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C A R L

"I need to see Maggie." Enid glares down at me and Megan, after we caught her in the act. "I'll be fine."

We first discovered the runaway girl as Megan was trying to sneak me out of her house, without her new downstairs roommate, Olivia, noticing. Mission accomplished.

When we looked through the window and saw Enid scaling the back wall, I wanted nothing to do with it. I couldn't care less about where she's going or what she's doing.

But Megan—of course—insisted that we snoop.

"You shouldn't go that far by yourself." Megan starts, projecting her voice upward. "It's too dangerous and I don't want you out there, all alone."

I haven't talked to Enid since she—surprisingly—approached me one day, and asked about how I was doing with my recovery. Because I thought that she was going to relay the information straight to Megan, I gave the girl a genuine answer.

But I figured out that I'd flattered myself with the delusion, when Megan told me that Enid actually refused to tell her how I was.

"What are you going to do?" Enid scoffs. "Lock me in the closet again?" The girl's eyes shoot daggers down at the girl next to me.

After a few moments of an intense glare, the girl returns to face the wall, continuing to stick her pegs in the supports. She climbs a few more pegs up the wall, before Megan finds it in herself to speak.

"I'm not sorry that I did it, you know." Megan remarks, cocking her head to the side. "Saving you from it."

"That's what happened in the armory?" Enid asks. "You saved me?"

"Yeah."

"You made it back in one piece." The girl continues to climb. "You're still here."

Megan shakes her head. "I'm not talking about that."

Enid looks down for a moment, before briefly glancing down at the two of us. "I'm sorry you guys had to see it."

I'm not.

"Well, I'm not sorry that you didn't." Megan retorts. I feel the girl's shoulders tense from right beside mine, as she shakes her head. "You can't stay mad at me, forever."

"I'm not mad." Enid starts with a sigh. "Don't you remember how you felt when the Anders—"

"Don't bring them into this." Megan cuts through her words.

"Sorry." Enid sucks in a breath. "I won't."

The girl besides me sighs, her dramatic breath taken downwind from me.

"Be careful out there." Megan squints her eyes a bit as the sunlight begins to bend its way over the wall. "Because I'm not saving you, anymore."

Enid soaks in the girl's words, staring down to the ground. After a sigh, the girl then hoists herself atop the wall. "I'm not mad at you. You know?"

"I know."

"Just thought I should make that clear, before I head out." Enid shrugs, before swinging her other leg over the edge and disappearing behind the wall.

Without a word, Megan turns away from the wall. The girl walks away with an unreadable expression across her rosy, sun-kissed face.

My feet soon follow after the girl. "What's going on with you two?"

"The same thing that's going on with everyone else." Her eyes flick down towards the ground as she shakes her head. "Glenn, Abe, him. It's in everything we do."

I scoff. "You two have a weird way of dealing with it."

"What?" She rolls her eyes. "Like we had a much better way of dealing with it, last night?"

My cheeks run hot. Embarrassment running its course through my stiff body. "That's what you think that was? Coping?"

"N—No," She adamantly shakes her head. "I didn't mean it that way. We just needed it. You know?"

My eye rolls and my lips purse. "Just like Enid needs to be a stuck-up bi—"

"Carl." Megan growls. The girl sighs with a subtle shake of her head. "We're all just—scrambling to hold onto whatever we have left, okay?"

No words make their way from my lips. Instead, I keep my eye glued to our feet as they continue to take steps back toward the house. The girl walks ahead of me as I hold the door open, waiting for her to walk into her own house.

Once we're both inside, Megan spins on her heel to face me. "And right now, Enid needs someone to help her scramble her way back to Maggie." She hesitantly says.

My eyebrows furrow, underneath my freshly-changed bandage. "I thought you said you were done helping her?"

"I am."

"Then who are you talking ab—" My breath hitches in my throat. "No—No, I'm n—"

"Please, Carl." Megan sighs. "I'd go with her, but I have to stay back and take care of Eugene."

"I wouldn't let you go, even if it weren't for Eugene." I growl. "Did you happen to forget what happened last time we tried to go to Hilltop?"

The girl's pleading expression turns into a hurt one, before her face hardens once again.

My aggressive rhetorical question immediately makes the feeling of regret wash over me. I allow myself a step forward, toward the angry girl, as I bring my sorrowful hands to her sides.

"No. I didn't." The girl's thin eyebrows furrow, just above her stern green eyes as they study my face. "Which is why Enid needs someone out there with her. And maybe even after she gets to Hilltop. What if the Saviors show up and recognize her? What if he's there?"

Her words make sense in more ways than she realizes, sending ideas running through my head.

A possible run-in with the Saviors is something I've secretly been hoping for in the very depths of my angry mind. And Megan doesn't know it, but she's just put that distant dream within my reach.

"Okay, I'll go."

The girl sighs, pressing her forehead to my collarbone. "Thank you." She whispers.

Megan snakes her thin arms around my back, nuzzling her head into my embrace. I gently squeeze the pleased girl, as I begin to realize that this may be my last time holding her. Or better yet, her last time holding me.

"I meant it." I hum. "What I said, earlier."

The girl sighs, and—whether she means to or not—holds me tighter. Her heartbeat races against my chest, thumping with less and less time in between each pulse.

A few more moments in her arms, and I'd never work up the courage to leave. "Carl, I l—"

I won't be able to take the risk I dwell on, if I let her say those critical words. My hands press onto her shoulders, before I slowly ease her away from my body. "I better go—before Enid gets too far away."

The disappointed girl drops her arms from where they formerly linger on my waist, as she sucks in a breath.

"Okay." She mutters.

We share a few more moments of a meaningful stare, before I manage to pull my eye away, grabbing my hat off of her kitchen counter.

My boots clunk against the wooden floor of the living room, and my hands begin to fumble around with the different key rings on the hooks that hold Olivia's collection of Alexandria's car keys.

"What do you need those for?" Megan breaks the silence.

A smile makes its way onto my face as I look at her, over my shoulder. "Do you remember how Aaron promised he'd teach me to drive?"

"Yeah?"

I shrug. "I think I know where the brakes are."

☆

Miraculously, I managed to catch up to a depressed Enid.

I only had to pay the price of one of Alexandria's very own supply-cars. It isn't much of a loss, considering it would've just become another one of the Saviors' play-toys.

The two of us now walk through the empty street, in silence. Every now and again, I'll kick a pine-cone that lies directly in my path.

Enid and I never have much alone time, which is what gives us both an excuse to avoid each other. The two of us lacking in a certain fondness for the other. Besides Megan, the only thing we have in common is the reason for our travels.

The same reason that seems to motivate our every move, nowadays.

"I watched it." I start. "Both times."

It takes the girl a moment to recognize the rare occurrence of my voice reaching out to her. "What?"

"I didn't look away." I break the ongoing avoidance, and look to the girl. 

She turns her head, as well. "Why?"

"Because, when it was happening, I knew I needed to remember it." I start. "So when I have the chance to kill him, I won't have a choice."

"I think I'd kill him, too." She admits. "It's messed up, but that's how it is. You do things for the ones you love—loved."

I slightly shake my head, thinking about the the ones I've loved. Everything I'd do for them—to have them back, even. But I know that no matter how much I bargain with the world, I can't.

My thoughts ultimately trail back to the one that I am currently allowed to love. The one I'd never be able to bargain for. The one who I would do anything to keep breathing: Megan Carter.

"That's why I'm out here, doing this. You know?" I start. "For Megan."

My segue is a desperate attempt at lightening the mood between myself and a stone-cold Enid, as I try to enjoy what might be the last conversation I have with one of my own people. A conclusive return to the olive branch that Enid once extended to me, during my recovery.

I'd want the last known words I'd spoken, to be ones that Megan can be amused by, amidst whatever grief she would feel. Although, I never pictured my last words to be spoken to Enid Rhee.

"Doing what?" Enid asks.

I scoff. "She's the one who sent me out here to chase after your dumb ass."

"I figured she had at least some influence." The girl stifles an amused laugh. " I would be mad at her for medaling—like what she did, back in the armory. But, I have to admit, it's nice to know that someone cares for me."

"I get it." I start. "It's especially nice when that someone is Megan." I mutter. My eyes drift down to the ground, the small smile vanishing from my face as I realize that the quest I've set out to venture, might take her away from me, forever.

After a few moments of silence, filled with nothing but our footsteps, Enid clears her throat. "She's really one of the people you love? The people you do these types of things for?" The girl sounds almost shocked.

"These types of things—like making sure that you get to Hilltop, safely—yes. They're all for her." I start. "But killing the people who took our loved ones away from us—those things aren't."

"Who are they for?" Enid asks, the girl already having an idea of the answer.

I choose to ignore her redundant question, as I can finally see the walls of the Hilltop just through a clearing in the trees. My blood runs cold when I see the familiar trucks that paraded around the streets of Alexandria just yesterday.

"I don't think he's here." My eye squints as I inch forward, peaking through the leaves. "I don't see that black truck."

The girl studies my expression from beside me, although I don't turn to look. "You didn't come out here, just for Megan. You weren't coming to get me." She makes the obvious connection, bringing my schemes to life. Her voice being the first to say it out loud.

"I can't let them get away with this." I start. "You know I can't."

"I know." She mutters. "Do what you have to do."

"Are you going to tell her?" I ask.

"I don't know." Enid scoffs. "If she finds out that I let you do something this stupid, I might be as worse off as you."

My eye drops to the leaves, just underneath my feet. "You know how worse off I'll be, right?"

"Oh, you'll be dead." The girl laughs. Oddly enough, I begin to laugh too. "That was my point. Megan would kill me."

After a shaking of my head, I walk a few steps away from the tree line, aiming for the trucks. I stop, and turn my head over my shoulder. "Then do us both a favor, and don't tell her until it's over."

At first, the girl says nothing. I turn back around and continue to close the long distance between myself and the Saviors' loaded trucks.

"And if you do make it back," Enid calls after me.

My feet stop walking, and I—once again—look over my shoulder to face the girl, who still stands within the confinement of the trees.

"It'll be your ass."

☆

I couldn't do it.

I didn't do it.

And now the man—that I set out to kill—himself, walks right up to Megan and Olivia's front door.

The girl I've been so desperately trying to keep hidden from all of this, is now exposed to it, inside of the place that's supposed to make her feel the most safe.

My face winces with every one of his motions, knowing that I've let her down. I would've disappointed her either way, but this way is the one that somehow left me alive to tell her the story. The story I know she'll want to kick my ass for, when she has to hear it.

An unnecessary knock on the door proceeds the man's steps, as—no matter what—he's going to do as he pleases. His manners are a mere charade.

The door opens to reveal an awe-stricken Olivia. To my relief, it selfishly makes me feel just an ounce better, knowing that Megan is spared from a few more seconds of the man's presence. The man lets himself waltz right into the living room.

Olivia soon leans close to my ear. "Carl, where's—"

"Enid's fine." I mutter. "Where's M—"

"Great, great, great!" The man parades around the kitchen, projecting his sing-song voice. Olivia closes the door, entrapping the both of us—as well as Megan and Judith, somewhere in the house—with this horrid man. "Where's Rick?"

"I—uh—I'm just—"

"Don't care." The man says—more-so sings. "Where's Rick?"

"Um, out scavenging for you." Olivia finally says.

The man has officially made my father his bitch. One bluff of having to take my left arm, and my father handed over all of his decisions to the bat-wielding man.

"Cool," He starts. "I'll wait."

"Um—he went out pretty f—far." Olivia manages to say. "They might not be back today. We're running really low on everything. We're practically starving, here."

"Starving?" He asks. "You? By practically you mean not really."

The woman begins to weep after his low insult. The man then turns to me, expecting me to offer some kind of reassurance for the aftermath of his words.

"Seriously?" I, however, keep a cold glare on the tall man. "You people seriously don't have a sense of humor." He sighs.

After a sarcastic, perverted apology, and a harsh slap from Olivia, the man gives himself a tour of Megan's home. Because, technically, he's the one who owns it. As he likes to think that he owns everything and everyone here.

I follow closely behind the man, looking around every corner to make sure that I spot the girl first, and not him.

We soon come across the last, closed, unexplored door. The room that Judith often stays in—when my dad is out, and Olivia or Megan babysit her—is the only possibility of a hiding place for my sister and the girl. "How about this one?"

My nerves run rapid, knowing who the man is about to stumble across. "I—It's just a water heat—"

"Are you serious, kid?" The man's gruff voice asks over his shoulder. "Come on."

Upon opening the door, the man basks at the sight of my baby sister. Alone. "Oh my."

The paranoia I feel watching the man take Judith into his arms, is only worsened by the fact that Megan isn't here with her, right where I'd expected her to be. Which means that she might not be aware of the man aiming to send terror through our community. That she could voluntarily stumble into her own home, aiming to find me, and rest her eyes upon the face of a murderer, instead.

After a few moments on the porch—where I watched my sister like a hawk—the man pretends to suggest that we make dinner. I comply, knowing that if I don't, I'd most likely face the delayed consequences of my arrival into his so-called Sanctuary.

I parade around in the apron that the man comically suggests I wear. My hands arrange the place settings at the table, before the man clicks his tongue. "We're going to need another setting."

My eyes widens a bit, at the man's anticipation of the missing girl's arrival. "What?"

"We aught to wait for my man Rick. Right?" The man says, looking up to where I stand above him.

After realizing that the man isn't talking about Megan, I reluctantly return to the kitchen to grab another set.

Olivia stands, holding Judith, trying to distract the unaware toddler of the man sitting at our dining table. She helps the baby stir the pitcher of lemonade, and cheerfully talks to her in a low whisper.

My eye flicks towards the dining room, noticing that the man basks about in his own, narcissistic glory. "Where's Megan?" I whisper.

The woman nervously looks to the man's back, as it continues to face us. "She left a few hours ago."

My mind first goes to the infirmary, where the girl spends the most of her time outside the house. If she stays there until the man leaves, she might not have to see him at all. And I could find a way to spare her, once again.

"To go where?" My eye continuously watches the man.

"She went out looking for you."

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A/N

yeah you look good but they still want to know where Megan at :P :P

THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH FOR ALL OF THE SUPPORT!! I CANT EXPRESS HOW MUCH IT MEANS TO ME TO SEE YOUR COMMENTS AND VOTES!!

also, I think I'll start uploading weekly (probably mostly on Fridays) to give myself more time to edit!!

AND IF YOURE HERE FROM TIKTOK, THANK U SO MUCH FOR CHECKING OUT EE!!

edit: IM ALMOST DONE WITH MY EDITING ONLY ONE CHAPTER UNTIL IM CAUGHT UP

☆vote if you wanna know where Megan at :p :p ☆