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Post by Rock114 on Jul 25, 2014 22:04:58 GMT
And there it is. Thoughts?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 25, 2014 22:26:14 GMT
But seriously, GREAT job. I loved it.
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Post by Rock114 on Jul 25, 2014 22:31:13 GMT
But seriously, GREAT job. I loved it. I'm glad you did. It's certainly better than what he got in the game. It was kind of depressing for me to have Nick die thinking that Pete wasn't proud of him. Though we all know that Pete WOULD be after that. Speaking of Pete, getting to write him and Nick's thoughts on him into this was one of my favorite parts.
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Post by Bioshock Infinite WD on Jul 25, 2014 22:33:38 GMT
I can understand why, man I almost hope someone makes a mod that makes it a better death, well, almost.
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Post by Teacakes on Jul 26, 2014 9:28:57 GMT
Dem feels...
My eyes are watering. Goddamn... Great job Rock.
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Post by Teacakes on Jul 26, 2014 10:44:54 GMT
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Post by Rock114 on Jul 26, 2014 18:19:43 GMT
And Part 2 is up on FF right now.
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Post by Rock114 on Aug 23, 2014 7:54:01 GMT
As the scrolls have foretold... an update.
I promised Part 3 of this several weeks back. It's underway, though no ETA as to when it will be done. I'm shooting for before Episode 5 is released to finish it up and get it out. It'll be here, don't worry.
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Post by Rock114 on Aug 23, 2014 22:08:54 GMT
A second update? Is this real life?
Anyways, I've finished Part 3 after a ton of procrastinating and writer's block. It'll be up here tomorrow after a bit of editing.
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Post by Autobot Sonic on Aug 24, 2014 1:34:17 GMT
Damn, this kind of exactly how Nick's death was from his POV. Good job Rock.
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Post by Rock114 on Aug 24, 2014 1:41:10 GMT
Thanks Sonic.
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Post by Rock114 on Aug 25, 2014 7:20:26 GMT
So you all may have read the post about it being up on the 24th. Obviously this has not happened. I'm not gonna bullshit you guys, I reinstalled the original Diablo and got addicted. Beat the whole damn game before I realized I was supposed to post the final part and by then it was too late. I'll do my best to have it up by the weekend.
If you want to think positively, then just remember that this little incident brings me closer to actually emulating the game. The characters, the emotions... the release dates...
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Post by Rock114 on Sept 5, 2014 0:53:35 GMT
AN: Guess who finally got off his ass and finished the story. That's right, this guy. I really hope this was worth the wait, since it's a couple weeks overdue. It was written out almost completely before the release of NGB, so it really is time this came out. Anyways, here's the final part.
Another gust of bitter wind blew into the gift shop as Luke sat upright in the corner, letting the chill wash over his face. It was nice. It dulled the senses and his pain as he sat with eyes closed, willing himself to fall into a sleep that refused to come to him. The only thing that came were memories. Painful, spiteful beings that bathed him in grief when all he sought was the temporary peace of dreams.
Hell, they’d probably follow him there, too. He’d give anything for a distraction. But the group wouldn’t trust him to be on watch after what happened with Jane. That was why Kenny was standing on the remains of the deck with the AK-47 and not Luke. Though Luke did find the situation darkly amusing. The man with one eye was the one trusted with being the lookout.
“Why aren’t you sleeping yet?” The familiar voice abruptly jarred him out of his thoughts as Clementine took a seat next to him.
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”
The girl smiled, a rare sight in the days since she had met the cabin group. “Well I asked first.” But as all her other smiles did, this one quickly faded.
“I was just thinkin’,” Luke said. “Now you.”
“I was thinking too.”
“What about?”
“Something Pete said to me once.” The sound of the kind old man’s name burned him. Pete had been the wisest, kindest member of their group in the days after their first escape from Carver. His loss had been felt by everyone in the group. None of them had been able to mention his name in the following days out of a combination of grief and the fast pace of events that had hounded them through their journey north.
Luke pretended that he was fine, taking on an unconcerned mask. “What’d Pete say?”
“When we were in the truck after we were attacked at the river, he asked me to watch out for Nick.” Nick. The blinding sting of loss came at Luke again, assailing him with vivid portraits of happier times with his best friend. Each memory cut off by the unbearable reminder that he would never see his friend again. “He told me that Nick was ‘playing a tough hand,’” Clem continued. “What does that mean?”
This was it. Luke could feel it all welling up inside of him again. That agonizing helplessness when Nick had pushed him into the trailer, the flames of sorrow engulfing his soul in their bright, unrelenting fury when he knew before Jane and Clem even arrived that he would never see his best friend again.
“It means that Nick had a hard life,” he answered. “His dad was an asshole named Wayne who never really cared. And Pete never coddled him when he was growing up. Nick never had it easy.”
“He was a nice guy, though” Clem said. “I could tell.”
“Yeah, he was. He was just so… peaceful, when he was younger. Did Pete ever tell you about that time he took Nick hunting?”
“With the buck? Yeah.” Clem’s smile returned. “Nick got mad when he heard us talking about it.”
“Pete loved tellin’ that story. Did he tell you what Nick did after, though? When Pete found it later and shot it?”
“Nick didn’t talk to him for weeks.”
“Not just that.” Luke scratched at his chin. “When Pete brought that buck to his sister’s house and Nick saw it, he lost it. He ran all the way from his house to my house, crying the whole way.”
“No way.”
“Way. He was in tears for hours. He showed up at our front door crying ‘Uncle Pete is a murderer,’ and when his mom and Pete showed up to take him home he wouldn’t go with’em. He actually had to stay at our house for a week ‘cause he refused to be anywhere near Pete.” Luke chuckled for a brief second before the sadness set back in.
“All Pete said was that Nick needed to get a hold of himself. That really changed how Nick looked at Pete. It was like their whole relationship was different after that. Before Pete was the father that Nick never had, and after Pete was a mean old bastard pretending to be a father that Nick didn’t need.”
“But Nick cared about Pete, didn’t he?” Clem, confused, continued her questions. “Remember how sad he was when we found Pete in the woods?”
“In time Nick realized that Pete was just hunting, but things were never the same between them again. Nick closed himself off to Pete and the two were never really able to see eye to eye again. It really broke that old man’s heart when Nick did that.”
“But they loved each other,” Clem reminded him. “They were family.”
“Yeah,” Luke agreed. “They did. But they could just never say it.” The two sat in silence for what seemed like an eternity, letting thoughts of Nick and the others that were no longer with them wash over them in the darkness of the gift shop until a nagging thought forced Luke to speak.
“When Nick saved us back at that trailer, me and Sarah, he said something to me.”
Clem rubbed the sleep from her eyes and lifted her head. She must have dozed off as they sat there. “What?”
“He told me that I ‘Wouldn’t let this drag me down,’ and that ‘I wasn’t like him.’ That’s why he went out there. Not just because I was his friend, but because he thought that I wouldn’t let his death keep me down.
“But I can’t stop thinking about it. He saved my life. My life. Me. And he did it by giving up his own.” Distraught, Luke stared ahead as he watched the scene play out again and again in his mind. “I mean, why would he do that? For me?” The resignation and acceptance in his best friend’s eyes as he locked the door haunted him and he had no doubt that it would for the rest of his life. But like everything else he had been forced to suffer through, it wasn’t a question of how it affected him. It was a question of how well he was able to hide it.
Clem’s hand slid out of her jacket pocket, fingers curled around a shiny metallic object that let out a faint ticking as he extended her arm over to Luke. “Nick gave this to me after we arrived at Carver’s,” she told him as her fingers opened. “He told me to hang onto it and keep it safe in case something happened to him.”
Luke was a master at hiding his feelings. Keeping up a strong facade was what he did while he pushed everything down to fester just beneath the surface. In times like these it was important to at least maintain an image of strength and unflappability to keep spirits high, or at least keep them from being low. He knew it gave him an image of being uncaring and able to swiftly move on, but that was anything but true. He simply excelled at concealing his pain.
But at that moment the floodgates opened. A torrent of emotions spilled out of him like a typhoon. Sadness. Anger. Depression. Helplessness. Despair. All of it swirled around him while he desperately tried to grab at them and shove them back into the dark unexplored corners of his mind in a last ditch effort to keep up the mask.
“Luke?” Clem still held her hand out as the watch ticked away the time, soft but deafening at once as Luke’s last barriers came down and the tears flowed like a river.
Words, disjointed and broken, spilled from Luke as he took the watch into his own hands. “I-i-it w-was… was N-Nick’s… Oh Jesus…” His face was buried in his arm as the sobs came, quiet and unnoticed by the rest of their group as they slowly choked him with despair.
Clem closed Luke’s hand around the watch and pushed it toward him. “Nick said that if something happened to him then I should give it to you.”
Luke pulled the keepsake to his chest as he let the tears stride down his face. The urge to let go grabbed him with both hands, attempting to shake him into letting down the last of his defenses and screaming away the pain until he suffocated in his misery.
But he couldn’t do that. So he held on. His knuckles went white as they tightened around the keepsake in his hands
The watch continued its ticking unabated and uncaring of his plight. He lost count of ticks as it counted up the seconds, then the minutes until Luke was in control again. Clem sat through it all, wearing a concerned expression as she let her friend silently cry to himself until, at the end, she spoke again. “Are you okay?”
Luke wiped the remaining tears away, clearing the haze that distorted his vision as he brought himself to look at Clem again. “I’m good enough,” he whispered. His fingers ran over the cold glass over the watch’s hands. His tone became quiet as he reminisced, looking beyond his surroundings into a distant time. “Pete gave him this just after his mother died. Maybe, like, a week before we found Carver's for the first time. It belonged to one of his old friends. When Nick got it his face lit up like it hadn’t in years. It was the first time he’d smiled since his mom died.” Luke gave the watch once last stroke before shakily handing it back to Clem. “Thanks.”
“But it’s yours,” she implored, reaching to hand it back to him. “He wanted you to have it.”
“No,” Luke sighed. “You just hang onto that for me. Until we get someplace safe, alright?”
Clementine’s expression dropped. “Don’t you want it?”
Luke threw his head back. “More than anything,” he admitted as he stared into the ceiling. “But like I said. Save it for someplace safer. You know, motivation.”
“Alright,” she agreed, subdued. Clem stood, preparing to go back to the space she had picked out for herself on the floor, before turning back to Luke. “I bet Pete would be proud of him.”
Luke muffled a sob that snuck on him. “Yeah. He would be. I know he is.” With that, Clem moved on, back to her corner of the gift shop.
He felt different. A shroud of… purpose settled around him as he thought of Nick’s watch. It was a reason to keep going. He had something of his best friend. A reminder, ensuring that such an unlikely hero would never be forgotten. Not just him, though, but everyone else from their group that had fallen along the way. In a way, it was a legacy. Entrusted to him. It sparked a fire in him. Determination to do more than just survive crept into his bones. Now he had a goal beyond just making it from day to day for the sake of being alive.
For the first time in years he actually wanted something. To get somewhere safe and earn that watch. To make sure that Nick's sacrifice wasn't in vain.
It felt… good. “Wherever you are, Nick,” he whispered to himself, “Thanks. For everything.”
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 5, 2014 1:10:05 GMT
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Post by Rock114 on Sept 5, 2014 1:12:44 GMT
This is the exact feel I was going for. Still though, I much preferred the draft of this where I assumed Luke would survive Episode 5. Because then this story would have ended with him taking the watch instead of having Clem keep it. Maybe that watch is cursed or something. It kills everyone who touches it.
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