Salvation. The Walking Dead: Season Five.

Our Last Days - Part Six.

*

Her dreams had remained just that during the night. The nightmares that usually plagued her keeping to the shadowy corners of her mind.

But still Clementine stirred. She wasn't sure if it was the hum and drum of the few remaining walkers, or something as simple as the slight breeze tickling her cheek. They had retired in the open after all, at the mercy of the elements above.

Touching her face she realised it was a little wet and tried to place the substance while properly coming to. Another drop across the bottom of her lip told her that the clouds were opening up.

She sat up, looking around for her hat to shield herself a little from it. Clementine located it, facing directly at her she did a double take. The 'D' that had come away falling off the tower had been stitched back on.

She had intended to ask James to fix it but never got around to it. She smiled as she picked it up, caressing the new stitches that held it back into place.

Violet must have taken the liberty after Clementine had drifted away. She leaned over and kissed her unconcious forehead lightly so as not to wake her. Though if the rain fell much more it would wake her anyway. She was a light sleeper.

Tenn snored loudly as usual and Clementine had made a move to go quieten him with a nudge when she realised Ryan had beaten her to it.

She'd been hunched over him as he lay on his side, mid reach when Clementine spoke.

"Keeping you awake, huh?" She asked, rubbing her eyes in an attempt to focus. Ryan jolted round at Clementine making her presence known and threw a hand over her chest and dramatic suprise.

"Clementine! You scare me! I- I didn't know you were awake." She said, the white of her eyes looking like a deer caught in headlights.

"I wasn't" She yawned, pulling her jacket around her. "I think the rain woke me."

"Ah, yes. Well this little guy, bless him. He could stop a narcoleptic from sleep." Ryan replied, relaxing a little. Clementine laughed.

"You're not the first one to say something like that." She looked around for James then to thank him for healing her hat, doubting he was awake at the same time.

But her stomach dropped when she failed to find him, neither sleeping nor awake. She ran her eyes over each remaining one again to make sure she hadn't missed him.

Ryan seemed to understand. "The kids gone. Jamess is it?"

"What do you mean by gone?" Clementine asked, asking a question she full well knew the answer to.

"Juss that. He thought I wass sleeping and I let him continue to believe that. He put hiss mask on, hung around a little like he wass in two minds. And then he disappeared."

Clementine got to her feet and moved to the edge of the roof as quickly as she could on her compromised leg. She couldn't see him. Not that she had much chance. James knew how to blend in.

"I guess Lilly got to him. Is probably for the best." Ryan continued. Clementine declined to respond to the last part.

"When did he go?"

"I loss the ability to keep time a long time ago, Clementine. I don't know, maybe fifteen minutes ago at most. It doessn't really matter though doess it? Like you said to me. We have to be willing to put our necks on the line for each other" Ryan said, using Clementines words against her.

Clementine had said she wouldn't want him feeling like he was being forced to stay, and she meant it. But she also thought that her request that he sleep on it would be honoured. She wanted the chance to say goodbye in a world where opportunities to do so without the person dying in your arms were few.

He always did shirk the spotlight, and Clem had to understand that. He didn't want a big scene to bow out on.

She took her hat back off her head, the patter of the rain landing in her dark hair. She traced her finger around the stitch again, this time with a sadness sticking in her throat.

Fixing the hat had been his way of saying his goodbye to her....

Clementine tried to take some solace in that, but she found it cut short as a strange beam of red light appeared to dance across it. She struggled to keep up with it for the few seconds it took to fly up her arm and come to rest in the dip between her collarbones.

That's when her eyes widened and she threw herself backwards without a second thought. The sound of a round ringing out thunderously as her back smacked the sharp stones on the surface...