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No, the reunion she dreamed of isn’t playing out how she hoped at all.

They won’t spend all day wrapped up together while years’ worth of anguish is washed away in favor of a satisfying reward.

She won’t have a chance to admit to him what she’s still afraid to admit to herself after having nothing but time to dig into her own mind and come to a conclusion that should have been obvious.

What’s actually happening may as well be a slap in the face after so many years of searching. She still can’t wrap her head around his reaction, what this means, or how to help.

What do they do now? How does she rationalize this new reality to help him through a battle she hadn’t been expecting and isn’t prepared for?

* * *

“I’m staying,” she says to Luke when she wanders back to find him holding up the wall outside Wade’s room.

She’s slightly dazed and a little wobbly. One person shouldn’t scream that much or cry that hard, but she’s always been an overachiever in the worst of times. Only grateful no one came looking and allowed her to implode in peaceful solitude.

“I’ll set you up a room.”

“I already have one.”

He sighs. “Can’t let you stay in there with him. It’s not safe. You see what he’s done.”

“You’re not letting me do anything. That’s where I’m staying. If you can get me a blanket too, that would be great, but if not, I’ll find one myself.”

“And if he kills you?”

“Then make sure someone puts me down before I come back and bite him,” Kara says, evenly. “The gun on my hip has three bullets. Use one.”

“Will you listen to yourself? You need some help. He does, too. This is over now. You don’t have to—”

“Don’t have to what? Be like this? Waste my life in the woods looking for a ghost?”

She spits the words back in his face the same way he sent them to her a lifetime ago. When her search for Wade was still new, and he hadn’t realized she wouldn’t eventually give up.

When he still thought she’d take up a spot next to him leading this little community, once she got all this pointless searching out of her system and gave in to his advances.

When he still had hope that she was salvageable, as if half her heart hadn’t been ripped out and left on the side of the road for the vultures.

“You insisted he was dead this whole time,” she continues. “Now what?”

He’s been such a constant source of deflation, beating down her hopes in an effort to get her to come back to Paradise Falls permanently, that it’s difficult not to let hostility overwhelm her now that she has proof of Wade’s survival.

“I’ll have someone bring you a blanket.” He turns on his heels and leaves her alone in the hall.

Luke won’t be back. Not for a while, at least, and the relief in that is palpable.

“It’s just you and me now,” she says softly, after slipping inside the room where Wade still lies exactly where she left him.

Kara doesn’t get too close this time. Stays on the other side of the room and slides down the wall with her knees bent, and stomach growling.

“Hungry? I am. I’ll get us something in a minute.”

He doesn’t reply, but she doesn’t expect one. Lulls her head back against the wall and closes her eyes, inhaling hard and wishing that just once he could catch a break.

If anyone deserves better than the cards dealt him in this shit world, it’s Wade.

How bad had it been all this time to turn him into what she sees now?

How often had he cried, and she wasn’t there to hold him?

How many nights did he lie awake in pain that she couldn’t fix?

How fucking close was he while she was out searching miles away, assuming him clear across state lines after all this time.

If Silas thinks this is an easy way to get her off his ass, then he’s dead wrong. Revenge is nearly as intoxicating as hope.

Traitorous tears pool in her eyes after she thought them all used up. “I missed you so much. I never stopped looking. Not ever.”

All she wants is to feel him, but there’s a room’s worth of distance between them now and that feels greater than however far apart they’d been before.

She sucks in a sniffle, wiping her face with an angry hand. “You’re safe here, I promise. You’re okay, we’re okay. I know you’re confused. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me.”

It’s all just nonsense barely reaching his ears. That’s fine, she thinks, only more determined.

He’s home now. She’s patient.

For the first time, she allows herself to really look at him, taking in the bruises and healed-over marks that litter his body. The two missing toes from his left foot and how his ribs spring on every inhale.

“Where have you been?” she whispers. “What happened to you?”

There’s a blanket on the floor he hasn’t touched, and it takes everything in her not to grab it and try to wrap him up again.

She isn’t prepared for this. Doesn’t have a clue what to do or how to keep from making this worse.

What would he do if their roles were reversed?

If there’s any right answer here, she fails to find it.

Only knows he’d never leave her, and she has every intention of waiting this out with him, too.

Outside, children scream in playful glee, the sound piercing through a preemptively boarded window, and she winces. There’s so much commotion here. So many people. It’s enough to have her on edge. She can’t imagine Wade’s doing much better.

She closes the curtains to block the sun and wishes it would block the noise, too.

There’s a bed in the corner that sits unused. A bathroom at the back of the room that she’s surprised he hasn’t escaped into yet. A glass of water on a side table, but nothing to eat.

“Food,” she says, mostly to herself. “I can do food. I’ll be back.”

She’ll be useful and fetch dinner, hoping he eats it, but having her doubts.

An awful band plays in the distance, complete with trumpet, and he shrinks further into himself as she heads for the door.

This place has always been comically positive to a fault.

There is always some festival or gathering.

It helps people forget the world is gone outside the gates, Luke told her when she first arrived, asking for shelter so many years ago.

It grated on her nerves then, like it does now.

All she has ever wanted is peace and quiet.

One thing is for certain, they can’t stay. Paradise Falls is the post-rotter version of New York City, and there’s no chance Wade can recover here. The question now is how long it’ll take until she can get him to follow her to a calmer, more secluded place.

Somewhere they can turn this into a new beginning, or where she can accept that the two of them sitting silently in a room together, several feet apart, is how they’ll live out the rest of their lives.