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It happens because Rick’s bad leg seizes up at the wrong moment. It happens because Michonne’s back is turned. It happens because the car is totaled, and walkers are everywhere, and luck has a habit of deserting them as it pleases.
Michonne doesn’t see it happen. She’s slicing through the small herd with the ease of too much practice and eliminating the bulk of them. Rick is at her back, guarding where she can’t see and picking off the ones that slip too close within and around the range of her katana. They won’t risk guns out here in the middle of nowhere. The noise could call down even more, too many for two people to handle, and Michonne can hear the squelch of Rick’s machete and occasionally his cane meeting walker heads. He’s grown adept at using the cane to the same effect of any weapon.
It’s been their walker arrangement ever since Negan broke Rick’s leg too badly to be fixed – Michonne taking the lead, Rick watching her back.
It works. Up until it doesn’t.
Michonne doesn’t see it, but she hears it – a cry of pain that’s quickly whittled down into a sharp intake of breath, but not quickly enough to escape her notice. She executes a backhand slice and uses the momentum to turn, keeping the rest of the walkers within one half of her line of sight and putting Rick in the other half. He’s bent a little over whatever made him cry out, holding his right arm stiffly, but he straightens and puts his back to Michonne and drives his machete through a walker’s head with his left hand.
A bad feeling churns in Michonne’s gut, but she can’t do anything about it with walkers six feet away. She returns to making short work of them with renewed vengeance, and the last five are cut down by her blade in quick succession.
She doesn’t stop to catch her breath before she turns to Rick again and finds him standing hunched over his right arm, machete sheathed and the last two walkers disposed at his feet. A jarring silence blankets the area now, save for bird calls in the distance and the warm hum of spring's heat and Michonne’s own panting breath. Rick's breathing is oddly contained, as braced as the rest of him is.
He looks up at her with apology in his eyes, and Michonne doesn’t understand why until she finally processes what she’s seeing.
Bloody and mangled skin, twisted up around a bite on Rick’s forearm, just above his wrist. It swims before Michonne’s eyes like they’re in the haze of summer instead.
For a moment, she’s back there – the yellow-green of trees in sunlight replaced by a camp in ruins, Mike and Terry bit and dying, already dead, and her baby... her peanut...
“Michonne?”
Rick’s voice floats between the fearful pounding of blood in her ears, and Michonne sucks in a shaky breath, the deepest she can manage with her lungs squeezed vice-tight by memory. Those images have played themselves out in her mind’s eye over and over since the day they were burned into her, but lately it’s felt less like they’re imprinted onto the backs of her eyelids. She doesn’t think they’ll ever leave her, not completely, but she’s had too much practice in managing them.
She can give in later. Not now.
“We have to do it now,” Rick says, and his face is steely, brave. He’s putting that on for her, Michonne knows, because his body language is something she’s fluent in, and she can see fear written in the stiffness of his shoulders. It’s no guarantee that he’ll survive. They’re more than halfway back from the Kingdom but still a few miles out from Alexandria, with a totaled car and a shattered walkie-talkie and no medical supplies.
Michonne shoves those thoughts into the darkest corner of her mind. She nods. “Not here.” Not around the dead; the risk of infection is high enough already.
They move away from the road and the battered car and the haphazard piles of walkers, into the trees and onto a patch of flat, open ground. Michonne has an old hand towel out from her back pocket, and some calm part of her that isn’t shut down and isn’t trying to overload with panic is berating her for not having freshly cleaned it. She wipes her sword down, and the habitual movement is now clumsy and graceless.
That won't do. She has to be as steady as possible for this.
Michonne takes another deep breath and watches as Rick removes his shirt and belt. The uses for those things go unspoken - the shirt to wrap up the wound, the belt as part of a makeshift tourniquet. It's a paltry set-up, but they have nothing else to work with. Michonne hovers near Rick as he drops the items on the ground along with his cane, and he turns, facing her. His left hand comes up to her neck, his fingers slide over her skin in a gentle caress, his thumb runs up the back edge of her jaw. He meets her eyes with complete trust in his own, and she nods again. Her hands don't feel as shaky.
Rick gets down on his back and extends his right arm, and Michonne is seized by the desire to throw up. By a surge of hatred for the sword in her hand, irrational as it is. She's done this before, and maybe that's why a part of her wants to scream. Hasn't she wielded this sword enough? Haven't her loved ones been hurt enough?
She comes around near Rick's head and kneels down, removes her own belt, and removes the sheath from her back to form the second half of the tourniquet. She wraps Rick's belt into the proper loops around it, recalling the lessons that Hershel had taught the group. With that done, she places one knee on Rick's upper arm to hold it steady. She looks at him again, wanting to apologize even though it's necessary, and he gives her a half-hearted upside-down smile.
"It's okay," he lies, and she hadn't thought she could love him even more.
Michonne waits until he bites down on a stick plucked from the forest debris littering the ground; they only have two belts, and she needs them both. Then she takes her hatred for the sword, directs it into the fingers wrapped around the hilt, and uses it to make the swing fast and clean, driving it down as hard as she can so that she doesn't have to do this more than once. Some morbid part of her is thankful for the location of the bite; a forearm is much easier to cut than, say, a leg.
She feels Rick's body convulse, hears his choked scream, but she shuts it all out and grabs the shirt. Mindlessly, methodically, she wraps the stump up as tightly as she can and uses her belt to keep the makeshift bandage in place, holding the limb steady against Rick's instinctive but remarkably restrained writhing. Pressure is building in the back of her throat, closing it, but she swallows and sets to work on applying the tourniquet, wrapping and twisting until it's set.
By this time, Rick has stopped moving, and Michonne immediately looks him over. He's breathing, but his eyes are fluttering, somewhere in between dazed and unconscious. The stick has slipped out of his mouth, and he feels cold in her grip. It's shock, she thinks numbly, but he's already laying flat and the only other thing she can do for that is try to keep him warm.
Michonne doesn't want to make the situation even more unsanitary than it already is, however, so she stumbles to her feet, moves far enough away, and vomits, hacking up what's left of lunch. She has the feverish thought that Ezekiel won't appreciate his fruit being wasted like that.
She's been been surrounded by the dead for years, she thinks, as she straightens and spits and tries to catch her breath. She's chopped limbs and shoved her sword through chests. She's killed people. But she's never had a reaction like that before. Not one so immediate. Things tend to hit her much later, in places quiet and alone.
"Sorry..." Rick's voice reaches her, weak and raspy but solid, and Michonne turns to find his head tilted and his eyes fixed on her, tenuous lucidity in his expression. She wonders just how hard he's fighting unconsciousness, and in another situation, she might shake her head at his tenacity, but right now she is suddenly, powerfully grateful for how tough he is. She hurries back to his side as he continues. "You shouldn't've... had to do that..."
"Don't," Michonne says, eyeing the shirt-bandage. It's darkened in parts, but less than she feared. Michonne remembers Hershel describing the way that arteries sometimes spasmed and closed upon being cut, and she mentally runs through his lessons on tourniquets again, and she prays that one or both of those options will work in their favor today. She prays that they'll make it back to Alexandria before any tissue decay or infection can set too far in. She doesn't know who she's praying to. "Think you can walk with my help?" She doesn't want to push Rick already, but the many uncertainties of the situation nip at her heels, and besides, keeping their bodies close will keep him warm.
Rick nods, which doesn't actually ease any of her worries. He would agree even if he was barely hanging on to consciousness, if he felt stubborn enough. But it lets her know that he's not feeling anything serious enough to make even him pause, and so, with some difficulty, they maneuver up. Rick's now hand-less arm is draped around Michonne's shoulders; his left hand is wrapped around his cane. Michonne has one arm around his waist, and her other hand holds her sword, absent a sheath for now.
"Just a few miles," she murmurs, as they begin to limp through the trees. It's twenty minutes to a mile at a reasonable pace, and their pace is below reasonable. Less than two hours. Surely that won't be too long, even with impromptu medical supplies and nothing to clean the wound.
They're outfitting every vehicle with a first-aid kit after this, Michonne decides. Even if they have to push their scavenging out further than ever so that they don't stretch supplies too thin. No trip is short enough to justify the risk of going without.
Rick nods again. Despite his lucidity and determination, his face is ashen, and his eyes are fixed on the ground, measuring every step. "Thank you," he says quietly.
Michonne's grip on his waist tightens just a little. "You can thank me," she says, "by not dying on me."
"I won't," Rick promises with that sincerity of his, pushing the words out past labored breathing. "Not leaving you... or the kids..."
Michonne feels her throat tighten again, and not from nausea this time. "I'm gonna hold you to that."
They have to stop every so often, so that Rick can rest and Michonne can dispatch lone walkers they come across. They're about a mile from Alexandria when Rick goes particularly pale, and Michonne wastes no time in letting him sink down against a tree. He leans back against the trunk and closes his eyes, breathing shallowly. Michonne crouches down next to him, wincing. She's starting to ache all over. The crash is catching up with her, and the pleasant heat of spring is becoming far less so.
"You okay?" Rick asks quietly, without opening his eyes.
"I'm not the one missing a hand," Michonne says.
"I'm not the one who cut it off," Rick counters, breathing more deeply and opening his eyes. He looks at her intently, concerned etched into his forehead.
Michonne sighs. "No," she says. "I am not okay." How can she be? She had felt the rest of the limb detach, halfway up his forearm, and it had been different than feeling a walker or a human enemy fall to her blade. Different, even, than the other times her sword had cut into people she'd loved. She had felt the instantaneous, all-consuming fear of loss the moment she had laid eyes on the bite. It hasn't abated yet, and it's dredging up old memories of every awful thing she's ever seen.
But it feels good to admit it out loud. To feel comfortable enough to do so.
Rick makes a small noise of commiseration. "Me neither," he says, with a slight uptick in the corner of his mouth.
A half-hearted laugh rises up in Michonne's throat, spilling out with a snort. "Really?"
Rick gives her a lopsided smile. "Really," he insists, and he reaches out with his remaining hand, resting it on top of one of hers. She turns her hand around and tangles her fingers with his, lets him pull her hand into a tight hold. As tight as he can manage, anyway. He isn't so cold anymore, but that's because a feverish warmth is setting in, and his grip is weak. Michonne makes up the difference with her own clinging. She leans forward, bringing her other hand up to cup his face, and presses a deep kiss to his lips.
He doesn't have enough energy to return it with equal fervor, but when she pulls away, he smiles again. "I think I can walk now."
"Hmm," Michonne hums. "I bet you can."
They make it to their feet somehow, even though Michonne's strength is flagging badly and noises of pain and exhaustion slip unwillingly out of Rick, and they keep going.
The last mile is the hardest, and Rick has sunk into another daze by the time Alexandria comes into view. Michonne doesn't know how he's still putting one foot in front of another or keeping himself steady on his cane. She doesn't know how she's still on her feet, with her muscles aching under the strain and the heat, already bruised from the crash. Afterwards, she doesn't really remember that last stretch; the only thing that comes back to her is the sense of urgency that had kept her moving.
She doesn't have the energy to call out as they approach the gate, but she doesn't need to. It's flung open soon enough, and Gabriel, Tara, and Aaron come running out. It takes everything Michonne has not to sink to the ground in relief and surrender to gravity, but she stays on her feet. She's not entirely cognizant of what happens next, only that Gabriel and Aaron take Rick and Tara takes her arm. The next thing Michonne knows, they're inside the community, following the men at a slower pace, and Tara is asking her what happened and if she's hurt.
"I'm f-" Michonne begins and cuts herself off when she realizes that she has no idea. There had hardly been time to take inventory of bruises and scrapes after the crash, with the walkers that had caused it bearing down on them from all sides. "Car crash," she says instead. "I don't know."
And then Tara is giving her a once-over inspection and flashing a light in her eyes. Michonne hears her talking, and she thinks she responds coherently when Tara speaks to her, but afterwards, she's never able to remember what was said or when Tara patched up a few of her scrapes or even when they got to the infirmary. There's too much exhaustion, too much going on in her head, Rick's severed hand and broken leg, Carl's eye, Hershel and Andrea and Tyreese and Glenn and Abraham and Mike and Terry and Andre and...
Her thoughts only clear when Carl comes bursting into the infirmary with Judith clinging to his neck. Michonne isn't entirely aware of jumping to her feet, only that she's up from the exam table and enveloping both of them in the tightest hug she can manage. Half the tension leaves her body, and the world rights itself enough for the room and the present to come into focus.
"You're okay," Carl chokes out, and he sounds close to crying.
Michonne runs a hand through Carl's unruly hair and breathes out slowly. "Yeah," she says shakily, and she's close to crying, too.
When Carl pulls back, Judith detaches her arms from her brother's neck and stretches them out towards Michonne. "Mama," she whimpers, actually crying, and Michonne gathers her up and hugs her close.
"Dad?" Carl asks, his one eye wide and his voice unsteady. "Gabriel said he, uh..." Carl trails off, his eye darting to Judith.
Michonne nods, glancing at one of the closed doors in the hallway, where Rick and Rosita and Aaron are. "Yeah. But I think he's gonna be just fine otherwise." She can't know for sure, but it's easier to believe here, with family and home, surrounded by the clean smell of the infirmary and not the stench of the dead.
Carl releases a trembling exhale. He looks like he wants to say more, but his eye finds Judith again.
Michonne kisses Judith's forehead and gets her attention after catching Tara's gaze. "You wanna go with your aunt for a little while?"
Judith frowns and clutches at Michonne tighter, but Tara scrunches up her face in the way that Judith likes. "Aw, come on," Tara says. "I want a hug too."
"It would be a big help," Michonne adds.
Faced with this, Judith relents. "Okay," the girl says, but not before kissing Michonne's cheek. Judith allows Michonne to put her down and attaches herself to Tara's leg as Tara leads her out of the infirmary. Michonne can hear them waiting just outside on the porch, and she smiles when the faint sound of Judith giggling at Tara's rapid-fire jokes drifts through the door.
"What happened?" Carl blurts out.
Michonne's smile fades. It had just been a simple trip to the Kingdom and a meeting between leaders, nothing more, and yet it had gone so wrong in the blink of an eye. Things have been uneventful for a while, and though they know all too well how quickly that can change, it never stops being jarring when something happens to remind them of how unsafe the world is. "We were coming back, and... there was this herd, out of nowhere. Not a big one, but... enough that we spun right off the road. Guess that car was too old to take it. I don't know how we got out of that with just scrapes." She falls silent. That had truly been the height of luck, and yet... "We had to fight off the walkers, and... Rick got bit." She wraps her fingers around her right arm, seeing the bite vividly in her mind, a too-bright memory that she knows won't dim for a long time. "So we had to act fast."
Carl nods, absorbing the story. He glances to the side, and Michonne notices that her katana is propped up against the wall near the door to the porch. A section of it is coated in dried blood. "You guys walked all the way back here?"
"The walkie didn't survive the crash," Michonne says. That had been the height of bad luck; its crumpled remains had ended up right at her feet, as if mocking her. "Couldn't exactly call for help."
Carl nods again, somewhere between impressed and ill, and before he can say anything further, the closed hallway door opens. Carl spins around, and Michonne steps forward at once, but as Rosita exits, carrying Michonne's sheath, she smiles at them, dispelling worries before they can fully form.
"He should be fine," Rosita says, walking forward into the main room. "He didn't want me to waste much anesthetic, but I have him on a painkiller, and there wasn't too much sewing up to do, anyway. That tourniquet was something." She hands the sheath to Michonne. "I put him on antibiotics for infection, too. Won't know if there's any nerve damage until the infection clears up, but that's still better than bleeding out."
Michonne blinks rapidly against the sudden rush of lightheaded relief. "Thank you," she says, pouring as much gratitude into the words as she can and setting the sheath down on the table in front of the fireplace. "You've been doing an amazing job with this place."
Rosita brushes the compliment aside with a wave of her hand. "Hey, you were the surgeon today. I just did follow-up."
She shoos them towards the hallway and moves forward to greet Tara, as Tara re-enters the infirmary with Judith in tow. Judith immediately runs up to them, asking about Rick as she looks between Carl and Michonne, and Carl picks her up. "We can see him now," he says. "But you have to be careful, okay? He's hurt."
Judith nods solemnly.
"There's some well-wishers outside," Tara says, one of her hands tangled with Rosita's. "We'll hold 'em off, don't worry." Michonne flashes a grateful smile in their direction before the two slip out to head off any other visitors, so that the people inside the infirmary have some alone time.
Michonne and Carl have hardly taken three steps towards the hallway before Aaron's voice drifts out of the room. "Rick, I really don't think-"
"Save it," Rick says, and the gruffness of his voice isn't serious. "I'm not gonna drop dead from a little walking." He appears in the doorway clad in fresh clothes, leaning on his cane and holding his re-bandaged right arm close to his chest. Aaron hovers behind him, equal parts concerned and eye-rolling. Rick's gaze fixes on his family, lighting up, and Michonne knows that's what pulled him out of bed despite probable orders to stay put.
Carl surges forward. "Dad," he says, and he's careful about hugging Rick, but his one-armed grip is unyielding once he's sure that he isn't jostling the injury. Judith rests in his other arm; it's clear that she wants nothing more than for her father to hold her, but she remembers her brother's words and merely holds out her hand in a silent, uncertain plea.
"In a second, sweetheart," Rick says, kissing the top of Judith's head and leaning into Carl's embrace. He closes his eyes, and for a moment, stillness envelops the room.
Smiling, Aaron circles around them and gives them a few moments, and then says, "At least sit down somewhere."
Next to him, Michonne folds her arms and fixes Rick with a stare. With a sigh, Rick gives in, and Michonne moves a chair out of the way so that he can limp to the only bed in the room. He settles down onto it gingerly and doesn't complain when Aaron helps him. He nods instead, and Aaron clasps his shoulder before retreating.
Rick holds his good arm out for Judith, and once Carl hands her over, she clings to Rick's shoulder with her little fists and stares down at his stump, wide-eyed.
Michonne reaches out to wordlessly grip Aaron's hand in thanks before he leaves, as Rick raises his injured arm to show Judith. "I was in an accident today," he says gently. "I lost my hand and part of my arm because of it." He speaks clearly, without sugarcoating, the same way they've explained to Judith why one of his legs doesn't work like the other one and why one of Carl's eyes is missing.
Judith's hands knead into his shirt. "Did it hurt?" she asks timidly.
"Yeah," Rick says. "A bit." He rubs her back reassuringly with his remaining hand and glances up at Carl, who is hovering near the bed anxiously, and Michonne, who stands with an arm wrapped around Carl's shoulders. He smiles, and it's as if a current of relaxation runs through him. Michonne feels it, too - as if the rightness of this banishes some of the horror of the day. "But it's better now."
It takes a while for activity to cease and for the infirmary to clear out - people wanting to drop by and Rick loath to let his children out of his sight. But Michonne can see the way that his eyes progressively glaze over, and finally, she and Rosita herd everyone out. Michonne sends Carl and Judith to the house after promising Judith that they can visit tomorrow. Rosita wants to keep Rick in the infirmary until she's sure that the infection is retreating, and Michonne firmly agrees, as much as Rick is already chafing under the restriction.
Peace falls as dusk does, orange light creeping through the windows by the time Rick and Michonne are left to themselves. Rick's head is tipped back into the pillows, and his eyes are closed, exhaustion evident in how pale he still is, but Michonne knows that he's far from sleep.
"I could use a shower," he says plaintively, as Michonne moves around the room, absently tidying things to give her hands something to do.
"Tomorrow," she says sternly. "You need to rest."
He relents, not that he was trying very hard in the first place, and sinks further into the bed, resigned to being confined there for the night. Michonne doesn't miss the way he winces. She moves to the cabinet near the bed, then to the kitchen area, and Rick only opens his eyes when Michonne is standing over him holding a glass of water and two Vicodin.
Rick shakes his head. "Don't waste that on me. Never know when we'll stop finding more."
"It's not a waste," Michonne says sharply. "Just one more dose. Please." She has no doubt that he's able to tough pain out, but it'll keep his body agitated and keep him awake, and he needs sleep right now.
Rick looks at her for a moment in exasperation comprised more of fondness than anything and reluctantly accepts the pills. He hands the glass back to Michonne after downing them, and as she sets it aside, she can feel his eyes following her. "I know you don't want me to apologize," Rick says, when she glances back at him, "but... I'm sorry you had to do this." He lifts his stump and then immediately sets it back down, wincing. "It couldn't've been easy."
Michonne hesitates, then circles around the bed, kicks off her boots, and crawls in, heedless of how grimy she still feels. The sheets will just need a thorough washing tomorrow; it's a luxury they've fought hard for, after all. Rick wraps his left arm around her and pulls her close, and Michonne rests her head against his shoulder. He's still fever-warm beneath her, but not dangerously so. "It wasn't," she says. She brings her hand up to rest it on his chest, above his heart. "I just don't want you to feel guilty about it. Things happen." Michonne thinks she knows why he's really apologizing, but she doesn't want to broach the topic before he does.
"I know," Rick sighs. "It was just bad luck." He hesitates, and then he confirms her suspicions. "My leg spasmed. Threw me off-balance. That's how it got me."
"Like I said," Michonne reminds him, "it happens." It's not so much of a touchy subject for him anymore, but she knows that he still has a few hang-ups about his leg. He's going to have some about his missing hand, too. Just as Carl had about his eye. But they're both alive, both strong, and both hers. And maybe that means that luck is more prone to tipping in their family's favor.
She feels Rick nod. He's silent for a moment, but she can sense his demeanor shift. "Got myself a collection, now," he says, amusement hidden in his voice.
Michonne shakes her head against his shoulder with a breathy laugh. "You bring any more injuries into the house," she says, "you'll be sleeping on the couch."
"Yes ma'am," Rick agrees. "Two is enough."
He presses a kiss to the side of her forehead, and they lay there in warm, comfortable silence for a while, letting each other's presence ease the last of their heightened nerves. Michonne wants to stay there, entangled with Rick. The thought that leaving his side isn't safe will persist for a while, and it doesn't matter how much she tells herself that it is. She doesn't want to let him out of her sight, and she doesn't want to relinquish his closeness. But she needs food and a shower. She needs to clean the blood off of her sword. She needs to check up on Carl and Judith and the rest of the community, for that matter. And she needs space to decompress and deal with the reinflamed scar tissue in her mind.
Michonne reluctantly sits up straight and turns to look down at Rick, whose eyes are starting to droop now that the painkiller is taking the edge off of his aches. "I'll be back tomorrow," she says, quite unnecessarily, but she's still trying to convince herself to get up.
"You'd better sleep in," Rick says, and his attempt to sound stern is belied by how fast sleep is creeping up on him, quickening his blinking and slurring his words.
Instead of answering, Michonne leans forward to kiss him soundly. This time, despite his sleepiness, Rick has enough strength to return it just as eagerly.