He doesn't remember going to sleep but when he wakes up it all comes back. The fight. The blood. Michonne next to him. His hand next to her hand, which is wrapped around the handle of that goddamn blade she whips around like she has eyes in the back of her head. Like she was born with it or something.
She is still asleep. The sun is creeping through the slats in the boarded-up windows of the grocery store and has landed on his face first. Another couple of minutes, another few inches, and it will be on hers.
He doesn't move his hand. He feels like he could sleep another thousand years. But they have people waiting on them. People wondering what happened. And the last thing he wants is for anyone to get sent after them.
She exhales, loud. Like she's dreaming. "Yes," she says. "Yes, please." It's so soft. Like her normal voice, but without the guard. It makes him want to wrap up in her. Tangle himself around her and that blade and never let her go off looking for the Governor on her own again.
The only reason he's here now is because seeing her leave the gates again on that horse without him killed him with guilt.
She goes through the shelves and cupboards quickly. Flour in a busted sack. A roll of tin foil. Three tins of tuna fish. A box of crackers pocked through with mice scratchings. Hershel's right; growing what they need is the way to go. Scavenging about is a waste of energy. She has seen one too many horror-filled refrigerators after the turn; she understands his philosophy.
Grow it all new.
Daryl, though, doesn't have a purist view. He rifles through pockets of dead walkers for cigarettes and lighters and rolling papers and drugs. Anything. He's got a thief in him that's never bothered with regret.
He's like a little boy, she thinks. Too much like one. A boy with no mama.
She watches him pull out a drawer from behind the cash register checkout and dump it all over the cash register counter. Sorting through the loot until he finds what he wants. A tiny flashlight, a pack of batteries, a pack of Marlboros, half-crushed, a little tin of chew. All of it goes into his jacket pockets. Then he's onto the next drawer.
She has spent too much time on revenge. She needs to be more like him. Taking what she needs. When she needs. Taking it and not looking back.
They don't leave that night. He says he wants to wait. He doesn't know why but she doesn't ask. Maybe she knows something he doesn't?
He likes the cool feel of the linoleum under his clothes, truthfully. She doesn't sleep on the floor. She unrolls a blanket down what used to be the snacks and chips aisle, but is now nothing. What he wouldn't give for a bag of chips.
What he wouldn't give to lay beside her, run his hand up her shirt. Feel her tits. Feel her heart beat. Feel her breathing. Feeling her alive, beside him.
He knows she's all eyes for Rick, though.
And he knows that she doesn't need him. And this itch in his pants? It's just an itch. Because what he needs isn't someone like him. What he needs is to be needed back.
She knows how to go it alone, just like him. She fought everything in her to join the group. Burnt herself doing it, same way he did. He sees how she teeters around the edge of it, smiling rarely. Trying. Waiting for openings that make sense.
He knows he can trust her, just by seeing that. Because that's how he is. Was.
But he can't explain it all out to her. With her, there aren't words. That requires something else entirely. Another woman entirely. And she's not here.
He's asleep on the bare floor, lying on his stomach on the white tile. She wants to laugh at him, but he looks passed out cold. His jacket and vest rolled under his head. She looks up, the bit of light through the slats of wood over the windows coming at her. Feeling hot.
Is he drooling? She laughs softly. He wakes up suddenly. "What?" he says, sitting up right away, hands against his crossbow.
"Good morning," she says.
He wipes his face with the back of his hand. He looks a little embarrassed.
"You ready?" he asks.
"When you are."
She turns and goes back to the toilet paper aisle where she slept. Her pack is rolled and she's ready to shove off. She's hungry; her belly's rumbling, her mouth's dry. She likes seeing him look rumpled and vulnerable. She wonders what he'd be like to fuck. Would he let her be the boss? She can't imagine. It kind of makes her smile to imagine.
She turns from him so he can't see the smile. This isn't anything she'd joke with him about. Sleeping beside him all these weeks, out on runs, desperately looking for their shared enemy - he knows a lot about her but she won't embarrass him with something like that.
Rick would let her be on top, she thinks as they start down the road, slow and cautious like always.
Rick, being an alpha, doesn't have to hump anyone's leg. Being in charge means you don't bother to prove it.
They get about two miles when a herd comes through. A nightmare herd. Dragging bits of bodies with them. He thinks he can still hear the people screaming but then realizes it's just the steady bass moan of so many walkers.
There is another house, a shed about a mile off the main road where the herd has slogged through. It's empty, with oil-stains on the floor. Someone's motorcycle storage, maybe? There's a farm house in the distance. They want until the herd passes, both popping out with binoculars until the ragged end is just an untidy speck.
"You want to try for that house?" he asks.
"Might be trouble," she asks.
"No might about it," he says. But they have to figure a way back to the prison. The car they were in is fucked. There's been no opportunities to find something else. They are at least 25 miles from where they need to be. He thinks for a minute that this might be the end of their time with the prison group. He feels strange and disloyal about it, because he's not scared with her. Not even a little bit. Just guilty about Rick and what he owes the man. And how he'll miss him.
And Carol, too. Carol's waiting on him. She was the only who didn't ask him to look for anything. She just didn't want him to go. Told him so, too.
Not getting back to her is a failure he can't stand. He finds a cut through the brush toward the house and starts running.
It's a suicide house. Two old people. Bullets in their brains. Rotting. Flies everywhere.
It could be worse, she says, as they clear the bodies out the back stoop.
She doesn't say, It could be better. No one can say that anymore.
Still, she feels like she's got to do her part. He's scouring the property for vehicles. There's a riding lawnmower and a motorcycle and a big pole barn. She sweeps the place for food and finds a couple of cans of things - beans, corn, tomato sauce - and then she goes out in the pole barn to spot him in case there's trouble.
There's a dead horse in the barn. He finds it first and doesn't shield it from her, which she appreciates. He knows she's fond of Flame, but he also knows she can take it.
And there's an old station wagon. Under a tarp. He flips up the hood, points at a mouse nest. Points at something he can tape up and fix. Nods. Talks to her, but he's really talking to himself.
"Tomorrow, we can head out," he said. "Found some gas in the back."
She looks him up and down while he's looking at the car. She holds in a smile. He's not the smoothest man that ever lived, but he's a strong man; she knows he'll feel good to touch. What eats at her is how he'll react to touching. This is a part of her from before that's never left her entirely. But it's a curiosity you can't afford to have these days. That kind of risk is something Carl takes - going to get a picture of his parents for his sister. Her going back for the paper mache cat. Dumb. Asking too much.
What will his face look like when he comes?
She thinks, we have this one chance.
He won't say anything. He won't even try it. Wouldn't dare.
"Come and eat in a bit," she says over her shoulder as she walks back to the house. "I've got some stuff for us."
I have this one chance.
He finds the gas. He fixes the car. He checks the tires. He ejects the mice from their comfortable nest. He runs the thing as much as he can.
It's started to rain a little bit, but she's inside, making food for them. The rain drums into the metal roof of the pole barn and he keeps working on the car until he feels like he's fallen out of time. Like, this is their house. Not the dead old people. But his house. He's never lived in such a house. Always little shotgun houses. Then, after his momma died, trailers. Rented trailers, at that. Ones they got kicked out of on the regular.
The woman inside his house? She's wearing an apron. Humming. Making him something. Spaghetti. There's beer in the fridge. The radio on.
And this? This isn't a fucking grocery-getter but a sharp-ass muscle car. Mint condition. Never drives it except on fine summer nights, when he takes her for an ice cream.
They'll do that after dinner. Then go inside and...there would be children. Yes. His daughter. His son. This house. He takes care of everyone. Everything.
In his mind, he deserves all this.
In his mind, there is no Carol. No Sophia. No Merle. No prison. No walkers.
In his mind, he could be someone's father. Not at a loss for it, like his own daddy.
In his mind, Michonne isn't Michonne. She's the sleeping woman with the soft voice. "Yes. Yes, please."
He wipes his hands on a rag. Lays down his tools on the barn floor. Heads toward the house, slow at first. Then, fast.
She isn't startled.
She heard him come in. Feels him, standing behind her. Arms around her. Awkward.
Her hands are busy with cutting up peaches. When she looks up in the window and sees him - them, together, reflected in the glass - he looks away. But pulls her tighter. Then he's still. Slowed down. Like he's not sure. Like he's asking permission.
But her heart isn't slowing down. His arms are soft around hers. She sets down the knife. His palm is over her heart. Maybe he can feel it?
She doesn't know what to do. Turn around? Say something? He is solid behind her, but his clothes are damp from rain.
He's the one who says it. In her ear, his scruffy beard tickling her: "Just this once?"
And she pivots, twirls as fast as she would if she were holding that blade instead of a fruit knife, and then her mouth is on his. Soft at first. Tentative.
She's got her hands around his neck, pressing up against him. He could fuck her right this second. He's ready. He presses her back against the counter, knocking her long blade propped beside her to the floor. They both pause at the noise; stare at the katana on the tile that has patterns of flowers all over it.
Then she smiles and it's like Christmas morning. Or what he'd never gotten Christmas morning. And he's back on her at lightning speed. He wants it so bad and he wants her to give it to him but he can't say anything more than he already said. He reaches down her pants and paws at her cunt over her panties. Spreads his palm over the cotton, feels her. Rubs. Slow again. Touching as if it's a question. He wants the actions to stop words; she can shove him, she can hit him. Take the blade to him, for all he cares. But don't make him explain himself.
She leans against the counter, giving him more space.
"Just this once," she says.
He's not one for foreplay. But he's not out of control, either. He's purposeful as he's always been. Not in any rush. That's what's kept him alive: patience.
And patience is undoing her vest. Kissing down her neck. Touching her breasts, soft at first. Then hard. Greedy. Sucking at them, squeezing. The more she sighs and breathes, the harder he squeezes. The harder he gets, too. She can feel it.
He's not asking permission anymore. That's passed. But she can feel his thankfulness coming off him in waves. He's not entitled; he's not the kind of man who grew up expecting to get anything. Not like Rick.
Rick bullies his way through the world differently than Daryl. With that soft voice and those hands on his hips as if he wouldn't kill you dead in a second if you got between him and his own. Rick expects things to come to him. That's how people who live by the rules are.
She laughs to herself, reaches into his jacket, slips it off him. She understands how he is. But damned if she doesn't have needs herself. She strips off his shirt, his face shocked as she flips the cotton over his head and starts at his belt.
"Keep up," she says.
"Yes, ma'am," he says back. Smiles a little, sideways like he does.
He thinks they should do it on the sofa. Or a bed. But they've both seen this house. The living room full of blood stains and rot smells. The bedrooms stale and dusty.
But he knows this is one time only. One shot.
He doesn't ask about condoms. He doesn't need to; she slips away from him, shirtless, and comes back with one. Was this something the old people who died had? Or something she just carries around?
He can't ask; he wants it so bad that his mouth is dried up and stuck. He imagines Carol laughing at him, now.
Would Carol put the condom on for him? Would Carol want anyone's babies anymore? His babies, at that?
This thought pulls him up short. He puts the condom on himself, which isn't anything he loves doing in full daylight. But a minute later, her legs are wrapped around his hips. His boots still on. Both their weapons on the floor.
She closes her eyes once he's in.
"Good?" he asks.
"Yes," she says.
Fucking standing up had never worked for her before. She didn't see the point of bringing it up now; Daryl wasn't that much taller than she was. But they are locked in position and she kind of likes it, wondering what he'll do next. And his dick is plenty big. It feels great. Using muscles you'd forgotten about has its own reward.
But then he says, "Ah, hell," and he pulls out of her. Gives up. The whole half-dressed & standing-up routine is bullshit. She says nothing. Just pulls off her jeans and socks. She likes being naked to fuck. Always has. All of your skin alive with it. Nothing covered. She imagines standing in front of Rick. What he might say if he saw her. Another thing she's curious about.
The cool, flowered linoleum sticks to her back as she lays down. He muddles around with his boots and his own pants. He looks like he wishes there was a light they could turn off. She feels bad for him, his awkward hands not sure where to go next. She pulls him down on top of her. His hair falls into his eyes.
She thinks, you need to get Carol to cut that shit already. She smiles, just as he slides back inside her.
"What."
"Nothing," she says. "Let's do this already."
They eat the peaches. They eat canned corn and navy beans and diced tomatoes, all slopped together in bowls. They eat with spoons, which they both eye immediately, after she laid them on the table.
"Got the rest in my pack," she tells him.
He grins back. Stuffs a slice of peach in his mouth. He's sitting at the table beside her, no shirt, just his pants half-done up. She's in a clean shirt she found somewhere. No pants. He likes the look of her legs. Strong muscles. But now tucked underneath her in a way he's never seen: casual. A Michonne you don't get to see. There's no expression her face that's pushing back anyone. She's just a woman eating. Scraping her spoon against the bowl. Reaching for the peach slices on the plate between them.
There are many things he's done before the turn that he's not proud of. There are many things he's fucked up after it, too.
But as he sits by this woman, sees her feet dangle easily from the chair, listens to her talk about their plan tomorrow, he knows that this isn't one of his sins. Because this won't happen again. He knows they are like spark to spark; a useless combination.
There are people who depend on him now. People who are waiting for them, back at the prison. People who rely on him. People who think he's capable and powerful and valuable. People who need him to be the best man he can be.
He knows how she looks at Rick. He knows she's what Carl and Judith need.
He pictures Carol, steady. Fierce. Not afraid to say anything. He needs her in a way he couldn't describe until she came back to him from the tombs of the prison.
Still, he smiles at Michonne. Whoever she is, this woman, casual as she is now. Because she understands him.
And she won't judge. She won't tell his secret: how much he needs. She knows he's keeping hers, as well.