“I wish we could go right now,” he says suddenly, and so tentatively that she wonders if he meant to say it aloud. “Leave. Make a beeline west and never look back.”
“Me too.”
“We could.”
“Wade…” she trails off, unable to voice how badly she wants to agree, or how impossible it seems. They can’t leave until Silasis dead. They could never move on until he pays for what he’s done.
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I know.”
And yet…she begins to have reservations. It’s a struggle to push her own feelings aside, especially after trying for so long to cut the head off the demon, but this isn’t only about her. It’s about Wade, and he’s telling her, the only way he can right now, that he’s changed his mind about needing revenge.
“Sorry,” he continues. “Said we weren’t gonna talk about it and then I brought it up.”
“It’s okay. We can. Tell me what you want.”
He takes a long moment before leveling her with a confused, defeated stare. “I don’t know what I want when it comes to him. Want more than one thing. Dunno how I feel. I want him dead. I want to see him suffer like he made me suffer. I want to make sure he can never hurt anyone else again. And then, I want to forget he ever existed and focus on what’s left of my life before it’s too late. Try to find what little happiness I can squeeze out of this apocalypse instead of letting him take even more time than he already has. I can feel it, ya know? The possibility of a future that isn’t just fighting and killing. I’m so fucking scared I’ll lose the chance of getting there. So I dunno what I want. What do you want?”
“To finish this walk, go home, and not think about Silas the rest of the night?”
It’s avoidance at its finest, something she’s always been an expert at.
“Alright.” His pinky finger brushes hers as they reach the end of the path and circle back.
She hooks her own around it, maintaining the smallest contact all the way to the house.
* * *
That night, after they’ve fallen asleep tangled together, he has the worst nightmare she’s seen yet.
It isn’t violent. He doesn’t attack her. It’s worse than that because he shuts her out so completely that she can’t reach him. None of her tricks work like they used to, and instead of finding comfort together, he only looks at her with fear.
She watches him scramble from the bed to slide down the wall in the corner of the room, his waking scream still rattling her bones. She half expects a knock at the door to make sure they haven’t been attacked, but nothing comes.
Kara wraps a blanket around her shoulders before joining him on the floor.
He doesn’t respond to his name. Doesn’t look her way. He is part of this corner now and it is a part of him, offering protection he won’t accept from her.
That’s alright, she’s good at carrying on a conversation by herself until he’s able to hear her. She picks up their earlier musings about going west. Adds a few more animals to the fake pastures and twinkle lights to some non-existent porch on a non-existent farm they’ll find one day. Tells him they’ll be able to bake pies somehow, she just knows it.
“I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life there with you,” she whispers. “Wherever that is.”
It’s then that he lifts his head, his bloodshot eyes meeting her own.
“Hey,” she says gently. “It’s cold. Warm up with me?”
He only nods, and she fans the blanket out like a cape, wrapping it around his bare shoulders to bring him into her cocoon. His head finds her lap, one arm curled around her knees while she warms him.
Her eyes stray to the side table he knocked in his escape attempt, jostling a book that fell on the floor, revealing theflowers he pressed to its pages. The same petals she offered him when he first returned lay dried and scattered on the carpet.
“You kept them,” she whispers, holding the tiny bouquet in her palm.
“It was the first thing I saw that felt real. Thought they still had me and then I saw that flower you left. No one woulda done that but you. I had to keep ‘em.”
She lays them carefully beside her to free both hands, one rubbing slowly from his elbow to shoulder and the other carding through soft hair.
“There’s an old wives’ tale,” he continues. “It says if you keep the first gift someone gives you, they’ll never leave.”
“You believe in that stuff?”
