Took me long enough. I always meant to do a second part to this story from Glenn's POV, and I finally got around to doing it. I hope you all enjoy it (and the small liberties I took with the bits of blank information the show hasn't given us). Reviews are love!
Being a man is such a clichéd phrase, and yet how often had that single phrase driven me on to do necessary things that were completely and totally against my better judgment? Too many to count I'm sure, but in the end, I guess that stupid phrase served me well. I don't think I'd be where I am without it.
I barely even recognize the kid I was Before. I remember him, all soft flesh and short hair, no callouses on my hands except for the slight ones forming thanks to playing hours of videogames. I never had a million thoughts running through my mind about how best to literally survive once I stepped out my front door. I'd had phantom thoughts of survival back then; chief amongst them being what was I going to do with my life? I'd felt like such a waste of space back then. I was living in Atlanta with my parents and my sisters, on summer break from my first year at college, still working at the same job I'd had since I was sixteen, delivering pizzas at breakneck speed because despite the Asian stereotype, I was the best driver of my shop. Sure I fishtailed the car a couple times, so what? Still got them there in under twenty minutes, and having been a college kid starved for grease and crispy crust after a night of binge drinking, I could appreciate the need for nearly instant gratification. Just thinking about it made my stomach growl, but I quickly banished the thought. Luxuries like pizza, alcohol, and videogames were things I would never see again.
I'd been living at home, trying to figure out what to do with myself, knowing damn well my liberal arts major wouldn't be worth the paper it was printed on, but not knowing what else to do. My parents were footing the bill for an education I didn't necessarily want, and while I did work and my sisters didn't, that didn't make me the golden child. My parents were too busy fighting with themselves to take much notice of me. I tried my best to be a good kid, to live up to whatever expectations they had for me, but I always had the sense that deep down, I'd never be good enough. I'd end up with some mediocre, paper pushing job in middle management somewhere that I hated, trapped in a town I didn't belong in, desperately wishing a girl would look at me as anything more than a comic book geek or falsifying math nerd.
Its like chewing rocks to admit it, but there are times I think the apocalypse might have been the best thing to happen to me. I mean, sure, waking up every day thinking I might die was awful. Not knowing what happened to my family was terrible. I hated myself sometimes, for not trying harder to find them, but really, back when the shit first went down, if I had broken free from the group and tried to look for them, I knew damn well I'd of been eaten. I knew it then, and that sense of self-preservation had saved my ass on more than one occasion. It made me feel like a coward though, and I think part of my more recent brushes with bravery, border-lining on possible heroism, was in no small part due to me trying to work against that feeling of cowardice and disgust with myself.
I'd never felt like a brave person. In the Before, I never did any of the things the boys I knew at school did. I never snuck out, never stole liquor, never smoked or did any kind of drugs. I was so squeaky clean you could practically hear my shoes on a floor that hadn't seen a buffering machine in twenty years. As the token Asian in a town of mostly whites, blacks, and Hispanics, I knew I was never going to fit in, and my unwillingness to do things to even try to impress my cohort only solidified my status as an outcast. So I stayed in my room, played my videogames, delivered my pizzas, and sometimes tried to imagine what my life would look like if I felt like I had any sort of purpose.
When the apocalypse hit, that was when everything had changed. I got swept up by the group in a whirlwind of stampeding humans looking for any kind of shelter as people in Atlanta ran at breakneck speeds towards the refugee center. I'd gotten a late start, trying to find my family even as the screams and breaking glass started the orchestra of death and destruction in the city. As darkness fell on the night that the world ended and I still couldn't find them, I knew I only had one choice. I had to get out. I became just another one of the seething masses, running towards the barricade, by passing stalled out and parked cars on that highway to hell, the sweltering heat of the night marking the transition into summer and at least some comfort that if we did all get stuck out here at least we wouldn't get cold. I don't think I really thought about the idea that this was really the beginning of the end. I don't think any of us did. But when T-dog had snagged me by the shoulder and hauled me away from the crushing masses of people swarming the barricade of the refugee center it was the best thing that could have happened to me. He'd warned me that they were turning people away, that if I wanted to survive I should follow him. I'd seen the urgency in his gaze as he told me he had a van and some gasoline and was taking people out of the city and that I should come. My instinct for self-preservation stepped up and I followed the man, grateful to have been extended an offer of help. Together, on a highway, we'd pulled together as a group. Me, T-dog, Dale, Andrea and Amy, Jacquie, Carol, Ed, Sophia, Shane, Lori, Carl, Morales and his family, and later on, after a few days when the firebombs had stopped and we were making a steady march towards the quarry, the Dixon brothers. At the time I'd been grateful for Shane's presence to keep the two roughnecks in check. They seemed like trouble, but what could we do, turn them away? They had weapons and survival skills we needed.
I started acting differently; I risked my neck for supplies, slipping in and out of Walker infested areas, pilfering food, water, any sort of survival supplies I could get my hands on. I learned how to handle a gun, and even though at first my shots weren't great, at least I eventually managed to stop flinching every time I squeezed the trigger. I didn't think of it in terms of bravery though. I thought of it in terms of survival. One foot in front of the other. This is what I had to do to keep living. But it wasn't just about me. It was about the group too. Every time I was tempted to turn tail and run empty handed back to camp I'd think of all the people that I was helping. It wasn't just about me. I wasn't the only one hungry, I wasn't the only one desperate for clean clothes; for those small little things that helped us to keep feeling like human beings and not raging animals. Working for the group gave me a sense of purpose and somehow conned me into being braver than I'd ever felt in my life.
I'm not going to lie, it felt pretty good to be one of the runners coming back into camp with supplies and people looking at me like I was a god-send. Nobody had ever looked at me like that before, if they ever looked at me at all. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that my knowledge of the layout of Atlanta and my sense of timing thanks to videogames would ever come in handy. That feeling of having my ego stroked wasn't enough on it's own to send me back into the city for supplies, but it did help. Feeling like I was contributing gave me a sense of security, like maybe I belonged here. Like I wouldn't be left behind.
I'd seen Rick swaggering through Atlanta on his horse like some wild west cowboy at first I'd been thinking Clint Eastwood's back in town, but then my good sense kicked in and all at once I realized that he would get ripped apart and I was trapped on this rooftop and was going to have to watch. How could he have not known that Atlanta belonged to the dead now? What in the hell kinda drug could dilute his brain enough to think he could just come waltzing back in like he was the sheriff of the whole damn city come to set order to the world? He was resourceful though, I'd give him that much. He made it off the horse and into the tank and stayed alive for those few precious moments, long enough for me to make one of my first executive decisions and snatch the radio and call out to him. From my vantage point I could see an escape route. I'd learned both through videogames, and my own real life experiences from scavenging, that height offered a great deal of usefulness when it came to escaping sticky situations. I offered him a way out, if he was just brave enough to take it, and Rick being Rick, was brave enough. It was only days later when it would prove to be absolutely worth it that I'd saved him. He paid that debt back to me and I swear to God, that moment was like a firework in the darkness of this completely fucked up world. He came back for me, and he brought hell as back-up. I'll say this for Rick Grimes; whenever he sets out to do something, he never half-ass's it.
But if Rick was a firework, Maggie was like an atomic bomb. Prior to meeting her, really the only people I'd ever truly loved was my family. Of course I'd had crushes on girls before, I'd wished I'd had the balls to step up and say something and try to write my own story that ended with me joining up with someone that I loved, but I'd never had enough of a spine to do it. Maggie was different. Maggie took charge; when she wanted something, she took it, and she didn't really care what anybody else thought. Her standing there in that pharmacy, catching me with the condoms that was really just a cover up for Lori's pregnancy test, God if ever there was a moment I wish I could have sunk through the floor and never been seen alive again it would have been that one. Yet it turned into one of the best moments of my life.
I'll have sex with you, she'd said. Like it was the least complicated thing in the world.
I'd kissed girls before. I'd managed to run my hands down a few of their shoulders and against their hair, but I'd never made it to second base, prior to that moment. I'd been overwhelmed and unsure if this was some kind of trick or maybe even a dream. A gorgeous brunette with an adorable southern twang and plucky haircut I could so easily run my fingers through and hold onto without getting tangled up, it was way too good to be true. But it was true, and it floored me to the point where finally my brain just shut off entirely and said You could be dead tomorrow. Hell, you could die in an hour or two when you ride back to the farm. Get with the program, Glenn.
She was a little bit rough with me but I didn't mind. It gave me leeway to not know exactly what I was doing. She tasted like a shot of Jack Daniels and a chaser of pink champagne and from that first kiss I pretty much knew I never wanted to kiss anybody else again. She was wild, spicy, passionate; the things she did to me surpassed any fantasy my feebly uncreative mind could have ever created. I wouldn't quite admit it to myself, but I think I was in love with her from that moment on.
It wasn't just the sex though. There was a slightly pathetic part of my soul that loved her just because she paid attention to me, when she probably could have any of the available men still left alive that she wanted, she picked me. Me. Why me? What had I done to deserve this? I couldn't figure out a reason and I never did get the balls to ask. It didn't matter did it? We played a game with each other, dancing around our tentative bond that was trying to form. I was all for it, back then I was so desperate for companionship and something good to look forward to that I would have pretty much done anything to further our relationship. These days I was wary of any and all forms of attachment beyond the group of people who though not blood related to me I considered my family. Back then though, back then I was looking for anything good to hold onto. With the continued disappearance of Sophia, the tension between Rick and Shane, Lori's secret pregnancy, the thought that Hershel might one day just kick us off his farm all together, every smile from Maggie was like a checkpoint to me. If I could just make it there, the bar that measured my standard of living raised just a bit higher.
I remembered my first major fight with her. Confronting her about our differences in ideology over what the Walkers were. It aggravated me that I knew how smart she was but she was blindly clinging to some idea that these monsters were still people, that they could somehow be salvaged. They couldn't be. How much more obvious did it have to get that they couldn't be saved? For Christ's sake, they were trying to eat us! But Maggie was still clinging to some idea of the old world, bolstered by her father's faith. There was a part of me that respected that, but another that thought it was really stupid. I rolled around in my tent uncomfortably, tossing and turning over the idea, how to handle it, worried about pushing her away, and also desperate not to lose her. Not that she had ever been 'mine' at that point, but it felt like maybe she could have been. I'd never had a person in my life to call my own, not like that, and just the very idea of it drove me on to keep living, to keep fighting. The thought of her being put into danger from the Walkers led me to confront her, blindly hoping she'd understand, as well as accepting the idea she might not understand, and might hate me and never want anything else to do with me but that I didn't care as long as she was safe.
I don't care if they're sick people or they're dead people! They're dangerous! And then I realized something. I don't want you in danger, ever!
I knew I'd managed to get through to her the day that Shane broke open the barn. The Walkers came pouring out and I had the shotgun in my hands and even though my group was taking a stand and aiming their weapons and I was running forward beside them, I still looked towards her. I knew what I needed to do, but I also knew that this was her family that was in there. Those people in the barn, those were her people and despite all of my anxiety about sleeping next to a barn full of Walkers, I respected her and her feelings. One way or another those Walkers would get killed, but if she didn't want me to, I wouldn't fire. All it took was one pleading gasp of her name. Tears were streaking down her face as she hoarsely sobbed and nodded, clutching onto her sister to hold her back while I ran forward and aimed my gun to start picking off the shambling corpses. It didn't feel good to kill them, but it did help that I knew without a doubt I was keeping her safe. It also gave me a little bit of relief to know that she understood, she accepted, what the Walkers truly were. I had always hoped that she would, but you couldn't always tell. It made it easier to sleep at night knowing that at least as far as I could tell, that was one fight we wouldn't have to have anymore.
It was more than slightly ironic that the day she finally told me she loved me was the day that my spine decided to completely rot and blow away in the breeze and I turned back into a panicking kid. It had just hit me so hard out of the blue. Back then, when we were still weaving our complicated dance, I could never truly be sure of how she felt about me. Maggie played harder to get than any girl I'd ever met before, and that was saying a lot, and she didn't just play hard to get, she had a bite like a pissed off badger when she got mad. Her temper was something that had a thousand different triggers and I seemed to finding new ones every single day. Later on, when we were on the road together and we really and truly learned who the other was, I'd understand she wasn't truly a confusing she-devil. She was just scared, and had a lot of good reasons to be. I understood that, we just reacted to it in many different ways. She reacted by shutting down, by baring her fangs and aiming her spears outwards to keep people away. I reacted by finding a mission, any mission, preferably something that benefited her or the group. I don't know if it was my need to prove my worthiness or just a need to keep busy but after a while, it didn't really matter anymore.
I knew immediately that I was an idiot for not telling her that I loved her when she'd first offered up that sentiment to me. I knew I was an idiot for not appreciating how hard that probably was for her, what she was trusting me with, but I just couldn't. Hearing her say that robbed me of my words and I'd literally run away, terrified of the idea that what she'd said was the truth, because if it was the truth, I now had something much bigger than myself. That might seem like an odd thing to point out, given how many times I'd risked my life for the group, but that was different. I don't know how exactly, maybe because we didn't really look at each other as family yet, maybe because all of the runs I made for them was to just prove my usefulness so they didn't leave me behind. When Maggie told me she loved me, I suddenly had this awareness that my existence mattered to someone else in a much deeper way than just my ability to sneak in and out of tight squeezes and dangerous places. She'd cry for me if I wound up dead. She'd be hurt if something happened to me, and I couldn't stand the thought of being the cause of her pain. Seeing her smile was like seeing the sun rise after a terror filled night, and I couldn't bare the thought of knowing that light might die because she was sad that something had happened to me.
Rick reminding about how we need hope in order to survive in this seriously messed up world helped, but like always, by the time I came crawling back to apologize and beg Maggie's forgiveness, she'd hardened against me, baring her teeth and turning me out. Maggie was definitely the sort of girl that you could fool once, but never twice, and she'd thrash you good and hard for the first sort, to warn you away from ever trying it a second time. I was prepared to bare her anger, determined to do anything I had to in order to win her back. Again, not that she'd ever been mine exactly, but it felt like that chance was there, and I had to fight for it, I had to make up for being such a moron and not seizing it when she'd first offered it to me.
After we'd lost the farm, Maggie had definitely become a different person. She'd always been tough, but being on the road all winter long wrought a change in her I didn't expect. She stuck tight to my side, and I taught her all the tricks I knew about how to steal supplies, how to evade and combat Walkers, and together we learned who the other really was. We'd both learned how far we were willing to go in order to survive, and what we were willing to do for the people who we considered our family now. I loved how even in the middle of the world continuing to crumble all around us that she still found passion for life and the desire to want things like sex and the smallest luxuries that we could cobble together. I loved the fact that she was never insecure about how the stress of living on the run worn down on both of our appearances. Any softness I'd ever had wore away to the bone and was replaced with hard muscle. My reflexes were like a snake's; I could put a bullet between a Walker's eyes at twenty paces in under three seconds once I heard the shuffle of its gate. It amazed me every single day how no matter how filthy the two of us got, how exhausted we were, how hungry, how cold, she could still summon up the energy to want me, and I'm not going to lie, seeing Maggie go to town on a Walker pack, smashing brains and ripping open skulls got me hot under the collar. She was tough, my girl, she was brave, she wasn't afraid to get filthy, to fight for what she loved.
I'd thought I knew how much I loved her but when Merle and the Governor took us both, it had been a wake-up call just as strong as the initial hit of the apocalypse itself. The fact she was in danger and I could do absolutely nothing about it ripped my insides out. When Merle tossed that Walker into the room when I was taped down to a chair, I had never been afraid for my life. I knew I had the strength, the sheer rage, to kill that rotting corpse. What I didn't have the power to do was save Maggie from God knows what horror could be happening to her just one or two rooms away, and that helplessness was so much worse than seeing the world torn apart by Walkers. The one thing I truly needed to keep going in this world had been taken away from me, and I couldn't get her back, and it almost broke my will to live.
When Merle had dragged me into Maggie's cell and I'd seen her standing there half naked, a gun held to her head, the Governor caressing her and nuzzling against her, I'd never felt such possessive rage and hatred before. For the very first time in my life, I'd felt a thrum of instinct from some distant, animal ancestor of my past rumbling with fury. How dare he put his hands on her? How dare he touch her when she was mine? How dare he hurt her, cause her pain and terror, right in front of me. I swore I'd get revenge on him right then and there. He was doing it just to hurt both of us, and it was enough to burn away all the fear I'd ever had from the day I was born up until that very moment.
I didn't hold it against Maggie that she revealed where the prison was. If the positions had been reversed I would have done the very same thing. When I caught her in my arms after she came running to me, all I could do was hold onto her with every ounce of strength I had left in me and try to keep it all together. I was her protector, I was her shield, I had to keep her safe, I had to try and hold our shattered pieces together while I figured out what to do. They finally left us alone and I gave her my shirt and held onto her hand and held out hope that we wouldn't die in this dungeon. Maggie at my side made that possible. Whenever she was with me I could see a better future.
Our stalemate argument after we were rescued both perplexed and angered me. Didn't Maggie want me to do something about the monster who'd terrorized her? Didn't she think I was capable, that I should do something about the Governor so he could never hurt or threaten any of our family again? I didn't understand why she was turning me away. It frustrated me to no end. Whether she wanted me to or not, I was going to do something about that animal. If only I had. If only I had, then a year later, we wouldn't have watched Hershel have his head just shy of being entirely removed, bleeding out all over the ground he'd so carefully shown Rick how to tend so it would provide food for us.
I'm not entirely sure why or what caused her to approach me, but when she came to me and we finally talked, it was like the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders. I'd felt foolish to doubt it, but when she'd said I'm with you. I'm always with you, it was life affirming for me. I guess maybe I'd never known what truly unconditional love felt like until that moment. Up until that very moment I was still running on this path of having to prove myself worthy. Right then, when we managed to reconcile our most intense differences and put aside everything that was forcing us apart in favor of being together, it was like I could finally breathe. Right at that moment I knew that no matter what happened, I wouldn't lose her love over something I did, or didn't do. That no matter how we fought with each other, how intensely we disagreed or how long we argued, she would not walk away from me, and I would never walk away from her.
Making love to her in that dark garage after that realization was more intense than anything I'd ever experienced before. It was the rush of passion, need, hope, joy, reunion, love. It was life captured in a short burst of visceral hunger and if I could have bottled and sold it, I'd of been richer than Bill Gates. I could hardly catch my breath, hearing her moan into my ear, the rocking motion of her hips underneath mine, the way she clutched at my hair and the back of my shoulders, it all served to drive me wild, nearly feral, with need. God, how could I ever think that I didn't know her, didn't appreciate every single inch of her being? We didn't have much time, but as Rick would say later on, it was enough. Laying there with her in the aftermath, completely naked and spent, sweating even in the cold air of the garage, still trying to catch our breath, it was the best thing I'd ever felt. I'd known before, but after that was when I finally decided to make my commitment to her official. Approaching Hershel had been a little bit scary- asking any man for permission to marry his daughter would be I think, but I had so much respect for Hershel as a person, and I was terrified he would say no and shatter the idea that I was finally good enough for something as amazing as Maggie. The words he said washed over me like the first spring dawn after the last winter frost.
No man is ever good enough for a father's little girl. Until one is.
I knew better than to think that anything I could manage to scavenge would ever be good enough for me to present to Maggie, but the other half of my brain knew that Maggie didn't need diamonds as bait to accept me. Somehow, someway, she loved me for me; every part of my scrawny, impulsive, reckless, almost desperate self, and no amount of shiny stones would ever sway her one way or the other. But I still wanted her to have something beautiful, something from the Before that both of us missed but not enough to cripple our will to keep living in the now. I didn't get down on one knee, I didn't outright ask her if she'd marry me, because how the hell were we going to manage to have a marriage ceremony with the threat of the Governor looming over us? But she knew what I was asking with my eyes as I gently placed the ring in her hand.
Just tell me I'm the only one you'll ever need, the only one you'll ever want, for however long we have left? I need you by my side and I can't do this on my own. So what do you say? Wanna spend the rest of our lives together?
I'm not going to lie. I'd of loved to see her in a white dress, flowers in her hands, Hershel walking her down an isle, the shine of her smile getting ever closer to me before we finally joined hands at an alter and exchanged vows to each other. I always had the thought that we could write our own. There wasn't time for any of that of course, but late at night when all was quiet sometimes I'd tell her these little fantasies and she'd give me that big smile that said she thought I was silly but she loved it anyway and I'd grin sheepishly right back because I just loved her and how could I resist her charm?
Waking up with the prison shattered, blown to a blasted ruin all around me, was in all honesty my worst nightmare. It was the thing that had constantly hounded me, the thought that we were finally safe, that we had built a life for ourselves that was actually worth living, violently blown to bits. The worst part was waking up to that gut wrenching reality alone. My entire life had been torn apart and I had nobody to help me cope. I screamed for Maggie despite the fact I knew I was catching the attention of a horde of Walkers. When she didn't answer me, fear so terrible that it nearly stopped my heart tried to strangle me, but I shoved it away. She couldn't be dead. I would not lose her. I refused to accept the idea, and I heaved myself to my feet, vowed to do anything and everything necessary to find her. The fact I couldn't find any of my family was like repeated blows from a heavyweight boxer. I didn't know how I was going to put one foot in front of the other. I didn't know where I was going to go, what I was going to do, the idea of being alone in this still very much broken world terrified me. I'd never been on my own before. I wasn't the weak kid I had been when the apocalypse first hit, but I knew damn well I couldn't do this alone. The only thing that kept me from going to pieces and losing my mind was the hope that I could find Maggie. That was the goal, that was my mission, and this world was going to have to have to kill me before I gave up on finding her. Not Tara or Abraham and his gang could deter me. They could follow me or not, I really didn't care. The only thing I cared about was finding my wife. After I found her, we'd find any of our family left alive. I had to believe that at least some of them made it out. I could not be the only one.
You're not the only one, Glenn. You're not, because Maggie is alive. She's alive, she's out there, you have to find her. She's going to be looking for you too. Get up, keep moving. Nothing in this world comes easy or for free. Fight for it!
One foot in front of the other, shoving my legs forward, carrying my pack, the riot gear twisting around my body like a second skin making it difficult to breathe but a necessary evil. Physically I felt utterly broken; my body hurt in ways I hadn't felt since living on the road that first winter. I was pushed to the breaking point, I was so close to giving up that looking back on it I'm amazed I was able to keep going. We'd been walking for so damn long and there was no sign of hope, no sign that I was getting closer or that Maggie was actually alive. With every footstep I had to battle with myself, I had to keep telling myself she's alive. She's alive, don't quit, don't give up. Keep going, she's out there, she needs you. God damn it, Glenn, don't quit now. At night I used the picture I'd salvaged to comfort myself, and to remind myself what I was fighting for. I'd stroke the glossy image, her closed eyelids, the cowlicks of her messy hair, the easy, relaxed expression on her face and I'd get so close to tears I don't know how I managed to hold them in. I missed her so terribly. It was like having half of my body torn out of the socket and misplaced somewhere. I felt incomplete. My lover, my best friend, my traveling partner in life, was gone. I'd turn to look for her to make some comment and she wouldn't be there and I'd be hit with the crushing silence once again.
Seeing that first note, that bloody, hand scrawled message on the train track map, it was like the storm finally let up. I'd finally managed to get my head above water and take a breath. I took off running as though there was an entire herd of Walkers trying to run me down and the only way out was pure speed.
She's alive! She's alive, she's alive, she's alive! My brain echoed the chant as fast as I could suck down oxygen into my lungs. My feet pounded against the pebbled ground that the train tracks were built on, the riot gear weighing me down but I felt as light as swirling leaves in an autumn wind. The others managed to catch up to me, but they were foggy background noises compared to the goal right in front of me. I didn't care they didn't want to go into that tunnel that probably was as dangerous as a metropolitan city. I wasn't going to waste a single second of time between now and finding Maggie, and if that meant braving that damn tunnel, then so be it. I could admit I was a little bit shocked when Tara decided to join me, and it did solidify my opinion that her joining up with the Governor had just been her falling under his spell. Hell, even Andrea, one of our own, had fallen victim to that. She was a good kid. She reminded me of me in a lot of ways. Someone had taken a chance on me, I could do the same for her.
When she got caught in that crush of rock and the Walkers began to close in on us, true panic set in. What the hell was I going to do? I couldn't just leave her here and let her die the most horrible death anyone could suffer in this world, but I didn't come all this way to lose my chance at finding Maggie either. Maggie was the ultimate goal but in that one moment, I couldn't leave Tara there to die. Even though she said It's ok, go. Go, go find Maggie. Go on, go find Maggie, I couldn't leave her like that. She was a human being, she was too much like me; I had to try. I didn't know what I was going to do once I ran out of bullets, I didn't think that far ahead. I emptied my clip and threw myself over Tara to shield her when all of a sudden a rain of bullets peppered the horde scrambling towards us. Bodies collapsed where they had previously stood as muzzle fire flashed like tiny bolts of lightening in the darkness. All I could hear was the popping blast of gunfire, Tara's terrified yelps, and my own ragged breathing as I both felt, and saw, my life flash before me.
When the silence finally descended I wasn't sure if I was dead or alive. The true litmus test to the situation was that I was still in a considerable amount of physical pain and exhaustion, but I managed to stand up straight and gaze into the light that was shining through the shadows of the tunnel. Headlights. At first, panic set in when I considered the idea that I might now have to face down an entire pack of extremely dangerous people, but then I saw that silhouette step forward. I would know that body until my dying day; the curve of her hips, the muscle of her thighs, the shape of her waist, the breadth of her shoulders, the swaying layers of her hair. I staggered towards her in pure and utter disbelief and then in the half light I saw her face.
She threw herself into my arms and I caught her and held on so tightly I'm sure it was making breathing difficult, but I just couldn't help it. I buried my face into her neck, breathing in her scent, in utter disbelief and amazement that she was here. She was real, she was alive, she was in my arms. My other half, my beloved, my wife, my lover, my best friend. I held onto her for everything I was worth and she held onto me, her husky sob stuck between amazement and relief. Somehow I was able to disentangle my face from her neck long enough for her to kiss me, and then before I knew what was happening we were kissing each other, sloppy and wet and desperate, filled with relief and love and we had absolutely no awareness of anybody else watching. The world could have been ending all over again and we wouldn't have noticed or cared. We had each other. We were complete again.
I shouldn't have been surprised when she wanted to burn that picture. I didn't want to let it go but the look in her eyes was so resolute I couldn't say no. We would never be apart again. No matter what we had to do, no matter how hard we had to fight, we wouldn't lose each other again. Never. I never knew that one human being was capable of loving another so deeply but I did and she did, and I think it took a love that powerful to keep us going in this world that was so fucked up it was amazing anything good ever survived.
Being shoved into that train car, stripped of Hershel's watch, of all our dignity, it reminded us once again how hard we were going to have to battle to stay alive. It didn't matter to me though. I had my purpose, I had my mission. And when Rick, Daryl, Michonne, and Carl came piling inside, it was like my world was back the way it should be. True we were still in so much danger it was hard to even get our heads around, but seeing them, feeling all of us back together again, my fingers interlocked with Maggie's, I wasn't afraid. I'd never be afraid again, not as long as they were with me. Rick had a deadly look in his eye, a look like he was going to throttle the whole damn world into submission for daring to mess with us, and my own protective instinct rose like a tongue of fire from deep in the pit of my belly all the way into my throat. I didn't care what we had to do, I didn't care how hard we had to fight, I didn't care how much blood we had to spill. I was never going to lose my family again. I was never going to let them be put into danger again, not without doing everything in my power to stop it. And above all, I would never let anyone take Maggie away from me. Many a man has probably had those thoughts about a woman he loves, but the difference between us and them was that I knew Maggie would, and was fully capable of, fighting just as hard as I was to keep us together. That made all the difference in the world, and as long as I lived, that would always be the thing that kept me going, no matter how hard the world tried to kill us. She was mine. I was hers, and no one, not the Governor, not Terminus, not even the fucking apocalypse, could take that away from us.
