For sweettooth7 who asked for a Marol story. Turned more into an expose about Merle but I hope you like it! Big thanks to Lamport for betaing!
Pt. 2 coming soon!
"Don't you ever go around thinking you're some kind of hero, 'cause you're not. Only ones that ever get to be a hero is the ones that end up dead. And that ain't gonna be me or you, Dixon. You know where we're gonna be? Wandering all by ourselves, wondering how in the hell you escape the dark side of things. Answer is we don't, because men like us are darkness. Men like us are selfish. Men like us are always at war."
That was the last thing Wallace had said to him, deep in the dark brown Earth, with the summer rain pelting the ground around them. But it was a cold night, with the kind of chill that only a blanket of arms and a soft kiss could warm. The foxhole was starting to permeate around them, like it was the only place in the world that they could ever fit into. And it was still—quiet except for the splashes. But if he timed it right, Merle could concentrate in between the incessant drips and hear all the silence the war had to offer.
Barely eighteen years old and the draft had felt like the answer to a prayer he never had the guts to utter. Vietnam, the only pocket of the world outside of the old man's reach, and he was practically giddy to get there.
His lieutenant, Wallace, was older by three years but it felt like millenniums. He had himself all figured out, and by the way he told it, he had Merle figured out too. Cut from the same cloth, he used to say. Running in circles until they realized that Hell went a whole 360 degrees around. War gave Hell a place and a time and a face. Made it just as real for everyone else as it had always been for them.
There was an air raid that night. Never saw it coming, they would say, if only we'd known then we wouldn't have lost half the damn platoon. That was the story they always told though, wasn't it. Like they half expected armies to stick together in neat little lines and announce their arrival with a flute and a drum corps.
It was fast. Hard hitting flashes of light that made Merle think that this must be what heaven looks like when lightning strikes. The ground shook, crumbling and flinging across his face in a mixture of mud and blood—whose he couldn't be sure of. The taste of it like sharp, shocking metal, angry and filling in his mouth. Wallace's body folded, molten and melding with the bottom of the dirt hole.
Merle clawed at the walls, his fingers slick with sweat and guts, until his body popped up onto the plateau. Smoke hung in the air, forcing its way into his lungs until he couldn't stop coughing, and he had to lay there, his body convulsing against his will to keep moving. Wriggling on his belly, he wormed his way around the hollowed shelters of his brethren. Their screams and heavy breathes mixing, growling and drooling in his ears amongst the blasting bombs and biting bullets. He didn't stop once to check to see who could be salvaged, who he could drag up to his level and shimmy their way out together. That'd only slow him down. He couldn't die here. No, he had to get back to that baby brother of his, who no doubt sported a black eye and a hopeful heart that he'd be coming home. Even if he never stayed around for long.
Aiming for a clearing in the not too far off distance, he crawled along the edge. Carefully picking his way through rock and filth, ignoring the growls that pleaded with him, until one latched onto his ankle.
"Get off me," he kicked, flipping to his back to see the poor desperate soldier that would rather drag him down then see him survive. He seemed already dead, the way his fingers were bony like a skeleton, the skin dripping off. The soldier's helmet must have blown clean off, because the crown of his head was bloody and broken wide open. His eyes were hollow, unseeing as the soldier leaned closer to Merle's ankle. The teeth were crooked and yellow as they opened to take a piece of him into his mouth. "Get off!" Merle roared, the butt of his rifle like an extension of himself as he leaned forward to drive it into the dying soldier's skull.
It was the squelch of his blade into the soft, rubbery brain that brought him back to it. He stared at it—the contraption that was his arm; the blade a perpetual middle finger to the world. Dazed, he looked around as the jungle of Vietnam molded around him to the grassy turf of a repurposed prison yard. But it was still a war.
He ducked back down just in time for a bullet to split into a walker trying to make a grab for him. He continued his crawl to the opening, realizing now that it was the fence. When he reached it, his fingers hooked into the chain link, and he swung himself upwards until the blade of his arm rushed into a stranger's throat. With his boot he pushed the woman off, steadying himself against the fence until he gained his bearings. It was all a blur, people running in every direction, fire and heat and gunpowder covering every inch of the prison yard.
He hadn't flashed back to the war like that in years, but what's the point in trying to fight his way back to reality if he was still encircled by flames?
Daryl.
He whirled around himself, trying to pick his brother's face out of the dead and the living and the ones in between. He spotted the Governor, bent over a bloody mess of a man in the grass he had just crawled out of. Michonne, the spitfire that she was, sneaking ever closer, her sword drawn and ready to serve her own justice. To his right, Merle heard the engine of the bus sputter a warning before it jolted forward with who knows how many people stuffed inside. But he knew Daryl wouldn't have gotten on, so he didn't bother to remember which direction it raced off to.
Daryl had to be somewhere, and he tuned his ears to listen for the swift slick of an arrow cutting through the air. In the corner of his eyes he saw just a flash of something blonde and small bounding around the corner.
It was one of her kids. Carol's girls. It was the smaller one, Mika, if he remembered her name right. She was running fast like she was trying to keep up. If Daryl was going to stick to someone that wasn't his own brother it'd be those two girls.
He took one last glance around before running after the child.
"What do you mean you ain't seen him?"
"I didn't see your brother, Merle. I didn't see a damn soul except these kids," Tyreese growled quietly, bouncing the Grimes' baby in his arms to quiet her. She had been crying for the near half an hour they'd been running for.
"We're going back then," Merle huffed, stalking in circles around the two little girls that stared up at him.
"Can't. There's nowhere to go but forward."
"Man, what do you know?!" He growled, spittle sparking from the corners of his mouth.
From the way Tyreese was barring his teeth, grinding them together to keep from biting, Merle knew he couldn't be pushed. Not that he feared a fight with the bigger man, but killing Tyreese would just leave him with three whiny brats that he had no desire to take care of. Sure, he could leave them, but once he found Daryl, if he found out about it, well there'd be no back peddling from something like that.
"Gotta be somewhere," he muttered, kicking at some loose dirt until it clouded around him. A rock flew off, hitting against something hard that echoed a growl back to them.
"We have to keep moving," Tyreese said, ushering the girls forward and hitching the baby up higher in his arms.
Merle snarled at the distant pack of walkers. Spitting in their direction, he dug his blade into the closest tree, notching out a distinct mark.
"…I want Carol," Mika whined, her little sobs growing more irritating with each step.
"Well she's not here," Lizzie reminded her, blunt and dull. She contemplated for a second, reaching into the baby bag and pulling out a knife and sheath.
Mika attached it to herself, looking awkward and unsure as she smoothed her tiny fingers across its hilt.
"It's gonna dark soon," Lizzie looked up to the two men, as if they hadn't felt every dip of the sun as it reached the horizon. "Where are we going?"
Tyreese looked back at her, sorrow and frustration wound around his deep eyes as he tried his best to keep them together.
Merle spit onto the ground, surprised by how much saliva he'd gotten out considering how dry and thirsty his throat was. The sun was setting fast, and their fun little walk around the woods was fruitless. They hadn't found another survivor, no water, and barely any squirrel to eat. Merle had managed to grab one, skinning it quickly and giving it to the two girls with a grimace. His stomach rumble only squandered by Tyreese's, and the baby's cries as the other man tried desperately to get her to down any amount of formula. But not too much, they only had a few bottles to last them until…well, until forever was how it looked.
He thought after finding the Governor, and then warming his way into the prison that he'd be done with this. This migrant wandering towards some unseen destination, the horizon seeming further away with each step. Dixon's were loners, that's what he knew his whole life, but even they needed something concrete. Something in the back of their mind to anchor them from floating away in the endless current of blankness that was so easy to get lost in.
He needed a base camp. He needed his brother.
The last time he had to do this, meandering through the woods once he got out of Atlanta—one-handed and resentful—wasn't something he wanted to repeat again. With his stump, half dried blood and half phantom limb. He lost count of how many tries he tried to grab something with his right hand only to swish through the air like a ghost, how many close calls he had with a rotting corpse because he went for his knife with the wrong hand. How many squirrels he couldn't skin.
Starved and half delusional when the Governor happened upon him, he had spit at the man. But he liked that, admired the dogmatic anger the older Dixon exuded as he laid against a stump and shot erratically at every minute sound he heard. The Governor cleaned him up, weaponized him, and dropped him in the only place that ever felt natural—right in the middle of a fight. Didn't even matter whose fight it was, as long as he was swinging.
"Better find a place to rest. Next thick spot of trees we come to should be good. Put the girls against the trunks, you and I can keep an eye on the outer line. Be easy to spot if anything's coming," Merle muttered, the exhaustion having crept its way onto his tongue. He was glad for it though, for the way it made his suggestion sound lazy and not thought out. He didn't need Tyreese or these kids to get the wrong idea that anything besides finding Daryl was a concern of his.
Tyreese nodded, looking between the two girls and Judith, his arms curled around her protectively. She was quiet for now, tuckered out from all the crying to finally rest her head along the soft of his chest. He moved them forward.
"Is everyone dead?" Lizzie asked, trailing behind as she waited for Merle. She was only met by his soft scoff, and a wave of his blade for her to keep up to Tyreese and her sister.
Merle left another notch in the tree, a symbol from their childhood. When he and the other neighborhood boys would go running through the woods, little Daryl always wanted to tag along. The other kids didn't like that idea so much, felt too much like babysitting. So their favorite game was to lead him deep into the trees and scatter as fast and as far as possible. Merle joined in, because what else is there to do in an empty town with empty heads but try to be a part of it somehow? He'd leave a notch in the trees that he passed, a trail for Daryl to follow as he tried to find the boys. I told ya, he'd say, their breathe ragged and hands clutching knees, when Daryl would find them out in less than a minute, My baby brother is a smart one.
They wedged themselves beneath the trees. The hunger that rumbled through them was quiet, like even their stomachs' were starting to give up on the idea of eating any time soon.
Merle watched as Tyreese wound the ragged cloth around his wound. He could help him out, but he figured he'd let Tyreese struggle. The man wasn't nearly as desperate as he should be.
He looked over to where the older one, Lizzie, sat on a log. Curiously, he watched as she held her knife, slicking it into something unseen on the other side. Her lips pulled in concentration, an oddly satisfied look taking hold of her eyes as she weaved her arm back and forth. He stood up, but the ruffle of dirt didn't even catch her attention. Moving around to other side of the log he saw the blood red bunnies, her knife still digging into their softness. She met his eyes when he flicked them to her, finally stopping, her smirk fading away but there was still a serenity to her expression. She stared into him, challenging him to speak up or tell her to stop. To do something. He held her there, let her worry that maybe he would, before he shrugged his shoulders and swept his gaze across the tree line.
It wasn't anything he hadn't done before. He understood the way tension could slowly tear from the inside out. The need to rip into something before he was splayed apart for the world to gawk at made his muscles itch if it'd been too long since a fight or a kill or a hunt. Feeling a body go limp, even something already so fracturable and small, could help him stand a bit straighter.
"You see something?" Tyreese asked, grunting as he held the rag between his teeth and tried to tie it off.
"No," Merle said, almost passively, as he walked away from the girl. "Nothing out there 'cept more nothing."
Judith started to cry, fidgeting on the dirty blanket Tyreese had put down on the ground for her. Some semblance of keeping her above the world she was born into.
"Hand me a bottle," Tyreese asked, a plea in his tone as he picked the baby up into his arms. "Merle!"
He looked down at the baby bag that he stood next to, but didn't move to get anything from it. It'd be nice to see a walker, nice to stretch his arms. They felt so tight, limp at his sides. He hated running.
Lizzie moved past him, grabbing a bottle from a bag and handing it over. "We shouldn't be out here."
With a lingering glare, Tyreese shifted his focus to Judith, holding the bottle to her. The crying kept coming, as she pushed the bottle away with a defiant shake of her head. Not far from them the leaves rustled, the sniveling sound of something drawing nearer.
"Walkers!" Mika cried out, full of fear that made Merle cringed. People didn't survive who weren't used to being threatened.
"Come on," Tyreese sighed, gentle as always, as he gathered the baby and the girls up. "Let's go."
The three of them moved quickly, unified as they hurried to walk through the night. Merle didn't move, the sweeping of leaves under heavy feet growing closer. His fingers flexed into a fist, muscles pulling towards the sound.
"Feel free to stay if you want," Tyreese called back, a quiet shout from where they stood at the crest of the woods. Lizzie stilled, staring back at him with that same provocation in her eyes. Daring him to stay. Daring him to come. He wasn't sure which it was but it compelled him towards them.
"Go on," he bit out, gruff and annoyed as he prodded the girl forward, cutting on a notch in the tree he passed before falling in step with their light jogging.
They had walked till the light crested over the horizon, their feet slack and lazy as they dragged forward. Judith's quiet fussing slowly progressed, and Tyreese lifted her up to sniff at her bottom.
"She needs a new diaper," he commented, laying the baby gently on the ground.
"You're one hell of a Mama Bear, you know that boy?" Merle sucked his teeth, smirking as the baby gave way to a tantrum and the other man tried to desperately to calm her down.
He couldn't stand the way Tyreese gently pleaded with the baby, as if she could answer. "What do you want?" he asked of her.
"Probably not your scary ass."
"Either help me or shut the hell up," Tyreese snapped, glaring up at him even as his hands held tenderly against Judith's stomach, trying to keep her from squirming right into the ground.
He rolled his eyes, looking to the two girls who stared back at him, inching away from the hostility between the two men. Grumbling he stomped towards the diaper bag, ripping one of the white diapers from it and throwing towards Tyreese.
"Thanks," Tyreese muttered beneath his breathe.
"Whatever," he snarled, eyes cast aside from the crying child. No amount of diaper changing or soft trails of fingers from Tyreese or Lizzie were going to calm her down. Wailing her tiny lungs out, Judith was an unstoppable force all her own.
Mika was starting to panic. She fidgeted from her station at the other side of Tyreese, eyes darting between Judith and the woods that surrounded them.
"They're coming!" Her fingers slid over Tyreese's wound causing him to shout at her. She jumped back in as he stood, rounding on her unintentionally.
"Don't yell at her! She doesn't understand walkers!" Lizzie cried, standing in front of her little sister.
"You're the one who doesn't understand them!" Mika shouted back.
"Quiet down!" Merle shouted, his voice cutting between the girls' fight. He moved close to the brambles where the rustling came from, looking back to Tyreese with a nod. Raising his blade to the air, he was ready to slice down. The leaves moved again and he waited in the tortured seconds until the figure popped out of it. Ducking down, his heart pumped with adrenaline. Wings flapped inches from his head as the bird flew upwards.
"You're a bunch of pussy's, you know that?" he turned to laugh but Mika had taken off into the woods, Lizzie close behind her. Tyreese looked at him with so much weight carried on his shoulders. He pointed to the diaper bag before taking off after the two girls. Merle cursed, snatching up the bag in his hand and running to catch up. He forgot to mark the tree.
Mika hadn't gotten far, and they found her sniveling against the trunk of a tree. Merle couldn't listen to the back and forth apology, the prodigal take away lesson Tyreese tried to jam into her.
"It's good that you ran."
Bullshit.
Merle scoffed, and before Tyreese could turn to chastise him screams sounded from beyond the wooded area. For once they were on the same page, connecting the screams to someone from the prison. They could know where their missing siblings were, or, even better, be Sasha or Daryl themselves. Though he knew Daryl wouldn't be screaming like such a sissy. Tyreese set the girls back to back, Lizzie holding tight to Judith and Mika raising a clunky gun in front of her.
When he saw the man and his son, he almost turned back around, despite Tyreese jumping in like some kind of white hat hero. He didn't care about saving anyone, but the sound of carnage tugged at his heartstrings. Grabbing a walker at the scruff of his neck, Merle spun the poor creature around so he can face him while he killed it. He laid a few slashes across its chest and arms just to get his blood pumping, feel the taut of his muscles as he threw his body weight into each swing. He worked the corpse like a boxer would a punching bag. Lost in the space between his knuckles as he pounded his left fist across the jaw, unhinging it into a perpetual open expression. He swiped his blade across the throat, the head flopping and rolling behind the walkers' shoulder and back, the body crumpling to a heap beside the severed skull. Having lost its ability to chew, the head could only draw its unseeing eyes in a lazy line, back and forth as it stared up at the sky.
A voice called his name, one that was familiar but he couldn't stop the blood rushing through his ears long enough to place it. Figuring it was Tyreese he turned from the body at his feet, noticing for the first time that the fight had ended, with both the son and father bit and bleeding. Maybe if he hadn't been so lost in his fight he could have saved them. Maybe he didn't care.
"Tyreese. Merle."
He blinked. Once. Twice.
Tyreese's breathe caught on an intake as he went rushing to her, his body swallowing her in relief. But Carol's eyes were stuck on Merle, unsteady but weighted. Hesitant. There was something blocked about her. She was stiffer than she used to be, watching everyone from the corners of her eyes. He smirked, rolling his neck against the newly relaxed muscles of his shoulder, and watched her shift into Tyreese's embrace. He had to admit, the woman almost had bigger balls than he did. Almost.
Their reunion was interrupted by the babbling of the father.
"There's a place," he said, breathless, "Called Terminus. Follow the tracks and you'll find it." He passed out, his chest barely rising.
"Bunch of piss and shit," Merle muttered, stamping towards the barely dead man and sticking a blade through the center of his eyes.
They walked along the tracks anyway, finding the first literal sign of Terminus after half a mile.
He trailed behind them, the two girls holding each other's hand, practically skipping as they led the way up the tracks, stopping to count wildflowers or inspect berries. The energy had changed between them, hopeful alleviation that made him wonder why this pixie woman was more equipped to ensure survival than he was. Even he had to admit that after they started moving he felt less strain, like maybe finding Daryl wasn't as hard as it seemed, like it was a real possibility that his brother might just pop out from the tree line any minute.
She explained to Tyreese about how she had seen them running, and followed them. She told them about staying behind on her run with Rick to gather more supplies. There were too many hesitant pauses filled with convenient explanations for it to be true, but Tyreese wasn't of the mind to notice.
"I saw you running through the woods. I lost you but…"
"...You found us." Tyreese smiled at her, a hand briefly pressed to her arm as she shifted Judith against her chest. The corners of her lips almost quirked up, almost allowing her to believe her own story.
"You seen Daryl? See which way he went?" Merle asked suddenly, his voice rasping against their contentment as he wedged between them.
He watched her carefully, the tiny step back she took, the way her blue eyes sunk, focusing into the ground so far that it was like she could see what was buried beneath it. She snapped back to him, her mouth pressed tight as she faded, an answer to a question no one was asking. The hush fell passed her, penetrating into the woods surrounding them. There'd be no more talk on the subject of Daryl. He could try to push it out of her, but it'd be at the cost of something far worse than her silence.
"How about Sasha?" Tyreese inserted.
She swallowed, hard and bitter. Tyreese looked earnest, an expression Merle couldn't pull off.
"There wasn't a lot of people left when I got there. Just saw the girls and that's the direction I went in. I didn't…there wasn't anyone else."
Merle's nostrils flared as he forced a breath out of them. A click of his teeth and the corner of his mouth smirked as he nodded at her. "Course there wasn't," he pushed passed them, knocking the girls' hands apart as he moved to the front.