Rarl one-shots.

19|Soulmate.

Carl doesn't understand what happens the first time. He feels a tug on his hair and a blow to his back. When he turns around, there's no one to hurt him, he's alone in his room in the middle of the night.

So Carl runs back to his bed as fast as he can, forgetting that he got up to go get some milk because his throat was dry.

Carl doesn't sleep, he just cries when he feels pain in his body that he doesn't understand.

The alarm clock in his parents' room goes off hours later and Carl rushes into the room. The phantom blows stopped at some point, but there was still a soft throbbing pain in places and he felt a jerk in his knee every time he walked.

"Mom!" Carl exclaims, as he climbs on the bed and goes between his parents, hugging Lori.

"Carl, honey, it's okay. Did you have another nightmare?" Lori asks, running her fingers through her son's short hair.

Carl furiously shakes his head and clings tighter to his mother.

"Last night...something pulled my hair and hit me, but there was no one there. It was so ugly. What if there's a ghost in the house?"

Carl gasps in fear that his house might be haunted and ignores Lori's sad, pained expression.

"Honey, have you ever heard of soul mates?"

Carl pulls his face away from Lori's shoulder and looks at her in confusion. Of course he do, everyone knows about soul mates and that everyone had one, Carl has one too, somewhere. What did that have to do with phantom pain?

Lori notices he confusion and smiles slightly.

"Well, you have to know that you are connected to your soul mate in order to find it, but not everyone is represented in the same way. Your father and I were united by music; when he heard a song, I immediately thought of that song, even if I didn't know the song. Others can taste the same thing their soul mate eats. Some get a tattoo on their skin with the first word they will say to their soul mate when they meet. Carl, in your case...it's the first the time I heard that he was connected to his soul mate by pain..."

First, Carl is excited to find out that he has a soul mate, he is five years old and he has always been told that the connection starts until after the age of ten, Carl doesn't understand it but he doesn't care. He had a soul mate! And his soul mate was suffering...

Carl tells his parents everything he felt at night and how he stopped when the sun began to rise. Lori assures him that his soul mate would be fine, but Carl doesn't notice the warning look Lori gives Rick.

Since that day, Carl is much more careful when he walks or does certain dangerous things like biking, skateboarding or running. If he felt his soulmate's pain, his soulmate would feel his as well.

Carl sometimes wakes up crying because he feels this pain that isn't his out of nowhere. Didn't have a pattern to follow, it didn't happen at an exact hour or day, sometimes it would take days and hopefully weeks before he felt anything. The only thing that happens without having changes, is that his soul mate is beaten during the night.

Other nights, Carl stays up all night with an ice pack next to him, because he might be able to ease the pain in his soul mate if he used it. Carl wasn't sure if he would do it, but if he could feel the pain, he might as well ease it. Carl realizes it's working when he feels a searing pain in his thigh and puts the ice pack down with a lot of pressure. The pain eases, it's still there, but not as painful.

And Carl smirks, because he was helping his soul mate feel better.

He tells his parents excitedly the next morning, but neither Lori nor Rick seem as excited as he is.