Setting: Mid S5, Team Family is still on the road to DC. Aaron was delayed by the weather and hasn't yet found the right moment to approach them.

***

"How is it out there?" Carol asked, keeping her voice low.

Daryl answered from his post by the window, keeping watch through a gap in the makeshift curtains, "There's a lot of 'em out and about. Haven't noticed us yet. We'd better get moving before they do. Maybe sneak out the back."

Carol looked to Michonne and Glenn, who each nodded in agreement. After weeks of sleeping on the ground, one night in a small abandoned house wasn't much, but it would have to be enough. It was safer to stay on the move.

"Where's Rick?" Glenn asked, checking that everyone was accounted for.

"Still sleeping, I think," Carl answered. He was feeding Judith some crushed up peaches from the trees in the backyard.

Michonne spoke up, "I'll get him."

She walked past the dirty, weary faces of her friends. Eugene's nose was buried in a paperback. Sasha was cleaning her rifle again. Maggie was staring into space with that same hollowness in her eyes that she'd had since Atlanta.

When she pushed open the door to the back room, Michonne was mildly surprised to see that Rick was sleeping. The man rarely closed his eyes for more than two hours at a time and he or Daryl were almost always the first ones up in the morning.

Then again, Michonne thought, it wasn't surprising after all that the exhaustion was finally catching up with him. She couldn't remember seeing him lay down since the night in the barn, after the storm, and that was two days ago now.

Rick lay on his side, using his bent arm for a pillow. His gun belt was on the floor beside the bed, ready at a moment's notice.

"Rick," Michonne called softly, reluctant to wake him.

When he didn't stir, she placed a light hand on his arm, calling again, "Rick?"

This time he moved, but only enough to roll onto his back. Michonne sat down on the edge of the bed beside him. She could hear the subdued shuffling of the rest of the group in the other room, getting ready to move on, but still she hesitated.

Rick's face looked worried and closed off, even in sleep. It made her heart ache. He carried such a burden and never had time to stop and parse it into manageable pieces. There was never time to heal.

'Rest in peace. Now get up and go to war,' his words from that dark night in the old barn echoed in her mind.

'This is how we survive...We tell ourselves that we are the walking dead.'

"I don't want you to die," Michonne whispered.

She knew better than anyone what it felt like to walk through the world like a dead person, trailing her pain behind her on chains. It was no way to live.

The warrior woman leaned forward and tenderly kissed the lips of the man who had helped bring her back to life. Maybe she could give a little bit of her light back to him.

"Michonne?" Rick blinked awake, startled and vulnerable and flustered all at once.

"I didn't want to wake you, but we've gotta get going," Michonne said, standing up and crossing the room.

She paused at the door and glanced back to see Rick sitting up in bed, a bewildered expression on his face.

"Uh, okay," he was all he could think to say.

Michonne turned and went to rejoin the others, but not before leaving him with a glimpse of a smile. Maybe this day would turn out better than the last.