Pairings: gen at the moment, Rick/Shane and Shane/Andrea in the future.
Disclaimer: Don't own
Summary: AU, Shane only makes it back from the hospital in time to save Carl. Aka the time Shane was Carl's dad.
A special thank you to my beta gravi_girl123 on livejournal for being awesome and shaping this story into what it is.
Candil de la Calle
Shane's too caught up. In his own grief and his own panic and Rick and he doesn't make it to the house in time. Gets there at the tail end of the afternoon, sun glinting golden beyond the trees. The front door is open when he pulls into the driveway, welcome sign hanging crooked, and he draws his gun.
"Carl!" he calls. "Lori?"
His answer is a groan. Wet sound of chewing. Rip of flesh and muscle away from bone. Shane holds his breath and sprints, fast as he can, through the family room and into the kitchen, fear a bandage wrapped tight around his ribs.
What he finds, it's just like the hospital, just like the past few days. Only now it's sharper. Now it's worse. This was supposed to be Shane's redemption. This was how he was going to make it up to Rick. Make it up to Rick for leaving him there, his best friend's lifeless body, just a gurney against the door to protect it from the hungry dead.
Lori is sprawled out on the linoleum, hair fanned wide around her head. Her eyes are open, clouded and unflinching blue. Old Mrs. Peterson, Shane and Rick's fifth grade teacher, ancient even then, is hunched over Lori, arthritic fingers in Lori's belly. They drag out coils of intestine colored red. Mrs. Peterson hears him and turns, hunched, snowy hair standing in frizzy wisps. Her floral printed housecoat is soaked in Lori's blood. She's missing a slipper on one thin, wrinkled foot. Shane can see her varicose veins, black beneath her skin, as he aims his Glock and fires.
"Lori," he whispers, not unlike he did with Rick. It's not the same, not to him, they don't have the same history, but he'll mourn her death. He closes her eyelids, heavy like slugs of lead beneath his fingertips. Then he shoots her, puts his gun to the side of her head and pulls the trigger. Smells Lori's blood. Feels the recoil as the bullet goes through her brain.
Carl, he realizes, suddenly. Carl. And he can't, he knows. Once he finds Carl that will be the end. He'd wanted to die with Rick, but it's Carl's death that will kill him. Carl's death that will give him the tiny nudge he needs to swallow his gun.
"Shane?" The cry is desperate, muffled, and Shane swallows and stands. His hands are shaking, like Mrs. Peterson's arthritic tremors, and he looks around for Carl but is afraid to see. Doesn't want to find him same as Lori. Worse because he'd be alive and clutching at his guts. Blood spurting from his wounds. Shane would have to listen to him scream.
"Carl, bud, where are you? Are you hurt?"
"No," Carl calls out, strained, and Shane locates the source of Carl's voice. It's coming from the kitchen pantry, the cupboard just behind Lori's head.
Shane reaches out and tugs open the door.
Carl's crowded at the back. Arms curled around himself, knees pressed up against his chest. He seems tiny, surrounded by boxes of cereal and stacks of aluminum cans. His face is streaked shiny with tears and his eyes, Rick's eyes, are tinted red.
"Hey," he says. He feels himself smile in spite of everything. Because there is Carl, Carl who is untouched and alive.
"Hey," Carl answers, lip quivering, before he launches himself at Shane, open and extended arms.
He gathers Carl to him and doesn't think he'll ever put him down. Just clutches Carl. Carl's face in his shoulder and Carl's hands wringing his shirt and Carl's scent, like Rick and like Lori and like the Grimes' house.
"My mom." He doesn't know what Carl's saying. What he's asking. If Carl is trying to tell him what they both already know. Carl heard it all. No doubt. "Shane my mom."
Carl tries to lift his head. He cranes his neck downward, searching, and Shane presses his face into his shoulder again, starts stepping back.
His feet skid through Lori's blood.
"Don't look," he tells him. "You don't wanna look."
Carl nods. Helpless and boneless in Shane's arms. He whines a little, grasping, when Shane lets him go. He sets Carl on the couch and picks a blanket up off the ground. He drapes it over Lori. The only part of her it doesn't cover is her toes.
"What do we do now?" Carl's stopped crying. He's stopped everything. His tone is blank and so are his eyes. The only sign he's been sobbing is the chest rattling hitch of his breath. Reality's sunk in, for the both of them, and just like Shane at the hospital, Carl knows this isn't the time for tears.
"Get to Atlanta. Stick to the plan." Refugee center. Food and medicine. Military escort to keep them safe. "Nothin's changed." It's a lie, they both know.
Carl nods and reaches onto the coffee table for his bag. Bags Lori already packed for them. Shane picks up the duffel of canned goods and other essentials. He leaves behind Lori's suitcase. Leaves behind Rick's too.
Carl beside him, Shane steps out into the dying sun.
The interstate is a mess. Eight hours and they haven't moved, not once. Everyone seems to know this, and they all get out of their cars. Children chase each other through the empty spaces. Mothers call worriedly out after them. Fathers stand, solemn, eyes to the west. The lights of Atlanta are just beyond the horizon. They could walk if they had to. Shane considers it, but knows Carl isn't prepared for the trek.
"Shane." Carl pulls hard at his shirt. "I'm hungry."
"I know." He wishes he had more to offer. It took them six days to get this far. Six days, and the meager supplies Lori had packed for them, more than enough for a simple trip to Atlanta, have run out. "I don't have anything for you, little man."
"We have some snack bars," the woman, gray haired and timid-looking, says to his left. "I'll get you one, honey."
"Thank you, ma'am." Carl says, and Shane smiles at that; Carl being polite like his mother taught him. Shane thanks her too. He'd give anything to ease the hunger gnawing in Carl's belly. He tries not to think about the hunger that may come. The hunger that Atlanta is going to prevent. It's their lifeline, that city—panacea for a dying world.
The woman returns, eyes downcast. Over her shoulder, her husband, big and brutish, stands behind her shoulder, cigarette dangling from his mouth. His eyes are hard like coal.
"We're out." She's apologetic. Shane spots the lie; her body language gives her dead away. She curls in on herself, collapsible as a dime store chair. Her husband is tense behind her, glaring, and Shane reaches out a hand for Carl.
"It's fine. I'll scrounge something up." He nods at her. He sees it for what it is. He remembers answering calls like it, pulling up to houses where a wife would meet them at the porch, smiles and excuses that didn't match the bruises on her face. He ruffles Carl's hair. "There's probably a Slim Jim tucked away in the car. Just gotta dig under the seats."
Carl relaxes just as the planes streak high overhead. Military, not civilian. It's too dark for Shane to see the model or the make. There are a few moments of silence before people start to scramble.
"What's happening?" he says, to anyone that passes by. He hears the desolate pulse of screams. He hears the noises, louder, darker, booming off in the distance. Thinks he recognizes them but doesn't know. Not sure he wants to, either.
He wants to go and see for himself but he won't leave Carl all alone. Carl's attached to him, fingers hooked into the loops of his belt even as he talks softly with the little girl from the car behind them.
"Your dad is nice," she says, blonde hair and dimples. Shane pretends not to listen. It's private. This conversation between new friends.
"Shane's not my dad." He's not. The truth is simple.
He breathes and thinks of Rick. Remembers how he looked, pale and motionless, when Shane left him in that bed. Gray as a corpse. The kind that actually stays dead.
"Hey." He catches a young man by the sleeve. "What's goin' on?"
"They're bombing the city," the kid says. His dark eyes are round and disbelieving. He shakes Shane's hand off him and runs away.
Carl stops talking. The little girl stops talking. Shane looks and thinks he can see the fires from the explosions through the thick canopy of trees. Orange, spreading like ripples across water, in the distance.
The first week at camp, Carl cries himself to sleep. Long, drawn out sobs that make his whole body shake, make the metal cot beneath him creak and quiver. The legs tremble and roll when Carl hiccups, tries to hold himself together so hard he chokes, snot and tears all thick within him.
"Shh," Shane says and places a hand flat on the top of Carl's head. Carl's still small enough that he can do that—cradle the curve of Carl's skull in a single, uncertain palm. He remembers when Carl was a baby, tiny and warm with a fuzz of hair, and Shane could hold all of him in just two hands.
That was how he'd held Carl the first time. Rick and Lori still in the hospital. Just one hour after he was born, Rick lit up bright with pride, while Lori slept in the hospital bed, hair damp with sweat.
"It's gonna be okay." Carl leans into him, into the touch, but the crying rocks him harder, and it hurts Shane to see Carl so broken. He's a windshield full of cracks, bump in the road away from shatter. "Carl, man." His voice is ragged, cluttered as the highways. "I promise."
Their camp starts to slowly come together. Stragglers wander in and find them, set up shop. Others move on, motivated by fading radio broadcasts and rumors of salvation out west. Their main group, though, the people Shane and Carl associate with, Carol and her daughter, Dale and his girls, they assemble and stay. It gets so he knows them all by name.
It's about an hour to noon when he calls Glenn to him. Glenn was one of the last to find them. He stayed in the city longer than most. He doesn't talk about it, about the things that happened, but Shane sees them in his face all the same.
"You up for another trip into Atlanta?"
Glenn nods. He's never refused a run into the city, at least not outright.
"What do you want me to get?"
Shane takes the little list out of his pocket. Andrea brought it to him earlier that morning like a list of grievances at an arbitration written on the back of a Target receipt. Glenn scans the paper quick.
"This is kind of a two person job," He says. His eyes are apologetic beneath the brim of his hat. "But if you come with me we should be able to get it done."
He tries to picture him and Glenn tiptoeing through Atlanta. He sees abandoned buildings stretched high, streets teeming with the dead, and he sees Carl, alone in his cot at night waiting for Shane to come back.
He presses his lips together hard before he speaks.
"I can't go with you." He should, he knows. It's his responsibility as leader to be the first to put himself in harm's way and if it was different, if it was more than just him and Carl, he'd have no qualms following Glenn into battle. "Gotta keep the peace around here."
Glenn looks at him and follows his eyes to where Carl's sitting with Sophia drawing pictures in the dirt. They can both see the outline of the pistol tucked against Carl's hip, bulky beneath his shirt.
"I get it," Glenn tells him, softly, like a secret just between them. His face brightens with a smile.
"Mattress pads aren't important in the long run," he says, coughs to clear the awkwardness. "Canned goods and non-perishables, that's what we need right now. Folks might complain 'bout sleeping on the ground, but they'll make do. Just get the essentials."
"Aye aye captain."
Glenn raises his cap in a mock salute.
It doesn't take long for the gravity of the situation to sink in. Not just the shit with the world ending, the geeks wandering, hungry, searching for their next kill. The things with him and Carl, those are what get him, strike the chords of his heart in a whole new way. He's no longer looking to Rick and Lori for approval—the final say. He can't check with them like he used to when he couldn't remember Carl's allergies or wanted to pull him early out of school on his birthday as a treat. Carl's his, solely. The only boundaries there are to overstep are the ones he sets himself.
That in mind, he puts twelve rounds into his pocket. Enough to fill a pistol twice. They don't have much in the way of extra ammo but there are times he can't take Carl with him. Times when he has to go out and on patrol. People in the camp are decent enough but Shane doesn't know them and he's got no one he trusts well enough to keep Carl safe. With no one else around to look after him, Carl has to learn to fend for himself when Shane's not there.
"I wanna show you something today," he says as he wakes Carl up that morning. It's a little after sunrise. The sky is more gray than blue. "C'mon."
Carl hauls himself sleepily out of his cot. He rubs his eyes, yawning all while he gets dressed.
They walk a ways into the woods before Carl asks.
"What is it?"
"I'm gonna show you how to use a gun. Use it, not play with it. You're gonna learn right. Most important thing is to respect the weapon." He takes the pistol from his belt and shows it to Carl. Carl stares at it, serious, and Shane's proud of him. He's holding himself together well.
They stop at the small target range he set up earlier. An assortment of green plastic soda bottles and rusted cans are lined along the trunk of a fallen tree. They're spaced about the same distance apart, not quite eye level with Carl, a good eight yards back.
First he shows Carl the basics. Safety and trigger. How to open the chamber to reload. After, he discusses grip and balance, how to keep a steady hand., the best way to aim. When he thinks Carl's got it, he gives Carl six bullets and watches him load the pistol, carefully, barrel pointed toward the ground, out and away. Then, once Shane's satisfied, he tells Carl to go ahead.
Carl misses the first two shots. The third comes close, enough that the bottle wobbles from the speed of the bullet in the air. Fourth shot, however, Carl sets his feet apart just like Shane showed him, both eyes open, arms still as the morning sun, and when he fires the rusted over can Shane dug out of the quarry zings off the tree trunk and disappears. He goes over, picks it up, and shows Carl the hole straight through the center. Carl beams up at him, forehead and tops of his eyes hidden beneath his shaggy bangs. He could use a haircut. Shane could too.
"You see that Shane? I got it." Carl's laughing, giddy, and it's good to see. Carl's moments of happiness are few and far between. Shane can't blame him for it. This is tough on everyone. They've all had losses, but Carl's the only child in the group with both parents dead. Maybe the one of the few in the world. Families tend to die together, these days.
"Oh you killed that sonovabitch. That there was a head shot, little man." Carl perks up at the praise, holds his shoulders higher. Holds them just like Shane. He notices, for the first time, that Carl's tucked the legs of his jeans into his boots. "Finish up with the next few rounds, c'mon. Then we'll get breakfast."
Carl finishes, hits seven targets out of eight, and once they're back, Shane gives him ammo and lets him keep the gun.
Carol and the girls start adjusting to cooking en masse. Shane leaves the tent, squinting up at the sky and the clouds on the horizon, the tepid promise of a sticky rain, and finds oatmeal, nut brown and watery, bubbling in their biggest pot. Carl's already got a bowl in front of him. Jacqui waves Shane over and ladles him a helping.
He watches Carl drip oatmeal off his spoon for a good four minutes. Then he nudges him with the toe of his boot.
"Hey, man, eat your breakfast. That's all we've got." He understands, of course. The oatmeal is tasteless, textured as soup, only has the barest hint of sugar. The oats squish between Shane's teeth.
Carl sighs.
"I hate oatmeal," he says, disobeying Shane for the first time ever. He puts his bowl on the ground and pushes it away.
"No one likes this shit, bud." Morales' wife bristles at the swear word. She claps her hands around her son's ears. "But you don't have the luxury of choice here. Carol can't just make you a special order. You eat what you gotta to keep up your strength."
Carl frowns. Sophia, off at her mother's feet, looks at Carl's face and snickers. Shane wonders when Carl stopped acting twelve and started acting two.
"When I was your age, I used to hate winter." The story's for Carl's benefit, but everyone, Jacqui and Morales and Dale and all the kids, lean in to listen. "Not because of the snow or anything like that, but because on days it got real cold my mom wouldn't let me eat cereal for breakfast." Carl tilts his head up at Shane, engaged. "Sometimes it was great. She'd make me pancakes or eggs or whatever. But man, she got it into her head on the coldest days, I'm talking below twenty plus wind-chill, that oatmeal would be the best thing to keep me warm on the walk to the bus stop. So I go down into the kitchen, expecting waffles or something, and I'm met with this bowl of oatmeal with bananas sliced on top. And Carl, I was an asshole about it. Complained every damn time, and you know what?"
"What?" Carl's hesitant as he asks. He's already anticipating a moral to the end of this story.
"If I didn't eat it then, she made me take it to school. Lemme tell you, there's nothing worse than chugging cold oatmeal from a thermos while everyone else has a sandwich." Shane is careful to leave out the part how, most days, Rick split his lunch down the middle and the oatmeal got glopped into the nearest trash.
"So if I don't eat this now, I have to eat it later?"
"Yessir. We don't waste food. Can't afford to. But hey, you have it your way. Do your thing. Just know that come lunchtime you're gonna be eating that while the rest of us have the mac 'n cheese Glenn snagged in Atlanta."
Carl glares at him, meanest look he can manage, crinkle of his eyes and nose, and reaches for his bowl.
Amy watches him fuss with Carl's hair for a few minutes before she comes up and snatches the scissors away.
"Let me do it," she says. She rolls her eyes at him. It's one of those let me show you what a woman can do things. "You're just making a mess."
"Hey, I'm trying." Failing and he knows it too. He and Carl have different hair types. Shane's grows thick before it starts getting longer. To trim his hair all he has to do is take an inch off the top everywhere but the basic shape of it, his hairline, that stays the same. But Carl got his straight hair from Lori and it grows out like weeds, like those dandelions he and Rick used to pluck as kids and scatter, seeds to the wind, and make a wish.
"You want me to fix your hair, Carl?" Amy asks, sweet faced, hands smoothing over the top of Carl's head.
"I guess." Carl shrugs but he moves into her. Scoots himself back so he can sit on the ground between Amy's legs, Amy on a chair behind him. He wraps an arm around one of Amy's calves.
It's not so much the hair that matters to him, Shane knows. It's Amy offering it, Amy who Carl goes to for some semblance of a motherly touch.
"How do you want it?" Amy tilts his head forward, sideways. She treats Carl like a canvas. "A trim?" When Carl doesn't answer, Amy continues, something playful in the corners of her mouth. "Like your dad, maybe? I think I can manage that, if you can hold still."
Shane licks the bristles of his toothbrush and waits. Brings it down, to the barrel of the shotgun, moves it hard in little circles. He doesn't say a word. It's always been Carl's story to tell.
"Just a trim," Carl says, thoughtful. He doesn't look up, won't, and Shane bites the inside of his cheek. This is new, different from those weeks ago, crowded on that interstate with Carol and Sophia.
This time Carl lets the misconception alone; free like a cicada, a buzzing that warms Shane, hotter than the summer, from his fingertips to feet.
"Shane," Carl says, quiet, as Shane tucks him into bed. It's humid out tonight, thick and cloying, so Shane covers Carl with just a sheet.
He meets Carl's eyes. He sees Rick and Lori in there and his heart twinges, heavy, inside his chest.
"Yeah, bud?" he asks, brings his thumb up to touch Carl's cheek. To brush back and forth, gentle, like his momma had done for him when he was young. He finds himself doing that often, lately. Repeating those tricks his momma taught him. All the parental stuff he never thought he'd get the opportunity to use.
He thinks back to a barbecue held by one of the guys from the station. It had been late summer and he'd been sitting on a lawn chair when Carl had wandered up, red faced from crying for his mother, and promptly conked out in Shane's lap. Lori'd found them a little later, Shane's girl of the time at her side, two of them laughing, hem of their sundresses ruffling in the wind. He remembers her name still, Joanna Ramirez, round faced and dark as coffee colored with a little cream—the first of half a dozen girls he ever made the mistake of giving a key. Joanna'd looked at him, at Carl, made a comment about family, being a father, and a month later he was tossing out the toothbrush she'd forgotten near the sink.
"Do you think, someday, not now—" there is an ageless quality to Carl's face. Wisdom, shadows deep, that stretches out beyond Carl's years. "But someday," Carl reiterates, slowly. He looks to Shane for some kind of cue to carry on. "I could call you dad?"
Shane has to close his eyes at that. Has to blow a breath out through his nose. He knows how much it means for Carl just to say it. For Carl to consider equating Shane with Rick.
"Of course." Yes. "You know I'd be proud to be your dad." He feels lost, right then. Feels like, at the core of him, he's channeling himself and Rick. "Anyone would."
Carl smiles, genuine, the first in days. He's getting better. Getting stronger. And someday soon, he'll be strong enough to take on the world. He'll have Shane and the things Shane showed him and they'll get through, the two of them. They'll be a family: Shane and Carl. And it will be something real forged from the dust and the debris.
Carl leans into him, head against his side. They watch the group come back from Atlanta together. Watch Morales' children run to him. Watch Amy and Andrea hug. They watch families reunited and they don't feel alone. Carl tips his cheek higher against Shane's stomach.
Then, like in Shane's wildest dream, he feels his jaw go slack.
Rick. Rick, uniform and stupid hat, Python tucked neat into its holster, Rick, his best friend and brother, comes walking around the bend. Rick who is not dead or something worse. Rick who sees him, awe etched into his smile before his eyes drop to find Carl. Rick who loses it, wholly, at the sight of his child.
Rick brings a hand to his mouth, eyes all water, as Carl breaks into a run. They meet in the middle, Rick on his knees, Carl toppling Rick as he leaps into his arms. A couple of the girls are crying and it's hard not to at the sound of Carl's breathless and elated Dad.
Dad. The word tugs at Shane in a whole new way. He'd thought. Well. He'd thought.
Rick staggers to his feet, Carl's arms locked tight around his neck. He approaches Shane, lighter, like finding Carl's lifted off a weight. Probably has. If Rick's alive and out, that means he went to the house first. That means he saw Lori. He doesn't know how Rick made it through the grief. Doesn't know how Rick could carry on thinking that his wife and son were dead. Shane almost didn't make it and if it hadn't been for Carl, he knows exactly where he'd be.
"I thought," Shane starts—stops. His throat is too wet to speak.
Rick grasps a handful of his shirt. Hauls him forward, back of his hand curling hard around Shane's neck. Carl's squished between them, face buried in Rick's chest. Shane wonders what, exactly, this is for. Truth of the matter is he lost Lori and left Rick for dead.
Rick lets him go and scoops Carl closer. Can't seem to make himself put Carl down. And Carl looks like he doesn't plan on going anywhere soon. Just dangles there, at ease in his father's arms.
"When I saw his bag was gone," Rick says, sounding wrecked as Shane feels inside. Shane's vibrating in his boots, too much happiness, he thinks. Too much of something else that he can't place. It makes him hurt, whatever it is. "I knew he was alive. I knew he'd be with you." Rick kisses Carl's forehead and Carl makes a lost and happy sound. "Thank you."
Rick clasps him on the shoulder and digs his fingers in. There's hoarseness to his voice. Rick means this more than anything. More than a hand across the bible to tell the truth or the vows that kept his marriage bed.
What Rick says is gratitude and blood and absolution.
"Thank you for protecting my son."
Rick's son. Logically, Shane's known that Carl is always going to be Rick's.
He'd just thought Carl was going to be his too.
"You don't have to thank me for that, brother." He tries to laugh, to smile. He curls his fingers into the thick hair at the back of his head. "I'da done it whether your ass was around or not."
"Me and Shane are glad you're back," Carl says, first coherent sentence in minutes. He keeps his face buried in Rick's neck. Not once, not even that day Shane pulled him from the cupboard, has Carl ever hugged him like that.
Shane swallows, and it's not joy this time that wets his throat.