Disclaimer: I don't own The Walking Dead. Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: Set post "Coda" in an arc where everything has gone down the shitter and it is just Glenn and Tara left. This was originally inspired by something on tumblr but quickly became one of those ideas that just had to exist, you know? Glenn is a very under written character in this fandom, especially in terms of his development past season one.
Warnings: Expect canon appropriate violence, mature language, rough sex with elements of possible dub-con, a homosexual character having heterosexual sex with another heterosexual character, possible consent issues, anger, angst, heavy emotional and mental trauma, references to panic attacks and mental breaks, dissociation, seriously unsound mental/emotional capacity and questionable decision making that will hopefully make sense in the end.
This is kinda messed up (but hey, what else is new?)
Chapter One
He hadn't gotten to say good bye.
It seemed like a pretty stupid thing to get hung up on, considering. But for right now that was what burned him the most. He felt wronged. Cheated. Like his life was just one big, gross cosmic joke and the irony gods had just planted yet another pile of shit on his doorstep and expected him to call it roses.
He didn't realize he'd said it out loud until Tara looked up from her spot on the other side of the fire. He watched the pile of blankets rise and fall – once, twice, then again – before exhausted eyes unslitted themselves and she pulled herself upright to face him.
"I can pretend to be her, for little while," she offered, layers pooling in her lap as she watched him watch her. Expression infuriatingly steady – calm – as he held onto his composure by less than a thread.
"You don't want me to do that," he spat, lip curling in the ghost of a sneer. Like by sheer force he could get her to back off and just forget about all of this. Fighting a hair trigger as he shot to his feet, pacing. Channeling Daryl unconsciously - right down to the fire twisting underneath his skin – like part of him was trying to fill the void now that the man wasn't around to be surly and pig-headed.
None of them were.
Not Rick.
Not Michonne.
Not Abraham.
Eugene.
Tyreese.
Sasha.
Rosita.
Carl.
Not Carol.
Not Daryl.
Not a single one.
They were all that was left.
They'd been okay for a little while. They'd managed to re-connect, re-group. Making it out of wherever the hell they'd ended up after Grady. He'd known the name of the place once. It'd been a town, a suburb, gated off, safe - at least for a little while. He'd lost track. Lost his center. He didn't even remember how they'd gotten here. How they'd come to this. To him, Tara and a puny little fire tucked into the back of a vine-covered mechanic's shop.
It was pathetic really. He didn't even have his pack anymore. And Maggie's things, he-
He felt the lines on his face – all caked blood and crumbling dirt – pull taut as his expression twisted. Struggling to peel away the red-tinged fog that seemed to be hemming him in at every turn, grinding his boots deep into the dry Georgia dust, like even the landscape was unstable.
He couldn't think.
He just wanted it to stop.
Every breath was like taking a lead weight to the chest.
Why was it so hard?
He knew this. He just had to remember. He knew-
He closed his eyes, fists clenched tightly as he forced it. Forcing the memories that some distant part of him knew better than to dredge up. They left their shrouds reluctantly, like even the ghosts were calling foul. Because the last he'd seen of him – of Daryl - was a bloody hand reaching up, opening and closing for a single, tremulous second before it slipped out of Carol's hand as the herd took them both.
The man had said something just before it happened, yelling out, the words muffled under half a dozen geeks.
It might have been her name.
Either way, they'd never know.
"I do," Tara threw back, tone stinging - acrid like heartburn – as she brought him soundly back to the present. Watching him watch her as she looked at him, chin tipped up and defiant like he was the one being unreasonable.
His nails bit into his palms.
"If this is about the prison, about guilt or-" he started, remembering the look in her face when he'd given her back the gun and told her to come with him. When he'd pushed back the anger, the rage, the low throbbing deep in the back of his skull long enough to recognize her for what she was. Just a person. Not inherently bad. But not inherently good either. Just a person who'd made a mistake, and, unlike her friends, was willing to suffer the consequences for it.
She'd looked at him like he was the sun after years of deep winter.
Like he was her golden ticket and that she'd follow him anywhere.
And she had.
"It isn't," she affirmed, uncoiling from the blanket to stand shakily. "It's not about that, it's about what you need."
The laugh that barked out was singular and haunting - hinging on hysteric.
What he needed?
What did he need?
He didn't know anymore. If he ever had.
He'd started off normal. He remembered that, remembered what'd come before. Moving to Atlanta. His first year of college. The peeling paint in his apartment. Living on noodles and cheap dollar store coffee. He'd slept less than he was probably supposed to. Played video games till his eyes hurt and ignored his homework. Everything you'd expect from his first year of real freedom. He'd gone out. Made new friends. Forgot to call his mother as often as he was supposed to and semi-ignored people's birthdays - the works.
When things fell apart, well, he'd changed right along with it. Going with the flow. Careful to keep the status quo. He'd rolled in with a couple people he already knew. T-dog had done some sort of church and community outreach thing at orientation and picked him up in his church van when he crashed his car trying to get out of grid-lock.
It was the hat, apparently.
He'd been saved the first time because the dude had remembered his hat.
"I remember you. Yeah. You're the sneaky one, the one with nerve. You don't scare easy, do you? I like that."
He'd been desperate back then. God. He'd been awkward, overeager and nervous. He'd been in a hurry to find a niche, to be useful. He'd figured out pretty quick that as a single person in a sea of families and sibling pairs, you had to make yourself not just valuable, but indispensable.
"In and out, a few things, no problem."
So he'd evolved. He'd become the person people turned to not for a solution to a problem, but to see that problem solved. He'd reinvented himself. Becoming an integral cog in the wheel – not the wheel itself – but right up there with it. All to remind everyone that he was important. That he mattered. That they needed him. Like he'd said to Rick back in Atlanta, come the worst case scenario, the point was that he could be that far up shit creek and end up not needing the paddle.
And it had worked.
A bit too well, actually.
Because before he knew it, just like every other time in his life, he realized he'd let himself get type casted. Placed in a role somewhere between the lead and the background character. He'd become his role. The go-to guy. He'd made himself so indispensable that people started taking him for granted. Worse, they'd had him believing it.
Maggie had been the first one to see beyond that.
To remind him that he was more.
That he was worth more.
Who was he now that she was gone? Who?
"Let me help you."
He felt dizzy with it when he realized she believed it too. Every impossible word that had come out of her mouth, she was ready to fight for. For him. She wasn't going to let it drop.
"Please?"
It was the blood stains on her shirt that did him in.
She was still wearing that same, fucking shirt. The one when Maggie had-
"This is so messed up," he whispered, rubbing his hands over his face. Letting the sharp points of his nails dig into his face as he imagined claws ripping and tearing. Shedding old skin for the new. For something weaker and far less sure as the remnants of the old littered the ground around them like paper rain.
Her laugh was weak, a gross shadow of what had once been as she cocked her head and looked him right in the eye.
"So, what else is new?"
A/N #1: Thank you for reading. Please let me know what you think! Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! – There will be one more chapter, stay tuned for the final chapter on Friday.
Reference:
Big thank you to gunslingerdixon for the dialogue help from Merle in season three.
