Copper On My Tongue

Jamie woke up with a terrible ache in her head, the side seeming to throb like it had its own heartbeat. She was sitting upright, that much she could tell, and her hands were bound. Pulling her arms, she couldn't move them from behind her. With the string from her wrists, she knew it was tape—probably duct tape. Must have been like that for a while. It was in the next instant that she remembered why she was waking up in the first place, the pull on her hair as Merle shouted, her head hitting the metal of the truck when she tried to fight against him.

Merle.

She was going to kill that son of a bitch.

"Jamie?"

Maggie's voice called through the otherwise silent room, causing Jamie to jump in surprise as her eyes snapped open. There was a table in front of her, no one sitting across it, but glancing to her right Maggie was sitting in a position identical to hers. "Where are we?" Jamie croaked out, her voice raw from screaming at Merle. He had hauled her from the truck somewhere and she immediately began to freak out, kicking and screaming at him.

"You kicked Merle in the balls," Maggie told her with a stricken look on her face.

"I did? So that's why my head hurts," Jamie muttered before she blinked rapidly to clear her vision properly.

"He brought us to some kind town, but we're in an abandoned building. Glenn's in another room." Maggie was keeping her voice low, trying not to draw attention to them talking. Jamie look a closer look at her, seeing that she was pale white with fear. Jamie wasn't sure whether that fear was from the situation in general, or because Glenn was somewhere else and they didn't know if he was alright.

"What happened?" Jamie asked in an equally low voice.

"Merle…he...he already spoke with Glenn. Glenn did something to him and he beat him," her voice was beginning to waver as she thought back to him. She was almost in tears. "It sounded so bad-"

"Maggie, shh, you know how strong Glenn is. It'll be alright," Jamie tried to assure, but in truth she didn't know. Merle was ruthless before, but now? He probably didn't have a care about beating up a restrained man, or killing someone who was innocent and couldn't defend themselves. Merle was probably worse than ever, and that could very well mean that Glenn was dead for going against whatever Merle wanted to know.

He was probably still looking for where they had set down.

"He got beat so bad, Jamie. I don't know if he's okay," she stuttered out.

"Maggie, you need to keep calm," Jamie snapped when the other woman seemed to begin hyperventilating.

A bang suddenly made both women jump, startled to see Merle enter the room. Jamie immediately tensed up, her shoulders locking forward like a cornered animal ready to strike out. The movement exposed the strong cords of muscle and tendons in her shoulders and arms, making her seem bigger. Maggie, as terrified as she was of Merle and what he could have done to Glenn, realized that this was Jamie's pathological response to the man. She had gone the same thing upon first seeing him in the parking lot.

Jamie's initial response to Merle Dixon was to appear bigger, stronger, and unafraid.

"Let's go and have a chat, sweetheart," Merle cooed as he looked straight at Jamie. Another man was standing behind him with a shotgun, ready for someone to make the wrong move. He didn't seem very sure, however, as he looked at the two women before him. Maggie was trembling, unsure, and didn't appear as an outward threat. Jamie, while appearing more menacing than Maggie, didn't seem like the kind to strike unless provoked first. He doubted the woman could kill anything other than a walker.

Gritting her teeth, knowing not to speak out again, Jamie just let Merle cut the rope around her wrists and haul her to her feet. Jamie shared a quick look with Maggie, hoping to reassure the woman that she would be okay, before she was led from the old, musty smelling room.

Merle's remaining hand was holding her arm, the same one he had cut to get her gun out of her hand, and he was guiding her through old, wooden halls. Electricity was what lit their way and Jamie was almost amazed by it. They hadn't been somewhere with power since Hershel's farm. It had been a long, cold and dark winter with only the heaters in the vehicles to give them warmth on their travels.

Being led to another room, separate from Glenn or Maggie's, Jamie was instructed to another chair but this time was left without her arms being bound.

The other man left immediately, leaving Merle and Jamie alone.

"Gotta say, you've changed a lot since I last saw ya," Merle started, taking a seat on the edge of the table in front of her. It was old, and creaked under his weight. Jamie's jaw was locked and tense as she looked up at him, her hands resting on her lap in case she needed to move quickly and use them to defend herself. "You used to be a spoiled little thing, but look at you now. Scarred and thin," he taunted, almost seeming to laugh.

"It's been a rough year," she muttered in response, never taking her eyes off of him. Daryl had a lighter shade of blue for his eyes; Merle's were closer to navy. But the resemblance, sadly, was there.

Merle seemed to take her in, from the hollowness of her cheeks to the faint scars that had accumulated since the outbreak. "How long have you been with Daryl? Last I saw him, you were pretty far gone from the picture."

"I was actually with Rick," Jamie answered, wanting to sneer when she said it. "We got separated in Atlanta, just before he met you. Went back to try and save your sorry ass, and Daryl and I ended up running into each other. I've been with the group ever since," she explained very briskly, seeing the tick in his jaw at the mention of Rick.

"Ain't that just sweet," he sneered down at her. "Still all the same assholes of the group?"

Smirking up at him, Jamie didn't say a word.

That was one thing that Merle could never stand. "Answer me!" he shouted as he leaned forward, spitting in her face from the volume of his tone and the proximity to her face. Jamie closed her eyes, but didn't even flinch. Lifting a hand to wipe her face calmly, Jamie only looked at him again once she was sure nothing was going to get in her eyes or mouth.

"Your manners are even worse," she grumbled, wiping her hand on her pants. The gauze was gone from around her palm, but the scabs would keep her from getting anything in the wounds for the time being. She found it surprising that the scabs didn't open up in her struggle. "And you can go blow it out your ass, Merle, because you're getting dick all from me," she finished, cold gold in her gaze.

"Little Jay-Jay got a back-bone?" Merle chuckled, leaning back against to try and get a height advantage. But she wasn't scared of Merle, she may have been at one point in the past, but she's seen greater nightmares in real life than Merle Dixon. "Whadya know, maybe you'll fit in with the family after all."

Shaking her head, Jamie smirked again. "Not with you, Merle. Daryl and I have our own family, with Rick and the others. Just because you were born as brothers doesn't mean that's how it stays." Merle looked furious at her words, and she was sure he was ready to hit her. "Did I strike a nerve? It must burn you to know that Rick has been a better brother to Daryl than you ever were."

"You cunt, you don't even fuckin' know what you're talkin' about!" Merle snarled, grabbing her shirt with one hand and moving to hit her with the metal covering on the remainder of his other arm.

"Go ahead, Merle, hit me. Hit me as hard and as many times as you want, then we'll see how much your brother loves you. Mark me up and let him see, because not even blood could stop him from tearing you apart. A broken nose would be the least of your worries," she growled right back, spurring him on, trying to make him angry. "That's all you've ever done, isn't it, Merle? Just drove him away, just caused him pain!"

Merle's first tightened around her shirt, his arm remaining up to strike, but he didn't move.

"You know it, too. When were you ever a brother to him, Merle? When he was bailing you out of jail, or when you were too fuckin' high to remember that he even existed? What about when you abandoned him and left to let him take the brunt of your dad's anger-"

This time he did hit her, striking her right against her cheekbone. It wasn't hard enough to break the bone, but she knew that it was going to swell up and turn many shades of purple before long. The pain she was already feeling in her head only increased, leaving her disoriented.

"Guess that's one more," she slurred out, feeling that the metal around the stump had also cut open her lip. Licking at it to taste the coppery blood, Jamie looked up to meet Merle's crazed blue eyes. "Just another one for the list: beatin' his wife."

Clearly, this was news to Merle. Daryl told her that he knew they were engaged, but he hadn't realized they'd do anything. Technically, they weren't married. But ever since Jamie introduced herself to the prisoners as 'Dixon' they had been calling Jamie and Daryl married, referring to them as husband or wide instead of fiancé like before.

"Yea, Merle, he'd be so proud to have you as a brother," she sneered up at him, blood coating her teeth from the split in her upper lip.

She guessed it was because he didn't want to end up hitting her again, but Merle stormed from the room after that, the sound of chains locking her in following his exit. Since she was alone again, Jamie let herself wince heavily and lift a hand to her cheek, feeling the tender skin and knowing that it was a brilliant red from the hit she'd taken. She was just glad he didn't have the knife attached to the end.

Even her neck hurt from how fast her head had whipped to the side.

Back at the prison, the others were trying to figure out how to take the appearance of the black woman outside of the prison, carrying a red basket of formula. Of course, she hardly seemed to trust them, either. Taking her sword away was for the best, even though Rick could understand someone's dependency on their weapon in the world they live in.

When Rick confronted her about why she was carrying formula with her, she didn't seem like she was going to tell them, before she confessed that the basket was dropped by an Asian that was travelling with two women.

"What happened?" Rick had asked, already more alert to know that they supplies had been with Glenn, Maggie and Jamie.

"Were they attacked?" Hershel demanded, already fearing the worst for his daughter and a man he was coming to see as his son.

The woman's eyes looked over at him for a moment, watching as he rose up onto his one leg, no longer able to just sit with the news that something had gone wrong on the run. "They were taken," she corrected. Rick stepped into her line of sight, bringing her attention back to him, questioning about how had taken them. "By the same son of a bitch who shot me," was her growled answer, the pain clear on her face when the topic brought it back to the forefront of her mind.

"Hey, these are our people," Rick reminded her. "You tell us what happened now," he demanded, his voice starting out soft and calming before he shouted the final word while grabbing at the bullet wound in her leg, using the existing injury to cause her pain. She immediately jumped up and away from Rick, hissing at him not to touch her.

Daryl, however, had raised his crossbow at her the second she moved, aiming it at her head. He didn't really want to shoot her, for the soul reason that she was the only one who could tell them where Jamie was. "You better start talking, or you're gunna have a much bigger problem than a gunshot wound," he threated, raising his voice as he spoke. He wasn't going to let some skittish woman get in the way of him saving both Jamie and his friends.

She looked Daryl right in the eye, over the arrow pointing at her face. "Find 'em yourself."

Daryl seemed to let out a growl at her choice of answer, his blue eyes going cold as she stared into them. Rick, however, didn't want Daryl doing something out of anger that he would later regret and gently placed a hand on the crossbow. "Hey, shh, shh, shh. Put it down." Even as he was instructing the redneck, he was looking at the woman.

She was breathing heavy, from more than pain and blood-loss, they all knew. It was never easy to stare down someone who was quite focused on killing you, when you had no way out of it.

But Daryl stepped back and Rick moved in front of the black woman, staring her down. "You came here for a reason," he chose to remind her. Those seemed to be the right words, because she looked away from him a moment, thinking on it. He was right, too. Why else would she brave the walkers that surrounded the prison just to bring a basket of formula to a group of people she didn't know?

"There's a town," she finally stated, briefly meeting Rick's eyes before looking away again. "Woodbury, about seventy-five survivors; I think they were taken there."

"A whole town?" Rick asked, unbelieving.

"It's run by this guy who calls himself the Governor—pretty boy, charming, Jim Jones type."

Daryl realized that someone who came away with a description like that couldn't control a whole town and walkers on his own. "He got muscle?" he asked, remaining where he was standing behind Rick. He knew that the man had a plan on how to talk to her, since she was beginning to confess to what she knew, now.

"Paramilitary wannabes," she answered, sounding disgusted and annoyed. "They have armed sentries on every wall."

"You know a way in?" Rick asked, cocking his head to the side. So long as he could keep her talking, he would get the information they needed. He didn't want to kill her, so he'd learn all he could, fix her up and possibly send her on her way.

"The place is secure from walkers, but we could slip our way through," she answered, sounding confident. The 'we' in the statement helped Rick. To have her there would help them somewhat, since she knew the town and could actually get there and in using the proper knowledge of the place. She didn't seem to mind having to break their rules, either. Someone did something to piss her off, and Rick could tell she was the wrong person to piss off.

"How'd you know how to get here?"

"They mentioned a prison," the woman answered blatantly, "Said which direction it was in, said it was a straight shot."

Rick stared down at her, trying to gauge if she was speaking on all honesty. So far, he could tell that she had been telling the truth. Glancing over to where Hershel stood just to the side, he motioned over to the man. "This is Hershel, the father of the brunette that was taken." Turning then to where Daryl was standing behind him, he continued. "And this is Daryl, the husband of the blonde woman that was taken. You best hope he doesn't find out you're lying." The woman didn't back down from Rick's stare, which he would admit to admiring. "Hershel will take care of your leg."

Merle didn't come back to see Jamie, but a while after he had stormed out the chains were taken off of the door and another man walked in. He looked like a business man, like someone Jamie would remember seeing sitting behind a desk at a bank. He was old enough that his hair was starting to grey in places and there were wrinkles on his face.

His eyes were dead.

They were missing any warmth that normal people possessed. Even Merle had more life in his eyes than this man, and that immediately set Jamie on edge.

"Merle tells me your name is Jamie," he began, offering a smile that reminded Jamie of a carnival mask. "It's nice to meet you, Jamie. And I do have to apologize for what happened; Merle can sometimes be…hard to control."

"Not if you pull on the leash tight enough," she answered back blandly, staring him down. He chuckled at her answer before taking a seat across the table from her, instead of the approach Merle had taken where he sat on the table, so he could be above her. Something was off about this man, she could tell, but he was also intelligent. It was more than likely that he had gone to Maggie already, trying to get something out of her first.

That only made Jamie worry, though, since she knew Maggie wouldn't say anything, but she was easier to traumatize.

"Your friends have spirit, you know. But you have more, I can see that for myself. You must have seen some pretty horrible things out there on the road-"

"Is this our friendly heart to heart?" Jamie interrupted, getting tired of his act. "Is this when you expect me to feel all safe and warm, tell you everything you want to know?" The friendly smile slipped from the man's face as she spoke, her words colder than shards of ice as she leaned forward in her chair. "You want information? Alright, how about this. Let us go now, and your shit will not be completely fucked up by the end of the week."

The man laughed, knocked on the table like a nervous twitch. "You really think your friends are coming to save you? They don't even know your missing."

"The second we didn't come back on time, we were missing. The second we're considered missing, you just fucked yourself up the ass—and I wasn't talking about my friends. I've been through a lot of shit to get to where I am, to be with the people that I have around me, and I'm not about to let a bitch like you dare get in the way of that."

The man rose sharply to his feet, his hands slamming down on the table, before Jamie used her seated position to kick the table from underneath, tipping it up before throwing its weight at the man across from her. He cursed loudly as he pushed the table aside, spotting Jamie standing now, in front of her tipped back chair. She was standing almost normally, but her entire body was a taut as a bow string and there was threat in her eyes.

In some distant way, she reminded him of Merle. She was caged and dangerous, willing to risk whatever she could.

"I'm going to go down to that prison, and I'm gunna kill every single one of your precious friends," the man threated lowly. Jamie refused to react, but she knew that this man had done something with Maggie and Glenn to get one of them to confess. The very thought caused her stomach to clench painfully in concern, but she refused to react. They didn't have Daryl to threaten her with, so there wasn't much they could do with her. It explained why she'd been left alone most of the time. "I know where they are now; and I'll find everyone precious to you and have you watch as they die."

"Only if you live long enough," Jamie snarled back. Taking a step straight back, the man banged a fist on the door and it opened up for him, a gun trained on Jamie so that he would leave without her attacking him. "Be seeing you again soon!" she called tauntingly, her voice echoing in her box of a room.

Beginning to pace the length of the room she was stuck in, Jamie fumed in silent rage that she was stuck in that godforsaken shithole. Sitting in that room made it feel more like a prison cell than her home in C Block ever did. Unable to just sit and do nothing, Jamie continued to pace, trying to think.

"You fucking, poxy bastards!" Jamie screamed suddenly, turning to beginning slamming the bottom of her boot against the metal of the door, continuing to cuss them out as she did so.

Things were just going wrong. She goes and gets taken by Merle, hit by Merle, threatened by a soulless asshole and to top it all off they knew where all of her friends were. Where Daryl was. Where a baby was. They would kill them. All of them. Continuing to throw kicks against the door, screaming her rage, Jamie only stopped in brief surprise when the door opened suddenly, Merle standing on the other side.

"That was some colourful language for a lady," Merle commented, grinning in amusement.

Her anger wasn't gone, not by a long shot, so Jamie shrieked in absolute frustration as she charged a very unsuspecting Merle, knocking him back and off of his feet. She should have taken the chance to run, she could very easily have done so as she knew she was much faster that he was, but she didn't. Instead, she kneeled over the older brother of her husband and threw punches, left, right, left right, bloodying his face even as he bruised her ribs and stomach with hits of his own, the metal on the casting for his missing hand causing the most damage.

"It's your fault," she shouted, beginning to slap at him when punches took too much time. "He's gunna die and it's all your fucking fault! You killed your own goddamned brother!"

"Enough!" Merle roared and grabbed Jamie to throw her off of him, slamming her into the wall next to the door she had just thrown her and Merle through. "Daryl's still alive! I didn't kill anyone!"

"You think he's gunna be left alive?" Jamie hissed out as she rose to her full height, glaring at Merle where he was taking a bit more time to do the same. She didn't move to attack again, but trembled in her fury. "Did your fearless leader tell you that? You and I both know that the second he sees Daryl's no use to him, he's dead. And then, once Daryl's gone and you find out, he'd kill you, too. Haven't you realized it, yet? You're expendable to him!"

"And you're so fuckin' precious?" Merle snarled back at her, wiping at the blood that was pouring down his face because of Jamie's assault. He didn't realize that the tiny woman before him was as strong as those punches were.

"I'd be missed if I was gone," she hissed out, shaking her bloody knuckles. "What about you, Merle? What have you ever done to be proud of? For once in your fuckin' life, do the right thing! You know it, Merle, I know that you do—Daryl will die if you let that man get near the prison."

"He promised he wouldn't touch Daryl," Merle insisted.

"For Christ's sake, you believe him? What about when Daryl finds out that I'm here? Don't think he won't, either. Daryl will kick up a fit, then be killed, and the you'll kick up and fit and meet the same fucking fate," Jamie shouted at Merle. "The only people you can trust are family, and you're turning your back on the only family you have left."

Marching forward, Jamie didn't resist when Merle grabbed her arm in an iron grip and yanked her back toward her cell of a room. "He done more for me than you've ever done. Than your group ever done," Merle hissed in her ear before she was shoved inside. "Rot in here for all I care. Daryl'll be none the wiser."

Slamming and chaining up the door, Jamie was left alone once more.

Refusing to waste her time like she had been before, Jamie began to look around the room. It was a box of metal walls, with a door chained on the outside. No vents were visible, but it wasn't meant to be a sealed room; the walls didn't meet the roof at the top, leaving a crack between the metal that Jamie couldn't draw her eyes from. Pushing the table over to right in front of the door, she thanked her height and stood on the surface to get a better look at the setup.

"Any architect's worst nightmare," she muttered to herself, pulling at the metal on the roof down to see how loose it was. Screws went through the metal into the wooden support beams all around. The metal was too thick to bend, so she couldn't escape it on her own.

However, she was able to get a good view of the hallway and realized that if she could knock out the light, she could get around a lot better in the dark than the meatheads guarding her.

After moving the table out of the way, Jamie picked up the chair she had once been sitting in before taking a deep breath and letting loose a blood curdling scream, stinging her abused throat in the process. Even when she ran out of air, she just took another breath and starting again, continuing to scream and scream, sounding like something was eating her alive.

"Shut her up!"

"Someone's gunna fuckin' hear her!"

Still screaming even when the voices were outside her door, Jamie prepared herself for the inevitable. The door flew open in the man's panic to silence her, not taking the time to assess what he was running into, and Jamie swung the chair as hard as she could right at the man's face. He dropped like a stone, his gun clattering to the floor as the man behind him shouted in distress. Retrieving the gun before he could react, Jamie put a bullet in his chest before he registered the importance of lifting his own weapon in defence.

Collecting both guns and from the men, she moved to leave them behind before she spotted a familiar hilt protruding from the second man's pants' belt. Retrieving Daryl's knife, cutting the man in the process without even caring about it, Jamie carefully wrapped it in a torn strip of the man's shirt and stuck it down in her boot, far enough to keep it hidden. She didn't need that getting taken again.

Call it sentimental.

Shooting out the overhead lights as she went, Jamie marched the black halls, searching for an exit. Whether it was a window or a door, she was going to be leaving that decrepit building. It was shockingly abandoned after the two guards, but she knew that only meant there was something else they were focusing on.

Finding what had once been the front of the building, Jamie knelt down in the dusty windows, the blackness of the building hiding her in the shadows. Watching as fake soldiers and citizens of the town an around, she knew the something had gone wrong. Had Rick and the others made it to the town? Were Glenn and Maggie safe?

Waiting for a break in the crowd, Jamie only left the building when the streets were nearly vacant. One gun strapped across her back and the other in her hand, Jamie stuck to the sides of the buildings, away from the fires that lit the street, and headed straight. She didn't know her way around, but she knew that heading straight for a long enough time would lead her to the edge. She could find her way back to the prison from here.

The cocking of a gun forced her to stop cold.

"I should've known you'd be the one to cause trouble," the soulless man from before said, his voice eerily calm. Jamie barely turned her head to look over her shoulder at him, catching the light reflecting off of his gun as it was trained at the back of her head. Her hazel eyes looked golden in the light from the fires, but it was a cold most related to that of an exotic dagger, deadly and beautiful. Gold was often compared to being a warm colour, but at the moment it had never looked colder.

Her eyebrow twitched as she took in his appearance, her hand itching to raise her own gun on him. "Who fucked up your face, so I can shake their hand?" she mocked, smirking at the clear wound to his bandaged eye. It was gushing blood through the bandage, which left her to believe that he didn't have an eye anymore.

The man didn't answered, however, but swung the butt of his gun up to catch Jamie's nose, sending her crashing backward from the well-aimed hit. Two men easily got a hold of her from then on, stripping her of the guns that she had collected from the two men outside of her 'cell'. They were less than gentle as they pulled the strips from her shoulder, deliberately elbowing and grabbing at her.

However, she nearly sneered in satisfaction that they didn't find the hunting knife shoved down her boot. Licking the blood off of her top lip, Jamie looked up to look into the man's remaining eye before a bag was pulled violently over her head, leaving her blind.

Sorry that it's been a bit, I didn't mean for it to take this long to get this new one out. I'm in a Humanities class at school where we have to read a book a week, and I've been falling a little bit behind. But, I finished editing this one and needed to get it out so it would stop bugging me. I hope you all liked it, let me know what you think!

Chapter 13 – I'll Be Your Conscience

As much as she hated the hick, Jamie knew that Merle would risk all he could to get Daryl out of there. And Daryl would only leave if they all went, so it worked in their favour. She wasn't about to put her life in his hands, but Merle had already risked his life to save Daryl once that night.

"Oh, shit!" Jamie shouted as soon as she cleared the fence, seeing the dozen or so walkers that had come into the area because of the screaming citizens.

"We ain't got time for this!" Merle shouted before taking off in a specific direction. Appeared beside Jamie, Daryl urged her to follow while he tried to tell Rick to do the same. She could understand his doubt, she shared it, but if Merle was getting them out of there, she was going to have to follow his lead for the present moment.

"Stay close," Daryl told her, but paused when she bent to retrieve something from her boot. He couldn't stop himself from snorting when he saw the flash of familiar metal, spotting his hunting knife nestled snug in her palm. She must have an emotional attachment to that damn knife because she always had it on her.

However, he could respect her proficiency with the blade. Charging past him, Jamie didn't hesitate to dig the weapon into the soft tissue of a walker's head.