Chapter Text
Sweat runs down Judith's forehead as she digs, her palms blistering against rusted metal. The shovel she uses already in a state of decay.
She thinks of her brother Carl as she works. She thinks about how it all began.
Of course, things didn't really start with Carl. He was not the first loss, and far was he from the last.
If she were being objective with her story, it would have to begin with her original mother.
She would recall the tragic tale of her birth. How she came into the world already sullied in death. Pulled from her mother's corpse, the cord cut with a fragment of glass. A fragment of something once whole. A fragment that split into the skin of her aunt Maggie's fingers as she gripped it in her bloodied hand.
But Judith is not objective, and the sun has almost set. So, in her mind, it began with Carl.
After all, he was everything to her way back when. And remains almost everything to her now. Almost.
For her first 6 years, Carl might have been the only person in the entire world for all it was relevant. Him being the only one she remembers. Carl was the one who interacted with her each day and sung her back to sleep when the inevitable terrors came each night.
Terrors not befitting of a six-year-old. Terrors of rotting bodies she didn't yet fully understand to be dead but had seen enough to know were not living.
Terrors of a sodden barn, and of rain bulleting against leaking ceiling planks. Of her brother desperately shielding her as walkers pressed monstrously against buckling doors.
Terrors of fire, and people not rotted, but still not quite human. Of being in her brother's arms, as she always is in her earliest memories, while he fled with her through the warring streets of their home.
Judith sometimes wonders if her brother ever put her down those first few years. If he ever felt safe enough to.
But in the end, he did put her down. And when he did, all her night terrors corroded into one single dream.
A dingy sewer with rusted walls that shook with the stampede of war overhead. A bed of rags. The bed of her brother, the last one he would ever lie in. The one they shared for only a few seconds as she clung to him. Only six, she didn't really know. Didn't know that when Daryl pulled her away, she would never again feel safe. Didn't know that after that day, she could never be home again.
His death finally became real the first night she woke up terrified and called for him, only for nobody to come.
His hat, which someone had left hooked on the foot of her bed, shone ghostly in the moonlight.
She hadn't noticed it before. Could have sworn it wasn't there when she went to bed, because of course it wasn't, it was on her brother's head like always.
Only it wasn't. And that night Judith clung to it and never let go.
After Carl there wasn't much time to find her footing before her dad, who exists in her mind like a legend rather than a memory, left and never returned.
They found him in bits, though nobody told Judith that. They didn't need to, her mom's refusal to let her see the body before it was buried told her what they couldn't.
As she grew, Judith heard people say strange things about her mom. Things like how different she became after losing her dad and Carl. But Judith doesn't know about that, Michonne was just the person she always had been as far as she could remember.
For just under nine months after her dad got himself blown up, Judith remembers existing in a sort of limbo. Always with her mom, though rarely were they out of bed.
Their neighbour Aaron brought food and always offered to take Judith to play with his daughter Gracie for a while. But Judith refused to leave her mom. Because everything hurt, and if she left the house her brother wouldn't be there, and if Carl couldn't play then she didn't want to either.
Then her baby brother was born, and once again everything changed.
For his first few months of life, all Judith can remember is how loud he was.
Then somewhere, at some point, Rj was never loud again. And Judith would often wonder if anyone but her noticed.
Regardless, it wasn't long after she and their mother Michonne started sleeping through the night again that time picked up from a funerals waltz to a neck breaking jig. And very quickly RJ went from something too fragile for Judith to hold to a constant weight in her arms.
Michonne started leaving the house again, and Rj began to walk. Soon, he was old enough to eat real food, and old enough to cry whenever his toast was split and not quartered. Old enough for it to become obvious he was different, and for the neighbour kids to begin avoiding him.
Except Gracie. Gracie was something else entirely.
Without her, Judith doesn't think she could have done it for so long. Gracie was the one who figured out it was noise which set Rj off into a meltdown. And she helped Judith ask around the town for a pair of headphones so Rj could play at the makeshift park without freezing up.
Together they made it work. Together, life wasn't so hard for the three of them.
Until they went to war with the whispers, and Daryl brought both her and Gracie's parents heads home in a bag.
They were only eleven then. Rj was barely four.
Uncle Daryl tried his best to raise the three of them after that with support from their aunt Carol. But it was obvious Carol wasn't well, not after losing a second child in the war. Her marriage fell apart with Ezekiel, and she with it.
In the end, Daryl spent most of his time cleaning up Carol's messes. Right up until she lashed out and killed the whisper leader's daughter Lydia, forcing her to flee.
Of course, Daryl went with her, Judith can't even blame him. If it had been Gracie or Rj, she would have followed them to the end of the earth.
For a while, things came to a standstill. With Rick, Michonne, Daryl, and Carol gone, the town needed a leader. Only nobody could agree on who.
To stop the brewing fight as community members started picking sides, a council was formed.
Gracie moved in with Judith and Rj the summer they both turned fourteen. Rj turned seven that year and took a growth spurt to boot.
Everything became more involved after that. He started having violent outbursts during his meltdowns. Judith would beg him to take it out on her, but it was always his own head that he would bang and hit. His own hands he would bite.
As soon as Gracie came round for breakfast and noticed the bruise on Rj's head and the redness in Judith's own eyes, she packed her things and moved in from her dads old house.
They never had a conversation about it. Just like they never had a conversation when Gracie started sleeping in Judith's bed a year later.
Judith doesn't remember their first kiss. It was so natural, so gradual, that she can't fathom the idea that there was ever a beginning. In her mind, they simply were and always had been.
Gracie was a part of Judith and Judith was a part of Gracie. If Judith believed in soulmates, she would say Gracie was hers.
Rj was only nine when it became apparent something wasn't right. First it was the headaches. He would wake her and Gracie up screaming every other night. Clutching his head, unable to communicate where or how it hurt. Pain killers would not touch it.
And Judith could only watch her brother in pain for so long before she would fall apart herself. So, Gracie would push her out the room and tell her to go back to sleep.
Only Judith couldn't sleep. Instead, she would curl up with her ears covered in their shared bed and wait for Gracie to return. Sometimes it would be hours before Rj exhausted himself enough to pass out, but after, Gracie always came back.
She would crawl into bed and hold onto Judith tightly until morning.
Two months after the headaches, Rj had his first seizure. By the following month, he had four more.
It got to the point where she and Gracie couldn't leave him alone anymore. Both of them taking turns to stay home with him during the day since Rj would get upset if he was away from the house too long.
The town doctor didn't know what was wrong, and they had nothing to treat seizures. It wasn't until the vomiting started that her and Gracie were told they needed to prepare for the worst.
Brain cancer.
It was confirmed not long after when Rj's vision started to go. Of course nothing was 100%, not without the ability to perform any tests. Cancer was simply the most likely prognosis.
Besides, they had no way to operate in any case. If there was a tumour, they would have no chance of locating it. And even if they knew where it was, there was nobody in any community capable of brain surgery.
The day the doctor told them to prepare, all Judith could think was how much she needed her big brother.
When Rj was born, something that had died inside her grew anew. She was a sister again. She had a brother. And he was hers to protect, only hers. Nobody else could be relied on.
And so, she vowed not to die. Not to leave Rj like Carl was forced to leave her.
Only, in all the years of raising him, it never occurred to her that Rj might be the one to leave. She had always assumed she could keep him safe.
How could she have imagined something would come for him that she couldn't save him from? That she couldn't fight.
But something did come, and her little brother was dying.
Gracie found her the next morning after the doctor told them what to expect. Unmoving In the sewers beneath their town. Curled up in the bed her brother last held her in. His hat clutched to her chest, her knuckles bloody and bruised.
She doesn't remember how Gracie got her to leave that bed. All she knows is that Gracie did and continued to do so every morning after that.
During the day Judith felt detached. Like she was a puppet mindless in a play. Forced to act out a story already fated with a forgone conclusion.
She tried to be normal for Rj, and some days it was easier than others. Some days her brother was so like himself she could be convinced the doctor was wrong. That Rj would grow up.
Then there were the days she found herself already grieving him. When Rj was so far from himself that she couldn't see him as anything but a Walker.
Those were the days when even Gracie couldn't get him to eat. And Judith couldn't get him interested in any of his toys. The days when he would curl up in her lap and sleep the day away on her chest. Only waking up to be sick, or God forbid, have a seizure.
Both Gracie and Judith quit working eventually. Demanding their rations to be given freely while they cared for Rj.
Thankfully, Judith's late mother and father were akin to heroes within their community. Both great fallen leaders. So, nobody put up a fight when Judith made demands. They didn't have the gall.
A year after the symptoms began, Rj took a turn for the worse. Judith was barely 17, but she already felt aged beyond her years.
Losing a child changes people, and Rj was her child. He was her brother and her child both. Judith thinks that's how Carl felt about her, now she is older and wiser.
Rj became too weak to get out of bed not long after turning ten. On his good days, she or Gracie would carry him downstairs to sit in the garden. Both of them trying to ignore how much lighter Rj was than the previous time they held him.
Outside their little house, war was brewing with a new community discovered a day's journey from them. The commonwealth wanted to expand into not just Alexandria, but all the surrounding communities.
Judith saw her aunt Maggie for the first time in years when the news of war came. At first, the woman walked right past her, clearly not recognising the child who she once cut out from its mother.
Then she did a double take, finally stopping. After her meeting with the council, Judith invited her round for dinner. It was a quiet affair, though to her credit Maggie didn't bat an eye when Judith kissed Gracie in greeting.
Things soured some when Maggie asked if Rj was with a friend, and both her and Gracie realised she didn't have a clue about their situation.
Maggie left later that evening, looking lost as they said goodbye. Judith offered for her to see Rj in his room, but Maggie told them she couldn't.
And maybe Judith understood. In a vague sense. She hadn't been close with her aunt since before her mom passed. And even as a little girl, Maggie was always distant. Judith grew up hearing stories about her uncle Glenn, Maggie's husband, but most of those stories were in relation to his murder at the hands of Negan in the first war.
Judith doesn't remember him, but everyone went on about how Maggie was never the same after losing him. And when Judith looked at her aunts hardened gaze, she thought she could believe it.
The next time Judith heard of her aunt five months had passed.
The war was in full swing, but neither Judith nor Gracie went to fight. Rj's hearing was practically gone by then. And his trips to the garden were safely in the past. The seizures came almost every day, and the nausea never went away by that point.
Gracie was upstairs trying to coax Rj to eat when someone knocked on the door. Judith had been trying to catch up on sleep since it was her turn to stay up with her brother that night.
When she opened the door, the person on the other side was distinctly from hilltop. He had the handmade clothes almost all of Maggie's people wore, and his weapons were clearly Made by their blacksmith.
Hilltop had fallen to the commonwealth, and Maggie had been killed defending her son. Judith didn't ask what happened to her cousin Hershel, the answer was written all over the messenger's face. Hershel had been only a few years younger than her, but they had never met. From what Judith had heard, Maggie rarely let her son leave the walls.
That night, Gracie and Judith packed their bags. The war was lost. Ocean side had been taken a few weeks prior, and now the commonwealth had a base at hilltop only a few miles from them.
Most of their fighters were dead, and the ones who weren't were in the throes of grief.
Both Judith and Gracie agreed they wouldn't stick around just to be killed when they came for Alexandria.
And though neither said it, they both knew Rj didn't have long. Judith would be dammed if the end of his life was anything but peaceful.
He would not die like their big brother. He would not be like Carl, who was forced to hide in a sewer as he died. Listening to the sound of their home being destroyed.
Her and Gracie stole one of the cars Alexandria kept for emergencies only considering gas was so rare by then. And by sunrise the next morning they were miles from the only real sanctuary any of them had known.
For two days they drove, until they found a tiny cabin seemingly abandoned. Surrounding it there was a forest in which they could hunt, and it wasn't far from a lake where they could get water.
It was perfect.
And now, the grave is finally complete. This year's summer has been a scorcher so far, but Judith is glad this will be how it ends. She must be 18 now, as old as her big brother got.
As old as she'll get.
"Are you ready?" Gracie comes up behind her, causing Judith to jump.
Turning around to face her wife, she smiles softly when she sees her brother cradled in Gracie's arms. Her wedding band catching in the sun, causing Judith to caress a thumb down her own. The two of them were wed earlier that month.
"Yeah. I'm ready." Judith agrees.
Together, they lay Rj gently in the ground and cover him up. A strange peace settling between them as the final bit of soil is laid down.
"I don't have long now." Gracie whispers quietly once they are finished, allowing Judith to pull her in for a soft kiss. Her lips are hot, and her skin is feverish. The bite on her neck black and infected.
"Together then?" Judith asks her softly, wiping a tear from her girlfriend's eye as she nods.
They're both trembling as they fall into each other's arms, the sun setting behind them for a final time. Judith can feel the kiss of metal at the base of her neck, pushing her to raise her own gun behind Gracie's curls.
Still in each other's arms, they say goodbye.
Then, with a final breath, Judith closes her eyes. Thinking in those last moments how glad she is to be going home.