[#002] Silence in the Field (Zero Escape)

[semperdormientes]

Theme Prompt: 002 - Heartbreak
Title: Silence in the Field
Fandom: Zero Escape
Rating/Warnings: Potential spoilers for ZE: 999 and ZE: Virtue's Last Reward.
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 352
Summary: She's never been alone before and now she is.


“So what if she’s dead?” Dio asks and she can’t help it.

To be fair Clover didn’t want to help it. How dare he mock her grief? Alice was dead, and she couldn’t reach Light. If she hauls off and punches him in his stupidly long face that was business. Not that it was really an if, the pain shooting up her arm reminds her that her fist really did connect with Dio’s face. The fact that the sarcastic cowboy wannabe is glaring at her from across the room doesn’t even bother her.

She shoots him a tight smile and walks away. She wants to be alone and the bar on the other side of the first set of chromatic doors is the perfect place. She just wishes there was actual alcohol available instead of weird colored liquid of questionable content. Maybe it would help dull the ache in her chest. The blank emptiness in her mind where she used to pass messages to Light.

For the first time in her life Clover is all alone. She’s never been this alone before, Light’s always been with her for the last ten years. They don’t leave each other’s side where possible.

Pulling her legs up to her chest Clover shudders. She’s alone with strangers in another Nonary Game. Maybe this one would finally be the end of her.

“It’s okay half pint. All you need is hope, faith, love, and luck,” The voice is old and gruff, but it soothes in a way nothing else could. His words tugging at a memory even though age has changed everything about the tenor of the voice.

“Junpei?” she asks through tears turning to the old man beside her.

He just nods and wraps his arm around her shoulders. “We’re going to get out of this one too. I promise.”

“Do you think I’ll ever see my brother again?”

“I don’t know. Radical-6 killed a lot of people.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. Thank you Junpei.” She lapses into silence then. There’s still hours until the next chromatic doors open. Time enough for the moment.

Comments

[etoile_noire]

It's very evocative for me. Poor Clover.
Thank you for sharing it.

[semperdormientes]

I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thank you for reading.

[rivulet027]

So sad, glad she has someone to comfort her.

[semperdormientes]

Me too. I think I'd lose it if I was completely alone in a moment like that. And I wanted to play with a hinted at revelation in the game so this worked out really nice.

[dray]

Oh dear, poor girl. It sounds like they're all under a lot of stress. Is this a little bit like the hunger games in terms of them being stuck in grueling challenges?

[semperdormientes]

Some of them more than others. You could kind of say that, though the actual point isn't to kill the other eight people you're with though some participants will take that to be the point. The games were escape rooms and novel sections before escape rooms were cool. The escape rooms were just a device to achieve the end goal of the trilogy. But it's a lot of fun.

[dray]

Sounds interesting! Still incredibly stressful though!

[semperdormientes]

Oh it is especially when it's your third Nonary game since a young age. She never takes the revelation that she's in another very well at first.

[badly_knitted]

Like she's lost half of herself. Poor Clover.

[semperdormientes]

Exactly. Poor girl gets shafted.

[canadiandiamond]

Her stress and heartbreak come through loud and clear here. I'm glad she has someone with her to help her too, poor Clover.

[semperdormientes]

Ah thank you. I'm glad it came through so well. She really does need a friend right about then.

[graveexcitement]

ah, poor clover :( her situation in VLR really is heartbreaking sometimes. nicely done.

[semperdormientes]

AH Snake. Yeah VLR is rough on her. You just want to wrap her up in bubble wrap and tell her it'll be alright.

[graveexcitement]

snake is my absolute favorite so thinking about him & clover being separated just makes me sad :(

[semperdormientes]

They are my favorite sibling pair. I was super miffed that they weren't in ZTD.

[graveexcitement]

let’s be real: both of the sequels had severe snake deficiency 😜

but yes, i would have loved to see them in ZTD

[semperdormientes]

Definitely a severe lack of Snake.

I would have loved to have seen Snake, Clover, and Santa in ZTD. I found the three of them far more compelling as characters than Sigma, Phi, Junpei, and Akane. Though Emo-Junpei of ZTD was pretty great.

[graveexcitement]

snake, clover, and santa in ZTD would have been great! i myself like sigma and phi a lot (though i find them somewhat more compelling in VLR than in ZTD), and while i do like junpei and akane... i miss snake... lol. that said i do love carlos and i love his dynamic with akane and junpei, so there’s that, at least.

[semperdormientes]

I liked the reveal of Sigma and Phi in ZTD but they felt somewhat blah as a whole. Much like Junpei and Akane were too me. For a set of characters that by all accounts are the "MCs" they kind of failed to carry the story for me. Yeah I miss Snake, I like his calm composed way of approaching things. As far as I was concerned Eric and Mira could have easily been replaced by Aoi, Snake, or Clover to work with Q. Yeah I liked Carlos he was really sweet.

[graveexcitement]

gotcha! there were some things i liked about eric & mira, but in general i felt they were just really not given time to develop, which i think could def have benefitted eric at the least. aoi, snake, and/or clover would’ve been fun to put on Q team!

carlos is such a sweetheart i love him

[semperdormientes]

Eric's devotion was nice. It was a different kind of character than what we had gotten previously. Or more accurately, it was a different twist on the devotion to something we saw from Dio. If he'd been given more development outside of his relationship with Mira he would have been a great character. Imagine the bickering that would have happened if it had been Aoi, snake, and/or Clover for Q Team. It would have been amazing.

He really was a major sweetheart all he wanted was to get back to his sister.

[graveexcitement]

agreed about eric, if we’d gotten some more development he could’ve been really great

god yeah. especially if aoi was here, the bickering would be off the charts, haha

[semperdormientes]

I wish Eric had been given more but they focused in hard on Diana and Carlos and Q Team sort of felt the weakest of all the teams. I think I played most of C Team and D Team before doing more than a few cursory segments of Q Team as a result.

Man now I want fic where Q Team was Snake, Aoi, and Clover and how that goes. The Fields would have so many words for him, or at least Clover would.

[graveexcitement]

yeah, i actually intentionally alternated more or less evenly between C, D, and Q fragments bc if i just went off of who i was interested in i would end up doing most of the Q Team segments last.

random thought: if Q-Team had had people other than Eric & Mira in it, Zero would’ve had to come up with more actual ‘decisions’ for them (since it feels like a solid 70% of Q-Team decision points aren’t even set up by Zero, it’s just the team (well, mostly Eric) turning on each other yet again.) lmao.

[semperdormientes]

It was somewhat of an accident that I didn't play a lot of Q Team at first. Heck it took me a minute to figure out that ZTD is set up that you actively leave and come back to segments in the middle quite frequently. That mid segment jumping was highly encouraged, cause I got to the whole chainsaw fiasco with C Team and was like what the heck do I do there aren't any other C Team segments?

Yes you're 100% correct. That was the major downfall of Q Team they were an afterthought. Like the devs realized they only had six characters worth of story but needed 9 for the Nonary Game and just went here have 3 flat characters to fill space. In which case I would have preferred seeing familiar faces over not, at least then we could have gotten some closure on some of the characters that were still actively working on/tracking Free the Soul and Crash Keys. Especially given they promised answers about Snake and Aoi's status when ZTD was announced.

[graveexcitement]

yeah, for real — it really shows how much Q team, and especially Mira and Eric, were mostly an afterthought, and it’s really a shame. [shakes fist] ztd where’s the character development!! rip.

& damn, i didn’t even know they promised answers about snake & aoi — i only got into zero escape recently. that’s kind of annoying, though at least we got some info on what snake was up to from clover’s backstory in VLR (side note, snake playing the harp is v charming, and his music getting actually semi-popular is hilarious). still, though.

[semperdormientes]

It really does. Eric and Mira were just sort of plopped in there and didn't really add anything in the long run. And the payoff of a solid trilogy ending.

Yeah they said we'd get more about what happened to Aoi and Snake between 999 and VLR. And then there was nothing. It's been a while since I played ZTD but I don't remember a single reference to either which sort of irks. You would think Akane might have mentioned at least something about Aoi during the game.

[graveexcitement]

i did play ZTD recently and i’m trying to remember it Akane mentions Aoi or not. i... felt like maybe she did, but i might be mixing it up with fanfiction. oh well.

[semperdormientes]

I'm working my way through all three in order. I'm about halfway through VLR. She might have it's been a while is all. I'll know for sure soon enough.

[graveexcitement]

i especially like VLR on a second playthrough bc there’s so much foreshadowing and shit that is really neat to spot on further playthroughs

[semperdormientes]

VLR was very tight from a story telling point of view and I loved that about it. All that foreshadowing really makes it more interesting. And makes Dio that much more insufferable.