This title chapter is "Solitude" by M83.

29. Epilogue: Solitude

Mason

She was alone, sitting next to a grave.

The smell of churned earth choked her. The sun melted her skin. Her whole body was numb, yet every movement hurt.

So she just

didn't

move.

There were other people around her, she was fairly certain. People she knew. But she was apart from them.

Alone

except for…

Eugene

He was terrified.

It had been three days since losing Beth. Mason didn't eat or drink or sleep. She was catatonic- heavy-lidded eyes like she could barely stand to see, empty eyes like everything she'd ever been was gone.

He guided her everywhere she went, slept next to her but never dared put his arms around her. Truthfully, he hadn't slept much either. Most nights he stayed awake watching her eyes swallow the void of the sky.

He didn't know what to do. He felt absolutely helpless.

On the fourth morning, Rick called a meeting. Mason of course stayed where she was, huddled against a tree, looking achingly small. Eugene hesitated to leave her alone but he needed to know what the next move was. He needed to know for her.

The others drew away as he joined them. He steeled himself against their animosity, just imagining that Mason was right next to him.

It took a moment for Rick to speak. Everything he'd said since Beth's death sounded strained, like every word had to be dragged from some bleeding part of him.

"Noah is going home to Richmond, Virginia," he finally said. "I think we should go with him."

"That's a long way," Carol said.

"Yes, it is. But I was talking with him. It was secure. It has a wall, homes, twenty people."

He paused, blinking down at the ground.

"Beth wanted to go with him."

Eugene flinched, casting an anxious glance behind him at Mason. But either she hadn't heard or was too numb to respond.

"She wanted to get him there," Rick continued. "It is a long trip, but if it works out, it's the last long trip we'll have to make."

Nervously, Eugene spoke up. "All things being equal, Rick, I'm not sure if we're up for such a trip at this moment."

Rick cocked his head and stalked toward him. The glint in his eyes made Eugene want to hide but he stood his ground.

"I don't seem to remember you making these kind of arguments back at the church," he growled. His voice was low, but it couldn't have been scarier if he'd screamed. "After Bob. After Mason kept you safe."

"I know. I just want what's best for her."

"Walls? Safety? A chance at a life that isn't this? I'd say that's what's best for her."

"More than you could offer her," Carol muttered.

Eugene recoiled. There was nothing he could say to that.

The group agreed to go to Virginia, regardless of Eugene's doubts. He knew he couldn't be the only one but no one wanted to side with him. Once it was decided, they wandered off to gather their things and prepare for the journey.

"Eugene."

He turned at the sound of Rick's voice, crossing his arms over his chest to hide his trembling hands.

"I am doing you a favor by letting you come with us," Rick said. "But you no longer have any say in what this group does."

"Rick, I just want-"

"And you're going to stay away from Mason."

Eugene blinked. "She needs me-"

"No. She doesn't need someone who's going to lie to her, who's going to put her in danger because they can't take care of themselves. Thatis not what she needs right now."

Christ, Eugene, do you even know what you did for me?

He could picture her face so clearly, shining at him in the dark. Telling him that he was one of her favorite people in the world.

Rick was still watching him, his eyes shadowed with the protectiveness of a father. He knew that's how Mason thought of him. The dad she'd always wanted.

Christ, he thought. I'm going head-to-head with her adoptive gunslinger father. Fucking Christ.

But in his mind she was shining. She was his best friend, and he loved her.

My feet were dangling over the edge and the rest of me was about to follow, but then there you were. You pulled me back.

He loved her more than that.

Swallowing his fear, he said, "If Mason decides it necessary to distance herself from me, I will gladly oblige. It's her choice. But until then I intend to see her through this."

Partners in crime.

"That's what we do for each other."

The look Rick gave him then… Eugene's stomach twisted with the certainty that he was about to die.

"Look," Rick growled. "I don't know what you think is gonna happen, but-"

"Shit. Mason!"

They startled at Daryl's shout, turning to see him ease Mason's limp frame to the ground. Her eyes were glazed and sightless, hair clinging to her sweat-slick skin. Panic sparked Eugene's pulse into double time. He and Rick rushed over, and Carol joined them a moment later.

"She fainted," Daryl said.

Gently, Carol patted Mason's cheeks with water until her eyes fluttered back to consciousness.

Except she wasn't really back. It was like staring down a vacant hallway.

Mason

She was floating, somewhere deep. An ocean.

She was a weightless anchor, fixed in place.

There was green all around her, and heat, but she didn't feel it.

There were people saying her name, and she knew she recognized them, but it didn't matter.

I could let myself die if I wanted to.

It would be easy. She was already so numb.

What else was there to hold onto?

Eugene

"She needs to eat and she needs to get some water into her system," Carol murmured.

Immediately, Daryl fished some pecans from his pocket and held them out.

"Mason?"

Her eyes never moved, fixed on some point in space that no one else could see.

Rick offered her water, as did Carol. She didn't respond to either.

Let's just both agree to stay alive then, coolioz?

Stinging with desperation, Eugene pushed his way forward with his own water bottle.

"Hey!"

Rick slammed a hand to his chest, jarring him to a halt.

"What did I just tell you?"

But though he was afraid, though he knew Rick could tear him limb from limb, he ignored him.

"Mason?"

Something deep within her flickered.

Slowly, slowly, she looked up.

"Mason."

Choking back tears, he held the bottle out to her. The others stared at him in disbelief but his eyes never left hers.

"I think you should drink some water."

There was a moment's pause, in which she regarded him with piercing recognition. Finally, with a shaking hand, she took the bottle and drank.

Mason

It was for him that she ate. For him that she stayed hydrated, for him that she slept. She felt no pull toward the warmth of the sun or the chirping of birds or the soft night air, except that he existed.

She never slept unless his arms were around her. She didn't say a word that first night, just curled up beside him, his side warming her spine. The nightmares made her thrash but he never complained.

She was aware that they were traveling, but was blurry on the details. Something about that kid Noah, the one who had helped…

But she couldn't think it. Couldn't think the name. It was on her mind constantly. It was not allowed to be there. Dancing around the forefront, the relentless torture of things that would not be repressed.

She couldn't escape the dreams, however. They came for her every night. Packs of wolves chewing that name into every thought, even the ones that weren't about her. Knifing her blood. Rending her brain like paper flesh.

She awoke from one she couldn't remember the night before they reached Noah's hometown. Salt and moonlight clung to her skin, her hair sticking in wild frays around her shadowed eyes. She lay still for a moment, catching her breath. Eugene slept with his face buried in her shoulder, snoring fitfully.

Movement caught her eye, a pale flash off to her left. Carefully she sat up, taking pains not to wake Eugene or alert any of the others. Abraham and Carol were on watch, but Daryl had taught her to walk near-silently through the forest. Neither of them noticed her disappear.

The forest was strangely peaceful, eerily so. She felt as though she'd entered a different world, a world conjured from mist and dreams and cricket song. Silver light hung on the branches like ethereal moss. She breathed deeply and evenly, tasting the air. For what, she could not name.

She smelled the rain first, and might've thought nothing of it except that the sky was clear. A moment later, through the trees, the pale figure materialized.

Mason shuddered to a halt, heaving a breath of air so quickly she nearly choked. Goosebumps pulled her skin taut.

The figure

(don't think the name don't think it don't think it)

was dressed in yellow and haloed in silver. There was everything familiar about it, and nothing earthly. Yet it was real. It had to be. It had to be.

Mason stumbled forward hazily. The wraith giggled and flitted away, doe-quick.

"Wait!"

She quickened her pace, forgetting the need to keep quiet, tripping over roots and smacking into branches. One of them whipped her hard enough to cut her cheek, but the pain was a faraway rush.

The wraith kept just far enough ahead to remain visible, turning every once in a while to smile or send a whispered lyric on the breeze.

Mason's mind whirled, or possibly the world was spinning too quick to keep up with. The gentle sounds of the night rose to a horrible cacophony. Blood and tears trickled into her mouth.

"Mason!"

A new figure crashed into her, sturdily familiar, smelling of earth and sleep and campfire smoke. Blindly she struggled against him, huffing a panicked breath. The wraith was getting away.

"Let me go!" she gasped. "The rain, the wraith. I need to find her."

Eugene held her by her arms, his face pinched with confusion. "What?"

"The wraith. She- it- let me go!"

"Mason, there's nothing out here. You need to come back with me."

"She's here, I saw her. I saw her, please, I saw her."

"You didn't-"

"I did!" she screeched, swinging her fists at his chest, his shoulders, his arms, anywhere she could reach. Still he held onto her, staring at her with an expression she couldn't bear.

"Mason. Sweetheart. It's not her," he said, and tears rolled down his cheeks. "Beth is dead."

"Stop. Stop."

But the fight in her died as quickly as it had kindled, burning out like the flash of a meteor. She collapsed into his arms, convulsing with sobs forceful enough to rattle her bones.

Eugene pressed his forehead to hers and cried with her.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

They held on for a long time, his bruises, her grief, clutching desperately at each other because letting go meant the end.

They were alone, but they were alone together.

~m~

Rick, Glenn, Michonne and Tyreese accompanied Noah to his hometown while everyone else waited behind. They made temporary camp off the side of the road, huddling up in an anxious circle to wait for Rick's report.

Mason sat by herself with her back against a truck tire. Eugene was snoring in the back of the truck, trying to reverse the damage of several sleepless nights. She drifted in and out of awareness, breathing around the hole in her chest.

"…Whether or not this works out, something needs to be done about him. We can't trust him."

She sat up straighter at the sound of Carol's voice, stirring from her numbness.

"What do you suggest? We just leave him out here alone?" That was Maggie.

"Maybe it would teach him not to use other people as shelter."

"Guys, what the hell?" Tara's voice joined the argument. "Eugene's a part of this group now whether you like it or not."

"Everyone sitting here has earned their place in this group, but he hasn't. He lied and he got people killed. He'll do it again."

Mason's blood began to burn. It didn't kill the numbness but it did eclipse it.

Eugene handing her a bottle of water, asking her if she was alright, holding her hand, wrapping her wound, laughing with her, crying with her.

Mason rose to her feet.

"People like him are just as dangerous as the dead," Carol continued. "We have to do something about him."

"No."

Everyone startled and looked up at Mason, who stood over them with her gun in hand. Her gaze was steadier than it had been in days, clear as a winter morning.

It smoldered. Raw. Bitter. Ice.

She aimed her gun. She didn't want to hurt any of them, but they needed to know that Eugene was not going anywhere. He was with her and she was with him until the end.

"No one touches him."

They stared at her, wary and amazed, until finally Tara stood up.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. No one touches him. I promise you right now."

She glared around at the rest of the group until a few of them nodded. Then she slowly approached Mason, resting a hand on her arm until she lowered the gun.

"It's okay. It's okay."

Frostily, Mason nodded. The numbness was already returning, devouring everything else. Deflated now that she'd made her point, she shuffled back to sit by the truck.

~m~

An hour later, Rick radioed the group to tell them that the town was gone.

An hour after that, he radioed to tell them that Tyreese had been bitten.

An hour after that, he radioed to tell them that Tyreese was dead.

Mason and Maggie were the first to get to Sasha when she heard. They held her as she sank to her knees, wailing her bone-shaking agony into the forest.

They were an island of grief in a storm of pain, and they were together but they were

utterly

utterly

alone.

~m~

Eyes watched them from the woods as they dug the grave.

There she was. Mason. Familiar and different. Home and lost. She was grieving. She was covered in it.

Good.

"Alpha," a voice whispered, and the watcher turned.

A man with scraggly hair and jagged yellow teeth grinned at her. The W he'd carved into his head had long since scarred into a beautiful weal, a proclamation of who they were and what the world had made them.

What they would take back from the world.

"Is it time yet?"

The watcher glanced back at the group she'd studied for so long. At the face that was somehow stranger and somehow not.

No. She needed to suffer a little longer.

"It will be," the watcher answered. "Soon enough."

They turned away and left, vanishing into the woods like ghosts. In their wake they left a scattering of walkers, torn limb from limb, head from torso, all inscribed with bloody W's.

On a rock, in glistening gore, they'd painted their warning.

Wolves not far.

Continued in SPIRITS...

NOTE: I'm sorry guys. I know these last two chapters were not happy in the slightest. In all honesty I cried while writing them because I'm just a pansy like that lol. Like I said before, I truly, truly hope you will join me for the sequel. I would never have finished this story if it weren't for all of you, for your reviews and support, and I am so, so grateful. Much love to all of you.

xoxo the muse.