Strength and Weakness by MissMishka
DISCLAIMER: The usual warnings, I claim no ownership of these characters, they are simply borrowed with love and adoration from the original creators to have their stories embellished on a little more than the show may do. Not for any profit.
The Winnebago isn't a place that Rick has had cause to enter very often. It's Dale's domain.
It had been Dale's domain.
Rick pauses with his foot on the first step, hand gripping the door to heft himself up into the RV. The loss of the other man is still too fresh for him to take it in stride when he'd reminded that Dale is gone.
He bows his head and scrubs a weary hand through his hair before moving it to rub the grit from his sleepless eyes. There had been no chance of rest in the hours since the Walker stumbled onto the farm and somehow managed to get the jump on Dale. Given the unrest of the last few days with wondering how to handle the Randall situation and the coming winter, he honestly could not remember the last time he had actually slept.
Exhaustion and loss weigh heavily upon him in that instant; frozen in mid-step to cross the threshold into the travelling home that Dale Horvath had opened to a group of strangers outside of Atlanta as the world broke apart in the chaos of the dead not dying. A tremor shakes his arm, muscles straining and protesting to draw his attention to how tightly his right hand is gripping the trailer door. He stares at his whitened knuckles with a blank kind of fascination; thinking it looked painful and that the grip should relax, but the command didn't transfer from his brain to his fingers because that didn't really seem to be his hand locked in a death grip on that knob.
The odd stupor holds him for a few moments longer than it should have until he can't deny the soft, shuddering and poorly stifled tears coming from inside the RV. It had been weeks since she had had reason to cry, but Rick still knows the sound of Andrea's grief in a way that part of him questions while another part of him already knows the reason for the instinctual recognition of the woman.
For a moment, he grits his teeth and curls his fingers tighter before he manages to get his hand to release its hold on the door. He pushes himself onward into the vehicle, rather deliberately throwing his weight around to rock the camper in warning; knowing that she would appreciate the moment to strive for some kind of composure.
She's sitting at the table in the kitchen area with her back to the door, head bowed forward over her hands as if in prayer.
Rick stands behind her, thinking of his prayers over Carl after his son was shot and he finds himself wanting to take a knee beside her in join her in whatever appeals she's making to any deity that might be listening. Andrea, though, hasn't shown many signs of faith in higher powers since they met in downtown Atlanta and Rick shakes of his momentary fancy that she's making any requests of God.
"Are they ready?" she asks before he can think of words, her voice is husky and raw from tears; different to what he's used to.
"Almost," his own voice is strange to his ears; gruff and broken.
The moment doesn't seem right for speech with neither of them sounding themselves.
He looks briefly at the door, considers closing it but knows he can't allow himself the illusion of privacy with her at a time like this. Instead, he shuffles quietly forward to slide stiffly into the seat across the table from her. As he settles, he sees the familiar canvas hat gripped in her hands and knows what she had been focusing on in her grief.
She doesn't look at him and after a moment he turns from the sight of the khaki material gripped in her slender, white knuckled fingers. He stares out the window over the field outside and his thoughts carry him along the path to the pasture where the walker had gotten Dale. The lush greenery with a faint hint of morning mists in the rising sunlight lacks the usual appeal and peace that he has found since coming to the farm and he scrubs a hand over his stubbled jaw as his eyes bounce from that sight as well.
Her hands begin to almost idly turn the hat, running the flopping brim through her fingers like the beads of a rosary. His eyes latch on that motion, finding the repetitive movements of her fingers hypnotic and allowing it to lull the chaos bordering on panic inside his head.
Outside the Winnebago is silence. Not the peaceful, safe kind that they had foolishly grown accustomed to on the Greene farm, but a thick, heavy kind weighted with their loss and the reminder that no place is safe from the plague of this new world. There is no hum of conversation, no sounds of work around the camp to carry on the chilling breeze through the open side window; even the birds and crickets were silent.
The quiet becomes oppressive and the play of Andrea's fingers over Dale's hat strikes him as obsessive.
"Andrea," he croaks to break the silence while putting out a hand to land gently on her delicate wrist to stop the motion of her fingers.
His touch seems to jar her and she jerks to a stop. The contact affects him as well and he pulls his away as quickly as he can without letting it show how the soft heat of her skin had seared into the pads of his fingertips.
"He should be buried in this," she speaks softly, voice cracking over the words. "Have they…"
"Shane and T-Dog were still digging when I left them. Carol and Patricia were," putting his insides back inside as best they could, "getting him ready for burial."
Her head bobs and she looks away, but not before he sees in the convulsive motion of her throat as she swallows the unspoken visual of those funeral preparations. He watches a tear slip from the corner of her eye to glide down the contours of her cheek before she dashes it away with a shaking hand.
"I thought I was done with this," she whispers with eyes fixed on nothing outside the trailer. "I didn't think I had any tears left in me after Amy. I wanted to be stronger than that. He made me want to be stronger."
"I don't think it's possible for anyone to be stronger than you are," he isn't able t stop his hand reaching out to take hold of her trembling, tear slicked fingers.
"I've done nothing but fight him since the CDC; resent him for taking away my choice to die in that explosion. If I had just listened to him, stood by him about Randall when he felt so strongly about it. After everything, Dale still put so much value in life; in living."
"That's why we have to do it, then," he gives her fingers a squeeze and strives for an encouraging expression. "We lay Dale to rest, set Randall free and find a way to make a life for ourselves in this place."
She chokes out a sound; part scoffing laughing, mostly stifled sob as she pulls her hand away from his. He resists the urge to laugh at himself as well as his empty hand closes in on itself to retain the warmth of her skin. He raps his knuckles against the wood of the table then draws a bracing breath and shifts to rise. She exhales a shuddering breath before echoing his actions.
Manners taught to him by his mother and Southern life dictated that he stand and wait for her to get to her feet; offer assistance that she shrugs off with a wry twist of her lips. Her foot catches, though, on the leg of the chair causing her to stumble when she would have stood upright and he doesn't give her a chance to reject his touch; he moves instinctively to grab her and prevent a fall. His right hand goes to her shoulder; his left to her waist and her right hand flutters to his chest for balance.
Rick feels his heart kick beneath her palm and from the way her eyes drop to his chest he knows that Andrea had felt it to. This was why he'd stayed carefully away from her ever since reuniting with Lori at the quarry.
She's his shame, his one secret and earliest moment of doubt.
He remembers clearly that first moment of her grabbing him and bending him back over a crate in that backroom in Atlanta. Beyond the wavering barrel of her gun with the safety thankfully engaged, he'd seen her fearful blue eyes yet resolutely strong expression. Gender aside, with her blonde hair and fury she could have been the Archangel Gabriel and in that moment he may well have been stricken by some will of God. Later that day, seeing her smiling while debating the legalities of lifting a cheap little necklace in the presence of a man wearing a mostly useless badge, he'd allowed the thought to stir that if his family were gone; if Carl and Lori had been taken from him in the horror that happened while he slept; if he had lost them then maybe all hadn't been lost if fate had put him and Andrea together.
He never would have given up hope, never would have stopped looking until he found his family dead or alive, but if it had taken him longer for the reunion to occur he doesn't deny in himself that thought of maybe. It's how he can manage to face Shane without wanting to gut his best friend for sleeping with Lori; if he had had as much reason to believe Lori dead, he would have looked deeper into that shimmer or interest in Andrea's eyes the day they'd met. When the pressures are getting too much, the not-so-secret exchanges between his wife and Shane are getting too heated and the knowledge of Lori's pregnancy is getting too heavy, Rick feels that disgraceful hollow ache in his gut when his eyes catch Andrea's smile, curling blonde hair or shimmering eyes like a bright beacon in all the darkness.
He never should have been the one to look for her.
He had, though, likely been the only one to notice her missing as the somber group prepared to bury another one of their own.
He tried to justify it as the duty of their unofficial leader; he needed to know where everyone was at all times or else something like Dale happened, but he know it's more than that with Andrea.
He knew Shane was digging the grave because he couldn't afford to have the man acting out in some way to antagonize Hershel further. He knew Daryl was guarding Randall and Glenn was taking solace in a stolen moment with Maggie because those guys were his supports and he never knew when he might need to ask something of them. He knew Hershel was with Jimmy going about the farm cleaning up the cow carcass and tending chores to keep the homestead running because so much depended on their host allowing them safe haven on his property. He knew Lori was in the kitchen with Beth and, hopefully, Carl, preparing a breakfast for the group because he kept better track of his wife than he hoped she did of him.
He hadn't known, though, where Andrea had slipped off to after wiping the tears from her face with fingers stained with Dale's blood and amid his own grief for the fallen man he had worried about her.
Her eyes blink up at him, her lips parting to utter some thanks or apology and he knows why that worry has distracted him these past hours; days…weeks.
Clinging to the excuse of grief if necessary he takes advantage of their moment of isolation with the others all accounted for elsewhere on the farm and he bends to close his mouth over hers before any words can escape into the quiet.
Her lips are as dry as his, but softer and already swollen from the way she had bitten down to control her sobs. After a moment, her tongue moves forward to provide moisture to the chapped skin, proving again his belief in her strength as she quickly takes this rare opportunity they shouldn't be allowing themselves. Her fingers curl into the front of his shirt as she presses closer; lush, womanly curves to welcome the hard thrust of his body, so different from the unhealthy thinness and jutting bones of Lori's frame since their reunion.
The thought of his wife, the realization that he's comparing the two, causes him to twist his face away, but neither his hands or Andrea's will allow him to break away from this woman. Closing his eyes against the wash of self-disgust for the lust that would betray them all, he grits out a curse and drops his head to Andrea's shoulder.
Her arms wind around him; no questions, no condemnations, just pure acceptance of his weight against her and an unspoken understanding of the burdens he bore. She rubs one hand along his spine while scratching the other through the hairs at the nape of his neck and it should be a soothing embrace, but he shudders from the contact and grips her tighter.
"Rick," she sighs; permission and plea in the same breath as he presses his mouth against the hollow of her throat and her head tips to grant access.
"Stop me," he all but begs as his lips trail back up to hers.
"No," she pulls back to look him in the eye as she says it, grief and want warring in her eyes without a sign of doubt or regret. "Not today. I need-"
That was all he had to hear because he could no longer deny that he needed, too. Dale was dead and part of him felt like his moral compass was likely broken without the older man's steadying influence, but broken or not, this was the direction that Rick needed to go.
It moves quickly from there, everything urgent and bordering on desperate but he can't bring himself to care. She breaks away long enough to get a condom from somewhere that he doesn't want to wonder about and there's a moment of awkwardness as they shove off pants and underwear and he tries to get the rubber rolled on without tearing it.
It'd been years since he'd worn one, not having a need since after Carl's birth when Lori was still off the Pill and they'd needed a form of birth control to make sure she didn't get pregnant again too soon after. Part of him dislikes the idea of putting the latex between himself and Andrea, but the last thing they needed was a Jerry Springer drama with the women on the farm all suddenly pregnant and no one's baby daddy being the one most would expect; Shane fathering Lori's baby despite her being married to Rick and Rick fathering a child with Andrea even though most suspected that she had grown physically close with Shane. The thought it disturbing to say the least, but oddly insufficient to stop their momentum as they stumble to the floor right there in the kitchenette.
The cheap linoleum is far from ideal, but the idea of the table where people ate or the bed stained with the memory of Jim's fevered conversion after being bitten and all of Carol's tears after Sophia went missing, the floor was the only surface that worked in the vehicle. Their bodies slide over it with the force of his thrusts until Andrea's shoulder jammed up against the partition behind the driver's seat. He would have slowed and apologized for that, but she locks her ankles over the small of his back, lifts her left hand to brace against the barrier then grabs him firmly with her right hand and moans up into his mouth until he can only pump harder; strive deeper inside her.
Release, when it comes, is only a moment of satiation followed by the realization that this has only just stirred the hunger between them, not fulfilled it.
"No regrets today," she says, seeing his guilt as he carefully withdraws to dispense with the condom. "We lay Dale to rest, set Randall free and find a way to make a life for ourselves in this place."
The words are lacking echoed back at him and he wonders if they had hit her ears with the same thud as he realizes that it can only be a collective 'we,' not him and her together with the others finding that way.
Andrea all but staggers out of the Winnebago, legs shaky and thoughts racing.
She clings to Dale's hat, the silly old fisherman's style headpiece that should be taken to the grave with the man who'd worn it. She tries not to wonder what the man would have had to say about her transgression with Rick and fails not to care about the likely disapproval of the man that had become her surrogate father.
Resisting an urge to cry again, she leans briefly against the side of the RV to draw a steadying breath before looking towards the big house.
And finds Lori not two feet in front of her, staring at her with an expression of shocked disbelief.
The other woman's eyes are stricken and Andrea doesn't have to wonder what Lori had seen or heard, it was all almost visible in that dark gaze. Her head lifts and her spine straightens as everything inside her rebels at having what she had just done with Rick reduced to something sordid and immoral. She had needed him.
Not sex.
Not violence.
Rick. The strength, comfort and anchoring that only he could provide.
She stares Lori down, waiting for the woman to say something, expecting another confrontation like they had had days before in the Greene's kitchen, but Rick's wife plays the trump card that insures Andrea will always come out the loser in this. With a hand going to cover her mouth and the other going to splay protectively over the fetus growing in her abdomen, Lori stumbles away to lean against a tree and vomit whatever food she may have recently consumed.
Andrea's eyes drop to the hat clasped in her hands and she feels a lurch in her own gut, but swallows down the bile and forces her feet into motion towards the house.
When Shane cuts across her path in the old Ford they'd adopted on the farm, she meets his dark gaze and echoes the tight clench of his jaw before looking at the resolute faces of Daryl and T-Dog on the back of the truck. Without hesitation she tucks Dale's hat into her parka and climbs into the passenger seat of the pickup.
Learning the taste of Rick's mouth, weight of his body, feel of his hands, scent of his sweat and the thrust of him inside her hadn't worked as she had hoped to stop her grief.
She's silently grateful to the guys for allowing her along on this sweep of the property, thinly veiled excuse for violence that they all know it to be. Zombies know and care nothing about revenge, but it feels damned good to come upon Walkers straggling on the farm and just bash them for what had been done to Dale, to Sophia, to Jim and, dear God, Amy along with the countless others since the nightmare began.
And if, in her mind, the female zombie looked a hell of a lot like Lori as Andrea plunged the pitchfork up through its chin into its feeble brain then that was just a little extra catharsis that no one needed to know about so long as it got Andrea through this agonizing day.