5 times Shane met Rick Grimes.

[keepsthemsafe]

The first time Shane Walsh meets Rick Grimes he doesn't really meet him. They don't introduce themselves, or make parting remarks. He's sitting in the back of his grandfather's car watching his father being hauled out of the police station. He's here because his grandpa provided red rope licorice which is the only reason he's quiet. (Shane Walsh will do anything for ed rope licorice.) His grandfather is explaining something patiently to the deputy, the new guy (new pork, his father says) from Atlanta. His father spent the night in jail again, something he did down at Stuckeys on 33rd and Shane is having to be dragged there again.

As he rolls his eyes and the car begins to pull away a pretty woman with long brown hair exits a hatchback with a small boy in tow. Their eyes meet.

If he were more of a superstitious person or had any grasp of a world beyond being seven years old he would have laughed or perhaps been terrified. Most likely a combination of both.

In one hand the pale well cared for boy has a balloon on a red string. In his own, licorice. They say that the red string connects you to someone important, your destiny.

They're right.
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The second time Shane Walsh meets Rick Grimes he is eight years old and there is a shout from the oak tree in his backyard and the crack of a branch breaking. Strange noises are far more satisfactory then a report about Ulysses S. Grant. He drops the book - and the comic book that was taking up more of his time to bolt outside only to find a semi-familiar figure lying on the ground beneath a broken branch with his arm pinned under a tree. The boy is trying furiously not to cry.

This is hysterical, "What the hell'd you climb up in there for?"

No response. Shane sticks his hands in his pockets and peers upward into the branches, "See how the branches are grayer at the base? Means they're old. My dad wants to pull the thing out but he's drunker then a three day old skunk and the old bastard will never do it." The arm gets attention, "...S'it broken?"

The boy's eyes are bright with tears, "...I can't move it."

"Can I poke it?"

"No you can't poke it." The boy's voice is harsh and cracked, "It HURTS. Why are you talking go get somebody it hurts."

Shane does as he's told, glancing back anxiously as he tromps into the house, "Grandpa! Grandpa! - there's a kid in the tree. He fell down and his arms'all purple and gross looking!"

Daniel Walsh, once upon a time was went to Harvard medical school. Daniel Walsh did a tour in the military, he is cultured a southern gentleman of the old variety the kind the south takes pride in. His own child, far from satisfactory, he attempts to avoid. Shane he is determined will make something of himself.

Pleased, he goes to attend the child and hits Shane so hard he sprawls face down next to his new prone friend. Daniel apologizes to his grandson very sharply and makes him promise to do so if he see sit again in any circumstance.

"You get hit a lot."

Shane is rubbing the back of his head, "What?"

"I see you. Pop says your dad's a no good rotten drunk and momma says you're going to waste and gonna grow up wild but I seen you. You were fixin' the porch and your dad knocked you sprawlin'."

"What your dad doesn't hit you?"

"No."

Shane dangles his legs, "Grandpa Dan doesn't hit me. He was just mad cause I let you sit there and cry. Still pretty babyish to just cry like that. I've fallen outta the tree lots of times."

"Did you ever break your arm?"

Shane doesn't respond. He looks at his hands.

"...sorry I didn' go for help right away."

"It's okay. It was pretty cool looking. Just that's what you're supposed to do the next time somebody gets hurt."

"You wouldn't have gone for me." Shane's voice is sharp, "We ain't kin. We don't know each other."

"Yes I would." Shane looks up and the thread tightens, "...You may not be kin, but you're a person. You don't deserve to lie there havin' somebody laugh at you."

"...'m Shane."

"Ricky."

-------

The third time in the count of ages that Richard Grimes and Shane Walsh met each other they are twelve and thirteen respectively. Shane is catching frogs down by the creek, three big fat ones. He is debating convincing his grandfather to let him cook dinner tonight when the underbrush breaks and Rick appears, crosses over to a rock and sits-heavily.

One of the frogs that was falling into his trap leaps away.

"What the hell'd you go do that for?"

"...They're fightin' again."

Deputy Grimes had fallen to the King's County curse. A small (but growing!) town occasionally had problems. Growing meant problems, meant late nights.

"Your mom still think your daddy's fuckin' Nancy Kieser over at the hospital?"

Rick glared at him and shane, uncomfortably aware that he was waste deep in pond water stared and shrugged, "...What? It's all over town."

"The hell are you doing anyway?"

Shane held up a hand, "Don't knock it til you've tried it. And you can come over and help me convince Grandpa I should be allowed to cook tonight. Before she died, my ma was the best cook ever.. She made all kinds of recipes. She was Creole, so some of um' were a little weird but she loved ta cook and the best thing she made? Frogs legs."

"...shane you're disgusting."

"No really, try it and you'll see they're delicious. Taste just like moist and tender chicken. C'mere and I'll show you how to catch um'."

"I don't wanna get in the pond water."

"Fry um' up with some spices? I swear Rick you will die and go to heaven and-"

"I don't want to eat Frogs."

"So what, instead you're gonna go home and listen to your dad tell your mom lies?"

"Take that back Shane."

"It's true. You moron if you can't see the nose on your face you're startin' to go blind. Besides Nancy's not known for keepin' secrets. Hell she's had my dad and the old bat must be desperate to have to fuck that loser. Now that she's got her mitts on a bonafide police officer she's probably gonna - "

He doesn't see the punch. He only sees the red and blood. Frogs go flying everywhere and suddenly the two boys are sprawled in the dirt throwing fist fights until Shane slams his knee into his best friend's groin and Rick goes down with a loud yelp.

"...Don't fight a Walsh. we're gonna fight dirty." His nose sounded strange and he was having trouble breathing, "I mean it Rick, now I know the truth hurts but life ain't fair."

The boy didn't say anything, he held himself.

"I cook, cause my momma died. She got cancer and she died Rick. And now my dad fucks anything with a hole between it's legs and drinks and gets arrested by your daddy who's gotta fuckin' work his ass off in a place that keeps growin'. and I bet he keeps shit from you right Rick?

So you don't see the people who got in that car accident, who got drunk and drove into that wall? Rick fucking Grimes Saint Rick, so spoiled that he doesn't see what actually happens out there! The world's shit Rick! It's shit! And you just gotta take that shit cause one day Grandpa Dan is gonna die and my dad's gonna drink himself stupid and your dad's probably gonna haveta pick him up with a spatula!

All you can do is look after yourself and make your own way after a certain point."

Shane's hands are balled into fists. He tries to figure out what angered him more, the frogs he'd spent an afternoon collecting, the disappointment with his friend, Rick's holier then thou attitude.

"You listening? You listening?"

"Rick?" His own eyes are wet. The pain of a broken nose is catching up to him, "...Rick you all right?"

Silence. Shane debates running for the house despite the fact that Grandpa Dan wouldn't be able to get down here in time. Squatting, he kneels beside his friend and wrapped his arms around his shoulders, holding him close.

"It sucks. It really sucks."

"You're wrong." Rick's voice is wracked with pain, "You gotta be wrong. I don't know how, I don't know why but shit matters Shane. 'S not all useless, not just...you versus the world."

"Well for you." Shane's still holding the other boy tight, "...I ain't got no hot mom or dad with a badge."

"You have me."

The world could end around them then and there. Shane grasped the boy tight and Rick continued to whimper to himself, curled in a fetal position. you have me. You have me. It matters.

He'd see it then, that red string. No it's blood from their fight but in the end that's what it comes down to. Being willing to fight for the people you care about, and the blood to prove your devotion.

That, Shane thinks with satisfaction, is enough.
--------

The fourth time they meet is pivotal in the history of the world.

No family burdens, no secrets, no nothing. Shane has done his grandfather proud. He wears a uniform now, like Rick's father (a man who Dan Walsh always respected). He drives a car, sure he plays rough but who doesn't in the world and at least he has a rock, an anchor.

"Burgers and fries will make you fat."

"Shut the fuck up. This burger is yours I seem to recall."

"I didn't eat breakfast." Rick Grimes is running a hand through his short hair and watching the people go by, "Lori had to get Carl out of the house early and..."

"Slave to the ball and chain huh?" He slides around to the other side of the car, balancing food in one hand and a grin in the other, "You're tied down man, need to let loose, be free."

"eh, it has it's perks. You'll understand it one day."

He does but it's not worth mentioning.

"Speaking of which, what happened with that girl..."

"What, oh." He speaks lines written by someone else for a farce that no one has directed and there are other strings for the first time, red ones leading off into the heavens for wide eyed puppeteers who live vicariously through others.

Tethered?

He knows that too well.
------------

The last time Shane Walsh meets Rick Grimes is in a cold field, but there's no warmth in the world anymore. It went away when she vanished from his life, calculation and manipulation replacing warmth and trust and a sense of acceptance.

He wonders if he ever had that. From Lori, from the group, from anyone. He wonders if they hadn't used him and now that a better leader had come along they'd toss him aside. I know what kind of man you are what kind of a man was he?

Did he even have the right to call himself one? Did he ever?

It's enough to hear Rick talking about how much he'd regret this to put the orders and the thoughts in line. Regret? his life was full of it, Can't live with it? He'd lived with nothing but pain and a shadow of himself, the person who he could have been if right had gone left, if cells had not mutated, if his mother had lived, if his father hadn't drowned his sorrows in stale soaked booze, if he hadn't dumped Pam, if...if...if...

I'm tired. But mostly it's the dead. The past dead and the new dead and the creeping sensation that those without boundaries experience, living on the edge of survival without support. No, worse. Knowing that support had failed you. All I have left is the fight because if he walked away or took an easy way out, took the Rick way out he couldn't go back and he would be even more isolated then before.

Never fight a Walsh Rick Walsh, a word here meaning a man on the edge, a man driven, a man broken, a human being who had lost themselves and hadn't figured out how to find it again. A man stripped bare. We fight dirty.

He lunged.

"...You made me do this! You made me!" He's crying too. The world recedes but he can't leave. Not yet. He's still tied here by that red glistening wet string, looking just like red rope licorice inside, coiled inside surrounded by wet and shiny intestines...

A bullet. Funny, it sounds almost like scissors. The string unties and he slumps to the ground, free.
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Later, much later after all the words are said and his wife is asleep Rick leaves them, he leaves all of them and wanders out to the field and stands there, silent, the dead staring at the dead. He would pray but there are no words, he would weep but he has no tears left in him and there are still others that he has to fight for, survive for.

And he sees himself at the center of a red web of attachments and entanglements and up in the heavens the strings belonging to the puppeteers.

"You lucky bastard."

The tears come then. The prayers, the sobbing, quietly so as not to wake the dead only the dead memories.

Above him, the stars come out.