What If I Had

twenty five - on the fritz

I hear the door open.
My heart stops, sinking down to my stomach.
"Gwen?"

He shut the door after him, following in behind him was a silence brought on by just the sheer suddenness of the situation. It didn't feel awkward, at all. It couldn't. That was impossible for us.

It came to me first like an illusion. Like I was imagining the man I was seeing before me.

Thinking my eyes were deceiving me, I reacted accordingly. The first few seconds of staring at him in the doorway really had me questioning my sanity.

Welp, so much for the plan. I bet it would've looked pretty good animated, but... the episode was fantastic, nothing will ever top that.

After that pause in time, after feeling myself fall back down to reality with my feet gracing the earth, it was like an instinctual reaction to yelp and launch myself across the garage.

"Don't ever put us through that shit again." I banged my fist on his chest, gripping his lab coat with my free hand. I whimpered. My face naturally buried itself into his teal shirt, staining it with the warm tears that stained my eyes. "I know you had to do what you did, but..." I'm so pathetic. I can't even keep my voice from shaking. I had this all planned out in my head. Ignoring my vague plan in the last chapter, that was all if I had actually rescued him. I'd have this smug little pep in my step when he'd face me, but... evidently, he escaped all on his own.

I felt his long arms wrap themselves around my shoulders, pulling me in closer. His chest moved up and down gracefully, feeling his exhale blow down on the top of my head and move some my hair in the process. He sounded exhausted. I knew he already had his welcome back with the rest of the family. I almost didn't realize he had been running a hand through my hair, tugging at locks of it closer to my face to pull them out of the way. Rick wanted to get a better look at me. He slid both of his hands onto my cheeks, softly raising my head up to face him.

"I've missed your hugs so much."

"I've missed you so much. I'll never leave again, baby."

My hands found themselves on top of Rick's, my thumb caressing the back of his hands. I broke our gaze, shutting my eyes and furrowing my eyebrows together. "Somehow..." I breathed. "I feel like you're just saying that."

The warm sensation of Rick's hands on my face went cold. I opened my eyes up cautiously, one eye at a time, to see Rick at his counter aligning dead flies into a row to reveal his secret stashes of weaponry and gadgets.

Well.

Somehow I've seen the episode and yet couldn't have used that to my advantage... what an inconvenience.

"I can only do my best to promise you something from happening because you're technically my wife, but not at all, and I care about you. But--"

"But you're just saying it to keep me sedated it until the next time you pull that crap. Did I hit the mark?"

Rick stopped what he was doing, getting up from the bottom cupboards to turn around with a look on his face that really questioned what he had actually heard. "That crap I pulled was the most necessary thing I had to do. You make me giving myself up to the confederation sound like the most selfish thing I've ever done."

I scoffed, folding my arms over my chest before tucking some of my hair behind my ears and out of my face. "I never made it out that way," Rick flashed me a look over his shoulder. "... at least I didn't mean to." I shrugged, joining him at his little work station. "You can't blame me for taking that promise as an insincere gesture. You did abandon our daughter once..."