Saint Peter With An Axe

Something I'd never, ever, pictured, was Rick Grimes standing in front of me again.

I thought I was hallucinating, honestly. Up there on the top floor of that crumbling hospital - smoke in the air, the grunts of the Whisperers still echoing in my ears, blood sticking to my boots. I looked up... and he was just there.

Rick goddamn Grimes.

Not a ghost. Not a memory. Flesh and blood and dirt and scars. Standing there like a man who had no business being alive.

I'd frozen. My mind refused to compute it. We'd seen the bridge explode. We'd mourned him. We'd built lives without him. And yet - there he stood.

It didn't make a single fucking bit of sense.

My knees gave out. Hit the ground hard. Hands shaking, throat too thick to speak.

Daryl didn't move either save for grasping my hand on instinct to steady himself. I don't think he even blinked.

He just laid there on that floor, locked in place, jaw tight enough to splinter bone. Not until Rick stepped forward with a smirk - extending a hand - did something shift.

He stared at Rick's outstretched hand for a few moments longer, still transfixed with disbelief, then... he took it.

Rick pulled him to his feet, and the pair locked their arms around each other with a force that looked like it could shatter bone. No words. Just the kind of white-knuckled hug that makes the world go quiet. Like gravity stilled just for them.

Brief. Intense. Raw. But so incredibly, beautifully real. You could feel the history in it - the loss, the guilt, the love. Everything they'd never got to say, pressed between them in that moment.

Brothers. Together once more.

We were happy to see Michonne too, of course - but Rick being back knocked the air out of everything. It made the world tilt, and neither me nor Daryl quite knew how to stand straight again in those moments.

I was the one who finally managed a word, quiet and breathy.

"How?"

Rick only shook his head, pulling me into my own hug. "It's a long goddamn story."

I didn't doubt that for a second.

Behind us, Gabriel groaned as he came to, blinking through the bruises blooming across his face. His gaze landed on Rick... and the man laughed.

Actually laughed.

In his shock, confusion and let's face it - concussion - he must have genuinely believed we were all dead, that this was the afterlife. He called Rick "Saint Peter with an axe," then mumbled something about how he thought heaven would've smelled better.

It was so absurd that we all cracked up just for a moment - blood-soaked, filthy, traumatized - and still, we laughed.

But it was fleeting... because this wasn't over.

The stairwell was clear now, thank God. So the five of us managed to avoid elevator shaft gymnastics or a rerun of Daryl and mine's ventilation adventure. We bolted down the stairs, desperate to find the kids - Gabriel mainly being dragged along by Daryl and I.

Only to learn the plan to draw the horde off the cliff had failed spectacularly.

Of course it had. What ever goes to plan?

Merle radioed the second my feet left that bottom step, his voice strained, growling that Whisperers had attacked the wagon. Blown the axle clean off. They were stranded in the thick of it now. No clean exit. No backup.

None of us hesitated.

Not Daryl and I, who were still in a hazy state of disbelief. Not Rick, who'd just returned from the dead, or Michonne who'd been back ten minutes and already found herself in the middle of a fight. And not even Gabriel - whose head injury meant he should probably have gone to seek safety with the others instead.

When we found the horde, we didn't know where the others were, and we didn't wait to figure it out.

Whisperers slithered through the dead like phantoms. But we'd learned. Learned how they moved. How their masks gaped around the eyes. How they let their sleeves hang lower so they could disguise the weapons they clutched. We hunted them like wolves - no fear, no mercy. It was our only option.

It was madness - dangerous as hell.

But somehow, it worked.

I don't know what it says about us that we survived it by running straight into the storm. But there was no other way. We couldn't keep living in dread, waiting for the next ambush, the next bloodbath.

It ended that day. Because we ended it.

That huge freak Beta was the last.

I watched Daryl force two knives through both of his eyes at once - silent, brutal and certain. Beta staggered back, his mask slipping, and fell into the dirt with a sick smile still twisted across his dead face like a final insult.

Even in death, the bastard looked smug.

I had a weird moment when I looked at him then, like I'd seen his face somewhere before. He seemed oddly familiar, but I couldn't place him - couldn't work it out.

Whoever he had been, he couldn't continue his and Alpha's reign of terror any more. The Whisperers were gone, and slowly, the horde were being led toward that cliff edge. It was about to be over. It really was about to be over.

And it was then that Daryl finally found his voice for the first time since Rick's reappearance. He looked up at me, fresh blood coating his skin - though thankfully not his - and his eyes said everything he was feeling before his mouth did.

"Got both my brothers back."

His voice didn't sound like his. Like he was saying it just to believe it. And God, I understood. Because I didn't believe it either.

I stepped closer, reaching up and cupping his face in both of my hands, my thumbs brushing his cheeks, my lips curving despite the exhaustion.

"Yeah, baby." I smiled. "You did."

He was on me in a second, his arms squeezing me tight, his mouth on mine. The relief, the disbelief, the goddamn confusion of it all merged with our kiss as we let the heat of it - the comfort we'd always found in each other - steady both of us.

Seeing Rick walk through those woods afterwards - toward Merle, toward Maggie and Glenn and Jerry - Michonne laughing behind him in amusement like a kid again - it was surreal. He still had his axe in one hand, blood on his shirt, and that old steady fire in his eyes like none of it had ever left him.

Everyone was stunned. Questions flew - but none of them mattered. Not right now. The priority was finding the others.

Getting back to the kids.

Poor Luke trotted along beside us looking confused as hell. It had escaped us that he had no idea who Rick was - why everybody was staring at him like they'd seen a ghost...

Carol and Lydia caught up shortly after, breathless and covered in grime, having managed to draw the tail end of the horde over the ridge. A near-suicide mission, but it worked.

Carol blurted a string of stunned expletives when she laid eyes on Rick, her brain malfunctioning just like mine and Daryl's had.

"Shit. Goddamn. Fuck... What?"

"Nice to see you too, Carol." Rick had smirked. "I like the hair."

Carol ran a hand through her long locks absently as her eyes darted from Rick, to Michonne, to Daryl and I with a silent "What the actual fuck?"

But there still wasn't time for Rick to explain. Not yet.

When we managed to find the rest of the group, I didn't even remember running. I just remember collapsing in front of Briar and Sawyer, Daryl and I clutching them so hard we could've cracked something. Sawyer squirmed, and in the end, Briar told us she couldn't breathe - only then did we loosen our grip.

Then, we watched the Grimes reunion unfold.

Rick's face when he locked eyes with his now bearded, fully grown son was priceless. And Carl just stared at his dad.

Just... stared.

Like something in him stopped working, like he was too afraid to let himself believe what he was seeing... Until Rick opened his arms, and Carl broke - ran like a kid again. He slammed into Rick's chest, fists twisted into his shirt like if he let go, he'd wake up from the dream he'd probably had a thousand times over. And Rick held his son like he never wanted to breathe without him again.

Judith was quieter. She approached slowly - only having been young when Rick went away - studying his face like she was trying to piece together a story. But when she hugged him, it was fierce, silent and unforgettable. Like their bond was greater than the scarce memories she held.

When she stepped back, still bewildered, Rick spotted the boy hiding behind Michonne's leg.

"Is that... him?"

Michonne smiled at him warmly. "Yeah, it is... This is your son."

RJ stepped forward, gave a small, serious nod. "Hi."

Rick crouched down, trying to smile through the sweet awkwardness of such a bizarre situation, while RJ stood like a soldier meeting a general. Polite, calm and deeply unimpressed.

It would take time.

Later, once the initial rush had settled, Rick made his way over to us.

Briar's eyes narrowed as he approached.

"Who's that man?" she whispered inquisitively.

Daryl leaned close to her ear, voice soft but choked. "S'daddy's other brother."

She squinted at him. "Uncle Rick?"

"Yeah," Daryl smiled, brushing hair from her face. "Uncle Rick."

I could see the cogs whirring in her little head. I thought she was going to blurt out something about how he was meant to be dead, but instead just came a calm and casual:

"I thought he'd look like Uncle Merle..."

I watched as Daryl proudly introduced her and Sawyer to Rick, my chest feeling like it was going to burst. I knew how much it had hurt Daryl that Rick would never get to meet his children, or see the incredible father he'd turned into.

But now that dream was somehow being made true.

The journey back to Alexandria was... strange.

I'd dreamt about this - about what it might feel like once it was over. The end of the Whisperers, the horde, the waiting-for-death feeling that had wrapped itself around our throats like smoke. I'd imagined it would be like when we finally ended the Saviors, but it's different. Even bigger. Because this time, our children had caught in the crossfire.

And things didn't just feel weird just because we knew the Whisperers were gone, but because in the best possible way, it felt like we were carrying ghosts home with us.

Rick Grimes, who we'd spent years grieving, remembering... Michonne, who we thought wouldn't return for a long time, if she made it back at all...

Our people were also somehow all here, battered but breathing, even a still very obviously concussed Gabriel who kept asking Rick when he'd get to meet "the big guy?"

It all felt too perfect, which meant it probably wouldn't last.

But nobody said that out loud. Not yet. We just let ourselves have it. The warmth. The illusion of safety. The fragile lie of peace. And when the gates shut behind us, Rick finally revealed where the hell he'd been.

A chopper. A city. Experiments. The years spent trapped like a lab rat. He told us about the island a few days from Oceanside. How he barely made it there after many already-failed escape attempts... And how, by some twisted miracle, the person that appeared on the shore right as he was about to pass out from exhaustion, was Michonne.

He made it clear straight away that he had no interest in reprising a leadership role, not after everything - which was lucky really, because things had changed around here... We had the council now, and people generally looked to Daryl in times of chaos (even though he still felt quietly uncomfortable with it.)

We didn't need one leader anymore. We'd banded together to make Alexandria work. And now Rick Grimes would get to be a part of.

A/N: A shorter chapter than usual, but I thought it deserved to stand alone 🙂

Hope you enjoyed! ❤️