A/N: Another helping of the Blake sibling angst. They make such great characters to write about.
Indra dies on a Sunday morning, under the harsh and pitiless Afghan sun, two days before Octavia is due to ship home.
It isn't what one would call a good death. Octavia has seen enough combat by now to know that there is no such thing as a good death. The concept is a myth, perpetrated by overly romanticized war stories designed to mask the brutal realities of war, for the next batch of fools eager to rush in where angels would fear to tread. Death, when it comes for ones such as them, tends to be brutal, violent, messy and painful. There is nothing 'good' about the death of a soldier killed on the battlefield. But even by those standards, this is a particularly bad one.
Octavia would have liked to be able to state for her report later that Indra died bravely and honorably, saving a civilian's life or single handedly covering her squad from enemy fire, but in reality it is nothing of the sort. They were out on a routine patrol and got blindsided by an IED. It was as simple as that. It was almost routine in its frequency. Another day, another firefight, another fallen soldier or three who would be making the return journey in a body bag. Just an ordinary Sunday this close to the frontlines.
Nothing to write home about.
Indra wasn't the only caught in the blast radius. She wasn't even the one nearest to the explosive when it went off. The air is heavy with the nauseating stench of burnt flesh from three of Octavia's other squadmates, their shredded, bloodied bodies scattered around the site of the explosion. The blast had killed them instantly.
Indra had not been as lucky.
"You can…leave me…here," Indra says through clenched teeth, lying on her back, hands pressed against her shredded abdomen and fighting against what Octavia guesses must be an epic level of pain. "I'll be…fine."
She is most definitely not going to be fine and they both know it. Her green military fatigues are a shredded mess, stained dark red by the blood seeping sluggishly from half a dozen shrapnel lacerations on her front and side, defying Octavia's frantic attempts to patch her up. She keeps trying anyway.
"Octavia…"
"Shut up," Octavia hisses through gritted teeth. Two words which would have brought her up on charges of insubordination under different circumstances. Her hands are slick with blood gushing out of the torn wounds with each heartbeat. It's already soaked the bandage dressing to saturation point and shows no sign of stopping.
"Octavia, I mean it," Indra snaps back. "Go help your squad."
"I am helping my squad."
"I gave you an order, soldier." The resulting glaring contest lasts for a couple of seconds before Octavia, mutinously, backs down. An order is an order. Much as she would prefer to, Octavia can't argue against that.
She abruptly turns away, seething, bringing her rifle up to bear and assessing the situation. It's not good. Two more of her fellow soldiers are crumpled into lifeless heaps at the side of the road, cut down by enemy fire. What's left of her squad has taken cover behind the same rocky outcropping where Octavia had dragged Indra to. As cover goes, it leaves much to be desired. Even as Octavia watches another one of her fellow soldiers catches a bullet to the head and goes down.
She doesn't remember much after that. The red haze that descends over her eyes leaves no room for conscious thought as her lizard brain takes over. The only thing she'll remember later is the cold hard feel of her weapon in her hands, the thudding of her heart in her chest and the savage exhilarating rush of combat as her body responds to battle instinct borne over years of training. Her hands shift the rifle almost automatically, aiming and firing in split seconds, targeting everything that moves that isn't wearing desert camouflage.
It's over almost before she knows it. One moment she's in the heat of combat, the next she's blinking at the abrupt silence, her ears still ringing with the sounds of rifle bursts, suddenly aware that the firing has stopped, and that her teammates are emerging cautiously from cover, weapons still at the ready.
"Clear," the point man, Adrian, calls out abruptly. Octavia cautiously lowers her rifle and goes to join him.
The ground in front of them is littered with dead bodies. It's almost surreal in its display, like some impossibly huge child had poked holes through a bunch of rag dolls and then lost interest and wandered off, just leaving them lying around. Some of them barely even retain a human shape, torn apart by a hailstorm of bullets.
Octavia looks down at the nearest one, sprawled on the ground in an awkward tangle of limbs, and crouches to get a closer look. She's pretty sure it's one of her kills. The left side of the assailant's head is almost completely blown off. But enough of the rest has survived intact for her to make out one eye staring emptily at the sky and the hairless jaw of someone too young to even grow a beard, let alone be allowed to wield a semiautomatic rifle.
"Kids," she says hollowly as she slowly stands back up, rubbing her face in exhaustion and despair. "We just killed a bunch of kids." She doesn't need to look at the other bodies to know that the rest of them can't have been much older.
This wasn't what she had signed up for.
She can't even remember what exactly it was that she had expected when she had signed up in the first place. Just that it wasn't this.
"Kids who did a number on us," Adrian says quietly. Octavia doesn't miss the fact that he's avoiding looking at her, just as she's avoiding looking at him. "Don't feel guilty, Octavia. We didn't cause this. It was them or us."
Octavia knows what war is like. She doesn't feel guilty, she just feels sick to her stomach. The earlier rush of battle is gone, a distant memory, replaced with a leaden feeling in her gut and the taste of ash in her mouth.
She makes the mistake of looking back down at the dead body in front of her. Dark skin, some distant corner of her brain notes absently, slightlycurly hair. Just like B…
Her throat, raw with earsplitting screams…
She slams the brakes on that train of thought so fast that she can almost hear it screech to a stop. She not going to be thinking about him. She's spent the past several years determinedly not thinking about him, and she's most definitely not going to be thinking about him right now.
The distraction comes quickly as she realizes that Indra is still where she left her, all alone, still bleeding out. She stuffs the tiny wisps of old memories that are threatening to break the surface back into the closed mental box that she had contained them in and then shoves the box back into the deepest, darkest corner of her mind. One that she's been determinedly been avoiding for years. That done, she goes back to find Indra, half dreading of what might have happened in the few minutes that she had been gone.
She finds Indra still where she left her, still bleeding, but no longer alone. She's got the squad leader Charles Pike for company, and seems none too happy about it.
"Go to hell, Pike" Octavia hears Indra spit out, catching the tail end of whatever conversation they had been having while Octavia was gone. Judging by the stormy look on Indra's face and the muscle ticking at the corner of Pike's clenched jaw, it doesn't seem to have been a cordial one.
Pike snorts. "If I do, I'm sure I'll see you there," he replies, matching Indra's derision with own.
Indra's eyes shift to Octavia, and something like relief flits in them for a second. "Octavia, I need a word," she commands, completely ignoring Pike as if he had suddenly ceased to exist. Pike, takes the hint, turns away and storms past Octavia without a word.
Octavia doesn't quite know what the deal is between the two of them. Nobody does, other than the fact that they have been at odds from the very beginning. There is a lot of wild speculation, shared in hushed voices among the soldiers on relaxed nights when they've had a bit too much to drink, chief among them being that they were exes, that he had cheated on her, or that she had dumped him for his best friend. But nobody knows for sure. Pike refuses to talk about it and Indra seemed like she'd take it to the grave, literally it seems now.
Doesn't matter. Octavia has more pressing concerns at the moment.
"Octaivia," Indra calls again, definitely sounding a bit weaker now. Octavia tries not to think about what that means.
"Don't talk," Octavia orders. "Medevac will be here soon. And they'll…you'll…" Her voice cracks, leaving her unable to finish the sentence.
Indra smiles slightly. It's not a common sight. Octavia can count on one hand the number of times she's seen Indra actually smile in the time that she's known her. She wouldn't even need to use all five fingers. "Octavia, we both know medevac is not going to get here in time."
Octavia does know that. The bleeding has slowed down somewhat, but it hasn't stopped. The wounds are too deep, too many, and even as she watches, more blood trickles out to fill the rapidly expanding pool that Indra's lying in with every belabored rise and fall of her chest.
Octavia leans back on her heels. The growing void in the pit of her stomach is back, but she just doesn't want to face it. It's shaping out to be one of the more hellish days in this god forsaken place, and it's not even noon yet. Octavia has already lost six friends, she can't lose her mentor too. She just can't.
She's already lost too many people as it is.
Her throat raw with earsplitting screams, an empty void where her heart used to be…
"You'll be fine," Octavia says in a low whisper. You have to be, is the part that goes unsaid. Tears prickle the corner of her eyes, and she blinks them away roughly. She's not going to cry. She will not cry. "You'll be fine," she repeats. The words sound hollow in her own mouth and she's suddenly unsure of who she's trying to convince, Indra or herself.
Indra takes a deep breath. "Octavia you need to make things right with your brother."
Octavia freezes, staring at Indra incredulously, unable to believe what she thought Indra had just said. "Excuse me?"
"You need to make things right with Bellamy," Indra says, a note of impatience mixed with urgency entering her voice. "Now, while there is still time."
Hearing Bellamy's name spoken aloud brings back that familiar tidal wave of rage from the deepest, darkest corners of her mind. It's muted now, not as overwhelming as it had once been, but it's still there. Even after all these years it hasn't gone away.
Octavia doesn't think it ever will.
Her throat raw with earsplitting screams, an empty void where her heart used to be, jarring impact under her right hand knuckles…
"We don't have to talk about this right now," Octavia says roughly, busying herself with repacking the medkit, which conveniently also gives her a golden excuse to avoid Indra's gaze.
"Octavia…"
"Not fucking now, alright?" Octavia's nerves are stretched to breaking point. She's surrounded by death. She's lost half a dozen of her friends and she's got the blood of children on her hands now. The memory of the rawness in her throat from screaming and the impact under her knuckles is as fresh as if it happened yesterday. "We can talk about this afterwards."
She has no intention of talking about this. Not afterwards, not ever. As far as she is concerned the past can stay in the past, where it belongs.
She doesn't remember his birthday, like clockwork every year, creeping up on her like an unwanted ghost. She doesn't find herself looking through dog eared English translations of mythology books in dusty old book shops in whichever country she happens to be at the moment and wondering if maybe he'd like to read this one…
She doesn't.
She doesn't.
"I'm not long for this world, Octavia," Indra says sternly. "If we don't talk about this now, we never will."
Octavia stares at her sullenly. "What do you want to talk about?" she spits out.
"You need to make things right with your brother," Indra repeats.
Her throat raw with earsplitting screams, an empty void where her heart used to be, jarring impact under her right hand knuckles, a crack of breaking bone…
Octavia looks away. "I can't forgive him," she whispers. "Not after what he did. Not after everything…"
She doesn't like to think back on that time of her life if she can help it.
She doesn't go out of her way to sign up for duty, or otherwise make sure that she's out of the country, during Christmas time. She doesn't think of him, all alone in that house, with no one to keep him company except that old pitiful excuse of a plastic Christmas tree that's weathered more changing seasons than Octavia has.
Indra doesn't reply to that. Instead she says, "I have a daughter."
Octavia's eyes snap back to her. "I didn't know that," she says, frowning slightly. She casts about her head looking for any reference Indra might have made of her in the past. It comes up empty. How had she not known that?
"No reason why you would," Indra says heavily. She shifts slightly, and winces. "I haven't mentioned her to anyone. We haven't talked in years."
"Why?" Octavia asks. Despite herself, she is curious. There was an entire side to Indra that she had kept hidden away from everyone. Even Octavia. How had she not known any of this?
"We had...a falling out," Indra sighs. "I wanted her to join the army. She...she wanted to do something else with her life." For a split second her face morphs into what may have been an expression of fondness. But then it's gone, and Indra's face is clouded once more. "I wasn't exactly supportive of her decisions," she sighs. Her eyelids start to droop.
"Okay," Octavia says slowly, "but what does any of this have to do with me?"
Indra closes her eyes as she tries to shift into a more comfortable position, and abruptly sucks in a breath through clenched teeth as a haze of pain passes over her features. Maybe physical, maybe something else.
"I had…so many chances…to reach out to her…over the years," Indra says, her voice low and growing weaker, filled with what sounds like a lifetime of accumulated regret, and it sends a chill racing through Octavia's bones. Somehow weak is not an adjective that Octavia would have ever thought to associate with Indra, even now, riddled with bullets and dying a slow painful death so far from home. It is an anomaly. A concept that shouldn't exist.
And yet that is exactly what is happening. Even the denial clouding Octavia's brain can't keep her from noticing that Indra's breathing has grown shallower, and that she's having trouble keeping her eyes open.
"Don't talk," Octavia orders, pushing past the dread pooling in her gut. She doesn't take her eyes off of Indra's, irrationally afraid that when she turns back they will be glazed over. "Medevac is on the way."
If she concentrates hard enough, she thinks she can hear the signature thump and rotor beat of the medevac chopper in the distance.
Or maybe it's just her imagination. Maybe the universe is not done fucking with her for the day.
Her throat raw with earsplitting screams, an empty void where her heart used to be, jarring impact under her right hand knuckles, a crack of breaking bone, the coppery smell of blood in the air. Not hers…
Indra doesn't seem to have heard. Her eyes are trained on Octavia, but they aren't focused on her. Octavia doesn't think that Indra is seeing her at all. Her eyes are locked into a thousand yard stare, like she's seeing right through Octavia, seeing something else entirely. Maybe looking into her distant past, at the memory that seems to be causing her so much pain but which she seems to be hell bent on reliving for some reason.
The roar of the chopper in the distance is much louder now, and growing increasingly louder by the second. Definitely not just Octavia's imagination.
"There were…so many times…that I…could have tried…to make things…right. I didn't and now…" Indra stops and heaves a sigh, "…and now I never will." Her voice is tired and melancholy, and it makes something inside Octavia clench.
Indra abruptly switches back to the present, her eyes moving suddenly to Octavia like she has only just now realized that Octavia has been there all along. "Don't make…the same mistakes that…I did," she says urgently. Her eyes are suddenly alight with fervor, like she has to make absolutely sure that Octavia hears her. Like it's the most important thing that needs to be done, with the limited time that she has left. Her grip is still strong when she reaches to grab Octavia's wrist, but weakening rapidly.
And it's all Octavia can do, to sit helplessly on the sun baked desert floor, and watch the life drain out of the eyes of the one person that she holds in the highest regard in the entire world. Because Indra is so much more than just a superior or even a mentor. In Octavia's eyes she is the very model of what an ideal soldier should be - competent, disciplined, conscientious, having earned the respect of all of her subordinates and the approval of her superiors, and above all, possessing a solid moral backbone. For the longest time, Octavia has held Indra as the standard for her to live up to in every aspect.
Her ultimate goal has always been to become just like Indra - the ideal soldier.
The chopper is almost overhead now, the roar of its engines drowning out all sound. Indra doesn't have the strength to shout above the noise, so she beckons Octavia closer instead, to whisper her last words in Octavia's ear. When she speaks, her voice shaky and barely audible over the roar of the chopper, and the pounding footsteps of the approaching medevac team. Yet somehow Octavia catches every word.
"Don't…become…like…me."
Her work done, and her message delivered, Indra leans back, exhales, and closes her eyes.
Her chest rises and falls, once, twice, and then goes still.
A/N: So, yeah, I decided to try something a little different from my usual oneshots. Let me know if there is enough interest for me to continue.