Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: Fill response to a prompt posted at the TWD Kink Meme: "Michonne/Andrea: Basically the way Andrea called out for Michonne in the sneak peek for 3x03 killed me. Give me anything that may or may not have happened between them up to that point. Sexual or otherwise, I don't even care." *Rated for: adult, language, adult situations, angst, and hurt/comfort.
Legacy
Chapter Two
She told her about Amy and Dale - about all of them. She felt like she owed them that, wherever they were. She told her about how she'd first met Dale. How a careening, multi-car pile-up had destroyed the front end of her car and trapped them in bumper to bumper gridlock about fifty miles outside of Atlanta. She'd struggled a bit when she tried to explain how she'd tugged Amy out of the car. Grabbing only what they could carry before they took off down the highway at a dead run. Not stopping until they'd clambered over the exit ramp and into the swampy ditch below.
Refusing to let Amy look back as the terrified screams of hundreds of trapped people suddenly rose up behind them. Mingling together with the shrieks of the infected until it was impossible to distinguish who was living and who was dead.
She told Michonne what she hadn't been able to tell Amy. About the endless, blood smeared mob she'd seen reflected in the rear view mirror. She didn't know where they'd come from or why, but the line of cars escaping the city stretched off into the distance in both directions, leaving them trapped in every sense of the word. She told Michonne about that sinking feeling that had taken up residence deep in her gut as she'd tracked the shambling figures. And how even then, despite the fact that even the god damn government didn't seem to know what was going on, she hadn't even hesitated. She'd just yanked out Amy's ear buds, unbuckled her seat belt and told her to run.
She figured that something must have shown in her expression, because Amy hadn't even said a word. She'd just grabbed her bag and ran alongside her. Her gorgeous, strawberry blond hair streaming out behind her like a banner as angry motorists mashed their horns and shouted out the windows. Leaving their smoking car behind as they'd darted between trucks, vans, and soccer mom SUVs. Managing to jump the metal barrier and tumble down into the ditch only seconds before the irritated shouts morphed into startled cries and agonized screams.
She told her about how those screams had come to haunt her, especially in those first few weeks. How she'd replayed that moment over and over in the back of her mind. Recalling in perverse detail how the rusty screech of her car door had echoed in the heavy Georgian air as she'd thrown it open - melding gratingly with the surly tones of the man in the blue convertible in the opposite lane who still trying to get a signal on his phone. She wondered why she hadn't stopped to warn anyone. Why she'd just grabbed Amy's hand and refused to let go until they were scrambling over the barricade, half running - half falling down the embankment and into the dense treeline. Heading towards that secluded rest stop they'd seen advertised only ten miles ahead. She tried to tell herself that she couldn't have saved them all. That they were already as good as dead and if she'd paused to warn them she would have risked them seeing where they'd gone. …Risked Amy.
But funnily enough, it didn't make her feel any better.
After all, the truth was that she hadn't even thought about it. At the time she hadn't considered the consequences of her actions or the fate of the people they'd run past. She hadn't wondered, she hadn't even cared, she'd just grabbed Amy's hand and ran. - And she couldn't help but wonder, this time privately, if that made her a bad person.
She told her about meeting Rick in Atlanta. Of watching him from the rooftops as he'd ridden into the city on horseback. Looking for all the world like he was auditioning for the part of King Shit of the undead apocalypse. Channelling what seemed like the Lone Ranger and the plot of literally every crappy western her father had ever watched on late night TV into one rather attractive looking figure. He'd looked utterly ridiculous of course, but all else considered, not bad for the end of the world.
She told her how they'd all thought he'd been a few cans short of a six-pack long before he'd managed to get himself surrounded and stuck in that abandoned tank outside city hall. …And really, who could blame them? What with him trotting down the litter-strewn streets like he didn't have a care in the world, geeks shuffling out of blackened stores and mangled cars as he headed west toward the military blockade - walkers practically salivating as a thousand pounds of horse and maybe one hundred and ninety pounds of pure idiot led the way down the city street like the god damned pied piper.
But as it'd turned out, he'd just been a man who'd had less time to cope with everything than the rest of them. Even Michonne had made a noise of surprise when she'd related the same story that Rick had told them that night around the campfire. Of waking up in that hospital alone, without so much as a single clue as to what was going on. …Because ironically enough, Rick really had woken up to a nightmare.
He woke up to a world he hardly recognized. To an empty hospital shot through with bullet holes, to floors smeared with blood and filth, and to doors and exits that were inexplicably hobbled with padlocks and chains. He emerged from all that only to find himself seemingly alone, his neighbourhood barren and burnt - his home empty, and his family nowhere to be found.
She still found it hard to imagine. After all, what the hell were the odds of something like that happening anyway? It seemed all but provincial. Either way you wanted to look at it, you couldn't deny that the timing was pretty damn insane. A week or so earlier and he would have probably wandered outside and gotten ham-stringed within the first five minutes. Because according to Shane when the military had retreated, it'd taken a shit load of walkers with it. Leaving a trail of bullet-ridden corpses that stretched close to eight miles outside of the downtown core.
She told her about the moment they returned to camp. Hugging each other close and trading happy grins with everyone as the group reunited. And of Rick, looking tired and sick as he'd stepped out of the van and into view. Boot soles grating across the rough-shot gravel as his stance suddenly went rigid with shock and surprise.
She'd struggled to find words to describe it. To describe the way Carl had cried out and run at him. To describe the look on Rick's face as he'd lost it completely and pulled Carl close, stumbling towards Lori with nothing but gratitude and love shining clear across his face as he'd held them close. …But luckily for her, Michonne seemed to understand anyway.
Then she told her about what had happened next. About Shane and Lori and how Rick didn't have a clue. She told her about how things had gotten worse, and how neither Lori nor Shane had come out on the winning side. She told her about Ed and then the attack on the quarry - about Amy and Jim and the others that they'd lost there. She told her about Jenner and the CDC. About what she'd almost done, and what Dale had said to her when he'd sat down beside her and told her he was staying.
"You don't get to do that…to come into somebody's life, make them care and then just check out. I'm staying. The matter is settled."
And then she told her how they'd lost him, and how those words had suddenly taken on a whole new meaning. She told her how she hadn't been able to do it - to end his suffering and pull the trigger herself. She eventually told her how it'd been Daryl that had stepped forward. Looking the man right in the eye as he'd muttered those three; unexpectedly soul crushing words before he'd pulled the trigger. Ending his pain as she'd knelt there, crying. Threading her fingers through his as the gunshot echoed through the still evening air.
She told her about Jacqui, Jim, and Morales. She told her about Daryl, Glenn and Carol - then about Maggie, Sophia, Hershel, Beth, Jimmy, Patricia and Shane. She told her about the farm and how perfect it had been. How it had been different, special somehow. Clean and practically untouched from the desolate highways and blood stained cities. But most of all she told Michonne how the farm had almost felt like it could be a home. …Their home.
She told her about the type of man she always figured she'd end up marrying. And how that ideal had changed after she met Dale. How she'd realized that she'd rather settle for a man who still talked about his wife the way Dale had, than for any of the shallow, two-bit douche bags she always seemed to get tricked into dating. She told Michonne about how the infection had changed her. How it had molded her into something different, something harder and stronger than what she'd been to start out with. And how it scared her when she realized that if the infection ended tomorrow, she probably couldn't go back to the way things used to be.
It'd been a long, hard winter, and by the end of it she was pretty sure Michonne knew the others better than even she did. With the woman often piping up, completely out of the blue with some offhand comment or question about one of the group's personality or background that it often made her stop and stare as she considered how right the statement truly was. Because as it turned out, caustic surliness aside, Michonne was actually a remarkably good judge of character.
Ironically, it was somewhere around mid-January when it finally occurred to her what she was really doing. That like the historians and scholars of old, she had unknowingly set about preserving her own history. …Their history.
After all, why else do people tell stories in the dark? It is because subconsciously or not, no one wants to be forgotten. It is instinctual, a form of survival that goes beyond both the flesh and the petty things that are built to represent us long after we are gone. Because in the end, that is what humanity really fears. It's not about death, at least not really. It's about not existing, about fading into obscurity like you'd never really existed at all.
It's the void that we really fear. …The concept of nothingness. It fucking terrifies us.
The truth was that Michonne was a survivor. No, she was more than that. She was the type of person that would either live through this disaster or die trying. So, in a way she had a damn good reason for what she did. Because she had no doubt that someday Michonne would out live her. And in telling her about the others, about herself, she felt as though she was somehow passing it on. Preserving it so that someday Michonne might pass it on herself…
The woman was like one of those mutant species of cockroach that always managed to survive no matter what you did - able to adapt themselves into any environment so that they could ultimately survive anything from the neighbourhood exterminator to a country-wide nuclear disaster. She realized that the metaphor wasn't exactly flattering, but at the end of the day she couldn't deny that it actually fit.
Michonne wasn't the type of person to opt out when the going got tough. She'd lost just as much as she had, perhaps even more, and she was still here - surviving. And sometimes, as strong as she was, she felt ashamed for not being stronger, for nearly opting out back at the CDC. Back when she just hadn't seen the point in fighting anymore.
Something tells her Dale would have probably laughed at that. In fact she could see the whole scene in her mind's eye. He'd just readjust that stupid old hat of his and smile - the corners of his lips quirking upwards like he was torn between a full-blown lecture and a smile. Lined cheeks bristling with that familiar salt and pepper beard until his expression alone had her laughing at herself.
So, despite it all, she'd kept it up. During those long winter months, stuck weathering through the cold and the restlessness, she'd continued talking - building that legacy from the ground up and passing it on. Creating a remembrance, a record of those who'd lived. It was a record of family and friends, strangers and lovers, the people who history wouldn't remember. A record of the people who would eventually be forgotten because there was no one left to write down what'd happened next.
No one save for them...
She wasn't sure if Michonne knew what she was doing. Hell, she wasn't even sure if the woman cared one way or another. Either way she'd never reciprocated. She'd never offered up anything of herself during those long winter months, despite the isolation and the maddening quiet. But she supposed it actually said something when she realized that Michonne had never once told her to shut her trap either.
But then she got sick, really sick. And suddenly it was Michonne who had started talking. Hell, some of her only conscious memories of the days and weeks that had passed them by, barely lucid and feverish were of Michonne murmuring beside her. The first time it'd happened it was so unexpected that she found herself choking on her own coughs in an effort not to interrupt – simply watching, with blurred eyes as Michonne built up the fire and sat cross-legged beside her. Running a cool cloth over her searing forehead as she put voice to her own experiences and regrets as her ever eager audience of one broke out into cold sweats and ran a temperature that made the frown lines on the woman's forehead deepen with every passing day.
She remembered Michonne telling her how she'd barely escaped from her office the morning the infection had overtaken her city. She remembered listening, eyes closed and heart pounding as Michonne had described the way she'd dodged walkers in four-inch stiletto heels and a pin stripe skirt. Of tripping and falling, rolling off one windshield and then another as cars swerved and braked all around her. She told her about Mike and Terry, about her two girls and bastard of an ex-husband. She told her about the weeks…no, the months she'd spent alone. Wandering the countryside, sneaking through small towns and road side strip malls, all but convinced that she was the only person left alive in the entire fucking state.
She'd even told her, in her own, roundabout way - that hearing her in the woods that day had actually saved her life. Implying more than she expressed when she talked about the silence. About the oppressive stillness that comes when there is no one left save for the undead. Until you were so alone that you'd give almost anything just to catch a glimpse of another living face. So desperate for the sight of a small smile or even a fleeting touch that your mind started looping back, and suddenly you found yourself recalling every detail of the way things used to be. ...Friend or foe, it didn't matter, just so long as it meant that you weren't alone anymore.
Because the truth was, that as strong and capable as Michonne actually was, even she'd come to the realization that a person needed more to live for than simply themselves. …That a person needed more than just survival, more than just getting by in order to justify being one of the lucky ones. Anything less was an insult to the memory of those that weren't lucky enough to get that chance.
So at the end of the day, perhaps that was the point. Perhaps they both needed to survive this. Because in a strange – backwards sort of way, they were actually each other's legacy. The sole witnesses to two different lines of remembrance that stretched back decades before the world had gone and ended on them.
And while she still wasn't sure what had possessed her to start all this in the first place. What was clear now was that it was through the bonds they'd forged during the past few months, that they'd come to shoulder each other's burdens as well. - And ironically enough, when it all came down to it, she did so willingly.
After all, there were a lot of reasons why she couldn't lose Michonne, and this was just one of them.
A/N: This story is now complete. Please let me know what you think? Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! – Sorry about the wait between chapters, I moved across the country and then my computer literally imploded. It has taken me this long to buy a new one and recover my files.
References: The thin background I provided for Michonne comes partly from the Walking Dead wiki article describing her character as portrayed in Robert Kirkman's graphic novels. Particularly the Michonne special issue published on March 16th, 2012 which portrays Michonne's life previous to the outbreak and the early days of the walker apocalypse.
"Remembrance and reflection how allied. What thin partitions divides sense from thought." - Alexander Pope.