. (mareas) wrote in rooms, @ 2015-04-17 18:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | !dc comics, *narrative, clementine murphy |
Narrative
Who: Clementine
What: Home
Where: Zombies → Home → Gotham
When: Before the house transfer
Warnings/Rating: Non-graphic daddy death and incest references
That watch 'round her neck put her back wrong.
Clementine didn't tumble on into Marvel or Gotham, and she didn't tumble into some other door any. No, she tumbled right back on home. Older, and years off from when she had that baby she hadn't seen in months. Felt even more like somebody else's child now, and her own face looked back at her from the mirror in a real familiar country house. She'd been this age when that damn party came. Halloween, and messing things all up, and then down again and a baby birthed, and somedays she thought she imagined it. Her EMS training, it told her that was depression, but not a lick to do about it now, and it had become part of her in the months after Penny took that child away.
But she wasn't in any hotel, and none of it mattered, because going back wasn't real given. Last time, it took a year. This time, she might never go on back to that place with its doors. Maybe that was for the best, and maybe it wasn't, but she wasn't real keen on thinking it through hard any.
She wasn't letting longing or missing settle deep in her gut neither, because there wasn't any point to it. Wouldn't change a thing, and it was best to make the best of things as they came.
She took the house for empty, and she went upstairs and to her bedroom. It looked real pink, and it looked real clean. Soft carpet, and it smelled like magnolias, and none of it was like that place with innards sloshing and rot so deep up in your nose that it weren't ever going. Standing there, she could still smell dead things over her shoulder, sick sweet and like bananas gone soft with rot. Squish like that, and she felt like it coated her insides. But here was clean, and pink, and it smelled like flowers, like her momma.
But this wasn't Savannah.
No matter, and she stripped out of jeans and green, and she ran the water and climbed grateful into that deep tub. She sighed, and warmth felt like resting. She felt like she hadn't rested in months, and she hadn't any. Ain't resting when you could hear the moans of the dying, and here there was quiet and still and steps on the stairs...
Steps on the stairs.
She opened her eyes, and she knew who'd be there. Standing in his hunting clothes, rifle in his relaxed hand and the hunting dogs at his heels.
"You've been away." And he was angry as snakes rattling. She didn't think to ask how long or how many years, because it wouldn't matter a lick. Point was, she'd been gone, and she'd took his baby, and he was mad as hornets.
Water sloshed as his hand closed 'round her upper arm, and water left a river of taboo to the pink bed.
After, she crawled out from beneath the sheets quiet. The dogs were gone, off to wherever they went, and she didn't bother grabbing for a robe. She didn't think any as her toes pressed into the plush cream carpet and crossed to where the rifle was resting beside the door to the bathroom.
Now, Clementine, she knew guns. She'd been hunting since she was small, and she'd been practicing with them undead things. Moving targets, she could hit those easy. A target lying on the bed like some festering thing from Hell? Heck, that'd be child's play.
After, she was splattered red as she stood in front of the bathroom mirror, bruising at her shoulder from the rifle's kick blossoming to a real angry purple. She brushed her daddy off her face with the back of her hand, red smearing, and she sighed real heavy and considered blonde.
But the bruise, and she'd need to wear sleeves if she went dancing. Shame, with it being Spring.
And just like that, she got zapped on back to that empty condo in Gotham with its pinks, and it smelled of magnolias. Her toes left bloodstains on that white marble floor.
She left the red be. Weren't no shame in sending the Devil back to Hell. Heck, might even be time to start living again.