Indignant outrage is a force to be reckoned with.
Merle had never considered he might experience such an emotion. Had never thought anybody would cause him to feel such a way, (anybody other than his brother, that is).
It happened though.
For someone he barely knew... and yet somehow she had done it.
And now here he is.
On the point of killing for her.
He finds himself on the threshold to the Governor's quarters and has no idea how he got here. It's as if he'd been sleeping and somehow woke up in this place. The echoes of a terrible dream lingering in his senses. One thought on his mind.
Gotta end it.
There was surely no other way.
How strange to reach this conclusion considering all that has gone before.
One might argue that Merle had no cause to react in such a fashion; after all, the Governor had saved his life, taken him in, recognized his potential and put trust in him accordingly.
And yet...
He had completely destroyed this woman and all she had been. Left her to rot.
And for what?
Because she "didn't give him a chance"?
What was that even supposed to mean?
So... he snapped because she wouldn't f*ck him...?
Was that what this was all about?
Or maybe he'd been hoping for a mother for his undead child?
Is that what he'd been after?
It's all too much for Merle.
Her image pushes him forwards. The image of how she once had been.
He'd always felt he'd been born to lose, so what happened to him, well, it was inevitable, the punchline to a bad joke...
But her...
He can hardly breathe as he reaches for the door handle. His heart is beating a mile a minute. But as so often, he pushes it aside and leaves no room for sentiment. After all, he had gotten to where he was by doing what needed to be done. In this world, it was the only way.
It seems the world has something else in mind this evening however, because instead of him opening the door, it opens for him...
…and instead of the Governor, it is Andrea who appears before him.
Utterly dumbfounded, he stumbles forwards like a clumsy oaf in a slapstick comedy. So much for the sure and steady movements he'd intended.
She visibly startles. A frightened yelp echoes loudly as she backs away from him, and the mortification he feels at this spanner in the works instantly morphs into irritation.
"Jesus christ woman! What tha f*ck are ya doin'? Tryin' to gimme a heart attack o' somethin'?"
"I could ask the same of you! What are you doing skulking about down here this time of night?"
"I'm security, Blondie, what else should I be doin'?"
The Governor makes an appearance then, a smirk pulling at the corner of his lips that Merle would love to wipe off his smug bastard face, but alas, Andrea stands in the way.
"Good evening, Merle, hard at work I see," the leader greets casually, like a man without a care in the world. The easygoing demeanour is soon replaced with a frown, however.
"I thought Martinez was on nights this week?"
Merle bites back a curse - nothing escapes the man's notice.
"He was. Swapped shifts. Don't sleep so good. Figured someone should get some shut-eye." Merle takes pains to maintain eye contact as he speaks, and it isn't difficult because although this was not his motive, it isn't a lie either.
"Is that so? And what, may I ask, is keeping you up at night?" The smile that accompanies this question is one of those non-smiles the Governor is so good at doling out that has Merle questioning his own name. Needless to say, he detests it.
"Same thing that's keepin' everyone up at night," he readily replies, because with all that's gone down, it's a lucky man who gets a good night's rest these days.
The Governor nods. Deep in thought. Andrea does too before making her way down the corridor and back to her room. Yes, they all knew about that alright.
"You worry about your brother?"
And just like that, Merle wonders what the hell he'd been thinking. It's almost as if he's letting him off the hook. All thought of what brought him here flies out the window and a strange kind of relief settles upon him.
As if to accentuate this, the Governor steps forward and places a hand upon his shoulder.
"You'll get your chance, ok?"
Merle closes his eyes because he wants so badly to believe this. Wants to believe this man holds him that high in esteem. He knows it isn't true, but sometimes the desire to give the reins to somebody else has us defer against our better judgement. For a man who liked to think he was beholden to no one, Merle was not so unlike his fellow citizens of Woodbury in that respect really. And they both know what the alternative is, so Merle nods and swallows the bitter pill, because an empty promise is better than no promise, and a safe haven is better than being out there alone.
He's halfway down the corridor when the Governor calls him back.
A dark voice from somewhere deep inside him whispers that this is his chance to finish what he started, but he tells it to shut up and though he will never admit it, the decision probably has something to do with the fond expression directed at him from the man in charge.
"What were you doing down here at this time of night?"
It's a loaded question and Merle knows much is riding on how he reacts. Fortunately, he's gotten pretty good at dealing with these situations of late.
"Thought I heard noises, y'know?" he shrugs with overdramatic flair. "Sounded like chipmunks o' somethin'..." he adds, with a lewd and knowing grin.
The Governor chuckles and shakes his head, "Wouldn't you like to know?"
.
The conversation replays in Merle's mind all the way back to his room.
Giving him an excuse to feel better that he didn't act.
It doesn't last.
The file hidden under his mattress is waiting for him. Telling him what a spineless coward he is.
Just when Merle thinks he cannot detest Milton any more than he already does, the nerd goes on to surprise him.
The file he stole from the lab is a case in point. Instead of the informative and useful read he'd been hoping for, it's an utter snoozefest. Heavily littered with scientific terms that mean nothing to the layman, it's practically a foreign language.
Which brings him to wondering who on earth he could've written it for. Was he hoping some leading light in the world of science was going to turn up on their doorstep and hail him for his genius? Because to be honest, no one else could do anything with this and that includes their leader.
Merle squints as if this might help. Reads slower. Tries to puzzle out what might be meant. Feels himself getting angry because it's as if the geek is mocking him. He is certain it's intentional. That Milton and his ilk get a kick out of making others feel dumb. Wouldn't be surprised if it was that sort of thing that got them into this mess in the first place.
It's all just one big pissin' contest. A race to the goddamn bottom.
By this reckoning, what Milton said about how he'd been 'going to end it' couldn't be true. There was simply no way. No matter how bad things had gotten for her. No matter what findings he'd made in his research. After all, who was going to let doing the right thing stand in the way of progress?
"You reckon they cooked this shit up in a lab or somethin'?" he muses, and wasn't that a thought to have in the early hours of the morning? Still, it seems to be the preferred time for most of his thinking these days, and as ever, he craves his usual companion as a sounding board. He passes her a stale candy bar and receives a grateful smile, which sadly, due to the conversation topic, morphs into a frown.
"Way back when it all started, the news channels were talking 'bout bio-terrorism, y'know? They kept goin' on about how it must be the Chinese or the Russians or something..." Merle finds himself chuckling because the terms he'd been about to use for those nations had not been politically correct, but he'd caught himself in time. Why he feels the need to censor himself he doesn't quite know, he's never gone to such trouble previously, but perhaps it's because for once he has a captive audience who is not merely waiting for an opportunity to pull him up about these things. After all, the reason he took such pains to provoke was because he was so good at it. People expected the worst of him, so that's what he gave them. Yet with her, none of this had taken place – she didn't write him off or look down her nose at him so maybe that's why he didn't feel the need to play up to the role he had so clearly stamped upon him. That's what he tells himself anyway.
"Yeah, it was our enemies tryin' to bring us down," he says, picking up where he left off, "tryin' to take us outta the race because they hate us and all we stand for..." A bitterness bleeds into his tone - a weariness he cannot hide, because he's heard it all before, they all had - the voices were different but the song remains the same.
"Did you buy into that?" he asks, his eyes narrowing as they meet hers. "Did you believe all that bullshit?" It's a rhetorical question, his voice tight with an anger that has no place to go, and he's sorry to be a Debbie Downer but so much has gone down even before all this happened that makes it difficult to believe that their glorious nation was innocent. They sure were quick to point the finger, that's all he knows.
"All that money, all those years... Hundreds of billions of dollars for the military, year in, year out..." he rubs a hand over his face, "I served, y'know? So much shit swept under the carpet, you wouldn't believe..."
He looks up to find sad eyes upon him and is sorry to upset her. After all, she has lost more than any of them. His gaze drifts to the ground, but in the corner of his eye he registers movement and then he has to swallow real hard on the lump in his throat because yes, this is her offering him what's left of the candy bar.
He draws her into a hug. It's no easy undertaking because she's a tangle of wrecked knees and useless limbs but he can't find it in him to care and if the way she relaxes into it is anything to go by, neither can she.
And with this, all the anger - the venomous cocktail of disappointment and frustration that makes him want to pull his hair out morphs into the kind of sadness that can only come with something so bittersweet. How can the world be so ugly and unfair and yet so… good? He is shaking because he can hardly bear it. A voice that has been ordering him around his whole life tells him to man up and yet he tells it to go to hell because why can't he feel this way? Why shouldn't he? Why did he always have to take it on the chin? Why did she? Why couldn't they hold each other here in this world where they would forever be paying for a f*ck up of epic proportions on someone else's watch?
The worst part was, that they'd had it so good and not known it. He wants to go back to the man he once was and knock sense into him because even the clusterf*ck of a life he once lead was better than how things currently stood.
How blind they had been! Spoilt brats sauntering through life, assuming that fate would always smile upon them and their entitled existences, little knowing that one day the scales would not only tip out of their favour but fall off the table completely.
And here he was - as entitled as ever - lamenting there would be no justice when the best one could hope for was survival. Taking comfort in the embrace of a woman who was dead. Oh yes, he'd sunk low here. Flesh and blood, alive and kicking - whining like some child whose mother wouldn't buy him a milkshake...
And here she was - trying to cheer him up! It was a humbling display and Merle had never been one for reflecting on his less than exemplary behaviour, but even he could tell that if ever there was a time to quit griping, it was now.
He holds her tighter and tells her he's sorry, that he's trying, that she has a free pass to tell him to shut the f*ck up whenever she feels so inclined… That maybe someday, when he finally has his shit together, they will walk out of here, the Governor and Woodbury be damned… get their own show on the road somewhere… maybe find Daryl…
Her response to all this is to sigh and nuzzle into his shoulder, and he's about to quip that he's not really one for cuddling, but a quick review of all recent interactions makes a mockery of that - indeed, any and all macho behaviour is going to have a hard time standing up in court these days...
So, he pushes the thought to one side in favour of pulling the blanket over them and getting them comfortable.
"Did I ever tell you about the bunch of assholes me and my brother ended up with before I came here?"