I really appreciate you all letting me know that you enjoyed the last chapter. I know I have readers on the fence about how harsh I'm being with Merle. It's totally understandable but remember that I love him too! I'm not a fan of prolonging a favorite character's torment. lol Even when it seems like I am! I hope you enjoy this chapter as well and thank you, as always, for reading! =)

Chapter Seven

Carol watched as a flash of pain crossed Merle's eyes but he quickly shut it down. He gave Daryl a brief nod and then turned, getting back in the truck without a backwards glance. He was the one that was here about the job on the pool. He'd seen Jake and realized who she must have been. He had gone inside to use the bathroom and could have seen one of the photos of Daryl that she had hanging up.

Once the truck was out of site Daryl turned to her and then his eyes went back to the house. The torment there had her looking away. She couldn't imagine what he must be going through. All of this was so sudden and the hits were just going to keep on coming for him today. She reached up, her hand going to the side of his face, like it was the most natural thing in the world. He grabbed her wrist and for a few seconds she was afraid that he didn't want her to touch him. She remembered how skittish he had been that first day she had met him. But then he pulled her towards him and she was suddenly crushed against his chest.

"I'm so fuckin' sorry," he muttered into her hair and she didn't know what to say.

"Me too," she said, finally pulling back and taking note of the physical changes in him, the broadness of his shoulders and the heavy weight of his arms. She trailed her fingers down his forearms and then gripped his hands hard. "But you're here now and that has to count for something."

He studied her for a few long moments and then looked back towards the house.

She looked down, studying her bare feet and the grass stained silk of her pajama bottoms. "Lily is yours too." She looked up, finally meeting his eyes. "She just looks more like me. But you're in there, if you look hard enough."

He frowned, his gaze still flicking between her and the house. "I think I woulda remembered makin' another one, Carol," his voice cracked.

She forced a smile. "Twins. Fraternal twins. I found out about two months after you left."

"Jesus fuckin' Christ," he breathed, running his hands through his hair, fingers locking at the back of his head, the look on his face was breaking her heart. Whether he wanted to be a father or not, it was clear he was drowning in guilt and he was drowning in regret and she wanted nothing more than to pull him out of the deep end. "I didn't know. I wouldn't have left or I woulda brought you back here. I..." He shook his head. They had been walking back towards the house and now he sat down heavily on the steps.

She sat down next to him taking him in and letting him sort through his thoughts. His hands were shaking so hard that she wanted to take them in hers but she didn't. She simply waited, giving him a moment. She drank him in. He lost a lot of those boyish features. He looked... harder. Like maybe he had lived a lot of heartache. His eyes were more haunted now than they had been the day she had met him. Hell, they were more haunted now than they had been the moment she opened the door and seen him. The pain was clear and so was the fear.

"Jake is a lot like you. He wont stop talking about the woods. I took them the other day. He gets quiet like you used to. Lily has a lot of sass and she's a Tom boy so, if you want to know them, you'll probably have a lot of fun with her..."

He looked over quickly his eyes searching hers. "'Course I wanna know'em. Jesus, Carol!"

She nodded, feeling relieved. This was one of her biggest fears. And now she had to face another one. "I called the day after I got to Palm Springs. I called every day after that but the number wasn't right. I tried to find you online. You got on a plane and you vanished. What happened?"

He stared off for a few long moments before he answered. "Merle. He already had another place. The phone was turned off and we moved out the day after I got back. I didn't know where you would be."

She had always wondered if he had simply decided that he didn't want to be with her. Hearing this, she felt like there was really hope for them. For all of them. She took a deep breath and held it, building her courage. "Is there anyone else? A woman waiting for you somewhere that's probably going to be mad that you're here?"

He snorted, shaking his head. "Nah. Nothin' like that. Not from lack of Merle tryin' though." He paused and then looked away. "Do they know about me? About why I ain't been around?"

She smiled then, nodding. "They do. They know that you're a good man and they know you would have been around if you could. It was only this year that they realized they didn't... they didn't have a dad around. I would take them to the park and other kids would be there with their fathers. They started asking questions. I started answering them as best as I could."

He dropped his head. "So, is some pissed off boyfriend gonna come out and try to kick me off his porch? Cause if he tries I can't promise I won't break his arms."

She smiled. "No one. I've never even gone out on the first date with another man. I was always hoping..." she flushed and looked down.

"Me too," he mumbled.

She shook her head. "You don't have to say that, Daryl. I'm not stupid."

He shook his head, a little color coming back to his face. "I thought about it. You know? Thought that maybe if I just tried to be with somebody else that it would finally make me start to forget. I can't even explain how fuckin' hard it was, every day, but I knew that it wouldn't have worked. And I just didn't want anybody else. So, I just dealt with it the best I could and I worked a lot." He chuckled a little, shaking his head, "Ain't nobody out there could have taken your place. I'm still a goddamn basket case and you're the only person I'd ever let in. With you gone, I locked it back up."

She blinked back more traitorous tears. He had never stopped loving her.

"Carol, I don't know what the fuck I'm doin'. I ain't never even been around kids."

"I hadn't either. And then all of a sudden there I was, nineteen years old with two babies. It's different when they're yours. I had to do a lot of growing up but it was worth it. They're great and they're so smart. They're funny and kind and I've always had a part of you with me."

"I can't fuckin' believe him," he said bitterly, shaking his head, running his hands over his face again.

"He didn't know. None of us knew," she said, finally grabbing his hand.

"I didn't think you could," he said, not sounding accusing at all.

"I was an idiot. I ran out of pills. I didn't even think about it really. Living out there in the back of the van was kind of surreal. It was like every day was some kind of dream or something. You lose track of things like remembering to take your birth control. I don't regret it. I love them. They made my life so better than it could have ever been."

"Mom?"

They both looked over their shoulders. Jake was still eyeing Daryl with a suspicious glint in his eyes but when he looked at her they softened. She smiled at the boy. "Let me guess, you're starved, huh?"

He nodded. "You're takin' forever."

She stood up, turning to head up the steps but paused, her hand on Daryl's shoulder. "Do you need a minute?"

He looked up and nodded gratefully. "Yeah. I ought to just sit here and wrap my head around this."

"Just come on in when you're ready. We're not going anywhere."

He blew out a breath and covered her hand with his, squeezing her fingers for a few long seconds as he gazed out at the yard. She left him there to collect himself before he officially met his children. She had no idea how to go about doing that.

~H~

He heard the door close lightly behind him and he dropped his head into his hands, willing his heart to slow down before he passed out. Too much had happened too damn fast. He had two fucking kids. Two! How the hell was he going to be a dad when he never had one, Merle's influence was awful and he didn't know the first thing about them? He was only twenty three years old for fuck's sake!

And as of this very moment he was homeless and didn't even have a vehicle to get his ass back to Augusta so he could go to work in the morning. He didn't even know who's house this was. Was she staying with some rich relative that she forgot to mention?

He had to go in there. Even though it was the scariest fucking thing he ever faced down in his whole life, he had no choice. He'd never thought about having kids. He'd never really thought about much besides getting by one day at a time. Now he was somebody's dad. Two somebody's dad. And that was too much to wrap his head around. He had a little girl. He had a son that, as far as he could tell, was him made over.

He stood up, unsure how long he had been out there. She had told him to come on in so whoever owned the place must have known he was already there. He stood there with his hand on the knob for a few more long cowardly moments and then he finally opened it and went inside, taking his first tentative steps into a whole new fucking world. But he would make this work. He would make sure they knew him, that he cared about them already. Somewhere in here were two lives that he'd helped actually create. It was the strangest damn feeling in the world. How could he love two people that he didn't even know yet? And he knew he did. They were less than a half an hour old in his mind but he'd do anything for them. All those old fears, the fear of turning into his own father somehow, disappeared and he felt a little stronger. More determined.

~H~

Merle started off by stopping at the first liquor store and buying the biggest bottle of whiskey he could find. Before he left Atlanta he stopped by the house of one of his old connections. The man didn't deal with crank anymore but he had a hefty supply of smack. But fuck it. Escape was escape, right? By the time he left the city he had dropped $400.

Daryl's reaction hadn't surprised him in the least. He had known exactly how he was going to feel and that was why he said his peace before he ever had his brother walk up to that door. Usually Merle wasn't too big on self sacrifice. The only thing it had ever accomplished was heartache. Either for himself or for whoever he was doing the sacrificing for. But he'd watched from the truck, saw the woman throw herself right at him and he half expected Daryl to toss her onto her ass, but he hadn't. Even from Merle's vintage point he saw the boy nearly crush the life out of the girl. He hadn't been able to believe his damn eyes. Right there it seemed like years worth of damage had just washed away.

He hadn't wanted to move to Augusta back then but he'd known that whatever had happened in that house between his little brother and the old man, but he knew it was the cause of his brother leaving. It had to have been worse than Merle ever imagine for Daryl to have just ran out and never came back. He had wanted to do the right thing and get Daryl away from that house where it had all happened. He wanted his brother to have a fresh start in a new house, with a job lined up.

And in doing that he had crushed the kid. Merle had been so sure that his brother would get over it. No piece of ass in the world was worth the heartache that the boy was dealing with. He had known it wouldn't last. Then after the second year, he'd known that he had fucked up big time. It hadn't been intentional but it had done a lot of damage to his brother. And his brother had been damaged enough without his help.

But his hands had been tied. There had been no way he could have hunted the girl down. Daryl hadn't ever even dared mention her name.

So when he had seen that little boy and then he had seen those pictures in that house he had put two and two together and came to the horrifying realization that the damage he had caused was much worse than he ever thought. And so he made it right. He'd had his brother drive right up to the doorstep. Watched him walk away from that goddamn truck knowing that when he looked at Merle again, everything was going to be much worse than it ever had been before.

And he hadn't underestimated him. Daryl would have knocked his fucking teeth out if the girl hadn't stopped him. And Merle had taken it wordlessly.

"Till you figure out a way for that to happen, you ain't got a fuckin' brother no more."

Merle flinched and gripped the wheel harder when his brother's words sounded in his head. He reached over and grabbed the bottle, twisting off the cap with his teeth and taking a long pull, the fire in his stomach and throat momentarily drowning out his brother's voice. It didn't matter that he still had thirty minutes to drive before he was finally home. He really couldn't stand the thought of facing that house sober.

He was lucky enough not to get pulled over on his way there. He grabbed his score and headed to the door. Once he was inside he kicked it closed and went to the kitchen, readying his first hit of the day with trembling fingers.

He earned this. He'd done the right thing and he had lost his brother, probably for good. If he wanted to dull the pain of that loss then fuck sobriety. He laughed and turned up the bottle again, slamming it on the table hard enough to jar it.

He didn't need Daryl's bullshit anyway. He was constantly on his ass about shit that didn't have a damn thing to do with him and it got on Merle's fucking nerves.

He sat down, his eyes raking over the dope he was about to inject into his veins. This was gonna be fine. This was gonna be a new start to a new Merle. He didn't fucking need Daryl and he didn't need to know the boy, either. He had his own life to live and by God now he was finally going to get to do it without having to deal with Daryl's stupid shit.

"This is a good thing," he mumbled, pushing the plunger, loosening the belt that he'd tied around his arm and then leaning his head back into the chair as that sweet toxin worked its way into his blood, dulling the ache, finally giving him a reprieve from the guilt.