The Doctor Is In
I'm glad I'm not the only one that dislikes Lori lol. As for the Shane issue, I think I'll be keeping him around. Whether or not he gets involved with anyone is up for debate right now.
Bo had decided, after some careful thinking, that she wanted to know if Rick knew about his wife and best friend. At first she didn't care but she had been witness to several interactions and wondered vaguely of what could possibly be going through the Sheriff's head. So when the group split up after coming across a church on their hunt for Sophia, Bo made sure she stuck around with Rick.
It just ended up sucking that Shane and Carl were around as well. It was almost like Shane knew what the blonde was thinking about and didn't want to get it spread to the one person (hopefully) who's opinion truly mattered to the officer.
Thankfully Carl was a good distraction.
And maybe not so thankfully, Rick seemed to want to talk to Bo as much as she wanted to talk to him.
Apparently not for the same reason though.
"How did you manage to end up in this group?" Rick asked, unwittingly cutting off the woman's attempt to vocalize a completely different topic.
"Oh...uh...I sort of came along with Glenn." Bo responded, trying to remember back to the first few days of their current apocalypse. "I ended up picking him up during my own escape."
"That was noble of you." Rick commented.
"Yeah well the kid was limping and I wasn't about to just leave him." Bo explained. Did she just get defensive about helping someone even though that was her job? Huh...Daryl must have been rubbing off on her. "Hey do you.."
"Lori says you're a med student." Rick spoke at the same time then paused, glancing apologetically at the blonde. "Sorry...just...continue."
"Kind of glad you brought her up." Bo muttered. The Sheriff tilted his head but didn't quite face her, watching his son more as the little group came across a small clearing. Shane and Carl were ahead of the other two but still close enough to hear the conversation. Carl was mesmerized by the sight of a large male deer standing in the clearing.
"Really?" Rick asked quietly, not wanting to spook away the nervous creature.
"Yeah." Bo whispered, crouching down. She took stock on their surroundings, the way Daryl had taught her. Momentarily distracted by wondering if they could possibly kill the deer and bring it back to the others for something to eat. "I've been sort of thinking...about things."
"What kind of things?" Rick asked, now turning his head completely to look at the blonde woman next to him.
"I don't exactly wanna be the bearer for bad news and I ain't trying to start something up here." Bo explained quickly, getting her main point across first before she said anything else. "But I was just starting to wonder...did you know that Lori and Shane..."
She never got to finish as a got shot rang out. The deer hit the ground...but so did Carl.
"CARL!" Rick shouted, bolting to his son. Shane went in the suspected direction of the shot while Bo quickly joined the distraught father.
"Oh fuck." The woman muttered. She waved off Rick's hands and pulled at the edges of the shot hole in the child's shirt to get a clearer view of the damage. She winced at the blood and tried to wipe what she could away.
"Can you do something?" Rick asked, hopefully.
"I don't have anything with me for this!" Bo explained, beginning to feel just as panicked as the man with her.
"I...I know where he can get help!" A large man that Shane had suddenly pulled over uttered his statement in fear.
***TWD***TWD***TWD***TWD***TWD***
"So...are we going to have a lot of issues?" Anna asked, looking around as she travelled through the woods with Lori.
"What?" Lori snapped, frowning. Anna had seen the look on the woman's face when it had been announced that the two of them would be getting a direction on their own to search for the young missing girl.
"Look, Lori, despite what you are probably thinking, I don't get involved with men in highly committed relationships...or really just any relationships for that matter." Anna explained. She went for the straight forward approach, deciding it to just be easier then attempting subtlety. "Hell, I've turned down guys I've liked because I had a friend with the biggest of crushes on that guy."
"I don't even know what you're talking about." Lori muttered. The other woman sighed and decided against saying anymore.
It wouldn't have lasted long if she had tried anyways. There was only a few seconds of silence before there was a scream that sounded suspiciously like Andrea. The dark haired women went running in the direction of the scream, only to find their blonde comrade on the ground and a young woman with short hair sitting on top of a horse by her.
"Who are you?" Anna asked as the rest of the group gathered around.
"My name's Maggie and I'm looking for Lori." The girl on the horse explained, her eyes drifting around the group for the woman that fit the description she was given. They landed on two women standing next to each other who both looked as they could have been who she was looking for. Lori stepped forward, confusion crossing her features.
"What do you want?" The woman asked.
"There's been an accident...Carl's been shot." Maggie answered. "You need to come with me."
"Is he okay?" Anna suddenly asked, worry etched on her face at the thought of the young boy being in danger. Of course, he was always in danger in this world but hearing about him getting shot made things worse.
"My dad and...Bo...are working on him." Maggie explained, struggling momentarily to remember the name of the woman back at the farm. She held down an arm to the mother and after a moment's hesitation, Lori took it and got onto the horse. Maggie swung out her other hand and pointed. "Just down that way is our farm. Y'all can go there." With that said, she twisted her horse around and took off back the way she came.
"Damn kids getting themselves in trouble." Daryl muttered. Eyes turned to him, Carol shooting the redneck a harsh look. "Get on back to the road!"
***TWD***TWD***TWD***TWD***TWD***
Bo rubbed her head, exhausted and more than a little ticked off. She was regretting telling Maggie to get Lori. The mother had done nothing but badger the people working on saving her son and when Bo had finally snapped at her to either shut the fuck up or get the fuck out, Lori had withdrawn and taken to talking quietly to Rick about Carl possibly being better off dead.
"He wants to live Lori!" Rick stated firmly. "When he woke up...he talked about the deer. He's focused on life."
"Y'all gotta make a decision here, are we saving this boy or not?" Bo asked finally. "We gotta do this without the respirator and full support is gonna be a nice thing here."
"Do it." Lori whispered.
"For someone who had no problem jumping to bed with him, you certainly got no faith in Shane." Bo stated, locking eyes with the brunette woman. While the blonde was no where near the officer's biggest fan, she couldn't deny that he had kept the group safe. He was an asshole, yeah, but that didn't mean that she had doubted his abilities to getting what was needed, even if he was pushing it.
Bo left the couple with the revelation that the affair was far from secret as she returned to Hershel's side to start the process of operating.
"I GOT IT!" Shane's triumphant call was accompanied by the sounds of the pickup truck's engine. There was a collective sigh of relief as the officer made his way inside to deliver the machine.
When Shane stepped outside to join the parents, he knew that something had gotten out. Lori wouldn't look at him and Rick just cast a confused and mildly betrayed look to his friend.
***TWD***TWD***TWD***TWD***TWD***
Anna walked out of the farmhouse and over to where Rick was angrily swinging an axe to chop up wood. She had just finished talking to Shane, finding out that he had left behind Otis and even assisting him in shaving his hair, not asking about the spot that seemed to have had the hair ripped clean out. He was a bit too shaken up as he told the tale to her and she wondered what he was leaving out but didn't push the issue.
"What's up cowboy?" Anna asked, getting closer to the person who was probably her closest friend these days. Her hands stuffed deep into her pockets as she watched the man tense up as his solitude was shattered. "Did you want to be alone?"
"No." Rick muttered, sighing. His shoulders slumped and he dropped the axe before looking at Anna. Her hair, which had once been a frizzy mess of knots and dirt, looked much smoother and cleaner, falling down in waves as she tilted her head to study her friend. "Shane and Lori were sleeping together."
"Oh." Anna wasn't sure how to respond to that. "Are they...still?"
"Lori says no, not since I've been back." Rick explained. He looked over the stack of wood he had already chopped up. Anna bit her lip, trying to come up with something to help him, but got herself stuck as her brain finally took to realizing that the man was topless. She blinked her green eyes, taking in the muscles over his abs, chest and arms. Her head slowly tilted the other way, eyes zooming in on the scar remaining from his shot wound.
So when did he actually become attractive? Well technically he was always attractive but Anna had always had something else to focus on before now. It wasn't like she hadn't seen him topless before but her attention had always stuck to his wound rather than exploring the expanse of his chest. Now however, she was taking in everything as it was covered in a fine sheen of sweat.
"Anna?" Rick asked suddenly, snapping the woman's attention up to his face. She only then realized that he had said something and even moved closer to her. She blinked a few times then looked apologetic as he laughed slightly. "Guess I can get a little boring, huh?"
"No! Not at all!" Anna insisted. "Just a lot of things going on. My mind tends to wander a lot."
"So I've noticed." Rick joked. Anna smiled softly as she looked around. Her fingers toying with a loose string in her pocket as she wondered about what to discuss next. "I never really asked about your past, did I?"
"You were worried about your family, it's perfectly fine." Anna insisted, keeping her smile in place to add truth to her words.
"I could have asked...about your dad." Rick admitted, coming clean about having heard her conversation with Shane without actually saying those words. Anna paused for a moment then nodded, figuring it out on her own. "How did he die?"
"He got really sick, really fast." Anna explained. She lifted a hand to push her hair behind her ear as her eyes drifted once more down to the wide chest of the man before her. "It was all just a big blur and by the end of it, I was in debt and just about homeless. My dad was really one of those live for the moment types and didn't really plan too far ahead so his hospital bills and funeral costs took a lot."
"Were you still...in debt...by the time this came around?" Rick asked, now intrigued in this woman's story.
"Oh yeah." Anna laughed. "Sort of...glad for this disaster. Don't have to deal with creditors anymore. Or annoying people at the hotel, or my boss."
"Freedom at a cost, huh." Rick mused. Anna nodded in complete agreement. "I've been pretty awful with you."
"What? No you haven't." Anna tried to protest.
"Yes I have." Rick admitted, so strongly that it silenced the woman. "I never asked anything about you. Just how you got where I found you and your name. I know what you're like, but that's just from watching you all this time. I know nothing about you. Who you are, who you were...I asked once about family when you brought up that notion of the gut tingling GPS thing but other than that...nothing."
"You were worried about your son." Anna pointed out, trying to ease the man's conscious.
"That's not an excuse to ignore the person who's been by your side through the whole disaster." Rick stated firmly. Anna sighed, her head tilting once more as she observed her friend's face and the guilt it showed.
"Well if you're that torn up about it, you can just start making it up to me now." The woman joked, finally earning a smile from the Sheriff. She laughed, lifting a hand and patting at his chest before resting her fingers over his heart without realizing it. "You stink."
"I've been a little too busy to consider much bathing lately." Rick defended.
"Still stink." Anna pointed out. "Nobody likes a smelly law man."
"Or so you say." Rick joked. Anna just grinned and moved up on her toes, ready to plant a kiss on his cheek. His head turned and he went to say something but instead caught her lips with his.
Both parties paused for several moments, their minds coming to screeching halts. Rick's hands were suddenly on Anna's waist and he manoeuvred her back against a tree. Her hands grasped at the sides of his head before moving to bury her fingers into his hair. She wiggled against him, caught between the hard rough surface of the tree and the hard body of the man. Her movements elicited a groan from deep in his throat as he pulled her hips harder against his own. Her teeth caught at his lower lip as his fingertips bruised her waist.
And then their brains rebooted and caught up with their bodies and they froze in their embrace. The cool metal of Rick's wedding band almost felt like a scorch mark against the bare skin of Anna's hip as her shirt had ridden up in the exchange. Her hands, slowly and shakily, pulled free of his hair as her eyes opened, confusion and shock riddling them. Rick took several steps back, casting one look up to her green eyes before dropping his own to the ground.
"So uh...I'm just going to umm..." He rambled.
"Yeah...I should...go...join the planning...for...finding Sophia." Anna muttered, lifting her hand to the back of her neck as she turned her head in order to only see Rick in her peripheral.
"Right, yes...Sophia...missing...I need to...see Carl." Rick stuttered out. Anna nodded her head rapidly before she quickly walked away, pulling at her shirt to cover up any revealed skin.
What...the hell...was that?
So Anna's sort of just going to be friends with Shane. Kind of showing him that he's human or something. I know what I'm thinking with them but I don't quite know how to say it. Sigh..
I really do need to get more into Bo. Gotta remember that while she's already established into the group, I haven't really given her much descriptions.