Rebirth

This fanfic contains major spoilers from the Walking Dead Comics-please do not read if you don't want to be spoiled or haven't caught up with them.

This is a somewhat AU take on Maggie's thoughts after losing Glenn and before she arrives at Hilltop to live with Sophia. No zombies, just blood, gore, and reflection.

Reviews, favorites, & constructive criticism is appreciated :)

We devour one another.

The thought flickered through her mind as Maggie rubbed her eyes, blurred and aching from sleepless fatigue and tears that were never shed. She felt the small, unmoving mass at her side before she could see it-flinching for a moment, she expected to smell the stench of decay, feel slippery cold flesh beneath her fingers and a mass of tangled hair, matted with blood...

No. Sophia lay at her side, her hair tangled yet her breaths small and strained yet steady at her side. She was curled up in a small ball, wrapped in her favorite yellow blanket they had taken with them from Alexandria. Sweat matted her forehead-she was having nightmares. As Maggie wiped the sweat from her palm onto her side, stained with blood from cradling a corpse in her arms, blood that never seemed to end, blood that had fallen in rivers so deep and wide she could bathe in her own sadness, her broken love-

She didn't blame Sophia one bit.

Maggie had refused to throw away her clothing after cradling Glenn's battered, broken body in her arms for hours. She had held him like the baby in her stomach, staring down at what was left of his shattered head, lumps of gray brain matter intermingled with stray hairs and a gaping hole where half of his face was missing.

They had tried to pull her off. All of them had-Rick laid a trembling hand on her shoulder and she had pushed him, had hit him as hard as she could, struggling to inflict any depth, any ounce of the pain that shot through her body so intensely it threatened to tear her in two. Only Michonne stood like an onyx statue behind her on the field, sculpted arms crossed before her chest, eyes straight and narrow as if they had been carved from frigid ice.

They camped out that night, after Negan had left. It was silently understood amongst all of them that he would not be back, at least until dawn. The havoc had been wrought, the life had been taken before their eyes-enough blood shed to pool across the horizon the next day.

She thought Michonne was being frigid and apathetic to her loss. Of course, Maggie would not have been so surprised. Sophia had lay crumpled at her side, a sobbing ball of sorrow-her face distorted, freckles warped in tears, tiny hands curled up on the ground near Glenn's blood-soaked corpse. Eventually, the girl's tears had run out throughout the cold, frigid night, and she had stopped to stare, hollow and wide-eyed, at Glenn's body as if she no longer held any sort of feeling within her.

For an awful second, Maggie didn't even care about her daughter, sitting there in shock. She looked down at Glenn's body-had refused to cover him in a sheet, or bring him inside the van to bury when they arrived at the Hilltop. She wanted to look at him, to look at his cold, clammy skin, focused on the parts of his body that had not been utterly destroyed-his chest, his stomach, his legs. She ran her fingers over him again and again, cradling him to her chest, as if she could get the unborn child within her to see her father, to see him one time before he would be buried and placed beneath the cold earth forever. Her hands, trembling and white beneath the black night, reached to touch his cheek. It was matted in blood, the entire top half of his face missing, yet his cheek was still as soft as she remembered, and her heart jolted in her chest.

She remembered the night before-stroking his warm cheek, feeling his hand press against her stomach, barely swollen yet, a tiny comma to the promise of new life. He had become a part of her, as they had done nearly every night, their hands joining in unison as their bodies pressed hot against one another, limbs interlocking, the warmth and tenderness a welcome distraction to each savage day, each minute in their lives they fought to survive, bathed in the cold fear of constant death. Glenn had made everything seem normal for the short time they could spend with one another each day-and she had never wanted to lose that. After losing her farm, her family, Glenn had been her rebirth, her warmth...

Instead, she felt the warmth of his blood on her skin when the first few swings of Negan's barbed bat connected with his skull. Sophia had her eyes wrenched shut, tears streaming down her cheeks, and Maggie held her-yet she could not tear her eyes from the massacre before her, the man she loved being mutilated, and no one was helping him, not a soul, not even Rick, with the somber expression on his face he constantly wore when another one of them died, dropping like flies from the Earth-somber, yet detached. "Sorry for your loss," She could imagine him saying, "I did everything I could."

Anger and revulsion had swelled up within her, and the feeling of being so weak, so vulnerable, as Glenn's blood covered them like raindrops, as his lips twisted in agony to form her name, as his scalp shattered like glass and Negan's grin widened into a perverse, hungry smile (hungry for flesh, like a zombie, with his dead eyes and blood-thirst), the pleasure in his gaze at the sight of her tears, at Glenn's strangled cries with each stroke of his bat upon his deteriorating flesh, turning him from human to a mangled mass of flesh and blood...

'Maggie! Maggie!'

He had sunk to his knees, the full weight of the bat, its wires digging savagely into his severed scalp, catching the brain and pulling out chunks of gray and red and black hair-

She shut her eyes. Her body had felt hollow at that moment, when she saw the back of his head, an eyeball hanging loose in the air, like a science exhibit she would watch, wide-eyed in school as a child-'here, class, is the brain,' she almost imagined Negan lecturing, shattering the head in one swoop of his bat, 'and here, kids, is the right eye! Brace yourselves for the left in 3, 2...'

Another crushing blow, and a low moan escaped her lips. Her body had shuddered and collapsed with Glenn's, and she had pulled him to her immediately, running her hands across him like a baby, the warm blood of his fresh wounds seeping into her clothing, matting across her hands, her limbs, and she wanted him to seep into her, she wanted to keep him there with her, somehow, still alive, still intact-clutched onto him as desperately as she could, and then-

Her hands were empty. Sophia was no longer at her side. Maggie found herself looking up, her eyes as heavy as cement, at a muscular pair of legs, sword gleaming bright and well-sharpened like the stars above her. Michonne nodded down at her, and her hand was clutching Maggie's shoulder hard enough to bruise. Her expression was as unreadable as always, but below her feet was a dried pool of blood, a darkened murky red against the grass, and nothing passed between them for a few seconds but tense silence.

Maggie was no longer crying. Something within her had stopped, shut itself off throughout the course of the never-ending night. And, as she stared at Michonne, whose steely gaze held hers as if for leverage, she knew somehow that the warrior understood.

"You can mourn as long as you'd like," Michonne's lips moved as if mechanically-Maggie's blurred vision saw two mouths, the voice seeming to float before her in the stagnant air, "But dawn is in a few hours. Sophia is inside. Safe."

Maggie allowed Michonne's words to wash over her, slowly absorbing the information as if she were speaking an alien tongue. She blinked and nodded,

"...G-Glenn?" The name came from her shaking lips like a prayer, a silent plea to someone, anyone higher than them-though she knew there was no answer, and never would be.

Michonne lowered her head for a moment, as if in mourning, and nodded at the van. He must be inside, in a blanket, wrapped up in a cocoon like an object-as if he weren't even human. Of course, there was no way he could come back to life, even as a corpse, because his head had been taken from him, destroyed by Negan, his life dragged and pierced along barbed wire like a hunter's prey. She wanted to grab him, pull him into her arms, cradle him against her, prove that he was still human, that he was still-

Yet she couldn't do a thing. Not a damned thing in the world.

"You're dead. On the inside." Michonne furrowed her brows, and in a swift movement brought herself to one knee, using her sword as support, eyes level with Maggie's, "I know that. I know you want to kill, or die. You don't see any other option. The choice-it's yours."

Maggie stared back at Michonne, wrath suddenly boiling within her blood, toxic and noxious. She wanted to kill Negan. She wanted to tear him limb from limb, taking the blood-splattered bat and digging it through his eye, relishing in pulling it from his skin and watching the socket cave in, the flesh adhering to the wires like cheese, and she would hit him again and again, his laughter echoing in her ears, relishing in the sight of him on his knees, each blow of the bat digging into his ear, his jaw, his nose, tearing apart his cheeks and the muscles beneath his chin and lips until he was nothing but a blood-soaked lump of bones and battered tendons, the laughter drowning as he drowned in his own blood-soaked cries for mercy.

"Give me your sword."

Michonne raised a brow in surprise, yet nodded quickly. She brought the blade before Maggie, and the girl took it, admiring her reflection along the sharpened edge of its shining surface. She hardly recognized herself any longer-her eyes seemed hollow and were bloodshot, cheeks sunken, hair matted against her head, smeared with droplets of dried blood. "And today's forecast?" She imagined Negan's voice in her head, taunting, the broad smirk of a hungry animal licking its lips, "40 degrees, freezing, with a hint of Glenn's brains and absolutely oozing with blood-rain! Oh Lucille, aren't you a lucky girl tonight!"

Her eyes shut. She stopped the thought process in her brain and ran her hands along the sword. It bit into the side of her palm, and the stinging pain made her jump-though with discomfort or satisfaction, she was no longer sure.

"Do what you'd like with it," Michonne told her, and she watched as the warrior appeared perturbed for a split second, pursing her lips before continuing. "But keep in mind that your life isn't the only one you can choose whether or not to care for. You have others who rely on you...others to live for. And that's more than most of us can say."

Her words caused Maggie to bring her palm to her belly. For a moment, she thought tears would fall across her cheeks, wash away the blood spattered against her chin-yet they never came. In a few months, the heartbeat within her stomach would grow heavy and loud, ringing in her ears, and she would think of Glenn at each and every moment, Glenn's body within her, Glenn's smiling, benevolent face on a tiny body, Glenn's warm breath against her skin, Glenn's eyes watching her with love and devotion, Glenn holding her at night, when she was afraid, when she mourned her family's death...

Her grip on the sword in her right hand tightened as she clutched her stomach with her left. Michonne watched her for a few more seconds, before standing up, and Maggie followed suit.

"Thank you," Maggie murmured, so quietly she could have been saying it to the air. Michonne nodded and crossed her arms, turning around to stand watch before the van.

Maggie disappeared inside, yet she did not sleep.

She heard Sophia breathing quietly nearby, felt dawn creeping across the horizon. One more hour-and they would be off, traveling towards the Hilltop again. Rick and the others were asleep, while she was huddled in a corner with Sophia, and Glenn-who knew where Michonne hid him, so carefully from her sight? For a second she hated the woman for doing so, but then her thoughts softened as she watched the katana's reflection before her, pale and gleaming and perfect.

She remembered the noose around her neck.

Her thoughts gravitated towards it, although she had once been so focused on forgetting the memory. The feeling of it tightening around her throat, slowly restricting her breathing, squeezing harder and harder with every passing minute, blocking her throat, her vision flickering in and out, yet her mind dizzy with a sudden, ecstatic joy, the joy that she would no longer have to suffer the possibility of losing Glenn or any of the others, would no longer have to travel the Earth without her family, would no longer have to run and hide in fear whenever she saw a walking corpse, hungry for her flesh and blood...

The katana was at her stomach. She felt its tip, piercing and hot, against her skin. Just a few strokes and she would be inside her own skin, cutting organs and arteries in half-and she could be with Glenn.

She remembered opening her eyes, the noose loose around her throat, Glenn staring down at her with terror, worry, anguish on his face.

She opened her eyes as she pressed the katana deeper against her stomach, about to penetrate, until she saw Sophia's face.

The girl was awake, watching her with wide, terrified eyes.

For a second, their breathing was in sync, heavy and erratic, the only sound between them.

Then, Sophia's small lips curled into a grimace, as she lowered her head in resignation,

"Mommy? Are you leaving too?"

Maggie lowered her eyes and looked at her reflection in the sword. Her brows were furrowed, lips pressed together. Tears had been streaming down her cheeks, yet she had been numb to it all. When had she become this woman, that Glenn would not have even recognized? The weak woman, who had not very long ago, been struggling within the confines of a noose, begging for death, regardless of who needed her?

She lowered the katana and placed it on the ground. Wordlessly, Maggie opened her arms wide, and Sophia leaned into them. The little girl felt heavy in her arms, heavier than she had ever felt, a weight heavier than the noose had been around her neck, sinking into her stomach, weighing down on her heart. Sophia pressed herself into Maggie's chest and began to cry, small heaving sobs, as Maggie ran her hands through her hair.

She fell asleep against Maggie's body. And Maggie wondered once again, as Sophia slept, at how humans devoured one another.

Throughout their lives, they were a burden upon one another.
Devouring emotions, devouring their thoughts.
Devouring their time, their will, their strength.
Upon death, they rise up and struggle to devour one another-
dead from birth, until death, until rebirth.

But there was life in her arms.
Innocent, young life-pressed against her chest, growing within her like a seed, flourishing each day.
Glenn was still inside of her.

She looked down at the katana, imagined it smeared with blood.

Negan's blood.

Revenge would come, even if indirectly-she knew it as dawn hit, the rays of the sun flooding through the windows, warming her heavy shoulders.

Hilltop was nearing. Sophia stirred against her, yawning softly, opened a tear-streaked eye,

"Mommy? Where are we going?"

Maggie found herself smiling-she couldn't feel the happiness along her lips, but something stirred within her belly as she did so.

"Home, dear. We're taking Glenn, and we're going home."