#tsalt

“How many fingers.”

“Three.”

“Well, if she has a concussion, it’s a minor one.”

Octavia digs her teeth into her tongue in an effort to stop from screaming as Bellamy shifts her body so Clarke can probe at things. Something in her lower half grinds together, pain shoots up her spine, and she bites down harder. Bellamy forces her jaw open. She moans, back arching. Clarke is unwrapping her bandages. It fucking hurts, it hurts it hurts it hurts. Her brother cradles her a little tighter, his cheek resting on her hair.

“Stop, O. Be still.”

Octavia doesn’t quite pass out in her brother’s arms, but she drifts. It hurts too much, all over, for her to really sleep so she doesn’t, just lays there, limp, against his chest. There’s a hand in her hair sometimes, a low, smooth voice in her ear.

“She’s bleeding again. The blast tore most of her stitches.”

It also made her lungs feel like someone filled them with dirt and rocks. She wishes she were coherent enough to tell Clarke that, but she can’t, because whenever she opens her mouth all that comes out is wheezy, choking coughs.

“Her fingers-”

“I know-”

Octavia moans, trying to form words. She wants to tell them that she’s cold, that it hurts, that she can’t breathe without shooting pains in her chest. Her brother murmurs in her ear.

“You’re alright, O. When the fire goes out we’ll get you fixed up.”

Niylah and the sight of her on her back in the flames clings to the front of Octavia’s brain. She thinks she cries for her at one point, begs her to be alright. She’s not sure. It hurts.

“Here, get the oxygen mask on her before we move her, Bellamy, she’s blue.”

And then she’s being lifted and it isn’t her brother, Octavia cracks open an eye just to check, it’s Kane cradling her. The sun, it must be midday, hurts her head.

“You…”

“Save your strength.”

Her voice sounds strange and weak in her own head. She needs to apologize to him. She was reckless. Her recklessness got her killed-wait, no, she’s still alive. Almost killed. It hurts. Indra. Indra was threatened. Is she still alive? She doesn’t know. Someone, Clarke maybe? Whoever it is is blonde and thin and too tall to be Clarke, Niylah, Niylah is fine, alive- her head hurts. She stops thinking. It doesn’t help.

“Hurts.”

“I know, Octavia. I’m starting an IV right now.”

Something tight around her bicep. A pinch. She whines. Her brother’s hand strokes her cheek.

“I’m going to give her something to sleep. I need to redo those stitches and she needs rest and I know she’s been awake the whole night.”

“Clarke, do you think that’s wise?”

That’s Indra. Octavia reaches blindly. A hand, smooth, small, calloused, wraps around her wrist and guides it back onto the mattress.

“Yes.”

“Okteivia. Relax.”

It hurts too much. There’s something cold flooding her veins and she can taste saline and the acrid tang of pain medication. It still hurts, and she’s still cold, but she’s suddenly too exhausted to care. Someone crawls onto the cot with her, lifting her into a lap. She’s not sure who it is, she’s too fuzzy. Her head hurts. She lets it fall onto a slim shoulder, sick, tired, in pain. Exhausted. The black behind her eyes swims. Somewhere around her, Indra is singing a lullaby. She’s never heard Indra sing before. Octavia feels her tired heart beat a little harder and she sinks into the warmth behind her as hands begin to tug at her shirt and spread stinging venom over her stab wound.

Octavia falls asleep.

~

She wakes up because she’s thirsty. She’s not in her bed, not in Polis, she’s somewhere else that her brain is less familiar with but that makes her groan all the same. Medbay. She can’t move her torso or either leg from the hip, and there’s quite the cluster of tubes in her body. Two in her arm. She can feel something in her chest and something snaking down her leg and fuck, she does not want to know.

She remembers what happened, it’s not that she doesn’t, she just doesn’t really feel like knowing what the damage is. She’s tired. She’s numb. She does not care what is currently wrong with her. She wants water, and she wants to go back to sleep until the world ends.

Knowing Clarke Griffin, she’s only going to get one of those things.

“Clarke.”

Her voice sounds like shit. She coughs.

“Clarke.”

Clarke doesn’t appear, but Niylah does, carrying a cup and a syringe with what Octavia dearly hopes is pain medicine.

“How are you feeling?”

Octavia shifts, whines at the pain, and rolls her head across the pillow. Niylah sets the cup down and goes to stick the needle into the tube in Octavia’s hand. It’s definitely pain medicine. The floating feeling hits her right away.

“Thirsty.”

Niylah presses a spoon to her lips. Ice chips. Octavia rolls her eyes at the excessive caution that comes with giving someone ice chips but takes them off the spoon anyways, sighing at the feeling of moisture in her mouth.

“You’re in pretty bad shape.”

“And you?”

Niylah startles, frowning and settling in the chair by Octavia’s bed. She looks exhausted, bags under her eyes, soot still clinging to her hair. She’d changed her clothes. Octavia notes sleepily that Niylah looks really good in blue.

“What do you mean?”

She’s clinging to consciousness as the medication draws her under, desperate to get an answer. Niylah got hurt because of her. Illian hurt her because of Octavia.

“You got, um, you know..”

“I’m fine. A little bruised, some smoke inhalation, but I’ll recover.”

Her eyes are half lidded. Niylah is surrounded by haze.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

Octavia can feel her words slurring together and she is annoyed.

“Illian…”

A cloth dabs at her face. Niylah laughs, a light sound, like the windchimes Raven made.

~

“You broke your pelvis. They had to cut you open to fix it, and there are screws in there. Holding you together. Along with stitches which are also holding you together.”

“Is that why I can’t move at the hips?”

Niylah fixes her with a look, daring her to say she’s been trying to move from the hips or even her lower back which, conveniently, has hairline fractures in it. Turns out falling off a cliff does a lot of damage, and the blast from Illian’s fireball had turned fractures in her pelvis that they’d missed into full on breaks. Octavia hates it. When she’s awake, which is becoming more and more frequent, she can’t move almost at all. Can’t go to the bathroom, can’t spar, can barely even move her arms off the mattress because if she does, it tugs her stitches and aggravates her injured back.

“Yes and if you know what’s good for you you won’t try, got it?”

Octavia rolls her eyes. Indra, sitting in a chair to her left, slaps the back of her head where it protrudes from her stack of pillows.

“Listen. You want to almost kill yourself a third time this week because you didn’t listen?”

She’s irritable. Bellamy is what calms her down, surprisingly. He sits by her bed when she’s being prickly, getting anxious, and he reads to her, or has her read out loud. It’s an old trick from back on the Ark and the part of Octavia that wants to leave the scared little girl behind hates that it still works, but the part of her that is injured and in pain clings to the comfort.

The mob that dragged him towards the fire must not kill Illian, because he’s there whenever she wakes up, zip tied to the bars of his cot and looking like he got the shit kicked out of him, which he did. He tries to talk to her, sometimes. She ignores him. She has nothing to say to him. She feels a strange, aching jealousy in her chest when he smiles at Niylah after she brings him food or water, or changes his bandages. She doesn’t shove it down but lets it fester. She wants to hate Illian, she really does, but she’s too- she doesn’t really know what she is, if Octavia is honest with herself, which she tries really hard not to be.

Word spreads that she’s doing better within hours of her first bout of consciousness, and her corner of medbay fills with visitors before she’s ready for anyone. She hasn’t seen her friends since before the City of Light fell, but she doesn’t want them to see her, not like this, not weak and bruised and barely able to sit up. She doesn’t seem to have much choice in the matter, because the next time she wakes up they’re all tumbling into medbay one after the other, crowding around her bed. It makes her itchy, claustrophobic. She hates it. She wants to send them away, wants Niylah to act on her clear irritation at the crowd in medbay, but there’s a guilt in her chest that doesn’t let her. Octavia hasn’t been around, hasn’t even been in contact, since a lot of really horrible shit happened. And they all seem so excited and relieved to see her breathing and in mostly one piece. She doesn’t have the heart to kick them out. She wishes she did though.

Jasper makes her uncomfortable. She feels guilty about it but the emptiness in his eyes, despite his constant off color jokes, rivals her own and Octavia can’t deal with it. She can’t. It’s terrifying and it makes her feel sick inside, dirty. It’s also seductive. Octavia wants to know what she can do to give up like that, deep in the pit of her belly. She doesn’t ask. Just smiles at him weakly and reaches out to squeeze his hand. When they all leave, Harper pressing a kiss to her cheek, Octavia tries to sleep away her desire to feel what Jasper is feeling. It doesn’t work.

In the days and hours following the visit, she thinks about it almost constantly, Jasper’s complete lack of concern for the end of the world and his own life, and the more she thinks about it the more it infects her, sliding under her skin and strangling her. Niylah is the only spot of sun. Clarke is gone, and her brother is in and out of medbay less and less as Praimfaya grows ever closer. Indra has returned to Polis. Octavia swallows, feels loneliness as clearly as she feels the pull of her stitches when Niylah has her manipulate the muscles in her arms and stomach.

Niylah’s changing her bandages when Octavia reaches for her wrist, gripping it between fingers that are still frustratingly weak. Niylah looks up at her, the slant of her nose catching the gray light from outside. Octavia keeps holding on.

“You alright?”

She nods, jerkily. She can play her reaction off on the pain. The bandage over her stab wound had been stuck to the stitches in places. It tugged something awful as Niylah had peeled it away. Niylah laces their fingers, the gauze forgotten on the sheets of the cot.

“You’re not alright. Talk to me, Okteivia.”

She shakes her head, tracing jagged patterns on her thigh. Her brother had found a pair of soft sleep pants for her, and a worn shirt, and helped her wash the blood and dirt and sweat off of herself before heading out on a scouting mission. She wishes he had stayed. She’s swimming in a sea of terror and guilt and self hatred and she’s barely keeping her head above water and Bellamy is an excellent life raft. She feels bare without her layers of leather, her sword, her tight ponytail. For the first time since Lincoln died, Octavia is truly exposed. Niylah taps between her furrowed eyebrows, smoothing the wrinkles with her thumb and a soft, gentle smile.

“Tell me what’s happening in that head, hmm?”

“Do you-” she swallows. Her mouth is dry. She doesn’t know why she’s asking this, but she needs to know. She has to. Her chest is tight, her breathing shallow, “do you think people can change?”

“Yes, of course. People change all the time.”

Silent tears make tracks on her cheeks. Niylah finishes bandaging her middle back up and changing the gauze pads that cover the stitches near her hips and the swell of her back. Octavia feels like the patchwork doll she had as a child. Disjointed, cobbled together. Almost ephemeral. She doesn’t believe Niylah. She can’t change. She can’t. She’s stuck. She doesn’t feel real. She doesn’t realize that she’s hyperventilating until Niylah leaves her to come back with a needle seconds later. A hand cups her face, stroking away sweat sticky hair. She wants to braid it, but it hurts to hold her arms up like that for more than a few seconds and she’s too proud to ask anyone else.

“Can I give you something? It’ll help you sleep.”

She nods. Niylah tugs at the waistband of her sweatpants and there’s a prick in the soft skin of her bruised thigh. She whimpers.

Niylah holds her hand until the drug takes her.

~

She’s doing her PT exercises when the men come for Illian a second time, likely to finish what they started the first time. Octavia looks anywhere but at him as he’s marched out of medbay, because he almost killed her with that stupid fucking stunt and definitely doomed the entire human race, and she understands the anger and the need for revenge the mob has. It doesn’t mean she helps them. She doesn’t stop them from dragging him out, either, but she doesn’t help them with it. She doesn’t need even more blood on her hands. She huddles back onto her cot, hides her face in the blankets, and pretends she’s asleep. A voice in the back of her skull that sounds distinctly like Kane whispers to her that by not helping, she’s compliant. She’s compliant, and Illian’s blood is still on her hands even if she doesn’t help pull the damn trigger. Octavia bites her lip until it bleeds to shut the voice up.

Niylah is scooping her up, setting her socked feet on the floor.

“M’boots.”

“I have them. Lean on me.”

Her head lolls, back and forth and into Niylah’s neck and shoulder and cheek. It’s slow going and Niylah is tense, her muscles corded where she clutches Octavia to her side. She feels sick.

“Bellamy. Bellamy!”

“I’ve got her. Niylah, we need your help and probably medical supplies. There’s- well, there’s casualties.”

Her brother makes a little nest of blankets in the corner of the main room in the Ark. She can hear thunder and it makes her jump, twitching as Bellamy eases her down.

“Is it-” She fights for a clear head, fog heavy and thick over her brain “black rain?”

“Yeah.”

She forces his face into focus, cupping it with her hand. The IV cannula is still in the back of it and there’s a splatter of blood under the clear bandage covering the entry site. She stares at it, open mouthed and distracted for a second, then blinks up at Bellamy again.

“You ok?”

“I’m fine. But I have to go, O, alright? There’s people out there trapped and I have to get them.”

“No. No, Bell, please no.”

She feels staticy, chest tight, breath shallow. If he leaves, he won’t come back. If he leaves her, Octavia will never see him again. She’s sure of it.

“I’m sorry, O. You’ll be safe here, and I will be back as soon as I can.”

“Let me go with you, let me come, please, Bellamy, please-”

Niylah is there, crowding her, hands pinning her to the floor as her brother kisses her on the forehead and leaves, walking out through the crowded room and towards his death. Octavia screams and fights, howling and sobbing. Her grief mixes with the sounds of the injured and dying, and she can’t help but think how appropriate it is. Those affected by the black rain badly enough are screaming and begging for death, and it echoes around the hall. Octavia’s  wailing sobs for her big brother join in, creating a macabre symphony backed by the rolling thunder outside.

She realizes, just as her screams begin to weaken and exhaustion falls over her, making her slump against Niylah’s strong hands, that she wants to die too.

She waits until it’s dark. The guy with the worst injuries has succumbed to them, and the hall is quiet except for the sounds of snoring and the occasional burst of a nightmare. Octavia stares at the ceiling to prepare for the pain that walking will cause. She needs to get to medbay. She can use what they have there more effectively than her sword.

Plus, if she’s in a part of the Ark where nobody is, nobody will stop her.

Her legs and hips are too weak to hold her weight, so Octavia crawls. She drags herself through masses of people, down the halls, and into medbay, where she manages to stand up and use the wall and the cots to brace herself as she staggers towards the supply cabinet. Pills don’t sound appealing. Neither does hanging. Octavia Blake is a warrior, and she’s going to go out like one, blood spilt, death earned through pain. Her back throbs as she stumbles, tugging open a drawer and pulling out a wicked looking scalpel.

She swallows. Her chest burns with anticipation and a little bit of fear, but she’s here now. She’s committed. She thinks back to Jasper and his haunted, empty eyes and how they mirror her own. The world is ending. They’re all going to die anyways. Her brother probably already has, out there in the acid rain.

Octavia puts the knife to her wrist, and she cuts.

She goes downwards, remembering the scars on Raven’s wrists. The blood is thick and hot and it comes in spurts, fast enough that she’s dizzy within seconds. Her heart beats like a startled rabbit.  Her hips go weak, her knees buckle, and she’s on the floor.

It doesn’t even hurt. She watches the blood pulse out over the floor, soaking into her clothes. The scalpel falls from her bloody fingers. She closes her eyes. She’s at peace with her decision. She’ll get to see Lincoln again. She hopes Niylah will burn her body like Trikru does, wonders if anyone will tell Indra.

“OCTAVIA.”

It’s Niylah, hand over her mouth in terror. Octavia smiles up at her dizzily, uncaring, blood seeping into her hair.

“Oh no, oh god, Octavia oh what have you done?”

There’s pressure on her wrist and she thrashes, exhausted, so tired, please, she just wants to die, wants to GO, but Niylah won’t let her.

“KANE! KANE QUICK!”

Niylah strokes her cheek with one hand and maintains pressure with the other, Octavia half in her lap. Niylah is sobbing, begging her to stay awake.

“Please, sweetheart, oh god, please. Stay awake.”

Kane is there, scooping her up, laying her on a cot, running around as Niylah shouts orders. There’s something injected into her IV cannula. She’s too weak to fight, too empty. She doesn’t think they’ll be able to save her. The cloth around her wrist is dripping blood already.

As Niylah begins to clean the wound, Octavia blacks out.

She sleeps heavily, drifting in and out through pain and peace like clear water. Her brother is there when she wakes up sometimes, to stroke her hair back and coax ice chips down her raw throat. He looks tired, afraid, old. Bellamy looks older than 24 when he looks down at her, in a hospital bed, wrapped in blankets. She can’t quite remember exactly, but she knows she did something bad, something wrong. It makes her queasy to think about so she doesn’t, just goes back to sleep when it starts to creep up on her.

When her brother isn’t there, Niylah is. She looks at Octavia like she’s made of shards of glass, fragile but dangerous. Niylah talks to her, works her through her physical therapy when she’s conscious enough to at least squeeze and flex when she’s told. She can’t move her left arm. It’s a minor annoyance instead of a complete and total nightmare. Niylah is warm and comforting, pressed to her side. She holds her, half in her lap, and reads to her quietly. Octavia feels safe, if a little broken. Niylah is safe.

She knows in the back of her head that she’s being sedated, that this warm, fuzzy sleep isn’t natural. She watches with heavy eyes as Niylah injects something into her IV before hooking her up to more fluids.

“Whazzat?”

“Hmm?”

She points, wordlessly, to the empty syringe in Niylah’s hand. Niylah smiles, sets it down to be discarded, and climbs in the bed with Octavia. A spoon meets her lips. Applesauce.

“Needle.”

“It’s something to keep you calm until you’re well. You hurt yourself pretty badly.”

No shit, Octavia wants to say, she fell off a cliff into a river and then got blown up. But the back part of her brain that knows she did something wrong whispers in her ear that Niylah is talking about the nobadwrong thing she did. Octavia chews her lip in between bites of applesauce. The blood mixes with the metallic tang of pureed fruit. She remembers there being lots of blood.

“Niylah.”

“Yes?”

“I tried to kill myself.”

Niylah’s hand comes to rest on her sternum, just over her heart, as if she’s reminding herself that Octavia didn’t succeed. Octavia just feels hollow. She tried. She failed. There’s nothing more to say about it.

“Yes. I found you.”

“You saved me.”

“Yes.”

Octavia buries her head in the crook of Niylah’s neck, inhaling against her skin. Niylah always smells like the forest, even here, under the acrid scent of blood and isopropyl alcohol. The drug is taking her under again.

“Thank you.”

The next time Octavia wakes up, there are voices near her, talking quietly. Voices she recognizes, but voices that aren’t Niylah, her brother, or Kane. Her eyes are sticky with sleep and it takes her a few tries to blink, bringing the world into some sort of focus.

“There she is. Welcome back, Pocahontas.”

Raven Reyes is grinning down at her like the Cheshire Cat, her hand squeezing Octavia’s shoulder.

“When did-” she coughs, clearing her dry throat. Niylah (thank God Niylah is still here, Octavia’s heart pounds out. She ignores it) puts a straw in her mouth.

“Drink. Slowly.”

“When did you come back?”

“While you were getting your beauty sleep, apparently. No offense, little Blake, but you don’t look so hot.”

“I got thrown off a cliff and stabbed, what’s your excuse?”

She opens her mouth for the straw again, grinning around the plastic at Raven.

“She refuses to sleep, that’s what.”

She knows that voice. Her head whips to the side.

“Luna?”

A soft, warm palm cups her cheek. Octavia smells salt and oil and sweat. She looks up, meeting Luna’s deep eyes. They glimmer like still pools of water and Octavia wants to sleep, suddenly. She fights it.

“Hello, Okteivia.”

She struggles to sit up, whimpering when her stab wound and her back both pulse with blistering pain. Raven scrambles to lift the head of the bed for her, and Niylah braces her until she can flop down against the pillows with a huff of breath and a grimace. There are still fluids being pumped into her. Her head feels light.

“It’s good to see you. Both of you.”

“I’m just glad you’re not dead. You’re more fun to harass than your brother.”

Octavia rolls her eyes, legs twitching. She wants to pull them up and cross them, press her feet together. She hates the position the brace for her pelvis forces her into. Niylah gives her a look.

“Come on, Niylah. Please?”

“Absolutely not. You pulled stitches out with your little stunt, crawling all the way here from the hall, and you’ve extended your healing time. I can’t-”

Niylah stands up, so fast the chair topples over, and then walks rapidly from the room. Octavia tries to fight the tears that are building in her throat, but a choked, whimpering animal sound escapes and then her cheeks are wet.

“Reivon, why don’t you go see to Niylah? I’m sure she could use some support. Okteivia and I will stay here and calm down.”

She can’t. Not without Niylah, not with Niylah so angry at her. Her chest hitches. She reaches for her bandaged wrist, pressing her fingers into the would frantically, needing some sort of sensation to distract her from the emotional tidal wave she’s been caught in.

“No, no. Hey.”

Lunah holds her hands gently with one hand and turns Octavia’s face towards her with the other, holding her by the chin.

“Please, let go, please-”

“Niylah told us what happened. I’m so sorry, Okteivia.”

“No, please, let me go, Luna please I’m begging you please-”

And then Luna is on the bed with her, wrapping her arms around her and tugging so they’re back to chest. Octavia screeches and fights, desperate to feel something, anything, to feel the pain she caused Niylah when she- when she-

“Shhh, Okteivia. I need you to breathe, sweet one. Can you repeat after me?”

She fights, but she’s so weak from inactivity and blood loss and sedatives and Luna has her in a tight hold. She wails, throwing her head back, trying to hit it against Luna’s shoulder or face, but it just lands on her shoulder.

“Repeat after me, Okteivia. Shhhh. Ai giv ai op- say it, love.”

“A-Ai g-g-g-iv ai o-o-o-p”

“Gon nemiyon-”

“G-Gon Ne- please, Luna, please-”

“Gon nemiyon… come on, Okteivia. I know you can do it.”

“Go-Gon Nemi-y-yon”

“Kom Lanik-De. Last part, alright? You can do it.”

“K-Kom Lanik-D-De-”

Luna repeats it, over and over, cooing to her as she sobs and thrashes. When the fight finally leaves her, bleeding her dry and leaving her hollow, empty, soaked in salt, Luna helps her drink and lays her down, sitting in the chair by her bedside. It’s getting dark out. A storm, or a sunset, Octavia can’t tell. Luna begins to brush her hands through Octavia’s hair.

“Tomorrow, we’ll braid it, hmm? It’s a snarled mess, down like this. We can wash it, and I’ll do it for you however you like. Keep the tangles out while you’re stuck in this bed. And we can talk. All of us. Clarke is anxious to see you awake.”

“I-I-”