AN: Please enjoy! Comments and reviews are always appreciated.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
CHAPTER ONE
My love took me down to the river to silence me
And when he left I could not speak
And what he said to me I can never say
Because it's breaking my heart to this very day
There, there is a heart in here
Where, where is the heart in here?
Little Green Cars
Inhabitants of the Ark hurried through the station, heading to work or class, and Nora allowed the current of traffic to guide her towards the mess hall. The hall was abuzz and she found herself eavesdropping on conversations as they passed by. She'd learned at a young age that the best way to get intelligence on the Ark was by paying attention to those who weren't aware of their surroundings. Gossip was an easy find on her morning commute.
"Did you hear?"
"They've been calling down the parents all morning."
"What do you think the Council will decide?"
"Nora Bishop, please report to the Command Center immediately. Repeat, Inspector Bishop to CC."
The speakers crackled through the busy corridors of the Ark, reaching the young woman intent on acquiring her morning rations. She frowned at the request and shook her head before turning down the corridor to her left, walking past the mess hall with its morning rush. Breakfast will have to wait, she thought to herself as her stomach groaned its protest. Pushing her way through the morning traffic, she wondered what the request pertained to.
Her review had been the week before, an event she was glad to have behind her. Both Councilor Kane and Major Bryne had testified on her behalf, and the council admitted that they little evidence to believe that she was in any way involved in the assassination plot against Chancellor Jaha. She'd been let go with a slap on the wrist and a warning to choose her associates more carefully in the future.
A respectable member of the Guard does not associate themselves with convicts. Her father had always been transparent with his opinion of the Blake siblings and Nora had done her best to ensure he knew how little she cared.
Bellamy.
Her stomach dropped as his name floated through her mind, a terrible thought forming. It had been two weeks since he had committed high-treason and shot Chancellor Jaha. Two weeks since the dropship was launched for the Earth's surface, taking with it the stowaway and attempted assassin, Bellamy Blake. Two weeks the inhabitants of the Ark had waited for communication from the 100. The last of humanity had been waiting for hope to return home.
Thus far, there was no official word. The council claimed that they were keeping track of the sacrificed 100, but the public didn't know what to believe anymore. Everyone had been shocked to learn what the council had done – parents were outraged that their children had been sacrificed, teachers mourned students, friends prayed for their friends. Some quietly cheered when Jaha was shot – others openly cursed his miraculous recovery. They didn't even have the chance to say goodbye. Nora had been given the chance to say goodbye but it didn't leave her with much comfort, only more questions and doubts.
Turning down another identical corridor of the Ark, she felt someone fall in to step beside her and she fumbled a chaste solute. He waved her one in return and slowed his pace to better match her shorter strides.
"Commander," she said, quickening her pace to match his determined one. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Shumway spared her only a slight glance and guided them through the bustling morning crowd. He nodded to a few citizens as they passed by but largely ignored their surroundings, looking distracted. "I'm here to escort you to Command. Did you not hear the call?"
She frowned and followed him down another corridor, this one wider than the previous and which ended in the large circular door that opened into Command. "I didn't realize that I needed an escort anymore, sir," Nora tried not to sound insubordinate while voicing her confusion. Her frown deepened with another thought, "Did my dad send you?"
A loud snort was her response and she immediately felt embarrassed as her cheeks tinged pink. "Your father has more pressing matters to address than worrying about what irrational decision you'll make next, Bishop," he said seriously, coming to a halt a few paces away from the door.
Nora's father had condoned the decisions of the council but had supported her through her acquittal. After all, he had voted along with them. Cole Bishop had dreamed of returning to Earth since he was a young boy growing up on Argo station. Top of his class in Earth Skills and the farming division, he felt most at home with his hands in a pile of rich soil. He argued that given the chance, who was he to deny his people the right to return home. The good the many had to outweigh the good of the few, otherwise what was the point? He believed that what they were going was right.
It had to be right, otherwise they had culled three hundred Ark citizens in poor judgment.
"A very fair point, sir," Nora conceded as she continued towards the door, stopping curiously when he put out a hand. Standing at attention, she waited for him to speak. He waited until a group of Mecha workers passed by and the corridor was relatively empty before moving closer to her, pushing her so that they were hidden from view by the intersections archway.
"What do you know about Blake shooting the Chancellor?" he asked in a rush, glancing over her shoulder at another wave of people coming down the corridor.
Her curiousness grew quickly in confusion as she fumbled for a moment. "I don't understand, sir. You were at my review, you heard my testimony. I didn't know that Bellamy was going to shoot Jaha," she said slowly with a frown. He moved a step closer as she continued, "I would have stopped him if I had known, both as a member of the Guard and as citizen of the Ark. You heard everything that I had to say and the council agreed. With all due respect sir, what is this about?"
Something passed over Shumway's face that set her on edge. He looked like one the wild animals on the nature shows they had to watch in Earth Skills. The animals that had been kept in captivity for too long before being released back in the wild. He looked lost, desperate, willing to do anything. As he took yet another step forward, Nora realized how close he was and tried to take a step back, only to be caught by the wrist in a vice-like grip. Willing to do anything.
"Sir?"
"What did he tell you?" He whispered aggressively as a group of pre-schoolers and their teacher passed down the corridor. Miss Annie looked at the two guards in concern but said nothing as she led the children quietly by. Shumway pushed Nora around the corner from Command, leaning his body so that he towered over Nora and blocked her view of the corridor. She wished that her quest for breakfast hadn't taken such a detour. "Don't play games with me, Bishop. I'll ruin you before you have a chance to run to your sweet dear old dad," he threatened, tone serious enough that Nora didn't want to call his bluff.
"Commander, please, sir, I swear," Nora was desperate and she kept her eyes on her commanding officer, hoping that he could seeing the honesty on her face. She wasn't sure if Shumway meant her bodily harm or if his threat referred to some sort of political slander, but both were things she hoped to avoid. She continued in a steady, controlled voice, keeping herself calm. "Bellamy didn't tell me anything. He said didn't even say goodbye, for Christ's sake! I didn't even know that he was on the dropship until you told me!"
Shumway's forearm went to her neck, forcing her onto the tips of her toes and pressing the back of her head into the corridor wall. A pulse of fear went through her. Her interactions with Shumway were sparse and few between as he was a high ranking officer and she wasn't sure if this was normal behavior for him. Maybe he had a volatile temper and she didn't have the rapport with him to know his boundaries. "I didn't say that, you little bitch," his breath warm on her face, his spittle falling on her face.
On second thought, probably not his usual behavior.
BEFORE
She stood with her back to the deck's wall, making sure to keep as many citizens in her view while stealing glimpses of the view above her. Somewhere, on that radioactively soaked surface, one of her favorite people was fighting for her life. What she was fighting, whether it be from horrible ground conditions, lack of breathable air and sufficient supplies, or if some horrific man-eating species had evolved as a result of the fallout, she had no idea. All that she knew was that Octavia only had to survive long enough for her to find a way to get to her.
Rumors were starting to float around the Ark of something called Exodus. She hadn't heard much, but what she did know was that it was somehow related to the last of the human race returning home. Whatever it really involved to become a plausible option for the Council, Nora knew that she would be on the dropship down. It had been eleven days since the 100 had been excised and Bellamy Blake had become a ghost, seemingly disappearing into thin air and escaping from a space station with no accessible escape pods.
After she completed her first shift post-reinstatement, she had wasted no time in checking all the crevices of the Ark, searching for the wanted attempted-murderer. She'd enlisted the help of others, searching all the decks and stations for him but after three days she'd given up hope. She wondered if the Guard had already found and floated him, keeping the details hidden from the public for some sort of gain. She hoped that in a few months they wouldn't come across his body, hidden amongst the grain barrels in Agro.
Her thoughts were interrupted as a throat cleared to her right and she turned to see Commander Shumway standing behind her, an expectant look on his stern face. She threw up a salute and stood at attention, cursing herself for being caught while compromised, staring at the sky. And by the Commander, no less. What an Inspector she was turning out to be. He waved her to ease and she nodded in thanks.
He came to stand beside her and surprised her by also turning his eyes upwards to the view. "You must be worried for them," he said, eyes not leaving the view of the Eastern United States and Western Europe, the bright blue Atlantic Ocean cutting the view in half. "I know that you have friends down there, Inspector."
Octavia's face flashed in her mind as Nora nodded, also joining him in returning her eyes to Earth. She tried to keep the emotion out of her voice as she spoke. "Octavia is one of the strongest people I've ever met, sir. She takes a punch and gets right back up. If anyone can make it down there, she can," she said confidently, a proud smile on her face as she thought fondly of her friend.
"I doubt that brother of hers would let anything happen to her," Shumway muttered, shaking his head as he focused his attention back to the people milling around the deck. He cleared his throat and turned to her, continuing, "Wouldn't you agree?"
Nora frowned but nodded her head in agreement. Of course Octavia would be better off with Bellamy there to look out for her. She didn't doubt for a second that if he had been given the chance to get himself arrested and thrown into the Skybox in order to follow her down to the surface, he would have. She looked at the Commander, a question forming in the back of her mind that she'd never thought to ask but she was cut short as Shumway walked away, eyes set on two teenagers that looked to be conspiring in a dark corner of the deck and he paid her no more attention.
With a halfhearted salute to his back, she slowly turned once more to look at the Earth as she was filled with dread as she realized that not one, but two, people she loved were somewhere on the surface fighting to survive.
AFTER
"If you open your mouth to anyone, I swear to G-"
The pressure on Nora's neck was suddenly lifted as Shumway was pulled away roughly. He turned with a look that could kill, only for all the color in his face to drain as Sgt. Miller looked at him in obvious shock and a hint of distaste. He looked to Nora, gesturing to her to come towards him protectively. Shumway fumbled as Nora moved away from him, looking at him with her own mixture of horror and disbelief.
"Is everything under control here, Commander?" the sergeant asked, motioning Nora back towards the busier corridor. He looked at her for only a moment before turning back to Shumway. "You're wanted in CC," he informed her. His eyes never left his commander's. "You wouldn't want to be late."
Part of her wanted to protest, to demand from Shumway answers to questions she hadn't realized she'd had, and she want to wait and see if Miller punished him for his rough treatment of her. She wanted to protest but her instincts to leave the situation forced her feet to move without her consent. Nodding once before turning away, Nora resumed her walk to Command with a quickened pace.
"What the hell was that about?" she thought to herself, looking over her shoulder to see Miller leaving a disgruntled Shumway alone in the corridor. His eyes locked with hers and a shiver ran down her back at the hatred that was being channeled her way from the Commander. Bowing her head quickly and turning back to her destination, she held up her ID card to be scanned and pushed open the door of CC.
Whatever had just happened with Shumway would have to be understood later. She buried the uneasy feeling in her stomach, surprised by the charged energy of the room as she realized how many people were on deck. Techs were running around the room, yelling stats, pointing at the large monitors, each driven with a purpose. She spotted Dr. Griffin, Sinclair, and a few other higher-ranking officers scattered across the deck. Her eyes scanned the screens that took up the large monitor at the front of the room, heart racing as she realized they were the faces of the 100.
Thank god. They're still alive.
The feeling of happiness slowly left her as she realized that every face was surrounded by a gray border and each life sign was inactive. She felt her chest tightening as she walked closer, not wanting to believe what she was seeing. The empty faces of one hundred dead kids stared back at her. All heartbeat monitors were flat across the entire board. Her eyes scanned the faces, looking for those that she knew had been sent to the ground.
Jaha, Wells – deceased
"What made you want to join the Guard?" Wells asked, handing over the books that she was requesting from the Archives. He rang in her ID card and catalogued her rental of the titles. A Brave New World. 1984. Fahrenheit 451. He remembered their names from his Classic Literature but little else about her choice in reading.
Nora took care to gently pack the novels into her satchel and thought about the question. With a casual shrug she slung the satchel over her shoulder and looked at him honestly, "The Ark is my home, and I want to be able to protect it and help it flourish, even if that means protecting it from itself."
Looking only half satisfied with her ambiguous answer, Wells nodded his head and shuffled a pile of books on the counter from side to side. He opened his mouth to say more but stopped himself, only to start again in a rushed manner, "But your dad is doing the same thing, right? Isn't that what both of our dads do, the whole point of the Council? Why go into the Guard when you could be involved in the real decisions that matter on the Ark?"
He huffed and forced himself to the stop shuffling the pile of books as Nora looked on in amusement. "All the Guard does is make you into a uniform with a gun. You could make real change happen if you'd joined one of the Guilds."
Her abrupt snort of laughter stopped Wells from continuing and he looked at her in confusion. She waved a hand at him and composed herself. "Do you really think that our either of our fathers have made 'real' change," she asked, letting another smile slip as she held up air quotations. "All the council does is uphold the laws that were written when the Ark was built. They don't make decisions, the consult a rulebook. They haven't changed anything," she said bitterly, the amusement leaving her face as she continued. "At least in the Guard I've learned skills to protect myself and the people that I care for. Can you say the same?"
Griffin, Clarke – deceased
"Do you have to keep using your face as a door?"
The needle stung as it pierced through the broken skin of her eyebrow. With a wince, Nora cursed under her breath and let out a fake laugh, shooting the blonde a glare as she continued stitching her face back together. "It's not like I did this on purpose, Clarke," she bit out as the string tugged her skin uncomfortably. "Training today wasn't exactly what I would call 'fun'," she said sourly, happy to hear the click of the scissors cutting the string, and sat back as Clarke set down her tools.
The younger girl shot her a sympathetic look as Nora caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, wincing as she gingerly poked at the stitched. Swatting away her hand, Clarke shot her a warning look, "You'll just force them out if you keep messing with them," she scolded, reaching into the medicine cabinet to grab a three day dose of antibiotics. Tossing them to Nora, she looked at her thoughtfully and after a few moments of silence the other girl grew uncomfortable under her gaze.
"What's on your mind, doc?" Nora tried lightly, shifting in her seat as she felt scrutinized for an unknown reason.
With a shrug the look left Clarke's face and was replaced with a smile. "I was just thinking that I see you a lot more frequently than the other cadets but that's probably just because you're such a rash decision maker," she laughed and gave her a friendly smile. "You should learn to be more careful, Nora."
Over the years Nora had been a recurrent visitor of the Med Bay. What started as cuts and scrapes as a child evolved into multiple broken bones and at the worst a short coma following a fall down a maintenance shaft – though Clarke had to agree the fault there lay with the person who had failed to properly rope off the shaft in question. Only a few weeks after her recovery, Nora was back in the Med Bay with bruised ribs and a broken nose from off-hours sparring with a fellow cadet.
Shaking her head at Nora's mutterings of disagreement at her comment, she helped the wounded cadet off the exam table and sent her on her way, calling down the hall to reprimand Nora's fidgeting of her stitches. The cadet sent her a rude hand gesture before mock saluting the blonde and disappearing around the corner. Shaking her head with a small laugh, Clarke greeted another patient and led them into Med Bay, she continued her shift. Her mother once called Nora Bishop a walking disaster and Clarke couldn't help but agree.
Blake, Octavia – deceased
No. God, please no. Please not her, too. Her mug shot blurred and twisted in Nora's eyes as she tried to understand what she was seeing. Please, please no. A tear escaped from her eye and sped its way down her cheek, falling unnoticed to the floor with a silent splash.
Nora watched in silent anticipation for Octavia to open the gift in her lap. It was simply wrapped in old copies of Council minutes that her dad had insisted be printed before losing them in his office. Nora had found them two months before and realizing the value of the carbon paper, however recycled it had become over the decades, knew that they would live to serve yet another purpose. She'd used the minutes to wrap the small box containing Octavia's gift and had used charcoal to decorate it with whimsy, swooping patterns. A spare piece of copper wire, found in the junk drawer of their meager kitchen, was used to tie a bow.
Now, as she waited for the younger girl to open her gift, she wondered if the gift was silly. It was an old dress that she'd been given for her sixteenth birthday by her mother. She'd worn it only a few times before it was lost amongst the other clothes she had and was entirely forgotten when her wardrobe became more uniforms than casual dress. Knowing how difficult it was for Bellamy and his mother to find clothes for Octavia as she grew older, Nora felt that she would appreciate the dress more than the back of her closet would.
As Octavia opened her present with great concentration, making sure not to rip the paper or crumple the bow, Nora became more confident that she would love the gift. She watched gleefully as Octavia hesitated to open the box within but was overcome with curiosity and gasped when she pulled off the lid.
"Oh my god, Nora!" She squealed, pulling the dress from its box to hold it up her body and fanned out the skirt, posing with a laugh. "How do I look?"
Nora shrugged and tried to hide her smile as her friend danced around the small living quarter with the blue dress. "I dunno, O, why don't you try it on and find out? You'd better hurry," she encouraged the other girl as she stopped her dancing, clutching the fabric tightly with a happy sigh. "I've got guard duty tonight for the dance."
She laughed out loud at the delighted look on Octavia's face as she raced into the bathroom to try on the dress. Resting her head against the edge of the bunk bed as she took a seat on the floor, Nora smiled and pulled the blanket of the bottom bunk. She let out a contented hum as the scent of the blanket's owner seemed to settle in around her. 'Where thou art, that is home.'
The world stopped.
Bellamy.
Her chest felt like it was going to explode. How could she have forgotten? His face wasn't anywhere on the stats screen because he was never officially part of the 100. She was looking at a hundred dead kids, but what was one more? He was gone. Fucking dead. The tightness in her chest made it hard to breathe. A hand brushed her shoulder and she jumped, finally tearing her eyes from the empty stat screens.
Abby stared back at her, worry and confusion clear in her eyes. "Nora, sweetie, what's wrong?"
The floor came up to meet her and Nora swayed unsteadily on her feet, an unstoppable wave of nausea coming over her. She was going to be sick. This was why they had called her down, to inform the next of kin. The Blake's mother had been floated the year previous and her father would have known that she would want to know.
"They're dead," she whispered, tears starting to pool in the corners of her eyes. The floor swam as she forced herself to remain standing. Her chest felt like a giant hole had been punched through the middle. She wondered if everyone could see right through her now. "They're all dead. You lied."
This love's killing me but I want it to
So long you're gone, just like I always knew
But I'm still here waiting for you
