For the first time since Rick had arrived in front of the gates of Alexandria, he couldn't hear the sounds that had first confirmed that this was a place of safety, a place where he could bring Carl and Judith so they would know some semblance of normalcy and security in a world that guaranteed neither: the sound of children shouting, playing, laughing.
The sound of children, of his people talking, thriving…living.
(sometime tonight, we'll be outside his camp's walls. and without seeing inside, I'm gonna have to decide whether to bring my family in.)
He couldn't hear anything except the voices in his head echoing in the ominous silence borne of the realization of who they were missing, who would forever be missing from the symphony of sounds, of voices that he had come to associate with his chosen group; the one he had brought with him to Washington on the grueling sixty mile journey from Georgia (it's been a death march and they're exhausted), and the one in this town that he had accepted as his own after they had all been though, a trial by fire against overwhelming odds (will you look out for him like you look out for your people?).
Missing voices that had been his curse and his conscience, his contemporaries, his friends.
His family.
(that is sweet music to my ears, officer.)
(hey, you. dumbass.)
(they're out there, so I'm gonna be there with you.)
(one way or another, we're doing what Rick does.)
(suck. my. nuts.)
(Maggie, I'll find you.)
He couldn't hear the remaining members of his family as they drove back into the gated community he had come to assume that they could keep safe through sheer force of will, as they walked through said gates, but he wasn't sure if it was because he physically and mentally couldn't hear them, or because no one was speaking.
It didn't matter anyways, really. Their defeated, shattered faces had said it all, and the condemnation, whether intentional or otherwise, rang almost as loud as the memories of the people he had failed, and cut more brutally than any actual venom-filled words ever could (do something. you said that you would turn on your radio every day at dawn and you were not there. you're slipping, Rick.).
(this group is broken.)
Rick couldn't remember actually arriving back in the false sense of security that was Alexandria, couldn't remember squeezing Rosita's ice cold hand (what you should be scared of is living, knowing that you didn't do everything you could to keep them here) or gripping Aaron's hunched shoulder (then you're gonna have to punch me in the face and tie me up again, 'cause that's what it's gonna take to stop me), trying to quietly murmur words of inadequate comfort to Eugene (I know I can be of some help. now's the time and here's the place.) or finally walking into his house, the one he shared with Carl, Judith and Michonne.
He could barely remember holding his baby girl, who was unaware of the night's events and of anything other than settling contentedly on his hip for a prolonged space in a time that seemed to have gone still, holding her to his chest in an effort to center himself, and failing (I'm a better father than you, Rick), couldn't remember carefully placing her in the arms of his world weary, far too old yet still too young son, Carl, who had proven himself to be ten times the man Rick was, who had been defiant in the face of barbed wire and wood, and as tender as any adult in their community or anyone who existed on this otherworldly, horrifying plane as he had offered Maggie the best comfort he could through a simple embrace (Dad…just do it…Just do it).
He couldn't quite remember Michonne gently sending Carl off to bed with a light kiss on his forehead and a hug that was a little tighter than usual, or the patient, loving way she snuggled Judith and stayed with her until she fell asleep, the sound of the little girl's breathing over the monitor a steadying, reassuring constant in the otherwise deafeningly silent house.
Clarity only set in when she placed her hand on his arm as she guided him upstairs to their bathroom, when her touch became the only anchor to keep him from losing himself in the rolling waves that were his thoughts, and their unbearable losses.
His coat fell to the floor with a disconnected, lackluster thud before her hands began sliding up his abdomen and his chest, stripping him of his shirt, before she was untying his boots and helping him kick them into the corner, before her graceful, calloused fingers were efficiently unbuckling his belt and pushing his pants over his hips so they joined the growing pile on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor.
Michonne's hands and the way they created a firm, light pressure on his skin were the only bits of consciousness that felt real in the face of his almost complete numbness, and for a moment, the voices mercifully faded.
As she turned on the shower and began to divest herself of her own clothing, however, as he stood naked in the middle of their bathroom and waited for her, the stark, accusing thoughts resumed their assault on his mind and his already damaged psyche, causing him to shiver in spite of the warmth emanating from the shower spray just behind the closed shower door and from the woman next to him.
"Come on." Her voice was a hoarse whisper, and the raspy timbre of her voice stirred Rick from his torpor, causing him, for the first time since they returned home, to seek her face and those eyes he knew so well.
That face and those eyes that he wasn't sure that he could face, that he was afraid to face.
(no, Rick. I don't have a problem.)
He could handle it from anyone else, even though he couldn't, but not from her. Not from Michonne.
Even if he knew that this time he deserved every bit of it.
He inhaled sharply, silently before he finally looked at her; at the woman he had come so close to losing mere hours ago.
Her beautiful, devastated face was trying to stay stoic but was instead struggling between defiant strength and crumbling emotion, causing the muscles of her jaw to tense and her lips to quiver slightly, only able to be seen if someone was actively looking for the tell.
Those bloodshot eyes had darkened to a shade of brown, almost black, that could only be described as scorched earth, those eyes that he knew would remain dry until the very moment until they stepped into the shower's concealing spray.
There was no blame there, no accusations, no confirmation of the depth of his failures he could feel burning at the back of his own eyes, that were deepening the already visible lines and creases on his face, that he could feel weighing down his very bones.
"Hey." Her voice was breaking but she wasn't, and he tried to draw on her strength just enough so that he could project some of his own onto her as she wrapped her hand around his bicep and walked them both into the sanctuary that was their shower.
Sure enough, as soon as they were underneath the falling water, Michonne tilted her face away from Rick and towards the showerhead, but he recognized the slight shaking of her shoulders and that strangled gasp of air, and he wrapped his arms around her from behind, unable to let her go through it alone, unable to allow her to keep up a charade for him, one that he didn't deserve.
Her head was bowed for a few moments more before she turned around in his tight embrace, resting her head on his shoulder and gripping his shoulders with something like desperation. He could feel the heaves of her body as she cried, and it caused tears to well up in his own eyes, though he was sure that they hadn't been dry since the start of the hellish night that had somehow ended, only to become an equally hellish day.
He dropped his head so their cheeks were pressed against one another's and, for a moment, it was almost peaceful, with her fingers coming up to graze his jaw and his own fingers buried in her hair, his hand loosely resting against the nape of her neck.
For a moment, there was a semblance of peace, and for a moment, they were able to forget.
Until his own fingers found several locks of hair cut brutally shorter than they should have on her head.
Until Michonne's fingers stopped cold on the not quite dried streak of Abraham's blood that had so carelessly been flicked onto his face.
The air around him suddenly felt freezing as Michonne moved him directly under the spray, her dirt-caked hands wiping at his cheek with such vigor that it would have hurt if he hadn't felt so goddamned numb.
He didn't have the heart to tell her that it didn't matter how much water or soap he used, or how frantically she scrubbed, that he would wear the bloodstains forever, of Abraham, of Glenn, of all of his family by marriage or by circumstance that he had been unable to protect.
(bet you thought you were all going to grow old together, sitting around the table at Sunday dinner and live happily ever after. no. it doesn't work like that, Rick. not anymore.)
Her hands caught his face as if she could hear what he was thinking, and suddenly she was drawing him into her with a fervent kiss that drove the voices and the condemnations temporarily to the back of his tired mind.
Rick could taste the salt on her lips and he didn't know whose tears had fallen there, but Michonne didn't allow him to dwell on it as she slid her hands down to his hips, pulling him with her until her back was against the shower wall, until he was pressed against her, until his leg was instinctively nudging her legs apart with an edge of authority that he was far from feeling.
But then he caught her expression for the briefest of moments in between increasingly hungry kisses, and the gut wrenching combination of determination and of naked pleading made him pause only for a quick nod of understanding before he was sliding his hands over the familiar path of her lower back, her hips, her ass, and finally, just underneath her thighs so he could lift her up against the slippery, stark surface of the shower wall.
Their lips came together yet again with an intensity that rocked Rick to his very core, a connection that almost caused his knees to buckle and yet kept his grip on Michonne's writhing body firm, a tangle of tongue and teeth that was messy, bruising, passionate, and everything that the two of them needed right now.
Of course Michonne had known that this was what they needed.
He was positioned at her entrance and it was as if time had slowed down, because he could hear every individual drop on the shower floor, he could hear her hand hit the wall and the subsequent squeak as it slipped in an effort to brace herself, he could see her thighs quiver in anticipation, he could feel her fingernails claw at his neck, he could feel one of his hands slip from behind and in between their legs so he could sample the wetness pooling in her core, he could feel the textured, sensitive skin of her nipples on his tongue, he could see her bite her lip and he could feel everything, see everything, hear everything around him, including the still present, overpowering silence.
It was as if they were in the eye of a hurricane and it was the unnerving calm before the landfall, and he somewhat mourned the moment, and so many other things, so many other people as he finally fully buried himself in Michonne.
Her hand slipped on and off of the tiled wall in an attempt to find a measure of traction and ended up clinging to his shoulder, and he couldn't but marvel at the simple, unconscious reflection of her trust in him. It wasn't as if he was being all that cautious in how he was directing his thrusts into her and she certainly wasn't shying away from her enthusiasm in the way her hips and limbs responded, but from the way her legs wrapped possessively yet comfortably around him, the way her body was melting into his, he couldn't help but think, hope, that she never felt anything less than completely safe in moments like this with him.
His teeth grazed her nipple again, greedily, and her moan echoed throughout the bathroom as her hands and fingers found their way to the back of his neck, to his curls so she could hold his head there, so she could wear the burn from the bristles of his beard in places only they would know.
Rick knew what Michonne liked just as well as she knew what he did, but instead of setting the pace for the two of them this time, he was intent on riding her out, letting her squeezes, gasps, and murmured directions dictate the rhythm into one that was rapidly leaving them both teetering on a dangerous edge.
"Rick…" His name left her lips like a prayer, and her entire body contracted in pleasure around him as his hand found her inner thigh and effortlessly pressed forward, maneuvering her so she was at the mercy of his hand and his hips, coaxing her on increasingly harder and spellbindingly faster.
If he could have formed a thought, it would have been amazement at how perfectly they melded into one another and how the chemistry, the pull between them that started in his heart and pulsed throughout his body in unpredictable ripples from his wearied mind to the very tips of his calloused fingers.
They had needed this, their safe place, because it was something that never failed them. This moment, the two of them together in moments like these was undeniable. Everything else dissipated into the water droplets forming and condensing on the tiled walls and left just the two of them, engaging in the love, the passion, the need from one another that was sometimes pushed aside in reluctant favor of the outside world and so many realities they had yet to fully face.
She cried out for him as she came and allowed her head to hit the wall, and then she was leaning into him, her tongue tracing down his neck and across his collarbone, and at the sounds and the delightful ministrations of her tongue, Rick couldn't control himself and began tightening his grip on her waist, seeking the absolution that only she could provide, the bit of peace he had hoped he was able to provide in some way for her.
Just before he finally let go inside of her, his forehead touched hers and those scorched earth eyes opened, those eyes that burned with everything unsaid, every bit of her heart and soul and everything that they had lost, all distilled into a gaze that was fixed unrelentingly onto him.
That look in her eyes could make him feel more in a moment than most other people, most other things and aspects of his existence had made her feel in a lifetime.
He could barely feel her fingertips dig into his skin or the delectable movements of her body as the spell of their brief look, the reaffirmation of the connection between one another held fast, as he finally broke and brought her with him.
"Rick..."
Michonne's whisper of her name made his body tingle instinctively, and he ignored the fact that he could barely move after the intensity of their encounter and pulled himself together enough to fully wrap his arms around her, simply as an embrace, one that was just as, if not more so, intimate than their lovemaking.
Their eyes were barely open now, still lidded with the residual pleasure, but still brown eyes sought blue, their noses and cheeks brushed one another's familiarly, their lips barely touched, not bothering to rush, to hide, to pretend that they didn't need this reassurance from one another in spite of the sex they'd just had that was supposed to fix it all.
A million words came to his lips but he physically couldn't breathe fully enough yet to speak and so he tried to express everything he could in the hooded gazes, nuzzles, and light kisses, taking solace in the same gestures from her.
The heat they had created was slowly beginning to rise and leave them shivering, but he couldn't let go of her and she didn't seem all that keen on separating himself from him.
(we can find a way. and if we don't…I'm still with you.)
Rick had no idea how long they stayed there in that infinite space in time, standing body to body in the long since cold spray of the shower, but he took the last bit of heart he possessed in this temporary respite, in Michonne, in the horrible fact that even though they had lost so much, too much, too brutally, that at least for one more moment, they still had one another.
That he still had her.