AN: Here it is folks, the final chapter! Thanks for taking this crazy ride with me and I hope to see you all again on my next project, "Bittersweet and Strange," starting next Friday. Love always - Artie
Epilogue - Six Months Later
NATHAN
I wake from visions of blood and death and monsters to find myself sitting up in bed, panting hard and covered in a cold sweat. It takes me a full minute to remember that I'm not, in fact, in the middle of a deserted highway and covered in gore, but safe in Haven in the bedroom I share with Audrey. There's a groan from the other side of the bed and I immediately still, hoping I haven't woken her up. She simply mumbles something and rolls over, burrowing her face in the pillow.
Breathing out a sigh of relief, I throw off the blankets and get up. There's no way I'll be able to get back to sleep now. In just my flannel sleep pants I wander to the door that leads to the balcony and slip outside.
The night breeze is cool and smells of ocean, and I inhale deeply. There are practically no lights on in the city at this time and the cloudless sky is dotted with pinprick stars. I lean on the railing and tilt my head back, tracing patterns in the stars as I try to clear my head.
It's been six months since I first came to Haven. Six months since meeting Audrey and fighting Boneys and falling in love. Six months since I magically came back from the dead.
And even still, the memories of my former life haunt me when I'm sleeping. They come less often than they used to, but it doesn't make them any less vivid or frightening. It physically hurts me to remember the way my life was before Audrey Parker.
In my dreams I'm wrapped once again in that numb, unfeeling void, separate from the rest of the world like I'm nothing more than a ghost. Worst of all though is the things I did. The lives I took. I know that it was necessary, that it was the only thing that kept me alive, but that doesn't do much to ease my conscience when I think about all of the people who lost the ones they love because of me.
Things have gotten better in six months though, not just for me but for the world. The humans began to accept us and that was the key. We slowly began learning to live again, creating relationships and finding hobbies. But Audrey and I had found the most important piece to the cure - love.
I wish I could say we cured the Boneys with love too but honestly we just straight up massacred them all. Once we teamed up with the humans, the Boneys never stood a chance. The ones that we didn't kill just wasted away without a food source. It took time, but eventually the world beyond the wall was safe again.
It seemed impossible once, but the world is coming back to life.
I can hear the soft scrap of bare feet on the stone balcony so I don't jump when I feel a pair of thin arms slip around my waist. Audrey lays her cheek against my back. "You okay?" she whispers against my skin. "Another nightmare?"
I cover her hands with mine. "Memories," I admit. I wish I could say that they were the memories from Before that I'm getting back, but it's not. It's not my life Before that haunts me, it's what I was in the After. Some days I can't decide what's worse: being a monster, or being human again after.
Audrey doesn't need any more explanation than that. This isn't the first time she's found me out here in the middle of the night. She slips beneath my arm so she can stand in front of me, one of her hands pressed against my chest. Beneath her palm I can feel the steady throb of my heart. My living heart.
"This is who you are now," she says. She kisses my sternum. "It's who you've always been to me."
I smile and wrap her in my arms. It doesn't make the guilt go away, doesn't stop the pain in my chest or the nausea from curling in my stomach, but it helps. She helps. When it all becomes too much, Audrey is what keeps me human.
She turns in my arms so her back is pressed into my chest, threading her fingers through mine on her stomach. "Wall comes down today," she says, staring out across the city. I grin against her hair. After months, the world outside the city walls is finally safe enough to live in. The community voted to bring down the wall and start moving out. Rebuilding society and trying to get things back to the way they were.
It's a new beginning for everyone, human and Corpses alike.
"Nathan," Audrey tilts her head back against my collar to look up at me. I hum to show that I'm listening. "You remembered anything more from your life before?"
It comes to me sometimes in snatches, faint ghosts of memories that fade as soon as I wake up. I never know if they're real or fake, except some of them. The ones about Gr mostly. "No," I say and shrug.
Audrey smirks a little at the monosyllabic answer. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," I say. I press my lips to the crown of her head. "I like the life I have now. With you."
Pivoting in my arms again, Audrey stands on her toes and kisses me. The contact fills me with warmth and vibrancy and life. It chases away the shadows that lurk at the back of my mind, wipes away the blood on my hands, lifts the weight on my chest.
The sun creeps above the horizon and brings with it a brand new day. A new world. A new life. A life where anything is possible, as long as I have this woman by my side.
I lace my fingers with hers, watching the way our hands fit perfectly together. "Partners." She's so much more than that - friend, lover, healer - but since that day it's become our word. Our label. It means all those things and more, always more.
Audrey smiles and nods, curling herself into my arms. "Always."