Holy shit, I am going to get SOOO much hate mail for these next two chapters. I know I am and I know you guys probably already knows what's gonna happen but I wanted to assure you guys that I PROMISE things are not what it seems! The only reason I'm doing this (because, believe me, it kills me to write this, probably more than it kills you guys to read it) is to open up several knew paths that I NEED to open up. So its not a path of leisure, its a path of necessity. That being said, I hope you guys brought your tissues, cause your gonna need them and I ran all out of mine writing the ending of the next chapter :(
allons-ymeg: So sorry I couldn't get to your review last chapter - right when I got it, I had already uploaded the chapter! Anyway, here's that chapter you wanted so much ;)
HaloHunter89: Yeah, Ethan's probably gonna ask Daryl, just letting you know now. Please don't kill for this chapter, cause I know you've been NOT wanting this to happen :(
wickedclownsmile: I was actually going to do a part based on the prison and possibly Ethan or Wren's POV but I decided against it because I felt it wouldn't fit the tone of these last few chapters - the anxiety and everything else that wrought them. Might do a chapter at the end called "Lost Chapters" and that might be one of them but I'm not sure yet lol.
PS: This chapter is also split into two parts, mainly because if they were one big chapter, they'd be over eight thousand words. So please, when you guys review, review after the ending of the next chapter. Just make things easier for me, kay? :)
Merle had always said that him and Daryl were exactly the same – twins born almost a decade apart but Daryl had always known better than that. He had known better than that when Merle would be gone for years at a time doing various stints in Juvie before moving on to the cold metal bars of actual prisons. He had known better when his older brother would be gone and leave him alone with his old man before coming back like everything was completely fine. He had known better than that when they would have their worst fights and Merle would almost always end up screaming at him that he had taught him everything that he had ever learned growing up – that he had protected him from the worst of what their mother and old man could ever have dished out to him.
When really . . . Daryl didn't think that no one in the world could ever convince him that his brother had it harder than him growing up. Yeah sure, Will Dixon had probably delivered his fair share of punches and slaps and liquor and beer bottles to his oldest son, but Daryl . . . Daryl had always gotten it worse and even though Daryl was Will Dixon's blatant favorite. Every time the squad cars pulled up in the Dixon dirt driveway with news that Merle had gotten caught robbing one of the local stores, or beating up the latest black kid or the latest Jew for being black or being a Jew, Daryl would always get a sick, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as he stood there on the front porch beside his old man. His eyes purposefully would avoid the tensing of his father's arms and the balling of his hands into fists at his side – the tightening of his stubbled jaw. They would instead land on the shiny gold of the officer's badge pinned on the left side of his shirt and he often remembered himself going numb at that moment. He could remember his mother, dark brown hair in a poufy mess around her head and wearing that damned tattered terrycloth robe that their old man hated and abhorred to no end, standing in the front doorway of the house behind them. That omnipresent cigarette would be dangling in-between the first two fingers of her right hand or stuck in the corner of her mouth. A look of expressionless would be on her face as she would listen to the officer describe the latest trouble that their oldest son had gotten himself into that time. She would probably already be drunk by then . . . she got started early, his mother . . .
"He's gonna go back to juvie for this, Will, ya know that, right? It's gonna be a longer stay this time, too. They're startin' to get tired of seein' him in there."
"What do ya suggest we do, Roy? We can' afford no lawyer. And besides . . . I got Daryl here to help 'round the place - I don' need tha' good-for-nothing son of mine. Let him rot in there for all I care!"
The officers would leave then, shaking their heads as if they knew the reason that Merle Dixon caused as much trouble as he did for the good police officers of Shooter's Mill, was because he was raised by such lowborn scum like Will and Marla Dixon. They would always end up gazing at Daryl with soft, sympathetic glances as they left and Daryl would always return them with hate – something that would immediately have them recoiling in slight shock. He hated their pity . . . they didn't have to deal with what he had to deal with. They didn't care to know that a little boy had to wake up and face everyday as a fight for survival all depending on his father's mood starting out in the morning.
They didn't have to live everyday knowing that nobody loved them.
Will Dixon had always been a smart man. He would always wait until the officers had gotten back in their cars, ramble up the dirt driveway and then disappear around the wooded bend, before Daryl's cheek would feel the bruising bite that his father's curled fist could pack. The blow would almost always end up throwing him off of the porch and he would always land sprawled in the same dirt drive that the officers had been standing in moments earlier, spitting the blood and dirt from his mouth when he recovered himself. Merle might claim that his childhood was rougher – that their old man had calmed down in his old age and after the death of their mother, but Merle didn't have to live with being beaten into an inch of his own life when their father would hear that he would have to live through yet another two or three months of having to listen to the humiliating rumors and gossip of the old town biddies on how Will Dixon's son was back in juvie again.
He remembered that he would open his eyes, dazed from the impact of hitting the dirt, and see his father above him, fist flying at his face again and again and the one thing that he always remembered with a shocking clarity – with perfect eidetic fucking memory – was the harsh red flame of his mother's cigarette as she would continue to stand there in the doorway for a moment, watching as her husband pounded her youngest son's face in.
Daryl: the youngest, the better looking, the sweetest (something she would always tell him whenever she was sober enough to hug him like a mother should hug her child, let alone remember who the Hell he was) . . .
Daryl: her husband's favorite because Daryl was the one Will Dixon knew with one hundred percent fucking certainty that he was his.
Marla would never say anything - she wouldn't even react . . . and eventually, she would just turn around and go back inside the house, where she would hunt for that bottle of wine that she had left lying around somewhere the previous night before collapsing asleep on her bed in a drunken stupor until he could scrounge up something that even remotely resembled a dinner of some sort.
Daryl thought he hated his mother more than he hated the cops. He hated her indecisiveness – her hypocrisy in the way she treated him when she was drunk and then when she was sober (which was rare in and of itself) – at least his father stayed pretty much the same the vast majority of the time. And when he was young and before he completely knew what sex and love and stuff like that was, he hated his father for seeking women elsewhere – outside his mother and father's marriage and that eventually, those other women would cause fights between them - fights that would drastically make things worse for Daryl until things calmed down.
It was thanks to his mother that he vowed ever since he was a kid, that when he finally wanted to settle down and start a family of his own, that he would find a woman the exact opposite of the mother he had: strong, maternal, beautiful, loving . . . sober.
And it wasn't until he met Tessa in highschool and fell so unbelievably in love with her, that he realized that women like that – women like Tessa - even existed. And he'd be damned if he lost her again.
And likewise, you could not convince Daryl that someone other than Tessa or that something had happened aside from her walking into his life that one bleary highschool day, had been the one thing that ended up saving him. Without her stepping into his life and making every bad thing go away whenever she was around him, he would either be in and out of prisons like Merle was, or worse.
He owed everything to her. She had been the one person who had kept him from drowning – the one who had helped him get through every damn Hell that his old man had put him through (and some that had been dealt him by his mother). It was her that made him realize that Merle and him were absolutely nothing alike.
Daryl had buried an ax in-between his old man's eyes for her. For some reason, he didn't think that Merle could stake a claim to the same.
And now, here they found themselves, in Woodbury, him and Merle standing in a dirt arena sitting right smack dab in what looked like an empty warehouse, surrounded by the people of Woodbury. Tessa was chained in the middle and snarling walkers were being led in one-by-one. It seemed like a nightmare come true.
And not-to-mention the Tessa that stood before them was a battered, very exhausted Tessa with rumpled clothes.
Nothing better have happened to her.
"Tessa . . . babydoll . . .?"
"I'm alright – I'm alright!" She called to him once his hesitant words reached her ears, but not before making a painful swallow. She flinched at the slight pain, a flinch that Daryl immediately saw and which had his teeth gritting. She shook her head. "Daryl, I'm scared. What if they release the walkers?" Daryl glared at Merle for a minute, a glance that his brother shared with him before pinning his eyes back onto Tessa. She saw the rage and the power bottled up inside him and swallowed heavily at the sight. The bad wolf was fighting and clawing to get out – to protect her from the walkers and the fucker standing beside him and she would be damned if he managed to keep it inside of him the entirety of this sick gladiatorial game.
"Then I'll have do ma damndest to keep 'em off ya, won' I, babydoll? Don't worry – I'll protect you!"
It was at that moment that she vaguely remembered the horse event that her grandfather had taken her before he died and when she was still a young girl. It was a highly illegal event that was being hosted in a remote location in the desert not that far outside of their reservation. He didn't want to take her but she had begged him to and he had, not because he wanted to show her such cruelty, but because he wanted her to know that the world did indeed possess such cruelty and to live not realizing that, was a gross ignorance.
Supposedly it was an event that held much traditional significance to a certain culture but as Tessa sat there and watched the brutal, stomach-churning event, she found herself wondering why such a thing could ever be possibly considered as such. A mare in heat was led into the large arena and tied to a stake in the middle. Then, stallion after stallion was led into the pen, the horses immediately becoming agitated and excited when they smelled her in heat. The handlers then let them go and the crowd watched and cheered and betted on which stallion would be the last one standing after the brutal slaying of their comrades in order to have the chance to finally be the one to breed with the mare. Brother on brother, father on son, stranger on stranger – it hadn't mattered.
Tessa felt vaguely like that mare. And as Daryl stood there, pinning Merle with glares of death and daggers, the feeling did not go away.
It had taken them a moment to realize that the Governor was talking again and when they finally turned their attentions back onto him, they realized with a chill what was happening: what this whole sick thing was about.
"Merle, a man I trusted above all others - who you all trusted above all others – was the Judas in our midst! He lied and betrayed us and allowed the others to come in and kill us! He is the terrorist in our midst!" He moved across the arena then and pointed to Daryl. "And this is one of the terrorists who infiltrated our home - Merle's own brother!"
The two Dixons could only stand there, gazing at each other for a minute and through the crowd, Tessa spotted Andrea. Blonde hair standing out against the sea of darks and neutrals, she was gazing at the man walking around in the arena with a look of betrayal in her eyes. When her eyes fell on her and their gazes connected, they widened even more and she immediately made as if to walk forwards to stop the man walking around the, in the arena, but someone with glasses and dressed smartly – like a college professor - held her back and she had no choice but to stop.
The Governor smiled as he moved over to her. He was wearing a makeshift eye patch – one that consisted of a long strip of white cotton wrapped around his head and which covered the empty eye socket in question and which was also the kind you would see in the Civil War era sepia photographs when the soldiers had lost an eye to shrapnel or a bayonet. The one dark brown eye left appeared calm and almost soft when they fell onto her, however, she could see past those flimsy emotions quite easily. The man standing before her was ruthless and hell-bent on revenge. For what, she didn't know, but she had a feeling that the two emotions would drive him to great lengths in the upcoming weeks and months.
Someone had started one Hell of a turf war.
"What shall we do to these two terrorists? This beautiful woman right here holds the answer!" He grinned then as his hand sunk deep into her hair and then pulled her head back almost cruelly. He bore her dark neck to the crowd like one would bare an animal's neck to the butcher's knife and she let out a whimper of pain and discomfort. Daryl's eyes immediately darkened and he took a threatening step towards him, however, two men with guns pointed squarely at him, stepped forward threateningly as well and he had no choice but to come to a stop. His eyes stayed pinned on the Governor's, though, even when the man continued to grin. "This woman right here is the catalyst for the attack led by the terrorists! This woman, wanted by the both of them, shall be their ultimate undoing!"
Both Dixons didn't like the sound of that and Tessa couldn't help but allow her heart to practically jump up into overdrive. "I think we shall have a fight to the death! The winner walks free . . . with her!" The Governor shoved Tessa forward then and a combination of her weak legs losing their balance and the chain she was tethered to the ground with, losing its slackness, caused her to fall to the dust and the dirt. She caught herself on weak arms and she heard Daryl called out her name in concern laced with anger, although she barely heard him over the crowd's inhuman-like cheers and catcalls.
The snarling and the snapping of the walkers could be heard growing closer and out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Governor slip into the crowd to stand on one of the bleachers surrounding the arena in relative safety. Andrea was also on the bleaches and the woman had a look of horror on her face at the sight of what was about to happen. Immediately she turned on him and lit into him, the man turning to face her with a coolness and a steadiness that was only possessed by those who had nothing to lose and absolutely everything to gain. Tessa's eyes then landed on the walkers and then on Merle, who was still gazing at his little brother standing beside him like he was seeing a ghost. Her teeth gritted then, in what emotion, she couldn't really tell.
"Daryl!" She called and when she turned her eyes up to his, she saw he was gazing at her expectantly, as if waiting for what she said before he let anything happen. Her eyes darkened when she realized what their only way out of there would be and when he realized what the next words out of her mouth were probably gonna be, his eyes darkened as well as he prepared himself for what it was he was about to need to do.
"Fuckin' rip 'em apart – rip all of them apart!"
Daryl let out an almost inhuman, bloodthirsty roar as he grasped Merle's head and slammed it into the ground a third time, the older Dixon lying there in the dirt, stunned for a moment. The crowd's cheers grew just a little bit louder as Merle spit blood onto the dirt and felt every bruise forming on his body that Daryl had dealt him since Tessa's yelled words. He had to admit – his brother could certainly pack a punch, although Tessa's chained presence probably only exacerbated his desire to get them out of there alive.
When Merle didn't immediately get up, Daryl hopped off of him and ran over to Tessa still chained in the middle and who was quickly being approached by a lumbering walker free of its handler. She cringed when Daryl's fist flew past her and landed squarely on the walker's jaw. The blow took the corpse off his feet and it flew backwards, where it landed on its back in the dirt, where it lay there for a moment before slowly getting to its feet again.
"He's stunned, but not for long. Can ya get these chains offa ya?" He asked her hurriedly and in hushed whispers, as he moved over to her and took up her wrists, where he observed the black shackles wrapped around the delicate bones. The handlers had a good grip on the walkers by then, so they were safe . . . for now.
Tessa swallowed hard and shook her head as they gazed down at the thick pulling chain welded to the heavy black shackles that eventually ended at the rounded spike hammered into the earth a few feet away. There was no way to remove it by hand – they'd need a tool of some sort, and when he realized this, he cursed violently as Tessa summoned desperately for words. "I mean . . . I can . . ." Her eyes brightened then when something suddenly dawned on her. "My knife – Daryl, they forgot to get the hunting knife that I always carry on me! Dumbasses actually forgot to get my knife!" She told him with a relieved laugh and his eyes immediately shot up to hers, where they adopted a hopeful gleam.
"It ain' exactly a Kalashnikov, but it'll have to do for what we need. Where is it?"
"Strapped to my thigh, where it always is. You'll have to find some way to get it without them – Daryl, behind you!"
Daryl barely had time to react when he heard Tessa's frightened words and the angry roar that came quickly from behind him. He spun around, right when Merle's hand closed around the edge of his leathers, where he pushed him down to the ground. Tessa let out a shriek of fright and quickly jumped away when they fell down, Daryl's hands just barely enclosing around Merle's throat as his did the same.
"Ya asshole – ya don' honestly expect them to jus' let either of us walk away with Tess, do ya?"
Merle's lips pursed then as his grip on his throat lightened. "Jus' follow ma lead, little brother – we'll get out of this!" He told them and it took Daryl a moment to collect himself when Merle's weight was suddenly off of him and the man was standing up, facing the walker ring that was steadily closing in around them. Daryl quickly got to his feet as well when he realized what had just happened. He yanked the hunting knife from the sheath strapped to Tessa's thigh before he scrambled for the rounded spike a few feet away from them. After sliding the blade through the spike and jerking firmly upwards, the spike slid up quite surprisingly well. When she was free, he hooked a hand underneath her arm and dragged her backwards, where they put their backs against Merle's. They could see the Governor's eyes darken in anger at the sight of the hunting knife in Daryl's hand and he knew someone was going to get fired when all this was over.
But Hell, if this was how Merle had planned it all along, then he wouldn't be halfway surprised if he had been the one to leave it there.
"Daryl . . .?"
"It'll be fine – I'm here now, babydoll . . ." Daryl answered her slightly nervous question by linking his arm through with hers.
"Philip stop this! Stop this now!" They heard Andrea's voice through the crowd but there was no answer. There was no man stepping forward to call the leashed walkers back. The Governor only stood and watched as Daryl and Merle would dart out to kick or punch the walkers away from them before returning to the circle. They didn't want to use the knife unless they absolutely had too – they didn't know what the Governor would do if they actually managed to drive it through one of the walker's heads. Biting a bullet wasn't exactly the way that either one of them wanted to end that Hellish day.
"When we get out of here . . . we're gonna fuck, baby, whether you want to or not!" Daryl told her and Tessa let out a little laugh and nodded in agreement.
"Now that, Daryl, sounds like a damn good plan!"
The walkers were closing in even more - they were starting to feel a little stifled, in fact, but froze when a gunshot suddenly ripped through the air. One of the walkers hit the ground, dead, seconds later, and the crowd immediately screamed and started scattering as Daryl yelled out a relieved, "Hallelujah"! Tessa let out a relieved prayer of her own when she saw Maggie behind a dumpster a little ways off, a sniper rifle in her hands. Another gunshot split the air through the crowd's screams and a young woman hit the ground dead next as Rick threw a flashbang into the crowd before deploying his automatic rifle, the popping gunshots making everyone run just a little bit faster. The Governor, as cool as ice, stayed in the middle, taking out the pistol he had in the inside pocket of his coat as he did so as he made his way calmly through the dust and smoke towards them. Lights burst above the crowd and sparks rained down onto them as they fought to get out of there and for a minute, Maggie and Rick lost sight of the three people that had been standing in the middle of it and the real reasons why they had come back.
"Rick – Rick, I can't see them!" Maggie spoke quickly, her voice taking on a slightly alarmed tone, and Rick nodded as he peered over the edge of the dumpster. At first he had feared they had been trampled underneath the feet of the running crowd or even shot by the ones holding guns, but when he saw Daryl and Tessa's booted feet in-between the running ones of the other people, still in the same circle they had been in when they first arrived, he let out a relieved sigh.
"I see them – just keep firing. We need to get them a way out of there before they're trampled or worse!"
Maggie nodded and continued firing and for a moment, they didn't register that the walkers had somehow gotten freed.
Now free of their handlers, they lumbered after the stragglers of the crowd, moaning and snarling and outstretching their hands towards them. Some even managed to find purchase – grips that eventually pulled the poor, unfortunate soul closer so that they could take a chunk of meat out of their neck or their shoulder or their arm. Tessa felt Daryl quickly pull up the chain still tethered to her by the shackles wrapped around her wrists and took a hold of it before taking one of her hands in his.
"Come on – they're over here!" He told her and she nodded as they took off running through the dirt and the smoke towards where the gunshots were coming from. Neither cared if Merle was following them – all they cared about was getting away from there.
"I'll take that back – thank ya very much, asshole!" Daryl spoke gruffly as he yanked his crossbow out of one of guard's hands. He then punched him swiftly across the face, dropping the man to the ground milliseconds later before yanking her off in the direction of Rick and Maggie again.
"For . . . for a moment, I didn't know if you were going to come for me," She told him, her chest heaving as they ran. "I thought I would never see you again . . . that I would never see Ethan and the twins again," She shook her head and when he glanced behind her and saw tears quickly filling her eyes, he had to rein himself back from stopping and taking her into his arms. "Oh my God, Daryl, I was so scared!" He nodded, knowing that, that moment wasn't exactly the best time for him to comfort her.
"I know ya were, babydoll, and I'm sorry that it took me so long to get to ya but for right now we gotta run and focus on gettin' out of here, where we can take these chains offa ya. Can ya do that?" Tessa immediately nodded as they continued running, where they finally reached Rick and Maggie seconds later. Tessa's heart sunk when she Merle easily on their heels but was able to ignore him as Daryl stepped coolly in-between them.
"Go, go!" They heard Rick speak and the wasted no time in taking off running again, their first order of business to get out of Woodbury as fast as they could. Tessa's hand clutched at Daryl's and when their fingers entwined moments later, she felt him pull her closer to him as they ran – as close as he could, anyway, without them tripping over each other. Her chain jingled in his hand the entire time and she found that she couldn't wait for the moment when she could finally get those damn chaffing shackles off of her.
"They are all out at the arena – this way!"
It was Merle who spoke when they finally made their way to the main street of Woodbury and they all came to a stop when Rick did, his voice gruff and his eyes cold when he pinned them onto Merle. "You ain't going anywhere with us!"
"Do ya really want to do this now?" He asked as he gestured them over to a loose piece of corrugated metal that made up the nearby wall and Rick found that he couldn't object – not at that moment, anyway, and that Daryl could either. He held it up and allowed the others to slip through before doing the same, allowing the doorway to close behind them, as inconspicuous as the split second before Merle had brought their attention onto it. They found themselves faced with a steady stream of walkers lumbering towards them. "Now come on – we ain't got time for this!" He shouted before turning off and sprinting in the general direction of the woods. Daryl moved to go off with him but Tessa held him back, a pleading look appearing in her eyes as she stayed put with Maggie and Rick.
"Daryl, let him go!" She urged him. "Please!"
A look of something she couldn't entirely place flashed across his eyes then. "I still got one Hell of a bone to pick with him Tess. I kinda want to keep up with him until the moment comes when I can yank tha' bastard out, okay?" He told her and she stayed put for a second longer before swallowing heavily and nodding. She allowed him to lead them off at a run after Merle again, Tessa sharing a weak look with Maggie before she and Rick followed them as well.
