i’m going to die, octavia thinks. she’s going to die before she can even make it home. helios — bless him — is walking slowly, each step even and careful, as if he knows what kind of state she’s in. if her head wasn’t so heavy and her body didn’t ache so much she’d have been able to appreciate it better, how smart he was. he knew the route well, even on his own, with only a few weak tugs on the reins when ( she thinks ) he starts to stray.
but she can taste the blood in her mouth, not unfamiliar but unpleasant all the same, and can feel how it seeps into her clothes, the saddle, helios’ flank. i’m going to die, octavia thinks. she should already be dead.
she doesn’t know how long they ride before she hears voices. is the sky darker, or just her vision? she feels helios come to a stop, feels his two front hooves pawing restlessly at the ground. she should try to dismount, she knows, should try to identify herself before they think she’s an intruder. but her limbs are so heavy and she’s so tired and, really, would they even let her in?
but for the first time in her entire goddamn life, luck seems to be in her favour. a voice shouts out in alarm (if octavia was thinking clearly, she’d know it was harper ), screaming frantically. “open the doors! it’s octavia, it’s — open the damn doors!”
once self-proclaimed leader resigned, he’d fallen to the outskirts of the group as the journey back from azgeda’s clutches was traversed, every footfall a leaden trudge. part of him had fervently wished for the ice nation to kill him their damn selves, a part of him that festered and grew in the blossoming swell of his chest with each second it took to wrench the blade into his gut a little more. it was a good death. he sees a thousand images at once —— octavia, fingers trembling, legs failing her as with one last desperate push, she tries to crawl away, or ... no, that’s not right, she’d be looking up, brow a defiant arch, spitting the rush of ichor in one penultimate act of scorn. he’s imagining her death, tries to find any one scenario that could be defined as a good death, and ultimately decides they’re all equally unbearable.
his stomach brings back up the little he’s eaten before arkadia’s walls are entered again, and for the first time as he stares up at its looming presence, he wonders if things would have been better if he’d indulged her, if they’d have taken for the horizon on horseback and left behind this wretched place which she’d never really called home. if they’d found a pocket of security they both felt safe in, if he’d let every delinquent be razed to a desiccated corpse if only it meant she was alive and happy. he’d do it in a heartbeat, if it brought her back now.
every noise is a hollow thud in the back of his brain somewhere ( he tries to keep track of them ; kane’s gruff vocals, his words swimming out of reach and with no attempt made to grasp them ; clarke says his name at some point, and he thinks he can hear the dread, the morbid knowledge that something is pitifully wrong without a word further ; it’s not bellamy that fills her in, eyes downcast and mournful, but when she comes to apologise to him later, he barely bats an eyelid, doesn’t say the words that bite at his conscience — so am i ) and when one sound reaches clarity over the rest, it’s his sister’s name, sharp and brusque on the tongue of another. he doesn’t look up, withdraws further into the numbness that’s keeping him in one piece, or rather, an amalgamation of sharp edges and broken parts, and flinches when miller’s hand reaches his shoulder, cautiously aware of the blade unsheathed in bellamy’s palm — he’s been sharpening it for hours, calloused hands bleeding raw, his campmates keeping a fair distance for fear of him turning its serrated edge against them, or even himself.
you might want to see this. there’s an undercurrent to his voice he can’t place, concern maybe, or perhaps just the gentle wariness that is elicited in grief. he’d know. he’d held his reservations, just as miller did now, with raven, with clarke, with octavia. nonetheless, he obliges miller, putting up little resistance as he’s guided to arkadia’s doors ; they’re casting him out, he thinks. they’re casting him out, and he can’t blame them, three hundred grounders to his name and one dead sister rendering him dead weight, an asset malfunctioned. he contemplates the list, takes his first pang of satisfaction in days from imagining his name neatly struck through, replaced with that of one more worthy of its place.
a distant echo of hooves against ground has him looking upward, expecting the frigid faces of azgeda to be looking back at him, their war paint reminiscent of the blood they’ve spilled, octavia’s name just another addition to the pile. if her dying a good death was meant to be of any reassurance to him, it was more like a cruel affirmation that she’d suffered, that she hadn’t backed down and that now, he stood empty with the piece of her that was gone. it ought to be easier, given their frail ties of late, not as close as they once were, but he wholeheartedly believes it’s just as much of a punch to the face as if she had died on the day they landed, for he’s failed her all the same.
but he sees a lone stallion in their pace, fatigue in its limbs and a figure slouched on its back, and his heart breaks. he’s seen this before, in chilling nightmares that leave his skin crawling in the late hours of the night, never thought he’d actually live to have borne witness to the day itself, would rather die by a thousand cuts than have to see his baby sister’s body limp as a ragdoll, life leached from her veins. the few people ahead of him know to make way, parting like water around a rock as he staggers forward, eyes brimming with tears, never leaving her but wishing for nothing more than to tear his gaze away.
denial falters at the sight, the word no tumbling as a mantra from the trembling seam of his mouth, his hands quaking as they ghost over her hair, matted with blood, jaw slack and eyes glassy and distant —— it’s enough to make his insides want to clench again, if only he’d eaten anything more to bring up. but then the other details kick in, the weak rise and fall of her lungs, the lethargic blink of her eyes as she struggles to stay conscious, the almost imperceptible twitch of her lips as words struggle to form in the back of her hoarse throat. he freezes, a scintilla of hope cruelly condemning him, wet eyes glistening. ❛ o ... octavia ? ❜
❛ oh, my god—— ❜ his throat is thick with tears and bile, head spinning as his mind reels. helios is the only thing that steadies his balance for about thirty seconds, before a deep breath brings him back to square one and he looks up, confirms what he thought he’d seen ; this is no delirious mercy. she was alive — barely, but alive. ❛ get abby. ❜ it’s the first sure statement to leave him, at nobody in particular, and when he dares rupture fixated line of sight to look at worried faces, he repeats it, louder. ❛ get abby, now. ❜ somebody breaks off from the group to do as instructed, somebody else takes the reins from where they’re coiled in octavia’s fingertips, and bellamy’s the one that eases her down from her perch, hands never more careful than now, seeing where the blood pools most and catering his hold around it.
he makes no haste of the manoeuvre, as urgent as he feels, knowing that her condition is frail at best, and when he finally has her off horseback completely, he looks at her in stupor for a moment, warrior’s countenance juxtaposed by the featherlight weight of her in his arms, no heavier than a child, and certainly no less vulnerable. ❛ h-hey, hang on for me, okay ? please, just —— i need you to live. abby’s gonna help you, clarke’s gonna— you can’t die. ❜ voice cracking in fragile desperation, he carries her to the medics’ facility with newfound adrenaline, the possibility at the forefront of his mind that he could still lose her propelling him forward promptly.
titsay
theartofmadeline
yousharknotpass
jbbartram-illu
germansingergirl
kaledo-art
