But something—maybe the prospect of a new friend, the lack of sleep, the fact he knew Gabriel wouldn’t tell Rick about what he said, or the thousandth night spent on those steps listening to the man snoring in his cell for hours on end—lowered his inhibition enough to make him reply: “No, not really. I mean, I’m fine. But, no, I don’t.. Really sleep well anymore.”

Gabriel gave him a sympathetic look.

“I understand. I have a hard time sleeping, too.”

What else was there to say?

Have you tried drinking tea before bed?

By that logic, why not vodka?

“How’s Enid?” She was his girlfriend? Fiancée? “I heard you moved in together,”

Are you married? Would you like to be?

He didn’t know how to ask that.

“She’s okay,” Carl replied, smiling just slightly at the mention of her. Glad Gabriel hadn’t asked

why

he was losing sleep. “Yeah, we did a while back. After… Well, you know,”

He gestured vaguely at the building Negan slept beneath, guessing that, even if he hadn’t, Gabriel would know what he was talking about. “It’s been nice.”

That was all the normal conversation one could probably wring out of either of them.

How’s your day, how’s your wife? You happy? You rested? Good? Good.

“Let me know if you need anything,” Gabriel said in that still so-polite way, a vague smile and a hopeful expression, “I can always officiate if you want to make anything … official.”

That wasn’t meant to be funny - Gabriel wasn’t really trying to be, he wasn’t funny, hell he made

Negan

jump - but it fell so awkwardly one couldn’t help but smile.

Carl nodded, the smile still there, fading slowly. Making it official. He wasn’t sure if Enid even believed in that, if she’d care to. To her, anything from the old world was as dead as the things walking around outside.

Hell, when

was

the last time anyone had a wedding? Glenn had just gotten a ring off some walker. Michonne and Rick had just decided to call themselves married one day.

But still…The thought left a warm feeling. “Thanks.. I’ll think about it.”
 
They passed the church and parted ways — for now at least. Gabriel insisted on walking him to his house, even if it was mostly just in silence, it was kind of nice (he had nothing else to do). That had one positive - as they were approaching the slumped suburbia, Rick was crossing over, rifle slung across his back, possibly going out to do something official, another supply raid.

His eyes practically bugged as he saw Carl and Gabriel in the same square of concrete.

Carl froze when he saw him, instantly reverting into that familiar self-soothing stance with his arms crossed and practically hugging himself. Feeling like a stupid petty child. He watched his father stop in place, too, one foot in front of the other, and instantly, effortlessly, assumed what Rick was thinking:

‘So, he’ll talk to this guy and not me?’

‘What did I ever do that was so wrong?’

Carl took a sharp, shaky breath in. They weren’t close enough to his house for him to just speed-walk up the steps and lock the door to avoid a conversation, so he kind of just stood there, in an awkward

ohmygodwhatthefuckdoIdo

kind of way.

“Hey Rick! Good morning!” Gabriel said brightly, pleasantly.

Rick grunted a good morning, gave Carl a long look, before, bent under Gabriel’s stare and the weird guilt that coated his every action,

he

was the one to speed walk away, past.
  
Enid was glad Carl had found someone else to talk to. As much as she loved being able to spend as much time together as they had been lately, it worried her, the way he’d spend all day awake in bed, all night wandering around. She knew where he went, but never asked him about it.

“Confessional, really,” Carl had said, hanging halfway with his head off the bed, a stupid grin on his face, “He wanted me to tell my friends about it. So, there you go.”

Enid laughed, turning the volume down on their television, “Yeah, I think I’m good. Maybe you wanna go, though?”

Carl shrugged, throwing himself back upright, hands resting in his lap. He shook his head and asked, “Why would I?”

“I don’t know. I don’t mean anything by it, just,” She looked at him, looked away. “It doesn’t have to be, like, religious. You can say whatever you want.”

Whatever you want.

Carl felt that tremble in his breath return.

He didn’t even want to think about it, really.

He laid down, sat up again a few moments later. It was hard for him to stay still sometimes, that overexertion of adrenaline that left him both always exhausted and always needing to move, run, fidget.

“Eh,” was all he said.

Maybe, but probably not

, was what he meant.
 
Gabriel had zero attendees for the service, which wasn’t anything special. He read his Bible and prepared sermons people weren’t going to hear. When the door eventually creaked, he lifted his head in slight surprise.

“I heard about you and Carl,” Michonne’s voice was cool and slow, relaxed in a way no one else’s could be. In her hand was Judith’s squishy fist.

“Small world,” Gabriel smiled, not sure if that was a threat or a compliment or a flat suggestion.

“You take care of him, alright?” She spoke flatly, only spiking up a bit at the end to prompt a question - demand an affirmation.

“Of course. I could always — if you ever need,” he leaned down to the blond-haired baby, “I can always tell Judith some stories, entertain her for an afternoon. Hi Judy, do you want to hear about Noah’s Arc?”

“Whose Noah?” She asked, brightly.

“We have all the help we could ever ask for,” Michonne responded, cooly, which was her diction for

absolutely not, you are not filling my surrogate daughter’s head with that bullshit.

“Oh, alright,” he straightened.

“Whose…Whose Noah??” Judith kept asking as they left the church, her running ahead of Michonne’s slow-motion stride and teetering a little bit.

It made Gabriel feel a little off. What was…the

point

of that? What did she

want

? What message was she trying to send - a warning? A

threat

?

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Proverbs 24:29:
Say not, I will do so to him as he hath done to me: I will render to the man according to his work.
 
Carl teetered uneasily on the curb outside the church, lost in thought. Pulling his sleeves over his hands, breathing warm into his palms. Watching the cloud of his breath escape.

The weight of his pistol was heavy on the holster. There probably wasn’t much point in bringing it just walking around. When was the last time they’d had an incident, an attack, a walker inside the gates?

(Obviously, plainly, he knew that wasn’t it.)

He had told himself, after Rick had knelt, a limp hand on his shoulder—

This is the best decision for all of us,

he had said, in that awful

‘look at how reasonable I’m being’

voice of his—that he would do it whether or not he had permission. But after months of thinking, I’ll do it, I will, and never being able to so much as go downstairs…

Carl thought, maybe, to turn away and go home. He wasn’t sure why he’d come all this way, so early in the morning. Gabriel probably wasn’t even awake yet.

Alexandria was so big, it wasn’t unreasonable to be armed when on a stroll. That’s the weird thing about it. Long rural stretches of trees and bushes, parkways, the distant silhouette of the cute Washington homes. The perimeter was so long, it was entirely feasible how it’d been overwhelmed. No one could guard that much wall without an almost militaristic strategy. The Alexandrians were not the army anyway…

But as Carl turned the corner, he was met with an open door leading into the claustrophobic interior of the empty church. Eerily silent. A rainbow of light coming through the mosaic panes above. The closet in the back corner - the confessional - seemed to hum with a secret energy.

He’s awake?

He’s in there?

For a moment he considered just turning back. But he found himself swept up in that morning light, the stained glass, the pews shining green-pink-blue, the smell of freshly cut wood. It was familiar in a way that he found comforting.

And besides… He was exhausted. He’d managed to sleep a few hours the previous night, in which his mind dragged him back down into that awful abyss, awakening with a start and the words

Don’t touch me

repeating endlessly in the whirlwind of his groggy thoughts.

Carl walked into the confessional booth and sat down, hugging his knees to his chest. It was so quiet he could hear the steady hum of his ringing ears, every tremble in his breath, the heavy thumping in his chest.

The shadow in the screen of the confession booth shifted. It’d been made only a few weeks ago, some of the screws mismatched and the frame not quite even. However in the eerie stillness of the morning, where dust and light danced together and a holy darkness spread door to ceiling, one could almost imagine it was official. Not just some closet that had been repurposed.

Well.

The house of God was never meant to be fancy.

He could practically imagine Gabriel’s dark eyes squinting at him through the screen, full of compassion and religious forgiveness.

“What’s on your mind, Carl?”

Came his soft voice.

He took a sharp breath, shrugging as if Gabriel could see him right now. How could he start. Did he even want to.

And if he

did?

What then? Once he said it out loud, there would be no turning back. No pretending. It would become something undeniably real. Like opening Pandora’s box, all of the ugliness spilling out.

(But he couldn’t keep it the loosely contained secret it was right now, not forever.)

“Sorry, I..” Carl paused, picking a loose thread from the sleeve of his flannel. “Don’t know why I’m here. I was just walking, and…”

There was so much to say, and yet not enough.

“The booth looks really nice.”

“That’s good.”

I’ll be in it all afternoon,

There was a subtle flip of pages - Gabriel was reading, probably his Bible or his notes. This wasn’t conversational lonely Gabriel - this was Father Gabriel, who was currently in his little box until his purpose was served. It was an expectation - no one made small talk with a priest in a booth after all.

Carl dropped his feet back onto the ground, tapping his fingers against the wood of his seat. Suddenly he felt cramped, almost claustrophobic, the walls pressing in. He coughed and straightened and said, “Uh… Yeah. I’ll see you around?”

“Of course, stay safe.”

Gabriel did a good job of not sounding desperate. He didn’t want people to feel like they

had

to, just a service that was available — but it surprised him even when Carl appeared in the doorway.
 
The next week, there was a town meeting. Rick’s voice crackled over the radios — even for those who didn’t want to attend. You weren’t allowed to shut those things off - surveillance state, one per house. The constant string of dad rock and Eugene’s equivalent of a

Star Trek “

podcast” -

it’s where my demons hide, it’s where my demons hide -

was interrupted by his rasp of a voice.

“And folks in case of a code orange-“ Fire. “If possible, cut your electricity and evacuate houses. Gather to the garages but do

not

begin to retreat until given the order, we don’t want any congestion or casualties.”

And then, because he was Rick, because he legally had to say something to make Carl’s day worse, he added,

“

Daryl is in charge of evacuating the medic station.”

And.

“

Carol, the prisoners are all yours.”

Carl could barely hear him as his voice turned to,

Eugene, you’re on the livestock, just turn ‘em loose. They’re animals, they know where to go…they don’t want to be cooked meat.

Thank you, sir. I’ll see to it.

Good. We’re going to cover earthquake protocol next-

“Is he fucking serious?” Carl felt his heart begin to beat against the walls of his chest, the very second those words registered in his mind. Enid glanced up at him from halfway across the room, spinning in one of those desk chairs, “Oh, yeah, have people risk their lives just to get

him

out.

Great.

Fucking…”

He threw the book he was reading down on the table, a bit harder than intended. It slammed and clattered to the floor. In the case of a fire, not only would they waste time on getting everyone who

mattered

to safety, but they would let him out. Even temporarily, they’d

let him out.

Carl was steadying himself with a hand against the bed frame and trying to catch his breath.

Around

him.

Around the others.

Enid stood, “Hey, it’s okay,” She took his hand in hers, thumbs brushing gently over his skin, “I mean, it sucks, it’s not

okay.

But–” Her voice softening, syllables like velvet, “–is there anything I can do?”

He shrugged, breaths growing more ragged until he erupted into a coughing fit, sputtering and wiping his mouth with a free hand. “No, I’m fine. Just. I’m gonna go on a walk, alright, I’ll be fine.”
 
He wasn’t sure why he found himself by the

wall

, the graveyard. Perhaps as a way of stating - screaming at the top of one’s lungs -

he killed them

.

They were alive and he made them not.

That awful man, down in his cell. He could probably hear the radio - yeah, there was one down there. Because whoever was on guard duty couldn’t be subjected to him without interruption. He’d heard it, painfully, the image of Negan, grimace and white beard, asking the poor sap on guard duty,

hey, lend me your magazine. Come on, man, be a friend, I’m not gonna bite.

The graveyard was as it always was. Were there always crosses embedded in the earth? Pipe and wood symbols of Heaven?? Who put those there, what did they even mean.

It was just a “t,” a t that stood for nothing more than

taken.

By him. Why were they dead and he was allowed to loiter in a cell, reading magazines and jacking off and inflicting nightmares on whatever poor sap brought him his dinner. Why did he

deserve

dinner?

Glenn and Abraham’s graves weren’t even

here.

They weren’t here with their families, no, they were off in unmarked graves far from the people they loved because Maggie had to hide from that

same fucking man

now living beneath them day and night.

His eye brimmed with tears that stung like acid, sobs like razors pinching the tendons in his throat. Carl stared at the graves through a hazy blur, green and brown mushing together.

He could almost hear that whistling again, that awful sound surrounding, enveloping everything like a siren that shook the ground, that dug into his flesh, settled in his bones—and the slam of the RV door, the creaking of the wheels on their hinges, a pile of mush on the ground and blood staining his hands—

your fault, this is your fault, this was your fault. Look at what you did.

It took him a moment to realize someone was

actually

whistling. It wasn’t the ominous tone - something more like the imitation of a bird. Tweet, tweet. It was such an innocent sound, Carl was almost startled (but not really) when he saw Daryl emerge behind a tree and grind a cigarette butt into the earth with his shoe.

He looked…well, it was easy to say he looked

better.

Better than he had when Negan was around, at least, though in a way he’d never really recovered from that. But a few meals and maybe a shower (once a month, if they were lucky) made him at least recognizable. Ragged hair and dull eyes - like how Carl might look if he didn’t have Enid. What a sad thought.

He glanced at Carl and just, kinda, grunted. It may have been a hello.

Carl nodded in return, shakily, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. Desperately pulling at strings to regain his composure. “Hey,” He said, quietly. It had been a while since they’d talked beyond nods in passing. “What’s–How’s it going?”

Maybe a stupid question.

“The radio’s a bust, I wish we’d go back to that nerdy shit,” he replied in a vague half answer, which was probably Daryl-speak for

Rick needs to shut the fuck up but I’m not gonna say that to his clearly crying son.

Oh no. But he was frustrated. His own lamentations were locked elsewhere - he couldn’t exactly complain to Carol about them. The two were close, but not close enough to lick their wounds.

He squinted in the morning light.

“What’s my job again? I missed half.” Some right hand man. He only took another step over where Beth’s marker was — she barely got anything, but the least he could do was kick some dried leaves off her doormat. A few white flowers were scattered around left untouched, budding like survivors.

“Um.. Infirmary?” Carl blinked. He wasn’t really listening to the broadcast, the majority of the time it filtered in one ear, spat out the other without so much as a nod, a murmur of acknowledgement. “I think?”

Well. Before today, at least, that one sentence that snapped him out of his comfortable bubble.

He moved to stand before her grave, too. The flash of crimson branches over glossy tiles. A music box that didn’t work and guitar strings snapping.

“Ah. Okay. Hope you don’t get sick.”

A side eye. Was that a joke or…

He cleared his throat, “There are better uses for it…he’s just talkin’ to talk. Everyone could have heard her sing.”

He said it so frankly, lighting up another cigarette. They were a losing commodity — only so many left in the world. Still, he breathed in like he was going to die tomorrow.

And then, rather suddenly, his face scrunched up, like he’d smelled something particularly unpleasant. “But that

fucking asshole

doesn’t deserve to hear that every day. I’m almost…”

Almost glad Beth didn’t have to live through that? That her life was cut short, swift and sterile by the hospital - not dragged out by Negan.

“Pretty girl like her.” He said, a statement. Beth was pretty - emphasis on was. And right when Carl thought he might, in his stupor, say something really stupid, he just pinched a hand to the bridge of his nose, saying, “She was just like fuckin’ Sophia. Goddammit, ugh. Just a

girl

.”

He turned back to Carl and Carl saw his eyes were red.

Ah, that’s not a cigarette. You’re smoking something more… sustainable.

“

I have to take a leak,” he muttered, leaving the little graveyard alone and Carl standing there, feeling a bit weird about himself.

The birds sang, he watched their V formations swimming in the air. An odd silence lapsing his entire being, Carl just stood, hands balled into fists, watching the sky. Everything so much and at the same time not enough. Beth and Sophia and all the others he had loved so dearly, their silences still something that stuck with everyone who had known them, like a tick fattening on misery. Still a presence, even in their absence, he could remember sputters of a laugh as he and Sophia chased after the frogs back at the first camp on the outskirts of Atlanta, Beth’s soft voice trailing down the halls of the prison, a golden light back when the windows wouldn’t let enough through.

Back before Negan, back when they were closer, when the group still felt like family, before…

Oh, god.

Stop.

Stop thinking about it.
 
Daryl didn’t mean any harm - he never did. That being said, his words still stuck with Carl long after the radio had gone silent. It was weird, how slow everything had become, the crawl of the days since Negan’s arrival and subsequent aftermath. It was as if his presence grounded them to earth, a tremendous gravity that forced the once fast days to drag on infinitely.

It was still January. There was a slight snow. Judith rolled a dirty man out of a few spheres of it. The graves were covered once again. And somehow, despite it all, Gabriel continued to host services for no one to attend throughout the last dreads of winter.

Carl was left in an odd mood in the weeks that followed. He felt on the verge of something, all of that rage and shame and lack of sleep about to culminate and break out of him—well, more than it already had—he had covered the radio with a blanket, turned it to the lowest possible volume, resisting the urge to smash it with a hammer until all that remained were loose wires. He pretended to be sick one morning so he wouldn’t have to leave the house, and it was the only day since Judith started preschool he hadn’t been the one to walk her there.

It wasn’t a complete lie. He did have a headache that seared and ripped over his temples like a knife bashing bone. His stomach was aching horribly, a dull stabbing pain in his chest. So he told himself it wasn’t really an excuse, even if that was how he always felt in the mornings, even if he knew he just couldn’t bring himself to put one foot in front of the other.

He laid in their bedroom in the early afternoon, a blanket pulled over his head. Almost regretting his decision to stay home—he knew Rick was gonna come knocking sometime, questioning him about it, that concern he was always so detached and awful at trying to show.

“Maybe you should go see the doctor,” Enid whispered, feeling over his forehead as he laid back, pulling the blanket gently from his head.

“No. I’m fine,” He told her, that guilt threading his skin. He felt stupid, really, how Enid always had to care for him. It never used to be like that. They used to be two halfs to one fucked-up whole—and now he feared he was the part that had broken off or died, dragged around like dead weight sewn into her flesh. “You’re studying anyway, aren’t you?”

“Yup,” Enid shrugged, laughing self-consciously, “Denise left behind all of these medical books. I don’t know if I’ll ever get the hang of it, but,” Her hand fell limp at her side. “I don’t think you have a fever or anything. Was it another nightmare?”

“Oh, you know me too well,” He sat up, fidgeting with his hands in his lap, the joke not quite landing. “Yeah, maybe that’s all it is. Just.. Left me more off than usual.” 
She laid beside him, the two staring up at the popcorn ceilings as if they were shooting stars, clouds drifting in the sky. Hands resting behind their heads. “What was it about?” Carl tensed. That space of things he held so far away brought into reality by her words, the softness of her tone. What was it about? It was everything he tried so desperately to keep at bay. Everything he feared remembering, feared speaking of, even if it had resulted in this culmination of events, what lay around them a devastating reflection of what had happened that day. The reason he can’t look his father in the eye. The reason he walks at night. The reason he couldn’t get out of bed this morning. 
The thing that kept him chained.

“I don’t know.”
 
It was Carol who checked on him. Not hapless Rick, not dull-eyed Daryl, not even the remarkably best option Father Gabriel. No, it was her, silver hair and piercing eyes like shards of sky. She knocked on the door twice, before saying with the tired curt tone of a substitute teacher, “Enid, open the door. It’s me.”

She didn’t exactly have many friends but as a core member of the group she was practically a branch manager. Even Enid had the energy not to get all up in her face. Her cat-feet carried her up the stairs, silently, until she was looming in the doorway of their bedroom, a sheet-gray phantom, asking quietly,

“Judy missed you. What’s up with you, Carl?”

In a way she was kind of a second mother – wire mother, not cloth mother. She and Lori had been friends, the beaten sad shell of a woman slinking in his mother’s golden light. And then, eclipsed it, as she came into her own and the hardness of the world…sharpened her. Not as in a spear, rather a tangle of thorns. Impossible for anyone to get close to from any angle.

The smell of burning flesh was not one easily forgotten, at least not by someone who had only been

14

.

Carl glanced at Enid in the doorway behind Carol as if trying to telepathically communicate the words

why the hell did you let her in—

But what other choice did she have. He forced himself upright and shrugged, searching his mind for a reasonable reply. Not knowing if any reason would be enough to satisfy her.

His temples ached like thumbs pressing hard against them. A physical representation of all those questions—

you look tired, what’s wrong? What was it about? What's up with you?

—closing in from all sides.

“Uh, I don’t really feel well,” He muttered, “I wanted to go, really, I just… I’ll come see her tomorrow, all right,”

He desperately hoped Judith wasn’t too sad, that it hadn't bothered her; but he knew they already didn’t spend enough time together as is. She’d ask him endlessly in her small voice why he hadn’t come.

At the very least, he knew what he’d just promised

wasn’t

a lie this time. He will go tomorrow. And hopefully that was enough.

Enid shrugged in his direction. To change the subject, silently praying Carol would just take what he said at face value and leave it; “How have you been?”

“Just fine,” Just fine – better than before, way better than before. As if she’d turned off all the right parts of her brain to hone herself into a peak survivalist. The subject quickly changed back to him, like a watchman’s light shining. “If you’re unwell, Carl, you need to go to the medical bay. We can’t have another outbreak, and winter makes it more susceptible,” she said, and in a moment that almost humanized her, half shrugged, “I had to lecture Daryl yesterday to put on a heavier coat…just, if something’s broken, you seriously need to get it looked at.”

Ha.

Hahahahahaha.

She ran a hand through her frosty hair, saying smoothly, “It’s been gettin’ colder each year. Happy 2018, Carl.”

He chuckled dryly, nodding. Internally, resisting the urge to say something like—

What, if I was sick, are you gonna do? Take me out back with a match and some gasoline?

He doubted that she’d find it funny, though.

“Enid said I don’t have a fever…I think it’s just a cold or something.” He said quietly, picking a loose thread from his sleeve. “Thanks, though.”

Go away,

he meant.

Still, she lingered. A long hesitant moment, like she was his mother, like she had any right to cast judgement on him.

You look awful, your hair a mess and your face so thin. Hmph.

But she wasn’t a mother - not anymore, by choice - so that faded like a ghost as she turned and walked back down the hall, saying, “Feel better soon, Carl. If you have to, come to the medical bay, we have antibiotics.”

He didn’t breathe relief until after the door shut behind her.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Galatians 6:7:
Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.

The next week, for some reason just shy of child abuse, Rick decided that Carl needed to overcome his fear of the monster under the bed. Guard duty. On Negan. All night.

For some reason, no one had been able to talk him out of it. It was a dreadful conversation – if you could call it that, a knock at the door and Michonne standing behind him, shooting a long and sympathetic stare with her sweet brown eyes, all as Rick pinned him in place with a scowl and his

“I know what’s best for you”

voice.

You can’t spend your whole life hiding, Carl. There will come a day when you’ll have to fight, when I won’t be there to protect you. You’re the man, you need to protect Enid, in case any more bastards destroy what we’ve worked so hard to build.

Surely one bastard that we’ve already ripped the teeth out of…surely he’d be no trouble, right Carl?

I mean, what’s he even gonna do?

How was Carl even gonna argue?
 
Carl spent the entire day leading up to his guard duty with a stomach-ache and nails digging deep enough into his palms to leave blisters. Enid had told him,

Hey, you don’t have to do it, we can find someone else. It’s unfair for him to ask you to do this.

In a way, maybe this was what he’d needed. Even if she was right, even if it was so infinitely unfair, unneeded, and ridiculous—that push to finally go down there, to do something about it, was there. Even if at his fathers’ hand. And so, (regretfully, maybe) he did not find someone else.
 
After a while of standing at his post, Carl tried to tell himself—Negan did not have that kind of power anymore, he had lost everything.

Come on, he’s just some old guy rotting in a cell, he can’t do shit

—but his grip on the pistol remained shaky, white-knuckled. Like at any moment he could jump out behind the door and grab him, and they’d be back in that clearing, back in that RV—

Fuck it.

He turned on his heel, slamming the door shut behind him. It took a moment before he could bring himself to look. In the dark he could blearily make out the silhouette of Negan, not in the least bit smaller, even when locked away, even with a form shrouded by the night and blocked halfway by metal bars. Tattered books scattered over the cement floors, a bed without sheets or blankets. It creaked under his weight when the man turned.

“Carl,” His voice echoed, “Long time no see.”

The casualty in his tone was feigned. Carl stared at the ground, the blood rushing in his ears. He kept telling himself that he was the one in control of this situation—

not

him—but it did nothing to ease his tremors, slow his thoughts. They ricochet in his mind like bullet casings.

“Well, I guess, not really. Long time no

talk,

but I’ve seen you. I’ve seen you sitting up there, muttering to yourself, little serial killer in the making, huh,” Negan laughed. His words scrambled. And, honestly, Carl was not surprised the man knew how often he wound up on those steps. He tried to avoid it, coming around from the angle in which he’d be hard to see, never turning to face that tiny window, the man’s only glimpse into the outside world. Of course he was always watching, waiting, listening.

“So, you gonna say something?” His words intercepted.

Carl chuckled, dry, staring down at his shoes as if there was nothing else to see. He could feel Negan’s gaze bearing down on him, regardless, a glare strong enough to pierce flesh and blood.

“I don’t owe you shit,” Carl said, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible—but the syllables trembled, his lungs rattling with each breath. He felt like a moth pinned beneath a rock. It had been two years, maybe a little more than that, since he’d heard his voice. And he knew more than anyone the depravity that lurked beyond his tone. The intentions behind his glare.

What he was capable of.

Carl managed to take his eyes off the ground. Negan had aged ten years in two; his eyes sunken into his skull, black like sparkling pearls in the shadow, cheekbones rigid as the edge of a ruler and his beard overgrown. Spores of dust filtered through the dim light of the window like tiny fireflies. “Damn, not even another round?”

Something in those words and the subsequent chuckle sent a wave of shock through Carl. For a moment he could not think, he could not breathe. He swore he could almost hear the creaking of the wheels in that RV, the whole car shifting, like a boat in the ocean. Feel the hands that rendered him immoble.

He clutched the pistol so hard it nearly fell from his hands and clattered onto the ground—he shoved the barrel between the bars, lining the shot, imagining the bullet erupting through his skull, willing himself to pull the trigger—When he glanced toward him, Negan did not react, only looking onward, only vaguely amused.

But he lowered the pistol back into its holster just as fast.

There was no point. Someone would hear it.

“Shut the fuck up.” It was the best response he could muster. Carl swung the door to the basement open so hard the handle slammed against the wall with a bang, and returned to his post outside, fighting to catch his breath.

Trying his best to ignore the relentless laughter that came through the window for what seemed like hours afterward.
 
Gabriel was the only guy in the entirety of Alexandria who actually liked English muffins. He’d decided to set himself up in the church that Sunday, with his breakfast of one (toasted, with jam, obviously, but the new kind they’d made through fresh-grown berries, which was great if you were okay with the occasional ant) and his coffee (we’re not Mormons, here), and just wait to see if anyone actually bothered to show up to church, confessional, service…whatever.

He almost choked in surprise when he saw a familiar face over the bump of the hill, one gleaming eye unrecognizable.

He quickly got himself ready, straightening up and finishing the last of his coffee, thinking in a frantic jumble,

do I approach him? Do I leave him? If I say good morning will that scare him away?

When Carl entered the dingy church, Gabriel was in the back, his silhouette only visible through the film of the confessional booth. Waiting.

Carl walked so slowly, as if he were treading through mud. As if his feet were disproportionately heavy compared to the rest of his body. When he settled into the confessional and shut the door—this time, knowing exactly where he was headed the entire way—he blinked back tears and balled his hands up in his lap.

“Hey,” He said, because he figured that was as good a start as any.

“Good morning, Carl.” Gabriel’s soft voice responded. There was a pause, and then, he made the motion of a cross over himself, “What’s on your mind?”

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

Carl leaned back, staring up at the ceiling, the polished wood gleaming. He had not slept. The moment someone else was able to take the morning shift, the moment he was able to walk away, he knew he’d be in for another few sleepless nights.

“Something happened,” He said—his voice only just above a whisper—because he wasn’t sure how else to put it. Last night, something happened. More importantly, two years ago, something happened. He had spent every waking moment since running from that.

He did not know how to put it into words, but he was going to try. Because, simply enough, he couldn’t bear it anymore.

“God has seen everything, and he loves you very much, Carl.” Was Gabriel’s voice. A way of saying,

there’s nothing you could tell me that would shock me.

Really, a good kid like you?

Carl shook his head, an imperceptible motion, really, even if Gabriel was able to see him.

I hope god didn’t see. I hope nobody did.

He racked his brain for how to say it, how to lead up to it; how even to form the words in his mind. He knew there was no guide for this, there was no right way. And he longed to back out again,

see you around,

to go home and lay in bed for as long as humanly possible.

But he didn’t. Because, even stronger than that wanting, was the need to get it out of him. Like a cough he could no longer hold back.

“The day we…”

No. He couldn’t start with that.

“I got assigned to guard duty last night. For the cell.”

“I’m sorry,” was Gabriel’s immediate reaction. Behind the screen, his jaw had gone slack.

Rick, why?? Why??? Why did you think that was a good idea?

You’ve never been good with other people's fears, no matter how reasonable they may be.

“And that was hard for you?” He coaxed.

An understatement,

Carl thought.

He lowered his head again, sat his hat down on the seat, threading his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, it was. I… He told me,

‘You can’t spend your whole life hiding

’,” He quoted, wanting to laugh at the ridiculousness of such a statement, “I did it, not for him, but.. I just, I’ve wanted to go down there for the last few years. You know, do something about this. About… I kept telling myself that I would.”

“You’re doing something right now by

talking

about it,” Gabriel said after a long awkward moment. He didn’t have the full picture but sometimes…well.

People used to come to his church all the time, when they had problems that needed someone to listen to. Gabriel wasn’t the stern bohemian father from Europe – nor the judgmental deep-south. He was very open minded to sit, and talk, and let others talk, about whatever they wanted, whatever felt sinful to them. Transgender people and people going through divorce, people who’d lost a child…back before everyone lost everything.

It was almost nostalgic.

“That’s a lot.”

“Thanks,” Carl whispered, lowering his hands back into his lap. He turned them over and eyed the reddish indentations on his palm from where the nails had broken skin. The night it happened, he told himself he would never speak of it again. He looked at his friends and family’s faces when it was over, out in that clearing and the tears running, the way they stared back like they didn’t know what to do with him. They never had. With so much pity and fear and a faraway glaze, like they didn’t recognize him.

He never wanted anyone to look at him like that again.

“I don’t think anyone ever really… Said anything. I know I didn’t. But more happened that night than just.. Glenn and Abraham.”

Gabriel had not been there at the lineup. There was another pause, and then, a merciful, “I wasn’t there to see it…and I didn’t hear much of anything from anyone, aside from those two’s…passing.”

“God might know everything, but I don’t, so…do you want to talk about that night, Carl?”

For…some reason this reminded him of another person he’d helped, a girl who’d been hurt in the way most tragically common for girls who’d come to his booth, crying, and could do nothing but describe the scene. When it was over, she asked, hiccuping, if she was clean again, now that she’d confessed, and he’d been so taken aback by that. Cleanliness - what a concept…and yet, perhaps getting some of that filth out of her mind had helped.

Whatever you say, it’ll be fine. Godforbid, I can take it.

Gabriel internally braced himself.

Carl struggled to take a breath. His temples were pounding, heart thumping in the walls of his chest.

I don’t

want

to, but I have to.

“I don’t know how to say it,” He whispered. He had never been good at talking about how he felt, or about things that had happened—probably a trait he’d inherited from his father, god forbid.

And trying to put it into words meant he had to think about it, which was infinitely more difficult. To rationalize something so incomprehensible.

His throat burned like razors serrating deep inside his flesh. His words came out choked and disoriented, like static through an old radio. "I didn’t even know what he

meant

when he said it.”

Ice was beginning to form on the nape of Gabriel’s neck. He hadn’t…he hadn’t heard about any of this. That's all, Abraham is dead, Glenn is gone. Not…well. He knew there was a change in Carl, he supposed, a distance, but he never had the words for it. “What did he say…?”

Carl buried his head in his hands, tears stinging the welts of his palms. For a moment there was only silence, silence apart from the sobs that wracked his body, silence apart from his erratic sniffling.

Rick, you keep acting tough, like I still need to break you…

“ ‘I’ll have my men run a train on your boy’,” He whispered, so quiet he couldn’t be sure if Gabriel had even heard it.

Oh no.

Gabriel didn’t know what to say- how to help. For a brief moment he felt like he was falling. Like - shit. What do you do? What do you do when the wounds’ already calloused over, and the motherfucker that did it is living comfortably underneath your houses?

Besides, it wasn’t his right to get mad.

Really, it was God’s fury. The indignation and anger that something so cruel had happened to one of his children. Different from Rick’s. Rick was impacted by everything and held onto reality by a thread and a prayer. This was anger on Carl’s behalf –

how dare they do that to you.

He steadied himself, and said, quietly, “Thank you, Carl.”

Carl shrugged, to nobody but himself, really.

He had said it, but it wasn’t over. The images flashing in his mind would not vanish, even after being spoken. His hands coated in blood after he was thrown from the RV—

Glenn’s

blood—the blackened-purple bruises that remained on his skin for weeks. The screams he hadn’t even realized were his, ringing in his ears like a siren. Any and every detail like leeches digging into his skull.

“I don’t know what to do,” He said. What was there to do? It had happened and he would continue living with it for the rest of his life, with that man living beneath them, forever. “Just… Hearing his voice last night, I couldn’t. I can’t do this.”
 
There was another long silence, before Gabriel raised his hand and said, in a solemn voice, "O Lord, Hear my Prayer.

Today, I lift up my dear friend, Carl,

” not Carl Grimes, just Carl. Really.

“...who is weary, suffering and in need of strength. Give him the power to live today in courage and hope

.”

Because what was there to do?

What could be done? Nothing could be undone. Did Jesus truly die on the cross so Negan could be such…

A goddamn demon

to this poor kid.

Gabriel could hear ringing in his ears, when he awkwardly said in a voice that was not his priest act, just Gabriel, “If…uh. If you need a hug, I can come out…or you can come in, I dunno…”

Carl laughed, quiet, and sniffled. He wiped his face with his sleeve and tried his best to gather himself, even if the pieces were falling apart quicker than he could manage, and threw his hat back on his head.

Alas, that momentary instance in which he was able to act okay quickly crumbled. He sank back into the seat and cried, hugging his knees to his chest, coughing and sputtering and shaking. He wanted to respond, to say

sure,

but he couldn’t get any words out through his sobs.

The door creaked open and Gabriel’s face poked out. He always wore his emotions. Brow creased, eyes wide and glinting.

Carl glanced upward and reached forward to open his door—it took a few tries, with his shaking hands and tears blurring his already bad vision, he kept missing the latch—and, despite all he could think being,

Stop, you’re acting like a stupid kid, get yourself together,

he still practically sank into Gabriel’s arms.

Oddly enough, Gabriel wondered if this is what Michonne had meant when she said,

take care of him.

Part of him wondered if somewhere, she was approving of this, in that cool, collected way she always did. And with the same breath, as his arms tightened around Carl’s thin shoulders, he thought,

why didn’t you?

“It’s going to be alright, it’ll be hard, but you’re strong, it’ll be alright,” he was saying, though he wasn’t quite sure if Carl could actually hear him over his own ragged crying. He put a hand gently over the back of Carl’s neck, like how one might hug a baby. “

Everything

is going to work out.”
Why’d he say that so confidently? Surely, God was not listening. To them, to anyone, especially not to Gabriel. But that thought he’d been circling finally materialized. A priest was a tool of the community. Officiate weddings, speak at funerals when peoples’ throats closed, bridge the gap no matter how steep it is. That was the purpose of God, of the Church. And, in some cases, in this case, in this hyper specific case, he had to bring judgement if no one else was going to.
It’s the same sentiment that drove the Satanic Panic, the Salem Witch Trials. That is of the devil and it should not be allowed to thrive. But this was different,

this was Negan.

So when Gabriel said, everything is going to work out, he meant it with

because, if no one else will, then I’m going to kill that fucker.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Daniel 2:2:
He reveals deep and secret things; he knows what is in the darkness. And light dwells with Him.
 
Carl wasn’t sure why he went back.

He stood at the top of the stairs two days later—knowing that if he fought it enough, Rick would have to give the job to someone else. What could he have done otherwise, drag him the whole way there?—listening to Negan’s snores that poured out the window.

Maybe he went back because it was easier than fighting with Rick about it. Maybe because somewhere deep inside, he thought facing things would make them easier to deal with. But the truth was, really, that being the one to guard the cell was possibly the most power he had ever had over that man. The upper hand where there had never been, otherwise.

(Besides, if he wasn’t here in

this

way, he’d still find himself on these stairs. It was a more productive use of his nights spent wandering.)

After his conversation with Gabriel, Carl thought about telling Enid. When he’d come home that morning, red-eyed with cheeks puffy from tears, she’d asked him what happened, if he was okay. He told her he’d finally gone to the confessional, like she had recommended. She didn’t push for an explanation beyond that—just hugged him.

He figured, maybe he would. But one person knowing for now was enough.

The January frost in the air, bundled in his winter coat, he was dully aware of someone walking towards him. Not the stomp of military boots or Daryl’s half-limp saunter – someone with a purpose, a purpose he’d wait oh so patiently to fulfill.

Gabriel, the only person who knew, appeared from the fog, his breath in a cloud around him. He tried to smile at Carl, but his mouth just wouldn’t do it. Clearing his throat, he said, “Evening, Carl.”

The hell are you doing at this hour?

Carl nodded in his direction, trying to warm his hands with his breath. “Hey,” He replied, speaking quieter than he usually would. Vaguely, he was aware that Negan could probably hear them from the window. “How are you?”

“I’m doing very well,” Gabriel smiled in a way not quite fitting the sight of both of them standing in the cold. His hands remained heavily in his pockets as he cleared his throat and said, “I…didn’t expect to see you up here. But just as well. Are you feeling better?”

Carl shrugged. He wasn’t sure how to gauge feeling good or not, especially since what had happened—just that a day where he could get out of bed was better than the rest.

“I guess so,” He mumbled, “I.. Didn’t really expect to be here either. Thought this was just a one day thing, my dad trying to prove a point, you know.”

“Ah. Well, knowing Rick…” he trailed off after a moment. He didn’t know Rick. Neither of them really knew Rick. There was another pause, before Gabriel seemed to reset before saying, “Right, uh! I would like to see the prisoner, if that’s alright.”

Something about the way he said it was off, and his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.

That was the last thing Carl expected to hear.

If it were anyone else guarding today, the first response would be protocol:

Well, what for? What are your intentions? I’ll have to go with you to supervise. Let me check you for weapons.

He, simply, did not care to do any of that. He trusted Gabriel enough to know that he wouldn’t be letting him out, and beyond that, well..

“Um, sure?” He replied, hesitantly, digging into his pocket for the keys to the basement. On the same ring, the keys to the cell. “Here.”

He thought to ask if he could come with, but, well, he would be able to hear everything if he stood close enough.

“Thank you. I just hope the Lord judges that man for all he’s done.” He took the key and held it with two hands, before shifting his weight to one side and quickly starting down the stairs. His movements were weird, like he was being puppetted around. Carl had the distant memory of their short lived close-combat training, and how Gabriel had a tendency of jerking around as if he were walking over hot coals.

When the door shut behind him, Carl followed down the steps but stopped before the entrance. He listened in from the window, more than a little confused.

Gabriel sucked in a steadying breath as he quietly made his way down the stairs. He’d spent an uncomfortable amount of time with Negan – he knew how he acted. Survival wasn’t in his blood - not the way it was for Rick. If Rick was a fox, then Negan was a big stupid dog that didn’t jolt awake in the night, didn’t expect to be hunted. He wasn’t going to stir. He was going to snore until…

Gabriel slipped the hammer he’d used to build his church, the handy one with the orange grip, out of his pocket. He turned the key and crept inside, until he was standing over the massive man sleeping on the thin mattress.

How funny - he gets a mattress.

After all he’s done, he gets a mattress.

Gabriel’s hand tightened on the hammer. His heart was pounding. Choirs were screaming in his ears.

Do it, go on, do it, one good thing, let him meet his maker, kill that bastard, kill that demon, do it do it do it!

Let us in let us in let us in!

He clenched his jaw, gripped the hammer, and raised it above his head, ready to send a single strike straight through Negan’s temple, biblical-style, Zechariah that bastard.

But the strike never came.

The man whipped around at that last second—yelling a groggy

“what the shit”

before he dove forward and blindly knocked the hammer out of Gabriel’s hands.

Carl ran inside as the weapon clattered against the far wall of the cell.

Gabriel had not predicted this.

He had a knife on him, just in case, but in the clatter backwards it spun onto the floor like a crescent moon. In a moment Negan was on top of him and he couldn’t breathe. It was a feeling that screamed sympathy for poor Carl, as too-large hands crushed his

neck

.

Carl, for a moment, could not figure out what to do. In a few seconds that felt like hours he eyed the hammer on the ground and Negan and Gabriel and knew there was no time to think. He grabbed Negan by the throat and tried pulling him off. Awkwardly, the man fell backward over him and they both landed with a bang, all the air knocked from Carl’s lungs, a sudden burning in his spine.

With all of the weight pressing down on him, Carl could not breathe—but couldn’t shove him off either, not with the cell door wide open—so, with one arm holding the man there with all the force he could manage, he reached blindly over the concrete for the knife. He clasped his fingers around the handle and plunged the knife into his skull, face, whatever, only really knowing he’d actually managed to hit him by the sound of flesh ripping underneath the blade and the man’s screams.

Negan would have probably gotten up before Carl could stab him, if not for Gabriel suddenly bearing down on him with the wrath of God.

He

was

coughing, spots swimming in his one good eye. Negan. On the floor. Like a roach. He didn’t even realize Carl was in the room, mostly because he was trapped under what had to be at least 180 lbs of

man

.

Negan was screaming a shrill animalistic noise and Gabriel grabbed and swung the hammer, the two back end spokes of it jabbing into the flesh of his neck before anyone had a chance to blink.

He abruptly stopped screaming, instead gurgling and coughing and gagging, as an absolutely abysmal spray of blood erupted from his punctured artery.

Carl tried to throw him off, then, gasping for breath, lungs on fire. But he couldn’t gather enough strength, and every time he tried, a stabbing pain shot through his spine. He attempted, pretty uselessly, to motion for Gabriel to help.

Oh, who used the knife?

Oh.

Gabriel wasn’t screaming but he was definitely making a pathetic whimpering sound. He managed to get his arms around Negan’s chest, feeling his heart beat slow and the last twitches of his body leaving. When he was pulled off, there was Carl, one with the concrete, pale face sprayed with red, so much so that his bandage wound looked fresh.

The knife was still lodged in Negan’s head. And the blood was still gushing.

Fun fact: no matter who it comes out of, blood smells the same.

Another fun fact: fresh human blood smells distinctly different than walker pus.

“C- Carl!” Gabriel gagging, leaning over him, taking him by the shoulders, “Are you okay?”

Carl shook his head rapidly—then quickly realized that was the opposite of what he meant, so he just said, “Yeah, fuck,” And forced himself sitting upright, one hand reaching down to feel along his spine. No injury, outwardly at least, but it burned as his fingers grazed the skin. “What the fuck were you thinking,”

Seriously, what the fuck was he thinking? Trying to do it by himself??

He stood, fighting for breath, half-hunched over, looking down at Negan. “Is he dead?”

God, this was going to be a thing.

Negan made a few more pitiful sputtering noises, but Carl’s knife had grazed the brain. He wasn’t moving anymore. He was probably dead, or at least this moment.

“Yeah.” Gabriel breathed.

There was a long pause, an elapse between them, before the beginnings of tears began to trail down Gabriel’s face as his mouth refused to cooperate.

Carl stood there, frozen, staring down at the body. For a moment there was nothing but the stench of rust and iron, the blood still warm that caked his face and clothes, the silence ringing in his ears.

And a dull relief. He was gone,

dead,

there would no longer be that lingering fear he could escape some day, or even worse, reintegrate into the community. His sleepless nights would be just that.

And most of the community would be just as relieved.

But then it hit him, once he thought of it outside this isolated scale:

Negan was dead. Actually

dead.

On Carl’s watch duty. And the morning was only a few hours away.

His heart shot into his throat. “What the

fuck

are we gonna do?”

“I am

so

sorry,” Gabriel exploded instead, shaking hands clasped. The light from the doorway was the only source and it cast a silver shadow on them, their faces and the glistening wetness of Negan. His neck spurted like a broken sprinkler. Negan was twitching, the last muscle spasms. No one ever talks about the stringy scent of urine — everyone pisses themselves when they die. “I- it’s entirely my fault, I just - someone had to- he-“

Somehow Carl was the one whose eye was dry.

The boy took his hat off, pulling the soggy blood-soaked bandage off of his face, parting his bangs to cover the socket. He scrunched the wet bandage into a ball in his pocket and said, “It’s–someone had to do it. Just..”

Just wish you would have told me.

Or.. At least.. Planned.

We’re gonna be in a lot of shit. Fuck.

Carl put the hat back on his head and turned to Gabriel. Trying to think of what to say–what to even do–now. He still couldn’t get enough air, so between just about every other word, he paused to catch his breath. “Are you okay?”

“I didn’t want to involve you…” Gabriel was mumbling to himself, practically in hysterics, “You’re…Lord, Carl, you’re good. You shouldn’t have to get your hands dirty dealing with some- some-”

“With this massive pile of shit, you shouldn’t have to do that!” He tried to wipe his eyes but, realizing his hands were covered in blood, made a startled noise and hastily rubbed them off on Negan’s paper-thin wife beater. A pause elapsed. And, somewhat dubiously as Carl’s questions registered, he began to laugh. It was that raspy

what the fuck

kind of laughter people only did when they were seriously screwed.

Carl laughed along with him, quieter, coughing between breaths. God, his father was gonna have a fucking field day.

After they quieted down, and after the cell shifted back into silence, Carl took a sharp breath. He wiped his bloodied hands on his jeans and mumbled, “Uh.. So, are we burying him, or just.. Leaving like this?”

Back when Rick was an

actual

cop, they would have been able to do forensics, fingerprints. Leaving a scene like this would have been a complete death sentence. Now, not so much.

But, he figured, cleaning up would at least buy them some time, while the council tried to sort out what had happened.

“I don’t want to get you in trouble…” Gabriel said, guiltily, “You were on guard duty…”

Elapsed 5 minutes later they had finished hauling the body up the stairs.

Carl had definitely tweaked his back, and Gabriel was never particularly good at heavy lifting. Also, the body – Negan, right, he did have a name – was heavy. He was heavier dead than alive, as though his sins were weighing him to the concrete.

At the last step, Carl drew back and rested his hands on his knees. “Should we, like, stab him again, because I’m not sure if–”

Not sure how far the knife went into the brain.

But it was a little late to be asking that, evidently, as an arm reached up from the ground and tried to pull Carl by his wrist.

Gabriel inhaled sharply, all his willpower not to scream. Negan’s face, with a bloody slit eye socket and a neck bent at an angle, surged up and snarled at them. His grip was on the hammer because he could think.

BAM. BAM. BAM.

He hit until the crunching turned to squelching and Carl was shaking him to stop.

Fun fact: the inside of a human head looks the same, no matter whose head it is.

Carl resisted the urge to vomit, one hand reaching up to cover his mouth–and then shrinking back quickly, when the stench of iron hit his nose and made that urge a thousand times worse.

He eyed their surroundings, swallowing back bile. It was difficult to see in the dark and fog, but, well, that was to their advantage.

(One thing, at least.)

And another point onto the ridiculously long list of their

disadvantages,

they now had

much

more of a mess to clean.

“What if we…” Gabriel was staring at the brain matter on the grass. “Huh.”

It looked like a weird mix between shredded chicken and spaghetti paste, red oozing between the dregs of protein. There was a slight puddle forming around it, though not of blood. A clear fluid, like someone had cracked open a snow globe. The human head was full of a lot of water.

Gabriel steeled his gaze to the sky, wrinkling his nose, and said, “Here’s the plan. You say you gave your guard duty to me. I say I fell asleep and didn’t see what happened. Or like…I don’t know, I went to take a leak. Yeah…all this happened when I got back. Okay? No one needs to know who did this,”

He smiled again, this time even more unsure, “What – everyone wanted him dead, it’ll be like…a guardian angel, I don’t - I can’t imagine they’d care, it was fucking Negan!”

“Fucking Negan” could be anyone with his face reduced to a weird crushed melon.

“No,” Carl responded, quickly, “They’re.. Not going to believe that. I’ll just say I abandoned the shift halfway, I went home, didn’t see anything. I fuck up all the time, they’ll probably believe it..” He chuckled, dry, thinking,

Of course everyone wanted him dead. Most people here are either going to celebrate or shrug. But what Rick says goes, and he’s not gonna like it…

“And you weren’t here.” He added.

“No! We can’t do that,” Gabriel protested, before lowering his voice to a whisper under his breath. “I did this. This was all me, I’m not dragging you down with me.”

The longer they stood over the body, the worse they both felt, eyes watering.

“What if we burn him? So…so it’s not such an incriminating sight…we can…bring him back down to the prison, down the stairs and…set him on fire there, and it will be good. It will be controlled. Hell, they could even think it was suicide…”

“Or I could say he escaped.. If we burn him somewhere else. Like, he ran past me or something,” Carl mumbled, thinking out loud, and then quickly realizing: “No.. If they find out he was murdered, then they’d know it was.. Fuck. Okay. I think we should burn him, but, probably not in there.”

They probably wouldn’t believe the ‘he escaped’ excuse, purely because if he had, Carl would have just shot him.

“If…we just say you left and then stash him somewhere…like- oh!” Gabriel snapped his fingers – or tried to. They were gummy and sticky from the amount of blood. “Under the church. It’s got a crawlspace. If we leave it to them, they’ll come up with a convincing theory, and we can just…play along, right Carl? Test…the waters?”

He was trying not to laugh again but it kept coming, giggles erupting out of his aching chest.

“..Okay,” Carl breathed. It was as good an idea as any, probably the best option for now. He knelt down again to grab the body by its ankles. “If we go around the back of the houses, that’s probably better… There’s windows, I guess, but it’s better than the street.”

Gabriel nodded and grabbed Negan under the elbows. With a wet slap what remained inside his dented skull fell out onto his shoes. He scrunched his whole face up. “Okay.”

It was the longest trek of either of their lives. Maybe that was an exaggeration. Gabriel had been alone for too long. Carl had experienced time slowing to syrup. But at the same time, they’d never been in this particular situation before, and the thought of what would happen if another Alexandrian saw them…hell, they might not even recognize the body as Negan. He was missing his face after all.

Miraculously they reached the church, where they set the body down and Gabriel began frantically upending the loose wooden paneling of the floor.

“We’ll just slip him under here, temporarily.” He said, still hiccuping laughter.

What the fuck. What the fuck.

“This is…augh. I’d say we shouldn’t desecrate a House of God but…”

It’s not a house of god—not really.

Carl thought to that day back in Gabriel’s original church—it had to have been at least six years ago now—when the people from Terminus had walked right into their trap. And with a laugh, he said,

“It’s just four walls and a roof.”

Gabriel laughed too. “Y-yeah. God Is everywhere anyway.”

They managed to cram Negan under there. Gabriel reset the wooden planks, saying, “It’s a good thing everyone avoids this place.”

They parted ways for the time being after that, with Carl muttering an,

Uh, okay, bye,

and heading back out the door.

He went back to the stairs first, kicking the brain matter and mush over into the grass, covering it as well as he could. Realizing.. There wasn’t really much he could do about the blood.

(Hey, maybe it would rain.)

It hadn’t fully hit him yet. He just kept telling himself,

do what you have to do, go home, nothing happened.

Those words on an endless loop in his head like a broken record. For some reason, he thought of a story he had to read for school, a very long time ago—

The Telltale Heart.

A line, the only he could remember beyond vague summaries of events in the tale, leapt out at him;

‘I could see nothing else of the old man’s face or person: for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot.’

Maybe in his sleepless shock and delirium, he was able to find something relatable within the words. He had not a thought for what Negan was, whatever misdirected good he may have done in his life, whoever may have cared for him before all of this, nor a thought of whoever else he may have hurt besides Carl himself. The thought of Negan crept up on him from the depths of his being, day after day, moments in which he was nothing more than that scared kid being dragged through the clearing of a forest, eclipsed into the RV, that RV in which agonizing moments were not only moments—but they were the present, past, and future. They were

everything,

a hell personally made for him, a hell he had become all too familiar with.

And even with him dead, maybe a small part of Carl’s psyche would live inside that moment forever. The heartbeat would be louder some days more than others. It wasn’t something he could ever rid himself of, not fully, even if the threat of it

truly

happening once more had been eliminated.

When he returned home a few minutes later, Enid met him at the door—for a moment she was completely frozen, staring through the glass at his form as if it were a walker on her porch and not someone she knew–before pulling him inside and slamming the door behind him, locking it.

“What happened?” She gasped, eying the blood that stuck his bangs to his forehead, stained his mothers’ flannel and undershirt. She pulled the flannel off gently as she could, examined his arms for a wound, and found nothing. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” He had said, swiftly. For a moment he thought not to tell her, to keep her out of this whole mess, allow her plausible deniability. As much as he wanted to, though, it would be pointless. Whenever Rick found out, he’d make it everyone’s problem.. And she’d be able to piece it together anyway. “It’s.. Not my blood.”

“What

happened?”

She pressed, following close behind as he hurried into the bathroom, pulled his shirt off, starting to wash it out in the sink. The water gathered over the old drain, twinged pink, squishy black clots gathering, floating.

She stood, leaning against the doorway with crossed arms, brows furrowed. Carl muttered curses, desperately trying to scrub his hands clean. “Negan’s dead,” He told her in just over a whisper, “I killed him.”

I, not we.

I,

because if anyone was going to take the fall, if it came down to that, he figured it should be himself. Carl had already killed so many—including a few who, very likely, did not deserve it–and, as ridiculous as his father had been these last few years, he knew he’d go easier on the culprit if it were his own son.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

No one checked on Gabriel’s house that morning. He didn’t even know they knew until the radio crackled and practically yelled,

ALL CITIZENS OF ALEXANDRIA, TOWN HALL. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. TOWN HALL. EVERYONE.

It was Rick. He sounded like he was screaming into the microphone.

For a blissful few moments, Gabriel stared up at the ceiling and thought,

I wonder what that’s all about.

Then, it hit him.

How he was on his couch with a bottle of wine he was supposed to be saving for service, blood of Christ. How the walls were practically itching, the floor swimming, vertigo seizing. The seething headache and bizarre acid-reflux burning sensation of his swollen throat. He frantically looked around for the clothes he’d used that night, before realizing with a start that they had been washed in the sink. The sink...Oh, shit, there was so much water. His bloody shirt had clogged the drain. Shit shit shit, the sink was overflowing, the faucet had not been turned off. A great puddle dominated the floor.

Shit!

Thankfully, his moment of panic was private and uninterrupted.
 
But a few hours ago, Carl was having a very different experience. A banging on his door, a voice ragged, “CARL! CAAAARL! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?”

It wasn’t Rick’s normal yelling. It was something worse.

Fear

.

Carl had leapt out of bed—narrowly avoided tumbling head-first into the wall. Instantly the blood was rushing in his ears—

Oh fuck, fuck fuck fuck I am so fucking dead.

He had told Enid to stay upstairs while he frantically threw his flannel and hat on. They had thrown his bloodied shirt and bandage into a trashbag and buried it in the woods, although he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of the flannel. It was one of the last things he had left of his mother. And so, he stayed up another few hours after that, scrubbing it until the stains were indiscernible, only a patch a few shades different from the rest.

Hurrying down the stairs, one hand clutching the railing as waves of pain shot through his back, Carl swung the door open when he met it.

“Dad,

what?

Everything okay?”

Rick, as soon as he saw Carl, put a hand to his own forehead. His face was flushed red, his eyes bloodshot. “Oh, thank GOD.” Instant relief.

He did something Carl couldn’t remember the last time it’d happened.

He suddenly half choked Carl in an embrace, before violently pushing them apart and pleading, “I shouldn’t have made you go on guard duty, I knew you were gonna fucking leave. They knew it too, they used it against us. God DAMMIT I thought it would help you not-

shit

.”

The words came out in a rush. He wasn’t quite apologizing but there was definitely an admission of guilt. He breathed heavily, through his nose, before saying in a tone usually only reserved by deep christians fearing the devil’s army.

“

Negan

escaped last night, and he killed one of our own on the way out.”

Carl froze, thinking for a moment—

I had to have heard him wrong. Nobody else.. We didn’t..

“Who?” Carl begged, his tone probably a little more desperate than intended. He lowered his head and choked, quieter, “I’m–I’m sorry, I didn’t.. I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t think..”

“We have no goddamn idea,” Rick breathed and, then, realizing perhaps he’d crossed a line, back tracked to say, “Daryl, Carol, Eugene – Michonne, our group is okay. But whoever it was, he left such a…spectacle.”

“I can take you there,” he let go of Carl, as though holding him by the shoulders was a gift he could no longer give. Rick was mad at him but in that self-hating way. It was evident in the way he avoided eye contact, even if his body language suggested he was relieved it wasn’t his son found there. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
 
In the moonlight, Gabriel and Carl thought they’d done a decent enough job covering their tracks. That was not the case.

The stairs leading up the prison were stained so red, but nowhere near as bad as the spray on the inside. Fresh blood, blood that clotted brown and stunk heavily. And on the grass right in front of the prison building, dregs of brain matter had been stomped into the earth, pieces of scalp with little threads of Negan’s hair poking out of them like spring flowers. Carl could almost recognize the imprint of his own embedded footprint into what might have been a cerebral cortex.

It splattered a lot farther than one would think.

As they approached, Rick at a half jog and Carl still in pain from his spine, a crow landed. It ducked its black head and greedily snapped up a piece of brain-fat. The moment was short lived as Carl heard Carol’s voice, “

DARYL!”

behind them.

A crossbow arrow shot through the crow. Or through its wing. It was still alive, flailing frantically, as Daryl approached and snapped its neck. He held it up by the legs, “It was eating the fucking evidence. Oh, hey Rick. Carl.”

Carol emerged behind them, her fingernails digging into her own arms. Daryl may not have blamed him, Rick may be trying not to blame him, but there was a crystal clear demand of guilt in her stare.

Carl ducked his head, feeling awkward pinned under her glare. He felt almost under interrogation, even if it seemed they didn’t suspect him.

(Well, not yet, at least.)

“Sorry,” He mumbled, because it was all he could think to do.

“Sorry is not going to bring people back from the dead, Carl,” Rick said dryly, placing a hand on his shoulder and glaring a little at Carol, a way of saying,

I got this, I scolded him. No need to.

“I uh, found this,” Daryl grunted, bird still in hand, non-chalant as ever. With the same hand as his crossbow, he lifted a little plastic baggie, one of the few left in the world, “back in the cell. At least we know our victim had brown eyes, I suppose.”

Inside the baggy, gleaming and yellowish, soaked in blood, was a surprisingly well formed dark brown human eyeball and the root stem that connected it.

Carl shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, arms wrapped around himself tight. Wondering how in the world he and Gabriel hadn’t thought to do anything about the cell.

If there was one thing he hadn’t expected, it was that their first theory would be that Negan had killed someone

else.

He wracked his brain for something to say, eventually settling on—”Should we look for him? Like, outside the walls, see where he might have gone..”

“Michonne’s on it already,” Rick replied, strained. “Right now, we need to run a census. Find out who's missing. Protect our community.”

He began giving the other two orders to go door-to-door, but kept Carl near him, almost as if he was afraid of what he might do if left alone…or what might happen to him.

From his perspective, it fit together scarily well. They knew Carl would be a shoddy guard. They knew it – that’s what that eye meant. Eye for an eye, and his poor half-blind son was almost threatened

directly

.

Hell, what if Carl hadn’t left? What if it was his baby blue they found at the bottom of the gory cell? Maybe that’s what they wanted…maybe they were frustrated he’d been too cowardly to stick around.

This was what was going through Rick’s mind, along with the sound of glass shattering. On the surface, he was just staring forward, pinning the bloody spot as if thinking he could reform it into a human head if he stared long enough.

Carl was mainly focused on just trying to walk without an awkward limp, even if every step shot waves of pain through his spine—that, and a vague sense of relief that, right now, the only thing he was blamed for was leaving his post—Gabriel, luckily, was not even on their radar.

However, he made a mental note to find Gabriel again tonight, so that they could move or burn the body. Soon enough it would start to smell through the boards.

He followed close by Rick’s side, pulling at a loose thread on his sleeve. Considering whether being quiet would be less suspicious, or if he should be in a full panic, eying every corner for the ‘escaped prisoner’.

He figured, though, that his father didn’t know him well enough to know how he would react to the situation.