#we'll get to unhinged clementine first we gotta do depression

[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.

:)

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AO3 | FF | Wattpad

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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.

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