Salvation. The Walking Dead: Season Five.

Road to Atone - Part One.

*

Clementine lay, her legs swinging gently back and forth over the edge of the 150 foot high platform the group now begrudgingly called their home. She'd been quick to volunteer for watch tonight, and yet her usual vigilance had so far escaped her in favour of staring almost longingly into a different kind of oblivion.

The sky was violently black, and it only sought to make the stars suspended within it glimmer more aggressively than Clementine had ever noticed before. Lifting her arm, she traced out the same constellations she and Violet had made together. It was something she did often now, a comfort that took her back to one of the last positive and calming memories she had held on to between all of the decay.

Before she and AJ had found themselves running. Again. The Ranch, Richmond, Ericson. They had all fallen, become tainted. First to people, houses divided. Then to the Walkers. It was an inevitability and Clementine had no doubts the same would happen to the place they laid their heads now. A damn water tower in Southern Pennsylvania.

It wasn't ideal. But it had so far kept the group protected and undetected from the Walkers and passing groups since they had holed up there a few weeks back. Getting up and down it's structure everyday was proving to be a potential death trap itself but there had been no actual fatalities thus far, though they were still dealing with prior casualties.

Lilly was in the process of nursing a broken collarbone back to full health so she hadn't step foot any further than the observation deck since they had arrived, with AJ under strict rule to stay put inside the tower under the guise of making sure Lilly came to no harm. Which was a real possibility considering the majority of the group hadn't forgiven her for what she did to Ericson.

However in reality Clementine just didn't want AJ tackling the ladder down to the ground any more than absolutely necessary. She would be damned if after everything she'd protected him from, it would be falling off a ladder that took him away from her for good.

Clementine was almost done tracing out the Star Bird when an ear splitting creek had her instinctively reaching for her double barrel, aiming it at the source of the noise, and then lowering it back down within the space of a second or two once she'd processed where it had ultimately come from.

"Jumpy tonight" James observed, pulling himself up and out of the hatch of the Water Towers domed head; its eggshell blue paint emblazoned with large, white, and peeled lettering reading 'SHARPSBURG, PA'.

"I'm jumpy every night." Clementine claimed, throwing the shotgun back down at her side; secretly embarrassed at said jitters. "It's a good job you didn't have that damn mask on. Your head would be rolling in the grass about now." She warned, bluntly.

"I like rolling around, in the grass." He shrugged back nonchalantly before making the small leap down to the deck that she occupied. Clementine opened her mouth again to enlighten him that doing so in two pieces would probably be a deal breaker but thought that avenue too much an invite to more conversation.

"Look, I'm good. You don't have to take over." She assured instead, hoping that it sounded final enough for her to find herself alone again. She was however left wanting, as James sat down beside her; knees pulled up to his chest, and intact head allowed to rest back gently against the cold steel of the tower.

"No. I'm... okay. Can't settle. Tenn, he is loud, when he sleeps. For a little guy." He replied finally, his stop-start like speech ever present, and ever cause to wonder if he was slow due to his time with the Whisperers, or simply infuriatingly composed.

Despite her warming annoyance, Clementine suppressed half a smirk, Tenn was an impressive snorer. But she didn't reply. She missed the sound of silence already and sure wasn't going to make it easy for James. She could feel his eyes on her, he had a tendency to stare and it had made some of the group uncomfortable on more than one occasion before now. It was something she thought she should probably tip him off to, but social cues were not his strong suit, never would be.