Chapter 15:
Clementine was not a complainer.
She'd established that early, before the outbreak, before everything. She was the kind of person who absorbed things quietly and dealt with them internally, which her mother had called resilience and her father had called stubbornness, and which was probably both.
But Clark Rogers was testing that.
Not right now, specifically.
Right now, he was asleep, which meant he wasn't doing anything to test anything, except existing with a fever that had broken two days ago and come back softer this morning, his breathing shallow but steadier than it had been. She wrung out the cloth in the bowl of water on the nightstand, lukewarm now, she'd need to swap it soon, and folded it and pressed it to his forehead with the practiced of someone who had been doing this for two days and had gotten good at it.
He didn't stir. He'd stopped startling at her touch sometime yesterday afternoon, which Carley had told her was a good sign. Without telling her why that was a good thing. But she could imagine it as Lee had told her tidbit of information about him.
The complaining she was doing was internal, and it was specifically targeted, and it had been building for approximately two weeks now.
Clark Rogers, the fool.
She'd hated him first. That was the honest version, and Clementine had always preferred the honest version, even when it wasn't flattering. She'd hated him before she'd met him properly, which was maybe unfair, but feelings weren't particularly interested in being fair.
It was because of Carley.
Carley, whom they had found in the first week of everything falling apart, when Lee was trying his best and his best was considerable and still left gaps that a panicked and scared seventeen-year-old girl fell into at two in the morning.
Carley, who had let her sleep in her bed without making it a conversation, who had given Lee her gun so he could show her how to load and unload a pistol with the calm efficiency of someone teaching a life skill rather than a weapon skill.
Carley, who smelled like woodsmoke and something else and, faintly and increasingly faintly, like the shampoo she'd had before everything ran out.
Carley, who had gone into a stripped apartment in Macon with Lee and come out carrying a boy she didn't know, a boy who was a stranger, a boy who had then woken up and pointed a gun at her.
Clementine had watched from above. She'd been in Carley's room. She'd had a very clear sightline.
The boy had used Carley as a shield.
She'd decided right then, before she even knew his name, that she didn't like him, no matter how much Carley told her that it was a misunderstanding.
Then she'd seen Carley's face when he came back through the gate, the open relief of it, unguarded in a way Carley almost never was after he left, and something complicated had happened in Clementine's chest that she also hadn't examined too closely.
She wrung out the cloth again. He shifted slightly, a small movement, his face tightening around the eyes and then smoothing out. She watched it happen and waited, but he settled back into sleep without surfacing.
The third time she'd seen Clark Rogers, he'd walked through the parking lot with enough food to change the arithmetic of their survival.
Her opinion had shifted approximately two degrees in a direction she hadn't chosen.
It had kept shifting, in increments she hadn't chosen either, the same way things happened when you weren't paying attention and then suddenly were.
He wasn't what she'd expected. She'd expected someone who took up space loudly, because loud people were usually the ones who survived in her experience and took charge, such as Lilly, Kenny, and even Lee. They didn't budge an inch and didn't let anyone go against them if there was something they needed to defend.
They convinced other people to clear their path through sheer volume.
Clark Rogers was the opposite. He was quiet in a way that wasn't passive but deliberate, the kind of quiet that had eyes behind it, watching everything. He chose corners and edges. He positioned himself with his back to the wall. He sat at the outermost point of every group gathering, close enough to respond if something happened, far enough that he could move first if it did.
She'd called it paranoid, internally, for about a week.
Then there had been the Monopoly game.
She'd sat down at that table ready to learn a game and leave. Ben had explained the rules with more patience than the situation required, and the boy who never said anything unnecessary had said nothing throughout the explanation except to correct one rule Ben got slightly wrong, quietly and without making it a correction.
And then he'd played like he was dismantling a building with a boyish grin on his face, and her heart raced.
She'd watched him do it to Duck first, then Ben, then Mark, Carley, and Lee in the rematch.
It was systematic, unhurried.
The Cheshire grin appeared only at the exact moment when the other person realized they'd already lost. She'd seen that grin when it was aimed at her, and her first reaction had been irritation, and her second, which arrived before the irritation had finished, had been something else entirely.
'Cute.'
She'd been thinking about the rematch before she went to sleep that night, tossing and turning every few minutes as she remembered the details of their first game.
She'd asked Ben if they could play again.
Ben had looked at her like she'd suggested something mildly dangerous.
The shoulder lean was a bit accidental. She had been tired from playing the same game for hours, and on top of that, she hadn't slept well the previous night. And by the time she'd picked up on it, she also picked up on him being extremely still, and a wicked idea came to mind.
She might not win the board game, but she'd win this way…
Maybe the third time, he'd be too distracted to win the game, and she'd swipe him off his feet and get her revenge. And in matter of moments, that were less than seconds, she leaned just a little. Not due to some scheme, but her leaning on him felt so right and comfortable.
So much so that she wanted him to stop being a statue and lean on her as well. To wrap his arm around her shoulder, so she could put her head on his.
He didn't put his arm around her.
She'd given him every opportunity. She'd leaned, she'd stayed leaned, she'd made it as clear as she could without actually saying the words, which she wasn't going to say because that wasn't how this worked and also because she had some dignity left.
He'd sat there like a statue and didn't move, as if his brain had stopped working.
She'd straightened up and picked up the thread of whatever Ben had been saying and pretended the whole thing hadn't happened, because that was the only reasonable response to being completely ignored by someone who was supposedly perceptive enough to notice a ghoul's footstep pattern from forty meters out.
She'd thought about it afterward, in her room, wondering what if- What if she wasn't clear enough. What if she should have went ahead and rested her head on his shoulder, what if-
No.
The conclusion she'd landed on was that she hadn't miscalculated. The signals- after that day- had been clear. She'd confirmed it accidentally a few days later when she'd caught the look on Ben's face from the corner of her eye- that expression of someone watching something happen that they'd rather wasn't happening- and realized that at least one other person in the parking lot had understood exactly what she wanted from Clark Rogers.
Which meant Clark hadn't missed it.
Which meant he'd just... not responded.
Or he was denser than a boulder.
Then Mr. Hissypaws had appeared.
She'd come out of her room on a Tuesday morning, or what she thought was Tuesday, and there he was. A small black cat, curled into a tight comma in a patch of early sun on the walkway outside the second door from the end. His tail was curled around his paws. His eyes, when he'd opened them, were the particular green of something growing in deep shade, bright and intelligent in a way that made her stop walking.
She'd crouched down slowly and said something to him in the low voice she used for things she didn't want to startle.
He'd hissed.
The name had arrived immediately and completely, the way the best names did. Mr. Hissypaws. There was no other option.
She'd stayed anyway.
He'd hissed again, with more conviction, and his tail had done a slow, irritated sweep across the walkway that she found inexplicably charming.
"You're so cute," she'd told him, because he was, even hissing, even with the tail, even with the expression of a cat who had decided he wanted absolutely nothing to do with her and was waiting for her to acknowledge that.
His eyes were the same green as Clark's.
She'd noticed that immediately and then put it aside because that was a ridiculous thing to notice, and she wasn't going to be the kind of person who projected a crush onto a stray cat.
He'd bolted before she could reach out to him. Four paws finding the railing, dropping to the parking lot below, and then gone, and she'd stood on the walkway for a moment feeling the particular deflation of something unexpectedly lovely being taken away.
Kenny had suggested grilling him.
She'd said something to Kenny that she wasn't entirely proud of but stood behind.
The second morning, Mr. Hissypaws was back in the same spot. Same sun patch. Same coiled position. Same green eyes that opened when she got close, watching her with an attention that didn't feel like a stray cat's attention, but she wasn't going to examine that.
She'd sat down cross-legged at a distance she'd calculated was non-threatening, and she hadn't reached for him, and she hadn't made sudden movements, and after a moment his tail had done something different- not the irritated sweep but a slow, curious curl- and she'd watched it and felt something warm settle in her chest that had nothing to do with the sun.
They'd sat like that for ten minutes.
He'd watched her the whole time with those green eyes that were too intelligent for a cat, too present, too specific, and she'd watched him back, and it had been oddly comfortable in a way she hadn't had with another living thing in a while, not since before all of this.
Katjaa had called her name. She'd stood, and when she came back, he was gone.
Clark had appeared from his room not long after, and her heart had done the funny thing it did these days whenever she looked at him, and she'd registered the green of his eyes, and she'd looked away before she could examine why that had made her feel two things at once.
Now she wrung out the cloth again and pressed it to his forehead, and his breathing shifted for a moment, a deep inhale and then a slow exhale, and then settled back to the shallow rhythm it had been holding for two days.
The funny thing was, the crush was gone.
Not what she felt, because what she felt was still there, larger than the crush had been and considerably less manageable. But the fluttery, uncertain, what-do-I-do-with-my-hands feeling of a crush had resolved into something steadier somewhere between the first day she'd sat by this bed and now. Something that didn't flutter. Something that just... stayed.
She wasn't sure yet what to call that.
She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead the way Carley had taught her, checking the temperature against her own skin. Still warm. Still not as hot as it had been. She picked up the water bottle from the nightstand and waited.
His eyes opened.
Not all the way. Halfway, the slow, reluctant surface of someone whose body had decided waking up was a reasonable option but hadn't committed to it yet. His gaze went to the ceiling first, then to the window, then to her.
He blinked.
"Hey," she said.
He looked at her for a moment with the expression of someone who was assembling information and taking their time about it. She unconsciously ran her hand through his forehead and then his hair, which he immediately answered by enjoying her touch.
Wanting to lean on it, before she leaned back into the chair and away from him.
"Still here," he said. His voice was rough from sleep and disuse, and the observation landed somewhere between a question and something else she wasn't going to examine.
"Still here," she confirmed, and held out the water bottle. "Slowly."
He took it from her, and she watched his hands- steadier today than yesterday- and let him drink at his own pace without hovering, because she'd learned on the first day that hovering made him tense and tense made everything worse. She just sat in the chair and kept her eyes on his face
When he handed the bottle back, their fingers overlapped for a moment on the plastic.
She took it and set it on the nightstand.
"How long was I out?" he asked.
"Not long, maybe three hours now," she said, turning to look at the watch on the nightstand. 10:32 AM.
He looked at her. His eyes, in the morning light coming through the gap in the curtains, were the same green as Mr. Hissypaws, and she was absolutely not going to think about that right now, even though she really missed the cat.
"You didn't have to do that," he said.
"I know." She picked up the cloth and wrung it out again, giving her hands something to do. "I wanted to."
He stayed quiet for a moment, and she let him, because she'd learned in two days that Clark Rogers processed things at his own speed and interrupting it never helped.
For a brief moment, there was quietness between them.
"Where's your hat?" He asked, and Clementine couldn't help the involuntary smile for noticing it and then frowned for losing her hat. She shook her head, "I misplaced it."
"Oh…" He nodded, as best as he could, and then silence once more. A comfortable silence.
"Thank you," he said, finally. And it came out the same way it always did when he said it- stripped, a little graceless, like gratitude was something he hadn't gotten enough practice with.
She nodded once and pressed the fresh cloth to his forehead. If her thumb wiggled and patted his head, well, no one said anything about that.
He closed his eyes.
She sat back in the chair and watched him breathe, in and out, steadier than yesterday, and let the afternoon light do what it was doing, and didn't say anything else because there wasn't anything else that needed saying right now.
She took this time to find the word for what she was feeling.
…
…
…
To some or most, they would look at Kenny and say that he was a prideful and stubborn man who didn't know when to quit. Kenny would agree. They'd say he runs on pride and ego, and it was his way or the highway. And Kenny would disagree.
No, Kenny runs on his care for his family. For his wife, Katjaa, who gave him a beautiful and energetic boy and took care of both of them. For his son, Kenny Jr, who gave him hope and strength to continue, to do whatever it takes to protect him and his wife.
No matter what.
He'd kill anyone, without question, if it meant he had to protect his family. He'd sacrifice himself and his humanity, if he had to, to keep them safe. They might get mad at him or even be against him. But at the end of the day, they'd be alive to do all of that and more.
Ever since the outbreak, he'd been more scared than he ever was in his entire life. More scared than when his father would discipline him the way he'd never discipline his son, more scared than when he had to ask his wife to go out with him. More scared than when he had to ask her to marry him, and more scared than when he found out he was going to be a father.
The outbreak had scared him more than anything in his life.
Because there were now thousands of different ways his family could be destroyed. From just one bite to the most basic illness taking over them, and then dying. The less said about the people who survived, the better.
He decided that he would take his family to his fishing boat and get away from land. He'd survive with them out in the water. They'd survive on fishing and clean water from the boat until the authorities got everything under control.
When they met Lee and Clementine- he had mistaken her for his daughter- and the man saved his son from the walker. Kenny decided to offer him and her a place on his boat. And then, they met others.
Carley was a good and smart woman. A sharpshooter who never missed, and most importantly, she was gentle with his son and Clementine. She helped when she could, when she didn't need to. She could look after herself alone, and Kenny wouldn't have thought wrong of her.
Then there was Lilly and Larry, and he hated both of them because it was because of them that the pharmacy was overrun, no matter how much Lee thought otherwise. And if that wasn't enough, if she thought that she would be the leader of their group in the motel, well, she thought wrong.
Because she wasn't a leader material. She was a cranky bitch who needed to be humbled. If she thought he'd put the safety of his family, his wife, and son in her hands, she thought wrong.
Ever since they cleared the parking lot and barricaded it all, Kenny made himself a system.
It wasn't a complicated system. It didn't need to be. The components were: wake up, check on Duck and Katjaa, check the fence, check the RV, work on whichever part of the RV that needed to be fixed so they could go to Savannah and then the boat, eat whatever was available, repeat.
The system had kept him functional for three months. He wasn't going to apologize for it or unmake it after finding out that they were all infected. It still was a good plan. Five people could live on his boat, six if Lee was serious about Carley.
Then Clark Rogers happened.
Kenny had seen a lot of people in his life. Fishermen, dock workers, the kind of men who built their character through salt water and early mornings and quiet desperation. He knew the type that talked big and delivered small. He knew the type that said nothing and meant everything.
Clark Rogers was the second type, and Kenny had known it the moment the kid walked back through that gate with a turkey under his arm like he was carrying groceries.
He hadn't liked him immediately. That was the honest version, and Kenny respected honest versions even when they weren't flattering. He hadn't liked him because the kid had held Carley at gunpoint, and Carley was good people, and Kenny didn't forget things like that easily.
But he also couldn't forget the turkey.
Or the rabbits. Or the squirrels. Or the fact that since Clark Rogers had shown up, Duck or his wife hadn't gone to bed hungry once. Not once. And that was a thing Kenny was keeping track of because it was the most important thing he kept track of, more important than the RV issue, more important than Lilly's rotation schedule, more important than anything else in the parking lot.
Duck. Fed. Every night.
That was the math. Everything else was commentary.
He was working on the RV again, to keep himself preoccupied so his thoughts wouldn't race, with his worried son holding the flashlight with both hands and while he had a wrench, and thinking about the kid because he'd been thinking about the kid for a while now, and it hadn't resolved itself yet the way things usually resolved themselves when he thought about them long enough.
He was stuck in one specific thing.
He wanted to bring the kid with them. To the boat.
There was no doubt about that. The kid more than earned it, and Duck looked up to him even though Clark kept his distance from his loud son. A movement, and he saw the other kid, one who was around Clark's age, Ben something.
Kenny didn't care about him. Everything about the tall boy irritated him. He was always hunched over, as if wanting to be invisible all the time. The only moment he looked even an inch taller was when he saw his chance with Clementine, only for his smart son to interfere and get her out.
That's all the opinion he had on the boy. Kenny didn't respect him; heck, no one respected him, but almost everyone pitied him. But pity would run out, and it had already run out from a few of them as the useless boy made no contribution to the group.
He'd invited him to hunt with him and Mark, but he stumbled and stuttered and looked at his feet and then away. Right away, Kenny regretted offering him a chance, spat to the side, and stormed off. If it were Clark, they'd have no use hunting because the kid would bring the whole forest before sunset.
Even Duck, as young as he was, would contribute to anyone and everyone. Even when he disliked him being near Lilly, at least, his son initiated and asked her about how she knew who should take the lookout shift and why, and how'd she knew they wouldn't fall asleep.
And when he got his answer, he had offered to be a lookout. Katjaa and Kenny refused until his demands became too tiring to refuse, so he agreed when it was his shift. Within two hours, Duck had fallen asleep, but it was a hard-fought battle on his part.
Yet, when Mark had suggested that Ben be the lookout, again, he stuttered and fumbled, and then he nodded in uncertainty. Before he could scream his refusal, Lilly clicked her tongue in annoyance at him and told Mark to forget about the boy.
And when he finally offered to help with solidifying the fence with Larry, he was screamed at and backhanded by the old man and was told to never show his face to him. The reason being he was wasting precious supplies on either messing it up or using the planks where they weren't needed.
Which, even Kenny thought wasn't much of the boy's fault for not knowing how to do it, but ever since then, he was only good at keeping Duck busy, cleaning the rooms, and counting the supplies.
In every sense of the way, except for height, Clark had Ben beat, and no wonder Clementine would develop a crush on him. And he wouldn't be surprised if she had gotten to love him in the three days that she'd started to care for him.
The first day, she had spent hours shadowing Carley and Katjaa on how to care for him. Then he'd asked everyone else, Mark, him, Lilly, and even Larry about their experience in being sick and taking care of someone sick, and most of them had repeated the same things Carley and Katjaa had told her.
The only times she wasn't in that room were if Lee was wiping the sweat off the kid's body, to make sure he wouldn't get sicker, or if she had to take care of herself.
Young love… Funny how quickly people get attached to each other in danger. Hopefully, when they do start their relationship, it will not be due to their bodies needing to release stress, but due to genuine feelings and thoughts.
Which is why he wanted to bring him to the boat with his family, Lee, Carley, and Clementine.
But from what he'd seen of the boy, Kenny was certain that he'd refuse. Because Clark was a weird, but good kid. He'd always hunt to make sure no one went hungry, even Larry, whom the kid still clearly disliked, but he'd bring him food no matter what.
The boat plan consisted of leaving behind at least half of this group. Most of which, Kenny wouldn't hesitate. But Clark would. And for that, he'd stay behind.
That's why Clark Rogers was a problem that wasn't going away, no matter how much Kenny thought about it. Because he wouldn't want to leave him behind. But if it meant safety for his family, he'd do it in a heartbeat.
===============================
AN: This chapter, as you read, was written with the goal of presenting other characters than Lee, Carley, and Clark. I also wanted to write down Clementine's pov for a bit now and thought that this was the perfect opportunity.
Regarding the progression of their feelings, I want to explain why its so fast. I explained it in one line or two but its very easy to miss.
On Clark's side, his baggage + his instinct trait + stoneplate ring that sees this as a good thing and not a hardship, so it "pushes" him into it instead of through. It's like, it could be a fuel for Clark if this happens so he could push through future hardships. At least, that's what I am telling myself. If you don't like this reason, then forget the ring, and just think that instinct is half the reason. Though, it's not mind control or compulsion or anything of that genre.
On Clementine's side, same things but on a lighter side. Survival, being close to death a couple of time, her instincts are waking up, the only guy other than Ben around her and between Ben and him, Clark has shown to be more reliable. That lead to developing a crush, and then spending hours taking care of him, close to two days, that evolved into something genuine and not just crush.
The next chapter, it would be Clark getting better and we'd face some action. Look forward to it. Another thing, I plan to give Clark a ticket for when Clementine realizes her feeling for him. What rank should it be? I'm thinking gold. But I'll be happy to hear your thoughts.