Because I'm Okay Too

by LaMorenaReina

Reluctant allies turned friends turned soulmates. Two broken people find their way again, or, maybe, find their way for the very first time. A tracing of Rick and Michonne's fated love from the prison to Alexandria. This story is at once canon compliant/adjacent/curious/indifferent/divergent.

5. The Prison, Pt 5

AN:

As always, thank you for reading, commenting, and following.

Leaks from the Richonne set are feeding me. The reawakened fandom racism irks my soul though. Predictable. To combat this, I've been reading a lot of writing by black women or writing that gives black women beautiful dimension. Some acknowledgements:

Eclipsed by Danai Gurira (she's fucking brilliant)
Sugar by Bernice McFadden
The Narrows by Ann Petry
When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
The Only Lovers Left Alive by iminyjo (found on and AO3)
Phantoms in the Mist by ttranger (Found on )
The Devil Beside You by Leannan (found on and AO3)

High recommendations all around. For my black women readers, I hope you feel seen. But, alas, you didn't come here for this. I wanted to explore Rick and Michonne through other character's eyes this chapter, including a fleeting OC that I grew quite attached to in such a short time.

Also, don't go to grad school. It's so much work.

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Part One:

Maggie knew smells. She grew up on a farm.

There were the good smells.

Moist freshly-turned soil. Sprouting alfalfa. Blooming Honey Crisp apple trees. Cured hay. A dewy morning after a strong rain.

Winsome and naive, she had arrived to Emory pining for those smells. Back when Atlanta was new to her. When the smell of burnt Starbucks and bus diesel felt too corporate. Eventually she embraced those new smells, discovered local coffee, started riding her bike to class, found her place.

But she never stopped missing the smell of the farm.

All the smells. The good and bad. And goddamn could a farm stink.

The bucket of potatoes left out to wilt in the sun. The sharp ammonia of fresh chicken manure. Horse shit. God, the horse shit.

Those were bad. Some smells were revolting.

Hershel had been called to farms all across the county. Beth and Maggie liked to tag along as his assistants. They had seen and smelled rancid things.

Festering abscesses in cows' hooves. Exploding boils on a mare's backside. A herd of alpacas with a stomach virus and the runs. Baby goats that foxes had gotten hold of.

Point was, Maggie Greene knew odors.

Nothing compared to the smell of walkers. Nothing.

Rotten, putrid things.

Walkers smelled like everything bad at all once. The abscess, the horse shit, the gutted goat, the rotten crop. Many of them had pissed and shit themselves before death.

Maggie wondered too if the virus itself was odorous, teeming and multiplying in the moist hollow of their mouths. There was also the sour leftovers of their meals. And the rot. The stink of split and oozing skin and whatever muck they trudged through to end up at the prison fence.

"I fuckin' hate these things."

Maggie jammed her sharpened crowbar through the fence. The impact squelched.

Next to Maggie, Michonne slid her sword through three walker heads. Smooth as softened butter on warm bread.

"When all this started we thought they were still people. Our loved ones. My mama. Our neighbor. Thought somebody would find a cure and bring 'em back to life."

Michonne kept working and said nothing. It didn't bother Maggie. Michonne always listened. No matter how quiet she was.

"We kept 'em in our barn. Waiting for the day we could get 'em help."

Maggie put another walker down. In its place came another. Then another.

There were more walkers lately. Maggie chalked it up to the prison's growing population. She figured the dead were lured by all the talking, working, and striving that happened in the yard. The dead, drawn to life.

Michonne went for another three. The furthest walker tripped and she missed. The first two fell in a heap. The third stood. Michonne rewarded it with the tip of her katana.

"Then Rick's group came along. Glenn."

Shane. Crazy bastard.

"They set us straight. It was ugly."

Maggie thought often of the barn, of the thunderous gunshots, of her father's pleas, of Carol's weeping, of Sophia's tremulous gait.

"It was real ugly. But it needed to happen."

To open her father's eyes. To put Sophia to rest. To further disenchant Rick from Shane.

A fresh wave of walkers pushed forward. The chainlink shrieked.

Karen stood a few feet away wielding a large bowie knife. Tyrese worked next to her. A gentle giant, laidback and sweet. His laugh boomed and carried. And he had a thing for Karen. If Karen was working the fence, Tyrese was too.

Maggie was sure that crush had originally been for her silent warrior friend. Tyrese used to follow Michonne with his eyes. When she returned, Tyrese would check in with her, make sure she was okay, smiling with his smooth skin and white teeth. Michonne received his flirting with cordial indifference. If she noticed his crush, she never let on. Maggie was sure she did not notice.

While Tyrese eyed Michonne, Karen had been eyeing him, unobtrusive. Tyrese pivoted his attention with zero fanfare or moping. He set his sights on Karen and there they stayed.

Whether they were a thing or not Maggie wasn't sure. But she liked to watch them, liked to see those tender feelings blossom into being. This world needed it.

Michonne stood back to examine the fence.

"We need more people."

Maggie nodded. Turning, she whistled to Carol. Maggie gestured to the fence and hollered, "Reinforcements!" Carol gave a thumbs-up and hiked to the prison.

Sweat pooled in the well of Maggie's collarbone. The fall's coolness didn't diminish the strain of their work.

"Might need to take this outside the fence," Michonne said.

She stretched. Fluid like water. She stood, hands on her hips, locs twined in a braid down her back. Cucumber cool. That's how Maggie had come to think of her.

Outside of her early days at the prison—back when the enmity between she and Rick was sour and thick—Michonne never lost her footing. Even back then, Rick had been the more choleric of the two, Michonne's inscrutability unnerving him.

Silent and dangerous and defiant—Michonne seemed born for this world. More than any of them. Perhaps besides Daryl.

But Maggie knew better.

There was a story there. A gut wrenching one. The way Michonne's eyes took in and cut down everything in their path. Nobody's eyes looked that way without having seen some things.

That look had faded some in recent months. Only now it was replaced with frightening determination. Michonne was chasing something, and it wasn't just the Governor.

"Either that or we herd 'em to another side," Maggie said.

The line of dead walkers meant they couldn't reach the encroaching wave from inside the fence. Hungry and bumbling, the walkers just kept tripping over themselves and each other.

"Up to you."

Maggie considered. "Let's herd 'em."

Together they could handle stepping outside the fence. Michonne really could handle it on her own. Maggie had seen her do it, take out more than a dozen walkers with the ease of a Sunday morning. But most of their people didn't have Michonne's skill. Even the most competent of them lacked her finesse.

Stepping outside just invited trouble. Maggie didn't want anyone getting ahead of themselves. She had to make those decisions now as a council member. The last thing they needed was an accident.

Another accident.

Last month was bad. Poor bastard.

They'd lost a "doctor" from Marietta.

That was how he introduced himself.

"Hi, I'm Doctor Tim Hart. And no, I'm not a cardiologist."

Their excitement swelled and died in the same breath. Turned out he had a Ph.D. in medieval history. Impressive, sure, but misleading. Useless in the grand apocalyptic scheme of things. Especially when Dr. Hart conflated his knowledge of medieval European warfare with combat skill. The man hadn't done much killing at all. Squeamish little fucker. His wife Bethany did all the hard work while he offered unsolicited advice.

Maggie wondered if they'd been heading for divorce before the outbreak or if, like many couples, the outbreak pushed them apart. Given how insufferable Tim was, Maggie guessed the former.

Bethany didn't seem too torn up about Tim getting bit. He'd howled bloody murder, pawing at his shoulder as if he could dig out the infection. Bethany watched as he wept and begged.

"Do something, Bethie!"

But there was nothing to be done. To Bethany's relief, Maggie suspected. She sat by her husband's side as his crying turned into whimpering and then to silence. Without hesitation, she plunged a hunting knife into his left eye. Then she dug his grave, kicked him into it, and disappeared for the rest of the day. She showed up for her shift the next morning as if nothing happened.

When Carol asked if she wanted to take the day, Bethany responded, "For what?"

And that was that. Tim's death lightened her. Without her husband's overbearing presence, the woman was smart as a whip, eager to help, and sociable.

Walkers did some good every now and then.

But not when they were pushing against the goddamn fence. It leaned the way her daddy used to when he came home smelling of cheap whiskey.

Michonne mimed a lasso. "Lead the way, cowgirl."

Maggie smiled. Michonne was kittenish under all her reserve. An impish little thing. Funny. She kept it under wraps. The Turn seemed to have zapped most of her playful impulses. It had for many. But Maggie guessed that Michonne used to laugh with ease once upon a time.

It was never more apparent than when she and Carl got to acting up.

Peas in a pod, those two. Laughing, huddling in corners, hovering over the pigs, talking about God knows what.

Michonne reached down and touched something deep in Carl, something nobody else could reach. It was good for him.

After the farm. After Lori's death. After Rick lost himself for a little while to grief and crazy.

It was Michonne that made Carl laugh like a kid again, set his feet to running whenever she came back after weeks away from the prison.

And it was Carl's slow loosening that eased something in Rick.

The garden too. Tending to the land had a way of settling the soul. It did for her daddy. For her mama too, before she died. Maggie did her best thinking with her hands deep in the dirt.

But more than anything, it was Carl finding companionship that soothed their leader-turned-farmer. Rick had Michonne to thank for that. He knew it. It was obvious with all his watching and ruminating and face-scratching.

He was quiet and introspective by nature. Maggie learned that on the farm. Brooding, some would say.

Thing was, she knew brooding men.

Back at Emory, there'd been a cohort of Philosophy-English double majors in her department. She had never met a cluster of men more glum and dour-faced. They described themselves as "the next wave of philosophical writers." For fuck's sake.

Maggie wished they had been more burdened by their thoughts. Perhaps then they would have shut the fuck up about them.

Rick Grimes was not like those men, feasting on his own thoughts, salivating over his feelings, reveling in them. He didn't fancy himself an intellectual. He probably didn't even think of himself as intelligent. He was though. Sensible and keen. He fled inward. Did all his thinking with a closed mouth, stored up his thoughts and words and emotions. Maybe for years at a time. Thinking, thinking, thinking.

Talking? Not so much.

It was a huge point of tension with Lori. One of many.

A man like Rick Grimes was prone to observing.

He observed Michonne. It was the way he did it that caught Maggie's attention. It was like he was seeing something for the first time. Like he had a million questions that he couldn't ask. Maggie could see them ping-ponging behind those sharp blue eyes. He didn't even seem aware of it.

Rick and Michonne's meeting was the collision of two forces. There was a likeness there. Neither seemed to notice, even as they thawed to one another. And their similitude intrigued Maggie.

"So," Michonne said, dragging her sword against the fence to catch the walkers' attention. They followed. "Glenn showed up. Was it love at first sight?"

Maggie scoffed and wiped the sweat from her collarbone.

"No, but it didn't take long. Maybe it doesn't these days."

Michonne hummed. A trail of walkers stumbled after her.

"I'd never been in love before Glenn," Maggie said making her own ruckus. "Daddy was strict. I had to be sneaky. I liked it. The sneakin' and hidin.' Made me feel like I had control over my own life. Especially after mama died. I needed that."

The fence was sturdier near the garden. Walkers pushed and pressed, rotten fingers extended. With a swipe, Michonne lobbed off a walker's hand.

"I had boyfriends. One girlfriend. But I was never in love. I knew I would be eventually. I wanted what my mama and daddy had. Figured it would happen much later in my life. That's how I always pictured it. Didn't wanna be one of those girls that got knocked up and married straight outta high school. Nothin' wrong with that, but it wasn't for me. I wanted to see what the world was."

Flicking her sword of brain matter, Michonne said, "I know the feeling."

There was no telling who or what some of them used to be. The outbreak changed people. Michonne seemed the type that was always fearless. Like she came out of the womb ready to fight. Maggie knew so little about her, but she knew that Michonne had never been weak. Had she ever been in love?

"None of us saw this coming. I didn't see Glenn coming either. Never thought I'd fall in love with some guy who showed up at our farm after a boy'd been shot."

Michonne smiled, soft and tender. "Who said it first?"

Maggie rolled her eyes.

"Me. And do you know what Glenn said?"

"What?"

"Nothing. Absolutely fuckin' nothing. He clammed up on me. Avoided me for a few days."

"Naturally."

"He eventually said it back when the farm was overrun," Maggie said. "But that boy had me on the hook for days."

Redirecting the walkers helped. The extra hands did too. The cluster thinned, but there was still stragglers that couldn't be dispatched from the fence. Michonne looked at Maggie, waiting.

"Mind taking care of 'em?" Maggie asked.

"Sure."

Winded from their excursion, Maggie leaned against the fence and watched. Michonne's skill with that sword terrified her sometimes. Maggie didn't worry Michonne would turn on them, not anymore. She couldn't explain why—it was just one of those feelings—but even when Michonne had first appeared, back when Rick was as raw as an exposed nerve, Maggie had trusted her.

She trusted her even more now.

But, sometimes, the way Michonne wielded her sword chilled Maggie. There was an eerie pragmatism to it. As if she neither enjoyed nor disliked killing. It just needed to be done. The way eating did.

Pragmatism in this world could be just as deadly as sadism.

And Michonne was good at killing. Efficient. Elegant, even. Wisdom dictated that they never made an enemy of her.

Michonne's skill signaled not only survival instincts, but a profound loss. A nagging emptiness that one filled with practicalities.

Maggie knew better than to ask.

Don't ask. That was the rule of this world. Never ask.

But Maggie wondered. What brought Michonne to their gates beyond survival? What kept her with them?

Michonne came back in. Spots of blood covered her face, neck, and collarbone. She swiped at them, only smearing them further. The two stood side by side in silence for a moment before Michonne gestured to Maggie's hand.

"Tell me about the ring."

Maggie gazed at it, turning it this way and that.

"His proposal was our wedding, I guess. He gave me the ring and that was that."

Michonne stretched and touched the tips of her fingers to her toes.

"Funny I didn't wanna be like the girls in my town and have a shotgun wedding or somethin'," Maggie said. "Now look at me. Married young."

"Were you eager to have a wedding?" Michonne asked.

Maggie shook her head.

"I thought about it sometimes. Not often. I figured it would be on the farm, lots of lights and flowers. Daddy didn't allow alcohol in the house. For a while, he didn't know how to stop drinkin' once he started. But I wanted to get drunk at my wedding and have a good time. Figured by the time it happened, Daddy would be okay with it, having alcohol around. I'd listen to good music, dance with my husband, and then go home and fuck him silly."

A brief pause.

"Well, you're already getting fucked silly aren't you?"

There it was. The understated smirk. That peek of mischievousness.

Charmed, Maggie smiled. "As often I can."

"Good for you."

Emboldened by their joking, Maggie peeked at Michonne.

"Did you dream about weddings? Before?"

"No. That was never my thing."

Wedding or marriage in general?

Michonne didn't seem the type to be tied down, always going off on her own. Most men—god bless their dumb hearts, Maggie's mama used to say—would only impede a woman like Michonne. Perhaps she had longed for love and partnership without the whole marriage business. Perhaps she didn't like men at all.

"I do love weddings though," Michonne said. "Always have."

"Think we'll start havin' those again at some point?"

Though the sun rose higher as the morning wore on, the air was crisp. It soothed Maggie's heated skin.

"Do you want one?"

Maggie frowned. "What?"

"Do you want a wedding? Like you planned."

Michonne stood to her full height. She waved at someone. Carl, dirt-covered and grinning. He gestured something, a shared signal between them. Michonne pantomimed back. Carl leaned over in a fit of laughter. Rick shook his head at their antics, as clueless as Maggie.

"We don't have the time or resources for somethin' like that," Maggie said shielding her eyes from the sun. "Not with the way things are. Glenn and I don't need it."

"We have time. We can find resources."

This floored Maggie. The suggestion. That it was coming from Michonne. Stalwart, survivor Michonne who never spent more than four consecutive days at the prison. Maggie snorted.

"You're real funny when you want to be," she said.

Michonne stared.

"You're serious?"

Shrugging, Michonne said, "If you are."

"I didn't suggest it, Michonne."

"I'm suggesting it. We can make it happen."

Maggie had no doubt that "we" mostly meant Michonne and her determination. If the woman was anything, it was determined. What Maggie couldn't figure out was why Michonne was directing her resolve towards something so inconsequential.

"Things like that don't matter anymore," Maggie said.

Michonne titled her head, her eyes incisive. Moments like these reminded Maggie that Michonne had a few years on her.

"Then why do this?"

Flicking her wrist, Michonne gestured at their surroundings. The leaning fence that they'd have to reinforce. The piles of dead walkers. Rick and Carl digging in the earth. Their bloodstained clothes.

Maggie heard the unspoken question.

What are we surviving for?

"You're still here," Michonne said. "You all fought for and built this place. You're young. Might as well enjoy it."

You all. Not her. Michonne still saw herself as separate though she'd been with them for nearly half a year. Only on rare occasions was it we.

"Don't let me talk you into a wedding you don't want. Women have had enough of that over the centuries. But it might be fun. For you and Glenn. For others."

"For you?" Maggie asked.

Michonne leveled her with a look. Maggie met it.

"Like I said. I love weddings."

Bemused by the turn of events, Maggie sighed. How had the conversation turned to this? Why did Michonne make sense? And why did the suggestion somewhat excite her? It was impractical to consider. Irresponsible.

"I don't know the first thing about wedding plannin', Michonne."

A shrug. "I do."

Interesting.

"You got it all figured out, huh?"

"Consider it," Michonne said. "Talk to Glenn. He might want a chance to play that Usher CD for everyone."

The two glanced at each other then laughed. Glenn was smart, responsible. He was judicious about batteries. But goddamn did he love that CD.

"It takes more than a few days to plan and execute a wedding," Maggie said. "You gonna be around long enough for that?"

A fresh wave of walkers advanced towards the fence. It was smaller than the last. Thankfully, Michonne and Maggie's shift was up. The next group had already grabbed weapons and taken up their posts. Michonne rolled her neck in a gentle circle.

"Someone's waiting for you."

Maggie followed Michonne's eyeline. Glenn and Daryl talked by the pergola. Her husband's body faced Daryl, but his head was angled towards her. A delicious pulsing rippled from her heart to the space between her legs.

She saw him then, waiting for her at the end of a makeshift aisle. She saw and felt his hand pressing into her back, swaying her to an Usher ballad during their reception. Slow Jam. Maybe Nice and Slow, the lyrics of which would scandalize her father. But how fitting they would be. A prelude to the way Glenn would peel off her clothes—some scavenged off-white maxi dress—and expose her breasts, kiss them the way she liked.

Michonne squeezed her shoulder, interrupting her dreaminess.

"Let me know."

Michonne sauntered away, taking up a position on the fence at a distance from the new shift. Her new post placed her in direct line of the garden.

It wasn't Carl who noticed right away, attuned as he was to his friend.

It was his father.

Rick looked up from tilling the soil. For the fall, he'd planted collards, cabbage, and carrots. Plants that made for good and easy stews to fight off the autumn chill.

To the oblivious, Rick was just catching his breath. Wiping the sweat from his brow. Surveying the fresh line of walkers and the ones they'd already put down. The bowed fence.

To the curious, someone nosier than a hungry dog at dinner (another one of Mama Greene's sayings), Rick's attention was elsewhere.

He glanced up, looked down, and then up again. Michonne was in his sightline now. Almost machinic in her movement, she slipped her sword through the fence. Watching, Rick leaned on his shovel. Maggie watched him. Until she was interrupted.

Arms slid around her torso. Lips pressed into the sweat-slicked dip of her collarbone.

"Hey, beautiful."

Maggie reached backwards to slide her fingers through Glenn's hair. "Hi."

"Can I borrow you for a second?"

It was their code for a quick interlude away from prying eyes.

"I'm sweaty."

"Mhm." Another kiss to her cheek. "You'll end up sweaty anyway."

Glenn had been sweet and fumbling their first time. His first time.

Oh the way his cheeks had flushed, the way his mouth hung open, the way he'd gripped her hips as he came. It'd been a quick affair, and she hadn't come. But his rushed breaths and his chorus of "Holy shit" gave her the stimulation she needed later to get the job done in her bedroom. She had liked thinking of him that night with an eager hand between her legs.

She had liked him despite her best efforts.

Glenn no longer fumbled. He was confident and eager. His stroke was just right.

And sometimes—when she was in the mood, when they were alone in the tower and didn't have to be quiet—Glenn wasn't always so sweet.

"Lead the way."

Glenn took her hand and tugged her along. Maggie looked back just as Rick returned his eyes to the garden.

The windows were down. Outside smelled of the woods and the dead. Inside, the SUV smelled of lemon air freshener, weapon's oil, sweat, and the traces of their soaps, the smell of which Michonne lingered on.

Part Two:

Soap was easy to come by.

The virus rampaged across the world in those early days. At first it whispered, only a rumor. Then it yelled from across the sea, a distant threat. A blink of an eye later and it was a catastrophe. Millions died in what felt like a week. Most others perished soon after.

Even with scavengers roaming, plenty of soap remained. In general stores, grocery aisles, businesses, abandoned homes. Bars, body wash, tacky soap dispensers.

A nomad could only carry so much.

Soap was easy to come by.

Water was not.

Clean water. Running water.

It why the prison was such a godsend. The prison she was still getting used to, still resisting.

And, maybe, it was why Michonne was so focused on the various scents during this particular outing.

She had been alone and out there for a long time before Andrea.

Out there smelled.

Like the decay of rotting buildings, like the mildew of old blankets and unwashed clothes. It reeked of spoiled food, of charred plastic, of burnt firewood.

Before Andrea, she smelled the rot and the mildew and the burnt.

She smelled Mike and Terry, her grotesque entourage.

They stank. God. They stank.

It was the gassy, necrotic tissue. The mephitic blood—was it even blood anymore?—that coated and caked their rusted chains. It was their open, festering mouths where flies liked to land and lay their eggs.

Their scent flogged her. She welcomed it. So she would never forget.

Elodie. Her failure.

Then there was Andrea. New scents came into focus for Michonne then. Not just Andrea's but her own.

Without easy access to water on the road, they marinated in their odors. The musk of their underarms. The stench behind their ears. The pungent, earthy aroma between their legs.

Michonne rejoiced in the funk. Because it was human. It was aliveness. And she was no longer alone, though, had anyone asked, she would have said she liked being alone.

It testified to how deteriorated the world—and Michonne— had become, for her to relish in the smell of unwashed bodies. Mike used to tease her over the endless supply of soaps, body creams, and perfumes she had.

Baby, you don't need that much.

Now without Mike and Terry, without Andrea, but somehow, with more company than she'd ever imagined, Michonne could take in other smells. Linger in them.

Sasha preferred fruity scents—coconut and mango and hibiscus. Tropical, beachy scents that reminded her of laughter and flowing skirts.

Daryl, well. It was Daryl. He favored natural scents. Sweat and musk and earth.

She herself had always favored warm, sweet notes. Vanilla and caramel and brown sugar. Mocha or bergamot or coffee. She loved to smell edible, loved to have Mike drag his nose across her neck and clavicle, inhaling and nibbling. And when she wanted to smell girlish, she turned to floral. Jasmine, rose, lavender, lemongrass.

Sasha commandeered the front seat, Daryl her surly passenger. That left Michonne in the back with Rick.

Rick Grimes was old-fashioned. Original Irish Spring. Clean, straight-forward, recognizable.

Air lashed in from the lowered windows, whisking the smell of him towards her. He kept his long legs tucked on his side of the car. Nevertheless, his presence filled the space.

His soap. The gun oil on his Colt Python, which Daryl demanded he bring. His steady hand on the grab handle. His quietude.

Rick Grimes took up a lot of room even when he rather not be noticed at all.

But he was noticeable. On this run in particular.

Rick didn't stray far from the prison. He'd made a rare exception to get Flame, but nobody bothered him about leaving anymore.

I got things to do here, was his refrain.

'I got things to do here' meant two things: he was not the leader, and he did not leave.

But here he was. Away from the prison.

Any deviation from routine became hot gossip in the small community. Rick volunteering to go on a run for the first time in months had been met with astonishment.

More astonishment than the situation warranted, Michonne thought.

This was for Glenn and Maggie. Glenn and Maggie who Rick had such obvious affection for. If anything could lure Rick away, it would be the needs of their upcoming wedding. The man wore his vast, bleeding heart on his sleeve. Michonne found his sentimentality conspicuous.

Others did not. Apparently.

But then again, Rick bemused most of the prison's population. For reasons clear and unclear to Michonne.

Maggie and Glenn had insisted the wedding not be extravagant. It wasn't a "big deal" they stressed.

Michonne had responded "Okay" and continued with her plans undeterred.

She needed to make a run to Peachtree city. A twenty-minute drive down Joel Cowan Parkway in a pre-outbreak world. These days it was best to take GA-54 S. Less dead traffic that way.

There was a shopping plaza there. She knew from scouting that it had a relatively untouched Michael's and Party City. In other words, a post-apocalyptic wedding goldmine.

Michonne kept meticulous notes in a marbled composition journal. Old school. Black and white. Dented along the spine, brown-stained along the right corner.

Growing up, Michonne's mother had boxes full of them. She'd scribble and scribble and scribble. Book outlines. Reading notes. Article ideas. Love notes to her daughters and sweetheart.

Desperate to be her mother's twin, Michonne begged for her own. Her mother obliged. Thus Michonne had begun her own scribbling—poetry, sketches, rambling thoughts. She would do anything to possess just one of her mother's old notebooks now. Oh, to lay her eyes on her mother's curling script again.

Faced with the Rhee's upcoming nuptials, Michonne found herself scribbling again.

Dinner had been winding down one night when Sasha peeked over, drawn to Michonne's steady writing.

"What are you doing?"

Few others would have asked. Michonne's general disposition warded off questions. She slid her notes over. Sasha looked, her top lip pulled between her teeth. She passed the notebook back.

"I got you."

Speaking of closeted sentimentalists. Sasha was fierce and determined and a total softie, which Michonne pretended not to notice.

A few seats down, Daryl inhaled his soup. He grunted without looking at either of them. Apparently he was coming too.

Three people would be more then enough, Michonne had thought. More than she'd planned for. Or needed, quite frankly. But Glenn and Maggie were beloved. It was only right to include others even if she would find it easier to do alone. They would need the van. Or the SUV.

"I can help."

Rick sat a few seats away. He'd spent the majority of dinner in near silence, his few words reserved for Carl and Judith. Carl had long since deserted the table to hang out with Patrick. He was the only kid besides Judith that Carl tolerated.

Rick and Judith lingered, the girl turned over one of Rick's large hands as he burped her.

He shifted in his seat. "If y'all need it."

He glanced at Michonne and then at his gurgling daughter.

Michonne's role as wedding planner perplexed. She'd seen the looks, heard the whispers.

Surprised she hasn't taken off yet.

You think she's done looking for the bastard?

She'd been at the prison for five days. Longer than she'd stayed since her solo hunt for the Governor began.

Maybe. He was a crazy son of a bitch.

Yeah but he's dead. Has to be.

Michonne ignored them. She always did. People talked. She never cared to listen.

And then Rick had given them something else to talk about. Rick volunteering for a run? An oddity in its own right.

A cluster of Woodbury folks exchanged glances. Hershel and Daryl stared. Sasha raised an eyebrow.

Rick patted Judith's back, ignoring the surprise he had to have anticipated.

"Okay," Michonne said.

Nodding, Rick stood. Judith belched her approval.

"Good girl," Rick said. He carried his daughter and their dishes away.

Now they sat in the backseat, two anomalies.

Sasha maneuvered through the clogged streets with the fastidiousness that landed her on the council. She glued her eyes to the road and woods, only speaking to solicit directions. Daryl and Rick mirrored her vigilance.

Michonne searched for her one-eyed chimera in the blurred mural of trees.

After all these months, the Governor evaded her still. Michonne searched. And searched and searched. In the dreadfully dense Georgia woods. In those slumberous small towns. In the blackened bones of Woodbury. In the sad forsaken cars. Along the snaking highway. Across the boundless farmlands. In the entrails of derelict factories, defunct machinery towering and sinister in the dark.

The Governor lurked everywhere. Yet he was nowhere. So Michonne never dragged her gaze away from the woods.

Sasha, Daryl, and Rick's greatest concern was a herd. The run team had spotted it two weeks back, creeping from the Sharpsburg and Turin area. There had to have been at least a hundred walkers. The council assembled a team strictly to track its progress, to stay ahead of it.

At first it seemed the herd would migrate South down GA-16 and divert onto Old Highway 85. Worst case scenario, it would follow the curvature of GA-16 but still miss the prison. Close enough for them to be wary, but, with luck, not disastrous.

But something changed. The herd splintered. Part of it spilled into the woods and onto the backroads. It wasn't unusual. Walkers were easily distracted. All it took was one or two curious walkers to reroute a pitching, odorous wave of them.

The wave crawled across Sharpsburg, changing direction on a dime. One day it swiveled towards the prison. The next it turned tail and shambled in the other direction. They could only keep their eye on it, hoping and planning around it. That's what they had to do these days.

The herd concerned Maggie and Glenn who didn't want their friends out on their behalf.

Leaving the prison was risky. It was always risky.

Michonne was pragmatic and cautious, but the risk of danger didn't deterred her. It never did. In fact, it excited her.

Her mother had dubbed Michonne her "wanderlust child." Her father used to joke about her yearning for freedom.

You were born with itchy feet, babygirl.

It was why, her mother had prophesied, Michonne and Mike would part ways someday. Skin ashen and withered, just a month away from her passing, her mother had soothed the sting of her words with a gentle hand to Michonne's face. Michonne, more heartbroken over her mother's fragile voice than her confronting words, had taken her mother's hand, kissed it, and held it to her breast.

Her mother would never know the accuracy of her prediction.

What her mother had known with alarming clarity was her daughter. She had always perceived that ineffable, ravenous thing gnawing inside of Michonne. The thing that craved more.

Mike had relinquished any thirst for more by the end.

He never had it the way you did. Her mother's voice. You knew that, love.

Mike's face surfaced in Michonne's vision. His dulling eyes as he lost hope. His surging, hiccuping sobs when she burst into that tent, his worm-eaten skin and missing jaw.

Michonne shuddered, a chill twisting from her scalp down her neck. She rotated her shoulders to dispel it.

Movement in her periphery. Rick, angling his head back to the window. His long fingers curled loosely around his knee. One of his legs had migrated across the seat. But, still, he kept his distance.

He was restrained with her since their talk. Rick seemed a generally restrained man. But he was even more so after his confessions. Not cold. Not standoffish. Sheepish, perhaps.

Maybe he felt that he'd given too much of himself away. Or that he'd surrendered too much of his wife, who he seemed to safeguard with his silence. Whatever the case, Michonne had zero desire to push. She embraced his honesty, but she also understood the fear of saying too much. She turned back to her window.

They were close.

"There's a loading dock in the back, behind Michael's," Michonne said.

Sasha nodded. "Better than leaving the car out in the open."

The front lot was barren. Not even a lone walker.

Sasha paused at Michonne's behest. Michonne had looked for the Governor here before. Not much had changed. At least as far as she could tell. That was a good sign.

There was still the collection of cars in the lot: the rusted white '99 Chevy Caprice; the olive green Jeep Cherokee with two flat tires (Michonne loathed green cars); the black Toyota Camry that Michonne had siphoned gas from once.

Carts lay overturned or discarded. Someone or something had shattered the display window of the Rack Room Shoes. Shoes wore down quickly on the road. Asphalt and brush devoured them. Sometimes the stench was enough to swap them for a new(er) pair.

A chainlink fence partly enclosed the backlot. From the outside, the lot was obscured by a line of dumpsters and detached shipping containers. Like the front, it too was quiet, lifeless. They cleared both Party City and Michaels as a team. Large, cavernous, maze-like, the stores were perfect dens for walkers.

Luck favored them. Party City was empty save for full shelves. Only a single walker hid in Michael's, behind a barricaded office door. Something that had once been a man.

"We can split up. Get in and out," Daryl said.

Sasha ordered Daryl with her to Party City.

"I'm not leaving you to your own devices. You'd come back with the wrong shit."

"Michonne made a fucking list, man."

"For party supplies. Not your expertise. Let's go."

Daryl followed, grumbling. Michonne suppressed a grin. Rick seemed to be doing the same, but Michonne couldn't be sure.

"She's tough," Rick said after the two exited.

"She is."

"It's good."

Michonne gazed around the store. Flakes of dust flickered in the sunlight, hovering, gliding, drifting.

"She's effectual."

She walked to the front of the store. Rick trailed her, silent and watchful. She could feel him without seeing him. Like in the car, his presence was hefty and dense. The heels of his boots clopped-clopped-clopped behind her.

"So. You got a list?"

With some effort, Michonne wrenched a cart from its nesting place within another. Disuse had rusted them together, and they screeched when they came apart.

The duo paused and listened. Rick with his hand on his python. Michonne, her sword. There was no telltale shuffling or groaning. Michonne took a knife from her belt and rung it once against the cart, just to be sure. Again they listened. Nothing.

She offered Rick a repentant look. He shrugged.

"There are several lists."

She'd sent Daryl and Sasha off with the relevant one.

"A'right. Put me to work," he said in his drowsy twang.

Michonne eyed him. He stood with his hands planted on his hips, expectant. She urged the cart in his direction. It rolled towards him, and he stopped it with his boot.

"Follow me, Cowboy."

She slipped past him. He followed her with his eyes before turning to follow her with the cart. The wheels chirped with each rotation.

"I'was never a cowboy, you know."

"No?"

"No."

"Perhaps you missed your calling. I could see you on a ranch. Somewhere in Montana maybe."

Rick paced behind her. Clop-Chirp-Clop

"Never been."

"You'd fit right in. You seem to like—" She flicked her hand towards the front of the store. "Outside."

He chuckled, low and coarse. "You don't?"

She preferred comfort. Outside was fine provided inside was nearby. The distance between a pebbled lake front and a posh lake house, for instance. A stroll between a tropical beach and a hotel room. Nobody would have described her as prissy back in the day, but Mike used to joke that she was particular.

She was aghast the first time he asked her to go camping with him. In the woods. In a tent. With a forecasted storm that would shake the mountain.

Come on, baby. It's a return to nature. Roughin' it. Like the old days.

She sent him on his merry way with Terry and a group of their Yale friends. Mike never asked again. Interesting, in retrospect. Mike despised "roughin' it" after the outbreak. That was Mike. Liking things in theory but not practice. She supposed she shouldn't resent that. Camping differed from being displaced, hungry, and afraid. But God, how Mike had bemoaned it all.

"I've gotten used to it. As one must."

She sounded put-upon even to herself.

Another chuckle. "You make it look easy." A pause. "For a city girl."

He raised his hands in surrender at her warning look. They meandered around the aisles, Michonne dragging her fingers across things as she went, Rick shadowing. Despite Daryl's urgency, Michonne wasn't in a hurry. It had been ages since she'd ambled around a store, looking for things that had nothing to do with survival. For all of Rick's disinterest in leaving the prison, he continued to follow her at an easy pace, not calling out her leisureliness.

"Why Montana? If you don't like nature."

Michonne paused to admire a vase. Not for the wedding. She just liked it.

"I like nature as long as I can go inside after."

Rick shifted something around on a shelf behind her.

"So why Montana?"

Michonne returned the vase to the shelf and continued perusing.

"It's pretty. The whole Pacific Northwest is. I spent a summer visiting different parts of it. Montana. Oregon. Washington. I had the best steak of my life in Montana."

He made a sound in his throat. Something mournful.

"Ain't had a steak in a long while."

"Porterhouse. Medium. Delicious."

"Quit braggin'."

Michonne smiled and tapped the cart, an indication to follow. He did. She unearthed her list though she had already memorized it.

"So you didn't do any campin' during your trip?" he asked.

He really could have been a rancher. There was an easy deftness to them, an inimitable sureness. She could see Rick there. A southern transplant, thick-accented, boots-wearing. Overseeing a sprawling ranch adorned by mountains and valleys and that big splendid sky.

"Absolutely not. Resorts, mostly."

"Sounds fancy."

"They were."

Around the store they went, Rick acting as her dutiful assistant. It would have saved them time to split up. Rick didn't seem all that keen to, and she felt better having him behind her, watching her six while she focused.

Rick said little as she did her thing. He watched. Sometimes he sifted through the items as they appeared in the cart. An assortment of taper candles. Candle holders. Faux flowers. Streams of waxy, artificial vines. Sheer fabric in orange, red, and purple. Table linens. Gold hooks. Vases for the centerpieces. Fanciful, indulgent things.

She'd started down another aisle only to notice the absence of the clop-chirp-clop behind her. She turned. Rick was paused a few feet away, running his fingers over something. Over and over.

He wore a musing, faraway look that was so familiar.

Something had beckoned him, drawn him away from the Michael's only lit by patches of sunlight. A relic of himself. A feeling. A memory.

Stirred by her approach, he pulled his hand back. Several items tipped over. Michonne eyed them—sanded wooden letters the size of his hands.

"Feeling crafty?" she asked.

Rick shook his head, a single tendril swooping across his forehead. And then, as Michonne expected, his thumb.

"Naw. I ain't good at stuff like that."

That crown of crossvine said otherwise. It had long since withered, leaving his wife's grave lonely once again.

Rick righted the fallen letters. The tips of his long fingers rested atop one: L. He tapped it in a mindless way. Michonne, prepared to leave him with his thoughts, tugged at the cart, hoping to slip away and keep working. It didn't budge.

"I got it," she said.

Holding fast, he said, "I ain't come here to let you do all the work."

Michonne looked at the near full cart, then at him, eyes accusing. Rick rubbed the back of his neck, offering her a small, penitent grin. (She didn't need help. He was just easy to tease.)

"You, uh, you've done this before?"

She stared at him.

"This," he said, gesturing to the cart. "Seems like you know what you're doin'."

He peeked at the hand holding the front of the cart.

Her left hand.

Naked, unlike his.

"I helped some friends. My sisters."

Rick nodded. His eyes fell to her left hand again, and she fought the urge to conceal her ring finger. If he had questions about the absence of a ring, about the dead boyfriend she used to talk to, he didn't ask. She rounded the cart, surprising him.

Reaching for the letters: "Did you have an idea for these?"

She avoided the L, feeling, somehow, that it belonged to him, that it was a private object. She grabbed a random letter. T. When he said nothing, Michonne turned to him. He stood, one hand on his hip, the other propped on the shelf. Rick was much like his son. Or Carl was like his father. Chicken or the egg. Either way, they had similar temperaments. Introspective, quiet.

It wasn't—as Michonne suspected they'd been told—that they needed to find the words. It was that the words needed to wait for them.

Rick fingered the L with gentle affection. Then his palm swallowed it.

"Had somethin' like this at my wedding," he said. "Lori saw 'em in a magazine."

Michonne leaned against the shelf facing him.

"They're popular for receptions. Especially if you're going for a rustic aesthetic."

She knew little about Lori, but she could see Rick enjoying something like that. Outside-loving country boy that he was.

"That's what Lori said. I guess we could'a bought some. Probably would'a been easier. But, I don't know, I wanted to make 'em. So Lori knew I was takin' the whole thing seriously. I didn't wanna be one of those men, you know. The ones who pretended like they weren't happy to be gettin' married."

Of course, she thought. This man is a goddamn romantic.

"Making the shape was easy. The hard part was carvin' the flowers into it. That's what I did. For Lori's name."

"You said you weren't crafty."

"Well." He cleared his throat, skin reddened. "I just copied somethin' I saw."

Michonne did her best not to smile, afraid her merriment might ward off his vulnerability, might send him back into his thoughts, though she never minded his quiet thinking.

"How old were you?" she asked.

Rick exhaled and shook his head. "Young. Prob'ly too young."

"How young?"

"Nineteen and eighteen. Straight outta high school."

Michonne whistled..

"Bout as redneck as it gets, I guess."

He was no redneck. Country as all hell though. Like her father's side of the family.

"It's sweet," she said.

He surrendered the L from a tight grip. He laid it down, then began to drum his fingers against the metal shelf.

"It started that way," he said.

It always does.

She knew how Lori and Rick's story ended. The grave in the yard. The withered crossvine. Those hushed morning chats with her while he held Judith.

The distance might have existed before her death, enlarged by whatever relationship she had with Rick's best friend, widened even further by his wife's protruding belly—a belly hosting a child that belonged to Rick by love but not blood.

Rick telegraphed his melancholy with sagging shoulders and dull eyes.

"Johnny Cash."

Confused, Rick blinked, summoned from his thoughts by her non-sequitur. Before he could speak, she snatched the cart from his loosened hand and whisked it away down the aisle. She planted herself at the cart's handle so he couldn't seize it back. Unless he tried to manhandle her. Mellow as he was, Rick didn't seem the sort. He cursed and trudged after her.

"Come'on now. You gotta let me do somethin'. Michonne."

"Shania Twain."

Rick caught up to her, appearing on her left. She reached around him for the vase she'd admired earlier. She placed it in the cart. Hopefully they had newspaper at the register to cushion it.

She sized him up. "Definitely Johnny Cash. Bob Dylan. Probably."

"What," he asked, face scrunched.

"Keith Urban. Chris Young. George Straight. You have angsty teen written all over you."

He reared his head back, offended.

"Angsty teen?"

Hands on his hips, pouting, he resembled his son. She had never seen him so indignant before. It tickled her. But she kept a straight face.

"Kenny Chesney."

"Are you just namin' country singers?"

"Singers you played at your wedding, more precisely."

She might as well have had three heads with the way he was looking at her.

"I'd bet my last Big Kat bar that you had at least one song by every person I've named at your wedding."

His bafflement melted into reluctant amusement. Scratching his beard—it grew longer every time she left—he shook his head.

"My weddin' was seventeen years ago, Michonne."

She dismissed him with a wave and a look that said: Be serious.

"I'm sure you remember every detail."

"You're just namin' people you saw on a Country Hits CD."

A miscalculation on his part—sort of. Michonne was one of those insufferable listen-to-everything-but-country people. Her father, he was quick to remind others, was a card-carrying member of All Things Country. No matter his elite education and career, his Louisiana roots defined him. Family reunions on her father's side boasted cowboy hats, concho belts, a trip to the rodeo, and 90s #1 Country Hits. Her uncle Walter could play the hell out of a banjo.

Young and introverted Michonne had soaked up their endearing rowdiness from a safe and happy distance, favoring her books and portable CD player to the warbles of Willie Nelson. Back then she'd donned her own wide-brim hat over her box-braids, lost in the heartbreak of Brandy and the yearning of Janet Jackson.

Michonne knew country. It just never spoke to her the way other genres did.

"My father was an avid country fan, thank you very much."

Rick came up short, stopping in the middle of the aisle. It seemed to startle him whenever she shared even the most minor thing about her life from before. Fair enough. She knew she was less than forthcoming. Words were something she could rarely find the energy for.

"That right?"

Michonne continued on. "It is."

"He never converted you?"

"Not for lack of trying."

"Damn." Rick huffed an approximation of a laugh. "Probably broke the man's heart."

Smiling, Michonne eased her shoulders up and down. "We had other things in common."

"Like what?"

The question was quick-fire. Almost like he hadn't thought much about the words before they tumbled out of his mouth. He paused. Then he said nothing, refusing to retreat.

"Movies. Sci-fi. Horror. Martial arts."

Rick made a knowing sound in his chest.

"Jesus. A nerd. No wonder my boy can't be bothered with me anymore."

Cutting her eyes at him, she stopped the cart, feigning insult. She wore the nerd label with well-armed pride, but it was fun to pretend otherwise with him. He stopped too, grinning, and reclined against the cart. It squeaked under his weight.

"Let me guess. John Wayne? Gunsmoke? That's your generation right?"

"Now you're just bein' mean."

They stared. His eyes carried from her face, to her shoulders, to the cart, and then back to her face. Hers traipsed his tanned cheekbones, his ever-growing beard, the Colt heavy on his hip, those eyes flanked by winsome creases. She narrowed her eyes. He mimicked her.

Then, wordlessly, synchronously, they surrendered.

Curling his fingers over the lip of the cart, Rick gestured with his chin. "You gon' head. I'll follow."

Michonne ceded the cart to him. Stepping back to give her room, he watched as she brushed past. She led him around the store once again. Daryl and Sasha would be done soon. As she tossed things into the cart, she thought of that L, left behind on the shelf.

She thought of weddings and families and grief.

"My sister got married a few years ago. She and my father danced to 'Butterfly Kisses'. So don't feel too bad for the old man. He got to live his dream, dancing with one of his girls to country," Michonne said.

"Did you plan that weddin'?"

"I helped."

She was pregnant at the time, still reeling from the revelation. Mike was euphoric. The wedding made him even more so. He watched the events with a dreamy hope, his eyes trailing from the proceedings to her as she directed them. In the slower moments, he settled behind her, encircled her waist, stroked her barely protruding belly.

You're so good at this, baby.

Weddings. Love. The dream.

Michonne saw it. His hope. His confidence that her facility for that kind of planning would one day transpose them into her sister and sister-in-law's place. How could it not, Mike's surety said, with his child growing inside her?

"Maggie said this was your idea."

Rick's voice liberated her back to the present. Just as he'd been earlier, she was far away, in a different moment, with a different man. She released those images. Of Mike's hope, of her sister's smile, of her father's joy and his heartbreak over being there without his beloved. Michonne maneuvered the cart towards the stockroom and loading dock.

"I just said it could happen. If they wanted it to."

They lingered by the dock doors.

"It's good. What you're doin'."

Avoiding his eyes, she dismissed him. "Not just me."

His crops were likely missing him. As was his disgruntled son. Carl made his displeasure at being left behind abundantly clear. The boy's gaze was as searing and censorious as his father's could be. They gave each other a run for their money.

"Yeah, well." Rick displaced his weight from one leg to the other. "People need somethin'. Somethin' to do that ain't the same ole' thing. Somethin' to look forward to."

People.

He still thought like a leader, thought of what (his) people needed. Planting crops was never going to keep his head down. He was still watching and listening and caring. Michonne was sure he couldn't help himself, probably didn't even know he was doing it.

Caring impulses aside, the prospect of attending a wedding within view of his wife's grave must have grieved him.

"People need breaks," Michonne said.

People.

His gaze scorched the side of her face. A challenge.

"They do."

Ignoring the unspoken question was their routine.

When will you stop?

When the Governor was dead. Her gut was still shrieking at her, refusing to be quieted. So she kept looking. Simple. Two plus two.

He approached the smaller door parallel to the dock, Colt in hand, first looking out of its narrow window, then easing the door open to peer outside. He signaled. All was quiet.

At his insistence, she kept watch as he loaded. Sasha and Daryl strolled up as they were finishing. Sasha caught her eye through the rearview mirror.

"Gotta make one more stop."

She pulled into the main lot and parked directly in front of a store.

LIM'S BEAUTY SUPPLY.

"Watch the car."

Neither man protested, instead taking up positions against the car (Daryl) and right outside of the store's entrance (Rick). Who knew white country boys could be so compliant? Maybe someone had schooled them. Keep a black woman from her hair products and endure her wrath.

The smell of LIM'S was familiar. It stank of new world decay. That vomitus odor and the mustiness of inactivity, cramming itself into every empty space. It smelled too of better days. The acerbic, homely stench of Dark and Lovely with the hot comb looming a few feet away on the stove. Only at her cousin's house though. (Michonne never developed the patience for straight hair, and, thankfully, her parents never forced it on her.)

Lim's smelled too of Saturday morning wash sessions—coconut shampoo, black castor oil, rosewater, and incense.

Michonne had been here before. Back then, the Governor's elusiveness infuriated her. Dry as tumbleweed, her locs threatened to break off in protest of their hydration. Her scalp itched something awful.

The aisles were neat, the windows unbroken. Nobody had touched it since the outbreak. The store's condition did not bode well for Lim. They were probably among the multitude that succumbed to the virus in the first week.

How that first spritz of rosewater had enlivened her flaky scalp. Her locs thanked her, crying out, rejoicing in her tender mercy. As a thank you to Lim, Michonne left the store spotless, locking the door on her way out with her precious bounty.

"Brings you back doesn't it?" Sasha said.

The words were murmured. Whisper-soft so they just barely reached Michonne. Unsure if the words were for her, Michonne kept silent. She understood the nostalgia wrought by the barred door; by the line of mannequin heads crowned with strikingly colored wigs; by the packs of braiding hair and extensions; by the rows of oil, cream, and mousse; by the plastic bins of afro picks, wide-tooth combs, and denman brushes.

Sasha meandered around the store, touching this and that, picking up bottles, dipping low to read labels. Michonne could have pointed Sasha to the right section—aisle six, where a dusty frayed sign read: NATURAL HAIR CARE. But Sasha's lagging gait, her loose shoulders, her soft rounded cheeks suggested a feeling like homesickness. Or that hazy impression when you dreamt something between memory and ideation.

Michonne did what she had become adapt at—giving space, taking it.

They worked in silence. On occasion, the hiss of their footsteps. The staticky crinkle of packaging. The thump of unwanted products tossed back onto yellow-stained shelves.

Michonne gazed up at intervals, tracking the bob of Sasha's fluffed ponytail, hair coiled from a week of braids. They eventually met in aisle six.

Michonne's basket was already filled. Shampoo and conditioner. Rosewater. A water-based mousse. Gel for Maggie and Carol. Shea butter for Fahari.

Fahari. From Woodbury.

A placid and industrious woman that no older than forty. Who knew for sure. Age meant everything and nothing now. She had dewey skin the color of pecan pie; sloping, shapely breasts; and a shock of dark and buoyant hair. She was beautiful, and suitors noticed. Lingering about with eyes fastened to those breasts, to her voluminous hair, to her glittering skin.

The outbreak dimmed neither desire nor curiosity. Those things—those deliciously human and alive things—existed alongside the gaping hole of existential hysteria. Psychosis brought about by endless death. The continual purgatory of the undead.

What could alleviate that kind of ontological terror better than a good fuck? Desire, curiosity, fucking, things Michonne didn't think much about these days. She hadn't thought much of it when Mike tossed and turned a few feet away from her and their daughter, or when he reached for her and bristled at her rejection.

Fahari didn't seem to return the interest directed at her, not in any notable way. Maybe she had the memory of her own Mike to contend with, her body attuned only to the basics: food, water, sleep. Who knew.

The Woodbury survivors were little more than ephemera to Michonne. Reminders of her failure and their own.

Guilt cemented their eyes to the ground when she passed. Months after the Governor destroyed Woodbury. Months after her instincts had proven prescient. Her pursuit of the Governor reproached them. She knew that much. Desperate to believe he was dead or long gone, her searching reminded them that she had known what he was and they had not. And as long as she continued to look, they would have to wonder if, again, she knew something they did not.

They turned away from her. She looked past them.

Except Fahari. Sometimes Michonne noticed her.

Sometimes sitting on an overturned crate, dipping into a large tub of shea butter nestled between her legs. Her scalp gleamed after each drag of her fingers. Sometimes she looked up, fingers massaging those parts, and smiled, eyes soft with apology. Michonne only nodded in return. She avoided the details of Fahari's face as much as she could.

Fahari's face morphed into more familiar ones. The face of her sisters. Adélaïde's wide nose. Madeline's rounded chin. Céline's thick hair. Features, voices, people she would never see again.

Michonne shifted the basket she was holding. She'd use Sasha as an intermediary; they seemed to have a good rapport. That was as far as Michonne's goodwill extended.

"I used to hate doing my hair."

Michonne fingered a dusty bottle of leave-in conditioner. "Why?"

Sasha shrugged. "I'm lazy."

"I doubt that."

"None of us can be lazy anymore, I guess."

"You don't seem the type."

"Ty used to say I was Type-A."

They shared a light laugh. Similar accusations had been lobbed at Michonne during various stages of her life.

"But not about your hair?" Michonne asked.

"Not about doing my hair. I used to miss wash days. Way more than I should have. If I could get somebody else to do it, I would. Sometimes I used to pay so much at salons—one-fifty, two-hundred dollars for a wash and twist. Just so I didn't have to do it myself."

Michonne breathed. "I get it."

Locs had always been less maintenance for her than loose hair, but she recalled the begrudging wash days, the pricey salon visits, the retwists, the abject frustration of undone hair.

"I hated it. It used to—"

Sasha paused and cleared her throat. Her eyes drifted to the front of the store without seeing it.

"It used to piss my mom off so bad. I swear to God. Sasha, you have such beautiful hair. Be grateful! She used to say that all the time. She got on my nerves. Fuck."

There was a fondness there. And regret. Always regret.

Setting the basket on the floor, Michonne propped her hip against the shelf. It groaned, shuddered, then held. Sasha trained her eyes on the door. Michonne followed the flurry of dust in front of her face.

"Now we're just praying we don't run out of water. I can't even think about hair products half the time. Sometimes I'd give anything to be back in my apartment, doing my hair, complaining about stupid shit to my mom on the phone."

In a rare moment of vulnerability, Sasha's face contorted with sorrow. Her chest swelled, an intake of breath sharp enough to repel any wayward tears. Tears that never came.

Her breath evened; her face slackened.

Michonne bore witness to this moment in silence. And when Sasha moved on from it, Michonne moved with her. Sasha dumped an armful of products into her basket and sighed.

"Fuck, I need to do my hair."

Michonne retrieved her own basket. "I can do it."

Sasha stared, doubt evident in the scrunch her nose.

"Or not."

"You got the time?"

"Could do it in an hour."

"Not what I meant," Sasha said.

Michonne ignored that. They needed to get back. She had a few things for the wedding she wanted to do before the day's end. She tossed the tub of shea butter to Sasha.

"Fahari."

"You could just give it to her yourself," Sasha said.

Michonne nearly sighed.

"He's gone."

Michonne did sigh then and kept walking. Sasha, goddamit, she was persistent. Feet light, shoulders set, she caught up to Michonne and blocked her path.

"So what? You're gonna look for him forever?"

The questions, the questions, the fucking questions. Sympathetic and endless and irritating. And that thing inside of her, that drive, the knowing. Continual. Dreadful. Inexpressible. But there. Sure as the sun's rising.

"No. Not forever."

Between them, momentarily impassable, was their insistence. Sasha's insistence that Michonne was chasing a ghost. Michonne's insistence that she was not.

Not that ghost, Sasha's stare said. The other ones.

Sasha knew nothing about Michonne's life before. She didn't need to. Everyone had ghosts. Michonne appreciated the concern. Or, at least, she knew she should. It was a kindness, a gesture of goodwill. But her ghosts were only hers to worry about.

Sasha branded her with a final searching look. Then she nodded.

"We could use you at the prison. That's all I'm saying."

Michonne slipped around Sasha. "You just want someone around to twist your hair."

To Michonne's surprise, Sasha threw her head back and laughed.

Part Three:

She hated the smell of prisons.

Fahari was seventeen when her mother got pinned. Six years for fraud. Eight additional months for assaulting a police officer during arrest. Her mother would spend the next few years of her life at Whitworth Women's Facility, almost two hours from Atlanta.

Her aunt and uncle drove her up every other weekend for the first year. It dwindled to every quarter during her sophomore year at Spelman. She had stopped visiting altogether by the time she graduated.

Her mother took to prison with the joy of someone coming home. Maybe that's why she permanently extended her stay by strangling her cellmate to death. It took three COs to subdue her. She took one of their eyes for their trouble. Fahari's mother was transferred to Arrendale State Prison to live out the rest of her days until they gave her the needle. Fahari visited her then for the first time in three years.

Why, she demanded of her mother.

Why won't you stop? Why don't you want to come home? Why don't you love me?

Her mother met her questions with stinging indifference. An apathy one should never direct at their children.

"Don't come back here," her mother said, eyes on the window even though she didn't dream of freedom.

Only later would Fahari understand that prison was freedom for her mother.

Fahari obliged that final request with equal parts despair and relief. She never saw or spoke to her mother again.

Years passed. Fahari built a life for herself. A good one by all accounts.

And she swore never to get locked up, never to fuck up so bad that she'd end up behind bars, shuffled to and fro on a tight schedule, being told what to do, when to do it. Bitter and cold like her mother, face shriveled by rage and cocaine.

When the bus arrived at the prison, it took everything for Fahari not to run back to Woodbury. She considered living there alone. Governor be damned. He could kill her if he found her. After he burned Woodbury, she still considered making a home in whatever was left or finding someplace new.

She had sworn to herself. Never step foot in a prison again.

But here she was.

She forgave herself after a while. Her promise preceded the Turn by years. How could she have seen this coming? None of them did. None of them predicted that one day people would die without really dying.

The prison was everything Woodbury was not. Hulking. Monstrous. Real. There was no covering what it was, no pretending it was a palace.

And, in that way, despite its incontestable ugliness, despite her sordid history, the prison became home.

She knew too that it would be her tomb.

I'm going to die here, she thought the first time she entered her cell.

She did not know how she knew. She just did. She would die here.

Just as her mother had died in her cell after the Turn.

Fahari couldn't confirm that. Not with any certainty. By the time the world went dark, she considered herself motherless and made no effort to find the woman who'd birthed her. But she thought of her and she knew. Her mother had died in that prison the way she'd always wanted to.

Fahari had never wanted to die in a cell, but she knew she would. She did not know how she knew. She just did. She would die like the mother who never wanted her.

The irony was that she did not mind. She embraced the knowledge with indifference. Perhaps some joy.

For the first time in her life, she understood her mother. She understood what it meant to be soul weary, unable to muster the feelings of those around you. For her mother, it had been things like love and joy and warmth. For Fahari, now, it was the desire to keep going. The will to live had abandoned her.

It was perhaps why she had settled into Woodbury despite seeing what the Governor was. He had the same eyes as her mother. Empty. She saw him, really saw him, the moment she met him. But, she reasoned, as long as his evil was not directed at her, she could live with it.

She had been a good person once. One who loved justice. One who confronted men like the Governor. Except now she was just so goddamn tired. Tiredness had followed her for years. And it had finally caught up to her.

Fahari accepted the bed, the running water, the food. And she ignored the evil in his eyes.

She turned away when Michonne arrived in Woodbury, sword on her back, eyes shrewd.

She watched from the bus when Michonne cut down those walkers in rage after her friend died.

It was Michonne's eyes she met when they arrived at the prison and Fahari had wanted to run away. Michonne's stare held her in place. Not with anger or malice—and God knows she had a right to them. No, what held Fahari in place was the woman's dispassion. That had shamed Fahari more than anger ever could.

Now when the others from Woodbury avoided the warrior's eyes, Fahari did not.

As Michonne searched for the Governor, Fahari got used to the smell of the prison.

It had been more than ten years since she last saw her mother. More than ten years since she sat in the visiting room as her mother dismissed her.

But she never forgot the smell of that facility. Acidic. Stringent. DBC-34 industrial cleaner and degreaser. Used in excess to cover the smell of cigarettes and, according to her mother, "stankin' pussy."

This prison smelled of death. Everything did now with the walkers roaming, crowding at the fence, trying to get into a place that people had always wanted to get out of. Except her mother, of course.

But this prison also smelled of life. Sweat. Soap. The musky smell of sex because people were never going to stop fucking. The metal of guns and knives. The sweet and earthy smell of Rick's crops. The pigs. The horse that Michonne spent more time with than she did people.

Fahari swore to never step foot in another prison. But she was here, and it wasn't the worst thing ever. This place, its ugliness, its smells, its realness. She slept soundly here. Something she could never do at Woodbury. She was her mother's child.

Tonight, the prison's usual smells were overwhelmed by others. Incense alight in intricate burners. Roasted chicken and vegetables. Perfume sprayed onto old dresses. Cologne spritzed onto pulse points. Honeyed whiskey and sweet wine.

It had been a short and beautiful ceremony.

Fahari never cared much for weddings or marriage or romantic love.

She liked to fuck. And it's not even like she loved that either. Men were such bumbling creatures and she had never developed eyes for women. She liked to fuck, but she didn't love it. And the idea of "making love"? Preposterous. As silly a thing as she'd ever heard.

She reserved love for her friends, for her aunt and uncle, for two of her cousins but not the third.

All that aside, it was clear Maggie and Glenn loved each other. That was sweet. Especially now, world being what it was. She could never begrudge such tender feelings, such hope, even if she could not muster them in herself. Dear old mom had passed along her misanthropy. These days she felt helpless against it.

But Maggie looked gorgeous. Glenn cried and smiled and laughed. The crowd hooted and hollered and made crude jokes. Hershel pretended not to hear.

It was a risk to have so much activity out in the open like this. Walkers congregated around noise and light. But it seemed worth it. There was a rotating shift of people at the fence, but, despite a strange increase in encroaching walkers recently, there were few tonight.

Fahari didn't believe in God, but she would take the good fortune. Even the universe needed a break from being such a fucking cunt all the time.

People drank and laughed and danced. A fire burned in the pit. Candles burned on the tables, hung from the pergola in glass lanterns, lined the makeshift aisle.

Daryl and Carol supervised the grill, probably so they only had to talk to each other.

Tyrese with his booming laugh and infectious energy animated the dance floor. There were more than a few people dancing, including the newly weds. The liquor helped.

And the woman responsible for it all relegated herself to the improvised bar. Some slabs of wood nailed together to form a high L-shaped table. The wooden stools must have been pilfered from an actual pub.

Michonne made drinks with the quiet nimbleness she seemed to do everything else. To each person she offered a hushed, "What can I get you" and little else. She seemed to have an endless Rolodex of drink recipes stored in her brain.

Lulled by Michonne's efficient movement and introversion, Fahari planted herself at the corner of the "bar." And she watched. The dancing. The laughing. The drinking. The flirting that could only serve as a foreplay.

And she ignored the subtle looks directed at her, at Michonne. She was used to them. She was sure Michonne was too though she suspected Michonne did not notice because the men who directed them were of little interest to her.

The prison was overwhelmingly populated by white men. Curious white men.

Fahari knew what they saw when they looked at her, Michonne, Sasha, and Karen. Shapeliness. Exoticism. Something new to try. Especially her and Michonne with their dark-skin and fat asses.

Staring, staring, staring. Fantasizing. Hoping. Hinting. Lingering by the bar. Leaving deflected by Michonne's curtness and Fahari's silence.

So transparent and boring they all were. Emboldened by the alcohol and the rare festivities. Yearning for black pussy at the end of the world.

Fahari hated to reward their keenness. But she was growing increasingly tipsy and thus horny.

Handsome, handsome Tyrese had a thing for Karen. It was too bad. She would have liked him to toss her around a bit, bounce her up and down on his dick.

And Bob. He liked Sasha. And the drink. She knew it by how insistently he avoided the bar even with his eyes. Her mother had tried to kick drinking once. She knew the look. Plus he was a sweet one, Bob. He seemed the type to form attachments easily. And as much as men touted their philandering ways, it was them who got attached. Particularly when the pussy was good, as she knew hers was. It wasn't anything she took pride in. She was just realistic about its effects.

The begging, The hangdog look. The stalking.

White men yearned in a special kind of way after bedding black women. Fahari had fucked enough of them to know. She wasn't interested in revisiting that, but she had limited options.

She turned her eyes to the only white man she would genuinely enjoy fucking: Rick Grimes.

He possessed a breathtaking attractiveness. Tall and lean and intense. He was her favorite kind of man: pretty and quiet. He had probably said a grand total of twenty words to her in the last five months, counting the phrases he repeated.

Mornin', ma'am, if he met her eyes on the way to his crops. A gentle nod as he went on his bowlegged way.

Real nice out today, if she commented on the weather on her way to the fence.

Thank you, ma'am, if she complimented the juiciness of his tomatoes, the sweetness of his carrots.

He's a real good kid, if she noted how hard Carl worked in the garden.

Rick Grimes lingered little and talked even less. Apparently he'd lost his wife shortly before Woodbury's arrival. Probably didn't talk much before that either.

He used to be the leader, she had been told. Gossip spread like wildfire in places like this. Anywhere where people had time.

With the way his family looked at him, like they were just waiting for him to snap out of something, he still was the leader. If shit went south, like, really south, they would turn to him again. He was commanding that way, reserved as he was.

There was just something about him.

But he clearly didn't want to lead. He was content with his kids and crops and pigs. The man kept his head down and his hands working. Fahari knew something he could do with those hands.

Regrettably, Rick Grimes didn't do the kind of looking the other white men did.

It was a shame. There was a rawness there, a simmering ferocity that would make for good fucking. Sometimes the saddest men gave the best dick. Too bad he directed all his angst to those vegetables.

But that didn't mean he didn't do any looking. He was an observer. Probably from his supposed deputy days.

Oh, he looked. Just not at her. And not the way other men did. Most of the time.

Judging by the way he (occasionally, heedlessly) looked at one woman in particular, Rick Grimes was not immune to the allure of a fat ass. Or a striking, dewy face.

He was a good man, it seemed. But a man nonetheless.

He hadn't bothered to dress up for this occasion, but he looked good in his plaid and boots, hair ruffled by the wind, beard overtaking that handsome face. He hid on the periphery of the reception, rocking his daughter, hoping not to be noticed or cajoled into something as ghastly as dancing. That man had two left feet and Fahari didn't need confirmation of that.

Carl wasn't any keener on dancing than his father and seemed to be hiding too. Except for when he'd come to the bar to chat with his buddy, casting a shy look in Fahari's direction before devoting his attention to Michonne. Her neutral expression melted into a warm smile, and she'd send him on his way with something non-alcoholic.

Rick watched Carl every time he came over, but his eyes would linger at the bar long after his son had returned to their table, tracking Michonne's graceful movement, her slender arms as she heaved boxes of liquor, the practiced way she portioned without measuring, the acrobatic way she spun the bottles, to the delight of her patrons. She offered a rare wink to the most awestruck.

Fahari watched Rick watch Michonne. It was easy to do. She'd successfully disappeared into the corner once the men stopped approaching her.

It wasn't the first time she noticed Rick's curiosity. Or the duo's similarity. A similarity neither seemed to notice.

Fahari slid her eyes to Michonne. Did she notice? She seemed a woman who noticed everything. But then again, she was always moving. Fahari knew running when she saw it. She recognized the gluttonous grief that ate you alive.

It was why Fahari met Michonne's eyes when others avoided them. Because she understood. Nothing was worse than pity when you didn't ask for it. Fahari spoke without ever planning to.

"Thank you," she said.

Turning, Michonne eyed the glass Fahari was still nursing.

"For the shea butter."

The head shake confirmed what Fahari had guessed. Michonne's thoughtfulness was supposed to be a secret, one Sasha hadn't bothered to keep.

"Don't mention it."

Fahari got the impression that Michonne really would have rather she never mentioned it.

Michonne had a smokey voice. It had a come-hither quality. It was nice.

Eyebrow raised, lips curved, Michonne said, "Thanks."

Shit. I'm tipsy.

Michonne surely noticed. "More?"

"Should I?"

"It's a wedding."

Fahari nodded. "Fuck it."

She watched her French Malbec double in volume. Fahari could tell by the label it had once been expensive. The wine lapped against her glass as she raised it.

"It's good."

"I figured you could appreciate it."

Michonne was used to the finer things, Fahari could tell. Only someone who was could manage to look so cultured even in the apocalypse. Fahari used to be a part of classier circles once upon a time. It was her attempt to distance herself from her childhood and her mother. For all her trying, she never quite fit.

Fuck, she was really tipsy. She got nostalgic and reflective when she was.

You're also going to die soon. That explains the reminiscing.

She didn't know how she knew. She just did, and she didn't mind.

"Do you believe in premonitions?" she asked.

Michonne stared at her, her face hard to decipher. It almost always was. Michonne looked away to eye the crowd. When nobody approached, Michonne turned and gave Fahari her full attention. She leaned her hip against the bar.

"I do."

"Do you have them?" Fahari asked, taking another sip of her wine.

The Malbec warmed her. She liked the feeling.

"Yes. Sometimes."

"You knew about the Governor."

"He was easy to see."

Fahari detected neither malice nor judgement. Fahari had seen. And stayed. For Michonne, it seemed, it didn't matter why.

Someone staggered up to the bar. Their momentum was so great it jostled the structure as they put their hands atop it. One of the Governor's men who used to work the wall. Rob. His pinkened skin shone with sweat and a layer of grease. This was his fourth time back at the bar.

"S'cuse me, ladies," he said, eyes fuzzy as he looked first at Fahari and then Michonne. His eyes lingered below their faces.

They stared at him. He grinned, yellow teeth gleaming. Like an idiot, he'd been swapping between white and brown liquor. Tequila. Then Hennessy. Then gin. He was drunk off his ass. But his visits had more to do with the woman behind the bar than anything he was leaving with.

Rob had tried his hand at Fahari before. Back in Woodbury. Again here at the prison. One of those curious, curious white men. After she told him to fuck off the last time, his attention turned to the often absent warrior. He was smart enough to keep his distance. Not a thing about Michonne invited that kind of come-on.

"Would you like to dance, Michonne?" he asked.

Idiot, Fahari thought.

"No."

His face fell. Then brightened again. He leaned closer and dropped his voice.

"Oh come on. Woman like you. I know you can dance."

Fahari snorted. A woman like you. For fuck's sake.

Michonne leaned forward and put her chin in her hand. "How about some water?"

That leaning in excited him. In his mind, it was approval. Flushed, he grinned wider. The smell of gin and chicken and an unbrushed tongue wafted from his mouth.

"Much rather you—"

Movement. On Rob's right. Rick placed his forearms on the bar. He nodded at Fahari.

"Ma'am."

Hello, Officer. This was not Farmer Rick. Not at all. She knew a cop when she saw one.

She smiled. "Rick."

He returned her smile before fastening his eyes to Michonne. Fahari settled into her seat, hardly offended by his diverted attention, grateful for her felicitous view of all parties involved.

"What can I get you, Sheriff?" Michonne asked, chin still in her hand, eyes still on Rob.

Rob's back straightened. The pinched look on his face was more comical than anything Fahari had seen in a long while.

Rick scratched at the beard that Fahari had imagined between her thighs a time or two.

"What'd'ya recommend?" he asked.

It didn't escape Fahari's notice that Rick hadn't looked at Rob once. And only a fool would think that Rick wasn't aware of him. Rob was a fucking fool.

"Hol' on a minute," Rob interjected leaning further across the counter towards Michonne.

Oh, he was drunk-drunk.

Cooly, Rick angled his body towards Rob. His movement forced Rob's eyes from Michonne.

"Am I interruptin' somethin'?" Officer Rick asked.

"No," Michonne said, matching Rick's cool. "Just getting him some water."

Face red, Rob pushed off the counter.

"I was kinda hopin' for that dance."

Fuck. Rick Grimes could stare. Fahari knew this already—she watched him enough—but it amused her to watch from such close proximity. It was even funnier to see someone so helplessly try to resist the power of Rick's displeasure.

Rob avoided Rick's laser-focused stare. Or tried to. Michonne turned to the barrel of water behind her and bent over it. Rob's eyes dropped. Fahari didn't blame him. Poor thing. But, of course, his eyes couldn't remain there for long. Rick didn't move an inch but his gaze sharpened. Fahari hid her smile behind her hand.

Michonne, indifferent or unaware, slid a cup of cool water to Rob. He now had to contend with two sets of eyes. Michonne's blank stare. Rick's dogged one.

How congruent they appeared. Silent and forbidding. Rob looked between them, eyes squinted, and for a moment, clear. He finally caved.

Clearing his throat, "Uh, thanks."

Rob shuffled away and kept his head down, taking extra care to evade Rick's eyes which followed him all the way to his table. Whatever irritation had come upon Rick disappeared when he faced Michonne again.

"A Boulevardier."

Rick blinked, confused. In a rare turn of events, Michonne smiled. The wedding atmosphere was getting to them all.

"My recommendation."

"Is that, uh, French?"

"It is."

"Might be too sophisticated for me."

"I was going to recommend an Old Fashioned but didn't want to be cliche."

"I enjoy an Old Fashioned."

Michonne sniffed. "I bet."

Fahari didn't move a muscle, afraid that she would disrupt whatever was happening in front of her.

"I'll take a Bou—" Rick struggled.

Michonne pronounced it in elegant French and Rick nodded, bashful. As he watched, she assembled the drink with ease, pulling bottles from where she'd organized them.

"You're good," Rick said.

Fahari had long since noticed his little quirk: the thumb and the eyebrow.

"I used to bartend."

This bit of information seemed to intrigue Rick.

"That right? During law school?"

A lawyer. No shit.

Fahari had considered law school once upon a time. During her early days at Spelman when she still believed that her mother had been betrayed by the system. Back when she still hoped that her mother loved her.

"It was that or stripping," Michonne said.

Rick's skin crimsoned. He waited. Michonne handed him his drink with a straight face.

"Well, ain't nothin' wrong with that," he said after a beat.

Michonne shrugged. "We all have to make a living."

Impossibly, Rick blushed harder, eyes falling to her clavicle. He wrapped a large hand around his drink and shifted his eyes into the brown liquid.

Fahari tried to imagine Rick Grimes in a strip club. Lights dimmed, country music playing, cowboy boots planted on the floor, ass and titties swaying in his face. It was an arousing image, but an incongruous one. There was something modest about him. Not monkish, necessarily, but a little sterile, restrained. She knew by looking at him that he hadn't yet discovered the proper outlet for all the power he possessed.

Fuck, I could show him.

"What do you think?" Michonne asked.

She left the image of herself as an exotic dancer there between them.

Rick made eye contact as he sipped.

"It's good. Real good."

"It has bourbon. For your cowboy sensibilities."

"'Preciate it."

"It's supposed to be garnished with orange. Maybe you should grow some."

He smiled and nodded, taking another sip. It was an unusual thing. Rick smiling. As odd as it was to see Michonne teasing someone who wasn't Carl. The two sank into this strange thing with each other. From the outside it looked like two people slipping into the same daydream at the same time, unreachable from the outside until they re-emerged.

Daryl interrupted them this time. Grunting, he hauled himself onto he stool next to Rick. He wrapped on the counter with his knuckles. Michonne reached down and retrieved a mason jar of clear liquid. Daryl muttered thanks, removed the lid, took a sniff, and guzzled. Rick wrinkled his nose and reclined away from the proffered jar.

Daryl shrugged and took another swallow. He offered the jar to Michonne who shook her head. The jar appeared in Fahari's line of vision.

"I know you got the balls for it."

"Don't you mean pussy?"

"Whatever."

Fahari took a large swallow. Limestone would have gone down easier. Jesus.

Daryl jerked his chin with approval and then he was gone. The jar disappeared with him. Wordlessly, Michonne planted a cup of water next to Fahari's glass of wine. Rick stood.

"Thank you."

Michonne tossed a towel over her shoulder like something straight out of a movie.

"Come back if you want a refill."

Rick nodded, first at Michonne, then at Fahari.

"Ma'am."

The southern boy with his southern manners.

"Officer."

That earned Fahari a rare grin. Her clit throbbed. Life was so unfair sometimes.

Rick took a step and then turned back to Michonne who'd started wiping the counter.

"It was real good of you to do this, Michonne. People needed this."

His earlier shyness gave way to something serious. And Michonne became the self-conscious one, lowering her eyes to the counter.

"We all did it."

But Michonne had, unexpectedly, astoundingly, spearheaded it. She'd been at the prison for more than a week. Longer than Fahari had ever seen her there.

"You gonna head out again soon?" Rick asked, voice lowered.

"Tomorrow. I need to get back to it."

Rick stared. "Yeah." He tapped the counter and went on his way.

Michonne tossed the rag onto the counter and watched after him. She rolled her neck. Something about their exchange sobered Fahari. She reached for the water. Still looking after Rick, Michonne spoke.

"My grandmother used to call it 'the sight.' She said all black women have it. It was a gift from God to keep us and our families safe."

The table creaked as Michonne placed her weight on it.

"She used to say the worst thing a woman could do was ignore what she saw. And sometimes, she would say, it wasn't so that you could change anything. Sometimes God just told you things so that you can make peace with it ahead of time. My mother wasn't religious, much to my grandmother's despair. My mother saw it as something evolutionary, something developed over time. Instincts honed by experience."

Engrossed, Fahari listened. "And you?"

"I think they were talking about the same thing in different ways."

"And you have them? Premonitions."

"If that's your word for it. I just know what I know."

"And you know the Governor is alive?" Fahari asked.

"I do."

"I believe you."

An apology. One that Michonne didn't need or want but one Fahari needed to offer.

"I knew something once," Michonne said. "I ignored it."

"And now you're paying for it?"

Michonne's eyes found her. And she recognized the pain there. The deep, ever-abiding pain. Whatever it was, Fahari knew nothing could ever pay for it. She wanted to tell Michonne she was sorry for whatever it was that she had lost. For who she had lost. But it wouldn't matter.

"You can't look for him forever."

"I know."

Fahari nodded softly, smiled. It wasn't the first one she'd directed at the woman before her. It was the first time Michonne returned it though. Fahari wished they could be friends. But there was no time for that.

After rubbing one out to images of a quiet Sheriff's deputy, Fahari fell asleep thinking of Michonne and of her mother. Of what it meant to know. She wished her mother had shared what she knew. She dreamed of her mother's cell. She had never seen it, but she had imagined it many times.

In the dream, her mother's skin peeled from her cheekbones. Her eyes shone, lacteous and bulging. Mindlessly, her mother pushed against the bars, hands outreached towards Fahari. For the first time, her mother told her she loved her and took her hand, pulled her close.

Two weeks later, Fahari awoke with a raging fever.