» Time Is Dancing « | » Carl Grimes «

» CONQUER «

Baby's First Outing. And By Baby, I Mean Me. And By Outing, I Mean Meeting

I ran a stressed hand across my face, sitting at the counter while Carl poured a glass of water. The crowd had eventually dispersed and Rick's unconscious figure was taken down to an empty basement. I just got back from cleaning his wounds and taping them up when I found Carl in the kitchen.

"Is he okay?" He asked about his father and I nodded my head.

"Yeah, nothing he can't handle. Don't know about Pete, though, Rick really laid it on him. Nothing he didn't deserve." I muttered, sipping the water.

We were silent as Carl put his empty glass in the sink, the clinking echoing around.

"You talked to Enid-"
"You met Ron-"

Our voices overlapped and I could tell we were thinking the same thing. I didn't want to admit I was jealous because I actually liked Enid, and Ron seemed like an okay guy. But Carl would always be my best friend. The awkward silence fell between us again, only broken by Judith's cries on the baby monitor.

"I should- I'm gonna check that out." Carl left up the stairs and I sighed in frustration, dropping my head in my hands. We hadn't talked much since I kissed him a few nights ago, and I could feel it hanging in the air.

I took the opportunity to leave the house, finding the tension way too heavy.

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I found Maggie at the kitchen table the next morning, clearly deep in thought. Her head lifted when she saw me coming down the stairs and she smiled.

"Any news?" I asked as I sat across from her.

"There's a meeting, tonight. Deanna's gonna decide if we can stay." She took a bite of toast, chewing as she thought.

"Can I come?" I was prepared to beg, but I was surprised when I didn't even need to.

"Sure. You're not a kid anymore, you should be part of it." She smiled. I grinned back, feeling like I was being treated like an adult for the first time ever. Maybe people would start taking me seriously now.

"How's Glenn?" I asked after a moment of silence. He was the person I relied on to stay positive, but after Noah's death I knew it had brought him down.

"He's doing better. He's handling things." She replied with a firm belief. Like me, she just wanted her husband to be okay.

"I told him it's not his fault. We both know Nicholas-" I sighed harshly. "If he hadn't been there, Noah would still be alive."

Maggie placed her hands on mine, making me look at her. "You gotta stop thinking about what could've happened, Belle. Because then you'll start blaming someone who doesn't deserve it...at the prison, me and Beth were at the bus. I told her to get on, and that I would be right back. But she got off anyway. For a while I thought, maybe if I stayed with her, she wouldn't have got lost, and she would still be here." She admitted sadly. My eyes watered as I thought about the guilt Maggie felt, and how she should never have felt that way. I nodded in understanding. They were gone, and we couldn't change that.

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"There's gonna be people here that want us gone, okay, so don't get mad. Keep quiet, alright?" Me and Maggie stood beside each other, the crackling fire providing light as people gathered for the meeting. They were starting to get impatient as we waited for Rick, but he never showed up.

"Shouldn't Glenn be here?" I murmured to her, and she nodded with a concerned expression, scanning the crowd for him.

"We're going to start. It's already dark." Deanna stood before the community. "We're going to talk about what happened. Not the fight, not what precipitated it. We're dealing with that. We're going to talk about one of our constables. Rick Grimes. We're going to talk about how he had a pistol he stole from the armoury, about how he pointed it at people. And we're going to talk about what he said."

Most of our group was there, and they all had something to say about our leader.

"Rick just wants his family to live. He wants all of you to live."

"Rick Grimes saved my life over and over."

"People like us need people like him."

"Maybe we should listen to what he was saying."

"There is a vast ocean of shit that you people don't know shit about. Rick knows every fine grain of said shit, and then some."

"He's a man with a good heart who feels the things he does, the things he has to do."

Deanna stepped forward after the group made their arguments for Rick. "Before we hear from anyone else, I would like to share something in the spirit of transparency. Father Gabriel came to see me, and he said our new arrivals can't be trusted. That they were dangerous, that they would put themselves before this community."

"Did he mention that Rick saved his life when they first met?" I saw Maggie glance over at me, but I ignored it. "Did he say that this group protected him out there, from the walkers and the danger because he didn't know how to. He has done terrible things, we all have, but we still welcomed him as part of the group. We kept him safe." It seemed like Deanna accepted my words. She was a good leader, she considered every side of an argument and didn't let bias sway her. But that didn't mean she knew how to handle the world today.

The crowd was alerted by heavy breathing and loud footsteps, seeing a once again blood soaked Rick Grimes walking our way, this time with a dead walker in his arms. My eyes widened as he threw it on the fire, addressing the gaping mouths and wide eyes.

"There wasn't a guard on the gate. It was open. I didn't bring it in. It got inside on its own. They always will- the dead and the living, because we're in here. We'll survive, I'll show you how." He spoke, but this time everyone could hear him. They weren't scared of him anymore, they were scared of the world out there that he protected them from.

"I'm not sorry for what I said last night. I'm sorry for not saying it sooner. You're not ready, but you have to be. Luck runs out." He finished, preparing to leave. He was stopped by approaching footsteps.

"You're not one of us. You're not one of us!" It was Pete Anderson, his face covered in band aids and Michonne's sword in his hand.

"Pete, you don't want to do this." Reg pushed against him as he stormed forward, begging him to let the situation go.

"Get away!" Pete raised the sword, slashing it against Reg's throat and I watched with horror as blood spurted in every direction. He was choking quickly, screams of terror coming from the crowd.

Deanna sobbed as she held her dying husband, begging him to live. But there was no hope.

"This is him!" Pete yelled from underneath Abraham's grasp. He struggled to break free but his hold was strong.

Deanna's face twisted from sorrow to pure fury as her husband lay dead in her arms, turning her head to Rick. "Do it."

The man didn't hesitate as he whipped around, aiming the gun at Pete and firing a single shot, blood spraying from his head wound.

"Rick?"

I looked up to see Aaron and Daryl, back from their first recruitment. It must've been successful, because with them was a man who I had never seen before, but appeared to know Rick.

He looked terrified.

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RIP Reg, I did actually like him
RIP Pete too, but he was an asshole so who cares

And that's the end of season five!!!!
I'll miss it, but good news is I love season six too so keep reading :))))