1: Beginning
Set in 2x16.
The rope around his wrists cuts into his skin, mostly because the terror and panic in his mind don't allow Marcus to do anything but trying to wriggle free, violently. Something tells him it's not the rope restraining his emotion-fuelled actions, but Cage Wallace. The young man with the ugly upper lip is standing between him and the very table the person most important to him is lying on. His eyes resemble stones in their hardness and, deep down, Marcus knows trying a diplomatic approach, hysterically offering bone marrow donations, is futile.
He doesn't let the words fail him, keeps on trying, for Abby, until her skin is broken by the drilling. Her screams shut him up – in the end, they are loud enough for the both of them.
The volume of her pain affects him and hurts him in a way not even the cruelest knife could. Does Wallace realize that, by torturing her, he's also torturing him? That her pain is his pain? In the time recently past, the doctor and the soldier have formed an invisible bond, a rather strong one, climbing over any boundaries they had set for themselves before (on the Ark, that is). Descending onto the ground was some sort of breakthrough for not only the Skypeople, but also for whatever has held the two of them together so far – in physical proximity as well as mental.
Their past disagreements are given a proper burial in this very moment, for when it is about a life in danger of dying, just like a star, Marcus basically doesn't give a shit about trivial things like partners playing at enemies.
He just hopes that today won't give him reason to plan Abby's burial. (Whether Wallace would let him have that last honour is to be doubted. Marcus is rather sure spitting on his face is the only honour the man would gift him with and possibly killing the soldier along with his doctor companion. The scenario sounds, ridiculously, bizarrely so, like a mere video game.)
It is when Abby's screams become barely an echo in his head, when she becomes silent and her body still, that Marcus, partially numb from the horror transpiring in front of him, feels his chest contract and his heart miss a beat. No–
Desperate relief floods his every vein as he spies her deep, brown eyes remaining open and ever so slightly moving. Weak and so very tired, but alive, he thinks, trying to alleviate both of their pains somehow by trying to share it, divide it… Marcus also tries to catch her gaze, but a river of tears rolling down to Abby's ear is the only response he gets.
Thankfully, things occur relatively quickly after that. Marcus can only calm his breath after removing the straps from Abby's skin – her material ties are gone, but her physical, inner ones remain, hence he is forced to watch her struggle with regaining control of herself, step by step, blink by blink. If even this is painful for him, how much more so must it be for her? Even so, his hands are always there to guide her, help her, as she slowly, with short breaths and stiff gasps, rises from the metal.
He makes to steady her injured leg with his hands as their gazes meet – brown on brown, pain on pain, key to lock. They just fit. (Marcus tries not to think about the empty holes that are Abby's eyes, the lack of expression, the pure exhaustion, tries not to think about the way the bags under her eyes look almost burnt from her tears. He tries not to think about the fact that only a little more would have robbed her eyes of their shine permanently, either.)
They are on their way back to Camp Jaha, and Abby still is exhausted beyond imagination, as if there's a weight resting on her body just waiting for her to fall asleep so it can finish her off once and for all. (She wants to sleep, in fact, but she refuses. She just refuses.) Also, she feels like her leg, numb yet buzzing with pain and fire, has made her redefine the saying "burning like hell" for herself. If Mount Weather just hadn't been, she's almost sure that she would have told everyone asking her "how she's doing" to go to hell. Alas, she doesn't even have the strength to put a mask in front of her physical misery.
It's a silly and meaningless comfort, thinking about wordplays and jokes in her situation, but soon, as they are nearing the entrance to the camp, she finds a far better warmth in simply holding Marcus Kane's hand.
The only thing Abby has touched voluntarily on the journey home is his hand. She doesn't only touch it, either. She holds it tight and grips it like it's her lifeline. In a, perhaps not so insignificant, way it is just that. Following their hands' touch are their eyes' connection, and when they walk through beneath the "Camp Jaha" sign, something in the air between them changes; their hands adjust to each other until every finger has found its perfect gap; his eyes become the warmest she's ever seen them once they find hers– It feels like a new beginning, a hope for a new home.
Abby tries to keep her stoic mask up, but she hopes that, by just staring at him for that long and holding on, he understands.