Disclaimer: I don't own The Walking Dead.

Folsom Prison Blues

Prologue: Darcy Dixon

No one who had ever met Darcy Dixon would think her helpless, not unless they wanted their faces to be imprinted in the pavement, growing up with a brother like Merle (who was all but infamous in their little neighborhood) had its ups and downs, mostly downs, but if nothing else, it had made her adaptable, so she could guarantee her place in the new darwinistic reality her world had become.

She had been used to people thinking the worse of her after they got acquainted with her brother, she expected it almost, so it surprised her when Carol started to concern herself with the amount of sleep she was getting, or whether she ate that day. Maybe Carol saw something in her, maybe the despair over the loss of her daughter made her latch onto someone who reminded her of her little girl, and Darcy really tried hard not to think of what Carol saw in her – a broken girl, come from a broken home, with an asshole for a father and no mother – because really, what kind of girl would be allowed to grow up like her if her mama was still around? Maybe she saw the wild little girl that reacted as aggressively as any animal trapped in a corner would, a reflection to what her own little girl would become had she not been there to stand between Sophia and Ed.

She tasted bile in the back of her throat – thinking about Sophia usually brought that reaction in her, made her think about things that she though wouldn't affect her anymore, her father, Merle.

Her brother was – is, the stubborn part of her mind insisted – almost fifteen years older than her, the long track of stillborns and miscarriages that preceded her birth had taken its toll on her mother in both mind and body, and Darcy couldn't remember a time in her childhood when the memory of her mother wasn't accompanied by the ever present aroma of alcohol. Between her mother and her father, Merle was the one she actually depended on, the one she needed, a fact that he wouldn't show any hesitation to bring up or throw in her face in later years. Darcy used to think that she would have killed for the white-picket-fence kind of family, a family like Juliette Barnell's, her little friend from middle school with whom she spent one thanksgiving with. Juliette's parents were sober and happy and always smiling, and her grandparents were alive and kind and she would fantasize that she was Juliette's sister, and that they were her family, laughing and telling embarrassing stories about each other from when they were little; she would still fantasize about that, even when she got a beating for spending the holiday with "those fucking democrats", even after Juliette and her family left.

Merle didn't share those dreams, if he did have any dreams at all, he kept it to himself. When she was little, he would tell her that as soon as he got a good job, an actual paying job, he would take her and leave; as the years passed the words changed: "as soon as I have enough money saved up", "as soon as Danny pays me what he owes", "as soon as I get out of this fucking prison". She was still very little when Merle got dishonorably discharged from the army and went for his first tour in prison, but she remembered the second tour well enough, and the others that followed… eventually her brother stopped making her promises, empty as they were, and she was left to watch as his eyes grew colder and his smile crueler. When their mother died and the house burned down Merle was no longer part of the picture; she was thirteen and her brother twenty-seven when they met again at her funeral, he went back home – however little there was left of it – with her. He didn't stay of course, not with their worthless father still breathing, and she was left alone again sooner rather than later.

Her father, abusive drunk that he was, soon started losing the interest in beating her when she was out of the house more often than not, and female visitors started to become a more frequent sight in her house, which prompted her to stay out of the house for longer than she normally would, sometimes camping for days in the woods near her home, and only returning for food or to use the bathroom. Sometimes her father would leave for weeks and she would have the house to herself, in these times she would call Merle (when he was not locked up or occupied otherwise), and he would come to stay for a few days and help her hone her skill with the crossbow; it was the happiest she remembered being for a long time.

When she was nineteen she started going out with a dark skinned boy she met in community college, it was not the first boyfriend that she had, but it was the first one she really cared about, the first man she gave herself to. Their secret romance lasted for a year and a half – by which point she was almost giving herself a heart attacks with the recurring nightmares she had about what Merle would do if he ever found out, which prompted her to end it. She graduated in business management and started working in a little law firm in Atlanta, she started low – the business assistant's assistant, but for once in her life the money that paid for her food was her own, not her brother's monthly drug-stained dollars, nor her father's invalid's benefit (for a work accident almost ten years ago – best thing that happened to her father since prescription drugs).

It was not the life anyone would have wanted, but it was the one she had, and while she knew it could be worse, that the abuse could have easily taken a different turn, so far life had not thrown her anything she could not handle.

Until the fucking apocalypse happened.

When she turned thirty, with a little apartment all of her own just outside the city limits, she found that she was finally happy with her life. When her father died of cirrhosis, she could barely bring herself to come to his funeral, but this time around when she left the cemetery and went home with her brother, Merle stayed. In. Her. Fucking. Apartment. Merle was neither an easy nor an enjoyable person to live with; the drinking and the drugs almost made her think she was living with her father again, but try as she might, she could not resent her brother; she could resent the man he had become, the absent figure in her life, but she could not resent her brother, the one who taught her how to track and shoot, how to hunt and clean her kills. Pathetic as it may be, Merle was the closest thing to a paternal figure she ever had, and as he had literally no idea how to approach a sister, he had simply always treated her as if she had been born with a dick instead – which made it really easy for him to beat the crap out of her when she found his stash in her teen years.

Merle lived in and out of her life, her couch was forever his bed (that is, when he actually managed to make it to the couch before collapsing) and it started to become familiar somehow. Merle didn't care to learn about what she did for a living, and she never asked where he spent the day, she knew; in fact the only real question she posed to her brother was: "how could your dumbass catch the clap, again?" When the news took a different tune she and her brother were packed and ready to bail as the government advised the population at large to stay in their homes.

She and Merle grouped with others when the shit finally hit the fan, and she found that her and her brother quickly became an invaluable resource in the little camp; the city folk couldn't skin a dead animal if their lives depended on it - which it did now, so Darcy separated herself from her feelings on the matter (which were telling her to gut that skinny bitch Lori for trying to make her do laundry), and resigned herself to what needed to be done – chores. After all, safety in numbers, right?

Her chores initially plainly consisted of hunting and skinning after she made it clear that she would put an arrow through Olive Oil's head if she was forced to touch other people's laundry, didn't matter who she was fucking -which brings her to Shane; she wasn't unfamiliar with cops, she spend a few nights of her own in the wrong side of a cell door, she just didn't know at first exactly what it was about him that made her stand on edge, but she didn't like him, she had learned to trust her instincts, and future experiences would eventually prove her right.

Rick was different.

She didn't expect to like him as much as she did – and it definitely wasn't love at first sight either; he had left her brother for dead, she had attacked him (the squirrel-throwing was not among her proudest moments), and he treated her as if she were a time-bomb most days (maybe he was right to, she wasn't the most reasonable of people when armed and in a potentially dangerous situation). It didn't start suddenly also, although she couldn't remember when she started having such a dramatic change of heart, perhaps it was when she heard him scream her name after Andrea shot her, or after Sophia – when he came to visit her little corner of the camp. By the time of the threat that came with the arrival of Randall, she was devoted to him; she asked Rick for a few minutes alone with the whimpering idiot and came back with the information he wanted, stood by him when the decision was made and was ready to carry out the execution had Rick asked it of her - which she did, just with Dale instead of Randall.

There was certainly a lot to love in Rick, he was not just handsome, he was kind, he was honest and loyal to a fault, he stood for what was right and had the confidence and belief that made people turn to him and seek him out as their natural leader. She knew she loved him because of the way he treated her, after the farm fell he started looking for her more often than ever; they discussed strategies over road maps, and she found herself talking about her life - Merle, her previous job, and when she would lapse into silence he would begin a tale of his own. His tone of voice changed when he spoke to her, which was more often than any of the others in the group, and his eyes softened when she made a joke about something or the other (mostly about Glenn and Maggie, because making the chinaman flustered was about the easiest way for entertainment these days).

Making fun of Glenn had become her new favorite sport ever since she found out that he had harbored a little crush for her since before the CDC. She used to pair up with him when they went to the streams – their own little "shower rotation" – just to appreciate the way his face would go beet red and his eyes would try to look at everywhere but her. Since Maggie came to the fold she had expanded her spectrum, but Maggie was not the type to get embarrassed easily; the little country girl was tougher than she looked and had the potential to be a lot more crass than she usually sounded. Some people had a type – Glenn's at least was consistent.

Whatever was the new place that she had taken in Rick's life, Lori had made no secret of her displeasure, some nights were alive with the sounds of Rick and Lori's not-so-quiet "discussion" while other nights were steely silent, and she avoided being around anyone, leaving to hunt at random moments; it didn't help matters that Rick usually went with her, but she didn't blame him, she usually avoided Lori about as much as she avoided Shane, if she were in his position she would be crawling up the metaphorical walls. Back at the quarry, or even sometimes on the farm, Lori seemed to think that she could boss Darcy around, and it made her want to pound her fist into something – preferably her face; back at the quarry it usually ended with Darcy blowing up on Lori and Shane blowing up on her.

It used to annoy the hell out of her when Rick would turn a blind eye to his friend's actions (another reason for her self-imposed exile –she was just so sick of everyone's bullshit), and would still take his word in higher regard. Eventually the former deputy began to show more of his true colors, and the sheriff started looking for her input, which in turn made Shane look as if he had sucked on an especially sour lemon. After the farm was overrun her role within the group changed to that of second-in-command, and she appreciated the closeness it brought to her and Rick.

To be fair, the winter had brought all of them closer, made all of them tougher, even little Carl, who started to grow a crush the size of a small semi on Beth (another good source of entertainment for her). And even though she started to care for them almost as much as she did for Carol, it did not compare to the way she felt about their leader, especially after that one night three months ago when they camped in a little meadow, and Rick had crawled into her tent after he finished watch, and she had warmed him from the cold outside.

She still does on most nights. The group didn't comment on what was obviously happening, and kept their opinions to themselves; Lori avoided looking in her general direction and resented Rick from afar (but that was fine, he did the same for her), and she wasn't about to accommodate her just because the idiot got herself knocked up (ever since she and Rick started spending their nights together, she had scavenged through a lot more pharmacies than before). She and Carl had grown closer after she took it upon herself to teach him how to shoot, and he had not voiced any objections to her new relationship with his father; he was always happy and eager to learn with her, and surprisingly it pleased her more than it annoyed her to spend time with him, and suddenly she was trying to teach him how to track –which he did worse than Glenn (and that one couldn't track for shit), but still.

All of them had grown during the winter months on the road, even Darcy, whose life had been one lesson in endurance after another.

She was stronger than they were. She had to be.

Her upbringing had prepared her for this - she was made to survive, and looking at what the world had become now, she was suddenly not quite as envious of Juliette's life as she once had been.

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A/N: in celebration for the upcoming second half of season 3, I answered to my own prompt on TWD kink meme! YAY!
I really, really wanted a season 3 fic with a genderbent Daryl, focusing on the growing relationship between Rick and Daryl (much to Lori's despair) – and I decided to have a go at it (since it was just not leaving my brain alone), sooo I turned their bromance into a romance (and while I actually enjoy Rick/Daryl slash, there are so few fics with fem!Daryl out there - and genderbend fics are a serious guilty pleasure of mine).
I haven't really decided where I'm going with this; I am labeling this fic AU, even though I'll try to stick to cannon mostly. Also, in case some are wondering about the timeline, I made Daryl – Darcy – younger (so instead of Merle being in juvie that time when Daryl got lost in the woods, he was in prison), Merle looks about 47-50 to me, so that would make Darcy be in her early thirties in my story.
The title is from Johnny Cash's song "Folsom Prison Blues".
Enjoy and Review!