Hey, guys. Been a while but I'm excited to get back on the horse! It's a short chapter this time, but hopefully not completely horrible. The title song is "Happy Pills" by Weathers. Give it a listen if you're so inclined, it's pretty cool.
10. Happy Pills
There were two perfectly valid reasons she had for sitting with Merle in this cell, drinking his liquor.
One: Daryl was gone. He, Rick and Hershel had gone to meet the Governor to talk things over- a temporary truce brokered by that Andrea woman. Over the past few days Daryl had obligingly, if unknowingly, distracted her from her most recent revelation that: she was in love with Beth.
It was because of this revelation that she desperately needed a drink. Which was reason number two.
"That's a pretty face you're pullin' there, darlin'. What, you ain't a whiskey drinker?"
Mason banished the pinch from between her eyebrows. "I'm a drinker of anything that gets me drunk. But it ain't my favorite."
Merle snorted. "You're just here for my sparkling personality."
"Believe me, I'd much rather be sitting with your brother than with you."
"Oh." Merle's brow quirked in a way that had Mason immediately regretting her answer. "It's like that, huh?"
"No."
"Baby brother's got a sweet little piece to pad after him?"
"No."
"Don't try and tell me all this time you two spend together is for pickin' daisies. I see how he looks at you."
Her jaw dropped. "He looks at me like a friend. We're friends, you mouth-breather. God, you think anyone showing the slightest bit of attention to anyone else means they're fucking. Oh, hey! I'm looking at this whiskey bottle right now, we must be doinking on the nightly!"
"I'd like to see that."
"Yeah, I bet you would. Does it get tiresome, your sexually dependent masculinity?"
Merle grinned and swiped the bottle. "Sometimes."
"That wasn't a compliment."
Merle narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "So what is it that brought you to my humble domain, if it has nothing to do with my brother? I know you have your own booze, so it ain't that."
Mason flushed as she realized that there was indeed a third reason, and it was the most cowardly of them all.
"I needed a place to hide out," she mumbled. "And after your little display out there I figured no one would come looking for you."
"Little display" as in Merle and Glenn had gotten into a fight and Beth had had to fire a gun to keep it from escalating.
Irritation twisted his mouth. "I ain't changed my mind. Better to strike now while the Governor's alone." He took a sip and then looked at her. "I know you know I'm right. You ain't the best at hiding what you think. You're like my brother that way."
Mason frowned, unnerved that her expressions were so easily accessible to a virtual stranger. If he could read them, then…
She shook her head. "If you think it would be so easy to take out the Governor, why are you worried about Daryl?"
He gave her a wry look. "You ain't got any siblings, do ya?"
Her eyes turned stony. "No, but I don't need any to know what it's like to worry. I have people that I care about."
"Then worry's a bit of an understatement, ain't it?"
He handed the bottle back to her. She stared into its brown glass for a long time.
"Yes. It is."
They were silent for a while, but Mason was surprised to realize that it wasn't tense or awkward. Maybe it was the liquor warming her insides but she felt comfortable.
The comfort was short-lived, however. A familiar voice startled her out of it.
"Mason? What are you doin'?"
Mason didn't look at Beth. She looked just past Beth's shoulder. Because looking at Beth- at those wide eyes and soft lips- would be her undoing.
"I'm just…chilling," she said, wincing internally at the flimsiness of her voice.
"Can I talk to you?"
Stifling a groan, Mason followed Beth out of the cell to a corner where they were alone. Alone, and very, very close. Heat rose along her spine and the back of her neck. She hoped if it showed on her face that Beth would interpret it as guilt.
"What are you doin' with him?" Beth demanded.
"I told you. We're just chilling. Are we not allowed to chill anymore? Is that, like, a law now?"
"You're drunk."
The change in Beth's tone, so abrupt… She couldn't help it. She had to look.
It was a strange mixture of relief and despair to see that her eyes were just as heartbreaking as ever. The emotion in them was hard to decipher, but it was easy enough to tell that Beth was hurt.
"So what if I am? I think I'm entitled to a drink now and then."
"Now is not the time," Beth said. She sounded strikingly like her dad. "You shouldn't be gettin' drunk, and you definitely shouldn't be gettin' drunk with him."
"Why not? He's not doing anything."
"Because he isn't safe. Anyone with half a brain could see that. Besides, you promised you were gonna train me. What happened to that? After the other night, I thought…"
She trailed off but her eyes never left Mason's face. Too penetrating. Too blue.
Finally, she said, "I thought you cared about me."
Mason stiffened. Her cheeks burned but it wasn't from guilt. "What, you think that I don't care about you?"
Beth had the decency to look flustered, but the spark in her eyes never dimmed. "That's not what I meant to say. I just… we're all on edge and I'd feel much better if you weren't off doin' shots with that Neanderthal."
There were a million things she wanted to say but she swallowed them all. When she thought she could speak without shouting, she growled, "Stop worrying about me. I can take care of myself, and I'm gonna have a damn drink."
~m~
Merle grinned wolfishly when she returned and she really didn't want to find out why. She motioned to the bottle instead, hoping if she didn't ask he wouldn't answer. "Give me that."
He watched her take a long pull, then said, "So I've puzzled out why you came seeking my hearth. Pretty obvious when I think about it."
"If I just tell you you're right, no matter what it is, will you shut up?"
"And miss a chance to impart my infinite wisdom? No, no, no, sweetheart. I haven't been this entertained since cable television."
"Your life must be more boring than you let on."
Merle ignored this. "What I don't understand is why you would risk your princess's wrath slummin' it with me."
"There weren't any alternatives aside from throwing myself to the walkers, which is starting to look better and better the more you talk."
"You really oughta work on that attitude of yours. I'm tryin' to help."
Mason laughed harshly. "Oh, yeah, you're just a well of charity."
"Well maybe if you'd explain the problem…"
"I'm not having a heart-to-heart with you."
"Why not? I bet you've had plenty with my baby brother."
Mason didn't reply, mostly because she didn't want to admit that it was true. She didn't think she could stand seeing the satisfaction on his face without punching him in the gut. But not answering was apparently answer enough, as his smile turned smug.
"He always was the soft one. I bet he never told you about the time he rescued a cat from a pack of wild dogs."
She didn't want to take the bait but Merle continued anyway.
"A fuckin' cat. Little shit was mean as hell but my brother took care of it anyway. He ran right into that pack of dogs and fought 'em off with his bare hands. Had to stitch him up in the bathroom."
Mason smiled a bit.
"That's the kind of shit my brother's always pullin'. Even if it's stupid and pointless. He saved a couple of strangers and their baby on the way back here."
"And you think that's pointless?"
Merle paused to eye her darkly. "This new world," he said. "It demands a different breed of people. If you care, then eventually you die."
Cold wound itself around Mason's heart. This was what she'd always told herself, yet coming from someone else- from Merle no less- was a kick in the gut. She couldn't think of anything to say, so she took another swig.
Finally she murmured, "What happened to the cat?"
"Ran off. Probably got its fool ass eaten by another pack of dogs."
Mason rolled her eyes. "I bet that gets tedious, too, huh? Acting tough?"
"Honey, I don't act tough, I am tough. Because I need to be. We can't all run and hide when the love of our life starts spewin' venom."
"She's not-"
But Mason cut herself off. She didn't want to say those words, the love of my life, but she didn't want to not say them. Which would be worse? That she was wrong or that she was right?
You haven't even known her that long, she thought.
So what? She hadn't known Gina long before she knew she was in love with her. And Gina was gone, so what was the problem?
The problem was Gina was gone.
"Alright, you want to help? Then tell me how. How can I make it when there are so many…so many people I don't want to lose? I can't lose. Not…again."
She didn't mean to say it, didn't mean to say anything, and least of all to Merle, but she was drunk and the words would not be contained. She stared into the bottle, vaguely surprised by how much they'd drunk but mostly horrified by her own lack of inhibition.
It startled her when Merle pried the bottle away, though he did it with unexpected gentleness. She glanced at him, prepared for some snarky comment about her stupidity, her weakness. Because that's what it was. In spite of all the rules she'd laid down for herself after Gina, in spite of knowing how easily, how eagerly, the new world took the things you loved most…
She was a fucking idiot.
But when he spoke there was no scorn. Only tired understanding. "I honestly don't know, sweetheart. I been tryin' to figure that out myself."
Mason sighed. "Well, awesome."
"Don't know what else you were expecting from a backwoods mutant like me."
"What about your infinite wisdom?"
"Part of my façade, sunshine."
They smiled with companionable cynicism and passed the bottle back and forth several times. When it was nearly gone, Merle said, "So who was it?"
Mason stiffened. "My…my girlfriend," she whispered. "I couldn't save her. She was the most important person in my life, and… It had to be her."
"Of course it did," Merle said. "Those important ones are always at the top of the list. Life has a funny sense of humor."
Mason thought of Rick's face when it was Maggie, not Lori, who walked out of the prison with his baby. The ruin in his eyes. How familiar it was.
"Don't it, though?" she said.
"That why you're givin' your new princess the cold shoulder?"
"I'm not giving her the cold shoulder, I'm trying to figure my shit out."
"You're a pussy is what you're sayin'."
Mason gaped at him. "Excuse me? You literally just said if you care, you die."
Merle nodded. "And I stand by that. Ain't nothin' worse than makin' space for someone in your life, because when they're gone there's just nothin'."
"You're unbelievable. Fucking unbelievable. Just when I think there might be a part of you that's actually human, you go right back to mutant. Fuck you."
"Don't you remember what I said?" Merle drained the bottle and tossed it onto his cot.
Mason shook her head, more out of frustration than anything else. "You're all over the goddam place."
"I'm drunk, what do you expect? Look, I ain't ever lost anyone I was particularly close to. There's been a few I'll admit it was a shame to see go, but…" He paused, and something in his eyes drew away from the world.
"But for a while there, I was sure my brother was dead. He had to be. I searched and searched and never found him, and it just made sense, you know? We grew up, and we only cared about each other. That's how it always was. It just made sense that he'd get taken from me."
Mason chewed the inside of her lip. "And how…did you deal with that?"
Merle snorted. "Did you think I just fell in with the Governor so we could paint each other's nails? It was the only way…"
He trailed off, his jaw shifting as he struggled with the emotion on his face. Mason pretended to be distracted by a string on the hem of her shirt.
"Look, sunshine," he finally continued, "there are people like me, and then there are the rest. The sentimental ones. The ones that save babies and kittens even though it's stupid and pointless. I told you if you care you die, but I also told you that you're like my brother. And my brother, when he cares about something, he's brave about it. Understand?"
It was becoming difficult to understand much in her hazy state, but this. This was crystal clear. Did she understand? Yes, of course she did. It was this understanding that made her heart thump too quickly, her lungs shrivel like rotten fruits.
She stared at Merle for a long time before she said, "Got anymore booze?"
~m~
When Rick, Daryl and Hershel returned, Mason was caught in the gray no-man's-land between drunk and hungover. She stood as still as possible next to Merle, quite a feat considering she couldn't get her eyes to focus. Merle, however, looked as sober as sober could be. The bastard.
"So I met this Governor," Rick says. A humorless smile played briefly at his lips. "Sat with him for quite a while."
"Just the two of you?" Merle asked and Rick nodded distantly.
Merle and Mason exchanged a glance before he whispered a quiet aside to Glenn.
"Shoulda gone when we had the chance, bro."
Glenn swallowed hard but he kept quiet. Maggie twined her fingers with his and glared daggers at Merle.
Unaware of this exchange, Rick continued, "He wants the prison. He wants us gone. Dead. He wants us dead."
Reflexively, Mason looked at Beth, all of her fears ripped open anew.
If you care, then eventually you die.
Dying on the inside or dying for real, it made little difference. She'd died once and been brought back to life, raised from the dead like a walker. Everything in her resisted the urge to bare herself like that again, to give so much of her vital self to someone else. But she didn't know if she had a choice in the matter.
Rick's eyes flickered back and forth between the faces of his group, the family that had taken her in. He said, "We're going to war."
No one said anything. The whole room was a tinderbox, waiting for a flame.
It was a graveyard waiting for corpses.
Beth's eyes flashed to Mason and she looked away, coward as always. She took in all the others- Glenn and Maggie, Carol and Hershel, Carl and Michonne. Daryl nodding to his brother, who barely nodded back. She recognized then the despair hidden so deep in him that he could hardly acknowledge it. It wasn't just his brother she had something in common with.
Eventually the group dispersed, subdued by the dissolution of their last hope. Mason stumbled for her cell, more than a little reluctant to share such tight quarters with Beth but unable to deny her need for sleep.
Rick reached her before she got there, grim-faced and furtive. It dawned on her then that he hadn't shared everything with the group.
"Come with me," he whispered, and though she groaned internally she followed.
He led her out to the courtyard, where Daryl and Hershel were already waiting. Her nerves buzzed with apprehension. Hershel's grave expression matched Rick's, but Daryl appeared to know as little about what was happening as she did.
"What's going on…?" she said slowly.
Rick hesitated, instinctively seeking Hershel's support. The old man nodded.
"When I talked with the Governor," Rick said, "he gave me a choice."
Mason swayed a little. "What kind of choice?"
"He said he didn't care about us. Or the prison. He said he'd leave us alone if I gave him something in return."
Daryl narrowed his eyes. "So what does he want?"
Rick looked down at the ground. Just slightly, his fingers were trembling.
"Michonne."