A/N: I just want to say, y'all reviews give me life! I was worried that I would be posting into a void so I appreciate everyone who took the time out to review, like, and reblog my nonsense. Thank you!
If there is a "lost" scene you want me to write, please tell me. I have a couple of requests I'm going to work on next.
This next chapter is a scene I feel we were ROBBED of, let me tell you. It's from the end of S6E9.
Enjoy!
"I was wrong," Rick started in a low whisper to his unconscious son. "I thought after living behind these walls for so long that...maybe they couldn't learn. But today, I saw what they could do. What we could do if we work together."
His tone was empathic, as if he were understanding the words as he spoke them. He wasn't sure if Carl could hear him, but if he could he wanted him to know that his father finally understood what he and others have been trying to tell him for so long.
"We'll rebuild the walls, expand the walls. There will be more, there's gotta be more. Everything Deanna was talking about is possible," he told him, caressing Carl's arm with one hand and holding his hand with his other, infinitely grateful for the warmth he still felt there. "It's all possible, I see that now."
His shirt was still stained with the blood of walkers and ones they had lost. His hair fell in wet ringlets around his tired face as he contemplated in real time the changes happening within himself.
"When I was out there with them, when it was over, when I knew we had this place again," he continued, scratching his fingers on his chin as he laid out his confession. "I had this feeling. It took me a while to remember what it was, because I hadn't felt it since before I woke up in that hospital." The words tumbled from his lips with shaky breaths as he lifted his eyes to look at his son's bandaged face.
He brought his hand to Carl's forehead, smoothing back the hair that had fallen over. "I want to show you the new world, Carl. I want to make it a reality for you," he told him in earnest, his voice was shaking as he was barely able to hold back the tears that stubbornly refused to fall until this point. "Please, Carl...let me show you...please son, don't die," he pleaded, barely above a whisper.
Rick dropped his head, having no words left in him. This world, in its current form, could only bring death and despair. But there had to be more to it than that. After what he experienced that night, he had to believe it. At least enough to make it possible.
"Maybe this is how it's supposed to be," Lori's words echoed in the darkest recesses of his mind, haunting him.
But he shook his head, pushing the memory away. It wasn't true then and it isn't true now. If anyone was made for this world, it was Carl. He would beat this world, Rick would do everything in his power to see to that.
It was then he felt it; the subtle but very real movement of Carl's fingers slowly lifting to curl around his father's.
Rick lifted his head in disbelief, watching as his son communicated to him in the only way he could in that moment that he was still there. He shifted his gaze to Carl's face, his good eye was still closed but damned if he didn't have just a little more color under his cheeks than before.
Rick turned to the doorway where he knew Michonne was hovering with his daughter. His eyes locked with hers in that silent communication they were so good at using, beckoning her inside.
She crossed the room wordlessly, cradling a sleeping Judith to her chest. When she looked down and saw Carl's fingers gripping his father's hand, she choked back a sob.
Rick looked up at her with watery eyes and she moved closer to stand behind him, shifting Judith in her arms to rest her hand on his shoulder. He brought a hand up to cover hers while still squeezing Carl's in his other.
There was a soft knock on the open door, but neither of them heard it.
Glenn hesitated in the doorway, unwilling to disturb the family. After everything, they deserved this moment of solace.
But with Deanna dead and the community structurally in shambles, the people of Alexandria automatically turned to Rick and Michonne for guidance on what to do next. The core family kept the rest of the community at bay, delegation was something they could handle for now. That wasn't why he was there, instead he wanted to keep their new leaders apprised on what they planned to do next.
"Ahem," he quietly cleared his throat and Michonne finally looked his way.
She squeezed Rick's shoulder before going over to him. She tilted her head towards the open space outside of the room, encouraging Glenn to follow her out.
"I'm sorry about that," he apologized right away.
Michonne shook her head. "Don't be. What's up?"
Glenn chanced a look back in the room they had vacated. "How's Carl?" he asked.
The corner of her mouth lifted in a small smile. "I think he's gonna be okay," she said.
"That's good," Glenn said with an exhale, deeply relieved by that news. "We got all the walkers inside. Abraham and Daryl took a crew to patch what they could of the breach until we can make it to the quarry. Rosita and Maggie are coordinating a clean up. The streets are wrecked."
Michonne sighed, lightly tracing circles in Judith's back as she held the toddler close. "Yeah, okay. What can I do?"
Glenn blinked at her. "Nothing. You guys should stay here with Carl. We got this."
"No, I can help," she insisted.
"Michonne," Glenn said plainly, leveling a look at her. "They need you in there. We'll take care of the rest. I just wanted to keep you updated."
Michonne looked over her shoulder at the room where she left her boys. In truth, she knew that was the only place she wanted to be but it felt wrong not to go aid the others.
"I'll make sure Rick gets cleaned up. After that I'll come help," she said, turning back to face her friend.
Glenn shook his head, his eyes sincere as he spoke, "The best thing you can do is to stay with him. I know where his mind can go and so far you're the only person I've seen that can get through that. Please, Michonne."
Michonne recalled what Sasha had said to her just the other day and thought this was a recurring theme as of late, family members telling her about her own place within their ranks. She wasn't blind to it but she was just beginning to accept what that could mean for her and the Grimes family. Either way, she was too exhausted to deny anything tonight. "Okay."
Glenn nodded then looked at Judith, his gaze softening. "Do you want me to take her?"
"No," she said, holding Judith protectively against her. "She doesn't know it, but she helps me feel better."
Glenn could see by how content Judith appeared to be in her arms that the feeling was mutual. "Okay. I'm going to head out but I've got the walkie if you guys need anything."
"That goes for you, too," Michonne told him.
With Glenn gone, that left them alone in the house. Even Denise was out there loading cadavers onto carts to be burned.
Michonne slowly rocked Judith in her arms as she ventured back into the room.
Rick remained in much of the same position she left him, his body bowed over the side of Carl's bed, his head resting on the edge as he clutched Carl's hand in both of his.
"Rick," she called over to him gently.
He didn't move and for a second she wondered if he had heard her until she heard his muffled "yeah," a moment later.
Michonne made her way over to him and he slowly erected himself to face her. She offered him a small smile. "You should get cleaned up. I can stay here with him."
Rick carefully returned Carl's hand to his bedside, exhaling a shaky breath. "I don't...I can't leave him."
"You won't be far," she assured him. "I brought you a change of clothes when I went back for Judith, they're in the bathroom upstairs."
Something flashed across his eyes but disappeared too quickly for her to dissect. "Thank you," he said in a gravelly voice.
He gave his son another once over, leaning forward to kiss his lips gingerly above his covered eye, an unspoken promise he would return soon.
As he slowly rose to his feet, he instinctively reached a hand towards Judith but stopped himself when he saw the dried bloodstains that covered it.
Michonne reached for him instead, smoothing his hair back from his forehead. Rick visibly relaxed under her touch. "We'll be here when you get back," she promised.
He nodded, that assurance was enough to move his leaden feet forward. The sooner he cleaned up the sooner he could return to them.
Rick looked and felt out of place in the pristiness of the bathroom.
As many times as he had seen himself bloodied and exhausted he would never get used to it, at least he hoped he wouldn't. His hands trembled as he brought them to his face, covering his eyes from his own reflection.
"Maybe this isn't a world for children anymore..."
Rick squeezed his eyes shut under his hands as Lori's voice continued to plague him. "Please, stop," he mumbled, turning from the mirror to slide down the sink cabinet to the floor.
"Why do we want Carl to live in this world? To live this life?"
He exhaled slowly, raising his knees. He never thought to ask those questions, even back then when the severity of their new normal made itself abundantly clear. He had always thought Carl's existence within it was something to adapt to, not give in to.
Whether Lori couldn't or wouldn't accept that, didn't matter now. She wasn't here. It was just the ghost of her lingering in the darkest recesses of his mind.
He thought of Jessie and her boys. They didn't have to die and now their ghosts would likely haunt him too, in those quiet, bleak moments of solitude.
Like Lori, Jessie wasn't equipped to handle this world, it was hard truth but there was it.
He realized now, that wasn't where their similarities stopped. Jessie reminded him of a time that had long since passed, when white picket fences and neighborhood BBQs were the staples of the American Dream. He felt guilty for not realizing how badly it fucked him up to pretend he could somehow go back to a time and place when those things mattered.
He didn't go about it the right way before, but there was still time.
"Don't you want one more day with a chance?"
He lifted his head as those words came back to him. Not from a ghost but a friend, someone who was just as invested in a future that held more than survival but a chance at life as he now was.
It took him a while to see it but he finally did. So long as there was breath in his body, there was a chance to have something more.
Michonne knew long before he did that they needed to build the world they wanted to see. It wasn't going to magically appear before them, they had to put in the effort to make it work.
She was downstairs now, with his children. The meaning of that wasn't lost on him.
Rick pushed himself to his feet, eager to return to his family. He took off his watch then paused as he concentrated on his left hand, or more specifically, the silver band that remained on his ring finger. He rotated it, thinking how it was one of the only pieces that remained from his life before, the man he was before. But he was no longer that person and he wouldn't pretend to be anymore.
With the decision made, he removed the ring and carefully placed it next to his watch on the sink. Then he discarded his dirty clothes and stepped into the shower and began washing away the bloodstains and memories.
He returned downstairs a short while later, dressed in a clean t-shirt and jeans.
Carl remained unmoved but there was a steady rise and fall to his chest that gave him hope that his condition had not changed for the worse.
Michonne was in the chair he had vacated, with Judith sleeping nearby in a pack-n-play he was sure wasn't there before.
Michonne looked up at him, a warm smile gracing her tired features. "That's better," she said, referring to his appearance.
Rick picked up another chair from the corner of the room and brought it to her side. "Thank you," he said as he took a seat.
She stared at him with a thoughtful expression.
"I'm okay," he told her, answering the question her eyes were asking.
"It's okay if you're not," she said.
Rick sighed heavily as he leaned back in his chair, exhaustion permeating from his body.
"It's happened before," he told her, realizing he never shared this story with her, "back in Georgia, back at the beginning."
Michonne's eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
"We were looking for someone lost in the woods," he said, not wanting to revisit Sophia's tragedy by name, at least not today. "We saw a buck grazing in the clearing. Carl wanted to get a closer look and before I knew it he was shot by a bullet meant for the deer."
Michonne looked back at Carl, then returned her attention to Rick, eyebrows raised in surprise at his revelation.
"We thought he wasn't gonna make it. He came pretty close," Rick inhaled, pinching the bridge of his nose. "That's when we met Herschel, Maggie. They saved his life."
Michonne sat forward in her seat, placing a comforting hand on his knee. Rick brought his own hand down from his face, looking directly at her. "Before we knew he would be okay, Lori came pretty close to giving up. She asked me if I thought it would better if he didn't pull through. I don't blame her for thinking that way but I didn't understand how she could," he paused, looking back at his son, "until it happened again tonight and for a moment...for a moment I thought, what if she was right?"
Michonne drew her eyes down to the floor, a sad little laugh escaped her lips. She could see Rick's confusion as she looked back up at him. "Mike said something similar once. Only, he had an opportunity to see those thoughts through."
Rick frowned, "Mike?"
"My dead boyfriend," she confirmed.
What she was saying hit Rick like a ton of bricks just then. He leaned over in his chair, squinting his eyes at her, wondering if she was saying what he thought she was saying. Because if she was, so many things about her made sense to him at that moment.
Michonne closed her eyes to his penetrative gaze. "We were at camp outside the city," she began, drawing in a slow breath as she prepared to knock down one of the only walls left up between them. "Me, Mike, his friend Terry, and our son...Andre." She opened her eyes again but wasn't ready to look at him, choosing instead to keep them on the floor. "We were there for a few days when supplies started running low. By that point, Mike had already given up. I argued that we had a better chance surviving on our own, outside of the camp but he refused. He said he didn't see the point."
She sat up in her seat and Rick leaned further into her space, placing his hand on her knee in a reversal of their previous position.
"I didn't want to fight with him. I figured that energy could be better spent figuring our way out of the mess we were in. That's when I learned there was a group heading out to look for supplies. I went with them thinking it was a chance to see what our options were out there.
"We couldn't have been gone for more than a couple hours but when we got back, the place was overrun," she sniffled, swiping at her nose, "I don't even remember thinking, I just ran, killing anything and everything in my way until I found them. Mike and Terry were already bit, but they could have been saved and I may have tried...but then I saw him...my baby."
"Chonne," Rick whispered, his voice thick with emotion.
"He was only three years old, he couldn't have protected himself and I thought, if it really came down to it, Mike would step up despite what he said before. But he didn't and they...they tore him apart, Rick," she whimpered, a lone tear running down her cheek as she finally lifted her gaze back to him. "There was nothing left...there was nothing left for me to bury."
Rick pulled her into his arms until she was practically in his lap and the dam broke. She clung to him, burying her face in his chest to muffle her quiet sobbing.
Rick stroked her back gently, blinking back tears of his own. In that moment, he wanted to take on the burden of her memories and do for her what she so effortlessly managed to do for him everyday: be present by her side, shouldering the ghosts from her past.
"I'm so sorry, Michonne," he murmured into her hair as she slowly composed herself.
She pulled back slightly, wiping the tears from her face as she shook her head. "Don't be. I didn't tell you that so you could feel sorry for me," she said in a watery voice. "I told you because I want you to know I understand what you're feeling. Wanting to protect your children isn't something you should question. Ever. Mike and Lori did that and they're not here anymore. But we are."
Andre wasn't there either, but Carl and Judith were - she didn't say it but they both had the same thought. Rick knew if he trusted anyone to protect his children it was Michonne. The reason for her desire to keep them safe was abundantly clear to him now.
"After I met you," she said softly, "after I saw the lengths you would go through to keep Carl and Judith safe, I couldn't help wishing Mike had been more like that. Before everything happened, he was a good father and Andre and I loved him. But he didn't have it in him when we needed him most. If he had, Andre might still be...he might..."
"Shhh," he cooed, hugging her back to him.
With her fully in his embrace, Rick gently rocked her, murmuring gentle reassurances into her ear as she shuddered against the painful memories.
Rick was usually in awe of Michonne's resilience, but this vulnerability was something new and he cherished the fact that she had decided to share this side of herself with him now. She had survived every obstacle thrown at her but he was just beginning to understand the depth of the pain it caused her to pull through. After all, she suffered a loss no parent should ever have to endure in one of the most cruel ways possible. Yet somehow she still had enough room in her heart to care for his children like they were her own.
He pulled back slightly to look down at her, lifting his thumb to wipe the tear streaks that lingered on her cheek. She lifted her gaze to him and as he looked into her endlessly deep brown eyes. He saw something there and not for the first time. Something he couldn't name before and it terrified him to do so now.
"Thank you for trusting me with this, Michonne," he whispered to her.
"I've wanted to tell you for awhile," she admitted. "No time seemed right until now."
Rick nodded. The timing was serendipitous in a morbid yet fundamental way.
Michonne exhaled before slowly pulling away and returning to sit in her own seat. Rick wouldn't have minded if she stayed where she was but he didn't voice that aloud.
"Would you tell me about Andre?" he asked, watching her lean forward to touch Carl's cheek.
Michonne smiled behind the veil of her hair, hearing Rick say her son's name made her feel like he was more than just a memory somehow.
"He was the sweetest kid," she said, smiling as she rested back in her chair. "He had energy for days."
"More than this one?" he asked, nodding to the toddler beside them. Funny enough, Judith was squirming like she was trying to crawl in her sleep even now.
Michonne followed his gaze and giggled. "Judes may have given him a run for his money."
Rick chuckled too, happy to have a moment of levity in an otherwise bleak night. "What else?" he asked, eager to learn more about the child he never got the privilege to meet.
"He loved art and music, he had more rhythm than most adults," she recounted fondly. "He also had this fascination with bugs that used to completely gross me out!"
Rick laughed out loud at the look of disgust on her face. He had seen this woman slay walkers by the dozen yet insects were where she drew the line. Or at least she did in another life.
"What's so funny?"
Both Rick and Michonne jerked their heads towards Carl as he tiredly voiced the question.
"Carl," Rick gasped, standing up to lean over his son.
Carl looked in their direction with his good eye. "Dad? What happened?" He lifted his hand towards his face but Michonne grabbed it, gently stopping him.
"Are you in any pain?" she asked him instead of answering his question.
It took a minute for his eye to land on her, she could see the confusion in his face when it finally did. "Everything feels fuzzy."
Both Rick and Michonne breathed a sigh of relief. That was good, it meant the morphine was still working.
"Listen to me, Carl, you were shot," Rick gently told him, placing a hand on his shoulder.
"My eye..." Carl started, dread in his voice.
Rick nodded, reaching for his hand to squeeze it comfortingly. "Denise was able to remove the bullet but we couldn't save your eye. I'm sorry, son."
Carl didn't say anything, closing his right eye as he digested what that meant for him.
Rick looked at Michonne, concerned but she shook her head. Carl needed time to grasp his fate without any cajoling from them.
"The walkers. What happened?" Carl asked suddenly, opening his eye.
"We handled it," Michonne told him.
Carl looked at her, confused. "How? There were so many."
Rick smiled. "The community came together. They're all out there now, pulling this place back together."
Carl smirked a little. "I told you they could," he said.
Rick returned his countenance. "Yeah, you did and you were right, I should've listened."
Carl shifted his eye between them. "What was funny before?"
Rick glanced at Michonne, before grinning back at Carl. "I finally learned what Michonne is afraid of," he said.
Carl looked at him curiously.
"Bugs."
Carl looked at Michonne, amused. "Bugs?" he asked, sounding incredulous.
"I never said I was afraid of them. I just don't like them," she defended, willing to take the brunt of their teasing for the moment.
"How'd that come up?" Carl asked, curious.
Michonne shrugged. "I told him how Andre used to like them."
Carl's gaze softened. "You finally told him."
Michonne nodded with a small smile.
Rick looked back and forth between the two of them, then shook his head huffing a laugh. Of course Carl knew about Andre. As close and he and Michonne were, it shouldn't have been a surprise.
Only now, Rick saw the relationship between the two of them with new eyes. It amazed him how this motherless child and childless mother could bond over their shared tragedy to form a relationship of their own. Serendipitous indeed.
"You should try and rest," Michonne said to Carl, reaching up to smooth back his hair.
"I am tired," Carl admitted, closing his eye only to reopen it a moment later. "You guys will be here when I wake up?"
"Yes."
"Of course."
Carl lifted the corners of his mouth, smiling tiredly as he closed his eye again. "Okay."
Tired must have been an understatement because the boy was out a light within minutes.
Rick reclaimed his seat with a relieved sigh before looking over at Michonne. She was still focused on Carl, tenderly running her fingers through his hair.
"I'm glad you're here," Rick said to her.
Michonne pulled back and shifted her eyes away from Carl to look back at his father. "Me too."
Rick reached for her hand, holding it in his lap.
Michonne looked down at their entwined fingers, curiously noting the absence of his ring but deciding not to comment on it now. Instead, she squeezed his hand in reassurance before turning back to Carl as the two of them kept vigil over their boy.