October 12, 2010
Shane's in the water with all the kids, including Andre, when Michonne makes her way down to the dock. She sits, pulling off her boots and socks, and dangles her feet in the water. Andre dog paddles his way over to her, taking in a mouthful of lake water as he tries to demand she look at him swim.
Shane catches him and lifts him up so he can talk to his mother, grinning at the wriggly little boy.
"No jacket, Mama. No floaties! I'm big!"
Michonne laughs and reaches out to cup Andre's cheek. "I see that. You're swimming like a fish."
The toddler makes an exasperated sound. "No, Mama. Fish swim under the water. I swim on top."
She tilts her head thoughtfully. "Does that make you an otter or a gator then?"
"Oh Lord." The boy's sudden snapping of teeth answers the question, and Shane barely keeps hold of him. "Now you got him started."
Michonne just smirks at him. He turns Andre loose to let him swim around the dock like he's been dog paddling. He moved both of the boats to one side of the dock, giving Andre a little manmade cove between bank, dock, and Shane's sheltering bulk. Beyond them, the older kids are padding with a combination of kick boards and a giant, obnoxiously pink inflatable flamingo that Merle brought back on a lark.
The three newest kids are all strong swimmers, even little Luke, but Sophia is still cautious about her newly acquired skill. Steady encouragement from Duane got her confident in the days before there were six kids to supervise in the water, but Shane's proud that she caught on so quickly.
He's going to be more than a little sad that they can't take these little jaunts much longer. October's hanging in as a fairly warm month so far, but he knows how the weather goes. Eventually, a cold front will hit, and that'll be that for the lake until April, at least.
"You gonna swim with us?" Shane eyes Michonne's capris and loose T-shirt, but doesn't see the telltale signs of a swim top above her shirt. She doesn't join in the swimming often, so he isn't surprised.
"No. I just wanted to give you a heads up that Merle and Morgan are on their way back, and they aren't coming alone."
Shane freezes, one hand going to his chest without him wanting it too.
She leans out to tug his hand away, shaking her head gently. "Not Rick or his people."
"Then who?" He's trying to think why Michonne would think he needs a warning that Merle's bringing in refugees. They've all four agreed that if someone passes the well-honed bullshit meter that the two men have, Morgan and Merle can bring survivors back without involving Michonne and Shane.
"Andrea."
Oh. Shane wracks his brain, trying to remember if anywhere in his tale to the two men the night he confessed all, he detailed anything about the half-formed plans Andrea made to try to get him to leave with her. There's a part of him that wonders if everyone would have been better off if he listened to the blonde and left the farm.
But if he had, the odds they would have stumbled across Sophia are negligible. There's no way the refugees from the farm found that cabin, because he can't picture Daryl and Carol not following the trail of clues if the group found that first note he wrote at the cabin. As guilty as it makes him feel, if it required that night in the field to get him on the path to Sophia, he would make the same choice.
"She a good one or a bad one?" Michonne asks, frowning. "Merle didn't seem perturbed by her."
Shane snorts. "Merle used to call her sugar tits and accuse her of being a lesbian using the most derogatory language he could. I doubt Andrea can phase him at all."
"Christ. He toned down the crazy so fast with me that it's hard to remember the first few days when he was still half-delirious and had no filter."
"I'm sure most of that isn't repeatable even in impolite company."
"He learned his lesson." There's a quality to Michonne's smile that makes Shane curious on how she tamed the big redneck, but he doesn't ask. One day, maybe.
"As for Andrea, she's a decent woman. A little more opinionated than most find appealing." He checks on the kids, finding them all content and safe. "We had a bit of a thing, toward the end. She wanted me to leave with her, strike out on our own without the illusion that the world was going to return to normal that the others wanted to believe in."
"So she's a realist?"
"More or less, yeah. Not as much at first. Used to bitch about divisions of labor, but didn't offer to learn anything useful aside from the laundry and such she hated. Came around after her sister died."
"That would be a world changer for many." Michonne nudges him, bare toes against his ribs. "This thing you two had. That going to be a problem?"
The question startles him, and he studies her intently. "If you mean like with Lori, no. It was just two people needing to blow off steam. It's not something I intend to resurrect. The kids don't need the drama, and she's definitely not much into kids."
Michonne's smile reaches her eyes as she nudges him again with her foot. "See? I told you the other night that you had the instincts for being a dad. You already acknowledge the kids as a factor in getting laid or not."
He catches her foot and curls his fingers to tickle the arch. It gets him a firm push backwards in the water. "Don't worry about me, Michonne. I buried the womanizer in the field I nearly died in, I promise."
Andre paddles back to the dock, wanting out of the water, and Shane lifts him up to his mother. "Gonna go further out with the other kids before I send them back to shore to wash up. Merle say when they were getting in?"
"Anytime now, actually. They were having some interference with signal, but they'll check it out later to see what's blocking them." When he moves toward the dock, she shakes her head. "Let me handle the culture shock moments. Spend time with the kids."
"Was she on her own?" Shane guesses she got separated from the rest the same as he did in the chaos of the herd swarming the farm.
"Nah. Got some psychiatrist fellow that holed up in a cabin in the woods following some Buddhist creed. Morgan convinced him to come back with Andrea after his pet goat nearly got turned into walker chow."
"More goats? The kids will be thrilled."
Michonne just laughs, snagging her boots and socks with one hand and lifting Andre to a hip. "At least they won't have to name this one, if we're lucky."
She heads up the incline to the house, even as Shane hears the gate mechanisms. He resists the urge to call the kids in early and leave the water. Like Michonne said, time enough for Michonne to make the introductions. Out of everyone left on the farm, Andrea's the one that worries Shane the least about upsetting the life he's dragging back out of the ashes piece by piece.
When he does make it back to the house, organizing swimsuit clad kids through the outdoor shower one after another to rinse off the lake water and sunscreen, he can see Andrea standing on the porch, looking down. He doesn't acknowledge her, concentrating on the kids. His skin crawls with apprehension of this major piece of the worst period of his life returning.
Shane steps into the shower himself, letting the water rinse the lake from his skin and swim trunks. He hesitates at the cabinet where spare clothes are kept, staring at the small pile of plain undershirts. Taking Michonne's advice not to hide the scar from his family is one thing.
Andrea isn't family.
He pulls on a shirt, glad that they stock the largest size needed to fit any of the three men. The white cotton fabric hangs just a little loose. He's building back some of the mass he lost when he was sick, but not at the driven level he would have in his deputy days.
When he reaches the porch nearest the living room entrance, the blonde is waiting on him, but she seems pensive, none of the usual backbone of piss and vinegar animating her. The kids were all sent up the stairs on the bedroom side, not questioning the diversion since they need to shower.
"It was easy to forget on the farm, just how good you are with kids."
Of all the things he expected her to say, that wasn't it. But she's been here for half an hour, so she had plenty of time to observe him and the kids on the lake. It earns her a hesitant smile.
"Didn't do much to keep ahead of Carl at the farm, I admit." No one did. It's a wonder the kid didn't pull up stakes and set off on his own, with his parents and Shane caught up in their own drama. He did in a way, because Shane's blood still runs cold from remembering Carl's confession about wandering into the woods with the gun and encountering the walker.
"I don't think anyone did, once he got out of that bed and looked healthy." She turns a glass in her hands and sits at the little patio table Sophia set up near the grill. "Merle didn't fill me in on much after the farm fell. Said it wasn't his piece to speak."
Shane leans against the railing, not willing to sit down and consider this a mundane conversation. "How did you get separated? Do you know who made it off?"
She frowns a little, but shrugs. "Most of us were at the house when it started. The plan was to draw off as many as we could in the cars. Glenn and Maggie were in one, me and T-Dog in another. Jimmy took the RV to the barn where Rick and Carl were, but he got swarmed. Barn was on fire."
She takes a drink of her tea, finger trailing in the condensation. "We didn't have enough ammo. We circled back to get the others. Walkers got Patricia. T-Dog got Lori and Beth into the truck, but when I tried to help Carol, we got cut off. I guess they thought I was dead, because a walker fell on me after I killed it. I hope they thought I was dead, because they left me."
Her eyes are glassy with tears. "Where were you? Daryl and Glenn found Randall as a walker."
Shane picks at the hem of his shirt, taking a deep breath. "Lying under a walker wishing I would bleed to death."
"Oh." She scans his form, and he makes no move to explain further. Not yet. "I saw Rick and Carl. They were alive, and they took Hershel with them. They didn't hear me beg them to stop. I heard the motorcycle, toward the end, when I fled into the woods, so I'm guessing Daryl survived."
"And Carol?" Jesus Christ, for Sophia's sake, he hopes Carol managed to get in a car somehow, somewhere, not left behind like Andrea. She isn't as resourceful as the blonde.
"I have no idea."
"Dammit."
"Why is Carol so important?"
Shane looks at Andrea and manages a rueful smile. "Because I found Sophia. She's alive, despite me being the biggest asshole on the planet about the odds she would survive."
"Holy shit? She's really alive? She's here?" The tears that threatened earlier spill over for Andrea, and Shane understands. Finding kids alive out there? It's a special kind of miracle. He can see her skimming over the kids she watched come up from the lake. "Oh God. I didn't recognize her at all."
"She's not the kid we lost in the woods anymore, that's for sure."
"Wow. Daryl was the last to leave. Hopefully he stuck around because he was looking for Carol and actually found her. No one else he would have lingered for, you know that."
"Yeah. That's what I told her. I remember hearing the motorcycle, before I got enough of me back together to get up and run." His memories are so foggy about that night, especially months later, but the sound of that damned Triumph still rings clear.
"Merle said he and the other man were looking for them. Why aren't you?"
That's when he finally takes a seat, knowing Michonne will keep the kids inside and away from this discussion. Confessing what he did takes so few words, but it's just as raw as it was with Merle and Morgan. There's not as much to tell, because Andrea knows everything up until his plan to drag Randall into the woods.
She doesn't speak right away, and he finally raises his head from where he directed every incriminating word toward the mesh of the patio table. Andrea doesn't look horrified, and she isn't recoiling away.
Instead she reaches across the table and places a thin hand over his. "For what it's worth, Shane, I'm glad you didn't succeed in that field."
He doesn't pull away, not right away, because he thinks the touch is about comforting herself even more than him.
"Most days, so am I."
There will always be the bad days. He knows that. He's snuck enough enough of Sophia's books and read the psychology sections to wrap his mind around the damage done.
"Maybe there's a reason Merle found me." That makes him pull his hand away, leaning back, and she smiles sadly. "Not me, personally, Shane. When I was running through the woods, I found someone too. Instead of being a lost lamb, I found a man with a staff, who bashed in the heads of the walkers on my heels like they were summer cantaloupes."
"Michonne mentioned a psychiatrist. I figured it was a hint."
Andrea laughs, curling her hand back around her glass when he remains out of reach.
"He's a good man, but it won't be just the classic head shrinker talk, all high and mighty. It's his story to tell, but Eastman? He knows what lines you crossed, Shane. Intimately, and not just because he worked with prisoners before."
Shane wonders if anyone here over the age of twelve hasn't crossed those lines. He doesn't want to ask Andrea. She hadn't, back at the farm, but he knows she's capable, if she had to.
"I guess I'll sit down and see what he can make of me, if he's willing." Sophia might duct tape him to a chair if he refused. He's seen the girl studying those same psychology chapters, that worried little furrow between her brows aimed his way when she thinks he isn't looking. She isn't scared of him, he knows that.
But scared for him? That's something maybe he can solve.
And God knows every kid in the house older than three needs someone skilled in mind healing in ways he and the other adults aren't. No more groping around in the dark hoping they don't trip a mine of horror and anxiety for the kids.
"Let's go inside. Let Fee see that someone else made it off the farm." He rises, pitching his voice lower, just in case. "Please don't tell her you aren't sure about her mama. Not til we know for sure."
Andrea studies him intently, something of the lawyer she once was rising into her expression. "I can do that. No sense in making her lose hope."
"Thank you."
She darts curious, intent glances his way as she passes him toward the door, but doesn't say anymore before she steps inside.
Shane takes a deep breath. In a way, Andrea was the first big test, in a way Merle was not, a piece of his bloodsoaked past wandering in for shelter. It doesn't scare him as much as it once did.
They'll be fine, and if Andrea survived, on foot and out of ammo, then there's always hope that the rest did as well.