Chapter 16:
Two weeks later, Clark was back to normal but lighter than ever. During that time, he'd noticed multiple tickets that had remained unused, and so, his powers activated anyway, and now they were… just there.
The one that was used the most was Adept Teaching as soon as he got better. He requested a makeshift spear be made from Larry, who provided it that day itself. Though the cost of it was complained about and whining. But Clark got his spear.
Which he gave to Clementine and put her through the basics of it, using his Novice Polearm mastery alongside his Intermediate Bladed mastery. Both skills complemented each other perfectly, so much that Clark had to wonder if fusing them forever would be better or not.
But he pushed it aside for later, as he taught Clementine how to defend herself and keep her distance from ghouls. When she corrected him by calling them walkers, he had her push herself to exhaustion as punishment while making use of the Horseshoe Necklace that he had gifted her, because they could afford it now with him hunting every now and then.
Using Adept Teaching- he was extremely grateful for it cause he had no idea what he was doing. Mostly, he gave her scenarios and put her in tight spaces, such as the walkway, and had her spar with him.
The admirable thing about her was that she didn't complain even once.
Not when he made her repeat the same defensive stance until her arms shook. Not when he put her through the walkway scenario four times in a row because she kept dropping her elbow on the third step. Not even when he made her do it again after she'd already done it right, just to make sure it wasn't a fluke.
She complained about other things. She complained about the name walkers being correct and ghoul being dramatic, which earned her another set of drills. She complained that the spear was slightly too long for her, which was a legitimate complaint that he adjusted for. She complained, once, that he was smiling when she was tired, and it was cute, which he denied, because he hadn't been smiling. He'd been almost smiling, which was different.
By the end of the second week, she could hold the defensive line in a tight location and knew how to get out of it. But spear wasn't the only thing he thought. He used a pocket knife that she carried around and taught her how to use it instead of flailing it around in an emergency.
Heck, with permission and supervision from Lee, he'd brought Clementine outside the motel and had her face about five to six normal ghouls, only with the dagger. The justification for that was that she would to lose her nerves and jitters when emergencies happened.
Then he had her brought to the alleyways close to the motel, leading about ten ghouls, and had her kill all of them with a signpost that he turned to spear with his Sharpen ability. After the first week, Duck also wanted to be taught, and so, he made use of that kid's infinite energy by teaching him how to use a spear and had them go against each other.
First contact only.
Another thing that he was not proud to admit was that he was spending much less time in his cat form than usual. He'd use it when it was time to hunt for the group, but he had stopped sleeping in it or sunbathing.
No, what he has been using it for other than hunting was spending time in it with Clementine. During one of their session, she'd expressed how much she missed Mr.Hissipaw, which greatly confused him, until she explained to him the name he gave her.
The only thing he had gotten in answer was a blank, flat stare that she got embarrassed by, but defended the name with aggression. So, in one of the dumbest decisions of his life, Clark would now turn into his Cat Form, sit, and sunbathe in the walkway to wait for Clementine.
If she thought he- the cat didn't notice her slowly closing the distance, well, she was wrong. But at one point, he decided to approach her and let her pet him as if he were a common stray cat.
That day, he'll never forget it. The way her eyes lit up, and her smile widened, he'd remember it forever. Of course, she didn't make a sound, in fear of making him- the cat frightened and ran away.
The next day, she had come back with a piece of jerky, and in exchange for that, he let her pet him longer than the previous day. The next day, before he knew it, he was sitting on her lap as she scratched all the good places that had him shiver and yawn in relaxation, and then she decided to talk to a (not)common stray cat about her day, and surprisingly, she gossiped a lot when no one was near to hear her.
Well, to him it was gossip. About how weird Lee and Carley get after spending a night together. How she can hear their happy times through her ceiling because she was right beneath Carley's room. And when they would go to Lee's, they'd be right to her bed wall.
She didn't want to tell them that she could hear, and from what she could hear, they were being very lovey-dovey with each other, which would surprise everyone else at how little they show in public if they knew what she knew. Which Clark didn't need to hear about any of that.
Nor about what they say to each other during their…- happy times.
Then she'd talk about everything else for hours if she was left alone. Which Carley made sure of when she had seen them. By the time the two weeks were up, Clark would spend time with her during her lookout shifts, from noon to evening.
…
…
…
The afternoon sun was doing its warm, unhurried thing across the walkway when Clementine settled into her lookout chair with Mr. Hissypaws in her lap, which was what she'd started calling the arrangement even though the cat had never once confirmed he was comfortable with the name.
He was purring a lot whenever she took him in her lap, which she counted as confirmation.
"I can't wait to show you to Clark," she told him, scratching behind his left ear in the specific way that made his eyes go half-lidded. "He's going to be so annoyed." She smiled at the thought, already composing the scene in her head. She'd say, very casually, that she had a pet cat now. And he would look at her with that flat, absolute stare he used when something had happened that he refused to dignify with a full reaction. And she would be smug about it for approximately the rest of her life.
The cat looked up at her.
"Don't give me that look," she said. "You don't even know what look I mean."
He kept giving her the look that reminded her of the boy she was talking about to it. It was uncanny.
She touched the horseshoe necklace at her throat without thinking about it, her fingers finding the warm metal the way they'd been finding it for two weeks. He'd given it to her during her second training session, matter-of-fact, the way he did everything, said it would help with stamina- whatever that meant- and that she needed it more than he did right now.
She hadn't given it back.
She wasn't going to give it back.
"He notices all of things, like Mark being left-handed, Duck learning better while moving rather than staying still, Lilly sleeping better because her mood is now better," she said, "and then somehow completely fails to notice- " She stopped. Made a sound that was not quite a laugh. He did remember her new haircut, which wasn't different than a few days ago, just shorter since it'd had grown. And he looked at her as if… As if…
"You know what I mean."
No, the cat simply kept purring with its eyes closed, one ear towards her as it simply listened.
"I've been clear," she said, with the conviction of someone who had rehearsed this argument and was going to see it through as she thought of all the time she subtly flirted with him during their training session. Even Carley had helped a little and then promptly gave up and told her to just do it. She looked out over the parking lot, where Lee and Mark were doing something with the fence, and Kenny was having his daily disagreement with the RV. "What more is there?"
The cat made a small sound that wasn't quite a chirp and wasn't quite a meow. Something in between, with a question mark at the end of it.
"Exactly," she said.
She looked down at him as Mr.Hissipaw let out a big yawn, stretching himself over her lap and exposed its belly fully to her. Not the first time, but every time, she would smile and scratch it a little and then pet it.
The purring continued as he calmed down, before jumping off her lap and curling by her feet on top of the RV. It seemed like he had enough pets. But he surprised her by putting his head on her feet.
"You're so cute." She cooed in that aggressive way and saw the tail flick and whip in irritation. "Ops, sorry." and back down it went.
The tail twitched once more before settling completely still.
Clementine leaned back in her chair, her fingers drifting back to the horseshoe necklace, turning it slowly between her thumb and forefinger the way she did when she was thinking about something she'd already decided.
"He's never going to say anything, is he," she said. Not a question. A conclusion she'd arrived at after two weeks of evidence, and was now simply wondering what to do with it.
Mr. Hissypaws said nothing, which was exactly as helpful as everything else she'd received on this subject.
The cat had opened one eye.
"Don't." She pointed at it. The eye stayed open. "I'm serious."
The eye remained open and judgmental in the specific way only cats managed without apparent effort.
She exhaled. Looked back over the parking lot. Kenny had moved from swearing at the engine block to swearing at a specific bolt, which was progress of a kind. Lee had disappeared into the motel, probably to get water. Mark was working on the fence section near the east corner, moving with the careful economy of a man who'd learned not to waste motion.
Normal. Everything was normal and ordinary and completely unhelpful to her current problem.
"He's going to be old and alone," she informed Mr. Hissypaws. "Still hunting, still feeding everyone, still noticing everything except the one thing directly in front of him. He'll be ninety years old, and someone will tell him, 'Clark, she liked you,' and he will say 'Oh,' and then he will apologize to a grave."
The cat's other eye had opened during this speech.
"I know," she said. "I know."
She looked down at him. He was watching her with those green eyes, and she had stopped wondering why they reminded her of someone specific, because she knew exactly why and had decided not to examine it. The warm weight of him against her feet was solid and present and familiar in a way she'd gotten used to faster than she'd expected.
"So I'm going to tell him," she said.
The cat went completely still.
Not the relaxed still of a sleeping animal. The other kind. Alert. Every muscle suddenly paying attention in the way cats had when something had registered that required their full assessment.
She almost laughed at the reaction. "Don't look at me like that. It's not that dramatic." She tucked one knee up to her chest and rested her chin on it, still turning the necklace between her fingers. "I'm just going to say it. Clearly. No more signals, no more waiting for him to figure it out. I'll say it, and then it'll be said, and then at least I'll know."
The cat had not relaxed.
"The worst that happens is he says no," she continued, with more steadiness than she felt. "And that's fine. We'd figure it out." She wasn't sure she believed that entirely, but she was going to say it until she did. "He's not the type to make it weird. He'd be all... flat and careful about it and say something graceless and sincere, and then we'd go back to training, and he'd make me repeat the defensive stance until my arms fell off, and it would be-" She stopped.
"Fine," she said, quieter. "It would be fine."
Mr. Hissypaws stood up, jumping on lap, a relieved giggle escaping her. He simply head-butted her and, in his own way, comforted her, before jumping down on the RV.
"What was that for?" She asked, but received no answer. He looked at her with those green eyes that were more present and firmer than everything, before he jumped down to the parking lot and ran into the forest.
Into the forest that Clark had gone in that noon because he wanted to relax, Carley told her, but to others, he had gone to hunt. As soon as the black warm furball was gone, Clementine felt lonely and pushed it aside, distracting herself from what was about to happen.
That she'd tell Clark Rogers that she liked him and that she wanted more than a friendship with him.
…
…
…
The notification arrived the way they always did, dropping into his awareness without ceremony, and Clark almost walked into a tree.
[Silver Ticket Acquired — Advantage]
|Love is in the air —- Someone you have extreme feelings for reciprocates them.|
He stopped walking and shifted into his human form behind a tree not far from the motel, a hand immediately going to his chest- no, his heart as he felt the beating. It was fast, but not worrisome. Not hurting. It simply was there, as if they were drums for a happy song.
He stood in the tree line, the afternoon light filtering through the canopy, and read the notification again.
Advantage. That meant the silver ticket was going to roll twice, and he'd get to choose the better result.
But right now, the ticket meant nothing to him. No, what was important was that as soon as he got back to the motel for the dinner that he hadn't hunted at all, she'd confront him.
His old instincts were back at it again, screaming and begging him to turn back and go deeper into the forest. For just one night. For just this one evening, and skip it. It didn't have to be till morning, no, he could just stay outside until Clementine went back to her room.
As soon as he thought of entertaining these thoughts, he felt sick with himself. He wanted to vomit and punch himself for even considering it for one moment. Because this was different. He wouldn't be running from his responsibilities, guilt, or trauma.
No, he'd be hurting Clementine.
For no other reason than he was a coward.
So, he did the brave thing, the courageous thing, and sat down by the tree. If Clementine was going to tell him her feelings, he needed to know- no, he already knew. He needed to understand how deep his feelings for her went. How important was she to him?
He needed to know his deepest depth, so he had an answer ready for her. So that his silence wouldn't hurt her.
He sat with his back to the tree and his knees pulled up and his hands in his lap, and he let himself think about it properly for the first time.
Not the deflection version. Not the she's important to the group version, or the I promised her I'd help find her parents version, or any of the other versions he'd been running when the real version got too close to the surface. The real version.
He thought about the Monopoly game first, because that was where it had started, or where he'd first noticed it had started, which wasn't the same thing. He thought about the shoulder lean. He'd thought about the shoulder lean approximately four hundred times since it happened and had not gotten any further with it, so he moved on.
He thought about her in the walkway, cross-legged at a careful distance, not reaching, not pushing, just sitting with him in the morning sun while he was small and black and pretending to be something he wasn't. He remembered her radiant smile and eyes so bright he had lost himself in them when he let her pet him. The slow curl his tail had done that he hadn't told it to do.
He thought about training. The way she hadn't complained when he made her repeat the defensive stance until her arms shook. The way she had complained, loudly and with full commitment, about the name ghoul being dramatic, and the look on her face when he assigned her extra drills for it- not resentful, just- she'd bitten her lip and done them with a pout, and he'd had to turn away because he hadn't been almost smiling. He'd been smiling. A real one.
He thought about her sitting by his bed for three days with a wrung-out cloth and a water bottle, not hovering, not making it a performance. Just there. Present. Doing what she could and asking for help for what she couldn't.
He pressed the back of his wrist against his mouth.
How important was she?
He tried to put a number on it, but he failed. He couldn't. The math kept breaking down somewhere around the image of her looking at him with eyes that fished for compliments after their training, and then her image of him taking his hand in hers and running her thumb in circles when she thought he was asleep and sick.
Important enough that the thought of hurting her made him physically sick.
Important enough that when she wasn't in his line of sight during any time of the day, he noticed the absence before he'd registered he'd been tracking her.
Important enough that he'd sat in a sun patch on a walkway every morning ever since she told him she missed Mr. Hissipaws because he couldn't afford to see her sad and that depressed.
He already knew the answer.
He'd known it since Carley's room. He'd said it out loud in Carley's room, to two people who had received it with the particular care of people who understood the weight of it, and he'd spent two weeks trying to decide what to do with the knowing.
Clark Rogers sat against the tree until the afternoon light shifted from gold to something deeper, and the forest settled into its early evening sounds, and his instinct gave him the all-clear on everything within forty meters combined with View Earth, and he had an answer ready for her.
He got up. Picked up his backpack and shouldered it. Sharpened the tip of the pipe, more out of habit than necessity.
He walked back toward the motel.
…
…
…
Dinner was smoked deer. It was surprising that it lasted that long. But at the same time, not really.
Clark ate his portion and noticed Clementine eating very little of hers.
He noticed other things, too, because he noticed most things. Lee and Carley exchanged a look across the fire that they both pretended hadn't happened. Kenny was watching Clementine with the expression of a man who had done the math and wasn't surprised by the result and then glanced at him. Katjaa, with the small, private smile she wore when she was watching something she found quietly hopeful.
Mark was looking at the fire.
Ben was not looking at Clementine, which was its own kind of look, and was making sounds like he was building toward saying something. Clark watched the trajectory of it develop over approximately three minutes, the gathering of breath, the slight forward lean and straightened-
Larry glared at Ben.
Ben looked at Larry.
Ben finished his food in four bites and excused himself to his room with the posture of a man who had made a decision in his best interest and was at peace with it- though not really. The door clicked shut.
…
'That was weird.'
Clark looked back at his plate.
The fire settled. The evening continued. Clementine was still eating very little, and her eyes had been doing the thing they did when she was thinking through something she'd already decided- not hesitation, exactly. More like a person standing at the edge of something and confirming the distance before they jump.
He recognized it because he'd spent the better part of the afternoon doing the same thing.
He set his plate down.
"Hey." He said it to her specifically, quiet enough that it didn't carry across the fire. She looked up. "Come with me for a minute."
She looked at him. Something moved through her expression, there and gone. She set her plate down and stood without asking where, which he'd expected and also hadn't. As soon as they were far enough, the people around the campfire began to whisper and gossip.
He led her to the far corner of the parking lot, past Kenny's RV, past the section of fence that Mark had reinforced yesterday, to the spot where the fence met the east wall of the motel and made a corner that was away from every door, away from every window, away from the fire and the people around it. The evening light here was different- quieter, a shade deeper, the last of the gold coming in low and warm from the west.
He stopped.
She stopped beside him.
Neither of them said anything for a moment. The fire was a sound behind them, and the fence, and the distant, directionless shuffling of ghouls somewhere beyond it, which he'd learned to tune to background noise unless it shifted and got too close.
"I like you a lot, Clementine." He decided to tear the bandage, his heart beating faster than ever, and his hands were shaking now that he registered he had said the words. His entire vision blackened a little, which meant he was getting tunnel vision as he only looked at her widened eyes and missed all her other features.
"Wha-"
"No, safe to say, I love you-" his voice shook greatly and turned to whisper at the end of it. His entire body locked up as he froze in front of something far more dangerous than ghouls.
He was trying his best to empty his brain so his tongue and throat and mouth could work together to say what his heart wanted to say for half a month now.
The words sat in the air between them, and Clark Rogers, who had split ghoul skulls and led hordes into bandits and survived three months alone and mercy-killed people he didn't know and people he loved, stood in the corner of a parking lot fence and waited for a response with his hands shaking at his sides.
Clementine looked at him.
He looked back.
Her expression had done several things in rapid succession- the widening, then something that was trying to process, then something he didn't have a word for- and had arrived at something he also didn't have a word for. She was very still in the way that he was, until she was the first one to relax, and his body followed her lead.
"You're supposed to let me say it," she said.
He blinked. "What?" Surprised at her changing the subject instead of answering.
"I had a whole-" She stopped. Her mouth pressed together, and she looked at the fence for a moment, and when she looked back, there was something in her expression that was trying not to be a laugh and was losing. "I had a plan. I was going to say it. I'd been thinking about how to say it for two weeks." She looked at him. "You just said it." The movement was… small, almost missable. But his hands still responded when her hands wanted to hold his, but they hesitated.
"I know."
"You completely-" She stopped again, looking at their hands together, warm. The not-laugh was getting closer to the surface. "I've been working up to this for two weeks, Clark."
"Sorry." He wasn't sorry; it just felt like something that he had to say to fill in the silence between them and ignore the whispers of the campfire getting louder.
"I didn't want you to have to be the one to say it."
The not-laugh broke through. It was short and slightly undone, the kind that came from somewhere real, and she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth for a moment and looked at the fence before she gave it back to his empty one.
"Okay," she said, when she'd gotten control of it. She looked at him properly. Her eyes were bright in the evening light, and the horseshoe necklace caught the last of the gold from the west, and he noticed both of these things before he'd decided to notice them. "Okay. My turn."
He nodded once.
"I like you too," she said. "A lot." A pause. "Maybe more than a lot." She looked at him with the direct, steady look she used when she'd decided something and wanted it understood. "And I've been trying to get you to notice for weeks, and you're infuriating for not saying it sooner when I kept giving you signals-" She stopped, biting the inside of her cheek.
Clark wanted to hug her.
But he controlled himself- until she was the one to initiate it, and immediately his arms wrapped around her and held her tight and warm, and his insides felt like that of an active volcano that was ready to erupt.
He also felt Clementine's arm around his back, her hands taking a fist full of his clothes and burying her face in his chest. The smell hit him, and Clark hoped to get some shower-related ability or item, because she and everyone else, including him, needed a bath.
But his biology as a man seemed to be in disagreement with his sense of smell, as something awakened, before he pushed it down.
He held on for a moment longer than he'd planned to.
Then he broke the hug, stepping back with the practiced casualness of someone who had definitely not just needed to take a breath and reestablish basic function. He hoped she hadn't noticed.
She had, almost certainly, noticed but didn't say anything.
He pressed his back to the wall and slid down it slightly until he found a comfortable lean, and after a beat, she did the same, her shoulder settling against his arm in the particular way it had on the Monopoly bench. Except this time, neither of them pretended it wasn't happening.
Her hand found his.
He looked down at it. Her fingers in his. He looked back up at the campfire as rations were exchanged between the adults.
"We need to talk," he said.
A giggle. Quiet, genuine, the real one she had, not the polite version.
"What?" He looked at her sideways.
"We haven't even been together for more than ten seconds," she said, "and already we need to talk?"
He held her gaze for a moment. Then he offered the small smile, the one he didn't give to most people, the one that wasn't almost-smiling but actual-smiling, quiet and without the Cheshire grin's edge.
Her giggle faded.
She looked at him properly.
"Oh," she said. "You're serious."
"I'm serious."
She straightened slightly, her shoulder still against his arm, her hand still in his. "Okay." Her voice had shifted into something that required her full attention. "Talk."
He looked at the fence for a moment, at the last of the evening light going gold along the top of it, and thought about how to say the thing he'd been thinking about since the fire in the early morning and Lee's question and the particular shape of what he'd been trying to build, mentally, for weeks.
"I've been thinking about what this looks like," he said. "What I can offer." He paused. "And I keep coming back to the same answer."
"Which is?"
"Not much." He said it plainly, the way he said most things that cost him something. "I can't promise food every day. I can bring in enough most days, and the Soylent Green covers gaps, but that's not the same as being certain." He looked at their joined hands. "I can't promise shelter. I can't promise a safe place, because there isn't one, and I don't know what tomorrow looks like, let alone a month from now." He paused. "I've thought about what a normal relationship would look like, the getting-to-know-you part, the trying-and-figuring-it-out part, the time you'd normally have for all of that." He stopped. "We don't have that."
Clementine was quiet, and he could feel her nervousness in the way she tightened her hold on him, as if refusing to let him go. Which made it easier for him to say what he meant.
"So I've been thinking," he continued, "that there's no point doing this halfway. I don't know how to do halfway. I don't think I'm built for it." He looked at her. "If this is going to be something, I want it to be something real. Something with a name. Not a maybe."
A sharp exhale left her as she finally figured out where he was going.
"You mean-"
"Clementine, you don't have to answer this now or even tomorrow or the next week. But I want you to know that I give you my body, my heart, and my every thought. Forever."
The word sat between them in the corner of the parking lot, in the particular quiet that followed something that couldn't be taken back.
Clementine was very still.
Not the frozen still of someone who hadn't heard. The other kind- the kind that meant she had heard everything, and her mind had received it, and her body had gone quiet while it caught up.
Clark watched her face do several things in rapid succession that he couldn't fully read, which almost never happened, because he read faces well, and hers especially. But right now, the light was gold and low, and she was looking at the floor, and he had just said the most terrifying thing he had ever said to another person, including "I killed my parents," and he was standing very still and waiting, and his hands were no longer shaking because he had run out of nervous energy and had arrived somewhere past it.
He didn't push.
He'd meant what he said about not wanting to force her answer. If she needed time, she could have it. If she needed a week, she could have that too. He'd said the thing. The thing was said. Whatever she did with it was hers.
He straightened from the wall, slowly, and held out his hand to help her up.
She looked at his hand.
Then she looked at him.
Then Clementine stood up on her own, which was fine, it was completely fine, and before he'd finished the thought, her arms were around his neck.
He went very still.
Her face was pressed into his shoulder, and her arms were around his neck, and she was close enough that he could feel her breathing and the warmth of her and the particular smell of woodsmoke and something else that was specifically her, and his hands, which had been uncertain for approximately four seconds, found her waist and stayed there.
She pulled back just enough to look at him properly.
Her eyes, in the evening light, were very bright. It was a bit teary, but it wasn't due to crying. It was simply the brightness of someone who had arrived somewhere they hadn't been sure they'd get to.
"From this moment on," she said, and her voice was steady in a way that his hadn't been, "I give you my body, my heart, and my every thought." She repeated, a nervous smile on her face, but also excitement. "We belong to each other."
He didn't know who signaled who, but a moment later, he had his eyes closed, as a long but chaste kiss was exchanged.
When they joined the camp again to enjoy the warmth of the fire, Clementine and Clark made sure not to look at others, as they knew the teasing smiles would start a very vocal one that wouldn't die out anytime soon. But Kenny didn't need any of that.
"So, love birds-"
Clementine blushed a storm as she tried to bury her face on Clark's shoulder, while he glared at Kenny, not backing down, but his glare was anything but one. Instead, it was an embarrassed pout of a newly turned eighteen years old as he tried to intimidate others away from teasing his light in this dark world.
Safe to say, when it was time to go to bed, Clark and Clementine felt like they had gone through a lifetime of teasing, no matter how much they tried to throw Carley and Lee under the bus.
…
…
…
The next morning, it was the usual, but different. Clark got out of his room, while Clementine got out of hers. They went through their routine, with him training her and correcting her posture. The difference was, they were doing it every stiffly, an awkward vibe around them as they didn't know how to continue after their unofficial proposal to each other.
Safe to say, the training wasn't going as smoothly as before, but it was better than nothing. Another thing that was heavily on Clark's mind was that he needed to share his powers with Clementine soon, and preferably with Lee as well.
With Clementine, he wanted to be honest with her, ignoring the uncertainty and paranoid part of himself that whispered dark things. She deserved to know what she was going to get involved with. And Clark felt a bit disgusted with himself for doing this after the kiss and not before it.
But before all of that, he had an advantage ticket to roll, which he didn't use as a distraction-
First, rolling the D20 that appeared, which was something he missed during his sickness.
D20 rolled = 18.
Clark stilled and scratched his head in confusion. Did that mean he technically had four rolls? After shrugging his shoulders, he went ahead with it-
[Blind Eye]
|Common Trait|
You just disappear in a crowd, as long as you shouldn't stand out you won't.
OR
[Linguist]
|Uncommon Trait|
You are able to understand all mundane languages and are very good at learning non-mundane ones too.
"You okay?" Clementine asked as they eat- drunk their breakfast, the milkshake thing called Soylend Green that Clark's bathroom was now filled with because when he had nothing to do, he would take one out every hour.
Still, he nodded, giving her a portion of his jerky that she tried to refuse, only for him to force her to take it. She might need it. "Yeah, it's something I have to do."
Clementine tilted her head in a cute way that did things to his chest, waiting for him to explain, but not now. When they were in private and had Carley and Lee with them, so he could shoot two birds with one stone.
But for now, he was in a confused situation, because the Blind Eye trait was the complete opposite of the trait he currently had, Larger than Life.
All traits, except for Gambler, was always active, so wouldn't Blind Eye and Larger than Life cancel each other out-
The trait got removed from the options before the windows spun again and landed on one that had Clark's eyes widen in astonishment.
Spoiler: First option rolls[Immunity System]
|Rare Ability|
While Immutable is an active ability slot, you are immune to poisons, diseases, and negative biological effects.
OR
[Linguist]
|Uncommon Trait|
You are able to understand all mundane languages and are very good at learning non-mundane ones, too.
"Clark?" Clementine called him, and that's when Clark realized that he was standing up. "Clem, bring Lee and Carley to my room right now, please." He asked her, and without another word, she ran up to Lee's room, as Clark walked up to his.
Kenny seemed happy to ignore the young lovebirds until then, but he didn't ask.
Meanwhile, the second option rolls were already being rolled without his consent. But unless there was something much better than immunity from the disease that was the cause of the end of the world, Clark's choice was already locked in.
Spoiler: Second option rolls
[Crystals]
|Uncommon Ability|
Allows you to create and sprout crystals from your body, either making them erupt from your body like spikes, covering your skin with them as armour or just selling them for cash.(AUTHOR NOTE: Crystal refers to a nebulous crystaline structure that is durable, not allowing you to make ANY type of crystaline structure.)
OR
[Rodrigues]
|Uncommon Trait|
You are a Brazilian, but not only that, you are a descendant of the legendary Jetstream Sam. Not only do you have the Brazilian ability to double jump, but you are also talented in swordsmanship and swordsmithing.
Clark nodded, the second option rolls were better than the initial first one, and if he still had Blind Eye in the beginning, then he'd choose the Crystal's ability all the way. Now, none of that mattered.
With his option picked, he mentally guided the rolls until he had it.
[Immunity System]
|Rare Ability|
While Immutable is an active ability slot, you are immune to poisons, diseases, and negative biological effects.
And immediately put it in his empty third slot ability. He didn't feel anything different in him. Maybe some lightheadedness was gone, but it wasn't anything noticeable. But that didn't mean he'd go and let a ghoul bite into his arm to see if he would turn.
Carley arrived first, which he'd expected, with Lee half a step behind her and Clementine close at his heels, her expression caught between curiosity and the particular worry she'd developed for him since the fever.
Clark was sitting on the edge of the bed when they came in. He'd left the door open. Clementine closed it after Lee when Clark motioned for it, because what he was about to say was the kind of thing that didn't need an audience beyond the three people already in the room.
"Sit down," he said.
Carley sat on the bed. Lee took the chair. Clementine was worried and remained standing until he pulled her to himself and switched positions. He couldn't help himself as a kiss landed on her forehead, soothing her worry.
Clark looked at all three of them.
"I'm immune from now on," he said. "To the infection. To be turned."
The room went quiet.
Carley's expression did something complicated and then went very still, which was her version of a strong reaction. Lee's face had moved into the careful, measured look he used when he was receiving information he didn't know what to do with yet. Clementine had straightened slightly, her arms dropping to her sides from her lap.
"What?" Lee said.
"The infection. The thing that turns people." Clark kept his voice even. "I'm immune to it. And to disease. And to poisons." He paused. "As of this morning."
"As of this morning," Lee repeated, with the tone of a man who was trying to locate the part of that sentence that made sense.
"Clark." Clementine's voice, careful. "Are you feeling okay? The fever was only two weeks ago-"
"I'm not delirious," he said, which he understood was exactly what a delirious person would say, and preemptively added: "I know how that sounds."
"How did you-" Carley started, and then stopped, and he watched something cross her face. A flicker of recognition. The look of a person remembering a conversation they'd kept closed. "Clark."
He met her eyes.
A nod.
"You're power…?"
The word landed in the room.
Lee's expression shifted. Not confusion now- something else, something that was going back through a conversation it had filed away under mishearing and pulling it back out for re-examination.
Clementine looked between Carley and Clark with the expression of someone who had walked into the middle of something and was rapidly assembling the edges. "What?"
Clark exhaled through his nose.
"This is going to take a minute." He told her as reassuringly as possible. He'd made more expression in the past two weeks than he had in the past three months.
He started from the beginning, the way he'd started with Carley, because there was no good middle entry point for something like this, and cutting corners would only mean explaining the corners later.
The tickets first. What they were, what they did, the hierarchy of them from bronze to whatever sat above platinum that he hadn't seen yet. He explained the fusion mechanic and the cooldowns, and the inventory that existed somewhere in a space he couldn't point to but could reach into.
Lee asked one question during the tickets section, quiet and specific: "How long have you had this?"
"I…" Clark got silent, trying to remember the days correctly, but he shook his head. "I don't remember the specifics. But maybe a month after the outbreak?"
He continued, with Clementine looking at him as if he were something different. "I didn't know what it was for a while. I thought-" He paused. "I thought I was going crazy. The notifications were just there. Mental text, floating. I ignored them until I couldn't."
Lee nodded once and said nothing else, waiting for him to continue.
He moved to the abilities. He kept it organized because the alternative was overwhelming, and the three people in front of him each had a different relationship with information overload. Lee received it best in order. Carley already knew most of it, but he could see her doing the inventory alongside him, checking what he'd gotten since their last conversation. Clementine was still on the tickets.
"Wait," she said when he got to Sharpen. "The pipe. You sharpen it every morning."
"Yeah."
"I thought you had a whetstone somewhere."
"I don't own a whetstone."
She looked at the pipe, which was leaning against the nightstand. Then back at him. Something in her expression resolved and rearranged into something that wasn't quite disbelief and wasn't quite acceptance and was navigating between them.
"Keep going," she said.
He kept going. Before biting the bullet and going to the one thing that would get a bigger reaction than what he had said so far. Also, because he wouldn't run anymore. At least, try.
Cat Form got the reaction he'd expected as soon as the words left his mouth.
Which was Lee going very still, Carley pressing her lips together with the expression of someone who had known about this coming for some time and had been waiting for others to find out, and Clementine-
Clementine went completely, absolutely still.
Clark watched the stillness with his heart, waiting for her judgment.
He watched it go from surprise into something else, something moving through her expression that he couldn't fully read, which almost never happened, and then-
"Mr. Hissypaws," she said.
Not a question.
The room was very quiet.
"Yeah," Clark said.
Another silence. Longer this time.
"You," Clementine said, with the careful, specific diction of someone who was going to say this correctly or not at all, "have been sitting on my lap."
"In cat form-"
"For weeks." It was maybe half a week, Clark wanted to specify. But kept it shut as she saw the complicated expression change and shift every few seconds as she worked through the events, the time she passed with his other form.
"I told you things." Her voice had gone flat in a way that was not the dangerous flat, not quite, but was in the neighborhood of it and moving in its direction. "I told you- I told you about—" She stopped. "I told you everything."
Clark did not say anything. There was nothing to say that would improve the situation, and he was smart enough to know when speaking would only add fuel.
Lee made a sound from the chair. It was very quiet.
But it had the intended effect, a chance to explain himself.
"You said you missed the cat." He spoke and watched as she snapped back at him, her glare changing into confusion and then remembrance. "I didn't want to see you sad."
Clementine was still looking at Clark with the flat look.
He met it. He didn't look away, because looking away would be worse than whatever was coming, and he owed her the honesty of not flinching.
"You could have told me," she said. Quieter now. The flat had shifted into something else. Not anger- it wasn't anger, but Clark was afraid that it might. Something more specific.
"I know." He didn't qualify it. "I should have."
"You were going to tell me today anyway."
"Yes."
"But you let me-" She stopped, pressing her lips together briefly. "I told the cat that I was going to tell you I liked you. And the cat knew. And then the cat ran into the forest, and then you-" She put the sequence together in real time, and he watched her do it, and her expression landed on something that was complicated and layered and had several things in it at once.
"You already knew," she said.
"Not before you told me- Mr. Hissypaw-," he said and stopped at admitting that name. A grimace escaped him and that seemed to cheer her up much more than anything else, before her previous expression returned. "The notification confirmed it."
"The notification."
"There was a ticket." He said it carefully. "|Love is in the air — someone you have extreme feelings for reciprocates them.|" He quoted it from memory, word for word, because it was the kind of thing that got remembered.
Clementine looked at him.
He looked back.
And then she sighed… Whatever her fear- that was masked by anger and… betrayal, had seemed to be destroyed as soon as he mentioned the commentary on the ticket.
She looked at their hands, which had found each other again without his noticing. "You're telling me everything from now on."
"That was always the plan."
She simply hummed, believing him on his words. He frowned at that- "Why do you believe that? I could be lying for all you'd know." His words came out more like a whip, a black thing in his chest that made him question that.
For a brief moment, the heavy mood in the room tilted to nothing as Lee let out a chuckle, Carley smiled at him, and Clementine simply pulled him next to her so she could hug him, but also rest her head on his shoulder. She was far more touchy now than ever. Even more than when he was in his Cat Form.
"Don't be silly, Clark." Carley started, leaning back a little into the bed and staring at the ceiling of the room, as if she was remembering something. "Out of all of us, I think you'd be the last one to be called a liar." Lee told him.
"If you went out there right now and told everyone what you told us, they'd shrug it off and get used to it in a matter of a week." He continued, giving him a proud nod. "We're not doubting you because of your words. I just…"
"Why or how you got your power, and if it will harm you." Clementine finished for him, and all three in the room nodded.
"Oh…" He let out, and the light of his world giggled at his eloquent reply.
She squeezed his hand once. "Continue."
He continued.
He moved through the items- the Soylent Green, the Ancient Fruit Wine incident, which he kept brief and which Carley did not keep brief in her expression, the rings, which he gave one of them, the Ring Of Steel Protection to Lee since he goes out a lot compared to others, the horseshoe necklace that was currently around Clementine's throat.
She touched it without thinking when he mentioned it. Her fingers went to it automatically, and then she looked at him with an expression that scared him and aroused him at the same time.
Then he got to the immunity, which was where he'd started, and brought it back around. "As of this morning," he said again. "Slot three. Active."
"Can you be sure?" Lee asked.
"I won't be testing it the obvious way," Clark said, with a flat look at the man, who nodded with an embarrassed look. "But the lottery powers have been consistent so far."
"Carley knew," He continued and watched as Clem and Lee looked to the woman, who nodded seriously. "She's known since the first week after I spent the night," Clark said.
Lee looked at Carley.
Carley looked at Lee with the expression of someone who had been waiting for this and had prepared for several versions of it. "I wasn't going to tell anyone without his permission," she said. "You would have done the same."
Lee held her gaze for a moment. Then he exhaled through his nose and sat back. "Yeah," he said. "I would have."
The room settled.
Clementine was quiet beside him, until she looked to him with a hopeful expression. "The immunity," she said. "Does that mean-" She stopped. Started again. "You can't turn."
"That's what it means."
"But we're all already infected. Ben told us that. We all turn when we die, bite or no bite." She looked up at him. "Does the immunity cover that?"
He hadn't thought about that. "I don't know." He admitted that because he didn't know what would happen to him if he got shot by a bullet in the head, he died right away.
Would he turn?
Would his powers still be active when he died?
He shook his head, "I don't know." He repeated.
Clementine exhaled beside Clark. Not relief exactly. Something adjacent to it.
The room stayed quiet for a moment that wasn't uncomfortable.
Then Lee stood, and Carley stood, and Clark recognized the why- the conversation had reached its natural landing place, not finished but set down for now, the way things got set down when they were too large to resolve in one sitting.
Lee stopped at the door. Turned back.
"Thank you," he said. To Clark specifically. "For telling us. But at some point, you'd need to bring it up to others."
Clark nodded. It was the kind of nod that didn't need anything attached to it. Because he understood. A secret that three people knew about was no longer a secret.
Lee and Carley left. The door clicked softly behind them. Clementine followed after them, and Clark felt a sting of loneliness. 'Do I have some love-sick illness?' He thought to himself, and then the door didn't open.
Instead, it clicked as it was locked, and then so were the windows and curtains, covering the room, turning the room dim.
"Clemintine?"
Clementine didn't move immediately. Until she sat where she was, her hand back in his, her shoulder against his arm, and looked at the middle distance for a moment.
"Mr. Hissypaws," she said again, quieter this time, but with some kind of tone that Clark was having a hard time figuring out.
"It's a terrible name," he replied, thumb running circles on the back of her hand. It was smooth, and Clark wanted to kiss it.
"It's a great name." She didn't look at him. "He's very dignified."
"He is not dignified. He has no control over his tail." He begged his mouth to stop, but it didn't.
"He's extremely dignified." She finally looked at him. Her expression had finished whatever it had been doing and arrived somewhere that was settled and warm and slightly, privately amused and… hungry. "And he lets me scratch behind his ears."
Her hand broke free, her body shifted until she was sitting on his lap, chest squishing his chest. Her eyes remained on his and his on hers. She looked- no, she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen in his life.
His hand moved to hold her right cheek, which she leaned into, and the other around her waist. Whilst her arm wrapped around his neck, and Clark shivered as her fingers ran through the back of his hair and then his ears.
Her smile widened, and Clark couldn't control himself, as his lips crashed on hers.
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AM: Hello, people.
I hope you all are good, cause I got a late-night chapter. Because I couldn't sleep. I had promised that action would come sooner, but it seems like I lied. Cause this chapter was another character development alongside pushing some plot points that I didn't know that needed to be written.
So, summary: Clark and Clementine get together. Clark gets immunity from Clementine's ticket. He shares his not-so-secret power with Lee and Clem, and at some point, he has to do the same with the group. But I'll just skip that when the time comes. I'll do it in one paragraph or two instead of freaking 2k-3k words for it. Can't keep it short when I want to, I guess.
I hope you really enjoy this chapter, and if not. I'm sorry. Because I was writing this with my eyes closed. Partially anyway. Even this, Im writing with my eyes closed cause I'm sleepy now.
I didn't have much else to talk about. Next chapter, we got smut? Maybe? This is my foggy brain typing. My fresh brain in the morning might disagree.
Anyway. Good night. Im going to sleep.