Chapter Text
Daryl leaned back against the side of the local gas station smoking a cigarette while absentmindedly listening to his brother talk shit about something. This was a normal occurrence for them. Almost every day Merle would find the time to rant about things he didn’t like while Daryl pretended to listen. The rants were often waterlogged with racist, homophobic and sexist remarks. Opinions that while Daryl didn’t share, he couldn’t refute out loud if he wanted to avoid getting his ass beat.
His father had nearly killed him when he said that he agreed with women having the right to vote. They’d gotten that right back in the 1920s, 40 years before Daryl was born, but his father was still bitching about it. He believed that it gave them too much power and say and that soon there’s be women in the white house messing everything up with their emotion fueled, liberal ideas.
Daryl disagreed with his father about women in politics too. He hoped there’d be more women in politics soon to balance out the testosterone fueled, warmongers there already. Daryl really didn’t want to get drafted to go fight and die in a war he disagreed with for rich politicians he doesn’t know or like.
“Damn commies,” Merle growled, “I wish we’d just go to war with them right now.”
“Why would you want that?” Daryl asked dropping the spent cigarette onto the ground and crushing it under his boot, “You really want to go live in dirty army camp and risk your life everyday as a soldier?”
“Hell yeah,” Merle turned to look at him, “Killing chinks wouldn’t weigh heavily on me, little brother. Besides, I could use the target practice.”
Daryl bit the inside of his mouth to keep himself from mouthing off at Merle.
“You wouldn’t be fighting the chinese,” Daryl reminded him, “It’s the Russians and their allies we’re in a cold war with.”
Merle shrugged, “Maybe so, but you and I both know they’d join the fight. Their leaders are tight.”
“Great, that means two superpowers trying to kill us. Still like the idea of an active war?”
“I wouldn’t say I like it, just that I wouldn’t mind it. Don’t you think it would be great to go off and fight for your country?”
Daryl shifted uncomfortably against the wall, not knowing how to respond in a way that would tell Merle his opinion without getting a black eye.
“I’d just rather not have to live overseas,” Daryl swallowed nervously, “I like being here better. I don’t want to be dragged across the country to fight an enemy I can’t see.”
Merle grabbed Daryl’s shoulder and roughly slammed it back against the wall, causing Daryl to flinch.
“You best watch that lazy sense of duty, brother,” Merle hissed leaning into his space, “Or the next thing you know you’ll be homeless and shooting the shit with a bunch of niggers.”
This time Daryl did bite his tongue and didn’t respond to his brother’s racist warning. Merle pushed him away and started off on a new branch of his age old rant, but now his was complaining about blacks believing they’re equal to whites. Daryl sighed and leaned back heavily against the wall, wishing he had enough guts to speak his mind.
* * *
“Are you excited for homecoming next month?” her nanny, Ms. Tiana, asked as walked with Connie on her way to school.
She didn’t walk with her everyday, but she had to go to the market to pick of some produce for the house, so today they walked together. Kelly wasn’t in high school yet, so she went by a different route to the middle school.
Connie shook her head, “No. Nobody’s asked me to be their date yet, so I might just not go.”
“Couldn’t you go with a friend?”
“All of my friends have dates. I’d be a third wheel all night long.”
Ms. Tiana tried to lift her spirits, “There’s still time for someone to ask you.”
Connie shook her head sadly, “Just admit it, nobody wants to go to a dance with a deaf girl.”
“Now Ms. Ridloff, I’m sure there’s some nice boy out there who’d love to take you to a party. Maybe he’s just shy.”
Connie sighed, “Maybe, just please don’t tell my Dad. I don’t want him to hire someone to take me to the dance again like he did last year. It was so humiliating.”
A flash of black steel out of the corner of her eye caught Connie’s attention. She looked over at the road to see a white man, probably no older than her, speeding by on a old Harley Davidson motorcycle. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, so she could see his face and she recognized him as Daryl Dixon.
Her lip curled in disgust as his name flashed through her head. His older brother is Merle Dixon, a very outspoken racist that liked to call anyone who wasn’t white racist slurs for fun. She’d never interacted with the younger Dixon brother, but she was sure he holds the same views as the rest of his family. He was just quieter and kept more to himself than Merle and his father.
It’s no secret that Daryl’s father is a drunk. The man practically lives at one of the bars in uptown Senoia known for being a “whites only” kind of place. The Jim Crow laws were repealed over ten years ago when she was just five years old, but some people in their remote Georgian town still liked to live by them. William Dixon would often leave the bar drunk off his ass and wander around the town shouting obscene and offensive things at people. He’d even attacked a young black girl when she’d talked back to him, putting her in the hospital with a broken leg and two cracked ribs.
“See something you like?” her nanny asked, raising her eyebrows.
Connie shook her head, “That’s Daryl Dixon, brother and son of two of the most violent racists in town. I wouldn’t go out with him if somebody offered me a million dollars to do so.”
“Sorry, I didn’t realize that was the younger Dixon,” Ms. Tiana apologized, “I’ve never seen him in person with a name attached before since I keep mostly to our side of the neighborhood as per your father’s request.”
Connie’s Dad, Mr. Ridloff, is fairly wealthy banker working at the local bank. He was among the first black employees there and had worked his way up the ranks to working just under the head of the bank, Mr. Gregory Berkeley. Mr. Berkeley is a weasel according to her father, but also extremely lazy meaning her father essentially ran the bank at this point.
She knew some black families were jealous of their success and others even hated it, saying that her father was a traitor for working with the white man to take money from them. That fact was probably playing a role in her lack of finding a beau for the dance as well.
Once they reach the place where Connie would turn off towards her high school while Ms. Tiana went on, she hugged her nanny goodbye.
“You have a good day at school, Ms. Ridloff,” Ms. Tiana said as she waved her off towards the school yard.
Connie hefted her books in her arms and made her way from the sidewalk to the main courtyard out in front of her school. Students were milling around and talking happily to their friends as they waited for classes to begin. Connie looked around for her best friend Sasha as she made her way through the crowds to the main doors.
She jumped in shock when she felt someone grab her ass. She whirled around to see who did it and was greeted by the sight of a group of white guys clearly laughing at what one of them had done. One of the guys, Dwight, high fived another one, Spencer Monroe, congratulating him. Her eyes unwillingly fell onto Daryl who was standing with them, but not laughing. Instead he looked uncomfortable by what was going on, but he didn’t step up to defend her.
She marched up to Spencer and grabbed him by his shirt.
“Fuck you!” she sighed aggressively, throwing her middle finger up in his face for good measure.
“Sorry,” he cackled, removing her hand from his shirt, “I don’t speak mime.”
He then proceeded to make fun of her disability by waving his arms around his body. The guys started laughing harder, all except for Daryl who remained silent. She was confused as to why he wasn’t joining in with his buddies to humiliate her, but it intrigued her. She shook the thought out of her head angrily, she didn’t care why he wasn’t participating. He wasn’t standing up for her either, so he was just as bad as his friends.
She bit her tongue stomped off towards the school, wanting to get as far away from them as she could. People like Daryl Dixon and his friends aren’t worth her time.