"How long do you think y'all will be?" Rick asked as we walked onto the porch of our temporary home.
"For a couple bags it shouldn't be too long" Michonne answered.
"It's 8:15 now..."
"We'll be back by noon" Michonne quickly answers.
Rick turns his attention to me and Carl, "You all stay safe. Follow her lead, you understand?"
"I understand" I answer but Carl just nods his head.
"Hey," Rick says, noticing Carl's change in behavior, "You okay?"
"Yeah I'm just uh hungry"
Rick starts to walk back into the house. "See you in a couple hours" he calls.
The three of us start on our walk. I look back to see Rick watching so I wave to him, letting him know everything will be okay.
We walk past a couple of houses before we even start to go in and check for supplies. We check about 4 different houses and find okay stuff, nothing too good, nothing terrible. The whole time we are on the run no one speaks and it's getting kind of awkward so I try to start some conversation.
"Find anything good?" I ask Carl who just walked out of the 5th house we have checked.
He doesn't respond.
Michonne catches onto what I'm trying to do and adds, "Any candy bars? Comic books? Crazy cheese?"
When Michonne says "Crazy Cheese" it catches Carl's attention. "Huh?" he asks.
Michonne then pulls a bottle out of her bag, "bam! Crazy Cheese! I found it still sealed and everything. Now i'll be nice and let you have the first pull."
"No thanks" Carl replies.
"You sure?"
"I'm fine" Carl says walking a little faster than the rest of us.
Michonne stops, "You don't seem fine"
Carl freezes and turns around to face Michonne, "I'm just tried, okay?" and storms off again.
Michonne glances over at me and I give her a "He's not fine" kind of look. She nods and runs after Carl. She sprays all the Crazy Cheese into her mouth and starts to make noises like a walker in hopes to make Carl laugh but he doesn't. He storms off once again.
I catch up to Michonne and whisper, "At least you tried."
The two of us walk onto the porch of the 6th home to meet Carl. Michonne breaks the silence, "I'm sorry, I'm not very good at making boys your age laugh"
"I was laughing, inside" Carl replies.
We both give Carl a look and Michonne gets back to knocking on the door. "Toddlers found me funny. 2 to 3 year olds" she adds.
Toddlers? Why would Michonne ever be with toddlers?
Confused, I ask, "What do you mean toddlers?"
Michonne turns around to look at the two of us, "I had a 3 year old son and he happened to find me extremely funny". But before either of us could reply she drew her katana and walked into the house, leaving me and Carl too shocked to move.
Eventually we followed her into the house and we all set down the heavy bags we were carrying. "That feels good" I say. I had been carrying that bag for hours now and it was getting very tiring.
Ignoring my comment Michonne starts to list off things we need, "We need food, batteries, water. In that order."
Carl walks up to Michonne, "Why didn't you yell m you had a kid? Did you have any other? What was his name? Were you married?"
I nudge Carl with my elbow to try to get him to stop. Obviously her child wasn't here anymore and I didn't want to make Michonne upset. It's hard losing family members and it must be even harder to lose your child.
But Michonne didn't seem to mind. "I'll answer one questin from the two of you, one room at a time and only after we've cleared it." she replied and walked into the other room.
The two of us followed her into the room to find her looking at a painting. "What was your sons name?" Carl blurts.
"I said after" Michonne replies without even looking back at us.
Suddenly I came up with an idea. "These are actually two sepeate rooms and we've already cleared this one already so..." I tell Michonne.
Carl looks over at me and a small smile creeps onto his face. I feel my heart skip a beat and those stupid tingles run down my body.
what was happening to me?
"Andre" Michonne turns around to look at us, "His name was Andre Anthony"
"Did you have any other kids?" Carl blurts again.
"Rules of the game my friend!" Michonne yells from the hallway.
Carl walked into the hallway and I followed. "So did you?" Carl repeated. Shit, he was being really pushy. I really didn't want to hurt Michonne anymore.
"You know you could be a spy or a cop" Michonne replies very casually, not at all affected by Carl being so invasive.
I laugh and flick his hat, "He's already the Sheriff"
"That's true" Michonne smiles, " and no. One was enough for me and Andre was a handful like you" she says as she points at Carl. She turns her attention towards me, "Now if I had a kid like Finn, I might have two"
I punch the boy next to me jokingly, "You hear that Sheriff?"
"Yeah I heard it" he laughed and punched me a bit lighter. "Does this hallway count as a room?"
"If you can find something we can use" Michonne says looking at another painting.
Both me and Cal run down the hallway in hopes we find something good we can use. I open some drawers and find nothing so Carl runs over and picks up a painting. "It's the only thing we could find. Does it count?" Carl tells Michonne.
"Technically yes" she laughs and takes the painting.
Carl walks into the other room, eager to know more about Michonne and waves for us to follow. Michonne sets down the painting and follows but I hang back. To curious to see what the painting looks like I peel off the crinkly white paper and turn it around.
It's a painting of a beautiful girl but her eyes are crossed out with what looks like blood. There's also various writing on the painting in the same blood. I shudder at the horrific painting and drop it. It hits the ground with a bang but no one seems to notice.
I look down the hallway where Carl found the painting and notice the door at the end is ajar. I quietly make my way down the hallway, gun drawn. Once I reach the door I slowly turn the knob and walk in. I look around and notice the room I'm in is a small bathroom with no signs of struggle. It is completely clean and untouched from scavengers. I walk farther into the bathroom and notice another door. I slowly open it and it leads into a blue room.
The room is filled with toys of children of different ages. I relax my hand from my gun and walk into the children's playroom. All the toys and cute posters are covered in cobwebs. They've been untouched for so long. I keep walking and find a pink door at the other end of the room. I slowly open the door not bothering to draw my gun. At first all I notice is the pinkness of the room, the pink walls, pink toys, pink curtains, etc. but when I turn my head I freeze.
There, on the two pink beds are four decaying bodies, each one of them dressed up in children's pajamas. A couple of them even have comic books laying on them. I feel a tear run down my cheek and I turn the look around the room. In the corner, there's another body. This one is sitting in a rocking chair, her brains blown out onto the wall.
"Finn?" I hear Carl yell from the other room.
I quickly made my way out of the pink room and closed the door. "Yeah?" I say putting my back to the door.
"Everything ok?" Carl asks, noticing my hesitation.
"Yeah everything is fine" I lie.
Carl quickly notices I'm lying and blurts, "What's in there?".
Michonne walks into the room and notices the tension between the two of us. "Is everything okay?" she asked the two of us.
Carl steps forward, "There's a baby in there"
I push myself closer to the room. I couldn't let either of them see that especially after what has happened to the both of them. "It's a dog." I blurt.
I stared at the two of them and realize they both know I'm lying. They both know I am trying to protect them from what's inside the pink room. I nod my head letting them know their suspicions were true. I see Michonne's face soften and Carl look at his feet.
"My dad let me name her" Carl says, breaking the silence. He looks up at me with his sorrow filled blue eyes and then back at Michonne, "Maybe her, Andre, and Claire are together somewhere."
My heart pains when I hear the boy mention my sister. I look and my feet and feel a tear roll down my cheek. I hadn't accepted my sister's death yet, I thought she could make it but maybe she didn't. Maybe she didn't make it.
I feel two arms wrap around my body and I look up to find Carl, hugging me. I bury my face into his flannel covered shoulder and I feel his head rest on mine. My body shivers at his touch. I want to stay wrapped in his embrace forever but he lets go. I look into the boy's eyes and he smiles. He reaches for his sheriff hat and takes it off, putting it on my head.
"There's a new sheriff in town" Michonne whispers through her tears.
We all laugh and smile. "A damn good one too" Carl adds.
XXX
awwww she gets to wear his sheriff's hat! He rarely trusts anyone with that so good job Finn! ;)
I love the Michonne, Carl, and Finn friendship. I find it really cute and I will write more about it since I love it so much.
I also want to write more about the friendship Finn has with Rick. They're just so similar I feel like they would be great friends.
Finally, Finn has finally started to realize her feelings for her best friend! Let's see how that turns out ;)