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

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

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.

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It's hard to describe.

In her world, she has to be a certain way all the time. Sometimes she could be more open with Luke (he'd ask if she was okay, he'd comment on how she watched Carver's face get beaten in with a crowbar without flinching), but Luke is dead. She has to be useful and survive and push forward. There's no room for her to not have her shit together, because it means dying. It means someone else dying. People aren't kind. They're hard and weathered like she is, and she locks it all down tight to stay alive. Reaching out to someone else means admitting need, which she can't afford.

She forces herself back together uneasily, and she looks up at Klaus again.

"Yeah. It- it is. It's all right." People care. People are kind here. He was kind to her. He understood, and it means something he'd even think to stop by when they only talked the once. "You can come in."

She steps back then, moving back to the bed as her hand fists tightly in some of the mass of blankets. "I was sent home, and I got shot."

No one is kind. For so long Klaus was what he believed the world to be: cruel, terrible, selfish, paranoid. For hundreds of years he walked the earth not believing in what made people good nor their capacity for it, so damaged and lost and torn he was inside. But he was wrong. He learned. Even in the darkest of creatures, there can be light.

It's something he needs to believe, for his daughter.

He thinks of her now, watching Clementine pull herself together. He wonders, even under Hayley's care, what kind of life Hope will live. He wonders, as his daughter, if it'll be like this. It rends his heart. It rends his heart to consider it; it rends his heart to see that pain and uncertainty so raw and real in this girl's eyes.

Klaus follows her into the room slowly, taking his time to take in the abode. How lived in it feels, the clumps and piles of blankets on the bed, the names, carved into the wall. His eyes stay for a moment, eyes burning and throat stoppered before he tears them away and continues to stop beside the bed. Klaus sucks in a sudden breath through his nose at her explanation. His lungs and chest fill slow with anger, indignation, rage. He expels the brunt of them with an exhale. "I hope it wasn't on purpose."

Clementine turns at the sound of his voice. She lifts her head up to look at him as he stops by the bed. Her hands grip hold of the blankets like fists, and she knows if her own anger were tangible, she'd never be able to contain it in these hands. But her chest is endlessly capable of doing exactly that.

She's instantly reminded of her conversation with Luke which seems like it happened a really long time ago. He'd wanted her to talk to the stranger at the edge of the bridge, because he wouldn't shoot a little girl. And Clementine said she would, because she knows what little girls are capable of.

What she's capable of.

"It was on purpose. I can be dangerous. I know that... probably sounds weird or funny or not true." If it had been just her and Arvo, she wouldn't have hesitated. "He didn't want me shooting him instead."

He does not think it weird nor funny, imagining Clementine nor anyone else burdened and trapped in the straits of a cruel world not turning to the instinct of violence themselves. He knows all too well how dangerous people can be; he has been one of them. Is one of them.

Klaus sits at the end of the bed, eyes glancing to her shoulder, to the waste bin filled with bandages and blood. "I hope you did," he says simply, solemnly, low and with little inflection; he does hope so, though he probably shouldn't. There are names on the wall. He's seen names written on walls before. He has a chest of letters at home, with a meaning he can imagine is similar. "Given the results."

He glances away, as if remembering himself. It's not a comforting thought, but it is a true one: "I believe you can be dangerous. I believe anyone can be, given the right motivation."

Clementine lifts her head up at his response. It's how she'd feel if she was talking to someone else, but it's not what most people would say. She gets why in her head. Lee told her killing changes a person. Her world doesn't leave her with a whole lot of options, which means she expects to change a whole lot more.

She senses Klaus means what he say as he always has. He's not patronizing her but telling her the truth. She wants someone who can talk to her without thinking she doesn't know what she's taking about or without looking at her like she's- She still remembers what he told her the first time they talked. That she was not broken.

"Didn't get the chance unfortunately. The shot knocked me out. They were gone when I woke up, and then there was more shit to deal with."

She shudders just slightly and then tenses and swallows. Her stomach does these ugly flips all over again like they've been doing since- since Kenny attacked Jane, and she knew what she had to do.

"I believe that too. It's why I can't trust anyone back there. Not anymore."

He doesn't know how to talk to her. Caring for children has never been his interest nor his strong suit—but he remembers. He remembers how his father treated him; he remembers those hissing words and sharp blows. He knows, at least, a blueprint of what not to do, and Klaus has never been one to cut corners nor hold back. He is no fool. What point would there be when he knows she understands?

(It's why he's here. He cares, in ways he cannot help but care.

In ways he cannot feel nor care for his daughter.)

The shudder of her shoulders does not go unnoticed, nor the absent explanation of her vague words that accompany it. Grief and anguish bottle up in his throat not at that, but at her steadfast loneliness. (He believes that too. That there's no one for her to trust.) "People are selfish, desperate things. Those of us with heart hurt more to become them." He has, from the moment he woke to find blood staining his hands, the body parts of his village's people strewn around him. She is hurting, so clearly, right in front of him. "I hope you find some peace. I'm told there are always moments," he adds softly, thinking of Camille, thinking of Hope with a small smile. "And people, when we're lucky, eventually."

He pauses, his smile fading. "Whatever you had to do, you did it because that is what it takes to survive. What is vicious is not always right or wrong—it's necessary."

Edited 2017-04-20 00:20 (UTC)

Clementine twists her hands together in front of her. Distantly, she's aware of the pain in her shoulder every time she moves her hand, but she can't stop moving her hand. He sounds like he understands, the way people are. He understands she maybe had to pull the trigger on someone (on many someone's. she hasn't killed all the people whose deaths are on her hand with a gun, but it was her fault and her responsibility. and she tells herself it was all necessary because it has to be, but the truth is some of it wasn't).

She reaches out abruptly. Her hand clutches to his arm.

Her eyes burn. She is vicious. She has to be, and God, does she want to find peace. Didn't she feel a moment close to it holding AJ, thinking he was pure and untouched by the hellish world around them? Thinking he was the first good thing she'd seen in such a long damn time? He's a father. She feels it in all his words, in his encouragement and understanding.

"There were two adults left in my group, two adults and me and a baby. The baby's mom died a few days ago. He was born a week ago."

There's another pause.

"How'd you know? That you were ready for your daughter to come?"

He's mentioned being very tough before. He understands what it means to be vicious, how to do what is necessary to survive. Sometimes she feels like- like a monster.

So much of his cruelty and viciousness wasn't necessary—he has done the same; he tells himself it was. In moments he cannot escape the truth, he tells himself if those consequences do matter to him, they are still done and in those moments there was no other choice for him. He cannot change the past, nor who he was. Not who he is. (He wouldn't want to, if it meant he could not protect his child.

He is a monster, but he long ago chose to be one. She doesn't. She hasn't. He knows this, because he must believe there is good in him that can survive the darkness. He sees the good in her, so that she might not suffer all that he has.

He understand the picture she paints: one in which she is a caretaker, a mother, thrust into a terrifying position she could not have predicted nor considered to want. He had sucked in a breath, startled though unflinching, when she reached for him. He feel the desperate strength in her small fingers, clutching at him now. The compassion in his eyes is joined with tears, remembering the completeness, the love, the weight of his daughter in his arms. How bereft, though not empty, they are now. Klaus places his hand over hers.

"I was never ready," he admits. He wasn't, terrified and unsure at first, at what the promise of an offspring could mean. Hopeful, that it could mean everything. "But I wanted her." More than anything he wants his daughter; his voice is soft and longing. "And I knew that she needed me; that I needed her." Just as this child needs Clementine. Just as Clementine needs him. "And that was all that mattered to me."

Clementine smiles softly at his answer mostly because it sounds so honest and real. How can anyone ever be ready for it? To have a child thrust into their arms, to have a baby rely on them so intensely. She breathes in as his hand slides over her own, and she closes her eyes tightly. A tremble overtakes her again, but she nods, because she can understand it in some way.

"I think that's the most important part. I think you'll do good," Clementine says as her gaze drifts up to him but she means it. "You want them. You need each other. You do your best to- to take care of them. It has to be."

It has to be what's required of her with AJ.

She will give everything she has.

"The two adults- They were fighting a lot. Kenny lost so much. Every time something went wrong, he lashed out. We were in the middle of a snow storm, and-"

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?"

(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.

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."

Edited 2017-05-26 18:37 (UTC)

(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.

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.

Edited (a terrible typo) 2017-06-02 13:46 (UTC)

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.

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

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klaus talks to children so good

CRIES omg so good. i love it.

more cry

it's fine. i'm fine :sob:

i'm not crying you're crying

sobs no it's just- i'm cutting onions...

100 years later FEEL FREE TO DROP if you need to

DROPS immediately!!!

SOBS!!!!

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