Disclaimer- I do not own the rights to the Walking Dead or the characters.
Rick couldn't stop replaying it all in his head, it was like some part of him wanted to teach him something. A lesson amidst the pain and depravity.
The way Glenn's skull's cracking was so much louder than the others before him, and how the blood pouring from his neck seemed to flow so much slower. It just made Rick begin to lose hope.
The second he could get back at the two that made Glenn that way, he took it, he was like a machine swollen over in red and drained reasoning. He didn't let up, he just kept going until they were gross caricatures of their living selves. Bob almost vomited and Abraham had simply observed with an understanding look in his eyes.
They moved out, past a group of entrapped prisoners, and breathed in the smell. It was so familiar, it almost reminded Rick of the day the Governor attacked the prison, the daily scent of corpses, mixed with an unwelcomed invasion of gunpowder, and the fumes of overwhelming manifestations of nature, smoke and fire.
They gunned down any Terminus people in their way, and if it weren't for the overwhelming importance of their mission, saving their people, Rick would have acted on his lingering desire to make those fallen Termites pay. The walkers clambering towards them, jaws open and hand prying would have to suffice.
Rick recalled how his group got out of there, how he tried to get them to understand that the remaining Terminus people had to die, he had Maggie on his side, but that was it.
The group was still reeling from Terminus and the last thing they wanted to do was to see their faces again, but Rick and Maggie couldn't let the fight continue on Gareth's terms, they wanted it to continue and end on theirs. Rick was about to go into a rant, when Carol had come out of the abundance trees, and guiding them towards a cabin close to the train tracks.
Rick is the first one to go over to the walkers biting their teeth into bits of Tyreese's flesh and start plunging his knife into them while they preoccupied their selves with the remaining pieces of the gentle giant, of the pillar of hope.
Rick is the first one to go through the cabin doors and notice his baby's frightened face and still form.
And now Rick is letting everyone else go through their processing of the scene before him, he isn't going to say anything, his words could really be used right now but he can't say anything. Everybody could use his words of empowerment, charisma, and the belief that they can still come out of this alright, but Rick can't believe that, not anymore.
Not with Sasha kneeling to the ground, as close as she can manage to be, near the remains of Tyreese, trying her hardest to vomit away from it. Bob standing over her, trying to comfort her, but failing due to the shaking in his voice and the deafening roar of Abraham's bullet as it spares Judith the last curse this world could inflict on her and her family, reanimation.
The group travelled as far as they could from that cabin and once they spotted a Terminus sign, they knew what they needed to do.
"Rick, come on. Talk to me." Michonne's pleading always came forth with an objective, sometimes the objective could range from getting a muttered, almost detached in tone, "I'm alright, Michonne. Let's keep moving with the group." Or a few tears and a weak sounding, "I'm okay." That's all Michonne, or anybody, could get out of the former leader now, he had become a quiet little version of himself ever since he let Abraham lead their ragtag bunch.
"I'm alright, Michonne. Let's keep moving with the group." Rick muttered the lie like he always did, staring at something besides the person he was speaking to, with his head looking onwards with a shallow sense of its former life.
"Rick we're not moving anywhere, the group's resting."
Rick was jolted out of his delusion of a walking group and was thrown back into reality. Where Michonne was staring at him with caring eyes, and where he could sense the pair of eyes in the background peering into their conversation with worry for the former leader.
"Oh." Was all Rick said before Michonne placed her hand on his shoulder and directed him towards their new temporary home, an abandoned church.
They found what remained of Terminus awhile back, it was the last time anyone in the group had seen Rick with some semblance of feeling in his eyes. It was reminiscent of the emotions that Rick held in his eyes when he witnessed Hershel's beheading.
Hatred and Disappointment.
The way Rick glanced at Carol, to get a nod that would show that the Termite he was about to kill, was the termite that killed Tyreese and Judith. She shook her head at each glance, and by the time they reached the last one, the glance was filled with desperation smeared with hope for some justice to be done amongst the bloodbath, there was none. The only thing Rick got was the satisfaction of hearing the leader of Terminus, Gareth, try and beg for a less bloody parting of ways. In that instant Rick could have sworn that he was holding something grander than a Machete when he brought it down on Gareth's pathetic form.
The group lied around the church in a state of leisure that they had been deprived of for a long time under Abraham's self-imposed militaristic reign. Michonne decided that this would be the best time to talk to Rick, to try and bring him back, and maybe get Abraham and his group out, so everybody doesn't end up dying on his road towards pointless martyrdom.
"Rick, listen I know you're hurting right now." Michonne grabbed Rick's hands firmly to stop him from shaking and continued, "But you have to understand that you don't have to go through it alone." Rick's hands started to grip back a little.
"I've been where you've been and yeah, it's tough and sometimes you wonder if there's even a point to it all, if you should even try to make the pain stop." Michonne moved her head slightly downwards but continued speaking with her heart and the feeling of the same tears that coated her face on the day she lost her loved ones.
"You wonder if you can go back…" Rick muttered, his eyes now giving their fullest attention to Michonne.
"Yeah…" Michonne began again, eyes darting from the ground to Carl, who was still thinking after Michonne's talk with him, to Rick, whose face looked ready to listen, yet his eyes looked like they knew what Michonne was getting at and they knew that the lump of muscle behind their sockets wouldn't accept it.
"And for a long time I thought I couldn't…" Michonne paused for a while. She was stabbing back at the once familiar urge to cry. She wanted to look strong while she said this, to make sure Rick wouldn't end up like her former self, before she met Andrea, someone who gave up on going back to who they really were, someone who fed their selves lies. "But then I met Andrea… you, Carl, Daryl, Glenn and Maggie, and I realized that I could go back. That I can still live in this world and still be myself."
"Michonne, I know what you're doing, you're trying to remind me of me, before this, before… when I was trying talk the Governor out of his bloodlust. Trying to find some humanity in the Governor, trying to drag some dreg of understanding." Rick could practically remember how the veins in his head nearly popped with rage when the Governor simply responded to Rick's proclamation of hope and peace with just one word.
"Liar."
Rick kind of shudders at the memory, Michonne starts gripping Rick's hand a little tighter, the way he just said that, as if it was a fact. It reminded Rick of Shane, and how he would yell at Rick for ignoring what it took to survive.
It reminded Rick of how his heart must have skipped a few beats while he coldly brought his machete down on Tomas and how he shot Dave and Tom with such quickness, that he almost forgot that he was shooting living people, not walkers.
"I just don't know if I can go back t-"
"Rick, you can. Ju-"
"No!" Rick shouted, causing everyone to go back to staring at him, and a few (Abraham, Rosita, and Maggie) to nearly draw their firearms, due to the suddenness of the shout. "Michonne, just promise me, that if I'm ever too far gone-" Rick makes sure to stress the last part, "You'll take Carl away from me."
Before Michonne could even protest to the idea of something like that, Abraham began barking orders to get on the bus.
Carol gave Rick the nod.
It was him, he did it.
It's been a few days since the group's last stop and during their current one Carol found him, he was trying to pick one of them off to eat, and he chose her.
He chose wrong.
Rick had begun walking towards the hat wearing Termite, he didn't bother to get his name, he didn't want that from him. He wanted justice and so did Sasha.
They both stood a few feet from the last remaining piece of the group's history with Terminus. Rick was feeling a rush akin to the rush that he felt killing Gareth. He felt his pain pumping through his veins again, he heard his heart's pumping as it synchronized with the ear-numbing return of a telephone ringing. Rick thought he was going to pass out from the overload on his senses, but something in the back of his head kept him there, kept him through all of it, and it made sure his heart didn't skip a single beat through it.
When he could finally step out of it and start processing what he and Sasha had just done, he took in every bit of it.
Sasha was illuminated by the sun's shine on the velvet coat her skin was draped in, it seemed she too was processing the aftermath of their combined actions, and as a result was vomiting on it, purposefully.
The aftermath was a mangled display, a grotesque visual that made up the pain that Sasha and Rick had been carrying for so long. Staring at it made Rick finally recognize something, something about himself.
Rick turned around to face the group's mortified faces and once he connected with Michonne's, he started walking towards her till he was in her face.
A grim expression rested on her face, as the words departed his grimy lips.
"The governor was right, I was lying."
Michonne's eyes started watering.
"I just didn't know it yet."
He knew this was going to be the last time he spoke to her and so did she.
The next day Michonne and Carl were gone.
Rick accepted it.