Finn stepped up beside Clarke, his voice frantic. "She's getting worse."
"I know," She looked at him, the desperation dripping from her eyes. "Help me lift her up. Oh, God, okay, here we go."
Clarke and Finn rolled the young girl on her side. She quickly dropped her head to the girl's chest. The quiet, hollow sound failed to muffle the despondent thud of her heart that struggled to keep her blood moving. "She's not moving any air on the left. There's fluid pressing on her lungs."
Finn's voice echoed through her skull. "I don't see an entry wound."
Pulling back from Tris, Clarke had no idea how she was going to fix this. "No. It wasn't shrapnel. It was trauma. The force of the explosion, it hit her in the chest." Clarke turned towards Finn; eyes wide. "She's drowning in her own blood. She can't breathe. I have to relieve the pressure."
Clarke looked around frantically as she called out to the rest of the room. "I need a small tube, something rigid the size of my finger." Holding up her little finger for reference to the men that surrounded her.
The younger of the dark-haired men, pulled a small tube off one of his many odd accessories handing it to her with only a mumbled "Here." Finn thanked him, retrieving it from the grounder before stepping up to Clarke's side again.
Clarke mumbled to herself as she recounted her mother's words in her mind. "Fifth intercostal space." Her fingers counting the dips in her ribs. "This better work."
Using the small pocket knife, she had been given by one of the various men that surrounded her, Clarke sliced through the layers of skin holding the blood in, trapping Tris's lung. "You're okay."
The blood spurted out quickly as Clarke inserted the tube, before slowing down to a quiet trickle. Right as Clarke was praising her young patient for drawing in the deepest breath Clarke had heard from her yet, Anya returned.
Anya rushed forward pulling Clarke away from Tris, jostling the tube that was supporting her continued ability to breathe. "What have you done?"
The hand on Clarke's elbow gripped hard and the nails dug into her arm, the jacket that was covering her arms did little to keep the sting of pain away. "You don't understand. She couldn't breathe."
Anya shoved Clarke to the ground which sent a ripple of tension through the room as Finn leapt towards her with a shout for them to back off. Finn, gripped Clarke far more gently then she had been handled since this morning. "What do we do now, Princess?"
Moving over to the side away from Anya she dropped her voice in hopes that only Finn would be paying attention to her words. "She's breathing a little better, but even if we can save her, what happens then?"
Finn's cheeky grin flashed in her direction. "Well, then maybe we don't die today."
Clarke was about to respond to Finn before Anya's voice called out that Tris was running hot. Clarke's hand went to the artery in her neck counting the beats in her head. It was still too weak, and her face was flushed with sweat pooling at her hair line. Clarke ran her fingers gently along her face and neck, brushing the strands of hair that were sticking to her face, off. In her examination she noticed raised lumps of scar tissue on the skin of her shoulder, hoping that none of them were the cause of infection she moved on. "Her heart rate is way up. She's probably septic."
Anya moved around to the other side of the table. Her blank face revealed none of the concern that her eyes held. "What does that mean?"
Clarke met her eyes with matching concern before she dropped them back down to Tris. "It means her blood is poisoned."
The clink of glass containers on a metal tray sounded from behind her, drawing her attention back to Finn who was holding up one of the containers to the grounder closest to him. "What about this stuff?"
His gruff voice spit out. "That slows bleeding."
Clarke shook her head. "Coagulant. No."
Finn's voice lanced her heart with its frantic edge, even though she could tell he was trying to stay calm for her. "I don't see any antibiotics. Maybe that lake seaweed?"
The unfair bite of anger dug through her stomach. "She doesn't need seaweed." Turning on Anya, Clarke strode back over to the table to growl at her. "She needs real medicine. How could you send a little girl into battle? What is wrong with you people?"
Anya drew back in surprise at the fire in Clarke's voice being directed at her. "She was with me. She was my second. It's how we train them to be warriors."
Clarke's despondent laugh trickled out of her. She couldn't believe her ears. That wasn't fair to those kids and that would never help her or her people. "So, the killing can just go on and on."
Anya leaned back towards Clarke, "you put the bomb on the bridge. You did this to her."
"You started this by attacking us from the day we crash landed on the wrong mountain. You-" Tris coughed out a weak breath cutting off Clarke's rant. Her eyes darted back and forth on the young girl's face, trying to figure out how they could fix this. Clarke ran through everything she'd been taught on the Ark, ignoring the violent twinge her insides gave at the sound of her mother's voice in her memories. Her eyes lit up as her mind settled on one of her earliest lessons about disease processes. "She needs clean blood."
Finn looked at her in surprise. "Transfusion?"
She nodded to him, taking stock of what meager supplies she had. Nothing here was going to be helpful to them. "Okay. There's no tubing. So, we need a syringe, the biggest one you can find, and I need a cannula. It's like a hollow needle."
The grounders quickly jumped into action looking for anything that would meet the descriptions Clarke had just spit out. They returned just as quickly with a dirty syringe and a hard-plastic
straw that she hoped would lock into the syringe well enough to get a solid suction.
It's not that he regrets sleeping with Raven. She was most certainly the most attractive girl he's ever seen, with her long dark hair and doe eyes.
They lay there on the cot in an uncomfortable silence. Wells loved Raven, she knew that. But something felt wrong. He wanted her to be with him but.. it just didn't feel right. Had she loved him?
He couldn't believe he was thinking this but... Neither did he. Well, not like that, at least. He still cared for her, just not in the way he thought it would work with. He hoped Raven thought the same, because otherwise, he basically just did what Finn did.
Wells snapped out of his thoughts when Raven quickly got off the cot and dressed herself back up with her back towards him. Wells leaned on his elbows, not really knowing what to say.
"Did um," Wells started. "Did that help?"
He watched as she stood there for a moment as she put her jacket on and hesitatingly answered. "No." She said honestly. She turned her head around to take a quick glance at Wells for a brief second before dashing out of the tent.
Wells shook his head and got off his cot, dressed up, and he too, left the tent.
After a few minutes, Wells had dashed into the dropship with a rifle in his hands, noticing that Monty and Raven was there. When he noticed Raven was there, he quickly looked at Monty, avoiding to look at Raven, who also avoided looking at Wells.
"How are the walkie talkies?" He asked Monty.
"Only three are up and running." Monty answered. "Why?"
Clarke and Finn aren't back yet." he blurted out, his body shaking in anticipation.
While Monty's eyes widened in understanding, Raven rolled her eyes "Who cares? They're probably at that bunker or something again."
"Myles was with them." Wells sighed, still not looking at her, although he could hear widening her eyes and standing up. "All three of them are out there?"
Wells sighed as he finally connected his eyes with Raven's. He nods. Bellamy walked in the dropship with Octavia behind him.
He nods and addresses them. "Good, you're all here. Clarke, Finn, and Myles are still missing. We're going to go look for them."
He passes them guns and then turns to Monty. "Are any of those radios up and running?"
"Three."
"Okay, we'll split into groups, so we can cover more ground. But stay close, in case anyone needs help. Got it?"
Everyone nods, and he grabs the three radios that Monty hands him. "Raven and Octavia." He passes them a radio, and turns to Monty, handing him one. "Are you good to go alone?"
Monty nods, and Bellamy hands Wells the last radio. "And you're with me." Wells nod in agreement. "Alright, let's go."
Finn ran the straw over the ground to grind it down to a point. After getting it as close to needle shape as he could he held it up for Clarke's inspection. When she nodded her approval, he dumped the bleach over it to clear it from as many contagions as possible. Clarke grabbed it from him, pulling the plunger a couple times to test the suction.
Clarke moved towards Anya. "Okay. I'm gonna need your blood."
Anya yanked her arm away from Clarke's outstretched hands. "No."
Frustrated Clarke ground out how Anya would be her best match because they were from the same tribe. When Finn took in the obstinate look on her face, he gripped Clarke's elbow again. "Clarke, if you're gonna do something, you have to do it now. Just use mine."
She took a brief second to meet Finn's eyes before pushing up the sleeve of his jacket and inserting the needle into the vein. She handed him the syringe to pull up the blood while she turned back to the girl. "I can't find a vein. She's clamping down. She's lost too much blood."
Her frantic search for a usable vein kept her from noticing that Tris was no longer breathing until Clarke heard the hard edge of Finn's voice calling her name. When the realization that Tris was gone finally hit her, she backed away from the table towards Finn. Her eyes did not leave Anya's until she gave the command for the grounder behind them to take Finn and kill him.
Heart jumping to her throat, Clarke pleaded with Anya. "No. No! Please! No! I did everything I could. Please!" The men converged on them. One grabbing Finn and pulling him away and the other standing firm against Clarke's attempts to get around him back to Finn. Clarke called after them begging for them to let him go. The rest of the grounders followed Anya out of the room with Tris's body leaving Clarke alone with one man.
His dark eyes masked by the face paint studied her before he spoke. "Anya will take no pleasure in your friend's death. Prove your worth, and you'll be welcome here."
Turning away from him, Clarke braced herself on the table that had held the young girl. Her fingers slowly slid the knife closer to her. Hoping to distract him from what her fingers were doing until she could slip the knife into the palm of her hand, fully concealing it, she asked. "Why would you want me? I couldn't save Tris."
He seemed to think her question over before responding in what seemed an honest manner. "We told you. Our healer is gone."
Finally, fully palming the knife she turned back to him. "Will I be able to go back to see them? My friends? My home?"
"Tomorrow there'll be nothing to go back to." At his words, Clarke's heart took off into a frantic pace. She could not wait this one out. She just needed to distract this man a few more moments while she tried to figure out an escape route.
Her mind got stuck on the marks on the little girls' shoulder, she had noticed them on Lincoln when the arrow that pierced his shoulder had pulled his shirt down enough for her to catch a glimpse. Knowing that her brain wouldn't move forward until she had the answer she asked. "Those marks on her shoulder, what were they? Lincoln has them, too."
The man in front of her puffed his chest out with pride. "Each scar marks a kill in combat."
The words staggered Clarke, "Five kills? She was a little girl."
His voice turned to disgust at the shock in hers. "She was brave."
"And how many do you have?" She watched him pull the collar of his shirt down revealing row after row of knotted tissue on his shoulder and chest. "That's a lot."
He puffed up more at her observation. "And half were after I hurt my knee."
Clarke's mind whorled. If she kicked him in the bad knee he had just offered up then she could get his hands away from his knives and hopefully slow his reaction time enough for her to get in close enough to nick an artery in his neck. She dropped her eyes with what she hoped was a resigned look before swiftly kicking out the grounder's knee with enough force to hopefully have torn a tendon or worse, but definitely with enough force to cause a great deal of pain to him.
The grounder bent forward as if to grasp at his knee when Clarke lunged forward and drug the knife across the delicate flesh of his neck. The pressure of the blood in his artery forced a spray of blood to splash over Clarke's face and clothes. She brought her hand up to cover his nose and mouth as he started to struggle. She tried to ignore the sickening feel of his hot blood slicking her fingers as she shushed him. With each thrum of his heart the blood rapidly spilled out of him. After a few seconds, each sluggish heartbeat pushed less and less blood out. Finally, his eyes started to fall closed and in less than 30 seconds from when she had made her move, it was over.
Clarke gave herself a few more seconds to look at the man who she had killed, he had been trying to be nice to her in his own way. She hadn't had a choice if she wanted to save her friends but the stutter in her heart didn't help to push away the guilt she felt.
Turning away from the man she took off out of the building hoping that she could make it back to camp with enough time to get her people to safety. Clarke ran until her chest heaved, unable to keep up with the pace she was setting. Her vision started to spot, and she knew she'd have to stop to catch her breath soon or she would pass out. She told herself she would only go a little bit further before she stopped, when her feet were ripped out from underneath her. The rapid flood of oxygen deficient blood to her brain when she was strung up, caused Clarke to pass out.
"I thought you said you were going west. Where the hell are you?"
Wells lifts the radio to his lips, "Just keep the moon to your left, and you'll find us."
It's silent for a minute before Monty asks, "Is anyone else hearing this signal?"
Raven answers, "Just keep your eyes open."
"I think it's the same thing we heard in the black box."
"Damn it, Monty, pay attention." Bellamy said in irritation.
The radio falls silent again, before Raven's voice cuts through, quiet. "There's someone in the bushes."
Bellamy and Wells shared a look in the dark before Wells answered through the radio. "Stay where you are. We're on our way." Wells and Bellamy tear through the trees towards them, reaching them as Octavia pulls back the bushes and mutters, "Myles?"
He had an arrow in his right shoulder and another in his left thigh, am obvious result of a grounder ambush.
"Where are they?" Raven asked instantly "Clarke and Finn, where are they?"
"Grounders took them." the boy said weakly, wincing in pain.
"Take it easy." Bellamy soothed "We have to get him back to camp."
"Bell, what about Clarke and Finn?" Octavia asked. looking at her brother.
Raven frowned and got up, trying to keep the tears back. Bellamy looked between Raven and Wells apologetically "I'm sorry."
"We can't just leave them here." Wells said, in disbelief they would even be considering that.
"Myles will die if we leave him out here." Bellamy tried to reason.
Wells shook his head and put the radio to his mouth. "Monty, we're heading home. You copy?" No answer. They all shared a concerned look before Wells answered again. "Monty, can you hear me? Monty, Monty where the hell are you? Report."
"We need to make a stretcher." Raven said calmly.
Bellamy sighs. "We can't go after him now. Hopefully his radio just died and he's on the way back to camp right now."
After they had made a stretcher, He leans down and starts to lift the stretcher, and feeling useless, Wells grabbed the other pole to help. Raven and Octavia lift the other end, and they all took him back to camp in silence.
To be continued...
Sorry to break your heart but Wellven will not be happing. I'm sorry.