He hears her come in late at night, after he's already put Judith to bed and after Carl has retired to his room for the night with his comic books. He'd been staying up with Rick to wait for her the past few days, but every night she came home later and later and tonight Carl had sat with him downstairs for ten minutes before rolling his eye and getting up, throwing his dad a quick goodnight, mumbling "This is stupid," under his breath as he traipsed up the stairs.
He'd kept sitting there in the living room, his hands folded in his lap, staring off into space, glancing up at the clock to see how much time had passed. When it hit midnight, he got up and dragged himself to their room, changed and got ready to go to sleep, before sitting down in the middle of the bed and beginning to wait again, the door to the room open, the light he left lit for her in the kitchen casting a soft, faint glow up the stairs and into the bedroom.
He leans over and grabs his watch when he hears the door open, squints and sees the time is 1:30. He sighs, laying back on the bed and running a hand over his face. He wonders how long she'll stay with him tonight. That first night at Hilltop they'd slept wrapped around each other. But their contact, and the time they spent together in bed, had lessened and lessened with each passing night. She sleeps with her back to him now. Last night, she'd laid with him for an hour before slipping out of the room.
He wants to say something, but he doesn't know if it will help. He doesn't want to make it worse. He doesn't want to fight with her. He knows how independent she is, how strong she is, and maybe she just needs to work things out by herself before coming to him.
But hell, what does he know? He's never been good with emotions. It's one of the things that was tearing him and Lori apart before he got shot, before the dead started to walk again.
So he's been waiting, letting it play out on its own. She'll come around soon. Slowly, she'll start touching him again. She'll start sleeping through the night by his side. He just has to wait.
(How long am I supposed to wait? he wonders.)
He hears her shuffling around downstairs, and then the light goes out, darkness engulfing the hall and his room. He waits to hear the stairs creak with her steps as she walks to their room.
He doesn't.
He does, however, hear a door open and then close gently. He knows where she's gone immediately, and his stomach drops.
She's in her old room.
His mind starts to race, his heart thumping wildly in his chest. There are a million reasons she could be in there, he tells himself. Maybe she realized that she left something tucked in the back of her drawers. Maybe she left her favorite pair of pajamas folded up in the dresser.
She'll come up in a few minutes. He just has to be patient. He just has to wait.
(How long am I supposed to wait?)
(It seems like everything he has with her is a waiting game these days.)
He stares at the ceiling for what seems like hours. He reaches over to the nightstand and picks up his watch again, flicking on the small lamp that sits next to it. He squints.
2:40
He nearly throws the watch down and switches off the light, something close to a growl rumbling in his chest as he throws his head back against the mattress. He brings his hands to his face again and claws at his skin.
It's been an hour since she's come home, and she's made no attempt to come see him.
"Fuck," he grunts in frustration.
He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't want to smother her. That's the last thing he wants to do. But he also refuses to let her drift away from him completely.
He decides he's done waiting.
He jumps off of the bed without thinking, goes over to the dresser and rummages around in the dark for a t-shirt. When he finds one, he turns and leaves the room before he even finishes putting on the clothing, wanting to get to her before he can change his mind. He jogs down the stairs and into the hallway, stopping in front of the door to her old room.
He takes a deep breath to steel himself, and then lifts a fist and knocks on the door.
He listens for her permission to enter. He's met with silence. He brings his hand up to knock again, but suddenly he hears her soft voice filter through the air and murmur in his ear.
"Come in."
His inhales slowly once more before placing his hand on the cool metal of the doorknob and turning.
His heart jumps when he sees her, sitting there on the bed, her back against the headboard and her legs stretched out in front of her. He stands in the doorway and watches her. She's wearing a pair of tiny shorts and an oversized t-shirt – one of his, probably. He tries to take comfort in the fact that she's still wearing his clothes. Her dreads are gathered and tossed over her shoulder, and she's staring down at her hands intently, using her index finger to pick at the skin around her right thumbnail.
"Hey," he murmurs into the silence of the room. He hopes his greeting will prompt her to lift her head and look at him, but it doesn't.
"Hi," she says curtly.
"Didn't see you much today."
He realizes that's not quite accurate. In fact, he hadn't seen her at all today, if you don't count the brief moment he spent glancing in her direction as she snuck from their room in the wee hours of the morning.
"I've been busy."
"Want to talk about it?"
"Not really."
She's been going out on her own a lot, without telling anyone where she's going or when she's coming back. At first, she was going out with the rifle, practicing her aim. But then Negan took all of their guns, and he doesn't know where she's off to now. She keeps saying that she's going on runs, scavenging for stuff to give to Negan when he comes, but she never comes back with anything. He's tried to get her to take someone with her since, according to her, she's just going on runs, but she always refuses, explaining that she can take care of herself, that they should save the companion for someone who can't.
So he relents, watches her leave Alexandria by herself without knowing how to find her. It feels criminal. Every time she goes, a part of himself is walking into danger unprotected. But he doesn't want to smother her. And he tells himself that maybe this is what she needs. Maybe space and solitude is how she mourns, and soon she'll come back.
"You came home pretty late today."
She shrugs.
"Like I said, I've been busy."
"Yeah," he exhales.
She's still picking at her thumb.
"Why're you down here?"
He cuts right to the chase because he's tired and lonely and confused and scared, and he is so sick of waiting.
"Took a shower," she answers, without missing a beat.
"All your stuff is in our bathroom upstairs."
"I left a bar of soap down here and grabbed a towel and washcloth out of the dryer. I didn't need to do any major scrubbing anyways. Just wanted to rinse off, mainly."
"You still could've come upstairs," he points out, not letting her off the hook. But again, he doesn't faze her.
"I didn't want to wake you."
"You know I wait up for you every night. I can't sleep if I don't know you're home safe."
He can tell his words throw her a bit, and her fingers still. After a moment, she clears her throat.
"Well, I'm home safe now."
He bops his head up and down awkwardly, and leans against the doorframe, shoving his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants.
"You coming, then?"
"Coming where?"
The confusion in her voice sounds completely genuine, and his jaw almost falls open in disbelief.
"To bed. To our room."
"Oh."
She drops her hands into her lap and sighs. His heart is beating like a freight train inside his chest.
"I wasn't going to go to sleep right away," she says slowly, like she's picking every word out deliberately and carefully. "I was going to read a little, maybe."
"Okay," he states flatly. "So are you coming, then?"
Silence engulfs the room. She shifts on the bed. Then.
"Again, I didn't want to wake you."
"That's bullshit and you know it."
He speaks without thought, and the words shock him as they reach his ears. He didn't mean to say that. It's what he was thinking, but he didn't mean to say it.
Her head snaps up, her eyes wide. She finally looks at him.
"Excuse me?"
He exhales roughly, shaking his head, deciding to go with it. It's now or never.
"That's bullshit, Michonne," he repeats, "and you know it."
The incredulity in her eyes melts into anger, and she glares at him.
"Leave me alone, Rick."
He ignores her, continuing to stare at her, daring her to look away. Blood rushes to his cheeks, and his heart still pounds, but in a kind of relief. They're doing this. No more tiptoeing around each other. No more waiting. Until now, their relationship that had been teetering on the edge since that fateful day. Tonight, it would fall one way or the other; she would either come to him or pull away from him completely. His palms begin to sweat.
"What's going on, Michonne?"
"Nothing's going on."
"Why are you lying to me?"
"I'm not lying to you," she spits back at him, sitting up and throwing her legs over the side of the bed, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.
"Oh, okay," he laughs. "Yeah, you coming home so late that you don't see the kids is normal. You going off by yourself without you telling anyone where you're going is normal. You not touching me and barely looking at me is normal. You staying down here by yourself and not coming upstairs and being next to me is so normal, Michonne."
"We've barely been together a month, Rick. You have no idea what's normal for me in romantic relationships."
"Fine," he concedes, even though it breaks his heart. "Maybe I don't know you very well in that way. But you not spending any time with us? You avoiding the kids? You avoiding your family? That's not normal, Michonne."
Her left hands grabs a handful of the comforter, squeezes it so tightly he can see her skin stretch over her knuckles from the doorway.
"Maybe that's the Michonne that I met around a year ago. Maybe that's the Michonne who first showed up at the prison. But that's not the Michonne I know now. That's not you. And this isn't normal, Michonne."
"Get out of my room, Rick."
Her words push all the breath out of his body, nearly knock him off his feet. His heart falls to his stomach and his chest tightens.
She doesn't want him there. She wants him to leave.
(She doesn't want him.)
The pain moves like pinpricks of electricity throughout his body, but he closes his eyes, swallows, and steadies himself the best he can.
"What's wrong, Michonne?" he asks, his words more sullen than before. "Why are you doing this?"
"I'm doing this because I have to!" she exclaims, standing up abruptly from the bed. "This is my problem, and I'm going to work it out on my own. You have enough shit to deal with and you don't have room to deal with my shit, too. So focus on your thing and I'll focus on mine. This isn't yours – it's mine. And I didn't ask for your help."
"Doesn't matter," he tells her immediately, and he's transported back to a time one year ago, to a vision of a beautiful, mysterious stranger covered in walker guts, sitting on the dirty, cold floor of the prison and staring up at him in anger and distrust. He almost smiles at the memory before continuing.
"This is my problem. Because I love you so much, and anything that hurts you or makes you unhappy hurts me, too. This is my problem. And I can only help you as much as you'll let me, but whatever you let me do to help, I'm going to make damn sure I do it."
She doesn't answer at first. She stares down at the floor, her fists still clenched at her sides.
"You made me promise to not let you get lost. That first night at Hilltop, you promised me that you wouldn't let me get lost, whether I wanted you to or not, because you loved me too much to let me go. And you made me promise not to let you get lost either, and I promised. I told you I never would."
Her hands have gone limp, and her shoulders now slump. He wants to go to her. He wants to hold her and kiss her and rock her back and forth until she falls asleep. But he doesn't know how she would react. If she would even want something like that from him at the moment.
"You're getting lost, Mich," he says gently. "Do you think I don't love you enough to hold up my end of the deal? I do. I love you so much more than that. I'd be here in front of you whether you had me make that promise or not. Because I love you, and I need you, and I'm not letting you go."
When she once again stays silent, he pleads with her again.
"Now, will you come up to our room, Michonne? We're both tired. We can get some sleep, and then keep talking in the morning. Or if you want to, we can keep talking now. It doesn't matter to me. I'll do whatever you want. Just…come up stairs with me, sweetheart. Please."
"I can't," she breathes, he voice cracking.
"Yes you can, Mich."
"No, I can't."
"Why not?" he asks, on the edge of exasperation.
"They don't get to."
Her voice is so quiet that he almost doesn't hear her, even in the stillness of the night. His brow furrows.
"What are you talking about?"
"They don't get to!" she yells, and they both freeze, turning their heads in the direction of the stairs, listening for signs of stirring children. When they hear none, they bring their gazes back to each other.
Her eyes are glistening with tears, and it makes him pause and shatters his heart all over again. He's not used to seeing her cry – his strong, beautiful warrior who he loves more than life itself.
But it plants a seed of hope deep inside him, that maybe they were getting somewhere, finally.
"They don't get to," she tells him again, her voice lower but still laced with a firm edge. "Sasha doesn't get to. Maggie doesn't get to."
Some of her tears have spilled over. His face softens and he stares at her.
"How can I go upstairs with you?" she continues. "How can I go upstairs and fall asleep in the arms of the man I love, with two children down the hall sleeping soundly, safe and warm? How am I supposed to do that when they can't? When they'll never get to again?"
"You feel guilty," he states simply, casting his eyes downward before looking at her again. Every so often, another tear falls from the corner of her eye.
"It isn't fair," she murmurs, closing her eyes. "That I get to and they don't. How is that fair?"
He can hear her shallow, shaky breaths ring out in the room. He thinks for a moment, ponders how to answer her.
"You're right," he admits, finally. "It isn't fair."
Her eyes snap open at his words, and she stares at him with wide eyes, her jaw hanging open just the slightest bit. He can tell she wasn't expecting him to say that.
"It's isn't fair," he repeats, taking a cautious step into the room. "It's lucky.
"I don't know what we did to deserve it. I don't know what I did to deserve having the three people I love most in the world in this house, safe and alive. Hell, I don't know what I did to deserve any of this. This community. This house. The friends I have outside."
He takes several more long strides towards her until they are only inches apart. He can't resist the urge to touch her anymore, so he brings his hand up to cup her cheek, his thumb rubbing against her smooth skin to dry the wet trail of a tear that has fallen.
"I don't know what I did to have those two kids who are sleeping upstairs. I don't know what I did to deserve you. Honestly, Mich – I don't deserve you. I don't deserve to be able to call the strongest, smartest, bravest, most compassionate, most beautiful woman in the world – the best woman I've ever met – mine. I don't."
"Rick…" she breathes.
"But I do," he continues, before she can try to tell him he's wrong. "I do have Carl and Judith. I have you. I'm lucky. All four of us are lucky, to have each other. And I'm not going to punish myself for living. I've tried that. It doesn't work. And you have, too. With what happened after Andre.
"I'm always going to hurt for Sasha and Maggie. I'm always going to hurt for Abraham, and Glenn. I'm always going to hurt for what we lost that night. I mean, sometimes I remember and it hurts so much it feels like I can't breathe."
He feels her lean into his palm just the tiniest bit.
"But I can't let that take you and Carl and Judith away from me. I can't let it take away the happiness I have left. I won't live if I do. I can't."
He shrugs his shoulders, glancing down at his feet.
"Maybe that makes me selfish. But I don't know any other way to get through this."
He looks back up at her, and there are tears in her eyes. She's biting her lip, and he can tell she's trying to hold back her crying.
The corner of lips turns up just slightly before he drops his hand from her face, trails his touch down her side until he finds her hand. He grabs it, intertwines their fingers, and holds it tightly.
"You're so strong, Mich," he whispers. "And I love that about you. I admire it so much. Your strength helps me get through so many things. It helps the kids. It helps everyone."
She closes her eyes.
"But you don't have to be strong all the time," he tells her. "Here, in this house. With me. You don't have to. I'm here for you just as much as you're here for me. You don't have to pretend. I love you. And I want all of you."
Her face crumples, and she lets out an unsteady breath, her shoulders slumping forward. He moves and places both of his hands on her hips.
"You're allowed to cry. You're allowed to hurt."
As his last words leave his mouth, a loud sob wracks her body, and she falls into him at the same time he pulls her towards him. She burrows herself into his chest and wraps her arms around him like he is a life preserver and she is in the middle of the ocean, on the verge of drowning. She finally lets herself go and lets herself cry, and he wraps one of his arms around her waist while he snakes the other one up her back and into her hair, cradling her head against him. He presses his lips against the top of her head again and again, whispering any sweet thing he can think of that might soothe her.
"I shouldn't have been out there that day," she chokes out between her cries. "I shouldn't have taken him out there."
She's blaming herself, and she shouldn't; Negan was the only one to blame for anything that happened. But he knows that right now isn't the time for logic, or reasoning. It's a time to listen to her, and comfort her - to let her ache and let her mourn, in order to purge the bad feelings from herself. To let her expel everything she's been holding back.
"I hate him, Rick," she seethes, her tears soaking through his thin t-shirt. "We can't let him get away this. We have to kill him. We can't let him –"
Another sob cuts her sentence short.
"I know, baby," he coos. "We're not going to. He's not getting away with this, I promise."
"They've lost everyone," she weeps. "Sasha and Maggie. Rosita, too. What are they going to do?"
"We're going to help them. They still have us. And that's never going to change."
Her tears slow slightly, and he hears her inhale deeply. Suddenly, he hears her breathy laugh.
"I'm going to miss Abraham's stupid one-liners," she sniffles.
He chuckles slightly at that.
"Yeah. He certainly had…a way with words."
She hums, moving her head on his chest, placing a kiss over his heart. Then she stills, pauses.
Finally, she says, "I can't believe he told Negan to suck his nuts."
Rick lets out one laugh, before moving his hand from her hair to her back, rubbing slow circles over the material of her t-shirt.
"I think I kind of can. In fact, that's one of the most Abraham things I've ever heard of."
"True," she admits with a sigh. "Is it weird that I'm kind of…proud of him for saying that?"
He pulls back from her only slightly. She tilts he chin up to look at him.
"Maybe," he tells her with a smirk. "But I'm proud of him, too. And wherever Abraham is right now, I think he's proud that we're proud of him."
She nods slightly, her eyes glancing around the room before coming back to meet his. After a moment, her bottom lip begins to quiver.
"Glenn's never going to get to meet his baby," she murmurs, her eyes beginning to shine again.
He nods once, lifts his eyes towards ceiling, blinking back his own tears now.
"Yeah. Yeah, I know."
"And his baby's not going to know him. They'll never know what a perfect person they had as a father."
"Yes they will," he says firmly, bringing his gaze back down, a few tears making their way down his nose. "We're going to tell them all about him. Everything. Any little thing we remember, we're going to tell them. We're going to make sure they know him."
She smiles sadly, and then tightens herself around him. He lays his cheek on top of her head, inhaling her, enjoying the feel of her.
"Should we go upstairs?" she mumbles into him after a moment.
He pulls back again to see her, a smile on his face. She stares up at him, her eyes shy.
"Yeah," he breathes, lifting his hand and running his fingers down the side of her face. "Let's go upstairs."
She goes to move from him, but before she can, he bends down and scoops her up into his arms. She lets out a surprised squeal.
"What are you doing?" she asks, and he can hear her laugh in her voice. It warms him from head to toe.
"Carrying you," he explains, as he walks from the room, flicking off the sole light-switch in the on the wall with his elbow as he walked into the hall.
"You don't have to do that."
"I know. But let me do this. Let me take care of you. I feel like you're the one who's always taking care of me. I have to return the favor sometimes."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Plus, we're already at the stairs," he points out. "It'd be pretty silly to put you down after we came all this way."
She smiles softly, and lays her head on his shoulder.
"I guess it would be."
He takes her up the rest of the stairs, down the hall, and into their room, pushing the door closed behind them with his foot. For the first time since that day – since he laid in bed with her that morning – he feels something similar to peace wash over him. Things weren't alright yet, and they had a long way to go. They had a lengthy, difficult fight ahead of them. He didn't even know if they could win.
But for the first time, he saw something that looked like light peek through the ever-present darkness that engulfed their lives.
He's about to lay her down on the bed when she grabs his face, turns his head towards her. Her deep brown eyes bore into his.
"What you said down there, about taking care of me - you know that's not true, right? You take care of me all the time. Everyday. You might not realize you're doing it, but you are."
He stares at her, the corners of his lips curling up, before setting her down carefully on the bed.
She's already pulled back the comforter by the time he reaches his side of the bed, and he settles down next to her under the blankets. She tugs on his arm, pulls him near her until he's on his side, hovering over her slightly. She lifts her head, presses her lips to his, lets he tongue slide once over his bottom lip before pulling away. She reaches up to cradle his face in her hands, running her thumbs along his cheekbones.
"I love you," she declares.
He smiles on reflex, as he does whenever he hears her say that. He still has trouble believing it – the fact that the best person he knows chose him. She wants him. She loves him.
"I love you, too."
She grins as he leans down to press his lips against her forehead and nose before covering her mouth with his in a tender but firm kiss. After they part, she rolls onto her side and he cuddles up behind her, wrapping his arm around her waist. He kisses her cheek before burying his face in the crook of her neck.
They lay there for minutes, simply listening to each other breathe.
"Rick?"
The sound of his name stirs him from his semi-asleep state.
"Yeah?"
"We're going to make it, aren't we?"
She sounds uncertain, which matches the way he feels. He doesn't answer her right away, and she cranes her neck and rolls back over slightly to look at him. Her face is just barely illuminated by the light of the full moon shining into the room through the window; she looks absolutely beautiful. She always does, but what Negan did to them changed everything. He almost feels like he's living on borrowed time, and at any moment everything could be ripped from him. So he takes his time to appreciate every good and beautiful thing in his life, to cherish it, to make sure his memories would last forever.
He stares down, studies and commits every detail of her face to memory. While he does, he mulls over her question.
He doesn't know, honestly. He doesn't know how they'll get through this, and even if they do, who they would lose in the process. It hurt to think about. He doesn't want to think about it. He wants to pretend it isn't real.
But he refuses to lie to her.
"We're going to try," he tells her, tightening his arm around her waist. "No matter what happens, we're going to be together. And we're going to try."
She nods slightly, running her fingers through his curls and then leaning up to give him one last kiss before turning back over and settling onto the pillows. He returns to his position as well, curled up behind her. He breathes in and closes his eyes, losing himself in her sweet scent.
They were going to try. He didn't know how it would turn out in the end, but damn it, together they were going to try.
And for now, that is enough.