A/N: I have been in deep love with Michonne and Rick for a while now. I can definitely see the two of them hitching up and hope to see it in the new season. This is just a short story about their relationship and their own personal progression throughout the epidemic. Takes place during season three and season four but mostly season three.

Disclaimer: I kindly leave this to Mr. Kirkman and all the other amazing minds behind the making of AMC's the Walking Dead; I only play around some!

Familiar Shared Loneliness: Walking Dead

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This new world, this brand new life had changed Rick Grimes, truly not for the better. He'd always been there for anyone who was in need of help or assistance, always, but he was different and Hershel, Daryl and all the others recognized the awful sudden change. It was like a light had been flicked down in the opposited direction inside his very head. It was sad to see it, but sadly, Officer Friendly had lost his mind to the reanimated world that had surrounded them long before Lori had passed.

He had his moments, several startling moments when he would cry out loud at the open air, in to the large open space full of complete nothing and just bust out in a crazy, almost uncontrollable rage. Nobody had any idea what he was constantly shouting at or what he had seen, but they all knew he was quickly leaning over the very edge of his sanity.

That was until he'd met a katana-wielding woman, skinny and slim, dirty and wet from the southern sun's harmful heat rays. He found her standing on the outside of the prison, behind the gate, right in the midst of reanimated men and women, drooling, constantly drooling for a taste of her dark flesh.

Carl cried for Rick to assist her, when he saw her struggle to keep the walkers from digging their rotten teeth in to her skin.

Right in that very moment, Rick's mind began to awaken, crawling up from the dark depths of his tormented thoughts and ideas. He still held his pistol in his sweaty grip, brows furrowed and eyes fixated on the needy woman.

Could he really save her? In the position he was in, could Rick truly save this unfamiliar and strikingly beautiful woman from the limping walkers?

His boy continued to shoot and call out and that's when Rick's slow-moving legs began to move faster until he had fallen in to a quickened jog towards the guickly growing herd of flesh-eaters, surrounding the nearly defenseless woman.

Rick recalled throwing a few words Carl's way but his heart was beating so fast and his mind was racing so crazy, he had no clue what those few words were, but he continued to fire his pistol at the walkers, knocking them clean off their feet whilst the woman did her best to keep them off with her slow-moving katana. Rick noticed her wound when she struggled to contribute to the walker killing. He had to hurry before the scent of her blood had them walkers running at her.

He aimed shakily and shot and clearly managed to get most of them dead and as soon as he neared the gates, he pushed them open with a muffled grunt and rushed to shield her when she had fallen to the ground.

His eyes looked down at her a few times and then back up at the walkers. Hershel's voice had been heard over the pounding of his heart and voices in his head, Rick was lucky, Michonne was lucky.

.

Hershel got the startled, speechless woman stitched up from the bullet wound on her left thigh and quietly removed himself from the room, with her kind 'thank you' running through his thoughts. That gave Rick time to talk and Daryl time to defend if needed.

Rick was almost scared to talk, but he managed successfully without a struggle as he placed each hand on his two hips, eyes locked on to hers. He talked for a good five or so minutes before leaving her locked up in her own pair of four walls. Damn, was she pissed beyond words at the man, who she knew saved her life.

.

As time proceeded to go on, Rick's tormented mind wandered off severely in to uncharted waters, that he knew nobody could swim but that woman, she continued to positively shock him every single day with the things she's done and still resumes to do. He thinks back at the first time he saw her time after time, and recalls the intense feeling he had in his gut, that had nearly saved him from his own desperate mind.

Michonne grew to respect Rick greatly and all the others, but she had a strange connection with Rick, she knew about it and so had he.

Sadly, Rick still loses all sense of reality and control of his emotions; he's found crying and torn in his cell, once every week. He struggled in this life, but he's struggled more from the loss of Lori and it didn't help that he knew Carl had to put her down. Fuck, life was a damn bitch, that only truly had a knack for being a total bitch. Michonne found him distraught a few times in his cell that wasn't that far from hers, she would invite herself inside, look down at him as he held his head in what seemed like shame and tell him things, things about her. He'd been the only one she's told anything to, he was the one that saved her after all, and she should give him something, so she gave him a little history.

She told Rick who she was before the world turned to hell, and how she continues to see and hear her lost lover, Ty.

Michonne wanted to know that he wasn't alone. She's heard him cry out to a strange, not seen with the naked eye kind of force, and he's witnessed her react to the similar force. Their relationship had grown intensely as each day continued to wiggle on by.

His head propped up again and those blue wandering eyes gazed across hers like a little child. Michonne's full lips cracked a kind smile and so had Rick's.

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E/N: I am sure that was as good as I can get the beginning chapter, please stay around and wait for the next update. My laptop has been on hiatus for what seems like a century, so don't be sad when it stops to say goodbye again. Hope it was enjoyable!