After the Storm [1]

5 • Intolerable

The night before they left Atlanta for good felt like the longest yet. There was no more adrenaline to help keep them awake. Only a dying man who couldn't be left to his own devices for the fear that he would reanimate and kill them all.

For Maeve, it was another night without rest. She had sat with Jim for hours by the time Carol came to relieve her. Maeve tried to argue with the woman that she should go back to sleep and care for her daughter, but ultimately lost as Carol Pelletier shooed her out the RV door and closed it behind her.

Maeve sighs as she stretches her back, sleep heavy in her eyes. She was no stranger to an all nighter, but the events of the past few days had caught up to her. Her jaw ached from being hit in Atlanta, her tailbone hurt from the goon falling on her during the attack on the camp. Her stomach ached with hunger and her lips were chapped from dehydration.

She silently makes her way down the dark path towards the pond. The water wavered slightly, reflecting the crescent moon in its ripples. That combined with the trill of cicadas created a serenity she had long since enjoyed. Maeve lowers a knee to the edge, a faint reflection of her dirt caked features staring back at her. She cups her hands and splashes her face, the water cool and pleasant as she rubs her dry, tired eyes.

Her attention is caught by a figure across the pond that she could just barely see in the moonlight. She stands, wiping her hands on her shirt as she walks a few feet closer to the person, her eyes adjusting to the dark. She could see him, his short cropped hair and scowl. Shane didn't look scared or worried as many of the others did. He looked angry, an anger that Maeve had tangoed with before. He sat along the bank, tossing the occasional pebble into the black pool.

She supposed he felt threatened by Rick's return. For stealing back the family that was never rightfully Shane's. Maeve had not noticed anything out of the ordinary between he and Lori before Rick had returned, but she supposed he had been all too eager to send her off on a hunt with Daryl for that exact reason.

"Got something you need to say, Maeve?" Shane calls out, hoping to catch the girl off guard. But he did not, nothing Shane Walsh did surprised Maeve anymore.

"Is any of the do-gooder act real?" She asks, stepping a bit closer to him so she did not have to raise her voice. She could see him clearer now, the misery on his face. It told her more than he would ever cough up.

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," he says, a sickly strained smile on his face. She scoffs, shaking her head in exasperation.

"What I mean," she bites, "is that I don't think the end of the world is enough to change you. How long do you think it'll be?" She looks at him expectantly, her bottom lip trapped between her teeth as to hold back any comments better left unmade.

He tips his head up at her finally, the faint light of the moon allowing his eyes to bore into hers. He was full of spite and rejection, while her eyes held an anger she'd harbored longer than Carl had been alive.