Broken -
An Andrea/Rick tragedy.
(This is a re-posting of a story I wrote a while ago, but for some reason the site deleted it.)
The first time he came to her, it was because he was lonely.
When she accepted him, it was because she was hurt. She wanted to feel something, anything, that wasn't pain and betrayal.
His hands felt hot on her cold skin, his voice rich and deep in her ear.
When it was over, her eyes and cheeks were damp from the tears and he could barely look at her. He kissed her forehead, smoothed back her hair and held her until she fell asleep. When she awoke, she was alone.
The next time he came to her, and the times that followed, he longed for her body.
At first, they both understood what it was. At first, when the primal need to feel something held them both in its icy grip, when their pain and anger was too prominent for either of them to deal with, it was purely physical. A release, a distraction.
Slowly, their encounters became less physical, until he came to her just to be there. With her.
The first time she came to him, it was because she missed him. Not him, specifically, just the warmth of another person. Her bed was cold, uninviting.
His arms opened to her and she curled against his chest. There were no words, no actions, just her ear pressed to his chest, listening to his heart beat steadily, promising her safety and comfort. He whispered to her, about how he was sorry, about how he'd change it all if he could, but she was asleep before the words could sink in.
She didn't want to hear his apologies, how his guilt affected him, because it made her angry. Who was he to make it about him? To involve his own feelings in her suffering and pain, in her physical and mental torture? Her body still showed signs of what she'd endured, what she'd been subjected too at the hands of the Governor.
Eventually, it became almost a habit. There was never a night when either of them were alone. Every night, she sought his company.
He'd curl up behind her, taking comfort in the smell of her hair and the way her hand clutched his, holding it close to her stomach, his arm wrapped securely around her. Her knees bent and his slotted in perfectly behind and that was how they'd sleep, each taking comfort in the presence of the other.
He'd wait, a silent observer, as her tears slid, silently, onto the pillow and she'd try to cry quietly. His arm around her waist would tighten, bringing her ever closer to him until finally, she turned around and buried her face in his shirt, sobbing away her pain. For that night, she would sleep soundly, stray tears still lingering on her lashes. However, he knew the following day would be no different to the others.
She would be quiet and solitary, keeping her distance from the rest of them. The wounds on her wrists and the rest of her body were slowly healing; her mind and heart were much slower. In the day, she would barely look at him when at night, her entire being opened up to him, her stony exterior giving way to vulnerability and desperation.
When the crying stopped, the nightmares started.
He thought it was over, thought she had finally healed, when she didn't cry that night. When he woke, however, to her thrashing and kicking, he was forced to reconsider this opinion. They all came running, when her agonizing screams woke them. When the screaming stopped, she would disolve into tears, still asleep, and her pillow would be soaked once more. She would wake, puffy eyed and exhausted, but the others knew better than to ask questions.
Eventually, they stopped coming when she screamed.
Eventually, the nightmares stopped.
Eventually, she smiled again.
He almost missed the first time. He just happened to glance up at the exact moment that her lips spread into a slight smile, as she gazed down at his gurgling baby in her arms.
The smile was like water after days of thirst, like food after weeks of starvation, like sunshine after months of darkness, like rain after years of drought.
The smile was what set his heart alight and reignited his passion for their survival. Her blue-green eyes filled with tears as Judiths tiny hand made a fist around her finger.
The child was a fighter, just as she was, and Andrea couldn't help but be amazed and awe inspired by the baby, oblivious to what she had been born into, a beacon of hope for the future.
Rick stared, mesmerized, but as soon as she caught him looking, the smile was gone, replaced by the same blank eyes he'd been gazing into for months. Still the fire inside of his burned with a new flame.
She was there somewhere.
Somewhere inside the broken shell of a woman that he had brought back from Woodbury, was the woman who had fought her way through the death of her sister, who had pulled herself back from the brink and overcome her own inner demons, the woman who had defied them all to take her gun away and then become their best sharpshooter, the woman who had fought her way through a long hard Winter, essentially bringing herself back from the dead. If she'd done it once, she could do it again.
But, he reminded himself, she was also the woman who had tried with her entire being to protect her baby sister and yet still had her torn from her fingertips, the woman who had been forced to give away her own means of destruction, had her choices torn from her, the woman who had been looked down on by everyone she then depended on, reprimanded for trying to help. She was the woman who had been abandoned by her friends to a gruesome solitude with someone she had to fight to get a conversation out of.
And most of all, she was the woman who had given herself over to the most destructive relationship of this new world, to save the rest of their lives, to save the lives of the people who had given up on her without blinking.
And she had paid the ultimate price, he thought, sadly; the price of her sanity.
The night came when she didn't seek him out. He was torn between his own desire to have her as close as possible and his confusion about her mental state. Did she want space? Was she pushing him away?
And so, once again, he went to her bed.
His feet traced his own steps and he contemplated how different his thoughts were now, compared to the first time he had made this short journey. The first time, his thoughts were those of lust, now they were thoughts of love.
He was still lonely, he realised, as he stood at her bedroom door and found her bed empty. He needed something more than the wordless communication they shared, he needed mutual interaction and conversation. But not just any interaction, not just any conversation. He needed to hear her voice, hear her speak for the sake of speaking, as she used to. All he heard from her these days were generic expressions: yes, no, maybe, please, thank you.
She didn't even coo over the baby, just held her, staring with her own icy blue eyes into Judiths warm, brown ones. He had observed as Andreas eyes warmed slightly, the child melting her heart as she had melted so many others. Andreas eyes would fill with tears once more, as they so often did nowadays, but she would bite them back and Rick could see her internalized struggle through those eyes. He longed to heal her broken heart.
He needed to feel her smile, not just see it, pained and in passing. He needed to feel the passion she'd had when they first met, see the determination he missed seeing in her eyes, the confidence in her stance as she held up her gun, almost arrogant with her ability, and rightfully so.
He found her outside, sitting on the grass, staring at the moon. She didn't turn or acknowledge his presence as he sat beside her, his hand seeking her own. She was freezing, wearing only a white tank-top and a thin pair of cotton pyjama bottoms. He shrugged off his shirt, offering her it but she made to move to take it and instead he wrapped it around her shoulders, doubting it would make a difference but needing to do it anyway, unable to take it back while she sat there like an icicle, frozen both inside and out.
As he held her hand, his eyes were drawn to the scars which circled her wrists. He knew from experience that some scars didn't heal and the pain she felt came from inside.
She wasn't the woman he had met in the department store, the one who had pointed a gun she didn't know how to use in his face and, not an hour later, looked at him, as if expecting him to arrest her for taking the mermaid necklace. The way she had spoken to him, so meekly and softly, when talking about Amy, seemed so long ago now.
She had never been weak, he mused. He recalled being told how she had stood up to Ed. He recalled how she had threatened to kill him for entrapping them, even though she didn't know how to use the gun she pointed at his head. The memory brought a painful smile to his face and then tears to his eyes. Pulling his gun out of the back of his jeans, looked down at it and then lay it on the grass between them.
Some people were too far gone, he mused. Some people changed in ways that were irreparable, were hurt by too many people, in too many ways. She was one of those people. This world had broken her, like a stallion that refused to give in, but eventually bent to the will of its master. This world was their master now, with its cruel, unforgiving ways. He realized that they would never stop running and that she didn't have the strength to run anymore.
She didn't want to run anymore.
"You know how the safety works." He said, leaning over to place a watery kiss her temple, before standing up and walking away, refusing to look back.
The shot that cracked the night broke his heart.