Sage ? Carl Grimes

➹ Hello by Adele ➹

Carl

All that my vision could grant me was the dull colors of grey and red.

Grey buildings, red cars. Grey clouds, red shoes . Grey ash, red blood.

Daryl was taking the lead down the abandoned, city streets, a gun balanced with both of his righteous hands, his crossbow slung behind his back. The arrows peaked over the wings knitted into his jean jacket, and he felt my gaze on him, glancing back to scowl me in the eye. Daryl wore a look of grimace, turning back towards the apocalyptic streets and leading us to our destination.

Dainty footsteps shuffled at my right, and I almost mistook them for dead ones.

Sage Riley. Her shoulders were pushed back with strength, bringing upon a new kind of demeanor for my arctic eyes to convey. Dressed in light blue jeans, a thin hoodie cloaked over a heavy, dark jean jacket with navy blue high-tops supporting her ragged footsteps as she molded into the rain puddles beneath her feet. A pistol was held firmly in her right hand, with a rifle tossed over her shoulder and dangling down to the back of her knees. Her sandy hair careless into a side braid, her face gently trickled with dirt and ash. Sage's grey eyes blazed ahead of her, not minding my gaze upon her.

Her mind was elsewhere.

I followed my girlfriend's lethal glare, drifting my vision to a grey building.

Grady Memorial Hospital.

Her lips pursed in pain, in reconciliation, in memoriam.

Sage seemed to have gripped her gun a little tighter beneath her wounded fingers. I saw strength berrading her somber eyes, and yet, I also detected weakness. Her strength was on the surface;her weakness swimming in the grey clouds of her vision.

She'll be facing her past, and living her present, I thought. Beth is in there, but so are her memories. Her burdens, her scars, her suffrage. Behind those hospital walls are a version of your love that you have never encountered. A version that has seen grief beyond the perseverance of the dead.

Cars were toppled over, bodies scattered on the streets. We walked down the city of Atlanta, only a mile's radius away from the destination of my family, and of Sage's dread.

"Are we going to the hospital tonight?" I asked. My dreary voice wasn't directed to anyone in particular; whomever would spare me the sound of theirs.

"You're messin', aren't you?" Daryl asked, his sarcasm both harsh and yet accustomed. He kept his eyes towards the hospital, his head facing me. "We can't just walk in and ask for our friend, Kid. We need to take a night to scope the area, take a plan. We don' know what's going on in there, or why they have Beth."

"It's a hospital," Sage outspoke. She halted herself in the middle of the street, her eyes mocking, and her gun used to motion towards Grady Memorial. "It's a place meant to save lives, Daryl. We don't need to scope any area; I know it like the back of my hand. Take it from me."

Daryl, at this point, had stopped walking, turned around to look my girlfriend in the eye. He looked her up and down, almost as if he were trying to identify who she was, his eyes narrowed into slits as he would a stranger. He sat in silence.