Octavia Blake (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
okteiviakom) wrote2020-05-24 09:21 pm
okteiviakom) wrote2020-05-24 09:21 pm
Polis, Sunday FT
In the end, the key to coming up with a new plan was that they ran into Roan, the king of Azgeda, on their way to Arkadia. Or, really, it turned out he'd been tracking Clarke for a while in the hopes of securing the Flame for his people.
They dragged him back to Arkadia with them. Convinced him to help, because now that Polis had fallen to ALIE, they needed him to get into the city and capture the false commander, Ontari, from the middle of thousands of people whose minds were linked.
They left Jasper, Harper, Raven and Monty behind to do the kind of computer stuff Octavia wouldn't even pretend to understand. The rest of them went to Polis, and split up: Roan took Clarke in through the main gate, pretending he'd taken her as his prisoner, while the rest of them snuck in to one of the buildings overlooking the square in the middle of Polis, right by the tower where the commanders lived.
The whole city was creepy. There weren't a lot of people around, and the ones that they saw in the square? Were all kneeling motionless, staring straight ahead.
And yet the worst part was still having to listen to Miller and his boyfriend talking to each other in hushed voices while they waited for Roan and Clarke to make it to the square. Miller was telling Bryan how they'd one day be done fighting, and would build a house on a lake. Grow corn, raise chickens.
Grow old together.
She just barely kept herself from telling them not to hold their breath. After that, it was a relief when things actually started happening down in the square. The plan was simple: wait until Ontari came out, then launch canisters of gas into the crowd to knock everyone out. They'd use only non-lethal force, because no one in Polis was in control of themselves. ALIE was the only one they wanted to kill.
But, of course it all went sideways. Ontari never came out, and they got ambushed, and dragged away, only to unexpectedly be rescued by Murphy (who Octavia had not seen since she'd ended up back on the Ground, and had assumed to be dead), Indra - and Pike. The only thing that got Octavia to stop staring at him was Indra reaching for her hand to help her up.
"You're with Pike?" Octavia snapped at her.
"Only way we get out of here is together," Indra replied, much too calmly. It took Octavia a few seconds for the realization to hit her. Indra didn't know. "He killed Lincoln," she said, and watched Indra's expression shift as she turned to look towards Pike. "Put him on his knees. Shot him in the head."
But it wasn't enough. Indra didn't immediately change her mind the way she'd hoped. And Bellamy said they needed to all work together, and there wasn't enough time for arguments. Bellamy and Murphy headed into the tower, the rest of them stayed down: Miller, Bryan and Pike worked to pull the elevator up to the top of the tower, while Octavia and Indra kept watch for any trouble that might have been heading their way.
-----
While they waited, Octavia kept staring down the hallway to where Pike was working with the others, feeling sick at the sight of him. But when she glanced at Indra, she saw the woman was looking at her.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Octavia asked, and looked away.
"Because I know what you're thinking."
Of course she did.
Indra moved closer, and so did Octavia, giving up on her split-second urge to pretend she didn't want to talk about it, to pretend there wasn't a question burning her up. "Why is he still alive?" she asked.
And once again, she was met with Indra's calm. "Because the dead can't help us." She didn't sound happy about it, no, but steady. Which was everything Octavia's huff of a breath wasn't. Suddenly, her eyes were stinging.
Her words barely more than a gasp. "Lincoln was -- what was left of my home." He'd been what little she'd still had of it here on the Ground, she wanted to say. But couldn't say it, and not just because it was too long a story to be told in that moment.
As an errant tear rolled down her cheek, Indra turned more towards her, as if for a better look at her. "Yu hou," she said, softer than Octavia had ever heard her sound before, as she reached out and put her hand on Octavia's arm, "kamp raun hir."
And then there was suddenly a gunshot.
It was Kane, acting under ALIE's command. He got a few shots in at the men by the elevator wheel before Octavia and Indra struck him down and promptly knocked him out. They sealed off the corridor with an explosive to buy themselves time as they kept working the elevator, to get it all the way to the top of the tower.
-----
Octavia was pushing the wheel with Pike and Miller when it finally clunked to a stop. Bellamy and Murphy had made it to the floor with the throne room in it, so Octavia headed into the elevator shaft to begin climbing, as Miller set the timer on their second explosive, this one meant to destroy the elevator controls so that no one would be able to follow.
But then Kane called out to Indra from the corridor. Indra shouted for him to stay back but then, with only seconds on the timer, she jumped down to tackle him. And then the explosion sent dust and debris up into the shaft the entrance to it collapsed, leaving Indra and Kane on the other side. Assuming they weren't buried under the rubble. Octavia couldn't stop to think about it.
There wasn't time to think about anything. By the time they made it up to the throne room, ALIE's faithful were already scaling the outside of the building to get to them. And they had enough issues up there as it was: the floor was secure for now with Jaha and his guards tied up, and Abby had been EMP'd to free her from ALIE's influence, but Ontari had been struck in the head hard enough that while she was still breathing, giving her the Flame would no longer help them, because she wouldn't able to tell them ALIE's destruct code. And so, Clarke had decided she would take the Flame herself, instead. They'd try to make her into a Nightblood with a transfusion from Ontari, and then she'd access the data on the commanders' chip.
There was just enough lamp oil for them to grease up the throne room balcony and all the windows, except the ones in the commander's chanmbers, so that was where they'd have to assume the battle would begin, buying time for Abby and Clarke in the throne room. And so that was where Octavia would be, along with Miller, Murphy, Bryan and Pike.
As she went to follow Pike, Bellamy stopped her, and told her to be careful.
She knew it wasn't what he really meant.
She said nothing.
-----
She didn't say much once they were waiting around in the commander's chambers, either. Just sat there, sharpening the sword that was slowly starting to feel almost right in her hand. Listened as Bryan groaned on the couch. Kane had got him good with a bullet, and he wasn't doing so well with the wound.
Miller decided to take him over to see Abby.
And so, Octavia was alone with Pike. She could tell she made him uncomfortable. Good.
"If we're gonna survive this," he said, "we need to stand together."
Octavia didn't even bother looking up at him. Her voice was perfectly flat. "Now you say that."
He didn't try to push the conversation any further than that, choosing instead to walk onto the balcony. Almost immediately after, he called out back to her, "Here they come!" The first wave had made it up fast, faster than Octavia would've expected them to make it up a tower this tall. Maybe it was ALIE's influence. She got up and took her place next to Pike, sword at the ready. He laid out the plan, that they were doing it Bellamy's way, letting them in, taking them down, then tying them up.
Octavia just nodded.
And then, when the first chipped people came in over the balcony railing, she slashed the back of Pike's leg and stepped back, and watched as they attacked him.
She hoped they'd kill him, she really did.
They were making a good attempt of it, too, but all too soon, Octavia heard a voice from behind her.
"O! What are you doing?"
Bellamy rushed into the room - and to Pike's aid, ignoring her attempt to grab him, to stop him. She stared at him as he shot two of the men who'd been trying to beat Pike into pulp. Pike himself broke the neck of the last one. But, more people were coming, even as Bellamy helped Pike up. Octavia had to give up her disappointment, and they had to give up the room, and rush outside as more people poured in through the balcony doors. The last Octavia saw was Kane with barely a scratch on him, right before they slammed the doors into the chamber shut and began barricaing them with furniture.
And even then, Pike found in himself to strength to lecture her. "I told you," he said. "You need to get yourself under control if we're gonna survive this." God, it was like he thought they were still on the Ark, and that this was Earth Skills. And that she was a scared 17-year-old who needed to be taught how the world worked.
They all put their backs against the barricade, to hold it steady. Octavia hit the back of her head against the wood. Once, then twice.
"O?" Bellamy's voice came from right by her side, and she turned her head to face him even though she didn't want to. "O, listen to me. I know how you feel." Did he? "I let the need for revenge put me on the wrong side. I don't want that for you."
No, he didn't know what he was talking about.
The door shook, and Octavia turned. "You keep it closed," she said. "I'll get more for the barricade." That was something simple and necessary and immediate she could do. She went and grabbed Miller and Bryan, and together they hauled every last piece of furniture they could carry to the barricade until they'd practically covered the entire doorway. And the people on the other side were still going. It wouldn't hold very long.
So they chose a different strategy: surprise. Octavia was standing at the other end of the corridor when ALIE's people broke through, led by Kane. She told him she'd give up, that she'd take the chip.
"Good," he said. "No one else has to die ever. Maybe you can convince your mentor of that."
Octavia couldn't help her surprised pause. Nor the faint softening of her voice. "Indra's alive?"
He nodded. "Yes. On the cross suffering, needlessly."
All of them were now in the corridor with her. None of them seemed to have paid any attention to the water at their feet. "Now!" Octavia yelled, and leapt onto a box as the others emerged from behind her, tossing their shock batons into the water, electrocuting Kane and the rest. As soon as the charge was clear, they went and grabbed all the weapons. The batons wouldn't be enough to deactivate their chips, but at least they'd be easier to safely take down unarmed.
And then Octavia and everyone else barricaded themselves in the throne room, to keep Clarke safe until she was done doing... whatever it was she was doing inside her brain.
-----
The barricade didn't hold for very long at all this time, either. One moment, they were waiting, the next they were in fully immersed in battle. The chaos of it felt oddly reminiscent of the single bar brawl Octavia had ever been apart of: since the chipped people felt no pain, they were all aggression. It left her side at a disadvantage, as they were trying not to kill anyone, and so Octavia was holding a sword but could mostly just use the hilt as a blunt instrument.
A grounder man, twice her size, knocked her down and put his hands around her neck, hellbent on strangling her to death. She tried to kick up at him, claw his hands away from her neck, wrench his arms, but nothing was doing anything and she could feel herself running out of oxygen, trying to breathe past a squeezing feeling that wouldn't let her --
And then suddenly the man was knocked aside by a heavy blow to the face, and Octavia looked up and saw Pike.
She could only stare at him as she gasped for breath. But only for a few seconds, because the battle raged on and there was no time to stop for anything. ALIE's people were still coming - until there was a sudden noticeable shift in the room. The fight just stopped, and some of the chipped people began groaning with pain. Some broke down in tears.
Whatever Clarke had been doing, she'd been successful.
For a moment, Octavia could only look around the room, dazed. Then she started going around, checking on people. Checking pulses on the people who were laying on the floor. As she straightened up from one of the ones who hadn't made it, she found Pike standing behind her back. He seemed to hesitate, then nodded at her.
As if they were even now, as if they were putting something behind them.
She ran her sword straight through him. Then, relishing in the shock on his face, she shoved the blade further through, and then yanked it out, and watched without blinking as he fell backwards onto the floor. Watched as he drew his last breath, and went slack.
This, she thought, was something she would want to remember forever.
-----
The city square was full of people, some injured, some looking for their loved ones. Octavia made it down the side of the tower just in time to see people cutting Indra down from a wooden cross. She looked like hell, but she was alive, and Octavia rushed to her through the square, shoving people out of her way.
She made it to Indra just as the lay her down on the ground. Her hand went to Indra's cheek almost without even thinking.
"ALIE?" Indra asked as soon as her eyes focused on Octavia.
"Gone," Octavia said. "It's over."
"And Pike?"
Octavia paused. For a second, she didn't even know what to say, but then: "I waited until it was done."
Indra's slow nod was all the approval she needed.
[ooc: NFB, NFI, etc. Taken from The 100 S3 episodes 15 and 16, plus a little bit at the end from S4 episode 1! Content warning for violence and cold-blooded murder of an NPC.]
They dragged him back to Arkadia with them. Convinced him to help, because now that Polis had fallen to ALIE, they needed him to get into the city and capture the false commander, Ontari, from the middle of thousands of people whose minds were linked.
They left Jasper, Harper, Raven and Monty behind to do the kind of computer stuff Octavia wouldn't even pretend to understand. The rest of them went to Polis, and split up: Roan took Clarke in through the main gate, pretending he'd taken her as his prisoner, while the rest of them snuck in to one of the buildings overlooking the square in the middle of Polis, right by the tower where the commanders lived.
The whole city was creepy. There weren't a lot of people around, and the ones that they saw in the square? Were all kneeling motionless, staring straight ahead.
And yet the worst part was still having to listen to Miller and his boyfriend talking to each other in hushed voices while they waited for Roan and Clarke to make it to the square. Miller was telling Bryan how they'd one day be done fighting, and would build a house on a lake. Grow corn, raise chickens.
Grow old together.
She just barely kept herself from telling them not to hold their breath. After that, it was a relief when things actually started happening down in the square. The plan was simple: wait until Ontari came out, then launch canisters of gas into the crowd to knock everyone out. They'd use only non-lethal force, because no one in Polis was in control of themselves. ALIE was the only one they wanted to kill.
But, of course it all went sideways. Ontari never came out, and they got ambushed, and dragged away, only to unexpectedly be rescued by Murphy (who Octavia had not seen since she'd ended up back on the Ground, and had assumed to be dead), Indra - and Pike. The only thing that got Octavia to stop staring at him was Indra reaching for her hand to help her up.
"You're with Pike?" Octavia snapped at her.
"Only way we get out of here is together," Indra replied, much too calmly. It took Octavia a few seconds for the realization to hit her. Indra didn't know. "He killed Lincoln," she said, and watched Indra's expression shift as she turned to look towards Pike. "Put him on his knees. Shot him in the head."
But it wasn't enough. Indra didn't immediately change her mind the way she'd hoped. And Bellamy said they needed to all work together, and there wasn't enough time for arguments. Bellamy and Murphy headed into the tower, the rest of them stayed down: Miller, Bryan and Pike worked to pull the elevator up to the top of the tower, while Octavia and Indra kept watch for any trouble that might have been heading their way.
While they waited, Octavia kept staring down the hallway to where Pike was working with the others, feeling sick at the sight of him. But when she glanced at Indra, she saw the woman was looking at her.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Octavia asked, and looked away.
"Because I know what you're thinking."
Of course she did.
Indra moved closer, and so did Octavia, giving up on her split-second urge to pretend she didn't want to talk about it, to pretend there wasn't a question burning her up. "Why is he still alive?" she asked.
And once again, she was met with Indra's calm. "Because the dead can't help us." She didn't sound happy about it, no, but steady. Which was everything Octavia's huff of a breath wasn't. Suddenly, her eyes were stinging.
Her words barely more than a gasp. "Lincoln was -- what was left of my home." He'd been what little she'd still had of it here on the Ground, she wanted to say. But couldn't say it, and not just because it was too long a story to be told in that moment.
As an errant tear rolled down her cheek, Indra turned more towards her, as if for a better look at her. "Yu hou," she said, softer than Octavia had ever heard her sound before, as she reached out and put her hand on Octavia's arm, "kamp raun hir."
And then there was suddenly a gunshot.
It was Kane, acting under ALIE's command. He got a few shots in at the men by the elevator wheel before Octavia and Indra struck him down and promptly knocked him out. They sealed off the corridor with an explosive to buy themselves time as they kept working the elevator, to get it all the way to the top of the tower.
Octavia was pushing the wheel with Pike and Miller when it finally clunked to a stop. Bellamy and Murphy had made it to the floor with the throne room in it, so Octavia headed into the elevator shaft to begin climbing, as Miller set the timer on their second explosive, this one meant to destroy the elevator controls so that no one would be able to follow.
But then Kane called out to Indra from the corridor. Indra shouted for him to stay back but then, with only seconds on the timer, she jumped down to tackle him. And then the explosion sent dust and debris up into the shaft the entrance to it collapsed, leaving Indra and Kane on the other side. Assuming they weren't buried under the rubble. Octavia couldn't stop to think about it.
There wasn't time to think about anything. By the time they made it up to the throne room, ALIE's faithful were already scaling the outside of the building to get to them. And they had enough issues up there as it was: the floor was secure for now with Jaha and his guards tied up, and Abby had been EMP'd to free her from ALIE's influence, but Ontari had been struck in the head hard enough that while she was still breathing, giving her the Flame would no longer help them, because she wouldn't able to tell them ALIE's destruct code. And so, Clarke had decided she would take the Flame herself, instead. They'd try to make her into a Nightblood with a transfusion from Ontari, and then she'd access the data on the commanders' chip.
There was just enough lamp oil for them to grease up the throne room balcony and all the windows, except the ones in the commander's chanmbers, so that was where they'd have to assume the battle would begin, buying time for Abby and Clarke in the throne room. And so that was where Octavia would be, along with Miller, Murphy, Bryan and Pike.
As she went to follow Pike, Bellamy stopped her, and told her to be careful.
She knew it wasn't what he really meant.
She said nothing.
She didn't say much once they were waiting around in the commander's chambers, either. Just sat there, sharpening the sword that was slowly starting to feel almost right in her hand. Listened as Bryan groaned on the couch. Kane had got him good with a bullet, and he wasn't doing so well with the wound.
Miller decided to take him over to see Abby.
And so, Octavia was alone with Pike. She could tell she made him uncomfortable. Good.
"If we're gonna survive this," he said, "we need to stand together."
Octavia didn't even bother looking up at him. Her voice was perfectly flat. "Now you say that."
He didn't try to push the conversation any further than that, choosing instead to walk onto the balcony. Almost immediately after, he called out back to her, "Here they come!" The first wave had made it up fast, faster than Octavia would've expected them to make it up a tower this tall. Maybe it was ALIE's influence. She got up and took her place next to Pike, sword at the ready. He laid out the plan, that they were doing it Bellamy's way, letting them in, taking them down, then tying them up.
Octavia just nodded.
And then, when the first chipped people came in over the balcony railing, she slashed the back of Pike's leg and stepped back, and watched as they attacked him.
She hoped they'd kill him, she really did.
They were making a good attempt of it, too, but all too soon, Octavia heard a voice from behind her.
"O! What are you doing?"
Bellamy rushed into the room - and to Pike's aid, ignoring her attempt to grab him, to stop him. She stared at him as he shot two of the men who'd been trying to beat Pike into pulp. Pike himself broke the neck of the last one. But, more people were coming, even as Bellamy helped Pike up. Octavia had to give up her disappointment, and they had to give up the room, and rush outside as more people poured in through the balcony doors. The last Octavia saw was Kane with barely a scratch on him, right before they slammed the doors into the chamber shut and began barricaing them with furniture.
And even then, Pike found in himself to strength to lecture her. "I told you," he said. "You need to get yourself under control if we're gonna survive this." God, it was like he thought they were still on the Ark, and that this was Earth Skills. And that she was a scared 17-year-old who needed to be taught how the world worked.
They all put their backs against the barricade, to hold it steady. Octavia hit the back of her head against the wood. Once, then twice.
"O?" Bellamy's voice came from right by her side, and she turned her head to face him even though she didn't want to. "O, listen to me. I know how you feel." Did he? "I let the need for revenge put me on the wrong side. I don't want that for you."
No, he didn't know what he was talking about.
The door shook, and Octavia turned. "You keep it closed," she said. "I'll get more for the barricade." That was something simple and necessary and immediate she could do. She went and grabbed Miller and Bryan, and together they hauled every last piece of furniture they could carry to the barricade until they'd practically covered the entire doorway. And the people on the other side were still going. It wouldn't hold very long.
So they chose a different strategy: surprise. Octavia was standing at the other end of the corridor when ALIE's people broke through, led by Kane. She told him she'd give up, that she'd take the chip.
"Good," he said. "No one else has to die ever. Maybe you can convince your mentor of that."
Octavia couldn't help her surprised pause. Nor the faint softening of her voice. "Indra's alive?"
He nodded. "Yes. On the cross suffering, needlessly."
All of them were now in the corridor with her. None of them seemed to have paid any attention to the water at their feet. "Now!" Octavia yelled, and leapt onto a box as the others emerged from behind her, tossing their shock batons into the water, electrocuting Kane and the rest. As soon as the charge was clear, they went and grabbed all the weapons. The batons wouldn't be enough to deactivate their chips, but at least they'd be easier to safely take down unarmed.
And then Octavia and everyone else barricaded themselves in the throne room, to keep Clarke safe until she was done doing... whatever it was she was doing inside her brain.
The barricade didn't hold for very long at all this time, either. One moment, they were waiting, the next they were in fully immersed in battle. The chaos of it felt oddly reminiscent of the single bar brawl Octavia had ever been apart of: since the chipped people felt no pain, they were all aggression. It left her side at a disadvantage, as they were trying not to kill anyone, and so Octavia was holding a sword but could mostly just use the hilt as a blunt instrument.
A grounder man, twice her size, knocked her down and put his hands around her neck, hellbent on strangling her to death. She tried to kick up at him, claw his hands away from her neck, wrench his arms, but nothing was doing anything and she could feel herself running out of oxygen, trying to breathe past a squeezing feeling that wouldn't let her --
And then suddenly the man was knocked aside by a heavy blow to the face, and Octavia looked up and saw Pike.
She could only stare at him as she gasped for breath. But only for a few seconds, because the battle raged on and there was no time to stop for anything. ALIE's people were still coming - until there was a sudden noticeable shift in the room. The fight just stopped, and some of the chipped people began groaning with pain. Some broke down in tears.
Whatever Clarke had been doing, she'd been successful.
For a moment, Octavia could only look around the room, dazed. Then she started going around, checking on people. Checking pulses on the people who were laying on the floor. As she straightened up from one of the ones who hadn't made it, she found Pike standing behind her back. He seemed to hesitate, then nodded at her.
As if they were even now, as if they were putting something behind them.
She ran her sword straight through him. Then, relishing in the shock on his face, she shoved the blade further through, and then yanked it out, and watched without blinking as he fell backwards onto the floor. Watched as he drew his last breath, and went slack.
This, she thought, was something she would want to remember forever.
The city square was full of people, some injured, some looking for their loved ones. Octavia made it down the side of the tower just in time to see people cutting Indra down from a wooden cross. She looked like hell, but she was alive, and Octavia rushed to her through the square, shoving people out of her way.
She made it to Indra just as the lay her down on the ground. Her hand went to Indra's cheek almost without even thinking.
"ALIE?" Indra asked as soon as her eyes focused on Octavia.
"Gone," Octavia said. "It's over."
"And Pike?"
Octavia paused. For a second, she didn't even know what to say, but then: "I waited until it was done."
Indra's slow nod was all the approval she needed.
[ooc: NFB, NFI, etc. Taken from The 100 S3 episodes 15 and 16, plus a little bit at the end from S4 episode 1! Content warning for violence and cold-blooded murder of an NPC.]