AN: Here we are, another chapter here. There's, of course, tons to go here, and we'll have lots of "ups and downs" to work through.
I hope you enjoy the chapter! Let me know what you think!
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"Where did he get them? Where did he get the fucking drugs! You were supposed to get rid of them, asshole!" Andrea yelled as she launched herself at Shane.
Carol couldn't imagine, and she didn't want to imagine, how she might feel if she were in Andrea's shoes. The small group had just gotten back, reporting that they'd searched Atlanta for Merle until the trail ran absolutely dry—not that there'd been much of a trail to follow thanks to the fact that he'd wandered off into a concrete jungle which allowed very little in the way of tracking.
Merle had freed himself from the handcuffs by using a hacksaw to remove his right hand just above the wrist. From what they could tell, he'd cauterized the wound, and he'd left the building. From there, it was truly anyone's guess where he'd gone or what had happened to him. There was no way of knowing. They'd searched the surrounding area to some degree, but the city was crawling with Walkers and looking for one person was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
They could sit and speculate for hours at the time over what had made Merle make the decision that cutting off his hand was better than remaining where he was, waiting for some kind of rescue that, perhaps, he believed was never coming, but it didn't matter. At the end of the day, all that mattered was that Merle was gone, and none of the Dixons knew if he was alive or dead, though they naturally feared the worst.
Standing back from it all, and keeping some distance because there were already enough people crowded around as the whole camp tried to close in on one space to be involved, Carol watched the whole thing with the kind of stomach ache that came from wanting peace, but knowing that it simply couldn't be found at the moment. This was just something that was going to have to pass. It would heal, as they all healed, with time.
Maybe Andrea should have kept her cool a little better, honestly, but Carol couldn't guarantee that she—or anyone else—would be better behaved in Andrea's shoes.
Shane blocked Andrea's physical attack, his arm coming up and across his chest to create a physical barrier that kept her from slamming into him. He didn't have time to respond to her in any other way before Rick—the man that, Carol had learned, was Lori's husband whom she'd apparently believed to be dead—grabbed Andrea's shoulder to physically draw her attention to him.
"You've got to calm down! This wasn't Shane's fault," Rick said.
"It was your fault, you asshole!" Andrea yelled. Rick had gotten her attention, but he may have gotten more of it than he wanted. In a clearly desperate act to do something, Andrea threw herself at Rick. "You did this!"
Rick's blocking of Andrea was quite different than Shane's had been. Instead of blocking her, he shoved her backward. She stepped backward, trying to catch herself, before she hit the ground hard. He quickly came to stand over her, demanding that she stay down. He was met by Daryl who was only slightly more in control of his emotions than Andrea, clearly having worked some of them out in Atlanta.
"Get the fuck offa her!" Daryl yelled. "Back the fuck offa her! Merle would break your fuckin' neck if he saw what the hell you just done!"
"She can't be attacking people! We don't need this kind of violence around here!" Rick barked in Daryl's face.
"You gonna handcuff her to a roof, too, Rick?" Daryl asked. Then Carol heard her husband yell something about violence and Rick murdering his brother, the words almost too difficult to understand through Daryl's anger and frustration, before any kind of calmness that had existed in the little camp shattered into a noisy din of confusion where everyone was yelling at everyone else about something. Carol had already tucked the children—all of them—away in the RV with Amy, and she'd made them promise to stay there. She was glad, now, that she had. She didn't want them to see everyone fighting with everyone else. Some of the people, she felt certain, didn't even know why they were arguing or with whom they were actually arguing.
This was, perhaps, a release of pressure that had been building up too long.
Luckily, when Daryl physically went for Rick, Shane stepped between the two and split them up quickly. He shoved Rick in one direction, and Daryl in the other, but the brief time apart calmed the men down enough to stop the physical fight from blossoming into its full possibility.
"Break it up! Stop it! Every damn one of you!" Shane yelled out in frustration as he'd shoved the two men apart.
Then he'd made his way over to where Andrea, swinging at anyone who got near her in grief and frustration, was still sitting on the ground. He heaved her to her feet, allowing her to fight against him and even land a few punches, and he hugged her to him. Carol was more than aware that the hug was less for true comfort and more for knowing that holding her still and controlled, in such a way, would help to calm her down even if she didn't want to be calmed.
"I don't know where Merle got the drugs," Shane said, controlling his voice to try to be at least somewhat soothing. "I don't know. They're hidden. I hid them. I hid them just like I said I would. I'm not even telling you where, just in case somebody around here decides they want some kind of escape from reality. I don't know where he got them, but it wasn't me."
"He probably had another stash," Rick said. He held his hands up, quickly, in Daryl's direction when Daryl visibly bristled at the comment. "Addicts tend to have ways of getting what they want. That's all I'm saying."
Shane's bear hold had the desired effect of calming Andrea down. As she calmed, Dale broke into the space and reached his arms out, taking Andrea away from Shane and pulling her into a hug that was meant to comfort rather than to simply restrain her.
"Where he had them hidden or—where he found them—or how he got them," Dale said, "whatever the case may be, it hardly seems to matter now."
"Yeah—what the hell matters is that my fuckin' brother got handcuffed to a roof until he cut his damn hand off an' went off on his own to try to save himself," Daryl pointed out.
"It's unfortunate what happened, but…" Rick started.
"But it's your fuckin' fault!" Daryl snapped back at Rick, before the man could continue.
"He was out of line!" Rick barked back.
"And I already heard everyone else say they seen him worse!" Daryl yelled back.
"So—just because he's been allowed to be worse that means we ought to tolerate whatever the hell he does to endanger the group?" Rick shouted.
"Hey! Hey! Let's not start yelling again! This is getting us no damn where!" Shane interrupted.
"He's dead," Andrea said, as calm as she could possibly be at the moment. "He's dead and you killed him." There was no question to whom she was directing her comment.
"Look, Andrea," Shane said, approaching where she was still accepting Dale's comfort. Shane held his hands up in mock surrender, clearly trying to keep from escalating anything, "we don't know that he's dead. OK? We don't. We don't know that. Not yet. We don't even have to assume that at this point. He's been gone less than twenty-four hours and that makes him still a missing person."
"He's missing out there," Jacqui said. "I'm all for being positive, but at some point, we've got to be realistic, too."
"Merle's a survivor," Daryl said. "If anybody could make it on their own, Merle could."
"That's my point, maybe," Shane said. "He knows where the camp is. Better than any of us. That's why he was down there—he's the best guide we have, right? It isn't—me getting lost out there where I don't know how to get back on my own. This is somewhere Merle knows. He's familiar with it. It's entirely possible that he finds his way back."
"He might come back," Carol said, finally closing in on the group a little now that everyone seemed to be calming. "He might find his way back."
"Yeah—if he ain't dead," Daryl said.
Carol approached him carefully, just in case. She knew that people did things that were out of the ordinary when they were angry or hurting. Daryl reached for her when he saw her approaching, but when he got his hands on her it was only to pull her to him and hold her close to him. He was sweaty. Dirty. He smelled terrible. And Carol couldn't be happier than she was in his arms. Her heart was pounding with the work her brain had done. She'd naturally been empathetic to Andrea and, as a result, her body had almost allowed her to feel the anguish that she would surely feel if Daryl hadn't returned from the trip into Atlanta.
"It'll be dark soon," Carol said quietly. Daryl squeezed her in response. He knew what she was saying. Those creatures seemed to thrive in the dark. Daryl and Merle had already figured that, maybe, the dead didn't need the light to see—maybe they saw equally well, or equally poorly, in daylight as they did in darkness. People were at a disadvantage, though, because they couldn't see the Walkers in the darkness.
"It'll be dark soon," Dale echoed, with a different tone entirely. "And there's food prepared. There's deer and vegetables. Why don't we all—eat what we can and try to settle down some."
Dale turned, guiding Andrea's body with his own, clearly trying to lead her back toward the area where the food in question was cooling, waiting to be consumed.
Andrea pulled back, though, and faced Rick.
"I want you to know that—you're still responsible for this," she said, her voice shaking. "And—I'm not going to forget that."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Lori asked, making her way toward Andrea. "It's not Rick's fault that your husband was a drug addict!"
"No," Andrea said, "you're right about that. It's not Rick's fault that Merle was a drug addict. It's not Rick's fault that Merle somehow got ahold of drugs—and I don't know if that was Merle's fault or someone else's. But it's Rick's fault that Merle got handcuffed to a roof. It's Rick's fault that Merle got left behind—probably thought that nobody was going to come back for him and nobody cared. It's Rick's fault that he's either dead or he's out there, somewhere, hurt—with his hand cut off…alone…and…"
Andrea broke off. Her voice finally broke. Her anger seemed to simply ebb away as her grief took over again.
"He had to be controlled," Lori said. "Rick did what he had to do. And he doesn't have to defend himself any longer. Merle was a threat to this camp. He was a threat to everyone. A drug addict is unpredictable, and that's the last thing we need with everything that's going on. He was a threat to you, too, if you could see it."
"Shut your fuckin' skinny ass mouth, Olive Oyl!" Daryl spat.
Dale didn't hesitate to lead Andrea away as quickly as he could, practically dragging her. She'd had all that she needed, and possibly all that she could take, for the moment. When Daryl let go of Carol to deal with some of his emotions, Carol put a little distance between them and watched as Dale took Andrea to the campfire and sat her down before he brought her a bottle of water and set about making a plate for her.
"Don't you talk to her like that!" Had been Rick's response to Daryl, and the two had threatened to lock horns again before Shane placed himself in the middle of them.
"This isn't getting us any fucking where!" He yelled. "What the hell happened out there, maybe it shouldn't have happened. But it did. And now we have to move forward with what the hell we've got. One way or another. We can't start fighting amongst ourselves."
"Not unless they outta line, ain't that right, Rick? Then you can do whatever the hell you want with 'em."
"T-Dog was supposed to unlock him," Rick said. "We had to leave to get the rest of the group back safely. I'm not happy about what happened, but I can't change it. If I could, I would. But I can't."
"Nobody can change anything," Shane said. "Listen—there's no good answer to this. Shit happens. Now—we all know Merle had a certain skill for starting things. Daryl—even you can't deny that."
"Don't mean Rick here had a right to kill him," Daryl said. "That how they do things in—King County?"
"Rick did the best he could," Lori barked.
"Lori—why don't you go get something to eat?" Shane asked. "Rick? Let's just let things cool down here, huh? Everybody get a little distance. Some space. Get some air. Something to eat."
"You forget who tracked that damn deer?" Daryl asked. "Shot it? Brought it back to this fuckin' camp that, by the way, we fuckin' been usin' for years? You forget who prob'ly prepared that shit? Cooked it? My family. My fuckin' family! Merle's family…"
"Daryl," Carol said, walking over then and gently resting a hand on his shoulder to ground him. He stood there, breathing heavily through his grief and anger, but he calmed. Slowly she felt his muscles relaxing. "Let's just—get something to eat? We'll get some sleep and we'll talk about it all in the morning. Andrea needs some time, Daryl. You need some time."
"You do," Shane said. "Listen to Carol. You need time and you need—to breathe. We'll keep watch tonight. Maybe Merle makes his way back to the camp. There's no use in fighting, though. Whatever the hell happens, fighting isn't going to make it any better."
Daryl seemed to accept what Shane was saying. He nodded his head, and he pulled Carol closer to him. Then he looked back at Rick.
"I'm keepin' my eye on you," he said to Rick, before walking with Carol back toward the area where people were beginning to serve themselves food to eat from the large amount that had been prepared to keep the meat from going to waste. "Come on," he said to Carol. "Let's get Sophia somethin' to eat an' check on Andrea."