AN: Here we go, another chapter here.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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"But he's OK?" Daryl asked. "He's really Merle and he's really alive?"

"He's really consumed by fever," Carol responded. "And Alice is really surprised that he's still alive. That it didn't kill him."

Daryl laughed to himself. He couldn't explain the way that he felt just knowing that his brother was alive. For what felt like decades he'd lived with the guilt that he'd killed his brother. Not directly, of course, but the result had been the same. He'd left him there to die. In his mind, Daryl could see the image he'd created—built piece by piece from the words that he'd heard too many times in taming—of Merle dying while defending their own little Alamo in the wilderness.

But Merle was alive.

Daryl felt like a weight had been lifted off of him and that was just the guilt. It didn't begin to cover the fact that he was actually pleased that his big brother was still alive.

"Can't nothin' kill Merle but Merle," Daryl mused.

"What?" Carol asked. Daryl hadn't spoken the words very clearly. They weren't meant to be heard, really. He'd only accidentally said them out loud.

"Can't nothin' kill Merle but Merle," Daryl repeated, this time making sure that Carol could hear him. "That's what I always believed. Before all of this. Merle was hell-bent and determined to kill himself with drugs and drinking too damn much. Fucked up every which way he turned for most of his life. He always said he was immortal. Couldn't a damn thing kill him. Like they used to say—ten foot tall and bullet proof. That was Merle. I never figured he was immortal, but I figured that if he died, it would be Merle that killed Merle."

"But you thought he was dead," Carol pointed out.

Daryl hummed and nodded his head in agreement with her.

"Yeah," he said. "But—I didn't think none of this shit was possible back when I was figuring that Merle was damn near immortal. I sure wasn't expecting this. None of it. Not the Dead. Not the prisons. Not this place. They told me his ass was dead, I didn't have no reason not to believe 'em."

Carol toweled off slowly enough that the air in the room had probably dried her body by now. Absentmindedly, though, she continued to scrub at her skin with the terrycloth rectangle. Daryl watched her for a moment, lost in whatever thoughts she was thinking, and then he finally cleared his throat to catch her attention and draw her back to him.

"What'cha thinking?" He asked.

She offered him a soft smile that was barely more than the raised corner of her mouth.

"Wondering what it feels like," Carol said, "to just have someone come back to life like that."

Daryl swallowed. He knew she was probably thinking about her daughter, Sophia. Whenever she got that far away look in her eyes she was almost always thinking about Sophia. She rarely mentioned any of her other dead and Daryl knew it was because they either rested peacefully in her mind—like her parents—or because she never wanted to see them resurrected—like her husband.

"Feels weird," Daryl admitted. "I'd give him up. Took what they said to be truth. Now there's a new truth. I don't think my mind really knows what to do with it."

Carol hummed quietly. The trance was broken, though, and she stopped toweling off her already dry skin. She slipped out of the bedroom and Daryl listened to her bumping around in their small bathroom while she returned the towel to its hanger to dry properly. While she was in there she brushed her teeth and took care of her other nightly business. When she returned to the bedroom where Daryl was waiting for her, she'd be ready to go to bed—that was until she was forced up again by the ever-bothersome call of nature.

Carol came back into the bedroom as naked as she'd left it. She went straight to her drawer to burrow through for something to sleep in and Daryl hummed at her to catch her attention again.

"Don't bother with it," Daryl said.

"I'm tired," Carol said, some apology in her tone.

Daryl laughed to himself and patted the bed.

"Didn't mean that," he said. "Just that you don't need to be all bound up all night. There ain't no need in it. If it makes you feel better, I'll stay all the way over here. All the way on my side."

Carol shook her head at him.

"I didn't mean that either," Carol said. She abandoned her efforts to find something to put on and came toward the bed. She sat on the edge of it, still not ready to sink under the covers and curl next to Daryl. Her nightly routine wasn't done yet. She combed her fingers through her hair, the ends of it starting to curl in one direction or another, and then she picked up the bottle of lotion from the nightstand that was practically one of her prized possessions. Slowly and methodically, she began to slather her body with the cream, starting with her feet.

"What can you tell me about him?" Daryl asked.

"What?" Carol asked.

"My brother," Daryl said. "Merle. What can you tell me about him?"

Carol stopped her work with the lotion for a moment.

"He's got an infection," Carol said. "A bad one. Daryl—he lost his hand. His right one. Alice said he could lose the arm up to the elbow if the antibiotics don't do what she wants. She might have to take more of it off—humanely, of course. They—he said that they chained him up. He had a fight. Some disagreement with an officer. They chained him up outside in a pen. They left him there. No water and no food. But they put the water where he could see it. Just out of reach. They put the hacksaw within reach. Then they left him there."

Daryl winced at the thought of it.

He truly wished that he could say that he was shocked. He wished that he could pretend to be horrified that such a thing would happen—that it would be allowed to happen. He wasn't really all that surprised, though. He didn't know anyone that had experienced the same thing in prison, but he could see that kind of cruelty in the eyes of some of the officers. Given half the chance, the same thing and worse would've happened to any of them a number of times.

Merle was just unlucky enough to piss someone off who got the chance.

"You think the antibiotics is gonna work?" Daryl asked.

"I don't know," Carol said.

"Didn't ask what you knowed," Daryl said. "Asked what you think."

"I hope they will," Carol said. She let the words drop in such a way as to let Daryl know that she had no opinion beyond her hope that the medicine would do what it was supposed to do and would prove stronger than the infection.

"D'you talk to him?" Daryl asked.

"Not much more than I already told you," Carol said, returning to her lotion now. "I told him you were alive. I guess that means—I told Alice too. I told Richardson—the max guard? But I don't know if he really heard me. He's been reading a detective novel all day and he's been pretty wrapped up in that. Anyway—I just told him that you were alive. That I knew you were his brother and that—that you were alive. That you were here. That you're my mate."

Daryl cringed a little at the word. He didn't care for the fact that they were called mates. He didn't know what else he might classify them as—and honestly mate might be just as good as any other title—but he didn't like the way that it made them sound like they were nothing more than beasts who picked each other out of the pack to reproduce for the good of the species.

The title might be accurate, but it wasn't flattering or comforting. He and Carol had briefly discussed it, and had talked about figuring out some kind of way to make the word their own, but they hadn't figured out, yet, how to do that. Until they figured out a way to make it their own, it wasn't ever going to be anything less than a word that had the ability to make his skin crawl.

"Bet he got a kick outta that," Daryl said, choosing not to discuss vocabulary with Carol again.

She laughed to herself.

"I guess he might have," she said. "Mostly he just—insulted you."

Daryl chuckled.

"That's my brother," he said. "Merle's always been an asshole."

"And you tolerate it?" Carol asked.

"Out of all the assholes I've known in my life, Merle's been the least hard to deal with," Daryl said. "He just runs off at the mouth. Hell—I don't think he means half of what he says. I don't even think he realizes what the hell he's saying. He's just running his mouth because he likes the sound of his own damn voice so much."

"He said it took them giving you a mate for you to have a woman in your life," Carol said.

"He ain't all wrong," Daryl said.

Carol looked at him over her shoulder, pausing with her lotion once more, and shook her head gently.

"It's not very nice, Daryl," Carol said. "And it certainly isn't flattering. I chose you. Before we even got here. Remember? They didn't give me to you. I wasn't a gift."

"I remember," Daryl said. "I chose you as much as you chose me. But Merle don't know that. Wouldn't matter anyway. He'd still bust my balls over it just because that's what he does. They give him a mate?"

Carol shrugged her shoulders.

"He'll get one eventually," Carol said. "Out of the women he came with."

"Any decent ones?" Daryl asked.

"Not that I'm sure deserve your brother," Carol responded.

Daryl might have taken offense to the statement if it had come from anyone else. Actually, if it had come from anyone else, he would have taken offense. When Carol said it, though, it didn't sound offensive. It sounded like an accurate assessment of Merle Dixon.

"When do I get to see him?" Daryl asked.

Carol turned and held the lotion bottle in his direction.

"Back?" She asked.

Daryl worked his way out from under the cover and got into position to slather the lotion on her back. He'd offered to do it before and she enjoyed it so much that it had become a nightly ritual. He wasn't opposed to it, though, because he liked it too. He liked the silky lotion under his palms. He liked the way that it felt gliding over Carol's skin. He liked that it gave him just another way to touch her that she never turned down, even if she wasn't quite in the mood for anything else.

And he liked the soft moans that she made when it felt good because he liked knowing that, even without touching her in any way that might be leading to sex, he could make her make those noises.

"Alice said you get to see him as soon as she can get you a pass," Carol said. "He's under lock-down right now. All the max prisoners are. But as soon as she can come up with a way to get you over there—she's going to. Until then? Everyone has to hold tight. You and Merle both. Doing anything else would be stupid and stupid, around here, can be fatal."

"Yeah," Daryl said. "I get it. Understand. Heard you loud and clear."

Her muscles tightened just at the thought that he might do something. Daryl felt them tense under his palms. He let silence fall between them as he gently kneaded them, using more lotion than was absolutely necessary, and when he brought his palms down to the small of her back, he slipped them around to gently knead the soft skin of her stomach.

There was no proof, yet, of the baby that they were assured was there. There was no change in Carol's physical appearance to indicate its presence. But they knew that it was there. Daryl knew that it was there—and he knew that he was always allowed to touch her, gently, where he knew the baby to be resting and hiding from the world while it worked on the hard job of growing bigger than what Carol explained to be something like a decent sized grain of sand.

Carol covered his hands with her own and leaned back into him, so Daryl scooted forward enough to press his chest to her back.

"You tell him about the baby?" Daryl asked.

"No," Carol said. "I didn't. It just—didn't seem right. It didn't feel right. Did I do wrong? Should I have?"

Daryl hummed and moved his mouth to nip the skin on the back of her neck gently. He always had the odd sensation of desiring to bite her. The feeling was new and strange to him and he worried that it might be strange to anyone—so he didn't tell her how often he felt it. She never scolded him, though, when he nipped her as long as the nips didn't hurt too much—and he welcomed the scolding then because his desire, even if it was to bite, wasn't to hurt her.

He kissed the spot where he'd let his teeth gently close together on her skin.

"You didn't do wrong," he said. "If it weren't right, it weren't right. Reckon—if it all works out—he'll find out soon enough."

"I thought you could tell him," Carol said.

Daryl swallowed, imagining to himself what it might be like to tell Merle that he and Carol were having a baby together. Even though, around here, it was entirely expected, he wasn't sure it was anything that Merle would be expecting to hear—not from him.

Daryl smiled to himself.

"Yeah," he said. "I'll tell him when I can. You're plenty soft enough for one night. And my eyes are burning. Let's get some sleep."