Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead or any of its characters. Wishful thinking aside.

Authors Note #1: This is my fill response to an unbelievably cute prompt posted on LJ at the TWD Kink Meme:Rick/Shane - slash or gen: I always thought that Shane's obsession with Lori eclipsed his feelings for Rick a bit too easily. So I'd like to have a fic where Shane realizes exactly what Rick still means to him." *Rated for: adult language, adult situations, light slash, and angst.

Defending Jericho's Trumpet

It is only when he's up on watch that he lets himself think about it. In the scant few hours before dawn when the others have all drifted off and the camp has gone still and quiet. A tenuous sanctity broken only by the muted hiss from half a dozen dying fires, and the subtle creak of the forest canopy shifting in the early morning breeze.

He tells himself that during these moments, and these moments alone, that it's okay to reflect. …That it's safe to simply sit back and remember.

But even then it's hard not to feel guilty. The truth was that these days they didn't have the luxury of idle thoughts anymore than they had room for free loaders and idle hands. Everyone had to pitch in and come together for this to work. If he knew anything, he knew that much.

The world had gone and changed on them and they were still scrambling around playing catch up, stuck learning the rules to a game that had been thrust upon them without explanation or mercy. There were no instruction manuals, no rules, no second chances, just survival. And perhaps it was that callousness, more than anything else that made this change so hard for the others to accept.

The world of today has made a mockery of their old lives. That he can't deny. Turning familiar sights, sounds, and hell, even people into daytime nightmares and macabre horror scenes from some obscure Hollywood blockbuster that simply refused to end. - This was what their lives had become, the reality that they faced every god damned day, and in all honesty it makes him fucking sick. How could it not?

…And yet, here he was, surviving. And despite the fact that the dead were technically walking, he couldn't help but think that for him, remarkable little had actually changed…

It was a realization that had only grown stronger with time, squirming and growing in the back of his mind like a cancer the longer he was forced to listen to the others talk. Forced to nod and pretend that he felt a semblance of the same as they went on about how life used to be. About what they missed, and what they'd do when this whole nightmare was finally over.

But not him.

It wasn't like he could talk to anyone about it either. He knew they wouldn't understand. To them this disaster was all horror, anarchy, and death; nothing more then tragedy and destruction without a cause. …But to him? Hell, he saw potential. In the end of the world he saw the possibility for something more. He saw the chance to build something better, different, and new. Something that could finally be his.

He likes to think that Rick would have understood. But deep down, he knows better.

Truth was, he'd started feeling more and more as though this was the world he'd been cut out for all along, like he might have even been born for this. – But some days he can't help but wonder if that's a good thing. After all, what kind of a man finds peace in a world that's been turned on its head? Honestly, he's not sure if he even wants to know.

So, most days he just pretends. He's good at pretending, at lying. Lord knows he does enough of it these days.

The problem, however, is that life isn't always that smooth.

It's that damn ring she keeps on that chain beside her locket that always reminds him. Peeking out from her tank top or swinging free to catch the light at the oddest of times. Curling around her dark brown hair and getting stuck in between the clasp and some unlucky, wayward curl whenever she bends down to do the washing or clean up around camp. Sometimes he thinks she does it on purpose, to remind him just as much as Carl and herself.

He watches her sometimes. Wondering if wearing it feels as clunky and as burdensome as it looks. Or if it feels cold against her skin instead of warm. But mostly he wonders what he is going to do the day she doesn't put it back on.

It's strange, but in a lot of ways, Lori has been taking it better then he has. He tries not to wonder what that might have meant in the scheme of things. Because whenever he does he is back in that god damn squad car listening to himself crack jokes and spout his ill timed wisdom about the nature of women and relationships in general.

Willing to do just about anything so long as it puts the hint of a smile back in those expressive blue eyes. Even if it meant gnawing at the inside of his cheek until he choked down a mouthful of smelted copper. Holding himself back from saying something that would vault them over that hazy little line that Rick didn't even know stood between them the first place.

So yes, sometimes he's grateful for the occasional glint of that burnished gold ring. Sometimes he can even find comfort in the knowledge that rests safe in the valley between her breasts. …Protected. But mostly he wishes he could just forget.

And he'd tried. Christ… He's tried so god damned hard to forget. Even told himself that he'd be better off if he did, that they all would. He's told himself that there was no use in entertaining ghosts or in thinking about that perfect possible future that had long since past them by. But funnily enough, the words never seem to stick.

Sometimes he can convince himself that losing Rick the way they had was actually a good thing; a blessing in disguise. Sometimes he can even go days without thinking about him. …About Rick. But the thing is, is that it never lasts. It never fucking lasts..

Because there is always some memory that comes and hits him from out of the blue, some graceless flash of prism shattered light that explodes across his minds eye with all the subtly of a load of buckshot to the kneecaps.

The memories make him feel helpless and vulnerable. But worst of all they remind him of just how much of a fucking hypocrite he actually is. Forcing him to remember all the times he'd curled his lip as he'd watched Jim stare blankly into the fire. Of all the times he'd hunched his shoulders. Rolling his neck from side to side to combat the stubborn tension that coiled across the span of his shoulders on the nights where muffled sobs had filtered freely from their ragged circle of tents. Growing like some sort of social disease until it sullied the quiet of the night as the days had turned into weeks, and the weeks into months.

And each and every time it happens, the memories force him one step too far. Leaving him mindless to all else but the needling stab of a thousand different emotions that sought to level him completely, to take him down to glinting ivory and bare sinew with the intensity of it all.

It had gotten to the point where he couldn't stand it anymore.

Because it is there, in the aftermath that he can't help but remember. Recalling the little things, like the way the man's eyes crinkled in the corners whenever he sported that stupid, thousand watt grin. Or that quiet, unassuming way he had about him. A subtle, understated strength that far too many perps had underestimated right up until the barrel of Rick's python was staring them right between the eyes.

It is like he was stuck, caught between the old world and the new. Tethered down by the memories of a man who had been blissfully unaware of the torch he'd carried for him ever since day one.

It's his fault that he had regrets, he knows that well enough. It was on him that he'd never found it in him to tell Rick when he'd had the chance. Maybe if he had the question of 'what could have been' may not have weighed so heavily on his mind. Maybe if he had they wouldn't have even been on the force together. Maybe they would have been a thousand miles away and heels to Jesus when that god damned car had flipped over. Maybe someone else would have been there to take that bullet. Or maybe if he had, losing him would have been a hundred times worse than it already was.

It was enough to drive a man mental just thinking about it. Hell, as it was, it was more then he could handle.

Because even now, whenever he closes his eyes, he is back there. Back in that damn hospital. Held captive by the memories of the moments where he'd zigzagged in between bloodied surgeons and trauma nurses doing triage right there in the hospital parking lot. Caught in the moments where he'd wrenched himself past flailing patients and trouble makers with bloody mouths and torn skin. Past the screams, the seeping fluids and the stink of sun baked death.

Back in the moments where his fingers had skidded through something nightmare-fresh and disgustingly slick as he forced his way through the side door. Hands curling around each corner as he used force and momentum to fling himself forward, refusing to so much as even bat an eye when his hands came back drenched in crimson. Flashing a sick, sweat diluted red under the flickering neon lights as he'd taken the stairs two at a time. Air ripe with the tang of freshly singed cordierite and day old gore as the sound of his heart beat grew deafening, suffocating him from the inside out.

He shook his head, fingers knuckling across his scalp as he wrenched himself up from the chair Dale had set up on the roof of the RV in favour of pacing. Boot treads thudding sharply across the roof as the rusty frame groaned at the abuse. Squinting into the dark as his gaze swept across the length of camp and then back again, pausing on each and every tent just to make sure before directing his attention back towards the tree line.

It still scares him sometimes, the lengths he'd been willing to go for that man. The things he'd been willing to do. Because he'd been willing to grab one of those poor, blood stained nurses by the scruff of the neck and hold her at gun point until they'd told him what to do. Hell, he'd even been willing to wheel that stupid sonofabitch all the way across the damn city if he had to. It didn't matter. He'd been willing to do anything.

Only Rick had gone and left him then, checking out right when they'd needed him the most. When he'd needed him…

After that there had been nothing more he could do, Rick hadn't given him a choice.

So he'd pulled that bed in front of the door and fled. Shooting his way down five straight floors and a half a mile of parking lot just so he could go and do the only thing he had left, to protect Lori and Carl. The closest thing he had left to the real thing.

In the end, the ironic thing was that neither of them had ever truly left that hospital. Not really. He'd found out later that he'd left something of himself there, a stronger, more stable part of himself that had died there in that room along with Rick. Something he needed, and now couldn't get back.

There are days where he hates Rick for that. Where he hates what losing Rick has done to him. Days where he just doesn't know how cope with the fact that Rick is gone, and that he is never coming back. And then there are days where he thinks he's lost the point of the matter completely.

But he's learned how to hide it, how to wall off his emotions and prioritize. He's even learned how to pretend. How to smile when he feels like screaming, love when he feels like dying. And touch softly when all he wants to do is to draw back his fist and hear the bones in someone's cheek bone shatter into a million fucking pieces.

He forces himself to pretend because there are some days where he thinks it's strangely fitting that he left something of himself behind there. Fitting in the same way that crutches are to a broken leg, or gangrene is to an infected wound. Fitting because who he was then, is not necessarily who he is now.

But like he said, most days he tries not to think about it.

…He tries not to think about it because sometimes he can't quite shake the feeling that remembering Rick Grimes might just be the death of him…

A/N #1: Please let me know what you think? Reviews and constructive critiquing are love!

A/N #2: The infamous "Jericho-Trumpet" was a wailing siren attached to the Junkers Ju 87 (Or Stuka), a two man, German ground-attack dive bomber used in World War 2. The siren was a powerful symbol of German air power and a propaganda symbol as it was said to strike fear in the hearts of the Allied forces whenever they heard its signature wail on the horizon. (source: My history books and wiki)