#saw someone say that Anthony doesn’t finish his business because all he does is eat 🐱

[rainbow-sunshine-unicorn]

No but you don’t understand how much I love that Anthony doesn’t see pleasuring Kate as a means to an end, but rather a complete purpose in and of itself

Anthony is someone who eats his wife out because he derives his pleasure from the act, and not because he sees it as a precursor to penetration.

I love how Anthony centres Kate’s pleasure from the very first time. In the gazebo scene, he keeps his pants on the entire time. In season 3 ep 1, he has his pants off and he’s still focused on eating her out. In ep 5, his idea of a quickie is eating her out. He enjoys making her feel good and that’s his entire purpose

It’s not just that the focus is on a woman’s pleasure but also that there is such a refreshing lack of emphasis on penetration as the whole sole end goal, especially in the context of a heterosexual couple. It’s so beautiful and important. To me, that is the embodiment of the female gaze.

[ilalos]

Worth it (Anthony Bridgerton x reader) Part 2/2

Summary: Your arranged marriage to Anthony seems fine, until it doesn’t.

Warnings: marriage, implied sex, angst-ish, fluff, pregnancy, crying, if you notice anything else let me know :)

Word count: 2.5k

The season passed in a blur with countless flowers and conversations that filled you with expectations about your marriage to the Viscount, you truly felt like love was around the corner for both of you and it was a matter of time for that corner to be turned. He was everything you had expected and more, you could tell he was wary about letting you in but didn’t want to push him so you let him open himself to you at his own pace. The had been some stolen looks, kisses on your knuckles that had lasted a little longer than they should and hand a bit lower than what was acceptable when you danced. To say the courting had been successful was the understatement of the season in your opinion, by the time the wedding day came you were counting down the minutes before you finally became Lady (y/n) Bridgeton.

Your wedding ceremony was short and the carriage ride to Anthony’s bachelor townhouse was even shorter. The wedding night had come with a surprisingly low amount of events, your virginity had been taken the sweetest of ways, with many kisses and whispered promises of pleasure that came true. By the end of the day, you were as happy as can be, laying on your husband's chest, feeling his heartbeat slowing down and smelling the sweet vanilla scent of his skin.

When you woke up the next morning the bed was empty and he had already left to work in his study back in the main Bridgerton home. He didn’t return until late in the evening and you were waiting for him so you could have dinner together.

“Thank you for waiting for me,” he said while taking a sip of his wine.

“It’s nothing, I like that we are finally spending some time together”

Anthony just nodded and continued eating in silence.

“How was your day?” You pushed for conversation, you had been alone all day and could really use some conversation with someone different than your maid, who was terrified of speaking freely.

“It was busy” he answered simply “how was your day?” He asked after seeing the face you made at his short answer.

“It was also very busy, I reorganized the books in the library, had the kitchen staff do an inventory on the pantry, and send the maids to the market to get some flowers for the table tops” you narrated proudly, hoping he might appreciate the way you ran the home.

“Good to see you’re settling in, darling” his small praise made you smile a little.

“You don’t mind that I changed some things?” You asked somewhat concerned by his silence.

“It is your home, you’re free to do whatever you please with it,” he said dismissively.

“It’s our home, Anthony, I want to make it perfect for you too”

After dinner, he walked you to the bedroom and after a couple of heated kisses you fell in his arms once again, the pleasure he gave you was addictive. Despite his cold attitude towards you in other aspects of your life, it was in the bedroom where you felt hopeful for a future where you both might learn to truly love each other, and then he would sneak out every morning making you feel like a worthless whore.

And so your days continued like this, every night was filled with passion and every day was lonely. You couldn’t even go to the Bridgerton home, you had been taught that a married lady was not to go out without her husband, so your heart slowly filled with sadness as you spent day after day alone in the townhouse. Anthony was none the wiser because he simply thought you enjoyed being by yourself, so it never occurred to him to invite you to his family’s home or anywhere else.

A month into your marriage you found out you were with child. You were extremely happy and Anthony had shown himself to be happy as well, but then that night he didn’t come home for dinner and didn’t make an appearance in your bedroom. He was more and more distant until four months had passed and he disappeared for two full weeks before you saw him again.

It was on the day of your birthday, and he had only gone to your room because the butler told him you had been very sick that day. When he entered the room he found you seating on the bed hugging your knees close to your chest, your eyes puffy from crying and silent tears still streaming down your face. You weren’t upset he had forgotten your birthday, you had never celebrated it so it didn’t matter he didn’t remember it.

“What happened? Is everything well? Is the baby-“

“Your child is quite well, Lord Bridgerton” you interrupted in the coldest tone he had ever heard from you “to what do I owe this joyous visit?”

“I apologize for my absence, I have been very busy” he answered measly.

“I figured out that much, husband” the word was said with venom.

“Are you upset with me?” He asked offended, you had never treated him so coldly.

“I am upset with myself” you started with a pained chuckle “I don’t need you to try and comfort me because you did nothing wrong, that is the reason for my anger” a small sob escaped your lips “I was taught to be a good wife, that my only job was to give my husband heirs and to keep the house running and I understood that and I didn’t fight it because at least I would have children to fill my life with love and a husband who at the very least would acknowledge me and my efforts”

“I-“

“I don’t want you to feel like you should change or apologize, this is not your fault, I feel miserable because I filled my heart with hopes and dreams of love but that’s just not how life is, at least not mine” you harshly wiped your eyes before finishing “I understand my place now, I’m nothing but a child-bearer for you and that’s fine because you didn’t even pick me in the first place” you got up from bed and opened the door for him “please leave me alone, I will be fine”

“I can’t just leave you here alone, have you even eaten today? In your condition-“

“Your child is perfectly well, my lord” your tone had turned icy once again “please go, I am tired and want to rest”

Unable to do anything else, Anthony left the room and went back to his family’s home. His mother had insisted for him to take you there that night, but seeing your state he didn’t even bother asking if you wanted to go. When he got there he was surprised to see the dining room fully decorated, his whole family dressed in their best clothes, even Daphne and Simon had paid a visit.

“Where is (y/n)?” Asked Violet.

“She’s not feeling very well” answered Anthony looking at the table that was filled with all his wife’s favorite food “What is happening? Why are you all here dressed as if you are attending a ball?”

“Anthony, please for the love of God almighty, tell me you didn’t forget your wife’s birthday!” Violet couldn’t keep his composure, how could Anthony be so clueless.

“I-I’ve been so busy lately supervising the building of the new house, it didn’t even occur to me that it was her birthday” Anthony felt terrible, as he should.

“It’s bad enough she doesn’t like us, son” Violet sighed, seating on the table “And now she thinks we don’t care for her birthday”

“Where did you get that idea, mother?” Daphne couldn’t help but ask “When she writes to us she says wonderful things about our family”

“Then why hasn’t she visited since the wedding?” This time it was Colin asking “Mother sent a tea invitation shortly after they got married and she never showed up, sent a poor letter apologizing but did not explain why she didn’t show”

“I might have an explanation for that” Simon spoke up “My aunt was a terribly strict mother, taught her that a wife was nothing more than a child-bearer and had no liberties like men do, for example: going out unaccompanied”

“Has she been out of the house since you married, brother?” asked Eloise, turning to face Anthony who was still frozen at the doorstep.

“I don’t believe so” he entered the room and sat defeated “I just thought she enjoyed being at home by herself, god!” he rubbed his hands down his face.

“I can’t believe it, the poor thing” lamented Violet.

“She hasn’t left the house in almost half a year” concluded Benedict.

“And here we were, refusing to visit thinking she had rejected mother,” said Colin.

“I would like to clarify, I never agreed with losing contact with her over one missed invitation” added Eloise, gaining the glares of everyone present.

“It matters not what we thought nor does it matter what has happened in the past” began Violet “right now I want you to go pick her up and bring her here, she deserves to be celebrated, especially after everything we put her through,” she told her eldest child, pushing him to stand and go to the door.

Anthony mounted the carriage and urged the coachman to hurry home and as soon as he got there he ran up the stairs to your room and burst through the door, jolting you awake.

“I am so sorry, love,” ha said kneeling on your bedside “I never knew you didn’t leave the house because you thought you couldn’t, you are free to do as you please, darling” he grabbed your hand and kissed your knuckles “I didn’t mean to make you feel trapped in your own home, and I am sorry if you felt like I abandoned you” he caressed your face and wiped some tears that had fallen without your notice.

“You did abandon us,” you said, trying to pull your hand from his grasp with your other hand protecting your belly.

“I was merely supervising the building of our new home, I was hoping I could surprise you before the baby arrived” he explained, now seating by your side “I can’t possibly ask my family to leave their home but I know how much you love that house, and so I chose to build a similar one not too far from here”

“You are building me a house?” You asked incredulously, hardly anything could justify his absence but this was in fact a reasonable explanation.

“Yes, love” he once again caressed your face “A home for our family” at that your eyes filled with tears, this time from happiness.

You sat up and wrapped your arms around his neck, crying with your face buried in his shirt. He wrapped his arms around you, kissing the top of your head and shushing you softly to calm down your cries. You spent a while holding each other until he suddenly broke you two apart, remembering his family that was still waiting for you both to show up.

“My beautiful wife, I must take you out of the comforts of your bed” he began, apologetic “My family is expecting you in their home to celebrate your birthday with a lavish dinner”

“Heavens! You should’ve started with that” you ran to your door and called out for your maid “I don’t think I have a dress for such occasion, non that would fit me now, that’s certain”

You opened your trunk and began taking out your chemise and all other items you had to wear under your dress in such cold weather. You took off your nightgown not caring Anthony was there, he had seen it all before, after you had put on your chemise your maid ran in and help you put on the rest of your garments and helped you squeeze your small baby bump in the dress you had worn for one of the first balls you attended when Anthony was courting you. She put your hair in a quick updo and even managed to coerce Anthony into putting on your stockings and your shoes while she did your hair. With all that rush and hard work, you managed to be ready in under an hour and still made it to the dinner at a reasonable hour (half past 9 is reasonable, right?).

At the Bridgerton home, you were welcomed with warm embraces and merry wishes on your special day. You all sat around the table and ate the feast that had sadly grown cold. Colin didn’t seem to mind as he devoured everything in sight, prompting Violet to chastise him softly. You, however, ate small bites because the pregnancy had caused your stomach to be upset easily and you didn’t wish to offend anyone by running out of the room to empty your stomach. Anthony watched you eat and held your hand atop the table, smiling as he watched you laugh and converse with his family.

“Is the food not good enough?” Asked Violet seeing your plate almost full.

“It is just perfect, my stomach has just been iffy since the start of the pregnancy” you answered smiling apologetically, Anthony choked on his wine because he realized at that very moment that he had forgotten to tell his family about your condition.

“You’re with child? Those are wonderful news!” Exclaimed Violet with a large smile “When did you found out?”

“Four months ago” you turned to glare at Anthony “I assumed your son had told you”

“How could you conceal such joyous information from your mother?” Violet then noticed her eldest daughter had become quiet, as well as her husband “Did you know, Daphne?”

“I was aware of it, yes” Daphne admitted ashamed “I too assumed Anthony had told you”

“You assumed my eldest son had told me about his wife’s pregnancy and I had decided not to mention any of it in our letters?”

“I-I’m, yes?” Benedict and Colin snorted with laughter hearing their sister’s answer.

Violet only shook her head with a small smile, her children were truly a wonder. Anthony was nervous that you’d get mad at him for not telling them, but one look at your laughing face told him he didn’t need to worry.

Later that evening you both laid in bed after yet another passion-filled encounter, your breathing slow and even making Anthony think you were asleep. He was caressing your naked back with feather-like touches, kissing your sweaty forehead every few minutes.

“I love you” you sighed, kissing his chest “You need not feel the same, I just want you to know how I feel”

He took a shaky breath before answering.

“I also am in love with you, darling” he placed a finger under your chin and tilted your head so you’d look at him “sometimes I’m scared of just how much I love you” he kissed you slow and deep, pouring all his love into the action.

The kiss was unlike any other you had shared before, this one was full of promise and hope. It filled you with love and certainty, you were now sure that no matter how difficult the road to Anthony’s heart had been, even if you didn’t want it at first, it had all been worth it.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

Hi! Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. If you like it let me know.

Tag list:

@alaizaaa02

@awesomebooklover17

[ramp-it-up]

Fresh Squeeze, Ch. 5

Pairing: Daveed Diggs x OFC Linden Marshall

Set in 2023, post-pandemic

Warnings: Cursing, Angsty Angst, drug and alcohol use, surprise flights, Anthony Ramos. Lots of Plot.

Word Count: 3.5 K

Plot: Linden Marshall just finished law school at Columbia University in NYC. Daveed Diggs is still creating magic with his platonic life partner Rafael Casal in the form of their Blindspotting musical, Bay Boys. Linden’s boyfriend WAS Mark Monaco, star of the superhero movie series Invincible.  They were together for years, and her trauma and his addictions were toxic. She knows now that wasn’t love. 

A/N: Keep in mind that this the same AU as Arrivals, with Holly Woods, but is BEFORE Rafa and Holly get together. And don’t come for me about Anthony.

Read the Previous Chapter.

===================

NYC, May 2023

Jasmine was blowing up your phone as you were trying to get dressed.  You had to search for it under the pile of clothes on your bed.

You had procrastinated getting ready, trying to finish one of your applications for a summer internship at this law firm in Harlem that you were excited about.  

You wanted to finally relax after finishing Columbia law in the top 10% of your class. You just wanted to relax and enjoy this weekend.

Craig, your mom and your uncle were the only ones to attend your graduation.  They knew you didn’t want any fanfare, so your famous friends didn’t attend, and they had a show to do, but they’d sent you tons of well wishes.

We're coming up, get decent!

You chuckled and shook your head. Anthony usually raided the refrigerator when he came over. This time, you told him to bring his own snacks..

You slipped on what you were wearing for the night.  Craig was in his room getting ready and you had volunteered his place, so you were playing hostess. You were surprised that he was so chill about it, actually. 

“Pika Pika,” you said to yourself in the mirror then ran to answer the doorbell. It was almost 6 pm.

You opened the door for Cookie Monster and Big Bird.  You burst out laughing. But you stopped when you saw Anthony's face. He had like five bags from Whole Foods that he was juggling in his blue arms.

"Jazzy!!!! There's my girl.  Hey Ant! leave the food and your girl. We may run off together."

Anthony came in the door loaded down with bags and kissed you on the cheek.  

“I love you Lindy, but fuck you man.” You punched him on the shoulder. 

“Ow! Time to get this party started!”

Linden heard Jazzy’s Brooklyn accent turn into a London lilt as she started play fighting with Ant. They felt like family at this point.

=================

Ever since the launch party in January, Jasmine had pursued you as a friend persistently. You normally didn’t let anyone in because of the circumstances of your life, but Jas was oblivious to your awkwardness with normal human beings.

“Girl, you are fucking DOPE, and you are NOT gonna deny my love.  I know your life has been a trip, and you don’t have to tell me all of it, but I’m not gonna let you shrivel up and be a little retiring wallflower. Life is to be lived.” 

Jasmine telling you that during a Saturday brunch date in February was the key to your heart. She drew you out, and you didn’t see what value you added to her life.

But she loved you anyway. And you loved her, and of course, Anthony was part of the package.  

He was beautiful, loud, talented, and reckless, but he reminded you too fucking much of Dell to be annoyed with him very long.

Your circle had certainly widened from just Craig. That was one thing for which you could thank Mark. You were working on him being a distant memory.  He hadn’t lasted too long in Bay Boys, quitting soon after the musical opened in March.  

Daveed’s hands and feet had ‘slipped’ one too many times during the scene when he was stomping his ass on stage. Mark cited health reasons, and publicly spiraled a bit. He was currently in rehab. 

Again. 

You had not heard from him and that was absolutely fine with you.

Because Jasmine was in Bay Boys and that was her life, the cast and crew became yours as well. Rafael was the type of chaotic creative genius that fascinated you; you could listen to him talk for hours.  

Things with Daveed were more tricky. Ever since that awkwardness with him after the launch party, you’d kept your distance, but you hung out a lot, so you were trying to be friends.

When you and Jas and Ant and Rafa hung out and talked, Daveed was there, smiling shyly and sneaking glances at you, throwing in pearls of wisdom every so often. 

He was so dope and so talented and intelligent and so freaking hot, but you were trying to get yourself together.  You were convinced that night in January had been a mistake. 

You needed some space. And time.  Law school was no joke, and you were in therapy so entanglements was not what was up.

Daveed sensed your hesitancy and decided to stop pursuing you. But he couldn’t stop how he felt.

You were both a little wasted and keyed up the night of the launch party, and despite the way you were beautiful and intelligent and sexy as fucking hell, he was not going to press you. 

Daveed was sure that you two could be something special if you would give it a chance, but he didn’t want to chase you, but he was so gone for you, that if you just nodded your head at him, he would be at your feet.

The attraction was undeniable. There was a crazy little dance you two did that everyone recognized and respected.  This group seemed to know you were fragile, and that you didn’t need to be pushed too far.

But the more they persisted, the more you came out of your shell.  The more you trusted, the more the old Lindy came back. 

Craig noticed first soon after you started hanging with the crew when you were trying to find a place to live. He went to one showing with you and sat you down for a talk.

“Girl, I love the light in your eyes.  I haven’t seen this Lindy since…well in a long time. Stay with me for as long as you want. I know you need to get through this last semester of school, you don’t need one more thing to think about. I’m proud of the work that you’re doing on yourself, Linden.”

You were grateful to Craig.  His place on the Upper West Side was super convenient to Columbia, and not having to think about finding a place was so clutch.  Third year was kicking your ass.

“Besides, I wouldn’t have this place if it wasn’t for…”

“Hush,  I don’t want to hear that.  Dell would have wanted this. I love you cuzzo.” 

=================

Craig came out in a Sully onesie and immediately dragged Jasmine into a conversation about the Met Gala that had happened a few days ago. 

You approached the kitchen where Ant stood, food all around him on the counter. You were whispering. He smiled a secret smile at you.

“I’m so proud of you doing this for Jasmine.  It’s good for you all to get away. I’m glad that she got a little break. She deserves it all.”

Anthony had arranged for this little get together to be a surprise for Jasmine. This was going to be a kickback weekend.

The show was on a four day hiatus while the set was moved to a bigger theatre.  It was a hit and was destined for a long run.

Ant’s green eyes lit up as you kept talking about Jasmine.

“Yeah, she does. And the woman of the hour deserves all the happiness in the world.” He lifted his beer to you.

They way he said that was weird and you were about to ask him what was up with that when the doorbell started ringing, you went to answer it and were stuck there for a few minutes as people started coming in. 

The food and the drinks were flowing while all kinds of characters came in. 

Now they also had Jack Skellingtom, and a Care Bear in the house to add to Big bird, Cookie Monster, Pikachu and Sully. It was an odd cast of characters who were jamming to 90's rap, eating chicken wings and basically tripping like only friends could do.

Then there was Toni, some tag-along chick who showed up with Rafa.  She had on a plain gray onesie.  What a downer.  

You’d  pegged her for  a star fucker who only hung with Rafa because of who he and his friends were.  The girl was too much in everyone's business. 

"Sooooo. You and Mark ARE broken up for real for real. The tabloids say y’all are back together!  I told my friend Susie you weren’t, but she wouldn't believe me."

You  just smiled and didn't confirm or deny, treating Toni like the paparazzi. The girl was oblivious to your hate and just kept talking.

Daveed rescued you. 

"Hey, Toni, show these folks how you can blow. They're setting up the karaoke machine over there. Show us what you're working with. Someone might hook you up with a gig."

Toni perked up and hurried over to Anthony and Craig, who were setting up the lyrics on the big screen to match the karaoke music. Some Bad Boy joints were up.

Rafa was behind them screaming, "Dylan, Dylan, Dylan!" 

They were a scene.  You  breathed and relaxed a little.

"Don't stress. She's not coming with us  to the island."

You looked up at the tall, fine Grumpy Care Bear who was nursing some of your special 18-year-old Chivas Regal that you had gotten for graduation. His beautiful smile shined out of his brown face and beneath the curls tumbling out of his hood. 

“I’m not pressed. I’m chilling. You can do what you want. With who you want.”

“She’s not with me. Rafa brought her for the ride to the airport. And it’s not entirely true that I can do what I want. With who I want. Because what if who I want to do doesn’t want to do me?”

You knew what he meant. But you eyed his drink instead of looking at him. It wasn’t that you didn’t want him. That was far from the truth. You didn’t want to get lost in him. And you could see that happening.

Daveed saw your wheels turning. You were over analyzing again.  He’d spent three months observing you every chance he got. He felt like he knew your anxieties.  So fucking smart, but here you were thinking too much.

"Hey Genuis Ass. Want some?" Daveed’s voice was softer as he grinned and offered you some of his drink.  “Or, I could go make you something?” For some reason he wanted you to get loose. 

"Nah, I'm good Diggs.”  For some reason you needed to stay in control.  You played it off by changing the subject. 

“I still can’t believe y’all call me that.” 

Daveed just smiled and nodded, chuckling a little. He craned his neck and looked at it, having to dodge a smack upside the head.

“That ass is genius, you know. That’s the one thing He Who Shall Not Be Named was right about. And you’re one of the smartest humans I know.”  

You had to look at him then. The flecks of gold in his eyes tho.  But you could tell from the slight redness that he was a little zooted.  He didn’t get that way around you a lot, but you knew for the stories that he partied occasionally. 

He and Rafa and that Toni chick must have pre-gamed.  You remembered the last time you two were  tipsy together.You cleared your throat and looked away.

“Why did you lie to that girl? She can’t sing.” You were shaking your head, scowling at Toni’s screeching from the karaoke machine.

He winked at you. D was well on his way to getting LIT.

"What? She can blow.”  Daveed sipped his drink and watched her. 

“She’ll suck your soul out and spit it back in your mouth." Daveed was loose. And so was his mouth. But he didn’t care.

Your mouth was hanging open at Daveed as you wondered what Daveed had done with Toni, what Daveed AND Rafa had done with Toni... 

Shit, you were just going to ask.

"How do you know that she..."

"AWWWW SHEEEIIIITTT! THAT'S MY JAM! REMEMBER THIS LINDY??"

“No, I was like, negative 5..”

You raised your voice as he traveled away from you, smiling. He was not slick.

“Well you missed out being tardy to the party…” 

He was backing toward the mic, knocking it out of Anthony’s hand and starting the rap. Rafa joined him, trading verses.

Now as the record spins around, you recognize this sound,

Well, it's the underground,

You know that we're down with wutchyalike

Yeah, with wutchyalike, yeah

And though we're usually on the serious tip, check it out:

Tonight we're gonna flip and trip and let it all hang out tonight,

We're gonna say what we like.

'Cause, yo, yo, we want to know how many people in the flow,

Would like to just let yourselves go

And doowutchyalike,

Yeah, well tonight's your night.

Just eat food, try not to be crude or rude,

Kill the attitude, chill the serious mood,

And doowutchyalike,

Yeah, and doowutchyalike,

Everybody doowutchyalike

Everyone was dancing and Daveed had effectively deflected your question. But you would never forget.

By 8 o’clock, Craig grabbed the mic and motioned for Jasmine to come with him. You had enjoyed some cocktails finally, and just figured they were going to duet Wind Beneath My Wings just like they always did. 

You were actually moving to the music and feeling good.

"Ok guys, whew.  I'm hot.  Is it hot in herrrre?" Craig was fanning himself.

“Whoooo! Nelly!”

You yelled and everyone laughed.

Craig took his hood off and started to unzip his onesie. Jasmine did the same.

You kept dancing nervously, not realizing it, looking around at the others who were also disrobing. You did a double take as D’s abs came into view.  What was going on?

Craig continued.

"Lindy, I just need a minute to talk, can you stop whatever it is you're doing?"  He grinned at you from across the room. "You're still moving Lindy."

You blushed and stopped fidgeting.

"Ummm, Craig, what the..."

One by one people dropped their onesies, all except Toni, who had no clue what was going on. Soon, everyone was standing in Craig’s condo in their swimsuits, looking fine as hell. 

You just looked around, then in your cup wondering if you were too drunk and hallucinating.

“Lindy, you’ve worked real hard, and this past few months have been crazy, so we wanted to do something special for you this weekend, for your graduation, and for your birthday, WHICH IS SUNDAY!!”

Everyone cheered as Jasmine took the mic. “You think this party is for me. Well the joke’s on you bitch, because you have been hosting your own party!”

You opened your mouth, squeaked a little, then spoke,

"But why?.. Everybody?  But what..."

Daveed moved close.

"Damn, you fine," you whispered. 

Your hand flew to your mouth when he smirked in response. Everyone was rolling because turns out, you didn’t whisper.

Daveed cleared his throat. "Thank you. You’re fine yaseif. Anyway, Anthony and Jasmine have a house there, and we’re flying out of JFK tonight.  In about two and a half hours in fact. So we gotta get going.”

You still had only a part of a clue of what was going on. But you couldn't resist all of this.

"Okay? But... I don't have any clothes. And I don’t have a ticket..."

Craig came from the storage room off the kitchen with one of your suitcases. Others started getting their bags as well

"Everybody's shit has been in my house for a week. And girl, you know I got your information. It ain’t nothing but a thang.  Your ticket is ready and waiting. Just sent it to your email.”

Your mouth dropped open and you stared at Craig as everyone pulled their onesies back up and got their bags together.

Your eyes filled with tears that you hurriedly brushed away. Craig came over and hugged you. Then every else joined in for a group hug.

"You deserve, Lindy. Let us celebrate you."

You looked like you didn't quite believe it, but you went along. You laughed, visibly deciding to go with the flow.

"I'm down!"

Toni was nearby. When the hug broke up, she started asking questions.  Your  patience was wearing thin.

"I don’t believe that all these people really roll like this. Y’all wild. Susie won that bet."

You just continued to look at this fool.

"But isn’t this dope?  All these famous, successful men being so fearless with their love and appreciation for Black women, of all people. Who woulda thunk they didn't want white women?"

Toni just kept saying the wrong thing. It was the "of all people" for you.

You stared daggers at your houseguest. Toni caught the look.

"Wait, are you mixed?"

You narrowed your eyes and said, "Black mixed with Black."

Toni clutched her pearls.

"Oh wow. Didn't mean to offend. I just mean everyone knows Jasmine is mixed, with her dad and all, as black as can be. But her white British mom saved her from his skin tone. I mean, she has braids in now, so you can see it, but all she has to do is blow her hair straight and she can pass..."

Toni jumped when Rafa spoke. She didn't know he was there.

"Toni. Not Jas. She's the homie." 

The look in his ice blue eyes could burn. 

"And you are a Black woman, so you know how dope they are. Why would anyone NOT worship at your feet?"

Lindy just sipped her drink as Craig entered the chat. "Amen!"

"Maybe it is time for you to get going, honey. I might call you when I get back."

Rafa  led Toni to the door as she protested.

"But I was going to take you to the air..."

"And I APPRECIATE you Black woman, but we'll get there.  See you later."

Then Rafa shut the door in her face. Linden discovered she loved him eternally at that moment. She was rolling.

No one mourned Toni’s departure as arrangements were made for cars to take everyone to the airport.

"You and Daveed can ride with us, Rafa." Ant to the rescue.

"Yeah, Jasmine loves to look at my profile." Jas pinched him so hard he jumped.

“Fuck!”

Ant  was screaming as he, Jasmine and Rafa went out the door. 

"Peace! See you at airport security.  If you get nabbed by TSA, you on your own!”

Daveed lingered. “I don’t know if all of us and our bags will fit in one car. Can I ride with you and Lindy, Craig?”

Craig smirked at Daveed, but didn’t say anything. “Of course...you good with that Lindy?”

You tried to keep it light. 

“Sure.. no biggie,” you cleared your throat and headed to the bathroom to make sure you had everything you needed.

=================

By the time you got to your Uber, the traffic was horrible. It took over an hour to get to the airport. You felt both anxious about missing the flight and keyed up about sitting next to Daveed in the car.

His thigh and side pressing into yours in the dark in the back of an Uber Black brought back memories of that reckless night. 

When he put his arm up on the seat behind you, “For more room,” he said, in that voice and flashing that megawatt smile, you were enveloped more into his scent and warmth. You had to control yourself not to melt into him.

Craig was sitting on his phone, sneaking glances at you and smirking the entire ride. He’d insisted that you be in the middle because you were so tiny.

The whole world was against you, you thought, as you and Daveed both stared straight ahead, both flashing back to that January night.

You were the last three people to run through the airline gate just at they were about to close it. All your friends in first class cheered when you took their seats, and Rafa popped a bottle of champagne.

"Talk about cutting it close," Ant commented as Rafa gave Daveed a high five.

Daveed looked at you. You shook your head at him. Somehow, you were sitting next to him. You just decided to let it be and have some time.

“Just make sure you don’t molest me under this blanket, Ms. Marshall,” Daveed intoned when you were settled and given amenities for the night.

The flight attendant had to tell y’all to keep quiet as the cat calls went up.

Welp, you thought. This will be the vibe the entire weekend. 

You weren’t mad at it. You loved these people. And you were safe. You just smiled, settled down, and looked out of the window to watch the lights of New York fade away.

=================

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Tagging:  @braidedchallah @einfachniemand @sillyteecup @commandersmiley @ohsoverykeri-blog  @theselilwonders @theatrenerd86 @sebastianabucknettastan @imatyoursurrvicesurr @riiyy @ivycomet @lonelydance @jbrizzywrites @id-do-it-for-free-babe

[ad1thi]

If your still doing fic recs, could u rec any soft stevetony ones?

absolutely!! this got pretty long so ive hidden most of it under a read-more so i don’t annoy people. a couple of authors feature more than once. ive tried to avoid that as much as possible, but if an author features more than once - take that as a sign that they have rly good stuff for soft stevetony

disclaimer: don’t forget to leave kudos and comments for every author!! (a disclaimer i regrettably forgot to add to previous fic rec lists but will be adding from now on)

soda pops: @starklysteve

If anybody asks, Steve would smile and say it was very romantic. Very Tony. Because if he went into any further detail, nobody would quite believe him.

Tony, on the other hand, would laugh and say that Steve’s in love with a man in a can. So, really, it wasn’t outside the natural progression of things.

me voy pa’l pueblo: @firebrands

two times steve walks away, and one time that tony walks with him.

/ or, my very fluffy take on my bingo card prompt "farewells." steve is on vacation when he meets tony.

fill for my stony bingo prompt: farewells; also for bookworminaslump on tumblr who asked for a tourist/knowledgeable local au!

Tumblr Ficlets:  @omg-just-peachy (this is 115 chapters of stevetony being soft!!)

A collection of enough tooth-rotting fluff to last a year, all in one place.

tender offerings: @omg-just-peachy

Five times Steve carried Tony to bed.

the best thing (is that it’s happening to you and me):  @captainstarkreportingforduty

Or, five times the team saw Steve Rogers and Tony Stark in love.

Sweet On You: @miniblackraven

It’s the 1940’s and Tony is working as a Donut Doll for the Red Cross. His job is to go around to various military bases and offer comfort food and conversation to homesick soldiers. He’s come to expect a lot of things in this job, but he doesn’t expect to fall in love with Captain America, the hottest most awkward soldier Tony has ever met.

Bespectacled Avengers Society (Membership of One):  @baffledkingcomposinghallelujah

Tony gets glasses. Glasses get a Tony. Steve loses his mind and walks into walls.

a flower crown for your love: @anthonyed

"There, there," Pepper cooed. "Tony likes flowers?" she said with a shred of doubt in her tone. But when Steve peered up, she's smiling her bright toothy smile. He squinted and she sighed, dropping her hand from his shoulder. "He does." she insisted. "Even more so than me."

if this was a movie: @omg-just-peachy

“One of our seniors is being generous with his time this year—by force of his own actions, but generous none the less—and he’d be happy to help you, I’m sure. Tony Stark? I’ll set something up for later this week. I think between the two of you you’ll be able to pull your average up enough to make it through to playoffs,” Coulson said, with that ever-hopeful lilt in his voice.

Or, Steve needs a calculus tutor, Tony is available, but how is Steve ever supposed to focus when he's been in love with Tony for ... his entire school life?

you take me higher than the rest (everybody else is second best): @firebrands

tumblr fill for adi & anthonydarling, who asked for "'Prank' war, but the kind to see who can make the other blush the most in public" from this prompt list

amore mio:  @brucewaynery

Tony has had it with Steve being dumb and reckless out in the field, he has a family to think about now, Steve promises him that he'll be with him, kingdom come.

(initially based on that one headcanon about Italian Tony yelling and gesticulating at Steve but Peter thinks he's doing some weird dance and tries to copy him, but it got very fluffy very quickly)

Lost My Mind in a Coffee Shop: @betheflame

“Boyo,” Bucky muttered to his best friend. “I swear to God that if you don’t ask that man for his number soon, I will create a Grindr profile for you and you will not like it.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “I am here to finish grading, not hit on men.”

“Can you not do both?” Natasha smirked. “Nearly tenured, historical genius, feels like something you should be able to multitask.”

&&&

In which Steve is a history professor and Tony's an engineering one and Bucky owns the joint where they have their meet cute.

AU-gust Chapter 7: @iam93percentstardust 

stevetony, childhood friends AU

Right Up The Road: @gottalovev

The day at the senate committee in Washington DC wasn't supposed to end with Tony and Steve transformed into animals by a baby witch. That said, the 350 miles trek back to the compound to get help promises to be quite an adventure too!

(or the adventures of Cat!Tony and Wolf!Steve - and how to readjust when you're back to human!)

i’ll take care of you: @elcorhamletlive

“Hi.”

Steve blinks. The sound of loud thunder roars outside, but he doesn’t jolt, too focused on the image in front of him to be startled by the noise.

He has no idea what to say, and he isn’t sure if the shock is because of Tony’s absolutely sodden state �� his hair glued to his forehead, his clothes dripping with water, forming a small puddle in front of Steve’s door – or because he wasn’t expecting to see Tony for at least three more days.

“Hi?” he says, a little tentative, before his brain catches up to reality. In his defense, he was getting ready to sleep when Tony knocked. He looks at what Tony is holding – a wet mess that seems to have been a flower bouquet at some point. “What are you doing here?”

The Tally System:  @betheflame

Everyone on the team knew about the tally system.

Whenever Steve would save Tony - whether from a monster or from his own stupidity - he’d say, “tag”. Whenever Tony do the same, he’d say, “your turn”. Thor thought it was adorable, Clint thought it was ridiculous, Bruce refused to register an opinion.

Natasha thought it was something she could work with.

what’s mine is yours: @robertdowneyjjr

5 times Tony stole Steve’s clothes, and 1 time Steve returned the favor.

or

For a billionaire, Tony Stark really doesn't pay for a lot of what he wears.

I like Shiny Things But I’d Marry You With Paper Rings: @betheflame

Rhodey: I just confirmed with Sam that he’s going to make sure he cooks tonight and that his entire team is briefed. I’m heading over now to strategically arrange a fuck ton of ficus trees to block them from gen pop.

Pepper: They’re not getting engaged in a prison, Jimmy.

Rhodey: Tony Stark and Steve Rogers show up to Circe on a Saturday night in May and you watch every person in that restaurant turn into someone I’d rather arrest than eat with.

****

In which Tony and Steve get engaged, but they're kind of extra about it, because they are always themselves

the road to the stars: @shell-heads

Tony is seven years old when he sees the ballet for the first time and meets his future pas de deux partner.

His father is invited to sweet-talk politicians into a new weapons deal and explain his latest idea for their program, and his mom goes to catch up with old friends she hasn't seen in years, but Tony goes because his mom had smiled down at him and told him he would love it.

His mom's never wrong.

-

In which boy genius Tony Stark meets girl wonder Natasha Romanoff at the ballet, and they fit their broken little pieces together to make something beautiful on the dance floor.

Steve? He's just a dumb, awful, chaotic, extremely supportive older brother that really should just shut up and admit he likes Tony a lot more than he pretends, because Natasha only has five people in the world she likes; it only makes sense her two favorites would fall in love with one another.

They always were a little slow, though.

A Second Chance To Take it Slow: @omg-just-peachy

Tony loves his adopted son, Peter, but that doesn't stop him from wishing he had someone to do this whole parenting thing with. After a failed one night stand, Tony's parent-teacher conference with Mr. Rogers comes with quite the surprise.

Wake Up!: @randomstufffromotherblogs

Tony came home from a business trip and is woken up by his husband and their three-year old.

pull me closer to love:  @captainstakreportingforduty (part of a series)

“A Mother’s Day card? For... Tony?” Steve clarifies, and can’t help the smile on his face as six familiar little heads nod in response.

“But... guys, Tony’s not—“ he pauses and takes a breath, any explanation dying in his throat against the excited gleam in everyone’s eyes. “Why do you guys want to do that, hmm?"

compromises:  @robertpattisons (when i looked up OP on tumblr, this is the blog i was directed to - but i sincerely apologise if ive gotten it wrong)

Steve should have expected it, he really should have.

There were regulations that came with dating Tony Stark. Things that were clear and things that they needed to work through.

Things like how Steve always got strawberry ice cream, while Tony got rocky road. Or when Steve needed to get his homework done before he was down to make out - even though Tony always got his way.

Things like that were clear

all that you are is all that i’ll ever need: @natasharxmanov

Tony Stark and Steve Rogers announced their engagement on Good Morning America through Tony Stark’s previous secretary now CEO, Pepper Potts. And over this past weekend, I got the chance to sit down with them both, to visit their home and attend their gala, all to write this article about the most powerful couple in the world.

(Or, the fic in which Tony and Steve get married.)

(i won’t ever) trade my mistakes: @brucewaynery

Toddler Peter, painting a masterpiece with his dad.

aka: a dumb amount of family fluff to help you power through the week

[irishseeeker]

                                             rules don’t apply - chapter three 

Having a crush on your boss is embarrassing. Inappropriate. Wrong. Especially when your boss is Anthony Bridgerton, the most insufferable man on the planet whom you actively despise.

What does Kate have to say on the matter?

…No comment.

--

read chapter 1 here or here 

read chapter 2 here or  here

-- 

chapter 3: hold onto your leash 

“Kate.”

Kate didn’t know where she was. She was sitting in a chair behind a wooden desk, which was covered with various files, a laptop and multiple picture frames. The frames were blurred and she couldn’t make out the faces. Everything looked familiar, but she felt completely out of place. Something felt..off. Everything looked fuzzy, her vision was slightly blurred and the air slightly darker, as if there was a shadow over her.

She noticed him then, he stood in front of her, glowing like an angel.

She could see him crystal clear.

What was Anthony Bridgerton doing in her office?

He wasn’t wearing his usual work attire. He was wearing the suit he wore at the gala, except his collar was untucked and loose, his tie no longer wrapped around his neck.

His lips were slightly swollen, tints of red smudged across his pink lips.

Her reflection became clear in a small compact mirror open on her desk. More importantly, she could see the bright red lipstick slightly smudged on her lips.

What was going on?

His voice sent shivers down her spine as he said her name, enunciating each letter, his voice low, rough like gravel.

“What do you want, Kate?”

She opened her mouth but she couldn’t speak, nothing would come out. All she could do was gape as he walked towards her, around her desk, slowly coming to a stop as he stood in front of her. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to his elbows, exposing his muscular forearms.

He moved closer, she could count the splatter of freckles across his nose as he closed the inches between their lips. One, two, three, four, five-

Kate woke up with a gasp. Newton let out a whine beside her, scowling at being woken up.

“Sorry bud,” She said, her breath hot and heavy as she scratched her corgi’s ears.

She did not just dream of Anthony Bridgerton. He was her worst nightmare.

Kate grabbed her phone, flicking open her google app and tapping impatiently at the screen as she typed her search.

What does it mean when you have a dream about your boss?

She flung her phone away from her, hearing it land on the duvet. What the bloody hell was she doing?

Kate had spent the previous day in bed with her sister, staying off her phone and eating takeaway while they watched movies all day. She needed any distraction from the article published. She even let Edwina convince her to do some yoga on Youtube. When she did pick up her phone last night, she flicked through some of the comments left under the article.

I thought you had to be pretty to be a gold digger?

Her sister is much prettier than she is

who even is she?

She quickly opened another bottle of wine to distract herself from the sinking feeling in her stomach.

How could she ever show her face in work again? What would everybody think? There was absolutely no truth to that article, but the truth had never been something people were concerned about when reading gossip.

Kate was hardly a scandal, she was a nobody. Anthony Bridgerton, on the other hand, was not.

She eventually got out of bed, washing her hair and exfoliating away the anxiety and dread that clung to her skin. She ate breakfast with Newton after getting dressed, opening her balcony doors and leaning against the railing as she looked out at London on a Sunday morning.

The air was bitter but the sun was shining despite it being winter, and Kate needed to clear her head and walk Newton. She texted Edwina, who suggested they grab a coffee and walk in the park. Edwina was a morning person, she had already been up for hours and had been to a pilates class.

Kate, on the other hand, had to set five alarms to get up on time and considered her walk to work sufficient exercise.

Cameras started flashing everywhere. Her eyes stung as the flashes started to blind her, she could barely make out Newton barking at her feet or the swarms of people waving a camera in her face.

“Kate Sheffield!”

“Kate, when did you and Anthony Bridgerton start dating?”

“Is it serious?”

“Will we be hearing wedding bells soon?”

Kate momentarily froze, gaping at the blinding flashes. What the hell was going on? How did they know where she lived?

“This is private property. You need to leave right now.” Her neighbour, a middle aged woman called Agnes Danbury, had appeared at her side. The woman tended to appear out of nowhere, trapping you in a conversation that wouldn’t finish until she was done. Kate actually liked her a lot, the woman just scared her a little. “Go out the back, darling. Through the car park.”

Kate hastily turned around and ran back into the building, down the steps and to the car park. She exited through the back entrance, which led to an empty road. She sprinted down the end of her road, away from the photographers and down the steps to her tube station. She got lost in the swarm of people in the busy station and by the time she turned around, panting, she did not see a camera in sight. She put her sunglasses on, pulled her beanie down lower on her head and cuddled Newton to her chest.

She wasn’t bothered after that, the ride on the tube and arrival at Hyde Park station was uneventful. Kate was shaken and paranoid as she glanced around her, but no one actually cared about her. It was Bridgerton they cared about. Newton was happily toddling along beside her as they entered the park gates. Edwina was on the other side of the park, near the pond, waiting with their coffees.

“Kate?”

The blood in her veins turned cold. She knew that voice anywhere. It was the unfortunate voice that she had become accustomed to hearing five days a week, a voice she did not get paid enough to listen to, a voice she could not get out of her head and now dreams.

Anthony Bridgerton stood behind her, beads of sweat dripping down his forehead as he stood in front of her. He had clearly been running, his flushed cheeks and damp t-shirt clung to his skin.

He looked good.

Why did he have to look good?

This was not the time to get distracted, Kate.

“Are you following me?” Kate managed to speak, flexing her fingers that weren’t holding Newton’s lead.

“What?” She couldn’t read his face. He didn’t look displeased to see her, which he usually did-but he didn’t look happy, either. He looked pensive. If she had seen him first, she would have run in the opposite direction or hid behind a tree.

He, for some reason, had approached her.

“Are you following me?” She repeated, bending down to scratch Newton’s ears. She needed something to do other than blankly stare at him.

“Why would I be following you?”

“Oh, so this is just a coincidence then?”

“I run in this park everyday,” Anthony said, his eyes narrowing as he spoke. “I have lived near it for years. So, yes. This is purely a coincidence.”

“Alright.” That was slightly embarrassing, but Kate was more preoccupied with getting away from him, getting away from this conversation and getting away from the thoughts spiraling in her head.

“Kate, wait.”

“No.”

“What?” He sounded exasperated, letting out a deep sigh as he appeared at her side.

“I am not doing this,” She said, gesturing between them. “We’re in public. Someone could see. I do not have the mental capacity to deal with you right now.”

“I presume you saw the article,” He said, putting his right foot on a bench to tie his shoelace. He looked completely unbothered, as if the events in the last two days hadn’t had any affect on his life whatsoever.

Two could play that game.

She just wouldn’t play it looking directly at him because he was bent over slightly and his shorts were rather right, which gave Kate the perfect view of his rather nice-

Kate, no.

“What article?” Kate simply shrugged her shoulders, her eyes flickering around the park. She didn’t see any photographers or anything unusual, which made it slightly easier to breathe. She needed to find Edwina and get away from him.

“Don’t play stupid, it doesn’t suit you.”

Kate narrowed her eyes. “You really have a way with women, don’t you?”

“My ways have never failed me before,” He replied, smirking smugly at her.

She mimed gagging. “It’s a Sunday. We are not working. I have no obligation whatsoever to talk to you.”

Anthony simply rolled his eyes.

It was incredible how she could be so attracted and annoyed by a man at the same time.

“Could we try to have a civilized, mature conversation? For once?” His voice was almost pleading, he still had his usual stern, arrogant tone but there was a hint of desperation in it.

He might actually feel bad.

“I don’t know, can we?” Kate mimicked him, making a sour face. She may be the problem here. She swiftly changed the subject.

“There were a lot of photographers outside of my flat. How did they figure out where I live?” Kate still hadn’t figured that out and it worried her beyond belief. She might stay at Mary’s for the next few days, Edwina’s flat was too small for anything more than a night.

Anthony’s face fell and he looked as if he felt bad for her. “You would be surprised how quickly the media can work. I’m sorry that happened, I really am.”

She didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing.

“The article doesn’t mean anything, Kate.”

“That is quite easy for you to say. Do you have any idea how this looks for me? You’re my boss. It’s inappropriate. I have to go to work tomorrow and face everyone. It’s mortifying. What everyone is probably thinking-” Kate would usually be embarrassed by such a display of emotions, how high pitched her voice was and the anguish in her face-but she wasn’t even thinking about that.

She was slowly coming to terms with the consequences of the events of this weekend.

The realization hit her and she felt quite faint.

It was that or the sprint to the tube station earlier-she was really unfit.

“I’m going to have to quit and move to Australia.”

“What?” Anthony said, his eyes bulging out his eye sockets as he stared in bewilderment at her. “You’re not quitting-what?”

If he hadn’t thought she was mad before, that ship had definitely sailed. Anthony’s voice had increased a pitch as he spoke and he looked scared.

“I don’t do well in hot climates. I grew up in Somerset, where it rains most of the year, for fuck sake. I’m also not a fan of spiders and snakes.” Kate groaned, covering her eyes with her hands. “They’re the size of Newton over there. My sister still has to remove them from my flat.”

“Would you calm down?”

“Don’t tell me to calm down,” Kate said, shaking her head profusely. “That’s the one thing you don’t say when you want someone to calm down. I have no reason to be calm.”

“You’re not moving to Australia,” Anthony said, trying to give her a reassuring look but it just came across as him looking slightly constipated. “It doesn’t matter what anybody thinks. Our personal relationship has nothing to do with our professional relationship. If anyone in work has anything to say, they can say it directly to me. Then they’ll get fired.”

It was Kate’s turn to roll her eyes and snort. “There’s definitely a human resources issue in there. Oh, well, that makes everything better than. Problem sorted.”

He was rather calm about the whole situation, really. It was infuriating. “Those gossip articles mean nothing, Kate. It will blow over in a few days and everybody will move onto the next story. That’s how it works.”

“That’s just amazing. I’ll just be known as another notch on your bed frame. I’ll have to add that to my CV.”

“I have a lot more experience with this than you,” Anthony said, his mouth forming a flat line. “I have been subjected to this for years-I do know what I’m talking about.”

“Yes, well, I haven’t. I never asked to be. It’s my worst nightmare. There were cameras outside of my flat this morning. They knew where I lived. That is terrifying. The comments online were much kinder to you than they were to me.”

“I know.” He actually sounded sincere and she felt a pang of guilt for being so rude to him. A slight pang of guilt. “I wanted to reach out and apologize. I wasn’t sure if it would make it worse to hear from me, given that we have never exactly seen eye to eye. I was going to speak with you tomorrow at work. I’ll send security to your flat tomorrow for when you go to work.”

Kate scoffed, rolling her eyes. Honestly, rich people. “I don’t need security.”

“Yes you do. They’ll harass you for a few days and then eventually stop. It’s not a discussion, Kate. This is a safety issue.”

“Okay. Fine.” Kate conceded, letting out a deep breath. If he really was concerned, that worried her. She wasn’t used to this type of attention. “Thank you. Send me the bill.”

How much was security? She’d had a shop online last night after a few glasses of wine and had bought clothes she definitely didn’t need, and her bank account had been hit hard.

It was his turn to scoff. “You are not going to pay.”

“I am going to pay-” Kate protested, but Anthony didn’t let her finish.

“Do you argue over everything? Or is this special treatment just reserved for me?”

“You do pay me to argue. Maybe work on your personality and I wouldn’t argue with you so much.” “Thank you, though-but only this time.”

Newton barked loudly. They broke eye contact with each other and stared down at Newton, whose tongue was wagging happily out of his mouth. He circled around Anthony, jumping up and down eagerly.

“He’s a bit overweight.”

Kate’s jaw dropped and she gasped. “You are so rude. He’s a corgi, his rolls keep him warm! He probably heard that!”

“He’s a dog.” Anthony glanced down at Newton, quite unimpressed.

Of course Anthony Bridgerton didn’t like dogs. He probably didn’t like anything that caused any joy.

“Newton,” She said, particularly emphasizing that he had a name and was not just ‘dog’, “-is incredibly intelligent.”

They both simultaneously glanced back at Newton, who was sprinting in a small circle, trying and failing to chase his tail.

Anthony hummed, his eyes bulging slightly that infuriated Kate further. “I’m sure.”

“Please do not project your insecurities onto my dog.”

“My insecurities? I’m quite confident in my body.” His cocky smirk infuriated her more. His tight t-shirt was not helping the situation.

Kate swore she could see the outline of his chest, the faint lines of his abdominal muscles were clinging to the west material of his t-shirt.

“Good for you.” Kate managed to conjugate.

“Do you think there’s something wrong with my body, Kate?”

“I don’t think about your body at all.” Liar, liar.

“We both know that’s not true, Miss Sheffield.”

Newton saved Kate from replying by jumping onto Anthony, his paws resting on the thin material of his shorts covering his thighs.

“Down, dog. Sit.” Anthony pointed at the ground, and to Kate’s surprise, he sat. She usually had to bribe him with some ham to do any tricks.

She needed to make a swift exit. “We have to get going. My sister is waiting for-oh!”

Newton sprinted away from them, jumping from his sitting position and charging off so ferociously he yanked the lead right out of Kate’s grip. Kate landed flat on her face.

She felt Anthony’s hands on her waist, easily pulling her off the grand. Kate spat out a mouthful of grass, ignoring the tingling feeling his fingertips left as she stood up, immediately taking off after her dog.

“Newton, no! Come back!”

“Can’t you call him back?” Anthony said, easily catching up with her as they sprinted after the dog. They had gathered a few people’s attention, it was an interesting sight-two people running after a manic dog.

“Thank god you’re here. I never would have thought of that one on my own.” Kate cast a disgruntled glare at him before squinting her eyes to make out Newton’s little figure, a good bit ahead of them.

“Newton!” She roared after him, but the runaway corgi paid them little attention.

Kate felt like she was going to vomit. She had to stop, coming to an abrupt halt to bend over. She was panting heavily, resting her hands on her knees. She may have been dressed in running gear, a jumper and leggings-but she had never actually ran in them.

“I think I’m going to get sick,” Kate said, half-panting, half heaving. Her stomach was not feeling good.

Anthony, who stopped a few meters ahead of her, glanced back at her unimpressed. He wasn’t even sweating. “We’ve ran about fifty meters.”

“I’m failing to see your point,” Kate said, biting her bottom lip hard before mustering the strength to take off again. She needed to find Newton-she wasn’t worried he would run off, he had severe attachment issues, as did Kate-but he would make it difficult for her in the meantime.

“Don’t you exercise?” He asked, easily jogging beside her. He still hadn’t broken a sweat and Kate couldn’t stop, the beads of sweat trailing down her forehead.

“I don’t have the time.” She wasn’t willing to try to find the time. She worked, she spent time with her family and Newton and she slept. An exciting life, truly.

Anthony, rather judgmentally, snorted. “We have a free gym in the building at work. It’s about making time, Kate. I exercise everyday.”

“Would you like a medal?” Kate tried to sound unimpressed, her tone flat and dull. It wasn’t news to her, he had raised a lot of money last year for the marathon and it had been advertised all around the building.

Kate had been treated to Anthony Bridgerton’s face everywhere for a whole month before the marathon. She not only had to see his smug face in person daily but she had been subjected to it on newsletters, in emails, on badges and on bloody biscuits.

“I have plenty, thanks,” He said swiftly, his usual arrogant tone alive and well. It was the voice he used in meetings at work when they were arguing over something and he was trying to irritate her-it usually worked. “I was captain of the rugby team at school and at Oxford. I also ran the London Marathon last year.”

“You’re so modest.” Kate laughed as he scowled at her sarcastic tone. His achievements were quite impressive, she had donated to his fundraiser last year-she just wasn't going to inflate his ego any further. “I pass the gym everyday and I swear I’ll go tomorrow. The thing is, I really couldn’t be arsed.”

Kate fell off a treadmill last year and still hadn’t emotionally recovered. It would be a cold day in hell before she stepped foot in a gym again.

“You should. It’s a good stress reliever. You always look so disgruntled every time I see you.”

Charming.

“That’s because I have to see you everyday.” Kate chimed back, shooting him a short smile before coming to a stop, beginning to walk towards Newton. They were getting closer and closer to Newton, who had been trotting around the same area of grass in the distance.

“Get him,” Anthony loudly whispered, interrupting their back and forth as he pointed towards Newton who was now rolling in a patch of dirt.

“I'm trying!" Kate shouted back, trying to keep her voice low as she reached out her hands. Her plan to pounce and grab Newton carefully before he could sprint away. "Stop distracting me. I need to get my dog. My dog, who now needs a bath and ran away, which are both completely your fault.” She was so close Newton, who still hadn’t noticed them.

Anthony was walking in front of Newton, trying to stay out of his eyeline by approaching from the side. It wasn't too difficult-Newton was quite oblivious.

“How is any of this my fault?” Anthony snapped, glaring at her from across the flowerbed as he creeped around it. “I am spending my Sunday helping you catch your beast-”

“Watch your mouth, Newton is an angel. I didn’t ask you to! I’m here because I came out to clear my head because of what you’ve done-” Kate argued, it seemed they could last a minute until they resumed bickering.

“What I’ve done?” He gaped at her, his mouth opening and closing. It was worrying how good it made her feel to make Anthony Bridgerton speechless.

“What have you done?” She was focusing on steadying her breath and controlling her panting, creeping closer and closer to Newton. She was seriously unfit. “Exist, specifically. I ended up in Lady Whistledown because of you! All because you enticed me into your fancy cars with snacks-”

“Enticed you?” It was more of an accusation than a question. “I was being nice. I can't help what the media write about me I was offering you a lift home. I won’t make that mistake again.”

“That’s fine by me!”

“Excellent”

“Great!”

“Fantastic.”

“Superb.”

Kate was going to run out of adjectives soon.

Anthony ran a hand through his hair, stopping in the middle of the flowerbed, glaring at her. "You...you are an absolute menace, do you know that? I have never in my life encountered such a frustrating-”

“A menace?” Kate snorted at the insult. “Do you always talk as if you’re from the 1800s?”

Newton spotted Kate and Anthony, narrowly avoiding Kate’s leap towards her. “Shit! Newton, come back here right now!”

Kate’s stomach dropped as she saw exactly what Newton had spotted and was now running towards.

The pond.

“Newton, no!”

“Isn’t he trained? Tell him to stop! Stop, dog!” Anthony shouted at her, his jaw clenched so tightly he looked like he was in pain.

“Yes,” Her voice wavered slightly, glaring right back at him. “He’s a dog. He’s having fun!” Truthfully, Newton had been asked to leave the three training courses Kate had signed them up for. Anthony was not going to know that.

“Kate!” Edwina waved her hand in the air. She was standing in front of the pond, a circle of ducks crowded in front of her. She appeared to be feeding them crumbs, a bagel waving in her hand.

She had completely forgotten about meeting her sister.

“Edwina.” Kate was roaring at her sister, waving her arms frantically. Edwina didn’t seem phased by her sister’s frazzled state at all. Kate wasn’t usually this dramatic, was she? “Move! He’s going to go for the bagel!”

Anthony had joined in on her shouting, but it was too late.

Newton launched himself at Edwina, specifically at the baked good in her hand-pushing her straight into the unbarricaded pond.

[yeetingmyfeeling]

Run, Run, Run!

Chapter Five

Everyone had begun eating, and loud chatter filled the room. It was comforting, in a sense. Though the blanket was going to break soon enough.

“These meatballs are so good!” Jarren mumbled through a mouthful of food. He was sat directly across from Brian, John on his left. On his right was Ryan and Luke.

John rolled his eyes at the pale boy. “Eat with your mouth closed,” Jarren swallowed his food and stuck his tongue out. The elder went to stab it with his fork, making the younger squeal.

“You know Evan, instead of doing whatever you were going to do,” Anthony pointed at Evan with his fork, then at John and Jarren. “Remember you have two literal children already,” The two shouted their protests, making the table laugh. 

“No wonder I’m already getting wrinkles,” Jon sighed over dramatically, pressing a hand to his forehead. “I’ve been babying two overgrown men.”

“There there dear,” Evan patted Jon’s thigh. “There’s ointment for that.”

“You’re supposed to say I don’t have wrinkles, dickhead!” Jon swatted Evan’s chest. “You bet I’m killing you soon, old man. For your fucking money.”

“I always knew Jon was a gold digger,” Marcel chuckled. “Scott, cough up the tenner.”

“Eat my ass Marcel,” Scotty shoved spaghetti into his mouth. 

“Take me on a date first,” Marcel rolled his eyes jokingly.

“I wouldn’t take your bitchy ass on a date,” Scotty swallowed the spaghetti in his mouth, coughing slightly. Marcel asked who he would on the table. Scotty looked around. “Brian.”

“Me?” Brian tilted his head, and a light blush coated his cheeks. He knew this was just a stupid joke, but the sentiment was nice. No one ever really wants to take him out on a date

“Oh so, you’ll take Brian but not me?” David was offended. “We’re the same! Both irish, and cute.”

“You’re not cute,” Tyler snorted, now a part of this conversation. It seemed everyone was watching this interaction now. “Brian is cute though, and his accent just sounds better. At least it sounds like he’s speaking mostly english.”

David scoffs loudly. He looks at Brian, who was sitting awkwardly next to him. Both because nerves, and the two mens long legs squished his own. “Brian,” Brian looked at David in question. “Do you think I’m cute?”

Brian stuttered for a second. “I- um, yeah,” Was what he managed to get it out. “You’re very cute David!”

David grinned, feeling something swirl in his chest. He went to say something, but Scotty interrupted him. “Yeah yeah, whatever. Brian, since you’re the cutest out of everyone here. Come on a date with me?” John, Ryan and Luke knew what he was doing. Brian had a hunch. 

Brian was stuttering again, but David spoke first. “Sorry, he’s busy going on a date with me,” He stated firmly.

Brian heard a growl to his left, and he was sure the only other person who heard that was Anthony, on Tyler’s other side. “Who says he has time to go on a date with you? Our date takes up a lot of time, so he’ll be with me.”

Brain could feel his face burning. He did not want to be a part of this conversation! So he just busied himself with his food. 

People moved on from that conversation, and were now talking in their own little groups. Brian was the only person sitting there quietly. He silently ate his food, admiring how good it actually tasted. Brian had cooked a few times, but not many.

He lifted his head up to look around the room. He felt like this was his new family. Although he felt some major attractiction from the two men currently squishing his legs, everyone else felt like brothers.

John and Jarren were in a heated conversation with David, something about realistic food. Brian didn’t understand it. Luke and Ryan were talking to Marcel and Scorry. Luke had an arm over Ryan’s shoulders, eating with only one hand. Tyler was talking to Anthony, and Brock was talking with Evan and Jon.

Brian still felt out of place a little bit. He wasn’t here as long as the rest of them, and he came from another pack. On those really bad nights, Brian swore he could still smell the old pack on him. This made him shiver.

He finished off his beer, noticing he finished it off quickly from his nerves. It made him feel warm, but he was nowhere near drunk. Maybe another night.

He heard the conversation to his right, and noticed David was now eating his food. John and Jarren talking to each other. Brian smiled, he could tell they had a thing for one another. Brian turned to David and poked his foot with his own.

David lifted his head, spaghetti dangling from his lip. Brian laughed and David quickly slurped it up with a blush. He wiped his chin and chewed at the food. “What’s up?” He asked after he swallowed the food.

“I was wondering if you could help teach me how to cook? Since you’re the big cook of the house,” Brian asked. “I sort of know how to cook, but nothing like.. This.”

“I don’t usually cook at home, maybe once every two weeks,” David stabbed at a meatball. “But I can help teach you. Actually,” He quickly ate the meatball then turned to Brian. “Did you want to go on a date? We can go to this cafe. The restaurant I work at partners with them, and we get bread for them. So it’s more like a bakery. It’s really good though, it would be nice,” David kept going on a tangent, nervous. 

Brian’s face was warm, but he had a giddy smile threatening to break. “That sounds good David,” Brian finally spoke. “I’d like that,” He mumbled. David smiled. 

David would have said something else, only he was interrupted once again. By Tyler. “A date?” He asked, and it sounded quite angry. He huffed loudly. Brian heard Anthony say something, making Tyler wave him off. “Bri, wanna go to the bar with me Friday night? I can get Anthony to give us a secluded table.”

Brian flushed even more. “Wha- I-,” That giddy grin was starting to come out. “I’d love to go to the bar with you.”

“So on Sunday, you’ll come to the cafe with me?” David asked, bringing Brian’s attention back to him. “They close at two, so maybe we could do brunch?”

Brian nodded quickly. “Brunch sounds nice, I’ll have to set lots of alarms,” He laughed, making David laugh as well.

“I’ll work on Friday, but we can still get there before it gets too busy,” Brian turned back to Tyler. “I get off early anyway on Friday’s.”

“That’s handy,” Brian grinned. “Maybe around six thirty we could get there?” Tyler seemed to agree with him.

Brian heard a huff next to him, and saw David shoving another meatball in his mouth. Looking at Tyler, he was smirking as he finished off his bear. Oh boy, what did Brian just get himself into. He looked up, and John winked at him. Ryan made the sex movements with his hands, and Luke pushed his mates hands down.

Brian’s face turned even more red, if that was even possible. He was sure he looked like a tomato at this point. 

“So Brian,” Brian knew from Scotty’s tone, he was about to start something ugly. “I think you’re the cutest at the table, and you said David is cute. But who do you really think is the cutest?”

All eyes were on him again, and he could have let out a whimper. He suppressed that classic omega noise and stared at his plate. He did not want to make accidental eye contact with someone. 

He would say Jon, but Evan would get pissy. Maybe Brock? He has been one of the nicest thus far. Brian really knew who was the cutest, but didn’t know if that answer was allowed.

“Am I allowed to say two people?” Scotty shook his head. Brain frowned, seriously considering his options. He sighed. “Brock is the cutest.”

“Yes! I knew the charm would work!” Brock joked and everyone laughed. Except for a certain beta, and a certain alpha. Brock noticed this and his lips quirked up in a smirk. Aside from the couples, who does everyone else think is the cutest?” John and Jarren said each other's name. “You two are basically a couple, hush.”

Anthony answered Brock. Marcel answered Scotty, Scotty kept with his answer of Brian. Brock said Marcel. David and Tyler were quiet. Brain felt the tension, and went to joke about how Brock didn’t think he was cute back when Tyler spoke up.

His voice was thick and heavy, and it sent a shiver down Brian’s back. “I think Bri is the cutest,” He answered. “Especially with those diamond eyes.”

Brian heard a grunt from the beta. “Bri is the cutest, he beats all your asses,” David tried to match Tyler’s voice, so his accent was thick. “He’s cute in every way. Look at him blush.”

Everyone could feel the tension seeping from the beta and alpha that sat beside the nervous omega. Brian looked at the people across from him with pleading eyes, but they just shook their head. They were trying not to laugh. 

Tyler wrapped an arm around Brian’s shoulder, and the omega immediately tensed up. He wasn’t prepared for the sudden contact. David noticed first.

“Hey, get your hand off him,” David pushed Tyler’s arm off Brian’s shoulder. “He was clearly uncomfortable with that.”

Tyler scoffed, shaking out his arm. “Were you uncomfortable Bri?” Brian shook his head slowly, looking down at his lap. “See, dude, it was fine.”

“Brian you’re allowed to speak up,” David placed a gentle hand over Brian’s that rested on the table. “Just because he’s an alpha, doesn’t mean you have to put up with him being a bitch.”

Brian blushed, his arm twitching from the touch. That’s when Tyler leaned over, harshly grabbing David’s hand and pushing him away. He nearly fell out of the chair. “Uncomfortable, remember,” Tyler mocked.

“Tyler! You act like such a child!” David groaned. “Stop being petty.”

“I am not being petty, alphas don’t get petty.”

“Alphas are some of the most petty people I know. Maybe you’re upset because I got to Brian first, but maybe if you weren’t such a dick at the beginning.”

“Not upset. You haven’t even gotten to him yet, you asked him on a date, that hasn’t happened!”

“You are upset! And at least I asked first, I was also kinder, not a cunt.”

“I’ll show you a cunt.”

Tyler stood up quickly, the chair going back. David stood up as well, eyeing the slightly taller male. Brian sat in between the two, alarm bells ringing. He looked at both of them, knowing he should say something. He was too scared. He looked around the table. The two other alphas seemed ready to jump in if necessary, but otherwise, they just sat and watched.

“Tyler, you have always been such a moody bitch,” David rolled up the sleeves of his sweater. “Since day one. You use the fact you’re an alpha to scare everyone, and you don’t care when it genuinely hurts people. You’re never nice, never say thank you or sorry. You need a reality check mate.”

Tyler glared at the other. “Oh get off your high horse, you were no piece of cake either,” Tyler pulled off his flannel, laying it over the back of his chair. “I remember when you first came here and Brock tried to help you. You nearly ripped his damn eye out.”

“I was scared and angry! What the fuck did you expect me to do!?”

“Not attack him!”

“Oh I’m sorry, who’s talking again? How many fights did you get in with Evan?”

“They were reasonable.”

“Stupid alpha fights.”

“They were pretty stupid,” Evan muttered, only to be slapped over the back of his head by his mate. Evan just snickered.

“Fine, David. Have it your way.”

“My way?”

Tyler stepped forward, and his fist collided with David’s cheek. Brain yelped standing up and pushing back into the table. David stumbled back, a hand coming up to rub his jaw. He knew he wasn’t going to win this fight. Tyler was trained, and a strong alpha. David was no weak beta.

David went forward, sending his own punch into Tyler’s gut. Tyler had little to know reaction, grabbing David’s wrist and twisting. David scowled, sending a leg into Tyler’s knee. This got a reaction, and the alpha bent slightly. David brought his knee up, slamming it into Tyler’s bottom jaw. He yanked his wrist away and pushed his other fist into Tyler’s chest. This caused Tyler to stumble back.

All while, Brian was gripping to the table. His eyes were wide with fear, and his breathing had picked up, his heart hammering in his chest. His knuckles were turning white, whimpers falling from his lips without him knowing.  

Brock rushed over, standing in front of Brian. Brian couldn’t help but reach out and cling to the back of his shirt. The two were still fighting. Throw kicks, punches and insults.

Anthony stood up and stood between the two, trying to push them away. He got a kick to the hip, and a punch to the jaw. Accidentally, but he didn’t budge. Luke came over next, wrapping his arms around the betas skinny waist and lifting him up, taking a few steps back. Evan was in charge of Tyler, and simply went about grabbing the collar of his shirt and forcing him back. This caused Tyler to on to his knees. He knew his alpha was the one holding him back, so knew to stay put.

The two were breathing heavily, glaring each other down. Anthony took a step back, standing next to Brock. Brian poked his head out over Brock’s shoulder, staring at the two angry males. Evan cleared his throat, going to speak. Only his mate was the one to talk.

“What are you two ididots doing!?” Jon shouted, walking to stand between the two. “Fighting? Actually fist fighting? At the fucking dinner table! Ryan spent all this time cooking for us, and although it was mainly for Luke, he was down in the kitchen since midday trying to make this right. Now you two knobheads have to come along and completely ruin it!”

“What Jon is trying to say, is that we are disappointed,” Evan’s tone voiced how everyone felt. “We are family, and we have all gone through a lot together. You both have gone through a lot, and it’s okay to have pent up anger, but fighting is not the way to solve it.”

“It’s my fault,” Brain spoke up with a frown. “I-I’m in the way, I’m the reason they started arguing.”

“No Brian,” Brock tried to reassure the omega. “It’s not your fault.”

“But it is!” Brian tried to argue, his voice cracking.

“Look what your fighting has done!” Jon yelled. “Brian is going to cry!” The two heads snap to Brian’s direction. He sunk down, hiding behind Brock again, sniffling. “Luke, Evan, please take the two to their rooms. They can stay there until they calm the fuck down.”

“Who put you as boss?” Evan asked with a smirk. Jon raised an eyebrow at him. Evan just rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” He yanked at the back of Tyler’s shirt. Tyler got the idea and stood up. Evan let go, and led them out of the room. Tyler looked at Brian one last time, guilt swimming in his eyes.

After a minute or two, Luke put the lanky Irishman down. David brushed off his middle, only to be shoved by the larger. “Gonna act tough, treat you tough,” David just snorted. He gave Brian a sad smile, then the two left the room. 

“Desert anyone?” Jon asked the room. 

[hymn2000]

Ideal Confusion - MCU AU Fanfic - C13

(Title subject to change)

Story summary: Giving into the constant pressure from the press, Tony decides to put a rest to the rumours that Peter is his biological son - once and for all.

Previous Chapter(s): 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Part of my Frostiron and Spiderson series.

Warnings/themes: family, family stuff, adoption, DNA test(s), pressure, peer pressure, social issues, mentions of alcoholism, mental health problems, potentially some minor medical inaccuracies, mentions of corporal punishment, hurt/comfort

You can also find me on AO3

Chapter 13 - Young Man’s Blues

-

Peter took advantage of his healthy bank account and finally splashed out on something big. He was up early, checking up on the tracking app, sitting at the bottom of the stairs to make sure he got the door before his parents did. Sure, Tony had always said he could spend his money on whatever he wanted (within reason and legality), but he still had a feeling they’d both have something to say about what he’d ordered - and not necessarily something good.

-

“Uh, what’s going on here?!”

Peter jumped. He hadn’t realised Tony had been in the lab all this time.

“...Just taking a delivery” Peter said, signing the form and letting the delivery men go.

He closed the front door and turned to his father. 

“Anyway, good morning”

“Do you not think that maybe you should have consulted me before buying something like this?”

“Well, it was a special deal - next day delivery. And anyway, you're always saying my money is mine to spend”

“Well, yes, but-”

“I’ll send it back if you want me to”

“No, no. That’s not necessary” Tony looked at the black Yamaha upright piano. “How much did it cost?”

“...Just shy of seven thousand dollars”

“Oh, nice. Why didn’t you get a grand piano?”

“Because they were like, forty-five thousand dollars! This was expensive enough. And anyway, this one will be easier to fit somewhere. I mean, maybe if I had a music room, I’d’ve got a bigger one”

“Are you hinting?”

Peter shrugged. “I’m not a big musician. I just fancied one of these. It was cool playing it the other day, like, while I was away? I’d only ever played at school. So... Can I keep it?”

“Of course you can! Look, that video your father sent me was great, and it’s plain to see that you’re a real talent. Where are you going to put it?”

“Well, there’s room here, by the stairs” Peter said, gesturing to the cabinet under the banister. “Well, if we moved that”

“No, leave it! Don’t go moving furniture” Tony sighed. “Maybe you should move it upstairs, kiddo. Up in the corridor or something”

“Ok. Can you give me a hand?”

“No way; I’m not juggling a piano. Why don’t you get your father?”

“I think he’s still asleep”

“He’s in the laundry room”

“Oh. Ok, I’ll... Wait, dad?”

“Mm?”

“You still love me, right?”

Tony sighed irritably. “Don’t ask silly questions, Peter”

“Can we talk later? Properly?”

“I thought you were getting your father?”

Peter sighed heavily and went off to get Loki. He supposed talking to Tony would have to wait.

-

Moving a piano wasn’t too much of a strain for a god and an enhanced teenager to manage. They found a good spot for it in the corridor outside the back room. It was a wide enough corridor for it to fit comfortably, with plenty of room to spare for anyone passing. Once it was positioned, Loki lifted the fall board and tapped a few keys.

“Well, this is your forte” he said. “I’ll leave you to sort the rest of it”

“Hey, daddy?”

“What?”

“Are you and dad fighting?”

“Why would you say that?”

“I need to know”

Loki sighed. “No, we’re not fighting. We’re just not each others biggest fans right now. Or, at least, I’m not his. Set your piano up and mind your own business”

Peter scowled at his fathers back, but sighed and looked at his piano. It was even prettier in person than it had been on the listing. It was so sleek and perfect and professional-looking - so much so, that he felt like he shouldn’t touch it, let alone play it. It was very much something to be treated with respect, he thought. Something decorative... But he’d bought it to play. Although... Well, maybe he should test it out...

-

“He was your responsibility - you should have talked some sense into him”

“I didn’t know he was buying a piano, did I? And so what? You said yourself that he’s talented”

“That doesn’t mean he can just do as he pleases!”

“Anthony, you’re always whining about him having money anxiety. He’s just splashed some cash - see it as progress. At least he’s spent it on something useful and sensible”

“You’re deliberately missing my point”

“You don’t have a point:- you’re just kicking off for no reason. Leave the kid alone. Sort out your own problems before taking it out on him”

“I’m not taking it out on him! Anyway, what if he never uses it? He’s already given up the lab, and he’s been trying to give up swimming for ages! Not to mention that steep downwards spiral in Spiderman activity.”

“He gave up the lab because he was majorly depressed and traumatised, remember? Spiderman was much the same, and anyway, he still does that on at least a weekly basis. You can;t; whine about that, because you used to whine when he was out in his suit every day. It’s like he can’t win. And, he’s never enjoyed swim team, not really - although of course you never want to listen to him when he tries to tell you about that, do you?” Loki said scornfully. “Give him a break. He bought it for a reason, and he’s probably using it as we speak”

“We’ll see about that” Tony said, pushing past him. 

Loki closed his eyes for a moment, trying to stay calm, and then followed him. Peter might need a bit of protection.

-

Peter could have heard Tony shouting from a mile off, so he stopped playing and turned round in his seat, folding his arms over his chest. Tony was visibly taken aback when he turned the corner and saw him there. 

“...What?”

“I assume you’ve come to shout at me?”

Tony didn’t know what to say to that, which as a great relief for Peter. 

“What time is Li Allen coming?” he asked quickly.

“What?” Tony looked at Loki. “Is that today?”

“Yes. One ‘o clock” Loki said. “Perhaps if you have a shower and something to eat you’ll feel a little less confrontational for when she gets here”

“Fine!” Tony said. “I’m going to my room then, if you’re going to be like that”

Peter waited until he heard the door slam, and then looked at Loki.

“I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that it was my job to kick off and slam doors”

“Don’t even think about it, chick” Loki sighed. “If he’s going to be like that, we need to pick up the slack. Li Allen has dealt with enough from us without all three of us kicking off”

Peter shrugged, turning back to the piano. “Well, until he shouts at me to stop the racket, I’m gonna be here”

“Have you had anything to eat today?”

“No, but-”

“But nothing. Come on; you need to eat”

“I’ll get something in a bit”

“No, you’ll get something now. That’s not a suggestion”

Peter sighed, and closed the fall board. There was enough tension in the house without him causing an argument with Loki.

-

Tony came in for something to eat just as Peter was finishing. He ran his hand through his wet hair, grumbling to himself. Loki made a comment, and Tony made a harsher one back. Within thirty seconds, they’d started arguing, and thirty seconds after that, it got serious. Peter carefully slipped out of the room, not that either of them noticed. His parents rarely argued properly, which just made it all that much worse when they did exchange cross words. He didn’t want to stick around to hear what they had to say. They could both be seriously nasty when they wanted to be.

Peter grabbed his MP3 and put his headphones over his ears so he couldn’t hear them. He went down to the back room, but stopped at the door, looking at the piano, which seemed to be the catalyst for the argument going on in the kitchen. He wanted to regret buying it, but he didn’t. He took his hand off the back room door handle and instead went and sat down at the piano. He lifted the fall board and ran his fingers over the keys gently, just enough to feel how cool and smooth they were. It felt good finally having one in the house. He was surprised, with Tony’s very public wealth, that there hadn’t been one in the house already. It seemed to be one of those things that every rich people had. Even Millie and Flo had a piano at home, and no one in either of their families knew how to play so much as three consecutive notes. 

He set his MP3 on the edge of the piano, scrolling through to find a decent playlist. He let it play, and placed his hands on the piano keys and started to play, humming along at first, and then singing, softly, so that he could hardly hear himself over his playing, and the music in his headphones.

“Too late, to save myself from falling.. I took a chance, and changed your way of life.. But you misread, my meaning when I met you.. Closed the door, and left me blind, by the light..”

Peter could tell just from the way it felt how good the piano was. It seemed to make everything easier. Maybe he was clouded by bias, or pride, or just the situation which had led him to play, but everything flowed so well. “Don't let the sun go down on me. Although I search myself, it's always someone else I see.. I'd just allow a fragment of your life, to wander free... But losing everything, is like the sun going down on me”

Peter closed his eyes. He knew the keys well enough to do it without looking. It helped, too: it meant he was fully encased in the music, and everything else was blocked out. Soon enough, he forgot about his parents, about the shouting, about the tension, about the DNA test... “I can't find, ooh the right romantic line. But see me once, and see the way I feel. Don't discard me, just because you think I mean you harm. But these cuts I have, oh, they need love, to help them heal...”

-

With everything else blocked out, there was nothing to stop him. For a while he nearly forgot who he was. On the one hand, he could be Peter Benjamin Parker-Stark, once orphaned, Spider-man, traumatised, ill, smart, but not living up to his true potential, suffering with selective mutism, prone to overreacting, not always sure who he was and how he felt. But, on the other hand, he could be someone else; someone who didn’t exist yet. An alter-ego, or perhaps a person - a personality - he could adopt. A mixture of great people, of great talent - someone ordinary, but with extraordinary skill and talent. He wasn’t - but at the same time, what was stopping him from being that? Or at least, just pretending he was...

So he kept singing. He kept playing. He had a safe playlist on, and he played whatever came on, regardless of how complex it was to play, or sing. He didn’t always get it right, but it didn’t matter, because he couldn’t hear properly, and even if he could, he felt great. He didn’t feel like him. He didn’t feel scared, worried about his parents, his parentage, his school and friends. He felt like someone else entirely, like... well, like he’d changed. Maybe he was someone else here. Who knows? And if he was, who was he to argue with that? Since May’s death, he hadn’t felt great all that often, and he was fully committed to taking full advantage of any time he did feel good. No questions asked.

-

Peter stopped abruptly. He hesitated, and then pushed his headphones down round his neck.

“...Hi”

“Hello, you” Li Allen said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you jump”

“It’s ok” Peter said. “Pausing my MP3 is far from being the worst way to get my attention”

“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other”

“A few months” Peter nodded, turning round on his seat. “I’ve kinda missed you, you know”

“That’s sweet” Li said, sitting down beside him. “We’ve known each other a long time now”

“I guess we’ve been through a lot together. Even if some of it was stuff you didn’t hear about until afterwards” he looked at her. “...I guess you’ve talked to my parents?”

“Yes”

“I guess you’ve been told?”

“Yes”

“What do you think about it?”

“Now, that’s what I should be asking you” Li said, putting an arm round his shoulders. “You had some impressive playing and singing going on just then, but your song choice gives a lot away”

“Well... You know, Macy once asked me to recommend some happy Elton John songs to her, and you know, to be honest, there isn’t all that many. There’s loads more sadder ones. And neutral ones, I guess. He’s emotional. So maybe it’s just coincidence”

“I don’t believe you for a second. I know you too well; I can tell when you’re spinning a story”

“Well, ok” Peter admitted. “I wasn’t lying about the Macy bit, though”

“I know. Now I think you need to answer my question”

Peter went quiet. He glanced back at the piano keys. 

“Why don’t we go somewhere a bit more comfortable?” Li suggested.

Peter took his headphones off and set them down carefully. “I’m ok here”

“Ok. Now, do you have anything to say to me? I can imagine how much of a shock this news was to you, and I can see the effect it’s having on your parents”

“I was thinking of you earlier, you know” Peter said. “About right back when we first met, and how I was, and how you had the same perfume as May, and how weak I was”

“You weren’t weak, Peter” Li said, gently. “Far from it. You were just very, very sad, and very sick”

“I feel sick if I think about it too much. But at least I’m not living it anymore. It was a horrible year. Finding out Tony Stark is my bio-dad is nothing compared to a lot of stuff I’ve been through”

“That doesn’t mean it hasn’t had an effect on you”

“Well, maybe, but I don’t know what that is yet, not really. I mean, he won’t even talk to me about it, so I don’t know how I’m supposed to figure it out. I mean, I know he’s not gonna remember my mother, but I didn’t expect him to. But that doesn’t mean he can’t answer some questions, you know? I mean, imagine if he’d always known about me. I’d’ve grown up in this huge house, and I’d’ve been at schools like St Hendricks my whole life, and I’d probably be a completely different person. If he’d stepped up, anyway”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, he’s not always been a family man. I know he was a right twat back in the day. Like, back when I was a really little kid, like, back before Iron Man and all that stuff. He’s still a bit of a twat now... He might have just told my mum that it was her problem, and refused to have anything to do with me” Peter said. “I mean, I’ve read the articles, and I’ve heard the stories, and I don’t know if I can imagine him in his playboy, parties, super-super-ego, look-how-great-I-am days being happy about having a kid. I mean, knowing what he was like, can you imagine him doing the honourable thing?”

“Parenthood can change people, whether the kid was planned or not. Sure, he might have run a mile, but there’s no guarantee. Maybe he’d have been given a shock, and wanted to step up. Maybe he’d have said he’d just pay for upkeep but having nothing to do with the baby, but then change his mind when you were born. It’s a reality we’re not living, so we’re never going to know. The important thing is; he stepped up for you, regardless. Now it turns out you’ve been flesh and blood all along. That’s got to be a shock to the system”

“You know, I think it would have been weird growing up famous. I mean, you remember when I got turned into a toddler, that whole Kindsprengen thing? I remember loads of that, and I remember it being scary when people crowded us in public and stuff”

“I think the hype of your story may have intensified that. But I see where you’re coming from. Still, you’ve been a celebrities son for a long time now”

“I sometimes wish I had someone to share it with. Like, if the IVF... If all that stuff had gone through, I’d’ve ended up with a sibling. Someone who understood and could share the whole thing with me, you know?”

“I can imagine it being strange and tough sometimes. Do you get lonely?”

“No, not really. I’ve started drifting off into my own little world a lot lately. And anyway, I’m friends with my parents, so that helps. If I didn’t get on with them, I guess I would feel lonely a lot more” he paused for a moment. “...I’m thinking of being a toddler now”

“The first time round?”

Peter shook his head. “I don’t remember that. No, I mean the Kindsprengen thing. It’s funny how much I remember sometimes. I keep meaning to write it down, but I always get distracted after a few paragraphs... I kinda feel like I did then”

“In what way?”

“Well, at the start, it was just daddy Loki looking after me, because dad was all scared or in denial or whatever, and he wouldn’t have anything to do with me, and he wouldn’t talk to me or pay proper attention to me... I remember being so confused and upset about it... Anyway, he won’t talk to me properly now - not about what we actually need to talk about, anyway. Daddy’s been real good, mostly, but dad hasn’t, and he’s the one I need more right now. It’s the same kinda like, segregation, I guess”

“Do you think he’s in denial again now?”

“...I’m not sure. I think he’s trying to pretend none of this is happening, like, pretend that it hasn’t changed anything. How was he when you spoke to him?”

Li paused. “...Tense. Both of them were. Let’s just say I took the first chance to slip away to come to talk to you. I wanted to check you were ok”

“Are they arguing again?”

Li nodded. “I’m afraid so”

“They’ve been at it all day” Peter looked back at his headphones and MP3. “I think this set it off”

“What?”

“The piano” Peter said. “It arrived this morning. There was a mixed reaction. I bought it myself. I guess I just wanted one”

“How long have you been playing?”

“About eight months. I’ve been paying for lessons at school. I didn’t tell anyone, but I went away with daddy and his friend the other day, and there was a piano there and I started playing it, and daddy sent a video to dad, so they know now. I don’t know exactly what they thought. I think dad would be pretty angry if he knew I’d skipped swim practice a lot to do it. Not that it really matters, since I’m not at school right now”

“Your parents mentioned home schooling again today. How do you feel about that?”

“I don’t really care” Peter said. “Not right now, anyway”

“What do you care about right now?”

“My piano” Peter said. “It’s so pretty right? It feels great actually being able to practice at home now”

“How were you playing all those songs?” Li asked, glancing behind them. “You don’t have any books or chords there”

“I can’t read music. My teacher tried to teach me, but I just don’t get it, so I don’t really use sheet music” Peter said. “I just play it by ear”

“That’s incredible. Not many people can do it, especially not as well as I heard you doing it”

Peter shrugged. “Well, it’s just like singing along, but playing along. I know I was kinda doing both, but you know what I mean, right?”

“I understand, yes. I’m glad you’ve discovered a new skill. But I don’t understand why you’ve kept it to yourself for so long”

“I guess I was worried what people would say about it, and think about it. Especially dad. Because of missing swim practice and stuff. You know what he’s like about swim team”

“Perhaps, with everything being out in the open, you should tell him that you want to quit. You’ve been miserable in your competitive swimming for far too long”

“No way” Peter said. “I got spanked last time I told him I hated it and wanted to step down. Well, actually, we did have an argument too, which I guess didn’t help. That was a pretty long time ago, anyway, and he hasn’t spanked me since the whole Kindsprengen fiasco, and I’m not really in a rush to break that streak”

“I don’t blame you” Li sighed. “It’s sad that you can’t talk about it with him. What about Loki?”

“He gets it, but dad won’t listen to him, either. They’ve argued about it a few times. They’ve been arguing a lot more recently, so I’m not about to bring that up and risk them having another barney because of it”

“I noticed the tension even before they started arguing. I assumed it was because of the test results”

“I wish it was” Peter sighed. “I don’t know what’s been up with them, but they’ve kinda been locking horns a lot these last couple of months. They usually try to keep all that stuff from me, but I have a feeling dad just keeps winding daddy up. It might be on purpose”

“Why do you think it might be on purpose?”

Peter shrugged. “You know, it’s good they try to keep me out of all that kinda stuff, but there’s a bunch of stuff they do that give away if they’re cross with each other. Tell-tale signs, you know?”

“I see. Do you have any examples?”

Peter shrugged again. “Not really. It’s all kinda stuff you shouldn’t notice, but do, you know? Like, it’s all kinda little things... Hey, can I ask you, like, a theoretical question?”

“Shoot”

“What would happen to me if they split up? Like, would dad get me because he’s blood?”

“Loki and Tony adopted you, and regardless of the results of the paternity test, in the eyes of the law, they’re both equally responsible - they’re equal parents to you”

“So, what would happen?”

“It would be up to your parents, or the courts if they couldn’t come to an agreement” Li said. “But, sweetheart, I don’t think you should think about that. I can’t see your parents splitting up, even if they’re having a rocky patch”

“Yeah, I guess so. This is nowhere near as rocky as it was when I first met daddy Loki, and they got through that nightmare” Peter sighed. “It’s just weird when they’re not getting on properly. I think daddy’s pretty upset about all this, too”

“They’ll get through it, kiddo” Li said, giving him a little squeeze. “Maybe they just have a lot to get out of their systems... Is that why you’re hiding back here?”

“Yeah, I was blocking out the shouting. At least, I was at first, but then I just kinda got really into the music”

Li smiled. “There’s nothing wrong with a bit of escape. Now, do you want to come through to the living room, so all four of us can talk?”

Peter went quiet, listening hard. “...I think they’ve stopped arguing, so... I guess so. I’d rather stay here, though”

“There’s nothing stopping you coming back afterwards, but I do need to talk to you all as a family”

“I know, I get it” Peter sighed, standing up. “Well, may as well get it over with”

-

Tony and Loki seemed to have calmed down a bit, but Peter stayed on high alert anyway, just in case. 

“I take it you haven’t done a press release yet?” Li said.

“It’s no one else’s business” Tony snapped. “Sorry. But it isn’t”

“People will find out sooner or later” Loki said.

“Not if no one tells them”

“You’ve told more people than I have” Loki pointed out.

“Barely!”

“You have! I only told Jo Jo. You told all your little superhero friends, and Pepper, and-”

“Ok, ok, point taken! That doesn’t mean we have to let the whole world know”

“I’ll just tweet about it if you like” Peter said. “Save you the hassle”

“Don’t be ridiculous! This is nothing to do with you” 

“HOW is it nothing to do with me?! You’re my dad, remember? Biologically? That’s entirely about me!”

“Get out of here, Peter: this is a grown up conversation, and your arguments aren’t helping”

“But-”

“But nothing!” Tony shouted. “Do as you’re damn well told!”

“Tony, I really think-”

“No, it’s fine” Peter stood up, interrupting her. “I wouldn’t stay in here if you paid me! You can deny it and pretend it doesn’t matter all you want; I don’t care anyway! You never should’ve done the stupid test in the first place”

-

Peter slammed down at the piano. He didn’t know why it had made him so angry, but he felt like he was bubbling over. He thought Tony had turned a corner, but obviously he’d been wrong. He was glad he’d left though: he had a feeling he’d have ended up with a smack if he’d stayed and argued the point.

He lifted the fall board. He put his headphones over his ears and opened his MP3 player. He looked at the song waiting to play. By some wonderful coincidence, it was exactly what he wanted to listen to. And exactly what he needed to play.

“Your old man got mad when I told him we were leaving. He cursed and he raged and he swore at the ceiling. He called you his child, said honey, get wise to his game, he'll get you in trouble-”

As he played, and sang, Peter couldn’t help thinking it was funny that a song with absolutely no relation to his current situation could feel so relevant. So close. Like it was written for him, to listen to and delve into in this exact moment in his life. It was so easy to get lost in the feeling of it, as if it was just an extension of himself. He was aware of how his fingers were moving on the ivories, aware of how far he’d come since that first shaky lesson all those months ago. But it didn’t feel like an effort at all. “..Saw your hands trembling, your eyes opened in surprise. It's ninety in the shade babe and there ain't a cloud in the sky.. I called you my child, said honey, now this is our game. There's two of us to play it, and I'm happy to be home again...”

Maybe Peter didn’t care about what his parents thought, especially Tony. Not right now, anyway. They could shout and scream and argue and kick off as much as they wanted to. As long as he had a set of headphones, and he had his piano, he’d be able to while away the time and block it all out until everything got back to normal.

“..And it’s, all over now, don't you worry no more, we’re gonna go west to the sea.. The greyhound is swaying, and the radio’s playing, some blues for baby and me"

*

[sweetpworld]

The P.A. - 1/2

Summary: Being a Personal Assistant is already a job full of ups and downs. When things start to change with your boss, you see yourself in a full on roller-coaster. Pairing: Sebastian Stan x Plus Size!Reader Word count: 9.262 in total (I GOT OUT OF CONTROL, SORRY) Warnings: Self-doubt, Body-shamming, Fat-shamming, mentions of smut and FLUFF. A/N: Ok, I’m trying this again after Tumblr went all riot on me. I still can’t believe I wrote over 9000 words, so I decided to make it a two-shot so MAYBE tumblr won’t fuck it up again.. I’m so sorry for any typos or grammar errors. English isn’t my primary language, so please, go easy on me. I’m really sorry if this turned out shitty, but I really feel good about the plot and I honestly hope you guys enjoy it.

----------

Another day on the set and here come the stares. Again.

It was always like this with you every time you showed up beside Sebastian, just because you were his fat personal assistant. Like, really people? Grow the fuck up.

When you first started this job you used to feel bad about this, about your body and about all these stupid people who keep on looking at the size 20 girl walking around them; but then, after a couple of months and receiving praises for your hell of a good job, you decided that people would still stare at you, but that didn’t mean you should care. You were here to do your job, not to please them.

You could still remember the day Mark Ruffalo was talking to Sebastian about the new movies and you were beside him taking notes and Mark said “Hey man, you know, your P.A. is a fucking good one. I don’t even know where mine is. If she was taking notes as much as yours is, I wouldn’t be as lost as I am most of the time.”. You all laughed at that, but that was also the moment where you understood that you weren’t a charity case. You were good at what you did and should be proud of that.

So here you are now, walking beside Sebastian with your head held high, iPad in hand and ready for the ridiculously crazy schedule you had for today. There was only one little thing that made your day harder than it should be: your boss.

Sebastian Stan is a very good-looking man and everyone knows that. All you need to do is look at him and bam: beauty. But after the last year and a half working with him, you have also met different sides that just made him look even more amazing in your eyes. Like the way he smiles at puppies, or how he works so hard on each role he gets, or how he loves his fans so much, or how inept he is with technology, or how he blushes so hard at compliments, as if he doesn’t know how amazing he is.

It’s a lot. Like, a lot. Specially for your heart to not fall for a man like him. But, of course, besides your job, there was always a problem with you having a crush on someone: they never liked you back.

Sebastian, for example, has a ‘dirty secret’. Not a problem or anything major, of course, but something that doesn’t come out to the public. He likes sex. A lot. And, let’s face it, it’s always easy for him to get someone to have one-night stands. The thing is that you are the one to deal with them later. So You're the one in charge of making them sign a confidentially contract, take away their phones to make sure they don’t have any pics or videos and finally send them on their ways while Sebastian is hitting the gym or something. And the thing is they are always the same tall, skinny and glamorous type of woman.

If you weren’t sure that he would never feel attracted to you before he asked to take care of them, you were completely sure after. So it was still hard to see him flirting with any good-looking woman that shows interest in him, but it helped your efforts to get over him, in a way.

-Hello Mr. Stan, hello Y/N. You look lovely today.

You were brought back from your thoughts by Jack’s greeting. He is Anthony’s personal assistant and has always been really nice to you.

-Jack. Shouldn’t you be with Mackie? - Sebastian asked him coldly. Which was odd, since he was always very friendly with everyone.

-I’m just going to take his coffee, Mr. Stan, but thought I should say hello to you. And to Y/N, of course.

-Well, hi Jack. Thank you for being so thoughtful. - You said smiling at him and giving Sebastian a look when he scoffed. - But go on and take Anthony’s coffee, I’m sure he is waiting.

-Right, well, we talk later, right Y/N?

-Of course. See you later! - You said walking quickly to catch up with Sebastian, who was already a few steps ahead. It was very odd, but you wouldn't make a scene out of it, so you just kept on going and decided to ignore it. Maybe Jack did something that bothered Sebastian or whatever.

And this was pretty much how your week went by: lots of appointments, taking care of Sebastian’s needs, watching him being rude with Jack every time you two were talking for a bit, not getting it any of those times, and just pretty much ignoring it. And just like that came Friday and you couldn’t be happier. Fridays meant Sebastian would go find a hook up and that meant free time for you. At least until the next morning, when you’d be needed to take away the trash, of course. But you were still glad to have a day to get home, put on some comfy pajamas e just chill.

Soon came the end of the day, it was getting darker, and Sebastian was finished for the day. You waited for him to change and met him back on the car waiting for you.

-Ok, so tonight you don’t have anything planned, tomorrow afternoon, starting at 2 p.m. you have a photoshoot for Hugo Boss and tomorrow night I’ll need you to attend an art exhibit that is raising money for the children’s hospital. But I’m sure you can find a woman for you there, so you won’t sacrifice your Saturday night’s fun. I’ll make sure to be at your place tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. with coffee and the papers for whichever lady you pick tonight. - You said checking your week agenda.

-Actually, you don’t have to worry about the papers. - Sebastian said beside you, looking out the window.

-Why? Is there a girlfriend this time? Because if not I have to do that so they don’t go around spreading picks of you naked on Facebook, IG or Twitter.  - you said still not looking up.

-No, nothing like a girlfriend. Nothing at all actually. - He said turning to look at you when you shot your head up to eye him.

-What do you mean ‘nothing at all’? - you said eyeing him suspiciously.

-I mean that I don’t want any girl tonight. Or tomorrow for that matter. - He said turning his head to the window again.

You were shocked. Like, for real. You were just sitting there, gapping at him like a fish and not knowing what to say.

-But... But... You always... Are you okay? - you ended up asking him.

-Yeah, I am more than okay. I have realized some things in the past few months and I just don’t want random woman anymore. - He said smiling softly, still looking out the window.

-Oh... Well... Good for you then. I mean, if you are happy, then that’s what matter, right? In that case, I’ll show up around 10 a.m. at your place, is that okay? - you asked him still slightly confused.

-You work too hard. Don’t worry, show up at midday and I’ll be ready, okay? I want you to rest and have a good night of sleep.- he said smiling and looking softly at you.

-O...kay. I won’t say that I don’t appreciate that, but are you certain you are okay? - you asked him again.

-Trust me, I am. I just need some me time to figure some things out. - He said taking your hand and kissing it. - We are here. Go get some rest.

You turned, still stunned that he was acting all weird like that and saw that you were indeed in front of your building.

-Well, who would’ve known? Maybe I should be in shock every time I take the bus so it goes faster.

He chuckled at that. - You were always funny.

You smiled, still confused, but decided that you needed some wine and your best friend to talk to. - Well then, I see you tomorrow at midday. Bye Sebastian, good night.

You didn’t wait for him to reply nor did you turned back once inside your building. If you had done any of those things you would have heard him saying a soft “Good night, love” and asking the driver to wait until you were out of sight.

----------

Once inside your apartment you called your best friend, Victor, inviting him to go over your place.

-Sure girl, I’ll be there in 40 minutes. Should I bring pizza?

-Absolutely. The Supreme with extra cheese.

-Okay, I get it, something happened, probably hot boss, don’t worry, I’ll be there.

He hung up on you, but you just smiled softly. Your friend was the worse, but he made it work the best. So you took a shower, put on some cute pj’s and shoved another bottle of wine on the cooler. You just knew you would need it. Not much later Victor arrived with two pizzas and 4 different Ben & Jerry’s.

-You know, if I didn’t need those today, I’d beat the crap out of you for ruining my diet.

-Girl, shush and live a little. Now, be a good friend and grab the wine. I’m taking these beauties to the freezer and those beauties to your coffee table.

Once everything was settled, you were already eating and “The Proposal” was on your T.V; Victor decided to do what he does best: go straight to business.

-So, care to tell me why you needed my wonderful assistance?

-Why, can’t a girl just love to spend time with her bff?

-Uh nuh. Cut the crap. We both know you have something bothering you and if I was to bet I’d bet it has something to do with Mr. Sebastian Hot-Body-And-Jawline-For-Days Stan. A.K.A. your boss.

Taking a deep breath you looked up to your ceiling – Ok, fine, yes, it has to do with him, but I seriously need your opinion here. - You said turning to look at him. Victor simply held your hand and signed you to keep going. - Okay, so you and I both know that Sebastian likes to have one night stands, right?

-Almost as much as I like those.

-Yes, exactly. And every Friday and Saturday night he finds someone to hook up with. And I am the one responsible to take care of them the morning after.

-You take out the trash.

-Yes, exactly again. So, what would you think if I told you he told me to not worry because he doesn’t want any woman today OR tomorrow? Like, at all. - You asked watching Victor pensive face.

-Well, that is odd, I’ll give you that. Did you ask him if he was feeling okay? Maybe he has a cold or something.

-I did ask him and he just said something about ‘realizing things for a few months now’. - you said making quotation marks with your fingers.

-Was it just that? I mean, was it the only weird thing about that talk?

-Well, he seemed a bit light-headed, you know? And he kissed my hand. Like right before I got out of the car.

-Hum… elaborate.

-There's nothing much of it, really. He was just off, smiling while looking out the window, dismissing his woman hunt, kissing my hand and telling me he wanted me to rest and have a good night of sleep.

Victor and you stared at each other for a couple of secseconds.

-BITCH, I KNOW HIS TEA! – He yelled all of a sudden making you jump.

-Oh my GOD, what?

-He is into you.

You stared at his smiley face for a couple of seconds, trying to decide if the was serious or not.

-What?

-He. Is. Into. You. It's obvious. He likes you.

-And you say that because of what exactly? He kissed my hand? C'mon V, you can't be serious. – you said pouring some more wine for you.

-Look, I am a guy, okay? A gay man, but that's the closest we have to thinking like a straight man right now. And as a guys I don’t stop sleeping around and show affection to someone if I am not really into said person. In fact, I only realized I wanted to date Nick because I didn’t feel like having sex with any other guy but him. And look at me now. Going for our second anniversary and still in love with the motherfucker. And let me tell you this: that Italian guy, Paolo, was a hell of a good lay.

-Okay, I get it. No need to be grafic. Again. But you don't have all the facts.

-And what am I missing.

-You're missing the fact that it is impossible.

-Oh my Zeus, girl! – he said rolling his eyes and taking a deep breath. – Why is that so impossible for you?

-It just is, V.

-No, I will have none of that. Talk to me Y/N/N. Why its it so impossible? – you sat there in silence for a couple of seconds – You can open up, you know. You don't have to share, but you don't have to carry whatever is inside your head alone either.

-I… It's just… - You took a deep breath, trying to focus on what to say – V, I am not the kind of woman who gets the guys.

-What do you mean?

-V… I am not like you. I don't have 7 or more guys lining up to take me out even if I was dating someone. Guys… People don't find me attractive.

-Y/N/N… But I see you with guys sometimes.

-Yeah, drunk guys who don't know who they are kissing on night club. Or guys who have a fat fetish. But I just don't have what you have, okay? Have I ever introduced you to someone and said ‘this is my boyfriend’s?

-Not that I remember…

-And you won't remember because there was never this person… The thing is, I am not pretty. I am fat. And no one really wants to know me. Specially guys. I act like people don’t affect me, but they do. So, it doesn't matter if I am smart or funny or whatever. No one will love you if you're unattractive. I used to hear that back in my school days and I hate to have figured it out it's true. It's real. No one could possibly want me. And that's why people like you and Sebastian and so many others can jump from relationship to relationship. I mean, there is an interview where Sebastian says ‘no matter what I do I always end up between Black Widow’s legs’. But he means it like it’s the most amazing thing in the world. Have you ever seen Scarlet Johansson? That woman is a Goddess so of course it is the best thing in the world. – you took a sip of your wine only to realize how sour it tasted now – Sebastian has always gone for model like woman ever since I know him. I am a fucking size 20. And I can't just take the fucking zero from that number and change its place. Therefore, he can't like me. No matter what I feel and no matter how much I try… It's impossible.

Victor took your hand in his and made you look at him.

-You couldn't possibly know how much it pains me to see you looking at yourself like this. – he said on the verge of tears – How much I am angry that you don't see yourself like I do. Do you have any idea how beautiful I think you are? Do you have any idea how I envy your fashion sense? Do you have any idea how many times I've said to Nick and so many others what a lucky bastard the guy who dated you would be? Too many to count. I am not saying that because I am your friend. I am saying that because you are truly amazing. Y/N, you are fat. And you are smart. And you are funny. And you are beautiful. And you are all of those things together because you don't have to be just one single thing. And Sebastian will be a fucking fool if he doesn't see that. Or any other man for that matter. You know what? I am texting Nick because I will marry you and he will be my dirt little not so much of a secret. You are my best friend Y/N, and I can assure you: any man who dates you is a hell of a lucky son of a bitch. And I will pay someone to beat whoever hurts you again, because let's face it, I am too thin and can't beat anyone up.

You both laughed at that and hugged each other, just enjoying the comforting bubble you two always build when together.

-Are you seeing him tomorrow? – He asked after a couple of minutes with the movie being the only sound in the room.

-Yeah. He has a photoshoot tomorrow afternoon and then a charity event. I have to go to both.  – you said almost in a whisper.

-Well, then let me doll you up. I love your fashion sense, but I want to make you extra.

-Oh God, I created a monster.

-Yes you did. Call me Frankie. Now, let's eat chocolate ice cream, watch some stupid horror movies and romcons, I will get those pjs I always leave here and tomorrow I will make you look even more stunning. Okay?

-Will you not do it if I say “no"?

-Absolutely not. You will be my beautiful size 20 doll and you will like it.

You smiled softly at your friend. Maybe dolling up a bit more wouldn't be that bad.

----------

The next day you woke up at 10 a.m., the latest you had ever woken up on a Saturday, to the sight of Victor already up and checking your closed for whatever he wanted you to wear.

-Good morning sunshine! - he said in a sing song voice – I've chosen the perfect outfit for you already, so get up, eat some leftover pizza, take a shower and put on that amazing matching underwear I got you for your birthday. Go on! There is also makeup.

Groaning you made your way around doing just as he said and, surprisingly, you were content with what he had picked out for you: black leggings, a black dress-like shirt with some sparkle in it that you adored, your favorite ankle boots and your favorite leather jacket. All black, but that would be great, especially for the art exhibit. So, you put them on over the sexy lingerie he had given you as a birthday present: also black panties and a nice bra all in lace. You actually loved it.

So you put them on, applied a bit of makeup and your favorite red lipstick that always made you feel a bit more powerful and left your room.

-Oh wow. Damn bitch, you look stunning. Hot and stunning. Hotunning. - Victor said making you laugh.

-Why thank you. I have a good stylist.

-I know bitch, I know. Now Let’s go. I’ll drop you off at Sebastian’s apartment before going to Nick’s.

After a short drive you hugged Victor goodbye and thanked him for helping you out.

-Y/N, we are friends, I have no problem helping you out any time of the day. I know you still think it’s impossible for Sebastian to be into you, but I will ask you one thing and one thing only.

-Fine, what is it? - you said rolling your eyes.

-Pay attention to him today. And try to not say “it’s nothing”. See if his behavior is still the same and try to think positively, okay?

Taking a deep breath, you opened the car’s door. - I can’t make any promises, but I will pay attention.

Waving him bye you greeted the doorman and went straight for the elevators.

Going up, you couldn’t stop thinking about what V had said, but a bigger part of you kept on thinking it was just impossible.

Shrugging the thoughts out of your head, you put on your best professional face and knocked on his door before using your spare key to get in his place. What you weren’t expecting was for him to open the door for you wearing only jeans, socks and no fucking shirt; making your eyes go bigger than plates and your mouth drier than a fucking desert.

-Hey Y/N! You’re here earlier than I expected. Come in, please. You look even more beautiful as usual.

-Good morning Sebastian. I’m sorry, I was just to let myself in. I should’ve brought you some coffee. - You said after cleaning your throat and trying to focus on anything but his muscles or what he had just said. After a few seconds to do just that, you turned to him again. - Are you wearing jeans today? It’s not a problem for the photoshoot, but it’s a bit underdressed for the exhibit. I should just pack you another set of clothes. - You said moving towards his room.

-Hey hey Y/N, it’s no problem. I can just change. It’ll save us some time, right?

And just like that he unbuttoned his jeans and started to take them off in front of you.

Usually, when he had to change shirts real fast, he would do it inside of a car or whatever and you always had a few seconds to prepare yourself. But he never, ever, changed pants in front of you before. So, of course, you turned as red as your lipstick and it took you a few more seconds than it should for you to turn around and try to not droll at the sight. Key word: try.

-I will just change real fast. Sit and relax, okay?

-Sure. - You could beat yourself for the high-pitched voice, but at the moment, you were just trying to get a grip on your heart.

You sat down on his very comfortable couch and took some deep breaths that were helping you calm down. That was until he came back in only his boxers and two pants in his hands, asking you which one would go better. This mas is trying to fucking kill you, you are sure of that.

-What? - your brain was completely mushed at this point and the only thing you could see was Sebastian fuckingly-handsome Stan in only black boxers and socks in front of you, so answering anything was just not possible.

-Which one of the pants will look better for the occasion? - He asked smirking at you.

-Ahn... - You forced yourself to eye both of them – The dark blue one. It goes well with pretty much anything, is dark enough for a night-time event, but also light enough to pass as a casual look. - Finally, one good and professional answer.

-Yeah, I like this one too. And It will make me look good next to you. - He said turning around and going to his bedroom again.

-As if you wouldn’t look good any time – You said under your breath. Only to then realize what he had said. What did he mean by ‘look good next to you’? He is really ill, that must be it.

The next time he left his room he was fully dressed and smelling better than ever. The bastard was using your favorite male perfume.

-So, let’s go? - he asked adjusting his hair.

-Yeah, sure. I’ll order us some light lunch when we get to the studio. I’m calling the driver.

-Or... - He said putting his hand on top of your phone. When did he get so close to you? - We could go get lunch together since we still have time and then go to the studio. - He said smiling expectedly to you. - I know a really nice Italian place not far from there that has one of the best tiramisus I’ve ever tasted. Besides yours, of course.

This man was just a fucking player and no one could tell you otherwise. He was looking at you like a lost puppy, bringing on your love for Italian food AND telling you he had actually eaten the tiramisu you made once for your birthday? Your favorite desert ever? What the fuck is going on?

-Are you ill? - You end up asking.

He looks surprised at that. - No. Why do you ask that?

-You are just acting very weird since yesterday. As your personal assistant, I need to worry. - You said hoping you were giving your best professional face, instead of the utterly confused one you were feeling.

He looked at you for a minute, as if looking for something, only to smirk back at you. - I fell amazing, Y/N/N. And I just want to have lunch with a beautiful woman who happens to be my assistant.

-O...kay... - There goes your brain and your ovaries. Again. - I’ll call the driver.

As soon as you stepped into the kitchen to make the call Sebastian let out a full-on smile, feeling proud of himself.

Since he first hired you, he knew there was something different in the way he felt towards you. He didn’t know what it was at first, but that changed when Anthony hired that stupid Jack as his assistant and he started to flirt with you. Sebastian could swear he saw red whenever the two of you were interacting. The only thing keeping him calm on those times was seeing how you didn’t care for his intentions or maybe didn’t notice at all.

He was no fool, he knew damn well what the media kept on telling woman how the ‘perfect’ body is and how many people would give you stupid looks whenever you walked beside him. And he could admit he also believed that shit for a while. He would always look for woman deemed as ‘perfect’: tall, slim, usually blonde with big boobs. And he always had his fun with them, but that was always it. They never had anything new. Gorgeous, yes. Some of them really smart too and some quite funny. But they were pretty much always the same.

Then he began to really notice you. You were really pretty at first and had an amazing fashion sense. You would always wear what you wanted and even leggings and jeans jackets would look really put together on you. But there was more to you than that. He started to notice how you would always throw your head back when smiling, how perfect your smile was; he took notice of the way you laughed and how you always tried to help people around you. He took notice of how much you loved your friends and how proud you were when any of them were successful. He took notice of the was your Y/E/C would change in the sun, how your skin always looked so soft, and then he started to notice how much he wanted to feel you.

Gosh, he wants to feel you. Your skin, your embrace, your heat, everything.

When he realized that he tried to tell himself it was just some crazy thought that would go away in no time. But then he started to not enjoy his hook ups so much. He didn’t feel like kissing of having sex with any other woman anymore. He started to feel guilty whenever you showed up at his place to send the woman away. And then, the last drop was when he actually moaned your name while fucking another woman. She was pissed, to say the least, but also agreed to wait until you got there.

He called Anthony the very same day when he went to the gym, asked to meet him there and told him everything.

“You do know you’re in love, right?” - Anthony said to him, back then.

“No, I’m not. I just... I don’t know.” - He said frustrated with himself.

“Okay, fine then, let me ask you this: If you’re not in love with her, would you be okay if Jack started dating her? Because he wants to.” - Anthony said watching his friend’s face transform into one of pure rage only to end up punching one of the sand bags that were near them. - “Thought so. The thing is why are you so afraid to like her? You’ve dated before.”

“It’s not that. It... It will sound stupid.” - He said sitting down and lowering his head.

“Good. Love should be stupid. Go on.” - Anthony said patting his shoulder.

“Shisatntmdiaillhafafilledday” - He said with his face in his hands.

“I’m sorry what? I don’t speak Romanian or whatever language you were speaking just now”

Taking a deep breath, Sebastian let go of his face and said slowly, in a whisper - “She is, you know, fat. And the media will have a filled day.”

Anthony’s hand fell off his shoulder and made him turn to his friend only to see his face contort in the angriest he has ever seen.

“You are fucking kidding me, right? Tell me you are kidding me, please.” - Anthony said with a tremor in his voice.

“I-”

“No, that was rhetorical because you better be damn kidding with me. You know what Sebastian, I came here because I noticed your feelings for her long ago as was just waiting for you to finally figure things out. It’s so obvious and the only person who hasn’t noticed is Y/N. Don’t you have any idea why she doesn’t notice the way you look at her or the way Jack constantly flirts with her? Because we live in a fucked up society and she probably had to live her entire life hearing that no one would love her because she is fat. As if that is such a problem. As if that is a good enough reason to forget how amazing she is. She pull a fucking tough face fin front of everyone, but if you look close enough she is always looking at thin woman with longing, desperately wanting to be like them, because of people like you who care so fucking much about appearance and made her think that is the only that would make anyone like her for her.”

He was almost screaming at the end of that speech, but Anthony didn’t care at this point. He just didn’t want to make more of a scene, so he took a deep breath before looking at Sebastian right in the eyes.

“You are handsome and you were always handsome. You never had to go to school and hear people making fun of you. I bet in school girls fought for your attention, just like some woman still do today. So, you have no idea what if feels like to be different, to not meet society’s standard of beauty and grow up with people constantly tearing you apart. Fuck society and fuck the media. Since when should they rule your personal life? But if you really think that Y/N being fat is such a problem, do her a favor and leave her be. She doesn’t need someone like that messing up with her heart. Okay?”

Anthony got up and left that day, but what he said replayed on Sebastian’s mind like a broken record. And thank the gods for that. Thanks to Anthony he realized the media could go fuck themselves. He is in love with you, not just for your body, but for you. He wants your body and he wants your heart. He just wants you.

That was when he decided the was done pretending and began to make anything in his power to make you his. Starting by not going for any more random hook ups and trying to see if you could feel the same way towards him.

He hoped you did.

----------PART 2

Ok guys, I wanted it to be a one-shot but Tumblr wants to get personal with me. So, Hopefully, this part 1 won’t have any problems. Thank you to @iamdorka for pointing the problem to me.

Tagging those who showered interest in this fic and I hope this works out this time:  @calumsbiceps96  @angelus320  @mikaelasingswritesloves  @nutmegroo1514 and I’m tagging my lovely mutual @andyl394 who I hope also enjoys this. Let me know of any problems again, okay?

Love you guys!!!

[thelostsmiles]

If this is how I feel with having just seen him, I can’t even imagine how it’ll be meeting him one day...

This year has been a blessing. April and May have been my favorite so far. I wanted to write about Letters Live in NY this past weekend but how could I when I haven’t even written about the IW premiere? I share my moment with you now :) It’s long but it’s everything I want to say and pictures are included so if you’re up for it, enjoy x

I had already been planning to go to the Avengers Infinity War LA premiere since last year. I asked for the day off and things were looking good.

The premiere was on Monday. With so many high profile celebrities attending, I expected a big crowd. Even so, I underestimated the event. I got there on Sunday early afternoon and there were already about 40 people in front of me. I did not lose hope though. Night time came and the workers started putting up tall, black barricades along the sidewalk, the same sidewalk where we were standing waiting. Everyone around me got discouraged because it seemed we wouldn’t even be able to see them walk the red carpet (it was actually purple in representation of Thanos). I felt a little anxious about it but I was already there and I was in it for the long-haul. After a chilly night, morning came and people started putting away the camping gear they had laid out. Some women left to use public restrooms to change into nicer clothes and others left to get breakfast. I had formed an alliance with two comic book aficionados in front of me and a couple of lovely teenage girls behind me who were there to see Seb. We watched each others place in line as we took turns leaving our spot for necessities. I refused to drink and eat too much in fear that I’d miss an announcement or something of the sort. Around 11am, we saw police officers come near us and they started taking measurements up against the black gates that were in place. They didn’t give us any updates but we kept on eye on them and tried to listen to their conversation. Our biggest fear was that they would block every one and nobody would get to see a single thing. About 15 minutes later, I saw them from a distance coming back with tall and wide hedges that were to be placed next to the ends of the gates to look pretty. They were closing off everyone that wasn’t in the very front inside of this bullpen looking box. I was right next to the closing section. I did not just sleep on the cold, hard floor for nothing. I was not about to miss my opportunity of seeing Benedict for the first time. The group in front of me asked the people in front of them if they would squeeze forward to allow us to get closer behind them. Surprisingly, they did. And that’s when I somehow managed to get into the box right before the hedges went up and they closed everyone else off. It ended up being about 100-150? fans in the box. I had made it! I would be getting a wrist band guaranteeing that I would see the stars... the one star I was there for.

After a couple more hours and a few issues here and there, the time had come. I was at the very front up against the gate. I was quite happy because since I’m short, there’s no way I’d get to see anything if I was in the back with taller people in front of me. I had my special comic book open and ready. I was set.

I saw Tom Holland, Tom Hiddleston, Zoe Saldana, Mark Ruffalo, Paul Rudd, Chadwick Boseman, Dave Bautista, Anthony Russo, Stan Lee, Chris Hemsworth, Karen Gillan, Letitia Wright, Gwyneth Paltrow, and more. They were all lovely but both Toms, Mark, and Paul were by far the sweetest of all!

I was yet to see my main man. I was getting nervous. I had many thoughts rushing through my mind. What if he arrives too late and doesn’t have time to greet us? What if he does make his way over but only does one half of the crowd and then leaves? What if, what if, what if. I forced myself to stop thinking and just wait. I did. I waited.

From where I was standing I could see the main stage on the carpet in front of me to my left. (We were across the street. Think of it as them on one sidewalk and us on the other with two lanes in between us.) I kept looking over there standing on my toes as if that would help me get a better view. I saw all sorts of celebrities go up but not B.

I had my phone in my pocket because the last thing I wanted was my battery to die at the most inconvenient moment (which wouldn’t matter anyways). I remember looking down at my book admiring the autographs my nerdy self had already collected. I was trying to figure out a certain signature when my phone started buzzing. It vibrated once then twice, three times, a fourth and so on. It kept vibrating but it didn’t feel like a phone call. They were alerts. I took a quick peak at the screen as it lit up and I didn’t even have to open any of them. I already knew what it was about having read the first line, “HE’S THERE! AND WITH SOPHIE!” My heart went into tachycardia and my palms started sweating. I said a silent and genuine thank you to my friends for having my back and keeping me updated on twitter

There were other stars still coming near us to sign but I honestly do not remember who. I was busy keeping my eyes on Benedict. I didn’t want to lose sight of him until I did. Oh, no. Where had he gone?

The fun group of girls that stood behind me in line were about 5 people away next to my left. They were really tall and had a better view at the starting point. I heard one of them call out, “Alex! He’s here! He’s coming!” I wouldn’t shut up about my love for B and DS the whole time and everyone knew I was there for him. The man next to my left who was also taller than me (everyone is taller than me lol) also caught a glimpse of him and he nudged me to tell me that the Master of the Mystic Arts himself was getting closer to our side. 

Oh my literal god. I kept telling myself to relax but it didn’t do much. The tears that had formed earlier found a way out and they were now rolling down my cheeks. At least I wasn’t sobbing and I most certainly did not get hysterical. I started saying his name. “Benedict! Benedict... Benedict.” He was arriving to our side and I was finally able to see him now. He got to the man next to me and he spoke to him. Upon hearing that deep, smooth voice, I could’ve fainted there and then had I let myself. It is a dream like no other. Was I breathing? Thank God it’s an automatic mechanism because I would’ve forgotten how to do it. I’m surprised I didn’t drop the book I was holding out in front of me. 

Now, remember, I’m short. The lady behind me had a big poster wrapped around a piece of cardboard and she had placed that over my head and it hung in front of me covering me a bit. I was just about to shove it away from me when this angel came to my rescue. He pushed the poster aside to get a better look at me. The poster faded away and that’s when I saw him directly in front of me. I have never seen anyone so beautiful and so very handsome and gorgeous and stunning and brilliant and marvelous and all good things as he is before. This will sound cliché but oh well. It’s true. I did not know true beauty until he was standing right there inches in front of me. 

I forgot how to do anything but keep my eyes open and smile. These two pics were taken by the man next to me who was kind enough to share them with me afterwards. In the second pic, you can see he’s looking my way. Maybe he noticed that mean lady behind me? It was now my turn and I was beyond happy. Something clicked in my brain and it told me to speak up. “Benedict... Benedict. Patrick Melrose. You’re going to be amazing!” He was already signing my book but he paused as if in shock that someone mentioned PM. Still holding the sharpie in one hand and the book with the other, he looked up at me and smiled. Let me take a fangirl moment here and scream because aaaaaahhhh he looked right into my own two eyes! He was wearing glasses but the California sun was peering through the shades and this allowed me to see his golden lashes flicker up and down. Still looking at me, he said the sweetest most sincere, “Thank you.” I could tell it meant a lot to him because there he was, standing with a crowd that was chanting “Ben”, “Doctor Strange” and “Stephen” the whole time (which makes sense given that it was AIW) and this shorty (me) was saying a completely different name. It caught his attention and why wouldn’t it? It is his passion project. I have been wanting to tell him all the things I feel about this project since the day we found out he was cast as the leading man. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to in these few seconds of interaction with him. I said what I thought would be enough to convey what I felt for the most part. Having now seen BN, I can safely say I was right. He finished signing his last name and in that moment I realized I was grateful he has a long name because that just means he takes a little longer with the fans :P

He proceeded to sign the others next to me. Even the pushy lady behind me because he’s kind like that. Karon tapped him to ask him something and he turned around towards his right. Bless her. This gave me extra time to admire him. After, he continued signing for the men next to my right and I still kept looking at him. He was undeniably gorgeous in that chocolate velvet suit. The moment had finally made its way into my brain and I couldn’t help myself any longer. With a few tears running down my face I said, “I love you, Benedict.” What happened next is something I never expected to experience in my entire life and, therefore, it took me by surprise. He actually heard me and replied back, “Love you too, darling.” This is the moment my soul left my body. I died a little this day. I got an “ily” and a “darling”. I don’t need anything ever again to live. This is more than enough.

He finished the section, waved and blew a kiss to everyone, said thanks and walked away. That was it. He walked back onto the carpet and into the tent and he was gone. He may have left but the memory of what I have shared with you now has stayed with me since. I cherish it more than anything I own, more than  other amazing moments that have happened to me. Writing this weeks later, I have seen him two other times now but nothing compares to the first moment when you see someone who you love and admire with all your heart. I realize how fortunate I am to have this and I will never take it for granted.

[even-strangerthings]

Safe Haven. Billy Hargrove. Chapter 3.

(This gif is NOT mine. Credit goes to the owner.)

Warning: Cursing, fighting, sexy things. 

Pairing: Billy Hargrove x OFC character, Dominique Villegas.

Word count: 4710

CHAPTER 1  CHAPTER 2

As 5 am hits the clock on Dominique’s nightstand rings, both Billy and her jumping awake. He takes his arm from around her waist, letting her scoot toward her nightstand and shut the alarm off, burying her face in her pillow, not ready to get out of bed and start her day.

“What time is it?”

Billy asks, his voice raspy.

“5 am.”

“Why the hell do you wake up so early? You’re fucking nuts.”

He mumbles, groaning as he stretches and turns on his side to look over at Dominique. He reaches his hand out and runs his fingers up and down her bare back. She shivers at his touch and picks her head up looking back at him. They smile at each other, Dominique laughing softly.

“You sleep good?”

“I actually did. Better than I usually do when I’m here by myself. Did you sleep good?”

She asks him back.

“Once I got used to you snoring I slept like a baby.”

Billy laughs at his joke. Dominique scoffs, trying to pull the pillow his head is resting on out from under him. Giving up after a few tugs.

“I don’t snore you dick head.”

“Whatever you have to tell yourself, sweetheart.”

They both lay there in silence, Billy still touching her back. Her eyes get heavy again but she sits up quickly and turns the light on, knowing if she doesn’t get up she’ll go back to sleep and won’t be ready for school on time. Billy groans and covers his face with a pillow. Dominique can’t help but smile to herself seeing Billy in her bed half naked. She hated him just a few days ago, and now he was laid up in bed with her and spending the night. Yes he was a dick, but he had said he wanted to change and she wanted to give him a chance. Maybe it made her stupid to give him a chance, but that was what her teenage years were for, mistakes.

“Come on you have to go before my dad gets home.”

“Damn, Villegas, you’re just kicking me out? Now I know how my dates feel when our night is done and over with.”

He laughs, taking the pillow off his face. Dominique shakes her head at him and hits his torso with the pillow. He sits up and takes the pillow from her, laying back down and wrapping himself up with all the sheets.

“Billy I’m serious! You have to get out before my dad gets home.”

“How am I supposed to drive home when I’m hungry?”

He jokes, making an excuse to stay. Dominique sighs and gets out of bed, looking through her closet to find what she wanted to wear to school for the day.

“That’s not my problem. I’m going to take a shower, you need to be out before I’m out. My dad will be home within the next 30-45 minutes and if he finds you in my room he’s going to kill you and probably me.”

She says, pulling the sheets off of him, patting his bare back. Billy groans loudly.

“I can’t join you in the shower?”

“See you at school!”

“Let’s go see Nightmare on Elm Street this weekend.”

Anthony, one of the guys in Skylar’s friend group suggests. After Dominique dropped the car off to her dad at home, the group all went to eat in town. They were talking among themselves but as per usual Dominique wasn’t interested in what they were talking about and she was sure as hell not interested in participating in whatever plans they had for the weekend. She continued to eat, thinking of a way to tell Skylar she wanted to go home.

“So, what are we doing tonight?”

Billy asks, coming out of nowhere, sitting on the bench next to Dominique, draping his arm over her shoulder. Skylar’s eyes go wide seeing him around her cousin. Dominique smiles at him, pushing a section of her hair behind her ear. Anthony clears his throat, she looks over at the rest of the group, all of them glaring at Billy.

“Um, I don’t really know. What do you want to do?”

“Why are you here, Hargrove? Don’t you have someone else to be? Some stores to shoplift from, cars to steal?”

Jason, the boy that Skylar ditched Dominique for at the party, fires at him. The group laughs, Dominique shooting a dirty look to Jason. Billy clenches his jaw in anger.

“Oh yeah, Michaels? I’m sure I could fit in beating your face in before I have to go steal that sweet Mustang you have parked in the parking lot.”

Billy spits back, a smug look on his face. Jason stands up quickly, rounding the table and rushing Billy. Billy stands up quickly and steps up to Jason, pushing him back, Jason tries swinging on Billy but he ducks, Jason stumbling forward. Billy turns around, grabbing Jason by his shirt. Everyone at the table gasps hearing the sound Billy’s fist makes connecting to Jason’s jaw.

“What the fuck?!”

Skylar yells, drawing even more attention to the brawl. Anthony and Dominique get up from the table and try to break up the fight, Dominique pulling Billy’s arm trying to stop him from hitting Jason. Anthony is holding Jason back, but he is still yelling threats at Billy. Billy laughs at him, trying to make his way back to him to finish the fight. She wraps her arms around Billy’s arm, trying to calm him down.

“Hey, let’s go before they call the cops. Wait for me in your car I’ll be right there.”

Dominique suggests, Billy takes one last glaring look at Jason before strolling to his car. She grabs her bag from the table, Skylar grabs Dominique’s arm to get her attention. Dominique pulls her arm away from her grip quickly, looking at Skylar confused.

“Are you really leaving with him?”

“A, don’t ever grab me like that, ever again. And B, why do you care?”

Dominique responds harshly. Rare that her cousin actually gave a shit about anything she did.

“Uhh, how about because he’s a low life. You’re not stupid, don’t make stupid decisions.”

She replies, gesturing toward Billy, now sitting in his car.

“He just punched Jason in the face Dom. Who does that? He’s fucking crazy and you’re going to go hang out with him?”

“Well first of all, Jason needs to learn how to shut his fucking mouth because he’s going to keep getting the shit knocked out of him if he keeps acting like a dick. Second, who I hang out with is none of your business, because out of all people to be judging me for who I spend my time with, you shouldn’t be one of them.”

Dominique replies, walking away from the table and joining Billy in his car in the parking lot. She gets in on the passenger side, closing the door. Billy is staring out the windshield, cigarette in between his fingers. She stares at him for a while, waiting for him to look back at her. He starts the engine, revving it a couple times before peeling out of the parking lot.

“How did you know where I was?”

She asks, breaking the silence in the car. Billy inhales the smoke, holding it in for a few seconds before exhaling, the smoke seeping out the crack in his side of the window.

“I was dropping Max off at the arcade and I saw you with your friends. I didn’t see you at school to talk to you about what we were going to do tonight.”

He responds, still not looking at her. Dominique lets out a small laugh.

“In order for you to see me at school, you would actually have to go to school.”

Billy looks over at Dominique and has a slight smile on his face, rolling his eyes. He takes one of his hands off the steering wheel and reaches over, holding her hand in his.

Billy pulls up to a little white house, parking the car parallel to the sidewalk and turning the engine off. Dominique undoes her seatbelt and gets out of the car, waiting for Billy to come around the car and join her on the sidewalk. He walks up to the steps of the house, Dominique following him. He unlocks the door, both of them walking in. She looks around the house, most of it pretty empty except for a few pieces of furniture throughout the home. Billy takes her bag and tosses it on the couch, heading straight for the kitchen. Dominique continues to look around the house, seeing a few boxes off in the corner of the living room.

“Do you want something to eat or drink?”

He yells out from the kitchen. Dominique follows his voice to the kitchen, the counter covered in food for a sandwich.

“Just water is fine. This is your house right?”

She questions him sarcastically. He looks up at her with an unamused face, looking back down at the bread, spreading a grossly thick layer of mayonnaise on the bread.

“No, I just break into people’s houses and make sandwiches. Yes this is my house. My dad and Susan aren’t home.”

Once Billy is done making his sandwich he takes Dominique by her hand and leads her to his room, turning the light on. His room pretty basic, a bed in the corner of the room, clothes thrown throughout the floor and spilling out of the closet. A few posters of women in bikinis on the walls and a few of what she would assume to be his favorite bands. Billy turns his radio on full volume, rock music filling the room. Dominique awkwardly stands in the middle of his room, not knowing what she should do. Billy kicks his boots off and sits on the edge of his bed, finishing his sandwich.

“Come here.”

He muffles, his mouth full of food. Dominique sits next to him on his bed, swinging her legs back and forth silently.

“Why are you so quiet?”

Billy questions, laying back on the bed, pulling her down with him. She laughs and turns her body toward him, resting her head on his chest, just like they had fallen asleep the night before. They both wrap their arms around one another, Billy’s fingers sneaking up the back of Dominique’s shirt, drawing little circles on her skin.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what you want me to do or say.”

Dominique hadn’t been nervous around Billy until yesterday, and the only thing that had changed was the fact that Billy had told her he wanted to get to know her better because he liked her. For some reason that flipped a switch in her and now she was giddy and nervous around him.

“Alright, you don’t want to talk? We could make out.”

Billy suggests. Dominique picks her head up, turning herself around to lay flat on her stomach her elbows propping her up. He’s wearing his typical ear to ear grin on his face when he thinks he’s being smooth. She rolls her eyes at him but can’t help but smile back at him. With her face above his, Billy’s hand slides across her cheek, cupping her cheek and caressing her face, his sky blue eyes staring into hers. She wraps her hand around his wrist, stroking the back of his hand with her thumb.

“You’re really beautiful.”

He murmurs, the same smile still plastered on his face. Dominique leans down and brushes her lips against his, Billy pulling her in fully, his hand still embracing her face. His lips tasting like cigarettes, but in the heat of the moment, Dominique could care less. She pulls her head back, opening her eyes and looking back into Billy’s. He smiles at her, not his usual cocky smile, but almost as if he was coming down from a high. He gets up from the bed quickly, practically ripping his leather jacket off his back and onto the floor.

“Lay down.”

He demands, bringing a smile to Dominique’s face. She lays her back to the mattress, resting her head against his pillow. He crawls onto his bed, his body above hers, his arm holding him up. Dominique’s fingers intertwine in Billy’s curls, guiding his lips back to hers. His other hand starts to roam underneath her sweatshirt, his fingertips trailing down her hip. Goosebumps spreading throughout her whole body. She hooks her arm around the back of Billy’s neck, slightly pushing him closer to her. They were both lost in each other’s lips and touch, and honestly she wasn’t going to make Billy stop kissing her any time soon, and she knew the feeling was mutual on his part by the way Billy’s hands were groping her. Just as Dominique’s leg wrap around the bottom of Billy’s back there was a knock at his door. He jumps up from the kiss and quickly gets off his bed, waiting until Dominique fixes herself up and sits on the edge of the bed to open the door.

“What do you want?”

He asks, annoyance present in his voice.

“I was just going to tell you that I got a ride from the arcade.”

A young girl’s voice responds, his sister.

“From who?”

“Why do you care?”

Dominique laughs to herself hearing his sister giving the tone of voice he was using on her right back.

“Because you know dad is going to ride my ass because I wasn’t the one to pick you up, and I was supposed to be watching you, blah blah blah.”

“I won’t tell them someone else gave me a ride. I’ll tell them you did.”

Billy nods his head, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Go to your room or something. I have a friend over.”

“Is that why you look like that?”

He responds to her by slamming the door in her face. As he walks back to Dominique he sees her laughing to herself.

“What’s so funny?”

“Your sister. She’s funny. Sounds like she doesn’t take any of your shit.”

Billy rolls his eyes.

“Step sister, and she’s definitely not funny. Get back up on the bed, but first, this needs to go. It’s getting in my way.”

He says, pulling the bottom of Dominique’s sweatshirt up. She raises her eyebrow at him, lifting her arms over her head and letting Billy pull it all the way off and tossing it on the floor next to his jacket. She smiles up at him, looking at him through her eyelashes. His eyes gaze down to her almost naked torso, his cocky grin back proudly on his face.

“Back on the bed.”

He demands. Dominique goes back to where she was laying, Billy going back to his position as well. His lips ghost over her earlobe, a small sigh escaping from her lips once they connect to her neck. He continues to kiss down her neck, stopping at her collar bone. Billy’s teeth lightly nip at the exposed skin, making Dominique gasp a little, her hands cupping his shoulders. He kisses the spot and makes his way to the opposite side of her neck. He ever so lightly kisses the skin, wasting no time before sucking on her neck. Goosebumps arise again feeling something cold against her skin. Dominique looks down and sees the charm on Billy’s necklace resting against her chest. She slides her hands across Billy’s shoulder blades and down around his bare chest. Dominique’s fingers begin to unbutton the few buttons Billy had done. She yanks the fabric that was tucked into his pants out, sliding the dark brown shirt down his back. He shakes the sleeves off his arms and starts to kiss across Dominique’s chest.

“Billy.”

She whispers, once again wrapping her fingers in his hair. As he’s now leaving more marks on her body, the door swings open, both of them scrambling to cover themselves.

“Jesus.”

The man says, turning his back to them. Billy throws his shirt to Dominique, his eyes wide and his all the color drained from his face.

“I didn’t hear you come home.”

Billy says, standing up in front of Dominique. She slips his shirt on and wraps the fabric around her torso.

“Yeah, I would imagine you wouldn’t with your fucking music playing. I came in here to ask who’s bag this was, but I guess this answered my question.”

The man, who Dominique assumed was Billy’s dad strides over to his radio and shuts it off. Billy turns to look down at her but she can’t look him in the eye.

“You,”

He points to Dominique.

“Get dressed. I’ll drive you home. As for you, I’ll deal with you after I drop her off. 5 minutes.”

“I can drive her.”

Billy responds. His dad turns and looks at him stepping closer to his son, his jaw clenching. Billy stands up straight, his chest puffing out slightly.

“No. You’re going to stay here and wait for me to get home. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes.”

His dad steps even closer, both of them eye to eye with each other, turning his face.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear what you said.”

Billy clears his throat.

“Yes, sir.”

He repeats. His dad nods his head and marches out of the room. Both of them are frozen, Dominique’s heart beating 50 miles per hour. Billy reaches down to the floor and tosses Dominique her sweatshirt with a sigh. She stands up and takes his shirt off, pulling her original shirt over her head. She takes her scrunchie off her wrist and pulls her hair back out of her way. Billy buttons his shirt up, only leaving the first two buttons undone. She grabs her bag from the floor where his dad threw it.

“I’m sorry if I got you in trouble.”

She says to him softly, wrapping her arm around his, leaving a kiss on his shoulder. He turns his head away from her.

“It’s not your fault. I’ll see you later, Dom.”

She unwraps her arm from his and nods her head.

“Call me later… if you can.”

He sits on the edge of his bed, his head hanging low, his hand rubbing the back of his neck again. She walks out of his room and back into the living room. Dominique sees Billy’s dad standing by the front door, his arms crossed against his chest. She quickly looks away and sees a redhaired lady sitting on the couch, she makes eye contact with Dominique and flashes her a worrisome look before looking away. Without a word Billy’s dad opens the front door, letting her out first. Just as she steps out of the house she hears what sounds like glass breaking inside the house. Dominique jumps, turning around and looking behind her to see what exactly it was, but all she could see was the door closing behind them. She tried her best to keep her breathing steady and constant and keep herself calm, knowing that if she worked herself up she would freak out. His dad opens the passenger side door to the car, slamming it shut once she slides in. Dominique can feel her hands shaking, a cold sweat coming over her.

One. Two. Three. Four…

Was all she could count to herself before Billy’s dad got in the car, starting it up and backing out of the driveway.

The whole car ride was silent other than Dominique giving him directions to her house. Billy didn’t live all that far from her, but with the awkward silence in the car the drive seemed like it was going on for hours. As he turns down the street Dominique clings onto the strap of her bag so her hands would stop shaking.

“Third house on the left, sir.”

She says in a small voice. He pulls off to the sidewalk in front of her house and turns parks the car, turning the car off. She finally looks over at him, his face expressionless, not making any type of eye contact with Dominique.

“Thank you for the ride. And I am really sorry for what happened. It won’t happen again.”

He nods his head, still looking out the windshield. She opens the door and quickly gets out, shutting the door behind her. Dominique walks up to the front door and unlocks it, once she opens the door she hears the car starting and driving away. She watches from the window by the door as the car turns around and exits the street the opposite way they had come in. Finally able to breathe she walks to her room and lays on the bed staring at the ceiling.

Dominique yawns, looking over at her nightstand to see what time it was. 12:57 it read. She shuts her math book and getting off her bead and putting it back in her bag. She walks into the bathroom to put her hair up when she notices the reddish, purple marks forming against the skin on her neck. She runs her fingers over the bruise and sheepishly smiles. Dominique pulls down the neckline of her shirt and sees 2 more hickies forming, one on her collarbone and one just above the cups of her bra. Looking at the marks Billy had left her, she thought about if he was okay. His dad was scary as shit, and she could tell he didn’t fuck around. He hadn’t called her since she got home, but she wasn’t going to call him with the chance of his dad answering the phone. She turns the light off to the bathroom and walks back into her room, shutting the light off and closing the door behind her, crawling into bed.

Billy takes the rag off his nose slowly, the red blood now making the original color of the rag unrecognizable. He flicks the cigarette butt out the window and into the grass a few feet in front of him. This was the third night in a row his father and him had gotten into it, but the first time in awhile he had made his nose gush blood. Billy stares out to the street at his Camaro, contemplating whether or not he should go see if Dominique was okay. She was the only thing on his mind during the beatdown and afterward. He couldn’t shake how her face looked when his dad saw her half naked on his bed. She was terrified when his dad said he was driving her home, and Billy couldn’t blame her. That’s why he wanted to drive her home, that way he knew that she was safe and not somewhere else getting beaten to a bloody mess. He slides back into his bedroom, closing the window. Billy steps over to the mirror to see the damage done to his face, he hears the crunching of broken glass under his boots as he walks across the floor. He looks down at the glass and cigarette ash from his ashtray scattered all over the hardwood. Once Dominique had left he tore his room apart in anger, knowing he wouldn’t be able to take it out on his dad when he came home. Fighting back was a lost cause and a stupid decision because the more Billy prolonged the beating or fought back, the angrier his dad got and the harsher the wounds looked the next day.  He wiped out an entire shelf, not giving a shit that he had broken anything. He looks up at himself in the mirror, dried blood crusted on his nostril, dripping down to his upper lip, a bruise forming on his cheek, and more dried blood spotted on his shirt. Billy takes his shirt off and throws it in the corner of his room, slipping a white t-shirt over his head and grabbing his denim jacket from the floor. Billy locks his bedroom door and turn the light out, sneaking out the window.

Once he pulls up to Dominique’s house he parks two houses away on the opposite end of the street, trying to see if any of the lights in her house were still on. It was 1:30 am, so she was more than likely sleeping by now. He turns the key, shutting the car off, getting out of the car and walking up to her house. Billy walks to the window he had snuck out of the morning before, trying to peek in but he couldn’t see anything. He cups his hands against the glass and sees Dominique’s silhouette on the bed, her back facing the window. Lightly he taps the glass on the window, waiting for her to stir. She doesn’t move an inch so he tries again, this time a little louder and harder. He checks over his shoulder to make sure nobody was around to see him tapping on her window. Finally her head snap up, looking around her room trying to find where the noise is coming from. He laughs to himself and decides to mess with her a little. Billy bangs on the window pane a couple times, making her jump out of bed and screaming. He sees her light turn on the lamp in her room, Dominique frozen in the middle of her room until she sees Billy at the window, her face turning from fear to unamused in a split second. She walks back to her window and opens it, letting him in.

“Morning sweetheart.”

Billy says, sitting on the windowsill. She throws her pillow at him, sitting back in her bed, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

“You’re an ass hole. Why did you scare the shit out of me for?”

“You couldn’t hear me so I got louder. How was the ride home with my dad?”

He asks her, striding over to her bed, laying his head on her exposed thighs. Her eyes look down at me, growing wide.  

“What happened to your face?!”

She almost yells, her hands moving his face so she can see the marks better. Billy tries to get up but she pushes him back down, waiting for an answer.

“I’m fine.”

Dominique bites her lip, taking a deep breath.

“Did your dad do that?”

“You mind if I crash here tonight?”

Billy sighs, moving her hand away from his face and getting off her bed, stripping himself of his clothes until he’s down to his boxers.

“No I don’t mind. But you didn’t answer my question.”

Billy turns her lamp off and crawl in bed next to her, his fingers rubbing her thigh.

“I said no.”

“No you didn’t. Then who did that to your face?”

She questions. He sighs again and covers himself with her sheets, Dominique still sitting up. He swears that he could practically feel her eyes staring into his soul.

“I… box… I went to the gym after my dad got back and got in the ring with one of the guys there. They got me pretty good, huh? Lay down with me, I’m tired.”

By the look on his face he could tell she didn’t buy into his story but she left it alone, laying on her back next to him. Billy shuffles himself closer to her, resting his head on her chest. She laughs, her fingers raking through his hair, massaging his head with her fingernails. He presses his soft lips against the exposed skin on her chest before laying it back down.

“Good night Billy.”

She whispers. Billy snuggles in closer, his ear resting right above her heart. It didn’t take long before Dominique heard snores coming from Billy. She knew in the back of her mind that his dad was the one that caused him to come to her house looking like he went toe to toe in the ring with Muhammad Ali. But as much as she wanted to ask him, she was scared of confirming her thoughts. With how thick headed Billy was, Dominique knew that she was either going to have to pull the truth out of him, or she was going to find out the hard and shitty way.

Tag list: @coolyoungbouquetdestinylove

[dailyironfamily]

day 28 - western au

Day twenty-eight of the November Fic Challenge is a western AU! This is not an 1872 verse fic, though it’s set in the same time frame and Tony has the same backstory, because it’s the obvious one. Established Tony/Rhodey with future Pepper/Tony/Rhodey.

Pepper sighs and wipes her hands on her skirt, stepping back as Sheriff James Rhodes settles Tony’s mostly unconscious body on the bench in the cell in the Sheriff’s office.

“I hate to impose, Jim,” she says, “but this is the third time this week.”

James carefully sets Tony’s head down against the bench, brushing his hair from his forehead. “It’s not a problem, Miss Potts. Was he causing any trouble?”

“No, it’s not that. I just wanted him to sleep it off somewhere someone can keep an eye on him.”

James steps out of the cell, leaving the door open. “Well, thank you for bringing him over, then. I know you must be busy.”

Pepper shakes her head. “Maria’s keeping an eye on the bar, it’s no trouble. I just worry.”

Looking back at Tony on the bench, dead drunk at 4pm, James sighs. “Don’t we all. Did he say what was bothering him?”

“Not this time, but I’d wager a guess it’s the usual,” she answers, frowning. The both fall silent a moment, watching Tony. He looks almost peaceful, asleep like this, but she supposes that’s what he’s hoping for when he gets drunk like this.

“I’ll talk to him when he wakes,” James says, quiet. She nods, then bids him a good day and heads back to the saloon. It’s unfortunate Tony handles his problems so poorly, but they’ve all got things they struggle with. It’s why they’re here.

Anthony Stark made weapons for the war, better, faster, weapons, and when he saw the destruction they wrought he left everything behind and went west.

James Rhodes fought for the North in the war, and when he saw no change in the treatment of people like him, he left everything behind and went west.

Virginia Potts had a husband and a son who went off to war, and when she saw them returned to her in caskets, she left everything behind and went west.

They found their peace in the town of Resilient, a place where people, when they saw the nightmares of the war begin to overtake them, eventually ended up after leaving everything behind and going west.

Tony enters the saloon the next day looking a little ruffled but otherwise sober. Pepper watches him carefully, setting down the glass she’s drying off and waiting with her hands on her hips as he approaches the bar.

“I’m not undoing all the hard work Jim put into drying you out,” she says before he can speak, squinting at him.

“Wasn’t here for that,” Tony tells her, hat in hand and looking contrite. “I wanted to say thanks, for getting me over to Rhodey.”

Her expression softens in surprise. “Oh. Well then, you’re welcome.”

“And if you ever need anything, don’t hesitate to ask,” he adds. “Please.”

“Ah, well, I suppose if you could check the stove in the back―?”

He shakes his head, interrupting. “Not just that. I mean, I’ll gladly check your stove for you, but if I can help in any way, with anything at all.”

“That’s a mighty big offer, Mr. Stark,” she says, raising an eyebrow.

“Please, call me Tony,” he says, smiling wide, and Pepper can recognize that old East Coast charm he was likely known for back home. “Now, what’s wrong with this stove of yours?”

The ‘secret’ dalliance between Sheriff Rhodes and town drunk-slash-blacksmith Stark was a very poorly kept secret. Most everyone knew about it, and most everyone didn’t care. Resilient was a town out of the norm and its residents were willing to defend that, even if it meant that Pepper had to step in and sort out some strangers every now and then.

The man is drunk and just “passing through,” he says, and then he says a few things about Mr. Cage and his wife, who have just left, that have Tony leaping from his stool to tell him off. The stranger turns his commentary to Tony instead, then James, when he stands to defend Tony, and by then Pepper has returned from the back room and slams her hand on the bar, a shotgun under her other arm.

“If you’d please exit my saloon, I’d greatly appreciate it,” she says coldly, her tone brooking no argument. “And once you’re out, please continue and remove yourself from our town, before I have our sheriff do it for you.”

The man protests, but she hefts the shotgun higher, and he stumbles to his feet, muttering under his breath (nothing flattering, most likely, but she doesn’t care as long as he leaves). She watches him like a hawk until he’s out the door, and only then does she exhale deeply and set down the gun.

“Apologies for that,” she says, terse. “He was polite as anything before now.”

“Not your fault,” James says, putting a hand on Tony’s shoulder and guiding him back to his seat. “Thanks for the help.”

Tony’s trembling slightly, and James rubs his hand across his back, trying to calm him. For lack of anything better to offer, Pepper gives him another beer, which he knocks back worryingly quick. He keeps shooting glances at the gun, and Pepper discreetly removes it from the counter top and leans it against the bar by her feet.

“If I see him around still tomorrow, I’ll make sure to tell you, sheriff,” she says.

James laughs faintly. “Doesn’t seem like you need help running anyone out of town, but all right.”

Pepper flushes, but the sound of James’s laughter has Tony sitting up a little straighter, looking less strained, so she doesn’t say anything, just goes back to work.

She’s closing up the bar one evening when one of the neighbors comes in and says, “Miss Potts, Stark’s drunk on your porch and won’t leave. Just thought you ought to know.”

Pepper sighs and thanks them, finishes up what she’s doing, then goes outside to see the damage.

Stark’s sitting on the steps in front of the door, a bottle between his legs, and he grins drunkenly up at her when she exits the saloon. “Miss Potts! What a surprise. I was waiting for you.”

“It’s not a surprise if you’re waiting for me,” she says, bending down to help him onto his feet. He grabs the bottle and stands, slightly shaky. “Come on, let’s get you back to Sheriff Rhodes, hm?”

“I came here for you,” he protests, but he moves when Pepper urges him down the couple of stairs and down the street. He leans on her as they walk, making Pepper go slower than usual, but at least he’s conscious and supporting most of his own weight.

“It’s late,” she says, pointedly. “You shouldn’t be out on the street like this. What if you got hurt?”

“So what?” He shrugs awkwardly with his arm around her waist.

“Jim would be upset.”

“Would you?”

“Of course.”

Tony’s silent for a moment. “You’re very pretty.”

Used to this kind of behavior from drunk patrons, Pepper just says, “Thank you, Tony.”

He starts humming some old Irish tune, one she recognizes her father used to sing, and they walk the rest of the way without saying anything else. Pepper knocks on the door to the Sheriff’s office, hoping that James is still awake at this hour.

Thankfully, the door opens a moment later, and James just steps back to let them in once he sees Tony slumped against her shoulder, humming. Pepper helps Tony into the building, saying to James,

“He was outside the saloon, I didn’t want him to fall asleep out there.”

“Thank you, Miss Potts,” James says softly, taking Tony’s weight from her. He takes the bottle from Tony’s hand, passing it to her, and she sets it down on the desk to deal with later. “Wait here a moment?”

She nods, and waits in the office while James brings Tony into the back room, presumably to put him to bed so he’s not out causing any mischief. When he returns, he shuts the door quietly behind him.

“I just wanted to say,” he starts, drying his hands on a rag before setting it down on his desk by the bottle of alcohol, “I appreciate all your help, but you really don’t have to keep bringing him back. It’s not your problem.”

“He’s one of ours,” Pepper says, nodding to the closed door. “You’re all my problem.”

“At this rate I ought to being deputizing you,” James says with a smile.

“Sheriff Potts has a nice ring to it,” Pepper says, smiling back, and it gets a laugh out of him.

“I wouldn’t go that far. Not yet, anyway.”

Pepper watches him, takes in his kind eyes and the way they crinkle around the edges when he smiles. It’s easy to see what Tony sees in James Rhodes.

“Have a good evening, Sheriff,” she says, giving him a slight curtsy, and smiles when it draws another laugh out of him.

The next evening, Tony’s waiting for her outside the saloon, but he’s not drunk. At least not that she can tell. He invites her back to his place for dinner, and she’s wary but curious, so she leaves Maria in charge of the bar for the rest of the night and follows him home.

His house is an oddly quaint affair next to an enormous forge where he does all his work. She’s been inside the latter but not the former, and she looks around eagerly as he welcomes her inside.

“I must confess, I didn’t think you could cook,” she says as he takes her evening shawl from her and hangs it up.

“If you’re confessing, I should too―I had some help,” Tony says, and that’s when James steps into the hallway to greet them.

“Are we having a party?” Pepper says dryly, glancing between the two men. “I would have dressed up.”

“You look lovely as is,” Tony says instantly, while James rolls his eyes at him and says,

“If you consider three people a party. Dinner’s ready, by the way.”

She follows them to the kitchen and the table set for three, and she sits, a little mystified, as Tony and James put the food and drinks on the table before joining her. James says grace, and Tony even chimes in with the “Amen” at the end. Pepper wonders for a moment if she somehow got into her own stock without realizing it and is now unconscious and dreaming on the saloon floor right now.

“The food is excellent,” she tells them after a few minutes of eating in relative silence, “but I have to ask. What’s the occasion?”

“We wanted to thank you for watching out for me all the time,” Tony says, setting down his fork. “I know I’m not...the easiest to handle.”

“Is that all? I told Jim, it’s not a problem. I’d rather you be an inconvenience than leave you alone to get hurt.”

She meets Tony’s gaze and he holds it, searching for something, though she’s not sure what. Finally, however, he looks down at his plate and nods.

“I told him that, but he still wanted to make you dinner,” James says, smiling.

“Well, thank you. I mean it.”

The rest of dinner passes without anything remarkable happening. Pepper enjoys their company, and they end up talking way past the end of the meal. It’s not until she notices the time that she realizes she’s probably overstayed her welcome and she gets up to leave.

“I’m sorry for taking up so much of your time,” she says, frowning, but James and Tony both brush off her apology.

“I’m glad you came,” Tony says, leaving the plates on the table as he stands, and the two men walk her to the door.

James nods. “You’re wonderful company, Miss Potts.”

“I think at this point you can call me Pepper,” she says, giving him a fond smile.

“Your shawl,” Tony says, taking it from its hanging place, and when she turns around to take it, she nearly runs into him, the two of them much closer than expected. She startles, surprised, but Tony doesn’t move, and they stand there face to face, watching. Tony’s eyes are a warm shade of brown, and when he licks his lips her gaze is instantly drawn downward.

“Pardon me,” she says, the still active part of her brain telling her to move, but her body doesn’t seem to be cooperating. In fact, when Tony starts to lean in, she leans in slowly too, eyes fluttering shut, until her lips brush against his. They stay like that for a few seconds, savoring the press of his mouth against hers, before she remembers where she is and who she’s kissing―and in front of whom.

She jerks back, turning around to apologize, “I’m so sorry, Jim, I don’t know what’s come over me.”

“The same thing that came over me the first time Tony kissed me, I’d wager,” James says with a laugh, and she can’t comprehend why he’s not furious at her. “May I?”

He’s holding a hand out to her, and she stares at it, still uncomprehending, until―oh. Oh.

She takes his hand, and he draws her closer for a kiss of his own, just as chaste and soft as Tony’s. She’s staring at him when he breaks the kiss, and doesn’t move even when Tony gently tucks her shawl around her shoulders.

“We hope you’ll come over for dinner another time, Miss Potts,” James says, his smile so charming, like he hasn’t just shocked the life out of her, and all she can weakly say is,

“Pepper. Please.”

“Another time, then, Pepper,” James corrects himself, and gets the front door for her.

She looks back at Tony, but he’s still smirking, and he waves when he sees her looking at him.

“Don’t think this means you can pass out in front of my door now,” she says to him, finding her voice.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Tony replies, grinning wider, and she blushes and steps out into the cool night air before either of them notice.

Lord almighty, what has she gotten herself into this time? And why doesn’t she feel worried about it in the slightest?

[thebachelordiaries]

Getting Down And Dirty: The Bachelorette Episode 3 recap

Would you believe me if I said I had this recap finished last Wednesday but just couldn’t find the right time to share it. Between the NBA finals making us miss a week of The Bachelorette to that whole Bachelor In Paradise scandal. (check my twitter @thebachdiaries if you want to see my opinions on that unfortunate situation)

But that’s enough excuses, let’s get the episode started:

Episode 3- Rose ceremony No. 2

I don’t think the perfect human exists, so Rachel Lindsay is probably the closest we as humans are going to get.

When DeMario came back to beg for forgiveness, Rachel just stood there and listened. Once he was done, Rachel said DeMario handled himself like a boy and she was looking for a man. 

[DeMario exits stage left]

The best part was that many of the men were standing nearby at the driveway, wondering if Rachel would feel vulnerable enough to give DeMario another chance. Clearly those men have never met a woman like Rachel before.

She. Doesn’t. Take. Any. Shit.

We had to deal with the whole stupid Blake/Whaboom! “feud” for rest of the rose ceremony. Whaboom! tells Rachel that he saw Blake standing next his bed eating a banana while looking at him. When she confronted about this, Blake refutes this claim by saying it couldn’t have been him because he is on a keto diet and doesn’t eat carbs.

On that note, Blake was eliminated. And so was Whaboom! The two had an argument during their exit interviews and I was too busy making myself dinner to care. All I remember was something about a “waka waka fart joke.”

The Ellen Show Group Date

I have been patiently waiting for this group date since I saw clips of it on YouTube two months ago. Rachel decided to invite all the guys she would like to see naked on this date (Peter, Bryan, Will, Peter, Ticklemonster, Fred, Peter), and I’m not mad at it.

I’m not joking when I say I paused on Peter’s face and re-watched Alex shake his behind an uncountable number of times. And I will probably watch this group date again for the same reasons.

I sadly also had to watch the part where Bryan kisses and tells in front of the entire audience and told Will he got his “sloppy seconds.” Rachel, who laughs at everything, did not find that comment amusing. In an Instagram post, Bryan apologized for his actions and blamed it on the a a a a a alcohol (they were apparently taking fireball shots before they took the stage.) I suppose I forgive him. (Forgive, but never forget)

The guys also played Ellen’s favorite game, which is also one of my favorite drinking games: “Never Have I Ever.” 

“Never have I ever thought about having sex with Rachel.”

We learned Peter hasn’t thought about having sex with Rachel, Alex peed in the Bachelor mansion pool, Fred hooked up with an older woman and Alex takes classy nudes. 

P.S. Who is this lucky woman who has received Peter’s nudes and can she be bought?

At the cocktail portion of the date, Alex claimed he doesn’t shake his ass like that on a regular basis, and I’m not sure I believe him. I like how he has a lot of dimensions to him because there’s nothing worse than a one dimensional person.

During her alone time with Bryan and Peter, she latched onto each of them like a spider monkey. I think that’s a telling sign she likes both of them.

Oppositely, while determined to get out of the campzone, Fred asked Rachel if he could kiss her. Rachel said she doesn’t like being asked. (Good lord Fred is so far into the campzone he may never escape.) They kiss and Fred is over the moon afterwards and is sure Rachel feels the same.

But when it came to handing out the group date rose, Rachel asked to speak to Fred in another room and brought the rose with her. She cruelly sent Fred home, never to leave the campzone, and then gave the group date rose to Alex.

1-on-1 With Anthony

You may be wondering, who the heck is Anthony? This man didn’t get much airtime the first two episodes, so like normal Bachelorette viewers with the brains of lab rats, we forgot about him.

Nonetheless, Anthony is a low-key babe. He’s quiet, confident and claims to be an “old soul.” To my surprise, he’s actually 26.

The two rode horses on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills because puns make the world go round.

My favorite part was when the horse took a giant crap on the floor of an upscale designer store.

Anthony seemed great, but the date was pretty dull. i don’t think there was any spark.

He still got the rose though. Anthony and Rachel ended the night by dancing to a quartet while overlooking the most gorgeous scenery. 

Are you kidding me with that view?

Despite the dull date, it was a pretty beautiful moment.

Getting Down And Dirty Group Date

If you aren’t yet sick of ABC playing up the “girl squad” of Rachel, Raven, Corinne, Alexis and other irrelevant Bachelor peeps, then I have some bad news for you: They’re back!

I can just tell Raven is already trying to find a man in Rachel’s group. Her backless bodysuit (and full coverage foundation that didn’t match her face) can chill out.

So a few lucky guys, who weren’t lucky enough to get a 1-on-1 or an Ellen Show date, got to board a party bus with a stripper pole. (side note: I feel like these guys are the same people from the basketball group date)

On the bus, Kenny christens the pole with his Chippendale dancer moves. Yes, Kenny was a real Chippendales dancer. Proof:

Told you.

Once at the venue, the guys find out they will be required to mud wrestle each other.

All you need to know is Kenny completely destroyed the racist Lee and was then probably forced to throw the competition so Mr. Square Jaw could win.

This is what happens when you don’t moisturize.

During the cocktail portion of the date, Eric got the group date rose because he voiced his uncertainty to Rachel and she wanted to show him she cared.

Flashback to earlier in the episode: Eric was complaining at the mansion about how he thinks Rachel isn’t as into him as he is into her. Iggy interjects into the conversation and Eric just starts yelling at him. I don’t know how it happened, but Eric does seem to have a short fuse. Eric also found out Lee and Bryce confessed to Raven that they think he might be here for the wrong reasons, which, doesn’t really make sense. I have no reason to believe Eric isn’t genuine.

At some point during the group date, Eric started getting comments from Lee about how his short fuse was “scaring him.”

Lee does it again at the rose ceremony. Hey look, we have ten minutes left into the episode and a rose ceremony just started. Totally enough time to send people home, right? Wrong.

Rose Ceremony

Essentially Lee the racist is playing into the stereotype that Eric is an angry black man. From what I can tell, the black men in the house pick it up very quickly. 

It is a sad situation that someone like Lee, purposely or not, ended up as a suitor for our first black Bachelorette. 

Rachel doesn’t deserve this, and neither do any of the men in the house.

Random Thoughts

As someone who is publicly against spoilers, I was disappointed to see that some girl, who doesn’t even follow me, tweeted at me and told me who supposedly won. First of all, this person was dumb enough to think I wanted to know spoilers, so she might be dumb enough to get the spoiler wrong, because I don’t really this it’s true. By the way, I blocked that bitch in Twitter never to see or hear from her annoying ass again. Good riddance.

[threeorphanpilgrimage]

Chapter 68 - Day of the Living

Clementine took a breath as she examined the instrument in her hands, dreading what came next. She tried to force herself to act, but couldn't summon the will to go through with it.

"Clem?" asked Sarah. "Are you—"

"I'm going to," assured Clem. "It's just… you have such beautiful hair."

"It's fine Clem," assured Sarah. "I don't mind."

"I mind." Clem sighed as she carefully took hold of Sarah's long, dark hair. "I hate this almost as much as I hate cutting my own hair."

"You know I would cut your hair if you just asked."

"You cut it too short," accused Clem as she carefully angled her scissors. "I barely have any hair left when you do it."

"You're the one who told me it's important to keep our hair short," reminded Sarah. "And if there are as many lurkers on the other side of the river as Devlin says there are, we need to be ready for anything."

"Yeah… we do." Clem sighed and made her first of what would be many cuts. She found each and every one of them painful, and it was all made worse that Sarah had asked for her hair to be cut as short as possible. Clem pleaded with her to settle on cutting it just short enough to tie back but she refused, and now she was sitting there calmly as if nothing was happening. After dozens of traumatic snips, Clem found the terrible task finished when she was unable to remove any more hair.

"You're done?" asked Sarah.

"Yeah," said Clem with a sigh. "It's done."

Sarah stood up and hurried into the bathroom while Clem looked down at the piles of black hair at her feet. She moved the chair and started shoveling it all into the garbage back they had set on the ground. Tying off the bag, Clem watched as Sarah returned from the bathroom.

"I'm sorry," said Clem immediately.

"For what?" asked Sarah.

"For cutting it so short."

"I told you to."

"It really doesn't bother you?" asked a surprised Clem. "I mean, you kind of look like a boy now."

"I really don't care," assured Sarah. "I was just making sure it was short enough that it couldn't get grabbed." Sarah walked over to Clem and picked up the bag she tied. "I'll toss this out and check on Patty real quick, make sure her and Devlin don't need anything."

"I'll go get breakfast." Clem headed for the closet and eyed their loose collection of cans scattered across the mostly empty shelves. It was a hard choice, but she eventually settled on artichoke hearts and their final can of beets as the least disgusting foods they had left. Sarah went to collect Omid while Clem cracked the cans open.

The beets were okay, but the artichokes tasted like wet mush mixed with too much salt. Omid didn't like either one, and made it very clear he didn't as well. Some well-executed maneuvers on Sarah's part did manage to get him to swallow a few tiny bites of beets, but not a bit more. Neither of them wanted to even try to feed him the artichokes, so they let him skip to dessert and eat his ice cream.

"Maybe we could borrow a can of fruit from Sin and Jet, or Anthony," suggested Sarah as she fed Omid a tiny piece of ice cream. "They would understand, right?"

"Yeah, I think so…" An uncomfortable hush fell between the two girls as they watched Omid eat. The boy finished his piece and immediately opened his mouth for another.

"Why don't you go get ready? I'll finish feeding him," said Sarah.

"Okay." Clem headed into the bathroom to do her business and brush her teeth. Moving to the mirror, Clem was disappointed her hair was as short as it was, but was grateful she still had some of it. She picked up a worn brown elastic tie and used it to pull her hair into a tight bun. Clem adjusted the bracelet on her wrist, admiring the multi-colored beads briefly before grabbing her hat.

Slipping the cap on her head, Clem couldn't help staring at the bruise on her right arm. It and others on her right leg had formed the morning after she had fallen in the river. They were still sore, but the sight of the blackened marks running along the right side of her body pained Clem more than the bruises themselves. The day before yesterday she had fallen off a bridge, and now she was going to try to do something far more dangerous.

"Clem?" There were a couple of gentle knocks at the door. Pulling it open, Clem found Sarah standing outside. "Are you okay?"

Looking at Sarah, it was obvious she had already noticed Clem's distress, approaching her friend without a word. Clem couldn't think of anything to say as Sarah stared anxiously at her, so she didn't say anything; she threw her hands around Sarah instead.

"I'm scared," Clem whispered into Sarah's ear.

"Me too," Sarah whispered back as she embraced Clem. "I think we have a good plan, but—"

"Something could go wrong," said Clem.

"I was just going to say, we've never tried something like this before. But yeah, something could go wrong."

"Something always goes wrong…"

"Not always."

"Name a time we did something and nothing went wrong."

"Well… the first time Patty helped us and we got all that food from Titusville. Everything went as planned and we got a lot of food."

"Yeah, but this a lot different."

"I know… but we've got a lot more help this time," reasoned Sarah. "We haven't had this many people since… back at the cabin."

"I guess that's true," said Clem, not finding much comfort in that fact. "I'm also worried about what Devlin said, about the power plant."

"Yeah, it worries me too."

"Does radiation really make your hair fall out?"

"I don't know. I wanted to look it up, but our encyclopedias were ruined in the flood. But I was more worried about the other part, about getting sick and dying."

"It's… it's been like two weeks," reasoned Clem as she tightened her grip on Sarah. "If there was something wrong, we would have noticed by now, right? I mean, how long does it take for radiation to make you sick?"

"I don't know," repeated Sarah. "Again, I wanted to look that up, but we don't have the 'R' encyclopedia anymore."

"I… I love you Sarah," professed Clem, suddenly fearful she wouldn't get a chance to say that again.

"I love you too Clementine." Clem turned her head and gently kissed Sarah's cheek, and found herself a little disappointed when Sarah didn't return the gesture.

"Mah-bah!" Looking past Sarah, Clem spotted Omid standing in the door.

"He's still hungry," realized Clementine.

"I'll get his stuff together and take him over to the Sunseeker," said Sarah as she pulled away from Clem. "We were going to keep him there anyway since Patty says it's the only vehicle that hasn't stalled on us."

"Speaking of which, I should bring her what's left of breakfast." Clem left Sarah to deal with Omid while she grabbed the beet and artichoke cans off the table. Looking through the windshield, she could see Patty handing out something to Devlin while Sin, Jet, and Anthony looked on. Stepping outside, she could see Devlin was holding a hand grenade.

"Where did you get these again?" he asked.

"I found them after I left Miami for good," explained Patty as she shut the lid on a green ammo box. "They were in a drainage pipe near a crashed truck. Not sure if they landed there or if someone stashed them for later, but it was the only thing left of value I could find."

"And there were only three left in the box?" asked Sin as he looked at the grenade he was holding.

"No, I used up the others. I'd toss them at old houses; the explosion would set them on fire while the noise would drag walkers in from all over. They'd walk right in and get burnt to a crisp, then I could loot the rest of the area knowing it was mostly clear. I was always hoping I'd just stumble upon another box of them eventually. I don't suppose you have any?"

"Nah, we used up most of our ordnance on the bridges, and the rest not long after that," said Devlin as he clipped the grenade to his belt. "If we get cornered, these will be good for drawing the infected off, but I really hope we don't need them. Y'all remember what I told you about using these things, right?"

"Yeah," said Jet while the others merely nodded. Yesterday, Devlin had explained to each of them how to use a grenade. Holding the handle on a grenade prevents it from exploding after pulling the pin, but once the handle is released they only had five seconds before it blew up. Clem was glad the others were handling the grenades; just looking at them reminded her of the time she accidentally crossed paths with one Patty had thrown in Titusville.

"All right, let's go over the plan one more—"

"We've been over it and over it," interrupted Anthony. "We must have talked about it a dozen times the other day, everything we needed to get from your fancy citadel is already in our vehicles, and we all know what we're supposed to do, so I say we just do it already."

"Yeah, I'm with Anthony," said Patty. "Let's roll."

Devlin looked over the rest of the group and saw a silent agreement in the faces of all of them. Clem herself was anxious to proceed, finding the mere act of planning yesterday stressful enough without reviewing it yet again.

"All right then." Devlin shrugged, then turned to look at the citadel's gate. "If this trick for slipping past the dead you told me about works, then—"

"It does," confirmed Sin. "It doesn't make sense, but it works."

"I hope so, because there's too many over too far an area to ever try walking the food back, so we're gonna need every advantage we can get if we're actually going to clear them out." Devlin looked out at the gate and took a breath. "I always assumed the Bible was talking about people who were already long gone when it said the dead would rise, not the recently deceased. I never thought this is what the end of the world would look like."

"I always assumed it would be a slow collapse scenario brought on by mismanaged resources and short-sighted fools blocking significant progress for quick gains," said Sin. "That or a solar storm."

"Solar storm?" repeated Patty.

"Activity on the sun results in the release of electromagnetism. A strong enough electromagnetic field colliding with the Earth would destroy our satellites, and wipe out most of the world's power grid along with just about everything plugged into it at the time."

"Are… are you serious?" asked Anthony.

"Am I ever not?" answered Sin.

"But that's the kind of thing that won't happen for a billion years, right?" asked Clem.

"Actually, the planet was struck by a major solar storm back in eighteen, fifty-nine. It was so intense that auroras could be seen in the sky from almost anywhere on the planet, and telegraph equipment shot out sparks big enough to start fires."

"Jesus…" said Devlin.

"Glad that happened over a hundred years ago and not now," said Jet.

"There was another solar storm of similar strength a few years before our current apocalypse," informed Sin. "It narrowly missed the Earth, but had it hit us… well actually a worldwide blackout may have better prepared us for what's happening now. At the very least it would have given us a few years to adjust to life without a functional electrical infrastructure, convince us to pursue more self-sufficient alternatives."

"Your old man always this optimistic?" Devlin asked Jet.

"He's my granddad," he answered. "And yeah, he's always like this. He was talking about the end of the world before it happened."

"It's not the end of the world," everyone turned to Sarah as she stepped out of the Brave. She was carrying Omid in her arms and had a backpack slung over her shoulder. "At least not yet."

"Whoa, what happened to your hair?" asked Anthony.

"Clem cut it, so it's safer," explained Sarah.

"Why do you care?" asked Patty.

"I just thought it looked better before," noted Anthony.

"I told you," said Clem.

"And I told you I don't care." As Sarah moved in closer, Clem could see Omid was still upset. She wanted to comfort him, only to remember she was still holding Patty's breakfast in each hand.

"Here," said Clem as she finally handed the beets and artichokes off to the woman.

"Jeez, I was kind of hoping for something a little better for our big day," said Patty as she studied the labels.

"Those are probably the best ones we have left," informed Clem, wishing those weren't the best canned foods they had left.

"Omid wouldn't even eat most it," said Sarah as she cradled the boy. "I was kind of hoping we could borrow a can of fruit from one of you, just so he'd eat something today."

"I'm fresh out," reported Anthony. "Down to just vegetables now."

"I'm sorry," said Sin. "But we don't have any fruit either."

"We've still got a can of corn through," said Jet. "Will he eat that?"

"Yeah, he's had corn before," said Sarah.

"Hey OJ," said Clementine as she leaned in close to the boy. "You like corn right?"

"It might not be the end of the world yet, but it sure feels like it," said Anthony. "I remember not long after this started, how I missed my favorite foods and hated eating out of cans. Nowadays, I'd settle for more cans of sugary mush than salted mush. At this rate, I'll probably be happy just to have salty mush in a few months."

"Kem-men," said OJ with a smile as he looked right at Clementine.

"Yeah, really, it feels like we're all just living on borrowed time," noted a glum Patty. "God knows our vehicles certainly are."

"Ah-sah." Omid started eyeing the sky with a sense of awe.

"Devlin," said Sin. "Did you every hear any news about the rest of the world?"

"I remember hearing news reports of their being signs of the outbreak in England, France, and China before communications went to shit. There were probably some other places mentioned too but I can't remember anymore."

Clem watched with great curiously as Omid start grasping at the air above him. She wasn't sure what he was trying to touch until she looked up and spotted a single puffy cloud hanging in the otherwise clear sky. She couldn't stop herself from smiling as she realized Omid was trying to grab the cloud.

"You said China?" asked Sin.

"Yeah, you got friend's there or something?"

"Not there, but back in Thailand," said Sin, a hint of sadness in his voice. "With news being so scarce, I was holding out hope that maybe some parts of the world had been spared this madness."

"You like being outside, don't you?" asked Clem in a whisper.

"Ow-sah…" awed Omid, revealing his two front teeth.

"We didn't hear much else after that, but what we did hear sounded like whatever this is, it's global," said Devlin.

"There's nowhere to go," concluded a dismayed Jet. "And nothing is ever going to change."

"Don't say that," snapped Clem in a harsh tone as she turned to Jet. "Things will change. That's why we spent all day yesterday planning, and that's what we're gonna do today; change things for the better."

Everyone looked at Clementine for a second, surprised by her declaration.

"Well you heard her," said Devlin. "Let's make this happen."

"Jai yen yen." Everyone looked at Sin in confusion.

"It means stay frosty," translated Jet. "At least I think it does."

"Semper paratus," added Devlin with a smirk.

"Isn't that the Marines' motto?" asked Anthony.

"That's semper fi, the Coast Guard's is semper paratus; always ready. After sitting on my ass and going stir crazy for a couple of months, I think I'm ready for anything."

"Be good for Sarah," whispered Clem before leaning in to kiss Omid on the forehead. "Love you."

"Muh-boo," repeated Omid while trying to reach out to Clem before being carried away by Sarah. She joined Sin and Jet as they all filed into the Sunseeker while Devlin followed Anthony to his truck.

"You ready partner?" asked Patty.

"I hope so." Clem followed Patty back into the Brave and sat down beside the woman as she tried to start the engine.

"Come on dammit, don't make me get out," grumbled Patty as the engine produced only an annoying churning sound.

"It keeps doing that," noted a concerned Clem. "Do you know why?"

"Could be one of a million things. Even if I had time to check, I probably wouldn't have the supplies on hand to fix it," groaned Patty as she turned the key again. "Devlin said they had hoarded stuff for their vehicles at this shopping center, maybe I can give it the tune-up it needs there."

"The shower isn't working that good either," added Clem. "The water only comes out a little at a time, like—"

"The sink," finished Patty as she tried the key a third time. "Yeah, I noticed that."

"Do you think you can fix it?"

"Honestly? Probably not. Just because it's attached to a vehicle doesn't change the fact it's plumbing, and I don't really know anything about that."

Clem sighed. "I guess it's not a big deal. Sarah says we're only supposed to use a little water anyway, so we don't waste it. But—"

"It was great having long showers while it lasted."

"Maybe we can use the other RV's shower sometimes?" suggested Clem.

"It doesn't have one," said Patty. "Just a toilet and a sink."

"And a shower rod they took to hang clothes on," recalled Clem. "But no actual shower."

Patty sighed, then tried the key again, finally starting to engine much to her and Clem's relief. "At least this thing is still working for now, along with the hot water heater."

"And the toilet," added Clem with a grimace.

Patty put the Brave into drive and Clem watched as they pulled past the citadel's gate. Heading north, they passed by more empty buildings, looted stores, and crowded parking lots overflowing with abandoned cars. Clem could also see modest houses complete with humble backyards closed in by a simple wooden fence running alongside the road. Clem would say they reminded her of her old house in Georgia, but she could hardly remember what it looked anymore.

They weren't on the road long before Patty turned the Brave onto a bridge leading over the river. This wasn't the same bridge Clem had fallen off the day before, but it was missing a section in the middle just like that one. The destroyed bridges was a safety measure according to Devlin, allowing them to quarantine the more walker heavy east section of town from its west. But since they did that, the east side had been gradually cleared out while the west had been swarmed by the herd from Oklahoma City. Unfortunately, what they wanted was west of the river.

"All right," said Patty as she put the Brave in park. "Let's go partner."

Patty loaded her shotgun while Clem equipped her pistol and her spare magazines, then collected their raincoats, respirators, binoculars, radios and backpacks. Clem grabbed her tomahawk while Patty strapped a machete to her back. Removing the sheath, Clem examined the weapon's razor sharp edges. She had spent over half an hour carefully sharpening both the axe and knife-edge yesterday, as well as cleaning her pistol in preparation for today.

Clem adjusted her hat while Patty finished tying off her scarf, then the pair turned to each other. There were no words between them, just a quiet look of understanding before they barged outside. It was warmer today, but still cold enough to make Clem shiver. Briefly eyeing the edge of the bridge, Clem felt a chill shoot up her spine as her thoughts suddenly shifted to the icy river churning below, and the bruises on her right side felt a little sorer as she scooted away from the edge.

Scanning the area for threats, Clem found little beyond a mostly empty four lane road that stopped abruptly in the middle. Eyeing a lone derelict car off to the side, Patty raised her gun while Clem approached it. She banged her tomahawk against the side of the vehicle, then checked inside when that failed to produce any results. The front was empty, as was the back and the trunk, likely picked clean months ago.

After that the pair moved towards the end of the bridge. The middle of the road looked as if something had forcibly ripped it away in a flash. If not for some scorch marks near the edge of the concrete, Clem never would suspect explosives were used to do this. The rest of the road past the break was empty, and an abundance of dead trees on both sides of it blocked her view on what lay past the river. According to Devlin, this road led right to the shopping center they used as a base, but if it was out there, Clem couldn't see any clues to its existence.

"Everyone ready?" Clem heard Sarah ask over the radio.

"Me and military man are in place," reported Anthony.

"Give us a minute," said Clem as she and Patty removed their backpacks. Clem started pulling glass bottles out of her bag while Patty unpacked a huge bundle of fireworks. The pair quickly set a rocket in each bottle until they had a row of six set up and ready to be fired.

"All right Sarah, count us down." Patty clipped the radio to her belt and removed a pair of lighters from her pocket, one of which she gave to Clem.

"Okay, get ready." Sarah's words prompted Clem to bend down and position the lighter right by the nearest rocket fuse. "Three, two, one!" Clem flicked the lighter and the fuse almost instantly sparked to life. She hurried to the next rocket, then the third one. After lighting those, she looked to her right and spotted Patty lighting her final rocket, after which the duo took several steps back and waited.

The first pair of rockets took off screaming into the sky and exploded into bursts of smoke, with any colorful lights being invisible against the morning sky. Clem could hear other fireworks in the distance, both to the north and south. The next pair of rockets streaked into the sky followed immediately after by the final set, each of their detonations echoed by two other sets of explosions in the distance. The loud bangs sent some stray birds flying from the trees on the other side of the river, and then there was silence.

"Now we wait and see if that was loud enough for them." Patty reached for her binoculars and Clem did the same. They both scanned the horizon for signs of walkers, but only found only an empty bridge. "We should have taken a bunch of those Saturn missile things instead of bottle rockets."

"A bunch of what?" asked Clem.

"You know, those boxes full of tiny red plastic missiles that make horrible screeching noises when they go off."

"Oh, those… I hate those."

"Yeah, me too, but in retrospect, we should have packed a bunch of them instead of bottle rockets, they make tons of noise and eat up less space. Hell, why didn't we at least pack more bottle rockets?"

"We were going to, but we had to move all your stuff into the Brave, so we could only take as many rockets as we could fit in the closet."

"That's right," recalled Patty with a sigh. "We should have just found another vehicle instead of me living with you and Sarah."

"You don't like staying with us?"

"What? No, I love being around you two and Omid, it makes everything feel less insane, almost normal."

"We like being with you too," assured Clem.

"Thanks, I… I can't remember anyone ever saying that to me before," professed Patty. "Still, we could have found a truck to use for hauling things, and I could have still slept in the RV at night, or—"

"I see them," announced Clem.

"Yeah, me too, on the right side of the bridge."

Clem watched as a rotten corpse stumbled into view on the horizon.

"Is… is that it?" asked Clem.

"Dammit, maybe the rockets weren't loud enough," mumbled Patty.

"Or maybe there's just not that many walkers left," reasoned Clem as she watched the lone walker stumble across the broken bridge. "Devlin did say it's been a long time since he went over there."

"Yeah, but he also said… oh shit."

Clem watched as dozens of walkers sprung into view, like an infestation of grotesque weeds growing out of the horizon. More kept pouring into sight until there was an entire mob of them canvassing the bridge. Clem felt a familiar sense of dread growing in the pit of her stomach as they shambled relentlessly forward, the dull roar of their uneven moans filling the air.

"Jesus, that's a lot of them."

Clem instinctively took a step backwards as the walkers lurched forward, and she found herself unable to breathe until the first walker plummeted off the bridge. It hit the water with a huge splash, which made Clem flinch as her bruises suddenly felt sorer than they did a moment ago. That walker was followed by a dozen more, all diving into the river and creating a series of loud splashes to accompany the non-stop moaning. Some of them thrashed about in the water, others seemed to give up and start floating downstream, while some of them simply didn't come up after falling beneath the water.

"It seems to be working," reported Sin over the radio.

"Seems too?" asked Patty.

"They're coming, I'm just not sure when they're going to stop," he said.

"Like I said, there's hundreds, and that's at the very least," added Devlin.

"And he said it could be as many as thousands," Patty mumbled to herself as she watched the dead pour off the edge of the broken bridge, almost like a waterfall of festering, moaning meat. Clem found herself growing uneasy as the walkers continued to march into view over the horizon without end, and she started to wonder if the next part of their plan was really going to work.

It dawned on Clem there could be walkers on this side of the river as well, and she spun around in a flash expecting at least a dozen of them shambling up to meet her. But there wasn't, and she didn't see any in the distance, only the Brave blocking her view. Walking past it, Clem saw nothing moving at the intersection or beyond it. Devlin had said he hadn't seen any walkers on this side of the river in a long time, but Clem kept searching, just in case.

"Clem, take a look at this." Patty's words sent Clem rushing back to the woman's side. She had moved from watching walkers rushing over the bridge to standing by the edge and looking out north over the river. Clem inched up to the edge, then took a few steps back. "In the distance, I think I can see the ones from Anthony and Devlin's bridge."

Raising her binoculars, Clem spotted another broken bridge north on the river, and just south of it in the water was an uneven trail of what she could only assume were walkers floating downstream. It was hard to tell from this distance, the bodies appearing to be little more than black dots even with the binoculars, but there was no doubt they were floating towards their position, all the while more walkers tumbled off the bridge to join them.

"Devlin, why did you say your people never tried anything like this while you were waiting here?" asked a nervous Patty.

"A lot of reasons," he said. "For one, we didn't like the idea of clogging up the river with these damn things and sending them downstream to be someone else's problem, or polluting our best water supply with rotten meat. But according to you people, there isn't anyone left downriver, and I know there's no one left here needing water anymore but us."

"They seem to be piling up on the ones who sink," noted Sin.

"Yeah, we can see that too." Patty's words prompted Clem to look back to their bridge. Following a couple of walkers as they toppled off the edge, she noticed one of them didn't immediately sink to the bottom. The top of their feet briefly remaining above the surface of the river before falling forward into the water and beginning their trip downstream.

"That's another reason, these things don't drown, so the ones who sink just sit there, until someone is unlucky enough to walk past one of them," said Devlin. "After a nasty drought during the first summer caused the river to shrink, we had people go out to get water one morning, and found out the hard way that some of the infected who fell off the bridge were still waiting there, like fucking land mines that crawled out of the water."

Clem found herself unnerved by what Devlin had just said. When she fell into the river, her only thoughts were of trying not to drown, but seeing the dead pour into the water by the dozens forced her to think about how much more danger she could have been in. Just one of her feet brushing past a walker lying on the river bed could have killed her before she even knew it.

"Mostly, we just didn't have the manpower to deal with what's left," said Devlin. "I really hope this smell trick of yours works as well as you say it does. Even with all the infected we're drawing off now, there's going to be a plenty left waiting on the other side."

"Yeah, we don't doubt it."

Clem watched as the stream of dead continued to flow forward, not unlike the river they were throwing themselves into. Only after several minutes did the mob of dead thin out to just a few loose walkers wandering forward, prompting the group to coordinate another launch of rockets. More walkers came spilling forward in response, less densely packed this time, but still in great numbers as they plunged into the water a few at a time.

Clem divided her time between watching the walkers push forward over their side of the bridge and checking over her shoulder to make sure there weren't any approaching her side of the bridge. It was odd to her seeing walkers by the dozens on one side and empty roads on the other, as if the city had been split into two most common sights Clem had come to expect these days; death or nothingness.

Turning away from the road, Clem saw the walkers were already starting to wane, but only slightly as more kept arriving to replace their fallen kin. After several uneventful minutes of waiting for them to end, Patty fetched a deck of cards from the Brave and sat down to play a few hands of poker with Clem. Clem was grateful to spend some time with Patty, she just wished she wasn't so bad at poker.

"I'll take... three." Clem tossed some cards onto the pile and grabbed new ones from the top of the deck.

"Try not to hesitate," instructed Patty.

"Huh?"

"The way you paused between saying I'll and three cards. It gives away you're not sure about what you're doing, which makes me think you're weighing a couple of options, like you've got two pairs and you were trying to decide between keeping them or losing one to get more cards."

Clem frowned as Patty said that. "Is it that obvious?"

"It was an educated guess," said Patty with a shrug as she tossed out two cards before grabbing more from the deck. "When you get rid of three cards, it's usually because you've got a pair, and since you were thinking about it, I figured you might be deciding between trying for a full house on your next draw, or losing one pair hoping to turn the other into three or four of a kind."

"Well I didn't get either." Clem dropped her cards on the concrete.

"Don't just fold, you can still bluff with a bad hand."

"You always know," argued a defeated Clem.

"Not always, sometimes I bluff about knowing when you're bluffing."

Clem groaned as Patty smirked at her. "How do you do it?"

"I guess I got a lot of practice bickering with my dad. He was always riding my ass about one thing or another, which meant I had to get better at making excuses and looking innocent just to keep him at bay."

"My parents were really nice to me," said Clem as she found herself looking at another terrible hand. "I'll never learn to bluff."

"That's not true, you had me going when I first met you. I never thought for a second you and Sarah were alone in that old RV with a baby."

"That was before I knew you. I guess—"

"It's easier to lie to people who aren't your friend," concluded Patty.

"Yeah, it is…" Clem found her mind drifting after saying that. "How do you lie to me? I mean, you think I'm your friend, right?"

"Of course," said Patty with a smile. "And for you, it's not so much lying as just pretending like nothing is bothering me, like I don't care. I just kind of let the game happen and try to think about something else."

"Like what?"

"Just, boring crap that needs doing. A minute ago when we were playing, I was making a list in my head of stuff we'd need to give the Brave a proper tune-up. It keeps the game kind of distant so I don't look excited if I get a good hand. You could also wear sunglasses."

"Sunglasses?"

"Hide your eyes, make it harder for people to see what you're thinking."

"But you don't wear sunglasses."

"I used to when I was a little older than you," said Patty with a smile.

"All right, they're down to the single digits again," said Devlin. "I'm thinking we should do one more volley then move on to phase two."

"I agree," added Sin.

"Got it." The pair prepared another row of rockets, using up most of their remaining supply. Sarah counted down and they lit the fuses. Soon after another crowd of walkers arrived at the broken bridge. After briefly viewing more of them plummet to their doom, the pair resumed their game.

Clem tried Patty's technique of occupying her mind. She diverted her attention between watching for walkers approaching from their side while thinking about things they needed to be on the look out for. Most of their clothes were showing a lot of wear and tear, Omid was already beginning to outgrown his, and they had been so pre-occupied looking for food lately they hadn't time to look for things like shampoo, soap, or toothpaste.

As they played, Clem noticed she was starting to do better, winning a couple of hands in a row, but noticing that brought her attention back to game itself and she immediately returned to her losing streak. She tried distracting herself again, but between the cold and the distant moaning, she was finding it hard to concentrate on anything anymore, especially a game she wasn't particularly good at.

"I fold," she said.

"You—"

"I know, could bluff, but I think I'm tired of poker," admitted Clem as she tossed her hand onto the pile.

"Yeah, that's probably enough for today." Patty collected the cards and stuffed them into her pocket. "It looks like that's about it for the walkers, at least for now."

Clem looked over to the other side of the bridge, spotting only a couple of lone corpses idly stumbling across it. Moving closer to the edge, Clem saw there was now a long trail of floating bodies that ran the length of the river. There had to be at least a hundred of them, and looking to her right she saw the trail continued all the way from their bridge to the next one north of here, forming a river of dead inside the rest of the river.

Watching another walker fall off the bridge, Clem was surprised it hit not water, but a small island made of corpses. It was tiny, and its most recent visitor immediately slid off the twisted stack of mangled bodies and into the water, but just that there had been enough dead walkers to make a small land mass was disturbing in itself.

So were the many bodies drifting by as Clem got a closer look at them. There had been so many before she had never focused on a single one, but studying them now she could see many of them had snapped legs, broken arms, and necks that had been twisted into unnatural positions. Their badly mangled bodies should have a provided her with some small comfort, reassuring Clem they probably couldn't attack even if they drifted back onto land, but instead it just felt like a series of painful reminders of the fate she narrowly avoided after her own unfortunate plummet.

"I think we've lured about as many as we can off a cliff," reported Patty over the radio. "Everyone ready to move on to the next part?"

"Been ready for about an hour now," asserted Anthony.

"We've only been out here for an hour," reminded Patty.

"Exactly," said Anthony. "I'll take anything to break up all this sitting and watching."

"We ran out of walkers a few minutes ago," reported Sarah.

"We've scouted ahead to the rendezvous point on the other side of the river," added Sin. "It definitely looks like we can use it as a starting point to clear a path to the shopping center."

"We already killed the ones nearby, so as long as we're quiet it should give us time to get ready," said Sarah.

"Right, we'll be there in a minute." As Patty put her radio away, Clem spotted something approaching from the road.

"Look." Clem pointed at a walker clumsy lurching across the intersection and towards the bridge. It looked pitiful even for a walker, its clothes nearly rotted off its body and its face so deformed that Clem couldn't be sure if it was a man or a woman. Whatever it was, it moved very slowly, dragging one of its ankles as it walked. Clem briefly looked past it, expecting more following it, but it was alone.

"I'll take care of—"

"No." Clem removed her tomahawk from her shoulder. "I'll do it."

"Are you sure? I—"

"We're gonna have to kill a lot of walkers today, so I want to make sure I'm ready for it."

"All right, I'll be right behind you." Clem could feel Patty walking beside her, and heard the woman removing her machete from its sheath. Clem took that as her cue to unsheathe her tomahawk, taking a moment to admire its fine edge before adjusting her grip on it.

Despite having done this countless times before, including a few times as she and Patty had explored the outskirts of Tulsa, Clem felt a little nervous as she stepped forward to intercept the lone walker. She had her raincoat, Patty was right behind her, and this walker looked weaker and slower than most, and yet there was still a lingering fear slowly moving up her spine as she approached it, that constant reminder that a single mistake could kill her.

As it moved into arm's reach, Clem swung her tomahawk, slicing the rotting tendons just above the sorry corpse's broken ankle, causing it to collapse onto its side. Clem flipped the weapon over in her hand, then stepped forward to finish off her prey. The walker lay there, thrashing about hopelessly, snapping its deformed jaw full of broken teeth up until the moment Clem brought her tomahawk down on its skull. There was a loud cracking sound, followed by silence.

"You okay?" asked Patty as she moved beside Clem. "You looked kinda nervous."

"Is it that obvious?" asked Clem as she pried her tomahawk free.

"What's got you worried? It looks like you handled that one just fine."

"That one," repeated Clem. "Here's hoping I can do it a few hundred, or thousand more times."

Clem took one last look at the walker she killed, noticing it had long, dark hair. Their hair was stringy and filthy now, but whoever this was probably had beautiful hair before they died.

The pair returned to the Brave and Patty started driving them south. Clem took a moment to clean off her tomahawk, then proceeded to double check all their equipment. Their guns were fully loaded, the radios equipped with fresh batteries, and their raincoats still freshly coated in the stench of the dead from the preparations they made yesterday. Everything she could check was ready and in working order, yet Clem still felt anxious.

"Where you'd say we should turn off?" Clem heard Patty ask the radio.

"The first exit on the right," answered Jet. "Turn right at the end of the ramp and we'll be at the first intersection past it."

"And be careful," warned Devlin. "Most of the infected are a little further north from this position, and we probably drew a lot away from the area, but there could still be some nearby. The ones stuck in buildings probably didn't find their way out when they heard those bottle rockets."

"Don't worry, I'm keeping an eye out for them," reported Jet.

"And we'll be there in a minute to back you up." Patty put her radio down and Clem watched as they drove past the bridge they stopped at the day before yesterday. Just seeing it in passing made her shutter, and she was glad when it was out of sight. Not long after that they turned onto a different bridge, and looking ahead Clem saw that this one was still in one piece.

Looking out at the river as the drove over it, Clem could see more walkers floating downstream, along with a few stranded on a tiny island poking out above the water. Watching them shamble around made Clementine's mostly empty stomach crawl, and seeing dozens more wandering around close to the shoreline didn't help.

Moving a little further inland, the dead thinned out quickly, and Clem realized the gathering near the river was likely what's left of the walkers who went chasing bottle rockets. But occasionally, she could still spot the occasional stray on the road next to the highway, which kept Clem from ever feeling safe.

After a few minutes of drive time, they reached an off-ramp which Patty immediately turned onto. As they rolled downwards, Patty shifted the Brave into neutral and turned the engine off. They were now quietly rolling down the ramp and were less likely to attract attention, but Clem kept a vigilant watch from the windows anyway.

At the bottom of the ramp was an intersection, with the road left leading under the highway and the road right leading to another intersection where Clem could see the Sunseeker parked. After checking for threats from the windows, Patty removed the keys from the ignition and the pair headed back out. Clem felt a tightness in her chest as she moved towards the other RV, fearful that walkers weren't far. She couldn't see any nearby, yet their presence felt obvious to her just the same.

"You two okay?" Hearing Jet's voice over the radio prompted Clem to examine the Sunseeker more closely. Looking up, she almost immediately spotted the boy on top of the vehicle, waving at them.

"We're fine," answered Clem.

"Do you see anything from up there?" asked Patty in a hushed voice.

"Occasionally I can see a walker in the distance," he reported. "Sarah and Granddad already killed the ones nearby."

"And we could use a hand with the barbwire," added Sin.

"Be right there." Clem hurried along with Patty to the intersection and past the Sunseeker. There they found Sarah and Sin kneeling near a street light on the corner. As they neared the pair, they could see they were working together to wrap a spool of barbwire around the base of the light.

"How's it's coming?" asked Patty.

"We're pretty much done with this post," said Sin as Sarah passed him the spool of wire. "Help me carry this to the next light across the street."

"Got it." Patty carefully grabbed the spool's handle and the pair started slowly moving across the road, taking great care to unspool the wire behind them.

"Clem, come on," called Sarah. "We can get started on the other one."

"Coming." Clem eyed the ankle high barbwire running across the road and carefully stepped over it. She hurried after Sarah, following her to a different corner of the intersection where another spool was sitting. Sarah carefully wrapped the wire attached to it around the bottom of the lamppost, then removed a metal clip from her pocket. She quickly threaded the end of the wire through the clip, then attached the clip to the rest of wire to create a loop around the base of the streetlight, just as Devlin had instructed them.

"Okay, now let's wrap it around a few times and then we'll move onto the next one across the street," said Sarah as she passed the spool to Clem.

"Got it." Clem wrapped the barbwire around the post as far as she could, then Sarah took it and wrapped it as far as she could. After a few passes, Sarah moved the spool away from the post. Clem grabbed one side of the handle sticking out of the spool while Sarah held the other, and the pair started walking forward slowly into the road to unspool the wire.

"You said yesterday that Shaffer's did this, right?" asked Clem.

"Sorta, I saw some people there do something like this once," said Sarah. "Before they ever built the wall, I heard someone yelling one day and snuck out to see what was happening. These people pulled up to the parking lot in a truck, then two of them immediately tied a rope between a couple of trees on each side of the road. When some lurkers came up after them, most of them tripped over it."

"And then those people bashed their heads in," concluded Clem.

"Yep, and it looked easy too, probably because most of the lurkers were already on the ground."

"I still remember the look on Devlin's face when you told him that part," said Clem with a smirk. "He never thought how much easier things would be if they only ran barbwire just high enough for walkers to trip over."

"There were only like a dozen lurkers then," said Sarah. "I don't know how well this will work for more than that."

"I guess we'll find out."

Having reached the other side of the street, the pair stopped at the next lamppost and started wrapping the wire around it. They were making good progress, but Clem couldn't help but feel exposed every second they were outside. She still couldn't see walkers, but she knew they were out there somewhere.

"We're almost there," reported Devlin. "How y'all holding up?"

"We're working on setting up the barbwire," said Sarah.

"And there are no walkers close, but I see some a few blocks north of here," added Jet.

"Right, we're almost there. Stay alert."

Clem could hear the distant sound of an approaching truck now, which probably meant walkers could hear it as well. Like Patty had done earlier, the truck's engine shut off as it reached the off-ramp and coasted quietly downward, rolling to a stop near the Brave. As Clem and Sarah finished up with the barbwire, Devlin came rushing up to meet them.

"We can take it from here," he assured as he knelt down to take hold of the spool.

"Sin and I were going to fence in everything but the ramp to get back on the highway," explained Sarah as she removed a few clips from her pocket and handed them to Devlin. "That way if things go wrong, we can just drive out of here."

"Got it." Devlin turned around. "Anthony, give me a hand with this."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming," said Anthony as he grabbed the spool.

"Why don't you two take a quick break?" suggested Devlin. "Might be a while before you'll get a chance to catch your breath again."

"Thanks, I had been wanting to check Omid," said Sarah as she took off towards the Sunseeker.

"Wait up." Clem ran after her friend and followed her to the entrance of Sin and Jet's RV. The door had been concealed by an odd tent like addition attached to the side of the vehicle. Looking carefully, Clem noticed there was a retractable awning deployed from the side of the vehicle, and hanging from it were cut up tarps forming primitive curtains. Moving in close, Clem noticed the fresh blood smeared across them.

"You think that will keep them from noticing us?" asked Clem.

"I hope so, it took me and Sin long enough to smear the lurker stuff on it," said Sarah as she gently pulled back one of the tarps. "Ugh, it was so gross."

Clem stepped inside and noticed the iron coat rack sitting by the door, just another piece of salvage they had discovered yesterday. Sarah hung up her raincoat and Clem tried to do the same, but her arm was just a few inches short of reaching the hook, much to her frustration.

"I've got it." Sarah grabbed the coat and hung it up for Clem, then the pair moved inside. The first thing they noticed was the sound of Omid crying. Clem exchanged a brief look of concern with Sarah, then they sprinted towards the bedroom together. Clem threw the door open and the pair found Omid sitting in the corner, crying to himself.

"Hey, don't cry," pleaded Clem as she removed her respirator and gloves. "We're here now and—"

"Nuh!" yelled Omid as he pulled away from Clem's grasp.

"Maybe he's hurt." Omid resisted Sarah as she tried to examine him, constantly pulling back whichever limb she tried to study.

"Nuh! Nuh!" repeated Omid every time Sarah touched him.

"Is he mad at us again?" wondered Clem.

"I put him down for a nap just before I went out to do the wire, that was like fifteen minutes ago at most," said Sarah.

"Come on OJ," pleaded Clem. "Be good, we just—"

"Ow-sah!"

"He wants to go out again," realized Clem.

"Now's really not a good time." Sarah quickly peeked out the window. "I guess we've got a minute before they finish with the barbwire. I'll go ahead to make sure it's safe and you can take him out for a few minutes."

"Got it." Sarah put her gloves and respirator back on while Clem moved in close to Omid.

"Come on OJ, you want to go outside?" Omid stopped sobbing, clearly recognizing that word. "Yeah, we'll go outside, you'll like that."

"Ow-sah," repeated Omid, sounding excited.

"Come on. Let's go out for a minute." Clem picked up the toddler and headed for the door, but stopped short of leaving. She looked at the crude curtains surrounding the space just outside the RV, hesitant to step forward until Sarah pulled back one of the tarps and motioned for Clem to come out.

"Here we go." Clem pinched Omid's nose to shield him from the rancid smell, then wished she had remembered to put her respirator back on as the horrid stench practically burnt her nostrils as she hurried past the curtains. Seeing Sarah standing watch in an intersection enclosed in barbwire gave Clem enough of a sense of security to ease her grip on Omid.

Looking at him, she saw Omid's eyes were wide open in astonishment as he gazed up at the sky. The sense of joy spreading across his face was so infectious that Clem couldn't stop herself from smiling as well. Quickly confirming there were no incoming threats, Clem gently sat Omid on the pavement, where he remained, spellbound by the sky.

He just continued to state up at the passing clouds for several minutes before he eventually stood up. Clem watch closely as Omid would move a few steps forward, then back suddenly as he tried to snatch clouds with his bare hands, only to pull back nothing every time. Clem wished she could enjoy watching Omid try to catch clouds, but all she could think about what was waiting just out of sight.

Anytime Omid wandered too far from the RV, Clem would have to pull him back. Omid didn't like this, and would loudly shout 'Nuh!' every time before resuming his sky gazing. Clem didn't like doing it either, but she had no choice as Omid seemed determined to wander further away from the RV each time. Eventually, he was moving right towards a piece of barbwire while looking straight up at the sky, forcing Clem to grab him with both hands, which just caused him to shout in protest this time.

"OJ, no," pleaded a desperate Clem.

"Nuh! Nuh!" refuted Omid as he tried to wriggle out of Clem's grip.

"Come on, let's take him back inside." Sarah hurried over to the tarp and pulled it back while Clem pinched Omid's nose again, a task made harder by his constant squirming. Clem placed the crying boy on the carpet while Sarah came in behind them.

"Now what?" asked Clem as she realized they were right back to where they started.

"I'll try to get him to settle down," said Sarah as she sat down beside a squealing Omid. "You go help the others, they should be ready by now."

"Okay." Clem slipped her gloves back on and grabbed her respirator when she noticed the coat rack of all things was trying to enter the RV. It fell forward onto the steps and rushing over to it, Clem found Jet outside trying to push it in. "Here, let me help." Clem grabbed the top of the coat rack and the pair carried it into the RV.

"Thanks. Jet closed the door behind him. "Granddad said they're about done with the barbwire, so I need to move the Sunseeker." Jet sat down in the driver's seat and started the engine. Watching the vehicle turn around, Clem noticed the lines of ankle high barbwire now enclosed three sides of the intersection. Jet turned the vehicle to only road still unblocked, revealing the barbwire extended back towards the highway, blocking off access to the underpass and the ramp they had taken to get here.

The only path left open was the narrow on-ramp leading back up to the highway, which Jet maneuvered the Sunseeker towards. He positioned the vehicle so it was aimed straight towards the ramp, then shut off the engine. Jet grabbed the coat rack, prompting Clem to grab the other end of it. They moved it back outside, then Jet moved to the nearest exterior compartment. He removed a pair of rain coats and handed one to Clem, which she put on, then he handed her a large piece of chalk.

Clem took the chalk and headed towards the on-ramp. She moved up to the barbwire and slowly wrote a large '8' on the asphalt. She then moved up to the intersection and wrote a '10' in front of the road on her left. As she headed for the part of the intersection facing north, Clementine paused as she looked out at the street ahead of her. They were far away, but Clem could see the shape of walkers moving about aimlessly in the distance.

"Hey." Clem looked over to see Jet standing next to her. "I saw them too, and I keep worrying they were going to come over here."

"They usually don't go anywhere unless they smell or hear something."

"What about if they see something?"

"I don't think they can see. If they do, they don't know what to look for."

"Granddad says it doesn't make sense they can smell," said Jet as he stared off at the walkers in the distance.

"Nothing about them makes sense," dismissed Clem.

"Yeah, but that means the stuff you know about them could be wrong." Looking over, Clem could see the uncertainty hiding behind Jet's eyes.

"It'll be okay," assured Clem as calmly as she could.

"I sure hope so." Jet knelt down and started drawing with this chalk, prompting Clem to do the same thing. Together, they wrote a big '12' across the pavement, then took a step back.

"Daylight's burning," crackled Devlin's voice from the radio. "We ready to do this?"

"The barbwire is finished," confirmed Patty.

"And I'm ready to knock some heads in," added an eager Anthony.

"I'll get what we need out of the RV," added Sin.

"And I'll be on top of it." Clem was surprised to hear Jet over the radio instead of next to her. Turning around, she discovered the boy had already raced back to the Sunseeker and returned to his position on the roof.

"Omid's still being a… pain," reported Sarah.

"Just stay in there," suggested Clem as she approached the Sunseeker. "One of us is supposed to stay inside anyway."

"Just be ready to hop in the driver's seat on a moment's notice," said Patty. "If this goes badly, we'll need to get out of here in a hurry."

"I will," said Sarah. "And I'll trade off with whoever needs a break first."

As Clem reached the Sunseeker, she could see Sin was removing a long roll of firecrackers from one of the exterior compartments. They had given it to him yesterday to hold onto, another souvenir from their trip to Alabama Fireworks World that they hadn't needed until today.

"Let's light this thing." Patty took the roll of fireworks from Sin.

"Sarah," said Clem into her radio. "Get ready to hold Omid's ears."

"Got it."

Patty unrolled the massive string of firecrackers in the middle of the intersection and Devlin knelt down to light them.

"Fire in the hole!" Devlin lit the firecrackers and everyone retreated back to the Sunseeker as the fuse burned down. Clem found herself instinctively removing her tomahawk from her shoulder, praying she was ready for what would come next. The fuse disappeared into the red paper encasing the firecrackers, and then nothing happened.

"You didn't keep your firecrackers in the outside bins did you?" asked Sin. "Because if they got wet in the flood, then—"

"No, we kept them all inside, along with the bottle rockets, and they worked," said Patty.

"Maybe it's a dud?" suggested Anthony.

"Or maybe it went bad," said Clem. "Maybe fireworks are like gas and—"

Clem was cut off by a series of deafening bangs that made her jump. The firecrackers had finally ignited and a series of tiny explosions were gradually tearing their way through the long strip of red paper laid out in the road. After the initial jolt brought on by the noise, Clem found herself growing more annoyed than anxious as she waited impatiently for the firecrackers to finish. After fifteen long seconds of non-stop explosions, the firecrackers were… about a quarter used up.

"Jesus, did you guys take the mother of all firecrackers!" yelled Anthony over the noise.

"We took them in case we ever needed a distraction!" yelled Patty back. "So we took the second biggest rolls in the shop because they'd make for really long distractions!"

"Let's just cut off a section from the roll next time!" suggested Sin.

"How bout right now!" Clem watched as Devlin removed a canteen from his waist and hurried over to the still erupting firecrackers. He poured water over a section of the strip just ahead of the explosions. The series of loud bangs were suddenly reduced to just a few stray pops.

"Oh thank God," said Patty, sounding out of breath, possibly from yelling.

Clem watched as Devlin removed a knife from his belt and knelt down to cut what remained of the firecrackers away from the section he soaked.

"Jesus, that was the second biggest?" asked Anthony.

"The biggest one was the size of a cake," informed Clem.

"Glad you guys didn't take that one," said Devlin as he rolled up what remained of the firecrackers. "We could probably cut what's left of this one into ten smaller strips, easy."

"And we still got two more full ones after that," noted Sin. "I think it's safe to say, we're well stocked on firecrackers for the moment."

"Hey!" Everyone turned in place and looked up to see Jet staring down at them from on top of the RV. "They're coming, a bunch of them, twelve o'clock!"

"Let's move with a purpose," said Devlin as he set the firecrackers down and removed a removed a nightstick from his belt while keeping a knife gripped in his right hand. Clem followed Devlin along with the others, removing the sheath from her tomahawk's head and placing it in her pocket as she took her place in front of the barbwire. "Kid," said Devlin into his radio. "Be sure to call out the infected as you see them."

"I will," answered Jet. "There's some moving in from two o'clock as well, but they're still far away."

"Let us know when they get closer," instructed Devlin. "And watch our flanks and six, the last thing we need is to get boxed in by these things."

"Got it," said Jet.

Clem watched anxiously as she spotted the walkers. The few flickering shapes she had seen in the distance before had grown into a steady march of withered corpses moaning softly as they drifted ever closer a few clumsy steps at a time. Seeing them approach wasn't what scared Clem, what scared her was that more walkers kept coming into view.

They moved very slowly, but this just made them more unnerving as it gave everyone plenty of time to behold their massive numbers. Every group of them was followed by more, and those followed by more still, until they had formed into a massive mob of deadly ghouls covering the length of the road, all marching towards where Clem and the others were standing, anxious to indulge their never-ending appetite for flesh.

"Jesus there's a lot of them…" Patty whispered under her breath, which prompted Clem to pick up her radio.

"Sarah."

"Yeah?"

"Be ready to drive, in case this doesn't work."

"I will."

"Don't bunch up," Devlin warned the others. "And be aware of your surroundings, we'll have enough to worry about without accidentally hitting each other."

"Why'd you look at me when you said that?" asked Anthony.

"I wasn't," assured Devlin.

"They're almost here." Sin's words brought everyone's attention back to the road. The first cluster of walkers had nearly reached the intersection, and everyone readied their weapons. There was a tense quiet amongst the group, allowing the noise of the dead's march to fill the air. That uneven shuffling that sounded like hundreds of slabs of meat being dragged over asphalt filled Clem with dread. The last time it had been this loud was when they were leaving Shaffer's, and this time they were standing right in front of a herd.

The first walker reached the intersection and snagged its foot on the wire as it stepped forward. There was a loud cracking as its head slammed into the pavement, followed by a louder cracking as Anthony brought his bat down on the bastard's head. It erupted like a ripe melon, sending flecks of blackened blood and bits of brain matter all across the pavement.

"First kill!" cheered Anthony before turning back to the road.

Three more walkers advanced; two tripped on the barbwire while the third managed to avoid it. Clem brought her tomahawk down on the nearest one's head, and Sin quickly eliminated the other one that tripped. Looking up, Clem watched as Devlin attacked the one still standing. The man swung a nightstick in one arm, smashing it across the walker's face with enough force to send it reeling in that direction. Devlin then pierced the walker's eye socket with his knife so quickly, Clem only knew what he had done when he pulled his arm back.

Devlin shoved the now lifeless corpse backwards and over the barbwire with a single mighty push. The body landed on the pavement in front of another walker, who tripped over it and fell face first onto the wire where Patty brought her machete down on it. Anthony kicked the corpse off the wire just in time for another handful of living dead to stumble forward.

Once again, most of them tripped, making them easy targets, and the ones who didn't were quickly dispatched and tossed out of the way just in time for the next set to approach and repeat the cycle. The initial sense of fear Clem had felt was quickly replaced with one of tedium. The raincoats the group wore rendered them invisible to the clueless would-be killers, and the increasing stack of bodies piling up eventually made the barbwire redundant, with walkers constantly tripping over their own fallen comrades.

"Walkers closing in on two o'clock," reported Jet over the radio. "There's also a few at six and ten o'clock, but not many and still far away."

"Me and Clem will handle it," announced Patty as she took a step back from the front line. "We'll call if we need help." Patty looked at Clem and a single nod was all the confirmation that was needed. The duo moved towards the right side of the intersection and readied themselves for the incoming walkers. Clem was relieved to see the walkers approaching from this street were fewer in number and spread out, but was annoyed to see the line of them extended into the horizon.

Much like before, the walkers usually tripped on the barbwire, making them easy to kill, and the few lucky enough to avoid the wire were taken down shortly after. The longer waits between walkers reaching the wire gave Clem more time to observe them. She noticed most of them looked even worse than walkers she had confronted in the past. Clothes so faded and torn they were little more than rags, spindly limbs whose flesh had been whittled away by the elements, and sunken faces that more closely resembled rotten masks ready to be ripped off their skulls.

After several dozen kills, Jet announced walkers were nearly at their six and ten o'clock positions. Devlin ordered Sin and Anthony to cover them, then swapped places with Patty and Clem, saying they could use a break. Initially, Clem didn't understand how covering the main road would be a break, but then she saw the roadblock of bodies that had formed on their twelve o'clock position.

Tackling walkers here became more of a test of patience than endurance. They would trip repeatedly just during their approach and many of them were reduced to crawling over a growing pile of corpses to get to the intersection, with some of them getting stuck along the way. Even if they navigated to the intersection, Patty and Clem would be ready to kill them. Each swing of Clem's tomahawk caused the pain in her right arm to grow a little more. At first, it was just a minor sting, then a constant soreness, then finally a particularly hard swing caused a stabbing pain to shoot up her arm.

"Ow!" Clem dropped her tomahawk and started rubbing her bicep.

"You okay?" Patty rushed over to Clem's side.

"It's just the bruise on my arm," assured Clem.

"Why don't you go take a break?" suggested Patty.

"I'll be okay," insisted Clem as she picked up her tomahawk. "I'll—ah!" Tightening her grip on the tomahawk sent another shooting pain up her arm.

"Go get some rest Clem." Looking around, Clem could see the others all still working to kill walkers in the distance, causing the girl to sigh. "They seem to be slowing down anyway."

Clem sighed. "Okay." The girl slowly slumped back to the Sunseeker. After moving past the curtains, she tried hanging up her raincoat, only for this to strain her already sore arm trying to reach the top of the coat rack. The coat fell onto the pavement and Clementine just shrugged as she headed inside the vehicle and towards the bedroom.

"Kem-men!" Immediately Clem felt Omid hugging her legs. "Muh-boo!"

"I love you too," assured Clem with a weak laugh. She moved to hug Omid, only to realize she was still holding the tomahawk.

"Are you okay?" asked Sarah as she took the weapon from Clem.

"Yeah, just tired," said Clem as she took off her gloves.

"I should go out and help then. I'm surprised they haven't needed help yet." Clem grimaced when she heard that. "I've been watching from the windows; there's so many of them."

"Yeah…" said Clem as she knelt down to hug Omid, wincing a little from the soreness of her bruises.

"But it looks like it's working," said Sarah, sounding enthusiastic.

"How far away is the shopping center?"

"I think fives miles." Clem sighed. "You rest, I'll go help the others." Sarah carried the tomahawk out while Omid walked over to pick up something seated in the corner.

"El-muh!" he said as he held out the stuffed elephant.

"Yeah, I see her." Clem slipped her shoes off and collapsed onto the bed. It was a great relief to get off her feet, but it sadly didn't last. Omid refused to be ignored, so Clementine was forced to find ways to keep him happy. Making Elma dance, doing faces, tickling him, all done for the benefit of keeping Omid entertained. After what felt like an eternity, Omid became as tired as Clem felt and she was able to lull him to sleep with a little rocking.

After tucking the boy into the makeshift crib Sarah had created out of drawer and some blankets, Clem decided to briefly check outside. Jet had made a few announcements a while ago but had been silent since then, and Clem couldn't see much from the windows. Heading out and grabbing her raincoat, Clem was shocked by the massive stacks of dead bodies that had accumulated in every direction she looked.

Twelve o'clock's barbwire was gone now and had been replaced with what was effectively a short wall made out of dead walkers; it would look right at place outside of Crawford. Ten and two featured uneven mounds of bodies that could probably become walls themselves with enough time and corpses. Even the roads near the highway were littered with dead walkers that must have numbered well over a hundred, and loose bodies littered the intersection in every direction Clem looked. Even breathing through her respirator, Clem still got a faint whiff of the overwhelming stench polluting the air, and it made her feel a little like gagging.

"Are you okay?" Clem looked over to see Sarah rushing up to meet her.

"Yeah, I got OJ to take a nap and came out to get some fresh air." Clem looked out at the piles of bodies again. "I think I picked a bad time to do that."

"There's a few more off in the distance at twelve o'clock," announced Jet over the radio. "I can't find any more though, even with my binoculars."

"A hundred and three!" Turning her head, Clem watched as Anthony smashed a walker's head in as it leaned over the wall of bodies. The bat caved in its skull and the corpse fell dead onto the barricade, becoming just another brick in the wall. "How many did you kill?"

"Too many," said Devlin to himself as he shook his head. "I remember them being a lot harder to kill than this."

"The raincoats make all the difference," said Anthony.

"Yeah, it's like they don't even know we're here when we wear these," realized Devlin, as if he didn't believe what he was saying. "But… but it's more than that. I swear, I used to have to hit a lot harder to put these things down. Some of them didn't even need the knife, the nightstick was enough."

"I noticed that too," said Clem as she took a step forward. "The first walker I killed I had to hit a bunch of times in the head. I was smaller then, but I still remember it was much harder to kill one than it is now."

"They're immortal, but not invincible," stated Sin as he and Patty joined the group. "Their injuries never heal, not as far as we know, so every blow and every fall they take weakens them, permanently."

"The weather probably doesn't help either," added Patty. "Spending months outside in the rain, snow, wind, everything; it's gotta take a toll on them after a while. A lot of them looked ready to fall over without our help."

"Wonder how long it'll take until they just finally die on their own," asked Jet from on top of the RV.

"They don't need sleep, or even need to eat even though they want to," noted Sarah. "But they're stupid, and do things that hurt themselves. I saw that some of the lurkers didn't even get back up after they tripped, like they broke their neck. They'd probably just kill themselves chasing things like thunderstorms eventually."

"Yeah, eventually," said Anthony as he wiped the blood off his bat. "But that ain't happening today."

"I can't believe we killed so many though," awed Clem as she continued to study the piles upon piles of bodies. "We probably could have killed all the walkers in Titusville had we thought of this then."

"There were only three of us then," reminded Sarah. "And we've still got a while to go before we get to the shopping center."

"All right then," said Devlin as he removed his gas mask and took a deep breath. "So far the plan is working; we've cleared out most of the infected in earshot of this intersection. I was thinking we take a quick rest then move up to our next target; any objections?"

Sarah, reluctantly, raised her hand.

"What's your objection?" Devlin asked her.

"Well… I… I wasn't objecting," stuttered Sarah. "But I was thinking, for the next area, we should use more barbwire. Run a couple of lines at different heights, that way it's harder for them to avoid it, and also add some barbwire further back from the intersection. It takes them a while to get back up and some of them don't get back up at all."

"That's good thinking, we'll do that. Anyone else with a suggestion?" No response from the rest of the group. "All right, I'll keep watch for stragglers while everyone takes fifteen, after that we'll move out."

"So he's in charge now?" mumbled Anthony as Devlin moved away from the group.

"He asked if you had objections," reminded Sin in-between breaths. "Do you?"

"No, but—"

"Then save your breath," suggested Sin as he staggered towards the Sunseeker. "You'll need it."

Since Omid was still in the bedroom, Clem followed Sin inside, Jet and Sarah coming up behind her as she removed her raincoat. As they all went in, the first thing they noticed was Sin sitting on the couch, rubbing his hands while taking slow breaths.

"Are you okay?" asked Jet as he approached his grandfather.

"I'm fine." Clem noticed Sin suddenly stopped rubbing his hands, as if he had been caught doing something wrong.

"No you're not." Jet's insistence was only answered by a silent stare from his grandfather. "At the next intersection, I'll kill the walkers and you can be on lookout, that way you can rest."

"No, I can handle this," insisted Sin. "You don't need to worry about—"

"I am worried about you." Again, Sin just stared at Jet in response, as if he couldn't think of a retort. "You're the one who keeps telling me these are hard times, and I have to be strong."

"We all have to be strong," corrected Sin. "That includes me."

"Nobody is strong all the time," argued Clem.

"And you won't be strong if you give yourself a heart attack." Sin's eyes narrowed slightly upon hearing that.

"Me and Clem can stay with Jet to help him," assured Sarah. "I know it's scary, but the smell, or whatever it is, means they don't even know we're there."

Sin let out a long sigh, then fiddled with something attached to his belt. "Here." Sin handed Jet a small machete that was still holstered in its nylon sheath. "And I suppose one of you should take this too." Sin shifted in place and removed something clipped to his belt.

Everyone looked at the grenade in the man's hand for a moment, possibly weighing the responsibility or danger it represented. Seeing the hesitation on Jet and Sarah's faces, Clem took the grenade for herself, even though she didn't want it. It felt strange holding something so deadly in the palm of her hand. Clem quickly but carefully secured it, using the safety handle as a belt clip to slid it into place near her holster.

"I'm gonna lie down for a while," said Sin, exhaustion hanging in his voice as he slowly stood up. "Come get me if I'm needed for anything."

"Be careful not to wake up Omid," cautioned Clem.

"I will." Sin disappeared into the bedroom, leaving Clem alone with Jet and Sarah. Turning to Jet, she noticed the boy had a nervous look on his face as he removed the machete from its sheath. It was much different from the one Patty and Sarah shared, appearing more like a long and curved knife that got very thick in the middle, almost like the blade had a fat belly.

"I guess if you two can do this, so can I," said Jet, sounding unsure.

The fifteen-minute break came and went in the blink of an eye. All anyone had any time for was getting some water and a little bit to eat before Devlin was calling for them to pack up and move out. Checking on Omid before they returned to the road, Clem was surprised to see not only was he still asleep, Sin was as well.

Being a grandfather, Clem knew he had to be much older than the rest of them, but he never really appeared elderly to her until just now. The look of exhaustion on his face that persisted even after falling asleep and the small wrinkles on his hand that made it look like the skin had been pulled a little too tight all made the normally tall and proud man look quite frail.

Clem was about to close the door when she remembered Jet's comment about Sin having a heart attack. Looking at the man, then eyeing Omid still asleep next to the bed in his crib, she suddenly had a horrible thought of Sin dying, then coming back and eating Omid. She found herself instinctively moving forward to collect the boy, but stopped herself from going through with it. Instead, she turned to Sin, then gently pulled the blanket over his shoulders before returning to the front.

The group was soon on the road again, maneuvering through an opening in the bodies Devlin had cleared and heading north a few blocks before turning west. The fast food restaurants, single story offices, and other signs of the city outskirts very quickly faded away and were replaced with trees and open land, as if they had taken a wrong turn back into the country.

One thing that didn't change was Clem could see walkers through the window. Few in number and always distant, but they were there, a constant reminder of all the other ones waiting just out of sight. Devlin and Anthony must have noticed them as well since their truck came to a stop not long after Clem wondered if they were moving too deep into unknown territory.

The two men emerged from their truck with their weapons at the ready, prompting Clem to do likewise. Jet had driven slowly so as not to disturb the tarps hanging from the vehicle's awning, meaning they had a safe spot to get ready. Clem, Jet and Sarah moved the coatrack back outside into the tented area and retrieved their raincoats and a spool of barbwire. Patty emerged from the Brave right behind them and grabbed one of the spools and before long everyone was working to booby trap the area.

This intersection was more isolated than the other, with the group having to use phone poles to run the wire since there were no lampposts here, and the only building actually at the intersection itself was a single small gas station. Behind it was a row of houses leading north into the horizon, but beyond that was just open land in every other direction they looked. This made spotting incoming threats easier but made it harder to implement Sarah's idea of additional wires, forcing the group to use street signs, fence posts, and anything else anchored beside the road.

All the time they were working, Clem was still afraid of being attacked. Like before, she occasionally spotted a walker off in the distance, but the only ones that ever got close to them were swiftly killed by Anthony shortly after arriving, and no others drifted closer without provocation. Despite this, Clem worked to finish their defenses as quickly as possible, always fearful of what she couldn't see.

With the preparations nearly done, Clem noticed Patty was struggling to keep pace with the others, hunched over as she moved slowly from task to task. Realizing she had worked through the previous attack with no break except for the one they all received, Clem conferred with Sarah and they both approached Patty with the suggestion of her watching Omid while the others fought this time. She was resistant, but only briefly before accepting the offer. After putting the last of the barbwire up, all three of them returned to the Sunseeker.

"I really appreciate this, seriously," professed a weary Patty as she removed her shotgun and machete before hanging up her raincoat.

"It's okay," assured Sarah as she took the machete for herself. "I didn't even have to kill many of them at the first stop, so I'm not tired yet."

"And my arm is feeling better," added Clem as they stepped inside.

"Just come tag me in the second anyone needs a break, I'll—"

The sound of Omid screaming sent everyone racing towards the bedroom. Throwing the door open, they found Omid trying to pull away from Sin with all his might.

"Mah! Mah!" chanted a determined Omid as he kept trying to yank the sock out of Sin's hand.

"He woke up," said Sin, a bored look etched onto his face.

"Well good news, I can take over as babysitter," said Patty as she entered the room. "We're just about ready to get started."

"You already put up the barbwire?" Clem nodded at Sin. "I guess I should get up top." Sin let go of the sock and Omid fell backwards onto the ground.

"Mah-bah!" he declared as he crawled away with the sock in hand.

Heading back out, everyone assumed their positions as Devlin readied more firecrackers. He used his knife to cut off a section from the big roll and positioned it in the middle of the road. Inching closer to Jet as Devlin grabbed his lighter, Clem could sense the boy's anxiety. The machete was trembling in his hands and even with the respirator on, Clem could tell he was breathing heavily.

"They're slow, you're not," whispered Clem. "And they're stupid, but you're not."

"There's hundreds of them, and only a few of us," whispered Jet back. "And they only have to bite us once to kill us."

"And we know that," argued Clem. "That's why we're wearing these raincoats and why we put up barbwire, that's how we killed hundreds of them at the last intersection."

"Yeah, you're right, it's just…"

"Scary, I know," assured Clem. "The first time I had to—"

Clem was cut off by the firecrackers, which once again filled the air with the deafening sound of a hundred tiny but loud explosions. Thankfully, they only lasted about ten seconds this time, and as the air cleared everyone heard their first update over the radio.

"I can see a large number of them approaching from twelve and nine o'clock," reported Sin. "None elsewhere yet."

"All right, Anthony take her and cover nine o'clock," said Devlin as he gestured to Sarah. "I'll take twelve with them." Clem and Jet stepped forward as soon as they saw Devlin looking at them, taking up position beside the man. It wasn't long until Clem could see another mob of walkers approaching slowly from the front. She tightened her grip on the tomahawk and waited anxiously as they gradually grew nearer.

Before they could actually reach the intersection, the walkers at the front of the mob had to navigate past the additional two lines of barbwire that the group had placed in the road. It was actually comical watching them fall on their face, struggle to get back up, then trip over the next wire. One hit the pavement mouth first, shattering most of its already rotten looking teeth. Another managed to put its arms out as it fell, but instead of breaking the walkers fall, the fall snapped its arm in half instead.

The first walker to finally reach the intersection already had its face caved in from the previous falls, and the second it tripped over the final wire Jet brought his machete down on the back of its head with a sudden and violent swing. There was a sickly cracking sound as the blade broke through the skull, followed by a by pitiful final moan.

"See," said Clem. "You can do it."

"Yeah, I guess so." Jet tried pulling his machete free, but it remained stuck in the walker's skull, and his attempts to free it just moved the corpse instead. Clem put her foot down on the dead walker's skull, which finally allowed Jet to pull the machete out. "Ugh, this is so gross," said Jet as he looked at pieces of sticky and rotten flesh clinging to the blade.

"I know," said Clem. "Before we used raincoats, we just used to put that stuff on our clothes."

"Ugh," said Jet as he shook off the bits of flesh. "I don't know how you did it."

"Most of the time, I was too scared to even think about it," she admitted.

Defending the second intersection went mostly the same as the first, except it was made easier by the extra layers of barbwire that helped to mediate the influx of dead. The injuries brought on by repeated falls made them easier to kill, while others just died from smashing their head on the hard asphalt too many times. Even the lucky few who managed to avoid the wires would usually arrive at the intersection alone and would meet a hasty end from whoever was in arm's reach.

After killing a couple dozen walkers, Clem's arm started bothering her again. It wasn't just the bruise this time, her shoulder was getting sore from swinging her tomahawk so much. After finishing off a couple more walkers, Clem looked for assistance in dealing with the next approaching group. Devlin had been called off to defend their six o'clock, but Jet was supposed to be helping Clem with their twelve. Looking around, she found the boy desperately trying to remove his machete from a downed walker's skull.

"Jet," said Clem. "Do…"

"I'll be right there," he insisted as he placed his foot on the corpse's head. Clem turned around to see a couple more walkers nearing the intersection. One tripped and Clem brought her tomahawk down on its skull while the other managed to shamble over the wire. Turning back to Jet, Clem watched as he grabbed the blade with both hands and kicked off the walker's skull. The machete came out with a sudden jerk and Jet let out a cry of pain as he fell backwards onto the pavement.

As the boy tried to stand, Clem noticed the walker suddenly lurched forward at Jet, prompting him to rush backwards towards the Sunseeker. The walker chased after Jet, hissing loudly as Clem dropped her tomahawk. Jet tripped over his own feet as he tried to back away just as the hungry beast charged forward. Two quick shots sliced through the side of the walker's head and its now lifeless body collapsed onto Jet as Clem holstered her pistol.

"What was that?" asked Devlin over the radio while Clementine rushed to Jet's side.

"Are you okay?" asked Clem as she helped to pull the walker off of him.

"I… I think so," said Jet, his voice still gripped in fear. "Thanks."

As Jet stood up, Clem noticed blood dripping from his right hand.

"Somebody, answer me, what was that shot?" asked Devlin.

"I shot a walker that attacked Jet," reported Clem.

"What?" asked a startled Sin. "Why?"

Clem watched anxiously as Jet removed the glove on his hand, revealing a clean slice running across his palm. Looking carefully, Clem didn't see anything that even remotely resembled teeth marks.

"He cut his hand and the walker smelled the blood, but he's okay." Clem breathed a slight sigh of relief as she put the radio down, only to notice Jet still appeared disturbed. "You are okay, right? It didn't—"

"No, it didn't bite me," assured a still distressed Jet.

"And when it fell, its teeth didn't touch you or—"

"Its head landed on the pavement next to me."

"Good, then—"

Jet rushed into the Sunseeker, leaving Clem to wonder what to do next. Looking at the road she was covering, the stream of walkers had slowed to a crawl and probably any one person could handle it. She then noticed the dropped machete and Jet's glove. Thinking it best not to leave something covered in fresh blood around, Clem grabbed both. As she looked up, she saw Sin moving towards where she was standing.

"Where's Jet?" he asked, unable to conceal the fear in his voice.

"Inside," answered Clem. "I was about to go—"

A loud crack sounded and Clem turned around in time to see a couple of walkers tripping into the intersection.

"Dammit," swore Sin under his breath. "Take care of them, I'll go check on Jet."

"My shoulder really hurts." Clem's words halted Sin mid-stride as he tried to enter the RV. "I can check on Jet for you, if you just—"

Spin spun around, walked back to Clem and held out his hand. Seeing a bit of Jet's blood still on the machete, Clem handed the man her tomahawk instead.

"If there's anything wrong I'll tell you," promised Clem.

"Thank you." Sin rushed past Clem and immediately swung at the nearest walker. He nearly cleaved its head clean off its body, then spun around and jammed the tomahawk's blade right through another walker's face with a surprising burst of speed. Seeing that Sin was sufficiently motivated to kill walkers now, Clem headed into the RV. The first thing she noticed was Patty, who was staring at the bathroom door.

"So what happened?" she asked. "I heard you say Jet cut his hand, then he barged into the bathroom without a word and won't answer me."

"I'll talk to him," said Clem. "Could you keep watch? Sin had to take over twelve o'clock for me."

"Sure thing partner, I'm feeling good and rested anyway." Patty hurried out of the RV, leaving Clem alone outside the bathroom door. Listening closely, she heard Jet groaning in pain inside, which prompted her to knock first. After receiving no answer, Clem cracked the door open. Peeking inside, she saw Jet wincing in pain as blood and water was dripping into the sink from his hand.

"Let me help you," said Clem as she stepped inside.

"I'll do it myself," insisted Jet as he turned away from Clem. "I should at least be able to do that after you had to save me."

"Are you mad at me because I saved you?"

"No… I'm mad at myself." Clem watched as Jet hung his head in shame and clenched his hand shut, as if he was refusing her help. "I'll be okay. I'm pretty sure I can't screw this up."

Clem felt sorry for Jet, having known the painful sting of failure too many times herself. She tried to think of something to say, but then got another idea. Clem rolled up her left sleeve and held out her arm so Jet could see the large faded scar on it.

"How did you get that?" he asked.

"A dog bit me, hard," said Clem.

"A dog?"

"Yeah, I saw one in the woods one day. It walked right up to me and I started petting it, not even thinking it could ever bite me," sighed Clem as she pulled her sleeve back down. "Someone had to give me stitches because of that. If I hadn't let them help me, I probably would have bled to death or gotten an infection. "

"I don't think this is as bad as that." Jet sighed. "But I get the point." Jet opened his hand and Clem grabbed a clean washcloth from the counter and a bottle of alcohol from the cabinet.

"This will hurt," warned Clem as she dabbed the cloth with alcohol.

"Hopefully not as much as cutting my hand like an idiot." Clem started cleaning Jet's injury with the washcloth, prompting the boy to wince in pain again. "I feel so stupid."

"It's okay, we all make mistakes. I've made a ton of stupid mistakes, just ask Sarah."

Jet let out a weak laugh. "She'd just say you're the most amazing person she's ever met."

"Why do you think that?"

"Because that's what she wrote in her diary."

Clem turned to Jet suddenly. "You read her diary?"

"Yeah, I was asking her about where you two had been and she mentioned she was trying to write it all down in a diary, and when I asked her if I could read it, she said yes."

"Oh…" Clem was surprised to hear that, wondering what else Sarah and Jet had discussed while she wasn't around.

"I think it's clean now," said Jet.

"Huh, oh, right." Clem set the washcloth aside and grabbed a bandage.

"I told her she should write more, but she says she hasn't had much time lately with everything that's happened."

"How much has she has written?" asked Clem, genuinely curious to how far Sarah had progressed since she last read her diary.

"The last thing I read was when she met you for the first time. She wrote, 'I didn't know it right then, but I'd find out later that Clementine was actually the most amazing person I've ever met in my entire life."

"She… she wrote that about me?" asked Clem as she applied the bandage.

"Yeah, well—"

Sin burst into the bathroom suddenly, eyes overflowing with fear and concern.

"I thought—"

"Patty agreed to cover for me," said Sin as he marched right up to Jet. "Are you—"

"I'm all right," assured Jet.

"You weren't—"

"He wasn't bitten," answered Clem.

"It's just a cut, and the walker smelled the blood," recapped Jet as Sin knelt down to examine the boy's hand.

"How did you cut yourself?" asked Sin in a stern voice.

"On the machete."

"The same one you were using to kill walkers?" asked Sin, sounding concerned.

"We disinfected the cut," said Clem.

"Was the blade covered in their blood?" Sin asked Jet.

"Probably, I had been using it all morning, why?" Jet's eyes widened in panic as he realized why Sin asked him that. "You think that infected me?"

"It doesn't work like that," assured Clem. "Only bites do that."

"You're sure?" asked a dubious Sin.

"Pretty sure," said Clem.

"Pretty?" repeated a frightened Jet.

"I've covered myself in their stuff more than once, and have been putting in on raincoats for a long time."

"But have you ever gotten any on an open cut?"

"No, but—"

"Oh God…" muttered a panicking Jet.

"But I got it in my mouth once." Both Jet and Sin turned to Clem. "I had a cold and didn't want walkers to hear me coughing, so I covered my mouth. There was still a lot of their… whatever on my hands, and I tasted it."

"But you were okay?" asked Jet.

"I threw up, and I got really sick later and passed out, but I think that was because I was already really sick. But, I didn't die, obviously."

Jet and Sin breathed a sigh of relief almost in sync with each other.

"Thank God," said Jet.

"You need to be more careful," lectured Sin. "How did you even cut your hand on the machete in the first place?"

"I—"

"It was getting stuck a lot," said Clem. "It's probably dull."

"It cut right through my glove," reminded Jet.

"Yeah, near the handle, but you hit the walkers with the end of it, that part is probably dull. When's the last time you sharpened it?"

"Sharpened it?" asked Jet.

"We… we never taught you how to do that," realized Clem. "And… we should have given you a gun too, so you could have killed that walker if you couldn't use your machete."

"I thought you said you didn't have any more guns," said Sin.

"I just remembered, we have my ankle gun. We could have given Jet that." An awkward silence followed as Clem dwelled on her own mistake.

"Somebody report," said Devlin. "We're short-handed and it looks like we're missing our lookout."

"We're okay," said Clem as she picked up her radio.

"And I'll be right out," added Sin. "Jet, stay here and—"

"But—"

"You hurt your hand, and I'm feeling better. Rest for now, please."

"Oh… okay." Clem noticed Sin didn't have her tomahawk; he had likely given it to Patty when they swapped places. Thinking it was better than no weapon, she handed Sin the machete and he left the bathroom.

"Thanks," said Jet.

"For what?" asked Clem.

"Saying it was the machete's fault, and not mine."

"It probably was, it was getting stuck. If anything, it's more my fault for not giving you a gun or teaching you to sharpen things." One look at Jet made it clear he still blamed himself. "I've done so many stupid things. The first time we tried getting bullets, I told Sarah to just park us right next to the gun shop that was surrounded by walkers. We just ran in there, then I spilled a box of bullets and had to shoot a walker, and then they all started coming in. I almost got me, Sarah and OJ killed because I was stupid."

"OJ?"

"Without me and Sarah, he would have starved to death."

"But what about Patty and Anthony?"

"We hadn't met them yet."

"Oh…"

"Kem-men!" called Omid as he came stumbling into the bathroom.

"I'm here, don't cry," assured Clem as she knelt down to pick up the toddler.

"Kem-men," repeated Omid as she picked him up.

"You want me to look after him?" asked Jet.

"I guess you'll have to," reasoned Clem.

"Not necessarily, I could go out and you could stay in."

"But your Granddad said—"

"I can rest on top of the RV and keep watch, that's not hard."

"Well, I could use a break."

"Great." Jet smiled at Clem, which made her smile a little. Jet returned to his position as lookout while Clem carried Omid back to the bedroom, where she soon discovered he needed changing. Despite that, she enjoyed her time with Omid. Looking after him was work, but work she liked a lot more than killing walkers all day. Clem actually began to feel a tinge of guilt for remaining inside so long, and was grateful when Sarah came into the RV desperate for a break.

Heading out, it's clear the bulk of the walkers had been killed by now. There were once again whole mounds of bodies piled up in every direction except for the road they drove in on, which only had a few scant corpses. Looking at twelve o'clock, Clem could see the line of walkers had been spread thin now, and killing what remained was largely a matter of patience. After trading Sarah's machete to Patty for the tomahawk, Clem took up position at twelve o'clock and waited.

As the sun climbed higher in the sky and chased away the chilly morning, Clem found herself annoyed by the relatively sweltering heat. The raincoat, the respirator, even her hat all felt suffocating after a while and it was hard to wipe away sweat when you were wearing gloves partially caked in dried blood and rotten flesh. The piles of bodies had reached a point where what few walkers who remained had to crawl over all those who failed before them just to be easily killed like all the others.

"Two hundred… and twelve!" announced Anthony as he brought his bat down on a walker trying to climb over the pile of corpses at nine o'clock. "It's got… to be… a world record. Most kills… in a single day," said the young man in-between deep breaths. "Clem… how many… did you get?"

"I don't know, a lot," she shrugged before noticing a walker climbing over the twelve o'clock wall of bodies.

"You people… really need to start keeping count." Clementine brought her tomahawk down on the walker's head and killed it. Only as she removed her blade did she notice this walker was a child, a girl that didn't look much older than her. A closer examination revealed large bullet wounds running down both sides of her body. What Clem didn't know if those were there before or after the girl turned into a walker. She assumed after, but only because the image of a little girl being gunned down disturbed her more. "Seriously, it's not fun having the high score if I'm the only one playing."

"Maybe the rest of us don't find this fun," retorted Clem as she walked away from the other girl's corpse.

"Oh come, you guys are always telling me they're not people anymore," said Anthony as he followed after Clem.

"They used to be," Clem said under her breath as she moved towards Devlin and Sin, who were dealing with a couple of walkers at six o'clock. Sin killed one of them as another came tumbling over the small mound of bodies. Devlin raised up his knife, but hesitated to strike.

"What is it?" asked Clem as she approached. "Why…"

Looking down, she saw the walker Devlin hadn't killed was a soldier. They were still wearing a large vest lined with pockets and a thick helmet. Who they were was a mystery, their face had been gnawed down to just a flailing skull held together with the thinest strips of rotten skin. The lower jaw, eyes, and tongue were all missing, and as they reached out their arms, Clem could see their hands were gone. The walker thrashed out at the air with its rotten stumps as its head swiveled back and forth on what remained of its severely gnarled neck.

"Friend of—"

Devlin angrily hammered the walker's head with his nightstick, over and over again, smashing it against the corpse's helmet repeatedly until he finally kicked the head with such force that it knocked it clean off the walker's shoulders and sent it flying across the area.

"So… not a friend," concluded Anthony.

"He's one of the OKC fuckers!" growled Devlin in a way that frightened Clem. "Thought we got all the bastards, but I guess this dumbass got himself eaten before we could shoot him. I hope it was painful you piece of shit!" Devlin kicked the corpse so hard it rolled over onto its back, revealing a rifle still attached to it.

"Well, at least that's one thing this fucker did for someone else." Devlin used his knife to cut off the shoulder strap and then grabbed the rifle. He unloaded and checked the magazine, then rolled the corpse back onto its back. Searching the pockets, Devlin retrieved a couple magazines and stood up. "Let's finish up and get out of here already."

Clem moved over to the soldier's decapitated head, which had rolled out of its helmet after being kicked. She noticed a bit of flesh near its scalp was twitching slightly, suggesting it was still alive, for the lack of a better word. But it was helpless now, its lower jaw and tongue was gone, and Devlin had broken most of the teeth connected to its upper jaw, all it could do is lay there and twitch, so Clem raised her tomahawk into the air and prepared to finish it off.

"Leave him!" ordered Devlin. "He deserves to rot." Clem felt intimidated by the man's stern order, but then he turned away and left her and the others alone to observe the severed head.

"You think if we took his teeth, and cut someone with them, it'd kill them?" asked Anthony

"What?" said Sin.

"I mean, it's bites that kill people, which means it must be something in their teeth right? Like rabies?"

"Rabies isn't spread by bites specifically, it's actually in the salvia." Sin looked down at the head. "I don't think these things salivate anymore."

"Which mean it's in the teeth." Anthony stared down at the head. "Or maybe it's in all the bones."

"That doesn't make much sense, then again, most of what we know about these things doesn't make sense. I suppose it could be something in their bones, reacting to the calcium. If we come back as them no matter how we die, perhaps whatever it is actually triggers the transformation early, and killing us is just a side-effect."

"If you took a femur, and sharpened it into a knife, it'd be like a poison blade that could kill people just by scratching them," realized Anthony.

"Assuming it is something in the bone, and not some other bizarre form of transmission," speculated Sin. "For all we know—"

Clem drove her tomahawk down into the walker's eye socket, finally killing it. "I think we've learned enough about walkers for today," she said as she walked off. "I want to get out of here too."

As it well past noon at this point, everyone stopped to eat lunch after they moved the vehicles away from the intersection. Clem returned to the Brave with Sarah, Omid and Patty for a while to enjoy some time together in their home. But other than Omid loudly demanding something to eat, there was little conversation between the group.

Part of it may have been fatigue setting in from their ongoing task, of which they were only half done, but in any case, none of them felt much like talking right now. Their meal didn't help either. They could only stomach a few canned chili peppers before it made them sick and Clem didn't even want to know what the substance in the can labeled 'tongues' was made out of. Trying to chew her way through that slimy stuff was a miserable enough experience without dwelling on it.

It was so bad, they didn't even offer any of it to Omid. Instead, Sarah took out the can of a corn she had saved from the Sunseeker. It was already half empty from feeding Omid breakfast, and by the time she was done giving him lunch it was completely empty. Their stomachs half empty and half full of things making them sick, the group elected to partake in the jam Winnie had left them. They each took only a spoonful, but spreading that decadently sweet sticky goodness across Clem's tongue was almost enough to make her forget about the rest of their awful meal.

After lunch, the group readied themselves for their next stop. Clem took some time to sharpen Sin and Jet's machete, as well clean off the blood from the rest of their weapons. While she was doing that, Patty retrieved Clem's ankle gun and gave it to Jet, double checking to make sure he knew how to use it properly, as well as apologizing for it being pink, to which Jet said he didn't care. Sarah was preoccupied with Omid's care, tending to his needs and giving him another short taste of the outside world before relocating him back to the Sunseeker for safe keeping.

After that, the group set out for their next destination. They went north for a couple of blocks then turned west until the road became a small bridge running over a four-lane highway. Clem could see walkers both north and south nearby, mostly off in the distance but a few ambling close to the overpass they parked just short of. Everyone got to work, but the geography made preparations more difficult this time.

They could easily run wires through the underpass to create a southern choke point, but the wide open road made it hard to reinforce their northern position. The group clumsily zig-zagged the barbwire between guardrails, abandoned cars, road signs, and anything else they could find to create obstacles for the walkers.

After that was the challenge of blocking walkers coming down the hill to the west of the road. A guardrail running alongside it created one barrier, and running wires from a road sign to the opposite ends of the rail created one more, but there was nothing left they could use to erect further hindrances for the walkers. The east side was left open, both as an escape route and because they had likely killed most of the walkers from that direction at their last stop.

With every reasonable precaution they could take, everyone took their positions before setting off another strip of firecrackers. As before, walkers came slowly pouring into the area, mostly from the north and south, but occasionally stumbling down the hill on the west side as well. Their wire wasn't as well set-up as the previous choke points, but the bigger area gave the group more room to spread out and reduce the chance of being boxed in.

One after another, walkers fell all around them, and more still came to take their places as the sun continued to sink. Clem could tell everyone was getting tired, with each wave of walkers being met with slower and less precise attacks. The raincoats kept them from being detected and their crude but complex web of wires prevented the dead from advancing too quickly, but the heavy burden of this seemingly endless task was beginning to weigh on everyone.

After what at least felt like an hour, the flow of walkers began to slow down, giving everyone much needed pauses in between attacks. The road was now littered what must have at least been a hundred corpses, and Clem could see more approaching in the horizon. They all begin to blur together for her after a while, just becoming a hazy slide show of rotted faces being punctured by her blade.

Then she saw something different approaching. At first she wasn't even sure it was a walker because it was so small, but it was. Waddling forward in a fashion even awkward for walkers was an undead toddler. He was bigger than Omid, but not by much. Clem guessed he couldn't be more than two years old at the most. He was completely naked, skin sickly and pale, only a few teeth in an otherwise empty mouth, stringy hair, and his big eyes covered by a strange white film.

His tiny steps carried him forward so very slowly that Clem could only imagine how long he had been following the noise of the firecrackers to get this far. His chubby arms were extended out in front of his body as he approached the first barbwire. His legs were shorter than the wire itself, so he couldn't trip. Instead, the wire connected with the toddler's stomach, slowly cutting him across his stomach.

Clem felt utterly transfixed at this horrible sight, a lone baby left to die only come back as one of the dead and tear up his body chasing a noise. Watching him rip open his belly on the barbwire, spilling his intestines on the ground, Clementine felt determined to act. She let go of her tomahawk and removed her pistol from its holster, then struggled to line up the sights on the poor child's head, then that head exploded into an eruption of blood.

"Two-sixty-seven!" Anthony had destroyed the undead toddler with a single swing of his bat, leaving just a tiny pair of legs attached to a severed torso with rotted organs spilling out onto the pavement. So sickening a sight to Clem she found herself panicking. Looking around at the massive piles of bodies surrounding her, she suddenly felt like she was suffocating. She put her gun away and ran up the hill towards where the Sunseeker was parked. Throwing off her raincoat, Clem charged through the vehicle and right into the bedroom as fast as her aching feet would carry her.

"Kem-men!"

"Omid," she said as she dropped to her knees and threw her arms around the boy. "I love you, I love you…"

"Muh-boo," said Omid as he hugged Clem.

"Are you okay?" Clem looked over to see an alarmed Jet staring at her.

"Yuh… yeah," stuttered Clem. "Where… where's Sarah?"

"She said she needed a break from Omid, so I came down here and she took my place on watch. Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, I… I just needed a break," stuttered Clem.

"Okay, I'll go help out; my hand is feeling a lot better. If you need anything, just tell me."

"Thanks." Jet looked at Clem briefly, clearly worried, then left her to be alone with Omid. At first, Clem couldn't let go of Omid, finding the warmth of his body against her skin and the feeling of his heartbeat incredibly calming. Eventually she had to let him go, but she remained close the whole time, and eagerly indulged his every whim. Playing with the toys he gave her, reading any book he brought her, and hanging on his every babbled word; Clem only wished she could give him more. After a while, Omid began chanting 'Wah-wah' and Clem carried him to the front to fetch some water.

"Hey there." Clem looked over to see Devlin seated on the couch. He had removed his helmet, mask, vest and padding. Without them, he appeared a lot smaller. Not skinny, but still thinner than Clem had imagined. He also smelled kind of musky, but she figured that was true for all of them by now.

"Are you hurt?" asked Clem.

"Nah, just worn out," he said. "Needed a break myself."

"Oh, okay." Clem set Omid down and filled up his cup with water. She sat down in a chair behind the passenger seat and invited Omid to join her. After she helped him climbed onto her lap, Clem put one arm around the boy while giving him the sippy cup in the other.

"You took off pretty quick."

Clem was surprised to see Devlin was looking at her. "I… I just—"

"I saw it too. That little boy out there."

"He was just a little baby," said Clem, finding it hard to fight the urge to cry. "I know he was already dead but… it even looked like OJ a little." Clem found herself squeezing Omid tighter after saying that. "It… it—"

"It's horrible," finished Devlin, sounding a little choked up himself. "Because it used to be a little boy." Clem nodded weakly at Devlin. "I may have knew his parents. There were at least a few couples in Tulsa with toddlers. I don't remember all their names, but I know only one couple made it out with their baby. The others…" Devlin covered his eyes with his hand and took a deep breath.

"Wah-wah," said Omid as he shook his empty cup.

"You're still thirsty," said Clem.

"I'll get it." Clem handed the cup to Devlin. He took it to the sink and quickly filled it. "I never got a chance to see this little guy the other day," Clem felt a little nervous as Devlin approached. He stopped in front of her and knelt down to look Omid in the eye. "How you doing there buddy?"

"Wah-wah," Omid told Devlin.

"Here you go." Devlin handed Omid the cup which Clem immediately helped to raise to his lips. "Have you and… Sarah right?" Clem nodded. "You two been raising this boy all by yourselves?"

"Yeah," said Clem with a nod.

"Damn, I'm seeing it and I can still hardly believe it."

"Me too," spoke a weary Clem.

"I've seen too many kids die," said Devlin, sorrow gripping his voice. "Schools were a bad place for kids to be during all this, a single infected gets in there and it could slaughter whole classes of them."

"It was spring break when the walkers came, so I wasn't in school then. But Sarah and I went to a school not long after OJ was born… there were so many dead kids there, and some of them were even younger than me."

"I'm sorry that happened to you, and that you've had to be on your own for so long." There was a sincerity in Devlin's voice that Clem found very comforting. It reminded her of how most well-meaning adults used to talk to children before things changed.

Feeling a restless Omid fidgeting in her arms, Clem set him on the carpet. Trying to think of a way to keep him entertained, Clem untied her shoe and slipped off her sock. Dangling it in front of Omid, the boy immediately took the challenge and grabbed it with both hands.

"Mah! Mah!" he said as he pulled on the sock as hard as he could.

"What would have happened if me and Sarah came to Tulsa before it was attacked?" asked Clem as she watched Omid try to take the sock from her.

"I told what you happened," said Devlin.

"I mean, what would happen to us? If me and Sarah drove up in our RV when Tulsa was still here, what would happen next? Would you search the RV and then tell us the rules?"

"Well yeah, we made people check their guns and ammo before they could come into town, then we'd want to get your names and a little more about you and where you've been."

"Why?" asked Clem.

"There were lots of people looking for lost family or news of other cities, so we made it a point to keep a list of names of everyone coming and going, and what they'd seen. If they got robbed or attacked by someone out there, we wanted to know what they looked like in case they ever came to town themselves. You know, stuff like that."

"That makes sense, but what about after that? Would you have let us in?"

"You guys? A couple of kids taking care of a baby?" asked Devlin. "Of course we'd let you in."

Clem found herself glad to hear that, but still hesitated from smiling. "And after that?"

"I… I guess we'd find someone to help look after you," reasoned Devlin.

"Look after us? Like who?"

"There were some other kids who had been… separated from their parents. We had to put together a kind of orphanage where we had some teachers and other people making sure they were being taken care of."

"Orphanage?" repeated Clem.

"Yeah, I guess that makes it sound like something out of a Dickens novel, but really they were just trying to keep them happy, which isn't easy these days. Sometimes people, usually parents who had lost their own kids, would come by and spend time with the children there, sometimes even adopt them if the kids like them enough."

Clementine found the idea of being adopted strange and uncomfortable to think about. Despite seeking safety for so long, the idea of answering to someone claiming to be her adoptive mother or father after all this time just felt wrong in the young girl's mind. It felt almost incomprehensible to her now even.

"You don't trust us," said Devlin, noting Clem's apprehension. "Or me I guess, seeing as I'm all that's left."

"It's not that, I just don't think I'd want to be adopted."

"We wouldn't separate you from Sarah or your… baby," assured Devlin.

"I didn't think you would, that's just not what I want."

"Well, what do you want?" asked Devlin, genuinely curious. "If you came to Tulsa last year, and you were sitting in front of me then, and I said you could have whatever you wanted, what would you say?"

"I guess… I'd like a house or a room somewhere safe for me and Sarah and OJ to stay… and enough to eat."

"And?"

"That's it really. We would have helped you any way we could have, and…" Clem noticed Devlin was smiling at her now. "What?"

"It's just weird a kid your age, talking about wanting her own house."

Clem frowned slightly upon hearing that. "We had one once, in a little town called Spokeston. We spent six months there, just the three of us, and only left when the food ran out."

"That must have been hard for you guys."

"Actually, that was probably the happiest I've been since things changed," realized Clem. "If we could have just stayed there…"

Clem was a little surprised when she felt Devlin's hand gently set down on her shoulder. "We had plenty of empty houses in Tulsa," he said with a smirk. "I think if you had come here, back when here was somewhere worth being, you could have convinced us to give you one to keep all to yourself."

"Not just myself," smiled Clem. "Sarah and OJ would be there as well."

"Mah!" Clem felt the sock finally be pulled from her grip. "Mah-bah."

Clem picked up Omid and set him on her lap.

"He sure is a cute little thing," said Devlin. "You and your friend are good moms."

"We hope so. We're always worried we're making mistakes."

"Every new parent is."

OJ continued to clutch the sock until he noticed Devlin looking at him. "Hah-dah?"

"Devlin," he said slowly as he gestured to himself.

"Deb-beb?"

"Dev—"

"Ahh, dammit!"

"Deb-bit," repeated Omid as Anthony stumbled into the RV, a look of excruciating pain on his face as he tightly clutched his right shoulder.

"What's wrong?" asked Devlin as Clem took hold of Omid, terrified of what Anthony was going to tell them.

"Are you bitten?" asked Clem as she found herself backing away from a wounded Anthony as he collapsed onto the couch.

"He's not bitten," assured Patty in a tired voice as she stepped inside. "Mr. High Score threw out his shoulder."

"Dammit," mumbled Anthony as he rubbed his shoulder.

"Deb-bit," repeated Omid with a smile.

"I told you should have taken a break," said Devlin.

"Yeah, yeah. It's just… I was so close to three-hundred," lamented a Anthony as he rubbed his shoulder. "Now I can't even hold the damn bat."

"Dab-bab." Clem felt a sudden urge to cover Omid's ears.

"Somebody get me some ice," pleaded Anthony.

"We don't have any, none of us have working freezers," reminded Patty.

"Shit…" Clem managed to cover Omid's ears before Anthony swore this time. "Well then, I guess I'm out of the game."

"Honestly, I'm not sure how much longer I can keep this up myself," said Patty, sounding out of breath as she sat down in the nearest chair.

"What's it look like out there?" Devlin asked Patty.

"Jet said there's almost none left. He's helping Sarah and Sin finish cleaning up what's left." Patty turned to Clem "You dropped your tomahawk but Jet said he'll bring it back when he's done."

"So we can move again soon?" asked Clem.

"Yeah, we could, but…" Patty let out a long sigh.

"Yeah, I'm worn out too," admitted Devlin. "And the sun's going down."

"And I'm crippled now," groused a frustrated Anthony.

"It might be best to pack it up and try again tomorrow," concluded Patty.

"Mah-bah." Clem looked down to see Omid looking up at her.

"You hungry?"

"Mah-bah," repeated Omid a little louder.

"I'll try to find you something to eat." Clem looked through the cabinets of the Sunseeker until she found some canned goods. Clem grimaced as she evaluated the small selection of odd and obscure vegetables, trying to figure out which ones Omid would most likely not spit out after two bites. As she pulled back a can to examine it, her hand bumped into her pistol. She didn't even realize she was still wearing it until now, or the grenade.

"Devlin," said Clem. "Our next stop would be the last one, right?"

"Yeah, but there's gotta be a bunch of them still there and I don't know if I've got the strength to hack through another hundred of these bastards."

"Oh, so you were keeping count," noted Anthony.

"I'm guessing, I've had to have killed at least a hundred of them by now."

"What if we just shoot them?" suggested Clem.

"You'd have to loan me a gun," said Devlin. "The rifle I took earlier is effectively ruined. After being left open to elements for so many months, that thing doesn't even cycle right anymore."

Clem thought to herself for a moment, then marched out of the RV. She walked the short distance back to where the Brave was parked and headed inside. She retrieved the automatic rifle stowed in the closet then headed back out in time to see Sarah, Sin and Jet stumbling towards the Sunseeker.

"Clem," said Sarah. "What are you doing with that?"

"Did something happen?" asked Jet.

"No, but maybe something should," she said.

"What does that mean?" asked Sin.

"Come on." Clem motioned with her head and led the others back into the Sunseeker. Once inside, she immediately offered the rifle to Devlin. "This is the same gun, right?"

"Yeah, it is," said Devlin as he took the weapon. "I remember your friend here aiming this at me the day before yesterday; surprised you weren't toting it around earlier."

"It's only got like six bullets," mumbled Anthony as he rubbed his shoulder. "I guess you've got plenty now though."

"We all have plenty of bullets," reminded Clem. "Let's just shoot the walkers and get the food already."

"Is that what we're discussing?" asked Sin as he found a place to sit. "I thought we agreed it'd be a waste of our ammo to do that."

"We've got lots of ammo, what we don't have is a lot of food," stated Clem. "I'm sick of eating junk; junk that's going to run out soon. I want good food, and I want it tonight, not tomorrow when we'll all just be even hungrier."

Looking around at everyone, Clem didn't see any hints of objection in the others' eyes. They likely were all thinking the same thing she was thinking; they didn't want to wait another day for what they had worked so hard for.

"A real meal again would amazing," professed Patty in a quiet voice.

"Fuck it, I can shoot with my left hand if it means I'm not stuck eating canned squash or whatever again," said Anthony.

"If we can drive as far as the shopping center, there's a place where we can bottleneck most of the ones inside," explained Devlin. "A couple of us could keep using melee weapons on them, others could cover the area and thin out their numbers using guns."

"Someone could take our rifle and shoot them from the roof of the RV too," suggested Sarah.

"I could do that," volunteered Jet.

"And we got the grenades if something goes wrong," reminded Patty.

"And if not, we could always just leave and come back tomorrow if there's too many," added Sin.

"Mah-bah!" Everyone turned to see a hungry Omid grasping at the cans in the cabinet, pawing at the lids in a hopeless attempt to open them. This sight saddened Clementine, then angered her as she realized she couldn't give Omid everything he deserved. But she could give him more tonight.

"Don't worry OJ," said Clem as he picked him up. "We're all gonna eat a lot better real soon."

The group returned to their respective vehicles and readied themselves, a renewed sense of determination taking hold as they finally moved towards their destination. As they headed north, Clem couldn't ignore the piles upon piles of bodies littering the road they were driving on. The sun was sinking now, painting the road itself in an orange light while the bodies appeared just as black marks against the concrete; a tally of all the people who had fallen in the time since the world changed.

As Clementine loaded an additional round to replace the one she used to rescue Jet, she realized that she still felt a shred of sadness for the walkers they killed. Even with their faces rotted and misshapen, she couldn't stop thinking about how every one was another person who hadn't survive. And with every corpse they passed, Clem continued to question her own survival. Why had she remained alive, when so many others had died?

Before long they passed another intersection and Devlin told them to slow down. Had they not been so tired, they probably would have stopped and begin the slow process of setting up another series of barbwire traps, but not this time. Instead, they kept going and Clem kept a close eye on the sides of the road. The highway itself had largely been clear of walkers, but there were still occasional ones to be found idling about in the distance.

Clem saw Anthony's truck ahead of them slowing down, prompting Patty to do the same. Until now, the section to the right of the road had been mostly empty space with a few houses sprinkled in. But as they rolled to a stop, Clem spotted a severely mangled chain fence running along the road. Beyond it was a handful of restaurants, and beyond that was a massive building with the words 'Sam's Club' written on the side. It would be right there for the taking if not for all the walkers standing in its parking lot.

"That's our food storehouse," confirmed Devlin over the radio. "Jesus, I never thought I'd see this place again."

"We could reach it easily from here if not for the walkers," said Sin.

"If we just go a little further, I know how we can force a lot of them into a bottleneck, make them easier targets."

Patty followed Anthony's truck as it moved a little further down the road. The broken fence continued past the restaurants and the storehouse, giving way to a massive row of buildings. There were worn logos on the top of the buildings, but no glass entrances or parking spaces in front of them. It dawned on Clem she was looking at the back of these department stores, and as the Brave slowed to a stop, she noticed a sign running over the road just ahead of them.

The original words had been painted over, just leaving "TULSA M.O.B." on the first sign, and a large arrow pointing at the shopping center on the other. Following the arrow with her eyes, Clem saw it was pointed to a gate in the chainlink fence that had long been knocked off its hinges. Beyond that, a gap in the buildings that led to a parking lot nestled inside, and there lay more walkers, just waiting for their prey.

"This is it," said Devlin. "Let's park our vehicles facing back the way we came, in case we need to leave in a hurry, and then meet outside." Patty swung the Brave onto the other road and the squeak of the parking brake set Clem and Sarah into motion. They loaded their guns, packed extra ammo into their bags, donned their raincoats, grabbed their melee weapons, and stepped out to meet the others waiting in the road.

"I still remember what it looked like." The first thing Clem noticed was Devlin staring at the hill across the road from the shopping center.

"Um, you're facing the wrong way," informed Anthony.

"The infected following those troops out of Oklahoma City came in on the interstate to the west of here. Maybe if they had just told us, we could have done something about it," spoke Devlin in a bitter tone through his teeth. "Instead, the fighting dragged them off the road and right to us. Once we finally killed the last motherfucker, we thought it was over, then we saw them come pouring over this hill here by the hundreds."

"That's… comforting," said Anthony.

Devlin turned around and looked at the shopping center. "Let's do this." The man gripped his rifle and took a step forward. "Bottleneck is right there," said Devlin as he gestured to the gap in the buildings. "A couple of us wire it up and get ready to bash some heads in."

"I'll do it," volunteered Sarah. "I've been with Omid most of the day, so I'm not that tired."

"And I'll go with her," added Clem. "I've taken a break every time, so I'm okay too."

"Patty, that shotgun would do a lot of damage at close range, go with the girls and cover them."

"Sounds good," said the woman as she cocked her gun.

"Here's our rifle, and all the ammo we have for it," said Sarah as she handed the weapon to Jet along with a bag. "If the scope feels off, you can adjust it with the little dials on the top and side."

"Wow, you've got a lot of bullets for this thing," noted Jet as he tested the weight of the bag.

"And you've still got the pistol we gave you." Jet nodded at Patty. "Use that in case they get in close and you can't use the rifle."

"And be aware of your surroundings, " ordered Devlin. "Using a scope, it can be real easy to forget what's just past the edge of it. The last thing I want to see happen is one of us go in to kill an infected and get shot in the back because you were aiming for so long you didn't realize where we were."

"I'll… I'll be careful," said Jet as if he was making a promise.

"I'd recommend covering the west hill. There's little chance of one of us wandering out that far in the first place and you'll have an easier time shooting them from up there than any of us."

"Got it!" Jet took off running for the back of the RV.

"You good to use that thing?" Devlin gestured to the machine gun Sin was holding.

"I haven't fired it before, but I trained with larger rifles," he said.

"You a soldier?"

"No, but military service is required in Thailand," said Sin with a hint of derision. "I guess I'll finally get some use out of it."

"All right, well you take the south road. There probably won't be too much on it seeing as we already killed a lot of stuff back that way, should give you time to get used to that gun. Also, watch the side of the buildings, in case any of them try to sneak up on the girls and Patty."

"Understood." Sin nodded at Devlin and marched down the road.

"And any of you ever use this gun before?" asked Devlin as he held up the automatic rifle.

"Yeah, it's loud, and it's impossible for me to hold when it shoots more than one bullet," answered Clem.

"Then it works," concluded Devlin as he examined the weapon. "I'll use this rifle and cover the north side."

"What about me?" asked Anthony.

"Watch the baby," ordered Devlin.

"What? You want me to babysit?"

"The gunshots will wake him up and probably scare him too," said Sarah. "Somebody needs to be there for him."

"But anyone can do that," argued Anthony. "Why me?"

"Because, you fucked up your shoulder from working all day without a break," reminded Devlin. "No good messing yourself up even worse. You get some rest while keeping an eye on the kid. If once of us needs to tap out and you're feeling better, you can switch then."

Anthony stared defiantly at Devlin in response.

"Please Anthony?" begged Sarah. "We can't leave Omid alone."

"You know what, I'll do it since you asked Sarah." Anthony smiled at her, then headed for the Brave.

"All right people, move with a purpose."

Sarah and Clem grabbed a spool of barbwire from the Sunseeker and hurried down the hill and towards the shopping center. There were bodies all over the grass leading up to the building, too rotted to be walkers anymore. Briefly glancing at them, she could see some of them had uniforms on, most of them didn't. There were also stray shell casings scattered across the dirt that Clem preferred not to think about.

Moving in close to the buildings revealed more signs of the battle Devlin mentioned. The concrete exteriors of the stores were riddled with bullet holes and an entire section of the structure on the left had collapsed into a pile of broken concrete from some unseen attack. Nearing the gap, Clem could see a damaged humvee smashed up against the building on the right.

Entering the gap, the scars of battle grew more numerous. There were several wrecked vehicles jammed up against the sides of the building at odd angles, small craters in the dirt path they were walking on, and at the end of the gap a bizarre arch that appeared to be made out of twisted metal. Getting closer, Clem realized the arch was the remains of a semi-trailer, like the ones that made the wall around the citadel, but this one had been torn apart in the middle, leaving an opening large enough to drive through.

Reaching the wrecked trailer, Clem was baffled by the black scorch marks surrounding the punctured metal. The razor wire running on top made it clear this was used as a wall, but Clem could think of only one thing that could have carved an entrance through it. And taking a few steps forward, she saw that one thing sitting in the middle of the parking lot; the remains of a large tank.

"Jesus…" whispered Patty. "It's just like Mobile."

"Except there are walkers everywhere this time," corrected Clem.

"Let's just put up the barbwire before they hear us," insisted Sarah.

The pair worked quickly while Patty kept a lookout. The debris and abandoned vehicles gave them some natural places to anchor the wire. They could hear Jet over the radio reporting about walkers in the distance, but Devlin told him not to shoot until Clem and Sarah finished. After securing their third strand of wire, Clem decided that was enough. They backed away from the gap, then radioed the others to let them know it was time.

A couple of rifle shots sounded, which was followed by more shots from the others, and soon there were walkers moving towards the gap. Clem's tomahawk moved without thinking, by now it was practically a reflex. As the walkers began to swarm, the girls stepped back and let Patty's shotgun deal with them. The deafening bangs drew more, which the girls would cut down with their pistols while Patty reloaded. After their numbers began to thin the girls would reload themselves, then go back to using their melee weapons, repeating the cycle.

The moans and groans of the dead became like white noise before long, and the constant sunken faces of the dead looking in Clem's direction before jamming her blade through their eyes all blended together into a depressing blur of rotted faces who features dimmed with the setting sun. It felt less like battling monsters and more like fighting a force of nature now, like throwing sandbags in the path of a flooding river, hoping you have enough to keep the water out.

The sun had nearly set as the distant sounds of gunshots began to wane. There were still more walkers piling in from the gap, and by now the bodies of the dead had once again formed a pile of corpses, burying the original wire, which just created a marginally more effective barrier. By now, Clem could barely breathe because her lungs ached so badly, yet she persisted.

Watching as another pair of walkers clambered over their makeshift wall of bodies, Clem tried to move forward to kill one, only to suddenly find herself too dizzy to stand. The girl fell backwards onto the dirt, dropping her tomahawk. Watching Sarah, her machete became jammed in the head of the walker on the left, and while she tried to free it the walker on the right was pulling itself over the wall.

Clem drew her pistol and took aim the best she could, but pulling the trigger just produced a click; she had forgotten to reload. Her eyes wandering around for help, Clem saw Patty was still loading her shotgun while the walker's arms started thrashing out towards an unexacting Sarah, whose was still struggling to free her machete. With a sudden wave of terror washing over her, Clem reached for the grenade on her belt. But before she could grab it, a cold but strong hand grabbed her from behind.

"Easy there," said Devlin. "I got you." The man's thick gloves felt coarse against her skin, but there was something gentle in the way he helped her off the ground, as if he was taking great care not to exert too much strength.

Suddenly there was a gunshot and Clem turned her head to discover Sarah casually shooting the walker with her pistol. Feeling a little less dizzy now, she noticed it wasn't quite as close to her friend as she initially thought.

"Looks like you three could use a break." Clem watched as Jet picked up the tomahawk and approached the wall, Sin following right behind with his machete. "The roads are pretty clear now, so we can take take it from here."

"Thuh… thanks," Clem found herself barely able to speak because her throat was so parched. She slowly trudged back to the Brave with Sarah and Patty, both looking only marginally less haggard than herself. Her feet hurt from standing all day, both her arms were throbbing in pain, her hands were incredibly sore, and even with the respirator covering her mouth she knew she must smell terrible.

Returning to the Brave to toss off their stuffy respirators and raincoats felt like escaping an iron maiden for the trio. Carefully removing the grenade from her belt, Clem took one last look at it before placing it on the table, grateful that she didn't need it today. She was about to remove the rest of her equipment when there came a noise from the closet. Without a word, Sarah jumped ahead of the group and threw the door open.

"Ah-bree-mah-bah" mumbled Omid as he chewed his ice cream.

"Omid, no!" scolded Sarah as she pried the boy away from his treat. "He ate almost a whole bag. You're gonna make yourself sick."

"What are y'all yelling about?" asked a woozy Anthony as he emerged from the bedroom.

"Dammit, you were supposed to be watching him," said Patty.

"I was, I just lied down for a minute. What's the big…" Anthony looked down at the mostly devoured plastic bag sitting amongst the remaining unopened freeze-dried ice cream. "Are you kidding me, you people lied to me." Anthony turned to Clem. "You said that bag you gave me to go New Orleans was your last one."

Everyone stared hard at Anthony in response to what he said, except for Omid, who just kept chewing. "Why don't you go help the others clear our what's left in the parking lot?" suggested a worn out Patty.

"All I've got is the one pistol."

"Just take my backpack, its got extra bullets," said Clem as she handed him her bag. "If you hurry, you might still reach three-hundred."

That was enough to get Anthony moving, leaving the Brave to its owners.

"Finally," spoke an exhausted Clem. "I really need a—" Omid spit-up a brown substance onto Clem's shirt. "Shower."

After confirming Omid was unarmed beside stuffing himself with too much ice cream, Clem's concerns were replaced with annoyance in needing to clean up the floor while Sarah had to wash and change Omid; Patty was left to sort out their guns and other equipment in case they needed to go back out. At one point, Devlin requested as many flashlights as they could spare over the radio, and Clem volunteered to take some out, reasoning she was still on her feet anyway. Only after that was she finally able to catch her breath in the bathroom.

Peeling off her gloves, Clem was disturbed to see her hands were bright red and covered in popped blisters. And as she undressed, Clem discovered more bruises and marks all across her body, many of which weren't there this morning. Tossing her filthy clothes in the laundry basket, Clem suspected she could have not used her raincoat at this point and still remained undetected due to all the blood that had splashed onto them, and Omid's puke probably just helped to make them smell even worse.

Stepping into the shower, Clementine felt the hot water almost instantly washing away her fears and concerns of the day along with the dirt and filth, only for the water to stop. It started again after a few seconds, then stopped again. Clem tried fiddling with the knobs and even knocking the shower head, but it didn't fix the problem. It was still a huge relief to wash herself off, but without a steady stream of water it was more like she was getting a quick rinse than a hot shower.

As she stepped out of the bathroom, Clem heard another call from Devlin, this time telling them to try and move the Brave into the parking lot. They had apparently cleared out most of the remaining walkers as well as clearing out some space in the gap, and Devlin wanted to make sure they could drive onto the lot now, saying they could spend the night here. Patty dutifully put up with the Brave's stubbornness until it started and headed for the gap.

The barricade of bodies had been parted down the middle and the wire removed. It was a tight fit, and Patty went slowly, but they managed to squeeze the Brave through without issue. Heading south across the lot, Clem found herself staring at the countless bodies littering the area. The asphalt looked almost like a wide open sea in the dark, and the Brave their ship sailing through these uncharted waters riddled with bodies. Despite what Devlin had said about staying the night, it still didn't feel like they were finished, and that there was some other challenge waiting for them.

Eventually, the Brave's headlights fell on the storehouse's front entrance. It was chained shut, and in the surrounding area, Clem could see Anthony, Sin and Jet eliminating a few lingering walkers in the distance, while Devlin was moving towards the storehouse's front doors. Patty and Clem rearmed themselves and grabbed their raincoats while Sarah tried to get Omid to settle in for the night.

Stepping outside, once again Clem found herself staring at the bodies lying around her. Seeing one walker on the pavement not far from where they parked, Clem grabbed her tomahawk. Her hands and arms ached as she lifted it into the air, but she endured the pain long enough to bring the blade down on the walker's skull.

"I think that one was already dead," informed Patty as she gravitated towards one the Brave's exterior storage bins.

"Yeah, but I wanted to be sure." There was a gunshot and Clem turned around in time to see a walker falling before Anthony, who was wielding a pistol in his left hand. Scanning for further threats, Clem found nothing but Sin and Jet as they moved towards where they were standing. Suddenly, the night seemed silent, free of moans and growls and shambling footsteps that had so followed them everywhere they went, and for the first time today, Clem didn't feel the walkers presence lurking just out of sight.

"Someone I knew once said that in the end, the dead always win." Clementine looked down at the rotten and mangy corpse sprawled out before her. "I think she was wrong."

"Devlin!"

Clem spun around to see Patty rushing towards Devlin, who collapsed to knees suddenly. Looking at the man, he had an almost vacant look in his eyes now, as if his soul had left his body.

"Are you okay?" asked Patty.

"You're not bitten are—"

"I just can't believe it," he mumbled in a barely audible whisper. "With just six of you…" Devlin raised his arm and stared at the dried blood smeared across the sleeve of his raincoat. "We could have taken it back. If only we had known, it could have worked… it all could have worked."

Clementine stepped forward and placed a hand on the man's shoulder, which seemed to bring him back to his senses. "I'm sorry," she said as the man looked into her eyes.

"They didn't even notice us," said Devlin. "How did you figure it out?"

"I was lucky," admitted Clem. "Someone had to kill a bunch of walkers to rescue me, and he got covered in their stuff. When a walker didn't bite him, we figured it out; I'm only alive because of him."

"I guess that means I am too now," realized Devlin as he stood up.

"We all are," said Patty as she approached the man. "None of us would have made it here without you Clem."

"Not me, Lee was the one—"

"You're the one who saved me back in Titusville," reminded Patty. "You wanted to take a chance to help Anthony, came to Sin and Jet's rescue outside Port Arthur, and I think I remember Sarah saying something about you saving her life."

"Well… yeah, I did do all that stuff, didn't I," spoke a surprised Clem, as if this was the first time she had realized this.

"And you're taking care of that baby," added Devlin. "Sounds like you're a real hero."

Clem turned away upon hearing that. "No," she said as she remembered something else she did. "I'm not a hero."

"Well, you're a hero to me," said Devlin with a smile.

"Really, even though I'm a kid?" asked Clem.

"That just makes you more heroic," reasoned Devlin with a smile. "I've known grown men twice your size who weren't half as heroic as I saw you act today."

"Three-hundred and eleven!" announced Anthony loudly as he joined the group. "What's my prize?"

"You get to kill the next three-hundred," suggested Patty.

"Ahh, you know what, I think I'll take the door prize instead." Anthony gestured to the front of the storehouse.

"Is it possible walkers are inside there?" Sin asked Devlin as he and Jet joined the group.

"I severely doubt it. We had the storehouse locked down tight to keep out thieves, and since we were attacked at night, none of us got a chance to open it before we had to retreat."

"How do we get in then?" asked Jet as he looked at the padlocks and chains welded to the door.

"I got it covered." Patty brandished the electric bolt cutter. She went right to the closest chain and pulled the trigger. The blades very slowly closed in on the metal link, but they didn't cut it. The tool just whirred very weakly as it failed to make a dent in the metal.

"Dammit…" Patty pulled back the tool. "What's wrong this thing?"

"We charged it the last time we stopped to get diesel, and we haven't used it since," said Clem. "Maybe the flood wrecked it. It was stored outside."

"How long have you had that?" asked Sin.

"We've had it for months now," said Clem. "Why?"

"It's possible the battery has lost its ability to hold a charge," said Sin.

"It's rechargeable," said Clem.

"Rechargeable batteries eventually lose their ability to hold a charge," informed Jet. "My laptop barely lasts thirty minutes when fully charged at this point."

"What kind of battery is it?" asked Sin. "Maybe we could replace it."

"I don't know, it's some boxy thing attached to the bottom," said Patty.

"Oh God damn it, we cut down an army of the dead only to get stopped by some fucking chains?" asked an indignant Anthony. "Why the hell can't we catch a break already?" A loud rattling caused everyone to spin around to find Devlin pulling the chains away while the padlocks lay by his feet.

"The Chief left the keys with us," said Devlin as he tossed the last chain aside. "In case we ever got back here… never thought I'd actually use them though."

"Just be good, please?" Clem watched as Sarah stepped out of the Brave, Omid cradled in her arms.

"Sarah, why are you bringing him out here?" asked Clem.

"He won't sleep, I think all the sugar from the ice-cream is keeping him up," said Sarah.

"Mah-bah," said Omid.

"And I think he's still hungry too," sighed Sarah. "Except for a bunch of ice cream, which he threw up, he hasn't eaten much all day."

"Well, let's get him something to eat then." Devlin pulled open the doors and grabbed his flashlight. He banged his nightstick against the door frame a couple of times, which produced no response, then he stepped in. Clem looked around at the others, all of whom seemed to be waiting for someone else to make the first move, eventually prompting Clem to do it herself.

She darted inside, past an area full of shopping carts, and into the store itself. Devlin was already far ahead, prompting Clem to remove her own flashlight. Flipping it on, she found she couldn't believe what she was looking at. Stacks, upon stacks, upon stacks, upon stacks of food, as far as she could see. Whole pallets of dried goods, entire shelves filled with cans, jars piled into boxes stacked upon boxes, packets of instant mix goodies laid out like piles of bricks on counters, bottles of sports drinks arranged into displays taller than her, and more food than she ever imagined seeing in every direction she looked.

"Holy shit," said Patty.

"I can only imagine how much more the troops in Houston had hoarded," spoke an astonished Sin as he studied his surroundings.

"Or how much they shipped away," added Jet.

Clem moved to one of the shelves. Reading the labels on the cans, she found fruits, stews, soups, and vegetables of all types neatly lined up for the taking. Removing a can of beef stew from the shelf, Clem discovered there were several more behind it. Moving a little further, she did see gaps and empty spots amongst the aisles, but there were so many aisles with so much food on it that it boggled the mind.

"Mah-bah!" Clem turned around to see Omid trying to grasp one of many plastic containers full of gum balls sitting on a shelf Sarah was walking by.

"No Omid, you've had enough sugar for today."

A loud bang came from behind and Clem discovered Anthony smacking the top of a can into one of the shelves.

"What the hell are you doing?" asked Patty.

"Trying to open this, I'm starving," grumbled a desperate Anthony. "Here, you try, both your arms work."

"Put that back, we—"

"Just let him have it," said Devlin as walked back towards where the group was standing. "We were trying to save up enough provisions to last one more winter. What you're looking at, we were hoping to use to build a future for this city, but that's over now. Now, for a small group of people, all this food is just—"

"A jackpot," awed Clementine.

Previous Chapter - Next Chapter - First Chapter

[mybookshavebooks]

Unknown

UK Is A Decent Mom/ Meeting Lana/ The Bus

Three months and the kid changed her for the better. She taught her how to apologize but doesn't know how to apologize herself.

After she saved Lana, she put her down and just started walking away. It’s what she always did.

If she saved someone, she left them behind. It kept them from getting hurt (or so she thought).

She didn't look at them cause they would look at her, and that was never good, but then she heard pattering behind her. Lana had followed her into the woods and kept up while she trekked through.

Then she falls and UK turns around, picking her up, putting her on her back and then kept going. Lana started telling her random facts and the story of Cinderella. A story which UK had never heard before.

UK had never seen or heard of 'Disney'.

She laughs at the voices Lana does. So talented for a six year old. UK had never really laughed before.

After 3 days of walking, UK stops and they take a break for the night.

UK gives Lana the food, but doesn't eat herself. She eats while UK patches her up. Lana was tortured before UK got there for a month.

She still acted like a six year old though. Still pure, except when in danger. She still doesn't know how to fight and some of the scars on her body seem way older than a month.

UK thinks it was just her father being abusive.

When UK got on that bus, she felt something off, and she was right. Her captors sent a team after her who posed as fellow riders.

They waited til night to attack. they took out the bus driver, which made the bus skid and uk wake up. They attacked and she fought some of them off but the bus was chock full of them, she was overpowered55/60 people fighting her would about do it, but only because they ended up using everything they had on her. she got shot three times, tased 4 and then a sedativeand that was just so that they could start the fight she keeps fighting though.

now it's time for the other 5 passengersall of them have pushed her into a corner, near the window on top of the double decker busher moves have slowed significantly. she's losing blood. she needs help. then someone starts taking them out from the back of the crowd. then from the stairs. the bus swerves againwhich makes uk fallshe falls and the one of the bad guys try to take her out, while the others turn to deal with the 4 men stacking themthe guy climbs on top of her and starts to use an effective but time consuming method of choking her until she passes out3uk's thumbs go into the guys eyes and starts pressing until she's on the verge of blacking out  when someone hits the guy over the head and he blacks out himselfshe's gasps for breath, seeing 4 figures standing over her, swaying back and forth in her sightone says, "Number 23 is a girl?!"then she blacks outfrom blood lossand the sedativeand the lack of oxygenThey take her off the bus, and bring her to a safe house, locking her in a windowless room until she wakes up.don't worry they patch her up too at some point

Who are they?They are number 22, 21, 20, 19, and 11, or now known as Mark, Anthony, Jason, Sid, and Burtshe wakes up in that unfamiliar room with five unfamiliar men staring at her and she's chained to the bed"hey-hey- guys. she's awake.""we can see that idiot.""shhh.""guys she look like she's about to-" she throws up.yeaaaah side affect of the sedativeone of the guys, slowly approaches: "are you alright?"uk looks at him, not saying a word."wait, jason, don't!"before they can finish their warning, uk already has her legs around his neck, pulling him to the ground, pressing the front of his neck into the side of the bedframe with the back of her knee. (haha this is such a compromising position)another guy starts to get up, she presses harder, he chokes, the guy sits back down"You. Unchain me."the older looking guy goes towards the headboard and does as she says"Before you go, you need to know that they're here, all over this town looking for you." "I'll be fine on my own."she unwraps her leg from the guys neck and pushes him towards the other guys with her foot, scooting towards the door, getting up and leaving.

they're just like hershe wasn't the firstthere were 2 trialsall tortured and taught at the same timeeach one better than the otherSo Lana was going to be ridiculousthey failed with trial 1 and moved on to trial 2that means kill them all find 11 more and try again8 escaped before the killingif 1 fails so do the rest19-22 all escaped togetherso they started again with 1 person, so that they wouldn't have to worry about not being able to keep an eye on her. they chose a girl."easier to control" as the boss put itand she was amazing. she was everything they weren't she was.

she doesn't get halfway down the hall before feeling woozy again she keeps going"Wendy..."  for some reason that name makes her stop. she looks up, leaning against the wall, blood pouring through a borrowed shirt. A man walks out of the room right across from her. "You're awake."Uk vaguely remembers that name but she also kinda remembers that face too.She saw it so long ago, and she can't believe who it is"D-Dad?" She begins to pass out yet again (blood loss)

they all found her because of steve and bucky finding herthey weren't exactly being careful of cameras when looking for herokay anyways context time! overback to lana and uk in the woods"My name is Lana. What's your name?""Wendy... I guess..." "My favorite restaurant is Wendy's!""Enough talk, kid, go to sleep." "...okay..." she lays down and puts her head on uk's lap, going to sleep. u.k. watches her with intriguing eyes, she goes to sleep too but not too deepshe wakes up at dawn, picks lana up and keeps walking until she gets to a tarmac with a plane waiting on her sid: "who's the kid?"wendy: "..."sid: "alright. i understand. none of my business."

they stay with the guys for about a month, until il decides it's time to go and they decide it's time to split up again.this was month 4her dad gives her some money+ what they took with them that she had at the bus and tells her to keep in touch.then she goes with Lana, taking her all across the country, flying to the us and staying in nycSo the others can help herwell yeahbut it takes her about another month to go to themso that's the 6 month markAnd we're all caught up!

[threeorphanpilgrimage]

Chapter 74 - Safety

Clementine steadied the hammer in her hand and took aim at her target. She landed a single firm tap on the lowest rung of metal wiring that formed the tomato cage she was kneeling in front of. Her strike didn't seem to drive the cage's legs any further into the soft dirt, but she hit it once more for good measure before moving a few inches to repeat the process in a different spot.

Her entire morning had been methodically reinforcing the stability of tomato cages a few taps at a time, even though the tomato plants themselves still were too small to make any use out of them. Even having grown from sprouts to proper plants, the few limbs they had were too short to reach the cage, which was narrowest at the bottom. However, with the approaching weather, Sarah said they should make sure everything was secure.

There was a crashing sound in the distance and Clem looked up expecting to see a flash of lightning. The thick gray clouds hanging over the area had been seen as a good omen by everyone. Rain would not only water the crops for them, but it'd refill the tanks on their RV's and the barrels they had set out under the houses' gutters. Clem was also grateful for the comforting shade it cast over the field, sparing her another morning baking in the sun.

There was another distant crashing sound but Clem saw no lightning. Adjusting her view downward slightly, she saw the backhoe on the edge of the field, further digging out the now severely shrunken pond. Sin had wanted to work on digging a trench the lake, but seeing it was overcast this morning, decided enlarging their pond before it rained would be a better use of his time.

Watching the backhoe move back and forth, its equipment crashing loudly as it did, Clem realized there had been no thunder, yet. After settling in place, the mechanical arm started digging again and Clem went back to work herself, reasoning she had time to finish before the rain arrived. She didn't make it much further before she noticed Anthony moving towards her.

"Need a hand?" he asked with a shrug, a hammer in his hand.

"You're done with the bean poles?" Anthony nodded weakly, to which Clem made a slight gesture with her head and he knelt down by the tomato cage next to her to begin tapping the wrung nearest the cage's legs.

"Really starting to wish Sin never told us about mercury poisoning," mumbled Anthony.

"Really?" asked Clem. "But then—"

"Getting sick and maybe dying while getting fat on fish is starting to look preferable to this bullshit," mumbled Anthony. "That lake is huge. I bet I could pull in two or three pounders every day if I actually went fishing instead of just pulling in those cages. I mean, how long would you have to eat fish before that shit would actually kill you? Weren't there people before who ate fish every day and they were fine?"

"I don't know," shrugged Clem as she moved onto to the next tomato cage. "My mom sometimes made me tuna sandwiches."

"And you're okay. I mean, the old man even said he's not an expert on this stuff; we could eat a lot of fish and be fine for all he knows."

"Or we could get sick, and then none of us know what to do because none of us are doctors," retorted Clem. "I met someone once who told me they knew people who tried avoiding the land when the walkers first showed up. They stayed on a river and just ate fish, and some of them got scurvy."

"The hell is scurvy?"

"Sarah looked it up and it's a disease you get when you don't get enough vitamin C, which fish don't have," said Clem as she tapped the tomato cage with her hammer. "She said it makes you really tired and your arms and legs sore and your gums start bleeding."

"Holy shit," said Anthony in a whisper. "Couple of days before I met you guys, my gums had started bleeding."

"You should have eaten those green beans," said Clem as she stood up.

"Huh?"

"Those cans of green beans you left in front of that… weird trap you made," reminded Clem. "You should have just eaten them."

"Why's that?"

"They're full of vitamin C." Anthony looked at Clem, baffled. She just smirked at him before moving onto the next tomato cage.

"How do you know what does and doesn't have vitamin C in it?" asked Anthony as he knelt down by the next cage.

"When we first started taking care of OJ, Sarah was really worried about what we'd feed him when he stopped drinking formula and we spent like three days just looking up different vitamins and checking the labels on cans to know what had what." Clem knelt down and started working on the next tomato cage. "And nothing really has everything you need, so even if we don't have to worry about mercury, we couldn't live off just fish."

"What about deer?" asked Anthony.

"I don't think we could just eat them either, and even if we could, we haven't seen a deer since the one you shot. That's why we need this farm."

"Yeah, yeah, I figured that. It's just this farming stuff is such a hassle," said Anthony as he tapped the cage with his hammer. "Sarah said once the corn stalks get sturdy enough, we're gonna have to carefully untangle the beans' vines, then rewrap them around the corn stalks because she's afraid the bean poles might get in the way of the corn once it starts coming in."

"Sort we're gonna have to do for the beans and corn what she said we'd have to do with the cucumbers and those weird wire tent things we setup?"

"Yeah. Thank God we did those just yesterday or Sarah would be telling us to double check them too."

"She's just being careful," insisted Clem. "After our first garden—"

"I know, she told me," said Anthony as he stood up and wiped his face with his sleeve. "I just hope we're not doing all this just to repeat what happened with it."

"Yeah, me too." Having reached the end, Clem stood up and looked out over the rest of the field. There were rows of cages, wooden poles, and tall wire structures shaped like sign boards neatly lined up across the rows of dirt, while the plants they were set out for were still tiny and frail. The cucumbers were currently just a mess of short leaves, the tomato plants were dwarfed by the cages that encased them, and the beanstalks still appeared to be little more than curly weeds. The only thing that resembled a finished vegetable were the lettuce plants, which currently looked like miniature versions of the finished product.

"Hey, take a look at this." Clem turned to find Anthony's face hovering an inch away from one of the cages. "This one's actually got a tomato on it."

"Really?" Clem knelt down to look herself, and under one of the plants leaves she could see a tiny green bump hanging from a thin vine. "I wonder how long until we can eat it."

"Probably a few weeks," said Anthony. "These are early girl tomatoes, so they'll probably be the first thing that's ready. The cucumbers shouldn't be far behind them."

"How do you know that?" asked Clem.

"Sarah's out here every morning at dawn checking everything in this field, and the second she needs a hand she wakes me up," explained Anthony.

"Really?"

"Yes really, who the hell do you think carries fertilizer for her or helps get more dirt to top off the potatoes' row?" asked Anthony. "I spend so many early mornings out here with her I can't help but ask when the hell this stuff is going to be ready."

"It's just… why does she come to you?"

"She says you're always busy in the morning taking care of your baby, and Devlin is always getting picked for some kind of construction project. I was hoping he'd finally be free today to help but apparently now is when he needs to go back to Tulsa to see if anyone has visited since we left."

"He said he'd go on the first of every month, and today is April first."

"Leaving me as the lone strong back around here; happy April Fool's Day," griped Anthony as he stood up. "Speaking of indentured servitude, I'd better go fetch some water."

Clem followed after Anthony as he headed for the pond. Running along the edge of the field was a thick white plastic pipe suspended about half a foot off the ground by blocks of wood. Looking to her right, Clem could see the pipe ran towards the rainwater collector built up against the side of the barn. Anthony stepped over the pipe with ease while Clem had to be more careful not to trip over it. Anthony grabbed a couple of watering cans tucked away by the barn door and started walking towards the pond.

"Wait, it's going to rain," remembered Clem. "Sarah said we won't need to water the field today."

"The field, no," said Anthony. "That little greenhouse Devlin put together for Sarah, that still needs water."

Clem wanted to ask Anthony something else, but as they neared the pond, the sound of the backhoe's engine drowned any attempt at conversation. Looking over at the cab, Anthony held up his hand and Clem could see Sin inside nodding. The arm pivoted away from the pond, dropping off a load of dirt near a large pile beside the vehicle, then the arm retracted and the backhoe's engine went silent.

"Why don't you go check on him?" suggested Anthony as he hopped into the wide ditch the backhoe created. "Figure out if his damn irrigation system works yet or not. I'd love a break from watering tomorrow too." Anthony moved through the ditch until he reached the edge of the dried pond, then kept walking until he finally reached what remained of the water. Turning away from Anthony, Clem noticed Sin exiting the cab of the backhoe and sitting down on the step just below his seat.

"Are you okay?" asked Clem as she approached the man.

"Huh?" said Sin as he looked up, as if he just noticed her.

"I just asked if you're okay."

"I'm fine," assured a tired Sin. "It just gets hot in there, and the constant sound of the engine probably isn't good for my hearing."

"We've got some special earmuffs that stop noise," said Clem. "We took them from a gun store so whenever we practiced our aim it wouldn't bother Omid, but he always takes them off when we put them on him."

"I think I could use those," said Sin as he looked over his shoulder at the rest of the backhoe. "Just digging out the pond is taking a toll on me. It'll probably take several days to dig a trench from here to the lake, maybe a week, and longer still to solidify it with concrete." Sin looked over at the pond as Anthony carried a couple of full water cans out of it.

"He's not going to water the field today he is?"

"He's getting water for Sarah's greenhouse," explained Clem.

"I haven't even looked at that yet," said Sin.

"I haven't either," admitted Clem. "Devlin finished it yesterday I think and by then I just wanted to go to bed, and this morning Sarah wanted me to come out here after feeding Omid to make sure the tomato cages weren't going to blow away." There was a sudden flash followed a few seconds later by a distant clash of thunder.

"Seems like you finished just in time." Sin closed the door to the backhoe and moved towards Clem. "We should probably all get in before the rain starts. Besides, Jet insists I come to this party Patty wants to do for our first rainy day."

"Oh yeah, that should be fun," said Clem as she walked with Sin across the dirt, eyeing the long water pipe that spanned the short side of the field. "Although, Anthony wanted to know how this rainwater collector works," said Clem as she looked over at the large stacks of barrels connected to each other by a mess of pipes. "I would too. I saw something like this once that collected lots of rainwater, but it different. It was just a shipping container they put gutters on that emptied into barrels, then they'd use one of those little mover things to carry the full barrels away."

"I suppose now is as good a time as any to field any questions about this device," said Sin as he walked over to the stacks of barrels stacked upon other barrels. "There's no carrying these barrels away. Devlin and I went to great lengths to anchor them in place and to each other to form a single large reservoir we can use to water our crops," explained Sin as he gestured to the pipes running between all the barrels.

Looking carefully, Clem could see there were two types of plastic pipes linking the barrels together; one thick and one thin. Both sets of pipes connected every barrel to every other barrel, even extending upwards in a few places to link the top and bottom rows. The larger pipes connected to tall tubes on each side of the collector that ran up to the barn's gutters. But the thin pipes only connected the barrels to each other, barring a few short lengths of open pipe sticking straight up past the top row of barrels.

"So… what are these for?" asked Clem as she pointed at the thin open pipes that looked like tiny chimneys, complete with small plastic covers that left space for air to escape.

"Those are the vents," explained Sin.

"Vents?" asked Clem. "Why do water barrels need those?"

"So there's somewhere for the air to go as the water comes in."

"I don't understand. Why does the air have to go anywhere?"

"Because if the air in the barrels couldn't get out, then the water could never get in."

"Really? If those weren't there the water would just, what, stay in the gutters?"

"Well no, some water would get in, but…" Sin scratched his chin. "Did you ever take a glass, turn it upside down, and hold it underwater in a sink?"

"Our teacher did that in school once with a bottle," said Clem. "I thought it was weird the water wouldn't go inside."

"That's because there's air trapped inside the bottle and has nowhere to go, which means the water can't enter the container because it's filled with air, which takes up space even if we usually can't see it," explained Sin.

"But what about when you just pour water into a bottle?" asked Clem. "There's air in there then too. Why does it work then?"

"That's because liquid particles aren't as densely packed as the solid ones a bottle is made out of, and air can push through water much like how we could swim through it. When you hold a bottle underwater with the top facing up, you see as air escapes the bottle in the form of bubbles being pushed up through the water."

"Well, then why do you need the vents? Wouldn't the air in the barrels do the same thing and just go up the pipes like bubbles out of a bottle?"

"What's a faster way to collect water: using a cup or using a bottle?"

"Probably the cup."

"Why?"

"Well, because the water goes right in. If you hold a bottle underwater, it makes this glug-glug sound while the bubbles come out and it takes longer."

"Exactly," said Sin with a smirk. "The cup has a wide opening that allows water to just push air right out, whereas a bottle has a narrow top that both the air and water have to pass through, which slows both of them down."

"Oh… but the pipes for your vents are narrow," noted Clem.

"Ah, but water won't be coming in that way," said Sin as he pointed at one of the larger pipes connected to the gutter. "The water will be rushing in from that pipe and come flowing into the bottom barrels, and the air will have to go somewhere. Where do you think it will go?"

"Um, I guess up and out through your vents?"

"Why?"

"Because… it's easier than trying to go through all the water coming in the bigger pipes?" guessed Clem.

"Exactly, the air will follow the path of least resistance. Without those vents, the main pipes would be a bottleneck for the escaping air and the incoming water."

"What's a bottleneck?"

"It's a part of a machine or system where very little can pass through it at once, which is a problem because most systems are only as efficient as their weakest components. Imagine if your watering can's spout was as narrow as a drinking straw. It would take a very long time to pour out the water we need for the crops."

"So… it's like a bottle's neck?"

"Huh?"

"I mean, you said the water takes longer because the top of the bottle is narrow," reminded Clem. "So, a bottleneck is like a bottle… neck."

Clem was surprised to see Sin stifle a laugh and try to hide the fact he was smiling. "For me, that word has been synonymous with production problems for so long that I never even considered its very appropriate literal meaning."

Clem couldn't stop herself from smiling as she thought about how she had actually taught Sin something, even if it was only something trivial. "So, is that why the water pipes connect to all the other barrels? So there won't be a bottle neck?"

"Yes, by giving the water multiple paths, it'll help maintain a steady flow and hopefully keep the pipe from backing up and wasting water during a heavy rain. I had wanted to have more than two pipes connect to the gutters to help, but the barns angular roof means we had to build the collector on a short side where we could run pipes from both halves of the roof. Otherwise, we'd miss half the water we could collect."

"What about this bench thing?" asked Clem as she pointed at the simple wooden structure that supported all the barrels. "What's it for?"

"It suspends the barrels a couple of feet off the ground so gravity could allow the water to flow out easily. Like I said, I can't make water move uphill without pressurizing it."

"But, then how would the top barrels ever get filled? None of them are connected to the pipe coming from the gutter, only the bottom barrels. Wouldn't the water just stay in the bottom barrels then?"

"The weight of the water in the pipe creates a small degree of pressure, enough to raise the water level," explained Sin. "However, it can't raise the water higher than the source of the water exerting that pressure, and the rising water goes slower as it approaches the height of its source."

"Is that why water towers are so tall?" asked Clem. "So they create lots of water pressure?"

"That's right," said Sin, sounding pleased. "That much water that high up creates a significant amount of pressure just from gravity."

"But, how did the water get up there in the first place?"

"Usually it's pumped in from a treatment plant."

"Oh, so they need electricity?"

"Generally. There are other means, like—"

"A windmill?"

"Yes," said Sin, sounding surprised. "How did you know that?"

"I met someone once who said she was going to build a windmill so she could have running water again," explained Clem, trying to keep her voice from sounding too bitter. "Could you build something like that?"

"Theoretically."

"Theoretically?"

"I understand the fundamental principles of windmills and how we could connect one to a pump, but actually designing and constructing such a thing under these circumstances is a different matter," explained Sin. "I'm still yet to even properly test our irrigation system."

"What is our irrigation system?" asked Clem. "I saw that pipe near the field, but what does it do?"

"We took as many drip lines and soaker hoses as we would come from Tulsa and I installed a valve with a connector for a hose on each section of that pipe over there. In theory, we should be able to connect the hoses to the pipe, unroll them across the field for each row we're growing, then just turn the handle and let the water from the collector flow out to our plants."

"But?" asked Clem, knowing it couldn't possibly be that easy.

"I'm not sure if the collector will provide enough water pressure to cover that many hoses over that great a distance. Even if they do, we'll only be able to use it after it rains."

"That's still better than having to water the crops every day," said Clem. "What about the trench from the lake you want to make?"

"I'm still working on what would be the best way to distribute the water, assuming we can make a trench through that terrain. Currently, I'm thinking it might be best to just install a hand pump near the end of the main pipe near the pond, just pump water into it and let the hoses distribute it, but—"

There was a sudden flash followed by a clap of thunder. Even if she hadn't noticed that they were closer together than the last time, Clem could tell the storm was nearer because of how much louder the thunder was.

"We should probably go in," concluded Clem.

"I'm going to double check everything. I'd hate to think I left a valve open somewhere and our first rain of the season goes down the tubes, literally," said Sin as he moved in close to the collector. "You go ahead, unless you want to stay and help?"

"That's okay, but this was kind of fun, learning how stuff works."

"If you ever want another lesson on basic engineering, just ask."

"I might do that," said Clem, thinking that sounded fun. Sin must have thought the same thing as it looked like he was hiding another smile, easily making this the most Clem had seen him smile since meeting the man. Leaving Sin to work, Clem headed towards the house just as another clap of thunder sounded. Crossing past the fence, Clem spotted Jet hurrying into the shed in the middle of the yard. Needing to return a hammer, Clem followed in Jet's footsteps only to almost crash into him as he came racing back out.

"Whoa!" said Jet as he jumped several steps. "Where did you come from?"

"I was just bringing my hammer back," said Clem as she held up the tool.

"Oh, perfect, I was just looking for one of those."

"What for?"

"I was just going to put this up." Jet removed a thick wooden sign from under his arm and held it out for Clem to see.

"Ceres Acres?"

"Ceres was the Roman goddesses of agriculture," explained Jet as he turned the sign around. "Also the biggest asteroid in the asteroid belt is named Ceres… plus it sounds cool."

"Why'd you make this?"

"I figured this place needs a name, so when we went to Pawhuska I made sure to grab some stencils and paint and a sign from the hobby store we found," explained Jet. "I've been working on it in my room at night whenever I get a chance. Do you like it?"

Showing her the sign again, Clem could tell Jet had spent a lot of time on it. There were painted images of leaves in each corner; the top ones green and rounded, the bottom ones orange and pointed. A pair of short chains ran through a couple of holes in the top. Thick black lines ran with little swirls growing out of them ran between the corners to create a border. Near the bottom in tiny lettering it read 'EST. 2 A.O.' while in the center was 'CERES ACRES' spelled out in big, black ornate letters.

"I like it," said Clem.

"Really?" asked Jet, sounding a little surprised. "I was about to go hang it over the front porch. You want to help?"

"Sure." Clem went with Jet to the front of the house, heading up the steps into the quaint veranda. Discovering they had never collected any furniture to place on the porch, Jet hurried inside to collect something to stand on while Clem made a mental note to get a few cozy chairs next time they went into Pawhuska. Jet hammered a couple of nails into the roof of the veranda while Clem held the stool he was standing on steady. When he was done, she passed up the sign and he looped the chains around the ends of the nails.

Hopping off the chair, the pair immediately ran down the steps to admire their handy work. The sign hung neatly in front of the entrance, christening the property with its new name. It even swayed a little as the wind picked up, and Clem suddenly found herself tickled by an image of her and Sarah as old ladies in rocking chairs, just watching the sun set together from the veranda.

"Hey, I think Devlin's back."

Clem spun around in time to see a large red semi-truck turn off the driveway and pull up next to the other semi hitched to the trailer they had used to move the backhoe. Clem went with Jet as they rushed out to meet the man. Arriving at the truck, they watched as Devlin slunk out of the cab, a forlorn look on his face as he leaned up against the vehicle.

"Devlin?" greeted Clem as they inched closer.

"Did something happen in Tulsa?" asked an anxious Jet as the man turned to look at the pair.

"Nah, nothing happened," Devlin said with a half-hearted shrug. "If anyone had come since we left, they didn't touch anything we left out for them at the Sam's Club, least not that I could tell."

"Then what's wrong?" Clem's question was met with silence as Devlin looked away. "You can tell us."

"It's just… being back in that big empty city, all by myself," spoke Devlin in a quiet voice. "Brought back a lot of bad memories of living there, alone, thinking I was the last man alive on Earth."

"I'm sorry," spoke a sympathetic Clem.

"There… there were more than a few nights there I thought about pointing the line launcher at my own head," admitted Devlin in a hushed whisper. "I think the only thing stopping me was knowing since it didn't use a regular bullet, there was a good chance it wouldn't actually kill me."

"Devlin…" spoke a visibly disturbed Jet.

"Never mind, just forget—"

"Don't," said Clem as she grabbed the man's sleeve as he tried to turn to back to the cab. "Don't tell us to just forget about something like that. Talk to us."

"I'm… I'm not used to talking to people about stuff like this," admitted Devlin. "Especially not kids who got enough to worry about as it is."

"Like I told you before, talking to people isn't nearly as bad as a lot of things we have to worry about now," reminded Clem.

"And I'd worry less if you just talked to us," said Jet, almost pleading.

"If you don't want to talk about something right now because it makes you feel worse, then just tell us that, but if it's us you're worried about then you're better off telling us."

Devlin took a deep breath. "I guess I'm just terrified I'll wind up alone again," he confessed. "Been my worst fear for a long time. I never really knew my dad, and my mom died not long after I finished high school. Just had a heart attack one day… she wasn't even that old. She… she had been my whole life up until then."

"You didn't have any other family?" asked Jet.

"Like I said, I don't know where my dad is, I was an only child, no grandparents or aunts or uncles, not that I know of; losing her was like losing everything. If I hadn't already enrolled in college, I don't know where the hell I would have gone next. And once I graduated I immediately looked for something else, anything so I wouldn't be alone. I had a lot of student debt, and I didn't really feel comfortable with the regular military, so I joined the Coast Guard.

"Might sound strange, but the time I spent with Simmons and company was probably the first time I felt like I really belonged, like I had a purpose, and a family again. As hard as things were in Tulsa, I don't think I had ever felt closer to people than I did with them. When we drew straws to find out what order we'd take lingering survivors out of Tulsa in, each time I drew the short one it felt like another punch to the stomach, until I realized I'd have to be the one who stayed the longest, by myself."

"That's terrible," said Jet. "You… you just had to watch them leave one by one?"

"The Chief went before the rest of us, taking whoever was left downriver to hopefully be safe in New Orleans. A family of four came to Tulsa not long after that; John took them downriver. Next was Jorge and this brother and sister who couldn't stop arguing. For over a month it was just me and Gina, this older woman who loved to swear. We used to joke she was around when the Coast Guard was founded. She heard us once and snapped 'And the recruits get bitchier every fucking century!"

Jet had to stifle a laugh. "Yeah, it gets less funny when you spend a whole month alone with her. But still, the day some starving old man with torn up shoes came stumbling into the citadel, I was sad to see her go with him to New Orleans. Then it was just me, waiting for my chance to go home to them… but they're not there anymore."

"I know how you feel," spoke a sympathetic Clem. "After everything changed, I just wanted to find my parents again. I met a lot of people who made me feel like I belonged, and eventually we went to the city my parents were in… They were dead, and everyone else I had ever met was dead or gone by the end of that day. I walked for miles, covered in blood and guts, not knowing where I'd go or what I'd do because there was no one left."

"What did you do?" asked Jet, transfixed by Clem's story.

"I got lucky. OJ's parents survived and found me outside the city. If they hadn't, I don't know what I would have done. I was so sad that if they hadn't of said we needed to move, I might have just sat on that log forever."

"Sounds like how I felt like when I met you people," said Devlin. "After you told me New Orleans was gone I just thought 'That's it, there's nothing left'. Then you guys talked about taking back the shopping center, and I was suddenly part of something again."

"Is that the only reason you came with us?" asked Jet.

"In a way," admitted Devlin. "I was just kind lost in the moment, and you people needed an extra hand. I'm happy I'm here now, but part of me wishes I just told the Chief I wanted to stay with her when she left for New Orleans for the last time, but I never said a word."

"Why not?" asked Clem.

"I guess I felt like it was my duty, not because I was in the Coast Guard, which didn't mean much after going AWOL, but to my mother, who told me the best thing you can ever do is be there for other people. Seeing as she died raising me, I always thought the least I could do is honor her by making sure her son was there for anyone who needed it, even when it meant giving up what I wanted."

"But you can't give up on everything you want," said Jet. "If you really wanted to be with your friends again you should have gone after them."

"If I had done that, I wouldn't have been there for you people when you came to Tulsa," reasoned Devlin.

"You said you thought about killing yourself while you were waiting. If that had happened, you wouldn't have been there for us or for anyone ever again." Devlin's stoic expression cracked upon hearing that. Clem watched as his eyes shifted in place and he sat up slightly, as if Jet now had his full attention.

"Anytime I was worried about something I couldn't control or was so far away I couldn't do anything about it, my dad would tell me to do something that made me feel better instead. He said if I don't stop to help myself every now and then, then I won't be in any shape to help someone else when the time comes."

"Your dad sounds like a smart man," said Devlin with a smirk.

"He and mom are both smart… I wish they were here." Clem placed her hand on Jet's shoulder as he sighed. "But, people like you and Clem and Patty help make it okay."

"Although, if you did want to go find your friends, I'd understand," Clem told Devlin. "I told you back in Tulsa I don't think it's a good idea, but it's not fair to you say you can't go. You've done a lot for us Devlin, the least we could do is let you do what you want most."

"I… I really appreciate that, both of you," said Devlin with utter sincerity. "But the whole time I was in Tulsa today, I just wanted to be back here."

"Really?" asked Clem.

"Yeah, really. I could barely stand being back there today… I don't think I could handle seeing New Orleans the same way."

"If it's that hard on you maybe you shouldn't go to Tulsa every month," suggested Jet.

"No, I'd feel even worse if I didn't. I mean, we left out instructions and everything. Being pretty cruel leaving people to wait in false hope like that."

"Well, what if I come with you next time?" suggested Clem. "That way the trip won't be so lonely."

"I appreciate that, but—"

"It's dangerous and I could get killed and a bunch of other stuff people always say when I say I should come with them," dismissed Clem. "Just let me go with you next time. You'll have someone with you so it won't feel lonely, and it'll be safer with two people who can watch each other, and I could get time off from watering plants and double-checking tomato cages."

"Damn, you just lay it all out there," noted Devlin with a smile. "You sounded a little like the Chief just now."

"So that means I can come with you when you go back there in May." said Clem, not so much asking as assuming.

"It doesn't sound like you're going to take no for an answer," observed Devlin. "And truth be told, I really would like the company."

"Great, so it's a deal," said Clem.

"And in the mean time, you're coming to Patty's party right?" asked Jet.

"Hell yeah," said Devlin with a smile. "I didn't spend an extra hour at the Sam's Club getting everything on her list just to not come. When's the festivities begin?"

"She said as soon as the rain started, so that way we've all got something to celebrate." Just after Jet said that, there was clap of thunder followed by the gentle patter of raindrops.

"Perfect timing," said Devlin as he spun around and reached into the cab.

"Here, first, this is the stuff Sarah asked me to bring back for her new greenhouse," said Devlin as he handed a couple of heavy plastic bags to Clem. "And Jet, you and I can bring in the rest before the bottom drops out."

"Do you know where Sarah is?" Clem asked Jet as she adjusted her grip on the bags.

"I'm pretty sure she's still behind the house in that plastic tunnel thing Devlin set up," said Jet as he took a large bucket with both hands. "I was bringing her pots of dirt all morning, and she didn't even look close to finished with… whatever she was doing."

Clem started running back towards the house as she could hear drops of rain falling on the brim of her hat. Running around the corner, she found the narrow space between the side of the house and the fence had been filled with a very long tent made out of a see-through material. It looked a little like the one Shaffer's used for a greenhouse, but much shorter and narrower.

After spending a minute trying the peel back a flap while juggling two heavy bags, Clem emerged inside the tent and found herself standing in a narrow aisle between the long tables that ran down the length of both sides of the tent. Sitting on top of them was a variety of different pots and planters all full of dirt. Hearing the gentle patter of rain suddenly erupt into a crude battering compelled Clem to look up and see the torrential downpour that had broken out in the short time since she entered the tent. Thinking she should get inside soon, Clem hurried forward and discovered Sarah standing at the opposite end of the tent.

"Sarah," said Clem as she approached her. "Sarah!"

"Hmm?" Sarah looked up from the pot she was staring at. "Clem, what are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here?" repeated Clem. "I haven't seen you all day. I'm here because Devlin is back and said you wanted this." Clem passed the bags to Sarah, who immediately set them on the table and started digging through them.

"Finally." Sarah whipped out a large plastic bottle, hastily eyed the back label, then twisted off the cap. Clem watched as she poured tiny yellow flakes across the dirt under the table, then kept moving to do the same under the next table. Briefly eyeing the label, Clem noticed the words 'Kills Fire Ants', and checking the bags, she spotted several other containers, pouches, and aerosol cans with scary words like 'RAID' and pictures of dead insects lying on their backs.

"I guess we have a bug problem now," concluded Clem as Sarah returned to the table and set the poison down.

"Yesterday, when I was setting up the tables after Devlin finished putting up the greenhouse, I suddenly felt something stinging my legs. Stupid ants climbed all the way up my sock just to bite me," groused Sarah as she grabbed an open container already sitting on the table.

"You… you had ants in your pants," said Clem, trying not to laugh.

"Then I thought, bugs might just eat all our plants before the stuff that's supposed to get rid of them finishes growing, and how stupid it was not to bring something to deal with them," rambled Sarah. "And then I realized I haven't read up on pesticides at all, even though I really should have, so just before Devlin left for Tulsa I told him to bring—"

"Sarah!" said Clem loudly but not angrily. "Calm down."

"I'm… I'm sorry," said Sarah as she scooped a tiny bit of blue powder out of a container and started sprinkling it over the dirt in the pot.

"It's okay, you don't need to be sorry. Just, take it easy."

"It's just, I didn't even think about pesticides until those ants bit me and it's getting warmer every day, so there will be probably more than just ants before long, so I need to start figuring out which pesticides do what and how to use them," rambled Sarah as she sprinkled the powder onto the dirt.

"Is that what you're doing now?" asked Clem.

"No, this is just fertilizer, which is something else I'll need to read up on," said Sarah as she grabbed a small watering can.

"Don't you just throw stuff that rots into a big bin or something?" asked Clem. "That's what I did at a friend's house whose parents had a compost heap in their yard."

"It's more complicated than that," said Sarah as she carefully poured some water onto the pot. "For good fertilizer, you need to make sure there's twice as much carbon stuff as nitrogen stuff, and you need to mix it right, and don't throw in things that attract pests."

"Don't we have a ton of fertilizer in the trailer… like literally?"

"Yeah, so we've got time for now, but eventually I'll need to figure out how to make our own before we run out," said Sarah as she set her watering can down. "Right now, it's more important I just get this stuff to grow."

"Are these the strawberries?" asked Clem as she looked at the pot.

"About half of them. The other ones are onions, carrots, and potatoes."

"You're growing those for the seeds, right?"

"Sorta," said Sarah as she moved onto another pot and started watering it.

"Sort of?"

"Well, from what I read, you can make more potatoes by cutting up grown ones into little cubes that each have their own eye on it. If you plant those, they'll grow into full-sized potatoes."

"Really?"

"Yeah, in fact, most of the books I read said you plant parts of a potato to grow into potatoes, not seeds anymore."

"But we planted—"

"That was our only bag. I think Devlin mentioned one of the people in Tulsa was an actual farmer who brought his stuff with him and he must have had a bag for growing what are called seed potatoes, which are potatoes you grow just to use to plant more potatoes. I didn't even notice it was the only bag for potatoes until after we used up most of them in the field…" Clem watched as Sarah's hand trembled as it scooped out more fertilizer.

"So, I'm growing most of what's left in here, hopefully so I can either get more seeds out of these potatoes, or just use the ones I grow to make more. If I don't figure it out… we'll probably never be able to grow potatoes after this year… assuming the seeds we had were even good in the first place."

"I… I had no idea," confessed Clem, feeling a little anxious as she thought about what Sarah said. "Are the carrots and onions like that too?"

"Not really, they just take a long time," said Sarah. "Although, you remember how we grew carrot tops like Dr. Bostwick said? You can do something like that for onions too. If you cut off the bottoms of onions and replant them, they'll grow roots and eventually grow into a whole new onion, sort of like the potatoes, except you can only get onion since they only have one bottom." Sarah finished sprinkling fertilizer on a pot and took a step back from the table. She took a deep breath as she looked out at all the other tables. "No wonder she was so mean."

"Who?"

"Dr. Bostwick," said Sarah. "She said she grew that whole greenhouse by herself; she must have worked all day every day on it."

"That didn't make it okay for her to be an asshole to us," stated Clem.

"No, but… probably nobody at Shaffer's really knew how hard it was to grow all that stuff. I mean, I never thought about it until I saw her greenhouse, and even then I didn't really know how hard it was until after we started that garden and I made so many mistakes and—"

"We both made mistakes, not just you," insisted Clem as she approached Sarah. "And we'll do better this time. And we got a lot of help."

"Who all need to eat too."

"And that's why we planted a lot more, and it'll start making food soon."

"Hopefully."

"It will. Anthony even found our first tomato today."

"Really?" asked a surprised Sarah.

"It was just a little green thing, but it was definitely a tomato."

"I'm glad we got the cages in now then," said Sarah. "You—"

"We made sure they were good and stuck in the ground, and he made sure the bean poles were too before it started raining."

"Raining?" Sarah looked up and saw the water rushing across the top of the tent. "I didn't even know it had started already. Did Sin—"

"He said the rainwater collector was ready."

"But the pond, did—"

"He dug it out as much as he could with the backhoe. Everyone's doing what you ask them to. It's okay," assured Clem as she grasped Sarah's hand. "Devlin just got back from Tulsa, and we were all going to have a party inside while it's raining. Why don't you come in already? You've been out here all morning."

"Oh… okay."

Clem breathed a sigh of relief as Sarah tossed off her gloves and apron and headed for the end of the tent. Even rushing through the rain to the door, Clem could feel herself getting soaked as the wind was whipping at her face. Bursting through the door and hurrying into the living room, Clem found almost everyone was gathered around a roaring fire in the fireplace.

"Kem-men!" Clem looked down to see Omid rushing up to greet her. "Sah-rah!"

"Hey there Oh—Omid," corrected Clem as she scooped him off the floor.

"Did you miss us?" asked Sarah, some of the weariness melting off her face as she smiled at him.

"Chai-yo!" he cheered.

"Chai-yo," answered Clem back.

"There you guys are," said Jet as he approached the pair. "He was saying your names so much I was just about to come looking for you."

"Sorry," said Sarah. "I just wanted to finish with everything in the greenhouse before I came in."

"Ah-mah-dah-pay," babbled Omid.

"You want something?" asked Clem.

"Actually, I think he was saying he made this." Jet handed Sarah a piece of paper while Clem set Omid on the floor. Looking at the paper, Clem saw it was a messy smear of colors that collided in the center of the page to form a large brown blob.

"Patty let Omid try finger painting today," said Jet as Sarah handed Clem the paper. "She said it took him a few minutes to make that, and almost an hour to clean up everything else he touched, including himself."

"Pay! Pay!" cheered Omid as he slapped his hands across the paper in Clem's hands.

"Ah, he made his first drawing," said Clem as she handed the paper back to Sarah. "Isn't that great?"

"And I missed it," realized Sarah.

"Don't worry, Patty said he wanted to make lots more," assured Jet. "You can ask her about it as soon as she—"

"Clear a path, here comes the post-apocalyptic party ball!" Patty and Anthony burst in from the front door, the former toting a very large bucket and the latter a pair of large fire extinguishers, all of which they set on the floor.

"What happened?" asked Sarah as she approached the pair. "Was there a fire?"

"Other than in the fireplace?" clarified Clem.

"No, but we really should get some extinguishers for such an occasion," said Sin without looking away from the window he was staring out of.

"Add it to the list for my May trip," suggested Devlin as he kicked his feet up onto the couch's armrest. "Patty already tapped me out on her party supplies for this last trip."

"Which was totally worth it," said Patty as she knelt down over her bucket. "Because fire extinguishers aren't just good for putting out fires."

Peering into the bucket, Clem could see a case of beer stacked on top of another case of beer being flanked by a couple of taller bottles. There was also a simmering white fog settling in the bottom of the bucket.

"Want a cold beer partner?"

"Cold?" Clem reached into to bucket and was shocked to the find the bottles were frigid to the touch.

"Freshly cooled by yours truly," announced Anthony as he gestured to the fire extinguishers he set on the floor.

"You can cool things with those?" asked Sarah.

"If they're the type that use carbon dioxide," explained Jet.

"Sure glad you spoke up about that earlier when I told Devlin to just grab any extinguishers. I thought the people I saw do this on TV said any kind would work," said Patty as she pulled a couple of beers out of the case. "Now let's drink up while it's still cold," said Patty as she offered the beers to Sarah and Clem. "These aren't like that that cheap crap we had on New Year's, I made sure to tell Devlin to grab a couple of my favorite ales."

"Wait, you're not giving them beer?" asked Sin as he turned away from the window.

"We've had it before," assured Clem as she took the bottles. "And we've had to kill walkers, and worry about people hurting us, and learn how to take care of a baby."

"And keep this whole farm thing going," added Patty. "Pretty sure if anyone has earned a beer, it's them."

"Yeah really Granddad," said Jet. "Everything that's happened and you're still worried about us drinking beer?"

"For real man, I had my first beer when I was twelve," said Anthony as he twisted a cap off a bottle. "And I turned out okay."

"You should mellow out and have a drink yourself Sin," suggested Patty.

"I don't like beer," he said as he looked away.

"What about wine?" asked Patty as she pulled the taller bottles out of the bucket. "We got white and red."

Sin stared out the window for a second, then looked over at Patty. "What kind of white?"

"It's just some fancy for Sam's Club standards wine but I remember it being pretty good at our Christmas bash in Tulsa," explained Devlin as he sat up. "I prefer red myself but it's good if you like white wine."

"And Devlin grabbed us some wine glasses too, which we also put in the bucket, so we got chilled wine in chilled fancy glasses."

Sin turned back to the window, only to turn back to Patty. "What the hell," he said as he took one of the bottles from Patty and examined the label.

"Here." Clem offered a bottle to Sarah, who hesitated. "Come on, it's April Fool's Day."

"Do people drink on April Fool's Day?" asked Sarah.

"I don't know," shrugged Clem.

"How about we drink to finally getting a rainy day?" suggested Jet as he joined the girls' conversation. "Which means we get an afternoon off from having to haul water across the field a few cans at a time?"

"Yeah, let's drink to that." Clem watched as Sarah's expression slowly morphed from one of apprehension to a cautious smile.

"Why not?" Sarah took the bottle and twisted the cap off, prompting Clem to do the same, which took a lot more effort than she was expecting.

"Oh, we should clink glasses—or bottles I guess," suggested Sarah.

"And say cheers," added Clem.

"Or chai-yo, which is Thai for cheers," suggested Jet.

The trio thrust their bottles forward. "Chai-yo!" they said in near unison with the clinking of glass. Clem threw her head back and swallowed a few big gulps of ale. The taste was pungent, but not nearly as bad the beer she tried on New Year's. It was an odd mix of something hardy, almost wood like, with something sweeter, like bubble-gum. Clem didn't exactly like it, but she could probably stomach to drink more of it, and looking at Sarah's and Jet's faces, she suspected they felt the same.

"Bah-bah!" demanded Omid as he stretched up to take the beer.

"Tell me we're not giving a baby alcohol," pleaded Sin as he stopped pouring wine into a tall glass.

"Of course not," said Sarah as she raised her bottle out of reach.

"But I did grab something for the little guy." Devlin removed a bottle of cola from the bucket and twisted the cap off. "Patty mentioned you gave him one of these on New Year's."

"Did she mention it was almost impossible to get him to sleep after that?" asked Sarah.

"It's… like one in the afternoon," said Clem as she checked her watch. "And besides, he wants to party too."

"Bah-bah!" demanded Omid as he stretched out his hands for his treat.

"Here you go buddy, have something sweet on us." Devlin handed Omid the bottle and Clem helped him lift it up to his lips. Cola dribbled onto his shirt as he lifted his head back to drink more. Clem was afraid he was going to spill half the bottle before he finally lowered it and took a breath.

"Ah-lah-dah-ah-bree!" he said before immediately drinking more.

"All right, now that we're all getting nice and buzzed, I say we sit down, listen to some music, play some poker, eat some choice junk food I managed to dig out of our trailer, and just kick back for the rest of the day."

Patty tossed a pack of cards and a wad of worn bills on the table in front of the couch while Anthony hauled over a big box. The box had wrapped jerky, sugary candies, not-entirely stale chips, and a single pack of freeze-dried ice-cream in it. While Clem fished out something to eat, Patty turned on their CD player. Between the warm sensation brewing in her stomach and the literal warmth of the fire drying her clothes as rock music filled the air and sweet treats filled her mouth, Clem felt her worries melting away as she sat down to spend an evening with friends and family.

Everyone initially joined in the poker game while alternating between sipping their drinks, enjoying their snacks, and making small talk with each other. Sin dropped out after only a few hands, admitting he wasn't a big fan of poker, and Sarah followed not long after that for the same reason. While playing poker, Clem could overhear the two talking, and distinctly heard Sin telling Sarah his wife had been a fan of Pink Floyd too.

Omid kept moving around the room at a frantic pace, likely still deep into his sugar rush. He would shout things, climb on and off the couch, and even try to take cards from people as they played. Eventually, Devlin managed to pull the toddler into his orbit by letting him choose cards. It only took three hands for Devlin to lose all of his money, which he didn't mind. Tapped out he went to converse with Sin while Sarah played with Omid with a renewed sense of vigor.

Clem did her best to stay in the game, but her head feeling lighter with every sip of beer she took and the generally relaxed mood of the party made it hard for her to stay competitive. After gambling the rest of what little money she had left on two pair only for Jet to call her bluff, Clem left the game broke but no poorer in any way that mattered to her.

Looking around, Clem saw Omid running back and forth trying to catch a ball Sin and Devlin passed between them while Sarah was spread out on the couch. Not wanting to interrupt Omid's fun, Clem headed for the couch and very careful lied down beside Sarah. She wrapped her friend's arm around her waist and soon felt the arm tenderly squeezing her. Lying there in Sarah's grasp, listening to her soft breathing over the music while watching the others laugh and smile, Clem felt like she was finally home.

"How'd you do?" whispered Sarah.

"You weren't watching?" whispered Clem.

"I was resting my eyes."

"I lost, bad. Patty's a lot better than me, and so is Anthony, and Jet too."

"I'm sorry," said Sarah.

"It's fine, I don't really care, but I would like to know who wins." Clem sat up, prompting Sarah to as well. Clem watched as Anthony raised his bet and tossed a few more bills into the pile.

"All right, I'm out," said Patty as she lowered her cards. "I'm not throwing away any more money this hand."

"That just leaves you kid," said Anthony with a confident smirk. "You in or out?"

"I amm…" Jet deliberately drew out the word 'am' while he clearly stalled for time. What Clem found odd was he didn't actually sound unsure, as if he was just trying to keep Anthony in suspense. "All in!" Jet suddenly pushed his entire pile of money into the pot.

"Whoa, what?" said Patty as she sat up. "Mister minimum bet only must finally have a hot hand."

"Or he's bluffing," added Anthony.

"Only one way to find out," said Jet in an uncharacteristically cocky tone. "You in or out?"

"I think that beer has gone to your head kid," speculated Anthony.

"So does that mean you're in?" asked Jet, sounding no less confident while Anthony continued to stare in response.

"Guess I'm playing one on one with whoever wins this hand," noted Patty as she watched Anthony slide all his money into the center.

"I'm in," he stated with no uncertainty. "So kid, show me—"

A large crash cut through the music as everyone jumped to their feet. Patty shut off the music while Devlin rushed over to a now broken window.

"Shit, where are the guns?" Clem heard Anthony ask as she hurried over to the window for a better look.

"They're all in our vehicles," answered Sarah as Clem arrived in time to see Devlin pick up something lying amongst the broken glass.

"What is it?" she asked as she moved in for a closer look.

"I… I think this is one of our spatulas from the grill," said Devlin as he held up the utensil.

"How did—"

"Oh God." Sin's words prompted everyone else to crowd around the broken window he was looking out of. Just getting closer to it sent a chill down Clem's spine as a frigid gale blew through the broken glass. Looking past Sin and Devlin, Clem watched in terror as she saw trees violently swaying in the wind while what sounded like a massive train barreled out of control somewhere behind the black clouds that had blanketed the sky.

"Jesus," spoke an awestruck Patty. "If I didn't know better, I'd say a hurricane was coming."

"Or a tornado," announced Anthony, terror grasping his voice.

"We should go to the storm shelter," realized Sin.

"He's right," said Devlin he backed away from the window. "Let's move, now!"

Devlin's order sent everyone scrambling. Sarah grabbed Omid while Jet grabbed one of the fire extinguishers. He tried putting out the fire in the fireplace, but nothing happened, forcing him to try the other extinguisher which produced just enough of a squirt of chemicals to douse the flames. As he set the extinguisher down, Clem noticed the crestfallen look on his face.

"It'll be okay," assured Clem with as much courage as she could.

"It's… it's not that," said Jet, slurring his words slightly as he spoke. "I was going to win."

"Huh?"

"I noticed Anthony doesn't blink when he bluffs, like he's worried we know he's hiding something, and he didn't blink once when—"

"Clem, Jet, come on!" Patty's yell sent the pair racing to the backdoor. Taking a single step outside, Clem felt the wind hit her with such force she was nearly knocked backwards into the house along with the hat it blew off her head. She only made it a few steps forward before being forced to step to the side and be shoved up against the house by the unrelenting wind. The terrible rumbling she heard was even louder now while an uneven chorus of wood cracking and snapping sounded from every direction.

"Everyone!" yelled Devlin over the noise. "Head for the fence! Use it to pull yourself towards the shelter!" Clem watched as Devlin struggled against the wind for a few seconds before crossing from the house over to the fence. The man dug his hands into the gaps in the chainlink, then waved to the others. "Come on!"

Anthony crossed next and Sin struggled to follow behind him, falling to his knees as he reached the fence. Clem's heart was in her throat as she watched Patty and Sarah group together to go next. The pair locked hands, while Sarah used her free arm to keep Omid tightly grasped against her chest. Clem's heart skipped a beat as they both stumbled forward, looking ready to be bowled over by the wind at any second. It wasn't until Patty grabbed Devlin's arm did Clem finally hear someone shouting in her ear.

"Come on!"

Clem looked into Jet's eyes for a moment, then locked arms with him. She felt her stomach drop as they let go of the side of the house and the full force of the wind felt stronger with each passing step. The pair had to lean into to wind and let their weight push against it just to avoid being knocked off their feet. With the rain blinding her as she moved, Clem could only trust Jet knew where they were going as she felt him leading her arm first to what she hoped was the fence.

Clem suddenly felt herself slamming into something metal and threw out her free hand to find the stiff chainlink between her fingers. Releasing Jet and looking ahead, it felt like sharp pebbles were being tossed at Clem's head as the rain stung her face. Keeping her head down as she pulled herself along, Clem could hear that horrible rumbling sound grow even louder. Looking up, she watched as a lightning strike lit up the sky just long enough to make out the outline of a giant swirling mass of inky blackness just past the edge of the forest.

"Oh God…" The light faded and Clem found herself transfixed by the sight of the dark sky, now knowing what was out there hiding just out of sight. Forcing herself to look back down, Clem saw Devlin had reached the storm hatch buried between the guest house and the fence. Clem started pulling herself along as fast as she could, the roar of the wind becoming deafening as she caught up with the others all lined up behind Devlin as he tried to reach the hatch.

Devlin tried pulling open the hatch with one hand while clinging to the chainlink, but the wind almost immediately slammed it shut. Another, louder chorus of cracking and snapping sounded over the roar of wind as Clem spotted trees on the horizon falling over almost in sync with each other. Clem instincts drove her to move forward but she couldn't; Jet was right in front of her, who was stuck behind Patty and Sarah, who were waiting behind Sin and Anthony, who were all watching in vain as Devlin tried to juggle the impossible of opening the hatch against the wind while clinging to the distant fence for stability.

After another failed attempt, Clem watched as Sin moved past Anthony and hurried to Devlin as quickly as he could through the wind. The two men seemed to confer for a second before Devlin moved a little further along the fence and grabbed the post instead of the chainlink, then Sin moved forward and grabbed Devlin's free hand. Clem watched as the older man moved against the wind just long enough to grab hold of the storm hatch's handle, then Devlin pulled on Sin's arm, effectively using him as a human hope to pull the hatch open.

As soon as the hatch was wide enough to pass through, Anthony bolted from the fence and hurried inside. Patty followed behind him, doing her best to lead Sarah by the arm while she clung to Omid for dear life. Clem's heart was in her throat as she watched them struggle to move against the wind, terrified it would topple them at any moment or that the funnel cloud would suddenly appear on top of them and suck them away into dark sky never to be seen again.

Patty reached the hatch, then dragged Sarah far enough forward that she could reach the edge. Clem watched anxiously as Sarah threaded her legs into the hole, then disappeared underground, Patty following right behind her. Without a word, Clem felt Jet grabbing her arm and they moved in tandem as they tried to cross the short few feet from the fence to the hatch. Clem wasn't so much walking anymore as being dragged forward as it felt like the wind would pull her out of Jet's grasp any second now.

Crossing in front of the open hatch, the door blocked most of the wind and Clem almost fell forward as the sudden break from it caused her to nearly lose her balance. Edging towards the hatch, Clem briefly caught sight of Sin and Devlin and the agonized expressions on both their faces. The door to hatch shook in place as the wind tried to wrest it from Sin's aged hands. Jet let go of Clem's arm and hurried into the open hatch, Clem following right behind him, threading her legs through the opening and dropping into the dark pit without a second thought.

"Come on!" Clem didn't know who was yelling until she saw Patty move into the light and start climbing back up the ladder. "We gotta keep the door open long enough for Sin and Devlin to get in here!"

Clem felt someone brushing past her in the dark and watched as Jet climbed the ladder after Patty. Patty tried pushing against the door with one hand while clinging to the ladder with the other, but Jet climbed past her. He stuck the upper half of his body past the top of the hatch, then carefully pivoted in place on the ladder until his back was pressed against the door. Jet stretched out his hands and braced himself against the opposite edge of the opening while his back pushed on the door. Patty quickly emulated Jet's tactic, moving up a little further and turning herself around to do the same.

"Granddad!" yelled Jet at the top of his lungs. "Hurry!"

Clem watched in horror as the hatch nearly slammed shut as it knocked Patty off the ladder and nearly Jet too. Clem was about to race to Jet's aid as he strained with all his might to keep the door even cracked, but Patty scurried back up the ladder and put herself in position. Working together, they managed to push the door open just enough for someone to come tumbling in between the pair's arms.

Sin fell forward onto the ground, landing on his shoulder before crumbling onto his side with a painful yelp. Clem hurried over to the man and pulled as hard as she could to help him off the floor. Slowly rising from where he fell, Clem managed to guide Sin forward on his knees towards the nearest wall just as Devlin dropped feet first into the shelter. As soon he landed on the floor, Patty and Jet both fell off the ladder, collapsing into a mess of agonized human bodies as the hatch slammed firmly shut and the shelter was plunged into darkness.

Clem couldn't see anything but could hear voices all around her, some groaning in pain while a couple other breathed loudly while. The sound of Omid crying in a corner cut through all of them, and behind that was the roar of the storm, sounding more like an angry ocean surging above them than the wind anymore. Clem just stood there in the darkness, unsure what to do until she heard a voice call her name.

"Clementine," spoke Sin just above a whisper.

"Yeah?" she responded in the direction she thought she heard Sin speak.

"I have a flashlight… in my right hip pocket," spoke the man in-between deep breaths. "I need you to get it."

"Why me?"

"Because… I can't feel my fingers right now." The words felt like a pin had just pricked Clem's stomach. She reached out into the darkness, finding something that she tried locating the side of. "My right, your left." Clem started feeling her way down the other side of what she assumed was Sin, feeling strange as she did. Eventually, her fingers brushed past what she was fairly sure was a belt, and with a bit more work she located a pocket and the tiny light stuffed inside. Pulling it out and feeling around for the button, she suddenly found herself looking directly at Sin as he held up his hands to block out the light.

"Sorry," said Clem as she lowered the flashlight.

"It's okay." Clem noticed a series of dark bruises running across the fingers on one of Sin's hands, while there were purple and red marks around the wrist on the other.

"Speaking professionally," mumbled Sin in-between deep breaths as he did his best to rub his stiff hands together. "Whoever designed this shelter… overlooked some critical design flaws." Clem wanted to laugh, but couldn't as she watched Sin wearily try to regain feeling in his hands.

"Is everyone okay?" called a shaken Patty through the darkness. Following her voice with the light, Clem saw the woman sitting on the floor near the ladder, rubbing her shoulder. Not far from her was Jet doing the same and Devlin on the ladder fiddling with the hatch until it produced a loud click. Eventually, the light fell on Sarah sitting in the corner, a sobbing Omid still cradled in her arms.

"It's okay," Clem struggled to say as she crawled across the ground to them. "It's okay, I'm here." Clem held up the light and moved in close so Omid could see her face. "I'm right here, it's okay, we're all okay." Omid turning his head and meeting eyes with Clem seemed to settle them both; Omid stopped crying and Clem started breathing normally again.

Adjusting the light a little, Clem finally could see Sarah's face. Her eyes were bloodshot and bugged out, seemingly frozen with the rest of her face in a state of wide-awake terror. "Sarah." Clem's whisper received no answer. "Sarah," Clem said a little louder.

"Sah-rah." Omid's voice finally seemed to reach her. Sarah blinked a few times and looked around, as if she had just woken up.

"Are you okay?" whispered Clem.

"I… I think so," answered Sarah, sounding confused. She adjusted her grip on Omid, then started stroking his hair with her free hand, whenever to soothe him or herself Clem wasn't sure. "Is… is everyone—"

"Oh God!" Anthony's panicked yelp caused Clem to spin around. Her light found its way to the young man as he seemed to be pacing back and forth across the short distance between walls, almost like he was looking for a way out and couldn't accept there wasn't one. "I… I'm gonna die down here!"

"We're not going to die," refuted Clem.

"You don't know that!" Clem flinched as Anthony raised his voice, yet it was the look of absolute terror on his face that frightened her more. His eyes looked like they were ready to pop out of his head while every muscle on his face looked pulled taut. "This—this—this isn't a shelter, it's a god damn prison cell, or a coffin!"

"Anthony, calm down," urged a nervous Patty as she stood up.

"I mean, it's just four walls, there's not even any lights or—fuck, there's not even any vents! I'm gonna suffocate!" Clem found herself aiming the light up at the ceiling and was disturbed to see Anthony was right.

"No one is going to suffocate," stated Sin, raising his voice as he did.

"How would you know!"

"Because I've worked in civil engineering twice as long as you've been alive!"

"Yeah, and—and did you ever examine this death trap before we came down here today?" asked Anthony, more panic creeping into his voice with every word he said.

"There's no way they'd sell a shelter that suffocates people," argued Sin. "That'd be a liability lawsuit just waiting to happen."

"Maybe they figured they could get away with it because most people would never use this damn thing! Companies did shady shit like that all the time right? We could run out of air any minute!"

"If you don't shut up we might," suggested an irate Patty.

"We're not going to run out of air," interjected Jet. "The door isn't even air tight. I could hear this whistling sound above me after it closed so there's at least some air moving in and out of it alone."

"Oh that's great, that damn door is probably defective and the tornado will rip it right off!"

"I locked the door," announced Devlin. "Anthony, man, just relax, okay?"

"Relax!"

"Yeah, we're safe down here, and even if we needed air, which we don't, but if we did, we could risk opening the door for a second to let some in."

Devlin's words suddenly halted Anthony's pacing. He turned and stared at the man for a second, then charged right past him.

"What are you doing!"

"Leaving!" announced Anthony as he rushed up the ladder.

"Shit, stop him!" ordered Patty as she lunged forward and grabbed one of Anthony's legs.

"I'm not staying down here!" yelled Anthony as he tried to reach the door's latch. "I'm going back to the house or my truck! Anywhere but here!"

"You're gonna get yourself killed!" said Devlin as he pulled on Anthony's other leg.

"Or all of us!" added Patty.

Jet sprung forward to help and Clem was about to join him when Anthony fell off the ladder, knocking Patty to the floor with him and nearly toppling Devlin as well. Anthony sprung up in a flash and tried to reach the ladder as Devlin stepped in front of him, grabbing Anthony by the shoulder and collar of his shirt.

"Sit down!" demanded Devlin.

"Let go of me you crazy nigger, I gotta—" Devlin's fist slammed into the side of Anthony's face, knocking him to the floor. Before he could get back up again Devlin put his knee in Anthony's back while he removed his belt. Despite his flailing about, Devlin managed to loop his belt around both of Anthony's wrists and bind them with a forceful tug before tying the end of the belt, and Anthony, to the bottom rung of the ladder.

Anthony demanded to be let go as he struggled against his bonds, a demand no one was willing to entertain. After nearly a minute of cussing and fidgeting in place, Anthony finally stopped, seemingly accepting his fate as he sat there and quietly mumbled to himself. A tense hush fell over the area and everyone seemed to retreat to a different corner to sit out the storm in whatever peace they could muster. Clem left the flashlight on the floor at an angle the illuminated most of the room, then returned to Sarah and Omid.

They didn't say anything, no one did, everyone just sat in silence as they all listened to the constant rumbling above. Every so often there was a loud bang or hard thud against the door that filled Clem with dread. Every time it happened it felt like the storm was announcing its intent to invade their shelter and finish them off. Eventually, the frightening rumble became a less intimidating rushing sound, and then even that faded away as light started streaming into the shelter through the narrow cracks in the door.

Checking her watch, Clem was surprised to see it wasn't even three in the afternoon yet. With the storm seemingly subsiding, there was a long pause before anyone moved to do anything. Eventually, Patty looked at Devlin, which was enough of a signal for him to take action. He maneuvered around Anthony as he climbed up the ladder, then reached for the latch. There was a loud click as he unlocked it, then light came flooding in as he pushed the door open.

"Well?" asked Patty in a quiet voice as she looked up expectedly into the bright light.

"It… it looks clear," reported Devlin, sounding relieved before he climbed out of the shelter. Clem looked over at Sarah and Omid, the former looking exhausted while the latter was quietly whimpering.

"Come on," urged Clem in a calm voice. "Let's go."

Clem helped Sarah to her feet and the pair headed for the exit. Sin and Jet approached the ladder as Patty climbed out.

"Are you okay?" asked Jet as Sin stretched out his trembling hands.

"I… I'm all right," insisted a weary Sin as he slowly wrapped his fingers around the ladder. "My hands are just very sore… as well as my arms… and my shoulders."

"Take your time," urged a sympathetic Devlin. "We wouldn't even have made it in here if not for you."

Slowly, and only somewhat surely, Sin climbed out of the shelter, with Jet right behind him. Next Clem urged Sarah forward, who carefully scaled the ladder with one arm while cradling Omid in the other. Looking down at Anthony while Sarah climbed, she noticed his expression was oddly vacant, his head listing to one side like he was a rag doll. Looking at the red and purple bruise on his cheek, Clem could actually see the outlines of at least two of Devlin's knuckles.

Looking up, she noticed Sarah stepping off the ladder and out of sight. Clem stretched up her leg to pass over the rung Anthony was tied to and climbed up herself. Emerging from the hatch, Clem found a sudden swell of relief in breathing in the fresh cool air. She hadn't even realized how hot and stuffy it had been in the shelter until now. Looking up, the sky was clear and free now, with a bit of orange on the horizon as the sun began to set. Turning her head, Clem could see dark storm clouds to the east and reasoned that was the storm had passed far over them, hopefully.

"Clem?" Clem looked at Sarah, who's face was such a jumbled mess of mixed emotions Clem couldn't be sure what she was feeling. "Can… can you take Omid? My arm is really starting to hurt."

"Oh, sure… sorry," said Clem as she took possession of a still whimpering Omid. "You—" Sarah marched off towards the house, a sudden urgency in the way she walked. Before Clem could go after her, Devlin emerged from the hatch. He looked down at Anthony still tied to the ladder, who could only look back up in response.

"You didn't untie me." Devlin stared at Anthony in response. "Oh come on, is… is this about what I said? I… I'm from Mississippi. I've heard bumfucks say shit like that so often it just kind of gets stuck in your head and I was freaking out and—"

Devlin slammed the hatch shut.

"What are you doing?" asked Clem.

"Giving him a couple of minutes to think," said Devlin as he looked over at Clementine.

"About something he said?" Devlin only stared at the ground in response. "What did he say?" Devlin said nothing. "Was it that word? I've heard it before; nigger."

"From who?" asked Devlin, sounding almost angry. "Did Anthony say that to you before?"

"No, it was a long time ago, and by someone who said all kinds of horrible things I didn't understand," said Clem. "I asked OJ's mom about some of them, and she just told me there's a lot of bad words even adults should never say. I guess that was one of them?"

"Yeah," said Devlin in a low voice.

"What does it mean?"

"It means you’re less than a person, just because of the color of your skin."

"Your skin?"

Devlin held out his hand. "Mine." Devlin gestured to Omid. "His. Your skin. All darker than Anthony or Patty's."

"So?"

"So… some people see that and think that they know you; know that you're no good, know you're a liar, know you're lazy, know you're stupid, or a crook, or a thug, or a killer, or some dumb animal, or any number of horrible things. Just from taking one look at you and seeing your skin is darker than theirs, they know you're a god damn nigger."

"One word means all that?" asked a confused Clem.

"Yeah, it's an ugly word meant to hurt you, made worse by it having nothing to do with who you are but just because of what you look like."

"That… that doesn't make any sense," said Clem as she adjusted her grip on Omid. "I mean, how can someone look at a baby like OJ and think stuff like that about him? That's crazy."

"Yeah, well… some people are crazy," said Devlin with a sigh. "Did… did your parents ever talk to you about something like this? About… what happens when someone says something like that to you?"

"Um… my mom did, on my first day of school," recalled Clem. "Before we left the house, she told me that if any of the other kids called me any names or words I didn't understand, or picked on me because I was a girl, or because I looked different, she wanted me to tell her as soon as I got home."

"And did anyone ever call you anything?"

"Some boys said girls had cooties, and my mom said that was just boys being stupid," said Clem. "There was one boy in the first grade at my old school who always called me an idiot, and I never understood why… do you think he was calling me an idiot because of my skin?"

"I don't know," said Devlin as he shook his head. "People can be ugly to each other for a lot of reasons, and sometimes you're not even sure why. I don't know if Anthony is a racist or just blurted out something he didn't mean while panicking. I'd like to think it's the second one, but either way it's a painful reminder of no matter what I do, I'm still gonna be just a no good nigger in some people's eyes, even now."

"And… what about me? And Omid? Are there people who'd think we're no good because our skin is darker than theirs?" Devlin looked up at Clementine, a bit of sadness in his eyes betraying the sternness he was trying to keep. "Oh…"

"How old were you when the outbreak started?"

"Eight."

"Your mom was probably hoping there be a few more years before she had to tell you… I know mine said she wished I had gotten a little more time before I found out." Devlin took a deep breath. "Take some comfort in one of the few silver linings to everything going to hell is not having to worry about this shit all that much anymore; end of the world tends to rearrange most people's priorities." Devlin looked down at the storm hatch. "But not all of them."

"So, what are you going to do?" asked Clem.

"Nothing really. I'm pretty sure Anthony already knows how I feel about this, so there's nothing left to do but untie him and get back to work, of which we probably have plenty more of now."

"Even though Anthony might think terrible things about you because of the way you look… or because of the way I look?" Clem felt her already racing mind being invaded with disturbing new possibilities as she began to process everything Devlin just told her.

"I had to work around a lot of racist bullshit before the fucking Rapture happened," said Devlin as he opened the hatch. "This is just a drop in the bucket compared to that."

"Can I come up already?" Clem heard Anthony's voice echo from below. "Seriously, I gotta pee and if you leave me here much longer—"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming; I want my belt back." Devlin climbed down the hatch while Clem headed back towards the house, her mind moving from one disturbing revelation to another as she surveyed the damage.

She could see fallen trees in the distance, while large branches and what she could only guess were tiles from their roofs were scattered across the grass both in and outside the fence. Heading for the center of the yard, Clem saw the picnic table they ate at had been blown into the side of the house, one of its benches broken in half. Their grills had all been knocked over and were badly dented all over, and Sarah's greenhouse was gone now.

Looking ahead, Clem could see the entire tent and had been flipped over and was now precariously resting upside down on the far end of the fence, a hundred feet away from where it had been before the storm. Many of the legs were twisted at odd angles and the plastic top torn in numerous places where it had been bent over the fence. And where the tent used to be was Sarah, kneeling in the mud, looking at the pots, tables, and containers of pesticides strewn all across the grass.

"Sarah, I—" Patty came bursting out the back door and immediately hurried over to Clem. "What's wrong?"

"Wrong? Nothing—I mean, not too much—oh, and here's your hat," babbled Patty as she handed Clem her hat back. "The vehicles are okay, and the house looks all right, except that window is still broken, and I think the roof sprung some leaks judging from the puddles I saw." Patty turned her head suddenly, and Clem looked over to see Jet and Sin approaching from the gate bordering the field. "How are the crops?"

"They're mostly all right actually," said Jet. "A lot of the bean poles blew over, and some of the cucumber and tomato cages, but the plants look okay."

"They're small, right on the ground, and probably didn't create much wind resistance," reasoned Sin as he rubbed his head.

"But something did," said Patty, noting the pessimism in Sin's voice.

"The rainwater collector," concluded a downcast Clem.

"It's… technically still there," said Jet.

"Technically?"

"It's intact… but the roof of the barn is gone," announced Sin.

"Gone?" repeated Clem.

"How's that possible?" asked Patty as she looked around. "None of the other buildings got hit that bad."

"Big open doors on both sides, angular roof… wind probably caught it just right and tore it off." Clem hurried across the yard as fast as she could while carrying Omid and looked through the fence at the barn. Sure enough, its roof was gone, and now there were just four battered and mismatched walls standing around each other. Dismayed by her discovery, Clem slowly walked back to the center of the yard where everyone else was standing.

"The actual barrels and pipes we built are all still there," reported Sin. "But without a roof to collect water for them, they're—"

Sarah started shrieking at the top of her lungs, startling everyone. Looking at her, Clem watched as Sarah started choking for air before collapsing into her own hands, crying hysterically. Just in the time it took for Clem to rush over to her, Sarah fell forward into the mud, keeping one hand on her face while pounding the wet soil with her fist.

"Sah-rah!" Omid tried kicking free from Clem's grip, forcing her to set him on the dirt. "Sah-rah!" he repeated as he hurried over to where Sarah was writhing in the mud, making pained sobs through one hand while beating the ground with other. "Muh-boo! Muh-boo Sah-rah!" cried Omid as he threw himself onto Sarah, wrapping his tiny arms as far around her body as he could. "Muh-boo!" he repeated as loud as he could. "Muh-boo-ah-ha-ha…" Omid's words collapsed into a series of loud cries as he clung to a still hysterical Sarah.

Clem knelt down close as Sarah struggled to breathe through her own sobbing. "It's okay," Clem whispered in her ear as she placed her hands on Sarah's shoulders. "It's oh—"

"Not it's not!" shrieked Sarah as she raised her head, revealing her face was racked with pain and covered in mud before immediately burying it back in the dirt as she started crying again.

"Okay, it's not," admitted Clem, fighting her every instinct to cry herself. "But… we still got each other. Okay? That's all I want right now, not a farm, me and OJ just want you to feel better. So please… please stop crying. I'll do anything for you, anything, because I love you more than anything, so please… please just stop crying…"

Clem felt herself beating back her own tears as she listened to Sarah continue to shed hers. She was just about to break down herself when she noticed Sarah's free hand had stopped beating the ground and was just laying there now. Clem reached for it, trying to wrap her fingers around Sarah's, only for Sarah to grasp Clem's hand first, squeezing it so hard it hurt.

"Come on," said Patty as she knelt down beside Sarah. "The Brave surely has plenty of water right now. Why don't you go get cleaned up, then lie down for a while? The rest of us can handle cleaning up in the mean time, and… we'll figure out how to fix this shit tomorrow morning after we've all had a good night sleep. Okay?"

Sarah finally stopped crying, although Clem couldn't be sure if it was because of what Patty said or she was finally too tired to cry. Either way, she didn't resist Patty's attempt to help her to her feet. Clem collected Omid, who clung to Sarah for as long as he could, then Patty helped Sarah stand up. She was covered in mud now and just followed quietly behind Patty and Clem as they all headed across the yard to the driveway.

Reaching the Brave, Clem was glad to see it looked intact, but stepping inside after Patty, she immediately noticed there was a massive crack on the right side of the windshield. Examining it further, the glass didn't appear in any danger of actually breaking, but the crack was yet another reminder of what was quickly becoming a terrible day. Hearing Sarah coming up the stairs behind her, Clem hurried over to her and stood between Sarah and the front, hoping she wouldn't notice the windshield. She didn't and just kept shuffling towards the bathroom as Patty came running out.

"Okay, I rigged up this little bucket over the shower head like a week ago, figuring it can collect water than I can dump out in occasional big bursts instead of that annoying ass on-and-off squirting the plumbing has been doing lately. Guess you'll be the first one to test it since this is the first time we've had water in here in a few weeks."

"Okay…" said Sarah in a barely audible whisper.

"And… I think you should take one of these." Patty opened her hand to reveal a small green pill. It wasn't a gel-capsule like the cold-medicine Clem had seen, but flat and made out of a chalky substance.

"What is it?" asked Sarah.

"It's a chill pill." Clem and Sarah just looked at Patty in confusion. "It's a Xanax, and it'll help you relax and feel better, trust me." Sarah looked at the pill with apprehension. "Look, doctors give these to people who have problems with anxiety, and if one had seen what we just saw outside, they'd tell you they'd want you to take this to feel better. I'm not going to make you take it but I honestly think it'll help right now. Not all medicine is for diseases and physical pain, there's ones like this for when you're miserable and just need some relief."

Sarah looked up at Patty, then took the pill. She popped it in her mouth, then took a swig of water from a cup Patty handed her. "Thank you… both of you," said Sarah in a barely audible whisper.

"It's fine," assured Clem, forcing some optimism into her voice for Sarah's sake.

"Just go get cleaned up and you can just lie down in the bedroom afterwards, all right?" Patty gave Sarah a gentle pat on the shoulder and a smile. Sarah headed into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. The pair stood there in silence for a few seconds, then they heard the sound of intermediately running water and let out a collective sigh of relief.

"Jesus…" mumbled Patty as she rubbed her head. "Everything is so fucked right now."

"I know," said Clem.

"We can fight off hordes of the dead but get our asses kicked by a fucking tornado," groused Patty as she dug through one of the cabinets.

"And a flood before that," added a downcast Clem. "I'm starting to think it doesn't matter if we ever get rid of the walkers or not, things are never going to get better because of all this other stuff we can't do anything about."

"Come on, don't say that," insisted Patty as she pocketed something. "We'll… we'll figure something out. Our plants looked like they survived, so we just got to fix… everything else so we can keep taking care of them."

"But how we fix this stuff?" asked Clem. "And so much of it."

"Yeah, really, I don't even know where to start," admitted Patty.

"Me neither." Adjusting her grip on Omid, Clem smelled something. "Okay, now I do. OJ needs changing."

"I'll go get your baby supplies from the house."

Patty headed out while Clem took Omid into the bedroom. She undressed him, and Patty returned with everything she needed to change him as well, something Clem found oddly relaxing in light of everything else that had happened today. After fitting him with a new diaper, Clem used a baby wipe on his face next, cleaning up his dried tears and crusty nose. Omid was strangely cooperative the entire time, which Clem found concerning.

She was about to take him out when the bedroom door slid open. Clem was surprised to see Sarah standing in the threshold, dressed in nothing but her underwear. Before Clem could say anything, Sarah immediately headed for the bed, ducked under the covers, and wormed her way up to the pillows resting at the top of the bed. Seeing Sarah so forcibly place herself in bed, Clem picked up Omid and prepared to leave when the toddler finally started to stir.

"Sah-rah… Sah-rah!" he repeated as he reached his arms out towards her.

"Just let Sarah rest, we—"

"It's okay…" Clem heard Sarah slowly say from under the covers. She moved her head and arm out from under the blanket and gestured to Omid. "Come Omid, you want to take a nap too."

"Sah-rah." Clem set Omid on the bed and he walked over to where Sarah was lying.

"You're worried about me too, aren't you?" The way Sarah spoke sounded uncharacteristically at ease, and even the way she took hold of Omid seemed different; slower and without the kind of deliberate energy she usually applied when handling Omid.

"Are you okay?" asked Clem as she walked over to the edge of the bed.

"Yeah," said Sarah as she cradled Omid against her body.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"So, that pill helped."

"Yeah," repeated Sarah. "It made me sleepy and my whole body feels… sleepy."

"That sounds kind of like when we drink too much whiskey," noted Clem.

"Sorta," mumbled Sarah. "But my head feels clear, instead of all foggy."

"What do you mean?"

"Just that, I'm not thinking about anything right now, and if I try, it just kind of fades away real quick."

"That doesn't sound good."

"No, it's really good," insisted Sarah without much authority in her voice. "Most of the time, I can't stop thinking when I go to bed."

"About what?"

"About stuff we need to do or that will go wrong. I try not to, but I'll keep thinking about it and sometimes, most of the time, I don't get much sleep."

"I… I didn't know that. Why didn't you ever tell me?"

"I don't know. I guess I didn't want to worry you," mumbled Sarah. "I didn't think there was anything you could do. I didn't know Patty knew there was a pill that helps."

"Me neither." Clem watched as Sarah turned her head to look directly at her.

"I really miss it…" confessed Sarah, sounding half asleep already. "Miss what?"

"Just… not having to think about all this stuff," said Sarah as she turned away, burying her head in her pillow. "When you told me my dad was lying to me… I hated him for it."

"He—"

"He was trying to protect me," recited Sarah. "I didn't used to believe that, at least, not entirely. But now, thinking about all this stuff we have to do, how dangerous everything is, not just walkers or people, but how easily we could just lose everything…" Even in her sedated state, Clem could hear the tension rising Sarah's voice. "I… I'm starting to think I'd do the same thing." Clem noticed Sarah stroking Omid's hair when she said that.

"I know how you feel," said Clem. "I lied and told Omid the deer would be okay after Anthony shot it, and I didn't want to tell him he was eating it later. Right now, he's probably too young to even understand, but when he gets older—"

"Are we really going to tell him all this stuff?" mumbled Sarah.

"I… I don't know Sarah. Devlin just told me something I hadn't thought about before, and I think my mom tried to tell me about it once, and now I'm wondering what else she wanted to tell me but didn't get a chance to because she was waiting for me to be older and…"

"What did Devlin tell you?"

"It's… complicated. I'll tell you tomorrow," assured Clem. "And it'll be a while before Omid is old enough to understand these things, so we can worry about that later. Maybe by then, things will be a little better and there won't be as much to worry about for him… or us."

"I hope so…"

Clem looked over to see both Sarah and Omid's eyes were shut now as they breathed softly under the covers. She leaned over the bed and kissed Omid on the forehead, then did the same for Sarah. "I love you both."

"I love you too…" mumbled Sarah without opening her eyes.

Clem left the pair to rest, then headed back outside.

"How is she?" Clem turned her head to see Patty standing by the door, lit cigarette in hand.

"She's okay for now I think," said Clem. "She said the pill really helped."

"That's good," said Patty before taking a drag off her cigarette.

"She said she has trouble sleeping because she can't stop thinking about all this stuff that needs to be done," continued Clem. "And that pill cleared her mind and now she's not thinking about it."

"Yeah, Xanax are usually pretty good for mellowing people out."

"Do we have any more of them?"

"You don't want one, do you?" asked Patty.

"No, I just thought if Sarah has trouble sleeping, maybe they could help."

"If she just has trouble sleeping I can probably dig out something lighter for that. We really can't be giving her Xanax every night though."

"Why not? Will it hurt her?"

"Possibly, but probably not, other than she might feel a bit hungover in the mornings."

"Hungover? Like when you drink too much whiskey or beer?"

"No, not anywhere that bad, just a little groggy," said Patty before she took another drag off her cigarette. "It's just, we only got a couple of bottles of them, and once they're used up it'd be hard to find any more, so we should probably save them for… well situations like this. I mean, you saw that pharmacy I tried to raid back on our first outing together. They put up damn walls because one the first things people want when shit gets bad is drugs. And why not, drugs numb the pain of life, and there's no shortage of pain right now."

"Is that why you smoke?" asked Clem as she watched Patty take another drag off her cigarette. "You usually seem to do that when you're upset."

"Yeah, they help calm me down," said Patty as she took the cigarette butt out of her mouth and examined it. "Problem is when you use them so much you start to kind of need them to get by. I actually thought I had quit smoking; I haven't had a cigarette since we left Tulsa. But, I still stashed away a pack from the Sam's Club because I think I knew if I didn't have any smokes around to even me out… I might lose my shit when things got bad."

"You mean like Sarah did?" asked Clem.

"Something like that." Patty dropped the butt on the ground and stomped it out. "All right, we got a couple hours of daylight left, might as well not let them go to waste."

Patty headed for the gate and started moving towards the field, where Clem could see Jet and Devlin were standing up bean poles. Clem moved to follow Patty when she noticed something lying against the fence. It was a large piece of wood, and flipping it over she discovered it was the sign Jet had hung earlier. One of the corners was badly dented now and there was a large crack running across it. Looking over at the Brave, Clem realized the sign was likely what hit the windshield, but looking past that she noticed the front porch of the house.

Clem moved up the steps, grabbed a chair from inside, and hung the sign again. Taking a step back to examine it, she found it was less pleasant to look at now with the large crack in it, but Clem reasoned it was better than just tossing it out. She sighed, then headed towards the field and figured she could start with checking the tomato cages, just like she had done this morning.

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