AN: I have other chapters written. However, my computer broke down so I'm having to upload them when I get to the office. This means that my updates may not be as frequent as I would like until the computer is replaced. (Soon, I hope.) Don't worry; I am not leaving you with any kind of cliffhangers, just less frequent updates until further notice.
I'm so glad to see that some of you are still excited. We've got quite the journey ahead of us. :-)
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Michonne and Daryl came into the kitchen to find Maggie, Carol, and Hershel sitting around the table. Carol was writing on a piece of paper.
"What'cha doin'" Daryl asked, sliding out a chair for Michonne to sit in it and then sitting behind her on a stool.
"Making a list." Carol said. "Maggie is going stir crazy so she's going on a run."
"Alone?" Daryl asked.
"I think Beth is going with me." Maggie said.
Daryl snickered. "Might as well go alone."
"Be nice, Daryl." Carol said.
"What? I ain't tryin' to be mean, but everyone knows Beth can't fight Walkers. Even Beth knows that." He said. "Where you goin'?" He asked Maggie.
"I thought we'd go a little beyond that last town we found. Maybe we can find another that hasn't been picked over. We're going to get food, clean out whatever we can get at a pharmacy, and we're going to get baby things!" Maggie squealed.
Carol looked up. "Baby's gonna need a crib, and Maggie's going to get some more cloth diapers and some more clothes. Judith is outgrowing what we have for her and I figured we should get boy and girl clothes so the baby could have a few things of its own. Michonne is going to want to nest soon and I thought she should have a few things to do it with."
"What the hell? Michonne's gonna build a nest?" Daryl asked. Carol and Michonne laughed at him.
"Nesting is what they call it, but you're not actually building a nest. I don't know, it's strange. You just sort of get the urge to get things ready." Carol said. "Any special requests, Michonne?"
Special requests…Michonne thought. If Hershel was right, and the little calendar he had created on the wall was correct, then Michonne was easily twenty seven weeks pregnant. As much as she kept trying to put it out of her mind, this was actually a reality. It looked like she was really going to have a baby, and now Carol wanted to know if she had any special requests. For a second it struck Michonne. This was the first time that she was really letting herself believe that she would become a mother again soon. Everybody else believed it, but she had to admit that she hadn't entirely until now.
"Michonne, are you OK?" Maggie asked. Her face wore a look of concerned and Michonne realized she hadn't answered and she wasn't exactly sure what kind of face she was making.
"I'm fine." Michonne said. "Uh…I don't know, Carol. I can't think of anything beyond the basics."
"Oh we'll get all kinds of things." Maggie said, clapping her hands together excitedly.
"I'll go with you." Daryl said. "I ain't lettin' just you and Beth go out there. You don't know how many Walkers you'll run into. We don't got the Governor collectin' 'em up no more and I've seen at least two herds move through the area.
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As they pulled out of the prison, Daryl wasn't really sure about this little excursion. Sasha had joined them at the last minute and all three of the girls in the car with him had just transformed into the chattiest, giggliest group that he'd ever been around.
"I think we should sing." Maggie said. She had her feet up on the dash in front of her.
"Man, no singing." Daryl said.
"Come on, Daryl, loosen up." Maggie said. "What's your favorite song?"
"I am loose, and I don't sing." Daryl said.
"We could play a game or something." Beth offered from the back seat.
"We used to play the alphabet game on car rides, but I don't think we'd get far with that." Sasha said.
"I spy wouldn't work either." Beth said.
"I don't know any other car games." Maggie said.
"I know one that I like." Daryl said.
"Really, what?" Maggie sounded surprised that Daryl was going to cooperate on the fun outing she had planned.
"It's called the quiet game and I bet I can beat you." Daryl said, smiling.
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Daryl was tired of babysitting. They'd had a productive run so far, obtaining both food and cleaning out the pharmacy for the most part. This town had been picked over pretty good, so it wasn't as big of a score as the last one had been, and there had been quite a few Walkers. Luckily Maggie and Sasha weren't too bad at fighting Walkers and between them and Daryl they had been able to manage.
Now they were on their last stop, the baby section at a store they had found. The girls were in heaven. Daryl didn't even know what half of the stuff they were putting in bags was. He was just walking around looking at everything. There was so much stuff for babies. He couldn't imagine what you needed all this stuff for.
Daryl came across something that looked interesting to him. It had a picture of a woman who was wearing a baby wrapped around her in a big cloth or something. He picked it up and looked at it. It looked like the baby was tied to her and she had both of her arms free. He thought Michonne might like that, thinking ahead to when they moved on. He was the only one right now that new they were moving on. He'd convinced Rick not to talk about it with anyone yet. Everyone was so happy right now. They deserved to enjoy that happiness as long as they could. No one would want to think about all the dangers that moving on would bring.
Daryl took a few more of the things that he had found. Maybe whoever was responsible for Lil' Asskicker when they moved on would want one too.
"Ya'll 'bout ready?" Daryl asked as he joined the girls and dropped his findings in the bag that Beth was holding.
"Yeah, we got a lot of great stuff!" Maggie said. "I can't wait to show it all to Michonne."
Daryl smiled at her. "I'm sure she's itchin' to see what you picked out." He said. On the way to the car they killed about eight more Walkers. "Suckers are startin' to get plentiful again." Daryl said.
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When they got back, Maggie had been about to burst to get to this "baby shower" that they'd talked about nonstop in the car. Daryl offered to unload the rest of the stuff while the girls went in and had their fun. He didn't have any interest in watching them go through the bags of stuff they'd gotten, and he'd heard more than enough about it. They had thanked him, taking the crib and the baby things and leaving him to get the rest out.
"Need help?" Rick asked, coming up behind him and grabbing a couple of the bags out of the back.
"Yeah. I told them I would do it. I couldn't take anymore squealing." Daryl said. "We got a lot of food, but the pharmacy was more picked over than we had hoped. I think they got all the baby stuff they wanted."
"At the end of the world that aren't that many people planning families." Rick said.
"Nah, I guess not, but it happens." Daryl said. Rick nodded. They went back to unloading, carrying everything inside so that Hershel and Carol could sort it later.
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"Oh my gosh! Look how cute!" Rachel said, cooing over some of the outfits that she was pulling out of bags.
Michonne was dizzied by all the stuff that they were pulling out, everyone trying to show her something different at the same time. She had been slowly dealing with the realization that there would be a baby, and this was overwhelming.
"It feels like we should have games." Carol said. "When I was pregnant with Sophia there were all kinds of games at the baby shower."
"What kinds of games?" Glenn asked. "We have Monopoly, and Connect Four." He offered.
"No, Glenn, baby games." Carol said. "Like, I don't know, you each get 20 clothespins, and every time you say the word 'baby' whoever notices it gets your clothespin until one person has them all."
"Wow, that sounds great." Glenn said sarcastically.
"Son, there are things that really excite women. When it comes to those things, you just leave them alone to do what they're going to do. Getting ready for babies is one of those things." Hershel said.
Daryl came in the room with Rick behind him. He walked over to Michonne, kissed her quickly, and rubbed her belly. He didn't miss the "Oooh" and "Awww" that he got from the three musketeers that had been giving him a hard time all day. He sat down on the mattress with Carol, since it was the one closest to Michonne's chair.
"Sure is a lotta stuff." He said.
"Babies need a lot of stuff." Maggie said. "Besides, it wasn't expensive. They were practically giving it away." Daryl laughed at her.
"Ok, I haven't done it yet, but it's baby shower tradition…" Carol started. "Can I feel the baby?"
Michonne realized that besides Daryl and Hershel, no one had touched her belly. It hadn't been that way with her girls. Everyone had touched her belly, even though it bothered her sometimes when strangers even felt the right to do it. She'd never understood why, but a pregnant belly seemed to be a magnet to people. Everyone here looked at it a lot, but no one had actually touched her. In fact, the look on Carol's face right now, one of hope but a little nervousness, made her wonder if they had been afraid to touch her.
Michonne smiled at Carol, more to reassure her than anything. "Come here." She said. She pushed around until she felt the baby start to kick and then put Carol's hand over it. Carol lingered there a minute and then she looked at Michonne and smiled. Michonne knew that for a moment she was thinking about Sophia, about when she'd been pregnant. Michonne knew that Carol thought about that a lot because she talked about it a lot. Michonne didn't talk about it, but she still felt it.
Once the ice was broken, everyone wanted to feel it, and Michonne obliged them as long as the baby cooperated. Glenn had been the most fascinated. When Carol helped him back to his chair he was still sitting there, his forehead a little wrinkled.
"You keep poking at it." He said. "Why?" Before Michonne could respond, Maggie poked Glenn. "Hey!" She poked him again. "Stop!" He said irritated. Maggie poked him again, this time laughing. "Stop poking me!" Glenn said, swatting at her.
"That's why." Maggie said, laughing. "Makes the baby move."
"Point taken." Glenn said.
"So are you nervous about having it?" Rachel asked.
Michonne was nervous about the birth, but she wasn't sure that she wanted to admit it to everyone. She might have admitted it to Daryl, or she might have admitted it to Carol, but she didn't really want to say it to everyone.
"Maybe a little." She said. She hadn't lied completely.
"Maybe it won't be too bad." Maggie offered.
"Well, I'm afraid I can't offer you the, what did you call it? The good drugs." Hershel said. "I'm afraid this time you'll have to fly solo."
Instantly Michonne saw the look cross everyone's face except Carol's. The worst part of it all was that Daryl was looking at her now too, and it wasn't a look that she could read very clearly. It was a look of sadness, but also of disappointment.
"Well…" Carol said, trying to break the awkward silence and change the topic. "We better get all this cleaned up. Michonne, did you want the crib in your cell or did you want me to put it in Judith's cell?"
"Um…my cell, I guess." Michonne responded. She hadn't thought about it, and she couldn't think about it right now.
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"Why didn't you tell me you had a baby before, 'Chonne?" Daryl asked. Michonne was sitting on the bed with her back against the wall and Daryl was sitting in front of her, looking hurt.
"I don't know, Daryl. I just didn't want to talk about it, and it doesn't really matter." She said.
"It does matter." Daryl said. He couldn't explain why it mattered. He had figured that Michonne had a life before this, and he'd thought she'd maybe had a husband or a boyfriend. It wasn't like it bothered him that he wasn't her first guy or nothing, he'd figured that out pretty quickly, but it felt like he didn't know her, and that hurt him. He hadn't known she had a child. That felt like a big thing not to know about someone.
"I had two." Michonne said. She didn't want to talk about it, but the look on his face was so sad, and it contrasted so much with the look that he'd worn lately.
Daryl looked up at her. "What were their names?" He asked.
Michonne sighed. "Angelica and Celine. Angelica was named after my grandmother, and Celine was named after my husband's mother."
"So you had two little girls?" Daryl asked. He tried to picture what they might have looked like. Michonne just nodded. Daryl wanted to know what had happened to them. He knew, though, that it was not going to be a happy story. "'Chonne…" He said after a minute. "What happened?"
Immediately the look that crossed Michonne's face made Daryl wish he hadn't asked it. She was breathing hard. He reached over and took her hand in his, trying to offer some type of comfort.
"Angelica was three and Celine was four." Michonne said. "We hadn't planned for them to be so close together. I had a hard time getting pregnant with Angelica, and I guess once I had her it wasn't hard anymore. My husband couldn't really handle it, so the marriage broke apart. When this whole thing started they were with him for the weekend and I had gone to the office to take care of a few things. When I realized all this crazy stuff was happening, I went home. I found my boyfriend there with his best friend and both of them had turned. I had to put them both down, and all I could get my hands on was a kitchen knife. After that, I realized how bad it was and drove to my ex-husband's house to get my girls, but when I got there…" Michonne stopped talking. She was crying and she was crying hard now. Daryl slipped beside her and hugged her to him. She wailed into his chest, and he hugged her harder, letting her cry it out.
"You don't gotta say nothin' else." He said. "You don't gotta."
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The wailing cries echoed through the prison. Everyone that was still in the living room playing games and talking froze. Glenn cast a slightly frightened look at Carol, and Maggie looked confused.
Carol understood those sounds, and it hurt her heart. She didn't know Michonne's story, but she knew when Daryl had asked her to go back to the cell with him that he was going to ask her about it. Carol knew that those tears were the worst ones that a mother could cry. She felt bad that the prison echoed the way it did and that everyone in the living room had heard them. Those tears were private, but there was no such thing as privacy anymore.
"Go back to your game." She said to Glenn and Maggie. "Just let it be."