Hello, before you read the next chapter, it is a spoiler if you have not seen Season 3 yet so please read carefully.
I hope I did Merle justice. I loved his character, he had been portrayed so well. I don't know a great deal about his past or if anything has ever been made about it, let me know if I had done anything drastically bad.

I do not own The Walking Dead.

Enjoy!

Chapter 16: Demon – Merle POV

A bad man, someone truly evil, they're light as a feather, they don't feel a thing.

Merle felt it, he felt it every single day as though he was dragging boulders behind him. For years he had managed to cope with them, he had become strong enough to carry them but ever since the end came, since all this shit went down and since he had been with the Governor, Merle felt those stones start to drown him. It was getting harder and harder to keep his head above the water, to keep a clear sight on what he wanted and who he wanted to be. Hell he was only human, some days he felt nothing at all, he felt like a feather as Michonne had eloquently put but then it would turn back into the stone it really was, reality slapping him for being a dreamer.

He had only done this because he didn't want anything to happen to his brother, fuck the others. Daryl was his family and if there was a chance to keep himself he was going to take it, whether it was handing Michonne over or, hell, chopping off his other hand. Rick didn't have the balls to do this, he may have come close but Merle knew men like that, they were weak in that area, in the area of getting the tough dirty shit done. They could lead, they could save lives and keep people safe but men like that needed men like Merle, men who didn't care about the dirt that got under their nails, found it easier to clean it away.

Now he was here, sitting alone in the crappy car and watching Michonne shrink in the rear view mirror. Dam bitch was right about everything, who knew she could fight with her sword as well as her tongue? Merle hadn't been expecting it; a physical fight he could handle, he could take the hits and the blood and the pain but the words? As much as it infuriated Merle, he knew she was right, he knew his feelings were right and he couldn't keep them locked away any more.

We can just go back.

Merle knew there was no going back, not only to the prison, which would be hard but he could do it, but he couldn't go back to who he had been before all of this. There was no going back for him, not now, he didn't know how to or where the fuck to even start.
He couldn't go through with it, he was really just as weak and pathetic as officer friendly, but Merle knew that wasn't entirely true. He had killed sixteen men, all since he met the Governor, not a single one before then. Sure he had roughed them up, broken a few ribs and jaws and eye sockets but to actually kill a man? Merle thought he would never sink to that low, ever. But he had been proven wrong when the Governor had found him, patched him up and given him a purpose. If he knew why he was like that maybe he could change it but it had been that way for as long as he could remember. He was more a chameleon than a man; whatever people needed of him, whatever they needed him to be that's what he was. If his gang needed a thug that didn't care for the law they got one, if the Governor needed a heartless lieutenant to take out the trash he got it. It killed him, tearing his soul piece by piece; he may not have ever been a good man but he liked to think he was a good person. But how could he be good if when people genuinely needed a good man to help he fought with them, how could he be a good man if when his own blood needed him to be a brother that he felt scared?

Merle had always had intentions, he had feelings and thoughts and dreams but growing up in the house he did, things like that got you beat, got you bloody and broken. Maybe that was all it was, Merle always had to be someone else, he couldn't be who he was because that person was gone, beaten and terrorised away into dirty rags and rotting floor boards. Aspirations had always been in his reach and in his thoughts as a kid, even as a teenager; to run away with his baby brother from the man they called a father, to grow up happy, maybe be a teacher, find a woman that could put up with him and have a happy life but things never worked that way.
Instead he became a monster, a twisted demon that got lost somewhere along the road of trying to do the right thing.

He stole, he fought, all trying to forget the pain at home; heck that juvenile centre became more of a home than that crumbling shack. He just wanted to escape, to get away from the fear and the anger but also to forget about the responsibilities he was failing as on older brother for Daryl; what sort of role model was he to him? He stole for him, sold drugs for money to get Daryl through school but eventually he started to take them, an escape to paradise, away from the shit he was calling life.
This was never what he had planned, for any of the shitty plans he had scraped together.
He had tried to always toughen Daryl up, tried to get him to be like him; a tough guy that was depended on, a man that was needed, it was the only way people like them could find a place but Daryl had always been different, and it made Merle jealous.
Daryl seemed to have forgotten all that, or even if it pained him, if it made him angry he didn't show it, he just wanted his brother back, and it frightened Merle.
Merle could remember Daryl as a kid, no higher than his hip, looking up at him and saying he loved his big brother. That made Merle question everything, made him feel disgusted in himself, he had done nothing to deserve his little brother's love or admiration.

No one's gonna mourn you, not even Daryl, he's got a new family.

As he drove, the road stretching on before him, Merle thought back on Daryl now, and how he had that young thing Jasmine. He had found love when everything seemed so impossible and then he had his big brother back against all the odds. Daryl had always been sort of a girl to Merle, weak without him and easily lost without his firm hand to guide him but since they had come back from Woodbury, Merle realised he was better off without him. People accepted him for who he was, no questions and even had someone love him. Jasmine had been brave to admit that she loved Daryl to him, but then again it brought Merle some odd sort of peace.
His first night in the prison, kept in a cage like an animal, it was Jasmine that came with some food to him, thanking him for his help at the prison. Merle just wanted to tell her to fuck off, but Daryl walked past with an angry glare and it hurt Merle. It was Jasmine that reassured him, reminding him that Daryl did care about him, despite everything that he had done, he was his brother. Merle couldn't be the brother that Daryl wanted, and he thought that they all knew it.
It was too late for Merle, and Michonne was right, even though all his life he had tried to find a place, tried to be someone that was needed, he was just that, a useful weapon. No one would miss him but a small part of him hoped that Daryl would, even if it was because they shared the same blood.
After all, he was doing this for his baby brother.
Daryl had a new family, a better family and he had told Jasmine to look after Daryl, to do a better job than he had and felt relief when she assured him she would, like weight had been lifted off his shoulders, but it had never been a burden and now he felt hollow and cold.

And all that shitty time and life decisions had led him to where he was now, a warm bottle of whisky in his hands, crappy metal blaring on the radio as biters began to pound on the windows, his gun sitting ominously beside him.
He had to do the right thing, at least once in his life. It pained him, he didn't want to do jack all for anyone anymore, but he couldn't let the Governor get away with this, he wouldn't allow that prick to kill anyone, especially Daryl, and if Daryl cared for those people back in the prison, if they really were his new family, then there was no room for Merle.
If there was one last thing he could do for his little brother, to make up for all the mistakes he had ever done, this was going to be it.

Thanks for reading!
Silver Kirin xXx