Disclaimer: Don't own

Summary: Shane doesn't need to dream. AU of 2.11.

Title taken from Daddy Yankee.

The woods are silent. Midday and nothing, lifeless as a corpse. Dead quiet even for January, leaves stripped from all the trees. They stand upright, tall and naked, thin and gnarled as twisted bones. They start to resemble fingers the longer he looks. Emaciated hands reaching toward the distant sky.

He shakes his head to clear it. Rubs a hand over his scalp and holds it there, palm flat and open, and warms his skulls. No hair in the middle of the winter is killing him. But, since Otis, his hair doesn't seem to want to grow back.

Shane holds his Glock higher. He tiptoes through a patch of straggly brush that's all wood and prickly roots. He rounds a bend and finds what he's looking for.

Blood dotted through the fallen snow.

Shane takes a breath and it crackles, like ice that shatters—thin beneath a heavy boot.

"Shane," Rick whispers. Gaunt faced and pale, so low on blood, whole ground dirtied behind him. He tries to drag himself, gurgling, on his hands and knees. The back of his shirt clings to him, soaked, and the saliva that bubbles from his mouth is frothy pink. Bullet to the lung and not the heart. "Shane, don't—"

Shane hadn't thought he'd miss.

It's better this way. Rick just has to see.

"Sorry, brother," he says, and his gunshot paints the white snow red.

Shane wakes to faded sunlight filtering thin through the nylon of his tent. His sleeping bag is bunched up below his ankles, kicked off, and he rubs his arms against the autumn chill. He knows why he dreamed of winter.

"Shane," Rick's outline appears outside the door, tip of his shadow falling on Shane's head. No more pale, almost-sun. "It's time."

Finally. Rick and his needing time to think.

Shane rolls up and over, bruised eye and throbbing cheek.

"Oh god oh please," Randal babbles, wracked with tremors that Shane feels beneath his hands. "Please I don't want to die."

He ties the blindfold tight. Wonders, just a little, how the terror in Randall's eyes might gleam. He'd only seen anger in Otis.

"Shh, shh," he whispers. Soft and soothing. He speaks to Randall like he's an animal Shane's about to kill. The comparison is more than appropriate, even if Shane isn't the one allowed to pull the trigger. "It'll be over soon."

Randall sobs louder. He shudders hard against Shane's chest.

He stands back, in a sliver of shadows, away from the glinting if the moon, dull like light reflected by the chain around his neck, and watches Rick raise his gun. He feels excitement. Some pride too. Rick is finally stepping up.

"Do it, dad." He hears Carl's voice, monotone, cold as that bloodied snow in his dream. Carl's voice but not the Carl he's used to. He forgets about Randall and Rick and the Python and drags Carl away by the arm. He lets his anger carry him. His worry. Aching, because if Carl got hurt he doesn't know what he'd do.

"What the hell did I tell you, man? Huh?" he asks, rougher than he means to, and his voice is raw and cracked. Doesn't know what is up with Carl these days. Rick and Lori's child he loves more than himself. "Jesus, Carl."

Turns his eyes back to Rick and Randall. Rick, thin lipped, guilt etching lines into the corners of his mouth. Rick, eyes soft, shoulder sloping. Rick lowering his gun. Rick being the good guy yet again.

Shane won't let that happen.

He grabs Carl by the back of the head. Hides Carl's face in his stomach. Carl struggles, fighting, but Shane won't let up, won't let him look, feels the wet and the heat against his belly when Carl breathes, talks, mantra of Shane let me go I wanna see. He curls his fingers in Carl's hair as Rick glances at them, at Carl, and readies himself again to shoot. Raises the gun that had started to wobble.

Shane gets it. He does. He wouldn't be able to off someone in front of Carl either. Not with Carl staring at him. Those freckles and those wide blue eyes. A little boy pretending to be big.

The bullet enters the middle of Randall's forehead and comes out the back, spray of blood, spurt of brain, gray matter. The gunshot echoes off the wooden rafters, startles a bat nested up high. Carl cringes, pressed against him, and he lets go of Carl's hair enough to let him look. Randall—jaw open, tear streaked cheeks, blood and sweat soaked collar—slumped awkward with his hands behind his back. Nothing fit for kids, and Carl knows it, judging from how he twists away. Carl who is not his son but should be.

"C'mon," he says. Rick joins them, Python holstered, and he looks okay. Shane doesn't see the devastation he expected. "Get your ass back to camp."

They leave together. Shane guiding Carl guiding Rick. Above them the sky is speckled, ink black, with tiny stars. Bright but not enough to lead them.

"Thank you," Rick manages a smile. It's a hollow, broken thing. But Shane will take it all the same.