01: The House

Written to The Lake by Aqualung


Her dreams are so fucking loud. They come with a deafening force. They're screeching, squealing and shrieking, they cut through her eardrums with saw-toothed sabres and they leave her feeling nauseated, they leave her feeling like shit every time she rolls to her side and finds him barely an inch away from her, chasing after her in his doze and frowning as his blind fingers slide aimlessly over the bedsheets.

At night, Rick turns into a needy octopus. At night, he holds her close and clings to her with a stubborn tenderness that never ceases to amuse her because he's the leader, the strict, unapologetic force that keeps this place going and hails down on all those, who dare to pose a threat to his newfound home. He's a fighter, forged and weathered by unbearable grief and the constant struggle for survival, and he can be merciless, he can be downright barbaric at times.

He's a killer, yes, but he's also a provider – a father. He snuffed a man with his bare teeth, ripped out his carotid like a mad dog and left him drowning in a dark red pool of his own blood before he stabbed another one to death to save his son from a horrible fate. He's fiercely protective of the people he loves and cares about, and he's always so eager to feel responsible when things don't go as planned, always so eager to burden himself with the weight of the world despite knowing that no-one ever asked him to do so.

She props herself on her elbow and studies the parts of him that aren't concealed by his pillow or the covers: the deep, unruly sea of grizzled curls that borders the tanned shores of his strong neck, the veils that cloak baptismal caves of endless teal and arctic blue, and the hardened realms of his lean torso, rising and falling with every breath he takes. Even in the sparse light of the early morning sun she can track down all the lines and notches that have been carved into his skin. Pain is a cruel artist, but it didn't get the best of him, it didn't soil the smooth space between his brows she's compelled to kiss goodnight when sleep truckles through the open window to hold them hostage.

Sleep.

Even after a good day, it pulls the rug out from under her feet. Even after a good day, it feeds her with doubt, languor and an irrational petulance she can't even begin to explain. Even after a good day, it tends to loosen Rick's grip on her and drives her out of his arms.

Careful not to wake him, she slips out of the bed, puts on her pyjama pants and drapes one of his well-worn button-downs over her shoulders. His room is a cluttered hollow, dark and warm and carpeted with a plethora of discarded shirts and socks. She shakes her head and smiles to herself on her way out. He's a slob – just like Carl, who's still convinced that being a teenager counts as an acceptable excuse for being spine-crawlingly messy.

The staircase is a minefield, so she makes sure to avoid all the creaky steps – the third, the fourth, the sixth, and the ninth – and then she moves through the hallway on quick feet, fastening up her shirt and giving a small jump when a loud, guttural, wall-shattering snort erupts from behind Daryl's door. Well. Good to know that he made it back from his three-day recruiting tour in one piece.

Once in the kitchen, she reaches for the far-left cabinet and pulls out a flat, rectangular tea box. It's one of the tackiest things she has ever seen: made from cheap tin, dipped in powder blue and spotted with tiny specks of tarnished gold, its cover presenting a young woman riding a swing and losing one of her shoes in the process. She's frozen in time, surrounded by roses and thimbleweed and shrouds of malachite shrubbery. The skirt of her taffy pink dress bounces and billows like the flower head of a peony in a light breeze and she doesn't take notice of her servant steering the swing with a set of ropes – or the young gentleman, who's sitting right in front of her, flinching away and reaching out for her at the same time.

She settles for a bag of chamomile tea, plants her hands on the counter and waits for the water to boil. Out there on the other side of the window, Alexandria is still lost in a cosy slumber. A soft drizzle obscures the neighbouring houses and thick wafts of mist funnel through the streets like ghost white streams of cotton wool.

After sunrise, the place is thriving. It's buzzing with energy, allegiance and a sense of belonging that – according to Rick and the rest of the group – had to be paid with the blood of bullies and innocents. Apparently, some people had to die while others lost their lives due to the ruthless law of collateral damage.

She was there, at the churchyard. She stood in the middle of a circle of naked potbellies made from soft earth. She followed endless rows of wooden grave crosses penetrating the sky like scuffed pillars: crooked, lonely, and poorly tacked together. She can't remember the epitaphs, the names of former residents who used to call this community their home, but she can feel them, she can hear them loud and clear.

She can hear past lives – happy lives spent in blitheful self-deceit – that float through the air, and echoes of faint laughter and hushed love confessions that sink down to the pit of her stomach. She can hear foreign memories as they croon in the dark corners of this house. They're with her. They're trapped within the walls, thumping against harled stone, and stretching the wooden beams above her head until they grunt and grate and squeak.

Why is she here?

How did she even get here?

Memories of what happened at the clearing start to sneak up on her and she flexes the muscles in her jaw. There are raindrops drumming against her forehead and there's a familiar stranger staring at her with bright, tearful eyes. A breathless chuckle reverberates in her ears and she remembers calloused fingers getting caught in her mop of drenched braids.

Rick found her. He fished her out of the woods and brought her to this strange place where walls of steel stand tall and immovable between her and the evergreen madness that wouldn't stop pestering her for weeks. And she can still hear it: the animalistic choir of the dead, the never-ending rustle of leaves scraping over dry ground, and a harsh, heart-breaking order, cooed and whispered ever so softly.

The high-pitched whistle of the tea kettle commands the waters of the past to drain away quickly. She blinks and prepares her cup of tea, a feeble thrum of disorientation bleeding through her pores and an eerie vibe of solitude sticking to the back of her neck like the brittle caress of a faceless lover.

"Hey."

His voice sounds like sandpaper: grained and heavy as it slogs along miles of indomitable land. It became her shelter when her body couldn't deal with regular meals in the beginning. When she would grip the toilet seat like a lifeline whilst coughing up thick threads of spit and curdled spew. When she would barge from one torturous loop of helpless convulsion to the next. When Rick – out of pity, instinct or affection –would crouch down beside her and hold back her hair. When he would press his forehead against her shoulder blade with a sigh and macerate her pain with palliative words of consolation.

Afterwards, they would find refuge in one of their beds and he would pull her in. He would slip his hand under her top to let his palm rest against her belly, urging her to start their nightly ritual of asking each other questions about their former lives: what they liked to do on Sunday mornings, which generic pop songs they secretly listened to on repeat for hours, and who they thought would have won the next presidential election if the world hadn't ended.

"Michonne?"

She turns around to take him in. Him and his wild hair, his bloodshot eyes, his rumpled clothes and stalwart boots. Commiseration tears at her brows. Despite getting a good amount of five to six hours of sleep each night, he always looks tired these days.

"Everything alright?"

"I'm here", she mutters.

It's a strange altercation of saying Hello or Good morning or Sorry that I unintentionally wriggled out of your embrace again, but it's what they agreed on when she slipped away for the first time and saw nothing but muddy spills and grey bodies lurching, stumbling and staggering around her, swaying from left to right and bumping against one another like some untrained members of a poorly choreographed marching band.

The sensation of his index and middle finger pressing into the crook of her arm shakes her out of it and she goes stiff under his touch, both angered and appalled by her inability to stay in the present – and of course he misreads her reaction as a sign of spurning dismissal. He shrinks back and raises his hands in gentle placation as if he's trying to comfort a wounded animal, as if he's trying to reassure her that he's not the enemy.

She takes a sip of her drink before she sets the mug on the counter. She holds her hand out towards him, waiting for him to get the message, and fortunately, he does: after a long, frightful moment of badly cached disappointment and uneasy confusion rushing across his rugged features, he gifts her with a soft smile and closes the space between them.

His body has become her shelter, too. It's stable and solid against her, it keeps her from running away too far without forcing her into a corner. His hands settle at her waist and she hums lightly as his chest expands against her forehead. This is still new to her. It feels strange and familiar at the exact same time, and for some reason, it doesn't really scare her.

At some point – probably after Beth's funeral – they used to be delusional in their collective urge to find a place to live, they used to be chocked off by silent shock and dehydration, and they would carve out a miserable existence in the grim and unforgiving dells of the wilderness, but she didn't need him to hold her then, even if a small part of her wanted him to.

Another part of her – a much bigger one – wanted to hold him as well because the sheer sight of him – rough, exhausted, and dysfunctionally leery – would wear down her will to keep going. He was bursting at the seams and she couldn't bear to look at him sometimes, so it never happened. They never held each other. Not until about a month ago, when he found her kneeling in a puddle of shredded guts and chopped off limbs.

"You need anything?"

His lips move against her auricle and she leans back to meet his questioning gaze.

"I'm good."

"You sure about that?" he asks with a tilt of his head.

Damn him. She slips her hands under his elbows and a sudden pang of jealousy starts to stab and saw at her breastbone. He's scheduled for a supply run today. He's going with Glenn and Tara, and he didn't ask her to join them. He didn't ask her to do anything so far.

"I need toothpaste", she says because it's the first thing that crosses her mind.

"Spearmint and baking soda", a conspirative smirk follows the grey-streaked trails of his slightly overgrown scruff; it tugs at his lips, glides along his cheeks and dissolves into tiny crinkles around the corners of his eyes, and she breathes out a sigh.

"You know it."

His grin broadens. For the split of a second, he doesn't look tired at all. He looks genuinely happy, like the prospect of doing something for her is enough to lift his spirits. And she's happy for him, but she also wants to fucking scream at him, she wants to wrap herself around him, she wants to tell him to stop caring so much because his constant need to be there for others almost destroyed him in the past.

Nonetheless, she's willing to emulate his serene expression when his smile begins to falter and makes room for deep lines of worry – the exact same lines that clouded his face when he told her that he's not ready to let her go beyond the walls, and she can tolerate his fears for now, she can tolerate the fears that beat through her own veins, too. They both know that they'll have to talk about it again eventually, though. And it won't be an easy conversation.

"You volunteered to take watch tonight?"

"I did", she says and she squeezes his arms to alleviate the growing apprehension that crystallises his posture, "Abraham's joining me. He found another box of Griffin's in the pantry, so I'm gonna smell like cheap cigars tomorrow. Consider yourself warned."

He bites the corner of his mouth and looks out of the window, his brows narrowing at the sight of what could be the fog, the dewy grass, the beige, crumbling plaster that enrobes the walls of Morgan's house, or the fact that she didn't ask for his opinion when she decided to start pulling her weight within the community.

"My shift starts at sundown. You said you probably won't be back before midnight, so I asked Gabriel to look after the kids."

"He's a good man", he says, "We can trust him now."

"Yeah."

His gaze falls back to her face and he rubs the crumpled material of her shirt with the pads of his thumbs before he lifts his hand and twirls one of her braids between his fingers. It's not much, but it's so much more than a quick round of questions and a goodnight kiss.

"You okay?"

"Not yet", he replies with a helpless shrug, "But I'm getting there."

"Me, too."

She thinks back to her first night in this house, this picture-perfect mausoleum. She thinks about the way his eyes would follow her during dinner, the way her heartrate would speed up when he told her that this place could be a home for them, and the way his voice would break around a handful of words that shattered her to the core.

"See you at the gates tonight?"

She gives a nod and a smile, and he leans in to kiss her cheek. Huffing out a disbelieving laugh, she catches his face with her right hand and tugs at his beard. He's an idiot, but at least he meets her halfway. He pulls her closer and lets go of her hair to press his fingers against the patch of skin that extends over the side of her windpipe.

He does that from time to time: checking her pulse whilst kissing her, making sure that she's still alive, even though she's standing right in front of him. She doesn't like it, but maybe he can't help himself because he didn't think he would ever see her again, because he already mourned her.

They both used to see things, they both used to hear things, they both used to suck at distinguishing between reality and the dark illusions their minds would rack them with, and it all fades away when he pries her lips apart and curls his tongue against hers, galvanizing her to grasp at the collar of his shirt and push up against him when a searing wave of fervency ripples through her body and singes the fluttering clod that's nestled between her lungs.

Coming up for air, they drift apart and bend their heads towards each other. His lashes brush against her upper eyelids and they're toe to toe, they're chest to chest. He covers her ears with his hands, muffles the incessant noise of weeks spent in isolation and nudges her nose with his.

"Thank you", he mumbles into her skin.

Her answer is a soft peck to his top lip, and she watches as he turns away and leaves before the gentle hum of anxiety reclaims her senses. With arabesques of celadon boughs blurring her view, she leans back and grips the edge of the counter until it feels like her knuckles are about to break the membranoid shell that was made to keep them safe.


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Quotes/References

1) The tea box cover was inspired by a Fragonard painting called L'Escarpolette.

2) "[...] the gentle hum of anxiety [...]" is a reference to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' composition of the same name (see The Social Network OST)