Warm Bodies: The Answer

The Last Thing

Julie sighed and looked from Rowan's still face to their clasped hands. She squeezed, her fingers folding over his, but he didn't squeeze back. He just slept. Just as he had for the past six months.

"Rowan," she whispered, leaning up against his shoulder. "I need you."

She'd tried that before of course, almost every day through his coma. But it had never worked. There just wasn't enough happening upstairs, Stephen said, when she'd asked him about it. Which was a stupid thing to say, and really irritating, because it'd worked when he was dead.

Her gaze lingered over his profile. Dark lashes rested softly closed against his gaunt cheeks, his mouth lay slack in sleep, his dark brown hair was a matted shaggy, mess. Hardly surprising, since she'd been cutting it for the past six months. He was really lucky he didn't look like he had mange.

Sighing softly again, she rested against him and watched his chest rise and fall. He was too thin. They really needed to get him awake and eating properly. Fill him up with burgers, pizza, and maybe a tub of ice cream from the new farm just outside the perimeter.

That counts as properly, right?

Screw it, she'd eat the ice cream herself.

Julie stared up at his closed eyes and sighed one more time.

"Rowan... where are you?"

He didn't answer.

She knew he'd been dreaming. She'd had to pull him out of some terrible nightmare the night before. She'd never seen him so tormented, not even during those horrible nightmares with that girl he'd killed that he'd finally told her about. Talking to him seemed to help - holding him, being close. He'd quietened down, but then the baby started crying, and calming her had sent Rowan right back to sleep.

It was so frustrating. He'd woken before, he'd said her name for God's sake, and he'd seen their baby! Why'd he fall back down again?

And then, there was what happened with Bran earlier in the day. The news had been a complete shock, and she'd just stared at Mark when he told her, her eyes so wide they hurt.

Because if Rowan didn't recognize Bran now... if he'd really been looking for his little brother... that meant he was stuck somewhere in the past, didn't it?

And the uncomfortable thought had popped up...

...how far in the past?

Stephen had done his best to explain what'd happened, though he'd admitted this was yet again outside of his experience, adding with a smirk that it was almost always that way with Rowan. He suggested that Rowan had been woken too abruptly, right in the middle of a memory, and had simply reacted from that memory. That'd he'd probably be fine the next time he woke if that was the case. It was a nice explanation, or at least... a little nicer than his next theory.

He'd been hesitant to offer it actually, but she'd poked him till he did, then kind of wished she hadn't.

Stephen had suggested that Rowan might be repressing some memories. As a form of self-protection, though he quickly added that it wasn't usually done consciously.

It was stupid, what she'd asked next, because she should have known. Because she knew Rowan, she knew how much he struggled with what he'd done. Even after shrugging off some of that weight after Jack. But Stephen gave her a perspective, when she asked 'why', that stunned her. He'd said that if what Julie had told them was true - mentioning again that it was the weirdest damn thing he'd ever heard, which she just sighed at yet one more time - Rowan had experienced the death of every person killed in this plague.

She'd nodded, and said that he had, and that's when Stephen said something that just floored her.

"If you'd been through that, experienced every death ever delivered by a corpse... what's the last thing you'd want to remember?"

With a terrible sinking feeling, she'd turned to Rowan, and the answer had just fallen from her mouth. Heavy and horrible.

"Being one..."

And she'd just stared at Rowan, just as she was doing now, desperately trying to see into him, to see where his thoughts were roaming, to understand why he was so far away, and figure out how to bring him back.

Because where would she fit in, if he woke up like that again? Would he still recognize her? Or would he look at her with the eyes of a stranger and act as if they'd never met?

Julie squeezed her eyes shut and pressed against him.

"No," she whispered, her heart clenching in her chest. "Jesus, don't do that."

Don't you dare.

She looked down at their daughter, dressed in a little onesie dotted with dancing penguins and cozily wrapped in a fleece blanket that was irritatingly, almost horrifingly pink. Nora had said it was the only thing she could find, but Julie had a feeling her friend didn't look that hard - Nora adored the color.

The baby in her arms was utterly adorable, and completely asleep. Just like Rowan. Julie was tempted to tickle her daughter awake just so she wasn't the only conscious one in the room, but then that struck her as a Very Bad Idea. She'd only just changed the baby's diaper for the millionth time and experienced yet another painful latch as the little one nursed. Time for a break.

As she stared down at her baby, Julie's mouth curled in a little smile, her fears slowly dissolved by the soft sleeping face nestled in a sea of pink.

"You need a name little lady," she whispered. "Daddy needs to wake up now so we can pick one, doesn't he."

Her little girl shifted just slightly, mouth pursing wetly in the first tremblings of waking, before she grew quiet again.

Julie sighed and looked back up at Rowan. The baby's soothing magic fell away, and a little of that fear returned.

What would she do, if he looked at her like a stranger?

It played in her head like a haunting, superimposed over his sleeping form. Rowan opening his eyes, turning to her, and frowning.

And maybe he'd say something uncertain and simple like...

Hello?

The frown grew deeper, and she shook her head at herself.

Stop it.

It was stupid. Stephen had said it was a possibility, and they couldn't know for certain until he woke up again.

But when would that be?

"Rowan," she sighed one more time. "Where are you?"