Chapter Text
Carl doesn't understand what happens the first time. He feels a tug on his hair and a blow to his back. When he turns around, there's no one to hurt him, he's alone in his room in the middle of the night.
So Carl runs back to his bed as fast as he can, forgetting that he got up to go get some milk because his throat was dry.
Carl doesn't sleep, he just cries when he feels pain in his body that he doesn't understand.
The alarm clock in his parents' room goes off hours later and Carl rushes into the room. The phantom blows stopped at some point, but there was still a soft throbbing pain in places and he felt a jerk in his knee every time he walked.
"Mom!" Carl exclaims, as he climbs on the bed and goes between his parents, hugging Lori.
"Carl, honey, it's okay. Did you have another nightmare?" Lori asks, running her fingers through her son's short hair.
Carl furiously shakes his head and clings tighter to his mother.
"Last night...something pulled my hair and hit me, but there was no one there. It was so ugly. What if there's a ghost in the house?"
Carl gasps in fear that his house might be haunted and ignores Lori's sad, pained expression.
"Honey, have you ever heard of soul mates?"
Carl pulls his face away from Lori's shoulder and looks at her in confusion. Of course he do, everyone knows about soul mates and that everyone had one, Carl has one too, somewhere. What did that have to do with phantom pain?
Lori notices he confusion and smiles slightly.
"Well, you have to know that you are connected to your soul mate in order to find it, but not everyone is represented in the same way. Your father and I were united by music; when he heard a song, I immediately thought of that song, even if I didn't know the song. Others can taste the same thing their soul mate eats. Some get a tattoo on their skin with the first word they will say to their soul mate when they meet. Carl, in your case...it's the first the time I heard that someone was connected to his soul mate by pain..."
First, Carl is excited to find out that he has a soul mate, he is five years old and he has always been told that the connection starts until after the age of ten, Carl doesn't understand it but he doesn't care. He had a soul mate! And his soul mate was suffering...
Carl tells his parents everything he felt at night and how he stopped when the sun began to rise. Lori assures him that his soul mate would be fine, but Carl doesn't notice the warning look Lori gives Rick.
Since that day, Carl is much more careful when he walks or does certain dangerous things like biking, skateboarding or running. If he felt his soulmate's pain, his soulmate would feel his as well.
Carl sometimes wakes up crying because he feels this pain that isn't his out of nowhere. Didn't have a pattern to follow, it didn't happen at an exact hour or day, sometimes it would take days and hopefully weeks before he felt anything. The only thing that happens without having changes, is that his soul mate is beaten during the night.
Other nights, Carl stays up all night with an ice pack next to him, because he might be able to ease the pain in his soul mate if he used it. Carl wasn't sure if he would do it, but if he could feel the pain, he might as well ease it. Carl realizes it's working when he feels a searing pain in his thigh and puts the ice pack down with a lot of pressure. The pain eases, it's still there, but not as painful.
And Carl smirks, because he was helping his soul mate feel better.
He tells his parents excitedly the next morning, but neither Lori nor Rick seem as excited as he is.
The first time Carl gets hurt knowing that his soul mate exists, he cries, he cries a lot because it means that he hurt his soul mate. His soul mate suffered too much already, why did Carl have to make him suffer too?
Carl sits on the couch, his face streaked with tears and snot while Lori bandages the scrape on he knee.
Several months later, Carl sits down to eat breakfast, and Lori drops her plate on the floor, quickly approaching Carl.
Carl doesn't understand, he just lets Lori take him face. His eye hurt, so Carl wishes his mother didn't touch it too much.
Carl had a bruise on his eye and when Lori tells Rick what happened, the three of them end up in the hospital.
When they have their doctor's appointment, Carl doesn't understand much of what the man is telling them. He only retains the fact that his connection to his soul mate could evolve into this. Now Carl felt the pain of his soul mate and had his bruises etched into his skin.
Lori asks the doctor if there was any way to break the connection and Carl gets very angry, because he didn't want to lose his soul mate... Later, Lori explains that they couldn't go on like this, he soul mate was making him hurt and Lori wanted it to end.
Carl pretends to lose interest in his soulmate, lies to his parents when they ask if he felt his soulmate, and begins to cover up the bruises that appear on his skin...
Carl spends more years of his life feeling the suffering of his soulmate, that when the apocalypse hits, Lori tells him that she was happy that the connection was broken, because he soulmate was sure to die and she didn't want Carl to feel that pain.
Carl thinks she's saying it because of the loss of he father and he cries hugging his mother. His father understood him more than his mother, he knew that he still had his soul mate... Now Carl must keep it hidden, suffer with the pain of his soul mate and his own for losing his father of the.
When they flee King County and end up at a camp outside Atlanta, Carl becomes good friends with a girl named Sophia.
For a second, Carl thinks Sophia is he soul mate, because her father hits her... but he doesn't feel pain when he saw Ed pull Sophia's hair, but Carl runs to tell Dale to do it something. Shane was gone and Carl was too afraid to go to the Dixon brothers for help. Glenn was great, but Ed was bigger than him and Glenn was a skinny kid. He didn't want to get beaten up because of him.
Carl hugs Sophia who cries against him and tells her that her father didn't mean to hurt her, he was just angry... Carl doesn't understand much, he tries to make Sophia understand that it wasn't right that her father hit her. Sophia gets mad at him, because her father loved her and didn't always hit her.
It was a way of showing her that he loved her and he cared about her...
Carl doesn't understand anything, gets angry and goes to talk to Shane. He blurts out all his frustration about Sophia and her father being abusive of her, but Shane explains that it was normal for victims of abuse to believe it was normal or an act of love. In most cases, they never understand or realize that they are being abusive. And Carl is more understanding of Sophia from now on.
Carl can't help but wonder if the same thing happened to his soul mate... He has his doubts and sleeps with it, until one night he can't and tells Shane.
Shane tells him the same as with Sophia and asks him if he still felt his soul mate. Carl responds positively.
More than a month since Carl last felt the sharp pain of his soul mate, he has a bruise on his jaw. If his mother saw it, she would know immediately what it would mean. So in fear and grief, Carl approaches Daryl Dixon, who was standing guard above Dale's caravan. The sun was barely up and it seemed like only the two of them were awake, maybe Merle was out hunting, but Carl isn't sure.
When he goes up on the roof, Daryl doesn't glare at him or tells him to go away with crude and cruel comments, he just waits for him to say something. Daryl seemed much calmer and less aggressive here, alone and silent watching the sunrise.
"Can you tell my mother that you punched me?"
Daryl looks at him like he ate a walker and leaves the shotgun he had in his lap next to him, away from Carl and on the safety.
"What the fuck?"
"I lied to my mom. I told her that I no longer had a connection with my soul mate. I can feel my soul mate's pain and for a few years now I have bruises on my skin. Sometimes I bleed too, but mom doesn't know anything and I don't want him to be mad at me for lying." Carl explains quickly, nervously as he glances over to his sleeping tent in case his mom wakes up and goes looking for him.
"Carl, I'm not going to tell your mother that I fucking punched you."
Carl is amazed that Daryl knew his name, because Merle does not know and always calls him the wrong name or just calls him a brat. Carl never gets close to Merle when he talks to him, but Daryl seems friendlier, especially when he doesn't have his gorilla brother behind him being a jerk.
"Don't you have some way to help me? Please, I'll give you my share of breakfast and dinner."
Carl didn't expect to have to beg a Dixon to do something for him, because he was seriously scared, but if he told his mom that Daryl or Merle hit him, then she was going to believe it, he just had to tell Shane the truth so that not to shoot him or kick him out of camp if Daryl says yes.
Daryl refuses, but tells him that he has a better idea, and they both climb out of the caravan, walk a little way from the camp, and stop at the riverbank.
Carl isn't afraid to come with Daryl like he had thought, in fact he felt much safer than anyone else in the camp.
Daryl kneels down and dips his hand in the river. Carl looks at him in confusion and Daryl tells him to come closer. Carl also kneels down and Daryl dunks his bruise, then puts dirt on top of it and to make it look more believable, a leaf from a tree.
"When your mom wakes up, I'm going to call you to help me with something, run over, you trip and cry. I'll help you to make the fall look more believable and you don't really hurt yourself."
So they both spend part of the morning practicing a believable drop. Carl notices Daryl holding back a laugh at his first attempts to just get his clothes dirty and have a good time... Carl never thought it would be nice to be with Daryl Dixon.
They return to camp and Daryl leaves a dead squirrel that he caught back on a bench, exactly where Carl was. They both had their story made, where Carl asks Daryl for help to learn how to hunt, because otherwise, no one would believe the fact that Daryl asked him for something.
And works.
When Lori comes out of the tent, Daryl immediately asks Carl to hand over the dead squirrel. Carl does and he actually trips for real, scratches a little bit of a bruise that he already had, and cries. Lori runs over and he tearfully explains that he had asked Daryl to go hunting with him, and he tripped and fell to the ground.
Still, Lori glares at Daryl as she picks up Carl and takes him inside Dale's caravan to clean his wound.
That night, Daryl stands guard again, and Carl goes up on the roof of the caravan.
"Thank you...and sorry. Even so, my mom got mad at someone."
Daryl looks at him and shakes his head. He tells he it doesn't matter, but Carl does and gives him half a can of fruit left over from dinner.
Carl goes back to sleep and Daryl watches him until he is safely in his tent.
Daryl eats the fruits and takes it upon himself to give Carl a larger serving of food for breakfast.