AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I just want to say that there will be some kind of gritty parts to this story. We'll have some kind of time jumps coming up, to advance the start of the story into other things (all explained), but all of this sets up group dynamics and character dynamics (I hope). There's a lot of what we can simply expect from TWD, especially surrounding the Dixons (history of abuse, violence, drugs, etc.). I will also say that I do intend to soften season 1 Merle just a little because, even though I know he's really quite racist, I'm not really comfortable writing it and I just don't want to. So, I'm going to conveniently and purposefully just soften that aspect of Merle. I hope you understand.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
Daryl knew Andrea's voice almost as well as he knew Carol's.
Whereas he'd spent time and effort committing Carol's voice to memory—learning the different inflections she used—he'd learned Andrea's voice from simply having called her family for so long.
Andrea's blood family, including Amy, would have said that the biggest mistake that a young Andrea Harrison had ever committed was tying herself to an asshole, ten years her senior, that made her Andrea Dixon only after a pregnancy scare that turned out to be nothing more than a couple of positive pregnancy tests, and a couple weeks of worry, followed by a heavy period that might have gotten Merle off the proverbial hook if it had come three weeks earlier.
Although Daryl hated that Andrea's family had never thought more highly of is own family, Daryl couldn't exactly swear that they were wrong. Andrea had done well for herself, as Andrea Dixon, but that didn't mean she might not have gone further if she hadn't been tied to Merle.
Andrea had married Merle in the summer after her first year of undergraduate college. That was when her parents told her they loved her, but they wouldn't support her bad decisions. They'd pulled any and all financial support and sat back, arms crossed, almost waiting to see her fail. Daryl knew that Andrea loved her parents, and even now she must be grieving their loss, even if the world hadn't allowed her such luxury, but he didn't suffer at their loss, and he'd never wholly forgive them for their treatment of Andrea.
Andrea had pretended like it didn't bother her, though, and she hadn't let it stop her. She'd finished school, gotten her law degree, and managed to get a job at one of two small law firms that East River had to offer. She made decent money, and she'd earned some prestige for herself, despite the fact that some people around town were always going to look down on her because they had a dislike for anyone that carried the last name Dixon.
She'd also always stood by Merle, whether or not the asshole always deserved her support. She understood where Merle and Daryl had come from and, more than that, she simply loved Merle.
If Merle Dixon couldn't say he had shit else in life, he had the love of one woman—and that had led to Daryl and him locking horns a few times over his treatment of that woman.
Daryl could have turned to artificial comfort as much as Merle had. It was in his blood and, often enough, he'd heard that was one of the main things that mattered when it came to determining if someone was addicted to some chemical form of getting the hell out of their own head. Daryl had an addictive personality, and he knew it. He was addicted to cigarettes—the lesser of evils, he reasoned. And he was addicted to Carol—an indulgence he'd chosen to allow himself since she'd come into his life. He'd purposefully avoided anything harder than liquor and weed, and he only enjoyed those things with very careful monitoring and mindfulness.
Merle, on the other, like his father before him and his father before that, had allowed himself to dabble in just about every substance that promised to provide peace and happiness—never fully accepting that there was just always going to be shit, deep inside all of them, that was just going to be there. It would never go away, no matter how hard they tried to drown it, smoke it out, or bury it under mountains of snortable and otherwise consumable drugs.
Daryl didn't know if it was typical of most addicts, but Merle Dixon didn't want to be an addict. He wanted to be sober. He wanted to be the Ward Cleaver kind of guy next door that always did right by his wife, his kids, and the whole damn world. And every time he got on the wagon—every time they all joined forces, and gathered their strength and their resources, and hoisted his heavy ass up on the wagon—he swore he was there for good. He had a good grip. He would stay on, this time. And every time he said it, they wanted to believe it—no one more than Daryl and Andrea.
Since Andrea had come into the picture, they'd both been there to catch him every time it had all just gotten too heavy again and, crashing down on top of him, it had toppled Merle right off the wagon again.
They didn't make excuses for him—not really—but they still loved him while they gathered up the pieces of Merle that seemed to get broken in every fall and started the whole process over again.
Daryl thought there was a certain quality to Andrea's voice when she cried out with the desperation of a woman trying to gather together all the broken pieces of the man she loved while, simultaneously, being eternally furious that she may never simply be enough for him—she may never simply be enough to quiet the demons. Daryl didn't excuse it, of course, but he understood it. Andrea had to sleep sometimes. She had to work. She had to leave Merle to do the things that life required if she was going to keep the bills paid when he sometimes failed to do that. The demons didn't have quite so many requirements, so they never left him.
"Stop it! Stop it! Right now! Merle! You son of a bitch!" Andrea cried out.
As soon as it registered for Daryl what he was hearing, and who he was hearing it from, it snatched him out of his slumber. Beside him, resting with her head on his arm so that he couldn't feel the blood pumping there anymore, Carol slept. In the little separate area of their tent, Sophia would still be sleeping as well.
The light around them suggested that it was dawn. Early dawn.
Daryl scrambled up, quickly, as the urgency of Andrea's voice, and the slowly perceptible din of other voices, made it clear that his assistance might be needed, and the faster the better. Daryl worked his way into his pants as Carol stirred and came into herself, scrubbing at her eyes with her hands.
"What's happening?" She asked, jerking awake as her ears started to take in what they were hearing. She immediately sat up and reached for her own clothes.
"Don't know," Daryl said. "But it ain't fuckin' good. I know that much."
"What do you want me to do?" Carol asked. "What's best?"
"Without seein' it, I don't know," Daryl said. "Tell Soph to stay in here. Maybe—try to come get Andrea?"
"What about Amy?" Carol asked.
"She ain't never been no good at comforting Andrea," Daryl commented, tying his boots at what he was sure was pretty much the fastest speed at which he'd ever accomplished such a task. He didn't wait to see Carol get her clothes on or tell Sophia to stay inside the tent. He got out of the tent as quickly as he could and took in the scene around him.
Andrea was soggy with tears, red in the face, and doing the desperate kind of screaming cry that would leave her throat raw and eventually lead her to lose her voice. Amy was wrestling her sister, and was one step away from riding Andrea around the camp like a pony.
The other high-pitched screaming came from the police officer's wife who was wringing her hands and walking wide circles around the spot on the ground where Merle and Shane—the police officer who had elected himself leader of their group—were rolling around fighting each other. It was difficult to say which of them had the upper hand, and it was clear that, though they were gaining spectators, nobody was really jumping in to swing the fight in one direction or another.
Daryl practically took a deep breath like preparing to jump into a pool and selected the best moment to get his hands on the upper-most man in the tangle. It happened to be Shane, but it didn't matter. All he intended to do was shake them apart and, once the tangle was undone, try to help sort out the problem.
Breaking them up was easier than expected, but Shane swung on Daryl the moment he gained his feet, twisting his body like a cat. Daryl held tight to him, ducked his punch, and walked him backward in an attempt to somehow figure out how to end the fight without having to engage in an actual fight. Daryl was no stranger to fights, of course, but that didn't mean that he always preferred them, if they could be avoided, and especially not first thing in the morning.
"Son of a bitch! I ain't fightin' your ass! Break this shit up!" Daryl growled through gritted teeth.
Finally getting words out, and putting some actual physical distance between Shane and Merle, seemed to do something to get the police officer out of the state of seeing red that he'd fallen into during the fight.
"What the hell is goin' on here?" Daryl asked, panting to himself with exertion, when he felt it was finally safe to let Shane go.
Merle, for his part, had found his feet, and the one black man in their group—whose name Daryl couldn't remember because it was some sort of chosen moniker that had been a little ridiculous to him and he hadn't take the time to remember it—was somewhat doing his best to be a body-block between Merle and Shane.
In less than a minute, Daryl could see his brother was on something. There was just something different about the way that Merle carried himself when he was strung out—and Daryl had been seeing that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde juxtaposition of his brother's personalities for a long time.
"I'm not allowing chaos!" Shane barked, his residual anger coming through in his tone.
"Try to fuckin' find some fuckin' order!" Merle yelled back. "Fuckin' good fuckin' sense! You invitin' fuckin' chaos you stupid fuck!"
He lunged forward and the black man stepped between them again, hands up, and did his best to try to soothe Merle with an offering of "Hey man, it's all right. It's good. Everything's good. Look at your woman over there. You see what you're doin' to her? Just ease up, man. Nothin's happenin'."
Daryl reminded himself to thank the man later and to be bothered with learning his name. This clearly wasn't his first time dealing with someone who was high enough to have probably been considered a person of interest by NASA. At any rate, Daryl was sure that his calm demeanor would have its limits if he had to deal with Merle too long.
"What the hell is going on?" Daryl asked.
"Your brother is outta his skull," Shane growled, backing off of Daryl and running his hand through his hair. His pacing in the small plot of land put him almost on the same level of frustration as Merle, though Daryl was pretty sure the officer was clean. "Thought it was a bear out here. Came out to find him knocking around. Said he was looking for a shovel to bury Ed."
Daryl felt like he'd been splashed with ice water. He didn't know if he was hopeful that Merle had killed Ed or that he hadn't.
"You kill him?" Daryl asked, tossing the question in Merle's direction.
"Asshole jumped me before I could find the shovel," Merle said. "I was going to be at his sorry ass to death and bury him in the hole. Bullet's too damn good for what he deserves. If you were half a man, little brother, you'da done killed his ass by now. Made him choke to death on his own fuckin' dick. Insteada kissin' ass up to these—pansy-ass, city-fied fuckin' do-gooders and pedophile-lovers." He shoved off the man that was trying to calm him. "Get the fuck off me you fuckin' fuck!" He shook the man off and went storming off.
Andrea did her best to go after him, screaming out his name in a voice that was going hoarse, but Carol and Amy both held her back and reminded her that the best thing to do was to let him have his space.
"He's dangerous," Shane said. "Out of his mind on something."
"You right about one thing," Daryl said. "He's outta his mind on somethin'. And we're gonna do our best to figure out—what it is and…and where it is. We're gonna try to get it outta camp. We don't want him to have it no more'n you do. But the thing you fuckin' wrong about is that he ain't dangerous. At least, he ain't dangerous to nobody that don't deserve it. Listen—I know my brother. Even outta his head. In fact, I might know him better outta his head than in it. Give him a wide berth an' he don't hurt nobody that don't just demand it. His ass would rather walk away, ten times outta ten, if you give him the space to do it."
"You wanna say that he isn't dangerous when he was going to beat Ed to death with a shovel? The man is still sleeping. You want to sit here and tell me that—that man is sleeping, and he's demanding that your brother attack him?"
Daryl laughed to himself.
"Listen, Ed's been demandin' it for a long damn time," Daryl said. "From what I hear—and from what I know? The shit he's done? The shit he's threatened to do? He damn well ought to be scared of prison 'cause they'd kill him in there, too. I won't defend my brother's drug habit, and I already told you that me an' his woman's gonna do what we can to find whatever the hell he took and get it outta here. But if he beats Ed Peletier to death with a shovel? The only damn thing I can say is Ed had it comin'."
"This group will descent into chaos if we start killing each other," Shane said.
Daryl shrugged his shoulders.
"Then we gonna do good to make sure we only limit the killin' to them that most deserve it," Daryl said. "Let's see about breakfast. Then Andrea an' me will find the drugs. Merle oughta be about ready to come down a little after he eats somethin'."