The Prisoner Of Woodbury

Chapter 12

It is a strange feeling to be willingly escorted into a prison.

Merle has an inexplicable urge to let Rick rough him up a bit. Give the onlookers a show.

Old habits and all that.

He quips that maybe Friendly and Shane could do the good cop bad cop routine on him, and the deafening silence he gets for that, accompanied by what could only be described as a chillingly hostile eye-f*ck from Rick, makes it clear that that particular half of the King County duo is most definitely out of commission.

His caustic sense of humour would also have him ask where the rest of the welcoming committee got to, but that would be pushing his luck. Everybody knows what the absence of familiar faces means these days. Indeed, the prison group makes for a sorry sight - even more so after Woodbury, and that might be a fantasy world – a group of sheep lead by a wolf, but if this is reality, Merle can understand why you might prefer to lie to yourself.

It is hard to find comfort in these walls. Merle swallows hard as he's shown through the cell block, not because of his long and complicated relationship with places of incarceration, but because of whom prison cells now remind him of. He's never looked at it like this before. When it was just about him, he could push those feelings of dread aside, file them away in some compartment of his mind, bury them under layers of bravado and bad attitude, but it isn't just about him anymore and he hates it – every single inch of it – this ugliness... this gloom... it closes in on him... makes him want to tear everything apart...

How does she stand it?

He thinks back to the time when they were still warily circling each other. When she could barely look at him. He remembers saying something to her, can hardly recall what it was now - was just running his mouth as he always did, and at some point it dawned on him that she was actually listening... taking notice...

And that did something to him...

He can't describe what, but the idea that he had given her something, even if it was just some miniscule amount of attention...

He was hard on himself for it later. Put himself down with the usual accusation of going soft, because according to the gospel of Merle Dixon there was no worse sin than that, but now, as he takes his place in a cell not entirely dissimilar to hers, he feels close to her. Understands what it was he'd been trying to do and why.

How he wishes he could have spent more time with her. It pains him to think that he knows practically nothing about her. But what could he have done? Those who had known her had given him nothing. Not even her real name. Had given up on her as soon as she'd outlasted her 'usefulness'.

It was no doubt easier that way.
Why trouble yourself with something so inconvenient as guilt when you can pretend she's just another test subject or ignore her entirely?

And the erasure of all she had once been would be complete... were it not for one thing...

The photo.

Merle pulls it out of his pocket and sighs. He's looked at it what feels like a million times and yet it never fails to enchant him. She has a quiet loveliness about her that brings tears to his eyes. In former days, he'd likely have written her off as a wallflower or a plain jane, but only because secretly he knew she was too good for him.

He often wonders what she'd been thinking in that moment. Where had it been taken and by whom? What had that person been to her?
Merle has asked himself a time or two if it had been the Governor who took the photo but can never bring himself to believe it, because for someone so lovely to gift the Governor a smile like that goes against the laws of all that is right and good...