Chapter 34

One Thousand Four Hundred Eighty days after Praimfaya

Octavia sat at her desk and looked over papers from the farm. Kara was reporting good news. The farm was bouncing back and thriving. She was still worried about it going fallow. Octavia realized that it was a very possible reality and one that might happen in their near future. She wished that she had Monty there with her. She knew that he would know what to do in order to help. Kara was a good farmer, but she wasn't Monty. Kara Cooper didn't have Monty's skills or knowledge. He was the only one that Clarke trusted when it came to herbs and how to grow things. She knew that before the attacks on the drop ship by Anya and finally Tristan, Clarke was going to ask him to build a farm, to grow food and herbs, both medicinal and not, and slow down Jasper's still. But, still it was good news and she would take it.

It had been a rough few weeks. It had only been about two weeks since she'd forcibly removed Abby from the Med Bay. Jackson had been making his daily rounds. They had more or less weened Abby down to a pill or two a day. She was still visibly shaken and very un-Abby-like. There had been a few times that times that Octavia thought that she was going to have to do something drastic, but eventually Abby would calm or pass out completely.

It was during these times that Octavia would call for Indra and Miller. She was using them to measure the pulse of the bunker. They had nothing ill to report, which was good considering both the doctor and the leader were "ill." Indra had convinced the people that the Doctor was caring for Octavia and that she would make a full recovery. She had also hinted at the fact that the people would need to see them outside the office. Octavia knew that they needed to get out. She knew that it wasn't only for the bunker's sake, but it was also for Abby's peace of mind.

There was so much that she needed to do, that she had fallen behind on, but she was trusting the council to keep things running. Indra and Miller had been her eyes and ears, so to hear Indra's casual comments of them needing to be seen, she knew what it meant. The people thought that they were being lied to and that Octavia was "sicker" than they were letting on. They all knew about the "raging sickness" that she had shortly after they were all sealed in. What no one knew was that it Clarke's radio silence that triggered it.

Octavia knew that she was right. It would do them good to get out of the office and the leader's quarters for a little while. She decided that they would go out for lunch. Now, all she needed to do was prepare Abby for it. The only true wildcard in the whole thing would be Kane.

She knew that Kane cared for Abby and it went deeper than any platonic relationship that he tried to convince her of. She'd seen the way that they looked at each other. She knew how Kane had tried to cover up Abby's drug usage, but in the end, it was Abby that got her own self caught. Jackson and Niylah had both come to Octavia way before Delphia did. She knew about it, but she honestly didn't know how bad it was until Delphia alerted her. Kane stepped up as soon as he found out that Abby was locked in with her. He'd come barging to the door, only to be stop by Miller and Indra. After two days, Octavia relented and let him in. She knew that if she didn't stop him and give him something, that rumors would start. And, with rumors of the magnitude that could be raised, all Hell would break loose in the bunker. They wouldn't survive it and they both knew it.

Kane agreed to Octavia's conditions only because he knew that Octavia was trying to save her. He made some very overtly and thinly veiled threats to Octavia, but she brushed them off. Even going so far as telling Indra that he was in love with Abby and that was why he was so upset. He knew that his words would cause him trouble, but he didn't care. He was thinking with his heart and not with his head.

Indra's words had been instantaneous. "Branwada!" (Idiot!) Octavia wanted to agree with her, but she understood. She had literally followed Pike until they saved Clarke and defeated A.L.I.E. just so she could kill him for killing Lincoln. It was a grudge, and she knew that Kane could hold one, as well. She also knew that Miller had put a guard on him. He was smart enough to use Skaikru for the mission, because they all knew that a Grounder suddenly following Kane meant a death sentence for Kane. For now, Indra would let him be watched, but she even told the man as he left the office if he betrayed Octavia that there would be no one and no corner of the bunker that would protect him from her wrath. Kane merely nodded, thanked Octavia for her care of Abby, and left the offices before he could dig himself into a deeper hole.

For Octavia, it was different having Abby in there with her. Especially when she was lucid. When Abby was coherent, she liked to talk and discuss things, plan things out and try to understand everything. Octavia decided that it was the scientist in the doctor. Abby had to know how things worked. It was how she dealt with everything. If she could understand it down to the smallest level, then she could build it up again in her mind making it make sense. Grounder life was just too violent. She understood it, but she valued life. She was doctor and she'd pledged to harm none when she took her oath. Killing was as foreign to her as the Grounder language. She fought to keep lives living by healing, surgery and medicine. She saw Grounders and their way of life as her personal antithesis. She couldn't find a good way to deconstruct it and make it work. And, what hurt her more, was that Clarke had.

And, that was another problem for Abby. She loved Clarke, but it was more than that. She loved the idea of what she'd built Clarke up to be. The Clarke that she met on the ground was very much her daughter, but she wasn't at the same time. It had taken years, mostly in that bunker, for Abby to understand that her daughter had simply found a way to survive, she was playing by Earth rules now, and that Clarke was no longer a child. She loved her and she always would, but there things that Clarke had done that even she wasn't sure she had the power to forgive Clarke for doing.

"Maybe there are no good guys," Abby stated.

Octavia turned her head and saw that Abby had joined her in the office. She sat down her papers and pen and looked over the dark haired woman. The more Octavia studied Abby the more she wondered what Jake had looked like. Abby and Clarke were as different as night and day, but there was still enough commonality between them to make them family.

"What?"

"It is what I told Clarke when we met again just after the fall of Mount Weather. I was trying to help her, but I think that I pushed her further away. It's my fault, you know? That all this happened. That she is the way she is."

Octavia didn't know what to say to that. She simply made an noise that sounded something between understanding and agreement. But, she watched Abby more closely, wondering where her mind was taking her today.

"I need to walk around."

"Mmhmm," Octavia agreed.

"The people must think something major is going on, since I've been locked in here with you."

"Mmmhmmm," Octavia voiced.

"Will you let me out?"

"We'll be taking lunch in the mess. Kane, Miller, Jackson, Niylah, Delphia, and Indra will join us. It will do the people good to us well."

"They think that you are sick?"

"Yes," Octavia replied.

"Why?"

"Because they would worry too much about loosing you that they would loose focus on survival. I could not let that happen. Indra and Miller already know what to do should something happen to me. They would take charge and continue the mission to get us above ground again. I have faith in them."

"But, you don't have faith in me?" Abby questioned.

"It isn't a lack of faith in you, Abby. It never was. It was the rest of your fisas that troubled me. You understand the technology and have embraced their healing methods. In fact, you use some of theirs over ours because they are much more...efficient, I believe."

"They are."

"Then, you can understand why I can't afford to lose your knowledge while we are all trapped in this concrete box in the ground."

Abby just nodded. She seemed lost in thought for a few moments. Then, she turned and looked up at Octavia.

"Jackson will be bringing me a pill just before lunch, won't he?"

"Like normal, yes."

"You trust him with my life, but you don't trust him with the bunker," Abby realized aloud.

"Something like that," Octavia murmured.

"He is a capable doctor, Octavia. Smartest of his class or I wouldn't have taken him on. He was helping me train Clarke as soon as she could see into patient's beds in the Med Bay. There has only one person that I thought that would succeed me on the Ark before him," Abby mused.

"Clarke?"

"Yes, she was next in line to the be chief doctor and surgeon as soon as she passed her tests."

"But?"

"She was locked up before she could take the exams. So you see, everything that she's become, everything that she's done, has been because I didn't trust her father enough and I tried Jaha too much. This is all my fault," Abby lamented.

"Abby, had things not happened the way that they had, we'd all be dead, floating in a big metal box, circling the Earth, until it wasn't. Clarke learned from you. She kept us relatively healthy. She saved Finn before he went cuckoo. She done more patching and stitching than most Grounder fisas, but some of it was all trial and error."

"What do you mean?"

"She didn't tell you that Jaha kept her in solitary. She never got to finish Earth studies. She kept Monty around to help her with that. She took what you and Jake taught her and she fought for us to live as soon as her boots hit the ground. I realized quickly that I would need to stay by her. She would take care of us," Octavia explained. "Don't get me wrong, I don't think we liked each other too much in the beginning, but she didn't treat me like a kid. She let me make mistakes. She helped me make them sometimes. But, in the end, she helped me learn who I was meant to be. Clarke was the most rational person we had. Bellamy was all 'take charge and guns a blazin' into everything,' while Clarke tried to think things through. She put aside her personal feelings and tried to see the bigger picture. I envy that now."

"You envy Clarke?"

"I know that you were Chancellor, Abby, but you were never the leader of our people. I hate to say it but's it's the truth. You held a title while Clarke held the power. She fought, she bled, and she gave up her soul for us and how did we thank her? We pushed her aside, we blamed her and we hated her for making the decisions that kept the majority of us hundred alive. She made it her mission to keep us alive. And, in the end, she managed to save...what...eight, ten, twelve of us. But, she did it. And, you can't tell me how many night she broke down because of the weight she bears."

"And, you bear this weight, too?"

"I killed eleven people to get through a door that my own people barricaded. I gave them a choice to back down or die. I did that because I knew that we wouldn't survive if we just started killing each other whenever the mood struck. I created the fitting pits to be an equalizer. I never would have thought that Cooper would have survived the first one and become a warrior because of it."

"Why not?"

"She had nothing to live for. Her family was dead. She had no children. She had no one to love. She was just a mind and a farmer. She was cog, not a person. She had nothing to live for when she started that coup, Abby. But, in that pit, something changed."

"What?"

"Her need to survive overrode her need to suffer."

"So, Clarke suffered for our survival?"

"Everyday. She knew that her suffering would buffer the rest. Why make all suffer when one can bear the weight? The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few," Octavia told her. "We all survive together or we all die together. Clarke was the only one of us that was strong enough to stand up and do what she had to do in order to protect us and grant us some peace."

"And, then Pike..."

"It wasn't just Pike, Abby. The people are foolish. The believe what you tell them to believe. Like the mobs in Rome, they have to be led to a common goal."

"And ours is to survive?"

"Yes, we are the last of man. We have done things in this bunker that we would have never thought of doing on the ground. The fighting pits being one of them. But, people were floated on the Ark. I at least gave them a fighting chance to live to see another day. Crimes in here aren't against the individual, Abby. They are against the whole."

"But, you saved me," Abby countered.

"No, I didn't protect you. I healed you. You were sick. And, to be honest, I would never put you in the pits."

"But I stole from the bunker..."

"Kane stole from the bunker," Octavia told her.

"What?"

"If needed, he's already confessed to your crimes. He will take your punishment for you. And, as you are still our head doctor, I will allow it."

"But?!"

"The needs of many, Abby. You are needed by many. Kane could be replaced easily and he knows it. He has no rank here. He isn't a member of the guard. He speaks languages that no one left on Earth speaks. He's smart, resourceful and a fighter. If he was pushed into the pits, he would come out the winner."

"I can't let him do that," Abby stated.

"It isn't up to you, Abby. It never was. It was always up to me."

"But, why?"

"Because like your daughter, I could have pulled the lever and irradiated Mount Weather. Bellamy couldn't do that on his own, no matter how much he tries to say that he could. Clarke was the one that made the decision. She pulled the lever. She committed the act. Bellamy was just along for the ride and when she needed absolution, she ran from us. She ran because she knew that we wouldn't be able to give it to her."

"And, the Grounders could?" Abby asked.

"No, the only person that could was Clarke. She had to find the peace in what she did. I know that is was hard for her to do so. She was pushed into a corner, but she wasn't willing to sacrifice anyone left in Arkadia or more Grounders being taken. She saw it as only saving the forty-four that Cage had imprisoned, but it was much more than that. If she'd made some deal with them to let them take our marrow, who knows the untold about suffering that it would have caused. She not only ended the longest running Grounder war in their history. She stopped us from being in a constant state of flux and despair due to the harvest of our marrow and the Mountain Men being free."

"But, we could have..."

"They would have turned on us. They would have taken over Arkadia. They would have hunted down the Grounders and those they didn't kill, they would have made slaves. No, Clarke did us all a favor in killing them to their last child. It sounds cruel, but at least with their genocide, our future generations have nothing to fear from them or the Mountain," Octavia explained. "It is the silent victory of war, Abby. The unknown amount of lives saved because of those you've taken today. The warrior pays that price because they know that they are saving those back at home and they are wiling to suffer for it."

Abby just stared at her, wondering where she was getting this thought process. Octavia thought over some things that she'd read while under the floor. It seemed like such a lifetime ago, but it was barely over five years ago. As she thought, she heard the radio click and knew that it was recording.

She glanced at the clock. Clarke was on time...again. She'd listen to today's message after she put Abby to bed tonight. She wondered how many more nights that Abby would have to stay.

"A famous America patriot once said, 'If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace," Abby told her.

"Yes, and Horace, the famous Roman poet, said 'In Love there are two evils: war and peace'."

"I would fight if I could," Abby stated. "For Clarke. For all of you."

"You are fighting, Abby. You're fighting to live now and that is a fight in and of itself. Don't stop fighting. We'll find Clarke when we get out of here. We will."

"So which evil are you feeding?" Abby asked.

"Peace."

"Why?"

"Because all we do as men in peace is prepare for war."

"How so?" Abby inquired.

"In war, we fight to protect those and what we love, hold dear and believe in. In peace, we grow stronger. We build weapons and train. We prepare for the next threat. We don't try to reason and understand fully either way, in peace or war. But, in either circumstance we are willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that those that we love survive. Even if it goes against our own morality."

"There are no good guys," Abby reiterated.

"Exactly. There never has been. It has always been them or us. And, like Darwin suggested, the strongest survive."