I used to believe in things.
In people, hopes and dreams, heroes of all shapes and sizes… There was nothing that could hold back my optimism when things went bad. I always had something to hold onto and strive towards, even at a tender, young age. There wasn't a damn thing I couldn't do if I set my mind to it, and even when all hope seemed lost, and people felt like their entire world was crashing down around them, there I'd be – waiting to catch the pieces with a pretty rainbow over my head. No matter what, there was always a bright side to things, at least in my mind.
Whatever happened to that sweet, hopeful little girl I used to know?
I'll tell you what happened – she grew up, realized that people are deceiving, manipulative jack asses that will clock you over the head and dump your body in the river when it works out for them. Heroes? Please, there are no such things as heroes. Heroes are selfless and kind; people who'd run through a burning building to rescue an old man who was stuck underneath his couch, or save helpless kittens from a tree.
Bad people are everywhere these days… and I think that I just found their main hideout. I had an inkling right from the start that these people were off their wagon; that a safe, secure place like this was bound to hold something sinister within its walls. I sure as hell wasn't expecting something at this level, but do you want to know the sad part about all of this?
I'm not even so sure that this is the worst that I've seen.
It's depressing to think about, but it's kind of the truth. All of my friends and family are either dead or gone, and I've had to watch as one by one they disappeared from my life forever. I've been held prisoner at least twice now, been held at gunpoint so many times that I've lost count, and have had to put down a bunch of people to keep them from turning – whether it's against somebody else, or physically turning into a walker.
"You need to do what's necessary, no matter the cost," I specifically remember Jane telling me when we were out looking for Luke, Nick and Sarah. "No hesitation."
Sucking in some wind as I aim my weapon at James while trying to make an exit, I take her words to heart. I hope you're proud of me, Jane.
"COME NEAR ME AND I'LL SHOOT!" I threaten, glaring coldly at the man who took me in just a few days ago. I bet he wishes now that I had just crawled back down through the floor where I came from.
The lenses of his glasses are fogging up due to the hazard mask that he's got on, so he carefully lifts the thing off his head while trying to make sure that I don't pull the trigger. My finger's getting pretty itchy, if you know what I mean.
"You shouldn't have had to see all of that, Clementine… I'm sorry – I know what it must look like…"
"You're sick, twisted monsters! All of you!" I shout, feeling the wall with my hand behind me as I continue to try and get myself out of this situation. There's no way that I'm letting these punks get their hands on me!
Placing the mask down on the table beside him, James eyes the gun wearily as he raises his hands out in front of him in surrender.
"Please," he begs for a forgiveness that I don't have, "just… let's talk about this, alright? I can promise you that it's not what it seems."
"I should kill you right now…" I grumble darkly, feeling an anger inside of me that I haven't experienced in a long while. What's to stop me from shooting this man and ending whatever messed-up shit was going on down there? James has a screwed up sense of justice and morality if he thinks that what he did was necessary. "You're torturing bandits?! What the hell is wrong with you?!"
"Most of them have come to kill our loved ones – "
"They're still PEOPLE! CUTTING THEIR HEADS OPEN DOESN'T MAKE THINGS BETTER!"
"We're doing it for the greater good – not what you're probably thinking," he shakes his head, probably realizing how that makes him look. In my eyes, this man and everyone downstairs is a psychopath. The fact that they're doing all of this behind closed doors is just as disturbing. "It's for the cure we're trying to create, Clementine. We needed live test subjects in order to see the effects on the human body… and obviously nobody around here was going to volunteer…"
"So your answer was to kidnap people and put them through that?!" I ask, desperately wanting what I had just seen to have been some kind of sadistic nightmare, but it's real. It's so very real, and I couldn't do a thing to stop it. "I'm leaving – you try to stop me, and I'll put you down! I don't have a problem killing monsters, and you know that I'll do it, James! Just try me, I dare you!"
Looking behind me for a brief moment, James sighs before putting his hands in his pockets and staring back down to the floor. I hope that he's damn ashamed of himself, as he should be. I don't know enough words to describe how cruel and terrible this is, but I think he gets the message. I might not be able to save those people downstairs, but I'm not going to let them drag me down next.
That is, until I feel a pair of strong arms wrap themselves around my stomach.
"NOOOO! LET ME GO!" I screech, kicking and screaming as I try to break free in a panic. Everything within me is on high alert, but I won't let them take me – not without a fight! "GO AWAY! LEAVE ME ALONE!"
"Jesus, Clem, it's me! It's Bo, just calm down!" he tells me, but that only makes me swing harder as I elbow the guy right in the nose.
Is he in on this thing too?! Was he lying to me the entire time?!
"GET OFF ME!" I shriek, attracting some attention as Debbie comes sprinting into the room. Before she can rush over, James places his arm in front of her and says that it's under control. I try biting Bo's finger the same way that I had back before I met the cabin crew, but his grip is too low for me to reach.
So instead, I try a different sort of tactic.
"Please… I don't want to die…" I pretend to cry, forcing a few tears to roll down my cheeks that I honestly didn't expect to come. "I want to be with… I want my Mom and Dad! PLEASE LET ME GO!"
The heart-breaking thing about this is that I actually do want Mom and Dad to come back to me, even though I know they're dead – I saw them with my own two eyes. Despite how tough and self-reliant I've managed to convince myself that I am, deep down I'm still just a kid. I should be at school during recess playing my friends, hanging upside-down from trees and giggling at jokes. My nights should be spent watching a little late-night TV with Dad until I fall asleep against his chest, or trying to read something with Mom.
But no – instead, I've been thrust into a shitty world with shitty people, forced to do shitty things that lead to shitty consequences. I'm scared for my life all the time, have to have a gun in my pocket constantly, and have to live every waking moment thinking that it'll be my last. This isn't any way to live, but it's what I've been forced into.
This isn't fair! Life isn't fair, and this whole damn world isn't fair! Why can't people just not die for once?!
"I'll take care of it," Bo remarks to James and Debbie, as my gun falls flat out of my hands and onto the floor. I've got no energy and no willpower left to fight back anymore. I'm done. I hang limp in the man's arms as he starts to carry me out of the board room. I don't care how ridiculous this must look as we pass by some of the other people living here; all oblivious to what's going on in there. All that I want to do is… sleep. Sleep, and wake up next to Lilly and Jane again. That's not too much to ask for, is it?
Suddenly feeling incredibly exhausted, I slowly nod off as my eyes start to close. Exposing people for the monsters they are can sure take a lot out of you.
…
"Lee?"
"Hmm?"
"Why did Lilly… do that to Carley?"
Looking over, Lee shakes his head and sighs. I've witnessed this scene play out a hundred times since she returned, but still the conversation intrigues me. Not because it's anything earth-shattering or game-changing, but my answer deeply surprised me.
"What do you think? Should we have left her behind?"
Even after killing Carley, even after potentially breaking apart a big chunk of this group with her and Kenny's constant fights… I could never convince myself to hate her.
Perhaps I felt more about Lilly than I had realized.
"No."
Dangling my legs over the roof as I overlook a large part of the city, her face continues to pop into my head. What's she doing now? Are her and Jane even still with each other anymore? Are they safe? Are they happy? So many unanswered questions fill my head as I see their faces pop up in front of me.
I wish that I hadn't taken off like that… I wish so badly for things to be different. Jane and Lilly only ever wanted me to be safe – they never wanted me gone. They had no choice, I can see that now. But I've recognized it far too late, and they're never coming back. I'm going to be on my own for the rest of my life.
Angrily, I yank my hat off my head and crush a part of the beak in my hand.
"You know, I could really go for a sandwich right now," Jane comments, stretching her arms to the sky as she tries to clean out the gutters up on the roof. Lilly holds the ladder steady while I watch with amusement from the wheelchair. "Anybody got a ham on rye? Extra tomatoes?"
"Sure, let me just pull that out of my fucking pocket," Lilly mutters sarcastically, unable to contain a smirk however as she rolls her eyes. "Why are you constantly thinking about food?"
"It helps me take my mind off of your naggy-ass voice!"
"How long do you think you'll be up there for, Jane?" I ask, getting kind of impatient as she grossly tosses a handful of mud beside me. "You said we'd go work on that 3-D puzzle thing this afternoon!"
"Just hold your horses, Clem. I'll be finished in no time."
Looking over to me, Lilly mouths "no" and shakes her head which causes me to giggle slightly as Jane cocks an eyebrow.
"What? Is there something on my face?"
"Yep, but we'll let you figure out where it is," Lilly says snidely, which causes the both of us to laugh when Jane tries to wipe the imaginary thing off of her… ending up with mud on her nose as she forgets what she was doing.
"I'm sorry…" I whisper on the wind, hoping that somehow my message will magically travel to their ears. The more that I think about Jane and Lilly, the worse that I feel. They could be dead or captured or walkers or anything, and I would have no idea.
Suddenly overcome with grief, I put my hand over my face and tiredly try to wipe my eyes. What have I done? I just shooed away the best friends that I could've asked for because I was too immature to see what they really wanted for me – safety.
A part of me wishes that Lilly had just slapped some sense into me right after I told Jane to leave me alone. It probably would've saved me a lot of trouble, and maybe I wouldn't be in this mess right now.
"Got room for one more?"
Quickly recovering myself, I give my head a shake before putting my cap back on and glaring out at nothing in particular.
"How did you find me?"
"Well, I am the one who brought you up here in the first place," Bo reasons, trying to crack a smile out of me that I no longer have in store. "…you're pissed, I get it."
"Do you even blame me?" I ask, too tired to yell even if I wanted to.
"No, you've got every reason to be."
"Then why are you here?"
Setting himself down a few feet away from me, Bo sets his rifle down on the ground as I look upon the inscription on the back end. It's the exact same logo that I had seen earlier – it's that firefly again. This can't be a coincidence, not this time. That symbol means something, but I'm kind of worried that if I ask, the answer will have something to do with those awful experiments going on down there.
Just the thought of it makes my blood boil.
"I think you and I need to have a little chat," he tells me, trying to get me to look at him. "I also think that if anybody else came up here to check on you, you'd try to throw them off the roof."
Well, Bo's certainly not wrong on that point. It probably wouldn't do me much good without a weapon, but I'd probably still be too stubborn to care.
"How can you stay here knowing what they're doing in there?" I question, completely baffled that he'd be willing to stick around. I don't care how well-protected they are, it won't matter if the people you live with are evil, heartless bastards!
"Hmph… why do you think you're the only one that I told about my past?" he mutters, causing me to nod my head as I recall what he told me about being a bandit beforehand. "Remember those friends that I told you about? Well… let's just say that not all of them died out in the woods."
"What happened?"
"We got separated out in the city. The streets were flooded with the dead everywhere, so we got cornered and I told two of my buddies to run. I managed to come across this place, and that's when I shot the watchman before making my way inside. I came, inside, lied about who I was, and that was it. They never suspected a thing."
Running a hand through his thick head of hair, Bo shuts his eyes tightly; as if trying to hold back a flood of memories that he'd soon rather forget.
"A couple of weeks later, they found one of my friends trying to break into the space center… and they were holding him against his will. The moron still had a bandana around his head, and they could tell at the very first second what he was," Bo explains, causing me to look on in interest. "The guy begged and pleaded for help… but I… I told them that I had no idea who he was; that he must've just been a scavenger out in the wastes. Couldn't do a damn thing as they took him away… I'll never forget that look of betrayal on my friend's face – I've never stopped having nightmares about it."
I don't know whether to hate him, or sympathize with him. I mean, I can see kind of where he's coming from – they would've dragged and strapped him to the table next if he had admitted anything to James and the rest of them. But leaving your friend behind like that? I don't really know what to say.
It's a good thing that Bo beats me to it, then, as I glance down at his weapon once again.
"I hate what they're doing to people; what they've become over the last two years or so. But as much as I'd like to kill them all – and believe me, I would – it wouldn't achieve anything. They know what they're doing, Clem. James… he's got a heart, and this is the last thing that he'd ever want to do. But as bad as it sounds… they don't have a choice."
"How could you possibly believe that?!"
"They can't even attempt to make a cure without living, breathing patients," he explains, looking pained as he speaks. "I know that's not you want to hear right now… but in this world, sometimes sacrifices have to be made. Whether we like it or not, people die. A lot. People are dropping like flies, and until we can find something to cure this disease with, it's just going to keep on happening. Does that make sense to you?"
"I don't think anything makes sense anymore," I respond, pulling my knees to my chest as I glance over the massive hole out in the street. So far it's managed to keep most of the walkers at bay, but how long is that going to last?
"Ha! That's probably the most honest answer I've heard in a while," Bo compliments, trying to make me feel better but failing – miserably. "So… what are you thinking?"
Somewhere in the back of my head, Kenny and Carver are whispering for me to shoot the place up and kill every last miserable person in this wretched place… but I haven't listened to either of them in a long time. Carver was always a prick, but Kenny… I try to remember the good side of him, before he went completely insane. Jane may have also been crazy, but Kenny was almost on another level.
Lee is pretty much the only conscience I have that I actually listen to, and right now he's telling me to keep my head on straight. I'm not making this stuff up, and no I'm not crazy either!
…okay, not quite as crazy as some other people.
"I'm going to leave," I tell him bitterly, glaring at the only man here that I don't want to violently attack. "I need to find my friends, and you're not going to stop me."
"I wouldn't even try, Clem."
Searching for any lies, deception or malice within his eyes, I huff out when I see none and stand up to start leaving this place for good. The Houston Space Center has turned out to be nothing but a massive disappointment, which sucks because I still think that rocket is super cool. There's nothing holding me back this time.
"…but can you at least hear me out first?"
Except for him, apparently.
Groaning in annoyance, I turn back around for a brief second to listen to what he has to say. I already know what my answer will be – no. I refuse to stay in a place that experiments on people like that, no matter how good their intentions might be. I've spent enough time in camps to know when it's time to get out, and there seems no more of a perfect opportunity than this.
"You've got a good head on your shoulders, and you've got morals and standards. That combined with your experience out there in the world makes you about ten times more important to this place. The people need someone like you," he tells me, standing up as he straps his gun across his back. "Give it time and they won't care how young you might be – you're a leader, Clem, and I've seen it. You can be the person that can save the human race, and save the next generation from getting wiped off the planet. You can be their salvation."
"Why do you keep telling me this?" I ask, feeling slightly overwhelmed at how highly this man thinks of me. It's kind of unnerving, to be honest with you. "I'm not the person that you think I am, Bo! I've killed before, too… How am I any better than the people out there?"
"You don't have to be better than them, you just need to guide them."
"I don't have to do anything!" I yell, not liking the idea of telling others what to do. "I'm not friends with you people, get it?! I'm just trying not to die! I should've died a million and a half times already! I'm not ready to lead people!"
"That's exactly why you're ready, Clem," Bo reasons. Jesus, it's through one ear and out the other with this guy! "You've got it in you, anyone can see that. Debbie knows it, James knows it, I know it. You're twelve years old, and you've had to go through more shit than anyone else I know… but you've come out on the other side. You know what it's really like out there, and that's exactly why you should stay. I can't express that enough."
There's not one bone in my body that wants to stay… but maybe Bo's got a bit of a point. How long will all of those innocents last without proper gun training or survival tactics? Do any of them know how to properly set up camp, cook food over a fire that they themselves have created, or have the mindset to kill things when they have to?
By the look on Bo's face, I don't think they do. He seems to be the only one around who's actually survived outside, but he was a bandit. I see why he's trying to force this burden on me now – Bo wouldn't be able to, not with the things that he's had to do. He's getting older, and some day he's not going to be able to get out of bed in the morning. Who knows how long the average person's got to live anymore?
"…what's that on your gun?"
Glancing down to where I'm pointing, Bo rubs his fingers along the white, little drawing upon the weapon with slight pride.
"It's the logo of the Fireflies."
"Fireflies?" I ask, confused as to the meaning behind it. "What do they have to do with anything?"
"It's more of an idea, if anything – it represents a hope for a better future. I've been meaning to put it together as a sort of saviour initiative, where we're all a part of something greater than ourselves," he explains, making me think that he's on some heavy-duty drugs or something. "If we could have everyone under one banner, sharing a common goal… then maybe we could start to rebuild. I know you think it's stupid, but maybe humanity isn't quite as lost as people might think."
Knowing exactly what the next question's going to be, I sigh and close my eyes. I'd do it if only to save these people from sick assholes like James and Debbie, and partly because I am just so tired of feeling sorry for myself. Enough is enough, I'd rather die fighting for something that I believe in than continue to live knowing that I ran the other way.
"Would you be willing to lead it?"
Grasping my hand on the door handle, I breathe deeply before hearing Lee's voice in my head once again. You can do it, sweet pea. I know you can!
"I'll… I'll think about it," I mutter, nodding towards him as I leave Bo to his thoughts on the roof.
This is a lot to take in.
AN: Hey y'all, sorry if that was a little bit slow, but I think it was necessary to get them feels out :) And also, if you haven't figured this out already, yes this is the same Fireflies from the Last of Us. The apocalypse obviously isn't the same, but you guys might be in for a treat in the coming chapters.
Anyway, hope you liked this one and I'll be sure to write the next chapter soon! Just one more exam until I'm off for the winter break lol. Reviews are always welcome!