A/N: Just to make sure it's clear, there are multiple timelines in this chapter. The Beth section is in the current timeline, but everything after Interlude takes place between 1 & 3 months earlier.

Chapter Thirteen

The girl had gone quiet, slumping limply against the truck's door as they swerved around yet another pack of demons and left the town in the dust. Murphy didn't pay her much mind. He had his own worries, like the fact that he was driving away from Connor. That his brother was still back in that fucking town. That town overrun by demons. Again.

He slammed his palm into the wheel and the girl flinched.

Why had Merle been the one to run into Connor? Merle, who was a complete bastard nine times out of eight just for the sake of it; who hadn't even bothered to bring Murphy up to him because, shit, if he couldn't manage to track down Daryl after all, at least he'd have a handy lookalike around as a backup, right?

His hand hit the wheel again, and the truck nearly hit a demon.

He noticed it way too late to blame it on periphery or the setting sun, or anything besides the way his vision was clouding into angry slits so narrow that he could hardly see the wheel in front of him, much less the road. Cursing, Murphy swerved at the last second. He heard something topple in the back, Merle cursing and Martinez shouting for Murphy to pay attention, but it was the girl gasping quietly and pulling her knees up to her chest that dragged him out of his literally blinding rage.

Things were bad for him, probably worse for Connor. But there was no use focusing on that when there was jack shit he could do about it. He couldn't turn around, search the town blindly with that horde in the way. Not with the girl to look after, and not when ditching the group to go back on his own would leave her alone with Merle and Martinez.

His palm slammed the wheel one last time, willing his tension (rage, frustration, guilt) to go out of him along with the blow. There'd be another time to find Connor. He had to focus on the road ahead of him. And the seat next to him. And the girl who was only stuck sitting there because she'd been fool enough to trust him.

"Sorry," he murmured, and the word was inadequate. Because how much could a "sorry" make up for the fact that he'd promised not to do anything bad to the girl, and here he was five minutes later, kidnapping her?

She nodded, but her eyes were fixed on a loose stitch in her jeans. Her fingers tugging at it like it was all she could bring herself to focus on. There was nothing else to say, nothing that wouldn't sound every bit like the selfish excuse it was, so he turned his attention back to the road, to the potholes and slight curves and blood spatters along the pavement, and for a while again they were quiet. Until:

"He thinks you're dead, you know."

The girl's quiet words knocked Murphy straight out of his guilty silence, and he started laughing. The girl sent him a startled look and he stalled the laugh, shrugging.

"Not surprised, that's all. I thought I was dead too."

She tilted her head. Curiosity was replacing the dead, hopeless look in her eyes. Her gaze flitted to his hand, to the faint scars of teeth, and he wondered how much Connor had said about Murphy, about their last moments together.

"So," the girl breathed, "how are you alive?"

.- .- .- INTERLUDE .- .- .-

"Don't fall back!"

A strained shout startled the quartet of figures huddled in the darkness of the storage room. There was just enough light from the slightly open door to see a set of pale eyes flutter open. Another figure, gaunt and faded, shifted restlessly against the wall before settling.

Noises continued outside. The shaking of a distant doorknob, a frustrated curse. A second voice shouting something about a garage, a door not closing properly. The pair of voices came closer.

The figure closest to the door – dark eyes, dark hair, and dark skin – twitched and inched closer. Lips parted, baring teeth.

Against the wall, a Walker shifted again.

"Alright, then let's try our luck with this one. What's that saying about third times, Murph?"

"Already partway open," The second voice answered; just a touched too strained to be cheerful. "Looks like a charm to me."

From inside, one could discern a long, narrow object wedged between the door and the edge of a cabinet. The angle it was placed at looked almost intentional… but whatever the intent, the door clearly wouldn't open any more than it already had.

Clearly… from the inside, anyway.

Something slammed against the door; the crouching figures twitched and shifted again.

"Fuck me… you have to be joking."

"Yeah, Conn. It's a funny joke. I just pretended to ram myself against the door and it pretended not to budge. I've actually got this whole street performance gig on the side, miming and shit."

"Don't try and be smart, brother. It doesn't suit you."

The pale figure – pale skin and pale hair to go with the pale eyes – started to shift forward. A sharp movement from the dark one stalled the motion. Outside, the voices continued bickering.

"They're getting close."

"Think I don't see that? Get back there and start blowing some brains out. I'll get the door down."

"Fuck that. You tried the last door and how'd that go? I'll get it open."

A slight pause.

"Fine. Work fast, Murphy. This is not a good corner to get ourselves cornered in."

The pale figure began to move again, crawling toward the door. The gaunt Walker by the wall stumbled forward a step.

Along the floor, a chain rattled faintly.

If the man outside the door heard anything, he didn't let on, because a moment later he was slamming himself against it the same way the other had – rattling and shoving at it as though the door's hinges were simply jammed.

The pale figure had reached the door. The dark one crouched inches away, at the edge of the doorframe, in the shadows just out of the man's narrow view. The pale one's hands lifted, fingers splayed against the back of the cool metal, jolting with the pressure of the outsider's shoves. The dark one's teeth bared again.

A hand reached inside the door. Four sets of eyes followed as it fumbled over the inside handle, the smooth stretch of unyielding steel, making its way toward the long object jamming the door in place.

Then the dark figure moved, letting out a spitting hiss as it launched forward, grabbing the hand and sinking teeth in. It only held it for an instant, and then the arm jolted, jerked back out of the dark one's grip. As the hand disappeared from view it was already beading thickly with blood.

There was quiet for a time, and then from a distance, a harried voice shouted:

"Not time for sight-seeing, brother."

And the man outside the door answered back, his tone a thin, numb kind of hopeless.

"Door's not budging. Have to find some other way."

The pale one pressed against the door, and the dark one's teeth gleamed red.

.-

Murphy woke up slowly, a haze of nausea-inducing dizziness clouding his brain even before he opened his eyes. Voices were talking a distance away, hushed and heated, and his stomach turned as he tilted his head toward the sound.

"…his tattoos?"

Well, this was familiar, and not in a fun way. Why'd it always seem to come down to someone bashing him in the back of the skull? He coughed, tried to call out toward the voices.

"…dreh…"

The useless syllable was enough to exhaust him. He breathed in deeply, wondered if he should just fall back to sleep. No one was paying him any mind anyway, and he was so fucking tired.

He'd been hit in the head, there was no doubting that. Bashed right at the base of his skull by something hard and heavy. Screwed balance and vision and his ability to turn his head without wanting to throw up.

Maybe that's why he was imagining a feather-soft mattress under his back.

If the faraway speakers had heard his wordless mumble, they didn't let on, still going back and forth at each other in increasingly sharp tones.

Well, screw 'em. They didn't want to tell Murphy what the fuck was happening, he'd just go back to sleep. That'd show them.

The world faded again.

.-

Murphy forced himself to turn from the doorway, from the bloody slat of glass and his brother's stricken face on the other side of it. He stared down the mob, trying to block out the burning in his hand, the infection he swore he could fucking feel working its way through his veins.

Who would've guessed, after all these years, that when he stared down the gates of hell he'd be standing on his own?

But there could be worse fates, right? If you were going to go out, might as well go out big.

For about thirty seconds it wasn't bad at all, like a shooting range on steroids as he took out one stumbling corpse after another with well placed shots.

Thirty seconds… Connor couldn't have made it out of the garage yet. Murphy still had time, time to take down enough of the demons that his brother wouldn't get himself killed on some idiot quest to recover corpse.

His corpse. How long did he have? How long until it turned him? How long until one of those fuckers got in too close, got another bite in? How long 'til he was devoured here on the street like some godless beast in the wild?

The gun was out of ammo. His knife was lodged in the door, protecting Connor.

Not long now.

He launched himself forward, trying to feel the old battle-thrill past the fear that was suddenly choking him. It didn't matter. Didn't matter that he was going to be eaten alive in this alley, because he was already dead. Didn't matter that he was hopelessly outnumbered, because he didn't have to win this fight. He just had to take as many of these sons of hellspawn with him as humanly possible. The barrel bashed in a soft skull, his foot caved in a second's rotting chest.

And he started laughing as he fought, because honestly, after all these months of running, it was fucking amazing not to worry about getting killed.

Then a long, bloody blade drove through the head of a demon next to him, and all at once the stakes changed.

.-

He drifted out of his dream, and he was still on a soft bed. His head was being braced by something warm, and something cool and wet was spilling down his throat.

As soon as he registered that last bit he choked, rolled to the side, and started coughing.

"Easy there." The voice that floated over him patient, blessedly quiet. "You need to get your fluids up; you've all been severely dehydrated."

Murphy ignored the roiling nausea and forced his eyes to squint open. A lean, well-groomed man with glasses and a bookish face was peering down at him, a cup of water in his hand. If this was a dream, it wasn't exactly the kind fantasies were made of.

Though the water did look pretty fucking fantastic.

The man saw him eyeing it and, tilting his head a little bit more, brought the cup to his lips and tipped water into Murphy's too-dry mouth.

"My name," the man explained while Murphy drank, "is Milton Mamet. You were discovered out in the woods about a day ago by some of our… explorers, and brought back here for your own wellbeing."

Murphy bobbed back his head and the cup moved away. Maybe there was something to the whole "dehydration" thing. His stomach was roiling less now, and movement made him less dizzy.

"'Explorers'?" he echoed.

A group of scowling men starting to circle them. They were well outnumbered, he could feel a fight coming, and his hand went for his gun.

Milton bobbed his head, a modest smile touching his lips.

"Scavengers," he amended, setting down the glass. Murphy started to notice, as his periphery opened up, just how clean the room around him was. It, like the man in front of him, seemed desperately wrong after months of dirt, blood, and destruction. "I hear you and our men got into a bit of a scuffle over some supplies in an abandoned van."

Murphy's tension was coming back faster as his mind cleared. He had been in a fight. They'd been in a fight.

"Where are they?"

Milton smiled again, and what had seemed like a friendly enough expression at first was suddenly infuriating – like a parent humoring a little kid, or a doctor pandering to an unruly patient.

Which, right, maybe he was. But still.

"Stay calm, everything's fine. But actually, there's someone else who's been waiting to talk with you. Insisting, really. I'm not sure if…" Milton trailed off, and his knowing look bled briefly into a perplexed frown. "Well, I'll just call him in."

Murphy inched himself backward to brace his shoulders against the wall, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and waited while Mamet crossed the room, opened the door, and murmured something to someone outside. He'd been halfway prepared for some big muscly gang leader type to appear, and when the balding, one-armed man came storming in he definitely fit the bill.

But the look in his eyes wasn't right. There wasn't anger there, or smug superiority. There was something sharp and hopeful and desperate, something that made him painful to look at for all the wrong reasons.

"Daryl?"

No magical water was about to cure the clenching in Murphy's gut now.

Not again.

These people had kept him safe, brought him to this place and helped heal him up, because they thought he was this Daryl guy. The stranger who'd looked so much like him had saved Murphy twice now.

Murphy'd had a lot of reasons to hate people in his life. He'd seen friends, family, murdered right in front of him. He'd spent his entire childhood loathing the stranger who'd walked out on his family, who fascinated his brother and made his mother cry. But this "Daryl," this man that Murphy had never met and had apparently stolen his face… he didn't think he'd ever hated a person more.

Murphy pushed himself further upright, ignored the way the room was swaying around him.

"No," he answered bluntly, and tried to ignore the way the other man's expression crumpled into now-familiar confusion. "Who are you? And where exactly the fuck are my friends?"

If they'd gotten killed in that forest showdown… if Murphy'd only been spared because he looked like this Daryl…

Relief flooded through him as a familiar voice snapped something out in the hall, the door banged open again.

And Andrea stepped in, Michonne, as always, a step behind.

"Sorry Murphy," Andrea flashed him a slightly-too tense grin, while her gaze flitted from him to the man who'd called him Daryl. "They didn't want us in here right now, but I told them to go screw themselves."

Murphy grinned, caught Michonne's eyes and saw them roll a bit. Not impressed by the security around here either, obviously.

"Well, perfect timing as always, ladies. Now do you mind explaining to these people that I'm actually your new friend, not your old one?"

.-

The blade impaled the demon's head and slid free as it fell to the asphalt, revealing a hard-eyed, dark-skinned and dreadlocked woman wielding a freaking samurai sword.

Murphy would have stopped to stare, but from his left a blonde woman shouted "Behind you!" and the samurai reached straight past him, stabbing something just over his shoulder.

He could've told her it didn't matter, that he was dead to the world anyway, but instead he just grinned, uttered a "thanks," and spun back to face the next demon.

If he could spend his last moments fighting beside a badass samurai and a beautiful blonde, well… there were worse ways to go out in this world.

.-

It was barely midday, and Andrea Harrison was exhausted by the bizarre ups and downs of the day so far. Maybe Murphy had it right: just get knocked unconscious and spend a few hours resting in a cot.

But who was she kidding? Ups and downs considered, Andrea wouldn't have missed this morning for anything.

First, just past dawn, she, Michonne and Murphy had run across what Murphy had declared a Godsend, and Andrea hadn't been about to argue: a car that had clearly been abandoned in a hurry, trunk open and contents gleaming in the morning light. Whoever'd ditched the car had been forced to leave behind half a case of bottled water… and it'd been nearly two days since any of them had seen water.

But then they'd had a run-in with Merle's group. With the Woodbury group. Murphy had been knocked out, Michonne disarmed, and all of them tied up, blindfolded, and dragged to what Andrea had feared would be torture or death.

Except it had turned out to be exactly the opposite. After being questioned briefly by the man the people here called the Governor, who'd apologized for their treatment and insisted they would be allowed to go free as soon as this Murphy/Daryl issue was resolved, she had been led out onto the street… and found paradise waiting for her.

People. Protective walls. No fear. Most people weren't even armed, just going about their daily business as though the world hadn't ended everywhere outside the town's truck and tire-lined limits. It was beautiful, heartening… and it had been ages since Andrea had really felt hope.

Michonne had scowled throughout the whole tour of the town's facilities, obviously looking for some flaw, some reason to cut and run. She thought it was all too good to be true. Andrea, for her part, just wanted a few seconds to bask in the notion of a sanctuary.

Which she would have been happily doing right now, if it hadn't been for one Merle Dixon.

He cornered her outside the makeshift hospital where Murphy – dehydrated and slightly concussed from a blow to the back of the head – still lay resting. Since the end of the Governor's tour, Michonne had been positioned determinedly outside the infirmary doors; waiting for them to try crazy lab experiments or murder Murphy in his sleep or what else, Andrea didn't know. The part of her that had lived through the hard months on the road, through the disappointment of the CDC, through Amy… was grateful for her friend's vigilance. But now it was Andrea's turn to look out for their unconscious companion. And Merle wasn't exactly making it easy for her.

"Look, what about his tattoos?"

Merle glanced through the open doorway and scoffed.

"Ugly as hell. What about 'em?" As though Andrea hadn't seen Merle lifting Murphy's hand on the ride over, examining the word etched there for a long time.

"Well, Daryl didn't have those the last time you saw him, did he? Sure as hell didn't have them the last time I saw him. And tattoo parlors aren't exactly thriving at the moment."

The look Merle shot her made it clear he thought she was being extremely stupid.

Merle. Thought she was stupid.

And she couldn't be outside learning more about Woodbury or helping prepare for tonight's bonfire instead of dealing with this?

"Don't go living up to your name, Blondie. He didn't need no 'parlor.' Those were home done." At her indignantly quirked brow, Merle smirked. "Prison tats. Done with ink and a needle. You can tell."

"Right," Andrea blinked past the term 'prison tats' (what exactly did that say about Murphy? Did it say anything? And at this point, did it matter?) and matched Merle's smirk with her own. "Because Daryl's the type to sit around inking himself up in his free time. Not hunting for food or carving new arrows or doing anything actually useful."

Merle was in her face in an instant.

"You think you know my brother?"

"I think you know him better than that." She held his gaze until he fell back a step, covering his averted gaze with a sniff and a flicked nose. She let a breath rush out as, behind Merle, Michonne leaned slowly back against the wall again, arms crossing. Maybe Andrea was starting to get through to him. "Besides, he couldn't have done them all himself. The ones on his hand and arm, maybe, but the one on his neck?"

Merle rolled his eyes, throwing up his arms in a way that made Andrea fight a flinch. The bladed metal arm didn't exactly frighten her, but it was still hard to look at.

She'd done this to him. She and T-Dog, Morales and Jacqui…

She buried the guilt. It didn't help her right now.

"Well, I don't know," Merle was drawling as she forced herself back to the present. "Maybe Deputy Shane likes to ink people up in his free time."

"Right," she couldn't help a laugh at the mental image: Daryl and Shane huddled up in a shack on some rainy fall day, drawing on each other's arms like school children. "And Daryl let him?"

Merle's eyes slid, again, to the sleeping man, and Andrea's smile fell away. She might not have a lot of love for Merle, but she knew what he was feeling. Losing a sibling was… There were no words. Of course Merle wanted it to be Daryl lying there. Andrea had wanted it to be him too, at first. But it wasn't fair to any of them to pretend.

Stepping forward and touching a hand to Merle's slumping shoulder, she shrugged.

"Everyone's got a twin out there somewhere, right? You can still believe Daryl's out there. This doesn't have to change anything at all."

But if anything, the other man's expression was even more hopeless as she strode back through the doors into daylight.

.-

They'd taken a fair number down, but they'd paid for it in sweat and bullets. The blonde's gun was clicking empty, and the samurai's arms were glistening with sweat and blood. The blonde caught Murphy's eyes, squinted at him, shaking her head slightly.

"We've got to move. Both of you; go."

The samurai was backing toward the door on the other side of the alley, the half-wedged door that had sealed Murphy's fate, and the blonde was stabbing a demon in the side of the skull with a short knife and gesturing for Murphy to follow her.

"Won't work," Murphy started. "It's—" But he cut off as the door was easily kicked open.

A demon grabbed at his arm and the blonde knocked it off.

"Daryl, come on!"

He didn't have time to think "who?" Was too focused on the door and the demon who'd bit him, who he expected to stumble out into daylight any second. Nothing came. And the girls were starting to get bogged down, waiting for him, as the masses came closer. And the blonde one grabbed his arm and jerked him toward the doorway, and his confused objection of "I'll stay. I'm dead anyway," was met with a snort from the samurai, who was sent a scowl in turn by the blonde.

"You're not gonna die," she said firmly, like she knew what was going on more than Murphy did. Which it seemed she just might, since that door had been stuck shut before the girls had showed up.

A demon made a lunge for Murphy's arm and, feeling suddenly protective again over his life, he stabbed forward with his gun hand, jamming the barrel straight into its eye.

"I'm not going to die?" he confirmed, wrenching the gun free.

The blonde shot him a wry grin, tugging him forward again.

"Not today. Not if I have anything to say about it."

They followed the samurai through the open doorway, and into a dark storage room. Blondie flicked on a flashlight while the samurai shoved the door shut.

"Michonne." The other woman ducked, pulled open a bag, and handed the samurai – Michonne – a large plastic zip-cuff, the kind that precincts too cheap to buy metal cuffs gave their cops to patrol with. Michonne took it and looped one end around the handle, the other around a piece of shelving at the door's edge, and then the blonde was tugging Murphy through a second doorway into the main body of the store. Michonne followed behind, in the darkness, and Murphy could make out two more figures, barely visible, trailing after her. Michonne pulled shut the second door, and the blonde turned back to Murphy, grinning wide.

"We didn't use the cuff before in case we needed to get out in a hurry, but we're not going back that way again. Sorry about your hand… That was Michonne."

Murphy's gaze flicked to the warrior, who met his gaze unapologetically.

It took him a second to comprehend their meaning.

"She bit me?"

"Yeah. Look, we've had some bad experiences running into raiding parties. She didn't want you to get the door open and find us, thought it'd scare you off if you thought Walkers were in here."

Smart. Scary.

"Near killed me."

"Yeah," The woman laughed, bobbed her shoulder in a 'what can you do' sort of gesture. "I heard you planning to go out fighting and I realized we couldn't just let someone get himself killed because he thought he was a dead man already. And then I opened the door and—" She laughed again, shaking her head disbelievingly. "I never would've guessed it was you. I mean, what's going on? What's with the accent? I haven't been gone so long I completely forgot you weren't from around here, have I?"

Her smile started to fall at his confused look.

That's right. She thought he was someone else. She'd saved him because she thought he was… what was it?

"Daryl… you're looking at me like you have no clue who I am."

He glanced again to the samurai, who was leaning against the doorway and watching the conversation with seeming disinterest. If Murphy hadn't spent years dealing with practiced fighters, he wouldn't have noticed the way her stance was just this side of tense, ready to dive in the second anything went wrong. He wouldn't be getting any help from her.

"Look, thank you both for the hand back there, but I'm not who you think I am."

The woman stared at him for several seconds. Back in the alley, a demon started slamming into the doors.

"Right. You're not Daryl." She said it teasingly, a smirk playing across her lips. When Murphy only offered a shrug, her brows furrowed. But Murphy didn't have time for her confusion. The bang from the alley had brought his mind back to his brother. Connor… Now that Murphy knew he wasn't dying, the few demons that stood between them and a reunion seemed an incredibly petty obstacle. He should've known their story wasn't about to end like this.

Michonne spoke up from the doorway, an undertone, clearly directed at the other woman.

"Could you be wrong?"

The blonde's head shook.

"I… don't know how."

"Saved him 'cause you vouched for him. Said you knew him. We're not trusting a stranger."

Exasperated, throwing her hands up: "Michonne, I don't know. I'm telling you, he looks just like—"

Something long and thin, like the dull end of a blade, slammed into base of Murphy skull. And that was the last thing he remembered before waking up, hours later, to the sound of the two women quietly arguing.

.-

Murphy sat at the edge of the too-soft bed, elbows on his knees and fingers clenched behind his head. In front of him, Andrea squared off against the scowling man, tone placating.

"Merle, we've been through this. I'm just as confused about it as you are."

The man's feet – the only part of him Murphy could see from his position, stalked toward Andrea. Michonne, ever the protector, shifted forward as well.

"Seems to me," Merle drawled, tone deceptively calm, "like that ain't much possible. See, I get left like bait in a bear trap by your sorry group, have to watch you go running off that rooftop without so much as a goodbye kiss. Then you show up again six months later, dragging along someone who looks a hell of a lot like my baby brother, tattoos aside, 'cept he don't know who I am and is talking like a goddamn pot-licker. So tell me, Blondie, what the hell am I supposed to think?"

He stalked in another step, and Murphy pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the dizziness and exhaustion that made the room sway around him as he darted in front of the larger man.

"Look, enough of this shit. I've got a brother, you great walking can opener. And he sure as hell's not you."

Merle's eyes flashed, and if there wasn't so much rage there, Murphy might've thought he looked hurt. Then he snorted.

"Right. So where is this other brother of yours, huh? I don't see him." Gesturing to Andrea and the ever-silent Michonne, "They seen him? Anyone ever actually get a look at this mystery brother, Darlyna?"

Murphy grabbed the front of the man's shirt.

"Shut your fucking redneck gob and quit calling me—"

"Can everybody please just calm down?"

Andrea again, her voice high and agitated. And never let it be said that Murphy MacManus caused a woman undue stress, so he spun away, took a deep breath, and worked to loosen his fingers from their ready fists. When he turned back, Merle was still watching him, but there was confusion, not rage, in his face now. Andrea caught Murphy's eyes and nodded gratefully, then turned until she was fully, again, facing Merle.

"Look, I've been with him for almost a month and I didn't believe it at first either, but I am sure this isn't Daryl. I've been thinking about it and… is it possible that you had another brother? Or brothers," she amended even as Murphy started bristling again. "Maybe your dad…"

And she trailed off, clearly unwilling to speak any accusations about Merle's family situation, but the implication was clear. Merle, far from being offended, only laughed.

"You asking if my daddy snuck around on the side? Sure he did. Saw strange women in his bed more'n I ever saw my own mom… and that was before she went and got herself burned halfway to hell."

Milton, from where he stood at the far edge of the room, well out of the line of fire, shot a sharp look Murphy's way at that, but Murphy only shrugged at the sad fate of a woman he'd never known.

Meanwhile Andrea, seeming relieved at discovering the solution to the long-held mystery, smiled faintly and nodded.

"Ok, so—"

"But that ain't it," Merle cut in, grimacing and shifting his gaze down to the blade glinting on his own arm. "See, my baby brother, he's the spitting image of our dear Mom. Probably why Daddy couldn't stand the sight of him."

And then he looked up at Murphy when he said that, like he trying to make him flinch, like he was looking to wound. Which Murphy was sure would've worked just fine, if they'd been talking about him and not some stranger. Again, he absorbed the news with a pointedly blank gaze, and when Merle looked back toward Andrea there was a decidedly unsettled look in his pale eyes.

"Ok," Andrea was ignoring the cutting comments, and Murphy remembered with a smirk that she'd said she worked in law before the Revelation. Wasn't too far from her old job right now, was she? Mapping out the facts. Setting screwed up families straight. Except Murphy had his own family, and Merle Dixon didn't figure anywhere into it. Andrea was bobbing her head thoughtfully, continuing: "So… while your dad was sleeping around, maybe your mom also—"

But that didn't cut, and that couldn't stand. Murphy felt his fists clenching again, and now it was he who stalked forward, cutting around Andrea, facing her and scowling.

"I've got a Ma, alright? She raised me, and I know fucking well enough she gave birth to me. I grew up in Ireland, not this ugly corner of the earth, with my Ma and my brother." He paused, seething, and then added as an afterthought, "And I've got a Da too. So both of you stop trying to fit me into your sad little fantasy where I'm some magical thread back to your lost friend. He probably died on that fucking farm, alright? And I'm not him."

.-

"He's gone. He's fucking gone!" Murphy's foot slammed into the garage door, and the pain helped for the barest second before the rage built back up and he was spinning back to scowl at the pair of women behind him. "He wouldn't have just run off. He came for me, fucking demonspawn or no. He came back to this alley and you two were just sitting in that store and let him come and go and…" His fist clenched, and Michonne's hand went back to her blade. The blonde was staring at Murphy with a mix of guilt and that same disbelief that hadn't gone away since he'd first revealed he wasn't her friend three hours back.

He spun away, palm slamming into the wall (even this mad he had the sense not to break his fingers punching brick) before grabbing his knife and wrenching it free. The garage door swung open with a hollow squeal, and Murphy stared down at the piece of metal, dented and near-useless, in his hand.

The blonde, Andrea, took a small step toward him, and he shoved the knife through his belt before he got the urge to use it.

He wouldn't use it. He'd never use it.

But shit, he wanted to stab something.

"Daryl…"

"Murphy," he corrected – again – sending the woman a look. His gaze slid to Michonne, who looked wholly unapologetic despite it being her sword slamming into his skull that'd left him unconscious long enough to miss Connor in the first place.

"Murphy," Andrea amended, though the tone was too placating to be sincere. She still thought he was her friend, thought he was just screwed up somehow: delusional, confused.

Jesus Christ, was he confused. A few hours ago he was a dead man walking, and now his brother was gone (he'd just missed him. He wasn't dead. If anyone could survive alone in this world, it was Connor fucking MacManus), and he was left in the company of a near-silent samurai warrior and a crazy woman who thought he was her missing friend.

They'd saved his life. They'd put it in danger in the first place.

"He thinks I'm dead."

And he couldn't think straight because if he'd thought Connor was dead… if he ever for one second thought Connor was dead… Connor wasn't dead. Connor would never be dead. Connor would fight off the hordes of hell hundreds at a time and still stand there smirking when the smoke cleared. That was his brother; Connor'd always been the strong one.

…Unless he saw no more reason to fight. Unless he gave up.

"It's not safe out here," Michonne murmured, and the ringing slide of steel on sheathe alerted him that it was more than an idle warning. "Your friend's long gone, if he ever came through."

Her meaning was clear, but Andrea took another step forward, leaning in to catch Murphy's eye.

"I'm sorry. If we'd heard him…" She shot a glance back to Michonne, grimaced, shrugged. "We can't do anything more here. Maybe you'll find him again outside town, but we've got to go."

Murphy's eyes followed her as she stepped back.

"I'm not him, you know."

Andrea's gaze flicked to his throat, down to his hand, and Murphy thought that just maybe she believed it.

"Regardless, I'm not leaving you to die on your own out here. We're all making it out of this town… Murphy."

Murphy nodded, the last of the rage bleeding out of him. And together, the three of them ran.

.-

TBC

.-

A/N: So that's it! Murphy mystery solved, and we've got some more friends in the mix. Let me know what you think of the revelation and about Michonne and Andrea being brought into the story. Thanks a zillion times over to my reviewers for last chapter! I didn't get a chance to respond to each of you individually last week (busybusy work stuff) but I hope you know how much each one of your reviews means to me.