open | action + video

[rheecon]

Who: Glenn Rhee - and maybe you?
Broadcast: Yes
Action: Also yes SS Starstruck
When: Shuffle Day! Plus he just arrived in time for it! Good timing, Glenn!

action: SS Starstruck ]

[ The last thing that he really knew, that he understood and processed, was that his life was over. After that, he couldn't call the details to mind, but the certainty was there. And then, something else happened. He was in a completely different place, somewhere clean, utilitarian but gleaming... and there were stars.

Truth be told, he hadn't gotten past the disbelief, gradually coming to terms with both space and his own continued existence, when suddenly everything changed around him again. Only this time, there was a little tune to greet him, confetti and dessert?

So don't mind him, far more disoriented than he's ever been, stumbling and barely keeping himself upright, staring around the bridge in building bewilderment - and it's rather immediately clear that's what it is, the stations, the windows... space again. However that happened. ]

Um... hello?

[ Eloquent. He'll get to words. Eventually. ]


video ]

I, uh... I guess this is basically like the internet? It's been a while but: Hi. My name is Glenn, and I just got here.

[ He draws a deep breath - while he's doing a bit better, he's still unsteady. ]

To space.

[ He's hoping for what he figures is the impossible... he can't bring himself to put it into words. So he leaves it there, with the dubious tone of someone who still isn't sure anything is real. Himself included. ]

Comments

[youdontneedapictureofme]

[She nods, understanding what he's saying. They've both been through grief before - together and apart. She knows he understands what it feels like for her to suddenly have the thing she wants more than anything while also losing something else. Part of her feels like a disappointment, that now it might be impossible for them to ever have their family that they wanted, but he's here and he's alive and she would give anything for that.]

Mmhmm. [She hums an answer against his shoulder, just closing her eyes and taking in how familiar it is. It made everything else feel like a bad dream.]

I know. Me too.

[She knew what it was like showing up here, not knowing what was going on or if any of this was real. The only difference was she had something to go back to. Anything he had to go back to had been taken away.]

[rheecon]

[ It's true; this is it now, for him. There isn't anywhere else for him to go, nothing to return to, no life to get on with living. Whatever life he's been granted has been granted to him here and here alone. The fact that she's here - that Carl, Daryl, Carol, any one of them are here - is beyond belief, beyond the impossible. It's more than he could have ever asked or hoped for.

Yet now that he has it, that he somehow has this renewed stay among the living, even here, that he has her... not having the family they'd been planning, hoping and waiting for, still cuts deeply.

But it does help, being here with her, weathering the grief that's each their own and shared. And so he hangs onto her, desperately, tightly, because he won't lose this. If he can just hold on, maybe he can keep them both here. He closes his eyes, dislodging a couple of stray tears in the process, and leans his head lightly on hers. ]

I love you, Maggie. I'd never stand a chance of explaining how much.

[youdontneedapictureofme]

[It cut deep, knowing that she can't give him a family. The Atroma had traded their child in for her continued stay here, now with him. It was painful, but the relief that he was alive soothed it a bit.]

I love you too. It's going to be okay.

[Maybe not completely, but she needed to tell herself that just as much as she needed to tell him.]

The others are going to be so happy to see you.

[But she gets him to herself for now. They have time to see the others. This moment is for the two of them alone.]