Chapter Text
The dropship shook as the rockets fired, the inferno they created taking down everything within the camp’s limits and then some. I wiped my forehead with my sleeve and realised it came away sticky with blood. Since that seemed like a problem for another day, and I wasn't entirely sure if it was my blood or not, I checked that I was strapped in properly and closed my eyes.
When I woke up, the dropship door was open.
But there was no one there.
~
Looking around warily, I climbed down from the tree— falling part of the way thanks to a combination of the wound in my leg, the fact that the tree was burnt from the middle down, and the fact that the pain in my shoulder had decided now was the time to do an encore. I grunted, checking the stab-wound in my leg. Not much blood, it wasn’t deep, but it was uncomfortable. I wasn’t poisoned though, that much was true. If I had been poisoned, I’d know, and the fall from the tree wouldn’t have mattered because I would be too unconscious to notice. And then I’d be dead.
There was no one around, so it was safe to investigate. First, I walked around the edge of the former campsite, picking up weapons here and there, mostly knives. I stashed them in the various pockets and pouches I had in my jacket, cargo pants, and boots. I sifted through the wreckage, trying to see if there was anything useful. No such luck.
A twig cracked nearby and I held my breath, slowly backing away from the sound until I had my back pressed against a small portion of the wall that was still standing. Without making a sound, I slid a knife down my sleeve, into my hand, and waited. The Grounder walked past, barely noticing me as he bent down to inspect the corpse of one of his tribe on the floor. Standing up, with a clear look of vengeance, he made his way towards the dropship and stepped inside.
I stood up, making my way towards it and hoping to cut him off in there. Just as I was about to board, a gunshot rang out, and I heard the Grounder fall to the floor. That meant that there had to be at least one person left. One person who wasn’t a Grounder, and knew how to shoot a gun. I took a step forward and heard their uneven breathing as they tried to lift the gun again.
Peeling back the parachute covering the entry, I raised my hands in surrender as I walked in. “Don’t shoot, I— Raven?” She lay there on the floor, gasping and groaning on her back as she lay the gun down. I ran to my friend’s side, easing her upright. “What the hell happened? Where is everybody?”
At that moment, I heard movement behind me and I shot around, holding up the knife. The figure’s shadow appeared behind the parachute and it wasn’t that of a grounder. The shadow had messy hair, a slight build and a limp. When Murphy came through the door I launched myself at him, tackling him to the floor. “Murphy you son of a bitch! You never should’ve come back here,” I straddled his chest, ignoring the fact that his hands were bound as I held the knife to his throat. “You almost killed Bellamy, and you shot Raven. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you.”
He sighed, “Because I’m already probably dying, same as her.” Murphy’s bound hands gestured in the direction of Raven. “There’d be no point. Plus, I haven’t fully recovered from the last time you stabbed me.”
I looked at his hand and saw that it was still bandaged, but the wound didn’t look brilliant and he was probably right. I said as I thought, “I’d be keeping a promise I made, which seems to be a pretty good point to me.”
“Look,” Murphy refused to struggle, just lay there on the floor as I pinned him down. “I—” We were interrupted by Raven, who started to cough and gasp, leaning over as blood trickled out of her mouth. “Lie on your side, lie on your side! Trust me!”
Bad choice of words, “Why the hell would I trust you?” I spat, pushing him into the floor before getting up and going to Raven, helping her lie on her side. Murphy rolled onto his side and sat up, crawling over to where we were and wiping Raven’s mouth with a cloth. I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Why are you helping her?”
“Because I don’t want to die alone,” he whispered. I sat down with my back against the wall next to Raven, who looked worse and worse for wear. “I’m sorry for shooting you,” Murphy said to her.
“What about almost killing Bellamy, you sorry about that? What about holding me and Jasper hostage, huh?” I pressed on, ignoring the fact that he squirmed uncomfortably.
Murphy looked at his hands instead of at me as he replied, “I did what I thought I had to do at the time. I’m sorry for taking you and Jasper hostage, because you two ironically aren’t as bad as the rest of them, but… I was only making Bellamy feel how I felt, when you lot almost murdered me.”
If he was talking about times I had almost murdered him, he’d need to be more specific. “When they tried to hang you for Wells’ murder? How does it make you any better than them, killing them for what they tried to do to you?”
He scoffed, “Isn’t that how you ended up in the Skybox? Revenge murder?”
“You don’t know shit about why I was in the Skybox,” I snapped, falling silent with annoyance. He didn't know the entire story.
Raven changed the topic, watching Murphy as he pulled a bandage off his leg and replaced it. “How’d you get to be such a dick, Murphy?”
You know what? I’d been thinking the same thing.
“I said I’m sorry for shooting you, okay?” He sighed, “Is that not what you want to hear?”
“Let me guess, maybe Mommy and Daddy didn’t love you?” whispered Raven.
Murphy leant his head on one hand once he had finished with the wound dressing. “No, they loved me.”
Raven raised an eyebrow, “Are you gonna cry, Murphy?”
“Screw you, Raven.”
“No, tell me.” She pressed on, “I want to know. How does a kid who’s loved by his parents turn into a murdering psychopath?”
“He gets the flu. His father steals medicine that turns out wouldn’t help anyway, gets floated for it. And his mother, she starts drinking… pretty heavily after that and… last words she says to him before he finds her in a pool of her own vomit is that…” he took a breath. “Is that he killed his father.”
“Boo-hoo,” Raven whispered back, but she managed a small smile at him which he returned, a few tears making tracks in the dried blood on his cheeks. But his story stuck in my head. There were a surprising amount of parallels between him and me.
“Aren’t you interested in my story? It’s a long one, though.” I lay down and faced the ceiling.
“Haven’t you noticed? We’ve got all the time in the world,” Murphy laughed, tilting his head back and leaning it against the ladder.
Raven nodded, “Might as well, what are you waiting for?”
I rested my hands on my chest before starting, taking comfort in feeling the steady rise and fall that told me I was still alive and remembering the last person I told this story to… and wondering if he was still alive. “My dad was a dick. Most of the rations we got on the Ark he ate, or traded them to the guy next door for booze. One of his other favourite things to trade was my mom, just for afternoons, sometimes evenings. The guy was a douche, but whatever else he’d done I know what he did with my mom was worse. When I was fourteen, I tried to tell someone about it, but they brushed me off— convinced I didn’t know what I was talking about— and everything went quiet. That was when I started practicing self-defence, although it wasn’t easy considering I didn’t have a partner to practice with. A year later… my mom had just had enough, I guess…” I trailed off, gathering up the courage to continue. It was weird, it wasn’t as easy this time around as it had been with Bellamy. That, and since the jobi nut incident, I wasn’t faring too well on that topic. “So she killed herself. My dad didn’t find her… I did. I didn’t get what had happened first, but once I figured it out… I knew why. So I stole a load of my dad’s stuff, traded it for a gun. I tucked the gun inside my jacket, paid my lovely neighbour a visit…” My eyes strayed towards the gun by Raven’s leg. “It’s pretty self-explanatory from there onwards.”
Raven tried to hide her shock, the only thing she managed to say was… “Shit.”
Murphy didn’t say anything at all, but his resident glare softened as he began to realise that maybe we weren’t so different after all.
“Wait, Alyssa. Why weren’t you with the others?” Raven asked, realising that I had been at the battle but not disappeared like everyone else.
“I was still fighting, got Clarke to shut the door with me still on the outside so I could finish a couple more off. Managed to get far enough away before the rockets fired up so I didn’t get torched… woke up and found the dropship opened and everyone gone.” I shrugged, “I’m as confused as you are about what happened, but I’m glad I stayed out. I managed to catch a guy before he went after Finn and Bellamy."
Raven’s eyes snapped onto me, “Finn’s alive?”
“Quite possibly, I’m pretty sure they were out of the blast radius by the time it went off. I have no idea what happened to them though. But I am definitely going to try my hardest to find out. Don’t move, I’ll be right back.” I stood up to climb the ladder.
“Where am I gonna go?” Raven laughed.
I searched the second level, coming back down with some nuts and berries (not jobi nuts). I tossed the packs through the hole before climbing down the ladder. As my feet hit the dropship floor, pain blazed through my leg like it was on fire and I tried to bite back a wince. The stab wound wasn’t deep, but it wasn’t pretty either.
“What are you doing?” Murphy raised an eyebrow.
I sighed, “Food, duh?”
“How about you put that down and let me take a look at that leg?”
“How about I grab a medkit and I take a look at my own leg?” I suggested.
He laughed, “Suit yourself.”
There weren’t any supplies left on the base level, so ignoring my pain I climbed the ladder again. I rifled through what was left up here which weirdly was more than I’d expected. It was like they didn’t realise they were about to leave. There weren’t any weapons left behind, apart from a couple of knives I’d hidden in various places around the ship, but the medical stuff was still here, it was just all the people that were gone. It couldn’t have been Grounders… the man I’d seen outside didn’t seem to look like he’d just taken fifty prisoners. He looked like someone who had lost three hundred of his tribe. Plus, there’s no way the Grounders would have taken all of them prisoner, they would have slaughtered them and left them here. If not them, then who?
A noise downstairs distracted me from my thoughts. Footsteps. They wouldn’t have been Murphy, he has a limp… and it certainly wouldn’t be Raven… Ignoring the pain in my leg I dropped down the ladder wincing but with my knife at the ready. Two adults were in the dropship, one leaning down next to Raven and the other standing near the door with a large gun. They weren’t Grounders, they were from the Ark? I looked over, realising that Raven had fallen back unconscious.
“Raven, Raven honey it’s Abby,” The woman kneeling next to her whispered, stroking her face. Abby. Abby… Abby Griffin.
“Shit, you’re Clarke’s mom? We thought you were dead?” My eyebrows shot up as I took in the other adult. “And… Kane.”
Raven’s eyes fluttered open, and Abby breathed a sigh of relief. “Clarke’s not here,” Raven whispered, causing Abby to look around in confusion.
“We don’t know where she is, or where any of the others are. Some of them I think managed to escape before the explosion… the others weren’t here when I came back.” I leant against the ladder for support, for once it wasn’t the stab wound that hurt but it was my knee more than anything else, thanks to my dramatic entrance through the hatch.
“What happened to you?” Abby asked Raven, her eyes filled with worry.
Raven glanced at Murphy before replying, “I got shot. I got shot.”
Kane stuck his head out through the parachute and called out, “We need a stretcher.” He held out a hand to help Murphy to his feet and slung his arm over his shoulders to help him down out of the dropship. I stayed back slightly to collect the remainder of my hidden knives as Abby tended to Raven, but as I was about to leave the dropship I heard Murphy’s voice from the other side of the parachute. “Bellamy. You’re… You’re alive…”
Bellamy was alive?
I burst through the parachute just as Bellamy tackled Murphy to the ground, “You murdering son of a bitch!” He punched him repeatedly, Murphy’s breaths coming out in uneven gasps between punches. Kane nodded at the guard beside him, who pulled out his weapon.
“Hey!” I tossed a knife before I even realised what I was doing, catching and burying itself in the hand holding the shock baton. I ran forward, grabbing Bellamy and pulling him from Murphy. “Believe me, I wanted to. But you were right before— he’s not worth it.”
Bellamy turned around at my words, his eyes growing wide as he realised it was me. Before saying anything else I wrapped my arms around him, my eyes brimming with tears. “They shut the door, you were behind us and then you weren’t… I thought you were dead,” he whispered into my hair.
I managed to force a laugh, “Can’t save your ass if I’m dead now, can I? I had unfinished Grounder business on the battlefield, I waited until the very last second before getting out. I hid out in one of the trees up there, threw some knives from above.”
“That was you?” I felt him smile.
“Of course, how many other badass girls do you know with an aim that good? Honestly, I thought—” I got cut off by a sharp pain shooting through my entire body. I collapsed, realising the source was another guard’s shock bat.
“Place them under arrest,” Kane ordered as another guard shocked Bellamy, leaving him writhing on the ground in pain.
“What the hell are you doing?” I spat, wincing as they tied my arms behind my back. “Piss off, I already have a shoulder injury.”
“Miss Jones, we are taking you back to the Ark. We’re here to help, the sooner you see that, the better.” Kane nodded at the guard and he cut my wrists loose, instead zip-tying my arms in front of me.
I scoffed, “Since when has the Ark ever helped anybody?” I could feel the knife up my sleeve and wondered if I could get it out discreetly to slice the ties between my wrists. “We were better off before you got here,” I spat.
“You are not in control here anymore,” Kane said sternly. “And I’ll be needing that knife.”
“What knife?”
“The one in your boot.”
“Oh,” I nodded. “My knife. Take it then.” Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Bellamy trying to bite back a small smile. I lifted up my hands, rubbing my nose but mostly covering my face so I could mouth the word to Bellamy without being noticed. Several, I winked.
They sat us down on the remnants of a charred log and left us there, while Finn spoke to Abby about Raven. I looked back over at Bellamy, whose face was covered in a mixture of blood and mud. “So you know where I’ve been, what about you?” I asked, moving a piece of hair out of my eyes.
“Ran from the blaze with Finn, got separated, he got captured by a Grounder, found Monroe and Sterling, tried to rescue Finn and got caught, then these guys showed up, we brought them here… and found out everyone was gone except for you, Raven and Murphy.”
“Oh, so a regular Tuesday then?” I grinned.
Bellamy scoffed, “Pretty much. What happened to the others?”
“I don’t know… they think it’s Grounders but I’m not sure. I didn’t see anything, I was passed out strapped to a tree for god knows how long. Came in and found Raven, then Murphy showed up. Tried to kill Murphy, decided not to…” I thought back to the bow that had been left on the second floor of the dropship, the one I’d given to Fox. “On an unrelated note, do you know how to shoot arrows?”
“No… I don’t?”
I laughed, “Was that an answer or a question?”
“Both. Why would you need to—”
Finn came back, cutting him off. “We’re leaving.”
“What?” I reeled back, “This is where they’ll come back.”
He shook his head, “I don’t think they’re coming back. The Grounders took them, and you know that.”
“How do you know it’s even Grounders?”
“Who else would it be? Look… we go with Kane to Alpha Station, we get reinforcements, weapons. Then we find our friends.” He leant in and whispered the rest of it, trying not to attract the attention of the guards.
“One question,” Bellamy leant in as well. “How many more of us will be dead by then?”
Finn silenced, pausing to look back at Raven on the stretcher behind us. “Abby says Raven needs surgery or she’s gonna die. It’s time to go.” He got up and left, standing behind Raven as the guards lifted her stretcher up.
I looked at Bellamy as the guards hauled us up, one for each of us, and began to march us out of the camp. I glanced back quickly, reading the message Abby had etched into the side of the dropship for Clarke. “Is this a good plan?”
“I don’t know,” he replied truthfully. “But it’s the only one we’ve got.”