A/N: Hi all! This is a little fic written for Richonne Just Dessert's AU Challenge. My prompt was "Activists". I hope you all enjoy!
"Officer Grimes."
She was standing on his front porch, wrapped in a crimson pea coat, shivering in the cold of the winter evening. He recognized her immediately, from her elaborate locs beneath her knit beanie to the dark brown of her lipstick.
"Mrs. Lewis," Rick's throat was suddenly tight, his chest pounding. "How did you find me?"
"You aren't hard to find," her voice was soft, gentler than he deserved. Her eyes locked on his face as though she was searching it, trying to see inside of him.
Alarm bells went off in his mind at her statement, but he pushed them to the back of his mind. "Did you want to come in?" he asked, reverting to his tried and true southern hospitalities. He fully expected her to decline, to speak her piece and leave him to his demons.
"Yes, please," she took a shaky step forward, then a second. Rick nearly tripped over his own feet in his haste to let her in. He glanced up the street one last time, cataloguing. His neighborhood was quiet, safe, boring even, just like always. The thought did little to comfort him.
"Mrs. Lewis—" he began again, locking the door and pulling it firmly shut.
"Not missus." She corrected him. "Not anymore."
Guilt punched him like a fist in the stomach. He remembered her husband, the fear in his eyes, his body limp and slouched. There was not a night that it did not haunt him. "Ms…" he tried again.
"Michonne," she fiddled nervously with the buttons of her coat. "Just Michonne is fine."
"Michonne," he tried the name, the syllables foreign to his tongue. It was a beautiful name for a beautiful woman, a name he felt he had no right to. "How can I help you?" he asked. He busied himself by assisting her with her coat, grateful for the distraction. She relinquished it to him wearily, her gaze never straying far from his face.
They stared at one another in his foyer, the sound of the heater kicking on the only thing breaking the silence.
"I'm glad you asked," she said at long last. She tilted her head, reaching for her hat. Her locs tumbled free, distracting him for just a second. "You were there in my husband's last moments."
"I was," he sucked his teeth, his nerves jumping. "Michonne, I'm sorry—"
She cut him off, one of her elegant hands coming up palm first, as though she were directing traffic. "I don't need your apologies," she said firmly. "I need your help."
His breath stuttered. "My help?"
"You saw everything. I know they have you on administrative leave. You and your partner, Officer Blake." For the first time, the hint of anger colored her tone.
"He ain't my partner," Rick clipped out, his anger nearly matching her own. "Only reason I was there was I was afraid he'd—" he caught himself, abruptly snapping his mouth shut. He was on thin ice already. He hadn't missed the veiled threats by his superiors as he gave his statement. He'd been sent home like a naughty child with one mandate: Keep his mouth shut. It burned Rick up to his core.
"You were afraid he'd do what he did," Michonne said, color brightening her cheeks.
"I couldn't stop him," Rick lamented. Lord knows, he tried. He'd told the Captain the kind of man Phillip Blake was months ago. No one had listened. Now the chickens had come home to roost. Now a man was dead.
"You can," Michonne stepped toward him, her chin tilted up as she regarded him. "Stop him from doing it again. Help me get justice for Mike."
"How?" he willed himself to stay still, to not wilt beneath her judgement.
"Testify," the word left her lips on a whisper.
The thought had occurred to him. Breaking the blue shield was not a joke, least of all in a backwoods town in Georgia. He had Carl to consider. "It might not do anything," he whispered back, thinking of his son.
Then again, Mike had a little boy too. Rick saw his picture on the news. He couldn't have been much younger than Carl, this stoic son who stood so bravely beside podiums at press conferences. For all of his courage, he was still a child, a child that only had a mother now, a mother who had journeyed into the town where her husband was killed just to show up at his door.
"It will," she sounded confident, her voice steady, even as she trembled. "I have a plan, but I need help." She swallowed, tears coming to her eyes. "Officer Grimes, I need help." The dam broke at once, her façade crumbling as her small body shook with the effort. Rick felt the last of his resistance crumble.
He was hugging her before he realized what was happening. Her tears saturated the fabric of his shirt. She clung to him tightly. Rick had a fleeting moment of the oddity of the situation, of a police officer comforting the widow of a man killed by another officer in his precinct. The whole situation was senseless.
"Please," she squeaked the request into his chest. "Andre and I need your help."
Rick pulled back just the slightest, fixing her with his gaze. She stared back, eyes wet and swollen. His heart broke all over again.
"I'll testify," he promised her. "For your husband and your son. And for you." He owed the man he couldn't save. He'd do his damnedest to save his wife.
He didn't deserve her smile, but he reveled in it nonetheless, his heart lightening just the slightest for the first time in weeks.
"We can do this," she told him. "Together." She held out her hand, palm forward.
"Together," he agreed, shaking it.