A/N: An author should never pick favorites, but...I admit...I loved writing this chapter. I hope you enjoy reading it as much. ~CeeCee
The day after Marie's funeral dawns cool and bright. He stands in the yard in the forgiving blues and pinks of sunrise, waiting for the rest of the hunting party. Rick and he had discussed going out specifically for meat not for immediate consumption, but that they could smoke and cure: summer would be over soon, and they would need winter stores. Planning, for everyone's future, for the survival of the group.
Being worried about his own future - and the future of other people - was still a new thing for him. Everything up until the moment when he realized that Rick, and the ragged group of Atlanta survivors, actually needed and relied on him, had been all about gettin' by. The next meal, the next smoke, the next shady deal of Merle's. Never thinkin' more than two steps, two days, or two weeks into the ahead. Never worried about investing too much time into much of anything. Except...
oooOOOooo
He remembers one summer, about ten years ago. He got sick as a dog, a summer cold or some shit. The air in the busted trailer he and Merle were holed up in danced with dust and reeked of week-old beer. He tried to tough it out but he finally got so fed up with the rumble in his chest and the pathetic weakness in his limbs, he asked Merle to grab him some Nyquil or something on his way out the door.
Merle returned in the wee hours of the morning, completely hopped up on crystal, carrying a wad of cash, and a crapload of cheap plastic bags filled with a bizarre assortment of sellable and useless items he'd stolen from a convenience store in town. He dumped all of it onto the nicked and singed table in the middle of the tiny, cramped space they called the living room.
Daryl lifted his heavy head from the scratchy couch and peered with bleary eyes at the bounty in front of him. Stacks of pilfered cartons of cigarettes sat next to plastic bags of pretzels, lighters in crayon colors, boxes of cheap toys and Hostess cupcakes.
"Gonna sell those," Merle pointed at the cigs. "Make a li'l more quick cash. Headin' out with the boys for a coupla days. You better stay here, little brother, you look like the backend of a donkey. Can't have you crampin' our style. Papa Merle needs to get laid." His eyes were glittering with cheerful bad will and the drugs.
He was nearly at the door, heading out for god knew how long (to Daryl's immense and completely unacknowledged relief) when he turned back and practically chucked a small bottle at Daryl, who wasn't quite quick enough to catch it, but batted it onto the couch, avoiding a blacked eye.
"What the hell, Merle?!"
"You asked me for that, little brother," Merle smiled liked a boa in the midst of digesting a bunny. "Was gonna get you a fifth of Wild Turkey instead, but I got what you asked for. 'Cuz that's the kinda lovin' brother I am." And then he is gone, with his misbegotten wad of cash and cache of cigarettes.
Daryl grabs the bottle and groans in relief. His Nyquil. He cracks the bottle open, chugs half of it. Collapses back onto the sorry excuse for a sofa. Passes out for a day and a half.
oooOOOooo
When he wakes up, he's aware of two things: he feels almost human again, and Merle's still gone. Early morning or late afternoon light seeps in the trailer's small, grimy windows. He gets up, takes a piss, grabs a beer from the fridge. Sits back down and realizes he's ravenous. He rips open the closest bag of junk food, devours it. Opens another. He starts sifting through all of the crap littering the table and the floor.
"What is all this shit, Merle?" He says to the empty trailer. The meth went shopping when his brother robbed the bodega the other night. The only things of value he seemed to have grabbed were the cash and the cigs. The rest of it is cheap junk. Daryl is about to lay back down when he notices a small box, about the size of a humidor, bearing a colored drawing of an old-fashioned crop-duster in flight. He picks it up, remembering the buzzing planes from his childhood dumping dangerous, but beautifully colored, clouds of poison onto the waiting fields below.
It's a model plane kit. He rips it open.
It's the whole shebang. Forty thousand balsa wood parts, bright, oily paint in tiny, connected plastic cups. Instructions in such miniscule typeface, he's not quite sure it's even English. He looks at all the pieces, the blobs of paint waiting patiently in their secure containers, the instructions written in Egyptian hieroglyphs.
He lays down, closes his eyes. Opens one. The stuff is still sitting on the edge of the table. He sits back up. Sighs a little. Pushes everything else off of the surface. And gets to work.
oooOOOooo
He thinks it takes him, in fits and starts, about four days to finish it. He's not entirely sure: the time he spends building the tiny plane is an odd mix of intense concentration and a haze of Nyquil, beer and the remnants of his summer cold. Right after he finishes painting the blue star on the side of the red body of the 'duster, he looks down at his feet. No less than a dozen bags of pretzels and chips litter the rug.
He puts it down, to dry. It looks so small and nearly perfect, sitting there. He reaches one finger out, spins the inch-long propeller. It moves. So does something light, in his heart. He lies back on the couch, folds his hand on his stomach. Stares at the plane for a long time, before drifting off, a small smile on his face.
oooOOOooo
Merle crashes back into the trailer, shakes him awake. He's not alone. Several of his compatriots are with him, and they are all reeling drunk. It's like having four rhinos running around inside a tin can. Daryl can't even think strait over Merle's cackling and his own fuzzy head, but his eyes dart immediately to where the plane was resting.
It is on the floor.
In colored slivers, like confetti after the party's over.
oooOOOooo
His thoughts are interrupted by a large group emerging from the prison. He realizes quickly that it's actually two groups: his own, the hunters: Glenn, Michonne, Rick, a few others. They have been joined by Sasha, her brother, Maggie, Carl and Carol, who are going back to work on the perimeter fences.
As the hunting party gather, Carol raises her hand to him, smiles brightly. She and her group head towards the back of the prison, and she looks around once again, to wave. She's walking with Tyreese, who leans over and says something close, in her ear. She bursts into laughter, whacks the big man's arm. Something turns in his gut.
"Like I said," Glenn is at his elbow, startles him. "Like I said, man. Tick tock, right?" He's looking at the pair as well.
Daryl doesn't respond immediately. He's thinking of a crushed plane that never flew. But...but, goddammit. He loved building that thing, piece by goddamn piece, in the silence and calm of his own space. Sure, he didn't get it entirely right, but it was his. Who cares if it got crushed to shit? What matters is that he built it. That he tried. That it had been beautiful and imperfect, even for a little while.
He finally turns to Glenn. Looks him in the eye. "I hear you. Tick-fuckin'-tock."