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Of course she had to get sick, of course. It had to happen eventually, right? Y'know with the dead walking around and all the world isn't very hygienic. Not to mention lack of running water, limited cleaning supplies, constantly being on the move, and taking care of a toddler. It was inevitable honestly. And a miracle, that she hasn't already gotten sick before this.
Doesn't make it any better now.
And like, what is she supposed to do? How do you deal with this? Clementine doesn't have any medicine. Even if she did, she wouldn't dare use it in case AJ got sick. There are medicinal plants, she knows this at least, but not a lick about how to identify them.
It's all she can do to find enough food and water to keep them alive, fight off the dead every damn day, without adding a fucking cold to the matter. At least they have the car. A godsend honestly, though not literally, you'd be crazy to believe in a god after living in a world like this. With the car they're protected from the autumn winds, a quick getaway if they need it. A decent place to sleep when they have to.
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At first she tries to ignore it. It's just a cold right? It'll go away eventually. Ha, no. There's snot dripping from her nose while she's trying to drive and it's very distracting. They don't have any toilet paper, let alone tissues. So the only thing she can use is the same god forsaken rag over and over until she has to wash it out at the nearest body of water. Her coughing is loud whenever she and AJ have to go out looking for food, and repressing it only makes it worse when she inevitably ends up breaking down in a coughing fit. Next comes the sore throat, which makes her constantly thirsty. But they can't afford to be drinking the water like that, so then the lack of water makes her throat dryer, which in turn makes her cough worse, which in turn makes the irritation in her throat worse and repeat.
It was already hard enough getting sleep. The constant anxiety, weariness, and awareness she has isn't exactly a great combination for a good night's rest, and that's without a mucus clogged nose making it hard to breath. It drives her insane, breathing through her mouth is making her throat even dryer, which is starting to cause wheezing noises. AJ wakes up once to ask her if she's dying, and she can't tell whether he's being serious or not. Regardless, she pats his head lovingly, tells him no, she's not. She's just a little bit under the weather at the moment. Then he asks her what under the weather means.
"I'll tell you in the morning", Clementine answers. "Go back to sleep"
"Why not tell me now?" AJ asks.
"Because I'm tired" she coughs, "And you need something to look forward to."
They fall asleep, eventually.
She does all she can to keep from getting a fever. She may even pray a little, begging to some unknown, most likely nonexistent being that she won't get a fever because she can't be bedridden, they can't afford that. What if she's unable to get up for days? Who will take care of AJ? If she can't go out searching, they'll run out of food. Or they could get attacked by walkers. All it takes is one. Just one noisy walker is sure to attract more, and walkers are pretty loud when they're hungry.
They're always hungry.
She can't get a fever, she won't, there's no way.
Then it happens anyway, and she fights it, but even AJ, in his small age of 4 years, knows that she's pushing it. He tries convincing her to not go out scouting this time, that they should stay in the car for the day, even with the way she knows he hates being cooped up. And what is she supposed to do? They only have a couple days left of food left, and she hasn't seen enough of the area to know what the extent of walkers are like here. But she's tired, so tired, and it's not just the bone achingly, wary tiredness that she feels every day. This is really tired. She can barely get up without feeling her head spin, lately the headaches have been so bad she wants to puke. And truly, all Clementine wants to do is lay down for a moment.
So she does.
She's laid out in the back seat of the car. The few pillows she managed to scavenge up in the past few months to make something of a makeshift prop up car seat for AJ are currently being used to cushion her head. Then AJ uses way too much of their preciously small supply of clean drinking water to make a cold rag to lay on her forehead. And she just lies there, going through it. A 'moment' turns into 30 minutes, then a couple hours, then a whole day.
Having a cold during the apocalypse seriously sucks.
It's freezing outside, but she's burning. Everything around her is way too cold and yet she has sweat building up on her back. AJ's sitting on the floor of the car, resting his head on her stomach, humming a little tune she used to sing to him when he was sick or upset. She hopes that he doesn't have to experience this anytime soon, or at all ever in his life if that could be possible. Then again, she supposes, he already has.
It takes hours for her to fall asleep, and once she finally does it's restless. She's rolling back and forth throughout the night and still waking to have occasional moments of lucidness to panic on whether AJ's still there or not. But he is. After getting a good nap when it was still light out, he stays awake throughout the whole night to watch over her. Switching the rag from off her forehead to lay it out in the cool weather before bringing it back to her while she's asleep. Telling Clementine random stories and wonderings that come to him to keep her distracted when she's awake. At some point in the night, she briefly thinks; precious, he's precious to me.
Sometimes she doesn't understand how you can hold this much love for one person. Doesn't understand how anyone could stomach it. She doesn't know what she would do if she lost the source of that love.
She stops thinking about that.
But then she tells him too, tells him how much she loves him and how good he's doing and how happy she is to have him right before she's falling asleep again.
Wondering where he's gone, Clementine nearly falls out of the car an hour later when AJ has to step out to relieve himself. He then catches her best he can, helps her back onto the pillows, lays that same damn rag that she used to wipe mucus away days ago back onto her forehead, and says;
"It's okay Clem. I love you too, and I'm right here. You can go back to sleep."
And so she does.