The Caged Bird
A/N: Inspiration from I aint a Judas; and all the other Merle/Beth shippers out there.
The first time Merle noticed her- was when she came to his aid at the top of the stairs when her sister was demanding he be moved to another cellblock- that it was all his fault anyway. And she had come down the stairs seemingly to his aid.
"Whats the difference whose thought it is? What are we going to do?"
Her voice had a certain charm to it when she talked- but asside from that. He didnt really notice her. He had sized her up just as he had everybody else in the prison, ya know, see the threats, the assets, the relationships- the obvious things. The important things. She was just a teenage girl, seventeen, eighteen at best- and he had written her off as nothing more than a weakling of the one legged farmer, Hershel.
By the end of that day though, Merle Dixon had REALLY noticed her- the day gone, sun set, Andrea in a car that they really shouldnta spared on her way back to deal with the Govenor- that was when he noticed her. When the sky and the prison were dark, candles the only thing casting lights around the prison- everyone feeling awkward and off and just damn weird vibes bouncing off the fucking walls- the girl does something he sure as hell didnt expect.
That night she opened her mouth and this sound beyond her years came out, a full powerful, graceful voice that had lured him into the he emerged he hadnt expected it to be her, he wasnt sure who he had pegged it to be- but he hadnt expected it to be her by any stretch of the imagination.
He watched the way her lips parted just so when she sang, the way her tossled blonde hair fell over her shoulder- the way her face was illuminated by the candles that lay spread out in front of her. He watched until he thought she looked beautiful- and than he no longer felt comfortable doing so, felt like he was staring to long and to hard at a girl that was to young and to innocent for his gaze. So he turned his attention up to the ceiling instead and listened.
That youngest daughter of Hershel's, she was something else. His girls, he had said. Ole man should be proud to have made a girl with a voice like that.
No matter what though, after that night- the annoying thing was- he couldnt STOP noticing her. She didnt plague his thoughts or disrupt his sleep, but he couldnt shake the awareness of her that trampled above the rest of them.
And that in itself was alarming to the oldest Dixon.
.*.