Salvation. The Walking Dead: Season Five.

Road to Atone - Part Two.

*

It wasn't the sound of chatter that disturbed Clementine the next morning, though there was plenty of it. It wasn't even AJ tugging her arm wanting breakfast for once. It was a warm, bright light. Or rather, the constant flickering of it on her eyelids. Like someone waving their hands across her line of view. She had turned on her side trying ignore it, but the effort had her parsing the conversation anyway, it turning out to actually be a heated argument.

"And if you're so set on doing that, why don't you take it outside!?" She heard Louis hiss, though he needn't have bothered to keep his voice down any longer, the ship had sailed.

"Nobody- allowed- to go - alone." Aasim responded, panting through his words. Clementine groaned, realising what was happening. He was at it again.

"You know you're going to do yourself an injury jumping around in here, right?" Tenn piped up, still managing to sound his timid self despite the likeliness of said assertion.

"I'm gonna do him an injury long before that." Clementine felt the breath of Violets threat on the base of her neck. She hadn't been the only one disturbed from her slumber.

"I- have- to be- stronger! Fitter! Can't let any- one- be taken again!" Aasim replied, struggling through his sentence; the thump of his feet on the floor coming with the irritating persistency of a Newtons cradle in swing.

He hadn't been the same since the seige at the school. Clementine had heard his claims before that the fitness 'regime' was to make sure he was strong enough to keep Minnie and Sophie safe now they were back, but she thought deep down that him not being able to stop his own kidnap by Delta was the true trigger.

"Look kid, sit the fuck down. Before I put you down. Hear me?" Lilly's snarl echoed around the inner walls of the tower; things were about to get much more heated. The only time this group united in agreement was in disagreement with anything Lilly said or did.

"Hey! You're in no position to be making any threats, ya damn homicidal bitch! Stay out of it!" Louis spat suddenly in a rare show of rage; he too having been one of Lillys victims alongside Aasim and the twins.

Both outburts saw Clementine giving up on getting any more shut eye at this, so she pryed them open and pushed herself up on her elbows, joints stiff from the uncomfortable surface of their sleeping arrangements. The hatch was sitting open, allowing sunlight to bathe everyone inside.

Aasim hadn't stopped doing his jumping jacks despite the brewing altercation. Sophie, Minnie and Tenn sat huddled together like they had since they'd been reunited, sticking closer than a trio of limpet mines. James was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn't strange, Clementine just assumed he was out for a morning stroll with the walkers. What did trouble her however was AJ's absence; Lillys primed vitriolic setto interrupted by her ensuing worry.

"Where's AJ?" She asked, scanning back over the room and working herself up to a panic before his familiar voice echoed down into the tower from above, only half calming her.

"I'm up here."

Clementine got to her feet quickly, brushing by Aasim's flailing arms to climb the ladder; head bobbing out into the slight breeze seconds later she shielded her eyes from the suns glare. AJ was sitting with his back to her; his small frame cross legged and facing the mountain range.