Chapter 21:
The first thing was the smell, Clark realized, his eyes closed. It was warm, filled with memory and sunshine, and oh so familiar. His chest ached in pain at the smell, and then it was the humming.
His mom's humming. The melody she never finished because it was a poem that she wrote, the one that started somewhere in the middle and looped back before it reached an end, because she didn't know the end of it yet, and somehow that had always been the most comforting thing about it. The incompleteness of it. The fact that it just kept going and going.
Clark bathed in the smell and the humming for a moment before he understood where he was.
The seatbelt lay across his chest, while his entire weight was shifted to his side. His cheek was against something soft. His own jacket, Clark figured out, was balled up against the window.
Outside the window, the world moved slowly, if barely.
Traffic.
He came awake like something had grabbed him by the collar and yanked him upward, and the seatbelt pulled him back, a full-body jolt that went from his spine to his fingertips before his eyes were open, a gasp tearing out of him that was too loud for the quiet of the car, except for the radio. His hands shot out and found nothing, grabbing at the seat, at the jacket, at the seatbelt, at anything with a surface to confirm it was there. That he was there.
"Whoa, hey." His dad's voice, from the driver's seat, looking back at him through the rearview mirror. "You okay back there?"
His mom had turned in the passenger seat before the question was finished, her hand coming over the headrest immediately. Her amber eyes were wide and startled and worried and confused, all of it at once. Clark's chest hurt.
"Clark. What happened? What's wrong?"
He looked at her.
He looked at his dad's eyes in the mirror- dark emerald, a different green he'd been told he had, the different green he saw every time he looked at his own reflection, set in a face that was his own face in twenty years, broader, the jaw a little heavier, the short classic cut of dark hair showing the first gray at the temples that his dad complained about to anyone who would listen. But as soon as his mom complimented it, he would boast.
He looked at his mom, whose hair was the same dark black and wavy as his dad's and his own, but whose face was different from both of theirs, paler, almost snow-white, the kind of pale that made her veins visible in her temple visible when she was really mad.
She had the sharp, elegant line of a jaw and cheekbones that Clark had inherited only in the shape of his face, not the sharpness of it, and those amber eyes that caught light the way actual amber did, warm and deep and slightly translucent at the edges.
He looked like his dad. Everyone said so. The eyes, the build, the way he sat, the way he moved. But the shape of his face was hers, and he'd always thought that was the part that mattered most, even if he couldn't have articulated why.
He was panting.
"Sorry," he managed, pressing his palm flat against his sternum, feeling his own heartbeat against it. Too fast. Too loud. "Sorry, I- it was a dream. I had a bad dream."
His dad's expression in the mirror shifted from alarm to relief, a sigh leaving him, as he relaxed his stiff posture in his seat.
"You scared me, kid."
"I scared myself," Clark said, making his dad chuckle.
His mom's hand was still over the headrest, her fingers now brushing his hair back from his forehead the way she had since he was small, automatic and present, and Clark almost cried from her touch, leaning into it.
"What was it about?" she asked.
He opened his mouth to say nothing, then he stopped, because she was looking at him with those amber eyes that he wished he had. Fortunately, his mom's genes still put up a good fight because instead of the dark green eyes that his dad had, his eyes were more light, almost forest green.
"It was-" He stopped. Tried to find the shape of it. The dream was already doing what dreams did, the edges softening, the details retreating into impressions. But the impressions were bad enough.
"The world ended," he said. "Like, actually ended. Everyone died, or-" He paused. "Not died? Turned into something. Something dead that kept moving…?" He looked at the back of his dad's headrest, unsurely. "And I was alone. For a long time."
The car was quiet except for the radio, which was playing something low and instrumental that Clark couldn't identify.
"You were there," he said to his mom, and then to the mirror. "Both of you. At the beginning. But then you-" He stopped.
His mom's hand pressed once against the side of his head, soft and sure.
"It was just a dream," she said, gentle in the way she said things when she wanted him to receive them and not argue. "We're right here."
"I know." He exhaled, pressing his back into the seat. "I know, I just-" He looked out the window at the slow crawl of traffic, at the other cars barely moving around them. "It felt very real."
"The worst ones always do," his dad said, from the front. His voice had settled back into its usual tone, the one that was warm without making a production of it, the one that gave advice by being matter-of-fact about things. "You know what helps?"
"If you say food, I'm going to-"
"Food," his dad said, entirely without shame, a grin on his face that matched Clark's when he beat his cousin Marcus at games, and his mom playfully scoffed, fully turning back to her seat, a smile on her face as well. "There's a place in Macon your Aunt Patricia has been wanting us to try. Real Southern food, she says. She's been talking about it for months."
"Everything she recommends is either too sweet or too heavy," his mom said.
"That's because she has good taste."
Clark felt his chest doing something. Loosening, maybe. The way things loosened when the adrenaline finished and left, and the body remembered that it had been resting. He leaned his head back against the window. Not the jacket this time. The glass was cool against his temple.
"Where are we?" he asked, because for a moment, he wasn't entirely sure. The traffic was thick in every direction, cars in every lane, and outside the windows, the world had the flat look of a highway that looked like every other highway.
"About an hour and forty minutes out," his dad said. "Depending." He tilted his head at the traffic around them, which had not moved meaningfully in the time since Clark had woken up.
"Depending on this."
"We're going to Macon?" Clark asked.
His parents exchanged a look. The look they exchanged when he'd said something that had them talk with just their eyes.
"Your aunt's house," his mom said. "For your birthday. Early, since you'll be gone before the actual date." She turned to look at him properly over the headrest now, her expression still carrying the residue of her worry from before. "Clark, are you sure you're okay? You look pale."
"I'm fine." He pressed his palm against his face. His cheek was warm. "I just woke up fast. I'm fine."
His dad's eyes found his in the mirror and held them for a moment. Not pushing. Just checking. And Clark nodded, "It's nothing."
He didn't say anything. He looked back at the road.
"Eye spy?" his mom offered.
Clark looked at her.
She raised her eyebrows once, the small gesture she made when she was offering something and waiting to see if he'd take it. She'd offered eye spy on long drives since he was seven years old, and he'd complained about it since he was twelve because, at some points, it got really boring, and she'd offered it anyway ever since then because his complaining about it had somehow become part of the ritual.
"Fine…" he said, something in him telling him to play along.
"Eye spy," she said, "with my little eye, something beginning with-" She looked out the window, scanning. "R."
Clark looked out his window.
His dad made a sound from the front seat that was suspiciously close to amusement.
"Road," Clark said.
"No."
"Railing."
"No."
"Red car." He pointed at the sedan three lanes over.
"You have to say it properly."
"Red. Car."
"That's two words." She tilted her chin up, which meant she was going to hold this position. "Try again."
"What starts with R that isn't road, railing, or red car?"
"Lots of things."
"Name one."
"That's not how Eye Spy works, Clark."
Outside, the traffic crawled forward maybe six feet and stopped again. The afternoon light was coming through the windows at an angle that turned the interior of the car gold. His dad was drumming two fingers on the steering wheel to something that wasn't the song on the radio.
Clark felt it again, the thing he'd felt when he first woke up. Not the panic this time. The other version of it. The sense of something missing, some awareness that was supposed to be there and wasn't, or was there and he couldn't access it. Like a word that was on the tip of the tongue and kept sliding away when he reached for it.
He pushed it down.
"Rearview mirror," he said.
His mom considered this with far more gravity than it deserved. "That's three words."
"It's hyphenated."
"It is absolutely not hyphenated."
"Rearview is one word."
"Clark."
"Rearview-mirror is therefore two words, which is still one fewer than you're claiming-"
"Roger, your son is doing the thing."
His dad's laugh was short and genuine. "I know. He gets it from you."
"He absolutely does not get it from me."
"Oh, I see how it is. When he does something good, 'Oh, look at my son.' But as soon as he annoys you, it's 'your son'?"
"Absolutely!" No hesitation in that response at all, which made his dad take a sharp inhale, shaking his head, and letting it out. "You see what I have to deal with?" He targeted that question at him, a smile on the older Roger's face, while his mom had that Cheshire grin and was immensely proud of herself.
Clark was smiling. A genuine, carefree laugh escaped him as his parents argued with each other playfully to pass the time.
He thought: I want to stay here.
He didn't know where the thought came from. He was here. He was in the car, in the traffic, an hour and forty minutes from his aunt's house and a birthday dinner with people he loved, and the nightmare was fading the way all dreams faded, leaving only the residue of itself, the hollow feeling of a fear that was no longer active but hadn't fully left.
He wanted to stay here.
The world outside was doing something unusual. Or maybe he was noticing something he hadn't noticed before. The other cars, the highway, the landscape on either side: it had the quality of something seen through glass that hadn't been properly cleaned, the shapes present but the details soft. He could see that there were trees, but couldn't have said what kind. He could see that there was a sky, but couldn't have told anyone what color it was exactly, whether it was the blue of a clear afternoon or the washed blue of one that was thinking about clouds.
He watched it for a moment and then stopped watching it, because the inside of the car was sharper. The stitching on the back of the seat in front of him. The small scratch on the center console that had been there since he was fifteen and would be there forever because his dad refused to have it fixed, because it held memory. What kind? Clark didn't know, and he wouldn't tell him.
The smell, which he could identify now if he tried: something like his mother's coconut perfume mixed with the "refreshing" smell of his dad's perfume, and underneath both of those, was just the smell of this car.
He'd missed this smell.
The thought arrived without explanation, and he didn't examine it.
"Rearview is one word," he said, returning to the only battlefield that mattered.
His mother pointed at him. "We are tabling this discussion."
"That means I win."
"That means I am choosing not to engage with bad-faith arguments."
"Dad."
His dad held up one hand from the wheel without turning around, the gesture of a man declining to be drafted into a conflict that would never end with two very stubborn people.
The traffic moved three car lengths and stopped again.
Clark leaned his head back against the window with a pout. "Road."
"You said that already." His mom shot back.
"Rain?"
"Are you even trying?"
His eyes moved across the shapes of other cars, the highway, the soft sky, the vague treeline. Nothing that started with R that he hadn't already offered. He was about to say so when he heard it.
A voice.
Not from the car. Not from the radio, which was still playing something low and forgettable. From somewhere outside, or somewhere between outside and not.
A girl's voice.
He couldn't make out the words. It was brief, just a sound, a shape of a voice rather than a voice, and then it was gone.
He straightened slightly. "Did you hear that?"
His parents both turned. His mom from her seat, his dad from the mirror.
"Hear what?" his dad asked.
"A voice." He looked out the window. The cars around them hadn't changed. Nothing was different. "Outside, maybe? A girl's voice."
His mom frowned, the frown she used when she was genuinely puzzled rather than skeptical. "I didn't hear anything."
"Neither did I," his dad said, his expression shifting into something more careful in the rearview mirror. "Are you sure you're okay? You've been-"
"I'm fine." He said it faster than he meant to. "I'm fine. I just thought I heard something."
His dad watched him in the mirror for a moment.
Then he looked back at the road.
"R," his mom said again, gentler this time, and Clark figured out it was her way of distracting him from his nightmare and uplifting his mood. He looked back out the window. His heart was beating a little faster than it had been, and he didn't know why, and he pushed it down because it was a highway and they were in traffic and there was no reason for his heart to be doing anything other than what it usually did.
"Ramp," he said. "Highway on-ramp. Past the green sign."
His mom turned to look. A moment of silence that meant she was verifying this, and then a small exhale that meant she was deciding whether to accept it on technical grounds. "Fine," she said. "Fine. Your turn."
The traffic moved again, a little more this time, and Clark watched it go. They passed the on-ramp.
He looked at the scratch on the center console instead.
"Eye spy," he said, "with my little eye, something beginning with—" He scanned the interior of the car, the dashboard, the seats, his parents' profiles. "S."
"Seatbelt," his dad said immediately.
"No."
"Steering wheel."
"That's two words." Came his and his mom's voice.
"I'm not playing anymore." His dad said, using the same flat tone as before, and his mom made an attempt at trying not to smile.
Outside the window, the sky was darkening. Not the gradual darkening of late afternoon moving toward evening, but something faster. Something that didn't match the light that was still coming through the windshield and landing gold across the dashboard. He watched it and then stopped watching it, the way he'd been doing with the outside since he woke up.
"S," he said again, redirecting. "Still, my turn. Guess."
"Sun," his mom said.
"No."
"Seat."
"No."
"Sign?" His dad nodded at the highway ahead, where a green sign was coming into view.
Clark had been looking at his mom's profile when his dad suggested it, and his eyes moved to the sign automatically, through the windshield, and for a moment the outside sharpened just slightly, the way things did when you focused on them, and he could see the sign clearly-
His leg hurt.
Not the dull, background-noise ache that he'd been carrying since he woke up and had been too tired to name.
This was sharp.
The wrong kind of pain, the kind that belonged to something real, and he made a sound he hadn't planned to make, short and controlled, and his hand went to his thigh before he'd decided to move it, clenching his teeth.
His mom turned immediately. "Clark?"
"I'm fine." He pressed his palm against his leg, which helped nothing, and looked at his hand, which was doing nothing useful, and then at his mom's face.
"What happened? Your leg-"
"It's fine." And then, before he'd finished the sentence: "I'm used to it."
He stopped.
His mom stopped.
The car was very quiet except for the radio.
He stared at the back of his dad's headrest and heard his own words again in the quiet of the car and felt the bottom of something drop out.
I'm used to it.
He wasn't used to leg pain or any pain for that matter. He was seventeen years old, and he had never had a reason to be used to pain. He was not someone who had leg pain regularly either. Heck, if he had ever had a paper cut, he'd cry.
There was no context in which that phrase made any sense coming out of his mouth in response to his mother asking if he was okay-
He pushed it down.
"I just-" He moved his hand off his leg. The pain had faded, or retreated, or whatever pain did when the moment passed. "I must have slept on it wrong. Pins and needles."
His mom looked at him for another moment.
"You'd tell me if something was wrong," she said. It wasn't a question, but an order. It was firm, and there was no room for Clark to refuse. He looked to his dad and saw the very same look as on his mom, but silent.
"Yeah," he said. "Mom. I'm fine."
She turned back to her seat, and Clark turned back to the window, and the outside was soft and vague again, the highway moving past in shapes and suggestions, the sky above it doing the darkening thing that wasn't matching the light.
He heard the voice again.
Clearer this time. no words, still, or no words he could make out, but enough to know the shape of it. Enough to know it was the same voice as before. Young. Female. Something in it that his chest responded to before his brain could, a pull that was below thought, the kind of thing that moved in him the way a magnet moved toward something it couldn't see but could feel from the other side of the paper.
He looked around the car reflexively. His parents hadn't reacted. His mom was looking at her phone now, texting someone, from what he could hear of her furiously typing on her flip phone. His dad was watching the road with the patience of a man who had decided traffic was traffic, and the only response was to outlast it.
He looked out the window.
For a moment, through the blurred soft exterior, he thought he saw a shape. Not a car. Not a tree. A figure, when he blinked, was gone or had never been there.
He looked away.
The traffic moved again, more fluidly this time, and Clark felt the shift as the car accelerated past thirty, then forty, then the release of a highway that had finally decided to become a highway again. His dad's shoulders dropped slightly. His mom looked up from her phone.
"Finally," his dad said.
"Finally," his mom agreed.
"I'm glad we're doing this," Clark said.
He hadn't planned to say it. It came out the way things came out when he stopped filtering what he was about to say and just said it.
His mom turned.
His dad glanced at the mirror.
"The trip," Clark said. Because there was more to say and he wasn't sure how to say it, so, he kept it small. "The birthday thing. I'm glad we're doing it."
His mom's expression did something that he watched happen and couldn't have described afterward. It moved through several things and landed somewhere warm and slightly undone, the way her face got when she felt something she hadn't prepared to feel. She reached back over the headrest, and her hand found his knee and pressed once, and he covered it with his own before she could pull it back.
She didn't pull it back.
"We are too," she said.
He wanted to stay here.
The thought came back. Larger this time. More insistent.
He pressed it down the same way he pressed down everything he didn't know what to do with, the same way he'd been pressing things down since he woke up from the dream that was already mostly gone, and looked at the window, and watched the soft world go past.
They came off the highway. Clark didn't remember the exit, but it happened, the road changing beneath the car, the particular shift from highway to surface road, the speed coming down. He watched the outside resolve very slightly as the car slowed. Shapes became a little more defined. He could see that there were houses, that there were trees, that the sky above was dark now. But that was it.
His dad pulled into the driveway.
The house. His aunt's house.
The lights were on inside, the warm yellow of a house that was occupied and expecting people. He could see shapes moving behind the curtained windows. He could hear, faintly, through the glass and the distance, the sound of voices and something that was probably the loud television.
His dad turned off the engine.
They sat for a moment in the silence of a car that had stopped after a long drive. "Here we are," his dad said.
"Here we are," his mom agreed.
Clark looked at the house.
He was shaking.
His hands, on his knees, were trembling. Not violently. The fine, continuous tremor of something that had been building and had arrived at a threshold.
His dad turned in his seat. His mom turned in hers.
"Clark." His dad's voice was different. The warmth was still there, but under it was something else. The tone meant he'd seen it, and he wasn't going to pretend he hadn't. "What's going on?"
"I don't know." It came out before he'd decided to say it. True and graceless.
"Are you feeling okay? Is it your leg again-"
"I don't know." He looked at his hands. They were still shaking. He made fists, and they shook anyway. "I feel like-" He stopped.
His mom's door was open. He hadn't seen her open it. She was outside, opening his door, which he also hadn't seen coming, and then she was crouching beside him with her hand on his face, the cool of her palm against his cheek, and her amber eyes were very close and very clear, and he wanted to say something about her eyes because they were exactly the color he remembered and he had spent some time-
How much time-
Not being able to-
"Come inside," she said. "It's cold. Come inside, and you'll feel better."
He looked at the house.
The front door had opened. Silhouettes in the light of it. He couldn't see their faces clearly; the light was behind them, but he knew them, he knew them by the shapes of them, by the way they stood, and something in him went toward them.
One of them moved back inside, disappearing from the doorway, and his uncle's voice carried across the yard, something about a room downstairs and something to drink, and then Marcus was gone from the door, and two girls, twins, else had taken his place, fighting each other on who would get to him first.
His mom was still beside him. Her hand hadn't moved.
"Clark." She stroked her thumb across his cheekbone once. "Come inside."
He stood because she asked him to. He stood in the driveway, and his parents were on either side of him, and the night was cold, real and present against his face and hands, and the house was warm and lit and full of people who would want to see him and whom he wanted to see-
He stopped.
His parents kept moving, a step, two, and then noticed he wasn't with them. They turned.
He was standing in the driveway with his feet on the concrete and his hands at his sides, and the oak tree behind him at the edge of the yard when it shouldn't be, and he could not make himself move forward.
He tried. He told his feet to move, and they did not move. He told his legs, and they did not move. He stood in the driveway and shook and looked at the house and at the people in the doorway who were his family, and felt, behind his sternum, something pulling in a direction that wasn't the house.
"Clark." His mom's voice. "Honey, what's wrong?"
"I don't-" He shook his head. "I can't-"
"Can't what?"
He didn't have an answer. He looked at his hands. The shaking had gotten worse, and his chest hurt in a way it hadn't hurt before, a deep, painful ache that had nothing to do with cold or standing. His head had started to hurt. Behind his eyes, pressure and heat, the pain of something that was happening inside and couldn't be reached from the outside.
His dad had his hand on his shoulder.
"Talk to me," his dad said. Simple. Present.
But Clark was looking at the tree.
The oak tree was bigger than he remembered. Marcus had fallen out of it when they were kids. Clark could remember the sound of his cousin's laugh instead of his cry, and the brightness of it, the way it had always been his cousin's psychotic laugh, unique to him, the one Clark had-
The one Clark had-
He stopped.
He stopped because something was wrong, and not just wrong but specifically, precisely wrong in a way that he had almost grasped and kept almost grasping and kept not quite reaching-
He heard her voice.
Not ambiguous this time. Not the shape of a voice.
Clear enough that he turned, reflexively, toward the sound of it, even though there was no direction to turn because she wasn't here, she couldn't be here, and he didn't know-
Clark.
He stood in the driveway and felt his whole chest move around the sound of it. The shaking in his hands got worse. His head hurt badly.
"There's someone-" he started. Stopped. Looked at his parents, who were looking at him with expressions of people watching something happen that they couldn't fix. "There's someone- I have to-"
He couldn't finish the sentence. He didn't have the end of it. Just like his mom's poem.
His dad's hand tightened on his shoulder.
"Clark." His mom's voice, close, both hands on his face now, tilting him to look at her. Her amber eyes, steady and warm. "Stay with us."
He looked at her.
He wanted to stay.
He wanted to stay in this driveway, with her hands on his face and his dad's hand on his shoulder, and his relatives in the lit doorway of the house, and the oak tree behind him that was bigger than he remembered, and the smell of the car still on his jacket-
He wanted to stay here.
Clark, please.
Her voice. Clearly hers. He knew it, knew the shape of it, knew the way it caught when it was trying to stay steady, and hearing it did something to his chest that was- that moved in him the way the magnet moved, and suddenly he was reaching for something he couldn't name, and the memory was-
Coming back.
It came back the way things came back when the door had been held shut and was finally forced open-
Like a wave.
Like being thrown through a glass panel and across a lobby floor into a concrete wall.
He remembered.
He remembered all of it, and the weight of it arrived all at once, and his head went white with pain for a moment, real pain, the pain of a skull that had taken damage and a body that had bone in it that wasn't his own and a leg that had been forced back into a place it had been forced out of, and he was in the driveway and his parents were in front of him and his relatives were in the door and-
He opened his mouth.
His mom's expression shifted-
He woke up.
…
…
…
Clark woke up with a gasp full of pain, his vision white hot, as everything hurt. He thought he heard someone speak, but Clark ignored it, a hand clenching his chest in pain, and tears escaped his eyes.
"W-hy-" He choked on the word, eyes shut as he tried his best to remember them, to remember their faces and smell and the memory, but it was escaping him. The dream was leaving him, and he didn't want it to. He wanted to stay in there; he needed to stay in there.
He had so much to say to them.
How sorry he was, how weak he was, and how much he needed them. He wanted to hug them, kiss them, and never let go. To tell them how grateful he was, and how mad he was that they forced him to kill them.
They broke him and made him have nightmares of that highway. Why did they have to force him to kill them?! Why! He was just a kid! A kid shouldn't have to be forced to watch his parents die, let alone kill them with his own hands!
He hated his mom and dad!
He hated them so much that Clark Rogers wanted to hurt them!
But he loved them.
He loved them so much that it hurt.
The rage inside him clashed with his love for them, and Clark cried out in pain, as the opportunity to rage and hug them was gone from his hands, slipping before he could even mutter a word.
He felt someone wrap his hurting head in their chest as he sobbed and hiccuped. Everything hurt all over his body, and Clark cried more because of the pain. He was tired from getting hurt all the time.
He was tired of all of it, but he had no rest because others needed him. They needed him to move. Even if everything hurt.
He tried to stop the tears, the hiccup, and the snot, but it kept going and going. And the arms- Clementine's that were wrapped around him, hugged him to her chest just a little tighter, hiccups leaving her as well as tears, as she held on to him, her body shaking in relief.
He cried until the sound stopped being coherent and became just exhale and inhale and exhale again, and the person holding him didn't move. Didn't shush him. Didn't say it's okay, because she knew saying that would make it much, much worse.
Clark's hands had found the fabric of her shirt at some point. He couldn't remember when. They were fisted in it because he was afraid. Afraid of the pain that was coursing through his body, the dream, and what would have happened if he went inside and slept in.
After a while, the crying stopped, but there were still hiccups from the couple, both holding each other tighter than any magnets. At some point, Clementine had climbed into the bed, most of her weight rested on the bedrest, while he was leaning on her.
Her fingers went through his dark, messy, wavy hair that he needed to cut, massaging his scalp as gently as she could, away from the fracture he had and bandaged with the help of Lee. He focused on it and breathed, and let his hands stay where they were, one fisting her leather jacket sleeve, and the other, on her shirt.
"You scared me," she said.
Her voice was very quiet, barely there, but Clark heard it, and he snuggled deeper into her, shaking uncontrollably. He was scared.
His leg hurt, his torso hurt, and every breathing felt like he was being stabbed in two different places; his ribs hurt, and he was having the worst headache of his life.
But worst of all, he was scared of losing what he had now. Of losing Clementine, Carley, Lee, Lilly, Kenny, and the others. He was terrified of it, and the thought sent a shiver down his spine. If he ever lost any of them, Clark would forget them.
He knew it as a fact.
Just like how he forgot his relatives and his parents. He would forget them, for days and days, too busy living as a dead person. And when he would remember them, he wouldn't be able to distinguish between fantasy, a dream, and reality.
"You scared me so much." She said it again, voice rough, filled with pain and fear, but now relief as well, not because he hadn't heard the first time, but because it needed saying twice, and she pressed her lips to the top of his head when she said it, and he felt them there, and it helped. It helped calm down his body.
Her hand was moving in his hair, as a part of him "remembered". The same motion his mother's hand had made, and the similarity of it hit him in the chest before he could brace for it. It wasn't the same, he knew it wasn't the same; he could feel the difference.
His mother's hands were cooler, lighter, the unconscious motion of a woman who had been doing it since he was small and had it in muscle memory. Clementine's was slower, more deliberate, the motion of someone who had decided to do it recently and was doing it with intent.
"Lee said-" She started and then stopped. He felt her swallow, the movement of her throat against the top of his head. "Lee said he didn't know. When you were out, he said he didn't know if you-" She stopped again. Her arms tightened once, briefly, the way they'd been doing every few minutes, involuntary, like her body was checking that he was still there. "He said your pulse was going weaker..."
"That…- that-... you'd-"
"Sorry." He could only mutter that, his hold relaxing on her clothes just a little. He heard her sniff and hum in agreement, as her lips planted another kiss on his forehead. "I was so scared." She said, and Clark could feel it as if it were his. She exhaled, and the shaking in her body eased by a fraction.
"I love you." She told him, and Clark could feel new tears replacing the old ones. "I love you." She repeated, her voice tight, holding back her tears for him. "I haven't said it enough, I love you." She said.
He didn't answer immediately because he had to hold back the thing inside him that wanted release. All the pent-up emotions, wanting to be let out, but he stopped them. He stopped the rage and love against his parents, the guilt, the worry, the stress. He kept all of it bottled up because he didn't want to worry her anymore.
Clementine had cried enough for one day, and he didn't want to worsen it.
He pressed his face further into her jacket instead, inhaling her scent, and it settled inside him, like home.
"I love you," he said. Into the jacket. Muffled and awkward and probably incomprehensible.
She heard it anyway. Her arms tightened again, and she half giggled and half cried into his forehead. "I know." She said, quietly. "I know." She repeated, much softer. He felt himself going to sleep-
"Don't." She warned, her arms around him, shaking him just a little to rouse him from it. "Lee said to keep you awake." He didn't say anything, enduring the pain all over his body. Instead, he inhaled her scent, finding comfort and warmth and love and home in it.
She shook him just a little once more, "Don't sleep, please." She begged, and Clark hummed. He could feel her heart beating through her clothes. "Where's Lee and Kenny?" He asked, voice rough from crying and thirst.
He felt Clementine move her head to look at the room, while his face remained glued to her chest, listening to her heart. "They were here a few seconds ago." She told him-
"Oh, Lee's back."
He crossed to the bed in three steps and crouched to eye level, a relieved smile on his face, as he looked at Clark's paleness. "Hey, buddy."
At the greeting, Clark reluctantly let go of Clementine, finally breathing air that barely had Clementine's scent of comfort. "Lee," he greeted back, as the man nodded, checking his pulse and counting. "How are you feeling?" The older man asked, and Clark winced- finally seeing the bone sticking out of his guts. "Yeah…" Lee commented, withdrawing his hand from his wrist.
"I did the best I could."
Clark nodded, one of Clementine's arms letting him go and instead taking his free hand, fingers locked. "Thank you." She told him, and Clark parroted her words. "Thank you."
"No need." Lee waved it off, checking the things sticking out of him to make sure they didn't worsen, poking around them while Clark hissed, explaining what happened to him, and then finally, his leg.
"How's your head?"
"Bad." He didn't soften it.
"Scale."
"Seven. Eight, when I move it." He paused. "Don't ask me to move it."
"I won't." Lee's hand moved to the back of Clark's head, careful, finding the bandaged section without pressing on it, checking the dressing. For a moment, they stayed just like that, until finally, Lee let out a relieved sigh.
He sent a cautious glance towards the living room, and then back to Clark.
"Do you have any abilities that might help?"
Clark thought over what he had so far.
Nothing that would help in the ability sections. He did have the Cor Leonis, but he'd never use it on his friends like this. Otherwise, there was nothing in the trait, skill, nor item sections that could help.
The Speckled Stoneplate ring was helpful in ignoring the pain through sheer will, but it was exhausting. But that didn't mean he didn't get new tickets.
"I got a platinum ticket and a silver for surviving all this…" He told them, quietly, and Lee nodded, while Clementine tightened her hold on his hand.
Hoping to get something healing or regenerative, he intended to roll the silver advantage first- only for a D20 dice to be rolled first.
It rolled for a moment until it stopped at 19. Immediately, his advantage silver turned to double advantage, and then, it rolled for the first bracket option.
[Gag of Silence]
|Common Item|
A simple red ball gag that, when worn in the mouth, suppresses all noise emanating from the user. Useful for spies and ninjas.
OR
[Flash]
|Common Ability|
You can emit a bright blinding light from your hands or use it with less intensity for utility, does not work well outside of close range.
Clark scowled at the two options.
"What's wrong?" Clementine immediately asked in worry. Clark shook his head, "Nothing useful so far from the silver."
He chose the Flash for the first bracket and moved to the second bracket.
[Paralysis]
|Rare Ability|
You are able to create a paralytic agent inside your body that you can expel through your pores or spray it as a gas via oral means.
OR
[Lactation]
|Common Trait|
You are capable of lactating; the quality of milk that you produce scales with your physical stats and has unique qualities depending on your traits. This trait can be rerolled for free-
Clark immediately rerolled the second roll, his face turning red, as his thoughts went to his own nipples. Before, he was scared; now, he was terrified for a very different reason. His eyes caught Clementine's worried ones, and Clark dodged it- though dodging the image of him releasing milk from his nipple during their lovemaking, that was impossible.
[Chaos Gacha Promotional Shirt]
|Common Item|
A regular white shirt with the words "I rolled a ticket, and all I got was this stupid shirt in return" written on it. In the event that the shirt is destroyed or lost, it will reappear somewhere accessible to the user in mint condition.
For the second bracket, it was either-
[Paralysis]
|Rare Ability|
You are able to create a paralytic agent inside your body that you can expel through your pores or spray it as a gas via oral means.
OR
[Chaos Gacha Promotional Shirt]
|Common Item|
A regular white shirt with the words "I rolled a ticket, and all I got was this stupid shirt in return" written on it. In the event that the shirt is destroyed or lost, it will reappear somewhere accessible to the user in mint condition.
Clark really wanted to go for the Paralysis all the way in and pick that from all options due to its rarity. But then he remembered his trait. Seamstress.
With Seamstress, he could use the shirt item as an infinite resource, tear it apart into string, and use it to make clothes for others. As soon as he thought about choosing it, he stopped, rereading the description.
It said the shirt would reappear, not another one that will appear. Meaning, if he ever destroyed it for resource, all the pieces would fade from his hand and go back to mint condition in his inventory, Clark assumed.
That meant Paralysis was still the better option, so he picked that instead, making him have 16 abilities now. Another four and he'd have another slot available.
For a moment, the terrifying image of Clementine sucking on his nipple came back full force, and he shuddered, moving to his platinum ticket now. But first, the d20.
For a moment, Clark feared that it would land on 1 and destroy his platinum ticket. And his fear was realized- almost realized, as the one changed to 18 at the last second, turning the platinum ticket into an advantage.
Clark rolled it-
[Cornucopia]
|Rare Item|
A horn that contains an unlimited amount of delicious and fresh mundane vegetables, fruits, etc., that can be taken out at any time, the user has to think of the ingredient they want before pulling it out.
OR
[Freezing Breath]
|Rare Ability|
Allows you to charge and unleash a breath attack of frigid winds that freeze whatever they hit. The longer you charge and the more energy you expend, the more powerful the breath is.
A disappointed, but happy sigh left him.
"Clark?" Clementine's voice broke him out of it, her eyes going through his body, waiting for the supposed healing or regeneration to begin, but nothing. "What did you get?"
With his choice made, he picked it-
[Cornucopia]
|Rare Item|
A horn that contains an unlimited amount of delicious and fresh mundane vegetables, fruits, etc., that can be taken out at any time, the user has to think of the ingredient they want before pulling it out.
And a moment later, a horn the size of a trumpet appeared next to him. "It's not healing, but our food worries should be nothing now." He told them, thinking of a fruit, Clementine's favorite fruit.
And then, a moment later, a ripe yellow apple appeared in the horn. Lee and her eyes widened, "It said it contains an unlimited amount of fresh vegetables and fruits, among other things, like spices and herbs and beans. All we'd have to do is think about what we'd want." He imagined clementines, the fruits, and five of them fell from the horn, as if it were full.
"You should have picked something else- something that could help with your healing." Clementine voiced out, her tone tight and a little frustrated. "It's random." He told her, bringing his attention to her and taking in her scent. "I only get the result. I can't choose." He reminded her, and she bit her inside cheek, taking the fruits that shared her name and peeled them for him.
"I see." Lee nodded, a worried look on his face as he watched Clark's injuries. "We're going to have to pull out what's sticking in you at some point today."
Clark grimaced but nodded.
"Rest for now. I'll be back later with Kenny to finish stitching you up."
"Oka-" He had the tastiest bite of his favorite fruit, as Clementine shoved it in his mouth before he could finish his word. Lee chuckled, leaving the two for now. He'd be back in half an hour. For now, he had to take care of Kenny before his friend did something stupid out of worry for them.
====================================
AN: HELLO HELLO
Are you, my dear friends, surprised by this chapter?! Two chapters in two days?! Well, you better be grateful! I skipped gym for this!!
So, on other news, Clark is kinda fucked now. He has life treatning injuries that will take a long time to heal. I was really banking on getting a healing item or trait or ability. Heck, for the platinum ticket, the first option was a mgical katana that I rerolled and got another magical related ability. I had to roll about 6 times to get Cornucopia. And when I get freeze breath, I was immensely disappointed.
Now, I gotta check how to progress the story with an injuried mc taking the back seat- I think I got something.
Anyway, sorry again if this chapter was a little bit too angsty for some of you, but I decided that Clark's personality, before the outbreak needed to be visited just a little, alongside his relationship with his parents to make him appear more human and remind some of you that he was an onrdinary boy if you forgot.
I just realized a thing. Some or most writers in this site and on webnovel write 1k-2k chapters and they get a lot of plot events done, while I have more than 5k and the story is really slow.
Is that something that bother you guys? Do you want me to get to the next arcs faster, sacrificing some character moments, or is this good?
Let me know please.
PS: The thought of Clementine sucking on Clark's tits for Lactation was... I don't know, man. I shivered. I mass posted this story on webnovel as well, and there are readers that are also rolling whenever Clark has to roll. Let me tell you, they get all the good rolls. Heck, someone got a healing ring, and another got Battle maniac trait or something, which would be useful in pushing through all pain and battle until he died. Two things that we really need Clark to get, but it's readers getting them. There's also someone that got the infinity cookie jar as wel... I'm tilted whenever I have to go there and look at the comments. Cause why don't I get that? Or maybe all of that luck is going to my d20 cause I keep getting over 15. I'm scared of the Gambler trait. so, LET ME KNOW IF I SHOULD REROLL IT.
anyway, hope you guys enjoyed this chapter. It's much longer than others, being around 8k words. I might release one tomorrow, but can't promise.
PPS: Another thing, if someone is good on minecraft, dm me. I've got an underground base in survival in a desert biome with mainly using sandstone and I need help with making a floor design, hallway design, and rooms for crops, animal, villager hall, and more. Minecraft and writing/reader is what relaxes me, so don't judge.
PSSS: I really might have fucked Clark up with the injuries and I'm thinking hard on how to get myself out of this, which is pretty hard. So, if you guys would want to make my life easy, we have 2-3 choices. I can sacrifice a couple of rolls, which YOU GUYS WILL CHOOSE AND THEN VOTE ON. From that, either we get a healing ring item or the minor healing factor ability. The other option is we sacrifice an ability slot, we have 4 right now, and a fewer sacrifice of previous rolls for the same result, healing/regen item or ability. OR we roll the gambler trait. If we get more than 15, 5 times out of 10, then Gambler trait will be sacrificed for an healing/regen thing. LET ME KNOW.
OR WE TAKE ON US A CURSE FOR HEALING/REGEN.