Well, here it is. It took me a little longer than I anticipated, and I apologize for that. But finally, my little girl had a happy and closed ending.
Thank you very much to everyone who has read this far!
It was great writing this story and I finally reached 100,000 words, Woo-hoo.
But, don't get too comfortable... I've written enough stories with happy endings. Probably the next ones I do won't have such a good ending anymore.
Hahaha.
What can I say? Happy endings, although often deserved and nice, are cliché.
So long!
(...)
Looking around, Lee sighs slightly as he sees that the horde was still chasing them, even though the walkers were slow and somewhat far from where they were. Although, he didn't feel much relief. Not with that steep climb beside that huge waterfall.
One wrong step, and he would slip on one of those rocks and fall ugly to the ground.
"Argh, damn." He heard Duck mutter low behind him and smiled slightly at the boy.
He was a little bigger, features a little more mature, and his manner increasingly resembled Kenny's. Although, on certain nights or random moments in those days, he behaved similarly to Katjaa.
"Hey, look on the bright side. Even if we fall, those walkers won't be able to catch us anyway." Luke said, a little ahead of Lee, and smiling amusedly at Duck, who just rolled his eyes.
"Pretty good, Luke, you sure know how to cheer someone up." The boy said with some irony, holding himself back from slipping again.
"Hey, slow asses, you guys want to get here soon or is it being a little hard?" Clementine asked, her body leaning slightly on the edge of the hill just off the right side of the waterfall, her eyes running down the men amusedly as she rocked Alvin gently in her arms.
The girl hadn't grown much in terms of height, but she had certainly matured in those years. She was more of a woman, although she still looked like a little girl, a mixture of maturity and childishness.
Sarah had also grown a lot, and now she didn't look much like the childish girl of before.
Finally she lived up to her age.
Lee watched the girl grow and mature at a pace too fast for his liking, and sometimes he felt a little lost as to what to do.
"You're lucky I let you up first, young lady." Kenny said, just ahead of Luke.
His beard was grayer, though smaller than it had been when Lee had found him. Kenny was wearing an eye patch after that bear attack, and the scars on his face still hurt if he concentrated too hard.
Kenny's own words.
"Come on, Clem, give it a rest. I'm old." Lee said, taking care not to slip as he walked.
He had changed a little bit himself. Although he was nowhere near as gray as Kenny, one could still see the effects of time in his hair and beard. There were a few more wrinkles on his face and his voice was more tired, though deeper.
"I know. But you guys are going to want to see this." Clementine said somewhat excitedly, and Lee arched an eyebrow for a few moments, concentrating on just not slipping right away and walking over to where the girl was.
After a while, they finally stood next to the girl, right next to the waterfall, and the group's eyes ran down the river ahead. It was not a wide river, but it seemed to be a long one.
The place was a very large plain, and a few hundred meters ahead there was a house.
A farm with a very large house, almost like a mansion.
Luke and Lee took their weapons and took the lead while Kenny and Duck stayed behind, protecting the rear and keeping an eye around while keeping Clementine and Aj in their line of sight.
Sarah walked alongside Clementine, a pistol in her hands.
They approached the farm, and as soon as they reached the house, Lee knocked a few times on the door, loud enough for whatever is there to hear.
After a few minutes without hearing any noise, and after checking the windows to see inside the place and seeing that there was nothing dangerous there, Lee opened the door.
Luke was the first to enter, pointing his gun around and quickly checking the corner of the room, as well as the closet that was right next to a dusty table that had a flat screen television above it.
Lee turned and signaled to Duck and Kenny, who nodded and then walked down the hallway and up the stairs that led upstairs while Lee walked to the kitchen.
Sarah stood next to Clementine, looking around beside the girl, watching for anything in case something approached the house.
Nothing, not even a dead body. The place was clearly abandoned, dusty, and some of the furniture was already old. But other than that, nothing.
No sign that there had ever been people there.
Lee opened the cupboards and the refrigerator. There were few things there, and many of the fruits had long since rotted away and left nothing but a few almost completely decomposed remains.
"The place looks clean. We didn't find any bodies." Duck said after a while, walking down the stairs now unconcerned about the noise as he put the pistol back in his waistband.
"We haven't found anything, really. It seems that when it all started, the people who lived here weren't home." Kenny said, right next to the boy, running his one eye across the kitchen.
"Same here." Luke said, approaching them.
"I didn't see anything in the barn. I took a look across the plain. There aren't even any bodies by the grass. It's like the dead were never here." Clementine said, approaching with Aj still in her arms.
Lee nodded, and then narrowed his eyes slightly as he walked toward the back door on the side of one of the cabinets in the kitchen.
As he opened it, he ran his eyes around and took a closer look at the farm.
It was a large plain with some trees scattered around and a river beside it.
"... If I'm not mistaken, the road we were on is blocked... the only way to get through was by the river, right?" Lee asked after a while, looking at his companions for a few moments before walking across the plain.
"Ahm, yes. But it's not like we could go swimming." Luke said, following Lee with a somewhat curious and confused expression.
"Yeah, sure... but if we had chosen to swim, we'd stop here... that's the river." Lee said, walking a little further and observing the river that flowed to his left.
"Yes... and?" Luke asked.
Lee didn't answer right away, and soon, he stopped after reaching the edge of the plain. The farm was just over a small hill. Part of the road they were on before ran around it, and he could see some of the bodies they had killed before they got there.
"...What you mean is, this place is on top of a small hill that's pretty steep. And it's not possible for a walker to climb this hill and get here, much less a horde. The only way in is by swimming." Lee said, turning to them and running his eyes around.
"In other words, this place is safe." Kenny completed, crossing his arms and standing right next to Lee as he watched the road.
"And the road leading here is blocked off. Not to mention that there are fallen trees all over the place. No wonder no one has come this far before." Duck said, his two hands in his pockets and a small smile on his face as he felt Aj grab his shirt.
"It's not just a safe place." Lee said, this time, not being able to hold back the small smile that was born on his lips as he looked at the farm.
The others followed his gaze, and Luke whistled as he saw some solar panels on the back of the roof of the house.
Duck and Clementine looked at that with some confusion in their eyes.
"...What?" The boy asked.
"Those are solar panels, Duck... Which means, electricity." Sarah replied. "If I'm not mistaken, those panels last about 25 years if used sparingly."
"Wait, are you saying... are you saying that this place can have electricity?" Clementine asked, looking at him with a certain incredulity, and even a refinement of hope.
"Exactly what you are hearing." Lee said with a smile. "Don't you understand? That's not just a refuge. You see a plain, I see plantations. You see an empty barn, I see a barn full of animals in the future."
"Wait, wait... are you serious?" Luke asked. Lee just shrugged.
"Prescott was destroyed. Richmond has fallen into the wrong hands. The kingdom and surrounding communities are at war with a certain Negan... this place could be our chance to have a real life. We don't need to get involved in all that... it's not our fight." Lee said, looking away from Luke and turning back to the hill.
"... We are a considerable distance from those communities... I doubt anyone is going to come here." Kenny said, apparently considering Lee's words very carefully.
"And we can finally sleep without having to worry about some walker sneaking up on us, or some psycho trying to kill us." Duck said. "Hell, what are the chances of us finding a place like this again?"
"I'll tell you, pal, zero. Hell, I'm in." Kenny said with a somewhat excited smile, making Lee smile warmly and somewhat anxious as he thought about the things they could do to improve that place.
It was a chance to build a life there, hidden away and far away from the wars that didn't belong to them.
"I'll be honest with you. You got me when you mentioned electricity." Luke said, still looking at the solar panels.
"Well... what are we waiting for then? I can really use a hot shower now. How does that sound to you, Alvin?" Clementine asked, lightly patting the boy's face, who just stared at her curiously.
"Hm... it sounds pretty good, right?" Clementine asked, still looking at the boy as she let her mind run distant.
She didn't even notice when her group started walking back toward the house. Her eyes were admiring the view from the top of the hill.
She could see all around, but one could not see the farm from down there, for example. It was a very hidden place.
Clementine sighed slightly as she thought about everything. A chance to have a life again. To have that sense of normalcy, even if only a little.
And it was inevitable for her not to think about the people who died.
First her parents who had the last trip of their lives.
Then Shawn, the boy who died on Hershel's farm.
Doug, at the pharmacy.
Mark and Larry, at 's farm, although she doesn't really like to remember Larry.
Carley, killed by Lilly.
Katjaa... Ben... Omid... Christa... Pete... Alvin... Nick... Walter... Rebecca... Bonnie... Carlos... Mike... She would never forget them.
And even though they were already dead, she could still do one thing for them.
She could live and thank them for what they did. For the help they gave her, however little, however brief.
Sometimes she thought that things for her would end unfairly, just as they did for some people she met along the way.
Many times she thought she wouldn't be able to have that...
A happy ending...
In that world...
With people who loved her and who she loved back...
Kenny and Duck, an uncle and a cousin with a fun spontaneity.
Sarah as a friend, a companion.
Luke as a kind of big brother she never had.
And Lee... a father who taught her so much. A man she considered her world.
She loved them and she knew they loved her back.
And despite everything she'd been through...
She was happy.
