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Michonne knows what’s going on. She knows when she’s throwing up into the toilet before the sunlight shines in through the windows of their beautiful Alexandrian home. She knows when she can’t stand the smell of the meat Jerry’s roasting on a spit when she visits the kingdom. She knows from the way she cries for no reason watching Judith and Rick play hide and seek around town as she watches from the red checkered picnic blanket.
Some nights she can’t let herself rest. On those nights she thinks about the war and everything that led up to that final climax by the tree. She thinks about holding Maggie back while she screamed and sobbed. Seeing such a strong woman broken still hurts her. Knowing her actions helped cause some of that break won’t leave her mind.
Michonne’s thinking about Andrea the night she finally decides to do something about it. She wonders how Andrea would have liked it in Alexandria. What might have different if the woman she shared so much of those early months with hasn’t shot herself in the head when she got infected. She remembers the cold nights they’d spent curled around each other in whatever abandoned building they’d holed up in.
Mostly she wishes Andrea could have seen her as what she is now. The calloused fighter is still there but she had always been something more than that, something Andrea had barely glimpsed before she’d cupped Michonne’s face and said her final goodbye.
She leaves as quietly as she can. Barely moving the sheets on Ricks side of the bed. She walks whisper soft past Judith’s room and down the stairs until she is out on the porch staring at the stars. The air is crisp with just a hint of chill. She likes it this way. Feels the slight night breeze on her face she sighs. Winter is coming.
Most of the horses are kept at the hilltop. It’s where the wild ones are brought to tame. Jesus has quite a knack for bringing in strays. But the woman who manages the small alexandrian stables is called Nora. Nora had kind eyes and a curly afro. Once Michonne would have called her too soft to survive in a world gone to shit but she knows better now. Nora’s one of the few people in Alexandria who know about Michonnes night time excursions.
The other woman had found out by accident a couple months before when she’d been up late waiting for a mare to go into labor. Nora had popped out of another stall just as Michonne was coaxing her horse outside. She hadn’t asked very many questions and Michonne had wondered if she felt it too, the restlessness that came from too much time inside these walls. Either way she let her pass and she hadn’t tipped Rick off. It was an unspoken agreement the way Nora sometimes left bits of supplies out for Michonne like the saddle she had left tonight.
When she first started to slip away unnoticed the thrill of being outside the walls with no special objective had been immediate. As time went on she needed to go farther and farther out of her way to get the same feeling. A couple of times she’d went straight for a good sized group of walkers just to see how fast she could bring them down. The pent up feeling abated for a while with the adrenaline kick.
Tonight she wasn’t gonna risk a side trip. Over the past year and a half of Alexandrian supply runs and the sanctuary’s raids the big brand pharmacies and places like Walgreens were completely stripped. When Arat killed Olivia the filching of supplies from the storeroom had gone haywire for a while before the next visit from the saviors put it under control. Nowadays you had to sign for every item you took from the store and what she needed wasn’t something she felt comfortable with showing the community. Not even close.
Michonne settles for a secluded gas station a nice fifteen miles from Alexandria. The doors are unlocked and the circular hole through the window matched with the shards of glass suspiciously encircling a rock gives her a good idea why the majority of the shelves are already empty. The beers and lukewarm sodas are as dead and gone but she finds what she’s looking for next to a half empty box of plan B in the back corner. Six packets of unopened first response pregnancy tests.
Michonne takes three and high tails it back outside. She left her horse tied to a defunct gas pump without a second thought but leaving him unprotected for any longer feels risky. All three are the same two parallel red lines. Michonne’s known for weeks but she still gasps in surprise.
It wasn’t like they were overtly trying. A few sly jokes here and there from their close friends maybe. But it certainly wasn’t how it was when Negan ruled Alexandria. Protection was a lot less relaxed then it had been during those horrible months when Negan and what he had done to their community had been present in everything Rick and Michonne did together.
A lot had changed from when Andrea had died. And yet so much was still the same. Michonne is still a woman learning to let herself trust again after the loss of her sons. Andre hung over everything she wanted with Andrea. Any future they might have had overshadowed by how scared Michonne was to let anyone in who she could end up losing. The worst part is knowing that if she had tried harder to pull her away from the governor and his promise of security then Andrea might be alive today.
Carl is there in everything she has now with Rick. Every time she takes a deep breath instead of sinking down to the level of a petty comment from an ungrateful savior. Every time she reasons with herself and with Rick over their decision to keep Negan breathing.
She knows the stories about the farm. Some told in hushed tones in the drunken jubilation that first night in Gabriel's church. The rest had slipped out over the years. Little details from everyone who had been there since the start. The woman who gave birth to Judith. How Lori hid her pregnancy for so long because of how scared she had been for Rick's reaction. So much of what is happening in the present is defined by the people who died in the past. People she never knew.
Michonne knows Rick is ready for another child. She knows that by the time her belly swells to the point where she can no longer avoid the uncomfortable questions from Alexandrians she will be. Michonne wonders absentmindedly if Rick will be the kind of doting boyfriend that will prop her up on pillows and rub her feet while asking her if she’s thirsty thirty times an hour. If he’ll insist she stay inside the walls once she gets to her third trimester. She thinks of how different it will be to have a partner that is PRESENT. A partner that won’t be sitting on her couch eating the last of their salt and vinegar chips and high out of his mind when she breaks the news. Rick will be nothing like Mike was.
The first hints of daylight are starting to appear on the horizon as Michonne gets back on her horse. She can’t wait to crawl back in bed and watch Rick wake up. Michonne knows she will be nothing like Lori was. She can’t keep this from him for any longer than she had kept it from herself.
She’s cutting it awful close by the time she hands her horse off to Nora and lets herself back in the backdoor she unlocked before she left. Michonne can hear Judith talking to herself through the cracked door into the nursery. She’ll want breakfast soon. Rick is still asleep but he’s splayed himself across their bed subconsciously reaching for an absent Michonne. She has to push his arm out of the way so she can get into bed. He sighs contentedly and throws an arm around her shoulder and she nuzzles into him and lets herself drift off.
When she wakes up it’s long past sunrise. She can hear Judith running around downstairs and the voices of their friends floating up from the kitchen. She looks up and Rick is standing over her.
“I let you sleep in. Figured you needed it”
He leans in to kiss her and she meets him halfway. The Sunday morning breakfast tradition was started the week after the war ended when everyone except Maggie had stayed back in Alexandria to clean up from the bombings and make ambitious plans for rebuilding. They’d taken a break one early morning and Gabriel had a makeshift mass by the lake. That was when they began counting the days again.
Rosita Tara Gabriel and Eugene were frequent attendees and Daryl came when he could get away from the sanctuary, which wasn’t very often. Carol had radioed in a couple nights before to let Rick know she planned on joining them with Ezekiel, their adopted son Henry and as many cookies as she had space to bring.
Most of the time they’d make drinks (coffee or spicy cider in the fall and peach lemonade in the summer) and catch each other up on the weeks happenings. They saw each other less as the plans for rebuilding society picked up. The more people there was to deal with the less time Michonne spent with her original group.
Eugene was overseeing plans to make ethanol from the saviors lackluster corn crop and Tara was living with a pretty blond woman who’d moved in from Oceanside in the spring. Rosita was teaching self defense to Alexandria’s children in the mornings and leading scavenging practice in the afternoon. She’d also been working on putting together a soccer team that could have matches in time for the winter festival.
Gabriel would ring the big brass church bell they’d taken from an elementary school when they went to Washington DC. Everyone who wanted too would take the walk over to Gabriel’s newly refurbished church and listen to the preaching. Judith couldn’t sit still for more than half the sermon and she’d run off and play hide and seek in the empty pews with Gracie when Aaron and his daughter visited from the Hilltop.
Sunday was also the day that Rick and Michonne would visit Carl’s grave together. Michonne knew that Rick came on his own sometimes. She let him have his privacy, god knows he deserved it. They came as a family swinging Judy between them as they walked. During the spring Judith used to pick the wild dandelions along the side of the road and lovingly lay them out for her brother the look on her little scrunched face so serious.
Michonnes heart still breaks when she thinks of the early days when Judith would cry and ask where Carl was in her broken English. Over and over until one day she had stopped. Michonne knows the memories will fade eventually. What’s organic will be replaced by what others will tell her about her spitfire of an older brother.
She can hear Judith’s excited shrieking from downstairs and a loud crash a couple seconds later. She pulls out of the kiss clumsily and their foreheads bump together which sends both of them into a fit of laughter.
“Rick?” She smiles softly once they’ve both calmed down. He turns toward her expectantly eyes filled with bliss. He looks at her with total adoration and beard messy and unkempt bead head and all he’s still stunningly gorgeous.
“Rick there’s something we need to talk about..” she starts leaning back to fish the tests out of her pocket and there’s a louder crash and shrill crying from downstairs.
“We better go check on her.” Rick sighs and she takes his hand and lets him lead her downstairs.
Michonne misses the days when they first arrived in Alexandria. When the others had been so suspicious of the Alexandrians good intentions that they’d all slept dogpiled together in Rick and Michonne's living room. But she’s also grateful to have her own space. It was only when the others left Michonne and Rick alone in the house that their relationship flourished. She certainly doesn’t miss waking in the middle of the night to the sound of Eugene’s rattling snores.
When she reaches the landing she can see Ezekiel and Carol sitting at the long table her boots in his lap. They’re drinking coffee and watching Henry dole out cookies to Rosita and Eugene who are arguing about something to do with the plans for a windmill. Tara is comforting a crying Gracie and her girlfriend is bouncing a clearly upset Judith on her knee who immediately brightens when she sees her parents walking downstairs.
“Dad! Momma!” She babbles ecstatically bounding over to them.
“Hi baby” Michonne coos picking the squealing toddler up with her free hand. Judith giggles and fiddles with a shell in her dreadlock.
“Morning Michonne. Rosita and I have been debating on the proper method of acquiring the lumber of a adequate caliber necessary to build our windmill.” Eugene yells (much too excited for lumber gathering tactics) and Rosita groans.
“Coffees by the stove Michonne” Carol calls helpfully taking a long sip from her cup.
“Hope the trip over wasn’t too bad Carol?” Rick asks as Michonne hands Judith over to him so she can make her way over to the coffee.
“Not at all. We used some of the sanctuary’s ethanol shipment and it worked wonderfully” Ezekiel cuts in.
“Glad to hear it!” Rosita interjects looking pleased “I was worried it wouldn’t turn out.”
Michonne pours herself a mug and grabs one for Rick without a second thought. She takes her coffee black but knows her boyfriend enjoys a little cream and sugar in his. Gracie pulls at the corner of her shirt and Michonne spills some coffee on her pants, startled.
“Can I have some Aunt Michonne?” Gracie is about a year younger than Judith but she’s already so articulate it’s a little scary.
“No honey coffee is for big kids” Tara laughs and scoops the younger girl up mouthing a sorry to Michonne as she goes. Gracie’s been staying in Alexandria with Tara and her girlfriend until Aaron gets back on his feet. He thought it would be best to have someone else look after the toddler until he got used to maneuvering the hilltop with one arm.
Gabriel’s bell begins begins to chime and everyone starts to gather up their drinks and walk to the door.
“Judy go grab a picture book for church ok?” Rick says setting the little girl down on her feet. Judith runs off for her bedroom Gracie close behind. Michonne hands Rick his coffee and each takes a sip.
“Guess we’re gonna have to finish these on the way” Michonne smiles and takes his hand.
“Oh shit no one brought Negan breakfast” Rick remembers groaning. Before Michonne can answer Judith and Gracie are back, holding stuffed toys and picture books.
“Well you girls look loaded up!” Michonne teases
“Gracie come on sweetie we want to get a good seat at church!” Tara’s girlfriend calls from the front door. Gracie gives Judith a hug and walks over to the two women. Michonne’s family is the last to leave.
“I’ll go bring him a tray. You two save me a seat” Michonne decides suddenly after they’ve walked outside.
“You sure you don’t want me to do it? Or we can make the man wait a bit. Not like he has anywhere to be” Rick jokes
“No I don’t mind” Michonne shrugs and kisses both her daughter and her boyfriend on the cheek before walking back into her house.
Eugene’s spilled crumbs and a bit of his coffee on the couch. She takes a minute to clean that before she goes into the kitchen to load up Negans tray. Carol’s got a few cookies left and Michonne looks for a burnt one she can afford to miss but finds them perfect as always. They bring the jailbird his coffee black and if he doesn’t like it that way he’s never said anything. She puts a boiled egg on the tray and a little of the dried fruit from their cupboard along with the cookie and coffee and thinks that should do it.
By the time she’s back on the porch Rick and Judith have disappeared around the corner. Negan’s cell is half a block or so away from their house and it’s right on the route to church.
She takes the keys from the man guarding and braces herself for the musty smell inside.
“What’s good Michonne!” Negan calls from the cell down the stairs.
“Lucky guess or are have you memorized the way our feet sound?” She wonders sarcastically
“Little bit of both. Damn bell woke me up and I thought I heard the breakfast club pass through. Didn’t hear you though.” He answers snarky voice forever a little gravelly from when Rick had slit his throat.
She comes the rest of the way downstairs and he’s stretched out on his cot. He smirks at her when she pushes the tray inside.
“More of those cookies? Fucking score! Gotta be a couple months since you’ve brought me one. Baker not local?” He asks talking through a mouthful of crumbs.
“No she’s not. I’ll pass on your compliment though.” Michonne replies nonchalantly as she can manage. He takes the mug and the dried fruit off the tray and chucks it between the bars roughly. The cheap metal hits the concrete and Michonne knows there’s gonna be a dent.
She rolls her eyes annoyed but thoroughly unsurprised by his antics and leans down to pick it up. As she does one of the sticks falls out her back pocket right into Negan’s sightline. She shoves it back into her jeans as quickly as she can but it’s to late. The damage is done He takes a long slurp on his coffee and stares at her.
“Who’s expecting?” He chuckles
“None of your business.” She snaps back
“Bet it’s the Mexican chick She looks like a CATCH Negan yells after her as she scoops the tray up and walks up the stairs. Michonne's not even out of the door before she’s angry at herself for letting his petty jabs affect her.
She doubts the man guarding outside heard much of the conversation from outside the thick concrete walls but Michonne’s never had much of a poker face.
“Are you ok Michonne?” He asks clearly concerned. She smiles warmly and hands him the keys.
“You know how Negan is.” She explains hoping she doesn’t sound as shaken as she feels
“Don’t let him get to you.” The guard sighs. “I think he picks fights because he’s bored. Whatever he said..” he trails off.
“Thanks…” She says over her shoulder trying to place his name and failing.
“Tim” He says clearly recognizing the dilemma.
“Sorry! Of course. Thanks Tim”
“No problem. Don’t feel bad about the name thing. I just got here a couple months ago. My wife, Ava and I we were living at the sanctuary when she got pregnant. Heard Alexandria had a doctor and I wanted to make sure she didn’t have complications.” He explains
“Yes Siddiq’s been really helpful to a lot of the parents here. I know your wife and baby will have the best care” Michonne replies.
“Siddiq did the best he can. We’re luckier than most. Ava’s fine but our daughter didn’t make it. Problem with the placenta in the third trimester. We have an ultrasound machine but..There’s no guarantee we could have saved her before the collapse but anything’s more of a risk in this world.” He tells her.
“I’m so sorry about your daughter hope things work out for you and your wife. If Negan ever gets to be too much find Rick and I and we’ll give you some time off” She gives him a pat and the shoulder and heads off for the church.
Mass will be wrapping up by the time she get there but she thinks the trip is worth it anyways anyways. To walk through Alexandria and see what they’ve built in such a short time. Whether it’s solar panels or a new gazebo she’s proud of how far the community has come. There’s a section of houses they never rebuilt after the bombing. Instead they used the empty space for garden plots. They grow tomatoes, cilantro, squash, and even a strawberry bush. It’s one of Michonne's favorite places in Alexandria.
The fresh smell and feel reminds her of the peaceful interlude between Andrea’s death and the horrors of the prison flu. She remembers long days out scavenging, bringing comic books back for Carl. She remembers secretly watching Rick gardening and chuckling at the way he always wore earbuds to block out the growling from the fences. Michonne remembers watching but rarely approaching. She’d only become close to Rick after the siege when they faced the next tragedy.
Sometimes she worried that the ONLY thing the peaceful times were was an interlude between the tragedies. Searching so long for terminus and being so terribly wrong about what they’d find inside. The reunion at Gabriel's church right before Bob died. Finding Aaron and Eric and safety in Alexandria right before they faced the herd that killed Jesse and Deanna. Rick and Michonne finally finding each other and Sasha and Rosita and Maggie losing Glenn and Abraham in one fell swoop. The powerful feeling that came with the decision to fight Negan met almost immediately with Carl’s death.
It had been a year and a half and Michonne still couldn’t let herself accept that they were gonna be ok. That the baby she was gonna have could grow up safely. Not in the old world with air conditioned public schools and summer trips to the beach and Disney land. Not with TV shows that left terrible cliff hangers before the next episode and afternoon traffic and fancy Chinese restaurants.
Her baby would grow up in this new world of learning to read from scavenged children’s books and old movies to watch on Friday nights. Defense classes with Rosita and helping in the garden and making homemade spaghetti sauce. Trips outside the walls that would become a right of passage to the Alexandrian children that had never known anywhere else. Her baby would never know high school dances and long lines at Kmart but they would know love and Michonne didn’t think that was such a bad life after all.
She sits by the curb outside the church so she can hear the joyful notes of the last hymn and soon afterwards everyone comes filing out. Gracie and Judith run out first holding hands with Rick and the others not far behind. Gabriel is out last, walking next to Jadis. Jadis is smiling and tucking her hair between her ears absentmindedly as trust talk. Michonne wonders, amused if something is going on between them.
“Rick can you come over here for a second!” She calls and he brisk walks over to where she’s sitting.
“How did things go with Negan?” He asks. She pats the curb next her and he sits down.
“Same as always. But that’s not what I want to talk to you about.” She brushes the topic aside and takes a deep breath.
“Are you ok?” He asks cupping her face. She sees so much confusion in those gorgeous blue eyes.
“I’m ok Rick. We’re all ok. We’re gonna be fine. This place is going to be so beautiful.” Michonne feels teardrops rolling down her cheeks as she talks. He wipes a tear off the side of her face and frowns.
“Of course we are Michonne. But what’s going on?” He asks again brows furrowed
“I’m pregnant.” She says simply and it feels freeing. Michonne smiles at him with watery eyes.
“Are you sure? How do you know?” He asks sounding a little worried but she can see the grin slowly sliding onto his face She pulls out the tests and hands him two.
“Completely” She smiles watching his face light up as he takes in the results.
He grabs her face and kisses her roughly and they both forget they’re still in public if only for a few moments.
Michonne worries so much. About her inability to sit still. About Maggie and the fragile balance they have with the saviors. She’s always been so worried about when the next tragedy will arrive but now she resolves to immerse herself in the interlude they’ve found together. Come next what will this moment is close to perfection.