Chapter 64: letters that you never meant to send got lost or thrown away
So he guesses the next thing is probably the note.
He put the money down. He's not sure when. How long ago. The note is a little white hole in the world made solid and angular, and he picks it up and unfolds it. He's not sure he even wants to know. Not sure he can focus on it anyway. The handwriting is a scrawl, almost illegible - not because of any particular shit Merle was going through at the time he did the scrawling, at least not necessarily. Merle's handwriting has always been terrible.
God, just.
He has to. It's all he has.
I'm leaving. don't follow me. I left you something under the couch, use it. don't be stupid about it. live your fucking life and leave me alone.
take care of yourself
It explains nothing.
And everything.
Before, at the prison, he was angry. It took him a while to figure it out, but it was true. Beyond angry. Enraged. So enraged he didn't recognize what it was - not at first. Couldn't get a handle on the full force of it, the fury of the storm in his head, all slamming wind and hail and spinning splintered wood and glass and the ruins of cars. The storm of helpless, hopeless rage that comes when you lose something, when you lose it all, and you don't know why.
He still doesn't really know why. But he doesn't think he's angry anymore. What Merle was doing... It wasn't malicious, and it wasn't callous, and it wasn't stupid. Wasn't any of those things. And now he's on his knees in the place he was certain he was going to get to leave forever, and then he was pretty certain he was going to have to stay, and now...
Now it'll be easy.
Now he'll basically be able to do whatever he wants.
So it was all worth it, wasn't it? The last three days and change. All that terror, all that exhaustion and pain, that dead room full of walking dead people watching his fucking brother walk out of his life - choose to do that, make the fucking choice for him, as if he had the right, as if he has the right to do that after everything he's put Daryl through, as if he has the right to leave him like this, and that's when Daryl realizes that he's shredding the note, slowly, not an angry crumple and tear but a slow, meticulous process on the part of hands that are no longer entirely or even mostly under his control.
He's shredding it piece by tiny piece, his jaw clenched so hard his teeth are grinding, gaze locked down on the stack of bills in front of him. More money than he's ever seen in one place in his life. More money than he's ever had. Ever hoped to have. Enough money to keep him in that apartment until next summer. Longer. Enough money to buy furniture, buy everything he could want for it, enough money to fix up the truck, enough money to...
God.
He understands all of it. He understands everything. And he only needs to think about it for a few more seconds to understand where it came from and what it means.
You get rid of the crystal?
Yeah. 's gone.
Oh, it was. It was gone. Or he made it gone, all at once or bit by bit, and he said it and even if he wasn't technically lying, Daryl never asked for more details, never investigated further, never once heeded the tiny warning bells chiming in the deeper recesses of his mind. Was so stupid. He's been so stupid. The signs have all been there for so fucking long and he didn't even try to read them.
That last night, what Merle was really saying to him. What was really going on.
We don't win. We just don't get to do that, little brother. We fight for everythin' we get, we fight like fuckin' junkyard dogs, but in the end we're just gonna get kicked back into the shit. Junkyard dogs stay in the junkyard. Ain't no one gonna take 'em home, give 'em kibble. Give 'em a bed. Ain't no one wants a junkyard dog near their kids.
We ain't dogs, man.
You don't think?
Like he can't recognize I can't do this, so goodbye when it hurls itself at him and smacks him in the face with a goddamn motherfucking bag of crystal meth.
Those tiny shreds of paper all over the floor, microscopic remains of Merle's ugly scrawl. Left you something. Use it. Don't be stupid. Live your fucking life.
Yeah, it was so worth it. Worth it like a bullet in the head.
Oh my God, Merle, Merle... All you had to do was try.
All you had to do was fucking TRY.
The note is down to a few remaining shreds. They feel damp. The air is damp. It's certainly not from his tears, because there aren't any. Everything else might be wet but his eyes are bone fucking dry.
He has enough money to do whatever he wants. And somewhere - and maybe she'll still speak to him after this fiasco - there's a girl who claims to love him, who he believes loves him, who he loves so much it feels like the sheer force of it might break his ribs, who he was going to make a place for, a place they can be together in whatever time they manage to steal, and now he can. Easily. He can do that. Live his life and, for now, live it with her.
His life is precious. She taught him that. He still doesn't fully understand it, still has a hard time conceiving of it at all, but his life is precious, and he started learning it the moment he pressed his lips to the scar on her wrist.
He can have that. He can have all of it.
Don't be stupid.
But he is. He is so, so stupid.
So all at once he's scooping up the money, clutching at it, his brain lurching vertical and whirling in clumsy, staggering circles. Wild. Beyond stupid - crazy. Sprinting right up to a pit and right over into it, not falling but diving, nothing but black water at the bottom and a man who insists on not being saved but there's a way to save him, there has to be, there have to be ways and he has to have faith because it won't kill him, and he always made a way before, found one even if he had to dig through dirt and mud and shit with his bare fucking hands. He made ways out of spilled blood and broken bones. He made it, and Merle doesn't get to do this to him, and Merle doesn't get to do this to Merle, just because Merle is afraid.
Afraid to try. That has to be it. That has to be why. There's no other possible reason. That's who Merle is, that's all Merle can be, and Daryl is going to do what he always does, thumbing through the bills and fumbling for the rubber band. Daryl is going to go to him and drag his ass off the ground, drag him to his feet, make him try.
He has enough money to do whatever he wants and he'll find a way.
"Daryl."
Of course.
She fucks with time. She can warp it, twist it, turn it back on itself, make of it a swooping, dancing Möbius strip. Most importantly she can come into it and wind it around her perfect little hands and freeze it, keep it where she wants until she's ready to let it proceed. She dams it up like a river. She's always done that, with them. Right from the beginning she's done it. Enclosed them. Enclosed him.
Made her own places for them. Her own beds.
Now she's doing it again. Everything has ground to a halt, every clock stopped, and he would bet a fair amount of the money in his hands that if he let go of it now it would hang there in the air rather than fall.
He doesn't let go of it, and he doesn't turn toward the door.
Because he's afraid. Because it's gripped him all at once, jammed ice down his throat, snowy winds jetting into his brain. His spine. He's terrified, because of what he'll see, which is that she hasn't just stopped time but wound it back, and the storm is here and she's seen both of them, seen something she can't unsee, and in a couple of minutes he'll shove himself to his feet and turn and advance on her, loom over her, back her down the stairs with his body as all that poison in him floods into his veins.
He'll do it. She'll go. And he'll lose her.
He doesn't think he's going to get away with this a second time.
"Daryl." Soft. Not like before, is the thing. She doesn't sound surprised. She doesn't sound horrified. She sounds soft, she sounds gentle, and she does sound confused but not in the precarious kind of way that could become something much worse. And she sounds...
She sounds relieved.
Her footfalls, just as soft as her voice. Coming into the room. He can practically feel her heat coming toward him, radiating against his back and neck like a compact sun. His orbit, swinging back around to her. He could never escape her pull.
He hasn't moved. On his knees, still holding onto the cash. There's something almost shameful about this, about how he must look. Like he's recoiling from the world. From her. He feels craven.
"I was... Why weren't you answering me? I called you... I called you so many times, I thought maybe you..." She falters, cracking. "What's going on? What happened to you? What the hell are you doing?"
Maybe not so gentle now. Not angry - not exactly - but there's an edge, something near desperate, not so much confusion as utter bewilderment, and hurt.
She's hurt.
He's such a piece of shit.
Her hands on his shoulders. He does recoil; he can't help it. She's burning him. He wants to pull the money against his chest, hide it from her, but a few bills slip free and then his hands are shaking again and all of them fall back into the floor in that whispering scatter, almost drowned out by the thickening drum of the rain.
It's always the rain.
Her hands go still. Rigid. Just for a moment. Then she's crouching behind and beside him, and her hair is a golden flicker-flame in the periphery of his vision as she peers over his shoulder.
"Daryl... Why do you..."
Settle in, girl. Hope you got a few hours to burn, because this is going to take a while.
"He's locked up," he murmurs. He's aware that it doesn't explain much - even less than the note, at least at first - but it does seem like the most pertinent detail and as good a place as any to start, because all the places at which he could start are absolutely fucking shit.
"Who?" A second's pause, then, "Merle?"
He nods.
"How?"
He breathes an awful little laugh. The ghost of the wind through the loose barn slats. The laugh of the man to whom that ghost hand on the glass belongs. "Don't matter."
It does matter.
"What's all the money for?"
What indeed.
He's moving. Sharp, hard, frantically gathering it all up yet again, willing the old-man tremors out of his hands. He has to do this and he has to do it now, before this gets any more real. Before it sets into the fabric of everything. "I'm gonna get him out."
"You- How?"
"I dunno. A-A lawyer or somethin'. I dunno, I'm gonna." He's not looking at her. He won't. She has nothing to do with this. He wishes so much that she'd just get the fuck out. "He turned himself in, he doesn't get to... He don't get to do this."
"Daryl." Hands on his shoulder, then one against his back, and she's pressing close to him and oh, fuck, he actually thought this couldn't get any worse. "You need to stop, you need to think about this. You're not thinkin' at all."
"I don't gotta think," he snarls, lashing it at her and jerking his face away again as he fumbles for the band. "He did this, he- We were... He was gonna be better, we was gonna be better, don't you fuckin' get that? All this fuckin' time, everythin'... He was gonna try."
"Daryl, stop."
He wrenches under her hands, vicious. You're an animal, just like them except there's another side to that and you see it when you back one into a corner. "Get the fuck off'a me."
"You can't help him anymore."
She doesn't yell. It's actually very quiet. But it's hard, it shoots out of her like a bullet, and it strikes him right in the head and reels him back, open-mouthed and throat knotting, every one of his organs crowding against his diaphragm and erasing the very possibility of breath. He's turned finally, still on his knees but twisted at the waist, hundred dollar bills crumpled in his fists, staring at her. She's flushed, eyes shining and wet and her hair damp in its ponytail and tumbled over one shoulder, her beautiful little braid, and she's glowing in the dark and all he wants to do is fall into her and forget everything.
He turns away, bent, almost hanging over the floor. Hanging on his own bones.
"But." He winches open a space in his lungs and drags in a huge, shuddering breath. "I. He said he was, he told me..."
He traded. He took himself out of the way. Traded himself for this. For you.
He's in there because of me.
"Maybe I coulda done somethin'."
It breaks off, choked as the burning blur takes his eyes away, and at the same instant she's practically throwing herself at him, onto him, arms wrapped tight around his chest and her head between his shoulderblades. And it's still raining, but just for a torn fragment of a second, through the blur, he sees what might be a flicker of setting sunlight breaking through the clouds. Catching his face. Holding him like her.
Or it's lightning. Striking something. Carrying fire.
She only holds him tighter as he slumps, shaking, letting the bills drop from his hands and this time leaving them where they fall. There's no light. There's just rain and encroaching dark, seeping into the room and into him no matter how close she holds him and how strong she is.
It should be enough. He has the money. He has her. That trackless road has no claim on him and there's nothing to drag him back onto it. He can do whatever he wants now.
He's free.
It should be enough. It really should.
But.
He doesn't know how long. She does that thing she does with time and as far as his perception goes none of it passes at all. All he knows is that it's getting darker out there, in here, colder, and he's starting to shiver. At some point he stopped crying. Just ran out of it. He's a mess, face still wet with tears and snot and his hair hanging in his eyes, hands limp between his knees. He un-limps one and swipes at his cheeks, his nose.
He feels like a fucking kid. Kid in a body way too big for him, a body he doesn't even recognize anymore, kid who never got out of that fucking house, mother burned and big brother left him, crumpled on his knees alone in his room and hurting so bad and wondering if he was going to die there, going to die there and no one would care. No one would miss him.
And he's a man, crumpled on his knees and hurting so bad but not alone, because a girl is holding onto him, a girl who loves him in spite of everything rational, in spite of every very good reason not to. Here with him now and not leaving him.
Was coming to see you.
He didn't get off the road. He just turned onto a different one.
She turns her head, presses her lips to his temple, and he almost starts crying again. Probably would if he had any of it left in him.
Which isn't what he would hope. Because unlike before, unlike the other times he's let go and given up and wept in her arms, he doesn't feel better. He doesn't feel scraped raw and cleaned out. He doesn't feel ready to be filled with anything new. Anything good.
He just feels empty.
"You gotta stay," she murmurs. Her mouth is against his brow and her breath is warm and sweet, and he should be happy about this, why the fuck isn't he happy about this? "Daryl, you just... I know you wanna go, I know it, but you need to stay here now."
But it's not about need. It's not about that. He doesn't even know what he needs anymore.
It's about how he has no fucking choice.
It's about that, about how he's never had a choice about any of this. Not really. He never had a choice about her, even though he'd gotten to thinking maybe he did, and he never had a choice about Merle, and right when he got to thinking maybe he did, Merle went and chose for him. He never had a choice about the hell of what most people would laughably call his childhood and he never had the choice of leaving until so much damage had already been done, he never had a choice about his mother, never had a choice after he did get free because he was a fucking loser, a redneck asshole without even a GED to his name and no real marketable skills except what he can do with his hands, never had a choice about the time he waited for Merle to get out of prison, never had a choice about the day he picked Merle up and they started on this nightmare road trip, the long, terrible journey that led him from there to here in her arms. He's never had a choice. Never.
That's bullshit.
"I need somethin'," he whispers, and it feels like the frame of his skeleton might collapse. What he has to say now. No: What he wants to say now. He doesn't, he doesn't want to, he wants so badly to not say it, but he also does, because there's almost twenty thousand dollars on the floor in front of him and an apartment with his name on it and his brother as good as lost to him forever, and if he's off-structure because of these things, there won't be any structure at all until he figures out how to make one. He's a kid and he's a man and he has no idea how to tell the difference between those things and he understands now that he never did.
And he's no good to her like this.
There's a hideous, twisted thing inside him that doesn't want to be.
"Tell me." She squeezes him, and oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. No. "Anythin'. If I can."
"I need you to tell your dad I'm sick. Make somethin' up if you have to. Tell him I'll be back as soon as I can."
"Alright." She doesn't sound happy about it, and he doesn't blame her one fucking bit. It's extremely awkward, how she'll be the one to convey the message. But he doesn't take it back. He trusts her to make it work. They're both going to have to get better at lying.
He suspects she's already pretty good at it by now.
"But I-"
"And I need you to go."
It hangs in the air between them. Just... hangs there. Like a spider, something huge and bristling and swollen bulbous with poison. The poison in him - he actually thought it might not be there. But it is, and all the proof he needs is all around him. She's gone rigid again, not loosening, utterly unmoving. He's not positive that she's breathing.
"Daryl...?" Single questioning sound. For some reason it isn't immediately recognizable as his name. It's a nonsense word. It means nothing.
"Beth." He pulls himself away, then. He pulls himself away and it's horrible, like twisting his own arms off - losing her heat, her solidity, the blessed music of her voice, losing her strength, the way she hadn't just been holding him but holding him up.
He's well aware that this might be yet another unbelievably stupid decision. But it is a decision.
"Beth, I need you to go." Breathing is like walking. When it comes down to steps you take them one at a time. "Please."
"Daryl, no." He turns his head slightly; she's rocked back on her heels, one hand on her knee and one at her mouth, as though she's about to stifle a cry. "I'm not gonna leave you, I'm not-"
"You said anythin'."
"I said if I could."
"You can do this." He presses his hand against his eyes. He keeps coming back to that internal darkness as if it was comforting, when really it's extremely not. But it's familiar, and he feels like he's short of that right now. "I'm gonna call you. Swear, I am. I just... You can't be here. You can't be here right now."
"You said you were gonna call me before. You actually mean it this time?" Still no anger. Just sad weariness - and he knows she'll do it. Because he's asking her to, because she loves him - and because really, what choice does she have? It's getting well into evening on a rainy Monday night, and he's not sure what she told her family about why she's not home - not sure she told them anything - but if either of them want to preserve this, and he really thinks she still does...
And he does. Wants to. Under everything else.
So that's something.
"My phone broke. Tell your dad that too. That's why I ain't called. I'll get a new one."
"I don't want to go."
Not arguing. Just saying. Like in the field under the stars, when she said she wasn't ready and he didn't argue, but he did say it, because he just wanted her to know.
I want you.
"I know." He drops his hand back into his lap and tilts his head back. The rain isn't hard but it's steady, and it sounds so loud on the roof. So close. Like it might be about to hammer its way in. "I'm sorry."
Nothing for a long moment. He waits it out. Lets it fill him, follows it in. Curls, even if he isn't moving. Compresses. He didn't explode at the prison, he didn't explode on the road or here before she came in, and he doesn't think the tears count as an explosion. But he thinks, after she leaves, there might finally be one.
Which is only part of why she can't be here.
Her moving - a soft shuffle. Her heat close to him once more, her hands on his shoulders, and he can't keep back his shivering sigh when she kisses the edge of his jaw. It's fleeting. A touch so light it's barely a kiss at all. Then she's pushing herself up and stepping away from him.
Her mercy is boundless. Praise her name.
"You have to stay," she whispers again. "Alright? You... You stay. And you call me."
He nods, once. He doesn't turn around.
Except for a few seconds of strained rage, he hasn't looked directly at her a single time since she got here.
"I love you."
And she's gone into the wet dusk, the stairs groaning agony as she descends them.
He mouths it. Over and over, he does. The night he said it, in the ruins drenched in that full moon, with her in his arms and hot and ready for him and so sweet, and she said it back and took him in and it was like the sky opened up and every single fucking star fell down over them both in a hail of broken diamonds.
That was another world.
He has to figure out how to live in this one.