A/N: Sophia's POV. It could be a triggering chapter due to her thoughts about her parents and domestic violence.

October 15, 2010

Sophia takes a deep breath as the third song on the CD ends. As the fourth begins, she lets Lucius go with a kiss on his furry head. The big cat stalks over to the back windows, leaping up onto the little kids' toy box and wedging himself onto the window sill of the one of the windows.

Cutting the music off, she stands, dries her face, and blows her nose before she opens the door. She can feel Shane's weight against it even as it moves, so she steps backwards. He allows himself to travel with the door, which lands him sprawled on her floor on his back. Molly and Luke giggle, sounding tired.

"Feeling better?" he asks softly, looking up at her. There's no condemnation in his expression for her temper tantrum, just concern.

"Maybe." She's still not leaving, and she meant it. Although maybe she won't walk across Georgia. He did teach her to drive, and Merle taught her how to hotwire the older vehicles.

"Molly, why don't you and Luke go help Michonne with Andre?" Shane suggests. They don't argue, but both of them step over Shane to hug Sophia tightly before heading to the bathroom where she can hear Andre splashing.

Shane looks at her for a minute before getting to his feet. He offers a hug, and she leans into his warmth, needing the comfort. She told Carl when they first met that his dad was nice, but even after she learned he wasn't Carl's dad, he acted like one. Back at the quarry, Shane was always so affectionate with Carl, as if hugs and attention were infinite things he just had to share with the boy.

She had been so jealous she could practically taste it.

"I don't want to leave here," she mutters into his chest. "This is my family."

Shane smells like everything she's come to associate with safety and home: gun oil, sawdust, the deodorant soap everyone shares, and the expensive cologne she couldn't describe until she read the box and knows it's bergamot and black currant - spicy citrus and sweet.

She used to be a little wary of hugs, needing to be careful not to add hurt to her mother's often injured frail form. But now, she can linger, with the little kids and with Merle and Michonne. The kids are still so tiny and breakable, making her feel like Hagrid trying not to break them while she holds them close. It's a lot like hugging her mama, making her feel a desperate need to protect.

Michonne always smells of the avocado conditioner for her dreads, with a whiff of something spicy Sophia's never been able to identify. She always feels stronger than Sophia, with all the layers of muscles trained by martial arts that Sophia envies and works hard to build on herself.

Being hugged by Merle is different than Shane or Michonne, because he still sometimes avoids using his right arm. But he'll drop the left one over her shoulder and pull her close companionably, usually with some really questionable joke just clean enough to share with a kid. He always smells like Old Spice and spearmint, and the earthy scent of the oatmeal based lotion he uses in his stump. He likes to tug on what length she has to her hair and suggest a different color she should try instead of brown. Usually it's something garish, like bubblegum pink to match the Bug.

Shane's big hand brushes over her hair, settling against the nape of her neck. "We are and always will be, but she's your mama, sweetheart. She was family first."

Sophia feels her fingers fist into Shane's shirt. Seeing her mother alive today was like a miracle. Even though Shane told her Daryl was looking after Carol at that farm, she didn't quite believe her mother would really make it very long.

"He's her boyfriend," she says, leaning back enough that she can see Shane. "She was holding his hand under the table."

"That could be a good thing," Shane suggests. "He's not like Ed."

She knows that much, between the quarry and Merle's stories since he's been here. Her mother is safe with Daryl.

"It doesn't mean he's in charge of me."

She thinks Shane's tightening of his hug is probably involuntary. His gaze is as serious as she's ever seen it. "No, it doesn't, but him being with your mama is something that takes extra consideration."

She huffs a sigh, feeling the breath gust back at her from his chest. "Did you ever have to do that? With your mama?"

Shane doesn't talk a lot about his mother. When he does, it's always wistful. She died of cancer when Shane was in high school, and it seems he has an easier time talking about his Grandma Jean instead, even though she's been gone for years. Sophia guesses it's different, seeing your mother waste away for years from cancer and its treatments versus a grandmother who goes peacefully in her sleep.

"Not really. She worked so much, and then she was sick for a long time. Maybe if she had, she wouldn't have had to work so hard just to get by."

Sophia thinks about that, and how being on her own in this world was terrifying. At least Daryl is protective of her mother. That sure as hell wasn't something Ed would have done. He probably would have laughed and added to the reasons for Carol to cry and encouraged Sophia to say more mean things.

"I still don't want to leave here."

"I know, sweetheart. We've just got to find the solution. Maybe they could come here. Stay up at the big house near the gates so Rick's not around you."

The idea of the other deputy being near her makes her feel panicky and dizzy. She can almost see the woods again and hear the strange sounds around her. Shame flickers through her at how weak she was then, even wetting herself that first night in that little pantry. It makes her stomach clench, and she feels like she needs to throw up. Her fear must transfer to Shane, because she's squashed against him again.

"Okay, maybe not. Not if it scares you this bad." He kisses her on the temple.

The gentle gesture of comfort jolts her from the worst of it. "I'm sorry," she says, recognizing her voice as the old Sophia, the weak one, and hating it.

"Ain't nothing to be sorry for. To be honest, I feel the same way about seeing him, even if my reasons are different."

"Because you were trying to hurt him." She remembers the unloaded gun that first night, but she's pieced together a good enough picture of the farm from things Shane's said directly and indirectly. He isn't the only one that's read that book about mental illness he's got in his nightstand drawer.

"Yeah, I was. I did a lot of things they aren't going to want to forgive me for. Some that they shouldn't. I told you the worst, the killing I did, but not everything."

She shifts a little, and he lets her go. She doesn't want to move out of the hug, but she needs to see him clearly to ask. "Mama mentioned needing an obstetrician and Lori being sick. Is Lori pregnant?"

Maybe Carl never noticed, because he was a boy or younger or just grew up around nicer people that didn't talk about sex or affairs, but Sophia remembers that Shane and Lori were a couple before Carl's father returned. Sophia had her hand on his shoulder when her mother brought up Lori, and his body trembled like it did when he gathered Sophia up in that Claimer camp.

Shane clears his throat, looking like he's about to tell her something awfully upsetting. "She is. It was part of why Rick and I were fighting. He didn't want me to be part of the baby's life."

"It's your baby?" She isn't sure how to feel about that. It's not like Shane's all hers. She's not that selfish. But a baby is something so much different than Molly and the other kids.

"Has to be. She found out too soon after Rick came back."

Sophia thinks that over, fitting another missing puzzle piece into her mental reconstruction of what went wrong on the farm. It's not right for Shane to never see his baby. He's a good dad.

"The brick house by the main road?" she asks, thinking of the two houses closest to the road that leads from their little rambling road to the highway. One is a small, sunshine yellow painted house with two bedrooms that looks like it was built a hundred years ago. The other is a big two-story white brick place that resembles Gloria's house a little bit in its design and layout.

"Yeah. Only time you would have to be close to him would be driving by."

She thinks maybe she could live with that. It might make things better, knowing where he is, and maybe making sure he doesn't lose anyone else. She's not a little kid anymore, and people listen to her opinions now.

"Okay. Do you think Mama will be willing to come here if we tell her Mister Eastman is actually Doctor Eastman?"

The psychiatrist doesn't like his real title used, asking her to use Mister if she's insistent on good manners. It's a little weird, because he's started doing counseling sessions with all the kids, so he's not pretending he isn't one anymore. But he went over how she took care of Shane and shared how doctors have to train in a lot of areas before they specialize in one.

"That could be a selling point. We kinda reached the shouting and crying stage before we asked where they're even staying and if it is safe in the long term."

She sighs, knowing he's right there. It just made her so angry that her mother didn't listen to her or even ask what she wanted. "I've gotta apologize to them, don't I?"

"You did say something pretty cruel at the end, Fee. I'm not one to say she's your mama and that excuses everything like some do, but from what I know of Carol, she's a good woman. She just had a really shitty hand dealt to her for a long time."

Sophia sighs and fiddles with the little bear on her pillow. "We left once. Went to a shelter in Atlanta and stayed one night. I thought we were finally free of him. But he found us somehow, and she went back. It was a nice shelter, too, not like Ed always said those places would be."

When she turns, Shane's sympathetic look makes her mood shift between anxious and angry and sad all at once. She bets he knows about shelters and saw lots of families like hers.

"I even went on the internet at school. Maybe Atlanta was too close and too many people knew where it was. But she wouldn't listen even when I gave her the address of a place in Chattanooga and another in Charleston. Ed was too lazy to go that far, I figured, and if she got a protection order, he could be arrested."

"I wish I could tell you honestly that he wouldn't have followed you that far. But if he risked going to Atlanta, he might have tried the others. And protection orders only mean the police can make an arrest." His brown eyes look haunted. "We didn't always get there in time."

That makes Sophia flinch. Ed threatened to kill her mother often enough, the last few years. She can imagine from her parents and from television why Shane looks half sick.

"At least he can't hurt her anymore," she says at last.

"No, he cannot." He smiles a little sadly. "And I think maybe she's learned some things while you've been apart. Did you notice her holster?"

Sophia wracks her brain for a mental image of her mother and has to shake her head. Carol had a jacket on, and while she's a little disappointed she didn't follow her lessons about observation, she guesses she didn't see her mother as enough of an unknown to assess her like that.

"She's carrying a little revolver of some sort, probably a .38. I could be wrong, but I doubt Daryl would let her carry a gun she's not trained to use. Not after Andrea accidentally shot him on the farm."

"Andrea shot Daryl?" Sophia is baffled at the idea.

"He came out of the woods, wounded after a horse threw him when he was looking for you. Was in bad shape and really dirty, so he did look like a walker from a distance."

"Daryl got hurt looking for me?" The idea of it makes Sophia's feel weird. Daryl doesn't even know her, and he got hurt and shot on her behalf.

"Horse got startled by a snake and bucked him off down a ravine. One of his bolts ended up through his side. He found your doll that day and brought it back to prove you were still alive." Shane touches his head to one side. "Andrea's bullet grazed him right there."

Sophia feels herself touching the same spot. "You said once that he was the only one that never gave up."

"I don't know why he believed as strongly as he did, but he was loud and determined that you were out there still." Shane runs a hand over his hair in that way he does when he's agitated. "I was a real asshole about it, after a few days passed. Kept quoting statistics about lost kids from before."

Shane looks so guilty that Sophia just grins to reassure him, not liking him being guilty for being realistic. She's seen the news and how searches for missing kids usually happened. "So, I guess you're going to have to apologize, too."

Shane laughs and drags her into a brief, squishy hug. "You're going first, missy. Gotta show me the way."

"Guess I should get started then." She looks at the windows, where Lucius seems like he's standing guard. It just takes a few steps to verify her suspicion. She can't see everything, not without being seen herself, but she can see her mother on the little loveseat.

"My own mama always said apologies are like medicine, Fee. Best given as soon as possible."

She giggles at the analogy and heads for the door. He lets her step by him, but surprises her when he speaks again before she's out in the hallway.

"You know I love you, right, Sophia?" It's so soft spoken she can't help but look at him. Shane looks uncertain, completely unlike the confidence she's come to expect to see.

"I know you do." She gives him her best smile, fueled by how warm the words make her feel, like her heart is too big for her body. "I love you, too."

But she leaves it at that for now, because she has to apologize to her mother and Daryl and fix the problem that's threatening to separate her family before she can think about how good it feels to finally say that out loud.