Sage ➸ Carl Grimes

32 ➸ smoke and mirrors

SO COLD by BEN COCKS

Wowie. It's been over a month. I was finishing up my freshman year, and had no time to write the way I wanted to. But, I'm out of school now for summer vacation, so expect a bunch of updates over the next few months. 

This chapter is slow, believe me. I'm easing back into things, so forgive me, since this is not my best work. 

110 votes for an update. Can we do it?

Be nice this chapter. I know it's not my best. Good luck. 

SAGE

"Bubby?"

It was a tiny and frail voice that caused me to pull from my darkest sleeps and dreams.

Lifting my head, I glanced all around, and found myself blinked rapidly. I looked alarmed, as if something more than just a small voice was calling my name. Pain began running down my stiff neck, and I grabbed it, while wincing in pain.

I had fallen asleep at Carl's bedside, because not a minute would go by that I would leave him. Not after everything.

My gray eyes had risen to the boy in the hospital bed. There he was; pale, but breathing. His arms were still and going without movement, but they were still alive. His eye was closed, and his breathing was shallow, and his lips were still, and his heart was faint, but he was still alive.

I blinked, since I hadn't slept since this all happened, and it had been days. I fell asleep here and there, but those moments startled me awake. All I could do remember, and what I could not manage to do was to forget. I reached over the bedside, taking Carl's hand in mine. His fingers did not move, nor did they curl over mine to complete the gesture, but they were still his hands. They still touched my skin, reminding me that even without the sound of his voice to reassure me of it, and even through these smoke and mirrors; my boyfriend was alive.

But just barely.

"B-Bubby?"

There it was again. That soft and unrecognizably pure voice. My red and swollen eyes wandered downward, and at my shoes was a little girl. Small hands were tugging on my jeans. A pair of blue eyes were looking up at me. A small toddler was craning her neck to meet my sad and grey eyes. She was wearing a dark blue dress, with tiny little shoes that had captured blood on the bottoms. Other than that, she was utterly pure. Her skin was pale as snow, much like Carl's, but the one true resemblance I recognized was her blue eyes. They were a vibrant, intensified color; piercing back into mine, the same way Carl's would. She giggled, displaying her smile of only which containing a few ingrown teeth. The sound was almost too lively and pure for my sullen ears to fully comprehend. Judith, her name was. I knew this from Carl's nightmares of her passing.

But here she was; at her brother's bedside, without a care in the world about it.

She didn't know her older brother was suffering. She didn't know he had went from lightness to darkness, and that was all he would see, coming out of this wound. She didn't know his chance of survival was slim, and that the mere idea of him still breathing beside us was miraculous beyond anyone's belief. Judith Grimes didn't know this world yet, and I learned that at the feeling of her innocent touch.

How it was, to be so pure. To think there was an end to this. To think we were the beginning.

Because, this wasn't the beginning. There never was a beginning; all it was false hope through smoke and mirrors.