A/N - This is my first attempt at a Walking Dead story so be kind. But I have binge watched 3 seasons in 2 days and though I haven't seen season 4 yet – I have watched all current episodes of season 5 and I'm telling you now I will lose my mind if Carol dies on Sunday.
Sins of the Father
He was a bastard and a bully. A racist redneck with drug problems and a hatred of authority. But he hadn't arrived fully grown like that. He'd been a child once, an innocent to the horrors of the world. He had hopes and dreams and wishes for himself once upon a time but they had been burnt away long before the dead started to rise. Burnt with fire and shame.
They looked at him like he was the devil. But the devil had been an angel once.
His one redeeming feature was the love of his little brother. He hadn't always done right by him that was for sure but he had always loved him. Daryl was possibly the only thing in this world Merle has ever truly loved. He was nine years older than him so he remembered clearly the day Daryl had come squalling into this world, pink and bloody swaddled in the blue blanket his grandma had delivered him in.
He remembered holding him and feeling his little fingers grasp at his only slightly bigger ones and wanting to protect him from the horrors that were waiting for him under the roof of this crapped out house.
As Merle got older he forgot that silent promise he'd made to his little brother the day he was born. It was easy to forget when the beatings came daily either from his daddy or kids in school. The complete avoidance from his mother who was lost in a haze of smoke and alcohol every single minute, of every single day, of every single year till the day she burned up too. And his little brother was so small and so slight and so silent that he was a terrified shadow in the house but at least that meant he escaped the abuse.
The day he discovered the escapism of drugs was and still is the happiest day of his life; it was easy to forget about the whippings, the starvation, and the drunken sexual assaults from that nasty foul man when he could soak his brain in meth. But with his increasing dependence of the drugs meant his increasing risk in getting them, one stint in Juvie followed another, till eventually aged 19 he just walked away.
He had never realised how dumb he had been till he saw his baby brother on his knees in the woods, the shirt ripped off his back. The whip marks down his back, the cigarette burns. When he'd walked away his daddy just moved targets and no silence, no child sized shadows were going to detract from his daddy beating the ever loving crap out of him. And there had been no escape from drugs for him, the only worthwhile lesson Merle ever seemed to have taught his little brother was to stay away from drugs.
The one good thing about all of this was his baby brother seemed to have achieved a peace, a lack of cruelty, the respect and friendship that Merle had always wanted but had never figured out how to obtain for himself . He had only learnt intimidation and threats at his father's knee.
But Daryl he had good people who loved him, Rick who seemed to truly respect him, Glenn who looked up to him and saw him as a friend and even that woman Carol, little Mouse, who seemed to love and care for him.
If he died today trying to kill the Governor, the sins of the Dixon men would die with him for his little brother was changing the story.