So this is it. This is how I want season 7 to start. I didn't wrap everything up with a bow, but it's still a good deal happier than I predict I'll be Sunday night. I doubt I'll write anything new before then, so I'll see you folks on the other side.

In an unfamiliar room, Maggie woke up to a familiar hand clutching her arm. She smiled because she could recognize the hand half-asleep, and with her eyes closed. Even though its clammy feeling seemed far removed from its usual comforting warmth, this didn't matter: she'd long ago memorized its every line and callous during long, boring nights on watch at the prison with nothing to do but learn the features of the man she loved more than anything.

She didn't even need to open her eyes to confirm its identity: the man it belonged to said – before she could even decide whether or not wakefulness was the right state for her at the moment – "Oh - oh thank god."

Hearing his voice, Maggie quickly decided that anything that caused Glenn to be so relieved couldn't be bad. She shoved aside the part of her that longed to shut her eyes for another day or so; instead, she tried pushing herself up and out of bed, resolving to see what Glenn was so worked up over.

Maggie's futile efforts were rewarded with panic from Glenn, "Oh no, no, no, no, stay right there."

Suddenly feeling the weakness of her arms and the pounding in her head, she didn't entirely disagree with his advice, but still, she felt the need to ask, "Four no's? Jeez, what the hell is wrong with me?"

But what came out instead was something like, "fornojeatthhellwrthme?"

Her eyes still closed, she heard some murmuring and then a door open and close; she would have worried that it was Glenn who left, but his hands stayed resting on her shoulders the whole time as if he was worried she would try to stand up again. So someone else had been in the room before, but they were gone now.

Answering her unasked question, Glenn said softly, "Sasha just went to go get the doctor. Everything's fine, he just wanted to know when you woke up. But you're okay, honey."

Maggie opened her reluctant eyes in time to see Glenn lean forward and place a light kiss on her forehead. This comforted her – though she couldn't quite remember why she was upset in the first place – and she accepted Glenn's silent offer to help her lay back down. Her energy sapped by this small effort, she closed her eyes again and was grateful when Glenn did nothing else but take her hand and hold it in his own.

Now that she was sort of awake, she noticed that despite his reassuring words, Glenn seemed to be having difficulty calming himself: she felt his hand methodically stroking her pulse point on her wrist, while his other clutched her upper thigh, the part where she faintly recalled there was a scar from when she got hit by a stray bullet when Alexandria was overrun.

Hm, she wondered idly, is that why I'm in a strange room and why Glenn said something about a doctor? But no, Glenn wouldn't be clutching my leg so tightly if that's what was wrong with me and besides, it's my stomach that was hurting so badly when we were in the woods –

And then she remembered –

The woods.

Negan. The bat. The baby.

The baby.

Her eyes shot open.

She sat up so suddenly that her world turned over; even Glenn couldn't catch her before she was upright, or convince her to lie back down as she swayed.

"No, Maggie, please, lie down, the doctor, he wants you to –"

"No, no, no, no, no, no" She finally managed an intelligible word and "no" was apparently the one she was sticking with. Maggie wasn't sure why because she could hear how desperate Glenn was. It wasn't like she thought walking would bring her back to a world where friends and babies didn't die, to this morning (was it this morning?) before Glenn went after Daryl and when Negan was presumed dead.

But even with the sudden adrenaline rush, Glenn was much stronger than she was. After he got over the shock of her outburst, he overpowered her in an instant, this time holding her close before setting her gently on the bed. He pulled a pillow from the chair he'd been sitting on and placed it behind her so that she could sit up while still be supported on the bed.

She protested, "I want to – I need to –" but was unable to verbalize exactly what she was so desperate to do. And she was regretting her earlier actions: painfully, her head and her stomach throbbed in sync. Glenn sat by her on the edge of the bed, either just for the sake of being close to her or, perhaps more likely, to prevent her from jumping up again. For the first time, she looked at him, really looked at him, and saw how awful he looked. She'd never seen him looking so simultaneously exhausted, sweaty, bloody, dirty, and sad before. Maybe one or two of those things, but never all of them at once, and to this degree.

Her mind was slower than molasses – worse than after she got her wisdom teeth out and Shawn made fun of her for singing the alphabet wrong – but one thing was clear: she should listen to Glenn.

"Sh, sh, sh," he said in what was probably meant to be a calming tone but sounded more like he was holding back tears, "Babe, you need to calm down, you're hurt. You're on some pretty serious pain meds right now so you can't feel it. But, but the doctor said – your stitches, and it's not good for the baby."

It took Maggie a long moment to fully grasp what he'd said, and even then, she wasn't sure that she'd heard her husband correctly. Hoarsely, she dared to ask, "Baby – what? The baby's still alive?" It was the first complete thought that she'd managed to voice aloud since waking up.

She had never dreaded the answer to a question so much before this, and when she looked up at Glenn and saw him looking incredulously back at her, it didn't help. Realizing his mistake quickly, though, Glenn overcompensated by saying in a jumble, "God, yes, oh god, Maggie, I'm so sorry, yes, that's – that's what I meant earlier by – but of course, you thought, but –" Drawing a breath and calming down at a stern look from her, he continued, "Yes. It – it was never the baby."

Maggie shook her head but Glenn just kept talking, "The doctor will come and he'll explain but when we got you here he immediately realized it wasn't a miscarriage – it was your appendix. We don't know if it was just random, if it was somehow related to your pregnancy, or if it could have happened when you got kicked by – by those women" he grimaced like the words tasted badly in his mouth, "But your appendix had ruptured by the time we got you here. The surgery took a little longer than it would have if we'd gotten you here right away, and you'll have to stay here longer just in case. A week, at least. The doctor was amazing, Maggie, we were all so sure it was the baby but he knew what it was almost the second he saw you. He wouldn't let me stay with you while he was operating but he told me after it was done that it went as well as it could've, considering how bad you were when you came in…" He trailed off, seeming reluctant to say –

"…Maggie, you almost died." It was clear to her that every word of this was painful for him. Still, she had to know -

She opened her mouth but before she could get the words out, he answered for her, "But the baby's fine, and the doctor said since you haven't had any bleeding yet, we shouldn't be worried. I saw for myself, he gave you another ultrasound after your surgery, while you were still out." And then a very small smile, the first she'd seen from him since she'd woken up, "The baby – it's a lot bigger than it was last time."

Maggie let out a breath. She finally believed him.

She said softly, "Thank you."

She wasn't sure what she was thanking him for, exactly. For explaining everything to her? For the way he was holding her hand, or the light kiss he'd just placed on her forehead? Maybe it was for just being there, right now, and for how he'd always stuck by her side when things got rough.

Or it could have been she was thanking him for the blurry snippets that she remembered from that night in the woods: how he had tried to save her from Negan, had held her in his arms on the floor of the RV.

The longer she stayed awake, the more she remembered. But one memory seemed too awful to be true, so she had to ask him, "Someone died, right?"

She saw Glenn's Adam's apple bob down and up, "Yeah. Yeah, Abraham died."

Maggie tried to confirm the last thing she vividly remembered, "Was Negan playing eeni meeni mini mo with us?"

"Yeah. When he landed on Abraham he said something like 'first instinct was right after all.' And then he did it. Everyone else looked away and – and I wanted to too but you were there, right next to him, and I was terrified. I just had the worst feeling like he was going to start hitting you too, just for the hell of it."

She shook her head, not wanting to think for too long about how terrified Glenn must have been, living through something like that. She knew that she had been there too, but since she hardly remembered anything, she had to assume it had been worse for him. Not only had he been fully present during the attack and its aftermath, but he must have had to worry about her a lot over the past few days.

Maggie breathed in, "We're in a lot of trouble this time, aren't we?"

"Not right now," Glenn said slowly, wiping away a tear as it made its way down her cheek. "We've got a week to get everything – food, supplies, whatever else they decide to take – together before they show up again at Alexandria. Rick and Michonne and the others are back there now, trying to figure out a plan. Sasha and Daryl stayed here with us, though. Daryl so his arm can heal and Sasha, well, she didn't really say why but I think she wanted some quiet, after everything that happened. But I also kind of think they didn't want us to be alone here."

Something else clicked in her memory, "Michonne. She was holding me." As soon as the memory surfaced, Maggie felt guilty for forgetting it in the first place.

Glenn looked at her with a sad smile. "Yeah. She went over to you as soon as Negan had finished with Abraham. She told me later that she was hoping if I saw somebody taking care of you, it would lessen the chances of me jumping in and getting us all killed."

"Well," Maggie started, "She's smart, isn't she? It worked." She spread her arms, as if to say we're still here.

"She also said she cared about you," Glenn continued quietly, "And she couldn't stand seeing you in so much pain. Especially not on a night when she'd already had to watch one of her friends get beaten to death right next to her."

And with that, Maggie broke down. It scared her, how quickly she seemed to slide back to how she'd felt upon first waking: hazy, confused, exhausted, and entirely dependent on Glenn to hold her up. Well, that last one wasn't quite that scary, because she knew she could count on Glenn to take his turn being the strong one.

She must have really been on some heavy pain meds (or Glenn was being ridiculously careful, an equally likely possibility) because she didn't feel a thing when Glenn climbed into bed beside her. He whispered words in her ear as she gradually calmed back down, zoning out with the help of her pain meds and her husband's gentle comfort. Unable to pinpoint what deeper issue was upsetting her, she could only think to ask him, "We'll be back with them soon, right? I wanna go home, I miss them, I don't want to be here." The Hilltop wasn't home. It was safer, maybe, but it didn't have her and Glenn's huge bed, the living room that they all hung out in until late into the night, the now-familiar streets where they went on long walks. And it didn't have her family. It didn't have Michonne, or Rick, or Tara, or Rosita, or –

Abraham.

She forced herself to swallow her tears at that thought. She could still be afraid of what was going to happen next, but she was one of the lucky ones tonight. She still had Glenn, and they still had the baby. They had the chance to make things right again, and that was all Abraham had ever really wanted, she thought.

They wouldn't waste it. She'd get better, and Daryl too, and together they would go back to Alexandria and make things right, because she, Glenn, their baby, and all of their friends deserved way more than a chance. They deserved a good life, and they would fight for it.

If you can't tell from the hopelessly optimistic story written above, I'm completely unspoiled for season 7 of The Walking Dead. Please keep it that way in the reviews!