After the events of S4, Violet and AJ make contact with the caravan Aasim spotted and find out that it's a Commonwealth expedition. Expedition's leader visits Ericson, and invites the kids to the Commonwealth. In disbelief of what the leader is saying about the place -how it is a society with law & order that reflects the pre-outbreak world-, after debates and reconsideration of their current situation, Aasim and Willy volunteered to travel to Commonwealth to see if the expedition leader's promises were true.
Couple weeks later, Aasim returns with the good news and everyone starts their journey to the Commonwealth.
## This series contains spoilers regarding the original TWD comics. Self discretion is advised. ##
A new day...
## 6 months after the expedition's arrival to Ericson... ##
Clementine woke up just before the alarm was about to go off. The alarm clock within her head always proved itself to be useful on the road and looked like it's still functioning.
As she straightened up, her eyes sought AJ and found him on the other side of the room, sleeping peacefully on his bunk bed. She grabbed her prosthetic leg that was sitting beside her end table and started wearing it. As she stood up, allowing her limb to really embed itself, she approached towards sleeping AJ.
"Ugh, I hate doing this..." she grouched to herself.
"...Hey, goofball..." Her hand was on his shoulders, shaking gently: "...It's school time..."
AJ grumbled unintelligibly, not wanting to wake up.
"...Come on, little guy."
"Why does it have to be so early?" AJ complained as he rubbed his eyes. "Why can't they do it at noon or something?"
Clementine pondered at his question a bit. One eyebrow's up, she said:
"You know what? I have no idea, either. It was the same with me too..."
Afterwards, realizing they're about to be late if they don't buck up a bit, she said:
"...Still, we need to hurry. Come on, I'll prepare something for you. You can eat at the school, like usual." Clementine's efforts to try and give AJ as much sleep as he can put them in a sweet urgency every morning that both of them -well some more than others- seemed to enjoy.
Getting used to...
After packing the breakfast on his backpack, AJ and Clementine got out of the dormitory and started walking towards the school. Halfway there, they saw Aasim on the other side of the street. He immediately waved his hand and started running towards them:
"Hey guys! Off to school?"
"Unfortunately." grumbled, AJ. Clementine, smiling:
"Don't mope. You can already read, it's not that hard."
Clementine and Aasim chuckled a bit to AJ's lack of enthusiasm. Then Aasim said:
"You guys mind if I tag along?"
"Sure, why not.", nodded Clementine.
As the three walk towards the school, Aasim could not help but notice how seamless Clementine was walking. As she noticed his effort to observe, sarcastically:
"Just like before, right?"
Aasim immediately turned his head, feeling a bit shameful:
"Sorry, didn't mean to-"
Cutting him off, Clementine chuckled:
"It's alright. To be honest, I'm starting to get used to it. Can't really run fast or anything, but I find myself forgetting about it, sometimes."
"Doesn't it hurt, walking with it?"
"It did, at the start. I guess it was because the amputation was recent. Now, I barely feel anything..." Clementine said, while putting her hand at AJ's head, shaking his hair to cheer him up as he seemed to got saddened a bit cause of the conversation. And then, she continued:
"...I just wish Maggie would stop treating me like a liability and give me a job, already. As awesome as this place is, it can get a bit boring..." As she realized what she just complained about, a bittersweet smile settled on her face:
"...Look at me, complaining about getting bored... Almost forgot how it felt like.".
Aasim nodded, then sarcastically said:
"Don't feel bad, you of all people deserve the sweet, sweet feeling of boredom."
"Oh, stop it..." Clementine said, as she jokingly got frustrated at him for feeling as though he owes anything to her. Both laughed, as they continued walking.
The expedition...
When they reached their destination, Clementine hugged AJ, wished him a good day at school and saw him off. As they saw AJ enter the school, Aasim said:
"Hey, you know the reason why I wanted to tag along was to talk to you about something."
Clementine, curiously and a bit sarcastically:
"Oh no, what did Willy do again?!"
Aasim, half laughing half trying to talk:
"Fortunately, it's not about him, this time..." As his face got a bit more serious:
"...Since I volunteered to be a trooper, Mercer wanted me to be a part of the expeditions this summer. You know, to get some experience about how the troopers handle situations, their protocols, bla bla..."
"Yeah, makes sense."
"When I saw the expedition routes, I remembered the last Ericson gathering we had a couple weeks back. I remembered you mentioning you were from Atlanta/Georgia. You even gave the open address of your home from your memory to prove it. Well, turns out..." As she slowly realized what Aasim was about to propose, she started to feel a bit lightheaded.
"... one of the expeditions is going to pass straight through the outskirts of Atlanta. First thing I asked Mercer was whether if you can come along or not but he immediately declined. Unfortunately, it seems like him and Maggie think alike on the matter. And... you know... I just thought maybe I could go visit your home, grab some things, maybe get some photos even... What do you say?"
"I... I'm..." Still in the effect of the offer, she struggled to find words:
"...I can't ask you to risk your life for something like that, Aasim. I appreciate the offer, but..." Aasim raised his hand in front of him to stop her, cutting her:
"Hey, I'm making the offer which means I know exactly what the risks are. Please let me do this, I know a thing or two about the importance of mementos. Plus, it would only mean a tiny detour. I asked Mercer and he approved, since he declined your involvement..."
Clementine, her head still flooded with the thoughts about her parents and wondering what she can get back from her home, unknowingly engulfed herself to her thoughts. She remembered wanting to do the exact same thing back when she thought she lost AJ. However, as she reunited with him and the nature of the war she witnessed there was unknown to her at the time, she prioritized AJ's safety over her own desires.
"...Alright then, that settles it. See you in couple of months." said Aasim, as he almost ran away from Clementine, not letting her change his mind.
The box...
## 3 months later... ##
As the assumed return of the expedition Aasim joined drew closer, a sense of anxiety and longing started to take a hold on Clementine. She struggled to sleep that night. As she figured she won't be able to, she drew her knees closer to herself, sitting in her bed, started thinking about back home.
As the time went on and the sun rose, Clementine still in her engulfed state, suddenly she realized the alarm is about to go off. When the alarm shrieked, Clementine almost fell out of her bed in panic, trying to close it off. The phantom limb feeling almost got the better of her but she managed to collect herself.
Unfortunately, the alarm startled AJ. He yelped as he woke up:
"I'm so sorry, AJ. I was just-" Clem tried to apologize. As his breathing calmed down, AJ intervened:
"It's okay, Clem." He looked at Clementine's eyes:
"Are you okay? Did you sleep?"
"I'm fine, goofball." she replied, trying to seem cheerful as she was trying to wear her prosthetic in a hurry. AJ was quick to realize that she didn't sleep much since he knows how she looks like and how she acts when she's sleepy. He saw it a bunch of times while they were travelling together on the car since she would stay awake for so many hours, just to keep watch at night:
"Nope, you're not. You know what..." he got out of bed. As he went towards the dormitory's bathroom:
"...I'll ask Violet if she can take me to the school for today. You get some sleep..."
"AJ! Wait u-"
"Bye." AJ said, as he closed the door behind him. Clementine, a bit frustrated, lied back down to her bed.
"Dammit, Clem." she said to herself as she tried to fall asleep.
After what felt like a couple hours, Clementine woke up to her door, knocking. On one foot, she hopped towards the door and opened it. It was Aasim:
"Hey! Missed m- Ouch!" Clementine rushed to hug him, cutting Aasim:
"It's so good to see you. Nothing happened, right?"
"Nope. Apparently our expedition is the most successful in the history of Commonwealth. No losses and even found 4 communities that joined us. It was incredible..." As he was talking, Clementine hopped back to her bed and Aasim let himself into the room, leaving the door open.
She waited for him to open up the conversation, but Aasim realized her hesitance. After a short, awkward silence; he started smiling and went back towards the hallway:
"...Don't worry, I went to your house, as promised..." He grabbed a cartoon box from the hallway and carried it to the study table right beside the door:
"...Here's everything that I thought would be important to you with also some photos I took. I'm sorry to say that the house itself was... a bit in ruin. Like every other place outside Commonwealth. I'm sorry..." She was speechless, again. Her eyes were fixated on the box Aasim brought.
Aasim looked like he wanted mention something else, but he changed is mind immediately:
"...Umm, I better get back. Mercer expects-"
"Thank you!.." Clem intervened, her eyes a bit teary. "...You have no idea how much this means to me. I'll never forget this."
"Hey, stop blathering. As far as I'm concerned, we're even. You did save my life... twice..." He chuckled towards the end and sarcastically:
"...Dammit, now I have to do something else for the second one..."
"Oh, shut up..." Both laughed.
"I'll see you later." Aasim said as he left the room, leaving Clementine and the box all alone.
The Boxcar Children...
The box was more like a crate, Clementine realized as she wore her prosthetic leg and grabbed it. As her hand went towards opening it, a sudden rush of sorrow filled her as if she didn't want to know what's inside the crate. She never thought she'd have to deal with something like this again. So much that she almost felt afraid to find out the contents of the crate.
As the fear grew inside her, she started reminiscing. About her parents, about the pre-outbreak world and how much Commonwealth reminds her of it...
Then her mind started wandering towards the darker memories... The walkie-talkie... The father on the radio... Her parents in front of Marsh House... The jewelry store...
All these sudden rush of memories, her hand still on top of the crate, depressed her and she started sobbing a bit. The survivor's guilt she felt throughout the years, in addition to the guilt she feels about Lee, caught up to her again.
After some time, which she perceived as forever, she finally decided to pull herself together, wipe her eyes and open the crate and as she did; the very first thing she saw was a children's book. She was about to say to herself "What's this?" but then, she glanced at the title.
"NO WAY!" she whispered, still with teary eyes and a grin ear to ear. It's The Boxcar Children, her favorite book that was sitting on her bookcase in her room with a couple of others under it. They were in good enough shape, too, quite legible. She remembered talking about her books to Violet in the forest, right after the boat.
"These'll be perfect for AJ!" Clementine immediately thought as she put the books beside her to see what else is in the crate. A coloring book caught her eyes, a very worn out one unfortunately. The only picture she could figure out was the one with the unicorn that's half painted. She seemed to not remember this one very well.
As Clementine took out the coloring book, she saw her framed paintings, the one with her hands in purple paint and the mountainous scenery with sun coming up among them. Still tearing up a bit, this time from nostalgia, she said to herself laughing:
"God, I was a horrible artist!"
As her hand went for the next item inside the crate, she first saw what it is before touching it. And as she did, her eyes opened, protruding, as if she didn't believe what she was seeing.
It was their framed family photo that was sitting right beside the telephone. She started reaching for it, her hands shaking. After almost 9 years, she couldn't believe she was seeing her parents' faces again.
After Savannah, whenever she tried to picture them in her head, whenever she tried to have dreams about them, all she could perceive was... them as a...
As she held the photo, she started sobbing again. But this time, out of happiness since she could now picture their faces... And be rid of the memories of them that haunted her all this time.
She went back to her bed, photo still on her hand. There were still the photographs Aasim took inside the crate but after seeing her parent's faces again, she did not want to bother with how things look right now. All she cared about at the moment was to enjoy the photograph, embed their faces to her mind to never forget them again.
The dream...
Next morning, AJ woke up before Clementine. The alarm was still to activate.
"Huh, this is new." He said to himself.
As AJ went back from the bathroom, he approached towards Clementine to wake her up. But before that, he noticed something out of place. There was a face down frame on top of her end table. AJ was curious about it, but did not want to check out what it is, yet.
When he was about to startle Clementine to wake her up, he noticed something else. Her face was turned towards him and it seemed like she was smiling in her sleep. Seeing her like that, he didn't want to wake her up and decided to ask Violet if she could escort him again.
He started making a sandwich for his breakfast. He saw Clementine do it for him bunch of times. He packed it real well and prepared himself for the school.
Just as he was about to leave the room, the alarm popped off and the second it did, Clementine almost punched it downwards to turn it off, immediately waking up.
"Stupid thing..." she said to herself. As she straightened up, she realized AJ was not in his bed. In a panic that lasted for half a second, she frantically searched the room with her eyes till she saw AJ within the doorframe, barely holding himself from laughing out loud.
"Why didn't you wake me up, goofball?.." AJ shrugged, not answering the question.
"...Anyways, wait for me a bit, could you?"
As they started walking towards the school, Clementine wanted to try her luck again:
"So, you didn't answer my question. Why didn't you wake me up?" She seemed a bit worried about him.
"I don't know. You looked like you needed the sleep..." For a second, he hesitated to say what he was about to say, but he continued:
"...I thought you were dreaming because you were smiling in your sleep. That's why."
Clementine looked at AJ with a smile so great that it looked impossible to do:
"Yeah, I was actually."
"What was it about?" AJ asked immediately. Clementine always refrained from talking about neither his or her family as much as she could. She believed it would only remind AJ of his unfortunate past and make him feel even sadder. He needed to grow up just a bit more for talks like that.
Cautiously and with aglimmer eyes, she said:
"It was about some people that were close to me. I saw them happy, and I remember it making me happy as well. That's probably why I was smiling."
"Huh..." AJ pondered, thinking about his own dreams. He couldn't really remember any of them and the ones he could were always filled with very loud noises that resembled gunshots and visuals that are filled with the color red.
As Clementine realized AJ was starting to wander off in his mind:
"Well, thank you for not waking me up right away, then." Both continued to walk towards the school.
The bag...
After sending AJ off to school, Clementine went back to the dormitory. In front of the building she saw Aasim, sitting on the stairs with a bag right beside him on the floor, almost as if he was waiting for her to come back. As Aasim recognized Clementine, he stood up and waved his hand.
"Hey, Aasim. Waiting for Ruby?"
"Not really, she always takes off quite early. Medical internship and all..." As he finished his sentence, he couldn't help but notice Clementine's jubilance:
"You seem good today, better." Clementine immediately put on a suspicious face, one eyebrow up:
"I wonder why..." she said as she slowly smiled back. And continued:
"...Yeah, the box you gave. It... brought back a lot of pleasant memories." As Clementine said that, she started mumbling a bit:
"...I... I ju... I still have no idea how to thank you for something like this."
Aasim, looking a bit frustrated:
"One, you have nothing to thank me for. I already explained why I'm doing this and two, that wasn't all of it."
"All of what..." Clementine asked as Aasim grabbed the bag that was sitting next to him.
"I wanted to tell you about this too, yesterday. But then I thought it would be better to bring it to you on working condition, if I can." Clementine's curiosity and impatience was off the roof but Aasim did not open the bag yet.
"There's this guy Eugene, works on setting up those trains. Well, based on what I've gathered from Mercer, apparently he's also a huge nerd when it comes to electronics. So, I asked him for a favor..." as the sentence was finished, he revealed what was inside the bag.
It was the telephone Clementine had back home, on arguably fine condition.
"I remember you mentioning your parents were not with you when everything started going to shit. While I was in your house and saw this telephone, I thought 'They must have tried to reach her, right?'. So I took it with me, hoping this Eugene guy can fix it aaaaaand, he did. I grabbed it this morning..."
Aasim forwarded the telephone towards Clementine. She took a couple of seconds to take it as she was still in shock of what was happening and with the idea of what the phone could contain since she knew...
"...The guy told me the voice messages within these things are recorded and can be replayed, like a voice recorder thingy. I plugged it on my room earlier today to see if it works and it does. Don't worry, I didn't open up the messages but I do know that, unfortunately, only the-"
Clementine, not hearing what he said after 'see if it works and it does...', rushed towards Aasim for a hug, telephone still in her hand, almost crying:
"Thank you... Thank you so much..." Afterwards, she ran towards the building and to her room, with no recognizable challenge regarding her movement, despite her prosthetic.
Aasim grabbed the empty bag from the floor, with a big smile.
"You're more than welcome." he said, looking extremely content.
We love you...
Clementine's hands seemed to entangle with themselves out of excitement as she was trying to connect the phone to where that stupid alarm clock was. As soon as she disconnected the alarm, she threw it to the other side of the room without noticing, almost breaking it.
As she managed to connect the telephone, she froze up. Just like how she did with the box, a sudden fear of revelation encircled her mind. But unlike last time, she powered through it a lot faster and activated the telephone.
There seemed to be only three messages, first two were dated the evening of the first day everything went to shit and the last one was dated the early morning of the next day.
Her hand shaking, she started the first recording...
"Hey Sandra, this is Diana. We're still in Savannah..."
Hearing her mother's voice again... After all this time... She was in a state of longing and jubilance she could swear she never felt before...
"...Ed had a little 'incident' with some crazy guy near the hotel, so we had to get him back to the ER and have him checked out. Anyway, he's not feeling well enough to drive back tonight..."
As Clementine realized what that 'incident' could mean, she started having speculations as to why they couldn't come back. Unfortunately, that also reminded her the state her parents were in, in front of the Marsh House, so she turned the family photo upside down and continued listening with the photo of her parents in front of her.
"... so we're staying an extra day. Thanks so much for looking after Clementine, and I promise we'll be back in time before your spring break!"
As the message was over, Clementine remembered what happened to Sandra. She realized the fact that she still remembered hearing Sandra's screams while Clementine was on her tree house, playing on the first day's morning. Her first encounter with walkers were clear as day for her. As she wanted to get down to see what's happening, she remembered seeing a couple of those, rotted corpses banging their hands on the house's walls to go towards Sandra's screams...
Feeling incredibly awful about this specific memory, Clementine decided to start the second recording.
"Oh my God, finally! I don't know if you've tried to reach us; all the calls are getting dropped. They're not letting us leave and aren't telling us anything about Atlanta..."
Clementine started to feel a bit guilty about not being able to answer her mother's phone calls, back then. If she had any idea...
"... Please, please, just leave the city and take Clementine with you back to Marietta. I've got to get back to the hospital. Please let me know that you're safe."
After the message ended, Clementine quickly realized her mother's mindset and felt the worry she reflected on the message. She couldn't help but tear up a bit to her mother's trembling voice. She almost didn't want to hear the last message, since she could feel what it contains.
And yet, she let her curiosity and desire to hear more win over her anxiety as she opened up the last message...
"Clementine? Baby, if you can hear this, call the police. That's 9-1-1..."
Hearing her mother cry on the message was exactly what Clementine was fearing. She hated the fact that she was right.
"...We love you... we love you... we love y-"
The sorrow... The guilt... The feeling of desperation in her mother's voice... The thought of her parents dying as they worried over their daughter's life, powerless to do anything about it... She couldn't help but see the resemblance between her mother's worry on the message and the one she felt almost a year back, in the barn...
All these revelations and memories started to emotionally overwhelm Clementine; as she lied down in her bed, put their photo right in front of her, and started crying uncontrollably.
He knew...
Half an hour later, still lying in her bed, Clementine straightened up. Her crying was over but she still felt awful about the messages. She was more than glad to hear them, of course. The last thing she wanted was to undermine what Aasim did for her. Bringing her parent's faces AND their voice back...
While thinking about it, Clementine felt the desire to hear the messages again. As she was about to activate the telephone, she realized something. She remembered this telephone's annoying beeping whenever there was a new message, back in the day. However, half an hour ago, the telephone acted as though these messages were all listened before.
Clementine wondered whether Sandra checked them out but that didn't make sense since she died way before these messages were sent.
Aasim did say he plugged it in just to see if it works but he also said he did not touch any of the messages out of respect. After all that he's done, Clementine wanted to trust him on that regard. Plus, she couldn't imagine Aasim lying about something as sensitive as this.
As she thought about who else could have went through the messages, the idiot that tried to get in her house to steal the TV came to her mind but there was no way it was him since he never managed to get inside the house. He was so dumb that he couldn't figure out the fact that the door was open. Clementine smiled when she remembered telling this story to Lee...
Wait...Lee... It must have been Lee that heard the messages. As the contents of them flooded back to her mind, especially the last one with her mother's crying and desperate voice, Clementine mumbled in shock:
"He knew... He knew they were dead..." Then she started thinking to herself:
'From the very first day that we met, all the way to the Savannah... the plans we made together on the train... Crawford...
During all that, he knew that my parents were dead but he never revealed it to me. To not sadden me. But not only that -from Macon to Savannah- he fought so hard to protect me, to make sure I set foot on Savannah, safe and sound.
And yet, with the tiniest show of exhaustion and realism I saw from him, the father on the radio swayed me to leave the mansion, and... and...'
Clementine felt her heart ache out of sorrow, as she realized the complete extent of what her protector did for her, and what she did to him in return... The guilt she felt was more excruciating than ever. So much so that she felt exactly like the little girl that was on the plains right outside Savannah again, after everything happened.
AJ, back from the school, entered their room. He saw Clementine on her bed, her legs were closed to her chest, sitting.
"Hi!.." he said in excitement. "...Today we finally started with something other tha-"
He realized that Clementine wasn't even acknowledging his presence. She was looking at the alarm... wait no... some other thing that was sitting right where the alarm clock was. He slowly walked towards Clementine's bed, got on it and put his hand on her shoulder:
"Hey, Clem. Are you okay?..."
AJ's touch finally brought Clementine back from her thoughtful state and she turned her head towards him.
"...Did I do something again?"
Without a second delay, she started hugging him and crying at the same time. Her crying and the fact that she was hugging him so hard made AJ a lot more worried as he also started tearing up:
"Clem! What's wrong?!"
Clementine finally realized what she was doing to AJ. She pulled herself away from him and started wiping AJ's eyes, completely ignoring her own:
"Nothing, nothing. You did nothing wrong, my little goofball..." Clementine said as she laughed, trying to stop her own crying.
While she was in that state, seeing AJ in front of her reminded Clementine what AJ truly meant for her. From the moment he was born, to this day... She tried her damnedest to take care of him not only because it seemed like the right thing to do, but because she wanted to redeem herself in her own eyes.
After what she believed she did to so many people that tried to take care of her throughout the years, the last thing she wanted to become was a person that shies away from the responsibility of taking care of someone that need her help.
And with the revelation she just had about Lee, she felt the weight of this responsibility multiplied on herself. She already thought she had a lot to work up for before today and now with this...
However, as she realized she's keeping AJ waiting for a response, Clementine calmed herself and said:
"...It has nothing to do with you, goofball. I just got emotional about some... stuff." Clementine said as she held AJ to her side, leaning towards each other.
AJ was about to ask what it's all about, but then he recognized the frame he saw earlier. It was sitting right on the other side of Clementine, face up. It was a photograph of a family of three. His eyes got fixated on the little girl at the bottom as if he recognized who she was:
"Is that?.."
Clementine realized what he was distracted with. Her immediate thought was to turn the frame upside down. But instead, she decided to grab the frame and keep it in front of them. With a smile, and a bit of an innocent bashfulness, she said:
"Yep, that's little me..."