AN: Here we go, the final chapter of this one.

It's taken me a very long time to write this one, and I'm sorry for that. There have been a lot of times that I've almost just stopped because it wasn't coming for one reason or another. I wanted to see it through, though, and I hope to expand my Michandrea writing into other stories and other territory (though they're already commonly a "secondary couple" in other fics I write).

Still, I thank you for sticking with me and for reading this far if you have.

I hope you enjoy this chapter and enjoyed the story! Let me know what you think!

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Andrea couldn't hear much around her because the sound of her blood in her veins, her rapid breathing, and her heart pounding to keep up with her was very much drowning out everything else. She was grateful, even if Woodbury itself had been something of a bust, for the medicine that she'd received there. This was her first opportunity to test out her healing body, but she could feel that the strength she'd almost lost entirely was returning to her, even if it wasn't back one percent.

Michonne was several feet ahead of her, katana in hand, with her attention set on clearing their path from whatever Walkers they might encounter.

Out of Woodbury? The first stop had been a house. They'd ransacked the place and come up with nothing more than a few candles for light—candles that weren't going to help you if you wanted to move quickly. The next house, luckily enough, had a rather clunky and heavy kerosene lamp that had at least provided them with enough light to see the Walkers, even if it had basically made it so that Andrea couldn't make any move to kill them because she was illuminating the area.

The third had given them the benefit of a few lightweight flashlights with batteries that still worked.

And it was those flashlights that had gotten them through until now—until morning when the sun was starting to do its natural job of illuminating the landscape around them.

They were still travelling in bursts of speed and walking in intervals, even though it had been at least two hours since their last encounter with anyone.

"There's no need to run, ladies," the voice had snarled. They'd heard it before they'd had any indication of where it might be coming from or who, in particular, it might belong to.

Before they'd heard it, though, they'd both been expecting it.

You could leave Woodbury whenever you wanted, but just as they'd suspected, nobody really lived to tell the tale of having left the town.

Until now.

Four of the Governor's henchmen had come together. Four men, in the dark, in the woods, all of them armed. Andrea hadn't thought it was very good odds, and if Michonne hadn't been there, it probably wouldn't have ended well for her.

But Michonne immediately had transformed into the woman that she'd been when Andrea met her. She'd taken on the hard appearance of the warrior woman that Andrea had come for so long to associate with her. Gone from her, for the time being, had been any trace of the woman that had broken down in a small room in a dangerous town and told Andrea her story. Gone had been the woman that had, in her own way, begged Andrea not to leave her—to stay with her.

All at once, she'd replaced the slightly vulnerable woman she'd allowed to be seen with the ferocious face that Andrea had feared—except this time it wasn't a face that she was showing to Andrea to keep her at a distance, it was a face that she was showing to others to let Andrea know that she wanted her to stay, as close as she could, and that she'd do whatever she had to do to make sure that nobody kept that from happening.

She'd attacked them. Stunned, Andrea had watched as Michonne had basically locked up with the men, all of them unknown other than in feature to Andrea, and started to fight.

As a reaction, Andrea had done what she could to keep the others off them—Michonne having clearly chosen the man she took as the strongest of the group as her first opponent—and for the very first time in her life, Andrea had killed a man.

Caught up in her own overwhelming feelings of fear, she hadn't even felt sorry for the man—little more than a boy—in the moment that she'd killed him. She hadn't felt sorry, either, for the second that she'd killed.

And she hadn't felt sorry for the one that Michonne killed or the one that, together, they allowed one of the approaching Walkers to destroy while he tried to take their lives.

It had only been, looking over the carnage, that Andrea had felt something—and even now she wasn't sure what it was that she felt because it was such a complex blending of her emotions.

She had been sorry that they'd had to die. She'd been sorry that she'd been the one to kill some of them. She'd felt relieved that she and Michonne, a few cuts and scratches and a broken finger or two aside, had survived the encounter and that—since none of them would return to Woodbury and it would take time to realize what their absence meant—the death of the men had bought them the time that they'd need to escape and put distance between themselves and those who might mean to do them harm.

And she'd almost felt, as well, like a part of her had died, even if she couldn't name the part that she only knew she had at the moment that she walked away from the bodies, leaving them for the birds to pick clean.

They ran as hard and fast as they could until they couldn't run anymore. Then they stopped and walked, trudging along with tired and sore muscles, until they could breathe enough to run again. Each burst of speed of slower than the last. Each burst covered less ground than the one before. Each time they slowed to a walk, it took longer to recover.

But determination was putting distance between where they were now and where they had begun what seemed like a million years ago, even if it had only been a matter of hours.

In her mind, Andrea almost laughed at the situation as they ran toward some unknown destination with a determination that she hadn't felt since the death of Amy had threatened to make her numb to everything.

They'd spent so long—the whole time they'd been travelling together—arguing over where they would go. They'd wasted hours arguing over some final destination, some end of the line stop that they hoped to achieve. They'd—and Andrea really knew that it had mostly been her—put so much importance into where they would go and where they would stop.

And now?

Now, along with whatever part of her, that she couldn't identify, that had died when she'd killed those men, the part of her that required a final destination had died. Now she realized that she didn't need to know where they were going. She didn't need to know where they'd end up. They might make it all the way to California. They might sit with their feet in the Pacific Ocean. Or they might turn and head somewhere else—maybe a cabin in Colorado where the Walkers couldn't climb the mountains surrounding them.

Or they might not live to see the sunset on some lonesome Georgia road haunted by the ruins of a world that they'd never really see again and slowly forgot with the passing of each hour.

But it didn't really matter.

None of it really even mattered.

All that mattered was that Michonne was several feet ahead of her, katana in hand, with her attention set on clearing their path from whatever Walkers they might encounter.

And they would keep going, together.

When Michonne's pounding footfalls slowed, Andrea knew that it was time to take another walking break. She slowed her steps as well—though a little later than her companion—so that she could match her and fall into silent pacing beside her.

Her throat burned from thirst, her body ached from the pounding of her feet hitting the ground and her muscles straining against activity that they weren't prepared to do, and her lungs felt like they might explode.

But she felt alive.

She felt more alive than she could remember feeling. The sun, as it came up, seemed brighter than she remembered the sun being. It's warmth seemed nicer on her skin. She felt aware of color and of the slight breeze that felt cooler than it might have normally felt because it blew against the sweat that drenched her body and held her clothes tighter to her than normal.

Even the pain made her feel alive.

She wasn't pushing Michonne to speak. In fact, Andrea wasn't certain that she could speak if she wanted to. The effort of breathing was too great, at the moment, to allow for much chat, even if they wanted it.

As she walked, Andrea swung one of the sacks from her back to the front of her body and burrowed through to come up with one of the water bottles that they had—one of the last ones that wasn't empty. She twisted off the cap, offering the bottle to Michonne before she ever tasted the water.

Michonne pushed it back at her, the gesture expected by now, and Andrea drank the water carefully. Her desire was to gulp the entire bottle, but she was careful to make sure that she drank very little, measuring as much as she could to be sure that she took no more water than she offered Michonne.

"Finish it," she breathed to her companion as she passed her the bottle.

Michonne looked at her, still keeping up her steps, and Andrea nodded her head gently in her direction to tell her that she meant what she said.

Michonne drank it down.

"That's the last of it," Andrea said when Michonne passed her the bottle back.

"There's got to be a creek around here somewhere," Michonne said, her voice croaking out a little despite her recent intake of water. "We'll take to the woods? See if we can't find something? Food?"

"We've got enough for two days," Andrea said. "Three if we're careful."

Michonne hummed.

"We'll find a house," she said. "Find some water. Tonight? We'll eat like kings on everything we can find there—tomorrow? We'll look to restock."

Andrea smiled a little at the thought, surprised at how good the plan sounded to her in the moment.

"Let's start looking for the water?" She asked, gesturing toward the side of the road where they'd have to wade through kudzu to even hope of finding anything besides kudzu.

She thought she saw something, maybe, of a hint of a smile play on Michonne's lips at the suggestion that they follow through with her plan—beginning immediately. Andrea bit back her own smile at the thought.

The warrior woman was still there, but now she didn't have to be the only one that was there.

Now there was someone more.

Michonne led the way into the brushy, overgrown area that they were hoping would lead to some kind of creek or natural spring. Andrea stepped in after her and Michonne reached a hand back, probably without realizing it, and grabbed Andrea's elbow as a way of supporting her while she stepped over the uneven ground.

Andrea smiled at her.

"It's OK, Mich," Andrea said. "I can handle it."

Michonne looked a little embarrassed, but she didn't move her hand from its spot on Andrea's arm.

"Maybe you can," she said. "But—it doesn't mean I won't try to help."

Andrea accepted it for what it was worth—she accepted it for what she felt like it meant, even if it meant that she was reading too much into things. And she didn't ask Michonne to explain herself.

"Do we know where we are?" Andrea asked, walking along with Michonne through the somewhat jungle they'd found themselves in.

Michonne hummed.

"Still in Georgia," Michonne said. "I think? I hope?"

"But we're far enough away, right?" Andrea asked.

"I don't think we're worth trying to track this far," Michonne said. "Besides—we stuck to pavement so far…I don't know how they'd follow us."

"I don't know why they would," Andrea commented.

"People have always been weird about protecting what they have," Michonne responded. "About—about protecting their power? Their possessions? That hasn't changed. I saw it a lot with clients. It's just that now? There's no law that says you can't kill someone because you thought they were trying to take your shit."

Andrea laughed to herself.

It was, in some ways, human kind reduced to a simple statement. Laws kept people from killing other people over things that didn't even really matter. And now? They were gone. Even if they'd failed, and they certainly had, when they were in place, now there wasn't even the comfort of having the hope that they'd do what they were supposed to do to protect you.

"So…let's find a house tonight? Even if we have to walk a little farther to avoid a barn or a…shed or whatever? A real house, Mich?" Andrea asked after a moment.

"I think we shouldn't have any trouble finding one," Michonne said. "But—we should move on tomorrow. We shouldn't stay. I don't think they'll follow us this far, but…"

"Yeah," Andrea interjected quickly, cutting off Michonne so that she didn't feel the need to explain—a feeling Andrea knew that she was responsible for because she so often asked Michonne to explain everything to her. "Tomorrow we'll move on. Find another house, right? Maybe—a store? Look for some weapons. Something better than this knife."

Michonne broke the conversation with something of a satisfied growl in her throat and Andrea looked around quickly, trying to figure out to what to attribute the sound. Michonne gestured and Andrea realized that, not far ahead of them, was a slope in the ground—and beyond that, a muddy trickle of water. It was evidence of more water if they dug down a little—and muddy water could be boiled to be clean water.

Andrea rushed ahead, toward the water, and dropped the bag on the ground beside her. She burrowed the bottles out and unscrewed the lids to prepare them for filling before she started digging the hole deeper with her hands to reveal more water.

Michonne eased down with less enthusiasm next to her and joined in creating a hole deep enough to fill the bottles with ease.

"Andrea…" Michonne said after a moment, once Andrea was working on filling the bottles with the muddy liquid.

Andrea glanced at her and hummed to spur her on.

"We don't have to look for an island," Michonne said. "And—if we find another Woodbury, we can give it a try. But—we need some direction. From here? We need some direction to know where to begin. So—where do you want to go?"

Andrea swallowed and then she offered Michonne a smile before she leaned on her knees, bringing herself closer to Michonne, and planted a soft kiss on the corner of her mouth—the closest place she could reach.

"Anywhere," Andrea said. "As long as I'm with you? I'm following you. Wherever you're going? I'll be right there—close by you."