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She and Glenn made a list, in the beginning. Hershel for a boy, Beth for a girl. The obvious ones. Shawn. Patricia. (Otis got vetoed pretty early on.) Glenn told her he didn’t want the baby to be named after his sisters or mother because he didn’t know, he just didn’t know. Where they were. How they died. If they died. Naming the baby in their honor wouldn’t bring any closure, just more questions.
There are a couple they just like. Susan. Andrew. Peter. Annie.
Names got added and dropped as time went by. Patricia got nixed after Maggie woke up from a nightmare. Aaron and Erin joined the list. After Alexandria got overrun, after she got down from the watchtower, after everything, Maggie added Deanna to the list.
Maggie used to say that the day the Governor showed up at the prison and murdered her father, that that was the worst day of her life. She used to say that.
And then her husband was beaten to death in front of her with a bloody baseball bat.
“She’s sick,” Sasha explains, leading Maggie into Harlan’s office after they’ve reached the Hilltop. The bodies are still in the RV outside, and Maggie feels like she’s with them. Just another dead body, walking around and talking and pretending to be alive. “We don’t know… she needs help.”
“I’ve got her,” Harlan promises, and he takes Maggie and leads her to a cot in the corner. “You were good to get her here.” And somehow he sees it then, sees the droop in Sasha’s shoulders, the dried tears, the ghosts. He stares at her.
“We, um,” Sasha says, feeling like she’s been running on adrenaline, on fumes, and now she’s too low. “We were stopped by Negan and the Saviors. We lost… we lost two of our own.”
Harlan gets it then, thinks he knew the second Maggie showed up. Because with his wife in this bad of a shape, Glenn would have been there. Glenn would have been there if he could. “I’m so sorry,” he says, and he has no goddamn idea what to say. This is life now. If you’re still standing it’s a blessing. From Negan.
“Just help her.”
Maggie gets better but she doesn’t go home. Sasha stays, too. She stands with her gun at the top of the watch post and wait for the Saviors, knowing she can’t do a damn thing to them if they come. When they come. Maggie works in the garden and she gets to watch vegetables grow, just like Glenn promised they would. She gets to see life in the dirt beneath her fingertips. She thinks about names and the future and she tries not to think about Alexandria.
Every community in the new world has a graveyard. It’s a universal constant.
Glenn and Abraham are buried next to each other on the Hilltop. Sasha scrounges up some wildflowers for their markers. Life goes on, jilted and painful, but it goes on.
Harlan’s got her on the table prepped for her latest ultrasound when they hear the commotion outside. “I’ll,” he says, starting to leave, but Maggie grips his arm hard enough to leave fingernail marks.
“Don’t.” She’s thinking of her baby who doesn’t have a name, she’s thinking of Glenn, of Glenn, of Glenn.
Negan walks into Harlan’s office, leisurely like it doesn’t matter. Like he’s just another person. Harlan stands up straight and stiff and tall beside the cot and Maggie hardly reacts. She’s thinking of Glenn.
“Well,” Negan says, and his eyes light up when he sees Maggie, when he sees the telltale bump, the ultrasound machine. “Well. Just swung by—” he punctuates with a swing of Lucille—“to check on y’all. And… and what wonderful news. You are expecting.”
“Negan—”
“Why don’t you go wait outside, Doctor?” Harlan hesitates, looking from Maggie to the man at the door. “Why don’t you do wait outside, Doctor,” Negan repeats. “Or I introduce the little girl in your waiting room to my lady friend.” He holds up the bat. Harlan clenches his jaw so hard it might break.
“Go,” Maggie whispers, letting go of his arm. “Just go. I’ll be fine.”
“Maybe,” Negan smirks. Harlan edges around him and leaves, and then it’s just Negan and Maggie alone. “So,” Negan says, beginning to pace around the small office. Maggie doesn’t know if she should watch him or look away, what’s better, what’s safer. She’s thinking about Glenn. “Boy or girl?”
She doesn’t want to risk not answering. “I don’t know,” Maggie tells him. She could know by now, she’s got the technology. But Glenn didn’t want to know until the baby was born. And so she’s thinking about Glenn, and what he wanted. “We… I don’t want to know until the baby’s born.”
“Mmm,” Negan nods. “Cute. That’s, that’s real sweet. Bringing new life into the world. It’s a cause for celebration.” He swings Lucille in his hand. He draws near the foot of the cot and Maggie tenses up, acutely aware of her half-naked body beneath the sheet, of her exposed belly. He notices. “Oh, come on,” he says, drawling, looking mock-offended. “I’m not some kind of a pervert. But I must say, you don’t look so shitty anymore. You know? You glow.”
Maggie grits her teeth and meets his eyes. “Why are you here?”
“I was just collecting,” he shrugs. “Heard the happy news. Had to see for myself.” She doesn’t know what to say, what not to say. He could kill her and the baby right now just because. Just for shits and giggles. “So what about names? You got one or two picked out? Maybe Glenn Jr.?” She flinches involuntarily and it makes him grin. “Hey, I got an idea. Maybe you name him after me. Little Negan, huh? A little thank-you for not smashing him to pieces in the womb.” She’s thinking of the baby and the people back home and she’s thinking of Glenn, of Glenn, of Glenn, of Glenn. She stays strong and she stays quiet. “Or maybe it’s a girl,” Negan says, strolling around the cot. “You know, I… I always liked the name Lucille.”
“No.”
“Watchitbitch,” he says like it’s all one word, and he’s leaning into her space and breathing right in her face and filling her field of vision, smelling like cigarettes and leather and copper. “I can crush your skull and walk out of here like it’s nothing. Or I can smash that baby bump in with Lucille until there’s nothing left. I can walk in here on your due date and collect that kid, raise it as my own. Or feed it to the dead. Whatever the fuck I want. And you would let me. Okay?”
Maggie’s hands are shaking and she’s blinking furiously, trying to think, trying to breathe. He won’t let her. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
He laughs before backing away, hefting the bat over his shoulder. “Aw, lighten up,” he tells her. “You’re having a baby.”
When he finally leaves, Maggie feels herself sink back onto the cot, the stiffness melting from her body.
The baby kicks.
“Shh,” she says, rubbing a hand over the spot on her belly. “It’s okay,” she promises the baby. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”
When Maggie visits Glenn’s grave, she always ends up looking at the markers around it. People she never knew. She thinks about their names— after all, they’re not using them anymore. Katherine. Rory. Derek. Mallory.
She has the baby on a quiet day, and she’s grateful for that even as she fills the silence with screaming. But it’s a good day, an empty day. No one is going hungry, no one is hurt, the Saviors are nowhere around. Rick and Rosita had been up at the Hilltop just the week before, so Maggie wasn’t too worried about Alexandria. Things were the same back there. Nothing was better, but nothing was worse.
Sasha and Harlan are in the room when the baby lets out its first cry, and Maggie’s smile splits her face. Sasha’s holding her hand and Harlan’s got the baby, small and red and loud. “It’s a boy,” he tells her, and he wraps the kid up in cloths and hands him to Maggie.
It’s a boy. For a long moment, she’s terrified, because he’s going to grow up and look like Glenn. He’s going to grow up and look like Glenn and break her heart. But he’s going to grow up. The moment passes. He’s going to grow up. She’s going to keep him safe.
Warm in her arms, Maggie’s baby squints up at her, blinks, taking in the new world. He reaches out his tiny hand and extends his tiny fingers and he’s so, so beautiful. “Hey,” she whispers, clutching him to her chest, unsure that she ever wants to let him go. “Hey, baby. Hey. It’s me.” Sasha and Harlan both laugh a little, and for a second Maggie understands what her son is to the rest of the Hilltop— hell, to the rest of the world. Hope. Change. A promise.
“So,” Sasha says finally, “have you thought of a name?”
And Maggie thinks. She thinks about her list of names, and all the dead people whose dead names were on that list. She thinks about Hershel and Shawn and Andrew and Peter and Aaron and Negan and Rory and Derek. She thinks about Glenn, Glenn, Glenn, Glenn, Glenn.
“Alex,” she says finally, looking down at her little baby. “Alex, for Alexandria. Because… because I want him to know what his daddy died for. I want him to know what we were fighting for. What we did it all for.”
Alex gets passed around the Hilltop much the way Judith gets passed around back at Alexandria. Everyone loves him— Jesus especially. Alex is a grabber and he loves Jesus’ hair. As much as the people of the Hilltop love to hold the baby, Maggie never lets him out of her sight (or her arms) for long. She’s keeping her baby safe.
Plans are made. Weapons are acquired. Once the Hilltop and Alexandria and the Kingdom all collaborate, they manage to find the supplies and the resolve to go after Negan and the Saviors. Finally, together, they have the numbers. Doesn’t mean they won’t lose people. It just means they’ll come away victorious.
For once, they know it.
Maggie leaves Alex with Harlan, because sometimes protecting her son means holding him close and sometimes it means fighting for him.
Maggie fights. Maggie wins.
Maggie comes back to the Hilltop with the others, standing at the gates all tired and bruised but alive. She’s covered every inch of her in blood; the bat in her hand doesn’t have a drop on it. “It’s done,” she tells Gregory. “Negan’s dead. They’re all… we’re done.” She breathes in, out, again. “Later this week… you and me are meeting with King Ezekiel. Working out trade. No Negan.”
Jesus smiles beside her. “Welcome to the new world.”
Maggie hands the bat to Gregory. “You can hang that up in your office,” she tells him. “Or burn it. I don’t really care.” And she goes to see her son.
It’s a study in shadows and light, the sight of Maggie, streaked with dirt and blood, scooping up her clean baby. “Hey,” she says, whispering into the top of his head, his wisps of dark hair. “It’s okay. I’m okay. We’re okay.”
Sasha pokes her head into the room. “Maggie,” she says. “Let’s go home.”
They make the drive back home in a beaten-up Buick, having returned the RV long ago. Sasha drives and Maggie sits beside her with Alex in her lap, feeding him when he needs it and comforting him when he cries.
“I’m sorry about Abraham,” she says. She can’t remember if she’s said it before, and isn’t that awful? There’s too much grief. Everything overshadows everything else.
Sasha looks at her and then back at the road. “Thank you.”
They reach the wall right after sunset. If she squints, Maggie can make out Father Gabriel standing at the top of the watch post. Sasha gets out of the car and waves to him. Someone shouts. The gate slowly begins to slide open.
The baby’s eyes are wide, searching. Maggie holds him close to her chest and smiles. “Alex,” she says, “welcome to Alexandria.”