Michonne was busy cooking when Beth came up.
"Where's Carol?" Beth asked, yawning and rubbing her eyes sleepily.
"Carol is taking the day off," Michonne said.
"What?" Beth asked. Michonne snickered a little because Beth sounded so surprised.
"She's taking a break," Michonne answered again. She moved around the meat in the pan she was cooking with. "Can you go get some more meat out of that smokehouse?" She asked, pointing. "And stir the oatmeal as you go," she added.
Beth didn't respond, but she did go to work. Michonne's stomach rumbled. She realized her morning sickness had finally gone on vacation because instead of the smell of the meat making her want to run for it, she realized it made her feel like she was starving. She was making extra because right now she felt like she could eat the pan in front of her without sharing with anyone else.
Tyreese was the next to join her, coming over with Judith toddling beside him, clinging to one of his fingers, her fingers in her mouth, and the baby tucked in the other arm.
"Aren't you missing someone?" Michonne asked, barely glancing at him.
"Who do you mean? Hope or the house full of Walkers that I just left?" Tyreese responded.
Michonne snickered.
"Hope. I didn't have much confidence that the rest of the crew would be accounted for this early," she said.
"I put Hope in the bed with Daryl to terrorize him a bit. She's in a really good mood and was pretty snuggly. I thought he might want to enjoy that for a bit while he's waking up," Tyreese said. "I think Carol is dead, Sadie is acting a little homicidal, and Mark was in the fetal position when I left. Do you need any help?"
"No," Michonne responded, reaching out to take the meat from Beth who had just returned. "I think we've got it covered here. If you can just rouse the household, you'll have done a lot."
"I'd rather cook breakfast," Tyreese said. "Can you take these two?"
Michonne sighed and reached up to take the baby from him, which he placed in her arms. She supposed that she could cook one handed, she'd seen Carol do it countless times.
"Don't go anywhere, Jude," Michonne warned the child. Judith ignored her and started to follow Tyreese back toward the house. "Judith! Back here!"
Judith stopped trotting behind Tyreese, turned, and finally took her fingers out of her mouth.
"I go with dada," she said, pointing toward Tyreese who was continuing on.
"No, you stay with me. He'll be back," Michonne argued.
Judith made a face at her.
"You can make that face all you want," Michonne said, "but do it over here where I can see you better."
Reluctantly the girl came back in the area where she was allowed to play, choosing one of her abandoned yard toys for entertainment. She knew by now that if she didn't listen when they told her to stay there, she'd be put in the pen, and then she really had no hope of trotting off behind anyone that she wanted to follow around.
Beth helped Michonne get the breakfast ready and get it inside. Michonne had paid very little attention to everyone trickling in, mostly owing to the fact that it was quite a bit of work to get breakfast ready, keep an eye on Judith, and dole out portions for everyone. Michonne frowned as she started putting portions on all the plates.
The size of this family is ridiculous, she thought. She'd never intended in her life to have a very large family, and for a moment she felt like she was a mother to about thirty people. She'd finally put the baby in one of the baby seats that were strung around. The good thing about Carol was that she had thought ahead and had established "baby areas" in nearly every location where she often stuck juggling children and chores.
The chatter told Michonne that the dining room was full. Beth started taking plates.
"You need to ring the bell to call up the rest," Beth said, her hands full of plates.
"Oh, yeah," Michonne said, heading out and ringing the bell. Coming toward her was Rachel.
"Helping with breakfast?" Rachel asked.
"Something like that," Michonne responded.
"I'm going to take a plate down to Seth and one down to Maggie," Rachel said. "I think they'll both be well enough to come to dinner tonight, but I won't push them to be up this early. Is Carol in the kitchen?"
Michonne started to walk back into the house with Rachel.
"She's taking the day off," Michonne explained. It was the second time she had to explain it, but somehow she felt like it was something she'd be saying a lot during the day.
Rachel wrinkled her forehead.
"Is she sick?" Rachel asked.
"No, just on vacation. I'm filling in for the day," Michonne said.
"Oh," Rachel responded. "Well, I'll take their breakfast. I'm going to need to change bandages for both of them, do you think you can get that stuff together for me? I'm going to eat down there with Seth, but I can pick everything up after breakfast."
"Um, sure," Michonne said. "I can do that."
They both pushed into the kitchen then and Rachel gathered up plates, balancing them precariously in her arms.
"Are you sure you've got that?" Michonne asked, waiting for all three plates to come crashing to the floor.
"You know, I probably don't," Rachel admitted. She returned one of the plates. "I'll take mine and Seth's, if you can run that down to Maggie, that would be great," she said. "Just tell her that I'll be down there after I eat to check on her."
Michonne stood there a minute, and Rachel walked out of the room.
"Sure, I got it, no problem," Michonne mumbled. She turned, almost bumping into Beth who was trekking back and forth taking plates to the dining room.
"I hungry!" Judith called to Michonne, pulling at her pants.
"Hold on, Jude, I'm working on it," Michonne said. She picked up one of the small plates and one of full larger ones. She made her way to the dining room, aware that Judith was trailing her. "Tyreese, please," she said, holding up the small plate so that he would see what she was getting at. She put it on of the high chairs and picked Judith up, putting her in the seat. Tyreese got up and moved closer to the chair.
Carol was at the table, but nothing about her indicated that she was even happy to be alive at the moment. Sadie looked pretty rough too. She was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. Beau was attempting to convince her to eat something. Mark was nursing his own hangover. Michonne scanned the room a second. Daryl looked hungover, but was better at dealing with it than the others. He was eating and feeding Hope who was sitting in his lap, grabbing at the food.
"Beau, make sure Sadie eats something, she's got to feed that baby soon," Michonne called.
Michonne turned and headed back to the kitchen. She picked up one of the plates that was left and started out the door toward Maggie and Glenn's house.
Michonne had not seen Maggie since the night of the battle. She didn't knock, just let herself into the house, knowing that Maggie was there alone. She made her way through the house and up the stairs, stopping to knock on the door to Glenn and Maggie's room.
"Come in," Maggie called.
Michonne opened the door and came in, Maggie was sitting up awkwardly in bed. Her shoulder was bandaged and tied to her.
"How are you feeling?" Michonne asked.
"Better," Maggie said, smiling. She looked tired, but there was color in her face. "I thought you'd be Rachel, or Carol."
"Sorry to disappoint," Michonne said. "Rachel is with Seth and Carol is taking the day off."
Michonne put the plate of food in Maggie's lap.
"Carol is taking the day off?" Maggie asked.
Michonne smiled. "Yeah, she's taking the day off," she responded. "Are you good? Do you need anything else? Rachel is coming by to take care of you after breakfast."
"I'm fine," Maggie said. "I could use some more water, though, and do you think I could get a bath today? I'm starting to smell myself."
Michonne nodded. "Sure, I'll get you some water and I'll make sure some bath water is warmed up for Rachel."
"Thanks," Maggie said.
"No problem, I'm heading back for a bit," Michonne said. She got up and started back toward headquarters. Her stomach was growling now, and she hoped that Hope wasn't too full because if she was she was going to have to pump soon. She'd decided that Glenn or Beth could take Maggie water. She'd scarf down what she could and get water going to wash dishes and to offer Rachel water to take to Maggie.
Michonne sighed, she had the feeling this was going to be a very long day.
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
Beau followed Sadie down the street toward her house. She had retrieved the baby she kept with her from Michonne, and now she was wandering home. He didn't know if she was aware that he was behind her. She hadn't seemed too on top of things at all this morning. He had a good idea of what had taken place at their house the night before, and most of them seemed a little out of it.
Sadie mounted the porch steps and dropped into one of the rocking chairs, the baby cradled in her arms. Beau stopped and watched her for a minute. She tipped her head back and put her feet on the railing of the porch.
He wondered if she was planning on going to sleep right there. He watched her a minute, trying to decide if he should go up and talk to her like he planned or if he should just go on about his business. She suddenly kicked up from her position, got out of the chair and disappeared into the house, only to reappear a second later with a baby carrier, which she put by the chair she had been occupying and gently placed the baby in. Beau walked up then, bounding up the porch steps. Sadie looked at him a second, smiled, and then sat back in the rocking chair. Beau leaned against the railing in front of her, stripping her of her earlier foot rest, and rocked the chair with his foot on the front of the rocker.
"Y'all musta had fun last night," he said. She looked better now than she did at breakfast. When she'd first sat down to eat Beau had thought there was something seriously wrong with her, and then the others had trickled in and he realized they were all nursing some kind of epic hangover.
Sadie smiled at him.
"We did, but today, it's not so much fun," she said.
"Never is," Beau said. He'd gotten drunk with his brothers a few times. They knew a man that lived not far from them that made some pretty low quality moonshine, but it did the trick. He remembered a few nights hiding out from his ma with that mason jar. The next day they'd all have to try to hide their hangovers, but his uncle always seemed to call them on it. He'd work them extra hard on those days, making them pay for their transgressions, but at least he never let Beau's mama know what they'd been doing. They'd grin and bear any punishment he doled out, so long as she didn't catch wind of what happened.
"You're too young to drink," Sadie said, giving him a disapproving look.
"No I'm not," Beau answered back, rocking the chair particularly hard to jar her a little. "I ain't been too young to drink for a while."
Beau wasn't too young to drink. He'd been old enough to celebrate his twenty first birthday at the local bar and honky tonk with his uncle and some of his rambunctious friends. He'd even gotten the attention of a couple of the girls there, though he hadn't done anything about it.
"How old are you, Beau?" Sadie asked. She leaned her arm up against the back of the chair, resting her head against her palm.
"I ain't got a clue," Beau said. It wasn't a lie. He really didn't have any idea how old he was anymore. The truth was that he hadn't kept track of time since all this started happening. Some days he felt like it had only been a matter of months since he'd come to realize the threat that was all around him, and other days it seemed like he'd been out there, away from the place he'd called home his entire life, for almost as long as he'd been home. "How old are you?"
Sadie snickered at him.
"A lady never reveals her age," she said, smiling. Beau returned the smile.
"Then I reckon we're even," Beau said. He paused a moment longer, leaned against the railing and continued to rock the chair. Sadie stared intently back at him, but didn't say anything, nor did she protest the rocking. Finally, Beau dropped his gaze, breaking the line of sight between them and gave the rocker a final kick. "I'm gonna go down an' see if'n they need help findin' some stuff for dinner in the fields," he said, tipping his face back toward Sadie enough that he knew she'd be able to understand him. "You oughta drink some water," he added after a second. "I'll bring ya some on my way ta go down there." Beau didn't wait for a response. He threw his leg over the railing he'd been leaning against and dropped to the ground, heading toward headquarters.
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
Michonne was exhausted by dinner. She grumpily served plates of food, irritated for a moment that hardly anyone said thank you when they received their plates, nor did they seem to think it might be a good idea to pass through the kitchen themselves and request their dinner.
Rachel had brought Seth and Maggie down to headquarters to join everyone else for the first time since the battle. Michonne had served all three of them first, and then she'd taken to serving the others with the quiet assistance of Beth.
When she finally took her seat, most everyone else was done eating and more than a few of the faces looked like they weren't far from desiring some sleep.
"So how'd you end up with them anyway?" Rick asked Seth. Michonne had come in on the tail of whatever conversation they'd been having, but it didn't take her long to figure out that they'd been talking about the group that they had "overcome", as they'd chosen to label what had taken place.
"I was with another group," Seth said. "We ran up on the group, I guess you could say. There was a bit of conflict. I guess I was a coward, I didn't want to get killed, so I agreed to join their group." He lowered his eyes then, focusing on his food.
"That doesn't make you a coward," Rachel said. She was sitting beside him and reached out, resting a hand on his arm. "We all do what we think is right to stay alive these days." She remembered that she had been one of the many that had blindly followed the Governor right up until the end, even believing the threat he had talked about when preparing to take on the enemy group of the prison. Now they were her group, these days things changed rapidly at times.
"The woman that was with ya, the one Sadie said you was locked up with, was she your wife?" Daryl asked.
"No," Seth responded, looking up now. "I didn't know her. She was a woman that came from another group. She got traded in."
"What the hell's all this tradin' shit you keep talkin' 'bout?" Daryl asked. He'd heard the word tossed around a few times and it didn't make any sense to him. You could trade a lot of things, but he had yet to figure out how or why you'd want to trade your group members.
"This group," Seth offered, "did a lot of trading. Women and children mostly. If another group had a woman that someone liked enough, they'd set up a trade, swap out another woman that they had, if she was pretty enough, or two or three if they weren't that nice. Children were often thrown in, since they really weren't good to have around unless you could guarantee that they'd make it to be good for labor. I saw a few of the trade negotiations."
"Man, that's fucked up," Daryl said. "Who the hell thinks they can just go tradin' people like they was money or some shit like that."
"It's not exactly a new idea," Michonne offered. Daryl looked at her. "Seems like one group of people or another have thought that they had that right for ages. We've just gotten back around to it now as a society," she said.
Daryl chewed at the skin on his thumb.
"Still fucked up," he growled.
"That it is," Michonne said.
"I didn't think it was a good practice," Seth said, "don't get me wrong, but that's what they were doing. That's how we got Sam in the group."
"Who was Sam?" Rick asked.
"Sam was the woman, Samantha, that I was locked up with. We tried to get away one night when we had watch. They caught us and locked us up. They were planning on trading her and those other three women as soon as they found something worth trading for," Seth explained.
"What happened to the others?" Mark asked, finally. There had been a lot more people lost in their group than could be accounted for at this time and he was curious.
"Some died, some were traded," Seth offered. "There were some kids there, a couple got traded, but the others died. The group didn't bother to take very good care of the people that they were holding just to use in trades. They just had to keep them healthy enough to be appealing in the case of a negotiation."
"And everybody in that damn group was OK with all that shit?" Daryl asked. He couldn't imagine for a minute what would happen in their group if anyone had come up with the idea to trade someone out for another person. All hell would break loose and they'd probably decide that the person who suggested it had gone completely off the deep end and needed to be restrained.
Seth shrugged. "I don't know, I honestly don't. It was hard to tell how much people did because they wanted to do it, and how much they did out of fear. Things didn't work there quite like they do here."
"Well that's pretty obvious," Glenn said. He was wide eyed listening to the conversation that was unfolding around him. "What about the other groups? These groups that they traded with? Were they staying in the area or just passing through?"
Seth shrugged again. "I don't know. None of them ever really said anything about their situations. That wasn't how it worked."
"Well, I hope they just moved on," Tyreese offered. "I, for one, could use a break from dealing with outsiders." He stopped for a minute and took a bite of food. "No offense," he said after a pause.
Seth grunted to signal that he'd felt no offense at the comment.
"It's fine, I know, I'm an outsider. I'm not like them, though, and I'll pull my weight," he said.
"We were all outsiders once," Rachel said.
Tyreese nodded at her comment, not adding anything to it.
"Well, I can tell ya one thing," Daryl said. "If they still 'round here we ain't goin' out lookin' for 'em no time soon. Long as they don't bother us, we'll stay the hell away from 'em."
"I agree," Rick said. "We need a break from it all. We need time to recover from that last group."
Daryl thought that laying low sounded like a good idea to him. He had no desire to get involved with any other groups again if it could be avoided. They could all use a little down time, some time to just enjoy everything they had. As long as there was no one threatening to take that away from them, he was willing to let whoever wanted to pass through the area do so peacefully. They wouldn't meet any resistance unless they came calling and tried to create problems. Then, of course, they'd respond, but they weren't going looking for conflict.
111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
Michonne was exhausted, so Daryl offered to put Hope to bed. As soon as the little girl was calm and lying in her crib, looking like she'd be asleep soon, he slipped into the bedroom.
"You 'sleep yet?" He asked. The lamp was still lit, but Michonne was lying on her side with her back to the door, so he couldn't tell.
"Not really," she said. He walked around the bed and crawled under the covers.
"Hope's down," he said, putting his face close to hers. "You tired?" He asked.
"Yeah, Daryl, I am," Michonne said. Her eyes were closed. Daryl leaned over and let his lips graze over her eyelids gently.
"Had a tough day today?" He asked.
Michonne smiled but didn't open her eyes.
"I did. I learned that I don't want to be Carol when I grow up," she said.
Daryl snickered.
He got up and pulled the cover off of Michonne. She groaned but didn't move.
"Daryl, I'm tired," she protested.
"I know that, you done said it once," Daryl said, crawling down the bed.
"Can I have the blanket back then?" Michonne asked.
"In a bit," Daryl said. "Damn, 'Chonne, why don't you put your grumpy mood to bed for a bit?"
Michonne sat up then, leaning on her elbow, "I'm not trying to be grumpy, Daryl, I'm just tired and I don't want to do anything."
Daryl took a seat at the foot of the bed.
"So don't do nothin', 'Chonne. I ain't asked ya ta do nothin'," He replied. He grabbed her leg and brought her foot into his lap, kneading it in his hands.
"Ohhh…" Michonne said, dropping back and rolling over onto her back, offering him the other foot as well.
Daryl snickered.
"See, an' you was gettin' all ill with me," Daryl said.
"Oh, God, that feels so good," Michonne responded.
Daryl snickered again.
"You better stop sayin' all that, 'Chonne, or everyone in the house is gonna think you was in the mood for somethin'," Daryl said. "You reckon you might get a little vacation from bein' Carol tomorrow, and then you might be more in the mood to spend some time with me?"
Michonne moaned in response.
"If you keep doing that, I'll do whatever you want," Michonne said.
Daryl smiled and continued to knead her feet, enjoying the fact that he could elicit such moans from her even without attempting to please her sexually.
"You gotta deal, 'Chonne, but I'm holdin' ya to it." Daryl said.