Fic: From Sorrow's Hold
This is the story I wrote for yuletide this year.
Author: Ashley
From Sorrow's Hold
warnings: language, m/m and multi, SPOILERS up through Season Two, Episode Seven, Pretty Much Dead Already.
summary: After the barn, after Sophia. Shane and Rick dream.
disclaimer: characters are AMC's/Robert Kirkman's, words are mine.
author's notes: thank you countesscole for the beta. All feedback is love.
Rick dreams.
The snow falls lightly, dusting his shoulders, the serene quality of the landscape outside the farmhouse a balm to his addled brain, soothing the noise that rattles there. He’s trying to ignore what’s caused the scrkkkkkkkk that shakes around inside, the racket reminiscent of tv static.
He’s wearing a white tshirt and jeans, heavy workboots, but no coat and no hat. He vaguely remembers giving it someone, and as he’s thinking he pushes outside, through the screen door that leads to the porch where Hershel and Maggie are sitting, both holding shotguns. They smile cheerfully at him and wave, neither of them wearing coats, and he waves back, thinking it should be odd, but he doesn’t want to appear impolite. He’s got to keep Hershel happy, needs to make the other man understand why he and his people (as the old man refers to them) should be allowed to stay here. Here on this farm, a tiny oasis in the desert he’s been wandering through for the past few months.
You’re killing us! You’re killing us!
He shakes his head, buzzing in his ears like a bee hive covered in a blanket, and walks on, past the barn with its ominous feeling (why, though, he can’t remember), past the horses in their stalls, past Glenn and Daryl practicing with Daryl’s bow. Everyone waves at each other, cheerily, and the snow falls.
Rick doesn’t remember being cold - it’s been a lifetime - and he watches the white snow stick to his arm hair and blinks through the flakes on his lashes. He whistles a half forgotten tune and slushes through the wet stuff on the ground, feet slipping easily through the chill. Strangely enough, though, he’s not cold. He thinks he should be, but he’s as warm as he ever has been. Sweating, even. It drips down the back of his neck and into the band of his tshirt collar.
He sees Carl and Lori up ahead, near the fence, wooden railing supporting Lori’s butt as she sits on it, Carl waving enthusiastically at him as he heads toward them. The sun is out despite the snow and he’s happy, he realizes, happier than he’s been in a long time. Happier than he’s been since the day he was shot -
Hands reach for Carl, and his son is pulled off his feet into the snow, the blond hair of the walker contrasting with Carl’s darker locks.
They’re sick people. Can you learn to live with that?
My land, my rules.
Rick runs. The snow sticks to him, dragging him down, wetting his skin, soaking his clothing and he’s cold, so cold as he watches the little girl chomp into his son’s neck, Carl screaming, pleading with her to stop, then wailing Rick’s name so loudly the whole world must hear him. He prays briefly that Shane hears, and wonders where the other man’s been all this time.
Lori’s face is constricted, confused and her huge belly (he can see it now) slows her progress as they both run for Carl and Rick raises his hand and it’s suddenly filled with the Ruger he carries now (courtesy of the run he’d done back to Atlanta for the bag of guns) and he pulls the trigger and snow flies around the dead girl and his son and he can hear Lori shouting and he’s running, the gun booming in his hands and abruptly he’s there, and Carl’s torn up and Rick kneels and gathers his child in his arms.
He’s crying and screaming and he barely registers the head shot he’s achieved (the little girl is dead, really dead this time) and he turns only at the sound of Lori’s voice.
Sun blinds him, sparking off the snow, and squinting he can see Lori through the fire the refraction creates in his eyes - she falls to her knees slowly, stomach red, a flower blossoming on the white of her shirt over her distended pregnant belly.
Rick raises his head to the sky and shrieks a wordless sound. The snow falls and he screams again.
*
Shane dreams.
Snow falls over him, sticking to his longish hair, the curls tickling the back of his neck. He shrugs a hand through them and walks over the porch of the farm where they’ve been staying, boots creaking on the wood flooring, despite the inherent danger that’s living in the barn just a few yards to the east. Shane thinks Rick’s crazy for wanting to stay here.
Lori’s pregnant.
“Lori’s having a baby…congratulations, man.”
Shane says it again to no one, looking at the sky, feeling his heart rush in his chest just as the other man’s body rushes him from behind, catching him unawares and shoving him up against the railing that surrounds the porch. The day is soft and quiet; no one else is around, no matter that Shane can see their encampment easily, and watery sunlight filters through to the ground, broken and patchy due to the falling snow.
He doesn’t remember being cold.
The hair on the back of his arms stands up when Rick’s voice growls in his ear. He doesn’t turn to look at the other man’s ridiculous blue eyes (better than a girl, m’man) but he laughs, the low sound rumbling his gut and shaking the gun he holds in his right hand. Rick’s fingers grab for it; Shane considers fighting him for it, but he lets Rick take it and for a moment feels the barrel ghosting over the bone that scallops behind his left ear. He smiles, the expression forcing a rictus of death out of his face.
Rick’s hands are on Shane’s stomach now, and Shane does turn this time, facing Rick, staring into the blue eyes that haunt him night and day am I doing the right thing will I make him proud will he forgive me for leaving him there how do I tell him I want him and Lori and that baby is mine dammit.
Rick fists a hand in Shane’s hair and jerks. Hard. Shane allows his throat to be exposed and doesn’t move when the cool point of Rick’s finger touches the underside of his jaw, the other man drawing a burning line from ear to ear, Shane narrowing his eyes only when Rick grasps his chin and pulls.
A knee against his groin; he laughs again.
come on, then.
Rick whips him around, his back to Rick’s front and Shane can see the walkers emerging from the barn, shambling quickly, faces and necks and arms and feet wrecked and horrifying and his groin hurts when Rick shoves him again, the hand in his hair painful and Rick bites his neck until blood flows down the back of Shane’s shirt, Rick’s hands on his hips, his thighs, his cock.
He gasps then, knowing they should be going for the guns, going for the head shot, getting rid of the pestilence that infects this otherwise peaceful environ, but he can’t do anything but watch as the snow drifts lazily to the ground, the dead shuffling through it as Rick’s hands do things to him he’d been embarrassed to even think to imagine and the other man’s mouth tears at his skin, burning a trail from neck to jaw.
Shane
Lori’s voice is an interruption - but she’s next to him unexpectedly, hands on his chest and further south, mingling with Rick’s, both of their breaths and the sounds they make ripping through his head and whirling the already confused thoughts into a storm of Katrina proportions.
He bows his head and gives in, the walkers approaching even as he shuts his eyes, taking Lori and Rick into him, both together, all three of them, one unit, forever.
*
Rick wakes.
He sits bolt upright, memory skewed, back sweating, hair tossed and spiked in weird points from the damp of the humidity in the air. The night is long upon them; he remembers falling asleep, remembers his dry mouth, lips opening and closing as he’d tried to think of something to say to Hershel, to Lori, to Carl - his poor broken hearted and broken souled son. God, and Shane. Shane’s breakdown, and Shane’s descent into whatever madness that’s possessing him, and Shane’s face when the last walker turned out to be…he shivers and wants to vomit with anger and suppressed sorrow. He had helped bring those things to the barn. And then Shane had shattered and had shot and shot and Rick had been screaming at him and Carl was there and Lori and Daryl and Andrea and Hershel and everyone. And Sophia. And Shane.
Shane and his wildness and the mental crash Rick had not expected. Shane and his idiocy (Rick could kill him gladly some days, truth be told; his gut twists and turns when he thinks like that though) and the desire to do what he could for Lori and Carl and for the group, no matter the repercussions and no matter the stupidity of the choice of action. God damned Shane, his brother in all things. Shane, fuck’s sake. But Rick needs Shane, needs his balance and his support and his dark where Rick is light.
And Rick wonders if Shane needs his darkness as support for when Shane can’t see anything but the killing they’ve had to do - and now, Lori’s pregnant and how will Shane see that? A little niggling thought crosses; Shane had taken care of Lori and Carl on the trip from home to Atlanta, had slept in their tent, had watched over them like they were his own.
Lori’s pregnant.
Rick wraps arms around his knees, sitting up in the sleeping bag inside his family’s tent.
Shane and I…
I know. Of course I know.
He had known, really, hadn’t had to even ask her. He understands, too, in the way only he can because he’s known both Shane and Lori for so long he doesn’t have to think about them or the why’s and wherefore’s. He swallows heavily, the bile that burns his throat rising and he sheds the sleeping bag and exits the tent, Lori’s querulous voice calling his name in a whisper, afraid to wake Carl now that he’s finally gone to sleep.
He walks, past the barn, past the holes where the newly (truly) dead are buried, Sophia included, although she’s away by herself, near the pasture and marked with a big white flower that Daryl had brought. Rick can’t bring himself to walk too close to it, his heart hammering as he looks toward the grave, his mind whirling at a breakneck pace that has him stumbling and tripping as he gains speed and runs to the fencing that surrounds the outermost area of Hershel’s property.
Of course Shane’s standing there, shorn head appearing odd in the shimmery dark. The other man doesn’t look at him, his back and hip draped in guns like Lori had been draped in flowers at their wedding, and Rick shudders again, possibilities and endless fear and sadness rocketing up and down his entire body. Betrayal of a kind he can’t imagine - and Shane finally speaks.
“Dream?” he asks, his voice rough, though it sounds like a statement, not a question. Rick nods. “It was snowing,” he answers. Both men stare at the woods beyond, both intent on watching for walkers, both intent on not speaking the words they really want to.
Shane draws in a deep breath, letting out a sound that is tiny and so much like a sob Rick’s gut constricts like a snake had bit him. Without thinking he places his hand on Shane’s back, the sniper rifle brushing his skin and chilling it like the snow had. The sweat that soaks Shane’s shirt wets Rick’s hand and the warmth is almost unbearable, intolerable, but Rick leaves his hand where it is.
Shane stiffens but leans into the small touch, unwilling to move away from Rick or from whatever it is that Rick says or does for him. If he could figure that out, his life might be a whole hell of a lot easier. Maybe it would have helped the crushing bullshit that takes up his every thought, his every move, his fucking ridiculous lonely existence that eats him alive every second of every day.
Then again, maybe that’s the draw. Maybe that’s the thing Shane needs in order to make this. Fucking. Work. Something has to work, something, anything, in order to make this world make sense or for him to make sense in it. He feels the gun in his hand, feels the weight of it as he blasts the walkers one by one, and then he sees her as she comes last out of the barn, stumbling, face grey and mouth growling and Shane’s face is a mask of anguish and he rubs his forehead and closes his eyes, if only for a moment. He couldn’t shoot her. He just couldn’t. Weak, weak, weak.
Lori’s pregnant.
You’re made for this world
“Fair enough,” he whispers and disregards the questioning noise from Rick’s mouth.
They watch the woods and Shane leans into the small touch, skin burning, as Rick lays his hand on Shane’s back and wonders just how long it will be before things truly explode.
You’re killing us.
He trembles once but ignores it.
~
Author: Ashley
From Sorrow's Hold
warnings: language, m/m and multi, SPOILERS up through Season Two, Episode Seven, Pretty Much Dead Already.
summary: After the barn, after Sophia. Shane and Rick dream.
disclaimer: characters are AMC's/Robert Kirkman's, words are mine.
author's notes: thank you countesscole for the beta. All feedback is love.
Rick dreams.
The snow falls lightly, dusting his shoulders, the serene quality of the landscape outside the farmhouse a balm to his addled brain, soothing the noise that rattles there. He’s trying to ignore what’s caused the scrkkkkkkkk that shakes around inside, the racket reminiscent of tv static.
He’s wearing a white tshirt and jeans, heavy workboots, but no coat and no hat. He vaguely remembers giving it someone, and as he’s thinking he pushes outside, through the screen door that leads to the porch where Hershel and Maggie are sitting, both holding shotguns. They smile cheerfully at him and wave, neither of them wearing coats, and he waves back, thinking it should be odd, but he doesn’t want to appear impolite. He’s got to keep Hershel happy, needs to make the other man understand why he and his people (as the old man refers to them) should be allowed to stay here. Here on this farm, a tiny oasis in the desert he’s been wandering through for the past few months.
You’re killing us! You’re killing us!
He shakes his head, buzzing in his ears like a bee hive covered in a blanket, and walks on, past the barn with its ominous feeling (why, though, he can’t remember), past the horses in their stalls, past Glenn and Daryl practicing with Daryl’s bow. Everyone waves at each other, cheerily, and the snow falls.
Rick doesn’t remember being cold - it’s been a lifetime - and he watches the white snow stick to his arm hair and blinks through the flakes on his lashes. He whistles a half forgotten tune and slushes through the wet stuff on the ground, feet slipping easily through the chill. Strangely enough, though, he’s not cold. He thinks he should be, but he’s as warm as he ever has been. Sweating, even. It drips down the back of his neck and into the band of his tshirt collar.
He sees Carl and Lori up ahead, near the fence, wooden railing supporting Lori’s butt as she sits on it, Carl waving enthusiastically at him as he heads toward them. The sun is out despite the snow and he’s happy, he realizes, happier than he’s been in a long time. Happier than he’s been since the day he was shot -
Hands reach for Carl, and his son is pulled off his feet into the snow, the blond hair of the walker contrasting with Carl’s darker locks.
They’re sick people. Can you learn to live with that?
My land, my rules.
Rick runs. The snow sticks to him, dragging him down, wetting his skin, soaking his clothing and he’s cold, so cold as he watches the little girl chomp into his son’s neck, Carl screaming, pleading with her to stop, then wailing Rick’s name so loudly the whole world must hear him. He prays briefly that Shane hears, and wonders where the other man’s been all this time.
Lori’s face is constricted, confused and her huge belly (he can see it now) slows her progress as they both run for Carl and Rick raises his hand and it’s suddenly filled with the Ruger he carries now (courtesy of the run he’d done back to Atlanta for the bag of guns) and he pulls the trigger and snow flies around the dead girl and his son and he can hear Lori shouting and he’s running, the gun booming in his hands and abruptly he’s there, and Carl’s torn up and Rick kneels and gathers his child in his arms.
He’s crying and screaming and he barely registers the head shot he’s achieved (the little girl is dead, really dead this time) and he turns only at the sound of Lori’s voice.
Sun blinds him, sparking off the snow, and squinting he can see Lori through the fire the refraction creates in his eyes - she falls to her knees slowly, stomach red, a flower blossoming on the white of her shirt over her distended pregnant belly.
Rick raises his head to the sky and shrieks a wordless sound. The snow falls and he screams again.
*
Shane dreams.
Snow falls over him, sticking to his longish hair, the curls tickling the back of his neck. He shrugs a hand through them and walks over the porch of the farm where they’ve been staying, boots creaking on the wood flooring, despite the inherent danger that’s living in the barn just a few yards to the east. Shane thinks Rick’s crazy for wanting to stay here.
Lori’s pregnant.
“Lori’s having a baby…congratulations, man.”
Shane says it again to no one, looking at the sky, feeling his heart rush in his chest just as the other man’s body rushes him from behind, catching him unawares and shoving him up against the railing that surrounds the porch. The day is soft and quiet; no one else is around, no matter that Shane can see their encampment easily, and watery sunlight filters through to the ground, broken and patchy due to the falling snow.
He doesn’t remember being cold.
The hair on the back of his arms stands up when Rick’s voice growls in his ear. He doesn’t turn to look at the other man’s ridiculous blue eyes (better than a girl, m’man) but he laughs, the low sound rumbling his gut and shaking the gun he holds in his right hand. Rick’s fingers grab for it; Shane considers fighting him for it, but he lets Rick take it and for a moment feels the barrel ghosting over the bone that scallops behind his left ear. He smiles, the expression forcing a rictus of death out of his face.
Rick’s hands are on Shane’s stomach now, and Shane does turn this time, facing Rick, staring into the blue eyes that haunt him night and day am I doing the right thing will I make him proud will he forgive me for leaving him there how do I tell him I want him and Lori and that baby is mine dammit.
Rick fists a hand in Shane’s hair and jerks. Hard. Shane allows his throat to be exposed and doesn’t move when the cool point of Rick’s finger touches the underside of his jaw, the other man drawing a burning line from ear to ear, Shane narrowing his eyes only when Rick grasps his chin and pulls.
A knee against his groin; he laughs again.
come on, then.
Rick whips him around, his back to Rick’s front and Shane can see the walkers emerging from the barn, shambling quickly, faces and necks and arms and feet wrecked and horrifying and his groin hurts when Rick shoves him again, the hand in his hair painful and Rick bites his neck until blood flows down the back of Shane’s shirt, Rick’s hands on his hips, his thighs, his cock.
He gasps then, knowing they should be going for the guns, going for the head shot, getting rid of the pestilence that infects this otherwise peaceful environ, but he can’t do anything but watch as the snow drifts lazily to the ground, the dead shuffling through it as Rick’s hands do things to him he’d been embarrassed to even think to imagine and the other man’s mouth tears at his skin, burning a trail from neck to jaw.
Shane
Lori’s voice is an interruption - but she’s next to him unexpectedly, hands on his chest and further south, mingling with Rick’s, both of their breaths and the sounds they make ripping through his head and whirling the already confused thoughts into a storm of Katrina proportions.
He bows his head and gives in, the walkers approaching even as he shuts his eyes, taking Lori and Rick into him, both together, all three of them, one unit, forever.
*
Rick wakes.
He sits bolt upright, memory skewed, back sweating, hair tossed and spiked in weird points from the damp of the humidity in the air. The night is long upon them; he remembers falling asleep, remembers his dry mouth, lips opening and closing as he’d tried to think of something to say to Hershel, to Lori, to Carl - his poor broken hearted and broken souled son. God, and Shane. Shane’s breakdown, and Shane’s descent into whatever madness that’s possessing him, and Shane’s face when the last walker turned out to be…he shivers and wants to vomit with anger and suppressed sorrow. He had helped bring those things to the barn. And then Shane had shattered and had shot and shot and Rick had been screaming at him and Carl was there and Lori and Daryl and Andrea and Hershel and everyone. And Sophia. And Shane.
Shane and his wildness and the mental crash Rick had not expected. Shane and his idiocy (Rick could kill him gladly some days, truth be told; his gut twists and turns when he thinks like that though) and the desire to do what he could for Lori and Carl and for the group, no matter the repercussions and no matter the stupidity of the choice of action. God damned Shane, his brother in all things. Shane, fuck’s sake. But Rick needs Shane, needs his balance and his support and his dark where Rick is light.
And Rick wonders if Shane needs his darkness as support for when Shane can’t see anything but the killing they’ve had to do - and now, Lori’s pregnant and how will Shane see that? A little niggling thought crosses; Shane had taken care of Lori and Carl on the trip from home to Atlanta, had slept in their tent, had watched over them like they were his own.
Lori’s pregnant.
Rick wraps arms around his knees, sitting up in the sleeping bag inside his family’s tent.
Shane and I…
I know. Of course I know.
He had known, really, hadn’t had to even ask her. He understands, too, in the way only he can because he’s known both Shane and Lori for so long he doesn’t have to think about them or the why’s and wherefore’s. He swallows heavily, the bile that burns his throat rising and he sheds the sleeping bag and exits the tent, Lori’s querulous voice calling his name in a whisper, afraid to wake Carl now that he’s finally gone to sleep.
He walks, past the barn, past the holes where the newly (truly) dead are buried, Sophia included, although she’s away by herself, near the pasture and marked with a big white flower that Daryl had brought. Rick can’t bring himself to walk too close to it, his heart hammering as he looks toward the grave, his mind whirling at a breakneck pace that has him stumbling and tripping as he gains speed and runs to the fencing that surrounds the outermost area of Hershel’s property.
Of course Shane’s standing there, shorn head appearing odd in the shimmery dark. The other man doesn’t look at him, his back and hip draped in guns like Lori had been draped in flowers at their wedding, and Rick shudders again, possibilities and endless fear and sadness rocketing up and down his entire body. Betrayal of a kind he can’t imagine - and Shane finally speaks.
“Dream?” he asks, his voice rough, though it sounds like a statement, not a question. Rick nods. “It was snowing,” he answers. Both men stare at the woods beyond, both intent on watching for walkers, both intent on not speaking the words they really want to.
Shane draws in a deep breath, letting out a sound that is tiny and so much like a sob Rick’s gut constricts like a snake had bit him. Without thinking he places his hand on Shane’s back, the sniper rifle brushing his skin and chilling it like the snow had. The sweat that soaks Shane’s shirt wets Rick’s hand and the warmth is almost unbearable, intolerable, but Rick leaves his hand where it is.
Shane stiffens but leans into the small touch, unwilling to move away from Rick or from whatever it is that Rick says or does for him. If he could figure that out, his life might be a whole hell of a lot easier. Maybe it would have helped the crushing bullshit that takes up his every thought, his every move, his fucking ridiculous lonely existence that eats him alive every second of every day.
Then again, maybe that’s the draw. Maybe that’s the thing Shane needs in order to make this. Fucking. Work. Something has to work, something, anything, in order to make this world make sense or for him to make sense in it. He feels the gun in his hand, feels the weight of it as he blasts the walkers one by one, and then he sees her as she comes last out of the barn, stumbling, face grey and mouth growling and Shane’s face is a mask of anguish and he rubs his forehead and closes his eyes, if only for a moment. He couldn’t shoot her. He just couldn’t. Weak, weak, weak.
Lori’s pregnant.
You’re made for this world
“Fair enough,” he whispers and disregards the questioning noise from Rick’s mouth.
They watch the woods and Shane leans into the small touch, skin burning, as Rick lays his hand on Shane’s back and wonders just how long it will be before things truly explode.
You’re killing us.
He trembles once but ignores it.
~