𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐍 𝐈𝐒 𝐀 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐊, carl grimes

xii. strength in the weakness

"Riley?"

The girl's mouth nearly dropped upon instant. She knew that voice, she knew it too well. Its feminine song accompanied by its southern delivery was unmistakable against the bleak sounds she'd been hearing all of recently.

Maggie Rhee stepped forward, her figure just barely illuminated in the one sliver of light they were granted. Riley could see the faint outline of her tangled, brown, hair as the woman approached closer slowly, as if fighting to believe the young girl was truly there in front of her.

"Maggie?"

The Rhee's relieved laugh practically illuminated the room despite the black all over, the sound itself splitting Riley's lips into a grin of disbelief. She stepped forward, awkwardly blinded by the lack of light, but it didn't matter, as Maggie's body surged forward and collided with the Endicott's within a matter of seconds, the older woman's arms wrapping around her as her hand held Riley's head close.

It was as if the past few days had melted into a void, shedding off of Riley and her conscious for the moment she lived in. She no longer had to spend her extraordinarily long hours of each creasing day worrying and wondering if Maggie or perhaps the others were alive, because they were right here. In front of her, Riley could see the magnificent grin on Maggie's face, feel the laughs and sobs of reassurance and ease vibrating through her body and into Riley's own. Beside them, Glenn had stepped forward and revealed his appearance to the others, the man's figure in a single glance surging the Endicott with a flood of consolation.

"You're here." Rick's statement was nearly contaminated with disbelief, although the shock of it all came heavy with the price of joy and dread. They were all there, stuck in a train car as they were wheeled to their deaths. "You're here."

Maggie's fingers brushed the hairs out of Riley's face, her dirty appendages slightly irritating the cuts and bruises along the girl's skin, but she didn't really care. The overpowering feeling of excessive delight and exhilaration blurred every small thing out.

"Thank God you're alive." Maggie's voice nearly broke in excitement. "I thought you were dead."

Riley nodded her head, no other way to express her mutual feeling across to the woman coming to her mind- although, she did always believe there was a chance Maggie had survived. The woman, despite being raised a dainty Christian girl with collective morals, had been built for this world all along.

"I'm okay." Riley said, her own mouth breaking into a chapped beam. "I'm fine."

The words were only partially true, as the girl knew that after everything she'd been chained to and pulled through in the past few days truly stripped her down of anything remotely close to "okay". But, she was alive, and she was standing there still, not yet beaten to the point where she laid her head on the ground and gave her soul up to rest with defeat. That enough gave her the motivation to say that she was okay, and that she was fine.

"Have you- have you seen Sawyer?" Riley asked suddenly, withdrawing a little from Maggie's arms to read her expression as clearly as possible. "Or Beth?"

Maggie's face dropped a little, her eyes blinking as she shook her head. "No, no I haven't. You didn't see any of them since...?"

Riley felt her stomach curl in a sickening twist as her own head shook. Maggie was there, Glenn was there, a few people in the back who the girl hadn't had a chance to look at yet were there. But Sawyer wasn't. There was the slimmest chance that he was still out there somewhere, but the world was big. For all she knew, he could've headed the exact opposite direction all of them had, and was now wandering aimlessly as he'd never seen any Terminus sign, any maps along the roads. Every joyous feeling Riley had just experience disappeared like a gust of wind wiped through her body within the course of two seconds.