"I'm begging you, please. Please! Stay here." Kenny entreated desperately, hands gripping my shoulders as he shook. His remaining eye embedded me, imploring for my compliance, his beard and clothes adorned in dried and tumultuous blood. He beseeched my submission, but in this situation, it was something I could not provide.
"NO!" I protested earnestly, "No no no no no no!" Tears unwittingly cascaded down my face as I glanced at the broken, begging man. "Why are you doing this!?"
"Because it's the only way," his reply was forlorn and practically inaudible, "for both of you."
He persisted, but I heard almost nothing, concentrated in the oblivion of my own deception: that I could not lose the one person I had left.
"Just, just do as I ask, just this one last time." He emphasized.
"Okay," I conceded, barely comprehending the words escaping my lips, "Okay, we'll stay. We'll stay."
I clutched Rebecca's recently-born child as I engulfed Kenny in one final hug. He was speaking, saying something, but I could not fathom, too obscured by the insufferable agony as he walked away, not even turning back. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that I lost everyone I had and everything I was. It wasn't fair that humanity had dissipated into such an incoherent memory. It wasn't fair….
"Clem? Clementine?!" I awoke to the sound of a tauntingly familiar voice announcing my name. As I adjusted my gaze to the unprecedented brightness, my throat taut and eyes watery, I saw the silhouette of a man I knew I would never encounter again.
"LEE?!"
My jaw dropped. Literally descended and dislodged from every fiber of my being. It wasn't comprehensible. He was certainly not genuine, just a cruel figment displacing my harsh reality.
And yet, as my vision cleared, it became all the more concise. The tall, comforting figure sat, arms enticing me, a concerned stare in his very much alive eyes.
"Clementine, sweet pea, what's wrong? Why are you crying?"
I didn't think, without even the remotest hesitation I leapt into his tremendously tangible and concrete hug, felt his warmth as it enveloped me, and the echo of a small, frightened eight-year-old past resounded in sobs of fitting laughter. Over his shoulder I peered, truly seeing ghosts, walking and laughing, some cynical, some uncannily giddy. All real. Duck, kicking a football relentlessly into the wall and Lilly reprimanding him, ordering that he cut the racket. Katjaa and Kenny (void of beard and retaining both eyeballs) discussing something quietly and subjectively. Ben looking genuinely mortified, face pale as he sat upon the RV, and Doug stood adjacent the fence, tampering with something.
They were all here. They had all returned. For me. Just for me.
I was home. And I intended to preserve it.