July 22, 2010
It's full daylight when Shane wakes. He realizes what roused him when he sees Quinn stretching next to the air mattress, limbering up muscles cramped from sleeping on the too-small surface with him. She frees her hair from the silk scarf and massages her scalp, hair a loose cloud of black curls now that it's free from its braid as well. The flash of color from her tattoos draws his eyes.
He didn't get a good look at any of them but the chest piece that night in the barn stall. With her clad only in the sports bra she was sleeping in last night, he can see that there's not a section of exposed back that isn't covered in ink. Whoever did her work was skilled with working against darker skin, because Shane sees none of the color fading he's heard people warned against when he got his ink done. There are rich accents of purple, blue, and red, all deeply vivid colors, and the general theme seems to be steampunk.
Quinn notices him looking and smiles. "It is - was - my one indulgence."
When she turns her back to him and unzips the sports bra to slip it off, he gets a full view of the major piece finally. Metal wings branch from a clockwork mechanism between her shoulder blades, as if surgically implanted. The skin over her spine is tattooed with a mechanical spine, ending in a glowing red gem at the base. A mechanical spider, with gleaming blood red accents on its body, weaves web on the spaces bare of the wings. A line of text curves beneath the gem: be your own guardian angel.
The irony is that her wings aren't angel wings at all. The scraps of deep purple leathery wing over the blue metal mechanics are definitely not traces of feathers.
"It's an amazing piece," he says, but his eyes catch minor changes in the flow of the wings that incorporate scarring into the design, just like the work he's seen on her arms. The animals and insects of her sleeve tattoos are steampunk themed as well, and they flow around scars so skillfully it's hard to see them.
She smiles over her shoulder as she slips the bra back on. "I'm fond of it, although the spider creeps Merle the hell out."
Shane snorts, sitting up to start looking for clothes, since he can hear folks moving outside his tent. "Can't imagine Merle afraid of spiders."
"He doesn't like bugs in general." Quinn tosses him a pair of pants out of his duffel. "Gonna go see what's up for breakfast. You and Merle will need to take the group out to 'find' our task is done here."
He gets the cargo pants up over his ass and zipped before he stops her. "How soon do we go back on the road?"
Maggie Greene and the two teenagers stayed until supper time yesterday, and Maggie spent a lot of her time with Quinn. Shane can't imagine his co-leader willingly leaving the battered young woman behind easily.
"We'll give it another day for Maggie to talk to her father. She says she's coming with us, one way or another. The question is just how many folks are coming with her."
He catches the shirt she tosses his way, making a mental note to himself that black is not the best color for the summer heat. "What's your estimate on that?"
"I think her sister will follow her into hell itself, because Maggie makes her feel safe, and she's barely coping with Maggie being attacked. The boy will follow Beth. It's the older three I have no idea about."
"You really think the old man will stay if his girls leave?"
Quinn sighs, looking sorrowful. "I think that he's too caught up in grief to choose his living daughters over the dead wife and son. Maggie doesn't think that Patricia and Otis will leave him behind. I told her we would take another day here to harvest crops and then leave out tomorrow morning, once we confirmed last night's raid was successful."
She crosses back from the tent opening and pulls him into a strong hug. "Let the others take the brunt of confirming things today," she says softly against his shoulder when he returns the embrace.
"Alright." It's an easy promise to make. Part of him wants to rebel and face his deeds up close. But there's a thread of worry in her voice that reminds him of how she speaks of Merle and the knife's edge he walks. If there's one less fear she can have today, he can do that much for her.
"Time to go find some clothes. I think that Hello Kitty pajama pants don't quite fit the dress code for today." She smiles at him, brushing a gentle kiss across one cheek, before unzipping the tent and disappearing.
He takes his time in finishing getting dressed, deciding to wipe down his skin to avoid any residual smell of smoke, but he can smell the distinctive scent of frying spam permeating the camp. It's a poor substitute for ham or bacon, but they've got to find a place to settle before that sort of thing is a possibility ever again. At least feral pigs are too damned mean for even walkers to ever wipe out their population.
When he emerges into the sunny morning, Shane spots Rick settled near the fire with a bowl already in his hands. His best friend waves him over, so he takes the empty chair and yawns as he rubs at his shoulder, which didn't care for the night on the twin sized air mattress.
"Late night?" Rick asks, amused.
For a brief moment, Shane's mind is back in Senoia, but then reality catches up with him. He just shrugs as he always does when Rick alludes to the relationship between him and Quinn. "I gotta find a bigger air mattress if we're traveling much longer."
Rick just laughs, gaze going to where Quinn's emerging from her own tent, dressed in her usual outfit of jeans and T-shirt. She's halfway through braiding her hair, talking to Merle where he's cleaning his Browning outside the trio of Dixon tents.
Lori passes him a bowl of what looks like a breakfast hash of spam, potatoes, and bell peppers. She still doesn't meet his eyes, so he's not sure if he's forgiven for revealing all to Rick yet or not. The couple seem to be settling into an easier relationship than he's remembering them having for years, so it was the right decision to make. He decides to test the waters, just a bit.
"Hey, Carl? Noticed there's a good sized pond on the property. You wanna join me and the girls to see if it's got any fish in it after I get back from scouting in town today?"
The slim brunette woman stiffens, but she looks at Carl and the shining, hopeful expression on his face and Shane sees her shoulders relax with an effort. "Sounds like a good plan for the afternoon, Carl," she says. Shane can even half believe her, and thankfully, Carl doesn't catch that her tone isn't quite right.
"Thanks, Mom!" the boy crows. "I'm gonna go tell Harper and Sophia."
He dashes off to where the girls are playing a card game, obviously waiting on the adults to get the day underway. The excitement of all three kids is damn near contagious, and almost makes him forget what today is going to entail.
"Hopefully, you won't get hung up on anything out there today," Rick says.
"Just surveillance, maybe grabbing another group if they venture out."
He's drawn into planning for that by Jacqui and Andrea. As Rick settles into quiet conversation with Lori, Shane is deeply grateful that Rick isn't going to be part of the gruesome discovery today.
That thought haunts him later, worrying over Rick with a law enforcement career behind him, instead of the youngest member of the scouting group. When they head back to the Cooper Farm before lunch, Shane's keeping a close eye on Glenn. The kid looks torn between haunted and vindicated, fists opening and closing against the worn fabric of his pants.
"You can talk about it, if you need to," Shane offers.
Glenn startles like a rabbit, banging his head on the window and rubbing it with a muttered "Ow."
"Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you."
There's a deep sigh and the kid shakes his head. "Is it awful of me to hope most of them weren't drunk or high enough to not know the building was burning?"
"Nah. I think much the same myself." Difference is, Shane knows a good number of them were aware of the fire. From the house fires they got called in, back as deputies if something seemed suspicious, Shane knows smoke inhalation is what kills many victims in a fire. But it didn't work quite that way for this group, probably because the building was a commercial one with high ceilings.
"Good." The echo of Maggie's vindictiveness would make Shane smile, if the subject were something other than barbequed bandits.
"Think we'll take a day or two to rest," he tells Glenn. "Quinn says Maggie is trying to get her whole family to come with us, and she wants to give the girl time to talk her daddy into it."
"I'm glad. She and her sister seem nice."
"Just nice?" Shane asks, deciding that teasing the hell out of Glenn is preferable to where either of their minds have been wandering. "Nice is how you describe your sister, kid."
He barely withholds the laughter when Glenn can't decide whether to gape or glare at him.
"Beth's real young," is what he manages at last.
Shane doesn't push him on his opinion of Maggie, because he thinks if he were Glenn's age, thinking of Maggie as anything other than 'nice' would make him feel like the world's biggest sleazeball. The poor girl's skin is a patchwork of blues, blacks, and purples from her battle with the two assholes who attacked her.
"How old are you actually?" Shane asks instead. His best guess is somewhere between sixteen and twenty. He has an enthusiasm to his personality that Shane associates with youth more than the slow cynicism the twenties bring to a man's experience.
"I turned twenty-two in May."
It's close enough to what Shane estimated, he supposes. "I guess Beth is real young then." He waits for a heartbeat, controlling his grin. "Amy's not, though."
It gets him a wide-eyed look. "Andrea would neuter me if I looked at her sister like that."
Shane does laugh now, chuckling as he turns down the long driveway to the Cooper Farm. "Amy might have something to say about that, and I'm pretty sure Quinn would slap it down hard. You're pretty well adopted there, Glenn."
The kid stares out the window for long enough Shane thinks he's just going to let the subject drop. "You really think that? About Quinn, I mean."
"I'll put it this way, Glenn. Any of these trips out we've been going on without Quinn? Anything happens to you, my ass is grass when I try to tell that woman I lost one of her kids."
"Really?" He sounds lost and so fucking young when he speaks.
"Yeah, really. Just cos she ain't tying you to some apron strings doesn't mean Quinn doesn't love you like her own." Hell, even Harper is pushed to careful independence, even if she's a little more protected due to being only eleven. Knowing what he knows of Quinn's childhood, he supposes it's the only way she knows, to give her kids all the tools she can toward surviving, with or without her.
Shane ignores the silent tears that get away from Glenn at his words, letting the kid look out the window in silence the last little bit until they park. It doesn't surprise him at all when the Korean is out of the truck before Shane's got it in park, running across the yard to fling his arms around a surprised Quinn in a hug strong enough he sees her feet lift from the ground.
She's smiling brightly when she meets Shane's eyes, if a little confused by the sudden affection. He just smiles back, feeling that his nudge toward Glenn to make him realize his place in Quinn's life might repay a small fraction of what Quinn's done for him.
A/N: I could not find any photos of a back tattoo that really describes what I envision Quinn having, but if you want to peek through steampunk tattoos, you'll get a general idea of what kind of ink she has. Shane still hasn't seen it all (and probably won't, since their relationship isn't a romantic one). But man, there are some gorgeously detailed tats in steampunk categories.
Gonna be real honest that this isn't going to be a Glenn and Maggie story, just folks know early on. As for other pairings, I'm loving the suggestions. I think I know where I'm going with Shane, but a Beth/Carl one wouldn't be possible for this particular story (not unless I do a sequel) because of their age gap. I'll put a Beth/Carl request in my Bunny Farm, though! :)