A/N: There's some heavy details of the attack suffered by Daryl & Scout as children as far as injuries and recovery in this chapter.
November 22, 2010
~*~ CP ~*~
Carol drops the empty office boxes in front of the big file cabinet. Merle's going to move it to her office, but first, it needs to be emptied of years' worth of personal and business legal papers that are now effectively obsolete. He said she could throw them out, but it feels wrong, so she's going to store them in the attic instead.
The first two drawers are all a miscellaneous history of Blackbird Construction. The name makes her smile, wondering how many people got the name in connection to Merle's own. She tapes the two boxes closed and labels them.
The third drawer is all paperwork related to the kids' daily lives, neatly labeled. She wonders if he's ever misplaced so much as a progress report since he became their sole parent. She's knows artwork and more personal items are already stored, but these will go with them.
The last drawer she hopes is just a sign of how much Merle trusts her, or maybe needs her between him and the memories it can evoke.
She tucks away the divorce papers and the amended custody paperwork, including copies of the succinct yearly reports Lilliana was sent about the children while they were underage. It's a checkered history of his determination to keep his kids from someone he's afraid will hurt them. It does provoke one question, though. She knows Blackbird was wildly successful in the last seven years, and he worked in a well-paid field before that, but the payments to his ex-wife are substantial even in the early days.
The answer comes in the next folder she packs away.
The little boy who grew up so poor alongside his teenage mother that he didn't even have his own bedroom in that little shotgun house inherited his mother's family's entire estate.
She pulls the personal letter from Hannah Austell to her oldest great grandson out of the legal paperwork. That can be stored, but the sweet words of an apologetic grandmother should stay somewhere more personal. Maybe there's something to the concept of karma, because the stubborn old lady outlived her husband, son, and grandson to pass on everything Merle - and Daryl - were denied when Ava Austell 'shamed' her father by taking up with Will Dixon.
He sold off everything except the investments and used the money to start his company, to raise his kids in a comfortable life far removed from his own, and set up trusts for each kid that make her realize that Cricket would have been a rare debt-free doctor after medical school. And he paid for years to keep Lilliana away.
She sighs as she tucks that one into the storage box and turns to the ones she truly dreads. The state of Georgia's error in setting Will Dixon free too early ended in a settlement to cover medical and therapy expenses for his two young victims. She doesn't think it's enough for what she's seeing in the images in the settlement files. Part of her wants to hide the folders away. Another needs to bear witness to what the psychopath did to harm two people she dearly loves.
When she's done, she tucks those folders away too and puts enough box tape on that box to need a welding torch to get in. Maybe Merle was right that this one should be destroyed.
Then she locks herself in the office to cry for those two terrified children whose ghosts still live on in Daryl and Scout. Will Dixon died too easy a death.
~*~ MD ~*~
Merle relaxes into the deck chair, his feet up on the rail. Like most November days, the temperature feels nice outside, although that will change rapidly as night falls. Shane's at the table too, although he's sitting more upright and nursing a glass of Maker's Mark. They're watching the remainder of the Dixon clan, sans Carol and Lori in the kitchen, chase after escaped lambs in the distance.
"Sure you don't want to go help?" he teases.
Shane snorts. "Hell no."
He turns when he hears the kitchen door open. Carol and Lori step out, but oddly enough are holding hands as if one or both needs support.
His feet hit the deck and Shane turns too. "Everything okay?"
"Just... needed to ask you something."
They both sit and Carol reaches out to take Merle's hand. "I cleaned out the file cabinet in your office today." He nods, aware that she was going to. "I looked at things to sort what to keep and what not to."
And now he knows why she was quiet at supper. "You saw the case files for compensation from the state."
She nods. "I didn't read them all, but the photos..." He sees tears well up in her eyes.
Lori looks stricken, and he hopes like hell it's sympathy and not that she saw them too. "I've been meaning to ask you about it," she says softly, "because Daryl's said some things here and there and there's the scar." She runs her fingers over the spot in her head where Daryl's worst scar is.
"Nowadays they call it traumatic brain injury," he begins, voice hoarser than he likes. "Based on the pattern of the skull fracture, they're pretty sure Will kicked him in the head while on the floor, and neither he nor Scout remember most of the attack, thank fuck."
"He was twelve, right?" Lori says shakily. Shane's quiet, just watching, and Merle wonders how much Scout's opened up to him.
"Yeah. Scout was nine." He sighs. "They did surgery on them both, but Daryl's was the worst. Had to remove skull fragments and a blood clot that nearly killed him all on its own. They kept him in a medically induced coma for a week. He had to relearn how to walk and his fine motor skills were shot to hell for about two years. Had seizures for about that long too. Maybe the only saving grace of him being a kid was a doctor told me they think it's why he recovered fully since the brain's even more adaptable.
"They told me he could have mood swings, be angry, depressed, anxious, you name it. Remember telling the hospital shrink, 'no fucking kidding.' He settled most on anxious. Had to know where the girls were all the time. School district made accommodations for them to learn at home, even let Cricket. Was the school counselor and not the damned expensive bitch y'all heard about during the fight that was the most help. She suggested Guam, because Daryl associated that with safety from Will Dixon. Didn't matter that he was dead now to Daryl's mind. He didn't watch him die like Scout did.
"When he was tiny, I told him we were getting on a plane to go far away to a special place Will could never find. Didn't think he remembered it, since he was only two, but the counselor thinks it settled into his psyche because he was safe and pampered there. She also thought his issues were compounded because each time Will became his nightmare, he lost his mother."
He glances out to the pasture areas, where for some reason catching lambs has devolved a mass wrestling match. The carefree looks of it makes the darkness recede a little.
"He struggled in school for years until they let him take his GED. Something about classes at the community college worked better for him."
"It's why the other kids have all the athletics and activities and he doesn't, right?" Carol asks.
"Yeah. By the time he was fifteen or so, he probably could have, but he didn't have the grades to be allowed. Ironic that he ended up with his first college degree by eighteen. He took that environmental tech degree and went to work for the state. I was both shocked as shit and not when he came and told me he was going to the DNR Academy. Thought he gave up on wanting to be a cop, but it made sense he took that route."
"Less exposure to the day-to-day shit like domestics," Shane comments. "Might be a lot more exposure to drunks though, working the lakes, especially. Assholes always think DUI don't apply on a boat."
Merle laughs. "Sounds just like his favorite bitch about the job."
Carol's not part of the brief levity, and he understands. Those images are fresh in her mind, which is evident when she speaks. "The head injury isn't all of it."
"No, but it was the worst, and I think it overshadowed his other injuries enough he never even thinks about the rest. He got his ribs broken a few years back in a tussle with a poacher and actually said something about he was glad it never happened before."
"The report said he had seven broken ribs."
"Yeah. Plus a broken collarbone, broken cheekbone, broken arm, and damage to his liver and kidneys."
"He was trying to kill him," Lori says softly and Merle meets her gaze evenly.
"The one thing Scout did seem to remember was Will screaming he was gonna finish the job he started. He probably would have if he hadn't lost a fight with his own body and a nine-year-old girl. He broke her leg bad enough she needed surgery to fix it, along with ribs and jaw. They didn't really even question her because of that last one."
"He thinks she saved his life."
"They don't know how much of Will's injuries were from Daryl and how much from Scout, other than they can confirm she hit him in the head hard enough with an aluminum baseball bat that he had a skull fracture of his own. Her bloody fingerprints were the only ones on the bat. Daryl's hands show signs he fought as hard a hundred-pound kid can against a grown man.'
"Defending the girls he hid away. Cricket said Scout thought Daryl was dead," Lori says softly.
Shane makes the connection. "She wasn't trying to defend Daryl. She was trying to kill Will."
Merle nods. He can still remember the absolute fury in Scout's eyes. "Her broken leg showed signs she was upright, probably worsened it herself."
"He died of a stroke, officially?" Shane asks.
The 'officially' makes him remember what one of the responding officers told him. It hadn't mattered what the outcome of the autopsy was, Will Dixon's cause of death would not implicate his traumatized daughter. The cops were livid a violent murderer was free after only ten years in prison.
"Officially, he aspirated on his own vomit following a stroke. Far as I know, it's even the truth, because Scout's recount of after is that she waited til he stopped breathing after he started vomiting before getting her sisters and going for help."
He lets them decide on their own about that stroke versus the man's close contact with a baseball bat.
"I don't think I'll ever know how Josefa, her grandma, worked her back from being a ball of constant fury to the control she has now. Woman survived the Japanese occupation of the island as a kid, so I suppose she had some expertise in trauma the shrinks lacked."
"Daryl says the carver he worked with told him stories about the occupation. Says he felt if the old man could survive all that, he could get better too."
"Sounds about right. I thought it a little crazy, putting a knife in the hand of a kid with seizures, but it did him a world of good. With Scout, Josefa talked and her grandfather, Robert, taught her to run. They ran all over that damn island."
And none of them ever batted an eye about the fact that Scout couldn't sleep unless it was in the same room with Daryl. He thinks these three would understand, but he's never forgotten the pain Carrie caused his brother by implying there was something incestuous about the fact that Scout shared a room with Daryl until they moved to this place when she was fifteen. He'd look in on them where they kept the heads of their twin beds pushed together. Daryl would sleep on his stomach, and Scout would have one hand gripped around his arm at the elbow, fingers on his pulse. In the earliest days, she'd count softly to fall asleep.
It stopped when Jazz arrived, but probably because the baby spent his first year sleeping in a crib between twin beds in their room. Merle relocated the family here after someone made it obvious they still lived a little close to where the less savory Dixon reputation remained. The three years here, in the original house, are the only ones in her entire life that Scout shared a room solely with her sisters.
An enlisted man's pay rarely stretched to three bedroom rental prices easily. They weren't even eligible for a three bedroom on base until after Daryl turned six, which wasn't until their second base after Guam. Keeping a bunk bed in Daryl's room even when he was separate was a necessity, because Scout usually preferred his company to her much younger sister. Daryl only lived with them here a little over a year, already over eighteen at the time.
He relays that, trusting none of them are the pervert Carrie was.
Shane actually smiles a little. "She still does that in her sleep. Wake up all the time with her fingers right here." He touches his inner elbow.
"Nurse at the hospital taught her that, because it can be done unobtrusively and works well on children."
"She touches a pulse points a lot," Lori says, looking thoughtful. "The people she loves. Ankles, knees, wrists, elbows. I don't think she consciously realizes she does it."
Merle knows what she's talking about. Last time they had a family movie night, Scout was using Shane as a backrest like she usually does, one hand around the back of his knee. The other reached out periodically to toy with baby Christian's foot - at the ankle - where the baby was in her sister's lap above them on the couch.
Carol's touching her own arm with a slight smile, putting two and two together about Scout taking her by the elbow when she wants to talk.
Merle turns and sees the lamb wranglers trekking back. "Carol? I'm not sure they left any mud down there."
She stands and giggles. "That's gotta be on purpose. There aren't any muddy areas deep enough to fall completely in."
He grins. "Go threaten to hose them down in the yard then."
"Merle, it's November!"
"It was over seventy today. They'll live."
She swats him and hurries off to guide them around - and to shower facilities that don't involve walking through living areas.
"You distracted her on purpose," Lori says and he nods.
"It's harder for her to see, but you two probably can. What happened to them? It was horrific and there are echoes even today. But it's a building block of who they are. Long as you can accept that, it's another thing that adds to the healing."
He stands to go after Carol, but stops with a hand to Lori's shoulder. "Keep taking care of him, Lori. You both deserve the happiness you have now."
He's not glad he had to relate the struggle, but he is glad the two people most important to Daryl and Scout are better informed now.
~*~ DD ~*~
Daryl grins at Scout where she's helping with the fencing that is going to enclose both their cabins so that Asskicker can roam free between her homes.
"You know we're going to have redo your place, right? And better before the baby than after." With no one else around, he doesn't bother with English.
They escaped Carol's herding folks to shower by lieu of still wanting to get in some work before dark. With supper not til seven, there's plenty of time to get half an hour on the fence and still shower even if they use work lights to get in another half hour.
The fence is panels, ones Merle deemed not quite what he wanted for exterior fences, but they're testing out using it for smaller scale security. It goes unsaid between them that if walkers ever get loose in Homestead, heavy duty fences around safe havens will save lives. There's no other reason for using the six foot fencing.
"Yeah. You volunteering to help?" She flashes him a grin as she shifts a panel into place, and he feels a familiar rush of relief to see her moving strong and casually after so many months of recovery.
"Considering how much you and Shane helped here, you really going to ask that?"
"You know what they say about assume..."
"You are an ass." Then seeing the smirk on her face, "don't you start talking about your ass, sister." He drops back to English to emphasize the familial word.
She laughs and is quiet until they've got another panel firmly in place. "Your guys from Thomson call us your siblings."
He shrugs. After the divorce, when he took the transfer his sympathetic boss offered, it just seemed like so much bullshit not to call it like it is. "Funny thing is, that is what my birth certificate implies you are."
She hums a little. "Makes sense with what you've been calling me since Atlanta."
"World ended. Fuck any ideas that says I'm something else than what I am. Who's gonna bitch anyway?"
She drops the tool she's using back into its spot on the belt, and it's not enough warning for him not to have to drop his to the ground in order to return the unexpected hug.
"I'm so sorry," she says, sounding young and plaintive.
He rubs her back, puzzled as hell what she's apologizing for, so he asks.
"For taking the second enlistment instead of coming home."
"Was never mad about the second enlistment, so much as what you were doing with it. Couldn't even just come see you easy." Hell, if she'd been stateside when he realized he was truly losing Abby three years ago, he probably would have relocated to where she was. Instead he got her for two weeks between Cyprus and the Philippines. She was in the middle of MSG School for the divorce, with a flight straight from Virginia to Tanzania.
He leads them over to sit on the ground next to one of the completed fence panels. They lean against each other and he marvels a little at how childhood habits come back. Maybe it's the weeks spent helping her in San Antonio that brought it all back so easily.
"So fucking glad you weren't over there when this went down."
"I'm guessing they probably recalled most military before it got really bad. I can't see them risking leaving assets for other country to appropriate, and you know they knew how bad it was going long before the local governments did."
He smiles a little. "No telling who you would have dragged out of North Carolina with you. I'm kind of partial to the folks you did bring though."
"Like Lori?"
It isn't something they've discussed yet. The first time he told her, she kissed his cheek and teased him about being glad he didn't stick to the better off alone vow. Then she acted as if Lori's been his partner all along.
"Well, technically, I found her before you did.". He nudges her a little. "And him. Although could have gone without knowing exactly that they were up to in the woods."
She turns to him, eyes merry and attempts shock. "Are you saying you saw my husband naked?"
Daryl groans. "That makes it worse, not better."
She just laughs and reaches for his hand, bringing it to her cheek. She leans in to it, fingers pressed against his pulse. "I'm glad she makes you happy, but this time, I promise I will not be wandering off if things don't work and you need me."
"Can live with that." He thinks about how happy she is now, as if the darkness that has been a passenger for so long has disbursed. "If I knew you had a thing for cops, would have lured you home years ago with one of my buddies."
It's worth the smack. She snuggles close and sticks her cold nose to his collarbone. "Missed you all that time."
He just holds her close. The damn fence isn't urgent. "Missed you too."
He knows he shouldn't have such a clear memory from age three, but he does: Lilliana placing the newborn in his arms and whispering, "She is your treasure. Guard her and she will grow up to guard you too one day."
Scout was such a tiny baby that Merle quips she only topped five pounds because a nurse had her thumb on the scale. Her skin was still newborn pale enough that his sun browned skin actually looked darker. Even in his own small arms, she seemed like a wisp of thing, a scrap of magic stolen from one of the stories of fairies his first mama told him.
It doesn't matter that she's as tall as he is and probably could take him apart without much effort. Times like this, feeling her breath against the side of his neck in imitation of the baby she once was, he remembers that feeling of stolen magic and smiles.
~*~ LG ~*~
Lori tugs the quilt into place, wriggling to find a comfortable spot and thinks she might worship Jacqui and Glenn for bringing back a full body pregnancy pillow for each of the pregnant women.
But Asskicker has a new trick tonight. As Lori tries to settle, the baby hooks her foot into Lori's ribs and shoves outward. Her "ow, ow, dammit, ow" summons Daryl, who looks torn between sympathy and amusement at the distortion of her pregnant belly.
He does help her roll to her hands and knees, which dislodges Asskicker's position. Then he leans in to chastise the baby. "Karate's one thing, baby girl, but leave your mama's ribs where they are."
As if she's responding, the baby thumps right on cue. Daryl laughs and helps her settle back down, going to rub her back without any need for her to request it. "Next checkup's after Thanksgiving, right?"
"Yeah. Saturday, since both yours and Shane's teams are off." She's almost 27 weeks now, and Cricket is starting off the third trimester with an exam. "Every two weeks going forward."
He hums as he works and she drifts sleepily as strained muscles relax. It's a little amazing how much he seems to enjoy the massages, working from her back to her legs with skill he could have made a living from before the world ended. She asked him once where he learned, and the sad smile came along with the fact he learned as part of Scout's recovery.
"You and Scout okay?" she asks. Carl seemed pensive when he returned from his failed errand to remind them about supper.
"Just needed a little quiet time," he replies, settling behind her. His arm tucking around her belly brings the surgical scar on his forearm in her line of sight. She's seen it many times, but tonight it is almost too vivid a reminder of Merle's words. It's not just the injury, but the worry that tinged his voice as he told of the recovery period and Carrie's ugly implication.
"Merle told me today, about everything."
He doesn't even stiffen up. When he speaks, she realizes he's relieved. "Didn't want to have to talk about it, but it's good you know."
She reaches up to cup the back of his neck and he takes it for the request it is, kissing her tenderly. Rather than dwell on the awful parts, she asks about Guam. "What was your favorite part of living there?"
"Being outside. In the ocean, it didn't matter my legs didn't always cooperate. I could just float. Had to watch out for jellyfish and stone fish and such, but I might've lived on the beach if they let me. There's reefs that keep the current out, and the water is so damned blue and full of fish. Always wanted to take Abby one day."
"Sounds like she would have loved it too."
"Yeah. And my Nana would have loved her.". There's a wistfulness in his voice when he mentions his grandmother. "Carrie always said it was too long a plane ride when we were married. Probably right. So, the times I visited, they didn't go along."
"How long was it?"
"Depends on whether or not you wanted to fly through Korea or stay in the states. Couple hours to a western airport like Houston, then eight hours to Hawaii, eight more to Guam, thereabouts."
She can understand that counselor's idea now. To a little kid, all those plane rides definitely would seem like putting a lot of distance between him and his monster. She hadn't realized it was so far away, thinking more like trips to Hawaii a few of her luckier friends made.
"Tell me about your family there."
And she drowses as he describes his fierce half-Chinese grandmother, her laidback half-American husband, and the aunt that sounds like most people describe their mother. It's so different from what she imagined, even after getting over herself when she came here. So much tragedy he could be angry about, yet he's focused on the time he taught his baby cousin to build sandcastles and walked through the jungle with his grandfather.
She doesn't think she would have managed such faith in people, but with the benefit of his warmth around her and his voice lulling her to sleep, she's glad he's the survivor he is.
~*~ SW ~*~
Shane closes the door behind him and at the sight of Scout curled under the blankets on the bed, feels a tendril of worry take hold. Carl came back from a trip to remind the two missing family members they were missing supper with a request to bring something home.
He slides the container into the fridge and goes to kneel next to the bed. She stirs then, reaching out to cup his jaw. As her fingers press into his pulse, he remembers Merle's words from earlier and holds still to let her keep count. Normally, he doesn't hold still long enough for the full count, going for a kiss after a few heartbeats.
He can see in her eyes that she recognizes a change in his response.
"I need you."
He moves away, rocking back on his heels and beginning to tug away his clothes while she watches, eyes dark with a need to forget. When he pulls back the blankets, she's not naked after her shower as he expects, but wearing one of his shirts. He eases the well-worn Kings County shirt over her head.
Now he kisses her, sliding his own fingers against her pulse point and feeling her react with a moan he feels more as a vibration against his fingers than a sound against his lips. Despite her words, he doesn't rush, tasting her skin both pristine and scarred.
chapter gap due to rating
He rolls them to their sides. With a kiss on her shoulder, he asks what most people would have before sex, but he knows by now is better to wait with his wife. "What's wrong?"
She catches his free hand and brings it to rest along the bottom of her ribs. "Just reminded of my own selfishness and couldn't get out of the dark mood."
"Something happen with Daryl?"
"Not really. Just cleared the air a little. It reminded me how if that damned IED didn't send me stateside, there's no real telling where I would've been."
He hates that she suffered, but he's never going to regret meeting her. "You would've found a way home."
"Maybe. I was so selfish. My family needed me, my big brother needed me, and I just kept chasing the next promotion."
"Can't change the past, but you're doing a damned good job of looking after them now."
She giggles suddenly. "You traumatized Daryl you know."
"How's that?"
"Sex in the woods with a hunter on the roam, how naughty."
"Jesus Christ. Tell me he didn't."
"Oh yeah."
That's just not something he wants to think about, even if she finds it funny he got seen screwing with his ex by her own relative, so he goes to fetch a warm wash cloth. By the time he has them both ready for bed, she's drowsy instead of amused.
"Shane?"
"Yeah, babe?"
"If I go off kilter, forget what's important, you'll bring me back, right?"
He thinks of the little girl so fierce and vengeful, grown into a woman who rides the edge, and knows that just like himself, there's a darkness harbored within. He knows she's his conscience, and he's hers.
"Always."