follow you into the dark - carl grimes

XV

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xv.

memento mori
"remember, you must die"

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c a r l .

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"When your father... When he hurt you... You died that night, didn't you?"

Sharon doesn't answer.

Time stops. The question hangs in the air, frozen, her silence implication enough.

The reality of my words, what I've just said out loud, and the weight of it seems to finally hit me.

In the darkness, my senses had always been heightened. I had grown accustomed to relying on the subtleties of sound and smell, the rhythm of life around me. Sharon, however, had always been an enigma, her quietness more than just a welcome respite to the boisterous 'sanctuary' I had been trapped in. The absence of her breath had been a void, a space I had filled with my own hopeful ignorance. Her touch, cold and unyielding, left me desperate to not question the chill it brought. Now, every memory, every interaction replayed in my mind, tainted by this newfound knowledge. The scent of death, so faint and ever-present, had been her unspoken confession, one I had been too naïve to accept until now.

I had convinced myself I was imagining things and nothing more. That her morbid tales of beasts and demons had corrupted my common sense. Time after time, each strange occurrence, the way she never drew breath, the way the veins in her wrist laid dormant beneath my fingers. There is just no way such a creature can exist.

But it does...

She does.

She has been stuck in this purgatory. A sentient being trapped in a state between life and death. Alone on that mountain all this time.

The magnitude of her struggle to maintain a semblance of humanity and protect me amidst this false reality she created for us to dwell in peacefully side by side. In this moment, I am torn between the instinct to flee from this unnatural presence with a visceral sense of betrayal and the overwhelming need to comfort her, even in the face of such a horrifying truth. It is a cacophony of turmoil.

I cradle her face in my hands still, her skin so bitterly chill and stiff. The dear surface of it beneath my touch. This is the only way I know her as. The sharp edge of her jaw, her chapped lips, the crooked slope of her nose, the furl of her eyelashes, the broken flesh across her temple and cheek. My fingers have traced the complex surface of her countenance many times before, committing it to memory, giving her an appearance for my sightless self to picture. Even now, in the bleak expanse of nothing, I can only imagine her staring at me with fear, expecting my rejection and repulsion.

I think of the moment in the bathroom. I had held a naked corpse against me and whispered how I wanted her, begged for her in between kisses. The dry surface of her lips so cold against my own. I think maybe I even knew it then, maybe I've always known.

I part my lips to speak just as she vanishes from my embrace. Her feet creak across the floorboards and within a millisecond she is on the other side of the room. A ghostly echo.

"...What are you?"

I sit up and am not expecting an answer, for her to damn herself further. But then I hear her jaw click.

"I don't know."

I ask another, this one has been pressing in on me for weeks.

"What did you do to Negan?"