Shambles- The Walking Dead [Alden x Maggie] [1/2]

61- The hell it is/was

Having completely lost oneself was a weird feeling. Alden knew he was still himself, but something inside him had snapped and broken. A part of him had died with Rose and another part went with it when he beat that Reaper to death with his bare hands. He was in shambles, a shell of himself.

He stared ahead at the grimey white wall in front of him in the infirmary. His mind was empty of any thoughts but images of Rose's throat being slit open. Repeating again and again. It had already begun to haunt him.

Maggie continued to wrap up his broken and bruised knuckles. She knew it hurt, but he didn't let on once. The others were getting her ready to be buried right now. And she needed to find a way to get him to agree that they should bury her here. She was afraid that if they didn't get it over with now Alden's mental state would spiral further out of control to a place she was afraid she couldn't rescue him from.

Elijah was there too. They had splinted his hurt leg with two pieces of timber. It was crude but it worked. He felt like it was all his fault. If he hadn't walked forward she still would've been alive. It was this weird cycle of blaming yourself everyone did after someone died. Blaming yourself was the easiest way to stop it from happening again. Loss always changes people.

Even after all the deaths they had witnessed and the murders they'd committed themselves, death still managed to have a profound effect on each and every one of them under the right circumstances. Negan had begun to dig a grave without anyone even asking him to. He wanted it over and dealt with, for everyone's sake. Daryl was still out there looking for Leah. Something Gabriel wanted to do for a different reason. He wanted to go out there and kill her slow and painfully for what she'd done. It would help with his own guilt.

Carl and Jesus had taken it upon themselves to wrap Rose's body up. The first thing they'd done was clean up as much of the blood; the pool on the ground, the stream soaking her clothes down her body and the splatter on her face. For Carl this wasn't as bad as when Enid died. Back then, they hadn't even been able to find any of the victim's bodies and all they could bury were their decapitated heads. At Least Rose could be buried whole. They wrapped her up in one of the white bed sheets they'd found inside the compound. They moved carefully due to her head being nearly decapitated.

Once they had her wrapped up some blood still soaked through the sheet. They wrapped her up in a second sheet before they cut another white bed sheet into long, broad strips and tied it around her to keep it as a package.

As Negan stared down at the empty grave he decided one thing; he needed to leave. If he left he would give all of them a chance to restart and he would be an easier target to throw their hate and anger at. The only thing that kept him back was Lydia. She still needed people to look out for her because she was just a kid after all. But then he was also sure that someone would look out for her.

At the moment Gabriel was the only person gathering supplies and packing them onto the wagon to take back to Alexandria. He'd quickly found out that the Reapers had only left one of the draft horses alive. Luckily, the one horse could get them home.

"There." Maggie pasted down the last bandage wrapped around Alden's wrist and knuckles. "Does that feel any better?" She brushed her hand past his cheek as she asked the question to get his attention.

His eyes fluttered slightly, clearly reacting to her gentle touch. He looked up from his lap and met her eyes. His eyes were still glassy and distant. He looked utterly broken and barely recognizable. He was the idiot that had stuck with her through the hell that this world was and she couldn't recognize him now. She knew he was still in there, somewhere. Somewhere she couldn't see at the moment.