Saying goodbye is a tightrope walk now. They say things like See you later and Take care. Stubbornly refusing to believe it'll be the last time, but it's there, heavy in the air. They walk between faith and fear.
When Maggie hugs Beth, she says, "Ya'll come back now, ya hear?" in a breezy tone, but her green eyes are worried when they meet Daryl's. They say, Keep her safe, bring her back.
It takes him back to the train car. He ignores his shudder of disgust for that place. He nods.
Being on the road feels strange, too, just the two of them alone in a car. Too normal and not normal at all. They stop sometimes to pilfer their way through some of the cars and clear the road. They move with easy familiarity, not needing many words, talking with eyes and hands and– just knowing. Knowing where the other is gonna be, what they're probably about to do. He has, again, what the others have: bonded being the last ones left. The silence feels right when they're killing walkers and in the wild. But once they hop on a long uninterrupted stretch of US route, in the tiny-ass car, the quiet pulls taut. An electric fence of unsaid words strung between them.
It makes his thoughts loud. He hadn't allowed himself to think so far ahead. The funeral home was a fairytale disaster, a Hansel'n'Gretel trap, a complete pipedream. But for a bit there, he'd thought of ridiculous possibilities. It seemed simpler there, back then, with her dreams of good people. And when she was gone, he tried to keep the faith, but he couldn't bear to think of it in detail. Couldn't flay his chest wide open with stupid, hopeful daydreams. Not if he was gonna find her turned.
He hadn't prepared himself at all for complete success. He couldn't have predicted this.
"Sure do miss the radio," Her voice crashes his train of thought, wrecking the tense silence. She's got the map with Ty's X mark folded neatly on the dashboard in front of her, staring out the window at the passing fields, what used to be cotton and corn and soybeans. Occasional overgrown orchards, browned and wasted in the late autumn months.
He'd learned to live without the radio pretty easy, he thinks, but the time without her had been somethin' else. He can almost hear Merle's laugh, his taunts. Ooh redneck Romeo! All moon-eyed over our young li'l songbird, Darylina?
"Why don't'cha sing?" He suggests, to keep her busy. To fill the time. To drown out Merle's cackle.
She does. It's the first time he's heard her since that night. A lot of the songs he doesn't know, some he heard her sing at the prison. Some church songs, and old country he recognizes. It makes it all feel unnaturally, extraordinarily normal. If not for the clumps of walkers they go by, he'd think the world hadn't ended. It'd be nothing to put his hand on her thigh in the small space. He can practically imagine they're other people in some earlier year. Pretend he is someone who's allowed to rest his palm on her leg while she taps out the rhythm of the song.
She starts another song, and it takes him a second, takes a few lines before he knows, but when her clear voice sings, "And you don't wanna be my boyfriend and I don't wanna be your girl–" his body clenches with cool dread, a rock dropping hard and heavy in his stomach.
He tried to remember all those words, trying to sleep while Joe and Len and the others hooted and hollered and crashed around, making the dark unbearable. He couldn't.
"Don't," He snaps. Then, "Not that one."
Her gaze burns through his cheek, but he doesn't look back. He keeps his eyes on the road, out the window, and his teeth in his cheek.
It's just a damn song, but he can't pretend it doesn't fuck him up some. It's just a song. And it's a sweet, vicious premonition. A silly girl's song that haunted him when she was gone. Made him wonder shit he thought for a while he'd never get to ask, like, Why did you sing that? And now he can't either.
It's just a song. It's a barely scabbing wound.
The devil on his shoulder calls him a pussy in Merle's voice.
She says nothing, but she sings something else, about a fast car, that reminds him of his mother.
He starts looking out for places to stay. They still got a long ways to go.