Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.” — Sylvia Plath 

Eight years of longing for home comes to an end under perfect blue skies. It proves so beautiful a day, Rick finds himself distrusting of it, waiting for flames to mar the edges of the picture, waiting for the first thunder clap. It is Michonne’s familiar touch and the burning sensation lingering in his lungs that tethers him to reality.

“Nearly home,” she whispers in his ear as they fly over miles of dead cornfields, even as he doesn’t quite believe those words can be true. It’s been so long since he let himself hope for a route home, since he let himself hope at all.

Rick remembers his life before in pieces, a chiaroscuro of memories marked in contrasts of dark and light. The sound of laughter at the gates to their new beginning. The night they defended Alexandria from the herd, battling against the dead until the sun came up. Finally kissing Michonne on the couch, pulling at each other’s clothes like teenagers and never once looking back. Losing Glenn, losing hope. Judith’s first steps, toddling towards Carl with her arms outstretched, every little milestone of hers a landmark victory of survival. The moment he thought he’d lost Michonne. Finding her beaten and bloodied, but alive, so defiantly alive. Carl’s goodbye and every loving word he uttered as he lay dying. Family picnics beneath blue skies just like this one. All the plans he made, the dreams he had for their community.

And then, like smoke obscuring all the rest, there is the last time he saw Michonne, heard Daryl, smelled the ash and fire and dead. The first time he opened his eyes after, the way it felt just like the very beginning, waking up alone to a new world. 

It was years ago now, years that have fallen away like sand passing through his fingers.

Those distant memories of Alexandria are flickers. They flash in his mind, a slideshow of polaroids, the saturation a little harsher than what’s real and the details faded. He clings to his memorized picture of Judith as she once was: loose curls, wild laughter, soft tiny hands squeezing his, boundless energy, curious eyes. 

He imagines who she is now, who she became in the absence of her father.

“She’s us, Rick,” Michonne had offered, by way of comfort, when he’d begged to know if she was okay.

He imagines the faint outline of Lori on her face, but it’s the warmth of Michonne and the infinite compassion of Carl and a reflection of his own enduring grit that shades in the picture. He envisions her as a perfect patchwork of their family, the one they found and stitched together, piece by little piece. His baby Judith, his greatest lesson in love and its boundlessness, waiting for him, mere minutes away now. 

Maybe she’s been thinking of him, too. Missing him, wondering about him. He doesn’t know what to hope for. He’d never want to be forgotten, not by her, the child who sparked light in the darkest dark. But he could never wish upon her the desperate longing that’s burned inside him all these years, an ache no medicine could numb. It’s too much for a child to bear. He’d wanted so desperately for her to live in a world that allowed her to flourish and believe in people and love fearlessly, not be buried under the weight of all the grief around her. It’s all he’d been fighting for all along, for his child to know love and joy and all the good in the world, whatever that looks like, whatever that is.

And then there’s RJ. His junior. His parting gift. Their son. 

Can you miss someone you’ve never met? That’s how it feels. There’s a chasm in his heart where all those little things a man should know about his son belong: what he likes to eat, what makes him laugh, what can comfort him when he cries. Rick’s asked Michonne a million questions already, but it’s not the same as knowing. It’s not the same as being witness to the milestones and moments that make up those eight missing years of his son’s life. 

Rick tries to swallow around the lump in his throat. He taps his fingers against his knee, trying to calm his restless hand. Michonne reaches across to squeeze it, steadying his nerves with her anchoring touch once again, this time holding on and letting their linked hands settle against his leg.

“You ready?” she asks, leaning into his side, a smile pulling at her lips and tears weighing down her eyelashes. It echoes a long-lost memory, from the first time they’d come to Alexandria. Much like then, he thinks this is a moment he might never be ready for; he’s simply giving himself over to the tide, trusting in Michonne that it’ll all work out right. 

He runs his thumb over the cool silver of her ring. 

“What if I’m not the father he’s expecting?” It hurts him to ask, emotion clawing at his throat, but the fear threatens to pull him apart just when he needs to hold it all together. “All those stories… He’s gonna be expecting some comic book hero. I’m not that.”

Michonne turns to him with a calmness that eases his nerves before she even utters a word. She places her hand against his cheek, her eyes meeting his with a commanding focus, as she promises, “You’re better than a story, Rick. You’re real. Your love for him is real.”

“They took so much from us,” Rick laments, not for the first time. It’s hard to let go of it. To make peace with what’s been lost, what’s been taken, feels like an impossible task. 

“We’re taking it back,” Michonne says, defiant as she ever was as the chinook begins its descent. Rick feels his stomach swoop with the motion of the landing. 

Before the doors to their new life open, as they stand together, waiting side by side, Michonne turns to face him. There is a regalness about her strength in such a moment, and there’s loving generosity in the way she lends it to him, as if sensing his frailty. Michonne closes the distance between them as Rick does the same, instinct following her lead, and he rests his forehead against hers for one last moment that’s theirs alone. He stands under the umbrella of her strength and breathes in.  

“You’re home,” she whispers, a laugh and a sob all at once. Rick blinks away his tears, but it’s her warm hand against his cheek that keeps him from coming completely undone. The battle’s won. It’s over. “You made it.”

“You brought me back,” he manages to say, his voice barely holding. He means it in so many ways. It’s true so many times over. “You got me here.” 

She kisses him as the door opens, her soft lips gently pressed to his as he feels a cool breeze ghost across his skin. They look over in perfect symmetry to see solid ground at last, a sprawling meadow their safe place to land. If Carl were here to complete the picture, Rick would accept it as a heavenly afterlife, but the truth of it feels even more impossible.

As they step out together, walking down the ramp from the helicopter, Rick catches sight of the two small figures appearing over the crest of the hill. Before Rick knows it, they’re running, Michonne leading the way as they race toward the children slowly coming into focus. In a heartbeat, they’re meters apart, and those small figures transform into children so big the word hardly seems right anymore. Except when they crash into Michonne, letting her sweep them up in an embrace, they look little again. 

Rick watches them curl into her body, his family fitting together like it was molded around her. He holds back, a step away, unsure of his place. Unsure of himself. 

Judith’s eyes are squeezed shut so tight, he can see the months and years of longing in her face. He observes her pain in its moment of glorious relief, her small hand clinging to her mother’s locs like she’s fighting to hold onto a dream. Maybe she missed him too, but she needed her mama. She needed Michonne so much, it almost breaks his heart that Judith ever let her go — for him. 

When Judith pulls back far enough to finally take in the sight of her mom, she looks up like she’s witnessing a miracle. It’s exactly how Rick feels as he watches them. 

He lingers awkwardly, trapped on the cusp of his old life, yearning to take a step forward and close his arms around them, but terrified to interrupt their reunion. His daughter rests her head against Michonne’s and the girls laugh together, RJ hidden against his mother’s body all the while, as Rick tries muster the strength to reach out. 

It’s Judith who notices first. 

She finally looks over at her dad as if the magic haze around her mother has, at last, sharpened into focus. He meets her big, beautiful eyes, so full of love and grace for him. It takes him by surprise to find familiarity in it, a bolt of lightning marking a jagged line right to his heart. 

She looks like Carl. So much more than she used to. Or maybe he just couldn’t bear to notice back then. Now, it’s a balm. It’s a gift to be reminded now that he knows forgetting is the deepest cut; remembering is a comfort. 

When Judith comes toward him, it’s steady. Staring at her dad with the kind of adoration usually reserved for daughters whose fathers were always there to hold their hand, she steps forward. She moves tentatively, as if knowing that if she came crashing into him, he might shatter. It gives him time to take her in before she’s in his arms. The love and strength she radiates. The sword on her back, his gun at her hip. She’s us .

In his embrace, Judith shrinks. She is the little girl his arms have ached to hold. As she weeps into his chest, he remembers every other time he’s comforted her: inside the walls of a prison, at the altar of a cursed church, as their home was stripped of all its comforts, after burying Carl. So many times, all of them a lifetime ago. Each time, in hindsight, she’d been comforting him all along. 

“I knew it, Dad. I knew you were still out there,” she says in a voice he’s never heard before: full sentences, strong and resolute. She gives him back that name — Dad — that he hasn’t heard in all these years. It’s been so long he’d begun to wonder if it held true anymore, but she utters it like it’s belonged to him every day of her life. It comes so easily, he knows she’s said it many times over in his absence.

Pulling back from him, with a sweet little shrug like it’s not enough to break his heart and piece it back together, she adds, “I just never wanted you to feel alone.” 

Rick looks down at the walkie in her hands, the way she still clings to it like she can’t break the habit. “I thought I was,” he admits. “Then I realized…” Rick looks around at his family, every one of them a new beginning in a world filled with endings. There is Judith, his last tie to what came before, a symbol of rebirth amid the dead. There is Michonne, with love spilling out for all three of them, his greatest gift, his redemption, the love of a lifetime. And then there’s the little boy curled tight in her arms, his brother’s hat askew on his head, the child Rick longed for in his happiest days: his journey’s end. “I wasn’t.”

He smooths over his daughter’s silky brown hair as she falls back into his arms, letting herself sob like she finally knows she’s safe enough to be a kid. It’s a brief interlude from always being the brave big sister. 

“You got him back,” Judith marvels at her mom.

“You told me to,” Michonne replies, like there’s nothing she wouldn’t do for her daughter. Their daughter, as she always was. It doesn’t escape Rick’s notice that it was Judith who brought them together from the start. That day in the prison, it started with her baby formula. 

A silent language passes between them, an understanding that, amid all the reunions, there are still overdue introductions to make. Judith lets her dad go the moment she sees the curiosity spark in her brother’s eyes, leaving a space for RJ to fill. 

Studying his son’s face for the first time, finally with a good look at the boy he unknowingly left behind, Rick holds his breath. He can see enough of himself in the child’s features — his discerning eyes, the shape of his mouth, the tilt of his head as he speaks — that it stirs a false sense of knowing one another while standing in the strange, terrifying newness of a first meeting. 

“You’re the brave man?” RJ asks with hopeful curiosity.

Though he doesn’t feel brave, the moniker moves Rick to want to earn it. With no alternative worthy of denying his son a storybook ending, Rick looks to Michonne for the strength to say, “I am.”

“He is,” she echoes, grinning at her son as Judith beams beside her. 

When RJ smiles in turn, Rick adjusts the sheriff’s hat to get a better look at him, the gesture duplicating a thousand moments with Carl. RJ feels so familiar, it takes all of Rick’s restraint not to spook him by coming on too strong. Pushing away the urge to hug him tight, Rick cautiously crouches to RJ’s height and meets him at his eye level. “But maybe you can call me Dad?”

“I knew you’d come back,” his boy tells him, with all the assured resolve of his mother at her most determined. Stubborn, she’d warned him. Not one to have his mind changed, not even with the odds they were up against. 

“How?” Rick wonders, awed by the unshakable endurance of RJ and Judith’s hope. 

When RJ says, simply, “I believed,” Rick can’t fight the urge to hold him and squeeze him tight a second longer. RJ comes to him easily and the feeling of his little arms locking around his dad’s waist gives Rick the permission he’d been craving. He kisses the top of his son’s head and holds onto him with all his strength, the small frame of the boy wrapped around his body a new, delicate feeling, the first chapter of the story they get to write together.

The moment is made complete when he feels Judith’s hand reach up to his shoulder, with Michonne reaching out for him in perfect synchronicity. Surrounded by his family, Rick has never felt more safe, nor more loved. 

It is everything he’d been fighting for. The whole damn point. 

As he leans over his children to kiss his wife, he feels Judith giggle against him. Rick and Michonne look down at her to catch her grinning, a state of childlike wonder about his daughter that pulls back the years.  

“I remembered you like this,” Judith says, her eyes moving from her mom to her dad and back. There’s a dreamlike quality to her voice, as if the far-distant memories are dancing in and out of view. 

Rick smiles to himself. “You remembered—” 

“You were happy,” Judith tells him, her eyes fixed on Rick’s. “We were.”

“Yeah,” Rick replies, and the profound truth of it hurts. 

Judith brings all those good memories to the fore because that’s the version of himself he always gave to her, and her recollection is an invitation to leave the rest behind. He thinks of their time together then, of every other time he’s kissed Michonne while holding Judith in his arms, so many casual, domestic expressions of love that he’d never have expected her to remember. 

Michonne tucks a strand of Judith’s hair behind her ear. “You can get used to it, kid.” 

“You heard your mom,” Rick says, smiling at her fully for the first time as if to prove her right, easing his way back into being the cheesy dad he dreamed of being. Judith rolls her eyes, but he notices the sweet way she lifts up her foot and sways happily. 

“And Mom’s always right,” Judith concedes. 

Rick raises his eyebrows at his daughter. “Ain’t that the truth.”

“I’ll remind you two of that in future,” Michonne says before kissing her husband again — a peck, a fleeting promise, a passing thought. He savors the press of her soft lips, before Judith brings him back down to earth. 

“Oh, you should know…” She braces, eyes fixed on Rick, gritting her teeth like a kid preparing to confess to eating all the candy. “We kinda have a dog now.” 

“Since when do we have a dog?” Michonne cuts in, and Rick can’t help but laugh at her surprise. She furrows her brow like she’s searching her memory for a file she can’t find, though there’s a tinge of amusement pulling at the corner of her mouth. 

“Dog the dog,” Judith says, grinning, as if she knows to anticipate the faux stern, exaggerated eyebrow raise of her father.

“The dog’s name is Dog?” 

Michonne suddenly catches up: “Daryl named him.” 

“Yeah. It’s really Daryl’s dog but we’re watching him till he’s back,” Judith explains like it’s no big deal. Except every word of it feels like a huge deal to Rick. “I’ve been teaching him tricks.”

“Where’s Daryl gone, sweetheart?” Michonne asks, realizing the significance of Judith’s words after a moment’s delay and crouching to meet her eye line. 

The smile fades from Judith’s face, and a little color too. Rick can see she’s holding something back, her eyes pleading with him before her attention returns to Michonne. “He, umm… he went out to find out more about what’s going on out there, other communities. Said he’d be back.” 

Michonne turns to look up at Rick, a wariness in her eyes that mirrors Rick’s own feelings. He can see that she feels as torn as he does. It’s Daryl, his brother. He’d hoped — they both had — that Daryl would be there to greet them, to welcome them home. But there’s no cause for alarm, no reason to think Daryl can’t handle himself. His fight or flight response is neutralized by the look in Judith’s eyes and the weariness that lingers from years of fighting other battles.  

“Please don’t go away again,” Judith warns them, intercepting their silent communication before the thought can even settle in their minds. “He’ll come back. I know he will. Uncle Daryl keeps his promises.”  

Rick gives a solemn nod before turning back to pick up their abandoned bags. His voice light again, in the hope that Judith will relax, he calls out, “Till then, we have a dog, huh?”

“He’s a good boy,” she reassures him as he pulls a bag onto each shoulder. When he gets back to them, Michonne takes hers from him. “Me and RJ’ve been teaching him how to do a spin and how to play dead, and, umm… he likes to sleep at the end of my bed, so he can help keep watch.”

“I like the sound of him already,” Rick says, sliding his arm around his daughter’s shoulders as she begins to lead them off in the direction of the place she calls home. “You might need to work on your mom, though. She’s more of a cat person.”

Michonne laughs, that rich, warm chuckle of a laugh that’s like music to his ears. 

“I don’t mind Dog. Maybe I can even learn to love him,” she offers, sliding her hand into RJ’s as they trail behind Rick and Judith.

“Never thought I’d see the day,” Rick teases, turning his head and grinning at her. 

“Don’t expect me to be the one walking him and cleaning up after him.” 

“I guess that’ll be us then,” Rick says, looking down at Judith, warmed by the thought of the two of them going on strolls around town with the family pet. She doesn’t need the help; evidently, Judith and Dog have coped just fine up till now. But he can tell she’s willing to humor him. It feels awfully close to the dreams he used to have for them, for their lives in an Alexandria no longer governed by terror and fear. 

“I don’t mind,” Judith says, perfectly content. “I like doing that stuff.” 

Rick looks on ahead, trying not to show his daughter how entirely lost he feels, their path a mystery to him. His steps fall a half-second behind hers, waiting to follow her direction. “He’s waiting at home?” 

Judith nods. 

“What’s this place like?” Michonne asks. Rick’s glad for it because he hadn’t known how to. 

“People take care of each other. The community’s big, but it works out pretty well. They say it’s like what came before,” she explains with the casual air of someone who’s given the same speech countless times before. As if abruptly realizing that this time the audience is her parents, she stops in her tracks to add: “We don’t have to stay here. Aaron always says we can come back to Alexandria anytime. Things are good there, too.” 

Comforted to hear the name of an old friend, Rick smooths his hand over Judith’s hair before ruffling it. “We don’t need to decide anything today. As long as we’re together.” 

“You should see the library they have here,” Judith tells Michonne, whose eyes light up. Rick chuckles at her enthusiasm, because even if it’s exaggerated for effect, it’s endearing to watch her be this version of herself around the kids again: light and playful and soft. It’s a different softness to the one reserved just for him, protective of their children’s innocence and malleable to their whims. 

Michonne swings RJ's hand in hers. “Lead the way.” 

*

The moment they walk through the gates of the Commonwealth, Rick notices a familiar face among everything that’s new to him, walking up the main drag of this unfamiliar world, along a blooming row of wildflowers that line the street. Carol’s eyes meet his like an echo of the past, the moment that once revived hope for him after they’d lost it all: when she reunited him with Judith after the prison fell. He rushes to hug her and, as he wraps his arms around her, observes the quiet emotion on her face, the way her stoicism falters for just a moment. 

“You made it back,” Carol gasps, and it’s almost a laugh, before she pulls back from their hug to get a proper look at him. 

He catches the moment she notices his hand, or lack thereof, but her composure gives little away. Just a glimmer of something like respect or sympathy. Their understanding of one another always existed so deeply in the unsaid. Here, again, she seems to sense that it is not a subject he wishes to be drawn on; he did what he had to, and that’s all there is to it. 

“It’s good to see you,” he replies in the safety of understatement as Michonne walks up behind them, flanked by their children. She takes her turn to embrace Carol, with RJ still clinging to her hand. “Thank you for watching ‘em,” Rick says, his every word imbued with solemn gratitude. “You’ve been there when I couldn’t be.” 

“We’re family,” Carol reminds him, shrugging her shoulders as if it isn’t a question or a debate, but a long-true fact. Michonne gives a grateful nod. 

“We are.” He smiles in earnest then, before glancing around, eyes squinting in the sunlight as he tries to get a read on his surroundings. “So, how’s the new place? Got a system, a leader?” He gives a sideways glance to Michonne as he throws in, “A charter?”  

“Ezekiel’s the leader here. His lieutenant’s been here since before us, before—” Carol cuts herself off. “It was a fight — to keep it, to save it.” Her gaze flicks to Judith so briefly, Rick barely catches it. He notices his daughter wince a little in the aftermath and it’s enough to make him wonder what he failed to protect her from, what she saw and what she knows. 

Carol’s quick to pivot back to reassurance: “But it’s good now, it’s working.” Before Rick can even ask about the others, about the home he remembers, she adds, “There’s Aaron and Gabe back at Alexandria. Maggie too.”

“She’s okay?” Michonne asks before Rick can get the words out. 

“She’s okay.” 

He feels the heavy subtext of the answer. He knows Carol means: she’s alive, she’s surviving. It’s the answer to Michonne’s urgent question, a roll call of old friends, but it’s not the whole truth. Rick now understands the depth of Maggie’s grief in a way he hadn’t before. Those dark days, in the deep abyss of his captivity, when he’d decided so firmly that never seeing Michonne again was a better fate than witnessing her death, or even knowing of it, often made him think of Maggie. Maggie never had the option of denial; the brutality of her loss was a cruel, excruciating certainty that defied humanity. It was an inescapable nightmare she would never wake up from.

Rick finds himself grateful when Carol interrupts his thoughts to say, “Hershel’s okay, too.” Perhaps she’d sensed where his mind had wandered, or maybe Michonne had asked a question he hadn’t heard. 

Instinctively, Rick reaches out to Judith, pulling her into his side like a life raft. 

Michonne begins to ask, “What about—” 

“Soon,” Carol says, cutting her off. Her face gives nothing away and Rick wonders if they’ve already run out of good news. “We’ll talk about the rest soon. Not here. Not yet.” 

He can tell Michonne has to stop herself from pushing. 

When Carol breathes in a deep sigh and looks around as if contemplating a guided tour or searching for somewhere better to talk, Rick starts to notice all the eyes on them. There are strangers gathering a distance away, lingering like they’re trying not to stare. The curious faces watching on are unfamiliar to Rick as he scans them for friends, though it seems as if they’ve figured out what’s happening just by Judith’s unwavering smile and the sight of RJ clinging to his mom. Rick smiles awkwardly, looking to Michonne to see if she recognizes any of them. He can tell from the discerning look in her eye that she doesn’t. 

“We’ll talk more later, but I’m guessing you’ve had a long day,” Carol says, and it’s calm enough that Rick accepts that things really must be under control. No urgent strategy, no hurried exchange of intel. He’s grateful not to be interrogated about the CRM right off the bat; there’ll be a time for all that. “There are places you can stay. I don’t know if you’ll wanna settle here or go back east, but you’ve got free run of one of the houses. I’ve been staying there with the kids, but you should have it to yourselves.” 

“No, we don’t wanna kick you out—” Michonne argues, just as Rick is about to do the same.

“You think I wanna third wheel you two?” Teasing, Carol raises an eyebrow, and Rick can’t hide his blushes. “You need time together, all of you. I might even see about going out there, finding Daryl.” 

Rick places his hand on her shoulder and Carol covers it with her own, giving him a tight smile. “Stick around a while first, okay?” he asks, desperate not to end a reunion so abruptly. Carol gives him a nod, before her attention is caught by a face in the crowd. 

Rick and Michonne follow her gaze to see Ezekiel striding toward them. “Rick Grimes!” he bellows. 

“Ah, the royal welcome,” Rick mutters under his breath as Carol steps away. He catches a smirk on Michonne’s face and delights in it, just as much as he enjoys the patient smile that follows it and the way she places her hand on his back. The show of unity makes him stand a little taller. 

As Ezekiel gets closer, Rick anticipates some grandiose declaration of welcome, but instead the new governor appears too shocked to utter another word. He gives Michonne a look of total awe, as if she might walk on water for her next trick, before throwing his arms around Rick, head shaking in disbelief.

Rick furrows his brow, uncomfortable with the attention fixed on him, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” 

Ezekiel scoffs a laugh. “I can hardly believe my eyes. You’re quite the legend in these parts, my friend.”

The compliment — if he can call it that — pains Rick a little. He feels the tiredness in his bones creep in now that he’s under a spotlight, the joy of family reunions paused momentarily, in favor of something that feels more formal and diplomatic. He’s too worn out to lead, too lost to offer direction or even consultation. Any attempt to live up to legend would be a performance. 

It reminds him of arriving in Alexandria. The state he was in had half the town terrified. Not wanting to make the same terrible first impression once again, Rick glances at the onlookers with caution. 

“Listen,” he says, while he has the ear of the governor, “we can’t talk about all of it right now — I’m sure you got questions — but those people who’re with us, who’ve brought us back, they’re from the Civic Republic.” He meets Carol’s eyes too, all too aware of her influence and keen to persuade her alongside Ezekiel. He can feel Judith’s intense gaze fixed on him too, his daughter no doubt old enough now to form her own judgment. “They’ve got food, medical supplies, aid. You can trust them. On my word.” 

It’s Ezekiel who asks, “We’re meant to trust these folks who’ve kept you hostage?” 

“That’s not—these people aren’t the bad guys. They’re trying to build a network of communities, just like us.” Rick’s brow furrows, the bright sun in his eyes again, as he searches for an eloquent way to disclose the darker truth, an explanation to satisfy Ezekiel’s concerns. “And the others, the ones who…”

When his sentence trails off, Michonne finishes for him: “They’re gone.” Clean and succinct as ever. 

Faintly amused, Ezekiel posits, “I’m guessing you two had something to do with that.” 

Rick and Michonne look at each other, the silent exchange incriminating enough in itself. 

Choosing not to admit to massacring an army with her smallest child curled into her side, Michonne answers, “No comment.” 

Rick sighs, scratching his head. “We can explain more tomorrow.” 

Michonne seems to sense his growing impatience, her hand on his back moving in soothing circles. “It’s been a hell of a journey, in more ways than one. We could use a break before we start with the introductions and interrogations.” With a wry smile, she adds, “Besides which, Rick’s track record with meeting new people might need a little work.”

Rick shakes his head, giving Judith a nudge the moment he hears a faint ripple of laughter from her. 

“Of course. We have much to discuss, but you must rest first,” Ezekiel instructs them. “In the meantime, I will accept the aid your people have brought us. I’ll take you at your word.”

Rick nods, but corrects him: “They’re not my people. You can trust ‘em, but my people are right here. And back in Alexandria.” 

“Understood,” Ezekiel says as Rick notices Carol’s shoulders drop, as if it’s these words that might have finally assured her he’s still the Rick she remembers. “We’ll talk more tomorrow, but it’s good to see you both. We don’t always get a lot of good news.” 

Again, Rick gives the faintest hint of a nod, grateful for the old king’s renewed faith in his character, or perhaps in Michonne’s. “I appreciate what you’re doing with this place, what you’re building. I don’t know much about what you’ve got here but… I know my kids are safe. That means everything.”

“It’s what you started,” Ezekiel replies. 

Carol chimes in, “It’s what Carl hoped for.”

Rick can only pray it’s true. He bows his head, no words quite measuring up to the occasion. 

As Ezekiel charges off to relay the message to his guards and Carol leads them toward the house that’s to become theirs, Michonne gives him a look, a silent question: you okay? He replies with only his eyes, his reassurance imperceptible to anyone else but understood empathically by Michonne. 

“No crazy beard this time and we showered this morning,” he jokes under his breath as they walk together, reaching for levity. “Not a drop of blood on me.”

"A low bar to clear, don't you think?" 

He concedes the point with a tilt of his head as Judith laughs, beaming up at her mom. 

*

Fresh out of the shower, Michonne wanders into their new — perhaps temporary — living room with her hair twisted into a turban and a soft towel robe wrapped around her. He loves this version of his wife: the serene smile on her face, droplets of water lingering at her collarbone that he’d gladly lick up, the knot of her robe so easy to undo. She’s wringing her hands together as she walks over to where he’s sitting back on the sofa, the shea butter in her moisturizer filling his senses as he stirs from half-sleep. 

“So, we live in Ohio now?” Michonne muses, as if trying to get her head around it still, like it’s been playing on her mind for the duration of her shower. “Never saw myself as a midwest girl.” 

Still half distracted by his own imagination, Rick can’t hide his amusement. “I don’t think we’re in any position to turn down free accommodation and free food. Besides,” he says through a yawn, “I’m too tired to move.” 

Sunk deep into the couch, Rick sits up a little straighter as she approaches. Michonne anticipates his hand reaching out for her, tugging her closer until she's standing over him. 

If the house was empty, he'd pull the tie of her robe and slide his hand inside it across her goose-pimpled skin, wandering the smooth plane of her stomach, then down the line of her body, until he was squeezing her ass to bring her closer. She would shrug herself free of the robe entirely, letting it fall into a heap at their feet, not caring that the curtains were still open. She’d straddle his lap and rock against him until he gave her what she needed. He wouldn’t stop until he gave her what she needed. 

He can see in her eyes that the thought occurs to her, too, that they’re dancing on the precipice of something too dirty for the dying daylight. 

With the kids upstairs — RJ wrapped up in the comic books they’d found for him in an abandoned shop hundreds of miles west, Judith changing into pajamas — Rick pulls her sideways into his lap and manages to keep his hand placed innocently over the robe at her hip. Her arms wrap around his neck as she curls into him.

“Don’t let me keep you awake,” she teases, her voice a little too breathy for Rick to handle.

“You can keep me awake all night,” he whispers in her ear, and he feels her shiver slightly, a warm smile spreading out across her face. “Why do you think I’m so tired?” 

“Funny guy,” she says, prodding him in the chest. 

“I like to think so.”

“Try not to embarrass your children,” she warns him, though she tilts her face so close it’s like she’s daring him to resist her. 

“This is me behaving,” Rick says with a playful grin. He leans to kiss her, daring to deepen it by sliding his tongue into her mouth. Michonne hums against him, responding in kind, her fingers pulling at his hair. When he draws back to catch his breath, the taste of spearmint dancing on his tongue, he teases, “You found some toothpaste in there, then.”

Michonne laughs, a low, rich, full-bodied chuckle. The kind of laugh that makes him feel drunk on it. It’s weightless and alive and free, a sound he once thought might’ve been left behind. 

“God, I missed the sound of your laugh,” he practically groans. Rick peppers kisses to the line of her shoulder where her robe has slipped to expose a sliver of her skin. With the lapel of the bathrobe caught between his forefinger and middle finger, he opens it a little wider to bury his face in her neck, sucking until he hears her sharp exhale.  

“This is you behaving?” He can hear the eyebrow raise in her voice, but her hands rake greedily through his curls, encouragement enough for the hickey he leaves in his wake. 

He lifts his head to argue, “You don’t make it easy.”

Just as she warns him, “They’ll be back down soon,” he hears footsteps on the staircase as if it’s a call and response. The sound gives them enough warning to compose themselves.

The footsteps turn out to be Judith, now wearing a baggy t-shirt and sleep shorts, her feet clapping along the ground in a well-worn pair of slippers that look at least a size too big. She grins instantly as she turns at the last step, noticing the way her mom is curled up in her dad’s lap, leaning into his body like years apart have done nothing to quell their natural intimacy. In truth, touch had been a lost language that came flooding back to him the moment Michonne broke the dam; even after all that time, his muscle memory could recall the places she wanted his touch most, the positions she took most pleasure in, the rhythms of every physical dance.  

“Hey, sweetheart,” he says, endeared by the softness of Judith’s features as she smiles in his direction. She looks younger in her pajamas, almost recognizable as the kid he left behind. 

“You were kissing again,” she points out, though it’s more as a fond observation than an accusation.

“‘Fraid so, kid,” Michonne puts her hands up. 

Rick plays along. “I’m saying nothing till I speak to a lawyer.”

Judith doesn’t quite laugh this time. Instead there’s a serious look on her face as she worries at her bottom lip, edging shyly toward them. 

“You got something on your mind, Jude?” Michonne asks softly once she’s right in front of them, her forefinger drawing a line where her daughter’s eyebrows knit together. 

Like she’s been holding her breath all day, Judith says, “I… I gotta tell you something because I know you’ll find out sometime and you should hear it from me.” She looks from Rick to Michonne with a fierceness about her like she’s got herself revved up for something. 

It makes Rick’s stomach flip and he feels Michonne tense in his arms. Judith sounds so much older than her years when she speaks. It’s jarring for Rick, whose only memories of his daughter are of a little girl who loved to be swung around in the air and read stories with all the funny voices.

“Jude?” he presses as Michonne shifts from his lap to the seat of the sofa beside him, leaving room for Judith between them.

Settling there obligingly, she looks down at her hands, her thumbnail scratching along her palm. “You’re gonna feel bad you weren’t here, but you shouldn’t, okay?” Judith shrugs, but her attempt at casual is too easy to see through. “Uncle Daryl took care of me, and” — she looks up to Michonne — “if you hadn’t been gone, Dad wouldn’t be home now.”

“You’re scaring me, honey,” Michonne says, reaching out her hand to hold onto Judith’s. 

The not-so-little girl with the serious eyes sighs first, then, looking at her dad, she confesses, “About a year ago, I got shot.” 

Maybe there’s no way to dress it up, but those three little words hit him like a bullet.

“You got shot?” Rick repeats. He thinks he might vomit.

“I’m okay, see,” she’s quick to point out, gesturing down at herself like the miracle she is. “I made it. Just like you, Dad. Just like Carl did before.”

“But you were shot?” Michonne repeats, turning the words over again, unable to let that revelation pass. He can hear panic in her voice, like it’s playing out in her mind in the present. “How? Why?”

“I was trying to protect Maggie, and everyone else,” Judith explains, calmer now her secret is out. Calm, as if she intuits that someone has to be. “I was trying to help.”

Rick can see the tears filling Michonne’s eyes and he knows it’s different for her. The guilt is different. She made a choice, the choice to leave them. To find Rick. Even as Judith tries to assure her it’s all okay, that she made the right call, he can see Michonne struggling with it. 

“Who shot you?” Rick asks grimly.

“She’s locked up.” 

“Good,” Rick remarks with the same gruff coldness as when Michonne told him she killed Jocelyn. “Maybe not good enough.”

“She’s locked up,” Judith repeats with a stern insistence as if to say, quite enough. His mercy might not have prevailed over his wrath if it had been up to him. When he dares to look down at his daughter, though, her goodness is a check on his conscience. “She wasn’t aiming for me.” 

“What happened?”

“Daryl saved me,” she tells him with a certain degree of pride. “He gave me his blood.”

Rick remembers doing the same for Carl. He remembers the hours of waiting to see if it would be enough, if his son was going to stay alive. He imagines Daryl doing the same for his daughter and his heart breaks not to have his brother in arms here with them. I would die for you , he recalls from their last hours together, and Rick had known all along it was true in spite of their disagreements. 

“How bad was it, Judith?” Michonne begs to know. 

She never could let herself embrace blissful ignorance, not even when it would’ve been better for her. Rick remembers telling her not to look at a particularly nasty wound she’d got courtesy of one of the Scavengers back when they were defending Alexandria, how she’d ignored the suggestion in favor of inspecting the gruesome sight for herself. 

When Judith only looks back at her, with no words of reassurance to offer, the silence is answer enough.

“She’s here, she’s alive,” Rick says, voice low and unsteady, but searching for a way to settle Michonne. Beside him, he can feel Judith’s relief to have an ally, her eyes pleading with her mother now as Rick adds, “Baby, we can’t change it.”

When Michonne meets his gaze, he finds himself facing into a deep well of pain. It’s all there, floating to the surface, her eyes shining in the halflight. He can see the cogs turning in her head. She can’t quite bring herself to say, I shouldn’t have left them — but it’s something so achingly close, a feeling just on the cusp of regret.

It was exactly what he’d warned her of in the midst of their fight. Maybe he should feel hurt by the implications of her regret, but his hurt is only a mirror of hers. 

From the moment Jadis had reminded him of all that Michonne was risking to save him, her sacrifice had tortured him. You shouldn’t have come , he’d said so cruelly. The words had been a knife he twisted into her chest in his last desperate attempt to push her away. He’d known that to question her love for their children would be the very worst thing he could do to her, awful enough that it might finally sever the fraying ties that bound them together. That they proved unbreakable means he has to live forever in his own regret over the accusation. 

It pains him to realize now that the memory of those words would continue to taunt her, that she might find an awful truth in them in hindsight. 

Michonne places a gentle hand on Judith’s cheek, sniffling as she tries to keep from falling apart. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you.”

“No,” Judith takes her mom’s hand from her face and squeezes it. “Don’t you see? It proves you were right all along,” she says, steering the conversation back to something good, something they can latch onto for strength.

He watches two perfect streams of sparkling tears fall from Michonne’s eyes when she blinks, but she smiles stoically through it. He knows she’s been caught out by her daughter. Judith’s argument is impossible for Michonne to dispute, alluding to her mother’s own words, the refrain she’d used to comfort and rally and reassure them all along. 

“We’re the ones who live,” Rick affirms as Judith grins proudly, leaning into her mom. 

“I had to hold on because I knew you were coming back,” she tells them, looking up at Michonne before remembering to include her dad too. “And I was right. I wanted us to all be together.”

“You’re a fighter,” he replies, brimming with pride. 

“I’m a Grimes,” Judith says as her mom kisses her head. 

Rick uses the side of his thumb to wipe Michonne’s tears away. They share a look — disbelief, pride, awe — over Judith’s head, like they’re the only two people on earth witnessing a supernova. 

Michonne allows herself to smile, then points out, “You got a little Dixon blood in you now too, huh?” 

There’s a dark irony in the fact that, in some strange and unorthodox way, Judith now has more of a blood connection with Daryl than either of her parents. Rick gives a low, wry chuckle, nudging Judith as he says, “Spells trouble.” 

“Wait till you see me with a crossbow,” Judith teases him back.

“Are you—” he starts to ask, then sees the grin break out across her face. “You almost had me.”

“Hey, maybe someday,” she warns him with a terrifyingly casual shrug, as if the sword and the gun aren’t enough. “I can pick things up pretty quick.”

Rick doesn’t doubt it for a second. 

*

It’s long after dark when the kids finally fall asleep, hours after the first family dinner of their new life. Judith’s curled up on the sofa where she’d been glued to Michonne’s side for most of the evening, with RJ out like a light in his bedroom. Rick’s sitting on the other couch, facing his sleeping daughter, studying every detail of her face to commit it all to memory, when Michonne returns from pouring herself a glass of water to find him staring. 

“Rick?” he hears and it breaks his daze. 

“I used to be able to carry her up,” is all he says at first, but it’s enough for his voice to crack.

She’s grown. Judith’s grown so much; it kills him to have missed it. There are moments — little more than glimmers — when she feels as distant as a stranger or she gives him a discerning look as if she hasn’t quite made sense of him yet. Those little hurts sprout through fine cracks, shooting up like weeds, obscuring the euphoric relief of being reunited. He is held hostage by the memory of her as the girl he left behind.

Each time she takes him by surprise, it stings like salt on an open wound. And yet once that sharp sting passes, there is sweetness in it too, in the slow unfolding of her personality.

As Michonne settles down next to him, now fully dressed again despite his protests, Rick leans back in sync with her. They both lie with their heads propped against the line of the couch. There is bone-deep comfort in the familiarity of it, of ending a day here, a simulacrum of how they once began. It is like the feeling of slipping off a pair of shoes at the end of a long day.

Even in the midst of a lingering melancholy he fears he might never fully shake, her presence at his side is enough for him to push on, to wade through the mud of his trauma and grief to reach for something better, something rich and good and beautiful. Sitting alone with her at the end of the day is enough. It’s what makes the rest of it worth it: the simple act of being together, side by side in a borrowed house with a family they’ve stitched together. 

“I’m here, I’m home. I know that.” The tightness in his throat adds a raspy edge to his voice. “But there’s part of me that still misses them, even now we’re all here. I can’t explain it.”

“It’s gonna take time, Rick. But we have it.”

“Eight years, gone.” The words come out a broken whisper. “When I look at our children, all that lost time is so undeniable. They’re grown. And I wasn’t here for any of it.” 

Michonne shifts closer, setting her glass down on the side table and placing her hand on his thigh.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t… get so fixed on it.”

“Don’t you dare apologize for that, for loving them and missing them.” Her voice is fierce, the tremor in her words only perceptible to someone who knows her steady voice as intimately as he does. “It’s who you are. And I can’t give you that time back, but I can tell you…” She musters a smile, her hand tightening on his leg, and he’s reassured even before she goes on: “You’re gonna get to know them, the people they’ve become, and you’ll fall in love with them in new ways that aren’t about what you thought they’d be, but just them: the people they are now, the pieces of us they carry and the parts of them that are completely unique.” 

Rick nods. He thinks of all that he’s observed already. 

He thinks of Judith’s dry, teasing humor — that playfulness she must’ve learned from Michonne that tells him that, despite it all, she managed to preserve something of their daughter’s childhood. Her persevering strength, warmth, generosity. The serious look on her face when she’s in protective mode with her brother, like she knows she’s a leader already and she’s unafraid of the fight. 

He thinks, too, of RJ’s shyness, so unlike the rest of their family. Their youngest son has a stillness, a quiet, about him. There is also that unmistakable stubborn streak Michonne warned him about, though, so there’s no doubting the boy’s parentage. 

His youngest son proves to be an entirely new person for Rick to learn and understand. 

Rick learned how to be a dad with Carl. RJ being his own person, Judith being so independent already — it all feels brand new to him. It’s overwhelming and immediate and as painful as it is joyous. But when he lets the joy in, when he feels the streaks of light peeking through, it calms his frantic mind. 

Even if it’s hard, it’s better. It’s better than it’s been in such a long time. 

Because of Michonne. 

He turns his face to the side against the frame of the sofa, gazing at her with full focus, the beginnings of a smile creeping through despite all that weighs on him. It damn near takes his breath away to look at her and think, for even a moment, about all that she is and all that she’s done for him. 

Her beauty hits him like sunshine, warming his skin and brightening his mood in some impossible way. She is a vivid, inevitable spring after a long, dark winter, hope flowering in him just by virtue of her presence. There is a softness about her face that contrasts with the hard solidity of her strength, of broad shoulders and ripped muscles from years of fighting with the sword. He loves all of it. He treasures the delicate parts of her that she keeps safe for him and he worships the body that holds her up, that keeps them all alive, remarkable beauty in every toned inch of her. She is a fantasy, a dream, a blessing. 

“How ‘bout you?” he asks his warrior wife, her secret softness exposed before him. “How are you doin’ with it all?”

Raising her eyebrows, she gives a wry laugh. “I’m exhausted.” He replies with a sympathetic groan. “Happy. Sad. All of it. It doesn’t quite feel real yet.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Rick concedes, before waiting patiently for her to elaborate, silent encouragement for her to speak her mind on all that goes unspoken. He longs to share in her joy and her pain, to hear what she’s feeling and make it better the way she does for him. 

Michonne hesitates, shooting a sideways glance back at him as if assessing whether he’s in any fit state to handle her truth. In the end, she’s perhaps too tired to answer with anything else. 

“It’s hard, when everyone’s lost so much. I can’t stop thinking about what happened to Judith while I was gone. And how… we’re all together, but we’re not,” she explains, warmth imbuing every gentle syllable, her words a balm to his guilt for every moment he’s found himself still longing for Carl. “I had this restless feeling the whole time we were apart, the whole time I was without you, then them. I thought it would pass if I could just get us all back to each other. And that feeling — it’s not like it was, but it’s not gone. We can’t bring back what’s lost.”

“The love’s not lost, Michonne. We still get to love them.” He finds her hand lying on the couch between them, patting it gently to prompt her to turn her palm up and let him entwine their fingers. 

“I know,” she says with a sad smile. He notices the tears shining in her eyes and squeezes her hand a little tighter. “I keep thinking about if our older boys were here. How tall they’d be now, how they’d take care of each other, how much Andre would’ve loved you.”

Rick feels the sting of his own tears at the thought of the child he never knew. He’s pictured her son a thousand times, his imagination conjuring a sweet-natured toddler with his mother’s eyes and her smile to match. 

Michonne never told him very much — not for a long time, not until after Carl died. When they lost Carl, it was like her chest cracked open with the grief of it, all that love and loss too much to hold inside. Every new detail she shared became a gentle reminder that Michonne understands his grief more than anyone. She understands the pain of losing the child who taught you how to be a parent and how unnatural it feels to outlive them. 

Rick holds onto every memory she’s disclosed like it’s a treasure to guard. He remembers the passing comment she’d made about Andre looking more like her than Mike as they lay in bed talking about having a child together. He remembers one morning when Judith had been delighting in homemade pancakes, the fond, distant smile on Michonne’s face as she offhandedly told her daughter, “Banana pancakes were always Andre’s favorite,” and the ache he could hear in her voice. 

He remembers coming home from a run to find her organizing Carl’s comic book collection one day in the midst of their grief; she hadn’t looked up at him, only felt his presence standing there in the doorway, but she started talking about how Andre had been obsessed with cars. “Maybe he would’ve grown out of it, become a comic book kid like Carl,” she’d wondered aloud, “but he had me spending hours on the front lawn watching them go by.”

He never had the words to push her for more stories of the life she’d had torn away from her, but he often wondered about her world before. In his dreams, he’d imagined them meeting as they were then, finding new ways to fall in love and new obstacles to overcome in the name of it. 

Remembering the ones where he’d painted his own picture of Andre Anthony, where he’d taken him to the park and bought him an ice cream cone or pushed him on the swings, Rick replies, “I would’ve done everything I could to be for him what you were to Carl. He was your baby, Michonne, and I would’ve loved every hair on his head.” 

She moves her free hand to cup his face, kissing him with such gentle affection it makes him feel fragile. Years starved of her tenderness have left him fearful, even now, of letting her all the way back in. 

“Thank you,” she rasps. 

“I meant what I said,” Rick reminds her, his forehead pressed to hers as if they might fuse together. “You don’t ever have to thank me.” 

He feels more than hears her breathe a laugh, or something like it. Michonne strokes his cheek with the pads of her fingertips, across the roughage of his stubble, like she’s still rediscovering the feel of him against her touch, learning all over again that every inch of him belongs to her. There’s a tension he can feel in her still, like a thought is nagging at her and she’s deliberating whether she can share it, turning it over in her mind, until— 

“Sometimes I can barely remember his face,” she confesses, barely above a whisper. 

He can see the shame in her eyes as she draws away and looks down; he can hear it in her shaking voice. It pains him so deeply, his mind rushes to formulate a plan, one where he flies straight down to Georgia in search of a dusty old photo frame that might heal this corner of her heart. He doesn’t have it in him after years of yearning for home, for a settled life with the family they have left, but if it would help her, he’d go on foot. 

After a long quiet, his thumb tracing along the line of her jaw, Michonne adds, “I can’t hear his voice anymore, or remember his smell.” 

“That doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten him, who he was,” Rick realizes, understanding for the first time that even having lost Carl’s face, he never forgot the essence of who he was. The son he was. “You told me he loved cars and pancakes, that he could watch cartoons for hours, that he looked just like you. He was a mama’s boy, right? You said he was just at the age where he was too big to be carried, but he insisted on it anyway.” When Michonne looks back up at him, there’s an unguarded curiosity in her eyes. They glisten with tears but she’s almost unblinking, as if rapt to receive every gift his words afford her. “I bet he just wanted to stay close to you.”

Michonne kisses him again and he feels the wetness of her cheeks against his. When they come apart, she looks as if she is about to speak, but the words don’t come.

His voice low, Rick says, “It gets harder, I know, but you won’t forget him. We won’t forget them.”

Her lips press to his like she’s pleading for something, searching inside their kiss for all that’s been lost. He wonders if she’s making the same choice he’d made back at that crumbling apartment: if I have to feel so much, please just let me feel something good. He gives her everything he can, meeting her hunger with his own, letting her pull at his hair and tug at his shirt and drag him down until he’s lying on top of her completely disheveled. 

When Michonne pauses to catch her breath, Rick hovers in the delicious anticipation of what happens next. There is a powerful charge between them, so electric it might spark. The promise it holds to be caught in such a pose, his waist locked in the vice of her legs, has him hard already. 

He is so deeply in love with her, it makes him feel a little crazy with it. It is nothing like the kind of love he remembers from the world before — that awkward dating phase, the box-ticking stages that build to the grand jackpot of a wedding, the slow descent into unkindness like two tired cellmates bickering, forgetting it all started with flowers and smiles and the best of intentions. Theirs is a wild, urgent but enduring love. The kind that makes you want to crawl beneath the other person’s skin, to live inside their body so that your twin souls can never be separated. 

He longs to be inside her, to feel the oneness that only happens when they are joined. His desire can’t be reduced to base lust; it’s a yearning for connection: that profound tether to his humanity, to his goodness, to his purpose. She is life in a world of death. 

He burns with the need to love her.

He’s been to the end of everything and back, and still he burns for her. It is not a flame that smolders until the wax has melted, nor a star shining so bright it will someday implode. It is a glorious blaze. It is as sure as death: undeniable, endless, inevitable. 

They will die, but first they’ll love. These are the only two things he can be certain of. 

When he kisses her again, because he can’t live another moment without kissing her, she surrenders all of herself, her heels digging into the small of his back, urging him closer. She whimpers when he releases her mouth to bury his face in the curve of her neck. 

Breathless, she confesses, “I don’t know who I would’ve become if I hadn’t found you in this.”

With lips swollen and his heart pounding, Rick draws back to meet her eyes, wanting to ground himself in them. 

“I used to think like that,” he admits, though it’s not a thought he can bear to reflect on now. They were once beasts, made beautiful by each other. “But I don’t think there’s any world where I wouldn’t have found you.”

Her brows lift in surprise. “Yeah?”  

“Would’ve done all kinds of stupid shit just to get your attention.”

She combs her fingers through his curls, her eyes guiding over every feature of his face with such intensity, he can feel her gaze ghost across his skin.  “You wouldn’t have had to try that hard,” she says, before a delicate kiss.

“Oh yeah?”

“Mmm,” she says against his mouth. “Don’t get cocky.”

His rumble of laughter disappears into another kiss, tongues surging to meet. It is a collision, a crash; the impact feels world-shaking. It hits like deja vu of their first night, pulling him through time, her mouth a homecoming. He grinds against her, unable to restrain himself a moment longer, her hips rising to meet him there.  

“Judith,” she gasps suddenly as his hand begins to slide beneath her top, stopping him in his tracks. 

“What?” He recoils.

“We can’t do this here,” Michonne whispers, trying not to laugh. She nods her head in the direction of their oblivious, unconscious child and he quickly sobers. “Judith might wake up and never recover.” 

“Point taken.” Rick immediately shifts himself upright, standing up and holding his hand out to her. He’s quick to point out, “But there are plenty of other rooms.”

“Oh, well,” she grins, delighting in his tacit eagerness, “I wouldn’t wanna keep you up.”

“Suddenly I’m wide awake,” he mumbles against the column of her neck, teasing her skin with his tongue, teeth dragging over the surface to earn a low, muffled moan.

When she pulls away from him, he can tell it’s her own impatience getting the better of her rather than resistance by the way she wets her lips. Rick straightens, suppressing his own self-satisfied smile, and waits for her to lead the way. 

Grateful for the view it affords him, he lets her drag him along by the hand. They pad carefully across the room in an attempt to keep their footsteps quiet for Judith’s sake. 

It’s as they knock into the banister and freeze, suddenly alert to the danger of her catching them again, that he takes another look at his little girl. Letting go of Michonne momentarily, he darts back to grab the blanket that’s draped over the back of one of the sofas and carefully lays it over Judith. Rick glances up to notice Michonne watching him, naked lust having transformed back into love in the seconds he’d been turned the other way. 

He meets her at the bottom of the stairs where she’s waiting for him, her height elevated by a step, and lets her drape her arms over his shoulders. 

“I love you,” she says. Three simple words. 

It’s the first time she’s said it since she found him and brought him back to life. He realizes it only because the words sound so delicate and new where once they were echoed through their everyday with mundane, almost careless familiarity. Rick understands the strength it’s taken her to find them again, the admission a surrendering. It is one last leap of faith, inviting the universe to overhear her and test the truth of it. 

“I know,” he reassures her, a smile lifting the corner of his mouth. He’d never needed her to say it aloud. Its proof exists in everything she’s done up to this very second. “It’s the reason I’m alive.” 

Michonne leans down to claim his mouth, softly, briefly.

She turns to lead him upstairs and he follows as easily as he had the very first time they did this, though with less of the feverish impatience. The feeling that it might slip through their fingers if not seized quickly has been replaced by a different kind of urgency, one more about making up for lost time. It’s not all about the consummation anymore. He savors every second of anticipation just as much, her spectacular ass in those pants she likes to wear — the ones that fit her like a second skin — taunting him with each step. 

When she reaches their bedroom and spins around to face him, her eyes are dark with focus, her purpose clear. He feels as if she can see right through him, read every impure thought. Her wanting gaze suggests she’d welcome them all. 

With the moonlight sneaking in through the half-drawn curtains, she is luminous and otherworldly. The dead coming back to life to walk the earth was not nearly so supernatural as her impossible beauty, the embodiment of his wildest dreams. Drinking her in, Rick steps forward, drawn in by the unguarded hunger in her eyes. He grabs a handful of her tank top to pull her toward him the rest of the way, needing her body pressed to his, the warmth of her enveloping him the moment they crash together. 

Michonne’s brazen hand slides between them to reach for him, feeling his cock through his jeans as if simply to remind herself of the power she wields. By way of reply, his hand reaches for her perfect ass, its natural resting place, slipping between those pants and the underwear beneath them until he can feel warm, smooth skin against his rough, calloused palm. 

She’s quick to oblige him, helping him maneuver her torturously tight pants off. The limitations of his limb difference prove most glaring in the frantic heat of undressing one another and he’s grateful for her subtle intervention. She takes care of unfastening them, then pulls at the fabric until she’s stepping free of it and kicking her pants to some soon-to-be forgotten corner of the room. He kisses her in the midst of the attempt and, with her mouth still on his, guides her back to the bed until they’re both falling back onto it in an undignified heap, muffling each other’s laughter with their hands. 

Michonne slides out of her top as he kisses his way down her chest, greeting newly revealed skin with his tongue, her body writhing beneath his affection. He doesn’t stop until he’s on his knees at the side of the bed, his mouth between her legs, her hand pulling at his long curls as he licks a line across underwear already wet with desire, tongue tracing along her slit. 

He hooks one finger under the hem at her hip, guiding her underwear down until there’s nothing left between them.

Rick kisses a trail along the inside of her thigh, her trembling legs opening wide for him like she remembers all her steps to this dance. He hears her hum of pleasure as his tongue begins to lap at her folds, his hand rubbing her clit in time with it until she’s bucking to chase the friction. 

“Rick,” she says, hitting the consonant hard the way she does when it matters most. She pulls the shoulder of his t-shirt up before she can find the breath to tell him: “I want to feel you.”

He crawls up her body to meet her mouth, the taste of her still on his lips when she kisses him deep and rough, a wildness in her now. He’s distracted, then, when her hands move to his left arm, her fingers gently stripping away the modest makeshift prosthetic he’d been using in lieu of the CRM custom-molded fist. 

He pulls back to look and watches as her fingertips smooth over his reddened, raised skin, warm and clammy from having been covered all day. 

She brings his scarred stump to her lips and places a light kiss to it.

Enchanted by her meticulous care, Rick lets her pull his t-shirt over his head, revealing the rest of his scars. Her fingers trace tenderly over a map of old wounds, barbed wire, rebar, fires and gunshots all having had their crack at him. They were once a record of his failures, every fumbled attempt to get home carved into his body. He wears each of his nine lives like the rings of a tree.

That first night they’d made love again, she’d kissed every scar like a thank you. 

Each precious press of her lips had made them new. She’d allowed him to wear them without shame, turning unsightly scars into nothing but proof of his unrelenting determination. She does it all again now, her touch sweeping across blemished skin like she’s reading him in braille. 

Once the intimate ritual is complete, Michonne’s hand drifts down his bare chest, settling at the edge of his jeans before she deftly unbuttons them. It’s another gentle kindness to save him the struggle of it, elegantly dressed up in lust.

When Rick is forced to stand slightly to divest himself of the last of his clothing, Michonne seizes the opportunity to spin them. She pushes him against the bed, pressing down on his shoulders until he’s seated and ready for her to straddle his lap. 

It feels safe like this. She seems to silently understand: the need to be looking at each other, to be coiled tight in each other’s arms when they do this. He feels her protectiveness in the way she wraps herself around his body, slowly sinking down on him and moaning gloriously as he fills her, her breath hitching as he finds just the right angle. 

She sits in his embrace and they rock slowly, finding their rhythm.

When Michonne puts her hands on his shoulders and pushes him to lie back, he relaxes completely, awed by the sight of her on top of him. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs. 

Just like that, they fuck like the world might end tomorrow, his name on her lips like a prayer. What starts slow and languid builds to a breathless, exhilarating crescendo.

If love is patient and love is kind, she is beyond love; she is the god of it. After years trapped inside his own living hell, rediscovering this marital ritual in a place that’s something like home creates a moment so pure, it pulls him free. He looks up at Michonne and finds heaven. His trauma is powerless to the tenderness of her love, to the way she holds his gaze as he pushes inside her, sees all of him — darkness and light — and rides him through.

In this language, there is nothing new about the I love you . It is a rousing mantra carried on every look, every touch, every slow, deep thrust. The sentiment is so worn in, it is embedded in their skin, an invisible tattoo around their scars.

He feels the comfort of her charging through his body, from his loveswept face to the ends of his curling toes. She overwhelms his senses until there’s nothing but her. 

Her hot breath against his ear, Michonne leans down to whisper, “Every time I touched myself, I imagined it was you.”

She takes his hand in hers and moves it so that it cups her breast, covering it to keep him there. 

There’s something delicious in the way she fills his palm, the sharp point of her nipple hard against his touch. She surges forward when he squeezes and strokes, searching for more friction, begging for rough and hard even as he tortures her with agonizingly gentle touches. He drags his thumb over the taut peak to elicit a frayed whimper, feeling her walls clench around him as he pushes deeper.

Rick lays his hand flat over her chest, sweeping over her skin like he’s appreciating the craftsmanship of a marble statue. He wants to touch her everywhere, remind himself of the realness of her at his fingertips. 

Michonne’s head goes back, her body arched to his touch, pleading for him everywhere. 

His fingers move lower to find her clit again, teasing that sensitive nub between her legs and watching her come undone for him. It doesn’t take much. He draws it out of her, feeling the tension in her body build and build and—

She jolts forward, her chest slapping against his. An indecent, moaning sigh escapes her lips.

“You’re home,” she gasps in his ear, and he doesn’t know if she’s reminding him or herself. The faint utterance floats miraculously in the air around them. Home, home, home, he comes in spirit as in body.

After it’s over, when he finds himself turned to liquid and melting into the bedsheets, Michonne returns from the bathroom — the full length of her bare body before him spectacular, obscene, arresting — and absently warns him, “We should put some clothes on.”

He gives a look of confusion, the why? in his eyes. 

“Our babies are not good sleepers,” she explains, peeling his boxers and t-shirt off the floor and throwing them to him. “Or… they never used to be. Must get it from you.”

Trying to ignore that part of himself that aches with all that he doesn’t yet know, Rick stumbles out of bed to pull the t-shirt over his head and slide the boxers back on. He reaches for her cami top and the spare boxer shorts at the top of his half-open bag. He’s hastened by his preference for seeing her in his clothes and, when he tosses them over, she’s happy to oblige. 

When they slide back into bed, they meet at the center of it and fold onto their sides. 

His arm drapes over her body as he fills the space around her, spooning her to feel her mold against him with as many touch points as possible. She slides her fingers through his and tucks their linked hands against her chest. 

*

The creak of the floorboards just outside their bedroom prompts Rick to sit bolt upright in bed, breaking from sleep with a violent lurch. The footsteps he hears are light enough that he stops short of reaching for the hatchet on the bedside table, but he watches carefully as the door slowly opens to reveal Judith’s anxious face peering in.

He breathes out a sigh of relief. “Sweetheart?” 

“Sorry, Dad,” she’s quick to say, a furrowed brow keeping her face entirely serious, “Just needed to check—”

“We’re okay, Jude. We’re here.” He glances over at Michonne’s side of the bed and she’s still lights out, her body curled onto its side and facing away from him. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” his daughter admits, biting her lip as if embarrassed by it, or frustrated with herself. “I just kept thinking about… what if you were gone when I woke up. What if I dreamed it and none of it’s real?” He notices her bottom lip quiver only slightly. 

“It’s real,” Rick reassures her, and he finds reassurance in his own words. “I promise you it is. We’re not going anywhere, sweetheart. Come here.” He beckons her over with the nod of his head, sensing the way she edges closer and inviting it gladly. 

“I’m not gonna fit in the bed,” she says, giggling as he gestures to the small gap at the center of the bed. “I’m too big.”

“It’s gonna take me a while to get used to that,” Rick admits, trying to ignore the sting of it. “You used to love crawling around between us in the morning, having your tummy tickled, playing hide and seek under the covers.” It used to be his favorite time of day, the three of them cocooned in bed before the outside world pulled them in all directions. 

Judith is tactful enough not to cringe at how long past those memories are. Instead, she fondly rolls her eyes a little before pulling herself into the bed to squeeze in between her parents, lying over the top of the duvet. The movement causes her mom to stir, but Michonne keeps her eyes closed, only turning over to face them and extending her arm so that it wraps around Judith’s waist. Even in her half-sleep, she’s hugging her daughter tight to her.

“You’re not gonna leave again?” Judith whispers into the near-darkness, her imploring eyes finding Rick’s. “Do you promise?” 

Rick finds her hand and clasps it in his. “I can’t promise. I can’t lie to you and tell you what happens next because I never wanted to go away in the first place. But I’ll never choose to leave you. I’ll fight anything and anyone who ever tries to take this from us.”

“We’ll protect each other,” Judith vows. 

Rick can’t help but smile to himself, the fight in her making him proud. She sounds so much like her mother. “Heard you’re pretty handy with the sword.” 

Judith gives a modest shrug, but smiles. “Mom taught me.”

“And the gun?” 

She looks down to where her other hand covers Michonne’s, a little shy. “I just liked using it because it was yours.” 

“You wanna keep it?” he asks conspiratorially. 

When she shakes her head, her hair fluffs against the pillow. “No, it’s yours. I want you to have it. Maybe I could just borrow it sometimes to practice.” 

“Anytime you like.” 

She nods, then he notices her biting on her lip. Quieter, barely above a whisper, she asks, “Will you ever be able to talk to us about what happened, where you were?” 

He’d wondered what questions she would have for him, whether they’d flow right away in a riptide or fall like droplets in the years to come. In those half-sleep musings in the days leading up to his return home, he’d decided he wouldn’t fight his children’s curiosity, only protect them from the darker parts of the truth. 

When they discussed what to tell Judith and RJ, Michonne had promised to be at his side through every hard conversation. Asleep though she may be, she’s still managing to hold up her side of the bargain on a technicality. 

“What d’you wanna know, Jude?” 

In the safety of their closeness, Rick finds himself braver than he’d expected. It feels private, this moment between them. It feels like the time and place to explain away the mysteries of the last eight years of their lives, a first step in rebuilding the trust between them. He owes her that much, at least. 

“I don’t want to upset you.” 

Rick leans forward and presses a kiss to her forehead. “You won’t. You and your brother can ask me whatever you want, and I can decide whether I got an answer for you.” He speaks gently to her, and then adds, “The same goes for you, too. If I ask you somethin’ you don’t feel like answering, you just tell me.” 

Judith nods sombrely. “Does it hurt?” she asks, looking down at his stump with only care in her eyes. She reaches out but stops short of touching his old wound.

It moves him that her question is one of concern rather than morbid curiosity. He strokes his hand over her hair, encouragement enough for her to close the distance, her fingertips brushing gently over the scarred skin as if she’s scared he might flinch. “Not anymore, not really. Happened a long time ago.” 

“How did it happen?”

“I kept trying to leave, so they shackled my hand to make sure I couldn’t. I did it to get myself free. I was trying to get home,” he explains, watching the realization dawn on his daughter’s face. She blinks furiously to fight off the onslaught of tears before leaning forward and laying her head against his chest. 

Muffled inside his embrace, he hears, “I love you, Dad.” 

He kisses the top of her head. “I love you, sweetheart. I’m sorry I was gone so long.”

“I forgot your voice for a while,” she admits gently, the softness of her words barely dulling the sting of it. It eases quickly, though, when she adds, “But not you. I loved you even when I started to forget. I don’t even know if that makes any sense.”

“It does. More than you know.” He thinks of Carl. “And it’s okay if it’s too hard, if… I don’t feel like someone you and RJ wanna call dad, or you need more time—” 

“Dad.” She cuts him off. “We’ve been waiting for you this whole time.” 

It’s hard for Rick to know what to say to that. Eight years of waiting and hoping is stubborn as hell. 

“The moment I saw you, I knew things were gonna be good again.” Judith twists to check that Michonne’s still asleep, before turning back to her dad. “Mom always used to put on a brave face. I forgot what her real smile was like, but you brought it back.”

It breaks Rick’s heart to reflect on all that Michonne went through without him. It’s a mirror of his own pain and longing. “You, your brothers, your mama — you’re everything to me.”

“I know,” she says fondly. “Everything you ever did was ‘cause you love us, right?”

Rick leans forward and stamps a kiss to the center of her forehead. “Everything,” he echoes, emphasizing the last syllable with a fading twang. 

In her sleep, Michonne squeezes Judith a little tighter and Rick watches his daughter smile to herself. She looks down and notices the glint of her mother’s silver wedding ring. 

There’s a question in Judith’s eyes when they meet his again. 

“You can ask me anything, Judith,” he reassures her. 

She considers the offer a moment. “How did you fall in love with Mom?” she says eventually, taking him by surprise. “So many people, they seem to couple up and they’re happy, I guess. Sometimes it seems like they just don’t want to be alone. But you guys… it’s… it’s different, the way you love each other. It’s like something from a story. I loved when Mom or Uncle Daryl or Aaron used to tell us stories about you, but I don’t think I really believed them until today.” 

“You got Uncle Daryl telling stories?” 

Judith laughs. “Sometimes. Usually just when I was sad and he was trying to make me feel better.”

It touches Rick to imagine it, knowing that Daryl became the man he always had the potential to become: a loyal brother, a caring uncle, a leader. “You’re not sad now, though?” 

“No. I just wanna hear you tell it.”

Rick thinks about all the bedtime stories he missed over the years with a sharp stab of regret. He remembers the weight of little Judith on his knee and the feeling of Carl falling asleep against his chest, the way he’d finish the stories even after they started snoring. He’s grateful for a second chance, even if it’s not a rhyming tale from a storybook. It’s his teenage daughter trying to get to know him and that means even more.

Rick clears his throat quietly, conscious not to wake Michonne. He raises his eyebrows as he considers where to start, Judith with eyes wide, utterly captivated.

“It was after the world turned, long after the dead started walking. Me and the group — Daryl, Carol, Maggie, Carl… We were living in a prison. We had it cleared, had a fence around it. But things had been bad for a while and we’d lost a lot of people. I was kinda out of my mind back then.”

“You lost my birth mom. Lori,” she says gently, her understanding a kindness and a mercy. It’s almost a question — is that what you mean? — but he receives it as a gift, the understanding that she doesn’t need him to say it. 

Rick nods. He can’t unpack the tangled web of feelings he has about Lori to their daughter, the daughter she died for. It’s a complicated, messy grief. Instead, he simply explains, “I lost her, and Carl lost her, and you were so little. Daryl used to call you Li’l Asskicker.”

“He never stopped,” she says with a grin that Rick mirrors. “I call him Big Asskicker.” 

“Even from the beginning, he was there for you when I couldn’t be. And then, one day, your mama showed up.” He tips his head in Michonne’s direction. “Shot, beat, exhausted. And I was all for leaving her out there to fend for herself. I wasn’t in a place to trust anyone. Not a damn soul. Good thing I had your brother around to steer me right.” 

“Mom always used to tell us it was Carl. It was him who let her in first.”

“They were thick as thieves,” he tells her with emphasis, a fond smile breaking out across his face. Judith smiles with him. “I think, in each other, they found what they needed — or healed from what they’d lost.” 

She seems to think about it for a moment. “And what about you?”

Rick takes a deep breath, his eyes wandering to Michonne. Perhaps it’s his heavy gaze that wakes her, or maybe her ears were burning. As he reaches for the right words, her eyes flutter open. 

He’s never told this story aloud before, but he’s been over it a million times in his head, revisiting the memories of her just to keep himself alive. Judith waits, eager and expectant, her tender heart grasping for comfort in the middle of the night, while her mother studies him with sleepy curiosity. 

“I thought the whole world was against me until your mama showed up,” he explains, his voice low and soft as if he’s disclosing a precious secret. “And then she became part of the group and I got to know her better, earned her trust. I had this feeling like we already knew each other.” 

It had snuck up on him, the nagging desire to learn everything he could about her. Every run, he wanted it to be with her. Every call he had to make, he’d look to her first. Every sleepless night, he longed for her company. 

Rick glances over at Michonne, anticipating the way her face transforms with—not quite a smile, but fond surprise. 

When he turns his attention back to Judith, he opts for playfulness: “Truth be told, I had a big ol’ crush on her — for months and months! Kept trying to get a minute of her time, but she was always on some mission. She used to go out on these runs and I’d never know if or when she was coming back. Drove me crazy.”

“Well, why didn’t you just tell her to stay?” 

“It wasn’t my place to tell your mom what to do. And I understood why she couldn’t let the fight go for a while. It was her way of protecting us.”

“But Mom would never want to be without you.”

From behind an oblivious Judith, Michonne looks away, up at the ceiling, anywhere but at him. Still, he doesn’t miss the bashful smile she’s fighting hard to suppress. He makes no attempt to hide an answering smile of his own. 

“Back then, we weren’t a family yet. Or maybe we were but we just didn’t realize it.” Rick thinks about it for a moment before adding, “I think she thought I was just some crazy guy, anyway.”

Judith giggles, and Rick notices soft lines appear at the corner of Michonne’s eyes. 

“Your mom was Carl’s best friend first, but she became mine too. She saw me at my worst and stuck around. She made me want to be better, helped me be better. She led me back when I lost my way, never made me feel like it was all on me. We were partners right from the start.”

“So you told her how you felt?” Judith urges him on, as if reaching back into the past and willing him to pluck up his courage. 

“Not for a long time. She wasn’t ready. Or maybe I wasn’t,” he says, amused by the exasperation in Judith’s eyes like she doesn’t know the ending, like she’s not lying between them right now, a gleaming wedding ring beneath her touch. His eyes meet Michonne’s over her head and he can see her holding back a laugh, thrilled by Judith’s interrogation. He locks on her gaze as he admits, “It was scary, a love that big in a world like this.”

“So what changed your mind?”

Rick thinks back, remembering his brief, ill-advised relationship with Jessie in the middle of it all. She’d been the safer option, in some strange way. She reminded him of Lori in her perpetual reliance on him and the way it stroked his ego, and in her refusal to let go of the world before. It felt safe enough because it was familiar. Not love or even infatuation, but something dressed up like it, with none of the risks of true feeling. 

He remembers how little it hurt to lose her, the way it made him feel like a monster. He’d flirted with her, he’d kissed her, but he’d never truly let her in. 

It had been almost losing Carl that wrecked him. 

It had been not losing Carl that saved him, guiding him back to the fullness of his humanity. To his humor, to his schoolboy crush, to his parental worrying, to some version of himself not so completely laser-focused on only survival. After Carl opened his eyes, Rick began to see it all in a different light. 

“I realized that… love is the point.” He gives a slanted half-smile, then sighs. “It’s what we’re still breathing for. We aren’t here just to stay alive; we have to find something to live for in each other.” 

Michonne beams. It’s a smile so disorienting, he’s glad they’re already lying down. 

It’s bright enough, he’d follow her anywhere. 

And when he leans forward and stage-whispers, “Lucky for me, she loved me back,” he delights in the way she theatrically rolls her eyes at him. 

“Real lucky for you,” Judith affirms on her mother’s behalf. 

He pretends to be wounded by the comment just to make his daughter laugh and she indulges him. “Lucky for you, too.” He taps her on the nose and she scrunches it, batting him away. 

“Yeah. Lucky for me, too,” she concedes amid a yawn. 

“‘S’late now. You should sleep,” he suggests, mirroring her without quite meaning to, and tucking his hand between the pillow and his cheek. 

Fighting to keep her eyes open, Judith asks, “What about tomorrow?” 

“Tomorrow?”

“What comes next? What are we gonna do now?”

“You mean—” 

The little crinkle that’s formed above her nose deepens in her determined efforts to stay awake. “Where are we gonna live?”

Rick absently rubs his eyes as he considers it. “Well, our home is with you. Does this place feel like home? We can make it that. If that’s what you and your brother want. But we don’t have to decide right now.” 

“Okay.” 

He keeps his voice gentle in the attempt to settle her worries and coax her into sleep. “One thing I know is… we won’t decide without you. We don’t know this place, we don’t know what it’s like back in Alexandria. But Judith… you do . We’re following you now.” 

He doesn’t mean to burden her with the weight of responsibility that he and Michonne have long carried. His promise is simply about trust and hope and becoming the kind of parents who work in service to her future.

“Yeah?”

He nods against the pillow, letting it disturb his curls with static. “So, don’t worry about it tonight. Just sleep and, in the morning, we’ll figure out a plan together, okay? The four of us.” 

“Mmm,” she replies, beginning to drift off. Her voice distant, almost like she’s talking in her sleep, he hears her mumble, “You’re happy when you talk about her.” 

He leans forward to kiss her forehead. Her eyes are closed and maybe she’s gone already, but he replies, “Jude, there are so many kinds of love in the world, even now, even in all this.” He keeps his gaze fixed on Michonne’s eyes as they glitter before him in the half light. “But your mom and I, ours can never happen again. It’s a one-time deal. So we hold on to it real tight.” 

He notices the way Michonne squeezes Judith a little tighter in her arms. When they hear her little puffs of breath, the sound of her in deepest sleep, Michonne quietly whispers, “You’re a good dad.”

It’s a small compliment on the surface, but he can tell she knows what it means to him by the way her soft gaze lingers on him. “You think I got the job, they’ll rehire me?” he tries to joke, even as he resists the threat of tears. Her sincerity feels overwhelming — perhaps gentle revenge for his own. 

Unable to lean across to kiss him with Judith asleep between them, she only reaches out to hold his face in her hand. Her thumb sweeps tenderly across his cheek. “Thank you. For choosing this. For loving us.” 

He can’t bear her thanks. If there was even a debt to pay, it’s been covered a thousand times over. 

“How can you forgive me so easily?” he wonders, conscious still of the battles she had to fight him on to get them here and marveling at the grace she gives him. 

“You came back,” she says. “I don’t just mean that you’re here. I mean you. You came back to me.”

“Michonne—”

She cuts him off. “I will love you forever. There will never be enough time for all of it. I don’t have a minute to waste on anger or resentment. You were trying to protect us.”

Her words are unshakable, only certain and true. Matter of fact.

Rick had shaken their foundations by ever doubting her, and yet here she was, resolute. She would stay rooted through any storm. 

He swallows around a knot of pain lodged in his throat, and Michonne strokes tenderly through his disheveled curls. “We should seriously get some sleep,” she says softly, relieving him of the need to reply. In such a moment, he struggles to find words that feel anything close to adequate. “They’re gonna have another hundred questions for both of us tomorrow.” 

Rick turns his face so that he can kiss the palm of her hand, then nods. 

*

When Rick stirs early in the morning, sunbeams bursting through the curtains, he wakes to find that RJ’s joined them. Their youngest is lying between Rick and Judith over the covers, his body curled into his dad like he’s clinging to a treasured childhood teddy. 

At the end of the bed, Rick notices a tail lying across the floor and smiles when it thumps lazily a couple of times, Dog happy to be close.

He reaches across to take Michonne’s hand, the sudden warmth of his skin waking her. Her eyes open and instantly home in on his. He watches her smile stretch out before she notices the company they’ve gained. 

“Is this what you hoped for?” he asks, eyes scanning across the scene.

“I hope they still like us when we’re not such a novelty.”

“When we’re telling her she’s not allowed boys in her room and trying to convince him to finish his math homework?” 

“Something like that.”

“We’ve always got each other,” he points out. “Even if the kids get sick of us.”

She squeezes his hand, and then her smile fades, gaze warm and serious.

“It's more,” she says softly.

“What's more?”

“Than what I'd hoped for.”

He nods, throat suddenly too tight to offer a reply. He’d grown so used to living without hope, he’d accepted his existence as a miserable formality.  The fact that he gets to be here, he gets to feel the miraculous warmth of his wife’s hand against his skin and hear the gentle breaths of their children asleep in his arms, heals something deep inside. 

Rick holds his family close as the sunlight spreads through the room, as the faint strains of birdsong carry from outside. As a new day dawns, ready for them to greet it.