Remember Everything
Oh, dear mother, I love you
I'm sorry, I wasn't good enough
Daryl lay in his perch, staring out the barred window at the inky sky beyond. He was particularly upset that night, for memories he'd thought were long since buried had come surfacing once more, and he was in no mood to deal with their implications at that moment.
Behind his eyes his mother's face swam, a blurred picture of the past. He couldn't really remember the way she looked anymore, just her flowing brown hair and the bruises that always framed her face. She wore too much eyeshadow and mascara, put on too much lipstick, and smoked like a chimney, but he had remembered thinking she was the most beautiful woman in the world, anyway.
He could clearly remember the night she had died. He'd had to walk back home because he didn't have a bike like all the other kids, and none of them were really his friends, or they might have let him ride on the back like he'd seen some of the other children doing during the summer. What had hurt the worst was the fact that they had all known before him. Hell, half the damn neighborhood knew that his mother had passed away before he did, and he could have done without the pitying stares he'd had to walk past on his way over to the charred remains of his house.
She had died, and Daryl had never truly known whether or not she ever loved him, or was proud of him, or even wanted him to be in the same house with her. Their family wasn't exactly verbal about their feelings, and mother's hugs were few and far between, but even so he'd always had the sense that she looked down on him. I mean, if she had really loved him like a mother's supposed to wouldn't she have tried to stop his father from beating her sons? Or maybe she had at a time he could no longer remember.
Daryl's eyes focused on a small, twinkling star, and he vaguely wondered how she would have fared this world had she still been around. Most likely she would have died almost as soon as the outbreak started; she never did have the survival instinct necessary to save herself.
Dear father, forgive me
'Cause in your eyes, I just never added up
Daryl's father had been an entirely different story. He was rough and tumble all the way through, and was mostly muscle, save for his beer gut. Daryl was sure that man had been half whiskey, considering how much he drank every day. A full bottle of Jameson barely put a shine to the man's eyes, and that was truly terrifying. Maybe if the man would have stopped at just the one fucking bottle, Daryl and Merle wouldn't have been struck down by his hand so many times. It wasn't the first one that got the man drunk, it was all the ones after it, and when he got drunk he got violent.
Merle had suffered the brunt of the beatings for a while, had even shouldered the abuse just to protect Daryl every so often, but it was different between the two of them. Whenever Daddy looked at Daryl there was something akin to contempt in his eyes, like there was something visibly missing from Daryl's genetic makeup. Maybe that was why it had gotten worse for Daryl after Ma was gone and Merle went to juvie.
Oh, dear brother, just don't hate me
For never standing by you or being by your side
Please don't blame me
I only did what I thought was truly right
Daryl swung his legs over the edge of the mattress, sighing as he shook his hair out around his face. How long had it been now since Merle had died? A couple of months at least.
Daryl could still remember how his brother's cut-off hand had felt wrapped in that stupid bandana, how he'd thrown it haphazardly in the face of that young Mexican kid as a way to scare him into spilling his information. But he hadn't just left it behind, at least not for a while, anyway. He'd lost it when that herd passed through on the highway, or at least he was pretty sure that was when he'd lost it. In any case, he hadn't had it when he got to Hershel's farm.
He remembered those few days in the woods, after the prison group had escaped from Woodbury, when it was just him and Merle against the world, like it had been before they'd found the Atlanta group. Daryl had regretted following after Merle then, but Merle was blood, and family came first. In the end, though, he'd left to go back to Rick and Carol and the rest of them.
Why was that, anyway? Merle was his brother, his flesh and blood brother, but he'd chosen those he honestly hadn't known for very long over him. Maybe it was because he'd finally realized that family isn't always tied by blood, but by the hardships people faced together. If he were being honest, Daryl knew that Merle hadn't really had his best interests in mind, at least not until the very end of things. Merle just knew that Daryl would take his side, defend his kin, regardless of who was right or wrong.
I feel like running away
I'm still so far from home
You say that I'll never change
But what the fuck do you know?
Everyone who was related to Daryl by blood was dead now. None of them had thought he would amount to anything, but he was the one putting up with their shit, or saving their ass, and still thriving. And they had all been wrong when it came to who he was, and who he would be. He'd found his place in the world, found his home, and he'd fight to the death to protect this place he'd made for himself. These people were his real family now, and that was all that mattered. Fuck the memories, and the depression, and the horrible past; all of those things made him stronger now.
This was where he belonged, in this fucked up world, in a band of misfits, with the dead surrounding them. It was an odd place to call home, but it was his, and he was comfortable with it.
It all went by so fast;
I still can't change the past
I always will remember everything
If we could start again,
Would that have changed the end?