"The Art of the Blade"
The calm light of the dawn was just beginning to spill over the horizon of Alexandria as Michonne stood in the grass, feeling the cool moisture of the dew on her bare feet. She hadn't been able to sleep more than a few hours the previous night, the restlessness creeping into her limbs like low flame, that flame fanned by a rush of thoughts that came forward as inexorably as the tide.
Him.
She unsheathed the katana, dropping slowly into an offensive stance, bringing the blade parallel to her body. Gripping the hilt tightly, the thoughts again rushed forward, unbidden and disquieting.
Him.
Despite the restlessness gnawing at her nerves, the longing that burned in the pit of her belly, she allowed herself a smirk, tightening her grip on the hilt, imagining her hands enfolding…
Him.
She shook the thought away and brought the sword over her head, bracing her left hand on the pommel. The air hummed as she pivoted to her left, her blade describing a swift, downward slash. When she trained with her blade, she often imaged pivots, foot shifts, and slashes that had been efficient in dispatching walkers, attacks she'd rehearsed again and again… But there was something else in these movements, something familiar, something that emptied her of all but desire.
"Michonne…" the voice came from behind her.
The chills up her spine were instantaneous, and the desire she had already begun to feel intensified, suffusing her with warmth despite the cool air of the pre-dawn.
Him.
"Good morning, Rick," she said, not turning to face him, shifting into another, lower stance for a sidelong variant of her previous attack, "Couldn't sleep either?"
"No. Just can't seem to turn my brain off right now."
She shifted her left leg behind her right and spun on her heels, describing a slow arc with her blade. He stood there on the back porch, leaning against the house. She felt his eyes moving over her as they frequently did, a glance which so often felt like a ghostly caress. In another life, she may have been taken aback by these glances, the degree to which he studied her body, but this new life, this new Michonne craved them and returned them in kind. He was dressed in a white v-neck and jeans, his hair still mussed from sleep, and Michonne found herself admiring the way his chest and neck met.
Her eyes found his and she froze, transfixed by that iridescent blue, seemingly forgetting she still held her sword. The power he exerted over her was immediate, unquestionable, and he did so effortlessly.
"Does training help? I mean, with the restlessness?" He asked, seemingly peering into her.
She couldn't help the wry smile. "Sometimes," she said.
Yes, she thought, Sometimes it helps and sometimes more direct methods are needed.
"I'd love to learn, if you would show me," he said, "Dunno if it would help me or not, but it occurs to me that a sword isn't going to run out of ammo." He grinned. "You never cease to impress me with that thang."
Michonne smirked as the twang emerged in his voice and she reflexively tightened her grip on the hilt of the katana.
She lowered the sword and looked up at him. "Come on down," she said, motioning with the blade.
Rick complied, making his way down the steps, his eyes never leaving hers. As he moved across the backyard, towards her, she felt a growing electricity in the air, a sense of internal gravity that sharpened her vision and quickened her heart.
Him. God damn it. Always him.
She looked up at him, cocking her head to the side.
"So..," she said with a coy smile, "Are you ready to learn?"
He laughed softly. "Well, as best I can. Be gentle with me, huh?"
"I make no promises. Here." She extended the hilt of the blade towards him.
Again came the sense of both electricity and gravity as his fingers brushed hers, as he accepted the blade. Rick held the blade in his right hand, bringing it close to his face, examining the fine steel as it gathered the soft morning light in a liquid sphere at its edge. There was an unmistakable longing and fascination in his eyes, the look of a man who is gazing upon something beyond his experience, but something he finds alluring, beautiful, and wholly deadly, something demanding to be both respected and cherished.
"Beauty, isn't she?" Michonne inquired.
"Yes," he answered softly, "Yes, she is."
Michonne stepped behind Rick, putting her hands on his elbows.
"First comes understanding how she needs to be held," she said, "Bring your arms up and put both hands on the hilt."
Michonne leaned into him, feeling her breasts press against his back. If she wasn't mistaken, his breath hitched in his chest. Perhaps it had been her own. In any case, the sensation sent a bolt of energy through her chest, that energy coming to rest in her belly where it described a high, ecstatic crescent, and she felt her nipples harden so quickly it was almost painful.
Attempting to hide the gnawing excitement and her quickening heart, she continued, reaching out to adjust Rick's grip.
"You want to hold her tight, but not too tight," she said, "If your grip is too tight, you become less versatile in what you can do. If it's too loose, she's going to get away from you. It has to be relaxed. You've got to trust her."
He eased his grip on the blade, his left hand moving slowly beneath his right. Michonne watched the movement of his hands intently, feeling the rise and fall of his back as he breathed. His breaths were becoming heavier.
"This feels right," he said, a twinge of nervousness in his voice, finding the correct grip, "And then?"
"Then you stop thinking that she's just a blade. She's part of you, an extension of you. When you move your body, she has to move with you."
She put her hands on his upper arms, shifting her hips against him, guiding a slow swipe of the blade across the air in front of Rick. His stance lowered slightly and Michonne pressed tighter against him. His form was not bad at all. He'd been watching her for some time, in many different ways, and he was instinctually attuned to her movement, attempting to mimic it in his way.
"There's more to a blade then just blindly thrusting," she said huskily, "There's… more to being with her in that moment and existing in that moment. You have to empty your mind."
Rick moved slowly on his own, Michonne's hands remaining on his arms, her breath hot on the back of his neck. He brought the blade in a slow diagonal across his body.
"Empty my mind?" He asked, "Stop thinking? To let everything be that moment and nothing else? Just her and I, being one, and how we move as one body?"
Michonne could hear her heartbeat thrumming in her ears, the gathering sphere of star-like heat between her legs.
"You learn fast," she rasped.
"I pay attention," he said. His voice had dropped several octaves.
"When you're one, when you move with her, technique is everything," she continued, her fingers tightening on his arms as she guided him, pulling the blade down against his left side. He shuddered slightly against her and drew in an excited breath.
Her lips were nearly against his ear now and she could feel the heat baking off his body. The morning chill was being eclipsed. Michonne felt a thin layer of sweat emerge across her back, rising in pinpoints above her breasts.
"When you thrust, she is always moving with you. You have to respond to that, to anticipate her movement. When you move your body, when you shift, she has to be always with you. If she shifts in your grip, you have to be ready to shift with her and never break from her."
She guided his arms in a slow, upward arc, the blade seemingly singing in the heaviness of the air, the edge of the steel moving through a swampy, languid tide.
Rick couldn't disguise his rapid breathing anymore, nor could Michonne. She wondered if he could feel her heartbeat through his back.
He could.
"When the need for her arises," she whispered, "When you have no choice but to be one with her, you must remember that without you, she is nothing and without her, you are nothing. You're empty, waiting to die. Your eyes and your strength connect you to her, and her grace is your grace. You are her, she is you. Without one, the other is nothing."
She felt the knotted muscles of his arms tighten under her hands and she allowed herself a brief, tender caress of them. The acrid scent of adrenaline permeated the air, rising like a ghost through the fog of desire.
"When you hold her, you must understand that this is what you were made for, what she was made for…" she said, her lips against his neck, "That you belong to her and your heartbeat is tethered to her. It vibrates through her as you hold her. When you understand that, you are one with her in the truest sense of it…"
Rick's hips shifted again, widening his stance, his left hand steadied on the pommel of the blade and for a moment, Michonne felt as though she were observing herself in another world, through a mirror darkly, another her, one with white skin, ice-blue eyes, and a growth of stubble. Her heartbeat was a ravenous crescendo in her ears. She could feel it behind her eyes, in her nipples as they throbbed with every pulse.
"When I hold her, when I give myself to her," he said, his voice gravelly, confident, serene, "Being one with her should be my only thought and only focus. Everything else should fall away. Without one, the other is nothing."
A swift, upward strike, his form flawless.
Yes.
"I speak through her lips, and through her, I am heard."
A downward, diagonal cut, the air humming with the essential unity of Rick with her.
Yes.
"I move as she moves because I can do nothing else."
A pivot of the hips, a horizontal slash, sundering the air with an audible gust.
YES.
"She belongs to me, I belong to her, and that moment is precisely what is must be, because without one… the other is nothing."
Another pivot of the hips, a pivot that brought the heat between Michonne's legs to a roaring blaze, an ineluctable current that electrified her every nerve, a desire-red wave washing away all doubt and all reservation and all despair.
YES!
Her breasts were heaving against his back now. His breathing had fallen into time with hers and she was resting her cheek between his shoulder blades.
Rick slowly lowered the blade. He bent to the grass and retrieved the sheath that lay at his side. Michonne watched as he slowly slid the blade into the sheath, watching the light run like liquid fire across the edge of the steel, until the full length of the blade disappeared into the scabbard with a click.
She felt sweat trickle between her breasts and trembled.
"I think I understand..," he said softly.
He turned to face her.
Him.
His eyes looked several shades darker now, his face and lips flushed. His eyes promised her an infinity of want, innumerable desires, and glimmered with the certainty that this moment was precisely what must be, that everything else had fallen away.
Without one, the other is nothing.
Her hand was still on his arm as she looked up at him, and his eyes moved slowly over her again, falling to the heaving swell of her breasts. She wanted him to look at her, wanted the hunger that rose in his darkening eyes.
A wall within her shattered in that moment. A barrier she'd long-hidden behind fell away, painfully at first, leaving her feeling raw and naked, though in the next moment there was joy. The joy was that which comes with feeling true certitude, with finally understanding that fear could no longer restrain desire, the realization that fear could lead one to death as surely as bravery.
Me. Him. Us. I think I finally understand…that I can admit it…
"I…uh… I think I need to shower, Rick..," she stammered, unable to break his gaze.
"Yeah..," he said with a shy smile. He trailed off for a moment, and when he spoke again, he stumbled over his words. "Daryl and I are going on a run, in a bit. Gonna have a Boys Day Out."
Michonne returned the smile, noting the sweat standing out on Rick's neck and chest.
"It'll be good for you two to have some time to go out and play."
Rick laughed, grinning at her. "Is that what you think we do?"
Michonne cocked her head coyly. "Please. If you were kids, you'd be making sandcastles together."
"Yeah, so says you," he said, squeezing her hand, "Go get your shower."
Michonne turned for the house with a teasing smirk, leaving Rick in the yard, holding her blade.
He watched her as she left. He always did. He watched the elegant economy of her movement, the swivel of her hips, the way her legs met her rear and the contraction of the muscle there. He admired her neck, how it curved so seductively into her shoulders, the way her dreadlocks spilled down her back. She gave him one last glance before returning to the house, her large, brown eyes glimmering with something he wasn't certain he'd seen there before this moment.
Certainty? Longing? Conviction? Surrender?
Him?
As she entered the house, Rick stood silently in the backyard, holding the blade, lost in his own thoughts as he considered it. He traced the hilt of the blade, the wrapped fabric, thinking of Michonne's hands and how they'd wielded this sword, how Michonne had pulled him so effortlessly into a meditative space she'd built, at once so laden with tranquility and roaring with the mindless, ravenous voice of desire. He considered her heavy breath against his neck, her pulse as it raced against his back, the feeling of her firm breasts against his back, and the sweet scent of her dark skin as it inundated his senses.
Rick looked on as the light of the dawn washed over everything, bathing Alexandria in its light, catching on solar panels, on windows, refracting from pools of water.
Today was a new day, and today, perhaps, it was the dawning of the Next World.
Rick began laughing himself, sitting in the grass to watch the last moments of the sunrise.
"Well, shit..," he chuckled, "She's going to use the last of my toothpaste."