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When Clementine is 9, she kills Lee and Omid. If Lee could talk to her, he’d say she’s not the reason he died. That’s what Christa always says. But that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t think it in his head. Either way, he can’t think at all anymore, there’s a bullet in his brain that Clementine fired. She lets herself believe Christa though, and she distracts herself with Omid’s jokes.
When Omid dies, Christa has no comfort to offer her. She doesn’t say anything but her sharp stare pins Clem down, saying you did this, you did it again , and Clementine has no choice but to stand there and watch the consequences of another mess she caused.
When Clementine is 10, she keeps having this one nightmare. She’s locked in that room, the one she’d been in for hours while the man who’d taken her talked to… someone. She hears a door open, and instinctively she knows Lee is here for her. She’s so, so scared but Lee makes her feel brave and it motivates her to get out. Once she sneaks into the other room, Lee speaks.
“Keep her. I don’t want her back.” His voice is cold, unaffected. “Everyone’s gone ‘cause of her.”
Then she finally looks at him, sitting in that hotel armchair. His skin is unnaturally pale and grey, and she just knows if she touched him, he’d be stone cold. His arm doesn’t look like it was cut, more like ripped off. Bone and muscle stick out further than his skin and create a jagged edge that is completely uncovered by any type of bandage. There’s no emotion on his face when he finally sees her, not even anger.
He lets out a growl, utterly inhuman, and shambles towards her as her back hits a wall. The dream always ends with her shooting him, or him grabbing her with superhuman strength and ripping apart her neck.
Before, she would always wake up to Omid and Christa watching over her. Omid would scavenge kids’ books so they could read them to her when she woke up in the middle of the night. It reminded her of Lee, back in the motor inn. Now though, Christa sits on a chair at the other end of the room and says nothing.
(They’re holed up in an empty house because it’s snowing outside. Christa’s not happy about it, but Clem doesn’t think there’s anything she’s happy about anymore. Personally, she just likes getting to sleep on a couch for once.)
Clem doesn’t know if she’s meant to believe Christa can’t hear her crying, or if she’s meant to understand she’s not worth the effort anymore. Clementine doesn’t blame her though. If there was a living person she could blame for Lee, Kenny and Ben all dying she would hate them. Maybe she already does.
She opens her backpack and takes out her photo of Lee. Without it it’s hard to remember what he really looked like, how nice he was and how safe he felt, when the twisted version of him is what her brain creates. It’s weird seeing him look so at peace. He’s wearing a white shirt that undoubtedly would’ve gone grimy with dirt and walker blood if he’d had it in the time she knew him.
It’s nice thinking that he had lived a whole life in the normal world before everything went wrong, where he never had to think about dead people eating him. The one good thing she could take from his death, even though she could never say it out loud, was that the world with walkers had just been a horrible, scary three months at the end of his life. It’s the same with her parents, they probably hadn’t lived long enough to be changed by everything. Maybe the three of them are at more peace than everyone alive. Or maybe that’s a selfish thought she uses to feel better about being the reason her friend died.
The walkers are never going away though. One day she is going to realise she’s lived longer with them than without, and her parents’ house in Georgia, school, feeling safe will all be from before , an unreachable dream that feels less and less real every day. That’s how it already feels. But Lee died for her, and not trying to live would mean throwing that away, so she will. She’ll have to try even if everyone dies around her.
“Clementine, go to sleep. I can hear you thinking from over here.”
Christa’s harsh voice cuts through Clem’s thoughts and makes her jump.
“Do you… want to stay on the couch with me? It’s probably comfier.”
Clementine’s soft, hesitant voice fills the room. Christa’s sitting on what looks like a hard dining room chair, and it’s like she’s chosen the seat with the most physical distance from where Clementine is. It goes unsaid that she knows why Christa is keeping her distance, why she always keeps her distance. She watches Christa stiffen at her words before rolling her eyes and walking out, ignoring her. For all Clem knows, that’s Christa’s last straw and she’s deciding to leave her for good. Maybe she’d be happier that way, not having to stay because of a promise she made to Lee months and months ago. But Christa’s taught Clem almost everything she knows, regardless of if she hates her, and selfishly Clem doesn’t think she’d survive on her own.
She suddenly has the urge to run after Christa and shout at her, I know I killed Omid and your baby I know I ruin everything I’m sorry just look at me speak to me say something please. Maybe Christa would slap her or shout at her but at least she’d react.
Instead she lies back down on the couch, lying on her side so she can watch the snowfall outside. When she wakes up, Christa is still there and they trudge their way up north again, with all that’s left unsaid between them.
When Clementine is 10, she has a third life on her conscience but she doesn’t let herself think about it much.
When Clementine is 11, she begs, “Christa, talk to me,” and it’s the closest she gets to laying all her feelings out. Christa tells the bandits that she’s alone to protect her, but Clem doesn’t help her back, she sneaks away. She feels bad about it afterwards, chilled to the bone from the river, but she doesn’t know it’s the last time they will ever see each other.
Sarah wants to be friends with her and the best Clementine can give her is an “Eventually.” She doesn’t know why it’s so hard, why she can’t even lie to the girl just to get medical supplies and leave after patching herself up. Maybe she’s too scared, knowing that all her friends fall into a curse of dying because of her, for her. She knows that that’s not the type of friend Sarah means, but there isn’t much distinction in her life. Really, she doesn’t know this girl well enough to be scared for her or feel bad for not being her friend. Her heart hurts a bit anyway when Sarah still gets her the hydrogen peroxide, which Clem doesn’t think she’d do for someone who so boldly rejected her friendship.
(Alvin helps her too but she uses her puppy-dog eyes and makes herself cry, and just about every adult falls for that. Even Lee had.)
When Clementine sneaks into the bathroom, it’s the first time she sees her reflection in a long time. Sarah thought they were the same age, and Clem thinks it’s obvious they’re not from the way Sarah towers over her, but apparently she looks older than she is. Looking at herself now, she sort of understands. Her once round cheeks have sunk into her face, and her cheekbones stick out. She sees herself but not the girl Lee protected.
A few days later, she isn’t really sure how she’s ended up in this group, a group willing to let a little girl die in a shed and one that collectively can’t tell the difference between a dog bite and a ‘lurker’’s. Pete was nice but Pete’s dead. Sarah’s nice and still trying to be her friend, but she’s too… different from her. From the way Carlos talks, Sarah is different from everyone but that’s not the problem. Duck was a bit like that too, and he and Clementine were friends. But then Duck died and she’d had to grow up. So maybe she’s the problem, the one that can relate to adults but not someone almost her own age. She still thinks Sarah should be less sheltered but the one time she’d said it to Carlos he yelled at her. She reminds herself: she doesn’t know this girl well enough to be scared for her.
Luke is the nicest, the only one who shows genuine interest in her like Lee once had. The first time they talk properly, she tells him, “Sometimes people die because of me,” but he still chooses to stay with her. Maybe he just doesn’t believe it.
“Are you still mad at Rebecca?” he asks quietly as they walk up the forest path. Rebecca doesn’t hear, at the back of the line with Alvin, but the question is so out of the blue that Clem stares at him with wide eyes.
“No,” she says slowly. She doesn’t particularly like her, but Rebecca had apologised and stopped being mean, even after what Clem had said to her. Though now that she thinks about it, maybe she had actually taken Clem’s advice and thought about being nicer to her.
“Hey, if you held a grudge I wouldn’t blame you,” Luke says, looking down at her. “I know the way she treated you was rough.”
“I don’t… hold a grudge,” Clementine replies, copying Luke’s speech. “Why would I? Nick tried to kill me and I forgave him.” She shrugs like it’s the simplest thing in the world. Nick’s also trailing at the back, his head down.
“He didn’t- alright, I get what you mean,” Luke concedes. “But Rebecca and I noticed you’ve been kinda, I don’t know, skittish around her. I mean, I’m sure it’s just you being you and her being her, but…”
Clementine almost asks what you being you means, but thinks better of it and realises what he’s actually saying.
“I’m not scared of Rebecca,” she answers, offended that it was even a question.
“Hey, I never said that.” He puts his hands up in response to her glare. “But you just seem kinda uncomfortable around her sometimes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like that time she let Sarah feel the baby kick, you looked like you were gonna run away.”
Clem racks her brain. If this did happen, she just can't remember.
“My friend Christa had a baby,” she says, unsure why it’s the first thing that comes up in her mind.
“Ah,” Luke says as if it's all the answer he needs.
“It was hard looking after it… I think.”
She remembers her and Christa had looked for baby supplies for weeks, and had barely found anything. She doesn’t know if the group she’s with have anything, or a plan for when the baby comes. Clem likes these people, more than she probably should, but the idea of them with a newborn baby worries her.
“You think?” Luke asks.
Clem shrugs. Truthfully she doesn’t remember all that well, which is probably a bad sign considering it was only some months ago. In her mind, there’s a before where Christa’s pregnant and an after where she’s not and can barely look at her.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Luke says quickly after taking a glance at her face.
“You guys will be fine. You have a doctor.” She lifts her voice in an attempt at being optimistic. “You know, unless the baby ever gets bitten by a dog,” she jokes, and Carlos grumbles behind her.
Luke smirks. “Yeah, yeah.”
So much happens in just a few days. She meets people like Walter and Reggie, who are nice and get murdered in front of her. Carver finds them and he gets murdered in front of her too.
She never knew Kenny that well before. He’d sit and watch over her and Duck sometimes but she never went out of her way to talk to him like Lee or Katjaa. Seeing him now though, nostalgia overtakes her and they hug like they’re old friends. She likes him a lot more now, even if the others, even Sarita, don’t know what to make of him. He is different now, she can see how his loss has marked him, but it gives her a sense of kinship. Katjaa wouldn’t recognise Kenny right now, but Lee wouldn’t recognise her either. Clementine tries not to think about that when she watches him smash Carver’s face in.
Jane doesn’t do groups, she survives on her own. The others find her coldness off putting but Clementine looks at her and sees a version of herself, what she could be when she grows up. Jane sees it too which is why she teaches Clementine new things, says you’re not like the rest of them , and you can make it on your own . So many people have died since she found Luke and the others, she’s been dragged into hell because she joined a group running from their past. The idea that if she really wants, she can just leave, run south all the way back to Georgia and forget about the baby and Wellington and Carver, feels freeing. But she wouldn’t. She’s like Jane but not enough to take the medicine from Arvo, or to leave Sarah behind in the trailer park.
When Sarah asks why she saved her, Clem says, “Because we’re friends,” and Sarah says, “No, we’re not.” Because Clementine had rejected her, told herself she shouldn’t care about her safety, and now somehow she’s the one that has to fight for her because Luke and Jane are both willing to let her die.
“I used to think that all the horror hadn’t gotten to you. But you watched your friend murder Carver. Not just kill him but… Clem, you didn’t even blink.”
Clementine has nothing to say to Luke after that. What can she say? She had watched Kenny kill Carver, slowly and painfully, and Carver had been happy about it because he was right, she was the same as him.
You go with that feeling you’ve got, Clementine. It’s what makes you stronger than the others.
If things start heading south, don’t let them drag you down with you. You don’t owe them anything.
Jane and Carver’s words mix in her head once everything settles down and she has time to think. She doesn’t think the two of them are the same, but maybe she’s a bit of both of them. She’s a bit of Luke too, the way he cares about family, and a bit of Kenny, still going on after everything he’s lost. She can put all 4 of them in separate boxes in her head, Carver labelled bad and Luke labelled good , so what does it mean that she can’t decide on herself? She left Christa with the bandits but she saved Sarah when no one else would. She forgave Nick for almost shooting her but she blackmailed Rebecca about the father of her baby. She wanted to take Arvo’s medicine but she couldn’t make herself do it. She tried to save Sarita and killed her instead. She’s the reason Lee got bitten but she put him out of his misery, even though it killed her inside. Is she good, is she bad, is she good pretending to be bad, is she bad trying to be good? Maybe this is how Lee felt back then, but she can’t exactly ask him.
“You’re doing it again. That thousand-yard stare.” Rebecca’s tired voice interrupts the silence. “What’re you thinking about?” Her baby is finally asleep in her arms, along with everyone else except Kenny, and Clementine is hesitant to speak. “Distract me. Please,” Rebecca insists.
It’s been almost a week and she hasn’t moved from her place on the gift shop floor, wrapped up in the jacket Mike doesn’t like because apparently it belonged to the Confederates. Her skin’s only lost more colour in the last few days, and it’s weird seeing someone who seemed so sure of herself, even through being heavily pregnant in the apocalypse, seem so genuinely exhausted and weak. It scares Clementine to think of when they will inevitably have to travel, but she knows Rebecca will never admit that she needs so much more rest, even though it’s the one thing that could make Kenny slow down.
“I’m sorry about what I said.” Rebecca frowns in confusion and Clem continues, “When we met. When I asked whose baby it was.”
Rebecca’s sudden laughter turns into quiet coughs, and Clementine doesn’t get what’s so funny.
“I forgot you did that. God, that feels so long ago now. And it was just, what, two weeks ago?” She sighs, looking down at the baby and back at Clem. “I wish I hadn’t talked to you the way I did. I was just scared. But if I was your age, and someone gave me that much shit, I probably would’ve said a lot worse.”
“You’re nicer now,” Clem says, sitting cross-legged next to her. “I thought you were mean back then, but… I don’t anymore.” She probably shouldn’t be calling Rebecca mean, but it’s not a secret to either of them that they both used to hate each other.
“Back then, I didn’t know what to make of you. I don’t think any of us did. You were so…”
“So?”
“You were sassy as hell. The only person you liked was Luke and you still didn’t let up on him.” A smile plays at Rebecca’s lips as if it’s some nostalgic memory.
“Did you think I was bad? Back then?” Tell me if I’m a good person or not seems like a big question for someone who’s probably too tired to put thoughts together.
“I thought you talked a lot of shit. But you were tough as hell too. Stitching up your arm like that, I couldn’t have done that at your age. Hell, I couldn’t have done it at mine.” She leans back then, her eyes struggling to stay open. “You’re a good kid, Clementine.”
“You’re gonna be a good mom,” Clementine says. She stays sitting next to Rebecca even when she falls asleep. For some reason this feels like a goodbye. Maybe she’s just tuned into these things now.
A few days later she realises. She let Arvo go before and he comes back to attack them anyway. She saved Sarah and the walkers came back for her on the observation deck. Rebecca thinks she’s a ‘good kid’ and she has to shoot her in the head before she turns. She might be a bad person or a good one, but it doesn’t matter because nothing would change either way.
Kenny spirals. Luke drowns. Arvo shoots her in the shoulder.
(Between Luke and Arvo, she watches Kenny work on the truck, uncontained anger simmering on the surface. There’s a tightness in her chest for reasons she doesn’t know. What she does know is: Luke is dead and whatever happens next from here on out is set in stone. She catches a glimpse of herself in the vehicle’s rear view mirror and thinks back to the cabin. After everything that’s happened, how old does she look now?)
She bleeds out and dreams of Lee, but for once, it’s a nice dream. Sitting with him in the RV is the safest she’s felt in a long time. If she could sleep forever and stay in this moment she probably would.
Then she wakes up and her gun trembles in her hand as she watches as Kenny pins Jane down, the knife edging closer to her chest as she tries to push him away. She looks away and hears the dull noise of the blade sinking into her flesh.
It’s ironic, the one person Jane, Luke, even Mike and Bonnie, tried to get her away from, is the only person alive and by her side in the end. She can’t leave him, even when Wellington is what she and him have both been searching for for years, even when Kenny begs and she knows AJ would be safer there.
Maybe that’s the type of person she is. She likes the idea of being free, alone, and knows she could make it that way, but she isn’t strong enough to leave. People have been taken from her, so many people, and she used to think it gets easier every time but maybe it doesn’t. When someone is fully gone, she has no choice but to accept it, but when they’re still here she clings. Because every time she thinks it might be different.
She clung to Sarah, a girl who decidedly wasn’t her friend, and begged her to start trying for her. She clings to Kenny, someone she didn’t even like that much when she was younger, even after Jane basically kills herself to show Clem the person he really is - angry, uncontrollable and murderous. Clementine sees it, sometimes, but she likes Kenny and she doesn’t want to be alone. Everyone else was stolen from her grasp but Kenny is here, alive. She wants to hold onto him, is that so wrong?
“Come on. We’re leaving,” she says. Tears are staining her face, and Kenny’s, but she hasn’t felt lighter since Lee died, even with the baby heavy in her arms.