Ugh. I don't even know what to tell you except for the fact that I'm really, really sorry about the unintentional hiatus. As always, your reviews/PMs regarding chapter 3 were a joy to read and kept me from fretting too much, so I'd like to thank you all for the wonderful feedback.

Love,

blueprintofyourpast

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Warning: This chapter deviates A LOT from the original source. It's also yet another spine-crawling mish-mash full of cute and fucked-up moments, sooooo enjoy?

04: The Shore

Back on the road, the mud smacks and squeals under their feet. Grey and brittle like a lump of ashes, the sun doesn't do much to keep them from shivering from the cold. The wind slows them down. It's only a matter of days until the first snow will come to hound and pester them.

The people are gone and so is everything that came with them in the first place. Only a few bleached-out shreds of the past – the black, white, red, and blue flag of the city, a cluster of dented street signs, and a couple of billboards promoting some annual food festival – commemorate what used to be a famous Southern escape.

"So, have you ever been to Tybee Island before, Michonne?" his boy asks as they trudge through a field of sordid suburbs.

"Once or twice when I was still in preschool", she says, "I don't remember much of it, but according to my Dad, I was very good at building sandcastles."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Do you think we can build one together when we get there?"

He sounds so hopeful, just like the pint-sized rug rat that would run around the yard in a Batman costume even though Halloween was still five months away. Obviously, costumes and Halloween are things of the past. Same goes for sandcastles. And yet Rick, the eternal observer, is struck with boundless adoration when the woman right next to him proceeds to indulge his son.

"Sure, kid."

"Awesome!" Carl exclaims, quickening his pace to catch up with the man who's walking ahead of them, "What about you, Mr Jones?"

"Oh, I might be a bit too old for that", Morgan croons with a gentle smile, "I'm sure Duane would love to join you, though."

With that, he rearranges his grip on the sleeping boy who is slumped over his left shoulder. Duane's a tiny kid. About ten years old and barely 4'1 tall. His mop of dark brown curls is hidden under a beaver-fur hat and his camouflage anorak is way too big for him, so there's always a rope or seatbelt wrapped around his waist. He could easily blend in with his surroundings if it weren't for his bright yellow rubber boots.

He was playing with a dusty fire truck toy when they found him in an abandoned bus shelter somewhere between Oak Park and Cobbtown. He asked them where they were going and next thing they knew, Morgan jumped out from behind a dead holly shrub, threatened them with a sawed-off shotgun, and ordered them to describe the taste of human flesh.

It was a test to see if they were monsters or not. Rick knew that, but it still pissed him off. Luckily, the woman right next to him was quick to intervene, so now they're five people looking for a place to call home.

It could be anything, really. A cave, a riverbed, or four walls and a roof. It should be safe like the bunker, but maybe a bit more enduring in terms of basic supplies. It should be permanent – that's a given – but what is made to last longer than a blink of the eye these days? What is made to last in general when there's nothing left but fires, cannibals, and the low rumble of another dying forest?

"Let's make a competition out of it", she suggests with a hint of hidden merriment, "Kids versus adults. Your Dad can be the judge since he's older than the four of us combined."

He doesn't mind her teasing him. He doesn't mind that Carl and Morgan's laughter pulls Duane out of his slumber, and he doesn't mind that the boy regards him with a shy giggle after they let him in on the joke.

"You're hilarious", he says dryly as the two of them fall further behind, "I'm not that old, you know."

Her guffaw is a counter-attack that tears at the corners of his mouth until they're spread into a crooked grin. It reminds him of the first time he pressed his lips against hers and marvelled at how quickly everything fell into place. At how quickly his pent-up anguish tailed away and made room for something much, much sweeter

"Oh, but you are", she shoots back in a singsong voice, and he'd probably sell his soul just so they could spend the rest of their lives like this: bickering and bantering like there's no tomorrow, "The age gap is real, Mister."

"Is that so?"

She scoffs at his cockiness.

"Listen, I was still watching Sesame Street and playing with Barbie dolls when you and your friends went to your first high school freshman party, sipped light beer from red solo cups, and rocked out to INXS and Milli Vanilli."

Crap.

"I should've never told you 'bout that", he groans.

"Why not? It's cute."

Her tone is light and their shoulders bump together. He remembers her telling him that he must be the first person to use the phrase rock out so confidently. He would've died from embarrassment if she hadn't pulled him in for a reassuring kiss then – much to Carl's more or less playful mortification.

"Well, if you say so –"

"And you're a cute old man."

"Oh my God."

The warmth in his chest shoots up to his face. He hides a bashful smile with a bow of his head when she dissolves into another chuckle. Muttering under his breath, he takes her hand and pulls her with him.

Down in the bunker, time became a mystery to them and they decided to pick up right where they left off in Cynthiana. They ate and slept and told each other stories about all the luxuries that used to bother them before – homework, slow WiFi, and dental treatments – and they held heated debates on music, comic books, and the pros and cons of soy milk.

They took one of the MRE cartons and made a new Monopoly game board. After two rounds, Carl finally got his revenge and celebrated his hard-fought victory with a handful of Big Kats and a gallon of grapefruit lemonade.

Sooner or later, however, the lights began to flicker again and they ran out of water, so they filled their bags with all the food they could carry and stumbled back into the woods. In the night, he held them close and watched them sleep. He wiped the dirt from their cheeks and stared up to the starless skies. He sat by the fire and negotiated with gods he didn't believe in, and his eyes turned into wells full of salt and love and despair.

"You okay?"

He looks at her and then at his son, who's now playing I spy with my little eye with their new companions. These two. His boy and his woman. They're made to last, and he loves them so much that it hurts, so much that he can barely breathe sometimes. Squeezing her fingers, he works his mouth around the truth.

"Yeah."

She smiles at him and he thinks about hardwood floors and mint green curtains. He thinks about towels and bedsheets drying in the sun. He thinks about his boy – safe and happy as he beats the high score of his new favourite video game – and he thinks about her. He thinks about tiny knitted socks, her round belly, and the stone blue walls of the upstairs nursery.

He thinks about a future that tastes like honey and smells like small-cupped daffodils. A future where all he has to worry about is a speeding ticket or a hole in his shirt. A future that is built on her ability to make him feel like they won a little even though they lost enough to strike their colours.

Swing sets, coffee mugs, and maternity dresses. A beautiful house in a beautiful neighbourhood full of beautiful people. What a perfectly constructed pipe dream. He wants to shake his head at himself, but it looks like she's already two steps ahead of him when she stirs his wishful thinking with just two simple words.

"I'm okay."

They make it to Tybee Island and his face falls with every step he takes. Buckled buildings and power poles that look like burnt candlewicks, heaps of concrete and miry reams of silt and garbage that have been poured onto the streets. It's all gone, scythed down and reduced to a pulp made of grit, bones, and animal scat.

Rumour has it that the people there have managed to build a safe zone. Sounds good, huh?

He used to be a cop, so it's not like he's never seen a dead body before. As a matter of fact, he's seen a lot of them. He's seen men, women, toddlers, and teenagers. He's seen them stabbed, shot, and beaten beyond recognition, and he's seen them after they'd been stitched back together in the morgue. He's seen his own wife, for fuck's sake, but he's not sure if he can come back from a sight like this.

Sounds good, huh?

The beach is a rough, leaden plane and the people of Tybee Island, stained and swollen, cover the sand like a shroud of snow. They must've tried to escape by boat when it – a thunderstorm, an earthquake, something – happened, but they never had a chance. They're still here, piled on top of each other and twisted into unnatural positions. Some of them have been ripped apart by scavengers, and the sound of the sea – the harrowing chant of lazy waves sucking on stiff limbs and tattered Sunday dresses – drowns out almost everything else.

Sounds good, huh?

"Dad?"

His eyes and mind snap back to his son, pale and visibly overwhelmed as he and Duane hold each other in a tight embrace. They look like they're about to cry. Like they can't or simply don't want to believe what they're seeing. His throat clamps up at the thought that they're too mature to dismiss this as a nasty glitch of their imagination.

"We gotta leave", Morgan says, apparently determined to keep his head in front of the boys, "I saw a couple of grocery stores on our way here. Maybe we should find a place to stay for the night and check them out tomorrow."

"Yeah", he rubs the bridge of his nose in an effort to get rid of the sick feeling that began to hit him in waves as soon as they passed the first row of cicatrised family homes roughly an hour ago, "'Chonne?"

She doesn't even pretend to acknowledge him. Her back is straight as a pole, her gaze oddly calm and calculated as it sweeps across the shore and then sinks its teeth into the horizon where wads of thick, black clouds pool together like enemy troops on the brink of another sanguinary battle. The wind picks up and claws at his face.

Her profile is as lovely as always, but the hard line of her mouth seeks to betray her. He already knows what this is about – and he hates it. He hates to see her like this and he hates the fact that there's probably nothing he can do about it. But that doesn't mean he's not going to try.

"'Chonne."

The crack in his voice doesn't startle her, so he takes a step in her direction. He's barely listening when Morgan mutters something about taking Carl and Duane to the pavilion so that they don't have to be near the bodies anymore.

His swallows hard and goes back in time. Back to that one evening in Cynthiana they sat on his front porch and talked about their biggest fears. Back to the evening she blessed him with a compassionate smile while he told her that he didn't like hospitals when he was a kid. That he didn't like the smell, the noise, the squeaky vinyl flooring, or the idea that a building had the power to devour sick people and excrete their corpses.

He goes back to the evening he told her that, years later, he reconsidered his position and came to loath the doctors instead – especially those who'd seek refuge at the local pub in-between shifts. Those who'd toss down drink after drink and brag about their achievements. Those who'd stare at the clock with bleary eyes as if they feared the moment they'd have to go back and save lives again.

Most of all, though, he came to loath those doctors, who'd end up at the station and pace around in the drunk cell. Those who'd yell about how they – the gods in fucking white – didn't deserve such a cruel treatment, and those who'd cry with relief because being arrested prevented them from spending the rest of the night in an on-call room where someone could ask them for help.

Of course, his woman made him reconsider his position again since she knew better than to hide her insecurities behind a drinking problem or a bloated ego. If anything, she appeared to be well-aware of the grave responsibilities that went hand in hand with her profession.

It's a tough place, she said with a shrug, People expect you to be almighty. They expect you to stay calm and make the right decisions all the time, and boy do they raise hell when it turns out that you're just another stupid human being like them. I've seen some of the most talented interns fall apart and give up because they didn't know how to deal with the pressure. I never blamed them.

Have you ever thought about giving up?

No.

Her answer came like a shot and it was then that he finally knew how much of a fighter she really was. It was then that he finally knew that she was going to be the last and greatest love of his life. And it was this particular realisation that almost made him slip, but his manners and the grave in his backyard fought tooth and nail to hold him back for the next four or five months.

Now that he's free, though – now that he knows what it's like to fall asleep and wake up right next to her – holding back isn't an option anymore. Not even when she turns to take him in with haunted eyes and a smile so pained and artificial that he can feel his heart dislodge and slump down to the pit of his stomach.

"Look at this", she says, almost wondrously before she chokes out a disbelieving giggle and slaps a hand over her mouth; her brows shoot up to her hairline and she cackles through a mesh made of trembling fingers, "I led us to a graveyard, I – "

She stops, snorts, laughs even harder, and he doesn't know what to do. He's heard about this before. He's heard that some people tend to laugh their heads off when they can't cope with a bad situation. This isn't a bad situation, though. This is a nightmare and it's killing her.

"'Chonne", he croaks for the third fucking time; his lungs constrict with sympathy and he blinks against the scorching heat that flares up behind his eyeballs as she bends over and laughs and laughs and laughs.

Too caught up in her nervous breakdown, she doesn't flinch or fight back when he wraps his arms around her. She doesn't stop laughing either, not until he tells her that he's sorry. Not until he tells her that none of this is her fault. Not until he tells her that she couldn't've known and that they're going to get through this.

He pulls her closer, his beautiful, devastated woman, and drops a kiss to the crown of her head. Her sobs bounce off his chest and her tears mingle with his neck and coat. Somewhere nearby, a lonely seagull sings about flash floods, hurricanes, and Mother Nature's sempiternal wrath.

All this time, she's been there for him. All this time, she's been there to lift him up whenever he was about to sink to his knees and let this world tear him to pieces, and all this time, he's been expecting her to stand tall in the midst of chaos and destruction. All this time, he's been taking her strength for granted. All this time, he's been nothing but a blind, selfish idiot.

Another storm threatens to knock them down and they find shelter in the ravaged belly of a seafood restaurant. A giant plastic crab looms above the entry and they make a fire to warm themselves and heat up two cans of vegetable soup. After dinner, Morgan pulls a Bible out of his backpack and reads the Tower of Babel to the boys. His voice flitters through the dining room like a bird in a dusty cage while the rain slaps and flails against the windows. Rick isn't sure if a tale from the Old Testament makes for a decent bedtime story, but Carl and Duane seem to be somewhat enthralled by it, so he lets them be.

Hours later, when she's sandwiched between him and his son – propelled by his silent need to comfort her, Carl snuggled up to her and curled his arm around her waist before he dozed off in record time – she turns her head to look at him, weaves her fingers through his beard, and tells him that she loves him.

He swallows against the lump in his throat and smiles at her confession. She's still a bit shell-shocked, still struggling to come to terms with the fact that Tybee Island turned out to be a dead end. Trapping her hand between his palms, he makes a vow.

"We're gonna find another place."

"How do you know?"

"I've got plans for us."

Her brows crinkle with confusion.

"Plans?"

"Big plans", he clarifies, shifting around until he's close enough to kiss her cheek and then her lips, "And nothing's gonna stop me from making them come true 'cause I'm a stubborn son of a bitch."

Her teeth glitter in the darkness. She doesn't complain when he throws his leg over hers and buries his face in her shoulder. Instead, she hums against his forehead, and they listen to the rain and their boy as he mutters something about talking piglets and tap-dancing penguins.

In the morning, he's still wrapped around her slumbering form and whines with frustration when Carl and Duane poke his side and tell him that they have to pee. Morgan is still fast asleep, too, so he gets up with a grunt. Once they made it to the parking lot, he learns that the boys lured him outside for a very specific reason.

"Michonne was crying a lot yesterday", Carl mumbles sheepishly as they cross the frost-glazed macadam, "We don't like it when she's sad. We wanna know what we can do to make her smile again."

"Yeah", Duane agrees with a nod that causes his hat to slip forward and cover his eyes for a second, "Do you think we should tell her some jokes?"

"I – uh…", he doesn't know how he's supposed to tell them that it's going to take time and more than a couple of well-intentioned gestures to alleviate her pain, so he settles for the easiest answer, "I guess the best thing we can do is be there for her. You know, make sure that she's safe and show her how much we care about her."

Unfortunately, his statement fails to satisfy them and he's about to sigh and further explain himself when a snap of twigs hurls him into a state of all-consuming panic. He whirls around and whips out his gun.

"Dad?"

"Mr Grimes?"

"Get behind me", he growls, high on a bitter sense of foreboding and ready to take out who or whatever is lurking in the shadows of the curved willows that border the parking lot like a damaged barbed wire fence.

Something's wrong. He knows that because he double-checked the area with Morgan last evening. He knows that because all they found was a couple of dead rats wasting away in a bed of hard soil and yellowed pasturage. He knows that because –

"Please don't shoot", a male voice rings out from behind the trees, "I know it sounds like a cliché, but we come in peace."

We.

Terror beats through his veins and his sweat glands explode. They're trapped and possibly outnumbered. They're fucking surrounded. He considers himself a pretty good shot, but he can't do shit with three bullets. And what about Morgan? Dear God, what about his woman?

Memories of the cattle unfold before his eyes. The gloom. The groans. The feeding trough. The stumps and stab wounds that oozed with blood and dark pus. He grits his teeth. He can't let that happen. He won't.

"Hey there."

Short, toffee brown hair, clean clothes, and a beard that rivals his own in terms of length and frizziness. Judging by the gleam and colour of his right arm, he's wearing a metal prosthesis. Did he kill his capturers? Did he follow in their footsteps?

His trail of thought is cut short when another stranger – armed with a crossbow and flanked by a German shepherd – enters the scene. Clad in combat boots, dark jeans, and a Navajo poncho, this one looks like the type of grumpy layabout Rick used to nick for vandalism or disorderly conduct when he was still a cop.

"We didn't mean to scare you", the guy with the prosthesis says whilst holding up his hands and offering a tentative smile, "My name is Aaron, this is Daryl", he points to his partner and his smile grows more confident, "I have good news."

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Quotes/References

1) Black, white, red, and blue are the colours of the city flag of Savannah, GA.

2) Oak Park is a city in Georgia. Same goes for Cobbtown.

3) The seafood restaurant mentioned in the third scene was inspired by The Crab Shack, which is a real restaurant in Tybee Island, GA.

4) The Tower of Babel is a story that can be found in Genesis 11:1-9. I don't consider myself a religious person, but I like to think that the act of building a tower that is tall enough to reach heaven is actually a pretty neat metaphor for overzealous industrialism.

5) I've only seen pictures of Daryl's dog. To me, it looked like a German shepherd. Feel free to correct me, though.