#twdgscav fic

[voltstone]

scav·eng·er | TWDG Retelling | 3

WINTER'S BITE

she starts to slip away. feels numb.

[2,274] [May.04.2024]

— — —

I've been figuring out how to pace this fic, and there will be 21 parts. (…or more.) However, I will post the story in full on Tumblr. Cuz turns out, the total character limit is 4 million?? Which. I don't need that much. Lol.

Anyway, hope you enjoy.

:)

— — —

AO3 | FF | Wattpad

[Previous] | [Next] | [First Chapter]

“Christa. Talk to me.”

.

Rain to sleet, then ice, then snow.

.

That's what she tells her, with the hunt—rabbit—over a smoldering fire that's more smoke than it is flame.

It's nights like these where Christa sinks down into the same spiral, and Clementine can't help but to join her. This is habit for them. It’s a cliffside to slip over. Christa sinks the more it rains, or whenever a promising meal decides to revoke that promise. She catches Clementine when her eyes stray often, to another…viable meal. Except that meal would likely kill Christa. She can’t have it. Will never have it. It is sin. Utterly depraved.

And it is, already, a deep scar in Clementine’s psyche, a disfigurement in her morality. 

Together, they’ve gone past not knowing. They know. They do, from the way she’s found normalcy in this, down to the cravings. Some walkers are a means to warm her tongue. Others are to claw down her throat. Many are sour in taste as much as smell; they’re the most palatable. Then there’s the few, where the citrus is a twinge, and the iron is all she cared for.

She’s degenerate. Christa isn’t much better for what she’s done. 

So Clementine waits with her. In the rain. In front of a meal that’s too close to revoke itself for either or their liking.

The night blooms a dark cloud. Winter’s breath bathes down her neck.

.

As they begin to encroach upon the winter months, the habit finds them with terrifying ease.

.

Clementine finds a cliff. There's only water after that. It pulls her under before she's thrashing, because she was right… In the year before, Clementine was right.

Her body fights the current. Tries to, anyway. Hurling herself off an edge, down onto concrete, would've done her better.

. . .

THE CRAVING DID NOT LEAVE

. . .

There is a cabin in the woods.

A man named Pete, then another named Luke, bring her there.

Her mind staggers. Christa's name alone is a thorned reminder of last night and its dismal downpour. Her memory, it scathes her. So Clementine doesn't ask. She doesn't bother telling the men about her.

Then there's the dog bite on Clementine’s arm.

It hurts like a bitch. Will probably scar like one too.

.

Somewhere in a staggering haze, Clementine falls. She still smells the earth when she wakes, minutes later.

In the split moment before her eyes crack open, anyway, because she's surrounded, and there's a rifle looming dead center between those eyes of hers.

.

The walker in her wants it to fire, and for her to feel the ground again. Or, well, the fall back to it, if not the ground itself.

The human in her doesn't want that. Not at all. She wants to breathe.

.

The scavenger can't decide. It's a confused smear between the two, and before she has the chance to fit the gun in her mouth or snap at any of them to point the thing away…

It fires.

Just past her arm. And the world blears. Their voices don't stop shrilling, and the wind doesn't cease its sharp whisper—not until well into the argument. Doctor included, because there's a doctor, and Clementine loathes the subtle shade of alcohol—medical—that reeks off his hands.

.

"With a bite like that…, could be anything."

.

Her head lobs the longest eye-roll. Because, sure, while the dog stripped her arm the same way she's ravaged bodies before, Clementine has a bite to compare. At her shoulder, so this doctor of theirs has some reference.

.

She doesn't show it, though. The bite.

Because there's a doubt, and it screams that these people…, they wouldn't care how aged the bite is.

So Clementine finds herself locked in their stupid shed for the night, with a throbbing arm. Which still hurts like a bitch, even if she's half-dead, half-alive, or something another.

.

It doesn't take long before she decides to claw her way out. Her scavenger's strength reels from her hands—a strength, which, she discovered in time, behind Christa's back. As a mild, silent exploration. And it rattles to mind. Cauterizes Clementine, almost, in its ferocity. She thinks to the few logs she’s turned over. Other feats as well where her body burned, and it burned hot, before the world gave way. So her teeth bare, and her hands burn. She's able to break the board and drywall holding the shed's gashed hole together. It only takes a few tugs, a sturdy leg against the wall, and then a line of sweat.

Thereafter, Clementine slinks off into the night.

She ducks away from the windows, and finds another gash in a wall—this time around, to the cabin's crawlspace. Despite what she'd figure, it's this where Clementine regrets not tearing the shed apart for an actual tool, or anything like that, to work the nails out. Her strength does all it needs to. This drywall comes apart easily.

A hammer would've helped her avoid the splinters, though. And, perhaps, the gouge her fragile knife left behind too. The trapdoor and its lock are not kind to her.

The cuts are nagging as she roams the cabin for a needle, then bandages, and—despite herself—the reeking alcohol.

.

"You're not supposed to be in here. "I'm not supposed to talk to you. My dad can't know."

.

By the time she returns to the shed, it's after making a new friend.

Clementine hopes so, anyway.

It's the one thing that prevails louder than the waking famine in her stomach.

.

"I'll help you."

. "I'm Sarah." "I'm Clementine."

.

Her arm is mangled together by lousy stitchwork, but she is an unsupervised child, and her arm was frayed open, so Clementine thinks it good enough.

Peace doesn't last for long. She can't find a rhythm to it—the silent harmony she'd be wrapping the wound to—, because she drops the bandages in her haste, and there to greet her is a decayed arm sprung from the gash in the wall.

A walker.

Relatively fresh. Angry too.

She finds a way to bludgeon it. Not before she's slung against another wall, and the lone shelf topples over its head. Glass shatters. Clementine hears it bite into her shoes, though none of it breaks through. None of it teethes into her heel.

And she finds the hammer with splintered hands. The gouge is restless down the handle.

Clementine nails the walker, and makes sure to tunnel a hole deep in its head.

Before its chest.

Down to its beltline.

.

Famine flares up her throat. It gnashes a gluttony down her tongue.

The blood the walker leaks isn't as dark as it could be. There's still red to it. The body itself isn't warm, and she avoids where the rain sopped its way through. Because the man he once was died with an array of bullets spat across his chest, and she doesn't want to bite one for herself after all—not quite yet.

.

It's the first body where Clementine isn't overrun by anguish.

There is only satiation. She doesn't think to cry.

.

A door does close, in the distance.

.

"I'm just— I'm just checking, okay?! It doesn't hurt to check!"

.

Clementine freezes mid-bite.

Panic strikes her. She knows there's the blood on her hands, and every puncture her teeth has left behind along the body.

Her first instinct is wipe her mouth clean. And as their strides plunder across the clearing, Clementine stumbles back. Far from the body. She keeps the hammer tight in her hands, just in case one of them—any of them—realize what she is, what she's done, and knows the dark smudge on her sleeve, it's what cleansed her mouth.

.

The doors open.

All they see is a girl trembling in the corner, with the walker collapsed at the center of it all. Her arm has been tended to, yes. She must have wiped her mouth clean enough—none notice.

Guilt pales them in the face for leaving her like this. (Beneath her skin, Clementine teems to dive back to her meal.) A poor little girl who was just mauled by a dog. Left out in the rain, no less. (She does wonder if her hunger extends to dead animals as well.) And all they did was barricade her in here. All responsible-like, or something.

(She doesn’t really care. They’ve only proven Christa’s spiral right. There is no one left. Trust calls itself a snare, yet it bites like steel-jaw.)

.

"I'm still. Not. Bitten. I never was."

.

The bite on Clementine shoulder has made a liar of her.

…but also, technically not.

Clementine has decided it’s a language thing. A semantic issue. And not her problem, except for when it is.

.

She ignores when they begin to fume over the stitches. She's simply too exhausted to really bother.

Luke does offer her a meal. He asks if she's hungry.

And Clementine is, in arguably the worst way. However, she wonders about what meal he has.

.

The curiosity is enough to follow him to the kitchen.

Where the doctor berates. Because her friend is his daughter. Sarah. And she’s…different. Somehow. Even though she’s inherited the same long face, and the same hair, and eyes, Sarah is different, she’s one ordeal away before she ceases to function, and now it’s Clementine’s problem, and all it took was asking for a stupid bottle of alcohol to stop herself from keeling over.

Even though the girl was reading about trans-dimensional body-snatchers when Clementine met her—whatever those are—, while she’s only read about unicorns with a crisis solved in ten pages.

And she’s the cannibal. So checkmate, Carlos.

.

…Clementine bites her tongue. He sees the frenetic storm within her. It brews a bleaker agony, and it’s all down the fine line between that tongue’s wit and her mind’s hemorrhage. 

He doesn’t ask. Leaves her instead to in Luke’s company, which is also meek—more guilt-ridden than it is a daughter’s passivity.

.

That second dinner's served in a nice, warm bowl. Clementine doesn't take much to conversation. She only knows food, and the stew finds its place with the gore she's already swallowed.

And so she sleeps that night, rather comfortably. Feeding both the human and the walker is a miracle to the scavenger.

Clementine thinks she ought to do it more often.

.

In the morning, she rises early in the promise there will be more. Fish. Down by the same river, to which she finds herself mulling over rather excitedly, and with those drawls of thought are…walkers. Whether Clementine could find the time to slip away, into the woods.

Pete leads the way to the river. Nick sulks ahead.

She listens idly to Pete and his anecdotes about hunting, and cowardice, the humility between. There’s a humanity too there, somewhere. 

Her nose begins to guide her best, however, because she smells the walkers, and the bodies, long before Nick sees them, long before he calls for his uncle.

.

There are many bodies.

Too many to keep track, and one of them—a walker—finds Pete. Bites him.

.

Clementine helps.

Doesn't know why, but also does. It's a conflation between compassion and a cruel inquisitivity.

Nick is left to scramble for his own veil of refuge, and she's led again by Pete, blindly in the other direction.

.

They find an abandoned truck. It smells stale, and there’s an itch down her nose which scathes her, in her throat, when she tries to swallow clean air. Pete tries to do the same. That may be the panic, however, or the denial.

The human does everything she can to help again, from handing over a saw, and water, to mere conversation.

The walker waits. Doesn’t sleep. 

Pete begins to smell like them. That citrus. It's ripe. He would be warm. Very, very warm. Better than what she just had in the night prior, and knowing that has her deliberate. Almost…hope the man succumbs.

.

"I'm scared, Clementine… "Jesus, I'm scared."

.

One half of her croons with him. The other half doesn't know what to say. It's just hungry again.

It always is. There's no… There's no cease.

Clementine doesn't know if there ever would be, even if there's a friendly face dying before her eyes. Just as there is now.

.

She wonders had Lee died after this hunger found her, what she would've done.

If Clementine would've left him to turn, and… A-And just—

.

No.

.

She— She wouldn't have. Never. The human screams so. It writhes in her heart. It’s blindsided.

.

Yet when Pete tells her to run, she does. For the worst reason.

Clementine doesn't want that side of her to prove her wrong.

When Pete tells her to run, she can't really believe she wouldn't have, so she doesn't risk the chance.

.

Clementine wishes Nick had just shot her with the damn rifle.

AO3 | FF | Wattpad

[Previous] | [Next] | [First Chapter]

[voltstone]

scav·eng·er | TWDG Retelling | 4

HEARTH pt.1

why can't she feel like she used to?

[9,591] [May.09.2024]

— — —

There's a tag (#twdgscav fic) for if you want to follow this story and not my whole blog.

But, as a swift note before this chapter, while I'll maintain that this fic is unhinged, and shall get progressively more so as it goes on, it's also a crack taken seriously kind of thing.

Meaning, the cannibalism and the reverse-bite(?) is allegorical to a loss of innocence, and it's an exploration of a survivor after the trauma itself. And the psychology behind it. And like. You know. The horror. So turn to this chapter where it's the first that directly addresses it, and Clementine. I know this is dead dove, but I figure I'd preface what this fic gets into since that wasn't something I thought to do initially, but here we are.

Somewhere down the line I'll probably either reorganize these posts, delete them all together (and replace them with one collective post), or something like that. This fic will be posted on Tumblr regardless, though. Rest assured.

Anyway. Hope you enjoy!

:)

— — —

AO3 | FF | Wattpad

[Previous] | [Next (TBW)] | [First Chapter]

A dying man was still clung to her, in nicotine's breath, upon her return to the cabin. Pete still is. 

And she stands here, in the kitchen, with an awkward lean against the counter peninsula. Clementine wonders if the stale tobacco is as strong as she thinks, or if it's just how the scent matted her nose, obscured the citric orchards. A wince irks for her face. She swallows it down.

Turns out, a mauled arm isn't something to lean on.

.

Not now, in company of a man with a voice like his, and the words crafted by a canniness, a wit, suited for nightmare.

He was coming in either way.

.

He looks like every other man. Heavy brow. Overgrown in both hair and face. Dark on him, and lined by steel. In all, he wasn't someone she'd pay any mind to in the world before—back when the country was thriving, and she wasn't starving.

Until his eyes.

It's always the eyes.

.

"Bloody arm there. That's a real dark stain, don't you think?"

.

"Hunting accident."

"You don't say."

.

Except for when it's the words, suited for nightmare, clothed by a witful generosity.

Clementine knows better now.

Even if that generosity is a nonchalance in this man, she knows.

.

Her arm is biting when the man decides he's spent his time in the kitchen, and he stalks down into the living room. He remarks a flannel of Carlos'. Murmurs over a chess game in pause.

White's in trouble.

She pangs to know how to get this man away.

Only for a door to close, and for the man to find a polaroid.

.

Clementine feigns her indifference. It doesn't sway the man. His glower gleams canny.

.

"You don't know who these people are, do you…?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

.

"Let me ask you this, what do they think of your appetite?"

.

Deadbolt.

She twists from the inside. Squirms in her eyes. It takes everything to stand firm. Clementine doesn't budge. Refuses it.

.

"Oh, you haven't told them. "They don't know, do they?"

.

He lingers. Before he parts, and he's down the stairs.

Clementine watches him. Doesn't say a word. She only glares, and when she bites, her jaw aches. An agony finds a blade. It strikes.

.

When the door closes after him, and he disappears into the woods, there's Sarah beside her. Where Sarah quivers, Clementine hums beneath her skin. It pricks, so she works her jaw. Finds the blade again. Winces.

It takes too long to lumber down the stairs, and onto the couch. Sarah soothes the flannel's sleeve. She absentmindedly toys with one of the black pieces to the board—hers, with whatever game she had with Luke. The piece tips over. She doesn't bother to find it beneath the armchair.

And Clementine sits all the while, as Sarah's vacant onlooker.

Because her thoughts are winding. His voice echoes. Like gravel. Deep in the earth, enough for the cabin's mass grave.

.

"You have a real nice day now."

. . .

THE HUNGER WAS EVERYTHING

. . .

The dog bite heals swifter than Carlos first estimated.

It doesn't smooth over. Clementine doubts it ever will. Yet, in time, she figures it’ll be a meager blemish and nothing more.

And, she figures the way she's been parched for blood by the hour, and starved for flesh, has everything to do with the dog's lasting remark.

She needs to feed. Her jaw aches as well.

.

They've been walking for too long. Rebecca is drained. Sarah teeters her weight into Carlos from time to time. There’s wary eyes on Nick, and what he might do now, after Pete.

Clementine burns in her soles, and her eyes are drawling for shade; the sun pricks them until the world numbs, whenever there isn't the shade to find. Every time a noise cleaves her—an odd bark of laughter between Luke and Nick, or gunfire, or a whistle of Carlos' for an all clear—, Clementine feels an agitation rupture down her back. She toys with the hammer whenever it happens. And it is dangerous, given the urge to strike it down on…whoever, really. Whoever's unfortunate enough to be a little too close, and a little too loud.

It's as if there's a nail lodged through her ear, or a needle. Whatever it is, everyone has nudged it at least once, and its pike has seized her mind.

Everything whirls for a moment.

She's grown a habit to snap her eyes at whoever's laughing, or with the smoking gun, or Carlos and that damn whistle.

.

She bites her tongue often. Buries her nails through her jeans and their denim.

And toys with the hammer.

Gnaws on its handle, even. Until the seizing stops, and the world is what it once was again.

.

Clementine needs to eat.

.

She can't stomach their rations anymore. There's granola, and beans, and the last of what Pete hunted.

Yet here she is, around the…third fire, is it? The fourth or fifth? Clementine's lost track. Every day, there's at least one. With Rebecca, and her unborn son, maybe two. They're tired. They're panicked as well.

Rebecca above them all. Clementine sees the way she glances at her, and there’s a burden in her eyes. Alvin seems to be her anchor; he’s a good husband. Still, there’s a trace of… Not fear. It’s not quite that, though she does wear a shade of it too. Just…not in her eyes. Not really. Instead, it’s a nervousness—cold and bitter to Clementine’s nose. She suffocates in it, whenever Rebecca decides to stray over and talk to her. Make amends. For being a close breath away from shooting Clementine herself. Then, for the shed.

And then dinner. Where Rebecca apparently cussed her out while she was face-deep in soup, without a damn to give.

.

There’s no knowing, no understanding, when and how time escapes her like this. Nor every last thing around her because she has, and will, watch the trees drown, and the earth beneath her shoes fade. Her ears swarm. There’s a fog to trudge through. Words refuse to bile.

Clementine knows her mind is slipping between her fingers. She’s well aware, in fact. She just hates how her very mind likens itself to sand leaking from one glass into another. Grain by grain.

She doesn’t have the patience for this.

Not that she has the say. Clementine’s found herself drifting towards the woodland on occasion. With her absent mind, she doesn't mean to. Honest. She really doesn’t.

She still scares them though. Luke paws her shoulder to snap her back, or it’s Nick who does. Or Alvin. Or Rebecca.

Just about everyone, actually, the more Clementine thinks.

It's after they ask her to climb something, or help lug a log out of the way. They've realized she's strong for her size. Impressively so. Because they are all same: nervous, burdened, and outright strange in ways she’s never been. However, she nods along. Tries to fix on a smile, or something like it. All while swallowing down this…temptation. A trepidation. It reeks all around Clementine. When she warns them of the walker struggling low to the ground, they chuckle, compliment her prowess, when it's really just that temptation trying to guide her teeth.

She just wants to rest. For an hour. Long enough to slip away.

It's getting difficult. Her hands fidget before she realizes. And Clementine's snapped at Carlos twice now, then Nick. Even Sarah. Not with her eyes, but her words.

.

She leaves the woman and her baby alone.

Doesn't understand how she knows the baby is a boy.

Clementine keeps that quiet though.

.

Now when—? When…did this fire go out…?

.

Is she the only one left awake?

.

Clementine salivated at the last walker. A couple days ago, she did. They had to pass it on their trail, and it was one Nick had the aim to shoot. The walker was waterlogged. She may have not cared in the moment, about the waterlog. Because Clementine would've taken anything in that hour. Even a scrap. A lone finger. And she still is salivating. She's empty. Her stomach churns, and it teethes at all other organs. So she salivates, and it's to that walker's mere memory. Clementine smells rain now. It's enough to recall the lakewater and moss dripping off the thing…

She staggers from the rock she sat herself beside, when the sun was still crisp above the horizon. The fire now isn't out entirely. There's still a few embers going. But, the smoke is gone.

Enough of them are snug in their tents—aside for Nick, who's taken to watching the stars, blank in the face.

Her feet drag at first, before she stalks across their modest camp in the night. Someone else is pacing. She’s not alone. It’s Luke, if she has to guess; he does it whenever he's on watch. Clementine takes note. Has enough of a mind to avoid him best she can. Her eyes scour. They blitz across the woodland.

.

Her jaw aches. Anytime she tries to rock its pain, it throbs. The pain is sharp.

Sometimes she'll massage it in whatever reflection she comes across. The water likes to tell her the most about her eyes.

The color in them is vibrant. More than they should be. And she's been paling a bit too.

.

Clementine. Needs. To eat.

.

There's a groaning somewhere. A lone orchard's rot. She's called to it. To the camp's outskirt. It's a rough murmur between the trees, and she echoes it, to herself. Feels it harrow up her throat. There's a congestion to this. Tastes like… Like all the meals she's had, except it's sludging, and it's not from her stomach. It's— This is her, and only her.

Her voice gravels.

.

Sarah…

.

Clementine hears her. Sees her shadow lurch close. Sarah screams. It isn’t loud. There’s no true voice to her. None, because she’s out of breath. Can hear her heart. It thrashes. Stumbling now— Sarah’s flailing. Trips over something. In the dark, the shadows are painterly, and the dirt billows off their heels.

She’s lunging. There is a violent blur of momentum, and Clementine’s lunging.

Because this is Sarah, and Sarah's a friend. She is. And she sounds pained. Clementine will help her. Has to. She's a friend, so that's what they do.

They’re friends. Sarah said so.

.

Clementine knows only hunger, however.

.

Despite the shadows, Clementine finds where her nose guides her, and where her eyes acclimate. There’s a rotting hand. It swipes violently after Sarah. Doesn’t have the time to twist itself around—bite Clementine instead. She hurtles. Its groan is a winded snarl. Hers has more weight; it barrels from dearth's basin. And they're rattling down a decline, together. Her and this dead, with the live behind. It's not far. Hurts though. She grabs one of the rocks she's shouldered into, and Clementine bludgeons. It takes a few swings. Brainmatter flecks. The smell revolts her. It's nothing like the marmalade. Instead, it’s too much. The acid. The citrus. It’s too much.

Behind her, Sarah fights for her breath. She whimpers something like a name.

And Clementine does not hear her. She’s scraping at its stomach, before the chest. This is made difficult without a knife. She doesn't have the hammer, nor its claw.

.

"Cl-Clementine, what are you—?!"

"Come … the fuck on already…"

.

She's seething. The sludge in her words, it's coarse. Clementine can only scratch so deep.

This one's fresh. God, it's fresh.

.

"Cl-em…?!"

.

It's fucking infuriating how fresh it is—

She just wants. To eat. One fucking full meal.

For. Fucking. Once.

.

Clementine clasps her hands together. Her teeth are bared. Agitation seethes between them. She socks both fists into the walker—aims for the ribcage. Twice. Feels bone snap the first time. Break through the second.

She's smiling.

It hurts how much she is.

Her fingers dig for the shards, and she uses them, leverages them—pulls the walker's chest apart. (Someone screams without air.) Skin frays with muscle, but that's not quite what she's after. Clementine brings some to her mouth anyway. Her hand closes around the chest's marrow. The center of it all. Clementine pulls. (That someone is whimpering now.) Her shoulder burns from the ferocity. When the vessels snap, and the tendons rubberband, she tears the heart free. (Hysterically. Silent, but hysterically.)

It's a pound of blood, and muscle, and fat. All in her one hand.

(She can hear Sarah's heart rocket up the girl's neck and pommel behind her ears.)

.

Clementine bites.

If a granola bar could be a dream, this is yearning reaped like pure treasure.

.

The meat to a heart tastes raw, and like iron. It's firm from the years of flexion. Rich in blood. So, so unbelievably rich in blood. The clots molt to her tongue. Its muscle begins to fray the more she works through. Her hands tear it apart. She will eat this. Clementine will devour this organ in its entirety.

Her breaths are rabid.

Her own heart—alive, or not—, it thrashes behind her ears.

Does so to the muse of this meal splitting in her hands, the leakage as well, and does so in harmony to those rabid breaths as they fog. It's cold enough tonight—for those breaths, and for the lukewarm meal to scald her.

She will sleep well.

Clementine will evade nightmare, not quite dream though. Her stomach shall anchor her to the earth.

.

A rifle tilts.

The safety is pulled, and the barrel finds company with the air right behind her neck, then her head.

.

Clementine may have just been a bit dramatic with this meal. Or this is just how it is, blossoming in the grey between bitten child to bitten adolescence.

.

She cranes a glare over her shoulder. Looks Luke dead in his eyes while he…tries to hold her dead to rights. To…this. Whatever this is. Luke visibly struggles to understand why, precisely, a kid has half a walker heart in her hands, and the other half swallowed. Then a corpse eviscerated at her feet. A corpse that was just walking, mind. And truth be told, Clementine can hardly blame him. She doesn't really know either, won’t ever know, just that it is vile. This is degenerate.

Somewhere down the line, she doesn't quite know when, she's stopped questioning it.

This…was something to welcome.

Because once there was a time when the dead didn’t walk either, and Clementine as a monstrosity is reality’s mere, feeble mirror. At least, that’s what she’s decided for herself. She decides a lot of things this way.

.

…losing Christa, it might've done something. Clementine hasn’t really acknowledged the void left behind, how it’s in the shape of her.

Their last attempt at a dinner was lousy. And the rabbit she caught, strung above the fire, thought the same. Reminded her too that it was no walker. It would've never satisfied her like what pounds in her hands now.

Not that night, where she fell off cliffside, found a river to drown in—only to not, because damn humanity.

.

Clementine was able to bite back the taste for it, a mere week ago. Or however many days it has been.

For Christa's sake.

She can't now.

With much of her life, she doesn't understand.

.

"I know. I get it. This is really bad."

.

She doesn't understand.

She will still try to brush it aside, however, because she just can't swallow the urge anymore.

Not tonight.

She—

Clementine needs this.

.

Sarah has gone rigid. She's huddled by a trunk, with the tree’s roots swarmed around her. And her doe eyes are strained to the ground. Her mouth’s skewed shut.

Scared again. Sarah’s scared—horrified, even—, except this isn’t Clementine wandering off. This isn’t Clementine with a likewise fragile mind. Or, it is fragile, yet rather than collapse, her mind splits like glass. It shards whoever offers their hand. Nobody likes the reality; they’d rather not learn what it is they find. Omid died to it. Christa deteriorated right with her.

And now Sarah…

She’s horrified of her. Clementine’s done the one thing nothing else has: rattle her to an absolute silence. She doesn’t even rock herself.

Her doe eyes are not to the ground either. Not anymore. They’re watchful. She doesn’t allow Clementine to sink away, out of sight.

Luke as well. He stares, wildly, with the rifle poised. On him, however, Clementine doesn’t know what it is that locks her in place, ebbs some of the euphoria. There’s fear. There’s also confusion. He wears the one with a pale face. But he…festers in the other—the confusion. Which plagues him. Refuses to leave him.

He wears confusion like his body has failed him, and there’s nothing to do but walk into the night. Without a rifle. Without his blade strapped across his back.

.

"Wh-What— What are you doing…?!"

.

"Just let me have this… Please, Luke. I've been starving. "I need it. I-I need this."

.

The flesh wilts in her hand, then it throbs. Clementine's grip is ironclad.

So as her heart begins to pound through her palm, it almost gives the thing a new life.

And that new life dwells in her hand like slaughter. It cries in blood.

.

"You… You eat them?!"

"Y— Yeah…"

.

He sounds as desperate as she feels. Rather than desolation, however, Luke strains denial. He still sees a little girl. The same he plucked off the forest floor; a little girl weary with a walker loomed over her. Or, the one in the shed, backed into a corner—eyes ignited, because she can take care of herself after all.

Clementine nods. Slowly. Ignores the disgust as it sinches down his nose. Tries to. Can’t, really. Climbs to her feet though.

The heart stays in her hand.

.

"Yeah. When they're dead like that, yeah."

.

She wonders if he’s realizing what happened that night. Why the walker was splayed the way it was, and why she backed away from it—the farthest she could. This may be the paranoia, however. Logic isn’t the kind to sprint through moments like these. It likes to fall behind and wait for revulsion's spire to bolt down a backbone.

Clementine eyes the barrel. Wishes, again, that it shot her.

Before she finds Luke. He’s soft. The rifle sinks in his hands. It mouths into the earth.

.

"I was bit, Luke. Just … a long time ago. H-Honest, I'm not lying. "It did something to me. I can't— I can't control it anymore."

.

He believes her.

Whether it be her words, or the fact that this is the most coherent she’s likely been, it doesn’t matter. Luke believes her. The sky, the ground, and the trees between begin to warble. A bleary haze, now. She doesn’t hear the words he murmurs, barely sees the hand that reaches out. Because her skin is teeming. Her wet mouth pounds for her to return to the body and feast again.

Clementine blinks the blear away.

Revulsion does loiter, and in his eyes, there’s still the body at her feet. He doesn’t have his hand offered anymore. Luke doesn’t know what to say.

.

Leaves bristle, and branches snap. Moonlight glimmers before Sarah nudges her glasses by their frame.

.

"Y-Your mouth…"

.

"You're bleeding, Clem."

.

Blood is pooling on her tongue.

Clementine swallows thickly. She’s dumbstruck as her tongue massages, before a hand feels instead.

A gap. A hole in her mouth.

Clementine just lost a tooth. Luke is guiding her away. The heart is dropped, somewhere. Clementine still thumbs where the blood leaks. Her jaw croons, and it’s numbing. The pain doesn’t think itself a knife. The serration is lost.

She just—

Just lost a tooth. And Sarah is still rattling, but she’s almost smiling. Chirps weakly about this…milestone. Luke pales the more he hears about a tooth fairy because now is not the time, yet it is, because Sarah’s rattling, almost smiling, and… And Clementine knows how often his eyes snag on her skin—how it’s entrenched by blood. Not red, aside for what’s twined from her mouth. Black. Almost an oil.

He’s about to vomit. Can smell it on his breath.

Sarah too. Yet, somehow…, she finds a way to bite it down. She’s instead brimmed by a fairy, and milestone, and— And something… Something about a— A-A hero. Rattling. It’s all she can do.

When Clementine doesn’t answer her, and instead stalls to thumb along her teeth again, Luke mutters about money, and how they’d need the tooth anyway. Looks like he just about dies when he says it. The words crawl before they croak.

It’s not the time. It isn’t. This tooth fairy died with the country. Supposed to stay rotting.

.

Half of Clementine is standing beside the walker. Begging for Luke to understand. She really…, really wants to go back to that walker now. Dig around for the heart. Brush away the mulch. She draws the line with dirt; a rotting human is one thing, dirt is… Is another…

She’s walking away. Luke’s practically herding her. But no. No, half of her is—?!

Clementine was hardly done. She’s still…

Still hungry. It’s never enough. Her mouth is a pain, but it’s numbing, yet it’s bleeding.

.

What.

The actual fuck.

.

Nick is the first to ask why the hell they’re all so twisted around for.

.

Clementine doesn't answer. Doesn't dare unveil the rot bathed in her mouth, though perhaps the fresh blood is enough to charm her way out of—

Well. No. There isn't charming her way out of cannibalism. It's a thought spurned by losing… Losing a tooth. Her canine. On the right, her canine.

That shouldn't be. She—

.

Clementine has already lost this one…

.

Sarah exclaims about a walker, a tackle, then the stupid fucking tooth.

Luke just vomits horror. He also cries.

.

And she never thought she’d see the day.

When Carlos nudges past Nick, Clementine is thankful. There’s words to eat. She’s thankful to hear his voice, and to watch as his eyes dart between the three. He doesn’t think to chastise Sarah. Luke is hurling the rest of his stomach—enough for the doctor to grimace.

So he finds Clementine’s bloodied mouth.

Can’t answer.

.

Sarah does instead.

.

Goes on about a hero again. Like in a comic book, the one Sarah wishes she had the chance to read back at the cabin.

.

Clementine only thinks of the river. How this is the same. Plunging off a cliffside, straight into water—the half of her who lingered by the corpse, it has found her again. And down her hand is static. The blood is cracking where it’s dried. She’s been wrenched from a freefall, a euphoria, right into a frigid current.

Her eyes dart. There’s whiplash. Her mouth doesn’t feel like her own anymore. Lost something… She lost—

.

Why is he looking at her like that?!

.

Carlos watches her. He isn’t a man of words, come to find. At least, not with anyone aside for his daughter. He saves them for Sarah to savor, and Sarah to cling for.

He doesn’t smile at Clementine. Instead, Carlos squeezes her shoulder. The bite itches. That’s all.

.

She…just did something. Clementine did good. 

A tenderness finds her. It’s warm—mouths like praise. Except this muses to Clementine something she already did learn. Once, in a time forever ago. It was already ingrained. The warmth is a haunting that shouldn’t be. Whatever this is she basks within, it should’ve come to her like an old friend. Not this. Clementine doesn’t know its name. Doesn’t know when it was lost, just that…it died, somewhere. In nightmare. And it still rots.

Yet it flails now. Like the dead around her.

And herself, if only Clementine would find the time to be honest with herself.

.

There is no nightmare. She doesn’t sleep for any to find her. That hour alone was nightmare enough. She doesn’t need the slaughter within haybale. Nor does she want to be slug around again, to the whims of her life’s malice evermore.

Instead, Clementine stares at the stars. She decides Nick has the right idea.

Her tongue grazes along her foreign mouth. There is no cease.

.

Maybe she is dead after all, and her body is what remains. This body.

Citrus is a mellow blanket from whatever lurks in the dark. There is no warmth, because all it does is whisper to her. And it whispers that the walkers have it better. The people they once were, they are not who stay behind.

None know the mute agony of fading away, only for their body to brew a vigor like nothing else.

Clementine does, for she’s been left behind to rot within this body of hers. Her heart has been silent. It’s caged by her very bones, and she’s mindless in her yearning. All she wanted was to feel a heart. It wasn’t her own, but it was enough. It bled, at least. She still tastes the scrap of what she once felt lurch within her by every passing day…

And her body bleeds beneath those stars. Enough to choke her. Like it finds this funny. The way her frenzy lost Clementine a tooth already matured—already the most human it can be—, it’s funny. Apparently.

.

Or it's not at all, nobody thinks that, and Clementine has just lost another thing she once had.

She doesn't understand.

.

Clementine doesn't. It becomes a mantra. And she never does find that musing's name.

.

"A pinky swear is forever."

.

Just an echo to a night's rain, and the promise therein.

.

The rest find the walker when morning comes.

Alvin is the first to comment. He’s the one who drops his flask by accident, and watches it topple down to the walker’s feet. And it’s a joke that comes to his mind first, something about having to watch for a worse thing than one of them.

Before he stalls. Looks at the crater in its chest, then abdomen. Realizes the skin stuck to his flask. And, with a sheen across his glasses, he scoffs and whistles at the gore left behind. It carpets the dirt. Because the body…is not a good spectacle. Not as it is, in this light.

Rebecca murmurs about a bear. Nick palms down the rifle.

Luke and Sarah are dead silent, and they keep themselves on the road they’ve been following down. Neither dare to witness.

Clementine plays onlooker. She watches Alvin hold Rebecca, who’s mildly curious despite it all, Nick with the rifle, pacing…

Then Carlos. Who surveys the body, just to assure Rebecca that, no, the bears are not what hunts them now. Another man is, and true to his name, he has a way in carving his eyes to memory.

.

They're a dark shade of hazel, as though the sun could rot before her eyes, and fester within the dirt to a fresh grave.

.

Clementine tries to bury his voice, and those eyes, and the words he snaked to her. She had been exhausted. A dying man was still clung to her, in better memory, upon her return to the cabin.

He is the reason why they walk. He’s the reason why they talk in hushed, nervous breaths, and why Rebecca dwells to herself more often than not.

The man gave rise to something within her… Ignited a fire, and it was the very same that she evoked from Luke with a walker’s heart at hand, and blood on her words.

.

The very same that struck Clementine, the moment she was bit. Because that man with the radio…

He had the same kind of eyes too. Except they were…pale. A weak, erratic shade of yellow.

.

And it is the same now, the longer Carlos studies the body. His brows are furrowed deep. He is far too engrossed to hear Rebecca, and the questions she asks of him. There's many questions. They don't so much as fall as they do plummet onto deaf ears. Carlos digs for something. Clementine sees a precision in his hands, and they're strung by a fervent loyalty to his eyes.

He digs through the chest in particular. Massages down the patterns of— Of teeth gouged into the skin and meat.

She feels cold. It burrows down her spine. It claims her throat, and it gifts her the worst knot to swallow.

.

Fear.

.

It is fear which crawls beneath her skin now. It was fear she evoked from Luke, fear in those pale yellow eyes…

And there is William Carver.

He pries from them all the same, except where they’re nervous, and they’re burdened, Clementine grows a famine. There is only her mouth now, and her stomach.

.

…she doesn't understand. She can't. Except that Clementine may have lied to herself, or her mind has refused to tell all.

The dog bite has gnawed at her to eat, and to replenish.

His dark, hazel eyes, and his snaked words—they've gnashed at her, for Clementine to devour.

.

Carlos snaps his own. Lands them on her.

He knows.

.

She rolls her tongue over the gap in her mouth. Watches him, and then one hand as it closes, because he's captured something. And she jolts. Tastes blood.

Fumes from her tongue. Hurts.

.

Clementine may have been more polite with her teeth than the dog had been.

Because Carlos knows her bite now. He knows.

. . .

HE SAID OTHERWISE

. . .

"What's the most important thing in this world?"

.

"Food."

.

"Listen, what's the one thing a guy would walk hundreds of miles to get back? Something you can't just find."

.

She's the cleanest she has been in a few days, and it's only now when Luke decides to pull her aside, away from the rest, to…have a talk. On the way to a bridge. And he continues to be cautious of her. Even now, when he… After he’s pulled her aside. For this. A talk.

It feels like he's urging her. He's desperate for Clementine to tell him the right answer—which there is one, apparently.

Clementine doesn't know it, though. She's the cleanest she's been, all to keep his eyes from being struck by this fear.She doesn't want that fear. Doesn't, but she's hungry. Needs to heal. She smells the citrus all around. Sweet. There's plenty of fresh ones roaming in the trees, just out of arm's reach…

The rations they have are enough. For the time being.

They just…don't sit as well as they could. And her tongue rolling where her tooth had once been doesn’t help.

.

"Come on. Clem, it's family."

.

"It's a tough world out there without people you can trust."

.

There's a stray hint of disappointment in his words. Yet, at the same time, a knowing, and then a caution. Because this had been a test, a gage, and Clementine has failed bombastically, but she'll still maintain that it is food, in fact, with every morsel she comes across. She longs for a mouth that waters like it used to, she does. She wants to perk to the sound of a crisp can, or the sweet aroma to Mom’s baking, or a homely dinner. Sometimes she does that too. To the cans or dinner—like the warm bowl, in fact. Yet. It's not the same. Not when blood soothes her skin the way it does, and flesh pulls apart to her mouth's desire.

Walkers have this tang… A tang that animals don't have. In their hearts, and their stomachs, their muscle—the muscle especially. Her mouth only waters to that tang now. Truly waters, because…it's the only ounce of satiation she can find.

And, quite honestly, family rings sour now.

.

Her bite was in a family's name.

It's what brought her to this. It's what brought a man to bite a child.

.

And family… That's what led her blindly to him in the first place.

.

Clementine will answer food, however. She will. No matter the lesson Luke intends.

It's easier to think it is. Finding a home requires an odyssey. It requires a gambit to embark, and its trial to writhe through.

And she knows, deep in her gut, that these people will not be that for her.

. . .

YET THERE A BREATHING MEMORY WAS

. . .

Nick just killed a man. The bullet threw his body over a bridge. There are lights in these woods; they're the eyes of who follows. There's a lodge too. A ski-lift.

It all…sloughs away, however. It takes one held breath, and the deck to whirl beneath her feet.

.

Sarah grazes her arm. Murmurs anxiety.

Clementine shrugs through Luke and Nick anyway.

.

She rolls her tongue again. Gashes another line, and the heartbeat bled is ruin. Half of her is still above the land, lingering in a breath shy from clouds. And the landscape is there as a canvas to forge behind her eyes. The pine vista. A sheer drop to water. A red bridge.

It begins to decay, however…

Clementine sees him. And only him. There's the trucker's hat, the same beaded necklace, then the brown of his eyes. He blears to focus.

Doesn't know what to say. Neither do, but she— She really doesn't. Doesn't know what to do either, aside for a careful step, and another, to the man.

.

Kenny.

.

And he wipes a tear.

He kneels, looks at her with a smile like no other, and it's for her. Only for her.

.

She may mirror him. She may not. If there is a smile, it's cracked across her numbing face. He's a comfort. And another one in life's comedy. Kenny should be dead, yet he's not. Looks very much alive. Breathes that way in what fogs in this cold.

His words are cradled by hearthfire. There's a homely timbre, and it doesn't��crackle as much as it should to her ears, despite teary eyes. There is only flame. A warm bask in yellow.

.

Clementine strays away with him. Kenny leads them all—her and the cabin, him and the lodge—around the corner.

There's no words between them. A giddiness, or disbelief, radiates off him.

.

Her strides are pounding however.

Because Clementine hears a saltlick. It echoes, somewhere. And the skull it married after that too, before the flesh trodden by their union.

.

Kenny makes a joke, or something like that, which… It actually rises a chuckle from her. Scathes up her throat, but it is one none the less. Feels…nice, even if not a moment later, she's rattled again. Kenny is a haunting reminder of Lee's patience, and how much he spent it on the man. Caught in a crossfire.

It takes everything to remember how she used to laugh.

And how Lee meandered down the line between one and another.

Clementine murmurs to Kenny that her people, they're fine. Sure her head was almost blown off at one point, and she still kind of wants it to, but, really. They're…

They're cool. Haven't made her laugh really, but they are.

.

The fireplace is grand.

In its mouth, a vast fire.

.

He comments about the ballcap. She could say the same.

.

The cold in her bones, winter's breath in her hair, remind her how far Savannah is. As a distant nightmare. A long, winding road down her life's broken spine.

.

"You know, I half-expected to see Lee walk up next to you…"

.

That nightmare flares. Life's broken spine rattles in her ears.

She's cold in her bones. Winter's breath feels too, too close to the tub's ceramic.

.

And there's Lee again. Spoken into the world. There is no grave for him to roll; he may twitch where she shackled him by his last wrist, however. Clementine doesn't know what Kenny sees in her eyes.

He panics though.

.

"Oh, shit, I didn't mean to… "It's just hard not to think about it, you know?"

.

It is.

It— It is.

.

Clementine swallows. She fights the bile.

She's desperate to know if he smells it off her.

Guilt. Rather than the degenerate.

.

"Aw, hell… I'm sorry, darlin'."

.

She answers everything he asks when she can. Silence permeates best, however.

.

They slink away from Lee. Catch up on things. Not many. There's no good memories left, and none of them breathe in their time apart. They're stained now. Corroded.

Like Christa. All of her.

.

"She's gone…"

.

Clementine doesn't know when she accepted it, the fact that there is no finding Christa.

The days have blurred together. Her famine has never ceased. It's only cannibalized. She eats away. Time smears in her split mind's wake. And between that, famine claws at memory and corrodes it all. Stains them.

The bite…

It gnawed Omid to an obscurity. Christa's next.

Kenny was too, once. Before life's gnashed smile brought him to her.

Why—

.

Why not Lee?

Or is he to be her last memory before blank moon eyes…?

.

"I am! This is all a dream!"

.

She flinches at first. His hearty laugh thereafter is unnerving���it snaps at her, wrings her from thought. This isn't Kenny. Not really. He's never done that, and the longer the laugh barrels from his chest, Clementine finds herself longing for the swift chuckle and clap on a shoulder.

.

They are not the people they once met. Neither are who they know by memory.

Kenny, the one in Savannah—Clementine laid him to rest, left him behind, the moment she was lured, and the moment the man's teeth found her shoulder.

And she's been rotting all this time. Not of body. In mind.

Gradually, because the days and weeks and years since have been a plodding agony.

.

The last Kenny still corrodes after all. This Kenny, however. He will never know what she's become.

Clementine's decided to mimic memory. He will not lose another child.

.

"Sorry. Bad joke."

.

Clementine finds herself wishing it wasn't.

. . .

AND SHE HERSELF WAS LOST

. . .

"Show me the bite."

.

"The other one, Clementine. You know what I'm talking about."

.

Carlos manages to snag Clementine from the Christmas tree. He herds her away, quietly, with the same hand on her shoulder. It doesn't feel warm. The scrap of whatever she still can't name, it's gone. There's no salvaging it.

And he's sat her on the furthest booth, beneath one of the overhangs.

Light is scarce here. The tree, and the fireplace, are one collective haze.

.

She hesitates, before grasping the shoulder.

He waits. Clementine should've known he expects to see the bite itself, so she works her shirt's collar open. Unveils where the man bit her: along the clavicle, dead between her neck's crux, her shoulder's point. Carlos studies it. Like before, his hands are loyal to his eyes, and there's precision. Nothing else.

Carlos murmurs about how it's scarred over. Asks if she was attacked.

.

Clementine wasn't. Not really.

A confirmation more than an answer—he knows from scar alone. The bite didn't tear. It's the perfect shape. There are no abnormalities. Yet, the clear indentation is what rivets the doctor so. The identity of a strange man. His lasting print. Had Carlos been in dentistry, this would've been something to diagram.

Clementine only hears that the man left his mark, and did it well.

Her grave, however shallow it shall be, will bury both her and this part of him.

There is no escape. Even now.

.

He asks if this had been a man, or the dead. His eyes want to know if she knew the intention. The depravity behind it.

.

The man had yellow eyes. He just wanted a family again. Until Clementine shot him, that is.

He's dead and gone. Never knew his name.

.

If Carlos thinks the worst of her, he doesn't say. His face doesn't flicker at least, and he leaves her to cover again. Which she does. Swiftly. When Clementine looks back to face him, she finds Carlos…pained. His face doesn't flicker; it yieldsinstead. Like something's dawned on him, so his hands come together. They're kept to himself. Whatever he knows, or assumes, Clementine can't fathom.

Just that there's an odd nausea, it coats him a blooming complexion, and he's angry. Cold, though. This is no fire. More like a man about to beat another, only to leave that man behind to bleed.

Lee had the same nausea. She saw it one night, with a hand twisted into her hair.

And he did just that—broke a man's face, left him behind to his welted eyes.

.

"There are men, Clementine, who aren't right, and they look at little girls all the wrong ways."

.

That was how Lee started a long, agonizing conversation. His words were coarse. There was conviction, however. She needed to know. It took a night. Then the week after curling herself deep in blankets, washing away the memory of the brother's twisting hand…

Then the other.

The one with dark eyes and a twitched smile.

She never met those hands. Nor saw what they'd do in light of the evil in his eyes, because it was only that light there. The evil.

.

"You bite if you have to. Do everything you can to get away."

.

Duck… He tried to do just that.

Did, almost, before Clementine was thrown off the patio, and Lee was slung over the St. John's shoulder.

She hopes he did. Duck's dead, but. Well. She hopes.

The memory of him settles whenever she believes so.

.

Clementine realized in the few weeks thereafter how glad she was that Lee killed the brother. And grateful, because there was a gratitude.

A world where that man walked with her, somewhere in the shadows, was worse to her than hearing the pitchfork run through ribcage.

.

She feels a lurch in her throat. She wants to assure Carlos that the man who bit her, it wasn't an evil in his eyes. He didn't want the same. He sought a daughter in her. Only that.

He did trap her by words alone, of course. His mouth. But not once did Clementine ever mistake him for the St. John brother. Not once. Still hasn't.

It's the thought of describing the brother, however, which keeps her silent. Because to explain him would means to speak gore.

.

Carlos preens away the nausea and watches Clementine. He then murmurs about her skin. The way that she's waned before his very eyes. In a mere matter of days, or something like that. Her aggression as well. Wandering off wherever they walk, or in the night. She's had a scarce portion of their food. None of them know a habit of hers—the one where Clementine pulls her ballcap over her face, just to sleep.

.

"There are many peculiarities with you, and I've kept my eye on them."

"You're not going to put me down, are you?"

"Of course not. I realize you don't have any interest in us."

.

Carlos speaks to her like she's something else.

As though Clementine is another being. No longer human.

Yet, this isn't the same as talking down to a dog either. Far from it. She's not an animal. Instead, he speaks like she understands every word, and knows them in his eyes—down to the grain. He's careful. Articulate. Above all, however, Carlos is guarded.

She's beyond his understanding. Something to behold. Perhaps study. And to revere.

A threat.

Clementine is a threat, but not quite the danger she could be.

Not an animal, but a walking dread.

.

He unfolds a hand.

.

There in his palm, a tooth. Hers.

.

"You are going through a metamorphosis, Clementine. "And so you feel like you're starving despite being fed not long ago."

.

Carlos has met a person like her before. He knew her. Married her. Had a child.

.

She got bit. A mere matter of days, and she was…fine, but not. He kept Sarah away. Did everything he could to console.

His wife, however… She was lost, but she was there. And she asked what Clementine craves. A gun. A ledge. A river.

.

Sarah found her writhing. Strung from a fan.

.

He does not know what would happen if Sarah is ever bit. What she would become. How coherent she would be, if at all.

And if she would feast like his wife did. Or if she would only walk.

Carlos doesn't say it. Clementine smells it off him anyway.

.

He doesn't want to be the one to pull the trigger. Not again.

.

"No bite is anyone's fault. But you do anything to Sarah, and I will put you down like you are one of them."

"She's my friend. I won't do anything to her."

.

A frenetic storm builds.

The same he discovered of her, nights ago. Her tongue's wit and mind's hemorrhage—neither have left Clementine, and Carlos sees them within her still. She is something to revere. Walk tepidly around, should he be a little too close, a little too loud.

And should Clementine be just hungry enough.

He sees it in her eyes. She isn't mindless… 

.

Carlos knows the dwelling monster.

It wears her skin, calls herself Clementine. Debated whether or not it could lick its maw in the time Pete fermented, and citrus throve.

She just…cannot, for the life of her, tell if he knows the monster only.

Wonders why Sarah sees beyond that—if she truly does—, and if it's something inherited from a mother, not the doctor.

.

Sarah is…different that way. Another for Carlos to behold.

.

"Do you understand now?"

.

She does.

No answer crosses her lips, but yes, she does.

.

Clementine nods. It is a vow to never bite Sarah.

.

When silence drawls, and there's nothing more, Clementine breaks away. Carlos lets her. The tree evokes for another time. The lights glimmer. Sarah's dawned it an angel. It's all a shard to her very eyes. The tooth in her closed hand bites. The floor rocks with every stride, and the lodge is swaying to the fireplace and its restful flame, and the shadows birthed.

She snags his silhouette through the windows.

Kenny's.

That alone keels everything in arm's reach.

.

Clementine shambles for solace. Finds it in shadow.

.

Cliffside again. Where the air was brisk, and the river beneath her was a frigid havoc to her body.

It's found her. Laughs like life's miserable parody. Harkens to its thrashing well, where copper lathers down her throat, foams like river's whirlpool. Momentum to gain, everything to lose—how it's happened again, and the world's racing to snap her neck, she doesn't know. All it took was falling off that fucking cliff.

And the water didn't feel like concrete, so she calls bullshit on that.

.

She knocks into a door. One of the lodge's restrooms. The women's.

As the door closes, Clementine is abandoned to the blood throbbing in her ears. Static is a balm down her skin. When she reaches beside the door— clamps upon an old, old habit of hers—, Clementine doesn't fathom why, not until she finds the switch, and a lone bulb springs to life.

Clementine recoils. It's loud to her eyes, and her ears. Buzzes worse than the static. It's callous as well. She's forgotten just how much everything was before. There was never a gradual passage between these lights and not. There was only ever onslaught, and the overbearance.

When her eyes adjust, she lumbers across the restroom tile. The stalls are wooden. There's clutter, everywhere, to meander around. Her nails rake across the counter. The mirror is wide.

To her nose, there's only must, grime, and neglect's spillage.

Clementine glares into the light's reflection, then the bulb itself. It hangs close to the mirror, incased within a flowering glass.

.

She has half the mind to throttle it before ripping the damn thing from the wall.

The other half reminds her that, well, she did just turn it on herself. So. Her fault. What didshe honestly expect? And Clementine doesn't really want to lug herself all the way back over.

.

She's also not that kind of guest. …even if she did rip open a hole into a crawlspace not a week ago.

.

Great. On top of losing her mind at the ripe age of still a child, she's now acquainted with her first very own paradox. Which is vandalism.

Second if Clementine counts the cannibal tendencies.

.

Mulling over the logistics of her wellbeing while glaring holes into her reflection, with her own tooth burrowing into her palm… It doesn't feel great, for some reason.

Who would've thought?

.

Clementine seeps into the aches of her body. Her exhale is withdrawn. The tooth rattles over the countertop granite when she clasps for balance. Burdened by her joins, there lies a call for sleep, to rest her weary head and heal these wounds. And her lungs are clawing for air the more she gasps. Every swallow is reticent. With them bolts another ache, and they're piling now. They settle where she doesn't want them to. Not her stomach's basin. Instead, these aches char within heart's cage.

They spurn her. Like embers, or the falling ash to a fire deep within pine vista.

And they've clogged her jugular. Clementine's mouth froths for words she cannot find. There's only smoke, or it's the thrashing frigid waters, or those coin spiral wishing wells. A blaring arcade. Claps of a storm.

There's too much. It's all too much.

In this… This body of hers…

.

She rocks her jaw again. Stares at the lone tooth.

.

Carlos cleaned it. There's not a red left behind.

Her eyes follow down a ravine in granite, and it splits into the wall, cracks the mirror. Weblike—it doesn't go far in reflection.

.

Clementine meets herself by her eyes. Finds a stranger. Wearing her skin. Hiding behind her name.

She's narrower than she once was, in the face. Her eyes are a striking shade of yellow. Not gold though. More… They're more lupine against her complexion. As in spitfire. Blinding in their own right. Spat from the end of a barrel, to scream a bullet's remark.

She leans to the mirror. Works her jaw, thumbs where the tooth once was, and by the pad of her finger, Clementine feels her skin abrade. A flinch later, a hand pulled away, blood beads close to the nail. Clementine leans again.

.

Another tooth. Knived, though… Its crown is knived. There's no other way to explain. She scrounges through smog to find better. There just isn't.

.

A thought pangs her. An inkling.

Clementine tries the opposite tooth. It's loose. So's another on the other side. Too many. She's already lost them. There's no reason. Her breath is rattling. The reflection is blearing, eyes burning.

Her nails grate into the granite. Chips wherever she scrawls, before she grasps, and tension shivers through bone.

.

"Sweet pea…"

.

The granite seethes into her palms. Lacerates one. Pricks the other.

Clementine jolts.

She staggers away. Holds herself.

.

The blood is dark. Seeped from her hands, stained into the counter, it's of wine. Dark like wine, raw in glass.

.

"Another … daymare, Clem? Which one?"

"The— The one you killed…"

.

She hears— H-Hears it fall.

.

Enamel chimes across ceramic tile. Cracks at the crown.

This blood, the wine, strings the counter. It leeches deep within grout.

.

Spitfire glints from shadow. Doesn't realize where she herself stands, and that it's the mirror. Her reflection. A stranger.

Clementine buckles. She chokes for air. Her ribs spine into her heart. Closes in. Blood smears down a stall door. Her hand's shape.

She seethes through her teeth. Air swells in her mouth. Can hardly swallow. Wood, tile, granite—the restroom whirls together. Agony gnaws her bite. Clementine's floundering. Her hands skate across tile. The grout is coarse. It cleaves whenever her palm's heel catches.

.

This isn't her mouth. It longs to shed its human shape.

A girl's lasting print.

.

"You bite if you have to. Do everything you can to get away."

"What i-if I can't…?"

.

Lee— He never did answer her.

So the world swam the way it does now.

All Clementine knew was his face.

.

"What do they want from me? "L-Lee?"

.

Not her mouth. Not her blood. Not her eyes—

None of this is hers.

Where has her body gone…?!

.

"The only thing a child has to themselves. Your … innocence, Clem."

.

Was he right…?! Had Carlos been right to look at her with this— This burdening nausea?!

Did it only take that one fucking glance at her bite?! Did the doctor know from her eyes alone?!

.

What— W-What did that bite do to her?

What did it take?!

.

"And men like that will steal it, just because they can."

. "They give reasons that don't ever make sense, because those reasons are for themselves to think."

.

Clementine smacks into a stall door, and down her spine, she nails into its frame. Her heart is hammering. It seizes down her veins. Sirens in her ears. She feels it pang behind her eyes. Or it's all her head, writhing in static.

Belting the moment when the saltblock drops.

Smells it. Tastes the flesh, ever brackish, on her tongue.

Her mouth's dry. Throat's raw. Air is clawing.

.

She can't breathe.

.

The air is clawing, yet her lungs scream for it. 

.

"Because I would rather be the one to ease it away from you than to have it torn from your hands. "I'm sorry."

.

What kind of world is this…?

For the mercy of man to take anyway—if by a tender, wary gesture in remorse's name.

.

Clementine shudders, and her chest swells for that air.

.

Agony finds her jaw for another time. It strikes when she bares her teeth, when Clementine coils into herself. She grapples her head. Her fingers lace through hair. And… And she weeps. There are no whimpers to croon, for she is an orphan with no one to hear. The cold flogs across her bloodied tongue.

There's no granola to soothe this.

Lee's voice will be a mere ghost forevermore.

.

She is alone. Will only ever have the bite to take with her.

.

Clementine n-never asked for this. She never asked for his family. She wanted hers. Mom and Dad—th-that's all she ever wanted. She got Lee instead. Cherished him. Abandoned him. Got bit for it.

Left Omid for citric orchard.

And then lost Christa. In the woods.

.

Blood twines from her mouth. There's salt in her tears. They bathe her tongue, an open wound, in daymare.

She chokes.

.

"A metamorphosis, Clementine…"

.

Her nails dig into either arm when she hugs herself. She keeps the cloth tight on her body. The bite agitates.

.

"A metamorphosis…"

.

"So you feel like you're starving despite being fed not long ago."

.

Did that little girl die in a nightmare?

.

She doesn't know. The monster doesn't know.

There will never be clarity.

For that is a fabled dream.

— — —

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[voltstone]

scav·eng·er | TWDG Retelling | 2

GRANOLA

what has the bite done to her?

[6,070] [Apr.26.2024]

— — —

Second chapter! Yay.

See I can write stuff. >:)

Anyway, hope you enjoy.

:)

— — —

AO3 | FF | Wattpad

[Previous] | [Next]

Nothing they feed her now settles. There's no stomaching the cans, or the bars, or even the hunt Christa manages with her swollen belly, and what Omid cooks fervently over every fire.

Clementine tries—she does—to string herself together, just to force the food down. To no end. It's fruitless.

.

And none of them know what to do.

. . .

IT WAS NOT ENOUGH

. . .

They've noticed her shivering, from time to time. The jacket Christa finds is blue. A dark blue. It fits Clementine, and it hides her away from the breeze and winds.

It's enough.

Clementine nods when Omid asks if it's snug, or cozy. A lie, though. Because it is neither. The jacket is loose to give her the room to grow, and it's…nice, but she's still not warm. She feels it when she sleeps. It's also there when she wakes, with the air biting through. The zipper catches. She can't grow when she's this… This hungry.

And they know.

Both Omid and Christa know because it has to be written across her face by now. Etched in it, if the way her eyes sit, and her smile fades, is anything to go off of. Clementine's just a liar. As it turns out, she has been raised to be one with all white lies and good graces.

This is the most they can manage, for the meantime, whenever she doesn't sleep soundly beside Christa, or lay her head, just to rest herself snug beneath Omid's arm.

.

Morning tends to come drawling.

This one has the sun rise in all shades of yellows to oranges. The trees too, with all the greens instead. They've been slipping their way to spring, and so the leaves are nice. The flowers are nicer.

This morning is also one that has Omid rest his hand over her head for the hundredth time that hour. In the other is a soup can. There's broth and cuts from the few birds they managed the hours before. Clementine smells it. She can't bring herself to reach for the can, or ask for a bite. Even though it's hers, and she doesn't have to ask—it's still a habit—, and she'll have to force it down anyway.

.

"I'm telling you, she feels fine, Christa… It's just. I— "I don't know."

.

Clementine stands miserably.

.

"Well, there's something, Omid. She's barely eaten."

.

And she's pale. And she doesn't ever seem to have the energy to talk—even when she wants to, which isn't often.

She's cold, she's miserable, and, of course, without Lee by her side. Her gun never seems to steady itself in her hands. Clementine can never truly raise it, despite the lasting flecks down its barrel.

.

Then the nightmares. There's those too, where she smells the meat locker, sees a saltlick thrown upon a grown man's head. There's blades and there's gore. Streaks on the walls. Bone chipped across a countertop.

The plates, though. The dining room. It's the quaint light hung above that table, and the cloth dressed over that table, the people sat, the dinner… It's those which steal the light from her world. The locker was reality. That table, and the community sat—they were the unseemly horror, lurking under her nose.

She can't shake it.

In no way can she do such a thing. Not when Clementine hears them gnash their teeth and writhe through the fences. There's rot on their skins. The meat begins to decay before her very eyes, on the plate, at the dinner table.

And the locker.

Their ragged clothes are hanging. Their bodies are swaying. Hooks gouge into their backs. Their dead eyes loll; their jaws sag.

.

Citrus.

The nightmares, from horror to reality, they reek of sweet marmalade.

Strung to rot.

In the sun, then in the rain, then in the mulch.

She hates her name. Loathes when she rocks to sleep. Hates where the jacket scathes the most.

The bite. Of course it's the bite.

.

She just. Doesn't. Understand. Not how. Never why.

It's agonizing. This has only been agonizing.

.

Omid and Christa try something. The week after.

.

Clementine is sat close to the fire, to keep her warm, and in her hands…

Meat.

Red, with the blood burning, and the marbled fat oozed between the musculature.

It's off the thigh of a beaver Omid took hours trying to tackle, before he kicked the dam in. She stares between him and Christa. The blood drips between her fingers. It laces down her nails, streams from her knuckles. The rest of the animal is still over the fire.

This is a desperate hope. Maybe, for whatever reason, she needs her food fresh—borderline raw—, because the cans and boxes they come across, they're okay, they're enough, but they're just about as okay and enough as the jacket on her back. Clementine stares at the slab in her hands again, for too long, the moment Christa assures it is cooked enough. Because that's what everything is now: it's either barren or enough. She's already tired of it. Knows that it's just the beginning, and will remain this way, to the end. But, at least, this wouldn't get her worse. The beaver. She won't get worse from this. Won't get any more sick than— Than she is.

Because Clementine is sick.

And the bite…is a lurking taunt, somewhere behind her eyes.

She does try, though. Clementine finds within herself the words to a white lie, a good grace, as she brings it to her mouth.

.

It's…

Only enough.

.

She wants to cry.

There is only desolation. She's barren, and hollow. Starving.

No tears will come to save her.

.

Clementine gives them a white lie, a good grace, through a nod. A quiet, broken smile as she gnaws on the meat.

.

They see through it though. Their smiles are resigned.

.

It's etched on her face again, the truth.

They don't know what to do.

None of them know what's been done to her.

. . .

DID NOT WANT TO

. . .

The dead are her roaming orchard.

.

Before, they had been a bed of sulfur. There was a sweet melancholy beneath that. More like honey, if set aside in a dark, decrepit corner. It took ages to find normality. She'd often have to bury her head into the motel's bed pillows. Cigarettes have a musk. It is far, far better than rot, even if Clementine felt her head spin for hours in those rooms.

Lee was better to bury her head. He had a musk too, especially whenever the woods leeched to his clothes.

He was her anchor. Before the rot claimed him too.

.

Clementine is…grateful for the bite. For this. For the one, barest favor:

Lee died smelling like one with the roaming dead orchard.

Never sulfur. She is dourly grateful.

.

"I never thanked you properly."

"What do you mean?"

.

"For saving my life, of course."

.

It's another campfire, another night. She chews through the best they could find: a protein bar, though it runs down like cud, the way bile gnaws at her. The raw meals over their fires are intermittent. It's been days since the last. Between then and this bar, there's been rice, and cans, and a little bit of nothing at all.

Their efforts merely stave off this dwelling famine of hers.

Because there's an itching now. It lingers when she wakes, then claws in her sleep.

At least there are hours like these, where Omid's smiling, Christa's laughing, and there's a warmth between them. Sometimes Clementine is caught in the crossfire, and she feels the beginnings of a smile herself. Most times, she's an onlooker, only an onlooker, and there's only orchard, and Lee's shadow behind her eyes.

.

"And now I get to repay you! Once … this thing's not. Um. This."

.

When the fire begins to settle, and they quietly are urging her again to rest her head, Clementine nods. Curls against a tree. Waits.

It doesn't come to her, dreamscape.

Such a thing has become a distant dream in itself as it slips away, between her fingers.

Christa can only bring herself to slip the last blanket they have over her lap. Omid gives his smile; if only it could reach his eyes. Neither do press her. There is no point. Their words are never enough, for this life has succumbed to a miserable parody, where coins drop, and those coins are racing down and around then around again—with momentum to gain and everything to lose—, before they plummet into a pit, the center of it all. A spiral wishing well… One of the many, many things that the world has left behind, and it's one that Clementine clings to. Bitterly. In absent thought.

She doesn't mean to cling. It just happens, whenever she can't sleep, and she slips into habit.

And it is a bad one. Clementine's aware. But, it's the only one she really has now. It's a semblance of something. A normalcy.

.

She just wishes it wasn't as disorientating as those wells.

Clementine did like them, for the record. When they kept themselves in arcades, and not this.

Until tonight, because they haven't kept themselves to where they belong. Tonight, it's this: when the dark rings around her eyes and those blurring thoughts of hers have her spiral, and she smells of copper, and there's nothing to do but the same, and the same. Over and over. Over again. Before she plummets. And there's no knowing what waits her in the dark.

.

Clementine is losing control.

.

The world is smudging. The days are blurring.

What did that man do to her…?

What did following that man do to her?!

.

"It's not so bad."

"'Not so bad?' You just had to be my knight in shining armor!"

"Warrior princess."

.

"What?"

.

It's cold. The fire has died.

Her feet drag, and she's left the blanket behind.

There's an orchard in these trees. Far from her now. Except… Except for one, and it doesn't move.

.

"A warrior princess. "It means we can save each other. But I still have the sword."

.

"Well. Gun, but sure."

.

The corpse is a shell of a walker, and the rotting gravestone of the woman before. She smells sweet. A touch acidic. Tart on the tongue, perhaps, if Clementine…reached into the night.

There's Omid. He steps on a branch behind her. His hand is a careful, soothing gesture on Clementine's shoulder not a moment later.

.

"You'll stick right by my side like before, right?"

"Yeah."

.

"Yeah, I will. "I promise."

.

She doesn't really hear him. He's too unsure in his words, and yet, she can read them. On his face.

Omid is searching. His eyes dart. He is the most sincerely grave she's ever seen. It haunts her, how natural it looks. Like he's worn these eyes and this face enough times in his life for it to fall so seamlessly.

It falls on. It falls off.

The brief frown that crosses him whispers a knowing about him. Murmurs the same—louder—when Omid eyes the walker shell.

He walks her back. Clementine roamed farther than she realized.

.

"I promise."

.

It begins to happen as intermittently as those raw meals. Clementine will start to drift, or she'll stray away. She's a husk herself. There's no telling where her mind will take her.

And one grey morning, she wakes. Clementine stands within her roaming orchard.

The dead do not mind her. The dead do not mind.

.

"I promise."

.

Omid runs. He barrels through the trees. Knocks into her before she's in his arms. Dirt billows. The dead ravage, because they do mind him, and his heart. The one that thrashes against her. His thoughts trill from his mouth. He darts wherever he can. Before he lurches. A hand has snagged him.

He throws her ahead. Snaps at her to run, and there's fear. There is only fear on his face as he writhes to his feet. Flounders for balance.

.

"I promise."

.

The orchard closes in.

There's one stumble too many, and they snare him. Clementine feels her voice shred her throat, and her chest. From the bottom of her heart. It reverberates off her restless stomach.

It's enough.

Omid lunges from the orchard. He untangles himself from their hands. Breaks from their maws.

It's enough to spark the last of his life. He is not unscathed. He is unstable in his strides when he finds her again. They sprint down the path she roamed.

And… And she wandered far again. She wandered far.

.

Doesn't remember how, or why, or when.

.

Just that she was searching for something too. Something like— Like a dream, and there were oranges, and they weren't this rot.

There was Lee. Cigarettes, and then a motel.

Somewhere someplace, behind an orchard.

.

"Good. Then I'll have the chance to pay you back."

.

Each breath Omid scrapes for himself, they rattle in his mouth, whistle from his throat. Flesh hangs from him. Blood seeps.

He has enough life in him to follow Clementine home—that's what he always called Christa, his home.

.

She meets him halfway.

.

Omid reaches for her. Rattles for the gun. Whistles a last sweet gesture.

.

The rifle screams widower. Its bullet gnashes the air. Meets him between the eyes.

He falls heavy, as though the weight of the world had been on his shoulders, and it all followed. First, he plummets to his knees. Then, he tilts. His home fractures. Her world tremors, and he falls. And he's dead.

And Clementine is their onlooker, only their onlooker.

.

"Okay. "Can we play dragons?"

.

"Sounds perfect."

.

For the first time in her life, Christa cries in front of her.

She cries. In anguish. From heartbreak.

.

It's not the same as when tears prick, or her eyes glaze, whenever there's exhaustion, a thorn on her side. Christa… She doesn't cry when life strikes her body. Tears may fall. Her voice might whimper. Those hours do not bring her to her knees like this. Christa never laments. She's never sunk into sorrow's depraved hands.

Until now.

Because this is the first time she has cried for Clementine to witness.

.

And it's her fault.

It's Clementine's fault.

.

Omid doesn't smell like an orchard in death. There isn't citrus. There's none of that sweet acidity. Not on him. He was given that grace. It had been in the name of a lover's mercy.

.

He rests purely on the bed of Christa's grief.

The grass smells like the dew rained from her.

. . .

A BIRTH

. . .

The baby is born fragile. She is born alive.

.

It's an hour where all Clementine can do is be the arm Christa suffocates by one hand, and she's glad to. For once, she's the one helpless, yet there, trying. Within everything—Christa's sweat, and tears, and the blood, then the whimpers she bites into cloth—, Clementine is glad. Won't admit it, finding solace in being the helpless observer, but she… She just is.

And the baby is born.

And Christa actually smiles.

She's still aging by the day, and her hair is not as kept as it used to be. But there is that smile.

.

Beneath that, a quiet worry. The smile is gentle. It can't hide everything, however.

.

The baby is born fragile, weeks too soon, in a time where Christa herself is not as strong as she says she is.

.

Life is just one confusion after another.

That's all the end of the world has taught Clementine. There is no knowing. There's only ever just…this.

Every break in the clouds, it comes with the fact that there are clouds, and there's still a storm brewing. Those glimpses of good are just that. A baby is alive, in her mother's arms, but she's weak. They both are. A girl sits beside them, more in the moment than she is hungry for once. Yet, she still is hungry. There's a famine. She still is sick. The baby has her dad's eyes. Her dad is dead. The girl gnaws on a granola bar, and the mother is humming. She can't find the ease to swallow it down; the murmurs are off-tune.

.

"What about Carley?"

.

Clementine tries to cling to this. It doesn't matter if they're in a bathroom so forlorn despite the evening stirring its light through the window. There is still the light, and the baby is here. So she thinks of names. Many come to mind. Including Diana, though she can't bring herself to that. She can't bring her mom back to memory. So, there's Carley. A close second, or a scrap of the same.

Christa is rocking the baby. Her smile flickers in a kind way, and she nods.

.

"That's a nice name, Clementine."

.

It is.

She decides it's more than enough, and Clementine feels…less hollow. More wistful.

This won't last. They both know it won't.

Neither will tell Carley that, however. Carley Hope, because they really don't need the subtly.

. . .

REALLY DID NOT WANT TO

. . .

Her skin is greying before her very eyes. Her words go hoarse in tandem to the stagger in her stride, and the gasps for air.

Clementine reminds herself of Lee.

She's thought of lunging herself off a ledge, or diving into every river they cross. One would plummet her, straight onto the broken concrete; she'd hope the overgrowth wouldn't break her fall. In the other, her body would thrash; she'd bite her tongue to keep reflex from fighting back.

.

Christa watches her. Helpless with an ailing Carley in her arms.

Because her baby is going pale. Her cries are losing volume, and her arms are more limp now than what they were.

.

There is something wrong, however.

Something very, very wrong.

.

Clementine and Carley, they are not the same.

.

Where she is greying, and where her words go hoarse, Clementine finds a vibrancy in her eyes, upon every reflection. Yellow cleaves best in the dark.

There's an erratic— An erratic stability in her mind. She hears what she shouldn't. She jolts to any and every noise. Sometimes, it's the odd motor miles off, when a car is blaring down a distant road. Other times, it's Carley. Her cries are losing volume; Clementine cannot fathom how blistering they would be to her ears if she wasn't dying—

She's dying. The baby. Clementine knows it. Smells it. Hears it. There's citrus. A slowing heart.

A tremor finds her, down the line. Whenever the baby does manage a scream, Clementine claws to keep her hands away. There's an animal to her. It cannot bear the sound of this— Th-This voice. The crying. Carley's too shrill. It's too sharp to her ears, and Clementine just wants to feel that tug again—the one that tells her to nurture, and soothe, and rock the poor thing back to sleep.

.

She stares at her hands.

Tries to find a prayer.

If only…the dead could pray. Because that's it, isn't it?

Clementine's not sick. She is dead. She's already dead, and bit, and gone.

.

Except she's not.

.

She's ebbing away. Getting stronger. As her skin greys, but her eyes flare, Clementine can weigh the pistol in one hand. Can decide it isn't heavy after all.

Which she does. And once she does, Clementine finds the flare in her eyes. Manages to shoot where Christa guides her—right for the lone meal, grooming its wing. The shot fires. Its echo cracks her skull, and she's on her knees, holding the world together with her hands clapped over her ears, and the ground warbles the more the tears drain into the dirt. She bares her teeth. Gnashes—audibly, she gnashes—back the impulse to lunge at Christa, or the baby, or both at once. The sunlight blinds when her ears seize.

Angry…

This is her angry. And confused. The harrowing, fine line between the two.

.

Clementine wants to gouge, and to tear. She's desperate to feel something—anything—fracture between her hands.

She's small. She knows that.

Whatever lurks within, it doesn't care.

.

She wants to bite.

.

Her mouth is parched. It longs for something. Satiation. A meal.

Agony thrives there.

.

"Clem…! Clementine!"

.

Citrus…

It's wane off the baby, but it's there. Weaker than what she got from Lee. But it is—

It is there.

.

"Clementine, honey, you have to get to your feet… Come on. Please. "Please talk to me."

.

Her ears…are throbbing. The trees and ground are a blotched haze, and when she tries to steer her head to those words— Soft. They're soft, and they're gentle enough. So when she turns for her, for Christa, the haze follows.

.

She collapsed. Just now.

.

Clementine begins to piece together the writhing tracks her nails bestowed into the dirt, and the thrashed streaks her legs left behind. Her stomach aches. Her mind whirls. There are no words. How could there be?

There's something wrong. There's something very wrong.

Christa is helpless to do anything.

Because nothing has worked. It's only been barren, aside for what has been forced down her throat, time and time again. But her throat is sore, because it's never good enough. She's lied. Too many times, Clementine has. It's never good enough.

.

They find a modest Bed and Breakfast. It's a sweet, little old cottage.

.

Christa starts its fireplace. She's given the time on her own, with Carley quiet in her arms. Clementine keeps to herself. Sits on the bench outside the front door, on the patio. Her body is rattled. It's plagued by exhaustion, even though she snaps to every lurch through the trees, where a walker or few trip over themselves.

.

In that hour, alone on that bench, Clementine understands.

.

Her hand is grappled over her sleeve. The bite grates against the cotton.

.

She understands what the man did, better than he could've known. She understands what's happened. Knows now, what it is she longs for. What her stomach, her famine, has crooned.

Bile climbs for her mouth, because there are no tears left.

.

Walkers.

The dead around her.

They are why she can smell the way she does. They are why she can listen for them, and why her eyes are searing across the night.

Clementine craves them. To the marrow.

Because she's dead, but also not.

She craves them.

. . .

HAD TO

. . .

This is the same trance that lured her before.

The one that killed Omid.

.

Clementine slugs down the path she follows. Her vision fades between the footprints Christa leaves behind, and the shadows amid the trees. The clothes on her back, she barely feels. The jacket is the same; she wears the hood over her ballcap to hide herself away. She knows the shirt beneath is a purple. Vaguely. Clementine wasn't all there in…wherever they found these clothes. Because she's dragging herself. Can barely hear it, never mind feel it, yet Clementine knows. Somewhere beneath the starvation, she knows.

It's not hunger anymore. Yes, there's traces of broth on her tongue, and down her throat. She's forced another meal down.

Her body doesn't want any of it. Her stomach screams. Her mind idles, then it convulses.

Does so now. Seizes her stomach mid-stride.

.

Clementine vomits.

.

There's a fire. Christa's cobbled together a tent, and the baby rests.

She keeps her back to all of it. The fire, where she can't bear the light anymore. Christa too, because her voice is— It irritates her. Irritates the agony in her ears. Something festers. Clementine can't stifle it. Not when her stomach screams again.

Not as citrus looms in the air. Some steams of Carley, but it's feeble. Clementine stares out into the shadows instead. There's one there. It doesn't move. There aren't any eyes to trace in the dark.

.

She's walking.

.

The moonlight blurs if she stares long enough, before she's rattled, and she searches again. Her nose guides her. Clementine scrapes the ground with her eyes, then her dragged heel.

.

Finds it. The walker.

.

It is where Christa shot it down. The rifle stole most of its face.

Clementine sinks to her knees. Her breath froths the air, and she's clawing into the body. It's older. Still with a suit and tie. The corrosion in its blotched skin, it frays to her fingertips with ease. Her face is wet. She's— She's crying. Can't tell the difference between the revulsion and relief anymore. There's anger, though. The desperation.

.

Brittle.

She doesn't know when she's brought a strip of this corpse to her mouth, but when she does feel her mouth, Clementine finds it brittle. The flesh, all that the walker has left with its abdomen hollow the way it is. Then she digs where she can—to the chest. It's softer. And there's citrus rot. That sweet, rancid marmalade…

Except, she's confused. Has to be. It doesn't taste rancid. This walker is decayed. He likely was on his way to an office, years ago. He is decayed. And rancid, yet all she has in her mouth is citrus, or marmalade, and meat. A rough, brittle texture. Hates it. Keeps gnawing. Doesn't mind the dark gore down her arms. But she does. In her heart, she does.

Honest.

It's just that, Clementine's hand is also tearing into the lungs. Her hand grazes the last of this corpse's literal heart.

.

Her tears begin to salt the meat.

It adds flavor.

.

She has been famished all this time.

.

The smog is clearing. The trance.

Where moonlight finds her, the more this body looks…like what it is. A body.

His hair was dark once. He wasn't tall, nor anything beyond slim. The walker after him, it tore open its hands. Half of its torso had long since dragged behind itself, before rotting away completely. A leg bent at both knee and ankle. The other is locked straight.

.

Clementine slows. Then stalls.

The world collapses around her.

.

"Clementine…?"

.

She's panicked. So Clementine hesitates, and those angry, desperate tears well again. Christa wants to say another word. Maybe it's her name again. Beyond that, however, she hears the rifle's safety.

There's a debate. To lunge at her. Have Christa panic more than she already is—see the whites of her eyes before the sentience—, and shoot Clementine down.

However, the urge has nothing on the human who still dwells within. The part of her she has refused to let go, one way or another.

.

Clementine slowly raises her hands. She climbs to her feet. There's a sob within that, as though it's the lamb in her, gnawing on her wolf's clothing.

.

The look on Christa's face says it all.

There's gore strung from Clementine's mouth, and it's damp from the tears she's spilled over the corpse. There is no red on her hands. Only black, and it smells of citrus rot. Flesh grows soft in her mouth. She doesn't swallow, no matter how much she salivates to. Because her eyes are pleading. Clementine may stand there, begging for forgiveness. Or, she begs to be shot anyway. She doesn't know. Just that her stare is the only staunch reminder of humanity, and every tear leaked from her is the agony of it all.

.

"I— I-I don't know what's h-happening to me."

.

This is the most conscious she has been for a week.

Clementine realizes how clear the world could be—has been—, and how many aches have found her. She burns in her shoes. Her legs shiver, and her shoulders throb. She keeps her hands raised, however. Lacerations scald her palms. Cuts all along her arms, and then her legs, those burn just as well.

Through all she can gather, Christa stares. The rifle falters in her hands.

.

"Ch-Christa, what's h-happening?!"

.

There is no answer. Only anguish, for Christa has watched this unravel for too long, and she must have realized it herself, the inevitable. This had been an inevitable. Clementine has stared at the bodies for too long. May have done with a gleam in her eye, one that strived for this resolve. Perhaps it has merely been denial starving her. Her own, and Christa's.

Horror breeds in Christa's face. But in her eyes, with the anguish, there's forbearance. It is, indeed, forbearance.

An inevitable then… The bite, this is what it's done.

She has known. She—

They both have known.

.

"Please… Please t-talk to me… I-I can't stop it. I—"

"I don't know."

.

Carley cries.

They both snap to attention. To console her.

Not that Clementine tries to get close. She tremors from afar.

.

Clementine paces.

Her mind is secure. Maybe. It might not be. She is pacing though, and every step isn't lagging.

It's another night, or it's the same one. Doesn't know. The days blur together regardless, it doesn't make a difference, because she doesn't dare sleep again. It's in vain. The nightmares do not care. She feels them in all her waking breaths. Still smells them too. The dead are everywhere. They do not stop roaming. And Carley, she is…quiet, and she smells like them. She smells so much like—

Like them.

.

No. Carley is silent.

Christa has slipped off somewhere. Down a road. Some road, someplace. Nearby, but that is all Clementine can gather.

.

Clementine freezes. Her throat pangs. She meanders to the same cobbled tent, and she realizes this one had been a haphazard attempt. Christa— She was in a rush. Another panic. A different panic.

She folds the tarp back, just enough for the moonlight to cast over her shoulder. And there, in a makeshift basket she barely recognizes, is Carley. Submerged in shadows. The last cry of hers hadn't been. It had been the dead's.

Did she not move to console the baby…? There's grime on her hands. The mulch makes it hard to tell if the warmth is from the fire, or if it is red. 

She staggers back. Hears Christa by the fire. She carries a trowel in one hand, then a fitted sheet in the other. Clementine's voice cracks. No words can trudge through the gore still clogged in her throat.

.

"You're back…"

.

Doesn't understand.

.

Christa stands, limp by relief, because her eyes are on Clementine, and they grow soft. To the likes of rubble rather than sheer stone.

Her hair is streaked of grey. There's lines in her face. More than Clementine thought.

Resignation. It's all it is.

.

"This wasn't you."

.

"You— You were back at the body again."

.

…the rifle—

Did the rifle steal the walker's face, or had that been her?

Was it Clementine that pulled the walker's torso apart, or— Or not…?

.

Clementine stands there. Dazed.

Doesn't remember.

Thought she did. Absolutely did not.

.

By the end, the jacket is thrown away. It is burned to ash.

This deranged part of her whimpers. Wanted to drag her tongue and reap all of what was stained.

.

Carley is buried with care.

For the second time in her life, Clementine sees her cry.

. . .

NEEDED TO

. . .

They stumble into a routine.

Mornings are dreary. Nights are worse. The hours between are a lagging odyssey from wherever they wake to wherever they find a quiet place for a fire.

Some days, they don't talk at all. Clementine sees Omid and Carley in her face, and they pale Christa, to a bleak shade of exhaustion. Other days, she's…warm. At least, warm enough, because anything more than that is something Clementine will just have to yearn for as she walks to her roaming grave.

The days between are another odyssey. She'll beg for an answer, or a conversation.

It's the same as prying a water bottle, or a last granola bar, from a hand locked by rigor mortis.

.

Whenever her skin begins to grey, and Clementine fidgets to any and every sound, Christa finds one.

A walker.

She's always so weary when she drags it to Clementine. Numb in the face. Void in the eyes. Like she questions where and why the hell life brought her here.

.

Clementine questions the same.

.

She does know now that this is desperation's bane, and it will never leave her.

This is for slipping away from Lee, his arms, for the sake of a family already dead, already rotting.

Still though, she does question it.

Clementine longs for the answer why she isn't just dead herself. Pines for the day when she is.

.

"Scavenger, then…"

.

There's a fireplace between them now. For once, they've strayed close to a town. Found an apartment complex, and it's fortunate, how much food there is left behind. She figures the town was evacuated, then left alone, for a long while. It's quaint. It's out of the way. None of the freeways crawl near the place.

Clementine looks at Christa. She finds the woman contemplative, and after a thought, she realizes that Christa has been. For the past few nights, whenever Clementine tries to roll over and sleep.

.

"You feed off the dead. That makes you a scavenger."

.

Christa explains what they are, and what they do. There's scant traces of a teacher saying the same, back in school.

Clementine nods along like she did back then. She listens to Christa now. Is far more engrossed.

.

Because this is…an answer. It's good enough.

.

Scavengers are animals. They feast off of the dead. They don't hunt. They wait.

Except, it is still strange, because Clementine does hunt. She can't wait.

Her dead roam, and she just can't seem to find the patience.

.

"Am I … still human?"

"I don't know."

.

"You're not one of them though. That's…  "That's all that really matters."

.

It's good enough.

That's all that Clementine hears from her. That is all Clementine knows now.

A mantra. It's become life's mantra—good enough.

.

They sit quietly at the foot of the fireplace. Her mind wanders. She tries to find more answers in what a teacher had said, but Clementine doesn't remember. Not the teacher, not really the class or its room. Science, if she had to guess. Something like that.

If only she had been more intrigued that day. Her slip in attention bites her now.

At least…, her skin is olive again. Almost a sienna now, the more Clementine finds the sun. The fireplace doesn't singe her eyes either—not beyond what it would do anyway. She can laze between the different hues. The cracks of the fire itself are not thorns dug into her ears. She's okay. It won't last for long. Still hungry. Still craves them. But… But she is okay.

.

Christa feeds her a granola bar. She eats it quietly, to her own corner.

.

It goes down like a dream.

Aside…for the hollow pit it lands in.

.

Goes down like a dream, yet it hardly satiates this waking nightmare.

AO3 | FF | Wattpad

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[voltstone]

scav·eng·er | TWDG Retelling | 1

"But we don't eat monsters." "Yeah, but if we could, we probably would..."

At least, that's what Clementine tells him. Because AJ doesn't need to know how warm the fresh ones are on the tongue, nor how decayed flesh claws on the way down.

[The times she scavenged, the times her secret was caught, and the one bite that started it all.]

— — —

Basically I took my creative liberties and ran with them. Head-first. Into…whatever this is. (Based off of the most out of pocket dialogue prompt, which this post is about.) I will blast through all the seasons, so. A full retelling! :D With cannibalism! And gore! And Clementine is not a-okay!! >:D

However, I did decide that I will have to break it apart for pacing, and stuff. But I will post the story in-full as well if people want to read it that way when I'm 100% done. This is the first part of…I dunno yet. But each part will effectively go through each season, or however I think to do it.

Now this is mature, and I did tag it dead dove. Because. Cannibalism, technically. And like. Violence. And stuff. But genuinely though, it is written to be unhinged. Lol.

Anyway. Hope you enjoy!

:)

AO3 | FF | Wattpad

THE BITE

she did not ask for this. it hurts.

[2,721] [Apr.25.2024] — — —

"The first thing that changes, sweetie, is the smell of them."

.

"It will only take a couple hours. They'll all … start smelling sweet, more like a citrus."

.

Clementine whimpers. She holds her hand tightly around her arm, up towards her shoulder where he wrangled the dress. Her throat's raw. She's swirling over the conversations Lee had with her, after her hair was grabbed, and he had to explain why the St. John brother horrified her the way he did. The other one. With shadows around his eyes, and a smile that always twitched around her.

Amongst that, Lee admitted why he killed him the way he did—pitchfork at hand.

He horrified him too.

.

She decides though, as she scrambles away from this man, that it isn't the same.

The man is good with his words, for one, and there's a…sincerity to him. A genuine one, but there's something to his face that Clementine never could've seen through the radio.

He's tall. Gangly.

And in his face, there's something not quite right. It's not the blood—her blood—he wipes from his mouth by a gentle hand. It lies beneath that.

.

Insanity.

.

"It hurts, I know. That's what my daughter said too. And that's what I felt when Tess bit me."

.

This is insanity.

It doesn't matter how well he preens it, this is insanity, and he just… He just—

He. Bit. Clementine.

Didn't look happy about it, and he still doesn't. But he just. He bit her, and hard, like he meant it anyway. He continues look at her like he means it, right with all the ramblings about his family, and how nice they are, and how she'd fit right in. At least, after he gets a proper brush for her. Her hair's quite a bit different from his daughter's.

. "I don't really understand what it is either, or what does it. "I just know…, biting you, you can be a part of my family this way."

.

"You've already met my wife… You can join my daughter in the backseat. You just have to keep quiet, and she won't do anything to you."

.

She doesn't really listen to what he says. There's too much of the day's horror racing through her body.

It's the bafflement, however, that strikes her mute.

Because this man bit her, and it isn't something Clementine can just wrest from herself. It spins and twirls until she feels an unease build, and she's about to vomit, her heart's thrashing beneath her palm…

She can't. She's barely eaten enough to force the urge.

.

It's dark in the bathroom. He's tall. Looming over her. 

And.

And Clementine's been bit. He stares at her as though it means the same as every other bite, yet it doesn't, because he's not dead. 

.

She knows how long his teeth are.

They sank far too deep for any genuine, sincere man in his right mind.

.

"She won't do anything."

.

Clementine hides in the bathtub for the longest while. Ducks right into it, the moment he shuts the door, and she hears him string the handle, then tie it to the closet across from her.

Every now and then, she dozes. Not because she wants to. She's desperate to stay awake. Yet Clementine is small, and she's tired, and there's no fighting this. It's an exhaustion she never could have fathomed. There's strange nightmares she can't quite place, and they rattle her back where her eyes fly open, the ceramic's cold, she doesn't want to sleep. There is nothing to see in them, those nightmares. Just a desolation, and a twisted ache down her throat. She smells gore in them. Can almost feel the blood and bone bathe down her skin, then crack in her hands.

The meat… There's meat.

In her mouth.

And she chews. And Clementine swallows.

.

She doesn't understand.

.

There is one nightmare she sees. It knocks her head into the ceramic tub by the time she wakes again.

.

A farm. Dairy. Except there's only slaughter. There's butcher across tile. The barn's locker rots.

Clementine never ate there. Never the meat. Not a bite.

Lee saved her back then. He did.

.

Lee saved her. He'll save her.

Again, and again.

.

He begins to be what she stirs to.

Her sweat's cold. The world blurs when the tears come.

Before Clementine is lost to nightmare for another time.

.

Then...

She snaps upright. Finds herself clambering from the bathtub and to the door. Her head is a smog, but she… Clementine can hear them both. Her voice rattles from her. She doesn't quite hear what she says— All she knows is Lee. At least, she thinks. Hopes so.

.

A citrus bleeds from the door, and to her nose.

.

It's likely the man's. He is bit, and his eyes are not quite as…human as he tells himself.

He's just…not dead, exactly.

Not truly alive either. His gaunt complexion tells her so, and the weary treble in his voice. Or he's always just been like that. Sickly looking, if not just plain unnerving.

Clementine can't really tell. It's hard to piece together a person like him, amidst the self-hatred. A loathing, if anything.

Because she fell for it. Fell for his words, the promise for her family. Even though…, Clementine knew, in the back of her mind, it's too good to be true. A random voice on the radio, how could he have known her and her parents? And Savannah? And Lee, and Macon, and everything between?

.

Simply put…

That random voice knows, because she told him herself.

Told him everything.

.

The fight for the world's clarity stands no better with her at the door. She sags against the wall. Her arm pangs. The bathroom is…cold, beneath her feet.

Frigid, even, the more the stupid girl's remorse blisters her.

This is what desperation has brought. It opened its mouth for her. His long teeth. And she stared. Looked at this gifted horse in the mouth; discovered a reason to run.

.

"Yeah. I'm not some cannibal, Lee."

.

Lee… So he has come to save her.

She knew he would. Clementine just knew he would.

It's enough to spark urgency. She stands.

.

"Some killer out in the woods. Some v-villain…"

.

That man is a liar, though. Lee is here, but the man is a liar.

Unless…, what he's done really wasn't murder, nor a kidnapping.

.

"I'm just a … dad."

.

Perhaps. Maybe that is right.

.

Still however. Clementine decides then and there to creep from the bathroom.

She makes sure to keep her sleeve down, and her dress over her shoulder. Because she isn't bitten. Not really.

.

The same way that man didn't murder.

.

"Have you ever hurt somebody you care about?" "My wife."

.

Clementine tries the handle first. It twists, yet the string holds it firm.

She almost weeps. Or she does, and her head is too numb to know.

The bathroom is all the more darker, and her exhaustion grows all the more heavy.

.

"I hurt her a long time ago. "In a lot of ways…"

.

Lee sounds… He sounds weaker than he did last night.

Exhaustion slinks from his mouth. It worms the same in her ears—the same as her own. There's a wavering, and then a husk. Like there's not enough life to draw from. And it says something—says a lot, actually—how much stronger the man with his treble is in his words. He's steady. He carries an unruly intention.

And Lee…, he sounds tired. And bleak. Mostly bleak. Doesn't talk much.

Clementine doesn't want to believe the strained breaths cleaving the room is him.

.

"I hurt her so bad."

.

"I hurt her so bad."

.

The man's wife has her head in his bowling bag.

She rolls in it. Smudges the tearstreaks left behind.

.

"I hurt her so bad."

.

Clementine flares the last of her strength. She swallows down the last of the dairy farm as it twitches for another nightmare.

She clasps the handle. Twists it, and tests the string. She doesn't want to get caught. Noise is her bane, and she knows the man has an ear for her.

.

"Do I look like a monster to you?"

.

She has to bide her time. It's daunting.

However, Clementine listens for the moment where he's engrossed, and the man is sunk back into his writhing sanity. He likes to ramble. Did it a lot that day, and he even did it routinely on the radio. On and on and on about his wife, and his kids.

Family.

It's always family with him. Family, and being a father, a husband, and having his nice daughter.

.

"She's already a part of my family now… "There's no reason for you to have come, Lee."

.

"I smell it on you. You're not going to last."

.

There he goes again.

Clementine pulls the door just enough for the string to strain, and for her to untangle its knot. It snaps back for the open closet.

The man talks to his wife again. He stares into his bowling bag, and she knows the wife's head to roll again.

She meets Lee by his eyes. He's… He's missing an arm, and he looks ghastly. Drained too. Yet, he has enough strength to nod for the side-dresser, and when her eyes follow, there glints a cleaver.

.

"Hey, honey. I think this is all going to work out."

.

It's tight in her hand.

The dairy farm ravages to the blood she ignores down its blade. Clementine hears the groaning instead. The wife. Can almost make out the nonsense the man pulls a few words from.

.

"I'm glad too. "I wish you wouldn't have had to get this bad, but it's all over hon. Isn't it?"

.

"I hate seeing you like this. I just miss your smile, honey."

.

Her strides to him are careful. Clementine keeps herself far from his eye, his peripheral. Lee tenses, though in his face, there's a quiet resolution. His eyes dart between the man, then her.

Clementine raises the cleaver. Moonlight darts along the wall when she does. Her hands tremble; the moonlight does too. She can't help it.

.

"I miss you so much, Tess. You're gonna like Clementine a lot, though. She's not Lizzy, but she's sweet. "She wouldn't hurt a fly."

.

Clementine sinks the cleaver deep. Thinks of it as a bite for a bite.

.

The man lunges away from her, and he reaches for the blade plunged into his shoulder.

Lee hurls his weight across the table, and knocks into the man. The fight is blurring. Clementine strafes, feels her heart soar when Lee buckles him into the wall.

Before he curls. The fight is too much for him. The man is strong in his intentions.

His hands are around Lee's neck. The gun is heavy in her hands. She trembles again. Aims. The world is whirling, except for Lee, and for the man, and the bullet she punctures through his crown.

.

She—

Clementine just shot him.

Just shot the man.

He's dead.

.

Bafflement finds her again. Locks her there, in place. Trembling. Air doesn't come easy. Her heart does well to scald her, and it's restless.

It names itself shock, however. She's not inclined to argue.

There's a look in Lee's eyes. Gratitude, but the shock as well. It rattles them both.

.

She cries. He consoles. But air doesn't come easy, nor do the words to her mind.

When he dawns her back her Dad's hat, however… The world doesn't cage her anymore.

It's not as cold.

It's still a desolate shade of moonlight.

.

A walker stands at the door. The citrus is pungent in the room. There were traces before.

With the dead looming in the doorway, however, it swamps her now.

And the gore Lee lathers down her clothes makes it worse. A thousand times worse. Because the citrus is like… It's like the oranges she plucked from at a fieldtrip's orchard. It's sweet. She can't tell if she's about to vomit or not. She sweats. It's cold again. Lee mistakes both for terror. Or, it's that she's the one mistaken, and this isn't anything beyond a break in sanity.

.

Her parents are dead.

They have been.

.

She sees them, when Lee guides her into the dead's orchard.

.

"The first thing that changes, sweetie, is the smell of them."

.

"The second thing…"

.

The second thing… There's a second thing. It rattles somewhere. She can only see the red jacket he held for her. The same she refused before.

The same that… The same that Lee—

Lee's falling.

.

His voice trails after him. He stumbles too, the more she whimpers and pulls at his shoulder. He isn't limp. He is not awake.

But he does move. Her arm throbs, Clementine trips over herself, and Lee is staggering after her. With a haze in his eyes. He shoulders into anything and everything.

The dead don't mind. Not really.

.

They don't mind him. Nor her.

.

Clementine's left to pull him into a store. She finds a string. Reaches for it.

The gate it guides slams to the floor once gravity has its say.

They are alone, her and Lee. Secure. There is no leaving… Which frightens him. More than the St. John brother ever did.

.

Clementine knows he's bit before he says it.

.

It's the sweet citrus.

The same that washes off the walkers, it leaks from Lee in steady waves.

.

It just breaks her heart, knowing that… That he really is a-about to— To die.

.

There's no time to tell him about her bite. She wouldn't have had the heart to regardless, nor the mind.

So she clings to his words. Nods to Lee, when he tells her to keep moving.

.

Lee doesn't have to tell her what to do next. Clementine knows.

So when he runs out of energy, and time, and mind…

She just knows.

.

"I'll miss you."

.

The gun is the heaviest when she raises it to his head.

. . .

SOMETHING WAS VERY WRONG

. . .

There is no fever. She doesn't understand, because it is not a fever, it's this brisk chill across her body, beneath the morning sun.

Maybe it's from lingering beside Lee's body for longer than she should have. Or, it's from stalking in the shadows where the walkers couldn't quite reach.

Yet, no. Those were the quiet lies she told herself, before reality wormed its way the moment she found them. Or, when they found her—none of them can decide. The more they hug her, the more Omid squeezes her shoulder and Christa holds her from her from the weary ground, the more Clementine realizes this for what it is:

The bite.

And it's rough against cotton. Cold too, like the deep inhale before something really, really bad happens, and now her body teems of it, and her head swims to every sharp clap of gunfire. Her eyes too, because the world warbles whenever Clementine passes wherever the sun is strongest.

This is the same cold which agonized her body in the Marsh House. In the bath, then in the room—with Lee's rattled breaths, and the walker splayed beside them both. It's the cold she fought against. Fell asleep to. Would awake to.

It feels like her body has been disturbed. As though…she herself, to her core, hasn't grasped what hit her.

Except that it has a name, and its name is dread.

.

It takes months for the hunger to set in.

[Next] AO3 | FF | Wattpad

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As much as I enjoy writing stories for the sake of catharsis, I do enjoy being unhinged and writing this kind of thing too. Cuz it can be fun. Once you get past the concerning things. Again, I am breaking it up for pacing's sake, so shorter chapters. My little writer gut tells me shorter chapters good, actually. For this. So the TBC will have a link to the next post once I'm done.

Hope you enjoyed so far! :)