The thought of getting up and going back to that god awful shop made Shane want to drink.

A lot of things made Shane want to drink, but only JoJoMart made the urge happen before 7am.

Things had gotten better since Lucie had decided he was worth talking to, worth noticing. Some of the villagers had even started treating him like a human, not a just the person keeping Gus in business. Before she'd arrived everyone had largely ignored Shane, he could feel their discomfort rolling off them whenever they accidentally made eye contact with him.

Even Linus looked down on him. Linus - the homeless guy who literally scavenged for food out of bins - thought Shane was worthless. And Linus was right. He filled a space, he stacked some shelves and he made everyone's lives miserable.

He drank, which disappointed Marnie and distressed Jas, and seeing them hate him just a little made him want to drink more. And every day Jas started to look more and more like her mother. Every day she reminded him that his closest friends were dead.

Shane didn't think he could cope with the day that he looked at Jas and saw his oldest friend looking back at him.

He didn't get out of bed that day.

Or the next.

Lucie had barely left the farm in a few days. She'd been to Pierre's to sell some of the crops she'd grown, and whilst she was in town she gave some crops to the strange little blobby creatures that lived in the Community Centre.

Haley had been bored and visited her on the farm, using the pretence of delivering her a recipe as an excuse. Yet, having delivered the recipe, Haley then stayed and watched Lucie struggle to milk the cows that still looked at her suspiciously, despite having lived on her farm for almost as long as Lucie had. Haley chatted away, blissfully unaware of Lucie's mounting frustration.

But aside from that Lucie hadn't seen a soul. Instead, she was doing the boring bits of living on a farm. The eternal weeding. If getting rid of trees which had seeded over the years 'weeding'.
Her shoulders burned, and her back screamed with every movement. Farming hurt, and Lucie hurt, and she didn't stop.

She woke with the sun, and stayed up well past sun set. She buried herself like an axe into a tree, but didn't realise she needed to pull it back to swing again. She just pushed and pushed and pushed.

Then, she burned herself out.

Turns out that mining until 2 am was not a good plan, and doing so after 5 days of less than 4 hours of sleep was an even worse plan.

She had only meant to lean against the fence for a second, just to put down the bag she was lugging for a moment, just to catch her breath. She hadn't meant to stop.
But then she was tumbling down the steps that she had forgotten were there. She must have fallen asleep for a heartbeat, and now she was lying on the ground, aching all over and barely conscious. Even the adrenaline from her fall couldn't counteract the sleep deprivation, and Lucie stayed where she lay.

She woke up in Harvey's Clinic with a headache and an IV in her arm. Her head felt like someone had drilled a hole in her brain and used her brain to show children how to slot shapes together.

Blearily opening her eyes, she groaned loudly. Lucie pressed her IV-linked hand to her forehead and struggled upright.

"Morning," Harvey said without looking up from his desk.
Lucie blinked a few more times in the bright, white light of the clinic.

"Wha-?" The word didn't come out fully. Her brain wasn't working. It felt as if it had a loose connection - some of the information was coming through, but mostly it was just white noise. And she could hear white noise too, which didn't help.

Harvey glanced up at her this time.

"Luckily for you, I couldn't sleep last night and I took a walk. You were practically lying in the river, dehydrated and exhausted." He was not impressed. The scolding tone was enough to make Lucie wince. Or maybe that was the pain she could now feel in her left arm - By Yoba that was a lot of bruising. Oh, shit, Harvey was speaking still. "What were you even doing out that late?"

"Mining." Lucie pressed a hand over her eyes. "Can I go home now?"

"Lucie." Okay, that was a no.

Shane finally hauled himself out of his bed and made his way into town. He wasn't going to work. Work be damned. Surely he'd be able to find another job somehow…he'd have to in order to pay for his and Jas' rent.
Being outside was good. He could tell that Summer was well on its way - he was almost sad to have missed the Flower Dance. If it was this nice, surely it would have been a nice day. And free food was always nice. But, frozen dinners was all he could manage two days ago, so nice things weren't for Shane. Not at the moment.

The breeze shook him out of his reverie, and he looked around the town square. There were a few people milling around; Haley and Alex were over in the corner pretending like they didn't have feelings for each other when it was so clear they did. Alex tossed the grid ball in the air. Arrogant fucker. Shane fought back anger, remembering his pushiness with Lucie that night. Shane should have done something more - something sooner. But he barely knew Lucie then, how was he to know?
He knew, he was lying to himself and he knew it. Lucie's face was screaming out her discomfort. She might have forgiven Alex, but Shane couldn't let it go as easily. He couldn't just forgive himself like that.

And there she was. She was emerging from the Clinic looking slightly dishevelled - her hair was was half falling out of its bun, thin tendrils of hair snaking down her neck as she turned to look back in the clinic. One hand resting on the doorframe, she leant back in through the door, back into the darkness that Shane couldn't see.
Suddenly, a thought flashed through his head. The bottom of his gut fell out and hardened all at once. Shane ripped his eyes away and trying not to think what he was thinking. Despite himself, he looked back towards Lucie and met her gaze.

Even at this distance he could see her blush. She lifted a hand and waved at him, a half-hearted unfurling of a hand which curled back on itself after a fraction of a second. She burrowed it in her hair quickly, reaching around to the back of her neck. Shane merely nodded back at her, glad he was too far away for her to be able to tell the state he was in. Glad that she was the only one who was embarrassed.

A/N: Hey, so, fun fact, I am currently writing, like, chapter 15 of this - so I can promise that I won't do my usual thing and abandon it half way through. BUT for the people who've reviewed this - thank you, I am terrible for forgetting about things so having peer-pressure in the form of people pointing out that they read this so come on, get on with it, is really helpful.

I'm glad you like it :) ALSO plz don't be shy to give critical feedback if you have it

and if anyone wants to write my diss for me, go ahead, i don't want it anymore, im done, im out