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[ ARSONIST'S LULLABY ]
MELODY DIXON —— godless
" there are worse things a person can do than kill someone else. "

all you have
is your fire
and the place
you need to
reach
don't you ever
tame your demons
but always keep
'em on a leash

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Normal life, for Melody Dixon, had always been... bleak. The very day that she was brought into the world by her barely legal mother, swaddled delicately in a towel, and left on her father's stoop with nothing but a note, it had been sealed in stone.

He was too sick to beat her by the time she was ten, so, in turn, he considered himself too sick to raise her, too; which meant, because she did not meet Merle until she was damn near fifteen and Daryl had to work all week long to pay for whatever their father's disability checks couldn't, there was no one to raise her but herself. Her childhood was spent doing homework at the foot of her father's armchair, listening to the cacophony of snores incase he reached apnea, and then walking herself to school in the morning.

Her childhood was a lot of waiting. Hoping. Wanting.

Waiting for Daryl to come home at the end of the week so she didn't have to eat anymore peanut butter on old, moldy bread.

Hoping that her father wouldn't wake up this time, even if she'd go on to spend the rest of her life taking care of him.

Wanting life to be anything more than what it was...

The end of the world as she knew it didn't come quickly, but it came before the life that she was waiting for.

It crept up on the human race slowly, a plague, "like the flu", that spread through the entire population like water seeped through a cloth—— just a few people at first, then climbing death rates, and then, suddenly, those formerly sick, formerly dead people were rising from their graves and roaming the streets, again.

After an incident in the operating room, Melody's boss, following orders sent out by the CDC and enforced by the local sheriff's station, sent her packing. Stranded with her father, uncle, and brother in a cabin in the woods, with their only connection to the world outside the woods that surrounded them being an old radio that world half the time, it came as a bit of a shock when the walking dead came knocking.

Forced from their home, wracked by loss, and joined by a few familiar faces, Melody and Daryl travelled through the ruins of rural George in the vain hope of finding something. Anything.

And, in a Quarry just outside of Atlanta, they found much more than they bargained for...

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

             → THE WATER IS FINE
             → EPIGRAPH
             → SOUNDTRACK
             → PROLOGUE: the end of the
                  anthropocene
             → ACT ONE/SEASON ONE (& a little before)
             → ACT TWO/SEASON TWO
             → ACT THREE/SEASON THREE
             → ACT FOUR/ SEASON FOUR
             → ACT FIVE/ SEASON FIVE
             → ACT SIX/ SEASON SIX

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CAST

EVANGELINE LILY as MELODY DIXON
mellie • emergency room nurse • thirty

ANDREW LINCOLN as RICK GRIMES
officer friendly • sheriff's deputy • thirty-six

IRONE SINGLETON as THEODORE DOUGLAS
t-dog • church custodian • thirty-two

NORMAN REEDUS as DARYL DIXON
dixon • game hunter • thirty-eight

MICHAEL ROOKER as MERLE DIXON
asshole • professional grifter • forty-nine

( ALSO FEATURING. )

WILLIAM LUCKING as WILL DIXON
RON PERLMAN as JESS DIXON
BUCK WILLIS as described
JONAH WILLIS as described
THE CAST as THEIR CHARACTERS

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NOTES

→ WARNING(S): INTENSE THEMES; rape and/or sexual assault; canon racism; canon typical violence, blood, and gore; both major and minor character death; drug use and alcohol intoxication; descriptions of both child and domestic abuse; sexual themes; pregnancy and traumatic birth; cheating and emotional cheating; and potentially many more triggering things. please proceed with caution.

→ DEDICATIONS: to all my milfs, who I will not tag in this because I know they're not interested in this fic and I do not want to annoy them. and caramelortoffee, sunbl3achedfly, and 7ormula, who asked to be tagged <3

→ IK ITS OVERUSED TO HAVE A DIXON OC but i have been planning this fic since i was like 12 (i just turned 20) and i needed to write it, so i need you to bear with me! i promise i am going to make it as original as i can!

→ IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR MERLE DIXON REDEMPTION, TURN AROUND NOW. I will be exploring his character, sure, but at the end of the day he is still a racist. A Neo-nazi. There's no growing past that. Idc if he died a death you can see as heroic.
↳ That^ being said, I will not be writing any racial slurs Merle—— or any other character, for that matter—— says. I am not comfortable doing so, nor do I believe it's my place to write those in my book as a white author. They will be censored, I just don't know how yet.

→ There will be a decent amount of sex in this story. I don't know if there will be smut for sure, but there will be mentions to sex!

→ THE DIXON SIBLINGS' AGES will be explained later on. (Both Merle and Daryl are around the ages that their actors were when they started the show.)

→ THIS IS GOING TO BE A ROUGH FIC! just warning you!

→ I WILL BLOCK YOU FOR INSANELY GROSS LORI SLANDER. Do not try me. I saw a comment on a fic about her getting gutted and I refuse to let you all do shit like that in my comments. (Same thing goes for Andrea.)

→ Y'all I've got no clue when this fic is going to end in the show bc I hate Negan with every bone in my body. Might just like... make up a fairytale ending lmfao.

→ DISCLAIMERS: whilst i made the cover for this story, the pictures/videos used belong to the people who made them. gifs are not mine. the lyrics/quotes are credited. i also only own any original characters, plot lines, and dialogue, everything else belongs to the creators of the original media.

↳ A WORD OF WARNING FROM YOUR AUTHOR: you are not required to do anything, but please read with the awareness of how much your interaction and engagement can help an author out. not only does it help boost the book in wattpad's algorithm, but it makes all of the work I do so much more worth it. we authors do this for free out of passion and/or love, but we also do this for you, too. voting and commenting comes at no cost to you, and it makes me want to write more, so please show your support if you're enjoying the book! that being said, i want my page to be a safe space for all people. if you are coming here to be hateful or just downright mean to others, you'll be reported and blocked. please respect my boundaries.

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started on: 12/08/24
finished on:
word count: