A/N: Small trigger warning: chapter has a reference to past suicidal ideation.
With Bonnie's help, they manage to keep Rick's presence in the CDC secret from Jamie. He doesn't wake from the sedation before Jamie is settled into bed for the night.
That leaves Brandy to wait pensively in Rick's room, with the security camera feed routed to a laptop. They don't normally keep watch overnight, but it just feels prudent with Rick traveling through the city today. She and Edwin will split the watch, putting them low on sleep, but not horribly so as long as they don't do it long-term.
Shortly before midnight, Rick begins to stir, moaning slightly. His IV finished running its course an hour before, but Brandy isn't surprised that his hand seeks out the IV cannula immediately. She stops him before he can rip it out, settling onto the bed beside him.
"Leave that be, Rick. We don't want to have to do another in an emergency."
He calms at her voice, blinking at her sleepily. His memory must be clear about their meeting earlier, because his expression changes to one of immense grief almost immediately. When he raises up enough to cling to her and sob, she just holds him tightly… and cries just as hard herself. She hasn't allowed herself such a wide-open release, not with her responsibilities, not until now.
When the flood finally dries up for both of them, Rick lays back in the bed, looking as exhausted as she's ever seen him. "When I found that note on Shane's desk, it just made sense that they'd be here. I knew he would do his best to keep them safe."
Brandy nods, feeling a bit numb. Part of her had hoped that the message didn't make it to Shane's desk, but it just confirms that something awful must have happened for Shane not to arrive at the CDC. She knows her baby brother, and abandoning family is an absolute impossibility for him.
And honestly? Even if something happened to Shane, Lori has her own dose of badass. Brandy can't imagine her best friend not getting Carl to Atlanta safely, even if Shane fell in the line of duty before he could get them to the city.
"You know Lori would have gotten her and Carl here if Shane couldn't," she says, feeling that long-familiar twist of uneasy sadness that Rick and Lori lost their youthful rosy faith in each other. When Rick blinks in confusion for a moment, she wonders if all he remembers is the false front of dutiful housewife Lori adopted after they got married.
It's a facade that Brandy hated from the moment she caught on that Lori was dead set on pretending she didn't come from a background even poorer and harsher than Brandy and Shane had. She met Lori when the younger woman was a brand-new freshman, and Brandy was a second-year graduate student working as a residential advisor because it gave her free room and board. Something about Lori just reminded Brandy of herself when she first arrived at college, adrift among all the girls who had nice families back home to rely on.
Grandma Jean did her best for Shane and Brandy after their mother died when Brandy was sixteen and Shane fourteen, but she was a retiree on a very fixed budget. The more money Brandy scrounged up on her own, the less Jean worried. Lori didn't even have the benefit of a loving, elderly grandmother back home, and everything big sisterly in Brandy just drew the girl right in.
Meeting Rick shouldn't have derailed Lori from her hard-worn scholarship, and Brandy never thought much of the age difference when the two started dating. Shane sowed enough wild oats for both him and Rick in college, and Brandy probably would have snatched her brother up short if he'd taken an interest in Lori. But Rick? Not Rick, not the sweet little gentleman he'd always been.
Rick may have felt like a bonus baby brother most of Brandy's life, but she's lost count of the number of times she wanted to just thump him upside the head in the last five or six years. Her expression must give away that she's feeling that way now, grieving or not, because he looks down at his hands and sighs.
"You don't like me very much anymore, do you?"
Of all the things for him to say, that hadn't been what she expected. Taking his hands in hers, she squeezes them lightly, smiling sadly when he looks up at her.
"I like you just fine, Rick, same as I always have. I just wish you and Lori had thrown in the towel or gone to counseling or anything but just grinding away at each other until all that was left was bitterness and silence."
Hearing Lori repeat what she'd said in the last fight still makes Brandy shudder. Lori was terrified those would be the last words she ever said to Rick, and Brandy understood. At least the last words Brandy had with her husband had been loving ones before Bradley died.
Lori's guilt goes both ways, it seems, because once Rick realizes Brandy has a good idea about that last fight, he babbles a confession that rambles between anguish and guilt. It's such a mirror of Lori after Rick was shot that she wonders how the two drifted so far apart.
When he runs out of words, she hugs him with every ounce of strength she has, hearing him groan a bit in protest. She flinches, remembering his still healing side, but his own arms tighten around her in obvious objection to her moving away. Eventually, he presses a kiss to her forehead and lets her go, looking anxious.
"Where's Jamie? Can I see her?"
It's the middle of the night, but Brandy understands the urge. The longer she's understood she'll probably never see Carl again, the more paranoid she's been about checking in on Jamie herself. She got so damned lucky that Candace gathered them up and brought them here to what is essentially an underground fortress. The rest of her family was not so blessed.
Helping Rick sort out a pair of pajama pants, she leads him down the hall, easing the door open to where he can see Jamie sprawled in her bed, loose-limbed and snoring just a bit. The Princess and the Frog pajamas make the room seem like they could be in a hotel anywhere, not surviving in a government building after the world came to a screeching, messy end.
"Jesus. She looks so damn much like Shane." Despite the intense emotion in his words, Rick keeps the statement quiet.
The resemblance between Shane and Jamie has always been a unique one. Brandy and Shane look enough alike that they are unmistakably siblings, but Brandy inherited their father and grandmother's dark red hair. Shane's thick black curls and darker complexion come from their mother, and to Brandy, Jamie looks more and more like Sybil Walsh as she ages, with the only feature that distinctly comes from Jamie's father being her jade green eyes.
But Brandy knows that to Rick, Jamie will always look like Shane, and now that Shane's lost to them, it's just further set in stone. She doesn't think Bradley would mind. He was awfully fond of her little brother, after all.
It's Rick that eases the door closed, looking reluctant. "It's safe here, right? She's safe?"
"Yeah. As long as we don't draw attention, we're as safe as it's possible to be with everything out there."
"Why would you leave at all?" he asks, looking astounded at the idea.
Sighing deeply, Brandy leads him to the kitchen to explain the one flaw in the vast security of the CDC. Catching up on both their journeys since they spent the day with their families at the Atlanta Zoo the weekend prior to Rick getting shot is going to be a lot longer story than normal, that's for sure.
Tugging her shirt into place, Lori catches the glint of gold in the leaves and reaches down to retrieve her locket and settle it back around her neck. The metal against her skin feels far heavier than it should, because while the locket is something she's worn for years, the addition of Rick's ring is unmistakable. Her husband has been dead less than two months, and here she is, hating that the flash of skin she gets as Shane buttons up his shirt makes her ache in a good way.
It is not that she's never seen Shane shirtless, but she was never supposed to understand just how warm and silky his chest feels underneath her fingers. She shouldn't know that he kisses with all the fervor he puts into everything in life, or that the first time they used lust to drive away their shared grief, he tried to hide his own tears after even as he wiped hers away.
Losing Rick should have been the worst thing they experienced, but she still remembers taking Shane down to the quarry and sponging off the dirt and ash and gore from the trip he made to the Atlanta refugee center. They knew, intellectually, that the napalming meant the center was probably gone, but seeing the evidence in front of him had damn near extinguished everything bright and lovely in Shane. Rick's job meant his death was something they always needed to be prepared for, but Brandy and Jamie being gone, too?
Lori is just grateful every day that Shane let her take his gun that day.
She hadn't given it back for days, and for all their squabbling faults, none of the quarry camp voiced the concern that their resident cop and protector was unarmed. Far too many of them probably understood exactly why he needed temptation removed until he got beyond the worst of the despair.
In a different world, if she were a better person, Lori could fall in love with a man who loved his sister and niece so deeply that his world effectively ended with their deaths. But she's broken somehow, and neither of them have said the words, but this is just sex as a stress relief. He loves Carl and she loves Carl, and that'll be enough to keep them a family.
"You okay?" Shane asks, voice pitched low as he reaches out to cup a hand along her hip.
Nodding, Lori turns and smiles wanly at him. "They'll be sending out a search party soon if we don't get back."
"Nah, they're too distracted by all the stuff Glenn's group brought back."
Glenn's first supply run with a group had been astonishingly successful, especially with Lori's worry about the potential for personalities to clash among the group chose. Somehow they'd all managed to get along with Merle Dixon long enough to bring back much needed clothing and camping supplies. It hadn't stopped the big asshole from keeping up the running commentary of bullshit he always dished out, she knows, but he did his job and guarded the others regardless of his particular brand of virulent racism with a side helping of sexist jackassery.
"Maybe we'll get double lucky and Daryl will bring back a deer," she says, pushing away the thoughts of the cantankerous elder brother for the slightly-less-cantankerous younger Dixon.
"Can't say I want to deal with his temper if he's out that long and comes up empty handed," Shane mutters, leaning down to scoop up her bucket, which actually does have a decent selection of mushrooms to excuse her trip into the woods. He hands it to her and peruses the woods around them. "You good to make it back without me?"
"Of course." Maybe she doesn't know how to live off the woods the way Shane and the Dixons do, but Lori isn't a city girl by any means, and if she got lost this close to a quarry the size of the one they're camped at, she'd despair of her ability to be a capable adult at all.
"Alright. Gonna patrol the border a bit. Going into the city more might get things stirred up to wander our way."
The very idea of walkers finding their very unprotected camp makes Lori's skin crawl. "If you think that's likely, maybe we need to start thinking about going somewhere else."
They've been here too long as it is. Too many of their group think help will eventually come, and staying near Atlanta means they'll be more likely to be found. Lori doesn't have that much optimism about the government that lied to them all until the problem was too big to contain and then bombed civilians in the very safe place they instructed them to retreat to.
"Could head for the coast. One of the uninhabited islands, maybe."
"Bring up the idea with the others later," she suggests, and on impulse, reaches out to hug him tightly. Breathing in the earthy scent of him, far from his old soap and expensive cologne scent, she can't help a soft, "Be real careful out there."
"Always." Pressing a kiss to her temple, Shane lets her go and heads off the trail into the trees, leaving Lori alone under a canopy of green.
Their family may be half of its old size and raggedly tattered, but it still exists, and as long as Lori draws breath, she'll make sure it stays that way.
Shane never considered himself a coward before the dead rose to walk the earth. But he's lost too much to ever feel like his old self, and what else can he call the hesitation he has as he sits in the driver seat of the SUV they appropriated for today's trip. After that initial trek into Atlanta that led him to the horrific discovery of the bombed out refugee center, he let the city be Glenn's domain.
It's easy to let the others assume he's a rural cop with little knowledge of the city. Everyone understands he lost someone at the center, but he hasn't volunteered who, and he knows Lori hasn't either. Maybe Carl's talked about Jamie to the kids, but if he has, it hasn't gotten back to Shane. Honestly, he isn't sure that Carl believes the closest person he has to a cousin is gone. It's hard to think of children's mortality at Carl's age, and mourning Rick is a much more understandable loss to Carl.
On his one and only trip into Atlanta, he did drive by Brandy's townhouse in Decatur, but the signs of hasty departure were there like everywhere else on her street. The garage door was wide open and the minivan she had modified first for Bradley's wheelchair and then for Bonnie's is gone. He hadn't been able to bring himself to go inside and see all the things they'd left behind. Glenn had been the only one with him that day, and Glenn may be young, but he knows how to not push someone's grief. It's why he asked Glenn along today, too.
But if they're going to leave the quarry camp like several of them agreed last night, Shane has to conquer this phobia. He may never return to the Atlanta area once they leave, and this is his last chance to gather momentos of his sister and niece.
"If you know what you're looking for, I could go in," Glenn offers, voice soft and hesitant. When Shane glances over at him, Glenn shrugs, his expression open and earnest. "Whoever lived here, they were your family right? I'd want someone to do the same for me, if mine wasn't so far away."
Shane swallows hard, wanting more than anything to take Glenn up on the offer. The minivan being gone means they aren't likely to find his family as caricatures of themselves inside, he hopes. He can't pawn this off on Glenn, though, who is barely more than a kid himself.
"Nah. Best we go together, just in case." Just because he doesn't think any of his family will be inside doesn't mean a stranger might not have taken refuge, and alive or dead, that's probably equally dangerous these days.
They enter the townhouse through the garage and the signs of a hasty departure are even more distinctive here. The biggest clue that they left is Jamie's much beloved Princess Tiana doll laying as if dropped on the way out the door. Shane stoops to pick it up, not caring that he's a grown man holding a Disney doll as he smoothes the yellow dress.
"Got it for Jamie for Christmas," he tells Glenn, unable to keep it to himself. "She was obsessed with the movie. Her mama took her when it first came out, and she managed to talk me into taking her to the theater twice when I was up at Christmas."
He hadn't minded one bit. Maybe he's only an uncle, but he knows kids grow up too damn fast, and it was probably the last childhood obsession Jamie would have before she started moving on to teenage interests.
"Jamie was your..." Glenn drifts off, unable to commit to the relationship part of the question.
"Niece." Laying the doll on the counter, Shane clears his throat. "Best make sure the place is clear."
It doesn't take long. Bonnie's suite on the ground floor is unoccupied, the modifications made originally for Bradley working for Bonnie as well as the same genetic disease beset mother as son. Brandy had moved upstairs once Bradley died, unable to stay in the room. Shane can only imagine the fortitude it took Bonnie to move into that bedroom once she couldn't easily access the second floor.
Just like Lori, Brandy gathered up photos, but she didn't take them all. Shane takes the one from the dresser in Brandy's room, leaving it in the frame for nominal protection. Spotting the leather braided bracelet he made for Brandy all the way back in Boy Scouts, he fastens it around his wrist, fighting off the urge to break down. He came back from that edge once, and he intends to keep the promise to look after Carl and Lori he made to both Lori and himself.
"You weren't kidding that she liked that movie," Glenn comments, looking around Jamie's room.
The comforter is missing from the bed, leaving behind the matching sheets. Posters decorate the walls, including an older Little Mermaid one and one of Bolt, but the rest of the decor shifted completely to all things Tiana.
"We may have spoiled her a bit last Christmas, me and her mama and grandma and Rick's family."
The Christmas before, Bradley had been dead less than six weeks. They'd gone through the motions, but none of the childish joy Jamie usually had for the holiday showed up that day. Everyone felt like they needed to make up for it once the loss had faded enough for some sense of normality to return. As much as Shane spent all his free time up here once Brandy was widowed, it doesn't feel like it was enough.
Now? All he can do is pray Brandy and Jamie didn't suffer, that they didn't know what was coming. Much of the refugee camp is obliterated beyond recognition, and if there is such a thing as a higher power, they were at ground zero.
Glenn makes an aborted motion toward a drawing tacked on the corkboard above Jamie's desk, drawing Shane's attention there. It's easy to see why Glenn thought about taking the drawing, because there's no mistaking it's intended to be Jamie and Shane, not with the deputy uniforms drawn on them both. He takes it down, smiling sadly, feeling tears threaten as they do so often these days.
"She hadn't decided if she was gonna be a deputy like me or a lawyer like her daddy when I saw her last."
"That is a pretty contrasting career choice."
Laughing softly, Shane nods his head. "Luckily, he wasn't into criminal law. Man had a weird fascination with tax law."
"Better him than me," Glenn mutters, and Shane agrees.
They head back downstairs, and he scoops up that doll, unwilling to leave it behind, even if it's impractical to keep up with. Growing uneasy with being on the opposite side of the city from the quarry, he directs them to the SUV, but before he can pull back out on the main street, Glenn's sharp eyes spot something truly unusual these days.
"Land Cruiser just went by down at the highway."
Part of Shane wants to ignore seeing the vehicle and get back to the quarry. But the responsible part of him wants to make sure any survivors out there aren't left on their own, and the wary part of him needs to know if any of the living are safe. Exchanging a wary look with Glenn, he heads in the same direction as the other vehicle.
And if that gives him a distraction from the fact that he just walked through a house empty of his niece's laughter and his sister's warm hugs, so be it.