okteiviakom | 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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Duke let out a faintly choked laugh. “I’ve noticed.”

"I'm sorry I'm not what you wanted to get back."

She didn't even mean that as a self-pitying thing. Just -- a fact. She was well aware they'd all expected the 21-year-old who'd been a little battered, sure, but still able to occasionally smile and tease and even amuse them sometimes.

And instead they had her.

That got a shaky sigh. "I'm not going to pretend I don't miss who you used to be," he said. "I do. All the time. But I'd rather have you than not. We just -- need to relearn some things. That's all."

What if we can't?

Well, no. What if Octavia couldn't? She didn't ask either version.

She reached out with both hands, slowly. Hesitated for a second, then ran them feather-light down his chest.

"I miss who I used to be, too," she admitted. God, that person had been so much lighter to carry, even though it hadn't felt like it at the time.

Duke reached out to rest his own hands on her hips.

"I still love this version of you. That part hasn't changed."

Even if she did frustrate the hell out of him.

Octavia exhaled like she'd been holding her breath.

And murmured, "This version still loves you, too."

Guess it took the middle of the night for her to actually say it.

That little smile was a lot more real, this time.

"I am very glad to hear that," he said. "Seven years is a hell of a long time."

Octavia ran her hands up to his shoulders. A little more firm with her touch, this time. "You were my everything," she said. Very quiet. "Yu don bilaik ai otaim."

And then the multiverse had decided to take that away from them.

Duke tipped his head down to press against hers. "Otaim," he agreed.

At length, he let out a little sigh.

"I don't know why I want to know, but -- you and Ilian, were you. . . ? I mean, you lived with him." He closed his eyes, annoyed with himself, and hurried on. "I mean, it's totally fine if you were. You thought you'd never see me again. I'm not jealous." He was a little jealous. She was the one who got him to give monogamy a shot in the first place, after all. "I just want to know what he meant to you."

Octavia's eyes had closed immediately as soon as his head met hers. It was practically a reflex, and one she was grateful for as soon as she realized what he was asking.

"Ilian was someone who... treated me softly and kindly, when I didn't know what to do with that." The first person since Lincoln who'd dared to really look at her. "He saw things other people didn't. But I knew him for about two weeks. There was no time for it to get like that."

And she was sure Duke was at least a little jealous. She would've been, after all. So she wasn't going to say anything about how she'd kissed Ilian. In part because she didn't want to talk about why.

But mostly because she knew she had to tell him this other thing, now.

"There was something in the bunker, though," she continued, after a little pause. "With Niylah, after we'd been there for about a year. It was -- well." She swallowed. She couldn't talk about the dark year. She couldn't. "She missed someone else, too, and she'd always supported me, so... We tried. Just, to be there for each other, I guess. Distract each other. For a while. But it didn't really feel like anything, so after a few times, we just..."

She shrugged, helpless.

Even her hook-up stories were sad.

"Stopped."

There was a very crass joke about that being hot that Duke was not going to let out.

"She was the one who made your necklace," he said instead. "Even if it didn't work . . . I'm glad you had people."

And he was. No matter how much it hurt that it couldn't have been him.

Octavia would've just told him that the problem had been it hadn't been that hot, anyway. It'd just been two sad women trying to distract each other from the horror around them.

"Mm." Her voice had dropped back to mildness. "I pushed her away, eventually."

Easier to just not try to be soft at all, and that included friends.

Duke nodded against her.

"Please don't push me away," he said softly, before he could stop himself. "I don't mind giving you space when you need it, but -- please keep letting me in."

"I'm trying."

Which was constantly the best that Octavia could do. She wanted to say it was hard, but... He already knew.

So instead, she chewed on her bottom lip and tried to grab at the words for something else she could offer.

"I know, I know," Duke assured her, his hands running up from her waist to hold her more firmly. "I just -- you scared me. When you left, when you came back, just now when I didn't know what you'd do."

He'd really wondered if she was going to jump into the ocean. Lord knew he'd felt the urge before himself.

He was right to wonder.

"I know I'm scary." Someone else might have made an effort to make that sound like a joke. Not Octavia, though. She'd traded on being intimidating for years, now. "But, when I'm like that..."

Oh, she needed to find the words, now.

"Don't be scared to touch me. I don't know how to ask for -- this." Her hand left his shoulder to move down his arm, to convey the way he was holding her now. "But I do know how to tell you if I don't want it."

"I can do that," Duke said, letting out a relieved noise and holding onto her tighter. "I can absolutely do that."

He usually wanted to anyway.

Octavia shuffled that last bit closer to him. Not that there'd been much distance with his arms around her, but now she was just... pressed flush against him, her own arms winding themselves around his neck.

Why yes, it had made her uncomfortable to tell him that. But at least his reaction was soothing some of it.

"No one else dares to do that."

Magnus didn't count.

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

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