I Did What I Had to Do
After Abby and Kane gathered the remaining Ark survivors together, they put together a party to head out in the woods towards the mysterious smoke nearby, which they hoped signaled the presence of other people besides them. However, they had misjudged the distance between them and the smoke, for after a long day of walking they still had not arrived, nor seen any evidence of other forms of human life.
Night settled in quickly, and the sky's enchanting clear blue color that had mystified them earlier transformed back into the sea of stars that they were used to. But it was different this time. Instead of looking out, they had to look up at the sky and the stars; it seemed worlds away, and pointed out just how far they all had come.
Once night had fallen, most people were satisfied with just a quick glance at their new surroundings, before giving in to the fatigue which had encompassed their long journey, but not Abby Griffin. While others were asleep in their tents in the middle of the night, she had gotten up and walked around, trying to take everything in. The exhilaration of it all had taken away her urge for sleep. No, she felt more alive than ever. She wanted to see everything, to take it all in until her senses exploded from overstimulation. She wanted to see the night sky from a distance this time, to breathe in the clean air that no longer had to be rationed, to feel the grass tickle her feet instead of the cold hard metal that was the Ark. But, most of all, she wanted to find Clarke. But that could wait, at least just for the night. She wouldn't let any worries ruin this moment.
"It's beautiful." She whispered to herself, once again. She was still unable to believe that the Earth could be ever better than she had dreamed, forgotten that reality could be anything other than bleak and ordinary.
"Isn't it?" Came a half-hearted reply to her private thoughts. Alarmed, Abby quickly looked around to find the source of the voice. She had come out here in the middle of the night, completely unarmed—never had she felt so idiotic. But most of her panic left her when she looked down and found that sitting with his knees pulled close to his chest, at the base of the thick tree right beside her, was none other than Marcus Kane. A wave of relief washed over her and her previous giddy feeling had returned.
Although he was not necessarily her friend, in that moment Abby didn't care. She still felt elated from her new home and was willing to share that feeling of elation with anyone right then, even if that someone happened to be Marcus Kane.
She still stood, her face tilted up at the sky, drinking in the stars above them. "It's just incredible. Even the stars look different from down here, better than before. It makes you feel… smaller, somehow. Like, we aren't the center of the universe after all, but this world is something better than we could've dreamed. I still can't believe that we've made it here." She smiled and looked down at Marcus, still huddled at the base of the tree.
"Yes, it certainly is a sight to behold." The words seemed uplifting, but the tinge of dismay in his voice conveyed that they were not sharing the same feeling at the moment. Abby's smile left her as the thought came to her that while Kane also couldn't sleep that night, it may have been for an entirely different reason. One not so pleasant as her own.
Marcus stared aimlessly off into the distance, and Abby took a seat beside him at the base of the tree. She didn't press him into telling her how he felt, she knew he would if he wanted to. And he did.
After a minute, Marcus said, "If I had only waited just two days, maybe even one day, even just an hour. If I had shown any hesitation at all, then those 300 people would still be alive. They would be able to see the Earth as it is now. But they died not being able to appreciate any of this." He gestured his hand towards the forest, then the sky, then ran his hand through his hair in frustration. "How am I supposed to appreciate it, when I was the reason none of them made it down here? Why should my life mean more than theirs?"
"Hey," Abby said, placing her hand on his shoulder. He turned to look at her. "You did what you had to do. You had no idea that Earth was survivable at that time. It was an understandable mistake." It was Abby's best attempt at comforting him, but he simply brushed her hand off his shoulder, then proceeded to put his face in his hands.
"I did what I had to do." He mumbled again, mostly for his own benefit. Ever since that incident, there was something Kane had to come to terms with—the fact that what he had to do, wasn't always the right thing to do. He had always prided himself upon his sense of justice, he knew that the law stood above all else, making all his decisions with a head over heart mentality. He had always thought this was what he was supposed to do. What he had to do. But he hadn't saved all those people, he had made a wrong decision even with his supposedly infallible moral philosophy. Almost every choice he had made resulted in the pain of another person, which was never what he had intended. It was though his internal moral compass had been broken.
When what you have to do is not the right thing to do, what choice are you supposed to make? How do you decide what the right thing to do is, when you had always thought you had been doing the right thing? Marcus Kane had absolutely no idea.
After a short while, Abby spoke up again. "Marcus, all of us make decisions that we regret. Sometimes, it really is impossible to tell what move you are supposed to make. " She thought of how one of her own decisions had led to the execution of her husband. Her voice caught, ever so slightly. "Sometimes, you screw up and people die."
That set them into another moment of somber silence, each adult contemplating the good things and the bad things they had done with their lives. Yet, there was something comforting in this moment of quietude. They felt reassured through their feelings of empathy, their guilt eased because someone else understood the feeling of making the wrong choices.
Marcus was the first to break the silence this time, he stretched out his legs, placing his arms by his sides, and glanced upwards at the stars hanging over them. "I tried to float you, Abby. You broke the law and I thought it was the right thing to do. I tried to kill you. Don't you hate me?" Now, Abby remembered this, but she also remembered unmistakably how he had saved her life after the Exodus ship took off. She thought of how, at that moment in time, she had known she was trapped in the over-heated compartment with little to no air, and her life had already begun to fade away, until she woke up in the arms of Marcus Kane. Then again, when she saw him get up the following day, ready to launch the Ark manually even if it meant he wasn't able to see the Earth, she knew just how much he had changed. She wasn't sure how she felt about him now, but it wasn't animosity, at least not anymore.
She wanted to express this to him somehow, but the best thing she could think of to do was put her hand on top of his and say with a slight grin, "I don't hate you all the time." At this he turned towards her and looked her in the eye and smiled, almost laughing. He didn't move her hand away this time.
And they stayed like that for awhile, until Kane felt a head fall onto his shoulder as if it were a pillow. Surprised, he glanced over—Abby Griffin had fallen asleep. It appeared that her fatigue had finally won out over the exhilaration of their first full day on Earth. He sighed again, and looked at her once more—because of their talk, he felt his frustration was already ebbing away. Not wanting to move, he put his arm around her and let himself relax. Looking up at the entrancing night sky one last time, he felt himself beginning to drift off as well. Yet one thought was still mulling about in his brain. On his own, he had made had bad decisions. But then again, so had she. Maybe together, they could finally figure out what they had to do, and do it right.
A/N: This was my first fic for The 100! Hope you guys enjoyed! Reviews that tell me how I did are much appreciated! :3