Rating:PG-13

Pairing: none, Rick/Shane frienship (sort of), reference to past Shane/Lori

Disclaimer: Don't own

Summary: Coda to 1.04 (Vatos). Rick and Shane make a perimeter check and Shane thinks.

In the aftermath they cluster together. Human instinct more than anything else. At the academy they talked about how life or death situations made the adrenal glands flare up. Every man for himself in those moments. There had been a story passed around, sworn truth by every guy that told it, about a father that held his infant daughter in front of his face when a thief pointed a gun at him and pulled the trigger. Both of them dead before they hit the floor. Sounded like bullshit first time Shane heard it. Stupid because what grown man would think a baby could stop a bullet?

Shane stands by himself, back to the people, bodies strewn every which way. He listens for shuffling feet and groans. Has to adjust to the solitude no matter that he doesn't like it. Isn't so used to it anymore, not after Lori beneath him in the forest, breakfast around the fire with Carl leaning against his knee.

But Rick's there, suddenly, his hand on Shane's shoulder cold as any gun.

"Shane," he says. Low like he doesn't mean it even though Rick Grimes never wastes a word. Was always good at that when they were kids. Concision their senior English teacher had called it, old bat with glasses that hung crooked off her nose. Always wrote see meon Shane's essays, underlined twice, as if the added emphasis would get him to care. He'd had football to worry about, endless strings of pretty girls. Those had been the days; back when twenty-two was more than a number he wore close to his heart.

"Yeah," Shane nods, smelling rot on the wind that rustles the trees. The leaves shake above them in a wide canopy of darkened green.

Their footsteps seem loud enough to shake the earth. He puts one boot in front of the other and doesn't turn. Tunnels his vision as they do their sweep.

The sounds that filter from the camp are mournful. The noises the living make to honor the dead. Wistful note to it. Wind chime kind of tinkle, like dying themselves would have been as good.

He tries not to think too hard about that.

Tries not to think about how moments before he was blasting walkers apart with his shotgun, hopeless futility to it because he only had so much ammo in his pocket. Lori and Carl though, that had been what mattered, and he'd kept his Glock close, careful.

Had to save three bullets, just in case.

"I came back." Rick looking at him in earnest, eyes in the moonlight a startling blue, bright as water. "Twice."

"Seems to be your gimmick, brother." Close as he can come to chewing Rick out for it. Wouldn't even need to do it if Rick would just look a little like he didn't know every damn thing in the world. A world Rick had stumbled into two days earlier, not one he'd been in from the start. Not like Shane who had watched things fall apart and salvaged life from the pieces. Saved Rick's own wife and son, loved them—husband, daddy, protector—new set of skills to add to his name.

Those are the things Shane did, guilt eating a hole in his stomach every time he blinked and saw Rick on that bed in that paper gown. Shane's eyes hot as he stormed the hallway, tears burning bad as the smoke.

"If I hadn't gotten back with those guns—" wetness in Rick's voice as he says it, frightened tone Shane knows. Remembers Lori in the hospital, Rick holding a newborn bundle of Carl and pale faced as he rambled about the blood, Carl squirming and whining until Shane took him and shushed him, first time he held a baby in his life. Rick standing there and watching him do it. His wife's blood drying on the bottoms of his shoes. Shane remembers swallowing, hard, when the janitor started to mop out the delivery room, cleaning solution wringing out of the bristles diluted red.

Might not have ever had a problem, Shane wants to tell him, if you hadn't felt the need to leave.

He'll save that for morning, though. Give a little well earned solace to the dead.

"C'mon." He jerks his head back toward the campsite. Sun is slivering on the horizon, flecks of gray that lighten out to gold. "Got a lot to take care of."