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Chapter Text

The first thing that hits him is how fucking horrible his hangover is.

Glenn's only felt this way a couple other times in his life - once at the CDC when he'd gotten drunk off his ass, once when he'd been horribly sick in the prison, and...

And.

It's the left side of his head, pounding, searing, so damn hot he could swear it's on fire, and with everything rushing back so suddenly it isn't beyond the question why that would be. Prying his eyes open proves to be fairly unhelpful for the first couple minutes, because he can’t even see clearly.

It’s the only way Glenn can process it. Word it, imagine it, whatever the hell it is, because it isn’t just the staccato swirling of his popcorn ceiling. There’s more to it, like his head keeps tilting right and just won’t come up again, and he finds himself reaching up for the side of whatever he’s laying on to steady himself. He can’t see it, but it feels… familiar enough, so he drags his head back to the left to catch what first seems to be the vague shape of an old green couch. Of all the places to end up, it’s not entirely unexpected to pass out on some couch somewhere, but it absolutely wouldn’t be something he did drunk , because being drunk is always bad news. Especially with it being an inhibitor.

Drinking’s only for when something good, really good happens, and even then, Glenn doesn’t drink that much.

What. What the hell?

Something’s wrong.

That’s the second real thing he notices aside from his literal splitting headache, and that’s that- he can’t- there’s something wrong . The world seems a bit blurry on his left side, again only vague shapes- and that’s only ever happened when he got punched in it, and that came with stars.
There aren’t any stars now, and all he can really see is a clear right half of a popcorn ceiling and the midday -or is it late morning?- light racing across it.

He reaches, then pulling his hand from the edge of the couch to instead palm at his face.
What he finds is that something rough obscures the left side of his face- his own hand, a thing that feels like it’s drifting far away off the surface of his own skin, much unlike the right. What also doesn’t bode well is how well he can see out his left- squinting his right eye shut, all he can make out is light, and the vague figure of his own open hand- 

Shit, shit, shit , Glenn can’t see out his left eye. Not well at least.

What the actual fuck happened? 

Glenn knows much better than to get up immediately, especially like this, not knowing entirely where he is. Even blinking away the bleariness, he half expects to come to in some kind of medical wing, or maybe even a cell somewhere. It wouldn't be the first time, not technically, and with how that whole 'confrontation' with Negan had been going- Abraham.

Was Abraham alright? Was everyone else alright? Maggie- Daryl- the baby ?

That's enough for Glenn to shoot right up, and he half rolls, half stumbles off the last thing he expects to.

His couch. Not any random old couch in a random house to hole up for the night, or any reclaimed furniture, no, it's his old couch , which he quickly discovers is still surrounded by his old laundry, old plate- old cup, old pizza boxes, old shitty box TV in the corner of the room, broken shades half down and-

No. This isn't happening.

Stumbling past his sorry excuse for a kitchen, the stove clock reads 11:37 in a jagged electric red smear, an indicator of just how late in the day it'd been- it is . Swaying, almost tripping, he has to brace himself against the kitchen wall -his old kitchen wall- just to stagger to his bathroom. He’d left the lights off, he thinks- had he? He hadn’t even slept in his room, and there’s an overarching thread in him as reality comes crashing into his pounding senses. 

Something pangs in his chest. Like a rope’s tangled in his ribs and wants to pull out his sternum.
He tries to swallow it down as he goes shambling through the doorway.

In the dark of his too-familiar bathroom, the figures of his sad little sink and toilet are enough for him to jump despite the immediate wave of wooziness that claws up his throat.

Oh shit.

Oh shit, he’s gonna puke.

And he does just that.

Collapsing in a heap just in front of that pathetic little toilet bowl, Glenn only barely manages to catch the rim before he’s tossing up whatever his meager dinner (or lunch? Or snack-) had been left from the night before. The acidic nature of it is immediately only more nauseating, a rush up through his throat and into the waiting porcelain. He heaves until he’s got nothing left to give, left staring at half-digested chunks of pepperoni and mozzarella.
Oh.

For a meager, terrible moment, Glenn lingers there. The porcelain is cool under his clammy palms, sweat having gathered before he could realize- it catches for a moment as he pulls himself away and the short distance to lean back against the rim of his shower. And then he sinks. And sinks, and sinks, and sinks, trying to ignore the grittiness of vomit between his teeth, the thickness of it on his tongue.

No, no, don’t think about it. Can’t puke again, nothing’ll come up.

Back pressed back on grubby linoleum tile, Glenn realizes that the bathroom is still dark. All that lights the space is whatever had managed to crawl through his already broken blinds and bounce off the wall of the short hallway. It’s grey, maybe a little blue, but it’s daylight.

The clock had read 11:30-something, and Glenn isn’t sure that what he’s feeling right now is even real. Whatever was before is fuzzy, distant, and thinking too long about it makes his head pound, makes his left eye feel like it's going to pop right out of his head- oh god, it hurts. It really fucking hurts. It’s more than enough for the weight of that overwhelming pain to weigh his arms down as he slumps there lamely on the floor and stares up at the ceiling with a groan. For a moment, he doesn’t even realize it’s himself that made the noise.

Right now, there’s nothing running through his mind but the ricochet of what must be a fresh migraine. It’s so stark, a strange reassurance that he is in fact laying on his old bathroom floor. His bathroom floor. Was it ever old?

Was that all a dream?

Swallowing is something Glenn immediately regrets. His throat is stale with it, with what he’d just puked up, with the thoughts forming a lump there. 

It can’t have been a dream. It felt too much, too real. He can’t even remember yesterday in detail, it feels like two whole years passed by in a night. Two years of- of walkers, of watching people he cared about die, right there in front of him. Two whole years of not being entirely sure where the next meal was coming from, or if he’d end up on the plate instead. Two whole years of- of falling in love. And getting married even if it wasn’t quite the same as it used to be, having a new and big and whole family there day after day, despite everything . A baby. They were going to have a baby.

And then it was over.

It was over and it took a bit longer than it should’ve. 

It was over, and he woke up in his old apartment on his old couch surrounded by old pizza boxes, still in Atlanta, like he’d never been there at all.

What the actual fuck.

Does he have to… does he have to call into work? Does that even matter? If it was a dream, just a dream, there still must be something incredibly wrong with him because he still feels it, remembers it, and all at once a job at a shitty Papa Murphy's down the street means absolutely nothing to him. He’s got a farm to get to, and he hopes his car has enough gas to make it. But- but would he just be showing up? A stranger on Herschel Greene’s front step, asking about his daughter? Jesus, that wouldn’t end well, especially because it- it might’ve been a dream. She might not even be there.

Something terrible and painful curls in his chest at that.

Was it really all just a dream?

Is he crazy?

There goes that feeling in his chest again. Nestled there between his lungs, behind his sternum, Glenn feels a deep seated ache he can only categorize as a pull. A pull that he really hopes isn’t the urge to vomit again. For a fleeting moment, he can almost be convinced it is, that maybe he’s having some kind of heart attack despite the odds- but then, it sits. And pulls. Floating through his chest it seems to want to go out , to compel him back to his feet, even if the floor is so much nicer and cooler right now. Like he’s gotta run, like he’s gotta go somewhere, like he needs to be anywhere else but his pathetic-shouldn’t-matter bathroom floor. 

Glenn isn’t quite sure how long he lays there just… thinking.

Maybe a better word is processing .

It works in time with the throbbing up his skull and face, the pulse in his lungs that’s less of a heartbeat and more of a will.

The light from the hallway stays grey, and it traces itself up across the ceiling. First it reaches his mirror, and then it sinks back, receding into the shadows. There’s no use in bothering to sit up and turn on the light. Not really. Not feeling like this.

It doesn’t take much longer for that feeling to get stronger, either. As if a fist is wrapping tight around his heart and trying to yank it out.

Ugh.

Maybe… maybe he’s drunk. Or hungover, or something. Maybe he somehow took drugs or- no, no. No, no, he couldn’t have, because it would wig him out way too much. He’d freak- he hasn’t drank. He doesn’t think.

Oh god.

Glenn needs to think.

Actually, no, maybe he needs a damn shrink. What if this is a dream, and he’s unconscious somewhere? What if this isn’t real?

No, no, no, he needs to think. He needs to use his head, because it’s worked well enough so far- that or in the dream he was deluded enough to think so.

The linoleum floor is cold beneath his back. Even through the T-Shirt on his back, through his half-rolled up sweats. It’s… dark, at least here in this room. But it isn’t silent. There’s traffic outside in the street a ways away, which means there’re cars. A lot of cars. Enough cars to make things sound normal. There’re birds- his neighbors downstairs blasting their TV on some game show he’d never been able to figure out. Outside, it must be midday, because some part of his memory that’d been tucked away recalls this as the lunch hour rush. And he always used to work the night shift. 

It was 11:30-something who knows how long ago, and Glenn is sprawled on his bathroom floor, trying to figure out what reality is.

He could laugh.

But he doesn’t. Because the pull is getting worse.

It’s enough, finally, to inspire him to sit up, a building pressure cascading down his collarbones. Swallowing down the lump in his throat, Glenn sways to sit upright and catches himself on his shaking arms. God, he’s out of it. But he needs to get up- he needs to get up, he hasn’t let anything else stop him from getting up before. Hell, Glenn would argue it’s hard to knock him down and keep him there.

Reaching blindly up to flush the vomit down the toilet, he tries to brace on the back and sucks in a breath as he pulls himself up. It’s hard. His vision goes white and bleary for a moment, head swimming now with a fresh throbbing that tangles in terrible tandem with that of his face, his temples, his everything.
It isn’t as bad as he’d thought.
So he pushes himself the rest of the way to his feet, staggering again in the direction of- well, the pull. Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? Vertigo, prying, demanding he step forward and peer over the edge of something he can’t even fathom, much less visualize. It takes the shape of something, finally, materializing from the dark as the edge of his sink. Good, okay. He can hold that. Gingerly, he does, bracing against it for a brief moment.

And finally, heart pounding in his chest, head heavy, Glenn looks up. 

He almost doesn’t recognize himself.

To start, he’s- more baby faced than he remembers. Which is a shocking thing, because no recollection he has right now seems particularly stable. He had to have seen his reflection at some point in the dream -not dream- because everything is so wrong. His facial hair is all but gone, and his hair in general is so much shorter, like he’d gone in and gotten it cut not too long ago. All the same, he’s paler… smaller, even. That doesn’t make him feel great.
What stands out, despite all of those fleeting thoughts, despite the wrongness of his own features like someone had turned back time, is located there on the left side of his face. 

It’s an answer. A solid one.

Any real conclusion that he'd just had the world’s most deluded and fucked up nightmare goes right out the window when he sees just how equally fucked up his face is. Scars crawl, old -old- and ugly around the pain, blinding him. They scrawl around, split his brow, threaten over his nose bridge and drag in ragged stray marks across his jaw, even a part of his neck- his left ear feels like its stumpy, short, a vicious jagged remnant on the side of his head. Where there should’ve been something there.

For a moment- just a moment- Glenn isn’t even sure he’s looking at himself . 

But he blinks. And that other self, that other version of him does too.
If Glenn had anything else left, he would’ve thrown up again right into his sink.

Did- no. 

No, no- no. He couldn’t have died. 

It might not actually matter if he has anything left to puke at this point, because his stomach clenches tightly like he has the impulse to anyway. Fingers white knuckling the edges of his already depressing sink, Glenn tries to steady himself. If he’d died he wouldn’t be here. He wouldn’t have a scar, he wouldn’t have somehow ended up in his… old apartment. From two years ago. In the middle of Atlanta , nonetheless, hours and hours farther south than Alexandria. They wouldn’t return here unless they had no choice, the group of them, not with what’d happened to Beth-

Jesus.

Maggie.

Where’s Maggie?

Each thought comes tumbling far beyond his control, caught there against his own silent visage. A part of him wonders if maybe this is a dream. But his head aches too much for that to be true, vision already starting to swim again as he wobbles back and releases his grasp on the sink.

There were cars. Traffic. He’d heard traffic outside.

The clock was on in his old kitchen.

That meant power. People .

But how .

Maybe… maybe there’s an establishment here in the city. Conveniently located around where his old block was- maybe. That thought surges forth, something a little desperate as he palms along the wall for balance and finds his old bedroom door. Right- right, it was a cramped little place to start, and it’s… a mess.

Surely after two years some of the shit he’d left laying around would’ve gone bad.

Oh- eugh. That’s an embarrassing thought.

Haphazardly pushing the door open, Glenn’s whole everything sways with a weight of realization. Yes, this has to be his apartment- his old, sad, mostly-empty apartment that he could barely afford to keep in the first place. Those are the same unmade sheets, the same half-broken shades clinging to the window frame, the same old laundry left dejected on his same old floor. Same sad lamp. Same sad few posters plastered up on the walls picked up from behind a movie theater, like some desperate attempt to replicate the image of a dorm room. 

And, just like before, life buzzes by outside.

His eyes are drawn to the lopsided mess of the shades, and more importantly; the light and movement behind it.

It’s a sunny day outside. 

The view is the same as he remembers it being, an alley, and a corner view out past the next building and into the tree lined street. Across the road, the buildings are shorter- stores, a gas station, the pizza shop he’d worked at, a great big gap in the city as the rest of Atlanta stretches on behind, partially obscured by another apartment building. It’s the exact same fifth floor view he’d had since he’d failed out of college.

It hasn’t- it hasn’t changed.

In a way, Glenn is momentarily sure he’s in a dream again. At least for a moment.
Nothing’s changed . The cars across the street and stuck in on street parking aren’t empty, or concave, or starting to rust out like he imagines they should be. They aren’t gathering leaves, at least not more than a couple days left should’ve- they look like they’ve been moved, cleaned, somehow in the last two-and-some years. The sidewalk isn’t cracked, there’s no rain or dust staining the buildings, no overgrown plants or moss or mold or fallen tree limbs. 

A car drives by in the small gap Glenn can see from this room. 

People walk by on the sidewalk. Unarmed people. Relaxed people.

Atlanta doesn’t look like it’d been napalmed, which Glenn knows it should, because he saw it from the living room and had hoped beyond hope this neighborhood was far enough away to not be met with the fires, that the oxygen wouldn’t be ripped from the air.

There aren’t any walkers in the street.

Maybe that’s what really strikes home, the fact that there aren’t any dead standing or lingering or shambling aimlessly- he can’t hear any groaning, any gasping, any drag of bony feet worn skinless across two summers worth of hot concrete and asphalt.

It’s like-

It’s like none of that ever happened.

Like the world didn’t up and end in every way he knew it, like none of what he’d lived had ever occurred. That he hadn’t met everyone else in the quarry, hadn’t found Rick, hadn’t met Dale or Daryl or Carol or the Grimes, or Shane, or Andrea- hadn’t gotten drunk for the first time in the CDC, he hadn’t found the farm, hadn’t met the Greenes or Maggie , that the farm wasn’t overrun, that the prison hadn’t happened, that what’d practically been a damn war hadn’t happened either. That- that they hadn’t walked to Alexandria together. That he wasn’t saved by Tara, or Abraham, and Rosita and Eugene. That they hadn’t survived what they did.

That they didn’t even know hide or hair of each other. The people that’d become his entire world.

He hadn’t ever married Maggie. They weren’t about to have a baby.

That he hadn’t-

Except-

Except the scar.

Which, if this… if this is all inevitably reality, that it’d all been a dream- the scar. He couldn’t account for the scar.

Glenn never had a scar like this, he’d never been half blind, ever. 

Something was so terribly wrong, and Glenn couldn’t fathom an explanation for why .

A particularly loud engine growls outside- a motorcycle, maybe, tearing through the alley below and out of sight.

Snapping out of his haze, he wrenches his eyes from the window and himself from the doorway. None of this makes sense- none of this feels real, and at once, all of it feels far too damn real. The pounding ache rocketing through his head hasn’t faded either- a pulsing behind his now seemingly bad eye that refuses to let up right now. In kind, that odd pull in his chest has only doubled, maybe even tripled in the few minutes it took him to soak in the unmarred image of the city. As if a tether had been tangled in his chest, and tied to a truck hitch, and he is stubbornly digging his feet in to avoid being dragged, Glenn can feel it. It’s almost suffocating.

Compulsion to ease that strain has him meandering back down his short hallway and towards the living room.

In passing, tilting his head all the way to read it with his right eye, the stove clock has changed. It’s almost one o'clock.

Not for the first time, or the last time really, Glenn finds himself wondering just what the hell is happening.

He needs answers.

He needs a better view of the city, the living room window, the fire escape just beyond would give that- no, no, his eyes drift back towards the box TV he’d gotten secondhand from down the road. There’s power. There were people outside, the city’s fine, which means- answers.

There could be answers.

There’s no real point in throwing himself blindly into something he doesn’t understand, either. Too risky.

Damn near drifting along into it at this point, Glenn searches wildly for the remote. With no sign of it on the couch cushions, or his banged up coffee table, he starts to fumble through the stack of already half fallen (and thankfully empty) pizza boxes- kicking away a spare soda can, searching, fumbling under the couch like he’s looking for the holy grail.

It might be.

But Glenn doesn’t get the chance to find it.

No, because something happens that he couldn’t have ever expected. Something that hadn’t happened before, ever, something that has his heart leaping right up into his throat and rabbiting wildly- tangled up there in the aimless prying of his chest.

A knock sounds from his fifth floor window.

For a moment, Glenn isn’t even sure it’s real. He can almost convince himself it was a hallucination, entirely imagined, his pulse simply too loud in his own head. 

But no, it comes again, hardly a pause- and it’s less a knock and more of a pounding, wild, a little desperate even. Dragging his eyes up towards the window, he can see the outline of a figure crouched there on the fire escape. The shades are a mess, but they offer very little information to glean anything with- there’re snippets of what might be muddy jeans. Or- rotten flesh.

The pounding continues- consistent. Determined.

Glenn stands. 

He goes, swaying to his feet, and cautiously makes his way to the window.

Against his better judgement, he yanks open the shades.

Chapter Text

‘ And we're on easy street. And it feels so sweet-’

Daryl needed the world to end a second time. For real this time.

The only comfort he found was in a concrete floor that smelled like vomit, piss, and aged hysteria. The source of the first two lingered in a corner. The third he was still trying to pinpoint. It could have been the welts and bruises blossoming hot on his naked skin. Could have been the agonizing song still blasting on the other side of an immovable iron door. 

Or it could have been in the polaroid still laying on the floor inches from his head.

It didn't matter that he drowned in darkness. The image was burned so deep into his mind, he could still smell copper. Or maybe that was the hysteria. All he knew, all that mattered, was that it was a picture of Glenn.

Glenn. Or what was left of him.

The concrete gave little comfort to his bruises and his agonies, guilt that chewed raw like a walker yet slower in his demise. At least walkers killed. This didn't. Knowing that his friend- friend , wouldn't be coming home, wouldn't see Maggie, wouldn't see the-

Source number one reared its ugly head and he didn't make it to the corner this time.

Was it cowardly to say he should have met the end of the bat instead? Was Daryl a coward? After all this shit he survived in a world that felt like it had been made for people like him, could he call himself a coward? Living's harder than dying. But now he was in a concrete cage, a prisoner again, as if he hadn't spent enough of his life in them. 

Just a new jail.

Just a new box. 

The music started to blur in his mind, lyrics bleeding together as he stared at black and a polaroid of his friend's mutilated body. For the first time since the world ended, Daryl considered giving up.

‘-when we're on easy-’

But the world wouldn't let him.

Because the music stopped and Daryl's eyes snapped open to color and light again. 

To greens and browns and a world that almost threw him off his feet at its sudden appearance. Daryl blinked. Then blinked again. Kept blinking. Around him is- it’s trees, bird calls, the low scattering of brush. Familiar tiny sounds of a living forest. In the face of the near hole Daryl had been moments before, the world is quite suddenly a fresh open orchestra of things all encompassing. No longer is the darkness there, the staleness, the hysteria leaching from his very being- no, he is met face first with a bright burst of life . Evergreens loom bright and proud all around him, the low brush a comfortable, familiar thing to be standing in despite any lingering doubts on his current reality. There's a distinct familiar birdsong, the right kind of warbler, fern and grass and earth wafting up from around him.
He thinks, as he stands in a world that’s familiar yet not, that he’s dreaming, and all of it would soon twist into the usual symphony of nightmares.

But dreams didn't start with fresh air in his lungs. It didn't start with the weight of a crossbow in his hands.

And it sure as fuck didn't start with a make-shift sling on his back holding a fucking baby.

He's out. Somehow. Unless he's dreaming.

That baby though, sure has something to say.

The little guy is big- maybe almost a year old, chunky and babbling, little feet kicking, little hands grasping at the now unfamiliarly short-shorn strands of hair at the back of Daryl's head. Craning his neck to look back, Daryl finds that looking at the baby is easy enough- He's got dark hair. Dark eyes. A short little nose to match. A little rugrat, really. And oddly, he’s content back there, the little guy, not minding any noise he's making even if he's pretty quiet for a baby.
Maybe, in his little baby head, he's explaining this all to Daryl.

Any moment left to soak in the sight of the little guy is cut short with the sound of Merle's voice- Merle's voice, footsteps a touch too heavy in the brush, arm extended with a hefty string of squirrels.
"Would'jou lookat that! Lookat that ther're some fat fuckers out're today!-"

It finally happened. It didn't happen in Terminus. It didn't happen with the gang Rick tore apart with his literal teeth. It didn't happen at Alexandria during the swarm or not even at the beginning of the apocalypse.

Daryl had finally lost his mind and all it took was a shitty song and a dog food sandwich.

Damn.

Merle must not notice the baby. At least, not immediately. He steps fully into the clearing with both arms intact. His own crossbow is slung over his shoulder, a thrilled look on his dopey face for all of a minute before he picks his head up from admiring his catches to actually look at Daryl. Maybe to give him shit.

But Merle looks up. Sees him, sees the baby .

Finally, Merle's face drops in a well of confusion, chin twitching up with his lip like a snarl.
"The fuck is that? "

Daryl had been trying to process the fresh air in his lungs first, then the frequent tugging on his hair -what the fuck happened to his hair- then maybe the fucking baby that was riding on his back, and maybe after all that he could put in line the fact that his body didn't feel like it had been in the hands of walkers for the past several years when he heard a voice that had only been following his nightmares. Daryl’s hands clenched around his crossbow -unloaded thankfully- or else his usually keen senses would have unloaded a bolt into his foot.
Maybe it would have woken him up.

Because he was not staring at the face of Merle Dixon again.

Being numb would have been easy. He'd have probably been able to waddle along in a dream that felt too real if he'd actually been numb. But there was too much that stripped numbness from him. The taste of piss-poor booze still in the back of his throat from the morning swig, the light reminder of hunger pains that were a blessing compared to what he had suffered before, and the fact that he was staring at his dead brother's ugly mug.

Oh, and the baby. He- he keeps forgetting about it. Which is hard enough to do when it’s yanking on his short-cut hair.

There’s a clear moment of long drawn out nothing as Daryl does his best. Really, what else is there to do when one finds himself suddenly blinking blindly into existence out of having been in a literal vomit filled hole in the ground, in the dark, for- who knew how long. 

By the time Daryl realizes he’d been standing stock still for around twenty seconds from Merle's outburst, some part connected that this isn’t a dream. It was the part that lowly rumbled out-

"What... The fuuuck..."

Maybe there’s something in Daryl’s disposition that throws not-there-shouldn’t-be-there Merle off. That had him stopping short some ten feet away, staggering with his big shoulders raised and that confused sneer plastered half assedly to his features like he’s trying to look not confused . Maybe it’s the baby. Who’s to say.

Either way, Merle takes a purposeful step forwards, throwing those fatass squirrels right over his shoulder to point emphatically at the baby- at Daryl . 

“The fuck’s- the fuck’s that? Where’d’ju get that? Fuck you doin’ with a baby?” 

Those questions come tumbling out accusingly almost, his voice just as hoarse and chafing as it’s always been, as it always is in those exact same nightmares. 

“Who’s chinkass baby’s that?”

Yeah. That's Merle. Same Merle that he had stabbed in the face six times until the infected brain stopped firing more than it ever had in life.

The baby does not care.

The baby simply looks over at Merle and sort of babbles to himself, before reaching out with a chubby arm and tiny fingers to smack aimlessly at the side of Daryl’s face. 

‘ Wake up! Wake up !’ Baby says, even if the baby can’t really say (or mean to say) anything.

At least the tiny wack to Daryl’s face seemed to do something, make him come back to life as Daryl jerked upright from his tense scowl.
His head swung like a top, jerking left and right, a now-familiar urge to find and claim his surroundings from any potential attack laying root in his mind. But he was starting to find pieces of familiarity in the woods and the bird songs and even in that string of squirrels Merle’s lugging over his shoulder.

Daryl ignores the questions he didn't have answers for, which was all of them, and instead tries to find meaning in what he had. Obviously, something had happened. He was alive, he was... Mostly here, he had a baby on his back, and Merle was somehow also alive. And with a quick check to his outstretched arm, there was no blade attached to a stump.

"Where the fuck-" was all he could utter again, boots brushing noisily through leaves in the rare slip of composure.
Simmering under all that is a sense of nausea. There in the rock of his stomach, being pried along with the compulsion, worsened by the air. It’s warm.

The air’s still warm , like in the summer. Summer. Right? It hadn't been summer. Which means the time is different. Which means-

"The fuck'r you doin' here?" Daryl cracked out, pieces not slotting where they should. Summer, Merle, baby. None of these belonged. "You're fuckin' dead. " 

It wasn't the most elegant way of coming to terms, but the words burst out without thought. Maybe he just- hit his head. Again. Had to be.

Merle, arms both blessedly (or dreadfully) blade free, face unmashed by anything at all, scowls in an instant. 

He is confused. 
Very confused, actually, the kind of confused that clearly makes the man angry when he doesn’t know what’s going on and no one’s keen on spelling it out for his slow ass. 

Gobsmacked, Merle starts, gesturing at himself with his bow in a broad sweep. 
“Dead! Dead!? The fuck I am, y’re trippin’- r’ are you stupid? The hell’s your problem you little shit? I’s gone twenny minutes!”

Maybe the immediate rise of those wordless defenses should be a great big blaring warning sign in neon red lights, because Merle suddenly goes from pleased as a peach to struck to staring at Daryl like he’s some fucker in a bar who’d just thrown out ‘hick’.
Hollering aside, Baby is snug as a bug in the sling, chubby little legs kicking absently as Daryl turns to and fro- his little head mirroring those movements, little arms settled and sprawled on Daryl’s shoulders.

“You on drug’s’re somethin’?” Merle starts, damn near breathes it as he very pointedly soaks in the sight of the kid- suddenly much more skittish and much more weary by the way he damn well holds himself than he ever has been before. And with what is absolutely a random baby. 

"Like you're one ta'talk 'bout bein' on shit!" Daryl shot back, the rhythm of a -less than civil- sibling argument too alluring to not fall into even now. 

The crossbow in his hands was almost resigned to being strapped onto his shoulder, only for the reminder of the baby stopping him short. 

“‘F you’re- did’ya take some of my shit!?”

Shit. 

Yeah. 

Fuck. 

What the fuck is he supposed to do about that?

“Hey dumbass!”

Focus, Daryl. Keep a target in sight. Obviously Merle’s alive, obviously Daryl was- not his usual self. Obviously something had happened that sent him back-

Back.

The word dropped through his mind like a pin in an empty room, rattling, tumbling, and then finally resting still. 

Back. 

Sent... Back. Merle’s neck deep in his explanation of being not -dead when Daryl jerks to stare over his shoulder. The brush is thick with life, and he’s starting to find his bearings.

Summer. 

Merle alive. 

Hunting.

Atlanta.

Atlanta.

They were on the outskirts of Atlanta and if the noise Merle’s making is anything to go by, they weren't about to be stirring up walkers. He scrapes through his memory for answers, past the nightmares, past the torment, and tries to find the moment where it all changed.

It’s not entirely clear.

"Shut yer ugly ass up and tell me what day this is," Daryl barks, stalking through the grass to stand face to face with- well, the brother he can’t believe is alive. 

Maybe later he'll think about the fact that second chances didn't happen to Dixons and he should have taken his bow with the brother who he last spat venom at. But it isn't about Merle. Because there’s a baby on his back and people that he needs to find; if what little inklings in the back of his skull were saying are true.

A familiarly cruel chuckle climbs right up out of Merle’s throat like he's spitting it. 

He doesn’t seem none too impressed, still just trying to piece together the sudden change in disposition, the sudden change in company .

Even when Daryl stalks right up, Merle doesn’t flinch back. He snorts. Kind of smiles like he wants to smack Daryl upside the head for his indiscretion of the familial hierarchy. 

“Musta shat ‘t out yerself, y’re actin’ like a damn woman.” 
Rather pointedly, he palms Daryl right in the chest to shove him back a bit, only moving to pace around and peer through the trees with a whistle. “Y’got a lil girlfriend hidin’ in here huh?”

The status quo is back at square one, that's for sure. Merle doesn't seem to give much a damn if Daryl has an answer or not, he seems more concerned about finding whatever mysterious 'girlfriend' could've spawned the ankle biter on his brother's back. Of course there's no reason for the kid's literal manifestation here, but the kid doesn't much seem to care- little baby hands, little baby fingers gentle to cling at the sides of Daryl's face even as he struggles to ground himself.

Being shoved by a Dixon wasn't an unfamiliar concept to Daryl either. Being the smallest, the youngest, made it an expectation, be it from Pa or Merle. Sometimes he'd get lucky on only a shove. But maybe it was the caterwaul of thoughts and feelings and the fact that Daryl had gone from tortured in a cement square to suddenly free and on the cusp of what very well could be the end of the world that had that expectation ground to a halt.
Suddenly expectations didn't matter anymore.

Suddenly Daryl isn’t the snot-nosed kid Merle thought he was.

Because he hadn't realized his hands were curled into fists until he was directly behind Merle, one hand jutting out and ready to grab the white-trash excuse of a man that was standing between him and answers. But he wasn't going to get answers out of Merle. Not here in this forest, in the middle of nowhere.

There had to still be time. And he couldn't be wasting it here. 

He has to get away.

And he needs a distraction.

Without letting himself think, Daryl reaches out and shoves Merle hard against the shoulders, hoping to unsteady him or even push him to the ground. 

He just needed a moment. 

A second. 

Enough time to turn and run and get the fuck out of these woods.

With reality and a purpose rocketing to the surface, it's something to do.

Merle had been right about to whip around and give him more shit when Daryl seemed to have the balls to shove. It sends Merle's eyes going wide and angry in surprise, he went stumbling back with a hoarse yelp and a shout.

"The fuck' re you doin!?- y'git back here y'little shit!"

Daryl doesn't have to, though.
And the baby seems pretty delighted about that, breaking into a happy, breathy little huff that not even Merle could hear.

Already, Daryl had turned away, the idea of abandoning the brother that he once was willing to rampage through an infected Atlanta to save one he had unfortunately come to terms with. But even though Merle was stupid, he wasn't dumb. He'd figure out the end of the world. They'd already done it once.

The baby's wrapped tight enough that he doesn't bounce out of the sling. His little hands cling all the tighter, semi-toothed mouth stretched wide with the thrill of the moment as they fly through the trees and brush with the gumption of a fleeing deer.

"Git yer ass to the quarry!" is all Daryl extended as a helpful hint to what was to come, with only a cheering baby to stare at with his retreating wing-vested back. 

Merle's swearing up a storm as Daryl takes off. Maybe he's cursing him, maybe he's getting ready to chase after, but all of that is well enough a secondary, even tertiary thought. He'd already started sprinting, bursting through the brush and tugging at decade-long instinct of losing a drunken Pa in the woods to aid his escape. He hopes Merle will find it in his thick skull to listen, maybe get a head start on surviving. Because Daryl’s going...

Somewhere.

He doesn’t know. But it was as if his legs knew, his muscles already assigned a mission his brain wouldn't comprehend as he snakes along his own tracks through the woods. 

Maybe the main part of that is a gathering compulsion in his chest. Needling itself far-too-comfortably between his ribs, winding and weaving, something astronomical quite literally compels him back towards the road he knows is there.

To what waits on it.

The motorcycle's easy enough to find.
He didn't stop until he caught the sight of metal tucked in a grove of trees, and while he'd have taken an eternity to marvel at the motorcycle that had saved his life more often than he could count, he didn't have that time right now.  Right there where Merle left it, still near the clouds of gnats that hang happily beside the road. 

Daryl doesn’t know how much time he even has.

But he has the motorcycle now. He has the mind to throw himself onto it, to slide comfortably back onto the seat and lurch for the handles- to go . Baby doesn't protest, not like he can, as Daryl throws himself onto the thing and takes off. As the motorcycle roars to life beneath him with the weight of the world and a baby on his back, he lets that pull take him to the only place he knew could have his answers.

Atlanta.

It doesn’t take quite as long as he might’ve expected to navigate out of the woods on the back roads on nothing but sheer instinct. He has to dodge and weave through some deer trails, out along the dirt roads- out onto gravel, then the sorry unmaintained paved ones that’d been there since he was a kid. And finally, towards the bigger roads, past farms and trailer parks and towards the signs that announce he’s going the right direction to the highway.

As he makes way towards Atlanta, those big roads are still busy and alive. People haven't quite realized what's going on yet, not really, there's a steady flow to the traffic, open gas stations, no panic. It's so inexplicably normal .

It's... Not supposed to be like this. Normal.

The last two years had eroded away normalcy. Replaced it with something rotten that tried to call itself something survivable. The most prominent thought that ran loops and loops like a broken record was that normal shouldn't feel like this. Fuck, Daryl almost got his ass stuck in traffic.

He'd pass cars that would honk with such a loud noise that it would make him flinch. Him. Daryl fucking Dixon, flinching at a car horn. Because he had spent the last two years conditioning his psyche to know that noise was dangerous and every vehicle he drove past could be one hiding a walker ready to tear through his flesh at any given point. The honking seems to scare his new baby buddy pretty hard too, so much so that the little guy practically jumps in the sling and seems very content hiding in the back of Daryl's winged vest. He seems to know better than to cry, though. Which could mean a whole helluva lot.

By the time Daryl forces himself to stop at a gas station, he's realized he couldn't hear himself think. The thoughts are coming back, screaming back; what was happening? Why? This was Atlanta. He'd stopped at this gas station for booze and smokes over a hundred times, yet he knew for a fact that it would lie in ruins, looted and on fire, in what could be hours.

Focus, Daryl.

As Daryl rolls up to the covered overhang of the station, there're three cars at the pumps and two more in parking spots just outside. The trees overhead are lazy things, there're frogs singing with the song of tires on asphalt, right there with the birds and the crickets that live out here.

He exhales hard, finally killing the engine. He needed a second. Needed to get his bearings. Needed to figure out why there was an ache in his chest like he couldn't fucking breathe. But first... He needed to know what day it was.

And it probably wasn't a great look, slinging a crossbow onto the back of his bike with a baby still on his back.

"You asskicker?" Daryl asked the baby, turning his head to try to get a better look at it. He'd barely been able to do more than put the thought 'there's a kid on my back' into motion than actually grasp the fact that this was someone. But with barely a second to look at the baby that may be heading towards ‘toddler’ sooner than he'd like to admit, he knew he was wrong. 

A group of kids come chattering out of the station with their candy bars and sodas and jump on their bikes, peddling back along the road as Daryl lingers at the bike- baby watches them go, his little hand finding the short cropped hair out the back of Daryl's head. When Daryl looks back at him- well, he's definitely not ass-kicker. Black hair instead of dirty blonde, dark eyes instead of ambery. Cheeks a bit rounder, too.

"Nah, yer not," he muttered. Well. That was one baby down. He didn't know any others.

"Sit tight," he grunted as he swung his leg off the bike, reaching back to make sure he had a secure grasp on the sling's strap. He headed towards the inviting doors of the gas station, only to catch himself rolling his steps halfway through. No walkers, he tried to tell himself as he reached for the glass door. "Just gotta do some fact checkin'."

Baby doesn't protest him going inside either, little head on a swivel as Daryl steps inside to the- Well. Normal gas station. The same scrawny kid that'd been there for a month is sitting at the counter, pock marked, with the radio on blast, not even bothering say 'hey' as usual. The lights are on.
It doesn't smell like rot yet.

Fuck. 

It's actually normal. 

And Daryl couldn't feel more uncomfortable with normal if he tried. It felt fake, walking into the gas station and trying not to scan through the building for quick entrances and exits and potential hiding places for walkers. Yet he found them all the same. Aisles clear of debris as he passed each one, people upright with no decaying skin or dead whited-out eyes. And fuck. Air conditioning. 

Fuck.

The comfort wouldn't last, he reminded himself as he tried to form a plan. His eyes landed on the register, and the tear-away paper sign that sat next to it. A calendar, in a way. ‘ Have to be this old to purchase alcohol ’ sort of shit. It was exactly what he needed pasted on the wall by the coolers as he found himself pausing to read it.

August 26th.

And it takes a second for Daryl to breathe again.

Okay. ...okay. The world was about to end. And Daryl had a baby on his back and what felt like a hook in his chest that kept pulling. Great. Perfect. He let the thought tumble through his head as he numbly dug into his pocket for his wallet and thumbed through the bills. It would be useless in three days tops, anyway. He'd need a full tank of gas, some food, water, and whatever shitty things he could get for the baby.

But he didn't have room for much. A couple bottles of water, a bottle of milk (probably would be fine for the kid, right? Probably off formula by now) and a bag of jerky would get them started.

And without a thought in his mind about the fact that civilized society still required payment outside of clearing a gas station of walkers, he headed for the door.

Even with the conscious thought of pulling out his wallet- well, old habits die hard. And reanimate a little harder. It probably doesn't help that each passing second that pull feels harder . Like a nasty fish hook tangled up there in his ribs and tangling even more, yanking and yanking with each step away from Atlanta's general direction he took even inside the store.

Baby seems to feel that much. He lets out a nervous little noise and looks around again as Daryl starts to walk right out, and that's when the kid finally seems to pay attention to his presence.

"Hey- y're gonna pay for that right?" 
It's none too polite, absolutely dripping with the normal 'blegh' of any teenager that hasn't seen world ending events.

Green Day is playing on the radio.

Daryl jerked to a stop, hand still outstretched to push open the door. He could have kept going. But the money in his wallet wasn't going to be doing him much good anyway, and he'd need that tank of gas. Siphoning out of still-working pumps would be too obvious.

So he stepped back from the door, walking to the register that looked dirtier than some did after the apocalypse and laid out his chosen prey. Daryl had barely passed a glance at him as he dug for his wallet again, dragging out two twenties and tossing them up on the counter.

"Rest on pump, uh," Daryl glanced out of the corner of his eye through the window, at the taken pumps with people who wouldn't know the liquid gold they were filling their cars with until it was too late. "...three," Daryl finished, finally looking back at the teenager from the corner of his eye. Young.

The kid's gaze is like a drill. Boring in. Maybe even a little haunting, considering that thought.
The kid doesn't seem to know, though. Doesn't seem to care either, giving an absentminded sweep over Daryl's odd selection. He stares down at it for a second and then drags his gaze up with a grimace- over the squirrels and the openly carried crossbow (not exactly like it's uncommon for duck hunters to come in with their shit, but the kid still stares) and then, finally, takes the bills to painstakingly input into the till.

He doesn't give Daryl any change, but he does offer the less than enthusiastic courtesy of shoving everything into a plastic bag for him.

"Have a nice day." The kid says, absolutely not meaning it, keen on turning the radio back up as soon as Daryl steps outside.

This kid would probably be dead in four days.

The intrusive thought sat like a bubble in his mind, one not allowing itself to pop and disappear.

Baby huffs a bit, a little breathy baby thing as he little arms flail, but any shared indignance is occupied with the everything . The colorful cars, even beat to shit, the pumps and the reek of gas in the air.

Daryl felt those little arms thump against his back with the flail, and he gave the strap the smallest tug and squeeze like it could somehow deliver comfort. Or maybe it was the instinctual grasp of what would usually be a crossbow strap. It didn't matter, because Daryl needed to get the fuck out of this place before that maddening hook in his chest had a chance to pull through his ribs.

The bell chimed merrily above him as he left, and Daryl had to fight the instinct to catch it. If they took that bell down, maybe they'd have a chance. Hole up until food or water ran out. Wasn't Daryl's problem. He wasn't out here to save the world. Never was. Just try to keep together what little parts of his world may still be out there.

"Almost out," Daryl grunted as he filled the tank of the bike, wrinkling his nose at the stench of gasoline. The fact that people would probably kill each other over it made watching the numbers tick up a little less excruciating. By the time Daryl was shoving the nozzle into its holster again, the plan in his head had almost solidified.

Get into Atlanta. See if shit hit the fan. Find some place quiet to hole up and get to finding the others. Some would still be in Atlanta, if he remembered the stories.

Rick.

Rick was in Atlanta.

In a hospital, no fucking clue which, but it was a lead. Maybe that's what he needed to find. Start there. Hope that the fucking pull would be his guide and he didn't find himself swarmed and dead. Dixons don't die easy, though. And as Daryl sped out of the parking lot with baby and bag in tow, he knew he couldn't be the first death of an apocalypse he had survived once already.

There’s a fair amount of cars pulling out of the city by the time Daryl gets back on the road. People with their cars packed, though not particularly rushed. Like everybody’s just suddenly decided to go camping or on a holiday. At the same time, there’re plenty of people still driving into Atlanta, even if it seems to grow a little scarce as he pushes past the suburbs on the highway. 

The pull keeps growing heavier and more adamant with every mile he gets closer. Like something needs to snap in place or- or fix itself. 

Maybe it’s knowing Rick is somewhere nearby, comatose. Or maybe it’s knowing what’s going to happen in the coming days. 

Maybe it’s the blue and red lights that pop up behind him as he gets closer to the city, starting to whizz past apartment buildings as the ache damn near grows in pressure like a tire getting ready to pop. 

There’s a cop car behind him. Actual fuzz, giving a shit about traffic laws or something, on his ass.

If there was a time that Daryl couldn't give a shit less about being pulled over, it had to be now. Not when he was starting to find the heart of the city, watching for hospital turn offs and feeling that pull grow harsher and more demanding with every building he passed.

"Fuckin' pig," Daryl grunted under his breath, wondering which of the many things got the cop on his ass first; no helmet, probably speeding, the baby on his back, or all three. He'd guess the kid.

God. It was too early to deal with being chased. He thought he'd at least have a few months of the apocalypse before that. Yep. It’s definitely behind him. And the cop is definitely looking at him. At the kid. There’s probably some dumb laws about booster seats and motorcycles or something that this cop just decided was important today, because he hangs on pretty damn tight and flicks his siren on as soon as Daryl starts to bob and weave. 

"Y'hold on, kid," Daryl rasped as he leaned forward on the bike, and with a sudden roar of the engine, he clenched down on the gas and tore ahead.
The engine roars under him as he rockets forward, some cars already starting to try and pull to the side, but bobbing and weaving sure is getting him to ground where the damn cop can’t follow. 

Maybe the dead would start rising any second now and the cop would find something better to fuck over. But right now, Daryl had a tail, and that pull was about to snap. He sped forward, swerving around the car in front of him and trying to grasp his surroundings. Apartment buildings. Alleyways. The usual way to dump a tail would be to try to shake the cop through alleys and hope the assholes got something better to do. Like the end of the world. Now's a great time for that.

Out here on the edge of the city, it’s mostly five story apartment buildings and a handful of hotels, and then more one story businesses with big old alleys for the dumpsters. It’s easy enough to get *off* the highway too, when there’s a hospital sign.

And then, the yanking feeling in his chest goes the other way. Like he’s at the end of some rope that just got thrown over the side of a boat. Or he’s the fish being reeled in from one end of a line.
The yank was so strong, for a horrifying moment, Daryl thought the cop was running old west tactics and had thrown a lasso over him to yank him off the bike. The bike beneath him jerked sharp with the way his body moved on its own accord, and before he could fully process the fact that the sign to the hospital was pointing to the right, he was already turning left.

Not good when going the speed he is, nor when there wasn't actually a street to turn into. His ass was lucky enough to be turning into an alleyway, but his head was still struggling to reconnect to the rest of him. What the fuck? How- What? Had he not needed his hands clenched down on the bars, he would have felt at his chest for that pull. Why here? No, why was this happening at all?

A little late for that question, because he was barreling down an alley, weaving between dumpsters and whatever was unlucky enough to be in his path as he blindly followed the pull. It got him this far, may as well keep going. Maybe it'll help him lose that fucking cop.

That cop clearly isn't fucking pleased, ready to switch on full lights and sirens as soon as Daryl makes that hard turn left- away from where he'd intended to go. Baby gives a squeal somewhere between 'look mom no hands' and 'holy shit that was very fast and I'm very small'. He has to turn hard to avoid one dumpster, running over some old bags, but the alley is wide enough for him to go comfortably, small enough for the cop car to be blocked off.
It's enough, really, to get him out towards the next side street among the apartment buildings.

The area is pretty worn down, buildings up to five or six stories tall, old wooden fences in what would've once been yards. Somebody walking out of the corner store stops to side eye him, but the alley continues across the side road. 

That pull keeps. down the alley- no, up towards one of the apartment buildings, wedged among others, three blocks as the crow flew. It’s just as much up as it is across, he finds himself having to navigate through several more alleyways and back roads and questionable parking lots before making it to the dingy building in question. It’s a six story building in particular, closer to where all the buildings get taller- the street out front is fairly busy and there’s old evergreens lining the road. And as he gets to that back door- to the fire escape? It goes directly up . Right there up the ladder, up and up with a force so distinct the damn whatever it is might as well launch him into space.

Up? Fucker is telling him to go up now? 

Daryl's hand squeezes down on the brake as he drove down the blocks, only reminding himself in the last second that there was still a baby on his back and he didn't quite know the cut off for shaken-baby syndrome to ease into it. The bike tires made an unnecessary squeal against the concrete, almost catching paper and random debris beneath, before Daryl comes to a full stop.

"Fucker," Daryl breathes out sharp, passing a glance over his shoulder. 

No cop. Good. He didn't need to be in prison for the end of the world. He takes a second to check his pathetic bag of supplies, made a note to himself to find the nearest store before shit went down, and gathered it by the handle. 

By now, Daryl’s past questioning why he’s being taken to some apartment building he'd never been to before, why it was guiding him to the back door entrance and that’ll probably be locked, hell, up past that, or why it felt like his heart was being tugged and yanked like a spinning compass wheel. He’s here now. With a baby on his back and a bag of piss-poor supplies.

God, this shitty pull thing needed to get out of his ribs before it pulled them out.

First things first, figure out where the fuck this pull is taking him. Then, figure out who this kid is. After that, maybe go scrape Merle off wherever the fuck he ended up.

Then be ready for the end of the world.

Daryl's hand hovers over the handle, the pull like marionette strings wrapped around his wrist that refused to fully let him connect. Not here, that's all he knew. 

Up. Fire escape. 

His eyes were drawn to it, and Daryl was sick and tired enough of this pull to deny it. So he drops his hand onto the rung of the ladder with a solid thunk.

Surely, had anyone been in that parking lot and bothered enough to look up at the sound of his clanging up the fire escape, he would’ve been quite a sight. As some witnesses may dub it: a redneck Spiderman. But it’s hot, there’s little breeze between these narrow buildings, and the pull doesn’t care how Daryl looks or if he can even wrap his head around any of this. 

It just keeps pulling. 

It had to look great, crossbow still on his hip, ratty with a mess of mud on his shoes and knees, baby on his back, as he climbed up rung by rung; unable to even explain what the fuck he was doing anymore. He follows the pull with each flight. Up. Up. Still up. Roof maybe? Maybe not the roof, because as he reaches the fifth floor, that pull hooked back into his ribs and dragged him forward. His boots thumped hard onto the steel walkway, pulling, pulling, yanking him to- a window. 

Middle window.

And when he does get to that window? Baby grabs at the side of his face again, chubby little fingers happy to cling as he gurgles. 

Daryl knocks like it’s a fucking door, each rap of his knuckle matching the hard thump of his heart.

Thump -knock. Thump -knock. Thump -knock. 

Thumpthumpthump.

It really doesn’t take long for Daryl to get a response , because all at once that pull grows. Like something about to pop, maybe the fucking sound barrier, as someone trips over boxes inside and the blinds go clicking wildly up. The air was sucked out of Daryl's lungs in an instant. So quickly, that he didn't know how his lungs weren't vacuumed out by the force. But they choked him all the same as he stared through the glass, and then through nothing at all, at the face of a man-god no, he looked like a boy right now-that should, would, had been dead.

It’s Glenn right there.

Glenn.

Right there on the other side of the window, about as shiny and young and new as Daryl probably remembers first meeting him, save for… well.
There is one difference. Even with the startled, gobsmacked look on Glenn Rhee’s face, it’s hard to ignore the giant fucking scar that eats up the left side of the man’s face like some corrupt birthmark, tracing up a bit into his dark hairline. If Glenn knows, he doesn’t bring attention to it- no, instead he lunges to unlock his window and throw it open.

Daryl’s hand is still reaching out, knuckles still hanging in the open space where the window once was, and that pull in his chest suddenly wasn't a pull anymore. It had swelled in place of his heart, sated, connected. Like a string had finally connected to his heart and pulled it back to where it belonged. He'd... he'd like his lungs back next, though, because the lack of oxygen was making his brain turn to fuzz and he was wondering once again if this was all some fucked up dream after all.

“Holy shit Daryl !?-“

But it's his name that snaps him back to existence, shared with the repeated smacks to his face from tiny fists. Breath shudders his lungs back open, and finally supplies words. They weren't the best ones.

Glenn hardly gets the window thrown up and open, prying out the screen when Daryl speaks , and he sounds- so much like he did before. 

It’s before. 

And Glenn should be dead.

"You're... fuckin' dead."

He'd said that earlier. When he had been staring at the face of his dead brother. He should have learned by now that whatever he thought he knew had changed. Changed. Like the scar that his eyes finally landed on, distorting the wide-eyed expression on the Korean's face. And he knew. He knew exactly what would cause that scar. What had split his skull open, eyeball popped out, slurring speech and gushing blood-

But Glenn’s there. Right there in front of him.

Glenn looks like he’d been struck by something with the shock that passes his face. A fleeting ghost of apprehension quickly vanishing, he looks entirely like he has no thoughts in his goddamn head as he scrambles to unlock and unseal his fire escape window. Those knocks must’ve- had practically scared him right out of his skin, undeniably, somewhere in a wave of nausea and unmistakable relief that Daryl is the one perched there at his fire escape- damn any of the other details. At least for the second. Maybe Glenn had expected a walker there, or someone- anyone else. Someone bad.

Glenn’s right there and he should be dead .

As if that realization is hitting Glenn full force, he starts. He still looks startled, unsure what to day, maybe even death with ringing ears for that revalation. He must know that- he has to, right?

“M’not.” Is all that comes out of Glenn, impossibly. 

And he stands there, window screen bent, clutched in his hands as he tries to wrap his head (or what’s left of it) around what’s happening. 

“Am I? Are you?”

Another long, suffering silence lingers as Daryl’s lungs figure out breathing again around this new thing wedged into his chest. Like a tumor, but a nice one. One that's infected not with cancerous cells but thready warmth. He- should get that checked out before the end of the world, the dying rational part of his brain tried to whimper out. Rational thought would be ending in two, three days max, anyway, when the dead walked and the living fell to pieces.

It could’ve been only a few seconds sitting there with his mouth hung open, but it feels like an hour 

There’s still a living thing on his back, he numbly remembers for the fifteenth time; as the little palms tugged on little patches of facial hair- okay ouch. Those little stings of pain were exactly what he needed as he slowly lowered his hand from the bent window screen still separating them.

"M'. Don't know. Don't think so."

Another pull, another spark of pain flutters through Daryl. Another reminder that he’s still alive and breathing and staring at the face of his dead friend. Who was no longer dead. Who was scarred with his death. Like he had been scraped off the ground before the walkers could chew up his corpse, nursed back to health, and had a couple years of age shaved off for good measure. Who still knew him, like how Daryl knew him.

Glenn’s still looking at Daryl like he fell out of the sky. If Glenn looks younger- jarringly, that means Daryl must look a lot younger. Probably a lot like he has no fucking clue what to do, which makes sense, because Glenn doesn’t either.

For a moment, Glenn stops ripping the screen out to pinch himself. Literally, he pinches the inside of his wrist as hard as he can muster and he’s still not convinced that this isn’t some confusing, fucked up, coma dream. Death dream? Dream in general. 

“What’re you- what’re you doing here!? How did you get here? When did I ever tell you my address?”
These are all absolutely the wrong questions to be asking, Glenn obviously knows , but his mouth is running a lot faster than he seems he can help himself. 

So Glenn moves then, yanking the screen out and letting it topple to the side with a hapless breath as he steps back and starts to reach out to pull Daryl inside. 
“Come on.”

There were- a lot of questions just now. A lot. But no time to answer them as Glenn rips through the rest of the screen, rattling on the floor as it’s tossed. He's being tugged through the open window before so much as an intake of breath, dragged into an apartment that was on the cusp of run down and one miserable, narrow level above shithole with what could be rented on pizza-delivery salary. But he wasn't here to admire decor. Far from it.

It’s small in there. Cool, but no less humid when Daryl slips inside, quickly wrapped up in the darkness of the dingy apartment. The old carpet is already flat under his feet, his peripheries framed by a dejected old green couch on the right and a box TV on the floor to his left- the coffee table looks like one that’d been picked up off the side of the road -again, not that Daryl can judge- and an arrangement of pizza boxes are stacked in twos or threes in some corners, scattered alone in others.
And right there, in the center of his vision, is still Glenn. Somehow, miraculously, still Glenn.

Another tug comes from the baby. Right. 
Daryl lifts his hand again, thumbing blankly to the toddler still trying to rip out what little facial hair he still had. "D'y'know this kid?"

It does take Glenn a moment to notice the whole entire baby on Daryl’s back though. That little detail seemed to have escaped him, what with Daryl appearing all youthful and conspiratory like at his window. It’s a baby. A baby who’s pretty content to peer around Daryl’s shoulder, to paw at his face comfortably, a swath of dark hair on his head, with his chubby cheeks, his big dark eyes. 

Glenn blinks owlishly (almost painstakingly) at the baby for a moment before blanching; “Why? Is it because I’m the only Asian guy you know or?-“

Not that it’s particularly helpful. But that is an Asian baby.

The questions keep coming, which is fine because most if not all of them were ones Daryl had been trying to spin through for the past however long he'd been dropped back onto this pre-apocalypse earth. Except- except for Glenn being the only Asian he knew. Which is true. But as he opens his mouth for any sort of retort, defending himself or just ignoring it to answer any of the other non-answerable questions, Glenn asks one more.

“Where’s Maggie.”

Maggie.

Maggie.

Maggie is out on a farm in what felt like a thousand miles away from them right now.

"Farm," is the only word Daryl manages to utter, before his entire mind locks onto the new mission.
One that he assumed Glenn would immediately know and agree upon without a word as he turns on his heel, and with a baby still on his back, reaches out for the open window to climb right back through the window he’d just been pulled into.

“Wait, Daryl!” Glenn starts, already stumbling to lurch forward and grab his arm and stop him from parkouring or whatever the fuck out the window. With the baby. “Hey dude! Dude , pump the breaks! Wait! You- what fucking day is it!? Daryl!”

"Don't got time, we-"

With all that, the baby doesn’t seem too bothered until Daryl starts to try and leave , and for the first time since Daryl came to himself, the baby starts to cry. Actually cry, little face breaking into a frown, little fists winding in Daryl’s collar as a sad little cry escaped him in an equally little gasp. It’s practically a wail, like a warning siren.
Whatever refusal Daryl had dried up the instant the baby began to cry. It hadn't done that since- ever. Kid had been happy as a clam on his back, up until the second he tried to leave. Same kid that seemed to have a better notion to what's going on than Daryl did. It made him stop, one hand still on the window frame. It flexed, fingers digging, before he reluctantly released it.

First thing Pa taught him while hunting. Don't go running off. Usually that was because Pa had a loaded gun and didn't want to be held responsible for blowing his brains out. He didn't think he'd be holding onto Dear Pa's words now, but...

"August twenty sixth," Daryl finally grunted, answering one of the many questions. "Shit's gonna go down any day now."

“It’s not about time right now-“ Glenn starts to protest, but he winces when that little voice catches up so big and loud- louder , the longer Daryl stands at the window.

Finally, Daryl steps away from the window. Back inside, back to the cool humidity and the stench of old cardboard. As soon as he steps back, baby stops his wail and instead clings to Daryl’s collar with a little sniffle and a steep frown that’s quickly buried in his too-short hair. 
Subconsciously, Daryl finds himself reaching back, letting his hand rest on one of those tiny fists still clinging and pulling at the collar of his jacket. His kid-rearing skills started and ended with Judith, but he knew better than to make a kid upset if he wasn't willing to hear the crying because of it. Even more so when it alerted the dead.

Baby still sniffling into the back of Daryl’s head, he turns back to find Glenn stood there just- watching. He still looks uncomfortable in his own skin, like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands- really, Daryl can’t bear to actually look him in the face. So instead he looks down at anything else- his rumpled shirt or throat, the disconcerted thin line of Glenn’s lips as everything just- keeps swirling.

What the fuck is happening.

But Glenn’s the smart one here, and all over again, he’s got words.

“Phone book.” He finally rasps, like it’s obvious. “And I want you- I need you to tell me how you got here. What happened .”

Glenn shifts then- stepping back, raising a hand like he means to reach out and pull Daryl further from the window. And then all at once, Glenn grimaces, hard, letting out a soft hiss as that hand instead jumps to the marred side of his face.

“Where’d… Jesus my head. Okay. First question actually. Where’d you find the baby?”

For some reason Daryl knows better than to examine at that moment, he follows Glenn's guidance back into the room. Away from the open window that still calls to him to find every piece of their broken found family before it was too late. But Glenn’s right. It isn’t about time right now, isn’t about running off, isn’t about none of that. They both have questions that need answering and all Daryl can hope was Glenn has a better rundown of what the fuck just happened to him than himself.

The mention of his head makes him flinch, though. When Daryl looks back at him from the corner of his eye and sees... God. His face. He can barely stand to look at it for a second, maybe even less, until his head jerks away and stares across the dark apartment.

First question. Not an easy one. 

"Don't know," Daryl answers in a tight voice. "Was... like blinkin'. One second I'm-" 

The Saviors camp, Easy Street, naked in a concrete cell staring at a picture of what remained of Glenn Rhee, the same that stands before him but he can't look at him, can't look at his face, at his scars, at his mistake –

"-not here, next second, 'm in the woods with Merle. Kid's strapped to my back like he's always been there. Merle weren't no help, asshole s’as surprised as I was."

“Yeah- yeah. Like wakin’ up.” Glenn shakes his head like he’s shaking himself from something. One hand finds his hip, the other finding his face, and he sways back and forth on his feet as he stares at his grubby ass carpet. “Merle? Your Merle. And he-“ Glenn gestures to the anxious looking baby (who is now adamantly sucking in a few faint little breaths like he means to yammer) on Daryl’s back. “He’s just there? Is it a he. Wait-“

"Man, I don't fuckin' know! I woke up to a kid on my back in the middle of the woods with my dead brother hurlin' squirrels at the end of the world! D'y'think I got any clue what this kid is?"

The words burst through without thought, the tension he hadn't realized that had coiled so tight in his newly awakened body snapping loose before he could have acknowledged its existence. It catches him, almost physically making him halt. Heat that ran rampant through his veins, singeing the skin, only to draw back as soon as it had been allowed an escape.

God. Was. Was he always this angry when he was younger? As if younger wasn't... two years, but…

Glenn recoils. Just a little bit.

Daryl swallows, hands tense in fists at his sides. Still staring at some dark corner of the room. He wishes he could have taken that little outburst back and tucked it under his skin where the rest of himself seethes. He'd need to work on that. Again. 

"...I woke up," he starts again, words careful like he expects to slip again, "and now I'm here. Like-... I dunno, man, like I... had to."

Chewing on his tongue, or maybe even his thoughts, Glenn’s hands drop to his sides then, brief and nervous as his fingers flex and he ducks his head like its pounding. Whatever it is, it drags him loathingly to sit on his own couch. 

“How’d you know where I lived? Live. Lived.”

It was only then that Daryl seems to take in the fact that he's standing in someone's apartment, someone's home. And he doesn't know what to do with that knowledge. It isn't a place that's caving in and falling apart at the seams, it's still a home. Glenn's home. And he takes a second to look as Glenn trails himself to the couch. That... tug in his chest rears its ugly head at the distance, like he wants to join him.

He doesn't.

"Got my bearings, sorta. Realized something didn't... Feel right. Thought I'd find Rick before things went to shit." 

Rick. Daryl turns back to the window, that urge to throw himself through and reunite with his motorcycle in some desperate attempt to find him again roaring through him, only to quiet. He chases away the sensation with a small motion with his hand, shooing at the window. 

"Got to Atlanta. Cop chased my ass. Kept driving. Didn't feel right 'til I was halfway up the fire escape and knocking on your window."

Shit.

Rick. 

Rick’s three hours or so south, if he remembers a one off conversation with Lori once upon a time. He has to suck in a breath to calm himself. It’ll be longer with traffic. But Maggie… Maggie’s north. Up by Dawson Forest, give a little. Considering the look on the other man’s face, the same thought must be settling in- Daryl gives a passing glance over just to be sure.

Hands dragging up his face, Glenn ends up staring at his sad stained carpet like it’s a map, before all at once withdrawing the one that finds the scars there.

He almost looks like he’s realizing it for the first time, and at once, maybe all over again.

Glenn cautiously glances up again, working his jaw in thought. 
“You… didn’t feel right. Okay. Uh.” He weighs it again, no real intent in those words than trying to figure it out. “…like throwing up kinda?”

The passing glance to Glenn's face is just that. Passing. Barely a flick of his eyes before they find some other corner of Glenn's room to marvel at like it's holding all the answers for their current predicament. It won't, but Daryl can't muster the thought to think of anything else right now. Too much on his plate, too much he doesn't know, and too much that's about to rip right underneath their feet.

It's survival. 
How he's survived for years. Before this date and past it. Information is great and all, but when it's about to change at a moment's notice, it's not worth dwelling. At least, that's how it used to be.

Now... He isn’t so sure.

The baby on his back is making tiny shifts and squirms and Daryl isn't sure if he's fighting the urge to pull it off his back and put it in Glenn's arms to at least get it away from him until he's found his head, or just hold it and let it remind himself that he's alive and aware. Instead, he just stands by the window, partially slumped, head spinning. Clarity still isn't coming. 

"Don't know. Kinda. Like..." he motions to the back of his head, and then changes it to hover awkwardly around his chest, then throws his hand aside when playing charades with himself still gives no answers. "Like m'body snapped. Like lightnin' struck me."

He'd give a better explanation if he allowed his thoughts to settle, but the idea of that is cast so far away that he'd rather go get chased by a cop again. So he stews in this afterimage of sanity as long as he's allowed to pillow the realizations.

"Let's... let's start there then, right?"
Glenn offers cautiously, straightening where he sits, leaning back like maybe it can convince Daryl to step in further. His eyes flick to the baby, who seems ready to start fussing- little chunky fists raised and clenched in the air.

Sucking in a sharp breath, Glenn leans forward to catch the nearest whatever he can- the armrest of his shitty little old couch- and teeters.

"You can uh- you can puke in my bathroom. I puked in my bathroom. Kinda helps. N'then uh... we should. Talk. Or something."

"Not gonna puke," Daryl refuses instantly. 

Pussies puke. ...Apparently that included Glenn right now; but looking at his baby face -how the fuck did he look like this in just a two years difference- maybe he'd allow that role to hang on him a little longer.
Daryl, though? Doesn't puke. Not outside of gut punches and shitty moonshine and the latter was years ago.

But... Just in case he happened to get... unwell...

"Take th' kid," he mutters, eyes screwing shut as he feels the squirming increase by a bit too much for his current headspace to handle.

The baby’s at least quieted down a bit, but he’s still fussing- it finally lures Daryl a little further into the room, closer to Glenn, and gives him the excuse to turn away from the other man. If he lurches a little as he does so, it's his head spinning too fast and the adrenaline still high in his veins. Maybe he had something from Merle's stash before this, he doesn't remember that fucking far back. Whatever happened on the last day of normality wasn't clung to like a fleeing lover like others may have thought.

Daryl's protest is met with an immediate glance from Glenn- dubious at the very least, absolutely not believing him at the very worst, but he doesn't push. Instead, he painstakingly rightens himself and tries to get his breath back. Finally, he manages to maneuver himself back over to Daryl to take the baby. It’s a precarious thing, getting the baby up out of the sling. However, in all of his squirming, his fussing, his little fists- the baby stops all of that the instant Glenn grabs him. Untucking his little face from the back of Daryl's head, he turns his little self in a babble and slides out of the sling with a squirm like he's trying to help, turning to reach and cling and hang onto Glenn just as much- all tiny little breaths stuttering into something that isn't about to fuss anymore.

"Hey- hey little man, hi-"

It still takes some effort to untuck the little guy from the sling completely, to lift him- and Glenn, despite himself, sort of just- talks through it. Chuckling, voice a little high and thin for it, he just talks, as if the air in the apartment is too much in itself.

"Where'd you come from, huh? This is totally not weird- totally not freaky! Totally not."

Once Daryl's relieved of the baby, and said baby is situated precariously in one of Glenn's nowhere-near-as-big-as-they-had-been arms, one of Glenn’s hands finds his shoulder.

"...it's okay, man."

Daryl forgot how hard it was to be touched.

When he flinches hard underneath Glenn's hand, he wishes he could restart again and take himself three steps out of his grasp to prevent it, but the second he feels the hand on his shoulder, fingers, palm, all of it, he startles and turns so sharp the entire room tilts on its axis and nearly topples with him. The scrape of wood on the floor and the sudden fire on his thigh is the only acknowledgement that he'd smacked himself on a corner table or whatever Glenn has old pizza boxes stacked on top that shuffle along with, but it's barely a speck to the flare on his shoulder.

It burns. He let himself forget what two years of relying on others had done to heal old wounds, now open and fresh and gushing blood again.

The world rights itself in a half a second but it's too late and he's reaching for where Glenn touched him like his touch is acid out of instinct. A flash of anger twists his expression, too fast, too unruly, not yet controlled, not yet stomped down by a world that demands control, but he manages to click his teeth down around the bark from a wounded animal. His fingers twist into the shoulder of his familiar jacket.

He's thankful for a second that he gave the baby to Glenn as his breath stutters in his chest alongside his still-racing heart. And he thinks he might be a pussy because his stomach churns in the most fitful way.

Instead of an apology, his mind whirls around its natural defenses not yet unlearned. "Don't," he grits through his teeth.

Glenn pries his hand away like he's been bitten at, stepping back wide with the baby in his arms.

And for a moment, he's just quiet. He kind of just - lets it Lets it all fester, lets the very sudden reality come crashing in, that no, maybe he's already pinched himself but this isn't a dream. It’s clear there in the slack of his mouth.

"Was I really dead, Daryl?"

There's an unnatural silence. Unnatural in the way that both of the men standing in that room knew that in twenty-four hours, fourty-eight tops, the streets were going to come alive with mobs and insanity that one would hope to never experience in their life, let alone twice. Daryl can barely look up at Glenn, and his fingers tense into the leather of his jacket. It's not as worn down as it will be soon enough. Wings are practically new and vibrant. It hangs on his body more than it should, not yet filled out with muscle.

He doesn't have his usual curtain of hair to hide behind, still recovering from the last shave-down Merle had given him. Military life was too ingrained in Merle no matter how much he protested it. It makes him unable to hide the fact that his eyes keep twitching to Glenn's face, then away, then back again like he has to hurt himself that little bit more.

He nods small. Chin tucked down. Hand fisting his jacket to anchor himself from the truth.

Adrenaline is fading and realization is coming. Daryl doesn't want to be there when it happens but unfortunately, he can't escape his mind right now.

The baby's stopped fussing.

He has a hand little in his mouth like maybe he's trying to keep himself quiet, to not interrupt, or maybe just equally as wrought by the moment.

And Glenn- Glenn sits down hard. He almost misses the couch he sits down so hard, caught in a near frantic silence- it’s hot. It’s so hot in here.

Swallowing hard, Glenn shifts, features screwing up in a squint when the baby takes his fist out of his mouth and makes a sound like a coo, grabbing onto Glenn’s too-big-T-shirt with a slobbery hand.

"I-" Glenn starts, and then he stops.

Words are pretty useless around now.

The room is fighting Daryl again. And so is his stomach. Too many thoughts starting to filter through the haze, his pillowing rendered useless by the quiet they now find themselves in. Two years of life flashing behind his eyes and the last few weeks of it burns red hot. It's too quiet. Mind trying to fill the silence and 'Easy Street' is so encroached into his mind that even now, now , it's starting to feed its way through.

Stomach twisting, he remembers- he’d lied about the last time he'd puked, actually. There had been vomit right next to his head, next to the polaroid of the same man he stared at now, except his head was reduced to paste and bone and graying brain matter. Glenn is dead. Glenn was dead. Glenn is sitting right in front of him with scars that he could trace with the nails of a bat that had swung and beaten and-

Bathroom.

Glenn's offer drags up as he turns and flicks his gaze over the few doors that lead into the living room. One is cracked open and he can see tile on the floor and he hopes to whatever fucked up entity that sent him back that there's at the very least a sink or a trash can in there if he's wrong. He tries not to make it obvious, as if there's anything else he could possibly be rushing for, and in maybe four steps his boots are hitting tile, the door is shoved open, he doesn't even reach for the lights because he spent longer without electricity than with it as he finds the ceramic toilet.

Thankfully Glenn is a man who lives alone and he doesn't put the seat down. He's not sure he'd have made it otherwise as his stomach turns inside out and suddenly memories and whatever he'd had for lunch that day comes topside and splashes into the bowl.

He thought it was jerky. Could have had oatmeal, too. At least it wasn't dog food.

It's maybe ten seconds of heaving, another ten of dry heaving, and a lifetime with Daryl pushing his forehead against the bowl trying to wait for the thoughts to stop and the quiet to take over. They swirl maddeningly, though. Clustered and dazed. He thinks he hears Glenn out in the living room and his voice is so far away it sounds like a ghost and his stomach tries to offer another helping of vomit for the thought. It doesn't have anything outside some bile.

His hand fumbles with the lever, and he'd never been so thankful for functional plumbing to allow the flush that rumbles the basin and makes his sick disappear.

The fucked up part is he didn't even get a party phase in his life where he'd pray to porcelain gods surrounded by ribbing of frat boys and the disgusted grimace of women. Only saw those in movies. Right now the closest he's getting is a dead man in the living room and a baby he doesn't know the origin to. That second part might have been in a movie, he's fuzzy on the details. Fuzzy on acknowledging anything until he realizes he can't spend long on his knees nursing the headache that's starting to throb in his skull.

They have two days tops before the world ends.

It's that thought that has him shuffling back to his feet, grabbing a poor defenseless towel of Glenn's to wipe his clammy face and letting it fall to the ground as he staggers back out. He's lighter, physically only. Weighed down everywhere else. He drags his hand over his face and clenches his eyes shut for several moments before taking in the living room again. It's still there. Still the same.

Glenn’s perched there on the couch still, looking like- well.
The baby is sat on his knees where he’s hunched, and he’s just looking at the little thing, brow scrunched up, lip threatening to curl. It’s somewhere between that now seemingly ever-persistent grimace and something far more upset, but the baby doesn’t seem to mind. Ever curious, ever the grabber, really, those little hands find the sides of his face. The baby’s sort of just… reaching. Not grabbing, just touching, in the way Judith would sometimes when she was sleepy.

Watching them there staring at each other feels- Daryl can’t place it.

More accurately, he doesn’t have words for it.

They have things they need to do.

This is real, now. And they're on a time crunch.

"Wha'do we do now?" Daryl asks aloud, because his brain hasn't allowed him a clear second to formulate survival odds.

"I don't have baby stuff." Comes the mumbled response, as if it isn't the most obvious thing in the world. The place they're in screams broke bachelor pad. "... don't have any stuff actually."

"...d'we wait until we don't gotta pay for shit or do you got money?" It's a bit of a stupid question, but Daryl isn't exactly wealthy and if he takes in the state of Glenn's apartment, he looked like he was three pizza deliveries away from going broke himself. Merle's got most of the money, anyway. He's the one doing drug hand-offs or buying supplies while baby brother hangs back and lets him work. Whatever he's got in his wallet is all Daryl has to his name.

It should get them at least a few days of supplies. That's all they need before the looting starts and the five finger discount is all they need for the rest of their lives. Or paying for shit by blood. He's done that before, too.

"Pro'lly can't wait for shit to be free."

Daryl looks back at the baby who is unnaturally quiet for having gone through a high speed pursuit and then being dumped in the hands of a stranger *by* another stranger. Kid was probably getting hungry. Obviously they weren't a newborn, but that didn't mean the kid going more than two hours without food would be high on anyone's to-do list. 

The baby seems content to stay occupied there in Glenn’s lap, kind of just looking at him, touching him with his little baby hands like- it’s hard to say what it's like. Glenn finally drags his eyes up to look at him then. 

It’s kinda stark how baby faced he is in contrast to the scar. It’s stark, it’s obvious , it’s half of him , and the eye caught in it rotates oddly, jittery in his skull, milky and unfocused. 

“Got rent,” he offers lamely, a catch in his voice like he might break into a disbelieving laugh. “Yeah- yeah, we oughtta uh- do that. Stock up. It’ll be two days before they start putting news about the camps out.” 

This is more what Daryl is used to. Plans. Solutions. Getting shit done. His hand drops down to his hip, to his crossbow, at the mention of weapons. He's still got his bolts and thank fuck that he managed to get caught in the middle of hunting with Merle for shit to go down. Granted, he can't take that into a store to get supplies, even down in Georgia. Not to get something as pedestrian as baby food.

Now that he has a start, now that he’s clearly thinking , Glenn keeps talking. 
“I got knives in the kitchen. And uhm- a baseball bat in my room. And some cup ramen, just need boiled water for that. It’s not a lot though.”

"I got-" Shit, he left his bag on the bike. "-milk. Jerky. Water. On the bike. Think kid's big enough for milk-milk or do we gotta do formula runs?" 

“Maybe uh- Judith. She was- she’s-“ flubbing, Glenn brings a hand up to his face and then all at once pulls it away when he feels his own features. “-eating applesauce. Right? They’re the same size.” 

Right, maybe some kind of baby book is in order. It’s a lot easier knowing what to do with a baby when other people actually have way more experience. Judith had still been on formula. Judith had been... maybe his size. Bigger, even. Daryl shook his head.
"Nah, milk's not gonna cut it. Formula run." But he still needed to get that shit off his bike. "Y'got a ride?"

He can trick himself a little longer and believe it's a supply run. At least until he saw the people still upright, walking, without the rot and stench of walkers or the weapons pointed at their faces.

“No.” He blanches, straightening then. Standing. Maybe a little too fast, but there’s no use in sitting around right? “No, the car I used- use- shit, whatever it is, it’s down the street at the pizza place. And they kind of own it.”

Applesauce, formula, diapers, fucking diapers, because those will be off the shelf the second they break through the glass and start looting. Formula, too. Daryl reaches for his crossbow, unhooking it from his belt and holding it in his hand. It takes an enormous amount of force for Daryl to set the weapon down onto the table, with only the reminder that they will be coming back for it keeping him in check. It lands with a small thunk, and Daryl immediately feels like he's lost a limb at its relinquishment.

"Then we gotta-" take his fucking bike. And there's meth in the fucking saddlebags.

Fucking miracle he didn't get caught by that cop because he surely wouldn't be getting out of that shit with just a ticket. At least Georgia’s open carry. 

"...Gimme a sec," is all he grunts as he turns back to the window and reaches for the sill.

Glenn gives a start, holding the nameless baby close as Daryl goes for the window. This time, baby doesn’t fuss, instead letting out a loud sound and giving a little jolting kick in Glenn’s arms.

“Woah- hey, hey! Where are you going? We can’t just show up to the farm, what if-!”

Daryl jolts at the window, hand still on the sill and leg lifted to throw himself over the edge onto the fire escape. Shit. Okay. They- don't. Have time for this yet.

"Supplies, then we talk. I'm getting the bike ready," is all Daryl gives as he resumes sliding through the open window and letting his boots thump onto the grate. They have time, after all. Two days before things go to shit. If they get supplies now, then they can take some time to talk things through, and even at latest, they can still get out of the city if they leave at night. Had to be enough time.

Daryl doesn't let Glenn stop him as he rounds down the corners that definitely felt much longer going down now that he didn't have the rush of adrenaline to aid him in the descent. His bike is still where he left it, propped up and waiting for his return. The bag of piss-poor supplies he managed to get at the gas station is still there, and flipping open the saddlebag greets him with-

Yeah. That's a lot of meth.

He grabs the bag of blue powder and stuffs as much of the other pills as he can into the small bag of supplies, along with whatever else still lingered in the bags. Knives, pieces of broken bolts, ass-old jerky he never got rid of, a few flasks, they all go into the bag and into his vest pockets. It's still not enough room, but it's going to get them started.

With that, Daryl was already making his way up the fire escape like a D-list Santa with the worst (or best depending who you are) bag of goodies one could ask for. He doesn't want to say he's out of shape per say, but it's not as fit as he'd appreciate when he finds himself breathing a touch heavier. He better fucking shape up fast.

Well, he did once. Surely he could do it again.

Daryl comes up through the window again to Glenn putting that very oily box on top of his not particularly well kept stove, the rest of the boxes shoved haphazardly into the puny trash bin. They won’t fit obviously, but it’s an attempt, all done with a year-old sized baby teetering in one of his arms.

The bag lands with a heavy thud next to the crossbow, tipping and spilling out a couple bottles of pills and the large Ziploc of blue meth.

Turning back at the sound of Daryl clambering in, Glenn ends up blinking owlishly at the mess that spills out. 

“That is so much meth.” He blanches, before a flicker of hapless amusement parts across his features, the kind one gets when they’re kind of manic and realize that things are going to work out in their favor. 

"Y'dont got inspections, right?" Daryl asks with a tone of sarcasm. He does take the time to remove the bottle of milk from the bag and checks the temperature against his hand. Not warm yet, should be fine. They could try it once they get the formula and see how the kid takes to it.

“Well, by the time it happens, everyone’ll be dead. So it’s not like it matters.” He shrugs, reaching to snatch up the little milk bottle. He still has a working fridge at least, and if they got milk, there’s no use in wasting it. “Thanks. How busy is it out there?”

Daryl passes the milk with a soft huff, the tiniest quirk to his lips that may show the same kind of amusement that is barely keeping them together. "Ride into the city weren't bad. Usual. Nothing's gone down yet." Daryl took the chance to glance to the ticking clock on the wall, squinting for the time. Almost two. Roads would still be quiet, and it may be the best chance they have to get supplies while staying as under the radar as they can.

"Y'got a backpack? Bike can only hold so much." Daryl didn't even want to begin to think about how the fuck they were getting anywhere in the first place. Daryl driving, Glenn on his back, baby in his arms? About all they had at this point. Chances were higher than he'd care to admit that they'd get caught by a cop again, but the meth was out of his bike at least.

Daryl wasn't as familiar with this side of Atlanta as he should. Most of Atlanta, actually. He'd be depending on Glenn knowing where to go, and with his pizza delivery knowledge under that scarred head of his, he had to have some plan. Baby things, weapons, nonperishable food, anything to get them started before they planned their next move.

Farm was his closest guess.

“Yeah, I have one,” Glenn quickly assures, at least partially pulling Daryl from his train of thought. He’s turning back from the fridge now, offering a nod, a subconscious glance back towards what must’ve been his bedroom. “There’s- I mean, we shouldn’t go too far out. There’s a store a few blocks down, it’s affordable. Not like cash’ll matter here soon anyway… how long do we wanna give this?”

"Give the town?" Daryl grunts, glancing across the apartment. A difficult question. And one he wasn't sure he wanted to field quite yet. There were too many things up in the air, too many things out of focus, and too many things that could go wrong. Hell, he didn't even know if this would... last. If this would be just a flash to the past, and he'd wake up back in his cell the second he closed his eyes.

It still didn't feel real. While also feeling exactly like it was happening again.

“Give going out,” Glenn corrects, but there’s no bite in it. 

"We... loot up." That wasn't what it was called when paying for it legally, but who cares- "Get back. Get the kid fed. Us fed. Then we..." Daryl paused again, waving out his hand for Glenn to retrieve his bag while he's talking. "...We don't... Know where the others are at. Outside of Maggie."

Instead, he finds himself scanning over the tabletop and its contents, what meager supplies he knows are in his apartment. They can fill takeout containers with water. Pots and pans and bowls too. When it gets to that point at least. 

“Then we barricade.”

With a passing glance to his door (one which the baby unmistakably mirrors) Glenn shifts on his feet and almost seems to perk up a bit. At least for a moment. They do know where Maggie is, which means they know where Herschel and Beth are. 

And they’re still alive. Shit, they’re still alive .

“Maybe- maybe we phone book it. We know what town she lives in, I just…” a guttural sigh breaks from him then, and all at once Glenn’s hand is back up towards his face, then his short cropped hair, then uneasily on the tabletop. “I don’t wanna show up and she doesn’t remember. Or no one does, we dunno if- this thing is just us. Whatever it is.” 

His gaze flicks up to Daryl, wary, just as unsure as he is. “We know Rick’s in a hospital down south. Which means Carl is around there. And so is Lori. And Shane.”

Fuck, it’s weird hearing that out loud.

Everyone's alive.

It's a realization that makes his hair stand on end, breath catching in his chest, and had he not already puked it may have sent his stomach rolling again. Shit. Everyone's *alive.*

"We-" Daryl starts, then catches, swallowing. He grimaces immediately at the taste of bile and sick. But he clears his throat anyway and focuses on the thoughts still pinballing through his skull. "We gotta find 'em. When it starts. Rick. We gotta find Rick. Even if he don't remember, he's holed up in a hospital anyway."

That was the whole reason he came into Atlanta. If Glenn knows where he is, knows the hospital, then they can be down there. Because he can't fucking lose Rick to this before it even starts. He can't.

“I know. I know but-“ Glenn opens and closes his mouth like a fish, well aware that the baby has shifted- still clinging onto him, he presses his little head against Glenn’s shoulder and whimpers. “What if we go and find everyone now and it fucks it up. We know- we know he’s there. He’s safe. They’ll all be safe well all- everyone will end up at the quarry by the week anyway. Right?”

Glenn sounds like he isn’t so sure himself.

"That don't make him safe twice!" Daryl snaps back, shoulders tensing and rising high. There's that panic again, the thing he can't fucking kill no matter what he tries to do. It's squirming in his chest even now, the dread in knowing that people are about to die and he can't do anything about it. But he can this time. He has to.

He has to.

"If we got dropped back here or whatever the fuck this is, then we gotta use it. So we get Rick, we get who we can, and we get the fuck out of Atlanta and to Alexandria. Skip all the shit in between. Hell, knock off the Govn'er's head too while we're at it. Stick Negan like a pig, too!" The absurdity of his thoughts couldn't begin to match the absurdity of the situation. It's all he can think of what he has to do. Fix shit, get it right a second time, and keep his family safe. Right now, though, he can't.

“And it doesn’t mean he won’t be!” Glenn protests sharply right back, shifting the baby in his lap a bit. There’s a stark furrow in his brow, or what’s left of one of them. “If we show up, and take him off whatever they have him on, what then? Or the people who weren’t there can’t look after him, what then?”

It’s all a hurried thing, like he’s just formulating these thoughts, coming to some glaring realization that makes Glenn equally as nauseous.

“We can’t just blow up the fucking world Daryl!”

"Then why are we here?!" Daryl demands the answer that he knows Glenn can't give him. Because it's not an answer one of them can give. There's no explanation why they're where they are right now, but it's the fact that they don't know, that they can't know, because there's no one alive that can give them answers.

Unless there are others. There had to be others. Right? But how-

How are they supposed to find more? Stand in the street and scream that the apocalypse is coming and hope that someone will hear? That someone will snap to attention and go, 'Yes! I remember!'

“I don’t know.”

Again, Glenn’s voice is sharp. Heavy in a way uncharacteristic of him, authoritative even- he doesn’t. He doesn’t know and it’s clear on his face despite that tone that- he’s scared. Glenn’s scared. There he sits holding this nameless baby, who’s starting to squirm and pout, and he’s starting to stand all over again to meet Daryl’s pacing with a sturdy set of his feet on the uneven, uncleaned carpet.

Glenn composes himself. Barely. Sucks in a breath and lets it out when the baby lets out a wavering little whimper. 

“I don’t know. We don’t- whatever the hell this is, I agree, we can’t waste it. It doesn’t feel real. But if we… if we go out, and do things that didn’t happen before, then we don’t know what’s gonna happen next. We don’t know it’ll happen the same, but it’s- if it’s happened once it’ll happen again, right? Like chaos theory. It’s- if there’s nothing to stop how things happened before, then we can actually- I don’t know. Try? Fuck- fuck, I don’t even know what I’m saying-“
His voice scatters a bit, suddenly exhausted, even choked up as he drags a hand down his face and tries to prop the baby on his hip.

"Huh?" Daryl starts, because a word caught him. "The hell's chaos theory?" 

All he can think about in that moment is that actual chaos is about to run through the streets with walkers chewing through the living. Is that chaos theory?

Daryl tries to piece through Glenn's words, eyes squinting down and brow furrowed so tensely there seems to be no  way to separate them after. But he's trying. Tries to drag in a breath through lungs that feel too tight and a chest that just won't let him do it. The heel of his boot digs into the floor, then the toe, and suddenly Daryl can't stay longer. He paces forward a step, then another, casts a glance to the window, then turns and paces back. He feels like he's in a fucking cage and it's not even day one of the end of the world.

Apparently it’s so hard to actually articulate what Glenn’s thinking, and it’s written there on his face. All of it is under lit by a note of panic when Daryl starts for the door. It keeps even when Daryl starts back, something almost ghostly on his near baby faced features for the moment. 

And then Glenn’s flubbing like he’s trying to just keep Daryl in the room. 
“It’s- look it’s the only way I can think of explaining it, it’s from Jurassic Park- but the whole point is like. Dinosaurs are fucked and horrifying and can kill people. And they make dinosaurs to put in the park and the dinosaurs do what the dinosaurs are always gonna do and eat people. Except we’re- the people in the park and the walkers are the dinosaurs.” 

That manages to stop Daryl dead, and the frustration, anger, and downright fear that had been launched through his body is forced to take a backseat for the utter confusion that's written all over his face. Every time he tries to take a moment to input something, interrupt, or just ask what the fuck Glenn is getting at, Glenn continues rambling. And rambling. 

It’s very much clear that Glenn is well aware of how confusing and frankly lame it must sound, but he’s blatantly at a loss all the same, giving a start. “No. We need- just wait. I need to get water.”

And suddenly he's asking for water. Seemingly both in an effort to hide the furious flush of exasperation on his face and to satisfy that need for water, Glenn turns pointedly on his heel (with the very pouty looking baby still on his hip) to start for the narrow, too-dark alley of his kitchen. 

"The hell you goin' on about?" Daryl manages to interject, head starting to tilt like a dog who can't figure out the source of a sound.

“C’mon.”

He doesn’t actually wait to see if Daryl follows, instead slipping inside and tentatively flicking the sink on -water comes out, miraculously, jarringly - and starting to lean forward to catch some of it straight out the spout in his mouth. For a moment that’s all he does, as if suddenly reminded of how parched he is before he spits out the mouthful, swishes some more around, and then finally gulps a mouthful down as he haphazardly reaches up to his broken cupboard for a plastic cup that’d seen better days. Daryl's far past being someone to judge how to drink water. He'd drank out of enough toilet tanks and suspicious ponds with the practice of boiling still not feeling safe enough. So he just has to wait through Glenn's sudden dousing of water and spitting, and try not to feel jealous at the fresh water that they soon will no longer have. But once Glenn has the cup , he fills it, and turns hurriedly right back around to Daryl with it in hand. He'd probably have pushed his way to get his own fill had it not been for Glenn turning back around with the cup.

“Gimme your hand.”

The first thing he thinks is that Glenn is offering him the water. But just as he prepares to reach out, Glenn speaks again. 

Give him his hand? ...Why? He's capable of grabbing the cup on his own. He wasn't the one who got his head-

Dubious, Daryl reaches out in silence as he tries to bury the thought down as fast as he possibly can.

But he wordlessly reaches out to take Daryl’s hand -hesitating for just a brief moment, likely considering his earlier reaction - before carefully maneuvering it into a curved, flat topped fingers position. Like a shadow puppet of an emu, or something- whatever it is, Glenn’s thinking about it. Hard. Honestly, Daryl’s getting more confused by the second, which while not the most unusual thing to happen to Daryl of all people, still doesn't feel the greatest. He can't help but tuck his other arm around his chest, pinning his hand under his bicep and letting his fingers curl into the leather of his jacket as Glenn conducts his little whatever on his hand. 

“Just. Don't move, okay? At all.”

And with a light tilt of the cup, the water comes racing in a little droplet down the knuckle Glenn chooses. The water droplet rolls down his middle knuckle, curves over a vein, and then takes a veer off to the left to fall off the back of his hand. Because gravity still works, if that's what Glenn's trying to test.

“See? Remember where it went.” 
And then with that he palms blindly back for a paper towel or dish rag or something. Yanking up a tattered and crumpled paper towel, he reaches to wipe Daryl’s hand where the water had gone.

“Don’t move, just watch.”

All he offers is a soft assuring grunt when Glenn commands him to remember, and to watch, and it takes all he has to keep himself from shifting his weight since apparently this is important. All he can think of, though, is that his skin, while looking much less rough from being two years prior to an apocalypse of weathering, still... feels different enough. He says nothing as he waits for Glenn to resume his test.

The baby is watching them both through all of this. 

His chubby little cheeks are pink, mouth open in a curious silence as his dark eyes dart to and fro- up at Glenn, over to Daryl, and back and forth again. One of his little fists is clenched white knuckled in Glenn’s shirt, and he pitifully -still frowning a little- tucks his tiny little head against Glenn’s chest there where he’s held.

With clear apprehension, he tilts the cup back again to let the water spill back down its path. 

Blessedly, it goes in the same direction. And Glenn- well Glenn lights right up. 

“See!? Okay so- the first time the water went. That’s like our first time. Whatever happened was just- happening. Making a path ahead or whatever. But then we reset it. Or it reset. Like I reset your hand. And what did the water do?”

Daryl's... getting it. Maybe. Judging by the way his brow is still furrowed and he's squinting so hard at his hand like it's about to explain everything in their situation, though, he still has questions. But he's trying. It's better than before. 

"It... went the same way," Daryl rumbles, eyes falling back to the cup. He wants that fucking water but he has to sit through this lesson first, apparently.

“It went the same way,” Glenn agrees, finally shoving the cup into his hand. “Which means, we know what will happen already. We know where the water’s gonna go. Where people are gonna go, our people.”

Right, okay, Daryl seems to understand enough to maybe, hopefully have a rational conversation about this. And there’s no use denying him water when they need to get their heads screwed back on their shoulders. 

“But we don’t know where a lot of our people are right now. What we do know is that- if things go like they did before, which they probably will, because we’re where we were, it means they’ll be safe for a little bit longer. But if we show up out of nowhere and- do something that didn’t happen before. Then we can’t protect what happens next, and we can’t keep them safe. It’s a huge risk.” 

The baby coos, mumbling to his little self, turning to look expectantly up at Glenn again.

Daryl takes a moment to digest the words, process them as fully as he can given the circumstances. The panic threading through his system, one he thought he had managed to kill two years ago but is back and thriving in his veins, has been soothed enough by Glenn's explanation that it lets him think. Basically what Glenn was saying was: step out of line, and shit gets fucked.

He barely gives Glenn a second after he finishes speaking to tip his head back and down the entire cup of water. Even if it rouses the sick in his mouth, he doesn't fucking care. He had dined on dog food what felt like two hours ago. Could almost taste it as he swallowed down the water. Vomit was commonplace. He only stopped when the cup ran dry and he gave his head a quick shake like he could free himself of the taste he subjected himself to, and plopped the cup onto the counter.

"So we're stuck to what we did last time," Daryl grunts. He barely has a second to pause before he's shaking his head again. "Then we've already fucked up. I should'a been out with Merle when shit went down with his gang. And." He motions to the mystery baby in Glenn's arms. "Him. Her. Kid. Sure as fuck wasn't on my back the first time."

“ Exactly,” Glenn repeats, emphasizing it. They have. Already. “But there’s no use in making this worse. Right? It’s… if this… baby was on your back, then you can’t just show back up to Merle without stirring up who knows what. And I already know what’s gonna happen in Atlanta. I know when it gets napalmed and when the stores start to shut down and right now it’s- we have time. To get ready.”

There’s a gathering confidence in Glenn as he takes the scratched up cup back to put it under the tap again, letting it fill, handing it back. But his gaze, even half blind, is firm on Daryl. 

“We can try to make a plan- and… and figure out where this baby came from. Right? And maybe- maybe I can try to call Maggie, we can even call the hospital to check on Rick. That shouldn’t get in the way.”

The second fill of the cup is drained slower, as in he pauses halfway through to think for a few seconds, and then practically drowns himself by downing the rest. It goes down easier, less vomit in his mouth to mess with, and he thumps the plastic cup once more onto the counter and releases it to rattle.

"Current plan" Daryl grunts, dropping his head to stare at the floor. 

He studies a crack in the tile to focus on, once again unable to bring himself to look Glenn in the eye. Not yet. Too much. 

"Supplies. Maggie. Rick. Get the fuck outta Atlanta. Retrace our steps and..." he lets his body sway to bump his hip into the counter, hand resting on the counter right next to the cup. "...Go from there. I can try to find where Merle goes if I gotta, but we ran into walkers. Half the fuckin' gang turned. After that, we scattered. Can't tell ya' where we went, only that we ended up at the quarry eventually." His nails dig at the countertop, bitten down almost to the nub. Nervous habit he hadn't been able to shake and an apocalypse wasn't a good starting point to try. "...might have to hope the asshole finds his own way back."

When the cup is placed back down again, there’s a long drawn moment where it sits with the invitation of an empty beer mug on a bar counter. Dutifully, Glenn takes it, fills it again, and lightly nudges the dark blue plastic back across the counter for Daryl should he take it. Should he want it.

But again, he sighs, hefting the baby up to readjust his grip. 

“Did none of what I just said-! Look.” His head’s still aching, clearly, he pinches his brow and then splays a hand out on the counter.

He takes a moment, staring down at the nicer-than-they’re-both-used-to sink, like maybe the drain’ll spit out some meaningful words. The same frown from earlier on the couch returns, steep and uncertain.

“I wanna go find her,” Glenn finally manages. “I wanna find her so fucking bad, Daryl, I feel like I can’t breathe. But we don’t even know if they’ll remember- and if they don’t? We can’t just. Say. That all of this happened. We’d sound psycho. I couldn’t just show up on Maggie’s doorstep saying we’re married without expecting her dad or- her cousin or… hell, her brother to walk me to the road with a shotgun. And if she does and she leaves, then her stepmom dies, her brother dies, her cousin dies- maybe even Beth and Herschel die and she won’t be there to help them like she was. And if we show up to Rick, we’re just to strangers. Lori’d… Lori would lose her mind. Shane would lose his mind.”

"I ain't saying we find them," Daryl snaps, but the words drag at his throat on the way out like it's a pain to admit it. 
Glenn's spiral is only echoing the racing thoughts in his mind that he can't bear to say aloud. At least one of them has, though. 

"Sayin' we... do the checking. Like you said. Calling. Checking. If... Anyone remembers. Cause if she does, you tell her the same thing you told me. Same for Rick. We don't gotta spill everything. If they recognize us, they're gonna recognize us. If they don't they don't."

Daryl reaches for the cup, wrapping his hand around the bottom and dragging it closer to himself. He thinks in that survivalist section of his brain that filling his belly with water will help keep hunger at bay, but outside of the fact that he's damn sure he didn't eat yet today, the hunger pains hadn't set in. There's still food. There's still civilization. Things hadn't gone to shit yet, but they're gonna. He just needs to be ready when it does.

The pair of them go quiet then for a moment, stood there in the dark, cramped apartment kitchen. It smells like water stains and dish soap. And pizza.

The baby makes another little withering whimper, big dark eyes tilted expectantly up at Glenn still, at both of them as they stand there. Slowly, it seems to pull Glenn out of it as he glances over to the baby, and Daryl can’t help but follow his gaze.

“Right. Yeah, exactly. But first there’s uh… there’s this little guy.”

Or girl. Or whatever it is. Baby turns back and forth between them again before making a little sound once more, little fists balling in Glenn’s shirt- and something in the man seems to melt in an instant into some kind of instinctive affection. The little guy stares up still silently, expectantly, leaning back from where he’d huddled his little self before going right back there to bury his face in the center of Glenn’s chest.

Babies tend to do that to people, anyway.

“Aw, bud- you’re probably hungry huh.”

"Supplies," Daryl says sharply, picking up the cup and taking a long drag from it. He can taste the metal in the water now that he's washed out the vomit. Shitty pipes in a shitty apartment that's about to become their lifeline. He sets down the cup half full still, then nudges it back to Glenn's direction. "First on the list."

“Supplies,” Glenn agrees, picking his head up quickly.

Daryl’s already standing up and abandoning the kitchen as soon as the words leave his lips, grasping for the sling on his body that had no business being there. 

"You keep a'hold of Junior," he instructs as he tugs at the corners, searching for knots or whatever the fuck was holding this thing together. They'd smade due with tied sheets with Judith when they were on the road and needed their hands free. Just like their mamas and the mamas before them, using what they could with what little they had- this one doesn’t seem to be much different, and all the same as the baby, seems to’ve up and materialized out of nowhere. Daryl frees himself from the sling and sets it down onto a countertop as he passes it by, already reaching for the keys in his pocket. 

Need to get down to the bike. Need to get ready to move.

“I can give you directions- wait, slow down? Please? Jesus Christ dude, I woke up on my couch not in the woods. You have a head start.”

As soon as Glenn notices Daryl is moving, he stumbles after the man quickly, hopping from one foot to the other to pull down the crumpled, rolled up legs of the sweats he’d woken up in and toeing around into a pair of beat up tennis shoes- distantly, Daryl thinks those might’ve been the very same ones Glenn wore all the way through in their first winter. He turns back towards the window, well aware of an uneasy edge of impatience gathering. Safe or not, they have something to do- he hates standing around at all.

"Yeah, and I had a pig on my ass on the way up, y'got cushy treatment," Daryl grunts, barely pausing as he enters the living room and rounds towards the window. "Gonna have to start trimming back the baby fat now when we got the time."

It's not entirely certain who that's supposed to be pointed at, as Daryl certainly isn't in the shape he used to be, either. Thinner arms, softer face, needs to scrape off the softness now. But he did it before. He'll do it again.

“Yeah, no shit.” Glenn gripes pointedly over. “Thanks. Push ups from here on out- I had a system. For the roofs. I can tell you when we get back and… I’ll grab the phone book downstairs too.”

It's still going to take time and they're against a ticking clock they had barely kept time with the first time. He can feel it crunch down in the back of his mind even now. But he's forced to stand and wait, grabbing the open window frame and peering out to make sure no one's touching the bike. Like hell is he going to start a rerun and lose one of the two most important things to his survival on day fucking one.

It doesn’t take long for Glenn to one handedly shuck on his shoes and snag the sling up again. It’s not like Glenn had ever been first up for baby carrying. Usually that was Tyreese or Beth or Carl or Michonne or Rick’s job- but the sling was a thing they’d all seen and helped do who knew how many times before. As soon as the mystery baby is adjusted and slung to Glenn’s front, he hurriedly slips into one of the two back rooms- something thunks and clatters lightly on the floor, shaken out, and he returns with a well-loved black backpack.

With one more sweep of the apartment, Glenn stops short. From the far side of the couch, off the floor past one of the arms, he snatches up a familiar ballcap, and pulls it low over his face. Daryl finds himself prying his gaze away again, jaw shifting uneasily as the other man makes his way over to the window at his side.

“Store’s only a couple blocks down so… hopefully that guy isn’t still looking for you?”

"He's gonna have bigger problems, so for his sake, he better not," Daryl glances back over his shoulder for a brief second, long enough to ensure that he's got his bag and the mystery baby in place. 

Just a second, and he turns back to the open window and his bike. He sucks in a breath from the stale air of a stuffy apartment, because Glenn apparently has no ventilation in this shitty place, and is already throwing a leg through the open window on the exhale.

"C'mon," is all he grunts as he steps onto the metal fire escape landing, the thump rattling and making him tense. The reminders that the world hasn't turned to shit yet don't help when the world's about to turn to shit.

That’s all the prompting Glenn really needs. He’s right there behind Daryl- already reaching out to hang onto the precarious edge of his window and peer down the four stories to where the bike is parked. Glenn’s quiet for a moment. Like maybe it’s hitting him it’s Merle’s-  the old one filthy with dust and mud and a graffiti mess of insignias that could spell out a slur just by existing- not the one Daryl had started fixing up in Alexandria.

“I’m coming,” he starts, with far less reluctance to clamber down than Daryl seems to have.

Glenn doesn’t really have room to complain as he follows, beginning the careful climb down the path Daryl leads- careful, at least to stop and pull his window shut until there’s just a crack left. Just in case. 

At least they have a plan. They don’t have a clue what’s actually happening, but they didn’t before either. And it’s a plan. They can work on a plan. 

Carefully, Daryl navigates right back down the rusted old ladders. Hopefully no one bothers look out their windows with all the rattling. It’s a lot of noise- noise that has the hair on the back of his neck on end, especially with two of them now scrambling down.

One thing does stand out clearly.

He’d expected to hear the baby again, just like earlier, protesting their descent.

Instead, his little head remains tucked against Glenn’s chest, eyes tilted to watch down as they go.

He hasn’t made a peep.