Ataraxia: Calmness untroubled by mental or emotional disquiet; A state of freedom from emotional disturbance and anxiety.
The question comes from nowhere.
"Why did you take the chip?"
Echo pauses, her nimble, calloused hands stilling. She flicks her eyes coolly up from the workbench to meet a steely blue-eyed gaze, and she catches herself.
Clarke Griffin stands across from her – the only other person in the workshop save for Bellamy in the corner, the sounds of clanging metal indicating he is as yet unsuccessful in locating one of the parts they need to construct a radiation shield. Sanctum may indeed be just that, but it still yields frustratingly few spare electromagnets.
At first Echo doesn't register the words – nor who has spoken them. She is not exactly accustomed to people making conversation with her these days; Never has been, if she's totally honest with herself. The fact that it's the so called 'Commander of Death' addressing her makes this occurrence even rarer. "What?" she asks guardedly.
The blonde stills, evaluating her, her face in that hard expression of thinly veiled judgement that Echo is used to seeing from her, and her own features stiffen in response, the mask of a spy easily falling in place. At least the others don't try to hide their mistrust of her. The fact that Clarke does makes Echo like her even less.
"ALIE's chip." Clarke says after a moment. "Why did you take it?"
At first, Echo has no idea how to respond. Why would Clarke ask that of all things? And why now? In her experience, Clarke doesn't do anything unless she can somehow benefit from it, or she can use it against the person in question at a later time. Echo has to admire her for that, she supposes. It is not a skill many are as proficient at.
She deliberately doesn't respond.
"You said you saw me in the City Of Light." Clarke continues, "That meant you took it at some point."
Echo casts a quick glance at Bellamy, still with his back turned to them. It doesn't seem as if he has heard anything. Yet.
"Why?" Echo asks suddenly, voice low, deliberately cutting Clarke off.
The blonde is silent for a moment, obviously caught off guard, and she shuffles her stance slightly while she gathers her thoughts.
"I don't know." She shrugs her shoulders, looking down at the bench. "I guess I'm just curious."
Echo isn't entirely sure why, but she believes Clarke is speaking honestly. The two of them haven't exactly spent a lot of time together, and after Echo nearly choked her to death in the Elygius camp, maybe she really is trying to rebuild some burnt bridges.
"I'm interested to know what she could have done to make an Ice Nation spy accede to her." There's no hostility in her voice, but Echo understands what she's implying. "ALIE used the people we love against us. You don't strike me as someone who had many of those."
And at those words, something in her breaks, something dark and painful that she keeps locked away, deep inside herself.
Her eyes flicker, almost imperceptively, and she forces herself to turn away as emotions long suppressed quickly rise within her.
Somewhat tactfully, Clarke says nothing more.
For a long time, the room is deathly silent, the tension palpable. Echo retreats into herself, warring with herself if she should even deign to respond. She doesn't owe Clarke anything. Maybe she did once, after making it to the ring, but not after being betrayed and the man she loves being left to die in a fighting pit.
"She tried."
Echo surprises herself when the words leave her mouth. She hadn't intended to give voice to her thoughts.
"She tried…" she repeats in a faint, far away whisper. "And you're right, it didn't work. But she was clever, if nothing else. She figured out quickly that love isn't the only motivator. Raven's was pain. Emori's was survival."
"And yours?"
Echo doesn't answer. Her whole body has gone rigid, a defence mechanism constructed over years of deception. Only now there is nowhere to hide.
She remembers it like it was yesterday, the army of chipped soldiers flooding across Azgeda territory once thought unconquerable, led by the very commander she had helped install – she flinches at the reminder of those actions. More guilt. More regret.
Having been left to watch over Troy by Roan while he tracked the woman opposite her, she was almost powerless to resist the onslaught, and soon found herself on her knees in front of the dark skinned Skaikru man, Jaha. Upon refusing the pale chip, she had been locked away in the palace's dungeons, bombarded with taunts of her own actions. Memories she now knew had been ripped from Raven's mind of Mount Weather, of the explosion she had caused, and most of all of Bellamy's reaction to her betrayal-
"Hatred." The word tears itself from her mouth before she can stop it. Hidden beneath the workbench, she can feel her hands trembling, while pricks of water sting the corner of her eyes.
Now its Clarke's turn to falter. Her eyes narrow ever so slightly, betraying her confusion.
Echo wants more than anything to stop. To turn away, leave the workshop and run. Run and not stop until the rapidly opening scars once again bleed no longer. She can't stand the thought of baring herself like this, least of all to her, but it's too late. Blood is already seeping through. The wound refuses to close.
"Mine was hatred." She continues shakily. "For myself… for the things I've done… for the Mountain…"
She can't see them, but she knows Bellamy's hands have stilled, and she has no doubt now that he has been listening the entire time. The workshop is painfully silent.
She takes a shaky breath. "Love isn't an emotion I knew, not back then at least."
Another glance at Bellamy, his back still resolutely turned to her, and this time its Clarke's turn to waver. Her eyes blink and her lips tighten reflexively.
"I wasn't allowed to know it. I wasn't allowed to know anything other than my duty."
She's forced to close her eyes again. She still feels every punishing blow, every crack of the whip. She still smells the burning flesh of her mother and still tastes the coppery blood of her only friend; killed, only so she could take her place.
Sometimes, if she tries hard enough, she can still hear her own name ringing in her ears.
Ashe…
Her jaw clenches as she clamps down tightly on those memories, drawing them close and locking them away. She feels sick knowing that ALIE had taken that from her. Violated.
"Why though?" Clarke presses, "Why give up your freedom, to be controlled by someone else?"
In an instant, Echo's emotion is transformed to a burning anger, and she lifts her eyes to glare at Clarke through the mahogany hair that has fallen in front of her face.
"I have been controlled my whole life." She hisses venomously. "How can you give up freedom if you've never known what it is?"
Clarke visibly falters, a flash of realisation crossing her features as she begins to understand the mistake she has made.
"You all think it's so easy to hate me." Echo scowls.
She's lashing out now. She knows she is lashing out. She doesn't care. It still burns. All the looks, all the derision, the simple insulting addresses. Spy…
They have no idea…
"You think I chose to do those things?" She clenches her teeth. "You think I wanted to become what I am? That I wanted to betray the person who saved me inside that damn Mountain?"
Clarke opens her mouth to say something, but Echo cuts her off with a shake of her head.
"Serve, or die. That is the only choice I've ever had. You think I should be grateful to you for ending ALIE's tyranny? Perhaps it is you should be grateful to have never known such a thing in the first place."
Echo's chest is heaving by now, her body twitching from the raw emotion.
"You can hate me all you want." She advances slowly, haunted chocolate eyes locked dead on Clarke's shimmering sapphire ones. "But just know, there is nothing you can feel for me that I don't already feel for myself. Hate me as much as you can, Wanheda. It is nothing on how much I hate myself."
Clarke recoils from her acrid words. Even Bellamy has turned around, a look of utmost hurt adorning his features. It takes everything in him not to go over and wrap her up in his arms, like he did every time she screamed herself awake on the ring, or he found her silently crying by the window. It destroys him to see her baring herself like this, but deep down, he knows she needs it.
"I have lived with that for as long as I can remember." She sniffs, before turning away and gazing longingly out the window, the hollows of her face illuminated in the light of the twin suns.
"The chance to live without it…" she turns back to face Clarke. "That is why I took that chip."
She has no more words to say. No more scars to bare, no more wounds to open. With a final shake of her head, she grabs her sword from the table – her final connection to that life – and leaves, leaving a stunned Clarke and a regretful Bellamy in her wake.
The two look at each other for a moment, silently asking each other the same question.
"I… I'm sorry." Clarke gets out a long moment later. "I didn't know…"
Bellamy sighs. "Neither did I…"
Silence descends again, this time bringing with it their own regrets, heavy and suffocating in equal measure, reminders that none of them are truly absolved from guilt, they all have their own demons, no matter how guarded.
"I'll go see if she's okay." Bellamy says a moment later as he moves towards the door.
He pauses on his way out, as if there is something else he wishes to say. Whatever it is dies on his lips however, and he exits without another word, leaving Clarke entirely alone with her thoughts.
She has no idea what to make of what just happened. What started as a simple curiosity quickly turned into something so much more, and she'd be lying if she didn't feel a little regret.
No matter what she had done in the past, Echo is still on their side, had still saved their lives and is still trying to do better, just as they all are. Most importantly, she is still human, something Clarke only now realises had been all too easy to forget around her.
She still felt, she still bled, she still hurt.
It is only now that she realises, maybe they aren't so different, she and Echo.
They've both done terrible things for their people, for the betterment of their clans. Both have suffered from it.
There is one key difference though.
Clarke did all those things because she had to, sure, but her actions were still her own. Terrible as they were, she still chose to do them.
Maybe… just maybe… Echo never had any choice at all.
"Why then, did God give them free will? Because free will, although it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having." – CS Lewis
If you've made it this far, thanks so much for reading! I've said this before in my work but Echo does not deserve the blatant, unwarranted hatred she gets from a large portion of the fanbase. I think she is a fantastically complex character who, sadly, is just one of several to have suffered from terrible, inconsistent writing as the seasons have gone on. we've caught glimpses of what makes her who she is, but we've never had anything to tie them all together, so I hoped with this to join a few dots, answer some questions and unmask a little of that missing characterisation.
I sincerely hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, please let me know! Any feedback and support is, as always, much appreciated!