Rarl one-shots.

19.1|Soulmate.

So much happened in one day for Carl. His father was alive and back, Shane distanced himself from them, they lost Amy and Ed to a walker attack, and decided to move. The camp was no longer safe.

Jim dies when he is bitten and they have no choice but to leave him behind, while the others get into the cars (motorbike in Daryl's case) and drive away.

They end up in a ghost traffic.

Carl finds weapons and for a second, he thinks he's going to die when the walker on the truck falls onto the wheel. He doesn't, he just falls to the ground and takes the weapons with a lot of emotion, because this was going to help everyone a lot. Lori wasn't happy, Shane agreed with her and that sparked a fight.

They find clean water, food, and even clean clothes, so Carl is happy about that.

At some point, Shane and Rick say they're going hunting, so Carl goes with them, maybe his lie about him wanting to learn to hunt sounds more realistic now.

Carl doesn't understand why they're going hunting if they have plenty of food they just found, but he doesn't question them. Shane forces a smile as he approaches, as if he's disappointed that he's going with them, but then he forgets all about it.

Carl would have liked to stay with his mother and play cards with Sophia in Dale's caravan.

They find a deer faster than Carl had imagined. Daryl and Merle always took hours before coming back from hunting with a few squirrels or rabbits. So Carl gets excited and Rick lets him get close to the deer to kill it. He sounds ugly, but for months no one has had a good meal and this deer could feed them for at least a week.

Carl doesn't remember much, in fact he only remembers the scream of his father calling his name, a ringing in his ears and a dull pain in his abdomen.

When he gets shot, Carl can only think about how bad his soul mate must be having at that moment. He doesn't think about the pain of his mother when he finds out, he doesn't think about the pain and despair of his father when he lifts him off the ground, only his soul mate and how he must be suffering.

Being careful not to get hurt doesn't work much in a zombie apocalypse, right? Not even the children are safe, on the contrary, they are the ones who have the worst time and need the most help. Basically a burden, but no one is so inhuman as to leave a child, let alone your own child.

Carl knows that there are bad people in the world, he knew it since before the apocalypse, he had his connection with his soul mate as proof, but right now he knows that everyone begins to show their true face or parts of themselves that they did not know that existed. The end of the world does that to you, adapting to survive and Carl hates to think that maybe he has to adapt at some point...

Carl listens to everything when he is unconscious. He hears from Hershel, Maggie, Beth, Patricia, Otis... Otis shot him, but he's okay, it was an accident and Otis was risking his life to go get medical supplies so Carl would be okay. He hears his mother crying and his father lamenting for not protecting him. He's fine, dad didn't know this would happen, Carl isn't mad, he's happy they didn't abandon him.
When Atlanta fell, Carl saw many people abandon each other, no matter who they were; adults, children, babies, your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your boyfriend... they only left them behind to save themselves.

Then Carl realizes that he is lucky to have the best father in the world. The man who drove through Atlanta only to find his wife and child.

The man who was next to him, promising that he will recover...

Carl hates it when Hershel has to remove the bullet pieces, because he hurts so much and he didn't want to make his soul mate suffer more than he already has. But Carl is strong enough to survive and one day find his soul mate so he can protect him from whatever he's been hurting.