It's easy to see how the introduction to Aaron and Alexandria could have been wildly different, Michonne thinks.
In another time, in another place where things happened just a little bit differently, the group would have been run down. They would have been even more exhausted than they are now, beaten by the journey from Terminus to the north. That's just the way things are on the road; hard, all the goddamn time. In turn, it makes people hard in order to survive and that sort of transformation can leave people combative and steadfast in their desperation to live. Rick could have just as easily beaten Aaron and held him for interrogation than listened and planned.
Following along those lines, it would be easy to see the way that hope could spurn them to hasty actions. It's happened before. The lure of even just a taste of how things were, of a better quality of life, could have moved them at warp speeds to give in to whatever demands were said or implied. Maybe they would have done it in bad faith, given up their weapons with every intention of subverting the system and going back on their word, but they would have made a show of doing it in the first place. Things could have -would have- happened. Tensions would have risen. There would be friction and blood. She knows it.
As easy as it is to see how things could have gone sideways, though, Michonne acknowledges that they haven't. The group isn't hastily pushing forward. The road hasn't made them hungry and desperate.
They have food and they have water. They can wait and watch instead of forcing themselves onward.
"It's nice," Rick murmurs softly, his voice clear even now. He looks like a different man now, shaved and showered with the amenities found within those reinforced walls, his clothes cleaned.
"It's very nice," Michonne agrees absentmindedly. She licks her teeth yet again after she speaks, slick and smooth pearls that sit on gums as slippery as a blood wet sword. She can still taste the faint hints of mint on her tongue, a monumental change from the grit and sour aftertaste that lingered.
More than the walls, the relative safety, or the nostalgic domesticity inside Alexandria -with its pristine houses and strangely docile aura, it's the little things inside that have made the greatest difference. Actual toothpaste and floss after what seems like an eternity without them, hot water -oh God, hot water, a thing she has literally dreamed about- to wash away the grime and ache of wandering the woods. Clean clothes that aren't stiff from air drying, and ever so faintly sweet with the smell of cheap detergent.
She washed her hair. Washed it three or four times. She could have washed it forever.
"The people are soft, " Carol drawls, her sharp eyes scanning their surroundings. "When me and Daryl got our little tour inside the walls they seemed shocked that others could exist outside."
Michonne hums but doesn't disagree. Soft is a good word for the citizens inside. She has no doubts they stared equally as hard at every group that passed through, unused to having to face the gritty reality outside their haven.
(And that's another thing that could have been so different. Once upon a time, it may have been all or nothing, desperate to stay together, holding tight to physical proximity. But this time they knew nearby didn't always have to correlate with togetherness. They played it safe, played it smart. Rick and her went in first while the group remained outside the walls, haunting the edge of the forests just waiting for a signal. A scouting party inside to test the waters, and the largest mass outside the walls to check the perimeter and lay siege against the town if worst should come to be. Michonne remembers seeing genuine fright on some of the watchmen's faces as she first walked Alexandria's streets, their eyes wide as they stared down at whatever lay just outside.
Michonne has a three-pronged bet going on with herself. Abraham cuts an intimidating figure to experienced survivors, let alone green watchmen, and Sasha's intensity these days is something that can be felt from yards away. Foregoing that, the wild dogs gave her pause at first as well.)
"Soft is good," Rick answers. "Soft is easy to subdue if we need to."
"The armory is on the west side in one of the brick buildings. Got a peek at it when I was playing starving woman gawking at their pantry."
Michonne doesn't frown. It's not that she dislikes the information. It's good. It's useful, but…
"Do we need to?"
Rick glances at her, then back to the group as a whole. The majority of them sit around the clearing, almost unrecognizable from who they were before. Almost everyone is clean and grinning, genuinely delighted and refreshed after their own tours around the inside, receiving their own chance to scope the community inside and get the same spiel she and Rick received from the headwoman, Diana.
Safety and comfort, a home and community. In return, they teach this soft little community to survive, work to better the people and the standing of the town within.
Smart woman, that Diana. Not like a scientist or mathematician, but Michonne knows her type from the times before all this when she went to court and stood in debates as a lawyer. A socially savvy politician, leading by wit and skill. Not bad, not yet jaded and selfishly bitter. There's a spark there, a hint of a long lost judicial system that runs the place.
But no executive branch, not like is needed here outside, where there is no time for debates or long thoughts on a certain subject. Not like Rick.
"Sure as shit won't stand long as it is now," Abraham volunteers, red hair straight gleaming from its recent wash, a toothsome smile stretched across his face as he idly cleans the bore of his gun. "It's a neat little town, but everyone I saw was a peace-loving civvy down to their delicate little slippers."
"They were boat shoes, pendejo," Rosita groans as if this is something they have been bickering about for a while now. They probably have.
"There's sure as shit no boats and they have no laces. That's a goddamn slipper in my book."
"It was risky of them to bring us in, really risky," Glenn adds, ignoring the two. "Really risky. We could have done a lot of bad stuff. But…"
"But it's like they didn't realize that. Or recognize it. I asked about other groups, what the rules were and the infractions for that. They don't really have something set down for that. The worst they have done seems to be exile, and Diana seemed flighty about it, as if she saying she murdered them with her bare hands," Maggie says. Trust her to try and poke at the diplomacy behind the place.
"For people like tha'?" Daryl mutters, whittling away on some stick. "Might as well be murder. They ain't gonna last out here for shit."
Michonne pauses at the grumbling tone in his voice, looking a little harder at the redneck. He has a point, of course, but of the people in the group, Daryl is one of the three that seem most… dissatisfied with the community. He's still unbathed, quiet, and withdrawn. She's caught him staring at the walls more than once with some unnamable expression on his face, like it leaves a bad taste in his mouth, but also makes him uncomfortable and almost sad.
"I heard someone whining about vanilla cake mix," Sasha spits angrily. "Cake mix. That's their biggest problem. Too much of the same flavour of cake."
The sniper bares her teeth at the ground, jerkily tossing her sharpening stone to dirt. Her gloved hands flex once, twice, three times in her lap before stilling.
"They're stupid and won't last. I say we take what we want and leave. Hell, just mark it on a map and come back in a few months. It's neat and pretty, but by then this place will be like all the other ruins."
Concern stirs in Michonne's breast. Something is building in Sasha and it has been since Bob died. Something very close to breaking. Out here, in the wild, if it goes at the wrong time, it could cost lives.
But inside the walls…
"It doesn't have to go to ruins," Tara says in the silence that follows. "I mean, that's why we're here, right? Why they're trying to rope us in? If we did this, we could make it last."
"If they listen," Carol points out, tone indicating exactly how likely she thinks that is.
"But it's worth trying. I mean, it's a risk, but for us? It's a small one. They already showed us inside, and I know that Eugene already can draw a map of the streets from just having walked them-"
"Can you really?" Rick asks, surprised.
Eugene coughs, scratching awkwardly at the back of his neck. Michonne catches something about Dungeons, Masters, and worldbuilding but chooses not to think about that too hard. Rosita, however, coughs out an unsubtle 'Nerd.'
"-and the lady in charge at least seems to know that we have something they need," Tara continues. "The people are weird and kinda judgy, yeah, but. It's… inside is-"
"It's a place to live," Michonne finishes for her. "Not survive. This is a chance, what we've all been looking for. There's more to life than just eeking out a living day to day. Look at us. I mean it, look at us. This is a chance to have a safe spot, to not always be watching our backs, just barely getting by. We can do something here, have something better. If we stay outside in the wild, how long until we stop trying to to get along altogether? How long until we give up on society, on what humanity can be, on the possibility of something more?"
Silence greets her statement as the group ponders it over. A few, she knows, were already on her side, but others remained on the fence. There was a comfort in that for them, having reserve plans to simply take what they wanted in lieu of working together for it. It was the barest order of the wilderness, the certainty of the triumph of forceful domination.
But it wasn't them. It wasn't right.
"There's a chance. There's…." Carl states from his place in the shade of a great oak tree, his father's hat falling over his eyes. His sister bounces on his hip, drowsy in the hot sun. "There's hope."
Rick looks at his children for a long, long moment. Michonne wonders briefly what he sees there, what answer he find in the shape of those kids. Whatever it is, he nods and seems secure in it.
"Then we try."
Michonne smiles, pleased. Suddenly the future seems brighter. Beds with actual mattresses, a steady supply of food. Maybe they can grow things here. They can start stabilizing, get Sasha the help she needs, get everyone the help they need. They can begin to heal-
"Who's going to tell Maly? They sure seemed mighty flighty around the mutts n' she hasn't even gone inside yet."
Michonne's excitement recedes a touch. Maly. Maly who remained silent and sullen outside, blank-faced and bereft of words. The slight woman who seemed to endlessly pace deeper in the woods, gathering and watching. The person whose influence, Michonne suspects, allowed the group to play it so safe in the first place.
Dammit.
If she had the words, or the inclination, Maly could start a list of facts about this settlement. It would be neither good nor bad in nature, just facts about it as a whole.
If she cared, she would begin with stating that the list disregards the biggest and boldest fact; the walls, sturdy and sounds as they may be, are a physical manifestation of a willing ignorance gripped tight and held close. A construction for a dream instead of an action in reality.
She knows the use of walls. Maly is not stupid. She knows the reasons why they are useful.
She knows a lot of things about this place now. She's been watching it for days.
It's big. That can go on the list. It is no small community, no gathering of tents or ramshackled city. Instead, it is an entire neighborhood sheltered inside solid steel, nestled inside a metal shell that blanks out the world around it. Inside, from the tops of neighboring trees, she can see houses, immaculate despite all the ways they should not be, with hedges and lawns and things that jar her, stirring up an acid taste in her mouth. There's water inside, a large body that the unforgiving sun shines down on, sending tendrils of light arcing through the ornate trees within.
There are people, too. More than the group, all just as off as the one in the barn. A juxtaposition. A tilted fun-house picture on a wall. They walk and talk and smile on those leaf and litter free streets inside the wall, all too clean and too nice.
The sight is… something. It makes that acid on her tongue stronger; stirs something in between her collar bones that squirms its' way to her jaw. She clenches her teeth, breathes in, and keeps watching.
The sight, she finds, doesn't bother her as much as the noise.
She can hear them, here in the real world beyond those walls. She heard the sounds from within long before she did her first perimeter check, circling solid metal in search of imperfections and weaknesses. There were voices carried by the wind, faint and soft, mumbling words she didn't care to make out. Sounds almost like a squirrels squealing appalled her, rhythmic and staccato instead of quickly drawn short and wet. The high pitched 'Heeeee-hi-hi-hi' was alien and grating, even at a distance, and she puzzled over it for almost three hours before it sounded again and she placed it as children laughing.
This settlement...Alexandria. It's foreign to her. There aren't enough guards on the walls, the trees haven't been cut back on the perimeter so an attacking force could sneak up easily if it wished, the lawns inside are trimmed even though that's a waste of resources. She doesn't see anything substantial growing inside; no crops, no produce, no livestock. There are cars on the streets and men wearing polo shirts of all are loud and clean, and they smile with all their teeth on display like a threat.
Even the name doesn't fit well in her mouth. No matter how many times she tries to shape it. AL-EX-AH-N-DRE-AH.
Too many syllables. Excessive. A waste of noise.
A waste.
That thing in her collarbones trickles up in her throat, and her teeth clench again. High in the tree, hidden among the foliage, Maly waits and watches as each of the locusts goes in real. She sees them walk the streets as much as she can, until they drift out again, as clean as the people inside, tempted by the lure of what was.
'It is, she thinks, just like the signpost she saw on the railway. That bold painted lettering that offered sanctuary to all who came.
There is only what you build yourself.
As much as she acknowledges that, though, as much as she knows it to be fact, she cannot help but look upon the clean streets and big houses and feel something war with that squirming in her collar bones. Something that runs through chest and gut like a sad echoe of hunger.
There are reasons, she knows, against it. Various ones. A list.
But Maly feels.
The light glinting off the water inside the walls stings at her eyes, and she shifts, finally turning her head away. She has seen enough for today, knows the six-hour watch shifts and where the people go in with bags and come out with cans. She knows the building the guards go in with weapons and leave without them.
As she makes her way down the tree, she tries to deal with the squirming in the back of her mouth and the hunger that is not hunger. They fight and mix inside her, prickling along the inside of her throat, scratching it raw and forming a lump there. Inside those walls is something that isn't. Something not made to last. A deathtrap. A temptation. Something not real.
Meatsack, snuffling in the composting underbrush, perks at the soft sound of her feet hitting the ground. Its muzzle is coated with grime, short hairs clumped together with the remnants of its last meal. There is a hunger in its eyes as it makes its way over, tinged with wariness. It knows danger, and is dangerous itself.
This is what's real, she reminds herself as the cur carefully approaches. This nature, this risk.
Yet the ache persists, unbeholden to reason. It lingers like the shadows of the night in spite of the morning sun. Not logic reaches it.
She must show it. Show herself.
Maly inhales once, bending her knees as Meatsack comes ever closer. She makes herself small, open. Defeatable.
And Meatsack comes close, sharp teeth and grizzled maw, a thing that has attacked her again and again for openings less than this.
Her muscles tense, ready to fling the dog away once it takes the bait. A tightness runs through her, her body ready to defend itself from danger. From something real.
Its face inches close, and almost kindly, meatsack licks her cheek, its rancid breathe washing over her face, hotter still than the muggy day.
Something inside her shift, the lump magnifying and coalescing into a great mass in her lungs. She cant breathe. She cannot take this. It shouldn't be it should be it shouldn't-
Maly chokes, a gross hiccuping sound escaping her mouth without concern for her desires. Her lungs deflate, leaving her breathless, and her eyes sting in a way no blinking will clear. The world around her blurs into a mash of colors without lines, and a wetness slips across her cheeks, mixing with the dog saliva.
She chokes again, trying to draw air. It feels too thick, the lump inside her too solid. It hurts for no reason.
It should not be. People are dangerous, the settlement is riddled with danger, she was weak and open and Meatsack should have attacked. There is no room for this softness, for the place within those walls.
But Maly remembers this feeling, knows this shade.
Maly wants.
(She sobs.)
AN: So if you all are wondering why these chapters are coming later and later it's because I work a full-time job and then live on an organic farm as well, on top of trying to maintain social relationships and basic health. I still love writing, and no comment I can think of has made to much mention of the time passing, but I thought you all deserved an explanation. Thanks for hanging in here with me, and feel free to pass this fic along to friends. Writers live by word of mouth. Also low-key kinda want the original writer and artists to maybe peek at this one day. A long off dream, I am sure.