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“No more kid stuff.”
Through all the world's distortion, the voice never faded from Carl’s mind. It lingered, haunting every action; whenever his palm sagged under the weight of the handed-down Beretta 92FS, complete with a silencer Rick had scrounged up, the voice appeared.There was no denying any hope of a continuing childhood for Carl had vanished, but “No more kid stuff” surely couldn’t translate to what the group had been reduced to, right? A group of survivors, people who had lived months on the road in bitter winter, were destined for more than playing farmer and family in a prison. Carl refused for this to be their fate– a fate that Rick had decided for them. So he was angry. He was angry the Governor and his new merry band of assholes rolled up to their gates without a hitch; angry Michonne and Hershel were so easily taken from under their noses to be dangled in front of them all as leverage; angry Rick actually thought talking to that psychopath would have stopped the katana from burrowing into Hershel’s neck; angry their home was now in ruins, their family scattered and scarred, and angry the responsibility to end the brutality fell on his shoulders.His father couldn’t protect the prison and their people, so Carl would. Smoke scorched Carl’s eyes as he ducked behind trucks and fallen fences in search of The Governor. Fire consumed guard towers, while bodies broken and bleeding were unavoidable wherever Carl stepped next. He had lost sight of anybody with a familiar face– well, ones who had not already been killed. The child inside him was suffocating; it clawed at his chest, pleading to be released, for someone to hold him and whisper that things would turn out okay, but Rick’s words from that distant memory on the farm overpowered the scared little boy in Carl’s soul. Gunfire roared across the acres of land, and when mixed with the screams of the fallen, it provided a perfect muffle for Carl’s footsteps. Bones crunched underneath his boots and the smell of rotting walkers was nauseating, but determination was blinding. The Governor’s tank was in view, just seconds away, and if he was lucky, the man he seeked would be cowering away with the machine as his shield. The Governor was nothing more than a caricature of power; Carl recognized the man’s fear, and Carl was grown now, he could defeat him like Rick couldn’t. This was it, before being uncovered or his nerve lost. So, trembling fingers reached down to his holster, the gun practically in his hands, yet before he could pull the weapon out, someone had reached him first.“Oh-ho, I see father is indeed not like son at all, is he?” Carl was thrust against the Governor’s chest, airways compressing as the man’s arm coiled around his neck, and the chill of steel against his forehead forced Carl stiff. “You see, son, your Dad thought this world was big enough for us both. He was wrong. He wanted to play farmer, pretend everything is how it was, but you know that’s not true, don’t you?”The cock of a gun unleashed every trapped scream and sob from Carl’s throat, agony lost alongside the warfare. Even if the surroundings were loud enough to mask Carl’s cries for help, The Governor didn’t risk anything. He clamped his hand over Carl’s mouth, bending and twisting the boy in his grasp to ensure he wouldn't run off. This was how Carl met his end. He would never hold Judith again, never have the chance to soothe her fussing at a time in the night when they both should have been sleeping. His small schoolboy crush on Beth would die with him, unrequited– he never had a chance, but it was a nice fantasy to get him through the days. He would leave the earth a shell of the thirteen-year-old boy he should have been, without a single goodbye. All over a stupid, one-sided grudge he held against his father. That alone had led him here, down a path Rick gave everything to protect his son from. “Your father is naive like I once was.” The mention of Rick sent Carl squirming, thrashing to free himself from The Governor. Carl was no better than his father; he couldn’t defeat this evil, not this time. “This world eats you up and shits you out without a second thought. Like I say, in this life now, you kill or you die. Or you die and you kill.“I lost my little girl, just about your age. I lost her. I lost everything. Now, I’m going to make sure your father knows the cards he’s dealt himself from this.”Tears were silent as Carl slipped his eyes shut. He accepted his fate. He had been so horrible to his father, not bothering to understand the reasoning behind Rick’s decisions, so maybe he deserved this. No, there was no “maybe” about this. He did deserve it. Carl had failed his father, more times than to count, and this was the only way Carl could see a future being possible. The gunshot echoed a church bell Carl remembered from a world long gone, the bell that signified the beginning of Sunday mass he used to attend with his mother. However, the strange part was the ringing never stopped, even after his eyes had opened. Everything was spinning. His eyes were too stubborn to focus on something specific, his head was pounding, and the buzzing in his ears was growing stronger every passing second. He was alive? How was he alive?
“Get your fucking hands off him!”
Carl recognized that voice, yet disorientation forbade him from placing a face to the sound. After a moment, he realized he was no longer captive in The Governor’s arms, but sprawled across the ground. How did he end up there? His head was inches from the bottom of the Governor’s tank– is that what he hit? The source for his throbbing skull? At first when Carl urged his body to move, stand on his feet and resume where he had left off with the enemy, his limbs gave no response; he was fixed onto his side, reeling in the pain rippling through him. There was no way to know how much time had passed before Carl gained control of himself once again, and as he rolled over, he just barely saw which gun laid askew and smoking from the recent bullet: the Colt Python.
His father.
Rick has been on a frantic search for Carl, weaving between discarded bodies of both living and the dead. After four minutes of wailing out for his son, feeling stuck in a twisted game of Marco Polo, his yells dissolved into hoarse whispers; that didn’t stop Rick from repeating Carl’s name into the battlefield. What did shut him up however was the hushed whimper coming from his left, the source blocked by a tank The Governor’s men had driven through the walls in. His movements slowed, and he heard the voice that filled his heart with ice. When Rick saw Carl restrained with a gun to his head, it was nothing more than pure primal instinct that caused Rick to tackle The Governor and shove his son to the side, out of the beast’s claws. The sheriff landed a couple sturdy punches before The Governor gained the upper hand, fist meeting face on an endless loop. Even if Carl had been more than half coherent, he still would never have been able to recognize his father beneath the blood tainting his skin. Like all that had happened so far, the horrible ring in Carl’s eardrums came to an end without warning, and what welcomed him were choked gasps for air and revolting laughter stemming from the brawl beside him. Boa constrictor versus mouse; The Governor’s hands burned as they worked to squeeze consciousness from Rick, indents of fingernails on his neck like marks from a predator’s fangs. Carl always protested that he could handle himself. Always fought against being babied or protected, and here was where he proved it. For a split second time passed in slow motion. Adrenaline replaced blood in the boy’s veins and before he knew it Carl was standing inches away from The Governor, the man who had stripped Carl of his temporary home, with his gun aimed at the ready. Rick instilled in Carl the rule to never aim his gun unless he meant to pull the trigger, and when his finger pressed down, an eternity must have passed before Phillip Blake was slumped on the earth with nothing but a stream of blood pouring down from his temple to show he had ever posed a threat.“Dad?” The words were meek, barely audible. Carl expected some sort of movement from his father– maybe clutching his throat, a string of coughs, or just a simple jerk forward– when The Governor’s hands fell away limp, but as he stood there, waiting, he saw nothing. “Dad, come on,”The gun was discarded and long forgotten as Carl raced to where Rick lay motionless. He latched onto Rick’s shoulder, shaking him like a ragdoll. “You gotta get up,” The little boy Carl had bottled away inside him managed to burst through the walls built in the span of the past few months, forcing tears to blur his vision and a crack in his voice while he pleaded to somebody– Rick or God, Carl was no longer sure who heard his prayers. It was all a disgusting nightmare. “Dad, we gotta go!” His fingers trembled with each feverish attempt to get Rick to breathe or blink or just give any sign that there was still life to be found in him, his screams barely reached his own ears like it did the ears of the walkers closing in on him. Why wasn’t Rick waking up? Why wasn’t his chest moving? Why was nothing he tried working?!“Help!” Carl became a broken record, wailing and weeping the same three phrases over and over again in desperation for a single living soul to hear him, but he knew there was no hope; he and his father were too far outside from the prison building that had seen the most action during the war, the area where all but he had congregated. “Michonne! Anybody! Help!” Beyond layers of blood and saliva remaining from the battle was a man who had always been prepared to lay down his life for his son’s, and beneath the tears and bile in his throat was a boy who was nothing but terrified. In all his life, Carl had turned to his father for hope, for sanctuary, for every solution. He turned to Rick when nightmares planted beliefs of monsters in the closet in his mind, and Rick would shoo any fictional foe away for his son to feel safe. He turned to Rick when grief threatened to consume him whole, and Rick would stay by his son’s side to keep his soul alight. He turned to Rick for everything, and because of him, Carl’s hero had lost the war. Walkers surrounded the father and son on every side. Fire raged through the destruction. Sounds of slaughter and war went silent, a signal that most were either dead or retreated. So, seeking one final moment of serenity, Carl squirmed on top of Rick’s corpse and curled into his chest. “I’m sorry, Dad.” Sobs and snotty sniffles blended with a chorus of moans from walkers reaching the duo at last, but Carl didn’t move from Rick’s cold arms. He couldn’t, not now. Not ever.
“I’m so sorry,"