The little things / Carl & Rick
The tightness of his throat ebbed little, tensed like his wrists as they curled into small, shaking fists at his sides. Gulping the stale air of the prison block made the waves curling in his peripheral dance like the shadows on his hat, breaths stoppered by the choked muscles in his neck. Like his own emotions, he thought whimsically. Bottled and stuffed, no where to go but out in an explosion of anger he didnât understand.
Heâd grown cold, heavy with confusion and careless because he had no moral bindings, no one to tell him no. It hurt, the confusion and the confliction, like stumbling through the tombs in the dark but bringing no weapon along to defend yourself with. And his father? He tried to obey the man, he wanted to fix it all so the agonising ache of suffering would leave him be, but the views he held - they had no place in submission, they did not bow to someone whose leadership was so obviously flawed in his eyes. Nostrils flared and Carl turned on his father.
âDoing what? Everything?â The bared derision in his voice felt wrong, out of place against his own father. âYou want to fix everything? You canât. You canât fix everything.â Itâs not in your nature to fix; your nature is to stop, to protect. It was momâs job for repair what had been broken. Just like the little broken race car lamps from home.Â
Carl broke down, then, at the thought of his mother, of the lamps heâd had next to his bed, of his father and the swirling mess of fog and baseless anger. âWhat do you want?â
Thick tension hung in the air around them, suffocation without asphyxiation beginning to feel as a very real possibility. He was drowning-- they both were, and what was he doing to stop it? Nothing. He was trying, yet falling short. Silence managed to creep back in, becoming their reality once more. The quiet burned his ears, somehow seemingly louder than the slight words shared between them. Without words, he ached. Yet still, the words that came could never be unheard. He'd failed Carl, once again, he'd failed all of them. It wasn't a foreign thought, or a new form of realization of any degree but still the reminder stung like small needles being pressed agonizingly slowly into his still beating heart. His body hadn't moved, not as the silence remained, not once when his son began to speak out against him-- but rather right in that very instance when his ears picked up on the shift in his son's tone, the indisputable sound of inevitable tears, and the painful reminder of what the new world had done to him. Rick was beside him within seconds, hardly taking note of his own movements before finding himself seated right down next to Carl, his hand hesitant to touch, resting uncertain between the two of them. "Like you said-- I can't fix everything, but. . . what I can try do fix is us."
