What Lies Ahead

Chapter Three

Struggles

This has been a long time coming but I'm finally revealing another chapter! Next chapter we should be getting back into the thick of things with Remi but I wanted to focus on how it's affecting the others, and some bonds that are growing while all of this is happening.

Also! I'm still in the process of editing the first book, but I have run into a bit of a problem. Trying to make sure I've written out all of the Walking Dead parts and making it my own I've found that I've become a little blind to some things and the other person who's been helping me has been such a big part of this fanfic that they too have run into realizing that they are filling in the blanks that they know from the show without it actually being written.

I've been debating bringing someone else in to help but I'm just not really sure what to do.

Other than that, I've been getting things ready for when I'm ready to publish and I've debated also bringing someone in to help me with managing social media and advertising as I'm simply not the greatest at it.

Mostly I just wanted to keep everyone informed on what's going on with this series!

I'm still going to be updating here until the publishing process actually starts happening! So keep a look out until then!

Thank you to everyone who's supported this series!

"I believe that there is courage
But it's burning like ash in the wind
And I'm broken to pieces
Begging to be whole again"

-Make me Believe by Everlove

Past Merle had never been known for his patience. The need to have what he wanted right then and there had gotten him in trouble more than once. It was one of the things that Remington had brought out in him, helping to smooth over some of those rougher parts of himself, but tonight, as the sun sank over the horizon and bathed their new home in darkness, he found himself struggling. His worry for Remington and Landon was eating away at him. It combined with knowing that his brother and Shane were still out there. Far too many people were missing from their group, and he was forced to put aside his own feelings as he took up a leadership role to keep calm and order with those who had made it to the development.

Maisie was a main part of his focus. The little girl had refused to move out of his arms as she clung to him and forced him to bring her with him as he moved from person to person, each small cluster of people, as he set them up with tasks to prepare this place to be slept in for tonight, and to give them something to do with their anxious energy.

"Where is momma?" Maisie whispered in his ear as her little hands dug into his shoulders. "And Landon? I want them. I want them now." She whined pitifully into his shirt before she began to wiggle and fight against his hold.

Merle grunted as he shifted her, trying to keep a hold of her even as she struggled. He pulled her off his hip, holding her in front of him. The muscles in his arms strained as she kicked her legs and thrashed in protest as a tantrum approached fast. Her lower lip was quivering, and her blue eyes had begun to water, making them look bigger as she trembled. She hadn't stopped trying to escape; he wasn't sure what she would do when she had, but it worried him that she'd try to slip away and look for her missing family members.

She hadn't stopped demanding things that Merle couldn't give her. His jaw tightened as he shifted her once more, her tiny body holding more power than he expected in such a small package, but then again, he hadn't lived through one of her tantrums before today. Not really, anyway. He realized anything she had shown in the past was mild hiccups compared to this.

Out of the corner of his eye, Merle spotted Jackson making his way over. The man hadn't been happy to find that his sister and Landon were missing from the group. Nor was he happy to hear about what had happened at the farm. If Jackson had any less control over himself, Merle thought he may have punched him for letting Remington run off like that by herself.

Irritation briefly flickered through Merle as he didn't want Jackson to come over here and help calm the girl down. Maisie meant something to him. She was important. He wanted her to see him as someone who could be there for her, especially during times like this. This was something he needed to be able to do on his own. Men did this all the time with their children. Merle wanted to be able to do it on his own.

He wanted to be a… dad.

Something proper to this scared little girl.

Kneeling, Merle swooped Maisie through the air in a dramatic show of putting her down on her feet to surprise her and hopefully calm her down a little. Maisie gasped, her eyes wide, as she hiccupped and stared up at him once her feet were on the ground. Her hands rubbed at her eyes.

"I know, sweetheart," he said, trying to make his voice softer as he reached up to wipe her cheeks. "I know yah do. But right now, we gotta be strong. Yer momma and Landon are out there fightin' ta come back ta us. And we… we gotta be ready for 'em when they do."

Maisie's sniffles filled the air as she stared at him wide-eyed and unsure.

"But… but what if they don't?"

Her voice was so small and scared, showing the depth of a child who needed someone older than them to make things better. To make the scary situation and monsters disappear. His heart clenched as he swallowed and tried to think of what to say to make her feel better. He didn't want to lie, didn't want to be that type of person to her, but he couldn't let her crumble either. No four-year-old needed to experience something like this.

"Look at me, Mango." He waited until her watery blue eyes pierced his own. "Yer Momma's tough, tougher than anyone I know, and Landon- he's got that fight in 'im too. If anyone is gonna make their way back ta us, it would be those two." Those were words he believed in his heart, and none of them were lies. There were no promises, just reassurances that there was a chance. "And I know they'd rather see yah smilin' and not cryin' so why don' yah help me git things into order for yer momma."

Maisie wiped her nose with the back of her hand and gave a small nod. Her eyes were still watery, but she was no longer outright crying or throwing a fit, so Merle took it as a sign that his words helped her at least a little.

He held his hand out for her to take, and Maisie wrapped her tiny fingers around his bigger ones. They moved together as a unit.

․° °․

Shane's strides were tense and quick. His single-minded focus on Daryl's words kept him moving forward even as that demon inside him urged him to turn back around. The fact that Morgan should have been leading them was lost on him. The man wasn't moving fast enough. He was still afraid he'd turn back around if he moved any slower. Even the quiet urgings of Carol asking him to slow down, pitiful whimpers escaping her lips, did nothing to soften him. There wasn't enough caring Shane left to give the woman a break, knowing that she had been devastated by losing her daughter in this chaos and then seeing Remington go down did nothing more than dig into those holes in his mind even more, instead of filling him with sympathy. She wasn't adapting fast enough to this new world they lived in. Shane was unfairly blaming her weakness on Remington getting bit and Sophia disappearing. If Carol had been stronger and more of a fighter, perhaps they would have had a better chance with someone who could be there for them.

In reality, Shane was angriest with himself. He had seen Remington rush off alone and hadn't tried to go after her. She had been acting strange most of that evening, and he hadn't thought much of it, knowing that Landon was down in the fields with Rick and Carl. He had just assumed she had gone to get him. He had thought the farm was safe enough. No alarms had been sounded. Remington constantly went off on her own to make headway on that internal list she kept. He hadn't thought things could go sideways as fast as they did.

He had failed her.

Blood sprayed through the air as his machete sliced through yet another Walker that had stumbled within reach of him. Specks of the carnage stuck to his skin, seeping into the gaps in his mind, allowing his outside vestige to mirror the chaotic mess on the inside.

There wasn't much of him that was identifiable, and when he stumbled upon the forms of Rick, Carl, and Landon on the road, surrounded by the wreckage of cars, he could see in their eyes how horrifying he must have looked.

The boy had begun to clear the distance between them, even at Rick's urging hiss to stay at his side, but came up short upon the moonlight giving him a view of Shane. There was a flash of uncertainty, then a hint of fear, as Landon fidgeted in place.

The blood speckling Shane's skin was intimidating, but it was the look in his eyes—the cold, detached emptiness of them—that made Landon uneasy. It caused the boy to take a step back before regaining ground, dancing on the edge of wanting comfort from being near the man and the instincts inside of him that told Landon that this wasn't Shane.

"Where is everyone?" Rick asked, his voice wavering, flickering with a tsunami of emotions. The most prevalent one was the fear that cracked his voice, tinting it an octave higher, something that broke through the haze in Shane's mind. He had never heard Rick sound like that before. "Someone opened the barn, let out Walkers, and I swear- Shane- he was leading even more to us."

That's what had Rick so shaken up, and the blood boiled inside Shane's veins as he listened. Any clarity he had tried to gain a hold of, for Landon's sake, slipped right back through his shaking fingers like sand. The boy was practically bouncing on the tips of his toes, eyeing the machete in Shane's hands, seeing how badly they shook, the whole object violently twitching against his leg. Landon, himself, was gripping the little machete that had been gifted to him by Remington.

Behind him, Rick was holding a gun that Shane had just enough sanity left in him to know that he hoped the man hadn't needed to use it with the boys with him. It would have drawn a hoard down upon them fast, and while Shane was just fractured enough to try to take the Walkers on, the presence of Landon and the clear anxiety written on his features made him second-guess it.

Shane's grip on the machete loosened, his expression slipping and allowing a fraction of the devastation he was feeling to show as some of the coldness in his eyes lingered. It was all Landon needed: to see a little bit of that Shane he knew return before he was flinging himself forward. The boy's arms wrapped around Shane's midsection, and the man stumbled back a step. While he didn't drop the machete, knowing that he'd need it if something were to stumble upon them, Shane lifted and wrapped his free arm around the kid.

"The farm's gone to shit." His voice sounded harsh, gravely, as he tried to soften it for the kids' sake. "We're heading to the compound. Morgan knows where it's at." His voice sounded disapproving, saturated with that insanity, as the reminder of what was happening around them caused those holes and his demons to fight for dominance.

Briefly, his fingers clung a little tighter to Landon, using him to anchor him in the moment.

Landon knew something was off. He could see it in the bloody mess that Shane had become. He spotted it the moment the man slipped from the shadows, and the moon lit up his warped features. He wasn't like Maisie. He didn't know what was needed to bring the man back. He had even feared whoever was standing before him for a moment because it hadn't been Shane. Then, he saw the vulnerability and devastation on the man's features, and Landon simply did the only thing he could have done. He sought out the comfort and reassurance he needed from the adult in his life that he trusted and tried to portray some of that back toward him.

"Is everyone safe?" Rick asked, knowing something must have gone wrong to make Shane like this.

"All back at the compound waiting for us. A few of us stayed back to find you lot."

It was only the half-truth, but Shane didn't have it in him to reveal what was happening with Remi to Landon. The boy was already afraid, and Shane was together enough to know that saying anything about it now would only put the boy's life in danger.

Landon was exactly what he needed to keep the demon from winning and to fill some of those holes in his mind.

Rick could read between the lines, spotting Carol and the way she wasn't holding it together, sniffles and quiet sobs spilling from her lips, and the tight look on Morgan's face. Seeing Shane look like this, it wasn't even necessary to tell Rick what might have happened. Instead of demanding clarity, he just nodded, letting it go, knowing it would be brought back up when they were all safe.

Shane didn't allow for them to linger much longer after that. He pushed everyone to move on, keeping up a steady pace, as he continued to mow down any Walker that dared to get too close before they stumbled upon a working vehicle. No longer moving meant that Shane had nothing to focus all his anger and restless energy on. His knee bounced carelessly against the passenger seat as he sat up front with Morgan while the man drove them.

Moving much faster now, it hadn't taken long for them to arrive at the compound, with the walls being the first thing that grabbed the man's attention. They looked sturdy and imposing, but most importantly, they screamed safety. It eased an itch in his mind even as he fought with the knowledge that this place had come a little too late to save the person he had fallen in love with.

Gripping onto Landon's hand, Shane didn't let the boy go, even as they entered behind the safety of the brick walls. The action kept him grounded and made sure that he didn't turn back around, disappearing into the night, as he went searching for Daryl and Remi.

A headache pounded away harshly at the back of his eyes. The adrenaline fled his veins, leaving him cold and causing his body to ache.

Then there was a shout.

The voice was high-pitched, and the face that broke away from a nearby group was similar in appearance to the woman who refused to leave Shane's mind. Not letting go of Landon's hand, Shane dropped to his knees. He watched how Maisie's features twisted, her sea blue eyes shining with an emotion of concern, nearly identical to the one her momma gave that it caused an invisible grip to tighten around his heart. Shane nearly choked on it. His legs would have given out on him if he hadn't been kneeling in the dirt.

The sight of blood covering his face and clothes didn't deter the little girl; it only caused her short legs to move faster, and Shane saw how much she resembled Remi at that moment. A warm and kind heart that loved greatly.

How could he break her heart?

"Daddy!"