we watch as they light up the sky
Arrowsbane
not a piece in their game (can't control me)
'Whatever the hell we want' only seems like a good idea until somebody decides they want something that isn't theirs to take. A life, a love, a night under the stars.
It starts as a chant, a way of unifying the one hundred against the strict way of life that they had been born to, but it quickly turns into an excuse to run riot without regard for anyone or anything.
The night is far from peaceful, Jasper's moans of pain cut through intermittent bursts of silence. He is dying. John knows it. He thinks that Clarke might know it too, but she's too stubborn to give up.
She's kind like that, so unlike the privileged that the others think she is, she really cares about each and every life – values them as much as her own. It's in the way she speaks to people (although she is curt with the absolute morons), the way she keeps watch even when she's exhausted, the way she comforts a screaming girl on her way to get water. There is a gentleness in her, wrapped around that inner core of steel, and John admires that. He's a survivor, he doesn't know how to be kind.
Three days, it's been three days and still Jasper hasn't woken up. Every moan makes John twitch, and Clarke's frown has only grown heavier. She's worried. He doesn't blame her. People are getting restless, and it's only a matter of time before one of them decides to end it. Moans turn into outright screams, and John bolts for the dropship, following Octavia up the ladder to where – what the fuck?
"Hold him still," Clarke shouts over the noise, knife in hand. It's a little terrifying to be honest, seeing her with a knife and that expression of firm determination. He wouldn't want to be on the other side of that blade right now.
"She's trying to save his life," Spacewalker tells a pissed off Octavia. Footsteps on the ladder make John twist his head to see who else is heading up. It's the older Blake.
"She can't." The man says, and John growls under his breath at his high-and-mightyness. Who the hell is he to say what Clarke can and can't do? Does he really want to piss off the only medical student down here?
"He's a lost cause," Blake insists, "If he's not better by tomorrow, I'll put him out of his misery myself." Blake leaves an awkward silence in his wake, broken only by Jasper's whimpers and Fluffy-hair's irritable grumbling. Spacewalker earns himself a black mark when he admits to Blake being right.
Clarke's mission to save Jasper's life involves her wandering off into the woods with Spacewalker and Jaha in search of some weird red water-weed. Of course John isn't too happy about that. He should be there, he should be watching her back, not those two. But instead, she asked him to stay in camp.
"I need you here John," she told him, "I need somebody I can trust to watch over Jasper."
So he stayed, kicking at the earth and scuffing his shoes in the dirt like a petulant child.
But he still stayed.
Blake takes out a hunting party: Atom, Jones, Mbege, Connor and Diggs. They sneer at him as he sits on the ramp, cleaning his nails with his shrapnel-knife, but he stays firm. Clarke gave him a job to do, and he'll be damned if he fails her now. Nobody but Octavia and Monty are allowed up the ladder, not even if they bring something that's been requested – he takes those items up himself.
A few hours later, something in the air changes.
Like the promise of a storm bearing the whispering voice of death, a great yellow cloud begins rolling towards the camp. Sparks of electricity crackle ominously in the air. John is up and on his feet in seconds, barking orders for everybody to drop what they are doing and get their fucking shit into the dropship right fucking now.
The last of them trickle in just as the cloud reaches the camp, coughing and sputtering and he closes the doors just in time, only a wisp of the yellow fog that burns the skin of anybody close to it is able to seep through the cracks before the airlock seals kick in.
"What's going on?" Monty calls, sticking his head through the floor-hatch.
"Some sort of weird acid storm," he says, doing a quick headcount and coming up with eighty-five which is good because he's pretty sure that's almost everybody who was in camp and then scrambles up the ladder to join the other two, three if he counts Goggles.
"My brother's out there," Octavia says, and John pushes down a strangled, panicked thought of 'So is Clarke.'
"He'll be fine." Monty reassures her, "We'll all be fine."
God I hope so, John thinks.
He dozes off against the wall once Octavia takes over the next shift of watching Jasper and making sure the kid doesn't choke on his own spit in the night, because with their luck, he bloody well would do. He's woken by the clang of hurried footsteps on the ladder and blinks bleary eyes open just in time to see Monty hurl himself through the hatch and slam it down.
"Why are you sitting on the hatch?" is the only thing he can think to say to the panicked teenager.
"Dax is going to kill Jasper!"
"The fuck?" He says, getting up and joining the lighter teen in sitting on the hatch, using their combined weight to counteract the heavy thumping coming from below.
"Don't let him in," Octavia yells, and Monty scowls at her.
"The lock is on the other side. We need to barricade it from above." The brunette spins on the spot, eyes searching for something to jam the lock with.
"I'm going to kill him, okay?" Dax shouts over the banging, "Let me in!"
John wants to laugh at the situation, because nothing about it is okay.
"So not okay," Monty shouts back, trying not to slip sideways off of the hatch.
"Hurry up," John tells Octavia, feeling the wheel move underneath him. She pulls frantically at a pipe on the wall, bracing her foot against something solid. It comes free with a nasty screech of torn metal and they collectively wince at the sound.
"Here," she shouts, rushing back to them. "Move." It takes all three of them to wedge it firmly in place, preventing the hatch from being able to open.
"You better open up this hatch right now!" A voice calls, and John can't help but laugh.
"Go to hell Dax," he shouts back. He shares a relieved look with Octavia and Monty.
Seriously, what the fuck?
Why does this shit always happen to him?
Its several hours before the howling outside stops and they're brave enough to open the doors.
Outside looks practically untouched, almost eerily so. Maybe it only burns living things or something? John is more than happy to bodily hurl Dax outside; using the excuse that Blake had given Jasper another day, and that Dax was overstepping his place to justify it.
He says nothing about the fact that Clarke would probably take Blake's gun and shoot the moron herself. They wouldn't believe it; they don't know how dangerous the look on her face is when a patient is threatened. Honestly, John doesn't want to ever find out what would happen if she ever acted on whatever she's thinking when she makes that face.
The sun begins to go down, and still the others aren't back. John prays to a god he doesn't believe in that they weren't caught in the storm, because he knows that he isn't cut out to take care of these kids by himself. He distracts himself by bullying some of the stronger boys into helping him gather firewood and setting it alight, which draws the others into a makeshift sort of circle around the blaze, huddling close for warmth.
Most of the hunting party comes back, towing a small blonde girl behind them and looking more than a little haunted. A sigh of relief goes up, but still Clarke and Bellamy aren't there. Where are they? Then Clarke strides in with Spacewalker practically on her heels; she looks harried and more than a little stressed. Blake is dragging a heavily laden stretcher and John feels his heart sink. Oh shit. No wonder Clarke looks so pissed.
"Get Clarke whatever she needs." Blake says to the nearest lackey, watching his sister emerge from the dropship and make a beeline for the blonde medic.
"It's about time." Octavia says, relieved. "They were going to kill him." Clarke nods, trying to pull her inside before she notices the stretcher. Predictably, it fails miserably and results in yet another fight between the Blake siblings before Octavia flees back into the ship, tears on her cheeks.
"Lose anyone here?" Blake asks him, and he shakes his head.
"No." He says, "We got lucky. Got everybody inside before the clouds reached us." Blake nods, looking relieved
"And Jasper?"
"Still breathing." John tells him. "No thanks to Dax. Crazy bastard tried to off him. We had to barricade the floor."
Then he adds: "Thought your sister was gonna brain him if he got through. She's scary with a pipe, did you know that?" Blake nods, sighing.
"She's always been a hell-raiser." John doesn't bother to suppress a laugh.
That's one way to phrase it. Maybe if she's been born in a different lifetime, Octavia might have been a Valkyrie. She has fire in her soul too.
She just refused to let the Ark suffocate it.
Blake wanders off to supervise the burial of Atom's body, leaving John to his thoughts. Near the fire, the small blonde girl that Clarke had comforted the night before jerks awake screaming. Babysitting duty sucks, he thinks, before sighing and climbing to his feet. John pads over to sit by her.
"You doing okay?" He asks, and the tiny blonde sniffles.
"No," she whimpers, clutching at a knife. "I have to slay my demons,"
He looks at the knife in her hands, a nasty, sharp-looking piece of metal that really shouldn't be used as a security blanket by a kid, and then at the haunted look in her eyes. Something feels really wrong.
"Slay your demons, huh?" He repeats, watching her face with a sharp gaze.
"Yeah," she nods, something flickering in her eyes. "Or they'll never go away."
John tilts his head to the side, and tugs the knife from her hands.
"Sounds like an awful big task for somebody so small," He hums, tucking the knife into his belt and shuffling her closer to the fire.
"I'm not little," She protests, and he hides a smile in his collar,
"Sure you aren't."
"I'm not!"
"You wanna tell me about these demons of yours kid?" John murmurs, watching her out of the corner of his eye, "I mean, I figure I oughta know what to watch out for."
The little girl goes quiet, goes still, her own eyes fixed on the dancing flames.
"Every night, they come in my dreams," she starts, eyes glassing over as she remembers, "it's always the same. I'm hiding until my parents come back from work, my brother isn't there –"
John can't stop his own eyes from widening at this. He didn't know there was more than one illegal child with them.
"–we sit down for dinner, and then afterwards Mum reads me a story and brushes my hair back. It's normal, just a normal day, and we're so happy. And then the door clicks open, but it's not Stephen coming home, it's the guard. Everybody is shouting, and Mum is crying, and somebody twists my arm back. It hurts. It hurt so much, I thought it was going to break."
The fire crackles, and in the distance there are crickets chirping away. She doesn't need to say what happened next, there's only one solution to this story. No second children, no exceptions.
"They said I assaulted a guard. I don't know, I don't remember. I just wanted my Mum."
"Jesus kid," John murmurs, pulling her close as she starts to cry, starts to hiccup with tears rolling down her cheeks.
"I never asked to be born," She whimpers. "Maybe if I hadn't they'd be okay. Maybe Stephen would still be happy."
She doesn't need to tell him what her demons are now. They're the same as everybody else's. The Council and their goon squad. Jaha and his merry band of sycophants. The Exodus Charter – meant to bring life and keep humanity safe.
What good is continuing the survival of mankind if they lose their own humanity in the process?
"They loved you," is the only thing John can think to say. "They must have. That's what parents do. It wasn't your fault"
"I want my Mum," Charlotte repeats, sobbing into his side.
"I know kid," John mumbles, rubbing a circle on her back, "I know."
She falls asleep next to him, lashes stuck together and her face puffy from crying.
The next morning, to his eternal amazement, John discovers that he has a shadow of his own now.
Originally Posted: March 15th 2016.
Rewritten: January 2nd 2018.
The Ending of this chapter was completely rewritten. Any material after this chapter is brand new. See AO3 version for original Author's notes.