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There’s a hole in his chest and fog all around. He’s seven years old and all alone in the world. He’s happy for a brief, shinning moment. He’s trapped.
His own life is mixed up in his head, but it’s all he has now. It belongs to him alone, his memories as isolated and unknown as Paul himself. They will die with him, but that’s okay. The world tilts and he remembers.
———
Paul is hiding under a strange bed in a strange room in a strange building. He’s cold and crying, trying to understand where his family went, why they left him behind, why they went to some ‘better place’ and he wasn’t allowed to go too.
The other kids he’s met throughout the day are just as cold and grey as the building they live in. He’s been poked and prodded, jeered at and scowled at, he’s had to tear his backpack away from a bigger kid and got smacked around the head for his troubles. It’s worth the headache though, worth anything to keep hold of the few things the cold, grey grownups let him keep from his own house.
Paul is scared and he wants his mom, wants to sneak into his big sisters room and curl up on her floor like he always did after a nightmare. He wants them back or wants to go find them, wherever they were. For the first time in his life, he is all alone. He doesn’t like the feeling at all.
———
There’s a beautiful boy in his 9th grade art class. Paul spends every lesson staring at his face to a backdrop of lectures about perfect symmetry and artistic expression, about Renaissance artists finding God and angels in oil and marble. He’s sure he’s never understood beauty until he met him; the way the dark curls of his hair falls delicately over his forehead, the way the light catches the light brown of his eyes and turns them to amber, the delicate tilt of his lips when he shyly smiles at Paul.
It’s a puppy love he pays for in the end, but it’s a price he has no regret about paying, if only because he discovers a truth about himself and a truth about the world.
The world is cruel and even the good make horrible choices. Even the people who say they love you will betray you if it saves their own necks.
The beautiful boy visits him in hospital, just the once. He holds Paul’s hand and quietly cries, stuttering out apologies and explanations between his tears as Paul pretends to sleep. The boy leaves and he never comes back.
Paul learns to guard his heart even more fiercely as he cries to himself later, arms curled around his broken ribs. If you love them, they will still leave and never come back. If you love them, they will still hurt you.
———
He leaves the group home the same day he turns eighteen, back straight and proud as he shrugs on his lone backpack containing everything of his in the world, walking out of the cold, grey building and never looking back.
He’s always been alone at the group home, never fitting in or making friends. The closest thing he’s had to connections are the younger boys, the outcast boys, the ones who look to him to help them out or stop their bullies, the ones just needing a kind word in their grief or anger, in their own loneliness. Paul has always been happy to give it, but he finds it just as easy to walk away from them all. He knows they’ll be okay, knows he’s given them enough tools to survive until they find a real home or age out themselves.
Paul belongs solely to himself now, answerable and accountable to nobody but his own mind and conscience. He’s been preparing for it for a while, networking all over his rough little corner of the city. Between the gym he spends almost every day at, the group of guys he does parkour with and the less savoury regulars of the few shitholes that only require a fake ID of the absolute minimal quality to drink there, Paul feels like he can skate by quite well.
He sleeps on the floor of a friend’s shitty apartment for the first week, one of the skaters from the park near the group home. They’re friends in the loosest term of the word, but it’s all Paul needs, grateful for a dry place to sleep as he hunts for a job.
It’s harder than he first thought, nowhere willing to hire a troublemaker from a group home, someone with basic grades and a problem with authority. He’s smart, he knows that, could have done better at school if he’d tried, but he’s never done well with boredom or being told what to do. He’s always preferred following his own interests and learning everything about them, even if it’d never get him an A on some pointless exam.
He leaves his friend before he can wear out his welcome, always preferring to willingly move on before he’s pushed. He bounces around for another week, nothing seeming to work out at all. He has some minor savings, but they won’t last him more than a few weeks. Still, Paul can’t find it in himself to worry.
In the end, after a terrifying situation with a bar patron, Paul stupidly following him outside despite the faint taste of warning in the back of his throat, he ends up falling right into something perfect.
Whilst black eyes and split lips aren’t unusual at the dojo, the sight of such a bad set on Paul comes as a surprise to his karate teacher. He tells him he got in a bar fight. He leaves out the part with pushy hands and an alley, with pulled hair and managing to escape with only his few minor injuries, leaves out the part where it could have been so much worse.
He ends up working at the gym, loving it in a way he hasn’t loved anything before, falling into an easy pattern, feeling more at home in his body and sure of himself than he ever has before. He spends every day there, still training even when he’s off work, never wanting to leave his little safe haven. When his trainer and boss finds out Paul still doesn’t have a place to live, he offers up his spare room in a heartbeat.
Paul spends nearly four months there. It’s so easy to fall into the warmth of the house, into the kind, motherly love of his trainers wife, into the gruff care of the man himself. He’s almost forgotten what that felt like, being at home somewhere, feeling safe and cared for. It’s addictive. He wants to stay there forever, though he doesn’t realise it until he comes back from closing the gym late and is pulled into excited hugs, Jim’s proud face beaming as he tells Paul that Louise is pregnant.
That night, as he lies in a room he’s started to think of as his, in a home he’s started to think of as his, he realises he has to leave. Because he’s started to think of Jim and Louise as his too.
It’s not safe to think like that, he knows that in his bones. They aren’t his, not even close. They’re good, kind people and whatever heart Paul has left loves them, but they aren’t his. They belong to the tiny life growing in Louise. Better to leave now before he’s asked to.
———
The world ends. The world ends and the dead walk and Paul survives, he always survives.
He’s not sure how he manages it, not many living in the heart of the city do, both the infection and chaos spreading faster than anything he’s ever seen. He has his skills though and his grit, his determination. More than anything, he has nothing to lose; no family to try and find, no friends to speak of after only moving to DC a few weeks earlier, nothing but himself to care for.
He goes through his neighbourhood gathering supplies and avoiding the dead, the hordes growing bigger and bigger, seeming to group together, drawn by noise and action. He leaves as soon as he’s able, barely making it out after being unable to leave a small family cornered in an alley.
Paul gets them out of there safely, even gives them some of his supplies to tide them over on their journey. He advises the father against it, tells him to take care of his own, that the rest of his family in a small town not far from them would have to do the same. The man doesn’t listen though, willing to risk what he has here and now for a maybe. Paul doesn’t try again after that, what does he know about family, about what you’d risk for them?
Still, as he watches them walk away, he knows they’ll never make it.
He wanders for a while, no particular plan other than surviving. He’s alone for a long time, avoiding the living and dead alike, both equally as dangerous now. He’s always a sucker for helping though, even now, not regretting it even when it earns him some wounds, some battle scars. He never stays with the people he helps though, too scared of getting attached. It’s not worth the risk.
Paul helps and he runs and he survives, sometimes going so long without seeing another person that he’s sure one day he’ll open his mouth and no words will come out. He’s more alone than he’s ever been. Some nights he’s sure he’s the only person left on earth, the silence and emptiness so oppressive that he finds himself looking for the dead just to see something move, to engage with something, to be able to convince himself he isn’t the ghost of something that died long ago but didn’t know well enough to move on.
He nearly dies during the winter. He’s out scavenging a tiny little town when he hears trouble, a small group trying to fight off a dirty bunch of bandits. They kill one of the group before Paul can reach them, diving into one of the filthy men before he knows what’s hit him, smashing his head into the ground. He fights to disarm and to render unconscious where possible, only having to kill the living a few times so far, but he knows immediately that his opponents have no issues with murder. There’s a gleam of madness in their eyes as they attack him, grins feral and without mercy.
When he’s laid them all out, Paul turns to the people he’s saved, asking them if they’re okay. He never hears their answer, just sees the sudden flash of fear on their faces, an aborted shout to move the only warning he gets before burning pain slices through his side, a stab wound turning into a deep gash as he manages to move just enough thanks to the split second warning.
He stabs his attacker in the neck before he goes down, sudden blood loss and a winter of little food making him weaker than normal. He’s sure he’ll be left to die, sure his body will end up roaming the ruined world just as his living one has.
It comes as a surprise to briefly wake up in a car, struggling just a moment before he passes out again. When he finally comes around properly, he’s in some kind of trailer with a man who turns out to be an honest to God doctor hovering over him.
He’s in a place called Hilltop and apparently, it’s safe. He doubts he’ll stay, but he’s grateful to have been saved and to have somewhere to heal.
———
Turns out he does end up staying at Hilltop after all. At first it’s because his wound got infected from his attackers filthy knife, landing him there much longer than initially planned, long enough to get chatting to both Dr Carson’s, to a guy they’re training called Alex, to a bunch of people really. He ends up liking the sound of Hilltop before he ever really sees it at all.
He still never expects to stay, even as he’s slowly wandering around the impressive old house and the land surrounding it, a big wooden wall nearly completed. First he stays because winter is harsh and he’s, eventually, another able body to help finish building or to watch for the dead, to help gather food and supplies. Turns out they don’t have many willing volunteers for that and from what he remembers of the group he saved, he’s not surprised.
Paul hates Gregory’s guts from the moment he sets eyes on him, his pudgy body and stuck up attitude the concentrated essence of all his most loathed school teachers and group home leaders. So despite what Mr Boss might think, Paul doesn’t stay for him, or for the safety of the walls, he stays for the people.
They’re soft on the whole, most of them being there from the start of the outbreak, brought from the nearby FEMA camp or heading there from the local area, none of them are used to surviving out there. Paul is, he’s good at it too, good at finding shit, at breaking into places, at avoiding the dead or carving through them like butter.
He might not be fixing to make Hilltop a home, but he knows he’s needed. And if there’s anything Paul knows he’s a sucker for, it’s people in need.
Time passes quicker than it did when he was alone, Paul slowly starting to feel human again, getting used to talking and engaging people again. He slips into a persona before he even knows it, that old self preservation instinct kicking in subtly as people try and figure him out. He becomes a mystery, but a comforting one, someone that eventually, they don’t care to dig deeper into because he’s needed, he’s their runner, their best fighter. He’s Jesus.
He tries to fight off the nickname at first, but he’s heard it before and with his looks, his long hair and the beard, he supposes it isn’t too far off the mark. More than that, it’s another comforting layer of separation, Paul able to tuck the real him safely away in his chest, falling easily into the image. It’s safe, easy. It’s lonely too, but then again, Paul’s always been lonely.
He ends up in an on again off again relationship with Alex that usually ends because Alex wants so much more from him than he can give. He wants commitment, he wants connection, he wants so many things that Paul isn’t sure he even knows how to do, let alone if he wants to do them at all. More than that, he knows it’ll be a lie if he even tries, knows Alex doesn’t want him, not really, he wants Jesus, wants the person Paul’s allowed himself to become. It’s not fair to let him fall for that and it’s not fair for Paul to accept someone who can’t see any deeper.
Still, it all works at Hilltop. He’s out in the world more than he’s behind the walls and he likes that, embraces that unlike the rest. He finds himself as Gregory’s right hand man, though he’s sure the smarmy asshole would much sooner call him errand boy, even as he’s blissfully unaware that without Paul acting as buffer, his little play pretend as leader would end all too soon.
Yeah, everything works at Hilltop. It works until it doesn’t.
Paul’s known hate before, knows what the bitter taste of anger and blood churning disgust is like, but he’s never felt anything close to the hate that bursts in his chest like rotten fruit when they meet the Saviours.
It’s over too soon to even do anything really, a young boy, barely sixteen and brutally bludgeoned to death in front of them all just to prove the bastards mean their threats. Paul knows the Hilltop will need him, as he listens to the Saviours lay out their demands, and that’s the only reason he doesn’t attempt to break the neck of every Saviour he can reach. He knows he’ll die if he tries, but he’ll die fucking happy.
He lets the desire pass, lets the hate and rage and protectiveness overtake him instead. They’ll need his skills, now more than ever. He just hopes he’ll still be around to help put an end to the twisted bastards.
As it turns out, he is. He finds the Alexandrians, works to connect all three communities, works at whatever he can. He’s only one small part of ending the following war, but it’s an honour all the same.
———
The first time he hears his name from Daryl’s mouth, it’s almost enough to stop him breathing, just for a second. It’s like he’s hearing it for the first time, the name his mother gave him, the name he’s hidden away behind a facade for so long. He’s heard it once, maybe twice over the past few years, but finally he understands what it’s supposed to sound like.
Daryl never seems to understand what the use of his name does to Paul, how it tethers him to himself, reminds him he’s more than a mirage, more than a carefully crafted character. It reminds him he’s a person, that he’s real and at least one other human can truly see that. Of course it’s Daryl, if anyone can see that, it’s him.
Paul knows he has it bad, knows that the feelings snuck up on him so quietly and with such determination that he never stood a chance. He knows they’re stuck with him now, as much a part of him as his bones, as the very beat of his heart.
He also knows nothing will ever come of it. Not in this lifetime, not in this universe. Maybe somewhere out there, there’s a parallel one where they have more time, where Paul can show Daryl how he feels, where Daryl can accept that, can allow himself to show it back. But here, in a universe of so much pain? In a universe of bloody childhoods and repression, of death and war, of Rick Grimes dying?
No. There might be a universe somewhere, but it’s not this one.
Paul still finds Daryl in the woods once he stops coming to Hilltop regularly, still makes sure he’s safe and has what he needs, still talks to him and soaks up every minute with him. They’re good moments but they’re all Paul will ever have.
And in a universe where he too is as alone and closed off as Daryl himself, it’s enough.
———
Maggie leaves. She leaves and with her goes Paul’s last, tentative relationship. The last person around him that knows even the barest hint of him.
Though if he’s honest with himself, he knows their relationship is a shadow of what it once was. Their friendship never really recovering after the war, not after the prisoners he brought back, not after calling in Maggie’s assassination plan to Rick. He knows he still loves her like the sister he once had, knows he’ll never stop loving her, even as she slowly looses that fondness in her eyes, even as he becomes her second in command and nothing more, the person she orders to stay behind and take care of Hilltop.
She’s left him in charge permanently now, made him leader of Hilltop. He doesn’t want it, Maggie knows he doesn’t, but yet here he is, leader all the same.
He escorts her to the twins waiting to take her away to her new life, far away from them all, somewhere she can hopefully let herself heal. Before she leaves, she turns to him and it’s like having her back again, the same old expression in her eyes as she looks at him. She pulls him close and he hugs her back, knowing even as he does it that this one moment of connection will add too many cracks to his already battered heart. It’s worth it though, worth it for that single moment of love, for that single moment of not feeling alone.
Paul sends her off with a smile, with love. He hopes she finds peace. He hopes they meet again in happier times.
———
Under the weight of Hilltop, Paul knows he’s buckling. He’s not cut out for this, was never made for this kind of leading, for being the head of things, for being stuck so firmly to one place.
He’s lonely. Even surrounded by all these people, all the time, he still aches with loneliness. It’s nothing new to him, not really, but for a second, he’d started to slip out from under his mask. With Maggie, with Daryl, he could be himself, just a little. Now nobody ever uses his name. It’s been lost to time, a faint shadow, only alive in the back of the mind of the person who hid it and, just maybe, in the grieving, lost soul that disappeared into the trees.
Hilltop is just too heavy for him to carry. It’s not meant to be lead by someone like him, someone so used to being alone, to being on the outskirts. To be the head of it is something he can’t settle within himself, doubts and fears rearing their ugly heads in ways they never have before. Paul’s not worthy and he knows it. It’s just a matter of time until he fails, until everyone else sees that he isn’t worthy too.
He may not have been a part of Hilltop before, not really, but he was needed. The things he could do, nobody else could, nobody else dared. Now, in a position he’s as unsuited to as a fish for flying, he knows people will soon see how little they need him at all.
The only brief flash of relief he gets these days are the short, secret training sessions with Aaron. They grow close, their friendship warm and easy, each needing what the other gives.
Sometimes Paul looks at him and sees Aaron looking back. Sometimes he wishes they could give each other more.
But Aaron’s heart lies in the ground and Paul’s is lost in the woods. It would be easier if they could love each other, but it wouldn’t be real, and it wouldn’t be what either of them really longs for.
Still, Paul is grateful to have one person in his life he can be at ease around, just for a little while. They talk, they train, they laugh. Paul shares his knowledge and skill, his council when asked and Aaron gives him peace. Aaron shares his thoughts and feelings, trusts Paul with them, and he never resents that Paul can’t give him the same, not all the way through.
It’s not much, but for each of them, it’s enough.
———
For the first time in so long, Paul feels alive again, feels energy and excitement burn through his veins, feels the siren call of a purpose again.
He’s a shitty leader, no matter what Tara says, but this, this he can do. Search and rescue, traveling through their ruined world, saving someone. He feels like something has been tied down in in his chest for too long and it’s finally being allowed to breathe, to roam.
He gets to see Daryl again too. He tries not to let it sting at the brief acknowledgment he receives from the man. It’s been months since they last saw each other, Paul should know better than to expect too much from Daryl.
It’s not till he’s mounting his horse that he sees them, heart soaring free and crazed in his chest. Books, three of them; two old, battered things he leant Daryl long ago, never expecting to see again and one other. It’s new, well looked after, neatly tied with string and carefully placed on the back of his bike.
It became a routine long ago, Paul bringing Daryl books when he visited. Maybe, just maybe, he’s getting one in return. He allows himself to hope, looking forward for the chance to read it.
They ride through the fields and empty roads, the sun shining down on their backs, wind rushing through their hair and Paul remembers the feeling of freedom, of happiness. It fills up the hollow, aching spaces in his chest, reminds him he’s alive, bright and burning and present.
Later, as his chest fills with nothing but cold steel and pain, he remembers that feeling. It was worth it, in the end, for one last day of freedom. Of life.
Still, he wishes he could stay, could help, but he knows his time is up. He hates to leave them, hates to hear their shouts and their pain, but the choice is out of his hands now. As much as he still wants to fight it, it’s almost a relief, he’s finally reached his last page.
———
In the end, Paul’s story is his and his alone, it will die with him. His memories will bleed out and soak into the soil of a ruined world. He feels the soft, silky black of the night descend through the fog and surround him, eyes shutting without his say so. It’s okay though, he’s done his part, now he’s just tired.
He hopes they bury him in good earth, hopes that flowers might take root between his bones and bring some colour to a world he’ll never see.
Nobody will ever really know him, but that’s okay. He knows himself and that was enough. With the last of his energy, he briefly wonders what’s next; some kind of heaven or another chance at life or maybe just nothing at all. Whatever happens, he thinks he’ll be okay with it.
His body might become flowers and there’s no greater ending than that.