Three against the world

63

Yn pov

Me and Rick ate our food in silence, it was that comfortable silence, it's been a while since we got something like that and it was nice, just the two of us having a meal. I love Carl and Daryl but I haven't had time to bond with them separately properly. "How's Carl doing" I smiled lightly, Rick knew full well how Carl was doing I knew he sent Michonne to check up on him

"Let's not small talk" I picked at my food "you and Michonne's been getting close" Rick put his fork down and looked at me with his brows furrowed "you think I'm doing something with Michonne?" He didn't sound defensive just offended "not physically but maybe emotionally, I noticed after a run with her or a talk you always come here to fix things" Rick sighed "who am I supposed to talk to?" By this point we were both done with our meal, the food half eaten "Daryl, someone in the relationship not out of it, I get she's your friend but what we do really isn't her business" Rick scoffed "and what about you talking to Maggie?" Rick's voice was raised and he got up from the table pacing a bit before leaning his hands on the back of the chair "I don't talk to Maggie about us, I talked to merle once"

He chuckled "like that's any better, talking to a homophobic racist" I cut him off "hey! First off yeah Merles racist I won't dent that but he's not homoeopathic. And yeah I talked to him, the man saved my life when this thing first started and I was alone, you bond with someone Over something like that" Rick sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose, something he always did when he was frustrated and I found adorable "so it's ok you talk to Merle but I can't talk to Michonne" okay he had a point "I didn't tell merle anything about our problems just that your mark was fading" Rick stopped and looked at me concerned "it was fading?" His voice was so gentle and not a lick of anger in it "after Randle and after I told you two about Judith" Rick sighed again, he's been doing that a lot the last hour "we don't even know what it means" he stated "no we don't, scientists don't even know why we have the marks. Humanity didn't have enough time to figure that out before the world went to shit"

The chair made that awful stretching noise when Rick pulled the chair out and creaked when he sat down "they had thousands of years to figure it out" I smiled as he rubbed his forehead, another adorable habit her had that made his curls bounce "not really, the only recorded record of soul marks were around the time they found a tomb called the tomb of Seti, it's speculated the goddess of love was buried there and when they opened it, it cursed humanity or blessed them depending on who you ask" they opened the tomb back in the early 19th hundreds, the whole soulmate thing is new to everyone still.

"We're getting off topic" Rick reminded me "yeah we are'' we both smiled "all I'm saying Rick, is communication, I don't care if it's me or Daryl but don't go to Michonne with our problems'' he nodded "agreed'' Rick went on to talk about his anger issues and how he dealt with them and it made a lot of since now, "do you still blame me for Randle'' he took a moment to think, planning out what he's going to say rather than blowing up "no, I haven't for a long time. I get why you did it, hell I was about too" he paused "what did you do in the military, all you told me was your promotion and your team not about what you do"

No I didn't, it was classified but now the worlds ended I can't see why not "the until was a special ops called reaper. As you can imagine our main job was to eliminate targets, but it was also to research stuff, nothing was consistent. Whatever the government gave us, we were tasked with the field tests while the scientists did the chemical ones, when this whole thing started security got worse and I had to smuggle out a note to Shane to tell him to get Carl away from town as fast as possible, you were in a coma and I only got to see you once with an escort. They could have killed me if they found the note I sent Shane, I'm just glad they didn't find out" Rick leaned back and digested the information, his loving wife and soulmate wasn't the sweet innocent person he thought she was "do you know what caused this"

I shook me head "at first we thought it was some pathogen from space it lined up with one of NASA's space missions but we couldn't find anything linking the two we tried a mutated strain of the parasite that takes over the snails motor function, people call them zombie snails but that didn't work, chemical reaction, we even tried cannibalism to see if it somehow caused a mutation that could spread, than we moved on to a HIV strain because it passes through saliva but that showed nothing. We have no idea what this is or how it started" Rick nodded and looked a little defeated, I think he thought I had an answer "the only thing we know is that it's airborne, that were all infected and to matter how we die we come back"

"How do you know it's airborne" he looked like he was trying to figure out the complicated puzzle "it's the only logical way this thing could infect everyone besides water supply, but we tested water from various places on earth so that was ruled out" the conversation ended there with the heavy weight in the air

"Will sex fix it now?" We both burst out laughing, it was one of those good deep laughs that made your stomach hurt "maybe but if you want sex go to Daryl, it seemed every time we have sex I end up pregnant and I've had nothing but bad luck with giving birth" Ricks smile faltered slightly "yeah, I'm sorry about that, we weren't there for either of them and carl. Man poor Carl '' I nodded. "I thought I was going to die, both times but here in Alexandria was the worst, the house had a few walkers in it and Carl had the twins. I was going to lure them away, if it wasn't for the adrenalin rush I doubt I'd be here" he nodded solemnly "I'll go on a run pick up some condoms'' he paused "we're thinking of a plan to get Daryl out"

"He's fine right now, you and I both know going would risk the kids and Daryl would kill us if anything happened to them, we need to make sure they're safe first" Rick looked conflicted, I was too but I had training for this type of thing he didn't. Rick wanted to storm the place and get his soulmate back "I'll talk with the general and my unit see what we can put together, we might be able to do some stealth recovery mission"