Chapter Text
When Daryl's pulled over he knows that he's in trouble. The night is hot and it makes the collar of his shirt stick to him, sweat beading down the back of his neck. Keep your composure, he tells himself. There's two cops that smile at him when they realize just who was in Merle Dixon's truck. Merle's truck is recognizable throughout town and really Daryl should have known. Should have known not to take it, should have walked instead.
"Well, well, what do we have here?" The one officer looks at him like he's a lion that's just spotted the perfect prey. There's a dog with them. It's wearing a bullet proof harness and it stares at him in a way that Daryl can only describe as suspicious. When the animal walks the car it starts growling, barking, pawing at the door. The officer's look positively gleeful. "Hey-- Wait, you guys know me. You know I ain't never done this shit- It ain't mine, this ain't my truck."
"You're Daryl Dixon. That's all we need to know, son."
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"The jury finds the defendant guilty and the sentence will be one year in prison and a fine of five hundred dollars. The jury is free to leave now, this court is adjourned."
Daryl hears the squeak of fancy, polished shoes on the ground and he can feel his lawyer staring at him. The lawyer's just a kid, a person that he got by default when he couldn't scrounge up enough money for his own. The kid looks at him nervously, can't be much older than himself. "I told you, I told you that you should've just said it was yours--" Daryl cuts the boy off with a sharp looks and distantly has the urge to strangle him with that stupid red tie that the boy is wearing. That won't help the prison sentence, he thought dryly to himself. Besides, Daryl knew it wasn't his lawyers fault but he will not sit here and listen while his own lawyer tells him the things that he'd done wrong, as if he'd done this.
The judge stares at him for a moment and Daryl can't bring himself to look away. His life, for the unforeseeable future, is over. He knows what prison does to people. Knows what it did to Merle. The thought of his brother gets a fire running in his blood, makes him petty, makes him pathetic with the want to throw himself down in front of the judge and just plead, tell him that the drugs really weren't his. When Daryl's walked away by two officers, he tells himself that his first year of adult hood could have gone worse. He could be dead, after all.
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The first few days are a blur. The eighteen year old is stripped and searched and then changed back into orange prison clothes. They're too big for him but the guard doesn't seem to notice or care, so Daryl draws the drawstring of the pants as tight as he can get them and rolls the waistband once and then twice. The shirt isn't nearly as bad. He finds that he's glad to have something to cover himself in, even something that's ill fitting. He'd fought to keep his trembles to himself when his scars were bared open to the world and the guard had halted in the search, staring with curiosity. The shirt feels like a barrier.
Daryl then gets a quick check up by the doctor and he's sent on his way. Over the next few days Daryl's moved around quite a lot, to different cells, different areas and then he's finally there. In his final resting place, so to speak. He tells himself not to be so dramatic but some of the other inmates look at him in a way that makes him shiver with revulsion. The boy juts his bottom jaw forward and puts a mean glare on his face to ward off any further looks. This is the prison that he'll be in for the next year, he thinks with a sigh. Not all that much get's explained to him other than the regular rules and bigger violations that he may run into. He's asked to make a preapproved visitation list though really he won't be allowed to get a visitor for the first six weeks of his stay. He hesitates for a good long while before he writes down in a scrawl, Merle Dixon. He gets a chance at reduced time if he behaves well and that's what he holds onto.
It's when they throw him into a cell, that's when Daryl panics. He'd looked all around and saw that each cell before his had room for two. Two people in each. That meant he'd either get lucky enough to get an already empty cell or he'd be thrown into a cell that only had one person. Daryl had always known that he wasn't that lucky. Dixon's never were.
The cell is small, as to be expected. There's two beds, bunk beds and it makes Daryl wonder if anyone's ever fallen from the top bunk down to the hard, concrete floor. Again his luck refuses to show itself as there's already a man laying down in the bottom bunk and that means the top bunk is his.
"Grimes," The guard behind him barks. The man inside is laying in the bed with a book covering his face. He's able to see a cock of a brow and a hear a hum, legs crossed at the ankle in a relaxed posture. "You're getting someone new." At that the man finally looks up, sharp blue eyes finding Daryl. Daryl stares back and tells himself to grow a spine, to not look weak. He can't look weak. Not in front of a man that he'll be spending a year with. The book lowers and Daryl is able to see more of his face. The man's not particularly buff, he looks more tall and lean than anything else. His eyes are a light blue but there's something lurking behind them. Something that certainly isn't happiness. He has brown wavy hair and his face is freshly shaven. Something glints in the dim light and the teen recognizes it as a wedding band.
"What, we're putting sixteen year olds in prison now?" The man, Grimes, intones after a moment or two in a dry, calculating tone. The guard only snorts, snorts like they already know each other and are good friends. "He's eighteen. Fresh outta diapers. Try and make sure he doesn't piss himself, yeah?" The guard behind him laughs, boisterous and loud. He's got a ridiculous mustache and ginger hair. Grimes only huffs out a breath that seems lightly amused but doesn't say anything else. Daryl feels his skin heat and he can only glare as he's pushed further into the room before the guard goes swaggering off, whistling as he goes.
The door has locked behind him and he studies the room again to give himself something to focus on instead of the hyperventilating that his body wants to fall back on. The two bunks, the urinal. The little picture that's taped to the wall right beside Grimes. He can't study it for long, not when the man is staring at him so intensely. It's not the look that some of the other prisoners gave him. This is wariness, distrust and curiousness. Daryl swallows roughly, standing there as his eyes finally travel back to the man. The man who is staring right back at him. Their eyes meet and they stay like that for a second or two. Too long, Daryl thinks to himself and he cuts his gaze away. Out of the corner of Daryl's eyes he watched as the wavy haired one slowly raised the book back up to his face, noticing the tight knuckle grip that he suddenly had on the book. Daryl got onto the top bunk a moment later.
There's a knot in his chest that won't loosen. It refused. The silence is uncomfortable. It's tense. It makes him want to grab at his choppy blond locks and rip the tufts out of his head. Eventually the dim light goes off and there's shuffling. Daryl holds his breath until it quiets and he allows himself to shuffle under the blanket of his bunk as well. Daryl has a lot of wonders tonight. He wonders of who he's staying with. Was his cell mate a thief, a murderer, a drug dealer?
And then in a saddened, bitter thought, he wonders what Merle is doing tonight.
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Drip, drop. Drip, drop. The blood is falling from his knuckles. He's covered in sweat and blood and he wants more. More blood. His anger has consumed him, his grief has taken away the last bit of sanity that he had. The sirens wail in the background.
"Brother-- Brother, please- You can't do this. Man, don't make me use these on you!" He ignores his brother. He's too far gone now. He knows that, knows that what he's done can't simply be undone. There's a swear word, cursed and bitten off and then he hears the footsteps. He doesn't pay them much mind. He can't, not when he's like this. Not when his hands are too busy trying to squeeze the life out of someone, trying to show him how much pain he'd caused him. Not when his blue eyes are filled to the brim with insanity. Grief has taken him and transformed him into something dangerous, into something ugly. Then there's burly arms around him and he's tackled to the ground.
"Oh God, Rick. What've you done? Brother, what've you done?"
What I had to do, Rick thinks to himself when cuffs are linked to his wrists.