eenie meenie miney moe

[thesamurai]

Who: Michonne and YOU
Where: around the mansion
When: June 1
Rating: PG-13 maybe? Probably? Or R, we just don't know. WE NOW KNOW.
Summary: Michonne left for a canon update and is back just in time to not be IT.
The Story:

main entrance/foyer/whatever it's called

[She's going to kill Negan. The same way she killed the Governor, she's going to take her katana and run it straight through his heart. And if he kills her first with that fucking bat, she knows Rick will kill him. Bound with her hands behind her back, she subtly glances down the line of all of them on their knees, feeling rage seize in her gut when Negan gets close to Carl. Clenching her jaw, she listens to him go on and on, and she knows, one look at Rick and she knows, someone's going to die. This isn't a joke, this isn't an idle threat. One of them is about to meet the end of a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire.

The rage fades to fear, something she hasn't felt since Carl was shot in the face, and she's shaking as Negan counts them down, using a child's rhyme to taunt them all. When he points at her with the bat, Michonne looks at him defiantly, but as he picks she closes her eyes, squeezes them shut for a moment, too afraid to see who it is before needing to know. But then she's on her knees in Wonderland, inside the mansion. She knows exactly where she is, and air leaves her lungs in a loud, guttural cry as she pitches forward, hands still tied behind her back, a sob wracking her frame with her forehead touching the ground. Someone's about to die and she's back here. Safe.

Pulling herself together she clumsily stands, taking a deep breath and looking around. One of her locs has been crudely cut from her head, but aside from that (and her restrained hands), she looks about the same as she did when she left. She just needs a little help with the ropes.]

video message sent from the bar (action optional)

[She doesn't go back to her room just yet, instead she goes where she knows people will be, people she can surround herself with and know she's safe. She settles in with tequila, starting a video message. It's recording for a good minute before she finds her words.]

I left. That's the second time it's happened in less than a year. But, I'm back now, and as per usual, nothing good happened, so. You need me, I'm in the bar.

[She wants to see the people she calls friends, family. Right now though, she just can't make it room to room.]

Comments

[thesamurai]

[She knew eventually she'd need to tell him about how it is for her all over again, and now seems about as good a time as any.]

I come from the end of the world. Which sounds dramatic. I guess it is. There was a uh...a virus. Some kind of sickness, a lot of people got sick. Most of them died. And then...they came back. Didn't stay dead.

[Either she won't need to go into more detail, or he'll get it, so she waits to see which route they're taking.]

[readytocomply]

[Bucky swallows, and maybe the idea of people not staying dead could sound like a good thing, but he got the feeling that it wasn't. He nods to show that he understands enough that she doesn't have to tell him more unless she wants to.]

Then you showed up here?

[He wonders if it was a good change. Bucky hasn't been here long, but he's heard of the events and mirrors. Maybe she had people back home she'd rather be with, end of the world or not.]

[thesamurai]

Then I showed up here.

[She confirms what he says as she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth.]

Thing is, the dead are dangerous. They eat people alive and if there's anything left after you die, you come back too. Continue the cycle. But they're slow. You're not in danger unless you don't pay attention, or let yourself get surrounded.

[She explains only to make the next point.]

It's people. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a life or death situation because of a person. Right before I got back here, I was on my knees with my family. Waiting for a man decide who he was gonna beat to death just to prove a point. That he's in charge.

[readytocomply]

[It was always people.

Every war, every fight, every bomb, it always starts in the same place. Bucky'd had the chance to see both sides of how people could be, but he's witnessed far more of the worse bits recently that it's left him a little jaded. Someone had to be in control, be the authority, have the most money, material possessions, or knowledge, there was always something someone was willing to do anything for.

Not even the end of the world could spare Michonne and her family from that, and it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.]

He'll get what's coming to him. [It won't lessen how she might feel now or how hard it is to know she came back here while that was happening, but it's the only thing he's knows with any certainty.] Bullies always get theirs in the end.

I don't know if it's God. Fate. Something I know nothing about, but he will. If not by your hand, then someone else's.

[thesamurai]

It's going to be my hand. He's killing someone in my family. It'll be me.

[Or maybe it'll be Rick. Maybe Daryl if he's not the one dead. Or Maggie if it's Glenn, or vice versa. Hell, maybe they'll all take turns. But she knows before the end of it, Negan's going to have some one on one time with her katana.]

I was a lawyer before everything. Believed in...justice and the law, and good people and bad people. Black and white. Nothing's like that anymore. Maybe it never was.

[readytocomply]

I don't know if I'm the best person to give advice.

[Bucky's own views on right and wrong, justice and law, good people and bad people, were all twisted up inside his head. Sometimes he'd think he'd know what the right thing to do is and then he'd get tossed into the middle of something that threw all his progress off.]

It's hard to know what to do or what not to do. I just focus on something that's real. Something that I don't doubt.

[A person. People. A place. It could be anything.]

[thesamurai]

Crazy as it sounds, I don't doubt this. Being in a magical fucking place where the world didn't end. I don't doubt that I'm here and this is happening.

[Maybe that is crazy. This, out of everything, should feel like the waking nightmare, where things change daily and maybe you're safe today but you're not tomorrow. And yet, this somehow feels more tangible than the dead walking and people murdering at will.]

But I know eventually I have to go back to what seems like the same unreal disaster playing out every day.

[This probably isn't going to be a fair question, but she's had a lot to drink, and this is what happens when she drinks. Maybe he's not always sure of his own morals, but he's here, and he's listening, at least.]

Is that good or bad or just selfish? To want to be here instead of there?

[readytocomply]

It's how you survive.

[Bucky couldn't tell her if it was good or bad or selfish, he just didn't know. He wants to say that it's probably a little of all of them, but that's not comforting and she wasn't here asking him for the hard truth. He'd probably mess it up anyways if he tried. He settles for something in between.]

It's never that simple. Or easy. Each day we have to make decisions that might break or change us. [He stretches his legs out, folds his arm over his chest.] We do the best we can to make it.

If this place gives you the chance to recover, even if it's short, then you take it and don't feel bad about it.

[thesamurai]

[She nods slowly, his words making sense through the haze of booze as she takes a deep breath, letting it out on a long sigh.]

Then I'm taking. As much as this place'll give.

[The longer she's back, she thinks, the more the guilt will dissipate.]

You adjusting?