Carl watched Charlotte surreptitiously from the horse pen as he rubbed Flame down with a bristled brush, the blanket folded neatly on the fence ready to be put back onto the beautiful russet coloured animal when he had finished. Michonne had returned early that morning with a stash of comic books, stale m+m's and the unfortunate news that she had still not found the Governor. It had been a couple of months since the fall of Woodbury, when it's survivors had been brought here to join their group and integrated into their small community. Carl had overheard his father and Daryl discussing Michonne's relentless mission to find the Governor, both believing that the trail had gone cold and that Michonne was using it is a reason not to become too settled within prison life.
He almost laughed out loud at the thought of Michonne staying within the community doing everyday chores, ringing out water logged clothes and hanging them on the large rotary clothes lines anchored on the large green expanse like Charlotte was doing at the moment, or standing at the large industrial sized pans in the kitchen area cooking spaghetti. He frowned as the thought occurred to him that Michonne would more than likely be leaving again very soon. It was her pattern. She would be gone for a week or so, then return for just a night to have a proper meal, a good nights sleep and more often than not she would have left by dawn the next morning. Michonne, along with Daryl and Tyreese, were his favourite people, mostly because they were group protectors and everything he aspired to be but specifically because they didn't treat him like the kid that everyone saw him as. They didn't baby talk him or pander around him. They treated him like an adult. And that's all that he ever wanted. He missed her quiet presence around the prison, the way she watched the goings on with her scrutinising eyes, and the very rare times she opened her mouth to speak, people listened.
They had held a council meeting that morning, something that he would never be invited to, he guessed to find out what she had discovered and what her next step was. Also more than likely to fill her in over what had happened in the prison in the last couple of days since Charlotte had joined them. His father as promised had come to talk to him about what had happened to her after the meeting and explained that she had been kept as a slave by a group of men, shackled and beaten. And that she had killed that group of men to escape. He still felt like his father was keeping something from him but appreciated the fact that at least he was sharing some information with him. He had of late been closed and off hand with him, since his mother had died. It had been the proverbial straw that broke the camels back, and the first couple of months had been hell having had to both grieve for his mother and by extension his father's loss of sanity, yet carry on stoically. The pressure and fear that had sat on the group had been immense, but he it had been finally lifted with the fall of Woodbury and the Governor.
Life had been comparatively peaceful for the last couple of months. His father had started to open up again to him over the shared back breaking labour of planting vegetables and fruits, and their relationship was finally back on track. This woman being brought into the group unsettled him a little, just as he had been when the Woodbury residents had joined their group. The difference was that the people from Woodbury were relatively innocent of the crimes that had been perpetrated against his 'family' on their behalf, their only crime had been that they had been ignorant or chose to turn a blind eye. This woman had proven that she would kill in cold blood if necessary. He conceded that Daryl, Michonne, even his father were capable of it, in his opinion making them strong as they would do it in the groups best interest, but he knew and trusted their judgement. This woman was a stranger which made the admirable qualities that he saw in the people that he loved, just plain dangerous in her.
His unsettled feeling had not lifted with the way that his father, the Green family and of all people Daryl had defended her. After her attack on Henry, she had been brought back by Daryl to the prison and after a discussion there had almost been an uneasy truce and acceptance that she would be staying with the group for a couple of weeks to recover her strength. The last couple of days had been quiet, a little awkward but had seemed to settle down again.
Michonne's first encounter with Charlotte had been predictable. They had met that morning after the meeting in the courtyard. It hadn't been a stand off but there had been only simply an exchange of looks, no words. Neither woman had spoken, they had stood a couple of feet apart and looked at each other. He had watched in interest as Charlotte had inclined her head in a slight nod, the flit of a small, friendly smile crossing her face to the warrior woman she had heard so much about from Maggie and had received a curt nod back. Nothing too welcoming, no smile but not quite cold. Just guarded. Charlotte had broken the eye contact and moved away correctly figuring that this was all she was going to get in welcome from the Amazonian.
"That's a pretty heavy scowl." The voice of the person who was parading through his mind carried quietly from behind him. He paused and looked over his shoulder to see her leaning on the guard rail of the small pen, a teasing smirk on her face. A little disgruntled at the thought that she had caught him absentmindedly staring in Charlotte's direction with the brush poised in mid air above the horse's hide, he didn't bother to answer and with a slight shrug of his shoulders resumed his brushing a little more vigorously than was necessary. She chose not to pursue, knowing when he wanted to talk he would and continued to watch him attend to the horse in companionable silence.
"I'm not sure that I trust her being here in the group." He suddenly spoke without turning around, knowing that she was still behind him, not breaking the rhythmic strokes over the red gold coat.
Michonne squinted in the afternoon sun, her eyes looking over to the woman who was leaning over the bucket of clothes. She watched her wring the dripping clothes before snapping them sharply to straighten out any creases, and place them over the washing line. She noticed with interest that she moved leisurely, a small content smile contrasting oddly against the yellowing bruises on her face, an expression of her mind being far away, as if she wasn't hanging out careworn clothes in a prison yard in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. She looked like a house wife, basking in the mid morning sun carrying out her chores, whilst listening to music and watching the clock to make sure that she isn't late for the school run.
She wasn't surprised considering what she had been told this morning in the council meeting. Despite what may have happened to her, even if her experiences hadn't involved been continually raped and brutalised, the fact that she was out in the sunshine and free from the confines of a dark room would merit her wanting to spend every last second outside regardless of the mundane nature of her chores.
"I don't think that you have anything to worry about." She replied in her characteristic and measured manner, economically saving on words to get straight to the point. She picked up the blanket and sauntered around the guard rail, seeing that the brush down was coming to an end.
"I'm not worried about me. I can look after myself!" He huffed impatiently, taking the blanket from her with hardly a nod of thanks and throwing it over the horse. "She murdered five men."
"Yeah well I'm pretty sure that they deserved it, even though your dad didn't tell you everything about what happened to her, you must see that." She asked him, her slightly raised eyebrows the only thing betraying her surprise at his statement. She had always regarded the eldest Grimes child as being capable and intelligent, and as a result treated him as an adult. His opinions had always been strong but she was surprised that he would defend five men who had knowingly enslaved someone.
"I don't care about those men, " he told her reading the surprise easily on her face, " What I am worried about is that all the adults in this place seem to be letting someone who was able to murder a group of men walk freely around."
"Ahh, " Michonne nodded slowly understanding his point, " okay. I get it. You think that if she got it in her head to hurt someone she-"
"And she proved it." He interjected his blue eyes flashing coldly, " She hit out at Henry when he grabbed her. She broke his nose and he didn't even do anything to her. I don't care about him but if she hurt Judith or dad or you and Daryl..."
She nodded understanding his point of view but also knew that Rick had purposefully not told him everything, and it was definitely not her place to go over his head and inform him even if she thought that he could understand the magnitude of a crime like rape. She squinted over to Charlotte and decided to try a different approach.
"Why don't you talk to her?" She suggested, smiling slightly at his head snapping up to her, the surprise written on his face. Despite his age, she felt that he was actually quite a good judge of character and maybe by speaking to Charlotte he would get a better sense of her. She was also pretty sure that having been a mother, Charlotte would not give him the gory details of her experiences just an overview of her reasons for going to the measures that she did to get away from her captors.
"You might find when you speak to her that you see other things that you didn't take into account. You don't know the first thing about her." She shrugged loosely, her dark dreadlock hair swaying slightly and started to saunter her way out of the pen, " Or don't and you can just keep an eye on her. You have a weapon, she doesn't." She pointed out as she turned around the fence and slowly made her way up the small incline to the internal courtyard gates.
Carl followed her path to the rail of the pen, he put the brush back into his back pocket and thoughtfully picked up the piece of wood that was working as a gate, slotting it into place. For a minute he watched his friend amble away, not for the first time comparing her to a panther. She was so lithe, so fluid and like a feline her movements seemed so measured and almost leisurely but it was misguiding because in a flash she would pounce with ferociousness and lightning speed knocking you down before you had registered what had happened.
He wondered if Michonne, possessing these qualities in abundance could tell that the English woman did not. Maybe she could read the newcomer better than most and felt unthreatened or unmoved by the presence of this woman in their camp, which of all the people in their group he had to say the warrior's assessment was the one he would trust above all. She had almost a sixth sense about things.
His curiosity was getting the better of him, his initial surprise at her suggestion was turning into an impulse to do it, to talk to Charlotte. He wondered what Michonne had seen in this woman that would merit her not being a threat to the group despite her actions towards Henry and the arseholes that had been her captors. Finally resolving to approach her, he placed a bucket of feed in front of Flame who had wandered over to him and patted him absentmindedly on the neck as he greedily snuffled the oats and grain.
He regarded Charlotte carefully as he approached her across the expanse of greenery trying to decide what he was going to talk to her about. She was dressed in a pair of worn jeans and a blue thin jumper that came to mid way down her thighs, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows whilst she worked. He felt with a pang that he had seen his mum wear a similar outfit, although in a better state of repair, once upon a time. The exception was that she was barefoot, the small ballet pumps strewn carelessly a couple of feet away from her in the grass. His mother would have never have gone barefoot. Her hair was tied in plait that looked like a thick rope that hung down her back, the hair at her temples frizzing slightly in the slight humidity, and her face was pink with a sheen of sweat from her exertions in the warm sun. It was hot but not oppressively so, the autumn descending pretty rapidly on them. He could see the swelling of her face had started to go down, leaving her with an array of sunset colours on her milky skin as the bruises remained.
"Hey." He said quietly. She turned to him, not in surprise but her expression losing the dreamy quality that had been etched over her features.
"Hello," She smiled warmly at him and inclined her head in a nod before returning to the wet clothes but now aware that he was continuing to watch her.
"So how are you?" He asked uncomfortably, scuffing his boot heel against grass. She looked over to him, a small smile playing at her lips as she remembered her brothers having the same lean, gangly awkwardness at the same age, where their limbs seemed almost separate from their bodies. She could see in him the same mannerisms of his father, the way he stood and held his head angled down, the expression in his steel blue eyes, but Carl still needed to grow into his body in order to achieve the graceful movement and control that his father possessed.
"I am much better thank you." She replied, wringing out a t-shirt that he recognised as one of his. He noticed that she was wearing jewellery that she hadn't been the other day, a white gold ring on her finger, a necklace and two name bracelets. She looked up and caught him peering at the bracelets trying to make out the names on the small silver cubes.
"Lilybet and Essie," she volunteered shaking out the t-shirt in her hand and pegging it up, smiling good naturedly at his embarrassment at being caught. "When they started talking, they couldn't pronounce each others name. Jessica called Elizabeth 'Lilybet' and Elizabeth called Jessica 'Essie'." She chuffed a sad laugh but continued, "It stuck as their nicknames. Two years ago at a market in London we stopped at a stall that were doing necklace and bracelet sets. We bought them a set each, I kept the bracelets and they had the necklaces."
"I'm sorry you lost your daughters and that you are stuck here now." He replied a little stiffly but with sincerity, unable to think of anything else to say to her. He sat down on the grass, peering at her, still not sure what to make of her.
She didn't reply, she simply nodded and putting the jeans back in the bucket sat down gingerly next to him. "It's not such a bad place... well, I guess aside from the walkers." She gave him a sidelong glance and grinned at him, "That was not in the brochure and I intend to write a very strongly worded letter about the matter to my travel agents."
He chuffed a laugh at her trying to make a joke and ducked his head, plucking absently at the long grass with his fingers. She rubbed her hands on her thighs, trying to soak the clamminess and stickiness of detergent off of them, noting how red her knuckles looked after having wrung out god know how many clothes. She looked up at the rotary clotheslines, each filled with clothes, and strangely felt a small twinge of achievement.
"You murdered five men." He said bluntly pulling her attention back. He watched as she took a deep breath not quite meeting his eyes, and swept her forearm across her face wiping the slight sheen of perspiration away. She uncomfortably tamped down the slight wisps of frizz around her temples and tried to tuck them behind her ears.
"You don't care about the men that I killed, you care that I may be a danger to the group because I was capable of murdering those five men." She quietly stated, sighing deeply and flicking her tongue over the healing cut on her lip. She mentally told herself off, having realised that it had become a slight nervous tick that she had developed, and was impeding the healing of her lower lip.
Carl nodded, glad that she was on the same wavelength that he was on. "My father told me what happened to you, although I have a feeling that I got the edited version, " he scowled in frustration, " but yeah I am concerned for my sister. My father is a good man but he doesn't have the strength that he did once. And the ones that do-"
"like Daryl and Hershel," she supplied, with a humourless grin.
"Like Daryl and Hershel," he repeated cautiously, and nodding, " even Michonne, seem happy enough to let you wander around freely in our camp even after what happened with Henry."
"Why do you think that is?" She asked evenly, not allowing any hurt or anger to enter her tone. She knew where he was coming from. She barely trusted anyone's intentions now a days and maybe she wouldn't trust a stranger who had committed murder regardless of the reasons.
"Trust that you won't do it again." He shrugged frowning at his own answer," But can they trust you? They don't know you."
"It's not trust Carl, it's understanding as to why I did it." She smiled sadly at him, " If they trusted me they would allow me to carry a weapon. I notice even the children have knives, as sad as that is."
" I understand why-" He protested hotly, wrenching a clump of grass out of the ground in frustration.
"No you don't." She interrupted him calmly, shaking her head slowly. "Carl, I killed those men in cold blood." His eyes snapped up to meet hers and held them in an intensity that was so rare for someone so young. They were the eyes of a man who had seen a lot of horror, set in the face of an adolescent with the vestiges of his childhood features. She could not break the gaze, meeting his eyes with all the honesty she could garner.
"My first murder was just an opportunity." She explained quietly, finally pulling her eyes away and diverting it back to the bucket of clothes. "I stabbed Joe junior in the neck with a broken bottle, when he came down into the basement where I was chained up. He came down to... check on me." She paused, pushing down the bile that had risen to her mouth as she remembered his hands all over her, she swallowed the vile tasting fluid, feeling it burn slightly. She glanced at him, and judging by his facial expression, she was telling him information that his father had chosen not to divulge to his young teenage son.
"He died in seconds. I stabbed him in the base of the neck to make sure he didn't turn. I crept upstairs where they had all passed out from a drinking binge and stabbed them all in the base of the neck. I killed them whilst they slept. That's when Zeke appeared from upstairs and chased me, I believe with the intention of catching me to bring me back to the basement where he would make sure that I lived so that he could torture me. Even though I was safe on the highway when I met your dad, Daryl and Glenn I killed Zeke in a fit of rage in front of them."
She stopped when she realised that he looked a little nauseous, but kept her comments to herself as she noted the steely eyes staring out past the fences to the dead wandering around aimlessly. He was alarmed that his father would have brought this woman into their group having witnessed her kill someone in front of them although from her story he now believed more than ever that those men shouldn't be anywhere but in Hell.
He understood now why his father had not told him the particulars of her story. He understood death, and the need to survive and to kill to facilitate the survival, but what had happened to her had been brutal and for want of a better word, unnecessary. As if the world wasn't a shit enough place as it was, here was a load more crap to pile onto your normal amount of all round shit.
He mulled over it as he continued to absentmindedly pull at the grass blades next to his feet. She was sitting with her legs pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them and her chin resting on her knees, her gaze was a million miles away. She had just confirmed that she was the kind of murderer that he had imagined her to be but she didn't seem to be threatening now. She was calm, honest, open, genteel almost.
"Before the world went to shit I was a good average person." She sighed cutting through his thoughts as if she had read his mind, " I was an engineer, an animal lover, never broken the law not even parking tickets, cried at sappy girl chick flicks, covered my eyes at the scary bits in the horror movies my husband used to make me watch, laughed hysterically at LOL cats. I guess the list is endless."
"I know that means nothing to you, because for all you know I could have been Hitler a year ago but one thing that is true is that this kind of world makes killers of us all whether we want to be or not." She paused hesitating, unsure whether to say what she wanted to drive her point home and decided that she had been honest with him so far, and that he appeared to respond to that. "I know that you had to put your mum down."
Hurt and anger flashed across his face as his head reared up, his body reacting defensively, though when he met her gaze he visibly deflated at the tears that glistened in her blue eyes.
"Was she still alive when you shot her?" She asked gently. He swallowed hard, his adam's apple bobbing, trying to push the lump that had risen in his throat away and blinking furiously at the hot tears that burned his eyes. She already knew the answer and spared him the need to vocalise the horrible truth that his mother had been unconscious but not dead when he had put a bullet through her skull.
"We all have blood on our hands Carl, you did what you had to do and I know your mother would be proud of the strength you showed. I understand your reasons, and maybe one day you will understand mine."
She raised herself off the floor, wiping the tears from her eyes and returning to her clothes bucket, she started wringing the jeans but dropped her head in frustration as she realised that they had a hole in the crotch and would have to be relegated to the rag drawer. It had taken her a good fifteen minutes to hand wash the blood and mud out of them. What a waste of time.
"Please believe me that I would never hurt you or Judith or your dad, or any of the people that you care about. Please believe me that I was only a murderer through necessity. I am capable of it but it doesn't mean I want to do it." She said quietly her gaze still steadfastly on the last bits of clothes in the bottom of the bucket.
She turned to him but he had already turned his back on her. Whether he had heard her or not she wasn't sure, he didn't acknowledge her assurance about her intention never to hurt any of his family. He just walked away.
