Come away little loss, come away to the water [open]

[smarterthanthem]

Who| Clementine and OTA
What| Catch-all for Clementine things since the end of the arena, Clementine dealing with her canon-updated memories
Where| The Tribute Center and out in the Capitol, choose from the prompts or make your own
When| Anytime between the end of Arena 12 and now
Warnings/Notes| Talk of violence and children in harmful situations probably.

It's been a strange few weeks for Clementine, how do you describe the sensation of waking up with a whole new bunch of memories in your head? It made the usual disorientation in coming back from the arena pale in comparison.

The memories were... good, bad. A lot of bad. The good was Kenny, alive, really alive. The bad was everything that had happened after that discovery, Carver and his camp, the things Clementine had done and witnessed in the span of just a couple of days. Things she now had to reconcile and fit in with her memories of Panem, ending with everyone surrounded by Walkers and Sarita...

So it's not all surprising that Clementine has been a little reclusive since coming back. She hasn't actively avoided people, far from it, but she has taken a little more time to herself and her thoughts.

Prompt A: District 6

There's nine people living in the District 6 suite (not counting their support staff) and only one big television to share between them in the big lounge area. That can lead to some squabbles over what to watch and a general first-come, first-serve attitude to grabbing the remote whenever it was spied outside of someone's hand.

Clementine takes advantage to temporarily being on her own to set up the gaming system she'd asked for after spending hours at the arcade downtown, putting in a rather bright and colourful racing game which has nothing to with violence or horror. She'll settle for racing against the computer controlled characters for now but if anyone else wants to join in she probably won't say no.

Prompt b: The park

It's extra cold out in the Capitol today and despite that Clementine still ventures outside of the Tribute Center.

She's wrapped herself up in a thick coat and scarf, got a cup of hot chocolate from one of the many, many coffee shops dotted around the Capitol and come to the park with a bag of bread in hand. The ducks here are probably pretty spoiled already by visitors, looking well-fed despite the season, but they still come swimming over the moment Clementine crouches by the bank and sets down her drink on the frozen ground.

"Alright, hang on." she mutters at their insistent quacking, opening up the bag of bread to start tearing off small pieces and throwing them into the water where the ducks immediately set in on squabbling for the food.

Comments

[weaintashes]

Kneeling down, he carefully reels in the hyper ball of fur so that the ducks will hopefully start settling down and come back. They're all looking quite plump and spoiled, so they're obviously not in any danger of starving even if they keep their distance from the free meal.

"For now," he answers, distracting the whining puppy with an ear rub to calm him down, and immediately gets attacked with licking for his trouble. "But... I think a friend'a mine needs this little guy more."

The only danger Clem's in with this dog comes in the form of being slobbered on. With the prospect of a new person to meet, the puppy's all too soon wiggling free and going to investigate. First the bread bag gets a good sniffing, then Daryl loosens up the leash to allow him to do what puppies do best; he's bounding around Clem with exuberance, barking and wanting attention.

And it's nice, Daryl thinks. This is where kids belong, in a park feeding ducks and playing with dogs, not in those godforsaken death matches. He doesn't know what Clem's fate ultimately was in the last arena, but it isn't difficult to guess. Only one person had survived it.

"What about you?" he asks after a moment. "Got any pets?"

[smarterthanthem]

"He's cute." she says, smiling wider and after a moment giggling as the puppy bounces around her. Clementine takes a deep breath, then kneels down when the puppy's done barking, holding out her hands to try and coax him close enough that she can pet him. "Does he have a name? Who are you giving him to?"

There's a lot of people she can think of for whom a dog would help them out a lot. Especially a cute, bouncy, friendly puppy like this one; it was exactly the sort of dog Clementine would have loved to own back when she was little if her dad's allergies had allowed it.

"Not yet. My friend Dave has a bird," which she'd encouraged Loki to buy for him, so that was sort of part-her bird too. "I've thought about it though."

[weaintashes]

And Clem immediately gets an armful of happy, wiggling puppy, while Daryl's surprised to find he remembers how to laugh. Something close to one, anyway, and it's a little startling, but it feels good.

"No name yet, leavin' that up to Beth." Which also answers the question of who he's intended for. "Y'know her? In district seven. Bet she'd let you play with the little guy anytime you want." Not only would it help acclimate the puppy to people and exhaust some of that boundless energy, he figures it could do Clem and Beth both some good.

After everything that happened to Beth in the arena, then Grady... It's like she's been dimmed, burdened with something he's still trying to understand. If he could shoulder that burden for her, he would in a heartbeat. But if that's not possible, he'll do what he can to help — that's what this little gift is for.

Seems the puppy's already made a new friend, too.

"Well, you best be plannin' to visit him now, or you might break his heart." A few of the more greedy, bold ducks have started edging closer again, and he has to consciously check the urge to reach out and snap the neck of one. Old habits really do die hard. Back home, a meal like that could feed the whole group.

[smarterthanthem]

A delighted yip escapes her as she loses her balance, falling from her crouch onto her butt proper and not caring one bit as the puppy clambers into her lap. It starts trying to bathe her face in saliva, causes Clem to giggle more as alternatively wrestles with and pets the energetic little dog.

"Yeah, I know Beth! I met her when she arrived, she's really nice." Clem glances up from the puppy to Daryl. She knows Daryl only arrived in the last arena where they'd briefly met, it makes her curious how well he knows Beth to go out and get her a dog. "How do you know her?"

At that Clem grins wide, snuggling the puppy closer, "I don't want to do that."

Honestly, Daryl's probably going to have a hard time prying her off him now to take the puppy to Beth.

[weaintashes]

"Back outside Atlanta, a little boy in our group got hurt, we ended up stayin' on Beth's family's farm for a spell. Her old man patched the kid up." And there was Sophia, whom they'd been searching for, while she must have already been long dead the entire time. He's quiet for a few moments thinking about it, and decides that part may be better left out.

"The place got overrun by this huge herd'a walkers, few hundred of 'em, so Beth and her family all came with us and we got the hell outta Dodge. Been together ever since," he says, shifting out of his kneeling position to sit cross-legged in the grass instead. He briefly looks out toward the pond and watches a few ducks gliding across the surface of the water, untroubled by the temperature.

After swatting away a duck that's been trying to eat his shoelaces for the last few minutes, he returns his attention to Clem and the puppy, their antics bringing another small smile to his face. A good distraction from getting too lost in his own thoughts. It also occurs to him that she seems to be on her own out here, which leads to him wondering, not for the first time, about her own people. Nick and Luke are pretty obviously from the same group, but it's unclear whether Clem was part it before Panem or a more recent addition.

"What's your story? If you don't mind my askin'. If you do, you can make somethin' up."

[smarterthanthem]

"That's more of us!" she exclaims in reaction to that, "More of us from that world, I mean. I was the only one for months."

Then all of a sudden there was Luke and Nick, then Beth. Jane came into the arena and so did Daryl. Clementine can't help but wonder why, why now? Was there some sudden interest in her world that had caused this to happen? ... was it something she'd done, to cause them to be brought here too?

Clementine hugs the puppy closer, getting her chin covered in wet licks for it.

"No, it's okay, I don't mind telling it." she does take a breath before it. "I live in Georgia too. My parents... they were away on vacation when the Walkers happened. I ended up with a group heading for Savannah but... not everybody made it. It ended up just being me and my friend, Christa," she has to say her name just in case, just in case Daryl might have seen her. "We were heading north, to a place called Wellington, it's supposed to be safe there. But we got separated by bandits and that's when I met Luke and Nick and their group."

It's a heavily abridged version of events of course, there's too much that's too hard to say in detail.

[weaintashes]

Christa's name draws no recognition from Daryl, unfortunately.

Savannah seems like an unusually poor choice of destination. The larger the city, the more full of walkers — and established groups who may be hostile — it'll be; he and his own group had learned that the hard way. Of course, Savannah is a seaport, so maybe...

"You guys were hopin' to take your chances in the water?" he guesses. "Wellington..." He says the name thoughtfully, rolling it over in his mind, trying to recall where he might have heard it before. "Well, never been. But if I were you, I'd be real careful of any place advertisin' itself as safe," he says with a sense of wariness borne of experience. "Think it's just a way to trap folks now."

His gaze drops to the grass as he absently tugs on a few blades, debating how much he should share. Clem's probably already lived through her fair share of nightmare fuel by this point, and who knows — maybe this knowledge will help keep her safe. "My group found a place like that, Terminus," he says in a low voice. "Sanctuary for all, community for all. Those who arrive, survive," he parrots the slogan. "Guess maybe it could'a been, once, and somethin' happened. When we got there, they trapped us, robbed us, kept us in train cars. They were eatin' people, and we were next." If not for Carol...

Then there was Woodbury. Just a different kind of Terminus, in the end.

"Could be the only safe place left is with the people you already know."

[smarterthanthem]

"Yeah, we were. One of the group, he used to have a boat, we thought if we could find one... but they'd all gone when we got there." Mostly. The one she'd found had ended up being stolen from them, not that it would have made much difference in the end given what had happened...

Her fault, her stupid fault.

Clementine pulls herself back from that, aided by her armful of wriggly puppy to pay attention to what Daryl was going in to say. Immediately her face shows revulsion, not without some experience to back it up.

"We once went to a place like that too. It was a dairy farm." and she'd come so close to eating a person herself, would have if Lee hadn't caught on to what was happening and stopped her in time. "They seemed really friendly, until they tried to feed us one of our friends." Just the thought of it sends a bolt of nausea through her.

All she can do in the face of that is agree with Daryl, "Yeah."

[weaintashes]

Daryl seems to come back to himself not long after Clem does, and he watches her with the puppy a moment before reaching for the abandoned bag of bread.

"Sorry about your friend," he offers as he starts tearing off bits. "N'everyone else." Normally he'd think nothing of eating some of the bread himself, but he's been left feeling a bit queasy by the recent topic, so it all gets tossed out for the milling flock of ducks. They seem content enough ignoring the puppy now in favour of snapping up the easy food. Things had taken a dark turn back there, and he's still questioning whether he should have brought up what he had. Trying to protect kids from the reality of how things are now just seems counterproductive — and dangerous, with the risk of them being ill-prepared to do what's necessary when the time comes. And it will come. It always does.

He can't help but be reminded of Carl. Clem's a bit younger, but Daryl doesn't doubt that she's probably endured just as much hardship. Losing both her parents... and losing her groups, from the sounds of it. At least Carl had always had people looking out for him. His father. Michonne. Daryl himself.

Up until two-thirds of that equation had wound up in Panem.

"You know anything about how they choose who gets brought here?" he asks, brows furrowed in thought. She's been here the longest of anyone from their world, so it stands to reason she might have the best understanding of the process.

[smarterthanthem]

"It's okay." she looks up and gives Daryl a bracing smile to try and show him that she was okay, she really was. This was just how things were for people like them and there was nothing to be done about it now. You could only move forwards.

In her arms the puppy wriggles over onto its back and Clementine dutifully scratches its belly, avoiding the playful attempts by the puppy to grab her hand between its jaws. She does chuckle when it manages to snag the furry cuff of her coat sleeve instead and worry it between its teeth.

"Not really, it's hard to say. They pick all kinds of people." she replies, "I think the only thing they care about is that we'll be entertaining to watch."

Some people could fight and others couldn't. Some were loud while others were quiet, they had different skills, different opinions and some of them weren't even human.