The woman that comes home is not the same Beth Greene who left. She's older, quieter and broken beneath the dirty yellow polo she wears. Red rims her eyes, haunted and lost. She's walking with assistance. Limping though the real damage is to her soul.
Curious Alexandrians are watching curiously from the window. Some rush out, Eric, Spencer and Enid but all they can do is stare. They've returned from war but not unscathed.
"Glenn and Abraham are dead. "
There's crying, yelling, pain.
Glancing down, Beth takes note of her own body and feels more exposed and vulnerable than she ever has. She pulls Daryl's old tattered poncho tighter around her shoulders. Thinks of sunshine and summer, of blinding smiles and soft unexpected kisses. Things were better back then. So very different.
Above her, the sky explodes in a burst of pink and yellow, dawn is breaking as it always does.
But everything is wrong.
He's our family too.
It's cruel. That a heart can keep on beating even after it is ripped in two. It's so cruel, that it's almost perfect.
Someone once told her that they all had jobs to do, but here she was, thinking about how it would feel - being torn apart. She imagined the intense pain of her own flesh being ripped from her bones, maybe she'd pass out before it got too bad. Maybe she wouldn't. But nothing would be as painful as this.
It's a long time before she's able to move, tears dripping from her chin, eyes red and burning, and when she does it's only to lift her head to press her face firmly against the matted brown hair of Maggie's head.
"I'm so sorry" she whispers, the words coming out hoarse and scratchy. "I'm so sorry." A deep, shuddering breath forces its way into her chest. Another. Then another. "I came to say I'm sorry." she rasps, forcing her eyes to open. Pulling back her knees quake beneath her as she stands barely able to hold her own weight. Beth knows she's not supposed to be here;
"You have to rest." Harlan had told her before they left. At least that's what she remembered.
Beth's gone into some sort of catatonic shock.
The brain has it's ways of protecting the body, burying experiences and emotions under a haze so it doesn't cripple the body entirely. For that she is thankful. But it was different, back then, back when she was begging for help to take her life. But now, she silently begs for Maggie not to take her own.
I wanna go, in this bed tonight with you beside me.
Maggie was strong, much stronger than she herself ever was but now, barely standing at her bedside Beth doesn't recognise the sister that she once knew.
Mom would be ashamed, to learn she raised such a coward.
"Maggie please.." She holds her breath, awaiting the rage, the screaming and crying but it's just a whisper, a soft puff of air following the lifted bed sheet.
She needs no invitation. Sighing in relief Beth tucks herself under the duvet, but can't shake the feeling - the horrible tingling sensation at the back of her mind that something was wrong.
"He's gone.."
The tingling stops then, giving way to a horrible emptiness.
Glen's gone.
"I'm sorry, Maggie." She breathes the words one more time. Just one more. Like she hasn't been repeating them like a mantra, over and over again. Dealing with grief, feeling it is easy. But watching it, is nothing she's experienced before. Not like this.
It's ever present within her sister. Now as she's pressed against her side Beth can feel the cold, the shakes and sobs the wreck Maggie from the inside out.
Slowly she sits up, wincing unintentionally at the pull of her stitches - there's something Beth knows she's forgetting but it's blurry and painful, then it's gone. So she focuses on Maggie; who sits up in bed, fresh tears trickling down her face. She looks so lost and afraid like a frightened little girl in a woman's body. Beth reaches out in the darkness beneath the sheets, her hand finding the cold form of her sister easily.
"I..it's not your fault Bethy.."
A minute ticks by, Beth reminds herself to breathe. She aches right down to her bones and sitting in the same position for too long is making her back throb painfully. But Maggie forgave her. Forgave her for something she can't quite remember but Beth knows it's important and suddenly can't remember how to form words.
Beth closes her eyes and runs her tongue over her swollen purple lip, hoping the pain would strike a chord within her foggy brain and make her say something, anything but nothing would be enough. So she has to stick to what she knows, it's the only thing that matters in the moment.
"I love you.."
Then Maggie's fingers curl tightly around her own, her grip strong and familiar and she starts to shuffle forward curling into her side like a child. A tiny smile threatens to grace her face as she's thrown back into the past; Beth used to do this, snuggle with Maggie when the summer storms hit. Their limbs tangled together for comfort.
"We'll be okay won't we?" Maggie breathes.
The bedroom door creaks open and Rick appears. For half a second he stands stock still, his captivating eyes are bloodshot. Like an extinguished candle they melt into an ever growing darkness of misery, no longer flickering with hope. His bandaged hand shakes on its hold of a black drawstring bag.
His mouth lolls open and closed before he visibly steels himself and moves closer to the bed. Rick wipes dark curls from his raw eyes and speaks, his voice coarse like fragmented rock.
"This..This was at the gate."
His voice quivers as if she were holding a gun instead of only empty hands. Their broken leader looked nothing like Beth had known him on the Farm; Hands that were once steady and strong tremble hard, sending the contents of the bag tumbling to the floor.
She had held onto it with hesitant hands that day, her dirty yellow shirt pressed up against his wings. Then again as she peeled it slowly off his broad shoulders. Beth remembered giggling as Judith swung carelessly off the back, leaving marks in the leather.
There's so much blood.
"Negan. He.."
"He's gone.."
It's like a switch, the flickering candle light is extinguished in a second. In that moment, it's raw and burning - the all consuming emptiness gnawing inside of her is hell. She knows that every waking moment from here on out is agony, knows that her best friend, her love, is gone and never coming back. There's a part of her that will never believe that he won't there to wrap himself around her back in their silent moments. Some part of her is missing. Some part of her being, has been obliterated and without it she's incomplete.
As she tears her gaze away from his wings she sees Rick through heavy tears, he's oblivious - they all are. Beth feels it then, the cold palm of her sisters hand rubbing her shoulder is a stark reminder that Maggie is the only one that knows. Knows that the father of her baby will never get to know.
Silently she tumbles, giving Rick barely enough time to shoot out his callused hands. Even then her dead weight was almost too much to prevent the momentum taking her to the ground.
The brain has it's ways of protecting the body, but what if it doesn't? What happens then?