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Michonne stopped in the doorway, heartbeat an erratic staccato in her throat as she watched Rick watch nothing. His expression slack, chest caved in, eyes weary…reddened but eerily dry as if he no longer knew how to grieve.
She moistened her lips, hands tightening into fists as she squared shoulders that wanted to curve in defeat.
Not today.
Not now.
No matter how much she was hurting.
Both of them couldn’t shut down.
“She’s okay,” she said, tone soft but steady—sure in a world where nothing else was. She could be that for Rick. She had to be. Please let it be enough, she silently beseeched any force that might be listening. Not that anyone or anything was—the world they lived in, the horrors they’d just endured proof of that. But she had to at least try. She loved him…loved Carl and Judith too much not to.
Rick blinked but didn’t turn, wobbling on unsteady legs as if drunk instead of devastated. She took an instinctive step forward, but went no further, giving him time to come back to himself. He would. He always did.
No matter how much he was hurting.
“Rick? You hear me? I checked on Judith. She’s okay.”
A stark nod, a shaking hand through disheveled dark hair. He swallowed hard, visibly trembling.
Upon returning to Alexandria, Carl immediately disappeared into his room, too broken to do anything but suffer in silence. “Can you…please…” he’d hazarded in a choked voice as he headed toward the stairs, tears preventing him from completing the request he may as well have yelled.
Check on my sister for me? Please.
“You know I will. Was already going to.” She squeezed his arm—the same one Rick had loomed over with a hatchet. A walking nightmare they would all be reliving for the foreseeable future. Rick had stalked to the living room, lost and numb, merely existing. A man without answers or hope, the weight of everyone’s survival bending him to the point of breaking.
Michonne had left them both to go to Judith. Hope when there was none, she soaked up the sweet, sleeping face of the child whose love was healing. Rick couldn’t be in the presence of such innocence after the harrowing evil they’d endured.
Abraham was gone.
Glenn…
Gawd…Glenn was gone.
The brutality of man far more devastating than any fate the walkers might wield.
For Michonne it was the opposite, she needed to be near Judith in the turbulent aftermath like she needed to breathe. For her, Judith was air. Judith was peace. Judith was the impetus to keep charging forward. Judith was the reminder that miracles still came in the darkest of times. When everything else shattered, their capacity to love remained. As long as Judith lived, they all had something worth fighting for.
And fucking hell, did she want to fight. Gut that bastard and every vile minion he dubbed a savior. She would. In time. And she doubted Rick could see it now, but he would. In time.
“Thanks for doing what I can’t,” Rick managed, voice gravely, devoid of emotion as he stared blindly ahead, Glenn’s blood still splattered across his face—a loss that would wear on him forever. Like Shane. Like Lori. And Hershel. But somehow worse, because Glenn had always been a beacon of light…of hope in the hellscape of this new world. Someone who shouldn’t have survived but figured out how to. Braver than most, becoming one of the strongest while never losing his heart. Glenn had saved Rick, but Rick couldn’t save Glenn. Michonne knew he’d never completely come to terms with that. “I mean it. Thank you, Michonne.”
She nodded, hearing the chipped failure that ran ragged in his tone.
You don’t have to thank me. She’s mine now, too. You all are. She thought to herself, not saying the words aloud, though she knew it was true for them both. There was a reason Michonne had chosen to stay with the Grimes family upon arrival in Alexandria. This was where she belonged. She was as essential to them as they were to her. After the agony of losing Andre, it should have terrified her to need three people this much.
But it didn’t. They were all built to survive…and she had to believe they would.
“I got you. You know that,” she said simply. She advanced slowly as if approaching a wounded animal, unsure how he might react to her touch. Would he curl into her seeking comfort, or would he lash out in his anguish—bare his teeth and push her away? She was prepared for either. Okay with whatever he needed at the moment, even if it was to be away from her. “Can I?” she murmured, reaching hesitant hands toward his rigid torso. He didn’t answer with words, but his body tilted back to rest against her. Michonne wrapped her arms around him, curving against his back like second skin. She kissed his shoulder. Rick—like Judith…like Carl—was air. “Come on,” she urged quietly. “Let’s get you cleaned up.” How much longer could he punish himself by wearing Glenn’s blood before he broke completely? “Breathe with me, Baby? Okay?” She took a deep breath, exalted when he slowly matched it. In, out, then another. Their shared, labored breathing the only sound in the looming silence for long minutes.
“Are you okay?” he finally asked in a ravaged whisper, slanting his head as if to rid it of tormenting images. “Your…your hair.” He absently patted his pocket, leaving her to wonder if he was carrying the locks of hair those bastards had sliced from her. “I found…when I saw it, I thought…I didn’t know.”
She pieced together what he was asking, squeezing his waist before kissing his shoulder again. “I’m okay. Only thing broken is my heart.”
Like his. Like everyone else’s.
“When I saw it, I didn’t know…” he said, gruff. Helpless.
“I’m okay. They didn’t hurt me,” she reiterated, unable to bear what he must be envisioning now that he had proof of how violent, how despicable the Saviors really were. “I’m okay. We’re okay.”
Rick jerked as if she’d struck him, the words too hard to hear. He angled his face to meet her gaze, green eyes spacy, chaotic. “We’re not okay, ‘Chonne.”
The way he shortened her name usually made her toes curl…mainly because the nickname often came amid stolen kisses and heated caresses, desperate lips working down her fevered body as he ruined her for all others.
But now…now it all but destroyed her. “No. No, we’re not. But we aren’t figuring it out tonight.”
“Carl…”
“Is his father’s son.” He would heal from this far sooner than she and Rick ever would. “He doesn’t know how to do anything other than keep moving.”
“The things he’s had to live through…live with…” Rick forced a shuddering breath. “It’s…it’s my fault. It’s…this…Abraham…Glenn. Michonne, I can’t. I can’t. It’s on me.”
“This is on all of us. We made the decision to strike first as a group. But Rick, we didn’t make them monsters. We didn’t make them into the kind of people who do shit like this. Evil, evil shit. That’s all on them.” She hugged him tightly, willing him to hear her. To believe her. “We will get through this the way we always do. Together.”
“This is different, ‘Chonne.” Grief clogged his voice.
“I know,” she said, sadness wrapping around each word.
“There’s no coming back from this.”
Michonne didn’t waste words on useless comfort, not when he needed to mourn. Maybe the same sorrow dragging him under now would eventually fuel him later. She pulled away, reaching for his hand, waffling their fingers together—a lifeline they both needed. “Come on. Let’s get cleaned up.”
He leaned into her side. She leaned back. Supporting each other. “Will you…”
“Yeah,” she answered, knowing he wanted her with him. That shower was small as fuck, but it wasn’t the first time they’d made it work. “Together,” she promised.
Like they did everything else.