Scarlett (Rick Grimes/OC)

{ MORE BONUS MATERIAL }

{ ~ MORE BONUS MATERIAL ~ }

Another one of these things!!! How exctiting! I hope!

Anway, yeah- I was in the mood to write something that goes along with the story, something not really in Scarlett's point of view, so here it is! Tell me what you think and whether or not ya'll appreciate these little short anecdotes. I don't have to do them if they aren't appreciated!

{~~~}

{ ~ Carl ~ }

Carl never really had nightmares as a kid. Sure, there was always the occasional bad dream that sent him running into his parents' room late at night crying, but there wasn't ever a cycle of constant and frequent night terrors that plagued his childhood. There were never dreams so awful and terrible as the ones he had now, there were never dreams involving guns and violence and the living dead. There were never dreams involving horrible death and rape and evil. There were never dreams where he shot his own bleeding mother in between the eyes with a pistol.

That would be the worst one for anyone who even remotely cared for his mother, let alone loved her like Carl loved his. What made this worse was that Carl had actually lived it. It wasn't all that long ago that he ended his mother, really, just over seven or eight months if he had figured Judith's age right. In the grand scheme of things now though, that was a long time. A lot had happened in seven or eight months, but that didn't make what he had done any less memorable. Sure, his mother had asked him to do it so that she didn't turn, therefore allowing he and Maggie and the baby to make it out. Sure, his father and everybody else told him that he did the right thing. Sure, they had made it out alive because he did what he did... But Carl couldn't make it feel like what he had done was OK inside his mind or his heart, and his brain wasn't about to let him forget just what it was that he did any time soon.

It wasn't every night that he had such terrible, awful nightmares, and some nights he didn't have any nightmares at all, but tonight was the night to end all other nights, the night to top them all.

He didn't see her weak, bleeding, exhausted form on the floor tonight in his head, no, he saw her strong and very much alive- and angry. So. So. Angry.

Carl's mother kicks him and throws him to the floor, clawing at his face and chest, saying that it was his fault that she was dead, that she would be alive with her husband and baby if he hadn't been such an impatient, wretched little prick. The whole thing is fuzzy and lucid, and his mother is his mother, but yet she isn't. Sometimes he can see her face, other times he cannot. The dream distorts itself and makes itself unreal, yet this is what makes it seem so vivd to Carl.

Just when he thought he could take no more from his mother, she walks away from him and his father comes into view. Carl's father (who, like his mother, is not really his father) is just as angry as his mother had been, maybe even more so, and he too starts beating on Carl with all of his strength. His father spits at him, saying that Carl was the worst son he could have ever had, adding that he would be glad if he just died. To make the whole dream even more painful, the last thing his father says to Carl before he wakes up was that he wished his mother had turned and eaten him so that his father didn't have to look at him.

Jolted and trying to keep from screaming, Carl sits straight up in bed, panting and crying. How he was not screaming, he does not know, but he does know that he is drenched in cold sweat and that he had thrashed his covers onto the floor. Judith still sleeps soundly in her crib, thankfully. Carl is glad he doesn't have to attend to her in this state. He's so shaky he fears he'd drop her.

Carl recovers himself slightly and straightens his blankets back to how they should be. He knows he should lay down and try to sleep again, but he's wired, still on an adrenaline high from the content of his nightmare. He has comics he could read, or he could go take a shower, but he doesn't want to do any of that. Carl wants someone, he wants his father or his mother- his real father or mother- to come comfort him, shush him and pet his hair and say that everything's fine and that it was just a terrible, awful dream that he should just forget. But his mother is dead and his father is outside the prison fences on a run God knows where.

I could go to Hershel, Carl thinks. Yeah, I could do that. Hershel would get it. Hershel would talk to me and make me feel better. No, no, I'll talk to Carol. She always kind of reminded me of Mom-

He doesn't finish his thought though, because Carl knows it's stupid to wake somebody up at this ungodly hour. Nobody wakes anybody up at this time unless something is seriously wrong and needs immediate attention, and the last thing Carl wants to do is cause panic. So, he does the one last thing he thinks he could get away with: he goes to his father's room across the hall.

Quietly, ever so quietly, Carl tiptoes across the hall, eases open the door, and then ducks inside, easing it shut behind him. Everything is how he lasts remembers it: bed unmade but still relatively neat, dirty clothes that need washing in a small pile in the corner of the room, and a stack of laundry that's yet to be put away on top of the dresser. It's comforting to think about his father tidying things up and keeping them neat like he always has, to think of his father as he actually is instead of the way he had been in Carl's awful dream.

Carl silently pokes around things and takes deep breaths, willing himself not to break down. There's no sense in it- it was a just a dream, after all- and he's not a child anymore. He's one too much, seen too much, and heard to much to shatter into a million pieces over a silly nightmare. It wasn't even realistic! His parents would never do the things they'd done in the dream to him in real life, and they'd never say any of that either... or so Carl hoped.

After about fifteen minutes of messing around and refolding t-shirts, Carl sighs to himself, thinking he ought to try to go to sleep again. But he doesn't want to go back to his bed because, although he would never dare say it out loud, he doesn't feel safe in it after he has a particularly awful dream like the one he had tonight. The bed here though, he feels safe in. The blankets and pillows have his father's scent on them, and it's a comfort to him right now. Carl wishes his father were actually here, but what he's got will do for him.

Feeling sort of like a little child in a way that he really isn't ashamed of deep down, Carl crawls under the covers of his father's bed and pull the blankets up to his chin. He catches the smell of his father's soap and the smell of firewood, and it soothes what small amount of frayed nerves he has left. Carl is asleep within minutes afterwards, and just as his eyes slip closed one last time, he notices his father's gold wedding band blinking at him on top of the dresser.

***

Author's Note-

More bonus material! And this time it features Carl! Yayyy!!

Thank ya'll so much for all the reads!!! ALMOST 3,000 AHHHH!

- Love, Madison :P