Chapter 1 – Dixon's Ghost

Daryl was considering throwing another log into the fire pit, but he couldn't really justify the excess. Another log burned meant another log to replenish tomorrow, and he was tired. It was getting late, and dark. Nobody with any sense wandered around outside after dark anymore. The Woodbury refugees were timid. They would be inside, singing carols and hanging stockings or whatever the hell people had decided was the merriest way to distract yourself from the dozens of animated corpses shuffling around the perimeter of whichever cozy cellblock you called 'home'.

He, on the other hand, would happily take his risks in stride; eyes wide open over being blinded by Christmas cheer. He could relax out here on his own without a throng of groupies orbiting around him. Sometimes he felt as likely to be ripped to shreds here as he did beyond the prison gate. It rubbed him wrong, the way they all vied for his attention. All because he'd mastered something that not only would they not have bothered with before, but none the able-bodied ones seemed particularly interested in learning even now.

And the presents – Christ the presents! He didn't think he'd ever live down the mortification of having a red-wrapped box thrust into his hands and being urged to, 'Open it now!', only to reluctantly pull out a stuffed squirrel holding a heart that proclaimed, "I'm NUTS for you."

Everyone that knew about Daryl - really knew about Daryl - had had a good laugh at that. It had taken him a moment or two to remember his manners and offer the woman a smile, or what he'd intended to be a smile – he'd been informed later by Carol that it had actually been a tight-lipped grimace. He still wasn't convinced she hadn't been behind the whole thing somehow. He'd tossed the monstrosity into this very fire pit not long after.

Even the memory of it made him scowl. At least with the walkers nobody was gonna get on your case about their damn feelings. He snatched up a long stick to poke at the dying embers of the fire. Only moments ago they were ebbing, all but ready to expire. Now, as he peered down at them confused they began to brighten, blazing angry and red like they were being stoked, except…they weren't. He was still staring stupidly into them, trying to comprehend what he was witnessing, when a sudden wind gusted him full in the face. It came howling out of nowhere with enough force and fury, to send him tumbling backwards off the log he'd been resting on.

"The fuck?" he muttered, bewildered. He sat up, one forearm raised in a futile attempt to shield his eyes as he was pelted with fragments of cinder and ash through the smoke.

"Christ on a crutch!" he choked out between coughs, fanning the lingering cloud away from his face. The wind died as abruptly as it came on. He wrestled himself back upright and was dusting the fine layer of soot away when he picked out the shape of a man sitting across the fire through the wasted blur of his vision.

Daryl's heart leapt into his chest. His entire body tensed. His hand dropped to the hunting knife sheathed on his belt.

"Who's there?" he croaked, throat burning from the smoke he'd breathed in.

"Happy Holidays, little brother." The shadow rasped.

"…Merle?" Daryl ventured uncertainly. He quickly looked back towards the prison to see if there was anyone else nearby. There wasn't, thankfully. They were alone.

"It's just you and me." Merle informed him.

Daryl looked from the prison yard to Merle, and back again a few times, no longer certain which senses could be trusted. Inside he was struggling to keep the terror he was feeling from broadcasting all over his face while he slowly drew his knife. He couldn't say for sure what he was seeing - Merle's corpse, his ghost, or a mad hallucination of Daryl's own devising – but whatever it was, he was determined not to cower.

"Would you sit your ass down and relax? Quit actin' like a damn fool…" Merle rumbled impatiently, "I ain't got all night for you to change your panties and fix your skirt."

Daryl reluctantly approached the log in front of him and sat down across from the blurry silhouette in front of him. He rubbed at his stinging eyes and squinted until piece by piece the features of his dead brother began to fill into the faintly translucent shade before him. Mercifully his face wasn't the pulpy void Daryl's hunting knife had left it upon their last encounter, but it wasn't as healthy as it had been when Daryl last saw him alive, either. The hollows under his eyes and the lesions and sores on his face took him back to a time he wouldn't have dared scatter the pale blue shards of methamphetamine stashed in Merle's saddlebags over the blacktop as he had months ago.

Daryl watched in shock as Merle produced a flask and took a long swig from it.

"This ain't real." Daryl declared finally. Then, pointed his knife at the figure across the fire, "You ain't real. The Governor killed you."

"Yeah, that's right." Merle responded with a sniff, "I'm just a figment of your damn imagination. The real Merle's off burnin' in hell somewhere." Another swallow. "Feel better?"

Daryl shook his head faintly, lips drawn tight in a grimace of distaste. No way no how was this Merle, but on the off chance it was… that sure was a Merle thing to say.

"'The Governor killed you'" Merle echoed, sardonically, "The hell he did! That was me, I made that choice. Sacrificed myself for you and those people you think so much of. Merle Dixon - went out like a god damned hero! How 'bout that?"

"Yeah, you did." Daryl agreed softly, the adrenaline in his system had thinned enough for him to feel the first flicker of pain at the apparition of his recently dead brother.

"Coulda ended better." He allowed. The two fell into an awkward silence. Merle shuddered then, and clutched his arms around himself, rubbing anxiously at his own skin.

"Anyway, it wasn't enough." he mused, "Got myself stuck here. Dead… a ghost, or whatever the hell you want to call it. Came here warn you while you still got time. Don't you do it, Daryl. Don't you go bein' like me."

"The hell are you talkin' about? What happened to you?" Daryl asked. He leaned in for a closer look, noticing for the first time a myriad of festering track marks running up and down Merle's arms and hands, even a few on his neck.

"Me. I happened to me. I built up a debt in life, Brother. Let a lot of people down. People who loved me… needed me. I'm payin' for it now. There's never any high. Just the need."

Daryl's brow furrowed as he noticed Merle's voice begin to quake with emotion in a way that it never, ever would have in life.

"Everything I ever told you was wrong, Daryl. You gotta straighten up and fly right for real. You can. I know you can. You were always better than me."

Daryl shifted uncomfortably for a long silent moment while he tried to process Merle's meaning, "I ain't hurtin' nobody. I do a hell of a lot for these people. Keep 'em fed, keep 'em safe…"

Suddenly agitated Merle waved his hand in dismissal, "Surviving. That's all you're doing is surviving. You got more than that in you. You know, there's a fine lady in that prison that thinks the world of you?"

Daryl flinched, but playing dumb was old tricks when it came to Merle "What, Carol?"

Merle pinned him down with his eyes, waiting expectantly, and in a moment of coarse inspiration he blurted out, "Don't worry, Bro. You know I'm hittin' that."

And in a moment of pure irony: the first; and perhaps only he would ever experience, Daryl found himself on the receiving end of a look full of supercilious moral outrage from his own racist, sexist, drug addicted; piece-of-shit brother.

"You know, there were reasons I died alone. Plenty of reasons. Good reasons. I gave up on myself, so I couldn't see it. Wouldn't have believed it if you'd told me, but I didn't have to. You don't either. Man, I don't want this for you. You gotta start investing in people, and letting them invest in you for more than a cut of game meat."

"I invested in you." Daryl pointed out dourly.

Merle threw his hands up in defeat.

"Well ain't that a fine thing. I come back from the goddamn grave to try and help you out, and you just sittin' over there stubborn as a god damned mule with your head up your ass. Boy, if that don't beat all."

"Ya done?" Daryl asked, patience stretched thin.

"No, I ain't done. I ain't anywhere near done!" Merle shouted, thrusting his arms over the fire between them.

Daryl opened his mouth to protest, but the words died on his lips as he saw the flames pass harmlessly through the spectral flesh. It was a show. Only a show, meant to illuminate the septicity coursing throughout his ruined veins while the fire, undeterred, licked hungrily at the night sky.

"I'll be walking this world for God knows how long before I'll be done, trying to find a way to make up for all the times I let this come before everyone that mattered to me. Now that's an evil I done, and so I recon it's gotta be paid, but I can't help but wonder. If it hadn't been drugs - hadn't been nothin' but my own foolish pride I let come between me and mine- would that really have been any better?"

Merle stood up then, and turned to walk away.

"You just think about that."

Daryl held his tongue, unable to think what else to say. Watching silently as Merle shuffled away from him and towards the bowing fence and the ever growing mass of undead behind it. His heart skipped a beat when he saw the dead begin passing through it, but he quickly understood it wasn't those dead. They were the other kind of dead. The Merle kind of dead. Disembodied spirits with troubled faces, burdened by the weight of everything unfinished in their lives. Some of them were, in fact, familiar to him from long days on guard duty watching their bodies press themselves tirelessly against the chain link barricade. Some of them weren't in the crowd out there at all. He knew, because he could remember driving crow bars and fence posts into their skulls and hauling them away himself. And yet – in this sense – they were all still here, moving in around him. An unwanted reminder that every thing beyond that wall had been a person. People with promises they'd meant to keep. People they'd meant to save. Mistakes they'd meant to fix.

People they'd meant to keep.

Promises they'd meant to fix.