Octavia Blake (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
okteiviakom) wrote2020-05-30 12:25 am
okteiviakom) wrote2020-05-30 12:25 am
The Woods, then Arkadia, Friday FT
Octavia was laying on the ground, and there were two tall figures looming above her. One in something sharp and dark, the other in something pink and fluttery.
"Well this won't do at all," said the first.
"Too soon, hato," agreed the second.
"Valiant effort, as far as dying dramatically goes, I'll give you that, miss Octavia." The figure nudged her hand with his foot. "Ba em laik taim yu gyon au nodotaim."
-----
Octavia awoke to something nudging her hand. She was cold and everything hurt, though the worst of the pain seemed to radiate out from her midsection. It was an effort just to get her eyes open, then another to get them to focus. She was on the rocky bank of the river, still halfway in the water, and the thing nudging her hand was Helios, licking at her bloodied knuckles.
The struggle to open her eyes had nothing on the struggle to crawl out of the water. To reach for the stirrup and use the very last of her energy on hauling herself onto Helios' back. "Home, Helios," she mumbled, as she slumped over in the saddle. "Take me home." Well. His home? She just had to trust him, anyway, because as hard as she was trying to stay conscious, that was about all she could do. That, and trying to hold on, keep herself in the saddle.
They made it pretty far -- maybe? Time was behaving oddly and Octavia couldn't tell seconds from hours. But they made it at least some of the way, before she slipped off, too weak to hold on anymore.
Octavia was laying on the ground, and there was a tall figure looming over her.
She tried to focus, see who it was. Instead, everything went black.
-----
The next time she swam into consciousness, Clarke was right there, her face filling up most of Octavia's field of vision. Behind it, dark metal. Arkadia. Arkadia, that meant she'd made it! "Azgeda is coming," she said, forcing her lungs to cooperate just enough. Not loud, but just enough. "Army... marching."
Clarke said something, Octavia saw her lips moving but didn't really hear it. She felt like she was underwater, and sinking.
"War's here."
The black took her again.
-----
It took Octavia a second to place the next face looming above her, to recognize the person running a damp cloth over her face. It was a blonde woman, with dark eyes, something serious and worn-down about her expression --
Niylah. Kom Trikru. She was a friend of Clarke's, they'd met her at the trading post she ran, before they'd traveled to find Floukru. Guess she was here in Arkadia working in medical, now. Here in Arkadia. With a flash of panic, Octavia tried to push upright. "I have to warn them."
"You did," Niylah replied, gently holding her down. (Just in case the immediate piercing pain in her abdomen wouldn't.) "Skaikru soldiers went to meet Roan's army."
Octavia drew several careful breaths. "How did I get here?"
"A man brought you," Niylah said softly. "Trishanakru."
Octavia didn't hear the rest of what she said, her mind already racing back to Polis. Trishanakru, they'd been looting tech, destroying it, taking their vengeance where they could. And there'd been a young man, with the ambassador, with the looters. ALIE had made him slaughter his family. "Ilian," Octavia breathed.
If he was the one who'd brought her here, Arkadia was in danger.
-----
If Octavia had taken no for an answer, it might have taken some convincing to get Niylah to let her search the ship. As it was, though, Octavia didn't really give her a choice: she'd go with or without her, and with her would be faster. Because Octavia should not have been trying to walk - and in fact, was leaning pretty heavily on Niylah for support as she did. As they looked through the ship, Niylah told Octavia why the place looked like there'd been a lot going on over the past month or so she'd been in Polis.
They were prepping it for use as a fallout shelter.
Suddenly, finding Ilian became even more urgent. And eventually, they realized where he'd cause the most damage, and found him in the server room, standing there with a lit torch in his hand. "Ilian, no!" Octavia called to him. "Whatever you do here, it won't bring your family back."
She would know, wouldn't she? Nothing brought anyone back.
"No one needs to die," Ilian replied. His voice sounded softer than Octavia had expected it to. She'd heard him speak in harsher tones in Polis. "You should leave."
"Please," Octavia tried, wobbling a little, inadvertently forcing Niylah to support more of her weight, "the engine room is right below us. If it blows, you'll destroy the whole ship."
"That's the idea."
Octavia drew in a deep breath. It sent sparks of pain all through her, and she ignored it, even as it brought tears into her eyes. "I was a prisoner on this ship," she said. "I hate this place. But now people need it." He just stared at her. Stony. "Ilian, please don't do this."
"Were you in the City of Light?"
There it was again, that odd softness in his voice.
"No," Octavia breathed. ALIE had never gotten to her, that much was true, but that didn't mean she didn't --
"Then you'll never understand."
He dropped the torch into the gasoline on the floor.
-----
Consciousness had once again deserted Octavia. When it returned, she was laying on the floor, there was smoke everywhere, and everything was tinted red from the emergency lights. And Niylah was laying several feet away, limp, her eyes closed. Octavia tried to call out to her. Thankfully, she saw her move.
And then there was a figure looming above both of them.
Ilian.
"What the hell are you doing?" Octavia croaked.
He reached for her arm and hauled her up. "Making sure you don't die." Then he grabbed Niylah.
Octavia didn't remember much beyond that. Smoke, loud banging, then outside air and the persistent crackling and heat of a fire that raged on and on and on.
-----
The explosion hadn't destroyed all of the Ark. Enough that they wouldn't be able to seal it in time, but not so much that it wasn't still of use otherwise, and so eventually, Octavia landed back in the med bay, with Niylah (once she'd recovered herself) overseeing her treatment and her physical therapy. She'd been lucky - at least that was what they told her - because Echo's blade hadn't pierced anything important, and so she was healing okay. But bed rest still gave her too much time to think, everything was coming flooding back. That was the weird thing about a near-death experience: as it had been happening, she'd only been able to focus on one thing, go on instinct alone because she hadn't had the faculties available to think about anything else, anything beyond the situation at hand.
But now all the pain beyond the physical was coming back. And she thought about how Kane had told her vengeance wasn't justice, and how she'd tried to stop someone else from taking theirs, and how he'd still done it.
She thought about it a lot.
Bellamy came to see her, to tell her how she'd saved so many people, how they'd be at war without her. She kept her back towards him, told him to get out. There was a long pause. Then, in a more hushed voice, he said, "Octavia, I thought you were dead."
"Octavia is dead," she replied flatly. "The last of her died when you killed Lincoln."
"Please don't say that, O." He sounded hurt. Good. "Hey, I'm your brother."
Octavia rolled towards him just enough to see him, and drawled, "Why do you think you're still alive?"
Guess that was enough to actually get him to leave.
-----
Jasper came by later, unexpected but welcome. Octavia hadn't seen him since -- she wasn't even sure when. He strolled in, humming something, and Octavia couldn't stop herself asking what it was. In response, ignoring a look from one of the medical staff, he grinned at her and sang, "Words to memorize, words hypnotize, words make my mouth exercise --"
Suddenly, Octavia wanted Jasper to stay with her. Couldn't get it past her lips, though, and so after sitting on the edge of her bed for a while and offering her a hearty gulp of moonshine from a bottle he didn't bother hiding at all, he was already on his way out. There was something oddly light about him, compared to how he'd been when she'd last seen him, and compared to everyone else around. Like he'd found some kind of inner equilibrium and was now just cruising along.
She found herself staring at the doorway for a long moment afer he'd already gone.
-----
They'd taken Ilian into custody after he'd hauled Octavia and Niylah out of the Ark. Then angry people broke into his cell and attacked him, seeking their own vengeance, and he ended up tied to a cot across the room from Octavia.
He told her he was glad she was alive. She told him he wouldn't be, soon. Jus drein jus daun, they'd come back for him. (In fact, where were his guards, right now?) He'd killed them all, indirectly, and it didn't matter that he hadn't known about Praimfaya, the wave of death coming for them all, because now everyone knew about it, and they knew he'd taken away a potential shelter.
"I never meant to hurt anyone."
Octavia snorted. "The sword doesn't care what you meant," she drawled. "It just cuts."
Actions and their consequences meant more than the intent behind them. The Ark had taught her that long ago.
-----
Not very much later at all, Kane and Monty and a guard showed up and locked the door, swiftly followed by an angry mob yelling outside that they should be let in. Octavia was sitting up on the edge of her bed, closest to the door, but just listened. The guard tried to argue with Kane about reconsidering, about letting the crowd have Ilian. But Kane couldn't be moved. "If we let them descend into darkness," he said, "there's no coming back."
Maybe he shouldn't have said that.
"It's the end of the world, Kane," Octavia rasped. "Darkness is all we have left."
She rose to her feet, and went and opened the door. People flooded into the room. Kane pulled a gun on them, but the guard that had argued with him stunned it with his shock baton. A man emerged from the mob, his own gun cocked, but Octavia grabbed him by the shoulder.
"You want his blood, you can have it. But the kill is mine."
So Octavia led the way outside, the men dragging Ilian with them as the crowd roared for justice, for vengeance. They forced Ilian onto his knees on the muddy ground. Someone handed Octavia a gun. Monty rushed to her side, tried to tell her she wasn't a murderer.
Wasn't she?
"You're wrong," she said, and disengaged the safety on the gun. Ilian was looking up at her with the eye that wasn't swollen shut. He looked steady, sounded it, too: "Get it over with." Suddenly, an alarm began blaring. Someone yelled, "Black rain, everyone inside!" and everyone began rushing back into the Ark. But not Octavia. The black rain - a harbinger of their oncoming doom, radioactive rain - could take her for all she cared. She didn't take her aim off Ilian.
(It wasn't actually raining. She didn't notice that, either.)
Kane was telling her to put the gun down, to go inside. When that didn't do anything, he stepped closer. "They put Lincoln on his knees, too." The hollow thing inside her chest was suddenly aching again. "Pike stood right there, right where you're standing," he continued, "when they put a gun against his head."
Lincoln of Trikru, you have been sentenced to death in accordance with the Exodus charter. Any last words?
Not for you.
"I was there," Octavia choked out as the memory overwhelmed her. The hand that held the gun was shaking. Her stomach was twisting into knots, bile was rising up her throat. She didn't want to do this.
She wanted to do this.
"If you do this..." Kane said. "You do this, and you're no better than he was."
The sob surprised her with how forceful, how violent it was. She wanted to double over with it, but didn't. The gun fell from her hand into the mud at her feet. Kane put his hand around her arm, trying to soothe, but she shook him off. And started walking away. Away from them, away from the Ark, towards the gates.
And then, holding her hand to the still-healing wound, she ran.
[ooc: NFB, NFI. Taken with tweakage from The 100 S4 episodes 4-6.]
"Well this won't do at all," said the first.
"Too soon, hato," agreed the second.
"Valiant effort, as far as dying dramatically goes, I'll give you that, miss Octavia." The figure nudged her hand with his foot. "Ba em laik taim yu gyon au nodotaim."
Octavia awoke to something nudging her hand. She was cold and everything hurt, though the worst of the pain seemed to radiate out from her midsection. It was an effort just to get her eyes open, then another to get them to focus. She was on the rocky bank of the river, still halfway in the water, and the thing nudging her hand was Helios, licking at her bloodied knuckles.
The struggle to open her eyes had nothing on the struggle to crawl out of the water. To reach for the stirrup and use the very last of her energy on hauling herself onto Helios' back. "Home, Helios," she mumbled, as she slumped over in the saddle. "Take me home." Well. His home? She just had to trust him, anyway, because as hard as she was trying to stay conscious, that was about all she could do. That, and trying to hold on, keep herself in the saddle.
They made it pretty far -- maybe? Time was behaving oddly and Octavia couldn't tell seconds from hours. But they made it at least some of the way, before she slipped off, too weak to hold on anymore.
Octavia was laying on the ground, and there was a tall figure looming over her.
She tried to focus, see who it was. Instead, everything went black.
The next time she swam into consciousness, Clarke was right there, her face filling up most of Octavia's field of vision. Behind it, dark metal. Arkadia. Arkadia, that meant she'd made it! "Azgeda is coming," she said, forcing her lungs to cooperate just enough. Not loud, but just enough. "Army... marching."
Clarke said something, Octavia saw her lips moving but didn't really hear it. She felt like she was underwater, and sinking.
"War's here."
The black took her again.
It took Octavia a second to place the next face looming above her, to recognize the person running a damp cloth over her face. It was a blonde woman, with dark eyes, something serious and worn-down about her expression --
Niylah. Kom Trikru. She was a friend of Clarke's, they'd met her at the trading post she ran, before they'd traveled to find Floukru. Guess she was here in Arkadia working in medical, now. Here in Arkadia. With a flash of panic, Octavia tried to push upright. "I have to warn them."
"You did," Niylah replied, gently holding her down. (Just in case the immediate piercing pain in her abdomen wouldn't.) "Skaikru soldiers went to meet Roan's army."
Octavia drew several careful breaths. "How did I get here?"
"A man brought you," Niylah said softly. "Trishanakru."
Octavia didn't hear the rest of what she said, her mind already racing back to Polis. Trishanakru, they'd been looting tech, destroying it, taking their vengeance where they could. And there'd been a young man, with the ambassador, with the looters. ALIE had made him slaughter his family. "Ilian," Octavia breathed.
If he was the one who'd brought her here, Arkadia was in danger.
If Octavia had taken no for an answer, it might have taken some convincing to get Niylah to let her search the ship. As it was, though, Octavia didn't really give her a choice: she'd go with or without her, and with her would be faster. Because Octavia should not have been trying to walk - and in fact, was leaning pretty heavily on Niylah for support as she did. As they looked through the ship, Niylah told Octavia why the place looked like there'd been a lot going on over the past month or so she'd been in Polis.
They were prepping it for use as a fallout shelter.
Suddenly, finding Ilian became even more urgent. And eventually, they realized where he'd cause the most damage, and found him in the server room, standing there with a lit torch in his hand. "Ilian, no!" Octavia called to him. "Whatever you do here, it won't bring your family back."
She would know, wouldn't she? Nothing brought anyone back.
"No one needs to die," Ilian replied. His voice sounded softer than Octavia had expected it to. She'd heard him speak in harsher tones in Polis. "You should leave."
"Please," Octavia tried, wobbling a little, inadvertently forcing Niylah to support more of her weight, "the engine room is right below us. If it blows, you'll destroy the whole ship."
"That's the idea."
Octavia drew in a deep breath. It sent sparks of pain all through her, and she ignored it, even as it brought tears into her eyes. "I was a prisoner on this ship," she said. "I hate this place. But now people need it." He just stared at her. Stony. "Ilian, please don't do this."
"Were you in the City of Light?"
There it was again, that odd softness in his voice.
"No," Octavia breathed. ALIE had never gotten to her, that much was true, but that didn't mean she didn't --
"Then you'll never understand."
He dropped the torch into the gasoline on the floor.
Consciousness had once again deserted Octavia. When it returned, she was laying on the floor, there was smoke everywhere, and everything was tinted red from the emergency lights. And Niylah was laying several feet away, limp, her eyes closed. Octavia tried to call out to her. Thankfully, she saw her move.
And then there was a figure looming above both of them.
Ilian.
"What the hell are you doing?" Octavia croaked.
He reached for her arm and hauled her up. "Making sure you don't die." Then he grabbed Niylah.
Octavia didn't remember much beyond that. Smoke, loud banging, then outside air and the persistent crackling and heat of a fire that raged on and on and on.
The explosion hadn't destroyed all of the Ark. Enough that they wouldn't be able to seal it in time, but not so much that it wasn't still of use otherwise, and so eventually, Octavia landed back in the med bay, with Niylah (once she'd recovered herself) overseeing her treatment and her physical therapy. She'd been lucky - at least that was what they told her - because Echo's blade hadn't pierced anything important, and so she was healing okay. But bed rest still gave her too much time to think, everything was coming flooding back. That was the weird thing about a near-death experience: as it had been happening, she'd only been able to focus on one thing, go on instinct alone because she hadn't had the faculties available to think about anything else, anything beyond the situation at hand.
But now all the pain beyond the physical was coming back. And she thought about how Kane had told her vengeance wasn't justice, and how she'd tried to stop someone else from taking theirs, and how he'd still done it.
She thought about it a lot.
Bellamy came to see her, to tell her how she'd saved so many people, how they'd be at war without her. She kept her back towards him, told him to get out. There was a long pause. Then, in a more hushed voice, he said, "Octavia, I thought you were dead."
"Octavia is dead," she replied flatly. "The last of her died when you killed Lincoln."
"Please don't say that, O." He sounded hurt. Good. "Hey, I'm your brother."
Octavia rolled towards him just enough to see him, and drawled, "Why do you think you're still alive?"
Guess that was enough to actually get him to leave.
Jasper came by later, unexpected but welcome. Octavia hadn't seen him since -- she wasn't even sure when. He strolled in, humming something, and Octavia couldn't stop herself asking what it was. In response, ignoring a look from one of the medical staff, he grinned at her and sang, "Words to memorize, words hypnotize, words make my mouth exercise --"
Suddenly, Octavia wanted Jasper to stay with her. Couldn't get it past her lips, though, and so after sitting on the edge of her bed for a while and offering her a hearty gulp of moonshine from a bottle he didn't bother hiding at all, he was already on his way out. There was something oddly light about him, compared to how he'd been when she'd last seen him, and compared to everyone else around. Like he'd found some kind of inner equilibrium and was now just cruising along.
She found herself staring at the doorway for a long moment afer he'd already gone.
They'd taken Ilian into custody after he'd hauled Octavia and Niylah out of the Ark. Then angry people broke into his cell and attacked him, seeking their own vengeance, and he ended up tied to a cot across the room from Octavia.
He told her he was glad she was alive. She told him he wouldn't be, soon. Jus drein jus daun, they'd come back for him. (In fact, where were his guards, right now?) He'd killed them all, indirectly, and it didn't matter that he hadn't known about Praimfaya, the wave of death coming for them all, because now everyone knew about it, and they knew he'd taken away a potential shelter.
"I never meant to hurt anyone."
Octavia snorted. "The sword doesn't care what you meant," she drawled. "It just cuts."
Actions and their consequences meant more than the intent behind them. The Ark had taught her that long ago.
Not very much later at all, Kane and Monty and a guard showed up and locked the door, swiftly followed by an angry mob yelling outside that they should be let in. Octavia was sitting up on the edge of her bed, closest to the door, but just listened. The guard tried to argue with Kane about reconsidering, about letting the crowd have Ilian. But Kane couldn't be moved. "If we let them descend into darkness," he said, "there's no coming back."
Maybe he shouldn't have said that.
"It's the end of the world, Kane," Octavia rasped. "Darkness is all we have left."
She rose to her feet, and went and opened the door. People flooded into the room. Kane pulled a gun on them, but the guard that had argued with him stunned it with his shock baton. A man emerged from the mob, his own gun cocked, but Octavia grabbed him by the shoulder.
"You want his blood, you can have it. But the kill is mine."
So Octavia led the way outside, the men dragging Ilian with them as the crowd roared for justice, for vengeance. They forced Ilian onto his knees on the muddy ground. Someone handed Octavia a gun. Monty rushed to her side, tried to tell her she wasn't a murderer.
Wasn't she?
"You're wrong," she said, and disengaged the safety on the gun. Ilian was looking up at her with the eye that wasn't swollen shut. He looked steady, sounded it, too: "Get it over with." Suddenly, an alarm began blaring. Someone yelled, "Black rain, everyone inside!" and everyone began rushing back into the Ark. But not Octavia. The black rain - a harbinger of their oncoming doom, radioactive rain - could take her for all she cared. She didn't take her aim off Ilian.
(It wasn't actually raining. She didn't notice that, either.)
Kane was telling her to put the gun down, to go inside. When that didn't do anything, he stepped closer. "They put Lincoln on his knees, too." The hollow thing inside her chest was suddenly aching again. "Pike stood right there, right where you're standing," he continued, "when they put a gun against his head."
Lincoln of Trikru, you have been sentenced to death in accordance with the Exodus charter. Any last words?
Not for you.
"I was there," Octavia choked out as the memory overwhelmed her. The hand that held the gun was shaking. Her stomach was twisting into knots, bile was rising up her throat. She didn't want to do this.
She wanted to do this.
"If you do this..." Kane said. "You do this, and you're no better than he was."
The sob surprised her with how forceful, how violent it was. She wanted to double over with it, but didn't. The gun fell from her hand into the mud at her feet. Kane put his hand around her arm, trying to soothe, but she shook him off. And started walking away. Away from them, away from the Ark, towards the gates.
And then, holding her hand to the still-healing wound, she ran.
[ooc: NFB, NFI. Taken with tweakage from The 100 S4 episodes 4-6.]