Author's Note: Thank you for reading/reviewing/tumblring. Find me on Tumblr under SepticLovebite or hit me up with your user name! Yeah, Merle's back. This is the first time I have introduced characters that didn't feature in the Ricktatorship scene at the end of 2.13. Bear with me...
TWDTWDTWD
She froze at hearing his words. Merle Dixon was here. That bit of information was more frightening than any amount of Walkers outside their door. She looked up at him from the floor, she was backed up against the window box, knees jammed under her chin and he was crouched over her, eye pressed up against the gap in the curtains. She couldn't help but grab his wrist tight, her breathing shallow and ragged with fear.
"What? Merle? Are you sure?" Rick jostled them over to get a look at the strangers hovering outside. Carol peeked past Daryl's legs and she could see everyone else getting up, slipping on boots and jackets in case they had to make a quick getaway.
"I know my own fuckin' brother." Daryl snarled. He shook Carol off his arm and got up, picking up his gun and crossbow as he made to leave the room. Rick shot after him, grabbing him by the shoulder.
"Wait!" He whispered. "He's not alone. He might shoot before he knows who you are. We don't know how many of them there are out there!" Rick spoke furiously and Carol knew why. She'd heard the story of what had happened on that rooftop in Atlanta. And like Rick had thought, she believed that Merle was dead. How could a man escape all those Walkers, with no weapon and one hand? Daryl had never spoken of it but she knew he had always believed that Merle was alive. But if he had been alive all this time, why didn't he go back to the quarry for his brother?
Daryl smacked Rick's hand from his shoulder, turning to give him a look of disgust. "That is my brother." He opened the sitting room door, heading over to the front door to move their makeshift barricade. Rick cursed under his breath and made moves to gather his own weapons, signalling for T-Dog and Glenn to join him. She took another look through the gap in the curtains and she could see that the other men had heard the commotion, readying themselves behind a truck and switching the flashlights off.
It didn't take any thought at all to follow the men into the hallway. Lori pulled her back but she shrugged her off, taking a spot nearest the stairs, out of view of the men outside, but in plain view of Daryl. He didn't seem to notice her though, as he forced the dresser aside, studiously ignoring the people behind him. Finally, he got the door free, wrenching it open and kicking the screen door ajar. He had his crossbow on his shoulder and she heard the click of his gun, just in case.
"Finally fuckin' decided to show up, you asshole." He spoke to the open air, voice not a decibel higher than normal. There was no answer and Carol wondered if Merle had left. Daryl stepped out onto the porch, Rick just a footstep behind him, his own gun raised into the darkness.
"Didja miss me, baby brother?" The voice was crowing, Merle sounded way too pleased with himself. Carol couldn't resist sneaking a peek through the small window in the hallway but the angle meant she couldn't see Merle. She could see his companion though, a burly black man, wearing a red headscarf and a worn black leather coat, he had two guns on him, one held out towards the house, aimed at Daryl.
She'd had very little contact with Merle Dixon. When the group was bigger, the Dixon brothers kept to themselves, sometimes disappearing for days at a time then showing up with game for the group to cook. They kept their tents further apart from everyone else and hardly mixed. In fact, she could recall not even noticing Daryl was there for the longest time. Merle was the mouthy one, constantly arguing and throwing slurs at people who weren't white. Even if Ed did allow her to talk to the other men, she would always have avoided the Dixons. Merle made inappropriate comments to the other women, even popped one or two her way when Ed wasn't around. She knew abusive men, but Merle Dixon was a different league to Ed. She never really understood why the two brothers joined the group in the first place, when they didn't get anything in return from them.
"How did you find us?" She was pleased to see that Daryl didn't lower his weapon as he approached his brother, although his tone was altogether friendlier than she'd heard it a while.
"Saw ya a few miles down the road. Didn't know it were you then, but saw that bike o' mine through the binoculars. Still pussyin' about with these losers, I see."
Daryl didn't respond to that immediately and as he moved forward, she lost sight of him. "It ain't like that no more."
"Oh, ya memory gone soft as well huh? Good thing I ain't bearin' grudges no more." Merle let out a cackle.
"We came back for you." It was Rick who spoke now, stepping forward, disappearing from Carol's sight. She heard Lori gasp, holding back Carl at the sitting room doorway.
"Yeah, thanks for the ride." So he did know that they came for him. She heard the catch of a safety sliding back on the gun and she knew it was Daryl's .
"Who's your friend?" The man in question kept his pistol up, twitching slightly.
"This here is my buddy, Andrew. We've been holed up down in town." She glanced back out the window and she could see Merle now, he had a gun too, but he held it loosely in his hand, waving it about as he spoke.
"Just you two?" Daryl stood right in front of his brother now, a mere two feet away.
Merle nodded. "Few more back at camp though."
She heard the click of another gun safety going on and she saw T-Dog and Glenn relax their positions, following what must be Rick's lead.
"How about Andrew puts that gun away and you both come in out of the rain?" T-Dog and Glenn exchanged incredulous looks and when Carol turned to look back at Lori, she was wide-eyed, before pushing Carl into the sitting room and shutting the door. Carol shared her fear, Merle Dixon was a loose cannon. Two of the men who shared responsibility for his mutilation stood in front of him and he tells them he bore no grudges and suddenly he was deemed safe? The man named Andrew looked suspicious too, twitchy and nervous. She could see him being the type to get trigger happy. He looked nervously at Merle at hearing Rick's suggestion, muttering something she couldn't hear.
"Sure. Just gonna have a quick word with Andy here about mindin' his manners in other people's houses." She heard the crunch of footstep on gravel and she could see them walk off to the side, furiously hashing out an argument in whispered tones.
The men came in, closing the door a little.
"You think it's normal for your brother to not hold a grudge after losing a hand?" Rick asked, hands on hips.
Daryl turned his gaze from the men out on the front lawn, looking at Rick with scorn. "Count yourself lucky." He spat out, tucking his gun into the back of his pants. Rick gestured at Glenn and T-Dog to leave them. He didn't ask the same of Carol and she wondered why but she didn't openly question it, sitting herself on the bottom of the stairs.
"Daryl." Her voice was soft and she didn't realise she had even said his name until he turned to look at her, as if noticing her for the first time. "You know Merle better than anyone." He nodded at her and she wondered if he thought she was going to support his decision on this. She wasn't. Merle was dangerous and Daryl didn't see it yet. But it had to be handled delicately. "Is that kind of response...normal?"
"His friend is black. You saw what he did to T-Dog. I knew your brother for one day. But it was enough to know that he doesn't play well with people. He especially doesn't play well with people who aren't white. There's something not right about that." Rick waved his arm towards the door gesturing at the two men. Daryl didn't say anything but she could sense he was angry, fury radiating from his skin. "They're not to come into the sitting room. I'm gonna fill the others in, before they get here."
Rick sighed and rubbed his hands over his face before leaving her and Daryl alone in the hallway.
"That's my brother." He just looked at her and the words almost sounded like he was pleading.
She nodded. "He's been fine all this time. He could've made it to the quarry that day, he had the van. He didn't." She heard the footsteps return on the gravel and she got up from the steps. "Whatever you think, I trust you." She placed her hand on his arm, he froze under her touch but she didn't remove it.
The door creaked open and she had to force herself not to jump away from the two men behind it. Daryl just nodded at them, moving to stand in front of her. A gesture she wasn't sure that he was even aware of. She released his arm and he gave her a gentle nudge towards the sitting room.
"Go back to bed." He murmured at her, leading her forward with a palm at the back of her neck. Rick came out of the room as she went in and as she shut the door she heard Merle chuckling behind her.
"Gotta yaself a girl now, Daryl?" He laughed, not bothering to keep his voice down.
Carol only shuddered as she picked her way back through the mattress to her bed, the back of her neck burning from his touch.
TWDTWDTWD
Daryl didn't know what to think. He'd never given Merle up for dead. He stood by his statement made back in Atlanta. Only Merle could kill Merle. He had expected him to show up at the quarry after escaping Atlanta. Why wouldn't he? There was nothing else better to go to. Merle had never let a slight go unpunished. Losing a hand was a damn fucking big slight.
He'd helped with the burning and burying of the dead Walkers because it passed the time whilst waiting for him to come back. Except he didn't. It took them nearly two days to get themselves together for the CDC. Merle was alive and he chose not to come back. Daryl had tried to push the thought from his head, but it was true. Merle left him.
He sat at the small square table next to Rick, Merle opposite him. Andrew was a twitchy fucker, his hand constantly ghosted over the guns at his hips, eyes shooting back between them all. Daryl had seen Merle high enough to recognise another tweaker when he saw one. Addicts were a dangerous kind of person, he knew, because nothing meant more than the next fix.
Rick popped the caps on the left over beers, trying to show willing, but Daryl could sense the tension coming from him. Rick was scared.
"How many of you made it here?" Merle leant back in the chair, his handless arm, slung over the back.
Rick opened his mouth to answer but Daryl cut him off. "Enough of us."
Merle smirked. "Never found that family of yours then, Officer Friendly?"
"They're in the next room." Rick answered, fiddling with the label on the bottle. "Safe."
And so it went, back and forth. An awkward, stilted conversation where neither side of the table was prepared to give away their hand. Merle seemed to find everything amusing and it was unnerving. Finally, Daryl realised that his brother wasn't going to give away the game whilst Rick sat at the table.
"I wanna word with my brother. Go check on the women or somethin', will ya?" He tried to keep his tone casual and Rick immediately bristled, unhappy with the request that Daryl tried not to imply was an order. "'S fine." He told him firmly.
Rick nodded. "Five minutes." He scraped back the chair and shut the door behind him. Daryl didn't doubt for a minute that he was standing by the door listening to every word.
"You have more women here?" Andrew spoke for the first time since they arrived and his voice was soft, feminine almost. Completely at odds with his appearance and Daryl thought it were downright fucking creepy.
"Sure, he does. Got himself a girlfriend too. I bet her husband ain't takin' too kindly to that." Merle laughed at Daryl's face, one of disdain.
"Well, I'm sure he would if she ain't gone an' put a pickaxe in his head." He didn't need tell Merle that Ed had already been dead. He didn't want him thinking of her as helpless. He knew he shouldn't have touched her in front of him. It was an instinctive reaction, to get her away from him. A stupid pissing contest, letting Merle know to back off. Except past experience told him that it did nothing of the sort. Anything someone else had, Merle took, whether he wanted it or not. "And you don't need to worry yaself 'bout me an' her."
"She can come too, if ya like?" He offered. "Especially if you shared."
Daryl had to grit his teeth, knuckles turning white as he gripped his bottle of beer.
"What are ya doin' here?" He asked finally, anything to get off the subject of Carol.
"A guy can't come see his baby brother?" Merle sat forward, leaning closer.
"You coulda seen me back at the quarry. We were there two days after we got back from Atlanta. You rode out." Daryl pushed the empty bottle aside, sliding back in the chair to recover some of the distance between him and Merle.
"I had things to do. And I'm here now, ain't I? Now, the question is, are ya gonna come with us to our camp? Bring your woman if ya like. She got a li'l girl too, ain't she?" Daryl's gaze flickered over to Andrew, whose eyes brightened at Merle's words. And he knew there and then that going with these men was something that would never happen.
"I gotta talk it over with the others first." He answered finally.
Merle shook his head at that. "We ain't extendin' this offer to all of y'all. Just you. We're a...selective bunch, ya could say. We ain't in the habit of takin' in folk that like to feed others to the Geeks."
Daryl looked at his brother and sighed. This was gonna descend into a shit storm pretty damn quick if he didn't play it right.
"I ain't just gon' walk out on 'em. I can't."
For the first time since he arrived, Merle didn't have a smirk on his face. It slid from his features, replaced with a grimace. He leant forward in the chair, hand bracing the table.
"They ya friends now, are they? I'm sure they ain't done shit for ya. They certainly didn't for me." He thrust his stump in Daryl's face to make his point. "You can walk out tha' door with us, bring your little piece if ya gotta, her brat an' all. We take real good care of our own. I can take of the rest for ya. Don't you worry yaself with what they gotta say."
"That right? I know what game you gon' play. You ain't bin here the last few months. You don't know squat about me an' them." He made to say more, but thought better of it. "I'll talk to 'em. You gotta leave and come back tomorrow."
"Ya gotta think this over or somethin'?" Andrew asked.
"Butt out, you." Merle shot at the man, kicking Andrew's chair. "If they all come, that make ya feel better?"
Daryl nodded once, quickly. He itched to get them out of the house immediately, it was no longer safe. "Where's ya camp?"
"There's a prison a few miles away." Merle chuckled.
"Prison? Merle, you spend half your life in the pen and now ya moved back in?" Daryl had to let out a laugh at this. The irony was just too much.
"I know, I know. It keeps tha' geeks out though. We only run out to stock up on supplies."
"Lemme talk to them. Ya come back tomorrow?"
Merle nodded, seemingly satisfied with Daryl's response. They got up from the table and headed for the door. Daryl heard the hushed voices in the living room drop when he opened the kitchen door.
"Hey, you still got my stash?" Merle asked, as if it were an afterthought, although Daryl knew better. The drugs were probably what he was looking for on the bike in the first place. Not like he could use the motorcycle anymore.
He watched them as they left, standing at the porch. They'd parked some distance away, which explained why no-one heard the engines, particularly over the rain. Once they left the boundary line of the property, he shut the door. He made his way into the sitting room, ignoring them as they jumped up to ambush him with words.
Carol was sitting on the window box, peeking out the window to watch the retreating men. He hushed the others with his hand and sat beside her, nudging her so that he could watch through the gap instead. He waited until he could see the faint glow of the headlamps in the distance, the car moving away, before turning back to the rest of the room. Carol drew her knees up, her feet brushing his thigh.
"We gotta get out of here. Tonight." He told them with a sigh.