AN: Here we go, another little chapter.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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When Michonne left headquarters, nodding her head at a few of the others who were coming up, obviously having smelled the bread, and still sucking honey off her fingertips in much the same manner as Daryl might have employed, she headed directly for the house that they'd given to Lisette and the girls, figuring that would likely be the most obvious place to start in a search for the disgruntled Mercedes.
And she was right. As she neared the house, she saw Mercedes sitting on the porch steps, leaning against the rail, but still looking rigid.
Her hand, from the sound of the pop, may very well still be stinging…but mostly she was probably nursing a bad attitude and some wounded pride.
Mercedes rolled her head up, looking at Michonne as Michonne brought the forward motion of her body to a halt in front of the girl.
"Can I sit?" Michonne asked.
She got no response, so she decided to take that as a yes and sat down beside the girl on the steps.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Michonne asked.
Mercedes gave her the same kind of look she might have been accused of giving someone when she was that age.
"Do you want to tell me what your problem is?" Michonne asked, rephrasing the question.
It earned her an eye roll, but she was willing to overlook that at the moment.
"What the hell are you people doing anyway?" Mercedes asked after a few moments. "You know what it's like, right? I mean you're obviously not stupid, are you?"
Michonne chuckled.
"Depends on who you ask," she responded. "But no…I don't consider myself to be stupid…at least not most of the time. I've had my moments here and there."
Mercedes' face said that Michonne's taking of this lightly, when it was so serious to her, was not appreciated.
"Mercedes…we know what the world is like out there. We were in it before we got here…and all this preparation? All this work that we're doing? We're preparing to go back into it," Michonne said. "You're not the smartest one of us all…and you surely don't have the most experience…at least not when it comes to life in general."
"What are you doing, then? Kids? Old people…you're building a collection of food to feed to those things," Mercedes said. "You have to know they're not going to survive outside of this…Disneyland that you've got."
Michonne hummed at the girl.
"I used to think like you…" Michonne said. "When this thing started…and sometimes I still do. Only the strong survive, right? Only the perfect…the able bodied…keep yourself closed off and keep everyone and everything at a distance. This life, now, it's only about survival. Is that it?"
Mercedes stared straight ahead as though she couldn't hear Michonne, but Michonne knew that she heard her.
And she thought, maybe, that she could somewhat understand the girl's concerns.
It wasn't so much, though, that Michonne's views on the outside world had changed…she still considered it to be a place of danger, a place where anything at all could happen, a place where absolutely nothing was guaranteed…but maybe her belief system about who would and wouldn't survive had changed a little.
Because everyone that had ended up in their community and everyone whose paths they had crossed had one thing in common. They had all survived, somehow.
And Michonne had also known a lot of people and heard people tell stories about a lot of people who were more likely to have survived, following her original line of thinking, than the ones who had made it this far, yet they had fallen one way or another.
"Our community isn't completely safe," Michonne continued once she realized she was getting no response from the girl. Mercedes didn't seem the type to run out of things to say, but apparently her hurt pride made her quieter. "We've been attacked…we know it's not impenetrable. But still…life has to go on, right? If we're surviving and we're fighting so hard to stay alive…then we've got to live. Otherwise, there's no need in fighting and we all might as well be dead."
Michonne didn't really realize how much she meant what she was saying until she was actually saying it. They'd all been through a lot and they'd all run a gauntlet of emotions about how they felt about what was happening around them…about what was possibly going to happen…but it all boiled down to what kind of life was there if they simply gave up on really living and only focused on surviving?
"And here?" Mercedes asked after a moment, choosing not to respond, obviously, to what Michonne had said. "Here you're what? Taking commands from that old ass woman? Letting the old white woman boss you around?"
Michonne chuckled and shifted, leaning more against her side of the porch step banister.
"Nobody's got control of anything here…" Michonne said. "Not really. We let Muh boss people around, as you would say, because she's old…and because she isn't hurting a soul. And I'm assuming my other boss is who? Carol?"
The look Mercedes gave her confirmed it.
Michonne shook her head.
"Carol doesn't boss me around anymore than I boss her around," Michonne said. "It's harmless…and really we've put a lot into our friendship to get where we are. It's comfortable and we understand each other. That wasn't where we started…but most of us aren't where we started."
"So you don't mind that you're married to the dirty ass redneck that's like the president of this place and people tell you when you can and can't eat?" Mercedes asked. "Now you're being stupid…"
Michonne shook her head at the girl.
"No…now you're talking about things out of their contexts," Michonne responded. "Daryl isn't the president…first of all…he's just another member. He just happens to be a member whose opinions people trust and value having. And no one tells me when I can eat and when I can't. When Muh makes food, she has a pretty strict code of rules…children and those who have some special need…whether they're sick or what, eat first. Then everyone else eats. And it's a good code. And the same applies to me when I have fallen under that category. Take care of those who need it when you're stronger, because there's never any telling when you'll be the one who needs to be taken care of."
"I don't need people taking care of me," Mercedes responded.
Michonne hummed again.
"I had a friend once…she used some of her last words to say that you can't do it alone anymore," Michonne said. "Nobody can…and you can't either. You didn't get here alone either. And don't do Calista or Lisette the injustice of discrediting them. Whether we need them for protection or we just need them because knowing they're alive puts a smile on our face and keeps us going…we all need people."
Michonne got up from the porch and dusted the dirt off her butt with her hands.
"Mercedes…we want you here…and we want you to be happy and comfortable here. Find your place and you might not hate it. But if you're staying…you've got to at least learn to play nice with everyone. That means that learning people's names…and not calling them descriptions…might help you out. And maybe it would be a good thing to think before you speak," Michonne said.
She'd heard the sounds echoing through the community that told her that vehicles were there, and she was sure it was the group returning from the run. She pulled her pants up, rearranging her belt and the knife that hung there, and Mercedes looked at her like a child who didn't like what their mother had to say but at least wasn't bothering to talk back.
"And Mercedes?" Michonne said, raising her eyebrows.
When the girl looked at her, cocking an eyebrow with a little attitude behind the gesture, Michonne smiled.
"If you ever call my husband a dirty ass redneck again…I'll cut your tongue out of your head," Michonne said.
She walked off, not knowing if it had done any good for the girl, but realizing that it had made her feel better if nothing else.
As Michonne rounded the corner and came into view of the front area of the community, she could see that they'd pulled one of the vans directly onto the lot where the old house for headquarters used to be, and the other was parked in the street.
Rick was locking the gates and everyone from the trucks was unloading, stretching arms, legs, and backs as they went.
Tyreese came walking toward Michonne, or rather simply in that direction, and he nodded his head at her as he did.
"Carol?" He asked.
"Headquarters," Michonne said, returning the nod.
Calista, looking like she was half asleep, nodded her head at Michonne too, but when she opened her mouth to speak, a yawn came out instead of words and she apparently decided to abandon the effort and head in the same direction as Tyreese.
Glenn followed closely after her, throwing a quick greeting in Michonne's direction and finally Michonne spotted Daryl as he walked around, inspecting something in the back of one of the vans, or probably just checking to make sure that nothing had shifted and caused some great disaster, and shut the door back.
She smiled at him when she saw the smile spread across his face at seeing her coming toward him. She picked up her step a little and came straight into his arms, and he closed them around her, squeezing her tightly and groaning a little as though her side of the hug was more than he could handle.
When he pulled away, he kissed her quickly and then the smile returned to his face.
"You look tired…" Michonne said.
He nodded his head.
"'Cause I'm 'bout fuckin' dead," Daryl said. "Going to take a nap…can you sneak off and sleep with me a lil' while?"
Michonne smiled and nodded her head.
"I'm pretty sure I could do that," she said. "How was the run?"
"Not too bad…we got hit last night," Daryl said. "Herd of at least fifty, sixty head easy…weren't too bad with all four of us…"
He stopped talking and yawned dramatically, stretching his muscles out even as Michonne stood there loosely hugging him.
"Hardly slept a damn wink last night for all the whinin' and the complainin' about wantin' to go home," Daryl said.
Michonne frowned.
"Calista didn't do too well?" Michonne asked.
Daryl chuckled and returned his arms to their position wrapped around her, running his fingers up and down her back.
"Shit she wanted to sleep bad as I did…I was talkin' about Glenn and Tyreese…" Daryl said.
Michonne laughed and nodded her head, understanding his implications that the two men had been far more distraught about their night away from home than the girl had…and Daryl had already expected, even before they left, that they weren't likely to get back before today.
"How did Calista do?" Michonne asked. "What's she like out there?"
Daryl nodded his head.
"She's pretty good," he said. "Good with Walkers…quiet when she needs to be…damn calm…she's a good kid…how'd y'all fair here?"
Michonne sighed.
"Pretty good," she said. "Mercedes might be more of a handful than Calista."
Daryl grunted and kissed Michonne's forehead, hugging her close to him again and then scrubbing his stubble against her.
"We already knew that…but unless she's fuckin' with the kids right now…I'm too damn tired to care. She'll learn…or she'll get her ass busted every damn step of the way. Either way…ain't no skin off my ass or yours neither," Daryl responded.
Michonne laughed.
She loved the way that, most of the time and when he wasn't weighed down with some immediate concern, Daryl could make anything seem like it just wasn't serious at all. It did a lot, she imagined, to influence the way that she felt about things and the way that her perceptions had changed since this whole thing started. All the things she'd tried and failed, she thought, to explain to Mercedes.
"Go get ready for your nap," Michonne said to Daryl. "I'm going to check on the kids…tell Carol where I'm going to be…and I'll bring you a snack."
Daryl kissed Michonne and turned, sleepily heading for the house in a bit of a foot dragging walk, and Michonne turned quickly to do everything she'd laid out for herself so that she could join him.