All Good Music.
Summary: Andrea misses music. She misses Amy missing music. There's a room in the Herschel house that has an old record player and when the sun sets she slips into the orange warmth to lose herself in songs of yearned-for pasts. Bit of a random one, this.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Inspired by the Alexi Murdoch song 'Orange Sky.'
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Andrea misses music. It's dumb, she knows: of all the things that a twenty-first century woman should miss, she misses music the most. Granted, she misses other things too, like her coffee percolator and a steady supply of Tampax and clean panties and knowing that there isn't a whole world of crazy outside, but she misses music. More specifically, she misses Amy missing music. Amy didn't just like music, she loved music: classical, jazz, electronic, hip-hop, even thrash metal – Amy would listen to it all. There was a room in their house growing up that she renamed Amy's Room because it was full of music, and not just cds, either, but vinyl records, cds, tapes, even minidiscs. Amy used to spend hours in there with their dad, listening to the most bizarre, arcane records that they had found at garage sales or thrift stores. One time they spend a whole month restoring a beautiful old record player that had been left on someone's front yard, weather-worn and beaten down. At the time Andrea had thought it was stupid: why spend all that time and twice as much cash restoring a record player that might not even work when you could buy one on Amazon for half the price?
She remembers the day that the radio had stopped playing music because it was the only time during this whole mess that she ever saw her sister lose it; properly, truly lose it.
"Where's the music!" She had shrieked as she furiously cycled through one radio station after another on the car that they had managed to acquire, before they fell in with Daryl and Dale and the others. When the channels had offered nothing but grim static, a monotonous FEMA warning or – worse – the chill of empty airwaves, it was as though it had all truly sunk in.
Some time after they fell in with Merle and Daryl and the others, Amy had noticed that Merle would sometimes strum away on an old guitar with only four strings, none of them particularly well-tuned. He wasn't any good and usually he was drunk when he played it but Amy had liked to hear him play. From a distance, of course. There was no way Andrea was letting her kid sister get within twenty feet of those two boys, both of whom watched the sisters with a casually lecherous gaze.
Daryl was another story; if Amy had liked hearing Merle play then she had loved hearing him play. "What does it mean?" She had asked him one night as he sat just away from the others, idly noodling away at the strings one night after Merle had gone missing. His talent was instinctive more than taught, the music he plucked from the strings very different to the cat-killing squeals that Merle produced. His was almost melodic.
He had shrugged and set the guitar down almost straight away, as though he had been caught doing something that he shouldn't be doing. "Nothin'." He said, giving Andrea a wary glance as Amy moved closer to him, all swinging blonde hair and wide blue eyes. He knew that Andrea wasn't comfortable with her kid sister hanging out with him and kept his distance. It was more than Merle had done, but now Merle was gone and Daryl was still there.
Amy wasn't deterred. "But it has to mean something." She pressed. "All good music means something."
"That so, huh?" Daryl had almost scoffed at her, but there was little derision there.
"It wouldn't be good otherwise." Amy insisted. "It has to mean something, have emotion behind it."
"Amy-" Andrea began, stopping her kid sister. She still hadn't gotten a measure on Daryl yet, wasn't sure what he might do now that his brother was missing. She was surprised he hadn't bailed already.
What she had not expected was his answer. "What do you think it means?" He had asked Amy, his voice soft but serious.
Amy shrugged, her eyes on the instrument. "I don't know." She said softly. "It sounds like the woods, maybe. Or the trees. Or the dirt. Sounds like the kind of thing you'd play sat on a porch somewhere, watching the sun set."
"Well there ya go, then."
Now Amy's gone and Merle's missing and Daryl doesn't play so much and Andrea can't even bring herself to look at that guitar. A couple of times she's thought about tossing the thing in the nearest lake or leaving in on the side of the highway but she just can't bear to do it. Every time she does she thinks of her sister and it just feels wrong to discard something that she loved so dearly.
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They have to leave the Herschel farm soon; she knows that although she doesn't think that Rick does, or if he does then he isn't admitting to it yet. Carl's getting well enough to travel and Sophia's come back and Daryl's recovered from that bump on the head. They can't stay here yet none of them really want to leave, not yet at least. Right now it's easy to sit here and pretend that there's some kind of normal.
There's a room in the house that has an old record player and when the sun sets, it's filled with orange light as the sun dips into the valley beyond the creek and the farmland and the cows that graze in the field, oblivious to the hell and death that swirls around them. No-one ever goes in there and she doesn't know why: she likes it in there, likes being able to slip behind the closed wooden door to lose herself in songs of yearned-for pasts.
There are no cds in there, only vinyl records; row after row of them which line the walls and spill onto the floors in haphazard piles without thought for order. She looks at a few, with half a mind to impose some order on them, to make her presence felt so she doesn't feel like such an intruder.
She's in the middle of sorting a pile when the door is toed open and Daryl Dixon stands on the other side. He's clean and dressed in jeans and a shirt that almost gleam with cleanliness. He doesn't have either his knife or his crossbow and he seems almost naked without it all.
His eyes widen when he sees her den. "Woah." He says softly, letting out a low whistle when he sees the hoard of records in the room. His gaze falls on the record in her hand. "That a Zeppelin?" He asks.
Andrea shrugs and holds it out for him to see. "Maybe." She says. "My music's on an iPod, not records."
Hours pass and the dusk becomes night and then day and then dusk again and the pair do not budge. They don't talk much, maybe to exclaim something about a record they have re-discovered from childhood, but mainly they sit in the room filled with records, lost in their own thoughts.
"Amy loves this guy." Andrea smiles as she reaches for an Alexi Murdoch album.
Daryl squints at the cover over her shoulder. "Never heard of him." He says. At some point he's moved to sit next to her, both of them leant against the stark white wall so they can watch the sun set. He's warm and solid and comfortable and its embarrassingly easy to see why she misjudged him so during those first weeks.
"He's some kind of folksy guitarist, I think." Andrea says. "I'm surprised he's in here, looking at these records."
Daryl holds up an old Kylie Minogue album. "I think the owner of this collection liked all kindsa stuff." He says.
Andrea slides the record onto the player that's old but lovingly maintained and awkwardly manages to get it to play. She's a cd or download girl, not a vinyl aficionado. The slow, guitar beat begins to fill the room, Murdoch's soft voice filling the room with dreams of lost brothers and sisters and orange skies. Suddenly its all so prescient that she wants to cry.
"Amy loves music." She says quietly, so quietly that she can barely hear herself over the record. "Loved music, I mean. She and my dad ... they restored one of these players once, when we both lived at home. Took them all damned summer. It was kinda stupid, actually. I don't even think it worked after all that effort."
She wipes at her eyes, not even aware that tears are falling until suddenly they're there and they won't stop and she's crying over a record player, her tears rolling down her cheeks and dropping on the wood, the orange sunset warm on her back until that warmth is replaced by warmth of an entirely different kind.
"Hey now, shush." Daryl says as he comes up behind her, not quite touching her but not standing apart from her, either. "Its okay." He says as she starts crying harder, letting out all the pain and anger and anguish that she feels, lets her cry for pasts that are now long dead and will only live on in memories and in dreams that will eventually become hazy and fuzzy, the details slipping into nothing until all that remains is vague feelings and snatches of truth. His arm's warm on her shoulder and he wraps them both around her when she turns around and cries on his shoulder, soaking his dusty shirt which smells like his crossbow and his own musky scent. He lets her cry and clutch at his shirt and his neck as she wails and cries and expends all her emotions, silently absorbing the tidal wave of pain that she's been carrying around. By the time she finishes the record has finished and the needle is slipping grooves into the vinyl.
Its dusk again when she wakes up in one of the Herschel bedrooms, the early morning light streaming through the curtain-less windows. Her head's pounding and her face feel's twice its normal size from all the crying. She doesn't quite know where she is, but from this part of the house, the sunset looks very different, a myriad of blues, reds and purples rather than orange. She watches the sunset for a moment before her eyes flicker to the record player which has somehow found its way into the room. She has no memory of getting from the music room into the bedroom, but a low snore and soft, heavy breathing next to her indicate how she might have made the journey.
He looks oddly peaceful when he sleeps, like he's burned off that frantic energy that he always carries with him. He's taken off his shirt to reveal a white vest beneath. He's warm and alive and he's there and she doesn't quite know why: companionship? Worry? Understanding about siblings lost or probably lost? She can't decide. He's oblivious to her scrutiny, anyway, and doesn't stir when she gently touches his face, surprised when his skin yields easily to her touch. Its softer than she would have originally thought, despite the stubble on his face and upper lip, and weathered from all the time he spends outside. Its the first time that she's ever seen him look vulnerable. She feels almost privileged; Daryl doesn't let his guard down around people all that often ... or at all.
"Stop staring." He mumbles sleepily, and she jerks her hand back so fast she almost falls out of bed.
"I thought you were asleep." She says.
"I was until you started pokin' and proddin' at me." He grumbles.
"Did you put me to bed?" She asks after a few minutes' silence.
His cheeks begin to turn quite pink. "Well you ain't gonna get a good nights' sleep on that hard floor." He mumbles eventually. "Now go back to sleep. We don't know when we're gonna get another nights' sleep in a decent bed."
Andrea smiles softly to herself as she closes her eyes and tries to go back to sleep. Maybe Amy was right. Maybe all good music does mean something, after all.
FIN.