#i have to raise clem with a bit of morals

[fox-from-fairytale]

Don't worry Sarita, I can stay. I already saw Kenny smash another man's head before. 😌✌️✨️

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

One of my favorite narrative choices/interpretations in twdg is how tied together Clementine’s “death” scene and Lee’s death are. Yeah sure, there are the obvious visual parallels but that’s not exactly what I’m talking about.

For the longest time, I was one of the people who always shot Lee, y’know? It just makes sense, you can’t let Lee become a walker, it’s so much more tragic for Clementine to be the one to put him down. Clearly shooting him is the right answer. After all, the player percentages don’t lie.

But then years passed and I eventually played the other route where I asked Clementine to leave Lee, and I am no longer one of those people.

Don’t get me wrong. Both endings make me cry. They’re powerful in different ways, but there’s something about the way that leaving Lee to turn into a walker can affect an interpretation of TFS and Clementine as a character.

[note: this turned into a bit of a Clementine character analysis and it’s long and I’m sorry that this is the way I am]

Y’see, having played through the series as much as I have, I’ve grown to love this narrative that you can build leading back to this choice and the ways it stuck with Clementine over the years, and subsequently affects the way she raises AJ.

When you ask Clementine to leave Lee, he gets the chance to give her a little more advice and it get progressively heavy:

Lee: You can leave me. It's okay.

Clementine: You'll be just like them.

Lee: It's okay. It won't be me.

Clementine: Lee...

Lee: Clem, it's time to go. You gotta get out of here.

Clementine: You can come with me.

Lee: No, honey, I can't. It's okay.

Clementine: Please?

Lee: You have to go, now.

Clementine: Maybe...maybe...I shouldn't let you turn.

Lee: I don't want you to have to do that.

From here, you have a set of options that allows Lee to explain why she shouldn’t shoot him: Shooting people changes you and Lee doesn’t want Clem to get used to that, she can remember him alive as her last memory of him rather than her shooting him, she should save the bullet, or the noise will draw more attention than it’s worth.

After that, depending on your choices, he’ll further explain himself. I usually get:

Lee: Pulling the trigger of a gun and ending a life, Clem...you feel yourself lose something every time. The first time, the most. Don't do it unless you absolutely have to.

Clementine: I'll go. I'll...leave you. I'll go as fast as I can.

Lee: And as safe as you can. Always be safe.

Lee is barely breathing at this point, he can’t keep his eyes open, he looks like he’s on the verge of turning into a walker at any moment. Clementine, gun her in her little hands, turns to him and one last time, asks him not to go.

Like… the whole scene is more than enough to make you teary eyed.

There are a lot of reasons for making this choice, most of which you’re allowed to explain through Lee. Some people have a more logical take on this by saying that it doesn’t matter if Lee turns or not, Clementine isn’t in danger with him chained up, therefore she doesn’t have to waste a bullet in killing him. That bullet might be the difference between life and death in the future. 

Then there’s a more emotional approach of not wanting Clementine to be the one to have to kill Lee, forever traumatizing her even further after everything she went through with the stranger and her parents. Lee can’t ask her to do that, he can’t force this little girl to kill him just so that he won’t turn into a walker. It’ll change her.

I like to think it’s all of the above. Lee’s made sure that he can’t get to her, she’s armed and knows how to protect herself, and he cares more about her having an extra bullet that could save her life rather than wasting it on him when no matter what, death is inevitable for him. It’s like what he says about Larry if you tried to save him: 

“It's like with Larry, honey. He was goin', one way or another. But at that moment I couldn't do more violence. You have to be careful about that. It'll consume you.”

She shouldn’t do that if she doesn’t have to. Lee has no idea what’s going to happen after he dies, if he’ll just be dead and gone or if part of him will remain as a walker, or something else. He reassures her that the walker left in his place won’t actually be him, but no one actually knows that. Yet, that doesn’t matter, he cares more about Clementine than himself at this point.

But what does this choice do to Clementine?

Sure, she doesn’t have to live with the fact that she killed the man who swore to protect her, even after she was indirectly responsible for him getting bitten in the first place. He asked her to leave him there, to let him become a monster, to leave before she could see him like that. He makes sure she knows that this was the right thing, the best thing for everyone, and I do think she believed him, or at least want to, in that moment. Underneath her grief and stress of the worst day of her life, she at least had Lee’s last words to her and his reassurance that she’s going to make it through this.

But then we move onto the other seasons, and Clementine isn’t the little girl she was in the first season. Season two is pretty much summed up with: “Clementine does ANYTHING and gets punished for it.”

She goes through so much shit in S2. You can try to make all the morally good choices you want and Clementine will still end up getting slapped around, people she grows to care about fall dead all around her, and she gets a lot of blame for it. She’s forced to kill a dog that attacks her, Kenny lashes out at her more than once, blaming her for Sarita’s death no matter what you do, she can’t save Sarah, she couldn’t save Luke, everything is falling apart and by the end, everyone’s fucking dead with the exception of either Jane or Kenny, depending on you choices. 

Clementine carries all this shit with her, like Kenny and Bonnie telling her that just because she’s a little girl, she thinks she can get people killed and it’s okay since she’s sorry. Of course she’s going to internalize all of it and bring it back to Lee. She has conversations with Kenny where she’ll open up about how it was her fault he died. Kenny, for all his faults, will usually try to reassure her that it wasn’t.... but then pulls the shit he does so y’know... mixed messages that help no one.

But by the end of it, no matter what ending you get, little newborn AJ is left in Clementine’s care.

From all of this, we know that Clementine tends to blame herself for the deaths of those she cares about, which is traced back to Lee. It’s when we get to ANF that her tune changes a bit. She’s jaded, bitter, selfish, and Lee was right..... all of this violence did change her. 

I mean, she just fucking shoots the guy who traded her bad bullets, and while she didn’t mean to... she still pointed a loaded gun at his head and pulled the trigger, something Lee taught her to never do unless she had to. Then, she wants Javi to cover for her, to lie... and if you don’t, because hey murder and lying bad, she gets upset and tries to make Javi feel like an asshole for telling the truth rather than validating her actions.

When I say ANF Clementine is my least favorite, it’s because her behavior, while it makes sense, is so frustrating and unbearable at times. It making sense doesn’t excuse it. 

She steals, lies, pulls several Kennys where she gets pissy when you don’t do what she wants you to, is willing to assist in Lingard’s death if it benefits her without even considering any other options or what a dark place he’s in, and she’s at a point where she just assumes everyone around her will inevitably die or leave her. That’s just what happens, that’s why she’s alone, and as a means of coping, she tries to spin it this way to alleviate some of the pain she’s had thrown at her for years.

Now, ANF Clementine isn’t all bad, she has a lot of redeeming moments where the Clem I knew in the past two seasons will shine through. You as Javi can help her grow and get onto a better path than the one she was goin’ down. She makes friends with Gabe, which is important since as far as we know, she hasn’t had a friend close to her age since Sarah. She has hope again after David tells her AJ survived, and she has more than just survival on her mind.

It’s just.... it’s sad to think that she’s at a point where she seems to have momentarily forgotten Lee’s final words to her. And when I think about it..... this behavior would almost make more sense if she DID shoot Lee, y’know? But in this timeline we’re discussing, she didn’t, she left him to turn and he gave his reasons for why he wanted that... but she still ended up this way. Nothing he could say or do could’ve prevented that. 

But at the end of ANF, Clementine has one goal: get AJ back.

Through all of this, through ANF and before the events of TFS... I truly believe that Clementine lost herself. 

She’s forgotten a lot of the things Lee taught her, she’s forgotten about her parents in the sense of “what would they think if they saw me now,” she’s overwhelmed with all that bad that those good things, that hope she had, has been put on the backburner.

She’s been forced to live in a world that’s cruel to you no matter if you’re “good” or “bad”, and that can put you into that selfish mindset where you tend to just disregard everyone you don’t have any emotional connection to, and even then, people you’re close to will get the same treatment, whether intentional or not. It’s unflattering, unlikable, and the only reason more people don’t see that is because it’s Clementine. 

It gets to a point where she has a few different paths she can go on, and right now, she’s on a destructive one. 

I think through knowing the Garcia’s, she was put on a better path but she’s still lost. She’s hyper focused on getting AJ back. Nothing else matters, nothing will stand in her way, and that leads to a breaking point in her character.

So...the McCarroll Ranch flashback is a thing. 

The varying interpretations of this scene are interesting to discuss.

Some will say Clementine was continuing her extremely selfish and destructive behavior when she found the ranch in flames and was willing to commit more murder in order to get AJ back, even if it meant traumatizing him with the death of his caretaker, and if she had shown up earlier before they were under attack, who knows how far she would’ve gone to take him away.

Others say no, that Clementine found the ranch compromised, she was acting in self-defense when she shot Eddie and AJ’s caretaker, Helen. It was either her or Clementine, as Helen was pulling a gun out when she spotted Clem, who reacted accordingly. If she hadn’t shown up, perhaps AJ wouldn’t be alive right now. We don’t know. 

For me, it’s a bit of both. She finds the ranch and panics because yeah, it’s on fire and there are assholes running around, shooting the place up. She holds Eddie at gunpoint, demanding to know where the kids are. He thinks she’s another asshole raider and even tells her that he’s not gonna let her take a kid, and she kills him. She doesn’t try to explain herself, she just demands the info and kills him. It’s not great, but yeah, he would've hurt her if she didn’t kill him. 

Then, she hears Helen talking to AJ, who is in the locker. I don’t know why she didn’t say anything. There isn’t an option to. Maybe she thought silence was the more peaceful route, or it would give her an upper hand. But, then Helen hears here and panics, pulls out a gun, and Clementine shoots her.

This is the moment. 

She shoots this woman in the children’s room, and after examining her body, realizes that she was the one caring for AJ. Clementine is looking over this woman, and you get pieces of her thoughts like-

“She was taking care of him”

“I had no choice”

“I’m sorry”

Then, Clementine finally gets what she’s longed for- she has AJ back... and he’s covered in blood, sobbing, terrified of her. She coaxes him out of the locker and he sees his caretaker dead on the floor.

This scene, with Clementine looking at the body, walking through rubble and fire to put AJ in the car, he’s staring up at her with this unfamiliar look in his eyes.... and she stops for a second... 

I truly feel like this is the moment where Clementine is suddenly hit by everything all at once, and she’s actually questioning, “Oh god..... who am I? How did I get here and what have I done?”

She did all of this for AJ, and now she has him, so it was worth it, right? Everything she did was a necessary evil and it was worth it... right?

... but imagine if Clementine did inject Lingard, killing him. She assisted in a man's death to get here. Was taking his life necessary? If you know how the choices work, then no, it’s not. But Clementine doesn’t know that. 

If you stopped her, then she still gunned down several people to stand where she is. She’s has left AJ so wounded by killing Helen, and while we know she didn’t have a choice in the moment, AJ doesn’t understand that. He doesn’t even recognize Clementine and she can see that in the way he looks at her.

“Pulling the trigger of a gun and ending a life, Clem...you feel yourself lose something every time.....”

TFS is where I think Clementine has found herself again and that’s why she’s more balanced and likable, and there are more references to Lee and her parents.... yeah, I know it’s mostly the writers doing it for fanservice and to make us cry, but I’m choosing to look at it in the narrative rather than with that intention.

Clementine has AJ back, she’s been raising him the best way she can, she’s taught him to use a gun since he needs to protect himself, and Lee taught her when she was little, too. She’s taught him to read,  taught him survival techniques she’s picked up, all that. She’s also more playful with him, she smiles more. She’s not a bitter 13-year-old like in ANF. Survival and safety is #1 and her attitude is mostly serious, but she isn’t afraid to tease or be a little silly.

But here’s the deal..... usually when I replay the series, I’ll leave Lee to turn but I’ll have Clementine tell AJ that if she ever gets bit, he’ll shoot her.

“What?” I hear you say. “But... haven’t you been rambling on and on about how murder bad and how leaving Lee was better because she didn’t have to live with the fact that she killed him?? but you want AJ to?? CJ you make no sense!”

I know that, but allow me to elaborate. Remember, this is all my interpretation after years of replaying this series. This is the narrative I find most enjoyable. This is my Clementine and the way I interpret her. 

So, Clementine listens to Lee and leaves him to turn into a walker. He tells her that it won’t be him, he’ll be dead and gone, save the bullet. Yeah, yeah, I already covered this. But remember my “what does this do to Clementine?” question?

I swingin’ back to it because I didn’t really answer it directly, now did I? It’s basically followed up with another question: What if Clementine comes to regret leaving Lee instead of shooting him?

She herself even says that maybe she shouldn’t let him turn, and he tells her he doesn’t want her to have to do that. She listened to him, and left him behind to turn into one of the monsters that tore their world apart. She’s lived with the fact that she’s the reason Lee was bitten, that he died.... but there was always another thing that pricked needles into her guilt: Lee’s a walker. He’s going to spend the rest of eternity as a walker handcuffed to a heater. There is the big possibility that no one will ever find him, will never kill this walker version of him.

Was that the right thing to do? 

I don’t know about you, but the walker debate is kinda fun to explore, and oh boy, do they try to explore it in TFS.

It’s easy for us to be like “Nope, there is nothing to walkers because they’re dead. Nothing human is left behind. Leaving Lee is fine.” 

…but then I have to ask, why did most people shoot him when the episode released? Why do people still pick that option? You don’t want Lee to be a walker, but at the same time, it’s actually fine because nothing about him would be left behind?

Is it because you couldn’t handle seeing him as a walker and didn’t know if the ending would show it or not? It doesn’t, you know that now. Were you afraid he would hurt anyone else? Well, you chained him up. He’s not going anywhere. He’s no longer a threat. 

So why do so many people still choose to shoot Lee and insist it’s the right choice even if by this logic, it doesn’t matter if he’s a walker because it’s not him? Save the bullet, don’t put Clementine through that, right? 

Maybe you just like the way the tragedy plays out when Clementine shoots him, and that’s perfectly fine. Maybe you don’t believe there’s more to walkers, but still pick this because how can you not? It’s Lee! He can’t become a walker.

Again, I feel you. My reasons for always shooting him in the past were that. It’s Lee, he can’t become a walker. I can’t do that to him. I love him, and that would be wrong. 

But that’s the thing... I believe we’re not the only ones having this debate. Clementine is having this internal debate within herself at different points over the series, but it’s especially prominent in TFS. 

Lee asked her to leave him, but was that really the right thing to do? He took care of her, saved her life and taught her to survive, and after he was bitten, she left him to turn into a monster. He didn’t deserve that, but his final wish was for her to leave. Should she have shot him anyway, ignoring his wishes? Would that have been worse? Disrespectful? Is it okay to ignore his wish if you think he’s wrong and you think you know what’s best? 

What if there is a part of him still inside that walker form? There’s no way to know that. What if she condemned a part of him to cruel fate because she didn’t shoot him? What if he’s truly gone and she’s worrying herself over nothing? What if she had shot him and needed that bullet later, or what if the noise drew attention? 

...What about her parents? They were walkers, too... roaming the street together... are they suffering, too? Or are they truly gone? 

I believe this is what lead to her decision to tell AJ that if she ever gets bitten, he should shoot her. All of these thoughts and regrets can resurface depending on your choices, like in the dorms at the beginning of ep2.

AJ: You told me your friend Lee became a monster. But you didn't kill him... because he wasn't a threat. Is that why you didn't kill him?

Clementine: He didn't want me to. He said it would change me forever. But I know he...

AJ: He became a monster. Do you wish you did?

Clementine: Yeah.... Every day.

Or, alternatively:

Clementine: How can you ask me that? What you did is completely different.

AJ: I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to make you mad, at all.

Clementine: .....I...I can still hear him. Telling me not to do it.

AJ: I said I'm sorry.

Clementine: ...I still hear it, sometimes.

and yeah, yeah, I know that this isn’t canon for everyone. Reminder that this is my Clementine interpretation and it’ll probably differ from yours, hence why we’re going over these specific choices. 

Looking at these responses, Clementine admits that she wishes she had shot Lee, that even though he told her that it would change her and she shouldn’t have to... she still left him to die alone and change. Maybe she doesn’t even fully understand WHY he asked her to do that... why didn’t he ask her to shoot him? Did he think she couldn’t? Even though he kept telling her that she had it in her to defend herself? Wasn’t he scared of what would happen afterward? What if Lee was so sick and out of it due to the bite that he wasn’t thinking right? 

Again, all these kinds of questions could possibly run through her mind, which in turn affects her choice with AJ. She doesn’t want him to go through what she did, to regret letting her turn into another monster. It’ll change him to shoot her, but it’ll also change him to let her turn.... maybe shooting her is the lesser of two evils. 

The thing about Clementine is that she’s not a perfect teacher, she doesn’t have all the answers, and all of her experiences reflect in the choices she makes with AJ. She’s trying her best. She loves AJ, he’s her family and she wants what’s best for him. She wants him to be strong, to be a better survivor who can take care of himself if something ever happened to her. But, she’s doesn’t know everything, and she forgets that yeah, AJ’s a kid... and so is she. She’s not some thirty something who has all this world experience and can always make logical decisions in every situation, and neither was Lee. 

AJ sees this towards the end of the season when he starts questioning her.

AJ: I always listened to Clem. Always. But...I've been thinking more. I don't know if she's right every time.

So while she truly believes that this is the best thing... she also won’t take AJ himself into account. Well, she does but she fails to ask him what he wants, what he thinks, and when he starts questioning her, she becomes defensive and makes him promise that he’ll shoot her even though he’s saying he doesn’t want to. 

Which leads me to two particular scenes that I think reopen the wounds and reaffirm Clementine’s thoughts and fears. We’ll start with the obvious one: James. 

I know it’s easy to just call James and his dumb walkers crazy, that walkers aren’t people, yada yada. But for fun, let’s indulge him for a moment. James is a fascinating character study with the way he’s come to view walkers, and he eventually shares these beliefs with Clementine when she asks him for help, and when you leave Lee to turn, you get this conversation:

James: They used them as a weapon. I do this...to protect them. I know it sounds strange. But that's why I brought you here. To see them as I do. As people.

Clementine: As...people?

James: Well, not people, exactly. But... Something in between. Part of us is still in there. Deep down. So few of us die anymore. We turn. Not dead, not alive.

Clementine: God, I hope that's not true. That sounds like Hell.

James: To you, maybe. I think it seems...peaceful.

AJ: Do you really think there's people inside of monsters?

James: Somewhere, yes. Think about it this way... Has someone you cared about turned?

Clementine doesn’t respond.

AJ: Clem's friend, Lee. She let him... but wishes she didn’t. 

James: Do you really think...there's nothing left of who he was?

Here’s where my Clementine will remain silent, as you can either agree or disagree with him which doesn’t feel right for her, in this case. Though a little annoying that James takes your silence personally and won’t talk about Charlie later BUT that’s a topic for another ramble. 

Anyway, Clementine doesn’t want to think about this. She’s thought about it enough, let it eat away at her longer than she should’ve, and now James is here asking her if she truly believes there’s nothing left inside the walker Lee became? She doesn’t have time to reflect on this, she has to get James’ help to save her friends. 

However, I believe this conversation stuck with her, and that’s why she gets more defensive when AJ brings up the idea that if Clem gets bit, then she should bite him, too. Like.... No, absolutely not, AJ. That’s not what we agreed on to do if she gets bit. He’ll shoot her. 

Clementine: AJ, we've talked about this. A lot. If I get bit, you know what has to happen.

AJ: I don't want to talk about this anymore.

Clementine: But you brought it up, so we're going to.

AJ: It does something weird to my stomach. Like I'm gonna get the dookies.

Clementine: AJ, I need to know you remember what we talked about. What you're supposed to do if it happens. Listen to me. If I get bit, you'll...?

AJ doesn’t respond.

Clementine: Shoot--

AJ: No! No, I'm not gonna do that.

Clementine: AJ, you promised.

AJ: I don't care. I'm not gonna shoot you! If you get bit, I'd want you to bite me, too.

Clementine: What? You don't mean that.

AJ: I don't want to be alone. Please don't be mad. I can't live with you not with me, Clem. I know we've talked about it. So much. But don't make me.

And like.... here’s an interesting thing if Clementine doubles down on this:

Clementine: Alvin Junior, if you have a gun, you shoot me. If you don't, you use your knife. No knife, a rock to the head. As many times as you have to.

AJ: I said I don't wanna!

Clementine: I don't care what you said. You will do it.

AJ: I don't care what you say!

Clementine: Goddamn it, AJ! You can't break promises.

Like jesus. She is once again so blinded by what she believes is right and what is the best option for AJ that she’s not even thinking about the fact that she’s telling him that yeah, if you have no other options, bash my face in with a rock! Holy shit, Clementine! She isn’t understanding a big thing here, the thing that factored into why Lee told her to leave him. 

Of course, there are less harsh responses but I find that one particularly interesting.

Now, lemme explore the other scene: Abel. 

So, the beginning of ep3 has Clementine and AJ talking to a tied up Abel about where the raiders took our friends. But it doesn’t take long before Abel starts spitting up blood and panicking that something’s wrong. 

Abel: Shit... I never wanted things to end like this. Everything...it all got out of hand. Now look at me. I'm a fucking mess.

AJ: Will he turn?

Abel: No! ...My...my whole life, everything I ever got, I got with my own two hands and...and my will. For my body to turn on me...to take control... I'll tell you where to find Lilly. Just promise you won't let me turn. I'm begging you.

Look, I hate Abel, he sucks..... but I also really like him as an antagonistic character and what they did with him here. 

So, we have Abel here begging for them to make sure he doesn’t turn... because Abel believes that letting some turn is cruel, he’ll even admit that he believes there are people inside of walkers and that’s why you put a bullet in them, no one deserves to be a walker. 

Abel: You wouldn't do it...you wouldn't let me become...one of those things.  What if they...what if they can feel it...when they turn?!

And after he gives you the info-

Abel: You got what you wanted. Please, don't let me become one of those things. Please... I don't want to turn...

Do keep in mind that this happens before the James scene, too. Clementine’s already got this on her mind when she meets up with him and the barn scene plays out.... but this whole thing with Abel is a lot. You can be cruel and torture him or you can play nice, or you can do a bit of both. 

And by the way, if you let him turn, it reeeally fucks with AJ. So that’s fun. 

Now not only is Clementine trying to work out a plan to get her friends back and trying to protect AJ and all that, but she’s also dealing with these thoughts and ideas presented by Abel and James..... and like, yeah I know the Lee dream sequence was intended for fanservice and to make us cry.... but I dunno, kinda funny timing that she would have a dream about Lee that night after going through both of those events in the same day as well as doing prep to infiltrate the boat. 

While I love the dream sequence and this interpretation I’m talking about probably wasn’t all that intentional given that this would've been the perfect moment to explore or even hint at it but they don’t.... but it’s fine, it’s perfectly logical that she’s more worried about her friends who are still alive rather than if she did the right thing with Lee. 

I think it’s time I move onto the actual bitten Clementine stuff before this turns into a novel sooo.... Clementine gets bit after she and AJ get separated from Louis/Violet/Tenn. She’s bitten on her wounded leg, and after all the chaos of getting away from walkers and climbing up to safety... Clementine just lies there for a bit.

And you can feel it, y’know? She and AJ knew what happened, but Clementine still has to confirm it... and when she pulls away part of her boot to reveal the bite... she lets out a deep breath and says she got bit..... but they gotta keep moving forward. No time, gotta get up, gotta keep moving, gotta get AJ to safety. Nothing else matters. 

So they walk. They walk until it’s morning and Clementine starts to look awful... and I think most of us took this opportunity to tell AJ she loves him. 

Then all hell breaks loose, they’re surrounded by walkers and have to hide out in James’ walker barn, but Clementine’s too weak to fight. This is when the game starts to have us take control of AJ, switching us between the two as Clementine shoots walkers and AJ shuts the doors. 

Until Clementine runs out of ammo. 

The walkers are locked out, they’re catching their breath... and now they have a whole new problem to deal with. Clementine’s bitten, and AJ, similar to how little Clementine was, tells Clementine she needs to try to get up and leave with him. 

Clementine: Good job, AJ. You did it.

AJ: Now what?

Clementine: You need to find a way out of here.

AJ: We can climb up there. The monsters can't reach us up there. Let's go. Easy climb. C'mon. Please...try. You can't give up! You can't give up! I need you! I need you...

She can’t get up. 

Clementine: I'm so sorry, kiddo. This is just what happens sometimes.

AJ: But...but it wasn't supposed to happen to you!

Sigh.... now here it is. This is another big moment in Clementine’s character that changes everything. It’s that moment at McCarroll Ranch again- it all hits her at once. 

Clementine: I need to make sure you remember.

AJ: Remember what?

Clementine: The rules. What's number one?

AJ: Never...never go alone. So...so I can't leave. Not without you.

Clementine: AJ...

AJ: It's your rule!

Clementine: You won't be alone. Not for long. Get back to the school.

AJ: I don't know how.

Clementine: Sure you do. One of the first things I ever taught you. You need to make sure they can't smell you. So... grab that axe.

She’s dying, she’s going to die and leave AJ behind.

Clementine: Next rule: what do we do when the monsters come?

AJ: Clem...

Clementine: AJ...

AJ: Shoot them in the head.

Clementine: Got any more ammo?

AJ: There isn't any more.

Clementine: Okay, then. Fuck. And...the last rule?

AJ: I want to stay. With you. I know what will happen. And...and I don't care. I don't want to go. I just want to sit next to you and...and stay. Like that monster couple, from the train station. No one would hurt us. Just...sitting. Forever.

Clementine: I don't want you to leave, either.

AJ: Then don't make me!

Clementine: But it's not about what I want. It's about what you need. And you need to go.

AJ: Okay, Clem. Okay.

Clementine: Last rule.

AJ: No...

Clementine: What do we do if I get bit? ....Are you gonna make me say it? 

And this is Clementine truly realizes, understands for the first time why Lee made the choice he did... why he asked her to leave him.

Clementine: Just leave.

AJ: I can't let you turn into a monster.

Clementine: You have to.

AJ: But before, you said...

Clementine: I know. But now that we're here... My heart is saying something else.

She finally gets it. 

When Lee said she’s in his shoes now...? She IS in his shoes finally understanding a part of their situation years ago that she never could. For years, she questioned how he could ask her to leave him, WHY he did. She questioned if she did the right thing, regretted listening to him.... but now that they’re here and she’s presented with the same choice Lee was... she understands why her reasons for asking AJ to shoot her if she gets bitten were skewed, that what she thought was preventively protecting him from more hurt was only doing more damage. He’s already taken a life, and just like Lee said, he’s losing a part of himself every time he does it, and if she told him to shoot Lilly, too? and if he shot Tenn? 

What is killing Clementine with an axe going to do to AJ?

What is leaving Clementine to become a walker going to do to him?

What is the right thing to do?

Well, for Clementine, her answer is to ask him to leave. She knows she told him differently, but that was when this scenario was merely a “what if?” Now it’s happening and she sees the errors in her thinking, and no matter what happens now, she’s going to die. Maybe she’ll feel it, like Abel said. Maybe James is right and she’ll spend the rest of her undead life alone in this barn. Maybe nothing will happen. It doesn’t matter. 

But... we all know, AJ has another solution up his sleeve that Clementine never considered. 

He turns to leave her... and then turns back around and disobeys her wishes... and chops off her bitten leg. 

And she fucking survives. 

Clementine survives her walker bite. 

AJ did what little Clementine back in s1 couldn’t do... he didn’t listen to her, and this time, it worked in their favor. 

Clementine: When we were in the barn, you didn't listen to me. And if you had...I'd be dead. You'll have to be strong for the both of us.

AJ: You made it so I can. So...thank you. For everything.

Clementine: You're welcome. For everything.

Clementine still has a lot of things to work though, especially now that she only has one leg. She can’t move around the way she could before, she has to completely relearn how to walk on crutches, possibly a peg leg. She gets to sit down and breathe, rely on others and do some reflection on who she is and come to terms with all the pain she suffered, and grow from there. 

Now that she understands why Lee did what he did, she can take a step in the right direction of forgiving herself, to atone for all the mistakes she’s made and the people she’s hurt. 

She has a boyfriend/girlfriend/friends there at her side to listen and love her, she has AJ, she has her lovable pupper Rosie, and she has a home... for the first time since she was little, she has a home and she can find herself again. Keep movin’ forward. 

This is my favorite line of choices, my favorite way to interpret the connection between Lee and Clementine’s scenes, and how I view Clementine’s growth and understanding as a character in TFS. There are so many ways for it all to play out, no Clementine is the same between players, and I dunno I just... I find the whole thing so compelling. 

Clementine is such a fun character to discuss, to compare interpretations of, and I’m sorry for such a long post but this is another thing I’ve wanted to throw out there for a while. Now that I’m done, I’m gonna go make some tea and chill out. 

[sweetfirebird]

I finished rereading Sweet Clematis and I'm full of emotions. First of all, I'd totally forgotten that Clem knew Teo (and possibly Carmelo?) as child. I can't help but imagine an AU where they raise him like the sweet, loving, fierce Mexican grandads they'd be. The old ladies fussing over him and people starting to offer traditional homemade candy and sweet bread for their tiny fairy. 😭 Do you think they'd be good for him? They don't seem the type for having kids, but once they're older?? 🤔

I just want to say that I love Carmelo and also he has his own morality, and also all the people he kills are bad and would not have been punished by the legal system, and people essentially ask him to step in as judge and executioner, but also he is a murderer. Or at least, he is a killer. 

So while the ‘Clematis is found by Kazimir and raised to be ice cold courtesan heartbreaker’ AU is bad to think about, and ‘Clematis is taken in by Calvin Parker and raised alongside Callalily’ AU is good to think about it, I have to sort of pause at “Clematis is found and taken in by the Jaguar and his pretty Teo.” 

To really think about it. 

You’re right. They’re not the sort to want or have kids around. Not to seek them out, anyway. But I don’t think Clematis was the only lonely nerdy kid hanging around their comic shop/book store. And as the nature of the Village changed, who Carmelo would be avenging would also change. Though, someone would have to ask. I don’t think Teo or Carmelo have the necessary histories to see quiet fairy child and immediately assume, or know, what was wrong. Maybe by the time Clematis was a teen and his behavior was more obvious. But as a child? hmm I mean, I don’t want to say it, but most adults who are not gross creepers and who are well-adjusted and decent (but busy, leading adult lives) would likely not notice something was wrong with Clematis until Clematis um reacts in his particular way, to get out of perceived trouble or to get something or in response to one (1) tiny bit of positive stimuli. And uhhh that’s not a thought we want for this morning/afternoon. (It’s the morning to me, emotionally. And also it’s morning in Hawaii still... I think.) 

I do think that Teo would spoil the little, quiet (always starving, always reading) fairy child though. And teach him Spanish. And as Clematis gets older, probably let him stay in the other parts of the house when Clematis shows up and Teo sort of realizes through what Clematis is not saying that Clematis has nowhere else to go. 

Teo probably does that for people anyway though. The house thing. I have a headcanon that the lawyer/advocacy offices that eventually goes up in the Village is in one of those buildings on the block that Carmelo owns. 

Anyway. I need to stop. I am making myself sad. 

[more--than--anything]

Episode Review: "Underneath it all, we're just dealing with good old-fashioned PTSD." [S04E16]

This week, the team closes in on Madeline, Jane gets therapy, and Rich and Boston flirt in weird ways. What did we think of “The One Where Jane Visits an Old Friend”?

Y: The ways in which couples flirt on this show does raise a lot of questions, doesn’t it? Rich and Boston are all about the passive aggressive, and on the other end you’ve got Jane and Kurt flirting while disarming bombs with their lives on the line. But strange flirting habits aside, one thing that is absolutely on point this year is Jane’s emotional and psychological journey which has taken the front seat from the “evil villain du jour” this season. And I for one am not complaining.

L: I didn’t expect the writers to take such a dark turn with Jane (we’ve talked before about how they skirted deep emotional and psychological themes such as Jane’s likely PTSD after her time with the CIA or the Wellers trying to put their marriage back together after the Avery/Clem reveals), but I have to say, I really appreciate the fact that they aren’t afraid to wade into the deep end this time. Bringing Borden back was even more unexpected, but really makes sense the way it played out. Jane’s story is driving this season much more than the Madeline plot, but as long as it’s this good, I am not complaining one bit!

Instead of a tattoo, this week’s case arrives in a hail of bullets and a string of dead bodies. How does our team figure out what’s going on?

L: This week’s case starts, fittingly, in Mad Maddie’s office, where Tasha is scouring every nook and cranny for evidence the FBI forensics team might have overlooked. Reade points out—correctly—that the reason she is so determined to find something is because if Madeline gets away, everything that Tasha went through—all the bridges she burned, every morally repugnant thing she did to gain favor with Madeline—would be for nothing. Not to mention the fact that her future is still up in the air, pending the outcome of this investigation. And frankly, if I was her, I’d probably want to take a sledgehammer to Madeline’s whole office, not just one tile in the floor. There has to be some job satisfaction in that for Tasha. (And I can’t be the only one who thinks there has to be something about the weird tree in Madeline’s office, since it seems like someone comments on it in almost every episode, right?!)

But instead of finding anything, Tasha and Reade nearly get themselves perforated by a hail of bullets through the window from across the street. (And wow, the slow-motion photography in that scene is intense!) The team jumps on the case and figures out that the shooter was Alonzo Cortez, chief hitman (and cousin of the leader) of the Sabinito drug cartel. Which answers our question about how Franco Cortez is taking the loss of his top hacker: Not well, not well at all. Two more HCI executives turn up dead under gruesome circumstances, which makes me even more relieved that Tasha and Reade escaped unscathed. Rich worries that Boston might be a target as well, so they bring him in, and he helps them find the hitman before he can take out any more HCI execs. (I honestly can’t figure out if it would have been a good thing or a bad thing if the cartel had managed to off Madeline before the team could bring her in. I mean, it might stop her plans before she has a chance to carry them out, whatever they are. But it also might leave Tasha hanging, if the FBI isn’t able to prove that Madeline is guilty of the crimes Tasha says she is.)

Three more HCI executives are killed after they take Cortez into custody, and the team realizes that there is another killer on the loose, this one working for Madeline, taking out everyone who knows what she is up to before they’re tempted to share that knowledge with the FBI. (Which makes me wonder, not for the first time, who the hell is running HCI Global right now? Mad Maddie is on the run, a bunch of their top executives are dead, and the rest are in hiding if they have any sense at all. I still don’t see how this organization is such a threat. If there was ever a time for someone else to step up and take over HCI—as Tasha told Reade the CIA was afraid would happen—this would be it, right? But apparently they are just worried about Madeline.) Patterson finds a list of past and present HCI executives in the fragmented data that Tasha retrieved in Zurich, along with the word “Helios.” They arrive too late to save the last person on the list, but in his desk they find a number for Madeline’s personal pilot, James B. Kelley.

Tasha calls J.B., but he doesn’t want to talk. She tells him that Madeline is killing everyone who might be able to produce evidence to incriminate her. Tasha promises that the FBI can keep him safe, but J.B. is the kind of smug asshole we love to hate and is only willing to come in if they pay him $10 million in bitcoin. Fortunately, the FBI has Rich Dotcom, hacker extraordinaire, who makes it appear as though the money has been deposited into J.B.’s account without actually dipping into the FBI expense budget. J.B. tells them that he’s supposed to fly Madeline out of the country, so the team heads to the airport to lie in wait. Only Madeline is late, and J.B. is much too calm about it, so Boston has Tasha tell him that Madeline has arrived, startling him into giving away the ruse; he was just stalling them while Madeline made her escape some other way.

Reade gets the FAA to ground all the flights (and I agree with Patterson: “That is impressive.”), but Weller realizes that medevac helicopters are still flying, and J.B. used to be a medevac pilot. Rich cross-references the pilots in the air with J.B.’s flight history and discovers that one of them is J.B.’s old co-pilot, en route to a hospital in Brooklyn. The team storms the hospital, but Mad Maddie brought a full complement of heavies with her, so they have to fight their way to the roof. (And okay, Jane’s improvisational use of the MRI machine to disarm the bad guys was seriously cool.) Tasha corners Madeline and arrests her, but we barely get a minute to revel in that before Dominic shows up dressed as an EMT and jabs Jane with a syringe filled with an extremely fast-acting tranquilizer (she couldn’t even gasp her husband’s single-syllable name into her comm before she passed out) and drags her off to parts unknown.

So today is a weird “win” that doesn’t really feel like one. They bring in Madeline, but Dominic takes Jane. Our team definitely got the worse end of the deal in that trade. Tasha and Reade escape their attack unscathed and bring in Boston before the hitman can get to him, but Mad Maddie manages to kill absolutely everyone who would have been able to tell the team what she’s up to. So now they have Madeline, but no hard evidence or witnesses they can use to put her away for good, and we still don’t have any idea what she's up to. And the whole promo for the next episode has me so worried about Jane that I am having trouble focusing on what happened in this one!

This episode was very fast-paced and the case was really fun, but honestly, Madeline is making less and less sense to me. I think Tasha kind of summed it up for me when she was talking to J.B., asking him if Madeline would really protect him. “And all her other allies she killed today? What happens when you outlive your usefulness?” This is the question I keep asking: Why are any of these people still loyal to her? Madeline is like a rabid dog; even if she was looking out for you yesterday, she could turn on you at any moment. After seeing the all the dead bodies that accumulate around her, it seems like anyone with basic survival instincts ought to say, “It’s not worth whatever she’s offering to pay. I should go hide somewhere she can’t find me!” What is she doing that makes people so willing to follow her, even at the risk of likely death or imprisonment? Unlike Shepherd or Crawford, she doesn’t have that righteous fervor that pulls people to follow her on her crusade. She just has employees that she threatens into submission, which seems like a far less sustainable model, long-term. I’d like to believe that with her in custody, we can wrap up this plot, but there are too many episodes left in the season, I suppose, to do that just yet. (And we get a convenient flashback at the start of the episode to remind us that Weitz is in Madeline’s pocket now, so I guess we know what “get out of jail free” card she’ll be playing next week.)

Y: Madeline having Weitz in her pocket and Jane in, I’m assuming, Dominic’s trunk at this point really does turn what appears to be a win for the team into something that will definitely make things worse for them. Even without having captured Jane, just the fact that Weitz is under Madeline’s thumb would have ruined this win for the team. There’s no way she is spending the night in custody. And knowing Weitz, he will get her out without getting any dirt on his hands, but he will make things worse for the team, mostly Tasha, and make taking Madeline down in the future even harder.

But having Jane gives Madeline an extra advantage because she’ll be playing Kurt Weller too. We know Kurt is the most by-the-book agent out there, but we have seen him cover up some things in the past to protect people. He covered up for Mayfair and Daylight. He covered up the truth of what happened to Taylor. And now with his wife’s life on the line? We know Kurt will do anything to protect Jane. And at this point I’m really worried about just how far he will go and what it will do to him to protect her.

But back to Madeline for a minute. We’ve been talking a lot this season about how Madeline may be a little crazy and a little evil but all of this still doesn’t seem to be founded in anything. And that is still the case. Her crazy is getting crazier and her evil is getting more evil, but we still don’t know what her endgame is. And we’ve talked about how this has made her a much less compelling villain than Shepherd and Crawford ever were. And in comparing her to the other two, this episode also showed just how sloppy she is. She made a mess and left a trail and didn’t care to clean it up. Crawford and Shepherd were never like that. They were meticulous and careful and calculated, and the team were never close enough to catch them, or if they were, those two always were a step ahead or had another card up their sleeve.

I’m not sure where all of this Madeline stuff is going or if she’s meant to be this sloppy villain without something grounding her that’s based on a firm belief or goal or higher purpose. But at least the plots of Jane’s story and Tasha’s story are compelling and interesting enough as character-driven plots to keep this season just so good.

Our team is back together, and they even pull Boston back into the fold with them this week. What shape is our tangram in this week?

Y: This tangram of ours keeps shifting and changing and evolving, and it’s a great thing to see because it forces these characters themselves to evolve and change and adapt. Boston coming in every once in a while forces certain shifts in how the team works and the dynamics. Similarly when Keaton is there or Weitz pops by or less-frequently recurring characters like Dave. It’s great when characters are constantly forced to face changes and shifts in their comfort zones. But for at least one of our faves, this season has been altogether lacking of any comfort.

L: Poor Tasha. We’ve been so focused on Jane lately, with all that she’s going through, that it’s easy to overlook that Tasha is walking around with her own Madeline-induced case of PTSD. We can see how frayed around the edges she’s become when she’s tearing apart Madeline’s office. But what Tasha does have in her corner is Reade. He understands—maybe better than anyone else—what Tasha had to do to maintain her cover and how much it is eating away at her. He knows what’s on the line for her, and how desperately she needs to bring Madeline in. And he is willing to do just about whatever she says, whether it’s taking a sledgehammer to Madeline’s office or calling J.B. and pretending to hand over $10 million. Or diving instantly to the floor to avoid being gunned down. He might have told her he couldn’t trust her anymore, but as the saying goes, actions speak louder than words.

Y: Tasha’s storyline has been fantastic this year—minus the whole flakiness of the CIA hunting her down part—but the focus on Tasha’s psychological and emotional journey has been great regardless. For three seasons we’ve been waiting for Tasha to step out of the awesome sidekick position she’d found herself in and enjoy her moment in the spotlight, and what the writers have given her this season has been nothing short of brilliant. It’s true that it is sometimes overshadowed by Jane’s story arc but I think those two plot lines have been the driving force of the season, and thanks to the amazing writing and beyond phenomenal performances of both Audrey and Jaimie, this season has not disappointed on that front. Tasha’s finally getting her moment, and what a storyline it has been. It has torn Tasha apart and left her so bare and vulnerable, having to rebuild herself and her relationships and rediscover who she is and what she stands for. It’s been a struggle and a true hero’s journey and while she had to go some of it on her own, it is quite the relief that she’s finally welcomed people who love her back in her corner.

It’s the season of badass women having to rediscover themselves and reinvent themselves and allow themselves to break down and reach rock bottom, but nothing is more satisfying that watching them fight their way back and refuse to give in or give up.

L: Amen. I know we’ve said it many times before, but I really love how this show writes their female characters, and the actresses who portray them just keep knocking these scenes out of the park.

Which isn’t to say that the male characters are any less developed. We talk a lot about Rich’s amazing arc, and this week we see fan-favorite Boston return to the FBI to bicker with Rich (and also assist in the investigation, but really, we’re here for the excellent snark). Is it weird that I am rooting for Rich and Boston harder than I am for Reade and Tasha? Their relationship might not be exactly conventional, but it in a weird, dysfunctional way, it works for them. “I love us,” says Rich. And frankly, so do I! Close second to that relationship, though, is Rich’s friendship with Patterson. I love how she doesn’t hesitate to call him on his bad behavior. “I know you. You are your own worst enemy.” Everyone needs a friend like Patterson, who is willing to call you on your bullshit.

And really, this kind of friendship is what sets this team apart and makes them the incredibly effective unit they are. As Reade said at the end of season two, this job “gives us family.” Nothing illustrates how close this team is more than the moment when Kurt told them that Jane was meeting with Borden. He’s obviously hesitant to drop this bomb on them, especially Patterson. There’s a brief pause while they digest this news, but Patterson, Reade, and Tasha immediately voice their support for Jane—“whatever she needs”—without hesitation. Jane being able to cope with her past and function as a part of their team is more important to them then their own past hurts and grudges. And that moment shows us so beautifully how much this team cares about each other and look out for each other.

Honestly, I think my only disappointment with this episode is that Patterson doesn’t say, “Stardate” when she is dictating into her log. (You can’t tell me that there isn’t an outtake somewhere of Ashley saying that.)

Y: I’ve actually been thinking a lot about Patterson recently and how unlike previous seasons, this year she’s more in the background than we’re used to seeing her. At this point in previous seasons, Patterson would have had a few centric episodes and a long arcing storyline, whether it was with David in season one or with Borden in season two. But this year, she still hasn’t had that. But don’t get me wrong, she has not been any less incredible and any less the LeBron of the team. It’s just that she’s been quieter. And in many ways, it’s a good thing. For one thing it has allowed Tasha to be in the forefront. But also, after years of suffering so much and going through so much pain, it’s great to see at least one character has found some sort of peace and balance in their life. And this episode highlighted that perfectly when she learns that Jane has gone to see Borden. It showed that Patterson has found closure and moved on and is in a much better place in her life.

But that moment wasn’t important just for that. It also showed us how supportive Patterson has been this year of all her friends—and like L mentioned, her friendship with Rich has been an amazing thing. Rich’s journey from smug dark web shady person into reluctantly reformed good guy has been one of the most rewarding storylines on this show, and watching how Patterson has been there by his side as a supportive friend who won’t let him get away with his shit is just a testimony to her own development and character. None of these people would be here without her—and not just in the field.

What I want now is to see more Patterson and Tasha interaction, though. Those two were unbelievably close friends and right now… not so much and that sucks. I need those two to interact more—to talk and be as close as they once were!

When we last saw Jane, she was breaking down, and this week, she seems to have hit rock bottom. She’s nothing if not a fighter, but even badasses need a hand now and then. How does she get the help she needs?

L: Jane has been through a lot, and even through the worst of it, she still kept on swinging. This is the lowest we have ever seen her, which is really saying something for someone who found out she wiped her own memory to bring down a team that had become her best friends, killed her former fiancé after he shot her boss who died at her feet, spent three months being tortured by the CIA and eighteen months on the run from hitmen, tried to arrest both her brother and adoptive mother, found out her husband killed the daughter she didn’t know she’d had, and received a fatal diagnosis and almost died. Whew! The last time we saw Jane call in sick to work was, what, season one, after Oscar told her she’d done this to herself. And even then, she only made it half a day before she went back to work. So to find out that she’s been hiding out at home for several days is... unsettling, to say the least.

It’s a step in the right direction for her to admit that she can’t cope with all this on her own. We have always seen that Jane is the type of person who will keep struggling along on her own, rather than asking for help. Calling a therapist illustrates both how far she’s fallen, but also how far she’s come in her character arc to be able to reach out and ask for help when she needs it—which in turn makes it even more heartbreaking when two different therapists aren’t able to help her.

The two scenes with the therapists are funny but also sad. (My favorite moment in this episode might be while the second therapist was trying to get all the details straight, and Jane just looked at the camera and sighed. So much said with no words at all!) I love that the writers are able to laugh a little at the insanity of everything that they’ve put Jane through in four seasons. It is... a lot. But at the same time, my heart breaks for Jane, because it does seem too much for anyone, even our badass ninja warrior goddess, to be able to recover from.

It does make a twisted sort of sense that she would turn to Borden. He’s a doctor with training in psychiatry. He’s familiar with Jane’s case, with the extent of her memory loss, and also knew her as Remi. But I think it’s that last bit that is the most significant here. It’s not just that he knew her as Remi. Remi and Borden formed a bond from what they went through in Afghanistan. Both of them experienced significant losses there; Borden lost his wife, and Remi lost her whole unit. They were both lost and grieving and traumatized, so they joined together to help each other through and to do what they could to prevent other people from experiencing the pain they were going through.

The first time I watched this episode, it bothered me the way Jane bullied Borden into helping her. She is one of the people who put him in prison; he doesn’t owe her a damn thing. She demands that he help and runs roughshod over his objections, and honestly, you wouldn’t really expect good help from someone you treated that way, would you? But that’s viewing this only through the prism of their relationship as we viewed it from Jane’s perspective. These two have a history that predates all of that, and Jane remembers it all now. She knows what they went through together. And the more they talk, the more it becomes clear that Remi encouraged him and helped him find a new purpose when he was lost after his wife’s death. So asking him to do that for her now, to return the favor in essence, when she is the one who is so lost and adrift, doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

We are used to viewing Borden as a monster, but he was simply carrying out the task that Remi asked him to do. We see him as the person who betrayed the team, but all the while he was simply staying loyal to Remi. And he helps her today—without asking for anything for himself in return. When Kurt went to see Hirst, the first thing she did was ask what she was getting out of the deal. But Borden doesn’t do that. We’re so used to thinking of Borden as “the enemy” (I know I did, even in the review for the last episode!) that it seems odd to think of him as being selfless, but in these scenes, he is. As he says to Jane, “It feels good to be needed, doesn’t it?” The work that he and he wife did in Afghanistan was clearly needed, and Sandstorm needed him to play a role that no one else could. Even at the FBI, he was needed—both by Sandstorm and the FBI.

Pardon me, I need to go have a small existential crisis. First I started empathizing with Keaton. Now Borden. Where will this madness end?? What are these writers doing to me?!?!

It is clear that Borden does know Jane, by whatever name she is using, and he is willing to help her. He leads her, step by step, to the acknowledgement that she and Remi are in fact a single person. We saw a hint of this in 4.09, in Jane’s ZIP hallucination. But if I complained about that being a little too pat of a resolution for this schism, I take it back now, because this is the moment that first, small step was leading us toward. The way Borden leads her to this realization is so masterfully done. Like Dorothy in Oz, he couldn’t just tell her how to get home; Jane had to come to this conclusion on her own. “Doesn’t it feel better to talk about yourself as one person?” he asks once she gets there. Because you can’t apologize for something that someone else did; that’s meaningless. In order to truly atone, you first have to own whatever you did, to accept responsibility for your own actions. Then and only then can you say, “I’m sorry,” as Jane does, and have it actually mean something. She has to accept that she is Remi, which means that she alone is responsible for everything that Remi did. As painful as that it is, it frees her to apologize and opens the door to atonement.

And it is beautiful to see where this acceptance takes her: Once she accepts that she has always been one person, she can see that her motivation hasn’t really changed. As both a member of Sandstorm and as an FBI agent, she’s been trying to see that justice is done, that the innocent are protected and that the people who would exploit others for their own ends are punished. (And I have to wonder if, even though he was loyal to Sandstorm, did Borden, like Jane, get caught up in the satisfaction of the work the FBI was doing?) Remi’s motivation was the same as Jane’s, but Remi was manipulated by Shepherd (and I still think she needs to recognize this in order to fully forgive herself), whereas Jane was encouraged the follow a more legal path by the people she encountered at the FBI. Same person, different circumstances, leading to different outcomes.

And this also goes back to what we were talking about last week with regard to Shepherd—as evil as she might have been, the goal of the initial tattoos was always to unmask corruption and bring the perpetrators to justice. As this show points out so masterfully, the difference between the good guys and the bad guys isn’t as great as we’d like it to be. Sometimes it just depends on the perspective from which you are viewing the story. (In fiction, the best antagonists are always the ones who believe themselves to be the protagonist of the tale, which is one of the reasons that Shepherd was such a phenomenal villain. From her viewpoint, all of her actions were justified and necessary to stop the abuses she had witnessed.) In the hands of less skilled writers, showing us all the terrible things that Remi did might have made her seem unsympathetic and unrelatable and turned us against her. But these writers (and Jaimie Alexander) are so good: They took this character, gave her all of these dark, hidden depths, and then made us feel every bit of her agony and remorse. It’s a redemption arc of epic proportions, rewarding both Jane and the viewers for four years of torments.

The final message delivered is no less powerful: Instead of focusing on the whole beach, on the whole of Remi’s transgressions, Jane should just focus on the things she can do now. She cannot go back and change the past, but she can move forward, continue the work she’s begun with the FBI, stopping the Madelines (and the Shepherds and the Crawfords) of the world from hurting innocent people in pursuit of their own gains.

We’ve been rooting for Jane since the moment she climbed out that bag, and we will continue to root for her—hopefully for many seasons to come!

Y: Oh boy… what else can I add to this masterpiece right here? L’s killing it every week in the Jane section, isn’t she? I can just sit back read this and applaud and sit anxiously waiting for everyone to read it and join me in being in awe of L, her analysis of Jane and of Jane’s arc this season and of course of Jaimie’s incredible performance every single week. Honestly, this is all just a thing of beauty.

I loved that they brought back Borden for this episode, and I may have thrown my arms in the air and sighed “Finally!” because I have been waiting for them to get him involved since Jane first started showing symptoms. I mean he is the most glaringly obvious person that they should go to. He was obviously Sandstorm’s go-to guy when it came to the whole ZIP scheme, and if anyone should know anything about the medical consequences it should be him. But I guess it does make more sense to bring him in the psychological part of the consequences rather than the physical. He was singlehandedly, for some time, responsible for creating and morphing this nameless woman who came out of the bag into Jane Doe. A lot of what drives Jane, or at least what drove her in the first season or so, was a direct result of things that Borden had told her and convinced her of. In so many ways, Shepherd’s plan when it came to Borden’s role was just as manipulative as you’d expect it to be.

And here we are once again going back to just how deep-rooted the effect of Shepherd’s actions are in Jane’s life and in the heart of this show.

But back to Borden, I think it was brilliant how he was brought back and why, and the entire process of breaking Jane down. And at the same time, allowing Borden himself to be exposed revealed once again that while we might see him as a villain in our view of the story, he too was in many ways a victim and a person only trying to seek justice and do the right thing. It was absolutely heartbreaking listening to him and remembering everything he went through and realizing just how useless he feels right now. I agree with L that he too may have been slightly falling into the good things he was allowed to be a part of while at the FBI, and I cannot help but think back to the episode with young Maya and how incredible he was in that episode. A part of me wants to believe that that was the truest we saw Borden be—that if all the horrible things that happened in his life including being manipulated into being a terrorist—that is who Nigel Thornton really is. He is a man who genuinely cared about helping others, but he was just… it was just never meant to be… at least so far.

One last thing before I wrap up this very long section. I think we all need to take a moment to appreciate just how unbelievably amazing Ukweli and Jaimie were in every single second of every single one of their scenes together. There was nothing to fault in those scenes, not in the writing and not in their performances. I swear, if this were any other show, those two would be up for Emmys for just those scenes. I cannot stress it enough just how dedicated and phenomenal these actors are, and these two were just out of this world in their scenes. So if the rest of the world won’t appreciate it, then our little mighty fandom will do it, because dammit it’s been a long time since I’ve seen two actors take such scenes and knock them out of the park so brilliantly.

No matter what happens, Kurt Weller continues to be the most supportive husband ever. Is there an award for Best Husband, and if so, is there a limit for how many times in a row he can win?

Y: He deserves it. He deserves a thousand million times and then some.

And if subtlety has been the key to how Patterson’s story is being told this season, and how her acts of awesomeness are still so loud and yet so subtly written, then the same in some ways can be said about Kurt. As the core leads of the show, Kurt has been by far overshadowed by Jane—or at least his main arc has been—this year, but that does not take away anything from Kurt’s story or his arc. It is just as important and impressive as it has ever been. And the growth and development of his character has taken leaps forward even if he has not been the focus. And once again, that is excellent storytelling right there—to allow a character to take a step back but still manage to put them through an amazing arc and allow them to grow so much takes a lot of talent and really impressive writing.

What they are making Kurt go through with Jane and within her main arc is something that reaches to the core of who he is and what his character is all about. They’ve designed his arc this year and his journey to be woven into hers, and the apparent passiveness of it is very much his own struggle and his own monster that he needs to slay and overcome.

L: Oh man, yes! And it shows that you don’t have to give every single character a major crisis every season, soap-opera style. Characters can still grow and change in the course of supporting other characters through their crises (which is also, not coincidentally, how successful marriages work).

If we are worried about Jane’s behavior, just think about how freaked out her devoted husband must be. His fearless, badass wife is refusing not only to go out in the field (the one place where both he and she feel comfortable, as she told him in 1.05), she’s apparently not even willing to leave their apartment. As we talked about last week, this is an enemy Kurt can’t fight, and that must be almost as terrifying for Kurt as it for Jane.

My favorite thing about the moment where Kurt gives Jane the therapist’s card (which implies that he’s either met with the guy or stopped in at his office or something; he’s not just giving her a phone number handwritten on a post-it note) is the way he leaves it up to her. He doesn’t tell her that she needs therapy, he doesn’t schedule an appointment for her, he just hands her the card and leaves the ball in her court. It shows how much he respects her and shows how much confidence he has in her to do what she needs to do. (Although, yes, with true mental illness, sometimes the person who is struggling needs someone else to take the wheel for a little while to get back on course.) And yes, therapy doesn’t work if it’s not really the idea of the person getting therapy. But I still love the way Kurt doesn’t try to pressure or guilt her into going by telling her how worried he is. He just gives her the number and goes to work, and lets her decide what she wants to do.

But he doesn’t abandon her. He goes home to check up on her. And when she tells him she wants to see Borden, we don’t see him voice any objection (although we see his obvious discomfort with the idea when he tells the team). He is willing to do whatever it takes to help Jane become happy, healthy, and whole once again. And that right there is our ship (and our team): willing to do whatever it takes so that all of them come through okay in the end.

Which is why, as freaked out as the clips of Jane in the promo for the next episode make me, the clips of Kurt are somehow even worse, for this poor control freak who has already dug up the body of one person close to him in the course of this series. Excuse me, I need to go buy all the chocolate in a three-state radius before Friday...

And last, but never ever least, our favorite badass power couple has been through a lot, but the happily ever after they deserve still seems elusive. They’re still setting #relationshipgoals anyway, though, aren’t they?

L: We’ve already talked about how supportive Kurt was, first finding Jane a therapist, and then agreeing to her going to see Borden—and being the person to tell the team about it. I really loved that moment, because it made him a party to Jane’s decision, accepting any of the heat that might have resulted (I’m still so proud of our team that there wasn’t any). And it underscores that these two are a team: Jane may be the one with the past full of demons, but they are fighting them together.

If I’m honest, the only moment that really had me worried about them (aside from the last twenty seconds of this episode, which I am endeavoring to forget until April 5th) was the opening scene, when Kurt knocked on his own bedroom door and said “Good morning” to Jane, implying that he’s been, what, sleeping on the sofa? While she’s been holed up in the bedroom (but coming out long enough to brew a cup of coffee)? That might have alarmed me even more than Jane apparently not leaving their apartment for days.

Y: Okay, that is an absolutely random thing to pick up on, and I cannot stop laughing that this is what you took out of the episode. But yes, #relationshipgoals does seem to be Jeller’s thing this year, and dammit they are setting the bar high. Just when you think their unconditional support for each other has reached the maximum possible, they go and take it up a notch. They go from being fiercely supportive to adorably domestic, and then you take them out in the field and they kick ass like no one’s business, and when all is said and done, they make things worse by being all flirty and adorable over open comms.

How are we mere mortals supposed to deal with this? How are we expected to compete? This is just stupidly unfair at this point.

That’s all from us! What did you think of Borden’s return? On a scale of “one” to “the season two nuclear finale,” how freaked out are you by the promo for the next episode? Can we all get some group therapy to help us cope?? Or should we just panic quietly and eat more chocolate? Come talk to our ask box!

—Laura & Yas

[eddycurrents]

For the week of 17 June 2019

Quick Bits:

A Walk Through Hell #11 gives us a bit more insight into Shaw’s childhood and further fallout from the investigation, even as things seem to get nastier in the hell they’ve found themselves in. The fields of bones from Goran Sudžuka and Ive Svorcina are horrifying.

| Published by AfterShock

Age of X-Man: NextGen #5 is a bit of a gut punch for a final issue in this series. Some great art by Lucas Werneck and Jason Keith, though.

| Published by Marvel

Aquaman #49 concludes the “Mother Shark” two-parter as Arthur gets answers on who he is and how he died. This is a huge one. Kelly Sue DeConnick, Viktor Bogdanovic, Jonathan Glapion, Daniel Henriques, Ryan Winn, Sunny Gho, and Clayton Cowles do an incredible job with this story. Beautiful and heartbreaking. 

| Published by DC Comics

Assassin Nation #4 has the remaining assassins possibly figure out the entire plan as they take down another crime boss in this penultimate issue. Kyle Starks, Erica Henderson, and Deron Bennett have been delivering a highly entertaining series here with great art and a wicked sense of humour. Every book needs a Fuck Tarkington.

| Published by Image / Skybound

Barbarella/Dejah Thoris #4 is the end to what has been a great mini from Leah Williams,  Germán García, Addison Duke, and Crank! Very interesting use of time travel for this story.

| Published by Dynamite

Batman #73 sees Tom King, Mikel Janín, Jordie Bellaire, and Clayton Cowles reveal as to just how demented Thomas Wayne is in part four of “The Fall and the Fallen”. His motivation is understandable, but this is insane.

| Published by DC Comics

Black Badge #11 reveals a lot of the remaining secrets that we’ve guessed about previously as to what exactly is going on with the entire Black Badge organization. Maybe. I’m still expecting more twists from Matt Kindt, Tyler Jenkins, Hilary Jenkins, and Jim Campbell when the series ends next issue.

| Published by BOOM! Studios

Captain America #11 sees Steve’s jailbreak from the Myrmidon in earnest, while Sharon and the Daughters of Liberty run the operation. Beautiful artwork from Adam Kubert and Matt Milla.

| Published by Marvel

Daredevil #7 reminds us that Matt Murdock carries more guilt than an entire Catholic archdiocese. There’s a very compelling depth and complexity that Chip Zdarsky is bringing to this story, moving us away from the typical superheroics.

| Published by Marvel

Elephantmen 2261: The Pentalion Job #2 enacts the heist of the pentalions in the second part of this story from Richard Starkings and Alex Medellin. Hip Flask raises some interesting questions as all of the Bond actors seem to meet their end.

| Published by Comicraft

Excellence #2 is another excellent issue. Brandon Thomas, Khary Randolph, Emilio Lopez, and Deron Bennett are developing Spencer and his history, his family, and relation with the hierarchy of the Aegis in a very compelling way.

| Published by Image / Skybound

Fairlady #3 is the first issue that doesn’t really end “clean”. It’s still a single issue story, but the mystery remains and isn’t tidied up by the end. It’s another murder mystery, with an adventurer impersonating a Conan analogue. Like the previous issues, this is a great story from Brian Schirmer, Claudia Balboni, Shari Chankhamma, and David Bowman.

| Published by Image

Faithless #3 continues to be very strange. Very, very strange. As Faith’s roommate is murdered by what seems like a wolf from her phone, her relationship with Poppy, and then she has sex with Poppy’s father. As I said, strange. I’m still not entirely sure what Brian Azzarello, Maria Llovet, and AndWorld Design are trying to do with this story.

| Published by BOOM! Studios

Gideon Falls #14 begins playing with time along with the alternate realities as Burke lands in a reality “closer to the centre” and is given a purpose to find “the five”. Jeff Lemire, Andrea Sorrentino, Dave Stewart, and Steve Wands are doing some amazing work here.

| Published by Image

Guardians of the Galaxy #6 concludes “The Final Gauntlet” from Donny Cates, Geoff Shaw, David Curiel, and Cory Petit as the Guardians, all of the Guardians, take on Hela and the Black Order to try to prevent the resurrection of Thanos. It’s suitably epic.

| Published by Marvel

Hit-Girl: Season 2 #5 kicks off the “Hong Kong” arc from Daniel Way, Goran Parlov, Giada Marchisio, and Clem Robins. It may well be the arc with the most narration so far, but it doesn’t detract from the usual over-the-top violence and action in the start of this story of Mindy trying to take down the Liu Triad, with rather humorous results, it rather enhances it with some nice introspection.

| Published by Image

Justice League #26 is part one of “Apex Predator” from James Tynion IV, Javier Fernandez, Hi-Fi, and Tom Napolitano. The Justice League are pitching to the stars in order to stem the tide of Perpetua’s plans and the impending Doom brought on by the “Year of the Villain”. But everyone’s wondering if it’s just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

| Published by DC Comics

Last Stop on the Red Line #2 is still very strange. Paul Maybury, Sam Lotfi, John Rauch, and Adam Pruett are crafting an intriguing murder mystery here as Torres and her new partner continue to try to solve the crimes on the subways, but it’s told through a very fluid, stylized way where we’re not sure what’s real and what’s just a character’s perception. It’s a very neat way to tell a story.

| Published by Dark Horse

Little Bird #4 is maybe the most heartbreaking issue yet in this masterpiece from Darcy Van Poelgeest, Ian Bertram, Matt Hollingsworth, and Aditya Bidikar. There’s a lesson of survival, of children supplanting the parents, instilled here in the penultimate chapter as Little Bird and Gabriel have a bit of an understanding as siblings.

| Published by Image

Middlewest #8 attempts to pick up the pieces after Abel’s outburst and near destruction of the travelling circus. Also, more of the sheer monster that his father is. Gorgeous artwork from Jorge Corona and Jean-Francois Beaulieu.

| Published by Image

Miles Morales: Spider-Man #7 is a number of vignettes with Miles checking in with family and Bombshell before setting up the next arc. Wonderful use of guest artists with Ron Ackins & Dexter Vines, Alitha E. Martinez, and Vanesa Del Rey providing segments as well as regular artist Javier Garrón.

| Published by Marvel

Outpost Zero #10 explains all of the cats. It also gives a timeframe for the colony and a lot more questions as to why the old ship structure and tunnels were just completely abandoned by the colonists. Wonderful designs by Alexandre Tefenkgi.

| Published by Image / Skybound

Pearl #10 takes an interesting detour for a bit into “real life” as Pearl tries to hold down a “normal” job. Then we get back to the fallout of her chopping off Mr. Miike’s fingers. Absolutely stunning artwork from Michael Gaydos, with some very interesting layouts.

| Published by DC Comics / Jinxworld

Psi-Lords #1 is another great debut for Valiant. Fred Van Lente, Renato Guedes, and Dave Sharpe update one of the few Valiant properties that haven’t been brought back yet, with a bunch of seemingly newly activated psiots awakening in some kind of “Aztec sex dungeon”. The story keeps you off-balance from the beginning, adding a nice bit of mystery to what’s going on. And the artwork from Guedes is excellent.

| Published by Valiant

Rat Queens #16 begins the run by the new creative team of Ryan Ferrier, Priscilla Petraites, and Marco Lesko in earnest, following on the special. The Queens are essentially tearing themselves apart at this stage and nothing seems to be able to go right.

| Published by Image / Shadowline

Rumble #13 tackles the next Scourge Knight and Timah learns an interesting fact about the bundle of joy growing inside her. Great art as always from David Rubín and Dave Stewart.

| Published by Image

Savage Sword of Conan #6 is a single issue story from Meredith Finch, Luke Ross, Nolan Woodard, and Travis Lanham. It’s a captivating tale of revenge and Conan fighting through some insurmountable odds. Great art from Ross and Woodard.

| Published by Marvel

Usagi Yojimbo #1 begins a new era at IDW...in colour. Tom Luth joins Stan Sakai for the interiors in the first part of “Bunraku”. While it is a bit odd not to be black and white, this is still masterful storytelling, building on some traditional Japanese culture and providing an intriguing supernatural mystery. 

| Published by IDW

Warlord of Mars Attacks #1 begins another property crossover mini-series from Dynamite, this time mixing John Carter with the Mars Attacks aliens, from Jeff Parker, Dean Kotz, Omi Remalante, and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. Nice bits of humour.

| Published by Dynamite

Wolverine: Infinity Watch #5 concludes this mini from Gerry Duggan, Andy MacDonald, Jordie Bellaire, and Cory Petit. It’s been a very entertaining follow-up to Infinity Wars, but it’s also served as a kind of weird clean-up to continuity that Marvel otherwise seems to have abandoned.

| Published by Marvel

Other Highlights: American Carnage #8, Age of X-Man: The Amazing Nightcrawler #1, Battlestar Galactica Classic #5, Captain Marvel #7, Clue: Candlestick #2, Curse Words #22, Deadpool #14, Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor #9, Farmhand #9, Firefly #7, Go Go Power Rangers: Forever Rangers #1, Goddess Mode #6, Hellboy and the BPRD: The Beast of Vargu, Invisible Kingdom #4, James Bond 007 #8, Lab Raider #1, Livewire #7, Lucifer #9, Lumberjanes #63, Marvels Annotated #4, Mary Shelly: Monster Hunter #3, Monstress #23, Planet of the Nerds #3, Port of Earth #11, Red Sonja & Vampirella meet Betty & Veronica #2, Sabrina: The Teenage Witch #3, Shuri #9, Star Wars #67, Star Wars: Doctor Aphra #3, Star Wars: Tie Fighter #3, TMNT: Urban Legends #14, Teen Titans #31, Tony Stark: Iron Man #13, Trout: The Hollowest Knock #1, Uncanny X-Men #20, The Unstoppable Wasp #9, War of the Realms: Journey into Mystery #5, War of the Realms: Spider-Man & The League of the Realms #3, War of the Realms: War Scrolls #3, The Warning #8, X-Men: Grand Design - X-Tinction #2

Recommended Collections: Archie 1941, Dead Man Logan - Volume 1: Sins of the Father, High Heaven - Volume 1, Hillbilly - Volume 4: Red Eyed Witchery from Beyond, Giant Days - Volume 10, Hit-Girl - Volume 4, Low Road West, Lucifer - Volume 1: Infernal Comedy, Marvel Action: Spider-Man - Book 1, Prince of Cats, Rainbow Brite, Shadow Roads - Volume 1, Spookhouse - Volume 2, TMNT - Macroseries, Thor - Volume 2: Road to War of the Realms, Uncanny X-Men - Volume 1: Cyclops and Wolverine, Vampirella/Dejah Thoris, Winter Soldier: Second Chances, X-O Manowar - Volume 7: Hero

[the-walking-memelords]

Allegiances: Chapter 14

Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 |Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 15

Series is rated M

Word Count: 4464

Mitch has a plan to stop Lilly for good, and Ruby has a plan to raise morale.

Read it on Ao3!

Read it on Wattpad!

As soon as the pair re-entered the safety of the school walls they split off from each other, Louis headed to find Mitch somewhere in the admin building, leaving Clementine alone to her own devices.

Clementine took the moment she had to herself to survey the damage. The smell of smoke and ash still swirled through the air as piles of charred debris littered the ground. Bullet holes from the previous night’s war dug holes into the toppled picnic tables.

Clem wondered what they had done with the bodies. She couldn’t bring herself to enter that basement again to see if he was still there. Dead or alive she relished in never having to see his face again. Yonatan’s crumpled corpse would have no doubt been moved from the hallway by now, dumped for walker food somewhere outside the walls. Then, of course, there was…

Marlon.

The blood had long dried on the ground but even without touching it she felt as if it would never leave her skin. The stain of her plan going to hell. Her eyes wandered from the crimson pool to the mounds of dirt aligning the graveyard.

One grave stuck out from the others. Grass had grown over the previous graves yet the dirt of one laid loose and fresh. The quiet whines of Marlon’s loyal companion broke Clementine’s heart as Rosie rested her body on the mound. Clem reached her hand out to the dog, letting her give it a sniff before she gave her a scratch behind her ear.

“Thank you for saving me.” She said to the dog as she ran her fingers over her warm rust-coloured fur.

Rosie gave her hand a lick as if to say “You’re welcome.” before leaving Clem alone with the grave.

A ring of golden flowers hung around the simple cross, the carefully twisted stems no doubt Ruby’s handiwork.

This grave shouldn’t be needed.

Clementine slowly sank to her knees as the name carved in wood stared back at her.

“I’m sorry, Marlon.” Sorry didn't even begin to describe how she felt about everything that had happened.

“I should have stopped this. You shouldn’t have died.”

Nothing but an eerie silence filled the air as she sat in silence among the graves. She didn’t know if he could hear her, or if he was even anywhere, but she hoped that somehow, he could.

“This isn’t going to happen again. I’m going to bring everyone home.” AJ included.

“Your death won't be for nothing. I promise.”

---

Clementine’s feet carried her a little too anxiously to her dorm room. Turning the corner suddenly, she nearly collided Ruby as the short red-head peeked over the pile of pillows in her arms.

“Oh! Sorry I didn’t uh… didn't see you there.” She nervously laughed in her southern accent.

“What are those for?” Clementine pointed out the tightly clutched pillows, trying to remain casual.

“I was… thinking we could have a fun little hootenanny before we go rescue our friends. To raise spirits, y’know?” Ruby truly had a heart of gold. Even with her face still puffy from mourning her lost friend, she was still here going out of her way to make sure no one gave up hope.

“Tenn’s helping me set up the music room I was just grabbin’ these so we ain’t all just sittin’ on the floor.”

“That sound’s like a nice idea.” A moment to distract them from tomorrow.

“You can come if you want.” Ruby invited, giving Clem a warm smile.

“You don't have to if you don’t want to, but y’know.”

“...I’ll think about it.”

---

Clementine leaned against the door as she closed herself off inside her room.

A party, huh?

The emptiness of her dorm felt more inviting. Perhaps it was no longer her place to sit among them so casually. Curling up with her dusty pillow alone might save everyone the awkwardness of her acting like a wallflower, picking at the vines that poured in from the broken window, or spending her time just letting Rosie lay on her lap.

I doubt they’d really want me there.

Clem ran her hands through her hair as she flopped back on her bed, the old springs digging into her spine as she bounced slightly.

I just need to focus on tomorrow.

Tomorrow. The day the fight continued. They get their friends back and then for the kids of Ericson’s, the fight ends. Clementine couldn’t bring herself to include them in her own personal rescue attempt. Even if she succeeds, when all is said and done, when Lilly has gone and AJ is by her side, what would become of her? Would the others really be able to trust her again? Or would they decide it best for her to take her little boy and leave?

Clementine squeezed her eyes shut tight, too frustrated to think of the tomorrows yet to come. The days that don’t exist yet. The days she couldn’t touch. The only thing she really had? This moment.

Who better to remind her than the boy who came knocking at her door?

Three calm knocks caught the girl’s attention as she slowly sat up, rubbing her eyes.

“Come in.” She said, barely loud enough for him to hear her.

Louis quickly shut the door behind him when he entered. Clementine looked at the freckled boy expectantly as she stood.

“There’s uh… something I wanted to talk to you about but I wanted to wait until we got back.” The boy’s shoulders slouched as he leaned against the bookcase, arms folded and face deep in thought.

“You saved me last night. You shot that raider I was fighting… but you saw them dragging Violet away, too. She needed your help more than I did, but you still picked me. Why?”

Louis’ words became weaker as he spoke, his voice growing uncertain with himself. By the time the final word escaped his lips, it was barely above a whisper and the way he slouched made it look as if he was trying to cave in on himself.

“I mean, I wouldn’t have picked me. Hell, I don’t know anyone who would have picked me.” This time his words flew out in a frenzy, eyes glued to the floorboards.

Haven’t I made it obvious?

“You were in trouble, too. I saw it and I couldn’t risk Lilly getting her hands on you”

God only knows what she would have done to him.

“You’re too important to me, Louis.” Their eyes finally met.

“I can’t lose you.”

Louis left his spot against the bookcase, pacing over to the boarded up window. He looked longingly through the cracks at the outside world.

“I know I’m always teasing her, trying to get her to do that one eye roll she does -you know the one- the one where it’s like ‘You’re such a dumbass’ she has to do a full-bodied eye roll.” Louis wasn’t one to be afraid to say how he felt about the people he cared about.

“I do it because when I do manage to make her laugh… It’s worth it.”

“We’re going to bring her home, Louis.” Clementine knew Vi was smart enough to keep her head down.

“Aasim, Omar, Brody. We’ll bring them all home.”

“I hope so.” The fear in his voice was poorly hidden.

“I’m going to make this right, Louis.” She promised.

“We sneak on, get the others out, and then I go after AJ myself.”

“Wait, you’re going back?” Louis spun on his heel, shock mixed with horror swirled in his eyes.

“Clem they’ll kill you!”

“I don’t have a choice. I couldn’t live with myself if I just let him go.” Her nails bit into her arms.

So many people died to get us this far.

I can’t give up on him now, not while I’m so close.

“He’s my little boy. I’ve gone through hell to keep him alive, I’m not giving up now.”

My little Goofball.

“Well, you’re not doing it by yourself.” Louis took a step towards her, lightly grabbing her shoulders.

“I’ll help you save him. We can bring him home together.”

“I can’t ask you to do that for me.” This final battle was hers. It didn’t feel right for her to ask any more of her friends.

“If they caught you and didn’t just shoot you, they’d do things that would make you wish they would.”

“Which is exactly why I can’t let you go alone.” He refused to drop it.

“It’s exactly why you have to.” Clementine knew what to expect, how to be careful. Louis had no idea what he was getting himself into.

“I told you, I can’t lose you.”

“Well, I can’t lose you either.” Louis slowly closed the gap between them, his breath just brushing her lips as if debating if he should or not. Clementine could only stand frozen, waiting for his decision as she closed her eyes. Louis gave in, letting his lips crash into hers. Clementine’s fingers gripped his shoulders, bringing him as close as possible as she melted at his touch. The two only broke away when their breath ran out. Clem sank into the soft fur of his coat as he pulled her close. A soft smile refused to leave her face as she felt his lips press against her forehead.

“Glad you didn’t secretly hate me.” She chuckled, a warm feeling in both her heart and face.

“Thought about it, couldn’t do it.” He rested his chin on the top of her head.

“It felt way too damn wrong.”

“You’re still not coming with me.”

“Guess we’ll have to talk about it later then.”

Clementine let the topic rest for now, but she knew she couldn’t let him risk himself for this. She stepped back from him. She couldn’t help but match the smile on his goofy face.

Dork.

“So, shall we head out?” Louis smirked as he held his hand out to her.

“Ruby could probably use a hand putting the party together.”

Clementine bit her lip nervously, still feeling uncertain about her attendance.

“Are you sure everyone would want me there?” Her chest tightened with anxiety.

“I mean, I’m pretty sure Mitch is still pissed at me.”

“Mitch is always pissed about something.” He joked, waving his hand dramatically.

“If Mitch has a problem he’s just gonna have to deal with it. You’re one of us. Nothing’s changed.”

She couldn’t begin to tell him how much that meant to her. All Clementine wanted was a chance to fix what she had broken, but it seems she had underestimated how much they cared about her.

One of them

Part of their family.

Clementine slipped her hand into Louis’, intertwining their fingers.

“Let’s go then.”

---

Ruby and Tennessee busied themselves planning decorations for their little party idea. The redhead held her hands up, framing an area she wanted for a banner. The two of them greeted Clementine with warm smiles.

They’re really not angry.

“Need a hand?” Clem smiled back.

“Sure, these damn candles have been givin’ me trouble forever” Ruby furrowed her brows.

“I wanted to light this place up all pretty but I can’t decide on a colour.”

Clem examined the three dyed mason jars in front of her, something about the purple standing out to her from the red and green ones.

“Purple was my dad’s favourite colour, so how about this one.” She carefully held the glass jar in her hands, the calming purple brought back memories of the small garden her dad kept in the front yard. The glistening jar held the same hue as the tiny petals of the flowers she helped him plant.

“I heard purple’s the colour of royalty.” Ruby enthralled.

“And that describes us exactly not at all.” Louis piped up with a snide joke. He leaned an arm against a dust-covered gramophone as he flipped through the record selection.

“This old thing used to belong to the headmaster. Dug it out so I’m not stuck on piano duty all night.”

“Got any classical in that pile?”

“A woman after my own heart.”

Hell yeah.

“Hey, Clem” A small voice called from behind her. Tennessee greeted her kindly with a paint can hanging from his left hand.

“Wanna help me make the banner?”

“A banner?” Tenn nodded to her as he held up part of a long sheet of fabric.

“I was gonna paint something motivational on it.” He spread the rough sheet flat across the floor as Clementine kneeled down next to him.

She wasn’t one for arts and crafts, at least, not in recent years, but the feeling of the brush in her hand as she swirled the paint across the banner was freeing in a way.

We’re bringing them home.

It was a simple message, but a hopeful one.

“I think that’s all I need for now.” Ruby confirmed seeming pleased with the plan.

“By the way, Mitch and Willy wanted to talk to you up in the office. Said they had an idea to stop them raiders from coming back.”

---

The door to Marlon’s old office hung open upon her arrival. She stood hesitantly in the doorway, lightly knocking on the wooden frame as she peered inside.

“Come in.” Mitch barely looked up from his spot on the floor across from Willy, the two of them fiddling with a suspicious looking plastic jug. The floor was scattered with open books turned to various pages.

Knowing Mitch and Willy that thing’s another bomb.

“Ruby said you wanted to see me?” She stepped into the room but kept her distance from the probable explosive.

“We were tryna figure out how to stop those fuckers from coming back after we rescue the others, and Willy here came up with an idea that just might work.” Mitch smiled proudly as he ruffled the boy’s hair.

“We’re gonna blow up the boat!” Willy cheered.

“We stick this baby into the boiler and BOOM! No more raiders.”

I fucking knew it.

“I’m noticing an explosive trend going on at this school.” Clem smirked with her hands on her hips.

“You bet your ass there is.” Funny how Mitch’s hobby seemed to match his anarchist personality. A trait that certainly rubbed off on Wily.

“Bombs are epic, and this little dude is a goddamn prodigy.”

“Aw c’mon, I’m not little.” Willy’s objection only earned him a playful noogie from the older boy.

“You’re shorter than me, kid, that makes you little.”

Clementine giggled at the exchange. A lighthearted moment in the midst of all this careful planning.

“Hey Willy, how ‘bout you go see if Ruby needs any help.” The younger boy caught the older one’s hint, giving him a nod before exiting the office.

Clementine felt her nervousness grow as Mitch returned to his serious demeanour. He gazed at the floor as he crossed his arms, letting out a sigh.

“I’m sorry.” His face softened as he looked up at her.

“For y’know… knocking you out, and tying you up. Everything felt so damn hectic I didn’t know what else to do.”

“I lied to you all, and your friend died because of it.” Clementine wished she had had the strength to tell them sooner, no matter how much the lies rotted in her stomach, the truth remained frozen in her throat. Lilly exposing her was something she kicked herself for allowing to happen.

“You had every reason not to trust me.”

“That doesn’t make it feel any less shitty. You risked a lot to save us, I get that. You had your reasons for doing what you did. Hell, If I had to pick between a group of strangers and Willy...” He scratched the back of his neck as he paced, gazing through the shattered balcony doors.

“I’m mostly worried about Brody. Like, if you just mention the possibility of someone coming to attack us she has a panic attack. I doubt she’s holding up okay.”

“I’m still going after AJ once we get the others back.” She declared.

“I won’t involve any of you, but once I get him back… Can… can we both stay here at the school?” Her confidence drained as soon as she began to vocalize her question.

“What the hell kind of question is that? Of course you can.” Mitch chuckled.

“I’ll even take him on as another student.”

“You are not teaching my kid to make bombs.”

Mitch shrugged his shoulders before kneeling to pick up the mess of books.

The sound of music drifting through the halls caught their attention, signifying the party had started.

“Go on, I’ll catch up.” Mitch waved her away as he continued stacking books into his arms. Clementine gave him one last thank you before following the music to rejoin the others. She hadn’t even arrived to Ruby’s party yet her spirits we’re already feeling lifted.

---

The elegant tune of the classical record she’d chosen blared from the gramophone, decorating the air with a graceful melody.

She caught Louis spacing out next to his prized piano, eyes closed, nodding his head along with the tune. His lips parted in a lively grin as his dreads swung with his movements. He seemed at peace. Naturally, Clementine decided to interrupt him. She managed to move closer unnoticed to the point where she now stood only a foot away from him. She raised an eyebrow, before giving him a light tap on the tip of his nose. The startled boy jumped at the sudden touch, his eyes widening to meet her mischievous grin.

“The party just started and you’re already half asleep.” Clem smirked.

“Please, I was just resting my eyes.” He gazed around at their friends, smiles adorning the face of every kid. The soft light of the candles reflected in his eyes as it bathed the entire room a brilliant purple, mingling with the moonlight spilling inside.

Louis slipped his hand in hers as they wandered to around the room, their bodies slightly swaying along to the music as they walked. She glanced back over her shoulder at the “potato” carved into the piano. It wasn’t exactly small. Clementine didn’t care if the others noticed it. It was probably pretty obvious to the others at this point about how she and Louis felt about each other.

The two said nothing as they moved with each other, clasped hands swinging between them. Louis twisted to stand in front of her, slipping a hand around her waist. The moment felt so whimsical, like something from a fairytale her mother would read her before bed. The prince and the princess dancing together as one during a grand ball. Though royalty they were not, no fancy clothes or pristine ballrooms, this moment was one she’d remember as magical for a long time.

“Alright everyone, gather ‘round.” Ruby set a bunch of steaming mugs on the floor as the others assembled themselves sitting in a circle amongst the pillows.

“I got a game for us.”

Clementine slowly sniffed the dark contents of her cup. The sweet aroma brought a warm feeling in her chest.

Tea.

“What kind of game?” The first small sip scalded Clem’s tongue but she didn't mind as she enjoyed having a hot drink.

“A guessing game. Since we’re all goin’ on this crazy rescue mission tomorrow, you should know who we really are.” Ruby slapped the top of a box stuffed with folders. “These are our official Ericson’s psych evaluations and probationary reports! Basically, all the bad shit we did to get sent here.”

“And all the bad shit we kept doing that got us stuck here.” Louis added.

“I’ll make sure it’s someone you’ve actually met.” Ruby opened up the first file and cleared her throat.

“‘While otherwise a remarkable student, Blank continues to be plagued with fits of anger, uncontrollable cursing, and repeated altercations with the senior faculty…’”

Well, that really narrows it down.

“Come on that's like, all of you.” Clementine could name three off the top of her head that would fit that bill.

“Hey, I am the most mild-mannered troubled youth ever.” Louis nudged her playfully.

“That’s Ruby’s file!” Willy blurted out in a fit of laughter.

“Holy shit, seriously?” Ruby always seemed like the mother of the group. The sweet one who looked after everyone.

“Our sweet Ruby here was... Kinda a nightmare when she first showed up.” Louis laughed nervously.

“She used to chase the adults all around the school. They were terrified of her.” Mitch added

“It was badass.”

“That was a looong time ago.” the redhead laughed.

Holy shit.

Don’t underestimate the nice ones I guess.

She sat patiently as Ruby continued to flip through the box searching for another file. Her face slowly fell as she flipped on and on, looking for someone who was still with them.

“I… I hadn’t realized how many we’d lost…” Her fingers slowed as she let out a sad sigh.

“Remember that Justin guy?” Willy asked.

“And Therissa. And Jasper…” Tennessee continued naming their lost friends.

“That one girl with the coloured braces. And Joey. Maddie. Lamar…”

“Erin.” Louis’ sombre voice seemed to struggle to find volume.

“She had the braces.”

“Alex. Dewey. Trey. Stephanie.” Willy’s list seemed never-ending as the names continued.

“Holy crap, how many of us died?”

“Thirty-two.” Ruby’s number caused the kids to grow quiet as the feeling of loss hung over them.

All the friend’s they’ve lost.

So many kids, abandoned for no reason.

Ruby had scrolled all the way to the end of the alphabetical list when she carefully pulled out a file of someone gone, but hopefully not lost.

“Whose is it?” Clementine’s tone grew quiet.

“Violet’s.”

Vi…

“Should we read it?” Willy asked with hesitancy.

“I could tell you my story instead. What got me sent here, I mean.” Louis interrupted quickly, turning to Clem.

“Only if you want.”

Why Louis was sent away.

The look on his face told her it wasn’t a great story. Most likely his deepest, darkest secret. Clementine tried to guess in her mind what he could have done to be sent so far away from home. He wasn’t violent. He wasn’t mean. He was nice and sweet. What could he have done to deserve any of this?

“I was hoping you’d tell me one day.” She gave him an encouraging nod as he began to speak.

“So, my family was stupid rich. Parents gave me everything I wanted when I wanted it. Except for one thing: singing lessons. God, I begged my dad. Told him I wanted to be a real musician. But all he said was ‘You get to be happy, or you get to be rich, can't be both.’ I know now that he was just trying to teach me some dumb "dad" lesson... but I hated him for that. So I decided I teach him a lesson.” Louis bit hard on his lip as he paused.

“I thought, ‘I'll break up my parents' marriage. That'd hurt real bad, right?’ So I broke into my dad's credit card accounts and made all these purchases in his name. Did this for over a year. This is how rich we were: he never noticed that he was spending a fortune on a mistress that I'd made up for him. But I made sure my mom did. Sent her all the receipts for the hotel rooms, the jewelry... all of it. They had a fight all night long. He denied it. She wouldn't have it. I sat in a corner and cried to help it feel more real. When their divorce was final... I told them the truth. I said: ‘You get to be happy or you get to be rich. You don't get to be both.’”

Louis’ eyes became glassy as he choked out those final words. Clementine sat almost frozen in shock.

He did that to his parents?

Louis always seemed afraid of hurting the people close to him. Always making sure they smiled and laughed, even at his own expense. Clementine now knew why.

“You know, those two would've been happily married forever. But then I had to go be a vindictive fuckhead.” His face contorted in anger, but only at himself.

“I came here... the week after”

“I can tell you regret it.” She said sympathetically.

“They told us we were bad people, Clem.” His voice broke.

“They weren’t wrong.”

“That person you used to be, that’s not you anymore, Lou.” Clementine knew he was just a kid who made a mistake, no matter how bad that mistake may have been.

“You’ve always been nothing but kind to me, even when I didn’t deserve it. You’re a good person, and I believe that whole-heartedly.”

The smallest of smiles appeared on his lips as if to say “Thank you”

“I’m sorry. This was supposed to be fun.” Ruby packed away the box.

“I guess I’m not really a ‘game’ person.”

“You said it yourself, Clem should know who she’s heading into battle with.” Louis picked at a loose string in the rips of his jeans.

“Hey, Louis...” Tennessee spoke up from behind the pillow he was hugging.

“Do you remember when Minnie used to sing us ‘Don't Be Afraid’ when we all used to get scared?”

“Of course I do. I helped her compose it.”

“Could you maybe… play it for us? If Violet was here, she could sing the words. But…”  The scarred boy only grew more nervous.

“Yeah.” He said quickly.

“Yeah, I’d love to, Tenn.” His voice lacked enthusiasm but he moved towards his piano anyways.

Clementine saw him stare at their hearted initials for a moment before turning to the ivory keys. He ran his fingers lightly across the smooth buttons as he adjusted his position.

“This is for you, Minnie.”

The way he played was just as elegant as ever. Clem swayed from side to side as the notes filled the room A soft, gentle tune. A song written by a girl who once fought for these people, but now only worked against them. Surely it wasn’t too late for Minerva to come home. The Delta’s conditioning was brutal, but if Clementine could break free, so could Minnie. Right?

Soon the song faded out, the noise of the crickets outside filling the silence. Louis got up from his piano and rejoined the group, and picking up his mug.

“I think that deserves a toast.” He said, raising his cup into the air.

“To our last night alive!”

That’s encouraging.

“How about…” Clementine raised her own mug.

“To bringing everyone home!”

“Yeah… I like that one better.”

“To bringing everyone home!” The group all raised their forgotten cups, clinking them together as they drank its cooled contents.

To bringing everyone home.

[aesthetic-survivor-of-twd]

This season is so much harder especially when it comes to raising AJ. James doesn't want AJ to be a killer. That's somewhat hard to keep that type of promise with the times that they are in. I don't want him to become someone like the Governor or Negan but there will be times AJ will have to kill. There were times to Clem had to kill and sometimes we didn't have much control of that. James is too soft, like he already asks us not to kill walkers which could kill us! You get what I'm saying?

I get what you mean.

Honestly, the line between morals and survival is overall quite complex in TWDG. Between your actions affecting your stance with certain character as well as what action is most appropriate for the current situation.

I think the fear with AJ comes from the fact that unlike Clem he has no grasp of the past world’s morals.

So AJ killing people is a bit more worriesome than Clem because Clem still has that knowledge about what’s right and wrong. AJ doesn’t.

You’ll notice that AJ tends to just do whatever Clem says and doesn’t exactly understand what he is being taught.

Like the whole “atone” thing.

AJ knows what it means because Clem told him. But It seems like he doesn’t actually grasp the true meaning of it or the weight behind it - he is just repeating what Clem says.

Not to say that AJ is a psycho with no emotions towards people, of course not.

But it does show that he is a very impressionable kid that can easily be swayed into that territory if not careful.

There will be times AJ needs to kill, but it’s having to figure out what situations are the best time for that and knowing when to let him.

I think that at the age he currently is, it’s not wise to expose him too much to that just yet. Even if say for example, not killing Lilly ends up with James killed.

I guess it all boils down to timing and balance.

[agirlinhell-a]

munday meme: what's a plot/plots you wanna write that you've never written? what are your favorite hobbies? what are you favorite/least favorite foods? what's a plot that you will never touch? if you had to rp as a different character/characters, who would they be? what would be your irl fc as clem you would pick? if you could visit anywhere in the world for your birthday, where would it be?

what’s a plot/plots you wanna write that you’ve never written? 

I have an entire wishlist tag for this!! If I were to pick the ones I really crave for, it’d have to be:

Clementine’s travels with Omid and Christa in the two year timeskip after Lee’s death. I feel as if this transition is extremely important to Clementine’s character, as Omid and Christa took care of her far longer than Lee, Kenny or Jane - and arguably better - than any of them ever did. The moment Omid died, Clementine lost hope in the world again and her mentality becomes a lot more depressing.

The aftermath of Clementine’s exile from The New Frontier and being separated from AJ - from her last talk with Ava to her time alone and then in Prescott, and her dark time spent there. It’s all very much headcanon based, but this is where Clementine truly becomes her own person, this is where she truly grows fiercer, this is where she learns to fight back and become harder and stronger. This is her time when there is no one looking out for her, no one is there to watch her back, and all she has is herself. During her time in The New Frontier, she was a medic and supply runner, but then she steadily grows into one of the group’s fiercest fighters, with help from Ava, who teaches her how to fight and archery, morse code, parkour and survival tactics - Ava is a woman trained in the army, and Clementine took her teachings to heart. During her time in Prescott, Clementine descends into a much darker mentality and it’s possibly the darkest place where she’s ever been and she starts doing many morally questionable things. This is her transition from Season Two to A New Frontier. For a year, Prescott would be her home and it would shape her into someone much darker and demented beyond recognition. That sweet little girl that her parents had raised and Lee had protected was gone in that city, almost like she’d never existed. Whenever she walked into a bar, she could hear the hushed whispers of “it’s THAT girl,” “poor thing”, “didn’t she shoot a walker point blank in the face?”. No one knew her real name, as she never gave it out, so they resorted to naming her “Hellgirl” and Clementine relished in her new identity. She quickly found herself being a mythical figure - and even a bit of a celebrity - a girl of her stature having survived this far into the apocalypse.She learns how to ride a horse and ride a motorcycle in Prescott. She stole, murdered, drank, smoked, got high and gambled… in fact, she made a living out of it as a child mercenary. She was living in sin all at age twelve. She had managed to become quite the thief, as well, as she was light and quick on her feet. At one point, she even owned a bar and had hired wayward men and women to guard her.That girl is gone now, faded with time, yet her wildness is only barely concealed by a stonewalled composure.

Clementine and her time spent at Wellington - I feel as if this would be really sweet to see, something for her to look forward to, somewhere it’s safe for her and AJ… until it’s destroyed, at least.

Clementine finally arriving at the McCaroll Ranch and reuniting with AJ... and the possible events that might’ve occurred there.

Clem learning flower language from a book in Ericson’s greenhouse and giving flowers with their own respective meanings to people.

-Clementine dealing with her own mental health issues.

-Clementine becoming a pagan witch and a beginner in witchcraft.

-Ericson’s being haunted by the deaths of Marlon, Brody and Mitch… and who knows whoever… or whatever else lingers through the campus?

-GROUP THREADS!! MORE THAN TWO MUNS IN A THREAD!! PLEASE GIVE THEM BAC K I MISS THEM!

Card games with the Ericson’s squad!!

-Clementine experimenting with her sexual orientation.

-Clementine experimenting with her gender identity.

-Clementine discovering and learning more about her African heritage.

-threads where muses talk about things that confuse them.

-threads where muses talk about things that have hurt them in the past.

-threads where muses talk about their deepest fears.

-threads where muses talk about sexual and romantic orientation and relationships (past and present !!)

-THREADS WHERE MUSES HAVE DEEP CONVERSATIONS AND ARE VULNERABLE WITH EACH OTHER.

-Clem as a babysitter to Tenn, Willy and AJ.

-CLEMENTINE AS A MOTHER AND ACTUALLY SETTLING DOWN WITH SOMEONE AND BEING HAPPY.

-CLEM LIVING UNTIL SHE’S AN OLD LADY AND DYING PEACEFULLY IN HER BED SURROUNDED BY HER CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN AND FRIENDS.

-AU where the original concepts that were planned for Season Two and Season Three: A New Frontier happen to Clementine… and make her a much darker character. However, I must warn you that this AU would not be for the faint of heart and contains heavy, mature themes. It is arguably a lot worse than what she endures in canon, and that’s saying a lot. Clementine’s mind slowly becomes darker and demented the more she ages, she begins to look at the world in a nepotistic way, and she will do whatever it takes to survive, and she will brutally murder whoever stands in her way. Basically, this is a much darker version of Clementine and a lot of things in her canon change, i.e AJ is dead, Kenny is more or less Clementine’s enemy, etc.. This verse begins in Season Two and will continue onward from there. HERE IS THE LINK. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

-AU where Clementine is taken in and trained as a soldier of the Delta against her own will or otherwise.

-Modern AU scenarios!! Youtube Channels, vines, memes, shenanigans!!

-ROADTRIP AU!! BASED OFF OF THIS POST!! I JUST NEED THE SQUAD TO BE NORMAL KIDS FOR ONCE AND NOT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT BEING KIDNAPPED OR BEING DEVOURED BY WALKERS???? I WANT THEM TO BE HAPPY AND CAREFREE?? IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK????

-Interactions between Clementine, AJ, CJ and Clem’s pet tigress, Rani, based off of THIS POST. Honestly, Clementine and AJ are one hella awesome duo, but add that in with Omid and Christa’s child and oh, I dunno, A FUCKING GIANT TIGER is even BETTER. Also, CJ and AJ are a lot like brothers and their bond is just so wholesome. CJ’s witty and lighthearted and is one of the only people capable of calming AJ down - CJ is also more analytical and calmer than AJ is. I just want Rani to be feral, scary but also soft and sweet - she has an appetite for walkers and the living alike, and she’s not completely tamed, but she’s mostly cool with most humans, but harm Clementine or the two kids and she will rip you apart and eat you. Clementine found her in an abandoned zoo back in Season Two and has been taking care of her ever since... and now, Rani is HUGE. God forbid you trespass on her eating, that’s not a good time. Also, I just wanna see other muses’ reactions to this huge tiger that Clem easily pets and cuddles with.

-Clem becoming a Whisperer, perhaps with James and Charlie? I haven’t read the comics yet, but I know a bit of what happens and what the Whisperers are really like. It’d be really cool to see Clementine in this kind of scenario - but I don’t think she’d be the same girl we see in canon.

-Clem joining settlements from the comics (i.e Hilltop, Alexandria, the Commonwealth, etc.)

-CLEMENTINE IN HER PRIME AND BECOMING HEADMISTRESS OF ERICSON’S WHILE REBUILDING IT AND MAKING IT AN ACTUAL SCHOOL FOR SURVIVORS AND ALL THE WHILE DREAMING OF A BETTER WORLD - AN AGE WITHOUT WALKERS.

-Harry Potter AU!!

-Naruto AU!!

-ASOIAF/GOT AU's!!

...and a lot more, but those are the ones I really, really want!

what are your favorite hobbies? 

Hmmm.. reading, writing, making aesthetics and moodboards, daydreaming, listening to music and cuddling with my cats!

what are you favorite/least favorite foods? 

MMMMMM PIZZA ICECREAM APPLES PURPLE GRAPES AND COOKIES!! As for foods I don’t like, uhhhhhh… veggies???? Idk I’m not a fan, SOMEONE BEAT MY ASS

what’s a plot that you will never touch? 

Hmmm… honestly, I don’t think there’s any plots I will never refuse? I’m roleplaying a girl growing up in the apocalypse, after all, so I’m very willing to roleplay morally questionable topics and threads with dark themes? In fact, I encourage it! Please don’t ever hesitate to plot with me no matter how dark it is!!

if you had to rp as a different character/characters, who would they be? 

Uhhhh… hmmm, I have a lot of ideas from many different fandoms! If I were to pick a few muses, it’d be Daenerys Targaryen from ASOIAF, Nymeria, the Princess of Ny Sar who ended up ruling Dorne from ASOIAF, Lyanna Stark from ASOIAF, Uchiha Madara from the Naruto series, Terumi Mei from the Naruto series, and maybe Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter series.

what would be your irl fc as clem you would pick? 

At the moment, Amandla Stenberg, especially with her Modern AU’s! A lot of people pick Zendaya and I just… why??? She looks NOTHING like Clem??? I’m very picky with my IRL FC’s but it took a long while to pick an IRL fc. Thanks to all of Amandla’s pics with her hair in braids, cornrows and the likes, I just really want Clem with traditional African hairstyles??????  GIVE THAT BLACK SCORPIO QUEEN SOME COOL HAIRSTYLES!!

if you could visit anywhere in the world for your birthday, where would it be?

God… ANYWHERE? Preferably somewhere in Eastern Asia, Europe or in the Caribbean, because those places just sound so amazing and fantastic to me? Canada doesn’t have a lot of cool things in comparison to those countries imho so it’d be nice to be somewhere else. If we want to be REALLY specific, possibly Kyoto, Japan, Shanghai, China, West Palm Beach, Florida or Jaipur, India.

[isecubeart]

Your OCs that you just posted are so cute!! Can you tell us more about them? (Or lmk where I can find more info on their story?? I love them)

hell yes i can!! anon thank u, i owe u my life, i love talking about my oc's sldkfjsdf

however, they are very new lsdkfsdf. the one on the left is named Frankie n the one on the right is Clementine (post can be found here for those who missed it :O!). it's a vv supernatural/modern-ish fantasy sorta setting, so buckle up!!

frankie was raised in a family that kinda,, hated non-humans. putting it vv lightly, they were in charge of Dispatching anyone who was abnormal like that. she was raised to follow in the family footsteps n all that, but she still had like,, a vv strong moral code. to the point where she wasn't dumb like her family n was like "well what if we just heard them out instead of killing them??"

clementine's family was a bit less strict about that, but their motta was basically "we sell you potions, we don't care what you do with them after we get our money". they were business partners w frankie's family, who used the potions to help kill all these supernatural beings.

and then one day!! by happenstance !! vampire attacks clem >:O!! and frankie happens to be near by, rushes in to save her, unaware of their family connections n all that shit. she manages to get the angry vamp off clem, but gets bit n basically drained. clem was too injured from the struggle n dies. frankie "dies" n becomes a vamp :O. clem gets a vv nice grave, frankie gets... a rock. bc she "betrayed family honor".

but clem is a ghost now!! bc most ghosts in this world form when they have a traumatic death n that death was nothing if not traumatic slkdfsdf

n it's!! basically about them learning to not only trust each other after that, but trust the world. n realize that not everyone is as bad as their families said they were. eventually, Things Get Gay, they settle down comfortably. until we get to the main story with Elio (find him here!!). Elio is the son of a potion-maker frankie n clem had come to rely on, who gets attacked by a werewolf. they help raise him!!!

that's,, basically it? it's not vv fleshed out yet but I'm love them

[unsettlingshortstories]

The Third Bear

Jeff Vandermeer (2007)

It made its home in the deep forest near the village of Grommin, and all anyone ever saw of it, before the end, would be hard eyes and the dark barrel of its muzzle. The smell of piss and blood and shit and bubbles of saliva and half-eaten food. The villagers called it the Third Bear because they had killed two bears already that year. But, near the end, no one really thought of it as a bear, even though the name had stuck, changed by repetition and fear and slurring through blood-filled mouths to Theeber. Sometimes it even sounded like "seether" or "seabird."

The Third Bear came to the forest in mid-summer, and soon most anyone who used the forest trail, day or night, disappeared, carried off to the creature's lair. By the time even large convoys had traveled through, they would discover two or three of their number missing. A straggling horseman, his mount cantering along, just bloodstains and bits of skin sticking to the saddle. A cobbler gone but for a shredded, bloodied hat. A few of the richest villagers hired mercenaries as guards, but when even the strongest men died, silent and alone, the convoys dried up.

The village elder, a man named Horley, held a meeting to decide what to do. It was the end of summer by then. The meeting house had a chill to it, a stench of thick earth with a trace of blood and sweat curling through it. All five hundred villagers came to the meeting, from the few remaining merchants to the poorest beggar. Grommin had always been hard scrabble and tough winters, but it was also two hundred years old. It had survived the wars of barons and of kings, been razed twice, only to return.

"I can't bring my goods to market," one farmer said, rising in shadow from beneath the thatch. "I can't be sure I want to send my daughter to the pen to milk the goats."

Horley laughed, said, "It's worse than that. We can't bring in food from the other side. Not for sure. Not without losing men."

Horley had a sudden vision from months ahead, of winter, of ice gravelly with frozen blood. It made him shudder.

"What about those of us who live outside the village?" another farmer asked. "We need the pasture for grazing, but we have no protection."

Horley understood the problem; he had been one of those farmers, once. The village had a wall of thick logs surrounding it, to a height of ten feet. No real defense against an army, but more than enough to keep the wolves out. Beyond that perimeter lived the farmers and the hunters and the outcasts who could not work among others.

"You may have to pretend it is a time of war and live in the village and go out with a guard," Horley said. "We have plenty of able-bodied men, still."

"Is it the witch woman doing this?" Clem the blacksmith asked.

"No," Horley said. "I don't think it's the witch woman."

What Clem and some of the others thought of as a "witch woman," Horley thought of as a crazy person who knew some herbal remedies and lived in the woods because the villagers had driven her there, blaming her for an outbreak of sickness the year before.

"Why did it come?" a woman asked. "Why us?"

No one could answer, least of all Horley. As Horley stared at all of those hopeful, scared, troubled faces, he realized that not all of them yet knew they were stuck in a nightmare.

Clem was the village's strongest man, and after the meeting he volunteered to fight the beast. He had arms like most people's thighs. His skin was tough from years of being exposed to flame. With his full black beard he almost looked like a bear himself.

"I'll go, and I'll go willingly," he told Horley. "I've not met the beast I couldn't best. I'll squeeze the ‘a' out of him." And he laughed, for he had a passable sense of humor, although most chose to ignore it.

Horley looked into Clem's eyes and could not see even a speck of fear there. This worried Horley.

"Be careful, Clem," Horley said. And, in a whisper, as he hugged the man: "Instruct your son in anything he might need to know, before you leave. Make sure your wife has what she needs, too."

--

Fitted in chain mail, leathers, and a metal helmet, carrying an old sword some knight had once left in Grommin by mistake, Clem set forth in search of the Third Bear. The entire village came out to see him go. Clem was laughing and raising his sword and this lifted the spirits of those who saw him. Soon, everyone was celebrating as if the Third Bear had already been killed or defeated.

"Fools," Horley's wife Rebecca said as they watched the celebration with their two young sons.

Rebecca was younger than Horley by ten years and had come from a village far beyond the forest. Horley's first wife had died from a sickness that left red marks all over her body.

"Perhaps, but it's the happiest anyone's been for a month," Horley said. "Let them have these moments."

"All I can think of is that he's taking one of our best horses out into danger," Rebecca said.

"Would you rather he took a nag?" Horley said, but absent-mindedly. His thoughts were elsewhere.

The vision of winter would not leave him. Each time, it came back to Horley with greater strength, until he had trouble seeing the summer all around him.

--

Clem left the path almost immediately, wandered through the underbrush to the heart of the forest, where the trees grew so black and thick that the only glimmer of light came from the reflection of water on leaves. The smell in that place carried a hint of offal.

Clem had spent so much time beating things into shape that he had not developed a sense of fear, for he had never been beaten. But the smell in his nostrils did make him uneasy.

He wandered for some time in the deep growth, where the soft loam of moss muffled the sound of his passage. It became difficult to judge direction and distance. The unease became a knot in his chest as he clutched his sword ever tighter. He had killed many bears in his time, this was true, but he had never had to hunt a man-eater.

Eventually, in his circling, meandering trek, Clem came upon a hill with a cave inside. From within the cave, a green flame flickered. It beckoned like a lithe but crooked finger.

A lesser man might have turned back, but not Clem. He didn't have the sense to turn back.

Inside the cave, he found the Third Bear. Behind the Third Bear, arranged around the walls of the cave, it had displayed the heads of its victims. The heads had been painstakingly painted and mounted on stands. They were all in various stages of rot.

Many bodies lay stacked neatly in the back of the cave. All of them had been defiled in some way. Some of them had been mutilated. The wavery green light came from a candle the Third Bear had placed behind the bodies, to display its handiwork. The smell of blood was so thick that Clem had to put a hand over his mouth.

As Clem took it all in, the methodical nature of it, the fact that the Third Bear had not eaten any of its victims, he found something inside of him tearing and then breaking.

"I…," he said, and looked into the terrible eyes of the Third Bear. "I…."

Almost sadly, with a kind of ritual grace, the Third Bear pried Clem's sword from his fist, placed the weapon on a ledge, and then came back to stare at Clem once more.

Clem stood there, frozen, as the Third Bear disemboweled him.

--

The next day, Clem was found at the edge of the village, blood soaked and shit-spattered, legs gnawed away, but alive enough for awhile to, in shuddering lurches, tell those who found him what he had seen, just not coherent enough to tell them where.

Later, Horley would wish that he hadn't told them anything.

There was nothing left but fear in Clem's eyes by the time Horley questioned him. Horley didn't remember any of Clem's answers, had to be retold them later. He was trying to reconcile himself to looking down to stare into Clem's eyes.

"I'm cold, Horley," Clem said. "I can't feel anything. Is winter coming?"

"Should we bring his wife and son?" the farmer who had found Clem asked Horley at one point.

Horley just stared at him, aghast.

--

They buried Clem in the old graveyard, but the next week the Third Bear dug him up and stole his head. Apparently, the Third Bear had no use for heroes, except, possibly, as a pattern of heads.

Horley tried to keep the grave robbery and what Clem had said a secret, but it leaked out anyway. By the time most villagers of Grommin learned about it, the details had become more monstrous than anything in real life. Some said Clem had been kept alive for a week in the bear's lair, while it ate away at him. Others said Clem had had his spine ripped out of his body while he was still breathing. A few even said Clem had been buried alive by mistake and the Third Bear had heard him writhing in the dirt and come for him.

But one thing Horley knew that trumped every tall tale spreading through Grommin: the Third Bear hadn't had to keep Clem alive. Theeber hadn't had to place Clem, still breathing, at the edge of the village.

So Seether wasn't just a bear.

--

In the next week, four more people were killed, one on the outskirts of the village. Several villagers had risked leaving, and some of them had even made it through. But fear kept most of them in Grommin, locked into a kind of desperate fatalism or optimism that made their eyes hollow as they stared into some unknowable distance. Horley did his best to keep morale up, but even he experienced a sense of sinking.

"Is there more I can do?" he asked his wife in bed at night.

"Nothing," she said. "You are doing everything you can do."

"Should we just leave?"

"Where would we go? What would we do?"

Few who left ever returned with stories of success, it was true. There was war and plague and a thousand more dangers out there beyond the forest. They'd as likely become slaves or servants or simply die, one by one, out in the wider world.

Eventually, though, Horley sent a messenger to that wider world, to a far-distant baron to whom they paid fealty and a yearly amount of goods.

The messenger never came back. Nor did the baron send any men. Horley spent many nights awake, wondering if the messenger had gotten through and the baron just didn't care, or if Seether had killed the messenger.

"Maybe winter will bring good news," Rebecca said.

--

Over time, Grommin sent four or five of its strongest and most clever men and women to fight the Third Bear. Horley objected to this waste, but the villagers insisted that something must be done before winter, and those who went were unable to grasp the terrible velocity of the situation. For Horley, it seemed merely a form of taking one's own life, but his objections were overruled by the majority.

They never learned what happened to these people, but Horley saw them in his nightmares.

One, before the end, said to the Third Bear, "If you could see the children in the village, you would stop."

Another said, before fear clotted her windpipe, "We will give you all the food you need."

A third, even as he watched his intestines slide out of his body, said, "Surely there is something we can do to appease you?"

In Horley's dreams, the Third Bear said nothing. Its conversation was through its work, and Seether said what it wanted to say very eloquently in that regard.

--

By now, fall had descended on Grommin. The wind had become unpredictable and the leaves of trees had begun to yellow. A far-off burning smell laced the air. The farmers had begun to prepare for winter, laying in hay and slaughtering and smoking hogs and goats. Horley became more involved in these preparations than usual, driven by his vision of the coming winter. People noted the haste, the urgency, so unnatural in Horley, and to his dismay it sometimes made them panic rather than work harder.

With his wife's help, Horley convinced the farmers to contribute to a communal smoke house in the village. Ham, sausage, dried vegetables, onions, potatoes—they stored it all in Grommin now. Most of the outlying farmers realized that their future depended on the survival of the village.

Sometimes, when they opened the gates to let in another farmer and his mule-drawn cart of supplies, Horley would walk out a ways and stare into the forest. It seemed more unknowable than ever, gaunt and dark, as if diminished by the change of seasons.

Somewhere out there the Third Bear waited for them.

--

One day, the crisp cold of coming winter a lingering promise, Horley and several of the men from Grommin went looking for a farmer who had not come to the village for a month. The farmer's name was John and he had a wife, five children, and three men who worked for him. John's holdings were the largest outside the village, but he had been suffering because he could not bring his extra goods to market.

The farm was a half-hour's walk from Grommin. The whole way, Horley could feel a hurt in his chest, a kind of stab of premonition. Those with him held pitchforks and hammers and old spears, much of it as rust-colored as the leaves now strewn across the path.

They could smell the disaster before they saw it. It coated the air like oil.

On the outskirts of John's farm, they found three mule-pulled carts laden with food and supplies. Horley had never seen so much blood. It had pooled and thickened to cover a spreading area several feet in every direction. The mules had had their throats torn out and then they had been disemboweled. Their organs had been torn out and thrown onto the ground, as if Seether had been searching for something. Their eyes had been plucked from their sockets almost as an afterthought.

John—they thought it was John—sat in the front of the lead cart. The wheels of the cart were greased with blood. The head was missing, as was much of the meat from the body cavity. The hands still held the reins. The same was true for the other two carts. Three dead men holding reins to dead mules. Two dead men in the back of the carts. All five missing their heads. All five eviscerated.

One of Horley's protectors vomited into the grass. Another began to weep. "Jesus save us," a third man said, and kept saying it for many hours.

Horley found himself curiously unmoved. His hand and heart were steady.

He noted the brutal humor that had moved the Third Bear to carefully replace the reins in the men's hands. He noted the wild, savage abandon that had preceded that action. He noted, grimly, that most of the supplies in the carts had been ruined by the wealth of blood that covered them. But, for the most part, the idea of winter had so captured him that whatever came to him moment-by-moment could not compare to the crystalline nightmare of that interior vision.

Horley wondered if his was a form of madness as well.

"This is not the worst," he said to his men. "Not by far."

At the farm itself, they found the rest of the men and what was left of John's wife, but that is not what Horley had meant.

--

At this point, Horley felt he should go himself to find the Third Bear. It wasn't bravery that made him put on the leather jerkin and the metal shin guards. It wasn't from any sense of hope that he picked up the spear and put Clem's helmet on his head.

His wife found him there, ready to walk out the door of their home.

"You wouldn't come back," she told him.

"Better," he said. "Still."

"You're more important to us alive. Stronger men than you have tried to kill it."

"I must do something," Horley said. "Winter will be here soon and things will get worse."

"Then do something," Rebecca said, taking the spear from his hand. "But do something else."

--

The villagers of Grommin met the next day. There was less talking this time. As Horley looked out over them, he thought some of them seemed resigned, almost as if the Third Bear were a plague or some other force that could not be controlled or stopped by the hand of Man. In the days that followed, there would be a frenzy of action: traps set, torches lit, poisoned meat left in the forest, but none of it came to anything.

One old woman kept muttering about fate and the will of God.

"John was a good man," Horley told them. "He did not deserve his death. But I was there—I saw his wounds. He died from an animal attack. It may be a clever animal. It may be very clever. But it is still an animal. We should not fear it the way we fear it." Horley said this, even though he did not believe it.

"You should consult with the witch in the woods," Clem's son said.

Clem's son was a huge man of twenty years, and his word held weight, given the bravery of his father. Several people began to nod in agreement.

"Yes," said one. "Go to the witch. She might know what to do."

The witch in the woods is just a poor, addled woman, Horley thought, but could not say it.

"Just two months ago," Horley reminded them, "you were saying she might have made this happen."

"And if so, what of it? If she caused it, she can undo it. If not, perhaps she can help us."

This from one of the farmers displaced from outside the walls. Word of John's fate had spread quickly, and less than a handful of the bravest or most foolhardy had kept to their farms.

Rancor spread amongst the gathered villagers. Some wanted to take a party of men out to the witch, wherever she might live, and kill her. Others thought this folly—what if the Third Bear found them first?

Finally, Horley raised his hands to silence them.

"Enough! If you want me to go to the witch in the woods, I will go to her."

The relief on their faces, as he looked out at them—the relief that it was he who would take the risk and not them—it was like a balm that cleansed their worries, if only for the moment. Some fools were even smiling.

--

Later, Horley lay in bed with his wife. He held her tight, taking comfort in the warmth of her body.

"What can I do? What can I do, Rebecca? I'm scared."

"I know. I know you are. Do you think I'm not scared as well? But neither of us can show it or they will panic, and once they panic, Grommin is lost."

"But what do I do?"

"Go see the witch woman, my love. If you go to her, it will make them calmer. And you can tell them whatever you like about what she says."

"If the Third Bear doesn't kill me before I can find her."

If she isn't already dead.

--

In the deep woods, in a silence so profound that the ringing in his ears had become the roar of a river, Horley looked for the witch woman. He knew that she had been exiled to the southern part of the forest, and so he had started there and worked his way toward the center. What he was looking for, he did not know. A cottage? A tent? What he would do when he found her, Horley didn't know either. His spear, his incomplete armor—these things would not protect him if she truly was a witch.

He tried to keep the vision of the terrible winter in his head as he walked, because concentrating on that more distant fear removed the current fear.

"If not for me, the Third Bear might not be here," Horley had said to Rebecca before he left. It was Horley who had stopped them from burning the witch, had insisted only on exile.

"That's nonsense," Rebecca had replied. "Remember that she's just an old woman, living in the woods. Remember that she can do you no real harm."

It had been as if she'd read his thoughts. But now, breathing in the thick air of the forest, Horley felt less sure about the witch woman. It was true there had been sickness in the village until they had cast her out.

Horley tried to focus on the spring of loam beneath his boots, the clean, dark smell of bark and earth and air. After a time, he crossed a dirt-choked stream. As if this served as a dividing line, the forest became yet darker. The sounds of wrens and finches died away. Above, he could see the distant dark shapes of hawks in the treetops, and patches of light shining down that almost looked more like bog or marsh water, so disoriented had he become.

It was in this deep forest, that he found a door.

Horley had stopped to catch his breath after cresting a slight incline. Hands on his thighs, he looked up and there it stood: a door. In the middle of the forest. It was made of old oak and overgrown with moss and mushrooms, and yet it seemed to flicker like glass. A kind of light or brightness hurtled through the ground, through the dead leaves and worms and beetles, around the door. It was a subtle thing, and Horley half thought he was imagining it at first.

He straightened up, grip tightening on his spear.

The door stood by itself. Nothing human-made surrounded it, not even the slightest ruin of a wall.

Horley walked closer. The knob was made of brass or some other yellowing metal. He walked around the door. It stood firmly wedged into the ground. The back of the door was the same as the front.

Horley knew that if this was the entrance to the old woman's home, then she was indeed a witch. His hand remained steady, but his heart quickened and he thought furiously of winter, of icicles and bitter cold and snow falling slowly forever.

For several minutes, he circled the door, deciding what to do. For a minute more, he stood in front of the door, pondering.

A door always needs opening, he thought, finally.

He grasped the knob, and pushed—and the door opened.

--

Some events have their own sense of time and their own logic. Horley knew this just from the change of seasons every year. He knew this from the growing of the crops and the birthing of children. He knew it from the forest itself, and the cycles it went through that often seemed incomprehensible and yet had their own pattern, their own calendar. From the first thawed trickle of stream water in the spring to the last hopping frog in the fall, the world held a thousand mysteries. No man could hope to know the truth of them all.

When the door opened and he stood in a room very much like the room one might find in a woodman's cottage, with a fireplace and a rug and a shelf and pots and pans on the wood walls, and a rocking chair—when this happened, Horley decided in the time it took him to blink twice that he had no need for the why of it or the how of it, even. And this was, he realized later, the only reason he kept his wits about him.

The witch woman sat in the rocking chair. She looked older than Horley remembered, as if much more than a year had passed since he had last seen her. Seeming made of ash and soot, her black dress lay flat against her sagging skin. She was blind, eye sockets bare, but her wrinkled face strained to look at him anyway.

There was a buzzing sound.

"I remember you," she said. Her voice was croak and whisper both.

Her arms were mottled with age spots, her hands so thin and cruel-looking that they could have been talons. She gripped the arms of the rocking chair as if holding onto the world.

There was a buzzing sound. It came, Horley finally realized, from a halo of black hornets that circled the old woman's head, their wings beating so fast they could hardly be seen.

"Are you Hasghat, who used to live in Grommin?" Horley asked.

"I remember you," the witch woman said again.

"I am the elder of the village of Grommin."

The woman spat to the side. "Those that threw poor Hasghat out."

"They would have done much worse if I'd let them."

"They'd have burned me if they could. And all I knew then were a few charms, a few herbs. Just because I wasn't one of them. Just because I'd seen a bit of the world."

Hasghat was staring right at him and Horley knew that, eyes or no eyes, she could see him.

"It was wrong," Horley said.

"It was wrong," she said. "I had nothing to do with the sickness. Sickness comes from animals, from people's clothes. It clings to them and spreads through them."

"And yet you are a witch?"

Hasghat laughed, although it ended with coughing. "Because I have a hidden room? Because my door stands by itself?"

Horley grew impatient.

"Would you help us if you could? Would you help us if we let you return to the village?"

Hasghat straightened up in the chair and the halo of hornets disintegrated, then reformed. The wood in the fireplace popped and crackled. Horley felt a chill in the air.

"Help you? Return to the village?" She spoke as if chewing, her tongue a fat gray grub.

"A creature is attacking and killing us."

Hasghat laughed. When she laughed, Horley could see a strange double image in her face, a younger woman beneath the older.

"Is that so? What kind of creature?"

"We call it the Third Bear. I do not believe it is really a bear."

Hasghat doubled over in mirth. "Not really a bear? A bear that is not a bear?"

"We cannot seem to kill it. We thought that you might know how to defeat it."

"It stays to the forest," the witch woman said. "It stays to the forest and it is a bear but not a bear. It kills your people when they use the forest paths. It kills your people in the farms. It even sneaks into your graveyards and takes the heads of your dead. You are full of fear and panic. You cannot kill it, but it keeps murdering you in the most terrible of ways."

And that was winter, coming from her dry, stained lips.

"Do you know of it then?" Horley asked, his heart fast now from hope not fear.

"Ah yes, I know it," Hasghat said, nodding. "I know the Third Bear, Theeber, Seether. After all I brought it here."

The spear moved in Horley's hand and it would have driven itself deep into the woman's chest if Horley had let it.

"For revenge?" Horley asked. "Because we drove you out of the village?"

Hasghat nodded. "Unfair. It was unfair. You should not have done it."

You're right, Horley thought. I should have let them burn you.

"You're right," Horley said. "We should not have done it. But we have learned our lesson."

"I was once a woman of knowledge and learning," Hasghat said. "Once I had a real cottage in a village. Now I am old and the forest is cold and uncomfortable. All of this is illusion," and she gestured at the fireplace, at the walls of the cottage. "There is no cottage. No fireplace. No rocking chair. Right now, we are both dreaming beneath dead leaves among the worms and the beetles and the dirt. My back is sore and patterned by leaves. This is no place for someone as old as me."

"I'm sorry," Horley said. "You can come back to the village. You can live among us. We'll pay for your food. We'll give you a house to live in."

Hasghat frowned. "And some logs, I'll warrant. Some logs and some rope and some fire to go with it, too!"

Horley took off his helmet, stared into Hasghat eye sockets. "I'll promise you whatever you want. No harm will come to you. If you'll help us. A man has to realize when he's beaten, when he's done wrong. You can have whatever you want. On my honor."

Hasghat brushed at the hornets ringing her head. "Nothing is that easy."

"Isn't it?"

"I brought it from a place far distant. In my anger. I sat in the middle of the forest despairing and I called for it from across the miles, across the years. I never expected it would come to me."

"So you can send it back?"

Hasghat frowned, spat again, and shook her head. "No. I hardly remember how I called it. And some day it may even be my head it takes. Sometimes it is easier to summon something than to send it away."

"You cannot help us at all?"

"If I could, I might, but calling it weakened me. It is all I can do to survive. I dig for toads and eat them raw. I wander the woods searching for mushrooms. I talk to the deer and I talk to the squirrels. Sometimes the birds tell me things about where they've been. Someday I will die out here. All by myself. Completely mad."

Horley's frustration heightened. He could feel the calm he had managed to keep leaving him. The spear twitched and jerked in his hands. What if he killed her? Might that send the Third Bear back where it had come from?

"What can you tell me about the Third Bear? Can you tell me anything that might help me?"

Hasghat shrugged. "It acts as to its nature. And it is far from home, so it clings to ritual even more. Where it is from, it is no more or less bloodthirsty than any other creature. But this far from home, it appears more horrible than it is. It is merely making a pattern. When the pattern is finished, it will leave and go someplace else. Maybe the pattern will even help send it home."

"A pattern of heads."

"Yes. A pattern with heads."

"Do you know when it will be finished?"

"No."

"Do you know where it lives?"

"Yes. It lives here."

In his mind, he saw a hill. He saw a cave. He saw the Third Bear.

"Do you know anything else?"

"No."

Hasghat grinned up at him.

He drove the spear through her dry chest.

There was a sound like twigs breaking.

--

Horley woke covered in leaves, in the dirt, his body curled up next to the old woman. He jumped to his feet, picking up his spear. The old woman, dressed in a black dress and dirty shawl, was dreaming and mumbling in her sleep. Dead hornets had become entangled in her stringy hair. She clutched a dead toad in her left hand. A smell came from her, of rot, of shit.

There was no sign of the door. The forest was silent and dark.

Horley almost drove the spear into her chest again, but she was tiny, like a bird, and defenseless, and staring down at her he could not do it.

He looked around at the trees, at the fading light. It was time to accept that there was no reason to it, no why. It was time to get out, one way or another.

"A pattern of heads," he muttered to himself all the way home. "A pattern of heads."

--

Horley did not remember much about the meeting with the villagers upon his return. They wanted to hear about a powerful witch who could help or curse them, some force greater than themselves. Some glint of hope through the trees, a light in the dark. He could not give it to them. He told them the truth as much as he dared, but also hinted that the witch had told him how to defeat the Third Bear. Did it do much good? He didn't know. He could still see winter before them. He could still see blood. And they'd brought it on themselves. That was the part he didn't tell them. That a poor old woman with the ground for a bed and dead leaves for a blanket thought she had, through her anger, brought the Third Bear down upon them. Theeber. Seether.

"You must leave," he told Rebecca later. "Take a wagon. Take a mule. Load it with supplies. Don't let yourself be seen. Take our two sons. Bring that young man who helps chop firewood for us. If you can trust him."

Rebecca stiffened beside him. She was quiet for a very long time.

"Where will you be?" she asked.

Horley was forty-seven years old. He had lived in Grommin his entire life.

"I have one thing left to do, and then I will join you."

"I know you will, my love." Rebecca said, holding onto him tightly, running her hands across his body as if as blind as the old witch woman, remembering, remembering.

They both knew there was only one way Horley could be sure Rebecca and his sons made it out of the forest safely.

--

Horley started from the south, just up-wind from where Rebecca had set out along an old cart trail, and curled in toward the Third Bear's home. After a long trek, Horley came to a hill that might have been a cairn made by his ancestors. A stream flowed down it and puddled at his feet. The stream was red and carried with it gristle and bits of marrow. It smelled like black pudding frying. The blood mixed with the deep green of the moss and turned it purple. Horley watched the blood ripple at the edges of his boots for a moment, and then he slowly walked up the hill.

He'd been carelessly loud for a long time as he walked through the leaves. About this time, Rebecca would be more than half-way through the woods, he knew.

--

In the cave, surrounded by all that Clem had seen and more, Horley disturbed Theeber at his work. Horley's spear had long since slipped through numb fingers. He'd pulled off his helmet because it itched and because he was sweating so much. He'd had to rip his tunic and hold the cloth against his mouth.

Horley had not meant to have a conversation; he'd meant to try to kill the beast. But now that he was there, now that he saw, all he had left were words.

Horley's boot crunched against half-soggy bone. Theeber didn't flinch. Theeber already knew. Theeber kept licking the fluid out of the skull in his hairy hand.

Theeber did look a little like a bear. Horley could see that. But no bear was that tall or that wide or looked as much like a man as a beast.

The ring of heads lined every flat space in the cave, painted blue and green and yellow and red and white and black. Even in the extremity of his situation, Horley could not deny that there was something beautiful about the pattern.

"This painting," Horley began in a thin, stretched voice. "These heads. How many do you need?"

Theeber turned its bloodshot, carious gaze on Horley, body swiveling as if made of air, not muscle and bone.

"How do you know not to be afraid?" Horley asked. Shaking. Piss running down his leg. "Is it true you come from a long way away? Are you homesick?"

Somehow, not knowing the answers to so many questions made Horley's heart sore for the many other things he would never know, never understand.

Theeber approached. It stank of mud and offal and rain. It made a continual sound like the rumble of thunder mixed with a cat's purr. It had paws but it had thumbs.

Horley stared up into its eyes. The two of them stood there, silent, for a long moment. Horley trying with everything he had to read some comprehension, some understanding into that face. Those eyes, oddly gentle. The muzzle wet with carrion.

"We need you to leave. We need you to go somewhere else. Please."

Horley could see Hasghat's door in the forest in front of him. It was opening in a swirl of dead leaves. A light was coming from inside of it. A light from very, very far away.

Theeber held Horley against his chest. Horley could hear the beating of its mighty heart, as loud as the world. Rebecca and his sons would be almost past the forest by now.

Seether tore Horley's head from his body. Let the rest crumple to the dirt floor.

Horley's body lay there for a good long while.

--

Winter came—as brutal as it had ever been—and the Third Bear continued in its work. With Horley gone, the villagers became ever more listless. Some few disappeared into the forest and were never heard from again. Others feared the forest so much that they ate berries and branches at the outskirts of their homes and never hunted wild game. Their supplies gave out. Their skin became ever more pale and they stopped washing themselves. They believed the words of madmen and adopted strange customs. They stopped wearing clothes. They would have relations in the street. At some point, they lost sight of reason entirely and sacrificed virgins to the Third Bear, who took them as willingly as anyone else. They took to mutilating their bodies, thinking that this is what the third bear wanted them to do. Some few in whom reason persisted had to be held down and mutilated by others. A few cannibalized those who froze to death, and others who had not died almost wished they had. No relief came. The baron never brought his men.

Spring came, finally, and the streams thawed. The birds came back, the trees regained their leaves, and the frogs began to sing their mating songs. In the deep forest, an old wooden door lay half-buried in moss and dirt, leading nowhere, all light fading from it. And on an overgrown hill, there lay an empty cave with nothing but a few dead leaves and a few bones littering the dirt floor.

The Third Bear had finished its pattern and moved on, but for the remaining villagers he would always be there.

[we-are-richmond]

No Rest E2 C4

YA AT LAST MORE

 "CLEMENTINE! Clem come here!" I exclaimed loudly, shooting up from my spot. AJ woke up instantly from this reaction. Clementine looked at me in surprise, anger growing on her face.  "Gabe what are you doing?! Do you want to bring all the walkers to us?" She scolded, crossing her arms. I turned to her, gripping the chains in my hands. This was real, this was really in my hand!  "Look, look! These are dad's Clem..! I know they are! He could've left these here, for us!" I exclaimed, showing the dog tags to her. Clementine looked at me confused, looking over the dog tags. She carefully took them from my hands, looking it over. Her bright eyes glanced over the chains, sighing heavily.  "Gabe, maybe he just dropped it when we..."  "Please stop..! I know he's alive! My dad has to be alive, he had to have left this for us! Can't you see?! My dad is alive Clem, we have to get Javi! We need to show him this, then we can get out there and look for him!" I exclaimed.  "We were here for over a month. If there was any sign of him we would have found him! Gabe you know as well as I do that your dad is probably dead!" Clementine screamed out.  I stared at her wide eyed, tensing. AJ whined silently in my arms from this. She sighed heavily, walking over. Her hands wrapped over mine, only grab AJ. Tears brimmed the corners of my eyes as I stared at her, sniffling a bit. Clem kept her eyes away from me, shoving the gun into my arms. The dog tags were shoved into my hand as well. AJ looked between us confused, not knowing what to do.  Clementine walked forward, not speaking a word between the two of us. I stared at her with teary eyes, still clutching the gun.  "Clem..." I whined out, feeling a painful tightening in my chest. Why was she being like this..? I thought she was the one to have my back. She said she liked me right? Or...was she just pitying me.  She wants to leave me.  I shook me head quickly, shuddering. A shaky breathe escaped my lips.  I clenched my hand around the dog tags tightly, trying to compose myself the best I could. The chain felt as though it was burning my hand, causing me to look at it. A single tear dropped onto the tags. A whimper escaped my lips. He had to be a live. He just had to be alive. Dad was alive, I know he was. With a stiffled whimper, I slid the dog tags over my neck.  The two of us continued down the streets of Richmond, dead scattered amongst the streets. As we walked I couldn't help but glance at the bridge as we passed through the city. "Hold on dad..." I whispered, gripping the dog tags.  "Where could they could've gone..?" Clementine stopped, looking around the streets.  "Uncle Javi and Eleanor can't be that far right..?" I murmured, stepping up besides her.  She looked back at me with concern, bouncing AJ in her arms. "I...I don't know..." She sighed out, shaking her head.  I grimaced, biting my lip. Javi was still hurt, and Eleanor. God pregnant and missing an arm. There would be no way for them to fight back if they got surrounded. No, no I couldn't think that. They wouldn't have a chance, they'd die. No, everyone's fine. We're gonna get back together, me, dad, Javi. Clem and AJ can get back to Eleanor too. Right? Wrong. Right right.  "Excuse me! Excuse me, you three!" The two of us turned around. I watched in surprised as two people riding horses made their way to us. A woman and a man, the female looked like a american-caucasian, and a american male.  Clem looked at me, and I raised the riffle nodding. She grabbed her gun, looking at them sternly. "Back up." I stated, gripping the gun.  "Woah woah kids! We aren't here to hurt anyone, we were just doing some scavenging!" The man explained, raising his arms. Clem looked at them, seeing the full bags on the back of the horses. What was in them was the questiom.  The woman mean while took her bow off her back, glaring back at us. "Try us you little shits." She hissed out, pulling an arrow back.  The man glared at her, shaking her head. "Put that down Jade!" He exclaimed, "Their children."  "Children with guns aimed at  us Liam, ya dipshit!" Jade scowled, not tearing her venomous gaze away from us.  "You can't seriosuly expect us to just trust you off the bat either." Clem countered.  Liam shook his head, looking forward at us. "Jade put that damn bow down. These are kids still, I got morals here! Even with this world in hell, we ain't gonna kill some kids! Hell, we should take them with us." Liam stated.  Jade scolded at us, then her partner. Me and Clem looked at each other, not knowing what to say. Did this guy just say he wanted to take us to his camp? Could we even trust him? Heck, there was no way we trusted Jade. But maybe...there was chance dad got there, to them!  "At your camp, have new people come there often?" I questioned quickly. Clem looked at me surprised, and I returned a desperate look.  "We try to pick up survivors as much as we can. In this world we can't fight each other. Bandits and lurkers do enough of that." Liam stated.  I took a deep breathe, trying to relax myself. Dad could be there. He had to. "Clem, we have to go with them. The others might be there!" I exclaimed, looking at her. She bit her lip, looking at me. She prepared to open her mouth, when AJ let out a soft whine. Clem looked down, watching the small child rub his tummy.  Jade's expression somewhat softened at this. With an agitated huff, the woman put the bow on her back, looking at us. "At our camp...we got food for the little guy. Food for everyone. But if you think about coming, you better be ready to pull your own damn weight around. We don't give out hand outs." Jade hissed out.  The two of us looked at each other, before turning to the two horse riders. "We'll do our best."

[andya-j]

It made its home in the deep forest near the village of Grommin, and all anyone ever saw of it, before the end, would be hard eyes and the dark barrel of its muzzle. The smell of piss and blood and shit and bubbles of saliva and half-eaten food. The villagers called it the Third Bear because they had killed two bears already that year. But, near the end, no one really thought of it as a bear, even though the name had stuck, changed by repetition and fear and slurring through blood-filled mouths to Theeber. Sometimes it even sounded like "seether" or "seabird." The Third Bear came to the forest in mid-summer, and soon most anyone who used the forest trail, day or night, disappeared, carried off to the creature's lair. By the time even large convoys had traveled through, they would discover two or three of their number missing. A straggling horseman, his mount cantering along, just bloodstains and bits of skin sticking to the saddle. A cobbler gone but for a shredded, bloodied hat. A few of the richest villagers hired mercenaries as guards, but when even the strongest men died, silent and alone, the convoys dried up. The village elder, a man named Horley, held a meeting to decide what to do. It was the end of summer by then. The meeting house had a chill to it, a stench of thick earth with a trace of blood and sweat curling through it. All five hundred villagers came to the meeting, from the few remaining merchants to the poorest beggar. Grommin had always been hard scrabble and tough winters, but it was also two hundred years old. It had survived the wars of barons and of kings, been razed twice, only to return. "I can't bring my goods to market," one farmer said, rising in shadow from beneath the thatch. "I can't be sure I want to send my daughter to the pen to milk the goats." Horley laughed, said, "It's worse than that. We can't bring in food from the other side. Not for sure. Not without losing men." Horley had a sudden vision from months ahead, of winter, of ice gravelly with frozen blood. It made him shudder. "What about those of us who live outside the village?" another farmer asked. "We need the pasture for grazing, but we have no protection." Horley understood the problem; he had been one of those farmers, once. The village had a wall of thick logs surrounding it, to a height of ten feet. No real defense against an army, but more than enough to keep the wolves out. Beyond that perimeter lived the farmers and the hunters and the outcasts who could not work among others. "You may have to pretend it is a time of war and live in the village and go out with a guard," Horley said. "We have plenty of able-bodied men, still." "Is it the witch woman doing this?" Clem the blacksmith asked. "No," Horley said. "I don't think it's the witch woman." What Clem and some of the others thought of as a "witch woman," Horley thought of as a crazy person who knew some herbal remedies and lived in the woods because the villagers had driven her there, blaming her for an outbreak of sickness the year before. "Why did it come?" a woman asked. "Why us?" No one could answer, least of all Horley. As Horley stared at all of those hopeful, scared, troubled faces, he realized that not all of them yet knew they were stuck in a nightmare. Clem was the village's strongest man, and after the meeting he volunteered to fight the beast. He had arms like most people's thighs. His skin was tough from years of being exposed to flame. With his full black beard he almost looked like a bear himself. "I'll go, and I'll go willingly," he told Horley. "I've not met the beast I couldn't best. I'll squeeze the ‘a' out of him." And he laughed, for he had a passable sense of humor, although most chose to ignore it. Horley looked into Clem's eyes and could not see even a speck of fear there. This worried Horley. "Be careful, Clem," Horley said. And, in a whisper, as he hugged the man: "Instruct your son in anything he might need to know, before you leave. Make sure your wife has what she needs, too." Fitted in chain mail, leathers, and a metal helmet, carrying an old sword some knight had once left in Grommin by mistake, Clem set forth in search of the Third Bear. The entire village came out to see him go. Clem was laughing and raising his sword and this lifted the spirits of those who saw him. Soon, everyone was celebrating as if the Third Bear had already been killed or defeated. "Fools," Horley's wife Rebecca said as they watched the celebration with their two young sons. Rebecca was younger than Horley by ten years and had come from a village far beyond the forest. Horley's first wife had died from a sickness that left red marks all over her body. "Perhaps, but it's the happiest anyone's been for a month," Horley said. "Let them have these moments." "All I can think of is that he's taking one of our best horses out into danger," Rebecca said. "Would you rather he took a nag?" Horley said, but absent-mindedly. His thoughts were elsewhere. The vision of winter would not leave him. Each time, it came back to Horley with greater strength, until he had trouble seeing the summer all around him. Clem left the path almost immediately, wandered through the underbrush to the heart of the forest, where the trees grew so black and thick that the only glimmer of light came from the reflection of water on leaves. The smell in that place carried a hint of offal. Clem had spent so much time beating things into shape that he had not developed a sense of fear, for he had never been beaten. But the smell in his nostrils did make him uneasy. He wandered for some time in the deep growth, where the soft loam of moss muffled the sound of his passage. It became difficult to judge direction and distance. The unease became a knot in his chest as he clutched his sword ever tighter. He had killed many bears in his time, this was true, but he had never had to hunt a man-eater. Eventually, in his circling, meandering trek, Clem came upon a hill with a cave inside. From within the cave, a green flame flickered. It beckoned like a lithe but crooked finger. A lesser man might have turned back, but not Clem. He didn't have the sense to turn back. Inside the cave, he found the Third Bear. Behind the Third Bear, arranged around the walls of the cave, it had displayed the heads of its victims. The heads had been painstakingly painted and mounted on stands. They were all in v arious stages of rot. Many bodies lay stacked neatly in the back of the cave. All of them had been defiled in some way. Some of them had been mutilated. The wavery green light came from a candle the Third Bear had placed behind the bodies, to display its handiwork. The smell of blood was so thick that Clem had to put a hand over his mouth. As Clem took it all in, the methodical nature of it, the fact that the Third Bear had not eaten any of its victims, he found something inside of him te aring and then breaking. "I…," he said, and looked into the terrible eyes of the Third Bear. "I…." Almost sadly, with a kind of ritual grace, the Third Bear pried Clem's sword from his fist, placed the weapon on a ledge, and then came back to stare at Clem once more. Clem stood there, frozen, as the Third Bear disemboweled him. The next day, Clem was found at the edge of the village, blood soaked and shit-spattered, legs gnawed away, but alive enough for awhile to, in shuddering lurches, tell those who found him what he had seen, just not coherent enough to tell them where. Later, Horley would wish that he hadn't told them anything. There was nothing left but fear in Clem's eyes by the time Horley questioned him. Horley didn't remember any of Clem's answers, had to be retold them later. He was trying to reconcile himself to looking down to stare into Clem's eyes. "I'm cold, Horley," Clem said. "I can't feel anything. Is winter coming?" "Should we bring his wife and son?" the farmer who had found Clem asked Horley at one point. Horley just stared at him, aghast. They buried Clem in the old graveyard, but the next week the Third Bear dug him up and stole his head. Apparently, the Third Bear had no use for heroes, except, possibly, as a pattern of heads. Horley tried to keep the grave robbery and what Clem had said a secret, but it leaked out anyway. By the time most villagers of Grommin learned about it, the details had become more monstrous than anything in real life. Some said Clem had been kept alive for a week in the bear's lair, while it ate away at him. Others said Clem had had his spine ripped out of his body while he was still breathing. A few even said Clem had been buried alive by mistake and the Third Bear had heard him writhing in the dirt and come for him. But one thing Horley knew that trumped every tall tale spreading through Grommin: the Third Bear hadn't had to keep Clem alive. Theeber hadn't had to place Clem, still breathing, at the edge of the village. So Seether wasn't just a bear. In the next week, four more people were killed, one on the outskirts of the village. Several villagers had risked leaving, and some of them had even made it through. But fear kept most of them in Grommin, locked into a kind of desperate fatalism or optimism that made their eyes hollow as they stared into some unknowable distance. Horley did his best to keep morale up, but even he experienced a sense of sinking. "Is there more I can do?" he asked his wife in bed at night. "Nothing," she said. "You are doing everything you can do." "Should we just leave?" "Where would we go? What would we do?" Few who left ever returned with stories of success, it was true. There was war and plague and a thousand more dangers out there beyond the forest. They'd as likely become slaves or servants or simply die, one by one, out in the wider world. Eventually, though, Horley sent a messenger to that wider world, to a far-distant baron to whom they paid fealty and a yearly amount of goods. The messenger never came back. Nor did the baron send any men. Horley spent many nights awake, wondering if the messenger had gotten through and the baron just didn't care, or if Seether had killed the messenger. "Maybe winter will bring good news," Rebecca said. Over time, Grommin sent four or five of its strongest and most clever men and women to fight the Third Bear. Horley objected to this waste, but the villagers insisted that something must be done before winter, and those who went were unable to grasp the terrible velocity of the situation. For Horley, it seemed merely a form of taking one's own life, but his objections were overruled by the majority. They never learned what happened to these people, but Horley saw them in his nightmares. One, before the end, said to the Third Bear, "If you could see the children in the village, you would stop." Another said, before fear clotted her windpipe, "We will give you all the food you need." A third, even as he watched his intestines slide out of his body, said, "Surely there is something we can do to appease you?" In Horley's dreams, the Third Bear said nothing. Its conversation was through its work, and Seether said what it wanted to say very eloquently in that regard. By now, fall had descended on Grommin. The wind had become unpredictable and the leaves of trees had begun to yellow. A far-off burning smell laced the air. The farmers had begun to prepare for winter, laying in hay and slaughtering and smoking hogs and goats. Horley became more involved in these preparations than usual, driven by his vision of the coming winter. People noted the haste, the urgency, so unnatural in Horley, and to his dismay it sometimes made them panic rather than work harder. With his wife's help, Horley convinced the farmers to contribute to a communal smoke house in the village. Ham, sausage, dried vegetables, onions, potatoes—they stored it all in Grommin now. Most of the outlying farmers realized that their future depended on the survival of the village. Sometimes, when they opened the gates to let in another farmer and his mule-drawn cart of supplies, Horley would walk out a ways and stare into the forest. It seemed more unknowable than ever, gaunt and dark, as if diminished by the change of seasons. Somewhere out there the Third Bear waited for them. One day, the crisp cold of coming winter a lingering promise, Horley and several of the men from Grommin went looking for a farmer who had not come to the village for a month. The farmer's name was John and he had a wife, five children, and three men who worked for him. John's holdings were the largest outside the village, but he had been suffering because he could not bring his extra goods to market. The farm was a half-hour's walk from Grommin. The whole way, Horley could feel a hurt in his chest, a kind of stab of premonition. Those with him held pitchforks and hammers and old spears, much of it as rust-colored as the leaves now strewn across the path. They could smell the disaster before they saw it. It coated the air like oil. On the outskirts of John's farm, they found three mule-pulled carts laden with food and supplies. Horley had never seen so much blood. It had pooled and thickened to cover a spreading area several feet in every direction. The mules had had their throats torn out and then they had been disemboweled. Their organs had been torn out and thrown onto the ground, as if Seether had been searching for something. Their eyes had been plucked from their sockets almost as an afterthought. John—they thought it was John—sat in the front of the lead cart. The wheels of the cart were greased with blood. The head was missing, as was much of the meat from the body cavity. The hands still held the reins. The same was true for the other two carts. Three dead men holding reins to dead mules. Two dead men in the back of the carts. All five missing their heads. All five eviscerated. One of Horley's protectors vomited into the grass. Another began to weep. "Jesus save us," a third man said, and kept saying it for many hours. Horley found himself curiously unmoved. His hand and heart were steady. He noted the brutal humor that had moved the Third Bear to carefully replace the reins in the men's hands. He noted the wild, savage abandon that had preceded that action. He noted, grimly, that most of the supplies in the carts had been ruined by the wealth of blood that covered them. But, for the most part, the idea of winter had so captured him that whatever came to him moment-by-moment could not compare to the crystalline nightmare of that interior vision. Horley wondered if his was a form of madness as well. "This is not the worst," he said to his men. "Not by far." At the farm itself, they found the rest of the men and what was left of John's wife, but that is not what Horley had meant. At this point, Horley felt he should go himself to find the Third Bear. It wasn't bravery that made him put on the leather jerkin and the metal shin guards. It wasn't from any sense of hope that he picked up the spear and put Clem's helmet on his head. His wife found him there, ready to walk out the door of their home. "You wouldn't come back," she told him. "Better," he said. "Still." "You're more important to us alive. Stronger men than you have tried to kill it." "I must do something," Horley said. "Winter will be here soon and things will get worse." "Then do something," Rebecca said, taking the spear from his hand. "But do something else." The villagers of Grommin met the next day. There was less talking this time. As Horley looked out over them, he thought some of them seemed resigned, almost as if the Third Bear were a plague or some other force that could not be controlled or stopped by the hand of Man. In the days that followed, there would be a frenzy of action: traps set, torches lit, poisoned meat left in the forest, but none of it came to anything. One old woman kept muttering about fate and the will of God. "John was a good man," Horley told them. "He did not deserve his death. But I was there—I saw his wounds. He died from an animal attack. It may be a clever animal. It may be very clever. But it is still an animal. We should not fear it the way we fear it." Horley said this, even though he did not believe it. "You should consult with the witch in the woods," Clem's son said. Clem's son was a huge man of twenty years, and his word held weight, given the bravery of his father. Several people began to nod in agreement. "Yes," said one. "Go to the witch. She might know what to do." The witch in the woods is just a poor, addled woman, Horley thought, but could not say it. "Just two months ago," Horley reminded them, "you were saying she might have made this happen." "And if so, what of it? If she caused it, she can undo it. If not, perhaps she can help us." This from one of the farmers displaced from outside the walls. Word of John's fate had spread quickly, and less than a handful of the bravest or most foolhardy had kept to their farms. Rancor spread amongst the gathered villagers. Some wanted to take a party of men out to the witch, wherever she might live, and kill her. Others thought this folly—what if the Third Bear found them first? Finally, Horley raised his hands to silence them. "Enough! If you want me to go to the witch in the woods, I will go to her." The relief on their faces, as he looked out at them—the relief that it was he who would take the risk and not them—it was like a balm that cleansed their worries, if only for the moment. Some fools were even smiling. Later, Horley lay in bed with his wife. He held her tight, taking comfort in the warmth of her body. "What can I do? What can I do, Rebecca? I'm scared." "I know. I know you are. Do you think I'm not scared as well? But neither of us can show it or they will panic, and once they panic, Grommin is lost." "But what do I do?" "Go see the witch woman, my love. If you go to her, it will make them calmer. And you can tell them whatever you like about what she says." "If the Third Bear doesn't kill me before I can find her." If she isn't already dead. In the deep woods, in a silence so profound that the ringing in his ears had become the roar of a river, Horley looked for the witch woman. He knew that she had been exiled to the southern part of the forest, and so he had started there and worked his way toward the center. What he was looking for, he did not know. A cottage? A tent? What he would do when he found her, Horley didn't know either. His spear, his incomplete armor—these things would not protect him if she truly was a witch. He tried to keep the vision of the terrible winter in his head as he walked, because concentrating on that more distant fear removed the current fear. "If not for me, the Third Bear might not be here," Horley had said to Rebecca before he left. It was Horley who had stopped them from burning the witch, had insisted only on exile. "That's nonsense," Rebecca had replied. "Remember that she's just an old woman, living in the woods. Remember that she can do you no real harm." It had been as if she'd read his thoughts. But now, breathing in the thick air of the forest, Horley felt less sure about the witch woman. It was true there had been sickness in the village until they had cast her out. Horley tried to focus on the spring of loam beneath his boots, the clean, dark smell of bark and earth and air. After a time, he crossed a dirt-choked stream. As if this served as a dividing line, the forest became yet darker. The sounds of wrens and finches died away. Above, he could see the distant dark shapes of hawks in the treetops, and patches of light shining down that almost looked more like bog or marsh water, so disoriented had he become. It was in this deep forest, that he found a door. Horley had stopped to catch his breath after cresting a slight incline. Hands on his thighs, he looked up and there it stood: a door. In the middle of the forest. It was made of old oak and overgrown with moss and mushrooms, and yet it seemed to flicker like glass. A kind of light or brightness hurtled through the ground, through the dead leaves and worms and beetles, around the door. It was a subtle thing, and Horley half thought he was imagining it at first. He straightened up, grip tightening on his spear. The door stood by itself. Nothing human-made surrounded it, not even the slightest ruin of a wall. Horley walked closer. The knob was made of brass or some other yellowing metal. He walked around the door. It stood firmly wedged into the ground. The back of the door was the same as the front. Horley knew that if this was the entrance to the old woman's home, then she was indeed a witch. His hand remained steady, but his heart quickened and he thought furiously of winter, of icicles and bitter cold and snow falling slowly forever. For several minutes, he circled the door, deciding what to do. For a minute more, he stood in front of the door, pondering. A door always needs opening, he thought, finally. He grasped the knob, and pushed—and the door opened. Some events have their own sense of time and their own logic. Horley knew this just from the change of seasons every year. He knew this from the growing of the crops and the birthing of children. He knew it from the forest itself, and the cycles it went through that often seemed incomprehensible and yet had their own pattern, their own calendar. From the first thawed trickle of stream water in the spring to the last hopping frog in the fall, the world held a thousand mysteries. No man could hope to know the truth of them all. When the door opened and he stood in a room very much like the room one might find in a woodman's cottage, with a fireplace and a rug and a shelf and pots and pans on the wood walls, and a rocking chair—when this happened, Horley decided in the time it took him to blink twice that he had no need for the why of it or the how of it, even. And this was, he realized later, the only reason he kept his wits about him. The witch woman sat in the rocking chair. She looked older than Horley remembered, as if much more than a year had passed since he had last seen her. Seeming made of ash and soot, her black dress lay flat against her sagging skin. She was blind, eye sockets bare, but her wrinkled face strained to look at him anyway. There was a buzzing sound. "I remember you," she said. Her voice was croak and whisper both. Her arms were mottled with age spots, her hands so thin and cruel-looking that they could have been talons. She gripped the arms of the rocking chair as if holding onto the world. There was a buzzing sound. It came, Horley finally realized, from a halo of black hornets that circled the old woman's head, their wings beating so fast they could hardly be seen. "Are you Hasghat, who used to live in Grommin?" Horley asked. "I remember you," the witch woman said again. "I am the elder of the village of Grommin." The woman spat to the side. "Those that threw poor Hasghat out." "They would have done much worse if I'd let them." "They'd have burned me if they could. And all I knew then were a few charms, a few herbs. Just because I wasn't one of them. Just because I'd seen a bit of the world." Hasghat was staring right at him and Horley knew that, eyes or no eyes, she could see him. "It was wrong," Horley said. "It was wrong," she said. "I had nothing to do with the sickness. Sickness comes from animals, from people's clothes. It clings to them and spreads through them." "And yet you are a witch?" Hasghat laughed, although it ended with coughing. "Because I have a hidden room? Because my door stands by itself?" Horley grew impatient. "Would you help us if you could? Would you help us if we let you return to the village?" Hasghat straightened up in the chair and the halo of hornets disintegrated, then reformed. The wood in the fireplace popped and crackled. Horley felt a chill in the air. "Help you? Return to the village?" She spoke as if chewing, her tongue a fat gray grub. "A creature is attacking and killing us." Hasghat laughed. When she laughed, Horley could see a strange double image in her face, a younger woman beneath the older. "Is that so? What kind of creature?" "We call it the Third Bear. I do not believe it is really a bear." Hasghat doubled over in mirth. "Not really a bear? A bear that is not a bear?" "We cannot seem to kill it. We thought that you might know how to defeat it." "It stays to the forest," the witch woman said. "It stays to the forest and it is a bear but not a bear. It kills your people when they use the forest paths. It kills your people in the farms. It even sneaks into your graveyards and takes the heads of your dead. You are full of fear and panic. You cannot kill it, but it keeps murdering you in the most terrible of ways." And that was winter, coming from her dry, stained lips. "Do you know of it then?" Horley asked, his heart fast now from hope not fear. "Ah yes, I know it," Hasghat said, nodding. "I know the Third Bear, Theeber, Seether. After all I brought it here." The spear moved in Horley's hand and it would have driven itself deep into the woman's chest if Horley had let it. "For revenge?" Horley asked. "Because we drove you out of the village?" Hasghat nodded. "Unfair. It was unfair. You should not have done it." You're right, Horley thought. I should have let them burn you. "You're right," Horley said. "We should not have done it. But we have learned our lesson." "I was once a woman of knowledge and learning," Hasghat said. "Once I had a real cottage in a village. Now I am old and the forest is cold and uncomfortable. All of this is illusion," and she gestured at the fireplace, at the walls of the cottage. "There is no cottage. No fireplace. No rocking chair. Right now, we are both dreaming beneath dead leaves among the worms and the beetles and the dirt. My back is sore and patterned by leaves. This is no place for someone as old as me." "I'm sorry," Horley said. "You can come back to the village. You can live among us. We'll pay for your food. We'll give you a house to live in." Hasghat frowned. "And some logs, I'll warrant. Some logs and some rope and some fire to go with it, too!" Horley took off his helmet, stared into Hasghat eye sockets. "I'll promise you whatever you want. No harm will come to you. If you'll help us. A man has to realize when he's beaten, when he's done wrong. You can have whatever you want. On my honor." Hasghat brushed at the hornets ringing her head. "Nothing is that easy." "Isn't it?" "I brought it from a place far distant. In my anger. I sat in the middle of the forest despairing and I called for it from across the miles, across the years. I never expected it would come to me." "So you can send it back?" Hasghat frowned, spat again, and shook her head. "No. I hardly remember how I called it. And some day it may even be my head it takes. Sometimes it is easier to summon something than to send it away." "You cannot help us at all?" "If I could, I might, but calling it weakened me. It is all I can do to survive. I dig for toads and eat them raw. I wander the woods searching for mushrooms. I talk to the deer and I talk to the squirrels. Sometimes the birds tell me things about where they've been. Someday I will die out here. All by myself. Completely mad." Horley's frustration heightened. He could feel the calm he had managed to keep leaving him. The spear twitched and jerked in his hands. What if he killed her? Might that send the Third Bear back where it had come from? "What can you tell me about the Third Bear? Can you tell me anything that might help me?" Hasghat shrugged. "It acts as to its nature. And it is far from home, so it clings to ritual even more. Where it is from, it is no more or less bloodthirsty than any other creature. There they call it ‘Mord.' But this far from home, it appears more horrible than it is. It is merely making a pattern. When the pattern is finished, it will leave and go someplace else. Maybe the pattern will even help send it home." "A pattern of heads." "Yes. A pattern with heads." "Do you know when it will be finished?" "No." "Do you know where it lives?" "Yes. It lives here." In his mind, he saw a hill. He saw a cave. He saw the Third Bear. "Do you know anything else?" "No." Hasghat grinned up at him. He drove the spear through her dry chest. There was a sound like twigs breaking. Horley woke covered in leaves, in the dirt, his body curled up next to the old woman. He jumped to his feet, picking up his spear. The old woman, dressed in a black dress and dirty shawl, was dreaming and mumbling in her sleep. Dead hornets had become entangled in her stringy hair. She clutched a dead toad in her left hand. A smell came from her, of rot, of shit. There was no sign of the door. The forest was silent and dark. Horley almost drove the spear into her chest again, but she was tiny, like a bird, and defenseless, and staring down at her he could not do it. He looked around at the trees, at the fading light. It was time to accept that there was no reason to it, no why. It was time to get out, one way or another. "A pattern of heads," he muttered to himself all the way home. "A pattern of heads." Horley did not remember much about the meeting with the villagers upon his return. They wanted to hear about a powerful witch who could help or curse them, some force greater than themselves. Some glint of hope through the trees, a light in the dark. He could not give it to them. He told them the truth as much as he dared, but also hinted that the witch had told him how to defeat the Third Bear. Did it do much good? He didn't know. He could still see winter before them. He could still see blood. And they'd brought it on themselves. That was the part he didn't tell them. That a poor old woman with the ground for a bed and dead leaves for a blanket thought she had, through her anger, brought the Third Bear down upon them. Theeber. Seether. "You must leave," he told Rebecca later. "Take a wagon. Take a mule. Load it with supplies. Don't let yourself be seen. Take our two sons. Bring that young man who helps chop firewood for us. If you can trust him." Rebecca stiffened beside him. She was quiet for a very long time. "Where will you be?" she asked. Horley was forty-seven years old. He had lived in Grommin his entire life. "I have one thing left to do, and then I will join you." "I know you will, my love." Rebecca said, holding onto him tightly, running her hands across his body as if as blind as the old witch woman, remembering, remembering. They both knew there was only one way Horley could be sure Rebecca and his sons made it out of the forest safely. Horley started from the south, just up-wind from where Rebecca had set out along an old cart trail, and curled in toward the Third Bear's home. After a long trek, Horley came to a hill that might have been a cairn made by his ancestors. A stream flowed down it and puddled at his feet. The stream was red and carried with it gristle and bits of marrow. It smelled like black pudding frying. The blood mixed with the deep green of the moss and turned it purple. Horley watched the blood ripple at the edges of his boots for a moment, and then he slowly walked up the hill. He'd been carelessly loud for a long time as he walked through the leaves. About this time, Rebecca would be more than half-way through the woods, he knew. In the cave, surrounded by all that Clem had seen and more, Horley disturbed Theeber at his work. Horley's spear had long since slipped through numb fingers. He'd pulled off his helmet because it itched and because he was sweating so much. He'd had to rip his tunic and hold the cloth against his mouth. Horley had not meant to have a conversation; he'd meant to try to kill the beast. But now that he was there, now that he saw, all he had left were words. Horley's boot crunched against half-soggy bone. Theeber didn't flinch. Theeber already knew. Theeber kept licking the fluid out of the skull in his hairy hand. Theeber did look a little like a bear. Horley could see that. But no bear was that tall or that wide or looked as much like a man as a beast. The ring of heads lined every flat space in the cave, painted blue and green and yellow and red and white and black. Even in the extremity of his situation, Horley could not deny that there was something beautiful about the pattern. "This painting," Horley began in a thin, stretched voice. "These heads. How many do you need?" Theeber turned its bloodshot, carious gaze on Horley, body swiveling as if made of air, not muscle and bone. "How do you know not to be afraid?" Horley asked. Shaking. Piss running down his leg. "Is it true you come from a long way away? Are you homesick?" Somehow, not knowing the answers to so many questions made Horley's heart sore for the many other things he would never know, never understand. Theeber approached. It stank of mud and offal and rain. It made a continual sound like the rumble of thunder mixed with a cat's purr. It had paws but it had thumbs. Horley stared up into its eyes. The two of them stood there, silent, for a long moment. Horley trying with everything he had to read some comprehension, some understanding into that face. Those eyes, oddly gentle. The muzzle wet with carrion. "We need you to leave. We need you to go somewhere else. Please." Horley could see Hasghat's door in the forest in front of him. It was opening in a swirl of dead leaves. A light was coming from inside of it. A light from very, very far away. Theeber held Horley against his chest. Horley could hear the beating of its mighty heart, as loud as the world. Rebecca and his sons would be almost past the forest by now. Seether tore Horley's head from his body. Let the rest crumple to the dirt floor. Horley's body lay there for a good long while. Winter came—as brutal as it had ever been—and the Third Bear continued in its work. With Horley gone, the villagers became ever more listless. Some few disappeared into the forest and were never heard from again. Others feared the forest so much that they ate berries and branches at the outskirts of their homes and never hunted wild game. Their supplies gave out. Their skin became ever more pale and they stopped washing themselves. They believed the words of madmen and adopted strange customs. They stopped wearing clothes. They would have relations in the street. At some point, they lost sight of reason entirely and sacrificed virgins to the Third Bear, who took them as willingly as anyone else. They took to mutilating their bodies, thinking that this is what the third bear wanted them to do. Some few in whom reason persisted had to be held down and mutilated by others. A few cannibalized those who froze to death, and others who had not died almost wished they had. No relief came. The baron never brought his men. Spring came, finally, and the streams thawed. The birds came back, the trees regained their leaves, and the frogs began to sing their mating songs. In the deep forest, an old wooden door lay half-buried in moss and dirt, leading nowhere, all light fading from it. And on an overgrown hill, there lay an empty cave with nothing but a few dead leaves and a few bones littering the dirt floor. The Third Bear had finished its pattern and moved on, but for the remaining villagers he would always be there.

It made its home in the deep forest near the village of Grommin, and all anyone ever saw of it, before the end, would be hard eyes and the dark barrel of its muzzle. The smell of piss and blood and shit and bubbles of saliva and half-eaten food. The villagers called it the Third Bear because they had killed two bears already that year. But, near the end, no one really thought of it as a bear, even though the name had stuck, changed by repetition and fear and slurring through blood-filled mouths to Theeber. Sometimes it even sounded like “seether” or “seabird.” The Third Bear came to the forest in mid-summer, and soon most anyone who used the forest trail, day or night, disappeared, carried off to the creature’s lair. By the time even large convoys had traveled through, they would discover two or three of their number missing. A straggling horseman, his mount cantering along, just bloodstains and bits of skin sticking to the saddle. A cobbler gone but for a shredded, bloodied hat. A few of the richest villagers hired mercenaries as guards, but when even the strongest men died, silent and alone, the convoys dried up. The village elder, a man named Horley, held a meeting to decide what to do. It was the end of summer by then. The meeting house had a chill to it, a stench of thick earth with a trace of blood and sweat curling through it. All five hundred villagers came to the meeting, from the few remaining merchants to the poorest beggar. Grommin had always been hard scrabble and tough winters, but it was also two hundred years old. It had survived the wars of barons and of kings, been razed twice, only to return. “I can’t bring my goods to market,” one farmer said, rising in shadow from beneath the thatch. “I can’t be sure I want to send my daughter to the pen to milk the goats.” Horley laughed, said, “It’s worse than that. We can’t bring in food from the other side. Not for sure. Not without losing men.” Horley had a sudden vision from months ahead, of winter, of ice gravelly with frozen blood. It made him shudder. “What about those of us who live outside the village?” another farmer asked. “We need the pasture for grazing, but we have no protection.” Horley understood the problem; he had been one of those farmers, once. The village had a wall of thick logs surrounding it, to a height of ten feet. No real defense against an army, but more than enough to keep the wolves out. Beyond that perimeter lived the farmers and the hunters and the outcasts who could not work among others. “You may have to pretend it is a time of war and live in the village and go out with a guard,” Horley said. “We have plenty of able-bodied men, still.” “Is it the witch woman doing this?” Clem the blacksmith asked. “No,” Horley said. “I don’t think it’s the witch woman.” What Clem and some of the others thought of as a “witch woman,” Horley thought of as a crazy person who knew some herbal remedies and lived in the woods because the villagers had driven her there, blaming her for an outbreak of sickness the year before. “Why did it come?” a woman asked. “Why us?” No one could answer, least of all Horley. As Horley stared at all of those hopeful, scared, troubled faces, he realized that not all of them yet knew they were stuck in a nightmare. Clem was the village’s strongest man, and after the meeting he volunteered to fight the beast. He had arms like most people’s thighs. His skin was tough from years of being exposed to flame. With his full black beard he almost looked like a bear himself. “I’ll go, and I’ll go willingly,” he told Horley. “I’ve not met the beast I couldn’t best. I’ll squeeze the ‘a’ out of him.” And he laughed, for he had a passable sense of humor, although most chose to ignore it. Horley looked into Clem’s eyes and could not see even a speck of fear there. This worried Horley. “Be careful, Clem,” Horley said. And, in a whisper, as he hugged the man: “Instruct your son in anything he might need to know, before you leave. Make sure your wife has what she needs, too.” Fitted in chain mail, leathers, and a metal helmet, carrying an old sword some knight had once left in Grommin by mistake, Clem set forth in search of the Third Bear. The entire village came out to see him go. Clem was laughing and raising his sword and this lifted the spirits of those who saw him. Soon, everyone was celebrating as if the Third Bear had already been killed or defeated. “Fools,” Horley’s wife Rebecca said as they watched the celebration with their two young sons. Rebecca was younger than Horley by ten years and had come from a village far beyond the forest. Horley’s first wife had died from a sickness that left red marks all over her body. “Perhaps, but it’s the happiest anyone’s been for a month,” Horley said. “Let them have these moments.” “All I can think of is that he’s taking one of our best horses out into danger,” Rebecca said. “Would you rather he took a nag?” Horley said, but absent-mindedly. His thoughts were elsewhere. The vision of winter would not leave him. Each time, it came back to Horley with greater strength, until he had trouble seeing the summer all around him. Clem left the path almost immediately, wandered through the underbrush to the heart of the forest, where the trees grew so black and thick that the only glimmer of light came from the reflection of water on leaves. The smell in that place carried a hint of offal. Clem had spent so much time beating things into shape that he had not developed a sense of fear, for he had never been beaten. But the smell in his nostrils did make him uneasy. He wandered for some time in the deep growth, where the soft loam of moss muffled the sound of his passage. It became difficult to judge direction and distance. The unease became a knot in his chest as he clutched his sword ever tighter. He had killed many bears in his time, this was true, but he had never had to hunt a man-eater. Eventually, in his circling, meandering trek, Clem came upon a hill with a cave inside. From within the cave, a green flame flickered. It beckoned like a lithe but crooked finger. A lesser man might have turned back, but not Clem. He didn’t have the sense to turn back. Inside the cave, he found the Third Bear. Behind the Third Bear, arranged around the walls of the cave, it had displayed the heads of its victims. The heads had been painstakingly painted and mounted on stands. They were all in v arious stages of rot. Many bodies lay stacked neatly in the back of the cave. All of them had been defiled in some way. Some of them had been mutilated. The wavery green light came from a candle the Third Bear had placed behind the bodies, to display its handiwork. The smell of blood was so thick that Clem had to put a hand over his mouth. As Clem took it all in, the methodical nature of it, the fact that the Third Bear had not eaten any of its victims, he found something inside of him te aring and then breaking. “I…,” he said, and looked into the terrible eyes of the Third Bear. “I….” Almost sadly, with a kind of ritual grace, the Third Bear pried Clem’s sword from his fist, placed the weapon on a ledge, and then came back to stare at Clem once more. Clem stood there, frozen, as the Third Bear disemboweled him. The next day, Clem was found at the edge of the village, blood soaked and shit-spattered, legs gnawed away, but alive enough for awhile to, in shuddering lurches, tell those who found him what he had seen, just not coherent enough to tell them where. Later, Horley would wish that he hadn’t told them anything. There was nothing left but fear in Clem’s eyes by the time Horley questioned him. Horley didn’t remember any of Clem’s answers, had to be retold them later. He was trying to reconcile himself to looking down to stare into Clem’s eyes. “I’m cold, Horley,” Clem said. “I can’t feel anything. Is winter coming?” “Should we bring his wife and son?” the farmer who had found Clem asked Horley at one point. Horley just stared at him, aghast. They buried Clem in the old graveyard, but the next week the Third Bear dug him up and stole his head. Apparently, the Third Bear had no use for heroes, except, possibly, as a pattern of heads. Horley tried to keep the grave robbery and what Clem had said a secret, but it leaked out anyway. By the time most villagers of Grommin learned about it, the details had become more monstrous than anything in real life. Some said Clem had been kept alive for a week in the bear’s lair, while it ate away at him. Others said Clem had had his spine ripped out of his body while he was still breathing. A few even said Clem had been buried alive by mistake and the Third Bear had heard him writhing in the dirt and come for him. But one thing Horley knew that trumped every tall tale spreading through Grommin: the Third Bear hadn’t had to keep Clem alive. Theeber hadn’t had to place Clem, still breathing, at the edge of the village. So Seether wasn’t just a bear. In the next week, four more people were killed, one on the outskirts of the village. Several villagers had risked leaving, and some of them had even made it through. But fear kept most of them in Grommin, locked into a kind of desperate fatalism or optimism that made their eyes hollow as they stared into some unknowable distance. Horley did his best to keep morale up, but even he experienced a sense of sinking. “Is there more I can do?” he asked his wife in bed at night. “Nothing,” she said. “You are doing everything you can do.” “Should we just leave?” “Where would we go? What would we do?” Few who left ever returned with stories of success, it was true. There was war and plague and a thousand more dangers out there beyond the forest. They’d as likely become slaves or servants or simply die, one by one, out in the wider world. Eventually, though, Horley sent a messenger to that wider world, to a far-distant baron to whom they paid fealty and a yearly amount of goods. The messenger never came back. Nor did the baron send any men. Horley spent many nights awake, wondering if the messenger had gotten through and the baron just didn’t care, or if Seether had killed the messenger. “Maybe winter will bring good news,” Rebecca said. Over time, Grommin sent four or five of its strongest and most clever men and women to fight the Third Bear. Horley objected to this waste, but the villagers insisted that something must be done before winter, and those who went were unable to grasp the terrible velocity of the situation. For Horley, it seemed merely a form of taking one’s own life, but his objections were overruled by the majority. They never learned what happened to these people, but Horley saw them in his nightmares. One, before the end, said to the Third Bear, “If you could see the children in the village, you would stop.” Another said, before fear clotted her windpipe, “We will give you all the food you need.” A third, even as he watched his intestines slide out of his body, said, “Surely there is something we can do to appease you?” In Horley’s dreams, the Third Bear said nothing. Its conversation was through its work, and Seether said what it wanted to say very eloquently in that regard. By now, fall had descended on Grommin. The wind had become unpredictable and the leaves of trees had begun to yellow. A far-off burning smell laced the air. The farmers had begun to prepare for winter, laying in hay and slaughtering and smoking hogs and goats. Horley became more involved in these preparations than usual, driven by his vision of the coming winter. People noted the haste, the urgency, so unnatural in Horley, and to his dismay it sometimes made them panic rather than work harder. With his wife’s help, Horley convinced the farmers to contribute to a communal smoke house in the village. Ham, sausage, dried vegetables, onions, potatoes—they stored it all in Grommin now. Most of the outlying farmers realized that their future depended on the survival of the village. Sometimes, when they opened the gates to let in another farmer and his mule-drawn cart of supplies, Horley would walk out a ways and stare into the forest. It seemed more unknowable than ever, gaunt and dark, as if diminished by the change of seasons. Somewhere out there the Third Bear waited for them. One day, the crisp cold of coming winter a lingering promise, Horley and several of the men from Grommin went looking for a farmer who had not come to the village for a month. The farmer’s name was John and he had a wife, five children, and three men who worked for him. John’s holdings were the largest outside the village, but he had been suffering because he could not bring his extra goods to market. The farm was a half-hour’s walk from Grommin. The whole way, Horley could feel a hurt in his chest, a kind of stab of premonition. Those with him held pitchforks and hammers and old spears, much of it as rust-colored as the leaves now strewn across the path. They could smell the disaster before they saw it. It coated the air like oil. On the outskirts of John’s farm, they found three mule-pulled carts laden with food and supplies. Horley had never seen so much blood. It had pooled and thickened to cover a spreading area several feet in every direction. The mules had had their throats torn out and then they had been disemboweled. Their organs had been torn out and thrown onto the ground, as if Seether had been searching for something. Their eyes had been plucked from their sockets almost as an afterthought. John—they thought it was John—sat in the front of the lead cart. The wheels of the cart were greased with blood. The head was missing, as was much of the meat from the body cavity. The hands still held the reins. The same was true for the other two carts. Three dead men holding reins to dead mules. Two dead men in the back of the carts. All five missing their heads. All five eviscerated. One of Horley’s protectors vomited into the grass. Another began to weep. “Jesus save us,” a third man said, and kept saying it for many hours. Horley found himself curiously unmoved. His hand and heart were steady. He noted the brutal humor that had moved the Third Bear to carefully replace the reins in the men’s hands. He noted the wild, savage abandon that had preceded that action. He noted, grimly, that most of the supplies in the carts had been ruined by the wealth of blood that covered them. But, for the most part, the idea of winter had so captured him that whatever came to him moment-by-moment could not compare to the crystalline nightmare of that interior vision. Horley wondered if his was a form of madness as well. “This is not the worst,” he said to his men. “Not by far.” At the farm itself, they found the rest of the men and what was left of John’s wife, but that is not what Horley had meant. At this point, Horley felt he should go himself to find the Third Bear. It wasn’t bravery that made him put on the leather jerkin and the metal shin guards. It wasn’t from any sense of hope that he picked up the spear and put Clem’s helmet on his head. His wife found him there, ready to walk out the door of their home. “You wouldn’t come back,” she told him. “Better,” he said. “Still.” “You’re more important to us alive. Stronger men than you have tried to kill it.” “I must do something,” Horley said. “Winter will be here soon and things will get worse.” “Then do something,” Rebecca said, taking the spear from his hand. “But do something else.” The villagers of Grommin met the next day. There was less talking this time. As Horley looked out over them, he thought some of them seemed resigned, almost as if the Third Bear were a plague or some other force that could not be controlled or stopped by the hand of Man. In the days that followed, there would be a frenzy of action: traps set, torches lit, poisoned meat left in the forest, but none of it came to anything. One old woman kept muttering about fate and the will of God. “John was a good man,” Horley told them. “He did not deserve his death. But I was there—I saw his wounds. He died from an animal attack. It may be a clever animal. It may be very clever. But it is still an animal. We should not fear it the way we fear it.” Horley said this, even though he did not believe it. “You should consult with the witch in the woods,” Clem’s son said. Clem’s son was a huge man of twenty years, and his word held weight, given the bravery of his father. Several people began to nod in agreement. “Yes,” said one. “Go to the witch. She might know what to do.” The witch in the woods is just a poor, addled woman, Horley thought, but could not say it. “Just two months ago,” Horley reminded them, “you were saying she might have made this happen.” “And if so, what of it? If she caused it, she can undo it. If not, perhaps she can help us.” This from one of the farmers displaced from outside the walls. Word of John’s fate had spread quickly, and less than a handful of the bravest or most foolhardy had kept to their farms. Rancor spread amongst the gathered villagers. Some wanted to take a party of men out to the witch, wherever she might live, and kill her. Others thought this folly—what if the Third Bear found them first? Finally, Horley raised his hands to silence them. “Enough! If you want me to go to the witch in the woods, I will go to her.” The relief on their faces, as he looked out at them—the relief that it was he who would take the risk and not them—it was like a balm that cleansed their worries, if only for the moment. Some fools were even smiling. Later, Horley lay in bed with his wife. He held her tight, taking comfort in the warmth of her body. “What can I do? What can I do, Rebecca? I’m scared.” “I know. I know you are. Do you think I’m not scared as well? But neither of us can show it or they will panic, and once they panic, Grommin is lost.” “But what do I do?” “Go see the witch woman, my love. If you go to her, it will make them calmer. And you can tell them whatever you like about what she says.” “If the Third Bear doesn’t kill me before I can find her.” If she isn’t already dead. In the deep woods, in a silence so profound that the ringing in his ears had become the roar of a river, Horley looked for the witch woman. He knew that she had been exiled to the southern part of the forest, and so he had started there and worked his way toward the center. What he was looking for, he did not know. A cottage? A tent? What he would do when he found her, Horley didn’t know either. His spear, his incomplete armor—these things would not protect him if she truly was a witch. He tried to keep the vision of the terrible winter in his head as he walked, because concentrating on that more distant fear removed the current fear. “If not for me, the Third Bear might not be here,” Horley had said to Rebecca before he left. It was Horley who had stopped them from burning the witch, had insisted only on exile. “That’s nonsense,” Rebecca had replied. “Remember that she’s just an old woman, living in the woods. Remember that she can do you no real harm.” It had been as if she’d read his thoughts. But now, breathing in the thick air of the forest, Horley felt less sure about the witch woman. It was true there had been sickness in the village until they had cast her out. Horley tried to focus on the spring of loam beneath his boots, the clean, dark smell of bark and earth and air. After a time, he crossed a dirt-choked stream. As if this served as a dividing line, the forest became yet darker. The sounds of wrens and finches died away. Above, he could see the distant dark shapes of hawks in the treetops, and patches of light shining down that almost looked more like bog or marsh water, so disoriented had he become. It was in this deep forest, that he found a door. Horley had stopped to catch his breath after cresting a slight incline. Hands on his thighs, he looked up and there it stood: a door. In the middle of the forest. It was made of old oak and overgrown with moss and mushrooms, and yet it seemed to flicker like glass. A kind of light or brightness hurtled through the ground, through the dead leaves and worms and beetles, around the door. It was a subtle thing, and Horley half thought he was imagining it at first. He straightened up, grip tightening on his spear. The door stood by itself. Nothing human-made surrounded it, not even the slightest ruin of a wall. Horley walked closer. The knob was made of brass or some other yellowing metal. He walked around the door. It stood firmly wedged into the ground. The back of the door was the same as the front. Horley knew that if this was the entrance to the old woman’s home, then she was indeed a witch. His hand remained steady, but his heart quickened and he thought furiously of winter, of icicles and bitter cold and snow falling slowly forever. For several minutes, he circled the door, deciding what to do. For a minute more, he stood in front of the door, pondering. A door always needs opening, he thought, finally. He grasped the knob, and pushed—and the door opened. Some events have their own sense of time and their own logic. Horley knew this just from the change of seasons every year. He knew this from the growing of the crops and the birthing of children. He knew it from the forest itself, and the cycles it went through that often seemed incomprehensible and yet had their own pattern, their own calendar. From the first thawed trickle of stream water in the spring to the last hopping frog in the fall, the world held a thousand mysteries. No man could hope to know the truth of them all. When the door opened and he stood in a room very much like the room one might find in a woodman’s cottage, with a fireplace and a rug and a shelf and pots and pans on the wood walls, and a rocking chair—when this happened, Horley decided in the time it took him to blink twice that he had no need for the why of it or the how of it, even. And this was, he realized later, the only reason he kept his wits about him. The witch woman sat in the rocking chair. She looked older than Horley remembered, as if much more than a year had passed since he had last seen her. Seeming made of ash and soot, her black dress lay flat against her sagging skin. She was blind, eye sockets bare, but her wrinkled face strained to look at him anyway. There was a buzzing sound. “I remember you,” she said. Her voice was croak and whisper both. Her arms were mottled with age spots, her hands so thin and cruel-looking that they could have been talons. She gripped the arms of the rocking chair as if holding onto the world. There was a buzzing sound. It came, Horley finally realized, from a halo of black hornets that circled the old woman’s head, their wings beating so fast they could hardly be seen. “Are you Hasghat, who used to live in Grommin?” Horley asked. “I remember you,” the witch woman said again. “I am the elder of the village of Grommin.” The woman spat to the side. “Those that threw poor Hasghat out.” “They would have done much worse if I’d let them.” “They’d have burned me if they could. And all I knew then were a few charms, a few herbs. Just because I wasn’t one of them. Just because I’d seen a bit of the world.” Hasghat was staring right at him and Horley knew that, eyes or no eyes, she could see him. “It was wrong,” Horley said. “It was wrong,” she said. “I had nothing to do with the sickness. Sickness comes from animals, from people’s clothes. It clings to them and spreads through them.” “And yet you are a witch?” Hasghat laughed, although it ended with coughing. “Because I have a hidden room? Because my door stands by itself?” Horley grew impatient. “Would you help us if you could? Would you help us if we let you return to the village?” Hasghat straightened up in the chair and the halo of hornets disintegrated, then reformed. The wood in the fireplace popped and crackled. Horley felt a chill in the air. “Help you? Return to the village?” She spoke as if chewing, her tongue a fat gray grub. “A creature is attacking and killing us.” Hasghat laughed. When she laughed, Horley could see a strange double image in her face, a younger woman beneath the older. “Is that so? What kind of creature?” “We call it the Third Bear. I do not believe it is really a bear.” Hasghat doubled over in mirth. “Not really a bear? A bear that is not a bear?” “We cannot seem to kill it. We thought that you might know how to defeat it.” “It stays to the forest,” the witch woman said. “It stays to the forest and it is a bear but not a bear. It kills your people when they use the forest paths. It kills your people in the farms. It even sneaks into your graveyards and takes the heads of your dead. You are full of fear and panic. You cannot kill it, but it keeps murdering you in the most terrible of ways.” And that was winter, coming from her dry, stained lips. “Do you know of it then?” Horley asked, his heart fast now from hope not fear. “Ah yes, I know it,” Hasghat said, nodding. “I know the Third Bear, Theeber, Seether. After all I brought it here.” The spear moved in Horley’s hand and it would have driven itself deep into the woman’s chest if Horley had let it. “For revenge?” Horley asked. “Because we drove you out of the village?” Hasghat nodded. “Unfair. It was unfair. You should not have done it.” You’re right, Horley thought. I should have let them burn you. “You’re right,” Horley said. “We should not have done it. But we have learned our lesson.” “I was once a woman of knowledge and learning,” Hasghat said. “Once I had a real cottage in a village. Now I am old and the forest is cold and uncomfortable. All of this is illusion,” and she gestured at the fireplace, at the walls of the cottage. “There is no cottage. No fireplace. No rocking chair. Right now, we are both dreaming beneath dead leaves among the worms and the beetles and the dirt. My back is sore and patterned by leaves. This is no place for someone as old as me.” “I’m sorry,” Horley said. “You can come back to the village. You can live among us. We’ll pay for your food. We’ll give you a house to live in.” Hasghat frowned. “And some logs, I’ll warrant. Some logs and some rope and some fire to go with it, too!” Horley took off his helmet, stared into Hasghat eye sockets. “I’ll promise you whatever you want. No harm will come to you. If you’ll help us. A man has to realize when he’s beaten, when he’s done wrong. You can have whatever you want. On my honor.” Hasghat brushed at the hornets ringing her head. “Nothing is that easy.” “Isn’t it?” “I brought it from a place far distant. In my anger. I sat in the middle of the forest despairing and I called for it from across the miles, across the years. I never expected it would come to me.” “So you can send it back?” Hasghat frowned, spat again, and shook her head. “No. I hardly remember how I called it. And some day it may even be my head it takes. Sometimes it is easier to summon something than to send it away.” “You cannot help us at all?” “If I could, I might, but calling it weakened me. It is all I can do to survive. I dig for toads and eat them raw. I wander the woods searching for mushrooms. I talk to the deer and I talk to the squirrels. Sometimes the birds tell me things about where they’ve been. Someday I will die out here. All by myself. Completely mad.” Horley’s frustration heightened. He could feel the calm he had managed to keep leaving him. The spear twitched and jerked in his hands. What if he killed her? Might that send the Third Bear back where it had come from? “What can you tell me about the Third Bear? Can you tell me anything that might help me?” Hasghat shrugged. “It acts as to its nature. And it is far from home, so it clings to ritual even more. Where it is from, it is no more or less bloodthirsty than any other creature. There they call it ‘Mord.’ But this far from home, it appears more horrible than it is. It is merely making a pattern. When the pattern is finished, it will leave and go someplace else. Maybe the pattern will even help send it home.” “A pattern of heads.” “Yes. A pattern with heads.” “Do you know when it will be finished?” “No.” “Do you know where it lives?” “Yes. It lives here.” In his mind, he saw a hill. He saw a cave. He saw the Third Bear. “Do you know anything else?” “No.” Hasghat grinned up at him. He drove the spear through her dry chest. There was a sound like twigs breaking. Horley woke covered in leaves, in the dirt, his body curled up next to the old woman. He jumped to his feet, picking up his spear. The old woman, dressed in a black dress and dirty shawl, was dreaming and mumbling in her sleep. Dead hornets had become entangled in her stringy hair. She clutched a dead toad in her left hand. A smell came from her, of rot, of shit. There was no sign of the door. The forest was silent and dark. Horley almost drove the spear into her chest again, but she was tiny, like a bird, and defenseless, and staring down at her he could not do it. He looked around at the trees, at the fading light. It was time to accept that there was no reason to it, no why. It was time to get out, one way or another. “A pattern of heads,” he muttered to himself all the way home. “A pattern of heads.” Horley did not remember much about the meeting with the villagers upon his return. They wanted to hear about a powerful witch who could help or curse them, some force greater than themselves. Some glint of hope through the trees, a light in the dark. He could not give it to them. He told them the truth as much as he dared, but also hinted that the witch had told him how to defeat the Third Bear. Did it do much good? He didn’t know. He could still see winter before them. He could still see blood. And they’d brought it on themselves. That was the part he didn’t tell them. That a poor old woman with the ground for a bed and dead leaves for a blanket thought she had, through her anger, brought the Third Bear down upon them. Theeber. Seether. “You must leave,” he told Rebecca later. “Take a wagon. Take a mule. Load it with supplies. Don’t let yourself be seen. Take our two sons. Bring that young man who helps chop firewood for us. If you can trust him.” Rebecca stiffened beside him. She was quiet for a very long time. “Where will you be?” she asked. Horley was forty-seven years old. He had lived in Grommin his entire life. “I have one thing left to do, and then I will join you.” “I know you will, my love.” Rebecca said, holding onto him tightly, running her hands across his body as if as blind as the old witch woman, remembering, remembering. They both knew there was only one way Horley could be sure Rebecca and his sons made it out of the forest safely. Horley started from the south, just up-wind from where Rebecca had set out along an old cart trail, and curled in toward the Third Bear’s home. After a long trek, Horley came to a hill that might have been a cairn made by his ancestors. A stream flowed down it and puddled at his feet. The stream was red and carried with it gristle and bits of marrow. It smelled like black pudding frying. The blood mixed with the deep green of the moss and turned it purple. Horley watched the blood ripple at the edges of his boots for a moment, and then he slowly walked up the hill. He’d been carelessly loud for a long time as he walked through the leaves. About this time, Rebecca would be more than half-way through the woods, he knew. In the cave, surrounded by all that Clem had seen and more, Horley disturbed Theeber at his work. Horley’s spear had long since slipped through numb fingers. He’d pulled off his helmet because it itched and because he was sweating so much. He’d had to rip his tunic and hold the cloth against his mouth. Horley had not meant to have a conversation; he’d meant to try to kill the beast. But now that he was there, now that he saw, all he had left were words. Horley’s boot crunched against half-soggy bone. Theeber didn’t flinch. Theeber already knew. Theeber kept licking the fluid out of the skull in his hairy hand. Theeber did look a little like a bear. Horley could see that. But no bear was that tall or that wide or looked as much like a man as a beast. The ring of heads lined every flat space in the cave, painted blue and green and yellow and red and white and black. Even in the extremity of his situation, Horley could not deny that there was something beautiful about the pattern. “This painting,” Horley began in a thin, stretched voice. “These heads. How many do you need?” Theeber turned its bloodshot, carious gaze on Horley, body swiveling as if made of air, not muscle and bone. “How do you know not to be afraid?” Horley asked. Shaking. Piss running down his leg. “Is it true you come from a long way away? Are you homesick?” Somehow, not knowing the answers to so many questions made Horley’s heart sore for the many other things he would never know, never understand. Theeber approached. It stank of mud and offal and rain. It made a continual sound like the rumble of thunder mixed with a cat’s purr. It had paws but it had thumbs. Horley stared up into its eyes. The two of them stood there, silent, for a long moment. Horley trying with everything he had to read some comprehension, some understanding into that face. Those eyes, oddly gentle. The muzzle wet with carrion. “We need you to leave. We need you to go somewhere else. Please.” Horley could see Hasghat’s door in the forest in front of him. It was opening in a swirl of dead leaves. A light was coming from inside of it. A light from very, very far away. Theeber held Horley against his chest. Horley could hear the beating of its mighty heart, as loud as the world. Rebecca and his sons would be almost past the forest by now. Seether tore Horley’s head from his body. Let the rest crumple to the dirt floor. Horley’s body lay there for a good long while. Winter came—as brutal as it had ever been—and the Third Bear continued in its work. With Horley gone, the villagers became ever more listless. Some few disappeared into the forest and were never heard from again. Others feared the forest so much that they ate berries and branches at the outskirts of their homes and never hunted wild game. Their supplies gave out. Their skin became ever more pale and they stopped washing themselves. They believed the words of madmen and adopted strange customs. They stopped wearing clothes. They would have relations in the street. At some point, they lost sight of reason entirely and sacrificed virgins to the Third Bear, who took them as willingly as anyone else. They took to mutilating their bodies, thinking that this is what the third bear wanted them to do. Some few in whom reason persisted had to be held down and mutilated by others. A few cannibalized those who froze to death, and others who had not died almost wished they had. No relief came. The baron never brought his men. Spring came, finally, and the streams thawed. The birds came back, the trees regained their leaves, and the frogs began to sing their mating songs. In the deep forest, an old wooden door lay half-buried in moss and dirt, leading nowhere, all light fading from it. And on an overgrown hill, there lay an empty cave with nothing but a few dead leaves and a few bones littering the dirt floor. The Third Bear had finished its pattern and moved on, but for the remaining villagers he would always be there.

From Horror photos & videos June 16, 2018 at 08:00PM

[the-walking-memelords]

Allegiances: Chapter 6

Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 7

Series is rated M

Word Count: 3731

Louis and Clementine share an emotional connection before leaving the school on what was supposed to be a simple scouting mission.

Read it on Ao3!

Read it on Wattpad!

Clementine fought to stay asleep. She didn’t want to leave the warmth that enveloped her, a feeling of safety that felt almost foreign. Though her eyes remained shut she could tell from the songs of the birds outside the window that day was upon them. A rhythmic thumping in her left ear began to lull her back into sleep before a light hand running through her hair made her realize what that sound really was. Her dry eyes stung as she opened them, all of the moisture being cried out a few hours earlier into his pine-green shirt.

“Good morning.” Louis said with a soft smile when he noticed her begin to stir on his chest, the two still wrapped up in his coat.

“Or, afternoon, I think. You slept for quite a while.”

Heat spread across her cheeks as she slowly removed herself from his embrace. They both remained seated on the floor, each leaning against opposite beds. She pulled her knees to her chest, embarrassed by how she acted that early morning.

“I’m… sorry, that you had to see that.” Her voice was hoarse and her face still felt sticky from the dried tears.

“...and that you had to sit here with me.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.” He comforted.

“I just hope you’re feeling better.”

“I think so.” Her body was stiff and sore but she still felt better rested than any other day at the school.

“Thank you, for staying. You didn’t have to do that for me. I’m used to getting through this by myself.”

“But you shouldn't have to.” He leaned forward, his tone was almost pleading.

“You shouldn’t have to need to get through these things on your own. It isn’t fair to yourself.”.

Did she even have a choice? Talking about the things that plagued her mind was absolutely not an option. So how could Clementine open up without… opening up? She scratched at the callouses on her hands, unable to look him in the eye.

“You don’t have to be alone anymore.” He tried to meet her gaze but her eyes seemed more interested in the floorboards below them.

“I’m not gonna force you to talk about it. I’m just saying, it might help.”

“I don’t think I can.” She sighed.

“I understand. Whenever you’re ready, I’ll listen.” He managed to catch her eye, his smile contagiously causing the corners of her mouth to rise. She gave him a soft nod.

He only pitties you.

She flinched at the voice in her head. Intrusive thoughts talking too much sense.

“Why?” Clem questioned, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Why what?”

“Why do you care so much?” A little something at ate away at her heart.

“Because I know what it’s like to be surrounded by people and have no one to talk to.” Louis’ smile faded.

“The people here… they’re my family. But, they don’t really take me seriously. I guess that’s kinda my fault for not really acting seriously. I just wish we could still have fun, y’know? What’s the point of surviving if you don’t get to enjoy living?”

She stared at him speechless. Did the others really think so little of him? Louis was so sweet. He seemed to always look out for everyone. What was wrong with trying to raise morale?

“What about Marlon? He’s your best friend.” Surely he didn’t treat Louis so coldly.

“Yeah, he is.” He seemed almost unsure.

“He’s had to deal with a lot of stuff over the years, being our leader and all. Having fun wasn’t exactly too high on the to-do list but he still humoured me every now and then.” Everyone must have changed quite a bit once the world ended. A bunch of scared kids forced to grow up too early just as she did. Yet something told her that Louis had stayed mostly the same. His usual cheery demeanour was a product of the old world that he saved over the years. His smile reappeared as he began to tell Clementine a story.

“I remember the day he showed up in this hellhole. An angry little kid with scruffy hair and a scowl on his face. I had already been here a year so I figured it was up to me to show him the ropes of survival under the headmaster’s fist.” His tone lightened as he recalled the story.

“So I sat down right next to that asshole and did what I do best. I talked, and I never shut up. Eventually, he began to tolerate me as most do and soon enough we were inseparable.”

Clementine giggled at the thought of Louis annoying a kid into friendship. His face lit up at her laugh.

“Who was your best friend?” He asked.

“I didn’t have a lot of friends in school.” She admitted.

“I guess my best friend would’ve been my babysitter, Sandra.”

It’s been so long since I thought about her.

“My parents worked a lot so she would pick me up from school and watch me until they got home. I used to make her play this stupid game with me where we would pretend we were secret sisters. I always wanted a sister, and I guess Sandra was the closest I could get.” Distant memories of the final days of the living world.

“She was watching me while my parents were on vacation when everything happened. A walker broke into our house one night and bit her. It was so early in we didn’t know what was going on. Thankfully I wasn’t around when she…”

“Damn.” Louis commented plainly.

“I met Lee a couple days later.” She noticed Louis perk up when she spoke about Lee.

“You mentioned him during the card game.”

“He found me in my treehouse one day and decided to take care of me. We met up with a group of survivors and we all tried to make it, but… it didn’t work.” She grimaced.

“We ended up in the city my parents were staying in a few months later. I wanted to go find them, but Lee told me they were most likely gone.” Fresh tears pricked her eyes.

I should have listened to you, Lee. You were always right.

“But you had to try, right? They were your parents.” Louis seemed to share the logic of her nine-year-old self

“I thought so too, and Lee did help me look, but… there was this man who said he knew them. I was stupid. I went with him, and Lee was bitten trying to get me back.” She crossed her arms tightly, nails digging into her sleeves.

“Lee had cut his arm off. He looked like hell and was weak from blood loss when he found me. They got into a fight and Lee was losing. The man dropped his gun during the scuffle, so I picked it up myself.”

She left it up to Louis to imagine what she had to do next. It was the first life she had ever taken. First of many over the years.

“After we left that place, Lee didn’t last much longer.” She grit her teeth hard.

“I-I… killed him. He asked me to shoot him. He didn’t want to become a walker.”

“I’m so sorry, Clem.” He wasn’t sure what else to say.

“I can tell he meant a lot to you.”

Clementine hadn’t realized she had started crying again until one of the droplets hit her hand. She quickly rubbed the tears from her eyes as she regained her composure.

“It was a long time ago.” Clementine thought of some of the people who’ve come and gone since then. Luke. Kenny. Javier. She knew she’d failed them all in some way. She couldn’t break the ice fast enough before Luke drowned. She lost control of the car and got Kenny killed because of the crash. She lost Kate in the herd while Javi went after Gabe, and then broke her promise to return once she located AJ.

“I think I feel a bit better now.” Clementine told him, the smile that crossed her lips wasn’t completely genuine, but there was still some honestly in it.

For a moment the world only consisted of them. Sitting on the hardwood floor of a dorm room, sharing memories both pleasant and heavy. It was peaceful. There was something unexplainably comforting about his presence as if the world was a little more tranquil whenever she stared into his deep brown eyes. An odd sense of joy overcame her as she suddenly broke into a small fit of giggles.

“What?” Louis asked with a chuckle, her laughter contagious.

“I don’t know.” She gasped through the giggles.

She suddenly snapped to attention when she realized how long they’d been in her room. It was at least noon, the sun no longer visible by a peek out her window.

“Wait, how did I get to sleep in this late?” She stretched, picking herself up off the floor.

“Surely Violet has something for me to do.”

“Violet stopped by actually.” Her head shot up when he said that.

Oh God, Violet saw us like that?

Clementine wanted to collapse inward again.

“She saw the door open a bit and came in. I told her you weren’t feeling well and to leave you be for the day. I think she understood.” He also seemed slightly embarrassed at the memory, letting out a flustered chuckle as he stood.

Clementine let out a groan, feeling her face heat up again.

“Don’t worry, Vi’s not one for gossip. She wouldn't tell anyone what she saw.” Louis assured.

I just hope she took it as innocent as it was.

“I… I should go see if she needs me to do anything.” She didn’t want to leave, but it didn’t feel right for her to be relaxing all day while the others worked.

She tried to make her way to the door before Louis stopped her, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Hey, maybe you should just take it easy for the day.” He suggested, his voice filled with worry once more.

“If Vi needs anything then I’ll take care of it.”

“I should be helping.” she looked down.

“You should be resting.”

“I’m fine, Louis. I don’t want to be cooped up in here all day feeling useless.” She snapped a little harsher than she intended.

“I’m sorry.”

“How about a compromise?”

She turned to him, raising an eyebrow. Clem wondered what kind of compromise he could have in mind. His mischievous grin not helping her curiosity, not to mention mild concern.

“Why don’t we see if Violet will let us go on a scouting mission or something. There’s a town not that far away that we used to hit all the time before the safe zone crap. We could be in and out just enough to see if the place isn’t completely overrun by the smelly patrol and be back before sundown.” It seemed like a decent enough plan at least. “You won't be cooped up in your room, we’ll be getting something done, and it’s not that difficult.”

The thought of getting away didn’t sound so bad. She remembered seeing the town on the map before she arrived at the school, not very large and probably picked through a hundred times. If the Delta had already gone through it, there was nothing left but the dead.

“What do you say, my lady?” Louis held out his hand to lead her.

“Are you feeling up for an adventure?”

---

Violet wasn’t a huge fan of the idea at first. The sun was already high in the sky, not giving them that much of a comfortable timespan to be back before dark should they get stuck somewhere.

“C’mon, Vi, we’re just gonna scope the place out.” Louis tried to convince her.

“We won’t even go that far in, just enough to see what’s what, and then we’ll go.”

“I don’t like this.” Vi told him, going over the map again.

“Are you sure you’re… both up for it.” Violet tried to make the question sound like it was for both of them but Clementine knew it was directed at her.

“I’m fine.” Clem felt frustrated with herself for letting anyone see her like that.

“Are you sure? You looked-”

“I can do this.” Clementine didn’t let her finish that sentence.

“She’s got this, Vi.” He put his hand on her shoulder, squeezing it reassuringly.

“Fine.” Violet said, defeated.

“Just… take Rosie with you, and be back before dark. If you’re not back by then we can't go looking for you until dawn.”

They nodded, taking the map from her.

“Be safe out there.”

---

Clementine leaned against the cool bricks near the gate with her eyes closed, taking in the sound of the breeze through the forest beyond the walls. She waited alone as Louis went off to find Rosie.

“Clementine?” She opened her eyes when she finally heard the voice of the boy who hadn’t spoken to her in five days.

Marlon stood before her with his hands jammed into his pockets. He seemed to try to make eye contact with her but averted his gaze every few seconds.

“Uh, hey Marlon.” She glanced around looking for Louis, but he was nowhere in sight.

“I’m sorry… I wanted to talk to you sooner but I just couldn’t get the nerve.” He bit his lip.

He came to apologize?

“I-I just had to tell you I’m sorry for… for that night in the basement with Brody. I don’t really know what came over me…” He seemed sincere, but Clem didn’t feel like buying into it. Her bruised cheek stung with the memory of that night.

“I thought that everyone would hate me if they knew the truth. That maybe they would kick me out… or kill me.”

“Well, you were right about the first part.” She scoffed, not willing to forgive him that easily.

“I’m pretty sure everyone here hates you on some level.”

“I just didn’t want to hurt anyone any more than I had to.”

This son of a-

“I’m not going to listen to you stand there and try to justify giving away two of your friends to a group of raiders and then bully another one into silence.” She snapped at him, her words full of venom.

“Your lies only made everything worse for everyone. Not to mention your response to being caught was to attack Brody and me.”

He flinched slightly at her response, though his eyes told her it was the one he was expecting.

“Look, I’ll never be able to make up for what I did. And I don’t expect you to forgive me. I just… wanted to tell you that I’m going to try. I’m going to try to make things right even if it isn’t possible.” Marlon actually seemed like he was about to cry.

“I just want to help.”

“I don’t need your fucking help.” She spat.

“Alright.” He sighed, holding his hands up in surrender.

“I’ll leave you be. I just wanted you to know.”

“Marlon?” Louis returned with Rosie on a leash with Chairles slung over his shoulder. He looked between his best friend and Clementine.

“What’s going on here?” “We were just talking.”

“He was just leaving.”

Marlon looked at Rosie, who was whining for attention at his feet. He bent down to pet her, giving her a good scratch behind her ears.

“What are you guys doing?” Marlon asked, letting the dog lick his hand.

“Scouting mission. We’re gonna go see what’s what with that town we used to get supplies from.” Louis explained.

“That’s pretty far outside the safe zone.” Marlon frowned, but he knew it was no longer his call.

“Are you guys gonna be okay out there?”

“There is no ‘safe zone’ anymore, dingus.” He tried to make light of the situation.

“We’ll be fine, nothing’ll happen to us or your precious pooch.”

“Let me come with you.” he pressed.

“I can help watch your backs.”

Not. Fucking. Happening.

“No can do, my dude.” Louis slapped a hand on his shoulder.

“Vi’s still got you on lockdown, remember? She’d kill us if we took you anywhere.”

Clementine didn’t want to argue this further

“We don’t have time for this, we’re burning daylight.” She said coldly.

“He stays, we go. End of discussion.”

Clementine didn’t wait for a response from either of them before she flung open the gate and began to make her way down the trail.

---

The streets of the town were lined boarded up buildings and rusted out cars with rotting bodies scattered all around. They were only a block in, yet the carnage was almost shocking. Clementine made sure to examine the corpses carefully as they passed them, jamming her blade into the skulls of any that might still be moving.

“Damn.” Louis commented.

“And I thought this place looked like shit the last time we were here.”

“You know this place better than I do, where should we start?” Clem couldn’t imagine this place would be anything but a bust.

“Anywhere’s better than on this damn street. This place gives me bad tingles.”Louis kept a good grip on Rosie’s leash as she sniffed around.

“Bad Tingles?”

“Yes, tingles of the bad variety.” He joked.

Dork.

“If I remember correctly, there’s an old hardware store on the next street over. We can bust in there and see if there’s anything left.” Louis lead the way.

So far, not many of the bodies around them were active, but who knows what was being contained inside the buildings.

The glass doors of the hardware store were long shattered, remains of what appeared to be some kind of wooden barricade were left on the floor inside. The sunlight from outside did little to illuminate the long dark aisles. The shelves seemed bare, this place didn't seem worth the risk.

“Maybe we should go somewhere else.” She didn’t feel like they were alone in there.

“Maybe.” he replied, furrowing his brow.

Louis swung Chairles against the metal frame of the doorway, echoing loudly throughout the store.

“What the hell are you doing?” Clem whispered.

“Watch.”

They both waited, staring into the blackness waiting for something to appear. One minute passed, then two, yet nothing emerged from the dark.

“We’re good.” Louis declared.

“Let’s just stick to the shelves in the light for now.”

“Aisle by aisle. You take the left I take the right.” She planned.

Louis nodded as they split, finding themselves searching with a tall row of shelves between them. Clementine ran her hands across the cold bare metal, finding not even a single screw to take back with them. She sighed, moving on the shelf just behind her. Her foot picked something heavy as she approached. She looked down to see a cardboard box peeking out from under the shelf.

“I think I fou-” She hardly got a chance to call for Louis before a hand clamped down on her mouth.

She tried to throw the body off of her but the strength that could only come from a living person forced her knife out of her grasp. It crashed to the floor with a loud clang.

The sound of Rosie barking filled the store and the stranger finally let go after Chairles connected with his back.

“Get the fuck away from her!” He yelled, preparing to swing again as the large man picked up her hunting knife and throwing her against the row of shelves, holding her there by her neck

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, boy.” He growled in his raspy voice.

Rosie snarled at the man, slobber dripping from her bared teeth. Clementine gasped for air as she struggled against his grip, digging her fingers into his thick coat.

“L-Lo..u…” She struggled out.

Louis let out a yell as he charged the man, aiming Chairles at the hand holding the knife as Rosie sunk her teeth into his leg. The stranger screamed with rage as he tried to shake the dog off, swinging the knife wildly and managing to slice into Louis’ left arm.

Louis cried out in pain, blood rushing out of the deep wound in his bicep. He let out a grunt as he brought the business end of his bat down on the man’s head, knocking out and releasing his grip on Clem’s throat.

Clementine collapsed to the ground, coughing and gagging as stars danced across her vision.

“Clementine!” Louis cried, rubbing her back as she heaved.

“Oh, fuck I’m so sorry.”

“I… d-didn’t even… hear… him.” She gasped out as she tried to regulate her breathing.

He shakily pulled her close, adrenaline still pumping through both of them. Clementine returned the embrace, feeling something wet against her fingers when she touched his sleeve.

“Oh shit, you’re bleeding.” She examined the torn material, blood already soaking down his sleeve to his wrist.

“I’m alright.” He assured, wincing at her touch.

“Tis but a scratch.”

“We need to get you back to Ruby so she can patch you up.” She looked for something to stop the bleeding in the meantime.

“Take your shirt off.”

“What?” He gasped.

“I need to tie that up so you don’t bleed out on the way back.”

He proceeded to remove his coat followed by his shirt, cringing as he pulled the blood-stained fabric over his wound.

“Hold still.” She told him, wrapping the green shirt tightly over the cut.

She couldn’t help but notice his freckles also spread to his chest.

“That’ll do for now.” She said, still shaken from what just happened.

Clementine froze when she felt Louis’ fingers tracing her neck. His touch was light, barely tickling her skin.

“More bruises.” He frowned at the red marks left behind by the strange man.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m okay, I promise.” She took his hand in hers, squeezing it tight.

“Let's just go home.” “What about him?” Louis gestured to the unconscious man being watched heavily by Rosie. Blood trickled from his forehead but the shallow movement of his chest signified he was still alive.

“Leave him for the walkers.” Clementine decided.

Louis stood, helping Clem to her feet with his good arm. Neither of them letting go of the other’s hand as they left the town behind.