A random ficlet that is based on a scene from another favorite show of mine, "This is Us." Random, I know, but I had to write it out. Enjoy!
Super Bowl Sunday- 11:55 pm
Michonne's hands tightly clutched the steering wheel of the SUV, her face stoic as she drove down the dimly lit street of the utterly quiet neighborhood. For the first time ever, she didn't want to go home. Didn't want to face the reality of what had gone down. She felt like she was in a trance, lost in translation as she tried to make sense of the events that had occurred just hours earlier.
It had all happened so fast, she thought. One minute she was in bed with Rick by her side and their children safe and sound in their rooms down the hall. The next they were all fighting to stay alive.
But Rick… he had saved them. Got them all out in one piece. He used to joke back during their dating days that he would be her knight in shining armor, but it turned out that he was right. He would hate to hear her say it and would stop her before the words even left her mouth, but he was their hero.
Her jaw clenched as tears started to form in her eyes and the road in front of her blurred for a brief second. She harshly wiped at them, refusing to let herself break down now. The pressure to grieve had been building up inside of her for the better part of the night, but she couldn't afford to break down in front of her teenage kids; they needed her. She had spent the last few hours consoling them as they sat in the hospital waiting room, shocked and confused, promising them that everything would be okay.
Truth was, she wasn't even sure if she believed her own words.
The car slowed and she pulled up in front of the familiar red mailbox that stood on the edge of their perfectly trimmed yard complete with the house number and Grimes spelled out across the side of it. Rick had built it and set it up about six months ago, the small object just one of the many projects that he had taken on to keep his hands busy these days.
The sight of it made her lip quiver and the tears that had threatened to pour earlier pushed their way through now, spilling down her cheeks and onto her Atlanta Falcons jersey.
She felt a range of emotions inside of her- confusion, anger, sadness, but most of all she felt helpless. Helpless that she was not able to tell her children what their futures held. Helpless that she couldn't save their belongings. Helpless that she could have saved Rick before he...
A sound escaped from her throat that she didn't recognize- a gut-wrenching sob that seemed to break through the trance and take over her body as she finally looked over at the charred black house that was once their safe place. Their family home, the one Rick had built with his own two hands for them, was no longer recognizable after it had been devoured by the orange flames.
She so tried to believe the words that she had muttered to her children, but as she sobbed over the steering wheel, she knew she was wrong- everything was not going to be okay.