A/N: The idea for this story came to me around about April last year, and it was one I tried to ignore for quite a while with me being so busy. Despite being behind on my other TWDG story Skin-Deep [which I have been in the midst of writing again, rejoice!] in the end I found this concept was calling to me so much that I had to do it.

I wanted to go down a different, more serious path than to my previous TWD stories, and make use of perspective switching, because unlike Growing Pains and Skin-Deep, each chapter will switch between our two leads. While playing with the idea I haven't seen that many people try before, Tacit also gives me the opportunity to go forward with the theme of a certain conflict from Season 2 that never quite saw itself through to the end, and writing certain characters I have been unable to write properly until now…b…because um, I accidentally killed them off.

Overall this is a story I've wanted to attempt for a long time, and it has been a real challenge with a lot of planning behind it. My goal with Tacit is creating something that makes readers really think. However, as an alternate universe like my other stories, again, this is not my take on a Season 2 or a Season 3, and shouldn't be regarded as such.

A special thanks to the Sialark and Keepmoving who helped beta for me, and to BembiAnn for allowing me permission to use her artwork for this story who you can find on tumblr and deviantart.


The Walking Dead
Tacit

Chapter 1: Prelude


Somehow, it always ended up being just them.

Home was just a word, fleeting as had been their destination, going from state to state and doing what they could to survive. They travelled with little purpose other than to get by, never staying in one place for too long. To keep their distance from others, they had learnt that lesson well, for however big or small a group, their functionality fell apart in the face of disaster, whether those inflicted by others or of their own undoing. Friendships forged and burnt to cinders; too often deceived and too many names and places to count where it didn't last. And after all the blood spilled, the lives to perish, from the ashes the two would emerge, drifters on the road again.

Finding themselves a haven—they had given up on that years ago, and chose to stop seeking freedom out from the gates of hell and accepted this world for what it was. The cavalry would never sweep in and fix things, and no walls or community were strong enough to hold out without corruption self-destructing it at the core. Together, just the two of them to watch one another's backs, for tactfulness and trust, it was enough.

This was their life now, and that's just how it was.


"Luke, look."

A hand lightly touched his shoulder, the young woman by his side gesturing over yonder where the horizon skies were scorched red. In the once empty streets of dilapidated buildings, dirty figures now crowded together a few blocks away, shambling on and spreading like cancerous cells invading the town. Walkers, lots of them; looked like a huge parade going on down there. Luke smelled it carried on the wind, death, from a decade's worth of rot filling his lungs. What better day to be alive than to be breathing that in of an evening?

"Not seen a herd that big in a while," his statement was casual, his awareness heightened, but not with great bouts of fear or stress. They had dealt with this situation enough times to know they could deal with it here; the living were the least predictable ones, while the dead got more cumbersome.

Luke turned back to the mummified walker lying on that rooftop, so weak the corpse could move its jaw in only the pitiful chomps of broken teeth, those thin stick arms too weak to lift themselves up. Dehydration or starvation were the likely cause of the man's death, too spineless to venture down and take his chances when all his supplies ran out; the refuge he'd sought here was poor, his tent was weathered into disuse, old clothes and trash scattered. An old banner tied together from sheets was hung over the building's roof, the faded words HELP scrawled on them in paint; he and Clementine had seen it from the street below, which inevitably led them here, to nothing of significant use. Discarded rusted cans all but empty, no food, no weapons; coming up here had been a waste of time.

Luke pulled out the knife from the sheath strapped to his leg.

"How long you reckon we got?"

"Hmm...ten minutes tops, maybe less," Clem concentrated on that portion of downtown the herd was advancing from through her small handheld telescope, certainty in her tone. "They'll be here soon."

"Be best to coat up then; no sense takin' gambles with that many," a knife through the forehead, the hollow eyes of the walker rolled into the back of its sockets, and still the corpse was. Those tattered clothes hung loose, thin and torn, exposing the belly or the lack of one to Luke. "This guy ain't got much on him; might be worth usin' one of the others we put down earlier."

Clem gave the walker the once-over, appearing to agree with his decision. That small telescope tucked away into her sweater pocket, she adjusted her hair bun and that an old weathered baseball cap, before heading for the fire escape they'd used to climb up to that rooftop. She spoke those words of warning as they always did; it was almost religious.

"Eyes and ears."

Ground level, their steps retraced, they found her in an alleyway next to a stone stairwell, the frail corpse of a headless woman that Clem decapitated earlier, a clean cut through the neck with that twelve-inch tantō blade strapped to her waist. The head of the walker laid nearby, its skull crushed in.

Clem kept a lookout while Luke went to work, using his knife to cut open the walker right down its middle, spilling out its rotten internal organs onto cardboard and old trash. The odor was nasty as always, his eyes watering at the smell filling his nostrils, but he persevered, sticking his hands right into the maggot-filled mess and smearing it onto his jeans and sweater. Such a repulsive business Luke never likened to, no matter often the cycle was repeated, but better than being eaten alive.

His friend took her turn next coating up after he was done, while Luke took his own turn in standing guard, so no dead in the area could creep up on the pair. When done, they cautiously walked out onto the desolate street of rusted cars, broken windows, cracked roads and pavements where small green plant life sprouted. The herd was approaching on their right, just a few short minutes away.

"What do you wanna do?" Luke asked.

The young woman kept a steady hand trained over the tantō, her eyes flicking between the masses of dead, examining and strategizing. "To head through the storm, then it's out of the way."

The machete was pulled free from the sheath holstered to his back, sunlight catching on the blood-splattered blade, still holding up nicely; a gift from a lover to replace a previous weapon lost, the inscription 'Boy Scout' burnt into the handle. He couldn't resist tracing over the words with his thumb, stirring up the recollections of black eye shadow, cigarettes, and leather boots with brass buckles.

Their days spent scavenging around in the bare bones of that town for supplies were up, with little to nothing found. They were days that could've been spent better by foraging for food or setting snare traps. It was time to go.

"Alright. Lead the way."

They walked head on, towards that oncoming herd. A look shared, their steps slowed and they drifted apart, blending in among the rotting bodies of filth that gurgled and croaked uncomfortably close around them, shuffling on old cracking limbs. A few eyeless beings on their last legs, others with arms amiss and jaws hanging open. The deads' clothing were identical to one another, with shoes worn, boney feet bare, to shirts and pants ripped to tatters, pieces sticking to leathery dried flesh as if one and the same.

The stench…

Keeping in each other's sights, he and Clem wandered slowly through that herd for several minutes, until the dead grew sparse and it was just them alone again to reconnect and walk the remainder of the way out of the town to a fast approaching dusk. Not a word was said.


Crickets chirped in the heat. Through the windows, the trees and neighboring houses on the outer suburbs of the town were nothing but the blackened soot of shadows, waiting to disappear in that fading light. A few cans of leek soup discovered in an empty pantry was all they'd had to share between them; it didn't taste too good, but would get them through another day to wherever they ended up next.

A whisper spoke to him on the verge of sleep, snapping Luke awake.

"Tell me a story."

Curled up and wrapped in blankets on the floor next to him, Clem's gaze stayed fixed on the silver button on the sleeve of her denim jacket, taken from the closet in that house with other clothes to replace most of their reeking gut stained ones. The bedrooms were a no go, a suicide family sleeping eternal in their beds with the empty chamber of a gun trapped in the bony grip of one parent. Decomposition hadn't been kind. Downstairs was where they were better off, the two-seater too cramped; the floor was the next best leisure in life that they were used to. No sense in building a fire, not while indoors.

The young woman was distracted; it was not the first time Luke had seen that look on her face.

"Like what?" he asked.

"Something from before; you remember things better than I do," Clem said.

"Okay...what do ya wanna hear?"

"Anything."

"Alright," both arms behind his head, dust was gathered on a ceiling fan above them both; it was similar to those Luke recalled in a diner a few days prior. The memory of greasy burgers, of butter and syrup pancakes from the good old days, they fed a hunger the cold dated soup hadn't satisfied. "Ate this meal one time, food didn't go down—"

"Other than you taking a bunch of dumps," Clem interrupted.

"You did say anything."

"Luke..."

He smirked too proud of himself to admit, wanting to relish in the humor for as long as it stuck with him. Things quieted down while left to his thoughts, and he drew in a breath, releasing it.

"Took a vacation to North Carolina a few years before all this; two weeks, it was just me and the boys."

No longer toying with the sleeve of her denim jacket, Clementine slowly looked at him with an almost childlikeness Luke didn't see much of in her nowadays.

"Was Pete there?" she asked

"No, he weren't...but Nick, his nephew, y'know, the guy I told ya about? He was. He hadn't wanted to go; I talked him into it, took some persuasion."

Luke carried on like that for a while, saying whatever came off the top of his head from a vacation with those who were nothing but ghosts to him now. He exaggerated a couple of parts, making the trip sound better than it was, and honed in on the important details of what Luke assumed Clem wanted to hear about the bygone era, and then some. He described the white beaches, the gulls, the sparkling blues seas that dazzled the eyes, the boats drifting on the water, the music and gossip from tourists of families and folks that flocked there during the summer time in big crowds. 'I love the beach,' Clem often told him.

She listened, rarely without interrupting unless to ask a question, those gold eyes remaining steady on him in the darkness of evening turning to night, soon difficult to see her face. Her breathing fell slow and even, having drifted off to sleep before Luke was finished telling his tale, as was often the case for the stories she would ask of him to share, and take their minds off what had transpired in the day.

The stories were her lullabies, keeping the nightmares at bay.


Nearly thirteen years ago they met when she was just a short skinny bean of a girl. He and Pete, they'd lost everything that week, the rest of their group dead, all their friends, their families; it happened too fast. The scars hadn't had time to set when out on that meadow they had seen Clementine below the branches of a bowing tree, her tiny figure standing where they themselves had been a few ten or so minutes before after ditching their ride, the car out of gas from driving all night.

Pete and himself mistook her for the dead at first, the distance and the blood on her clothes amplifying those suspicions. The girl had approached the pair with tiny and timid steps, crossing that vast grassy meadow towards them as they had too made their own way forward. Every few yards she would stop, just to watch them like a spooked deer watching hunters, before advancing in a little closer. When the distance shortened to the last dozen yards, it was easier to tell a live corpse the girl wasn't, but a danger? That was open to debate.

Nine years old and carrying a gun, two things Luke hadn't liked put together.

Pete broke in the introductions first, the bravest between them to step forward towards the armed child. "Hello there, you lost young lady?"

That gun clutched in her small hands, aimed at the ground, the girl had looked between them, wide eyed and frightened. She was jumpy, the sort that would pull a trigger by mistake, the bad kind that kept Luke on his toes.

The old man didn't let that deter him. "The name's Pete, and this here fellow with me is Luke, a friend of my sister's boy. What's your name?"

Her mousy voice broke after a long wave of silence, of the long grass rustling in the early dawn breeze.

"Cle...Clem, Clementine."

"Clementine? Well, what a lovely name. Luck should have it, I used to know somebody by that name growing up; a real funny girl," Pete bluffed for small-talk; no Clementine of such had ever come up in a discussion in the past to Luke, that of him knowing.

"Where are yer parents?" Luke was to ask, scanning the meadows of golden grass, the colors of the landscape stagnant by the autumn. "They out here somewhere with you?"

His face fell when she shook her head.

"No...no, t-they're gone..."

Giving Luke a long, acknowledging look, the old man adjusted the strap of his shotgun hanging over his back, and cautiously he'd knelt down in front of the forlorn looking child.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Pete spoke to her, sincere. "We lost people of our own just recently ourselves; my sister and nephew along with them, God rest their souls…"

"They died because of the walkers?"

"The what now?"

"The...the monsters."

"Yeah, that'd be them. Whole herd swamped us on a backroad some days ago now; didn't stand much of a chance in hell. Got Luke's folks too; ain't that right boy?" Pete said, awaiting the clarification Luke never gave, too numb for such trivial talk. The old man continued. "You got anybody watchin' out for you, another group?"

Clementine stared down at her dark sandals, with another tired shake of her head.

"No, I don't know. There were a lot of us. I tried to, to find them, but they weren't...I…"

Dead or alive, they never found out. Over a decade on, none of those from Clem's group were seen again. They were gone, and there within in that time and place with nobody and not a thing around for miles? It seemed sure as hell nobody was going to come looking for her.

"It's alright, you don't have to say no more about it," Pete words held assurance, to the sniffling child welling up with tears. "Why don't you stick with us for a while? It's not safe for a girl your age to be out here all by yourself."

"Not safe for anybody," Luke muttered under his breath, unheard by the girl, but not to Pete to have sent him an ill-tempered scowl. The old man was near enough to snatch the gun out of the nine-year-old's hands, yet he didn't try for all the efforts of gaining her trust; her skittish nature too jumpy to risk having their faces blown off.

"I-I don't...do I have to?" Clementine asked.

"Of course not, but I'd rather not leave you all alone here; wouldn't be that much of a good man if I did," was Pete's response, all but good intentions behind it. "If you want, we'll stay with you until we're able to track down members of your group, or some other decent folks out there with kids of their own willin' to take care of you. How does that fair?"

The girl had looked past Pete, staring at Luke from where he was, examining his face with teary eyes wide as if searching for something hidden, a trick or indication of wicked deceit, nothing of the sorts a child should have to do. He used to think he was a decent judge of character, telling apart the friends from foes, the good from wicked. Yet people were puzzles, and they weren't so easily solved.

Whatever she'd seen in him, it left that little girl decided as she looked back to Pete, wiping one of her cheeks stained in fresh tears.

"Y-Yeah…okay."

Nobody got hurt; when asked, Clementine allowed for Pete to take the gun off her, with little to no protest. They never went looking for her group, the word of Savannah being overrun by the dead deterring such efforts. Sticking around the area a few miles out from such a herd hadn't sat well for a plan after encountering one before at the cost of their group, so they chose to move on. For many weeks from the few good strangers they met, the girl would ask out the names from her group and if any were sighted. None were, and in the very end, she stopped asking.

Clementine, she'd grown remarkably close to Pete in those first couple days, and did so over the course of those years. A parental figure to the child, the connection between the kid and Pete was almost there overnight, and to Luke's own surprise at just how strong it formed in such short period of time. 'He reminded me of Lee,' the girl would confess in the not too distant future when Pete was no longer with them, the similarities unable to be shared for Luke had never met the friend she spoke fondly of.

The old man himself, Pete, he took to the kid well, being less tough on her than Pete had been on Nick and himself when they were boys, but still stuck in his ways; the motto every man must be a man and nothing less, but women had the right to choose how thick-skinned they wished to be, the old timer saw no reasoning beyond that.

Unlike Clementine and Pete, Luke and the kid weren't all that close for a while. Witnessing Carlos and his girl get eaten alive by the walkers a few days before Clementine showed up in that meadow, it became a bleak reminder to him this wasn't a world for anybody, especially children. Having another young girl travelling around with them again, he'd worried about history repeating itself; as if he hadn't dealt with enough grief already. Pete's suggestion of finding her a better group, it became the best alternative to him. Luke didn't want to get attached to that kid, he couldn't, thought it'd be easier putting the responsibility on somebody else than dealing with it himself.

That plan blew up in his face spectacularly.

The long hours listening to crackling of the fire lit in that stove, and the smell of burning pinewood, they were to be intruded upon by the creak on the stairs. Luke hadn't the need to look, but he had chosen to anyway, knowing who it was.

"Can't sleep?"

The small figure carefully wandered down the staircase of that cabin, the nine-year-old's Bambi eyes weighed with shadows below them. A green blanket was snuggled around her, pulled over her head like a hood, the kid so short, the blanket was dragging behind her along those floorboards, towards the couch where he'd been sat tasked with maintaining those handguns in their possession.

"I had a really bad dream...is Pete awake?" Clementine asked.

"He already hit the sack; been out a while now, probably best to leave him," Luke had motioned his head over at the closed door to the first floor bedroom, the warthog snores heard faintly from within.

Silent the girl was, before asking another question.

"Why aren't you sleeping?"

"Night owl," was all he'd given, too distracted checking the barrel of the handgun to have been cleaned and solvent. He tested the gun slide after it was reattached, ensuring it worked fine before dry-firing the unloaded weapon, the trigger releasing a soft click.

The kid still standing there, reluctant to leave and climb the stairs had soon caught his attention again.

"Can sit down if ya want," was his offer.

"Hmmm..."

Rather than choose the other couch in that cabin, Clementine had found a spot on the two-seater next to him instead, soon making herself comfortable, wrapped in the cocoon of her blanket. There she'd stayed a silent thing, drowsy and yet aware to everything Luke was doing while he cleaned that second firearm, the pistol to have once belonged to that girl. She was too astute, as a glance to check on her revealed the girl focusing not on the disassembled gun on that coffee table, but on a black and white glossy photo creased in the middle, words written on its exposed back, taunting at him with unacquainted longing.

Talk to me

The grease wiped off on a grubby stained white shirt, the photo was snatched up, and Luke pocketed it away.

"So, watcha dream about?" he'd asked.

"Scary stuff."

"Uh huh..."

The nine-year-old had wriggled her feet in her socks, her short legs not long enough for them to touch the floor from where they hung off the edge of the couch.

A question was raised, curious with childish motives.

"Do you know any bedtime stories?"

A fraction of a moment Luke stalled during the midst of cleaning that pistol, before he'd continued on.

"Not off by heart, no."

"Oh..."

From a brief pause in time for feet to wriggle, another question was raised.

"Do you know any stories that aren't bedtime stories?" Clementine asked.

"Sure," he'd said.

"Can you tell me one?" she'd asked further.

A shrug.

"Depends what kinda one that is you wanna hear, squirt."

"Something, happy?"

"Happy...yeah; gotta couple in mind that'd be those, I guess."

Like Luke said. The plan blew up in his face spectacularly.


A thrift store full of second-hand clothing, toys, sports gear and all other sorts of forgotten knick knacks. Glasses, plates and ornaments were all left to gather dust, with coat hangers and wrinkled garments littered around the store floor where people had dumped old clothing for those on the rack. It seemed as if other survivors had been here before, doing the same thing they were, by rifting through those items for anything they could use.

The building was secure, stinking only of stagnant air rather than corpses, and the wide store windows let in plenty in of daylight allowing for decent visibility. Outside things were quiet, with a few shops across from a gas station, all of it situated miles out in the woods. They had time to browse.

"What about this one?"

Luke looked away from the long rack of men's clothes when Clem popped up in the left of his peripheral vision. Her head was poking out from one of the aisles; she was wearing a green camo-cap.

The memory of an old friend often in camo-pants sparked in his mind. Not a match.

"Nah, doesn't quite suitcha'," he said. "Try somethin' else."

A crinkle of her nose, the young woman disappeared again. Some rummaging about, a few beanies and bobble hats tossed on the floor outside the aisle, her head popped around the corner again, this time wearing an orange cap with white stripes.

"This?"

"…Traffic cone."

"What?"

He gestured to his head. "Y'know, the color with the-"

Clem groaned and stepped out of sight, that hat quick to be flung across the thrift store like a Frisbee, knocking sunglasses off a stand by the cash register.

"I'll never find a good one."

"You will."

"Not like mine."

"Pessimistic."

Not far from him, a violet sling backpack belonging to that of his friend was left down by his own brown faded knapsack. The old D inscribed baseball cap resided on top, dirty, wore and falling apart. Too often sewn and patched up for over a decade now, that it could no barely hold out being worn a decade more. It was cherished, but not invulnerable to wear and tear.

Flipping through the rack, Luke pulled out a jacket by its hanger, the redish brown color eye-catching as the leather. There were enough pockets, but too small a size, and not his style.

Back it went.

"Can check someplace else; not the end of the world, Clem."

Debunking the suggestion with a scoff, the young woman wandered on out from the aisle and down the rows past him, boots scuffing on the tiles. "Have you been outside lately?"

"Nope, been cramped down in a bunker eatin' stale beans all these years," Luke smirked. "You?"

"Limbo," Clem trailed to a stop by a bookcase nearby full of small ornaments, animals and humans alike. Among them he caught her picking up a snow globe, wiping years of dust away to reveal a tiny house inside that glass bubble. "When's my birthday again? It's soon right?"

The dates on a calendar were long lost track of. Guess work was the ways things ran now, based on the seasons and the lengths of days between them. The climate was still warm, but change was in the air, the days getting shorter, the evenings colder.

Luke was quiet for a while, inspecting a moth-eaten sweater with little interest. "About….think, a month or so now, might be less."

"I feel old."

"Hah, think twenty-two'll be old, should try bein' me; partway to earnin' myself the title of old-timer over here," Luke said for humoring effect. "Don'tcha get me started on the grays."

That snow globe tipped upside down for only a few seconds, Clem held it up to her face, watching with fascination as minute glittery stars fell over and around the small house inside it. Luke noticed her standing there a while still holding the thing, until at some point she wandered off while he was taking down something from the highest rack. It was brown leather jacket with a hoodie, the thing worn, but durable and the right size. It would do.

"Leather's not really my style, just thought you should know that."

His statement had earned him a scowl from the ashy-brown haired woman, distracted straightening out the jacket on him, ensuring it fit right on the sleeves.

"Be thankful it's not stilettos I'm putting on you."

"Good point."

A roll of her almond eyes, the woman had fetched up the sheathed machete from the floor, carefully fitting the holster around his torso, over the new jacket. The straps brought around to the front, she'd fastened them over his chest, while having taken her sweet time with a task Luke could have easily done himself.

Her lips narrowed with a piercing gaze to match. "What?"

"Nothin'."

"Wipe that grin off your face then; I'm not fooling around."

"I know."

A sigh to his playfulness, she went on fastening the last strap, a sly smile overruling the deadpan expression on her fair-skinned features.

"This might be all fun and games for you, but like it or not you have to start dressing like a survivor," she'd given the collar of his exposed shirt a tug. "These flimsy shirts of yours are a written invitation for every corpse to Timbuktu to take a bite out of you. So if you don't mind, I'd like to keep you in one piece."

"I'm sure you do-oof!" the curled fist to Luke's gut had been anything other than gentle, and yet he'd rolled with the punches as it was said, giving the most charming smiled in surrender, mustered up just for her. "One piece? Gotcha."

"Good," that pretty face close enough to count her eyelashes, the woman leaned her body into him and pressed her lips to his right cheek, a teasing whisper to his ear sending a pleasing shiver from where her warm breath tickled his skin. "Just remember who saved your ass, little man."

A folded photograph and a folded piece of paper, both crumbled and worn on the ridges; Luke remembered to take them out from his back jean pocket, slipping them on the inside pocket of the leather jacket once it was fitted and the machete holster strapped on. They would be safer in there.

He didn't look. He couldn't...

"Oh my God, you're kidding me!"

Clem's voice brought alarm, Luke finding her down one of the aisles in no time at all. The young woman was safe, no threats around. She was knelt down to one of the lower shelves, pulling out from under some children books what appeared to be a strangely shaped plastic box with stickers on it.

Her expression was one of excitement. "I, I haven't seen one of these since I was a kid!"

On approach, the shape became identifiable to Luke as something that played music, but new to him in that it still sparked curiosity.

"A toy record player?"

As it was lifted up, colorful disks fell out from a side compartment, plastic records barely bigger than CD disks rolling everywhere onto the floor.

Clem giddily scrambled to pick them all up. "It's a music box."

"Y'sure? Cause it looks like a—"

"No, no it is. I'll show you."

A record got left behind as his friend hurried off, left down by Luke's foot which he retrieved and inspected. A peachy color, one side damaged, scratched and chipped, but the other side remained intact with strange grooves on it. The title Jack and Jill was engraved on the record, the title of a nursery rhyme he'd vaguely recollected.

To the checkout counter where the cash register was, Clementine stood there with her newfound toy on the glass display case. The sight of her tampering with the thing was an amusing one to watch.

"My mom, she got me one of these for my birthday. I used to play it in my treehouse all the time," Clem said on his approach while dusting off the bizarrely designed music box. "I hope this thing still works…um, can I—"

"Yeah," Luke let her take the plastic record he had at hand, watching her place it down on the turntable, and resting what appeared to be the tone arm bearing a cartridge over it. She flipped the ON switch, and…nothing.

Her shoulders sunk with disappointment. "Shit."

"Maybe, it runs on batteries?" he asked.

"No…it should've, oh!" a spark of realization, Clem tilted up the front of the music box, grabbing what appeared to be a dial; she turned it three, four times, and on the fifth, the toy came to life. That plastic record of titled Jack and Jill began a slow spin on that turntable, and with it was created a simple, but beautiful melody, vivid and almost taboo to the ears in a world long without songs.

Clem looked overjoyed. "It works!"

"Sure does," Luke leaned against the display case, content to listen to that music box with her. Such things were never in his own possessions over the course of his lifetime, and yet still, it reminded him of simpler times of being a boy and of the ebony jewelry box in his ma's bedroom that would play whenever she put on her favorite pair of earrings or other pieces of her jewelry. And then there were of course other times that music triggered of which he tried to put out of his mind, the memories to have gone amiss for many years…

The music box ran a fifth cycle of that nursery rhyme before the windup contraption died, its tune disappearing back into the void as its brief moment in time came to past. His friend didn't wind the toy again, not immediately, her face having changed to one without happiness, those gold Bambi eyes remaining steady on that music box as if its melody played on still inside her memory.

'They grow up so fast,' the term from a world gone extinct. There was little than the whisper of the child Clem used to be, her cheekbones becoming more define in recent months, or was their poor malnutrition in that time misleading such change? He'd seen it all, watched her shoot up through to adolescence, teen tantrums, to where they stood now. There was no pride, not for someone raising a child the best that they could in the circumstances handed to them, only pity, loss, for what never was. Luke considered himself fortunate, for his childhood, and some of the early adulthood of his twenties, were both decent enough in contrast, but Clementine never got that. Over half her lifetime was spent, not being able to live by the old ways, with so much that couldn't be undone.

Clem was to turn her head in his direction, focusing not directly on him, but on the new jacket which Luke wore, his friend studying it a short while. "I want to be alone for a bit. Is that okay?"

She sounded on the verge of breaking, though he saw no visible signs, not the ones many would've suspected. A wooden gaze, the sort he'd seen on her before in times he'd rather forget. There was reluctance in him to respect those wishes, until Luke found it in himself to give her the space she needed.

"Yeah…yeah, sure," he said, moving away from the display case. "Just, come and find me when you're ready."

Nothing was said, only a small nod of Clem's head acknowledging his words.

A light pat to her shoulder, Luke left as requested, choosing to snoop out the rest of the thrift store by himself. Many times that music box would play again from that end of the store by the checkout counter, the twisting of the dial, clattering of plastic, and a new melody freed from its prison.

Passing by a metal storage basket, handbags and purses bundled inside, something stuck out of place to reel Luke back, an interest strong enough for him to fish it out. The color violet and made of cardboard, it was a slim jewelry box with a tiny bow. The lid cracked open, inside something gold shimmered in the light, a chain.

A glance to where his friend stood, her back turned with all attention held on creating music, Luke shut the lid of that box, returning to where he'd left his knapsack on the floor not far from Clem's, tucking it in discreetly with a smile to himself.

This would do.


The kick came hard to his ribs, adding damage to what was already broken.

There was shouting, a jumble of words forming an incoherent sentence that couldn't be understood to a brain of jello. It took Luke too long to figure them out before another kick came, this time straight into his abdomen.

"I won't ask you again! Now where's the girl?"

Bandits, they ambushed Luke outside the thrift store and only him. Clem, after they'd both walked outside she'd gone off to take a piss in the alleyway between that store and another, and while she was away out of sight, those bandits showed up. They had come from the road he and Clementine had previously travelled from, the group of strangers walking right out from around bend of those trees. It was no coincidence them being here; he and Clem had been tracked.

All in casual gear, the bandits were three young men in their twenties or so, and one a woman who was the graying middle-aged leader of the three not-so-lost boys. Relations were there, clear to be defined by the similarities of their broad noses and narrow chins, as was it the same with those bright brown eyes and their long greasy brown hair. A mother and her sons, or an aunt with her nephews perhaps, Luke hadn't known at first and none of that matter, because he got bad vibes off the lot of them. He'd known he was in trouble the moment they set their sights on him like a rabbit caught in a snare.

He heard the group too late to find cover and hide, marveled by a hawk hovering high up in the sky while stood in the road in a brief moment's distraction that cost him for what was his own fault. The bandits were all armed to the teeth, brandishing rifles to 9mm pistols, all enough to be intimidating.

"Greetings stranger! It's a pleasure meeting you here!" charismatically had spoken the woman, as if out on a morning stroll. No age and gender could deter from the threat she posed. The strong outline of muscles on her vest and exposed forearms a sign that she was anything but frail.

One the youngest of the males, a baby-faced bandana-wearing man, he'd aimed a gun at Luke the second he'd tried to bolt. The weapon resembled a luger, an antique. "Nuh ah, oh no you don't; you be staying right where you are. Lead's not good for the body, you know what I'm saying?"

Too close of range to flee without getting shot, at gunpoint Luke was given no other choice but to raise his arms and surrender. "I don't want no trouble guys. Just take my stuff and-"

"Whoa whoa whoooa, slow down," another of the men interrupted, being a bear of a guy with a scar on his lip. "You're taking things way too fast pal; you do what we tell you to do."

"Yeah, we're running the show, not you!" the third and final male mocked, a short guy with thick sideburns. "Fucking pacifist!"

The gun trained on him, Luke was ordered to throw down his knapsack and weapons, consisting of nothing more than the knife strapped to his leg and the machete on his back. The group closed in with the female leader in front, who was to kick his weapons far from reach into the company of those behind her. She was the type of woman to have been attractive in her youth, and retained much of that beauty to old age, but inner beauty she was anything but. There was not a scrap of decency reflected in her eyes, rotten through to the core.

An eerie calmness surrounded the woman an the aura, and the question she'd posed to him.

"Where is she?"

Luke stared her down. "I don't know who—"

"Your girlfriend! Don't play dumb asshole, we saw her!" Babyface shouted.

The woman hand signaled for silence from her boy. "She's here, isn't she? Hiding somewhere, am I right?"

How much had it taken Luke not to break eye contact, to not to give away any indication of where his friend remained in hiding in that alleyway, probably listening to everything.

"Just me here, ma'am," he'd said.

"Of course it is," the woman studied him up and down, her thin lips revealing a flat smile. "You've no guns? Poor man...then, neither does she? You weren't armed with them earlier from what we saw on my son's scope; I bet that's still so or you wouldn't look so skittish."

When? How long ago were they spotted and tracked? That morning, it must've been, or these folks would've acted sooner and in the night. Adrenaline in the veins, fight or flight, and neither could be done. Breathing trained steady, a tactic of desperation emerged.

"You don't have to do this," Luke had said, full knowing reasoning was beyond them, and soon ENOUGH he was proven true.

The woman's smile formed into remorse, her eyes wide and sadistic.

"But I do. We have to."

With a crack of her knuckles, that's when like a street gang, they attacked him.

Rather than shoot him dead, make it quick, they beat the living shit out of him. A fist to his face, with a kick or two bringing the ground in fast as stones and broken slabs of road connected with Luke's cheek, scrapping at the skin. The senses got knocked out of him after a few blows to the head, breaking the world apart into him seeing only stars and blackness for a time. The pain struck in bursts on coming to, suffered in the crack of his ribs, his nose. Luke couldn't remember much in between the beatings, a blessing almost.

There was a persistent thought, a fear for himself, for Clementine, that she would intervene or give herself up.

'Stay hidden,' he kept praying whenever consciousness permitted it.

"firearm she'd of used it by now; stake her out," were the words to welcome Luke when regaining consciousness, the words of the female leader. It took his sluggish mind too long to register it, the voices of men echoing in the spinning vortex of his skull. The remarks sent a chill down his spine.

"Time for some pussycat, you get me?"

"When the fuck don't I?"

Hunched over on the ground, Luke pulled in short stabbing breaths. A copper taste was in his mouth, and his nose bled, dripping bright red in a rhythm of pitter-patters on his leather jacket sleeve when trying to get up, failing.

Two dark shapes walked off towards the sparse stores lining one side of that street, the figures splitting and rejoining in his double vision, everything a blur. Anger and fear intertwined, they were not enough to aid Luke's battered body to fight back when a hand roughly grabbed the scruff of his hair, and shoved his face into the ground. The old woman chose to be the one to deliver him more beatings, demanding answers Luke refused to give. He could tell the sideburns guy was there too, just beyond the haze on guard, a semi-automatic rifle armed at the ready to shoot anything that moved.

"If you're listening girl, you best turn yourself in now if don't want to this ending badly for your partner here!" the female bandit enticingly called out. To no response coming, she knelt beside Luke, the task of focusing on the woman's face near impossible with the fight to remain conscious. "Call her out of hiding. I'm sure you don't want her to watch you suffer anymore than you do having your bones broken. Which would you prefer next, the rest of your ribs? An arm, or maybe a leg?"

In an effort to raise his head, blood spat out from between his dry lips, hitting the concrete radiating with heat from the wrath of the sun. "I'm not….not with—"

"With anyone? I heard you the first time, but eyes don't lie," disregarded, the leader was to stroke his hair, her touch poison to which he recoiled from. "She looked very beautiful, even by nigger standards. It's not right that you should keep her all for yourself; women like her are needed. We can give her a good home with us like she deserves; we'll break her into being one of the flock soon enough."

Sharply inhaling, cracked ribs splitting nerves as hoarse laughter broke from him. Luke was fast to regret such actions as pain silenced him again. "That, that always what it boils down to with you folks? Fuck anythin' on two legs? Just a bunch of animals!"

A fist collided to his cheekbone, crack, pain buzzed and throbbed. The woman's muted voice shouted at him from behind of walls of his skull. "Animals!? This is for my sons' sakes, their futures! What fucking right do you have judging us!?"

Luke spat out more blood, some satisfaction gained from those red splotches landing on the woman's shoes. "Ca…callin' it, by…by how it is…"

"You piece of—" the mother's son, Sideburns, kicked him in the back, right in the kidney. Before further violence could be inflicted, they were interrupted by the sound of music, like soft bells. It was the melody of a music box…Jack and Jill.

It came from the direction of the thrift store.

Luke's memory of doing a sweep of the building flooded back, of the emergency backdoor being unlocked, the one that led out to the woods, and to behind the alleyways between the stores.

Clem!

A loud whistle, the female bandit alerted her two scouting sons departing out from the ice cream parlor next doors. The shapes of the two men were visible in Luke's vision advancing towards where the nursery rhyme played in the thrift store.

"She's up to something! Watch yourselves, and no damaging the goods! We need her alive!"

By their mother's orders, the men stormed the building, guns ready. Few precautions, and overconfident. Foolish or experienced?

"No! Clem get—" a second kick, this time delivered by the bandit leader right to his gut. The wind knocked out of Luke, his lungs refused to draw in a single breath.

"Clem? That's her name? What's that short for, Clemence? Clementine?" the woman asked; another kick coming when he didn't answer, harder this time. "Hey I am talking to you!"

Oxygen, Luke couldn't take it in fast enough, ignoring the pains from damaged ribs wanting to squeeze every breath out from his lungs again.

A rifle firing, ears ringing. A tumble down into darkness; screams from faraway—

Not again, not a second time. He couldn't…

"Going to give you one last warning girly!" the mother yelled impatiently. "These hide and seek games stop now! Come quietly, you hear me Clemence!?"

Her sons in the thrift store were to do the same, Luke's ears picking up the calls for pussycat inside the building, mocking.

Nothing.

"Why am I not surprised?" a chuckle, the mother knelt back down, much closer to him now. The sun overhead burned into Luke's retinas, with the woman's face residing in shadows, that smile of hers almost satanic. "God, look at you, so weak. What kind of man are you anyway? Can't even get the man part down right can you; gotta have the young missus doing all the work."

"S…suu…"

"What?" the woman leaned farther in. "Louder please hon; I didn't catch that."

The crack of laughter from her son, a mere couple of steps behind him, both were crowded in. No show from the other two, with the melody of the music box within the store dying…one shot. Push Luke did, succeeding after a struggle to lean up onto one forearm. Blood wiped from beneath his nose, a trail left on the back of his hand, he let the arm fall cumbersome on his hip, dazed eyes set on the mother's own jeering venomous ones.

Strained but clear, he vocalized a single word.

"Sorry."

An untimely cue, a sudden loud crash from inside the thrift store brought about new alarm. Somebody yelling, a man, followed by another. More crashes like glass shattering, yells turning to high pitched screams, unidentifiable of the gender. Within seconds it occurred, and it was all to become what was a moment's diversion in distracting the mother and her son, the diversion he needed.

To the back of his belt beneath his jacket, tucked under a dirty brown shirt, Luke pulled that concealed knife free; an old keepsake.

"Come on Boy Scout, show me what you got."

Blood pounding in his ears, he grabbed the mother around the throat and drove the knife into her head. The woman let out a strangled cry, hands clawing at his wrist only to quickly go limp. She fell backwards, her body not having hit the concrete before the shouts sounded from behind him.

"No! You fucking—" over Luke's shoulder, he tracked the woman's son raising his rifle, to not shoot, but to strike him.

Rolling round onto his other hip, he delivered a kick to the knee of that bandit, a massive crack from the joint causing the man to go toppling over. The advantage was gained and with fast thinking Luke twisted around to yanked the beretta free from the dead leader's gun holster, pulling the trigger on the temporally stunned bandit.

Click!

Luke should've known by the weight.

No bullets.

A foot slammed into to his face, knocking Luke onto his back, a useless gun to fall away from reach. Sideburns was on top of him in seconds, the side of the rifle's barrel pushing down onto Luke's neck.

"Bastard! BASTARD!" the words were screamed down at him, spit with foul breath and eyes full of pure rage as the weapon was pushed down harder, strangulation the full intent. "You're dead! I'M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU! YOU MURDERING PIECE OF SHIT!"

Luke grabbed at the rifle, no avail in wrenching it away. Too strong, the bandit's good knee dug into Luke's injured ribs and he choked out a cry, losing with it much of his air supply. Lungs on fire, he gasped for air, but none reached them. His legs kicked but Luke could do nothing, and letting go would only kill him faster.

Her knife, he needed…

The risk was taken. One hand released off the rifle, his arm outstretched to its limit over to the dead woman's corpse nearby him. Fingers grazed her hair, her scalp, to where the knife's handled was lodged in the bone, the skull. His teeth gritted, his all given, but Luke couldn't get a decent enough grip to wrench the knife out.

The bandit kept shouting at him, crying, face red.

"You're gonna pay! You and that little bitch! YOU'RE FUCKING DEAD!"

Luke's vision went unfocused, his lungs at bursting point, head spinning…

Boots pounding on concrete, somebody came running full throttle. The pressure on Luke's throat reduced, the bandit letting out a surprised noise, reacting too slowly to the blurry figure to come charging out from the mist over Luke's sight with a ferocious battle cry inhuman to the ears.

No mercy.

A fast swing of the arm, something shiny was brought down on bandit's back. With a howling scream of pain heard, the man was kicked off of Luke, and he was freed. No time to thank the gods, he was able to breathe and couldn't do so fast enough, coughing and sucking in deep quick breaths of air.

Through the haze, the attacking figure jumped upon the downed bandit and struck the man again, again. Blood curdling screams of agony, drowning under the loud violent hacking of a blade, down through flesh, into bone, the actions fast and savage to no end.

Luke's hand pressed to his sore neck, eyes sharpened, quick to clench shut to warm liquid splattered across his face, blood.

"St…stop…Clem!"

The strikes from the blade on the dead bandit ceased, the young woman's heavy labored breathing loud to all that was now quiet. Stepping off from the fresh corpse, Clem soon found her way over, dropping down on her knees beside him. The smell of death like perfume, she was donned in blood that wasn't her own, splattered over skin and clothes in a tribal war paint, with that old baseball cap having seen better days.

The sight of her broke him.

"Are you okay?" Clem asked, with a sting of pain on her tongue from an injury his battered brain was slow to spot. Stabbed, a flesh wound exposed from a tear on the denim jacket on her upper arm. A superficial wound, the bleeding was minimum, but it'd need stitches. She'd taken a few hits, left cheek and lower chin with prominent redness; there would be bruising.

Luke managed to sit himself up, nursing a migraine hammering into his head like nails.

"You shouldn't've done that," He said. "Gone, that far…"

Aversion, Clem turned away as if to look at the disfigured body of the bandit over her shoulder, the dead man pooling in a thick red liquid as was the deceased bandit's mother. Luke's friend sheathed the blood-encrusted tantō blade, and reached for him.

"That didn't stop you."

"Yeah, but—urm!" he withered at the pain stemming from the right side of his chest, an aiding hand recoiling. "I-It's just my ribs, I'm fine."

"Sure," unconvinced Clem was, remaining so in helping Luke to his feet like the foolish drunk he may as well be now. The young woman let go when certain he could stand on his own. "We should get out of here while we can; they're walker bait, and there might be more of their friends around."

"What about their guns?"

"They're not loaded," a surprised look altered the answer of his friend, as she clung to her injured arm. "The guns were all bark and no bite; I um, I found out the hard way."

"Fuck…yeah, yeah me too."

Bullets, such things were a scarcity nowadays. A cleverly staged hoax, that's all it was, and it brought on a sickly feeling to the gut, more than nausea. It was brewed up from the thought such trickery might've allowed those bastards to get away with their scheming.

The woman's words ran through his mind, and Luke was quick to be rid of them.

"I don't think anybody else is comin', or they'd be here playin' their game too," a shortened raspy breath, Luke pressed a light hand to his ribs under his jacket, the area painful beneath the fabric of his shirt, from bruising and much worse. His nose had stopped bleeding at the very least. "I say we search 'em first…might, might have somethin' useful."

"But you're hurt," Clem protested.

"So are you."

"Luke—"

"I'm fine."

An obvious statement it was to notice Luke wasn't believed. His friend kept to a ready stance, as if prepared to catch him might he keel over. He mustn't have been a pretty sight to look at, as bad as he felt.

"Don't be makin' that face; ain't droppin' dead on ya just yet. We search 'em now, Clem; we've got time for that."

"…fine."

A risky call, it's one to bear fruit. Two boxes of matches, a half used box of water purification tablets, bandages and a small can of peas. In death those bandits contributed to helping lives other than their own. The thought didn't bring much comfort when crippled in pain and a concussion setting in though. His concentration kept straying and needed to be put in its place. Yet it was Clem who proved him right. Sideburn's rifle appeared in working order, no exterior damage, but the weapon was lighter than anticipated like the mother's beretta. They weren't loaded. A relief there was not to be adding bullet wounds to their list of injuries.

After a few tugs, the knife lodged in the mother's head came free. A few wipes of the blade on the leg of his jeans removing much of the blood, Luke's gaze lingered longer than need be at the small marking of a skull visible above the hilt on the knife.

"H…how'd you know?"

"Know what?"

He took the dead woman's empty beretta, undoing the straps for the holster on her leg. They were things that may come in handy, with the firearm being the lightest of the lot to carry.

"His gun, that it weren't loaded like the others."

Clem hesitated, her back staying to him. She carried on bandaging up her arm to prevent infection, tying the thing tight as flies were quick to flock upon those corpses.

"I didn't."

Stiffly Luke retrieved his other knife from the ground, and a moment later with it his machete. As his friend returned from the alleyway, her sling backpack recovered, he and Clem returned to the thrift store. Once inside, the smell hit him greater than on the street or on his friend: the stench of death. The carnage was evident in seconds, with those shelves overturned, broken glass on the floor from a shattered display case by the counter, with the record styled music box lying broken inside with its discs.

No quick clean kills here.

The store was a mess, a blood bath with red splashes sprayed on racks of shelves and clothes. A right arm hacked cleaned off laid on the tiles next to a rifle, a heavy blood trail leading down one of the aisles. Luke discovered the butch man from earlier, butchered, his body crumbled at a twisted angle on the floor. His jugular had been lacerated, and his head…

Lightly Clem brushed passed him, slowly stepping into the mess to search the corpse.

"The other one's further back," she was to say, patting down the man's pockets. "He's not going anywhere."

Luke understood what she meant soon enough.

To the back of the store, near to where there was a door with a 'staff only' sign, there a luger was on a floor, empty too. Stepping over piles of the very books he'd flicked through a short time before, there it was, the second body down the last aisle. It was the baby-faced bandit with the bandana; the man's legs were trapped by an old heavy bookcase, his intestines hung out from his split open belly. There was a stab wound, right through the chest, a torn shirt soaked—

"Urh...wu…"

The splutter of blood out from between parched lips, the ragged rise and fall of a chest, they weren't the symptoms of reanimation as Luke mistook. He regained the step taken back, shocked fading from finding the bandit still breathing. The man barely clung to life, staring cloudy-eyed up at Luke, a plea for mercy within them as if his sins committed were redundant and he were only an innocent now.

How many people looked up to those bandits the same way? How many deserved mercy of which was never given to them?

Prolonged no longer, Luke removed the knife from his belt a final time and rigidly knelt down. Grabbing the dying bandit around throat, a look of wild panic and desperation were quickly snuffed out with the man's life as the knife broke through the skull of the bandit's left temple into that diseased brain. He watched as the dim light in those eyes gradually went, turning glassy and hollow as the bandit's body gave a few twitches upon the knife being ripped out, and nothing more.

Luke didn't feel a thing.


He felt every mile of that trip in his aching body. There was no time for rest, for that was their rule. Potential bandit territory wasn't where a person wanted to be, and whether that group was alone or not, distancing themselves from bad happenings as much as possible always was the best course of action.

They chose to pick someplace far off from their confrontation with the bandits to patch up, diverging off the road down some railway tracks overgrown with long grass and weeds. They passed a burnt-out train and its carriages on the way, derailed and overturned, all left to rust. Charred skeleton remains of dead passengers were inside, a sight seen too often, left over disasters in the decaying old world, the norm.

With no encounters from the dead or living in those hours walking, to a small rundown train depot they winded up at. It was a derelict one-story building that had taken a great battering from time and the elements. There wasn't much to behold inside, broken furniture falling apart that was good for firewood and nothing else. He and Clem would be sleeping rough on the floor again as per usual, but it was a roof and four walls, with an extra saving grace of a stream nearby allowing for them to filter and refill their water bottles.

The pair sitting on upturned plastic crates, Clem tensed up every time he threaded the needle through, slowly sewing together the cut flesh on her right arm one stitch at a time. The bandit's knife had created a deep gash, but not deep enough to be life-threatening; the wound was properly cleaned to prevent infection, and with time it would heal.

They were lucky today.

"Hrm...can you hurry up? It stings," Clem was to ask half-whimpery, half-irritable. Despite such complaining, pain tolerance was better in her than Luke whenever it was him needing stitches. In spite of that knowledge, he still took extra care.

"Almost done."

"But, you're not even halfway."

"Gettin' there."

"You sew like a nanny."

Luke gave a short throaty laugh, the pain it brought one side of his ribcage enough to end it. He readjusted his grip on her arm, concentrating. "If you don't quit complain', I'll d…do a crappy job of it, then you can have yerself a matchin' pair."

A grumble, Clem's fingers brushed over the jagged bumps of scarring on her left forearm. It was the mark of their first and only attempt at keeping a dog, of a stray that turned on a ten-year-old girl without fair warning or inklings that it would. The mutt had known to have done wrong, laying low and still in the corner of the kitchen, whining with sad brown eyes and ears droopy. That wasn't good enough; they couldn't risk another incident happening again, or it coming back. Led out by Pete with its tail between its legs, the stray was shot out in the woods away from the cabin, before they could even give it a proper name.

Pete never let him know peace for that incident until his dying day, as Luke was the one to let the animal in. It was the first of many scars and mistakes.

Clem hissed at the needle being threaded through again. "Are, are you gonna be o-okay? You looked ready to black out before. You had me worried."

"I'm fine. Just bruises, nothin' time won't deal with," was what Luke assured, not all to be the truth. His nose was fractured, and some swelling to one eye. Breathing a frequent reminder of damaged ribs, with aches and pains elsewhere, and a stabbing migraine included in on that. It was nothing more lethal than the cards he'd been dealt in the past. "Trust me, looks worse than it is."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

"But I am; I shouldn't have waited so-hrm, so long," Clem clutched at the edge of the crate, gritting her teeth as another stitch was sewn. "I thought they were going to kill you."

"Thought so too," Luke echoed.

Her denim jacket rested on the floor by their gear, still stained in the blood of corrupt men. Clem would have to do her part to scrub it off, as with the mess on her jeans and baseball cap, right down to her boots. Her clothes would remain stained; it would never come out, like always. Death could be many things, a release to end pain, a means of revenge, the act of survival, or the unfair natural order of things that stole those a person loved away. Taking a life was not one to be done so lightly, but times of naivety were past. Kill or be killed, as they so callously said, and yet…

"You're mad at me."

Those quiet words caused the needle to be held steady, his grip on her arm remaining no tighter than need be.

"No," Luke said.

"That's a lie," Clem responded with.

"…yeah, it is," he said back.

Clem's hands wrung together on her lap, the fingernails still harboring specks of dirt beneath. Luke saw her left hand missing the nails on the ring and index finger, broken clean off in the attack hours earlier. They would take time to grow back.

His friend sucked in her lower lip, rapidly blinking to banish salty tears.

"I was scared, Luke…I couldn't, just, just let them get away with it. I had to do something."

He can't comfort her by any means, leave a needle dangling from a thread in her arm to do so. A light touch to her shoulder was the best Luke could manage.

"I know that. I just don't want you havin' to make that call."

"I'm not a kid."

"Don't change a thing."

The discussion lurked; it was one brought up and argued over a handful of times before and with no resolve between them, an argument he once had had with another. 'You'd've done the same for me,' is always Clementine's defense to which he can never deny, but her brutality is what fears him most for her.

They couldn't have this conversation again, not now whilst his head was splitting and his energy for reasoning at its weakest. He didn't need it.

"Thanks anyways, for savin' my ass back there. I mean that," Luke chose to say, as Clem was to wipe her tears away, finding an acute distraction in the cracked glass panes in-between the sash bars of the depot. Beyond that window, train tracks ran for miles swallowed up by the woodlands; a never ending road.

"Don't mention it...just-ow, add it to growing list of things you owe me for."

"Will do."

Luke stitched away in silence, a few hisses of pain escaping his friend until the last thread was tugged through and he was done binding up the skin. A cut to that thread soon to be knotted, proper bandaging of that arm began, and as he was to do that, Clem was to tilt her head his way when it was securely tied in place, her cheeks dry with tear streaks after wiping her face.

"No bullshitting me, you're alright?" she asked.

Pain ricocheted through webbed nerves ends across his rib cage when standing, almost hunched, a headrush following from sitting too long. Rest, he needed to…

"Yeah…uh, feel a little crappy, but I'll be okay."

The needle sterilized for a second time, everything used for treating Clementine's injury was put away as it should be in their first-aid-kit. Luke rummaged through, picking out the last remaining ibuprofen tablets from other pills, and something to clean his face up with, the cuts—

Dizziness took him off guard, a sudden tightening in his abdomen, fluid rising up in his throat.

Shit.

Luke made a dash for the door, forcing the thing open, and no sooner afterwards did he throw up. Little came out, the digested remains of leek soup spilled on those dirty stone steps. The cool breeze was welcomed, but not the sun in his eyes. He stayed put there, holding onto the wooden frame, leaned against it, every cough torture to damaged ribs.

He'd learned to breathe again by the time hands were to grab him from around the elbow, steering him gently back to sit down on an upturned crate once again, that ugly green plastic making him queasy. Pills placed in his hand, he swallowed them down with the bottled water offered to him. Eyelids heavy, Luke surrendered to the day's toll on him, not putting up any resistance over his friend choosing to tend to the cuts on his face instead of him.

A wet cloth dabbed against the sore scraps on his right cheek, over the jagged indent of a diagonal scar long set into the skin as small stones, dirt and blood were washed away. He could've dozed off…couldn't really, but he wanted to.

"Pinocchio."

"What?"

Clem refused to look at him directly, eyes focused on lightly dabbing one side of his nose, more blood to come away stained on that cloth.

"Pinocchio," she said again in clarity, her expression sullen, distant. "It's your name now."


All these years learning to adapt and survive, and Clem was always three steps ahead. The younger generation always did pick skills up faster than the old, and it was no different with this way of life. Luke wished that weren't so, that they were more at equals than odds. He still held his own, had to or he would have long been dead, but there was no denying age had anything to do with it. Clementine was more built for this life, and there were more times he owed her, than she owed him.

Jane, she had been the same.