Disclaimer: I do not own any of TellTale's characters from both The Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead.
I do not know where this idea came from.
"Clementine." The going girl's hazel eyes latch onto the surprisingly sanitary floor. "You have to eat it." The girl remains mute, with her head bowed down so that Bigby can only see the top of her stained ball cap. "Clem!" Bigby sighs, slightly infuriated from the lack of the young girl's attention he obtained. "This stuff is good for you, look, it's..." Bigby peers through the symmetrical vertical iron bars. What is it? "Ground meat," Bigby takes a guesstimate, the hue of the mush plopped in the
He digs out the object that bulges out of his back pocket. A cigarette lighter. He then retrieves one of the cancerous sticks out of a small cardboard box in his other back pocket. Flicking the hood of the lighter off, he presses down on the red lever, and a spark appears, before bursting into an unsteady flame. He lights the end of the cigarette, and after pocketing his lighter, he sticks the other end into his mouth. Clementine wrinkles her nose at the small wisp of smoke that flows from the crispy end of the stick, but she makes no comment about it.
A familiar sound of heels clicking across pavement alerts Bigby, and he sighs, averting his eyes from the unresponsive girl, and fixates his attention to the young lady walking forwards. Great, Bigby decides to enjoy the cancer stick as long as he can before he gets a scolding.
"She's not eating again?" The woman asks. She crouches down next to her worker, to face the uncooperative girl. "Clem, please eat your food." Snow firmly commands. Clementine doesn't even acknowledge the two older adults kneeling in front of her, but separated, as they're on the other side of the bars. Then, as Bigby predicted, Snow quickly snaps her head to face him. "Are you smoking?" Bigby nods in response, and he removes the cigarette dangling from the ends of his thin lips to exhale a gray cloud. "You know that Ichabod wouldn't allow that." Here it comes, Bigby rolls his brown eyes. "And besides, they're not good for you!" Snow purses her lips to show her displeasure at Bigby's second respiration of smoke. "Bigby!" Snow chides. Bigby sighs loudly to imply his annoyance, and he stands up, and drops the white and brown tipped stick onto the cement floor, before grinding it underneath the sole of his shoes. He steps back, and crouches down, inspecting the crushed cigarette. Black dots speckle the cigarette.
"There," Bigby huffs. He really needed that smoke after dealing with Carver, the older physcopath earlier. That damn unemotional bastard. Snow nods in appreciation, and despite the irritation from the tiring day and denial of smoking, he ends up smiling feebly towards her.
"Now," Snow turns to the problem at hand. Poor Clementine, Bigby has to muse over that topic. According to the previously retired guardian over Clementine, the one who used to feed Clementine her food in this asylum, mentioned how she'd have crazy fits and mental breakdowns at such a young age. And she's been here for what-for four years? After watching a man who tried to take her television and killed off her father, she begin to have these hallucinations, and always talked about her invisible friends, some of them actually the people she met here, like Kenneth, another asshole that Bigby has to put up with. "Clementine, why don't you eat them? They make you feel better," Snow reassures. Clementine finally meets her eyes, staring at her skeptically.
"Then why am I still here?" She questions Snow, before returning to her current hobby: staring at the ground. "I seen what happened to Kenny, didn't he kill a man with a salt lick by accident after drinking too much? I'm not eating drugs." Bigby blinks, startled at Clementine's outburst. That is the longest damn sentence Bigby ever heard.
"Did your mommy ever give you medicine? Some drugs are good for you," Snow recomposes herself from Clementine's snarky retort. "And it wasn't just Kenny and his alcohol it was that he hears voices in his head as well."
"I know that." Clementine responds. Bigby has to admit, this girl is full of surprises, and it's only been the second day he's been her guard. She's also quiet and keeps to herself most of the time. In complete honestly, at first, Bigby thought maybe they got the wrong girl, after all, she doesn't show any symptoms of hallucinating, and he couldn't believe that this was the girl who stabbed her previous guard with his own pen.
No doubt folded in her meal, are grounded pills. Clementine refuses to eat the medication. If it's supposed to help her then why is she still trapped in her head? If the pills aren't going to destroy her lucid dreams, she's not taking them. Rather, the white pills fogs her head, and makes her drowsy, and more vulnerable to sleep and tiredness. She doesn't want to sleep. It's when the nightmares come, after all.
"Clementine." The words of one of the nicer workers causes her to look up, and she tugs the visor of her cap downwards, shadowing her eyes. "Why don't you eat your lunch?"
"I'm not eating pills." Clementine stubbornly hisses. Those words pull a sigh out between the scarlet lips.
"Clem, they help you get better," the lady reassures. "Ichabod won't hesitate to force you to eat them, you know. We hear you screaming at night, it won't be long until he figures out you're not taking your medication." She tucks a ringlet of ebony hair behind a pierced ear. Clem finally claps her narrowed eyes with the lady's frosty azure ones.
"And what would that scrawny weasel do?" Clementine challenges, sarcasm slowly seeping into her tone. To her pleasure, the rugged man on his knees beside the lady snorts. It's not even that good of a joke, and the lady glowers nastily at him. She rounds back to Clementine, her expression strict.
"Clementine, we're doing this to help you." The lady explains. Clementine labels bull on that. She exhales loudly, and smooths her beige pencil skirt over her thighs. "The reason why you're not getting better is because you're not eating your medicine," she claims. Clementine however, is more interested at her glossy, low hair bun. Even though the lady had inclined her head multiple times, the hair doesn't seem the least bit ruffled. "Clementine, are you paying attention?" Clementine shifts her eyes back onto the visage of the woman after hearing her accusing, scornful tone. Clementine nods. "Look, this is your only lunch you're getting today, so I suggest you eat it." At that, the lady heaves herself onto her slender, pale legs, and walks off, the sound of her heels against the concrete floor fading with each step she takes. Clementine scowls inwardly.
"Can you do me a favor?" Clementine blurts out, slightly startled that she's willing to actually say what's hanging on her mind. The man looks at her, his expression unfazed.
"If you're going to ask me to take your pills and lie on your report of you eating them, no." Clementine parts her lips, ready to snap at him. He rises from his kneeling position. "It's not going to work anyways, because then that night I'll hear you screaming and shouting very colorful language at us." The man drawls, and Clementine glares at him out from underneath the brim of her cap. Her eyes trail to the flimsy tray that entered her living space through a metal slot that opens from the outside, attached in the middle of her barred door. She knots her lips in disgust. Yesterday, the jerk that's her guard must've scribbled on her report, informing the lady from earlier that the trays that return to him, still has two long pills in one of her food tray's receptacle, untouched. So? Who cares if she eats the pills? Maybe it's to prevent her from assaulting people with writing utensils.
"Please just let me go..."
The straight jacket is uncomfortable in every way, it's hot and humid underneath the white leather. Her clothes underneath cling to her thin frame from sweat. She doesn't struggle against her bonds. She slowly shuffles down the hallway, her large, quivering toffee eyes darting around the area. A girl peers out at her from the shadow the visor of her hat cast across her dilated eyes. Her retinas is the hue of amber and hazel blended. She slowly shakes her head before shifting her bony, unhealthy frame towards the wall behind her, so that her back faces Lily. However, that one, short shake her head almost seem like an answer to Lily's previous plead for her release. Then, her feet refuses to move.
That bastard.
Lily feels her nostrils flare, her hackles rising, and the once stomped out blaze of anger in her stomach reignite at the visage of the man, in the corner of one of the slightly spacious cells, with an iron band clamped around his ankle, and a chain melded to the ground. He's shackled to the ground, like the other inmates in the cells in this section.
"What's wrong? Move!" One of her escorts shove Lily forward. She keeps her gaze of fury on this man, resisting the temptation to grab the collar of his filthy shirt through the gaps of the iron bars, and tug him forward repeatedly, smacking his visage onto the metal rods. She doesn't tear her glare at the man until she enters another section. A woman on Lily's right side turns to one of the cells in the back of this room, identical to the shape of the other rooms she passed earlier. Then, to Lily's surprise, from the gentle dispatch of her waving a gun out in the streets, shouting gibberish that she does not recall, the treatment her two escorts quickly turns rough, and a gasp escapes her lips as she's quickly shoved to the ground, her spine arched, as a knee's placed to her back.
"Wh-" Lily's fury from seeing the face of her father's killer earlier expands as the guards pin her to the ground. "The hell-!" Then, through more struggles, she realizes, that they're trying to remove her straight jacket quickly, and they pinned her down in case if she was to kill them. She gladly allows them to tear the thick cloth off of her, and shove her back, as they quickly retreat out of the cell, and they leave after slamming the barred door of her cell shut.
Lily slowly digests the events. It wasn't her fault. She didn't mean to. She did lie about being crazy and hearing voices, just so she doesn't get fined, but now, she's wondering if she'd rather be sent to a jail cell rather than here. She crumples to the ground against the wall as she begins to regret choosing the insane asylum instead of just calmly being sent to jail for shooting a bitch in the head.
"Mr. Crane, I don't think the medication is helping," Snow informs her boss, the man who runs this corrupted building. "I get several claims from various patients, that they're not getting better, even our oldest patient, the one's that's been here for twenty-two years, say that she's slowly getting worse, and she's pretty weak. I don't think that Faith is going to live any longer, she's been here since the age of six." Snow points out.
"Kindly continue your job, Ms. White," Ichabod responds in his nasally tone, using Snow's last name to indicate his annoyance at her sudden interruption with his 'work'.
"Snow's right, that girl that's been here for four years, Clementine, she says her pills don't work." Bigby supports Snow's claim, and Snow's heart lifts at that, after all, she needs someone to agree with her. Snow tugs the light blue collar of her inside shirt with the snowflake patterns. She wears this outfit to work everyday to Fabletown Insane Asylum, it's where her nickname first originated from, her original attire. "And besides, what are you giving them? All the pills look exactly the same, are you actually buying them the ones they need?" Bigby questions. Snow's tiny smile curls downward into a slight frown. Ichabod doesn't like people questioning his rules or work.
At Bigby's claim, Ichabod's sallow neck arches in indignation, a scowl forming underneath his rather large nose. "Of course I am! Are you saying that I'm not giving our patients the treatment they deserve and I'm just fooling around with their medicine and needs?" Ichabod screeches, his voice cracking multiple times. "Now, as I told Snow earlier, I'll tell you. Kindly continue your work!" Ichabod ends his direct demand with a shuffle of his stack of papers. "Snow, where's that wine I ordered for you to get?" Snow grinds her teeth in irritation. The only reason she decided to by the bottle was because she didn't want to have her boss to shout at her through the phone in the middle of Walmart.
"I-I left it on your desk," Snow responds. She quickly inspects his work space, crowded with files of his patients and with a compartment, each slot with a key that unlocks each cage for every individual section. Like the top key should unlock every cell, in every room, that's in Section A, the least dangerous of the bunch. She does a double take towards the corner of the desk, where she has recollections of putting a tall glass bottle full of rich liquid in a paper bag there. Where did it go? It's clearly not there, but she decides to go with her claim, acting as though she didn't realize the missing bottle.
Ichabod leers at her, rounding his sallow skinned and red tinged nose towards her direction, and Snow cringes. "It's not here!"
"Why'd you send Snow to get wine, anyways?" Bigby intervenes.
"I put the wine there, I remember-"
"Never mind!" Ichabod scowls, furrowing his unkempt eyebrows downwards into an angry expression. "I'm going anyways, I have business to take care of," Ichabod storms out of the room.
"Like what?" Bigby smirks, running the palm of his fingers along his jaw and stubble. Ichabod's frown curls even farther downwards at that comment, if possible. "Your spa appointment?" At that, Snow's boss storms out of the office.
"You shouldn't have provoked him like that, you know," Snow chides, though she was enjoying Ichabod's humiliation. Bigby just shrugs, the smile still across his face, and to Snow's disdain, he pulls out a box, and pops out one of the cigarettes inside.
"Ichabod won't like you smoking in the office," Snow reminds him. Bigby continues to light the cancerous stick, and Snow waves away the smoke that drifts her way. "Anyways, where did that wine bottle go?" Then, as though on cue, a boy stumbles in, hiccuping. "Buffkin?" Snow prods his shoulder as he trips over his feet, slamming into Ichabod's office. And then, her eyes narrow as they notices that in the boy's grip, is the neck of a tall bottle, nearly empty. "Where'd you get that wine bottle?"
"Oh, I found it on that desk over there," Buffkin responds, ruffling his curly green hair. His large eyes that has the same shine and color of tar, travel to Snow, and though she can't tell as his whole eye is oddly black for some reason, she has a feeling that his eyes aren't focused on her from the scarlet liquid. She snatches the bottle away, her heart plummeting as she realizes the dark, crimson liquid is almost gone, the bottle is almost drained of it.
"Buffkin!" Snow slams the bottle on the desk where she placed it hours earlier, causing Buffkin, who's hanging off the edge of the same desk, to retract his hands.
"Oops, was I not suppose to drink that?" Buffkin giggles.
Nobody saw it coming. Not even the people in the cells next to the cage, in the same A section. Bigby decided that it must've happened at night when everyone was asleep. But...right before he left, he remembers seeing her sitting in her cell, weak but alive, staring back at him with her jade eyes. Everything goes against the solid evidence that someone killed her in her sleep. How did the executioner even get into the cage without a key, for one, as the key is in the office, which is locked every night. How did he successfully decapitate a person without anyone else noticing, is also another good question. All of the other girls, in their separate cages, are clearly good friends of the deceased victim. It would be weird of them to lie that they didn't see their friend die.
How did he do it? Bigby can't comprehend this. How was the executioner able to disembowel Faith's head, in her own cage, with the cage still locked and nobody else seeing anything?
"Why would someone do this?" Snow hoarsely asks from beside him. Bigby doesn't answer her. He doesn't have an answer. He closes the eyes of the shocked girl. Then, after removing his hand, he notices something. A purple entity sticks out from between Faith's pale and ashen lips. He tugs the object which feels silky between his coarse, calloused fingers. A ribbon tumbles out. A periwinkle ribbon. "What's that?" Snow inspects the ribbon. "Why is there a ribbon in her mouth?" Snow questions. Bigby shrugs. Below Faith's chin is obscured with a jacket, covering her mutilated neck.
"You know how I told you that the girls don't know anything?" Snow whispers. Bigby nods. Snow went off to question the other ladies in their cells nearby Faith's, and according to them, they were actually on good terms with Faith and were heartbroken. "Actually, one of the girls I questioned, instead of saying 'I don't know' or anything along the lines, she said something like, 'my lips are sealed'. I forgot to tell you about that." Snow says.
Bigby pauses at that, his brain processing her words. "'My lips are sealed'? Which girl was it?"
"Her name is Nerissa, she's the one with ginger hair."
Yeah. Okay. I know. This one is kind of short. But live with it.