⊱ 07 ~ ❝ no reason to weep ❞ ⊰
〖season one, episode six〗

In the movie Hercules, three little ladies tried to cut the demigod's lifeline ⎯⎯ but it rebounded, much stronger than it was before, signifying his transformation into a God.

Clementine was no God or Demigod ⎯⎯ those three ladies didn't end her life at that moment as her eyes adjusted to the light. She would survive, but come out as the same being she was already, a little girl.

"Hello," Rick called out, leading the way through the double doors, his gun firmly held in hand as he looked around for whoever had granted them access to the building.

A distant sound of a gun cocking back echoed off the vaulted ceilings and high walls. Everyone stopped short and looked for the source. "Anybody infected?"

Within the shadows stood a disheveled, blonde-haired, man. The one who had asked the question, and was also holding on tightly to a weapon. He looked no better than they did ⎯⎯ minus the dirt and blood nowhere to be seen on his clothes.

"One of our group was," Rick responded, his voice loud enough to hear, but his tone was small. It wasn't easy to talk about someone's dead loved one right in front of them. He couldn't look at Clementine as he said it, everyone knew it was Jim he was speaking of. "He didn't make it..."

"Why are you here? What do you want?"

"A chance."

It was a standoff filled with unanswered questions and a mixture of curious and worried gazes. "That's asking an awful lot these days."

Clem squeezed her hands into fists till her nails pressed into the palms of her hands. "You opened the door."

The man's eyes darted to meet Clementine's like he hadn't realized there were any children with them despite Rick having screamed bloody murder that they had women and children. It was thirteen against one ⎯⎯but half of them didn't even have a weapon to defend themselves.

"You all submit to a blood test. That's the price of admission."

"We can do that."

"You got stuff to bring in, you do it now. Once this door closes it stays closed."

All the men who were carrying the rear scurried out of the door, grabbing the duffle bags, backpacks, and guns they had set down in the midst of chaos. One of the duffle bags was slung over T-Dog's shoulder ⎯⎯ and Clementine immediately recognized it as her father's. The one she found her brother's shirt in.

She'd wondered if that shirt was back in the bag, or still tucked beneath the pillow, left abandoned in the loaned tent that got left behind.

Clem quickly grabbed it, pulling the strap off T-Dog's shoulder and wrapping her arms around it like he would take it back. "I can carry it for you?" He offered, hand outstretched.

He withdrew his hand as she shook her head, squeezing it tighter. There were too many things she could say ⎯⎯ and her ability to blurt how she felt about everything was overwhelmed with all the options, sticking with one word.

"No... "

• ───────────────── •

Dr. Edwin Jenner. That was his name, and he was a little weird.

Based on his tousled appearance, Clementine also wasn't very inclined to believe he was a real doctor.

Everyone crammed into the elevator, forced to stand incredibly close in awkward silence that Clementine couldn't participate in when she had so many questions ⎯⎯ she had to break the insufferable quietude.

"What kind-a doctor are you?" Nothing about a new guy harbored any good possibilities in her mind ⎯⎯ but frankly ⎯⎯ she rarely ever jumped to positive conclusions anyways. One thing, he looked more depressed and lacking sleep than dangerous, despite the gun in hand.

"Yeah, Doctors always go around packin' heat like that?" Daryl bounced off Clem, using her nosiness to ask his own question.

Edwin Jenner looked around, everyone was curious ⎯⎯ he couldn't avoid answering. "There were plenty left lying around. I familiarized myself. But you look harmless enough." He stated, looking at all three of the children in the center of the elevator. Carl, his hands firmly pressed to his sides, Sophia holding the doll Eliza gave her, and Clem clutching onto a duffle bag like the cure was inside. It must've been a sight to see. "Except you. I'll have to keep my eye on you." He joked, looking pointedly at Carl.

"Or don't."

"Clementine..." Dale started, about to tell her to calm down or loosen up.

The doctor lifted a hand waving Dale off, to stop him before he could continue. "No, no. She's okay. I'd be a lil off kilter too if my dad brought me into a place I didn't recognize." He explained, loosely motioning to Rick ⎯⎯ assuming he was her father.

An instant tension tangled within the group, and silence fell upon the elevator. The only sound was the faint hum of the machine moving.

"He's not my dad." Her voice was soft, coming out like the true child she was, but in her mind, she screamed. How dare he? Every mention, every thought involving him ⎯⎯ made her want to throw up, cry, and scream all at once.

A knowing look was shared between Jenner and Rick. Nobody else stood up to claim the girl as theirs, so he came to the conclusion that the girl was in fact alone. The people she was with ⎯⎯ were just pulling her along for the ride.

• ───────────────── •

I'm it.

A statement not even Clementine's wild imagination could have conjured up. This one guy, was all that was left? Unbelievable. Even more unrealistic with how gigantic the damn building was ⎯⎯ no way he was all there was.

The blood withdrawal went by smoothly except for the crippling anxiety that rushed through Clementine when she saw the needle. She hid it like a champ, not wanting to be the person to make a big deal of it. After all the ways they'd seen her act in the past twenty-four hours, freaking out over a needle was one she would not let people see. There was no reason to weep over something so insignificant when she couldn't even cry at the abandonment of her father.

The so-called doctor took them to a cafeteria when he was told none of them had eaten in days. The cafeteria had wine, an abundance of powdered versions of food, and more assorted snacks.

It was a self-proclaimed party for their arrival, or possibly just for the free food. Everyone was joyous ⎯⎯ at least most of them.

Dale was passing wine to Lori, a full glass when Clem considered she didn't belong with the people around her at that moment. Not because of the wine, Lori, or Dale. Just the whole situation wasn't for her. She didn't fit in the mold and needed out.

She picked up her duffle bag and started to leave the room.

Nothing they were talking about was something she wanted to hear or participate in conversation with. The wine was useless to her, and she had yet to feel hunger at all. Daryl looking like a kind human being didn't interest her either. They could have fun, none of it mattered. She just wanted to be alone.

T-Dog was already facing the exit from where he sat at the table. "Aye, Clem. Where ya goin'?"

An exasperated sigh left her lips as people turned to look at her curiously ⎯⎯ pitifully. Rick tilted his head like he was trying to read her mind. Lori's smile held weakly, trying to hide the sorrow for the girl. Dale with his bushy white brows furrowed worriedly.

Clementine shrugged, finally looking at T-Dog. "Tired."

• ───────────────── •

Jenner didn't show them anything other than the cafeteria yet, but on their way, he did point down a hall telling them that it was where they could sleep. So, Clementine found her way back to that hall, wandering, opening door after door.

Behind one door was a room with three pinball machines lined up on a wall, bookshelves on another, and a little seating area.

While the rest of them ate dinner, Clem sat on the floor of the apparent activities room. It was about time she looked in the duffle bag to see what she had left of her family name.

There was another pair of her jeans, her holey socks, and a couple of her father's worn and grimy-looking shirts he used to wear to work every day. Folded at the bottom was the shirt she had set out to find in the first place.

A Linkin Park merchandise he had gotten at a concert with his friends. It was much too big for her. Miles was a teenager and already almost the same height as their mother, but Clementine wouldn't let the shirt go.

All she had now was a rock and a couple of T-shirts.

Chatter filled the hall and Clementine looked up as the door opened ⎯⎯ stuffing everything back inside the bag. "There you are." Rick sighed. "Jenner showed us to the rooms. You're welcome to sleep with us."

Clem shook her head lightly, squeezing the cloth tighter in her arms. "I'm fine."

"Okay, let's go find you one, then."

• ───────────────── •

Rick was tense ⎯⎯ more so than Clementine, and she was always on edge. He wholeheartedly blamed himself for Jim's untimely demise in all aspects he could illogically blame himself for. Behind closed doors, Lori had been sure to reassure her husband he only followed through with a dying man's wishes, but it did little to comfort him.

There was a looming desire to make up for his choices ⎯⎯ do as Jim asked and take care of Clementine as if she was his child. After all, she needed someone far more than he needed to redeem himself, and he knew that.

He brought her to a room at the end of the hall, where he didn't see anyone go into when Jenner was showing the space to them. There were few bedrooms. Most of the doors led to sitting areas or offices with couches.

Inside the room, there was a bathroom to the left. "You should shower while you can, Edwin Jenner said there was hot water."

Clementine's eyes lit up, she hadn't taken a proper shower in a devastatingly long time. And hot water? She'd never thought the sound of heated water would bring her so much joy. She closed the toilet seat, setting her duffle bag on top of the lid. "I haven't washed my hair in a while... Tell me, does it smell like dead men?"

She grabbed a fistful of her hair, raising it up for him to smell, a soft smile dancing on her lips. For the time being, all her worries and pain had faded into the background noise.

Rick cracked a smile, chuckling at her always entirely unfiltered words. He took a whiff of the hair being held out to him. "Just a little dirty, that's all." He confirmed, turning to look in the cabinets and drawers. Under the sink, he found a two-in-one shampoo and conditioner. Behind it, a bodywash with a picture of green apples and little pink flowers on the front.

While he turned on the shower, flicking the lever just a little toward the red line, Clem tossed her dirty clothes to the floor, stepping into the shower afterward.

It was warm ⎯⎯ a warmth she had begun to miss at night, tucked in her bed with all her blankets piled on top. Even under all the blankets, cocooned in warmth, she insisted on her ceiling fan and a box fan blasting all night.

The proper shower was a luxury she hadn't experienced for quite some time, and it was quickly softening tension in her muscles she hadn't even acknowledged being there. She quickly became oblivious to everything and everyone.

"I'll leave the bottles here," Rick said from the other side of the curtain, setting the bottles down just outside of the curtain where she could grab them.

She quickly pulled the curtain back just enough to peak out, eyebrows scrunched up. "You're gonna leave?"

The man in front of her didn't have any experience raising a daughter. He had no idea what the right things were to say. He knew how to parent Carl. Carl was fairly independent in the sense of doing things on his own, and Rick only knew what he learned from being his father. Not for even a second, did he consider the girl may not have been used to being left alone when doing something as simple as bathing.

"You want me to stay?"

She bit the inside of her cheek, realizing that perhaps he didn't want to be the one stuck taking care of her. The man probably didn't want the responsibility of a parentless child. He just wanted the kid to stop smelling like muck most likely.

Growing up her family was fairly poor, most showers ⎯⎯ she took with her mother to save hot water. If it wasn't a shower with her mom, someone was usually close by in case the overly anxious child needed something.

No immediate yes or no came as a response, and Rick didn't want to wait for her to shut down and say she didn't need him when she was just beginning to have a smile on her face. "I can stay." He snatched up the two-in-one sitting on the edge of the toilet seat, her duffle bag behind him. "Here, wash that deadmen-scented hair of yours."

She giggled, grabbing the bottle, and putting a good puddle of the soap in her palm. "Thank you."

Most of the time it was silence as he sat there, he could hear her behind the curtain faintly humming to herself as she lathered her hair. When the humming started sounding far too familiar she silenced, passing the bottle back to him.

The white bubbles rinsed out of her hair, and by the time it got to the shower drain it had turned more off-white, with some red splattered within. She truly needed a shower more than she had realized, and she didn't even get to the body wash yet.

Rick held her hands steady as he poured some of the body wash in her hands. "Make sure you get your back, sweetheart, and your legs." He motioned to her knees which were scuffed up with dirt ⎯⎯ her jeans must've been wearing down on her knees faster than she thought.

Within another five to ten minutes, she was done. All the now dirty soap had cascaded into the drain and left her skin nice and clean. He helped her step out of the shower, wrapping a towel around her.

"I'll be just outside, you get dressed, and then you can get some sleep."

She put on the Linkin Park shirt she had just found and a pair of shorts that were stuffed in the bottom ⎯⎯ a little too big for her so they were probably Archer's.

Outside of the bathroom, there sat the man who dragged her away from her dying father on the edge of the bed. He no longer wore his hat ⎯⎯ at some point after they went down the elevator he took it off. He was just a man doing his best.

"Are you tired?" He asked waving her over gently.

"Yeah, a little... But ⎯⎯ I don't know if I wanna sleep."

He tucked a little bit of hair behind her ear, hunching a little to try and meet her eyes. "Why's that?"

Clementine let out a sigh, looking down at her clean hands. Not too long ago they were covered in dirt and blood, her nails were spotless but she could remember the feeling of the gunk stuck underneath. "I dream of them ⎯⎯ the walkers."

Rick nodded sadly despite her not looking at him. "I... I do too. But it's not smart to fight it. Gotta sleep eventually." He hooked his arms beneath hers, carrying her up to the pillows before setting her back down.

Her wet hair hit the pillow as she laid back ⎯⎯ Rick pulled the blanket down up and over her. "There you go⎯⎯"

"I know what my dad asked you."

A bold statement he hadn't expected, but when had Clementine ever not said exactly what was on her mind? All she could think about was her dad left on the side of the road. Who knew if he was even still there...

He moved her hair away from her face, lying it against the pillow instead. "I'm sorry you had to hear that." The comforter reached her shoulders as he sat on the edge of the bed next to her.

"Why'd it have to be him?" She asked, her eyes glossing with tears she was fighting to keep at bay. "I miss him."

"I don't know, Clem. But... You got all of us still lookin' out for you." He insured, resting his hand on her shoulder gently. "We care."

"That's what Dale said." Clem passively spoke, looking at the ceiling instead of at Rick. "Before, that's what he told me."

"Well, it's true."

It was an internal debate trying to decide if she believed him or not. There was no indefinite way to know for sure. She believed they cared. She believed they were looking out for her, but the underlying meaning of those two statements hovered in the air with the unknown. What did it mean for Rick to care about someone's safety when he already had a family of his own to keep safe? There had to be only so much he could do for her.

Over the time she had where it was just her father ⎯⎯ after the loss of her two brothers and mother ⎯⎯ Jim had become one to not care much about anything. He cared about not having to deal with other people's shit ⎯⎯ but past that most of his fatherly instincts had been suppressed against the weight of his own pain and loss.

While Jim was suffering through the death of most of his family ⎯⎯ Clementine was too but saw it as, I still have my dad so it'll be okay. A comforting thought she could no longer turn to.

It was blending into the Grimes family. If she had them, she could be okay. Her dad was adamant about her being strong enough to go on without him, but he could hardly face the world without his wife and two sons.

So, she had no idea how she was gonna do it.

Only after Rick left her to sleep did she feel the overwhelming amount of sadness slam to the forefront, bringing tears to pour down her face.

• ───────────────── •

Being underground gave no visual indication of the sun being up ⎯⎯ but the tiny analog clock on the bedside table glowed with the time, four twenty-nine. Then she stayed in bed for another hour, staring at the wall and yawning over and over.

Once she found the energy to get out of bed, she found her extra pair of jeans in the duffle bag and put them on, keeping the Linkin Park shirt on for the time being. She wrapped her dirty clothes in a towel and tucked them back in the bag, not wanting the clean clothes to touch the dirty clothes.

She tied her jacket back around her waist, not wanting it away from her for even a second longer.

After she went to the recreation room for quite a while, there was a traditional clock with the stick hands, on it ⎯⎯ but she sadly had no idea how to read one, so couldn't tell how long she was sitting on the couch with a dictionary in hand.

She was smart ⎯⎯ she didn't know how to read a traditional clock ⎯⎯ but she was pretty damn smart in other aspects. Her favorite word so far had been the word, abirritate. A word that was classified as a verb. Which she couldn't remember what a verb was either so she had to find that in the dictionary too. But abirritate ⎯⎯ defined as, to make less irritable or to soothe.

A word she could easily fit into her current predicament. It seemed most people were attempting to abirritate her, and she didn't hate them for it ⎯⎯ she hated that she had them feeling like they had to.

She was just beginning to get into the C section of the dictionary when T-Dog peaked inside. Her name was also a fruit ⎯⎯ one she hated with her whole being because of its stringy pulp. Even the word, pulp, sounded grotesque. But because it was a fruit it most often showed up in vocabulary books such as the dictionary, so she was excited to find it.

"There you are. Why don't-ya come get some breakfast, Clem." He asked, leaning in the doorway. "I'm makin' some eggs," T added, raising his eyebrows up and down in a, I know you want to, look.

Hunger hit her. She hadn't eaten the fish at the campfire, and the night before they had nothing but mushrooms available, and that time she flat-out refused. But eggs? Scrambled eggs were good, and she could feel the subconsciously suppressed hunger come full swing.

By now, without food for multiple days, she was famished. "Yeah." She rushed out, stumbling off the couch and onto her feet, shoving the dictionary off her lap and onto a different cushion.

He put his hand out, more so to gesture her to walk beside him than to grab her hand, but she grabbed onto his contently. It wasn't what he was expecting at all ⎯⎯ she had not acted like the kind of child to want hand-holding. But he cared too much to say a damn thing to deter her from doing so, he was one of many people doing his best to abirritate the girl through her loss.

T-Dog led the way into the cafeteria, where Jacqui, Dale, Andrea, and Glenn all sat. Glenn ⎯⎯ was moaning in pain.

"What the fuck happened to you?" Clem asked, eyeballing Glenn confused as to why he acted like he was dying from the inside out.

"Got one hell of-a mouth on ya', kid," T-Dog said, walking back to the kitchen area of the cafeteria.

She shrugged, her parents did their best to influence her not to speak such foul language ⎯⎯ but her brother Miles was a fifteen-year-old with a bunch of guy friends who never censored their words even when a much younger child was around. "If you can say it, why can't I?"

T nodded, silently saying, you got me there, and continuing to make the eggs he had promised.

Soon after Lori and Carl joined them, sitting just a couple of seats over from Clementine who sat next to Glenn. Jacqui stepped behind Glenn, rubbing his back comfortingly. "What is wrong with you?" Clem asked, looking at him confused.

"Just not feeling good⎯⎯"

"He's hungover. Right mom?" Carl said, cutting off Jacqui from trying to soften the reality of it. Lori smiled, nodding to confirm Carl's assumptions. "Yep, just like my dad's gonna be. That's what she told me."

Clementine laughed, enjoying Carl's sudden bluntness. "Yeah? Glenn, you regretting your decisions?" She asked, leaning forward on the table, looking for the face that he had in his hands.

"Yes..." He groaned loudly, eyes shut.

Rick came waltzing in as Glenn let out another pained noise, holding a fork in his hand with no food in front of him quite yet. There was a faint crooked movement to Rick's walk, giving the clarification that he was in fact hungover. He's older than Glenn so perhaps he had already gotten used to waking up with the pounding headache because he had no inclination he was suffering as much as the early-twenties man.

"Eggs. Powdered, but... But I do 'em good." T-Dog proclaimed proudly, walking around with a pan and a wooden spoon in hand, scooping scrambled eggs onto Clem's plate first. Carl already had a bowl of cereal in front of him, so, next was Glenn, he clearly was in need of some food in general. "I bet you can't tell..." He sauntered up beside Glenn, pushing some eggs out of his pan and onto his plate. "Protein helps the hangover." T smiled from ear to ear as Glenn only responded with a lengthy moan.

"Where'd all this come from?" Rick asked, raising a bottle of pills.

"Jenner."

"Could you help me, please?" Rick passed the bottle to his wife, proving to be hungover enough that the child safety on a pill bottle defeated him.

Lori smiled, opening the bottle for her husband. "He thought we could use it. Some of us at least."

"By some of us, she means Glenn. Never heard a grown man complain so much." Clementine joked, pointing her thumb towards Glenn.

Another groan came from him, "Don't ever, ever, ever let me drink again."

Rick passed the bottle of pills to Clem, pointing to Glenn, silently asking her to give him them. "Here, Glenn." She said shaking two pills onto the palm of her hand and holding it out to him. He quickly swallowed the pills, stuffing a forkful of eggs right after.

In came Carol and Sophia ⎯⎯ soon after a very tense-looking Shane. He beelined for the coffee pot, pouring some into a mug as he talked to Rick about how he felt after drinking too much.

"The hell happened to you?" T questioned, eyes wide as he stepped up beside Shane to get his own cup of coffee. "Your neck." He announced to the rest of the room.

What exactly was wrong ⎯⎯ Clem didn't know what quite yet ⎯⎯ her first assumption was a bite from a walker to signify his incoming death. Instead, it was a scratch going across the side of his neck, just under his jawline.

"Must've done it in my sleep."

"Never seen you do that before."

Clem nosily leaned forward as Shane took a seat across the table from Rick ⎯⎯ who sat right next to Clem. He couldn't have gotten bitten because there was no way for walkers to get inside ⎯⎯ but how on earth did he manage that? "You turn into a werewolf when the moon comes up or something?"

The werewolf only gave a dull unimpressed look in response to Clementine. He didn't care to entertain her anymore it seemed. "Me neither." He sipped on his coffee, only responding to Rick. "Not like me at all."

Another plate of powder-made eggs later, Clementine's stomach was full as if she hadn't gone many days without food. The whole group was there eating eggs or cereal or drinking coffee.

A little later Dr. Edwin Jenner walked in, a pale blue button-up and black dress pants, looking far more professional than he did when they met him. "Morning." He spoke nonchalantly to the group of thirteen that had overrun his place of work in under twenty-four hours. Who knew if he even told them to help themselves to the powdered eggs, cereal, and coffee?

"Hey, Doc."

Dale and Andrea sat up straight in their chairs, they must have been waiting for him to arrive all morning. "Doctor, I don't mean to slam you with questions first thing⎯⎯" Dale started, trailing on his words.

"But you will anyway." Jenner poured himself a cup of coffee, awaiting the questions with his back to them.

"We didn't come here for the eggs," Andrea announced the obvious to Jenner, looking at his back as he turned to face the table.

Clementine let out an ill-timed snort, finishing off her cup of water. "No, we didn't." She snapped, setting down her cup ⎯⎯ annoyed. "We came here for my dad, but he's not here is he?" Fingers interlaced nervously as she faced the grown woman, unabashed with her straightforwardness.

Attempting to deescalate Clementine's natural fire, Dale turned to her with his normal gentle look. "Doesn't mean we don't have some questions." He reasoned, turning to Jenner.

Jenner sighed, "Come with me."

• ───────────────── •

Jenner took all of them to the big room full of computers he originally took them to tell them he was the only sorry bastard left alive in the building. He walked to a single computer among many of them, likely his assigned computer from when this building was just a place where hundreds worked on a daily basis.

He pulled something up on a big screen, calling out. "Give me playback of TS-19."

Playback of TS-19.

Clementine stepped up beside him. "What does that mean?"

The Doctor looked down at her, enjoying her curiosity for the science and technical terms. "T.S. stands for Test Subject and nineteen is just the number of the test subject for the current experiment. Much easier to remember numbers than hundreds of names that people could share, huh?"

"What's the current experiment?" She questioned further, wanting to know everything.

"Watch, and I'll explain." He stated, turning to face the rest of the group. "Few people ever got a chance to see this."

A loading bar appeared on one big square screen. Once it hit one hundred percent a new image showed in place of the loading screen ⎯⎯ a seemingly boneless and blue human head.

"Very few."

"How come?" She asked again, impatient for the lack of answers ⎯⎯ he talked too slow for her liking. Explanations were needed and he just kept droning on.

Jenner chuckled, he hadn't met such an adamant child in so long ⎯⎯ he hadn't spoken to a child in general in so long. So far, Clem had proven to be more outspoken than half the other grown adults he let into his work. The expression on his face didn't match well with his laugh ⎯⎯ talking solemnly. "Many of them were already gone."

"Is that a brain?" Carl piped in curiously, taking the initiative when Clem seemed to be brave enough to. He asked as the image completed, showing ⎯⎯ still no bone structure but instead a brain just behind the rough eye indent with a branch coming out of the bottom and down through the neck.

Dr. Jenner nodded, "An extraordinary one." Happy to educate the two inquisitive children, only to fall victim to verbalizing his negative internal monologue. "Not that it matters in the end... Take us in for E.I.V."

Another question appeared on the tip of Clem's tongue, about to ask, what's E.I.V. But the electronic system named Vi responded instantly to Jenner.

Enhanced Internal View.

The camera rotated, turning to the side profile of the smurf-like human being. It zoomed into the side of the brain till all that filled the screen were bright white lights and blue strings connecting in thousands of directions. A giant jungle gym of a mental system.

"How... How can we see in there?" She asked, bewildered by the concept of seeing into someone's brain.

Jenner faced her. "You know what an X-Ray is?" She nodded, scrunching her face ⎯⎯ insulted by him thinking she wouldn't know. Maybe she asked a lot of questions but she wasn't that dumb. "Kind of like that."

From a chair behind them, Shane decided to participate in the game of twenty questions started by two of the three children. "What are those lights?"

Jenner turned to face the rest of the group, pointing back at the screen with his hand. "It's a person's life⎯⎯ experiences, memories. It's everything. Somewhere in all that organic writing, all those ripples of light... Is you. The thing that makes you unique. And human." It was the most enthusiasm Clem had heard the man express since they arrived ⎯⎯ the scientific nature of his job was what made him the most happy.

"You don't make sense, ever?" Daryl grumbled, confused and not understanding a damn word the doctor was saying.

Pacing a few steps, Jenner responded to Daryl's question ⎯⎯ not making it any more simplified than he had before. "Those are synapses, electric impulses in the brain that carry all the messages. They determine everything a person says, does, or things from the moment of birth to the moment of death."

"It's your personality, Daryl. You know, what makes you such a dumbass?" Clem attempted to dumb down Jenner's words ⎯⎯ how did she understand but he didn't. The expression on his face contorted with annoyance and a ⎯⎯ who cares what a kid has to say ⎯⎯ look.

"Clementine." Lori hissed gently.

Rick marched to the front, letting everything said after Jenner go unnoticed. "Death? That's what this is, a vigil?"

"Yes, or... rather the playback of the vigil."

Vigil. Clementine took note of the word, she would have to look for it in the dictionary she left in the recreation room. It had to be somewhere near verb, which she already found.

"This person died? Who?" Andrea asked, her eyes saddened.

"Test subject nineteen." Jenner monotonely responded. "Someone who was bitten and infected... And volunteered to have us record the process."

A pure undiluted sadness took place on the doctor's features, but no tears. Clem knew that face well enough. She knew that feeling well enough that you could be feeling the utmost agony and still not carry the ability to cry anymore. It was clear in every grief-stricken feature on his face that the person on-screen ⎯⎯ test subject nineteen ⎯⎯ meant something to him.

"You knew them."

The man kept his eyes locked on the screen ⎯⎯ not responding to Clementine's statement. "Vi, scan forward to the first event."

Scanning to first event.

The so-called first event was the same thing ⎯⎯ darkness had just begun to creep into the bottom of the skull, where the branch went down the neck. How it spread into form looked like something out of the comic books her brother would read.

"What is that?"

"It invades the brain like meningitis. The adrenal glands hemorrhage, the brain goes into shutdown, then the major organs." Jenner explained, waving his hands in emphasis as he spoke.

"Then death. Everything you ever were or ever will be... Gone."

Clem sucked in a deep breath, forcing her eyes down away from the screen. It was beginning to look far too much like her father.

"Is that what happened to Jim?" Sophia looked up to her mother ⎯⎯ oblivious to the implications that gave to his daughter who stood mere feet away.

She whirled around to face Sophia when she heard her father's name, but she wasn't mad. Sophia was just curious ⎯⎯ Clementine couldn't fault her for being curious when she always was. It didn't make it hurt any less, but Clementine could excuse it.

The differences between Clementine and Sophia were varied ⎯⎯ Sophia was older, only by a year or two ⎯⎯ yet Clem seemed more mature, and it could have been Carol's attempts to keep her child innocent despite her father's abuse ⎯⎯ Clem wasn't sure, she just knew she was overly aware of the horrors around every corner.

"Yes," Carol answered sadly. A pitiful look on her face, gave little to alleviate the overwhelming ambivalence.

Everyone rapidly became uncomfortably aware of how the knowledge of the virus brought a poignant cloud over top the heads of Andrea and Clementine. Jenner as well clearly noticed the change of attitudes⎯ Andrea looked repugnant as she looked away from the screen, and Clem stared blankly.

Jenner looked to them, then to the group for answers.

"They both lost somebody... Recently." Lori informed the doctor. "Her sister." She said, not speaking of Jim ⎯⎯ it hadn't been long but Lori already knew well enough that Clem wouldn't want to hear it.

"I lost somebody too. I know how devastating it is." Neither girl gave him a verbal response. "Scan to the second event."

Scanning to second event.

The second event loaded in. "The resurrection times vary wildly. We had reports of it happening in as little as three minutes. The longest we heard of was eight hours. In the case of this patient, it was two hours, one minute, seven seconds."

People she'd lost in the first two months of calamity cycle through her mind one by one. Mom, brothers, Amy, dad ⎯⎯ what about the rest of her family? Her uncle, her mom's best friend they went looking for but never found, neighbors, cousins ⎯⎯ what if every single one of them had suffered the same fate as test subject nineteen.

Jenner said the longest was eight hours, but her dad survived the bite for almost two days. He must've been something else by now. And there weren't many comforting details to go based on the current state of those she'd lost.

The only one of them she was sure wasn't in a perpetual existence of feasting on living humans ⎯⎯ was Amy. Andrea made sure that her sister wouldn't suffer that destiny. But everyone else was up in the air.

Jim insisted Rick not to leave a gun with him ⎯⎯ the reason for Rick offering a firearm to a dying man ⎯⎯ Clem didn't want to ponder on. He was left, sick. How long did he sit there alone before he turned, or did he manage the strength to get up and go somewhere else? Or did more dead come swarming and finish him off before he had the chance?

It was a persistent thought ⎯⎯ how many of her loved ones were destroying other families the way the walkers destroyed hers?

"It restarts the brain?" Lori piped in ⎯⎯ bringing the focus back to the screen. Sparks of light resembling only the smallest percentage of what it looked like before emitted from the darkness in the brain.

"No, just the brainstem."

Clem was annoyed, all he managed to do was dance around what he was trying to say. "What does that mean?" With every passing second, there was another thing she couldn't make sense of. Usually, her overactive imagination had her thinking far beyond the box and parameters of her own knowledge. But all the scientific verbiage and complex visuals had her mind reeling for answers.

"Basically, it gets them up and moving."

Rick wasn't any more satisfied with Jenner than Clem. He couldn't decide if he was in denial or if he just didn't believe. "But... They're not alive?"

"You tell me." He shared the same perplexed facial expression.

The self-revivification process had begun, and everyone in the room had a first-hand look literally into the mind of the dead-but-not-dead being.

"It's nothing like before." Rick vocalized his thoughts, looking at the scintilla of life returning to the brainstem. "Most of that brain is dark."

"Dark, lifeless, dead. The frontal lobe, the neocortex ⎯⎯ the human part ⎯⎯ that doesn't come back. The you part. Just a shell. Driven by mindless instinct."

Clementine frowned deeply, starting to really detest the incredibly depressing man with his little attempts at filtering his words to not hit so hard. He didn't care if what he was saying crushed every ounce of hope left in them. "Well, aren't you just a ray of sunshine?"

Test subject nineteen had fully awakened by the time Jenner finished his awfully depressing monologue. Its mouth chomped open and closed, gaining its awareness of its surroundings as much as a mindless being could be. There was enough happening in that brain for it to look around for a living being ⎯⎯ but not enough to recognize anyone as a friend, family, or colleague.

Within a few seconds of the unidentifiable human being's revival, a bright white light beamed through the brain in one long streak, exploding out a pure white from the back of the skull.

"God. What was that?" Carol asked appalled by the sight of the beam of light turning into a dark tunnel burrowed through the skull.

Clementine was just thankful it was only the X-ray version. She wasn't prepared to see whatever it was that did that damage in a normal video.

"He shot his patient in the head... Didn't you?"

"Vi, power down the main screen and the workstations," Jenner commanded the robotic system, ignoring Andrea's question.

Powering down main screen and workstations.

"You have no idea what it is, do you?"

Clem was stuck pinching herself, wake up wake up wake up. It didn't work. No amount of pain from the strength of two of her fingertips awoke her from the nightmare. "Of course, he doesn't." She pinched harder.

None of it mattered. Getting the CDC didn't matter, the man they left for the CDC with was no longer accompanying them. Even if he was ⎯⎯ there was nothing left here for Jim. It didn't matter that they were alive. And it especially did not fucking matter that Dr. Edwin Jenner ⎯⎯ the last man standing in the CDC ⎯⎯ knew nothing, because what would they do with the information if he did know? He's just one man.

"It could be microbial, viral, parasitic, fungal." He listed off random words ⎯⎯ Clementine didn't know any of them.

Jacqui, her face streaked with silent tears, "or the wrath of God?"

"There is that."

The indents in her arm from every pinch no longer gave off any pain ⎯⎯ no matter how many times she kept doing it. Her internal thoughts got louder, tuning out the rest of them. She didn't think she believed in God. She didn't want to believe one man or woman could decide if or when something like a worldwide massacre would happen.

Neither did she want to believe any greater being would want to inflict such pain and suffering against innocent lives. Perhaps a great percentage of them deserved what was coming ⎯⎯ the racists, the rapist, the pedophiles, the murderers, and the abusers like Ed Peletier himself... But what about the rest of them?

She looked at Carl and Sophia. They were much like her ⎯⎯ children who were only starting to get used to the life they were born into. How long until this version of reality was normal for them?

But if it was going based on the Christian sins she'd heard of, Clem felt all of them could be at fault. The list was endless.

It only invoked the familiar anger inside of her at the mention of this God. Why did everyone seem to fall to their hands and knees for this being they didn't even know for certain existed ⎯⎯ and what was the meaning of having faith in them if it ended with them being completely destroyed from the inside out?

None of the religious dots connected within her brain. Rather, she found herself stuck standing between the perceptions of reality. Balancing the thin line between faith and what was in front of her.

"Somebody must know something. Somebody. Somewhere."

All the others weren't done asking questions, but Clem... She was far from done. She wanted to leave, never see his face again. It wasn't his fault that everything that had happened ⎯⎯ happened. But he failed to relieve any of the bubbling worry within them, and that was enough for her to want the fuck out of there.

She backed up, away from the words that were no longer coherent. The girl was already far retreated into her mind. Few words sunk through the barrier. Words like: people, how, communications, dark, and nothing left. All of which blended together. The only voice that stood out was that of a guide.

Clementine's beloved compass she had steered away from for the time being ⎯⎯ but he was back. Dale.

"Dr. Jenner, I know this has been taxing for you and I hate to ask one more question, but... That clock. It's counting down. What happens at zero?"

It was a six-digit clock. Analog unlike the one in the rec-room she couldn't read. It was displayed in a harsh red, zero, one, zero, zero, zero, zero. But the second she looked it changed to, zero, zero, five, nine, five, nine. And only kept going down, confirming it was in fact a countdown with hours, minutes, and seconds.

Whatever it meant, they only had one hour and that time was gradually dwindling and losing time to figure it out.

As per usual ⎯⎯ Clementine's expansive mind came to not a single good conclusion. She envisioned thousands of walkers busting through the door as it struck zero. A twisted version of Cinderella turning back into the unfortunate step-sister she always was.

A clock that slowly counted down visibly mystified everyone else. Dale brought attention to it and it was now the cynosure of all eyes. Most conclusions were slightly more reasonable than Clementine's but none were quite right.

Desperately, they all found themselves staring at Jenner for answers once again. "The basement generators... They run out of fuel."

Not for a damn second, did Clementine believe him. It was pulled right out of his ass as he searched for a logical reason behind the doomsday clock. "He's lying." She proclaimed, looking to Rick with the same desperation others looked to Jenner for ⎯⎯ what ⎯⎯ assurance? Back up?

"And then?" Rick knew it too, he wasn't being entirely truthful, but the man he was carried a lot of hope for others to be voracious. "Vi, what happens when the power runs out?"

When the power runs out, facility-wide decontamination will occur.

• ───────────────── •

Lori took her son and Clementine back to the room the Grimes family had slept in. It was an attempt to keep the children from being frightened any further, giving Carl one of his school workbooks and Clem a coloring book.

Instead of putting the colorful lead of a colored pencil on the paper, she stared at the black-and-white outlined photo of a flower. She hadn't sat down and colored in a long time ⎯⎯ it was only ever at school when she colored, at home she spent her time outside.

"What does facility-wide decontamination mean?" Clem asked Lori, watching the woman move to the center of the room and look up at the ceiling.

She looked back at the girl, noticing the red colored pencil floating just above the paper. "I'm not sure, sweetheart." Lori turned back, getting up on her tip-toes and raising her fingertips to the metal grates of the vent overhead.

"Mom? Something wrong?"

"Uh, nothing. It's just... The air conditioning stopped."

From out in the hall, they could hear people opening their doors, leaning out and talking. Clem jumped from her seat, abandoning the untouched coloring book and pencils. As she swung open the door, Carol peeked from the door across the hall. "Why is the air off? And the lights in our room?"

Jenner rounded the corner, walking along the hall without giving any of them a second thought.

Lori grabbed her son's hand, looking back at Clem with pleading eyes, "Stay by Carl, Clem. Please."

She nodded, stepping up beside Carl. Nobody in here knew what was going on ⎯⎯ but if staying next to Carl would diminish some of the worry on Lori's face, she would do it.

"What's goin' on?" Daryl leaned out the doorframe, looking down the end of the hall, a liquor bottle hanging from his hand. "Why is everything turned off?"

The bottle got swiped out of Daryl's grasp by Jenner. "Energy use is being prioritized."

"Air isn't a priority? And lights?" Dale asked, bringing attention back to the fact they were underground.

It didn't occur to Clem that being underground would limit the amount of Oxygen ⎯⎯ especially if the energy resources were what kept the air flow funneling to the basement levels. "We're going to run out of air?" She asked, sticking close to Carl, but trying her best to see past those in front of her.

"It's not up to me. Zone five is shutting itself down."

"Hey! Hey, what the hell does that mean? Hey, man, I'm talking to you." Daryl raced to the front, walking alongside the doctor who stole his liquor. "What do you mean it's shutting itself down? How can a buildin' do anythin'?"

"You'd be surprised."

Everyone funneled down the hall after the man. Rick, Glenn, T-Dog, and Shane all return from the boiler room where they went to investigate Jenner's unbelievable claims of it being a fuel issue.

"Rick?" Lori called, hoping for her husband to have even a smidge of answers. Anything to relieve the piling-up stress.

He had nothing. Rick raised his hand in the air in a silent, stay calm. "Jenner, what's happening?"

"The system is dropping all nonessential uses of power. It's designed to keep the computers running to the last possible second. That started as we approached the half-hour mark..." He pointed to the clock as they entered the main room with all the computers. "Right on schedule." The clock intimidatingly read thirty-one minutes and twenty-eight seconds in the same ruby red as he gestured to it, taking one last long gulp of alcohol before passing it back to Daryl ⎯⎯ who rightfully yanked it back into his possession, just as frustrated as the rest of them. "It was the French."

Andrea tilted her head into his view, realizing he had spoken directly to her just then. "What?

"They were the last ones to hold out as far as I know. While our people were bolting out the doors and committing suicide in the hallways, they stayed in the labs till the end. They thought they were close to a solution."

A sickening image of people lining up in the hallways and one by one firing a bullet into their temples came to mind. It brought that same rage back to Clem. She'd hit her breaking point with the grown man. "What the fuck are we supposed to do with that?"

"What happened?" Jacqui asked, her voice just as soft and kind as ever ⎯⎯ her natural gentle presence never fading for a second. It was a stark contrast to Clem's fury.

"The same thing that's happening here. No power grid. Ran out of juice... The world runs on fossil fuel. I mean how stupid is that?"

"Lori, grab our things. Everybody, get your stuff. We're getting out of here now!"

Clementine followed Rick's orders, stumbling down the steps that led up to the computer desk-covered platform, and ran for the doorway. A loud alarm began blaring in the room, a subtle red light flashed somewhere overhead, and the clock appeared on the big screen, suddenly showing the minutes, seconds, and milliseconds.

Within a few seconds, everyone around her started yelling frantically, repeating Rick's words to get the hell out of there, and started moving in different directions around each other. Shane let out a shout, another command from the fellow officer, and it was to move.

She did just as she was told once again, lurching forward ⎯⎯ then the large metal door tucked inside the wall socket, came slamming down right in front of her. The weight of the door rattled the ramp she was standing on. Despite being just out of reach, Rick hooks his arm around her ⎯⎯ yanking the girl as fast as he could back into his chest to ensure her safety.

Her eyes bulged wide, being crushed by a large door was not on her list of things she was expecting to ever happen to her.

"Are you okay?" Rick rushed out, turning her around in his arms, and grabbed her shoulders as he looked over her.

Clem couldn't find the words as she looked past Rick's face at the door, nodding rapidly.

"Did you just lock us in? He just locked us in!"

Once she was back to her feet, Rick rushed to the center of the room, leaving the frozen in shock child.

"Hey, Jenner, open that door now."

"There's no point. Everything topside is locked down. The emergency exits are sealed."

"Well, open the damn things!" Dale exclaimed ⎯⎯ even he was angry. While he could control his outbursts there wasn't much to speak on the rest of their abilities to do so.

Clem wanted in the discussion. She didn't care if anyone else thought she was just some kid who talked too much ⎯⎯ over her dead body if she'd sit back and let someone else fight her battles. After all this time, she did not continue living just to die at the hands of a psycho suicidal doctor locking them up and starving them to death. But as she pushed her way past Carol and Sophia, T-Dog stopped her short with a hand on her shoulder. "You don't want to be in the middle of all of them, no matter how much you think you can handle it." He said, coaxing her back a few steps.

"That's not something I control. The computers do. I told you once that front door closed, it wouldn't open again. You heard me say that. It's better this way."

There was no way to know for sure what it meant. Nobody could pinpoint exactly what dying in that room would qualify as being a better ending. But Jenner was ready to go, that much was clear.

Rick leaned in closer. "What is? What happens in twenty-eight minutes?" Jenner turned away, clacking away at his keyboard. He didn't want to tell them ⎯⎯ but it seemed obvious that this room was where all of them would come to their final end, at least that was his intention. "What happens in twenty-eight minutes?"

"You know what this place is? We protected the public from very nasty stuff! Weaponized smallpox! Ebola strains that could wipe out half the country! Stuff you don't want getting out! Ever!" He screamed in everyone's faces, looking at all of them like they had personally wronged him. Like they were the people trapping him. Not vice versa.

Clem forced herself past T-Dog. "Who do you fucking think you are? You are the one locking us up in here!" She screamed, pointing her finger at him angrily. Everyone thought they could just walk all over her. Jenner wasn't intentional of course, but everyone had a tendency to look at her like she didn't have any valid opinion. It drove her mad. "You've seen things you will never unsee, so have we. You lost people, and so have we. You are the one that is doing this ⎯⎯ you closed that door with the same damn computer you claim to be in control of every other door.  How are we the bad guys?" She yanked her hand out of reach from whoever was trying to grab at her. "Time is ticking, and you still have yet to tell us anything. If the outside doors aren't even openable ⎯⎯ why bother locking us in here?"

Jenner sat down back in his chair, tugging his jacket back into place. "In the event of catastrophic power failure ⎯⎯ in a terrorist attack, for example ⎯⎯ H.I.T.s are deployed to prevent any organisms from getting out."

"H.I.T.s?"

"Vi, define."

H.I.T.s: high-impulse thermobaric fuel-air explosives consist of a two-stage aerosol ignition that produces a blast wave of significantly greater power and duration than any other known explosive except nuclear. The vacuum-pressure effect ignites the oxygen at between five thousand and six thousand degrees and is useful when the greatest loss of life and damage to structures is desired.

The other children in the room and their mothers begin to cry. It didn't take much scientific knowledge to know what a giant explosive would do to them. Andrea and Jacqui were frozen in place ⎯⎯ pure thought on their faces. Everyone else, was perplexed, looking around like they weren't sure they heard it right.

Clementine's mind ⎯⎯ for once in her life ⎯⎯ fell completely, and utterly, silent.

"It sets the air on fire. No pain. An end to sorrow, grief... Regret. Everything."

• ───────────────── •

Clementine sat against the back of one of the desks a few feet away from Carl and Lori where they sat doing the same, next to Carol and Sophia. There was no point in pleading, yelling, or crying, but most of them did so anyway.

There was no point in beating on the door the way Daryl was. He said, no pain, no suffering. But as far as she could see nobody around her looked anything close to peaceful.

She ignored it when Jenner attempted to say it would've been easier if they didn't know. She ignored it when he turned to Andrea and asked about Amy, using her loss to try and sway the majority.

But then he turned to her.

"Clementine, is it?" Jenner asked, only getting a dull stare back. "What about your father ⎯⎯ mother? Would they want you to be forced into a lifelong whirlwind of pain?"

"Don't say that to her," Lori said angrily, eyes widening, baffled by his carelessness with his words.

Clementine squeezed her fists tight, tight, tight, until her fingernails left crescent moon-shaped indents in her palms. It would be all too satisfying to send a hard punch right into the center of his face ⎯⎯ but she'd break her wrist before his nose. "You don't know shit." She spit, squeezing her hands hard in her pockets.

But was he wrong? Jim told Clem to fight. He told her she was stronger than him ⎯⎯ and despite her not being too sure of that ⎯⎯ here she was fighting. It was her mother who would be weeping if she could see what her baby girl had already been through and end up alone. Marie Holloway would be broken, but she wouldn't want her father to die this way either.

Clem squeezed her eyes shut, if her time was coming, she didn't want to see it approach. She covered her ears with her crescent moon-shaped indented palms, putting her forehead to her knees.

Even when the floor beneath her seemed to rumble with harsh footsteps she kept her eyes sealed closed. Even when the sound of ruckus managed to make it through her hands, she kept her head down and pressed her hands to her ears harder.

The loud sound of Daryl's voice was the only thing to make her glance up. "Well, your head ain't!" He shouted, holding his axe up in the air preparing to decapitate the doctor.

It looked a lot like the time he raised a pickaxe over Jim's head ⎯⎯ but this time Clem was silently rooting him on.

"You do want this." Jenner stood and faced Rick. "Last night you said ⎯⎯ you know it was just a matter of time before everybody you loved ⎯⎯ took care of... was dead."

It hurt. Far more than she would ever care to admit to anyone. That a man, who wasn't even her father, spoke about her imminent destiny. The awaiting death of them was gradually nearing and it felt betraying that only a small amount of time after she spoke to him about missing her father ⎯⎯ he talked to Jenner about all of them being bound to die.

Lori had a stronger look of betrayal, she was his wife after all and she was one of the few people in the group he loved more than anything. She loved him and had put her life in his hands. Many of them had put their lives in his hands. But, maybe that was the problem ⎯⎯ Rick is just one man.

"What? You really said that? After all your big talk?"

"I had to keep hope alive, didn't I?"

"There is no hope. There never was."

Every pessimistic word of doom seeped its way into Clementine like termites rotting away a tree. Rick more than anyone else could feel the tension that came from Jenner's words. "There's always hope. Maybe it won't be you, maybe not here, but somebody. Somewhere."

Andrea jumped to Jenner's defense, "What part of everything is gone do you not understand?"

"Listen to your friend. She gets it. This is what takes us down. This is our extinction event."

Carol cried, squeezing her daughter closer like Jenner would rip her from her grasp. "This isn't right. You can't just keep us here."

"One tiny moment ⎯⎯ a millisecond. No pain."

"My daughter doesn't deserve to die like this!" Carol shouted through her tears, glossy trails stretching down to her chin. The same look on her daughter's face.

None of the pleading switched Jenner's train of thought onto another track, he was persistent. "Wouldn't it be kinder, more compassionate to just hold your loved ones ⎯⎯ and wait for the clock to run down?"

"To watch their time run out on a damn analog clock?" Clementine exclaimed, standing to her feet. She just barely stood taller than him as he slouched over in his chair to speak to Carol. "You have no right to make that decision for them. Any of us. Neither do you." She pointed to Andrea.

The cock back of a gun resounded in the room and then a quick, "Shane, no!" From Rick.

The tornado of Shane's wrath had doubled in size since he pummeled Ed Peletier, this was an act of war compared to what he did to that man in the quarry. "Out of the way, Rick! Stay out of my way! Open that door or I'm gonna blow your head off. Do you hear me?"

His tornado spun faster and faster with a frightening approach. "Brother, brother, this is not the way you do this. We will never get out of here."

Once again, Clem was forcefully yanked back out of the reach of danger. "Shane, you listen to him," Lori commanded as she pushed Clem behind her along with her son. If any guns were to go off she would have to take the bullets for both children, she wouldn't allow them to suffer that.

"He dies, we all ⎯⎯ WE ALL DIE!" Rick shouted, trying to be heard over Shane's pure rage he released in a roar of anger. "Shane!"

Lori ducked behind a computer, pulling the two children down with her as the shotgun let off many rounds. Clem couldn't see it but she could hear the struggle, and by the time she stood back up along with Lori, Shane was flat on his ass with the butt of his gun pointing directly toward his face.

"Are you done now? Are you done?"

"Yeah, I guess we all are."

All the pressure fell on Rick, everyone looked at him with horrified expressions as he glanced around the room. The whole situation had Clementine wanting to curl up in a corner. It would be easier to pretend chaos wasn't ensuing all around her. It would be much easier if she couldn't see the clock rapidly declining in milliseconds, giving the illusion time was moving far too fast.

Rick hadn't given up yet. He did tell Jenner they were running out of time ⎯⎯ and maybe he was right ⎯⎯ but he wasn't even close to ready to let that time go without a fight. "I think you're lying."

"What?"

"You're lying about no hope. If that were true, you'd have bolted with the rest or taken the easy way out. You didn't You chose the hard path. Why?"

It felt almost ironic that the so-called hard path was just continuing to breathe with the newfound state of the world ⎯⎯ and what that meant for the path her father took. Was it easy to be left behind, even if it was his choice? Was it easy to die alone?

"It doesn't matter."

"It does matter. It always matters. You stayed when others ran. Why?"

Jenner gritted his teeth. He didn't want to talk about the people he lost any more than the rest of them did. Since they returned from Atlanta for the search of Merle, Daryl didn't utter a word about his brother. Carol didn't speak of her husband for a single second after putting him out of his misery. Andrea ⎯⎯ she only spoke of Amy because of Jenner. Clementine talked about her father as little as she could, he already took up most of her mental space already.

"Not because I wanted to. I made a promise... To her. My wife." He pointed to the screen despite only the counting-down clock being left up on the display.

"Test subject nineteen was your wife?"

"She begged me to keep going as long as I could. How could I say no?"

Clem gulped. "You're stronger than me, sweetheart ⎯⎯ and I know you're gonna fight like hell because that's what your mother always taught you to do."

Tears pricked in her eyes, but she forcefully wiped them away with the end of her jacket sleeves. The distant clank of Daryl being back beating against the door was all that could ground her.

It wasn't that day. She wasn't on the side of the road watching her father get set under a tree, and she wasn't leaving him behind again. It had already happened, hours ago. By then he was just another wandering man, stuck in the body of a being that would only cause more pain.

She wasn't as grounded as she thought, she was stuck seeing her father as one of those things that killed her mother, and her brothers.

Rick was pleading once again, for a chance. Just one more chance.

"Your wife didn't have a choice. You do. That's ⎯⎯ that's all we want..." He looked at the clock, time was dwindling. "A choice. A chance."

"Let us keep trying as long as we can."

"I told you, topside is locked down. I can't open those."

The door lifted, Daryl's axe mid-swing into the indestructible metal. "Come on!"

"Come on! Let's go!"

"We're gonna get out of here, Sophia."

Clem rushed along with them to the door, skidding to a halt when she looked back and saw not everyone was coming. "Hey, we've got four minutes left! Come on!" Glenn screamed, holding onto Carl's shoulders.

T-Dog wrapped his arm around Jacqui's waist, pulling her along with him. "Let's go. Let's go."

"No, no, I'm staying ⎯⎯ I'm staying, sweetie." She squirmed out of his hold, her voice just as it always was, carrying that motherly kindness she exhibited for everyone.

His eyes widened in shock. "But that's insane."

Jacqui pushed away his reaching hands. "No, it's completely sane. For the first time in a long time." She fell silent, looking at Clementine with a sorrowful look. "I'm not ending up like Jim and Amy. There's no time to argue. And no point, not if you want to get out. Just get out. Get out."

I'm not ending up like Jim and Amy.

It repeated painfully in Clementine's head. Even when Andrea decided to stay back too, and Dale yelled at the rest of them to go ⎯⎯ her brain only repeated it again and again.

I'm not ending up like Jim and Amy.

Maybe she was right. Maybe Jenner should have kept that door shut, let everyone cry and beg to the end, and then it would've been over. But even when that door opened, Clem bolted. For whatever reason deep in her heart, there was a desire to survive. It opened to the hallway, and they all ran but staying ⎯⎯ it sounded so much more... Easy.

Easy wasn't something she ever gravitated toward, though. She enjoyed jumping across stepping stones in a stream, even if she was bound to slip and fall in. It was easier to take it slow and pick the precise ones that would be the safest to step on, but the other way was so much more fun.

Easy paths were letting it go, prioritizing safety and health over, fun, desire, and dreams. Easy ⎯⎯ Well ⎯⎯ It was just too damn easy to take the easy path.

Therefore, she ran. The thrown chair, the axe, and even Shane's shotgun did nothing to penetrate the windows. But there was one more thing.

"Rick, I have something that might help."

"Carol, I don't think a nail file's gonna do it."

"Your first morning at camp, when I washed your uniform ⎯⎯ I found this in your pocket." She pulled out a grenade, happily ignoring Shane's misogynistic insult.

At the sight of it, Lori grabbed both Carl and Clementine's hands, took them down a couple of steps, and pulled both of them in front of her. "Cover your ears, and do not look. You don't want glass coming at your face. You hear me?" She spoke authoritatively, demanding to be heard clearly and understood ⎯⎯ much like her husband.

Rick was the one to do it, he pulled the pin and chucked it to the floor ⎯⎯ hesitating far too long for the rest of their comfort. He jumped toward them, over the steps, and at the same time, the grenade blasted, shattering the window pane entirely.

"Thought a nail file wouldn't do it?" Clem huffed, looking over at Shane, a satisfied grin on her face.

"All right..." He muttered, taking the hit for once.

Everyone ran for the window, they didn't have time to count heads ⎯⎯ to make sure everyone was coming. Clem froze in place in the broken window frame. She was supposed to stay with Carl, she knew that but as he grew further her legs cemented into place.

T-Dog jumped down just before her, and turned back, his eyes landing on her. He went sprinting back, he could see it written on her face. She was horrified ⎯⎯ a suppressed fear she'd been shoving down as the time went on ⎯⎯ but it had nowhere else to go but finally show. Clem didn't want to be left behind, not like how her father was. No, she wouldn't be able to take it if they left without her.

But T ensured that wasn't going to happen. He'd hardly spoken a word to the girl ⎯⎯ but would rather be left behind himself than see her and keep running for safety.

There was no blame to be put on anyone else for not making sure she was there, or looking out for her. She wasn't their responsibility, but she'd never felt so grateful in her entire life to be swiped up like a child and carried away.

T-Dog didn't just run for his life ⎯⎯ it was for Clementine's too. Full speed ahead. Lori realized Clementine wasn't beside her son about halfway but T already had her. She screamed for T to hurry as he swung open the driver-side door of the van and nearly threw Clem into the passenger seat.

Lori was still screaming for someone to get down, and T quickly climbed into the driver seat and leaned over the center, putting an arm around the girl and pulling her close.

They had seconds, nobody was one hundred percent sure how big the blast would be, but hopefully, in their vehicles they'd have a little extra protection.

"Close your eyes, don't look. Don't look." He rushed, placing his hand on her head, holding her as close as he could with the center console being between them ⎯⎯ making sure she'd stay down just in case. "Just look at me."

"I'm scared." She whimpered, looking at him pleadingly as he held her.

"I got you."

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〈〈 𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄 〉〉

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Hope you liked it <3

T-DOG!!! The most underrated character I have ever seen in my life ⎯⎯ feel free to argue with a WALL. Also, how do you feel about the rewritten version... I'm scared it will disappoint anyone who had read the OG, but I'm gonna tell myself to get over it and that I'm a bad bitch.

I post edits for this story on TikTok!

Fanfic Editing Account: thinn.skinned.wp