A/N – I'm totally struggling with writing two multi-chapter Caryl fics at the same time. Even though they are different, I feel like I can't properly write them both at the same time. I may need to take a few days off from one story in order to get a proper feel on the other story. I'd rather write confident chapters on one story at a time than half-assed chapters on two stories at the same time. And although I like this particular chapter I feel like I was half-assing chapters yesterday. Don't worry, I'm thinking I'll dedicate each week to one story… work on one this week (probably this one) and work on the second next week and alternate from there.

Anyway – thank you for the reviews! I hope you like this chapter… I found it interesting to write. :)

Chapter 4

Daryl hadn't meant to snap. He supposed he could have said a lot worse, but he hadn't even meant to say what he had. He'd meant every word of it – he kept quiet most of the time so that he only ever said stuff that he actually meant – but that hadn't been the way he'd wanted to say it. She did need to toughen up, but he didn't want to put it out there the way he had.

At any rate, she was quiet the rest of the trip, but at least she'd stopped those pathetic, mewling sighs she'd been doing before.

The quiet was good. He was comfortable with the silence and it gave him time to wrap his head around where he was going.

The Dixon Family Home.

It had been ten years since he'd been there. He could still remember his last moments in that house.

"Ya ain't leavin' me, boy… ya ain't fuckin leavin' me." He could hear his father's surly, scratchy drawl from somewhere in the house as Daryl packed his bags.

He heard his father swear an obscenity and then heard the bang of something being thrown against a wall. This was followed by loud footsteps down the hall. Daryl was shoving his clothes into bags straight from the closet and he picked up the pace. He dropped what he was doing as the footsteps reached the doorway and Daryl spun to face his father's large looming body in the doorframe.

"Ain't a boy no more, pop." It was true – he was twenty-seven… today was his twenty-seventh birthday… five years almost to the day since the last time he'd seen his sister.

His father lumbered in to the tiny room, his eyes narrowed, his lips pulled back in a sneer. "Yer a fuckin loser is what ya is…," he snarled and reared back a fist.

The old man was drunk and Daryl stepped back to avoid the hit, watching his father stumble when he missed his target. The old man righted himself and stepped up close in Daryl's face so that the stench of bourbon and beer filled his nostrils.

"Ya ain't gonna find 'er… I know that's what yer fixin' to do. Well, she's dead. Ya know it, I know it. Yer candy-ass brother knows it. Yer jus' too stupid to accept it."

Daryl stood his ground, his eyes boring holes into his father's, and he refused to back down.

His father's sneer changed to a malicious grin suddenly and a chill went down Daryl's spine. He'd been so focused on staring his father down; he didn't notice that his father's hands weren't hanging down at the old man's side anymore.

He felt the pierce of something sharp in his side. His father's eyes had never left Daryl's and when Daryl looked away first, looking down at the pain he suddenly felt, the fire in his chest… he saw his father's hand release the blade that was buried deep in Daryl's upper torso. His father had angled the blade up as he'd stuck it in, slid it right between Daryl's rib cage, and Daryl felt the air rush out of him as he realized his lung must have been punctured.

He rasped, seeing the blade handle… knowing which blade it was. His father's hunting blade, the one with the curved end, serrated on one side, gut hook on the other… he remembered the words Merle said when the old man brought it home – "that'll leave more damage comin' out than goin' in."

His eyes went to his father's face and the old man was grinning. The old man grabbed Daryl by the collar and pulled him forward so they were nose to nose.

"Try and leave me now, boy… fuckin jus' try and leave me now."

As the room started to dim around Daryl, everything fading to black like the end of a movie, his father's grinning face still inches from his own, all he could think about was Karla… the last thought he had before passing out was that, this… this was the reason Karla snuck out when it was just the two of them home and left the way she had.

Daryl didn't remember any more after that. From what he'd been told, Merle had come home some time later to find their old man hunched over Daryl's body on the floor, carving into him. The worst of his scars were from the wounds the old man had done to him that day. Merle had pulled the old man off; checked for a pulse and gotten Daryl to the only person he could think of at the time – his meth dealer.

Normal people – or at least what Daryl had always considered normal – take their stabbed and dying family members to a hospital. Not Merle though. Merle took him to a hopped up meth dealer, carried Daryl's lifeless and limp body two blocks down the road to the dealer's house, screaming and hollering for the dealer to do something.

Merle had spouted off that the hospital wasn't an option. Hospitals meant trouble. "If there's docs, there's gonn' be cops." Someone would have to be held accountable for stabbing Daryl, for carving into him. Even the jackass police in their rundown town cared about a "white trash redneck" if he ended up in the hospital. Outside of the hospital was a whole different story – cops didn't give a shit what happened. Merle wasn't going to get the police involved, wasn't going to get their old man in trouble.

"He's loony tunes, Daryl… ya cain't fault 'im for it," Merle said, looking down at Daryl lying small and shrunken in the meth dealer's bed.

"The hell I cain't," Daryl croaked, wheezed, feeling pain as his ruined lung contracted with each breath he took.

In the end, Daryl just healed himself up and got the hell out of the shithole town he grew up in. He never went back to the house, had no intention of ever going back for the rest of his life.

Until now.

He angled the truck down the one lane dirt road that led to the house and prepared himself for what was to come.