Rick starts walking up the block toward James's house when he sees Bob rolling a wheel barrel with a bag of cement in it. He runs up to him, "Bob, let me ask you something…"Bob puts the wheel barrel down, "…I know you were a medic in the army but…how well did solders handle the death of brother in battle?"
Bob shrugs his shoulders and says, "It's hard to say. Some of them would hold that shit in and bury it deep especially in the middle of a battle. Then on occasion I would see some guys' breakdown and never recover. But every now and then I would see guys torn up by death of someone in his platoon then it turns that the two of them hated each other and had threaten to kill one another on a couple of occasions. But from clinical stand point with Jane..." he shakes his head, "…she aint no soldier. She's a civilian but they're plenty of civilians in the same shit we're in and they bury their grief in order to survive. If she doesn't bounce back after a period mourning she'll never be right."
"Yea," Rick said sadly. "I haven't seen James too much either, you would think that he would want to be there for his sister but…" Bob shrugs shoulder and adds, "…like I was saying everyone is different."
"Thanks", Rick says then he starts up the block again.
Rick knocks on the door and Rosita opens it up, "Hey, Rick glad to see you made it back alright." She tells him.
"Thanks, is James around?" He asks.
"Yea, he's in his room its upstairs on the far left." She tells him.
Rick walks upstairs and knocks on the door, "James, its Rick can I talk to you for a sec?"
James opens the door and nods his head to come in.
When Rick comes in he sees two beds, one of the beds has some of Jimmy's stuff piled in the middle. James closes the door and sits on the other bed. "I came by to tell you that I was sorry to hear about your brother."
James shakes his head then leans down on to his thighs then, clasps his hands together tightly to the point where his hand resemble the color of a hot pink.
Rick sees James is trying hard to bury his grief, trying hard to hold it together.
"Listen, don't you think you should be down there with your sister? I mean she's really shook up. It's times like this family should mourn together, to heal." He reasons.
James looks over at Rick with bitterness, "She just a half-sister Rick." He walks over to the door and says, "She wants you."He opens the door for Rick, "I'm on watch to night and I need to get some sleep. Thanks for stopping by, I appreciate it."
Rick looks at him a bit confused and walks out of the room.
Before leaving James' house, Rick looks up the block and sees the SUV in Tero's driveway, so he decides to go and check out the house. Once he gets to the front door he sees Daryl coming down the steps holding a little body covered with a blanket.
Rick looks in horror at the blanket and starts to ask what happened but Daryl cuts him off, "Don't ask man…" Daryl shakes his head and keeps walking down the stairs, "…not right now."
Rick can hear the sorrow in his voice as he walks past him;freezing in place for a moment to regain himself then yells out for, "Michonne?"
"I'm up stairs." She yells back.
He walks upstairs and looks down the hallway where he sees she's standing in front of the window staring out at the neighborhood.
As he walks in to the room he sees the floor is littered with bottles of asthma inhalers; he looks at the back of her as she stands in front of the window with one of her arms crossed and the other holding her head.
He walks over to her and in a soft voice he asks, "You wanna tell me about?"
Michonne turns around and says "No."
Somewhat bothered by her answer, he remembers what she said the night before about her issues with intimacy and sharing. So he doesn't press her.
She starts walking out of the room so she can check the other door and asks, "Have you seen this house?"
Rick closes the door behind him and follows her and says, "No, not really."
"Well you are in for a pleasant surprise." She knocks on the door, when she doesn't hear anything she opens it up.
The two of them look inside and it's an office with a computer table and chair, laptop and wall shelf full of DVD's. There are also a couple of small files cabinets and a spare bed against the wall by a window.
"Damn, this house is fabulous." she acknowledges while walking downstairs.
When they reach the living room Rick looks around and notices the lights coming on then looks around the room with admiration, "Wow, he must have made a good living as an engineer."
Rick continues walking over to the fireplace mantle and picks up a picture of Tero's wife and graciously smiles, "Yes, she was a pretty lady indeed", remembering his conversation with Tero on the way to the trucker motel.
"Come on, you gotta see this, his wife made a good living as well." Michonne says while walking to the kitchen toward the basement.
Walking through the kitchen Rick takes a sniff of the air, "Tero had a grow room in here." He asks.
"Yep, wait till you see the basement." She tells him
Rick gets to the bottom of the basement steps and Michonne shows him the utility closet with the solar batteries. "Damn, he had power all this time?" Rick says. Michonne walks him over to the grow room, then over to the laundry room with the stock piles of food.
She walks over to the workbench and grabs the work badge to show Rick. Once he walks over to where she is he is baffled by how many weapons, tools and raw material there are.
"Look at this", she says handing him Shelia's badge.
He reads the badge, looks at Michonne and says, "You think they knew about the outbreak before it started?"
Michonne pokes her lips out a bit and says, "I don't know, it's possible."
Rick looks around the room and says, "Alright, we got to get that truck back from the motel, pass out some of these weapons and food to our people, then take the rest to that cellar at the bar.
"What about the natives", she asks.
"They haven't been very forthcoming with the help when it comes to food. So we'll do what we planned and pass out the stuff we got from the run and keep this reserve for our people. We're doing most of the work around here anyway", he explains.
Before they walk up back upstairs Rick grabs a book off the book shelf about solar power; as he begins to walk away from the workshop he sees the wall full of tools then observes the handmade .45 caliber handgun.
He pulls it off to the wall; while admiring it does a quiet laugh and says, "Cute."
Michonne turns around and smiles at him, "See I knew you had an eye for art."
Rick puts the .45 back on the wall, walks closer to his woman gazing her up and down, "I know beauty when I see it."
Meanwhile, Daryl walks over to the large shed in the corner of Tero's backyard hoping there's a shovel so he can bury the little body; he pass by some old metal lawn furniture and an over grown garden that hasn't been tended to in a long time.
When he reaches the shed only to find thatits been pad locked. He knocks on the shed door to see if anything moves; then he pulls out the keys Tero gave him trusting that the key to the pad lock is on them.
He tries a few keys then he finds the right one and opens the lock, once again, lights automatically come on. He steps inside and directly in front of the entrance he sees some gardening tools and equipment. However to the left and right sides of the shed sees more guns, bags of gunpowder, boxes of ammunition shelved along all the walls, solar panels, boxes of "Lifesaver Water Bottles and other survival gear. Daryl steps out of the shed with a shovel, stabs it in to the ground then runs back in to get Rick and Michonne.
Daryl catches Rick and Michonne coming back upstairs from the basement. "You gotta check out this Tero's shed, they knew about the outbreak way before it started to spread."
They start walking over to the shed, as Rick pass by the lawn furniture he looks up at the house next door and sees a man staring at them from the window. "Who's that?" He asks.
"Oh, that's the man I'm going to kill next chance I get." Michonne says nonchalantly while walking past him and Daryl.
Rick stops and grabs Daryl's arm and lamentably to ask. "What the hell was that?"
Daryl is hesitant but tells him anyway, "That's Tero's neighbor. He got upset when I told him the news about T, he started blaming us and I was about to go over and kick his ass but Chonne' got in between us to stop before anything started...", he pauses and continues with, "...then…he called her whore. She got mad and was in the process of taking out her sword but I grabbed her arm and pulled her away."
Daryl looks over at the window and tells him, "He's sort of old, probably as old as Tero maybe a few years younger. He looks too old to be the one of her attackers but…who knows."
Rick could feel a surge of heat rising from his head to his face; he turns his back to Daryl for a moment then looks at him and says, "Thank you for telling me Daryl."
The three of them look around the shed with awe.
"Where the hell did they get the money to buy all this shit?" Rick aks.
"It's like a survivalist Wal-Mart." Daryl adds.
Michonne walks over to the far right corner and notices 3 stacks of copy paper boxes. When she looks inside the top box she notices they are filled with 3" binders. Looking closely at the binder spines, they all have labels with, "PROPERTY OF D.H.H.S". Without any announcement she grabs one of the boxes and begins to carry it out of the shed.
Rick walks over to the other copier boxes to see what was in them; after reading the labels on the binders he too, quickly grabs the other two boxes and leaves the shed.
Michonne enters the dining room and places the box on the long classic dining room table. She removes the lid and pulls out the binders when Rick walks in and places the other two on the table. She feels somewhat nervous standing so close to Rick after sleeping next to him last night, so she blurts out, "How's Jane holding up?"
Rick looks at Michonne, "She's a mess. Sobbing uncontrollably she's practically inconsolable. I swear, if I didn't know that she just lost her brother…I would think she was faking."
He starts to pull out a binder from one of the boxes he carried in, "I went to talk to James and he seemed…genuinely upset at first. Then I suggested that go and be with Jane help her mourn and he got pissed with me and told me that Jane's his half-sister and that she wants me."
Michonne pretends to look through the pages in binder remaining silent as he tells her about the conversation he had with James.
Rick can see that she's somewhat bothered by what James told him earlier, he can already see that softer side of her held on to last night going in full blown retreat.
So he grabs the binder out of her hand and places on top of the box; feeling the awkward moment coming in to the dining, Michonne tells him, "I better go help Daryl."
He reassuringly holds her hand stopping her from leaving the room and says, "No, no, I told last night I would fix it…look at me."
She doesn't want to look in his eyes so she focuses on eyebrows.
Rick starts to chuckle because he can tell that she's still not look at his eyes. So leans his face a little closer and says, "Chonne, look at me not at my eyebrows. I still want you under the same roof with me…but it would be pretty cruel to kick her out the day after her brother died."
Michonne's relieved that she doesn't have to tap in to her softer side just yet however, she was curious to see if she still had it in her at all. She enjoyed lying with Rick the night before. She felt safe in a way that her boyfriend Mike couldn't provide after the outbreak. Hugging Rick for her was plunging in to a relationship that could end horribly and at any given minute. She thought about all the "what if's" what if she couldn't find that softer side that he wanted, what if she makes the wrong decision like before and it costs Carl or Judith their lives. What if Rick got sick, what if Carl got sick or Judith?
All of these thoughts start to fill her head with one touch of his hand. Not wanting to upset him, she looks at Rick and says, "It's alright, I understand. I can wait… handle your business.
He lifts her hand and says, "I am."
Later around dusk everyone with the exception of James and Jane come over to Daryl's new digs. Michonne shows them basement and everyone gets excited by the abundance of weapons and food that are in the basement.
Abe looks over at the weapons and books in the workshop, while Daryl and Glenn check out the grow room.
Maggie, Judith and Carl go back upstairs because of the strong stench of the weed.
Tyreese, Bob, Sasha and Rosita start laughing at how much food is in the laundry room.
Rick announces, "I know everybody is feeling good right now with what's in the basement and what we brought back from the run. But we don't want to deplete all of our resources so everybody take what they need for their house and then we are going move the rest to the trucker motel. If times get bad we can always go back to the truck stop and get it. For now, the stuff in this basement is ours; the other survivors in the neighborhood don't need to know about this. We'll pass out an equal share of what was brought back from the run to the neighborhood, but this stuff is ours."
Glenn asks, "What's at the stop?"
"I'm thinking it's sort of a safe house in case we need to get out of the area in a hurry. Sort of a plan B", Rick tells him.
Abe comes from out of the workshop and says, "Why do they get to stay here living in the lap of luxury?"
Before Rick can say anything Daryl steps in front and tells Abe, "Cause Tero gave me the keys to his house last night that's why. You got a problem with that?"
"Alright fair enough but why does she get to stay here too?" Abe asks with some detection of spite. Glenn steps up, "Me and Maggie are cool where we are." Tyreese looks at Bob and Sasha then over at Daryl and says, "Same here we're good where we are too."
Daryl looks back at Abe waiting for him to say something else.
Michonne walks next to Daryl trying to diffuse the animosity, "It's not that serious Daryl, I can stay anywhere."
"No, you're staying here in this house." Daryl says looking directly at Abe.
Rick's relieved that Daryl spoke up about Michonne staying in the house.
He tells everyone, "Look let's do this. Just so everyone has a chance to hang out here, While Jane is in mourning she won't be able to keep Judith so I was hoping that we could do some kind of schedule with taking turns keeper her during the day along with myself. Whoever wants to keep her for the day can watch her up here. That way everyone can take a rest from the day to day labor if they want to."
Abe looks around the room and sees that no one has any objections, so he shakes his head in agreement.
As everyone starts to gather up what they need, Rick pulls Sasha to the side away from everyone, "Sasha, I want you to arrange it so that Abe and James are on a morning watch together. I want to show Glenn and Tyreese where this motel is located."
"What about Bob?" She asks.
"I'll have to show him the next time I go out there maybe sooner. Besides I want you and Bob to stay away from any hint of danger. The two of you are the only medics we have." Rick tells her.
Sasha asks, "Well when do you want me to do this?"
"Sometime over the next four or five days, we had to leave in a hurry from a herd so I'm hoping by next week the walkers will have dispersed.
The sun is almost down as everyone leaves with food and weapons form Daryl's house.
On the way out of the front door, Maggie turns around and looks at Michonne, "I'm glad you came back alright." She switches Judith to the other arm, 'We were all worried that you left us."
Michonne looks at Maggie and feels guilty about running off without any notice, "I'm sorry Maggie, and I certainly didn't mean to scare you or anybody else." Michonne steps closer to Maggie; moved by her concerns, "I just had to fix something that required me to step away from everyone. But, if I had known that it would cause this distress I would've tried to find another way."
Michonne smiles at Judith then says in a baby voice, "I won't do it again, I promise."
Maggie and Michonne hug warmly then Maggie walks down the block with Carl and Glenn.
She closes the door and walks back in to the living room. The living room is looking more like an art exhibit or a model home, the soft lighting in the ceiling adds a quiet ambiance to the room.
Rick walks in to living room; his arms full of supplies and a few weapons are hanging off his shoulder. The two stand on opposite sides of the room in silence for a moment.
Michonne looks at Rick and asks, "Where's Daryl?"
"He's around back; him and Tyreese are going to drop off some of the water filtrations bottles to our people before it gets too dark.
She looks down at the floor, "Well, I guess you'd had better get going yourself."
Rick senses the disappointment in Michonne's voice about him leaving. So he places his supplies on the floor and his weapons on the loveseat.
"I can't even put in to words how much I don't want to leave", he tells her as his slowly walks across the room.
Intuitively she feels another one those intimate moment about to invade the room so she tries to make a bee line for the stairs but he steps in front of her, foiling her attempts of leaving this moment so close to him.
"Lying with you last night felt calming to me, do you know what would have made it perfect?" He asks.
Michonne looks in his hypnotic blue eyes when he says, "Knowing that Carl and Judith were only seconds away from you or me."
She finally concedes to the moment and tells Rick, "I enjoyed it too, probably more than you think."
Relieved that she felt the same, he begins to kiss her lips tenderly, she quickly falls in to the kiss as she pulls his shirt bringing him closer to her.
Without thinking Michonne slips her tongue in to his mouth quickly changing the temperature of the room and the kiss.
Rick pins her against wall next to the front door and starts sucking her long graceful neck as she runs her fingers through the formless curls in his hair.
He places one hand on the wall for support and moves the other one up her shirt to caress her breasts.
As soon as his hand brushes against her nipple she breaks out of the kiss and steps away leaving Rick with his one hand on the wall.
She smirks feeling a little embarrassed that she elevated the kiss from warm to hot,"You should probably go or…I may not let you leave." She tells him in a cheeky tone.
Rick walks over to the supplies he had placed on the floor and the weapons on the loveseat.
Michonne walks over to the door and opens it for him. Right before he leaves the front porch he turns around and says, "That's three promises you've made so far."
She grins and fidgets with the door knob a little while saying, "I know, I won't break them."