Chapter Six

On the way back to AGD from the Woodbury meeting, the vibe in the car let Daryl know that some shit had gone down, even though Rick wasn't saying what. The boss was keeping his cards close to his chest, but it didn't take a shrink to see that he was wrestling with some big thoughts.

Hershel kept silent on the matter too. The two of them would probably talk it out when they got back, and that was fine with Daryl. He didn't need to be in on the back and forth when they made the big decisions—as long as they told him what needed doing, he'd get on it. He trusted their judgment and owed him the loyalty.

The meeting hadn't been what he expected. He thought they'd all sit around at some big conference table and go back and forth about shit they were never going to agree on. Daryl didn't think he'd do much more than size up the competition and look formidable. That's why Rick brings along the muscle when he needs to.

Yet, mostly, Rick and the Governor spoke alone, foregoing even the intermediary. That left him and Hershel to wander outside in the large, empty lobby with their Woodbury counterparts. And Andrea, after Rick and the Governor threw her out.

Surprisingly, when she wasn't being a stubborn fool, Andrea found time to ask about Michonne. He'd lost a lot of respect for his former colleague, her being in cahoots with the Governor all this time, but that raised his esteem back up for her a little. It was nice to know that the woman gave a shit after all. Although Michonne could rival him on being closed off, he recognized her hurt over Andrea's betrayal. He couldn't ignore it after Andrea's visit to AGD and made it a point to check in with Michonne about it. The woman had mostly brushed him off, but some small part of his efforts had helped, he was sure of it.

He and Andrea didn't speak much on the matter, though he told her that Michonne was fitting in just fine. Michonne didn't talk much or put on a rosy face, but she worked hard and did her part. Andrea seemed pleased by that and asked that he and Hershel make sure she didn't run off on her own again. Andrea had called it her natural instinct.

There was a story there, no doubt.

Most of the time, Daryl kept his eyes on Martinez, the Governor's muscle. The man had sized him up, probably wondering all sorts of stuff about Merle's little brother. They were on opposite sides, yet, whether he liked it or not, there was a familiarity between them, the understanding of men who knew what needed to be done. They'd let the decision-makers run around in circles and then step in when all the talking was done and only action remained.

At the end of the day, it didn't seem that much had changed between the two camps with the way things were left, except for whatever Rick was stewing about. When they got back to the AGD complex, Daryl took his leave and left the older men to hash out whatever weighed on Rick's mind. If they needed his input, they knew where to find him.

When he got back to his office, Merle sat at his desk, piles of folders scattered on the surface and his knife out, tensely poking at whatever he could get his hands on: paper, the trashcan at his feet, the desk itself.

"What I tell you 'bout this shit?" Daryl reprimanded lightly, in no mood for any of his brother's tantrums.

"And what I tell you 'bout comin' round puttin' on airs and actin' like you got sway over what I do?" Daryl turned to scrutinize his brother. He was twitchy and agitated. If he didn't know better, he'd have thought his brother was tweaking on something as edgy as he seemed right now.

"What the hell's wrong with you?"

Merle's mouth twisted down in a grimace. "What's wrong with me is all these chicken-shit assholes you runnin' with now. Don't even got sense enough to take hold of an opportunity when it sits right on their lap and takes a shit."

The dread further crept up Daryl's spine. "What did you do?"

Scoffing, Merle stuck his knife especially hard into the plastic trashcan. "I didn't do nothin', and neither did your little Korean buddy or that yellow-bellied pansy Michonne, hiding behind that kid when we could have been kickin' ass and takin' the Governor by surprise. Me and girlie coulda hit him where it hurt. Color me shocked that she pussied out since I know she wants a piece of Phillip Blake real bad. But you folks got her all domesticated."

For whatever reason, it rubbed him the wrong way to hear Merle talking about Michonne and Glenn like that, as if Michonne was some dog and Glenn hadn't already proven himself a man equal to anybody at AGD or Woodbury. Merle had messed things up for them enough without all the shit-talking and drama it sounded like he caused. And he needed to stop trying to run things around here.

"Take him by surprise and do what, Merle? All's that woulda done was cause trouble. Michonne and Glenn know that and you should too."

"Aint that what the man needs? Just gotta find somebody 'round here with spine enough to give it to 'em." The fire had returned to Merle's eyes as he got more riled up thinking about his thwarted plan.

"We were at that meeting so you needed to leave Woodbury the hell alone until Rick gives the go ahead. You run off tryin' to do your own thing, and you could ruin shit for everybody." Daryl wondered when he started towing the AGD teamwork line so hard and then decided that he was okay with that.

Merle, however, remained unimpressed with Daryl's split loyalty. Daryl figured Merle couldn't really handle not having his little brother follow blindly behind him at every move. It wasn't that easy for Daryl either, still he knew being his own man counted more now than it ever did before the world changed.

The disgust returned to Merle's expression. "Look at you, actin' like employee 'a the month. Never thought I'd see the day when my little brother hid under the skirts of The Man just to make a buck. We're Dixons. We take care of our own shit and do what we want. We don't wait for orders and follow somebody else's plan."

Standing rigidly in front of his desk, Daryl glared at his brother. "You were in the military. You know how this goes, don't act like I'm the only one. You said yourself we need to watch ourselves with the Governor, not go off divided and half-cocked 'cause you're bored. Man, we done gone through this before." They both cringed at the rare mention of their failed partnership before returning to AGD.

Merle backed off a little, leaning back in his chair and kicking at the overturned trashcan. "Well, I'm for damn sure bored. But I aint stupid. It was a good plan to do some damage and make some shit happen while y'all had him distracted. There are plenty of investors we could have gone after and got on our side just in the few hours y'all were running your mouths outside 'a town."

Daryl shook his head. "You don't know that. And you can't be runnin' shit like that behind Rick's back. It could have blown up in our face and then where'd we be? You aint got no stake in this but AGD's got folks countin' on us to fix things."

"I got stakes." Merle's somber admission caught Daryl's attention again. "Just need to figure out how to play into 'em." Daryl didn't like the sound of that. Merle became his own worst enemy when he got to being unpredictable.

He sighed. "Alls I'm sayin' is be patient. We got a good gig here. We could work things out like we planned before, 'cept actually make a go of it." It was difficult to know how that would sit with Merle. He'd grown accustomed to running things and expecting Daryl to agree. But right now, he needed to let Daryl take the lead and make things right for the both of them. Carol had already tried to counsel him about not letting his brother tear him down, reminding him that he had a place at AGD, a good situation with folks who had turned into family. Merle was his blood, but that didn't mean he was good for him, Carol had said.

It seemed that Merle was thinking about Daryl's advice. Or at least he had stopped stabbing and kicking at things and had turned his garbage can back around. Before Daryl could hit the point home, his office phone rang at the desk.

Glancing at the number, he yanked the phone off its cradle. "Yeah," he answered gruffly. "Alright, I'll be over." He hung up and grabbed his cell phone he'd thrown haphazardly into his office chair when he'd come into the room.

Merle scowled, his foul mood flaring back up. "Does the master summon?"

"Fuck you, Merle," Daryl said without any real fire, feeling a little defensive. The call had been from Ms. Richards letting Daryl know that Rick wanted to see him ASAP. "Just stay outta trouble while I'm gone. Can you do that?"

"I'm still here and everything's in one piece." Daryl glanced down at the trashcan and Merle kicked it under the desk. "I aint a damn baby so put the teat away 'fore I change my mind and kick your ass." Merle seemed dead serious while remaining unaware that his pouting contradicted his protestation. Daryl shook his head and walked out of the office, pocketing the phone and readjusting his jacket.

On his way to the executive wing, he turned the corner and stopped fast to avoid Michonne coming out of her office.

"Hey, I was just coming to see you and ask about the meeting."

Her body language broadcast her anxiousness. The woman had probably been lurking around all day, tight as a drum, waiting for any word. And if what Merle said was true about the in-fighting, he wouldn't be surprised if there were a few internal fires to put out. They'd left Glenn in charge and the kid was trying hard to find his footing as a leader in his and Rick's absence. The whole Woodbury situation had gotten awfully personal for him, but it was nice to hear that he knew how to keep his head.

"Went about as well as we thought. Don't think much has changed but we'll see. I'm about to go talk it out with Rick and Hershel now."

Stepping back from their missed collision, he noted in the back of his mind that she looked real nice today. Well, she always looked okay and would wear the same kind of slacks and dress shirt to work everyday. But today she had dressed down for hauling boxes and going through their archives all day with Glenn and his crew. She sported some tight cargo pants and a tank top paired with some battered boots. She probably had a blazer in her office to bump it up to business casual. She looked downright rustic right now, like she'd be ready to go stomping through the woods if she felt like it. He did like that in a woman.

And then he caught himself, stopping his thoughts from going in that direction.

"I gotta go," he added as a distraction to himself. "I'll fill you in later, but are you good? Merle just went off and I figure y'all probably had more stuff happenin' than what went down with us.

Michonne waved him off. "It's fine. It got tense but we all were antsy. His plan wasn't the right thing to do and he's pissed because he knows it."

Daryl figured that probably got to the heart of Merle's sour behavior. "My brother aint never been good at sittin' shit out."

"We get that. It's hard for us too." He bowed his head at feeling her frustration of being left behind. When he looked back up, her frown had disappeared and she watched him with softened eyes. "He was worried about you and didn't like you being out there without his backup. It made him feel powerless so he acted out."

That's not what Daryl expected to hear, and it felt strange even as he understood where it came from. Merle might have been the source of a lot of disappointment in Daryl's life but he'd also protected him too in his own way.

"Yeah," Daryl replied, not sure how else to react to Michonne's assessment.

He realized he needed to get to the other side of the floor to see what Rick wanted, yet he lingered, feeling as if there remained more to say between them. For the past few weeks, he'd found more comfort in her way of seeing things than with anyone else at the company. That developing kinship surprised him, though he didn't fight it. For once, he let himself want to get to know someone, and her working partnership started to make a lot of sense to him.

Then he recalled sitting in her office the other day and the pleasure of seeing the full impact of her smile for the first time as she joked with him. There were a lot of ways to be dangerous, and he got the feeling that she knew a few of them, even if she didn't realize it.

"Talked to Andrea a little at the meet up. She asked about you." Michonne stiffened. "Just thought you should know." He backed away and turned to head back down the hall to Rick's office, leaving her to her thoughts.

He didn't know why he'd told her that but it felt right to do it.

Daryl's thoughts were in this haze of conflict and distraction as he sat in the conference room helping to put together the materials going out for their last big investor sweep. They wouldn't be caught by surprise again after Woodbury had dropped all that drama on them, destroying business relationships and compromising many of their contacts. They were still putting the pieces back together weeks later.

But that wasn't what had him stressed out. It was the meeting he'd had with Rick the day before where it felt like he'd been asked to compromise everything he'd come to believe in the name of loyalty.

He glanced across the room at Michonne who was instructing Maggie and Glenn on a new way to process their records that would save them a ton of time and also make it impossible for anyone to breach their network of contacts if Woodbury got it into their heads to launch another digital attack. For a lawyer, she sure knew a lot of stuff that didn't have a thing to do with the law. He guessed that's what you did when you ran your own business.

Going back to his own work, Daryl bit into his lip, a nervous habit since he was a boy. It felt like he was lying to her, and even though they didn't know each other that well, she didn't deserve to be lied to.

She'd done her part around here and they were about to sell her down the river.

It disgusted him, and he'd tried to talk Rick out of it, although not that convincingly. After their trip over to King Consolidated, Daryl had seen a turnaround in Rick, a new focus that didn't remind him of a cornered animal. They'd talked about Michonne and how Rick thought she might have long-term potential after all. Carl had warmed to the woman too, and the boy had been caught poking his head into her office a few times in the past couple of days. It made sense that the newfound trust was fragile, but it surprised him to see all that buckle under anything the Governor had to say on the matter.

Daryl didn't like being on the wrong side of Rick's decision. Hershel had stuck to his guns, but Daryl couldn't bear to abandon his friend, a man who had given him chance after chance and welcomed him into the company like family. Rick had trusted him and made him his right hand. He couldn't throw that away over some woman he barely knew, no matter how shitty it felt and no matter how much he'd grown to like and respect her.

He could hear Merle in his mind, sneering at him as he questioned whether Daryl was a real man or if he would hide behind Rick rather than display some balls. But what did Merle know? Rick was right now recruiting him to do their dirty work. The whole thing went down like acid in his stomach.

Rick walked in as they wrapped things up and scanned the room to assess their progress. Daryl noted the tension around his eyes and the firmness to his stance. He'd already spoken to Merle, and it seemed as if it their plans were ready to be put into motion.

Glenn walked around the table and approached Rick at the head. "If they try to come at us through official channels, they'll hit a few bumps in the road after what we set up. We've got calls confirmed from our people at the regulatory offices and with our best investors. And Jean at the courthouse is on notice to keep her eyes out for any new Woodbury filings."

As Glenn explained, Daryl stewed even more about how things were unfolding. Michonne had come up with that idea and it was useful. It would make things better for them. Why were they throwing that away on some bullshit chance that the Governor was on the up and up? They had no idea what the man would do with Michonne once they turned her over, but it wouldn't be good. And if he'd do that to Michonne, he'd have no problems going back on his word to them. No, this plan was fucked. But it was out of his hands.

Nodding over Glenn's explanation, Rick voiced his approval of the report. "That's a good plan."

"It was Michonne's." Daryl said, not pushing too hard, but feeling emboldened by his recent thoughts on the matter.

Michonne didn't seem to be aware of any negative energy directed towards her. If anything, she looked proud of her work and happy to help out. "We don't have to win. We just have to make their getting at us more trouble than it's worth." Her attachments were starting to show, and, in that moment, Daryl felt sorry for her and for himself.

Rick averted his eyes, once again sizing up something in the distance. He turned briefly to Daryl who held his gaze and offered a barely perceptible nod before looking away too. No, he didn't like this but he'd go along with it like the good soldier Rick expected.

For some reason, Daryl felt like even though they were preparing for something big, another important part of their community threatened to unravel at the same time. It unsettled him. He needed to go talk to Merle, get his bearings and figure out how to process these newest developments.

Maybe he could find some way to save Michonne, or at least make peace with himself after everything played out.

TBC …

AN: Thanks for sticking with this story. I know it's a slow-going one that'll read differently once it's all out on the table. And don't worry, I'm still working on my other stories already in progress. I just pick at whatever I have the time and energy for these days. I'll try to churn out more updates on all fronts as soon as I can get my act together, haha. RL has been a bundle of craziness lately.