Player Two Has Left the Game

The following headache was not one of the beautiful things. It had to have been bad for Two to accept an extra-hefty dose of painkillers. Those knocked her out for the night and a good chunk of the following day, but she was awake and accepting some broth from Eugene, her own hand too uncoordinated to guide the sloshy soup to her mouth effectively.

"Thank you…" she whispered.

"You are well and truly welcome."

She rolled her head back and forth in a negative, not wanting to stir her aching head more than necessary. "Not just for taking care of me, but thank you for that, too." She paused as if so exhausted from the effort of speaking she needed to catch her breath, then finally continued, brushing her thumb across his jawline. "Thank you for showing me the weirdest and most wonderful the world has to offer."

"De nada. I, and I am sure the rest of Alexandria, felt the Pythagoras Switch was well worth the effort."

She half grinned, half winced. "I don't mean the Twobe-Goldberg…"

"No? What, then?"

Not holding back a wide grin, she shoved his chest lightly. "You, dum-dum!"

"Oh?" he replied, but accepted this revelation with another "Oh." He set the half-full bowl on the nightstand and joined her in the bed, spooning with her instead. "Is your noggin up for a thorough application of smoochins?" he asked, planting a gentle kiss beside her ear.

"Yeah… Go easy, though."

And he did, covering her face and neck with the lightest kisses he could, and she smiled, even though she was clenching her eyes in pain. When he had finished, she asked for help turning over, where she spent a long while gazing into his eyes and stroking his face, then asked him to sit her up so she could rework his braid. He was sure she still couldn't see right anymore, but the muscle memory in her fingers worked into a perfect plait without her needing to see at all.

"I like it when you do that," he told her sedately. "Feels nice."

She gave a breathy chuckle. "Want me ta do it again?"

Honestly, he would have happily taken her up on the offer, but she sounded do exhausted, he felt obliged to decline, and laid her back down to continue their cuddling, noose still in place.

"Two?" he asked softly.

"Hm?" she responded.

"I love you…"

"I love you, One," she whispered back.

He was hesitant to even ask, sure the question would annoy her. "Would you tell me your name? Your real one…" She did give him a flat look at the request, but he continued. "It's been said that a person's never truly gone so long as their name is still spoken. I'd like your name to be spoken a good, long time yet, even if it's only to my own ears. The others wouldn't have to know."

She smiled weakly at that, petting his face. She drew a deep breath, as if mentally preparing to speak the name she had so long forsaken, and said, "It's K—kh—khh—hkkhh—" Before she could issue the sound, her eyes rolled back in her head and the violent tremors wracked her body.

"Two!" He sat up abruptly, steadying her and rolling her to the side. This was the most violent one he'd seen he go through. "It's all right, you're going to be okay… You're going to be just fine!" he recited, though he himself was starting to cry, sensing something he couldn't put a finger on… that this time was different somehow… Worse. "It'll be all right! I'm here!" He wondered if the words weren't more to assure himself. "You'll be okay! You have to be!" he sobbed. "I'm here… Don't go yet…"

In what felt like decades later, her shuddering ceased, and the room was peaceful again, save for Eugene's occasional sniffle.

The waiting squeezed at his heart, killing him by inches. He could not bear to feel for a pulse or check if her breathing had stopped.

Two hours and thirteen minutes later—in which Eugene had counted every second—she started moving again. After a few jerky motions of the fingers and arms, Two launched upward from the pillow, her noose cinching tight around her neck as she lunged for her former lover. "Waaaarrgghhh! Aggghhh!" Eugene wasn't even surprised at the sudden motion, well out of range of the attack, merely looking down in saddened acceptance. He slid her little cleavage paring knife from its place on the bedside table—recovered by Rick under the tree branch after her fall and returned while she'd been out cold—and turned it over in his hands a few times before grasping a handful of blonde hair and shoving it firmly into her ear canal until the Walker's jaw clenched, then slackened.

The room felt unnaturally quiet without her laughter, or breath, or snores. He did not, in fact, cry boo-hoo-hoo, though he had fully expected to; instead, an emptiness and a sadness surpassing tears settled over him. He climbed back into the bed, pulling the body to him and holding her until she was cold. Then he retrieved her hairbrush from the bathroom to straighten her lopsided blond locks. For the next half hour, he painstakingly braided it, just the way she'd shown him, over and under, over and under, until he'd made a perfect plait, banding it at the end and as close to the scalp as he could. Then, with his machete, he cut it loose. He brought it to his nose for a deep inhale of her scent, then placed it in a small, sealed plastic bag and a little silken pouch the house's previous owners had left behind, its former purpose lost to time. He placed the little packet in his chest pocket, where it could reside, ever close to his heart.

He pulled the comforter from the bed and yanked the top sheet loose from the foot, readying it for a more unsavory purpose.

x-x-x-x-x

Tara was sitting guard duty—deader than usual since the attack, since most of the straggling Walkers in the area either ended up in the rave pit or in the monster's belly—and as such there was nothing much to watch for, so she was doing more people-watching within the settlement to keep her mind occupied. Therefore she was likely the first to spot Eugene crossing the square, his head bowed, carrying a white-sheeted, human-sized bundle toward their continually-expanding graveyard, setting it down and beginning to dig. Her heart dropped, knowing the inevitable had happened. She flagged down one of the newcomers, asking them to take over for her temporarily and climbed down from her post, hustling over to her friend's side, wordlessly taking up a shovel to help. Eugene barely gave her a look of acknowledgement, but she didn't expect different from him at this point. That was how their friendship functioned.

It wasn't a minute before Rosita showed up, grabbed a shovel, and got down to business with it, giving neither of them so much as a look, nor excusing away the wetness in her eyes.

Daryll was the next to appear, followed by Victor, Cherise, and Arlo, then Aaron and Enid, and Rick, and Carol, and Michonne, Gabriel and Anne, Siddiq, and many of the townies and several newcomers who had come to know Two, if not by sight, or her quirky nature, then certainly by deed. With six shovels in use, most of them simply stood by to show their support, offering to trade out if one of the diggers' arms got tired. Some accepted, but Eugene declined with a simple no each time he was asked, refusing to relinquish his task and responsibility until it was finished.

Only after Two had been laid in the grave and given back to the earth and Gabriel had said some words that went in one of Eugene's ears and out the other did he give himself free reign to blubber, first into his hands, then on Rick's shoulder when the leader came over to give him a comforting pat on the back. Rick gave an awkward wince at being sobbed on, but bore it.

Marking the head of the grave, Daryll pounded a piece of planking into the fresh earth, using the head of one of the shovels. Eugene looked it over, shaking his head with a rather irritated huff. "Rick," he asked after a moment, "might I be granted a brief extension of my reprieve from our—my—communal tasks for the time being? It's just… She deserves something better than that."

Rick clapped him on the shoulder and looked him in the eye. "Take whatever time you need to grieve, Eugene."

The big man nodded. "Muchas gracias, Jefé."