Chapter 33:
The bolt went through the man's skull so cleanly that he was already falling before the sound of it reached the farmyard.
One second, he was standing, rifle up, a few dozen feet from the tree lines where the projectile came; the next second, he wasn't, and the man's body hit the gravel.
Nobody moved for half a second. Their attention was divided by the bloodied, half-naked kid and then their dead friend.
Then the golems moved.
Clark didn't give them a visible signal. There was nothing to see from the outside, no gesture, no word, just the four earth-colored shapes that had been standing in patient stillness behind the farmhouse, suddenly having a purpose, and their purpose translated directly into motion at a speed that their mass had no business producing.
The first one came around the farmhouse corner and hit two of Doyle's men before either of them had finished processing that it was moving. The sound of impact was not the sound of a fist hitting a body. It was the sound of a wall hitting a body, crushing them into the dirt, and only leaving a red spot and crushed bones.
The second golem had reached the mote group before the third shot from the treeline had finished echoing. Already, five had fallen.
Marcus Doyle's face did several things in very rapid succession. The warmth left first. Then the ease. What replaced them was the expression of a man whose calculations had just been invalidated, who was rapidly rebuilding from scratch and panic, his eyes moving from the golems to the treeline to his men to the motel group and back again.
"FIRE-" he started.
"THAT'S CLARK!"
Ben's voice cracked across the farmyard like a second gunshot, high and ragged, the voice of someone whose fear had finally found a target it recognized. He was pointing, his arm fully extended, his face gone white, staring at the figure that had emerged from the southern treeline with blood as cover.
The five men who had moved to cover Ben had turned at the shouting.
Clark hit them before they finished turning.
He wasn't in hybrid form, which made his takedown worse; there was nothing to point at and say that explains it. He was just a bruised eighteen-year-old in a too-large shirt and destroyed pants and bare feet who moved like the space between him and five armed men was an inconvenience rather than a distance. Superhuman and Total Concentration Breathing running in the background, every motion precise and completely without hesitation.
The first man went down to a strike to the throat that Clark delivered on his way past him, not slowing, not even looking back. The second caught an elbow to the temple that dropped him mid-turn. The third had his weapon hand broken at the wrist before he'd finished raising it, and then pushed through his mouth into his head, violently, and Clark's follow-through carried him into the fourth man, both of them going down in a tangle that resolved itself with only one of them getting back up. The fifth fired once, the shot going wide, and then Clark's hand was on the barrel, and the gun was pointing at the man's own head, a pull on the trigger, and the head was missing.
Five men. Maybe one second for each.
His brain, on Mentats, told him he could.
Ben was still pointing.
His voice had stopped. His arm was still extended, and he was staring at Clark's face with an expression that had nothing of the boy who had brought snacks to Monopoly games in it, and everything of whatever these weeks had made him into.
Clark didn't look at him, as Half Light didn't categorize him as a threat.
He was reading the farmyard, Half Light running its inventory, tracking positions, counting guns, marking the men whose attention had split between the golems and him and the treeline where Rick's group was shooting from, and couldn't decide which threat to prioritize, which meant they were prioritizing none of them effectively.
The golems had drawn the automatic fire from the motel group, which was the point. Three of the eight of Doyle's men, who were closest and had pointed at Clark's group, were emptying magazines into the nearest one, the stone surface cratering and fracturing under sustained fire but holding, for now, the fragments of it flying in arcs that were making the surrounding men flinch, and reposition, which meant their backs were to the motel group.
Lee and Carley moved.
They'd been waiting for exactly this. Lee had the pistol up before the first golem had taken its second hit, his grip two-handed, and the first shot from him took a man in the shoulder at four meters, spinning him, and the second shot finished the engagement. Carley was two steps to his left, and she fired, killing the other two with clear headshots. She turned back towards the front, as the golems crumbled to the ground, their last command used up.
Three of Doyle's men went down in the space of six seconds.
One of his men turned, realized what was happening, and made the decision to run.
He made it to the gate.
He didn't make it past it.
The shot that took him came from somewhere in the dark between the trees, the flat crack of a rifle with a silencer fired with patience rather than panic, and the man dropped at the gate's edge without crossing it.
Two more ran in different directions, neither of them making it. One took a crossbow bolt that arrived from an angle that showed its sender had repositioned since the first shot. The other caught a rifle round that had more reach than a pistol and more precision than the automatics Doyle's men had been using.
Rick's group had found their positions.
Lilly had her rifle up and was working through the men on the drive with the methodical focus of someone who had been waiting for a clear shot and was now using every one. She fired twice, three times, with each shot, taking down an enemy.
Mark had no weapon.
He fixed that in approximately the first six seconds by the simple method of being near a crushed body who had one and couldn't argue about it, and then he was covering Lilly's left side with focused, grim efficiency of a man who was doing what he had to, even if he hated it.
Clementine had no weapon.
She fixed that, too.
The man she took it from was already on the ground, shot in the back of the head by Carley, and she came up with the pistol, and she was scanning, not freezing, not hesitating, her eyes moving through the farmyard the way Clark had taught her to move through spaces during their weapons training.
The chaos had a shape to it now, chaotic on the surface but readable underneath, the farmyard resolving into zones. The golems who were holding the center and taking the automatic fire were now gone. Rick's group was clearing the perimeter with efficiency that showed they knew what they were doing. The motel group holding the farmyard itself, five people with recovered weapons, and the calm of people who had already decided they were going to survive this.
Marcus Doyle, who had processed the situation faster than most of his men and had arrived at the correct conclusion that the correct target was no longer the treeline or the kid that was tearing through his men, turned with his weapon toward the motel group, because the motel group was the leverage, and leverage was all he had left.
Larry was quicker.
He wasn't faster in the way that Superhuman was fast. He was faster in the way who knew what another was thinking by simply thinking what he would do if he were in his shoes. They both had come to the same conclusion.
His hand caught Doyle's gun arm at the wrist, shoving it up.
Then the twist that followed was the practiced motion of a man who had spent decades using the same move to train others. The pistol exchanged hands, and Doyle's arm got dislocated from the shoulder. The sound he made was brief, a grunt that was filled with pain.
The kick to the back of the knee came after, and Marcus Doyle, who had been standing with his hands in his pockets two minutes ago with the ease of total control, went down to the gravel with the gracelessness of someone who had not been expecting anything that happened a minute later.
Larry had the gun at his temple before Doyle had finished processing what had happened to his arm.
"Talia-"
She was already moving; the woman's experience showed in the speed of her draw, the pistol coming up at Larry's head.
The shot that took Talia came from Carley's direction.
It arrived before Lilly's rifle had finished tracking to the same target.
Talia's body found the gravel, with a hole in her head, and Lilly returned to the men she'd been working with before the interruption, her face empty of everything except the mission.
The remaining Save-Lots men who hadn't run or gone down were making their final decisions, because they were all shot down as Rick's group slowly walked up to the farmyard. The motel group tensed, but for now, since they were killing the people who wanted to kill them.
Ben was the last thing that moved, his gun drawn, eyes fixed on Clementine.
He aimed at her, fingers on the trigger, and tears in his face, his expression that of pain and hardship- Clark was already in front of him, hand crushing his wrists and forcibly pointing the gun down.
"AH, IT HURTS!" Ben cried, but Clark didn't let go. Instead, he put more strength, snapping the bone. Ben fell to his knees, struggling and panting like a dog, crying out in pain, but Clark didn't let go.
"Please! Please, let me go! I won't-"
Clark wasn't in the mood to hear his plea; instead, he had another question that was burning in his head after seeing Ben.
"Kenny and his family. Did they kick you out?"
For a moment, Clark thought Ben wasn't hearing him, as he was struggling, so he repeated it, putting his force in his grip, kicking the bra gun away from his reach, even if his hands were now useless.
"Clark," Lee called out, eyes fixed on Rick's group as they cautiously came face to face close to him. The eighteen-year-old glanced at Lee and then Rick, ignoring the silver ticket he got from a meeting with two cast members. "They were about to be Terminus' menu, like us," Clark spoke, with the two men nodding off as a greeting after hearing that.
"I wanted to leave them behind." Clark finally let go of Ben's wrists, the older teenager or young adult curling up to himself, sobbing. Abraham was the next who came to Clark after telling others to finish off the bodies on the ground, making sure they didn't turn right then and there.
"Why is he alive?"
Ben whimpered at that.
"He was part of our group." Rick, Abraham, and their group slowly walked up to them as well, most of them wincing at a kid being in pain. Glenn, Maggie, Tyress, Bob, Eugene, Tara, and Carl, and Rosita. The rest, Rick, Abraham, Carol, Michonne, Daryl, and Sasha didn't even flinch.
"Then he betrayed us. Took our supplies and left with a man and his family. Left us to deal with the mess that was the cannibals…" Clark continued, his eyes going to the other side of everyone circling Ben. He saw Mark taking over Larry, as the man seemed to be much more in pain, with Lilly by her side, filled with panic and worry.
"So, you're gonna tell us how-" Rick's demand for his unnatural powers was ignored, as Clark's heart spiked. "No." He murmured to himself, worry and fear taking over as he saw the old man fall to his face, clenching his chest with both hands.
Clark was already moving, dropping beside him before the sound of it had finished, his hands finding Larry's shoulders. The old man's face had gone the color of old wax, his breathing shallow and wrong.
"Larry." Clark's voice came out flat and direct, immediately switching Cat Form with Cor Leonis. "I need you to listen to me."
"Get-" Larry's jaw set.
"Hey!" Clark shouted back, for the first time letting his fear turn into anger.
"I can take it." Clark cut through him. "The pain. The condition. I can pull it out of you and into me. I've done it before." He met the old man's eyes, which still had fire in them, even now.
"But I need you to let me. That's all. Just let me. Okay?!" Clark gripped his shoulder tightly, Cor Leonis was active, but only blocked due to permission. A moment later, still not being permitted.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Clark lost his patience, shaking the pained man just a little with his super strength. "I KNOW YOU'RE FEELING MY POWER ASKING PERMISSION. JUST LET IT IN!"
Larry looked at him with a glare of his own.
The fire didn't go out. But something underneath it shifted.
"Dad." Lilly's voice, from next to Larry, stripped of everything except the word. She was on her knees, her hands on his arm, her rifle abandoned in the gravel, and her face- her face had lost every layer she'd built over months of keeping this group alive, and what was underneath was just a daughter fearing for the life of her father, letting tears fully flow. "Please. Just let him-"
"Fuck off!" The man tried to struggle free, but while Lilly let go for a moment, Clark didn't; his glare fighting Larry's, his jaw set, and a huge desire to break the old man's jaw ignited in Clark.
"I can fucking fix you-"
The forehead came from nowhere, hitting him right on the nose. Clark's head snapped back, his hands finally freed Larry's shoulder and went to his nose- his bloodied nose as Clark fell on his back, all the anger, the fear… Just gone, as he stayed in the group, eyes wide open, as he felt blood freely leave his nose.
The first time someone had ever hurt him enough to bleed him after he'd gotten the defensive traits and abilities. Someone- no, Clementine got to him, on her knees to check up on him, if he was okay. But Clark was still stunned by the sucker punch- or sucker forehead.
The surrounding group gasped, and even Lilly let out a gasp, while Larry grunted in pain, both from his chest and his forehead.
Larry's voice was rougher than Clark had heard it, the roughness of air finding its way through something that was closing. His eyes went to an equally stunned Lilly. "Stop fussing."
"Dad-"
"I said stop." He got it out firmly. Barely. His hand found hers and closed around it, and then his eyes went back to Clark with the expression of a man who had something to say.
Clark didn't move. He stayed exactly where he was.
"This-" Larry stopped, his jaw working through the pain to find the words. "This isn't yours to fix, kid."
"I can-"
"You can't." He said it without cruelty. Just certainty, the voice of a man who already knew. "Maybe you can move pain around. You can't-" He exhaled carefully, controlled, the deliberate breathing of someone wanting to let the words out as fast as possible before the heart gave up. "You can't fix sixty-eight years." His eyes were steady on Clark's. "This isn't the apocalypse doing this. It's just-" A short sound that was almost a laugh and wasn't. "Just time."
"My condition," Larry confirmed. "My burden." He got it out between breaths now. "Not…- yours."
"Larry-"
"I'm dying of old age." Each word deliberate, chosen, placed down one at a time because he had a limited number of them left and intended to use them correctly. "The world ending didn't change that. Would've- happened- anyway." His eyes went to Lilly. "Would've happened- in a hospital. With machines." His hand tightened on hers. "This is- better."
Lilly made a sound. Her free hand came up to cover her mouth, and she looked at her father's face with the expression of someone who had been prepared for this moment for years and still wasn't ready to see it happen.
Larry looked at her for a long moment, eyes soft. Then his eyes moved. Past her shoulder, finding Mark, hovering over Marcus Doyle with a gun aimed at his head.
Abraham noticed it before anyone else in Rick's group, and volunteered to take his position.
"Go."
With a nod, the man joined his group in surrounding a man who was out of time.
Larry's free hand came up.
His grip was looser than it had been, but it was deliberate. He reached for Mark's wrist, found it, and pulled, and the motion was clear enough that Mark moved without being asked, dropping to one knee beside Lilly.
Larry put their hands together.
His palm over both of theirs, pressing once, firm, the grip of a man making a point he didn't have the breath to speak.
Mark looked at Lilly. His jaw clenched.
Lilly was crying now, openly, her free arm wrapped around her father.
Larry's hand dropped.
His eyes found Clark one more time.
The fire was still there. Dimmer than it had been. But present, the stubbornness of a man who had spent his entire life being the hardest thing in whatever room he occupied, and was going to die exactly as he had lived.
Larry wanted to make a request, a plea. To make sure he wouldn't be the last person to die from old age in a ruined world. But he had no strength. Nothing to mutter those precious words to the kid.
Clark said nothing, imprinting the scene in front of him, his first loss ever since the death of his parents and relatives. Even if it was the man who was the cause of him being kicked out the first time from the motel.
Even if it was the man Clark liked the least in the group, and hadn't had much interaction. Even if- it didn't matter. He wanted to save him-
Larry's chest rose once more, shallow, the last of the controlled breathing running out.
Then it didn't rise again.
The farmyard was quiet.
Lilly's hand was still in Mark's. Neither of them moved.
Lee had wrapped an arm around Carley, who was tearing for her friend. Mark was rubbing circles on Lilly's back with his free hand, the other still under Larry's dead grip and over Lilly's warm one.
Clementine- she had taken his head and brought it to her chest, whispering soft words of comfort as if she knew the complicated emotions he was going through. He felt a tear fall from her face and, subconsciously, wrapped his arm over her waist and brought her in his hug.
Behind them, Rick's group spread across the yard, and none of them spoke. The ones who had been watching from their positions lowered their weapons slowly. Daryl looked at the ground. Carol's hands were folded in front of her.
Abraham watched from where he stood, his jaw set. Glenn had taken off his hat, returning Maggie's hug. Next to him were Eugene and Rosita.
Rosita, whose heart broke after seeing the familiarity and intimacy of the boy who saved her and the girl in his arms.
But the rest, they let the motel group grieve one of their own for a moment.
The moment shatters when Larry's body starts moving just a little-
"Lilly," Carley warns her friend.
There's a struggle on Lilly's part, unwilling to move, but with the reminder that Mark was close to her, she finally does.
"We should probably end it before he fully turns." Rick finally voiced out his thoughts. Lilly nods, wiping her tears. She goes to take the gun from Mark's end, but Clark stops her.
"Don't."
He finally stands up, lifting Clementine as if she weighed nothing, and then gently placing her back on her feet. Her somber expression turns into a small moment of joy and giggle, which lights up the mood just a little. He smiles at her, planting a kiss- Clementine dodges his bloody lips, not wanting to dirty herself more than needed after a shower.
Though Clark is confused, missing Rosita's heartbroken face, he walks up to Lilly.
"No child should kill their parents."
Lilly masks her grief with scoffs.
"You did." Rick and others share a glance with each other. Especially Rick and Carl.
Clark nods. "Because I had to. I was forced to."
"You aren't." Clark finished, crouching by Larry's turning body, placing a palm on the back of his head. Cor Leonis switched with Leaf Blade.
"What-"
"Trust me. This will be less messy." He comfortably told her, picturing the perfect length and thickness for the blade. A moment later, the body stopped as Leaf blade pierced and destroyed the brain inside the skull.
When Clark removed his palm, there was just a small hole the size of a pencil. A numb feeling takes over his heart at the deed. His eyes closed for a moment, accepting and moving on from the death in front of him.
But when he opened his eyes, it was clear once more that there was no more storm. Instead, he looked to a silent Ben who was wishing everyone had forgotten about him, and the leader of the Save-Lots.
Doyle was still on the gravel, his dislocated arm held against his body, his face pale from the pain of it, and he had been very still and very quiet for the duration of what had just happened.
He looked up at Clark with an expression that Clark didn't care for, standing by Abraham's side.
"Hey," Marcus said. His voice was softer than the one he'd been using with the group, the warm voice, the reasonable voice, the voice that had probably worked many times before on many people. "Hey, I know what you're feeling right now. I've lost people too-"
Clark crouched in front of him.
His face was still, the same stillness it had been since the farmyard. His eyes were bloodshot at the edges, the only visible evidence of what was happening underneath, and he looked at Marcus Doyle the way he had looked at the St. Johns.
"Your remaining men," Clark said. "Where."
Marcus's mouth closed.
"I'll ask once more," Clark said. He wasn't raising his voice. He didn't need to. The quiet of it was worse.
"You're a smart kid," Marcus said. "Smarter than most. You'd be-"
Clark took Marcus's remaining good arm at the elbow.
He applied pressure, not enough to break it, but enough to show his freakish strength and how easily he could break it.
The sound Marcus made was not dignified.
"Southeast," he said, his voice cracking. "Old quarry, about four kilometers. Base camp. Twenty, maybe twenty-five-" He tried lying about the numbers, to make him hesitate on finishing him off, to open a door for negotiation, but Clark didn't care.
Clark stood.
He looked at Rick, who was watching him with the careful eyes of a man who was holding his judgment. Then he went to Ben's position, crouching next to him.
"I asked you a question. If you make me repeat it, I will cut your ear."
Immediately after, Ben sang, telling Clark and everyone everything, how Kenny wanted to go back to the farm, to give them all back, to apologize, how Ben convinced him otherwise. How Marcus's men shot at the RV and killed Kenny. How Katjaa was bleeding, and that they took him. He told Clark how he tried to save Duck-
That's when Marcus laughed, reminded about the kid that his now dead squad leader had used for entertainment. And how he had lost a bet to the subordinate.
"What's so funny?" Abraham asked, kicking the man in the guts. An umph left the former leader, but he still chuckled.
"Oh, nothing much. It's just- that kid sure is unlucky." Clark and everyone else frowned.
"What do you mean?" Mark asked, feeling unwell.
"I mean, he survived his own ma's teeth, escaped the RV, and just when he was clear, he ran into a horde that my men were leading away! They tore him to pieces, Ha!"
The farmyard went very quiet.
Until Carley's hand went to her mouth. Mark and Lilly were overwhelmed, while Lee's face exploded in rage.
"You-" He walked up and kicked the man in the head-
"Lee!" Carley called, but didn't stop him, nor did anyone from Rick's group, as Lee beat the life out of Marcus.
Clark didn't move.
He was still crouched at Ben's level, and he stayed there, very still.
He didn't like Duck because he was noisy and wouldn't ever shut up, which is why he limited his interaction with him. But Duck was a child, a kid, and innocent.
"And you did nothing?" Clark asked, staring blankly at Ben, trying his best to hide his face under his arm and hands.
Ben's answer was his silence- no, a whimper.
Clark looked at him for a long moment. Ben's face was pressed into his forearms, his shoulders drawn up around his ears, the posture of someone who had decided that if he couldn't be seen, what he'd done couldn't be seen either- or what he hadn't done.
Ben's shoulders moved. Just the involuntary tremor of someone whose body was answering a question their mouth had decided not to.
Ben finally looked up, his eyes filled with hate, his pain forgotten.
And that disgusted Clark more than anything. All that pretense, the acting, the worry he supposedly showed while they were a group, all of it was fake, while his true face finally showed itself to Clark.
"I-"
The people surrounding them jumped as Clark's hand tore through the eyesocket, Leaf Blade piercing Ben's head and destroying his brain. "What the fuck-" Daryl muttered, all of them taking steps back from Clark.
Then he wiped his hands, tearing his glare from the scum in front of him to watch as Rick, Glenn, and most of them had pointed their weapons at Clark and his almost glowing magical blade.
Which is what the motel group needed to break out of grief for a child, aiming at Rick's group.
"What the fuck do you think you are doing?!" Lee demanded, aiming at the former sheriff, looking startled. Rick Grimms and others tried asking him some questions, but Clark ignored them for now, turning off Gambler for a moment. He used the silver ticket-
[Common sense]
|Rare Trait|
Common sense works differently when it comes to you; people try to rationalize and accept your more unusual or alarming actions. People automatically try to normalize matters related to you, but the effect is lessened the more drastic and inexcusable your actions are.
Immediately, the trait settled into him, and Clark let out a sigh.
"I have powers." He muttered, finally fulfilling his promise to Rick and his group.
He remembered how he left, running towards the shots he heard, only for it to be a camp of bandits that were imitating gunshots to draw any remaining hordes from the area.
When Clark caught up to them, he had killed them all, except for one, who told Clark everything. Of how their leader wanted the Johns' farm and how they had to clear the forest of ghouls, and how the new people who had the farm would be taken hostage and turned into slaves.
When Rick's group caught up to him, the last scum was already killed. They asked how it was possible to do what he had, and Clark had promised that he would tell them. But first, he needed their help. After their reluctant nod, Clark had popped a Mentat, his mind racing from all the possibilities, and he went with the plan to kill the scouts in the perimeter in his hybrid form while Rick's group waited for a signal.
With his loved one taken captive, he couldn't simply singlehandedly kill everyone. He needed to cause chaos to put the leader on his back foot and get close. Once he's close, he could kill everyone singlehandedly.
The rest was history.
"I've had them a… month?" He looked to Clementine, and she deadpanned at him, even while aiming at Rick's group due to the scare. "After the outbreak. I don't know why or how I got them. But I'm trying my best to use them to protect my loved ones." He motioned Rick and others to the motel group.
And on the ground, lay Marcus Doyl, who looked up at the monster wearing a kid's skin, and he laughed loudly.
Marcus Doyle laughed the way men laughed when they'd lost everything and found it clarifying. It wasn't the practiced warmth he'd been using all evening. This was realer and uglier, the laugh of a man who had been beaten into the gravel and was choosing to find it funny rather than find it anything else.
"Look at you," he said. His dislocated arm was pressed to his body, and his face was pale at the edges, but his voice had found a tone that wasn't performing anymore. "Look at what you just did. What you've been doing since you walked out of that tree line." He tilted his head back, finding Clark's face from the ground. "You killed twenty of my men in a matter of seconds. You killed the St. Johns. You killed-" He moved his eyes to Ben's body and back. "And you did all of it to protect-" He gestured at the motel group with his chin. "What? Six people? Eight, now?"
Nobody spoke, but they had turned to him.
"That's a kingdom." He said. "That's the beginning of one. You just don't know it yet because you haven't named it. But these people will be your hands and feet!"
Clark looked at him. His face was still. The blood from his nose had dried on his upper lip, and he hadn't wiped it, and he was standing in another man's shirt and destroyed pants and bare feet in a gravel farmyard, and he looked at Marcus Doyle with the flat, complete attention of someone who was listening and not being moved.
"You have abilities that nobody else has," Marcus continued. He wasn't performing anymore. He was arguing, the way a man argued when the audience was the only thing he had left. "You can-" He paused, his eyes moving to Ben's body, to the golems' crumbled remains, to the bodies of his men scattered across the farmyard. "-do whatever you want!" He looked back at Clark. "In the old world, men built empires on less. On gunpowder. On gold. On the right bloodline." His jaw set. "You have something better than all of that."
Behind Clark, Rick's group had gone still, as if realizing that the downed man was right and they didn't disagree. Clark could do a lot more than anyone could do. Just his freakish strength and that green blade, it would-
Glenn looked at the ground. Maggie looked at Glenn. Abraham had his arms crossed and his eyes on Clark's back, and whatever was happening in his expression wasn't dismissal, but a nod, fully agreeing with Marcus and even looking forward to exactly that.
The motel group was quieter. Lee's hand had dropped from the pistol. Carley's hand was still at her side. Clementine was watching Clark's face.
"It's so clear now." Marcus continued, chuckling to himself.
"What is?" Abraham nudged him just a little, which Marcus saw through. But he still performed. "My purpose." He looked at Clark's back, where people were slowly moving. "I wasn't meant to build my kingdom." He paused, a crazed look on his face. "I was meant to start yours."
For a moment, no one even dared to breathe; their eyes stayed on their downed enemy, who was looking proud of himself at the moment. But they couldn't tell themselves that he was wrong. Larger Than Life and Comforting Presence oozed off Clark, making this idea solidify in their mind.
Clark crouched in front of him, reminding everyone to breathe.
Marcus met his eyes.
Clark looked at him for a moment, the way he'd looked at Andrew St. John before he'd decided, and the way he'd looked at Gareth, and something in Marcus Doyle's expression shifted, the first real crack in the composure that had survived everything else.
"I'm tired," Clark said.
Marcus blinked.
"Not-" Clark stopped. He looked for the right version. "Not tired like I need sleep. Tired like-" He looked at his hands. The blood on them dried at the knuckles and the forearms. The ring on his thumb that he made appear again. "I've been doing this since the second week of the outbreak. Moving. Killing. Carrying things." He looked back at Marcus.
Marcus's mouth was slightly open.
"You want to know what I want?" Clark said. "When this is finished. When the people behind me are somewhere safe, and Clementine is-" He stopped himself. Something private crossed his face, briefly. "When it's done. I want to sit down." He said it plainly. "I want to sit somewhere that isn't a motel parking lot or a farmyard, and I want to do absolutely nothing for a day. Maybe two. I want to watch Clementine complain about something stupid, and I want Lee and Carley to argue about what to name-" He stopped again. "I want to hear Lilly tell Mark to stop smiling at her. I want to eat something warm or watery that we prepared. I want to watch the people I saved befriend those I care about." He glanced at Rick and others, then looked back at Marcus. "That's the whole of it."
Marcus stared at him.
"That's it?" he said.
"That's it."
"You're sitting on-" Marcus's voice had an edge in it now, frustration bleeding through for the first time. "You have something that nobody in the history of the world has had. You could build something that lasts. Something that means something beyond-" He stopped. "Beyond two people arguing about a name and a warm meal."
"A warm meal sounds good," Clark said. "A kingdom sounds exhausting," Clark complained.
The farmyard was quiet.
Rick was watching Clark with an expression that Clark would have found uncomfortable if he'd been paying attention to it, which he wasn't. Beside him, Abraham had uncrossed his arms, and his expression was that of a man who had just heard something extremely stupid and wanted to really argue. But kept quiet, because it wasn't the time.
"You're wasting yourself," Marcus said. It came out quieter than the rest, stripped of the argument, the last real thing he had. Not an accusation. A conclusion.
Clark looked at him.
"Maybe," he said. "But I don't want to rule anything. I just want to live freely, without worrying about survival."
Almost immediately, whatever image that Marcus had presented to them was shattered as they finally looked to the eighteen-year-old with a new sense of opinion. And they found that they weren't upset by it.
If Clark Rogers didn't want a kingdom because it sounded exhausting, then who were they to force him? But they weren't blind to the reality of their world and Clark's nature. He would continue to help people he met. Rick's group was proof of it, and as much as Clark wanted to leave them back at Terminus' territory, his bleeding heart made it impossible for him. So, why not build a blueprint that didn't need Clark Rogers?
A community that had a semi-absent leader. And if someday, that turned into a kingdom, well, Clark wouldn't be able to blame them.
Clark stood.
He looked at Marcus Doyle for one more second, taking inventory of the man one last time.
Rick immediately walked up to his right side, his signature pistol aimed at a shocked Marcus whose face was slowly turning into rage-
BANG
Clark Rogers had no grand expectations from this new life.
All he wanted from life was a simple meal with people he cared about, maybe a shower, a clean and fitting shirt that wouldn't fall from his shoulder, a pair of pants, and sneakers, and a good cuddle from his wife.
He didn't want a kingdom. He wanted to sit still. Relax.
He wanted a tomorrow with them.
That was enough.
That… was everything.
...
...
...
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AN: yoo, hope this was a good read. (6k words people, where are my powerstones!)
I've got to where I wanted for this volume. I would normally call an end to this story right here as I've already said a couple of chapters ago. But it made you guys really sad.
So, I won't end the story. Instead, I will put it in hiatus.
... Damn, I'm evil.
Before you try to find my location and come to beat me up during a night, please, listen.
I will put this story in hiatus, and work on it whenever I feel like it.
I have a bit of plot points in mind, but I'd really like it if you guys participate as well. Comment what you want to see here or even DM me and I'll read it and consider it.
But I don't really have much, other than plot points for kingdom building for Vol 2.
I'm really sleepy, even though it's just evening.
welp, im going to nap.
byeeeee