Hello! I've wanted to add to the Richonne fanfic library and here it is. I'm relatively new to the fandom but it's was like going down a deep cave with these two and now I can't find my way back.
There's no beta and only me so if there's mistakes, sorry but enjoy!
"Michonne!" The shrill cry rapidly approached to where the gaggle of women bunched and tittered. They were all staring and gesticulating at one person in particular and as Madam Gertie came into view, her gasp was loud.
Michonne looked down over her shoulder, her long locs swaying behind her with grandiosity. Madame Gertie's face scrunched in distaste and she pointed at Michonne from below, now coming into the middle of the other women. "You get down from there, you're unsightly!"
Michonne turned and looked at the wee baby bird still balanced on her palm, its feathers ruffled and its body shaken, perhaps from just being born or falling out of the nest so suddenly. There were three more babies huddled in the twiggy nest and their chirps were joyously calling for their mother. Michonne's thighs hugged the tree trunk, her skirts bunched up too high on her thighs and probably the reason Madame was having a fit.
"Michonne!" Madame Gertie called again and the woman rolled her eyes with a sigh before smiling softly at the bird and reaching to rest it with its siblings.
"Yes Madam!" She absently answered, folding her arms and laying her chin against them.
"You sweet thing, don't be scared, you're back now" she said softly. "Eat well and grow, I'll check on you from time to time" she took a moment to close her eyes and bask in the warmth coming through the leaves and the wind blowing softly against her skin and the lightness she felt being all the way up there.
"Michonne!" Another shout broke her from serenity.
Michonne straightened and gripped the branches near her, dreading the lecture she would likely get once she touched the grass. She carefully but skillfully maneuvered her way down the trunk, an elegance in her boisterousness. Once down Michonne faced the older lady. Madame Gertie's face was pinched with anger and harried worry and something else that had Michonne seizing up. The grip that settled on her wrist was nothing new and with a shaky sigh she was whisked away leaving the others' laughter behind.
-()-
Michonne grimaced as she was forced to sit on the wooden chair in the corner of Madame Gertie's office. Her backside was aching and irritated from her house mother's heavy hand and her ankles were bound to each of the front chair legs.
"I only climbed a tree!" Michonne grumbled. "The baby bird would've died"
"You could've gotten hurt" Madame Gertie sat behind her big oak desk scribbling away at some papers.
"A scraped knee is hardly something to keel over at" Michonne felt defiance line every limb as she shifted and winced.
"A scraped knee is a blemish on your beautiful skin and we can't have that. There are already small scratches on your thighs from clinging to the bark and not to mention the dirt on your hands, you know better" the woman didn't bother looking up, having already expended her breath on her long winded lecture prior.
"Yes and that's why I know I'm not some doll you can shelte—ack!" She sat wrong and was rolled over with pain.
Michonne groaned. "Curse you"
Madame Gertie sighed and looked over at the beautiful woman who grew up behind these doors and within these long halls. She remembered the scrawny, shivering girl being pushed into her hands by a woman with wild eyes just as big and brown as Michonne's but nowhere near as soft and warm despite it all. Madame Gertie had brought her up under her wing and has watched her shape and mold into the defiant woman she has become and in some aspects she was proud of her independence and strength but not at the expense of her business.
"Language," Madame Gertie reminded absently.
Michonne scoffed and rolled her eyes. "This place is a joke"
"It's a living"
"It's a prison," Michonne spat.
Silence stretched and then Madame Gertie got up and came over to her, looming. Her face was stoic and pained in a way Michonne never understood. The older lady reached out and gripped at Michonne's chin, forcing her gaze. "You are my most prized flower, Michonne and that gives you some liberty where the others don't but don't mistake that for freedom" she said measured. "You're mine. You may want out but once you step out of these doors your worth boils down to zero, at least take the chance here to determine your own worth and that means reigning higher than the rest, don't fall like that bird after I've raised you up to where you need to be" Madame Gertie's rough grip let go and some of Michonne's loose locs fell forward and framed her face.
A swirling uneasiness settled above them. "Rules come with punishment and it's best you remember that"
Michonne winced in her seat and bit her lip as the harsh feeling of the smooth and unforgiving stick against her flesh came back behind her closed eyes. "I've been too soft on you" she heard.
"I won't be here forever," Michonne gritted out.
Madame Gertie circled back behind her desk, split between the need to have a firm grip on her business and assets and nurture. She looked at the woman who was leaning awkwardly to one side in an effort to stave off the pain she'd inflicted on her backside. She tempered the mild grin playing on her lips because it was wretched and she shouldn't be feeling this way. She looked at her hands and tapped her fingers a few times on the paper with the contents she'd been ruminating over for a long time now.
Madame Gertie took a breath and pushed down the ugly joy she got at hearing her prized possession's cries. "You mean a lot to me, Michonne," she said softly.
"Not me, my body" her locs hid her face but the disgust was apparent. Such soft hair Madame Gertie had found her hand rung into on occasion.
"You're like a daughter to me, the first of what became many and I hold pride in you" Madame foreclosed. "You're mine" she uttered again, "and until you are claimed, you'd always be"
Michonne turned her head and frowned at the older lady. Their relationship was a murky interconnection of desperation, indifference, need and a warped sense of servitude. She had no parents, no relatives of any kind that she knew of and so all she had was the house mother who instilled in her all her knowledge and way of life. Their locked gazes sparked with unspoken truths and confessions. Madame Gertie sighed and pursed her lips.
"Sasha was claimed" she said suddenly.
Michonne sat up then and her eyes went wide. She bolted to her feet about to take a step when her binded ankles stopped her and she jerked forward slightly.
"What!?" She shouted as the surprise gave way to rage. "No! What do you mean? You didn't allow it, right!?" Her words were frantic.
"Michonne, settle down please"
"How can I? You can't let her, you can't!"
"Michonne!" Madame Gertie was in front of her once more and she cried out as fingers fisted her hair and she looked into lost and angry eyes as hers blazed.
"Act like the woman I made you" Madame Gertie scolded sternly.
Michonne's body stilled and her fist curled at her sides, all the rage and worry and concern pouring off of her in waves as she abided by the older woman's whims who scanned her face with that worrisome mix of emotion Michonne could never pin down.
"You can't…" Michonne's voice slowed to something pleading.
"This is not within your control and it's my fault that you even have the gall to think so" Madame Gertie shook her head in disappointment and let Michonne go who seemed wobbly on her feet.
"She's…Sasha…she's all I have"
"She chose this and you know I would never condone this if she didn't because I do wish to protect you all" Madame Gertie's voice turned soft from the whip it was before and her hand came up and softly guided Michonne's gaze on her once more by her cheek where it had been glued to the ground.
"She doesn't know what she's talking about" Michonne shook her head in disbelief.
"I don't think this is what you're afraid of Mich—"
"It has to be! They don't care about us, they just want someone to vent to and control us they're worse than horseshit!" Michonne's eyes flew open when Madame Gertie gripped a hand over her mouth and pushed her back roughly into the chair.
"Ack!" Her shout muffled and her whole body winced at the pain in her backside.
"I said to not confuse my leniency with freedom! Watch your filthy mouth my glorious flower or I will have to explain to your long line of clients why your pretty lips are so bruised" Madame Gertie's eyes narrowed.
Michonne clutched onto the older woman's wrist and matched her fierce look with her own. "This is not Mike" she heard and instantly that fight diminished and was replaced with anguish and hurt and fear and hatred; so much, that it all came crawling up like a monster from deep inside Michonne and forced her to the side in a heave and out of the stronghold of her house mother, a mad woman that she claimed as a real mother compartmentalized in that sad warped feeling of servitude.
"Sasha knows of your punishment, she left something for you" Madame Gertie's hand came to rest on her shivering back then it was gone and her footsteps retreated.
Madame Gertie opened the door to her office and Michonne turned then and went straight for the rope at her ankles. "Get this off!" She pulled at it desperately. "I have to talk to her, I have to see Sasha, she can't go!"
She fell out of the chair and to her knees awkwardly but she rested her forehead to the floor and reached back and kept ripping at the rope uselessly. "Let me out!"
After a few tries she looked up to Madame Gertie who couldn't tamper that ugly emotion of satisfaction and it had morphed itself into a that wretched grin. "Why didn't you tell me until now!?"
"Adhere to rules, Michonne"
Those beautiful brown eyes, such underlined warmth and softness over casted with frantic need and desperation. Tears streaming like glittering crystals against smooth, dark cheeks. Evening under such distress her prized flower was such a debilitating beauty that it sent a shiver up her spine. She closed the door on her sobs.