Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's Fear the Walking Dead. Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: Second work in my Daemon AU series. Set pre-season 1/season 1, focuses on the beginning of the outbreak, mostly between Dary/Dee and Merle/Skandi. -This fic focuses on the daemon!trope, from "His Dark Material's" series, by Phillip Pullman. I recommend reading the wiki on the subject, but here is what is relevant for this story. *Dæmons are the physical manifestation of a person's 'inner-self'/soul that takes the form of an animal. Daemons are bound to remain in close proximity their humans, so even a bird daemon could not fly high or far from their human counterpart.
Warnings: adult language, adult themes, blood/guts/gore, fantasy-elements represented and discussed. Touches on what happens when someone's daemon dies.
Crumble (with me into the world's destruction)
They had no daemons.
That was what horrified everyone at first.
People stumbling around without their other half.
Eyes vacant. Milked-over. Empty.
The live footage had shocked everyone. Making even the CNN news anchor's vibrant Goliath Beetle daemon creep down into the gaping V of her blouse. Curling up next to her heart as the woman shuddered, visibly taken aback as the shaky footage coming in live from downtown Manhattan showed a massive horde of shambling shapes and nothing else.
"Where are their daemons?" the male anchor cut in, black-headed snake daemon coiled tightly around his wrist as he stroked her scaly head. The action unconscious and self-soothing as both reporters squinted at something off camera.
"I don't see them, they must be-"
"Angela? Are you there?" the female anchor asked, clearly steeling herself as she flashed an apologetic smile to the camera and started up again. "I am speaking now to our correspondent in the field, Angela Klan. Angela, what it is we're looking at? Have these people been…separated from their daemons? Or-"
There was a crackle of static. Hallmarks of a fading signal as the images from the live feed pulsed black for an ageless second before-
"I'm here, Kim. I am reporting live from the tunnel, as you can see behind me it is complete chaos. Many are saying the evacuation order left people with little time to-
He wasn't entirely sure what he was looking at until the cameraman panned a wide angle. Showing a slow moving line of cars jockeying for position in grid-lock for as far as the eye could see. Thousands of people with no idea what was coming as the hulking crowd of shambling figures came around the corner. Weaving between cars and around barricades, bleeding, torn into, and painfully alone.
"As you can see behind me, containment has failed. People are running. Trying to escape the infected anyway they can. The military is-"
His eyes narrowed, refocusing on a point just over the reporter's shoulder when Dee straightened - curled up on the couch beside him - and let go of a low warning growl. The sound roused Skandi from her perch on the back of the old armchair Merle was splayed out on, half asleep. Beating her large sickly-thin wings as Merle snorted himself awake, cursing a blue-streak under his breath as he kicked himself upright.
"The information we've gotten in the last two hours has been startling – impossible – but as you can see behind me-"
That was the moment when it all clicked.
When he realized what he was seeing.
What those shambling, daemonless shapes were doing to the people in the crowd.
"Oh no! Look- don't! Oh…oh god! Turn the camera away. Away Ned!"
But it was too late.
The whole damn world saw it all.
Seeing it second hand had been bad enough. Watching in horrified fascination as a group of shapes knocked a man and his ferret daemon to the ground. Sinking their teeth into him as others tore into the soft of his belly while he was still screaming. Misting the camera lens with red as the man's daemon screamed with him. Pulling vainly on his collar and coiling close like she could somehow protect him from it. Hissing and clawing at the infected as her human's screams turned to whimpers and she started to fade around the edges. Dust returning to dust.
They never touched her, those things.
Not once.
It was like they couldn't even see her.
Dee's scruff was puffed up - standing on end like a threat. A mournful sound leaving her lips like a whimper and a growl as the footage abruptly cut out. Looping resignedly as chaos reigned in the background of the news station. But honestly, all he could see was the dying flicker of the man's daemon starting to fade and drift, helpless and trying to burrow deeper as the man took his final breath and-
"That ain't right," he whispered. More to himself than anything as Dee angled close, shivering under her fur. Weaving between his legs again and again – repetitive and self-comforting as he curled into himself in inches. Feeling the chill of what he'd seen ripple through him like shock waves as Dee butted her head close for assurance and comfort.
Everyone knew what happened to your daemon when you died.
They faded somehow.
Escaping from you – molecule by molecule.
No matter how hard you tried to hold on, you always lost them.
But this had been different.
It was a violation.
Unnatural and the last thing from kind.
"Survival of the fittest Darlina," Merle returned, slurring the vowels enough that the entire thing would have been unintelligible if he wasn't so pathetically used to it. Looking up in time to watch as Skandi drooped awkwardly into his lap. Big eyes already half closed as Merle stroked her long neck with drug-gentle fingers.
"Nature ain't kind, you know that. Let the world bleed," Merle finished, drifting off. Docile-high and oddly quiet as he and Skandi shared silently. Blurring together as the last of the drugs coasted through their system.
And no, maybe it wasn't.
But that didn't mean he had to like it or even accept it either.
He didn't care what Merle said.
Nature had a code, and this?
It wasn't it.
That last part would be important later.
Seeing it happen first hand was worse.
Like it had been with Amy and Betan.
They'd watched it happen.
All of them.
There for every second when Betan had curled tight on top of Amy's chest – unmoving and sickly-still as they'd struggled to breathe. His long rabbit ears soaking up the tears as Andrea and Caymus hovered close above them – holding them gently as Andrea's daemon wedged himself into the space between and licked desperately at Betan's quivering form. Chirping at him with rough, clicking purrs as her breaths turned shallow and Betan started to waver - like a signal fading weakly. A far cry from only a few days before when he'd been cleaning his bolts, watching Betan bully Caymus into a game of chase. Hopping around like a god damned maniac as Chell and Furia scrambled to join in, making Carl and Sophia giggle as the adults paused to watch. Nimbly zooming around camp at breakneck speed as Caymus let go of a rumbling yowl and stretched himself out. All lithe and graceful like only a big cat can be before he let them have it.
Betan had been gone for hours when Amy finally opened her eyes again.
No one really talked about it, about what happened to your daemon when you died.
No one liked to.
Like an unspoken taboo, everyone and their dog avoided it.
And he was right there with them.
Because despite feeling and acting and interacting like a physical being, daemons- well, weren't. They were dust. More like a concept than anything. Like the definition of a soul on paper, they were figurative and undefinable. They didn't exist without the human they'd been born into the world with. Same went for the other side. One couldn't live without the other. Human and daemon. It was a matched set or bust.
When he passed, his Dee would just fade clear into nothing. Straining and reaching for each other but never quite coming back together. Maybe all those dusts motes and molecules reformed on the other side, he didn't know. All he did was that when you died, your daemon did too.
So the walkers?
All those people that got bit.
That died and sat back up and started walking again?
Wanderin' around without a soul?
They weren't human no more.
They couldn't be.
Authors Note #2: Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed. - This story is now complete, but there will be more in this series. Stay tuned.
Reference:
Daryl: 'Dee' short for Delilah (wolf daemon, female)
Carol: 'Trelli' (spotted hyena daemon, male)
Ed: 'unnamed because no one cares' (mosquito daemon, female)
Merle: 'Skandi' (vulture daemon, female)
Shane: 'Leena' (brown and white-striped pitbull daemon, female)
Deanna: 'Matimba' (Black-maned Lion daemon, male)
Abraham: 'Kandi' (Bull-mastiff daemon, female)
Aaron: 'Hubrand' (Honey Badger daemon, male)
Michonne: 'Kanyen' (African Serval daemon, male)
Jim: 'Nallie.' (Great Horned Owl daemon, female)
Dale: 'Zia' (unmentioned daemon, female)
Sophia: 'Chell' (unsettled daemon but preferred deer form, male)
Carl: 'Furia' (unsettled daemon, unmentioned, female)
Judith: 'Leetan' (unsettled daemon, unmentioned, male)
Amy: 'Betan' (Holland-lop rabbit, male).
Andrea: 'Caymus' (Cougar, male.)