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Sometimes Maggie can still see the blood on her hands.
The first time she ever killed someone. Sometimes she reminds herself that it was the only way to save Judith, that any other way would have killed them both, that Lori had insisted she do it. And sometimes she starts to and decides that reasoning doesn’t mean jack shit because she still sliced open her friend while she was still alive and breathing.
The scream echoes in her ears even now.
Which is why when she gets out of breath walking down the stairs and then five minutes later rushes to puke up her eggs into the toilet, she’s overwhelmed with nothing but pure, icy terror, meeting Glenn’s kid-in-a-candy-store excitement harshly like two different drafts clashing into a cold front.
“We don’t even know if it means nothin’ yet,” she says as levelly as she can, bending to spit her foamy toothpaste spit into the sink. “Don’t get all worked up on me and then mope about like a sad puppy when it’s nothin’.”
“But what if it’s not nothing?” Glenn persists, leaning back against the shower door, one of his ridiculous grins plastered across his face. Might as well have been glued on, with how long it’s gone without wavering since he connected the dots. “It could absolutely be not nothing, we’ve done it enough-”
“What are you, five years old?” Maggie asks coolly, bracing her hands on the sink and bowing her head, not particularly wanting to get an eyeful of her reflection at the moment. “Do you want it to be...not nothin’?”
“Mags, I don’t - I want that so bad- ” Glenn says earnestly, shifting his weight about antsily from foot to foot. “We - we could have a kid. Our kid. That would be awesome- ”
“It would not be awesome!” Maggie snaps, her brown hair flopping in her eyes as she spins her head to the side, rounding on him. “In case you’ve forgotten, Glenn, the dead are walkin’ around eating the living, we’ve got a whole army of hostile thieves watchin’ this place like hawks, and our ‘doctor’ is a psychiatrist- ”
And then she feels bad, because Glenn is now inadvertently making the exact same face she knew she’d get if it turned out to be nothing other than stress, that kicked puppy look that she hates because it’s too damn sad. “I’m sorry-” Glenn starts, but Maggie stops him with a raised hand.
“No. I’m sorry. Not fair to you to yell, ‘course you’re excited. I...I wouldn’t mind it, if it wasn’t…”
“You’re thinking about Lori,” Glenn guesses softly, reading Maggie’s mind the way only he can. She loves that about him, that he never has to try to tug words out of her that she doesn’t want to say because he already knows as much as he needs to. “About...what happened to her.”
Maggie nods, a little stiffly, and then she tastes salt as a lump swells up in her throat like she’s trying to swallow a golf ball. “You - you weren’t there, Glenn, you didn’t see-”
“You’re right,” he says, just as softly, stepping towards her slowly. “I wasn’t. I didn’t see. But I can imagine, I think - Mags, I get it-”
“No. You don’t.” Maggie’s breath hitches on a wheezing half-sob that catches in her chest and her knuckles tighten around the sink until they turn nearly as white as the porcelain. “You can’t. ”
“Okay,” Glenn says again, and he rests one warm, calloused hand on her shoulder, the familiar weight just barely soothing her jangled nerves. “Okay. I don’t get it. Can you help me get it?”
“I - I had my hands inside her, ” Maggie manages, staring down at the faint remains of the foamy toothpaste in the sink, dribbling slowly towards the drain, so that she can keep avoiding the cold, hard truth of the mirror. “My - my bare hands, in her organs - I felt her go limp, felt her quit breathing - she died, Glenn, she died and it was awful, all sliced open and bloody on the concrete, and Judith wouldn’t cry - she died in a minute, just died right there on the floor with my hands inside her- ”
Then she can’t take anymore and she breaks down sobbing, and Glenn gently takes her wrists and guides her around to face him, her tears soaking into his shirt. She rests her hands on his shoulders and curls her fists into bunches of the soft cotton fabric as Glenn’s hand slowly smooths down her back, trying to soothe her. He can’t stand to see her cry, would do anything to protect her from even the slightest distress, and she finally feels safe as his strong arm wraps around her shoulders to keep her close to him.
“I don’t want to die,” Maggie says weakly through her tears, pulling her head back just the slightest bit. “I don’t want to die...not like that… ”
“I know,” Glenn says quietly, his hand stilling briefly between her shoulder blades, feeling the reassuring rise and fall of her chest, the reminder that Maggie at least is still breathing, before resuming its slow, comforting strokes down her back. He sounds lost, and not in the cute way he did when she was still toying with him, just to see how high she could get him to jump. He just doesn’t know what to say anymore.
Maggie finally disengages herself from his embrace, because vulnerability still feels foreign to her, even knowing that Glenn would hold her like that all day if she asked. She wipes quickly at her eyes, her sleeves darkening with wet splotches from the tears, and a glance at Glenn’s shirt reveals a conspicuous wet patch. “Got you all wet…”
“Don’t worry about my shirt, ” Glenn says dismissively, despite the fact that one spot is so damp it’s clinging to his skin. “I can change, but Mags...I’m an idiot, I hadn’t even thought about-”
“Only I get to call you an idiot,” Maggie scolds him fondly, feeling a hint of a smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “My right and mine alone, you hear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Glenn says humbly, and he’s got a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth too. “What are we going to do…?”
“We’re going to be adults about this and talk ,” Maggie insists, sinking down to sit on the closed toilet seat. “We could have kids. We could. And we might be about to.”
“But you just said, it’s dangerous - everything with Lori-”
“Yeah, well, bein’ alive’s dangerous too, now, isn’t it?” Maggie laughs without much humor, looking up at the ceiling. “Not much left that ain’t dangerous anymore.”
“Mags, I couldn’t lose you…” Glenn leans back up against the shower, his arms folded as he chews thoughtfully on his lower lip. “You’re my number one. If it’s too risky-”
“Oh, it’s risky,” Maggie agrees. “It’s risky and it’s scary and I ain’t at all about to commit just yet. But what if it was like before? What if we could guarantee I’d make it through just fine? How’d you feel about it then?”
Glenn pauses before he answers, thinking through his response. Finally, the words come to him and he speaks up, a little dreamily. “We could build something together. Have a kid of our own. And like you said, we might be about to...I want to build something like that with you.”
God, I love you. That’s the only thing Maggie can think of as she watches him, clearly not finished but still hesitating a bit.
“But it’s up to you. It’s one hundred percent up to you. Because we already have something great, the best thing I’ve ever had, and the last thing I want to do is ever see you hurt. And you have every right to be scared, to not want to do this, and...it’s your call. Do or don’t, I’ll be here. And if you do want to do this...I’ll do anything I can. Everything I can. To make it better, to make it as good for you as it can be.” Glenn dips his head a little awkwardly like he’s yielding his time, shuffling his feet a little on the bathroom floor.
“I married you for a reason,” Maggie whispers, fresh tears glazing her eyes as she wraps her arms around his neck, burying her head in his shoulder. “I want...I want kids with you, but only if it’s with you. Only if you’re by my side every step of the way. I can’t do somethin’ like this alone.”
“Couldn’t chase me away,” Glenn vows, and then Maggie sobs again because they’re going to have a baby, or at least try their damnedest to get one, and she whispers as such to Glenn, and he almost sobs too as he hugs her back.
“Glenn?” Maggie says suddenly, tears abruptly drying as she lifts her head.
“Mags?”
“I’m goin’ to throw up.”
“Oh, shit, here-” Glenn turns her around easily, hands on her hips as he guides her back over to the toilet. His warm hands drift up slowly, sweeping her hair back behind her ears in one smooth motion. “I gotcha.”
She tries to think of it as a good sign; that she’s getting her wish. It’s hard to do when her mouth tastes like how burning rubber smells, but she manages just a bit, letting her head rest on Glenn’s shoulder when she’s done. “Go on a run for me, okay? Take Tara with you, don’t go out by yourself again, you know that worries me. ‘N grab me a pregnancy test. We know you’re good at finding those.”
Glenn flushes pink, remembering their first awkward tryst in a drugstore back in Georgia. “Don’t think we’ll be needing the condoms this time around, though.”
“Be a bit counterproductive, don’t ya think?”
Glenn laughs softly, leaning around to kiss her cheek. “One pregnancy test, coming right up. Although I’ll probably actually grab a couple, can’t be too careful...you’ll be okay alone?”
“As long as you’re coming back to me.”
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“Well.”
Maggie stares at the four different brands of tests laid out in front of her, all taken and ready to be flipped over. “We’re really doing this.”
“Let’s just do it,” Glenn suggests, practically twitching with anticipation. “Not the end of the world if it’s negative, we can always keep trying…”
“Yeah.” Maggie nods, still staring at all four neat little pink tests. “Okay. Let’s just do it.”
“I’ll flip two and you flip two?” Glenn offers, and Maggie agrees, so they each grab two of the tests and then before they can hesitate any longer, just get it over and flip them.
There’s a total of eight lines staring back at Maggie, one set of two little pink lines on each test. “That’s a resounding vote for yes, ” Glenn mumbles, staring at them like they’ve come from another planet. “You’re…”
“I’m pregnant,” Maggie finishes, and her ears are ringing slightly, and her voice doesn’t quite feel like her own. “I’m pregnant.”
“We’re having a baby, Maggie - we’re having a baby- ” Something about that, maybe the change in phrasing or just hearing it a second time or maybe it’s just the plain old ecstasy in Glenn’s voice, but the shellshock fades away into a rush of joy that’s barely tinged by the fear from before, and Maggie lets both hands rest lightly on her stomach, which doesn’t feel any different from before the tests, not in the slightest. There’s a baby in there, her and Glenn’s baby, and she’s still worried, but not nearly as much as before. Not with it all so real and in reach, just months away from holding her and Glenn’s baby in her arms, and Maggie decides almost completely, capturing all but the very most distant, foreign, frightened parts of her, that the risk is worth it. It’s absolutely worth it to be building this with Glenn.
“I love you,” she tells him, gently taking his hand and guiding it to her stomach. Glenn touches almost reverently, his fingers almost imperceptibly trembling as his fingers rest over the fabric of her black tank top. “I love you so much. And I love this. That we’re doing this together. Even if it’s still scarin’ me.”
“Anything for you,” Glenn swears, his hand resting on her stomach like he never wants to take it off. “I’ll get you anything. I’ll get you the fucking moon if you want it, because we’re having a baby- ”
“I don’t know ‘bout the moon,” Maggie teases lightly, her hand resting over his. “Got no use for the moon. What you can do is take me baby shopping next week. Maternity clothes, baby clothes, formula, a crib… ”
“I know just the place,” Glenn promises, and then he leans down to kiss her again, and Maggie doesn’t hesitate to reciprocate. There’s going to be a crib in her house, and a drawer full of baby clothes, and Maggie makes up her mind right then and there that she won’t be dying, not anytime soon. She could live for a thousand years with something like this to live for.