A/N: Thank you all for coming. I've been thinking about this for a while and wasn't sure if I could put it down. I tried and I hope you stick with me through this different yet still the world of TWD. Sort of a slow burn, Richonne has to get to know each other first. Includes all of the TF and no one dies… at least no one of importance.

The setting starts at the farm in season 2 and is twisted straight to hell from there.

For those who've read my other stories, y'all know what's comin'.

Hope you enjoy!

Ps: VO is on hold for now. I'm sorry, I lost my way.

What If… A TWD Tale

Chapter 1

The Farm

"I'm pregnant."

As she spoke those dreaded words, Lori kept her gaze on her boots that were a size too big. Rick kicked at small clumps of dirt and grass as he stepped away, flinging the morning-after pill packet away from him in disgust.

With all the crap that been happening, the world dying, he and his newfound family constantly running and fighting for their lives, she had to go and pull this shit. Not that it was her fault getting pregnant (that takes two) but it's the lies that had him pissed off.

Biting the inside of his cheek, he rushed back over to where she was standing. "Now? You had to do this now? Why didn't you say somethin' before?"

Lori held up her hands while backing up in fear against the thread-bare wooden fences in need of mending, yet no one had the time to mend, "I couldn't tell you. I was scared."

Biting his lip and running a hand through his ever-growing hair, "Scared of what? Why are you acting like I'm gonna hit you? I've never raised a hand to you in all the years I've known you. With all we've been through, you should be one of the baddest bitches there is. You of all people shouldn't be scared of shit… talk!"

Using a shaky hand to push her long dark hair behind an ear, Lori tried again to keep from fessing up, "I was afraid of how you'd react."

All the while they were arguing, Rick kept a vigilant eye out for any stray walkers that might make an appearance near the farm. He'd only caught the end of her sentence when his mind strayed back to when this shit show began:

When he woke up alone in the hospital, he made his way to his house and immediately noticed a couple of things before going on the search for his family. He had his suspicions, but his mission to find them was more important. He'd deal with whatever… after. Once Rick found his family, he didn't have time to deal with what he discovered. There was only time to escape from the camp, the CDC and find someplace where they could be safe.

Then his boy was shot.

That was another incident that held back this talk. Now that Carl was on the mend, they had a safe roof over their heads and enough food to fill their bellies, he was ready to get it over with and wasn't going to wait for Lori to confess.

"Oh, I know why you're afraid. You're scared I'd find out about you and Shane bein' fuck buddies. I caught on when I went straight home from the hospital."

Lori's frantic face fell blank, "What?"

Rick's temperature began to rise over the thoughts and feelings he'd held back since he first saw her when he stepped foot on that mountain camp. He couldn't forget the look of fear she had on her face when she realized that he was back… that he was still alive.

"Did you think I wouldn't figure it out? Did you thank I was that stupid?" He rubbed a hand over his lips before placing them at his waist, "When I looked for you first at home, do you know what I saw?"

Not understanding what he was talking about, she just shook her head.

"You packed clothes for you and Carl. You took photo albums, but you didn't take nothin' else."

Frustrated with how cryptic he was being, "What are you talking about? I took the things that Shane said I needed. People were dying all around us, I didn't think about getting anything else. I didn't have time. Where are you going with this, Rick?"

Sunset was approaching and the air around them was beginning cool down, "Shane told you what to pick up and you didn't have time, you say."

She huffed in frustration, "No, I didn't."

"You're sure?"

She screeched, "Yes, Rick!"

Rick bobbed his head in understanding as he bit his bottom lip, "I was in a coma for like thirty days. I don't remember much but I do remember Shane comin' to visit me. I couldn't say anythin', but I was somehow aware enough to know he was there." He pointed a finger at her, his eyebrow raised, "I don't ever remember seeing you."

Lori, in her sleeveless plaid shirt, defensively folded her wafer-thin arms across her chest and defiantly lifted her chin, "You were in a coma, Rick. Of course, you wouldn't remember seeing me there. After Carl got off from school, we visited you every day."

Nodding his head again, he began pacing around her as she leaned against the fence, "So, what did you do while Carl was in school?"

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't stutter. What. Did. You. Do. While. Carl. Was. In. School?"

Lori looked offended, "What I usually did. I cleaned the house, ran errands, visited my friends and made sure I had dinner on the table."

Ricked stopped pacing, his eyebrows rose to his hairline, "Oh, really? Then the mailman must have still been delivering the mail after you all ran from the city. Cause it was full when I got there. Can you guess what I saw when I looked at the post date?"

"Rick… I- "

"No, no… let me tell you. They were marked with the dates during the time while I was in the hospital. Now how is it that you were cooking and cleaning our house and yet, you never emptied the mailbox? It was right there on the porch. It's not like you had to walk down a long driveway to get it. Can you explain that to me?"

Lori kept her head down.

"That's what I thought. You know what else I saw?" He didn't even bother to wait for an answer. "My safe in the basement full of guns hadn't been opened."

She gasped, frantic, "Rick, why didn't you tell me? Carl could've…"

He waved a dismissive hand to her, "Don't you dare act like you give a fuck about Carl after telling me he's probably better off dead. As for why I didn't tell you, you didn't need to know with you being all dramatic and shit. Shane… Shane knew I had that safe. And if you had been home when the world went to shit and he came and got you… he would have gone down there, opened it up and he would've had weapons to protect you and my son. He wouldn't have just left them there untouched. But he didn't have time, did he? Instead of getting adequately armed and hightailing it out of the city, he gave in to your whining ass to go all the way across town to pick up your clothes and your photo albums. From what I was told, y'all barely made it out of there and got stuck in a traffic jam."

Lori reached her hand out to him and pleaded, "Rick, I'm sorry."

Shaking his head, he backed away from her, "Nah, you can keep it. I really don't care that you slept with Shane. I've accepted that and it's above me now. What I can't accept is how stupid you made me look when I first showed up at camp."

His anger ramped up several notches as he began to yell at her, "Everyone there knew you two were fuckin', yet no one said a got-dang thang to me. Not Carol, not Daryl… fuck!"

He pulled at his hair with both hands in frustration, "Not even you. And, you were my wife! Nope, you took me for a fuck'n idiot. I waited for y'all to say sumthin, but I got nothin'. It's only because we had to fight for our lives against the dead, I was happy my ex-wife and my son were alive. All the while you lied about fucking my best friend… my brother while I was laid up in the hospital and left for dead."

She followed him, "But Shane said you d-…."

He cut her off, "I don't give a fuck about that! I give a fuck that my ex-wife lied to me and continued to lie to me. You let me run around here lookin' foolish. I heard what Andrea said when she called you the queen-bee laying down rules for everybody but yourself. Everythang was just hunky dory for you. You had the husband, the son… now a baby and a boyfriend."

Lori continued to chase after him, "Rick, Andrea is insane."

"Yeah? And so are you. I'm done!"

She sniffed, "Rick, that's not fair. Why do you keep saying 'ex-wife' and 'had a husband'? I'm still here and we're still married."

Rick kept backing away. His intentions were to head back to the farmhouse. He was done talkin'. "You are no longer my wife. It's the apocalypse and there aren't any rules anymore. No courts, no justices. I am divorcing you because I said so." He pulled off his ring and threw it at her.

She stopped in her tracks, shocked. "Rick, you can't do that. What about our baby?"

"Doesn't matter anymore. I will help watch over you and the baby. I'll teach you how to protect yourself and that baby, but my son will be my first priority. You killed whatever feelings I had left for you. If you want more than that, then I'm afraid you're gonna have to go to Shane for it, cause I got nothin' for ya."

He turned around and made his way to walk up the porch steps of Hershel's farmhouse. Shane came walking out the front door as Lori caught up to them.

Shane took one look at Rick's face and Lori's frantic crying and he knew.

He dropped the apple he was eating. He rubbed the back of his dark, short and curly hair while tightening his full lips into a thin line, "Rick, I'm sorry. I should have told you."

"Yeah, you should've. She tell you she was pregnant?" Rick jabbed a thumb back behind him.

Shane's mouth dropped into a soundless 'O' as his look of disbelief went from Rick's stoic face to Lori's tearful one. "No, she didn't. Are you sure? She told me that she couldn't get pregnant because she got her tubes tied."

Both men turned toward Lori, who threw her hands up in the air, "Oh, great… make me the bad guy."

"But that was a lie, Lori. Why would you tell him that?"

Instead of answering the question, she burst into tears and fell to her knees.

Rick just shook his head, "Forever the actress," he said before turning back to who he thought was his best friend and his brother. "You wanna explain this to me? Not about why you fucked her, but why you… you of all people let this go on hangin' between us."

Shane grabbed a hold of his belt and rocked back and forth on his feet, blowing out what seemed like a sigh of relief.

With a voice full of sincerity and remorse, Shane let him know, "Rick, I got no excuse. I fucked up. I had no intention of sleeping with Lori before you got shot. Not once, I swear. When you were in the hospital, every night I came home from visiting you, she was there. She cleaned my house, made dinner for me, said she needed me and that she couldn't make it on her own if no one was there for her."

Tears began to form in the corner of his eyes, which he quickly rubbed away, "I'm sorry, I got caught up… I… I believed her, believed in us. That we'd be a family. When all the shit went down, I vowed to you, I would give my very last breath to protect them."

He stepped closer to Rick, "I've known you most of all my life. You know everythin' about me, who I am, what I do, and I swear to you, I didn't go into this unless I was sure. I knew I was wrong, but I was following my heart. I kept my mouth shut because Lori begged me to keep it quiet. I should've gone with my gut. I've made so many mistakes and I know there's no way I can make it up to you."

Lori's cries had hushed as she listened to Shane's quiet plea.

"I take full responsibility with my part in this. When you came back and she turned her back on me and act like everything we did meant nothing to her, I knew everythin' was over. I'm not gonna stand in between you and your wife. I don't expect you to forgive me and I wouldn't want you to. You have more people with you now that can fight and help protect everyone. So, I know you'll be fine. I'm gonna go."

Rick nodded his head in agreement.

Lori jumped up, "You can't just let him go!"

Both men turned to her in astonishment.

Andrea came running out the door after listening to the whole conversation, she hopped eagerly, "I'll go with you, Shane."

Shane turned around and scratched the curls on his head, "Uh… no. You can't shoot for shit. I'm going out there to deal with the dead and I don't have time to babysit a person that won't follow orders and thinks they can fight when they really can't. You bring drama and I ain't got time for that."

Despite this being one of the worst days of his life, Rick couldn't help let a snort slip out.

He sobered up quickly when Shane dropped a gentle hand on his friend's shoulder, "I'm so sorry, Rick. I wish I had done things differently." He walked over to his car he prepared for travel a couple of weeks back, "If I see you again, I pray you've forgiven me. I love you, bro."

With that, he opened the door and got in. Lori surged ahead, "What about me?"

Shane didn't even acknowledge her. He shut the door and gave Rick one last sad smile before starting the car and roaring off.

The Prison, one year later…

Rick, Glenn, Maggie, Hershel, Daryl, and Merle stood around the table looking at a map of their surrounding area. "There are some shopping malls further up north," Rick pointed to a spot on the map, "We haven't gone that far before but we're running out of supplies and it's getting a little bare around here."

Hershel, fiddling with his crutch adjusted his weight. "Rick, things will be better once the crops start producing. If we can find enough supplies to last until then, we'll be good. Lori and Beth have done a good job taking care of the farm."

Rick dismissed Hershel bringing up his ex-wife's name, "Good for them. I wanna take three with me, Daryl, Merle, and Oscar. The rest of you stay here and protect the prison. We'll follow this route," his finger trailed along the small red line on the page, "and if we have to take a detour, we'll go this way." He pointed to another line on the map.

Daryl spoke up, "We can take the truck in case we find a good haul."

Rick stepped back, his fingers tapping on his Colt, "Yeah… that's the plan."

Rick, Oscar, Daryl, and Merle had reached their destination and found a megastore hidden behind a set of hills and trees. Luckily, it had been untouched by looters. With a wealth of supplies readily available they decided they would leave their own truck, since they had other smaller cars at the prison, and each person could drive one of the eighteen-wheeler trucks abandoned in the warehouse parking lot in the back, giving them more room to haul provisions back home. The store had its own fueling station and had plenty of diesel to fill the gas tanks.

After using one of the forklifts that still worked, they all gathered together to go over their planned route back to base. Everything was going according to plan. They were fortunate not to have run into that many walkers. At least not any more than they could handle.

Rick felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck as he looked up from the map, "Where's Merle?"

Daryl didn't bother to take his eyes off their designated route, "He said he was goin' back into the liquor department and pick up some stuff.

Oscar chimed in, "That's all the way over on the other side of the store. Since there wasn't anything vital we needed from over there, we didn't clear it."

Moaning and growls in the background became louder, Rick dropped the map, "Shit!" He pulled out his gun and ran around the side and towards the front. Sure enough, Merle was pushing a cart full of liquor bottles, trying to get away from a bunch of the dead steadily pouring out of the building.

When the world went to hell, the customers and workers must have tried to hide in that part store.

Each man pulled their weapon and began knocking skulls. What they didn't realize is that another large group of walkers passing by heard the shots and yelling, had begun making their way toward the noise.

Rick, Oscar, Daryl, and Merle were eventually surrounded.

They had been fighting the dead for over a year and each man had become an expert at killing but no amount of expertise would help if hundreds began attacking at the same time.

Rick saw the numbers and his heart sank. He didn't think he was going to get out of this one. His first thoughts went to how his son would survive. Then, to whatever happened to Shane after his self-exile. Where was he? Is he still alive?

After everything Rick had gone through, after everything he'd done, he wished that he had a chance to speak to Shane once again.

Yeah, he was mad how everything went down and yeah, Shane fucked up by fucking his wife, but after constantly fighting, all he wanted was to have his brother back by his side.

Everyone continued to fight with all their might. Even Merle abandoned his alcohol to keep the dead from getting too close to his brother.

It was beginning to look like the end when suddenly gunshots and the metallic sound of metal swishing through the air could be heard. There were too many walkers around Rick for him to see, so he kept fighting and praying that whoever was doing the shooting wasn't trying to kill him and his people. He had run out of bullets a bit ago so now he wielded his red machete and was ramming it through skulls one by one and kicking walkers away from him, trying not to get bit or scratched.

More gunshots could be heard, and Rick noticed that the herd was beginning to thin out. Bodies were piling up on the ground as space began to open up for him and his boys. Able to take a breath and rest a little longer between strikes, he squinted and saw a group of people fighting the dead and clearing them out.

One man wearing sunglasses was holding a shotgun and his stance looked awfully familiar.

There were five other people that fought alongside him.

Two men, two women. One of the females had a sword... and was that a child?

Rick cut down a dead woman who tried to bite into his shoulder before watching the amazing and incredible display before him. The little boy stuck close to the female but far enough to stay out of the way of her katana. He held two daggers in his little hands, that looked too big for him. Yet, the little tike kept an experienced hold on their handles. Light brown in skin tone, his hair textured tight and curly. He darted around the legs of the walkers and sliced the back of their ankles, causing them the crash onto the ground. This allowed the woman, maybe his mother, to double back and stab them quickly in the head or if she was too busy, he took care of it.

For one so young, he had a fierce look to his countenance. Rick guessed he was around six or seven years old. Too young to have to deal with death and killing. However, he couldn't deny what he was seeing. This little boy was knocking down and dispatching walkers like he was born to it.

As he continued to fight, Rick kept an eye out on the pair between swings.

The walkers began to dwindle, giving the groups a chance to approach each other.

Daryl, Merle, and Oscar killed off the remaining walkers as Rick stepped cautiously toward the experienced group. Rick couldn't take his eyes off them until someone else caught in his peripheral.

It was as if time slowed down. He almost tripped over his boots as he drew closer. He could make out the features of the woman holding the sword as she and her always-near little boy, walked past him. Her skin of golden umber radiated under the warm rays of the sun. Sweat from her exertions glistened along her neck and arms giving her a fiery glow. Her shoulder-length hair was styled with coiled locs, held back from her forehead with a red headband.

His gaze traveled from her kick-ass black boots to her tight, low-waisted dark jeans, on up past muscular abs and arms revealed by her short-cropped, sleeveless leather vest and a tank top. Her beautiful doe-ish brown eyes widened in surprise when their gazes finally met. Her lush heart-shaped lips opened slightly to draw in a small gasp, grabbing Rick's attention on how full they were.

Rick unconsciously raised his hand and laid it across his heart as he walked by.

It was only until a familiar voice quietly said his name is when Rick reluctantly pulled his attention away from the intriguing woman and her child to the man he hadn't seen or spoken to in over a year.

Though his hair was longer, curlier and hung past his ears and his face sported a full beard, Rick could never mistake the man he'd known since kindergarten. The man who when they were thirteen, held him as he cried on his shoulder when his mother died. The man who stayed with him through his mother's funeral and came to his house every day for months to comfort him because his grief-stricken father refused to talk to his own son. The man who he told all his secrets to and his fears and the man who betrayed him…

Shane.

He held out his hand in peace, "Shane. It's good to see you again."

A/N: I got my fingers crossed that you all enjoyed and please leave a comment and let me know what you think about this. In the next chapter, we'll find out where Shane's been and how he ended up with Michonne and who their other companions are.