A/N: Enjoy!

18. Bitches Be Crazy (part 6)

Rick's grip on my hand tightened the moment his eyes met hers.

I kept my eyes locked on him.

I had to.

If I looked at her, I absolutely, positively was going to break her jaw and kick her teeth in.

But Rick wanted talking only.

So I looked at him as he looked at her in that intense, head tilted, eye squinting way of his...

and I tried to ignore the fluttering in my stomach.

Shit.

This was not happening.

Not now.

I inwardly rolled my eyes at my ridiculousness and then casually lowered my gaze to our connected hands.

I had to bite my bottom lip to stop a smile from spreading across my face.

Shit! Get it together, Michonne!

I was being beyond ridiculous.

This moment was about Rick confronting that walking, talking pile of garbage. Nothing more. I was not about to start acting like a teenage girl with a crush just because Rick Grimes was holding my hand.

It's not as if this was our first time holding hands anyways. He'd wrapped his sticky hand around mine the day we first met, and there'd been countless instances of hand holding since then. I'm sure we'd held hands at some point over the weekend.

But…

But this was the first time that holding hands felt like...

something more.

The sensation of his palm sliding against mine…

of his fingers settling between mine…

of his hand gripping mine…

was…

It was a spine-tingling, head-dizzying, heart-stopping kind of electric!

The fluttering in my stomach intensified.

The warmth that only came from blushing heated my face.

"Oh my God," I groaned under my breath.

This was happening.

Now, of all times, this was happening.

And this was all Margaret Josephine Greene's fault.

I finally listened to her damn toilet talk, and now I was acting like a teenage girl with a crush. If I started twirling my hair around my finger and giggling, I was heading straight to the Greene farm to have words with her.

I was in the middle of one hell of an eye roll when I felt Rick gently tug on my hand. My eyes snapped up to his face.

My breath immediately caught in my throat.

He was facing me with his head cocked in concern, and those blue eyes of his—those heavenly sky-blue eyes of his—were peering at me, wide and questioning.

"Michonne," he said softly, moving closer to me. "What's wrong?"

Jesus.

Was that how he always said my name? "Michonne." I stared at his lips—his perfectly pink lips—and silently willed my name to come out of his mouth one more time.

I needed to hear it again. Desperately.

My heart was beating wildly.

My chest started to rise and fall in anticipation.

I may have licked my lips.

"Riiiiiiiick!" Lori suddenly cried out from across the room.

Startled by her very loud, very high pitched, baby goat-like voice, Rick and I jumped and looked at her. She took three wobbly steps towards us, collapsed to the floor onto her knees and covered her face with her hands.

What in the actual fuck?!

Maggie was easily the most dramatic person I'd ever met, but even she would've considered what Rick and I just witnessed to be too much.

"Oh, Rick," Lori woefully moaned into her hands, rocking her body forward and back.

She effectively killed the fluttering in my stomach after she ever so slowly lifted her face from her hands and wiped an imaginary tear from her cheek.

My rage started churning when she looked up at Rick with big, sorrowful eyes.

Fucking. Lori. Grimes.

She's a bat-wielding lunatic in front of me but a repentant lunatic in front of Rick?

Fuck that!

Break her jaw. Kick her teeth in.

I took a very aggressive step toward her, but Rick pulled me back by my hand that was still connected to his. I tried to yank my hand away, but he held onto it even tighter.

"Stop," he silently ordered after I whipped my head around to glare at him.

Oh.

How wonderful.

He still wanted to do the talking only thing.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Shit!

I swallowed a frustrated grunt and gave him the slightest of nods to acknowledge that, for now, I would stop. Against better judgment, I looked away from him to glare at Lori. She shot me an almost imperceptible smirk before fixing her face back into a deeply contrite expression.

That did it.

My blood was boiling again.

Don't break her jaw. Don't kick her teeth in.

"Rick… baby, I missed you so, so much," Lori professed.

Don't break her jaw. Don't kick her teeth in.

"But I'm home now, baby. I'm home." She beamed, holding her arms out for Rick to run into them.

Don't break her jaw. Don't kick her teeth in.

"Lori," Rick said in a very strained voice.

Don't break her jaw. Don't kick her teeth in.

"Get your shit and go!" he roared.

Don't break her jaw. Don't kick her… Wait. What?

When Rick said he wanted to talk, it never occurred to me that those would be the first words he'd use.

"B-but," Lori stuttered in confusion.

"Get up, get your shit, and go!" he barked.

I blissfully watched the color drain from Lori's face. And when her jaw dropped, the look of open-mouthed horror elevated my bliss to ecstasy.

After all the nonsense she spewed when she had LuLu to hide behind, it was obvious that she'd only ever envisioned one outcome with Rick. This was not that happily ever after outcome. Being kicked out of the house that she still considered to be her home, by the man that she still viewed as her husband, while he held hands with the woman that she thought of as her nemesis completely blindsided her.

"B-but," she stuttered as her arms fell to her sides, "you can't mean that. Rick, you don't mean that!"

"I'm not fuckin' around, Lori," Rick growled in a deathly serious voice. "Leave!"

Her eyes widened in shock.

"No. No, no, no, no, no," she mumbled, shaking her head back and forth. "Baby, no," she whimpered, looking up at Rick with a slightly unhinged expression on her face. "I know it was a shock seein' me earlier. I know it's a shock seein' me now. But I promise you, Rick, I promise you I am home now. I am here now. We-"

"There is no we!" Rick shouted. "You left! You left your child! You left your home! You left us!"

"B-but," she stuttered, "Rick, just let me-"

"I drove around for hours, Lori! Hours! Lookin' for you... Not knowin' if you were... I thought you were..." He let out a shaky breath and cleared his throat. "I drove around thinkin' the worst because what else would keep you from bein' at the hospital? Why else wouldn't you return my calls?"

The anguish in Rick's voice twisted itself around my heart. When Nugget was making his way into the world, I had no idea Rick was grappling with the thought that Lori was either seriously injured or dead.

The depth of my hatred for her, which was already so deeply rooted in my bones, grew.

More than wanting to break her jaw and kick her teeth in, I wanted to pull Rick away from this moment and wrap my arms around him. I wanted to hold him as closely and as tightly as possible to comfort him for having felt that type of pain. I wanted to whisper the sweetest nothings into his ear to drive out the lingering echoes of that pain.

Then I wanted to kick Lori's ass.

"And even after I found that letter and knew you walked away from us, I still looked for you," he said in a pained voice. "Instead of bein' there for Michonne and our son, I chose you. And I hate myself for that, Lori. Every day I do. I hate you for that."

"You… you don't mean that, Rick. I don't believe you!" she yelled, rejecting his rejection of her.

"Was it even true?" he asked, ignoring her outburst. "Or was it all a lie?"

Her eyes widened just a fraction and she swallowed hard.

"W-what? Was what true?" she asked a little too aloofly.

"The letter, Lori!" he snapped.

The letter. I'd looked for it everywhere—in the house, in Rick's truck, in Rick's desk at the station, in the squad car Rick shared with Morales, in Daryl's house—before I decided to respect Rick's privacy and stop looking. I couldn't read what I couldn't find, but I think it was safe to assume it was full of lies.

Lori's lousy poker face confirmed that it was.

"It doesn't really matter, does it?" Rick asked before Lori could respond. "Just somethin' else that doesn't mean a goddamn thang to me now."

"Stop it! Stop bein' so mean!" she shrieked. "I'm not perfect, baby, I know I'm not! But neither are you," she whimpered. "You turned your back on me when I needed you, Rick. Don't you think that hurt me? Don't you think that broke my heart?"

What the hell was she talking about?

"What the hell are you talkin' about?" Rick asked, fuming.

"I have bruises up and down my body from what Michonne and those people did to me! You let her attack me! You let those people attack me! And then you left me in the dirt! Twice! My own husband! I could hate you for that. I could cuss you out six ways from Sunday, but I'm bigger than pettiness, Rick. You were in shock, and you made bad decisions. I understand that."

Was this crazy bitch insane?

"Have you lost your goddamn mind?" Rick asked her.

"In good times or bad, baby," she said with conviction. "Those are the vows we took. They still mean somethin'. This," she said, looking at her wedding ring, "this still means somethin'." She held up her hand so that Rick could look at the ring too.

This crazy bitch was insane.

"No, Lori," Rick quickly disagreed. "Not to me. Not anymore."

"You can't possibly mean that!" she screeched. "You can't! You're just bein' cruel because you're hurt!"

"Me?!" he asked in outraged disbelief. "I'm bein' cruel? Me? Me?!" he questioned, storming towards her.

Since our hands were still connected, he pulled me with him. When we were standing in front of her, he dropped into a squat to look directly into her eyes.

"How many times have you seen or held our child since he was born? How many times have you even asked about him since you got back to King County?"

"I… Rick… you don't understand," she stammered.

"Answer the question! How many times?" he shouted.

We all knew the answer, but Lori stared at him without the decency of even looking ashamed.

This heartless bitch!

"Not once!" he answered for her. "Not one time!"

She swallowed hard again but remained silent, not even attempting to offer an explanation or an apology for her apparent lack of interest in Nugget.

With a look of disgust darkly transforming his features, Rick leaned in closer to her. "You are the cruel one, Lori. You are," he harshly whispered.

Lori gasped loudly, apparently surprised by Rick's words and the coldness that accompanied them. Her bottom lip trembled and her eyes filled with actual tears.

Rick was unaffected.

He stood abruptly from his squatting position. "Save your tears. Our son is..." he started to say before stopping himself.

My body tensed.

I was momentarily blinded by a flash of red fury.

Breathe, Michonne.

But I couldn't breathe.

He had just fucking said "our son" to her after she shamelessly and unapologetically admitted that she didn't care about Nugget.

That was his second time saying it to her.

In addition to saying "your child."

In addition to saying "our child."

Both of my eyes twitched.

I respected that he was in the process of evicting this delusional bitch from the life she thought was still hers, but if he referred to Nugget as being theirs or hers one more time, I was going to LOSE. MY. SHIT.

DNA was no longer relevant in my eyes; Nugget was not her child.

Rick was his dadu. I was his Muhmuh. Nugget was-

"Our son," Rick said quietly, stealing my attention from my thoughts.

Goddamnit, Rick!

I turned to him with every intention of lighting into his ass over his offensive choice of words, but when I looked at him, there was a gentle warmth radiating from his blue-eyed gaze that disarmed my anger and left me tongue-tied.

"Our son," he repeated, looking deeply into my eyes and squeezing my hand, "is healthy, happy, brilliant, and he's loved."

And then, as if his verbal declaration hadn't just stolen every last air molecule from my lungs, he looked back down at Lori to say, "And you had absolutely nuthin' to do with that."

I couldn't breathe, I couldn't blink. All I could do was stare at Rick.

"He doesn't need you, Lori," he said.

I watched his mouth as it moved and heard his voice, but I didn't… I couldn't…

Our son?

"I don't need you, Lori," he said.

I took in a choppy breath.

"I don't want you, Lori," he said.

I thought of Nugget's healthy, happy, brilliant, and loved little self and blinked back joyful tears.

"Rick, please!" Lori cried out.

Our son!

Rick gave my hand another quick squeeze before letting it go, and I watched in a bit of a daze as he pulled his wedding ring off.

"And I don't want this," he said, letting the ring fall from his hand to the floor.

It landed with a soft thud next to Lori. That sound that must have been deafening to her ears, but to my ears, the sound was liberating. It lifted the weight that settled on my shoulders the day Rick and Lori exchanged I do's.

Rick had to be feeling infinitely lighter himself, but when I glanced at him, I couldn't get a read on anything except his anger. Without taking his squinting eyes off Lori, his hand reached for mine and he slowly backed away from her, once again pulling me with him.

Lori was completely oblivious to the distance we were creating. She stared at the ring in a trance-like state until loud sobs racked through her body.

I sighed in content.

Our son.

"You aren't welcome here," Rick calmly told her once her sobs died down some. "This isn't your home anymore."

She gazed up at him with a pouty, tear-streaked face, looking very much like Nugget when he was throwing a tantrum.

"B-but, Rick, can I just… " she said between sniffles, "Can I just talk to you… alone… without-"

I narrowed my eyes.

"Without Michonne?" he asked in disbelief.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose in exasperation and mumbled something under his breath. I couldn't understand what he said, but it sounded very rude and I didn't appreciate that he didn't say it louder.

"Let's get somethin' straight right now! This is Michonne's home! She doesn't need an invitation to be here. She doesn't need permission."

Lori's pout grew more pronounced, but that scowl of hers was under the surface, itching to make an appearance.

"She is not the intruder here, Lori, and she won't be treated like one. If you have somethin' to say to me, then you say it in front of Michonne too!"

Fresh tears rolled down Lori's cheeks.

"And hear me loud and clear when I tell you this, because I won't say it again... If you ever, ever raise a bat to Michonne in her home again or threaten her in any way, anywhere, I will show you cruel, Lori. I will make sure you regret the day you ever stepped foot in King County. Do you understand?"

Her icy silence was all the confirmation I needed, but Rick wanted a verbal response.

"Do you understand?" he growled.

"Yes, Rick," she whispered faintly.

"Then we're done talkin'," he said evenly. "There's nuthin' left to say, Lori. There's nuthin' that changes what's happenin' right now."

She wiped away her tears and stared at him with a deep-set frown. When that did nothing, she turned her thoroughly iced over eyes to me.

"You!" she hissed with a scowl on her face. "What did you do? What the hell did you tell him?!"

Rick pulled me closer to him, but he didn't need to worry about me attacking her. Harming Lori was no longer the prevalent thought running through my mind. A much more delectable thought was.

Mine!

There was a giddiness that came from embracing the thought I'd been so afraid of and confused by. So in the spirit of giddiness, I was going to have some fun using my words. I gave Rick's hand a reassuring squeeze and smiled brightly at Lori.

"It's kind of funny how things work out if you think about it, isn't it Lori?" I asked, repeating what she said to me earlier. "Turns out that you're the one standing in my home uninvited and… Oh wait... You're not actually standing, are you? You're sniveling... on your knees... in my home. Uninvited. Unwelcome. Sounds an awful lot like trespassing, don't you think?"

Lori glared at me with murder in her eyes.

"And I can do whatever I want to a trespasser, right, Lori? I can find a bat, or I can call the police, or maybe I can bury my fist in your face, if I felt so inclined. And I feel so very, very inclined."

Break her jaw. Kick her teeth in.

So much for feeling giddy. I was back to wanting to cause harm.

I looked at Rick.

"No," he silently said.

"Just one punch," I silently argued.

He gave me a "was I born yesterday?" look.

He was right. I wouldn't be able to stop after one punch. But I really didn't care for how he had such little faith in my ability to control myself. Before I could roll my eyes at him, Lori started clapping.

It was slow and condescending.

"You still think you're the smartest person in the room," she said when she was done clapping. "You still think you're better than everyone."

This slow clapping bitch!

She got up from the floor, wincing and holding her side. When she was standing, she put her hands on the bones she passed off as hips and scowled at me.

"You're wrong, Lori. I've never thought that I was better than everyone," I told her. "What I know is that I'm better than you."

Her jaw dropped and anger crept up her face, leaving behind its very red footprint. But instead of the hysterics I was expecting, she closed her mouth and jutted her chin out.

"Rick, do you remember what we did the night before Michonne moved in?" she asked, addressing him but looking at me. "Do you remember how we celebrated that six-month mark? How we made love all night long?"

Over my dead body was I giving Lori the satisfaction of knowing how bothered I was by her questions. I gagged on the inside but kept my face stony.

"Lori, enough!" Rick shouted. "Either you walk outta this house right now or I remove you. Your choice."

"I didn't wanna tell you like this, baby. But somethin' happened that night. Somethin' special," she said, unconcerned by Rick's threat to remove her.

Rick turned his back on her and moved in front of me, blocking her from my sight. The embarrassed and apologetic look on his face answered the question I had about Lori's disgusting claim. They had indeed "celebrated" the six-month mark of the pregnancy.

Since I was shielded from Lori, I quietly gagged. Rick waited patiently until I stopped.

"You done?" he whispered.

"I'm done," I whispered back.

He looked like he wanted to say more, but he cleared his throat instead and said, "I need you to stay right here. Will you do that?"

"We did somethin' amazin', Rick," Lori continued.

Fucking Lori Grimes!

I pulled my hand from Rick's and crossed my arms. I couldn't be mad at him for being with her in that way back then, but I didn't want to be touched by him while she described it.

"Mich—"

"Yeah," I mumbled, letting him know I would stay put.

I took a step away from him and backed into the counter. I wasn't mad at him. I wasn't. But the last thing I wanted to hear was my name coming out his mouth right now.

He let out a frustrated sigh when I averted my eyes from him. I held in my own frustrated sigh when he walked away. This was the first time since the three of us had been left alone that he was leaving my side. I knew he was doing it to physically remove Lori from the house, but he was still walking away from me for her.

"Baby, I didn't know how to tell you," Lori said to Rick, watching him as he walked closer to her, "but I was in shock, and I made a bad decision. I didn't know what else to do."

I didn't know what the hell she was talking about, but my mind started racing to make sense of whatever she was alluding to.

"But I'm here now. I'm home. That's what matters," she told him.

When Rick was close enough to grab her, she sidestepped him and ran to the table to create a barrier between them. She bumped the table when she ran around it, and I watched one of the Winnie the Pooh bottles fall on its side and roll off the table.

My stomach dropped.

No.

There was no way.

I tried to shake off what my gut was telling me, but my mind wouldn't let me.

My mind took me to the pink bags in the front room….

The bags full of toys...

No!

My mind took me to the car seat in the SUV…

The stuffed bunny next to it...

NO!

My mind took me to the farm where I first noticed Lori's fuller face…

And where she uttered those five infuriating words…

"I'm a mother now, too!"

"No," I breathed out.

I turned around to grip the countertop before my shaky legs gave out.

"Baby, I know you're upset." Lori was speaking in a steady, confident voice now. "But you can't make me leave, Rick. Not when we have a child."

"Leave him outta this!" Rick bellowed.

"I'm not talkin' about him, Rick. We have a child. We have a daughter."

I broke out in a cold sweat.

My heart was pounding in my ears.

"What the… what the hell is wrong with you?" Rick asked.

"We have a daughter, Rick. Her name is Judith Grace Grimes, named after your mother. She's six months old. She-"

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" he asked again.

"Baby, I know it's a lot, but it's the God honest truth. Please just hear me out," she whined. "That mornin' Michonne went into labor, I wasn't feelin' well, so I went to the doctor. They ran some tests, and that's when I found out that I, that we were three months pregnant. I didn't know what to do! I didn't know how to tell you or-"

"That's not possible!" Rick shouted.

It wasn't possible.

That impossibility was confirmed by specialists, and by more specialists who gave second opinions, and by more specialists who gave second opinions of second opinions.

That impossibility was why I went through all the blood tests, and the medical screenings and the hormone therapy. It was why after two unsuccessful embryo transfers, I was still willing to attempt a third. It was why I grinned and beared it through the symptoms of pregnancy, and the agony of labor and the torture of delivery.

I gave up my body and changed my life based on Lori not being able to get pregnant.

"She's our miracle baby, Rick!"

I tried desperately to catch my breath.

"Don't look at me like that," Lori complained. "I knew Michonne would make you doubt this, so I brought medical records, and pictures and… and I brought her. I brought Judith, Rick!"

I couldn't be here anymore. I needed to leave.

I walked out of the kitchen on the most unsteady of legs, tuning out Rick, whose voice was loud and irate, and tuning out Lori, whose voice was loud and whiny. Rather than walk past them to get to the front door, my feet took me to the hallway leading to the bedrooms.

I stopped outside of Nugget's nursery.

My stomach was in knots.

I rested my forehead against the closed door, preparing myself for what I knew was behind it. When I opened the door, the powder fresh scent of a baby hit me.

It wasn't Nugget's powder fresh scent.

Tears filled my eyes, but I could see the baby squirming in Nugget's crib as clear as day. The sight of her, the sound of her, the smell of her was too overwhelming.

I bent over, gripping my knees as I dry heaved.

I couldn't catch my breath. My stomach wouldn't stop rolling.

I gripped my knees harder and vomited.

Everything that I thought was mine, wasn't.

Fucking Lori Grimes was right. Rick would never walk away from his child. And if this child was going to be a part of this home, then Lori would be a part of this home too.

I needed to go.

I tried to stand up, but the room started spinning and my legs buckled.

I felt myself falling, and then everything was dark.

A/N: Thank you for reading! Please take the time to leave a review. It's appreciated!