Michonne pivoted around the corner of the shelf with her sword extended. It was a clean slice. Two walker heads landed heavily on the ground with a wet splat. One of the heads rolled until it touched her boot. She stared at the decaying skin long and hard.
This wasn't the head she wanted.
She cleared the rest of the store quickly. The shelves were desolate, only offering up streams of dirt and useless items. It was about what she expected when she stepped into Kathy's Mercantile Store. Kathy, the entrepreneur.
Good for you, Kathy.
Michonne hoped Kathy wasn't one of the walkers she had just beheaded. Chances were slim. Kathy had probably hightailed it out of town long ago. Maybe, like lots of Georgians, she'd headed towards Atlanta hoping for military intervention.
Michonne pictured Kathy as a cheery brunette with fluffy 80s-styled curls. A woman who preferred waffles to pancakes. She hadn't felt halfway about it either. It would have been an opinion she used to argue vehemently while she tapped cherry red acrylic nails against a simple white coffee mug.
Among Michonne's strange post-Turn habits, this was a favorite of hers. She liked to imagine the people whose places she raided, liked to imagine the life they might have lived. It was the least she could do for breaking in. Hopefully Kathy was safe somewhere with family and friends.
Above the store was a moderate-sized studio apartment. Like the store below, it was dusty and stale-smelling. But there was a double bed pushed into one corner. The windows offered a clear view of the street below and a decent view of the town's center. Michonne could hole up here for the night if the rest of her search proved fruitless. That was the likely outcome.
The Governor had so far eluded Michonne's wrath.
It was as if the bastard never existed at all, like Michonne just conjured him up in some masochistic fantasy. Had his reign of terror not left such indelible marks on her psyche, had they not marked Andrea's grave with a cross bearing her name, if the Woodbury survivors didn't shrink away from her when she returned to the prison, she would have believed that she invented the psycho.
Mike's ghost could attest to her fragile sanity.
If Daryl was the gloating kind, her returns to the prison would be insufferable. Thankfully that wasn't his way. He was quiet and observant and loyal. Daryl Dixon was not arrogant. Though he had declared the trail cold after their third trip out, he didn't grandstand when she came back to the prison empty handed. He would grunt, clasp her shoulder, and say, "Glad you made it back." When he thought she wasn't looking, he would watch her. Perhaps for signs of injury or some other ailment. He never said anything though. Daryl communicated more with his eyes than his lips anyways. The looks weren't quite "I told you so" but they said something.
"You ain't gotta keep going out there, Michonne."
"I do."
"It ain't safe. You out there by yourself like that."
"I can handle it."
"Who the fuck says you gotta handle it?"
That was after her second solo trip.
He stopped saying anything after that, in welcome contrast to Hershel and Maggie's gentle prodding. God bless him. Michonne was admittedly fond of the tenderhearted country boy. Years of practicing and teaching law meant that Michonne could clock 'em quick. Grunts and clipped words could do little to hide what Michonne knew: Daryl Dixon was all heart.
Just like another country boy.
Michonne suspected that Daryl and Rick were in cahoots. Only way to explain those shared not quite I-told-you-so looks. Pointed as hell though. Rick's looks, however. They were a shade different. Intensity was Rick Grimes' middle name if Michonne had to guess, but she couldn't yet articulate what made a Rick Grimes stare different from a Daryl Dixon one.
She chalked it up to her friendship with Carl. Attentive father that he was, Rick probably wanted to keep an eye on the woman who talked to his kid as often as she did. Days on end she spent away from the prison. Gone more often than she was around, she probably still seemed like a stranger to Rick.
Things were easier between them after that moment in King County, like exhaling deeply after holding a breath. A new leaf of sorts.
Except shortly thereafter he made a deal with the Devil. Rick's betrayal wounded her less than it perhaps should have. Give her the same set of circumstances and her child's life on the line and she would consider it too. She knew what it was to gamble with your child's life. Look where that got her.
In this world, sometimes deals with the Devil had to be on the table.
Rick's contrition, though, had been sincere and ardent. Michonne was learning that most things about him were. His irritation, distrust, remorse, proactiveness, loyalty. Earnestness suffused the air around him.
Michonne still kept her distance.
Rick Grimes was running on fumes. Grief followed him, preceded him, surrounded him. He wasn't chasing his wife's ghost anymore but his regular visits to her grave told Michonne all she needed to know. She understood.
Space he needed and space she could give.
He kind of owed her for The Governor bullshit. All her graciousness aside. But she more than owed him for taking her in. Maybe, really, they were breaking even but she recognized his pain, more than he knew.
One time she returned to the prison to see a sweaty Rick knelt in the dirt, headphones shoved into his ears, a surprisingly placid Carl at his side. And there he was again the next day and every day of her brief stay. There was a council in place the next time she returned to the prison. Rick had stopped carrying his gun.
Good for him, Michonne had thought, watching from a distance as he used his plaid shirt to wipe the sweat from his brow.
The man deserved a break.
Bad enough that he had to live out the grotesqueries of grief in front of so many invested eyes. Doubly, triply, infinitely worse for those eyes to be turned towards him in submission, always seeking guidance.
Lucky and misfortunate, Michonne had experienced the worst parts of her grief in private. Night after night. Day after day. Barring unspeakable tragedy, Rick Grimes would never be granted the kind of privacy Michonne had.
So, she gave him a wide berth, kept a loose on eye him when she was around because she understood—the gut wrenching pain, the ease with which it could carry you away, how quickly sanity could abscond with the best parts of you.
She also kept an eye on him because she was…curious.
There was a puzzle that needed solving.
The iPod. The damn iPod.
It was the not-so-occasional subject of her musings about Rick Grimes.
Southern gentleman, the good ole' boy—what kind of music did he listen to?
Carl would tell her but she refused to ask. She liked the mystery too much. It amused her to imagine a different song playing each time she saw him, each more absurd than the last.
Her favorite so far: Fuck the Police by NWA.
It was perfectly rebellious, fitting. Underneath that perfected southern charm, Michonne suspected that there was something a bit irreverent about Rick Grimes. Reluctant was she to part with that image.
Rick's real musical tastes might be disappointing after all. She couldn't risk it by asking him or Carl. Amusement was so rare on the road, so rare in this world.
She sometimes wished she could borrow his iPod for her trips. For amusement.
And because she desperately missed music.
Her most recent recon mission had taken her to Zebulon, Georgia. Some twenty-one dusty, lonely miles southeast of the Prison.
At first she and Daryl figured The Governor would flee north towards Atlanta. The city was overrun which made it an unlikely destination. Unlikely destinations made for a good asylum. Who would be crazy enough to follow him to Atlanta? Unfortunately for The Governor, Michonne didn't have a lot of fucks left to give.
The trail didn't lead to Atlanta. Instead it took them East on GA-18 E. According to Daryl, the trail ended at the Still Branch Reservoir.
"Maybe the fucker drowned," Daryl said tossing a stick into the water.
Michonne stared, wondering how deep the reservoir went. "If only."
As surely as she knew her name, Michonne knew The Governor was still alive.
Gut. Intuition. Instinct. Whatever one called it, Michonne had it. After Mike, after…She knew better. Never again would she dismiss that voice. It spoke to her, screamed at her as she stood over the blue-black water, its gentle waves lapping against the pier.
In the absence of an obvious trail, Daryl had abandoned the search. Michonne couldn't muster up a lick of resentment for it. Rick's indefinite sabbatical meant that Daryl was needed at the prison.
Her, not so much.
Now here she was in yet another rural Georgia town. One she would never have set foot in Before. Venturing this far into Georgia had always been a no-no, a pledge that she and Mike had joked often about. Atlanta, safe. The outskirts, cool. Savannah and Athens, quaint. Anything else was a resounding hell no.
"We're too Black to go anywhere else, Meesh."
"Baby, you don't have to tell me twice."
Michonne saw a confederate flag coming into town. Just the one but it was one too goddamn many. Long deserted, the town still unsettled her. A quick perusal of the the town's history would no doubt cough up some nasty shit. As most southern towns did. The entire world was a ghost town, yet there was something especially pernicious about these small enclaves she wandered through in search of her white whale.
This song and dance was beginning to wear her down.
Moving often and quickly had kept Michonne alive all this time. Solitude, quiet, tedium—those things she had grown used to. She was used to upheaval, settling down temporarily in some abandoned building only to be gone in the morning. The constant traveling, the indeterminate destination.
Incredibly, impossibly, that obscure destination had taken shape, looming beyond the tree line against the Georgia sky, surrounded by clusters of rotting, reanimated bodies and barbwire. A crude oasis.
The prison and Woodbury were as distinct as their leaders. One—rough, broken, authentic. The other—polished, smooth, spurious.
Now she was hunting the latter while the other grew tomatoes and cared for his children.
One child that Michonne did her best to stealthily avoid, the girl's precious little face opening up a jagged wound in Michonne. Conversely, Carl's precocious and inquisitive nature soothed some of the rawness in Michonne.
He was part of the reason she let out a quiet "whoop!" when she found a dense stack of comics packed neatly in one of the houses. Sealed in poly bags and beautifully alphabetized, the comics were in excellent condition. Her bounty would thrill Carl. Almost as much it thrilled Michonne. Almost. Carl wouldn't know much about Don Mcgregor's Black Panther run from the 70s. Her little friend was intelligent and informed but "Panther's Rage" was a classic before his time.
Michonne snorted.
When had she reached the inevitable "What you know about this" age? When had she become the (cool) aunty at the cookout?
Thoughts of her parents came to mind as she continued her search. Her sisters and nieces, aunties and uncles (real and play). Family friends. Saturday morning cleaning sessions to Luther Vandross. Summer barbecues and baby showers. Michonne had loved them all, loved the energy and rhythm permeating each laugh, dance, and joke. Anita Baker's discography spoke to and tethered Michonne as much as it had any adult in the room. "What you know about this" was a tender acknowledgment of Michonne's wisdom. With a smile, Michonne had always shrugged coyly at the question. Impeccable taste demanded a smidgen of modesty after all.
I miss you, she thought of her family as she cleared yet another house. I hope you're okay.
Promises, promises, promises—she made so many at the beginning of the outbreak. That she would touch base with them soon. That the military would help. That she and Elodie were safe with Mike. That nothing would happen to her daughter. Every word, uttered with her daughter wrapped tightly in her arms, had carried grave determination. They were lies Michonne never meant to tell.
Except the one.
Because Michonne knew.
As she watched Mike dart anxiously from room to room, always coming out empty handed, fingers locked tightly behind his head a moment before he bounded into the next room only to repeat the cycle again, Michonne knew.
While Terry sat idly on the couch, legs spread wide, one arms tossed across the back of the couch, sipping a rum and coke at nine in the morning, she knew.
When Mike had stopped his pacing to eye the drink in Terry's hand. When Terry offered the drink to her then feckless lover. Such a casual offer, like muscle memory. When Mike hesitated but Michonne had already seen the longing, the craving. When he took a step towards Terry, paused, shook his head, and began to pace again. When Elodie whimpered and pressed her face into the tense muscles of her mother's neck.
Michonne knew.
So she lied.
She said confidently into the phone, "Don't worry. Mike and I will figure it out," when she really meant that she would figure it out.
At the time, it was only a white lie. Necessary misdirection in order to ease her father and sisters' worry.
It would mean little in the long run, Michonne convinced herself, because Mike? Mike would replace his panic with courage, trade in his fluster for faith. Of that Michonne was sure. Why? Because she needed him. Because Elodie needed him and Mike had always attended to Elodie's every need. The Mike she had fallen for had possessed such conviction and valor, and it would return to him when they needed it.
He just…needed a moment.
Just give me a minute, Meesh! Please!
Mike never yelled at her. Partly because he was chill and easygoing, often expressive but slow to anger. It was also because Michonne simply didn't play that shit. But like many things that would change, Mike had yelled then when she'd offered a plan of action. She had stared at him and then walked away to give him the minute he'd asked for.
She ended up giving Mike many minutes. Too many minutes, moments.
Until that moment.
"I'll call you soon to touch base," she'd said to her family over the phone. CNN played loudly in the background.
It was the last time she spoke to them. Landlines stopped working the very next day. Wireless networks collapsed soon after. In her final conversation with her family, she had lied.
White lies grow and grow and…
"Enough," Michonne scolded herself. "Enough."
She commanded her regrets to wait, to find her when she had time for them. Problem with regrets is that they don't take kindly to being ignored. They would pay her a visit in her dreams, rob her of her sleep, make space for themselves since she couldn't spare a moment right then.
Focus, she needed to focus.
A few more buildings on Main Street still needed investigating and there wasn't nearly enough daylight to do it. A heavy sigh rushed past her pursed lips.
Truth was, Michonne didn't want to clear anymore buildings. She wanted to take her loot of comics and tuck in for the night. She wanted load up, trek back to the prison, and present her bounty to Carl with a flourish.
She wanted to get back ho—
Michonne hesitated. Right there in the middle of the rundown post office, sword gripped tightly in both hands, ready.
Home.
Is that how she thought of the prison?
More home base than home, Michonne countered. Headquarters perhaps. So fleeting was her time there. So disconnected was she from the prison's residents, save for a few.
On autopilot, Michonne resumed her search through the post office. She ignored the endless supply of commercial envelopes scattered across the floor. They weren't useful.
All the while she turned the idea of home over in her head.
She had not been looking for a home as she stumbled through the woods, bleeding, Similac rattling around in the shopping basket, Andrea's choice as painful as the wound on Michonne's leg. Skirting the limits of consciousness, Michonne had needed shelter.
A home, not so much.
She didn't stumble up to that fence for a home.
Admittedly, though, she'd been desperate for help. Slipping away promptly after getting the help was always the plan. She couldn't or wouldn't stay. She'd owed The Governor a visit.
But then there had been a man on the other side of the fence. A haggard man with wary and perplexed eyes. Recognition bloomed as they stood on opposite sides of the fence. Vision shimmering at the edges, Michonne had wondered if she was hallucinating. She'd wondered if they had met before.
No, as it turned out, but the recognition persisted. His coldness and distrust didn't stifle it. Neither did his continuous threats of eviction.
And there was Hershel's gentle touch as he treated her wound. There was the freckle-faced boy with sharp, grief-stricken eyes, a younger vision of the haggard man. There was that sweet, tearful reunion after the return of a lost friend.
There was a baby.
The haggard man had been holding a baby, placing feather-like kisses on her forehead. And that group had gathered around, cooing and awing and shielding the baby, likely from Michonne's gaze.
Even then, the prison had not seemed a potential home. She was eager to leave, eager to show Andrea new evidence of The Governor's treachery, eager to kill him.
Still Michonne knew that whatever was happening at the prison—with its grungy walls and cold steel and wearied residents—it was genuine. There was no subterfuge, no masking, no performance. Just openly broken people who were desperately devoted to one another. It had kindled a rawness in Michonne.
That rawness would in turn royally fuck up her plans for detachment.
Nearly three months later and she was hunting the man who could upend that beautifully broken place, the place that had snuck up on her even though she'd walked right to it.
The Governor was out here, somewhere, waiting. He would be back. For the prison, for her. Men like him didn't cut their losses and disappear forever. He needed the power too much, needed the victory. Needed something extra for his ego too. Even alone, he was a devastating liability.
So Michonne persisted in her search.
She'd promised herself and Rick before she'd first left in search of The Governor.
Rick's group had taken her in. She owed them. She cared about them. God fucking help her. She cared. Retribution fueled her, definitely. But so did her growing regard for her new—allies? Friends? There was no point in pretending otherwise.
Promises, promises. History rebuked her for making more promises.
You haven't learned your lesson, baby?
"Uh-uh, Mike. Go away."
He ignored her.
Remember what happened last time? Don't get comfortable.
Mike spoke to her more often now that she was on the road. As often as he had right after…
He disappeared for much of her time with Andrea, and Michonne mourned his absence. Then she got used to it, reveled in it. Sanity returned to her. Albeit slowly.
Mike stayed away during Woodbury. During her early days at the prison too. For a while, Daryl's quiet, consistent nature warded off Mike's presence. That was Michonne's theory anyway. Now her ghost, ever the attentive lover, had returned to her.
You break your promises, Michonne. Remember?
All she did was remember. The mournful wailing. The smoke clouding her vision as she ran harder than she ever had before. The blood.
"Of course I remember," Michonne said quietly.
She had long since abandoned her search. Instead she slumped against a wall in the mailroom. If she kept this up, she'd be returning to the prison with nothing but comic books.
Don't get comfortable, Michonne.
"I'm not!"
She wasn't. She wasn't.
Was she?
No.
There was just something inescapable about the eclectic group of survivors at the prison, something that kept drawing her in. Pulling, pulling, pulling despite her efforts to remain distant and neutral.
Maggie's fierceness and hilarity. Glenn's compassion and extensive knowledge of 90s R&B. Sasha and Tyrese's silly, loving exchanges. Hershel's warmth and wisdom. Daryl's knowledge and devotedness. Carl's intellect and spontaneous childlikeness. His sweetness, despite his effort to hide it.
Rick.
His quiet, introspective nature. His strength. His obvious tenderheartedness. His grief. A grief that she understood, a grief that resonated deeply.
Mike chuckled.
See, baby. Comfortable.I know you. It's just a matter of time.
A matter of time until what? Until she was too attached? Until she failed again?
Flashes of their old camp unfolded in front of her. The downed fences, the billowing smoke, Mike bleeding and weeping, Elodie's torn body. Just as quickly, Michonne saw the prison. She saw Carl and Judith, flesh ripped messily from their bones, Rick bitten and bleeding, crying over their bodies.
"No." Michonne stood abruptly. "Not again."
It's inevitable, baby.
"Fuck you."
Mike's words renewed her vigor. Defiantly, Michonne swept through the rest of the post office. She cleared houses methodically. Even if The Governor still evaded her, she would not return to the prison lacking.
Luck was on her side. A detached garage yielded rope, one bowie knife, fishing and camping gear, two flashlights, a pair of walkie talkies, batteries, a trauma kit, and a 2009 Toyota Highlander with a three quarters full gas tank.
"Holy shit," she breathed.
Old Michonne would have twerked in celebration. New Michonne squinted suspiciously at her harvest.
Too good to be true, Meesh. Probably belongs to somebody. And they ain't gone.
"I had considered that. Thank you very much."
Mike had become devastatingly fatalist in his last days, but he was right. Hauls of this magnitude were never left neglected. The house's isolation could explain the garage's seemingly untouched state. Burrowed into a dense nest of trees, far away from the town's main roads, the house would be difficult to find, especially for travelers not stalking a megalomaniac.
But Michonne needed to be sure.
She eased her way into the abutting house through the kitchen. Dense layers of dust covered every available surface. Broken and dirty dishes filled the sink and lined the counters. The food waste rivaled the stench of walkers. Nobody had used this kitchen in a long time.
Michonne moved further into the house. The living and dining room were in similar condition. Stale, messy, seemingly abandoned. She knocked loudly against the wall hoping to draw out any undead. Walkers would hear but so would any living occupants. She took the risk. Quietness followed. No familiar shuffling and groaning.
"What were you saying?" Michonne quipped to Mike.
There you go getting comfortable again, baby.
Ignoring him, Michonne continued through the house. Moving upstairs was always a gamble in these situations. Especially when she was armed only with her sword. Anyone on the second floor had the tactical advantage: visibility, height, reach. Thankfully, the second floor landing was expansive and visible through the railing.
All the doors were open except for one. Growing closer, Michonne smelled it.
The telltale scent of decay.
Michonne tightened her grip on her sword and stepped lightly, cognizant of the creaky floorboards. She pressed her back against the wall beside the door and listened. The room was silent. Michonne placed her hand on the door knob and braced herself.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi.
She swung the door open, sword poised for attack. Silence—the reason for which became quickly obvious. Centered on the bed was the body of what once must have been a herculean man. His legs reached almost to the edge of the queen sized bed. Gelated blood colored the wall, headboard, and sheets. There was little left of his head. A shotgun laid haphazardly across his chest, barrel jutting towards the headboard.
Michonne sighed.
Scenes like this disquieted her no matter how often she came across them. Despair permeated this fetid room. A room that had once been home to mundane, perhaps joyous moments. Pictures adorned the wall behind her, evidence of a life once lived. Michonne avoided them. She did peer curiously at the slip of paper propped up on the nightstand. Blood splatter obscured some of the sloped handwriting but the message was legible:
Supplies in the garage and basement. Do me a favor. If the flowers are in bloom, please place some on the graves in the backyard. Good luck. Hope you make it.
Wielding the bloodied Sharpie left behind, Michonne wrote a simple response: Thank you. She took the shotgun with her.
When she checked the other rooms, she found exactly what she expected, the reason why she had not glanced at the photos.
The man had fathered children. First, to a little boy who couldn't have been much younger than Carl. She left his room untouched.
There was a nursery. For a little girl.
Michonne's energy steeply waned. Mike remained curiously quiet.
Five minutes is all she allowed herself to feel sad, to imagine the life this family had lived together. She did not think about how they might have died. She did not think about her own little girl. Instead, she loaded up a suitcase with things for Judith before hastening out of the room.
The basement was a gold mine.
"Holy shit." It was the second time she'd said that today.
Non-perishable food, toilet paper, paper towels, laundry detergent, and bottled water—all of it was packaged neatly on a couple of long black wire shelving units. Michonne had never been this lucky. Never. With new residents steadily coming into the prison, this was a godsend.
Oh, she could just imagine the look on Daryl and Rick's faces. She couldn't help it. She laughed.
You sure you don't think of that place as home, baby?
Michonne was too pleased to heed Mike's smugness. She was quickly running out of daylight.
It took nearly an hour to load the car. The sun was just setting as she finished. Trekking through a mostly unfamiliar town at night was asking for trouble so Michonne decided to hunker down for the night. Fidgety with the corpse still in the house, she carted the couch cushions into the garage and secured the door. There she laid, one hand behind her head and the other resting on her stomach, hoping for sleep without expecting it.
She hadn't looked in the backyard yet.
I miss when it was just us, Meesh. You remember?
"Wasn't just us, Mike."
Terry was there too, skin rotting and stinking and falling off in clumps. Mike shuffled behind him. Formerly tall and statuesque, his spine had concaved, leaving him hunched over so that his head was nearly at the same level as hers.
That was all you, Michonne.
Michonne sat up abruptly and opened her mouth to protest. Words stalled on her tongue. Falling back into this pattern with him disconcerted her. She was supposed to be past this. She told Rick that she "used" to talk to her dead boyfriend. Past tense. But here she was, arguing with Mike like they were back in their downtown Atlanta condo. Michonne groaned and flopped back onto the floral cushions. Sleep came fitfully the way it always did.
In the morning, jewels of sunlight filtered through the stained glass windows, kaleidoscopic against the black SUV and white walls. Egret White, Sherwin Williams, by the looks of it.
"Should have gone with Elder White," Michonne mumbled.
White was never her preferred color. Potentially elegant, sure, but bland. White paint invited trouble. Spills, stains, blemishes. Homes needed color. Vibrancy. Her condo used to have…Michonne paused. Things like that didn't matter anymore.
How do you explain that gorgeous cat then?
Mercifully, her own voice echoed back to her, not Mike's. She resented the question all the same.
Girl, just mind your damn business.
This was a different flavor of her crazy. Warding herself from her thoughts as if she was trespassing in her own head.
"Time to go," she said as she rose from her makeshift bed.
The voices grew louder and more persistent the longer she spent away from the prison. They were a litmus test. Incessant voices—Mike's, usually—were her cue to head back. Sometimes it couldn't be helped, and she would stay out longer. When she got a sense that The Governor was close. (He never was.) When she wasn't ready to be around people again. When she was worried about hauling her grief back with her and tainting the life her…friends…were trying to build. A life that she willingly existed on the periphery of.
Nah, baby. You're cozy there. Admit it.
Jesus fucking Christ. She needed to go.
Light-footed but heavy hearted, Michonne slipped into the backyard. Three graves. Three distinct mounds of dirt spaced closely together. The man had likely lost his love too. Familiar grief washed over her, and she resolved to move swiftly.
Purple and magenta petunias burst from the wooden fence, their vines weaving playfully through the latticework. Another day and she might have stopped to admire their beauty. She would have remembered her mother who used drink jasmine tea in her garden of tulips and creeping phlox, listening to Sade on her Sony boombox. Cynthia Hawthorne had adamantly refused to get any kind of mp3 player.
CDs have worked for decades, Michonne.
Tears welled. She swiped them away. Memories of her mother didn't belong in this lonely backyard.
She delicately gathered a handful of flowers for each grave, knelt down, issued a gentle "I'm sorry," and was gone. She stopped for that crate of comics on her way out of town. No way was she going back without it.
Zebulon to Senoia was probably a thirty minute drive in the old days. Now, roads cluttered with abandoned cars and wandering walkers, it took Michonne an hour to reach the prison.
Celine Dion blasting, she pulled up to the prison with her windows down, arm waving out the window so they knew it was her. A sharp whistle sounded from somewhere inside the yard. Michonne could see Carl take off like a shot towards the gate as it opened. He reached the car right as she pulled to a stop just past the second entrance.
"Michonne!"
"Hey you," she said smiling as she slid out and blocked his view of the crate in the passenger seat.
Carl's lanky body vibrated with energy, his eyes darting to and fro. Bouncing on his toes, he peered into the back windows. His eyes widened at the full backseat and trunk.
"Whoa, Michonne. That's a lot of stuff! Is that why you were gone so long? Where did you go this time?"
Each statement was issued with barely a breath between them. Michonne's smile grew.
"Carl," Rick said as he caught up with his eager son, moving at a more moderate pace. Face covered in sweat and dirt, he gave her a small apologetic smile. "Give her a minute, son."
Carl ignored him, opening the back door. "Dad, look at all this stuff."
"Carl…" Rick trailed off as he too peaked into the backseat. His eyebrows rose. "Shit."
"Told you," Carl said already rummaging through the supplies.
Rick turned to her about to speak, right as Daryl and Glenn met them from the prison and Maggie met them from the gate.
"Howdy, stranger," Maggie said pulling her into a warm hug. "You been gone a while."
Michonne squeezed her back. "I come bearing gifts."
She flicked her hand towards the car.
"Hey, Michonne…holy shit" Glenn said at both the car and its fullness. "Dude. Where'd you find all this?"
Michonne answered simply. "Zebulon."
Rick, who had his hands on his hips, exchanged a glance with Daryl who leaned against the car. It wasn't subtle. They did this damn near every time. Michonne pretended not to see it and they pretended too. Daryl grunted.
"That's further out than you been goin'," he said.
Oh, this was a change of pace. Both Daryl and Rick had seemingly resolved not to press her about her continued searches. Yet here Daryl was pressing her about it. Michonne was far too tired to argue. Wait until they realized that she was only going to keep going further out. If it was necessary. It felt necessary.
So they could live without worrying. At least without having to worry about The Governor.
Michonne just shrugged at the question that wasn't being asked.
They watched her for a moment before Rick looked away, watching Carl spring from one thing to the next, talking all the while. Daryl nudged her.
"Good to have you back," he said.
"Staying out of trouble, Dixon?" she teased.
He nudged her harder. "Only one of us gettin' into trouble is you."
"No trouble here."
He grunted and started to inspect the car. Michonne reached into the car and pulled something out of the middle console.
"Glenn, for you."
Glenn raced around the side of the car. Michonne marveled at how childlike and joyous he could be sometimes. She held her gift behind her back and held up a hand, her face serious.
"Before I give this to you, admit that I have impeccable taste."
Glenn's eyebrows creased even as his smile grew mischievously.
"I don't know, Michonne. You like Toni Braxton more than Mariah Carey."
"Because Toni is soulful and speaks to me."
"Yeah, but it's Mariah Carey!"
"So you don't want your gift?"
Maggie watched, shaking her head with a wide smile. Glenn sighed loudly.
"Fine. You have impeccable taste."
"I know. Here."
She held the CD out to Glenn. His eyes widened and he snatched it from her hand and clutched it to his chest. Michonne rolled her eyes.
"Usher? My Way? A classic!"
"There's a lot of batteries in the car. You should take a few. For your CD player."
He frowned, a protest forming on his lips. Michonne beat him to the punch.
"There's a lot of batteries in the car."
Glenn thought for a moment and then grinned. "Thanks, Michonne."
Michonne winked and turned only to be met by a grinning Carl. She raised an eyebrow. He put his hands on his hips looking like the spitting image of Rick Grimes. They stared at each other. Five seconds, not even five full Mississippis—that's how long she made it before she cracked a grin.
"You waiting for something?" she asked folding her arms.
Carl shrugged and leaned on the door, the picture of ease.
"Depends. You got something for me?"
Laughter bubbled in her chest but she held off. This kid. She looked away, feigning indifference.
"What makes you think I have something for you?"
Rick stood by the trunk, watching. She could see him in her periphery. He watched them often. What surprised Michonne was the small smile he wore.
"You always have something for me, Michonne," Carl said.
She sighed. "So spoiled."
Carl Grimes was many things but not spoiled. Responsible? Yes. Burdened? Yes. Spoiled? No. The kid had been through hell. Michonne was happy to bring him back random things, let him act his age for a few moments.
"Michonne," Carl groaned.
Like that.
"Close your eyes. Don't open them until I tell you."
He did it without question and Michonne noted his trust in her. Something ached in her but she pushed it away. As quietly as she could, she moved to the other side of the car, hauled up the crate, and rounded the car to place it in front of Carl.
"Before you open your eyes…"
"You have impeccable taste, Michonne," Carl rattled off. "Come on!"
She laughed. "Fine. Open them."
Carl looked down. He peered closer and his eyes turned into saucers.
"Holy shit."
"Carl," Rick said sternly from the trunk.
The boy winced.
"Shit," he whispered and then colored a deep shade of pink. Louder he said, "Sorry, Dad. But come look!"
Carl knelt down and foraged through the crate of comics, his hands shaking with pure excitement. He could barely get a good look at one issue before he was grabbing another. Michonne noted that despite his haste, he treated the comics reverently. Rick ambled to them and looked over Carl's shoulder. He whistled lowly.
"Michonne, there's so many!"
Grinning, she said, "I know. That'll tide us over for a while."
"There's SO many."
"Probably enough to share with the other kids, don't you think?"
Frowning, he looked up hastily. Michonne nearly crumpled in amusement at his face.
"That's a good idea," Rick said, face serious. Save for his twinkling eyes.
"They'll mess them up," Carl said.
Probably but they lived in a collectivist community. Sharing was the kind thing to do. A collection as big as the one she brought back was best put to use for everyone.
"Maybe. Or you can teach them how to handle them nicely. We can develop a checkout system too, like at the library. We do have a library," Michonne said.
She ignored her use of "we."
Still frowning, Carl appeared to give her proposal serious thought. He was a serious boy after all. Much like his father who silently watched his son turn the idea over in his head. Eventually Carl's frown evened out and he nodded to himself. Then her.
"Okay," he said.
Rick sized up his son. "Just like that?"
Carl shrugged. "It makes sense."
Rick's face twisted in disbelief. Michonne was positive he muttered, "You gotta be fucking kidding me." She turned away to keep from laughing. Maggie, Daryl, and Glenn talked quietly while still looking over the supplies. As council members, they'd be responsible for its circulation into the community. Michonne pulled out the stack of Black Panther comics and waved them at Carl. He squinted up at them.
"We don't have to share everything."
Carl grinned. "Thanks, Michonne. This is awesome."
Winking, she tossed the books back onto the seat and reached in for something else. She extracted a hard-shell suitcase.
"For Judith," she said to Rick, surprised to find him already watching her.
Gifts for Judith were as frequent as gifts for Carl, but Rick looked surprised, maybe even a bit cautious each time. Michonne hoped her aversion to the baby wasn't obvious but it must have been. Other people cooed over her, jostled to hold her, rocked her to sleep to give Rick a break. As they should. Judith was adorable, certainly, and Rick had more than earned the help. Michonne didn't have it in her.
She drummed her fingers on the suitcase.
"Clothes. Bibs. Bottles." She nodded to the trunk. "Formula. Should last a few months."
Rick slid his eyes to the trunk and then back to her. He tilted his head in that way of his.
"Books too. Goodnight Moon. Where the Wild Things Are. That's a classic."
"I had that book didn't I?" Carl asked still sorting through his loot.
Snorting, Rick looked at his son. "Used to cry bloody murder to get me to read it to you."
Carl opened his mouth to say something and then snapped it shut. Rick noticed. Michonne did too. Moments like this were expected. Reminiscing was always a trip through a landmine. Reminiscing meant getting caught up until you remembered that words conjure the dead. Hoping to recapture Carl's lightness, Michonne redirected.
"Reading to infants helps with language development and literacy," she said lightly. "Research shows that starting early helps."
Talking about Judith didn't get them away from the subject of Lori Grimes, but it could point to life instead of death. Futurity instead of the past. Michonne couldn't think about the past and babies right then.
"Plus she'll have good taste if she reads good books," she continued. "Gotta start early."
"Well, I am her big brother after all. She'll have good taste," Carl said smirking, perhaps eager to move on from the moment.
Michonne scoffed, happy her diversion was working. Rick smiled gratefully at her. He ruffled his boy's hair.
"When'd you get so cocky, son?"
Carl shrugged. "Michonne, how come you know so much about babies?"
Her stomach lurched, and her heart nearly stopped. Relief fled.
Raw from being in that fucking nursery, this was rubbing salt in the seeping wound. Not that Carl knew that. But he did seem to realize that his question was a potentially loaded one. Father and son looked at her with slowly evolving alarm.
Michonne and Carl talked about their past lives, mostly in the realm of hobbies and interests, and never in front of Rick. Past lives were off limits between her and Rick. Michonne was intentional about not adding to his pain. Or hers. They only rarely talked in fleeting exchanges. A nod hello. Good mornings or evenings. A "Carl's looking for you" in either direction. Not much more than that. Really, outside of Carl, she saved her words. Maggie and Glenn could occasionally pull her into longer exchanges. Hershel too. Daryl was short on words himself, thankfully.
Rick, to his credit, looked like he was trying to figure out a way to rescue her and Carl from this conversation. Carl was blushing.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have…"
"I had two nieces and a nephew," she said.
Somebody give her an Oscar for this performance, for seeming like someone who had actually worked through their grief, someone who could talk about lost people so breezily.
It was true. She did have two nieces and a nephew—Zaria, Brianna, and Andre. She had been there for all of their births, had adored them, still missed them. Whether they were alive or not Michonne would likely never know.
Either way, she absolutely was not ready to talk about Ellie. Might never be.
But she could talk about her other babies. Briefly, at least.
"I used to visit them all the time." Also true. "Picked up a lot from being around them."
Not a lie. Watching her sisters mother their children left a lasting impression on Michonne.
Carl still looked chagrined for stepping on a grenade. Thankfully it turned out to not be a nuclear warhead. As far as he knew anyway, and she wanted to keep it that way.
"Crazy kids," she said fondly, heart still thumping.
He smiled at her almost shyly.
"I'm sure you were a cool aunt, Michonne."
She smiled softly in return. "I was the coolest aunt."
The moment passed with his quiet laughter. She expected more questions from him later. Those she could probably answer. Michonne turned to Rick.
Again, he was already watching her thoughtfully, almost apologetically. He scratched his jaw. There was more hair there every time she returned.
"I appreciate you always bringin' things back for them. Can't thank you enough, honestly" he said meeting her eyes. "It's real nice of you."
Suddenly antsy under his gaze, Michonne waved him off. Before she could say anything else, not that she had much to say, Daryl approached.
"I can drive this up," he said tapping the hood. "Get some people to start unloadin'."
"I'll come too," she said.
Carl wanted to chat, and Rick seemed poised to let him. Truth be told, Michonne needed a shower, a snack, and a nap. In that order. She promised Carl to put the comics in Rick's cell—Rick assenting with a nod—and that they would hang out and sort through the crate together later. Dejected, Carl sighed. Rick, sensing her fatigue, tugged on a lock of Carl's hair.
"We got more work to do, son. I'll let you off early so you can ditch me."
The preteen brightened. Rick rolled his eyes.
"Okay. See you later, Michonne. We have a lot to catch up on!"
He dashed back to the garden, probably hoping that if he moved fast enough the work would pass quickly. The elder Grimes watched him go and shook his head, smiling slightly.
"He's, uh, happy to see you," he said still watching Carl. "Always is."
"He's great," Michonne said moving to get the crate.
Rick beat her to it, lifting it easily. He stowed it in the back seat and turned to her.
"Yeah. Thank you again. For those. And the stuff for Judith, especially the formula."
She nodded. "No problem."
His thumb went to work on his eyebrow. He hesitated like he had something else to say. When he didn't, Michonne nodded at him again.
"I'll find Carl later."
"Yeah. Okay."
Michonne hopped into the backseat, Glenn and Daryl already occupying the front. Maggie peeked her head into Michonne's window, promising to catch up with her later, before going to resume her post at the gate. Watching her, Rick tapped the car twice and Daryl drove away.
Rick had eyes.
Sorrow deranged him some days. Most days. But he wasn't blind or deaf. If anything, he saw and heard too much. Fantastical, impossible things like his dead wife.
He saw and heard plenty.
So when Rick passed a cluster of adolescent boys on his way to the garden prattling not for the first time about Michonne, Rick noticed. Teen gossip ranked incredibly low on his list of priorities and yet.
"Shit. She's hot. She probably prefers pussy though."
Lucas. He and his family migrated this way from Tennessee and somehow ended up at Woodbury before the Governor's rampage. As far as Rick was concerned, Lucas was a little shit. Mouthy, cocksure, useless. The kind of kid Rick spent many a Friday night reprimanding during his deputy days. Rick privately applauded Carl for avoiding the kid as much as possible. He's an idiot, Carl said to him once. Rick made a habit of not lying to Carl so he had only hummed in acknowledgement and fought hard not to smile. And he had failed miserably. To his surprise, Carl smiled too, a rare and welcome moment of ease between them.
"She'd cut off your balls, dude. Look at her. Have you seen her use that sword?"
This was from Patrick who Rick hoped Carl would latch onto. Patrick was sensible and polite and ingratiating. Carl liked Patrick. But Carl also thought Patrick was weak. Rick could see it in the way that Carl looked at the boy sometimes, the way a curmudgeonly old man might look at a loud and naive child. His son wasn't wrong, per se. Patrick puked his first dozen times on fence duty. Rick encouraged the friendship all the same.
"With an ass like that, she can slice off my balls. I'd thank her."
Rick didn't remember this kid's name—Zach, maybe— and was almost glad for it. Shit. The oldest of them couldn't have beeen more than seventeen. Was he this vulgar at that age?
Maybe. There was that tyrannical horniness, sure, but Shane was the crass one, the one who loved to say cock and pussy and cum while he described his sexual exploits. Shane loved the details. And Rick had always been happy to play the exasperated but dutiful listener. Laughing. Muttering the requisite "Jesus fucking Christ, man." Blushing, much to Shane's amusement.
Shane had been obscene and Rick had been sheepish. Rick always withheld the explicit details of his and Lori's sex life and Shane never pushed for any. But he and Shane did talk: about the frequency in the early days before Carl; about whether or not Lori was satisfied; about how good makeup sex could be; about how rare even the makeup sex was right before Rick was shot.
Out of propriety, and for his sanity, Rick tried not to imagine Shane and Lori together. He tried after his reunion with them in Atlanta when their dalliance quickly became obvious to him. Orbiting around each other, so clearly aware of the other's presence and yet avoidant, their eyes darting away whenever Rick was near.
Rick was many things but not blind.
He noticed.
Of course he noticed. Shane and Lori had always enjoyed a straightforward friendship. Breezy and playful, especially when they were ganging up on him. Rick never minded their joint teasing. He always liked that his wife and best friend got along. So the averted eyes, the whispers, the mounting tension between them—all of it stood out. And he tried, he tried, not to imagine how it happened the first time. How they happened. How it must have kept happening after.
As far as they knew—as far as Lori knew anyway—Rick was dead and the world had turned on its axis and she had a son to protect. Shane saved her. How could Rick blame them for needing comfort? It made sense, Rick told himself. He was dead and the world was completely fucked and they needed relief. I get it, he'd said to Lori after she finally confessed. I get it.
He understood, he understood, he understood.
He owed Lori his understanding then. For not being there when the world changed, for not being the ideal husband before that.
On the farm, he desperately pushed away those unbidden images of them fucking when he would see them whispering harshly to one another, when they thought he wasn't watching. Self-pity was inappropriate then. Sophia was missing, Hershel was resisting, and Shane was hostile. Rick tried. He tried after the farm and before the prison, when anger and heartache calcified him, when it wrenched him and Lori even further apart as her belly swelled with his best friend's child.
He tried even harder after Lori died because he owed her again. For not saving her, for not being there in her last moments.
It was hard now to even picture Lori as Lori without imagining her gnarled, bloody corpse strewn about that dank boiler room. Or whatever was left of her corpse. Only malevolence or masochism could push him to wonder or even care if Shane had made her come. If she was freer with Shane. If she enjoyed Shane more than him. If Shane with all of his experience and love of the details was what she had needed and wanted all along. Rick did not think about that. Except for when he did. Except for when images of Lori—under, around, on top—of Shane plagued him.
"You okay, Mr. Grimes?"
Rick blinked back into the moment to find that he was stalled at the upper entrance to the yard. He looked to his left where the gaggle of boys leaned against the fence, bodies facing the field and heads turned toward him, eyes squinted in varying degrees of caution. Patrick smiled timidly but his eyes drifted down to where Rick griped his shovel fiercely.
Christ. He had to stop doing this shit.
"Fine, Patrick." Rick pinched the bridge of his nose. "What're you kids doin'?"
Small talk wouldn't ease their wariness. For one, Rick botched small talk. He always had. More pressingly, the newcomers already whispered about his madness. He heard them sometimes, and the wide berth some people gave him was so glaringly obvious. It didn't bother him much.
He wanted the space, craved it. He just hated when the whispers reached Carl who already had more than enough to deal with. No matter how unimpressed Carl was with Rick these days, he was protective of his father.
"Uh," Patrick said shifting his weight. "We were just…"
Rick remembered exactly what they were doing before he zoned out. He waited, letting the tip of the shovel rest firmly against the ground. The boys glanced at each other in his periphery and he took some small pleasure in their discomfort.
"Uh. We were just…" Patrick quickly removed his glasses and rubbed the hem of his t-shirt across the lenses.
There was no way he wasn't just smudging more dirt across them. Rick could just imagine the red dashing across the boy's cheeks.
"We were talking about how hot Michonne is," Lucas said.
Rick turned to stare at him. The boy stood taller, both hands gripping the fence. He looked at Rick as if they were holding a secret together, as if Rick was in on the gag. The kid grinned and even inclined his head conspiratorially towards the field. Rick tilted his head at Lucas and stared until Lucas' back hunched inward. Finally, Lucas turned his gaze to his tattered sneakers.
Rick turned to the field where Michonne, clad in black, twirled her katana in balletic movements.
She practiced in the early mornings. Whenever she was around. So, not all that often. Whether because of her frequent absences or her skill, a small audience occasionally gathered at the fence. She never acknowledged it. The prison was large but it lacked a wealth of private, walker-free places for her to train so she was relegated to this public sphere. It only increased her mystique rather than dispelled it.
The rub of all this was that Rick was many things.
Heartbroken. Detached. Moody.
But he was not blind.
It had not escaped his notice that the woman was by all accounts striking. Rick wasn't much for magazines before but Lori was. She'd collect a bunch of them, lay them out on the coffee table for guests, mostly her friends. Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Vogue, Harpers-something. Rick was well-acquainted with the kind of lavish beauty only found on glossy covers.
Michonne could have easily graced the cover of Vogue with her pristine skin, high cheekbones, and expressive eyes. She no doubt turned heads when she walked into a room before The Turn. She still did if the boys hanging off the fence were any indication. Especially when her full face was on display, like today when she wore her locs in a high ponytail. Especially when she moved her sword through the air as if she was born with it. And whether by design or accident, her clothes always fit her lithe frame well.
Rick observed all of this about her in a clinical sort of way.
Michonne's attractiveness was factual the way the color of the sky was. The way walkers were. The sky was blue; walkers were clawing at the fence; Michonne was a very beautiful woman. That knowledge mostly passed him by. There were other things that thrust her into his sphere of notice, other things that forced him to pay attention.
"Careful," Rick says. He turned back to Lucas who avoided his eyes. "You wouldn't thank her if she cut your balls off. Trust me."
Chagrin washed over them. Patrick blushed to the roots of his hair. Lucas kept his eyes on the ground. The other kid groaned.
"Shit, Mr. Grimes." The nameless kid's eyes widened. "It's just that she's cool, man. We were just kidding around. Talking shit." He winced. "Sorry. For cursing."
Rick raised an eyebrow.
"Would you have said any of that to her face?"
"No!" Patrick shook his head so forcefully that Rick expected his glasses to go flying.
Sweet, sensible Patrick.
"Nah. I wouldn't say it to her. She kinda scares me, you know?" the other kid said.
The admission softened Rick. Kind of. He understood the sentiment. What the hell was this kid's name? Rick sighed.
Already exhaustion settled over him and he hadn't even started in the garden yet. He could admit that he was slightly amused though. Outside of Carl and Judith, amusement was hard to come by.
"Then don't say it about her," Rick reprimanded.
Patrick and the unnamed kid nodded. Lucas kept his eyes down, but Rick caught the eye roll.
Rick had never been prouder of his son's good judgement.
"Problem, Lucas?" Rick asked, his voice deputy-stern.
Despite all of his bravado, Lucas blushed. "Naw. Ain't no problem."
"Alright then."
Rick jerked his head away from the fence. The boys took the hint and scurried away, kicking up gravel and dirt as they went. Rick pulled on his gloves and continued his path to the garden, feeling the need to avert his eyes from Michonne after admonishing the boys for gawking.
As was her habit, Michonne made it difficult for Rick to just mind his business.
"Are you terrorizing the children now?"
Rick faltered. He turned and took in her glistening skin and raised eyebrow. He couldn't decide if he was more surprised by her seeming amusement or the fact that was talking to him at all without Carl around.
Even after all this time, Michonne kept her distance. She remained especially reserved with him. Rick could hardly resent her distance, but he regretted his part in it.
He behaved poorly during her early days at the prison.
That was the rub too.
He wanted her to talk to him sometimes. She was so aloof. Aloofness was a prize well-earned at the end of the world, but he was curious about her.
Surprised as he was, Rick wasn't keen on letting this opportunity pass him by.
"I don't know about terrorizin'," Rick said rubbing the back of his neck.
Nobody could arch an eyebrow like Michonne could, Rick decided. She looked to the fence and then dragged her eyes back to him, looked him up and down.
An itch appeared behind his ear. He pulled on his lobe to relieve it.
"They ran off pretty fast," she said.
"Should'a run off sooner. Punks."
Amused, Michonne was amused. She wasn't smiling but Rick could tell. There was the tiniest glint in her eyes. Her sword rested on the ground and her hands on her hips but she didn't look stern. Only thoughtful. Rick got the sudden urge to smile but held back.
Months after Lori's death and he still struggled to smile. Before her death hadn't been much better.
"Tits or ass?" she asked.
Rick startled. He felt himself blushing to his toes and regretted being smug about Patrick's blush earlier.
"What?"
It came out as more croak than question. Another itch blossomed at the back of his neck. He scratched at it with his thumb. Michonne never broke eye contact, and he wished she would because he was too embarrassed, too bemused, to do so.
"Were they talking about my tits or ass this time?"
Michonne still seemed entertained, more tickled than angry. She was definitely having a go at him and it was working. Rick was a grown man. A grown ass man, Shane would have said. He had two kids. He's had sex. He's seen a naked woman before. And yet, somehow, he balked at repeating Lucas' declaration that Michonne probably preferred pussy even if—and this was an interesting revelation to him—she apparently wasn't shy about such things. For some reason, he also didn't want to tell her that they were talking about her ass.
"Well?"
Fuck, she was good. Still no smile but he was certain that her amusement had increased in the last ten seconds. Her eyes crinkled at the sides.
"They were, uh, talking about your technique."
True enough. Patrick did make reference to her sword-handling. But Michonne knew better and he knew it and she knew that he knew it. She looked him up and down again. His ear itched again. He tried to ignore it.
"My technique?"
"Yeah."
She stared at him and he admired her persistence, liked that she refused to let him off the hook. His skin felt stretched tight across his body and his fucking ear wouldn't stop itching him.
Rick was as desperate to walk away as he was to keep talking to her.
"Your ass." He looked away and scratched his eyebrow because the itch migrated there. "They were talking about your ass."
The pussy comment he kept to himself. Shane would have said it. Shane loved the details.
She hummed.
"Even at the end of the world some things never change."
He met her eyes again and startled at her smile. The smile was a small, toothless thing but a smile all the same. It freed something in him and he chuckled. It sounded like a snort.
"Guess not. I had a few words for 'em though."
Her smile widened only on one side but he counted it a victory.
"You mean to tell me you didn't talk shit at that age, Rick?"
He put his hand hands on his hips despite the shovel he was still holding.
"I asked myself the same thing when I caught em'. I did some lookin'. Shit talking too, I guess. My language wasn't that colorful. My best friend though, he was something else. He would—"
Rick realized two things at once.
One, he was jawing on and on like one of the teenagers he had just reprimanded. When had he last strung this many words together?
Two, he just evoked Shane as if Shane hadn't fucked his wife and then tried to kill him. As if Shane's corpse wasn't probably still rotting on the farm after Rick stabbed him and Carl put him down.
All the itchiness disappeared and something frigid settled over him instead.
Michonne's smile disappeared too and it incited his anger at Shane further. Her good humor was reserved for others, not him. She watched him for a moment and he thought of their run to King County.
I know you see things, people. It happens.
It was this kind of look, the one she was giving him now, that often forced her into his notice. This kind of knowing that she had, the keenness.
He wondered how much she knew about Lori and Shane and the farm. Michonne avoided people but gossip still made its way around. Who knew what Andrea had shared believing that Michonne would never meet the players in her story.
Her smiled returned and it surprised him again.
"I'm sure you were sweet. Shy probably."
She looked him over. The itch reappeared.
"Definitely shy," she concluded.
Rick was suddenly hot under the collar and gave in to scratch at the mysterious itch. He saw her smile and her teasing for what it was. Mercy. A way out.
"What, uh, makes you say that?" he asked, curious about her assessment of him.
He had been shy. Sometimes painfully so. Like right fucking now.
Fluidly, she slipped her boot under the scabbard and kicked it upright so that she could deftly catch the handle. She slipped the scabbard strap over her head and moved her ponytail out of the way.
"Just a feeling."
She nodded and walked off towards the prison.
Michonne didn't linger.
Rick had noticed that. Some of his people—Hershel, Glenn, Maggie, Daryl occasionally— hovered when they got the sense that he was slipping, when they worried that a memory had come and snatched him away. He understood their caring intent, and he supposed there would be a certain loneliness to always being left to his own devices. Not that he wasn't already unbearably lonely. He appreciated his family though. He did. He also withered under their sympathetic looks.
Michonne was different.
She never lingered. Her looks were understanding, resonant, but never sympathetic. She didn't mind leaving him to his thoughts, his memories, his ghosts. Probably because she had her own. Her nieces and nephew. (A revelation that seemed to surprise her as much as it had him.) The dead boyfriend. Andrea. Others, likely. He couldn't know for sure because she revealed so little about herself.
The irony of it all.
The person who somehow knew and understood, the one who so effortlessly diverted his attention from ghosts, the one he bizarrely wished would linger for just a moment, was the one most content to give him space.