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Merle was not a good person. He knew that, his father knew that, every goddamn person in this backwater little town knew that. But Merle loved his little brother, and the fucking idiot was damn lucky he did.
Said idiotic little brother was currently sitting on their shitty little couch, staring blankly at the short letter they had found on the ground in front of their trailer.
Along with a baby.
Because his stupid little brother had gotten some chick pregnant.
There was no denying that the thing was his, what with those huge fucking eyes, the exact same shade of blue, and a tiny little button nose neither of the Dixon boys had inherited but Merle remembered seeing on his Mama.
The thing was asleep now, hadn’t been inside a minute before conking out. It was a little unfair, seeing as the thing had woken the two of them up at the ungodly hour of eight in the damn morning howling a like a tiny little banshee.
“You remember the broad ya knocked up, little brother?” Merle drawled. Daryl slumped over even further, his eyes shifting from the letter to the sleeping baby in it’s little baby carrier. At least it hadn’t arrived in a basket. That would have been too much.
Daryl finally managed to choke out, “Not...not really. I think she was blonde, maybe? I dunno, I was really, really drunk.”
Merle figured as much. For all that Daryl was only nineteen, he was usually a lot smarter than this.
Hell, Merle was twenty-five, and usually the less responsible of the two, and even he had never done anything this stupid.
Just wait till their father got home, Daryl would be in for the beating of his life.
With a heavy sigh, Merle heaved himself out of the worn recliner and grabbed the keys to his motorcycle off the table. Daryl looked at him curiously, and Merle gave his baby brother a crooked smile.
“I’m headed out to the store, babies need to eat like every five minutes or some shit. And we’re gonna need diapers too, and them little sucky things babies like. Fuck if I know what else, I’ll ask Dorene, god knows she’s got enough of them to know what’s up.”
He stomped out the door without another word, heading straight for the middle aged woman a few trailers down with a smoking problem and about thirty goddamn kids. Lord knows where she keeps all of them, they probably sleep on top of each other.
Merle loved his little brother, and he could already tell that this thing, useless and tiny and probably noisy and smelly and annoying as all hell, was gonna carve out a place right next to her daddy in ol’ Merle’s black little heart.
The door closed behind his brother, and Daryl went back to staring at the letter. Well, more like a note, really.
Her name is Josephine. I don’t want her, don’t contact me. I left the birth certificate in the carrier.
There wasn’t a name. A quick glance at the birth certificate(after a few agonizing minutes spent trying to ease the death grip the infant had on the piece of paper without waking it up) revealed that the mother’s name was left blank.
His name was on there though. Under father. For about the millionth time in the last hour, Daryl felt like someone had kicked him in the chest.
He was a father, Jesus Fucking Christ. Merle was an uncle too, and that was somehow even weirder. Daryl took a second to imagine his big, tough older brother sitting down for a tea party with a little girl, the constipated look on his face, and smothered a hysterical laugh.
Daryl had no fuckin’ idea what he would do when the thing woke up.
Babies were constantly screaming and crying and shitting themselves. They needed someone to hold them and talk to them and teach them right from wrong, and Daryl would be the first to admit that not one of the Dixon men were up for the job.
Just look at how bad Will had messed him and Merle up. Both of them barely scraped through high school, neither one really employed beyond fixing the odd car for a friend of a friend and selling some of the meat they drug in from the woods. Merle had been dishonorably discharged from the Army for punching a SO in the face.
He did love to tell the story of the ‘stuck-up piece of shit’ spitting out his own teeth.
Their mama woulda known what to do. She would’ve swanned in, dirty blonde hair pulled up in a tail, smelling like smoke and cheap perfume and home . Woulda taken one look at the baby on the scratched up coffee table and fallen in love, instantly and deeply and completely .
But their mama was dead, and Daryl still had no idea what to do. What would they even feed the damn thing? It wasn’t like the mother was around, and like hell Daryl was gonna walk around the trailer park and ask one of the women to offer up a boob.
And, hell, they lived in a trailer park. In a rundown two-bedroom trailer filled with all kinds of crap that had been piling up over the last couple months, because none of them could be bothered to pick up. Will had alcohol of every kind scattered around that he downed like water whenever he managed to drag his ass back in from wherever the hell he went these days, Merle left out both his cocaine and his dirty magazines without a care in the world, and Daryl himself never remembered to put away all the knives and arrowheads after he was done sharpening them.
Any baby forced to live in this dump would be dead within a week, and that was being generous.
The baby stirred, eyelids fluttering, and Daryl froze in panic. It made a weird(adorable) as hell little squeaky noise before blue eyes opened and stared straight into his fucking soul.
They were stuck in a stalemate for a minute, before the baby screwed up its’ face, tears gathering in eyes that were just way too big to be normal.
Daryl had been around enough new mothers and their babies in the trailer park to know when one was about to start screaming. He didn’t have any food for it, or one of those sucky things, or anything to clean its’ ass.
Panicked, he dived for the baby and spent a couple seconds figuring out how to pick it up without it breaking, fuck it was so tiny and babies were supposed to be fragile , right? He held it against his chest and tried to hum soothingly like he saw mother’s do sometimes, but all that came out was a panicked wheeze that seemed to make the screaming even louder.
He tried bouncing, walking around, even petting the thing on the head like a damn dog, but it just kept wailing. Finally he just flopped down on the dirty couch, exhausted and so fucking panicked that he had to keep blinking his burning eyes to keep from joining the baby because he was a grown ass man, dammit, and a Dixon to boot. Dixon men didn’t fucking cry.
Daryl held the baby’s head to his chest and tried not to choke on his own tongue.
A couple minutes later, though it felt more like a hundred years, the baby seemed to cry itself out. Now it was just staring at Daryl with those huge fucking eyes. It blinked blearily. Blew a spit bubble. Flopped an uncoordinated arm towards his face but ended up slapping his neck instead.
The baby stared at the pudgy little hand like it had been betrayed. Screwed its’ face up again. Daryl followed an instinct he had no idea he had and made a gentle shushing noise, laying a gentle hand on the back of a tiny little bald head.
His hand spanned the entire thing, he cupped an entire skull in his palm, and the baby calmed. It let out a little coo and fell limp against him, cuddling further into his chest. Daryl shifted his hold slowly, until the baby was pressed right up against his heart. That was supposed to be good for babies, right? Something about a mother’s heartbeat in utero calming them down, he was pretty sure he heard it somewhere.
The thing fell back asleep a few minutes later, and Daryl spent a good ten minutes just staring at it’s peaceful face. Tiny pink lips smacked in sleep, and Daryl had to fight a smile.
“Josephine Dixon, huh?” he murmured, his hand migrating back up to the baby’s - his daughter’s - head. “You’d probably have a better chance in the system than you would here.”
His daughter- Josephine - snuffled deeper into his chest.
“I’m serious, girl. You’ll be dead in a week in you stay. You’ll stick some of Merle’s coke in your mouth, or Will’s gonna try feeding you with moonshine, or I’ll forget to pack up my shit and you’ll cut yourself open.”
The baby just breathed rhythmically.
“I’m fucking keeping you, aren’t I?” Daryl murmured quietly. “You really would be a hell of a lot better off anywhere that’s not here, but I’m a selfish bastard.”
Someone hammered on the door, and the baby - his baby - jerked awake with a startled wail. Mrs. Wendal, a middle aged homemaker from the next trailer over whose kids had already moved out and so had nothing better to do when her husband was at work than involve herself in every single damn thing that was none of her business, started screeching.
“Dixon, do I hear a baby in there? Why in the hell do you have a baby in that shithole, Dixon? Did that brother of yours get some poor girl pregnant? I know you’re in there, Dixon, answer me! Open the goddamn door!”
Daryl groaned, the combined efforts of baby and the harpy making his ears ring.
“I swear to god, Dixon, I’ll call up your landlord, just see if I don’t! You’ve got till the count of three, young ma-ah! Christ, Merle Dixon, don’t just sneak up on people like that. You coulda given this poor old woman a heart attack!”
“And what a damn shame that woulda been,” Merle drawled. Mrs. Wendal sputtered indignantly as Daryl snorted. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, ma’am, it seems my idiot little brother’s sprog is pissed about something, and I bought a whole lotta shit that I wanna put down.”
Merle didn’t wait for an answer, just pushed past and shouldered open the door, kicking it closed in the woman’s screwed up face.
Hands filled with plastic bags, Merle grinned. “So, Darylina, what’d you do to make the baby cry?” Ironically, said baby chose that moment to settle down again, falling back asleep within seconds. Was that normal?
Daryl rolled his eyes. “Weren’t me, fucking harpy started hammering on the door and woke her up.”
“Her? So I’ve got me a niece, then?” Merle asked.
“Yeah. Whoever-the-fuck-she-is left a birth certificate and everything. Her name’s Josephine Dixon, she’s six days old.”
“The bitch didn’t even wait a week to dump her, huh?” Merle dumped the bags on the couch next to Daryl, and held his hands out. “Well, c’mon, lemme see her.”
Daryl gave him a sceptical look, and Merle scoffed. “I hold Ronnie’s baby all the damn time, dumbass, I ain’t gonna break her.” Ronnie being the young mother a few trailers down, pretty enough. Pretty married too, not that it stopped either of them when her husband went out of town for work.
Daryl reluctantly handed the baby over, already missing the slight weight on his chest, and watched like a hawk as Merle settled her into the crook of his arm.
“Hey there, princess,” he cooed, and it was damn near one of the weirdest sights Daryl had even seen. “Josephine is a bit of a mouthful, so how ‘bout Josie, huh? Uncle Merle went and got you a bunch of shit, so he’s gonna be your favorite, a’right?”
Daryl of course argued, and Merle never could resist getting into it with anyone. They both ended up yelling, Josie started screaming, and Mrs. Wendal came back with a vengeance and hammered on the door again. More neighbors came over to see what all the ruckus was about so early in the morning, and soon enough there was a somewhat annoyed mob outside their trailer.
With the exception of the screaming baby, it was pretty much a normal Tuesday morning.
What the actual fucking fuck?!
She let out another panicked cry, a plea for help, but it came out a baby screech once again.
Tears of frustration rolled down her cheeks as giant hands picked her up and brought her into a giant chest with a soothing hum.
She kept sobbing hysterically because what the fuck?!
What the actual fucking fuck?!?!
She was- she had fucking died. There was a knife buried in her gut and blood all over the dirty cement of the back alley and a man scurrying away with her purse in hand and all the twenty dollars and assorted change it contained. She had bled out slowly and it hurt and she couldn’t even call for help because her phone was in her purse.
And now she was here. Wherever the hell here was. Maybe she was in the hospital, having a really freaky coma dream? And when she woke up, her mom would be there and scold her for walking home alone at three in the morning instead of calling for a taxi. Her friends will troop in one by one with flowers and cards and missed school work and fill her in on all the important high school gossip she missed.
Except she could feel the sticky heat of the air on her skin and the scratchy texture of her clothes and when the giants forced a bottle into her mouth she felt the liquid go down her throat. The TV blared in another room, birds chirped and people yelled at each other outside the window.
Even though her vision was blurry and she couldn’t move, this was way too detailed to be a dream.
Which meant it must be reality.
Which was really fucking terrifying.
The giant holding her rocked gently, one huge hand sweeping down her back soothingly. “It’s alright, Josie, Daddy’s here, it’s alright.”
She kept screaming.
Daryl was fucking exhausted, and also happier than he had ever been in his life. His daughter- and even after a month and a half he still couldn’t believe it, he was a father, christ - was indeed loud and smelly and useless. She couldn’t even hold up her own head, for crying out loud.
But in those rare times when she was calm, staring at the world around her with wide blue eyes and a gaping little mouth, cuddled up to his chest and clutching a fistful of his shirt for dear life, he had never seen anything more beautiful.
And she was getting better, even! She screamed like she was being murdered less and less, and stopped refusing to eat.
Merle was wrapped around her little fingers too, doted on her like a little queen. He loved that little girl to pieces, and if that wasn’t just the strangest thing. Hell, Daryl had even heard his brother muttering in the middle of the night, holding Josie as she sniffled and whimpered and trying his damndest to get her back to sleep, about getting a job, moving out of the trailer park. “Get you your own room, and a proper crib, and so much food you won’t even know what to do with it all. Maybe a yard, even, and a dog, I bet you’d love a mutt to cuddle up with.”
It was a pipe dream, Daryl knew. He and Merle were trailer trash, through and through, and everyone knew it. They were lucky as it was that the owner of the trailer park, Marla, had been a friend of their mama’s, back in the day, and let them live there no matter how much she absolutely hated Will.
The feeling was mutual, too, and Will had absolutely no problem letting her know, loudly and rudely, often in public. If not for Daryl and Merle, she would’a tossed them out ages ago. As it was, nobody in this town was going to hire them for anything resembling respectable work. They would have to move to another town altogether, and moving of course required money that they did not have. So they were stuck here.
And then there was Will to consider.
Will, who barged through the door at two in the morning three weeks after Josie was left outside their trailer, stepped on one of Josie’s brand new pacifiers that had somehow made its way over to the door, and started hollering loud enough to wake the dead.
Josie started screaming immediately, and Daryl hoisted himself off of Merle’s bed that they were sharing for the time being. He stumbled the two feet over to his own bed and scooped up his daughter, much more easily now after weeks of practice and a few valuable tips from both Ronnie and Dorene. They had every pillow in their trailer and few borrowed from around the park piled along the edges so the baby couldn’t fall off and kill herself.
“What in the hell is that racket!?” Will roared, and Merle met him at equal volume after heaving himself off the couch. The two of them had been trading off who got the bed.
“That’s you’re fucking grandaughter, old man, and you just woke her up! Along with the rest of the goddamn park and probably half the state of Georgia!”
“The fuck are you talking about, boy? You gone and knocked some girl up while I was gone? Why the hell didn’t you just leave the thing with the broad, I ain’t having no baby in my goddamn house!”
“Well then it’s a good thing it ain’t your goddamn house and we already got the ok from Marla then, isn’t it?” Daryl asked, running a soothing hand along his daughter’s spine as he entered the living room.
Will turned to him with murder in his eyes, glazed over and hazy with whatever foul thing he had poured down his throat this time. “The fuck you just say to me, boy?” he hissed. “That any way to talk to your father?” Will took a menacing step in his direction, before Merle came up behind him and grabbed his collar. Will fell back with a choke.
“You weren’t gonna hit my brother while he’s holding your grandchild, were you?” Will made a strangled noise of rage, and Merle turned around and pulled him out the door. “Get my niece back to bed, Daryl,” he called over his shoulder before the door banged shut.
Daryl did just that.
The next morning, while Daryl was trying to coax his resisting daughter into taking her bottle, Merle threw open the door and marched in, a much more sober Will on his heels, nursing a hangover.
“Dad,” Daryl greeted warily, tightening his hold on Josie until she started to fuss.
Will rolled his eyes. “I ain’t that much of a monster, Daryl, Christ. You think I’m gonna hit a baby?” Daryl, who had hazy childhood memories of being slapped across the head as young as six, said nothing.
Will grunted and marched over, grabbing Josie out of his arms. “You ain’t holdin’ her right, dumbass. Gotta keep her head supported, like this.” He arranged Josie so her head was nestled up to his forearm, ear pressed against his chest, and miraculously Josie calmed. Will held his hand out for the bottle and Daryl reluctantly handed it over.
After Josie started eating, making little discontented noises and scrunching her nose, Will sighed heavily. “Always thought it would be Merle knocking some bitch up, shellin’ out child support for the rest of his life.”
“Same,” Daryl grunted, and Merle squawked in the background.
“And I gather you’re keepin’ it?”
“Yup.”
“Alrighty then,” Will stared at his granddaughter for a long, tense moment, before sighing and closing his eyes. “What the fuck, I guess. You’re gonna have to figure a way to make some more money, though. Babies are fuckin’ expensive as all hell, they’ll suck you right dry.”
Something loosened in Daryl’s chest, and he relaxed enough to give his father a tired smile. “Yeah, been feeling that for the last few weeks. For being such a tiny thing Josie sure does make a lot of shit, we have to buy diapers every other day.”
Will threw back his head and laughed. “Yeah, I remember that with the two of you, me and your mama were making diaper runs every goddamn day with Merle. Guess it makes sense that he grew up to be such a piece of shit!”
Merle flipped his off from his seat on the couch, eyes glued to the TV and whatever sport they were recapping, open can of beer in hand.
Will, still with a wide smile, looked down at his granddaughter. “Josie, huh? Well, Josie, you’re in for a hell of a ride, but you’ll make it through. ‘Cause you’re a Dixon. Ain’t nothin’ gonna kill a Dixon easy. Nah, we make them work for it.”
Josie stared up at Will with blown eyes, sucking furiously on her bottle.
“Yeah,” Will murmured softly, sparing Daryl a glance and a rare, soft smile. “You’ll do.”
So.
By this point, she really had no choice but to accept the fact that she had been fucking reborn. She was a baby, under the care of her father and uncle and occasionally her grandfather, somewhere in the southern US.
The last however long(a week, a month, an eternity ) had been spent alternating between sleeping, eating, and screaming her little lungs out. Her new father or uncle would come running the second she opened her mouth, cradling her gently with half hearted curses and infinitely gentle hands. Her grandfather wasn’t around a lot of the time, but when he was he spent a good majority of it with his face attached to a bottle.
She felt a little bad for being such a huge pain for these two rough but genuinely kind men, but she still jerked awake at night feeling a knife sliding into her abdomen. Imagining her mom’s face when she gets the inevitable call that her sixteen year old had been murdered in a back alley walking home from a party she had let her go to.
The arms around her tightened as she started wailing again, her father making gentle shushing sounds while he swayed back and forth. She could only be thankful that the universe hadn’t tried to give her a new mother, but instead a father for the first time. She had been the product of a drunken one night stand, her sperm donor vanishing into thin air before her mother even found out she was pregnant.
Her mother may not have been perfect, far from it, but Josie - and when had she accepted that as her name? She couldn’t remember - had loved her a lot. She would never be able to accept another woman as her mom, and she was pathetically grateful that she wouldn’t have to try.
And as far as fathers went, hers’ seemed to be pretty good so far. She was constantly held and talked to(though there were enough swear words thrown around that Josie couldn’t help but feel a little shocked, her mom had never been a prude but she at least attempted to curb her language around her when she was little) and her every need was met to the best of both his and her uncle’s ability.
There was another first. Her mom had a sister that lived three hours away by car, and Josie had met her a grand total of twice in her life, at eight and thirteen, both incredibly awkward for all parties.
The grandfather was new too. Both her mother’s parents were raging Catholics, their young daughter having a baby out of wedlock and point blank refusing an abortion was more than their faithful little hearts could handle. The last time her mother saw them was in a hospital room just hours after she was born, pushing adoption papers and tales of how a baby would be so much happier in a stable home and don’t you want what’s best for your child?
Her mother had sent them packing, and never contacted them again.
This one fell a bit short on expectations, what with his apparent alcohol problem, but in the rare moments when he was sober? He wasn’t too bad.
Time seemed to pass simultaneously fast and slow. Josie was fairly sure that she was hitting milestones too early, rolling over and sitting up and all that, but there was no way she was staying a useless little drool monster for any longer than absolutely necessary.
It put a bit of a damper on her love of babies, discovering just how much it royally sucked being one.
Next step, movement. As a former proud member of the track team, holding the school record for the mile, being forcibly stationary was worse than hell.
“Wha- Daryl! Darylina, get your ass in here, you gotta see this!” Uncle Merle dropped ungracefully to the floor and held his massive hands out in her direction, urging her on.
Josie sighed mentally and resumed her awkward army crawl across the rough carpet, tuning out the sound of her father freaking the hell out in the background.
She would very much like to move on to walking now, please.