Thank you for reading! Trigger warning: mention of child death.
It was the silence that was the hardest to get used to. In her real life, the life before, there had so rarely been silence. From the mundane, ordinary noises—the chugging hum of the dishwasher, the whisper of the air conditioning, the ticking of clocks—to the annoying sounds you wished would go away—the engines of a helicopter or airplane overhead, the heavy footsteps of the upstairs neighbor, the annoying electric whine coming from somewhere in the kitchen that they could never seem to find—there had always been something. And, of course, the welcome noises. Music. Conversation. The whir of the coffee machine creating the perfect grind. And the voice of—
No. Michonne put her hands over her ears. Silence was better than hearing phantom voices of the dead in her ears. Silence was better than saying his name, even inside her head. He was gone. That old life was gone. All that was left of it were the grotesque things in chains she dragged around with her so that she couldn't forget. Because it was important that she not forget, for reasons that were fading more with every day she spent alone. What would it hurt if she gave up, gave in, stopped fighting, let the katana drop to the ground and let the dead take her? No one would notice.
She knelt in the center of what would have been the dining room. The remnants of a "for sale" sign outside the house explained its emptiness, the furniture gone, nothing in the cupboards to steal. She didn't mind, though. At least here in this pristine cleanliness she could be completely alone.
Except for the silence, her oppressive only companion. Straining her ears, she could hear the faint clink of the chains on the dead who walked with her, armless and toothless and helpless. And somewhere beyond that, maybe a bird? Hard to tell. But beyond those, there was nothing. It had been—well, she no longer bothered counting the days, but a long time, certainly, since the last time she had seen another living person. A helicopter had gone by overhead once, and she had looked up and watched it pass with something like hope jumping in her heart. But hope for what, really? The past was gone, the life she had known was never coming back. Any fool could see that, and Michonne had never been that. Except for the one time she had trusted—
No. She got to her feet, refusing to remember that day or what she had had to do. Softly, reluctant to make any noise herself that might remind her that she was still alive, she climbed the stairs to the bedrooms above. The house smelled musty, but even that was an improvement over the stench of decay that hung everywhere outside. With most of the world dead, decay was all that was left. Why was she fighting it?
In the master bedroom, Michonne stretched out on the carpeted floor and looked up at the skylight, imagining what it must have been like to live here when the world was real. They had thought about buying a place like this once or twice, she and the dead man with no arms shuffling around on the porch in his chains. Now she thought about it, the two of them here in bed looking up, taking bets as to whether the light above them was an airplane, a satellite, or a true star, shining on them from light-years away. If she were still here tonight, she would know for certain. Well, she would know the lights couldn't be from a plane. She supposed there were still satellites up there, circling the Earth and transmitting messages to empty rooms that no longer had the ability to receive them. Someday they would all come hurtling back down, plowing craters in the ground as they landed.
But that was today, and tomorrow. In that imagined yesterday, there was just her and him, lying here in bed, beginning that slow series of touches that would end so passionately, until the sound of a little voice from that room down the hall—
No. She would not think of him. Not least because the last time she had let go of her iron control and let herself think of him she had ended in hysterics, on the ground weeping violently in the middle of an abandoned back yard, drawing all the dead within earshot to her. It turned out that fighting for your life was an excellent way to recover from a bout of hysteria. But the dead couldn't reach her here inside the house, and she had no wish to draw them with any sounds of hers, draw attention to the seemingly empty house.
She blinked at the skylight, thinking she should get up, keep moving. It had been at least a day since she'd found any food, and there was enough light left today to forage some more. Beneath her the carpet was still soft, the day through the skylight bearing no reminder of the ruin that awaited her outside, and she lay there, lacking the motivation to move.
Something woke her from an unusually sound sleep, something that had her heart pounding as she lay still, listening hard. What had it been? Michonne blinked furiously, trying to clear her head of the fog of sleep, to listen for whatever noise there had been.
Ah. Somewhere a sound once so familiar that she had trouble convincing her brain to hear it as being out of place. A car's motor, purring as it moved down a road. How far? Once upon a time, the sound of a single car wouldn't have carried far, but that was then. This was now, and it was impossible to tell how far away the car was. The sound was fainter now, as if it was driving away, out of her earshot.
But it had been enough. Somewhere out there someone else still lived, still fought the daily struggle for food and shelter and safety from the dead. And if they had found a reason to do so, Michonne could, too. Or so she told herself, as a reason to get to her knees and then to her feet, her shoes whispering over the carpet and tapping faintly on the hardwood floor of the hallway.
Life still lay out there amidst the ruin and death; it hadn't left her behind entirely. Andre was gone. Mike was a shambling remnant of his former self. But she was alive, and she would stay that way as long as she could.
She shut the door of the empty house behind her with a defiant bang.