Octavia Blake (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
okteiviakom) wrote2020-06-07 08:16 pm
okteiviakom) wrote2020-06-07 08:16 pm
The Bunker, Sunday FT
Wonkru had been living in the bunker for two years. Not comfortably, not always harmoniously, but they'd lived, and they'd done so together as one clan. Sometimes that was enough. The fighting pits weren't pretty, weren't something Octavia thought she would have sanctioned on the ground, but they were necessary. For population control, for unity, for a grim reminder of what their enemy was.
Two years ago, Kara Cooper had been the first person to prove herself in the arena, to emerge victorious and earn back her place in the clan. She had returned to her job running the hydroponic farm, and had never gone against Wonkru again.
And today, Kara Cooper told Octavia and her advisors - Indra, Kane, Abby - that despite her best efforts, the farm was in trouble. An infection was spreading across the plants. Currently, it was still contained to the soybean crop, but it wouldn't be for long. She'd already salvaged some healthy plants to use for seeds, but it would take a year for them to get protein from the farm again if she eradicated all the infested plants. Which she would have to do, if they didn't want the entire farm to die.
One year without a protein source. After they'd already had to go to halved rations before. The air in Octavia's office suddenly felt like it was pressing down on her.
Abby had been quiet at the other end of the room for a long while. Now, she spoke, her voice grave. "We all know what the answer is." In response, Kane said her name as if expecting to quiet her with just one word. All that did was get her to turn her gaze directly on him. "If we don't get at least ten percent of our calories from protein, over that amount of time, we'll starve to death," she said. "I'm sorry, Marcus, but that's a fact."
Octavia realized she was holding her breath as she listened. And then, it released, as Abby concluded, "There is only one potential source."
She was right, they all knew what it was. What she meant. Indra was the one to actually say it.
"The fighting pits."
Octavia swallowed as she leaned her hands heavily against the desk. Looking from person to person, taking in Indra's familiarly unreadable expression, what felt like shades of guilt on Cooper's face, the confusion on Kane's...
And the resignation on Abby's.
"Will it be enough?" Octavia asked. "To last a year?"
"It should be once the crime rate starts to rise," Abby replied. "And it will."
"Are we seriously talking about this?" Kane asked, slowly, like he was having trouble even comprehending it. And a part of Octavia wanted to side with him, it really did, but -- "What else are we supposed to do?" she asked, and her voice wavered a little. "Kane." She fixed her eyes on his, and pleaded, "Give us another solution."
But he had nothing.
So Abby shook her head. "There is no other solution."
------
There was no other solution.
It took a few days to implement this change. A few days of increasingly meager meals as rumors of the state of the farm spread. And then, the day came when they were gathered in the mess hall, and each of them had three things on the metal trays in front of them.
A glass of water. A little cup of broth.
And a cube of meat.
The room had never been as quiet. There was only the insistent electrical hum of their generators that was always vibrating through the bunker. No one was moving, no one was talking, and Octavia felt as if all eyes were now on her as she sat in the middle of the long table at one end of the room.
Sitting on her right, Abby whispered, "They need to see us do this."
So Octavia forced herself onto her feet. Forced herself to pick up the meat cube, and forced herself to speak to her people.
"We all know the situation," she said. "What we do here now, we do to survive." Just like they had done everything up to this point, too. Just like she had done her entire life. "Some of you think it's a sin. But the sin is letting ourselves starve to death when we know... we're all that's left of the human race."
She looked down at the cube in her hand, and then back up at the room as she brought the meat up to her mouth and sank her teeth into it. Bit off a piece.
Lead by example.
Chew it down.
Don't think about it.
"Wash it down with vegetable broth," Cooper suggested gently, quietly, from the other side of the table. "It'll make it easier." So Octavia picked up her cup, and drank down some of the broth, trying to focus on that taste instead, if she couldn't just ignore her senses completely.
She swallowed.
Then she sat back down.
And watched the people. Some were eating, gingerly bringing the meat to their mouths, eyes closed. Some were not. There was hesitation even at Octavia's own table: Niylah, in particular, but Indra told her she should honor those who'd died so they could live.
There was murmuring between Kane and Abby. Then, as Octavia stared at him - as everyone stared at him - Kane stood up and announced, "We all need to make this choice for ourselves."
"There is no choice," Abby hissed. "If you don't eat, you starve."
"There's always a choice, Abby. You know that."
Then he walked out.
And so did several others. They were choosing starvation. They were choosing the enemy.
------
"No way," Octavia snapped. "I won't take away their choice! When they're hungry enough, they'll eat."
Abby had come to talk to her in her office. But the things she wanted to say were not things Octavia wanted to hear. Octavia was angry Kane had gone against her, against the best interest of Wonkru, but at the same time -- that was an option he had to have. Because otherwise, what were they?
"Listen to me," Abby said. "Nobody wants to do this. But we can't let them starve." Well, they were in agreement about that, at least. "If they die from malnutrition, their muscles will atrophy, and there won't be enough meat on their bones to --"
Octavia dropped her hands to her sides. "I can't hear this." She wanted to pace. Instead, she felt frozen in place, while Abby was free to stand up and step up closer to her. "You have to hear this," she insisted. "On the Ark, the Blight generation, they had a choice - and they never recovered from it." The Blight. The Ark had begun floating their dead after it. "The people who ate had to watch the people who didn't eat die slowly, and their guilt... nearly destroyed them."
"What do you want me to do?" Octavia asked, and her voice wavered again. She'd been doing her best to stay strong these past two years, but this... Her voice dropped into a whisper to keep it steady. "Make it a crime not to be a cannibal?"
She didn't think she had any heart left to break, but Abby's quiet nod seemed to prove differently.
She sank heavily into the chair by the desk, and rubbed her hands over her face. "That's one way to fill the freezer," she mumbled, dark and dry because the only other option was breaking down. She looked away as Abby took a seat next to her.
Was this really their only solution? Forcing people to eat their dead so that the human race could make it past this year?
"First we get... full compliance," Abby murmured. "And then we deal with supply."
"Supply?" Octavia gasped, her gaze snapping back to Abby. "These are my people you're talking about!"
"I know that," Abby insisted. "They're mine, too."
Something occurred to Octavia, just then. Made her voice into a drawl. "And I suppose you want me to make an exception for Kane?" she asked, but Abby's response surprised her. Because Abby shook her head. "No," she said, with a sudden -- lightness? "Marcus is the key. You convince him, and the rest will follow." She looked like she believed it because she had to.
But it was the only solution they had.
------
And so, the next time they all gathered in the mess hall, Octavia had posted armed guards around the room. Kane was the last to arrive. As soon as he was seated, Octavia stood up. Once again, she picked up the meat from her plate, though this time, she placed it on her palm, and put her other hand underneath, and held it like a sacrificial offering.
Like the sacrificial offering it was, like the sacrificial offering it needed to be.
"We honor those who died," she began, "so we could live." She paused, giving a little more time to the last few people to shift their full attention to her. "I give all of myself to you. You know that. And so did they."
And once again, she brought the cube to her lips, and bit off a chunk. So did Indra and Niylah on on side of her, Abby on the other. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Kane frozen still like a statue. Not picking up the meat. Not eating.
Not surviving.
And looking across the room, Octavia spotted an entire table filled with people who were just as still. She stood up, and made her way over to them, her steps measured and loud in the quiet of the hall.
"Eat," she told them.
They did nothing.
"I'm sorry," said the man at the end of the table, looking up at her, shaking his head. "I can't."
Goddammit. Octavia huffed softly. "Maybe I wasn't being clear," she tried. Please just eat. "This isn't a choice."
"For me it is," the man replied. He glanced down at his tray but his gaze barely got there, definitely didn't linger. "One of the men in the arena yesterday was my brother."
Octavia's stomach turned. She could practically feel bile rising up her throat, and tried not to be obvious about swallowing it down. Forcing everything down. This was about survival, why couldn't they see that? Slowly, she knelt beside the table. As if she was praying. (As if she was begging.) "And he gave his life, so you could live," she tried, feeling her lips twist into a desperate smile. "So we all could."
She glanced around the table, at their still, anguished faces.
She reached for the meat on the man's tray, and held it with both hands as she stood up.
"All of him," she said, "for all of us."
"Omon gon oson," she heard Indra echo her in Trig from somewhere behind her. All of me for all of us. She turned towards the man again, offering him the meat.
Please.
But he was still shaking his head. It pained him to do it, she could tell. But he still did it. "I mean no disrespect," he said, "but I would rather die with my brother than --"
Octavia stepped up to the closest guard and grabbed the pistol from his hip. She heard Kane call her name, ask what she was doing. But she turned her gaze back on the man. Holding out the meat to him with one hand, holding the gun at her side with the other.
"You are Wonkru," she said, "or you are an enemy of Wonkru." She set the meat back on his tray. "Choose."
And she aimed the gun at his head.
Kane had made it across the room. She heard his voice from behind her. "Octavia... Put the gun down. Please." But she wasn't going to. She was still staring at the man, and he was still staring up at her - and then, perhaps sensing hesitation in her as her aim drifted just a little lower, he started leaning up, as if intending to challenge her.
And she pulled the trigger. He fell limply back in his chair.
Tears rolled onto Octavia's cheeks, but she circled to the next person, a woman who hadn't touched her food either. Once again, Octavia aimed the pistol at her head.
"You eat or you die."
The woman, shaking, shook her head. "Please don't do this."
Kane was still pleading with her, to stop, to put down the gun. Saying this wasn't her, but he was wrong, this was what she had to be because someone needed to carry the burden of all of their survival and it was going to be her. All of her for all of them.. "Just take a bite!" she hissed at the woman, desperate. They were both crying. "Do it."
Nothing.
This time, she shut her eyes tightly before pulling the trigger.
A man from the other side of the table stood up. "You eat or you die," she said, gun already trained on him. But his expression hardened, and he shook his head.
Another shot.
"Eat or die," Octavia told the woman who'd sat beside him.
Finally, Kane yelled, "Enough!" And Octavia turned her stinging eyes towards him, and hoped against hope that he'd -- "I'll eat."
Octavia watched as his shaking hand reached for the meat from the tray of the first man who'd died. She watched him take a bite, watched him gesture for the others at the table to follow his lead - and they did. Shaking and gagging, with tears running down their faces, but they did.
Painful or not, everyone left was choosing to survive.
[ooc: NFB, NFI. Taken from The 100 S5, episode 11 (yes, we're skipping ahead for a bit, because this is flashback country in the original continuity). CONTENT WARNING for cannibalism and graphic murder of NPCs.]
Two years ago, Kara Cooper had been the first person to prove herself in the arena, to emerge victorious and earn back her place in the clan. She had returned to her job running the hydroponic farm, and had never gone against Wonkru again.
And today, Kara Cooper told Octavia and her advisors - Indra, Kane, Abby - that despite her best efforts, the farm was in trouble. An infection was spreading across the plants. Currently, it was still contained to the soybean crop, but it wouldn't be for long. She'd already salvaged some healthy plants to use for seeds, but it would take a year for them to get protein from the farm again if she eradicated all the infested plants. Which she would have to do, if they didn't want the entire farm to die.
One year without a protein source. After they'd already had to go to halved rations before. The air in Octavia's office suddenly felt like it was pressing down on her.
Abby had been quiet at the other end of the room for a long while. Now, she spoke, her voice grave. "We all know what the answer is." In response, Kane said her name as if expecting to quiet her with just one word. All that did was get her to turn her gaze directly on him. "If we don't get at least ten percent of our calories from protein, over that amount of time, we'll starve to death," she said. "I'm sorry, Marcus, but that's a fact."
Octavia realized she was holding her breath as she listened. And then, it released, as Abby concluded, "There is only one potential source."
She was right, they all knew what it was. What she meant. Indra was the one to actually say it.
"The fighting pits."
Octavia swallowed as she leaned her hands heavily against the desk. Looking from person to person, taking in Indra's familiarly unreadable expression, what felt like shades of guilt on Cooper's face, the confusion on Kane's...
And the resignation on Abby's.
"Will it be enough?" Octavia asked. "To last a year?"
"It should be once the crime rate starts to rise," Abby replied. "And it will."
"Are we seriously talking about this?" Kane asked, slowly, like he was having trouble even comprehending it. And a part of Octavia wanted to side with him, it really did, but -- "What else are we supposed to do?" she asked, and her voice wavered a little. "Kane." She fixed her eyes on his, and pleaded, "Give us another solution."
But he had nothing.
So Abby shook her head. "There is no other solution."
There was no other solution.
It took a few days to implement this change. A few days of increasingly meager meals as rumors of the state of the farm spread. And then, the day came when they were gathered in the mess hall, and each of them had three things on the metal trays in front of them.
A glass of water. A little cup of broth.
And a cube of meat.
The room had never been as quiet. There was only the insistent electrical hum of their generators that was always vibrating through the bunker. No one was moving, no one was talking, and Octavia felt as if all eyes were now on her as she sat in the middle of the long table at one end of the room.
Sitting on her right, Abby whispered, "They need to see us do this."
So Octavia forced herself onto her feet. Forced herself to pick up the meat cube, and forced herself to speak to her people.
"We all know the situation," she said. "What we do here now, we do to survive." Just like they had done everything up to this point, too. Just like she had done her entire life. "Some of you think it's a sin. But the sin is letting ourselves starve to death when we know... we're all that's left of the human race."
She looked down at the cube in her hand, and then back up at the room as she brought the meat up to her mouth and sank her teeth into it. Bit off a piece.
Lead by example.
Chew it down.
Don't think about it.
"Wash it down with vegetable broth," Cooper suggested gently, quietly, from the other side of the table. "It'll make it easier." So Octavia picked up her cup, and drank down some of the broth, trying to focus on that taste instead, if she couldn't just ignore her senses completely.
She swallowed.
Then she sat back down.
And watched the people. Some were eating, gingerly bringing the meat to their mouths, eyes closed. Some were not. There was hesitation even at Octavia's own table: Niylah, in particular, but Indra told her she should honor those who'd died so they could live.
There was murmuring between Kane and Abby. Then, as Octavia stared at him - as everyone stared at him - Kane stood up and announced, "We all need to make this choice for ourselves."
"There is no choice," Abby hissed. "If you don't eat, you starve."
"There's always a choice, Abby. You know that."
Then he walked out.
And so did several others. They were choosing starvation. They were choosing the enemy.
"No way," Octavia snapped. "I won't take away their choice! When they're hungry enough, they'll eat."
Abby had come to talk to her in her office. But the things she wanted to say were not things Octavia wanted to hear. Octavia was angry Kane had gone against her, against the best interest of Wonkru, but at the same time -- that was an option he had to have. Because otherwise, what were they?
"Listen to me," Abby said. "Nobody wants to do this. But we can't let them starve." Well, they were in agreement about that, at least. "If they die from malnutrition, their muscles will atrophy, and there won't be enough meat on their bones to --"
Octavia dropped her hands to her sides. "I can't hear this." She wanted to pace. Instead, she felt frozen in place, while Abby was free to stand up and step up closer to her. "You have to hear this," she insisted. "On the Ark, the Blight generation, they had a choice - and they never recovered from it." The Blight. The Ark had begun floating their dead after it. "The people who ate had to watch the people who didn't eat die slowly, and their guilt... nearly destroyed them."
"What do you want me to do?" Octavia asked, and her voice wavered again. She'd been doing her best to stay strong these past two years, but this... Her voice dropped into a whisper to keep it steady. "Make it a crime not to be a cannibal?"
She didn't think she had any heart left to break, but Abby's quiet nod seemed to prove differently.
She sank heavily into the chair by the desk, and rubbed her hands over her face. "That's one way to fill the freezer," she mumbled, dark and dry because the only other option was breaking down. She looked away as Abby took a seat next to her.
Was this really their only solution? Forcing people to eat their dead so that the human race could make it past this year?
"First we get... full compliance," Abby murmured. "And then we deal with supply."
"Supply?" Octavia gasped, her gaze snapping back to Abby. "These are my people you're talking about!"
"I know that," Abby insisted. "They're mine, too."
Something occurred to Octavia, just then. Made her voice into a drawl. "And I suppose you want me to make an exception for Kane?" she asked, but Abby's response surprised her. Because Abby shook her head. "No," she said, with a sudden -- lightness? "Marcus is the key. You convince him, and the rest will follow." She looked like she believed it because she had to.
But it was the only solution they had.
And so, the next time they all gathered in the mess hall, Octavia had posted armed guards around the room. Kane was the last to arrive. As soon as he was seated, Octavia stood up. Once again, she picked up the meat from her plate, though this time, she placed it on her palm, and put her other hand underneath, and held it like a sacrificial offering.
Like the sacrificial offering it was, like the sacrificial offering it needed to be.
"We honor those who died," she began, "so we could live." She paused, giving a little more time to the last few people to shift their full attention to her. "I give all of myself to you. You know that. And so did they."
And once again, she brought the cube to her lips, and bit off a chunk. So did Indra and Niylah on on side of her, Abby on the other. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Kane frozen still like a statue. Not picking up the meat. Not eating.
Not surviving.
And looking across the room, Octavia spotted an entire table filled with people who were just as still. She stood up, and made her way over to them, her steps measured and loud in the quiet of the hall.
"Eat," she told them.
They did nothing.
"I'm sorry," said the man at the end of the table, looking up at her, shaking his head. "I can't."
Goddammit. Octavia huffed softly. "Maybe I wasn't being clear," she tried. Please just eat. "This isn't a choice."
"For me it is," the man replied. He glanced down at his tray but his gaze barely got there, definitely didn't linger. "One of the men in the arena yesterday was my brother."
Octavia's stomach turned. She could practically feel bile rising up her throat, and tried not to be obvious about swallowing it down. Forcing everything down. This was about survival, why couldn't they see that? Slowly, she knelt beside the table. As if she was praying. (As if she was begging.) "And he gave his life, so you could live," she tried, feeling her lips twist into a desperate smile. "So we all could."
She glanced around the table, at their still, anguished faces.
She reached for the meat on the man's tray, and held it with both hands as she stood up.
"All of him," she said, "for all of us."
"Omon gon oson," she heard Indra echo her in Trig from somewhere behind her. All of me for all of us. She turned towards the man again, offering him the meat.
Please.
But he was still shaking his head. It pained him to do it, she could tell. But he still did it. "I mean no disrespect," he said, "but I would rather die with my brother than --"
Octavia stepped up to the closest guard and grabbed the pistol from his hip. She heard Kane call her name, ask what she was doing. But she turned her gaze back on the man. Holding out the meat to him with one hand, holding the gun at her side with the other.
"You are Wonkru," she said, "or you are an enemy of Wonkru." She set the meat back on his tray. "Choose."
And she aimed the gun at his head.
Kane had made it across the room. She heard his voice from behind her. "Octavia... Put the gun down. Please." But she wasn't going to. She was still staring at the man, and he was still staring up at her - and then, perhaps sensing hesitation in her as her aim drifted just a little lower, he started leaning up, as if intending to challenge her.
And she pulled the trigger. He fell limply back in his chair.
Tears rolled onto Octavia's cheeks, but she circled to the next person, a woman who hadn't touched her food either. Once again, Octavia aimed the pistol at her head.
"You eat or you die."
The woman, shaking, shook her head. "Please don't do this."
Kane was still pleading with her, to stop, to put down the gun. Saying this wasn't her, but he was wrong, this was what she had to be because someone needed to carry the burden of all of their survival and it was going to be her. All of her for all of them.. "Just take a bite!" she hissed at the woman, desperate. They were both crying. "Do it."
Nothing.
This time, she shut her eyes tightly before pulling the trigger.
A man from the other side of the table stood up. "You eat or you die," she said, gun already trained on him. But his expression hardened, and he shook his head.
Another shot.
"Eat or die," Octavia told the woman who'd sat beside him.
Finally, Kane yelled, "Enough!" And Octavia turned her stinging eyes towards him, and hoped against hope that he'd -- "I'll eat."
Octavia watched as his shaking hand reached for the meat from the tray of the first man who'd died. She watched him take a bite, watched him gesture for the others at the table to follow his lead - and they did. Shaking and gagging, with tears running down their faces, but they did.
Painful or not, everyone left was choosing to survive.
[ooc: NFB, NFI. Taken from The 100 S5, episode 11 (yes, we're skipping ahead for a bit, because this is flashback country in the original continuity). CONTENT WARNING for cannibalism and graphic murder of NPCs.]