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If there was one upside to being dead it’s that you don’t have to subscribe to those pesky human inconveniences like needing food and shelter. Which is why he’d put off fixing the door for so long.
The creatures from the garden were getting cosy and the October rain was upsetting the wood varnish. There was always something to fix and he’d been working on something different every month since he’d fallen into the long nap and reawakened significantly more pale and tethered to the old house he’d always dreamed of flying away from as a kid.
It’d been a ward to the city after his daddy passed away in the 80s and was locked up in some legal bullshit before it was granted over to him. He’d just gotten the keys and had come to terms with owning more than a plaid shirt and a few lottery tickets when fate had somehow linked him back up with his ole bastard brother Merle. A few heated arguments with the wrong people, two bullets, and a late call to the paramedics later, both Dixon’s laid dead at the gates of Dixon Manor.
So it’s him and his dumb brother Merle, and a large, slowly decaying mansion that nobody will buy because local legend says it's haunted. (Guess they weren’t wrong there.)
Merle spends his afterlife doing what he’d done best in his waking: pissing people off. Particularly Daryl. And Daryl spends his fixing things. Particularly things Merle points out or breaks. He thinks in some weird, twisted way it’s Merle’s way of keeping Daryl busy because he knows, probably more than Daryl did or cared to admit to, that this ghost business was a lonely one and it vexed him. It’s more than he had to offer or do, he thinks, when he was living and the door, that’d been Merle’s latest parting gift.
-
On Monday Daryl sets out to fix the damn door once and for all but is thwarted by some unexpected guests.
There’s a guy in town with an eye patch and dubious amounts of property around the city. Everyone calls him The Governor, but Daryl mostly calls him asshole. He had only met him once in his waking life, but once was enough. Anyway, The Asshole comes crashing through the gates (another thing to fix) in a big pick up truck packed with a posse and a devious glint in his eye. Daryl’s about to float out and kindly tear them a new one for breaking in the gate (they could have just unlocked it, dammit), but Merle one ups him and Linda Blair’s the entire situation. The Governor, his lawyer, and surveying crew zip off the property screaming and covered in pea soup.
The priest comes Tuesday morning roughly 7:45am. Merle twists both his arms round and the priest leaves in an ambulance by 8. Daryl wasn’t and still isn’t too hung up on whether or not he’ll eventually make it upstairs or find himself down south, but even he could acknowledge that attacking a man of the cloth wasn’t doing the Dixon’s any favors.
A demolition crew comes Wednesday. They knock over one of the crude looking marble statues in the garden maneuvering up to the manor (he really wishes people would stop breaking shit). But before anyone of them sets to work, Merle’s already pressure hosing all those who didn’t run away from the ghoul pals he’d enlisted to scare them off. Sopping wet and scared shitless, men fall in the dozens into the bowl of the excavator and, much to Daryls annoyance, steamroll another statue on their way out.
Thursday, there’s just one guy. And his entire schtick is ghost pest control. Daryl finds the idea rude. He’s not the one comin’ into someone else’s property uninvited, after all . Merle seems to think the same because not only does he scare the guy stupid, but verbally assaults the guys very existence so bad that Daryl swears he hears the guy crying when he’s running back into his car, telling his crew of his incompetence, resignation and the flight to Mexico he’s booking.
When nobody comes on Friday, Daryl thinks that maybe the Governor has given up. So he ventures back out, determined, to finally put the damn door back on its hinges. Now that he’s got all the necessary parts and had been ridden of their fleshy infestation (as Merle likes to call em) causing him grief, he thinks he could finish by sunset.
He thumbs through channels on their old portable T.V. for a little background noise when something weird catches his eye.
“King’s County native Dr. Rick Grimes counsels clients from the great beyond.” The news ticker reads, panning into a room full of books and relics from all over the world. Hunched over and scribbling in a notebook is a man at the desk. He’s long, and lean, and has got a head full of curly hair. The man seems to be unbothered by the cameras. A woman in a tweed pant suit comes into view, sitting across from him. She lies a heavy hand on the table, drumming her finger tips.
“Dr. Grimes—“ she starts, and starts to fiddle with a golden plated mechanical model of the solar system. She tries to twirl it, but Dr. Grimes stops it before it could give a full revolution.
“Sorry, that’s…it’s very fragile.” Dr. Grimes says, finishing off his thought and then shuffling the papers closed.
The anchor fixes him a smile and offers an apology. It’s the first time that the camera gets a clear shot of the man’s face.
Daryl doesn’t leer. Not when he was alive nor does he when he’s dead, but the guy has got a very good smile. If he had flesh and muscles it’d probably hurt that he accidentally leans into an exposed nail on the threshold of the open door. Daryl doesn’t realize he smiling at the T.V., but is possessed by the new idea faster than he can analyze the risks of it. He’s gotta meet him, this Dr. Grimes. So he escapes into the telephone wiring, zipping up the road and into the Governor’s T.V..
The Governor’s in his long-johns and ordering a pizza when he gets there. By Daryl’s manipulation, he catches the interview just as Dr. Grimes is saying, “I counsel the recently departed.”
And just like that, the Governors asking if they have any Kings County locations because he’d like to send a gift to a friend.
-
The Grimes family roll in not a month later with no more than 3 boxes to a person. The eldest looks looks like he’s disinterested and unimpressed as he’s hauling a sleeping bag over his shoulder and into the house. The toddler waddles after him, yelling at him to slow down. Rick Grimes just stands outside and eyes the property before he makes it in.
Daryl really wishes that he could say that after they’d all come waltzing in, he’d been the one to greet them and ease them into maybe, yeah, there are dead folk around but not all of them were evil or looking to haunt or possess. Some of them were just looking for good conversation, for instance. Like him. Some just wanted to be left alone. Like him, but mostly Merle.
But nope, like the guest from the previous month, it was Merle who’d gotten to them first. It’s not great.
Rick Grimes screams like a teen in a slasher film and throws his kids in a broom closet while he tries to fend off Merle with a vacuum cleaner. Daryl wanted to laugh, but oddly enough it worked. Merle gets stuck.
After things quiet down and Grimes had vacuumed every room in the manor, he sets the kids to sleep and retreats to his own.
Daryl convinces himself that the only reason he doesn't seek Grimes when he was alone was because he wants to give him a chance to simmer before upsetting him again. He also needed a different approach.
And neither of those things had anything to do with being nervous or self-conscious.
-
In the morning, Daryl’s making breakfast and Grimes walks into the kitchen like he’s on a tightrope over a fjord. Daryl rolls his eyes.
“If you’re gunna scream again, don’t forget your vacuum,” Daryl says whiles he’s blistering tomato. “Merle’s a real princess in the mornin’.”
Rick makes a noise in his throat that almost sounds like an acknowledgement and Daryl offers him a full English with coffee. Rick stares at him while he eats. He doesn't start asking questions until he’s had his first sip of coffee.
Rick ask about being dead. What he’s made of. What Daryl does all day. Does he sleep?
Then Rick asks about his relationship with his brother and if Merle always been known to be stand-offish. Daryl tells him he doesn’t know about stand-offish, but he’s always been a dick.
He doesn't know how Rick got him to do it, talk so much about himself, but they spend the rest of the morning talking about Daryl’s childhood and don’t change the subject until the kids and Merle come down (which is like watching a honey badger and a snake, Carl Grimes being the badger and Merle being the snake, because he counters every insult Merle hauls at the family. “Get a grave!”)
-
A few months in and Rick Grimes, turns out, forms a love hate relationship with his brother. Merle loves to antagonize Rick daily, picks fights with Carl at the turn of the hour, but somehow wins over Judith's affections despite his disposition—and Rick hates it.
A few months in and Carl and Judith cling on to Daryl like he’s some sort of Messiah. Carl gets to asking him a million questions, about everything, hunting and handiwork and being dead and comics they both share a likeness for. It’d be exhausting if he wasn’t just as happy to answer. He feels stupid amount of honor when Carl asks him instead of Rick if he wanted to help build Judith and him a treehouse out back.
A few months in and Judith has dubbed him some sorta of personal servant. She won’t eat unless Daryl’s cooked it and sat next to her and will threaten a tantrum if he’s not flown her around the garden once a day or through the house even though the little brat could walk just fine (Daryl admits that he never lets it get to a full blown tantrum because the thought of Judith being denied anything her wide eyes and soft giggle wanted, would cause Daryl to die—again).
A few months in and Daryl, turns out, forms a damn crush. If he had skin he’d be red all over just thinking about how much he’s always seeking Rick out. Not that Rick ever minds because he seems to do the same (something that also would have his heart pumping if he had one).
Daryl discovers two things to be true in that same time:
The first of it is, he’s not only sharing all his deepest and darkest and shallowest and bright, but so is Rick. Rick divulges that he had a wife that died in Judith’s birth not 3 years prior and that had gotten him into the spirit counseling. He was obsessed and driven by grief, but through counseling of his own and focusing on moving forward, he had come to accept that he was reconnecting with every departed with unfinished business but his wife because she had no unfinished business.
“The idea that she wasn’t here anymore made more sense the more I thought about it, “ Rick said once, when they were working on reflooring the sunroom, “She had faith in my ability to father the kids. So why would she stay?”
Daryl hummed in response, and a few paces later asked, “If you’d been connecting with ghost all this time why the hell did you freak out when you saw Merle?”
“Never did see one in a corporeal form. Most of them talk to me indirectly.” Rick said.
And when Rick told him that a ghost once talked to him through Christmas lights, and that he’d formed alphabets under each bulb, Daryl’s laughter didn’t die down until the sun died down.
The second, well, Daryl realizes that Rick might be the only true friend he’s had in years. Even before he was dead. The thought would make him sad but then Rick comes round making a shit dad joke, helping him fix the banister on the stairwell, and asking him all about his two lives like Daryl's the most interesting dead person on the planet, so he really doesn’t get to dwell too long.
One night, the pair of them are in the parlor room watching a zombie flick. Daryl watches Rick more than the screen and before he can stop himself he whispers, “Can I keep you?”
Daryl gets a small grunt and snort before a steady sound of soft snores. He smiles, covers Rick with a blanket, and finishes the film by himself.
-
Things get weird when The Governor gets wind of the Dixon Manor vault.
Look, Daryl’s been dead for some odd years and he’s been estranged from his dad years before that, so he didn’t remember the vault nor the machine his dad built in the tomb underneath his house. He forgets what else is in the vault, but he snorts when he remembers what the machine does: just a funky little thing like bring back the dead.
He doesn’t know how The Governor finds out this information but it doesn’t matter because as soon as he threatens Rick’s livelihood. He tells Rick he's got a month left to get the Dixon's to cross over or he's not getting paid.
It charges something awkward between Rick and him. Daryl doesn’t want to go and he doesn’t think Rick wants him to either.
So when it reaches the end of the month after the threat, and Rick still hasn't gotten them to leave, The Governor and his lawyer give up on waiting and sneak in.
Daryl’s out with the kids tending to the garden and barely hears Merle scream “don’t wait up lil brother” as Rick’s being hauled up in the air with him.
It prompts Judith to asks him if she can fly too. So he picks her up and flies her around the house. When the both return, Carl looks moody and constipated. Daryl doesn’t even ask, grabs their sandwiches, hauls both kids by their waists and takes them over the ocean. They have lunch atop the light house.
By dinner Rick and Merle come back sloppily singing old Irish drinking songs. And Rick’s a little wasted, for sure, but also very dead.
Rick doesn’t remember his kids and Merle doesn’t even look bashful. It’s the biggest fight he and Merle have to date.
Daryl begs Rick to see reason and tricks him downstairs to get into the Lazarus, while the kids cry and it’s heartbreaking and inconvenient until they’re thwarted by The Governor who steals the last bottle of elixir right from Daryl’s hand and takes Carl by the ankle 50 feet in the air. And now, Daryl’s just pissed off.
“You fuckin’ kidding me?” Daryl yells. “Put the kid down, you piece of shit!”
Merle twitches beside him like he’s about to float up and beat the shit out of him, but stops when The Governor says, “come any closer and I will drop him.”
The Governor, like every shit Hollywood villain, recounts his plot to die in order to get into the vault before resurrecting himself by way of the machine. And that when he’s gutted the vault, he was going to knock down the Manor. No more Dixon grounds, not more Dixon hauntings, he says.
In the end it’s Carl himself who tricks The Governor into crossing over.
“You’ve got the house, you’re about to get the treasure...you’ve got everything you fuckin’ ever wanted…” Carl says.
They all barely see the look of contemplation and eventual but brief revelation before The Governor explodes in bursts of light and disappears from the realm for good.
The bottle and Carl go whirling down fast, but Daryl moves faster.
While Merle takes care of The Governors lawyer, Daryl sighs while he’s looking at the bottle. He wished he could have used it, but knows that it’s Rick who really needs it.
“Come on, Rick.” Daryl nudges towards Lazarus, “Let’s get you undead.”
Rick comes back with a pulse a few whistles and shakes later and no recollection of the past 24 hours.
“Uh? Where am I?” He ask as his children cling onto him.
Daryl gives him the abridged version. Just when they are set to go and Merle returns to shut Lazarus down, Carl asks about what was in the vault.
Daryl grins. He remembers the code, his mother birthday.
Carl pulls it open with him because it sticks, and when they venture inside it’s just as Daryl remembers it. A small chamber with lots of shelves.
There’s some family heirlooms Daryl could recall seeing at points in his waking life, his mothers wedding dress and baseball trinkets from when he and Merle were kids (a few cards, tee-shirts and his favorite mitt signed by his favorite player). There’s also a shit ton of money. And the original copy of the deed. He knew his Dad was rich, but he didn’t know he was literally hoarding wealth.
When he’s floating out it’s Rick that sees them, seems to catch on a refraction of light--there's a small shelf hidden in the chandelier. On it are three more bottles of tincture.
“What?” Daryl says, staring into the chandelier.
“It looks like there’s more, er, stuff.” Rick points.
Daryl’s jaw drops. He floats up to retrieve them and looks back at Rick and his kids without a word. Then to he looks to Merle. Merle’s got this look of unease.
“Merle?” Daryl ask, he doesn’t think he needs to finish.
“Nah, you go ahead lil brother. There ain’t nothin left for me here.”
Daryl floats in front of him, ready to argue.
“Don’t say that.” He says.
“No, it’s true...think ya just got handed a second chance.”
“Merle please, man, don’t—“
“So take it!”
Merle snatches the bottles out of Daryl’s hand and whistles for Rick’s attention. He throws one over and Rick catches it before it could fall and shatter to the floor.
“Merle. Dammit!”
“Don’t ya argue with me kid! Get in the damn machine. Grimes, do your thing.”
Daryl shakes his head no. But then Rick is looking at him, pleading with him and before he knows it he’s settled himself into the chamber. Outside the sole porthole window, before everything turns dark, he sees Merle give him a salute.
And when he emerges a whole head taller than his ghost form and breathing, Merle’s gone.
“Did he...” Daryl starts to ask, looking at his hands. Blue veins. Pink Skin. Eyes that are warming. It’ll take some time to get used to again. It’ll take forever to get used to being without Merle.
“Said he felt better leaving knowin’ you were being taken care of. That you won’t be alone.” Rick says, grabbing onto both Daryl’s wrists.
“I won’t?” Daryl asks.
“Not a chance.” Rick replies without a beat, “What do you say, kids? Can we keep him?”
Carl smiles. Judith pouts.
“You can’t fly no more?”
-
Years later and Judith is taller, with more teeth and gets over not being over flown around, but still insists on Daryl being the only cook of the house. They tend the garden together, fix it up until the weeds and duff are replaced with roses and vegetables.
Years later and Carl spends every Sunday before school staying up late to watch Marvel movies with him. They get into arguments about which adaptations do the comics any justice and come to find out they not only share favorite heroes, but favorite villains (even though they feel like they aren’t suppose to; Magneto had some points, okay).
Years later and Rick is still the best friend he’s ever had. They spend their days fixing up the Manor until every room is cobweb free and shining, making out like horny teens after every small victory, and fall into their shared covers aching from exhaustion and warm with pride, lazy with love.
Years and a resurrection later, Daryl decides that being alive is much better when he’s got things worth living for.