entrancelogs | you are what you love [ open ]

Hands clutching his own, fingers threading around his in a way that no one has ever -

People don't need him. People don't want him. He's tolerable at best. He's just some broken-up thing that shouldn't have been given the number of chances it did, who watched everyone die because he was too cowardly to do what he should have always done. He could have always just disappeared, walked out of the narrative, and no one would be the wiser. They would all be better for it, wouldn't they?

Wouldn't they?

Because I want you here.

The Lost Soul's voice is shaking.

It just can't understand.

"Why - why?"

Clementine's hands tighten over his own despite the urge to wipe her face from the tears, from her expression that nearly crumples as she holds tight to him. She doesn't let herself wipe them away. This is not a plea- She's used it before. She has used her being a child. She's used her vulnerability before to get what she needs to survive, but this- this is not that.

Not at all.

"Because- because you're my friend."

She slides her arms across her chest.

"Family. I think. You're family to me. I've told you things I haven't told anybody else cause you make me feel safe and like I don't have to be better. You make me feel like I just have to be me- like that's enough, and I- I'm selfish, I guess. I don't want to lose you. I get people lose people. You lose everyone eventually, but if I can fight for you, I will."

You're my friend, says Brian, all drunken smiles and grinning eyes, clapping him once across the shoulder and squeezing in that stereotypical college fratboy display of macho camaraderie he's witnessed a hundred times but never, not ever, once been a part of. He says it a dozen other times in a dozen different ways - in a late night detour to Tim's dorm after a one-word text message, in early morning hours spent staring disconsolate at infomercials playing silently on the television screen, in his gentle urging to get Tim to step out of his shell, even slightly, and his elated grin when those tiny efforts would succeed.

His first friend - splayed out on the ground, sallow and thin beneath rumpled folds of an unwashed hoodie, skull cracked open on the concrete.

Other people have used that word, fleetingly, and nearly pitched him into a panic. George snaps it over a video feed while the hallway outside fills with water. A dark copy of Jay rasps it out, dying among spirals of steam and flimsy wooden walls.

You're my friend, pleads Clem.

You're family to me.

The static flakes away like melting snow in the same moment Tim drops to his knees.

Clementine drops too when he does. Her hands are still on his hands. Her fingers still clasped around his own in the spaces between. Her expression crumples as the static fades away. She never thought she could- This is not what-

Her knees hit the floor. Tears slip down her face.

"Tim?"

She can't remember the last time she felt so young- so vulnerable, the last time she sounded this way without intent. She hates the sound of her own voice, but she can't focus on this hate when she just desperately needs to know that he's okay.

That's more important.

He's always cried too easily, too loudly, for too long. It overflows and leaves him a wreck on the floor, unable to stand the sound of his own shuddering, disgusting sobs. Don't be difficult, Tim. Throwing a tantrum won't make things any easier. Little boys aren't supposed to cry.

Making a mess, making a scene. A camera lens trained on him, and Jay's fumbling, fiddling inability to know what to do or how to go about comforting a grown man sobbing, nigh-hysterical, on a burnt, abandoned hospital floor.

Jay. He can remember him now, fully, in earnest, those ghosting shreds of nothingness burning away like mist in sunlight.

Suddenly, the memories are flooding back.

"Clem," he chokes, feebly, head still half-bowed. "I'm s-sor...I'm sorry, I'm, I'm sor - "

His grip around her hands tightens, as if he frantically needs to reassure to himself that she's real. Or that he himself is.

Clementine tightens her hold on his hands too when she feels the way he grips on. She shakes her head several times, recognizing his voice- recognizing him. It's difficult to work her way through these emotions. There are so many of them, and she's not used to feeling the emotions so openly.

Hell, she's not used to that- that being what's needed to help someone else.

She's hardly been used to helping anyone these last two years (and she never would have believed she could do so unless violence was involved- that's kind of been her worth lately). She's survived. That's all there was, and now- now she tells him the truth about how she feels and she can help free him from whatever the hell had gripped hold of him.

"It's okay. It's okay," she promises, letting herself fall into the intensity of that relief. "You don't have anything to be sorry about. It's just good to see you free of- of that shit."

Even if she knows it's still in the air, it's still in him. It's not drowning him in static like before.

He's sorry. He's sorry. He is. He never means to do this - to draw people close, to open a door that someone else could walk through. His efforts to ensure that no one feels alone the way he did, by nature, requires that he leave that avenue available to be traversed at a whim.

He's sorry.

He's done something terrible, and he did it to a child of all people, because the worst part of all of this is that he knows that she means it, and that she meant every word.

"You, uh." The words rasp - with disuse, with emotion he can't or doesn't want to name. Fuck, he's shaking. His eyes are too wet and his fingers can't seem to hold still, flitting up to grip her shoulder and then pushing up through his hair and then scrubbing at the heat on his cheeks. "Guess I - I owe you again, huh?"

Clementine rests a hand against his shoulder too as if sensing he needs the touch to feel like this is real- It's real like she's real. She can see how much he is shaking, and she's grateful she didn't- she's grateful the static didn't get her like that, because it seems terrifying.

She smirks a little despite the emotion still in her eyes. Her hand grips tighter to him at the shoulder.

"Pretty sure it doesn't work like that with people you care about."

It's how it would work where she's from. People tally up what they're owed.

"You need anything like water or- I don't know."

He can't summon an argument to that. He doesn't have - he feels like he's just run some hundred-yard sprint, his lungs heavy and his chest aching. Like he was missing something from inside himself, and it's just settled into the still-raw ache, skin growing fresh over a bleeding scab.

"I just need a...I need a minute." To laugh or maybe stop sobbing, and either way it's going to border on hysterical. He has no idea. He has no fucking clue.

The world's gradually coming back into itself, snapping into place.

His memory's still hazy, and that raises a cruel thought that sends a fresh jolt of panic into the center of his chest, stiffening his spine and sharpening his gaze into focus.

"I didn't - didn't hurt you or, or anything, right?"

"Okay," Clementine says, and while she keeps a hand on him, she does try to give him some privacy too by looking around to be sure there isn't anyone else static-like nearby. Some of them could be pretty violent from what- what she saw on her way to find him. She didn't recognize them so she didn't stop- she didn't stop until she found him.

She's glad she did. She doesn't know how much worse it could get.

She only turns back to him at the question, shaking her head quickly, wanting to reassure him. She knows how- Well, they both know what it is like to hurt someone they care about. She doesn't want him to think for a second that he has to worry about that, and even if he had, it's not like he- that static just took over.

"No. You didn't even try. Not for a second. Most everyone else who gets all static, they've been attacking people but you didn't. ...you don't remember what happened?"

Did the Event take that? They've talked about memory loss before too, and she doesn't want him to forget anything he doesn't want to.

"It's just kinda...blurry. Like, I dunno, a dream, maybe." The memories are there, he knows - it's not like the last few however many hours were carved clean from his skull and left an utter blankness there. If he strains, he can remember pieces, fragments. And then immediately wishes he hadn't. There's no protection against the utter desolation that lingers there still, the memory of being...

Lost, he guesses.

"Guess I'm pretty miserable at actually - actually trying to hurt people," he says, weakly, with the air of someone telling a joke. But he can't even lend a false huff of laughter to the attempt at levity. "It's always gotta be on accident."

Clementine nods. The static looked- looked unlike anything she's ever seen before, but he definitely didn't seem like himself- not wholly, not fully. Like the darkness had come over the rest, she breathes out, shaking her head at his attempt at a joke.

"Not a bad thing to be miserable at," she says softly even if it's shitty to hurt people accidentally. In some ways, it may be even worse, because it's not something that you can take ownership of. It just... happened.

She can feel her own awkwardness creep up again briefly even if her words are so genuine. "But you help too. I know it's all blurry but you've helped me so I wanted you to... remember that part at least."

"No, I - I do." It's not the remembering that's the hard bit, there. It's the admitting it to himself, the accepting of what she's just said. Not just friends, but - something that not even his mother was eager to impart, like the moment she knew her child was some broken thing, she was already preparing herself to sever those ties, drawing back.

He can't remember that word ever being used before. At him, for him. If she ever said it, it was when he was too young to recall it in earnest.

"You, you, uh...you c-called me..."

He can't say it. He can't fucking say it, even now.

"Family."

She fills it in without any hesitation at all once he brings it up himself. Despite her inexperience in general with expressing emotions, it's how she feels. It's what she would want him to know too. The words aren't words she gives easily.

She can't remember the last time she did. They're not words she feels towards- towards hardly anyone, but she feels that way about him. It's why she moved right into trying, trying at something she's never done before in the hopes it might bring him back- that it might be enough (and even more miraculously, it was).

"You're family to me."

"No one's, uh."

He's struck with the notion that he doesn't know where he should be looking, because eye contact feels like an insurmountable obstacle just now. Staring at the floor, at his hands, at the walls, at anything but Clem, who has just said something he can't remember hearing in his life.

"No one...says that," he manages at long last, the words feeling choked and fuck, fuck this, and fuck him for being the kind of person who cries way too fucking easily.

"Well, I fucking do."

There's something Tim asked her when she first showed up again in Wonderland after being gone as long as she was. It's what she wants to ask now, because it meant a lot to her then and-

Her throat kind of locks up, because he should have heard that as a kid at least. That's the- the bare basics anyone should have when they're growing up ( a family).

"Can I give you a hug?"

"...yeah." It's a weird reversal of things, and it's not lost of him, that parallel. Maybe that's what does him in, what shuts him up and practically glues his throat shut, to the point where he can barely nod, barely work the words out.

"Yeah. Yeah, 'course you can."

He feels about ready to break down right in front of her, if he's honest.

Which is kinda what he's been doing already.

Clementine nods when he gives the permission, moving forward, winding her arms around him to hug him tightly. She presses her face to him, and she doesn't say anything else, because she doesn't want him to feel like he has to say anything at all either. There's just no requirement- not for anything.

It's quiet but it's good.

It's okay.

He doesn't have to do or be anything other than who he is right now, what he feels like doing.

you are what you love [ open ]

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