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At the prison before Philips attack – Merle's POV

I looked at the zombies behind the fence. "Ya motherfuckin' scumbacks." I spat onto one of them and he didn't react at all.

"I see ya makin' new friends?" Daryl appeared behind me. I wondered why he left his sweet cheeks girl alone. She must be out of the woods.

"What do ya want? Bad ass awake?"

"She's sleeping for now." He retorted coming closer. "Need to talk to ya."

"What the hell did I do know?" I grinned sarcastically. If there had been a problem it's always been me. Why should it be any different now?

Daryl leaned at the fence opposite of me, his arms crossed in front of his chest. There was this thing again, this way of looking at people, when his head was a bit to the right and his hair in his face. The way his eyes were hiding behind his hair. He had always done that when our father had accused him of anything and nothing. Before the beating had started. Why did he look like that at me? "What do ya want?" I grew mad at the memories, of what our father had done to me and to him. The feelings in my heart never had left my mouth. I had always kept it to myself, but my temper had always shown what was seething inside: Hate and rage for what had happened and what I couldn't have prevent.

Looked like he didn't know how to talk to me. Back then it had been so easy. Before the apocalypse when we had been living a life as the Dixon Brothers. No one had dared to mess with us. I snorted at the thoughts.

"The meds are working. Ya should take some too." His eyes wandered the fence.

I raised an eyebrow at him and lit a cigarette. "Spit it out man, what do ya want from good old Merle?" He didn't come here to minister me.

In the distance old man Hershel appeared. He was walking quite well with one foot chopped off and after conquering a deadly disease. Just the limping revealed the artificial limb. But he was strong and fought it all. I looked down on my hands, well of the leftover-fingers and the stump were now was a sharp knife.

"Thanks for ya help." Again I raised an eyebrow at his words. But before I could say something he beat me to it. "This is going to work."

"Ya mean the black sheep destroying the delightful picture of the white herd." Man I was funny. In the past Darlinya was just as bad as me. But he had always been the silent one. Since he had been with Officer Friendly and the others he had lost his aggressive asshole side.

"If ya want to stay on the outside …"

"Did ya came here to lecture me?" I interrupted his talking.

"I came here to thank ya. Ya fixed the car to get back to the prison. Without it we maybe …"

I wasn't in the mood of some emotional shit, never had been. I wasn't meant to be all whiny and needing comfort. I had always been better off alone. "I got it. Yar girl is fine. It's all puppies and kittens." I inhaled a puff of my cigarette. I wished it would have been my favorite, but this shit had to do. A joint would be even better. I smiled to myself.

"Ya warned me!" He suddenly said in a harsh voice. "Ya knew she would do something stupid."

"Everyone knows she is not the one to act like a normal girl." I had known that the first time I had seen her.

Daryl took my cigarette. "That's why I need to talk to ya." He took a nervous drag.

I lit another cigarette with a grimace. In a world like this no one was picky about anything, but damn, I would kill for a Marlboro right now. "I ain't got all day." The only thing I was planning for the day was to visit little Miss Frankenstein.

"When she will regain strength she'll definitely want to go after the fucking bastard." He started. Michonne had done some talking back in the car. She had told Daryl how sweet lil' Miss Sunshine would go out hunting some asshole. "I don't know what's going to happen next. If there will be another flu, another governor, another walker attack …. But I need to know one thing for sure: Ya have to keep her safe n' sound."

"What?"

"We won't be that lucky the next time." He wasn't even looking at me. His eyes were on the walkers next to us. Our enemies where not only behind the fences but among us. Who could tell what might happen next, what might happen at night. It had happened before, it can always happen again.

"That's ya job man. I'm only here to start some trouble." I laughed … laughed away the pain I had felt since I got here. I had wanted to take her with me a long time ago …

"Just promise me to keep her safe." He threw me a small box.

I looked into my hands where the red and golden emblem of Marlboro smiled at me. "I'm only good for problems."

"Ya worth to keep her safe and alive." He looked to the prison. I had never seen him care for another person as much as he did for her.

I lit a new cigarette and took a drag. Man, the way how the dark cloud of death filled my lungs felt good. "I'm worth shit." I laughed again. "That bad ass won't leave your side for the rest of her damn life." She had made her choice a long time ago. And all I wanted for now was for my brother to be pleased.

"If anything goes wrong …" He started to talk about the plan the damn elected council had made up. A sweet little escape plan I didn't clearly remember. He had told me something about a bus, but I didn't remember it anymore. Daryl talked on about how they could escape while I nodded and listened to the snarling close next to me. The plan meant nothing to me. I would just run after my baby brother's ass to keep him out of the line of fire. "Ya in?" He suddenly said. I was startled about his last words.

I rolled my eyes. But Daryl grabbed my arm. "I feel it in my damn bones that this prison won't be safe forever. Tyrese is right … this place ain't safe no more." He looked to Hershel again who came closer. "When there'll be the time, ya will take her away. Take her as far away from here as possible. No matter what." He sighed deeply. "We'll meet up at the bridge at the lake …"

"I'll keep here busy." I interrupted him not able to think about him dying. His voice had grown rough. The words didn't match what I saw in his eyes.

"Na … I am asking ya to …"

"I got it man, I got it." I turned to walk away. "If it all goes down the hill I promise to keep your love bird alive." Walking away from him I couldn't believe he just told me he thought he would die first. Not me …

I would do everything in my power to keep him and his hopeless daydreaming bad ass alive. I had never been a help in his past, I wanted him to be happy. He deserved it. From all the scumbags in this shitty prison, my little brother deserved to be happy. Deserved to be alive.

Now

All I had wanted to do is lay down and cry. But something deep inside me got me walking.

Maybe me!?

No, it wasn't the voice in my head. It was the sheer determination to find my friends. My family. I didn't want to feel all helpless again. The last days I had been a silent mess of emotions, between crying and staying alive. Not talking and keeping all the pain and sorrow inside. Now I buried it all under a blanket of repression. People always told me to think of the dead is like keeping their memory alive, but I couldn't do it. I stored the memory of Daryl deep in my heart where it would last forever, but didn't remind me every day of what I had lost.

Well thanks for the compliments.

Well thanks for leaving … There had never been a comment on that … still wasn't. So I tried to focus on the trees ahead. Giving up had almost killed me and fighting of alone got me into trouble too many times. So here I walked with the brother of my beloved one who began to feel like a brother to me too and my ex-boyfriend who didn't seem to be the person I had fallen in love with once.

Suddenly Merle struggled next to me and almost fell down. "Merle!" I grabbed his arm and wanted to help him get up, but he pushed me away.

"Leave me alone!" He hissed. "I am no motherfuckin' pussy."

You really have nice company.

I let merle brat about it. He was hurt and he wouldn't admit it until he would die of an infection. Looking at his bloody arm, there was still the fabric of my shirt around the wound. He needed fresh patches. I marched on without giving him time to rest or argue. "Come on big boy."

There was a rustling to my right and before any of the guys could react, I threw my knife into the head of the appearing walker. Merle shot me a mad glance. "I had it."

"Stop being a whiny shithead." I retorted and he gave me a mean smile.

Jess walked to the dead body. "Where are all these words coming from?" He took the knife out and handed it to me. "I had never heard you talk like that before."

He was my past. He knew me too well for my own good. I smiled at him. I had loved him. "I learned from the best." I nodded to Merle.

"I can tell."

Merle went straight through us, as if to separate Jess from me. "We need to walk a bit south."

"How do you know?" I asked. I knew if Jess had asked there would only have been dirty words.

"Daryl would have walked south …" His name hurt. "Last time we were on the road together we had walked south. That's how we found the bridge at the Yellow Jacket Creek."

Jess gave me a questioning look but I shook my head. "It's already getting dark. We should set up a camp." He was right. We had hiked the whole day almost without resting.

Merle stopped walking and turned around. Jess was looking to his right not paying any attention. "Guys, there is …" He crashed into Merle. "Sorry man." But Merle punched him and Jess went down. Before Merle could go on I stepped between them.

"Stop it!" I looked at Merle. "If you guys don't suck it up, we won't survive." I helped Jess to get up. "And if this silent fights are going on …"

"Missy stop the rambling." Merle walked on again.

"I saw a car." Jess said.

"What?"

"There was a car …" He looked to the right again. "A black car." He wanted to go right but I held him back.

"In this world people with cars don't mean no good." I told him. He wanted to say something, maybe protest, but I silenced him. "We are not walking on a road." Still he seemed to struggle to say something back. "I had learned that some time ago. Trust me when I tell you that roads don't mean no good."

I walked to Merle and we walked on. When I looked back over my shoulder Jess looked to the right again. "Let him make our mistakes."

"Our mistakes?"

"We both had our turns."

He is right. Let that guy walk after the car. My brother still wanted to get rid of Jess. But I couldn't give him up. Don't tell me this is some kind of lost-love-thing. It wasn't … but in this world you do not abandon good people. You still think he is a good person?

Jess joined up. "What about a place for the night."

"In what direction did it drive?" Merle asked without looking at him. There was the normal sound of hate in his voice but there was no insult. He could change …

Jess looked back. "Away from us." He pointed in the other direction.

Merle changed the way we had been walking. "What are you doing?" I asked him. "I thought we were going south."

You still hope Daryl would walk that way!?

I fell silent and so did my mood.

I am sorry …

I couldn't bear to hear his name. I had made peace with the thought of Daryl not being alive. Why couldn't he stop to mention his name ...

"Just follow the one who knows the woods." I nodded to Jess and we followed Merle.

Deep down an emotion started to stir, but I suppressed it with all my strength. He had known the woods like the back of his hand.

Wouldn't it be easy to just let it out?

No … When he had left for the veterinary college, he had asked me to be the madcap he had known. So here I am, as mad as can be.

I don't think that's what he had meant.

He tried to not say his name and I was thankful for that. But I was mad that he talked on about him. I didn't care for his opinion. I felt dead inside and so was my body. My body, a cicatrized scroll who told the story of an involuntary dreadful adventure.

I think he had wanted you to be a happy nature. The one he had met on the road, at camp. You had been yourself back then. You had been my always-smiling-sister with more than just happy lips. Talking like sunshine. That's who he had fallen for.

A silent tear escaped my eye. "Shut up." I said lowly. Jess shot me a knowing glance but I ignored him. The girl Daryl had fallen for had died with him at the prison. My brother had wanted the phoenix from the ashes, here I was: Something between Frankenstein and Two Face.

You are giving yourself a hard time. Why do you blame yourself so much? Why do you lower yourself?

I didn't say I was lost … like I had said before. I just needed to be tougher. I needed to be stronger to keep these guys save and to keep on walking to find the others. Maybe if we would walk in a circle, check the perimeter of the prison …

That's what I had been looking for, the spirit to go on. But still you are a human person and my sweet little sis. The one who was afraid of the monsters under the bed.

There were no monsters under the bed anymore, they were walking around.

"This is no fucking forest this is an ocean of bushes." Merle sighed frustrated. "And not even the ones with wild berries." He used the blade on his stump to move through the bushes. Almost looked like some kind of Indiana Jones.

There was a snarling to my right which sounded like an echo. "Merle!" But he was already alarmed. I looked over to Jess who nodded.

"Sounds like an army." Merle checked the blade on his stump.

"We need to hide." Jess proposed.

"Ya see any magic rabbit hole?"

Jess looked through the bushes. "There are too many coming here." You could tell from his voice that he was scarred.

There were just a few bullets left in my gun. And shooting wouldn't help but attract other zombies. So I took my knife. And closed up to Merle. "We should run."

It was too late. The first walker stumbled clumsily through the bushes. He ripped himself of the bush and looked like a wild Christmas tree. Jess killed him and the next one. I pulled him back to us. "We have to stay together." So we stood there our backs together.

A real horde appeared. "We can't let them surround us." I said to the others and stepped forward to kill a walker. When he fell dead to the ground I stepped back to the circle.

"Where to run?" Jess was nervous.

"We stay together." Merle's voice was all steady. He wasn't afraid.

He should be. The one who is not afraid is dead.

"I am not afraid." I said as calm as could be and took another one down.

"There's too many of them." Jess voice trembled.

"He is right." I said to Merle.

Merle laughed and killed two in a row. But stumbled forward. Jess and I were quick at his side, covering the flanks. The walkers surrounded us like a wolf encircled his prey. I kicked the next one into the others behind him. The fell down but they would get up quick. I kicked the other one and he buried another under him. I jumped on his head and crashed my knife into the one under him.

"Ella, watch out!" Jess screamed behind me. Without thinking I jumped backwards to my friends and felt the ripping of my shirt. A walker had tried to grab me and torn of my sleeve.

"Bastard." I hissed. Merle was at his feet again, his breath uneven. "If anyone has a good plan, I would love to hear it." I laughed. I heard my brother laughing too.

"Run bitches run!" Merle fought an aisle through the walkers and we followed. I wondered how he could run that fast. But looking back I knew the answer. Death was on our heels.

Were we still running south?

Really!? You think about that now?

After a good sprint Merle slowed down. I came to a halt next to him. "How do you feel? And I don't wat to hear some shitty answer"

"Fuck it …" He spat to the ground. "We need a safe place to hide."

Behind us there were no walkers in sight. They really grew weak without a meal. Seemed they couldn't even run, just slurp. This was our advantage.

It was dark when we finally found a place to rest. I was exhausted from the walk and hungry like a bear. Merle's breath was uneven too. His wound must be causing him some trouble. When we opened the door Jess was the first to enter. He was the fittest of us. He had no wound and hadn't endured an illness of almost no return.

The house was the last one in a row of streets it almost looked like the other houses were abandoning it. My eyes wandered over the house to the street. It was built at a street with similar houses. It almost looked like the Desperate Housewives had been shot here once. I sighed. That was over too, no more TV Shows, no more TV ... I took my knife out of the holster and entered after Jess. Merle raised his stump-knife. He almost looked like back then at Woodbury. Just the mad eyes weren't there anymore. Instead he looked exhausted.

The ground floor was clean. With our last strength we barricaded the door. The windows had a special sealing from the outside and were already looked. We hadn't been quiet, so if there were walkers they would have come for us. I nodded upstairs. "Let's take a look." I whispered in case people had hide somewhere above.

Merle sat down at the couch. "Have fun!" He took the bottle next to him to his lips. I wondered where he had already found the booze.

Jess nodded to me and we walked up together. "This looks almost like my parent's home." The smile seemed forced.

"I'm sorry …" I wondered if something had happened to his mother. His father had died of cancer when we had been together two years. He hadn't mentioned something – and I had never asked.

"Nothing to be sorry for. It is like you have said in the woods. No one of us is responsible for what is happening."

We reached the top of the stairs. There were four doors. Jess nodded to his left. He opened the door on three. There was a dead walker on the floor of the bathroom. And another one in the bathtub. While I waited in the door Jess entered to take a closer look. He smashed his knife into the heads of the walkers again. "Just to make sure …" He looked around for a hideout, but there was no place to hide. He opened the small closets but there was nothing but some towels. "I don't want any surprises."

He came back and we checked the next room. It looked like a guest room. The windows on this floor weren't barricaded. Some light showed us a guest room. It looked too neat and clean to be a real bedroom. "You can have this one." He told me while he checked the closets again.

"You wanna have the king size bed at the parent's bedroom." I laughed.

He turned to me. "I didn't hear you laugh in a while." My lips stopped smiling at once. "It is good to hear you haven't lost it." I was about to say something. "But you added quite a range of dirty words."

What does he know …

"I had hit the books."

"You had done pretty much …" We went for the next room. When he opened the door a lightning highlighted the parent's bedroom. "Dibs." I jerked at the loud thunder.

"I knew it."

Jess ran for the bed. "Slowpoke." He jumped on it, but the moment he crashed on the bed a hand came out from under the bed and a well-known snarling arouse. With a short sprint I was at the bed, grabbing the hand and pulled the walker out to slam my knife into its head. I looked under the bed but there was nothing else. When I got up Jess looked at me surprised.

"You have really changed." His eyes bore through me. "I had loved to protect you from spiders and the monsters under your bed." And he really had. When we had been in a hotel or a place I hadn't know, he had always checked under the bed. He had remembered the nightmares of my childhood and my protecting brother who always had to check under my bed.

"I don't need anyone to protect me."

"You know that I and that man at the end of the stairs will give our lives for you."

"No need to …"

"Accept it. You don't have a choice." He jumped from the bed and stood close. "You can't control everything and you sure cannot protect everyone."

He nailed it.

I rolled my eyes. "You cannot even suppress the voice in your head …" My eyes went big. "I knew it when we walked through the woods. You still do the face when he is talking to you. Like I said, you can't control everything."

"No word of this to Merle." I didn't want him to know.

"I promise."

"You have broken that promise once." I said in a harsh tone.

"Ella … it wasn't …" He stopped and sighed. "I want you to trust me again." He took my hand and placed it over his heart. "What can I do that makes you trust me again?"

There was a creaking behind us. Merle opened the door across the hall. "Mine!" He shouted and crashed on the bed.

I wanted to turn around, but Jess still held my hand. I didn't want this to be anymore awkward. "Come one, there is one more room to check."

You should be more clear about it. Seems like he won't give up on the thought of the two of you.

Maybe he was right, but I didn't want to make things any worse. If there would be a next time – and I hoped there wouldn't – I would put him into place.

We checked the next room. It must have been a boys. A real teenager bed room. "Dibs." I smiled and walked into the room with my knife ready. There was a door to the left, a bathroom I guessed.

Jess opened it slowly and peeked into it. "Clear!" I walked after him and saw a small bath room.

"Definitely mine." I smiled.

Jess opened the small shower cubicle and immediately stashed his knife into it. Dark viscous blood splattered the milky glass wall of the cubicle. I wanted to get closer, but he stopped me with his hand raised. "Stay away." His voice was a bit shaky. "The kid …"

I walked backwards. I really didn't want to see that. Instead of going away, Jess leaned into the cubicle. I felt the urge to puke and went back into the room to sit on the bed. A few minutes later Jess came back to me with a small backpack in his hand. "He has meds in his backpack."

"How did it happen?" I wondered if the boy died there by accident or if someone had killed a kid.

"He was shot …"

"How could someone kill a defenseless kid?" I looked at my hands.

Jess came closer and sat down next to me. He put an arm around me and hugged me. The feeling of a lovely hug felt good. I closed my eyes for a second but saw Daryl's face. I opened my eyes and stood up. "We need candles." I walked downstairs and found candles in the living room. The mother must have been pretty romantic person. Almost all the candles were red or pink. Even the matchbox had a heart on it.

Before I went back upstairs I checked the door again. It was tight close as were the windows. I light a candle and went back upstairs. There was a grunting and I almost dropped all the candles. Walkers? A sound of pain came down the stairs. I walked up fast and saw Jess treating Merle. Merle's sat there only in his pants. I would never have thought he had a trained body.

The thunder grew louder. I winced, I had never liked the sounds of a thunderstorm. I walked back into my new room and lit a few more candles. The fatigue had somehow vanished. The lightning and loud rumbling shook my heard. I sat down on the bed and looked to the bathroom door. I smiled. Jess had closed the door and sealed it with a hanger.

I laid down and looked out of the window where the storm raged. "We are safe for the moment."

You need to rest. Close your eyes, take a nap. I will watch over you tonight.

"I can't simply …" I yawned and closed my eyes. The warm feeling of a hug returned but this time I felt my brother around me. I wrapped myself in the blanket and took in a deep breath. I wished to stay here for a while. A safe place …. Could it be true?

Don't get to comfy there Ella. This world wont get any easier.
Hope you enjoyed the chaoter and hope to see you all next week. R&R