Pairing: Shane Walsh x reader, Rick Grimes x sister reader
Warnings: swearing, minor violence, cheating
Shane snapped out of his trance, stepping towards you. He cupped your face gently before looking down at the baby in your arms.
“He’s ours, Shane. He’s our son.”
There was a quiet nervousness among the group, indicating that everyone was still processing what had just happened. Zombies, death,and a new life. You look at Shane to watch your brother trying to calm his son down. Feeling your eyes on her, Lori looks up at you and lets out a sharp intake of breath and claps her hand over her mouth.
“Oh my god,” she says, teary-eyed.
Sensing the change in his mom, Carl turns to see what she was staring at and notices you, “Aunt y/n.”
He runs to you and wraps his arms around your waist and sobs into your stomach. “Hey, munchkin,” you softly say. “I’m so glad you're okay.”
“I thought-I thought you and dad were dead.”
You run your hands through his hair, trying to comfort him while others start to grieve over the loss of their friends and loved ones. While your brother tries to help a blonde woman who keeps waving him off, Lori stays still with the same expression on her face, except this time she’s not looking at you. She’s looking at Shane.
Daytime came quickly, and when it did, plans needed to be made. The bodies needed to be dealt with, food rations needed to be sorted, shelters needed to be rebuilt, and an idea of where the group was heading would need to be decided. But after only being in the presence of most of these people for one night, you didn’t say anything; you didn’t want to overstep.
You had offered to help burn the dead, but both Rick and Shane told you to stay inside the RV with Jace. You understood they wanted to keep you safe, but you couldn’t sit and do nothing.
You stepped outside the RV curiously and watched as a man named Morales helped Daryl move the body of someone who’d been killed by a walker the night before towards a pile of bodies.
“What are you guys doing? This is for geeks. Our people go over there,” Glenn says, pointing towards a different spot distressed.
Daryl shrugs him off, “What's the difference? They're all infected.”
“Our people go in that row over there. We don't burn them! We bury them. Understand? Our people go in that row over there.”
Both men seem unconvinced. Glenn doesn't say anything further. He just picks up a shovel and starts to head in the direction he plans on digging.
You notice nobody goes to help him at that moment, and you turn to look at Glenn. “I’ll help you, just give me a moment.”
Behind you, the door opens, and Lori steps out behind you with Carl by her side. “Can you watch Jace? I’ll be back shortly.”
“Um, yeah, sure,” she says, uncomfortable. It was confusing to you why your sister-in-law was refusing to make eye contact with you, but you were sure Shane had something to do with it.
You pick up a shovel and follow Glenn until Shane steps in front of you. He wasn’t happy with you because he snapped, “What the hell are you doing?”
“Someone needs to help dig holes for the dead.” His expression shifts from angry to stressed. “You’ll know where to find me.”
You walk back into camp and throw the shovel down before taking Jace from Lori’s arms. You’d only been apart from him for less than an hour, but it felt like a lifetime. You kissed the side of his head before placing him back into his sling, while listening to the current conversation.
“I say we put a pickaxe in his head and the dead girl's and be done with it,” Daryl says bluntly, looking over at a man named Jim. You weren’t there to hear what had happened, but you assumed Jim had either been bitten or scratched judging by how the others were reacting.
“Is that what you'd want if it were you?” Shane asks.
“Yeah, and I'd thank you while you did it.”
An older man named Dale shook his head, “I hate to say it... I never thought I would... But maybe Daryl's right.”
Your brother faces him with a look of disgust on his face and says, “Jim's not a monster, Dale, or some rabid dog.”
Dale tries to take back what he was implying, “I'm not suggesting…”
“He's sick. A sick man When we start down that road, where do we draw the line?”
“The line's pretty clear. Zero tolerance for walkers, or them to be.”
“He's kinda right,” your brother says, turning to face you with a surprised expression. “Look, I don’t want anyone to die, but death seems like the kindest thing to do. It’s what I’d want if it was me.”
“What if we could get him help? I heard the CDC was working on a cure.”
Shane looks at Rick as if he’s grown a second head, “I heard that too. I heard a lot of things before the world went to hell.”
“What if the C.D.C. is still up and running?”
“Man, that is a stretch right there.”
You elbow Shane lightly, mentally telling him to cut it out. His shortness with Rick was starting to piss you off.
“Why? If there's any government left, any structure at all, they'd protect the C.D.C. at all costs, wouldn't they?” Rick asks. “I think it's our best shot. Shelter, protection…”
Shane lets out a frustrated sigh, “Okay, Rick, you want those things, all right? I do too, okay? If they exist, they're at the army base. Fort Benning.”
“Isn’t that a hundred miles in the opposite direction?”
He nods, “It is. But it's away from the hot zone. Now listen to me. If that place is operational, it'll be heavily armed. We'd be safe there. Jace would be safe there.”
“The military were on the front lines of this thing. They got overrun. We've all seen that. The C.D.C. is our best choice and Jim's only chance,” Rick says, holding Shane’s intense gaze.
“None of this matters right now, not while there’s a more pressing matter that needs to be dealt with first.”
“She’s right,” Daryl says in agreement. “Someone needs to have some balls to take care of this damn problem!” Daryl picks up a pickaxe and storms towards Jim.
“That’s not what I meant!”
Rick points his gun at Daryl's head just as he lifts his arm, “We don't kill the living.”
“That's funny coming from a man who just put a gun to my head.”
“We may disagree on some things, but not on this,” Shane says, trying to talk him down. “You put it down. Go on.”
Daryl puts the pickaxe down and storms off, mumbling under his breath, while Ricks helps the dying man stand, “Come with me.”
“Where are you taking me?” Jim asks, confused.
“Somewhere safe,” Rick says, walking Jim towards the RV.
You are walking with a bounce in your step, trying to stop Jace from fussing. The quarry wasn’t far from camp, and you insisted on walking ahead of the others, although they were still close enough to be in your line of vision. When you reach the newly dug gravesite, you can hear your brother and Shane talking.
“Okay. I'm thinking if you'd stayed here, if you'd have looked after your own... Instead, you went off. You took half our manpower with you. I'm thinking maybe our losses wouldn't have been so bad.”
You're left speechless at how harsh Shane’s words are. It wasn’t Rick's fault that the dead attacked late at night when they were unprepared.
“If we hadn't gone off and brought those guns back when we did, I think our losses would have been a lot worse. Maybe the entire camp. Also, I wouldn’t have brought back my sister and your son.”
“That’s not fair. I thought y/n was dead and I had no idea she was pregnant,” Shane says defensively. “This isn’t about them, it’s about you leaving.”
Before they can continue, Daryl pulls up in the truck with the rest of the bodies in the back. He jumps out and immediately starts to moan, “I still think it's a mistake to not burn these bodies. It's what we said we'd do, right? Burn 'em all. Wasn't that the idea?”
“At first,” Shane replies, as his eyes land on you. He was no doubt wondering how much you heard.
You roll your eyes as Daryl continues. “The Chinaman gets all emotional and says it's not the thing to do. Can we just follow him along? These people need to know who the hell's in charge here, what the rules are.”
“Well, that's a problem,” Lori says, standing beside you. “We haven't had one minute to hold onto anything of our old selves. We need time to mourn and we need to bury our dead. It's what people do.”
While Andrea says goodbye to her sister, who was killed by a walker the night before, you study everyone else’s faces. You tilt your head and look at Lori. Following her line of sight, you see Shane watching as he scratches at his chin nervously.
Shane meets your gaze and you instantly know the secret he’s been trying to hide by the guilt written on his face.
You feel your knees starting to go weak.
As your stomach drops, you take a deep breath and quietly excuse yourself and walk back to camp, pushing back tears. You weren’t going to let either of them see you cry.
You sit by the window in the RV while you finish feeding Jace, watching the others walk back into camp with a grim expression on their faces. Jim was sleeping in the back, occasionally talking to himself, but you were alone except for him.You allowed yourself to briefly cry, but you pulled yourself together. Now wasn’t the time to fall apart. You needed to be strong for Jace, plus you didn’t know anything for certain, despite what your gut feeling was telling you.
You freeze when you notice Shane joining Lori at the doorway, while your brother is walking in their direction.
“I guess I'll just add it to the list of habits that I'm breaking whether I like it or not.”
“What habits?” Your brother asks
“Just his need for a plan,” you say, opening the door, giving all three of them a fright. “So what is it? Are we leaving or staying?”
Rick gently runs his fingers over Jace’s head, “We can't stay here, it’s not safe.”
“I was just telling Shane I think we should trust your gut,” Lori states.
You scoff at her words, earning a fearful look from your fiancé and a confused one from Rick.
Shane sighs, “Let's go do our sweep.”
“We need to talk before you leave,” you tell Rick, motioning for Shane to follow.
Shane follows you toward the edge of camp, which looks over a small field. You let out a deep breath, and turned to face him, and when you did, he immediately started to apologise.
“Baby, I’m so sorry,” he pleads, trying to reach for you, but is cut off when you shove him in the chest.
“Get the fuck away from me!” You hiss. “How could you do this to me?”
He gives you a pained look. His voice sounds weak as he says, “You have no idea how much I regret what happened.”
“Regret it? This isn’t some random girl at a bar you’ve slept with; it's your best friend's wife. My sister-in-law. Your family.”
“If me and Rick never came back, would you still be sleeping together?”
“No,” he answers quickly. “God no. It was a mistake. If I could do anything to change things, I would, but I can’t. We all make mistakes.”
You shake your head and wipe your fallen tears away, knowing that nothing he said could fix this. “I’ve done a lot of shit I’m not proud of and I’ve put you through a lot these past few years, but I’ve never once looked at a man.”
You groan into your hands, trying to take a moment to think. Sensing movement around you, you look down to see Shane crouching on the ground with his head in his hands, looking like a broken man. He looks up at you with tears in his eyes, “baby, y/n, please tell me how to fix this. All I want is to keep you, Jace, and Carl safe.”
You chew on your bottom lip trying to hold a sob back. You believe what he’s saying. You don’t doubt that he’d do anything to protect you, but why he would is a different thing. “Do you still love me?”
He looks hurt by the question, “How can you even ask that?”
“Because you had sex with someone else, how could I not?” your voice crackles. “Do you have feelings for her?”
Shane stands and cups your face so you are looking directly at him. “I love you. I’m in love with you. If I wasn't, I wouldn’t have stayed with you when you needed help, or spent every goddamn minute since the world went to hell grieving for you. I dragged all those people to Atlanta because I wanted to look for you, but when I heard the city was gone, I gave up. I assumed the worst, and for that I’m sorry. I’m sorry about everything. But the moment you walked into camp with Jace, nothing else mattered.” He kisses the back of your hand. “Can you forgive me?”
You blink away the fresh tears that are building up. With your vision becoming more clear, you can see the look of concern in his eyes as you struggle to find your voice again. He sighs, “If you keep doing that, your lip is going to bleed.”
You stop chewing on your lip and faintly taste blood. You can see your words are swaying heavily on him. “I will talk to Lori when I stop wanting to scratch her eyes out, but in the meantime, Rick can’t know. This would break him.” You gulp down, “I can try.”
A hopeful smile spreads across his face, “you will?”
“I will, but…” His face falls flat again. “You need to swear to me nothing else is going on between you and Lori, and you will always put Jace first.”
When you walk back into the main camp area, you notice everyone standing in a group, “What’s going on?”
“I think they are waiting to find out what the plan is,” Shane answers quietly. “What do you want to do? We could always stay behind, just the three of us. We’d make it on our own.”
“I’m not leaving my brother.”
“Okay,” he reluctantly agrees with you and clears his throat to get everyone’s attention. “I've been, uh, I've been thinking about Rick's plan. Look, there are no signs ofThere are no guarantees either way. I'll be the first one to admit that. I've known this man for a long time. I trust his instincts. I say the most important thing here is that we need to stay together. So those of you that agree, we leave first thing in the morning.”
Rick looks at him surprised. “Okay?”
As they continued talking, you tried to study Shane’s body language. He still radiated confidence, but that might have come from his years as a cop. You were taken aback by his suggestion that you could go it alone; the idea was insane. You’d never make it longer than a week, and you’d never leave without your family.
“Why can’t I ride with you and Shane?” Carl asks with a pout. He was bored listening to them talk about the logistics of things, but you knew Lori and Rick would be hurt if they knew he’d asked.
You ran your fingers through Carl's thick brown hair and sighed; you hated disappointing him. You knelt down so you were the same height, “because your dad needs someone to cheer him up, and you're the only one who can do it.”
He gently stroked Jace’s cheek, then went back to his mom.
Moments later, you got in the car with Shane, who drove off without saying a word. His mood had dramatically dropped since Morales and his wife, Miranda, decided to stay behind because they wanted to go and find their family.
You noticed your brother had left a note for the man who saved him, Morgan, on the side of one of the cars. You hoped Morgan and his son would be able to find your group soon.
“Why didn’t you want the kid to drive with us?” Shane asked, breaking the silence.
“He should be with his parents,” you answer while gazing out the window. “Besides, Carl would hate being stuck in when Jace wakes up. He’d get irritated by the crying.”
“The little man doesn’t cry much, which is lucky.”
“Yeah…”, spin back and look behind you, noticing the RV pulling over to stop. “Something is wrong.”
Shane abruptly stopped, “Stay in here with Jace.”
You waited inside the car with Jace, cooing softly as you fed him. Your eyes were occasionally scanning the area to make sure the dead weren’t lurking nearby. You just hoped the group made it to the CDC without any more hiccups, aside from the RV breaking down.
A few more moments passed by, and Shake rejoined you in the car with a devastated look on his face.
“What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
“Jim... He’s asked us to leave him behind. So we did. Me and Rick just left him beside a tree for him to die alone.”
You squeezed his hand, “If it’s what Jim wanted, there was nothing else you could do.”
“Holy shit,” you say as you step out of the car and immediately zip up your jacket over your head to protect Jace from the bugs.
The outside of the CDC was nothing but a large graveyard covered with hundreds of rotting bodies and swarms of flies.
Shane placed his hand on your back and spoke quietly while he addressed the group. “All right, everybody. Keep moving. Go on. Stay quiet. Let's go. Okay, keep moving. Stay together.”
Somehow you all manage to make it to the building without waking the dead, but it’s all for naught as when you reach the building it’s locked up with metal shutters that won’t budge. Both you and Rick attempt to open it, but nothing happens.
“Nothing?” Shane pounds on the door.
You go to tell him to stop being so loud, but it’s too late.
“Walkers!” Daryl calls out before shooting one directly in the head with an arrow.
You reach for the knife on your belt, but your sudden moments frighten Jace, who’s strapped to your chest, causing him to let out a small whine.
Daryl glared at your brother, “You led us into a graveyard!”
“It was the wrong damn call!” He snaps back.
You storm towards him, “Just shut up. You hear? Shut up. Shut up! Rick, this is a dead end. What do we do now? This place is going to be crawling with walkers soon.”
“She's right,” Lori says in agreement. “We can't be here this close to the city after dark.”
Noticing a walker coming up behind Glenn, you run for it and stab your knife into its skull. Glenn looks at you wide-eyed, “Thanks man.”
“We gotta go! Everyone back to their vehicles, they can at least give us shelter for now!”
While everyone started running towards the vehicles, you noticed not everyone was there. You look back towards the building to see Shane trying to talk to Rick, who was still trying to get inside. “Man, just listen to me. Look around this place. It's dead, okay? It's dead. You need to let it go, Rick.”
“I know you're in there. I know you can hear me.”
Rick continues to bang on the shutters, so you run back to him and help Shane pull him back. “We need to go now! The dead are coming!”
Rick ignores you and starts to beg while looking up at a security camera. “Please, we're desperate. Please help us. We have women, children, no food, hardly any gas left.”
Shane wraps his arm around you, brother, and manages to pull him back, “Come on, buddy, let's go. Let's go.”
“Please help us. You're killing us! You're killing us! You're killing us!”
Suddenly, one of the shudders opens, revealing a bright light leading into a hallway. Rick was right; someone was inside the CDC.
