Another Kabby fic set in 3x16. Marcus Kane attacks and tries to kill Abigail Griffin instead of Bellamy Blake. Mostly canon-compliant, I literally just finished watching S3 yesterday at four in the morning so chill the fuck out.
He felt everything his brothers and sisters felt.
At first, it was kind of strange, because he'd never had a brother or sister, but now, having most of the population of Earth as his brothers and sisters, it was amazing. Something nagged in the back of his mind- wasn't there someone he knew that had a sister?
Marcus paused for a moment, trying to remember. There was someone, there had been someone, and he'd killed the mother for having a second child-
"Get back to work, Marcus," the guiding voice of ALIE interrupted his thoughts. He blinked, forgetting his current train of thought, but continued to move down the hallway where there were enemies waiting. He shook his head as if to rid his head of traitorous thoughts and in monotone movements, tried (and failed) to fight Indra.
He got up from the ground, ready to follow them into the elevator but even ALIE missed the bomb tacked to the turnpike. Then the next thing he knew was that he was lying on top of a (thankfully? Why was he thankful, he should've killed her, but he knows that she has a strange fondness for him and he for her, why was he trying to kill her again?) unconscious Indra, and hesitated to put his hands to her throat and end her, but ALIE stopped him before he truly could.
"She is not a threat right now," the AI said. "Climb after the others. Stop them." Marcus nodded and went outside to climb with the others, with one goal in their shared minds: stop the Flame. Stop Clarke.
Why was he trying to kill Clarke, again? Because she had the second chip that could stop ALIE and stop him from ever entering the City of Light again.
He climbed vigorously, and the burn that was in his muscles wasn't there, because there is no pain in the City of Light. He got to the top, the very tippy top floor and watched as his brothers and sisters tried to break down that door. He directed them to a lamp-post to help knock the barricade down.
When it gave way, they all climbed over it (with some difficulty, and Marcus barely registered the blood dripping down his arm as he cut it on a rather sharp corner of something) and followed ALIE to the Commander's Hall, where Clarke and Murphy and Abby-
Abby.
He stopped in his tracks. And then he took an impromptu trip to the City- Abby wasn't there.
Was she a traitor? Last Marcus remembered, Abby had been suspended in the air and then something happened so he'd become disconnected. He had a strong suspicion that Clarke had something to do with it.
Oh, he would so kill Abigail Griffin for not resisting, for not stopping Clarke when they were so close to their goal.
So he bashed into the door with more force than the others, not realizing that he would sorely regret it later, because there was no pain in the City of Light.
Der ste no gon kom Soncha Kapa.
Where had that come from?
"Marcus, you are getting distracted," ALIE warned him. "Focus, Marcus. We are so close to our goal. Do not stop our progress now."
He nodded, the coldness of no actual emotions overtaking him once more as the team of robot people finally burst into the room. He stood and watched for a second, then made a beeline for Abigail who was shaking holding a gun, having already killed two Grounders. My people.
He snuck up behind her and took her by surprise, throwing the gun out of her hands where behind him, Murphy conveniently caught it with his not-pumping-blood-from-a-dead-person's-body hand and used that to defend himself. She put up a better fight than he'd have expected her to, and there was something there that told him she had learned how to fight from him, but ALIE swiftly blocked it out. He had her on the ground in no time, her skills no match for his enhanced mind.
She slapped at the hands around her throat, gasping uselessly for breath as she tried to get away.
Marcus smiled, a truly wicked, evil smile, and looked on her with all the hatred of a thousand souls who had personally been executed by Abby herself.
"There's two ways out of this, Abigail," he said, adding pressure to her windpipe.
"No," she still managed to gasp through lack of oxygen, "Never again. No," she said as he put more pressure on her, eyes slowly drifting closed, hands struggling with his own getting weaker...
"M-Marcus..." she gasped weakly. "Mar-rcus..."
And the second she stopped all movements- the struggling, the heaving gasps for the precious gases in the air that gave life-
It stopped, at the exact same time everyone else stopped their fighting and the agonized screams of the eternally haunted filled the air.
She stopped the same time Marcus realized that he had been under the influence of ALIE, when he realized he had just tried to kill the woman he loved.
No, not loved. Loves. Marcus Kane will always always love Abigail Griffin, even if she's dead and he's alive and he killed her. If there's anything that Marcus Kane is good at, it's sticking to a policy for as long as physically possible.
A dead buzz filled his ears as he stared at the motionless body of Abigail Griffin, currently being cried over by Clarke. He didn't feel the guards shove him to his knees and onto the floor, he didn't feel the way the handcuffs tightened around his wrists, already injured from being crucified, he didn't feel the sting when Clarke slapped him and punched him in the stomach as he was being led out.
All he felt was the crushing weight of everything he'd never said, echoing and bouncing around his head, making him roar with agony. He wasn't ever quite sure, though, if it was from the empty thoughts or the crushing guilt of a still, unmoving Abby on the floor and thinking, that was me. I did that.
And he bucked and roared at the guards, but they didn't let him go and eventually he succumbed to a sleep-inducing drug they were forced to inject into him.
God. His head hurt like hell.
He debated on moving, doing anything, but after a check to make certain that he had all his limbs, he just lay there, perfectly content to never move again and face what he'd done.
"We know you're awake, Kane," a gruff voice said from somewhere over to his left. He heard pacing on metal floors and realized that the guards must have been monitoring him.
Slowly, he opened his eyes. Thankfully, the room was dark, so his head was spared hurting more than it needed to. Bellamy was standing to his left, Octavia sharpening her sword in the corner not too far from her brother. Clarke was on his right, pacing endlessly.
Bellamy shifted. "Clarke," he said, and she stopped her pacing and came over to Marcus.
He tried to raise his hands to defend himself against a wrathful Clarke, but his limbs, as he'd failed to notice before, were zip-cuffed to a table in medical. He lay helpless as she punched him hard enough to almost break his nose, before Bellamy pulled her off of him.
Clarke wrestled out of Bellamy's grip and looked at Kane, the utmost fury in her eyes.
Marcus, at this point completely terrified, only looked at Clarke, who stormed around the table once before sitting down and facing him.
"You will not get pardoned for what you have done," she said, her voice colder than his when he'd been under control of ALIE. "But you will be questioned and then sent to confinement, seeing as Pike is now dead, and we don't kill our own." He didn't miss the look Clarke spared Octavia, who didn't look up but her expression soured.
"Marcus Kane," Bellamy said, "You are under arrest for the attempted murder of Abigail Griffin."
"Wait," Marcus said. "She- she's alive?"
"Thanks to Indra," Clarke said coldly. "She was one of the Grounders we'd taught how to resuscitate people, and she performed it on my mom."
Bellamy heaved him up from the table and half-dragged, half-pushed roughly into the cell, shared with Jackson and Jaha. Jaha refused to look at him and Jackson merely glanced at him sadly before staring out the window at the sky. Bellamy chained Kane' hands above him to the wall, leaving him in a quite uncomfortable position in which he could neither sit or stand comfortably without his hands being pressurized painfully in some way.
Marcus looked at him, kind of astonished.
"I'm returning the favor. I wasn't exactly comfortable, either." And then he left to do whatever a Bellamy did. Sighing, Marcus shifted around to find that he could not get comfortable, and therefore resigned himself to the most painful way he could find, as if trying to... to what? Pay for his crimes? It was going to take a lot more than that.
After what seemed like hours later, a guard came in with Abby in tow, and took Jackson out of his chains.
He stepped tentatively towards Abby, as if trying not to scare away a frightened animal. Except, Jackson was the animal, not Abby.
"It's okay, Jackson," Abby sighed. "It's okay. I... I forgive you." She hugged him, Jackson melting into it like it was his only lifeline, and Marcus could hear him apologizing over and over again.
"It's okay," she said, patting his back. "It's okay."
Eventually, Jackson let go and Abby took him back to Medical with her, but just before she closed the door Kane called out to her.
"Abby, wait," he said. She stopped and looked at him, hand hovering over the lock button. The terror from that night was still very clear in her eyes, and he rattled his chains a little and struggled, trying to get free so he could go to her, but all she did was hurriedly slam the button and she turned to the guards to say something, mentioning to him. She turned, ever so slightly, and Marcus saw the bruises on her neck.
That was me. I did that.
The guards came in and gagged him as he yelled for her to come back, so he could apologize for everything he'd done and not done, what he'd said and never said that couldn't be said anymore.
Great, now he was painfully chained to a wall and gagged. This was a great party.
He stared helplessly at her fast-retreating figure and cried out, but even he didn't understand it through the gag.
Jaha turned around and looked at him for the first time all day.
And suddenly, Marcus found himself deathly afraid.
Because if there is just one thing you avoid, it's getting Jaha angry at you.
"You did that to her," he said, stepping closer. "Did you see the bruises?" The chain connected to his hands gave up plenty of slack for Jaha to come closer.
Marcus whimpered, although he really didn't know why.
"And look," the former chancellor said, "Now you're afraid." He scoffed. "I should have known you'd be the ultimate downfall of our plan."
He stood, peaceably for a moment, then ran up to him as far as the chains would let him. "My plan."
The cuffs barely let Marcus escape from the same death he'd tried to give Abby. Wildly, he tried to scramble away, but due to his arms being above his head there was nowhere he could go except back a few steps.
Jaha laughed, a humorless, cold laugh and returned to his side of the room.
"Weak," he said. "So weak. The City of Light was the key, Marcus. And you destroyed it."
Marcus stepped back as far as he was allowed to go, which really wasn't much. He backed up against the wall, terror in his eyes.
"You know, we used to be friends, Marcus," Jaha said, and Kane didn't notice him chipping at the wall. "You, me, Abby... Jake. The only person out of us you haven't tried to personally kill is yourself."
Jaha was silent for a while after that, leaving Marcus to strain against his bonds until he collapsed from exhaustion, knees not quite touching the floor and head hanging.
It was true. Marcus had tried to kill Abby, twice now, had been on the team to float Jake and had arrested Abby for saving Jaha's life, which endangered him.
Who hadn't he tried to kill?
Himself, just like Jaha said. Sure, he'd offered himself but never actually planned to go through with it.
He barely looked up as Jaha came over, holding a sharpened price of scrap metal in his hands.
"Maybe you should rectify that."
Abby woke as a scream echoed down the hallway to confinement. She looked over at Jackson, who had fallen asleep a few hours ago. She had soon followed suit. ALIE admittedly didn't give them much time to sleep, so it was perfectly reasonable to fall asleep during work. It wasn't the first time and sure as hell wouldn't be the last.
Abby tensed as another scream came from confinement. She picked up her scalpel as a weapon, and cautiously went down the hall and rounded the corner to confinement. The two guards were out cold on the ground, thankfully still alive. She grabbed a taser stick from one of them just in case. She gripped it firmly in her hand as grunts and panting and screaming came from within.
She was fairly certain that Jaha and Kane hadn't gotten up to It. Those were very obviously screams of pain. Confidence not wavering, she opened the door.
Jaha was standing there, bloodied, with a piece of sharp metal from the Ark in his hand, also covered in blood. Kane stood across from him, the floor under him turning red. It had reached Jaha's shoes.
"Abby," Jaha said. "How nice of you to join us."
Abby looked from Jaha to Kane to Jaha.
"What are you doing?" She asked, then cringed at the sound of Marcus screaming as Jaha split him open across his forehead. Blood ran into Marcus' eyes.
"What he asked."
Twenty Minutes Earlier
"No," Marcus said, looking at the piece of shrapnel. "I'm not going to."
Jaha shook his head. "A shame. Why not give yourself the honor that you have given everyone else?"
"...You are."
Jaha turned around, surprise clearly etched into his features. "I'm sorry?"
"You will take that," Marcus said, putting effort into standing up properly, "And I will suffer from the same thing Grounders subject each other to."
"And what is that?" Jaha already knew, but he wanted to hear Kane say it.
He swallowed.
"Death by a thousand cuts."
Abby could only splutter as Jaha cut him again, down his forearm. Marcus' green shirt was now red and Abby highly doubted it would ever return to its natural color.
Marcus whimpered and groaned as the metal pierced his skin, drawing blood. Everything was already swimming in front of him. Not long now, he thought, then visibly flinched away from whoever it was holding his face.
"Marcus, Marcus listen to me," Abby implored. "Marcus, I will get you out of this. Stay with me."
He spit blood out of his mouth, weakly, and turned to look at Abby.
"No," he said, and she almost didn't catch it.
"Why?" Was the only thing she could ask, so she obviously said "Marcus Kane, if you die, I will kill you."
He laughed weakly and it turned into coughing as Jaha sliced down each of his ribs- seven on each side, fourteen in total.
"Stop it," Abby commanded Jaha. "You're killing him!"
"It is what he wants," Jaha said. "I am here to provide."
"No, you're not," Abby said. "I'm sorry your City of Bullshit got shut down, okay? Let him go."
"I was going to save us all!" Jaha said, slicing Kane again. "And then he-" Slice. "-comes along-" Slice. "-and-" Slice. "-ruins it!" Slice.
"I was going to save the human race. No more hurting! No more suffering!" Slice. "There is no pain in the City of Light." Slice. "If this is what he wants, then I'll give it to him, since I couldn't give him the other way out he needed."
"No," Abby said. "It wasn't Marcus, Thelonius. It was Clarke. She was the one who flipped the killswitch."
Jaha now stopped slicing and Abby slid the knife out of his hand and onto the floor. She didn't notice the unmoving Marcus beside her.
"It wasn't him."
Abby grabbed the taser and hit Jaha in the head with it, knocking him to the ground and officially unconscious.
Now she noticed the unmoving Marcus beside her. She grabbed his head in her hands, bloody as it was, and Marcus' half-closed eyes looked into hers. He smiled.
"Der ste no gon kom Soncha Kapa," he said. "Der ste no gon kom Soncha Kapa. Der ste no gon kom Soncha Kapa, der ste no gon kom Soncha Kapa, der ste no gon kom Soncha Kapa-"
He stopped as Abby hushed him. He muttered it under his breath all the way back to Medical where he was put under anesthesia and operated on.
He muttered it under his breath as soon as he woke up.
He muttered it under his breath as he watched Abby sew his wounds shut the next day, and the day after, until he was healed.
He said it when he woke up from passing out that time Abby made him watch her sew his wounds shut again.
He said it when he saw the bruises on her neck, and when he thought, that was me. I did that.
But that was the last time he'd ever say it, because he and Abby had talked it out.
"Marcus, did you really think you had to do that to pay for your crimes?"
"Yeah," he said. Der ste no gon kom Soncha Kapa. Der ste no gon kom Soncha Kapa. "I did, because I almost killed you, so I thought if someone else almost killed me I'd... have made up for it, or something."
"Oh, Marcus," Abby said. "You know you don't have to."
And they kissed under the stars.
And, despite the rain, the fire that ignited in their hearts would never be quenched.