Axelrocks - Oh gosh, Six Ways and Gossip were lovely. I'm actually personally fond of Deuces Wild...but only because I have a serious thing for the 50's, so greaser Norman was like the perfect character for me. (random tangent, but why are there not enough fanfics for Deuces Wild?...it's a damned shame. I may have to make this my next fanfiction project...).

Brazen Hussy - You asked for more Merle and I have given him to you! Enjoy this chapter!

Supfan - Gah, I know. Not enough Caryl indeed, but I'm building to something wonderful...just have to wade through actual plot and stuff first...ugh. Why can't I just write Caryl porn?!

MollyMayhem84 - How come it's always a bigger tearjerker when animals die in things and not humans? I always wondered about things like that. (Don't get me wrong, animals dying is horrible and sad, but humans... you know?) Also, rest assured I am not a fan of killing animals in my stories just to get the emotions up. I'm not a cheap writer like that. Besides, I don't think the Lt would stand to lose a little soldier in the heat of battle so easily.

Surplus Imagination - Aw, puppies always love people who dislike them most. It's like a dog thing, isn't it?

KrisAnthemum221 - I like the meaning too. The only time I've ever found where an insult is actually and endearment. Those Cajuns are cool, cool people.

RuinNyght - Thanks for the review! I shall keep on keeping on for as long as I can!

AFishNamedSushi - Gee, I hope you don't mind that I plug your story here...I hope that you don't get upset if I tell people to check out your wonderful story called You Got Your Memories right here in this very spot. I hope that it's cool with you if I tell people that it's a wonderfully written piece and that I love it. ^_^

spygrrl99 - I enjoy their banter as well. I think by this point Daryl has given up trying to hate the Lt. I think by this point, if I may point it out, I enjoy the fact that he calls the Cajun 'dumb ass' and likewise the Cajun calls him 'couyon', it's almost brotherly.

GG - HAHA! Girlfriend...I'll have to remember that...love it! Walkers, you know they're going to be everywhere and a handful of trouble to everyone...

Anyways, here's a Merle chapter for my fellow Merle fans. I couldn't help it, he's just such a complete and utter shit.

Chapter Nineteen: Matou

**Merle**

Leaning in a shadowy area of the wall, Merle watched the back gate.

It was probably the least thrilling location to be on watch, but it had to be done, he supposed.

Personally he preferred to be walking the wall, as it gave him more of a bird's eye view of the convent and the comings and goings there.

The back gate was a task for a hermit, you literally saw nobody and nothing.

Merle was a sociable person, he liked to see human beings and interacting with them, but the back gate was the worst possible place to be for someone like him.

He had gone to the Mother Superior the day before and asked her for permission to carry a weapon, to start work on a blade to replace the one lost from his stump.

The woman was actually very trusting, offering to find him something among the things the Lieutenant had collected. She said most of the weapons couldn't be used as they were run down and the Cajun was always in a working state with half of them, but she did find him a rusty old buck knife that he decided would be good enough for taking out walkers.

The woman also had an ass on her that could make a saint cry.

Of course this was something he kept to himself. The nun seemed like she'd tear his pecker off if she even knew what sordid thoughts were running through his head.

So until he could get a replacement blade made, he borrowed a long assed old bread knife from the kitchen. Anything that could pierce through a walker's skull was good enough for him.

As soon as the buck knife was wearable, he was out of there.

The convent wasn't anyplace he wanted to linger and his dumb assed brother went and got himself tangled up in that group of his.

Merle wasn't needed and he had the distinct feeling he wasn't wanted.

He didn't care. Everyone could kiss the whitest part of his ass as far as he was concerned.

Around noon Carol came out with a plate of food for him and a tin mug of water.

He took the water and eyed her carefully, before downing it.

"You want me to take over?" She asked softly.

"Naw, I'm good." He grunted, handing her back the mug to take up the plate. It was the same thick gruel-type stew that they seemed to eat all the damned time at the convent, but food was food so he sat on the ground to balance the plate on his lap so that he could use his good hand to eat with.

Carol slid onto the ground beside him quietly, eyes on skies over head.

Merle looked her over. She wasn't much to look at in his opinion. The woman was kind of plain with a long, upturned nose and thin lips. Then again, his brother wasn't winning any beauty pageants himself, so he supposed it was a sub-standard man with a sub-standard woman.

He honestly didn't think Daryl could get himself a bathing beauty, so Carol seemed to fit at least.

Carol looked over at him and offered a small smile.

Merle kept eating, cleaning his plate, before handing it back.

The two sat in silence, before Merle decided to break it.

"When Daryl was ten I brought him home a little mutt of a puppy dog," Merle said. "When our daddy found out about it, he drowned the thing in the bathtub, didn't think we could afford to feed it. I told Daryl that it ran away, didn't really have the heart back then to tell him what really happened. He loved that little mutt. So every day, he'd go out looking for it. Little dumb ass didn't ever catch on to what daddy did to his mutt."

Carol eyed him with mild disgust, but Merle didn't care, he went on casually. "Daryl gets his hopes up too high. The boy's one of those jack ass optimists. Every now and then you have to check him or he'll take it too hard."

"There's nothing wrong with being an optimist, Merle." Carol replied calmly. "People need hope."

"Bullshit," Merle replied. "People need to stop living with their heads up their asses. Daryl included."

"Maybe you need to pull your head out of your own rear, Merle, and see that your little brother grew up to be a good man."

"Dixon's aren't good men."

"Daryl is," Carol insisted firmly. "And I have a feeling that deep down you are too."

Sneering at the woman, Merle wasn't sure if he should tell her off or ignore her remarks. She didn't know him, and she damned well had no idea what kind of a man he was.

"Don't give me that look, Merle Dixon." She stated firmly. "I've seen plenty of mean in my life and you have it in spades. I'm not scared of the stink eye anymore." Climbing to her feet, she looked down at him quietly. "And I'd appreciate it if you stopped calling Daryl a 'dumb ass'. He's a lot smarter than people think."

..-~-..

..-~-..

"You have a big head."

Merle looked over at the little runt of a girl who had skipped over to sit beside the gate. She didn't say a word until that moment and he didn't encourage her to talk. He didn't mind kids, but he hated the yappy ones.

"Thanks." He grunted.

"Are you mean?" She asked.

"Yeah," he replied.

The girl was quiet, thinking his response over, before she replied with a quick, "are you really?"

"Sure. I'm mean as a snake."

"Is Mr. Daryl really your brother?"

"Sure is."

The girl was quiet again, playing with the tall dead grass that had grown against the wall before the winter killed it off.

"You have a name or what, little sparrow?" Merle growled.

"Annie," she replied softly.

"Annie? You like that name?"

She shrugged.

"Well, makes no difference," Merle said. "I once knew a woman named Sparkles."

Of course he didn't tell the kid that Sparkles was a stripper that went home with you if you dropped enough green in her G. Merle was uncouth, but even he knew there were some things kids didn't need to be privy to.

The little girl laughed.

"Yeah, dumb name, right?" He asked.

"A little." She replied.

"Annie Louise," Sister Joan scolded from the wall behind them. "You're not supposed to be outside without someone."

The little girl jumped up. "I am with someone. Mr. Merle."

"You'd better get inside, Mother Superior will be furious." The nun went on.

Annie screwed her face up. "Who cares? She never lets me outside to play! All I get to do is sit inside and read the smelly old bible!"

Merle laughed at the nun's reaction as her face went from shocked to enraged to embarrassed and back to shocked.

"Annie Louise Miller!" Sister Joan scolded. "You'd best hope I don't climb down from this wall, Little Missy!"

"I don't care!"

"You sour little sprout," Sister Joan went on. "I'm coming down now."

Sticking her tongue out, the little girl turned and fled back in the direction of the dorms, long black dress flowing out behind her.

Sitting on the wall, Sister Joan sighed heavily. "That girl is destined to be the death of us all. I swear."

Merle eyed the nun with a smirk. "She's got it in her, huh?"

"She's got the devil in her, indeed. It's that Cajun. He lets her run wild, won't take her in hand like he should."

"Is she his?"

"No."

"Then why is it his business to punish the brat?" Merle growled.

"Because he's the only one she listens to."

Studying the woman, Merle took in her bare head and the golden hair that she had kept hidden under that stupid hat thing the nuns wore. She was the fourth nun he noticed without the hat and it seemed suspicious to him.

"What's going on around here?" He demanded. "Why are you all going around with naked heads?"

"We removed our veils," she said simply.

"Yeah, I gathered that much. Why?"

"Mother Superior thinks we need to adapt to this new world."

"Breaking with tradition, huh?" Merle asked with a smooth grin. "Now there's something worth breaking, I'm sure."

Rising to her feet, the nun tsked at him. "Mr. Dixon, I have a wall to walk."

Leaning against the wall casually, Merle smiled after her. "You'll be back."

..-~-..

..-~-..

He was in the infirmary later that night working on his new blade, when the Mother Superior stepped inside.

She looked about at the disorder of his cot and the multitude of broke assed weapons he had stocked up and was trying to repair to the best of his ability, before she moved to perch daintily on the cot beside his.

"Mr. Dixon," she greeted in that posh Georgian accent of hers. "You have quite the nest here."

"I'm a magpie, what can I say?" He replied.

The woman smiled.

Merle liked the looks of the woman. She was his kind of saucy looking minx and since she removed her veil to reveal only a sparse amount of grey in her dark hair, he pegged her age better at forty something and she appealed to him even more than she had when he thought she was just some young looking old broad.

Of course, she didn't seem the type that would take his shit, so he kept his dirty thoughts to himself in regards to her.

"I was thinking maybe you'd like to join us in the dining room this evening for dinner." She said.

He looked at her quietly.

"Sister Joan has told me how much help you've been to her on the back gate and the wall lately. I thought it time you were given a formal invitation to join us for a meal."

"Finally get an invite into the hen house, huh Sister?" Merle asked.

"Don't think it's open season, Mr. Dixon. This is just a meal invitation." The woman replied.

Merle beamed. He really loved the hellfire the woman had in her and he loved a challenge even better. "If you wanted to have dinner with old Merle all you had to do, little darling, was come on out here with your plate and we could have had a nice meal together."

The woman eyed him for a moment, before she smiled softly and settled her hand on his knee. "I'll tell you what, honey," she began, leaning in and whispering sweetly. "How about after dinner, you and I get together just the two of us and we head on over to the church where it's nice and quiet and I get down on my knees," she trailed off with a wicked grin.

Merle smiled a little at her and leaned in a little closer to her.

"And I say a little prayer for your soul?" The nun finished, slapping his knee a little harder than needed.

"Are nuns allowed to cock tease men like that? Because you're killing me," Merle snarled, wondering where the hell the woman had even learned to torture a man like that – and secretly wondering where the hell she even learned about blow jobs.

The woman laughed blithely. "Oh, honey, you are an old tomcat, aren't you? Come on now, let's get to dinner." She pushed to her feet, offering him a kind hand up.

Merle refused the hand, standing up on his own stubbornly. "You know," he began, following her to the door, "there are better things to do on your knees then pray, Sister."

The woman glanced back at him with a blank, innocent look. "Nothing better than prayer, Mr. Dixon."

"Yeah, nothing better." He remarked dryly.

Walking behind the nun about three paces, Merle studied her ass under the habit. It swished so beautifully, he had to imagine it was a nice ass under all that black cloth.

Fuck it'd been too long for him. Was it too much for him to ask for one decent lay before he died? God knew he needed one.

"Mr. Dixon my attributes are my own, mind your wandering eyes." The woman stated, not even looking back at him.

He scowled at the back of her head. He wondered if that weird as fuck Cajun had better luck prying the head nun's legs apart, because he was certainly getting nowhere with her.

"What's with you nuns, anyways?" Merle growled. "God gives you an entire playground down there and you think you have to keep it to yourselves just to impress him?"

"It's not about using the 'playground' God has given us, Mr. Dixon," the woman replied calmly. "It's about proving our devotion to him by refraining from weaknesses of the flesh."

"Bullshit."

"Bull true. An orgasm is easy to achieve. Refraining from the temptation of seeking the means to achieve one is the hard part."

"Sounds cowardly."

The woman gave him a funny look. "You are an odd duck, aren't you, Mr. Dixon?"

"I don't mean to be. Just the times, I guess." He replied.

She nodded. "Dead people walking around would probably make me an odd duck as well."

"Give it time."

Spinning on him before they reached the door to the dorms, the woman placed a small hand against his chest to stop him. "Mr. Dixon, may I ask you something? Given that you don't know me and don't owe me anything, I have no right to ask, but…may I?"

He studied her for a moment, sneer on his lips. "Okay."

"I want you to know I'm aware of your desire to leave us, but I'd like you to consider staying here with us."

Merle shifted on his feet. Other than the Governor, no one ever really wanted him around except Daryl. He wasn't sure what to make of that. It almost felt like she was fucking with him, but a nun wouldn't do that, would she? "Why?" He growled.

"We're not warriors by any measure, but…times being what they are, I thought you might be inclined to stay on here, help us out a little bit. The sisters here could use the protection a man like you could offer."

Glancing around at the late Georgian evening, Merle sighed. "Ain't nothing a bunch of nuns like you could offer me in return, though, is there?"

"Please, just think about the offer, Mr. Dixon?" The woman insisted. "And I'll try to think of something we can offer you in return."

"It better be something worthwhile," Merle replied gruffly. "Because there's not much keeping me here once my blade is finished." With that he pushed past the woman, heading into the dorms for a meal.

He wasn't sure how he felt about staying. It had never been in his head to stay longer than his recovery and he wasn't sure about staying at a place where all the pussy was locked up tighter than Fort Knox, but…if the offer was good, he wouldn't be dumb enough to just throw the offer in her face. After all, where else did he have to go? He saw what the Governor did to maverick's he came across, hell Merle himself took out a few loners himself, pillaging their corpses for ammo and weapons and anything else of use.

The times being what they were, were not meant for mavericks and loners, they were made for tribes and clans. That was how America was before the white settlers came and that was how it would be long after the last of the walkers fell.

Humanity was about to either be utterly abolished or it was going to be rebuilt by groups of people who fought their way back up onto the top of the food chain.

The Cajun Dialect

Matou - Tomcat