Sometimes in life, there are moments that shift the entirety of the way someone sees the world.
Rick has seen more than a few.
The earliest he remembers was when he was twelve and his grandmother died. The funeral is a blurry affair in his mind, white flowers and a hole in the ground in some park he can no longer recall. The suit he had been stuffed into had been stiff as a steel sheet, the fabric itchy and uncomfortable. For the first time in his life, he saw a grown man cry, his own father hunched over that grave like it was the only thing in the world supporting him. He remembers thinking of every storybook western he had seen, all those greaser flicks and fast-talking, gun-wielding men who never showed a hint of doubt. He remembers thinking that they were wrong and that men -true men- were no less for grieving. Not now, not ever.
The next was when he was in high school, drunk for the first time off of cheap Aristocrat Vodka a friend of a friend had nicked from the basement of some house, somewhere. It was a hot night, the sticky Georgia heat invading the house through the open window his cousin blew cigarette smoke out of, June bugs clinging to the screen. The first long pull from the bottle had burned, the cheap quality scorching his tongue and teeth, making him cough. The second was better, easier to get down as the people assembled goaded him on. His lips had tingled, his fingertips buzzed.
He remembers the world tipping, turning, and sliding away before it went black completely. He doesn't actually know what happened that night, and to be honest, he isn't sure he wants to. What he does know is that when he woke up, he was in a halfway familiar bed, stomach writhing, and Shane had been standing by his bedside with a bottle of water and a bucket read. His friends face, still rounded with teenage puppy fat, had an exhausted tinge to it, his eyes shadowed with the weariness that comes from watching over a drunk friend all night.
And when Rick had tilted over and emptied bile and acid into that feed bucket, he knew that Shane was not just a friend, he was a best friend. A brother.
There are more, more than he can rightly count. In recent years they seem to have accumulated at a faster rate than normal. His wedding day. His entrance into the force. The birth of his son.
After he was shot, they came faster.
The rising of the dead, Merle, finding his family, the first death, the CDC, the death of Shane, the prison, Andrea, Sophia, the governor, Terminus. The list goes on, a slew of moments that keep flying by faster and faster the older he gets. He's becoming better and better at recognizing them when they happen, can almost taste when they are about to come.
But this one… this one blindsides him.
Before now Maly was indomitable. It wasn't that she couldn't be beaten or defeated. It's simply that Maly was as she ever was, a solid mountain jutting up from the earth in defiance of all the wind and rain that tried to make her bow. Maly was a force of nature, and nothing stopped her. She went the direction she chose to go, at her own pace, and nothing would budge her from her inflapple blankness; her sheer grit. Maly was a survivor, and he supposes he couldn't think of her of anything other than that. In his head she had always existed like she did when they found her, rugged and enduring.
But what he approaches in the forests isn't that.
Her shoulders are hunched by her ears, the thick collar of her leather jacket and the fabric of her scarf swallowing the bottom half of her face. Her thin arms are swimming her sleeves as they wrap around her torso, the very tips of her mud-caked fingers sunk deep into her ribcage. With her knees tucked to her chest, sitting in the grand expanse of nature, Maly looks… small.
Fingers grip his shoulder and he pauses. A glance over his shoulder tells him that Michonne can see what he sees. That she can feel something shifting too. That this is one of those moments.
Rick turns back to the woman in the clearing, the one the knows must have heard them coming.
"Maly?" he asks, voice whisper soft. He knows sound bothers her, that the noise of the community must grate. It's why he knows that she must have heard them coming.
There is a pause where the name sinks in and it seems to stretch even longer than usual. The humming of cicadas drones on in its rhythmic way, the birds twittering now and again. The bright sunlight filtering through the trees angles just enough to heat patches of his skin, causing fat drops of sweat to well up like dew before her head shifts to face him in the smallest increments, expression emptied.
Rick breathes deep through his nose.
Maly's hollowed, dirty cheeks have clean lines cutting through them, dried streaks exposing a clear mottled and ruddy complexion that comes from exertion. Her usually intense eyes are bloodshot and puffy, swollen slightly, looking for all the world like they have been rubbed a hundred times over.
"Oh, Maly," Michonne whispers.
She looks, Rick thinks, utterly human.
He takes a step forward, telegraphing his movements, and Maly watches with the dazed sort of dullness that he usually associates with heavy exhaustion. She doesn't move, though, doesn't try and stop his approach.
Instead, she makes a sound in the back of her throat. He sees the fabric of the scarf move, as if she is moving her mouth to form words and forgot to sync her voice.
Beside her, the merle coated canine perks its ears and huffs at her, head resting on its paws.
She coughs, thick and wet, and her eyes finally seem to fix on him.
"I ca…," she starts, but then trails off. Her eyes slide to the side, an attempt to remember the rest. Before now, the words she spoke were careful, meticulously enunciated. Not this. Not thin and unsure, voice distracted and rough. With sudden clarity, Rick realizes just how much effort it takes her to talk.
"It's not real in the walls," she finally manages, focusing again. "If you go in… it's not like out here. I can't go in. It's dangerous."
Rick sees it in her eyes then. Sees, because for once, what she is feeling writes itself on her face. The words don't make sense themselves, but the terror and longing make sense of them.
Internally, he feels an echo of the same. To survive in this world, you have to be strong. You have to have grit and fight for life.
Inside Alexandria, there is none of that.
He doesn't respond at first, regaining his mental footing at the unexpected shift, and doubting he has an answer in the first place. They came to tell Maly they had convinced Diana to let the dogs in, citing their use as an alarm system and defensive strategy in hopes that Maly would follow the pack in. But this is less straightforward, not cattle lead into a chute. This is complicated.
This is human.
"It's there isn't it?" he asks, head lifting to look at her. "You can see it. Touch it. Smell it and hear it."
Maly's brows furrow, conflicted. Her tiny hands dig a little deeper in her coat, the skin stretched tight over the bones. She's so thin, so dangerously small.
"It is what it is, Maly, and we are what we are. If its dangerous or doesn't work, we keep going."
He gives a moment for the words to sink in, and almost to fast to catch he sees the flicker of her thoughts across her features. There's fear there, so much fear, but there is want as well, and something sad and ineffable besides.
Maly breathes one long draw in and lets it rush out. She unwraps her hands and twists to face them fully, taking in Michonne and the few others that came as well. Her eyes dart around, and he sees something warble in her. She can't seem to decide and is absolutely terrified of both prospects.
Wordlessly, Rick reaches out a hand to help her up.
The motion captures her attention, and for a second her whole body seems to still. There's an unsettling amount of focus she casts on his hand, and that fear melds into an unreadable sort of blankness. It is as if her being is stuck on the cusp of something, and Rick feels the whole world follow suit. This is it, that moment where everything changes.
Maly's eyes lift to meet his, and she takes it.
(Her hand trembles in his own.)