"YOURE NOT MEANT TO be out here, y'know."
Michonne spoke out into the woods, knowing Carl was there somewhere. She hears leaves crunching somewhere in her plane of sight, which is just confirmation to what she'd already known.
"You took your comics with you, of course I know where you went." She tells him impatiently.
"Quit yelling, you're gonna attract a herd." He casually scolds, revealing himself from the trees and making his way towards Michonne. She smiles at him solemnly, and he grins back, as they begin to walk side by side.
"What are you doing here?" She asks him.
"Just wanted to be alone." She gives him a knowing look and he sighs, ready to confess the real truth.
"I just don't want to forget what it was like. The kids here, they're not...."
"They're not what?"
"They don't know what it is to actually be a survivor. You know what I'm talking about."
"Well maybe we can teach em," Michonne picks a green spec of spinach from her teeth and throws it to the floor. "You spoken to any of the kids yet?"
"What do you think?"
"Maybe you can make some friends. I don't want you to be lonely. You shouldn't be lonely."
"I have Judith. She's my friend. And you, and dad. That's all I need."
"I know, kid, but don't you think it'd be nice to meet people your own age? You might have some stuff in common with them." She asks.
"Well, unfortunately for me your wish has been granted. Dad wants me to go over to Ron's house to meet some of them."
"And you don't wanna go?"
"It's what dad wants," he sighs, "So i'll do it. But don't think this is some ground breaking out-of-the-shell revelation cause I'm not trying to make 'friends'."
Everyone had been a victim to Carl's distancing after Jane's supposed death. Even Michonne had noticed it, yet this was the first time anything had been outright admitted by the boy. She thought maybe he'd fall into the group of boys here, if he just gave it a try. Michonne had seen a girl wandering around too - similar age to him, maybe. A girl could go two ways. He'd latch onto her like he did with Jane, or he'd avoid her for the rest of his life because she reminded him of her.
"Your dad's worried about these people too. But I think we can help them."
"Yeah. Maybe," he says, looking down at the comics in his hand and stuffing them in his tote bag. "Deanna seems nice."
"Yeah, she knows best. She really respects your dad, which is nice, because it seems no one else from Alexandria wants to." She tells him.
"Tell me about it." He replies, watching intently as Michonne pulls out a peanut butter protein bar from her satchel bag, handing it directly to him. He doesn't object, thanking her as he unwraps the snack.
They keep walking, making their way back towards Alexandria as Carl's plans loom over him. An owl coos, and he finds himself turning to face it. It flies away, out of sight before he can even see it - and as he squints his eyes he can hear her talking.
"It's just an owl, Carl, she'll be fine." Jane says as she cradles the girl in her arms. She's sound asleep, just snoring a little.
"I know, I just don't want her to wake up. Everyone needs sleep. They don't wanna be woken up by crying."
"It'll be okay, look, she's sleeping through it."
"Only cause you're here," he tells her.
"Nonsense."
"It's true! She loves you, you know."
Who doesn't? He thinks to himself, as he watches her hold the baby with such ease. She's so gentle, so caring.
"I like the name you picked for her. Judith. It's a nice name." The owl hoots again, and Carl darts his eyes to the prison window. "Us J's gotta stick together." She says with a smile. He can't pinpoint why, but as her eyes fluttered to his, he couldn't help the fact that his face would heat up, or that his cheeks would start to flush a wine red.
Surely she had noticed, why wouldn't she notice?
"Carl?" Jane asks.
"Yeah..?" He replies untruthfully, half paying attention, half staring at her complexion in the moonlight. The shadows of the bars were strict to her face as she looked towards him with a fateful smile.
"Carl?" Michonne shouts, an arm placed rightfully on his shoulder to try and shake him awake a little. "You okay?"
"Oh, yeah, just remembered something, that's all."
Michonne nods at this comment. She knows who and what that was all about, but she doesn't mention it. She never mentions it. Just that girl's name follows many bad paths.
"I'M RON, THIS IS mikey, and Enid." The blonde boy gestures to the girl, propped up on his bed, reading a comic. This had immediately intrigued him - they'd already shared something in common from the moment they'd met.
"Hi." He says, trying to shake the nerves from his voice. To further fuel his uneasiness, no one gives him a greeting back.
"Wanna play some video games?" Ron asks, and Carl nods as the controller is thrust into his hand. He just stares at Enid as she doesn't even acknowledge him. He wonders if it's something about him? His face, his hair, his expression, maybe?
"I haven't played in awhile. Might be rusty." He spits out, with a weird newfound confidence.
"It's okay man, we get it. We totally get it." Mikey reassured him as he pointed to the foot of the bed next to him, where Carl ended up sitting. You don't, he thinks to himself, but starts to play anyway. The whole concept seemed too dystopian - too far out of touch. Just last week, he was starved, sharing Judith's dried applesauce that he would have never dared touch before hand. He had almost died, just three weeks ago. Now, he was preoccupied playing mariokart and worrying about unimportant, commercial things, such as socialisation.
Surprisingly, carl does seem to fit with them, when he tries to. Enjoy would be quite a strong word for their interaction, but he could possibly tolerate a meet up like this every few weeks if he had to.
Halfway through their three part race, the girl behind them rises and dumps the comic book on the spot where she had sat merely seconds ago. Carl turns his head to her as she does so, and she avoids his gaze like it's the modern day plague.
Suddenly, courage overtakes his tongue and he chirps up to her, making the others alert of her shift in presence as well.
"Where are you going?" He asks so rudely, that it almost takes himself aback. He wasn't used to being this mean.
"Why do you care?" She retaliates, and only then does she take the time to look at him. Her eyes seem to pierce daggers to his intrigue, and he finds himself wishing she hadn't looked at him at all.
He doesn't answer and she proceeds to slip out the door, and Carl is astonished to find that the others don't bat an eye.
"Is she okay?" He asks, seemingly concerned. Ron just shrugs, which instigates a deep anger in Carl that he can't shake. He doesn't quite know if it's because Ron's girlfriend is right in-front of him, yet he doesn't even look at her, whilst his is gone - or if it's just because the girl had snapped at him.
"I dunno. She does shit like this a lot. Didn't speak for like months after she arrived here."
That's when he gets up from his seat, calmly placing his controller on the desk and moving swiftly past Ron and Mikey to the door.
"Hey man, where are you going?" Mikey yells over the brain-rotting sounds of the game.
"To check on her."
"She doesn't want to be checked on," Ron calls, having made that mistake many times before, but Carl is already filing past a questioning Jessie and shutting the front door behind him. He makes it out in just enough time that he can see her in the corner of his eye, making her way towards the wall.
Within ten minutes, he had figured out exactly how to scale it like she had, and had followed her deeper into the forest. He was sure she didn't know he was there, but was cautious anyway as he avoided dead sticks beneath his feet. He'd become quite good at controlling the sounds around him, being sneaky and small seemed to be an advantage where it hadn't been before. Although, he could feel himself growing and changing more frequently, and even though the things he had seen had catapulted him into adolescence - his body still had a little catching up to do.
As he continued to creep behind her, he felt an overwhelming sense of confusion and self doubt hit him. Why was he following this strange girl, that he'd never met before, out into danger? Sure, he came out here all the time by himself, and maybe the reason was because he felt obligated to protect her....but no, that couldn't have been it.
Getting lost in his thoughts and his strange self centred questions, he looked up to find that not only had Enid completely vanished, but she'd left no trace of herself left for him to latch onto. This was when he decided to take a very shaky shot.
"Enid?" he called. Nothing.
"I know you're there, you don't have to hide," he yelled.
"Why are you following me?" her voice seemed to echo from every direction as he scrambled to think of an answer.
"Wanted to make sure you were okay." A complete lie, but truth was - he didn't know why he was there at all.
"What a gentleman," She states, with such lack of emotion that he can practically hear her rolling her eyes at him.
"Why are you out here?" he replies calmly, trying to get her to stop messing with him. Fortunately, it works for a second as she springs out from behind a circle of trees, swinging her bag from her back and throwing it to the ground beside a fallen log by his feet.
"Same reason as you."
he nods, lowering himself to his knees as he sits up against the log, mimicking her position. She unzips her backpack, reaching into it, pulling out her knife. She wraps her fingers around it's hilt an pierces the blade through the wood, leaving it there as she toys with it.
"Why do I scare you?" He asks playfully, watching her index trace the patterns on the handle. She smiles a little, and Carl takes notice that it's the first time she's done so in his presence.
"I don't know, you just do." her eyes turn to his and he's met with a brilliant green, and suddenly struck with the image of Jane's eyes looking up at him as she plucks plants from messes of greenery and nettle. He coughs, clearing his throat, and looks away, staring back down at his feet. She smiles again, still looking directly at him.
"Cool. you're afraid of me too."
He scoffs at her remark, but doesn't object to it. She continues to fiddle with the knife, as guilt builds in his gut. He can't seem to get Jane out of his head.
"What happened to you?" he asks unapologetically. She shrugs, seemingly unbothered by the question.
"The same thing that happens to everyone else. I should ask you the same question, but I won't, because I already know the answer." he nods, struck with sudden fear that this girl knows the world too well. Knows him too well. She understands.
Over the next week or two, Carl seems to see less and less of Enid. Half the time, he watches her sneak away, up and over the walls where she might be gone for hours at a time - and the other half, when he does finally spot her, she's with Ron.
On his walks with Judith, he had seen them together a few times: hugging in the park, sharing a Kiss by the canopy. This bothered Carl, but he couldn't figure out why. He wasn't Jealous of Ron because he had Enid, more because he actually had something like that to hold onto. He found himself watching them when he shouldn't have been, and he always seems to have a knack for being obvious. Enid normally acknowledges him, whether it's just an act of staring back or a small head tilt before he moves on with his day.
He seemed to compare the two to him and Jane in his head, but really, the two of them had never really been anything. She'd kissed him on the cheek, and that had been it. But they were, they were something, at least. They had to have been, right? More often than not, he dwelled on the fact that the wound just never closed - no matter how much he tried to stitch it back up, and so desperately he wished he could wash his hands clean of her. But nothing did, or ever would, work.
His sleep became more irregular than it had ever been, even though he was the safest he'd been since the world's normality. It hurt, to shove the past away, but he had to keep on, and not get distracted, because that's how you die. The others in the house heard him, waking up from these terrors late at night. And when Ron would ask him how he ever survived out there, he would say "You disregard everything else and learn." he had been lying, of course, because he didn't disregard or throw away anything - secretly he kept it, locked in his heart were the words they had exchanged and the colour of her iris's. Things he would never toss out. The smell of her hair, the softness of her hands. Her kiss had lingered on his cheek ever since she'd placed her lips to his face.
He had no hope left in him, yet the love he felt convinced him to keep believing she was somewhere. Somewhere happy.