Author's Notes: At the end.
The trip back to the vehicles was freakish in its normality. Clear skies, bright sunlight, not a walker to be seen. Daryl kept turning around to check their backtrail. It wasn't just him – Aaron nearly fell on his face twice, twisting his head over his shoulder.
Morgan – and Daryl still wasn't sure it was him, Morgan, Rick's Morgan, because this serene gypsy dude was miles away from the grief-stricken crazy man that Michonne had described to Daryl, but hey, after those trailer doors had snapped open, there wasn't much of anything Daryl was ruling out as too damn crazy. At least not for the rest of the day.
Morgan was calm. Head up, head left, head right. Two more steps, the end of the walking stick came down and he looked back over his shoulder. Cool as hoarfrost.
"I don't want to stay out here, tonight," Aaron said, soon as they hit the turn-off. "If we hurry, we can get back to Alexandria well before dark."
Daryl nodded and started plucking branches off the ugly car. Hell of a thing, to be so eager to go running right back to that toy village…
He stopped with an oak limb in his hand. "No." When Aaron looked up, Daryl faced him square on and said again, quietly, "No. Ain't going straight back." He gestured at the woods, at the darkness far back under the trees. "We dunno who those guys were, who set that up. We dunno if they're watching us right now."
"I met two of them earlier," Morgan said. "They're not friendly folk. I don't recommend waiting about to chat."
"Right. And we ain't goin' straight back. We ain't leadin' 'em right back to our people." Daryl could see it sink into Aaron. Hell, Aaron had done the same thing with their group, hesitating about taking them to Alexandria – Aaron had to know it was the right thing to do. The only thing.
Not that Daryl blamed him for spacing out. It had been a damned fucked up thing, sitting in that car, looking out at the death looking in at them. Not seeing a way out. Enough to shake anyone.
Aaron sighed and straightened again, putting his shoulders back as he pulled the last branch off the hood and tossed it into the brush. "East a little ways, then. I know a place we can stop and look for anyone following us." He motioned at Morgan. "Come on, you can help navigate."
Leaves billowed up in the wake of Aaron's ugly roan sedan. Daryl held the bike back far enough that he could barely make out the license plate. The mess at the loading docks was the second time Aaron had lost plates for someone in their group.
Well, Eric was getting Aaron back. The little guy probably figured that would beat the plates – or he should.
There was a knife riding on Daryl's belt at the small of his back. A good knife, kept a nice edge.
It didn't match the sunshine on Beth's hair.
Daryl bent over the handlebars and followed Aaron around the curve.
Ten miles out of Beckton, Aaron led them off the highway and up the hill to a detached carriage house with open garage doors. Behind the six foot fence encircling the estate, they found only one walker. With that one dispatched, they backed the sedan into the carriage house. The house looked down over the lightly wooded slope, and from the darkness of the open bay, they could see nearly a mile of the highway.
Morgan didn't settle until he had walked through the carriage house twice and tapped on all the cabinet doors. Daryl dropped to his belly and peered under the inner doors and between the tires of the SUV parked in the left hand stall.
"Nuthin'," Daryl said, scrambling back up. The SUV's license plate was missing.
Morgan nodded. "Good." He reached under a bench and kicked out a rolling stool. One-handed, he guided the boxy seat to the shadow's edge, where he took a seat and scanned the road and the slope on the far side. From time to time, he pointed out the birds flitting through the woods. He gave them names – half of them Daryl had never heard – and completely confused Aaron, who didn't know a redwinged blackbird from a redtailed hawk, much less what a rufous-sided towhee was. Not that the names were the point.
"It's a hopeful thing," Morgan said, without removing his eyes from the binoculars. "Life goes on."
"Yeah," Aaron said, ass on the hood of the sedan. He had a bit of yellow paper in his hands.
Daryl popped the crossbow off the back of the bike and slung it over his shoulder before perching next to Aaron.
Aaron held the wrinkled paper loosely, staring at it, but Daryl doubted the other man actually saw the words.
TRAP
BAD PEOPLE
COMING
DONT STAY
The first couple of words were in black ink, over written and fading in and out. The last were bolder, in a reddish brown that shouted from the page. Whoever had written that meant to be heard.
"You wonder…" Aaron started, when Morgan had gone a long time without calling out another bird sighting. He swallowed, then went on. "I wonder what happened to the person who wrote this. Who they were. If it was their van. If they made it."
Daryl blinked, thought about another smoke, and shrugged. "Pr'bly not. Got to hand it to those fuckers, that was a sweet set-up. Good trap."
"Yeah," Aaron said again. He turned the page around, folded it again and creased the edge. He lifted his head and stared down the slope.
"Another pileated woodpecker," Morgan said.
The silence stretched on. The words on the paper had dug into Daryl's brain. They crept around, looking for things to latch onto.
Hershel at the table, late at night, with a lit strip of rag in oil as a candle, holding the pages of his bible to the light. He had glanced up as Daryl wandered past. In the dim light, the old man's eyes had been clear and calm, like a well of still water that went down into the heart of the world.
The tumble of silly bright li'l girl things Beth had tacked to the walls of her cell room; the way they'd dangled over the bed were Beth lay with her head bent over her diary, writing down all the hopes and dreams that a child should have. Maggie had that journal now, and Daryl had seen her reading from it once. After, Maggie had been quiet, and hadn't shouted at Eugene for most of a day.
Carol, with her notes from all the council meetings, and her books for the kids. Making clear marks on a clean page, so other people could know what she'd been thinking. I know you.
Some days, he thought she did. Other days…
"Mockingbird," Morgan said. "A pair of them, beating the crap out of a crow."
Daryl slid off the hood of the sedan and went looking for a piece of paper.
The SUV had a load of crap in the glove box, including a clear shafted Bic and a little pad with a series of numbers and dates. Mileage readings and fill-up dates, it turned out. The last three quarters of the pad were blank, and the pen still worked.
Daryl didn't even shut the passenger door but just stood there and held the note pad against the window of the rear door. He had to shake the pen once before the blue ink rolled out thick and irregular.
A name, two words. He chewed his thumb a moment, then added another name.
He stared at it. Four words wasn't much. Ripping the page out, he dug back in the glove box and pulled out the owner's manual and dumped the registration cards out of the plastic baggie.
The bag dwarfed the page and made the words look even smaller against the narrow lines and white space.
He chewed on his thumb again. Could take care of it when we get back. There would be plenty of time for him to think it over, add something else, make sure he had the words right.
No. He remembered what it was like, sitting in that car. The whole sense of it – the smoke in his throat, the weight of the walkers rocking the minivan on its springs, the faint tremble in his fingers as he brought the cigarette back up to his mouth. Impossible to count on making it back.
The odds of him dying in a bed – like Bob had, with all the women there to cry over him, and Rick to make sure Daryl stayed down…Fuck. Not gonna happen. He'd go out like Merle, out alone somewheres, and only if God felt like throwing him a bone would none of them have to put him down afterwards.
Besides, it was Carol. If Eric could be trusted to read…whatever Aaron wanted Eric to know, from a random rusted metal plate, then Carol would know what Daryl meant. She'd know, and she'd hold onto that, like she'd held to her little girl's hair band for so long.
Up at the mouth of the carriage house, Morgan raised the binocs again. "Bobwhite quail. A whole mess of them." Aaron looked over his shoulder at Daryl, then back at the bird-thick slope and the empty road.
Dary checked the zip twice on the bag, then carefully folded it up. He held the bag in his teeth as he unslung the bow and propped the stirrup on the front seat.
There wasn't a lot of room in the buttstock tool hidie. He shook the jasper rock out into his hand, then re-arranged the thin wrenches so the plastic baggie fit up towards the top. A bit of fiddling, and the rock fit back in, too. The cover locked into place with a snap.
It all could ride in there for months, or fall out and get lost next week, the next time he broke a cable in the middle of a herd swarm. No telling.
"Been three hours," Morgan said. "Still nothing. You want to wait here over night?" He shifted on his seat, eyes going from Aaron to Daryl in the darkness at the back of the garage.
Aaron kept his arms folded, but everything about his shoulders said road home, road home, road home.
Daryl slung the crossbow and shut the SUV door. "If yer done counting birdies, might as well go."
As they loaded up, Daryl caught Aaron's eye. "Hey." He gestured at the bow settled on the back of the bike. "Anything happens to me, make sure this gets back."
Aaron nodded, fast and polite. "Sure," he said. Then he stopped, looked at Daryl. "To Carol, right?"
Daryl started to shrug, whatever, and thought better of it. "Yeah. Carol. She'll sort it out."
Aaron nodded again, like he understood, and took his place behind the wheel.
The road stayed clear, all the way back to Alexandria.
end
Ratings/Warnings/Etc: Teen for Dixon mouth. Smutless. Canon pairings. Mild nature geekery. Minor bending of canon details.
Author's notes: Morgan came late to birdwatching, through some old books he found along the way. He isn't aware of the modern debates over the classification of the towhee complexes, and so what he calls a rufous sided towhee is, as far as he's concerned, a rufous-sided towhee.
As far as I can find, the Stryker 380 doesn't have a buttstock compartment for tools and whatnot. It does have the shape for it, though, which not all crossbows have.
Thanks again to the best beta ever. Thanks also to all those who left 'checking on you' notes to me while I was off being a responsible adult. You know who you are, and you are all appreciated.