The Zombie Apocalypse with MCR (Complete)

Final Words

Our day together is very domestic.

It's probably the most peaceful day I've ever had, or, at the very least, I can't remember ever feeling more peaceful.

We prepare our meals together, eat them together, wash the dishes side by side. We bicker, but it only ever gets as far as teasing, and there's no real irritation.

Between meals, I sit at the little table and update the journals I kept when we were in the outside world.

There are essays to edit and tidy. Stories to rewrite or finish. It's meticulous work, and I didn't think I'd be able to focus with Frank pottering quietly, but I quickly fall into the rhythm of study.

The words flow out of me in an uninterrupted stream. It's the quickest I've ever worked, and I don't have to stop to agonise over anything. It's as if, with the time constraint, everything has become crystal clear.

Frank doesn't ask, even when I shuffle loose papers and bind them together, or close a journal, and set it all aside to move on to something else.

"Did you finish Andraste's story?" Is his first question in a long while.

I look up at him with a smile, "You remembered her name."

"Course I did." He frowns, "Would be rude of me not to, wearing her necklace and all."

He tugs on the silver chain around his neck. He's never without it; I gifted him the little medallion last Christmas, depicting a woman on horseback, carrying a shield and spear. It's an almost-lost Celtic Goddess, worshipped by Boudica before she went into battle against the Romans.

"I finished her legend," I say, and rifle through the journals at my elbow. They're separated by category - new stories in one, retellings of myths and legends in another, essays on their own.

"Can I read it?" He's hopeful.

"Would you tell me if it was bad?"

He purses his lips and deliberates for a long moment, "Yeah, I would."

"Good answer." I nod, and pass over the book, open to Andraste's story.

I try not to watch him, but my pen barely manages a sentence as his eyes move, as he turns the pages carefully, like the binding is already fragile.

It takes him a little while - probably due to my untidy scrawl - but he looks up with a dreamy smile.

"I absolutely loved her birth," Is the first thing he says, and I sit up a little straighter.

I wrote that she was born from the belly of a forest grove and was nursed on the milk of a hare.

"Thank you."

"You're very good." Frank reassures me, "People will love these, one day."

"Maybe one day," I agree, to humour him. I'm not so sure.

"I'm not going to lose all your hard work, you know that, right?"

His expression is very earnest, his dark eyebrows high, and he reaches over the table with a tattooed hand to grip my wrist.

"I know." That's one thing I'm certain about.

"It's one of the reasons I wanted to marry you. Aside from the obvious, of course. I didn't want any of your things to be lost, or stolen, or handed away as souvenirs. Buy this sock of Nevaeh Dailey's and it'll bring you good luck, sort of thing."

I don't know that I'll ever be as big a deal as he thinks I'll be, but the thought makes me laugh.

"And what was the obvious?"