fic: How Few Remain [The Walking Dead]
Title: How Few Remain
Fandom: The Walking Dead
Characters; Judith Grimes, Carl Grimes
Judith can name more dead people than she can living. Carl doesn't like it when she points it out, brows furrowing until one disappears behind his eye patch. He likes it even less when she starts listing them, starting with those haziest in her memory and all the way up to their most recent loss.
He tells her, "That's not how it's supposed to be, Judy." But Carl knows even more people than she does -- names he whispers to her when she can't sleep, telling her stories of Dale with the giant car that ran for weeks and Beth who sang the prettiest lullabies and Tyreese who carried her all winter back to her daddy. He just doesn't like to hear them all piled on top of each other. They all have a story, he tells her, and they respect their memories by taking the time to tell it.
There was Abraham who chewed on cigars as big as Carl's thumb, Hershel that knew the secrets to fixing up humans from sickness and injury, T-Dog who sacrificed his life to prevent walkers overrunning the rest of the group, Aaron who took a chance on half-feral strangers.
Lori has whole days of stories, some of them even from Before when Carl was only as big as Judith is now. Judith can't imagine Carl being her size, but he puts his hat on her head and nods and says it fell down to his eyes just as far. Then he gets serious and grabs both of her hands in his, pulling her close to listen. "It's time for you to start remembering too, Judy. We forget the people we love and we forget who we are."
So sometimes when Judith can't sleep she's the one telling stories to Carl about Glenn whose speed and lightning quick strategy squeezed them through impossible situations more than once, about Jessie who could offer comfort with nothing more than a dull pair of barber's scissors and gentle hands carding through her hair, about Daryl who called her Li'l Asskicker and carried her on his back when her feet hurt from so much walking.
They whisper their stories to each other through the moonlit gloom, and if their dad is on watch he'll smile the one corner of his mouth that ever smiles and rest his hands on their shoulders. Sometimes Maggie overhears them and she'll bring fussy Paul over, who quiets as they whisper his heritage to him. Sometimes Sasha sits behind them and listens like she's trying not to forget herself.
The number of dead people Judith knows never stops growing, but she learns to stop rattling them off like it's only the quantity that matters. She remembers the unique details of all their lives, begins to understand how each person in her family has shaped who she is today and who she wants to be tomorrow. When she hears Paul walking behind her, chanting under his voice to the rhythm of his footsteps, she reaches back and grasps both of his hands in hers. "No, Paul," she tells him. "That's not how it's supposed to be."