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Violet wasn't really supposed to go on walks by herself anymore. Her eyesight had been fucked up while she was held captive by The Delta, and while she could still see to an extent, things were out of focus and cloudy. But she could still see, and she didn't really care about pissing anyone off anymore, since she and Louis were the leaders of the school. What did it matter that she went for a stroll in the woods by herself?
Well, calling it a stroll might've been the wrong word. It was more like a short hike. After bumping into a cliff, decent in size but still manageable to climb, she'd decided to say fuck it and check out what was up there. There was old blood on some of the stones, so dark and flaky that it had to have been from walkers. The fact that it only reached about halfway up her climb really enforced that. Still, whatever was left of the herd that was used to raid The Delta's ship had dispersed ages ago, so the risk was low.
What awaited her was... more forest. Violet didn't know what she was expecting, but she was still kind of let down anyway. Was it so much to ask for some excitement of the non-walker variety every once in a while? Probably. The last time they'd been through that, it resulted in her becoming effectively blind. Which wasn't an experience she wanted to repeat.
Leaves crunched under Violet's boots as she made her way down a natural trail. It was weird how much could change in what felt like so little time. She and Louis made a really good pair when they weren't taking potshots at each other. While Louis was friendly, social and always good for rallying people together, Violet kept them in line, checking egos and respecting the silent boundaries that Louis wasn't great at seeing without a visible reaction. They balanced each other out.
She couldn't help but think of how differently things would be if Marlon was still alive. He was pretty good at leading, but in hindsight, he'd been too scared. Fear painted his every action; from the save zone, to abandoning parts of the school building. He could talk a big game, sure, but when push came to shove, Violet had seen firsthand how willing he was to throw other people under the bus to ensure his own survival. He was a prick and betrayed them, but she still missed him, despite his flaws.
How different would things have been, then, if AJ didn't return to Ericson's that night all alone, holding a blood-splattered, worn hat with an iron grip? He'd taken to wearing it at all hours of the day, and honestly most nights that Violet checked on him. They were all worried about him, but as the only person who really grieved over the same loss as the kid, Violet felt it was her responsibility to make sure he was alright. Maybe not the healthiest outlet, but fuck, that kid could take them all out if he went off the deep end.
The landscape gave way to something different. Violet couldn't really tell what it was, but the colors were all off from the forest around it, and whatever the thing was, it was big. Maybe an old shack? She was far enough away from the school that it could be feasible. This was probably someone's property a long time ago. Curious, she walked toward it.
Getting nearer made the image sharpen by a fraction. Shack would be a good word for the building in terms of its state of disrepair, but it was too big. It kind of looked like a barn. Did people have farmland that close to the school? She had to have walked a couple miles out, but that was still pretty close to a boarding school for troubled youths. Hmm... One thing was sure, though; Violet wasn't about to just walk away from this disruption to the boring old woods.
Drawing closer, it wasn't long before she heard the sounds of a walker. Her body flew into a fighting stance, grabbing for the old screwdriver she'd started keeping on her instead of a knife. Knives were cool and all, up until you couldn't pull the damn thing out of a walker's skull. Screwdrivers had all the stabbing power, and none of the friction when removing. Perfect balance.
It didn't take a genius to figure out that the low groaning was coming from inside the barn, but it did take a solid five seconds of Violet reflexively checking her surroundings and straining her ears. She felt like her hearing had gotten more sensitive after her eyes had been fucked up, but maybe it was just placebo or whatever it was called. She thought about walking away, but shrugged. In for a penny, in for a pound, as... someone in her family used to say.
Knowing that the walker was trapped gave Violet enough peace of mind to approach the barn. She didn't get close enough to be grabbed through the small, barred-over windows, only close enough to peek inside. There was a fuzzy mass in there that was moving in slow, mindless motions. The shape was humanoid, though that was kind of hard to tell with how dark it was inside the barn. Something was pinning the walker down, a long stick or handle sticking out from it's abdomen.
It would be best to just walk away. She'd found something kind of interesting, had her fun, and now it was getting into dangerous territory. Violet knew she should turn back and head home without tempting fate further. But something in her - her inner adrenaline junkie, probably - wasn't satisfied with that. Oh no, of course not, she wanted to get a closer look.
Against all common sense and survival instinct, Violet slid the door to the barn open. The walker made a little extra noise, a stray limb flailing in Violet's direction, but it was clearly well pinned down. With a morbid curiosity, Violet got as close to the thing as she dared. The stench made her grimace - it was the smell of lukewarm, decomposing flesh mixed with whatever else was leftover in the barn from before the dead started walking.
Violet couldn't see the walker clearly, even though she could crouch down and touch it if she wanted to. The clothing it wore was still held together, no rips or torn seams, so it had to have died more recently. All the clothing blended together, though, a mess of blues and dark black stains that had to have been blood. The face hadn't fared nearly as bad. Milky eyes were standard, and the way the cheeks were starting to slough off was typical of rotting flesh. But something wasn't right.
That- No. That wasn't. Violet's every sense screamed at her to get back, get out. Leave, and never return to this place, ever. Not to tell anyone else about it, and just pretend it never existed. He'd mentioned a barn, hadn't he? With the crazy shit going on that night, that little detail had completely slipped her mind. Fuck! She didn't expect her rebellious walk to make her see this.
There was only one way to describe it; the walker was Clementine. Now that Violet had recognized her, she could place together that the clothes she wore were the same, just soaked through with blood. The features that Violet could recognize by sight were so familiar, but so wrong. Skin was necrotizing, turning black and dead. What wasn't too far decayed was getting there, her very flesh seeming to melt off her bones. She'd heard that walkers that didn't eat decayed faster, but this was just... too much.
Nothing remained of the mysterious stranger they'd cared for in unconsciousness. There wasn't a hint left of AJ's caretaker, Ericson's makeshift leader or Violet's kind-of-ex girlfriend. Her mind had gone, leaving her shell of a body behind to rot and decay in slow agony, unable to move. The tool imbedded into her chest was pronged at the end, clearly an attempt to keep her from moving, from killing and eating. It had to have been AJ's work.
VIolet remembered hazily his sudden return to the school that night. He was hysterical, shouting about needing a wheelbarrow of all things, and after someone had told him where to find it, he'd taken it and run off. They didn't see him again until the next morning, after dawn. AJ had brought the wheelbarrow back, empty. New blood was splattered on his clothes, and clenched in his hands was Clem's old hat. He had refused to talk about it for weeks.
Against her will, she found herself inspecting Clementine's body. She tried not to look at the rotting flesh for too long. Cloudy though her sight was, it still wasn't a nice thing to look at. Violet stopped short at her legs. One of them was... It had to have been amputated, right? Her right leg was way shorter than the left, so dark with blood that Violet couldn't identify how clean the cut was. That wasn't something a walker could do. Losing a limb like that had to have been the work of a living person.
AJ... Had he done it before she turned? Or after? Was it to make it difficult for her to hurt anyone as a walker? But, that didn't line up with his story. He'd said something about her getting bit, but didn't mention where. The missing chunk of leg oddly reminded Violet of Abel. He'd been begging and pleading to be killed before he turned. Did Clem do the same? Had she asked AJ to put her out of her misery before she became a monster? He always told them that he had, but her reanimated corpse disagreed.
"Fuck. I didn't want to believe it, even though I knew..." she muttered to the senseless walker. It feebly reached out towards her at the sound of her voice, desperate to take a bite out of her. Violet smiled at it ruefully. "I guess this is my last chance to say my piece, huh?" The walker didn't reply, merely wheezing out a weak, pained breath. It was pathetic, barely clinging to life, as though the undead husk knew Clementine hadn't wanted to exist as a mindless walker.
Seeing Clementine's body in that state, Violet hesitated. She had been so mad back then. Clem had let her be captured, and then that bitch Lilly had destroyed her sight, and all the while, Minnie was there just watching it happen. Losing Clementine had lessened that hate, the grief overriding it, but it had never really gone away. If that James guy was right, and that walkers had anything left over from their lives, Violet would feel really bad. But she needed to get these feelings off her chest.
"Fuck you," she hissed. "You let them take me. You saw that I needed help and did fucking nothing. I'll never forgive you for the hell I went through on that damn boat." Violet took a breath. Weird, why was her vision swimming even more than usual? "But damn it if I don't still love you. I miss you. AJ misses you. And... I'm sorry that you've been here all this time, forgotten like this. I might be mad at you, but it's not what you deserve." She readied her screwdriver, stepping around the flailing corpse.
Distantly, Violet could feel tears roll down her cheeks, but she didn't care to stop them. When she was behind the walker's head, she held the stabbing instrument up. Arms weakly tried to grab her, the walker's jaw working lethargically. It was too weak to grab her. Violet tried not to notice how black Clementine's fingers were. Taking a deep breath, she swung the screwdriver with as much force as she could. It pierced right through the skull, lodging itself deep in the brain of the thing.
It took a few moments for the walker's body to catch up with its new brain injury. Movements grew more stilted, there was a brief gurgle of pain that sounded so close to a cry that Violet's heart froze in her chest, and then it was motionless. Dead. She looked at it for a long time, trying to commit to memory the out of focus image of her dead girlfriend lying at her feet. Violet wasn't sure how long she stood there before pulling the screwdriver out. It left a perfect little circle in her forehead behind.
The sounds of a struggling beast had been silenced. There were only the quiet, hiccupped breaths of Violet trying not to break down left behind. She did it. Finished it. Did what AJ had never been able to do. At once, she knew that she couldn't tell him. If he hadn't been able to stop Clem from turning, he wouldn't want to know that Violet had put her out of her misery. Fuck, she needed to get back.
Swallowing back tears had become a practiced art for her by now, and she was safe to leave in only a few minutes. Still, part of her wanted to linger, to live in this moment for a while longer. Maybe it was the fucked up shit she saw as a kid. Maybe it was how fucked up the whole world was. But as she slowly slid the barn door closed behind her, Violet felt like she was closing the book on something. A chapter of her life, of all their lives, that they'd never get to revisit.
At least Clem didn't have to suffer anymore.