AN: This is a one shot based on a prompt that was sent to me for some quarantine fun.

There are some elements, here, that will be repeated when I start my next story (coming soon to a fic site near you, when "Becoming" is complete), but I won't specify all the little things that will carry over (think Dixons and established relationships).

This is kind of dark. I don't know that I meant for it to really happen that way, but it is what it is. I'm giving you fair warning for discussion of domestic violence (not terribly detailed), some hint at domestic violence (think Season 1 Ed), and lots of actual violence (of the non-domestic) variety.

At any rate, I hope you enjoy this little one shot. Don't forget to let me know what you think!

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Daryl was certain that it was actually physically impossible to hate any one person more than he hated Ed Peletier. He was certain that the human body simply didn't have the capacity for any more hate than that and, if he'd actually found anyone that he possibly wanted to hate more than Ed, his body would simply explode because it ran out of space to hold that much of the negative emotion.

He sincerely doubted, though, that he'd ever find another person to hate as much as he hated Ed—no matter how long he lived, how far he travelled, or how many assholes crossed his path.

Ed Peletier was a specific kind of asshole. And he'd once, less than two years ago, been married to Daryl's wife.

But Daryl didn't hate the man simply because he'd been married to Carol. He didn't hate the man because he was Sophia's biological father and, despite their best efforts to get rid of him entirely and despite Sophia's protests, had still convinced the court to give him supervised visitation with the girl once every other week—which was, as a matter of fact, how it came to be that, at the end of the fucking world, Daryl Dixon was stuck in the vicinity of the man that he hated with every single fiber of his being.

Daryl didn't hate Ed Peletier for any shallow reasons. He didn't hate him for petty jealously. Daryl hated Ed Peletier because he'd hurt two of the most important people in Daryl's world—and he'd hurt them purposely and often.

Daryl wouldn't mind seeing Ed Peletier strung up in a tree somewhere, and with the law being in rather short supply, he was only waiting for the best opportunity to bring such a vision to life.

Rather than sit and stew in his hatred of Ed Peletier—which did nothing for anyone and, sometimes, caused Daryl problematic physical symptoms—Daryl tried to reserve his time for hating Ed to the moments when Ed most required it, and he put his attention into the necessary activities that it would take to keep the group fed. His primary concern, honestly, was making sure that—in addition to the tent shanty town they'd built for shelter—they all had enough food and water.

He didn't want these people, which he wasn't exactly sure how to shake now that they'd kind of bunched up on his family, to see what Dixons were capable of if some kind of fight for survival was forced to break out over supplies.

Daryl had a wife, a daughter, and two babies on the way—neither of them too much bigger than strawberries or fat little grapes. In addition to his small family unit, Daryl's brother was in camp, and he had a wife that he was more than a little fond of who had, somewhat by accident, brought her little sister along for the ride. Neither Daryl nor Merle was going to be willing to watch their loved ones suffer from hunger, thirst, or exposure—especially not when, so far, they'd been responsible for most of the hunting and fishing that was keeping the rest of their accidentally-acquired rag-tag group from simply drying up and dying on the spot.

So, Daryl put a great deal of effort into hunting to make sure that there was always plenty to go around. Still, some people got a little out of hand sometimes.

The camp had been relatively calm and quiet all day.

Merle's wife, Andrea, and her little sister, Amy, were floating around on the pond in a little fishing boat. They weren't wasting time entirely, though. They were both pretty decent fisherman, and the two women did more than pick up the slack when the noises of camp ran the good kills off further than Daryl or Merle could safely wander—especially with Ed Peletier at camp.

Most of the other men and women were chopping and hauling wood, doing laundry, boiling water, or tending to other daily chores that needed to be accomplished. Most of them.

And the kids—the two that they had present, accounted for, and living entirely separate lives from their mothers, unlike the two in Carol's belly that Daryl already counted as being every bit as important as anybody else—were doing homework in the shade of some trees in an attempt to keep things as normal as possible.

Everyone else was supposed to be occupied with something useful, but some people were better at being useful than others.

Daryl had followed Merle back for the last little leg of their trip through the woods. The deer had run further than either of them had expected it to be able to run—especially not with a bolt that damn deep in its shoulder. Daryl had to give the animal credit; it's drive-to-survive had been pretty strong. Still, it had eventually fallen, and Daryl had heaved it up and onto his shoulders so he could follow Merle back to camp. His brother had always been a stronger tracker than him, and Daryl would rather not have to admit that he'd lost the path, in the excitement of chasing the deer, to the point that it would take him a while to be sure he was going in the right direction.

Merle didn't even seem to have to think about it. He had always seemed capable of practically smelling the way to whatever destination he had in mind.

Right about now, all Daryl could smell was blood. Blood, death, campfire smoke, and sweat.

"Pick ya feet up, lil' brother," Merle warned. He was telling him about the guide-wire, so that meant they were almost back to camp. Daryl laughed to himself. Merle could lead them the clean way into camp. If it had been him, Daryl would have probably had them tripping over whatever private little nook in the grass their fearless leader, Shane, and his sweet piece, Lori, were pretending that nobody knew about.

Daryl cleared the guide-wire without a problem and without jingling the tin can contraption that they'd set up to alert them that the animated corpses had roamed too close to the camp. Then, free of that, he stomped along behind his brother at a slightly more rapid pace—anxious to get back since they'd been gone longer than they'd intended.

Stepping into view of the camp, everything was just as they'd left it, at first glance.

Daryl dropped the deer where Merle would clean it—his end of the bargain for Daryl having hauled it all the way back—and Daryl walked his way, panting over his exertions, down to the shallow end of one of the smaller water-filled holes at the quarry. He bent down to wash his hands and his arms clean from the deer blood, and then he wet his face and the back of his neck with the cool water.

In a quick glance, he could find Sophia in the shade working on her studies or, more than likely, pretending to do math because her mother would never check behind her these days. He straightened up, his heart picking up a few extra, and irregular, beats of rhythm, when he couldn't immediately find Carol.

When he did find her, his heart came to a screeching halt.

She didn't scream. She hadn't. She never would. The asshole had used and abused her to the point that Daryl had seen her, once and accidentally, grab the hot iron wrong and never so much as squeak at the pain of the serious burn.

She would never have alerted any of them to the fact that he was up to his old shit.

He never had any right to put his hands on her, but he had less rights now than he ever had before. Seeing what was happening, Daryl rushed toward the end of the camp where the cooking pots and other non-perishable items were stored. Ed was there, his hand wrapped around the upper part of Carol's arm, dragging her—where? Toward the woods, toward the area where he'd soon trigger the clatter of a different piece of the guide-wire that Daryl had stepped over earlier.

Ed hadn't noticed him and Carol was too busy trying to quietly beg—because she was begging, Daryl could hear her as he neared them—Ed not to do whatever it was he had in mind to do. She would be begging for Sophia's sake—so the girl wouldn't hear or see anything—as much as she'd be begging for her own. Daryl knew all about that.

"Get your fuckin' hands off my wife!" Daryl barked out as he got close enough to overtake them and to take Ed by surprise. Hauling the deer for the long distance had worn him out. His muscles were sore and his body screamed for rest and water. His brain and his heart overpowered everything else, though. There was nothing that mattered more to him, in that moment, than freeing Carol—and breaking Ed Peletier's skull.

"Daryl, no!" Carol cried out.

It was nothing more than instinct. It was a knee-jerk reaction. It was practically built-in for her, now, to try to stop any kind of violence toward Ed because it might, somehow, come back on her or Sophia.

She was living in hell having him so close again.

"Get your fuckin' hands off her!" Daryl growled, gritting his teeth together hard enough that his gums hurt. "I ain't warnin' you again!"

Daryl grabbed Ed's arm when the man didn't make a move to release Carol. Casting a quick glance toward Carol, Daryl could see that Ed had already given her some motivation to come with him—to remind her what he would do to her and, more than that, what he would do to Sophia. Carol would have sacrificed her life, a thousand times over, to keep him from touching Sophia. The busted and bleeding spot on her lip attested to that.

And the blood made Daryl so angry that, all around him, all he saw was blood. All he smelled was blood—the blood of the deer that had leaked over his body, Carol's blood as he saw it in his mind's eye, and the blood that he intended to draw from the man who had never deserved to make it this far.

He saw the blood. He smelled it. He tasted it. He heard it.

He practically drowned in the copper scent. His tongue was coated with it—it quenched an animal thirst in him that was greater than the thirst his exertions with the deer had caused. He savored the taste, and he felt no pain to convince him that the blood was his own.

And all around him, all he saw was red.

He heard it coursing through his veins. He heard it pounding in his ears. He heard it rushing like the ocean crashing hard against rocks in the middle of a hurricane.

The sound of blood drowned out everything else.

It drowned out Ed's spat curses—for however long they lasted. It drowned out Carol's protests and concerns. It drowned out the sound of everyone else screaming at Daryl to stop. It drowned out the sound of Merle and Shane fighting over whether or not such an animalistic display should be allowed to continue. It drowned out the warning shot fired by Shane—the now obsolete police officer—and the warning by another Dixon that a rifle-butt to the head would be delivered before another round could be fired off.

The sound of the blood pounding in Daryl's ears drowned out the sound of the skull cracking. And the red that he saw all around him blended seamlessly with the blood that soaked into the red Georgia clay.

Daryl had been dragged back into that red Georgia clay and doused with cold water from the quarry before he ever realized what was really happening around him—how everyone was looking at him. Everyone except his own flesh and blood, and that which he had accepted as his own.

The blood surrounded him, still. It stained his clothes and his skin. He would smell it for days and taste it any time he closed his eyes and drew to mind that particular flavor, something he'd tasted since he was a boy and his father had busted him in the mouth the same way that Ed thought it was fine to bust Carol and Sophia.

Daryl was no stranger to blood.

And he would do anything to protect those that he considered his blood—real or otherwise.

"We've got to—clean this up," Carol said, her voice eerily calm. "Before Sophia…"

"She's outta range, Mouse," Merle offered. "Sent her off 'fore she even heard it. Told her to go help Andrea with the fish an' to tell her I said they weren't to come back until they had some flounder. She's gonna know to keep 'em down there. She's gonna know I ain't stupid enough to think they's flounder in that water."

"We're going to have to tell her about it," Carol said.

"Tellin' her's a hell of a lot easier'n than erasin' this image," Merle said. "She's gonna bounce back. Kids are resilient little motherfuckers. Besides, Mouse—you don't mind me sayin'? I got a good idea she's gonna be more pissed off about that blood on your lip than she is about—this whole damn pile of it. You with me, lil' brother? Give me a hand gettin' this outta the camp an' buried just deep enough that the kids don't stumble on it?"

Daryl slowly came back into himself. He heard the crunch of the skull, and he looked to see Carol driving the pickaxe through Ed's head—making sure that the brain damage was severe enough to keep him from reanimating as a living and bloodthirsty corpse.

"I don't know what happened," Daryl offered.

"Comin' back into yourself?" Merle asked.

"Shit—I'm sorry," Daryl said when Carol wrapped around him. She kissed his jaw. She shushed him, moving her face close to his ear. She whispered her love for him. She did her best to soothe him. "I don't know what happened…" he stammered.

"Still in shock," Merle offered. "What the hell happened, lil' brother, is this asshole was fuckin' with your woman. Got under your skin. In your blood. An' you wiped the fucker off the face of the planet." Merle spit in the general direction of the body that was already starting to collect blowflies. "Good damn riddance. World's better off. Mouse? Can you carry the shovels? Just carry 'em? We goin' just out there in them tall ass weeds. Just—about thirty feet from here oughta do it. Brother, get the feet."

Carol moved, nonchalantly, toward the shovels that were lined up in the area where they kept their supplies. Daryl moved to gather up Ed's feet as Merle moved around to handle the heavier part of the man, clearly aware that Daryl would be tired after all his earlier exertions.

Daryl was still feeling slightly numb to the whole thing—the inside of his skull almost felt numb—when he saw Shane reach his hand out and wrap his fingers around the upper part of Merle's arm. Merle saw it, too. He laughed low in his throat. It was a warning sound.

"Move your hand, Officer," Merle said. "My woman ain't gonna be able to entertain kids with invisible fuckin' flounder but for so damned long."

"You can't just—let your brother beat a man to death and bury his body like it never happened," Shane said.

Merle laughed to himself.

"Maybe you can't," Merle said. "But—for blood? That's exactly what the hell Dixons do."