"Urgh… this fucking kills!"

"Just keep some pressure on it! Don't lift your hand off!"

"Yeah, easy for you to say! You're not the one who's been shot!"

"Would you just quit whining and keep still?! You need to keep from bleeding out!"

"…where's Clem? Is she…"

"I don't know… There's a shit-ton of blood around here…"

"Jesus…"

"Fuck, we need to get her inside! There's no way she'll survive like this!"

"Go… I'm right behind you."

"You can barely fucking move, Lilly! Just stay there, I'll come back… Shit! They're turning!"

"I'll cover you… just get her inside…"

"I'm not leaving you alone, Lilly!"

"…why not?"

…

The first thing that I see is a blinding light – a bright, annoying glare that creeps in through the slits of my eyelids as my senses tell me that I'm still very much alive. My vision is foggy, but I'm sure that it'll start to clear up any second now.

Ahh, there we go.

I'm lying on some kind of bed, that's for certain, as my head's sitting on a pillow and I'm looking straight up at the ceiling. A ceiling fan hangs there motionlessly as the blue-coloured walls slowly start to creep into my line of vision.

"Where… am I?" I ask to nobody in particular, finding it very difficult to remain focused on anything for a long period of time. I feel pain, but it's numbed down a little bit, as if my body's slowly starting to put itself back together. But that still doesn't answer my question – where am I, and what happened to me?

"Hey, kiddo," a voice suddenly startles me, but I regain my composure and smile when I realize that Jane's been sitting beside me in a chair the entire time. "I hate to ask this, but how are you feeling?"

"Crappy," I reply simply, causing Jane to chuckle slightly. All seems peaceful around here, at least for now. "Where are we, Jane?"

"Houston Hills – we never left, Clem."

"Does that mean…?"

Jane nods, but she seems a little bit sad as she does so. If we won, and we're sitting in this place without any worries about the outside, then what could be the matter? Why does Jane look as though somebody kicked her puppy or something?

"Are you okay?" I ask, breaking her out of her mood as she tries her best to cover it up with a half-hearted smile. "Jane, come on, you can tell me. What's the matter?"

She points her head to the lower half of my body, as I turn to see what it is she's referring to. Confused, I slowly lift up the blanket that covers me…

After about a minute or so, and realizing what this means, I slowly burst into tears. Jane hops on the side of the bed as I collapse into her arms, but no amount of comfort is going to help in this situation.

And as Lilly walks in through the door, she can't help but rub her eyes to prevent any tears from coming out. This is a tough day for all three of us.

…..

Nobody's POV

"Clem! Oh my god, no! No, no, no, no, no, no, no!" Jane panics, sending off an array of death from her machine gun as guard after guard fall to their deaths. That truck's providing good cover from their attacks, but Clementine won't be safe for long. Lilly's sprinted down the hill to her side, and as soon as Jane sees Corvo her blood starts to boil. "JUST! FUCKING! DIE!"

Corvo collapses in agony as he desperately tries to crawl to safety; having just gotten his legs completely crushed by the truck as Clem had run him over. In a last ditch effort, however, as Jane tries reloading her weapon, Corvo notices that Lilly's hunched over the ruined form of Clementine; providing just the opening he needs. He holds the pistol up shakily as he tries to get his aim right.

"Fucking… pricks…" he spits out blood, closing one eye and taking aim.

"Get… out of here!" Clem garbles as Lilly looks on in shock; not knowing where to even start with the young girl. There's glass sticking out of various points in her face, her hands are torn to bits and her legs… Jesus…

"Clem, god damn it! Stay with me!" she yells, unwilling to let this wonderful young child die like all the rest of the people that she's been with. "JANE! HELP ME OUT OVER – ARGGGHHHH! SHIT! I'M HIT! GOD DAMN IT, I'M – "

Jane quickly shoots Corvo in the neck after the barrel of his weapon goes off, but has to reload again as Lilly collapses from a shot in the side. She's on the ground and seemingly incapacitated, and the third bastard has shown back up after Jane thought for sure that she'd killed him. The bullet went right through the chest! How is he not dead yet?!

"Fuck! NO!" Jane bellows as time seems to go to a standstill, and Jane watches helplessly as Papa John brandishes the barrel of his weapon and sticks it right between Clem's eyes. This is it – she let Clementine down, and now she'd have to live with the guilt for the rest of her life, however long she's got left. She's completely helpless and powerless to do anything.

But Lilly's still got her gun as well.

Papa John turns his head at just the same moment, but Lilly's already put a bullet right through his eye as it goes out his skull; killing the man instantly as the fighting finally comes to a halt.

Once Jane has caught her breath, she immediately rushes down the hill in order to come to the aid of her friends. They'll need it…

…..

"I'm not leaving you, Lilly!"

"…why not?" she asks as Jane empties her last remaining bullets into the heads of some walkers. No matter how safe this place might be, it's still able to fall, just like any other place they might go to. Jane realizes that now.

"Friends stick together," she dramatizes, rolling the words off her tongue in a cheesy manner as Lilly chuckles bitterly. "I'm out! Drag your ass inside, or just hold on! I'll come back for you!"

Not waiting to hear an answer, Jane quickly scoops up the broken heap of Clementine and places her on the hardwood floor as gently as she can.

"Just hang on, Clem…" she mutters, but gasping as Lilly manages to take down a walker right before it takes a bite out of her arm. Nodding, Jane rushes back outside to help the other woman into the house, not needing to rush as quickly since all of the walkers are dead.

What they really need to rush for is Clementine.

"Turn her over… lemme see," Lilly instructs as Jane does as she's asked. The both of them cringe as they look upon her grotesque form; not even close to the sweet little survivor they had grown accustomed to earlier. "Fuck… We need to get the glass out of her face…"

"You need to go take care of yourself."

"My life's not as important as Clem's, Jane…"

"It won't matter whose life's more important if you're dead!" Jane barks, watching as the blood turns her white shirt into a dark crimson. "Go find something to wash that with – you're bleeding onto the floor."

Biting her lip, Lilly turns tail and sighs as she reluctantly walks into the kitchen; on the hunt for some medical supplies or anything resembling it. Honestly, at this point she'd probably tie some fucking paper towels around her waist if she had to!

Jane, on the other hand, is busy working on Clem's face. The young girl is completely passed out, which is either a good thing since she won't feel any of this, or a bad thing because… well, you know why.

"Nice and easy…" Jane says to herself, though this is anything but as she carefully grasps a large chunk of glass from the kid's forehead. With a sickening splotchy sound, Jane groans as she carefully pulls the thing out of the girl's head; the sharp glass now stained with the child's blood as it rolls down her face.

Clementine's face is caked in blood – it's almost as if the pour kid flipped her skin inside out, it's so disgusting. This probably won't ever properly heal, and she's definitely going to have scars on her face for the rest of her life… if she makes it through this. Thankfully, Jane seems to believe that there's a chance, so she doesn't give up as she pulls out a smaller piece near her left cheek.

"How's she doing?" Lilly asks, still holding her side even though she just wrapped it with whatever she could scrape together. Antiseptic will have to wait until later. "Don't you tell me she's dead, Jane."

"What the fuck are we gonna do…?" Jane asks in disbelief, gesturing to Clem's mangled legs. Parts of them aren't facing the right way, and there are several broken bones that lead all the way down to her feet. In complete stress, Jane rubs her hands through her hair and shakes her head, unable to believe what this could mean. "Lilly… she might not – "

"She will," Lilly interjects, holding herself up against the wall as she edges her way closer to the two of them. "She has to… It's fucking Clementine, for god's sake! She'll pull through!"

"And when she wakes up? What then?" Jane questions, lifting the girl up and walking towards one of the bedrooms on the ground floor. "How the hell are we supposed to deal with this, huh? You think Clem wants to live as a cripple?! The kid's already been through enough shit! What's gonna happen when she wakes up and…"

"We'll deal with it, just like everything else. She has to survive, Jane, no matter what condition she's in. I owe her that much after everything that's happened…"

Taking one last look at the young girl before gently setting her down on the bed, Jane nods and orders Lilly to come make herself useful by the bedside. This is gonna take some work.

…..

Paralyzed… at least for now. That was my immediate reaction when I lifted the blanket up, but now I'm wishing that I hadn't. I could've been safe and in the dark on my condition; completely oblivious and unaware that I can't move at all. I'm going to be stuck in a chair or a bed for… well, maybe forever depending on how things go. This is bullshit.

My eyes are red and puffy from crying so much, but the mirror paints a much more gruesome story than just teary eyes. I'm all bandaged up on my face, and there are cuts literally everywhere. I couldn't look more beaten up and battered if I tried to. Jane tells me that it'll be at least a week before I can even think about taking the bandages off for long periods of time, but it's not as if she really knows anything about this sort of stuff. Jane's no doctor by any stretch of the imagination.

Frowning sorely, I sigh and place my trademark ball cap with the letter D on it back upon my head. Hell, even my hat looks as though it's been through hell, and that's the nicest-looking thing about me now.

"I'm gonna be a freak for the rest of my life…" I comment, noticing as Lilly walks up behind me, studying my reflection in the mirror as I sit in a moveable office chair.

"I think it makes you look more like a bad ass," she opinionates, even though deep down we both know the truth – I'll never look like my old self again. No amount of haircuts are going to change anything, and I'm certainly not the same person that I was before. "You know, they say that looking at a mirror for too long will cause you to go crazy."

"Maybe I already am," I retort, sighing as I twirl in the office chair and wait patiently as Lilly gets set up behind me. "Mush, mush…"

"This isn't a dog sled you're on, Clem… though that'd be pretty freaking awesome."

"Yeah, sure…" I mumble without much emotion, glancing at the floor as Lilly brings me back into the bedroom. Apparently I need as much rest as humanly possible before I can wander about the house – Dr. Jane's orders.

Lilly carefully lifts me up and back down onto the bed, but wincing as she accidentally bangs her wound again.

"Damn it, that smarts…" she hisses, but shaking it off as she notices that I'm staring again. "Don't worry about it, Clem. Nothing we haven't dealt with before, right? Back in that church and everything…"

"Have you just wanted to die this whole time?"

My question obviously throws her off guard at first, but I keep my expression neutral as I patiently wait for an answer from her. It's blunt, for sure, but we don't beat around the bush with the three of us; not anymore. There's no room for that considering that every single day could very well be your last.

Sighing, she bends forward in the chair and folds her hands together while looking at the bed sheets surrounding me. This is gonna be tough to answer I'm betting.

"Sometimes I have, yeah. Depends… depends on the circumstances," she explains quietly, a sort of reservation about her as she describes what she's been going through. "Sometimes I just… lose myself, you know? And it's hard to pick up the pieces after you've lost… well, pretty much everything."

"I know."

"Yeah, yeah I guess you would," she concedes, nodding her head sadly. "I spent a whole lot of nights after taking that RV just wondering what the point was anymore. I was completely alone, having destroyed the last couple of friendships that I had left in this world. And with all of that Carley shit running through my head… one night I grabbed a pistol from the glove compartment, raised it up to my forehead… but I couldn't force myself to pull the trigger. It would've been a slap in the face for my dad if I just took the easy way out – he raised me not to be a quitter and all of that typical fatherly bullshit. So when I met up with you and Jane back at Howe's, I figured that maybe I'd have a chance. If I ever got into a life or death situation, I'd make sure that you two weren't the ones to go. The person to die would have to be the one that deserved it the most."

"Lilly…"

"Nothing was simple anymore; not like it used to be," she continues, glaring at the floor as she clenches a fist. "Not like it was before… fucking Kenny…"

I take some time to let her vent a little bit more, as it's obvious that this has been bottling up for quite some time. We've all been there; all had the worst possible things happen to us that we can't control. That's why it's so much easier to relate.

Nothing compares to the heartache, the grief of losing someone you love… It's one of the worst feelings in the world.

"What do you think would've happened… if I had shot Kenny instead of Carley that day?" she asks, slightly curious but not as bitter as I thought she would've been about it. "Do you think… things would've been different?"

I shuffle upwards a bit to get in a better position on the bed. How the hell do you answer that question? I mean, she knows that I had to shoot Kenny in the chest; to end the brittle relationship that we may (or may not) have had after he lost everything. Would it seem more justifiable in that instance?

Sadly, I doubt it.

"Katjaa wouldn't have let you back on the RV," I shake my head, doubt swirling in my mind as I think back to that fateful day. "Lee probably would've allowed it, but then she'd probably get super mad, and then the whole thing would fall apart. But… Kenny was the same way as you, I think. He didn't want to be here anymore either."

"That's not what I'm saying, Clem. It's just… fuck, I felt low, alright? Like the entire world was out to get me, and that nothing I did was going to make it better. Believe me, I tried."

There she goes again – overanalyzing things. Why is it that whenever problems come up, adults always make it worse than it needs to be? They can't ever just find a solution that works for them, instead just dragging it out and beating themselves up over the smallest of details.

Then again, like Lilly just stated, things aren't so simple anymore.

Sometimes I wonder if I had made the right choices – choosing Jane over Kenny, letting Lilly come into the hardware store, and inadvertently causing tension among the group members. I keep asking myself what Lee would've done, but then I realized something important – we're two different people. He wouldn't want me to do the same stuff that he did. Lee would want me to live my own life; make my own choices and live with the consequences.

And when Kenny started asking me what Lee would've done back in the truck, I knew that it wouldn't make a difference. The man left a mark on everyone he came into contact with, for sure, but that's it. He's gone, and I shouldn't drag myself down because of that fact. It's a different world now – the decisions that Lee had made won't apply now. I need to figure things out for myself.

"I'm glad that you came back," I murmur, closing my eyes as I prepare to drag myself back to a peaceful slumber.

She thinks that I can't see her, but I can tell what's going on. Lilly smiles fondly at the little friend that she found again after so long, and brushes her hand tenderly over my cheek. It's so unnatural coming from her, but it only makes it that more special; that more significant and meaningful.

Because when Lilly smiles at you, you bet your ass that she means every one of them.

"Me too."

….

"Are you sure about this?" I ask uncertainly, glancing down at the wheelchair with suspicion and doubt. "I mean, won't it be even harder to get around in this thing?"

"Hey, I didn't search through the whole attic and the basement just for you not to try it out at least once," Jane jokes, a smirk playing upon her lips as she helps me to sit myself down. I have to physically pull my legs onto the pedals of the chair before finally getting settled. "See? This'll be way easier to use than an office chair, Clem."

"I haven't even moved in it yet," I point out, before sniffing the air and scrunching up my face in slight disgust. "And… why does it smell like piss?"

"Well, apparently this used to be a senior center here."

"Jane! That's disgusting!" I gag, suddenly wanting to walk again about ten times more than I already had. "Isn't there anything else?"

"The smell should die out soon enough, Clementine. Don't worry," she brushes off, trying her best not to laugh at this. When I stubbornly put on my best annoyed face and fold my arms over my chest, she can't help but snort. "Sorry… Anyways, try pushing the wheels forward and backwards. You're gonna gain some wicked upper body strength with this thing."

"If you say so…" I mumble, doing as instructed and trying my best to move the wheels around, but with limited success. Why does this seem so much easier to do in the movies? With the limited strength in my arms that I actually have, I struggle to move the chair down the hallway, but somehow I manage.

However, once I get to the end of the hall, I run into a little bit of a snag.

"Uh, Jane?" I call out, unable to turn around to face her. "I'm stuck over here!"

"How? You've only been doing this for like five seconds!"

"Just get over here!" I huff, feeling embarrassed enough as it is without having Jane make a mockery of it further. When I feel her grasp the handles at the back of the wheelchair tightly before turning me back towards the kitchen area, I sigh in discontent. This sucks – why couldn't I have just put my damn seatbelt on? That was rule one of driving, according to Jane! How could I have been so careless?!

"Bring her in here," Lilly calls from the kitchen, which slightly piques my interest. "I figure we might as well do something fun for a change."

"Lilly and fun… Never thought I'd live to see the day," Jane jokes, getting a grunt from the older woman as she rolls me into the kitchen. Set up on the table is a small box with some question cards inside of it. As Jane sets me up against the table, I pull out some of the cards and start to read… sort of.

"Password? What is this, some kind of game?" I ask, glancing at the cardboard box to try and make heads or tails of what we're supposed to do.

"We've only got three people, so it might be a bit challenging," Lilly shrugs, sliding a plate of vegetables down Jane's way as she puts it on the table – the prison's vegetables. Really? We couldn't find anything else? "One person knows the password, and has to try and get their partner to guess what it is. You can only say one word as a hint for your partner."

"You couldn't have found anything else? I don't know, a deck of cards or something?"

"What's the matter, Jane?" I smirk coyly, "Don't think you can handle it?"

Scoffing, Jane sticks her tongue out at me before ruffling my hat around a little bit.

"I'll have you know that I am the queen of these kinds of games," she proclaims proudly, taking a seat beside me as Lilly sits across from us. "Queen Jane… huh, that's got a pretty nice ring to it, don't you think?"

"Yeah, maybe for an egotistical maniac," Lilly rolls her eyes, the usual hostility between the two of them having slowly started to dissipate over the time that we've been with each other. I'm proud of this accomplishment – after all of the fights, the violence and the threats, we've come out on the other side. Not without consequences of course, but we've made it.

All three of us are safe, at least for now. We can make this work, is the line that Jane would usually feed me with whenever we thought that Howe's was too big of a job for us to handle.

But this right here… Houston Hills… this is our best shot at a home. It'd be nice to just not have to keep running away and moving from place to place all the time. Perhaps it's just wishful thinking, but other than the obvious threat of Corvo and the rest of them (who are now taken care of, according to Lilly and Jane) we haven't actually had any problems here. Lilly found a whole stash of supplies that are kept cold in the cellar on the far side of the basement, and even though we're going to need to start doing runs again eventually, for now it's nice to know that we're relatively in the clear for a change.

"Alright, wise guy, you're up first," Jane tells me as she looks down at the card. Once she thinks it over a little bit, she tries her best to give me a hint. "Cold."

"Umm… water?" I guess to which she shakes her head and turns to Lilly.

"Cube."

"Ice!" Lilly says swiftly, causing me to chuckle at her enthusiasm. It's nice to see all three of us enjoying ourselves for a change… sober as well.

The game continues on this way for about an hour or so until we start to get bored, having exhausted many of the cards and eaten half the plate of vegetables already. Lilly kicked both of our asses, but I actually racked up more points than Jane did. So much for "Queen Jane"!

Joking and laughing and reminiscing about the good ol' days… I never thought that we'd get to experience this stuff again. Sure, a drunken night at Howe's may have provided some of that stuff, but this is different. Nobody's threatening to kick each other out of the group, or trying to toss somebody out of the group in a drunken rage. This is just us enjoying the limited amount of time that we can in each other's company; most of our past grievances with each other forgotten.

Lilly isn't trying to run off with our supplies or kill us in our sleep. She'd rather throw herself in harm's way than allow anything to harm one of her friends. I don't need to ask how I know if I can trust her any longer – I just do.

Jane's not trying to convince me to take off in a truck through a winter storm, or have me turn anymore folks away when they desperately need our help. She's smart, resourceful and is gonna stick by us until the bitter end. It's what she promised me after we got back to Howe's, and I can hold her to that.

This is my family now, all three of us – troubled, often dysfunctional and quite dangerous when we need to be, but we're family. I thought that we had died inside after AJ was taken from us, that whatever bridge was holding us together had been blown up and shattered into a billion tiny pieces. But we've overcome this obstacle, and others like it, despite how terrifying this world might seem.

We're survivors, and we're going to stay that way until we die.

"Did you hear that?" Lilly asks suddenly, her brow furrowed as she pulls her chair out and grabs her rifle off the kitchen counter. "Something's outside – we need to go check it out."

"I'm coming with you," I inform her, hearing no argument as Jane rolls me back out into the hall. Lilly swiftly opens the front door and peers outside, glowering as a family of four stop their truck and slowly make their way towards the front steps.

"That's far enough!" Lilly hollers, holding her weapon in front of her but not aiming it directly at them – yet. So far, from what I can tell at least, these people don't seem to be too dangerous. But you have to be dangerous in order to survive out here these days. That's just the way that the world works.

There's two grown men with a daughter who looks a little bit younger than I am, and for a split second I can see myself within this girl. Small, scared of everything that moves, and wanting nothing more than to just find somewhere that's safe enough for them to stay in. They explain themselves, saying how they've been on the road for days and are running low on supplies, how they just need a place to stay for a couple of days at the most – you know, the usual pitch from families like these.

Then I think back on that family of three that I turned away so long ago now… Randy, Patricia, Gil… and what my thoughts were when Lilly and I came across them when coming back from that town. How guilty I had felt for inadvertently causing their deaths, and wishing that maybe I could've given them a chance. I was a different person then, and that was a different time. Jane and I were desperate, having just come off of some very traumatizing weeks.

And lastly, I think about how I allowed Lilly back into my life.

"How do I know that I can trust you?"

"You don't."

Glancing at the family of three, I nod towards Jane and Lilly, who reluctantly back off. I'm not going to make the same mistakes again.

"Just a few days – you can put your weapons at the front door," I tell them, watching as their faces brighten in appreciation. "Come on inside."

AN: And that's all, folks! I've had an awesome time writing this story – Jane and Lilly are ridiculously fun to write for, and have so much untapped potential for the writers at Telltale. If they'll ever decide to bring them back is a mystery, but I'd be over the moon if they did. I think that'd be so cool :)

I'd like to thank all of my reviewers for this absolutely amazing journey – you guys rock! Rebloxic, spiderclone, kesrakuch, Full Power, classykazmiller25, a Writer with Mixed Interests, boomboomboomer, VictoriaSW, CarlosTWD, Robot Terminator, Mr. Unknown, emilyrose727, Sven the Crusader, FeedtheMachine23, Bubbles2K100, 101WalkingDead, The Person of Nothing, Flare Hedgehog, ashes2ashes, Rayne Ariana Maranochi, clemenfan, Salient Spring, clemmyclue19, Assassin's Creed Master, clemenTIME, Zero Bullet, maryaa, Lee and Kenny, He Who Destroys All, Lord Skarlet, Sharon Ryght, and all of the guests. You guys have been UNREAL! Thank you so much :)

Maybe I'll do something more with these three, since honestly they've become pretty much my favourite characters in the series. It probably won't be for a while, since I don't have any ideas at the moment, but this won't be the end of fanfic writing for me. I'll see you guys around!

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