29
Scratches and Staples
OCTAVIA
I am alive. But I no longer FEEL alive. The adrenaline, the rush, the high, is receding as quickly as our enemy. And as it leaves, the pain rushes in to fill its absence. Every inch of me is throbbing or aching or burning or stinging. My calf, my thigh, my rib cage, my shoulder, my whole fucking arm... Everything hurts. But the worst of the pain is what is aching on the inside. Because the excitement is gone. The itch is gone. Even the anger is strangely absent. And, in my exhaustion, all that is left is the goddamn emptiness.
I hear Luna panting beside me and I feel her weight press into me and I collapse to the ground alongside her. And we just lean against each other, struggling to breathe against the pain. For the first time, I notice the shaft of the arrow sticking out ridiculously from the back of my bum ankle, just above the Achilles. It's tip is lodged into the plaster of my cast and I cannot say just how long it has been sticking out of me. I wrench it free of the cast and toss it aside. And I can't even find the strength to laugh at the irony of it. All I can do is breathe.
"So..." Luna groans from beside me. She has an arm wrapped around her middle, clutching the spot between her ribs and her hip, the spot in my side that always aches when I run too fast. "Did we win?"
"You're hurt, Luna." I comment, stupidly.
I grit my teeth against my own pain and turn towards her to get a closer look at her side. But she won't let me pry her hands from the wound.
"It's nothing, just a scratch. Just the little prick of an ice pick." She says, trying to push herself up, but falling back to her elbows with a sharp gasp.
"What are you doing here, Luna?" I ask because I am still surprised. She was the last person I expected to have fighting and bleeding and struggling for breath by my side. "I thought you didn't want your clan involved in war."
"I didn't." She chokes out, between sharp, shallow breaths. "I came alone... For Lexa."
"Well... I'm glad you came." I say softly. It is the closest thing to a 'thank you' I can get out of me.
"I'm not." Luna tries to chuckle and doubles over, coughing instead. And I watch in horror as a fresh layer of black blood coats her palm and seeps from between her fingers. Once the coughing passes she starts to shake and I am worried.
I set my jaw and muster my strength and push myself through the pain and the exhaustion and onto my shaky feet.
"Come on..." I say, hooking my good arm under her armpit and around her shoulder blades. "We have to get you to medical."
Luna is too weak to fight me. But she is too weak to help me either, and by the time I manage to pull her onto her feet I feel dizzy and weak on my own. Luna leans heavily against my good shoulder and it's all I can do to stay upright as we hobble through the mass of bodies around us. Some are twisted, broken, severed and still. Others are writhing, slowly dying. Others crawl, trying to find the strength to rise. Still others just sit there dazed, as if all they can focus on is learning how to breathe again.
I don't make it five steps before my legs give out under the added weight of Luna and we crumple to the ground in a tangled mess. Luna cannot walk and I cannot carry her and the panic is rising.
"Help!" I call out into the night. "Someone help me!"
All that answers me are the moans and groans of the dying.
"Someone help me!" I cry again, swiveling my head around, looking in all directions, for someone... Anyone. Here and there I spot warriors on their feet, some limping across the field towards Arkadia, some propped against each other hobbling together, others kneeling over their own wounded. No one pays me any mind. I am just another body crying in the night.
Luna is shaking harder now. Her eyes are unfocused, glazed and rolling.
"Hold on, Luna." I whisper to her. "Stay with me. Hold on."
I have no other choice. I have to leave her.
"I'll be back." I promise. And I clench my teeth and push myself to my feet, forcing my legs to hold. I turn towards the gates and slam directly into a wall and suddenly I am on my ass again.
I blink up at the wall before me even as it bends and scoops Luna into its arms. The green and silver on his face is smeared with crimson like a four-year-old decided to decorate him for Christmas. The shaft of an arrow sticks out of his left bicep and another protrudes from his right thigh. But he doesn't seem to notice, and Turlino doesn't even limp as he carries Luna across the sea of blood and bodies to the metal gates of Arkadia.
The infirmary is so crowded that there are wounded sitting propped up against the walls in the hallway outside of it, slowly bleeding as they wait for someone to notice them, someone to tend to them. Inside, the room is complete chaos. There are far too many patients and far too few medics.
I spot Abby in the corner crouched over a cot, shouting instructions to the panicked Jackson beside her. I've never seen Abby look so stressed. I've never seen Abby looked so focused.
"Abby!" I call out to her. "Abby! Help, it's Luna!"
Abby frowns at the limp body in Turlino's massive arms.
"We don't have any open cots." She says, biting her lip.
"Here!" Someone shouts from a few cots over. I turn in surprise to see Murphy lifting someone off of a cot. "Here. Put her here."
Turlino gently sets Luna onto the cot as Murphy, limping, drops the other person onto the floor beside the wall with a grunt. He sees me watching him and gives me a sad shrug as he grabs a pair of crutches leaning on the wall and slides them beneath his armpits. "That poor guy didn't need his cot anymore."
Turlino tuns to leave and I grasp his wrist.
"There are others out there." He says, simply before I even open my mouth.
I want to thank him, but my mouth is too dry, my tongue too swollen, so I just nod and release him.
Abby hovers over Luna, jumping into action. She tears Luna's shirt open and all I see is black. It's as if someone spilled a bottle of ink down her stomach and side. A huge black gash runs diagonally from just below her armpit nearly to her navel, and even as I watch more of the darkness spills from it.
"She needs blood." Abby says, her voice simultaneously calm and urgent. "Murphy, get Jackson. Tell him we need a transfusion set-up stat... Murphy!"
Murphy jolts at the bark. He had been staring at the blackness stupidly, looking like he might vomit. He glances at Abby quickly, his eyes wide. He still looks like he might puke any second. But he nods, turns, and hobbles off.
"Put pressure on the wound." Abby instructs me, handing me a pad of gauze. I do as I'm told, watching in confusion as Abby suddenly pulls off her med-coat and rolls up her long-sleeved shirt. She's rubbing the crook of her elbow with an orange solution when Jackson arrives brandishing a bag of blood, a mess of tubes, and a giant needle. He looks at Abby with the same confusion on his panicked face.
"That blood won't work." Abby says simply, now cleaning the crook of Luna's elbow.
"It's O negative." Jackson replies, still confused.
Abby doesn't bother to reply as she pulls the needle and tubing out of Jackson's hands. She works rapidly, yet smoothly, an expert at her craft.
"That's a..." I nearly jump at the words suddenly leaving Luna's lips. She's regained consciousness, but just barely. Her eyes are still rolling and she struggles to focus them on Abby's hand perched over her arm. "REALLY, REALLY big needle."
I would laugh if I wasn't struggling just to keep breathing. Abby doesn't hesitate. She clamps the tubing and drives the needle into Luna's vein without so much as a "3-2-1." Then she holds her own arm out to Jackson.
"Abby?" Jackson's eyes are even wider with panic and confusion.
"She needs MY blood, Jackson." Abby says simply. "Now."
Jackson just stares at her like she's gone mad. "But... What about the other patients? We need you on the floor. I can't handle all this alone..."
"Jackson..." Abby says calmly. "She's already lost too much blood. You need to do this now, or she will die."
Jackson hesitates one final moment before accepting the needle and tubing from Abby and driving a needle into her own arm. Jackson unclamps the tubing and I watch in shock as black blood creeps down the tube from Abby's arm to Luna's.
"You're a Nightblood?" My brain feels like its going to explode from the worry and the adrenaline and the utter, utter, confusion.
"Not yet..." Abby answers. "But hopefully I'm close enough. Jackson, go back to the others. Murphy... Rubbing alcohol and the stapler... Go."
"Is she going to be OK?" I ask, surprised at the crack of fear in my voice.
"If the blood takes." Abby answers in a tone that sounds to me like 'I have no fucking clue, but I hope so.'
Abby sits down on the edge of the cot, clenching and unclenching her fist, looking just a tad woozy as the blood drains from her. "OK, Murphy... Just like the others..." She says softly as Murphy reappears, leaning on one crutch while holding a staple gun and a bottle of alcohol in his other hand.
"Slow and easy... Alcohol first."
Murphy still looks like he's fighting back the vomit. His lip is curled and there is fear in his eyes. But he pushes my hands away from Luna's side, exposes the gash, uncaps the bottle of alcohol and starts pouring it over the wound. At the sting of it, Luna lets out a gasp and her unfocused eyes fall on mine as Murphy sets to work with the staple gun. And I suddenly realize there are tears in my own eyes.
"You can't die, Luna." My words are a whisper, but I feel like I'm shouting them with every ounce of my being. Because my body is so broken, but the pain of my shoulder and arm and legs is nothing compared to the pain I've been carrying inside of me since the moment Lincoln fell into the mud. Because, as broken as I am on the outside, I am far more shattered on the inside. And no staple gun can put me back together again. And I am tired of the anger and the loneliness and the I can't carry them anymore. I can't. I can't. I can't.
"You can't die, Luna." I repeat, my voice cracking in desperation. "Because I need you. I need you to teach me..." Luna's eyes hold mine for half a second before rolling back into her head. And I am wondering if she understood me even as I watch her eyelids drop.
"You can't do anything for her now, Octavia. You need to get your own wounds looked at." Abby's voice is soft and soothing like a mother's but she eyes me up and down like a doctor. Her eyes linger on the charred skin of my forearm. "There's a boy from one of the other clans over there who has an herbal ointment for burns more effective than anything we ever had on the Ark. Get him to clean that. Don't worry... I'll be with her. I'm not going anywhere." She nods to the tube in her arm with a sad, tired chuckle.
I'm too emotionally and physically drained to argue, even at the prospect of having Teeko be the one to tend my wounds. I wipe at my tears as I cross the room. Already the panic is receding. The desperation inside of me has disappeared as suddenly as it came. And all that is left is the emptiness again.
But the sound of a familiar voice drifts towards me from Teeko's corner of the room and I almost find the strength to laugh. Almost.
"Damn it, Teeko! It's just a scratch! Put away the fucking Crocusjus."
"You have to let me clean it, Malika... Or else it will get infected. Stop being such a baby, and let me clean it."
"That stuff burns like a bastard. Touch me with it and I swear I'll stab you in the eye with a scalpel. Just use the alcohol to clean it."
"Crocusjus is way more potent and effective." Teeko answers as I catch sight of the bickering siblings in the corner. "The rhizome extract is not only antiseptic, it's also anodyne, hypotensive, antispasmodic, febrifuge, and..."
"OK, OK... Just stop!" Malika interrupts him with another fabulous eye-roll. "Does it treat headaches too? Because you're giving me a major migraine."
"Actually... If you grind the petal and mix it with powdered..."
"I said stop!" Malika interrupts him again. "Stop talking and just get it over with, then."
"We're going to have to suture the wound closed too." Teeko adds.
"Whatever... Just get it the fuck over with."
"The other kid borrowed my staple gun." Teeko mumbles, before turning and calling out over his shoulder. "Yo, Murphy! Stapler!"
Looking for Murphy, Teeko sees me limping towards him and he immediately sets down the Crocusjus he was threatening his sister with and rushes towards me to assist me. And I wish I was strong enough to refuse his help. But I'm not.
Seeing his distraction, Malika quietly rises from her cot and tries to limp away silently.
"Hey... I'm not done with you, Malika!" Teeko scolds her and she lets out a long huff as she plunks down on the cot beside me.
"Octavia kom Trikru." She smiles at me. The beautiful green and silver tree on her face is smudged in red blood and brown dirt, but she is pretty all the same. "You are still breathing."
"Just barely." I mumble as Teeko takes my ruined arm in his hands. His eyes are wide and his forehead creased.
"I know..." I say. "It's fucking bad."
"No..." Teeko tries to reassure me. "It's not THAT bad. OK... It's bad... But I've seen Azbluma Ointment heal worse. This is going to sting..." He warns, digging through a sack for a gray-white cream.
"Not as bad as fucking Crocusjus." Malika sighs.
It stings. I swear it burns as hotly as the actual flames burned as they ate through my flesh. I feel like my skin is melting. I expect to see it dripping right off my bone like wax. But my skin is still attached, the burn snaking up my arm, pinkish-red, shiny, blistering, and tinged black along its edges. It stings. It stings bad. Bad enough to make my breath catch and my eyes water. Bad enough to make me forget the ache inside for one moment. Two moments. Three. And then the burn subsides and is abruptly replaced by a cooling sensation, like I just plunged my arm into a bucket of ice water. I breathe a sigh of relief at the merciful cold. And then I find myself half wishing the burn would return, because with the cold, comes the emptiness again.
Murphy hobbles up to us as Malika finally succumbs to Teeko and his Crocusjus. "Fuck... Fuck... Fuck... Fuck... Fuck... It burns... It burns... Fuck" She mumbles under her breath and I almost laugh. Almost.
"Don't worry, you're getting some Crocusjus too, Octavia." Teeko smirks at me before turning to Murphy. "Will you staple this one up for me?" He asks, nodding his head at Malika. "Start with her mouth."
"Fuck... Fuck... Shut up, Teeko! I'll still stab you in the eye... Fuck... It burns."
"And stick around for a second." Teeko adds to Murphy. "This one needs stapled too."
"I don't know what the hell I'm doing." Murphy admits to me while he staples me back together. My skin still burns like fire where Teeko cleaned the gashes in my thigh and calf, side, and cheekbone. My whole body is a mess. And I relish the burn. And I relish the sharp bite of every staple that snags into my skin. Because every pang is better than the emptiness.
"I climbed out of my cot just to offer it to someone who needed it more than me." Murphy adds. "Not because I was volunteering to help. I don't remember registering for Abby's goddamn Nurse Training 101 course. She keeps making me staple people up. And clean their wounds and pull knives and arrows out of people. And... I fucking hate blood. Especially black blood." He shudders and I almost laugh. Almost.
"Why are you helping then?" I ask. Because I haven't spent more than five minutes in the same room as Murphy since the day he tried to hang my brother. And though I now understand what it's like to want to hurt, hurt, hurt Bellamy, I don't understand why the hell Murphy is helping anyone other than himself. This is not the Murphy I remember from the dropship. But, then again, I suppose I am not the Octavia he remembers either.
Murphy just shrugs and adds another staple to my thigh. I relish the bite. "Abby asked me to." He says. "And she's a stubborn woman."
...
I spend the night in the infirmary because I cannot bear the thought of returning to my room. I'm already struggling to breathe as it is. Normally I would go outside and find a soft, level patch of ground beneath the trees... Beneath the open sky. But that would involve hobbling through the blood and the bodies. And I don't think I will be able to breathe out there either, not amongst the groans of the dying and the silence of the dead.
So I just accept the strange green powder Teeko gives to me and I give my cot to someone who needs it more. And I curl up on the floor in the corner. And I am utterly exhausted. But I am aching outside and I am aching inside. And I know the sleep will not come. And I am wondering how the hell Teeko's powder that tastes suspiciously like ground up grass is going to possibly help with anything. And even as I am still scraping the taste from my tongue, my eyelids droop. And I'm not even aware enough to be surprised as sleep takes me.
I wake as sore as I ever remember being. Ever. But the blood all over the various parts of my body is caked and dry. My stapled gashes are already showing signs of healing, and the skin on my arm is still an angry red, but already I feel it hardening like leather. I guess Teeko's love for botany, nerdy as it is, isn't such a bad thing after all.
I slowly pry my sore ass off the metal floor, and immediately I have to pee. But I hold it, because I need to check on Luna first. The infirmary is still crowded and bustling, but the chaos is receding into commotion. I hobble my way over to Luna's cot and feel my stomach flip. The girl in Luna's cot has light, grass green and violet streaks across her face, the markings of Louwoda Kliron. The markings of the enemy. She glares up at me as if to say, 'what the hell do you want? Unless you're bringing me a pudding cup, get the fuck away from my cot.' And I just stare at her blankly, trying to figure out why the hell we are treating the enemy wounded. And trying to figure out why she is not Luna. Because this is LUNA'S cot.
Except that it wasn't always Luna's cot. I think of the man Murphy dumped on the floor to make room for Luna and my stomach stops flipping and drops completely. There can only be one reason this cot was made available... And I'm afraid to look at the floor, lest I see her wild hair strewn across the metal.
"Octavia kom Trikru." A voice calls gently behind me and my heart beats wildly and my stomach flips again. Because the voice is Luna's. She's standing behind me, pulling a standard issue gray Arkadia blanket from her shoulders and exchanging it for her dirty, black and red stained coat.
"Luna?" I stammer, in complete surprise and even more complete confusion. "How are you standing... I thought you were... Are you... Are you going somewhere?"
"We all are." A deep, soulful voice answers from the cot behind Luna and I glance around her to spot Indra sitting still and patient as Abby sews stitches into her collarbone.
"Indra!" I gasp. I am as relieved to see her as I am to see Luna. As relieved... And as confused.
She shoots me a quick smile, just a flash really. But it is enough to make me forget my emptiness for one moment. Two. Maybe three.
"Clarke has called a meeting of the clans." Indra says in a tone that indicates she is explaining something. But I am just even more confused at her words.
"CLARKE? CLARKE called a meeting of the clans?" I repeat stupidly. "What do you mean CLARKE called it?"
"I mean exactly what I said." Indra answers simply. "We leave for Polis as soon as Abby finishes patching me up."
"Polis?" I am so damn confused. And by their tiny smirks, the women around me seem to find it amusing.
"It's still the capital. Where else would she hold it?" Indra says in a tone that makes me half-expect her to follow the words with a sassy 'duh.'
My head is swimming. None of anything they've told me so far makes any sense. I'm wondering if maybe Teeko's grass powder is to blame. I have so many questions I don't even know where to start. "I thought Azgeda took Polis..."
"Clarke has reclaimed it." Luna answers.
"How the hell are you going to Polis today? I watched you almost bleed to death last night. How are you even standing?"
Luna shrugs. "I told you it was nothing."
"She nearly died." Abby pipes in. "I've never seen anyone recover so quickly from that kind of wound before. She shouldn't even be conscious right now, let alone standing and walking around."
"I had a good doctor." Luna chuckles. "Plus that gangly, pimply, sweetheart of a boy put some kind of magical purple potion on the wound for me. And I think maybe, just MAYBE, he has a crush on you, Octavia." She flashes an evil smirk at me.
I just frown back. "Crocusjus isn't THAT magical."
"It's the blood." Abby pipes in again, the hint of awe in her voice. "I gave her three liters last night. Jackson tried to stop me at two, but she needed three. Really... I shouldn't be standing right now either. But I feel fine... Better than fine."
"Have I thanked you, by the way?" Luna asks.
"About six times." Abby chuckles.
"How do you even have nightblood?" I blurt out over the women, because the confusion is too much. I can't make sense of any of it. And I'm worried I will feel the anger rising if they don't start explaining things more clearly. "And why the hell are you treating enemy wounded?" I ask with a nod towards the Shallow Valley warrior.
"She needed help." Abby just shrugs.
"She's the enemy." I argue, because I feel the anger rising.
"Not anymore." Indra says.
And before I can turn my angry glare on her... Before I can shout more questions at the women laughing at me... Luna cuts me off.
"I daresay you will have all of your questions answered at the summit today, Octavia." She says. "Take a deep breath. Maybe two."
"Or ten." Indra suggests as I hobble away from the giggling women, wishing I could stomp properly.
