AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
Very short time jump here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
Most mornings Andrea's schedule didn't vary too much. She was up ridiculously early to spend part of the morning on the bathroom floor. Michonne spent that time going back and forth between checking on Andrea and having quiet breakfasts with Milton who wasn't entirely opposed to eating with her as long as she kept the chit-chat to a minimum while he looked over whatever notes he always seemed to be studying before work. When Andrea was feeling a little better, she'd eat breakfast—which now tended to be some kind of bread washed down with juice—and then she'd go back to bed and sleep until Michonne was able to drag her back out again to at least pretend that she was alive.
This morning, however, had been fairly different. The morning "camp out" in the downstairs bathroom had happened just the same as it always did—entirely out of Andrea's control—but Andrea hadn't gone back to bed afterward. Instead, she seemed to have more energy and more life to her than she had in the while that they'd been there. Today was a big day, especially for Andrea. It was the first ultrasound—a day when she was going to see the baby that she joked already hated her.
"You do realize that it's just going to be like—a blob, right?" Michonne asked, watching Andrea wash down her breakfast with a glass of juice. The vitamin she knew she had to take was still sitting on the table and Michonne moved and put it on her now empty plate to remind her that, even if she hated the act of trying to swallow it, she had to choke it down. "You're not really going to see anything."
"No, Mich," Andrea responded. "I don't realize it's just going to be a blob. Because I've never done this before. And—I really don't appreciate you trying to rain on my parade about the whole thing."
"Not raining on your parade," Michonne responded. "Just checking your reality."
Andrea shook her head at Michonne.
"I don't need a reality check," Andrea said. "Everything about my life right now feels like some kind of giant reality check. What I need is to enjoy whatever the hell I can. I get to get out of the house. I get to see my baby. I get to hear a heartbeat. I need to enjoy that—not have you checking to see if I'm realizing it probably won't be that great by your standards."
Michonne felt properly scolded at the moment.
"I know you've never done this before," Michonne said. "Things were a lot different out there. And I know that things can't be that comfortable now. I just don't want you to build this up to be something magical that it's not going to be and then feel disappointed about it. That's all. I'm just trying to keep you from crashing. I see you watching it, by the way. You've got to take that vitamin."
Andrea curled her lip at Michonne.
"It's really hard to swallow that without gagging," she pointed out. "And when I gag? It's not going to end well. Can I just keep my breakfast for—a few more minutes?"
Michonne laughed to herself.
"What's it going to hurt, right?" Michonne said. "By the way, there's more juice in there. Milton had three bottles of it sent over for you. He thought you might like it since he wasn't going to make it today for the ultrasound."
Andrea raised an eyebrow at Michonne.
"Milton thought I might like it? Or Michonne thought I might like it?" Andrea asked.
Michonne bit back her smile.
"Milton needed a little help," Michonne admitted. "But after I pointed it out to him that it would be a nice gesture? It was his idea to order three bottles of the juice instead of just the one that I suggested. I think he gets at least some credit for his efforts."
"He can have some of the credit," Andrea ceded. "All the same flavor?"
"Whatever it is that you like so much," Michonne said. "That's pretty much what Milton said on the phone. Whatever it is that you're always ordering."
The juice was, like much of what they consumed, products of their "new world". When the world came back to life, everything that they'd known before was essentially gone. The government had rebuilt everything. The government also controlled everything. If you wanted something to eat or drink, you could probably get it, but it was coming with the labels of the new companies that were all government owned and, to some degree, government operated. Michonnne had noticed that pretty much everything these days was produced with what she might call a generic label. It reminded her of the food that was discounted in the grocery stores that was always labelled with the most basic information—what the product was and little else—because the company wasn't spending money on marketing or pretty labels. Back then, people bought it because it was what they could afford. These days, people bought it because it was what was available. There wasn't need to convince them that they wanted the only brand that existed.
Michonne hardly ever drank the juice, and she knew that Milton didn't touch it, because it just seemed like it was Andrea's. It belonged to her. Currently it was the only thing that she got excited about and it just didn't feel right to drink it if it might deprive her of that simple and fleeting bit of happiness.
Andrea got up from her chair, picked the vitamin off the saucer, and put it back on the table to stare at it until a later time. Usually she didn't get it down until right before bed even though Michonne put it with her breakfast daily. She took her plate to the kitchen and Michonne heard her open the refrigerator.
"Did you write the note?" Andrea called.
"What note?" Michonne responded.
"The good day note?" Andrea asked. "The one on the fridge that says I hope you have a good day?"
"Milton," Michonne responded, pleased with the fact that the man had thought of something like that. It was a small gesture, but small gestures from Milton were grand gestures to Andrea. They were still trying to figure out how the whole thing worked—Milton was the father of the baby, biologically, but the baby was part of his experiment. They were trying to figure out, more than anything, if the baby meant anything more to him than just furthering the plan. And if it did, what did it mean exactly? What might Andrea mean to him?
The note, knowing Andrea, would only increase the likelihood that she actually did have a good day.
"That's really sweet of him," Andrea mused, stepping back where Michonne could see her, full bottle of juice in hand, lingering between the kitchen and the living room. "Do you think Alice will give me one of those little pictures? To show him?"
"I think Milton will get a video of the ultrasound if that's what he wants," Michonne said. "Or she'll do it again at a special time for him. Milton gets whatever Milton wants." Andrea showed her disapproval of Michonne's comment even from this distance. "She'll probably give you one of the pictures, too," Michonne added, hoping to soften her earlier comment.
The knock at the door only brought excitement to Andrea's features. She said something—Alice was early or something to the like—and she moved to stand just far enough away from the door that it could open without hitting her. Alice didn't give her customary greeting as she unlocked the door—probably sure that they were already anticipating her arrival—and she didn't stick her head in the door to look around and check for their locations before she invited herself inside.
Instead, the door opened wide and suddenly. It happened quickly enough that if either of them had been standing in the way, the impact might have actually caused them some injury. The door hit the wall with a slam that shocked Michonne.
Whether the glass broke first or the man yelled, Michonne wasn't sure. She'd never be sure. Her ears heard both at the same time.
"She's got a weapon!"
The fight that broke out between Andrea and the guard that entered the house was barely describable as a fight. It was mostly the guard fighting Andrea while Andrea fought to be free from the guard. Michonne made it to her feet, still feeling mostly stunned by the situation, but she wasn't able to even react before she heard another man say something about "unauthorized" and she was suddenly overtaken in her own battle. She hardly even knew the man had her in his grasp before she felt the sharp pain of her head making hard contact with the floor.
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
Michonne could have been convinced that they'd been locked in the unexplained and sudden nightmare for hours, but realistically she knew it was only a few moments, when she heard a voice that was familiar ringing out over the chaos.
"Fucking hell! Get the hell off of her! Get the hell off of her! What the hell is going on here?" Alice screamed, her voice shrill and high next to the louder booming voices of officers that were trying to explain their actions.
The man holding Michonne flat against the floor didn't immediately let her up and she could guess that the same could be said for the officer that had attacked Andrea because she heard Alice loudly protesting his abuse of Andrea. Then Michonne heard another woman's voice. It was a voice that she hadn't heard before.
"She had a weapon," the woman said.
"What weapon?" Alice asked.
"When we opened the door, she met us with a weapon," the woman responded. "They had to diffuse the situation."
"It was juice!" Michonne got out just as the officer let her up enough to allow her to breathe. "It was a bottle of juice. It wasn't a weapon." She touched at the side of her mouth and looked at her fingers. She was bleeding. She wondered if her forehead, now victim to a constant thumping, was bleeding too but she wasn't going to check.
"I don't have a weapon," Andrea sputtered out in protest. "I don't have anything. I'm not even wearing pants."
"Maggie, call off your guards!" Alice yelled. "Call them off! Damn it! This is the second house this has happened in already and if this how you're doing things then...just pack up and fucking leave. Just fucking go! And take your hyper-sensitive attack dogs with you! I put the guides up on the doorframes for you! I put them up for you to know where the hell you shouldn't go just busting in. Do I have to post signs that say do not attack the gestating mothers?"
"Is Andrea OK?" Michonne asked, not getting up from her spot for fear of being put back into it. She wasn't in the mood to stir them up again when Alice seemed to have just gotten the calm she commanded to fall over everyone. Alice, she could see, was inspecting Andrea. "Is Andrea OK?" Michonne asked again when she felt that she might not get a response.
"What hurts?" Alice asked, clearly directing her question to Andrea while she actively ignored the other brunette woman that was, as far as Michonne knew, new to Woodbury.
"It's OK," Andrea started.
"I want you to complain!" Alice barked. "What hurts?" She asked again, softening her tone. "Here—I'll start the list with you. Your foot hurts because that's—well, that's probably going to need stitches. What else?"
Andrea hesitated a moment before she finally played her own version of the "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" game with Alice. Alice maintained her composure while dealing with Andrea, but as soon as she gave Andrea the command to stay where she was and got to her feet, Alice seemed to come as unglued as she'd been before. She was no longer ignoring the new arrival to Woodbury.
"Do you even know how much trouble you could cause here? Do you even know what saying shit like she's got a weapon could do?" Alice asked.
"Alice, you misunderstand," the woman—Maggie—responded.
"I understand that this is the second house where I've found you attacking one of my patients," Alice said. "And I understand that both times were unprovoked."
"Michael thought she had a weapon," Maggie said. "We have to protect ourselves. And there's an unauthorized prisoner here—we didn't know what might be happening."
Alice looked at Michonne. Michonne still didn't move. She didn't want to escalate things and she could see, from here, that Andrea appeared to be fine even if she was a little worse for the wear than Michonne was at the moment.
"Check your charts again," Alice said. "Read your memos a little more closely and do your homework. She's a hundred percent authorized to be here. There's another prisoner that's authorized to be here too. He's here whenever he wants to be. And—for the record—we're not calling them prisoners. They're citizens. This is their home. And they have a right to have fucking juice with their breakfast without expecting a concussion for it."
"I never meant for anything bad to happen," Maggie said. "You know I wouldn't do anything..."
"I don't know anything about you anymore," Alice said quickly. "But I do know what just happened. And I do know that this will be reported."
"Alice, you don't have to report this," Maggie said. "It was a mistake. The officers made a mistake. And it's better to err on the side of caution. You know that."
"It's better to err on the side of not being brutal," Alice said. "And this has to be reported. This is Milton Mamet's house. Andrea? She's Milton's personal companion. His pregnant personal companion. Milton has to know what happened. And he's going to report it. And you better—you just better hope that nothing worse than a mess I have to send someone to clean up and few stitches comes out of this."
"Alice—I think we should talk," Maggie said.
"We should," Alice said. "But I can't because I've got work to do. And thanks to you, I've got a lot more of it now. So I think—right now? You should leave. Get your guards on a shorter leash until you can find some that aren't gun shy and don't even go near a house that has a Cherokee Rose."
"When you calm down, I hope we'll be able to talk?" Maggie asked. "I'll be around all day."
"Unfortunately, I'm aware," Alice said. "If I have time—I'll talk to you. Right now? I've got things to do." Rather than argue any more, the brunette turned and started out of the door. "Take Bruno and Rocky with you!" Alice added, yelling it at the woman.
"What happened?" Michonne asked.
"Hurricane Maggie happened," Alice responded. She shook her head at Michonne. "I don't have time to explain right now. Can you wrap a towel around that cut on Andrea's foot? I think the glass got her. Watch out for the glass—by the way. Don't worry about cleaning it up. I'll send someone to clean. Just—hang tight. I'll be back for both of you in a couple of minutes."
