"We are the greater good." - Rick Grimes
It was finally there, after all those years, right in front of him.
Things are funny like that, Daryl thinks, because of course, it would take the end of the world for him to become part of a real family.
His earliest memories are of the cheap smell of wine and vodka, tendrils of smoke curling upwards into the hot Georgian skyline. He doesn't remember the feel of his mothers fingers as they brushed through his hair, as she passed him by on her way back into the house from the front porch.
The last time he ever saw her, he remembers, because when he came back home later that day, there was nothing left. There was no body, no pictures, nothing for him to remember her by. The people in his life have always been like that, there one instant and then gone the next, leaving nothing behind but the ghost of their presence. We bury the people we love, he recalls. But in a world like this, there is no time to mourn.
There is no time to hurt, no time to grieve. Not anymore.
But even so, he can't really find it within himself to walk away from the body of his brother, can't leave the body lying out in the grass. But he has no time to dig a grave. Instead, he settles for pulling his lighter out of his pocket and watches the flame consume Merle's body until the day has turned to dusk and there is nothing but a pile of ashes left once again.
And isn't that just a recurring theme in his life, watching his whole world burn down to nothing.
He hopes that his mother never suffered in death, not in the way Merle had. Hopes that maybe she died of the poisonous fumes before she could feel the heat sear the flesh from her bones. Thinks of the hand his brother lost, and the two missing fingers on his remaining hand and thinks of the gunshot wound on his chest, of walking away that day in the forest and that day in the quarry in Atlanta. Thinks, I just wanted my brother back.
If regrets were money, Daryl thinks he'd be the richest man on the planet.
But it's not like he can leave now, he can't just walk away. Because there is a war coming to the prison and he owes it these people that have become so much a part of him that he can hardly picture a life without them anymore.
You're family, too he'd said to Rick. And he had meant it, too. Rick is like the brother he had always imagined Merle to be when he was just a kid. Strong, heroic, tough, loyal, and most of all good.
Daryl is not the same man he was the day he first walked into the camp at Atlanta, not long after the world went to hell, and that is one thing that he does not regret.
These long months spent sharing the same breathing space with the same tight knit group of people have made them tougher, stronger, just so long as they are together. That much Daryl has learned. They take care of each, cover each others back, even if it means laying their own life on the life. It's what they do, after all.
And isn't that just ironic, because if someone had told the old Daryl that he would be sticking with a group of people, a select few of who he even trusts, he might've laughed. It's a far-cry from where Daryl expected to be, but he thinks it doesn't matter because for once in his life, the people he care about are a constant.
He grew up with an abusive alcoholic father, and a brother who breezed in out and of jail as often as other people washed their clothes. If that doesn't scream unstable and unwelcoming, he doesn't know what does. He often wonders where he would be if the dead hadn't started getting back up, wonders about the person he would be. Because despite living in a constant midst of bloodshed and despair, he finds himself genuinely caring about this dysfunctional rag-tag group of people.
No one can make it alone now, Andrea had said.
I never could, Daryl replied.