Chapter 62: did you lose yourself somewhere out there

Merle isn't there when Daryl wakes up.

Not that weird. Daryl barely remembers falling asleep last night, and it's entirely possible that Merle went back out again and just hasn't come home yet. Or it's possible that he went out early; he didn't specify an exact time at which he's supposed to meet up with this mysterious guy, and time is usually kind of a fuzzy business with Merle anyway. Conventional temporal measurements often don't apply in his world.

So whatever.

It's a clear day to start, but as morning goes on clouds begin to roll in - low, though they don't look like the kinds of clouds that bring rain. But they do bring more wind - sharp, sudden gusts of it - and birds have to flap harder and they appear generally irritated. Leaves shower from the trees - falling firesparks, all glowing with color - and Daryl is halfway between the barn and the toolshed closer to the house when a particularly strong gust slams into him from the side and actually succeeds in staggering him just a bit. It howls and wails through the barn and the horses stamp and murmur, nervous.

Leaning against the side of the shed, temporarily sheltered from the wind, he shoots a text at Merle and asks him what's up, any news, did he meet the guy yet. No response after a couple of minutes of waiting, which isn't in itself alarming. Merle is also incredibly bad about responding to texts, voicemail, picking up the goddamn phone at all. Frequently he lets the battery run down and doesn't put it on the charger for a day or so. Daryl has become grudgingly accustomed to it.

If there's nothing in a couple of hours he'll try again.

Midday, eating lunch in the house, Hershel sits down opposite him in the kitchen and fixes him with a speculative eye, and before he opens his mouth Daryl has a pretty good idea of what this is about. Beth suggested the possibility, Hershel himself appeared to be thinking through it, and Daryl swallows the mouthful of leftover mashed potatoes he's working on and gives the man his full attention.

His stomach isn't jumping around. Not much. A little, maybe.

Staying here. Staying with her. Through the winter.

And yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what it's about. Hershel has been thinking - about how it's been helpful having Daryl around in general, about how Daryl is a good worker, about how Hershel isn't getting any younger and the downside of the farm doing well is that there's a lot to do, and how when Maggie comes home for Christmas she'll be staying after, possibly for a good while, but it might still be wise to have an extra pair of hands... And if Daryl's amenable, if he has nowhere else to be, Hershel would be happy to keep him on.

Hershel would be happy to keep him on indefinitely.

Daryl manages to remain calm. Somehow. He says yeah. Yeah, sure. That would be fine.

He would be happy too.

By mid-afternoon there's still nothing from Merle.

Daryl still isn't worried. Not about Merle, anyway. But that he hasn't heard anything... And this is sort of important. This sort of needs to work out. He texts again, waits, calls. It goes immediately to voicemail. He leaves a message - short, not exactly terse. It's irritating, though. Merle knows how much this means. Merle knows how much this means to him, and after the conversation the night before, Daryl was prepared to believe that counted for something. That Merle cares, actually cares, and even if he remains skeptical about the whole thing - and he clearly does - he wants to try to make it work.

But Merle is Merle. And Merle isn't going to magically stop being Merle overnight by sheer force of will. Daryl doubts Merle could stop being Merle even if he wanted to do so with every fiber of his being.

So okay, maybe he is worried. Maybe he's worried a little bit.

He goes back to work and tries not to think about it.

That goes about as well as it usually does.

He still hasn't heard anything by the time Beth comes home. She gives him what's becoming her usual tiny smile on her way up to the house, and he returns it, but he can tell by the shift in her expression - curious, very faintly concerned - that he didn't return it convincingly.

He usually counts down the last half hour or so before she comes home, counts it minute by minute and becomes internally more and more antsy - in a pleasant way - like a dog left alone and cooped up inside all day but knowing that the Return of the People is imminent. He counts it down and then when he finally sees her everything in him feels like it's leaping over a cliff, and then a whole series of cliffs, until she vanishes through the front door. It's horrible and wonderful, so it's basically emblematic of every other aspect of this glorious insanity.

But today he forgot. Today seeing her was a surprise. He hadn't realized time was passing that quickly. He hadn't realized what time it was at all.

Later at dinner he's even more distracted. Through grace, through passing the peas, through the process of eating itself - which is something, given that Annette's dinners have never been anything but amazing in all his weeks of eating them. He's probably just working himself up for no good reason. He knows this. He's invested a lot in this, got all wrapped up in it, and he's probably primed to freak out about something that seems big but ends up being small. Nothing. A misunderstanding. A snag somewhere that later he'll feel like an idiot over. A perfectly simple explanation. He could - probably will, in fact - get home and Merle will be waiting there with the money, half drunk, phone dead, and it'll turn out he just forgot to stay in touch, which would be very, very Merle of him.

He needs to calm the fuck down is what he needs to do.

Under the table, Beth's fingers brush his and he almost jumps. Almost yelps.

He clenches his hand into a fist so hard his nails dig painfully into his palms. Later there are little dark red crescent moons imprinted into the skin, all in a neat row.

He gets home - managed to keep the gas pedal off the floor the whole way - and Merle isn't there.

He flicks the light on and stands for a minute, keys still in his hand and the door open behind him, staring at the room as though, if he stares long enough and hard enough, Merle might just spontaneously appear. Which doesn't happen. It's the same old dim shitty room, same old shitty rug and shitty furniture barely worthy of the name, and no sign of Merle's presence since Daryl left for work that morning. Daryl has a good memory - not eidetic but quite good - and nothing has been moved or shifted out of place or added or subtracted. The room is exactly as he left it.

Well. Almost. There's a scatter of crumpled paper towels across the couch, a couple on the floor, and he immediately sees why: he sleeps with the window open at least a crack whenever possible and this morning he never closed it before he left.

The wind.

Just as he thinks it, the thin finger of a gust slips in through the few inches he left and stirs the paper towels, and also the ancient newspaper tossed over one arm.

Other than that? Nothing whatsoever.

Daryl's mouth tightens, his stomach tightens, and everything else tightens as he crosses the room and shuts the window with a harder downward shove than necessary, even though it often sticks. It rattles in its frame.

He sits down on the couch, does nothing for a moment, then pulls out his phone and is about to call yet again when it buzzes Beth's number.

For a second or two he actually considers not picking up. Then he does.

"Yeah."

"Hey." She sounds cheerful, mostly her usual self, though not quite so usually there's music in the background and voices and he can gather without anything having to be explained that she's at a party, or at least something along those lines. "Just wanted to. Y'know. Say hi."

He leans back and closes his eyes. Normally her voice would be soothing, whatever the context in which it comes to him. Normally everything would ease as soon as it drifted into his ear. That's not happening now, and it's making him feel an odd and very unwelcome species of guilt.

"Hi." He pauses, presses a hand against his forehead. "Where are you?"

"Birthday party. Kid from school. I don't even really know him, he's just in my history class and everyone's showing up."

A party. Not the first one she's been to since that first night in the rain, but though it still doesn't ease very much, it pulls part of him back there, away from the thing that's chewing on him and getting larger and larger every hour. Pulls him back to her.

Where he belongs.

"You got a ride?" He's smiling a little, sure she'll hear it in his voice, and when she answers he can hear the same in hers.

"Yeah. I'll be fine." She pauses. Swell of noise and laughter. He recognizes the music now; it's Taylor Swift again.

he can't keep his wild eyes on the road

"I think... Sometimes I think about what if you came with me to one of these. What people would think."

"Be fuckin' crazy, girl."

"I know. But I still like thinkin' about it. They all think I've just sworn off boyfriends after Jimmy. If they knew..."

If. They both have a secret, exciting because it's secret and secret because it's exciting. He understands why she enjoys the fantasy. He might even enjoy it himself, kind of, if he could focus properly on it.

"Are you alright?"

"I..." Not sure how to answer that. Mostly, he realizes, it's because talking about his fears here will make those fears seem more real. Or he imagines that's what will happen. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"You just seemed real distracted earlier. You seem..." She sighs, and she's so fucking perceptive, and he will never ever ever be able to lie to her. "You're not fine. C'mon. What's goin' on?"

He presses his fingers and thumb against his eyes and watches the swelling blotches of increasingly violent color. "Ain't heard from my brother all fuckin' day."

"Oh." She pauses again. "Is that bad?"

It's a fair question. He's told her enough about Merle for her to have a general idea of what Merle's modus operandi tends to be. "Today, yeah, it is. He was supposed to pick up... We needed some extra cash for the place. He was supposed to get it from a guy." Hadn't wanted to tell her, hadn't wanted to worry her with complications, but now it doesn't seem to matter.

"You know who? Where?"

"No." He takes a breath. This isn't helping anymore. "I don't know nothin'."

Simple fact, cold all down his throat and in his belly like he's swallowed an ice cube.

He didn't tell me anything.

"Alright." Her voice is tense - not a lot, but enough for him to hear, and he feels like shit, sort of. She was having a good time, she wasn't worried about him or about anything or about fucking Merle, and he should have brushed her off and not told her about it when he doesn't even know there's really anything to tell her. "Can I do anythin'?"

"No. No, 's probably nothin'. He'll turn up." He takes a breath. "I'm gonna go. You get back to everyone."

"Alright," she says again, and then - very soft, so soft he almost can't hear - "Love you."

"Love you too." He opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling. The blotches are still there, still swimming, melting into mutant South America. "Call me if you need somethin'."

Anything.

She's gone. He sits for another few minutes, motionless and silent, the phone still in his hand. Then he dials. Doesn't bother with voicemail. Dials again. Texts. Lays down the phone.

He flips on the TV.

Half an hour later he flips it off, gets up, walks out the door and down the rickety stairs, gets in the truck, and drives.

He starts close in. Works his way out. He's been to almost all of these places, has helped to find more than a couple - some ten, fifteen miles out, one of them even more. Every shitty little biker bar, roadhouse, honkytonk, places masquerading as eateries, and two strip clubs that don't even deserve to bear the name, they're so small and filthy and full of dead-eyed people. He knows them. He remembers them. He can't know for sure if one of them is where it was set to go down, but he'd bet the money they were supposed to get that it was.

Nearest one - biker bar, actually not as terrible as it could be, decor that might once have been nice, pool tables that don't look a million years old. ZZ Top on the jukebox, whole place packed with a gang coming through. Younger than he's used to seeing. Rough crowd. A few white supremacist tattoos visible on hands and arms and necks.

No sign of Merle anywhere. No sign of anyone who matches the extremely rough description he gave. But Daryl would bet the same amount of money that Merle was bullshitting him, at least in part. He had known that at the time.

Maybe should have paid a little more attention to that knowledge.

He shoulders his way to the bar - fast, earns himself some dirty looks, but when people see him they back off with glowers and mutters. He forgets that he's imposing until it actually becomes a thing and he's barely conscious of it now.

The woman behind the bar - big, well-muscled, as tattooed as anyone in the place sans the swastikas and lightning bolts and SS symbols - leans across and listens as he yells to be heard over the music. Shakes her head. Yells back.

"IN HERE COUPLE'A NIGHTS AGO. HAVEN'T SEEN HIM SINCE."

Her voice is like thunder. It's not all about her volume.

He shoulders his way back out again, past an equally raucous crowd leaning on their bikes in the parking lot, chugging beers. One of them staggers to the wall, leans over, vomits copiously. Daryl watches for a few seconds and turns away, disgust roiling in his gut.

He's not who - or what - he used to be.

There's no going back.

Next place: Similar. Louder. Bartender also muscular, also many tattoos, black guy with a disarmingly friendly smile. Daryl sort of knows him and knows that he's as pleasant as the smile would indicate, and Daryl also knows for a fact that he can put a troublemaker on the ground so hard and so fast that afterward they won't even remember what they did to get them there.

Same answer. No Merle, all day.

Same in the place after that. After that. After that, Daryl sits sideways in the driver's seat, door open and his boots on the gravel, staring down. At his hands. At the weird neon shadows thrown by the signs in the window.

Looking at this from a purely objective standpoint, doing some basic math, he still doesn't actually have any reason - yet - to completely freak out.

He is.

He calls again and gets voicemail. He should just stop doing that. Definition of insanity and everything.

Well, he's already kind of losing his mind over this anyway.

Next place. He's getting further and further afield, fewer and fewer lights, black seas of trees and fields. Clouds half obscure the moon. Time becomes part of that black flowing sea and it slips through his fingers. Then, suddenly, it's three in the morning and it's over an hour's drive to town and he's almost asleep at the wheel. He goes back. He doesn't want to. Tomorrow. He'll look more tomorrow.

Unless he gets back and Merle is already there, and then how fucking stupid will he feel? Even more than before. Idiot drove around all night to find a guy passed out on the couch, in bed, whatever. Wherever. He panics over nothing. What the fuck is his problem?

He wants panicking over nothing to be his problem.

He gets home, passes out in his clothes. In the early afternoon he wakes up to a couple of texts and a voicemail from Beth. Nothing from Merle. He doesn't want Beth to worry, knows she would; he responds with a text of his own, that he's taking care of some things, everything is fine, he'll call her later.

A lot of the places he'd been looking and planning to look aren't even open yet and won't be for another few hours. He sleeps again for a little while - no idea how he manages it - until the sun is low and the shadows in the room are long. He gets up, showers in a vague kind of way, finds some semi-clean clothes, goes back out. The wind is still high, still pushing at the truck's side. Rattling. He heads out of town. Slightly different direction. One of these places has to be the one.

None of them are.

It's taking longer and longer to get from one to the other, moving in slowly widening circles. No straight lines. After dark the moon follows him, coasting across the sky - thin. Getting thinner. Yellow as old teeth, yellow like nicotine stains. He stares at it when it floats in front of him, looks for its faint glow when he can't see it directly. It's ever-shifting. Inconstant. He can't navigate by it. He has no idea what he could navigate by, other than his own swelling tide of fear.

Around four in the morning he pulls into the tiny, cracked parking lot of a crumbling non-chain motel and gets an equally crumbling room with a bathroom that looks like it might have had a body dismembered in it at some point in the distant past and grimy-looking sheets he doesn't even want to touch.

Normally he wouldn't touch them. But this isn't normal. Not even close. Nothing is anymore. He tugs his clothes off, moving slow, gripped by excruciating weariness, and collapses on top of the bedspread and sleeps - once again, past noon.

When he wakes up he's curled into a ball, cold, emerging from absolutely psychedelic dreams - almost as bad as the ones from the mushrooms that time he saw the chupacabra - and with the thick curtains he has no idea what time it is.

Or what day it is. Saturday? Sunday? He feels like he's been driving forever. He doesn't even know how far out he is anymore. Doesn't know how long a drive it would be to get back. Back is a weird idea. And lying there, staring at the discolored ceiling, he thinks about what he was facing in that first week when he thought he would have to leave town: the endless trackless road that became an endless trackless downward spiral, nothing good, only initially slow but increasingly rapid decline. In his despair and in what he now recognizes as the other downward spiral that is falling in love, he had seen that trackless road as a kind of almost-oblivion, a near-death. He would get out there with Merle and live that life again, that life that isn't a life at all.

Get out there and be walking dead.

Get out here.

He feels dully sick as he checks his phone. Three calls from Beth. Otherwise nothing.

He texts her back. still missing, looking, call later

It's not going to be enough for her but oh well.

He gropes his way into his clothes and out to the truck, pulls out of the lot and back onto a trackless road with no signs. Nothing but fields and gray sky and distant, oddly colorless trees. Nothing but nothing.

When he hits the main road he swings back toward Atlanta.

Just after sunset. He's exhausted. Not even from driving; he can drive, and he can drive for long periods. He has before. It's not a big deal. This is bone-weariness, bursting from his marrow and pouring into his blood - an internal vampire, sapping him of everything.

He used to think about Merle like that. A vampire. A parasite. As he climbs out of the truck and toward the roadhouse's door his stomach wrenches into a hard, lurching nausea and he's not sure whether he wants to puke or cry.

He supposes that they aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

The roadhouse is low and flat and brick and sizable, and instead of being out in the middle of fucking nowhere it's on the outskirts of a reasonably big, reasonably thriving town. As such, it's not as shitty as it might have been, though it's still shitty enough to fit what he and Merle - really mostly Merle - tend to look for in a place.

They were here before. Weeks upon weeks ago. Such a fucking long shot but he's so far from being picky about the length of his shots.

He recognizes the bartender. She's leaning against the wall to the side of the building, smoking a cigarette and moodily scanning the rolling grassy horizon, the pink and white beads in her long braids little spots of color and her deep brown skin even deeper in the dying light. The neon signs in the windows aren't lit. Most other places would be open by now but this place isn't. Or doesn't seem to be.

Weird.

He walks over to her, trying to look non-threatening. Trying to look exactly the opposite of how desperate he feels. Trying to look like he's not far past freaking out and well into the territory of utterly terrified.

She glances up as he approaches, one arm folded across her chest. She looks at him skeptically while he talks. Turns out the roadhouse is closed because their license was only just now pulled for serving underage kids. She's fuming and in a few minutes she'll go home and fume some more.

He asks his questions. She listens. The skeptical expression fades bit by bit from her face, replaced with something else. Something horribly like pity. She streams smoke from the corner of her mouth and shakes her head, and he's ready for another nope, haven't seen him, and then she speaks.

He was holding his phone in one hand, turning it over and over in his fingers. Anxious. Trying to keep from twitching. As she talks, his fingers slow. Still. Freeze.

She finishes speaking and his fingers uncurl, suddenly nerveless. The phone drops onto the gravel. Flips open. Snaps right down the middle. The pieces tumble in opposite directions and lie still.

The screen is cracked. It flashes in the last of the sun as the sun sinks away.

Daryl simply stands there. Looks down at it. He's puzzled by it. He doesn't understand what he's looking at. He doesn't understand anything. Nothing makes sense. Nothing. Nothing has made sense all weekend. Nothing is making sense now.

Phone lying in pieces on the ground. It was useless anyway. It wasn't getting him anywhere. Now it's truly useless, pointless in every respect. It's not worth any particular attention from him. It doesn't matter.

Everything is broken.