I need you here with me // Carl Grimes [EDITING]

Eighty One - The Last of Carl

He lasted for so long, so long that I feared how much time I really had left with him. Was it hours? Was it minutes? Or just seconds? I wasn't ready to lose him. Carl had been the only constant in my life for as long as I could remember, the only one who had been there to held me in my time of need. Every single damn time. And I was going to lose him, all because of his kind heart and need for saving others, even if they were just a stranger to him.

I thought it was the end for us, for him, back in the sewers underneath Alexandria but I knew Carl better than anyone, so I should've known that he would fight until the very end.

Michonne, Rick and I somehow managed to get him away from the gunfire, we dragged him out and just barely saved him. I feared for him more than ever, but it wasn't just losing him that I feared, it was the idea that I would never get to tell him I loved him one final time.

"Lyds?" He spoke tiredly, his voice raw and rough as his body began to shut down.

"What is it? Are you in pain?" I worried, "Do you need more antibiotics?"

"No I just... I just love you." The Grimes boy smiled despite his pain and I felt a pang of sadness within my chest. In that moment I knew it was the end, just as I felt him slipping away from me, he could feel himself losing his way too.

"I love you too... I'm going to get you out of this okay? Whatever it takes."

"You know- You know you can't..."

"Don't say that." I desperately shook the tears away, I tried to hide the pain and fear on my face from him but the boy already knew what I was feeling. Carl's grasp across my shoulders only tightened and he pulled me closer into him as Rick and I lugged him further and further through the forest.

"This way!" Michonne called out before her katana buried itself in a walker's head.

"I don't know how much further I can go..."

"Please Grimes, you have to stay with me." I mumbled before I placed a soft kiss to his temple

"Just a little further Carl, then everything will be okay." Rick cut in, the man held an eery calmness to him.

"But it won't be." The brunette boy murmured

Everyone chose to ignore his words of truth and instead trudged onwards through the vegetation and the darkness towards an uncertain safety and a certain death.

Soon enough the first hints of daylight glimmered through the gaps in the branches of the trees and lit up our faces, it was only then that I saw how worn down Carl really looked. He was barely hanging on...

His eyes were sunken in and his skin was pale, his lips were purple and he could barely hold his own head up; he wasn't my Carl anymore, but I still loved him all the same.

I gave him the last of my water and what food I had in my backpack but we all knew it wasn't enough to keep his strength up, he'd already succumbed to the virus.

"How... How much... further?"

"Look there's a church up ahead, we can stay there then find somewhere-"

"There's nowhere else. Not for me anyway..."

It was in that moment that it hit me, soon enough, sooner than I could've ever thought, I was finally going to be saying goodbye to the boy I loved. None of it made sense, out of everyone I always thought that it would be Carl who survived until the very end, not me. That wasn't the way things were supposed to go.

The longer we stayed hidden within the partially burnt down church, the weaker the Grimes boy grew, until he couldn't even bring himself to stand any longer.