Beyond all the efforts anyone made, everything needed to come to its conclusion, no matter if it's ugly or clean.

"G-Got any more ammo?"

". . .there's no more left."

"Okay t-then. . . Fuck."

He was shaking violently that was mixed with the screeches of the undead, locked by a single wooden door, potentially able to get at them at a spontaneous moment.

Clementine's been bitten, slowly, her life fading from her body as the blood and bite both dragged her crippled body into a fate that Abel was spared off. Any moment, a walker could enter here and make her death just that much more painful, yet he didn't want to think those thoughts, but all he could see is death, rotting, smelly and ugly undead. His mind would not allow him to try to focus on anything else than death and Clem's fate. She- She will turn if he does not kill her, but. . .

"I-It was not supposed to happen to you!"

His words did nothing, his voice was pointless, and his actions were redundant, as all of his efforts lead into a single outcome of the situation.

Clem's body looked pale and cold from what he saw in his own pair of eyes, her eyes red and filling with tears, the skin on her void of color and blue and red lines of veins popping very faintly everywhere on herself.

He didn't know what he needed to do, what could he do? What his actions would do is simple, and he just. . . knew.

AJ kneels over to Clem as she weakly asking him, tears dripping down her cheeks. "You're such a cutie. . . H-How did I get so lucky?"

The expression on AJ's face said it all, the disbelief of the situation, the intense feeling of hopelessness and sorrow that flowed through him as Clem enjoyed her last moments with their only family left alive.

She puts on a small smile as she uses her right hand to boop his nose in a play-like manner, making a small 'boop' sound to add to it.

"Gotcha. . ."

He embraces her as he begins to cry into her shoulder, being unable to contain his emotions any longer. The sound of the dead got louder as they heard the noise of AJ crying in an emotional breakdown. She didn't notice the axe laying down on her legs, in a taunting way to her of the fate that awaits Clem in the next few moments, hopefully as late as possible to allow AJ to escape safely.

AJ calms down after a while, his eyes reddish from the crying and sounding just as depressed.

"I- Clem, I- I don't know w-what to do without-"

"It's okay, goofball, don't cry."

"E-everything is going to be okay. . ."

"Please, please don't lie, clem."

Clementine's face dropped and hanged to the ground. She was scared, of course, of death, but she remembers what Lee taught her, what his. . . death looked like. He has a moment of peace and talks with her, and she wants to give that to AJ as well, if she's able to, in all reality.

"I must make sure you remember."

"The rules. I remember."

"Never go alone. . . but you can't come with me!"

"AJ. . ."

"It's one of the rules, clem!" His tone of sadness brings her to tears even further. "Y-You won't be alone for long, you must get back to the school, you won't be alone, not anymore. P-Please, AJ."

AJ didn't know what to say. He didn't seem to have anything to say as Clem instructs him to pick the blood-like axe and to cut the walker open.

"There's a juicy walker over there, j-just waiting to be cut open. Go on. . ."

AJ did as instructed and opened the walker's chest with the axe blade, then using the insides from its chest to cover himself all over his body, and his face to hide his scent from the walkers. He shakes off his hands a little and grabs the axe laying next to the eviscerated walker, making sure his grip on the axe is not slippery and easy to handle. He brings the axe up to his chest as he turns back to Clementine, who became much paler and the wound on her leg leaking a more pus-filled blood, now soaking part of the barn with it.

"I-I love you C-Clem. I'm sorry."

They have a moment of joy, of telling each other goodbye, and just. . . saying their last words to each other as the creaking wood of the barn stops and the breaking of it begins.

"Oh god! Clem! What do we-"

"Go, AJ! Up the barn!"

"But what about-"

"JUST GO!"

AJ had no time to think as all of the doors and planks began to break and crack under the weight of the undead trying to get at the two alive people stuck here.

However, AJ started to climb onto the top, as the walkers began to flood into the barn, and charge for the still-living clementine, who managed to utter the last words that truly changed AJ. "I LOVE YOU, GOOFBALL, LIVE FOR ME, AHGHGHGHHH-" Her cries of love turned into screams of agony as the walkers started to rip into her chest and legs and began pulling her long intestines out, with the screams of the undead choiring with Clementine's screams of hellish pain and crying, having her upper chest and face ripped apart as she still screeched and leaked blood all over her body and the barn, her legs being ripped off violently off her chest and arms following that next. Before that, fortunately, her heart had been bitten and ripped to little pieces before her limbs were thrust out of her flesh, and so she slowly, and surely, began seeing the darkness seep into her vision as all feelings of pain and sorrow faded into nonexistence, her struggles finally coming to a brutal end as she finally fulfilled her role as a guardian angel, just like Lee to her, and now she to AJ... She was... at a real sense of peace as she died in a tranquil state of death grasping her into the afterlife, or whatever happens after death.