A quick note: I'm not writing the entire story in 2nd person, just this prologue. I know that tense can be off putting for some, so I wanted to clear that up right away. Second, this is technically my second attempt at TWD fic, the first falling dead in the water when another fic went in the same direction I was intending and doing it so beautifully that my muse capitulated. I am very committed to this, however. I hope you enjoy!
There's blood between us, love, my love,
There's father's blood, there's brother's blood,
And blood's a bar I cannot pass.
-Christina Georgina Rossetti, The Convent Threshold
Blood Between Us
Prologue: 29 Days Without an Accident
She smiles at you across your bounty and it's there again: the sudden catch in your chest that squeezes everything like a fist. Not brutal and violent, but tender and strong and exactly like you imagine her hands would be. She's reached inside your chest and gripped your heart, massaging it every time you please her, every time she teases you. Slowly she's working it into something and you can't help the absurd thought that you hope its final shape aligns perfectly with her own.
This is what she does, turns you upside down and poetic and all you can do is clear your throat and mutter something about field dressing. She nods and surveys the kill and you feel puffed up by how pleased she is with it. You want to thump your chest and strut around and make sure everyone knows you're a provider.
Her provider.
A clap on your back breaks the spell of pride and machismo and Rick is there, telling you how well the deer meat will go with the peas he's been growing. She smiles at him too, but you've catalogued every twitch of her lips and know the difference. The smiles she gives to you are different, special, just for you. Rick has his own smile too; she's got them for so many people⦠But while her smile for Rick is just as warm, just as comforting, you can see the slight flag of worry behind it, the smallest hint that she isn't entirely sure what to make of his transformation into a man of the earth.
You're not sure either, but that's the beauty of what you've built here. There's time, now. Time to let things play out, time to let Rick be a farmer for as long as he needs that. He's not Hershel, he won't ever be the man he's playing at... but it's who he needs to be right now. Not just for Carl, no matter what he might say. You know this is as much for him as it is for his son and who are you to fault him that?
Carol breaks you from your thoughts, musing about the best way to stretch the meat across dinner and breakfast tomorrow and Rick is there nodding, planning the menu with her like it's the most normal conversation they could have.
And maybe, in this world, it is.
You leave them, then. Leave them to their plans, your job was to provide the deer and you don't actually care what they do with it because you know whatever they decide, it will be delicious. Not that taste has really been much of a motivating factor in your life; food is food, especially now. But along with the slow massage to your heart, the new brother who doesn't tear you down at every turn, the respect in the eyes that fall on you... Along with all those changes, you've come to appreciate that, sometimes, there's a difference between food prepared by someone who's actually trying and food meant only to stave off hunger.
The hunger is still there, it's never going to leave, but the appreciation is new. It's settled slowly into your bones in this new life until, somewhere between telling Michonne you weren't going out there again and Hershel explaining why you were a natural choice for the council you came to the realization that this was home. This was family. This was everything you laid in your bed wishing for as a boy and it may have taken the end of the world to give it to you but you'd found peace. You'd found happiness.
You'd found love.
It made you uncomfortable to think of the word, but it was getting easier every day. With every smile, every slap on the back, every one of Glenn's stupid jokes... Every step you took was bringing you closer to an acceptance of something you never really thought you deserved.
Later, after dinner (delicious) you retreat to your cell because there's a limit to how much praise you can take without your flight instinct kicking in. It's still too much, sometimes, watching the smiles and the jokes and having people credit their full stomachs to you. Sometimes you need a little space to be with your thoughts and your bolts and the ghosts that don't define you anymore.
She comes by once people start settling in for the night, of course. You know it's something you take for granted, that she will seek you out at the end of her day. She always does, though. Always trails her hand along the bars of your cell before settling in for whatever the evening brings. Sometimes she talks, nonsense stories that you follow raptly despite the fact there's not really a point to them. Sometimes you talk, though that's not as common and nowhere near as rambling. Most times, though, she perches on the edge of your bunk with her mending or a book or whatever she's brought to do and you sit in silence together with your evening activities. Her presence is quiet and stable and enough to calm any nerves that sprang up during the day. She brings you that peace, that bookend to whatever horror the day wrought and you hope you do the same for her.
Tonight is a quiet night, she's got a battered book in her hands and you're sharpening knives. The scrape of metal against stone and the soft flick of pages are the only sounds for a while as she leans against your pillow and rests her feet on your hip. It's quiet and comfortable and you know you're inching towards something.
You want to touch her, kiss her, tell her to bring her stuff in and make the cell a home for you both and each day brings you a little closer to the courage for that. Each time she smiles and squeezes at your heart, you find the words a little closer to the tip of your tongue.
Any day now will be the right time. The certainty of that calms you and when she folds over her page, stretches her toes against your thigh before standing and announcing her intent to go to bed you see the gleam in her eye.
She knows, too.
Any day now
