an anon on tumblr asked for a soulmate AU, and since i am a weak mineral, i snapped this up. because we need more rixonne fic in the world, you kids.

title from that t.s. eliot cat (HA. see what i did there.). from michonne's POV, because she is our queen.

When you were born, there were no marks on you. No handwritten facsimile of what first words the person you'd share your lifetime with would ever tell you.

"We thought it would pop up after a while, that your soulmate could be born younger than you," you mom says once you are old enough to wonder, and ask. "Don't worry, baby. That probably means you get to choose who you love, and it hasn't been decided for you."

"But you and Daddy are happy, right?"

Your mother looks over to where the man who told her ma'am why is this place serving fish and chips without the chips?, and is now putting mushroom soup on the stove. The mark on his bicep gleams with your mother's writing: you'll have to ask the guy who came up with that menu.

The looks on their faces as they grin at each other tell you everything.

When you meet Mike, the mark on the back of his hand has blurred, the words indecipherable. "It went like that when I was twelve," he tells you on your third date. "My world kinda ended, then. I didn't even get to meet her, or him, whoever they were."

"I never got mine," you admit, sighing into your wine. "I don't know. Maybe some people aren't born to have soulmates."

Mike's shoulders have gone a little tense, and so you reach out to take his hand. "Maybe they have to make their own," you whisper.

You can feel the smile he gives you snap tangibly in your own chest, like lightning, and hope.

You bury your son.

His body is so small in the grave you've dug, his arm limp where it's peeking from the sheet. The words along it have blurred as well, soulmates parted before they could even grow up and meet each other. You don't realize you're crying as you shovel earth over him, little screams of pain with each wrench of your shoulders. You only know how you sound: a broken animal, a shattered glass pane, howling wind.

The husks of what Mike and Terry once were are swaying listlessly where they're tethered. You grab their chains and start dragging them away, to anywhere but here.

You don't know how many months pass when you're jolted awake one morning because there are twin spots of fire on the bones of your hips. Further inspection shows you that two sets of words have appeared there, two different handwriting styles.

You laugh until you're nearly weeping from it.

Andrea asks you what's wrong. You tell her it's nothing, and it is. Finding your other half never really mattered to you anyway; you're not about to start caring now.

You swim in and out of consciousness, overheated and weak from blood loss, and the first thing you do once you gage your unfamiliar surroundings is try and reach for your sword.

"Hey, hey, we're not gonna hurt you," a firm voice says, pinning your arms down, "unless you try something stupid first, alright?"

You freeze, everything inside you rattling to a halt. You've studied those words every day on your skin, the neatly printed script. It's such a sick fucking joke.

"I didn't ask for your help," you snarl, and surprise, surprise, the white man – Rick – flinches, and stares at you longer than he has to. Yet he doesn't change his frigid tone, and keeps treating you like a hostility.

The last thing anyone's worrying about these days is finding their soulmate. But it still doesn't explain the maddening puzzle of a completely different set of words.

Then when Rick tries to reach for your gunshot wound and you stomp on his foot, the one called Daryl sets his crossbow sights on you. "You better start talkin, or you're gonna have a much bigger problem than a gunshot wound," he barks, and.

Fuck.

You've heard of people having two different soulmates at once, but those cases rarely ended with happy ever after. And so your bare your teeth and say with finality, "Find them yourself."

And from Daryl, the same shock of recognition. You're too pissed to even laugh at the soap-operaness of it all.

But they have their family to save, and you have a Governor to kill.

You only comprehend how deep this rabbit hole goes when you overhear their conversation.

They're walking behind you, their footfalls so synchronized that you have to glance back to check if they're both following. Daryl and Rick are standing closer than friends, closer than brothers, no matter that there's a foot of space between them. Their heads curving towards each other as Rick says, "What you did for me, for my baby, while I was working things out— thank you."

"S'what we do," Daryl murmurs, his eyes fiery, as if he could infuse Rick with his strength through that alone. Your snap your gaze forward, your step faltering from the weight of this new knowledge. God, what a mess.

Oscar pulls at his sleeveless shirt, his mark a smudged necklace around his collarbones, burnished with sweat. "Don't mind them," he intones to you, quiet yet firm. "Just get us where we have to go."

This isn't supposed to mean anything. Rick and Daryl seem to be working just fine without you, except come morning Daryl chooses his brother over his group, leaves the both of you alone.

Dull ache raveling behind Rick's face again, and he stares at you for too long before he says, "get in the car."

You tell yourself that you're only staying because you don't have anywhere else to go.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

You groan and blink, find Rick sitting at the end of your bunk. "Tell you what?" Then you realize your shirt has ridden up in your sleep, exposing the right wedge of your hip, Rick's words. You scowl and sit up, hiding them from Rick's sight. He still looks like shit; mental breakdowns aren't good on him.

He sighs and scrubs his face, then unbuttons his own shirt. There's a dull pink scar on his side, then looping around his ribs, your own handwriting. Your words.

But there are also the chicken-scratches right above that, the writing that's on you as well, the other half of the equation. who are you? it says, where yours contains a threat about bodily injuries. You can only imagine what that first conversation between them could have been about, since Daryl doesn't seem to be one for pleasant introductions.

"This doesn't make sense," you say, sounding more helpless than you should.

Rick laughs once, hollow. "Nothing makes sense. These only came out when I. When my wife was pregnant with Judith and." His voice quavers. "I never got to tell Daryl. And you probably hate my guts."

"I never said that," you venture, and Rick's breath leaves him in a relieved gust. It occurs to you then that he's just as terrified of this as you are, and every second you're together is a leap of faith on his part and yours.

You bite your lip. "If this is supposed to work, it has to be all three of us."

He nods, though he's still anxious. "I can't believe I tried to hurt you," he sighs, and then gives a surprising laugh. "But Daryl threw squirrels at me and tried to cut me open when we first met, so."

You smile, and it feels so foreign on your face. Genuine mirth isn't something you've felt for a long time. "That sounds like one hell of a story."

Rick grows subdued again, and tells you with the same steeliness, "He's going to tell you that story himself. We're gonna find him."

As it turns out, you don't need to.

Daryl is quiet as Rick tends to his arm, and exhausted, since his head lists back until it's pillowed against your stomach. You both jump at the contact, but then you decide to sink your hands into his hair. He breathes easier after that, with Rick's fingers soft on Daryl's bullet graze.

"I didn't wanna tell you, when you had Lori, the kids," he tells Rick that night, in a cell far away from the others. The air is thick with anticipation, and you feel like a middle-schooler drunk on cooking cherry. It's not helped by the fact that when Daryl takes off his shirt, stark against the childhood scars are words in your handwriting, and Rick's, right above his heart.

there's no easy way to say this so i'll just say it, it reads, and without thinking you reach out to rub at them, circle at his nipple. It's such a primal thing, this beautiful man marked by you and only one other person, the privileged two on this earth. Daryl trembles, looking down at you with a hunger that threatens to swallow you up.

"Don't know how this shit plays out," he admits, his thumb circling your iliac crest, tracing his words. From behind you, Rick glues himself against your back, kisses your shoulder and promises, "We'll figure out the rest. But I'm not losing either of you, never again."

What snaps in your chest this time is more tangible, more weighted, like pieces falling into place. In a brazen outburst of needwantlove, you grind against Rick, relishing how hard he is already, how he sounds when he moans your name. "Show, not tell," you rasp out.

Daryl surges forward, mouths at your neck before meeting your lips, a shy hello of a kiss, and Rick muscles in for a kiss of his own. A hot spark ignites between your legs at the sight of them together, the wet sounds of their tongues right beside your ear. There is no jealousy as you feared, just an insatiable desire to draw them both into you forever, chain them to your ribs so you won't lose this.

"We ain't gonna fit on the bed," Daryl gasps, but Rick just flashes a grin that's nothing but mischief. "Won't have to." And christ, he kneels, both of them do, sucking on your hipbones and fumbling your pants down. You actually go dizzy from the sight, and you let them spread you on the mattress, their breaths so terribly close to where you want them.

Then Daryl licks you through your panties where you've soaked them already, and you short-circuit for a bit, your knee tightening where it's braced over his bicep. Rick pulls back the fabric enough for him to close his lips around your clit, with Daryl's tongue dipping inside you. Their beards are rough and their tongues are soft and slick and warm. Half the time they bump noses and mouths, laughing softly at each other, and that's somehow better than the amazing oral sex they're administering.

The heat and tension rises until it finally crests, Indian summer radiating from your thighs as you come, juddering groans wrenched out of you. Rick slides two fingers into you, twisting up hard until you're coming again, right on the heels of the first one.

"Fucking hell," you manage after a brief respite, issuing breathless chuckles as you prop yourself up on your elbows. Daryl's eyes are terribly bright, and he's gripping his thighs hard enough to pale his knuckles. Rick's hips are hitching in desperation, issuing soft sounds that give you goosebumps. Their mouths are red and glazed with your wetness and god, you could go again.

"You two wore me out," you murmur, smiling indolently. "Why don't you take care of each other."

The three of you squeeze together on the bed, with you lying along Daryl's side as Rick ruts against him, Rick's thighs around Daryl's hips. They're so beautiful, as are Daryl's desperate gutshot whimpers when Rick composes himself enough to say, "Next time you're fucking me for real."

They shudder their way to climax and you clean them afterwards (Rick's soiled belly jumping as you lick at him languorously, Daryl's cock giving a valiant twitch as you take him in your mouth for one teasing suck). But this is what you love most, their calming hearts beating out a new tattoo against your skin, one that promises that no matter what happens, you'll die having this. You never thought you'd feel anything but grief after you lost so much, but you've found each other, and for now that's enough.

They bring you on their run for more supplies, Daryl and Carl in the backseat while you ride shotgun and Rick's fingers patter on the steering wheel. Carl still doesn't quite trust you, not even after you and Rick had shown him your marks as proof. He tells you as much when he goes to get Judith a crib.

"All my mom had for her mark was one word, one stupid general greeting," he tells you, his voice flatly angry. "And Dad's never showed up. But they loved each other. I don't get why you and Daryl have to take that away."

"We're not," you insist, and your throat aches for wanting Andre. You want to tell Carl that you're not replacing him for your own little boy either, but you can't talk about that yet, not with anyone. "We just want you to be okay with your dad being happy again."

He frowns, though it's more subdued this time, pulling at the bandana wrapped around his elbow that covers his mark, keeping it secret as it's customary. "And are you making him happy?"

You soften your smile, and say, "You'd be a better judge of that than me. What do you think?"

Carl doesn't answer, silent up until you two are walking out of the baby store with a crib in tow and he tells you, "We need to get one last thing. Judith should know what our mom looked like."

The walkers in the abandoned restaurant are of the same stock: pitiful shells with the words on their sagging skin blurred forever. You've seen how marks fade when a person dies; you can't help but wonder if their soulmates might still alive, and will never get to meet their chosen ones as they should.

But maybe everyone get a second chance, just like you have.

On the ride back, Rick falls asleep in the backseat with Carl curled against him, and Daryl turning over the paper mache cat beside you, ragging you for your bad taste.

Then, in a fit of sobriety, he asks, "You still feel like you don't fit in that picture?"

You glance up to where Daryl's staring in the rearview mirror, of Carl's head tucked under his father's chin, the photo frame squashed between their hands. that picture certainly isn't what you thought you'd be saddled with, never even dreamed of having. You're not even sure if you get to keep this, what with a psychopath hell-bent on destroying you all.

But you think about Rick, how he passes a hand over your skin every chance he gets, trying to make sure you're real. You think about Daryl, who's looking at you now like he'd build a house out of his own bones to give you shelter, uncertain and anxious as that gaze may be. You think about Andre, and Mike, and how when you remember them it's not with a blind rage but a throbbing ache, that grows lesser every time.

This is healing, and second chances, and taking Daryl's hand in yours, tracing his knuckles. "We can always make our own picture," you insist. "The colors might be shit but at least it's ours."

He grins, accuses you of being a hippie artist soul, but there is gratitude in the kiss he places to the back of your hand. Rick blinks awake and murmurs for Daryl to stop distracting you from driving, while Daryl rolls his eyes at you like he's all of five years old.

And that settles it. When you finally go in the ground, whether that's decades from now or next week or tonight, they had better be by your side.

Andrea reaches for you, and you clasp her hand, hating the slide of her blood. "It's good that you found them," she says, the words sluggish but genuine. "No one can make it alone now."

"I never could," Daryl murmurs, and his eyes flick from yours to Rick's, fists bunching at his sides.

Those words have never rung truer until tonight, when you have to wrap Andrea up in white bedsheets, the best you can do for a shroud. Neither Rick nor Daryl leave your side all throughout, not treating you like a china doll but not ignoring you either.

Tyreese leads you to an empty house for you to stay the night, and you can't be bothered to pull off the covers on the dusty bed, just sinking down on it. Your whole body shakes like you're going to fall to pieces, and Daryl flanks you on one side while Rick crowds close on the other. They're grabbing you tight, hauling you in, wrapping their arms around you, hanging on, holding on.

You can finally breathe as you cling to them, because this is something real. This isn't a dream, it isn't a memory. This is Rick, Daryl, solidly warm wrapped around you. This is the salvation that you had never seen coming, but your words have vanished, all your language gone.

And so you thank them the only way you know how.

Rick's mouth parts so sweetly under yours, as does Daryl's. "Sleep," Daryl murmurs, his hand fanning over the expanse of your neck, reining in your pulse. "We'll still be here in the morning."

They unerringly find the places where their bodies fit against yours, and it's simple and feels like home.

You're home.