Author's Note: Longest chapter yet, yay!

If last chapter was my 8x09, this chapter is my 8x10. I promise there's no Negan and no Junkyardigans.

Be nice to Rick.

Thanks for reading and reviewing. You're all so lovely, and I wish I could give each of you a giant hug.


chapter four: rick and michonne

Carl taught Judith how to walk.

They all had a hand in it, of course. The four of them liked to spend evenings when they all were home from runs and watch and any other tasks that needed to be attended to so Alexandria stayed afloat, together in the living room. They pushed the coffee table out of the way and Carl sat cross-legged on one side of the room while Rick and Michonne sat across from him, backs against the couch, and hands loosely linked together once they realized their feelings for each other. They beckoned and urged Judith to move between the three of them across the floor, first on her hands and knees and then with wobbly steps that grew steadier with each passing day.

Sometimes Daryl would be there, sitting in the armchair near the corner of the room, picking at his fingernails with his knife and trying to hide the smiles that kept creeping onto his face as he watched the little girl amble back and forth. Or Carol, or Maggie and Glenn, or any other member of their family that was passing through for the night.

The four of them - Rick, Michonne, Carl, and Judith - were always there.

But it was undoubtedly Carl who did most of the teaching, always on the move with his sister. First, with both her tiny fists wrapped around one of his fingers on each hand, him hunched over her and spouting off words of praise of encouragement in a soft, high-pitched voice reserved only for his sister; words that she didn't understand but took comfort in anyway, speaking back to Carl in long babbles and happy squeaks and squeals. Then, she held just one of his hands with one of hers as she became surer of herself. And soon enough, she was walking alongside him all on her own, as her brother grinned down at her proudly.

There's an open area right next to their house, and on warm, pleasant days he liked to sit in the grass and teach Judith there. The ground outside was softer for her to fall on, he'd say, and he and Judith got to examine bugs and dirt and grass and clovers and whatever else the two could find. He'd say he was helping her get to know the world.

Michonne and Rick started to call it Carl and Judith's spot, and somehow that name spread throughout the community, until everyone referred to it that way. Carl and Judith's spot.

That's where they bury him.

They didn't really know where they were going when they finally managed to stop their tears and walk outside, Michonne holding a clean, white sheet that she'd retrieved from the dryer. Neither one spoke when they found him, leaning against the side of the house, eye closed, hat on the ground beside him. Instead, they moved mindlessly and automatically. They moved according to the muscle memory they'd acquired burying too many loved ones before him.

They'd wrapped him in the sheet and then picked him up, walking down the porch steps and starting down the road. She supposes they'd been headed to Alexandria's cemetery, but when they reached that open patch of grass, they'd both paused and locked eyes with each other. And they decided, without words, setting his body down on the ground gingerly.

They hadn't spoken since it happened. They still haven't.

She hates digging the grave. She hates every grave she has to dig, but she despises this one more than most. It feels like it takes days to finish, and her hands are raw from rubbing up against the wood of her shovel's handle. Her back is sore, and her feet ache, and dust from the dirt keeps swirling up her nostrils and clogging her lungs. She keeps coughing, and it feels like she can't breathe. And she's so, so tired, and she wants to stop. She wants to put down her shovel, lay down on the ground right where she is, and curl up and sleep for one hundred years.

But she doesn't stop. She doesn't stop, because Rick doesn't stop, and because they have to finish. Because they have to finish for their son, and because she won't make Rick do this alone.

She keeps digging. Eventually, they finish, and then they lower his body down, Rick placing one more kiss onto his forehead before climbing out of the grave. They each toss a handful of dirt onto his body, and then pick their shovels back up to start filling in the hole they've dug.

After they're done, Rick walks over to the closest tree and snaps off two branches. He pulls out some shoelace from his back pocket that he must've grabbed from the house while she'd been getting the sheet, and uses it to tie the branches together into a cross. Then, he comes back and screws it into the ground at the head of the grave, and crouches down, bowing his head.

She wants to go to him. She wants to sit beside him and wrap her arm around his shoulders. She wants to mourn with him.

But she's hesitant. She doesn't know if he'd want it, or if he wants a moment alone with Carl. She hasn't been able to get a read on him since it happened, since that gunshot rang through the air and tore up their lives.

And she's scared. Because she's been able to read Rick since she found him and Carl in that house after the prison burned. Because she knows him - knows every inch of him. Because he's a part of her.

But right now, he feels so far away. Far enough away that she feels alone, and she's been with him so long and loved and been loved by him so much that she'd forgotten what being alone was like.

She feels it now, its blackness creeping into the corners of her heart like spilled ink, and it makes goosebumps rise on her skin.

He rises suddenly, hanging Carl's gun on the cross for a moment before taking it back off and clipping it to his belt.

She sees a walker limping towards them out of the corner of her eye, so she grabs her sword and spears it through the head.

She doesn't even have time to lift her eyes from the walker as it lies on the pavement and turn around before Rick passes by her, walking back towards the house. Without a word, or a touch, or a pause. It's like she isn't there. Like he doesn't even see her.

And she's so scared.


There are too many walkers wandering through the streets. And their number keeps increasing the longer she's outside, which mean either The Saviors managed to pry the front gate open, or there's a breach in the wall somewhere. Either way, she has to find it and fix it.

She walks to the gate first, her eyes staying on the walls the entire way there, peeled for damage and weaknesses. She doesn't spot any, and when she arrives at the entrance of the community, she finds the gate firmly shut, just as it always is.

She sighs, lowering her head towards the ground and closing her eyes. The absolute last thing she wants to do right now is walk the entire perimeter. So she decides to take a different route back towards the house, hoping she'll find the opening on the way.

After she walks the first block, she comes upon their cemetery. The small area of land they've fenced off so the community has a place to bury their dead. One that they're forced to expand far, far too frequently.

She stops, stares at the cemetery with a blank look on her face, her mouth hanging open slightly.

She knew she'd pass it if she walked home this way, somewhere in the back of her mind. She had to have known. She's walked these streets countless times, been to so many funerals, helped shovel out more graves than she cares to remember.

But she didn't think of it. There are too many distraction, too many thoughts tumbling around in her mind, and she didn't think of it.

Damn it, why didn't she think of it?

Now she gazes at all the friends and loved ones she's had to lay to rest, helplessly, frozen in place, as if the cemetery's taken on some gravitational pull that won't let her leave or even move, no matter how much she may want to.

The white paint on the steel panel behind the field catches her eyes, and she stares at the names of all the people they've lost and memorialized in plain sight so everyone can see and remember. She blinks, and wonders when Rick will add Carl's name. If their home will even be around anymore - if Alexandria will stop burning, and if they'll be able to clear the ruins and build it up again - for him to get the chance.

Her heart cries and aches and strains in her chest.

She's grieved enough over the past few years to last ten lifetimes, and she's so tired. Tired of missing people, tired of being sad. Tired of mourning people she should grow old with. Mourning people who should've died long, long after her.

She's exhausted, and she doesn't want to do it anymore.

She doesn't know if she can do it anymore. Not this time.

Suddenly, she hears a groan in her ear, and she's freed from her trance, spinning around to find a walker closing in on her. She kicks it away as she pulls out her katana, and then slices its head in two as it stumbles back.

Once it falls, she takes in her surroundings, wiping at the liquid that's welled up in her eyes without her realizing it. She finds far more walkers gathering around her than were at the fence, or around Carl and Judith's spot. She stands up on her toes, and looks beyond where she is, at the wall ahead.

Her shoulders drop in relief when she spots the breach, and she jogs toward it, cutting enough walkers down along the way so she can make it there safely. Since she doesn't have any building materials with her, she kills the walkers trying to make it inside so that their dead bodies pile up against each other and block the way.

When she's satisfied the barrier will hold, she turns around, and gulps as she surveys the scene around her.

There are too many walkers wandering around the streets. Not enough that she wouldn't be able to handle putting them down, if Rick were with her, but so many that all the alarms in her head are going off, and an uncomfortable feeling starts to roll through her stomach.

They need to get out of here.

She takes off, running back in the direction she came, slicing up walkers as she goes.


It's quiet when she walks through the front door and into their house. Quiet enough that she starts to fear that Rick isn't here anymore, that he wandered off somewhere else and she'll end up having to search the whole community anyways, despite her finding the damage to the wall rather easily.

After she searches the entire downstairs and finds it empty, she starts up to the second floor. She comes upon Carl's room first, and she pauses as she places her hand on the doorknob. She closes her eyes, turning off her mind and stuffing her feelings, before pushing at the door. She opens it only long enough to confirm that Rick's not in there, and then yanks it shut and turns on her heel, moving on quickly so that her thoughts can't linger on anything that might make her break down again.

Her old room is next, and she steps inside and finds it empty. She finds the same thing when she peeks into Judith's room, and then into the hall bathroom. Both are quiet and undisturbed.

Their room is the only one left, and her growing worry churns in her stomach as she approaches the door. She holds her breath as she turns the knob, and closes her eyes.

When she opens them, she sees Rick sitting on the edge of his side of the new mattress they found recently, facing the window.

She lets out a long breath as her muscles release the tension that seized them the moment she found the house silent and vacant. He doesn't turn towards her as she enters the room, and his head is dropped down to his chest, his knees pulled up towards him as he rest his forearms across them. His shoulders droop, and he looks as tired and sad as she feels. But at least he's there.

She walks over to him cautiously, trying to make sure she doesn't startle him. He hasn't acknowledged her, so she can't be sure he's aware that she's there yet, or if he's lost in his own head and ignorant of everything going on around him. She'd understand if he was.

She kneels down in front of him, bends over slightly as she attempts to catch his gaze.

"Rick," she says, her voice slow and soft.

He doesn't move an inch, or address her in any way.

"Rick," she repeats, louder. She allows a hint of urgency to seep into her tone.

When he still doesn't respond, she scoots nearer to him and begins to lean forward again, hoping she's able to get him to make eye contact with her this time. She notices his whole body is trembling the closer she comes.

She'd thought her entire heart had shattered already, but some piece that managed to evade the pain cracks apart as she watches him. Or perhaps the shambles in which her heart lies are simply breaking all over again, into smaller bits and sharper shards. Either way, she wants to hold him. But she doesn't know if he'd want her to, just like she hadn't known if he'd want her to join him as he crouched over Carl's grave.

She feels so far away from him.

"Rick, we have to go," she says, as she reaches out to him. As soon as her hand lands on top of his, he flinches, and she pulls back swiftly, folding her hands together in her lap and willing herself not to cry.

"A part of the wall came apart," she informs him, now that she knows he's at least cognizant of her presence there with him. "I found it and blocked it up temporarily, but a good number of walkers got in before I could. I'm confident we could take them out if we worked together, but we need to go to The Hilltop anyways, so what's the point of risking it and trying to take them out now by ourselves, when we could bring back more people later and do it then? We just need to get out of here now, before they all manage to follow me back here and surround the house."

He doesn't answer her.

She sighs as she closes her eyes, bringing her hands up so she can massage her temples with the tips of her fingers.

She doesn't know how to do this. Before, when Andre had died, she'd been left by herself, to mourn on her own. She didn't cope in the healthiest way, she knows, but at least she was only responsible for herself, free to do whatever she wanted without consequence to anything other than her own person.

She doesn't know how to sort out her own grief while also helping someone else through theirs. She doesn't know how she'll ever find the strength to do both.

"Rick," she whispers.

"I can't," he mutters, cutting her off before she can say anything else. A weight lifts from inside her chest when she realizes that they're talking again.

"Yes, you can," she tells him. "I know you can."

"No, Michonne. I can't!" he insists with a slight yell, and he snaps his head up and finally meets her eyes. His blue ones are still cloudy and red-rimmed, dark circles sitting underneath them.

"I can't," he stutters again, quieter this time. He shakes his head, and moves his gaze so that he's staring past her and out the window, a blank look on his face. "I don't even...I'm - I'm not...I just don't...I can't, Michonne."

"I know you're hurting. I know it feels like nothing is ever going to be okay again. Trust me, Rick, I know. I feel that way too. But, Rick. You're one of the strongest people I've ever known, and if anyone can do this, you're the one who can. We'll do it together."

She glances over her shoulder, out the window, and she can see more walkers starting to gather outside. She turns back to him.

"But we have to do it, and we have to do it now. We're just going to go to Hilltop," she promises him. "That's all. And then we can breathe and figure out what to do next when we get there."

He keeps staring out the window, his expression stoic and faraway. She doesn't know what to say. She's grasping at straws.

"When Andre died," she begins, as she wraps her arms around herself, "I lost everything. I was by myself, had been betrayed by the people I loved and trusted, and I - "

"Yeah, Michonne, I know," he interrupts abruptly, turning towards her. His eyes are hard, and there's an edge to his voice that makes her spine crawl. "I know I have to suck it up, because this isn't as bad as what you went through, and nothing will ever be as bad as what you went through. You win the biggest tragedy contest, and the rest of us just have to get through whatever shit happens to us, because we'll never be in as much pain as you were."

She gazes at him, dumbfounded, eyes wide and mouth hanging open, taken aback by the harshness of his stare and the ire in his voice.

"That's not...that's not what I meant at all."

"What did you mean, then?" he mumbles, his voice gruff. He scratches his thumb across his forehead.

"I meant…" she starts, slowly, still trying to gather herself after what he said. "I meant that when everything happened, and Andre died, I felt like the world was ending. But I found a way to make myself keep going, even when I didn't want to. And eventually, those wounds began to heal and I didn't have to force myself to live anymore. I got to the point where I wanted to live again. So that's what we have to do. We have to make ourselves get up and keep going, until we can get to the point where we can see the good in the world again."

He doesn't answer her right away. Instead, he looks towards the window again, and she hopes he's taking a breath and clearing his mind, ridding himself of whatever came over him moments before.

But when he brings his gaze back to her, that coldness and severity is still there, swimming in the blue of his eyes, stealing away the calm that usually washes over her when they look at each other.

"Sorry, 'Chonne," he tells her, the edge in his voice even sharper than before, "but I remember how you were when you got to the prison. And if that's the way you want me to cope, then I'm gonna have to pass on that. Because it seems like you weren't doing a very good job of it."

She feels like he's punched her in the gut.

And it's not even what he says, really. It's how he says it. It's the stern tenor in his voice and the frigid, bitter glint in his eyes.

She feels so far away from him. She feels like they're on different planets. Like she can hardly see him anymore.

She feels like he's slipping away from her.

"You don't get to do this," she says, getting up off the floor and starting towards the door. "You don't get to do this to me."

"Where are you going?" he asks, his eyes following her as she walks away from him.

"You don't get to be mean just because you're grieving," she tells him, pausing in the threshold of the room and turning back towards him. "That's not an excuse for you to be mean to me. That's not how this works. I know you're angry, and I know you're mourning, but you don't get to be mean to me."

"Michonne, wait…" he murmurs, eyes dropping towards the floor.

"No," she barks immediately, and he closes his mouth. "I'm going to go down the hall, and you're going to stay in here and figure out what the fuck is going on with you. And you're going to pull your shit together until you can get out of here and get to the van, and make it to Hilltop with me. Until then, leave me the fuck alone."

She turns and begins to walk down the hall before she can see his reaction. She thinks she might hear his voice calling after her, but she ignores it.

She stops when she gets to her old room, enters and then closes the door behind her with a loud bang. She kicks off her shoes and crawls onto the gathering of blankets on the floor, laying on her side and folding her hands under her head on the pillow.

She doesn't even bother getting under the sheets. She doesn't have the energy.

She stares out the window mindlessly, cursing the sun for how it shines outside, its brightness so starkly clashing with the misery that seems to be swallowing her up from every side. She feels like she should cry, but she doesn't have any tears left inside her.

She's so drained that she's at the point where she can't hold her eyes open any longer, so she doesn't put up a fight when her eyelids fall shut. And before she knows it, she falls into a dark, heavy, and dreamless sleep.


She's woken up by the sound of walkers moaning.

She feels ridiculously groggy when she stirs, and although her sleep was deep, she can tell that it was neither peaceful or restful. She rubs at her still-tired eyes before getting up and making her way over to the window.

The sun is much more dull than it was when she fell asleep, and she can tell it's sometime in the early evening. And when she peers out of the window, she finds a multitude of walkers gathered outside, filling the yard and the sidewalk and spilling out into the street.

She closes her eyes with a sigh, and rests her head upon the window's cool, glass panel. This is why she and Rick needed to go, hours ago. This is the type of situation she wanted to avoid.

She doesn't move for several minutes, leaning against the window, eyes closed. Her thoughts are so loud in her head, spinning through her brain and bouncing back and forth against the sides of her skull, like a ping-pong ball. And they're deafening. They're too loud for her to even make sense of them. Instead, they scream at her, like a blaring alarm between her ears that won't stop, won't leave her alone.

It's been that way since Carl died.

She opens her eyes again, and watches the walkers below her, constantly pushing up against the house. Walkers are obsessive and persistent, and they keep chasing after the last thing that caught their attention until another sound or movement distracts them. And since Alexandria is empty and quiet, her running past them is still the most recent thing to trigger their instincts.

She turns her head to look up the street, and sees a continuous stream of them ambling in her direction. The ones that weren't out there when she was are just following the herd, like some sort of sick, rotted sheep.

And suddenly, a deep hatred for each and every one of them blooms in her belly.

She's always hated them, of course. And she's grown to hate them more with each passing day, as they constantly take from her. They took both of her sons and they took so many of her friends and so much of her family.

And they just keep taking, and taking, and taking and taking and taking and taking and taking…

She can't stand it. She can't take it. And she can't even put into the words how much she despises them in this specific moment. The feeling rolls over her skin like a fire, hot and burning everything in its wake. It fills every cell in her body, and she can't take it anymore.

Before she knows what she's doing, she turns and picks up her katana from where it lays on the floor. She walks over to the bedroom door and throws it open, and then rushes down the stairs and straight out the front door.

She pauses on the front porch only for a moment, watching them try and fail to make their way towards her, the coordination needed to climb stairs long gone from their bodies. They reach out towards her, their jaws opening and closing incessantly, staring with cloudy, dead eyes.

She unsheaths her sword, and runs down the stairs.

She doesn't think as she starts cutting them down. Instead, she relies on instinct and the skill she's gained after years of finding and killing the dead. She's had more than enough practice. She's an expert now - at taking them out in general, and with using her sword - and she doesn't need to concentrate anymore. She doesn't need to think. So she lets their groans drown out the shrill ringing in her ears, and swings around her katana, going off of her hard-won muscle memory.

Even still, there's a small voice stirring from someplace deep inside her. It's screaming at her. Crying out that there's too many walkers here for her to take on, that she needed Rick to help her before and she especially needs his help now, if she's to have any hope of getting this done. Yelling that she's being reckless, and that this is dangerous, and she can't do it by herself.

But she pushes the voice down, drowns it in the adrenaline coursing through her veins.

She refuses to think.

She keeps going, and her arms start to ache but it doesn't matter because she's resolved not to stop until she disposes of every single walker in front of her. She keeps swinging and slicing with her katana, moving with a certain grotesque grace. With some sort of grim artistic touch that she shouldn't have had to acquire, but a touch that she did acquire anyways.

"Michonne."

His voice cuts through the fog in her brain like a knife. She stiffens as she hears him call her name from the porch behind her, the katana dropping to her side. But then, a walker moans in her ear, and she springs back into action, swiveling and splitting the walker's head in two before continuing to chop away at the dead around her.

"Michonne!" he yells again, but she doesn't turn around.

"'Chonne, there's too many of them. We can't do this by ourselves, it's too dangerous. You have to come inside. You said it yourself. It's too risky."

She doesn't stop.

"'Chonne, you need to come back inside."

She doesn't stop.

"Michonne!" he shouts. He's starting to sound desperate.

But she doesn't stop.

"Fucking hell, Michonne!"

She hears the pounding of his boots as he sprints down the stairs towards her, and she turns on her heel, her katana still raised.

"Fuck!"

He's closer than she thought he'd be, and he has to crouch and swerve away from the sword. She lowers it with a start, creeping closer to the house as walkers begin to close in around them.

He holds his palm over the left side of his face as he rights himself. When he lowers his hand, she sees the thin slice across the hollow of his cheek, the spots of blood beginning to blossom on his skin.

Ice runs through her veins.

She whispers, "Rick."

But before she can say anything else, he's shouting something at her, as he yanks his axe off his gun belt. He shoves her aside and kills a walker that was precariously nearing her shoulder, and the close call brings back her focus. She turns from him, and once again starts to work with her katana.

"What are you doing, Michonne? We have to go!"

But she doesn't listen to him, and she doesn't stop.

Suddenly, his arm snakes around her waist from behind, and she doesn't have any time to protest or question him before he lifts her up. She lets out a surprised yelp as he turns and carries her up the stairs.

He lets he go when they reach the porch, and she gawks at him for a few moments, her mouth hanging open, before she speaks.

"What the hell was that?"

She doesn't wait for his answer, instead starting back towards the stairs. But she can't get to them, because he reaches out and wraps his hand around her wrist.

"No, Michonne."

She glares at the fingers grasping her arm, and then up at him.

"What do you mean, 'no?'" she asks, and she tries to yank forward, but his grip is unwavering.

"I'm not letting you go back down there," he says firmly.

"You're not the one who gets to decide that, Rick," she growls. She lurches towards the stairs again, but she still can't manage to free herself from his hold on her.

"Let me go!"

"No, Michonne!" he shouts, looking at her like she's lost her mind. "What the fuck are you thinkin'? There's too many of them down there, and I know that you know that. You're gonna get yourself killed."

"Let me go!" she yells back, attempting with all her might to pull away from him.

"No! I told you already, I'm not letting you back down there."

"And I told you already," she says, taking a step towards him as she shoots daggers at him with her eyes, "that you don't get to decide that."

"I'm not gonna watch you go down there and die," he tells her, his eyes beginning to shine with tears. "I love you, and I'm not gonna let you do that. I already lost my son today, and I'm not gonna lose you, too."

She stares at him, silent, his words throwing her. In the quiet, the moans of the dead start to rattle her eardrums once more, and she looks back at their gray, decaying bodies.

She hates them. Her blood boils when she sees them.

She drops her sword, and it falls onto the wooden floor with a clank. She takes another step towards Rick, places both hands on his shoulders, and pushes him backwards.

"Let me go."

"No," he answers, without a moment of hesitation.

She curls one of her hands into a fist, and brings it down onto his chest, hitting him.

"Let me go," she tells him again, clenching her other fist and bringing both down together, punching his body.

"No."

"Let me go!" she shouts at him. "Let me go, let me go, let me go, let me go, let me go!"

She uses both of her fists to beat on his chest, backing him up against the wall of the house. She keeps hitting him, and commanding him to let her go back down the stairs, until he reaches up and clasps one of her fists in his hand.

"Michonne."

She stops as he says her name, her eyes transfixed on the spot where she'd been hitting him moments before. Her breathing is heavy and erratic, brow furrowed and lips turned down into a grimace.

And suddenly, as if every bit of her energy up and left her all in one fell swoop, she collapses into him. She clutches at his shirt with needy fingers, and starts to sob, finding tears she didn't know were left in her body and letting them pour out in torrents.

He wraps his arms around her, and holds her.


They stay like that for a few minutes, curled around each other, Rick's back pressed against the house's siding. She waits for her tears to cease. Once they do, she takes two deep, steadying breaths and then pulls away from him.

His hands linger on her as she backs up, and she can feel the tips of his fingers squeeze around her before he drops his arms to his side, as she finally moves out of his grasp.

"Michonne," he croaks, and she can hear his voice shake. She eyes the porch stairs as she approaches, and realizes what he must be thinking.

"I'm just getting the katana," she assures him.

As she crouches down to pick it up, she hears his voice from behind her, mumbling out a breathy, "Okay."

She rises with her sword in hand, electing not to put it back in her sheath right now. She got enough walkers in her killing spree that she'll need to wash the blade off. Turning to walk back into the house, she passes Rick, without a glance in his direction. She enters the foyer alone, but after a handful of seconds she hears the clack of his shoes against the ground as he follows her.

She wishes their hug outside had been enough to heal the rift between them. She wishes that things could be fixed effortlessly with the magic of a desperate embrace, but she's lived and experienced enough to know that magic isn't real, and almost everything takes effort. They'll have to talk about what happened. About what they lost, about what he said to her, about what she tried to do outside. About how they're going to manage, moving forward.

She ambles up the stairs and down the hall into the bathroom, where she turns the water on and rinses off her katana in the sink. After it's clean, she grabs one of the towels hanging on the bar on the wall and dries it off, before putting the sword in its sheath and leaving the bathroom to walk to her old room.

He's standing in the hall, leaning up against a wall and waiting. She passes him again, wordlessly.

Once she's in the bedroom, she goes to close the door behind her. But she thinks twice, and leaves the door open a crack. It's her invitation to him, to come in and talk to her. To try and mend whatever's falling apart between them.

She sets her katana on the floor, and then sits down at the foot of the blankets, kicking off her shoes and stretching her legs out straight, folding her hands in her lap. She clenches her eyes shut and bites her bottom lip, concentrating on him as he stands in the hall and trying to will him to come in and sit.

It takes him a few minutes, but Rick comes in.

The door to her first bedroom in this house has always been squeaky, and it used to drive her crazy. Every time she had to get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, or fetch something from her room while Judith napped, she would cringe and curse as the door moved on its hinges and sent a loud creak throughout the second floor.

But she welcomes the sound now, and as it rings out and fills her ears, she could almost smile.

He settles down next to her. They're close, but not touching, and she misses the warmth of him. She's not used to being deprived of his touch anymore. The separation between them eats away at her, and she remembers the way his body pressed against hers during their embrace on the porch, how his arms had enveloped her and how his skin had caressed hers. She longs for it so acutely that she considers foregoing their conversation and climbing into his lap instead, kissing him until they both forget about everything apart from each other.

But that won't solve anything, she knows. It will only delay and defer, burying thoughts and words and feelings until they explode out into something that they might not recover from.

They need to talk. In the end, they'll be stronger for it.

Yet, they're silent for minutes on end. She's not sure where to start, and it seems he isn't either. She wrings her hands together and listens to his breathing. She's about to just suck it up and say something, even if it's just his name, to try and jumpstart something, but he beats her to it.

He murmurs, "I'm sorry."

She nods woodenly, staring ahead at the wall instead of looking at him.

"For what?"

She needs him to say it to her. To put it into words, instead of tiptoeing around a vague idea of it.

He hesitates, and she begins to bounce her left knee up and down as her nervousness tics up with each moment of quiet. She steals a glance at him out of the corner of her eye, and finds him facing forward as well, jaw tense.

"I have no idea how it must've felt when you lost Andre and Mike," he finally tells her. "It didn't happen to me, and if it had, I have no idea how I would've reacted. And I have no right to judge the way you coped. You trusted me with your pain and grief, and I took it and used it against you. That's so unfair and disrespectful to you, and awful for me to do to anyone, but especially to you. To someone I care about as much as I do. And I'm so sorry, Michonne. I can't tell you how sorry I am. It physically hurts me that I said what I said."

"I wasn't trying to say that what happened to me was worse that what happened to you," she stresses to him. "I wasn't comparing what we were feeling, or trying to pit our experiences against each other. You have to know I would never do that."

"I do know that. I promise, I do."

"And I'm not even saying you were entirely wrong. After I lost everything, I didn't cope very well," she admits, running her palms over the denim covering her thighs. "When I was first at the prison, and before I got there - I wasn't handling it well. I was a damn mess inside, Rick. I don't want that to happen again, and I don't want it to happen to you, either."

She pauses, folding her arms across her stomach.

"But the way that you said it. It was like I had done something wrong. And you seemed angry with me. I didn't get it, and it hurt. It almost felt like you were a different person, and I just…"

She feels his fingers skim her upper arm tentatively as her voice tapers off.

"I know," he says, and she hears him let out a frustrated breath as his fingertips trail down her bicep to her elbow before he pulls away, resting his hand in the empty space between them. "I know. I'm sorry, 'Chonne. I wasn't angry at you. Hell, I don't know if I'm even angry at all. I don't know how I'm supposed to feel. It's easy to feel angry, and there's sadness too, but then sometimes I don't think it's even set in that it happened yet. And there's fear, and pain, and it's all kind of just mixed up inside and I can't make sense of it."

"Then tell me that," she urged, turning towards him and grabbing his hand that had been on her arm from its spot on the blanket. She twists their fingers together and crushes his hand in her grasp, her skin stretching over her knuckles and her bones aching from the force she's using to cling to him. "Tell me, and let me help you. And I need you to help me, too. We need each other, Rick. We can't do this by ourselves."

She reaches out with her free hand and takes his chin between her thumb and forefinger, tilting his head up so she can see his face. As he stares back at her, she can still see the sadness and mourning swimming in his eyes. The lost look that glazes over them, like he doesn't know where he is and what he's doing anymore.

She acknowledges that, and accepts it for now. She's sure her eyes look the same. The hurt and grief they carry can't be solved with an embrace, or a conversation.

But when she looks into his blue irises, she sees the softness that she's come to love so much. The peace that she doesn't quite understand, but that makes her feel that even with everything weighing them down right now, they'll find a way to make it.

Somehow, they'll make it.

He takes the hand holding his chin and lifts it to his cheek.

"It can't be like it was with Glenn and Abraham," he whispers. "It has to be different this time."

She nods, knowing he's referencing the way they pulled away from each other after that terrible night.

"It will be," she promises him, and she crawls toward him and settles in his lap, straddling his legs and wrapping her arms around his neck. "We'll do it together."

"Together," he vows.

They kiss.

They kiss, desperately, and she breathes him in. He pulls at the hem of her shirt and she threads her fingers through his hair, and as his mouth plies hers open and their tongues stroke together, she knows nothing except that she needs to be close to him. She needs to feel his heart beat in his chest and hear his voice in her ear and feel the warmth of his blood as it runs through the veins under his skin.

They shed their clothes in haphazard piles around the room, and soon they're laying naked across the blankets on the floor. She lays on her back as he hovers over her, legs wrapped around his waist and nails digging into his back, leaving crescent-shaped indents on his skin. She shuts her eyes, panting, anticipating the sensation of him inside her.

But the feeling doesn't come, even though he's pressing against her, hard and insistent. She opens her eyes after a few moments, to find him still and staring down at her, a troubled look on his face.

"What is it?" she asks, lifting herself onto her elbows.

"I thought you were going to die."

Her stomach drops.

"When you went out there into that herd, I thought you were going to die," he repeats. He grimaces as the words leave his lips, his eyes beginning to shine. "I thought you were trying to get yourself killed."

His voice breaks on the last word, a sob wracking his body.

"No," she breathes, moving her hands so they wrap around the back of his neck, and then pulling his face down into the crook of her neck as sadness and guilt wash over her. That's not what she was doing. She was just overwhelmed and frustrated and alone and reckless, and she was desperate for a distraction.

But she realizes what it must have looked like.

"No," she says again, making her voice more firm.

"I can't lose you. I can't lose both of you," he cries, his voice muffled by her skin. "I know we agreed that we could lose each other if we had to, because it wasn't about us, but shit, Michonne. I can't. I can't lose you. Please don't leave me, Michonne."

He lifts his head, and stares at her with anguished eyes, tears streaking down his face.

"Please don't leave me, baby. Please don't leave me."

"I'm not gonna leave you," she swears, and she feels a few of her own tears fall from the corners of her eyes and onto the pillow below her head. "I'm not gonna leave you, baby."

He crashes his lips against hers, and somehow their kisses are even more frantic than they were before. During the brief moments when they separate, she repeats her pledge to him again and again, trying to burn the words into his mind and heart.

She cries out when he enters her, and she clings to him as he moves, keeping her lips against any part of him she can reach and tugging at his hair, whimpering in his ear and breathing against his skin. They reach their peak together, and he lets out a groan as he buries his face into her neck.

"I love you," he moans desperately. "I love you."

"I love you," she vows.

She loves him. More than she'll ever be able to express or comprehend.

Their breathing slows, and he relaxes against her. She keeps her legs wrapped around him and basks in the fact that she can feel his heart pump as his chest beats against hers.

She runs her her fingers through his curls over and over, and presses a kiss onto his head.

"I love you."

She loves him so much.

And they'll get through this together.


A/N: I never write smut ever ever ever, and even though this is super light-core, I think I no joke blushed about fifty times while writing it and almost took it out while I was proofreading. I hope it doesn't suck too much. *ducks and hides*

There's one more short chapter left, and I hope to have it up within the next few days.

See you soon!

xoxo,
Rebekah