total eclipse of the heart - carl grimes

XII

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xii.

go ahead and cry little girl
"nobody does it like you do"

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We crash through the door of the abandoned house, both of us out of breath and soaked to the bone. The rain pounds against the windows without tire. I scan the room, taking in the dusty furniture and peeling wallpaper, the kind of place that might've been someone's home once. But now, it's just another shelter, and for tonight, it's ours.

The first thing I do is barricade everything. Every door, every window. I'm not taking any chances, not after everything that's happened. I shove a heavy dresser in front of the main door and wedge a chair under the back doorknob. My body is on autopilot—checking every corner, making sure we're locked in and safe. The adrenaline's still running hot in my veins, keeping me alert. I don't even feel tired or hungry, although I'm sure it'll hit me soon.

When I finally turn around, I notice Mary standing in the middle of the room, shivering slightly. Her clothes are soaked, her hair clinging to her face in damp tendrils. But what catches my attention most are her feet—bare and bloodied, leaving faint red smears on the worn-out floorboards.

"Mary." I say softly, moving closer. "You're hurt."

"It's nothing." She folds her arms over herself, as if to preserve from warmth. Standing there in nothing but blood-stained lingerie.

"Please. Just sit."

She hesitates but finally nods, sinking into one of the chairs by the small table. Still so stiff, so on edge.

I grab a clean kitchen rag from a drawer and kneel at her feet, beginning to wipe the blood off her soles. It's a tender act, almost intimate. The blood seeps into the cloth, but then I hear her breath hitch. I look up, concerned, and see tears welling in her eyes. I freeze, the rag hovering just above her foot.

"Am I hurting you?"

She shakes her head slowly, but a single tear rolls down her cheek. Before I can say anything else, her resolve crumbles, she starts sobbing. The sound is raw and pained. It shatters something inside me. The rag falls to the floor, my entire body goes slack.

"What did he do to you? Did he...? Did he hurt you?"

"No." She whispers, using the heels of her palms to rub rough at her eyes. "But I hurt him."

I want to reach out, to hold her, but I don't. I don't know if she wants that, and I don't want to push her, not now.

"You did what you had to do." I implore, my fingers hesitantly dust her bare knee, as if that'll comfort her somehow. "You did what... what I couldn't do."

"Carl. I killed him."

I know she did. But hearing her say it. This sweet voice, this sweet lamb of a girl. There's something devastating about it—not in Negan being dead, but in the fact it was her innocent hands that shed his blood.

"I looked him in the eyes and... I ended it. I got him in the throat but there was so much blood and he was choking on it and reaching out to me and he kept trying to speak but—I watched him die. I let him die."

There's something broken in the way she tells me this, something that makes my chest feel like it's about to cave in. I've killed before. I've seen life fade out of someone's eyes and didn't feel a thing, but Mary... She sounds so completely torn up.

I feel my eye ghost over her attire. "You were protecting yourself. He was going to... Well, wasn't he? Or... Did he? Did you...?"

"He just..." She swallows, looking away. "He pulled me onto his lap. Like I was a little girl, his little girl. And he just held me. And he asked about this—" Her fingers lift to the molted skin below her throat, tracing down her sternum between her breast. "—He told me, he wouldn't let anyone hurt me like that again. That by being his, I was the safest I'd ever be. And... He meant it, too, Carl. And I thought he was going to try to... You know? I mean, he had me wearing my God damn panties and a fucking baby doll slip... They had given me a razor earlier, to shave everything, and I popped out one of the blades. Hid it in my bra. And I was going to do it when he—Well, if it happened, that's when I would have done it. But he... he told me to go to bed. That he'd see me in the morning when I woke up. I don't know. Maybe that was just another step in his whole game, manipulating me into thinking he really cared—Some of his wives are deadass convinced he does so that must be how he works it out. But I knew if I didn't do it then, I'd never do it. I slit his neck open. Deep. I made sure I cut open the wind pipe and hit the artery when I did it because you can't fix that shit up, that shit kills every time."