AN: First off, thank you so much for reviewing and making me not feel so alone here.
Secondly, I realize that when we were waiting for Hope things passed much more quickly. That was mostly owing to fewer plot lines and therefore easier time lapses. Now time passes more slowly as we are playing around with other plot lines. Our newest little Dixon is growing, but we must await the arrival as much as anyone in the story. ;-)
If you've lost track of time, I'll help you out using my "calendar" that I've made up to roughly follow the events. Michonne is roughly 4/5 months pregnant at the time, so you'll be waiting for the winter to come before we even think of seeing a birth.
On another note, this chapter is a little different. Like some that we've seen before, this is a character/plot development chapter that focuses on some of our other characters. It is a Rick and Sadie centered chapter. No worries though, even though this chapter doesn't focus on our beloved couple, they haven't disappeared in the slightest!
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Sadie had never questioned who Judith's parents were. It was obvious to her that one way or another the child belong to Carol and Tyreese, and biology mattered nothing to her. Paul was hers, and could even be said to be Mark's as far as she could tell. He was the one that woke her at night to care for the infant, and he was even willing to shoulder diaper changes and the like. Their relationship status, she assumed would mean little to nothing to the boy as he grew, and if he lived long enough to wonder about it she hoped that the fact that she'd never carried him nor birthed him would mean nothing.
She had always assumed, knowing well what that could do for someone, that Judith was Carol's daughter, and that Tyreese had accepted responsibility for her. She hadn't dared to ask how the child had been conceived. Such a question seemed ridiculous to her these days, and perhaps even a little cruel, given some of the situations she'd found herself in since the dead decided to ramble about.
It was only when Carl referred to Judith as his sister in one of their sign language lessons, and she'd made him verify it by both speaking and writing the word for her, that Sadie started to wonder.
Carl's mother wasn't with the group, and Sadie didn't know why. She assumed that his mother had died, but he hadn't offered the information and she wasn't one to press for details, especially not to someone Carl's age when it came to his mother. His father, Rick, had never really shown any sign of affection toward Judith, and that left her a little baffled.
She hated to pry, but she wanted answers to this, and Rick was unoccupied by anything at the moment. She could see him lazily swinging on the porch swing at his house. Sadie excused herself from Carl, offering the excuse that she was tired and Paul was hungry. They'd pick up their lessons and conversation the next day.
She was relieved when the boy thanked her and left, more excited by what he had learned for the day than disappointed that she'd cut him short of the time that she normally allotted for him.
She gathered up Paul, who was asleep and not hungry at all, and made her way toward Rick's porch, stopping only momentarily at the bottom before mounting the steps, admiring how whoever had constructed the neighborhood had managed to create almost cookie cutter houses, one after one.
"Is something wrong?" Rick asked when Sadie came up, drug a chair closer to the swing, and sat down with the baby.
"No," she said, leaning back in the chair.
Rick regarded the woman for a moment. He wasn't going to believe she was here without a purpose. That wasn't how Sadie worked, and he'd figured that much out by now.
"Is Judith Carl's sister?" Sadie asked after a few minutes.
Rick was taken aback by the question from her for second, but then settled in on it. She was still settling into the group. Unless it had come up in conversation she'd have no way of knowing all that they'd been through. She had, however, spent some time with Carl and he had little knowledge of what passed between them.
"She is," he said finally.
Sadie sat forward in her chair, regarding him a moment.
"Half-sister?" She asked.
Rick stared at her.
"Why do you ask?" He answered her question with one of his own.
Sadie sat back. "Your half, or your wife's?"
Rick swallowed. He suddenly realized the woman in front of him was unlike any that he'd known before.
"I don't know," he said finally, "if she's mine."
"What happened to your wife?" Sadie asked after a second.
"We lost her when Judith was born," Rick said. He realized that he'd never said that before, never so point blank, but something in the way that Sadie stared at him made him feel like that was the only way to respond.
The woman sat quietly a moment, contemplating. Then her face shifted.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I've lost people too."
Rick nodded at her.
The baby she was holding stirred and started to cry. Sadie tried to soothe him for a moment and Rick regarded her.
"Do you mind?" She asked, her hands going toward the hem of her shirt.
"No, it's fine," he said, swallowing.
Michonne and Sadie both breastfed when and where they pleased. Rick didn't mind the act at all, but somehow just now it stirred him a little that Sadie had no problem lifting her shirt and offering the whining infant her breast. Once he was quietly feeding she decided to continue her interrogation.
"I lost my husband," Sadie offered after a second. "My brother, my children, everyone, I guess," she said when she continued.
"I'm sorry to hear that," Rick said. He was surprised when she smiled in response.
"It's happened to us all, hasn't it?" She said. "It's what we do these days, we lose the people we care about. It hurts, but it gets better. I've mourned them, and I think my mourning is through." She looked away for a moment and then looked back at Rick. "At least it's done for a while. There are days."
Rick swallowed and cocked his head to the side. He understood what she meant. There were days that you thought you were fine, days that you thought you'd somehow gotten over everything that had happened, and then unexpectedly you'd be slammed with feeling. Something small, perhaps, something that meant nothing at all would bring it slamming back against you.
Sadie sat there quietly nursing the baby, not talking. Rick sat back in the swing, unsure of what to say to her. After a minute he just relaxed, deciding that perhaps they were through. Maybe she was just going to sit with him.
"My husband and I, we had five children. Three girls, two boys, all alternating, a perfect pattern," Sadie said after a bit, pulling her shirt down and burping the baby. "We left Atlanta with my brother and a group of people. The first big group of Walkers I saw attacked us at night when we were travelling. I had the baby, and my brother got my third child. We lost a lot of people that night. My husband, and three of my children. They were just gone in one night."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Rick said, still not sure exactly how to respond to Sadie. He wasn't sure why she was sitting in front of him right now telling him this story, but he wasn't going to stop her if she felt like she needed to share her story. Maybe she just wanted someone to listen to it. What surprised him most was the calmness with which she was speaking. He knew that she didn't tend to change her tone of voice often, and he didn't know if that was because she was deaf, or if it was a trait of hers, but her tone remained steady. She didn't even look upset, just like she was thinking. Her brows were only slightly knitted.
"The next big attack I lost my older daughter, but my brother kept me and the baby moving forward. I never knew where we were going, but we had to keep trying to get there," Sadie continued.
"I don't think any of us know where we're going anymore," Rick said. He knew for a fact that this group had no idea what the future held for them. Once upon a time they'd been planning on trying to get somewhere, not sure of where it was, just hoping they'd know it when they saw it.
Sadie nodded at him. She was quiet again for a minute, her head cocked to the side. She drew a foot up in the chair with her and supported the infant against her chest, rubbing its back.
"Then I lost my daughter. My last baby. A Walker took her right from me, and I couldn't do anything," Sadie said. "That was when I thought I wouldn't make it, but my brother made me keep going."
When she was quiet again, Rick waited. It was clear that she wasn't done, and he didn't try to interpret her silent hesitation. He just regarded her with the same intensity that she typically wore when she was looking at anyone.
Sadie shrugged, making a face after a minute. "Then the men came that killed all the men that were with us, and some of the women. I didn't care then. What were they going to take from me anyway? When the group we attacked came, and took everyone else. Only Mark came back for me," Sadie said.
Rick sat there, looking for what he was supposed to say.
"I'm sorry," he said, realizing how short it fell from the mark. He had listened to the story, trying to imagine how Sadie felt telling the story. She'd told it matter-of-factly, like she had been telling a story about someone else, not like it had been something she'd lived. "That's a lot to go through," he offered, still feeling like it wasn't adequate.
Sadie nodded at him, contemplating something.
"Have you mourned her yet?" Sadie asked after a minute.
Rick was caught off guard, still thinking about the story that he'd just heard.
"What?" He asked.
"Have you mourned her yet? Your wife? Have you mourned her?" Sadie asked. Something in her face was urging him to answer. When she asked you a question, he thought, you knew that she expected an answer and she wasn't going to just let the question go. She wore the facial expression while she sat silently waiting for him to reply.
"I have," Rick said. "At least I think I have, I don't know. It's complicated…" he hesitated, not quite knowing what he wanted to say. "It was a complicated situation," he finished.
"The mourning?" Sadie asked.
"We haven't had much time for mourning, just time here and there," Rick said.
"So you're still mourning her?" Sadie asked.
"I still miss her," Rick said after a minute, wondering why it was that he felt like he needed to continue, why it was that he wanted to keep talking. "I feel guilty. I never took the time…" he stopped again. "I just didn't make things right, and I wanted to make things right."
"Make what right?" Sadie asked.
Rick felt himself growing a little annoyed. He had dismissed this conversation before. Carl hadn't talked about it much, hadn't pushed him. Everyone else had left him alone to deal with his loss. Rachel had never really asked him about it. She didn't care, and he liked sometimes that she didn't care. He hadn't had to really talk about it. But now here he was, sitting on his porch swing and this woman who had never even met Lori was sitting directly in front of him, expecting him to answer questions he didn't know if he even could answer.
"My wife," Rick started, "she thought I was dead when this all started. She left with my son and my best friend. I found them later with the group," Rick said.
"With this group?" Sadie asked.
Rick thought back. For a moment it struck him to think how much the group had changed since the day that he'd found them, coming back to report to a bunch of strangers that they'd left a man handcuffed on a roof and barely made it out of Atlanta with their lives. They had been coming back to tell Daryl that his brother was handcuffed to a roof.
"Daryl, Carol, Glenn…and others…we've lost the others since then," Rick said.
Sadie nodded.
"So you found her and Carl, and then?" Sadie urged.
"Well, my best friend…I don't know what happened…I guess he went crazy, I guess maybe he loved Lori, or both, I don't know," Rick said.
Sadie looked at him, somewhat confused but intently focused on him and curious.
"I killed him," Rick said after a minute. He started to choke a little, feeling the memories coming back. The pain was still there. He hadn't wanted to kill Shane, and no matter if Lori had ever thought it was out of cold blood or not, he knew it hadn't been, but he'd felt sometimes that she looked at him differently after that. He'd worried sometimes that she had maybe been angry with him for it, like she would have preferred that things had been different, maybe even that Shane had been the one to return that night.
Rick realized that Sadie looked even more confused and perhaps a little worried.
"He tried to kill me," Rick explained. He suddenly felt his mouth dry and wished that he had water. This was a story that he hadn't wanted to tell. He couldn't stop, though, he already knew that. "I had to kill him first," he said, shrugging.
"Why did he try to kill you?" Sadie asked. "Because he loved your wife?"
Rick shrugged and brushed his forehead with his hand.
"I don't know what Lori thought," Rick continued, "but sometimes I think that she didn't believe me. Maybe she thought I did it because I wanted to. It was like we didn't know how to communicate anymore, like I didn't know what to say to her and she didn't know what to say to me. The way she looked at me…I didn't know how to take the way she looked at me," Rick continued. He stopped a moment and pinched his nose. He felt Sadie touching him on the leg and he looked up. She had a look of something in her eyes. It wasn't sympathy, maybe it was compassion, but it was a comforting look. "It was just hard," Rick said.
Sadie nodded.
"Marriage is hard," she said. "Relationships are hard. They always have been, but now, like this, with whatever this is…" She looked around, like she was trying to define the nightmarish landscape that they'd all been walking through all this time.
"My marriage wasn't perfect before all of this," Rick said. "I thought I could make it right, though. I thought we'd make it somewhere safe…" He trailed off and looked around. Maybe this community, maybe this life that they knew now, maybe that's what he'd thought that they could find. It was the closest thing he'd seen so far to the dream that he'd had. "I thought that we'd make it to a place to be safe, and then I could make it right. We'd all be safe and then we could make our marriage good again, make it what we wanted it to be."
"But you didn't make it?" Sadie asked.
Rick swallowed, feeling the tears welling up inside him. He pushed them back. He wasn't going to cry in front of a woman who had just told him how much she had lost since all this happened without choking once.
Rick finally shook his head. Sadie's hand returned to his leg.
"I never made it right…" he said. "I never got the chance to…I never told her so much," Rick said.
Suddenly he was feeling frustrated, almost angry. He didn't want Sadie's sympathy and he didn't like the way she was looking at him right now, like she wasn't shocked by what he was telling her. Like she didn't hold it against him. He held it against himself, and he felt like she should too.
"I didn't talk to her," Rick said. "Lori always said I didn't talk about things, and I didn't. I don't know why I'm talking about it now," he got up and started across the porch, turning and pacing back. Sadie got up and scurried after him. "I'm talking about it now, and I couldn't ever talk about it with her," he said.
Sadie swallowed hard, her eyes a little wide and he realized that he was gripping her arm. He thought about it a minute, realizing he was holding her too roughly. He hadn't meant to reach out and grab her arm like that, holding her in front of him. When he relaxed his grip, her face relaxed.
"We're all different," Sadie said. "We all change. You're safe here, right now. It's easier to talk about our feelings when we have time to feel them."
Rick sighed and returned to the swing. Sadie sat in front of him again, soothing the baby that had become upset when she'd gotten up from the chair.
"Relationships are hard, and they don't always work. Sometimes it isn't anyone's fault," Sadie said.
Rick chuckled a little.
"Yeah, relationships are hard," he said. He thought about it. He thought about the people around him. Hershel told stories about his wives, both of them, beautiful stories. Dora and Frank had lived most of their lives together and they had died together. All around him people were happy in their relationships. And Sadie sat in front of him now, listening to his story, and telling him that relationships were hard. He laughed a little at it.
"What is funny?" Sadie asked.
"Relationships are hard," Rick repeated. "Except for I'm not seeing a lot of hard relationships around here, Sadie. There's Daryl and Michonne, Glenn and Maggie, Tyreese and Carol…hell even Junior and Beth…but relationships are hard."
"You can't compare your life with someone else's," Sadie said. "Your reality is yours, and theirs is theirs. It's the same with relationships. If yours wasn't perfect, it doesn't mean that it was anyone's fault. It was just the relationship. They are happy, but it doesn't mean that they don't have to work for it, it just means that in the end, they are happy," she said.
"I wanted to be happy with Lori. I was happy with Lori. It wasn't always bad," Rick said.
"Circumstances," Sadie said.
Rick stared at her a moment, and she stared back at him, unwavering.
"And Rachel?" Sadie asked. "Is it hard with Rachel?"
Rick chuckled again. He didn't have a relationship with Rachel, not really. Essentially they were just playing house, and they weren't very good at that. He'd seen Sadie and Mark doing a better job of playing house together. At least it was obvious they cared about each other, even though Mark was openly gay, and as far as he could tell Sadie was celibate.
"No," he said, "it isn't hard with Rachel because there's nothing there. I don't want anything there, nothing like I wanted with Lori."
Sadie looked thoughtful for a moment, nodded again.
"You can't change things with your wife," she said after a few minutes. Then she shrugged. "We can't change the past. You can mourn it, you can miss it, but you can't change it."
Rick looked at her, not responding.
"What about Judith?" Sadie asked, returning to her original line of questioning. "Do you care about her?"
"I don't know if she's mine," Rick said. He pinched the bridge of his nose. He had no idea how he felt about the child. He felt like Carol was right. He felt like he didn't know her. He knew that everyone looked at him like he was supposed to do something, like he was doing something wrong. Part of him felt guilty for having abandoned the child to Carol, but he didn't know what to do anymore. Now he had no idea what he was supposed to do, or even if there was anything to be done.
"Oh," Sadie said. "You think she might be your best friend's baby?"
Rick shrugged and put his head in his hand.
Sadie touched him on the leg after a minute and looked around.
"He's not here," she said.
"No, he's not here. I told you…I told you what happened," Rick responded.
Sadie nodded.
"It must be hard," Sadie said after a minute, "to think of loving a child when you don't know if it's yours."
Rick looked at her. She had paused, but she wasn't really looking at him and he could tell she would continue before long.
"I know that Paul isn't mine…" she said. "Carol and Tyreese know that Judith isn't theirs…but it must be really hard when you don't know."
Rick got annoyed then. Her tone of voice didn't change, but he was certain that if sarcasm had a facial expression he was staring at it now. He felt himself starting to grow angry with the woman in front of him.
"That's different," he said.
"You're right, it is," Sadie said, nodding her head enthusiastically. "For you there's at least a chance that Judith is your daughter, that's very different."
"So you're like everyone else," Rick said. "You think that I'm doing wrong by not being a father to Judith."
Sadie nodded. "Do you think you're doing wrong?"
"I don't know," Rick said. "I don't know what to do anymore. I don't know if it's too late."
Sadie sat there a moment.
"It's never too late," Sadie said, "not while we're still alive. It's only too late when something happens." She looked at him for a minute and he had no idea what she wanted from him. "You feel guilty about your wife," she continued, "and that may go away, or it may not. Do you want to feel guilty about Judith if something happens?"
"I don't even know her," Rick said. "She doesn't know me. She knows Carol and Tyreese."
"You're right, and you're wrong," Sadie said, sighing.
"And you're going to tell me why, right?" Rick asked, trying to control the slight annoyance that was building again. He hadn't asked her to come and interrogate him like this.
Sadie nodded. "She knows Carol and Tyreese, and she's happy with them, but that doesn't mean that she can't know you too. You can be someone to her, you just have to decide who you want to be."
Rick chuckled.
"It's that easy, is it?" He asked. "I just decide who I want to be to Judith, and then there it is. I don't even know where to begin, Sadie. I don't even know what to do. I haven't been there for her and all this time she's been fine without me."
"Of course she's been fine without you," Sadie said. "We don't miss people before we know them."
Sadie stood up and Rick watched her, curious as to what she was doing.
"Here," she said. "Hold Paul, just a minute." He furrowed his brow at her and took the baby.
Sadie smiled at him, not saying anything and trotted down the stairs, disappearing.
Rick sat awkwardly, holding the sleeping baby. He suddenly felt very tired. He hadn't talked about all of this before, and thinking through everything that had happened was exhausting. It wasn't how he had intended to spend what he thought would be a quiet afternoon. Now he was sitting here, holding Sadie's baby, and wondering where the woman had disappeared to and how long it would be before she decided to come back.
When Sadie did come back, she was carrying Hope and Judith was toddling beside her. She reached down, taking the little girl's hand and helping her up the porch steps.
"I got them both as a two for one deal," Sadie said, smiling.
She put Hope down and the little girl started across the porch, apparently finding something that caught her attention. Sadie watched after her for a second before picking Judith up. Rick watched them interacting for a second and realized that Sadie was signing to Judith, and Judith was responding in sign.
"You taught her to sign?" Rick asked.
"Babies learn easily," Sadie said. "Sign language is easy for babies."
Rick smiled.
"Jude, this is Rick," Sadie said, smiling at Judith who smiled back at her, touching her face with her palm for a minute. "Rick, this is Judith," Sadie said. "Rick wants to hold you, Jude. Can you let him hold you?"
Judith looked at Sadie for a minute and then looked at Rick, smiling. He couldn't help but smile back. She was pretty, and there was a lot of Lori in her features. Sadie put her arm out and he passed her back the baby. She shifted her weight toward him and he reached his arms out to Judith who responded by reaching hers toward him. He took her and held her against his hip. It was the first time he'd held her since she was very small.
"Hope!" Judith called, pointing at Hope who was toddling around. She had apparently found something of interest and Sadie rushed over, prying the unsuspecting beetle out of the girl's hand before she could eat it.
"No, Hope, we don't eat bugs," Sadie said. Rick watched her. Hope looked up at her, grinning.
He looked back at Judith who was watching both of them.
"Hey, Judith," he said. Judith smiled at him, putting her fingers in her mouth. He reached up and pulled her hand out of her mouth. "Don't suck your fingers," he said. Judith regarded him for a minute, knitting her eyebrows together. She put her fingers back in her mouth and Rick pulled them out again. Judith glared at him, but didn't return her fingers to her mouth.
Sadie came back over to him, the baby in one arm, and Hope on the other hip, ripping at her hair and smiling.
"Step one," Sadie said, looking at Rick. "Now, why don't you take Jude on a walk? She likes the fields."
Rick looked at the little girl a minute, wondering if she would protest when they started to leave the porch.
"You want to go for a walk?" He asked.
Judith didn't respond to him.
"Jude, do you want to go with Rick to see the vegetables?" Sadie asked.
"I pick 'quash?" Judith asked.
Rick smiled.
"You can pick some squash if there's any down there, let's go look," Rick said.
Sadie smiled. "I'm going to go now," she said. "See you at dinner."
Rick nodded at her. "Thanks," he said.
Sadie smiled again.
"Don't mention it, I'm a good listener," she said, turning and started off the step with Hope waving at him over his shoulder.
Rick waited a minute, wondering if Judith would start to cry, but she didn't. The only thing she did was wave back at Hope and then regard him. He started down the steps then, chuckling to himself as he realized that Sadie's description of herself, though somewhat ironic, was also a very good description. She was a good listener.