A/N: Longtime fanfic writer. First time Richonne writer. I rewatched the show recently and was dazzled by them all over again. As the series comes to a close and we eagerly await clues to a possible reunion, I needed to write about them.

I hope this story resonates with you, delights you, frustrates you, flusters you. May your love for them be (re)kindled. May you be transported back to the delicious unfolding of their love. God, the absolute joy of 6x10.

I hope this story moves you the way I've been moved by the countless fics I've read in the last few months. Shoutout to RichonneJustDesserts on Tumblr for being the best index of Richonne fics.

Michonne looked from Milton's corpse across the room, to the puddles of blood on the floor, to her friend's trembling hand which Michonne gripped firmly in her own. Andrea had put up a helluva fight. Naturally.

Michonne listened as Andrea and Rick exchanged quiet words. Apologies. Reckonings. As they spoke, Michonne thought of the many things she had never said to Andrea in their time together.

You're my friend. I care about you. Thank you.

"I'm glad you found them," Andrea said to her, tugging lightly on her hand.

Andrea looked from Daryl who stood forlornly in the doorway, to Rick who kneeled stoically, to Michonne who cried silently beside her.

"Nobody can make it on their own anymore."

Daryl nodded. "They never could."

There was a bent of wisdom to his words. Michonne wondered if he was thinking of his recently deceased brother. Or the hard life they'd both clearly lived even before the outbreak. Many months she had spent alone before Andrea, and she thought of them now. The quiet days and nights, the rotting carcasses of her friend and lover shuffling aimlessly behind her.

Michonne didn't protest when Rick handed Andrea his gun. The two shared in what Michonne assumed was an inside joke, Andrea's lips curved in a gentle, sardonic smile. Rick matched it.

"I'm not going anywhere," Michonne said.

She and Rick exchanged a brief glance. His eyes were filled with sympathy and more softness than he'd ever directed towards her. Sadness and fury prevented Michonne from feeling self-conscious over her tears. She turned her attention to Andrea when Rick left and closed the door behind him. Andrea met her gaze, her eyes sorrowful but resigned.

"I'm sorry. I should have listened to you."

Michonne shook her head. "No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Andrea said patting her thigh gently. "Thank you for saving me."

Michonne's tears fell harder. "You brought me back."

It wasn't everything Michonne wanted to say, everything she should have said, and Andrea would never know just what she had saved Michonne from.

Andrea smiled and studied the gun in her hand. She traced calloused fingers over it as she spoke too quietly for Michonne to hear, "Amy" being the only legible word. Taking a steadying breath, Andrea patted Michonne's leg tenderly once more. She then reached up and tugged on a loc of Michonne's hair. Tears flowing steadily, Michonne kissed the back of Andrea's hand before she backed away from her friend, putting distance between herself and the bullet meant for Andrea's brain. Andrea offered a final smile while meeting Michonne's gaze before her mouth formed a flat, determined line.

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi.

That's how long it took for Andrea to shut her eyes, place the gun firmly at her temple, and pull the trigger.

As long as Michonne had known her, Andrea never beat around the bush.

Michonne never looked away, even when Andrea's blood and brain matter splattered against the wall and her head slumped forward. A messy, grisly death. One that would terrorize Michonne in her sleep. Still there was a modicum of dignity to it. It was the kind of choice that Andrea had wanted and been denied at the CDC. Better a gunshot to the head than the torturous fever, body aches, and delirium.

After all, Michonne would know. She'd watched with rapt, furious attention as Mike and Terry turned.

Knees trembling, Michonne crumpled to the floor and let out a long jagged moan. She was indifferent to the men, who could undoubtedly hear her, waiting on the other side of the door. Unrest was brewing outside in Woodbury and Michonne ignored it, crying until she was spent because Andrea deserved her tears.

When she finished, she pulled Andrea's jacket from her body and gently laid it over her head, hiding the now gaping hole. She wiped away the tear tracks and stood straight, wrapping her knuckles against the door. The door opened inward and Rick appeared in the threshold. He observed her, taking in her reddened eyes and rigid posture before he looked towards Andrea.

"I need to bury her. You don't need to wait for me," Michonne said.

She could get back to the prison on her own. Or she could find another place to settle. Her emotions were raw enough that it seemed a viable option.

Nobody can make it alone. Michonne shook away those words.

Rick watched her for a moment longer, eyes roaming over her face, his jaw working, those blue eyes plaintive.

"We can bring her back to the prison," he said. "She was one of us too."

Too. Neither his soft inflection nor careful gaze implied that he'd actually meant first. In that moment, as far as he was concerned, Andrea was as much Michonne's as she had ever been theirs. Daryl stood from his sagging position against the wall as if to affirm Rick's words. Michonne nodded.

It was Tyrese who carried Andrea out of the dungeon-like maze of rooms. Woodbury residents scattered to and fro in their confusion and fear. A hush fell over the town as the group emerged from the depths of The Governor's lair.

Michonne stood silently next to Tyrese when Rick, to her surprise, offered the Woodbury residents a home at the prison, and despite her ever-increasing rage, she helped load them onto the bus. Many of them avoided her eyes, no doubt shamed by their earlier suspicion of her.

Michonne cared little. Their blindness and subsequent shame would do fuck-all for her. More than that, Michonne lacked the emotional energy for blame. She understood, as much as anyone, the desire for a home. And isn't that what Andrea had really wanted so desperately? To live instead of simply surviving? A fresh wave of grief threatened to collapse her right there in the street.

No. Enough crying.

Turning abruptly away from the woman she had been helping, Michonne approached the walkers encroaching past the now unmanned wall. She swung her sword in fierce, angry arcs until a pile of walkers fell headless at her feet.

Brindled with blood and sword at her side, she must have struck a frightening picture. She hoped that she did.

"I owe that one-eyed fuck."

Daryl suddenly appeared in her periphery.

Michonne turned slightly in his direction, inhaling and exhaling evenly. The archer stood beside her, surveying her handiwork. He worried his bottom lip and the muscles of his biceps bunched as he gripped the strap of his crossbow tightly.

Michonne flicked blood off her sword, careful to fling it away from him.

"Me too."

They stood side by side for another moment. The bus thundered to life behind them. Daryl launched his leg back and booted the blonde decapitated head nearest his foot. It skipped across the cement and left a stuttering maroon trail in its wake. He cleared his throat and spat in disgust before trudging away. Breathing in once and then out slowly, Michonne turned away from her mess.

Rick stood beside the bus whose windows were littered with dumbfounded faces. He was watching her. Contrary to the faces pressed against the window, his was inscrutable.

His eyes roved over her and the collection of maimed corpses at her feet. He lingered on the shimmering length of her sword, dragging his eyes carefully from the tip to the hilt.

Michonne paused under his scrutiny, momentarily suspended in place by the force of it.

Rick banged on the side of the bus without taking his eyes off her. Tyrese emerged from the door. His sister poked her head out of a lowered window at the front of the bus. Relinquishing Michonne from his stare, Rick exchanged a few words with Tyrese. The burly man nodded and disappeared into the bus again.

Daryl pulled alongside the bus in one of the abandoned jeeps by the gate. Michonne met them at Andrea's body which now lay swathed in a fleece blanket. Michonne fixated on the spreading stain where Andrea's head was. It nauseated her. She knelt down.

Without speaking, the three gingerly lifted Andrea and placed her in the trunk. Ignoring the empty backseat, Michonne sat next to Andrea's body. Her hand was still warm. Blood seeped from underneath the blanket, staining the upholstery and the leg of Michonne's pants.

The blood was still warm too.

Standing in the prison yard, rocking a placid and swaddled Judith, Rick wasn't sure how to feel.

Lori was gone.

He hadn't seen her since he brought in the people from Woodbury more than a week ago. No longer seeing her ghost—specter, revenant, manifestation, whatever-the-fuck—soothed him. It perplexed him just as much. Her sudden absence forced his hand. Rick now had to do what normal widowers do.

He had to visit her grave.

If he wanted to talk to her without seeming crazy that is. While Rick thought that ship had sailed long ago, he was trying. For Carl and Judith. For the people he found himself leading. A group that, courtesy of his recent philanthropy, had multiplied. Much to Carl's chagrin.

Rick was sure, as they erected Lori's grave, that some of Carl's anger had to do with the prison's new residents. With nothing to bury, he and Carl had selected a random spot in the prison's make-do cemetery. Rick watched quietly as Carl etched Lori's name into the cross with his knife, his little hand wrapped tightly around the knife's hilt.

Neither of them spoke a word, and Rick had wished desperately for something consequential to say. Any fucking thing. For his boy. For himself. For Lori. Platitudes would only alienate his increasingly shrewd and distant son. Save for a shaky, "I'm sorry, Carl," words had evaded Rick. Carl avoided his gaze and walked away.

Even in death Lori was right. He really was a closed-mouth son of a bitch.

Now Rick was standing beside her shrine staring sightlessly at the cross. The thing about visiting her grave was that it was so visible. Anyone standing outside could see where he was, private mourning having long since faded away with the old world.

Thankfully the early morning hour discouraged loitering so at this moment the prison yard belonged only to Rick and Judith and the dead.

"She doesn't cry much. She's real quiet. Guess maybe you get a sense of that when I bring her out here."

Maybe she's just like me even though she's not really mine.

Rick flinched at the thought immediately. Lori and Shane were dead, and Rick was cradling Judith the same way he'd cradled an infant Carl—tenderly, protectively. Whose child was she if not his?

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," he murmured to the baby as if she could read his mind, kissing her velvety forehead and cheek. "Daddy's sorry."

Judith stared up at him, blinking slowly. Rick hoped it meant that all was forgiven. He cherished these moments with her. Their early morning adventures nursed something inflamed and achy in him.

So different were these quiet moments from his earlier feeble connection with her. Initially he could barely stand to look at her, could barely distinguish her tiny face from the image of Lori's remains and Shane's snarling visage. His hands shook violently, unsteady with the paternal knowledge that he was supposed to hold her, that he was supposed to want to tuck her against his chest and soothe her but couldn't.

Could he hold her with hands that had killed her other father? Would he taint her with hands that had preferred the cold hardness of his gun to the warmth of her mother?

Then he did hold her. And felt nothing. Just a vast, gnawing emptiness. It had scared the shit out of him. Frightened him so bad that he made a strange groaning sound in the back of his throat. Afraid that Judith would absorb his coldness, Rick had thrust her as gently as he could into Carl's arms and scurried away.

Daryl had found him later that day staring at the fence.

Talkative son of a bitch that he was, Daryl had said, "She's yours. Fuck everything else."

Then he promptly walked away.

It was bald. Simple in the way that Rick needed. Ideas like principle and truth had always appealed to Rick, guided him, comforted him in his old life. Strangled him too, if he thought about it honestly enough.

He wasn't ready to be that honest yet.

The world had changed and Rick couldn't make heads or tails of principle or truth. Everything was so complicated now. Rick desperately needed simple truth. And Judith? Judith was a simple truth no matter her conception. She was here and Rick was her father. That was it.

Newly determined, Rick had marched back to the prison, took Judith to his cell, and cradled her against his chest because he loved her and she was his.

She was his now, sweet and beautiful and alive, as he talked quietly to the mother she would never meet.

"She's intuitive, I think. It's like…like she knows what the world is now. Maybe somehow she remembers those days before we found the prison and we had to be quiet out on the road."

Though mute the day he and Carl erected Lori's grave, Rick somehow found words when holding Judith. He wasn't sure why. All Rick knew was that she eased the persistent tightness in his throat. Plus he figured talking to his dead wife while holding their infant daughter was more normal than whatever the fuck he'd been doing before. Chasing Lori's ghost around, yelling at someone who wasn't there.

"Can't say I don't appreciate how calm she is. I do. I just hope she ain't like me. Too quiet, you know. What did you used to call me?"

Rick looked down at Judith and she wrinkled her nose, as if she was summoning the word he was searching for.

"Brooding. Yeah. Hopefully she ain't a brooder. I hope she's real talkative, that words come easy to her. That she doesn't hold back. I held too much back. I know that. Shane—"

Rick faltered at the knee-jerk invocation of his friend. He wasn't ready to talk about him. Certainly not while holding Judith at Lori's grave. No, not yet.

Judith gurgled contentedly. Rick gently swiped the tip of his finger down her nose. She cooed more, whether at his touch or eye contact, he wasn't sure. Years removed from Carl's infant days, Rick had forgotten how responsive babies could be.

Silver winked in his periphery. Without turning his head, Rick detected motion to his left. He breathed a hefty sigh.

The day was starting. People were up and about and probably trickling outside. At night, lit only by a few candles and kerosene lamps, the cell block was dark, murky. Eerily so. The prison's cavernous spaces and jagged angles were a far cry from Woodbury's manufactured coziness. Promising warmth and light, the morning sun often lured more than one person out of the prison's bowels.

"There goes our quiet time, sweetheart," Rick said bringing his lips to Judith's forehead.

The sun was steadily peeking over the trees and it was time to take Judith inside anyway. Her delicate skin was still too sensitive for prolonged sun exposure. Rick turned. And paused. To his relief, there weren't multiple people filing out of the prison. Just one.

Michonne.

Michonne, who had been withdrawn and blank-faced since Andrea's death. Gone was the surprisingly playful woman from their trip to King County. Or the merciful one who had extended an olive branch after his aborted deal with the Governor.

The last week had kept them busy. Clearing out two additional cell blocks. Sorting out new rotations for daily tasks. Generally acclimating the new group. Michonne was there for all of it, silent and on the periphery, but lending her capable hands when they needed it. Work she never avoided. Casual conversations, leisure, shared meals? Michonne avoided that like the proverbial plague.

Rick understood. Recently, his most robust conversations were with his dead wife.

Leisure was purely theoretical to him, an abstract concept. People should enjoy leisure. Fun was something that people did. They had fought for a place where people could enjoy life and not just survive it.

It wasn't that Rick actively excluded himself from fantasies of leisure. Leisure for his own sake just never occurred to him. And it was for Carl's sake, and only for Carl's sake, that he joined most collective meals. For all the good that did. These days, Carl reserved his words for Judith.

And Michonne.

Rick's thoughts frequently turned to Carl and Michonne's blossoming friendship. It didn't escape his notice. Not much about Michonne did. Since her arrival, Rick hadn't known a single moment of indifference towards her.

She was even harder to ignore when she made his aloof, grieving son laugh. Or when she tapped the brim of Carl's hat as she walked by, pretending like she hadn't, eliciting a smile and a limp "Quit it, Michonne!" Carl hadn't displayed that kind of playfulness since the farm, and it had been sparse even then.

It bemused Rick. Their levity and ease. An ease so inaccessible to him.

Michonne only shared that levity with Carl. She certainly didn't share it with the new arrivals. Most of whom actively avoided her gaze and stayed out of her way. To Rick, her time in Woodbury was hazy. Michonne was selective about what she shared, only having relayed the necessary information for their siege.

Thing was, Rick didn't need many details. Math had always come easy to him. He liked the rules and logics of it. The truths of it. Simple additive equations? A goddamn breeze. Blank spaces foiled by the simplicity of addition. Rick did the math.

Michonne's gunshot wound. The Governor's missing eye and his perverse vendetta. Merle, everything about fucking Merle. Michonne and Andrea's fractured friendship. Andrea's death. The Woodbury survivors' regretful glances. Michonne's indifference to them.

All of it added up to a shit time.

It also evinced an imposing force of a woman. A woman who claimed the Governor's eye and slayed walkers offhandedly, as if such a gruesome task required minimal effort on her part. As little as he knew about her, Rick knew one thing. Her presence exponentially strengthened their group. After his poor behavior, it was a wonder she stayed with them.

Don't look at the gift's price tag, son. Wise words from Rick's father that, presently, didn't feel too wise. A sentiment meant to discourage overthinking suddenly felt like an excuse to avoid…things. Rick avoided lots of things.

Fuck. Rick stretched his neck until it cracked.

He was doing it again.

Brooding. Speculating. Watching.

Being a cop, he was used to surveilling, assessing, investigating. The outbreak had only increased those tendencies. Michonne, though. Michonne was hard to read. To compensate he found himself watching her when she was in his vicinity. Often involuntarily. There was something about her that sparked his instincts. Not in the way that generated worry—not since her initial arrival anyway. She triggered him in a way that simply said pay attention.

The cop in him heeded that voice. The supposed leader in him heeded that voice. The father in him. The man.

He frowned. The man?

Rick looked down at the barren cross bearing his wife's name. Then at the child she gave her life for. The child she would never know.

Not the man.

Well, yes. The man who craved understanding. The man who'd been offered it from a powerful and cagey woman in two unexpectedly simple words: It happens. That man heeded the impulse to keep an eye on her. From a distance, of course. Out of respect for the space she evidently wanted.

He watched her now from from his place next to Lori's cross. It was her katana that'd originally caught his attention. The sun glinted off the steel as she twirled the sword nimbly in her hand. Back and forth, she traced a slow path between the picnic tables, periodically disappearing from view when her path took her behind the wooden utility closet.

Unsure if he'd been spotted, Rick remained still and curious, gently bouncing his daughter as he watched Michonne pace. Perhaps growing bored of the space she'd confined herself to, she extended her path to the gravel. Michonne had to have noticed him but gave no acknowledgement. Her composed gait led her to the fence's entrance where she stood, sword hanging at her side, unmoving, staring into the trees.

His skin prickled.

Especially when she kept standing there. Motionless.

Rick's eyes darted towards the trees. Walkers aside, the woods were still. As still as Michonne was standing. Rick looked up to the second watch tower. Carol was there. She didn't seem alarmed but her frequent glances between the woods and Michonne affirmed his sudden edginess. Rick approached the gate slowly, rocking Judith and scanning the woods. He came to stand a few paces away from her right hand, where her sword dangled.

"Everything alright?" he asked.

She said nothing at first. Her eyes slid towards him, then to Judith where they lingered momentarily, then back to the woods. She eased her sword to her left hand.

"I need to find him."

The Governor.

Rick shifted his weight. "Because you think he's out there and that he'll come back."

"He is. He will."

Certain, Michonne was certain of this. God help him, he was reluctant to dismiss her. Not because of anything The Governor had shown him, and The Governor had displayed significant neurosis. Killing his own people. Collecting walker heads. Demanding Michonne.

None of that raised the hair on the back of Rick's neck. It was Michonne. He trusted her surety. Even after so little time, he trusted her instincts.

The thought of her leaving to hunt The Governor troubled him all the same.

"Woodbury's gone," he said, "His people are here. The ones he left alive anyway. What if he's gone?"

"You don't know him like I do."

Rick nodded, feeling the need to tread lightly, always feeling the need to tread lightly around her. She wasn't wrong. Rick's animosity towards The Governor paled in comparison to hers. Destroying the prison had always been a corollary concern for the madman. Excess for its own sake. What the man had always truly wanted was the woman standing beside him.

"And what's your plan?"

Michonne shrugged. "Find him. Kill him."

"By yourself?"

"It has to be me."

Rick turned his head toward her. "Does it?"

"I owe him," Michonne said evenly. "More importantly, he owes me."

He ruminated on her answer and not for the first time wondered about the contours of her relationship with The Governor.

"What does he owe you?" Rick asked.

Michonne turned to him then. A lucid, steadfast gaze met his own. Underneath her calmness he could see something else. Coldness. Chilling and relentless. A coldness that on its own was frightening but only fueled the strange understanding between them.

"His head. And I will have it."

Goosebumps crept across his skin. He believed her. Goddamit, he believed her. If anyone could topple The Governor, it was Michonne. Rick was sure of it. What concerned him was her eagerness to go looking for The Governor alone. Or at all. Where would she even start?

"It's dangerous to be out by yourself, Michonne."

Ricks suspected that she knew that intimately. Probably better than him.

Rick had barely made it to the prison with himself intact, so consumed with his anxiety and anger at the time. He wasn't sure that he did make it intact. And that was with his people in tow. Rick got the impression that Michonne had been alone for a long time before Andrea.

"Waiting for him to come back is dangerous."

Michonne once again looked at Judith who had been staring unwaveringly at the woman since Rick joined her at the fence. Judith cooed softly to herself, her eyes never leaving Michonne. Michonne looked away.

"You guys built something here," Michonne said looking beyond the fence. "I'll help protect it."

Rick was ambivalent about her declaration. Her promise of protection suggested that she planned to stay which could only ever be a good thing. They needed her. Yet there was an aloofness to her promise. Rick saw the line drawn between you guys and I.

"Michonne. We're lucky to have you here. Especially after I—"

Rick cleared his throat. She had forgiven his sellout already, they'd talked about it, and still he was reluctant to bring up his betrayal. The shame and regret lingered.

"—After what I did. You don't have to hunt The Governor to earn your keep."

Michonne glanced at him, her expression indecipherable. She looked away once more.

"Someone's sleepy," she said.

Rick's brow scrunched and then he looked down at the tiny beauty in his arms. Sure enough, she was on the tail end of a wide yawn.

"Surprised she hasn't started wailing yet," Rick said looking at his watch and then the prison. "Bout time for her to eat."

Michonne hummed, eyes forward. "Best not to tempt her then."

"No. Probably not."

Rick wanted to say something else but what? Resolve was evident in the straight lines of her back and shoulder. He didn't know what would get his point across. And, given that he did in fact trust her instincts, Rick struggled to pin down his point.

Don't go after him.

It's dangerous.

There doesn't have to be a "you guys" and "I."

I should be out there looking for him.

That last one pressed on another thought, one that clanged around his brain noisily these days. He'd been turning it over in his mind since Carl reluctantly proposed it. A proposal that had become more plausible the more Rick reflected on his handling of The Governor…and everything else.

Stealing a final glance at Michonne, Rick bit back his useless words. He nodded at her before carrying Judith back up to the prison where Carl was just emerging from the cell block.

True to her word, Michonne was gone two days later, Daryl with her. They were a powerful pairing, Daryl and Michonne. The two had an odd, surprising symmetry about them.

Rick only found fleeting comfort in their combined strength. He mostly felt itchy about their absence.

I should be out there with them.

Normally he would be. But he was a single father now. He had newborn and a son who barely spoke to him. His kids needed him. Here.

Isn't that what Lori had alleged so many times? That his impulse was always to leave when really he should stay?

He needed to stay.

Days passed with no sign of Daryl and Michonne. Rick was fidgety. About them being out there. About him staying. About him wanting to leave at all when he had plenty to stay for. About what Carl said to him weeks ago.

You shouldn't be the leader anymore.

Abdicating his role was a seductive possibility. After confessing to the group about his deal with The Governor, his words to them had been earnest. No one of them should hold the power to make decisions like that. Least of all him. Especially not him. Basic things like left and right were shaky concepts for him these days. Entrusting him with their lives, their future? That was a fool's errand.

"They'll be back. They're strong," Hershel said, reminding Rick that he was, once again, staring aimlessly beyond the fence.

Hershel had gotten mighty stealthy on those crutches.

"They are," Rick agreed, hands going to his hips.

Hershel shifted his weight to lean mostly on one crutch. Rick silently thanked him for not yet turning his knowing gaze on him. The older man stared into the woods as if he was trying to materialize Daryl and Michonne too.

"You think you should be out there with them."

That was the thing about Hershel. The blessed, infuriating thing. Little got past him, and he was never afraid to speak.

It reminded him of Michonne's candor actually. Or perhaps she reminded him of Hershel with her bold willingness to name something—his conversations with his dead wife—that other people had surely noticed but refused to comment on. Michonne's honesty differed from Hershel's in a strange way. Rick couldn't yet put his finger on it. All he knew was that Michonne's understanding had a different effect.

"I ain't even sure they should be out there," Rick confessed.

Hershel hummed. "He's a sick man and he took a lot from them."

Despite Hershel's diplomacy, Rick knew that Hershel had tried to talk them both into staying.

"Michonne—she thinks he'll come back. If she doesn't go find him first."

Hershel considered this.

"So she said. I'd wager that she knows more about The Governor than we do."

"I don't doubt that," Rick said. "I don't doubt that."

"But you disagree with their decision to leave?"

Rick scratched his eyebrow and sighed.

"I don't know, Hershel. Part of me feels like I should be out there with them. Part of me feels like outside of runs, we should all be here together, building something."

"Maybe both instincts are right."

Rick shook his head.

"Maybe. But I can't do both. My kids are here. Lori—" His throat constricted painfully. "Lori's gone now. Carl and Judith need me."

Hershel grabbed his shoulder and squeezed.

"Then be here, Rick. You've done more than enough. Rest."

Carl had said the same thing. You can rest, Dad.

Rick could hardly imagine rest. What was rest in this world? How would that impact the group? They were counting on him. Because of his unilateral decision to shelter the Woodbury survivors, "they" had more than tripled in size.

Hershel watched him, having long since acclimated to Rick's taciturn nature. His proclivity towards thinking silently. Or let Lori tell it, loudly.

Jesus, Rick. Sometimes you think so loudly yet you never say a goddamned thing!

"You know, there are other ways to be here, Rick," Hershel said finally turning his gaze back to the woods.

Lori had whispered those words harshly. She was so angry that she pushed the words through clenched teeth. It was the day he got shot, when she accused him of not caring about her or Carl. Why did he struggle so much then to talk to her?

For fucks sake, why?

Agitated, Rick shoved a hand through his hair. It needed a trim.

"Yeah," he said noncommittally.

Redistributing his weight to both crutches, Hershel turned his body towards the prison where people were milling about outside. He squeezed Rick's shoulder again in comfort. Rick listened to the fading clack-clack-clack of Hershel's crutches until it was swallowed up by the sound of walkers.