I don't own anything to do with Rick or any character from the Walking Dead. I own the OC character, Ruby, however, and I adore her.

Summary: Shane's been killed by Rick and the group doesn't trust him anymore. So what does Rick do? Snap. He finds a girl in the woods and takes out his aggression.

Yes, I know if you've read my other stuff you know that I am a Shane girl, but Rick is awesome, too. So I decided to play with him a little.

Rate and comment if you like! Thanks, and please, no flames. They are... unhelpful.

**** Hey guys! Thank you SO MUCH for the wonderful feedback you've given. I love that you are enjoying the story as much as I am writing it. This chapter is going to delve into Rick's relationship with the people in the house now that so much had changed, and his and T-Dog's heart to heart at the end seals it, I think. I have heard that I may not have written Lori very true to form, and I want to explain where my interpretation of her comes from. In the season finale, when Rick revealed he killed Shane and she yanked away from his touch and stared him down like she didn't know him. That's what did it for me, because I felt Rick realized he'd lost Shane forever, and now he'd lost the one woman he'd moved heaven and earth to get back to because, in her heart, she'd chosen Shane, no matter what she might have said. If I were Rick, I think I'd have snapped, so there ya go. Thanks again, everyone!

The lessening of tension that usually comes when a major threat has been eliminated didn't come. He couldn't relax even a little, not with Ruby so torn up in the adjoining room, Daryl out there watching for walkers, his son upstairs probably terrified out of his mind. Deciding to try and do something about it, he climbed the stairs to the second floor and made his way to Lori and Carl's room.

Knocking gently, he opened it slowly and saw Beth laying back on a cot in the corner, and Lori sitting up in the bed holding Carl close. She looked up at him and for once, she didn't seem furious. Just worried, and he took a few steps toward them, close enough to tousle Carl's hair. The boy looked back at him and put his little arms around Rick's waist.

"Walkers from the road got too close, but we stopped them." He said softly and Lori nodded, focusing her attention on the bedspread beneath her fingers.

"You think we should stay here? Even with the boarded up windows downstairs we're still pretty close to the road." She asked, looking back up at him as she finished.

He frowned, patting Carl's shoulder. "I know. I think we need to talk about it, all of us."

"You said this wasn't a democracy anymore." She countered, but her voice didn't have the same bite it had over the last week. He just took it as a sign to stop for now. Getting into it so late and after what he'd just done was less than appealing.

"Carl, you and your mom get some sleep. We'll be downstairs keeping watch, nothin's getting' in here, ok?"

"Ok, dad." Carl shifted back next to Lori, and he nodded to her and Beth as he left the room. He poked his head into the open door of Maggie and Glen's room, and saw them sitting on the bed facing each other, talking softly.

"Nothing to worry about, it's over for tonight." He said.

"Thanks, Rick." Glen said and Maggie forced a tight smile. She was worried, anyone could see it, but Rick left her to be comforted by her boyfriend and shut their door behind him before heading back down the stairs. He checked on Carol last before going to the living room and looking out through the slats next to T.

"Anything?" He asked.

"A few more walkers drawn by the shots, but Daryl took 'em down pretty fast. He's in that tree, see?" T pointed to a tall oak in the front yard next to the road they'd pulled up in. If T hadn't pointed Daryl out, Rick would have missed the hunter completely. Only a portion of his leg, swinging slightly below a branch showed, and Rick scanned the yard quickly. It would have to wait till the morning to pick up any new bodies, the important thing was to stay quiet now and avoid drawing any further attention to themselves.

"I don't want to leave him out there without backup. Get some sleep, I'll watch with him." Rick said and T sat back a little.

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

"Ok, man." T didn't fight it, standing and moving to his cot in the corner and flopping on it tiredly. Rick was glad the fire had died away, the candles in the room extinguished. The darkness made the moonlight drenched ground outside very easy to see, and Rick got comfortable in his perch at the window. He thought about the prison Ruby had mentioned for the hundredth time, wondering if he was making the right decision to not go for now. Lori was right though, and it was something he'd thought himself. They were too close to the road, and the events that had just transpired only served to prove that.

But the prison... probably filled with walkers or Merle Dixon types, maybe both. He found he wanted to talk to Ruby about it further. If Paul had wanted to go, and he'd obviously been smart enough to keep them alive, he wanted to know why.

When the sun was almost ready to break the horizon, Rick saw Daryl drop easily from the tree and stretch a little as he walked back to the house. Neither of them had moved the whole night, and Rick found he was similarly stiff-muscled as he moved away from the window. Daryl opened the door quietly and nodded to him as he went to the couch in the living room and sat down wearily.

"Figured you were watchin'." He drawled through a yawn. "We got lucky. Must not a been a whole lotta those things on the road when those boys came through."

Rick locked the door after him, biting the inside of his cheek as he did so. "I got some ideas on how to not draw attention to us from the road."

"So do I, but I'm getting' some sleep first." Daryl said and Rick jerked his head in acknowledgment. The man rolled over on the couch and threw his arm over his eyes, and Rick went back into the dining room. Grabbing a fresh shirt from beside his cot, he changed quickly and heard a slight bump come from Ruby's room.

He knocked softly and she answered almost immediately. When she saw it was him she left the door open and stepped back for him to enter.

"Did you get some rest?" He asked and she nodded.

"Surprisingly, yes." She said, grabbing her brush from the vanity and running it through her hair quickly.

"I need to ask you about the prison, what do you know about it? Why was your group going? Was it a hunch or did you hear something?" He laid the questions out as he sat down on the edge of her bed.

She shrugged. "It's Georgia State, but you probably already know that. It's huge, Paul said he'd been there once or twice for work, said it was safe if we could secure part of it, clean it out. But hear anything? No." She pulled her dark hair up into a messy bun on the back of her head and turned toward him, leaning back against the vanity and crossing her arms over her chest. "You rethinking it?"

"I don't know. Maybe. What do you want to do?" He asked, and she raised her eyebrows in response.

"You want to know what I want to do?" She sounded amused and came to sit next to him, curling her leg up under her.

"Yeah, I do." He said and she took in a deep breath.

"The only reason I wasn't going was because I was alone. Paul might be there already, Sarah too." She reasoned, looking back at him closely. "Might be worth a shot. What do you want to do, Rick?"

"Keep everybody together, and everytime we walk into someplace blind, we leave with less than we came in with. But, if Paul was so sure about it, it made me wonder."

"If I knew they were there, I'd have left already, but I don't know that. They could be out here searching for me. We've only been here two days, maybe we should wait a couple more. Are you going to ask the others if they wanna go?"

"If I don't and they find out I knew about it, they really will stop believing anything I tell them." He rubbed the bridge of his nose hard, squeezing his eyes shut. "I need to think about it, but I want to make sure we can't be seen from the road again. I don't want a repeat of last night."

"You're not the only one. What did you have in mind?" She brought her knees up to under her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs.

"Cover the windows better, I don't want to be able to see any light from the front of the house when we have a fire going. Move the cars around back, make this place look abandoned."

She swung her legs off the bed and went to her closet quickly. Getting down, she dug through some articles and fabric on the floor and pulled out an armful of black cloth. "We can use this, hang it over all the openings down here. I found it the first night we got here."

He stood up and went to her, taking a piece of the fabric in his fingers and looking at it closely. "This'll work. Come on."

They went to the kitchen and she dug a pair of scissors from a drawer, then they took their finds to the living room and stepped quietly around the sleeping T-Dog and Daryl. Motioning for him to hold the cloth up to the window, she moved around him and made a cut in the cloth to fit the opening. When it was free from the rest of the bolt he hung it on the nails they had put into the board on the window.

They covered the other window in the living room the same way, then went to the dining room where they could at least speak in hushed tones.

"Doesn't the hutch cover that window pretty well?" She asked after they's covered the front window and looked at the one to the side of the house.

"Yeah, I think so. We'll do the ones upstairs facing out when the others are awake." He said, folding the cloth up in his hands and tossing it on the table. "We need to move the cars."

They walked outside and kept their attentions on the surrounding treeline as they each chose a car and hopped up into their respective driver's seats. The keys had been left in the ignitions, something they'd grown accustomed to doing on the farm, and she followed his lead as he pulled away from the front of the house and down the slight incline to the back.

He saw the truck the killers from the night before had left and when he parked the car he drove safely out of sight behind the house, he walked over to it.

"They have anything good?" She asked, coming up to the other side of the bed of the truck. Her words were casual, but they held a taste of bitterness, one which he could not blame her for.

"Some canned stuff, looks like. Tents..." He said slowly, picking through the bags and zippered canvas stacked in the bed. She walked around her end and hopped up into the back easily.

She pushed a bag of clothes back and laughed softly, making him look up curiously. Her eyes met his as she pulled a sawed off shotgun out from underneath a tarp. "Not bad, huh?"

He reached out for it and checked the weapon. It was fully loaded. "Not bad at all. Any more?"

"Yeah, handguns and two rifles too." She grinned and held a couple more weapons up. He went to the gate of the truck and took it down, laying the weapons she handed to him on it.

"Ammo?" He asked as she handed him the last gun. She dug around and came up with three boxes, shaking them gently.

"One is full, the other two are mostly full." She said and he put those next to the guns with a smile. It did, however, chill his blood that these men were planning on taking their guns and ammo, too, even with what they already had.

"They had medicine, too." She said, pulling a ziploc baggie out a canvas duffle. She tossed it to him and he inspected it.

"We'll get this to Hershel. Let's get the guns and food inside." He said, feeling suddenly slightly more optimistic. Last night was a nightmare, but they were still all there, and they'd come out on top. First time that had happened in a while.

They carried their finds around to the front of the house and went in the front door. T-Dog was waking up and his eyes grew slightly when he saw what they carried.

"You search the truck?" He asked and they nodded, taking the stuff to the coffee table and laying it out.

"There's some clothes too, you guys should see if anything fits." Ruby said and T-Dog went back outside with them. She and T walked around the house as Rick fired up the last car and drove around.

"This is good. We didn't get a chance to get much from the farm." T said to her as they started pulling the bags of clothes out and carrying them back to the house. Rick grabbed a few bags too and followed.

"T-Dog, give me a hand getting the back door usable again. We'll go in and out through there from now on." Rick said and T nodded, following him to the kitchen. They took hammers and pried off the boards they had sealed the door with, but leaving the ones that covered the glass on the top half. Rick opened it and looked out, making sure they had a way easily in and out of the house. Seeing it was right next to the door to cellar, he nodded his approval. "This'll be better."

T nodded and gathered the boards they had pulled free. He carried them out tot he living room and put them on the floor in front of the door. Ruby had separated the usable clothing from the trash, and found another box of ammo. He grinned at her appreciatively and knelt down to look at a few shirts and pants she'd thrown into a pile. They would fit, and he tossed them on his cot as she got up and went back into the kitchen.

Carol had woken up and come out to find Rick filling bottles of water up at the sink.

"What's going on? I heard the cars." She said, coming to look through the new canned goods she saw on the table.

"We're moving everything to the back, hopefully we won't have another night like the last one if it looks deserted." Rick said, taking a drink of one of the bottles he'd just filled. He looked up as Ruby and T-Dog came back in.

"More ammo, and some clothes that'll work for you." Ruby said, handing him a armful of clothing.

"Thanks." He said, meeting her eyes. It didn't seem to bother her that they would wear the clothes of their attackers, so he allowed himself to quickly take them to his cot in the dining room and drop them in a pile on the thin mattress. Going back to the kitchen, he saw Ruby helping Carol make a light breakfast, and he gestured to T to follow him outside.

They spent the next couple hours getting broken things from the shed he'd found the generator in and getting it up around the house. The tall grass helped to complete the effect that the house was abandoned and unable to be used, and they stood back and looked over their work when they were done.

"I wouldn't go in there." T-Dog said flatly and Rick chuckled.

"That's the idea."

The back of the house was another matter. They walked around the house and saw Carol and Ruby hanging out laundry he didn't recognize on the line. He was going to object that the women had come out without them but Ruby had a gun tucked in the back of her jeans and he let it go.

"I left breakfast for you two on the table." Carol said as they finished up and met them at the back door.

"Thanks." Rick said and he and T grabbed a seat at the table, pulling their plates of fruit and crackers toward themselves. Carol and Ruby got back to work doing another large load in the wash bin and he watched them work as he chewed. Ruby was focused, giving Carol short answers to her idle conversation. Once, her eyes met Rick as she was squeezing water out of a shirt and he turned the corner of his mouth up at her. She smiled and focused on her chore again.

The shower went off upstairs, they could hear it through the pipes in the house. The others must be getting ready for the day. When T-Dog got up to go get a shower himself Rick grabbed a pile of wet clothes and went with Ruby to the clothes line as Carol cleaned up the wash mess in the kitchen.

"It was a good idea, moving everything around back here." She said as she pulled articles from the pile in his hands and hung them.

"I shoulda done it when we first got here, maybe last night wouldn't have happened." He said apologetically and she frowned at him.

"Forget last night, Rick. It was awful but it wasn't the first time. If it had happened at the ice house I'd have been screwed. Least I was here."

"I wanted to come check on you again last night, you seemed pretty upset."

She shook her head as she hung a shirt. "Nothing a night sleep won't cure."

He handed her the last pair of pants and after she hung them he instructed her to get the keys out of the cars and lock them up. Maybe he wouldn't have to worry about looters now, at least they'd make noise trying to get in. They hung the keys inside the back door, where the last owners of the house had conveniently placed hooks in the wall.

The rest of the house had begun milling around and he quickly gathered them in the living room, where Daryl had woken back up and sat rubbing his eyes. They took places on every available seat, and Rick noticed Ruby took her now usual place between Maggie and Carol on the other couch.

"I know last night scared some of you," He began, looking around the room. "So we've been working to try and make sure it doesn't happen again. No light will get through the windows after we're done hanging the shades, and don't pull them back at all if there's a lit fire or a candle in your room. We're blocking the front door, we're gonna use the back from now on. T and I spent the morning putting stuff in front of the house to block the door and windows too, make it look abandoned. And the cars have been pulled around back and locked. The keys are hanging on the wall if you need them, but if you do go outside, you need to let us know."

They all nodded their acceptance of the new plan, but Rick noticed Ruby looked very concerned. He quickly adjourned the group and met her just inside the dining room.

"What is it?" He asked, holding out a hand to stop her.

"It's Paul. If he comes around and thinks there's no one here, I'll miss him." She said, her brows knitted together.

"We'll keep watch, 24/7. Anybody comes down that road, we'll know." He said reassuringly and she nodded, allowing a tentative smile to grace her face for a moment. "Don't worry, I'm not gonna let you miss him."

She nodded her thanks and he squeezed the back of her neck gently as they both turned and went back to the group milling around the living room and kitchen. Lori noticed them together and her expression darkened but she stayed quiet, no death glares to either one of them, and Rick found himself mildly surprised. When she went to join Maggie and Carol in the kitchen, he and T-Dog used the wood they had gotten from the back door to secure the front. When they were done, nothing was getting through.

Glen had retrieved the guitar again and when Rick and T were heading upstairs to cover the rest of the windows, he heard the young man strumming over the instrument and asking Ruby if they could play again. He could hear her voice and the sounds of the guitar softly coming up the stairwell to where they were working, and he smiled a little as he hooked the material into place.

"She's getting a little more comfortable, isn't she?" T asked, shooting him a strange look and Rick felt the room get a little warmer.

"Seems like it."

"She wouldn't even look at us when she got here. Now she's holding concerts." T pressed and Rick nodded.

"Yeah." He answered shortly as they moved to another window.

"It ain't my business, man. I know that, but I see the way you and Ruby act together. Even when she wouldn't hardly talk to us she still worked with you like you'd known each other for forever. How'd that happen?"

"I guess we get along." Rick said, finally turning his attention fully to the man. "Where you goin' with this?"

T-Dog shrugged and looked him in the eye. "I think you should run with it."

"What?" Rick asked, taken aback.

"We all knew about Lori and Shane, and I'm not tryin' to piss you off by saying that. When he didn't come back from that field, she changed. She didn't just shut down with you, she walks around like her whole world's been ripped away and that didn't happen till Shane was gone. The way she avoids you or starts a screaming fight ain't right. We all hear it, we're too close not to."

"Ok." Rick said tentatively, thinking he knew where this was going.

"Ruby's good, and she gets along with everybody here. Hell, even Daryl from what I see. And the way she took that guy down last night was kick ass. I'm just saying that spending time with her might take some of that stress offa you, man."

"And Lori? What about her, and Carl?" Rick was asking the questions he was expecting everyone to be asking him. Playing devil's advocate. The last thing he expected was one of his group coming to him and saying they approved of the things that hadn't stopped running through him mind since he'd met the girl.

"What about her? She already doesn't speak to you unless she wants to fight. You don't even sleep in the same room."

"She's pregnant." Rick said and T-Dog sighed exasperatedly.

"Yeah, and she's got a whole house of people watching out for her. I'm not saying you ignore her, but you don't have to stay away from Ruby either. And Carl, you think it doesn't bother him to see his parents this way? I grew up with my folks screaming at the top of their lungs at each other, I'd wished every night they'd just shut the hell up and find something that made them happy."

Rick bit his cheek and considered the man for a moment. Realizing that he still had some support from the people he'd seemed to have lost made his stomach knot tightly, painfully. "T-Dog, that first night we lost the farm, what I said-"

"You were a mess, man, and I don't blame you for that. You did what you had to do. And I'm not tryin' to talk you into anything here, just wanted you to know that we don't think you're as bad as you think we do."

Rick pressed his lips together and T-Dog held up his hand. Rick grabbed it and they bumped shoulders like brothers. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it. Let's get this done, man. They're havin' way too much fun down there without us."