Chapter Text
Part One: A Love Of Such Deafening Weight
Everyone stops when they hear the music.
Over two hundred days since the outbreak started. Two hundred days of minding his tread and silencing himself like he was on a constant hunt. So much silence and fear. Months without much in the way of music or entertainment - because who the hell has the time for that kind of shit?
Yet here they are, listening to a distant tune all the same. What in the hell?
While the storage lockers they wintered in have been secure, they found no supplies there. Well, they had a bunch of cheap plastic nonsense, but those sorts of objects lost their value when the world turned to hell. Any food, water, or other supplies, had to be sought after.
For months they had scavenged until they were nearly through with winter, although the biting chill in the air begs to differ.
Now that they are on the tail end of winter the immediate area has been picked pretty bare. What they started with was dogged. What they found was very little. Even hope is in short supply, although that is hardly new.
They had checked all the buildings in a twenty mile radius, and then some. Everywhere was picked clean twice over before they kept going further and further out. They had to, though.
Most everyone longed for something, but Lori needed prenatal vitamins. Rick had said something about stockpiling food and formula for the big day, too. The way he talked made it sound like a bear readying for hibernation, but Daryl would never say a word against it.
Especially not after they discovered Lori had been unfaithful to Rick. Kid might not even be his, and Rick still proverbially mounts up? That was a damn sight more than what Daryl is used to.
Rick is a good man. Worth saddling his lot to, that is for damn sure.
But how Rick thought he was going to stockpile supplies when they barely had a leg to stand on is a new kind of fool’s errand. Yet they had no choice. Their group needed it - especially since nobody but Carl had, had dinner yesterday. They needed this to go well.
Now, over thirty miles out from their hovel they called home, with music flowing effortlessly through the air, it raises Daryl’s hackles.
It smacks of a trap.
They have checked five sparsely spread-out houses and found only a handful of supplies: Some over the counter medication, water, a comic book Carl might like, and ladies’ toiletries. The houses were empty of walkers too.
Up until this moment, the town has been as dead as the couple of walkers inhabiting it. Very few walkers is the only positive; Small town, small population.
The sleepy little town stretches out around them like melted butter. Each empty abode cuts deeper when you needed to trudge a couple thousand yards to the next one. Daryl had not thought they would find one of those one post office, one general store, kind of places out here. Real town rural America - not the kind bullshitting people put in magazines. It had given them some hope that it was not picked clean, but the music shattered that.
In the middle of this emptiness, someone is playing music. Although as his ear adjusts, the sound is still equal parts incredible and unnerving. Nobody should be playing music. It is one risk too far, but the music carries on all the same.
Singing.
A male voice.
Stranger still, it sounds natural and lacks any tuning. Plus the lone singer is accompanied by only a guitar’s strums. Something rocks the pit of his stomach in discontent while realizing someone is singing live - and doing it close by.
“That’s not a recording?” Rick asks the question that Daryl figures is on everyone’s mind. His voice is as perplexed as Daryl feels, though only half as concerned.
“In there!” Daryl lowly comments as he spots a door ajar in one of the nearby homes. He raises his crossbow, crossing the wide, flat space that might have been a yard except there are no boundaries. New grass peeks out of the showing dirt ground, but at least the last of the snow is gone.
The others file in as Daryl does an immediate sweep of the country-house. Everyone is quiet but they breathe harshly, filling the empty space all the same. This home is truly empty - lacking not just photographs on the wall, but everything right down to the furniture. It was as if the Grinch had come down the chimney. The people who owned this must’ve hightailed it out of here early.
Prolly didn’t do them a lick of good.
Being empty makes the place a quicker sweep, allowing Daryl to return to the anxious group’s frantic conversation.
“We should leave.” Rick breaks the quiet with a swift, cautious opinion. After everything they had seen Daryl could not blame him for wanting to be careful, but they had only just scratched the surface of this town.
Glenn is sporting a frown and a quieter word, but no more positive. “It’s too late in the day to go back, but maybe we camp in the woods?” His lips purse just before he starts trailing off curiously, “It is weird though...”
We have walls here, Daryl thinks but does not say it. No point rocking a boat that already has a hole in it.
“If it’s a madman, maybe he needs to be put out of his misery,” T-dog suggests with a frown and a tinge of mercy that Daryl finds impressive.
“Not at a cost to us,” Rick replies crisply and without delay.
“We should go see - not outside.” Carol’s voice tenses as she joins in after having stayed quiet. “Just upstairs.” A slight meekness curls back into her words. “Out the window?”
“I don’t know.” Rick continues to hesitate, although Daryl can see he has calmed from the initial shock of the song. He is teetering.
Rick is always good like that - thinking about the group and keeping them all safe. They left Lori, Carl, Beth, and most of the less able bodied people behind. The group could move quickly, but even Daryl thinks actually going out towards the sound is asinine. Away from it, now maybe that would work.
Still, Carol’s got a point and what harm would a glance do? So, as Rick seems to be silently mulling it over, Daryl rolls his shoulder not holding up his bow and mutters, “I haven’t cleared upstairs yet anyway.”
It is almost like he can see the moment Rick gives up and his gaze grows weary. Not in the same way it gets when he looks at Lori at night, real late when he thinks no one is looking. No, this is just a plain old finished-with-everyone’s-opinion look.
“Alright,” Rick finally concedes.
They mount the stairs, with him going in front of course. In the past he was not one for ladies first much of the time anyway - hell, what lady would have hung around him and the ilk he had strut around with for way too long? But now, he keeps his weapon raised and eyes sharp.
Even though the tension of a potential walker rounding a door hangs heavily, Carol breaks the quiet with a near-whisper. “He only agreed because you spoke up.”
Rick weighing his opinion like that is still novel to him. It is a strange sort of feeling to be relied on like that; kind of respectful but embarrassing all the same. So, he merely grunts in what he hopes is neither an agreement nor disagreement. Just letting her know he heard.
The upstairs is a pair of bedrooms with a connecting small bathroom, allowing Daryl to clear it fast. It, too, is bereft of any trace of mankind, save for some litter in every room and a tiny dresser still covered with clothes now dusty. Daryl steps back into the hall once finished checking down to every closet and gives Carol a nod.
The hallway is short, so Carol looks around for a second before walking down the far end. A small rectangular window provides a good vantage point so Daryl steps up behind her, but sees nothing at first. Just a few other houses in the distance to the left, and to the right a handful of commercial looking buildings. The latter is a guess, but he does not know of many homes with flat rooves and industrial venting.
Then Daryl notices the brief patches of street that he can see. Mostly empty, but a couple of walkers stumble along. Both are headed in the same direction. So, after a second he steps back and turns right into the bigger of the two bedrooms. This one has a much larger triple window and it faces directly towards the commercial section of the little town.
In a flat field of rooftops all clustered close in the middle of this otherwise stretching town, a lone figure on the rooftop with swift, sharp movements stands out like a giraffe in a goat’s pen. Although the person's features are difficult to make out at this distance Daryl squints and stares.
One figure - a thorough visual scan confirms nobody else is lying down or partially covered. The bulky body lacks curves and has some height, so Daryl figures it must be a guy.
“The hell is he doing?” Carol exhales the question in awe, as if she cannot believe what is happening. After taking note of her tone, Daryl sighs.
Then again, even I can’t make out what the hell’s the point.
Whoever the guy is, he must be insane or something. The building he is on is a single story, but at this angle the front is just hidden from view so he cannot make out the shop name. All Daryl sees is part of the street.
Walkers - one or two dozen. Not a lot, but they had only seen three on the way in. They stand there staring up at the man perched on the edge of the roof. About half the walkers still have the energy to reach up their arms to him as he leans forward, arm hitting his guitar vivaciously.
Unable to reconcile the display of brazen recklessness with the reality of the world, something gnaws at him. Not to help, but to understand since this guy clearly is losing his mind, but not in a way Daryl has ever seen. Not in a way that he can even begin to piece together.
Anxiety dispelled, and curiosity abounding, Daryl drives his knife into the windowsill. He has to pause his ministrations to throw a semi-apologetic yet somehow still dulled stare to Carol for startling her enough to make her jump.
When he has pried the window open a crack, Carol remarks with a slight hint of sulk that he suspects is playful, “I think that window unlocks.”
He barely gets out a grunt because the crack allows the noise to flow through easily. On this side of the house, with the bewildering person in view, the words actually carry clearly. At first Daryl is just shocked it is an actual melody and proper lyrics - not a madman’s ramblings or a drunkard’s slurs. This man sounds coherent, and that is the last thing he expected.
Then as the gears in his mind try to turn without having all the pieces, Daryl starts to listen to the lyrics.
"I know I stole your coat,
You can have this song I wrote.
I’ve just crossed the line,
From fashion to crime."
Then, after a split-second pause of silence while the man slams his foot onto the roof in a moment of gusto, the guitar is hit like it owes the guy money. Something feels missing - but then again, it was probably not meant to be soloed. No, it sounds more like this is a single piece meant for a group, but looks more like the lead singer out on his own.
"So, this is the last time that I’ll hold your hand.
I want to kiss you on the mouth and tell you.
I’m your biggest fan.
I’m your biggest faaan!"
As he starts to repeat what Daryl presumes is a chorus, he notices Carol eying him and turns to meet her wide-eyed stare. “He doesn’t sound insane,” Carol murmurs what he has been thinking since he heard the lilting, pleasant turn of the stranger’s voice; Lacking any fear of the walkers below, or any awareness of anything but his music.
“No, but maybe he’s been bit, and enjoyin' his last moments.” Daryl sums up what he can only assume is the bewildering stranger’s reason for calmly acting out of his head. It is the only thought that explains it all.
“Huh.” Carol only answers quietly and Daryl swears he can hear her wondering about how anyone could act that free. Even Daryl finds it chilling. Music, now?
It feels insane. Daryl knows he damn sure would not go out at the end with a song. Just a grunt, probably a bottle of liquor if he can find it, and a few more drags on a cigarette. That would be if he was lucky though, and nobody is lucky these days.
Not that you would know it listening to the songbird across the way. He sings like the dead never walked. Daryl simply shakes his head and strides out of the room. He knows enough to return to Rick and tell him the guy seems harmless enough - and more importantly, he is a walker magnet.
Could be useful.
The music goes quiet a little while later, but starts up again in spurts throughout the afternoon. Some are clear covers, but others might be original. Daryl does not know enough genres to say for sure. Merle’s passion for country twangs made sure of that in the past, and these days nobody has music left in them.
Except that guy.
Rick agrees to stay and canvas the town once Daryl returns downstairs and fills him in. They found a sparse few supplies, but enough to make the trek worth it - including one bottle of unexpired prenatal vitamins. That alone was gold, though at this point Daryl is sure Rick would have happily brought back anything.
It is enough to spur them back into scavenging the little town, but they keep their distance from the melodic menace. Nobody touches the commercial street - which seems all there is in town. Just a line of suddenly tightly packed buildings, which look strangely compressed in the sprawling, flat grassland.
By the evening, they had all returned to the initial empty house they had briefly scuttled into. Hauls were compared eagerly and Daryl could see it is only just worth the gas and trouble. Still, better than nothing.
Many homes had little in the way of food and meds, but they had plenty of locally pilfered pillows and borrowed blankets to spread out on the first floor. Daryl settled himself up on the second floor instead. The little dresser left behind in the larger bedroom is a perfect perch.
Rick’s main demand in staying was they keep an eye on the peculiar singing stranger at all times. Anyone in the same town could creep up and kill them in the night. So there is a downstairs watch on the front entrance (and he suspects Rick is wide awake too), and Daryl is the first evening, upstairs watch.
It is easy enough, since the singing stranger never leaves the roof. After dark, the melody starts back up on the guitar and words flitter like they are darting playfully through the air. Up on watch, Daryl has nothing better to do than listen.
The stranger’s voice has a rich quality that almost makes up for missing his bandmates by filling the space. He sounds more joyful than Daryl thinks anyone has a right to be, but he likes it, even if the music itself is not to his taste. Maybe absence really does make the heart grow fonder - at least when it comes to creature comforts.
When it got quiet, a tiny fire sparked up across the way, and then the figure sat. Likely eating, Daryl supposes as he glances over at the man’s back. Now in the darkness he cannot make out much save for the man’s position.
The weird guy would lay down and stare at the stars for a while, maybe sleep, but Daryl doubts it since he would get up and move around a bit. Not in the leering, staggering way that a walker would though.
Still, whenever Daryl saw movement, his gaze snapped over. Daryl readily expected the guy to turn. Only a bitten man would sing his heart out for a dead world. It would happen, sooner or later.
When he swaps watches for the night he actually looks out at the songbird and takes what he assumes to be a brief final gaze. Just one more oddity in this sea of strange horrors, except this one is not so bad.
“You gonna head out, or swap shifts?” Rick asks the next morning, sending Daryl’s brows to furrow as he tries to fathom what that means.
“Shifts?” Daryl says with a few grainy, golden flecks dotting his chin.
“It’s fine if you’re still eating.”
They had found one box of cereal yesterday and passed it around in the early morning. Mostly he is eating crumbs, but the sugary coating plasters itself deliciously to the roof of his mouth.
“Shifts fer what?” Daryl mumbles out.
“The guy.” Rick answers plainly, as if that explains it all.
“He’s still alive?” Daryl finds the words falling out of his mouth before they take on a cogent form in his mind. Mild snarky comments aside, he likes to give thought to serious conversations but this is just a shock. If this guy is still kicking, then a bite is looking less likely too.
“Well, he was singing this morning.” T-dog pipes up with a gentle smirk. His was the last night shift, and he would have been there for sunrise. Daryl finds himself wondering whether the singer sounds insane yet.
If not bitten, there has to be something. Normally Daryl could kick curiosity to the curb, but this is too bewildering to ignore. After everything they have seen, this singer takes the cake.
“I’ll take a shift.”
When the group goes out on the prowl, Daryl has a whistle at the ready if the man makes a move off the rooftop. Granted, now the shop he is parked on has two dozen walkers out front - and Daryl knows there are more he probably cannot see. The rest of the streets look empty, making it a perfect opportunity for the group to scavenge.
But for Daryl, he is stuck on singer guard duty.
He watches with a muddled expression as the peculiarity cannot be reconciled in his mind. Now and again, the singer comes to the edge and belts out a few songs in a row. He rails on the guitar with a passion visible even from afar as the words wobble and his frame shakes with the intensity of them and whatever their meaning is.
It is like a sick concert, but it is no less than a concert. The walkers stagger below, often turning their gaze up at him, and the man plays on like they are standing in the front row.
After a brief quiet respite, Daryl observes him standing on the very edge of the roof again, belting it out to the walkers like they were cheering fans. He oscillates between thinking the guy surely must have lost it, and thinking he sounds too sane to be this far gone.
Besides, the end was months ago. Most who would lose it, would have done so early on. Unless he lost someone. Daryl supposes that grief will do that to a person, but it does not sit quite right and fails to settle in his mind. There is a joy in the singer’s voice that rings true in the wild words. He is not showing even a hint of sorrow.
Then before he knows it, Daryl is back to square one with his wonderings.
They move to another home that night, with the aim of taking the long trek back come morning. Although far from filled to the brim, they found enough to fill up the trunk of the car they had arrived in. Glenn had gone back to check it was still hidden out of town, untampered with, and reported back all was well.
They could go in the morning.
That only made the alternatingly haunting and brassy melodies filtering in from across the street all the more confusing to Daryl. He took the first watch of the evening, allowing him to catch the songbird’s final chirps of the day. When he realized the songbird was done for the night and they would roll-out well before he began again, something tightens inside Daryl.
Maybe the guy is insane after all, but his gut says no.
When everyone is breakfasting and Daryl gruffly suggests getting closer, unsurprisingly the dissent is strong. Glenn calls him a name he does not want to dwell on. Rick calls it flat out stupid.
Hell, Rick went further than that when he finally went to put his two-tone boots down. “You’re not going out there.” He swears the sheriff sounds like he is reprimanding Carl, and it only puts more gas in Daryl’s tank.
“You gonna tell me no?” Daryl asks, stern voice bringing on a pin drop silence.
They stare one another down for a second and he wonders if it will devolve into a fight. Everyone in the room has gone silent, watching the stare off.
Instead, Rick just puts on a sullen glare and Daryl knows the argument is over. He shoulders his crossbow and heads out into the street without another word. He might have normally said he would be careful or something, but not after that.
As Daryl moves smoothly yet slowly along the edges of the first commercial building, he finds himself sidling down the back road rather than the walker-filled main drag. It has fire escapes - making him actually thankful for red tape and building code bullshit for once. No Dixon ever filed a permit for any of the shit they did. Nobody cared enough to hassle them for it.
Not worth policing a garbage heap.
But family is far from his mind. The one walker in the back street is all he focuses on a moment later, slamming a knife into the temple of a woman with her jaw missing and a sinew hanging where her right arm used to be. The ones Daryl has seen lately are ravenous, so he supposes without much to eat in the winter that they are struggling. Winter has not been kind to many of the walkers, and hopefully it means some might be dead permanently. He damn well hopes so.
For now though, he grabs hold of a fire escape and tugs but it does not yield. Even when he shoulders his crossbow and uses both hands, it just sticks. Upon glancing up he spots the distinctive ruddy-orange tinge of rust and grunts in frustration while letting go.
Abandoning the fire escape on the singing stranger’s building, Daryl shifts to the next one and that yields with precious little effort. Wonder if he chose that on purpose or jus' got lucky? Granted, walkers did not climb, and this little town was unlikely to have many visitors. Still had us ride up.
The morning quiet is broken by a trilling tune that begins with gusto. The wordless, speedy song starts up as Daryl slips behind a large hatch on the rooftop to get his bearings and a better vantage point. It sounds like something he heard yesterday.
A quick glance over the top proves the singer is near enough. Daryl catches sight of jeans and a black top. Not clean, but not too worn either. Dark hair, medium length but falling down like it was missing hair gel. No visible injuries. No bites. The man has his back turned as he starts to belt it out for the seething walkers below.
"Well, I’ve had a secret.
And I feel it’s time that you should know,
When I’m in your arms it turns me on."
For such a buttery, smooth voice, one could be mistaken in thinking nothing was wrong. Anyone might miss the couple dozen walkers standing below him, eager to gnash him apart - well, if they have not been wide awake the last several months. Not that Daryl can see them from his crouched spot, but he knows they are still there.
How could anyone act this way more than six months after the end of it all? How is he singin' like he’s not got a care in the world?! Daryl turns and gazes a little longer this time, eyes narrow at the bewildering unknown.
"But I’ve got a conscience too.
And it says my heart’s never in tune,
With anything I do!"
As he watches the passionate musician cry out to the void, Daryl assesses the rooftop around him and spots a few knives and the silver glint of a gun or two, but little else that matters. The guns are in the middle of the rooftop, far from the enthusiastic singer leering forward at the walkers down below, sending a surge through Daryl. This is the moment to act.
Daryl rises to his full height and turns like he is not a little nervous deep down. He still considers that the guy might have mentally snapped, but his intrigue is louder than his inner doubts.
The singer lifts his arm to strum the guitar strings again and Daryl takes advantage of the break after the bridge to cooly bark from his spot a rooftop away, “Hey!”