Chapter 1
It was several days before Bellamy realized that Octavia was gone. And by then, it was much too late.
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He was standing on his perch next to the Commander's throne, focused on all the joyous reunions happening right in front of him, so it was a moment before Bellamy understood that he really had just watched his sister casually run through Pike with her sword. His head was already spinning from the implication of Clarke's words, that they hadn't saved the world quite yet. And then he saw...that.
For just an instant he was frozen to the spot, his eyes shifting from Pike's fallen body to Octavia hurrying out the doorway, and by the time his feet finally began to move and he gave chase, she was nowhere to be found amidst the rooms crowded with bewildered former combatants. And soon enough duty pressed in on him from all sides, and he was forced to temporarily abandon his search.
As soon as all the recent denizens of the City of Light had their wits about them once more, an exhausted Abby Griffin set up a makeshift medbay to tend to the wounded and the disoriented. After that, the next order of business was figuring out how to get down from the tower.
Bellamy and Marcus Kane, who only hours earlier had been locked in a death struggle, worked together to devise a plan to lower everyone through the inner tunnel that had been left behind when the elevator was destroyed. They'd first considered using the exterior walls, but the weather had turned nasty and no one wanted to wait for sunnier prospects. Not to mention the added problem of all the windows and balconies that they'd carefully doctored with oil before the fight began.
So it was the elevator shaft or nothing.
It was a Trikru, their very best tree climber, in fact, who offered to rappel down those inner walls. They utilized what rope they could scavenge to carefully lower him foot by foot, as he struggled along the way using whatever handholds and footholds he could find.
When he finally reached the bottom, other recently de-chipped grounders helped him gather additional ropes to set up a more stable rescue network, secured by the knotting techniques that only a clan of serious tree climbers could have devised. Eventually, after most of the able-bodied had been rescued in this fashion, they attached a large sturdy wooden basket to the bottom of the rope and lowered the wounded to the ground.
The dead were sent down last.
When exhaustion started to settle into his bones, Bellamy had wondered if it was worth it to expend the energy to lower all those dead bodies to the ground. But the Trikru had been insistent, and Roan had sent up word that Ontari must be given the glorious sendoff due her status as Commander. And so they worked several more hours, tediously sending down the dead, the last of which was Charles Pike.
Then it was only the four of them left, himself, Kane, and the Griffin women. Abby went next at Kane's insistence. By now, they'd done it so many times that it was the work of only a few minutes to get her down safely.
"You're next, Clarke," Bellamy said, his voice hoarse with fatigue. But when he glanced over, he was surprised to see reluctance on her face, to see fear.
"It's safe, I promise you," he reassured. "I won't let anything happen to you."
But he was misreading her concern.
"It's not that," she said softly, giving her head a little shake. "What will happen when we reach the ground? It's still not over. They think they're safe, but it's not true. Did I have the right to make that decision for everyone?"
So far, only the four of them knew about the looming threat from the nuclear meltdown. They'd all thought it better to delay dealing with that issue until the more immediate concerns were addressed.
Bellamy was always careful about how and when and why he touched Clarke. For his own peace of mind, he had to be. But he knew this was not the time to hold back.
"Hey," he said, holding her gaze with his own. His voice was equally soft, and his hands reached up to press her shoulders tenderly, to stroke up and down her arms. "You saved them. This time, you saved them. Do you really think they all wanted to live only in their heads? At ALIE's direction? Is that what you would have wanted?"
Her head was shaking before he'd even finished his question.
"No, of course not," she said adamantly. "I want to live my life, no matter how short it is. Not just dream it."
Bellamy squeezed her shoulders, again offering reassurance.
"And so do they, believe me. They were there in the City of Light and they know what you did for them. It'll be okay," he added. "You won't have to be Wanheda anymore."
Clarke gave him a rueful little half-smile, the smallest one in her repertoire, reluctantly allowing herself to be convinced.
"Let's go, then," she said, loud enough to be heard by Kane who had removed himself to a discreet distance while their conversation played out in private.
"I'll see you on the ground," Bellamy told her. For an instant, Clarke looked like there might be something else she wanted to say, some other gesture she wanted to make, but in the end she simply slung herself into the rope carrier, while Bellamy pulled on it, signaling to those below to begin her descent.
And then only the two men were left. There was no question that Kane would go first. He was in reasonably good shape, but he simply didn't have the upper body strength that Bellamy had, strength that might well be required for a descent without assistance from above.
When Clarke was finally down safely and the carrier had reappeared, Bellamy cocked his head at Kane, who nodded in return and began to drift toward the shaft. Bellamy was checking the top of the rope system for perhaps the hundredth time when Kane unexpectedly reversed his steps.
"Bellamy," he began determinedly, "I can't leave here without saying something about what happened in this room. About what I did to you...was trying to do..."
"Don't." Bellamy cut him off abruptly. "You don't need to explain yourself to me."
"The hell I don't!" Kane was equally resolute. "For god's sake, Bellamy, I had my hands around your throat. I was trying to kill you. Why the hell didn't you fight back? You could take me easily."
"Fuck!" Bellamy turned away, remembering that awful moment when he'd thought Kane might really kill him. Unless Bellamy killed him first.
He pivoted abruptly to face Kane.
"You were chipped! You didn't know what the fuck you were doing. I knew that. I don't hold you responsible."
Bellamy briefly closed his eyes, just a quick blink, willing himself to remain in control.
"But I wasn't chipped. I never had some asshole AI directing my actions. I managed to be an asshole without any help at all. And look what the hell happened! I almost got you killed. So don't you apologize to me."
Kane nodded slowly, and at first Bellamy thought he wasn't going to respond. Because of course there was no response. It was true, all of it.
"But you learned," Kane said finally, "about doing the right thing. A lot of chipped grounders would be dead right now if you hadn't insisted on non-lethal tactics. And then, of course," he added with a wry smile, "there's the whole thing about you and Clarke and the rest of you saving us all. You might remember that part when you're taking stock of all your bad deeds."
"I might," Bellamy conceded with shrug and a nod.
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It was harder than he'd thought it would be, descending with only the assistance of those on the ground, hoping like hell the whole way down that the rope above him would hold firm. He'd needed every ounce of strength he could muster to keep himself from twisting and bouncing dangerously off the crumbling concrete walls of the shaft.
And then there was the darkness. Without the ubiquitous candles, there was nothing to light his way. In those middle floors, when he'd completely left behind the last bit of light from the throne room and had yet to reach the distant daylight that filtered in on the ground floor, it had felt like a descent into hell.
But then Bellamy remembered that he'd already been to hell. That he'd been chemically 'cleaned' to within an inch of his life, hung upside down and drained of his blood, and that compared to that, this was child's play. And besides, he knew that Clarke was waiting for him at the bottom, probably fretting herself sick. He renewed his efforts to stay centered in the shaft and get it the hell over with.
When he reached the bottom, the grounders manning the ropes eyed him warily. They'd all needed each other these past few days, and a sort of impromptu truce had arisen. Bellamy wondered how long it would last. He hoped to god it would hold when the clans were told about this new threat. He knew the Arkadians didn't have the energy to both figure out a solution to the nuclear meltdown and fight the grounders.
He'd scarcely cleared the shaft when Clarke appeared, smiling at him. He watched her hands flutter and he knew that if they'd been alone she'd have flung her arms around him in relief, like she had that day at the gate of Camp Jaha.
But something had changed since then. Embraces between them were far too weighted now to be offered under the curious gazes of strangers. They were meant for quiet times. Private times. As always, Bellamy shied away from examining exactly how he knew that was so. He just did.
Clarke contented herself with grabbing his hands and squeezing tight.
"Hey," he said, laughing. "I managed to get down that shaft without any broken bones. Including these fingers."
"Sorry," she giggled. (Bellamy wondered when the last time was that Clarke had giggled.) "I'm just so relieved you're okay. You know?"
"Yeah, I know," he said, and there it was again. The things he knew without knowing how he knew them. "I'm happy to see you, too."
They might have stood there in their relief, smiling at each indefinitely, if Kane hadn't approached just then.
"Sorry to interrupt," he said, turning to Bellamy, "but I thought you should know right away. It's Octavia."
Bellamy's head shifted immediately into concern for his sister, and he chided himself for forgetting about her. Even momentarily.
"How is she? I saw her going down with one of the early groups, but I never got the chance to talk to her first."
"Well, that's just it. I've just had a word with Indra, and...the thing is, Bellamy, no one seems to know exactly what's become of Octavia."
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Bellamy was reluctant to approach Indra. Feelings of shame still nearly overwhelmed him when he recalled their unprovoked slaughter of Indra's army. Pike had been so sure that it was necessary. That the safety of Arkadia depended upon it. That to do nothing was tantamount to abandoning their people to an inevitable attack by the grounders.
And...maybe Pike had been right. Maybe if that standing army had still been in place when Lexa died...when the Azgedan Ontari took over as commander...maybe his prediction would have come to pass. Pike certainly thought so, but Bellamy was not so sure. And now he would never know.
All he knew for sure was that before that day, he'd only killed when he had to. When his life, or the lives of those he was responsible for, demanded it. And he could no longer believe that an unprovoked attack on a sleeping army met that threshold. Bellamy had never been very good at lying to himself.
So he found it excruciatingly difficult to ask for Indra's help. But this was about O, and difficult was not the same as impossible.
"Don't be concerned, she's already agreed to talk to you," Kane murmured to him as they approached the Trikru heda, and Bellamy wondered how much of Kane's assistance sprang from his own feelings of guilt and shame.
They came to a halt a few feet in front of Indra, who rose to confront him. He looked down at her, wondering not for the first time how a woman so slender could be so intimidating. But then he realized he knew a lot of small but formidable women.
"Indra," he said, giving her a brief nod. "Thank you for agreeing to speak with me."
Then he waited as Indra looked him over, noting, no doubt, the cuts and bruises that had accumulated on his face and body over the past week or two. Finally, she nodded in return.
"I'm not doing this for you, Bellamy kom Skaikru, I'm doing it for Octavia. I am concerned about her."
That made two of them. "So, have you seen her, Indra?"
"Not since shortly after she cut me down from the cross."
Bellamy watched as her eyes flickered toward the row of tall wooden structures in the form of an "X" that still lined the street leading to the tower. He glanced down and saw the gaping wounds that pierced her wrists, only now barely beginning to heal. The same wounds he'd seen on Kane's arms.
Kane's face contorted into lines of pain as he followed Bellamy's eyes. "Indra, I'm...so sorry..."
She cut him off with a look. "You bear these same scars, Marcus Kane. We were all victims of that...machine. We came together to defeat it."
Indra turned back to Bellamy. "I know you played a great part in saving everyone. Let that be the beginning of your return to the path of honor," she said, her face impassive.
Bellamy found he couldn't hold Indra's gaze, and his eyes slid shut as he took a deep breath. Would he ever again trust himself to know which path was the honorable one?
He cleared his throat of bile and regret so he could ask another question.
"So. Octavia cut you down. Then what?"
"She told me what had happened, but I knew it already. It was as if everyone here just...suddenly woke up. But they were confused and unsure. She and I cut the others down and then freed some Trikru who had been locked up by the crazy machine."
She paused and Bellamy was sure he knew what was coming next.
"That was when Octavia told me she'd killed Pike. 'Blood must have blood' she said. But I'm not sure Lincoln would have agreed with how she did it. These things must happen in a certain way..."
Indra paused again and Bellamy could see that she was distressed.
"She told me the whole of it. How she hobbled Pike as they were fighting the intruders, but then you saved him. How later, Pike saved her life. And how...he nodded at her after it was all over, as if to say that they were...even. But we were not even, we could never be even, she told me."
Indra let out a breath so quietly, it was barely discernible even from two feet away.
"I did not want this for her, this path of vengeance. She thought it would make her feel better, but I knew it would not."
Bellamy agreed. "I tried to tell her," he said dully.
Indra gave a small nod. "I did not react to her news in the way she had hoped, and it was clear she was not happy with me. Even more so when I would not join her in leaving this place again. It was different before, when Octavia and I left. The Commander was still in charge. And if anything happened to her, there was the conclave. But now..."
Indra looked resolute.
"I need to stay and help put our lives back together. The Azgeda king is here somewhere, but Polis is Trikru. And few of rank have survived among the Trikru," she added bitterly.
"Indra..." Bellamy began again, his voice strained, but she cut him off.
"No, Bellamy. It was not just what happened on that field. Or even the machine." Indra paused, and he could see some great emotion simmering just below the surface. "In her anger, Octavia also told me about TonDC."
"Ah," he said, not surprised by her reaction.
"You knew." It was a statement.
"Yes," he acknowledged, "I knew. But not until later. They did it to keep the battle plan alive, so that you could attack Mt. Weather."
"But we did not attack the mountain."
"No," he said. "You didn't."
Kane interrupted the short silence that followed. "I think you should tell him what else Octavia said, Indra."
Indra nodded unhappily. "She said her home was gone and she would have to look for another."
"Her home?" Bellamy was puzzled. "Octavia was...uncomfortable...in Arkadia. We talked about that. But it's still there. It's not gone, unless..."
He turned to Kane. "Unless what happened with Pike...?"
Kane shook his head. "After everything that's happened, I'm not sure we can afford to lose anyone else. I'll talk to Abby, but I think she'll agree that we could find some leniency for Octavia. She's in no danger from us."
Bellamy nodded, relieved.
Indra spoke up then. "It was not a place that Octavia felt was her home. It was Lincoln."
"Of course," Bellamy agreed. "But where would she go? What is she looking for? Lincoln...she can't replace Lincoln no matter where she goes."
"Yes, I agree. But that's a truth she must find out for herself."
