AN: This is in a series of "shorts" that I'm doing for entertainment value as I rewatch some episodes. Some of them are interpretations/rewrites of scenes that are in each episode. Some are scenes that never happened but could have in "imagination land". They aren't meant to be taken seriously and they aren't meant to be mind-blowing fic. They're just for entertainment value and allowing me to stretch my proverbial writing muscles. If you find any enjoyment in them at all, then I'm glad. If you don't, I apologize for wasting your time. They're "shorts" or "drabbles" or whatever you want to call them so I'm not worrying with how long they are. Some will be shorter, some will be longer.

I own nothing from the Walking Dead.

I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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It wasn't that hard to understand. Rules were rules and they were in place for the good of everyone. High fires were a risk. They drew attention—and at this point they still weren't sure if attention from the Walkers or attention from other humans was what worried them most. The world was in a state of turmoil and Shane knew, probably better than everyone else there, that people could be every bit as dangerous as the Dead. The rules were in place to keep them all safe. They applied to each of them.

But Ed Peletier was a man that believed he was above the rules.

He had no reason not to believe it, either. No one had ever told him any differently. To Ed, the world existed for his comfort. Everything existed for him. For his use. For his wants and desires.

He was a lazy, no-good bastard and Shane hadn't been able to stand him since he'd set eyes on him on the highway. He'd been balking them every step of the way, refused to pull his own weight, and seemed to think that by just existing he merited some kind of respect from all of them.

And he thought the rules just didn't apply to him.

Shane had wanted, more than once, to deck the man and to deck him good—but Ed hadn't given him a good enough reason to do it. Not yet.

When Shane walked over, he caught the uncomfortable expressions that crossed the faces of Carol and Sophia. The little girl watched her mother, looking for a sign. Shane was perfectly aware of why she was looking at her mother like that too. His interference with Ed's wishes could cost Carol big time. Ed wasn't man enough to stand up to anyone in the group—and especially not to Shane—so he took out all his frustration on his wife. Their daughter, no doubt, was closer to the action than she'd ever been before they'd been forced to share such cramped quarters.

Everyone knew what happened when they were alone in their tent, just a little off from everyone else's. The bruises on Carol's body showed, clearly, what Ed was up to. He kept it hid, though. He never did it in the open. He never gave Shane a clear reason to stop him.

But Shane was biding his time and, in the meantime, he was trying to keep things calm enough that the suffering of Carol, and Sophia by extension, might be minimalized.

For that reason, and that reason alone, Shane might have let Ed be above the rules this once. But all the chaos and confusion of the day had already possibly given away their location and they couldn't have that made worse by the fact that the log Ed had thrown on the fire would raise the flames up to a visible level.

He wished he could apologize to Carol. He wished he could help her. That's what he'd once sworn to do and he'd help bust up more than one domestic fight, but that was in a world where there were jails to haul Ed off to. That was in a world where he knew how to get his wife and daughter away from him—and to keep them safe. Things were different now and he wasn't even sure what to do.

Here sat a man who, when everyone else was sweeping up the broken bits of their lives, had his wife and his child safely with him and he was as big of a threat to them as everything else that was out there. Here sat a man with a family—one thing that Shane wanted and, apparently, couldn't have—and he was willing to destroy it for his own ego.

Shane grimaced when Ed instructed Carol to pull the log out of the fire that he'd thrown in there. If he'd anticipated such a command, Shane would have pulled it out for him. No man, in Shane's opinion, had any business instructing his wife to come so close to handling a burning piece of wood—and especially not when he was the reason the thing needed to be moved in the first place. But Shane hadn't anticipated it because it was something entirely out of his realm of comprehension and expectation, but when Carol had moved to do what her husband commanded, Shane didn't interrupt. To do so, he knew, might just further irritate the man and push him to show his so-called dominance.

Sophia was watching everything, but more than anything, she was watching Carol. She was trying to discern—for her own safety and the safety of her mother—if things were going well or not. She was trying to decide exactly how worried she should be. How afraid should she feel?

And a few feet away, Lori was sitting, reunited with Rick, her son between them. Shane felt like he was being torn apart inside by the whole thing. Rick was his best friend and he was happy to see him alive—he was amazed to know that he'd survived. But it didn't stop the suffocating feeling of disappointment and loss that had come over him when he'd seen Rick standing there, appearing out of the van like some kind of hero. Lori would go back to Rick—her lawfully wedded husband—and Carl had his father back. Shane had no one. At least, he had no one special. He had no one that he could call his in all this. Everything he'd enjoyed for the last while was gone now with the return of his best friend and he'd never felt more conflicted than he did at that moment.

And Lori was a perfect contrast to the woman who sat by Ed's fire, small-framed but made even smaller by the shadow of her douchebag husband.

Carl, thankfully, would never know the fear that Sophia knew. And Lori would never know Carol's fear. Lori's biggest problem in all this, if any of it even affected her the same as it did Shane, was that she had too many men that loved her. She had too many men that would do anything they had to do to keep her safe and protected.

And Carol? She was expected to pull burning logs from fires to save the hands of her worthless husband—to protect his hands so he could use them to beat her later for her efforts.

Shane spoke softly to both Carol and Sophia—mostly for Sophia's benefit and to try and wipe away some of the concern from her features. Carol responded and quietly apologized to him for the wood—apologized to him for conflict that she didn't cause in the slightest. The gesture struck Shane, too, because he knew that it would cost her. Apologizing for Ed's mistake would cost Carol. And she knew it too, it was clear. But she still felt that apologizing for inconveniencing him—and perhaps endangering the group—was worth whatever she might have to pay, personally, for such a small act of boldness.

Shane didn't miss it.

And he wished that there was something he could do. He wished there was some way that he could protect her from Ed. He wished that there was some way to justify punishing the man for his actions—always hidden in the tent that they shared—so that no one would look at him like he was acting against reason when he killed the man.

But there wasn't anything that he could tonight. There wasn't anything that he could do right now. So he simply offered some parting words to the man, hoping that his tone somehow let him know that he thought he was a despicable excuse for a human being.

He hoped the tone of his words, maybe, imparted some kind of a warning.

Because, one day, Ed would give him a reason.