Taffer Notes: This is a companion piece to Latchkey Hero. Spoilers ahead, since it takes place after the midseason finale in Season 3. Considered Latchkey canon.
Written by MaverickWerewolf over on Ao3. Since she doesn't have an account here, I get the honours of posting it. Any and all comments will be passed on to her! I love it a lot and it's the best and she's amazing.
Dead ringer... or not
Rings.
No, not rings – a ring. Singular. Worry about the other ones later, right?
From where he sat perched on atop one of the taller buildings overlooking the town – or "that shithole over there," depending on who you asked – Kyle surveyed the streets and absently pushed his sleeves farther up above his elbows.
All he had to do was find one teeny-tiny Fi-finger-sized circle of gold (gold gold; he wasn't settling for something out of a box of fucking Crackerjacks) somewhere out there in that relatively little handful of civilization.
Pssht. Civilization only if zombies counted as civvies.
Really, why didn't he at least do this back in Harran? He had lots of space to look around there, and now here he was about to turn upside down a small cluster of buildings Harran could've swallowed whole a few times over.
Not only did he have to do that, he had to find that one home of that one happily engaged whoever that didn't happen to be wearing their ring when all this started. Or else that one unhappy fiance that took theirs off at some point, or else…
Probably ought to get to it instead of thinking about it. Which meant he had to cross the street, and crossing the street always sucked.
Getting to his feet, Kyle set his sights on what he guessed was a set of apartments, leaning on a nearby rusty railing just long enough for it to creak at him and let him know it was about to dump him right down into the street.
So he vaulted over it instead (which was absolutely stupid, all things considered), landing flat on his back on a once-colorful tarp stretched out down below.
It immediately stripped noisily away at the poles holding it up, making him scramble up and off it and somehow keep his balance while stretching one leg out, making a leap to the top of a nearby van instead.
Fine, maybe he should stop with the tarp-landing thing.
A couple biters shuffled their way over to the commotion like bad neighbors who'd heard something make a loud and overly interesting thud, but Kyle was already up and finding a hopscotch course of car roofs to take him far enough to jump, fingers finding a ledge, and hoist his tired ass up onto somebody's porch.
A porch with a lawnchair and a somebody still sitting in it, except now their face was less a face and more a bloodied set of teeth poking out from half-rotten skin surrounding a pair of bugged-out zombie eyes that locked onto him instantly.
It rattled up a harsh groan-growl like he'd disturbed its beauty sleep and twitched trying to surge out of the chair at him. But he was already gone in quick flap of those neat red danglies from his belt (they looked cool when he ran, okay?) and a blurted Shit.
The door wasn't far, so Kyle went to throw it open and stop riling up Beauty-Sleep, but a rattling lock told him to fuck right off when he got there. And now Beauty-Sleep was up and staggering toward him, slowly lifting gnarled hands his way, looking for lunch.
Well, that didn't take long. Was he getting worse at this, or was he seriously this distracted?
Snatching the hatchet from his belt, he threw a hard swing to knock Beauty-Sleep's arms away so those fingers wouldn't ruin his nicely pressed new shirt (who was he kidding, his shirt looked like hell). Bringing his weapon back around, he caught the blade right in the back of the zombie's neck and sent it crashing to the floor with a not-so-neatly, mostly-severed spine, and a whole lot of putrid blood that painted the previously pretty porch, and try saying that three times fast.
Nope, not getting worse. Only better, thank you very much. Now Beauty-Sleep could get all the rest they wanted down in hell.
Okay, that was plain terrible.
Planting a foot on the zombie's back, he pried the hatchet blade from its neck – it was actually pretty hard to get a blade out of a person's bone, by the way; the movies always made it look too easy – and slung some of the gunk off before sliding it into his belt again and turning back to the door, kneeling and whipping out a set of lockpicks.
He was good at this, too. Nimble fingers and all that… Fingers.
Fingers. Rings. Rings that went on fingers, a whole lot littler than his.
What ring size was she, anyway? How would he even tell ring size? That shit was really particular. Last time he'd tried on rings from one of those big ugly heavy sets of metal bands they waved around in jewelry stores, he'd figured he'd wear it for life because he couldn't get one size back off and he'd had to stick it under running water and all that embarrassing shit while everybody else har-har'd over just how funny it was—
What if he found a ring and it didn't fit?
Aw man. He'd die. On the spot. Clutch his heart and fall over stiff as a board.
Snap, his lockpick went.
Ow. It broke right in his face and made him flinch, because he'd gone and almost stuffed his nose right up against the door while staring very hard at the inside of his brain.
That was fine. He had this.
When he finally – not that it'd taken him that long, just a little longer than usual – got the lock open, he slipped inside and glanced around.
Seemed like a nice place. With a locked door on this side and broken-in windows on the other side, big enough that he could've climbed through. His insides twisted into a few embarrassed knots and he told some tittering little voice in his head to shut up.
You aren't paying any attention, you dumbass. And how long had he been doing this now?
Okay. Rings. Ring. Singular. All he had to find was one and he was home free.
There were a few chairs, bookshelves, shelves of movies, an overturned TV in one corner – pushing past a tattered cloth hanging in a doorway, he found shit scattered everywhere in a bedroom: duffel bags ripped wide open and left laying around, loaded with a whole bunch of useless junk.
But his filter snapped on through all the muddied flailing over rings to tell him that meant whoever had come in here to raid the place had wanted 'useless' junk. Wanted things like bits of plastic and wire. Only tools, electronics, or else bits that could be fashioned into something else – raiding to survive, not to sell.
So, they'd not wanted rings. Who wanted a ring in the apocalypse?
This guy, of course. Kyle fucking Crane, at your service.
Anyway, that meant if there were any rings in here, they probably would've been overlooked or left entirely. He went over to a nearby dresser and started rifling around.
Didn't actually take long for his super nimble, calloused fingers that definitely weren't knocking everything in the floor (not like it mattered) to find a velvety little ring box. And another one, on the opposite side of the wide wooden surface.
Two. Jackpot.
He cracked one open and found a fat-ass gold ring set with a heavy chunk of onyx staring back at him. That was a dude's ring. Great.
Tossing that over his shoulder, he tried the next one – which turned out to be empty.
Kyle groaned and snapped it shut, throwing that one over his shoulder, too.
Thunk. It hit something just behind him that was way too high up to be the floor. He froze.
Sneaky fucker.
Turning and pulling his hatchet, he whirled and stumbled back, very gracefully slamming his rear end into the drawers of the dresser he'd been scavenging and almost knocking the mirror on it right down onto his distracted head.
A biter had made its – her – way over to him while he was busy working hard getting himself killed looking for a ring. Now stood there glowering like it'd – she'd – kind of locked up halfway across the room and then had stopped there, dumbfounded, when a little ring box had hit her in the noggin.
Probably her ring box.
When she stumbled forward, Kyle brought up one leg to kick her a good several paces back. Enough for him to hoist the hatchet again and knock her head hard so askew that she staggered and fell lopsided into a heap, moaning and struggling to get up or else right her hands enough to drag herself around on the floorboards.
He kind of prided himself on braining zombies. Heheh. That was funny.
Sunlight spilling in through one of those windows he totally should've used to get in here glinted off a speck of something shining through all the grime on the her fingers – a ring.
A gold ring. Except his mind sputtered and stalled to a halt.
Because this ring was on a zombie woman's finger. A dead woman. A person who'd had a life once.
Oh. He was being a looter right now.
Great. Great, you were gonna get her a used ring as good as pried off somebody's finger that some other person got for their special person. All covered in their skin particles and memories and shit.
He sure was a mean fuck.
Yeah, he wasn't doing this. Abort mission. Find a fucking jewelry store, get something New. Not Like New or Used or Actually a Zombie's, without so much as a note about potential crusty old blood.
If the kind woman in the floor wasn't currently totally overloaded with wanting to eat him and trying to right herself with a giant bloody rut carved into her caved-in skull, he would've apologized before he made his way out. He was considerate like that.
As it was, though, Kyle just turned and went out one of those windows he hadn't seen before because he was currently riding extra high on the dumbass scale.