Chapter Text
Clementine didn't like that Terric of York was with another woman. Two of them, in fact. Of course she had some recollection of her own species's culture and history. It may as well have been a poorly oratation of the Sparks Notes version of Earth for fifth graders, but Clementine understood enough these women were from some of the most romantic and beautiful countries in the world. They had to have been gorgeous and their languages were equally as rich and charming as the experiences they got to have with him. Experiences she'd never have or understand fully. She was definitely removed and...almost alien to her own species unable to relate tp plenty of standard moments. Siblings, skyward sights, retaining moments of contingent memories... Marriage... A family.
Anyone in any far reaches of human memory and universal history knew Brazilians were ascribed with being incredibly sexy and French women could make any man float through air, dammit! How was she supposed to measure to that even in their short duration of time in Jerusalem? Clementine knew she was beautiful and found heself less feeling in adequate for her beauty and power, buther inability to control her own power. The inability to have sustainable threads of events in her life. To share it with those around her. She would prefer it if she doesn't hurt them and destroy everything. Fuck!
All this time she expected him to wait for her. She didn't see it as a viable, realistic option, but the redhead found her fire burning in her chest. Which was stupid! Considering Clementine saw herself as a danger. The danger. Removing herself from his life to let him be happy was her own decision. It was the right and only position to take. She didn't exactly intend to go back, but a part of her wanted to hold out hope for possibilities. Maybe that was ger fault too. A nice fantasy that one day maybe...
Maybe a part of her relied on something equally hopeless. He was the only person she could really allow herself to fall for. Hopping frantically about time periods and various places in those periods, it was the one of few places she felt really safe; at home— with Terric. She just couldn't trust herself to be able to do the same for him. Even if she finally started to feel like whatever her current self started to mold into was working towards something viable. She couldn't allow herself to do it. Knowing he was alive and well was great, but it stilk irked her that it irked her missing out on what plans they had. Like those other women.
And now? It wasn't like she could think too deeply in the meantime, bouncing back to and fro from accomplishment to accomplishment trying to chase after belonging. Stillness. Ease. It wasn't fair that even now, it all boils over to the surface like a pot of boiling water. Terric being the ceramic holder beside the stove, holding the stirring utensil to keep the bubbles from overflowing. She just had to see him again then, didn't she? Even now it hurt her chest. All of what was shoved down, bottled emotions brimming like sodapop and mints. Pushing the fizz against the lips of a bottle with now stickly soda hands.
She shouldn't be so fixated on it, his devotion towards her didn't have to last seven hundred years the way she would assume a lovesick man from distant century to hold. She didn't even know he would survive more than seventy years! It was her fuck up that he lasted so many unnatural lives. As much as she didn't want to lose anyone she loved, that was torture. They held plans and shared love, but he wasn't and shouldn't be obligated to only her memory and her love. Despite telling her terrible feelings all of this, Terric still held her in his memory. There was proof he still cherished her memory.
Immortalizing it in paint and oils and canvases. There was proof of existing in his mind and heart and history. That should be enough for Clementine, but she still can't help the aching sensation. Wishing it had belonged to her instead of what had taken course. Eventually she would have wanted those moments to build into memories to build into families. However normal it could be to stay frozen, fixed materially but still somehow bound to drift through history for Terric. What a shitty fate to accidentally grant someone...
Watching it all go by and become someone, something at times unrecognizable. To himself most of all.
It really wasn't fair but why did she still feel this lingering grudge? She didn't resent him but these dead women. Thus resenting herself. Did she hold it all against herself in the end? Some parts of her said yes, but she still somehow wanted to place the blame on these, no doubt, beautiful bones that lay to rest. God, she felt terrible that she was so jealous that those kids— now long gone still made her feel a sense of sick dread...
Clementine's feelings always ran circles around her, wound her up into tight confusing knots and made her feel sick. Maybe that's what got her in all this mess. Terrible emotions. Still her mind raced.
Did Terric have grandchildren too? He had to have great grandchildren.
It wasn't fair that none of them could be hers. A sense of normalcy? Why couldn't they be hers?
Splitting aestroids that splintered people's perceptions of their realities. Flicking at the seams of reality itself to try and fix and toil and have those around her agree with her. Confusing what little friends she does have in Mount Hood's cozy shadows.
And Frank.
Rearranging Frank and time around him to undo her damage. The damage she inflicted upon his existence and his poor entrails...
No.
No, no.
Why did that have to be her normalcy? It wasn't normal. Clementine wishes she could make it all stop. These ugly thoughts.
Clementine couldn't allow herself to revisit this. This moment with Frank. She can't continue to look her friend in the eye with such an awful, lingering expression everyday. Like her knitted brows were hiding the, frankly, melodrama. Every blink was an apology for making his insides look like the time Caspar attempted reheating lasgana during a break in the DMV office and sighing out expletives on the phone with his wife. Trying desparately to not see the anomaly of a woman reappear into his life. It made her shudder...
Herself, not Caspar.
For all these terrible thoughts, she had odd reality bending powers and what she thought could all too easily be manifested. Once again, there are places she can't allow her mind to go. It was best to keep her focus. She couldn't afford to let her mind go adrift, even if her relationship with her mind and ability sated softer these days. Stiller than before, but this was.
This was her own mind she had to deal with.
Besides, Ava had some very valuable ideas and thoughts on where to direct her imagination. They helped. It made her understand this Hashem more even though she wasn't religious. At any point she could maintain the universe in these limbo states, setting it back on track with careful attention, tender care towards the gentle temperance she had to monitor. Not quite holding a blank whiteboard, but definitely something to allow its own stasis so she didn't always have to rely on her own control. Leif would probably compare it to an Etch-A-Sketch. Trying to enjoy the process and pick away a decent picture without vigorously shaking out of frustration to get it right this time. It would probably create another weird tangle of time if she had entertained reverting back on what she learned.
Clementine had no idea how such a being could even be allowed that much sickening control over something so... Precious. That's why she needed to hold it gingerly in her fingertips like her own flesh rather than a plastic, awkward toy that'll break with her meddling. Fiddling. It was, in some way, her own. In a nontraditional sense, she has taken part in the process of creation even if she can't have that in a more. Reasonable way.
And for some reason this creative process was thrusted upon her possession.
And Clementine had to monitor her own emotions, her own control. Her own possessiveness.
She hated to admit it, but that's what it felt like with Terric. A small part of her wanted it to be just them. Not the only people in the universe, not hers for all time, but she wanted him to be hers and only hers. It was a sickening sunken feeling in the pit of her stomach. Her skin crawls. Addressing this jealousy didn't really help. It just made her worry about what her unconscious control could manipulate. Where it would lead everything. It wasn't like she had the luxury nor the liberty to just, sardonically drift into these sick hypotheticals!
Her possible thoughts could create very concrete, very real rewriting realities and she didn't need to hold the responsiblity of more peril. The isolation was enough.
None of that was really what she wanted but she could will it to happen and unravel all of what she's worked so hard to keep in balance.
The only thing Clementine could really do now was remember. What she had, what she could have had, and most importantly what she cared about now. It was all that she had and everything she could manage.
Clementine had a collection of pens of all kinds. A package she got from her friends before being sent off on her own to make her own experiences. To make her own life and bask in the world she loves so much. A stack of envelopes, stamps, and stupid fountain pens that Caspar sent her off with.
A little gift from a municipal pencil pusher who has hoarded way too much pocketed stationary to disperse notes across the universe. It'd be difficult to send snail mail through space but he didn't think it'd be needed, though still welcomed. If anyone could manage it, it'd be Clementine.
Clementine had gotten into the habit of collecting postcards and writing pieces and brief thoughts that came to mind while she traveled from place to place. Bouncing from train to boat to plane when she felt like it. Never too far from her cozy nook in the shadows of Mount Hood.