Hey guys! Hope you're ready for part 2! I can't thank you enough for the interest in this fic. I don't think I've ever worked harder trying to write something so your feedback is so appreciated! Enjoy, and thanks for reading! xx
Letting the brush of leaves tickle against his skin, Merle moved slowly through the trees. He had scouted for two hours, about a mile and a half radius. He was looking for something to eat, among other things, but came up with nothing except the unsettling quiet of a world gone dark.
When he made it back to the tracks he saw as Carol told the older girl, the smirking one, to sleep. She curled herself up with Tyreese who was already snuggled close to Mika, trembling and crying as he did at night. It made Merle's stomach tighten.
He knew men like Tyreese in the war, the ones that got booted out early, eaten alive before such a thing was so commonplace. They were the ones that cried for their mamas and clutched to gritty half torn pictures of their sweethearts back home. The ones that never bothered to become a man because they were too busy trying to remind the world that they were still a kid.
But he had to give Tyreese some semblance of credit, he made it farther than Merle would have thought he could. He was in the same spot Merle was and he figured he had to be some kind of tough son of a bitch to do that. Even if he was a sniveling one.
Carol sat at the edge of the tracks, back straight with the baby cradled so naturally in her arms. He forgot how she used to be someone's mother and something about seeing her with someone else's child curled his stomach. He half-turned from her, looking out at the elongating tracks that disappeared far into the blank night. They seemed endless.
"You should sleep," her voice flowed down his back, prickling every fine hair that lay on his neck. He shrugged, a half-hearted shoulder quirk. Lightly, he stepped towards her, two long strides, and pulled his body down to the tracks beside her.
The quiet wrenched between them, a hard mass that pushed against him uncomfortably. He watched the two girls wiggle closer to Tyreese, drawing to his body warmth and closing in around him on either side. It made him itch, the kind of contentment they could have just from being near him, even as they slept.
"I have some lotion," Carol said, and he drew his fingers away from the cuff's edge of his other arm, not realizing he had started to scratch. "In my backpack, there's a small mason jar."
His eyebrows stitched together but he did as instructed, pulling out the small jar filled with the heavy whitish cream.
"Get this on your run with Rick?" he asked, trying to untwist the cover one-handed.
"Something like that," she answered, absently, pulling the jar away from him. With one arm still holding around Judith, she put the jar in the crook of her elbow, bearing down as she used her other hand to loosen the top.
"I could have done that," he mumbled, unbuckling the metal casing that covered him. Dry, flaked skin called for his fingers to grant him relief but he kept his restraint.
A small smile blew across her face, there and gone with the breeze. She held the jar between her knees, dipping her slender fingers into it and motioning that he hold his arm out to her. Slathering the cream across him, she smoothed it evenly and massaged it into his skin with a gentle deftness that relaxed more than just his need to scratch.
"What's your plan?" His voice grated into the night, and his arm felt colder without her touch against it.
"My plan?" she concentrated on covering the jar, putting it beside her in the fallen leaves and dirt. "The girls need safety, and I'm going to do whatever I need to. You can be a part of that or not."
He smiled, unable to help himself as his mouth spread wide letting his teeth poke out. He licked his dry and needy lips, welcoming her severity. She was cold and warm, a dichotomy swirling around in that same tiny mouse body of hers. When she glared at him, steely blue eyes that darkened in the shadows, he only smiled more.
"Where would you suggest I go, sugar?" he leaned closer to her, ignoring the gurgling baby that twisted between them.
"You could leave us at any time Merle. You know that. We know that. You're the most fit to survive on your own," she said simply, no callous in her tone. She didn't want him to leave but there was no point in trying to anchor him to her.
"And what about you?" his mouth curled higher on one side. "Are you fit to survive on your own?"
He expected the cracks to form then, watching her chest for the eventual heavy rise and fall as her breathing changed. But it didn't happen. She wouldn't take his bait and she held his gaze with unnerving resolution.
"What are you getting at, Merle?"
He knew this Carol, and he liked it. This was the woman that came to him, when he first arrived at the prison, unabated as she threatened him. She called for no bullshit, only giving weight to the answers she wanted. He guessed after a lifetime of it, she stopped playing by other men's rules.
She was never a mouse, he decided, but a wolf playing coy to get into the good graces of a loving family. Hiding the ugliest parts of her, the ones that seeped in moral ambiguity to get what she needed. And God be damned of anyone who stood in her way.
She was just like him. He bet that if they wanted, if they allowed themselves, they could break against each other. Crack wide open just like real people do.
He leaned back, allowing air in between them. "These kids aren't going to make it, and Tyreese is hanging by a string. All he needs is to feel distracted again, settle in somewhere and you're doomed, sister."
Her look cut across him, mouth pulled tight. She was one step away from growling. He let out a small laugh, easing his back down onto the dirt.
"Buy maybe it won't be so bad that way," he added, a final thought as he rolled to his side, grinding his face into the flecks of earth and pebbles. "Nobody needs other people to live."
Sleeping on the tracks in shifts broke the night up evenly. Carol had shaken him awake after three hours and Merle paced the outer rail on his turn, hoping he could stomp out the sound of Tyreese's wailing with the crunch of his boot.
He was exhausted the next day, leaning against the trunk of a tree, tuning out the comfort Tyreese and Carol tried to give each other as she fixed his wound. She took Mika for a walk soon after, as Tyreese and Lizzie played a pathetic game of I Spy in the woods for reasons he'd never quite understand. He wasn't interested in adventuring, just living in a quiet space for a moment. They left him with the baby, who hadn't made much of a peep since there was a woman in the group. Some kind of motherly instinct voodoo that must have quieted the little worm.
Mika had come running back not even a half hour later all smiles and sunshine, rambling on about a house and even going so far as grabbing his hand and pulling him from the tree. He yanked away from her tiny, unblemished skin, grumbling and eyes of fire as he glared down at her.
"Just grab the damn baby," he rolled his eyes at her sheepish expression, the way she shriveled into herself at his irritation. It was disgusting, and like a flash of a mirror he could just see his little brother. Daryl at six years old, hiding in the wedged space between the refrigerator and the wall as his daddy wailed and hollered and broke a few glasses.
Kid had to toughen the fuck up.
He followed her begrudgingly to where Carol and the others were, letting her struggle with both the baby and the diaper bag strapped to her meek body. Barely shrugging at the cold look Carol shot him as she relieved the child of her haul, taking it all for herself and leading them to the cottage.
He'd be damned if he ever knew a more perfect home than the one that was standing in front of him, amidst a pecan grove. Plenty of room and grass to sow, the house looked almost cared for, without much rot or destruction. It was a dream house, the kind he used to drive passed on his Triumph when he'd take long winding highways to some seedy back country bar. They were always filled with a kid or two, maybe a dog and a cat that would sit on the porch to shoot a drowsy glare at his direction. He'd always rev the bike extra loud, add just a tinge of disturbance to the perfect little lives that must have hidden away inside of such a perfect little house.
"If this ain't the Devil's trick then I don't know what is," Merle muttered, a sigh clenched between his nostrils as he followed Carol into the house.
The light from the afternoon sun suspended sooty ashes in the air as they walked into the doorway. The three of them waited, breathes held as they strained to hear the shuffling that had become so routine to them, that the absence of a walker was a stranger event than seeing one.
Upstairs a floorboard creaked, and Merle could already envision the satisfactory tear of flesh. He nodded to Carol, pushing Tyreese out of the way to ensure that he'd be the one to dismantle the creature. It was up in a bedroom, made of plain walls and a plainer bed. It stumbled towards him with a growl and outstretched hands. Merle smiled for the first time that day.
He didn't believe in false promises, which was exactly what this picturesque house felt like. It's what Woodbury was, and what the prison turned out to be. Merle wasn't one to gamble on an unknown outcome, and there were few things left in the world that he was certain of.
But, a walker was a sure thing. He knew exactly what they wanted from him and how they'd try to get it, and he knew without a doubt that the best high nowadays was gutting one wide open with the pound of fist and the drag of his blade.
Bouncing on his toes, a quick roll of his neck, he winked at the walker who continued its gawkish lurch. He evaded it with a side-step, gripping the back of its brittle skull, and feeling the hairs crumble in his fist, Merle slammed the head into the corner of the bedside table.
Now curled into a heap on the floor, Merle went to stick his blade through the neck, to skewer the dead body and hold him up for another punch or two. A shot sounded from outside the house, and he forgot the walker in his haste to look out the open window on the other side of the room. Pressing against the screen he could just make out the fallen body that crawled on the grass by the bench they had left the children on.
He lept down the stairs, following behind Tyreese as he appeared from another doorway. Two more shots fired, and the body lay limp by time he made it to the porch. Mika stood with the gun rigid in her hands, and he wondered if she'd ever be able to fire the damn thing without looking so stunned about it. Carol wrapped herself around Lizzie and Judith, the baby's cries not even hushing when Tyreese gathered her in his arms.
Lizzie's eyes blinked in the way children do when they don't want anyone to know they're crying. She stared at the walker, but it wasn't out of fear. Walking away, like it hurt too much to see the body, she focused instead on a patch of pink flowers. Merle stepped off the porch then, catching Carol's eye and the distraught way she seemed to stare at him. He wished she wouldn't try so hard, that she'd realize nothing lasts long anymore. These kids were a well passed their due date, the baby a ticking time bomb all her own. There wasn't a whole lot of point in putting all this care into something that was bound to rot.
But he couldn't deny the twist in his stomach at seeing the walker two floors below him, a kind of strange helplessness that forced him down those stairs in haste.
He heaved the walker up to his shoulder, indicating with a flick of his head to Carol that he would dispose it behind the other side of the house. She gave a nod, turning her attention to where Mika was doing her best to soothe her sister.
"Just look at the flowers, Lizzie."
She did, her body shifting with each heavy breath. She noticed Merle towing the body off, a watchful gaze following him as he did. It was an angry glare, and just a little bit mournful.
Merle retreated back to the couch after getting the fire started. There had conveniently been a kindling piled up over where he dumped the walker body and he hauled it back into the house before night fell.
"Are you still upset?" Carol prompted Lizzie from where they sat breaking open pecans. The girl had been quiet for most of the day, a frown seeming permanently stuck to her features.
The warmth encompassed the room, tucking them all in to a cozy feeling. He laid back against the arm, shutting his eyes and allowing the chatter between Lizzie and Carol to fall away, tuning his ears to the burning embers instead.
His exhaustion from earlier was nothing compared to the bone heavy tired he felt now. Carol was meticulous in making sure every corner of the house was swept for provisions of any kind. It wasn't all like his style of just propping a door shut and letting nature takes its course. He wasn't a rummager, preferring to stumble upon something useful.
Carol was insistent though, and the plumbing was fixed where they could, the gas stove tested, and the wood gathered. The girls took their bedroom in less time than it took for the sun to set. Judith was bundled into the crib that had almost been expecting her, an abundance of baby supplies found in a pantry that were gratefully stuffed into the diaper bag.
He stirred when Mika came running into the room, waving a ridiculous looking doll at Carol.
"I'm gonna name her Griselda Gunderson!"
He groaned, loud enough for her to hear, but Mika just rolled her eyes at him, plopping herself at the small coffee table and running her fingers through the yarned hair. When Tyreese came in babbling about water, Merle sank completely down into the sofa, hoping to portray his desire to be asleep at that point.
"Now all we need is to bag us a deer," he said, gracing Merle with a pointed look.
"I ain't your fuckin' lackey. Get one yourself."
"We'll get one. Mika and I can go out tomorrow and search one out," Carol said in that tone that allows no room for an argument.
Mika smiled back at her apprehensively, before looking up to Tyreese, her head tilting like a confused puppy as she asked him, "What's wrong?"
Full of wonder as he looked around the living room, Tyreese sighed, "I'm not used to this."
"And which one of us is, sunshine?" Merle scoffed, turning onto his shoulder, fingers slipping beneath the cuff of his arm to scratch. He should have grabbed that mason jar from Carol before he settled in.
"Used to what?" Mika asked.
"We're in a living room in a house…"
"Yeah," Mika rolled her eyes, and Merle almost laughed at the attitude of her voice, "So relax."
He finally let himself, falling into the armchair. Absently thumbing at a magazine on the coffee table before picking it, the look of bewilderment not once leaving his somber eyes.
The quiet finally settled into the room except for the cracking of the fire. Merle let his heavy lids close, shifting his shoulders deeper into the soft material of the couch. It felt better than the train tracks and the dirt. Felt better than a prison bed. Or an army barrack.
Better than the flimsy mattress he had grown up with, the one he and Daryl shared before he shipped off to war.
"We should live here."
He turned over his shoulder at Mika's suggestion. The inspirited bounce she gave her head as Tyreese stared at her before looking up to where Merle had angled himself. They both glanced towards Carol, Merle propping up on his shoulder to be able to see her over the arm of the couch. She gave the faintest of smiles, the corners of her lips just barely stretching out passed their normal position, but a radiance seared from her eyes, scorching through him.
She wanted it, wanted the hope that this could be their home. But, maybe, she didn't know that homes could be broken.
He knew how to settle, he'd done it before. It's not hard to stick to one spot, any good hunter knows how to be still. But something in his gut gnawed at him. He didn't know what this house would do to them.
There was no use fighting it though, at least not that night. He sank back down, for the second time, folding up around himself and digging his head into the fabric of the back cushion. Concentrating on the way is rubbed against his cheek his brain fuzzed, pulling him into a dozy slumber, and slowly the sounds of the embers and Mika playing and Lizzie breaking open pecans fell away.
And, for just a few seconds before he completely gave way to unconsciousness, he almost felt normal.
The quiet didn't last long. Tyreese's jerks and stirs, bemoaning about Karen, started quicker than Merle would have liked. He woke with a growl, twisting on the couch to glare at Tyreese in the armchair. For a second he considered taking the iron fire poker and cracking it across Mama Bear's head until he fell into a quiet unconsciousness.
It was a harsh difference falling asleep to a warm room and waking up to something cold, filled with someone else's nightmare.
Above him, the ceiling creaked, a small trail off dust crumbled down, illuminated in a fragment of moonlight. Tyreese jerked again, his foot almost knocking into the crib. Merle hoisted himself up from the sofa, leaving the two crybabies behind to console each other when they wailed themselves awake as he mounted the staircase.
The floors sighed beneath weight they hadn't felt for some time. He could hear her shuffling around in that room, pacing by the sound of it. The house felt cramped, and he stood at the top of the stairs, looking between the front door that he could just make out, and the one in front of him that Carol hid behind. Springs creaked, and he could just picture her sitting on the bed, bathed by the moon and surrounded by solitude. The long, slender gleam of her back and the muscles that shifted with ever arch and twist of her body. How her skin would jump at his bristly fingers holding against her.
Loneliness always found a way to seep through even the most comfortable of nights.
His body tightened involuntarily, his breath shallowing at the back of his throat. Fingers gripped around the dust crusted doorknob. He was careful not to throw it open, stepping into the room he had killed the lone walker in.
"He ever gonna stop with these damn nightmares?"
It was a dramatic entrance but he didn't know how to be quiet about things—finesse was never his strong suit. She sat, folded into herself at the foot of the bed, staring out the window. It was a watchful kind of stare, waiting for the inevitable spook to come out of the shadowed corners. But it didn't seem like it was ever going to come, not here in this haven they had found, just cramped enough for the six of them. She twisted her neck, just barely, almost rolling her eyes before taking up her watch again.
"He's gone through a lot," she said quietly like she was afraid she might contribute to his horrors even more.
"Who hasn't?" Merle snorted, pacing forward towards the bed. He looked down at her body, compacted at the far side of the bed, tilted away from him to keep an eye out the window. He ached to be anything but stagnant.
Kneeling onto the bed, the springs screamed beneath him. She turned to him, a glare in her eyes. He wasn't invited to share her bed, but she wasn't exactly stopping him.
He sat, scratching at the bumpy, flaked skin of his stump. Carol was still eyeing him with suspicious, but a noticeable lack of disgust.
"You wonderin' where they are?" he said abruptly, the silence having stretched far enough for him to handle. There was no use in him sitting around in the room just being with her. He might as well get something out of it.
Her eyebrows quirked together, questioning him. Merle tilted his chin to the window, "The others. Rick, that gangly kid of his, Maggie and her Mail Order Husband…Daryl?"
She knew that she couldn't keep out the glimmer from her eyes at the mention of his name. The quick, sharp glint that flashed despite her stony expression, the way the very edge of her cheeks deepened and she turned her face away from him. Everyone had a weakness. He had her clutched in his hand and she knew it. He didn't have a clue about what he was doing, dangling Daryl between them like a wishbone for them to break apart. Maybe then they'd know who had the bigger piece of him.
"I thought you were supposed to be the one looking for him," she half-grunted, folding an arm around her stomach as she stood, walking to the window with her back to him. "Why are you even still here Merle? You don't have to stay with us."
His huffed breathe trebled passed his lips. There wasn't an answer that he really wanted to give her. He could have left no more than ten minutes ago but he hadn't. He hoped she'd just accept his pass of lazy happenstance, that he didn't have a better place to be. Which was only half true. He just didn't know where that better place was.
A part of him that he tried to ignore dropped from his gut at her question. She saw it though. He was never able to get anything passed her, as she saw through every fiber of the masks he tried to shell around him, found every crack in his walls and knew every play in his book.
"Could ask you the same thing, really. Why didn't you just take the girls? Leave me and Tyreese on our own? You don't owe us nothin'."
"I wouldn't say that," she sighed, softening up and letting her arms fall to the side. Turning to face him finally she fell against the wall next to the window. In her hands she held the hem of her shirt, fingers playing languorously with a thread that hung loose. She spoke again, her eyes set on the ceiling and he was sure she wasn't really talking to him at all. "It's probably better this way. We would never have been able to keep that place going. It was too big, too much, too…comfortable."
"You look pretty damn cozy here too. Making fuckin' sugar pecans and letting that little thing play with a doll. We all playing house now? Thought I wasn't the only one left with some damn sense," he bit out, the words pointed sharply. He didn't fit in to a place like this, and maybe none of them did anymore.
But at least they used to, even if it was lifetimes ago.
"You looked fine stretched out on that couch. But, is that what you think this is? That I'm just living it up, all nice in this house, and this big old bed to warm me at night? I'm doing what I have to do for those girls. I am trying to keep Tyreese together long enough for him to grieve. I am trying to make sure you…" She stopped, the steam dissipating and the cool air settling back between them. He could see the exasperation on her face, the ire lines that framed her lips.
"Make sure I what?" he snarled, forcing himself closer to her, standing just inches from her in an attempt to keep her from folding back into herself. He wanted to grab her and make her stay, do about anything to shock her into playing the game the way he wanted to. But it was near impossible when she wouldn't dare move any pieces.
That steely resolved melted over her again. Carol looked at him, the long draw of her gaze as she searched him from head to toe resting uneasily with him. He rolled his eyes, a pull in his gut yanking him towards the door before that room smothered him altogether. She was so imperceptible in the way she could gather under his skin. His brother may like the way she could get at him without him having to offer much up, but it gnawed at Merle to the core. Vulnerability wasn't something he carried well.
He held himself at the door, his fingers on the knob. "One day, sweet cheeks, you're gonna do something selfish. And you know what?" He paused at the door, fingers pressed against the doorknob, the ribboned pattern indenting his skin. "You're gonna damn well like it."