-e-
"Relax." His mouth brushed against her ear as they waited for the dead to lose interest. She was trying to relax but there were so many reasons why she couldn't. "Seriously, Eden. If you don't relax you're gonna hurt yourself." His lips brushed against her ear again and she wanted to pumble him. This was such a bad idea, they would likely suffocate in this car before those monsters gave up. The man under her gave a grumble and Eden looked back far enough to roll her eyes.
They were close to being eaten. They had been in a car accident. She was sitting closer to him than she had any man in a very long time, and it felt way too nice. Her head was fuzzy. She was fucking hungry. On top of it all, she felt guilty, even though none of this was her fault. There was no way she was going to be able to relax.
"How are you so relaxed?" She whispered back making sure to brush her lips along his ear just for revenge, she'd see how he liked it. His hand gripped her thigh tighter.
"We shouldn't talk." He said, his voice deeper, his breathing coming out heavy.
"Why not."
"You know why not. Now, close your eyes and try and relax. When this adrenaline wears off you're gonna be in a lot of pain." But the dead kept growling and her skin felt like there were bees living underneath it.
"Turn around," Merle said after thirty minutes of Eden leaning her forehead against his shoulder. Every inch of her was on edge and she couldn't for the life of her find it comfortable to be straddling Merle in the human version of a sardine can.
"What?"
"Just do what I say, Eden." It took a moment of adjusting, the tight space making it difficult for her to get her legs up and around the steering wheel. When she was settled, Merle put his arms around her waist and pulled her back against his chest. Her head fell heavy against his shoulder. "Just breathe with me." She could feel his heart beating through her back, the way his lungs expanded and the rush of air cooling down her forehead. She hadn't even realized she had been breathing hard before, how fast her heart had been pounding.
"There you go, Dorothy." Eden liked the way his voice vibrated into her back. The feeling almost ticklish against her skin. He hadn't been wrong, the adrenaline was starting to wear off quick and the pain in her head began to burn.
"I'm sorry you got hurt." His fingers traced absentminded circles along her side. "I was so mad at my brother and at my group. I wanted to catch up with them and… I don't even know what I wanted to do, to be honest. I wanted them to see what they did to me and that I didn't fucking need them."
"I'm sorry they left you. Even though you're a racist asshole, you're also really smart and I like to think that you show how you care in the little things you do. Like when you teach me things, or when you give me the last drink of water."
"Fuck. I'm not racist, Eden, and I'm sorry I ever said those things." Eden relaxed a little more in his arms after hearing that. It had been laying heavily on her mind since the moment he had woken up that first day. She had a feeling he hadn't been as extreme in his racism as some of the people she had met, but the thought didn't feel good. "You saved my life. Twice now. You could have left me here after the crash."
"You're still a person, Merle. If I had to choose between a cop and you, I'd choose you." She wanted to lighten the mood just a little. Wanted to show him that if they had found his group she would have been on his side over the man who cuffed him. She couldn't begin to understand the heartache of being left behind. "I was alone out there for a long time, the world begins to play tricks on you. The loneliness twists your head inside out and it may be selfish but I don't want to feel that again. You're not perfect, but you're strong in the ways I'm not and I have skills that you don't. We're a team."
"We're nothing alike." He said. Merle shifted around for a moment until giving up whatever he was doing.
"That just means we could be really good at this. If we work together we can get twice the amount of stuff done." Eden blushed at the enthusiasm in her voice. "If you don't leave me, I won't leave you.
-m-
"My brother did." His heart was doing flips in his fucking chest. It felt nice to open up to the woman leaning against him. It hurt thinking about Daryl leaving him to die on that roof but he hadn't been a good brother in a long time and maybe Daryl had finally seen that. "I don't know if he even came to look for me."
"He did," Eden said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "You're his brother and I know if Aaron and I got separated I wouldn't stop until I found him." Her fingers had taken to massaging the tight skin of his wrist. She had done this once before, while they were driving to the quarry, a moment that seemed so long ago now. No one had touched him so gently, no one had cared enough in so long. He had either pushed everyone away or they had kept their distance. He had craved it so deeply that even with the geeks so close to them his chest ached for more.
Merle had been feeling less like a man without his hand. There were things he couldn't do and even more things he had to learn to do backward. He hated to imagine the look on the faces of the people he would meet when they saw he wasn't completely whole. Then there was Eden. She doesn't flinch away from the absence, she didn't look at him with pity. She touched him as if there wasn't anything wrong with him. It annoyed him to no end how accepting she was of who he was.
"Will you look for him?" He knew they were trapped in there, waiting out the threat just inches away but the intimacy at that moment was thick. Their voices low as they whispered to one another, her skin warm against his chest, their arms wrapped together. It smelled like death and rot, the air was getting hotter as the minutes ticked by, and they could die any minute but Merle had never felt more comfortable.
"I'm going to keep looking for him until I die." And he would. Even if Daryl had left him, even if Daryl never went looking for him. He was still Merle's baby brother. He was still family and now that Merle was sober, now that Merle had changed, he could show Daryl that he cared. Because he had changed. Everything was different the moment he picked up that saw and once more as he had laid on the roof of the store he had shared with Eden.
"I would look for you," Eden said after a good five minutes of silence. "I would look for you." The second time came out more of a confirmation to herself, and Merle took a moment to think about it. Eden had proven to him again and again how good of a person she was. Even as he rained down insults, even as they fought. She trusted him and felt comfortable with him, things he denied wanting. He hadn't been someone worthy of anyone's trust in years.
It rocked Merle to his core when he came to the realization that he believed her. He believed that the woman on him would search for him, he wasn't too confident in her tracking ability but he did believe she would try. Merle squeezed her tight to him, his nose pressing into the dark braid on her head. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes as he was overcome with emotions.
"You were right about my head." Merle pulled back and took a better look at the gash along her hairline, it would likely scar but worse, it was still bleeding. "Everything hurts." Her voice had been so strong before was now tight in pain.
The little light that filtered through the blood covered windows wasn't enough for Merle to get a proper look at her head but even so, he was afraid of it getting infected. The amount of geek blood she had all over her didn't help his sudden anxiety. There was a chance that she could be infected because of that cut.
"We need to get you cleaned up." It was his fault that she was in pain, it was his fault that she could be infected. Yet, as Merle looked around for a way to help her everything he thought of involved them being out of this death trap. "Can you fit in the back seat?" The roof was dented more back there but there was enough room for her to lay down.
Her movements were sloppy and once she finally wedged herself in the small space Merle took a deep breath and tried not to think about what he was going to do. With a look back at Edens pale face, he knocked his window out and began climbing out. There was a mound of dead geeks under the window and Merle slipped over the pile of hands and teeth. Before he could get his footing the others were coming around the end of the car.
The first to reach him was a kid no older than 14, his shaggy hair matted and patched. He was followed by a nurse, an old married couple, and a woman who looked a lot like the local news anchor.
He raised the weapon he had taken from Eden and hit the kid in the head, both of them falling from the momentum. Merle cursed as he backed away from the small group, the boy raising once more. He went to reach for the crowbar but he couldn't feel it, and when he looked he saw why. He had been reaching out with his missing hand.
Brenda, from News Channel 11, fell at his legs, gripping his pants in her broken fingers. There was a moment of complete horror as the other four descended on him that he thought he was going to die, but just as Merle slipped on the pile of bodies so did the old woman. The woman fell on top of Brenda and knocking her over, Merle was free. He crab-walked away from the group far enough for him to climb to his feet and sprint a few feet away.
Merle stopped in the horrified realization that Eden was in the car, he had lost their only available weapon, and he was too far away to help her if they took an interest to her. She wouldn't be able to fight back in the state she was in and Merle has destroyed the little security they did have.
"Come on! Come get you some of Ol' Merle!" He shouted, throwing his arms up in the air. The noise seemed to frenzy the geeks as the rushed after him on their weak legs. He gave a loud shout when he saw them all come after him, the broken car and the unconscious woman inside left behind. Merle took off jogging through the woods, making just enough sound to keep these geeks interested but not enough to attract anymore.
Merle's plan, now that he had a moment to think of one, was simple. He was going to lead the geeks far enough away that they wouldn't be a threat, circle back around and come out down the road from where they crashed, take a new car and then rush back to Eden. It wasn't a solid plan and every step he took farther away from her the more he worried. There were too many variables, too many unknowns.
He had only planned to go out a mile or two into the woods but he hadn't expected so many geeks hanging around throughout the trees. Something had happened around here and recently, the bodies were fresh. The small group of five behind him had easily turned into ten and as Merle rounded another hill he saw why.
Right outside the tree line was a highway clustered with cars. There were still geeks strapped to their seats reaching desperately out towards him. They seemed so human at first that Merle had run towards the nearest car to try and help the man but the bloated skin showed him otherwise. It was a graveyard for a hundred yards, a huge pile-up clustered at the end of it. It was what was beside that pile up that had Merle tripping over his feet. Something that would change his life forever.
Keep Right
Center for Disease Control - 9 miles
He had a choice to make.
-e-
She felt heavy and light all at the same time. As if she was floating and made of lead. It was a struggle to open her eyes and for a moment Eden wasn't sure she wanted to. The last thing she remembered was the car flipping over the safety rails, she didn't know what she was going to wake up to and decided that just for a moment if she was going to wake up being half eaten - she would enjoy this light heaviness for just a moment longer.
Yet, the longer she laid in this swirling bliss the more she began to realize she couldn't hear the dead groaning and she could not feel their fingers tearing into her. She slowly started becoming more aware of what she felt. There was something tight around her head, her clothes and her skin felt clean for the first time in months, and she was laying on something soft.
Edens' eyes were heavy as she forced them open, the soft light blurring everything around her until she blinked it away. The world was painted in hues of blue as a soft wind blew in through the window and brought the fabrics around her to life. Edens' head fell heavily to the side as she tried to look out the window. A little voice in the back of her head was worried about how slow and tiresome her movements were but then the weightlessness smothered the tiny voice.
When she attempted to sit up the first time, Eden couldn't manage to get her weight under control, her arms felt like noodles as she used them as leverage. On the fifth try, she finally sat up against the massive pile of pillows but had to take a break once there. It had taken so much strength out of her. Eden sat against the headboard, the breeze tickling her cheeks and her head heavy, longer than she could count before she remembered what she had been doing.
Again the wind blew in and Eden realized she didn't smell the dead. Just the smell of wet leaves and dirt. Had it all been a dream? Had she fallen on her way to the cab? What was the last normal thing she remembered?
Raising her hand she felt around the tightness on her head and found a soft bandage; Eden felt around for any damage and pressed hard against the scalp right above her right temple. The dull pain brought back memories of dead bodies pressing against a window, of feeling terrified, of her fingers painting the window with her blood. She hadn't been dreaming, the fear that spiked through her was too real.
"Thank the Lord you're awake." Eden's heart hammered against her ribs as the blonde woman took a step into the room. Her long hair braided over one shoulder and held together with a red bow. She took a step closer to Eden, her smile wide. "I told him you would wake up today. I just knew it."