Chapter 2:
The eight of them headed outside to talk outside so Josephine wouldn't hear them, leaving Miller inside to guard the person they hoped most was lying.
But if she was lying, she was doing a damn good job. After all, hadn't all the things she told them been true?
"I don't care what that she-demon says," Raven said as she started pacing back and forth. "Clarke wouldn't give up on us, or Madi for that matter."
"I think she might be telling the truth," Murphy said as everyone looked up at him in shock and horror.
"Cockroach now is not the time. Just because you feel guilty about helping Josephine doesn't mean you get to take the easy way out now," Octavia muttered. She still wasn't on good terms with the rest of her people. Her brother wouldn't even look her in the eye, but they had bigger problems now. Clarke was the only thing that Bellamy could focus on right now.
"She's right," Echo said after several uncomfortable minutes of silence. "We don't know she's telling the truth. She's the best liar I've ever seen, and I've known many."
"First, I wouldn't be tossing insults because I promise you mine are worse, Bloodreina. And this isn't guilt or pity or whatever. I'm being serious," Murphy said. He wasn't offended by Octavia's suggestion, but it did put a pit he was all too familiar with in his stomach.
"You guys didn't see her during the Eclipse. I did."
"Murphy, this is Clarke we're talking about. She's brave and she survives," Bellamy said as if the sheer will of his words could make it so.
"Bellamy, this Clarke was not the brave princess that told you, you would have to kill her for that wristband. This was not the Clarke who shot the rifle in the sky while almost dead from disease to stop the kids from killing each," Murphy said. "This was a different Clarke entirely."
"You guys just don't understand," Murphy said as she scuffed his feet in the dirt.
He was uncharacteristically coy with whatever information about Clarke he had, Bellamy thought. Maybe because it wasn't his information to share.
"Murphy, tell me what happened to my daughter. Now," Abby said for the first time that whole day. Kane was still on ice. Bellamy radioed her before she could wake anyone up. She felt more than a little ashamed that she hadn't noticed Clarke wasn't even her Clarke anymore. She let Clarke down, again, and she knew it.
"Everyone else tried to kill other people," Murphy said. "Bellamy tried to drown me and almost suffocated Clarke. Emori cut me. Miller and Jackson were trying to cut bugs out of each other."
"But not Clarke. When I went to look for Clarke, she had a knife to her own throat. She was talking to the radio, but it wasn't even on. I don't know who was on the other end of the radio, or what they were saying, but Clarke was really going to do it. I threatened to shoot her in the leg and she was still going to do it. I only changed her mind when I told her I needed help to Bellamy from killing us or himself."
How could they all have missed it? Since the day she left for the ground, she turned into their personal devil. Blame every mistake, every death, on Clarke because she would take it. She would bear it so they don't have to.
She ran away and took on the title Commander of Death and they still didn't notice. What would keep Clarke from the people she loves most if not for guilt and grief? And then they left her on the ground to die. But she survived, miraculously, from then to come back and place the weight of the world on her shoulders again.
"She must have felt like she was drowning," Bellamy thought. It must have been so easy when Josephine gave her the choice to chose peace finally. It must have been as peaceful as simply sliding under the water after a long swim.
And if it secured the safety of her peopleā¦.
The likelihood that Clarke actually was gone began to dawn on everyone.
Bellamy stormed off, unable to even begin to comprehend a life without Clarke.
As Echo turned to go after him, Raven put a hand on her shoulder.
"Let me," she said as she turned to follow him.
She caught him sitting on a tree stump in an abandoned field. The primes were apparently not growing anything there at the moment and for a moment it like the rest of the world melted away.
But as she looked into his eyes, she fell to the ground with him.
How could Clarke's two oldest friends have missed so much?
END OF CHAPTER 2
