okteiviakom | Elsewhere, then the Preserve and Through Town, Late Thursday/Early Friday

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Elsewhere, then the Preserve and Through Town, Late Thursday/Early Friday

The next day, they marched on Shallow Valley again. Madi led the group, but Octavia was by her side. And this time, they were successful. The strike team handled the guards in the pillboxes, and the rest of them charged through, and into the village, and surrounded McCreary's men. McCreary himself was up on his ship, but he was a problem for Clarke and Raven and the others up there to handle.

Madi wanted to kill the men in retaliation for the gorge. Bellamy was almost done making his little peacemaking speech to her about breaking the cycle when the alarms around the village started blaring. One of the men said it was an evac signal.

"It means conditions are unsafe. We're supposed to bug out."

Then Raven's voice came through on the loudspeakers. "Everyone listen up. Life as we know it is about to end. Again. Get your asses to the transport ship now for immediate evacuation." They had nine minutes to get everyone to the Gagarin.

Octavia didn't ask questions. She volunteered to stay with the group that went door to door, getting every last person out of the village. And that was how she found Abby, her hands bloody. And Kane, unconscious on a makeshift operating table.

Abby didn't want to leave him.

"We've been here before," Octavia told her. "This is not a choice."

"Yes, it is."

Octavia stared at her. Abby was a doctor, she had a duty. She couldn't just stay here and wash her hands clean of her sins by playing the saint for Kane, or by dying for nothing. No matter how much Octavia wanted to leave her behind for what she and Kane had done to Wonkru. "So it's okay for me to be the monster, but not you?" she snapped. "Is that right? 'Eat or die', that was you, too!"

"Yes, it was," Abby replied, coolly. "You're right. And he knew. So, go ahead. Strike me down like the devil he says you are, or get the hell out." She was already turning away. "Because I'm saving the man that I love."

Fine.

-----

They carried the stretcher to the Gagarin with barely a minute to spare. And then they were off, flying away from a planet once more on fire. Wasn't until they made it to the mothership that Octavia heard what they were actually running from. As his final act, McCreary had bombed the valley with hythylodium. If he couldn't have it, no one could.

And so no one had.

And now they were on Eligius IV, and it was overcrowded, its hallways lined with the wounded and the weary, Wonkru and Eligius prisoners alike. They were no longer at war, but that didn't mean they were doing well, either.

And just a day ago, Octavia would've been the one calling a meeting on figuring out the next move, a new plan. Now she watched Bellamy and Clarke go on their way as she sat on the floor with the rest of those who didn't get a say.

"Cheer up," a voice said from above her. Octavia looked up and, to her surprise, saw Diyoza. She hadn't actually seen the woman since the day her people had lifted Wonkru out of the bunker. She was visibly pregnant now, her belly big and round, and Octavia had to assume that had been a factor in her decision to switch sides when she had. "I wasn't invited, either."

Octavia made no move to give the impression that she wanted any company, but Diyoza sat down next to her anyway.

"You know what your mistake was?"

"Not killing you the day you opened the bunker?" Octavia drawled, looking over.

"That, too," Diyoza allowed with a little nod, as if to say 'good one'. Then she smirked, just a little. "But then what kind of lesson would that be?"

This was the first time in years anyone had even tried, however vaguely, to tease Octavia. Figured it would come from someone who'd been one of the worst terrorists of her time.

Octavia was too tired to even manage a snort. She said nothing, and Diyoza seemed to be fine with that. "Your mistake was liking it," she continued. "Power." Octavia didn't have the energy to roll her eyes, either. "It's the kiss of death," Diyoza added, softer somehow. Then, almost like an afterthought, she said, "That's okay. I liked it, too."

Octavia looked at the wall across the hallway.

"One garden," she said, after she'd let the thought sit there for a moment. "Two serpents." Her voice raspier than before. "Eden never stood a chance."

-----

It was obvious the ship was overcrowded. They didn't have a lot of rations, and the half life of hythylodium meant it would take at least a decade for the valley to come back. And so the decision was made by the ones in charge: they were all going into cryo for the next ten years. There were 500 chambers, and 412 of them aboard the ship. More than enough for all of them to take a decade-long nap.

Something about the idea felt welcome to Octavia. She could use the rest.

And the chance to not think for a while.

To not feel.

To her surprise, Bellamy came to seal her into her chamber. She lay down, and felt a brief surge of claustrophobia, even though she hadn't even slid into the actual pod yet. She swallowed it down, and murmured, "Kind of like closing the door in the floor."

"Kind of like that," Bellamy replied. He turned towards the controls, already reaching for them. She turned her head. "Wait," she said.

And then waited for what felt like an excrutiatingly long moment for him to look at her.

"I love you, big brother," she breathed. When he said nothing, she turned her head again, looking up at the ceiling. "I know you love me, too." He still didn't say anything. Bellamy, please. Octavia pushed herself up on her elbows. "Don't make me wait 10 years to hear you say it."

"You're my sister," he said, after far too long. "And a part of me will always love you."

She nodded.

It was better than she'd expected, if she was honest. She stretched back out, settling down. And she didn't look at him again.

"Does the other part still wish I was dead?"

"The other part wishes a part of you was," he said. "Yeah."

She nodded again, and whispered, "That's fair."

As he closed the chamber, he told her it wouldn't feel like ten years. She felt a tear roll down onto her temple, and then she felt cold, and then she felt nothing at all.

-----

And then Octavia opened her eyes again, and didn't even notice the tear roll the rest of the way into her hairline. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness, but then she saw them, treetops against the night sky, nothing but moonlight touching them.

She was laying on the forest floor.

This was a familiar dream. Countless nights in the bunker, she'd ended up in the woods. Either filled with shadows that seemed to move and to stalk, or - when she was lucky - filled with calm and quiet and no one and nothing else for miles.

She felt no danger here. Nothing moved in the shadows as she got up from the undergrowth. She didn't notice the things under her bare feet, crunching and scraping and pushing between her toes. Nothing could hurt her here, after all. She was sure of it.

And so she began walking.

And she walked and she walked.

And eventually she came to the edge of the forest, and wasn't at all surprised to see the castle. She'd seen it many times over the years, in her dreams, looming in the background of everything else.

She kept walking. Past the castle, towards the gates. Onto the cobblestone streets.

Down to the docks.

To the ship.

It wasn't always there when she came down here. Sometimes she couldn't even find the docks, but this time she had, and it was. She stood still for a moment, just looking at it, stretched out in its slip.

Then, she walked across the gangplank, and stepped aboard.

[ooc: For one. NFB for distance first, and then for timing. Things under the cut taken from The 100 S5 episode 13, and THUS CONCLUDES THE PLOT! \o/]

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Duke was having a late night. Another late night, one of many over the last month. And as with the other late nights, he was having one of many, many drinks. He sat at the table in his galley, staring into the middle distance. Into nothing.

Tonight, though, he'd put on music. The song from the diner, first, then letting it roll into whatever dark, moody song the Cure had for him next. Nothing quite said dark, moody nights like the Cure.

Be still be calm be quiet now my precious boy
Don't struggle like that or I will only love you more
For it's much too late to get away or turn on the light
The Spiderman is having you for dinner tonight

"Robert Smith," he muttered into his glass. "You are one weird son of a bitch."

Edited 2020-06-11 19:46 (UTC)

She didn't usually go in.

But this time, she heard music. Thought she did, anyway. It was faint, but she followed it, followed it into the belly of the ship. Into the galley.

And then she stopped, and just stood there. Dazed, still half trying to decide what to expect from this dream.

(Because this was one. There was no way this wasn't one.)

Duke looked up with a frown when he heard -- something. Not footsteps, Octavia was too naturally quiet for those. Maybe he just sensed something change.

Like, say, all the air vanishing from the room.

"Tavi."

The glass slipped from his hands as he stared back at her. He didn't notice until bourbon splashed on his shirt, then didn't care. He shoved to his feet, wanting nothing more than to rush forward and sweep her up into his arms, but somehow unable to get his feet in motion.

"If this is a Fandom thing, I'm going to be so pissed."

For her part, Octavia just stood there. In her black shorts, her white tank top, her locket just barely tucked under the collar of her shirt.

Her hair had been chopped so that it barely touched her shoulders, and her skin was deathly pale. She'd always had a healthy tan, before.

"Hey," she said, barely stronger than a sigh.

She looked like a ghost, like a parody. Like someone had tried to make a copy of her and gotten all the little details wrong.

Duke took them all in. The pallor, the hair, the outfit. The new tattoo, which looked older than her old tattoo should be by now. Everything about her looked older, in fact, and Duke knew enough about Fandom to know that sometimes people showed up who only looked like people you knew.

But she was here on his boat. And she seemed to recognize him.

"Octavia?" he said softly, taking a single step forward, and looking her over again (and again and again, drinking in the sight of her even if it was wrong). "Jesus, gona, your feet. . . ."

Octavia blinked, looking down at her feet. They were dirty, mixed with drying blood, neither of which seemed to make much of an impression on her.

"It's okay," she said, as she looked up again. There were several old wounds still only in the ugly scabbing stages on her arm below the new-old tattoo, all much worse than whatever was going on with her feet now, and, anyway: "Doesn't matter here."

She was looking at his face, her eyes wide. The image of him had gotten fuzzier over the years, with no pictures anywhere for her to remind herself with. So how did he look so much clearer now, so picture perfect, every detail exactly like she knew they'd been when she'd left?

"They will if they get infected," Duke said, snapping out of his fugue.

Sometimes, after the people you loved went away, they came back beaten and bloody and you had to piece them back together. That was just a fact of his life. And something he knew perfectly well how to handle.

He came over to her, hands up and out, offering to help but not touching until she said it was okay. "Sit down," he instructed softly. "Let's clean you up."

Octavia did as he asked, shifting until she could take a seat, but there was a clear disconnect happening. She looked like she was barely listening, barely processing.

She was just staring at his face.

Duke bustled over to the counter and pulled a first aid kit out from underneath it, then filled a bowl with warm water from the tap. He grabbed a towel and crossed the narrow space again, kneeling down by her feet.

And froze again, just for a second. He swallowed and held the bowl and towel out for her to take.

"I can't touch your blood, Tavi."

And right now, that felt like a major failure on his part.

It didn't seem like Octavia was taking it that way, at least.

"Oh," she said, softly.

Then slowly reached out to take the bowl and the towel, even though she didn't thinkk they were necessary in the first place.

She didn't really seem like she was taking much of anything anyway, honestly, which was spooking the hell out of Duke. He was used to her being detached, but not -- blank.

"Hey." He reached up to catch her chin, though he didn't have to direct her to focus on him. "Mounin hou, gona. You're home."

Home.

Octavia had spent the last couple of weeks trying to take Wonkru home, and she'd spoken that word a lot. It had sounded nothing like how it sounded from his lips.

She exhaled a huff, and the corners of her mouth wobbled like they were unsure of which way to turn.

Duke smiled, as though to show her how. Mostly he was just glad to see her processing something. He assumed it was the Trig that had helped, and wished he knew more than just a handful of phrases.

He knew the important ones, though.

"Ai hod yu in, natshana," he said, like a promise. Like a pledge. "I'll do whatever you need me to."

Like permission.

Octavia set the towel aside, and the bowl of water, and she leaned down, leaned in. Tried to kiss him.

Because here, in this weird space that was a dream that she wished wasn't one (but it had to be, there was no way it wasn't - or if it wasn't, she was dead and she was getting something she didn't deserve), she could allow herself that much.

Duke wasn't 100% convinced he wasn't dreaming, either -- but his dreams were rarely this nice to him.

He kissed back, both hands coming up to frame her face, slide into that too-short hair. All thoughts of I can't touch her blood were gone; all he wanted to do was hang on and never let her go again.

"I missed you so much," he whispered, his voice gone thick. He wanted to thank her for coming back, demand she never leave again, but the words got stopped up in his throat, so he just leaned in to kiss her again.

Octavia knew this couldn't be real. Before she'd started aggressively trying not to think about him or Fandom at all, she'd run the numbers in her head more than enough times to know that if she'd somehow managed to come back, at least half a century would have passed in her absence. So this couldn't be real.

But her lips were chapped, and he tasted like liquor in a way she would not have remembered just a moment ago.

This felt real.

Duke pulled back reluctantly, just far enough to be able to watch her face again.

"You were on the Ground again?" It was almost as much a statement as a question. "How long?"

Lucifer and Danny's worlds' timelines had gone all kinds of funky this last month. And she'd clearly been gone for more than a month.

Octavia made a very small noise as he pulled back, but she didn't fight it.

Her voice was very quiet. But soft, too. "Seven years." Give or take. "We're not there anymore."

Not because she was on Fandom, no.

"No," Duke said, not understanding. "You're home."

Seven years. Seven years. He let out a slightly pained noise. "You're 28 now. Guess I don't have to feel like a creepy old man anymore."

It as a terrible joke. He wasn't sorry.

She didn't laugh.

Just pressed her palm to his cheek. "You're not this young anymore, either," she murmured. "You're in your eighties, at the very least."

(It made sense to her.)

". . . Says who?" Duke asked, honestly confused. "Tavi, it's only been a month on this side."

Only, he said. Like it hadn't been the longest month in recent memory.

Octavia ignored the question. This was her dream, she could do that. She knew better than a figment of her exhausted imagination, anyway.

Instead, she pressed her forehead to his, and closed her eyes.

And said, very softly, "Call me that again."

Duke smiled a little, resting his hands on the back of her neck.

"Ai Tavi," he said, the way some people would say amen. Then, because it needed to get out: "Thank you. For coming back to me. Mochof, Tavi. Bitam. Mochof."

Tavi.

Octavia had imagined hearing him say that so many times over the years. It'd come to her, sometimes, when she was just about falling asleep, just at the turning point between wakefulness and dreaming. When she was lucky, it felt almost like he was in the room with her, like it was a whisper from the other side of the bed. And when she was very lucky, it led to dreaming of holding hands on the deck of the Cape Rouge, watching the sun setting across the water, a gentle breeze on their faces, in their hair.

(She'd rarely been lucky over the past several years. Usually, when she dreamt of him, she saw him down in the fighting pit. Covered in blood, his eyes burning silver even in the shadows. A hurricane of her making.)

She didn't really hear the rest of what he said.

Just like how squeezing her eyes shut tighter didn't really keep the tears from escaping.

"Hey, hey," Duke said, because his eyes weren't closed, and he could see the tears catch the warm light of the galley. He brought his right hand up to brush against her cheek, the left still braced around the back of her neck. "You're home, Tavi. It's over. You're home."

If she opened her eyes again, and could look at anything but his face, she'd see the shark inked on the inside of his arm, dark and bold and just barely healed. If she couldn't, she'd see his own eyes weren't exactly dry.

Edited 2020-06-11 23:05 (UTC)

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