-ACT ONE-

Compared to the first weeks of Carl and I's relationship, the past two months had been unexpectedly calm and optimistic.

Gone were the huge, hectic and deadly herds of walkers, and the psychopathic villans that boasted of wearing walkers' skin or tortured fellow survivors for the sheer pleasure of it, and gone was Rick's irrational hatred and lack of acceptance toward me.

And in its place, was something completely different...

A promising start to a new life. A community named Alexandria - a modern, self-sustaining metropolis in the middle of a dead and decaying world.

When the five of us - Rick, Carl, Carol and Michonne and I - first arrived at this place, we told ourselves it was too good to be true. Particularly after the group's narrow escape from Terminus, we weren't about to be fooled by the promise of hope and a bright future. We considered walking away.

We were going to walk away.

But then we discovered something that nobody would have expected: survivors from Carl's former group.

Siblings Tyreese and Sasha, along with a lone ranger named Daryl.

Carl had told me about how, during their escape from Terminus, the group had been divided into 2, having to split up and travel in separate directions. Carl's half had managed to escape as a huge herd of walkers converged on the harrowing facility, but the other half had found themselves cornered.

He had given them up for dead. They all had.

But eventually, we all found ourselves here, in this place named Alexandria. And it was the sight of friendly faces that ultimately persuaded us that - just for once - this community was a genuinely kind group of people, with the sole intentions of living and prospering in this dark world.

We committed ourselves into helping them with this task as much as they could. Tasks such as fortifying the community with an ever-expanding wall, going on scavenging missions to find helpful medicine and supplies, as well as scouting and recruiting runs to find others that would be interested in a life at Alexandria, were all helping to turn this place into a true utopia.

And then there was Carl and I; a relationship that was not without its faults, but it was as humane as people could have imagined in an apocalypse.

We loved each other, that was not up for debate. But this love had become... strained. It was my fault - or at least, that's what I was always told. A combination of monotonous days and sleepless nights had led to an increasingly frequent number of arguments between the two of us, that often resulted in harsh and unnecessary insults that we immediately regretted afterwards.

I found myself becoming increasingly worried that the only reason Carl and I had fell in love in the first place was because our lives were on the line.

Now that things had finally settled down, I couldn't help but wonder; did we love each other as much as we had initially thought?

I would find out soon.

I could tell, deep down, that we had been delaying the inevitable for far too long. Good things never last forever, and we - in our simplistic Alexandrian lives - were beginning to forget that. But something would happen soon that would change that.

The question now is: what will it be?

I would just have to wait and find out...