Chapter 2.
The party was in full swing when Rick arrived with Judith in tow. Music blared from speakers arranged around the square, loud enough to create a festive atmosphere, but not so loud that it would draw a herd of walkers to the wall.
Most of the townspeople were already gathered, along with his friends: he could see Carl sitting on the steps of the old courthouse with a group of boys from school, Glenn and Maggie talking to another young couple, Hershel being chatted up by one of the old ladies from the bridge club… Even Daryl and Michonne had put in appearances, though both looked decidedly out of their comfort zone, Daryl sticking close to Carol's side, while Rick couldn't help noticing that Tyreese seemed to have taken a shine to Michonne. It was nice to see them having fun – well most of them. He made a mental note to thank Andrea for all the hard work she'd put into making that happen.
Within minutes of his arrival, he was relieved of the baby by Beth, who proceeded to make the rounds with her, showing her off proudly, and soon she was being passed around while the women took turns fussing over her.
Satisfied that his daughter was taken care of, at least for the moment, Rick began to weave his way through the sea of unfamiliar faces, searching for the woman responsible for it all.
He spotted her over by the refreshment table, nursing a glass of wine while she uncovered plates of food.
She had dressed up for the event, ditching her usual messy ponytail in favour of pinning her golden curls neatly into some sort of fancy updo, exchanging her jeans for a vintage style halter dress, the same shade of deep crimson as the lipstick she wore. They were covered in dirt and blood so much of the time that it was easy for him to forget what a knockout she was: she had a kind of classic beauty that reminded him of the movie stars of his grandfather's day like Grace Kelly. Without meaning to, he found himself staring at her for much longer than he knew was polite, intrigued by this softer, more feminine side of her.
"You look nice," he announced by way of a greeting, walking over to where she was standing.
She turned at the sound of his voice, confusion written across her expression when her eyes met his and she realised the compliment was meant for her.
"Thank you, Rick," she said, recovering quickly, a flirtatious note in her voice, but he could see that she was blushing. She twirled on the spot for his benefit, demonstrating the way the skirt fanned out around her. "I found it in the clothes store and it was in my size so I figured, 'What the hell'. You only live once, right?"
His eyebrow shot up challengingly in response.
"Or not," she agreed with a smirk. She eyed him appraisingly, and he was suddenly glad that he'd forced himself to shave for the occasion. "You don't clean up too badly yourself. There might actually be hope for you yet."
She grabbed his hand, and Rick started as her soft fingers brushed his. He tried to remember the last time anyone had touched him like that, but he couldn't – it must have been Lori, back on the farm, before he'd driven a wedge between them by murdering Shane. Carl was too old and jaded for hugs and kisses from his father, so the only person he shared physical contact with anymore was Judith. It suddenly hit him how lonely he was. How lonely he had been, even before Lori died.
If Andrea noticed his reaction, she didn't let on. "Come on. I'll introduce you to everyone."
For what seemed like an eternity, but in reality couldn't have been more than an hour, she dragged him from group to group, rattling off names, most of which Rick heard and then promptly forgot.
"Is there anyone here you don't know?" he asked her, envying how at ease she seemed with them. He had never been especially skilled at small talk, preferring to limit his socialising to a select group of friends, but his recent experiences seemed to have made him worse. It was hard to care about trivial details like what line of work someone was in when you'd just spent the better part of a year watching the people you loved die one by one while you ran for your life.
"I haven't met this little guy," Andrea told him, stopping to admire Woodbury's newest resident: a boy born just two days prior. "He's beautiful, Eileen."
"Would you like to hold him?" the mother, Eileen, asked her.
Watching the change in Andrea's demeanor as the swaddled infant was placed in her arms, it occurred to Rick how little he knew of her life from before. He had no idea if she'd ever been married or engaged or had a child of her own, or if those were even things that she'd wanted before the end of the world robbed her of that future. All he knew were the superficial things she had told him, like that she was once an attorney who grew up in Florida. She was right: he really should start making more of an effort to connect with people.
"What are you calling him?" Andrea was enquiring, glancing from the newborn back up to his mother.
Eileen looked down at her son with a tender smile. "Matthew."
"Welcome to Woodbury, Matthew," Andrea told him, pressing a light kiss to his forehead.
She drew back slowly, inhaling his scent, before handing him reluctantly back to his mother.
"You better watch out," she teased Rick as they continued on their way. "It won't be long before he has his eye on Judith."
After almost a year on the road, it was hard to imagine staying in the same place for eighteen months, much less eighteen years, but the more Rick thought about it, the more he came to realise that it was easy to picture them building a life here.
And he wanted that life. He wanted to be the overprotective father instilling fear in the hearts of the neighbourhood boys before they took his daughter out on a date. He wanted to walk her down the aisle and dance with her at her wedding when she found the one who would treat her right. He wanted to watch Carl put his gun away and become a good man, a gentle man, not a soldier in an endless war who thought nothing of taking a stranger's life.
But most of all, he wanted to live long enough to be happy again, to find someone to love, who would love him in spite of all the shameful things that he'd done. Someone he could grow old with.
When she had finished her introductions, Andrea poured herself another drink and went to oversee the preparations for the barbeque, and Rick headed over to check on Judith, relieved to be back among his own people.
He lost track of her after that, although occasionally he would glance up in time to catch a glimpse of her through the crowd, so busy playing hostess that he wondered if she was finding time to enjoy the party herself. It was typical of the almost manic behaviour she had been exhibiting over the past few weeks, always with somewhere to go, something to do, constantly on the move as though she were afraid of what would happen when she was finally still.
"Does Andrea seem weird to you?" he asked Carol, watching her from the other side of the square.
Carol frowned. "Weird how?"
He struggled to put it into words. "I don't know – restless, I guess." But then she'd always been impatient, driven, determined to prove herself – at least in the short time that he'd known her. The change was subtler than that. She was quieter now, more reserved.
Haunted.
"She's got a lot on her plate right now," Carol reminded him. "You both do."
"That must be it," he agreed, but deep down he wasn't convinced.
Once the food had been cleared away, and there was nothing left for her to do, he decided to seek her out and talk her into sitting down with her friends before she collapsed.
He must have asked at least a half dozen people if they knew where she was before Eileen said, "I saw her go that way a little while ago," pointing vaguely up the street.
Her apartment was back the other way, he realised, but he didn't think she would have gone home, so leaving Judith with Carol, he headed away from the party in the direction that Eileen had indicated.
He found her at the end of a row of empty stores, hunched over a garden bed, retching into the bushes.
"Shit, Andrea. Are you okay?" he asked her, rushing to her side.
"I think I had too much wine," she groaned, wiping her mouth on the back of her palm, smearing her lipstick across her cheek in the process.
"You're not kidding. Have you eaten anything tonight?"
She shook her head, and one of her perfectly arranged curls came loose, falling into her face.
He remembered the water bottle in his back pocket. "Here," he told her, unscrewing the cap and offering it to her. "Sit down, drink this."
She accepted it gratefully, perching on the edge of the wall.
He watched her sip it slowly until most of it was gone. "Better?"
She nodded.
"Good." He sat down beside her. "Now you wanna tell me what's going on? You haven't been yourself since we got here."
"I'm fine, Rick," she protested, pressing the cool bottle to her forehead. "I just overdid it a little, that's all."
"That's what you call 'a little'?"
She looked away from him, ashamed.
"We're friends, aren't we?" he asked her.
"Yeah," she agreed, but he couldn't help noticing that she didn't sound completely sure.
"So you can talk to me," he assured her.
Fat tears spilled from beneath her lashes, rolling down her cheeks. She wiped them away furiously. "I'm scared that if I do, you'll lose whatever respect you have left for me," she confessed.
He tried to imagine what she could be hiding that might have that affect on him, his eyes widening in alarm as a disturbing thought occurred to him. "You're not pregnant, are you?" he asked her. He had caught her throwing up after all.
She paled at the idea. "No," she insisted, repeating it for emphasis before adding, "Thank God. I don't think I could handle that."
She seemed sure so he decided to let it go. "I'd say you dodged a bullet there."
"You don't have to tell me." She closed her eyes, drawing in a shaky breath to compose herself. "You were close, though. It is him," she admitted finally.
"The Governor?" he checked.
She nodded again. "I'm not sorry he's dead," she rushed to clarify. "He would have killed me, and Mich, and who knows how many others…"
He sensed a 'but' coming. "But you regret killing him," he supplied gently.
She glanced over at him in surprise. "Is that wrong?" she asked him. "He was a monster. He deserved to die for what he did, and what he was going to do. So why do I feel like this? Why can't I stop thinking about it?"
"There's nothing wrong with you," he assured her. "Dale was right – taking a life should never be easy, even if that life does belong to a worthless piece of shit like Philip Blake."
"After you killed Shane… Did you have nightmares about it?" she asked, and he was relieved to hear that there was no judgement in her tone, just a desperate need to understand.
"Sometimes," he admitted. He realised he hadn't told anyone that before, but then she was the first person who'd wanted to know. "Not so much anymore, but occasionally I still do." After all, it had been the worst day of his life, right up until the day Lori died.
"I have these dreams that he's chasing me," she confessed quietly. "He corners me in that warehouse or at the prison or somewhere here in Woodbury, and sometimes I kill him, and sometimes he kills me, but one of us always dies. I can't even remember the last time I slept through the night."
"Have you tried talking to anyone about it? Michonne?"
She shook her head. "The Governor is still a sore subject with us. I'm worried she'd tell me it serves me right. Maybe it does. Maybe this is my punishment for not seeing the truth sooner. I had so many chances, but I just didn't want to believe it."
He tried to think of something to say that would help her, but he knew from experience that the only thing that could heal her broken mind was time. Time, and whatever support her friends could give her.
"If we were in the old world, I'd suggest you see a therapist," he told her, "but since that's not an option anymore, why don't you come spend the night at my place?"
She looked at him strangely.
"You can have my bed and I'll sleep on the couch," he added hastily, in case she thought he was trying to take advantage of the situation. "That way you won't be alone if it happens again."
She reached for his hand and squeezed it and this time he didn't flinch at the contact. "Thanks, Rick."