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Wade’s pupils are dilated like saucers. It isn’t something she noticed until she was able to get close enough, but it’s clear now that he’s been drugged.

The effects are obvious even if she has no idea what’s currently coursing through his system. Only hopes that once it’s gone, he’ll be able to see her instead of whatever his mind manifests instead.

It’s difficult to wait. All she wants to do is hover, eager for any hint that he’s coming out of it, searching for a moment of realization that hasn’t come yet.

Kara didn’t sleep much last night. Not because she’s afraid of him.

She isn’t. She sees what he’s capable of and if it comes to that, she’d rather go by his hand than a multitude of other options.

Would only fear it for the guilt it would give him later.

No, she’s not afraid of him, but for him.

Her presence is only making this worse and so instead of sleeping in the same room, she took a pillow out into the hall and slept with her back against the door.

Maybe he got some rest with her gone, but she only got an hour or two at most. Luke pestering her at three am didn’t help matters.

He wants her to take a different room, but she’s not having that.

Can’t be so far away from Wade. What if something happens, and she’s not here? It isn’t worth the risk.

He seems no better now than he was yesterday. The food remains untouched and the blanket, too. He lays where she left him, naked and curled into the corner, wide awake but refusing to meet her eyes.

She squats down, trying to ignore the tangible distance between them. “What do you think about getting out of here soon?”

He doesn’t reply.

Moving him will be a struggle if he’s not willing to walk out on his own.

She has no plan yet, but he’s only deteriorating.

The music started up again despite the tongue-lashing she gave the band.

The children play and scream, like children often do, and there’s a dog in the distance who loves to hear his own voice.

Occasionally, people laugh or talk in the hall far too close for comfort.

It’s all too much, and it won’t quit, no matter how hard she tries to silence the community just for Wade.

They can wait and hope things look better soon, or leave now and give themselves better odds somewhere secluded. She’d be risking additional trauma to get him there, but sometimes the risk is worth the reward. Not that this impending choice isn’t already stressing her beyond belief.

Just tell me what to do . She wants to beg. Show me how to help you so I don’t fuck this up. He isn’t offering any suggestions this morning, though. If anyone is going to make a choice for him, it has to be her.

Kara picks at food from the plate that’s gone tough overnight. “I’ve been living out in the woods for a while. It’s quiet there. Nothing but the river to keep us company. What do you think about going there?”

The makeshift camp is her first choice simply because it feels like home already, but it’s also exposed. If he tries to run she may not be able to stop him.

“Or there’s a little house just outside the gates. About half a mile up the road.” She digs at the softer parts of the bread on her plate. “It’s overgrown, but it’s nice inside. I stayed there for a while when I first found this place. Before I got up the courage to knock on their front door.”

The blue house would be a decent option. There’s a fence, so if he runs, she stands a better chance at getting him back before he’s too far away.

Normally, Wade wouldn’t be one to care about the elements.

He’d happily live out in the woods with her and not bat an eye.

Probably have a better setup than she could ever craft, but this isn’t a normal situation, and he needs somewhere safe.

Clean. Warm. Somewhere with four walls and a solid roof where they can concentrate on each other instead of the constant struggle to survive.

“Maybe that one instead? There are plenty of woods behind it, too. We could go hunting when you’re up for it.

You can correct my form with the shotgun.

Not that I wasn’t always a better shot.” Her tone tapers into a light tease, hoping to spark recognition.

“Remember when we went to the range after I got out of basic training? You bet me twenty bucks I couldn’t hit the bullseye three times in a row. Drinks were on you that night.”

Her effort falls flat. His depression is contagious and seeing him like this is enough to have her just as desolate. It creeps into her chest and twists and ties until she can’t breathe without wanting to cry, only feeling more useless than ever.

“I’m not sure how we should get there,” she watches his fingers shake against the concrete. “Or if we should wait and stay here longer. Please tell me what to do, Wade. I don’t want to make a mistake.”

All she has done since she lost him that day at the start of the turn, is make mistakes.

They spent the night at her apartment after he found her there, intending to head back to his other childhood friend, Cole, in the morning.

She never spent as much time with Cole as Wade did, but she knows that Wade trusted him as much as he trusts her.

They got separated instead, two miles away from their destination. Funny how nothing ever goes to plan when fighting off rotters is a daily chore.

They can’t both fall apart now. One of them needs to stay strong, so she sucks in a sniffle and hides the tremble in her voice.

“Think about which place you’d like most. I’m gonna take this and bring you something else, okay?

I’ll be right back.” She grabs the uneaten tray, inhaling the contents herself as she carries it out the door and down the hall, intending to exchange it for something fresh when Luke stops her short of her goal.

“How is he today?”

“The same,” she replies, moving past him into the nearly empty common area.

“Will you take the room I suggested now?”

“No, but I’ll take the blue house if it’s still unoccupied.”

He pauses with a frown. “You won’t take a room across the hall, but you’ll take a house down the road?”

She gives him a level stare until the marble falls into the hole.

“No. No way. Have you lost your mind, Kara?” he half yells.

“We can’t stay here. This place is terrifying for him. We need to go somewhere quiet where it’s just us.”

“You’ve gotten lucky so far that he hasn’t hurt you. Now you want to go off alone and tempt fate? I can’t allow it.”

“I’m not asking permission.” She dumps the empty tray and fills a new one. “I’m just asking if anyone else is living there now.”

Luke sighs. “I’m on your side here, you know that, right? I’m trying to help.”

“Then help.”

“It’s vacant,” he admits with a shake of his head. “You’re going to get yourself killed out there with him.”

“Are you going to help me move him or not? I’ll figure out how to do it myself if you won’t.”

“I’ll help.”

“Okay.” Some of the hostility she always harbors around him begins to fade now that’s he’s agreed to assist her in what she knows damn well she can’t do alone. “Thank you.”

“You’re really willing to risk everything for him? Even your life?”

“He’d do the same for me.”

“Would he? Are you sure of that? Because if you’re not, then I beg you to rethink this.”

“I’m not changing my mind. After all this time, I thought it was obvious that I don’t tend to do that.”

Luke pauses, clearly mulling over his words before finally setting them free. “I kept hoping that once this was over and you found him, one way or another, that things could be different.”

One way or another, he says, as if the possibility of finding Wade dead would ever allow her to have a ‘normal’ life again.

“That’s never going to happen. It’s been years.”

“Let me know when you decide you want him moved.”

Perhaps, some reason for his reluctance to give up on pursuing her has to do with the fact that she entertained his flirtations at first. When she was fresh off the end of the world, convinced that she might not see the next sunrise, and mourning the loss of Wade, it had been easier to search for some sort of comfort, however she could get it.

Now, even after all this time, he holds out hope that she’ll come around again.

She nods, relieved that she won’t be alone in this venture that feels like a monumental task.

Has her doubts that Luke has truly accepted what she’s been trying to tell him for so long, though.

They’ve had versions of this conversation before, but that’s something to worry about another time.

She has more than enough to deal with already.

Kara’s had only one purpose, to find Wade. Now that he’s back, she still only has one. To find him again.

* * *

She showers for the first time in what feels like forever.

Scrubs the dirt off her skin and wishes she could do the same for Wade, who’s got her beat by layers.

Leaving him for even this short task is risky, but she won’t have the chance to get this clean at the blue house.

She can bring in water from the river, but it’s not the same, and she sighs heavily, enjoying the spray before reluctantly turning it off.

Hardly recognizes herself after wiping the fog off the mirror. Is this why he doesn’t either, she wonders.

Her dark hair is longer than the last time he saw her.

It hits well below the shoulders, tied back in a loose braid.

The scar above her eye from the tree branch she ran into one night in the woods stares back as another defect.

She didn’t even earn that by doing something worth talking about.

It was only a stupid mistake that left a mark.

She’d take scissors to her hair this instant if that was enough to break the spell, but suspects it’s not so simple, just like every other decision that plagues her.