Throughout my work of dull routine patient complaints and procedures I come to a slow decision. I can't continue to visit her knowing that I'm just patching her up from one vicious abuse simply to face another. Whether that's what Octavia seems to hope will happen or not is irrelevant. Her mother was wildly irresponsible to ever put any of them in this position, but now that Octavia is here she deserves better than this.
Far better.
Bellamy too, if he isn't the culprit. The thought that he might be has me ready to vomit. Logically, if he is, he is sick, but the close relationship between the two of them...the warm fatherly indulgence in his eyes when he watches her doing something odd, like reaching out and playing with my hair, just doesn't match up with the violence that was written into his sister's body this morning. If it had been him, if their relationship had taken a twisted, sick turn from all the years of close proximity, the hopelessness and stress of their situation, or just perversion on his part...he'd have her thinking it's normal and consensual. The wounds she had this morning didn't look like that. Neither did the fear and frustration in her body language and eyes. She was begging me not to say anything to protect Bellamy.
At the time, I had thought she meant because she didn't want him to get in trouble for hurting her, but the more I think about it, the less likely that feels. Something in my gut is telling me that it isn't him doing this. Why would he have so happily handed over his keycard if he had; knowingly putting me alone with her right afterwards? Why would she have just gotten into the shower to try to wash away the evidence of the attack as I was coming into her room when Bellamy had already been at work for hours?
Bellamy had risked everything to practically abduct me from the medical unit when she was sick. He was willing to risk both he and his mother's lives on the chance that I might decide to attempt to save his sister's life. If that doesn't prove that he loves her more than himself, nothing could.
If he isn't the culprit, then there's a man on this ship that is going into their quarters when Bellamy isn't there. Who could have possibly learned about them, as careful as they are? Who would do such a despicable thing repeatedly to a teenage girl? It had to be someone with access to their quarters. Someone who knew Bellamy's and Aurora's work schedules. A guard then. Those are the only workers with keycards that could access personal quarters and who would be able to see Bellamy's shift schedule. But what about Aurora? She's a seamstress. She takes her work home with her and doesn't keep any reliable work hours at all. Even a guard wouldn't know when she is or isn't there and no mother on earth would just sit around if she were there and let something like that happen. I don't know Aurora well at all. She's been gone almost every time I've visited...but surely even she would fight or at the very least beg him with everything she had...do anything to keep the monster away from her child.
Suddenly, the words from my argument with Octavia come slamming back into my head.
"He and mom are all I have!" Octavia whisper yells to me. "You can't say anything! You'll get them killed."
"Does your mother know about this?!"
Octavia tears up "She walked in before when…and she tried to keep him away. He said not to tell her or he-"
She had walked in on it before. I freeze in place, right in the middle of the eye exam I was performing on a ten year old with perfect vision. Oh shit. Aurora Blake wasn't a neglectful mother. She was trying to appease the bastard who she knew could get her entire family killed with only a single report. That's why she was gone every night. She was sleeping with the man who had raped her own daughter to try to keep him from hurting Octavia. She was doing the only thing she could think of to keep him silent.
I can't stop the vomit from tearing up my throat and out of my stomach the moment it all clicks. Feeling sicker than I ever have in my entire life, I stumble backwards from the disgusted ten year old freckle faced kid in front of me who now had my vomit all over their left shoe. "Eww!" I hear the boy yell from in front of my bent over body.
"Clarke?" My mother leans back to look at me from her place writing a report twenty feet away. "Oh sweetie, you don't look good."
As she walks over, concern etched in her features as she looks me over silently, I pull back and to the side of the kid just in time to retch up the little that was left in my stomach. Mom puts her hand on my back, rubbing circles in it as she instructs the boy to go back to the waiting room. I feel one of her cool hands on my forehead, no doubt trying to feel for a temperature.
"You don't feel warm. Clarke, why don't you go home? Get some rest. It's slow in here today. I can handle both sets of patients."
I nod at her, grateful for the chance to leave and wishing I could do just that. At the moment I want nothing more than to curl up in my own bed in the comfortable, safe Alpha quarters I share with my parents and pretend that I knew nothing about any of the Blakes' existence.
But I know I can't.
Instead, I find myself going straight back to Factory Station with shaking hands, a queazy stomach, and a barely concealed rage that is nearly impossible to hide. Shumway. It must be him. The jackass that I passed by this morning in factory station was leaving after violently assaulting my friend as I was coming in is one of the most senior commanding guards on the ark. For any of the Blakes to do anything against him would be quite literally suicidal. He had them all pinned down to his will and he knew it. Octavia couldn't even try to fight him, not that she'd have much chance, with him undoubtedly using her mother and brother's lives against her. Aurora would have to be his willing slave whether he left Octavia alone or not or else he'd have her baby killed and likely her son as well along with her. Both women would have to do anything and everything to hide the abuse from Bellamy or he'd loose his damn mind and rip the Ark apart in his rage to try to kill Shumway, and probably failing, before getting all three of them killed.
None of them can do a damned thing. They are screwed…utterly and hopelessly screwed.
But Shumway doesn't know that I know…about Octavia or about him. I'm the only chess piece in the game who can move without the Blakes immediately losing everything. I have to save them. This time when I get to their quarters and gently knock on the door, announcing myself, it's their mother who answers.
Not surprisingly, Octavia is curled up in the lower bunk, awake, and holding a pillow against her abdomen in obvious pain. Her mother looks like she'd been crying, but must have wiped her face before answering the door.
"Clarke." The woman just manages a shaky smile in greeting. "I'm afraid now might not be the best time for visitors. Octavia's a little-"
"I know." I interrupt, my tone flat and my body still shaky with rage. " I stitched her up."
The older woman in front of me visibly deflates at that, as though all the energy she had left fell away with her faked hospitality. She doesn't quite know what to say, that much is clear, but she moves back to sitting next to her daughter's curled up form on the lower bunk.
Looking over her daughter's body instead of at me, she speaks quietly. "I've practiced my speech to the council thousands of times since she was born. I've thought of every variation possible from every angle- moral arguments, reasoning, begging…but I've never come up with a single one that would stop your parents and the other council members from killing my baby. All I've ever wanted was for her to live. I didn't- I didn't know I was pregnant…when my implant must have failed. I didn't realize until I felt her fluttering inside of me…my baby girl. She was already alive in there. I couldn't…I couldn't let them murder her. Now just look at what I've let happen instead. If it were just my own life, I would murder him. I've fantasized about it so many times…all the ways I could kill him. But it's never just me. They'll kill my babies, Clarke. Judge me all you want, but there's nothing I can do."
"I know." I tell her. I had already come to that conclusion, but hearing it all admitted from Aurora Blake's mouth only strengthens my resolve. "That's why I'm going to."
Octavia's head whips around from her balled up place in her bed towards me, in shock at the words. "What?"
The older woman looks at me uncertainly from her place, worry and fear and just the tiniest bit of hope written into her face. "How- you can't. You're just a child."
"Octavia doesn't look anything like me. It's going to be hard to fool him long enough. If I can get him to think I'm her long enough to start attacking me though…get the attack on video…I can kill him in self defense. I made my parents think me and Bellamy are dating as an excuse to be over here. No one would question me. I'll tell the council that he'd threatened me before…make up some kind of back story so it's believable. I need to catch him doing something else to make it look like he knew he was about to be caught and tried to shut me up. If I set it up right, no one will ever know or trace it back to Octavia. She can be safe here and Bellamy won't have to know about any of it until he's dead."
"Or ever." Octavia corrects, shooting me a look to make it clear how much she didn't want Bellamy involved.
Aurora slowly exhales a deep breath, looking at me as though almost pained. "That's risky. That's very risky, Clarke. If anything goes wrong, he'll tell-"
"No, he won't." I turn to look Octavia in the eye as I explain. "I'm going to document everything he did to you. I'll bury it in with the other medical files on my doctor's tablet. No one will ever check for anything suspicious in there, but it will be safe. If this goes sideways and he threatens to report Octavia, I will make sure he understands that it is mutually assured destruction. Rape is a capital offense and I guarantee that the council members won't care if he did it to a legal citizen or not. He'd get floated same as all of you."
"That would mean that they'd find out you aided and abetted." Aurora amends, softly.
"But her parents are on the council, right?" Octavia asks hopefully, innocent ignorance lacing her tone. "Clarke is safe from them." I shoot Aurora a pointed warning look and manage a tight smile for the younger girl, nodding.
"Of course." I lie. "My parents would protect me." I can feel Ms. Blake's stare through my skull at the blatant lie. My parents would try, of course, but Octavia's mother knows just as well as I do that I'd get floated just as quickly, council member parents or not.
"I need some time to think. In the meantime, I'm messaging my mom that I've got a stomach bug. They think Bellamy is my boyfriend. I'll tell everyone he's been exposed and starting to show symptoms. Him and I will both need to quarantine here to prevent spread." I take out my tablet to message my parents and a coded message to Bellamy about our mutual stomach illness to allow him to leave his shift early. My voice comes out a little shakier and higher pitched than I mean it to as I continue. "Shumway wouldn't dare come here with me and Bellamy both quarantining here. I'll stretch it out as long as I can to avoid suspicion."
Aurora's face drops even as she nods, a queer look settling deeper into her eyes as she takes her eyes off her injured daughter to glance over to me again. "I'll have to go back to Shumway's quarters. Keep him from asking too many questions and make sure he doesn't suspect anything. Can I have your shirt?"
I feel my eyebrows involvuntarily scrunch in confusion.
"It's soiled and smells of vomit and if I'm working on it, that'll help make Shumway think the buy is real. I won't mention to him that your here though. Just Bellamy. That should be enough to keep him away as long as he's home." The older woman explains.
The gears, turn in my mind as I take off the shirt and hand it over, leaving me in just the thin camisole I had underneath over my bra. I shake my head. "No. Leave it up to him to wonder. No matter what he says or does, don't admit to him that I know, but don't hide that I've been here either. Let him get suspicious. If he's watching me, it'll be easier to make people believe he attacked me later. We need to make him wonder. He's a control freak. It'll drive him nuts."
The older woman nods in agreement, tiredness and stress showing in every line of her still beautiful, yet aging face. For moment, a heavy, suffocating understanding falls over us. We both know that any one of a million things that could go wrong here would spell the girl between us's death. Up until this moment, any miserable condition that meant keeping Octavia alive for one more day had been worth it to Aurora Blake. Hunger, constant fear and vigilance, loss of any sort of social life, having Bellamy sacrifice his future and career choices and any chance of a family of his own…all worth it. Even whoring herself was worth it to keep her daughter safe. But forcing Octavia to live a life as a monster's victim, being hurt however he wants at his whim…that was her line.
As we sat there in silence for a moment, a deep respect for the woman settled into my chest. I know my mother loves me…but Aurora Blake has a level of devotion to her children that would rival any other parent's on the Ark or on the earth before the bombs. Up until the last few minutes together, I hadn't understood the woman at all. Now, looking at the woman in front of me, I know where Bellamy gets his devotion and his ability to love so deeply from.
Octavia loosens her grip on her pillow, just a bit, in the safe zone she must feel in between between the two of us. I know she's in pain- both emotional and physical. I wish there were better pain killers that I could offer her. Those were one of the inventory cabinets that were less of a mess though. They might be missed. I'm just lucky that I managed to get everything I really needed squirreled away and out- just a little at a time- before it became too much of a risk. Octavia would have all her vaccines she needed just as soon as her body was healthy enough to handle the first set. She'd also get a standard implant for birth control if she wanted it- though it wouldn't last her whole life and I'd need to find a way to replace it in five years.
For now, I just take the plan B I'd smuggled out of the medical bay in my pocket to give her. If that asshole had gotten her pregnant, this should stop things before it got too far. It's what anyone is prescribed that suspects their implant might have failed or become defective. For Octavia's mother's part, I'm surprised to find her silent as she stares at her daughter, one hand on her daughter's shoulder. She's looking right at Octavia, but it's clear that she may as well be a million miles away as I explain it to her as gently as possible. I unpack the pills, placing them in her hand to swallow.
After kissing her daughter's head once Octavia had downed the pills, Aurora leaves, her eyes full of something that I can't quite place and her expression one of grim determination on her exhausted, pale face. She pauses before opening the door for a moment and almost turns her head around to face us again, but then stops, as though she thought better of it at the last second. As the door shuts behind her, I lay down next to her daughter to hold her while she silently begins crying again and I wonder how either of them is as strong as they are. She doesn't make a sound. I wouldn't even know she's crying except for the wet tears that land on my arm that's wound under her head like a pillow. I tuck my head into her shiny dark hair and wrap my other arm over where she's holding the pillow to her abdomen.
"If I was on Earth, I'd be an artist. I'd paint and sketch and have a house like the ones in the movies, but I'd cover every wall with bright murals in paints of every color. And I'd have a dog." I say into her ear, searching my mind for anything that might bring the girl some comfort remembering the game she and Bellamy play sometimes.
She doesn't move other than to snuggle back into my bigger spooning figure a little closer and use my forearm to wipe her eyes. It should feel oddly intimate, considering what little time I've known her, but it doesn't. Maybe it's because of the situation. I've already had to bathe and stitch her up in the most private areas possible. I've also already signed on to risk my life to save hers. Compared to all that, spooning with her really isn't that big of a deal.
"Like one of those little yippee dogs that shake when it barks?" She asks me, her voice hoarse.
"No. No, like that one from Homeward Bound. The big yellow one. I think they were called retrievers."
"What's Homeward Bound?" She asks, her voice vibrating into the skin of my arm.
I smile into her hair. "My parents used to watch it with me was I was a kid. I'll pull it up for you out of their library. You want popcorn tonight? I can get you fruit too, if you want." I'll send Bellamy to get it, anyway, I fill in mentally. I'm not leaving her until I have an ironclad plan to float the son of a bitch that did this and I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that she'll be safe in the meantime.
I feel her lips tug up into a tight smile against the skin of my forearm. "I'll be alright, you know, Clarke." She turns a little to look back at me in the eye. "I'm stronger than I look."
I nod at her, trying to smile, but not quite managing it. Instead, I trace my free hand that isn't pinned under her head and finger comb the shiny, dark hair back from the sides of her face. Her brother's hair is curly, but hers is like straight spun silk under my fingers. Octavia sucks in a breath at the sensation and closes her eyes, the corners of her mouth pulling into an almost smile.
"In your house, would you have a room for me? I think I'd want to travel. Have adventures…but maybe it would be nice to have a place to come stay sometimes. Wake up in a room with a view for a change."
I let out a little laugh at that, but realize too late that I'm crying too. "Sure. You'd have the best view in the house. We'd - we'd put your room upstairs and your window would overlook the mountains and the valley behind the house and you'd have another big window on the front side overlooking the ocean."
"That sounds like a really cool room." Octavia says softly.
I nod, trying not to cry anymore than I already am, and take my fingers away from where I was still combing them through her scalp to quickly wipe the tear tracks from my face.
"That feels nice." Octavia says under her breath once I start massaging my fingers through her hair again, laying her head back down to face away from me.
I sigh involuntarily, suddenly feeling very tired. I'm not sure when I fell asleep, but the next thing I know Bellamy is sitting at the desk, leaning forward with his elbows on the table and reading aloud quietly more of the mythology Octavia loves so much. Octavia hasn't moved from her place spooned up in front of me and the arm under her head is tingly for lack of circulation, but I feel reluctant to move. Octavia is awake, but she seems comfortable for the moment, relaxed in my arms and listening to her brother tell her stories of giant three headed dogs and Hercules. It feels comfortable with just the three of us in here.
I find myself watching Bellamy's face and lips as he reads softly to his little sister, as though he is trying not to wake me up. It's hard to believe that I ever doubted him now. It feels like I owe him a deep apology for ever thinking he could ever hurt the girl in between us. Would he ever forgive me if he knew the things I suspected him of? Everything he's ever done has been for his sister. She's like his own baby to him. I should have known that he would never hurt her.
As Bellamy finishes the chapter he's on, tapping away the tablet power to conserve it for later, Octavia shifts just slightly in my arms. "I think I'll save the math for another time." She whispers. From my periphery, I can see Bellamy nod in agreement. For them, I guess it doesn't matter. Octavia is much more likely to suffer after he has nothing else he can teach her than she is for not completing her made up lessons quickly enough. What would she even be able to use any of that information for anyways?
"Thank you for risking it." She tells him after a long stretch of silence right as I was about to make it clear that I was awake. "For bringing Clarke here." The statement silences me. I should let them know that I'm awake and can hear them, but it feels wrong to interrupt the intimate family moment.
"I didn't have much choice." Bellamy replies, eyebrows raised, like it wasn't anything for her to thank him for. "But I am glad it worked out to give you a friend. I always wanted that for you."
"I had you." Octavia replies with a surprising amount of conviction in her voice.
"Yeah, but that's different." Bellamy says as he leans back to try to relax in the uncomfortable looking chair.
Even through the tingling, I can feel Octavia's smile on the skin of my arm. "Yeah, you never would kiss me when I asked."
I can see Bellamy's face twist up in barely disguised disgust. "That'd be sick, O. It's bad enough you making me be your dance partner."
"Do you think Clarke thinks it's sick?" Comes Octavia's suddenly very hesitant, insecure sounding voice. "To kiss me?"
Bellamy shrugs, as though he didn't view it as a big deal. "No. She kissed you, didn't she?"
Octavia doesn't respond to that, but she does ever so gently wiggle herself free from me and slowly sits up, reaching back to nudge me by the shoulder.
"Wanna watch the yellow dog movie now?"
I sit up slowly from behind her, blinking the sleep from my eyes, and rotating my mostly numb arm and rubbing it with my other hand to try to get the blood flow back in. "Sure." I say, my voice still thick with sleep. Bellamy smiles softly at me, noticing my arm and moving from his chair to sit on the bunk beside me closest to the door. As Octavia powers on my tablet and begins scrolling through the movie library, looking for Homeward Bound, Bellamy silently reaches forward and takes my arm with both of his large, warm hands and extends it out towards him. He uses his palms, as well as his fingers to massage the blood back into it, running his hands up from my wrist to my elbow, then pressing into the skin with his fingers in little circles as he moved them back down to my wrist again and to my palms before repeating the process over and over again. It feels heavenly just giving myself over to his strong, warm, muscular hands, even if it is just my arm and he's only doing it to improve my circulation.
Once Octavia has the movie projection started, she lies back down, carefully keeping her legs close to her chest and pulling the wadded up blanket over from the corner of the bed to cover her lower half as she settles her head into my lap. Sandwiched between the two, my right arm being massaged in Bellamy's lap and my left finding it's way into Octavia's dark silky hair again, I should feel smothered.
But I don't.
Odd as it is, I feel right at home.
"So we're supposed to be quarantining?" Bellamy asks in a whisper around the time that one of the dogs are chasing the chickens in the movie.
"Yeah. I left work early. It should buy us a couple days before anyone leaves to go anywhere."
In my lap, Octavia shushes us, transfixed by the dogs running around on the projection wall.
Bellamy rolls his eyes and lowers his voice even more, so that I can barely hear him. "Buy time for what?"
In my lap, Octavia freezes up, her breath stopping and her neck going tense under my fingertips. I mentally kick myself for falling asleep instead of coming up with a plausible reason to tell Bellamy.
"I asked her to." Octavia replies before I can come up with anything to say. "I don't feel good today. I have cramps."
That gets Bellamy's attention. He pauses the movie and looks down at her severely until she looks up enough to make eye contact with him. "O, you can't do that. She has a job. I have a job. There's- we have responsibilities other than just you. You know that. If we bring attention to ourselves-"
"She didn't ask. I offered." I cut in, unable to bear listening to her getting berated for any reason today after what I know she's been through. She's smart though. The period story is a good one, especially considering the blood he's bound to notice in the laundry and probably in the sheets from when I had her laying in the bed for stitches this morning. Bellamy looks up at me with doubt written into his face, like he's already sure I'm just covering for her somehow. "I'm over worked. I need a break and I wanted to hang out more with my new friends. It'll be fine just this once."
Slowly, he nods, still studying my face as though he can't quite decide whether he really believes me or not. Either way, he lets the subject drop and settles back into watching the movie for a few more minutes before getting up to retrieve the rations left outside the door after the expected knocking to signal it's delivery. Normally, everyone is expected to get their own food from their station's cafeteria, but exceptions are made for anyone in quarantine, since no one wants any contagiously ill person anywhere near the communal food. Silently, we split the rations for two into thirds and eat it curled up into each other in front of the familiar movie.
After, when Bellamy states his concern that Octavia is too still, even for a girl on her period, she gets up as quickly as the stitches and general damage in her core will allow for and suggests dancing. I shoot her a worried warning glance, not at all sure she should be up and moving around like that at all. What if she pops one of her stitches? She just ignores me.
Bellamy rolls his eyes and smiles at her as though it's the most expected Octavia like thing for her to suggest in the world and she switches on an old world song called We're Going Home by Vance Joy. She's a little stiff at first even as she practically pulls her brother off the bunk bed and pushes the desk aside to the wall with a huge smile, but quickly she shakes off any discomfort she feels and just moves with the music. I stare at her, a little shocked at her apparent obscene level of pain tolerance.
The Blake siblings smile as they twirl each other around the small room comedically, grinning at each other as they push and pull each other around the music. After the first minute or so, Bellamy holds his hand out in my direction and smiles at me, beckoning me to join them. I laugh as I twirl back and forth, dancing with both of them and neither and with no idea what the made up steps are supposed to be. Bellamy leads me around the room just like I would've expected him to, dominant and careful not to lead me into anything that I might bump. Octavia dances like a wild woman, free and tantalizing, both leading and following in random intervals with no clear pattern. Sometimes they even return to spinning each other around, in the way that closely reminds me of the father daughter dances I'd attended before I got too old- Octavia using every bit of indulgence that her older brother possesses and making up her moves on the fly without ever bothering to clue him in first. She's silly looking when she dances with him and he looks like a loving sibling in the way the old earth movies always portrayed them. When Octavia dances with me though, her moves take on a slightly different tone, as do Bellamy's. Still it isn't any tug of war. They are so used to sharing and stretching anything and everything between them that they don't seem to question or find it odd at all to have the same dance partner. I hang onto Bellamy's strong frame and sway with him in the slower parts of the song, as Octavia twirls around a couple feet away by herself and then I twist and turn and even grind up a little against Octavia when it picks up again without a second thought in the moment as to how odd it is until much later that night.
When we're all finally all danced out well over an hour later and settling into the metal bunk bed built into the wall again, Bellamy climbs into the top bunk and I climb into the bottom with Octavia without a second thought. The lights are automatically turned out by now, Factory Station wide, to conserve energy, and it's pitch black with no way to see a single inch in front of my face. The Blake siblings don't seem particularly perturbed by this, but it's still a bit of an adjustment for me. In Alpha station, there are no automatic lights out hours and it's up to individual families how and when to light their quarters. Still, the absolute darkness doesn't scare me, not with Octavia's body curled up into mine. Her silky long hair next to my face smells just the same as her brother's. They are siblings, of course, and they all use the same shampoo. There is nothing at all wrong with Bellamy's hair- curly and boyish and thick. Still, I can't help but admit that I might have a small obsession with Octavia's hair. She nestles into me, both of us facing the other, like it's the most natural thing in the world. Maybe to her it is, I remind myself. After all, there are only two beds for the three of them, so she probably is used to sleeping with her mother every night, even at sixteen. Maybe that's all I am to her- a comfortable substitute and first real friend. I shouldn't let my physical attraction to the younger Blake sibling color how innocent her actions probably actually are into anything more.
After Bellamy's soft snores make it clear that he's asleep, Octavia's fingers make their way to my face, tracing my facial features slowly with her fingertips like she's trying to memorize me in the darkness. Her fingertips are more calloused than I would've guessed. Probably, it's from all the sewing and needlework she does during her days to help her mother. Still, it's hard to take without allowing myself to respond. At first my arms were both tucked under my head, but eventually, I move my upper hand to trace around her face as well. Her features are all straight from the mythology Bellamy reads to her, a goddess from the storybook paintings with her high cheekbones and perfect nose and just...fuck. I really shouldn't let myself get attracted to Octavia Blake. On so many levels, it's such a bad...monumentally bad, just epically, epically fucked up idea to even let myself consider her in that way.
I can't have a future with her. I can't even tell my own parents that she even exists. Anything I do is probably taking advantage of her no matter what she says or does. She's already been through enough as it is and the last thing she needs is someone coming onto her right now. Anyone with a clear head looking at this situation would say that it's a beyond terrible idea. I know this. But, as attracted as I am to Bellamy for his handsomeness and warmth and just straight up goodness, the thought of just leaving her alone to live under the floor again so I can be with Bellamy just doesn't feel right. Maybe part of it is pity. I don't know. If it is, she would hate that. Maybe it's just that they both embody all the traits that I'm attracted to in both genders. Maybe it's me that's screwed up.
But her fingers running lightly across the skin of my face doesn't feel like anything bad or ominous. They feel like the touch of salvation. Cold on my skin and yet fiery hot in my nerves.
"Have you ever slept with anyone, Clarke?" Her deep voice asks me in the dark, fingers stilling at my jawline.
"Once." I whisper. "With my friend, Wells. We...our parents pressured us a lot to get married. I guess we both wanted to see if there was anything there in between us."
I hear Octavia take in a deep breath. "Was there?"
I smile, the corner of my lip touching one of her fingers. "No. Just good friends. I love him, but not like that."
"Did it hurt?"
This time I take a breath, knowing the girl's experiences in front of me have been the worst kind of nightmare. "Not like it did for you. That's not supposed to be like that. Shumway is a power fanatic. Rape isn't like regular sex. Sex is supposed to feel good. It isn't supposed to hurt you. I'm so sorry you had to go through that, but even if I have to kill Shumway myself, I promise that is never going to happen to you again."
There's a long, heavy silence and I can only wonder what is going through her mind until I hear her low voice speak again. "This feels good." Is all she says, still lightly caressing my face with her fingertips.