Chapter Text
The final time. With a long journey behind her, Clementine hoped that whatever machine, whatever device was taking them home would be the final of its duties. All her previous trips had incited something wrong. To have it going as intended, she hoped that this, the last, would be the first of its kind.
The world changing around her was of a rush passing in and out of her body, her old save drawing nearer and nearer. Clementine shielded her eyes upon entering the other realm, its first sign of welcome a bright light glaring down on her cap.
“Oh Man…”
Her unending headaches were absent in the presence of an opportunity they’d usually feast upon. As white evolved into colour, it slowly adjusted to that of the music room inside the ever-rotting Ericson’s Boarding School For Troubled Youth.
On the piano bench, she carefully pushed her body into a sitting position, still feeling the weight of her borrowed time in the other world. “Louis…?”
A call to no receiver. The musician was nowhere to be found in the room.
“Louis?!”
Silent piano keys shone beside her in the rays of light through the window’s torn sheets, rays covering the piano, the bookshelves, all but her partner or the time machine they’d used in that exact location. Her feet shot to the ground, ready for her to pounce before a figure she hadn’t noticed yet called out to her.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Easy there!”
From behind a stack of books, a figure rose and walked out in front of her. Clementine’s jaw fell to the floor. The height, the clothes, the hat. The person in front of her… looked exactly like her. A mirror image. Even their voice held the same pitch, the same mannerisms. Any difference was demonstrated only on their skin, those being the lack of visible scars.
“It’s alright, I’m not gonna hurt you! It’s great to see you again!”
The identical figure’s eyes lit up noticing the return of her outfit’s oldest item. “And back rocking the old hat again, huh? Awesome! Glad to see you finally made it.”
The second Clementine beamed a wide grin at the other paralysed in shock. She leaned away from this cheerful figure, unable to take her eyes off them. “Oh… I must be dreaming again. Like the one I had before. That’s right…”
She surveyed herself to prove her theory correct. A blue denim jacket, combat trousers, new boots, all along with her classic hat made for one very real appearance. Then she tried her surroundings, finding it nearly exactly as she and Louis had last seen it. All it lacked was the C + L engraving on the piano and the time machine.
At their touch, she turned back to her other self whose fingers took hold of her own.
“This is real, Clementine. It seems your journey has finally come to an end, and I have so much to thank you for. That’s why I brought you here.”
“Um, brought me here?” she asked, knocking away their hands and laughing at their ridiculous suggestion. “Uh, no. Me talking to myself? I know I’m crazy, but that type of thing only happens in my dreams, not in real-, w-wait…”
Her eyes traced the borders of the room once more. “This is the music room. At the school. Where I’m supposed to be… right?”
“That’s correct!” the other Clem confirmed. “Well, kind of. This may be the music room, but it’s not the music room you know. It’s just a copy. Oh, but don’t worry! You’ll be back with Louis soon enough. Just hear what I have to say, okay?”
Clementine blinked at her clone, who’s smile persisted through her varying puzzled expressions. “So it is a dream,” she concluded, much to their dismay. In a strange manner of her thanks, she was quite accustomed to this type of scene, that being her mind playing tricks on her. “Mm… Do I really have to wait to see him? Can’t we do this some other time?”
“Uh… It’s really not a-”
On instinct alone, her reflexes sent an arm over her stomach in moving to a more comfortable position . Her body tensed, although no pain, nor any urge to vomit arose. Clementine 2's bright expression immediately fell. “Oh shit, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m… fine?” The arm clinging to her stomach held on for dear life. In another strange instance, she didn’t need it for once. “That was weird… Guess I’m still a bit jumpy; I uh, haven’t been very well recently.”
“Phew…” Her clone nervously smiled. “Yeah, I know you’ve had it rough. I tried making it an easy trip as possible so take as much time as you need.”
At her direction, Clem took the opportunity to take a look around the room, taking deep breaths in battling the time-machine-induced heaviness. Those stacks of books nearby, her subconscious relayed she remembered. From height to the colour of their covers. The same went for the floor in its lack of cleanliness. Then the same went for the graffitied poster of the headmaster.
One, two, three, four, five. Each hand had the correct amount of fingers and thumbs. Her reflexes were accurate, her clothes were accurate, everything compared to the last time she saw the room was completely accurate.
Words seemed stuck on her tongue as she opened her mouth, needing to be forced beyond this reality silencing her denials.
“I, uh… just want to know one thing for sure. So… Say this is actually real, and you’re actually real… Once we’re finished here, I’m definitely going back home… to Louis. Right?”
She received a reassuring smile. “Of course you will. I would never lie to you, Clementine.”
“And why should I trust you on that?”
The other Clem sighed. “Do you remember back at the Motor Inn, one of the very first days you returned there? You thought you hallucinated yourself stood next to Kenny. And that dream with your parents?”
Clementine glanced between both their eyes. The other Clementine then glanced between both of hers, giving the faintest of nods when they opened further until wide. “So… You’re trying to say that was you? Wai-wai-wait, so when you said earlier how it was great to see me again…”
“And let me tell you, it really is great to see you!”
“That was you? But how did you-?” She paused, trying to dig out the explanation from them that never came. “I mean, the first was a hallucination, and like I said, I know I went crazy a few times. The second, that was all a dream! It wasn’t real. None of this makes any sense.”
They moved to her side. “I think you’ll get it soon enough. Can you stand?”
They offered a hand. Clem felt herself leaning heavily on their arm, giving her counterpart a look signifying she wouldn’t be letting go. The goal they rotated to face: the large double doors at the other side of the room.
They asked, “Louis told you what he learned about that machine of yours, right? About the save files?”
“Uh, yeah,” she replied unconfidently. “I think it called our worlds ‘saves’, and we were rewinding to checkpoints in them. Or was it chapters? He was the expert but I think I got it.”
“Manipulating those machines… Manipulating our Save Files… That’s what made all this possible.” Her voice carried a mystique about it. “Throughout your stay at the motel and the journey afterwards, I was trying to find ways of communicating with you. That hallucination - as you call it - was my first.”
They gestured towards the door, the two rather steadily taking a slow pace.
The original Clementine let them continue. “It was really hard. I’d been trying to get something more than that since the day you ended up back home. My ideas never worked, and when they did, there were always, uh… interferences.”
“Wait.” Her voice picked up. “Like the dream I had after the blizzard? In the barn? I remember hearing a voice, and the banging on the walls!”
Her counterpart nodded. “Yep. Guilty.”
The two stopped in front reaching the doors. The Second Clem momentarily dropped her bright radiance, a look of seriousness overcoming her.
“I tried to help in whatever way I could. I was growing so worried I wouldn’t be able to do anything while you kept suffering, but with your help and one or two others, now it’s different. I don’t know how you interpreted the messages I passed through, but to be honest, I don’t care. The only thing that matters is you did. So now this cycle, this “fish trap” as you’d probably call it, can finally come to an end for so many more.”
The sound of heavy breathing broke Clementine 2 from their train of thought. “Hey, you okay?”
The hand clinging to their shoulder had twice the weight put on it, Clem struggling to simply walk off the effects. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Just trying to shake off this heavy feeling and take in everything you’re saying. Don’t know which is harder.”
A smirk stretched across her aide. The two silently agreed on a pause, giving Clem enough time to stand on her own two feet without support.
She eyed up this other self top to bottom, running over every lace of her old boots, to every button on her jacket. The lack of weight under her arm was now apparent, as if she were expecting to have been supported by a ghost, or rather, a hallucination. But of course, there had been weight, and she had leant on them.
This Clementine under watch raised a brow in amusement. “So, if you’re done, are you okay to carry on?”
“Um… yeah,” she agreed. “Let’s just take it slow.”
“Sure thing.”
They pushed the doors open, taking their first steps through the run-down hallways of the school.
“So, uh, other me … these instructions me and Lou pulled off,” Clem began, “They seemed like such random tasks… How did they help you? And you said someone else helped? You’re not referring to one of the other kids at the school, are you?”
“Heh. No,” they denied. “Well, maybe the kids at this school, anyways…”
Rays of warm summer’s light guided their walk beyond the music room.
The double doors leading to the outer yard seemed more imposing than ever - Clementine, who was mere steps away, could hear a plethora of voices from beyond the walls.
The other did not share her concerns, however. “Not only did you complete those tasks, but at the very end of it all, you had the faith and belief in yourself to create a perfect world. As perfect as we can get, anyway. One that you’d leave behind all for your friends.”
Pride glittered in their eyes. Their heads both followed the shouts and laughter punching through the door, the original Clementine’s eyes going a nervous wide in anticipation for what her counterpart had in store.
“That final time you used the time machine, that made it possible to broadcast a message across all of them linked to mine and your own. You weren’t the only one going through a horrible cycle, trust me! What I sent out today was an invitation.
What you might’ve already picked up on, is we're now able to stand in the same room together. No more need for ‘hallucinations’. At least whilst we’re here,” they laughed off, the slight hole in their plan not disrupting the persisting positive spirit.
“It’s still kinda a work in progress… But this time travel mess has caused us nothing but pain across so many saves, so now even if I can’t be there physically, I can communicate with others like us and make sure it doesn’t hurt another Clementine again.”
Clementine held a blocking hand out in front of her. “Hey, wait a second! You mean-”
She listened closely to the voices around the yard, then back to her excited clone.
“Everyone out there is another… me?!”
“You betcha!” she confirmed, loudly. “And get this: every single one of them is unique in some way. All of us throughout our saves made different choices, things that make us different from one another! Some even come from completely different places!”
Clementine, with utter bemusement to her, took a step back, a slight shake of her head in her speech. “Uh, no… I can’t believe all this. The whole save thing, that damn box… I mean, screw all that stuff, I’m still having a hard time accepting you standing in front of me… And now there’s even more of us? Clemen- or whatever I’m supposed to call you… Please . Tell me what’s going on here.”
“Pardon the pun, but what’s going on…” Their voice lowered. “...Is you need to see all of the people you’ve saved.”
Her clone approached once more, regaining that gentle hold of her hands. Their head angled down slightly, their eyes radiating the weight of a role far from the realms of her understanding.
“When you go back to your own world, it’ll just be you and Louis again. I’m sorry you couldn’t save AJ, and I’m sorry we couldn’t find a way to let you stay with Lee. The sacrifice you made meant putting yourself back in a school you’d rather just forget, but I wanted you to see the results. For those who needed it most.”
They looked down at Clem’s hands, their fingers taking interest in the various stains of dirt leftover from her days of walking. “It’s meant to be a safe space for all Clementines who’d been hurt like yourself, so if it ends up making you feel even the smallest bit better, then it’ll all have been worth it.”
Clementine remained silent. Her brow furrowed in trying to piece all the information together. It was too much; she hadn’t even expected to survive leaving her life in the hands of their broken time machine. But by this point, from when Louis first found it to the point of having other versions of herself standing beyond a door, she wasn’t that surprised anymore. And because she wasn’t surprised, she gave understanding it a go.
“Is… Is it really that big of a deal? What we did? We only went out of our way because we were so desperate. I just wanted things to be over…”
Only the muffled noise of the outside conversations played through the halls, the other Clem waiting for her to lift head from the floor. “It is, Clementine. You made it happen. Now… Are you ready to go out there?”
The hands she tried to retract were locked in place by her brighter self. They held their encouraging expression, Clem’s eyes snapping between it and the door as her heart rate suddenly picked up. “ W-Wait, you mean… go out and meet all those others? It, um… Sounds like there’s a lot. I-I don’t think I’m ready.”
They let go off her hand, Clem sighing in relief. “That’s okay. Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?”
Clementine gave a nervous laugh. “W-Well… They’re not, uh… Gonna treat me like a hero or anything, right? There’s not gonna be some big reception or party?”
The other Clem grinned. “C’mon, this is a place full of ‘yous’! Yeah, some are more outgoing than others but I guarantee you it’ll be fine. Besides, not everyone went through the same thing. One or two will probably be more focused on me, anyway, aha…”
The nerves they both now shared was a surprise. “Why? Do some of them not like you?”
The other Clem scratched her cheek. “Well, I don’t know about that…”
It seemed by asking about them, the minute of stalling Clementine was aiming for was to begin. She kept quiet as a further explanation was coming up.
“Uh, think about it like this. Some of them didn’t go through nearly as much trouble as you for kinda a simple reason. They didn’t use the time machine. At all. Either haven’t found it, or haven’t used it. So everything that happened to you because of it, for like half of them you can just wipe it off.”
She sighed, guilt settling into her face.
“So imagine you have no clue this stuff is even possible, and all of a sudden you’re plucked into another world where there’s only, you know, you everywhere.” Their scratching then moved to the back of their head, giving a goofy grin. “Probably scary, right? I might’ve jumped the gun a bit, aha…”
After a moment of silence, she continued. “Uh… anyways, there’s actually a different reason why some might not like me, and to be honest, I get it…”
Despite the disheartened look on her face, they still managed to maintain a weak smile.
“Really?” Clem asked. “Why?”
They pushed their gaze repeatedly away from her, flickering to and fro the muffled voices outside. “To help identify each other while we’re here, we started handing out nicknames. I got handed “Lucky”.
Her brow twitched hearing that word return. She couldn’t stave off the corner of her lip copying as it crept upward. “‘Lucky’, huh? T-That doesn’t sound so bad…”
To her relief, her counterpart bought it. “I know, but it doesn’t go over so well. The reason I got that name is because as more and more of us arrived, it became obvious I was the one who’d gone through the least amount of shit. In fact…”
She held her hands behind her back, not able to match Clem’s gaze. “The uh, only really bad thing that happened to me that you and I share… like the others outside… is that my parents and my Lee died too.” Clem held her breath in piecing together their background. “So much of the pain you guys went through… I didn’t.”
“You mean, you didn’t…” Clem interrupted to the shake of their head. “What about Kenny?”
“Left me at Wellington.”
“Katjaa?”
“Seperated.”
“Duck?”
“Same as Katjaa.”
“ Anyone we met at the cabin?!”
“Yeah, they just didn’t want to follow us north.”
“...”
“Fuck…” Clem concluded.
“Yeah… Well, Wellington did get attacked I guess,” they justified. “But I didn’t even get shot like some of us did when escaping. Few years of travelling alone later, and I ended up here.”
Clem felt her legs wanted to go limp as she stared endlessly into a random wall. She just wanted to fall. Fall endlessly knowing that out of all the chances to skip her most traumatic events, she believed Lucky to have missed all but one of them. “Holy shit, you didn’t even mention The New Frontier…”
They looked away, despondent. “Yeah… I understand if it makes you hate me. Just know I wanted to do this for you. As thanks.”
How conflicted such a backstory made her feel couldn’t be understated. A part of her could understand why some would hold hateful feelings towards her. Another wanted to avoid those types of thoughts that would lead to her very prevalent anger problems.
She took a moment to think. Folding her arms, she posed a question. “Everything you’re doing here, is it really to help all of us? You know, unluckier versions?”
A cautious, but confident look became of her. “Yeah. Where I didn’t suffer, I want everyone to have a chance of the same experience. I feel like it’s my duty. My mission, kinda.”
“Hm…”
Lucky waited on edge. Clementine closed her eyes, double, no, triple checking her breathing was in order before opening her mouth and making sure her head was crystal clear. “Well… While you must’ve had a really, really, really easy life up to this point, it sounds like you’ve been putting a lot of work in to make up for it, so…” She frowned, dissuading any negative thoughts. “You’re alright in my book.”
“...Really?”
All of the brightness she was capable of returned to shine again. “Oh thank God! Thanks! I don’t think I could’ve dealt with pissing off another one! Let’s move on, shall we?”
They eagerly gestured to the door, Clem again, throwing her arms up to slow them down.
She asked, “Woah, hang on. Some of us are seriously making your life difficult?”
“Oh don’t worry about that, come on!”
They grabbed one of her raised arms to drag her to the door. “Uh-”
“It’s only natural some wouldn’t be happy!” she reiterated. “That’s just how it is. Now, let me get you up to speed with a couple things. First: your nickname! What do you think it is?”
“Eh?” She gave Lucky a blank stare. “I have literally no idea.”
“I’ll give you a hint.” She held up a pointed finger. “You’ve already said it once while you’ve been here. And I picked it!”
Her blank stare became all the more blank. “You know how little that narrows it down, right?”
Lucky sighed, though remained positive. “Oh, fine… Your name is Hero! The one who indirectly saved us all!”
Clementine’s face pulled up in a cringe. “Oh… Great…”
Opposite to her unenthusiasm, Lucky patted a hand against her shoulder, saying, “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. Can’t change it now anyway, since everyone already knows you by it.”
She cringed harder. “Oh… GREAT… ”
Lucky laughed at her disgusted reaction, which itself didn’t help Hero warm up to the name. “Ah… You won’t be saying that when you hear what some have to say to you. But calling yourself ‘Clem’ might be trickier once we’re outside, so practise getting used to saying Hero!” Unsure if Lucky was even talking to her at that point, Hero just nodded and agreed.
“Huh? Wait, did I just-”
“Good! Now, listen up, okay? It’s serious.”
As if her confusion didn’t exist, she dropped all the humour, looking at Hero dead in the eye. “You’ll probably understand why, but don’t talk about AJ. It’s straight up forbidden. Don’t do it.”
Her shoulders tensed at the name. “So we don’t bring up any bad memories?”
“Exactly.”
She sighed, giving Lucky a regretful nod. “Yeah, that makes sense. Guessing everyone else knows not to?”
“Yep, especially the ones he survived with… or maybe, hasn’t died with yet,” she corrected. “Some haven’t made it that far. To the encounter you had with the raiders. That, or it never happened. That’s the biggest difference you’ll find out there. Sorry if this is hard to hear.”
Hero looked away. “I get it. Can we go now?”
Against her wishes, Lucky kept them to halt for a little while longer. “I really appreciate you understanding, Hero. And I really hope this place can make up for everything you went through.” She took hold of Hero’s hand, her confidence knocked at the stare she received back. “U-Uh… I didn’t push too much, did I? You okay?”
It was a great question after such a long journey. Was she okay? The one question her master plan hadn’t accounted for. “Just…” She waved a hand in the space between them, trying to distance herself from thoughts infected by her boy’s name. “Let’s keep to that rule, okay? I’ll be fine.”
Lucky beamed. “Awesome! You don’t know how relieved I am to not have horribly fucked this up.” Hero’s brow twitched. “U-uh, and with that, we’re done! So… Are you excited to meet your future friends?”
Hero looked back at her, her tongue sharp and ready to shoot down this string of positivity. It was becoming annoying, fast.
But why? Why was a smile so bright well-received on the faces of her friends, but frustrating on her own? As weary as she was, perhaps that smile could be hers, too. She’d sure as hell earned it.
Hero sighed. “I guess I’m ready?” Sighing didn’t cut it, apparently. “Okay… fine. How bad could it be?”
“Mhm!~” Lucky hummed. “That’s the spirit!” She grabbed Hero’s hand and held the door handle with the other, ushering her to do the same. “We’ll open on three.” Hero obliged. “One, two…”
“Three!”