Bloodletting – Concrete Blonde (AN: I have three songs from them, so who knew that two would come up so close together?)
Merle was a vampire. Not in the blood-sucking, undead sort of way, but in the way that he had sucked any future out of Daryl's life and kept coming back to ruin anything that Daryl had created for himself. Like a blood sucker, only not as a romantic as the ones in films. Daryl snorted, crouching down by the river. Even when his brother wasn't around he managed to screw things up.
He had left the small group while they were setting up their small camp on the farm. They were all making nice with the farmer and his family and Daryl just felt out of place. He didn't want to sit around taking about the weather, or thanking the family for what they had done for Carl, he wanted to find the other child that had been with their group. The one that Lori and Rick had already seemed to forget about. He didn't blame them too much, considering their focus, but he well remembered being a forgotten child.
Which brought him back to his brother. Merle had left him behind often enough as a kid, so he was used to surviving on his own. Being lost, getting away from their father, whatever it was he needed to do all he could rely upon was himself. When he had his brother had both survived what seemed to be the end of the world, he had thought that it was finally a time he could count on Merle to do more than just take advantage and boss him around. Instead Merle just kept to his old ways, wanting to take whatever he could get without thought to the consequences around them, and now Daryl was on his own with this group of people.
He picked up a stick, poking the muddy shore with it, before looking up toward the farm again. It was getting close to dusk, and he knew he should get back before long, but the way they looked at him sometimes made him want to just walk into the woods and not come back. He could survive just fine without them. He had doubts about their ability to do without him though, and no one else seemed to remember that they should be looking for a little girl except her mother.
Daryl threw the stick into the water, watching as it spun around for a moment before sinking. He needed to get back to their camp, before they started having more crazy ideas about the silent outsider. Probably thought he did some weird hippie redneck stuff like dance around the woods under the moon to get ready for hunting or making moonshine. He snorted, amused for a moment, wishing he had a drink. That desire flared and vanished though. He had to keep his wits about him at all times now, there was no time for the things that Merle had led him into before. He didn't want to become a pale shadow, lurking like his brother's junkie friends.