Dead Man Walking

xv.

Hunter isn't truly sure what's going on around him. He doesn't want to believe that Lori's dead. It couldn't be possible, she was supposed to be here. This little girl in his arms is supposed to have a mom. It wasn't supposed to be this way, this little girl was supposed to be raised by two parents. And now her mother was gone.

There was a huge chance that this baby wasn't Rick's but Hunter didn't care. This baby was innocent and he was gonna love her no matter what. He was gonna protect this little girl like his life depended on it. This little girl was going to have the best life, Hunter was going to make sure of that.

He couldn't hear the cries of his brother, or the cries from Maggie, his sole focus was on the baby in his arms. Soothing her cries was what mattered to him. He felt a nudge on his stomach and quickly glances over at Carl.

"Hershel wants to see the baby."

Hunter looks at the group before slowly standing up. Maggie came to his side and helped him walk over to her father, "What are we gonna feed it?" Daryl asks, "We got anything a baby can eat?"

Hunter turns the baby to Hershel and takes a quick look at her, "The good news is she looks healthy. But she needs formula. And soon or she won't survive."

Hunter shakes his head as Daryl speaks up, "Nope. No way. Not her. We ain't losing nobody else. I'm going for a run."

"I'll back you up," Maggie says.

"I'll go, too," Glenn volunteers.

"Okay, think where we're going," Daryl says before pulling Beth to the side.

"It's not your fault," Hunter says not taking his eyes off the baby. He was speaking to Maggie and she got that, "She would've wanted you to save this baby. Don't blame yourself. You to Carl."

"You two get the fence. Too many pile up, we got ourselves a problem," Daryl says taking charge of the group, "Glenn, Maggie, vámonos."

"Rick!" Maggie shouts taking Hunter's attention away from his niece. He watches his brother pick up an axe and walked into the prison Maggie and Carl came out from.

Hunter places his hand on Maggie's arm, "Let him go. He needs to deal with this in his own way." Hunter rocks the baby in his arms as he walks back over to his nephew. He places his arm around him and walks them away.

____

"I got some cards if you wanna play," Hunter suggests to his nephew. He didn't want to bring up Lori if Carl didn't want to talk about it.

"I know what you're doing," Carl responds as he sits on the opposite side of the table, "Just ask what you want to ask already."

Hunter had wrapped his niece up in one of his clean shirts as he tried to get her to go to sleep while they waited for food, "I don't want to ask you anything, Carl. I wanna know if you want to play cards."

"No, you don't," Carl argues and Hunter doesn't try to stop him, "You want to know how I'm feeling. You want to know what happened with my mom. You're just scared to ask me."

Hunter adjusts the baby in his arms before looking up at his nephew, "Look, I'm not here to get you to talk if you don't want to. I'm not your dad, I'm your uncle and you can talk to me about anything whenever you want. But if you don't want to talk about it we don't have to."

Carl sat there in silence as he stared at his uncle, he didn't know what to say to him. He did what he had to do, and he hated that, "I killed Dale, I saw the walker that killed him when I was in the woods. I couldn't do it then. I couldn't. I had to kill my mom."

Hunter reaches over the table and held onto Carl's hand, "I'm sorry it had to be you.  But you saved her from becoming one of them. We do it when they can't do it themselves. And it's okay to be angry, to be mad at the world no one is gonna hate you for that. And if you want to cry cry. You wanna yell and scream you do that. Do what you need to do to feel better."