Chapter 25

Daryl woke up and felt Emma beside him. It was a feeling he was still getting used to after them being separated for so long. He loved her warm curvy body snuggled up next to him and out of habit he rolled on his right side to face her. That was the wrong thing to do and it sent stabs of pain from his shoulder down to his toes.

"Fuck!" he groaned and he quickly changed to lying on his back. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"

"What happened?" exclaimed Emma as she woke up to his cursing.

"I rolled onto my god damn shoulder," he told her. "Fuck that hurts."

Emma automatically got up and filled a glass with water from the bathroom. Then she got a pain pill out of the bottle and handed it to him along with the glass. He downed it quickly. "Another," he told her.

"Umm, I don't think so. Why don't you wait until you see if that one works first?"

"When did you become my keeper? It's fucking killing me Emma, give me another pill." Daryl knew he wasn't being fair to her, but his shoulder hurt like hell. One extra pill was not going to make him an addict, but it would make him feel a hell of lot better.

He never told her about the drugs he did with Merle before her met her. He had stopped a few years before, but for a long time he and Merle were causal druggies. It wasn't anything he was proud of and when he finally got his shit together, he never touched another pill, smoked a joint or took anything that was not necessary. Merle never understood why he stopped. Merle never wanted more for himself then what they had, Daryl did.

Emma glared at him holding the pill bottle. He had no reason to talk to her that way. She knew he was in pain, but she only had his best interest in heart. "Fine. You want the pills, here they are," she told him throwing the bottle at him.

Daryl easily caught it in his left hand, but watched her storm out of the room slamming the door behind her. "Good job, asshole," he berated himself. He knew he had to make things right with her, but first he had to take care of his shoulder. Daryl popped the second pill and waited until they started to kick in.

With the edge taken off the stabbing pain, he left the room in search of Emma. He didn't have to go far as her found her sitting on the front porch swing. Their eyes met and he could see that she was still furious at him.

"Sorry I yelled," he told her sitting next to her. "But I don't need you to babysit me, Em. I'm okay."

Emma knew that she had overreacted, but she was sensitive to drug use. She had lost her parents to it and didn't want that to happen to Daryl. "I know and I'm sorry I threw the bottle at you. That was childish of me. Good thing you still have fast reflexes."

Daryl chuckled at her comment.

"Just understand where I am coming from, I lost my parents to their drug addictions and I don't want to lose you," she started to tell him before he interrupted her.

"Em, I was shot just a few days ago. I'm not taking these because I want to, I need to. I'm not going to become your parents. I promise you." Daryl understood now better where she was coming from. Sure she overacted, but so did he.

"I know, I'm sorry." Emma gave him one of her beautiful smiles that always had him questioning why someone as gorgeous as she was, would settle for him. He was a lucky man.

Daryl kissed her and the same desire he always got whenever he touched her or kissed her flowed through him. He couldn't wait until they could have sex again. He just wished he knew when that would be. Emma was being very weird about that and he couldn't figure her out.

She pulled back from the kiss first. "Take me for a walk. I really don't know much about Alexandria."

"That we can do," he told her.

They both got up off the swing and headed down the stairs and into the quiet street. Emma slipped her hand into Daryl's' as they walked past the houses that made up the community. He explained that everyone contributed to living here in one way or another. A large amount of people did guard duty on the watch posts. Some worked construction to enlarge the complex and fix anything that broke. People did supply runs and there was assorted other jobs that needed to get done.

Daryl told her that when they had initially come there a woman named Deanna was in charge and ran the place. His group had fit in as normal contributors, but now they ran it. Deanna had died during the big walker invasion and Rick was a natural leader.

When they came to an unoccupied house, Emma suggested they sit down for a moment. After a few minutes of silence, she asked him the question that had been on her mind for a while. "Daryl, what happened to Merle?"

He was not expecting that, so it threw him for a minute. "Before I tell you that, I think you need to know what it was like back then for us...for me."

"Sure, however you need to tell it is fine with me," she told him. She kissed his bare shoulder to show her support.

"After I couldn't find you and we had to leave town, I was in a really bad place. Merle fed off that, you know how he was, Em. He was his own worst enemy and mine. We drove around trying to find a safe place, but nothing ever worked. We had heard of a place to go outside Atlanta that was supposed to be safe, so we headed that way in my old blue truck. Instead we get stuck in a fuckin' huge traffic jam that went nowhere. People in the cars around us started hangin' out and talkin' to each other and Merle was playing nice with them. I just stayed in the truck. I didn't want nuthin' to do with nobody." Daryl had started to chew on his fingernail, something Emma knew he did when he was uncomfortable.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," she told him.

"Naw, it's okay. You're the only one that ever knew us before all of this," he said. He appreciated her offer more than she knew.

"A bunch of cars that had been stuck together turned around and we decided to find our own safe place. How they let Merle and me go with them I never knew? I'm following an old RV and all Merle can talk about is that we gotta rob these folk of their weapons and food. You know I was messed up, cause I was going along with it. Anyway, we find a hillside to set up camp by this quarry. It was Carol, her dick of a husband and her daughter Sophia. Then there was Rick's wife Lori, Carl their kid and Shane. He was a cop with Rick. He was our biggest problem. Glenn was there, Dale, Jim, T- Dog, Andrea and her sister and a bunch others." Daryl stopped to remember what it was like back then.

He and Merle were lucky that they needed men, so he figured that's how it was okay for them to join the group. They certainly didn't fit in -the lowlife rednecks with the families and the cop. Shane was the only cop initially until Rick showed up. Daryl remembered hating most of them. It's wasn't what they did, but what so many of them had with them – family and that bond. Sure, he had Merle, but that was nowhere near the same. He had missed having Emma with him more than he could have ever imagined. During the day, he tried his best to put her memory away and his anger ruled him. At night, he couldn't control his dreams and she was with him every single night. Often he would wake up with tears on his cheeks, and he'd quickly wipe them away before Merle could see. That would have made his life a more of a living hell than it already was.

Now so many of the people from that camp were dead. Glenn, Carl, Rick, himself and hopefully Carol were the only ones left. He had changed so much from how he was back then. Hell, he was a different man than when he was living with Emma.

"You didn't mention Rick," Emma said breaking his reminiscing.

"He wasn't part of the group then. Hell, his wife and kid though he was dead. Anyway, there was a supply run to Atlanta and Merle went. I was hunting for deer and squirrels in the forest. Apparently Merle was more of a fuckin' idiot than normal, cause he got left there handcuffed to a pipe on a roof. Glenn found Rick in Atlanta and apparently some bad shit went down with Merle and they left him. When I got back I found out what happened I went off on them all. I still hated the world, so instead of knowing what moron Merle could be, I tried to take it out on Rick and Shane. I was lucky they didn't kill me."

Emma looked at him with wide surprised eyes. "Why would they do that?"

"Because I was being a dick and it was easier to blame Rick for abandoning Merle than to blame Merle. I pulled my hunting knife on him fully intending to cut him, but Shane got me in a head lock first. Weird, cause Rick and me are really close now. He's like the brother I shoulda had instead of Merle." Daryl took a deep breath before going on. Memories were hard. "We end up going back to Atlanta to get my brother. It was just me, Rick, Glenn and T-Dog. When we got there, Merle was gone…all except his hand. Em, he cut off his fuckin' hand to get out of the handcuffs."

Daryl watched as her hand went to her mouth in shock. "He cut off his hand?"

"Yep. It was just sitting there on the roof. I never saw Merle again for a long time. I stayed with this group of people and it ended up the best thing I ever did. We lost people along the way and gained some. It wasn't until our group had a conflict with another group, that I knew Merle was still alive. To make a really long story short and a lot of Merle fuckin' everything up, he ended be ousted from his big group, but no one in my group wanted him there 'cept me. He had tried to kill too many of them, but I couldn't leave him Em. When it came down to it, he was blood and as much as I didn't want to leave Rick, Glenn, Michonne and the other's I had to."

This was more than Daryl had talked in a really long time, but Emma could always get him to loosen up. He was getting to the part of the story he hated. He looked over to Emma for emotional support and the sweet smile she gave him, was all that he needed.

"We left together…me and Merle, "Daryl said continuing the saga. "Rick begged me to stay, but I knew I couldn't just abandon Merle. He was a self-centered, rotten douchebag who never knew when to shut his fuckin' mouth, but he was all I had left for family. I didn't have a choice."

Daryl told Emma how he quickly realized how much that each of them had changed, but in completely different directions. He didn't want to go back being like Merle, so after only a couple days, he couldn't take his brother anymore. Finally, they had gotten into a big argument and Daryl left to go back to Rick and the group. They were more of a family than Merle ever was. They respected him and counted on him and he needed that back, so he went back with Merle dogging his heels. When they got back to where the group had been living, Daryl had found out that they were under attack by the people that Merle had been with. They helped them survive the attack and Merle stayed, but no one was happy.

Emma knew what Merle was capable of, so she could only imagine how he badly he behaved. She had never known a grown man to never give a shit what he said or who he hurt by it. He had hurt Daryl more times than she could count and for that reason alone she never liked him.

"I'm almost at the end," Daryl told Emma. "Thank-fucking-God," he thought to himself.

Daryl continued explaining to Emma how they had all decided that they needed to get rid of the leader of the other group; he was behind all the hate for them. He called himself the Governor and he was a psycho bastard. In the end, it was Merle who went to do the job himself without telling anyone. "He sacrificed himself for the group…for me," Daryl said choking up. "When I found out what he was doing, I went after him. He tried, but he wasn't enough. I found him eating from a dead body…he had turned. I had no choice but to put him down when he came after me. Besides leaving town without you, it was the hardest thing I had ever done."

Daryl was trying to hold back his tears, but when he saw them streaming down Emma's face he just lost it. They held onto each other while they cried and grieved together. Daryl mourned the brother he lost and Emma's heart broke for Daryl having to ultimately kill his only brother. As much as Emma disliked Merle, she never wished for him to die.

Killing walkers they did every day, but killing a family member that had turned was horrible. She wouldn't have wished that on anymore and here the man she loved more than anything else had to do it without her support.

"I'm sorry I wasn't with you," she whispered to him.

"Me too, but you're here now," he replied his coarse voice thick with emotion.

They stayed hanging onto each other for a while until Daryl was able to pull himself together. Then they headed back to the house arm in arm knowing they had each other to rely on. As close as Daryl was to Rick, they didn't talk about personal stuff. That wasn't a guy thing to do, but with Emma he had always had someone to listen to him and support him. It was good to have that back. In fact it was better than good, it was fuckin' awesome.


A/N- Loving all the new followers! Thanks for reading GONE. Love hearing from the readers, so keep the comments coming! Walking Addiction thank you again for such high praise. I very much appreciate it.

Today was a short chapter, so here's another bonus one for ya!