The First Time She Talked To Him

She had noticed the Dixon brothers immediately of course. How could she not? The older one, Merle, was electric, larger than life. He was big and menacing and loud and sarcastic. He strode around camp like he owned it. He said whatever he wanted and did whatever he pleased. Maybe there was a slight hint of…not deference (certainly not that!)... but maybe…hesitation? in the way that he interacted with Shane, as though on some level he recognized that the former deputy with the gun was the one person who could stop him if he got out of line. But it was only slight, and most of the time he seemed to be challenging Shane lazily with his eyes. Pushing the envelope just a little bit more to see what he could get away with.

She wondered if he was on drugs. She had no experience with anything like that but it seemed sometimes that his eyes were wilder than usual, his movements more frantic, his words a little more loose. Most of the time he seemed to make some minimal effort not to curse or talk too wildly directly in front of the children. She even thought that she saw his face soften once or twice when he looked at Lori's Carl or her Sophia. But other times he seemed to not even know what he was saying or care who was hearing it. That's when she wondered if maybe there was something stronger in his tent than just beer.

So yes, of course she noticed Merle Dixon from the moment that he joined the little camp at the quarry at the end of the world. But she noticed the other brother almost immediately after. He was much quieter, significantly younger, slightly smaller, but with the same blue eyes and the same strong arms. She noticed that he almost never spoke, not even to his brother. She noticed how he always deferred to Merle, but how it almost looked like he would wince when he heard him cursing in front of the children or the women. She noticed how he appeared to be poised on the edge of a fight with anyone for any reason at any time but that he seemed to flinch sometimes when his brother grabbed him roughly around the neck. And she noticed that although he made no effort to speak to anyone at camp other than his brother or interact in any way with the group, that he always came back from a hunt with meat that he would share with everyone. Oh, it was obvious that he didn't want anyone to notice or comment on it. He would stalk to the center of camp, seemingly uncomfortable to be away from the outskirts. His face would be set, and he made no eye contact with anyone. But every time he would unhook more than half of the game from his belt and drop it beside the communal fire pit. Then he would turn and walk off, not ever looking back to see if the meat was cleaned or eaten or even picked up.

So yes, she had noticed him not just because he was partly responsible for feeding her child, but because he just seemed so very interesting, so strong but almost curiously fragile, and so unlike any other man she had every met.

She had never spoken to him. Had only even made eye contact with him once. There were reasons for that. First, she wasn't stupid enough to be caught staring at any other man, especially after eighteen years with Ed. She knew what would happen. She had lost count of the number of times that Ed had beaten her on some pretext, claiming that she smiled too long at their waiter or at some poor high-school kid who was only trying to pump their gas. She knew what was expected from her by Ed and so she kept her head down and her eyes on the ground. It was the only way to try to avoid the inevitable.

But one day, a couple of weeks after the Dixon brothers had joined the camp, she had been caught up in an little injury suffered by Sophia. It was just a splinter, but Sophia was crying so she had held her and smiled at her and done her best to make her laugh. She had heard the older brother, Merle, make some comment about Sophia. She wasn't close enough to hear him very clearly, but she heard his mocking tone and she had stiffened instinctively, looking around and seeing the brothers at the edge of camp. Merle had already turned away, bored, but she met the younger brother's eyes, and she straightened her back. If they wanted to mock or hurt Sophia, they would have to go through her to do it.

When she met his eyes though, and saw the flush in his face and the embarrassment in his eyes, she knew immediately that it was the brother that Merle was mocking, not her daughter. He must have been in his late thirties, just a few years younger than she was, but as she studied his face, she thought that he looked like a little boy. His face was so open and unguarded; his eyes were so honest. She had unwillingly made something of a study of the evil in men over the last couple of decades, and there was nothing like that in his face. Only the lingering wonder of watching her laugh with her daughter and the shame of hearing his brother's words and knowing that she had heard them too. She met his eyes and felt like she knew him instantly. She tried to smile, to tell him wordlessly that it was okay, but the spell was broken. He huffed impatiently and hurried off to the woods after his brother.

After that, he seemed to avoid the camp even more than before. She knew it was for the best. Ed was volatile at the best of times, and at the end of the world, his temper was at a short fuse every minute of the day. Life went on and she didn't look at him or say a word to him, or he to her.

Until that day.

The scouting party (wasn't it weird to call them a scouting party? It seemed almost unbearably funny to her for some macabre reason, but that's what the camp had called them so she thought of them like that, while stifling her laughter internally) had returned from Atlanta without Merle. She sat silently at the camp's center, listening to the others talk about handcuffing Merle to a roof and discussing how to "break" the news to his brother. When he finally returned from his hunt, they told him. It was terrible. She had watched his face desperately as he reacted, willing him to be calm, wanting him to be okay. She knew loneliness, and his brother had been the only person he ever talked to. He seemed so alone as he raged through camp before being wrestled to the ground by Shane and Rick.

They left the next day to go back for Merle. It scared her to have them all gone, but as she watched him leave, pacing and screaming for the others to hurry up, her heart went out to him and she silently prayed that they would find his brother, jackass that he was, and bring him back.

They didn't bring him back. Instead, the dead attacked their camp that night and they lost half of the living.

The next morning, everything was surreal. Everyone was focused on Andrea, kneeling dead-eyed over her sister. Everyone was focused on Jim, who seemed to have recovered from heat stroke to walk around even more numbly than before. Everyone was focused on what to do with the dead, both the newly dead and the walking dead that had killed them and been killed in turn. No-one was focused on him. Except her.

She had left Sophia with Lori and Rick and followed him down to the lake, not quite sure what she was doing. Ed was dead, but the thought didn't really register, other than the stray worry of how it would affect Sophia. The only thought that she seemed to be able to focus on was to wonder who was looking out for him. No-one cared that he had also lost everything. No-one spoke to him or acknowledged him. Class and social rank were funny things, she mused. They should have meant nothing in this new world, but they still seemed to matter somehow still. To the people in camp, the Dixons were trash. Merle was no loss, and no-one gave a damn about his brother.

She saw him sitting silently by the lake, and she crept up quietly behind him. He heard her before she got within twenty feet of him, however, swinging around in one fluid movement towards her with his bow to his shoulder. When he saw that it was her, he lowered the bow but didn't acknowledge her in any way, turning back to stare down into his lap.

Taking his silence as consent to her presence, if not an actual welcome to it, she slipped silently to his side and sank down next to him. She was careful not to touch him. She knew that would be disastrous. He continued to stare at his lap and she followed his eyes down, before rearing back in horror with her hand to her mouth. He had a blue handkerchief spread out over his lap and sitting in the center of it was a severed hand. She fought to control her breathing and fought the urge to scramble up and run back to camp screaming. She looked up wildly at his face, but at what she saw there, she felt herself gradually calm. The pain in his face. The tears at the corners of his eyes. She knew immediately what they must have found in Atlanta, and what he must have gone through.

"I'm sorry about your brother," she said softly. He didn't answer.

She swallowed hard and tried again. "I wish you could have brought him back." He didn't speak for a long minute and she swung her legs under her to get up, to leave him alone to his grief.

His voice was so soft that she almost didn't hear it. "Why?" he asked.

She looked down at her hands. "Because you loved him," she said simply.

He darted a look at her, perhaps to see if she was mocking him, but he must have read the sincerity in her face, and he spoke again.

"I wish I coulda found him," he said. "So I coulda ended it myself." She knew at once what he meant. That he thought that his brother was dead, but somehow still walking around in the city. That Merle needed to be "put down."

She studied his profile. "Why would you want to be the one who did it? Wouldn't it be too hard? Why not someone else?" she asked. He didn't answer for the longest time, and she assumed that he was done sharing with her. That was okay. She felt absurdly grateful that this rough, tough, unbreakable man had even given as much as he had. She got up to go and turned back to camp. That's when she heard him.

"I shoulda been the one to do it. He was my brother."

She nodded. She understood.