Sakiko had finally broken the wire off from around her hands.

Rolling out from under the bed, she rips the tape from her mouth and takes a deep breath.

"That son of a bitch," she pants, untying the wire from around her ankles.

Stumbling to stand, she picks up the mattress on the top bunk to retrieve her knives that Merle had stashed and jogs out from the cell. She nearly got lost trying to find her way back to the cell block the others were and finally hears the sound of Glenn and Ryan arguing- Maggie in the middle as she tried to defuse the situation between the brothers.

Arguing over her to be exact.

"If you would have been watching her, she wouldn't have gone off!" Ryan shouts, "Now she's out there with just Merle?"

"What else was I supposed to do? He can track her, we can't. And we don't know how long until Daryl and Nanami get back- Merle was the only option," Glenn defends.

"Merle!" Sakiko shouts, "Where's Merle?"

At the sound of her voice, the arguing stops as they look over to her.

"Kiko?" Ryan asks, disbelief in his voice.

"Merle.." she breathes, "Where did he go?"

"Where did Merle go? Where the hell did you go?" Glenn asks, pointing to her.

"He tricked me. Tied me up," she points to a further part of the prison, "Made for great family bondage time."

"He.." Glenn begins, shaking his head at the choice of words.

"He told us that you left to go after the others," Maggie steps up, "So, he was going to get you back."

Sakiko throws her head back, groaning aloud before rushing to the table and picking up a gun that she prayed she didn't have to shoot.

"What are you doing?" Glenn asks.

"I've gotta go get him," she states, "I'll be back soon."

"Sakiko, you can't just- hey!" Glenn shouts, running after her.

Sakiko ducks his arms, dashing up the stairs and outside the prison.

"Sakiko!" Ryan shouts, following after her.

She slows down enough to a stop, running back to where Ryan was.

"I'll be right back," she says again, kissing him quickly and running off again.

"Sakiko!" Glenn calls, though she was already running down the courtyard.

"Goddammit!" Glenn hisses, kicking the fence.

--

Sakiko traced Merle's footsteps through the woods, the tracking feeling like second nature as she jogged after him.

Soon enough, she ran into a note on a tree. She plucks it off, reading the content that felt like a warning.

'Go back. Take care of Daryl and Na.'

Sakiko sighs, rolling her eyes as she crumbles the note up and tosses it on the ground- hurrying along the path.

--

"Gone? The hell do you mean?" Daryl asks.

"I mean Merle tied Sakiko up or something and said she went off. He used that to go after her and then when she made it out, she went after him.. God, I don't know," Glenn exasperates, "Your family has lost it."

"Come on," Daryl pats Nanami's arm.

Nanami takes the cue, picking himself up and following Daryl.

"Where are you going?" Rick asks, confused by the onslaught of news.

"Where do you think?" Daryl calls over his shoulder.

Rick sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration.

--

"Merle!" Sakiko calls, seeing the man's back.

"I told you to go back," Merle responds.

"Not without you," she argues, "The others are probably on their way back if they aren't already there. Come on. Let's go-"

"What?" Merle asks, turning to look at her, "Home?"

Sakiko slows her steps, looking across the woods to him, "Yeah. Home."

"That place ain't my home, kiddo," Merle denies.

"Maybe not.. But, Nanami and Daryl are there. Isn't that worth something? To me, it's everything. What about you?"

Merle makes sure that his face doesn't show the feelings in his chest. Her words were reminding him of Daryl's before he left. 'I just want my brother back' is what Daryl had told Merle..

"That's why I gotta do this," Merle swallows, "To keep 'em safe. You, too."

"That doesn't mean you have to do it alone," Sakiko shakes her head, a lump forming in her own throat, "We can't do anything alone."

"I do better on my own."

"I used to think the same," Sakiko relates.

"Me and you are two different people," Merle frowns.

"We both left our brothers behind because we were afraid."

Merle's head tilts, readying his words to argue with the teen.

"I was afraid of Shane and the others for how I would get punished. You were afraid of your dad. We both left them behind to help ourselves."

"I wasn't afraid," Merle's eyes turn colder.

"You were," Sakiko smiles softly, "Because I was, too."

Merle was ready to tell her that their dad's weren't the same either.. But, he knew that was a lie. Will Dixon would have gotten along great with Shinsuke and all their internal issues would have made for great bonding sessions. They were one and the same.

"You enlisted in the military," Sakiko recalls the stories, "I went blindly into the walker-infested woods. Either way, we put ourselves at risk because we were too afraid to face our lives."

Merle Dixon had never been left speechless by a seventeen year old telling him facts of his own life. Yet, here he was. Staring blank and dumbly at the girl like she'd somehow opened up his chest and read every bit of his soul that he thought he'd lost a long time ago.

"Are you really going to leave Daryl behind? Again?" she asks.

"You take care of him," Merle forces himself to say with a light shrug, "There's a reason y'all were ready to go off on your own."

"And there's a reason Daryl called you at that gas station. A reason that he had both of us leave the group because they wouldn't accept you," Sakiko takes careful steps toward Merle, "He needs you. He might not say it and you don't want to hear it, but it's true. And you need him just as much, if not more."

But, Daryl had said it. Daryl told Merle that he wanted his brother back. Daryl told Merle that he wanted him.

Merle looks the way he was going, then the way he came.

He needed Daryl, yes. But, there was always something that went above that.

All Merle wanted was to keep his baby brother safe.

"I gotta do this," Merle sighs, "To keep him alive. Out of this fight.. Safe."

"Merle-"

"Kid, I left him behind to die with our old man. Then, I fucked up so bad that I got myself cuffed to that roof and left him behind again. Fucked up again with the pizza boy and the farmer's daughter. I keep letting Daryl down. I keep putting him in danger.."

Merle takes a deep breath, shaking his head with determination running through his veins like it was his new drug.

"Not anymore. Not this time. I'm killing that son of a bitch and keeping Daryl safe. I gotta make it right," Merle states.

He walks off, soon hearing the crunch of leaves behind him as Sakiko catches up to him.

"Kid-"

"No one can make it alone anymore," she says, looking up to him, "I won't let you be alone."

No one had told Merle that before. Merle had always been alone- rather by people leaving or his own acts getting in his way.

Here was this kid he's seen grow up- worming her way in despite his arguments. No wonder Daryl couldn't leave the kids behind. They had a way of getting under his skin- Daryl was weaker at the heart when it came to that. Somehow, she'd finally broken Merle down.

"Then, let's finish this," Merle nods.

Sakiko gives him a nod back and for once, Merle didn't feel so incomplete.

𝒶𝓊𝓉𝒽𝑜𝓇 𝓇𝒶𝓂𝒷𝓁𝑒𝓈--

im cry im gonna miss this book so much

theres still a few chapters but just-

😭😭