It was a close call. Sitting in the back of the room with a bowl you would own, but they didn't know. Closing on my back I feel safe at times. Certain emblems tell me it's time, serpents in my mind…
Rick Grimes is staring.
Staring at the woman who is gone but is there. He knows she should not be there. Should not lure his gaze from stocking the trunk with gun supplies and onto a more favorable distance. But in spite of what should and should not be, she does.
And Rick stares.
As the forest's clear to see, so is Rick Grimes's wife. The white dress on a slim figure. A cool smile on the face framed by chestnut hair. And pallid cheekbones, embedded in warmth. Warmth even in death.
"You see something?"
There's a ripple in the white. Rick blinks and she's back.
But so is someone else.
The smoky female voice hauls Grimes's focus from the not-there wife and to the woman who is.
"I know you see things," she says. Her lips purse, a thought between them. "People."
Rick arches an eyebrow.
And how the hell do you know that?
As Deputy Sheriff made Survival Leader, Rick has encountered his share of types. People. He's gotten apt at reading them too. After all, one has to know folk's intentions before intention forms the action. The ache at his shoulder is raw reminder of that. Still Rick saw Morgan's blade-clenching fist was set on bringing pain. He just wasn't swift enough to stop it.
But Michonne? She's a peculiar one. Rick can never read her actions, intentions. Just who is she? A foe with an agenda under that unfazed gaze? Or the friend, an ally, whatever Rick considers the people who flicker into his life until the Unnatural snatch them away.
Rick hardly concerns himself with this foe-ally getting snatched away, though. The mulish Michonne isn't going nowhere. Hell, if walkers had sense in their one-track brains, he thinks they'd run from her. Rick remembers the first time he's seen Michonne. Fists clenched around the prison gates, Walkers flanking her sides, and a bullet in the leg.
Michonne, Michonne, Rick thinks on an absent shake of the head.
Like a cat, she evades the odds.
Like a cat, she evades him.
While Rick's jaw is lax, Michonne's is the exact opposite. Stern-chinned with keen eyes all too aware of his every moment. He doesn't doubt she notes the minute throb of his pulse, fighting the unshaven skin at his throat. Why does she stare like this? As if she's peeling him apart, layer by layer.
She won't get a confession, that's for certain.
Why yes, I do see people. In fact my dead wife is standing by those woods right now. Wave hello.
Rick looks away from Michonne. Let her stare all she wants. She isn't getting to his head. Into his head. The there and not-there wife already fills the position and at least she never points out his crazy.
