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E P I L O G U E :
D U L C E T
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SOTC: Sunflower — Rex Orange Country
• you don't have to feel this emptiness •
❧ six months later
You'd think forgiveness would be easier than this. That you could reach into your throat and pull out a bouquet.
April felt suffocated inside her bedroom. She pulled open the window, tried to bathe in some kind of night elixir, but the air had warmed since February. This goddamn suburbia. No wonder adults drink wine at dinner parties.
She'd sworn off liquor at the beginning of the month, but as it proved more and more difficult to go to sleep, her sobriety seemed to be living on borrowed time.
Her house was nice, she couldn't deny that. Small enough for her and Elle to live comfortably, with a small television room, a kitchen, and two bedrooms. During those first weeks, neither of them had much more energy than to watch old movies and play the variously themed Monopoly games stored in the cabinet.
April hardly left the house without Carl. Just to the backyard to lay out in the sun, to read a book or cloudgaze until she fell asleep.
God, she wasn't sure why she wasn't doing more. Or at least, she didn't want to put a name on it. The thought of people seeing her face, after she'd committed arson, after she'd killed people. Suburbia hid monsters like her.
But that didn't mean she hadn't tried to make things better. Just that last week, she'd found a pair of old sunglasses in a drawer, and popped out the right side lens. She'd given them to Carl as an alternative to his bare socket, a late birthday present, because his birthday was in June. And lord, he'd loved them. He thought he looked so cool.
Elle had grown back an inch or so of her black hair, which she'd buzzed up the sides. She was still petite, but she'd returned to a healthy weight, and her features had lost most of their sharpness. She'd gotten back her gorgeous smile again, the one that once seemed devilish and now was only radiant.
She left the house a little more often than April did, but that didn't stop Elle from making friends and even taking up cooking as a hobby. They would be on a canned diet if it weren't for her. There was even a girl, supposedly, as she had told April some nights ago. She's too good to be true, Elle had said. She just wanted to take it slow this time.
"Hey."
April was snapped back to the bedroom, where she had been staring out the window for some time now. She turned around quietly, saw Carl in the doorway. He had his sunglasses on, looking like a scrawny Arnold Schwarzenegger, with his brilliant grin. He held an unopened beer in his right hand.
She donned a casual smile. "Hey," she said. "I don't know why you're here, but I'm glad. Is that for me?" She pointed to the beer.
"Thought you would want it."
"Surprised you've ever held a beer in your life, cowpoke."
"That's funny," he said, handing it to her. "Because I haven't. Care to step outside?"
April laughed. "Wait, what...?" She watched as he climbed out her window, onto the roof that stuck out just outside. "My God, you're a trendsetter."
"Did I ever tell you about the time I ate 112 ounces of chocolate pudding on a roof just like this one?"
April knit her eyebrows. "Excuse me?"
Carl laughed. Then he sighed frustratedly, like he'd forgotten something. "Dammit! I'm—"
"Don't worry about it." April slammed the end of the bottle on the end of her bureau, and the cap popped right off. She showed it to Carl. "Pros don't need openers."
He looked genuinely impressed as she climbed through the window after him, inching down to the edge of the roof so her legs hung off the side. She sat on his left side, so he could see her. It was nearly midnight, but the streetlights cast a dim glow on the two of them.
April breathed in. The summer night air was so clear, and it carried the distinct aroma of the barbecue from that evening, which, of course, April had not gone to but observed from the kitchen window.
"I gotta be honest," she mused, taking a sip from the bottle. "I have no idea why you came here. Aren't you leaving with your dad tomorrow, to talk to that new group?"
Carl looked down. "I've been worried about you."
Her smile dropped. "Don't be. I'm fine."
"I wish you would meet some people."
"Why?" The word fell out of her mouth. She regretted it immediately. "I mean, I just feel like nobody would want to meet me." When he didn't answer, she continued. "Like, look at me. I'm a murderer and a pyromaniac."
"You're neither of those things."
"Even if you think I'm not, they do."
Carl shook his head. "April, I just feel like you're... I don't know." He struggled for words. "Like you're wasting your life in here. I just don't want you to feel trapped."
That's it, though. That's exactly what she was feeling. Encased in walls of, what was it, shame? Embarrassment?
"You need some, I don't know..." Carl caught her hand and pulled her closer. "I miss you, I guess."
She offered him a tired smile. "I don't know, Carl, I just feel a little lost right now."
His smile faded. "April..."
"People died in that fire." She didn't move, just felt her gaze rest on Carl's eye, and in it, the reflection of the streetlight. April continued in a low voice, "I shot my dad. I stole people from their families. That's what keeps me in here."
"You know I forgive you for that."
"But why did I shoot my dad?" April felt herself crack. "That has to prove that the psychopathic part of me is still alive."
Carl took her hand. "No," he said. "If I had the chance to shoot Negan, I would have."
A cool breeze swept across them. April looked over at the house across the street, the splash of light against the garage and the basketball hoop in their driveway. Chalk drawings decorated the sidewalk.
"Remember when I visited him?" When she finally said this, April felt a chill flood through her. Around a month after she'd arrived in Alexandria, Carl had taken her to the basement of the empty house where they kept her father as prisoner. She'd asked Carl to wait outside, so she could speak to Negan alone.
"He only said a couple words to me," she continued, her voice low. "First, he said welcome home, April. He said that before I had even turned the corner, before it was possible for him to see that it was me. He just knew.
"He has a beard, now. And he'd been amputated up to his knee. He has this kind of pegleg thing."
"The two of us could make a full pirate," Carl joked, which April returned with a grin.
"He was oddly quiet. It was quite eerie." April remembered the way he'd stared at her, sitting against the back of his cell, shadow cast over his face, eyes glittering like jewels.
"I was kind of paralyzed at first." It was a kind of shock she'd felt before, the first time she'd seen her mother without hair. "Then I told him hello, asked him how things were, and told a joke about something. I don't remember what it was about, but it was pretty funny, and he should have laughed, but he didn't.
"Instead, he had this blasé look about him, like he didn't even hear me. And I just stared at him for a long time, specifically his leg, or lack of leg. Then all of a sudden, in this dry, raspy voice, he tells me that he wanted some water.
"After that, he turned around, and just stared at the wall. I tried to make conversation, but after a while, I gave up and told him goodbye.
"I'm just..." April trailed off, staring off at the sprinkling of stars past the horizon. "Afraid. Because I know I was the one who made him like that. I was the one who broke him. But I'm afraid that he didn't deserve it."
In the silence that followed, she closed her eyes, and took a sip from her beer, which had grown warmer as the minutes had gone by. She felt a sick feeling in her chest.
"He isn't broken, though." Carl said this in her periphery. "He's just rattled."
"Am I just rattled, then?"
Carl swallowed. "No," he said carefully. "You burnt down the Sanctuary. That place is destroyed. You're here now."
"I feel like I haven't changed enough."
"No, April." Carl leaned closer. His voice was warm. "You don't need to change any more. You learned from your missteps. You've done bad things, but you would never do them now, would you?" He traced his thumb along her jaw. "You don't need to be a saint to be a good person, a person I love."
At that, April felt her body begin to fall apart. "What would I do without you?"
"Probably find a better boyfriend," he said, bringing his lips to her cheekbone. "One that doesn't leave for weeks at a time."
"Well, shit," April laughed weakly. "Maybe I'll leave you for the other hot one-eyed boy who lives here."
"You would never," he said, then angled his lips to meet hers.
She'd forgotten how this felt. Kissing Carl sober made her evaporate. April felt magmatic, felt her blood rush in the dark, as she pressed closer into him, parted her lips to let him in.
And it was different this time. The sugary taste of Coke followed him into her mouth, something he must have had beforehand. It was like dynamite, dulcet explosions as he touched his tongue to her teeth.
April broke for air. He began to kiss a line down her neck. She could feel her pulse in her lips, thundering, she was delirious. She swept him back up and kissed him closer, deeper.
It was different because it was open. She felt the breeze play through her hair. She felt the roof under her palms.
Kissing him like this could make her believe in a higher being. Kissing him like this made her feel immaculate. She could be in one of those falling dreams, like she was plummeting without moving an inch. She was so sober in this moment that each touch could make her collapse. She was so fragile that every movement made her shatter.
Early the next morning, Carl brought her to the walls. They crossed town and ascended the ladder and stood facing the sun.
The ocean of trees spread out before them, a rippling colossus of dawn blues and greens. And then, beyond it, there was a rising tsunami of gold light.
When she looked at Carl, the sunrise flushing him in gold, his tangly brown bedhead in gold, his eye and sunglasses a gleaming regal gold.
There was a melody in his broad smile. He was royalty.
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Man, I could never write smut, but if I did, you bet there would be a "there's a snake in my boot" joke when Carl brought out his dangalang
final A/N on next part >>
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Word Count: 2021
Created 6-2-18
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