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CLARKE WAS GOING TO BE OKAY. And Marley had never been more relieved in her life.
The most they could do was keep watching her, dabbing away the blood while she slept. None of them were doctors, no one trained for these kinds of things; it was entirely improvisation, but they seemed to have figured something out that actually worked to actually help her.
Marley had passed the cool rag over to Raven, standing up to stretch her back after being hunched over for so long. It was a welcome relief and the moment she stood, pulling back from Clarke as she drifted in and out of sleep, she finally managed to the shaky breath that had been hitched high in her throat for what felt like hours. Elijah gave her a weak smile as she pulled away, still firmly rooted to the wall, like he was unable to move.
He looked uneasy and his mind seemed to be racing at a thousand miles an hour. Marley knew what it was like; sometimes, she felt as if all her mind ever did was run wild with thoughts near impossible to drown out. She would have talked to him if she hadn't thought she'd say something hopelessly wrong. She didn't even know what she could have said to make things better. It was a terrible situation with terrible circumstances, with a terrible outcome and the most brutal of weights resting heavy on their shoulders.
Instead, she wandered in search of Bellamy. She wasn't sure when he'd left - she'd been too focused on Clarke and her injury, and not somehow turning an awful situation into a complete disaster - but she could hear his footsteps pacing heavy above them, echoing throughout the ship in the cloying silence.
There was too much fraught tension in the air. Running, for a moment away from all that, seemed like the best option.
She climbed the ladder as quietly as she could; no one wanted to hear her intrusive footsteps. She was surprised when Bellamy didn't hear her climbing because, even despite her attempts at staying quiet, her boots were heavy and cumbersome and still made a racket against the metal ladder.
He only turned when she called out his name. He was fiddling with something on the table before him - exactly what, she couldn't see, but she reckoned it was his gun, playing around with the bullets in case they needed to defend themselves against the Grounders.
"Bellamy-" The tense, rigid set of his shoulders relaxed when he heard her call out his name. It washed over him, a tsunami of relief, her voice so soft and gentle through the roaring of blood in his ears.
She was a steady boat on a terrible sea.
Marley smiled when he turned, stepping further into the light. "I think she's going to be okay."
He returned her smile. "I knew you could do it."
"Well, I'm no Abby-" She shrugged slightly, trying to seem unbothered, nonchalant, but he could see that her hands were still shaking. Her hand reached up to press against her scalp, her fingers running over the skin beneath her hair gently. At first, he thought she was brushing over the area Tate had hit her, when Elijah had found her outside camp and carried her inside, barely conscious and bleeding, but he realised that it was the opposite side. "But I've had some practice," she admitted. Her voice was small but it seemed so loud in the fragile silence.
