AN: Here we go, another chapter here.
There's a graphic description of a rotting animal in the first two paragraphs, just in case you're squeamish about those things. If you watch TWD, though, then it's really nothing that you haven't seen in Technicolor before.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Daryl had a memory of walking through some woods once and stumbling upon the mostly-rotted carcass of a deer. Whether the animal had died of natural causes or had been lost after he'd been shot by a hunter, Daryl could have never known. Most of his hide was missing and he'd been dinner to what had likely been a hungry coyote. The sight of something like that hadn't been shocking or even surprising to Daryl. Everything that lived was part of one big chain and that chain meant that things were always killing and eating other things. It was the natural way of life.
What had stuck with Daryl, in particular, about the deer that he'd come up upon—so close he remembered that it hadn't hardly smelled and he'd almost put his foot in it—was that when he got down close to look at it and identify what it once had been, he'd seen that a number of things were inside the skull. A number of worms and bugs and beetles and creatures he didn't even bother to identify were crawling around inside the skull and they were eating the brain of the deer that had fallen.
They were eating up the deer's mind as surely as the coyote had eaten much of the rest of the deer.
For some reason or another—because Daryl never understood why minds worked the way they did—the image of that deer being eaten up all the way to his brain had stuck with Daryl through his life.
And now he felt like he was that deer.
Except it wasn't bugs and beetles and worms and other creatures that were working together to eat away everything he'd ever thought. It was just one woman.
Daryl felt consumed by Carol. He felt consumed by the thought of her. Thoughts of her were eating away his brain until he couldn't think of anything else except her face. He couldn't think of anything else except how soft and nice she was and how sweet she smelled—like soap and flowers. He couldn't think of anything else except getting back to the house of ill-repute and back to her.
He'd have handed over every dollar he ever earned just to get back to her and it was becoming clear that he wasn't going to ever sleep again—not if he didn't get back there.
Daryl rolled out of the bed, almost feeling like he was choking with the urgency of responding to the demands that his brain was making at the most forsaken hour of the night, and helped himself to a glass of the water that they kept up in their attic room in a pitcher. The water was warm and a little sour. It was stale and tasted like the smell of the room. It did very little to quench Daryl's thirst and it did nothing to help the crawling insects that had taken over his brain.
"Hell you doin', lil' brotha?" Merle slurred out, barely within the realm of consciousness.
"Can't sleep," Daryl responded, his own voice coming out hoarse.
"Knew that, if'n you weren't walkin' around in your sleep," Merle responded. "Hell's got you up? You sick?"
The attic room had a small window that Daryl could get his head out of if he'd really tried. It stood open all the time to let some air into the space so they didn't suffocate to death in their sleep. Daryl walked over to the little window and poked his face out of it. There wasn't a breeze and the still air wasn't exactly cooling.
"Think I got worms in my brain," Daryl said. "Bugs'n the like."
Daryl heard the shrieking squeak of the unoiled coils under Merle's bed as his whole weight shifted suddenly. Merle must've made it to his feet in one solid move because the next sound was his shuffling around in the dark. He bumped into one thing after another, blinded by the night.
"Hell you talkin' about?" Merle spat, finally finding Daryl.
Merle's hands searched out Daryl's face in the darkness like he was blind. There wasn't any light anywhere except for the moon and stars and they weren't very bright tonight. The night was clouded over. Still, Daryl had spent most the night awake so his eyes were well adjusted to his surroundings. He held his breath and tolerated his brother's blind searching of his features, the calluses on his hands scratching him as he looked him over.
"Got you a fever?" Merle asked. "Damn soaked."
"Wet with sweat," Daryl said. "Hot as hell up here. Ain't nothin' new. Ain't slept dry since we moved in here. But I don't got no fever. Not no damn fever like you lookin' for."
"What other kinda fever you workin' on, brotha?" Merle asked.
Daryl sucked in a breath. If Merle hadn't sounded genuinely concerned, he wouldn't have bothered to answer him at all. Merle could give Daryl hell about just about anything, and that was particularly true when it came to the realm of feelings.
But Merle was just about the only person that Daryl had. He was his older brother, but since their mama had died—when Daryl was no more than a snotty nosed kid—Merle had damned near been Daryl's mother too. He was the one that had gotten them this far. He was the one that got them the job they had on the farm.
And everything that Daryl knew, he learned from Merle. Even if he didn't know a whole lot, he knew what he did know from Merle.
"What's it take to get married Merle?" Daryl asked. "What—you gotta do? What you gotta have to get you a wife?"
Merle was quiet enough that Daryl might think that he'd left if he couldn't see the blacker-than-night outline of him standing there. After a second, he laughed low and long in his throat.
"I knew it was gonna happen one day," Merle said. "Boy such as you is always set on gettin' himself hitched. Yeah—reckon I knowed it was gonna up an' happen one day. Who the hell you got your sights set on, Derlina? 'Cause Loretta Ducann's old man ain't gonna be happy to see her marryin' up no Dixon. We ain't got no kinda reputation around these parts."
"We ain't got no reputation nowhere," Daryl responded quickly. And it was true. They'd left Georgia with a group that was headed out to settle some unclaimed territory out west. At the time, Daryl didn't even know that "West" wasn't a state just like Georgia. They'd found someone to pay their way and, in return, they'd worked off their fare when they'd arrived. After that? That's when they'd found steady work at the farm. Food, board, and some pocket money—but it didn't come with a reputation. If anything, it came with a way to leave behind the legacy their old man had made for himself back in Georgia.
Dixons weren't the kind of folks you wanted around—but they didn't know that out here. Out here, they could start over. "And it ain't her. It ain't Loretta."
"Damn, brotha," Merle teased in the darkness. "How many women you got around to choose from? Loretta's the only one I even seen around here except Miss Jo. I know it ain't one of Hershel's daughters. He'd skin you alive as quick as look at you for some shit like that."
Daryl knew that the Greene girls were so off limits to him and Merle both that they were best considered not to even be women. They were extensions of the farmer and his wife. Nothing more. The girls lived and worked on the farm, but they weren't free to step out with anyone. At least, they weren't free to step out with anyone without their parents' say-so in the matter.
"Ain't them," Daryl said.
"You gonna tell me who the hell it is?" Merle asked.
"Didn't ask you for your opinion on her," Daryl said. "Asked you what the hell it takes to get married. What you need, Merle? For a wife. What you need?"
"You don't need nothin' for some wives," Merle said. "Get her swollen up with a kid and she's all yours. But you need money. Place to live. Same damn thing you need for yourself but twice as much. Now if she was Loretta? Or one of them farm girls? You gotta have you a reputation. More money than your ass ever sees."
"I got money," Daryl said. "I can get more."
"How much you got, Daryl?" Merle asked.
Daryl shook his head, even though he knew his brother couldn't see it in the darkness. Merle couldn't hold onto money any better than he could hold onto water. As soon as it touched his hands it went right out of them. Daryl didn't even know how he managed to spend all the money that he made, but it was always gone. His pockets were empty every time he put a hand out to accept to his pay. The only reason they'd made it out here, honestly, was because the fare they had to pay for help in crossing the distance had never touched their hands.
Daryl, on the other hand, was frugal. He was careful with his money. He knew that somebody had to be and he knew that, one day, he might want the money for something. He might want it for something important.
And if money was what it took to get Carol to be his own wife, then that was about the most important thing that his worm-and-bug consumed brain could think of at the moment.
"Got enough, I reckon," Daryl said. "If it ain't? I can get more."
Merle hummed at him.
"You dead set on this?" Merle asked. "Gettin' married?" Daryl hummed in affirmation. "You know what that means, brother? Means—if you doin' it all the way? Means you ain't never rid of her ass until the day she up and dies. Means she gets to riding you and you just gotta take it."
Daryl shrugged his shoulders, another gesture that he was sure that his brother didn't see, and hummed again.
"I'm gonna marry her," Daryl said. "Soon as tomorrow if I can. Go and get her with sun-up."
Merle snorted.
"Who the hell's this mystery bride you picked you out, Daryl?" Merle asked. He was quiet for a moment, but when he realized that Daryl wasn't going to answer him, he pressed a little more. "I ain't gonna yank you around," Merle said sincerely. "Just wanna know. Don't want you settin' your sights too high and then she don't let you know easy that she won't marry you. She don't tell you like I would that your ass ain't good enough for her."
"That's the thing," Daryl said. "I ain't good enough for her. But—if she'd let me? I'd sure try to be."
Merle hummed.
"Your brain ain't eat up with worms," Merle said. "But you sure been bit by somethin'. Who is it what's got you where you don't sleep?"
"Carol," Daryl said. It felt strange to say her name out loud. It felt strange to confess his feelings to Merle. He'd been holding it inside. He was holding her inside him. Even her name felt like it was something special. It felt like he wouldn't want to hear it on the wrong lips.
"Carol?" Merle asked. "Who's Carol? I don't know no Carol."
"From Eden," Daryl said. "Carol. She's who I aim to marry."
Merle was unnaturally quiet for a moment, and then he laughed to himself.
"The whore?" He asked.
Daryl hadn't expected mention of Carol's current profession to make him cringe quite so much. Lucky for him, his brother couldn't make out his expression in the darkness.
"She ain't no whore for long," Daryl said. "When I marry her? She'll be my wife. My own wife."
Merle laughed again.
"Whores don't make wives, Daryl," Merle said. "They two different things. They's whores and they's wives, but they ain't whores that's wives."
"When she marries me, she'll be my wife," Daryl said. "Nothin' more, nothin' less. She won't be no whore no more. Just my wife."
"You can't marry a whore, Daryl," Merle said. "They just ain't wives. They ain't good for that. They're good for whorin'. They're good for doin' just what we done with 'em. But they ain't for marryin'. Just ain't, boy. You set on getting you a wife? Get you one what's suited for bein' a wife."
Daryl shook his head at his brother's opinion.
"There ain't nobody else, Merle," Daryl said. "It's her. There ain't nobody else that's made for me. Gotta be her."
"But it can't be," Merle said. "No more'n you can marry Maggie Greene. She's just a whore, Daryl. That's all."
"There some law about it?" Daryl asked. "Sheriff gonna come and lock me up if I go after her? Marry her? 'Cause I ain't got no roots here. Ain't got no roots nowhere. I could leave with her. Find me a wagon—go where they don't know she was never no whore."
Merle sucked his teeth.
"Settle down, brotha. There ain't no law about it," Merle said. "Not that I know of. Not no written down law. But whores don't marry men. And men don't marry whores. They got no kinda reputation in the town. Bring down whoever they with. Hell—they don't even let 'em come in some places, Daryl. Don't even let 'em step foot in the door. Prob'ly wouldn't nobody even marry you together if you tried."
Daryl shook his head again.
"She can't bring me down, Merle," Daryl said. "There ain't nowhere for us to go but up from here. We ain't worth a pound of manure. You and me? We ain't worth the salt in our sweat. She can't bring me down no way. And if they don't let her in some place? It ain't a place I gotta go. I just as soon stay home—and she's gonna make me one of them. When I marry her, Merle? She's gonna make me a home that I can stay in. A place where she's welcome too."
"All she's gonna know how to make is a whorehouse, Daryl," Merle said. "Prob'ly all she knows. Listen—your prick's itchin' for it that bad then we'll go back there. I'd like me another poke with that Andrea. But that's what they're good for. Go back and get you what you want, but you leave the whores where they is."
"Not Carol," Daryl said. "You gonna try to stop me if I do? If I go back and tell her I aim to marry her?"
"I ain't gonna stop you, brother," Merle said sincerely. "But—don't be surprised if she don't wanna marry you. I'm tellin' you, it just ain't what them women do. It ain't what they was made for. If they was? They wouldn'ta been whores."
"Not Carol," Daryl said. "She ain't happy there. That ain't her place. She's a whore, but she ain't a whore. You gonna see, Merle. You gonna see that she's gonna marry me. And if money is all I need? I got that. I ain't afraid of work. I can get more of it. If that's all I need? I'ma marry Carol."
"You serious, Daryl?" Merle asked.
"More'n I ever been about anything," Daryl assured him.
"Then you best talk to Hershel tomorrow," Merle said. "Money's all fine and well. But you gotta have somethin' more'n that to make a home with that woman. She ain't gonna live in this attic with us. If she marries your ass at all."
"She'll marry me," Daryl said. "She's gotta marry me."
Merle hummed, but he'd given up whatever fight he'd tried to start with Daryl over the whole thing.
"She might," Merle said, though there was little belief behind the words. "But now? You and me's gotta get some sleep. Them damn cows ain't gonna go easy on your ass just because you got whore-worms in the brain."