Young and Young at Heart (The Rewrite of The Walking Dead Game: S2) [TWDG/TWD]

81. Regrets

"A couple of weeks ago, I was arguing with Omid about what we should do next," reminisced a melancholy Christa as she stirred her spoon in the can of pineapples sitting in her lap. "Now I'm here with his son, and not him, out in some church I'd never heard of."

"Back when we lived in the cabin, he'd come by in the morning and knock on my door sometimes," spoke Clementine. "Usually he was just telling me it's time for breakfast, but other times he'd say something funny. I didn't always get it, but it always made me feel a little better."

"Which ones didn't you get?" asked Christa.

"One time he knocked and said 'turndown service', and I didn't understand."

"Turndown service is just when the maid at a hotel comes in to make the bed and change out the towels and all that stuff," explained Christa. "He was playing with you, pretending he was the cabin's maid or something."

"I'd never answer him and..." Clem felt herself tearing up. "I wish I had. He always made me feel better but, I was so sad I didn't even want to get out of bed most of the time."

"You know what I wish? I wished I never pulled that trigger in the first place," confessed Nick. "Then you could have just told him that in person."

"Yeah," commented a forlorn Christa. "Unless something else happened to him between then and now." Sarah started weeping softly into her hands.

"I... I never killed anyone before that," admitted a shaken Nick.

"I never killed anyone before leaving Shaffer's," added Christa before eating a spoonful of canned pineapple.

"You hadn't?" asked Clem.

"Could have fooled me," said Nick.

"I guess Pete was right, I was ready to start." Christa turned to Clem. "And I'm guessing after this Matt thing, you're ready to start as well." Christa sighed. "Clem—"

"I already started," said Clem in a quiet, pained voice.

"What?" Christa went wide-eyed in shock.

"Who did you kill?" Sarah started whimpering in response to Nick's question. "Oh, shit." Clem put her arm around Sarah.

"It was the same with Lee," informed a tearful Clem. "He was bitten, and dying, and it was the only thing I could do for him."

"Who's Lee?" asked Nick.

"He was the man who was taking care of her, before Omid an I met her," informed Christa.

"Jesus," spoke a horrified Nick. "I... I couldn't do it."

"Do... do what?" asked Sarah.

"My mom," said Nick. "She got bitten, right when all this started. When she... changed into one of those things, I didn't know what to do. I kept thinking, there had to be some way to help her. A cure, or something..." Nick trailed off.

"Is that why you don't like getting near walkers?" asked Clem.

"It's not so much being close to them as killing them up close I hate doing," clarified Nick. "Shooting them from far away, you can't see their faces that well. But up close, I always just think, this one used to be someone's mom, or dad, or son, or daughter, or whatever."

"My mom and dad are walkers," whimpered Clementine. "I... I hated seeing them like that."

"Pete hated seeing my mom, his sister, like that," spoke Nick. "He came after me and her the next day. I told him there had to be a way to help her, but Pete told me there wasn't. He said he'd seen other ones ripped apart and they still wouldn't die until you took out the head.