Author's Note: Christ. I haven't used this site in forever. I've got this story uploaded on ao3 as well, under the name maggiemcnue. Regardless. Enjoy, because writing this was my cathartic release and I miss Tara and Denise so much.
Tara doesn't remember much of the end; it comes in bits and pieces, and maybe it's better that way.
She vaguely remembers being on her knees in a barn, surrounded by Siddiq and Enid and everyone else.
She remembers escaping restraints and fighting, fighting like she's constantly done since the dead started walking the earth, fighting because it's one of the only things she knows how to do without question.
She remembers looking up and out towards Alpha, towards the horde of people behind her, and knowing – knowing that there was no way they were getting out of there alive.
She does not remember the knife that's plunged into her, the searing pain that spreads through her chest like a wildfire out of control.
She does not remember the heavy feeling of death smothering her like a thick cloak.
She certainly does not remember her last thoughts, succumbing to a fate she thought she wouldn't be subjected to, remembering that no one gets a happy ending.
What she does remember, however, is waking up to brilliantly bright lights.
It's the starkest shade of white, like blinding sunlight. In fact, when Tara opens her eyes, she wonders if she's been abandoned in a field, as unlikely as it sounds. She half expects to sit up and feel fistfuls of grass around her. She wholly expects to not have a damned clue where she's at.
She's dealt with weirder things before, after all – waking up in a field with no clue of how far she is from Hilltop or Alexandria or the Kingdom or, hell, even Oceanside would just be another thing to add to the ever-expanding list.
(The logical side of her knows that this isn't the case, from what she can just barely recollect.)
Her eyes adjust, eventually, and it hits her that it isn't sunlight, but the artificial glow of incandescent lights. Tara blinks. Once, twice, three times, trying to muster the strength to get up, to find someone. She tightens her hand into a fist, gripping thin bedsheets – and when she looks at her arm, she doesn't see any marks. Marks that ought to have been there, considering how roughly she recalls being handled.
Slowly, she sits up, and it hits her that she's sitting in Alexandria's infirmary. Alexandria's infirmary, except it's not how it was when she left for Hilltop years ago. It's just like back when – back when she lived here, with –
She can't think about that. She won't let herself think about that.
Despite being back in Alexandria, the world feels…calm, surprisingly. Something Tara can't say she's been able to use as a descriptor in a long, long time. There's a soundtrack of (relative) silence flowing in from the opened windows – chirping birds, a slight breeze that makes wind-chimes flutter. Looking outside, it's a gorgeous spring day, not a cloud in the sky.
She's expecting something to snap her back into reality – for someone to tell her she's been out cold for a week, to explain how she got hauled to Alexandria in the first place, for maybe Michonne or Rosita or, hell, Eugene to bring her up to speed on what the hell's happened since she passed out. She's expecting someone, anyone –
"I was starting to think you'd never wake up."
Anyone but her, leaning against the door frame that leads into the kitchen, the shyest smile on her face.
(Tara wonders, briefly, if a traumatic head injury can be the cause of sudden onset schizophrenia. She's dealt with weird, but not suddenly-seeing-your-dead-girlfriend-weird.)
That's the only way she can rationally explain seeing Denise. Denise, who has been dead for well over six years; whose last words to her were "Good-bye and be safe" when Tara left with Heath; who promised an "I love you" when Tara got back; who left Alexandria with Daryl and Rosita on a whim and came back with an arrow in her head.
But here she is. Not six feet underneath Alexandria's soil. No arrow in her head. Just her arms folded across her chest and her hair up in a ponytail like nothing's changed.
"Where am I?" Tara's expecting her voice to sound hoarse, for her throat to feel dry, but everything feels…fine. Just fine. Finer than fine. Too fine, actually.
"Exactly where you're supposed to be," Denise says.
Tara furrows her brow at the vagueness of her response. She swings her legs over the side of the bed, stands up; she stretches, and realizes she doesn't feel any pain that she anticipated. Not even the ache in her lower back that's been bothering her for a couple of years. "O-kay, Miss Mysterious. How long've I been here?"
"Oh, not too long," Denise replies. "I wasn't - I couldn't look at what was happening, so I didn't see it all, but you haven't been here for more than a few hours, if that."
There's a sinking feeling in the pit of her gut. "See it all?" she says. "See what? What's going on?"
There's a long, pregnant pause. Denise pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose, lets out a weary little sigh like she used to when she stayed up all night reading. She closes her eyes for a moment, likely trying to find the right words to say.
"I don't know how to phrase this," she says, finally. "But, after you left the fair...You were...You got..."
But nothing else needs to be said, because the realization makes Tara's stomach churn - she wasn't knocked out. Or, well, maybe she was, but she's not going to wake back up. She's-
"I'm dead," she says bluntly. "I died, didn't I?"
Denise nods. She looks as if she'd rather anyone else be having this conversation.
She would throw up if she was capable of doing so (can you even vomit in the afterlife?). Dead. Dead dead dead. The word sinks in her mind, makes her stomach feel like lead; it feels like she's taken a bullet to the chest. She died, she can't even really remember how, but she's dead and gone and everyone on earth has to go on without her. Just like she had to go on without Glenn, and Lilly, and Meghan, and Dad, and -
"Hilltop needs me," Tara says suddenly, her stomach twisting and churning as she realizes that they're leaderless. They've already lost Jesus; they can't lose her, too, not so soon.
Denise shakes her head. "Don't you think you've fought long enough?"
"I'm not done."
"Oh, Tara," - she's forgotten how wonderful her name sounds when it's in Denise's mouth - "If we could go back, I would've been with you a long time ago."
And, well, she doesn't know how to argue with that. The panic that's been building up in her subsides (for the time being). There's a list of people she's okay with being here to welcome her into the afterlife, and Denise is one of the privileged few.
Tara's practically a ghost as she drifts across the room, and she wonders if that's all they are now - specters doomed to haunt the infirmary. Do ghosts exist? Can they wake up in beds? It seems silly to think otherwise when they've been dealing with the walking dead for a decade.
But neither of them can be ghosts; everything feels too real. Ghosts aren't supposed to be able to feel anything; that's how movies always made it seem, at least. It feels real when she reaches the doorframe, and it definitely feels real when she cusps Denise's face in her slightly quivering hands, brushes her thumb against one cheek. She looks exactly the same, down to the smattering of freckles on her face, the natural pout in her lips, the wisps of dirty blonde hair that have never been able to stay where they're supposed to be.
Tara kisses her, and her heart feels like it's about to burst out of her chest, because this - this is what she's been missing. Even when she was busy fighting Negan and his dumbass cronies, even when she was threatening to shoot Dwight's face off, even when she was leading Hilltop, even when she was off doing a million supply runs and killing hundreds of walkers and everything in between, even when things were too hectic to really breathe...this intimacy is what she's been craving. Denise is what she's been craving.
Her lips taste like lemonade; she smells like oranges. Tara had just about forgotten that Denise loved to worship her whenever they kissed. She loved to bury her fingers into Tara's hair, loved to let her lips linger, loved to press feather-light kisses all over her face when she has to pull away.
Their foreheads are pressed together, eyes closed, when Denise murmurs, "I missed you." Her voice is soft; she sounds like she's on the verge of tears.
And that's when Tara starts crying. Not big, heaving sobs, but she feels her eyes welling up and she feels a knot in her throat that she can't unravel.
"I missed you so much," she says. "I missed you so fucking much. You have no idea."
"Trust me, I think I do."
"Every single day I'd wake up, and I'd think about you. And for a moment, I'd wonder where you were at...why you weren't in bed. Then I'd remember you weren't there, and - and you left me, but -" Tara can't speak anymore, because here comes the obnoxious crying; buries her face into Denise as she takes a deep, shuddering breath.
They stay like that for a good, long while; Tara doesn't bother keeping track of how long, exactly. She just lets herself cry, lets Denise cry, too. They stay locked together, arms around one another tightly, as if afraid to break apart.
(And Tara kind of is. She's afraid she's going to let go, and Denise is going to disappear again, and Tara'll never be able to get her back. She's not sure her heart can take losing her twice.)
Eventually, the tears stop - for a little bit. Tara is fairly certain that this won't be the last time she cries.
Denise is the one who breaks the silence; her voice is a little rough. "I'm sorry I left. I love you. I told you I'd say it when you got back. And you're here now...so I am."
"I love you, too." Her response is immediate, one she's been waiting to say since God knows how long. "I never stopped."
Her girlfriend - fuck, it feels good to be able to say that she has a girlfriend again - lets out a tiny laugh. "Never?"
"Not even for a second," Tara swears, very reluctantly prying herself out of Denise's arms. Neither one of them disappears, and that lends more credence to the idea that this might actually be happening.
"You're very sweet," she says.
Tara kisses her again. It's not quite as long as the first one, but it's just as nice. "So are you, waiting here for me."
"I'm not the only person. In fact, honey," Denise says, glancing towards the front door. She says honey in such a Denise sort of way, all awkwardly endearing, as if she's not sure if that was the right moment to try out that term. "I promised Glenn you could see him next."
Shit, she might just start crying again. "Glenn? Glenn's here? You're not fucking with me, are you?"
"I'm not. He wanted to be one of the first. I should've set up a queue to see you; a lot of people are waiting."
"Who else?"
"It might be easier to list who isn't waiting." Denise grins. "You're very popular."
Tara's heart pounds with each name she thinks of - Mom and Dad. Lilly and Meghan. Noah. Glenn. Jesus. All of them, probably waiting to see her. "Am I, now?"
"You're very lovable," she says. "And if I keep you here any longer, there might be riots. They might start flinging rocks through our windows. Or maybe they've found pitchforks somewhere."
Denise acts like meeting dead loved ones is no big deal, the way she's joking. Maybe because she's been here so long, it isn't.
Maybe Tara will get used to it, too. Maybe being dead isn't so bad after all.
Tara grabs her girlfriend's hand, gives it a tight squeeze, takes a deep breath. "Well, we don't want the windows broken," she says. "So let's go."
And so they do.