She had waited.

Although clocks no longer ticked in the background like an unconscious thought, Michonne was aware of every second, minute and hour that passed; down to the few spaces between seconds that do not have names but instead can be identified by the small hiccups of breath a person takes when they are anxious.

Her foot tapped impatiently as she looked over the wall, willing her eyes to look deeper into the shadows the night created. She was hoping – praying – to identify anything other than a shuffling of feet followed by the shallow groans of a walker.

Instead, she wanted the stride of a confident, yet alert, bow legged male to find his way through the shadows and appear at the gates. Realistically, he may be battered and bruised but that would be okay, at least his appearance would stop the hammering in her heart, that hurt, where it felt as though after every beat, small fractures in her rib cages were being produced.

Looking back towards the house they shared, where the lights were all off and Carl and Judith were probably sleeping peacefully, despite all the things that they had processed (or had repressed in fact), hurt her.

It was simple to understand why.

He - Rick – had never been back so late from the run.

This territory of the unknown scared Michonne, down to the core, where the bodies old and instinctual ways kick in and fight or flight becomes second nature for every second of the day.
The confidence to roam freely had been stripped away from them and it had bought Michonne to her knees. She remembered the conversations they had before he left.

"It isn't safe to do it alone." Michonne had said, looking up at him and seeing how the worry lines had deepened.

"We're the ones who live, I've said it before." His voice was soft and his hands wrapped around her waist, the grip tightening as he finished his sentence.

She had held back a grimace when he said that, for something hadn't sat right in her chest when he rehearsed these words, not like they had before. There were two enemies now and they could barely escape one without having help.

"I don't want you alone out there." Michonne tried again, trying not to be too direct, trying not to stunt his confidence within himself at such a delicate time.

"We need this, you know that and everyone... everyone is busy doing their own thing. And someone needs to do it, that can be you or me and right now, with the way things are... I'd rather it be me." His eyes become slightly wetter then, making them sparkle like the sun on the ocean floor.

Michonne sighed and thought back to their conversation in the caravan when they had gotten away long enough for Rick to keep pressing the matter of not going back for a few more days.

Nothing left her lips as she pressed herself against his chest and looked out of the window beside them, where the sun had shone high and made it seem as though everything below it was peaceful and happy.

At this moment in time, she wanted to kick herself. But she knew, she knew in this heat that they were in, it was dangerous to leave Judith and Carl alone again. Michonne had been aware, without even being told, that this was the reason she was still here and not there with him – wherever there was. The maternal instinct had kept her here, foot rooted between the wall and the house, looking to and fro to make sure that he came home, to not leave them and to maintain the dynamic that not only kept the family alive, but the group.

Rick was five days overdue and since the first night Michonne was unable to sleep. She had clung to the side of the covers that covered his body every time they slept together, smelling it and hoping that it would soften the clenched feeling in her throat.
When that didn't work, she paced to and fro in the living room, trying to distract herself by coming up with new ways to scavenge and to prep the Alexandrians that they had left. But when her eyes began to close, her mind was filled with thoughts, all negative, and she didn't know where it had come from.

Admittedly, although she never showed it, there were times where her confidence lapsed and it was unfortunate that it occurred at such a time. And it hit her low and dirty, making others have to say her name twice to get her attention, making her draw her katana slower in teaching lessons concerning the Alexandrians, taking a few seconds longer to respond to Judith's cues. She felt herself slow down without her other half by her side.

Suddenly her body jolted and she steadied herself, looking around her quickly and tentatively. The sun was rising above the horizon, the shallow sleep giving her enough energy to get down from the wall and hang her shoulders low.

Michonne wss remembering the way that Rick had tasted on their final kiss, how tight his body had felt when she had thought he had died at the fair and jumped to wrap herself around and how his hands always wandered on the nights of days that they had skimmed by near death experiences.

The near death experiences always scared her. They always did.

Was that going to happen again?

It was tiring her, all this thinking. The urge to run back to the wall and search for his blue eyes and blue shirt in the distance required so much energy to fight against, walking back home in the quiet Alexandrian streets alone stole pieces of her spirit.

And all she wanted, as wind picked up and as the clouds reformed and as the sun started to deceive the world with being a bright place, was for Rick Grimes to appear at the gates, battered and bruised like he always was, looking like he was made of something more than his constituent parts.