Rick thought the worst feeling of his life was the utter soul wrenching despair he felt when he escaped the hospital to find his home empty. It took him too long to take note of the small things missing, while he was overwhelmed with the two most important ones. Logic prevailed, and he remembered feeling deep in his heart that Carl and Lori would be safe, because they were with Shane.

That faith collapsed entirely when Daryl brought back his son's bloody, tattered scraps of shirt. He knew then that nothing on this earth was worse than seeing proof of his son's obvious demise. Even though the hunter tried to hedge, to say it could be a mistake, Rick just couldn't imagine his luck being so perfectly pure a second time. There was no evidence of Shane, either, and his faith faltered even more. The guilty part of Rick mourned his brother more than the two little girls.

It made him useless, in the end. Glenn stepped up, him and Daryl tag teaming the rest to keep them searching even when their own existence was precarious. The young Korean having faith? That's almost a given. It's just part of who he is, down to his very core. He believes, and because he does, so do many of their group.

Daryl's faith is different, an unexpected discovery that really shouldn't be so unexpected. He still believed Merle alive and well somewhere out there. Believing that Beth and Shane could survive as long as no evidence told them otherwise just suited the man's ability to see the strength in others.

They'd both been right, even if they hadn't realized how much so. It sucks that Daryl's still missing, because Rick thinks the redneck would rejoice as much as he did on seeing all four of their missing people alive and well. The fact that Merle reunited so many of them? Christ Almighty, fate has a twisted sense of humor toward Rick's life.

The two weeks it takes Rick to pass muster with the stern Naval Commander to be considered for the search teams are the longest of his life, worse than attending police training in the first place. He almost falters at the mini boot camp he's put through, and at times, wonders if it's a punishment because of what he caused to happen to Merle. The older Dixon's obvious value among these remnants of the military is more than Rick's right now.

It's a fact that's made pretty clear when he's handed a uniform to wear when he goes out, with the single stripe the leathered old Master Sergeant told him most kids lose by the end of boot camp. He's meant to earn his way to anything more, and the bar is set pretty high for him to prove himself.

But then the day comes where Merle claps that metal and plastic hand on Rick's shoulder and tells him to gear up to head out the next day. Any contact he ever makes with Rick is always with the prosthetic. It's both a punishment and a shield, he thinks, between himself and the man he left to die and returned to save a day too late.

Shane caught on that Rick is looking for answers more than hoping for any more miracles. Carl doesn't, thank God, because the boy has a cheerful sort of faith much like Glenn's. To Carl, his mother is one of the strongest people on the planet. She's out there somewhere. Surprisingly, Shane agrees with Rick's son.

It's too bad that it can't be shared so easily, to be contagious like the virus that tore their world apart. Rick could use a dose of it somehow. Instead, he gears up and climbs into a Humvee, part of eight people out searching on a mapped out grid planned by military survivors who specialized in logistics in a way he'll probably never grasp. They'd been lucky there, to have a Marine Logistics Base scrape together enough survivors to put together a real plan for the future.

The nights are cold enough by the end of October that they light fires when they stop. Sometimes it's a fireplace in an abandoned home, but just as often, it's a Dakota fire hole dug inside some fenced off area. Their camping gear is rated for weather much colder, but that only helps when they sleep.

"Here. If you're gonna sit up half the night, you might as well warm up a bit." There's a glove covered hand in front of Rick's face, holding a mug that smells like soup instead of coffee, so he takes it. He doesn't even need the voice to identify his benefactor, because like so much else that haunts him these days, the fingerless glove leaves metal and plastic fingertips free to view even as it covers the palm.

Sipping at the thick soup, Rick eyes the older man as he takes a seat on a fallen log dragged close to their little sunken fire. "How long will we keep searching up here?"

"Until we run out of places to search." The statement is said with complete assurance, and not for the first time, Rick wonders just how far up the chain of command Merle actually is. He wears a Marine sergeant's three stripes and crossed rifles on his rank patch, but Rick knows the two rockers below the rifles mean something special, and the other enlisted men call him Gunny instead of Sarge or his last name. "Doesn't snow enough in north Georgia to really keep us from it."

They aren't the only search team out there, but the Commander only allows two teams of eight out at a time, rotating two back to camp. They can stay out as long as a week, canvassing an area, but they'll spend an equal time off duty when they get back. The others on Rick's team just shrug and say it's the benefit of a doctor being their only surviving officer. The other team out right now is working their way up the coastline into South Carolina.

"You sure they'd head into the mountains?" It made sense when Rick first got to join the team. People return home when they're under pressure, just like Shane ran to ground with the kids. Hershel Greene's farm is gone, lost to the ravages of the wildfire that split up the group. No one's returned to King County since Merle first plucked away Shane and the kids and the two Joneses before returning for Rick and his small group.

Looking for where Daryl might herd the others is their only remaining clue. The fact that the Dixon brothers grew up across the entire mountainous region of north Georgia is just dumb fucking luck. The hunter could have taken refuge just about anywhere up here, according to Merle.

"My baby brother? He doesn't venture to new places unless something forces him to. If you're right that he's the only one left who can guide the women, boy, and old man, then they'll be up here. Problem is that he's never stayed in one place for long." Merle runs a hand across his face, sighing deeply. "That was my fault. Boy spent too many of his formative years and after trying to keep my sorry ass in one piece."

It's not the first time Merle's sounded more paternal than fraternal in talking about his brother. Shane tells Rick he thinks it's what fuels Merle's determination to turn over every rock in Georgia and beyond if he has to. He's probably right.

"He'll be that dedicated?" Rick asks, finishing off the soup and staring into the empty mug. "To people he barely knows?"

"You gotta understand the soft spot Daryl has for people in need of help," Merle says, rough and gravely. "Ain't a Dixon trait, not usually. There's been times I wonder if my late, unlamented daddy's rants about Daryl not being his might just be right, because Mama wasn't a whole lot sweeter than Daddy by the time Daryl came along."

"You're saying he stayed with us because we needed help?" Rick can actually picture that, because when he surveyed the survivors of the walker attack on the quarry camp, Daryl's gaze was on the kids in particular. When Glenn got snatched, Daryl had been even more determined to get him back than Rick, even when it delayed any search for Merle.

"I'm saying exactly that. He figured I could survive on my own, didn't he?"

Rick chuckles softly, remembering Daryl's words, wringing some amusement out of the memory of standing in that room with the horrific stench of burned flesh. "He said the only thing that could kill you would be you. Then something about eating a hammer and crapping out nails."

Merle snorts, making himself cough softly in trying not to outright laugh. "Sounds like the boy. He's thought I was indestructible since he was old enough to know my name. Didn't deserve the hero worship then."

"And now?" Curiosity drives Rick to ask, because the Merle he's been around since King County is nothing like the Merle on that rooftop. Being free of the influence of drugs can't account for all of it.

"A smart lady told me that the best way to live up to someone believing in you like that is to man up and live up to it."

"That all?" The amused smirk sent his way tells Rick it wasn't.

"There was a longer speech about arrested development, perpetual adolescence, and a few repetitions of the phrase infantile egomaniac."

"Impressive."

"Yeah, she is." The smile on his features now is so damned soft and gentle that it strikes Rick more profoundly than the words Merle said.

That's when it clicks for Rick, the change that runs deeper than the older man being given responsibility and staying sober. He's seen the same look more and more on Shane's face the longer Princess is around. Hell, back when things were good between him and Lori, he's seen it on his own face.

Merle Dixon is head over heels in love with someone. Who, Rick has no idea, because he's never socialized with the man outside of what they need to do for the search teams. Maybe some of the others know, but he's pretty sure asking won't get him much of anywhere if they do. Merle's forgiven him for the reason he has that prosthetic hand, but no one's forgotten.

It's also something Rick has never exactly apologized for. He's attested that he went back for the man, along with Daryl, T-Dog, and Glenn. But actually apologizing? No. Shit.

"Hey, Merle?" he begins, after a good five minutes of silence as they watch the fire and the perimeter in turns.

"Yeah?" Merle's looking off in the distance, head cocked to one side like when he's listening to the night life for any sounds of alarm.

"What I did, leaving Atlanta and not turning back when they said you weren't in the van? That's not something I can really make up for, but thank you for letting me try." Because yes, he's out here because Lori's maybe still out here, but Rick has more faith that Daryl's alive than his estranged wife. "Even if we somehow find Lori without Daryl, I won't stop looking until we know for sure."

Rick owes the man, because he's part of a family separated because Rick was too selfish to just turn back around for a stranded man that his cop's instincts said was trouble in a way he wasn't equipped to deal with anymore. The others would have bent to his will, if he'd stopped that van and insisted on a plan to retrieve Merle, especially after T-Dog chained the door. Even Andrea would have felt too guilty to keep retreating if even one person spoke up to do the right thing.

"You came back to look for me, Grimes. Ain't something to owe me some sort of life debt over."

So Merle says, but Rick has to wonder. Always touching him or handing him things with the prosthetic could be a side effect of the man losing his dominant hand after fifty plus years of being right handed. Maybe it's only Rick's guilty conscience crawling around in his gut each time he sees it and not Merle making sure he never forgets.

"I came back an entire day later." And deep down, can really say he would have gone back if he hadn't dropped that bag of guns? He likes to think so, likes to think he's the good man he's lived his life being, but now he'll always wonder about the quality of his own character.

"That's more than most people would have bothered with." Merle shrugs, and it's such a similar behavior to Daryl's willingness to stay and defend Rick's family and the others that he thinks maybe it's not just love that changed the man… but a distinct lack of it in his life aside from his brother.

"Still, I meant what I said. As long as Daryl's missing, I'm going to be helping you look."

Astute blue eyes study him for several heartbeats. "A'right."

When Merle gets up to pace their perimeter, still listening intently at things only a woodsman can glean from the night, Rick feels something settle in his chest at the easy acceptance. He's a good man who made a mistake that could have been even more horrific than it was. Somehow he's been deemed worthy of correcting that mistake, and maybe whatever luck shined on him there will lend itself to their search.

Lori came from people just like the Dixons, and he's been spending his time remembering the housewife and mother, not the bold little spitfire he met at college. Just because she bent to his world doesn't mean she's forgotten where she came from. Daryl's brother believes in the younger man's innate ability to overcome anything.

Rick is going to start believing the same of Lori.


If anyone had told Merle a year ago that he would be back in uniform for any reason, he would have laughed his ass off and told them that prison jumpsuits aren't uniforms. It's the closest he's come to a uniform since he punched that shitbird NCO back when he was about up for reenlistment. Sixteen months in military prison taught him little that was good, other than how to rise to the top in any state or county facility.

Technically, his rank isn't legit, not in the old world way. He supposes with the world going to complete and utter shit, his dishonorable discharge would have been tossed in order to have more cannon fodder if he'd volunteered. But at his age and with his checkered criminal record? Odds are he'd have been lucky to have been trusted with that much.

Instead, he gets his sorry ass in a jam even Dixon ingenuity couldn't get him out of, because there's no pride in the fact that he sawed off his own damn hand when a thumb would have gotten him out of those cuffs. Feverish and infected, he managed to get out of the city, only to stumble right into the waiting arms of a fucking Marine fireteam. The week that it took to get him lucid and off death's door meant he lost track of his brother entirely.

He still thinks the Commander and that rat bastard of a Master Sergeant of hers are a little bit batshit, handing him actual control. Worse yet, after his third foray into the field and saving two of his men, they went and promoted his ass from his last legitimate Marine rank. It would make more sense if he'd bullshitted them both, but he hasn't held back one solitary thing from how he's spent the years between twenty-three and fifty-two.

Damn Master Sergeant just laughed his ass off and said that's the sort of Marine needed right now, providing he can follow orders. Then the asshole made sure he either outranked or was equal rank to every surviving NCO they have except himself. Commander just smiled that sly fox smile of hers and signed off on it. There might even be some remote regulation that allows all of it, based on something archaic they could drag up for the end of the world.

Because it's not legit like it is for the rest of the Marines here, Merle can technically hand his uniform at any time. He's never been further from wanting to do so in his entire life. Thirty four Marines and one Naval officer survived the collapse of the Marine base at Albany. Merle's proud to serve with every damn one of them. Thing is, he can't picture Commander Barrett ever issuing an order he feels the need to disobey, and his loyalty, once given, is pretty damn unshakable.

The thing about him wearing that gunnery sergeant rank is that Merle might not remember if there are provisions to reenlist a man such as himself legally, or even field promote him up two ranks from his last, but he does remember quite clearly one thing about rank. Where he is right now would be a crime, back when there were officers around more senior than the one they have here.

It's not just that she saved his life. That got her his initial loyalty. Observing her leadership priorities cemented it into place. Spending time with her without her ever comparing where their extensive literature backgrounds come from? That got him fucking intrigued, and it should have been a schoolboy's crush, ignored by the widowed Navy doctor.

It wasn't ignored. Jesus Christ he's glad of that as he steps into their bedroom, and she smiles up at him over those dark rimmed glasses of hers, brown eyes studying him with interest. She hasn't bowed to the whims of vanity and dyed her hair since it started going gray back in her early thirties, joking that being a wife and mother on top of being a military physician gave her more gray than even a professional stylist could conquer.

"You are gonna get eaten by paperwork one day," Merle tells her, reaching over her shoulders to gently tug her pen from her hand. He lays it on the notebook she's using to make her own little cheat sheet. "And you don't have to become an engineer. You have people for that here."

Cass sighs, but cedes his point by taking her reading glasses off and laying them on the notebook as well. "I don't think engineer is possible at my age, but I do like to do more than smile and nod when the technicians are explaining how they want to reinforce our electrical grid, you know."

"Yeah, I do, and I bet all you do is study when I'm out in the field, once the grandkids are off to bed." Asshole Merle would laugh himself stupid knowing he's shacked up with a woman not only four years older than himself, but a grandmother twice times over.

The grandkids are underfoot, too, thanks to one son being out on a damned Naval ship, fate unknown, and the other didn't make it to Georgia from Portland when everything started shutting down. It's just a quirk of immense luck that Cass the two grandkids were flown off to grandma's hopefully secure military base as soon as the virus started making the news. Merle wishes like hell the parents had gotten their asses on that same plane instead of staying behind to finish up obligations in Oregon. At least she has one daughter-in-law safe and sound - and eight months pregnant.

She shrugs, standing to slip her arms around his waist and kiss him softly. "At least you know I'm taking a break when you are, right?"

"There is that." He just enjoys the closeness, all the soft femininity that she hides away the second she puts on her uniform to keep this place running. "How's Jade feeling?"

"Like a beached whale. I keep expecting a countdown to delivery in the kitchen any day now."

Merle can't say he blames the girl. Being pregnant wasn't exactly a picnic even when the world was nice and she was going to be part of a two parent team raising the baby. But at least once the baby's born, she can at least see it was all worth it.

"Maybe she'll get lucky and the kid will be early instead of late."

Cass scoffs as he leads her away to bed. "First babies rarely are when you want them to be." She smiles though, curling up against his shoulder. "It'll be nice, though, to have a little boy around again."

Thinking of the two little granddaughters tucked away in their room, one barely walking and the other just big enough to attend preschool now that the community numbers have grown, Merle thinks girls are just fine. But he can also understand how much Cass misses her sons, and she may never get closure. It's something Merle knows could happen to him about Daryl, too, but at least finding his brother is geographically possible. Oregon is an almost impossible idea now, and a Naval ship in the Pacific might as well be the moon, if they even managed to keep the virus and the dead off the thing.

"Maybe he'll be a turkey day baby. Then Jade can dress him in little turkey suits every year for his birthday until he's big enough to escape all the cute."

It earns Merle a laugh, even though he thinks that sort of thing is damned silly and shit people with too much money obsessed with doing to their kids. Money's not a dividing line anymore, and if it makes that poor sad kid barely in her twenties grin, Merle will make the damned turkey suits himself.

"I'm glad you're home," Cass mumbles, half-asleep already. "It's not the same when you aren't here. Love you."

Merle agrees, because maybe this thing between them is less than eight weeks old, but neither of them are young or dumb enough to waste any time anymore. It took him fifty-two years to stop shooting his own self in the foot when it came to romance, and he's happy to be where he is. "Love you, too, Cass."

He's loyal to a fault when it comes to someone who finally sees value in him and puts it to good use. But when it comes to Cassidy, as opposed to prim Commander Barrett? Merle knows he'd burn the world at her whim, fraternization be damned.


A/N: I've never tackled the Rooftop from Rick's POV, and thought it fit well to do it here. This Merle has moved beyond what happened, but the way he and Daryl accept it in the show? It just shows you just how abused both men were that it wasn't an unforgivable event for them.

When I initially watched the show (rewatching it is worse), it absolutely horrified me that they all knew they left Merle behind (except Glenn), yet kept driving and made no plan for rescue. They got to sit around, eat a meal, enjoy an evening (and Rick even got laid)... Having left a man to die of sunstroke or potentially eaten by walkers. None of their behavior is that of good people (and I include Dale and Shane, both of who were leaders enough to arrange a rescue, and Dale even puts a price on loaning out his bolt cutters.)