Xxx

One day passes. Then two. On the third morning after her departure Rick is livid. How dare she leave him – them - like this? Taken off in the middle of the night with one of their fastest cars, a can of gas and Daryl's bolt cutters. If she hadn't returned by tomorrow he was going to ask Daryl to go out with him and find her. He knew Daryl would do it, if not for him than for Michonne. He hadn't slept well, replaying their last conversation over and over in his mind, how could he not have foreseen her leaving like this? This was her M.O. So why did her absence get under his skin like this?

Rick was sitting in the guard tower, alone, on the evening of her third day of her absence. He was watching the place where he had seen her emerge from between the forest so many months before. With every flicker of the leaves in the wind he half expected her to stroll out of the brush again. He heard running steps from below.

"Dad! Dad, she's back!"

Rick bolted out of his place on the floor and ran down the steps two at a time. There had been a trance of panic in Carl's voice that he didn't like, and immediately after blasting through the doors out of the tower he sees why. The entrance gates were just being opened and he saw a red van being driven through, not the car Michonne had left in. A corner of the hood of the van was totalled, as though it had been in a collision. He could see that the back windows had been broken and sides severely dented.

He sprints to the car as it comes to a stop outside the second gates. The drivers' door is opening just as he arrives to it, and he sees Michonne step out. He knows at once that something is wrong with her because she stumbles out of the car and nearly falls over. Rick is there to catch her as she stumbles back, and he sees that there is a nasty gash along her forehead, and that she has small cuts all over her face and chest. Michonne had obviously been in the car when it had been struck.

Her glazed eyes locked onto his and she blinks. "Tell Hershel I got the saline."

With that she passes out and goes limp in Rick's arms. He lifts her up and into his arms and quickly carries her through the gates, Carl trailing after them, carrying her katana. Rick notices that it is covered in dried blood.

Xxx

Now Rick is sitting outside of Michonne's cell door, listening to her deep, sleeping breaths. Hershel had said that she has two cracked ribs and a concussion, but other than that is perfectly fine. Rick could have hugged him. Carl had sat with him for the first hour, but had gone off to get something to eat. He had asked his dad if he wanted anything, but Rick just shook his head.

Rick sat with his knees bent in front of him, his elbows resting on them. His head hung low and he kept running his hands over his face. If he had lost Michonne, if her injuries had been worse… but they weren't. He kept telling himself that. She would be fine. She came back to him.

He hears a stirring from within the room. He quickly turns and sees that she's lying on her side and watching him sit there, her face half obscured by the pillow. His breath catches and he gives a weak smile.

"Hi." She says, smirking.

He smirks too. "Hi."

She licks her lips and swallows, her mouth is obviously dry. He stands and enters the cell, grabbing a bottle of water that Hershel left on the table. She makes to sit up but he quickly kneels by the bed and gently pushes her back into the mattress. He is half surprised she lets him do this. Wordlessly he puts his hand at the back of her head, gently, and helps her sit up enough to pour some water into her mouth. She looks at him while he does this, their faces no more than a few inches apart. Rick can't remember a time where they were ever closer than this, and he feels that Michonne is noticing the same thing.

He can tell this vulnerability is making her uncomfortable, but he doesn't care too much. This is what she gets for leaving him for three days. "How you feeling?" He asks.

She swallows. "Sore." Michonne smiles again at him but he doesn't smile back time.

"What happened to you?" The worst possible scenarios had been running through his mind for hours and all he wanted was for her to calm them.

She inhales deeply. "I got there no problem, the night after I left." Rick knows that she is not going to apologize for leaving. "Parked the car a couple blocks off. Everything was working out; I found the doors to the shelter, they were chained up just like before, same lock too." He almost wanted to smile. Her brain worked well in this grizzly world; she noticed things that others wouldn't.

She continues, "Got in easily, it was just getting light so the walkers hadn't even noticed me. There weren't that many there, anyway." She scoffs, "Probably should have known there was something up."

Rick wasn't going to console her because he knows she doesn't want it. They both know it's useless.

"It wasn't a huge stash, but there were sterile needles, tubing, all that. Then in the back room I found the saline, it was stashed with a bunch of other medicine. There were bags of it, so I took a load and headed back to the car, to bring it around." She shakes her head, "These three guys were in the car when I got there, trying to hot wire it. They had this girl with them and she was screaming," Michonne purses her full lips, "They couldn't shut her up, she was going to bring every walker to them." She clears her throat. "They killed her, stabbed her in the head."

Rick leans closer, putting more weight on his arm resting on the mattress. He hoped this would come across as friendly, and not that he had been refraining from grabbing her hand.

"I crept around them and I killed them. Didn't take long." Michonne stares at him as though waiting for him to jump in and say something at this. When he doesn't, when all he does is stare back as her, she continues.

"I took the car to the hospital and started loading up. By now it was pretty late in the morning, almost noon I'd guess. I think I'm golden when I finish packing the car, and I'm out of there. Then, out of no where this fucking guy hits me. Some big-ass black Ford drives out of the bushes and t-bones me, pushes me off the road. I hit a tree." Rick raises his eye brows, "I was fine, though. Anyway, I got out and ran. They didn't even try to chase me, I guess they just took the medicine and drove off. When I came back the car it was empty and the tires were gone."

Rick can't see how she managed to get the supplies back.

Her face had gone blank, though, as though remembering what comes next was distasteful to her.

She had an air of unease as she continued "There were leaves on the road, so I could follow their tracks. Just a couple miles up was this makeshift camp-site." She pauses, "There was only a few of them."

He could tell she didn't want to talk about this, but he wanted to know. He prodded her on, "Where did you get the car from?"

"It was there too. They had transferred all the supplies into the van, so I hot-wired it. Had to wait till night, of course. Anyway, I didn't make it ten miles before they caught up. I had slashed the tires of their truck but I guess they had spares. They crashed into me again, tried to run me off the road. That's when I hurt my ribs," She blinks and sighs. "There was a loaded gun in the car. When they came up level with me I shot him. The truck flipped and I kept driving." Michonne finishes.

Rick absorbs the story he had just heard. He feels something very odd towards Michonne in this moment, and it isn't pity, or even lust. It was respect. He respected her for what she had done, knowing if he had been in her situation he wouldn't have acted any differently. He grimaces unintentionally at the thought.

She can see that he thinking this, thinking that he would have killed those men all the same, and that he doesn't feel guilty about it.

"Do you want to know what your problem is?" She asks.

He's taken aback. After all she had just shared, he had expected her to close off and turn away from him. "What?"

"You see everything as black and white now. You think you can only be one thing; a Sherriff, or a killer. Moral or immoral. But Rick…" She looks at him and exhales, "You can live in this world and kill, kill many people in many ways, and still be a good person. It's fucked, but as long as it's for those you love, I believe you shouldn't ever feel guilty about killing. Not any more."

Rick wasn't really sure what she was trying to say. Yes, he agreed with her, but why was she saying all of this to him, and why now?

"I found something for you." Michonne says. She reaches back behind her and winces. Rick's hands are immediately hovering above her, but she shows no more sign of needing him as her hand snakes into her back pocket. Rick's eyes widen when he sees a flash off gold in her hand.

She extends her dark hand towards him and gripped in it is a small, plastic Sherriff's badge. He stares at it for a long time before he takes it from her. It's warm from being so close to her body. It reminds him of one he had bought Carl for his Halloween costume years and years ago, long before the outbreak. He chuckles and closes his fist around the small oval, giving Michonne an amused and incredulous look.

She snickers too and shrugs from where she lies against the bed. "Just so you don't forget where you came from."

Xxx

The saline drips were working. Apparently the bags had been in good condition, so Hershel felt comfortable using them. Michonne had found enough supplies to actually allow for Hershel to use an I.V. drip. Deciding together, Rick and Hershel were not going to give the I.V. to the most sever cases, which were thankfully few in number, to make sure there was enough of it to last. Glenn, luckily, was not one of the most severe cases.

When she was well enough to walk, Michonne began receiving very warm welcomes wherever she went throughout the prison. Everyone knew that it had been she who had returned with the medicine, and Rick found it incredibly endearing that she shied away from this attention.

Xxx

Weeks passed and they once again fell into a rhythm. Only a few more graves were dug before the people who had been ill seemed to recover, though they were still quite weak. Rick had volunteered to dig the graves, and Michonne quickly offered her help. Glenn was healing fast, and he and Maggie hadn't been apart since he was first released from quarantine.

Rick and Carl were tilling in the field on a hot afternoon nearly a month after Michonne had left on her solo raid and returned with the saline and a concussion. Right now she was working on the east fence with a few of the others, and Rick kept seeing the flicker of her katana as it caught the sun light. There had been a build up of walkers over night again, and she and the others were working at bring them down. They would throw glances at each other; catch each other's eye, smile, and return to work.

It was as Rick watched her that he saw something outside the fence grab her attention. She lowers her sword and stares at something near the red metal gates of the entrance. Without a word to the others she heads along the fence towards the gate.

Curious, Rick puts down his hoe and he and Carl walk to the gate as well. He's stunned to see Michonne grab the rope and heave the heavy red doors open, and he picks up his pace. He and Carl reach her just as the gates open enough to see what she had been staring at. On the ground, placed directly in front of the gates, was a severed head in a tank.

Carl covered his mouth. Even from here Rick could make out the defining features of the head. It was a woman, and he skin was dark like Michonne's'. Michonne strode forward and swiftly picked up the tank. Rick strides to the gates and pull them closed, seeing that a few walkers had spotted them. He walks up to where Michonne is standing, looking into the tank. He grimaces hard when he sees the details of it. What looks like a cheap black wig had been sewn onto the scalp of the woman's head, and the wig was matted in what was obviously meant to be dreadlocks.

Rick watches as Michonne blinks, looking at the grotesque head float in the tank.

Xxx