Author's Note: The usual disclaimer that I do not own any parts of The Walking Dead franchise and no infringement is intended nor profit expected. Spoilers (I guess?) for Season 4 up to the finale.

Here's another Dixonne dabbling that I threw together this week. Again, it's not super polished but it's about as polished as I'm willing to make it. It's mostly canon with a smidge of (hopefully respectful) Beth/Daryl and Rick/Michonne mentions. But the story is all about Daryl and Michonne's connection, past and present (and maybe future). It's a bit moody and sad but hopefully with a few high points.

Enjoy and thanks for reading.

The group walked along the train tracks, somber and numb after what had happened the previous night. Everyone was lost in thought, unwilling to share the dark musings running through their minds. Michonne lamented the veil of sadness surrounding her traveling companions.

Rick had washed the worst of the blood off his body, but with the way he carried himself, they all could tell he still felt dirty and tainted even as he accepted the things he'd been forced to do to protect his family.

Carl's face remained clouded and sullen. He could barely look at his dad much less get close enough for conversation. He trailed the group as they travelled along the path, making sure to keep within a safe range.

Daryl was distant. Drained. It seemed to Michonne that he'd travelled with those men only a short amount of time but the experience clearly had done a number on him. And whatever had happened before preyed on his mind and ate away at it.

Only she maintained some sense of steadiness, albeit a cold calmness. The emotions that had been stirred up in the last few hours were ones she'd already reconciled.

She'd spent most of the night with Carl after giving Rick a bit of guarded attention and ensuring that Daryl was okay. The latter had waved off any serious injury but allowed her to check him over, coiled yet tolerant of her lingering hands. Michonne didn't bother to hide her worry about the both of them but they were grown men, presumably able to handle the demons that had overwhelmed them when all hell broke lose. She instead concerned herself with the boy who thought himself a man but in reality was so ill equipped to process the impact of his trauma, the things he'd seen, the harms he'd endured.

When she'd let him rest against her, she tried to give him the love and strength she would have given her own child; provide comfort that she couldn't to the rest of her friends, near or far or gone. He held onto her as if he needed it too.

Come morning, she'd listened on with Carl while Daryl and Rick made peace with themselves, embracing the dawn of a new day. So much that surrounded them was broken and a few days ago, she would have thought them all just ghosts. Now she saw herself and her companions as survivors doing their best to try and pick up the pieces of what was left to care about.

Rick trudged forward on the train path, determined to keep a steady pace as they headed for the mysterious Terminus. They were all hungry, tired and emotionally gutted. The promise of shelter had its appeal although Michonne remained skeptical.

Trailing Rick a bit, she heard the sounds of Daryl's presence further behind her. He shuffled along, slightly injured and exhausted, yet still as sharp as ever. Outside of the few minutes she'd spent checking him over, she hadn't had a chance to really let it sink in that he was there and that he was okay. She hung back a few steps to walk alongside him.

"Hey," she muttered, careful to keep her voice discrete.

He turned to her, a distraction from scouting their surroundings. "Hey." She could tell that he was favoring his left side a bit but she didn't expect him to complain about it. And he wouldn't expect her to bring attention to it as there was nothing to be done for it anyway. They knew each other well.

"I'm glad you're here," she said, reflecting back to the words he'd spoken to her in earnest recently. It seemed so long ago that he'd said that to her when it had barely been a couple of weeks.

He glanced at her and his eyes softened before turning back in front of him. "Where else would I be?" he mirrored. They let the response sink in. Until a few hours ago, they may as well have been a million miles apart; separated with no way to find each other, blind fortune and tragedy bringing them back together. "Still don't feel real after everything that's happened. Not even with y'all standin' right in front 'a me."

She agreed. "It is the damnedest thing, first to find them and then to find you." He looked over in concern, gleaning that the fall of the prison had left her alone and abandoned, even if only a short time.

They walked in silence for a bit farther before she continued. "About what you said last night? That goes for you too. You're good people, Daryl, even if they weren't. Bad people don't step up and put themselves on the line for anybody else. You did." Michonne recalled having a similar conversation with Merle before he released her to go after the Governor. It chilled her. "You were willing to sacrifice for your family. Rick and Carl wouldn't be here right now if you hadn't done that. Neither would I." It was difficult to read whether her words were having an impact so she tried a different tactic. "Your brother would said the same thing. I didn't think he was good for much, but he was good for that too in the end."

Daryl bit his lips, fingers tightening at the crossbow he held at his shoulder. Michonne could tell she'd hit a nerve. "Last I saw 'a you, he had you on your knees, guns to your back…" He didn't need to finish. "And then last night to see you like that again … finding you only to have you snatched up." His features hardened and he shut down a bit. "I almost lost it when I saw what they were plannin' for y'all. You're right, Rick and Carl are family. And you…"

Michonne nodded. She realized she wasn't family to Daryl. They hadn't known each other long enough. But they were also something quite different to what he shared with everyone else. Something private and unspoken that they'd been dancing around before it all fell apart. Something strong.

With family, there's the ups and downs, the disappointments, the sacrifices and the reconciliations. With her and Daryl it was all trust and instinct, unspoken familiarity and a kind of spiritual recognition. They disagreed but didn't argue. They spent time apart but never grew apart. They accepted each other not because they had to, like with family, but because they wanted to. Like partners.

It hurt her to see the angst that he needlessly carried for what hadn't come to pass. "Hey, we're okay. Or we will be. The point is, you're always gonna be good people to me. To all of us."

Michonne turned to make sure Carl was still close by and the boy looked up and nodded. He'd been keeping his distance as they talked to afford them a little privacy and maybe some for himself too.

"I was with Beth after we left," Daryl mumbled, so quietly she had to lean into him. "Found that shithole shack we holed up in all those times." Daryl spoke of it with the weight of memory, both their old ones and the new ones he made with Beth.

"That moonshine cabin? I hated that place." They both had. It reminded Daryl of the worst parts of his life from before. She simply associated it with their worst runs, the last being where Daryl had told her, in a fit of frustration, that he was going to stop looking for the Governor with her. After that, she'd avoided the place.

Daryl read the disdain in her expression. "Burned that bitch to the ground. Me and Beth did."

Michonne caught something in his eyes as he revealed this and wondered if something had happened between the two. Beth was young and pretty and sweet. And she had a steel to her too, something a lot of people didn't recognize about the girl. And for all of Daryl's seeming superpowers, he could be fragile, especially after a loss. It was an odd pair but one that made some sort of sense, all things considered. If he and the young woman had shared a moment while together, she could understand it. When grief and sorrow take hold, you have to filter in whatever light you can find. And there was a lot of light to Beth—and a lot of sorrow to Daryl.

But mostly she could understand it because she and Daryl had had their moments on the road too.

And those moments had nothing to do with sorrow; rather, what they'd shared together conjured a sense of freedom and kinship and a shared purpose. When they'd fallen together, it was all passion and pleasure, an indulgence to fit their wild spirits while they navigated this mad world as a combined force to be reckoned with. These moments they didn't take back to the prison because it felt too damn precious to expose to the others.

Echoes of those times simmered at the surface after they'd taken on separate roles within their group. And sometimes those feelings would spill over—a steady gaze full of longing here or there, intimate concern manifested in challenge or caution, warmth or anger.

And then they'd lost it all, or so they thought.

Michonne wondered if Daryl's hesitation to continue his story wasn't just about reliving his loss of Beth but perhaps wondering if she and Rick had found a similar connection too; a part of her wanted him to ponder it. It could have happened if the circumstances had tilted that way. However, it was pretty transparent that she'd further bonded with son instead of father.

Daryl let out a deep exhale and it snapped her attention back from thoughts of the past to the dire present with which they were still grappling. "I thought all y'all were dead, or at least that we'd never see you again. Not Beth though 'cause she had hope we'd find you. Kept sayin' you and Rick were out there and we needed to keep on the trail. I was too scared to believe that and was a jerk to her about it; she got me to move past it. Said herself that she wasn't you but she was there and tryin' to make the best 'a things which was more than I was doin'." He turned away to stare off in the distance for a beat. "She was good too and then she was gone."

There was more to it than he was telling but he'd get to it in his own time. Or not. They'd been through too much recently to dig it all up now.

"Had a lot 'a time to think on it and I wanna say I'm sorry for not bein' out there with you." Neither had to mention the specifics of what—and to whom—he was referring. "Shoulda been trackin' him with you and maybe—"

His misplaced guilt served no purpose now. "Stop it. You were where you needed to be. If you were out there you wouldn't have made a lot of people's lives better for a while or seen what a great leader you are. You wouldn't have gotten to know Zach or Tyreese or gotten close to Ms. Richards and her family and given her one last kindness before … everything.

Daryl scoffed. "I could've kept 'em safe by taking that asshole out. So a lot 'a good that does now."

"It did, Daryl. It did a lot of good. Then and now. I'm sorry I wasn't there to see more of it with you. But you didn't cause that sickness that cut our numbers and you didn't cause those fences to come down from that horde." She felt the tension rolling off of him at the reminders of their poor luck. She shared that frustration. "And you didn't let Hershel ride out with you to burn those bodies. It wasn't your weapon that killed him." Daryl faltered in his pace at hearing her forceful words, a peek into the regrets she carried. She gripped her katana and pinched her eyes closed for a second before continuing, pushing away bad images of those last minutes at their home. "You're right, it doesn't matter now because the prison's gone to us and the Governor is dead. He's the man responsible for that, not you. We're still here."

"Are we even sure 'bout that?" Daryl demanded, finding an outlet for his resurfacing anger. "That bastard's like a damn cockroach. He killed all his own people then ran off and found some more fools to finish the job on the rest of us. Who's to say he didn't cut and run?"

Michonne stiffened and her eyes turned cold. She saw Rick ahead of them similarly straighten, having caught part of what Daryl's raised voice had conveyed. "He's dead. End of story," her icy tone revealed. Daryl glanced at her, taking in the serious expression.

"You…"

"Finished it."

He held her gaze, another one of those long assessments where there was so much going on behind those blue eyes that she couldn't put her finger on. She saw satisfaction and pride, maybe a bit of envy. His features hardened as he processed that information and then he let it go—as much as any of them would be able to anyway.

They'd all be haunted by what went down even if they reunited with more of their group, an unlikely scenario yet a nice thought.

But Michonne hadn't intended for her talk with him to further darken their moods. She bumped into him with a smirk pulling at her lips. "I know we both have regrets about how things went down but are you seriously implying that you're a better tracker than me?"

Daryl didn't exactly return the humor but he did relax a bit at hearing that. "Hell yeah, I am. You know it too. Don't get cute." That made her smile. He jabbed her in the side with his elbow and finally cracked a small grin in return, the first she'd seen from him in what seemed like an eternity. She wanted to bask in it like sunshine, her own personal beacon of light in dark times.

They walked on, checking their surroundings for any threat—or any food. Carl continued to brood behind them. But Rick kept a steady pace, finding his center again slowly but surely. Daryl caught her eye and gestured towards their leader before hanging back a little. He'd had his time with Rick and they'd both started to heal as they reconnected. But Daryl was well aware that Michonne had a way with Rick too and the two of them needed to make their own amends on the matter.

And right now, she was the only one keeping it together, being strong so the men around her could process and grieve and refocus. She'd had her crossroads out there on her own when she'd slain that walker horde. Now, she was only concerned with moving forward. When she'd told Rick that she was done taking breaks, she'd been dead serious.

So she let Daryl drift off as she turned her attention to her other friend and offered whatever support she could.

And all the while they walked on, so many complicated miles behind them and a shrouded future in front of them. A future they'd face together.

End