Chapter 64 Don’t Pretend With Me, Shane

“Hey, man, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Shane Walsh moved a little closer to Magnus Vane, clearly unwilling to admit anything so easily. Before saying more, he glanced over his shoulder toward the temporary camp and only relaxed slightly after confirming Rick was still by the tents instead of following them. The gesture alone told Magnus nearly everything he needed to know. Magnus rested the Quality 5 Stone Sledgehammer across one shoulder and gave him an unimpressed look. “Don’t pretend with me, Shane.”

Magnus started walking again, forcing Shane either to follow or end the conversation immediately. “How many people in that camp do you honestly think never noticed there was something between you and Lori after Rick disappeared?” he asked. “Nobody said anything because there was nothing to gain from humiliating either of you, and at the time everyone believed Rick was dead. Lori was scared, Carl needed somebody helping protect him, and you were already carrying half the group on your back.” Magnus glanced sideways at him. “You really never noticed that whenever you and Lori disappeared somewhere together, people generally found a reason not to come looking?”

Shane’s expression tightened. “We didn’t plan any of it. I thought Rick was dead.” His voice became defensive almost immediately, and Magnus could see the thoughts beginning to pile on top of one another behind his eyes. “I saw what happened at the hospital. The place was falling apart. Soldiers were shooting people, walkers were everywhere, and there was no damn way I could get him out.”

“All right, all right.” Magnus raised one hand before Shane could work himself into another spiral. “I’m not standing here judging you, so stop acting like I brought you out here for a confession.” There were too many sides to what had happened between Shane, Lori, and Rick for Magnus to reduce it to a simple question of who was right or wrong. What mattered now was how Shane chose to handle something that had already happened and could no longer be erased.

Magnus knew exactly where the original Shane Walsh had gone wrong. Shane had always been impatient, intense, protective, and quick to anger, but those traits alone hadn’t destroyed him; the real collapse had come after the world kept pushing him until he began believing ruthlessness was the only thing left that mattered. In the original timeline, killing Otis had accelerated that change dramatically, but this Shane had never killed Otis because Carl had never been shot and the entire farm storyline had shifted. That meant Magnus was speaking to a man who was still unstable in certain ways, but not yet consumed by them.

They crossed the open exercise yard until they reached the section of perimeter fence farthest from the camp. On the other side, several walkers wandered aimlessly in the darkness, occasionally drifting close enough to scrape against the chain-link before moving away again. The distance and the background noise made it extremely unlikely anyone near the tents could hear them clearly. Magnus stopped there and planted the Stone Sledgehammer upside down against the ground, the long handle pointing toward the night sky. “Nobody else is listening, and I’m not going back there to repeat this conversation, so I’m going to be straight with you.”

Shane remained quiet.

“I don’t know exactly how you see me,” Magnus continued. “Maybe you don’t trust me. Maybe you think I’ve destabilized the group, or you think people listening to me means you’ve lost whatever position you had before I showed up.” With every possibility Magnus listed, Shane’s gaze dropped a little farther toward the ground. “Maybe you think Rick came back and took one part of your life, then I showed up and started taking another.”

Shane’s jaw clenched.

Magnus noticed.

“And when I started getting closer to Lori, then took Carl away for a week and trained him myself?” Magnus asked. “I’d bet there were moments when you wanted to put me in the ground.”

Shane’s head snapped up. “I never—”

“Don’t.”

Magnus cut him off immediately.

“Don’t tell me the thought never crossed your mind.” His tone remained calm, which somehow made the words harder to dismiss. “You and I aren’t exactly the same, but we understand some of the same instincts. When you think somebody is threatening the people you’ve decided are yours to protect, your first reaction isn’t always polite.”

Shane opened his mouth again, then slowly closed it.

Magnus knew he was right because part of Carl’s training had been deliberately provocative. Taking the boy away for seven days without contact had been reckless in hindsight, and Magnus had already admitted that to Lori, but he also remembered watching Shane from the beginning and intentionally testing how far his attachment to Lori and Carl went. The reaction had told Magnus plenty. Shane had wanted to challenge him repeatedly, yet some part of him had always stopped short of crossing the final line.

Then Shane remembered what had happened earlier that afternoon.

When Dale stepped between him and the surrendering correctional officer, Shane had immediately felt the familiar frustration of being judged by somebody still clinging to rules that no longer protected anyone. Shane had been ready to argue, probably loudly, but Magnus had simply walked past them, picked up the sledgehammer, and ended the issue himself. Nobody in the group had stopped him. Even Dale, who would have challenged almost anyone else, had backed away once Magnus made his decision clear.

That memory lingered.

Maybe Magnus was right about one thing.

Maybe they understood each other better than Shane wanted to admit.

Moonlight spilled across the prison yard, illuminating both men beside the fence. Magnus stood with his arms folded loosely across his chest, watching Shane with an unreadable expression, while Shane’s normally aggressive posture had become strangely restrained. For someone who had spent much of his life projecting confidence, he suddenly looked less like the former sheriff’s deputy who had challenged Rick and more like a man being forced to look at things he preferred keeping buried.

Magnus saw the hesitation and pressed forward.

“And here’s the part you probably haven’t accepted yet,” he said. “It isn’t just me who figured it out. Other people noticed, and Rick isn’t stupid either.”

Shane inhaled sharply.

“Lori probably told him eventually,” Magnus continued. “Or at least enough for him to understand what happened.”

Shane released a long, tired breath and rubbed one hand over his head. “Why the hell would you think Rick knows?”

Magnus gave him a look. “Because Rick Grimes spent years working beside you. You really think you can live around the man every day, look at his wife the way you do, treat Carl the way you do, and have him never notice anything?”

Shane stared at him.

“Rick is more forgiving than most people would be,” Magnus continued. “There’s a reason everyone naturally looks toward him when I’m not around. He thinks about what happens after the decision, not just what feels good in the moment.” Magnus tilted his head toward the camp. “If Rick suspects what happened, he also knows dragging it into the open would hurt Lori, hurt Carl, destroy whatever is left between you two, and potentially tear this entire group apart.”

Shane swallowed.

Magnus didn’t let him look away. “Some things can exist quietly and eventually become part of the past. Drag those same things into the middle of the camp and force everybody to choose sides, and suddenly they become something much bigger.” He paused. “Rick still sees you as his brother, Shane. That’s the important part.”

Shane slowly turned toward the distant camp.

Rick had risen from where he had been sitting near Lori and Carl, and for a moment it almost seemed like he was looking across the yard in their direction. Whether Rick could actually see them clearly in the darkness was impossible to tell. Shane nevertheless stared for several seconds, his expression tightening with something that looked far more painful than anger.

“But what the hell am I supposed to do?” Shane suddenly snapped.

The words came out louder than intended.

He grabbed both sides of his head and turned away, visibly struggling with frustration that had been building for far longer than this conversation. “You think I can just shut it off? I thought Rick was dead. I got them out. I kept Lori alive, kept Carl alive, kept everybody moving, and then Rick comes walking back like the whole damn world decided to change the rules again.”

His raised voice attracted attention outside the perimeter.

Two walkers turned toward the sound and began bumping against the chain-link. Another joined them a few seconds later, rotten fingers curling through the openings while they growled uselessly at the living men on the other side. The noise only made Shane more agitated, his breathing becoming heavier as he stared toward the darkness. Then a strong hand settled firmly on his shoulder.

Shane stiffened.

He looked over.

Magnus was smiling.

“I’ll tell you what you do.”

Shane stared at him.

Magnus nodded toward the moonlit yard. “For a minute, stop thinking about Lori. Stop thinking about Rick coming back. Think about what you were before any of that.”

Shane’s brow furrowed.

“When everything collapsed and Rick wasn’t there, who kept this group moving?” Magnus asked. “You did. You took responsibility because somebody had to, and people listened because you were willing to make decisions when everyone else was scared.”

Shane’s breathing slowly steadied.

Magnus kept his hand on his shoulder. “You protected Lori and Carl because Rick was your partner and your best friend, and you believed he was gone. You protected the rest of the group because being responsible for people was already part of who you were before the world ended.” His voice lowered. “That didn’t start with Lori.”

Shane looked toward the moon.

His expression became distant.

Magnus knew he was remembering Atlanta, the highway, the quarry, and everything before Rick returned.

“You went back for Rick at the hospital even when the military had already lost control,” Magnus continued. “When you couldn’t get him out, you blocked his hospital-room door so the walkers and soldiers passing through wouldn’t immediately reach him. That barricade may be one of the reasons he survived long enough to wake up.” Magnus squeezed Shane’s shoulder once. “That wasn’t a man trying to steal his partner’s family.”

Shane’s eyes shifted.

“That was a cop trying to protect his brother.”

The anger in Shane’s face slowly gave way to something else.

Magnus continued before the change could disappear. “Your sense of responsibility didn’t vanish when civilization collapsed. Your loyalty to Rick didn’t vanish either. What happened was that everything else disappeared around you so fast that Lori and Carl became the place where you put all of it.”

Shane lowered his head.

“You lost the department. Lost the law. Lost your home. Thought you lost Rick.” Magnus spoke carefully now, guiding instead of pressing. “Then suddenly you had Lori and Carl depending on you, and protecting them gave you something that still made sense.”

Shane’s lips pressed into a thin line.

“And then Rick came back.”

Magnus let the words settle between them.

“That should’ve been the best thing that could happen,” he said. “Your best friend was alive. Carl got his father back. Lori got her husband back.” Magnus watched Shane closely. “But by then you’d already built your whole reason for surviving around being the one who protected them.”

Shane stared through the fence without speaking.

“So instead of only feeling relieved,” Magnus continued quietly, “you felt like Rick came back and took away the one thing that had become yours.”

Shane’s shoulders tightened.

Magnus could tell he had hit the center of it.

“That’s why you’ve been tearing yourself apart.”

The walkers continued pressing uselessly against the fence several yards away, but neither man paid them any attention. Shane remained silent beneath the moonlight, staring into the darkness as memories and emotions he had avoided for months slowly rearranged themselves into something he could finally recognize. Magnus didn’t rush him.

For once, Shane Walsh wasn’t angry at Rick.

He wasn’t angry at Lori and Magnus.

He was finally beginning to understand why he had been angry at all.

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