AN: Happy Halloween, my faithful readers! Don't go egging or TP-ing my house if you don't like this chapter, please :) Although, I think it should be fine. Just a heads-up though, yes I reused one of the themes for after Clem shoots Kenny and she forgives Jane, but I think it works pretty well in this circumstance. Some revelations are revealed!

By the way, this unfortunately is going to be the second last chapter of this story. It's been a good run for this, but I think that it's time for it to end. I'd like to thank all the reviewers for sticking by me with this thing, and I'll make sure to list off the reviewers personally at the end of the story. Thanks for the unreal support guys :)

"Clem, stop for a second."

My head hangs low; my shoulders sagging, but I keep walking forward.

"Clem? Did you hear me?"

Oh I hear you alright – but I'm not really listening. And why should I? What have you done within the last five hours that can warrant me giving you my full attention?

"Clementine, stop!" Jane jogs up to me, placing a firm hand on my shoulder that I instantly try to shake off. "Come on, quit being so ridiculous! Don't just ignore me as if I'm not even here…"

Narrowing my eyes, I say nothing as I stubbornly refuse to speak. What's there left to say though? We're out in the middle of nowhere, with the desert sand sneaking into my shoes and the heat pounding down onto our heads. Walkers are the least of our problems – heat exhaustion, dehydration and starvation are our main worries right now.

Tilting my chin up, Jane brushes a thumb (the only one she's got left) against my cheek as I suck in air. It stings like you won't believe, and that's not even the part of my face that hurts the most. Right above my eyebrow is a terrible burn mark, as well as in the section that Jane's touching for some reason. My face looks like it's been put through the ringer, but Jane doesn't look much better.

"Couldn't get a good look at you until it was light out," Jane explains, sighing as I lightly bat her hand away from me and walk forward. Lilly's constantly got her gun out, worried that a tumbleweed might roll its way over and kill us all where we stand.

Yeah, Lilly's getting pretty paranoid.

"Come on, kid. Let me in – don't keep shoving me out," Jane hollers from behind me, which I ignore yet again. All that I want to do is get somewhere safe, and then maybe we can talk. Certainly not here, though. "I can't do this alone, Clementine! Is that what you wanna hear?"

"She's not talking to anyone right now, Jane," Lilly remarks as she shields her eyes from the sun. "Might as well give up."

"…Fine," Jane relents, slightly bitterly as she puts her hands in her pockets and making the both of us seem extremely immature. Well, at least I haven't stomped my feet on the ground and thrown a tantrum yet – I'm pretty sure that Lilly would leave me on the side of the road if I started doing that.

Baking in the morning sun, I can see the heat waves coming off the gravel road up ahead as we see almost no signs of life in any direction. We didn't have to dress up in walker attire this time around, but we did have to off two or three of them before getting here. That was a while back though, and we haven't seen any activity since.

"Where the fuck are we even going?" Lilly asks, raising her hands up in front of her before lazily letting them hang back down at her sides. "We've been at this for hours, and we've seen the same stretch of land now for ages!"

"What do you think we should do?" Jane sighs, rubbing her temple as we all stop for a moment. She's really not in the mood to be having any arguments right now.

"Figure out where exactly it is that we want to head to before going any further. We don't need to worry about the prison anymore, so the least we can do is stop and plan," she explains, holding her gun at her side instead of out front for the first time in hours. "Anybody got a map or something?"

"I snagged something like that, but it's got a bunch of lines and colours and shit all over it," Jane grimaces, pulling out a rather large map that looks vaguely familiar. At first, I just act as if I don't care and keep to myself, but once I get another glimpse of what Jane has, I pull one side of it closer to me to inspect it.

"This… these are those trade routes Sandro was telling me about," I remark, tracing my finger along the blue line going back to Houston. "We should be heading in that direction if we want to – "

"Wait a minute, you're saying we should go back to Houston Hills?!" Lilly exclaims, and even I have to agree that it sounds pretty stupid. Actually, it's extremely stupid – possibly one of the worst ideas I've come up with in a long time. "We should be heading as far away from that place as possible!"

"Hold on, let's think about this – "

"There's nothing to think about, Jane!" Lilly cuts her off, clearly against going back there. "Sandro's dead, and we're finally out of that hellhole! We should be heading up north – I'm so sick of this place!"

"They've got food, supplies and guns there, Lilly," I count off my fingers, even though deep down I'm actually on board with her for this one. "We're low on everything. Shouldn't we at least try to take some of the stuff from there?"

"So you're saying we should just go over there and steal their stuff?"

"We're gonna kill every last son of a bitch in that place, and then we'll take over the house," Jane reasons, her goals getting more dark by the day. "Look, the prison's trashed, but we know that Houston Hills is safe! You saw it, Lilly – no walkers in sight, and it's got enough space that we'll be safe from attacks. Plus, like Clem said, they've got guns!"

"Yeah, that they'll be using on us," Lilly mutters, but cursing as her stomach starts to growl. Looks as though she's gonna cave. "Alright, but how the hell are we going to do this? There's no way that we can just waltz in and take over the place. Any ideas?"

"We'll figure it out as we go along," Jane shrugs, causing me to roll my eyes and Lilly to rub her face in exhaustion. "What? It's not as if the plan worked last time! Half the place was destroyed and almost everyone died!"

"It doesn't matter what happened! The important thing is that we got out – that was the goal," Lilly states, causing me to furrow my brow in confusion.

"What are you saying?" I question, folding my arms together as I look at the both of them. "The plan was to get everyone to safety, right? Don't tell me that we were just looking out for ourselves?"

"That wasn't the original idea, no," Jane admits slightly shamefully as she rubs the back of her neck. "But… if it came down to getting us out of there, then… well…"

"Tell me," I demand, not liking where this is leading to. Not that it really matters much now, but still. "Tell me that the plan didn't involve shooting Mikael and leaving him and the rest to die in a house. Would you have killed Dominic too, if he was getting in the way of us escaping?!"

"It wouldn't have come to that," Lilly steps in firmly, causing me to settle down a little bit at least. "None of them were supposed to die… It's just that they put our safety at risk, and Mikael wanted to kill us, Clementine. You could see it all along. He was going to wait until we'd finished the problem before shooting us when our backs were turned."

"I don't believe you…" I refuse pathetically, lowering my gaze to the ground. "Mikael trusted me… He'd never do something like that on purpose. We killed him!"

"He used you, Clem. Same goes for most of 'em," Jane says simply, causing me to second-guess myself. Was our friendship all just an illusion? "We didn't murder Mikael, it was self-defence. If Lilly hadn't told the rest of the prisoners to wait outside when we headed into the office, we'd probably all be dead right now."

My brain's starting to hurt… Was that really just self-defence on our part? It sure as hell didn't feel like it, and Mikael made it quite clear that we were in the wrong.

But what if it was all an act?

It kind of makes sense, if you think about it. Mikael and the rest of the camp wanted their freedom, and they knew what we were capable of doing. So once they realize that we're a bunch of survivors, they go along with the "revolution" and help us to kill all the guards. Mikael waits for the right opportunity, and knew that Jane would want to inflict as much pain on Sandro as he did to her. So he frames it all as cold-blooded revenge, and then starts claiming that we didn't want to help them in the first place.

That son of a bitch…

"Dominic wasn't like that…" I tell them while shaking my head. "No way was he in on this – the guy could barely understand what I said half the time, and he was loyal to the core. He wouldn't deceive us."

"You're right," Lilly shrugs with a softened glance. "But he was the only one that we knew of. That's why we sent him with you when you guys escaped the community centre."

"Because Mikael would've…" I clue in, finally putting the pieces together as the two of them reluctantly nod their heads. "I'm… sorry, guys. All along, you knew what he was gonna do…"

"You don't need to worry about him anymore, Clem. He's gone, and so is Sandro," Jane comments, glad to see that I'm finally speaking to them again. This is the good thing about having a smaller group – the problems are much easier to talk about. "We should've warned you earlier, but… It doesn't matter now. Let's just focus on getting back to Houston Hills."

"I guess we won't have to look very far," Lilly remarks, seemingly surprised as she notices another torn sign for the place. She rips the paper from the telephone pole, scrunches it up and chucks it into the wind as it picks up speed and scatters through the desert.

We wouldn't want any enemies to come looking for our place once we take it from them now, would we?

…..

"Now I remember why they told me that breakfast is the most important meal of the day," Jane complains in a joking manner, walking with less enthusiasm than I used to see her with when we were at Howe's together. You know, as scary as that place could be at times when Carver was still around, I still miss it sometimes – not Carver, the actual building itself. We had walls to keep us safe, but you'd never get bored because there was always something that needed to be done. Not to mention that Jane and I hardly ever fought there, and with AJ to take care of I was pretty content.

Now it's all gone, and this feels like Deja-vu. Going to take back another place so that we can hold up and live in temporary peace.

Only this time, things are gonna be different – we'll make this work.

"I'm sure we'll find something to eat once we get in there," I share some hope, though it does little to quench our thirsts or satisfy our hungers. At least it's better than being so depressed all the time, and I'm sure deep down Jane appreciates that I still haven't given up on her. After everything that's happened, it'd be pretty easy to do so. "But yeah… some eggs and bacon would go a long way right now."

"Stop, now you're making me hungry!" Lilly whines, closing her eyes to just imagine that she's got a plate of that stuff in front of her. "Jesus… you don't realize how much you miss food until it's gone."

"Omelettes – my best friend through college," Jane remarks with a smirk, but her gaze grows serious as we finally make our way back. Houston Hills… this place used to be nothing but an illusion, and the infuriating part was that we were so close to a safe haven.

But Papa John took that away from us…

"Look there," Lilly whispers, pointing to various windows up on the second level. "There are only a handful of guards from what I can see, but there might be more of them inside."

"Should we just shoot them, then?" Jane suggests, aiming her rifle up and looking through the notch. "It'd be so easy to pick both of them off right now…"

"Yeah sure, if you want to bring them all down on top of us!" Lilly hisses, lowering the barrel of Jane's gun as she scratches her chin in thought. "There's gotta be an easier way… a safer way. We need to get a distraction."

When the both of them turn towards me, I gulp but reluctantly sigh in acceptance. There's no way that I'm getting out of this – I've accepted that fact many times over.

There's a rather large moving van in front of the house that definitely wasn't there before, but Jane seems to recognize it as she points to it angrily.

"That's the van they put us in when they took us to Mexico!" she exclaims quietly. "Fucking Corvo's gotta be in there!"

"And if he's inside the house, then Papa John must be as well. This is our chance…" Lilly remarks, patting me on the shoulder as she lays down the plan. "Clem, I need you to sneak into the truck, alright? The keys are still inside, I can see them through the window."

Sure enough, there's a set of car keys sitting haphazardly in the ignition slot for the truck – just ripe for the taking.

"What do I do after?"

"…I need you to turn on the car, drive out into the road and make as much noise as possible. Honk the horn, press the panic button, blast the radio, anything to get their attention. We want all of them to come chasing after you."

"Are you insane?!" Jane insinuates as my face starts to pale in nervousness. "Do you want to get her killed or something?! I thought we wanted to do this quietly!"

"Think about it," Lilly remarks, poking her head up to make sure that nobody's taken off in it yet. "If we try to sneak inside, not only do we have a better chance of getting killed, but we'll end up shooting up the place and ruining our safe zone. Clem can do this – I believe in her."

"I can't believe what I'm hearing right now!" Jane complains, grabbing her hair and looking as though she's about to rip it right out. Groaning, she looks towards me with a worried glance as she bends down to my height. "Clem, this plan is stupid… Are you sure you're up for this?"

"Since when are our plans not stupid?" I joke, chuckling nervously as I bite my lip in pensiveness. "If it means that we'll be safe, then… yeah. I'm ready."

Gripping my poncho tightly, Jane does the unexpected and pulls me in close for a hug as the time for action draws nearer.

"If anything goes wrong – ANYTHING – you book it out of there, alright? Don't worry about Lilly and I, just go."

"You know that's not how I roll," I comment, smirking as she releases me. I give a nod towards Lilly, who seems pretty nervous about this whole thing as well. This plan is practically suicide, and the chances of failure are very high, but with our luck I think we'll do alright.

I just hope that Lilly and Jane both know what to do once I start the distraction.

"Alright, go – hurry before someone sees you!" Lilly urges as I sneak my way down the hill. I'm a fair distance away from the house, so this is going to be a bit of a stretch. I slide through the grass like a snake as I keep a close eye on the second level. I almost forgot how they hardly ever needed to have someone on watch, since they don't really get very many walker problems around these parts.

That's their first mistake. The second one was leaving the keys in the truck.

When one of the officers glance outside, I quickly drop to all fours and stay to the ground as low as possible; not moving a muscle as my breath hitches in my throat. If somebody spots me, then it's game over.

Glancing my eyes upwards without moving, I see that the bastard Corvo is indeed present in the house – no doubt pulling a curtain over Papa John's eyes as to what happened with Sandro and the prison. Not only is he liar, but he's also untrustworthy, disloyal and a trigger-happy prick, and I'm pretty sure that Lilly's going to love killing him once and for all.

The grass tickles my nose as I breathe inwards, but quickly stand up after seeing that they've disappeared. I don't think that any of them saw me, otherwise they probably would've shot me dead from the window once they realized who I am. The stones of the unpaved driveway crash against my shoes as I tiptoe the rest of the way; hiding behind the door of the truck and sighing in relief. So far so good, as I give Lilly and Jane a thumbs up which they return. Holding up their guns to let me know that they're going to set up, I nod and watch as the two disappear from my sight.

The sun's starting to go down, revealing a darker shade of pink and red that dots the landscape – the colour of blood, as it will be spilled this evening for certain. Grabbing the door handle of the truck, I carefully open it and step inside before shutting it firmly closed again.

…..

It's a pretty good thing that I'm so small, isn't it? The only thing that anybody would really be able to see from the outside is my hat bobbing up and down; slightly burned now unfortunately after that whole prison situation. Why did I ever feel that getting rid of this was a good idea?

Anyways, there's not much too this truck really. It's a pretty old piece of junk that smells like cigarettes, and the stickiness in the cup holders makes me think that somebody spilled some soda in here. Didn't their parents ever tell them to clean up after themselves? Geez, what a bunch of slobs!

Looking out the window to make sure that nobody's watching yet, I hesitantly turn the keys until I hear the engine roar to life and everything start to shake within the vehicle. Gripping the steering wheel tightly with both of my hands, I put my foot on the gas pedal and slowly move forward; trying to avoid the tree that they've inconveniently planted nearby.

One of the guards point down to the truck from the window, and they quickly disappear back into the house.

"Showtime…" I mutter as I honk the horn excessively and crank the CD player as high as it can go, hurting my ears in the process as the bullets start flying at the back of the truck. Realizing that they've come out to play with little, old Clementine, I put the pedal to the metal and floor it down the dirt road; kicking up dust as two bullets break my left side mirror. It's as if they're trying to kill me or something!

"How far do I go, how far do I go?!" I ask myself over and over, not wanting to stop and get caught but also not wanting them to turn back around to get Lilly and Jane killed. I drive for another thirty seconds or so before gritting my teeth together and trusting my gut. This has gotta be far enough, so I start to turn back around… without using the brakes.

I travel left off the dirt road as the bumps underneath the wheels grow increasingly violent, causing me to go up and down like a ragdoll as I try to prevent the car from flipping over. My stomach turns to knots when I get some air in this huge transport truck, but I settle again once the thing lands. There are a shit-load of dents in this thing, but that's alright.

I need to run people over with it anyways.

"WRAGHHHH!" I scream out like a crazy person, lowering my head as I turn back onto the road and run several guard patrols over. One of them go flying through my windshield, smashing the glass as it cuts into his skin. He shrieks as the blood pours down his face, so I take out a pistol and shoot him to save the man from more suffering. I'm not that cold, guys.

More bullets fly my way, and I try my best to avoid them, but one of the gunshots crash through the window on my left side and causes a shower of glass to crash down onto me. Several cuts form on my face, and I scream in pain as one of the shards cut open the burned part of my head – this hurts like you won't believe. My left eye is blinded by the blood that's flowing down from the upper part of my head, and I clutch the wound painfully while letting go of the steering wheel. There's so much going on right now that my brain's having trouble processing everything.

But now I'm no longer in control of where the car's going.

"CLEMENTINE! STOOOPPPP!" either Jane or Lilly call out, but it's too late. The truck smashes into the same tree that I had tried avoiding earlier, and I go smashing through the window pane to the ground below; hearing a sickening snap of bone as I roll over. That's why you wear your seatbelt, kids!

But seriously, somebody just needs to shoot me… That'd probably be a lot more merciful than what I'm currently experiencing at the moment.

"Oh… godddddd…" I whimper, tears flowing freely as I'm forced to sit there and listen as the gunfire continues to go off. I've completely destroyed the truck, with the front hood bent inwards so far that it looks like it tried to fold itself up. The windshield is no longer there, as I can still see glass littering the hood and the ground below it, and lastly I can hear steam coming out as the truck sizzles and pops. Whatever I did, it wasn't pretty.

Using the only eye that I can see out of right now, I painfully turn my head back to see that Lilly's rushing over towards me; Jane covering her as she makes her descent down the hill.

"JUST! FUCKING! DIE!" Jane swears as she unleashes an utter fury on her enemies, seeming to hate the living assholes more than the dead ones at this point. I can't help but agree.

"Oh my god! Clem! CLEM!" Lilly yells, coming over to me as she cradles my head in her lap. I try telling her to get out of here since it's so dangerous, but she won't listen to me. "Damn it, I'm so sorry! I never should've told you to do something like this… Shit! FUCK! You're gonna make it, I swear to Christ!"

"Get… out of here!" I manage to say, though still sounding as though my mouth is full of marbles. I taste blood in my mouth as my eyes slowly start to close. This could very well be the end for me…

"Clem, god damn it! Stay with me! JANE! HELP ME OUT OVER – ARRGGHHH! SHIT! I'M HIT! GOD DAMN IT, I'M – "

No… is my last thought before I see that fucker Papa John standing over me with a wicked smirk as he pulls out his pistol – aiming it dangerously close to my head.

"You folks shoulda stayed in prison…" he snarls, unlocking his pistol and shaking it in his grip. His jacket is definitely bloody, so somebody managed to shoot the bastard at least.

Perhaps it was Jane… I hope so. Hopefully she and Lilly will be able to walk away from this… to move on… from me…

My eyes close, and a gunshot goes off that pounds my eardrums.