AN: Here we go, another chapter here.

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

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Normally Daryl's very first thought when walking into such a small room, and having the door closed behind him with four other people present, would have been that it was too crowded to even breathe. Instead, his first thought was that he simply couldn't be seeing what he was seeing.

Standing almost directly in front of him was his brother.

Merle was older because of the years that had passed since Daryl had last seen him, but he was older, too, because of what those years had brought with them. Though he'd never been obese, he was much thinner now than Daryl could ever recall him having been before. The weight loss, not done intentionally or healthfully, had left his skin looking loose on his bones and had left his face sagging. Around his neck was one of the metal collars that they'd been wearing the day that they'd been led into Woodbury in chains—apparently they were a permanent article for all of them.

Merle looked tired. He looked old and he looked tired.

And Daryl might not have believe it was him if it weren't for his eyes. No matter how much they'd taken from him, there was still a spark of something that was Merle in his eyes.

Merle chuckled. It was almost a popping noise. The quick indication that he found something amusing. The corner of his mouth curled up in amusement.

"Well," he said, drawing the word out, "if it ain't the damn prodigal son. Sent you out to check a couple of traps and never seen you again. Figured the boogeyman got'cha. How ya been, lil' brother?"

Daryl felt his pulse pick up. His heart might have skipped a beat entirely. That was a voice that he knew almost as well as he knew his own. He willed himself to stay stiffly in place instead of running, as he used to do as a child when Merle would return home after some absence usually caused by his inability to "act right," to wrap himself around his brother. Merle never liked that. He always told Daryl that it was too damn clingy.

"Merle," Daryl said, finding that it was difficult for him to come up with anything else to say or any other way to respond. For all the speeches he'd practiced in his head, and all the apologies he'd been ready to offer, nothing seemed like it wanted to actually up and come out of his mouth.

And then, if he thought he couldn't be any more surprised, he was wrong. Merle stepped forward, offered an arm out, and wrapped it around Daryl. Daryl didn't know how to respond and Merle laughed in his ear.

"Damn, Daryl," he said. "Don't you know how to hug anymore?"

It broke whatever had frozen Daryl to his spot and he wrapped his arms around his brother, drawing him into him. Close to him like that, Daryl could feel how thin he was. He could feel how much he'd changed—though it had been far more years than Daryl could count since he'd had his arms wrapped around his older brother's body.

Merle broke the hug and backed up a couple of steps. He looked Daryl up and down and didn't try to hide it. Daryl wondered what Merle saw. He wondered how changed he was in his brother's eyes. The transformation on his part might be nearly as great as Merle's. After all, Daryl wasn't that much in the practice of seeing himself and he figured, even if he did catch glimpses of himself in the mirror every day, he might not notice the changes in himself the same way that Merle might after the long time they'd spent apart.

"How you doin', brother?" Daryl asked.

Merle laughed low in his throat.

"Best damn vacation I ever been on," Merle said. He lifted his arm to show Daryl that he'd lost a hand—something that Daryl already knew—and Daryl let his eyes focus for just a moment on the covering that hid the stump from his eyes. "Lost my damn hand. Real nice fuckin' game that was to play with Officer Friendly in the prison." He ran his finger under the metal collar that hung around his neck. "Got some nice jewelry that the Doc here says I might get to part company with soon." Merle gestured his head in Alice's direction before he let his eyes trail over to Carol and then back to Daryl. "But you...you look like you doin' alright. You...you doin' alright?"

Daryl followed Merle's glance toward Carol and she offered him a soft smile of what was, more than likely, encouragement. Daryl swallowed and nodded his head at Merle.

"Better'n I ever been," he said. "I gotta admit. But Merle—I didn't turn you in out there." He shook his head at Merle. "I didn't tell 'em nothing. Not where you were."

Merle worked his jaw like he was physically chewing on something. He shook his head.

"Never thought you did," he said. "Wouldn't matter anyway. They'd've found me. Did find me. I did ask 'em about you. Told me yeah they'd seen you. Told me that—that'cha put up a fight. They come up on ya and you put up a fight. That they—took care of ya. Put me in a van. In the back of it. One officer in there with me. Asshole—when we was in the van and me all tied up like a damn buck ready to load up? Asshole told me that he killed you. Broke your neck." Merle laughed to himself and shook his head again. "They never expected, when they opened them damn doors, to find out I could untie just about any damn knot they could tie up—and that he weren't the only fucker could break a neck."

Daryl's stomach dropped. If it were possible, he was pretty sure it would've hit the floor. He swallowed against the lump that was forming in his throat—a lump that he didn't expect and was a little embarrassed to find was plaguing him.

"That's why they took you to that place, Merle," Daryl said. "That's why they—put you in them chains."

Merle shrugged his shoulders.

"If it weren't that, it'd been something," Merle said, dismissing it. "Prob'ly didn't help I had the asshole's gun and I got me one more of 'em coming out the van."

"I made the circuit," Daryl said. "I been in—a buncha places. Last place I ended up was a place they called Region Thirty Three. Come outta there to come here. A citizen of Woodbury. I didn't know nothing about what happened to you until—they told me in taming. Said you was dead. Went out like—like you was defending the damn Alamo."

Merle genuinely laughed at that to the point that Daryl couldn't help but laugh at it, even though his body didn't seem to agree with such joviality. He heard, around him, evidence that Alice and Carol were laughing too.

"If you gotta go," Merle said, "then I reckon that's how the hell to do it." He looked back at Carol and then nodded his head in her direction before he looked back at Daryl. "This little woman the one they give you? Right mousy."

Daryl shook his head.

"You don't know her," Daryl growled before he even realized the way that the words came out. He felt his pulse pick up in a different way this time. Merle liked to give him hell. He always had. Usually it didn't really get under Daryl's skin too badly, but he could feel that he wasn't going to appreciate it if it was going to come at Carol's expense—especially with her present—and he hoped Merle would be able to detect that. "She ain't mousy. And they ain't give her to me."

Merle's lip curled up again in amusement. He laughed to himself.

"Hell, little brother," Merle said. "Pull in your damn claws. Just fuckin' with you. You always was too damn soft."

"Not soft," Daryl said. "But she ain't no damn mouse."

Merle held both his hand and his stump up in mock surrender, genuine amusement across his features. Carol, for her part, remained as quiet as the other two women in the room.

"Easy, brother," Merle said. "Glad you like what the hell they give you. Hell—you weren't gonna get one no other way. This shit was a damn blessing in disguise for you."

"Didn't give her to me," Daryl repeated.

"We chose to be with each other," Carol offered. It was the first thing she'd said since they'd come in. "We met—we met in prison. At Region Thirty Three. When they told us we were coming here, we chose to be together."

Daryl nodded his head. His pulse slowed a little. He watched as Merle looked Carol over, head to toe, and then his brother smirked at him.

"Yeah," he said. "You got you one." He looked at Carol, then, and addressed her. "My lil' brother's the sensitive type. Real sweet, he is."

"I think I know a little bit about him," Carol offered, seemingly unbothered by Merle in the slightest.

"We like it together," Daryl told Merle. "It's good that way. Gonna have us a kid in seven or so months."

Merle looked at Carol again and smiled, but he erased the expression quickly.

"Knocked up?" He asked.

Daryl saw when Carol rolled her eyes in his direction. She looked back at Merle.

"If that's how you want to phrase it," Carol said. "Other ways might be—I'm pregnant. I'm going to have a baby. I'm expecting our child—your brother's child."

Merle laughed to himself.

"Maybe you ain't so damn mousy after all," Merle said. "Maybe I read you wrong, Mouse. Look like you might wanna break my neck same as I did that nice officer in the van."

"Don't give me a reason to," Carol said, offering him a smile of her own. "We're all proving just how human we are here. How tame and submissive. Like quiet little mice, Merle. We don't want to mess that up."

"Carol's right," Alice said quickly. "And I don't like confrontation."

Merle looked at her and smiled.

"Ain't nobody confrontating, Doc," Merle said. "We're just gettin' to know each other. That's how Dixons do it." He turned his head and offered a quick wink in Daryl's direction. Daryl didn't realize how tense he was feeling in the space until he relaxed upon seeing that—a sign that Merle was truly doing nothing more than fucking around. A sign that all was well. Daryl tried to communicate that to Carol with a look of his own, and he was pretty sure, when he saw a quick snatch of a smile cross her lips and fade away, that she understood exactly what he was trying to say.

"He's right," Daryl said to Alice, not wanting the woman to get too concerned about what might happen in the small space. After all, if she called for security, they were all possibly dead over a misunderstanding. "Nothing but bullshit going on. That's Merle for you."

"You right skittish, Doc," Merle said. "Maybe you the little mouse in the room."

"Call me whatever you want," Alice said. "But this is a small room and I'm not exactly supposed to have you all in here without at least one guard present. Not yet. So—I'd appreciate everybody keeping their promise to be on their best behavior."

Merle seemed to soften a little when he looked at Alice. Maybe it was because, like the lion with the splinter in his paw, she'd helped him with his stump. Maybe it was because she was going to get rid of the metal band around his neck. Or, maybe, it was just because she was treating him like a human being and that wasn't something he wasn't entirely used to. It wasn't something he'd ever been entirely used to.

"Simmer down, Doc," Merle said. "Ain't nobody here even pissed off. Hell—I'm fucking ecstatic! Found my little brother and found out I'ma be an uncle—all in one damn day. It's a good day, Doc."

"If anybody's a mouse, Merle, it's your little woman stuck over there in the corner," Daryl said, gesturing toward the woman that was sitting on a stool. Like Merle, she wore one of the heavy metal bands at her throat and there was still evidence of healing wounds on her face. She, more than likely, wasn't a mouse at all. At least, the authorities hadn't seen her as a mouse. She perked up a little when Daryl gestured in her direction. Merle looked over his shoulder and Daryl thought he saw a hint of some kind of softening on Merle's features then.

"Sadie ain't no mouse," Merle said. "But she don't talk all that much. Can't hear a damn thing so the talkin'—it don't mean that much to her. When she's got somethin' to say, though, you gonna hear it. Gotta look at her when you talk to her or else she don't know nothing you say."

Merle gestured at Sadie and she abandoned her stool. Standing flat on her feet she wasn't much taller than she'd been when she'd been perched up on the piece of furniture. Daryl wondered what the woman must have done to make any of the officers fear someone of her stature enough to put her in irons. She walked over to stand beside Merle, clearly assuming that now she was being invited into the conversation though she was mostly obvious to all that had happened already. She smiled at Daryl and offered him a hand to shake.

"Hi," she said. Her voice, if Daryl didn't know she couldn't hear, would have told him that something was different about her speech.

"Hi," he said, laughing at the ease and, to some degree, innocence of the greeting. "Daryl," he said. Sadie nodded, her smile not fading.

"Sadie," she said, pointing to herself like Daryl might confuse her name for belonging to someone else in the room.

"Carol," he offered, gesturing toward Carol.

"Oh, I know," Sadie said. "We met."

Daryl looked at Merle. His brother, much more of an idiot than Merle would ever admit to being, was smiling like a genuine idiot at the woman. Daryl had seen his brother with a lot of women in his life, but he had to admit that the expression he was wearing at the moment was something he hadn't exactly seen before.

"Anything else you wanna tell me?" Daryl asked.

Merle looked at Daryl and his expression changed. Aware that Daryl was looking at him, he wiped away the expression that he'd been wearing.

"What?" Merle asked.

"You knock her up?" Daryl asked.

Merle furrowed his brows slightly at Daryl.

Maybe he wouldn't like it so much if the shoe was on the other foot. Maybe, too, there was something there that was a little bit more than just being together for the convenience of the project—no matter how it started.

"She ain't pregnant," Merle said. "Not yet."

Daryl glanced at Alice and then back at Merle.

"Talk to Alice," Daryl said. "She can make just about anything happen that you want to happen." He looked back at Alice who was giving him a look that he wasn't entirely able to identify yet. "Ain't that right, Alice?"

She made a noise that was almost a growl.

"Apparently so," she said. She sighed. "But—right now she's got to make you all magically reappear back in your spaces—so say what you need to say."

"When we get to see each other again, Doc?" Merle asked.

"I don't know," Alice said.

"But you gonna fix it so—so it's normal, right?" Merle asked. "Damn if we're supposed to be living in some kinda town and they don't even let us out of our houses to talk to our friends. Talk to our damn family. He's my brother."

Alice sighed.

"I'm working on it," Alice said. "But for now? It's a practice in everybody learning to be happy with what they get. I might be a lesbian, but I'm not a magic fairy."