Chapter 47: shots in the dark from empty guns

"She let you fuck 'er yet?"

In his head Daryl snaps himself upright, sits up in the truckbed all clenched and angry and very much inclined to toss out some punches, because maybe he was trying to beat the shit out of Merle last week, and maybe that was fucking awful, but he's delivered lesser and more benign beatings-the-shit-out-of, and he'd be willing to do it again. For this. For that. For talking about her that way, with all the crude nastiness behind it. Talking about them.

About today.

Except not. What he does is all in his head and after a few seconds it's over, and he just feels mildly irritated. Nothing has changed in this respect, no matter what else has happened: Merle is an asshole. Merle will always be an asshole. Merle will be an asshole regarding just about anything put in front of him, and Beth is most certainly included, and he knew that the second this whole thing began in earnest. The second he saw her singing in that fucking coffee shop and his heart broke open.

And here's the thing: if this is what he was so afraid of - or if this is the worst that happens - it actually isn't all that bad. He had a good day. He had an amazing day. The odd trance state it pulled him into hasn't left him, and he's feeling sleepy and warm, lying on his back and staring up at the turning stars and the moon just shy of full, and it's not just because of the very pleasant buzz he has going. Merle can't ruin what he had today.

Right now he feels like Merle can't ruin anything.

He inhales deeply, lifts the cigarette from between his lips, blows smoke at the sky and listens to a gust of wind sweep across the meadow, making it hiss like a coiled snake. "Fuck you, bro."

"Yeah, see, that's the point." Merle is sitting with his back against the side, bottle of Four Roses dangling between his bent knees. He takes a swig. A big one. "So you're in love with her, you stupid motherfucker, fine, so that's even more reason to nail 'er. If you need one. I ain't in your head, thank the good fuckin' Lord."

"Don't need one," Daryl murmurs, still not looking at him. He inhales again, lets the smoke drift out through his nose in a slow cloud. "We'll do it when she's ready."

"Who is this bitch, you makin' some kinda big sacrifice for her?"

In the periphery of his vision, in the deep shadows the moon is throwing, Daryl sees Merle make an exaggerated face, all incredulous scorn. He recognizes it as less than genuine, and he sighs.

Whatever.

"Ain't a sacrifice."

"You ain't gettin' laid, little brother. She's a fuckin' cocktease."

Yes, this was all expected, and he continues to be nowhere near as wrathful as he might have thought he would be. In addition to the irritation he feels the other thing Merle is rousing in him most often these days and has been for so damn long - though he's uncomfortably aware of the deeper stuff lurking underneath. It was only a week ago that they both got a good look at the stuff in question. It feels like a month, but it was a week. He's done with it what he always does with things like that, even if nothing before has been that bad: he put it away, because the alternative is too terrible, too final. He can't afford that kind of rage. Not now.

Nothing much was going to change in a week, and it's still the same old shit: he's just tired. He feels tired. At least for the moment, they're apparently going to keep plodding along this endless stretch of road.

But that doesn't mean he's going to be a fucking doormat about everything. That shit is over.

"Why the fuck you so interested in what happens to my fuckin' cock, bro?"

Merle is silent for a long moment. The quality of the silence is drunkenly shocked. Daryl coolly waits it out. Again, as far as they've both silently agreed to be concerned, last Friday didn't happen. They've gone back to this being very out of character for him, even if they both know what a pile of bullshit that is. Even if they both know a number of new and very unsettling things about the true nature of his character in question.

Somewhere in the distance, a fox screams.

"Someone's gotta get you some tail, little brother," Merle says at last. "Sure as fuck ain't no good at gettin' it for yourself. You ain't never been good at it. Didn't start with this."

Merle might intend for it to be a growl, but it's not. It's a bloodless thing, raspy, far too thin to even be grumbling. Daryl listens to it, picks it apart on his head, and decides there's almost something pleading about it. Which tightens him up, twists at him, but even that can't ruin how he's feeling. At least not enough for him to make a thing out of it.

He's really tired of making things out of anything here.

Yet here we are.

"You always assumed I wanted some. Never thought to ask me 'bout it. It's my fuckin' cock, man, so maybe you let me deal with it from now on?"

Another period of silence, and it's significantly longer. Daryl closes his eyes against the night and he thinks about Beth resting her chin on his chest, looking up at him with those big blue doe eyes and all that solemnity, nothing even slightly ridiculous about it. Giving him permission for something, except all she really did was inform him of the fact that he never needed anyone's permission in the first place.

"You never asked me," he says again, quieter. The cigarette is burning down to his fingers and he leans up briefly and drops it into a half empty beer bottle. "You coulda asked me. You never did."

"The fuck was there to ask about?"

Now Merle just sounds bewildered, and Daryl gets it, gets why, doesn't even really blame him anymore. Doesn't blame him for any of this, if it comes right down to it. Doesn't blame Merle for shoving him at women he didn't want to be with, doesn't blame him for the shit Merle dragged him into, the drinking and the fights and all the bad company, all the stuff they did that should have landed him in prison thirty or forty times over and landed Merle exactly there in the end. All of it. Because this is the aftermath of what happened, the fight and the drugs, and before that the fucking money in the fucking sock - which is all still there, no suspicious withdrawals or deposits. This is the real aftermath. Of telling Beth about it, and before that, the terrible, terrifying night in the ruins, and everything since then, every rare second he's forced himself to sit down and think about this. Really think about it.

Here it is: Merle is an asshole. Merle is a piece of redneck white trash, Merle is no good, Merle is no good for him, is doing him no favors, and while he loves his big brother so much it's like his heart is a fist punching itself over and over, the fact of the matter is that even on the best days Daryl doesn't like him. Isn't sure he ever really has. But what Merle spat at him when they were still throwing words instead of punches - what made Daryl so angry then, because it was being spat at him by a man clutching a bag of poison that could mean the end for both of them - it wasn't completely untrue. At least not from Merle's end. Merle believes it. He looks back on everything before, not necessarily at the details but in aggregate, and Merle meant it, what he was spitting, and that was why it hurt so much. Hurt both of them.

He's tried to take care of Daryl.

He has. He sucks at it, has almost exclusively done more harm than good; that's become piercingly clear as well. But he was trying. All of it was his awful, sad, broken way of trying to take care of his little brother, maybe even trying to make up for some lost time, trying to atone for some things, because there was a period - a space neither of them wants to think about or look at directly - when no one took care of Daryl at all.

And this is included. Getting his pathetic little brother some tail. He was just doing for Daryl what he would have wanted for himself. It's the Dixon remix of the Golden Rule, and Daryl bites his cheeks to keep back his laughter.

Merle asked a question. So.

"You coulda just asked. Coulda asked if I needed your help. Wanted it."

"You sayin' you didn't?"

"Yeah," Daryl says, very patiently. "Didn't need it. Didn't want it. Coulda left me alone, man. I woulda been fine."

Merle coughs a laugh. The laugh turns into a real fit of coughing, which goes on for a while. Once more, Daryl waits it out. "Brother, you'd still be a fuckin' virgin if I'd done that."

"Yeah." Quiet. Agreeing. There's nothing to disagree with. Not only does Daryl think it's possible he would be, he thinks it's likely. Left to his own devices, yes: he can see himself a virgin at thirty eight. Sees himself that way and sees himself not minding, in isolation from being externally given all this shit for it.

You should only do it when you want to.

"You..." And Merle is silent again. Completely.

Daryl supposes it's possible he's actually broken him.

The fox screams again; there's the answering call of an owl, sounds like about the same distance away, and Daryl has a surreal image - rising and quickly sinking again - of an owl and a fox locked in combat, rolling over and over in the meadow scrub, clawing and pecking and biting, ripping and gouging, feathers and fur and blood everywhere.

There's something desperately sad about it.

"Just drop it, bro." He sighs and sits up, swiping a hand down his face. He still feels okay, but he can tell Merle doesn't, really doesn't at all, and this... This isn't about placating, and it isn't about dancing around something difficult or letting Merle have his way. It's about how he's not going to get anywhere. If he tried to explain what happened today, even a little, what he learned, it would be like running headfirst into a wall made of belligerent incomprehension - a wall that can be hurt by the thing smashing into it. Walls don't understand. They just stand there. This isn't about cutting the wall-that-is-Merle a break because his own head is hurting.

This is about kindness.

"Mm?" Again, bewilderment - and Merle sounds a bit like Daryl woke him up from something. Which might be exactly what happened. Daryl turns and looks at his brother's face in the low moonlight, and all he sees are mountain peaks and gorges, canyons and dry riverbeds. Walls, landscapes; everything he thinks of when he looks at his brother is hard and barren.

This problem isn't going to go away.

Which he knew.

"Drop it," he repeats gently. "Let it go, man. Don't matter. Just don't bug me 'bout it from now on. 's my business. Don't need your help. Don't want it. Let it be."

Merle says nothing. After a moment or two he lifts the bottle again, and Daryl figures things are, if not okay, then at least as okay as they're likely to be right now. He pushes off the tailgate and stretches, feeling what seems like every single one of his vertebrae crack at once. The truckbed is way more comfortable when he's in it with Beth, which makes complete sense and isn't in the least surprising.

"Gonna take a piss."

Merle grunts. Daryl hesitates; he could do it right here, it's not like either of them have ever been shy about this shit, but suddenly he doesn't want to be here at all. Just for a few minutes. He wants to be out there in the dark, out in that half-seen meadow. Alone. There's the road not far away, but it's a backroad and no one else has passed for a couple of hours. Not a single house is visible. It's just the truck and Merle and a sea of night.

He doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to do. The other side of that coin?

He can do things he wants to do. Within reason.

So without excuse or explanation, he wades into that sea.

Last time he did this, he realizes, it wasn't all that different from how it is now. He dropped a bomb on Merle and left him behind in the rubble to work things out for himself. This is a lesser bomb, smaller payload, but it's just one more, and if he follows this analogy all the way through - and why not, it's not at all a bad one - this particular bombardment has been going on for a while now.

Too late to call the planes back. It's done.

This isn't the same big open stretch of land he walked into the last time he did this - when he told Merle to just fucking leave if he had a problem with what Daryl was doing - but it might as well be. It feels very similar. High scrub, some patches of grass, distant woods. There's a dip and a rise not too far away, and on the rise - set against the sky like an evil spider-fortress from some kid's fairy tale - is a radio tower. A single red light blinks at its top, over and over, like a winking eye.

He stops and stares at it for a little while. He's not sure how long. Wind whips up through the scrub, pulls at his hair, dies away again.

He could climb it, he thinks suddenly - madly. It's stupid and he knows it, doesn't entirely know where it's coming from, but he could; he could do anything. She cut him loose and now a whole set of things are possible, more all the time. He could climb it right now, fuck all the reasons not to, and hey: if he jumped, isn't it just remotely possible that he might fly?

Isn't it? Isn't everything at least a little bit possible now?

This has the potential to be dangerous. But he knew that too. Really, he's known it from the beginning.

The fox screams, very close, and he doesn't have time to jump before it lunges toward him out of the rustling scrub, a small dark bolt with its legs beating the ground like a rabbit's heart, there and gone past him and vanished again in the time it takes him to process that it's even happening.

No owl. Silence.

He stares at the place the fox disappeared into for a few seconds, feeling a spot of very odd blankness descend and settle. Then he shakes himself, breathes a laugh. In theory he came out here - maybe as much as a quarter mile away - to take a piss. He should do that and get back.

But he can't just get back. He's in this space now, where everything is weird and dreamlike – in a moonlit meadow just as much as a sunny clearing - and none of the rules apply anymore. Where the sense he used to make of things might no longer work, where it might get tangled like his fingers in Beth's hair, hopeless even if he wanted to get free. Where things might come at him out of the dark and be gone again just as fast, no time to grapple with them. Where winged wolf gods hear and answer prayers.

And in a country like this, it's possible he might be able to make some rules of his own.

He came out here to take a piss. He should do that and get back.

So he does that and he goes back.

As far as he can tell Merle hasn't moved, though by the time Daryl returns he estimates something like half an hour has passed. He expects Merle to comment on Daryl's apparent difficulty in locating his own dick, but Merle says nothing at all, and continues to say nothing when Daryl sits back down on the tailgate and lights up another cigarette.

The moon is higher. In the distance he can still see the red on-off wink of the radio tower.

"Tell me somethin'."

Here it is. Before, he told Merle to drop the subject of his cock out of kindness, and this could erase any benefit that kindness might have conferred, but he's here and Merle's here, and this was such a strange and strangely wonderful day, and there's something about the quality of this night that's fucking with his head in ways he doesn't think he's ready to call bad.

He's ready to take some jumps, and for a week he's needed to take this one. He might have wings in there someplace. Waiting under his skin. Trembling under all those scars.

Merle grunts again, and it's impossible to read but it doesn't sound like no, I refuse.

So.

"What was the deal with the money, man?"

In all honesty he doesn't expect an answer. It makes sense for there to not be an answer. He can't think of an answer Merle would want to give him, not voluntarily, not even a lie - which he doesn't think Merle would attempt to offer. Not now, not about this. He didn't catch Merle with the sock in his hand, didn't catch him with a roll of bills, but he knows, and Merle knows he knows, and it might be good to be straight with each other about what they know. Not that he anticipates the whole thing being reciprocal, but he's at least going to do his part. He knows. He wants to know. He's asking, even though he doesn't expect an answer.

So it's something of a surprise when Merle gives him one.

"Had some extra. Poker game. Figured I'd stick it in there."

Daryl looks sharply at him. Merle's face is still difficult to see clearly, all that craggy landscape, but one eye is visible, and that eye... Sober. Like when Daryl staggered out of bed the night after the flood, like when Merle was waiting for him, and everything felt different all over again and at the same time ached with how it was probably never really going to change.

"Why?"

Because Merle has never in his life failed to spend extra when he has it. Merle can always find some pit to toss it into. Without fail.

But Merle shrugs. "I had it. Why not?"

"Merle..." Okay, well: he just smacked Merle in the face a couple times not even an hour ago, so he probably deserves this. It's probably only fair. "You coulda... You don't..."

"Do shit like that?" Calm. Knowing. Of course Merle knows. Merle is well aware of all of this, and if he didn't know the full painful depth of Daryl's feelings before, he sure as shit does now. Merle isn't stupid. Merle isn't oblivious. Daryl suspects that Merle is every bit as good at lying to himself as Daryl is - that might be kind of the family business - but at some point even that runs out of road. So Merle gives him a thin, sharp half-moon of a smile and shrugs again. "You said you were thinkin' 'bout a better place. That's what that money was for, ain't it?"

"You thought that was bullshit."

"It is." Merle lets out a long breath and leans his head back, staring up. "But what the fuck. That hole we're stuck in, that's bullshit too. 's all kinda bullshit. So why not?" He pauses for a few beats and toys with the bottle. "You're still outta your fuckin' mind with this girl, you know it. You know it's not gonna go anywhere good, man. Just a world of hurt. But yeah. Just 'cause you wanna fuck your life all up, don't see why this's gotta be part of that."

Daryl gapes at him. Maybe he shouldn't actually be that surprised; there were a limited number of things that extra cash could mean and this was a fairly obvious one. But hearing it. Hearing Merle say it. That he'll more than tolerate it. More than humor Daryl's stupid little fantasy.

That he'd help. That he even was.

"So you wanna...?" He can't do words right now. There aren't any. Fortunately Merle picks him up and carries him along.

"You wanna. I got no reason to be a dick about it."

"Man..." Daryl has no idea what he wants to do. What he can do. Sit there and stare. Try to thank him and probably fail. Tackle him, hug him, actually fucking hug him, because this is everything, everything - exactly what he wanted so desperately two years and however many hundreds upon hundreds of circling miles ago, what he always wanted, what kept him going when nothing else did, when the world was trying to beat him to death and there was nothing to believe in, what he never stopped wanting even as they kept running and running and he became more and more certain that it was never going to happen. His big brother back and all that shit left behind and moving forward for real and everything better. This is what he never stopped wanting even when he was almost certain that his chance to have it was over. That this dragging, weary thing was all there was ever going to be.

And now.

You want to?

You want to.

Like that's enough.

He drags in a breath and it catches halfway down his throat. It's always been a mistake to show this much, and he can already hear what's coming next - what, you gonna cry about it, you damp pussy? Fuck off with that shit, Darylina, all I said was I wasn't gonna try to punch how fuckin' stupid you are through your thick fuckin' skull - but it doesn't. That's not what comes at all.

"You find a place," Merle says softly. "You find one, we'll haul ourselves over there. Tell that Elmer to shove it up his ass." He smiles, very faint. "Be happy to see the last of that fat fuck."

Daryl manages to take a breath and put it behind a word. "Alright."

He whispers it. That seems to be all he can do. Sit there and whisper and try to understand.

None of the rules apply anymore. None of them. Not a single one.

Much, much later, on his back in the dark, staring into it and thinking about how it might be one of the last few nights he spends in this particular darkness, his teeth worry the healing cut on his lip and he drifts through the other side of this. Because it's not just about looking back and seeing what he didn't have, what he wasn't allowed to have. What neither of them were. How it took them this long to reach for it, and how he was so scared they never would.

It's not just about what's behind them.

Beth found him. Came to him. Pulled him into her circle of light and warmth, and then it became a whole fuck of a lot more than a circle, and she's pulled him into something much bigger and brighter, something that burns. She took his hand and led him into something, got her own hands on him and in him, started moving pieces of him around, and he's changing. Everything is changing. All the rules, all the premises on which he used to operate, all the foundations on which he used to build. Shifting, falling away, unrolling beneath him like a road.

Beth is taking him somewhere. He wants so much to go. He was certain - absolutely certain, certain and cold and hurting with it - that his brother wasn't going to be able to follow him.

Until now.

The good days will happen again.