"What's happened?" He glances up from the pot he's stirring, sauce still bubbling inside, and looks at each of them. Tara can't meet his eyes, keeping her gaze locked on the floor, and everyone else looks at him in varying degrees of pity and sadness. "Am I in trouble?"
"What are you talking about?" He gestures to the pots next to him, "I found a packet of pasta in the pantry. I didn't think taking the last few tomatoes from Abraham's residence was a bad thing, I was making something for Bill." Tara makes a strange noise, like a cross between a cough and a hiccup, and he puts the lid back on the pot carefully. "If this isn't about that, what's going on?" There's a tense silence when they all look at each other, and eventually Maggie steps forward. "Eugene, maybe you should sit down." He nods and makes for the table a few feet away, but halfway there he remembers Billie telling him that he didn't have to do what he was told, to stand up for himself more, so he turned back around, "No, I'm not sitting down. Tell me what's going on? Is someone hurt?"
"Eugene, it was Billie."
Throughout his life, Eugene never had a relationship that crossed the lines of family or friendship. When it came to romantic and sexual interactions, he was admittedly inexperienced. In part, he simply wasn't interested, and the other part of himself felt too awkward to put himself those kinds of situations. He'd never even been on a damn date. And he certainly, absolutely, had never been in love until he met Billie.
He moved towards the door, probably quicker than he's ever moved before, and Tara stepped out to block his path. "Eugene, you don't-"
"Move."
She stood her ground, talking over him and insisting that he shouldn't put himself through that. Stand up for yourself. "Tara, move!" He slipped past her and out the door, taking the stairs at a run and down towards where the cars and trucks were still parked, beside the big orange tree that she liked the most. They stopped when they saw him coming, moving to let him past when he got close enough, and then there she was. "Billie, no." He didn't fall to his knees, not quite, but the world seemed to tilt and then his knees were digging through the dirt as he shuffled towards her. "Bill?" Her skin was cold where he touched, along her arms and down to the bracelet still on her wrist with the knife clasp rotated to point outwards, and bloody. "Wake up." He tried to remember the last thing he'd said to her but his mind seemed like it didn't want to cooperate, and blood smeared along his skin as he brushed his fingers down the side of her face. "You said you'd always come back, remember?" He didn't know when he started crying, but his eyes went blurry with tears and he rubbed at his face with the back of his hand, ignoring the blood still there. "Bill, wake up, you promised." How long he sat there, he doesn't remember, but eventually they send Abraham to get him up and walk him back to the truck, then he watches as Tara wanders down and picks up a shovel, joining the group digging through the dirt underneath the tree.
"She volunteered, to save the rest of us." He jumps when Daryl talks, seemingly appearing from thin air, "The last thing she said was to tell us to look after you." If it's meant to he reassuring or just Daryl telling him how it was, he isn't sure. "Don't know why she couldn't have done it herself." He shifts over on the back of the truck, making space for the other man to sit down.
"Because that's just who she is. She would have given anything if it meant everyone else was safe." Did give everything, but he doesn't say that. "She wouldn't have forgiven herself for letting anything else happen." The two of them sit in silence for a while, the seconds stretching like hours.
"If I'd known what she was going to do-"
"I know." There was a reason they were so similar, ready to do anything to keep the people they loved safe.
"She loved you." He knows that too, and laughs a little, but it's a broken and bitter sound. "I loved her, too."
The only problem is that's the first time he's ever said so out loud.