Episode 3, "Walk With Me" has just finished premiering and now I am once again in need of a story to curb my Merle appetite. It's still early in the season and so much more could happen, but I'm going to go ahead and start a story anyway. I already know some of what I want to do, but if it so happens that what I write about makes it onto the show, know that I haven't seen the episodes yet and I was totally winging it. Then again, everything could go up in flames. I'm hoping for the best, but with Merle, well you just never know.

This story is going to be an experiment told from two and possibly three characters' point of view, but hopefully it'll work out. It starts within and after Season 3, Episode 3 and then I'm going to go my own way from there, though I might take a few of the finer points of other episodes if it will benefit my story. For example, if it turns out that Merle and Daryl end up leaving Woodbury and the prison to go off on their own on AMC, I might just use that (highly unlikely if you've read any of my other fics, but just as an example).

As always, thanks for taking the time to read through and please review and suggest to other readers!

ANDREA:

"Hoooooly shiiiit. Blondie. Damn, you're lookin'—good."

The blade connected to his arm device jabbed straight up through the walker's jaw, but his facial expression never changed. Those eyes, cold, pale blue never left her as the walker toppled sideways and lay still. Even before she turned to him, she had known who he was. His voice was one she never expected to hear again because she, like his brother and all the others, had taken him for dead. But only one person in the world now for what it was could possibly have that slightly over-used, strained tone riddled with sarcasm. In his left hand he held a pistol and as he stood up, a giant towering over her while she knelt defenseless and frail, he pointed it skyward, sparing a grin for her. A grin she remembered from nearly a year ago. A grin she hated.

"Now," said Merle Dixon, "how's about a big hug for your ol' pal Merle, huh?"

The span of that leer from one side of his face to the other descended upon her like a thick, swirly vat of fog, clouding her brain and sending a toxic scent straight up into her nasal passages. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she keeled over.

Michonne had left the talking up to her other than demanding their weapons back, but the security, the sense of peace that Andrea had felt since arriving in Woodbury was something she was not keen to be rid of and she knew Michonne would not leave without her, not after everything they had been through. True, she knew enough about the woman to fill three lines on a wide-ruled piece of notebook paper, but Michonne had come to her aid in the woods, nursed her through the worst part of her illness, and taken countless risks for her and Andrea would not soon forget that. There was no telling if Rick had managed to lead the others to some sort of safe haven for the winter and if he hadn't, Michonne was the only friend she had left.

Regardless of her trust issues with the Governor, with Woodbury, and the whole shebang, Michonne would not drag Andrea away from this small town after only two days. There were moments when Andrea still felt a wave of nausea sweep over her and she was not in a hurry to risk getting sick again outside of these well-guarded walls. And if the others truly were gone, Andrea had no reason to leave Woodbury at all. It was safe here, or so the Governor claimed, and the people were thriving. Before the horde, the Greene farm had been a thriving place as well, but that was a thing of the past now and Andrea wanted to stop running. She wanted to breathe without wondering if that breath would be her last and she desired security at last over all else. More than food, or the mental secure notion of having a weapon, or even the comfort of a strong, dependable arm around her shoulders, she wanted to stop running and Woodbury was shaping up to be this chance for her—if Michonne didn't ruin it.

Her friend had fallen asleep with a frown on her face beside her on the almost queen-sized bed they shared, but Andrea was wide awake with her thoughts. Ironic though it was that Michonne, who wanted to be well shot of Woodbury was the one to sleep while Andrea, who felt well-protected could not drift off, Andrea had more of a reason to still be awake at this hour than her friend. Michonne was not the one who was watching a ghost walk the streets of Woodbury, wondering if the man had some sort of torture in store for her.

In the limbo between her illness and the medicine the doctor shot into her blood, Andrea could still remember her conversation with Merle Dixon. When she got a full, unaltered look of him, Andrea could see immediately that he had lost weight in addition to his right hand. Sarcastic as ever, he hardly glanced away from her as he sat opposite her in that medical room, though his face looked slightly less menacing. If anything, he was as surprised to see her as she was to see him. They had not parted on a good note: the last words he spoke to her were ones of sexual nature and she had rejected them as quickly as they had come. The last she saw of him, she had been unconcerned, running beside Jacqui down from the roof to meet Rick with the moving van but now that she recollected the moment, she could distinguish a voice crying out, begging behind her. Merle had pleaded with them as they left him and he had every reason to hate them all.

He seemed only slightly interested when she told him that a fair number of people from the Atlanta group had been killed until she revealed that Amy was gone as well. Admitting her sister's death to a man who hardly knew her along with feeling the emotion in her throat made her sick to her stomach, but to her credit, she managed to look him in the eye and was surprised to find what appeared to be sympathy there.

"Your sister," he had said tonelessly. "She was a good kid." How could he have known? That was just bullshit; he knew nothing about Amy, didn't give a damn about her. "I'm sorry t'hear." An even bigger lie. Merle Dixon felt no empathy for anyone. But he had spoken the words, hadn't he? He could have reprimanded her and laughed in her face, saying that that was what she got for leaving him behind, but instead he held her gaze and expressed sorrow on her behalf, at least with his words. Whether or not his sorrow was genuine didn't matter. She knew she had hit a milestone in getting Merle Dixon to say the word "sorry".

The real flood of emotion came when the subject of Daryl cropped up. Seeing the change in Merle's face at the mention of his brother's name was like seeing a person display every emotion known to mankind at once. His eyebrows had gone up ever so slightly and the pitch in his voice quavered, but it was barely noticeable. "You seen my brother?" he had asked, casual and indifferent, but when he shot ahead and presumed the worst, she read the loss and fear behind the testosterone that fueled him. "Now he's dead." She saw his Adam's apple rise and drop and knew, despite everything his masculinity led her to believe, Merle had been waiting for months for any news on his baby brother.

She didn't know if Daryl was alive. If he had stayed with the group, he might be, if he had left and gone on alone, he could be, but there was just no way of telling. She didn't want to give Merle false hope, but she didn't want to crush his hope either, so when he asked how long it had been since she last saw him, she tried to make seven or eight months sound like seven or eight days. Sure enough, a glimmer of hope did appear on Merle's face and she just didn't have the heart to squash it.

She did know, though, how it felt to lose someone, but unlike Merle, she had seen her loved ones die. Amy by her own hand, Dale by Daryl's, and she, unlike Merle, had no hope to cling to that her sister or Dale might come back. Merle could keep hoping, but Andrea kept none for herself. She understood what it felt like, to want to hope and she could not begrudge him that. He may not give a rat's ass about what had happened to Amy, but Andrea loved Daryl as much as any of the others and she wanted to believe like Merle that he was still alive somewhere, somehow.

His deliverance of "sorry" was not overwhelming, and neither was her own when she had said, "Thank you." It certainly caught Merle off guard who most likely never expected to hear her utter those words, least of all to him, but at this point certain courtesies were in order. Andrea and Merle had lived and survived together, for however brief a time, and they knew how much siblings meant to one another. Andrea left Merle on the rooftop and he had saved her from dying an ill death in the woods. Things were as uneven as they could possibly be, but he could have shot her through the head instead, right? He could have put a bullet through Michonne's first, proceeded to torture or rape Andrea, and then kill her, but instead he carried her to the truck that had transported him to the helicopter crash and taken her to Woodbury's doctor. Perhaps he didn't hate her, or perhaps (and knowing as little of Merle as she did, more likely) he had done her this favor because he expected something in return.

But he would not get it. She would never give him that. She was grateful, but grateful had its limits and it ended well before the subject of sex.

For now, he would maintain his distance and continue to carry out the orders the Governor issued to him while Andrea attempted to persuade Michonne to stay. Merle was on a leash and at the other end was the Governor, so as long as Merle feared this hierarchy, she need not fear him.

All the same, sorry and thank you seemed to have brought them a long way, no matter how little emotion they put into it and all Andrea could do as she rolled onto her right side and closed her eyes, was hope that those two little words of hers would not be ones she came to regret.

Wow, speed chapter. WD ended a little over an hour and a half and I started pumping this baby out about forty minutes ago with some Facebook distractions. Maybe I have a slight obsession. Maybe.

I appreciate your feedback, my friends, but until next episode, next chapter, have a good one!