The cemetery was no place to die. To be dead, to mourn and to regret, that was what the cemetery was made for, but it was no place to die. It was quieter than he remembered and darker. For the first time as he looked around, he saw it not as a battlefield against the undead or as a patrol hotspot, for the first time he saw it for what it was. A place of monument, made by the living to honour the dead. It was a place of loss: loss of future, loss of love, loss of life. But it was not a place to lose life, the cemetery was no place to die. It was very dark, he noticed, with the moon covered by clouds and he realised that it had always been the company that had made it seem lighter. It had always been an empty place, at night when the living finally left the dead in peace and the cemetery became no more than a cement plagued garden, a garden of emptiness. Because that is what it was empty and quiet, void of light, void of noise, void of life. It had always seemed different because he had always seen it through different eyes, with different company and with a different future. Now he saw it in all its emptiness and loneliness as he faltered and began to fall and he realised the cemetery was no place to die. He wondered why he had never noticed it before. The dark, the quiet, the emptiness and he wondered if it was because he had always taken secret pleasure in its emptiness. He wondered if when he had come here a hundred times before with his best friends, he wondered if he had wallowed in the quiet, in the safety of the dark. He thought, as his knee connected with a vicious marble tombstone, that he had from a young age learnt to love time alone. Alone had always meant safe. As he heard the cracking of his own bones against the marble he thought about the fact that he had learnt to hate the company of his family the most. Learnt to see them as the greatest threat. Finally he began to realise that they had taken so much away from him with their unhealthy desires and actions. Taken so much of not only his happiness, not only his sanity, but so much of his life. Because he realised that it had been their torture that had taught him to love the quiet, to love time alone, even to love loneliness and he realised that the cemetery was really a monument to quiet, to loneliness and he thought again that the cemetery was no place to die. Only one person had ever really changed that. Only Willow had really come into his lonely world and told him he was OK. Had accepted him, his life, his family. Only Willow had known all his secrets and as his head too connected with the marble head stone and the crack sound reverberated in his ears he realised he wouldn't ever get to thank her. For suddenly, as he felt the soft grass, cushion the blow as his head hit the ground, he realised that everything and everybody else had been irrelevant. The blood was warm against his neck as it dribbled down and dropped to the grass, he stared at the dark sky and realised that she had been the only one to care, ever. That she had been the only person to love him unconditionally. That she had been his soulmate. And that he would never be able to tell her that he couldn't have ever lived without her. That she had been his world, always. That he loved her. He thought all this as the emptiness and darkness of the cemetery began to creep into his body, into his mind, into his soul and as he felt for the last time the loneliness and emptiness that had been so much of his life. As he closed his eyes a tear slid out, a tear for lost future, lost love, lost life and he thought, the cemetery is no place to die.