Author's Note: So I've had bits and pieces of this floating around in my mind since the mid-season finale, and I finally decided to sit down and write them out, and put them together into some sort of semi-cohesive story.

So this fic obviously isn't fun, given the subject matter and the events of 8x08. But I hope you'll give it a read anyways. Drop me a comment/PM me if you want, and I'll be sad with you! There will be another part or two of this, and those ones might even show our lovelies a glimmer of hope and light! *wink wink*

Love and thanks to you all.

(Warning: This fic contains the mention/discussion of child & infant death.)

chapter one: the second go-round

She doesn't really remember what she felt like when she found Andre's body.

She knows how it felt to lose him, of course. She knows how it felt to live without him. And she still knows each of those feelings, intimately. She carries them with her every day.

But that first rush of emotion, everything that came over her when she first came upon the destroyed and overrun camp, all the things that consumed her when she found Mike and Terry and, finally, her son - they aren't so clear anymore.

She can't quite remember.

She did. She used to. It's all she used to remember, all she used to feel, with every day, every night, every moment, every blink, and every breath.

She'd tortured herself with it. She'd killed herself with it. She might've risen every morning, moved through the world around her, eaten, cut down walkers, inhaled and exhaled as air passed through her lungs, but she'd been dead.

Dead in spirit. Dead in hope. Dead in heart.

Dead in every way that mattered.

And the weight of Andre - her baby boy - limp and unresponsive in her arms, was the only thing she let herself feel. For years.

And she died. She'd killed herself - her soul. Still having to walk on this earth was the hell to which she was condemned. The hell she thought she deserved.

But then.

But then.

Then, there was Andrea. There was the prison - there was the prospect of belonging to something again. The possibility of having people who cared for her. Having people she cared about.

Then, there was Carl, and there was Rick, and there was Judith.

They brought her back, from nothing. They shined a light into the darkness she'd been tumbling around in by herself for so, so long. They breathed life back into her heart, opened it up again and settled into the places they'd slowly but surely carved out for themselves.

She was a mother. She was in love - so in love. In love more strongly and more deeply than she'd ever been before.

She didn't forget Andre. She never would, and she'd never want to. Forgetting him was her biggest fear, even though she knew forgetting him was impossible. So she clung to him, with all her might. With all her strength.

Not a day passed when she did not think of her baby boy. But, her memories were different than they used to be.

She didn't hear him in the moan of walkers anymore. Instead, she heard him in the lilt of Judith's laughter. In the eagerness of Rick and Carl's voices as they urged the little girl to call her Momma.

She felt him in Carl's arms every time they wrapped around her in a hug, rather than in the weight of her sword in her hand. Felt him in the heaviness of a sleeping Judith in her arms as she carried her up the stairs and tucked her into bed after a long day.

Instead of seeing him every time she passed their cemetery, looked at the crosses pounded into the Earth and read the names painted on the steel of their walls, she saw him in the growing swell of Maggie's stomach every time they met with The Hilltop. She saw him in the shine of Rick's eyes every time he took a moment to stop and gaze at his children, in the gentle smile that would turn up his lips and the warmth that radiated off of him as he'd catch her eye afterwards, the small grin on his face breaking into something blindingly bright and beautiful, that took her breath away and filled her heart so full of love for that man and his children that it overflowed and poured into every atom of her body and soul.

She stopped killing herself with horror and death and fear and self-loathing, and she let herself remember the good, instead of the bad.

And memories of Andre's laughs and smiles, reminiscing on the sound of his voice and his endless energy and boundless creativity and silly sense of humor - they muddled the memory of his death. They didn't erase it; nothing would ever do that. But they made it less potent, somehow. They blurred it. Dulled it. They took some of the sharpness and sting out of the moment she had used to torture herself into oblivion.

She doesn't really remember what she felt like when she found Andre's body - not exactly.

But when Carl lifts up his shirt, pulls up his bandage, shows her and his father the blood on his pale skin, the teeth marks imprinted into his abdomen, the bite on the side of his stomach, where there's no chance of amputation, of a solution, of hope, of miracles, of life…

It hits her. Like an eighteen-wheeler.

Like a bullet.

Like a punch to the stomach.

Like a brick to the side of the head.

It takes her breath, closes her throat. It knocks her off her feet, pushes her to her knees.

It hits her, with a vengeance. With every speck of searing ache and blistering agony and choking grief that had been eased by healing and happiness, it hits her.

And as bile stirs in her stomach and fire scorches her veins, she is at a loss as to how she ever forgot it.

She doesn't know what to do.

She wants to hold Carl. She wants to hold Rick. She wants to comfort them, to take away their pain. To take it on for them - all of it - swallow it and heap it on top of her own, let it drown her, suffocate her, let it seep into her skin and bones just so they won't have to feel it.

But she can't. Her heart has dropped to her feet. Her limbs are full of lead. Her mind is fuzzy and broken, her throat is dry and her tongue is tied. She can't move, can't think, can't speak.

She wants to take Carl's bite. She wants to save his life. She wants to die for him.

But she can't. She can't, and she's never felt more useless and helpless and futile.

She doesn't know what to do.

She can't help but think of the little boy she saw when she first came upon the chain-link fence of the prison, that one with bangs that didn't hang into his eyes. The boy with a face dusted by one thousand freckles and a sheriff's hat on his head that was two sizes too big for him.

The boy who risked his life to show his baby sister a picture of her mother.

"It's the only one left!"

She can still see his face in that photo so vividly. A face so soft and innocent, so happy. A face not hardened by the horrid world around him.

What she wouldn't do to give that back to him, that joy and peace.

And still, her brain keeps rewinding, past those first moments, starts conjuring up visions of things she wasn't even there for. Scenes of birthdays and loose teeth and the first day of school. Family vacations and trips to Grandma's and Christmases and little league games and learning to count and say the alphabet and starting to talk and starting to walk and crawling around on the floor, back and forth between his mother and father when he was still a baby.

Rick holding his little baby boy.

She can picture it so clearly in her mind, picture Rick cradling his hours-old son, the tiny infant fitting snugly and perfectly in the crook of his arm. His hands and posture betray his nervousness and unease, the same fearful uncertainty felt by every first-time father, but she sees and hears the way he coos down at the baby - still pink and wrinkly with his miniature fists clenched by his chubby cheeks - sees the gentle, uncontrollable smile playing on his lips, and knows he's never fallen in love with anything so quickly.

Her Rick, holding his little baby boy.

The image seizes her heart, and for a moment, it's in a good way. For a moment, she's filled with the warmth and delight that comes with seeing the love of her life so enamored and in love with the person that's unquestionably become her son. The peace that comes with seeing someone you love care for someone else you love, just as much as you do.

But then she remembers that it's all in her head, that it's not real. She remembers that now that same little boy is dying in front of them, that Rick is losing his baby boy, that she's already lost hers, and she doesn't know what to do.

There's nothing she can do.

Her mother had always teased her about being a control freak, used to talk about how she'd put herself in charge the day she came home from the hospital and never relinquished the position, so she could always be on top of things, always be three steps ahead of whatever life threw at her. So she could plan and plot and make contingency plans and alternate routes in case anything changed or went wrong.

But there is no contingency plan - not for a bite on the stomach - and she curses the world for doing this to her again, for tricking her into thinking she could find happiness and manage to keep it this go-round, before violently ripping it away from her for a second time. First with Abraham, and then with Glenn and Sasha, and now with the burning of her home and the death of her second son.

"It worked out for you!"

That's what Sasha told her once, and she was right. It had worked out for her, even though she hadn't seen it at the time. Not all of it. But she did see it, eventually. She saw all of it, and she took it. She took every last bit, and maybe that was the problem. Maybe she'd been selfish and greedy, and maybe she'd taken too much, and now this was her punishment. Maybe her happiness - the love she found with Rick, the family they built with Carl and Judith - had thrown this cruel world out of balance, and this was it righting itself.

Maybe she'd expected too much. And maybe she'd been foolish to do so, given her history. She thinks of Negan, and she thinks of Andre and Mike and Terry and Glenn and Sasha and Andrea and Hershel and Beth and Tyreese and Noah and Abraham and…

Or maybe it was the opposite.

Maybe she hadn't expected enough. Maybe she let her guard down, and forgot. Forgot the risk that comes with being happy. The danger that comes with loving and being in love.

Now, she remembers. She remembers the danger, she remembers Andre, she remembers Newton's Third Law of Motion - For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

And for every great love, there is equal and opposite potential for great sorrow.

A/N: So like I said, there will be another part or two to this. And there will be much more dialogue and appearances by other characters (like Rick!) in subsequent chapters. I know this one was just a ton of exposition/kind of just a character study and self-reflection of and by Michonne, but I hope you still enjoyed it, and I promise there is more plot, more character interaction, and much more Richonne coming. Just stick with me if you can!

Once again, love and thanks to each and every one of you! *blows kisses*

xoxo,
Rebekah