'People destined to meet will do so, apparently by chance, at precisely the right moment.'
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sometime after the end of the world, after he loses his wife and she loses her partner, after they both lose sons, after they build a new world and create new life, after they temporarily lose each other, and after he comes back to her- it seems too surreal. She can't help but stare at him. He's been back for nearly a year, but sometimes she still thinks it might be a dream. That they're both still out there searching for one other.
But they're not.
He's in their bed, in their home built of fortified walls, with their children sleeping just down the hall.
He's holding her left hand in both of his, resting them on his chest as he sleeps soundly on his back. She doesn't know if he does it so she can feel his heartbeat or so he can keep her close, but it's how he's slept every night since he's returned. But tonight for the first time, she's wearing a thin copper band on her ring finger. She told him it was unnecessary, that they'd been partners in every sense of the word since the day they'd met. But he wanted it. And how could she deny this man of anything. This man who despite time and trauma was the most beautiful man she'd ever seen. This man who gave her a family in the darkest of times. This man who quite literally helped rebuild society so his children- their children could grow up in a world to be proud of. She couldn't.
Her eyes, heavy with sleep, fight to stay open to stare at her ring against his chest. She wants to remember everything about today. Their whole community coming together to celebrate them. Their children's smiles, seeing the beauty that could come from life's most incomprehensible times. The way his eyes, deeper and bluer than the ocean, reflected nothing but love when he responded to her confession of disbelief that it took an apocalypse to bring them together.
"Darlin.'" He mumbled, his lips against hers, while they swayed to a gravelly sounding Nat King Cole record someone had found on a run. "In every universe, in every dimension, in every timeline, in every life. We find each other."
She snuggles down into their weathered sheets, ready to succumb to the sleep she's fighting because she feels safe in that idea. She can let go of the anxiety. It's not a dream that he's here, but even if it was- he'd find his way back to her. She knows it's true. Because whatever this is; destiny or fate or soulmates. That's what he is to her. And what she is to him.
In every universe. In every dimension. In every timeline. In every life.
a/n: title from everything, everywhere, all at once. characters from twd. stories from meeee.
let me know if there's still a market for twd/richonne stories and i'll try my best to finish "all the things..." (my other richonne fic i accidentally abandoned after the first chapter oops).