intro: I plan for this to be about 20 chapters long. Plus there's a lot I haven't developed yet. This a teenage AU, no zombie apocalypse unfortunately. It's Rick, Michonne, Glenn & Daryl as teenagers going through a tough time in their young lives. They each have their own individual issues which are causing them immense pain. Their decisions will determine what will happen.
prologue:
There was always something so beautiful and so sad about watching people cry. Yet in this moment, all she felt was the tragic sadness that came with watching her best friend of eight years fall apart right before her eyes. He was devastated. They both were at this point. The life that they thought they had together all that time ago was a vicarious figment of the imagination. It was never as pretty as they thought it was going to be. It was a dream that was never meant to come true.
Every precious thing in the universe would eventually fade out. They wouldn't come back.
Chapter 1: Intro to Our Family
King County. 2:00 AM:
"This is it guys. This could possibly be the last time we're together like this."
"Shut up, Glenn," Daryl spit out as he bumped the younger kid's shoulder playfully. "You're so pretentious, you know that?"
Glenn just straightened out his shoulders and fixed his worn out baseball cap before quickly and smartly responding, "I am not pretentious. Do you even know what that word means, dumbass?"
"Yeah, do you Tiny Tim?"
Rick and Michonne shared their usual look before rolling their eyes at the two. After years it seemed like their banter would never come to an end. Daryl liked bikes. Glenn liked computers. They liked each other too, so none of it truly mattered. They were up there together as a celebration-minus Glenn who was just a junior, they had just graduated high school the previous week. 'King County Graduates!' the sign had read. The school held all of 228 kids and close to zero hope for a pretty future.
The ungodly hours of the morning seemed to be their favorite time to get together. It was a time their young minds were allowed to be numb.
"Pass that to me, will you?" Rick yelled out to Daryl, who was two people away from him. The drinks might have helped a bit too. They passed the glass bottle back and forth until their thoughts disappeared. Smoking and drinking were practically inevitable.
The four of them sat lined up with their legs dangling out into the star-twinkling sky. They were together at the very top of the water tower they escaped to often just at the edge of King County. There, they could see the world and ironically, from that height, things weren't so scary anymore. It was innocuous, the way they were.
They could forget about all the things that pushed into their minds when they were left alone for too much time. The upcoming presidential election that would quite possibly determine their futures, whether or not they did well enough on every test they had taken since they were fourteen years old and inevitably too scared to try.
"You still got a whole 'nother year kid," Daryl teased just after spitting sunflower seeds over the edge of the impossibly tall water tower which they were illegally occupying. He watched them fall until they were too tiny to see.
"Daryl!" Rick and Michonne whisper-yelled at the same time.
"If they find us up here a second time, we will be arrested," Michonne said to Daryl in a way that sounded very much parental. Daryl would never admit that he appreciated it.
"So what?" he responded in spite of himself, "This town is a dump anyway. You know that better than any of us, Mute."
The last part had been practically whispered, but it sounded like screaming to Michonne's troubled mind. "Yeah, you're right," she lied with ease and the best poker face anyone had even seen took it's place with her expression. It was what she had to do to make it in a town like King County.
However, Rick wasn't as convinced as the other two. He stared at Michonne's profile with a look so deep and meaningful that Michonne was forced to look the other direction. Away from his glinting, intelligent eyes. The two of them would talk later.
"Rick, Mute, look!" Glenn yelled to them excitedly, pulling them out of their temporary distraction.
The four kids looked to the plane that shot through the sky at a speed that resembled that of lightening or thunder. Lights shined from it and the water far below brightened from it's reflection. It was no shooting star, but it was a sight to see growing up in a place like King County. It was so close to the water tower that they could feel the wind rush by, causing them to hold on to the rails just a little tighter.
"It won't be the same without you guys," Glenn spoke sadly out of nowhere, putting his head down in a way that stirred pity in the stomach's of each of his best friends.
The older kids didn't exactly know what to say. None of them had ever been particularly popular, so they knew exactly what he was going through.
"We still got the summer," Rick said cheerily, reaching out to push him a little on the shoulder. "And hey," he spoke, "Maybe one of us or all of us will end up staying in this shit hole for college. Then we'll have no choice but to see each other's faces all the time."
The joke didn't seem to make him feel better. In King County, people saw Glenn as the weird little dork whose only friends where three seniors who were possibly even weirder. They saw him as a kid they could pick on and copy homework off of and nothing more. He had never really fit in with people. At least in the prior years, he had people to protect him. Now, he would have nobody in this place. Yet, he remained unadulterated by the torturous world surrounding him.
"That's weeks away, Glenn," Michonne shot his way from where she sat on the left side of Rick, "No matter what happens, we have our phones. We'll always be important to each other."
"Yeah," Daryl agreed, "This ain't goodbye."
"It isn't," Glenn sighed to himself imperceptibly. "I'm just sad, I guess."
'We all are, kid," Daryl whispered before bringing one of the beer bottles back to his lips in an effort to erase the pain. They weren't just friends, they were family. They were all they had.
They stayed up in the water tower for another two hours before eventually climbing down the tall latter. Daryl led them to their usual spot in the woods and they talked all night. They talked until they were sure there was nothing possible in the universe left to talk about. Glenn could've been right-this could've been one of their last times together. So they acted like dumbasses and they laughed like the kids they were.
Once Daryl had snuck through the window to his tiny bedroom and Glenn had been walked home, it was just Rick and Michonne. They walked together in comfortable silence, their hands occasionally touching due to the tiny space that separated them. The sun was threatening to come up behind them, but they kept walking. The temporarily tranquil environment surrounded the space they occupied.
King County. 6:28 AM:
The trees swayed with the light windy-breeze and the birds began to sing, not missing a beat in their usual performance.
"What happened before," Rick inevitably began, "What Daryl said, did it bother you?"
Michonne was quick to reply, "What? No," she was the one to quicken their pace through the silent neighborhood, "You know how Daryl is. He didn't mean anything by it."
"Michonne. Please."
She knew it was serious. They only used her real name when it was serious.
"I know you don't like to talk about it-"
"If you know that," she interrupted, stopping suddenly on the sidewalk, "Then why are you trying to make me talk about it? Why, Rick? This always goes the same way with us."
She was upset. Just as he knew she would be. But he had to try because sometimes you have to be honest, even when it's painful.
"Did you take the pills I got you?" Rick asked out of the blue. There was zero hesitation in his tired voice.
"Jesus," she whispered to herself shakily. "No, Rick," she let out so quietly that it was as though she was afraid one of her parents would appear out of thin air though they were a distance away, "They'd know. Or-or they'd find out somehow."
"You need them," he pushed gently, "I've seen what happens when you don't take them. I know you've been trying to hide it-you might have Daryl and Glenn fooled but you can't fool me, Michonne."
It was then Michonne noticed pools of water forming in her best friend's ocean-like eyes. Eyes she had known for what seemed like a lifetime.
'What the fuck," she whispered sadly before looking him dead in the face for the first time that night, "Just because I'm in pain doesn't mean you should be too."
"Your pain hurts me too." He was sincere. She hated every bit of it. She hated what her illness had done to the people who were important to her.
"You're sufferin'-and you're scared to talk about it because of how things have been for you when you try to. I know that. I just want you to be okay." His bright blue eyes had turned icy in the past couple weeks.
The world seemed to freeze in time after he said that. The inevitable had happened long before she intended for it too. "I will be. I promise." Though they were walking again, she looked him right in the eye-right down to his soul-so he would know she was telling the truth.
"Fuck them, you know that?" Rick spit out angrily, "What they've done to you, it isn't okay."
"I know that too."
"Parents shouldn't be that way."
Michonne scoffed in disbelief, though she knew he was right. It drove her insane just how right he tended to be, even when he didn't know everything. "Yours aren't any better. So don't pretend they're perfect."
"At least mine don't willfully keep me from doctors when I'm sick."
"Wow," she laughed to herself, "I forgot how much of a know-it-all dick you can be when you're drunk."
They both knew he wasn't drunk. Neither of them said a word about it.
"I know I don't understand the whole thing, but it's like you let them walk all over you. Why?"
"I don't know," she sighed out truthfully, "I don't know another way. Maybe it's some twisted type of penance." His usually bright eyes were pleading, communicating the obvious, painful words.
Although they were using their words to bite, their voices never rose above a whisper. They knew better than that. There was an uncomfortable pause before she began to speak again.
"So your parents are insanely strict, Daryl's don't give a shit about his welling being, Glenn's-well, you know how they are. But mine? They just don't care about what happens to me at all." Michonne's voice was trembling and boiling with emotions held back. Rick just watched her sadly, his own poker face finally disappearing.
"Please, don't ever let anyone tell you you deserve that." was Rick's instant reply.
"I don't want to talk about my parents right now, okay?" She was pissed off but she couldn't figure out exactly why. Was it because Rick was right and she was scared to admit it? Was it because everything was starting to fall apart in her life and people were starting to see it-to notice?
His perfect facade dissipated right before her eyes. "Okay. Just-the important thing is," Rick spoke with a softer tone this time, reaching out to place his hands over her tiny, prominent shoulders, "We're only 18 years old, and you promised me we'd see 40 together."
"I intend to keep that promise," she said as she covered Rick's hand over her left shoulder with her own. Showing instead of telling was usually their thing, but sometimes the words were good to hear too.
"Then will you just think about it?" He pleaded weakly, "If not for me, then will you just do it for yourself?"
She could only nod and Rick wasn't about to push her for more. She promised she would try and that was enough for him for the time being. He was going through something torturous too, and maybe that was why he felt the need to protect her from her own unpleasant inflictions.
"You don't have to protect me."
"But I will. You know I will," he pushed, "It's what we do."
"Please don't patronize me Rick."
"I'm not," he said back instantly, "I'm telling you the truth."
Yet another pause took it's place.
Suddenly, that big, dorky grin took it's place on his young face as if he hadn't just been on the verge of tears. They all had their ways of keeping the pain at bay where it belonged. "The boys want to go out for ice cream tomorrow, you in?"
She had always admired how he could be so happy after witnessing such sad things in his life. She wished she could be that way too. To be able to bounce back like that was something she had wanted for years. But it was a dream that wasn't going to come true for somebody like her. It was a peculiar and inconceivable idea.
"Yeah," she grinned back, trying to mirror it with Rick's enthusiasm, "I'm in."
It was almost like the serious talk they just had didn't happen. It was almost like they were two carefree kids walking home together after a late night out, the world sparkling behind and all around them. The place they grew up in was bad, but the people they grew up with made up for it. At least they tried to.
The two of them just walked at a slow pace, grinning at each other like idiots until they heard a car zooming their way.
"Shit!" Michonne yelled as the two of them quite literally dived behind the nearest bushes. Everybody knew everybody in King County and neither of their parents would like to know what their kids had been up to while they were sleeping.
"Woo! That was close," Rick breathed out excitedly.
"Dumbass," Michonne mumbled as she pushed him off of her. While she had just pushed it off, Rick knew she was scared of what would happen if they had been discovered. They didn't talk about that part, either.
Just like that, they were walking again. Up until they reached Rick's house, the second to last stop. Standing out in the open like they were was dangerous, but they didn't give a damn.
While Michonne had always been timid and introverted, Rick was the exact opposite. "What, no kiss goodnight?" he smirked.
Michonne rolled her piercing eyes fondly, pointing up into the sky as if it was obvious. The sky was becoming lighter by the second. "Don't you mean good morning kiss?" She paused and then added teasingly, "And I though we didn't do that type of thing anymore?"
"I guess I just got tired of kissing Daryl's butt all the time," Rick joked back. It was an inside joke created way back into their childhood that always made them laugh. They were much younger and much less worried at the time.
"I'll see you at the ice cream shop, Rick."
He could barely contain his disappointment, but he smiled back anyway. "Yeah, I'll see you."
She began to walk away, towards her own home. She never told her friends how much she hated going back there. To her parents and every reminder of the traumatic things she'd seen in her short life on the planet earth.
Being young meant not having everything figured out yet, and for the time being, that was okay. With the most important people there in each other's lives, the impossible seemed possible.
"2 o'clock?" She called quietly over her shoulder, knowing that he would be able to hear her.
"2 o'clock!" he yelled back.
He was through the window and disappeared before Michonne could tell him not to yell outside. She just kept walking.
You've got to leave behind everything you thought you knew. You know nothing.
"I've seen this movie twice before.. I can't get away and you will never leave me.. it's time to do the right thing and give you back.. yeah 'cause I'm done stealin'.. truly that is something I believe" done stealin'