Disclaimer: I do not own any piece or part of TWD. This is my therapy.
My depression is a shape shifter
One day it is as small as a firefly
In the palm of a bear
The next its the bear.
On those days I play dead
until the bear leaves me alone.
- Sabrina Benaim "Explaining My Depression to My Mother"
Daryl shifted anxiously on his feet, his eyes darting around in the hallway as he waited for the man to come answer his knocks. He had gotten the call from Mike about half an hour ago and it had taken him awhile to get everything together and in order. He had never even gone along with Merle to a drop off before and suddenly it was all on him. He felt his stomach twisting and turning with nerves and a need to run the other direction, but if he didn't make this sale, he wouldn't be able to post bail for Merle and then he would be left all on his own for even longer. He needed to get Merle out so he could learn the tricks of the trade or at least find some way to take care of himself should the case go south, as things often did for the Dixons.
Mike answered the door, peeking out and frowning. "Where's Merle?" The man was shaking and it was obvious that he was in need of a fix fast. Daryl only had Merle to go on, but Merle had gone into withdrawal enough for Daryl to instantly pick up on the signs of it when he spotted them. It made his blood boil, but he had to push the feeling aside. What this man decided to do with his life was none of his business. It couldn't be his responsibility. If Daryl wasn't selling to him, he'd find another supplier and all that would achieve was Daryl and his own going without. He couldn't take it personally. Merle didn't take responsibility. Daryl tightened his jaw and nodded, slipping in through the open door.
"Merle got himself in trouble. Don't worry, I got your stuff." He pulled the baggie out to display the pills he had counted out and put inside. "You didn't say how much you wanted. That gonna be enough?" It was just barely enough that it should cover the rest of Merle's bail, he wasn't sure how much he was supposed to bring, but he felt certain that it was less than he usually saw Merle packing up for people. He was just worried with the way that Mike was looking that he might get himself into a fight for not bringing enough to get Mike to his next score.
The man looked at the baggie, his gaze darting over the pills, fingers dancing over the surface and counting them twice over before he nodded, shifting to toss it to the table. "Let me get the cash. Yeah." His voice held such trembling excitement as he raced back towards another room, his eyes wide and wild and excited for the coming high as Daryl shifted uncomfortably on his feet. He could do this. Yeah, it wasn't his first choice of occupation, but it brought in the cash and he could do it. He wasn't a total screw-up.
"Breathe. Daryl, breathe." Merle's voice was low and focused as he kept his eyes on the road as he saw Daryl curling himself up on the other side of the truck cab, his hands pressing to either side of his head, his breathing erratic and frantic. The chain of the locket still dangled from his hand, swinging back and forth with the way that his body trembled as the truck barreled over the weather-worn roads. "Daryl Dixon. Stop your pussy ass sob fest and breathe, dammit. You a Dixon or ain't ya?" Still nothing. No words from his brother. Daryl was sitting there, completely losing himself in horrors, curled up in the passenger seat of his own truck. Merle punched the dash roughly, pulling off to the side of the road and jumping out of the truck without bothering to cut the engine.
He marched around the truck before he yanked the door open, reaching for his younger brother and pulling him as roughly as he could from his spot on the seat, watching as he fell out, barely catching himself from falling on his face. "Fight." He yelled in Daryl's face as he pulled back and smacked a punch against his brother's face, watching him stumble back under the weight of it, but he didn't try to shove back. "Fight." Louder, angrier, as he stepped forward and grabbed his shirt, pulling him forward and into another punch, this one knocked him on his ass completely and Daryl didn't look like he hardly registered an attack at all. "Dammit, why the hell ain't ya gonna fight?" He moved to step backwards and then forward to kick his brother in the gut, but Daryl just caved forward, his arms falling against the road as he leaned in and closed his eyes silently against the pain.
"Get up." Merle growled the words, yanking his brother by the hair and hauling him up to his feet, dragging him to the back of the truck and lowering the tailgate to practically pick him up and shove him back onto the truck bed. "Yer gonna ride in the back like the damn bitch you is, then." Merle slammed the tailgate shut once again before he stomped back to the front of the truck and peeled out and drove like a mad man back to their trailer, his breathing heavy and he felt his sanity slipping. This bitch was going to pay for what she was doing to his brother. He couldn't let Daryl slip back into this level of depression again. He'd lose him for sure this way - one way or another - and no amount of feeling guilty over the way that things had gone was going to excuse this woman. He didn't owe her shit.
Merle didn't owe her shit.
Carol grabbed at another log and took a deep, steadying breath before she heaved up on it and grasped it tightly to herself as she crossed over to throw it into the open door and the waiting fire. As the flames took to the new wood she quickly slammed the small door closed and backed away, her eyes shutting up tightly as she stumbled back to the stack of the wood behind her, sitting down hard and feeling the way that the log shifted under her weight. It was unstable and unsafe to perch herself on, but she didn't care, everything in her life seemed to tremble this way. At least it was something that made sense in her life, offering continuity to everything else that she lived. She wasn't afraid of how dark the world could be, she didn't have anything left to lose.
The sound of an engine roared close by and her head turned up to see a motorcycle pull into her yard and watched the angry and imposing figure of Merle Dixon climb off of the back of it, his eyes finding her instantly and there was a fire in his eyes. Carol did not like Merle Dixon but she didn't hate him. Merle Dixon had kept Andre safe, he had worked with Michonne for so long to protect her little boy from the man that she loved but couldn't trust to make the adult decisions that a father should be able to make. Sure, he had taken extra from Michonne for a payment for their arrangements, but he always held up his end of the deal and that worked for Michonne, so it worked for Carol.
"Mousy." His growl was dangerous as he came closer to her, making a beeline for the woman.
"This isn't about you, Merle. Has nothing to do with you." She called out to him as he approached, standing up from the logs as he came closer. He still towered over her, but his presence wasn't as intimidating as it would have felt if she had kept herself seated.
"Bullshit it ain't. You deal with this on yer own an' you leave Daryl out of it, ya hear me?" He jabbed his finger into Carol's chest. "Daryl Dixon's only thing I got in this world and I ain't gonna let ya take 'im from me. Did a lot of fuckin' work ta keep 'im above water when it happened. You ain't undoin' it all now. I ain't lettin' you." He stepped forward, his hand lifting up and his thumb pressed against the hollow of her throat as he spoke. "You ain't much to silence, no matter how loud you wanna try ta practice yer roarin' on him."
"There are consequences to every action, Merle Dixon." Her eyes locked on the motorcycle that he had come into her yard on this time around, fighting to speak around the pressure he put on her throat and the fear it sent coursing throughout the rest of her body. "He got selfish. He broke the deal. You all knew full well that Mike couldn't be trusted with that kind of stash, but he left it there anyways. He-"
"Ain't on him." Merle's voice dropped low as his hand lifted to grasp at the wisps of curls around the top of her pixie cut, yanking back to force her head back and force her to look into his eyes. "Daryl ain't the one who screwed up the deal." His voice was low as he spoke, keeping his eyes locked on Carol's, his gaze nearly black as they bore into hers. He invaded her soul and reached around to her reality, twisting it until it didn't resemble what she was used to. What it had been molded into years ago.
"You were in prison." He wasn't going to convince her otherwise, she remembered everything about that time in their lives. She couldn't forget. She tried to reach back and reshape that reality into what it had always been. Fixing it.
"Yeah. I went to prison. Daryl hadn't never sold before, I left him a note with the addresses and names of all my sales when I knew I'd be goin' away. He had to keep sellin' to keep the cabin, to pay for gas and bills and survive. He had to take over. I left him the list." Merle's voice hitched a bit and his hand tightened on her hair, his other hand reaching to grasp her arm painfully tight.
"You left him a list..." Leading him for more, listening to his story as that look took over his gaze, ignoring the way her skin and scalp burned in pain under his touch. She held the clay of reality back out to him to allow him to add his own molding to it as he offered her information that was just too pained to be made up.
"I didn't put shit for details on that list. I put the price. I put the price. Didn't leave 'chonne's number. Didn't leave instructions for him to call her after or -" Merle voice caught again and he had to let go of Carol to take a step back away from her, releasing his hands from her, holding both of them in the air between them. "I didn't tell him Mike could only be left with one fix at a time. Didn't tell him that was the deal we had with her. I didn't tell him that Mike wasn't trusted with a stash around his kid... didn't tell him there was a kid to worry about. I just told him where to find Mike to sell to him. And how much it cost." Merle lowered his voice with a shrug. "He sold the pills and posted my bail."
"He didn't know...? He didn't - it was - Daryl didn't..." Carol couldn't breathe and she stumbled forwards towards Merle again as his hand loosened on her hair. "Daryl hadn't..."
"Never sold before that, no." Merle shook his head again, and she saw the guilt that he had managed to keep buried deep down surface for a moment as he looked her in the eyes and admitted the truth. "He was just doin' what I said. An' I forgot. I forgot to - tell him any of it. I forgot and that boy died, an 'Chonne died. And Daryl almost did too... outta the guilt. Took a hell of a lot to pull him back out." Merle watched the way that the clay altered, crumbling completely and falling around her.
"Daryl..." She repeated again, moving towards the house to lean against the wall, hands flat against the wall. "No... no, he... it was - he sold it to him." Daryl was still to blame. Daryl sold a dangerous drug to a man and a little boy - her godson - and his mother - her best friend - had died. Carol twisted her body away from Merle, trying to catch her breath as her forehead fell hard against the wall, hands grasping and reaching, trying to find purchase on something, but everything felt - off. The world was all wrong. Merle was wrong.
"Daryl sold the drugs to Mike. Mike knew the set up, but he took the full stash without a word of the deal to him. Mike took the full stash and left 'em out while he was high for that little boy to find. Mike did that. 'Chonne knew she couldn't trust the man, but she stayed with him. 'Chonne did that. I left Mike's name with Daryl and told him to call, without none of the details. I did that." Merle stepped towards Carol, pressing himself into her back, his voice low as his head dipped down to her ear. "Got a lot of people to blame here, Mousey. Ain't one of them Daryl. Not one." His hands splayed over her sides and pressed her back towards his own chest before he reached to slip his pocket knife out, flipping it open and lifted it to her throat, his lips to her ear as he spoke. "You leave the boy alone, else next time I show up, we ain't gonna have words. Got it?"
Her soft sobs were Merle's only answer and he nodded before lowering the knife and shoving her roughly against the house before turning back to his bike to leave. Carol was left kneeling in the snow, fingers digging through the cold as it soaked her and chilled her to the bone, numbed her completely, but the pain in her heart raged on as her reality lay in shambles around her.