entrancelogs | i've got blood on my name [open]

Entry tags:

i've got blood on my name [open]

Who: Clementine and you!
Where: Front of mansion or Kitchen
When: August 22nd
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Zombie apocalypse survivor falls into Wonderland covered in zombie blood and guts and fresh blood too. She smells. It's gross. Then she cleans off and creates an accidental feast because FOOD! Action spam or prose is good w/ me :')
The Story:
arrival
Clementine shakily clutches the hatchet. She is covered in walker guts and Sarita's blood. She has a cut across her face from when she'd been hit when she tried to stop Kenny's beating. Clementine stands quietly in front of the mansion like this, terrified to move, because this goes against everything she has ever learned.

Maybe. There's panic associated with having no idea what's going on. She leans over, trying to catch her breath for a second, until she realizes no one's around counting on her. No one is around to see anything at all. No Walkers are going to catch her in this moment of weakness. She sucks in a breath, walking closer to the mansion. Another wave of hesitation sweeps over her as she tenses. Her gaze sweeps the nearby area for walkers, because they're always around. Always. Clementine stays quiet, but she can't hear a single moan or shuffle or any walker sound.

It's strange, eerie. It makes her tense as she bites on her lip, staring up at the mansion, wondering what to expect from it. People can be as dangerous as walkers (if not more so). People are smart. Walkers aren't, and she's seen many people betray all of them, screw them all over. It's shit. But that's the world now. Shit.

She can't stand out here either. It's with her hatchet clutched to her like a lifeline (but she wishes she had a gun instead) that she starts to step up the stairs.

later
When she finds her room, Clementine immediately cleans herself up (running warm water is a miracle), changes into a fresh version of the jacket (what? it really was kinda cool), and gets a gun. It's always kept on her pretty visibly wherever she goes as she starts to explore the mansion.

But truth is, she ends up in The Kitchen and doesn't leave just yet. Clementine has been hungry for so long she forgets what it is like to feel anything other than hungry. She's been starving before, but food comes out of these cabinets as easily as guns do. It's wrong, and it's magic, and she wants to believe in magic but magic never helped her before.

Her gun remains in a holster around her tiny waist as she starts to throw out options on to the table, trying to remember all the food she once loved back when she had it readily. Containers of macaroni and cheese, fresh fruit, rainbow sherbert ice cream, Lucky Charms, chocolate chip cookies, dino shaped chicken nuggets, and she's sure she's forgetting something but it's more food than she's seen in one place in a long time.

Without realizing it, she's creating a feast but doesn't even dig in. Just stares at it all. Come join the tiny girl with a gun.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"No," Clementine says, and the answer comes faster than she means it to, but she doesn't. She doesn't believe in Santa Claus or the Easter bunny or food that comes without a cost to someone or something somewhere except- She makes a little face and then looks over at the food again. "But I don't know how I got here either."

She can't explain that away as much as she might cling to this ideal that magic isn't real. If it wasn't, how did she show up here without any walkers following her? If it wasn't, how did she end up here at all?

"Unless this is a dream."

She doesn't really have many of those. When she does dream, it's usually Lee in them or her parents. Otherwise, it's a nightmare, and this is the most elaborate dream she has ever had.

Iris wishes she had the answers. Certainly, she's been looking for them ever since she arrived. It's what she is meant to do. As a reporter, it's her job to uncover truths, no matter how well they're hidden. Wonderland has proven to be her toughest story yet. There are those who've been here much longer than Iris, and don't know any more than she does, either.

"It's not a dream," Iris assures her gently, not that it's much of a reassurance.

"You're real and I'm real and the food is real. I've been eating it for months."

Nothing's happened to her yet. She's asked herself these same questions. Where does it all come from? How much is it going to cost them in the end? But these are all abstract thoughts. The rational and practical part of her remembers: they need to eat, whatever the reason.

Clementine looks up at her when she insists that it is not a dream, and Clem doesn't know if she's ready to believe that yet, but- She believes that Iris has been eating this food for months, and Clementine figures no matter what she's got to eat this, but the last time she saw food that seemed too good to be true, it turns out the meat was actually human meat... and it was one of their own, Mark. Lee kept her from putting it in her mouth, but it's hard to shake that away.

"I've had... bad experiences with food," she says as a way of explanation even as she takes a seat at the bench and picks up the cookie, taking in a deep breath before she takes a tiny bite out of it. She swallows slowly, not wanting to eat too much either.

Because that seems like it could unsettle her stomach which isn't used to much and definitely isn't used to something so sweet, good.

"You've been here for months?"

"Two and a half months now."

Iris answers softly, almost absentmindedly, as she regards the younger girl. Her gaze is not intrusive, but it is thoughtful; concerned. Bad experiences with food can mean several different things, but Iris would bet money that it's not related to allergies.

She waits for Clementine to take several bites of the cookie before asking. "Feeling okay so far?"

"How do you like it?"

Two and a half months seems like it could be very long or very short. It depends on what fills those months up, and she can't say she knows what Wonderland is like. It's different than where she is from. It's probably better than where she is from.

"Yeah, I think. Tastes better than I remember but kinda a lot too."

Her expression grows gentler, warm. She has to wonder how long it's been since Clementine had this sort of food. It's why Iris doesn't urge her to take any more of it. Slow and steady will win the race here, she thinks.

A pause, as she considers the question.

"It's ... different. To any place I've ever been. There's good and there's bad."

Clementine takes another bite of the cookie, setting it down as she turns to face Iris. Her little hands are fists at her lap as her gaze lifts to meet Iris. She's warm, and Clementine trusts her. She reminds her of her own family which helps even if her family died years ago now.

"What's the bad? I know I'm a kid, but you don't have to hold back. I've seen and done a lot of really terrible things. I want you to give it to me straight."

In different circumstances, Iris would be amused, and certainly impressed, by Clementine's fire. "All right, all right. I can see you don't want me to hold back with the punches," she tells her. The way Iris sees it, it's important to be prepared, much as she is certain there will be plenty of residents who will want to protect children, Iris included. "Has anyone mentioned the events yet?"

That seems like a good place to start.

Clementine picks up one of the cookies to hold out to Iris with a nod of approval when Iris says she doesn't want her to hold back with the punches. Then she takes a bite of her own as she crisscrosses her legs and looks up at her, sitting in one of the chairs. "No, not really. It's the weird stuff that happens. It's all I really heard."

She heard some examples too, but she's not sure where they come from. It just sounds like people have to expect the unexpected, and she doesn't like that. She knows how to survive against walkers and against people who are also trying to survive, but Wonderland's already shown her it's more than all that.

"The weird stuff that happens? Most of the people here will refer to it as an event. Some of them will only lead to a change in scenery, but others can be more dangerous than that. It's important to try and stay safe when it happens."

And hopefully, to not be caught alone and off guard.

Iris was affected by the sleeping curse, more than she realized at first. It's led to nightmares she hasn't been able to speak of, and insomnia that never used to be a problem. Maybe if she'd been more vigilant, she could have avoided the purple cloud.

Edited 2016-08-30 21:52 (UTC)

"I know about staying safe back home against walkers, but I know the dangerous stuff that happens here is different too," Clementine says, which means she doesn't know always how to prepare for it. She can shoot a walker dead. She's had to shoot people before too, but magic means- means it can be way bigger than that.

Simon mentioned demons. She doesn't know what that means.

"Just means you gotta keep fighting, keep moving even when you don't know what to expect."

In a fair world, Clementine wouldn't have such a clear-sighted and sobering answer. She can't be much older than ten, she isn't supposed to know how relentless danger can be, and how often it strikes against those that deserve it less.

This isn't a fair world.

"Is that what you've been doing back home? Fighting ... walkers?"

"Yeah. Two years ago, something happened. The world changed," Clementine says, and it couldn't have been over night, but it felt that way. Her babysitter was bitten, and she got really sick, and Clementine hid up in her tree house because those things can't climb. Then Lee found her, and if he hadn't, she'd have died too, become a walker.

"When people die, they don't stay dead anymore. They come back as walkers. Monsters. If they bite you, you'll become one of them too, but even if you die some other way, you still come back like that unless someone puts a hole through your head. ...Sorry."

She knows she's talking kind of plainly about it all, and she knows not everyone here's from a place like that.

"You don't have to apologize to me."

If anything, Iris is the one who feels like saying sorry, but Clementine strikes her as a young girl who has a good head on her shoulders, and doesn't want what might be construed as pity. It sounds like something out of a zombie movie, and it should be impossible, but if she's learned anything, it's that she has to think much broader if she is to apply the word impossible to anything.

"I'm just trying to make sure you're okay. It sounds really rough back home."

Clementine looks up at Iris, and she smiles softly through that feeling in her chest.

"You remind me of good people from back home. Luke. Krista," she says, because it feels important to say it. There's a warmth to Iris. There's a- There's a connection to her because of it. "It's really rough back home for everybody. It's just hard all the time now, but I'm here."

Even if it was rough back home. She doesn't know if she's okay. She's not bleeding, and it seems like that's the best way to figure if she's okay or not in the last two years.

Iris' smile softens, too.

She would want to remind Clementine of good people. Wonderland isn't easy to navigate, most of the time, and it helps to have people you can trust. She already feels a sort of protectiveness, and it isn't inspired only by Clementine's age.

"Now you're here. I'm glad I can remind you of home in a good way. I'm Iris."

That's what she should've started with ...

Clementine smiles at her, nodding. She's glad too. There's little about this whole place which seems familiar to her, and as much as the familiar is mostly terrible, it's good to help her feel secure, feel like she knows where she is going and what to do.

"I'm Clementine."

She pauses, shifting on her feet.

"You told me the bad about this place but what's the good?"

She mentioned there being bad and good.

Edited 2016-09-12 00:08 (UTC)

"For starters, there's the closets."

Iris isn't sure Clementine will be interested in them, from what she has been able to assess. A girl who's had to grow up very fast isn't easily swayed by enchantment. But it is nonetheless a quality to Wonderland most people seem to enjoy.

"You can ask them for nearly anything." Nearly.

It's more magic, and Clementine has never believed in it before but she watched this closet give her any and every type of food she could even imagine. She smiles, leaning forward, tilting her head to the side.

"Nearly? That's pretty cool. What have you asked the closets for?"

She's curious about the limits. People are obviously not something they could ask for. She's hoping. Sorta. She wouldn't mind asking for Lee, but it's like pulling him out of some dark hole.

"Clothes, mostly. Work supplies, even if I can't officially do my job like I would back home." She leans in all conspiratorial-like. "If I'm feeling lazy and I don't want to come on down here, I'll ask for a brownie straight from my closet."

And oh, it's a mouth-watering brownie, Clementine. Iris is all about the chocolate.

"What about you? What do you want to ask for, aside from food?"

"You wear really pretty clothes, and brownies are smart to ask for. Your own treat,," Clementine says with a smile as if only just now noticing it, and she is only just now noticing. Clothing hasn't been important. They find what they can. They put it on. They move. Things change here.

They can change here. She bites down on her lip, shaking her head.

"I don't know. I- Do you think you could help me? My room's kinda bare."

She knows that works like the closets. Think it up, it appears. She's not 9 anymore though, and it's the last time she had a room of her own.

Oh, Clementine. As if Iris wasn't already developing a soft spot for you.

Her smile widens, earnest and true, and she gives a firm nod. A brownie will materialize before them, and Iris breaks off a piece to offer to Clementine. "I would be happy to help. You can tell me your favorite colors, and we can figure out the rest as we go along."

Iris will try to be more intuitive, so she doesn't ask questions Clementine might be uncomfortable with, but she wants to make sure Clementine's room becomes a place where she feels safe and comfortable.

Clementine blinks in surprise at the magically appearing brownie but smiles. Magic is pretty cool. She never would have believed it was real if she didn't see it for herself, and how can she deny what's right in front of her? She takes the piece, popping it into her mouth.

It's so damn sweet and good. Way better than anything canned.

"Thank you. I think I need to figure out my favorite colors again," she admits with a little smile, which indicates it's kind of nice to figure something like this out instead of how to survive or how to trick a bad man or if she's gonna jump on top of the guy holding the gun at her group to stop him from firing at them. "It used to be yellow before the walkers."

But now it's probably something else, it'll just be nice to have something that's hers and to get help with making it hers.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

i've got blood on my name [open]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject