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GREY KINGSTON
under the thick covers i remind myself to breathe. in and out, again and again, and i've done that since i crawled into bed while the sun was still out. it's sunken into the horizon now.
my hair has finally dried from the shower i took. i had to carefully peel my clothes off my body, every muscle used was too much. everything hurt.
i couldn't bare the look on carl's face when rosita dragged me to camp, hearing what his father did, how we couldn't find him afterward. it was rage, utter rage, and denial on carl's face.
he'd been there, with enid. they came to help re-set the camp from the storm. carl was there, just a mile away from where the bridge blew up beneath his father's feet. he ran at the sound of it, at the bright orange erupting past the top of the tree line, but siddiq ran ahead, stopping him. he held him back by the shoulders even though he knew carl would pummel him down if it came to it. it almost did.
but when he saw me, rosita, daryl, maggie and carol, and the looks on our faces, the slump in our bodies as we returned to camp, carl slumped too. he fell to the ground in siddiq's arms and panted through his anger as i explained to him what happened, daryl backing me up on the missing pieces i didn't know about.
carl's mad at rick, i know that much. he's struggled with it since the start, accepting his father as the leader of this group. he used to wish, back at the prison, that rick would take a break from leading. when he did for awhile, after lori, carl then just wanted his dad back, to see him smile, and mean it.
but he's always hated the weight on his father's shoulders of being the leader, and knew deep down that that weight would be placed on his next if they both survived this world long enough for the reign to be passed to carl like some sort of royalty, leading us, leading the walking dead.
judith's too young to know, to understand, and i clutch the thick comforter tighter to myself at the thought.
i've been in my bed, in my room—my old room, i suppose. not rick's room, the one he officially asked me to move into with him just the other day in the van during our supply run. we never got to spend a night in his room together after that. never got to enjoy the stupid record player he fell in love with.
we never even came home to alexandria together. he spent the night at the bridge camp and i spent the night at hilltop last night when we came back during the storm.
about a half hour ago i heard two people enter our house. daryl and rosita let them in. i recognized the weight of the footsteps almost right away, knew them from my years as a little kid.
my father came. he came all the way from the sanctuary, negan with him, at the news of what happened on the bridge this morning.
i heard daryl block him off at the foot of the stairs, telling him that's about as far as he should go. rosita slipped in. "i asked him to come." she said to daryl.
