okteiviakom: ([neg] aww shit)
Octavia Blake ([personal profile] okteiviakom) wrote2020-06-29 04:39 pm

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.]
betterthanaplan: (touching foreheads)

[personal profile] betterthanaplan 2020-06-29 11:29 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
betterthanaplan: (let's think this through)

[personal profile] betterthanaplan 2020-06-29 11:40 pm (UTC)(link)
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."
betterthanaplan: (touching foreheads)

[personal profile] betterthanaplan 2020-06-29 11:58 pm (UTC)(link)
"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.
betterthanaplan: (I need a hug)

[personal profile] betterthanaplan 2020-06-30 01:00 am (UTC)(link)
"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.