Author's Note: Join me on my very first fanfiction journey. This will be a multi-chapter story with a slooooow build, from introduction to whatever lies ahead between Rick and Michonne in an AU full of mystery and adventure and tragedy and healing, so I'm hoping to hook my fellow Richonne lovers. Please be patient as I lay the foundation for this story, and since this is my very first time writing fanfiction, reviews and feedback is very much appreciated. Please enjoy!

I'm nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody too? - Emily Dickinson

Seven Months Since The Turn

Day 213

The last fleeting moments of death-like sleep ended, the darkness terminated. Michonne's sleepy eyes fluttered open to early morning daylight creeping past papery curtains, the apricity heating her exposed skin. She shielded her vision from the brightness, pleasantly groggy from sleep as she stretched her body and basked in the afterglow of a good night's rest.

At last, she'd slept through the night completely. She couldn't recall the last time she had enjoyed the pleasure of deep, dreamless sleep. The inky blackness and silence of it.

No nightmares. No insomnia.

Just empty, restful slumber.

She yawned and looked up at the ceiling, suddenly recalling where she was, ruining her short-lived moment of peace. She sat up with a start, her hair whipping about, a few of her tresses hitting her sharply in the nose. Grabbing her sword from the end table beside the couch, she quickly unsheathed it, holding it with steady hands, her bladed friend ready to defend her.

The sound of her sword fleeing from its sheath cut through the silent air in the room, causing her sleeping friend to wake promptly and frantically. He bumped his head on the underside of the glass coffee table next to where he had slept on the floor, crying out.

"Shit!" he yelled. He leapt to his feet, still donning chunky hiking boots that sounded with the stomps of his abrupt rising. He clutched his wounded head and threw a vexed glare in Michonne's direction, his blue-green eyes squinted in frustration at her as she sat on the couch with her sword ready, her body frozen, her eyes darting about, searching the room frantically. "Jesus Christ, woman! The hell was all that for?!"

In his moment of startle, he had forgotten she was like this.

Paranoid. Leery. Waiting for something, for anything, to happen.

He softened, not hesitating a second more to retrieve his black crossbow from the floor and walk about the living room, checking the front door, then the kitchen, the bathroom and the tiny bedrooms, along with the closets in the small home they'd sought respite in the previous evening. He returned after his search, flopping down on the couch next to her.

"Hey," he said gently in his low, scratchy voice, trying his best not to startle her. "I cleared it. Ev'rything's fine. Don't scare me like that."

Michonne exhaled slowly, her lips pursing, her stiff shoulders at last relaxing. She lowered her sword and sheathed it as her heartbeat steadied to a normal pace, her breathing following suit.

"I didn't mean to wake you, Daryl," she said, her voice murmurous as she stared at the carpeted floor, the tufts of fabric nestled between her toes. "Sometimes I forget that I can't… Sometimes I wish I didn't have to worry about -" She stopped before she could finish; metaphorically zipping her lips, locking her secret away in a vault buried somewhere in her mind and scowling again, refusing to say anymore, annoyed with her near blubbering admission.

That was unlike me, she thought. I don't need to tell him those things. I don't need to tell anyone these things.

"I gotcha," Daryl said, nodding. She knew he was reassuring her, letting her know he had her back if something happened.

She knew that. She knew she could depend on him.

Shifting on the couch, she turned to face him as he spoke. He was sitting uncomfortably close to her and she couldn't begin understand why. He was a stand-offish man; that she knew. She met his gaze and saw a trickle of crimson blood weep from somewhere hidden in his greasy hair, slipping from his scalp, down his forehead and settling in his brow.

"You hit your head," she said, reaching out to him, changing the topic of conversation. Daryl stood up swiftly, awkwardly, avoiding her touch. He tenderly pressed his hand to his forehead, examining the bloody evidence of his injury.

"I ain't even notice," he said, turning and leaving, heading towards the bathroom. Michonne followed closely behind, leaving her sword on the couch. "Don't worry, I got it," he grumbled, hearing her trailing footsteps on the creaking floorboards. He opened the medicine cabinet and fiddled with the miscellaneous toiletries. "It's your damn fault I hit my head to begin with. Don't need no help."

He found some disinfectant spray, removing the green cap and aiming it at his wound, squirting himself with it and grimacing from the sting of the spray. "Shit!," he yelled. He chucked the bottle at the mirror and it bounced off of its surface, landing with a few clatters on the floor at his feet. Michonne stifled a giggle through her fingers from the doorway, prompting a menacing glare from her frustrated friend. She was unthreatened by it, relishing in her momentary seconds of enjoyed laughter.

"Hush," she said. She joined him in front of the mirror. "Look at me," she ordered. Daryl turned to her, avoiding her eyes and looking down at his feet as she cleaned away the blood with the cleanest towel she could find hanging in the the cramped bathroom. She took a small bandage from a drawer and covered the cut nestled in his hair as best as she could. "You'll be fine. Don't be such a baby." Daryl pushed her away with a shove of the shoulder.

"Shut up," he grumbled. "I don't need you takin' care of me all the time." He looked back at her, frowning. "And for God sake, put some fuckin' clothes on."

Michonne's eyes widened.

She'd forgotten that she'd woken up in the middle of the night and had taken her pants off to get comfortable as she slept, her bare legs hidden beneath her fleece blanket. She was wearing only purple panties and a brown v-neck t-shirt, her long legs bare and visible. Her face warmed.

"Thanks a lot!," she called after him as he walked away. She could hear his laughter as he retreated into the kitchen in search of food. Michonne scurried back to the couch, retrieving her black jeans and slipping them on before deciding to take a stroll through the rooms around her.

She enjoyed doing this; exploring the homes they found. Attempting to get a sense of who the people were that had lived there, the people who spent their lives under the very roof she stood beneath before everything came crashing down around them.

The quaint home they had slept in for the night was messy and unkempt, the way many houses were now, disheveled and left in ruins after the Turn, families ransacking everything salvageable before fleeing to God knows where in hopes that everything would be okay. That this nightmare would be over soon. Leaving behind dirty floors, dusty old sofa sets and willowy, faded drapes. Worn house shoes and forgotten toys.

They'd stripped family photos from the wall, absent smiles, blank spaces between the paintings of generic sunsets and forest mountains; reminiscent of Bob Ross pieces. The last snapshots of the people they knew; gone now. Their moments of happiness missing from their once prideful places. Snapshots captured as they celebrated Christmases and birthdays around dining room tables full of food. Vacations and marriages to nostalgically recollect years into the future.

Times when the biggest problems families like this faced were late bills, defiant teenagers sneaking out late at night, and the struggles of careers; promotions, stress, making ends meet.

None of that mattered anymore. Nothing in comparison to the struggles of the world now.

Who would have ever thought that the dead would come back to life and feast on the flesh of the living? That that would be the way the world ended?

Michonne wasn't at all surprised at how accustomed she had grown to this way of life. It almost felt as though she was made for it, and it for her. She was a survivor. Perhaps she always had been. She almost felt sorry for the families that lived in homes like this; knowing they might not have made it. But the world was for the strong now. For people who could adapt, people who could fight until their very last breath.

She was one of those very people. No matter what she went through, no matter what the world threw at her next, she was never going to stop fighting.

Michonne sighed, completing her tour. She sauntered into the kitchen, finding Daryl eating old corn flakes out the box with filthy hands, spilling flakes on the floor around his booted feet.

"We oughta head out," he muttered. "We slept in later'n usual, I think. We'll go the same way we were going yesterday, through the woods. It might take us 'bout half a day to find any houses to stay in for the night, so we better get goin'." He reached out, offering Michonne some stale cereal, crumbs stuck to his lips and facial hair. She declined with a shake of her head and he snorted at her in response, shaking the box at her some more.

"Eat," he ordered, "I don't need you passin' out on me." She rolled her eyes and snatched the box from his grip, shoving a couple handfuls into her mouth and chewing furiously. She knew he was right; she needed the calories. She loved to eat but food was often scarce as of late and she was reluctant to partake if she wasn't ravenous

"There," she said, "Now, let's go." She handed the rest of the corn flakes back to Daryl. He removed the bag from its box and stuffed it into his backpack, along with a few cans of beans and vegetables they were lucky enough to find in the cupboards.

This had been their routine for about three weeks now. Travel by day, seek intermission from their voyage in the evenings and rest at night in a small house. Rummage for food and venture out again at the break of dawn.

They were headed for the coast of Georgia, to St. Mary's and then, once they could aquire a suitable boat, to Cumberland Island. Michonne had lived in St. Mary's as a child and her parents still lived there before the Turn. She'd been to Cumberland Island a handful of times, on multiple trips and vacations over her lifetime and she adored being there.

But she doubted she would find her parents when she got to St. Mary's.

They're probably long gone, she thought, grieving anew from the very thought of it.

But the island might be safe...and something she wanted desperately was waiting there for her.

Though her journey to the coast was not for sentimental reasons, being back near her hometown gave her the slightest glimmer of hope. She'd been happy there as a youngster and she was thirsty for that bittersweet flavor of nostalgia, even if it left a sour taste in her wanting mouth. She wanted to feel something, anything other than this redundant cycle of anxiety and hidden sorrow that the world had left her with.

Anything other than the nightmares...the flashbacks.

At least she didn't have to be alone now. Michonne thought she could fair well on her own. She had traveled solo for two months, a solitary wanderer, isolated inside her tortured mind, the camouflage she pulled behind her as her only company. She felt as though she did not deserve the fellowship of others, that she deserved to be by herself. She thought for weeks that she needed no one, that she'd be alone forever.

Just a nobody, maundering amongst the walking dead.

Another monster.

But one day, in the midst of the coldest week of the winter... someone needed her. Someone temporarily distracted her from her misery and kept her thoughts on the present.

She'd found Daryl curled up in a corner on the floor in an abandoned house in Sandersville, battling a fever brought on by an infection from a gunshot wound. He'd been shot in the calf and could barely walk, much too disoriented to be traveling. He pleaded with her to leave him, yelled at her to go away and let him be. He called her every name in the book in hopes that she would turn away and leave him... but she couldn't.

She wouldn't.

Perhaps she did crave companionship. Perhaps she didn't want to be alone anymore, talking to someone who was no longer with her, whom she ached for every passing second. Perhaps she needed the sound of another voice to occupy the deafening silence.

Whatever it was that compelled her to stay brought her back to the present for awhile, tucking her past away into a flimsy envelope that would surely reopen again soon.

Michonne helped him. She could tell that he wasn't a bad person. He was brazen and aggressive but not once did he try to harm her and she knew he was a good man. She could see it, hiding behind the grief in his cyan eyes.

She nursed him back to health. Kept him warm. Went on runs to find him food and scavenge medicine. The bullet that wounded him had gone clean through, so fortunately for Daryl, no fragments needed to be removed. Michonne wondered who had shot him; if anyone was after him, if she needed to be worried for her safety.

She cleaned the infection, draining the pus from the swollen wound, applying ointment and giving him antibiotics she'd found on a run. She was suprised at how natural it felt to tend to a wounded person, how good she was at it and how well it all turned out. But it must have been agonizing for Daryl and Michonne felt awful for him. She didn't even know him and her heart swelled with sympathy.

He alternated between biting down on his fist and sobbing quietly, his face turned away from her, ashamed at his display of emotions as she cleaned away the infection as best she could. She bandaged the wound with the fabric of some of her old t-shirts and kept him fed and hydrated. In a day, his fever was gone and a few days later he was no longer feeling feeble. Soon enough, he began to speak to her. He hadn't talked to anyone in weeks, he told her, and everything came out at once, almost as though he couldn't help himself.

He had been with his older brother since the Turn. For months they'd wandered from place to place, surviving somehow, just trying to make it long enough to see another day. But now his brother was gone. He'd been bitten during a struggle and Daryl had to put him down, leaving him in an unbearable state of grief and bitter anger.

From then on, he'd been on his own and two day before Michonne found him, he'd been chased by a group of armed men. With no idea of their intentions and as no match to fight the six of them, he'd fled. In his retreat, he was shot in the leg, limping away for hours until he found the small house where Michonne had discovered him, resting for two days as his condition worsened.

He was just another lone survivor.

Just like her.

Someone who had experienced pain and loss just as she had. And once she pushed her paranoia aside, she knew she could trust him. Seeing him at his weakest moment made them close. Forced together somehow, their fellowship was all they had and they reluctantly accepted it.

Something urged Michonne to tell him of her plan to go to the coast and, with nothing more to do, he had asked to accompany her. He needed the companionship just as much as she had. She'd thought perhaps the presence of someone else would put the nightmares and flashbacks at bay, would keep her from talking to herself.

But it didn't.

And it was because she knew she needed to face her demons. Now or never or her predicament would continue to torment her.

Michonne searched through the house one final time for any goodies left behind before she and Daryl left the small house, donning their coats to protect themselves against the cold air. They headed southeast into the woods, continuing their long journey to the coast. Hopefully, they could get through the day uninterrupted and find a house to spend the night in. Each day that passed made Michonne more anxious. It was hard to contain her emotions but she did, biting her tongue, distracting her racing mind with calming thoughts. It would all be over soon enough. She couldn't wait to see Cumberland Island on the horizon. To push her dilemma aside and stomp it into the dirt. To finally move on.

Though she had been sociable before the Turn, she had not been in the mood to converse often anymore. Meeting Daryl and nursing him back to health had changed that a bit. She was still quiet but... she had a friend.

She couldn't believe that for the first time since she'd ventured out on her own... she actually had a friend.

But she hoped for no more distractions. His company was enough for her to deal with. Indeed, he was indeed a skilled survivor. An expert at navigating, an experienced tracker and hunter; a useful companion.

Intuitive and skeptical.

Just like her.

Michonne knew she was lucky to have found him but, like everyone, he had his flaws. He was a difficult man to understand, the toll the new world took from him leaving him aggressively and shamelessly emotional. He often had outbursts for no apparent reason, loud and angry at everyone, at anything, but most of the time he kept to himself. Lost in his own thoughts.

Just like her.

But he was a good man. Maybe it was destined that their paths should cross and now that she had backup, she longed to get to the coast as soon as possible, no obstacles, no more diversions.

The yearning to get the Cumberland Island kept her awake occasionally, kept her warm when she did slept, kept her blood pumping, her mind racing. Her eyes searching...

She was ready.