[ota] It leaves us with regrets and picks apart the threads

[shorthair]

Who: Clementine + you
Where: Mansion
When: April 5 - 12. Plus, all of April and May
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Clementine returns from her canon update. Feel free to reply to the network post here since I won't actually spam the network community too. Action spam or prose is totally cool with me.
The Story: First week and a half

It's warm.

She's felt like she was freezing since she fell into the lake of ice. Was that really just yesterday? It's warm here. Her hands press to grass, and she stares at the ground, shuddering because she thinks the frozen water might have seeped into her blood. She knows it's warm but she still feels cold.

She's back in Wonderland. A rush of memories, of emotion hits her. There are so many people she cares about here, and she hasn't seen them since she left, and it feels like she's been gone for years instead of- days. Weeks? Time is funny.

AJ isn't in her arms anymore. It's just him and her now. Seems right. She can't trust people anymore.

Now that the adrenaline has faded away, the bullet wound in her shoulder hurts like fucking hell. She killed someone else she cared about. Again. Does she even belong in this place with people who are good, who do what's right? If they knew, what the fuck would they think of her. She feels like she might be sick, but there's nothing in her stomach to puke anyway so it's just her insides twisting around like knots.

She pulls her network device out, texting a quick open network post, because she won't remember everyone she'll want to text to let them know:

It's Clementine. I'm back. In my room.

If anyone is up at night, they might run into her, a child with blood on the shoulder of her jacket with a very clear hole through it. No gun for once. She left it with the last dead body she's left behind her.

When she finally makes it into her room. She writes the names of more dead people on the wall (Sarita, Sarah, Luke, Rebecca, Kenny). She pulls out blankets from the closet and piles them on the bed and puts herself underneath them, but it doesn't help with the cold. She tries to get out of the damn jacket, but she hisses out pain and stops midway. She stays there for a week and a half without leaving.

Rest of April/May

Eventually, later in the month, she finally leaves her room again. She's got the small shot gun from Christmas with her, holstered to her back.

She's in the cafeteria in short sleeves, which means she's revealing a certain scar for the first time since she came to Wonderland. Sometimes she's reading books about taking care of babies as if osmosis will happen if when she's sent back. Somewhere in between reading how often they have to feed and sleep, she tosses the book away from her so hard that it almost hits somebody.

Then she picks up baking. She used to with her mother all the time, and if she can kill people and survive walkers and gun shots and ice lakes, she can make some cookies if the recipes right there, right? Maybe.

She ends up making a big mess in the kitchen as she tries to spoon big chunks of cookie dough out on to pans, smirking at her giant mess. It's kind of hilarious she can survive so much and fight so hard and then get defeated by cookie dough.

Comments

[demonstrate]

"Waffles," Iris answers with decisiveness. "Which are superior to pancakes, and don't let anyone tell you any differently."

She leads Clementine to a cute lil' table to set everything out for them. She heats up the food that's gone cold, if any, and pours Clementine some orange juice. Iris doesn't know when Clementine last ate properly, but Iris is going to make sure that she has a hearty breakfast.

Joe did always say it was the most important meal of the day.

[shorthair]

[ Clementine takes his hand in her own and then nods as she swallows thickly. There's no way to stay in Wonderland if Wonderland wants someone to go. Maybe it learned better than to separate Dipper and his sister. ]

Good. Sounds like Wonderland got its shit together when it came to that at least. [ Her chest aches as she swallows thickly. ] We don't really have... any control over it.

[shorthair]

"He- Wow. Was it weird being next to the like... king?"

He would have been very powerful back where they're from, but the power wouldn't move over to Wonderland with him. It shouldn't at least, but sometimes when people are used to having a lot of power, they have a tendency to expect it. They try to push people around. Power is good. Power keeps people safe, but it's also- it also bulldozes anything in their way.

Clementine shakes her head a little and then shuts the door behind him.

"It was already bandaged up, and it didn't hurt that bad. I mean, I've had a lot worse. Just with Events, I don't want to be injured when the next one comes."

100 years later FEEL FREE TO DROP if you need to

[poppycock]

His fingers wrap tight around hers, knuckles white. Klaus does it instinctually and intentionally all at once, seeing her eyes close; feeling and seeing her tremble under the weight of what overtakes her. He means to lend her desperate strength and in the lacking of it then understanding, comfort. He knows that weight, that fear: the fear of losing and the fear of having something worth all of it.

He hopes he will do right by his daughter. He hopes that willing and wanting and needing it to be so will be enough in the practice of trying. Klaus blinks past the tears hearing her words, taking in the shared belief they both need. He is choked of words for a moment, for it means no small thing, coming from this strong, anguished little girl without a parent for herself nor a place to call her home.

Klaus swallows thickly. He listens. He hardens. Finds quiet words. "Did he hurt her?"

[shorthair]

"Because of the holes that catch the syrup?" It makes perfect logical sense to her, okay? Clementine takes a sip of the orange juice. It's delicious, and the food looks good too.

She's smart enough this time to not add too much syrup since her body's not used to too much of anything food related after being back in her own world.

It all looks delicious. She's hungry, and it's good to share breakfast with- with family.

[demonstrate]

"The pockets, yes! See, I knew you'd get it."

Clementine is a sharp girl, after all. The indentations are deep enough that they catch the syrup and the butter perfectly. Iris finds them superior to pancakes and most everything else, really. Sorry, pancake lovers. It's just how it is.

She eyes Clementine subtly as they sit down to have their breakfast, nudging a small bowl of fruits in her direction, too. She should only eat what she is able to, and at her own pace, but Iris wants to at least give her options.

"What's your favorite food?"

[circlejerked]

Come to think of it, Anders doesn't think he's ever heard what sorts of rulers Michonne and Clementine's world has, whether arls or teyrns or zombie overlords, or if they have any at all after the undead swarmed in. With the collapse of civilized society, it seems enough just to be thankful Clementine had survived her trip back to that dangerous place.

"It was surprisingly... normal," he replies, humoring her curiosity as he sets his bag down. "He hadn't yet taken up the mantle, just another man I might have passed on the street. I wouldn't have gotten to meet him like that if not for this place, so for that I'm thankful. Same goes for you. If I didn't say it yesterday, it's good to see you again."

After all, it'd be a crying shame if Clementine didn't get a chance to adopt her cat and finish her studies under Georgia.

As he's not her father and hardly in a position to wag his finger over her being stubborn, Anders lets her omission go. "I believe you about having worse, but I'm not so sure about the rest. But better late than never. I'm here now--if you sit, I can take a look."

[krmvgivv]

No. That's the scariest part. [Even for the people who want to stay, there's never any guarantee of how long they'll be there or if their loved ones would stay with them. Wonderland could leave Dipper or Mabel alone, and he can't let that happen.]

DROPS immediately!!!

[shorthair]

(ooc: but no i know you were looking to handwave threads so after i figure out how much she tells him about what happened, we can handwave the rest if you want. :') )

Clementine lifts her gaze up to look at him when she feels his fingers wrapping tight around her own. She breathes in and finds the strength through that hold to continue on (to say things that are hard to say but true. they're part of her, sharp and uneven

they stick. she's never getting rid of that shrapnel).

"Yes." She swallows thickly. Once he accidentally elbowed her in the face. He blamed her for Sarita dying. Kenny lashed out when he was hurt. It was only a matter of time. She'd always known it but didn't know what to do about it because she still cared about him. "They fought after she upset him on purpose. I tried to get in the middle of it but it didn't work. He was about to kill her when... I shot him in the head."

She killed him first.

[shorthair]

Clementine smiles at what Anders says. There's warmth in her gaze which somehow manages to exist behind her hard edges.

"It's good to see you again too."

She means it genuinely. It's good to have a neighbor who makes her smile and laugh when both seem like such a struggle for her lately. She still has to adopt her cat. She plans on doing it once she gets re-settled into this world.

She nods and then sinks into a chair immediately. "Do you need me to take off the bandage?" She doesn't know how this healing thing works.

[circlejerked]

Hard edges can be softened, physical wounds can be healed, but in Anders' experience the clincher is having the mental fortitude and the will to survive to snap back after a rough go of it. Clementine's smile contains a trace of that fortitude, a sign that she's down but not completely out.

The fact that she still has that much in her despite looking like the weight of the world is on her shoulders is reassuring, if nothing else.

"If you wouldn't mind. I'll get a look at what I'm dealing with." And while he joins her at her side to help her remove the bandage, he glances at her face and says, "How did it happen? Or is that the price of readmission when you go back to visit your home?"

[shorthair]

"Two of my group were trying to escape with a prisoner and all our stuff, because they thought someone in our group had lost it and was dangerous."

They were right, but they were going to leave the rest of them to burn. She unravels the bandage from her arm until there's just the bullet wound. No bullet in it. It went clean through but she winces because it does still hurt like hell.

"I heard them, and I tried to stop them. The prisoner shot me."

[circlejerked]

"For some reason thieves and cowards tend to make poor travelling companions, I can't fathom why." Nasty business. Anders makes a rueful. "Brave of you to step in. Good thing your prisoner wasn't a better shot."

Once the ugly knot of flesh is exposed, Anders bundles up the soiled bandage and sets it aside, then turns to survey the injury itself. There are many days when he feels as though his abilities are going to waste here, knowing there are darkspawn to fight at home and Karl is rotting away in some Free Marcher cell, but it's moments like these that he's glad he's here and can leave people a little better than when he came.

He gives a confident nod, followed by an equally confident smile. "Well, not to worry. This is no match for a spirit healer from Thedas. Just sit back and relax and you should feel some relief in a moment."

The advantage to magic is that it doesn't require half the discomfort and mess of stitches; holding his hands above her shoulder, he calls forth his mana for the spell, which manifests as a soft, cool glow about his hands. The light passes from them to Clementine's wound, settling deep in the muscle, dulling pain and repairing flesh. Bit by bit, the healing spell finds what damage the bullet had done and works to undo it.

"You look less like a pincushion already."

[shorthair]

"No idea," Clementine says with a smirk since obviously she knows better. Of course, none of those people seemed like thieves or cowards until it was too late, and she's been asked to steal from others multiple times. She always refused despite being hungry, starving. It never mattered. She suffered the consequences regardless.

She sits back, watching with amazement.

Magic is new to her as of Wonderland, but she finds it wonderful in ways that can't be put to words. It's like a fairytale from back when she still believed in fairytales. She stares as the wound heals in front of her eyes with this soft glow from his hand as if it could possibly be so simple.

She laughs a little, swallowing abruptly thickly through a well of emotion in her throat as her hand slides over the healed skin. The pain is gone. How incredible magic would be if it existed in her world though she knows his own world has so much terrible in it too. So many people are dead, and-

"That's amazing."

SOBS!!!!

[poppycock]

​ooc: sure! that works for me :3 i'm good with slowtagging it until then. i love this thread so much :')

These abuses don't just happen; they don't start and end with the terror of one decisive moment. He can piece together the tapestry from her small confessions, her guilt, her anguish. This man was not a good one (nor, he suspects, was this woman in association) and that cruelty and selfishness reverberated among them all, building to this: this moment Clementine details as if the memory itself is shaking inside of her.

She did not deserve this. She did not deserve the maltreatment, the lack of tenderness; she did not deserve the responsibility of being the adult surrounded by those too wrapped up in their own fear to spar a thought for her or their child.

(Klaus considers he would have liked to slaughter them both in lieu and in deference to her suffering. The world might be better off.)

He reaches to cup her cheek then, the hardness of his rage muted and softened by his desire to comfort her. ​"No one should have to do what you did," he tells her, because people should not have to die, to be killed or to kill. Because it should not have been on her shoulders at all. But it was. It was, because life does not deal in shoulds.

She did what it took to survive. That is not wrong in his eyes. That is strength. "But you were brave in doing it."​

[circlejerked]

He doesn't miss the shift in her face, the way that she looks at the fading glow and newly repaired flesh of her shoulder with untold feelings that seem a little too big and a little too complex for a girl's features.

The same could be said of a gunshot wound. The same could be said for a lot of what Clementine's divulged of her situation.

"Doing all right?" he checks, returning his hands to his sides after the last of the healing is completed. Though the healing spells he's concocted aren't meant to cause pain, he'd like to know if she's at all overwhelmed. It seems safe to guess this might be her first brush with a mage--or perhaps even this brand of magic on a broader scale.

[shorthair]

Clementine nods. She's okay. She manages a smile that's not quite a smile. Her hand slides over her shoulder, and it's like it's gone.

It's not there anymore. She feels no pain at all, and she's used to feeling- lately, she's just been used to feeling some low level amount of pain always. It becomes such a part of life that- It half feels like something is missing to not be hurting, like she's more free somehow than she was before.

"I know magic has shitty sides of it too, but I wish mine had it sometimes."

They could fight zombies. They could heal people who are dying. She could do more than what she can do with a gun.

[shorthair]

(ooc: good ;o; i love it too. ;;; )

Clementine closes her eyes when he cups her cheek. The gesture surprises her but it does- it comforts too. People don't ever- Physical affection isn't common. People get tired and worn out and stamped, and in her world, she can't remember the last time anyone even hugged her (her father used to hold her face like that when she was scared). She closes her eyes briefly against the rapid burning at the edges of those eyes before she looks up at him when he speaks. She rarely ever looks away from anyone, from anything. It's something Carver commended in her. He thought she was like him, and maybe she is like him in some ways though she believes what Georgia told her (he wanted to manipulate her, to use her, to quiet her). But she has to be like him in some ways, because she does know how to make terrible choices.

She is capable of doing what needs to be done.

If there's anything she knows how to do, it's survive. She breathes in, steadies herself, feels the reassurance in the meaning behind his words.

"Thank you for saying so."

Nothing ever feels brave in the moment. It feels desperate and strained.

"It's just me and AJ now. The baby."

It's why she asked him more about being a father now, because she's going to take care of AJ by herself. "I don't think I'm ready either, but it's good to know maybe I never would have been either." She's joking mostly cause she's actually scared. Scared of letting AJ down, scared of not being able to protect him. Scared because she never would have chosen this but she took one look at AJ and she has to try.

[poppycock]

ooc: excuse me while i cry
​
Desperation does not preclude​ bravery. In many instances it necessitates it, and though Klaus would not hold his own instincts of survival brave — not at the hands of his father, his mother, or any else that has stood against him — he knows even in the warped and beaten recesses of his mind it is not her fault, no matter how it might seem to him, taught so thoroughly it is a base and primal feeling, that it was his.

​She did what she had to do. She saved herself and that baby even if she does not see it; even if she has not and will not forgive herself for the ruthlessness of the act.

Klaus turns his hand to brush a comforting touch down the slope of her jaw. Gently​, he nudges her chin at the end. He had assumed as much, about her question, about the baby. It's why he can find it in him to let his features soften at her strained joke; he can let a brightness enter his eyes despite knowing she is afraid. Because she is afraid. "It will be all right," he tells her softly, and not because it is an empty platitude, but because it will be. She is strong, and capable, and smart. He knows sometimes how that is not enough regardless, and he'll assume it's ever more true in her world.

He knows this to be true, too: "And if it's not all right, it will be again." She'll find her way through this, too.

[shorthair]

ooc: /ends scene on my tears

Clementine swallows and looks up at him when he nudges her chin. Her near yellow eyes fill with tears as she watches his face and then nods as if saying it makes it so, as if saying it will make it real. Then she folds herself against his side. A very long time ago, Lee promised Clementine that he would never leave her. The promise ended up being untrue, but it's what she needed to hear at the time, and she thinks back on that memory over and over again after she lost him.

Klaus now promises her it will be all right.

She believes him because she needs to hear it right now.

Whether or not it ends up being true, she believes him.

[circlejerked]

The attempt is enough to pacify him. It wouldn't be the first time finding a spell amazing came with a dose of fear attached, and he wants Clementine to be comfortable in her own room. She seems like she has so little to rely on as it is; it should be a sanctuary she can retreat to to escape what threatens that comfort and safety.

"So do I," he admits, pulling himself up from his bent position. "A world without it doesn't seem like its one in equilibrium. Some blame our world's problems on magic, but it can do great things, too."

Good things, which he hopes he can do for her.

"I have something else for you--something from another world."

He returns to his bag, and pulls out an object vaguely conical in shape with three sleek, metallic-looking fins that form a tripod. A rocket shape, to someone familiar with rockets. A vibrant red liquid sloshes lazily within despite the device lacking a cord, and as they watch the color slowly begins to deepen, darkening to plum. Were Clementine to watch it long enough, she'd see it shifts through most of the spectrum of colors.

"This followed me back from space. Since you didn't get a chance to see the event for yourself, I thought you could have the next best thing--a little piece of it."

[shorthair]

Clementine watches as he moves toward his bag. Her expression grows curious, and the attempt at a smile widens into something more genuine at the sight.

She shakes her head in amazement, reaching out for the rocket shaped object. The colors change. It's beautiful. It gives her some idea of how amazing it must have been to be in space, to see the stars in the sky from up close and to meet aliens and to see all the future technology, which gave them the ability to travel around in space.

"You- You want to give this to me?"

Going back to the world she's from, it makes her forget (the softer sides, the warmer sides of humanity). People can be giving. They don't even need a reason for it like a holiday. They care, and they want to give.

[circlejerked]

He's happy to pass his souvenir into Clementine's hands. Her expression says it all: she'll be better served by it. Anders is hardly as old as he acts--as if he's lived a thousand lives and late 20s is the peak of all human wisdom--but it's still true he's had years more than Clementine to experience moments and make a roadmap to the past from knickknacks picked up along the way. It's her turn.

"I was able to live among the stars for a while, that's enough for me," he says, smiling to see her intrigue turn to interest. "It's yours. I'm only sorry it wasn't a cat that followed me back."

A space cat would make a fine gift and cheer up her room, which seems noticeably cat-less at the moment. They'll have to do something about getting Clementine a roommate to watch over her sometime in the future.

Before that, though, Anders isn't quite done playing Santa Claus just yet. He gives the bag a light shake, and from within comes the sound tinkling glass. "And there's more! I took the liberty of packing you some potions should something like this happen again and I'm not around. They'll help restore your strength when you drink them."

[shorthair]

Clementine shakes her head as she holds it within her hands, and she glances up Anders way curiously. He means it. She doesn't quite know what to do with it, what to do with this gift he's handing over so easily. She laughs a bit.

"I'll still get a cat from the closets someday."

She doesn't know that she could take a cat from him but this? It's- Wow. Her gaze darts up to him again when he pulls out more.

"Anders." Her eyes burn. She has no words. Words are hard. People use guns to express themselves in her world. It's why she pushes herself up, moves to him, and then wraps her arms around him to hug him tightly. Hugs are rare for her. They're hard, but this is-

It's worth it.

"Thank you."

[circlejerked]

The space cats will simply have to live on in his memory...

"Your room is looking a little lonely..." Pretending to sweep her quarters with a speculative gaze, it's all he has time to get out before Clementine rises with her newly restored strength and--much to his surprise--comes forward to embrace him.

Oh.

Funny, how so much character can fit into someone with such small stature. He's on the tall and willowy side for a man, and the top of Clementine head only reaches the vicinity of his chest.

She doesn't have to articulate her discomfort aloud for it to be understood; it's easy for people who claw their way up with their teeth to forget they don't always have to show them to the people they meet. Physical affection is a casual visitor in his own life, and if he were in her position being squeezed back by someone his size, he knows he'd be squirming if it were harder and longer than he'd like. After a moment to let the warmth of her gesture sink in, he smiles and rests a hand lightly between her shoulders.

"Don't mention it," he says. Is that a note of embarrassment in his voice at being pleasantly sucker punched? Shh, nonsense. He's not that easy to catch off guard. "I'm a giver."