Every single step was harder than the one before.
His feet seemed to be getting heavier the closer he got.
Even the long, dry grass seemed to be trying to stop him from ever getting there.
It was a beautiful day, with a blue sky, a light breeze and birds singing. The kind of day she had cherished. The kind of day that had made you forget, for just a little while, what had happened. What they had lost. What the world had come to. The kind of day that had you rejoice in the fact that you were alive and breathing.
Every trill of the birds, every chirping of the crickets hidden away in the grass, even the humming of the multitude of insects waking up for the day seemed to be driving him to his knees.
Because she wasn't there any longer to appreciate this beautiful day.
Because she was dead.
And they hadn't even found her body to bury.
At long last he reached the empty grave with the cross at its head and sank down to one knee, his crossbow on his back.
His body seemed unwilling at this point to allow air to pass into his lungs. Heaving in one painful breath, he reached into his shirt with one hand and withdrew it again slowly, bringing out a single white flower, five delicate petals arranged around a sun yellow center.
He lowered his head, closing his eyes, as his thumb caressed the flower in his hand ever so gently.
Now that she was gone forever, he wished desperately that he had done this more often while she had still been there to enjoy this tiny bit of appreciation. Wished that he had shown her every day how much she meant to him. How much he cherished her. How precious she was to him, how important her life and well-being.
He wished that he hadn't been a dick and been open to her about how he felt.
As with so many other things before and after the Turn, he had failed her, allowing her to believe for even a single moment that he took her for granted. That he wasn't aware every second of every day of what a monumental change she had brought about in his life. That he owed who and what he had become to her, and her alone, because she had been the first person ever to believe in him.
He was about to look for her body one last time - or her walker.
And before maybe being faced with either of these - her dead body, with too much of it gone, or damaged too badly to turn, or else a dead-eyed walker wearing her beautiful face - he needed to pay tribute to and remember her as she had been while alive:
The way she had taken care of everyone, taking upon herself so many of the „menial" tasks that you only noticed when they weren't being attended to; making sure everybody had what they needed; saving a kind word for everyone who came to her. Her smile. Her laugh. The way her blue eyes shone when she looked at him.
How would he ever go on without her there to pick him up when he faltered?
How would they all?
He placed the flower on her empty grave, in the center of the ring of small pebbles he had prepared for just that purpose, silently promising her that he would always remember her the way she had been in life, that he would not allow whatever he was about to find in the Tombs now to tarnish his memory of her, and then caressed the cross, resting his hand on it for a moment as he attempted to compose himself. He sat motionless, bowed down by the weight of his grief.
Then, bracing himself for his task, he rose to his feet and returned to the prison again, to give her the rest she deserved, to look for her one last time.