Wow! What an episode! This was one of the most intense ones so far! And Mr. Lincoln's performance at the end was heartbreaking This one-shot contains spoilers…so, there's your warning… Lyrics at the beginning is from the song 'Losing Your Memory' by Ryan Star. It's a gorgeous song and I recommend you give it a listen.
Wake up, its time
Little girl, wake up
All the best of what we've done
Is yet to come
Just remember who I am
In the morning
Rick's POV:
One small helpless cry was all it took to snap me out of my fury and make me focus on what was happening. We had just taken back control of the prison it seemed after one of the rogue prison bastards tried to kill us all…
I turned away from Glenn and Daryl in the direction the cry was sounding…
No…Lori had the baby now, today of all chaotic days…?
My mind was absorbing the image of Maggie and Carl solemnly walking through one of the section gates, with the young brunette woman holding a bundle in her trembling arms, my son limply holding his gun with blood covering his hands…
But, my wife wasn't among them…
The looks on their faces, Maggie on the verge of sobbing and Carl with his eyes down at the dirt ground, were telling me they didn't want to speak out loud.
"Where…where's Lori?" I ask anyway, trying to keep the undeniable sobs out of my voice.
Carl refuses to look at me as Maggie continues to hold the baby in her hands and give in to her grief of presumably being at my wife's side in her final minutes. The blood on my son's hands told me everything, that his mother had no chance of making it, not without real medical help. That he had to do the deed himself of putting her down.
I cursed the world around me…the walkers, the prisoner who started this mess in the first place, fucking everything up just when we were starting to settle in, to make lives for ourselves.
And all those weeks where I treated my wife with indifference, as if she hadn't been the same woman I had killed my best friend for, who gave birth to my son. While I did my best to show her my gratitude the other day for saving Hershel, I had tried to make it sound it was everyone who was grateful for what she had done, not just me exclusively.
In that moment staring in disbelief at Maggie and Carl, I could only let a wail of sorrow and pain.
She was gone…and I hadn't even been there for her when she had to go. All those times before when I left her side to go save someone else. Right then, I wanted to take it all back. No…I wanted to be dead right then, instead of her being dead. That baby in Maggie's arms needed its mother and now she was gone forever.
All of those years of being with her, from the heated arguments that threatened to tear apart our marriage, to the reunion at the camp by the quarry, where we made love for the first time in years in our tent…
I heard and saw nothing else as I fell to the hard ground in pain, forgetting that other people could see me, their leader, having a breakdown before them. But I didn't give a shit that they were watching. A man had a goddamn right to grieve for his dead wife…
My body curled up into a devastated ball of vulnerability, and nothing could make me get up in that moment… The dictator inside my spirit faded away, leaving nothing else but a lost widower sinking deep into failure.
Lori, please forgive me. I'm so sorry. I…I love you. I never stopped loving you… Goodbye…