Rick jolted upright. Air hooked in his lungs and refused to come out. His heart galloped, ready to vacate his chest altogether. Petrified and woozy, Rick planted one hand on his chest and the other on the bunk above him as an anchor. Somehow aware of his sleeping daughter, Rick tried to catch his breath as quietly as he could. It eluded him.
He struggled like this for long minutes, until he could breathe again, until his heart slowed, until his vision cleared.
The block's nightly sounds filtered through his open door. Hershel snored three doors down. Glenn and Maggie sporadically giggled, a sure sign of their not-so-quiet lovemaking. Pages ruffled. Breaths, soft and loud, huffed from slackened mouths.
Rick scrubbed a hand down his face.
"Fuck."
Traces of his dream held him. Refused to let him go. Shane. Lori. Shane and Lori together. Shane and Lori leading him out to that field on the farm to kill him. Walker Shane sneaking up behind him and biting into his neck. Lori, dead and decomposing, clumping around the boiler room holding a maimed infant, beckoning to Rick.
She's yours, baby. Come hold her.
Shane emerging from the shadows.
Yeah, come on and see my baby, Rick.
Like most dreams, the images were cloudy. They tumbled over one another, collided into each other. Over and over. Shane, Lori, Shane, Lori, Shane, Shane, Shane.
Shane haunted him.
Rick was starting to wonder if Lori and Shane were together in the world beyond, if they decided to trade off on visiting him. Lori vanished months ago. Now here was Shane. Rick supposed he should be grateful. Outside of that moment in Woodbury, Shane was confined to Rick's dreams.
His friend had gotten greedy towards the end of his life and in death. Taking, taking, taking. Always trying to take. Rick's wife. His son. Now his sleep.
Rick leaned over to check on Judith. He placed a gentle hand over her torso, his hand covering the span of it, just so he could feel the rise and fall of her breathing. Some of his lingering panic dissipated.
Rick hauled his body off the bed and groaned. After months of farming, his body was used to the labor, used to the ache and the strain. He liked it; he was stronger now than he'd probably ever been. But these last two weeks of fitful sleep left him pacing at night and sore in the morning.
I'm too old for this shit.
Carl was sprawled on his bed when Rick peeked into the cell next door. It was like Carl's limbs were sprouting like weeds.
Rick was as stunned by his son's growth as he was grateful. Grateful that his son was alive, breathing, fanned out in plaid pajama bottoms and the Spider Man shirt Michonne had gotten him. The shirt his son wore as often as he could. If Carl wanted to wear the shirt everyday, Rick wouldn't say a word. At least his son could still form youthful attachments.
Rick paced. From the door to the covered toilet, from the bunk to the opposite wall. Nearly an hour passed like this. The nightmares always left him jittery. Walking dissolved the shakiness. It also made his mind race.
On one of his rotations from the toilet, Rick came up short.
A shadow materialized in his doorway. Carol.
"Everything alright?"
He kept his voice low not wanting to wake Judith or his neighbors.
"Can't sleep?" she asked in return.
Rick rolled his neck. "Just thinkin'."
He hoped his pacing wasn't loud. He didn't think it was. But he had a history of talking to himself. Or people that weren't there. At times without realizing it.
Carol nodded and leaned on the threshold.
"Take a walk. If she wakes up, I'll get her."
The promise of fresh air was tempting. Fall had settled in. Nights were cool and breezy. Dark and activity-free, the prison yard appealed little to walkers. They still loitered by the fence, wandering without direction, but they were more subdued at night, inert.
"Naw, it's okay. Get some sleep."
Much as he wanted some air, he didn't want to put Carol out.
"I'm up. I got her," Carol insisted. "Go on."
She gazed into the murkiness of the block, the darkness occasionally broken by flutters of light from a few cells. Perhaps it was in the shifting muscles of her jaw or the pensive look in her eyes that let Rick know that he wasn't the only one struggling to sleep. Nightmares afflicted them all.
He squeezed Carol's shoulder. "Thank you."
The yard was just as he suspected—quiet, cool, empty. Immediately the lingering panic vanished. His muscles slackened. Mindlessly, he walked to the garden and sat on the bench he'd built for him and Carl. Wasn't anything ornate. Just something simple, functional, a place to catch their breath.
On good days, Carl would talk to him during their breaks, talk to him about a book he was reading, give him the latest prison gossip. Carl had ears like a bat and could easily sneak into spaces, hanging out on the fringe unnoticed. Rick didn't care for gossip, but it amused him that Carl picked up so much.
Like that Stephanie Davis was lifting gummy bears from her sister's stash and blaming it on Lucas. Rick never remembered which sister was which.
Or that the kids had a running bet on what Daryl did before the Turn. Nobody mystified and awed the kids more than Daryl.
Except for Michonne. She was the mystery of the prison.
Carl never shared gossip about Michonne. Whether it was because people were careful about it around Carl or because Carl simply didn't entertain rumors about her, Rick wasn't sure.
Either way, Carl's attentiveness to the happenings at the prison often eased them into conversation.
Some good days meant they didn't talk at all. Those silences were easy, uncomplicated. They'd share a water bottle and watch the on-duty crew clear walkers from the fence.
On the bad days, well. Those silences were full to bursting with everything Rick wanted to say but wasn't sure if he should. What could Rick say to bring his son closer? What could he say to ease his son's pain?
Rick was sure Carl had some things to say too. But he had Rick for a father. What was his recourse other than to hold back?
Talking used to be easier with his son. He and Lori struggled to talk. Well, he struggled to talk. In contrast, Rick had always been plain with Carl, as Rick's father had been with him.
Richard Grimes Sr. had possessed the capacity for poignant words. He used to charm Rick's mother silly, speaking easily with her even late into their marriage. Rick envied his father that, his profundity. Richard Carl Grimes Sr. had passed on his blue eyes and sharp nose and absolutely none of his verbosity.
But Rick used to be able to talk to Carl. Lori's death pilfered the small reserve of words he had.
On those silent days, Rick and Carl looked everywhere but at Lori's grave.
Rick looked towards it now. Cloudy and moonless, the night obscured it.
When Rick's mother died in his late 20s, he used to sit at her grave for hours. Try as he might, he could never wrap his head around the fact that the woman who'd given birth to him was in the very ground he'd been sitting on. He knew her body was there, knew that it would be until it decomposed, leaving behind nothing but bones. His work put him in close proximity to forensic pathologists and morticians. Rick understood the mechanics of death.
Mechanics made little sense when applied to someone you loved, someone who used to kiss your skinned knees, someone who liked Corona and loathed Budweiser, someone who laughed deeply, someone who wore plaid better than any man ever could.
Morbid as it was, Rick would sit against his mother's headstone and try to reconcile that alive woman with what he knew her body would become.
Death perplexed him then. It confounded him now.
Bodies rarely went into graves anymore. Folks weren't lucky enough to die and be buried by friends and family. People died. Then they roamed. Bodies decayed in motion. Sometimes there was nothing of the body left.
Only pieces of Lori remained when he found her. Unrecognizable bits of flesh and bone.
In the weeks after her death, Rick would try to submit to this new reality. The one where the woman he used to sleep beside, laugh with, make love to, fight with, could be reduced to half-eaten scraps. The woman who'd carried their son in her beautiful, strong body was just gone.
There was nothing under that cross in the yard. It was merely an inadequate reference, a symbol to remind them all that Lori had been there once, that she had lived.
No wonder Rick had hallucinated her immediately after her death.
How was he supposed to make sense of her just not being here.
You could spend your whole life with people and then they were just no more. Shane was somewhere else the way Lori was. His best friend, his brother. Just gone.
Gone but not really gone.
Never content with the sidelines, Shane made himself front and center of Rick's dreams these days.
Rick dreamed most often of their last moments together. The moon had been brilliant that night, perched round and full in the sky, illuminating the field and Shane's angry, cold eyes. Blood curling down his nose and mouth, Shane had looked nothing like the man Rick knew.
Even when Rick dreamed of distant memories—high school, the Force—Shane always appeared as he had that night. Mouth and nose bloodied. Gun raised. Angry. Sneering.
Walker Shane.
Walker Shane hugging his boy. Walker Shane delivering Judith. Walker Shane fucking his wife.
"Christ," Rick muttered, rubbing his eyes. "Christ."
He came out here to get away from all that and here he was rehearsing it. Rick resumed his pacing, this time around the fence's perimeter, nodding at Tyrese who was on watch.
Early morning found him bent over the cabbage. Judith whimpered not even a minute after Rick reentered the cell.
"Perfect timing, sweetheart."
He picked her up to start their morning routine.
It went like that for days. Nightmares. Outside. Judith. Carl and Farming. Dinner. Carl and Judith. Short spells of sleep. Nightmares. Outside. Judith…
The cycle left him sluggish in the afternoons, energized only by the prison's need for food. He felt especially lifeless this afternoon. Carl noticed.
"You okay, Dad?"
One elbow on his knee, Rick wiped the sweat gathered across his forehead.
"Tired, son."
"Me too."
Rick chuckled. "You staying up late to read comic books have anythin' to do with that?"
"We had to finish that issue before Michonne leaves."
"She headin' out soon?"
"Tomorrow," Carl said sullenly.
He sighed and yanked at a weed. Carl retreated into himself right before Michonne was set to leave and for the first few days after. He moped around the prison for the duration of her absences, brightening only when she returned safely.
She never came back with a scratch on her. Not a single one. Each time Michonne returned to the prison looking as if she'd been away on vacation, bright-eyed and hands full.
Rick worried for her anyway. No matter how many times she came back intact, Rick worried. She was alone out there hunting a man that Rick wasn't sure she'd find. But if she did find him. If she did find him. If all her skill and prowess failed her for even a moment, Rick knew the Governor would have no mercy on her. Mercy had never been his plan.
The worst part was that the Governor was only one of many threats. Herds. The elements. Men with bad intentions towards women traveling alone.
And, Jesus, how would they ever even know what happened to her? When weeks, months passed and she never returned?
Rick wasn't sure his son would survive that, so distinct and anomalous was his bond with her. After that King County trip, the two had fallen easily into friendship. Months later and it still mystified Rick as much as it comforted him. He was grateful for their closeness. And he…he envied it.
"Hey, Dad?" Carl said.
Rick set his eyes on his son's pensive face. "Yeah?"
"Do you think she'll ever stop looking for him?"
Rick wondered the same every time Michonne returned.
"I don't know, Son. I know why she's out there, why she's lookin' for him. If anybody can find him, it's Michonne."
Carl watched his father carefully before looking away in thought.
"Do you think she'll find him?"
That was the question wasn't it.
"I don't know. I don't know if he's still out there," Rick said honestly. "What I know is that Michonne thinks he is. And I know that Michonne has good instincts."
Rick speculated that there was more than instincts keeping Michonne out there looking for the Governor. That wasn't Rick's to comment on.
Carl nodded. Rick could tell he was working up to something. Like Rick, Carl got real quiet when he was thinking. Never much for external processing. He took a deep breath.
"I think she should stay, Dad. If the Governor's out there, if he comes back, we can fight him together. All of us. She's stronger when she's here, with us. We are too."
Rick peered at his son. His father's wisdom had skipped a generation it seemed.
"When'd you get to be so smart?" Rick asked ruffling Carl's hair.
Carl blushed. The kid vacillated between his desire for affection and his need for independence. Rick never knew what kind of mood Carl would be in. All he could do was reach out and see.
There was a lesson in that somewhere, Rick was sure.
"I know it's hard on you when she leaves," Rick said.
Still blushing, Carl dipped his head. His ever-growing bangs flopped across his eyes, further obscuring his face from Rick.
"I like it when she's here. It would be cool if she stayed all the time."
It was the most vulnerable Carl had been with him in a long time. Rick wanted to stay in this moment for as long as he could.
"Have you told her that, Son?"
Carl cringed. Rick held his breath.
People had tried to convince Michonne to stay before. Daryl, Hershel, Maggie. Rick wasn't sure that even Carl could convince Michonne to stay as committed as she was to the search. Rick was still curious how candid his son's conversations with Michonne were at times.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because, Dad."
Rick tilted his head and waited. Waiting was key with Carl sometimes. Pushing too much repelled him. Carl glanced at him.
"It's just that—nothing. Never mind."
Carl's face shuttered closed and Rick knew that was the end of the conversation. At least on Carl's end. Rick decided to push his luck.
"Sometimes it's okay to say how we feel even if we don't think it'll change anythin'. Sometimes we just need to say it."
You goddamn hypocrite.
The way Carl looked at him, flint-eyed and unimpressed, he knew it too. Silence descended on them. Not the easy kind either. So tired of the simmering disquiet, Rick was about to name his hypocrisy, put it out there for them to finally deal with. That was his job as the parent in the equation, lead by example.
Nearby laughter swept his words away like a flash flood. Maggie and Michonne were closing in on them. Carl's deadpan morphed into a wide smile. Rick's ear started itching.
"How's it going you two?" Maggie asked. She leaned over the raised bed Rick and Carl were working with the careful eye of a farmer's daughter. "Those carrots look good."
"Got lucky," Rick said. "Turned out bigger than I was expectin'."
Maggie smiled.
"We used to get these monster carrots back on the farm. Didn't look nothin' like what was in the supermarket but they were good. Mama used to say they were sweeter than cake," Maggie said.
"Are you about to ride Flame?" Carl asked Michonne eagerly.
For the past few weeks, Maggie had been teaching Michonne how to ride a horse.
Despite having brought them a perfectly usable SUV a while back, Michonne was refusing to use the prison's collection of cars. Better to leave them at the prison where they were needed, she'd said. Rick and Daryl had insisted she keep using one, not at all keen on her going out on foot and hot-wiring cars.
As was her habit, Michonne ignored them.
It was serendipitous that Daryl found a mare wandering an abandoned farm. He'd tried and failed to comfort it and get it back to the prison. That's what he told Rick at least.
"Found something," Daryl said, mouth full of stew.
"What?" Rick asked.
"A fucking horse."
Outside of setting and checking snares, it was the only time someone had successfully coaxed Rick away from the prison. Maggie could have easily gone. Probably should have. She was a farm girl, born and raised. Daryl insisted Rick come with him. Rick had been itchy then, longing for a brief reprieve from the prison, so he didn't question it much.
And there it was right on that farm. A fucking horse. Staring quietly at them as if they had kept it waiting. It came easily with Daryl and Rick. Rick didn't question that either. The whole thing reminded him of the horse he found right after he woke up from his coma, back before he'd found Lori and Carl.
"Thinkin' Michonne can use it. Since she don't wanna take no cars from the prison."
"Can she ride a horse?" Rick asked.
Rick had no idea why Daryl would know that. But Daryl seemed to know things about her. Michonne and Daryl were friends. Unlike she and Rick. She and Rick were acquaintances still, drawn loosely together by his son.
Daryl shrugged. "If she can't, she can learn. Got people to teach her."
It was Carl who named the horse. Rick figured he got Flame from the mare's reddish-brown coat, the redness of it activated by the sun. Carl had a knack for naming.
Rick had been right there when Daryl and Maggie presented the horse to Michonne. She'd stared blankly at Flame and Flame had stared back. After a few moments, Michonne had moved towards the horse, tentatively reaching out. One touch and that was that. Michonne took to Flame the way Flame took to her, easily. Michonne took to riding the same way.
This would be her first time taking Flame out on one of her searches.
"Yeah," she said to Carl tugging at his bangs. "Just want to make sure I know what I'm doing before I take her out tomorrow."
"Can I go?" Carl asked.
"No."
"Nope."
Rick and Michonne spoke simultaneously. They glanced at each other. Carl opened his mouth to protest.
"You've got work to do."
"We got things to do, Son."
Again, they spoke in concert. Michonne pressed her lips together and looked away. Rick bit the inside of his cheek. Carl huffed.
Maggie came over with Flame in tow. The women exchanged some words, Maggie giving some last minute pointers. Michonne mounted Flame with the nimbleness Rick had come to expect of her. She winked down at Carl who was still pouting.
"How do I look?"
Back erect and head held high, she looked powerful and regal, like she was always meant to be a sword-wielding, horse-riding warrior.
"Like a badass," Carl said grinning, his ire readily falling away the way it always seemed to around Michonne.
He glanced at his father. Rick gave him a perfunctory warning look. It lacked all conviction.
"I was going for cowgirl, but I guess I don't have the right footwear," Michonne said looking at Rick's worn boots.
She smiled lightly, teasing him. She seemed to do that more often these days. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he looked up at her.
"Well, you don't need boots for that," he said feeling that itch on his eyebrow.
Working in the garden made him itchy sometimes, dried his skin out.
She watched him. He considered the benefits of using lotion more often.
"Good to know," Michonne said, pulling her hair out of her face.
Maggie looked from him to Michonne and then back again. Her face scrunched curiously and then evened out just as quickly. It was a thoughtful, speculative look, one Rick couldn't read.
He figured it had to do with the fact that he'd once been incredibly inhospitable to Michonne. That was months ago now, but Michonne and Maggie were friends. Rick's attempts to ease Michonne's lingering wariness probably didn't go unnoticed by the observant young woman. He was unbearably clumsy about it.
Talking to Michonne was the equivalent of a dorky high schooler approaching the cool college girl.
Unknowingly rescuing his father, Carl took Flame's reigns and started leading the horse to the gate, he and Michonne talking about whatever they read the night before.
Rick stayed behind. Maggie eyed him, smiling.
"Those carrots really do look good," she said.
Rick cleared his throat. "Thanks. I'll bring 'em up later."
Maggie nodded and patted his shoulder. Then she was gone.
A nightmare yanked Rick from his sleep that night. Breath catching, Rick collapsed forward, clutching at his thin comforter. He choked. When he finally caught his breath, it sputtered out of him in surging coughs.
As usual it took him drawn-out minutes to reorient himself. He'd gotten into the habit of silently chanting to himself.
You're okay. It's just a dream. Judith and Carl are fine. They're fine.
As usual he put his hand to Judith's chest, peeked in to Carl's cell. Even still, his heart thundered. A look at his watch revealed that it was barely midnight. Rick needed air now.
He and Carol had an agreement. If Judith woke and cried for too long, she'd know that Rick stepped out for air. It wasn't just Carol. Hershel, Beth, Maggie and Glenn were all nearby. None of them minded rocking a fussy Judith back to sleep.
Thankfully, Judith hadn't woken in the middle of the night since the nightmares started, but Rick was worried that she would. He didn't want her to get used to waking up to his absence.
He practically staggered outside, his heart still going a mile a minute. Back against the cell block door, he heaved until his pulse returned to normal. It took longer than usual.
This nightmare disturbed him more than the others.
It was just like that night on the farm. Carl calling out to him, Carl raising his gun, Rick pleading with him. In the dream, Carl pulled the trigger and the bullet went through Rick. Rick looked up into the night sky, seizing his chest, trying to call for help but no words came out. Carl loomed over him with steely eyes. Shane appeared next to Carl and smiled. Atta boy, Shane had said.
Perhaps it was no coincidence that the moon shone tonight as it had that night. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. The yard was awash in silvery light.
On trembling legs Rick walked to the yard. He was nearly to the garden when he noticed the outline of something, someone, sitting in the grass. Rick paused. The last thing he wanted was company. Rick was about to turn in the other direction when the someone turned.
Michonne.
She took him in, his shifting posture, his heaving chest. She looked around as if trying to locate the source of his emergency. When her search returned nothing, she looked back at him. She started to unfold herself from where she sat lotus style.
"No," Rick said. His voice was rough with sleep and panic. He cleared his throat. "You don't gotta get up. I didn't meant to interrupt you."
Michonne looked around again.
"It's your garden. Here."
Again she started to stand. Rick didn't know how he felt about her referring to it as his garden. Especially if that translated to her feeling like an intruder.
"No, really, Michonne. Please."
She hesitated. Maybe she was like him and sitting outside because she needed air, space. Michonne craved space. Rick knew that without her ever having to say it. He wasn't keen on invading her space. He took a step back, intent on heading back inside.
"No need to leave. I won't bother you," she said.
Rick wavered. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was intruding. Yet he wasn't ready to go inside. And, despite him coming out here to get away from people, he suddenly didn't want to be alone.
"I won't bite you either, Sheriff."
Looking elsewhere, she patted the ground next to her. His feet were moving before he realized it. He sat down, leaving adequate space between them.
True to her word, she didn't bother him. Didn't say a word to him. At first, he savored the quiet. There was a mellowness to Michonne that fit perfectly with the brisk evening. Rick wondered what brought her out here, wondered if she was running from nightmares or just enjoying the weather.
"Can't sleep?" he asked and immediately regretted it.
I won't bother you suggested that she likely didn't want to be bothered either.
Surprisingly, she answered.
"No. You?"
"Not tonight." Most nights.
She hummed in response and looked at the walkers roaming the stretch of land beyond the fence. Some bumbled into the fence. Others stood completely still, waiting for something to draw their attention.
Rick was again struck by the clarity and expanse of the sky. The moon gleamed. The way it had the last night on the farm. The night Shane died.
The words tumbled out before he could stop them.
"I killed my best friend."
Rick was stupefied by his own words, surprised that he could cognitively form them let alone release them into the ether. He never talked about Shane. He hadn't mentioned him by name since he'd angrily confessed to the group right after the farm. But for all of Rick's silence on the issue, Shane was always right there with him. In his memory. In Judith's face even though she looked more like Carl than she did Lori or Shane. In Carl's simmering anger. In his dreams. Shane was always with him.
But Rick didn't talk about Shane.
When Michonne continued to look forward beyond the fence, Rick wondered if he actually said anything at all. He did not imagine things with the frequency he had before, but he didn't put it past himself. He was probably so twisted up, so sick with shame and regret that he fantasized about talking to someone, her specifically. Reality was only his tenuous companion.
But then she turned and looked at him and he knew for sure that he did say it and that she heard him and he wished he could snatch the words back. He didn't want her to distrust him or to wonder what kind of sick fuck he was. He had already given her plenty of reason to do that with his initial harsh treatment and his deal with the Governor.
"I'm sorry you had to do that."
Her soft-spoken statement blindsided him, and she turned back to the fence as if she had just announced the weather. He blinked slowly. Had she misheard him? He watched her, waiting. For what he did not know.
He could never tell if stories about the farm, about Lori and Shane, about his failures as a husband ever reached her. There was no telling how much Andrea knew and shared with her.
Michonne never conveyed the kind of pity he perceived in others. He was a southern boy after all. He knew when a look said oh, you poor thing or God bless your heart or you miserable piece of shit. But she never looked at him that way. Given the softness of her words, her lack of reaction, her resolute interest in something out there, he assumed that prison gossip had its way already.
"You probably heard about that." He sighed. "I know people talk. Ain't much else to do I guess."
Not true. There was plenty to do around the prison to keep it running.
"I didn't know that part, no."
Rick exhaled, surprised. "No?"
"No." She shook her head without looking at him.
He turned that knowledge over in his mind. Then he thought about her words. I'm sorry you had to do that. Replayed them. I'm sorry you had to do that. Something stuck to him. I'm sorry you had to do that.
"How do you know?" he asked.
"Know what?"
"That I had to kill him. How do you know I had to?"
Piercing eyes fell on him again. The insistent way she looked at him was enough to make his heart gallop. Rick suddenly felt hot and cold. He expected to be interrogated or for her to recoil away from him, behold him as the monster he probably was, demand to know how he could do such a thing to his best friend.
Just as quickly as she turned to him, she looked away.
"You're no murderer, Rick."
He closed his eyes, shook his head, opened his eyes again to stare at her in bewilderment. A strange, inexplicable irritation bloomed in his chest.
"I just told you I killed my best friend."
"I heard you."
Rick brought one knee up and rested his elbow on it. He rubbed his thumb against his pointer and middle finger. His limbs lightened, almost like they were disconnected from his body.
"He was my best friend." He exhaled sharply. "I knew him my whole life."
A few moments passed before she said, "Then I'm sorry you lost him."
Was he condemned to be a broken record tonight? Why didn't she understand?
"I killed him, Michonne."
"You lost him before that. That's why you had to kill him."
He wondered now if she lied about how much she knew. Maybe she didn't want to confirm that people at the prison did in fact talk about him sometimes, his marriage, his failure. This could be her way of giving him room, but somehow that theory dissipated as quickly as it formed. Michonne hadn't told him a single discernible lie since he met her. She withdrew. She went off on her own. But she never lied to him. Michonne was many things—most of them he had yet to discover— but she wasn't a liar.
"You agonized over it." Now her eyes were back on him, assessing. "You're still agonizing over it. You probably begged him to see reason. Begged him to be the man you knew before, the friend he was before. But he was gone and you couldn't get him back."
There wasn't an ounce of doubt or confusion in her voice. He shook his head in disbelief. It took every bit of his resolve not to scream.
"How could you know that? How could you know that? You weren't there."
Again she turned back to the fence and he finally realized why it agitated him that she kept looking away. It wasn't that she was being cavalier or flippant. Sincerity suffused her words and her gentleness. What bothered him, what unnerved him was her certainty. She didn't need to read him. She already had.
"Did you murder your best friend in cold blood, Rick?"
Rick blinked back tears.
"No. I—He wouldn't stop. He wouldn't stop."
He sucked in a ragged breath.
When she looked at him this time her gaze was searching.
"Then who are you trying to convince?"
As deadly with her words as she was with her blade, Michonne gutted him.
Resolve be damned. Rick bowed his head and cried into the crook of his arm. Attempts to muffle the sound only made the sobs more strangled and angry and deafening. All the while Michonne held a silent vigil for his grief.
He should feel humiliated by his outburst. He hadn't cried like this since the day Lori died, and he'd done that in front of his son and people he'd known for the better part of a year.
He hadn't known Michonne even a fraction of that time and yet here he was. Messy. Abandoned. Raw. Just like that day in King County, she took it in stride. Looking beyond the fence like his display was normal, like it barely warranted attention or comment. She sat quietly.
Though she neither touched nor looked at him, he felt embraced in a strange way. Loneliness evaded him for the first time in a long time. And when his sobs died down long moments later, she continued to sit with him, this time with her hands hugging the bottom of her thighs and her chin propped on her knee. His eyes were blurry and he was turned inside out, but he was sure that she was sitting just the tiniest bit closer than she was before.
"I don't—shit." He scrubbed his hands roughly down his face. "I don't normally do that."
"Which part?"
Michonne was smiling softly when he looked over to her. She never showed her teeth when she smiled at him, and the smiling was rare enough, but it lightened him nonetheless. He wiped at his face again and grunted out something like a laugh.
"Talk like that. Talk that much, I guess."
"Hm."
The least you can do is speak.
Shane had said that to him once, an echo of the wife who needed more of Rick's words.
Hilariously, right then, Rick kept talking. It was a habit he noticed forming. Few minutes around Michonne and he found more words than he thought he knew. Sometimes it felt like he couldn't shut up.
"Lori, my wife, she used to say I didn't talk enough. My best friend too. They wanted me to talk more. They liked to talk."
"But you didn't?"
"No, I guess not. Guess I just didn't have much to say. I'm not…I'm not good with my words." He scratched his forehead.
"Says who?"
Rick tilted his head. "Hm?"
Michonne stretched her legs out in front of her. With enviable grace, she leaned forward to grab the heels of her feet, pressing her forehead into her knees. Rick heard a soft pop and a satisfied groan before she sat up and looked at him.
"You're selective with your words, but you have them. And when you choose to speak you can be eloquent. Probably because you're honest. Honesty can be very poetic."
In disbelief, Rick choked out that same mangled laugh.
"I been called a'lotta things, but nobody's ever called me that before."
"Honest?"
"Eloquent. Definitely not poetic."
She hummed but doesn't say anything else as Rick pondered her evaluation of him.
Before he could stop himself he was wondering if Lori and Shane talked much after sex or if their coupling was always rushed and clandestine. The latter was more likely. The camp was small and Rick was sure Lori never wanted Carl to know.
But maybe in the slow moments, in the hours after Carl fell asleep or was off playing with Sophia, Lori talked to Shane in a way she could never talk to Rick. Shane had been many things but never shy about his feelings and thoughts. Rick had always envied him that. Maybe Shane and Lori talked about him. Something told Rick that they didn't.
With both Lori and Shane gone, he had to content himself with never knowing what drew them together—outside of comfort, that is. Rick was forced to speculate about what they had found in one another. He could only blame himself for that. Perhaps Lori would have told him had he acquiesced to her attempts to clear the air.
There was a time when he'd vowed to never confront them. It seemed like the kind thing to do, let them have their secret. Once Lori confirmed his suspicions, he could never bring himself to ask the question he really wanted to ask.
Was he better for you than I was?
It was to his benefit then to be the "close-mouthed son of a bitch" they knew. Afraid to hear something that would further upset his and Lori's already brittle union, Rick had remained mum.
Goddamit.
That self-pitying darkness reached up to grab and devour him as it did when he lingered in his thoughts too long. He forcefully rolled his neck and turned to his silent companion.
"You don't talk much."
She looked at him.
"I guess I ran out of words along the way."
What happened along the way? How did you get here?
That's what he wanted to ask. Maybe because he was still raw and she had this uncanny ability to incapacitate him with so few words. Or no words at all. Just a look that gripped him for too long. Soul-weary as he was, tired as he was, Rick didn't have the energy to pretend that she didn't frequently leave him feeling naked.
"Were you quiet? Before?"
Before was always before the Turn. There was Before and there was After. No elaboration needed. What did you do before? Did you (insert the blank) before? Before, Before, Before. Except Before was as far away as anything could be. Farther than that. Now there was After and After had a way of eclipsing everything else.
Michonne wore After like skin. It was in her alertness, her stillness, her preparedness. The way she wielded her body and her sword. The way she saved her words.
But, sometimes, Before erupted from some hidden place deep in her. Like when she smiled, cheeks lifted high and impossibly white teeth bared in mirth. Those rare glimpses of her Before caught his attention. He sensed that asking her about Before was safer than asking about After.
Smiling, she said, "Depends on who I was with."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah" is more encouragement than question. Provocation, coaxing. He wanted more. He liked talking to her. He liked when she graced him with more than a few words which was a rarity. This was a rarity. A first.
"If I was with my people, I could be wild. I used to really act up sometimes," she said, voice filled with a kind of nostalgic cheeriness.
Rick tried to reconcile this reserved Michonne with someone who liked to "act up." Even beyond her present quietude, she seemed like the cosmopolitan type. A chin-up, good posture kind of girl. Refined. That paper machete cat, motley and vibrant and loud, came to Rick's mind.
She and Carl had a good-natured argument about the cat in the car after their trip to King County. Both Rick and Carl had been confused—Carl more intrigued than anything—when she had breezily tossed out the word aesthete.
Rick knew then that she was sophisticated and worldly. A version of Michonne that acted up had never entered his mind. Until now. Curious, Rick squinted.
"What counts as wild to an artsy city girl like you?"
She guffawed, a noise more emotive than he was accustomed to from her.
"What makes you think I'm a city girl? Or artsy for that matter?"
This was a new development. He had surprised her. Of the two of them, she was the one that did all the mystifying. Always catching him off guard.
He felt a rare, splendid confidence in her presence then.
"Come'on now," he said smiling. "It ain't hard to figure out. Especially after you brought back that cat."
"You seem very sure."
"I am."
From head to toe, he looked her over, hummed and nodded like he was thinking hard.
"Yeah, I got it."
She arched her eyebrow. "Oh? And what do you have?"
Boy, did he enjoy her inflection. Cheeky, playful.
He shrugged.
"Bet you had a fancy condo somewhere in the city. Coffee shop on the corner. You went to art shows and stuff like that. Probably had a lot of books. I see you reading around here. You and Carl are always talkin' about this book or that. And you're always using those big words that nobody knows. When you talk at all, that is."
She sucked her teeth and a smile played on her lips.
"Don't sell yourself short, country boy. You're no idiot."
"Now I ain't saying I'm dumb. I'm just saying you're a different kind of smart. College smart. You went to grad school too didn't you?"
Miracle of all miracles, she laughed. It was big and warm and melodic. Others had pulled this kind of laughter out of her before—Carl, Maggie, Glenn, Daryl of all people.
He never managed it until now.
This was the most they'd talked to each other. Rick couldn't recall the last time he felt this playful or witty.
"You are such a cop."
"You mean on account of my keen observation skills."
"And the unbearable smugness."
He liked the eye roll she gave him.
"I'm not smug," he said feeling more than a little smug. "I just notice things too."
She shook her head, still smiling. "So it seems."
"So am I right?"
"About which part?"
He looked at her closely. "Any of it."
She looked at him, deciding on whether or not she was going to answer. Part of him wanted to quickly backtrack, wanted to apologize for being presumptuous, wanted to assure her that she didn't owe him an answer.
Another part of him, the louder part, told him to keep his mouth shut. He knew by now that Michonne could not or would not be bullied into anything. She would tell him to fuck off just like she told him never to touch her again.
Michonne sighed with exaggerated forbearance. She momentarily pulled her hair up. Rick's eyes were drawn to the artistic lines of her arms and clavicle. When his brain caught up with him, he jerked his eyes away. Only when she pulled her arms back down did he feel safe to look at her face again.
"I did live in a condo. There was a cafe nearby."
"Oh, a cafe. Excuse me."
Ignoring him, she continued.
"They made these phenomenal almond cherry croissants. Phenomenal, Rick." She placed a hand over her heart. "I did go to art shows. I owned a lot of books. I was always buying more even though I had unread ones at home."
She leaned back on her elbows, all easy like Sunday morning.
"My bookshelf is high on the list of things I miss. I made it. And I don't mean I bought it from Ikea and put it together. I cut, stained, and painted the wood myself. And yes, Sheriff, I went to law school."
Rick ignored the way Sheriff sounds coming from her, the stress she put on it, He also ignored the abominable itch on his eyebrow. He needed some lotion.
"Shit. You were a lawyer?"
"I was," she said slanting a stern look at him.
"No wonder."
Eyes narrowed, she asked, "What does that mean?"
Rick shrugged, all smiles.
"Nothin', Counselor. You built your own bookshelf?"
"Uh-uh. Don't change the subject."
He liked this about her, her refusal to back down. Michonne never just let him get away with stuff. She pushed, interrogated, questioned.
"Well?" she demanded.
She was smiling despite her flat tone.
It was hard to believe that he bawled his eyes out just a few minutes ago given how hard he now had to work to temper his smile.
"Aw, come on, you know. The fancy words. The stubbornness."
"Stubborn? You of all people are calling me stubborn?"
"I can't argue with you there." Rick paused, then grinned. "But since you're a lawyer and all you'll find a way to argue with me anyway."
She laughed.
"Oh, see, had we worked in the same county you would have gotten on my last damn nerves. I know it."
Rick laughed quietly. He imagined encountering her in a courtroom. It was an incongruous image— a poised and sophisticated, briefcase-wielding Michonne, sweeping through the halls of King County's dinky courthouse that always smelled of Folgers coffee, cigarettes, and lemon Pine-Sol. Rick got the feeling that she would have been his favorite troublemaker. He would have enjoyed running into her while she was on the warpath, even if she was busting his balls about a case.
Shane would have liked her.
He liked the fiery types, as he would have said. Shane would have liked looking at her, and he would have been ostentatious about it. Bold in a way that marriage and bashfulness would have kept Rick from being.
Would Michonne have liked Shane? Would his flirtation and charm have appealed to her? Imagining Shane and Michonne in the same room gave Rick a peculiar, indecipherable ache.
Levity somewhat dimmed, Rick corrected her. "I was a Sheriff's Deputy. I wasn't the Sheriff."
As if hearing her her call him Deputy would do much to prevent the way his cheeks warmed when she called him Sheriff.
Her mood remained light despite the slight shift in his.
"Well, aren't you the Sheriff of this here town?" she asked with an overblown southern accent, sounding like Scarlett O'Hara from Gone with the Wind.
She put emphasis in all the wrong places and he wondered where she was originally from. Rick snorted at her affectation and her statement.
"Nah. Not anymore."
It was her turn to snort. "Okay, Sheriff."
"What kind of law did you practice?"
"Criminal. I was a prosecutor."
Rick chuckled and Michonne eyed him warily.
"This just keeps gettin' better."
"Listen, cowboy, I don't appreciate your tone."
Rick blushed. So it wasn't just Sheriff then.
"'Course you don't. I'm sure you were vicious in a courtroom."
She tossed her hair behind her shoulder, her eyes sparkling with devilish confidence.
"I did alright."
Rick dragged his eyes from the top of her head to her gentle smirk, to her black combat boots to the katana lying within reach beside her. He chuckled.
"I'm sure you did."
They lapsed into a cushy silence. Rick noticed on their way back from King County how easy the silence between them had been. So different from the strained quiet of their initial car ride to his hometown. And now he again felt free to exist in the silence with her, pondering on all they'd spoken about, what he'd shared of himself, what he'd learned about her.
Any moment now he was expecting her to get up and walk away.
Mindful of their still delicate armistice, he treaded in shallow waters. He asked about her bookcase and was pleased with the level of detail she gave him. Her apparent carpentry skills might be of use around the prison, he thought. Her whole face brightened when he asked about those cherry almond croissants, and Rick learned from her emphatic hand waving that the warrior had a vicious sweet tooth, going so far as to describe the feeling of eating said croissants as orgasmic.
The longer they talked, the more he was beginning to see what "acting up" might have looked like. Michonne was a character when she got to talking.
"How are you survivin' without sweets?"
Michonne flopped back onto the ground. Even that she did with more grace than she had any right to.
"It's hard, Rick. It's hard."
Rick decided that he liked this side of her.
"I bet."
They sat in comfortable silence for a while after that. Maybe an hour, maybe closer to two. Rick wasn't keeping track of the time and Michonne didn't seem to be either. He should get back inside, just in case Judith woke up.
"Carl said you're headin' out tomorrow."
Michonne nodded and stretched her arms above her head.
"Yeah. I should try and get some sleep."
She should. If she was leaving, if she was going out there again, if she was going out there alone again. She needed all the rest she could get. She normally left early, often not even staying for breakfast.
"You gonna be okay out there?" He extended his statement when she looked at him strangely. "Without more sleep, I mean."
She stood. "I'll be okay. I've run on less sleep before."
"Don't mean you should."
Michonne smiled. "I'll be fine, Sheriff."
Rick stood too. "Alright."
They watched each other. They did that sometimes. Rick felt himself being drawn in without even noticing, snapping out of the moment like waking up after having dozed off. Maybe it was just Michonne's gravity, the weightiness that surrounded her, that knowing quality of hers.
"Thank you," he said. "For, uh, listenin'. I didn't know I was gonna—I wasn't planning that."
She shrugged, smiled. "Meant you needed it then."
Rick thumbed his eyebrow. "Yeah. Thank you. Again."
They stared at each other. Rick needed to get back inside. So did she. It was Michonne who finally turned away.
"Goodnight," she said as she was going.
Rick lingered behind to give her room. He would give her a head start, stay back to gather his thoughts.
"Goodnight, Michonne."
She made it a few steps before she stopped, lingered. The thing she normally did not do, especially with him. She turned to face him and pinched her top lip between her teeth. After a few seconds she seemed to come to a decision.
"I didn't know your wife, Rick, and this probably isn't my place to say. But maybe she wanted you to talk more because she knew that you had words. She saw them in you. Maybe she just wanted you to trust her with them."
Cutting to the quick. That was Michonne's style, Rick was learning. No bullshit.
He felt that upwelling of emotion again, the burning in his throat, the stinging in his eyes. Michonne waited as if testing the waters, but her eyes were shrewd. She spoke her next words gently.
"And again, I didn't know your wife, Rick, but maybe, sometimes, your instinct was right."
Chest tight and head tilted, Rick put his hands on his hips.
"My instinct?"
Michonne nodded.
"That it was safer to keep your words to yourself."
Her words bowled him over. She must have been a hell of a lawyer. This time she didn't stay to watch him stare, dazed and overcome, at the cross with his wife's name. She'd watched enough of his breakdowns.
Rick stayed rooted for long moments after Michonne disappeared into the prison. He stared and stared and stared at Lori's grave. If anyone asked him what he thought about during those moments, he wouldn't be able to tell them. He thought of nothing and everything that concerned his wife and his failure as a husband. And he allowed himself to think of the moments when the words inside of him had been restless and seeking and he'd held them back because he knew that there was no place to put them.
When he finally made it back to his cell, Rick slept and did not dream. In the morning, bleary-eyed and late, Rick stumbled out of his cell to find Beth already with Judith. Carl's cell was empty. Outside, Carl was already working in the garden.
Michonne and Flame were long gone.