Burning

Rick's truck turned into Michonne's driveway. The movement of the big body frame triggered the sensor for the lights revealing the silhouette of her waiting in her little economy car. At the sight of his headlights, she opened her door, meeting him between the two vehicles and poured herself into his arms.

"Rick…"

"I'm here, love. Don't you worry. I'm here," he said kissing her temple and holding her tight. "You're gonna be okay."

The sound of scuffling soles cut their reunion short. Loosening their embrace they turned, squinting, to the glare of the camera light sitting on Morales' shoulder. Michonne whimpered as Rick moved her out of the path of the bright white beam, giving the camera lens a shot of only his broad back.

"Ms. August, I'm Dale Horvath, investigative reporter with channel four news." The older man flicked his cigarette butt and moved as fast as his stiff and tired bones could carry him. "I just want to ask you a few questions about the death of your son. Please."

Michonne planted her face squarely in Rick's chest, hiding. "Why won't they leave me alone! I don't want to answer any questions!"

"Okay. I'll get him out of here," Rick whispered tenderly into her hair. He turned then to the men accosting them, shielding Michonne with a tall, hostile stance. He was like a completely different man, fearsome and harsh. Michonne shivered when his voice boomed, echoing through his shoulder blades where she was taking cover. "Get the fuck back! Back up! Back!"

Morales withdrew, one step and then another. Dale stood frozen, momentarily paralyzed by the unexpected fury before him. He almost turned to run, until he recognized the man breathing fire. "Sheriff Grimes? …King County?" His thirst for reporting superseded his fear and he curtailed an excited smile, thinking this story just got that much more interesting. "If she don't want to talk, can I ask you some questions?"

Michonne watched, unsure of what to do, as Rick's boots pounded the concrete floor. He marched up to the reporter, his jaw tight, his eyes narrowed to slits. The officer spoke with a grisly intensity.

"Can you ask me some questions? That what you said?" Rick inquired rhetorically on an aggressive head tilt. Dale's smoke blackened lungs shrank over his wildly beating heart. His chapped lips parted but no sound came out. He only gave a nearly imperceptible nod.

Rick's tone was eerily calm, "Mr. Horvath, you and your colleague are trespassin'. That's bad enough, but you're also upsettin' Ms. August."

Rick stepped to the side to give Dale a better view of Michonne's petite frame, swallowed up by Rick's coat, looking taxed and unnerved. Resuming his imposing posture, Sheriff Grimes presented the barrel of his personal firearm to the men and began backing them off of her property until they reached the sidewalk.

"She ain't takin' questions. But I'll make a statement," Rick said, turning to walk back up to the house, not even bothering to look them in the eye. "Next time you come here botherin' her, I'm pullin' the trigger."

Slipping his gun back into the holster at the small of his back, he collected Michonne and walked inside the house.

"You get all that, Morales," Dale asked as he checked his watch and pulled out an old school spiral top notebook to jot down the time and circumstances of the encounter. His cameraman was silent. "Morales!"

"Yeah, yeah. We got it." The hairy man snapped out of it, stopped recording and turned off the camera light.

"Sheriff Rick Grimes... with this lady," Dale exclaimed. "This story is something else entirely now."

"Yeah. It's a death sentence," Morales scoffed, walking back to their van. "I'm pretty sure that guy was serious. I'm not trying to get shot. My last name is Morales," he said his own name, pronouncing the 'r' with an exaggerated roll of his tongue. He was proud of his heritage, though it wasn't always a benefit in American society.

"All three of my brothers are bangers. I got uncles doing time. I got cousins in the ground and I don't want to join them. I went into broadcasting to avoid getting shot at by cops. So if it's all the same to you, I'm good with leaving this part of the story out."

"Are you crazy? What we had before was good. Then the kid gets killed and…" Dale was lost for words, not wanting to sound like a heartless asshole, he trailed off and came back to make his point. "All I' saying is, this ain't just local news no more. Besides, I guarantee, Grimes'll help us once he finds out what we know."

"Maybe he already knows. Maybe he just doesn't care."

"Trust me, he doesn't know. You'll see. He'll be like a hound on stink. We just gotta get to him when he ain't so... high strung."

...

"You alright?" Rick asked softly through short breaths, rubbing Michonne's shoulders and the length of her arms. They stood next to her washer and dryer in the small laundry room separating her driveway and her kitchen. The cramped space was dark except for the light coming in through the windows at the top of the doors.

She nodded in answer to his question, still a little shaken by the delivery of his warning to the men outside. "Are you?"

"I'm okay as long as you are."

Michonne tried to shake the awkward feeling she now had in his arms. She stepped away from his embrace. "I didn't know you were armed," she said, her voice small and unsure.

Obviously, he's carrying a gun, she reminded herself. You see it every time he's in uniform.

She felt completely ridiculous, but the knowledge that a gun was part of his uniform was very different from seeing it in his hand, aimed at someone else. She never liked guns and now, knowing a gun stole her child from her left her with a mix of emotions.

Up to this point, even facing a mob of angry people, he had always remained patient and non-threatening. The loss of civility in what could only be described as a warcry jolted her to her core. It would be a lie to say that seeing Rick come to her defense did not turn her on as a woman.

The fact that he had the power of life and death in the palm of his hand made her skin hot and her pulse race. Principles that she held as a mother, clashed with the desires she had as a sexual being and she had no idea how to rectify the two.

"I'm always armed," Rick said, taken aback by her tone and the space she put between them as she kicked off her slouch-style boots at the kitchen's threshold, walked in and turned on the light. He watched her shrug off his coat and lay it neatly on the back of one of four kitchen chairs. Respecting the distance she put between them, he stood in the doorway of the kitchen. "Does it bother you? I have a case I can lock it up in, in the car, if it does."

"I don't know how I feel about it." She confessed, immediately set at ease by his clear concern.

"Very few people have an indifferent opinion of guns. Either people feel safe or unsafe around them."

"I guess… it's a little bit of both."

"You're always safe with me. Gun or no gun." His thick southern accent, in soothing round tones not unlike the way he spoke the night of the riot. She realized the benefit of such a powerfully persuasive voice, in his line of work, to de-escalate situations and talk people back from ledges. He was good and it was working.

"I know, Rick. I know." She extended her hands to him. He repeated her action, ditching his boots next to hers and sauntered over on his socked feet. She clasped his large hands in hers. "It must be true because here I am, standing in my house when I thought coming back here would kill me."

She looked around all the things her son left for her to love him by. The little finger smudges low on the fridge. The small bowl of dried up instant oatmeal that had been sitting in the sink since Andre ran out of time eating it and rushed out of the house for the last time.

His drawing of superheros, disproportioned in their signature colors was still atop his placemat on the table. His adorable, yet ill-timed preoccupation with the details of his artwork was the reason he couldn't finish his breakfast. The memory of his tongue curled over his top lip in concentration made his mother smile as she held Rick's hand.

"You have to excuse the mess," She prefaced as they passed through the bright dandelion walls of her living room. A basket of clean laundry accompanied spiced patterned pillows on her pumpkin red sofa. Junkmail, Andre's graded homework and interoffice envelopes topped her shiny wood coffee table. Action figures and miniature battle-crafts were sprinkled over the spotless cream carpet. About a dozen glass jars of exhausted candle wax sat on a built-in shelf and scented the room with light sugary notes.

"I don't see any mess." Rick took in the warmth of her demure, lived-in abode and smiled. He congratulated himself, having imagined her surrounded by similar hues. She exuded a cozy, sunny aura, even through her tears, the first time he met her. "Trust me, I know what a mess looks like. There's a reason I keep my boy's room closed up tight when he ain't there. Who knows what kinda gremlins he's got hiding in there."

"I'm so nervous to meet him," Michonne admitted as she cleared a path, tossing toys into a bin.

"Well, I wish I could say for sure how that'd go…" Rick felt it necessary to warn her. Helping her pick up, he continued, "He's a good kid but since the divorce and his mama's remarryin', he ain't really been a 'model of well-behaved youth'."

"I wouldn't expect him to be. That's a lot for a kid to process. Not to mention the general moodiness of double digit life," she said with a mocking tone, but her sentiment was sincere.

"He used to be such a sweet kid."

"I'm sure he still is, Rick. Trust me. Mike was a grown man and worse than any teenager I've ever met. I understand it might take time for him to warm up to me. I'll give him his space." She thought about her father's overbearing personality. "I wouldn't want him to feel pressured…"

Michonne went quiet as she went deeper into the heart of her home. Lamplight from a doorway up ahead illuminated the dark hall connecting the common areas to the bedrooms. A few more steps and they were at Andre's open door. Michonne stopped and stood there a while. Leaning into Rick's side, tears came as naturally as the tide.

The tangerine fox theme that she chose years ago for her clever little one, now clashed with the patriotic motif he had gradually incorporated in honor of his favorite shield-toting Captain.

"He never turns off his light," Michonne said, stepping inside the brightly lit room. It was true in a metaphorical sense as well. His big white smile was always there to greet her in the morning or refresh her after a grueling day.

His dresser drawers were spilling their contents, as usual, and she stuffed his clothes down with her fingertips and straightened the books, puzzles and games on his shelves. "What am I going to do with all of his stuff," she wondered aloud as she dropped to sit on his tightly tucked bed.

"Do you really have to decide yet," Rick asked from the door waiting for her to give him the okay to enter.

She looked around, her eyes landing on item after item. She remembered how her son had been so excited and thankful to receive just about everything in that room. "Come here. Look at this." She called Rick over showing him the Atlanta Braves baseball cap in her hands. "I know this may be nearly blasphemous to say to you," she chuckled and wiped her eyes, "but Andre never really liked sports much."

Rick smiled at her joke and listened. He put his arm around her pulling her close while her eyes stayed on the red-billed hat her son used to wear. "But he saw this hat right when he was starting to recognize letters and spell his name. He thought the 'A' stood for Andre." They both shared a quiet laugh. "He wanted to wear it everywhere."

"I lost a sheriff hat to Carl that way."

"And now you've lost your coat to me."

"Oh, I'm not getting that back, huh," Rick asked pretending to be surprised. Michonne held back her laughter and shook her head in answer.

Sitting on her baby's bed with him missing from the room, knowing he would never sleep there again seemed even harder than the torment of seeing his lifeless body in the hospital. Though Michonne could understand why Sasha could not bear to stand beside her while she held his tiny hand and cried, Rick's presence was so strong. He felt like a concrete pillar next to her. A support she could cling to when bereavement tried to swallow her up.

"When I was waiting for you to get here, I was thinking, maybe letting go of his things will help me say my final goodbyes at the funeral."

Rick was happy that he'd read and researched how to help her get through her sadness. From what he read, Michonne showed all the characteristics of what professionals call nomadic grief. Described as vacillating on a range of emotions and the desire to keep their lives going in the same measured direction, he understood that in her attempt to find a new normal, she could also find herself regretting hurried decisions.

He knew this, and yet as she looked to him for reassurance, her damp nutmeg eyes reassured him. As much as she had voiced her fears concerning the obstacles between them, her steadfast gaze held a surety that was as unmistakable as his own reflection. She may have dreaded the fray that awaited them, but the man seated beside her was worth it and her expression promised she would be strong.

It didn't seem right to either of them to put Andre's things in the black trash bags they found in her mudroom. Rick left her there, cataloging all the elements and matter of a dearly missed child. He found the plastic storage boxes at the 24 hour Wal-Mart a mile from her house. When he returned to her with the big containers, a Big Kat surprise and a few things he'd need for an overnight stay, he also found her asleep on her living room floor.

"Rick?" She picked her head up from the crook of her arm at the sound of his boots on her kitchen linoleum. "Perfect," she said of his purchases and fought back a yawn more powerful than her chin. Michonne clapped her hands together for a little motivation to overcome her fatigue, "Okay! I have a couple more things in his room to grab…"

"No." Rick said gently and just as gently took the stack of folded clothes from her hands and placed them on the coffee table. "You go get ready for bed, I'll finish packing this up."

...

Not much later, Michonne was showered and dozing in her bed. Her eyes had failed her and still woken up to the reward of Rick's strapping naked form, damp and lit by the lamp light. His head hidden in the drape of a towel. He leaned forward. preoccupied with the package in his hands. She could tell from the pauses between the crinkling sound of plastic that he was trying not to wake her up opening the underwear he'd bought for himself when he was out.

"Sorry," he said, pushing back the towel from his slick curls when her body moved beneath her covers. His sweet blue eyes met hers, "I was tryin' not to wake you."

"And I was trying not to fall asleep." Michonne threw back her silken sheets and reached for him to join her.

He briefly surveyed the peaks and valleys of her soft dark skin and realized a pair of boxers would have him dreadfully overdressed. He tossed the assortment to the chair where he'd neatly hung his clothes. He hastily rubbed the towel over his hair and across his body and joined her with a matching smile.

They wrapped themselves around each other, her face pressed to his solid chest, his legs tangled with hers. They enjoyed a comforting silence, all their muddled private thoughts uncoiling in their minds until they could focus on the beat of their hearts and the calmness of their breaths.

Michonne broke the quiet with a tiny giggle.

"What," Rick wondered, beginning a slow stroke of her arm with his fingertip.

"You're the first man to ever sleep in this bed." That confession made Rick happy in a way that he had to admit to himself was juvenile and possessive, but it felt so good to know that he was the first man she'd trusted this way in years. He didn't respond to what she said. He only smiled above her head. "I feel bad for taking you away from your team."

Rick groaned remembering how their little celebration started to crash and burn just before he left. "I don't know. Thangs ain't go quite like I planned."

"I'm sorry, Rick. I know how much you were looking forward to that. What happened?"

"Nothin' I'd trouble you with. Petty office rivalries."

"Walsh and Dixon come?"

"Dixon was there. Walsh'll need a little more time." It wasn't until then, with Michonne in his arms, that he relieved himself of all the anger he had about Andre's death and truly sympathized with his oldest friend, who was more like a brother.

Maybe he was channeling her extraordinary empathy. Maybe being in her home with her and seeing evidence that, in time, she really would be alright had relaxed him enough to commiserate with someone other than her.

He thought back to the last time he saw Shane. Mentally, he put Shane's nonchalant words about the incident on mute. He remembered the other man's eyes: red rimmed and somewhat swollen. He knew how vain Walsh could be, but his normally clean, crisp uniform was wrinkled and sloppily worn. It dawned on him that Shane was more affected than he'd let on. He realized that maybe radio silence between the two of them was not the best reaction.

From the fog of his thoughts he heard Michonne confess that she hadn't thought about how meeting with her would make them feel. She arrived at the idea that maybe what she thought would be an accepted gesture of goodwill, might make the officers she sought to console feel even more uneasy. Michonne thought about Sasha as well, hoping grief had her best friend misinterpreting her feelings for her.

"Everyone handles pain differently, I guess." Michonne said softly, running her fingers through the soft patch of Rick's dark chest hair.

Rick lifted her chin to stare directly in her eyes. "It feels wrong to say this, but… I'm only concerned about you right now, makin' sure you're okay. The first time I saw you, Michonne… I don't know… it's like I found the rest of my life." His big warm hand smoothed along the contour of her cheek and her jawline, his fingers coming to rest behind her ear as his thumb swept the delicate grooves of her neck.

He spoke to her in the gentlest tones but there was an undercurrent of scorching intensity in every word. "Seein' you in pain makes me feel like I'm fightin' for my life. It's hard to explain."

"I understand." She kissed his lips and closed her eyes, her mind groping for the right words. "It's like I'm trying to be strong but when I'm with you… I can just... rest." She trailed her splayed fingers across his big toned arm. Describing the way he gave her peace, ripened her desire for him without warning. She felt the coolness of her arousal slick between her thighs.

"Like, when I'm holding you," she pulled him closer to her . "I'm closer to myself than I've ever been. Like… I'm strong when I'm with you because I don't need to be. Does that make any sense," she asked through a faint breath as she brought his hand from her neck and pulled it down to cup her dewy sex.

"I don't know if it makes sense to anybody else," Rick admitted dizzily, sliding two fingers past her plush folds, "but I understand."

He gently found his way inside her. His thick fingers caressed by the tight slippery satin of her walls made him lift himself on his elbow to better see her gorgeous face respond to every curling dip. She inhaled sharply at his expertise.

"God, Michonne, you're so beautiful." He leaned in to her ear, funneling his deep country drawl to ripple under her skin. "Me and you bein' together, like this… right now… bein' in love... maybe that doesn't make sense…" Rick said as his mouth watered from the sopping sounds and sweet scent of her juices, "but the two of us, we understand."

Her peaked and sensitive nipples were being grazed ever so slightly by his warm bare-chested bulk as he attacked her throat greedily, pressing her into the pillows with his welcome weight. Michonne pulled at him, her body begging to be possessed by him completely.

"You want me, Michonne?"

She had never had her spirit nourished like this before. She felt as rich as the dark brown earth after a downpour, tingling and buzzing with life and new things. She tried to dismiss the bounty of Rick's affections. She told herself the timing was wrong and that the world wasn't right for her to find passion of this calibre. Now that she'd allowed herself a headlong dive into this man's big heart, however, she was dug in like a tick.

"Yes. Make love to me, Rick. Tell me..." Michonne whimpered through her strained lungs while Rick rapaciously sucked her pear-shaped breasts, one then the other, swirling the tip of his tongue around her tightened nipple."Tell me I'll belong to you… forever."

"Oh, you're mine…" he said confidently, rolling himself between her open inviting thighs. She was so soft beneath him, so perfectly primed and willing to let him have his way. He pushed her legs apart and up as he went in the opposite direction, stalking her delicious center like something wild and nocturnal. "You're mine and I'm yours. Nothin' and no one can change that."

The quivering skin of her abdomen, her legs wound tight, her spine arching into the mattress and then her tailbone jerking and lifting away, spurred him on to get to work. The tendons and veins in his arms sprang to life under his fair, soap-scented skin as he wrangled her still and coated his face with her heady translucent puddle. His fingers clamped down, dominating the swell of her thighs. He lapped at her like a big cat in a jungle stream, eyes closed as he relished the taste.

"Oh god, Rick."

Michonne rolled her eyes closed as well, crushing them shut tighter and tighter. The pleasure virtually rendering her blind when the suction from his lips and tongue on her trembling bud began to pull her apart. Overwhelmed and in a tizzy, she yanked his hair, redepositing his attentions lower to the pearly gates of his own personal heaven.

Not missing a beat, he unfurled his tongue long, thick and hot and immediately she bucked against his face with fervor. She heard him moan from her manic grip of his mane and let him go with a bashful apology.

"Don't be sorry," he said, rising to his knees and wiping a hand over his glistening nose and beard. "You can't break me." A grin rose from his plump lips to his eyes as he kissed her ankle and laid it on his shoulder. "Hold on as tight as you need to." Setting up the heaviness of his girth at the drenched entrance to her throbbing canal, he rubbed himself all along her most delicate parts.

The coolness of his desire dripping from his engorged member mixed with the sticky nectar he'd conjured out of her. He watched as her features went slack with hungry anticipation and the enjoyment she received from just the tip of him probing and rolling insistently over the ruffles and pleats God designed. "Be as loud as you need to be… as long as you take as good as you give."

He invaded in earnest now, hard like steel and hot like lead. Slowly filling her up. Slowly making her lose any presence of mind.

"Oh, fuck…" he abruptly declared on a shuddering moan as the constricting slickness of her ignited every nerve ending in his body.

The piercing pitch of the fire alarm jerked Michonne and Rick awake. A black torrent of smoke rushed into the covering the ceiling and and quickly burning their eyes and throats. Michonne scrambled to get her bearings.

Was she asleep? She gasped in horror, shocked by the nightmarish scene and immediately began choking on all the soot falling from the air.

"Michonne!" Rick thudded to the floor, pulling her out of bed with him. He pushed her lower to the rug beneath them, covering her with his body. "What the fuck," he said to himself as he looked around for answers and a route of escape.

He snatched his t-shirt off the chair and doused it with the glass of water he'd brought back to bed after working up a thirst. Quickly but calmly, he placed the wet cotton in her hand and brought it to her mouth and nose. He then grabbed the blanket off the bed and threw it over his back, covering them both.

He made for the ground floor window on the other side of the room. Michonne, however, resisted. Still coughing violently, she tried to clamber across the floorboards to her bedroom door.

"No, Michonne. NO!" Rick screamed over the constant din of the alarm, pulling her back.

"Andre's things," she croaked back and tried once again to squirm from his grasp. "Let me go, Rick! My baby's things! Let me go!" His burning eyes quickly shot to the door, where there was clearly danger on the other side. "They'll be nothing left! Let me go. They're going to burn and there'll be nothing left!"

For a split second he thought about risking it and going through it to try and retrieve at least some of the things they had packed. He worried, though, that in her hysterical state, she might follow him. Or worse- a backdraft, sucking flames into the only room he was sure they could make it out of unscathed.

"We have to get out of here, Michonne. That way ain't safe. Come on." His voice was raised but he spoke as measured as he could as he dragged her screaming, fighting frame to the window.

He stood about halfway up, managing to hold onto her and slide the panel of laminated glass open. Once she felt the cool outdoor air on her skin, she stopped struggling and turned her face to the night beyond the walls of her home. One-handed, he pitched their shoes and blanket into the darkness.

He pulled her to him with urgency as the smoke billowed out into the sky. "Come on, baby. We gotta go. We gotta leave."

Michonne looked back into the room. The orange-red glow now bled through the cracks around the door's edges told her there was nothing beyond it to salvage. She let out a painful cry of frustration but allowed him to scoop her up and lower her feet first onto the ground.

She looked up at him as he let her arms go and her wet dark eyes nearly broke his heart. Michonne screamed his name as he disappeared from the window. Rick heard her screams as he crossed the suffocating room and opened the door to the lick of furious flames. Jumping and reaching for the ledge, she tried to pull herself back up into the window but her fingertips slipped with every strained attempt.

Inside, the heat was so intense and the inferno sucked all the oxygen from the air, leaving only smoke to breathe. A few feet in front of him, Rick found what he was looking for on the floor of Andre's room. He grabbed it and made his way back across the hall back to the open window.

His eyes bulged and his heart dropped when he saw her struggling in her flower bed with a man dressed in black.

"Michonne!" Rick roared and the man on the ground let out his own stinging shriek when the tiny woman he was trying to assault fought back, kicking and gouging his eyes. The man pushed her away and took off toward the alley behind her house. Barefoot, Rick gave chase and tackled the unknown man with a brutal thud to the cold, hard earth.

Michonne called after him. Her breaths so quick and shallow, she made almost no sound when she screamed for help. She hoped the neighbors would come running or at least call the authorities. For her part, she was spent. Tired, terrified and utterly paralyzed by shock and fear.

Her eyes burned and blurred as she tried to stand and follow the sound of frantic profanities coming from Rick and the unfamiliar voice. Then she saw why he went back inside. A few inches away, her son's red-billed Braves cap lay peacefully in the soil amid the chaos.

A warm hand on her shoulder, sent a shiver up her spine and she went wild, kicking and throwing fists.

"Miss August!" Dale tried to evade her blows and calm her hysteria. "I'm not trying to hurt you. Are you okay?"

Her eyes strained to focus on the older man with a concerned look under his khaki bucket hat. Just beyond him, his assistant was hurriedly hoisting the camera onto his shoulder. Their vulture-like rush to her calamity boiled her blood, but she felt relieved that she and Rick weren't there alone. She turned her attention back to Rick.

Her sheriff scuffled with the man for advantage, until Rick found himself atop the stranger. His fists connecting with a gruesome rattling of the other man's skull until he stopped struggling and Rick was winded and wheezing, still affected by his exposure to the smoke. Catching his breath, he stood over the limp body on the dead grass.

Unable to make out a face in the dark, he began dragging the man, past a trailing Michonne, up to the street. The sheriff flung the half-conscious assumed arsonists in the middle of the road, under the street light's glow.

He demanded with a beastly snarl, "Tell me who you are!" His hand twitched to reach for is gun, but he'd left it inside. He grabbed the man by his shirt again, bringing himself intrusively into the blood splattered face of the blond, long-haired enemy. "Talk!" He punched the man again, squarely in the nose and spoke through clenched teeth, "Or I swear to God I'll leave your face a bag of broken bones."