The rain pounds against her hair (which she's cut considerably shorter since the last time I saw her), and her face has droplets rolling down her cheeks. There are several dark circles below her eyes, indicating a lot of restless nights, but her gaze still has that fierceness about her that always used to scare me. It's just not quite as pronounced as it was before.
Jane watches our exchange with confusion, as she really has no idea what the two of us have been through together. If she did, then I'm pretty sure Jane would've shot her square in the head the second she walked up to the gate.
"I take it you two know each other?" she asks, leaning against the wall as I nod silently. I can't tell how Lilly's feeling right now, but I'd imagine that it's a complete shock to find me of all people out in a place like this.
"Just give me a chance, Clem," Lilly huffs, not wanting me to pull the trigger and end her miserable life already. I'm very tempted to do so.
"Did you give Carley a chance?!" I yell out over the rain. Lilly seems unfazed by this, as she's probably gone over that scenario a hundred times at least.
"I can't take back what happened," Lilly admits, putting her arms back down at her side, "but I'm not here to hurt you – that's a promise. I just need a place to hold up in for a little while."
When I say nothing and narrow my gaze even more, Jane steps in as AJ starts to doze off again.
"Listen lady – "
"Lilly," she hisses, snapping at Jane sharply.
"Yeah, sure, whatever," Jane rolls her eyes, "It's obvious you've fucked up somehow, and we're not taking any new members. So you'd best be moving on! Clem, back me up on this, would ya?"
The cold metal of my pistol gleams dangerously as I continue to hold it in front of me. I do not trust this woman at all. Whatever sort of relationship we may have had with each other ended when she murdered Carley on the side of the road, and then jacked the RV when we weren't paying attention. Who's to say that she won't just do the same sort of crap again?
Glancing back to the ground, Lilly puts her hood back up, grabs her gun and starts walking back out into the rain. The woman's gotten even scrawnier than before (not that I'm one to talk), but there's something different about her. When she spoke to me, there wasn't any malice behind her words (except when she talked to Jane), and she seemed as though she actually did kind of change during her time away from our group.
But… it's Lilly! The stone-cold, yelling, scary lady who I always made a point to stay away from whenever she was in one of her moods. Granted, whenever Kenny wasn't around she was pretty kind towards me, so…
God damn it. Jane's gonna kill me.
"Lilly, wait!" I call out to her as she spins around. "How… how do I know I can trust you?"
After pausing and giving it some thought, Lilly gives me the most honest answer she has.
"You don't."
Getting a better grip on the sleeping bundle in my arms, I put my pistol back into my pocket and turn towards Jane.
"Let her come on in."
"Are you crazy?!" Jane argues, not on board with the idea at all. "She's dangerous, Clem! I could see it on your face – something happened between you two that you're not telling me, and obviously it was really, really bad. And now you wanna just let her back in?!"
"We'll keep an eye on her," I respond calmly, putting a finger to my lips to tell Jane to be quieter. "She can sleep out in the pen, and we'll put her to work on some of the things around here. I know her, Jane, and yeah she screwed up before. But she's not a stranger. Believe me: the second she tries to steal anything or hurt one of us, she's gone. We might even need to kill her… But I can't send her out on her own again."
"What the hell have I gotten myself into…" Jane questions, rubbing her hand through her hair tiredly. "Fine, it's your funeral, Clem."
As Jane hollers for Lilly to come around the side, I retreat into the loading dock and wait for her to enter. This could either be a chance to make things right again, or the biggest mistake that I've made in a long time. The biggest one was listening to that kidnapper and leaving Lee…
Lilly opens the door a few seconds later, completely drenched with water from head to toe. She tries shaking herself dry, but it's not going to be much use. Putting her out in the pen will just cause her to freeze to death.
"There's an office upstairs you can sleep in," I tell her emotionlessly, pointing up towards Carver's old personal space. Man, I hated him…
"Umm… what's with the dead guy?" she asks suddenly, and I turn around to see that we still haven't moved Carver's rotting corpse out of the loading dock yet. The rain's drowning out the stench for now, but I imagine that tomorrow it's gonna fill the entire room.
"The worst kind of person there is," I explain sadly, not going into more detail than that. "Meet us down here tomorrow; we'll find you something to do."
"Sounds fair," she nods, standing there kind of awkwardly as she looks around the room. She must have not interacted with a whole lot of people after she ditched us like that. "Well… thanks, I guess."
Not responding, I walk back into the staff room where Jane, AJ and I sleep as I watch Lilly head off in the other direction. When the door to Carver's office finally closes, I walk in to see Jane already laying on her side facing away from me.
"I hope you know what you're doing, kid," she warns, turning her body when she hears me place AJ down gently.
"I'm not a kid."
"You're eleven," she retorts with a smirk, "that qualifies you as being a kid."
"Well, how old are you?" I ask, folding my arms across my chest. This isn't really helping my cause, is it?
"Should be twenty-six now, but hell… my birthday could've already passed and I'd have had no idea. It's not as if anyone's counting the days anymore," she shrugs, propping her head up with her hand as she continues to talk to me. "Didn't Bonnie say that they still had some alcohol around here somewhere?"
"I think so… why?"
"One of these days, you and I are going to have a drink together. A proper one," she clarifies, reminding me of that day at the power station. Why couldn't things be like that all the time? It was so much more peaceful than what happened afterwards… people hadn't turned on each other yet.
"I'd like that," I smile slightly, settling myself down on the crappy mattress that I snagged once we got here. Neither of us had been allowed to sleep in here back when I was still with the cabin group, but I realize now that it really isn't that much nicer. It's certainly warmer, but the room in dank and depressing. It's literally just four concrete walls surrounding us with some cupboards, a busted coffee machine (which Jane was really pissed about), and a water cooler.
Beats the living hell out of sleeping outdoors though.
"So how do you know this… "Lilly" person anyways?" she asks me suddenly, still skeptical about my choice.
Where do I even begin with this?
"I was with her and… Kenny… when all of this first started," I begin, trying not to upset her about that incident again. "We had a big group – there must've been around ten of us at one point – and she became the leader after nobody else really wanted to do it."
"Hmph…" she grunts, still not that impressed with her description.
"Things were going pretty well for a while," I explain, rubbing my fingertips along the fabric of this itchy, blue blanket that I found. "The details are kind of fuzzy, but we were staying at a motor-inn and would go into the town for supply runs every once in a while. Well, Lee did anyways…"
"He was your friend, I take it?" Jane clues in as I nod solemnly.
"He taught me how to survive… how to shoot a gun, keeping my hair short, going straight through the walkers like you did. I miss him," I sigh sadly, still holding onto the picture of him despite everything that's happened. "He and Lilly got along pretty well for the most part. They didn't always agree with each other, but they knew how to compromise."
"But then the dairy happened…" I say quietly, and Jane quirks an eyebrow towards me. Yeah, it shouldn't sound that foreboding, but it was an experience that I'd never forget. "These dairy farmers took us into their home when we started running out of food. Turns out they were a bunch of cannibals who tried to feed us human meat, but Lee stopped me from doing it."
"Disgusting," Jane comments, wrinkling her nose and shaking her head in disgust. "That's straight fucked up. What could drive someone to go to that level?"
"You're telling me," I agree, closing my eyes as the next part replays in my head. "They stuffed us in a meat locker, and Lilly's dad had a heart attack. Kenny thought he was dead, so…"
"So… what?" Jane asks worriedly, seeing as how I've stopped mid-way through my sentence.
"He… Kenny smashed his head with a salt lick," I shudder after having kept that memory buried for so long. Jane doesn't really know what to say to that – probably trying to justify her actions on trying to convince me to kill the man. "After we got out, Lilly… she was never the same. She closed herself off from the rest of us and was just so miserable all the time."
"Then one day, some bandits I think it was, they stormed our camp after not getting medicine from one of our group members. We headed off in an RV to escape, and Lilly… she just snapped. She brought the group members outside and shot one of them in the head when she thought that they were somehow involved. Lee let her back on the RV, but she took off in it after we found a train. I hadn't seen her since tonight."
"Fuuucckkk…" Jane sighs, drawling out the swear word as she mumbles into her palms. "So we just let in a murderer and a thief?"
"Maybe she's changed, I don't know. What I do know is that she's a hard worker, and she can shoot a gun probably better than either of us. We need that sort of thing around here," I reason, trying to justify my actions not only to Jane, but also to myself. I was so close to just shutting her out of my life forever – a part of me is still bitter over Carley and leaving us stranded, but we've all made mistakes. We've all… fucked up… at some point over the past two years.
It's just… she's made more than others.
"Just watch yourself, Clem. And AJ," she adds after the fact, before turning onto her side to get some rest. "I don't trust her, and I don't think you should either. Who knows what two years has done to her?"
"That's what I'm worried about," I sigh, before turning over one last time to see AJ sleeping soundly. "Night, Jane."
"Night, Clem."
With nothing more to be said, I close my eyes and begin to drift off to a peaceful, uninterrupted sleep…
…..
"Bonnie, come on! We've gotta go!"
"Don't you touch me!" Bonnie snaps, gazing down at my bleeding form but doing absolutely nothing to help. I hear her say sorry, and it rings in my ears constantly, but it makes no difference. "Sorry" doesn't stop Arvo from pulling the trigger; doesn't stop you and Mike sprinting off with our supplies.
"HOW COULD YOU MURDER A FUCKING CHILD?!" Kenny bellows, going in for the swing as Jane dodges; a dangerous, rage-induced craze in his eye as he's swiped at by Jane. The two grapple at each other for a moment, but I can't do anything about it – instead sitting here helplessly as the two of them tear each other to pieces.
"Don't come near me, you son of a bitch!" she hisses; her knife fresh from Kenny's stomach wound as they tumble through the window and outside. I cringe as she digs her fingers into Kenny's bad eye and he screams out in complete agony.
I need to put an end to this!
My legs are suddenly free, and I throw Jane off of the fisherman as he jabs Jane's knife into her leg. I'm knocked backwards as they collide into me, and I woozily look at my gun.
"Please…" I beg them with teary eyes, watching as Kenny holds the knife dangerously over Jane's chest.
Suddenly though, seeing no other option available to prevent two of my last remaining friends from dying, I bring the gun up to my forehead as the both of them turn in horror.
"CLEM STOP!" Kenny yells, crawling towards me as Jane looks on, flabbergasted that I'm willing to take such drastic measures.
My breathing stops as my finger slowly pulls the trigger… and then all I see is darkness as it clouds my vision.
"NOOOOOOOO!"
Waking up in a cold sweat, I quickly glance around the room with heavy breaths. Just a nightmare thankfully… a messed up, yet so realistic nightmare. Everything just felt so real there…
Alvin Junior has woken up beside me and is making some whiny, gurgling sounds, so I pick him up to find him something to eat.
"Morning, AJ," I yawn loudly, smirking at the handsome baby boy as I pick him up. His diaper definitely needs changing, but I'm gonna tell Jane that it's her department. I bet she'll get a kick out of that!
Speaking of which, where is Jane, anyways?
Wandering out into the hallway, I stop when I notice that Lilly's examining the shelves of supplies that we've still got here. Instantly, my suspicion increases tenfold, and I raise an eyebrow as I approach from behind. Somehow she hears my silent footsteps, and Lilly turns around carefully.
"Just seeing how well you guys have got it," she explains herself, probably recognizing that she was being monitored. "That's a lot of food you've got there. Should last you for quite a while if you ration it properly."
"That's the idea," I tell her simply, lifting AJ up a little higher so that he doesn't fall to the floor.
Lilly looks at the baby for quite a while, as if she's examining an alien species or something. Obviously she hasn't had much experience around kids.
"Please tell me that baby's not yours," she remarks, sighing in relief when I shake my head slowly. "Good, because you're… way too young for that sort of thing."
"Where's Jane?" I ask, not commenting further on AJ. He's on a need to know basis only.
Shrugging her shoulders slightly, Lilly mentions something about her going up to the greenhouse to check on how the plants were doing.
"Alright…" I cut off, thinking of something that she could work on for the time being. Something that doesn't involve our supplies. "We could use some help on barricading the gates. There are wooden planks in some of the aisles of the hardware store, and some nails down there too. If any walkers try to get in… well, you've got your gun. Just yell for us and we'll come."
Nodding once, Lilly takes one long look at me before starting to head off to do her tasks. However, before she reaches the door, Lilly stops for a moment. Curious, I look over towards her as she tilts her head back towards me.
"So… I'm guessing that the others…"
"Why did you kill Carley?" I ask her, not willing to go into detail about the people she abandoned. "We all head out of the RV, wait for Kenny to finish killing the walker, and then you shoot her square in the face. You didn't even hesitate; didn't even care. Why?"
"…you already know why, Clementine…"
"I wouldn't be asking if I knew."
"She…" Lilly stops, old emotions flaring about her eyes as she pushes some hair out of her face. "If Carley had just minded her own god-damned business, then I wouldn't have…"
"That doesn't justify anything," I argue back quietly, shaking my head, "especially murder."
"So does that make Kenny or Lee any better than I am?" she retorts, placing her hands on her hips. "I've paid my price, Clem. I made a mistake, and I've lived with it."
"If you hadn't pulled out your gun, then Carley would still – "
"Do you even remember what she looks like? What she even sounds like?" she asks me, causing me to step back a little bit. I hate to admit it, but… not really. Sure, I was around her for three months, and I always enjoyed having her around, but the only thing that really sparks my mind anymore is how she died.
"I see her in my mind; hear her damn voice in my head every night," she sighs, no longer as harshly as before. "Every time I close my eyes, it's that fucking image in my head – Carley's haunted me for two years. I don't need to hear about it anymore…. What's done is done."
Turning on her heel, Lilly slowly walks out of the room as I stand there holding little AJ in my arms. She's given me quite a lot to think about here.
As for Alvie, I'm off to find Jane. Cleaning duties for a week beats diaper duty any day – like, ever.
But as I ascend the stairs up to the roof, I can't help but replay Lilly's conversation over in my head. Is anger about Carley's murder really clouding my mind?
Maybe it's time to let old feelings go.