Chapter Text
When Octavia finally falls asleep, long after the sun has set and the camp grown quiet, it’s with her head leaning on Jasper’s feverish shoulder, a wet rag still clutched in her hand. Finn disappeared downstairs a while ago, with some words about checking if anybody had killed anyone else yet - the joke falling flat with a glare from Clarke. Monty has pushed together a few seats to create something akin to a makeshift bed, and is now rummaging around to find blankets. A hopeless cause, most likely, for every precious resource was scavenged hours ago by the other teenagers when their little group was still on their way to Mount Weather.
Clarke sits on one of the seats, as uncomfortable as the decade-old foam is, and lifts her arms up above her head to stretch her sore muscles and get rid of the cricks in her neck. She’s leaning her head to the side, wincing at a particularly painful spot under her ear, when Monty plops next to her.
“What a night,” he sighs, with tiredness in his eyes and his body.
Clarke likes him. He’s quiet, and kind, only locked up because of some teenage bullshit behaviour, unlike so many of the others outside. She might even grow to trust him, given enough time.
“Tell me about it,” she answers softly before she lies down. A spring pokes into her back, and she has to shift around before she finds a more comfortable position. It doesn’t make for the best of bed, but it is still better than the cold metal of the dropship. It will have to do for now, until they can figure out something better.
Monty lies down too, leaving as much distance between them as their sparse sleeping conditions will allow. He folds his hands on his chest and looks up at the ceiling. In the dim light of the dropship, face darkened by shadows, he looks younger than his fifteen years. More vulnerable.
How they are supposed to survive on the ground, with monsters hiding in the forest and lurking in the river, Clarke has no idea. The mere thought terrifies her.
“It’s so quiet down here,”Monty comments.
The faint noise from outside - the wind in the three and the soft sounds of people chatting and laughing - drifts toward them, but Clarke knows what he means. The low, never-ending hum of the air vents is gone, and with it the clicking of neon lights, the beeping of alarms down the corridor, the creaking of metallic doors opening. Those sounds she has known all her life, once white noise to her, now deafening in their absence.
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” he continues. “Too quiet.”
“We’ll get used to it,” she answers with a smile. If this is Monty’s only issue with this entire situation, he will be more than fine given enough time. “The fresh air is a perk, though.
“No longer breathing recycled old farts,” he laughs softly. “Sunrises are nice too.”
“And water.
“And actual trees. Remember when you were five, and you were able to touch the tree for the first time? Jasper and I were–”
A scream pierces through the night.
Then another, louder.
Then the sound of her name.
Clarke shares a glance with Monty, his eyes as big as hers, before she scrambles to her feet. Someone calls after her once more, and it’s closer, louder, drowning out Octavia’s soft complaints at being woken up. Clarke ignores her as she falls her way down the ladder, Monty close behind, before she breaks into a run toward the dropship’s exit.
A loud gasp is wretched from her lips at the sight in front of her – Wells leaning with difficulty against Finn as blood pours out of his neck. He looks pale, too pale, and Clarkes runs toward him, hands reaching to cup his face. His skin is cold and clammy, his breathing laboured and painful.
When she checks for his pulse, it is weak and stuttering, although she can’t tell if it’s because his heart is struggling to pump blood through his body, or if her fingers and shaking so much.
“Who did this to you?”
When he coughs, it’s rough and dry. “Char…” he starts, before another fit of coughing stops him. “Charlotte.
Clarke’s eyes meet Bellamy’s over Wells’ shoulder. His are wide and panicky, and she only wants to shake him out of his torpor. Of all times for him to lose the bad guy’s bravado, he chooses now?!
Thankfully, Bellamy snaps out of it within a moment, one sharp nod of his head that sets everything into motion. He turns around to face his boys at the same time Clarke focuses back on her best friend in front of her.
“Miller, Murphy, grabs some flashlights. She must not be far.”
Nodding to herself, Clarke throws Wells’ other arm around her own shoulders, guiding him toward the entrance to the dropship with the help of Finn. She winces as she fails to ignore her best friend’s moans of pain, and the blood seeping into her own shirt.
Monty has already sprung into action inside, throwing a bunch of large boxes together to create a makeshift table, draping some fabric on top of it. It is a far cry from the sterile operation rooms Clarke had interned at the clinic, but they don’t have much of a choice right now. It is better than lying Wells down on the ground. It is better than letting him die.
After Finn has helped her put Wells on the table, she turns to him. “I’ll need boiling water, and more of that tea. Any kind of bandage you can find. Thread and a needle. Quick!”
Finn thankfully springs into action, running toward the camp to find everything she needs. Meanwhile, Monty helps her rip the shirt off Well’s body, using the fabric to press down on the wound and hopefully stop some of the bleeding.
Soon, Finn is holding a cup of tea to Wells’ lips, helping him drink it. One of the youngest girls, whose name Clarke absolutely doesn’t know, shows up a few minutes later with a container full of hot water and a pile of shirts. She pales at the sight of Wells, and disappears back outside.
Finding something to sew the wound close turns out to be more challenging, as Clarke already used the few supplies they had from the emergency kit on Jasper. But, once they do, Clarke’s hands are trembling so much she’s unable to put the thread through the needle. She tries once, twice, until the needle falls to the floor and she lets out a curse.
She shakes her hands a few times, sharp motions to num the trembling and bring back some sense into herself. Still, she struggles with picking the needle from the floor, so much so that it’s embarrassing and she ends up cursing herself loudly.
“Let me do it.” She raises her head to find Octavia standing in front of her, palm up. “My mother was a seamstress, I know how to sew. And you’re a fucking mess anyway, no offence.”
Clarke hesitates, just for a second, before she hands the needle to Octavia and takes a step back. Octavia takes over without a word, her hands steady and confident as she stirs the needle through the hot tea to sanitise it before she guides Finn to push the skin around Wells’ wound together so she can start sewing. She curses softly when the needle meets resistance as it pierces through skin, but soon she manages to find a rhythm, slow but methodical.
The wound starts at his neck and runs all the way down to his armpit, deep then shallow, like someone tried to stab him but Wells moved back at the last second. Clarke thinks back to Charlotte, tiny, adorable Charlotte with her tight braids and her frightened eyes. She has no idea how anyone could do that to another person, let alone such a young girl. It doesn’t make sense.
“There,” Octavia says after what feels like hours. She finishes with a neat little knot, then leans forward to cut the thread with her teeth. “Chancellor of Earth can brag about his badass scar now.”
Her voice is strained, facing Clarke with a look of defiance in her eyes, a reminder that she and Wells are not among friends on Earth. She may have saved Jasper, but she still isn’t welcomed here, still isn’t one of them. Octavia didn’t have a reason to help her – had too many not to – but still did, because she is a good person and not because she wants Wells to live.
“Thank you,” Clarke replies, and she tries to pour as much honesty and gratitude into those two words as she can.
Octavia simply shrugs. “Don’t mention it. I’ll go check on Jasper.”
And just like that she is gone, climbing up the ladder as fast as she can. Clarke braces herself for the slam of the metallic door, but Octavia is soft in her motions. Not to wake Jasper up, most likely. Clarke stares up for a few more seconds, before she focuses back on Wells.
He passed out at some point, between drinking the tea and Octavia stitching him up, his mouth opened into something halfway between a moan and a snore, his skin warm and sweaty. But he should be fine. He will be fine. Clarke will make sure of it.
She grabs a strip of fabric and damps it with water, before she presses it to his forehead. The water is lukewarm at best but, as with everything since they crashed their way to the ground, that will have to do for now.
“You should sleep,” Finn tells her, fingers brushing against his elbow. “Between the three of us, that’s more than enough people to stand guard for the night. Go and rest.”
She wants to take him up on his offer, wants so badly to curl up into a ball and sleep until morning, exhausted all the way to her bones. But duty calls for her. She cannot, will not, leave Wells alone, like that. Cannot close her eyes and…
She inhales deeply through her teeth. “I’ll be fine. I’ll sleep later.”
Finn hesitates for a moment, thinks of fighting her about it, before he shrugs and makes his way toward the upper level of the dropship. The trap door closes behind him, and then silence falls. Clarke swallows with difficulty before she turns to Month and offers him a tight-lipped smile. He returns it with a bit more warmth, and squeezes her arm affectionately.
“We’ll be fine,” he tells her, and means it.
Clarke can only nod, the words stuck to the roof of her mouth until she almost chokes on them. Monty smiles one last time, before he goes and makes himself a little nest of broken seats and pieces of fabric in a corner of the dropship. He’s asleep within minutes, his breathing loud and even.
It leaves Clarkes alone with Wells. She pulls a smaller box closer to his makeshift bed so she can sit and grab his hand. He’s burning up now, which is good. A fever means healing. A fever means alive. She can deal with a fever.
Outside, conversations come to a close as teenagers prepare for sleep under the stars. Soon, Clarke can only hear the forest around them, soft yet present. It lulls her to sleep too, her cheek pressed against Wells’ shoulder, her entire body at a weird and uncomfortable angle. She drifts between sleep and awareness, despite the screaming of her muscles and the dull throbbing of her joints, unable to rest but refusing to step away.
She’s startled awake by the heavy sound of boots on metal, the ruffling of plastic, as Bellamy makes his way inside the dropship. Clarke blinks against the brightness of the early morning, eyes struggling to comprehend what they see – Charlotte, hands tied together in front of her, dragged along by Bellamy. Her braids bounce with every hurried step she is forced to take, little squeaky sound muffled by the piece of fabric wrapped around her head and over her mouth.
Bellamy drags her up the ladder, despite her whimpers of protest.
“Quiet,” Clarke whispers angrily. “You’ll wake Jasper up!’
Either Bellamy doesn’t hear her, or he elects to ignore her, because he slams the trap drop open, then shut again, the echo of his boots loud as he climbs all the way up to the upper level with Charlotte. Another slam of a door before he appears at the top of the ladder once more, and makes his way down.
His teeth land on the floor with a loud thud, and then he sighs loudly. He must have forgotten Clarke is here – must not even be aware of Monty’s sleepy face poking from behind some crates – because the entire bravado disappears within seconds, his features no longer smug and confident. With his shoulders slouching and his hands on his hips, eyes closed, he looks broken. Defeated.
It is as if Clarke is given a glance into an entirely different person altogether, and she doesn’t know what to make of it. So instead she makes a big deal of faking waking up, raising her arms above her head with a loud yawning. Just long enough to give him a moment to compose himself once more.
When she looks back at Bellamy, the mask is back on his face. Like nothing even happened.
“Jasper’s awake,” he tells her without even a greeting. Not that she expected anything of the like from him. That’s the Bellamy she knows, rude and obnoxious.
She rolls her eyes at him. “I wonder why.”
He barely glances her way before he makes his way back outside, only to stop in front of the dropship’s entrance. With the plastic curtain falling back in place, Clarke can’t see him, but she makes up his silhouette against the fabric. Maybe it is wishful thinking, but his shadow looks tense.
“Okay everyone, listen up.”
At the sound of his voice, loud and imposing, the early morning chatter of teenagers waking up turns into silence. Although she can’t see them, Clarke imagines them all turning toward him, attentive, loyal. She would admire his authority on them, if she wasn’t so scared of the power he holds. There is power in his words, in the way they all look up to him, that it would be a mistake not to be scared of it.
“Starting now, weapons are no longer allowed in the camp,” he carries on. Finn climbs down the ladder at the same moment, just in time to share a disbelieving look with Clarke. “You have until the end of the day to hand everything in and put your weapons in this crate next to Miller. Knives, spears, blades, you name it. If it’s sharp, if it’s pointy, it goes in the crate. We find you carrying a weapon, you won’t have food for three full days. You do the stupid thing and attack someone with a weapon, you’re banished from camp. Understood?”
A pregnant pause follows Bellamy’s speech, Clarke struggling to make sense of his decision. She can’t find a reason to complain about it yet, but she knows better by now – Bellamy only cares about Bellamy and Octavia, and the sudden change of heat on his whatever the hell we want way of life must hide something else. Something more. Something that benefits him, one way or another.
Especially since the gun must still be tucked into the waistband of his cargo pants, making him the only armed one in the camp. A dangerous thought if there ever was any.
“So what’ll happen to Lil Murder up there?” comes a drooling voice. “Cause she did try to off Jaha.”
Sound of scuffle and shifting fabric, Bellamy’s silhouette grabbing another one by the collar of his shirt and pulling him closer, as in a twisted pantomime show. “It was your knife she was using, so I would make myself really small if I were you, Murphy.”
The silence that follows is uncomfortable, and Clarke swallows with difficulty. As if she doesn’t have enough on her plate already, now she has quite a few more items to add to her list. Wonderful, really.
“You have until tonight,” Bellamy barks as he pushes Murphy away from him, then walks down the ramp.
Clarke lets out a breath, to clear her lungs and her mind. The mystery as to what Bellamy gains from this new rule remains, but she will have to deal with this later. For now, she has two patients to take care off – she needs to check on Jasper, and to change Wells’ bandage. Priorities, and all that.
“Well…” comes Wells’ parched voice, startling her. “That was something.”
A relieved smile settles on her mouth while she turns around to face her best friend. He still looks a little too pale, but there is no denying he’s in better shape than last night, even as he winces his way into a seating position before accepting the glass of water Finn gives him. The two boys share a look, one that lingers for a few seconds and that Clarke doesn’t quite comprehend. But when Wells looks back at her, it’s with a newfound determination in his dark eyes.
It occurs to her, for the first time since last night, that she is supposed to still be angry at her best friend for what he has done. But it’s as if the exhaustion took all the fight away from her, leaving her numb and mindless. Later, she decides, she will deal with all of this later, once she has food in her stomach and a few hours of well-deserved sleep behind her..
“Clarke, I haven’t been honest,” he says, soft, careful. “I need to tell you something. About your dad.”