"Well shave my head and call me Britney Spears, it is Pirate!" Izzy shakes her head in disbelief as the large dog approaches.

"I'll be damned," Seth murmurs, standing up from behind the hood of the car.

I stand also, looking at Pirate in utter surprise and complete joy. "And where there's Pirate..."

"There's Rogan," he says, "and where there's Rogan..."

"There's Doyle," I whisper, my feet taking flight beneath me and carrying me toward Pirate, whose great tail wags in greeting.

Seth is right on my heels, Izzy grumbling as she follows along behind him, but before I can reach Pirate, he turns and begins running down the street in the opposite direction of where we came from.

He must want us to follow him. I take off running after him, Seth in close pursuit, and of course Izzy starts complaining about it.

Pirate leads us to an alley near the end of the street, where he disappears around the side of a building. I slow to a walk, cautiously peering into the shadowed passage.

I see Pirate's tail duck behind the building, and I follow, Seth beside me, Izzy behind us, grumbling about how silly we are to be chasing a dog.

"Shut up for a minute, will you?" Seth hisses at her, resulting in a good firm smack to the back of his head.

I round the corner, looking upon dumpsters, trash, and a couple of dead things, and Pirate is sitting on top of a crushed cardboard box.

And then...time slows down. My heartbeat thuds in my ears, and I can't hear anything more than a muffled cry from Seth as he rushes forward and tackles him in a massive bear hug.

Doyle stumbles backward when Seth crashes into him. I hear their voices, but I don't comprehend what they're saying.

Doyle. He is there, right there, in front of me, alive and real. Alive. Alive. From beneath a threadbare gray beanie his fiery red hair escapes, longer and more tangled than before, hanging well past his shoulders. He still wears that plaid shirt of his, and those worn out jeans, and those sneakers that he's got held together with tape.

"...knew you were too stubborn to die," Izzy's voice cuts through the static in my ears as she walks past me.

"Yeah, right," Seth says, finally releasing Doyle.

"I did, too!" Izzy protests.

Seth just shakes his head. "So where's Rogan?"

Doyle is looking past the two of them, straight at me, our eyes locking. "He's...around," he mumbles, stepping between them and heading toward me.

I suddenly remember to breathe, my chest rising and falling with rapid breaths as I see his face. It bears a new scar, just above his right eyebrow, and seems thinner, paler, more tired, but his eyes shine out, a brilliant explosion of hazel.

He stops just feet away from me, studying me, looking as if he can't believe I'm really there. He slowly pulls the hat off his head, more hair falling into his face.

"Wynne, I...." He trails off, his eyes searching mine, his expression strained. And I still can't move, can't speak, can hardly breathe.

"Aw, damn it," he mutters before crossing the space between us, cupping my face in his hands and pressing his lips to mine.

I don't care that they're cracked with the cold, I don't care if Seth and Izzy are watching. I kiss him back, gently, my hands moving to grab the front of his shirt, to pull him closer so that there is no space at all between us.

The kiss lasts forever, but not long enough. It's simple and sweet, innocent, pure. Complex, lustful. When it ends, he rests his forehead on mine, our eyes closed.

"I thought I'd never see you again," he whispers, hardly loud enough for me to hear.

"I thought you were dead," I murmur, my heart pounding so hard I feel as if it might burst from my chest.

"Did you know that each one of you have over five hundred germs in your mouths?" Izzy's voice shatters our moment, and we break apart, Doyle's face growing red.

"Probably more since it's the end of the world or whatever," she continues.

Seth elbows her in the ribs. "Shut up!"

She shoves him, almost knocking him off his feet. "What? It's gross!"

"What, so you've never kissed anyone before?" He teases as Doyle heads back over to the dumpster he was previously digging through.

A strange expression passes over Izzy's face, a distant, troubled look in her eyes, before she smirks and says, "of course I have, that's how I know it's gross."

Seth rolls his eyes. "Whatever."

+++++

Doyle leads us to the building he and Rogan have been holed up in for the past month. It's a warehouse of sorts, on the outskirts of the tiny town, three stories tall and made of brick. Many of the windows have no glass, or at least several panels missing.

We follow him up a flight of rickety wooden steps to the dusty second floor, where he takes us into a smaller room with a small covered window.

It is dark in this room and it takes my eyes a moment to adjust. Pirate, panting, trots over to the darkest corner, and I soon spot the bed of blankets there, and the person lying on top of it.

Rogan.

"Well, fuck, I was hoping he was dead," Izzy laments, stamping her foot. An irritated grunt comes from Rogan, while Seth sighs in annoyance.

"He almost was," Doyle says, setting his black garbage bag of belongings on the floor beside a single, moth eaten blanket. His bed, I assume. "Got shot in the leg, fought off an infection."

"Take some credit, Carrots," Rogan says hoarsely, "you're the one who dug the damn thing outta me."

A pair of crude crutches lean against the wall beside Rogan's resting place. A few cans of soup and other food are stacked neatly beside them, along with some bottles of water and a rusty, dented metal box with a faded red cross on it.

"Anybody could've done that," Doyle says before turning to Seth, "so who all is with you?"

"Mara, of course," Seth replies, and Rogan seems to perk up at the sound of her name, "got a new guy, Hudson, and three days ago somebody tried to rob us. She's still there."

Doyle raises an eyebrow. "You kept the thief around?"

Seth shrugs. "I didn't know what to do with her."

Izzy grumbles, "I could've taken care of the bitch."

"Where are you staying, anyway?" Doyle asks, all of us opting to ignore Izzy the psychopath.

"In this old house in the woods. It's got a nice fireplace, keeps the cold out," Seth tells him, and Doyle nods.

Izzy scoffs. "But it's full of rats. And the attic is creepy as fuck."

"But we don't live in the attic, Izzy," Seth says, turning to her, "why do you always have to find something wrong with everything?"

"What's wrong with that?" She demands angrily.

"Everything's wrong with it!" Seth yells back.

"See, you do it, too!"

Doyle steps over to me, his arm finding its way around my shoulders, and he says softly, "so they've gotten worse."

"You have no idea," I sigh, "I'm surprised they haven't killed each other yet."

"You know, if you and I argued like that, Izzy would've slammed our faces together by now, told us to just kiss already."

"She didn't have to tell us," I say, grinning and looking up at him. He turns a bit pink, but smiles.

"Took me long enough, didn't it?"

"Too long," I say, "I should've done it a long time ago. I wanted to kiss you even before we got separated."

"I wanted to kiss you the moment you danced with me at that stupid party in Finley," he says, growing slightly redder at his confession.

I feel my cheeks heat up, and look away from him for a second. "Really?"

"Really," he replies, "and after we got separated I promised myself that if - when - I saw you again, I'd stop messing off and just kiss you already."

"Even with the whole five hundred germs thing?" I ask playfully.

"Who cares about mouth germs anymore? It's the freaking end of the world," he says, grinning.

Before I can reply, Izzy pretty much yells at us. "Stop being romantic and shit, it's gross!"

+++++

Well give me some rum and call me a pirate, I finally updated!

I hope their reunion lived up to your expectations - I rewrote it several times because it has to be perfect. I hope it is!