This was painful to write on multiple levels, but the idea wouldn't let me go. "Scars" by Papa Roach, "Skin" by Sixx A.M. and "Bleed It Out" by Linkin Park looped as my soundtrack while writing. The lesser known track that I highly recommend which set the tone for the end, is "Human (Again)" by Josh Joplin Group.
~For Joe, scars and all, you were and always will be loved. I miss you, bubby.~
Reminders In Flesh, by MissMishka
DISCLAIMER: The usual warnings, I claim no ownership of these characters, they are simply borrowed with love and adoration from the original creators to have their stories embellished on a little more than the show may do. Not for any profit.
Merle stumbled into the hell hole, high as a kite on twenty-four hours of freedom from the bars of juvie and the long line of coke he'd cut and snorted on the dash of his best friend Billy's dashboard.
He'd felt the most amazing rush when the powder seemed to burst in his brain and he knew Billy'd be like a bitch on her period for a while after the beating Merle had given him just for an outlet for the sudden adrenaline.
His boots caught on something lying on the floor and he almost fell because of it.
Seeing his discarded brown paper bag of belongings given to him upon leaving the detention center, he frowned. Daryl always picked up after him. The kid always picked up after all of them, the only sucker in the place that ever made any attempt to make the dump habitable.
"Boy," he hollered out, more like their dad every day, ready to give the little bastard hell for daring to break the habit now.
Silence greeted his bellow.
Not even a background noise from the TV or stereo sounded in the trailer.
His buzz began to wear off quickly in the face of such ominous quiet.
Yelling, screaming, crying, beating, fucking, sports or an action flick on the TV or angry, rebellious rock music from the stereo were sounds that always filled this place at one time or another. Never in his sixteen years, had Merle heard silence in the Dixon household.
It was wrong and that told him something was wrong.
The door down the hallway was shut to the room he shared with his little brother, but the weight in his gut just told Merle that the kid was in there. He crept down the hallway and paused at the barrier, ignoring the signed they'd made and various posters they'd stolen that warned people to 'fuck off' and 'stay out'.
Somehow, the "Enter at your own risk" poster seemed most appropriate and he stared at it as his hand lifted to open the door.
Any intoxication from the cocaine fled his system and he would have gladly put himself back in juvenile detention to not have seen the kid like he was.
Suicides were common enough in lock-up, so it wasn't like he'd never see or seen a mess like this in the centers, but that was his brother lying on that threadbare blanket atop the bed that consisted of nothing more than a old twin mattress tossed on the floor.
Fighting an urge to cry, he crept closer, swallowing down bile at the tighty-whities that were anything but from all the blood. The briefs were all the kid wore, giving Merle plenty of bare skin to look at.
He saw the scars and fresher cuts on the inside of Daryl's thighs and remembered the first time he'd seen a cut on the boy. Daryl had claimed the knife had slipped while he sharpened it. Merle should have known it to be a lie, there was no klutz in the kid, but he'd believed the excuse because he'd not wanted it to be deliberate.
That kind of shit just wasn't done by a Dixon.
The cuts were much higher this time, no chance of excusing it away as a slipped grip. Unless the boy had been trying to slice his own throat and had hit his chest instead, but either way the objective had clearly been death. Only possible outcome.
Merle ran his hands through the short strands of his hair, having no idea what the hell to do and wanting to kill the kid for tearing him up like this.
He'd loved that little fuck.
Snorting back tears, he turned from the body to kick and pound at the wall, thinking he'd have to get around to calling someone. To finding their damned dad, who was probably getting drunk in a bar, and their worthless mother, who was probably blowing the bartender to get the bastard's drinks for free.
"Merle?"
The voice was low, raspy and shallow, like the breath that followed it.
He froze in disbelief at the sound, doubting his hearing and sanity before turning back to the bed.
Daryl tried to raise himself up, but either hadn't the strength to support himself or just couldn't find a hold in the slippery mess of his blood on everything under him. Probably a bit of both, Merle imagined as he watched the kid's feeble efforts.
When he finally gave up and collapsed with a whimper of pain, Merle finally sprang into action.
"What the fuck did you expect?" he demanded, stomping across the short distance to snarl at the boy for reacting to the pain now instead of before he even started.
"Thought," the kid's eyes were unfocused as he stared more in Merle's direction than actually at him, "thought I could get it out. All it does is hurt. Just couldn't," he frowned down at his chest, rising with the pants of breath that seemed so hard for him to draw, "couldn't get past the bone…"
His bloody hand flopped toward the heart he'd apparently intended to carve out, fingers curling into the wound as if he still meant to dig the organ out.
"That it?" Before he even thought it through, the discarded buck knife was clenched in his fist, the blood on the hilt cold and congealed against his palm. "That the only damned thing stopping you? Cause I can fix that. Solve that little problem for you right easy, little brother."
There wasn't much fight in those blue eyes so like his own, no instinctive tensing in defense of the throat that Merle pressed the blade against.
If he'd sliced that vein open, he doubted the kid would do more than smile gratitude.
"Why?"
Daryl looked at him like the answer should be plain and Merle maybe even agreed that the harder question would always be 'why not,' but the kid tried to respond anyway.
"Ma's gone," his lungs were laboring harder with his struggle for words and breath. "Dad went after her, bring back again. Won't come this time. She left with that colored fella…"
"Fucking nigger," Merle corrected, knowing immediately the bastard Daryl meant.
"…she ain't coming back this time," Daryl continued without response to the correction. "Everyone's gone. Ain't worth coming back here."
"I came back," he protested, pressing forward to emphasize his point and drawing blood without thinking.
"You'll go again…always do."
"So fucking what, boy? I ain't your bitch and you ain't mine," Merle threw the knife aside, fearing he'd fully cut that throat if the weapon remained in hand and not knowing if it would be accidental or not. "You don't need me to fucking live. You don't need mom. Or dad. No one needs anyone else to survive. People come, people go. Fuck'em! You just keep going, you'll find some more. That's life."
"Sucks…"
"Hells yeah, it does," he ran his hands through the darker, longer hairs on his brother's head and got a good grip on the back of the kid's skull, "but you gotta suck it up, buttercup."
He stared into those mirror-like blues eyes and tried to force the will of his anger into the kid, needing him to fight since he hadn't managed to die before Merle got to him and not being able to accept it happening now.
"There's nothing good or easy 'bout this life, boy. Always gonna be some fucker to put you down. You don't stand for it, you hear? This ain't our way," he pulled away to stare at the blood and finally thought to look for something to press against the cuts on that scrawny chest. "A Dixon don't take shit from anyone or anything. We give it. We don't fucking quit, we push back until the other bastard gives up. You ain't my brother if you don't see that!"
"…brother," slurred from lips that had lost a good deal of color.
"What?" Merle asked, pressing his pillow to the wound and thinking he needed to get to the kitchen and call for help.
"I'm your brother," Daryl said, finding enough strength to enunciate.
"Then start fucking acting like it!"
Daryl's fingers picked at the scar again, as they always did when he was troubled.
They'd pulled up stakes pretty quickly and he closed the tailgate of his truck after seeing Merle's bike safely aboard.
Joining this group had been his idea all along and he'd never shake the guilt of that decision as he wondered at his brother's fate, but there was no use crying over spilt milk. His brother was likely to beat the snot out of him for the few tears he'd squeezed out already. And Daryl would gladly let him, to have that family tie back to hold him to sanity.
This world the way it was…it was hard to remember that there'd ever been anything else. Hard to imagine that there ever could be something else again. But as long as he'd still had Merle, there'd seemed a chance. Fucked up as it may have been to find comfort in that broken past and twisted kin.
Now, he just sensed them all being pushed a little closer to the brink.
He didn't really see a reason to keep fighting back against the end of it all, but the scar under his fingers reminded him of all that mattered now.
Dixons didn't take shit from anyone and they didn't quit.
And Daryl was Merle Dixon's damned brother.
A/N: Fiction aside, if you've read this and are/were/know a cutter, don't suffer the abuse in silence. Pain can be faced and managed in so many other ways.
My Joe slashed himself 23 times before the blood loss and pills knocked him out and he laid on a mattress much like I describe for Daryl, but he died there before his parents got home to find him. He was 16, a total ringer for Johnny Depp and I was his babysitter through just 3 years of his troubled life, but he was like family to me and I will grieve him til I die and I will never erase the memory of his room afterwards. An empty prescription drug bottle, 3 razor blades, a dull paring knife and that blood soaked mattress. I don't know how his family kept living there, but I couldn't keep babysitting the brother or sister he left behind.
So, again, I implore you, keep fighting and find another way to deal. You shouldn't wish that kind of ghost on the loved ones you'll leave behind.
My heart is with you all, may that mean something.