okteiviakom | The Cape Rouge, Port of Fandom, Way Early Monday Morning

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The Cape Rouge, Port of Fandom, Way Early Monday Morning

It would have been an overstatement to say Octavia had been sleeping well over the last couple of weeks. Although she slept a lot, her sleep had tended to be fitful, restless. But, so far, whenever she actually managed sleep, it had been of the exhausted, dreamless kind.

As Sunday turned into Monday, her luck on that front finally ran out.

-----

She's back in the gorge. It stretches on for miles, impossibly long, out into the horizon and even beyond. She knows this even though she can't see it.

She's not alone.

She's never alone. The bodies are strewn all across the dusty floor of the gorge. She can see some of them piled up on top of each other. Some of them twitch and convulse in unnatural ways.

Others are perfectly still, and she's not sure which is worse.

Octavia.

Someone speaks her name, right beside her. She turns her head, expecting Bellamy, because it's always Bellamy. Right? But it's not.

It's Ilian, laying on the ground with her.

Around his neck, not on a black leather cord but on a delicate chain, hangs her dove. Above it, a round pendant with a butterfly on it. And above that, his smile. Warm, faintly amused, as if she's been tilling the soil all wrong again.

And then he moves to get up, and panic fills her lungs so tight she can't even tell him not to do it, and his smile falls away.

Gon Blodreina.

She can't move. And as Ilian gets up, she can see the arrow sticking out of his neck, sees her knife stuck in his belly, sees how ashy his face is. Sees the bullet strike his temple, sees the tiny spray of blood.

Sees him drop down next to her, eyes glassy and staring right through her.

She screams his name.

-----

It wasn't a scream, out in the real world. Octavia had spent too long under everyone's constant attention to let her guard slip that far down even as she slept. It was muffled, more like a whimpery mumble.

"Ilian, no --"

And she was fidgeting. Still felt like she couldn't move.

[ooc: For that guy in the bed. Content warning for some gore under the cut. ETA: Extra content warning for the thread for vague suicidal ideation, talk of past NPC deaths and probably various other sensitive subjects.]

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"I knew him before that, though."

Another swallow.

"It's kind of a... complicated story."

Duke looked around. "We've got time."

He didn't even have any classes this week.

Octavia hadn't quite meant it like that. She didn't even know where to start. She closed her eyes, then immediately opened them again when all she saw was Ilian again.

Dead.

"He tried to blow up Arkadia," she said. "For something he blamed Skaikru for. He didn't know yet that Praimfaya was coming. And he didn't know they were trying to build a fallout shelter out of it."

Edited 2020-06-29 17:00 (UTC)

. . . Huh. Not the kind of story Duke was expecting.

"Was he like the Floukru woman -- Luna? In the conclave to end it all?"

And Octavia had even skipped over the part in Polis where she'd assassinated Ilian's clan's ambassador and beheaded another member of it.

"You're skipping ahead," she replied quietly, with a little sigh. "But no. He was there for his clan, same as the rest."

"I'm skipping ahead?" Duke teased gently. "Did you know him, before the conclave?"

Was she going to have nightmares featuring each other champion in the conclave in turn?

"I already said that."

She was pretty sure she had, anyway. But it was far too early in the morning, and she was far too rattled to know for sure.

"The Arkadia thing was... I don't know, a couple weeks before the conclave?"

That meant she knew of him. Not that she had any kind of connection to him.

"Okay. So . . . he blew up Skaikru, and then you fought him in the conclave."

Octavia pulled back from his chest a little, but didn't look up at his face.

"Do you want to tell this story?"

Duke winced, letting his hand drop from her back. "No. Sorry. Just -- go ahead."

Octavia let her forehead rest against the top of his chest again, but didn't press closer otherwise.

"Just stop skipping ahead," she mumbled, sounding exhausted.

She wasn't sure she should've been telling him this in the first place.

Duke still didn't think that was what he was doing, but knew better than to say so. He leaned down to kiss the top of her head, and kept quiet.

So did Octavia.

And then, with a deep inhale, she pulled away. "I need -- I need air." So that part still held true, from the last time they'd done this. She didn't bolt the way she had then, but there was still something of a baby deer in the way she got off the bed, and was already heading out the door.

She slept wearing more than him - underwear and one of his shirts - so at least she was okay on that front.

Duke let her go, taking a moment to just sit in the bed, arms propped on his knees, hands wrapped around the back of his neck.

"Patient. I just -- need to be patient."

It was exhausting, trying to stay steady and cheerful for her. Being her grounding wire. He took a few long breaths, then uncurled to grab his discarded pants and follow after her.

Octavia made her way on the deck, then paced for a moment or two before she ended up looking down one side of the boat, staring into the water.

There was nothing calm about her breathing now. As soon as she'd stepped away from the bed, something like anxiety mixed with terror had begun spreading through her, and now she couldn't tell whether she wanted to cry or scream or hit something.

It was much warmer than it'd been last time they did this, the air humid and close. Duke stopped at the opposite side of the deck, hands in his pockets, and watched her watch the water.

He didn't know how to do this. He'd promised her on her voicemail that he could fix her if she came back broken, but he'd had no idea. None.

All he could do was watch and wait. And hope he didn't screw up too much and lose her completely.

Octavia had put much more stock into his reassurance that it was okay for her to come back broken than she had in the idea that he could fix her.

She wasn't sure she could be fixed.

She stared at the water and thought back to the broken mirror in the bunker. To her knees in the mud in the gorge.

And leaned just a fraction further.

. . . Duke really hoped she wasn't thinking of doing what it looked like she was thinking of doing.

"Hey," he said softly, taking a few steps closer to her. Then, lacking any other ideas, he started to sing.

"Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei."

Octavia wasn't really thinking of doing anything.

Wasn't really thinking.

And then he started to sing, and her first instinct was to bark at him to shut up, but she managed to tamp that urge down, and just tried to pull in a deep breath.

It made her shoulders quake with how shuddery it was.

Look, it had worked before, okay?

He kept moving closer, slowly, ready to stop if she reacted badly, or leap forward if she reacted really badly. His singing wasn't exactly steady, either, lacking his usual force and confidence. Almost more of an afterthought.

"I know I don't get there often enough
But God knows I surely try
It's a magic kind of medicine
That no doctor could prescribe."

Octavia stayed where she was. Stayed still, stayed quiet.

Continued to stare into the water until her eyes begun watering, too.

Duke lost track of the actual verses of his song pretty much immediately, just singing whatever words of it he happened to remember.

"There's that one particular harbour
Sheltered from the wind
Where the children play on the shore each day
And all are safe within."

He was within arm's reach now, but kept his hands in his pockets, his stance as casual as he could make it. Trying so hard to be as easy and uncomplicated a presence for her as anyone could be.

Maybe that should have included shutting up. But he talked when he was nervous or uncomfortable. Put on a show. Always had to be the entertainer.

Octavia wished he'd dared to touch her, instead of... whatever this was. Singing at her until she calmed down?

She didn't turn around to face him.

"You want to know who Ilian was?" she asked, much louder than his voice. "He's someone who thought I could be better than I was. There's always someone like that, and they are always wrong."

He'd totally start doing that if she just told him.

He stopped singing as soon as she started talking.

"Why did he think you needed to be better?"

And telling him was a weakness Octavia didn't know how to handle.

So clearly acting the way she was acting now was the superior choice.

"Because I was an assassin."

Because she'd been cold and aloof and he'd seen through her.

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