Well well well, if it isn't another fanfiction writer (me) who has been drug out of hiding due to the wonderfulness that is The Ones Who Live. I could not get through this series without writing SOMETHING. It just was not happening. Their reunion scene made me cry and I just thought it was so beautiful. I hope you enjoy, and please leave your thoughts.
S/N: Please visit my original profile under 'givesup' to read all of my old Richonne fanfiction if you feel so inclined. Thanks for reading!
The Reunion
Snow had just started to fall. Frozen flakes though small felt like tiny little slices as they landed like shards against his face. Numb and bruised he moved rigid before shock had a chance to keep him frozen in place.
Rick frantically tried to piece together the events of his morning. He mentally weeded through meaningless tasks that had started to become robotic sometime ago in his journey to try to forget them. Quick fading flashes of memories tangled with dreams bursted against the forefront of his mind. He stared up at her, his eyes bright like blue ice glowing through the gray of the day.
Despite the nipping air, a prickling heat started from the back of his neck and came around to the front of his throat as though drowning in fire. That combined with the whooshing sound of his own pulse hammering against his temples was enough for him to reason that he was in a very real moment. His body quaked like an aftershock ripping through the earth's crust at the quiet revelation.
His eyes never left her face as he carefully pulled himself to his knees before her. The very nature of who he is never forgetting its compulsion to give in to the silent commands of the woman who now stood only a couple of feet away after just moments ago not existing at all. Her helmet was now pulled completely off and tossed to the side. Her locs the same but different as they cascaded down only one side of her like a textured copper waterfall that he wanted to be under.
She stared down at him for the few short seconds that he was still on his knees with dark, disbelieving eyes that pulled at his center.
Like laws of gravity Rick continued to submit to his natural ways.
From his knees he pulled himself from the earth to close their distance. He felt like he was gliding. He couldn't tell if his feet, weighed heavy in combat boots, were even hitting the hard, frozen ground beneath him as he stepped. On instinct he reached out the part of him that would be able to touch her first. Get to her first. His own body raced against himself. He reached out the hand that could still feel as the rest of him followed close behind. Underneath his thick glove his fingers even stretched towards her; his knuckles burned. Even his blood in her presence raced to his fingertips as he moved in on her.
He could feel her warmth pummeling towards him. Face to face his brokenness clung to her familiarity but also noted with an ache new roundness to the space between her cheekbones and her jaw. Snow landed on this part of her like little pieces of felt that melted on contact leaving her skin to match her eyes. Brow. Glistening. Beautiful.
An explosion of adoration erupted within him, rose and faded out somewhere near his adam's apple. Her dark eyes a home where he used to reside. He connected to them instantaneously, just like he had years ago at the prison fence, pulled himself up and fell back into them, baptizing himself again for the first time in years.
She caressed his face with her own gloved hand, grasping and pulling at him. She held his face as though he might just fall to pieces right there in front of her if she didn't. And with the force that seeing her again had built up within him crashing around his ribs like stormy ocean waves, he just might have. The sting of a blush rose on either side of his cheeks and underneath his graying beard. Her touch set a blaze of love, relief and admittedly shame coursing through his body and they all fought to take precedence.
Erratic his breathing became the rise and fall of his chest more fall and less rise. A visceral reaction threatened to squeeze his windpipe closed altogether as letters, dirt caked heineken bottles, an ax to his own god damned hand, a jagged piece of broken glass held to his neck, swallowing whiskey until he saw black all played behind his eyes like a movie trailer from hell.
But nothing felt as painfully sharp as the memory did of him burning her letters, the phone art. His hope. His reason to live.
All of his failings were pouring out of him for her to see and he was powerless to stop it. He looked at her as though she could see the very moment when he wrapped her and Judith up in a white sheet and placed them gently in the back of his mind and outtend the light there. His head felt heavy then and he started to tilt downward - his eyes sought the ground. But she held onto him. She pressed her gloved hands firmly into the sides of his face lifting him back to her proudly while tears spilled over both of their cheeks.
Closer.
She wrapped herself around him and pulled him in at the same time. His face found a place atop her shoulder, a resting area for the desolate. Pressed into her he wanted to make like an invasive vine and wind his way around her permanently. Her sweet scent flooded him with sad nostalgia. Salty coastal air, coconut, sweat… A sob escaped his hardened chest. His entire face flushed pink as he buried his burning eyes and nose even more so into her. The sounds of her wet cries soaked into his desert dry existence.
He embraced and was embraced.
Like a dead, crispy leaf floating in the autumn breeze Rick was at the mercy of Michonne as she blew back into his life. Second by second she was being made to be more than just a ghost of his past. More than just a survival tactic of his own consciousness. More than just a name that, after a successful duration of time being dead inside, would like lightning burn a fiery trail through his thoughts at any given moment. Second by second she quickly sunk deep into his lungs and was exhaled again as hope.
After this, it would still take a great while for him to float down from her enveloping winds and land back at her feet, grounded, steady.
"I found you." her cry slipped into him gently like silk and puddled somewhere down inside of him. Those words would live within him forever, beyond this lifetime, he'd carry it into the next.
Judith. The white sheet he placed over her, all in one moment, was yanked away without waiting for him to catch a breath. His last memories with her were bursting through every crevice of him all while that familiar tightening of his throat began to threaten with a scratch at the top of his collar bone.
"Judith. Is she - is she alive?"
Her dark bronze cheeks stained with tears like little rivers flowing towards the ocean that is her mouth. But her smile is the world and he's just a moon in her orbit. Her reaction to his question a chip at the mountain of fear that sat within him as he waited for her response.
"She's ok. She's ok, Rick. Yeah."
They weren't gone. Inwardly, he startled at how clearly he could hear Thone's voice as it blew against the warmth he was nestled in like a cold gust of wind through a cracked window in a well heated home. "They aren't. We are." She had reminded him once. He was gone.
That unseen race within him between shame, love and relief came to an end as shame crashed to the finish line. He felt exposed which prompted the bubbling over of his next words. He tried to push them out into the open with clarity and confidence but the shake of his voice denied him that ability.
"I'm - I'm not -" He swallowed and then a quick inhale.
"I'm not with them." he finally managed. His own voice sounded like a strangers. Her words back to him could dismantle him in a second. He couldn't handle it if she thought of him as one of them. He'd surely drop to his knees and die in that forest if she thought him as one of them.
He's with her.
He was almost terrified to look at her but somehow his blue eyes flitted like summer moths back to hers searching hoping for a response in her expression before he had to face her words.
Steady hands continued to grip his face while his thoughts chased each other. A loving swipe against his beard coated jaw. He wondered how much and how exactly his face had changed since the last time she looked at him like this.
"I know." She nods. Her eyes nearly as desperate as he felt. His stomach dropped to the bottom of itself ike it used to when his dad sped up and down those steep hills on the back roads of rural Georgia. He let out an exhale and his lips trembled when he did. Her knowing, understanding is the only thing that temporarily resurrects him for even just a moment from the deadlike state he forced himself into a year ago.
He'll try. Then, a crash of a kiss. Searing love, fear and bottomless yearning between them. He reveled in the taste of her as though the world was minutes away from burning around them and deep down he knew that it might. But god - he kissed his wife. He teetered on the edge of who he had made himself to be and who he truly was and he let himself fall. He fell unsure of where he'd end up but her full lips provided the soft landing for him regardless. They always had.
Rick cried, tears welled as every atom that was his being began to vibrate to life so forcefully that tiny bumps pebbled across his body.
Their tongues collided again as they tried to take on the others pain and place it on their own shoulders to bear. But even with the most loving effort the pain remained in each of them. The most he could do was mix their traumas together. A cocktail of tragedies. He held onto her with urgency. She snaked her arms around the back of his neck. They stood as one and blended in with what they were surrounded by, bare trees, and Rick would not complain if they could somehow live there forever amongst them. Because her breath was inside of him once again.
He wanted to resurrect.
The hollow space between her chin and her shoulder called to him. He obliged, pressed his entire face into her shoulder still absorbing her broken cries, her sadness, her relief. He wanted to saturate himself with the moment. But, fear was unrelenting as it crawled up his legs starting with a dull throb near his feet. They could not stay as these trees were. They were not a part of this forest. He could not wrap himself around her or live in her. The consequences of giving up and giving her up were nipping at his heels.
He pulled back and tried to catch his breath. Fear now speeding through him had moved its way to his chest where it took pleasure in spreading there. With his face back in the elements the snow once again began slicing at his skin, little reality checks made of glass. Strands of his wet hair hung like thin ice cycles against his forehead. Still Michonne's hands were on his face, pushing those dripping curls back up against his hairline. Fear made home in his chest and now anxiety was curling itself around his mind. A voice only he could hear screamed at him to find a way to protect her or he'll lose her again. His eyes lifted to the sky above. The helicopter heard in the distance and he began to shake.