A/N: This story was written by Afilmmefatale based on a prompt by jojoindia-blog on Tumblr.

Please be sure to check out her other works on her FF page.

-We're The Ones Who Write

Chapter 1

The imminence of death was unbearable. Rick yearned to be anywhere but here - sitting on the cold floor, in the dim light of the living room, beside Carl's still form on the sofa. But it was the only place he could be.

This was not a threat he could flee from or silence with his magnum - this was his son dying. He clutched Carl's clammy hand, larger than it had been even a year ago. He felt Carl's forehead with the back of his hand, his countenance pale with the promise of death. The anti-inflammatories and pain meds from Siddiq, along with Michonne's around-the-clock compresses, had mitigated his fever, but his skin was still hot to the touch.

They were losing him. Carl had drifted into unconsciousness some time ago, but he held onto life with a quiet determination. His shallow breathing and weak pulse were the only signs he was still with them.

Light from the street lamps shone through the bare windows. The lights had turned on as scheduled, minutes before sundown, oblivious to the fact that more than half of Alexandria was in shambles. On the coffee table, Rick noticed Carl's worn paperback copy of To Kill A Mockingbird. A slip of paper was placed about three quarters into the book.

He'll never finish it, Rick thought, wanting to scream and sob all at once, unable to do either. He was out of tears. There would be no release from the anger and regret and inescapable sorrow.

Carl is going to die.

A walker bite to the torso was all it had taken to sentence his son to death. And Rick's reason for living would likely die with him. He squeezed his raw eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. His other hand wrapped around the butt of his holstered magnum.

"Give me your gun," Michonne said, forcing his tormented mind back into the light. She stood in the doorway, her smooth brown cheeks streaked with dried tears.

"You don't need to take my gun, Michonne. I'm fine," Rick said, lying through his teeth.

She crept toward him, as though reading his thoughts. "Carl wants you to live after he's gone. Not to give up."

Rick laughed involuntarily, both angry and ashamed at the truth in her words. "If you know what's best, why weren't you here? Why didn't you keep him from going out there in the first place?"

She stopped dead in her tracks, jerking back as though he'd hit her. "I couldn't just sit here and do nothing. I wanted to help you."

The despair and hopelessness Rick first felt at learning of Carl's imminent demise reared its ugly head. He stood, needles prickling in his legs and thighs. He relished in the pain, letting his agony get the better of him. "He was the one who needed your help."

The sting of her slap drove away the tumultuous emotions clouding his mind. He could see clearly again.

"Michonne." He reached out, but she was already gone. He heard the front door open and slam shut.

Rick slammed his fist into the nearest wall. He barely registered the bloody knuckles and mind-numbing pain. He unholstered his gun, his grip sure and decided. He had to do this now, before she came back. It would only be harder if she were here to witness it. Carl had wanted to do it himself, before he lost consciousness and turned, but Rick had talked him out of it.

He swayed with dizziness. This room had come to mean so much to Rick. It was where Judith had taken her first steps. Where he and Michonne had made love for the first time. Now, it would become the room where he'd put his son down.

The silence in the empty house made Rick want to yell at the top of his lungs. He was alone, with no need to hold back. The others had fled to the Hilltop, Daryl promising to look after Judith. Only he and Michonne had stayed behind with Carl, to be with him as he took his last breath.

The dirty bandage covering the scars of Carl's old injury reminded Rick of how the loss of his eye had thrust his son into manhood; changing him into the person who would risk his life to save someone he didn't even know. On his deathbed, Carl had told Rick of the future he imagined. A community of people living and working together to survive and build something new. The kind of future that could exist only if Rick changed course; if he chose peace over war.

Rick knelt before his son. He wanted to remember the happy times, before the Turn. But he couldn't see past Carl's wasted complexion. Rick placed his magnum against Carl's skull, his sweaty palms causing his finger to slip on the trigger.

"Do it," he whispered. "Do it!"

But he couldn't do it. The grief paralyzed him.

Suddenly, Carl breathed in, loud and deep, struggling for air.

Rick stumbled back, the gun sliding across the floor. He moved to retrieve it when a sound stopped him short.

"Ugh. It hurts," Carl croaked, coughing.

On instinct, Rick shot to his side. "Carl?"

"But it worked," Carl whispered to himself.

Rick wondered if he was seeing things, like when Lori died. Maybe this was a mental break, his mind attempting to reconcile his grief. Carl turned to look at him, his blue eye alert. Rick noticed a thin white ring surrounding his dilated pupil.

"You're so young." Carl reached out his hand. Rick grabbed it. His skin felt cooler than it had before.

"Are you really alive?" Rick asked, not sure he wanted the answer.

"I'm here," Carl said.

"And I'm here with you."

"I don't have much time, so you need to listen."

Rick nodded, but wondered if he was dreaming all of this, or if Carl had actually regained consciousness so close to death. "What do you need to say?"

"I'm from the future."

Not quite what he was expecting. "Alright."

"And I'm here to help you save me."

-#-

"What future?" Rick asked, his mind lagging, slow to process it all.

The line between reality and fantasy had been blurred ever since the dead started walking the earth. But that didn't mean the laws of time had changed.

"The future. Twenty years from now."

If this really was just a glitch in Rick's brain, a figment of his imagination, he had no idea where exactly his mind was taking him. "You're not from the future, son. You were bitten."

"I hacked the spell."

"What spell?"

"Dad, the origin of the walking dead was a magic, not a virus," Carl continued weakly. "A spell cast in Norleans." He rolled "New Orleans" into one word with ease.

Where'd he learn to do that? Carl had never been anywhere near Louisiana.

"Magic?" Michonne asked, making Rick jump. She stood a few feet away. Her uncanny ability to move without being noticed still unnerved him. How long had she been standing there?

"Michonne," Carl said, looking her way.

"Right here," she said, coming to kneel by Rick.

The rush of gratitude he felt at having her by his side only deepened his guilt over lashing out at her earlier.

"A spell of sorts, conceived by someone skilled in blood magic," Carl continued.

"Why? How?" Rick asked.

"She died before I could ask her."

"Did you end up breaking it? The spell?" Michonne asked, as though this were just a normal conversation. When had she, the diehard skeptic, developed a belief in magic?

"The daughter of the priestess who cast the spell." Carl's words came out garbled, as though his mouth were full of gravel. "I knew blood science, she knew blood magic. We created a vaccine to prevent death and reanimation." Carl smiled weakly. "And fell in love. You guys are grandparents."

Imagining Carl living and breathing - with kids - lifted some of the darkness that had settled in Rick's heart.

"But a vaccine won't save you. It's too late," Michonne said, the resignation clear in her voice.

"Blood-"

Carl's eyes suddenly rolled into the back of his head. His body convulsed violently, his facial muscles spasming all at once.

"Carl!" Rick yelled, not sure whether to hold him down or leave him be.

"It's a seizure," Michonne said. "Get him onto his side. Now."

Rick grabbed his shoulders and Michonne his legs, as they rolled Carl onto his side. His frail body continued to jerk, saliva trailing from the side of his mouth and onto the pillow. Mere seconds felt like hours. And then it was over.

Carl's body went limp and they returned him to his original position. Slowly, he came to, cringing. Rick grabbed his son's hand, wanting to take the pain away. He wiped the drool from Carl's chin with his sleeve. Carl took a few deep breaths, a rattling noise settling deep in his chest. "I can't hold on much longer."

Rick took a deep breath, saying the words he'd lacked the courage to speak before Carl lost consciousness the first time. "I failed you." Then he let anger displace the guilt. "I should've gotten rid of Siddiq when I had the chance."

"Everything's happened as it had to," Carl said. "Don't lose hope."

Rick shook his head. Hope had only led them to the most hopeless situation of all. Alexandria was in flames, the Hilltop had suffered losses and he didn't even know the status of the Kingdom. Rick's hope that they could defeat the Saviors, that they would be the last ones standing, had only resulted in his son's current predicament.

Carl squeezed his hand with the strength of a boy hovering between life and death. "If you'd killed Siddiq, then we wouldn't have a doctor. He'll save people."

"You were right to save him," Michonne said quietly, gripping Carl's leg.

Rick really looked at Michonne, for the first time since they'd moved Carl from the tunnels to their home. Her expression remained unreadable, like it had been when he first interrogated her at the prison. When she had no reason to trust him. She was as grimy and exhausted as he was. Her eyes were puffy, yet glassy with unshed tears. He nearly drowned in his shame at having lashed out at her earlier.

She had to be as shocked by Carl's return as he was, but she remained calm, stoic even. If this mother-warrior fell apart, he would be close behind her. And she must have known that. He realized then how little he'd done to deserve the strength and support of her feminine energy.

"How can we know you're really from the future?" she asked.

"Judith's father is Shane."

Rick paused, his shocked brain moving at a snail's pace. "How…."

He looked to Michonne, but she just shook her head. He knew she would never have divulged his secret. If not for his sake, then for Carl's. But if she hadn't, then who…

"You tell us both, on her 16th birthday."

Rick was stunned by the revelation. He'd made that decision a long time ago, to wait until Judith was a teenager to tell her about Lori and Shane. And now Carl was telling him that was exactly what he had done. In the future.

"A walker bite begins the process of reanimation, before the actual death." Carl paused, his breathing becoming shallow. "This process provides a link across time, between the past, present and future. The conscious." Carl focused on Rick. "Blood…André…can save me. But Mike must not die."

With those final words, Carl went completely still. Rick and Michonne watched for signs of consciousness. There were none. He'd returned to the state he was in before. Not dead, but not quite alive either. After watching his son slip away for the second time, Rick felt something he thought had abandoned him forever. Hope.

-#-

"Time travel isn't real," Michonne said, rubbing her temples. "I don't know what that was, but it wasn't Carl coming to us from the future."

"He came back, Michonne," Rick said. "We were both there to witness it. You're the one who went on about magic and such."

The ridiculousness of this conversation struck him. Were they really arguing about time travel and magic?

She shook her head, as though trying to shake away the truth of what had just occurred. "Magic is a possibility. Time travel isn't. And if it were, the two are in completely different realms. Maybe the whole thing was just a hallucination. We've both got a history of talking to people who aren't there."

Rick refused to back down. Carl's consciousness had traveled across time to give them a message. One that could prevent him from dying. Deep down, he knew Michonne believed it too. He just needed her brain to catch up to her heart, so they could figure this out together.

"How did he know about Judith then? I certainly didn't tell him. Neither did you," Rick said. "And then there was Mike. You told him about André, not your ex."

"Carl is dying!" Her voice resonated with dejected anger. "Nothing is going to change that."

Rick wanted to comfort her, to acknowledge her grief. But this might be their only hope of saving Carl and he had to push her to believe it as much as he did. "This isn't the end of his story. Or ours. It can't be."

She stared at him as though she were beginning to open herself up to believing in him again.

"'Chonne," Rick said. "Carl came back for a reason. And if my traveling to the past helps him survive this, we have to try."

"Why can't you just accept that he's gone?" Michonne asked, on the verge of giving in.

"Because Carl is meant to be something. He's meant to change things, to change everything."

She remained quiet for some time before responding. "If time travel really is a possibility, saving André would change everything." She looked both hopeful and terrified at the prospect. "We might never meet."

Rick's heart stopped. Would he really be forced to make a choice between his son and the woman he loved? "We don't know that for sure. You might still have ended up at the prison. Or we might have crossed paths some other way."

She frowned, considering something. "The memory of the camp has always been hazy. The horror of losing André…was something I just wanted to forget. But when I dream of that time, you're always there. And it feels like we were there together."

"Let's consider that it's not just a dream. Carl said the spell provides a link throughout time. Maybe it's a memory of what will happen, not what has happened already."

"Even if that were the case, how would you even travel to the past? You've never been bitten or been close to death. At least not during the time I was in the camp."

"But I was in a coma."

After their first night together, Michonne had shared stories about André and how she'd fled the chaos of Atlanta - along with her boyfriend Mike and his best friend, Terry - to seek refuge in a camp controlled by the National Guard. It had been around the time of his coma.

"Hmm," was all she said.

"Carl mentioned hacking the spell. Maybe I can do the same. Use my coma as some sort of anchor to the past."

Michonne shook her head. "This is crazy, Rick."

"Not any more than the conversation we just had with Carl."

"But even if you're able to go back, what exactly do you need to do to save Carl?"

Rick thought back to their conversation. "He mentioned something about blood."

"Blood as a cure? It can't be that simple. Although…" Michonne tilted her head. "My aunt was a scholar of folk religion and the mystic arts, magic and such. From what I remember, blood is crucial to some spells. If the original spell was bound by blood, maybe it'll take that same blood to counter the effects of the spell."

"So it's not necessarily a vaccine, but just blood, that would be enough to save Carl."

"Likely a special type of blood."

"Maybe a rare type?"

Her smile was a beacon in the darkness. "AB-Negative."

Rick nodded. "The rarest type on the planet."

"Yes. And André's blood type."

"Of course. That can't just be a coincidence." Rick was certain now of what he needed to do and Michonne seemed to have jumped on the bandwagon.

"I agree. But we still haven't figured out how time travel works. How do we send you back?"

Rick was ready to put everything on the line. "I have one idea. But you're not going to like it."

-#-

This is it, Rick thought, his heavy eyelids drooping against his will.

The wicked cocktail of Xanax and Codeine that he'd ingested was rapidly making its way through his system. They'd searched the medicine cabinets of the few houses still standing in Alexandria, managing to collect enough pills to do the trick.

It was a gamble. If they lost - if inducing a comatose state didn't allow him to time travel - he would never see her again. Carl's death would be permanent. Judith might grow up without her father. They were banking that a coma was close enough to death for him to use the spell in the same way Carl had and connect him to his past self. This was all an exercise in faith; faith that Carl had lived well into the future because Rick had succeeded in the past.

"It won't be much longer now," Michonne whispered, her cheek resting on the top of his head. The rhythm of her heartbeat, which he loved to fall asleep to after lovemaking, was faster tonight.

"I'm sorry for what I said before." Rick tightened his hold around her waist. "You've only ever protected Carl. We never would have made it this far without you."

They lay on the floor of the living room, gazing up at the neon yellow stars Carl had stuck to the ceiling. He'd wanted to make the living room into a sort of planetarium. He'd loved astronomy as a kid.

"Promise me you'll do whatever it takes to save André. Don't let anyone - Mike or me - get in your way."

"I'll do what I need to do."

They'd tried to figure out the timeline, where his coma overlapped with her time in the camp, but neither of them could pinpoint an exact day or time. They could only hope that André would still be alive by the time Rick woke from his coma and found them. It was a terribly long shot.

"Do you remember how to find me?" she asked slowly, as though speaking to a child.

"Yes, Ma'am," he said, liking the way the word rolled off his tongue. "Ma'am." He laughed at the suddenly foreign-sounding word.

She kissed his forehead. "Shhh, just sleep."

Rick nestled into her, wondering if he would remember this moment when he woke in the past. "I love you so much, 'Chonne."

"I love you too." He felt wetness where her cheek met his head. She sniffled.

"I love you a lot. A whole lot."

She chuckled. "I know."

"I think I loved you the first time I saw you, covered in zombie guts. I've never seen someone so beautiful." His last words came out loud and slurred. "I can't lose you."

"You won't. Just close your eyes. Remember me in this moment. Think of how much you love me. How much you love Carl. And Judith. Carry that love with you."

Rick stopped fighting and just let go.

"Come back to me," he heard a voice whisper from miles away, before he sank into darkness.

-#-

Four Years Ago

"Run!" Michonne yelled to the few remained.

Todd - or what was left of him - lay in a bloody heap on the floor, two walkers feasting on his small intestine. Their fearless leader had led them directly into danger and hadn't survived to lead them out. Michonne swung hard, her hatchet connecting with the skull of the walker coming in fast. She kicked it hard in the chest, sending the corpse flying back into the group of walkers streaming through the front entrance, taking a few of its fellow travelers to the ground. She'd known the strip mall was a death trap, but Todd had insisted.

"Food and weapons are the priority. Everything we need is here," Todd had said in response to her objections. The others, hungry and afraid, trusted the man who'd taken charge after the National Guard had abandoned them. The group had gotten cornered in a pawn shop, surprised by three walkers in the storage closet. Now it was up to her to make sure the survivors made it back to the camp alive.

Luckily, most of the group had heeded her command and escaped through the rear exit of the shop. Marsha, a former kindergarten teacher, cowered behind the front counter, the only straggler.

"Marsha!" Michonne looked between the woman and the exit, debating whether or not to leave her as the bell above the front door signaled the arrival of more walkers. She had to survive for André. Her conscience overruled her self-interest and she darted for Marsha. She wrenched the woman up hard by the arm, shoving her through the exit just as a walker got a hold of her shoulder. Michonne spun around, landing the hatchet in its neck, missing her target. She struggled to keep its teeth away from her forearm, desperately trying to dislodge her weapon.

Suddenly, a gunshot rang out and the walker's head exploded, spraying her with blood and bits of gore.

"Michonne!" an unfamiliar voice called from behind her.

She turned to find a bearded man with ice blue eyes aiming a silver pistol in her direction.

"Catch!" He yelled, before chucking some sort of stick her way. She caught it entirely out of instinct.

A katana? she thought, gripping the leather handle.

"Look out!" he yelled, firing off another shot, the bullet whipping above her left shoulder.

She unsheathed the sword, swinging wildly at whatever came her way. Her movements were frantic and untrained, but good enough to dismember the rotting walkers closing in on her.

"Let's go! There's too many!" he said, waving for her to follow him out the back.

She rushed through the door, taking the katana with her. Her group was nowhere to be found and she hoped they'd headed back to the camp. She and the mystery man fell into a hard sprint, putting distance between themselves and the shop.

"Over here," he said. "We'll be safer if we're not on foot."

Michonne considered whether it was smart to go off with some stranger with a gun, but said stranger had just saved her life. And something in her gut told her she could trust him. Plus, she still had the katana, in case her instincts proved wrong.

She let him lead her behind an adjacent building. Just a few yards ahead, grazing in a field of grass, was a horse, its chestnut coat shining in the afternoon sun. They came to a halt in front of the horse. The man coughed violently, clutching his ribs.

"Are you okay?" she asked between breaths.

He nodded, the coughs tapering off into a more manageable wheeze. She sheathed the katana before strapping it across her shoulder. Grabbing a bottled water from her leather pack, she unscrewed the top and handed it to him.

"Thank you," he said. She almost expected him to call her "Ma'am" with that polite Georgian accent. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he drank, a trail of water dripping from his full pink lips and down his bearded chin. She felt thirsty all of a sudden.

"Who are you?" Michonne asked, struck by the fantasy of it all. A man with a silver pistol and a horse had saved her life, like some knight in denim armor.

"Rick," he said.

And then she recalled something that had surprised her back at the pawn shop. "How did you know my name? Have we met before?"

Rick chuckled. "Yes and no."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm from the future."

"From where?" she asked, thinking she'd heard the name of his town wrong.

His baby blue eyes twinkled. "From four years in the future, Michonne. And I came back to find you."