"None of this is your fault." (a Walking Dead story, Caryl. But mostly Carol and Lydia).
Whoops. I’m back on my bullshit for the second night in a row. Sorry.
Just another little speculation/wishful thinking fic for Season 10. Basically Hilltop burns, Carol and Lydia bond, and Carol has an epiphany and rises from the ashes.
Yeah. Bullshit because it’s all too easy but a girl can dream right? Right.
Typos are all mine. Wrote this one in a bit of a hurry. Not quite one of my writing sprint exercises but damn close.
Carol’s often wondered if she’s in Purgatory. If she’s been cast straight into Hell for hating her husband and praying for his death for so very many years. Destined to lose her daughter, every child that dared imprint on her heart, and walk this cruel earth alone. Endure through fire and brimstone, death and destruction while everybody she loves, one by one, is lost to her.
Hilltop is nothing more than ashes. Barrington House is destroyed. Gutted and hollowed out, its smoldering remains bear no resemblance to the stately mansion it used to be. The fields beyond the walls are trampled. Much of the livestock that hadn’t been released or fled on their own? Slaughtered. The community’s homes, their livelihood gone, just like that.
And yet, those losses are secondary to Carol. It’s not that they do not matter. They do. Of course, they do. In some ways? She feels responsible for bringing Alpha and her Whisperer army to Hilltop’s doorstep. Still. She looks out across the ruins and it’s the faces she does not see that affect her most. It’s the fallen that make her throat grow tight and her heart ever more sore and coming upon Lydia’s huddled form at the base of a nearby tree? Glimpsing the tears that make tracks down her sooty cheeks? Carol feels her own eyes warm and allows her bow to slip from her shoulder, fall in a clatter at her feet, as she sinks down beside the girl.
Lydia’s only acknowledgement is to curl her arms tighter around her updrawn knees. She sniffles as her gaze takes everything in and for a few seconds more? She’s silent. But then? “This? All of it? Is my fault.”
“Bullshit.” Carol’s reply is blunt but sincere, a shock to the young girl’s system she can immediately tell. Once she has Lydia’s undivided attention, she reiterates herself. Although, this time? She settles for a truth they both know, deep down. Alpha’s madness is her own and Lydia is just as much her victim as Henry was. “None of this is your fault. None of it.”
“Do you really believe that? Really? What about Henry?”
Carol is unwavering in the face of the girl’s doubts and the stranglehold her own guilt has on her heart loosens fractionally because madness knows no reason. She realizes that now. If not Henry, Alpha would have exacted her price in some other way. “Maybe. Maybe it happened the way it was supposed to. The way it was always going to. And nothing you or I said or did could have changed it.”
Lydia takes her time digesting Carol’s words.
Months of watching the girl, of studying her with first suspicion, then recognition and growing compassion, easily tells Carol when she has reached her own grudging acceptance. It’s not an absolution, by any means. It’s just a way to shoulder her burdens without being forced to her knees. It’s a way to keep surviving long enough to work toward a better future, one she’s surprised to hope she’ll have some small part of. So she repeats her words and offers Lydia a small smile as her fingers reach to sweep her hair back from her face. They tuck the tangled strands behind the girl’s ear and linger there as long as they dare before falling away. “None of this is your fault. Henry wouldn’t want you to blame yourself. Neither do I.” Then she stands up and reclaims her bow, briefly resting her hand atop Lydia’s bony shoulder.
Lydia covers her hand with her own and clings to it like the lifeline she’s been denied for so very long. “Henry wouldn’t want you to blame yourself either.”
Tears swimming in her eyes, feeling something monumental shift inside her and crack open wide, Carol manages a nod and a simple response. “I know.”
“Where are you going? You’re not going to…”
“No.” Carol turns her palm over and squeezes the small hand in hers in reassurance. “Not without finding Daryl. Not without telling him…”
Put on the spot as such, Carol laughs and reclaims her hand to knuckle away tears. “Some stuff. Things he should be the first to hear. If he’s ready.”
Like the teenager she’s never gotten the chance to be, Lydia rolls her eyes. “Pfft.”
She sounds so much like her surrogate father in that moment, Carol feels her heart swell to bursting with unexpected affection. “What?” she questions as the girl climbs to her own feet, brushing first her tears then the dusty seat of her pants. “Lydia? Hey.”
“Don’t ask me. Ask him.” Lydia offers a small smile of her own and brushes past. With the smoke still rising and curling around her, she seeks Daryl’s worn form and points Carol out. Daryl, however, stands still and steady.
He’s waiting on her, Carol realizes. As he has been all these months. Finally, it’s clear to her. The next move? Is 100% hers. Inhaling deep, she swallows down her fears and self-recriminations. Her lips silently form his name and she takes that first, final step toward forever.
