Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
while loving someone deeply gives you courage
- Lao Tzu
There is a sound in his ear. A pounding.
It's the only thing he hears as her hand drops from his wrist, as she lets him go.
Do you want to be alone?
The night is unkind.
The mist is too thick, the sky too dark. The headlights are a swirl of fog before his eyes. He drives painstakingly slow after he hits a walker just down the drive, the right side mirror gone in a splash of brown and black gore.
He doesn't know how long he drives, only that he leaves in the night, trying to push her touch from his memory. He eyes his wrist, unmarred to the eye, but burning with an unseen fire. He feels her hand drop from his wrist - over and over and over. Releasing him.
Releasing him from the quiet they shared, and the very real possibility of what it might have become.
His brother is alive.
The thought should make him happy, but it feels remarkably like the time he found out Merle had survived drowning in both a literal and figurative gutter, spiraling down among drugs and alcohol. It's a sour feeling lost in purgatory of two emotions, a wayward place between relief and anger.
This time the anger is dominant, rearing its ugly head higher and higher. He isn't sure if it's because of Merle - or the knowledge that going to Merle means losing something he never thought he'd ever attain in his life.
The grey of morning greets him, and the sun burns away the fog - if only a bit.
He finds the farmhouse, grimmer and greyer than it once was. In the distance, muted and distorted by the winter fog, the charred husk of the barn and the skeleton of Dale's RV are glaring reminders of what once was and what was lost.
He wonders what might have been if Cal had never shown up. Where would they be? Who would they be?
Daryl pulls into the familiar lot and parks facing back down the drive. Everywhere he looks there are the distorted remains of the walkers that had marched on the farm and fallen. Near the house there is a ring of bones and half frozen parts, the final morbid testament of the two women that had been dragged down by the undead. He looks away, remembering how he had seen Cal fall so close to them, his heart having grown still in that moment of pure, abject terror.
For a long moment he sits in silence, hands tight on the wheel, eyes glued to his wrist and that phantom touch that burns down to his core.
"Your brother scares the shit out of me."
The farmhouse looms before him, the front door ajar, windows thick with shadows.
He leaves the car, his armed crossbow cradled against his chest. The only sound he can hear is that same pounding in his ears - the wind, the crunch of gravel underfoot, even his breath is silenced by the perpetual, unending, unsatisfied drumming.
"But you don't."
His wrist burns as he moves up the steps, skirting a trail of blood still drying in the humid chill of winter. It's sticky - fresher than anything else he's seen in a long time. He doesn't know if it's Merle's blood or T-Dog's.
Daryl steps across the threshold into the dark and dusty space.
"You aren't him, Daryl. You aren't Merle."
Glenn's map is an unholy artifact. Pandora's box rests before her, and without hesitation, she opens it.
Georgia is small on paper. The roads are easier to traverse. The walls fairer to climb. The only threat is the jagged arrows scattered about - the vast herds and their movements.
And maybe, she thinks, another threat might exist. One that she knows the name of, a whisper that plagued her in her heartache, and soured her nightmares.
Woodbury.
In the tension of their encounter, that simple moment of untruth had betrayed her - and yielded something in turn: Merle was from Woodbury.
She runs her finger along the map, knowing where Woodbury sits on the far side of Senoia. She hesitates for a moment at its size - it's barely a town, nothing more than a strip road and a scattering of houses.
Cal runs her eyes along the map, pinpointing the Greene's ruined farmhouse, Woodbury, and their current residence.
She frowns, realizing with a chill that Woodbury is much closer than she thought. In their wandering they had found themselves only a stone's throw from the town - the burnt out Save Lots and it's scattering of equally charred homes was the only development between them.
"Isn't that Glenn's map?" Rick materializes out of thin air, a mug of shitty coffee in one hand and a can of beans in the other. He hands her the beans - she accepts them quickly, hoping he hadn't seen her fingering the small blur that makes up Woodbury.
"It is."
"He's been looking for it for a few days now."
Cal sips her her coffee. The map is vastly more interesting now that Rick hovers at her side. She knows why he's there - and why he's been out of the corner of her eye all day. The first thing she had seen that morning was Rick slumped against the wall at the foot of the stairs, folded up beneath a blanket. She knew he was waiting for her - or Daryl. Whichever one stumbled across him first.
She'd stepped over him, quieter than she'd ever been.
"I'm just looking it over," Cal's voice is soft, gentle.
Rick watches her carefully, considers the way she won't meet his eye. "He'll be fine."
Cal stiffens imperceptibly. He hadn't seen her touring the roads between their current home and Woodbury; he hadn't seen her trailing different routes between their home - and wherever Merle came from.
Rick continues on, unphased. "Daryl survived Merle before this - he'll survive him again."
Cal's jaw tightens. She doesn't want to tell him that surviving is different than living - and surviving someone, something like Merle is not necessarily an accomplishment.
There is no victory in war.
Cal swallows the last of her coffee, ignoring the sharp bite of heat down her throat. In a quiet voice she asks, "If you saw Merle again, what would you do?"
Rick eyes her curiously. "Why?"
Her gaze stutters. Hardly, but enough that Rick narrows his eyes at her. A cop is a cop, she thinks.
"I want to -" she clenches and unclenches her hands, jaw tight with violence.
Rick nods slowly. "That's fair."
"I don't think fair is the right word - for wanting someone… hurt." Dead. She can't even say the word. "I think it's just vindictive."
Rick's brow furrows. "Some might call it justice."
She drags her thumb along a printed interstate, she brushes her fingertips along a scattering of backroads.
"I don't think justice is the right word either," she says, her finger pauses, hovering over a speck of a town. She searches for a word to match her heart. Instead she finds herself giving voice to a bitter truth. "I should have shot him in the head."
Rick looks down at the map beneath her hands. "Daryl would still be gone."
Her eyes find the small red X that marks the Greene farm. Fifty miles. It feels like eternity.
In a small voice she gives word to a possibility - a biting, painful possibility. "He might not come back."
Rick's jaw tightens. "You don't know that."
Cal isn't a fool. She's been on this side before - she's watched someone walk away. But the distinguishing difference between them is that one she begged and pleaded with not to leave - and the other…
She almost laughs - almost. A breath escapes her in a gasp, and she nearly chokes. "I let him go," she whispers.
"You had too." Rick still doesn't look at her.
And Rick is right.
She had too.
She knows that if she had asked Daryl, he would have stayed. He had left only when she let him go.
She doesn't know how long she sits there, only that the grey light of morning has drifted into a slightly brighter grey of afternoon. Rick has taken a seat across from her, waiting in a solemn quiet that makes her feel uneasy.
The map sits open between them.
Without preamble she announces, "I think Merle is from Woodbury."
Rick looks up sharply. "What?"
Cal drops her thumb on the small speck of land they call home. She doesn't lift her eyes from the space between her fingers - a hair's breadth. "I lied to him - about where we were from. I said Woodbury. And he was so - sure. He knew I was lying."
Rick nods, a flare of light in his eyes. "Might be a ghost town. Might be he knows that."
Cal's eyes narrow imperceptibly.
"Or," Rick amends. "He's from Woodbury."
For a long moment neither of them speak. They stare at the map between them, the breadth between her thumb and forefinger so dangerously small.
She thinks of Merle, of his careful consideration, how he'd scrutinized her. He'd known she was lying just from the state of her supplies, her dirtied coat only buying them time.
Merle had been clean. His truck filled with supplies. He hadn't cared about the encroaching night, whereas any sane person in this new world would head for the safety of camp. But Merle was a wild card, his every move unpredictable and unaccounted for.
In a quiet voice, Cal asks once more, "If you saw Merle again, what would you do?"
Merle had been Daryl's only ally - and even in those moments when he was the furthest thing from an ally, Merle had still been all he had. That nostalgia, that loyalty was what tethered him so tirelessly to the sinking ship, the thunderstorm that was his brother.
That unfaltering tie to his only brother, his only family, is what forces him down into the couch in the Greene's long abandoned living room. Daryl sits in quiet, staring down at a patch of fresh blood soaked into the cushions beside him, the fresh footprints interrupting the fine dust on the floor, the dead walker long crushed at the foot of the stairs.
Around him the house is silent and shadowed. The only light streaming in through the windows and open door.
His foot moves as he shifts, scraping over broken glass.
And he suddenly remembers. The grey light of morning reminds him of the fucked up world he came from - a life long past; of a small home in a smaller neighbourhood, with a mother long since burnt up in her bed and a father too drunk to care. The couch is as lumpy and worn as the one he grew up with, usually occupied by his old man if he wasn't out fucking his way to hell. The floor as dirty as it was after his mother died. The walker was new - but he could imagine it seamlessly into that old double-wide as easily as he blinked.
Daryl takes a ragged breath in, realizing with a wince he hasn't thought about that life since Atlanta.
He scrambles back from those memories as quickly as he can, the phantom of a cracking belt echoing in his ears.
Without really looking, Daryl knows Merle isn't in the house. The house is empty. He can see where they disturbed the grime, the dust. Hurried footsteps and blood. Someone had disturbed the kitchen, trailing a bloodied footprint through the house and back out the door. He knows it's Merle, despite Cal never specifying where she shot him.
He lifts himself from the couch and follows the steps outside.
The tracks aren't hard to find. His brother was only light footed on the best of days, and with a bleeding foot he had walked like a drumline across the frosted covered fields. Daryl follows the ribbon of foot prints, frowning as he moves further from the farmhouse, but closer to the feeling it had settled in his heart. He can practically taste the ash of his mother's cigarettes; smell the ripeness of his old man's beer-laced breath; feel the emotional and physical repercussions of Merle leaving him alone.
Do you want to be alone?
Daryl hesitates, jaw tight as the pounding in his ears suddenly stops. Maybe it was the sound of his heart cracking, breaking, shattering into pieces. Whatever it was, the drumming stops - and it leaves him feeling suddenly hollow.
No.
He stops.
They sit in silence.
They stare at the map.
The group sits quietly, watching one another, Rick, Cal, the map. They are infected with fear, anxiety. Each one has seen and judged the space between their home and Woodbury.
Just over the next rise, Dale had said.
T-Dog, from where he laid on the couch, told him to fuck off.
"What if they aren't good people?" Lori's voice is wrangled into a false calm. There is a quiver at the end of her words, a soft warble of fear - the only indication of her anxiety.
"They probably aren't," Glenn mutters. Not if Merle's there, he doesn't say. He doesn't need to.
"We're just going to see what kind of threat they might be," Rick clarifies.
"And?" Dale asks, voice filled with that same unwavering faith they had come to know him by. "If they are a threat?"
Rick's jaw tightens. "Then we'll deal with it."
Dale opens his mouth to reply, but Rick cuts him off with a flashing glance. "We'll deal with it."
Everyone goes quiet once more. They think of Randall and his group, of their apparent appetites and the whispered anecdote from Cal upon her arrival. A chill creeps through those familiar with Merle, of his own voracious appetites, his addictions, his cruelty. Their eyes find T-Dog and his crippled hand, or Cal and her vacant stare.
Her hand curled in her lap, fingers twitching as they reach, grasp for something, anything.
Rick's eyes sweep across the group gathered in the living room. "We're just going to check the perimeter, see if anything sticks out."
"I'll go," Glenn says, shrugging off Maggie's pointed glare. When he refuses to meet her eye, Maggie volunteers as well.
Cal is opening her mouth to offer when Rick shakes his head at her. "Not this time."
They leave shortly after, Glenn and Maggie and Rick all drifting away into the perpetual fog. Everyone stands under the eave of the farmhouse, staring out into the grey mist.
One by one they retreat to the house. One by one they leave, until only Cal stands on the porch staring down the drive. She huddles beneath a blanket, the only suitable replacement for her bloodied, ruined jacket.
Eventually her fingers and toes are too cold, and she returns to the closet and her pile of blankets, breathing into her hands to warm them.
For a long moment she stands in the door of the small space, her eyes glued to the small scattering of belongings Daryl had left behind. She sits awkwardly, tugging her pack into her lap and sorting through the few belongings she has left. She isn't certain why she organizes and reorganizes them, though a small voice whispers of her broken heart and leaving as she had once hoped to do.
Someone knocks on the frame of the closet startling her from her repacking, and she turns slowly, blinking owlishly up at Carol who smiles - a sad, sad smile - down at her.
In her hands she holds a steaming mug of something. Coffee. More coffee.
"Where did you shoot him?" Carol asks, her voice oh-so soft. She sits down, sliding along the door frame, folding her legs beneath her. She places the steaming coffee cup near Cal's foot.
Cal eyes it skeptically. She hasn't had a second cup of coffee since the old world ended. "In the foot."
Carol snorts. "Deserved worse."
Cal's lips twitch. "T-Dog thinks I should have shot him in the head."
Carol snorts again, a small smile tugging at her lips.
Cal sets back, slumping among the pillows and blankets. Her pack sits awkwardly between them.
Carol eyes the pack skeptically, lips thinning as she recalls Cal's penchant for running away. And that's what it is, truly: running away. Carol's jaw sets with resolve. "My husband died near the beginning," she says.
Cal glances up.
"Some days I still think he's going to come walking through the door." Carol tucks her hands into the folds of her coat. "And some days I think it would be so - much - easier if he did..."
A pregnant pause. Carol shifts, rubbing at her fine, long fingered hands as she wrestles with her own discomfort. Cal watches from beneath the hood of her blanket, waiting.
Carol sighs, "Familiarity is comforting - even if that familiarity is misery."
Both women know Carol isn't only talking about the backpack.
It's nearly dark.
Cal leans against the arm of the couch nursing a mug of long-cold coffee. She listens to T-Dog reminisce about the world before; about his church and the folks he shuttled about; about playing in the woods out behind his house as a kid; about drinking sweet tea in the middle of a hot summer.
He's propped up with a pillow, uninjured arm tucked behind his head as he stares up at the water stained ceiling. On occasion they both glance at Lori where she paces near the front door. They can hear Carol and Dale talking in soft whispers from the kitchen, and Hershel and Carl have taken up the useless crows nest from the attic.
And they wait.
It's nearly dark.
Rick, Maggie, and Glenn haven't returned.
Daryl is somewhere out in the world, gone.
Cal takes a long gulp of her cold drink, long since immune to the taste of shitty coffee peppered with grinds and grit. Her hands shake, her heart putters away in her chest. She's two cups deep and her blood is on fire.
"There was this one old lady, real sweet. Had a set of lungs on her like I've never heard. Whenever she'd sing Amazing Grace, I swear -"
A soft thud from the upstairs forces the room into stillness. They wait, listening to the silence of the house. Their eyes find the front door, Lori paused near it, eyes wide.
The door opens with a sigh of cold, wintry air - and Daryl.
He stands just beyond the threshold, his eyes dark and hooded as he first meets Lori's wide eyed stare - and then looks beyond her, searching.
Cal is already up from the floor, the blanket draping from her elbows, her hands clasped tightly in its folds. Their eyes meet.
Daryl still doesn't cross the threshold.
"Did you find him?" Lori's voice is careful.
Daryl doesn't look away from Cal. He holds her electrified, over-caffeinated stare with his own exhausted gaze. "No," he says softly.
Lori shifts uncomfortably, and then tuts. "Well, get in here. You look like you could use some hot food. Cal could you -?"
Daryl hesitates, his eyes are still glued to Cal.
Cal only looks away when she moves to the hearth, the fire low where it nips at the edges of a steaming pot of soup. She spoons a helping into a bowl and turns to find Daryl still watching her from the doorway.
Cal motions with her chin for Daryl to follow as she sweeps past him towards the now empty kitchen - Dale and Carol having seemingly retreated from the small space. Without hearing him, she knows Daryl follows close behind.
She brushes the table top with the hem of her shirt before placing the soup down. A spoon is neatly tucked at its side.
When she turns it's to see him watching her carefully from the doorway, uncertainty written across his face and deep into his shadowed eyes.
They stare at one another for a long, quiet moment. Daryl worries the inside of his lip, shoulders hunched as he considers her. Cal leans against the kitchen counter, motioning for him to sit. She stares at him blankly when he doesn't.
"He walked away, bleeding, but he walked."
"I only shot him in the foot," Cal confesses.
"He can handle it," Daryl rasps.
Cal nods, knowing without a doubt that Merle could have taken a bullet to the heart and been fine. He was not a man to be easily defeated. A titan might have a chance against him.
But she doesn't really care about Merle.
There is only one man she cares about now.
"Would you have gone with him?" She whispers, her carefully constructed mask cracking to reveal her hurt. "Would you have left if you found him?"
Familiarity is comforting - even if that familiarity is misery.
Before he might have snapped and bristled and growled, but now Daryl stays his quick, defensive anger. He considers the hurt in her eyes - and the hope that limns them. Still she refrains from asking him to choose, but she asks what his choice might have been.
Silence draws out between them, stretching on and on until Daryl breaks it with a soft spoken confession.
"I ain't good at being anything but how I am." He grimaces as he looks at his hands, at the scars on his knuckles, looping into the wrists of his jacket. She's seen some of them, and felt others between the thin layer of his shirt. "It was only ever Merle and me. Until it wasn't - and I had nobody. I've only ever been alone when it comes to my brother - even when he was around." Daryl's eyes are dark with unsaid truths. "Merle taught me what leavin' looks like."
Cal swallows thickly, realizing his choice.
"That's why I came back." His eyes lift, meeting her's across the room.
Author's Note
Okay so the last chapter was ridiculously hard, but this one has it beat. IDK, I rewrote it several hundred times, thus the extreme delay, which I apologize for! I know how frustrating it is not to get updates regularly.
I'd love to hear if there were any particular moments from this chapter that stood out to you!
Thank you so much for reading.
