AN: This is just a little Richonne one-shot that someone requested. I hope I did it justice.
I own nothing from the Walking Dead.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Everyone had bad days at work. A horrible day at the office. Those kinds of days that meant a drink when you got home and you couldn't wait to get out of those shoes.
Michonne had them all the time. She remembered them well.
Sometimes it was a particularly difficult case. It was the kind of case that she studied over for hours and still felt hopeless about. It sent her home to nurse her oncoming migraine. Sometimes it was a ruling that went in a direction that she never imagined it could've ever gone. Sometimes it was finding out that she was going up in front of the honorable Judge Benson—an old man who would've hated her for being a woman and would've hated her for being black, but found the combination of the two to be absolutely unbearable—and would lose just on principle. And sometimes it was simply a case of a client that she couldn't stand to work with but was forced to represent for one reason or another.
Rick, as a police officer, certainly had seen his share of bad days at work. A bad day could mean any number of things for him. It could mean any number of problems—some of which would trickle down to someone like Michonne—and a good day was only really had when there was nothing much to speak of in the way of excitement.
Things hadn't really changed all that much, perhaps. There were still bad days at work and a good day was still a day when there was really nothing much to speak of in the way of excitement.
But this was a different world, and a bad day in this one? It was usually a really bad day.
When Michonne came out of the bathroom and saw Rick sitting on the side of the bed, his elbows on his knees, the dirty evidence of his day all over his body, she knew exactly what kind of day it had been. The details, perhaps, were masked at the moment but nobody looked that filthy after a good day. Nobody looked that dragged down after a good day.
"Get up," Michonne said. "Get in the shower."
Rick looked at her.
There was a fine balance to be found between love that was too tough and love that was just tough enough. If she was going to love a man like Rick Grimes, Michonne had to find that balance and she had to master it as surely as she'd mastered anything else in life. Being too soft with Rick wouldn't have any effect at all. Being too hard with him could push him toward an outburst that he'd just be sorry for later. There was a lot of weight on his shoulders and it always threatened to tip the scales in one direction or another.
Seeing that her first command to shower had no effect, Michonne adjusted her strategy. She walked toward him and reached a hand out. She touched his shoulder and kneaded it gently. He brought a hand up, absentmindedly squeezed hers, and dropped his hand to his lap again.
She'd gone on a run to protect some of the Alexandrians that were going out for the first time. They'd purposefully chosen for it to be an easy run. Nothing more to deal with, if they were lucky, than a handful of Walkers. Anyone could handle it. Judith, if she had the balance to stay on her feet that well, could have gone on the run. It was for the beginners.
Rick had gone in the other direction—his group a little more seasoned by beginner runs—and he was taking them out for something that would be a little more challenging. They needed pieces to keep their solar power up and going. They needed to make repairs. The area they needed to go in was slightly overrun and it could be tricky getting in and out. It wasn't a suicide run, but it wasn't a cake walk either. Michonne had offered to trade runs with Rick but, of course, he wasn't hearing it. He said she was better with the beginners. Her patience was better. She was better at inspiring them instead of instilling fear.
Her run had gone fine. His, more than likely, had not.
"How many?" Michonne asked.
"Three," Rick said. He shook his head at the memory of it all—a vision that would likely replay in his mind for at least a few days without end. "They didn't have to die."
"Never do," Michonne responded.
She sat on the bed next to him and moved her hand from his shoulder to his back to rub circles there. Every now and again she flexed her fingers against the tension that had made his muscles almost rock hard. She knew she hit a spot that was particularly tender when he groaned, clearly without meaning to. He rolled his shoulders in response but didn't ask her to stop, so she didn't stop.
"If they just would've listened," Rick said after a moment, still working through things. "They just wouldn't listen. They weren't paying attention. I couldn't keep an eye on everyone the whole time. I didn't even see the two that got them before they had one of them down and the other two were bit. I was too slow—Michonne? I didn't even see it before it happened."
Michonne continued the rubbing she was doing on Rick's back. She could feel some of the tension melting away and that was better than nothing at the moment. Maybe this was what he needed. He didn't need the tough love today, at least not as tough as she could dole out at times.
"You're one man," Michonne said, when she could see that he wasn't going to speak again without some kind of input from her. "You're one person in all of this. And—it's not your job to protect to everyone. You can't look in every direction at once. None of us can. That's why we go out in groups. We go out so that someone's got our back. We can't watch everything."
"Taking them out there is going to get everyone killed," Rick lamented.
Michonne hummed.
This wasn't the first time they'd had this discussion. Maybe it hadn't come in exactly the same words, but it had been picked apart before. The people of Alexandria had been sheltered. The walls of Alexandria had, until now, kept them from knowing what was really out there. In some ways that seemed like a blessing—people who had somehow avoided the horrors of the world that was now theirs to inhabit—but in many ways it was a curse. That utopia wouldn't hold forever and when the walls came down, as they'd seen, the ignorance was costing lives by the dozens. Taking them out and trying to train them when things weren't so urgent was the only way that they could possibly think to prepare the otherwise sheltered Alexandrians for things they may have to do in the not so distant future.
"Taking them out there is what's going to keep them alive," Michonne said.
"Three of them died," Rick said.
"But more of them learned how not to die," Michonne said. Her chest ached. It always did. It was a permanent condition and the result of being far too compassionate at times. She felt for other people's pain—even if she hid it better than most. Losing someone, even if she didn't know them well, felt like a hot knife in her stomach. Michonne sucked in a breath and composed herself. Rick didn't need her crumbling right now. Right now? It was his turn to do that. Later, if she needed it, he'd repay her the favor of being the rock that she could lean on. "Rick—people are going to die. Not just—them. Not just the people that weren't out there. Look at our own people. Strong people. Good people. And they still die. In moments when we don't even expect it to happen. It's going to happen. What we're doing is—trying to keep so many of them from dying."
Rick hummed at her in the negative. He shook his head but he didn't give any real words to the negation of her statement that he was thinking.
"The accidents are going to happen," Michonne said.
"I went out with them to protect them," Rick said.
"And you brought most of them back," Michonne said. "But part of taking them out there is letting them stand on their own two feet. You're out there to help them, but it's not your responsibility to do everything for everyone. That's not teaching them anything. It would get more of them killed."
Rick looked at her now, the first time he'd come out of his anguish enough to fully make eye contact with her. He shook his head gently this time.
"I'm supposed to be their leader," he said. "I'm supposed to tell them what to do. The right things to do. And I tell them to go out on these runs and they die out there. I'm—Michonne—I'm leading them to their deaths."
Michonne laughed ironically to herself.
"I think most leaders do," she admitted. "Whether or not they all come back alive doesn't make you a leader, Rick. It's whether or not they trust you enough to follow you—and to follow you again, that makes you a leader. At the end of the day? You're still just one man. And leader or not, you're still just a man."
He sighed and somewhat rolled his eyes at her.
"A man who's leading his people to their deaths in Walker attacks that should've been avoided," Rick said.
"A man—who had a really bad day at work," Michonne responded. "A man who needs to—let it go as much as he can because tomorrow is another day. And we're going to go and pay our respects to the families tonight but—what they need to see more than your sorrow? Is the promise that it all happens for a reason."
Rick's face looked pained.
"A reason," he repeated, his intonation not leaving it entirely clear if he was agreeing with her or questioning her.
"Fewer accidents in the future. More people better prepared. A brighter future," Michonne ticked off.
Rick smiled, genuinely, for just a moment and then he hummed at her.
"You sound like a commercial," he said. Michonne felt her cheeks burn warm and she smiled at him. "You sound like you're the one that should be leading them," Rick added.
Michonne raised her eyebrows at him. She felt the tightness in her chest loosen just a little. He was coming back to her.
"Behind every good leader is a woman that's getting him through the bad days," Michonne said.
She accepted the kiss that he offered her and she smiled at the expression on his face when she broke the kiss. He would relax tonight. She'd see to that. He'd be ready to go out there tomorrow, just as she would, and face it all again. Michonne pushed herself up off the bed and offered a hand out to him like he might need help getting up from where he was sitting.
"Come on," she said. "You need a shower—and I need another one. We'll go make the rounds. Give our condolences. And then we'll come home..."
He took her hand and kissed it instead of using it to pull himself up. He got to his feet on his own.
"We'll come home?" He asked, some levity to his voice that hadn't been there before. Michonne nodded at him. "You've got something in mind?" He asked. Michonne nodded again and didn't bother to bite back her smile.
"A way to spend the evening," she said.
He hummed at her and raised his eyebrows in question, all that he was giving her at the moment. The smirk on his lips, though, just made it harder for Michonne to keep her smile under control.
"What's that?" He asked, finally.
"Looking for a new blanket," Michonne said. "Because you got Walker all over our bed." Rick frowned at her, not as amused with her joke as she was, and Michonne took pity on him. "And maybe," she offered, "there'll be time for something else. But we're not discussing that until it's clear you're going to shower."