A/N: I don't wanna say much, because I know you guys just wanna get to this chapter (also, I'm lowkey pissed because I was making my final edits and lost all of them at the last paragraph, so I had to start over), but I just wanted to leave a quick note to say thank you all so, so, so much for all of the incredible feedback. You guys are totally the reason I was able to get this chapter done so quickly. You're so thoughtful and perceptive, it really makes this a joy to write. So THANK YOU. And I will now shut up and let you get to it. I really hope you enjoy! -Ash

Chapter 6
You Gon' Lose Your Wife

Who the fuck do you think I is?
You ain't married to no average bitch, boy
You can watch my fat ass twist, boy
As I bounce to the next dick, boy

"I don't know if you realize this," Michonne began to speak quietly. Her tone was almost alarmingly composed, while her icy gaze stared intently out of the front window of the car. "Maybe you've been too busy feeling yourself for the past few years to remember. Or maybe you never saw it in the first place. But I chose you, Rick. Actively and consciously, I made the decision to be with you." She could feel him looking over at her, likely wanting to say something in his own defense, but she ignored it in order to speak her piece first. "And maybe I couldn't control the fact that I've been in love with you since you bit out a man's throat to save your kid, but that didn't take away my agency in the matter. I didn't fall in love, like it was some accidental occurrence. I rose in it. I chose it. I sat on that couch, cognizant of what I was doing in taking this leap with you. Deanna Monroe told me to figure out what I wanted for my life, and it turned out, it was you. I stood in front of God and Gabriel, and everyone we knew, and I let it be known that you were what I wanted for my whole life." She let out a soft sigh, trying not to mentally crack as she recalled those happy moments.

"So you can imagine my surprise when I wake up one day," she continued, "and the man that I chose, the man that supposedly chose me back, has decided to want someone else. Some woman he's known half as long, and hasn't done half as much for or with him as I have, has somehow come along and taken half of what's mine. Imagine the gut-wrenching pain that comes with knowing that this man you've given everything to, when you didn't really have to, has disrespected the shit out of you; has abandoned you without warning or cause." She turned to him, finally, seeing that the expression on his face was unchanged since they'd left Hilltop a few minutes before. "Can you imagine a thing like that?" She didn't wait for his answer, knowing that he wouldn't have one. Not one that she wanted to hear, anyway. "You look like you wanna throw up."

Rick's sweaty palms gripped the steering wheel even tighter, his mind and his body struggling to stay focused on driving under Michonne's questioning glare. He did want to throw up. But more than that, he just wanted to get it all over with. The worst part, the part he'd been dreading the most, was already over – she knew. Now, it was time to rip off the rest of the band-aid. "I just wanna talk this out," he murmured.

"Oh, I bet you do," she sneered. "I'm sure you think you can talk through whatever could've been going through that fucked up head of yours at the time, and fix this with your words somehow. But I can't imagine a scenario where your excuses will work this time."

He flinched at her choice of words, feeling like he'd been attacked. At the back of his mind, Rick had been relieved that Michonne didn't have her sword along for this ride home, given how upset he knew she'd be. Of course, he didn't take into account that words could cut just as deeply, if not worse. But they were two people with a history of emotional and mental instability, and that wasn't something he ever thought she'd throw in his face. "You're hitting below the belt."

"You're lucky I haven't literally hit you below the belt," she shot back. "But if you wanna talk, go ahead. Explain how you could do this to me."

"I can't explain it away," he was quick to admit. He wanted her to know that he understood that. There was no excuse. "It was a mistake, and I wish I could take it back. It was a one-time thing that went too far, but I didn't have sex with her."

Michonne stared at the side of his face, her stomach doing backflips as her mind tried to decipher whether he was telling the truth. She hated that she couldn't tell anymore. How often was that the response from some man after he's caught? And after all the lies and the silence, how was she supposed to believe this man, in particular? The fact that she couldn't tell only frustrated her more. "Then what happened?" she demanded.

"It was a kiss. We were talking, we said too much, and then it turned into the two of us kissing on her couch." He glanced over at her as he chewed at his bottom lip, trying to gauge her reaction, but was unable to glean anything from her stoic expression. "I started it," he added in the interest of full disclosure. "But I stopped it."

"You stopped it," she chuckled, her tone dripping in sarcasm. "Because you're so honorable."

"Because you're my wife, and I love you."

"Fuck you," she rolled her eyes. She turned to face him again, searching for some sign of whether this was real, or just another lie on top of all the others. A twitch, a quirk, a something. But she only got more nothing, which just made her angrier as she thought about what a mess this was. She couldn't even look at her husband, much less believe this innocent spin he was trying to put on his sins. He had ruined everything. Michonne was generally a calm, patient woman, in control of her emotions more often than not. But he had her so frustrated, so irate, that anger turned into rage, and suddenly, her right fist was headed straight for Rick, connecting with his shoulder in a loud thwack that startled both of them. She hit him so hard, the car swerved, and she immediately recoiled, burying her face in her hands.

Rick winced at the pain, but knew that was the least he deserved after everything he'd done. In fact, he wished she would hit him again if that's what would make her feel any better. "Are you—."

"I'm sorry," she cut him off to say. She hated that this had reduced her to violence. "I shouldn't have done that."

"It's fine."

"It's not fine," she shook her head. "Because I really wanted to punch you in the face, and the only reason I stopped myself is because I don't wanna die in this car," she confessed. "I wanna put you through that window for what you've done."

"I'm sorry," he offered, knowing it wouldn't mean much.

"I can't do shit with you being sorry."

And keep your money, I got my own
Keep a bigger smile on my face being alone

"I wanna fix this," he implored. "We can come back from this."

"We can come back? I didn't go anywhere!"

Rick looked at her, knowing she was the one who wasn't being honest now. "We haven't been us for a long time now, Michonne."

"Yeah, because you're a fucking liar."

"All right."

"Don't you dare try and get indignant with me now."

"I'm not… " He let out a small sigh, obviously frustrated by the conversation as well. There wasn't much he could say that wouldn't make this worse, but it was becoming impossible to say anything. "I fucked up. I'm not gonna pretend I didn't. But I'm not a liar. I'm still the person you married."

"And yet you lied," she was quick to remind him. "And the person I married wouldn't let me go around looking like an idiot for weeks, wondering if I was crazy when he was the one that fucked up. The person I married, whose first wife and best friend nearly killed him when he found out they were fucking, wouldn't turn around and do something like this. So how could you be the same person I married? How do you square that away, Rick?"

"I made a mistake," he whispered, having no other way to explain it.

She shook her head at his lame excuse for an answer, her eyes landing on the gold band that adorned her left ring finger. "Yeah, maybe I made one, too."

"Please don't say that."

"If it was just a kiss, why didn't you just tell me?" she asked, ignoring his plea. "If that's all it was, why would you let it snowball into this?"

"I don't know. I was scared of what it meant for us," he said. "I've never slipped like that before."

"I had to be the one you experimented on." She sighed, feeling so lost. "Is it because you think I'll stay with you, no matter what? 'No matter how shitty I treat Michonne, she's always by my side.'"

Bad motherfucker, god complex
Motivate your ass, call me Malcolm X
Your operator, your innovator

Rick glared at her then, more offended by that than anything else she'd said. The implication that he'd treated her badly in their time together… "Are you serious right now?"

"Yeah, you roll those pretty blue eyes," she mocked him, her own eyes narrowed on him. "You know… I turned the other way when we first came to Virginia, and you lost your goddamn mind over Jenny or Jessie or whatever her name was. It wasn't my place back then, even if you were making yourself look like a fucking idiot. But I thought you were just emotionally traumatized, and acting out in ways I wasn't supposed to necessarily understand." She shook her head, recalling how she had to actually knock the sense into him back then. "But maybe this is just who you are. Maybe you prefer the company of mediocre white women that like to stroke your fragile ego. …And whatever else." She stared at him, almost enjoying the aggravated look on his face. "Five years with me, and that's still what does it for you, huh?"

Fuck you hater, you can't recreate her, no
You'll never recreate her, no

His only response was silence and him visibly swallowing back down his nerves as she laid into him. The only thing he could do was let her.

"I wanna scream at you for ruining this. You've eroded my trust so much that I literally don't know what to believe, and that just makes me even angrier. I feel even crazier, and I didn't think that was possible after the last two weeks I've had."

Rick took that opportunity to stop the car, because he felt like he needed to look her in the eye for this. To be able to tell her, reassure her, that he was truly being honest with her, finally. "Michonne," he called her name in a pitiful hoarse whisper. He turned his entire body toward her, hoping she would do the same. She did, eventually, and their eyes locked, blue melding with brown as he pled with her. "It was just a kiss," he promised as earnestly as he knew how. "It was a full-on kiss, I don't know how long it was, but it felt fast. It wasn't like… us, where time seems to stop. It was strange, I was thinking of you, even though I knew I wasn't with you, but I let myself go anyway. I dunno. She ended up on top of me, and I could feel myself getting… excited, and that's when I slowly realized what I was actually doing. She had unbuckled my belt, but that's as far as it went. I swear on our children, that's as far as it went."

The mere thought of Magna on top of him in that way made her queasy. Thinking of the hundreds of times she'd been there herself, and now he'd allowed some other woman that experience. Her mind didn't stop there, though, because it had gone past that so many times now. Images of that woman sucking his dick, him gripping the back of her hair while they fucked on her ugly orange sofa. Even if that wasn't what happened, in her head, it had. And now, there was no way for her to know. She turned away from him, shaking her head. "You should get out," she mumbled.

His gaze had drifted to her hand, her wedding ring, in particular, but he looked up from it upon hearing her command. "What?"

"I don't want to ride home with you anymore," she clarified, her tone clipped. "Get out of the car."

"Michonne…"

"You can walk home."

Rick looked out of the window at their whereabouts, even though he knew they were still nearly twenty miles from home. "It's thirty fuckin' degrees out there."

"Well call your girlfriend to come get you," she suggested coldly. "Or you're welcome to call your son if you feel like explaining to him why I left you on the side of the road. But I'm not going any further with you in this car." Michonne was quick to hop out of their Lexus, making her way from the passenger's side to the driver's, while Rick sat there stupefied, staring out of the front window. Finally, he looked about as pissed as she felt. When he didn't move quickly enough, she knocked harshly on his door.

His jaw was clenched tightly as he finally opened the door and stepped out of the warm SUV into the biting cold. "What is this gonna solve?" he asked, peering at her, and then past her, to the empty road. Not another car in sight.

"Nothing," she was fine with admitting. And with that, she hopped in, slammed the door shut, and drove off.

We just gotta let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be baby
You just gotta let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be baby

Michonne's silent drive home felt like the longest twenty miles of her life. And she was someone who'd walked twice that distance in the cold before, back when walkers were everywhere. But this particular trek, where she didn't have to worry about her safety, the only thing on her mind was her ire. She wanted so badly to hurt something – to hurt Rick – the way she'd been hurt. In the end, it was really for his own safety that she kicked him out of the car.

When she walked into her empty house, she felt a sense of relief to be somewhere that she felt comfortable again. Something about being away from home in times of crisis always seemed to make things just a little bit worse. But then it quickly dawned on her that this space was no longer the haven it once was either. Her place of respite had been tainted by the betrayal that lived there now, too. The man she'd made a home out of was suddenly a stranger to her. Unable to believe this person she'd put unwavering faith into, it was scary. She wasn't afraid of much, but she was deathly afraid of what this meant for her marriage going forward.

When you hurt me, you hurt yourself
Don't hurt yourself
When you diss me, you diss yourself
Don't hurt yourself

Still draped in her coat, Michonne headed for the living room, and more specifically, the bar, as had become her habit as of late. What started as a casual thing to do with her husband at the end of the work day every now and then had turned into part of her routine. She found that the liquor helped to quiet all the noise in her head, which allowed her sleep. She never slept quite as well without it, she was learning. And that had been especially true over the past couple of weeks. But then, that didn't explain why she was going to that well now, at 10:00 in the morning.

"A new low," she chuckled sadly to herself, opting for some red wine in favor of hard liquor. It was some awful concoction that their friend Genevieve had fermented, but it would do for the moment, she figured.

With her glass in hand, she found herself roaming around the house as if she were on a tour of it, like some random guest, visiting for the first time. Gazing at the pictures of her family, taking note of the various smiles on their faces in all of them. So happy and stupid, she thought. She walked through the kitchen, examining the cabinets and counters, the only thing out of place being the clean dishes from the kids' breakfast the morning before. She continued to Carl's old room - originally her room, back before she and Rick got together. Michonne smiled to herself, remembering when Carl decided to move downstairs, and she was so annoyed by it. She knew it was only a matter of time before he'd be out of the house completely. But she was glad he'd left his room the same, all his posters and trinkets in place. She ran her fingers over his old sheriff's hat, sitting on top of his dresser. After a few more seconds of reminiscing, she closed the door and headed on out, circling back to the staircase. For the first time in a long time, she noticed her katana up on the mantle, where she'd put it nearly two years ago, and rarely had reason to take it back down. She wanted to now, though. She was so tempted to sit on the steps with it in her lap, just waiting for Rick to walk in the door.

Instead, though, she went up those stairs, slowly meandering into Judith's vibrant room first. She loved its colorful pallette of blues and pinks and purples and greens. She and Rick had painted it themselves, a mural of these giant, vivid flowers. Sometimes, Michonne would just get lost in the art of it all, reveling in what they'd created. Today, she didn't though, her eyes quickly scanning the rest of the room to make sure everything was in place. Books, toys, clothes, all in order.

She took another gulp of wine, and left that room too, headed for her own. This place where she'd rested her head for so many years. Where she'd shared everything with Rick. Their dressers, their closet, their bed. The things they'd done to one another in that bed. The things they'd said. That room was the core of where they shared their lives together. It wasn't a wonder why it always felt so cold lately.

She still didn't take off her coat as she wandered into the closet, looking around at all their clothes. All the elegant suits and dresses they rarely got a chance to wear. She laughed to herself as she thought of what Rick's life would look like without her. She'd created this beautiful existence for him, for them, and he didn't even care. All this work she'd done, and it felt like she was watching it circle down the drain.

When you hurt me, you hurt yourself
Don't hurt yourself
When you love me, you love yourself
Love god herself

Before she knew it, Michonne was flipping through all those suits, searching for something she knew she wouldn't find – a clue as to whether he was telling the truth. She didn't see how it was possible, all of this over just a kiss. So she sniffed his jackets, looking for a scent that didn't belong to him or her. Searching the pockets for something of the same nature. She moved on to the dresser, too, rummaging through all his casual clothes, the things he wore daily, digging for evidence of some long stringy hair, a part of an earring, a condom. She was pretty sure all the condoms had expired, but she still looked for one. She even went through the hamper in the corner, combing through his dirty clothes as well, examining them for cum stains or lipstick. Magna didn't even wear lipstick, but she was desperate. She searched through all of it once, and then did it again, pulling his clothes to the floors and the bed. Poring over every detail of his things until she couldn't stand it anymore. She couldn't figure out how she had finally uncovered his secret, and she was still on this ridiculous quest for the truth.

It was dark outside by the time Rick had found his way home. Michonne could hear some car pull up outside before the front door opened, so he must have found one along the way, as she figured he would. How could she know him so well in so many ways, but not at all in others? She stared around their messy bedroom, all of his clothes strewn everywhere, and it only highlighted that fact. And she was losing her mind because of it.

It wasn't long before she heard his footsteps trudging up the steps, and she took a deep breath, readying herself for part two of this unending battle.

I am the dragon breathing fire
Beautiful mane, I'm the lion
Beautiful man, I know you're lying
I am not broken, I'm not crying, I'm not crying

The bedroom door swung open, and Rick stood in the threshold, staring back at his wife fixedly. He knew he had no right to be pissed, but he'd done a thirteen-mile walk of shame in the freezing cold before he could find a car that he could hotwire. So a little bit of anger had crept in with all his contrition. But more than that, he wondered if she was feeling any different. She didn't look much different. She looked worse, really. Swaddled in her bathrobe, her hair in this haphazard, loose ponytail, she was sitting amongst a mess. Another of those cocktails she seemed to enjoy so much was perched on the nightstand beside her.

"You kickin' me out of the house?" he wondered, noting that all of the clothes on the bed were his.

"You'd like that, I'm sure," she returned tersely. "Make me the bad guy."

"You know that's not true."

"I don't know what's true, Rick," she said, her voice so low she wasn't even sure she was speaking out loud. "I suppose I have to believe you when you say that it was just a kiss, even though that doesn't really make sense to me." She watched him walk across the room, resting his tired body against one of their dressers. "I came home looking for something that would give me definitive proof of what happened. Because I knew I would drive myself crazy otherwise, unable to believe you, unable to trust my own instincts. I wanted proof," she shook her head at the mess, seeing exactly how futile an exercise it'd been. "But of course you wouldn't leave evidence. I had to steal your phone for even an inkling of what was going on, and all I got was some missing text message." She scoffed, rubbing her tired face with her hand. "The only reason I figured any of this out is because of what I do know about you, the evidence being you. You won't look me in the eye. The way you've kissed me lately. The way you fuck me, or don't fuck me. None of it is the same. It's obvious you're somewhere else, maybe wishing you were with her…"

"No," he cut in to say. "I've never wanted anyone but you. Even with her, I was thinking of you."

She frowned, but didn't respond to that. There was no way to respond to that, whether it was a lie or not. "I thought things were starting to change because I'd gotten boring. Too familiar. Maybe I didn't suck your dick enough, or maybe I did it too much. I thought about these things every night as you laid next to me, but still so far away. Wondering what I did wrong. And maybe…" She thought about the miscarriage and began to scratch her forehead in order to hide her face from him. "Maybe you just hate me now."

You ain't trying hard enough, you ain't loving hard enough
You don't love me deep enough, we not reaching peaks enough

"Michonne, I could never hate you." He went to the bed, kneeling in front of her. He took her hands into his, hopelessly caressing them with his thumbs. "I swear to god, I love you more than everything."

She looked into his eyes, seeing him for the first time in what felt like forever. His tears said he was genuine, but so was she. This hurt. "Then why would you do this to me?" she whispered, her voice breaking as the words eked out. "I would never do this to you."

"I didn't mean to hurt you."

"But you did hurt me. You consciously made the decision to lie to me over and over again, every day, for weeks." She took her hand back from him, hating the way she could feel herself slipping with just a simple touch. "You had me thinking you were upset about a baby. Had me thinking I'd failed you somehow. Come to find out, you just felt guilty because you took an interest in someone else."

"I didn't take an interest in her. She was…" He sniffled as he searched for the right words. "She was a vessel for all the things I was too proud, too scared to say to you. And I thought that not telling you was somehow protecting you. Sparing your feelings," he nodded, looking down at the floor. "But now I see that I was protecting myself."

Michonne closed her eyes, and it finally struck her that when he said he and Magna talked, it wasn't just the typical silly banter they usually exchanged in her presence. It hadn't been flirting that led to all this kissing. "What did you mean when you told me you and Magna 'said too much'?"

"It was…" He sighed, trying to actually recall everything he'd said. "I shouldn't have told her some of the things I did," he intimated, rubbing his thumb along his eyebrow. "I told her how I felt about us losing the baby. And I explained to her why I couldn't talk to you about it. I-."

"This was before you told me," she recognized, thinking about how he didn't share anything with her about the miscarriage until the night after his strange behavior.

"It was," he nodded. "What happened with her made me realize I should've just come to you in the first place."

"But you told her first."

"Yeah," he croaked.

Michonne immediately felt like she'd been punched in the stomach, after already being stabbed in the back. She swallowed hard, unsure if she even wanted to know anything else. But it felt like she was finally getting the truth, understanding why he felt so much guilt over 'just' a kiss. Obviously, it was more than that. She couldn't stop there. "What else?"

"I told her... I felt like you couldn't see me. But also, I was hiding from you, because I didn't want you to see that I wasn't as strong as you." Rick felt the regret actually weighing him down as he spoke, his body slumping forward as his tears dropped steadily to the carpet. "I told her how you lost your son and I didn't understand how you went on after that. It didn't break you. Nothing breaks you. And I just… I wish I was more like you."

How wrong he was about that. In that very moment, in fact, something within her had broken, and tears came rushing down her face. Finally. "You told her about my…" The very idea that he would share all of this with some virtual stranger was so unfathomable, she couldn't even finish her sentence. She only cried more, realizing that she didn't even know what the hell they'd been fighting about. It was so much bigger than she thought. "I can't believe you, Rick."

"I know." He sobbed too, so angry at himself for what he'd done to her, to them. "This was my weakness. It was my failure, Michonne. Not yours."

Blindly in love, I fucks with you
'Til I realize I'm just too much for you
I'm just too much for you

"I used to think of you as someone that would never hurt me, and now you're killing me." She shook her head, wiping away her tears, hating the way her voice sounded so congested beneath her crying. She felt like a helpless little girl, and now, she sounded like one, too. "What would you do if you were me? How am I supposed to love you like this?"

Rick shook his head in reply, wiping at his own watery eyes. "Michonne, I was surprised you ever loved me," he revealed quietly. "You talked about how you chose me all those years ago, and I still can't believe you did. I really can't."

A flash of a frown hit her as she digested his words, but she refused to give in to it, refusing to allow him to play the victim. "Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? Poor you, getting everything anyone could want at the end of the world? Perfect wife, perfect kids, and a big ass house to put it all in. Keep me outta your pity party."

He brushed his face one more time and stood from the floor, stepping over his clothes to go stand by the closet. "So you want me to talk, but then you don't wanna listen to anything I have to say."

"Because why didn't you say this a week ago!" she shouted. "Why didn't you tell me how you were feeling a month ago, before telling that woman all of our business?"

"Because you didn't wanna talk about it!" he yelled back. "You kept claiming you were fine, which, at this point, I think we're both clear isn't true, by the way, all while not wanting to talk about it. And you seemed to forget that the conversation didn't end there."

"Fine. Next time you make a mistake, I'll go stick my tongue down Ezekiel's throat. And I'll tell him all about how Lori thought you were dead for all of a week before she started fucking your best friend. See how you feel about it." She could see his face doing that angry twitch it always did whenever a straight man even spoke to her for too long. "Yeah, you don't like that shit." She gulped down the last of her drink, which was mostly just melted ice at that point, wanting to chuck the empty glass at his head. She slammed it back down to the table instead, peering at her husband. "I don't have anything else to say to you."

"You can't just keep shutting down in the middle of the conversation, Michonne. You insult me, then run away? We're never gonna get anywhere this way."

"I've taken all I can take today, Rick," she said as calmly and as honestly as she could. "I get over one hurdle and three more pop up." She pulled herself up from the bed, her body and mind exhausted by all this grief, and she slowly headed for the door. "I don't… I don't know what to do."

"Where are you going?" he asked quietly, his tone begging her not to go.

"I'm gonna sleep in Judith's room."

Rick let out a heavy sigh because he knew he couldn't stop her, but closed his eyes as he crouched down to the floor, unable to watch her leave him again. He could feel his heart breaking in half as he listened to her walk away. He rubbed at his face, his beard damp with his tears, feeling sick. Feeling lost. He thought the hard part would be her finding out about all this, having to tell her what he'd done. But he was wrong, because this, the uncertainty of what would come next, was so much worse. If he was scared before, he was terrified now. Because he didn't know what to do either. He and Michonne had always worked through everything together - be it finding a home, or defending it from someone who wanted to take it from them. But now, with this giant chasm between them, was it even possible for them to fix this? Or was this the beginning of the end of their marriage?

We just gotta let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be babe