I do not own The Walking Dead. All rights go to AMC.
Takes place pre-series, probably within a week or two of Rick showing up.
This was not what Glenn had expected. When Daryl asked to make a pit stop on the way, Glenn figured it was for something simple. Cigarettes. Beer. Hell, Twinkies. A shop on the road into Atlanta, an easy stop. So, of course, he agreed. After all, what could one pit stop hurt?
His first thought is that they're going to look for weapons. After all, what else could they be doing here in this nice suburban area? But Daryl seems to know exactly where he's going. Just as Glenn is thinking about asking him where they're going, Daryl pulls to a stop outside a nice little two-story with a fading white picket fence. Wilted roses have taken over the mail box and clumps of weeds are pushing up through the flower garden. Other than that, the house looks completely normal. A bit neglected, of course, but nice. Decent. Hell, even innocent.
"Daryl, what is this place?" Glenn asks as he studies the house. There's an upturned bicycle by the trashcans on the side of the house. There are three of the tall plastic bins: one for rubbage and two more for recycling and shrub clippings. Out back he can see a caved in doghouse and a large American Sycamore with a swing and a tree house.
Daryl stares directly ahead, not even looking to the right, past the curb and up the driveway. "My house."
This was not what Glenn had expected at all. "Y-your house?" he sputters, surprised.
Daryl smirks, almost looking amused. "I didn't always live in the boonies, boy. Couple months back, I was a good ol' law abidin' citizen of Atlanta."
"So why are we here?"
"I've got a job to do."
"A job? What kind of job?"
"Somethin' I shoulda done two months ago."
"What-Daryl, you're not making any sense."
As an answer, Daryl reaches up and flips down his sun visor, popping out a photograph from the mirror flap. He holds it out in his thumb and forefinger. "The woman is my wife Alexis. The little girl-that's my daughter, Karen."
Glenn is overcome with shock. "Your daughter?"
"I ain't repeatin' myself Chinaman."
Glenn decides that right now is not the time to distinguish himself as Korean. Not if he wants answers. "Where are they now?"
Daryl grips the steering wheel a bit tighter. "Inside."
Glenn's stomach drops down to his feet as he suddenly understands why they're here. "Are they…?"
"Yep."
"And you're going to…?"
"S'what we're here for."
Glenn gulps, his head spinning. "Okay. All right. Do you…"
Daryl chooses this moment to set his body in motion. "Wait here."
"What if you need help?"
"Won't. Know where they are and the house is locked. Ain't nothin' that's gotten in here. I'll take care of it."
Glenn nods and says, "Okay. Then I'll just…wait here."
Daryl is halfway up the drive when he turns around. "Hey Chinaman."
Glenn rolls down the window. "Yeah?"
Daryl looks almost…nervous. But there isn't that glint-that gleam in his eye signifying that he's gone off the deep end- so when he says, "Would…would you like to come in and meet them?" Glenn just nods and gets out of the truck.
Daryl unlocks the door with a key that's hidden in a slide out brick from the bottom of the house. He glances up to see Glenn's confused face. "Well, I wasn't gonna leave that piss-ugly metal siding they put around houses up. I had to do somethin' better, and this seemed like it was as good an idea as any. It's pretty convenient, too."
He lets them in and a wave of hot, musty air hits them. It's sweltering inside, more so than outside since it was shut up. Daryl steps in first, listening closely; though for what, Glenn has no idea. He signals that it's all right to come in and Glenn follows him to the hallway. Daryl toes the dust on the tile. "If Missy was around, she'd have our heads for wearin' shoes on her clean floors," he mutters.
"Missy?" Glenn asks.
Daryl glances at him out of the corner of his eye. "The housekeeper."
If Glenn is taken aback-and he most certainly is-he says nothing. Instead, he looks around. To the left is a sitting room with green striped wall paper and cream colored chairs. A bookshelf, coffee table, and whiskey cabinet complete the formal parlor atmosphere. Glenn half expects to see a record player in the far corner when he passes, but there's just a little wooden table with a vase of long dead flowers on it. The room to the right is has double doors and from the gap where one is cracked open, Glenn can see that it's an office or study of some sort, with a black leather chair and a corner desk that touches the closet on one side of the room and goes halfway out on the wall next to it. Sheaves of papers and folders cover nearly every inch of space. The mounted bookshelves on top are filled with dictionaries, law books, and medical reference books. Photographs and a few hand drawn marker creations on computer paper accent these perfectly, pictures of a smiling family and a large chocolate lab.
They make their way down the wood-floored hallway, leaving tracks in the dust. There are pictures on the walls, too. Pictures of Daryl in, of all things, a business suit, and more of that pretty blond woman with the bright blue eyes and pink lips that seemed permanently stretched in a smile from all the pictures. She always seemed to be laughing, Glenn noticed. The little girl was in them, a girl with pigtail braids the same color as Daryl's brown locks, but with her mother's face. One picture, which Daryl ran his fingers over gently as they passed, was of her sitting in the grass out back. It looked like it was Easter, if the background was any clue. There were still some eggs in the grass, the plastic kind that parents stuffed with coins and candy, and a bring pink, yellow, and blue basket was looped around her arm, stuffed with more eggs. She had her arms around the dog's neck.
"That was Charley," Daryl says as Glenn looks at the picture. "The dog. We got him when Max was about a year old."
"Max?"
Daryl scans the hallway again. "My son."
They continue on their journey, passing a spiral staircase. One side leads up to the second floor. The other curves down to the basement. Glenn does not ask what's down there. Daryl takes him into the large back area, which is a dinner table and then, across a little pony wall, a kitchen, which is painted a bright, happy, sunny yellow. Daryl goes into the kitchen and opens the cabinets. "Open your backpack," he says.
Glenn does as he is told and Daryl fills it to the brim with food. He disappears for a moment with only a, "Wait here," and walks out the door in the kitchen. Glenn can see it's a garage. From just out of sight, behind a silver Camry, Glenn hears a shove and then the tell-tale dumping rattle of dozens of Christmas ornaments spilling onto a garage floor. Daryl comes back, slipping something in his pocket as he does so, and sets the plastic storage tub on the floor in front of the pantry. "Let's get loadin', boy."
They load up the rest of the food-in the end there's enough room to put the stuff in Glenn's bag in the container as well, with some leftover space for paper towels and toilet paper. Daryl brings this out to his truck and leaves Glenn staring out the back door at the tree house. There was a picture on the china cabinet in the dining room. One of a smiling boy, no more than ten or so. There had been something off about the picture, though, like the smile was fabricated, or the boy wasn't really there. He was just some conjured up computer image or magazine cutout.
Daryl catches him staring. "That's Max," he says casually. "He was nine when we took that. Before the chemo hit him too hard."
"He was sick?"
"Leukemia. He was ten when he left us." Left us. It just sounds so domestic, so proper. It doesn't seem right, somehow, coming from Daryl.
"I'm sorry."
"Karen was four when he died." Daryl continues as though he hadn't heard Glenn. "Alexis was crushed, of course. Bedridden for weeks. But at the same time, we were…relieved. Because he was gone. He wasn't suffering anymore." Daryl looked out the back door. "He only used that tree house twice before he wasn't strong enough to climb the ladder. That's why I built that pull-system, so I could bring him up myself. Never got a chance. He died six months later."
"Daryl-"
"And you know what the twisted thing is? Kid's lyin' there on his death bed and you know what he says to me? He says, 'Daddy, I'm sorry I didn't get to use the tree house more. I really liked it, though. I promise.' And I'm sittin' there like some sick fuck, relieved that my kid is finally dyin' cuz goddamit, at least it wouldn't hurt him no more!" Daryl is breathing raggedly, pain evident on his face. He breathes in and out for a few moments. Then he says, his voice even and neutral, "Let's go upstairs already."
They pass two doors and a hall closet. The first door has a bright blue wooden sign on it. The block letters announce "MAX" in all caps. The second door goes to a bathroom. Daryl stops here and pulls out all the medicine, toilet paper, and soap. Almost as an afterthought he snags a rubber duck. "For the kids," he says. Glenn nods.
The room across from them has a bright purple, glittery sign on it. "Karen" is written in loopy letters, and a fairy hovers over it all, looking like a vague, hand carved representation of Tinkerbell. Daryl passes this room silently.
They go by an office and one more hall closet before they reach the room at the end of the hall. Daryl lets it swing open gently and Glenn gasps.
There, on the four poster bed with the red and gold swirled bedding, is the woman from the pictures. Her body is emaciated and-and Glenn nearly thinks this is worse-bound. She's wrapped in duct tape, her mouth taped shut and her arms and legs bound together. She can't move at all, except to thrash her head a bit.
Daryl makes quick work of crossing the room. He stands over her for a moment, then slowly reaches out and turns her body over, rolling her onto her back. He pulls out his knife and, whispering softly, "I'm so sorry, Lexi," he drives the knife blade into her skull. It's quick, it's painless, and when it's done, he slowly unwinds all the tape and turns her over, closing her eyes with his thumb. If it weren't for how death-ridden her body was, Glenn could almost believe she was sleeping.
Wordlessly, Daryl moves to the closet. He picks and chooses from a selection of jeans and shirts, stuffing them into a gym back from the walk-in closet floor. He grabs two more gym bags, filling them with the toiletries and towels from the master bathroom and some socks and underwear. Then he does something that, at first, confuses Glenn. He fiddles with the clock radio by the bed. The power went out a long time ago, but he flips a switch, effectively transferring it to battery power, and picks out a CD. He presses play and very soft music spills into the room. "You said you wanted me to play our wedding song when you died," he said. "Always figured you'd be the one to outlive me." And then he walks out without a single glance back, leaving Glenn alone with a dead woman's body and the opening notes of Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Porcelain."
When Glenn finds him, he's in Karen's room. But something's wrong. He's just sitting there, in a wooden chair by her bed. He's got a book in his hands and he's staring at it blankly. "We were readin' this when the attack happened," he says. His voice is flat, empty. Glenn looks at the title. It's, of all things, "The Hobbit." Daryl turns the book over in his hands. "We only had a few pages left. We were nearly finished…Max loved books. He loved to read. Especially after we started taking long trips to the hospital. He couldn't go out, couldn't do the things the other boys did. So we read. Well, he and I watched TV mostly, played a few video games. It was Alexis who could read." He looks up suddenly. "You ever read Inkheart?"
"No," Glenn admits. "But I saw the movie."
"Well she was like that guy, the dad. Meggie, too, I guess. She could make things come alive when she read them. Not really, 'course. But the way she read...I'm telllin' you. Voice of a goddess. But there was one series that Max and me read together. That was the Lord of the Rings. When he died, Karen made me read her the books. We were reading "The Hobbit" last. I dunno why. Just the way we did it." He looked up at Glenn again. "But I ain't finished. Almost done. But I ain't finished."
Glenn didn't know what to say to this. So he sat down and fixed his eyes on Daryl. "Go ahead."
Daryl opened the book and began to read. His voice caught and broke several times, but then he was on the last page. "'You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all! 'Thank goodness!' said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco jar."
Daryl set the book down. "And that's the end of it, Kare-bear. Whatcha think?"
The Walker-child, of course, did not answer, but Daryl didn't seem to expect her to. He slid onto the bed beside her and pulled her close to him. Glenn's eyes widened and he wondered if Daryl had lost it. But Daryl just pressed her face to his shirt, a father hugging his daughter. While she was against him, he slid the knife out of its case. It was only when he knew for sure that her face was turned away that he hovered the tip a hair's width away from her neck. "I love you, Kare-bear. Until the end of time and back again." He leaned forward and Glenn had to strain to hear him whisper, "I promise it won't hurt. Goodnight, princess." Then he pushed the knife into her spinal cord and she went limp against him.
Daryl stayed there a long time. He didn't rock or cry. He didn't scream, shout, or speak. He simply sat there, holding his daughter in his arms. After a while, though, he began to sing. Four songs, in total. The first, Cats in the Cradle, made Glenn's stomach drop. Then Dock of the Bay and Cumbersome. By the time he sang Tears in Heaven, Glenn had tears running down his face. He felt as if he should leave, that he was intruding on an incredibly private moment. Of course, he was. But he couldn't make his feet work, couldn't turn and walk out.
After the songs, Daryl unbound the girl's body and tucked her into bed. He reached into his backpack and extracted something. "I think this is yours, Princess. I'm sorry Daddy took it and left you without it two whole months. That was real mean of him, wasn't it? That was a mistake, baby girl, and I'm real sorry. I hope you can forgive me for it." Somehow, Glenn knew he wasn't talking about the teddy bear.
With a final kiss on his daughter's forehead, Daryl turned and walked out of the room. Glenn followed him downstairs. "Let's go," Daryl said.
"Aren't you going to bury them?"
Daryl turned to him. "Why should I? They're in their own beds, in their own rooms, in the house they lived in and loved in. Lexi's son, Karen's big brother, is in an urn on the china cabinet. Their whole lives were here. Why take them away from it?"
In the end, Daryl packed up the truck with plenty of supplies for camp and took with him a small rucksack. Inside it were two "baby's first Christmas" ornaments, a Red Hot Chili Peppers CD, a few photographs, and a copy of The Hobbit. At the last minute, he went into the study that Glenn had seen and came out with a folder full of hand written pages. The name Alexis Dixon was printed in gold on the cover. "She was a writer," Daryl said, as if that explained everything. And somehow, it did.
They did not make it to Atlanta. On the drive home, Daryl said nothing, and Glenn didn't ask him to. It wasn't his place, it wasn't his business. Already Daryl had shared a moment with him that was so precious, so private, that Glenn didn't feel he deserved anymore answers. And besides, he had a feeling he could answer the questions himself. Who tied them up? Most likely Daryl himself. But then why didn't he finish the job? Glenn thought about this awhile, thought about the way he'd played his wife's CD and tucked in his daughter, and decided that maybe he just wasn't ready for that final step. Why did they come? The answer to that one was obvious. Daryl needed closure.
The one thing that Glenn couldn't understand why Daryl had chosen now of all times to go back, why he had chosen to go back with Glenn of all people. He had a brother back at camp. But then he thought of the house. Not a single picture of Merle had been on the walls. Something warmed in Glenn's heart.
"Thank you," he said when they'd nearly reached camp. "For trusting me with this."
Daryl flipped on the stereo and popped in his CD. "Let's just not talk about it, alright Chinaman?"
"Korean."
Daryl shrugged. "Same difference."
And that was when Glenn understood. As "Otherside" spilled out of the stereo, he got it. The closure Daryl needed wasn't something to help him come to terms with the demise of his family. He'd already done that. He was moving on, slowly but surely. This was just another step. A setting right of things. He put them in their natural order, they were done, and there would be no more words about it. And now they would go back to camp, share their "findings" with the others, and not speak a word of this. But in the back of his mind, Glenn would always know. He would know that there was a photograph of Alexis and Karen tucked into the sun visor and one of Max taped onto the dashboard. The others might never know, but he would. He would know the truth.
When Daryl pretended to be a simple country man, it was a ruse. He'd lived the suburban apple pie life. He knew what it was, how it worked, and what it led to. He'd played catch, read to his kids, and worked in a city.
When Daryl claimed to have never had anyone but Merle, Daryl Dixon was lying.