Michonne is essential.
His truest inner-voice. A force of nature. Beauty in stillness.
She had been all of these things almost from the first, but his determined protective violence had kept him from her in the manner the recesses of his heart most desired.
She had been his friend, his son's guardian, a gentle sage of joy and wisdom in this broken decayed world.
...As sharp as her own katana blade, every uttered word held impact and meaning.
She wasn't like Lori. As much as he had loved her, his marriage was strained even before the Walkers. She always wanted more from him, wanted to know more of what was going on inside of his head, because she couldn't always read him.
He wasn't complicated. He figured she ought to have known by then what he was about. He should not have had to spell it out at that stage. But, she was a long tall dark-haired beauty who still made his knees quake beneath her gaze, she loved their son, and she had a good heart. He would have made it work.
Then Shane happened.
Such is marriage, especially in an apocalypse that it doesn't always end well. In this case, in death and sacrifice. Funny how you can resent an attachment in life that nearly pulls away your sanity in death.
Yes, he had loved Lori with all of his heart. Loved her into the comforting apparition she was to him for a time, before he could fully accept the reality of her nasty demise.
And so, when Michonne showed up in a field of Walkers, a dark spectre of grace and mystery, a solitary warrior on a quest... An imploring look in her eyes and a basket of formula on the ground beside her; he thought her another hallucination.
She was too striking. Too incongruous a figure, with her dark beauty, halo of locs, and katana.
He simply waited for the mirage to fade or to regale him with more lies like the voices on the phone had. Then his son asked if they should help and he knew that she was real. He was momentarily stunned. Unable to do anything but watch as this wounded creature used the last of her reserves to dispatch three walkers before collapsing.
This spurred him to action. He could not watch her die.
So he saved her and later, she returned the favor.
They brought each other back.
More than a year later, filthy and weak, irritable, starving and paranoid, only she had been able to cut through all of that to get him to see safe shelter as a real possibility.
Then, as he rolled up to the great steel walls of Alexandria, he shuddered with fear. Not for this place being another Terminus, but that it would be everything that he had hoped and dreamed for his family, for his kids, for Michonne, only to be snatched away. Then she lay her hand upon his own and smiled her rare glorious smile and he knew everything would be alright. He would make sure of it as he had always done, at any cost.
Jesse had been small-town pretty. She smelled of cheap shampoo. She flushed pink when she saw him half-dressed.
This was familiar.
This was attainable.
She saw a desirable man, new and freshly scrubbed of horrors she couldn't possibly imagine. He saw a woman who would have wanted him before the dead began to walk. She could have been one of Lori's friends who would ogle him in his uniform when she wasn't looking. One of those friends who he would never in a million years betray Lori for, like she had with Shane.
And now, as this woman cut his hair, ran gentle fingers soothingly against his scalp, she unwittingly reminds him that he is now a widower and becomes a nagging itch at the back of his throat.
The itch isn't just Jessie anymore. It's her asshole husband, and it's the weak people in this town who will never "get it". Who will get themselves and his family killed. Daryl and Carol are with him one this, and yet... His heart whispers that it isn't right. The piece of it that is Michonne would tell him that and she would be right.
So, his shame in this knowledge keeps him from giving her that chance.
After...
After the fight and threats. After he is subdued. After he wakes feeling like the idiot that he was.
There she is, his dark spectre, quietly observing, making him burn with shame for having avoided her. And worse when she tells him that she would have stuck with him even in his idiocy.
And would not have deserved her loyalty.
He never deserved her.
When he turns his back to her to sleep, he dreams of being that man that she would deserve.
The night that Jessie and her sons are devoured by walkers, she is there, steadfast, a regal benefactress, far beyond him.
And yet... She was always beside him.
He saw red when she fell, saw the easy familiar attainable thing that reminded him of life before, rendered the delusion he knew it always had been. Saw his folly nearly destroy the real thing that he had, his son's life. The stupid risk he took in order to protect what would have been his destruction.
For a subpar illusion. Someone he thought could be made to fit what he thought he was supposed to have.
Perhaps, he had been suicidal as well as delusional.
Still she slashed, hacked, stabbed, got them both through.
And then incredibly, the town came through.
It was time to stop clinging to the past and look to the future.
It had been as if she had always been there. No drama, just a soft ease.
She appeared in the doorway tall, glowing, and stunning as ever. Beyond him in the other life, but now...
He wanted her. He had to have her completely, but only if she would have him. If not, he would treasure what she gave instead.
"Don't you ever touch me!" she had said back then.
This wasn't a desire that was sure to be fulfilled with a few easily-assurable steps like Jessie. His heart pounded and he shifted as his entire being reacted to the realization that he needed her, needed to touch her. Needed her to need to touch him.
...And he wasn't certain if that were even possible. Wasn't certain he was even the type of man she would take in that fashion. She was a sophisticate, always dwelling in calm. He was so often chaotic, he wondered if she took that as lacking what she needed.
All day she was there in his mind, making her happy, wanting her joy to be something he could have the privilege of drawing out of her all of the time. Of having her at his side always.
She wanted spearmint toothpaste. He would get her that. He would run until his lungs were raw, would chase down a post-apocalypse hipster, and he would find spearmint mints for her, failing all of that.
When he got home, he was utterly exhausted. Dog-tired, as his father used to say.
Sleep was just claiming him when he felt the not-so-gentle tap. He opened his eyes ready to kill, but saw those womanly curves, saw the baby monitor in her hands and was, -would always be awake enough to entertain this.
Then the ease between them ignited something, which became an all-consuming fire. -The joy in realizing it was in fact possible. That it was now so, poured kerosene on that fire and they became one.
He took pleasure in worshipping her, with fingers, mouth, tongue, and cock.
In watching with awe as she rose above and beneath him.
In taking firm hold of the glorious perfection of her posterior.
In seeing, feeling her fall into light. In being the catalyst for it now and the future.
She wasn't beyond him.
She wasn't beyond him.
As he had always been hers, she was now his.