A/N: Happy Holidays everybody!
The governor lit a cigarette and leaned beside his office desk rather than returning to sit on the chair behind it. His every movement was slow and deliberate down to each careful intake of breath. He looked Merle Dixon in the eye before he tossed the half-full pack back inside a drawer.
Merle knew a display of power when he saw one. That calculating stare. The blatant parade (and denial) of his preferred vice. The fact that he was given a stool like a petulant child about to get scolded by the school principal. Merle recognized and detested every single one.
The governor blew smoke in his general direction before speaking again. Merle watched the stream of smoke disperse with undeniable longing.
"You know the girl." Another deep breath. Another blow of smoke. Another glance at the coveted nicotine. "I don't appreciate being lied to, Merle. It's making me think that taking you in was a lapse in judgment."
Merle knows why he was there. The governor was a manipulative dictator. Merle Dixon was a wildcard. And there were only a handful of reasons people like the governor kept people like Merle Dixon.
The girl was the governor's trump card. Bargaining chip. Leverage. Collateral.
Merle came upon the clinic at the request of that menthol-smoking spic and chanced upon the girl sleeping on one of the assorted makeshift medical beds. The comical widening of his eyes upon seeing her was the first giveaway. The guilty expression upon seeing the governor watching him by the side of the room was the second.
If you ignored the armed sentinel on rotation it was almost like they were only living with an extended blackout. The growls beyond the corrugated iron were merely unpleasant substitutes for cicadas. Terrifying, but concealed enough for it to be a mere peripheral concern. Woodbury had rules, boundaries, walls, curfews, food. It had peace. But peace is built on lies and the governor was made for lying.
Liars detested their own kind.
Merle watched the smile drop from the governor's face with what little trepidation Dixons were allowed to feel. This was a test. One that he wanted to pass. A test he needed to pass. It wasn't that he liked the governor. He just really liked being alive.
"I'm not really concerned about her existence in itself, you understand." This time it was a double shot of whisky being swished around at the bottom of a crystal glass. Merle could feel himself salivating. "What I want to know,
The governor sat at the edge of the table. Downed the glass before setting it down beside his leg.
"I want to know if she's going to be a problem." Is she going to compromise things? Is she going to be a liability? Because liabilities don't just die. They ruin things before dying.
Dixons didn't squirm. They grunted. Noncommittal. In a battle of wills you either pressed or evaded. Merle was employing the latter. The governor looked impatient. Maybe pissed. It was gratifying but the little feeling of triumph was masked down by apprehension. The uncomfortable stool was doing wonders on working down Merle's self-esteem.
"She knows you by name, Merle." She knows him by name and the way she spoke of him was almost worship. There was a tinge of bitterness but just by her speaking about him the governor knew Merle had been forgiven.
Girl didn't have an ounce of self-preservation in her, din' she? Merle cocked his head to the side and allowed himself to slouch. The chair received a harsh whispered curse and Merle adjusted himself. The governor watched the change in disposition with interest, a look that Merle missed when he turned to look at the locked door.
"Tala." Merle finally told. The apprehension was replaced by another feeling altogether. He felt like a tattletale. (In the back of his mind Merle recalled folk tales boasting about the power behind one's name, and the caution one must exercise in divulging it. In the same train of thought he remembered Daryl running with snot on his nose and dirt on his hands to a mother that once cared.) The lack of any sort of reaction on the governor's face let him know that the girl has supplied the same information. Girl's got a mouth like a fucking loose cannon. "Saw her just after I lost my hand."
"You didn't answer my question."
"No." Merle looked at the contraption he now sported on the stump. It was an unfinished scrap of a thing, but Merle already had blueprints on his head. "She's not going to be a problem."
"She's not with the group you were with then?" Torso forward. Eye contact. Interest. Maybe a little satisfaction.
"No, sir." Brilliant deduction. I would clap my hands if I still had two.
More than his annoyance with the governor though, Merle was annoyed with himself. He felt cheap. And he felt like a coward. The guilt that he felt upon seeing the girl was nothing to that uncomfortable heaviness now riding in his chest. He could only describe it as feeling like he had let the girl down. Like he had denounced his alliance with her three times before a judgmental council. Granted she gave him no choice by not being quick enough to turn and run but it didn't ease the itch in what remains of his Dixon conscience. That he had somehow betrayed the trust that she so carelessly gave him. Logically, it didn't make sense, this feeling of having betrayed a girl he didn't really know but Merle knew firsthand how logic fell short in the great span of human behaviour. It was akin to what he felt when he left Daryl in the heavy hands of Will Dixon. The reminder of his brother made his chest clench anew.
At least she was alive. At least she wasn't eaten by those geeks. At least he could still watch her from here. Merle wondered why the girl even trusted him. Maybe she'd be better off if she had found herself with Officer Friendly.
The feeling didn't pass when the governor finally sat on his chair, introduced himself as Philip, and tossed Merle an unopened pack of Marlboro lights.
"You drink whiskey?"
Might as well. "Fuck yea."
He didn't see the girl for another two months.
Tala was harbouring a little crush.
Caesar Martinez was on gate watch. He was carrying a silver bat but strapped across his back was a familiar heavy-powered rifle. He was talking to archer girl, and damn it if she didn't feel a little jealous.
Martinez was the first man she saw the second time she woke up in Woodbury. He was leaning against the closed door, ear almost pressed against it as if he was eavesdropping. From where she was, she could hear Merle Dixon's voice on the other side. She went through emotions like a child channel surfing on a lazy Saturday afternoon- hope, elation, suspicion, betrayal, curiousity- before she stamped them down with a figurative Godzilla-sized hand.
The man straightened when the voices eventually trailed off. There was a wrinkle on his forehead that looked out of place. He didn't notice she was awake, and Tala didn't take very kindly to being ignored.
"Didn't your mother tell you that eavesdropping is rude?"
One thing she had to say about the encounter was that she was glad Martinez didn't have any guns on his person.
Tala would have liked to say that that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but really, it was just the start of a couple of months of her following him around like a smitten schoolgirl. It may have been a wee case of imprinting but he was nice enough and didn't mind a lot when she tagged along.
Painfully, she was reminded of Merle Dixon. Aside from his muffled voice on the other side of the door she hadn't glimpsed even a single hair on his head. She asked about him a lot. On the first week, Martinez told her he was recuperating, and was not allowed visitors by recommendation of the Woodbury doctors. Despite Tala's desperation to believe everything he said (because in a world with dead cannibals you desperately hope for good honest people) she couldn't help that nagging voice inside her head that told her he was lying.
Briefly during the first few weeks of her stay Tala entertained the thought that maybe Merle had not been around on her account. When the governor asked her about Dixon, she had, like the child Merle thought she was, went on and well told on him. In between anecdotes of her life pre-apocalypse she spun tales of meeting this god-awful redneck who kept saying mean things to her while forcing her to attend to his needs like getting food and caring for his ugly stump when in all actuality the only mean thing he really ever did was raise his voice at her. (Well, maybe he did rough her around a bit but Tala brushed it off and rationalized that it was an integral part of his survival instincts.) Tala took great pleasure in stretching the truth so thin that it was ripping at the seams and the governor was the first willing ear she had encountered after the Turn.
But now that she had weeks to process it, she realized that she missed Merle, and rationally leaving her behind may have been for her own good. It was illogical but god help her she trusted him. He felt like an older brother. And she always wanted one.
She didn't miss his snarkiness though.
(Okay, maybe just a bit.)
Anyway, Martinez assured her he was alive. After his story went from doctor-prescribed-recuperation to perimeter-check-duty-at-potential-safe-zones to looking-for-stranded-surviving- political-leaders to running-errands-for-the-governor though (which wasn't that far from the truth) she took everything he said with a grain of salt. At least Dixon was alive, and he didn't apparently receive the ass-whooping she initially hoped he would.
Besides, Martinez was much better company. And he was cute when he showed off. Which he did an awful lot.
Tala smiled at the sight of Martinez jumping down from the wall. He did it with much aplomb with the requisite smirk in her direction. She tried to smirk back but she was sure it just looked like an unflattering involuntary twitch.
He was walking towards the governor, who was apparently calling for volunteers for a supply run. Tala would have liked to go but she got cooking duty. (She didn't want to complain. At least they didn't make her do laundry. She detested laundry.) The feminist in her wanted to scream at the injustice of the implementation of traditional gender roles but she figured she could bitch about it if she survived long enough to not be considered one of the new people in town.
You don't bitch to the hand that feeds you, is that not what they say?
Well, the Martinez show was over. Tala turned, ready to head to the kitchens when she bumped into a man. The first thing she noticed was the makeshift bayonet connected to a hairy arm. Then she noticed the smell of a week's worth of sweat and grime and musk. Her stare rose with much difficulty from the shiny metal contraption into the face she's been anticipating for the last two months.
"Watch your feet girl, ain't got enough hands to catch ya."
Turns out, one hand was enough.