1 + 2 | EMBERS TO FIRESTORM | THE 100 | JOHN MURPHY

TWENTY FIVE

T W E N T Y F I V E

Althea watches as Clarke storms out of Bellamy's tent, followed closely by Finn. She was a whirlwind, focused on doing what she thought was right. Once she came to her conclusion, it was all she was driven to do. Althea knew that first hand.

"Where are you going?" She asks them as they pass by. Finn is the one who slows down enough to explain briefly.

"To find Bellamy," He tells her, shrugging his shoulders slightly.

"Then I'm coming too," Althea says with determination burning brighter than the fire in her lungs, overcoming the ever present fear of dying that thrived within her veins, hot and molten. It was time to rise from the flames.

-

She knew Bellamy wouldn't listen to her, but at least trying gave her the opportunity to set her conscience to rest for a moment. She's told him not to do anything stupid; he hadn't listened.

As they made their way through the forest, Althea's mind was elsewhere. She thought about herself, how weak she had been, how she had cried at every little thing.

Now she promised herself that she would never cry unnecessarily again, no matter how much it felt like she was drowning or being overcome by the burden that smothered her.

Then she thought about John Murphy, banished from the camp and sentenced to the unknown, perhaps the most terrifying thing for anyone to be condemned to. She missed him. She missed the way he held her hand when she slipped hers into his, she missed the way he had kissed her before she'd had to leave him to his fate, mostly she missed the way she could look into his eyes and know. He made her chest heavy and her veins rush with a flurry of want. Indescribable to another.

"We should split up," Clarke says, "And meet at the bottom." Looking between the two, Althea is uncertain and suddenly feels as if she is intruding.

"Okay," Finn agrees, eager to keep moving. "Althea, go with Clarke."

Sending him a small nod and an odd smile, she follows Clarke. Running up behind her to catch up and for the first time in years, the fire in her lungs ceases and her eyes glisten with adventure. Perhaps that was the relief she was seeking: adventure, not love.

They run side by side. Never having been in such close proximity since the day Althea first saw her father's death inside her mind, not since it kept coming back to haunt her. She had isolated herself as if she were afraid of herself, as if she were afraid that her mind would twist and turn more people she loved into death scenarios. She quickly learned that hiding away would never prevent them. The crows always caught up, pecking into her skull with their sharpened beaks.

Never knowing what happened to her after that day, the curiosity and hurt is too much for Clarke to withstand. "What happened to you?" She asks suddenly, much more hostile and vicious than she intended, but it painted the picture of all the hurt in its reds and its blacks.

Althea doesn't even look at her. She can't. "What do you mean?"

"Why did you do this to yourself?" Clarke asks, stopping dead in her tracks. After a few paces, Althea stops too and turns to face her former friend at last. Their eyes meet and, instead of meeting the vibrant eyes she adored and envied, Clarke is locked onto a pair of dull, empty eyes, their very existence flawed. A girl who had seen too much. "Why did you avoid me?"

"I got sick, Clarke," She replies as if it was obvious, and it was. "I'm still sick."

"And that's your excuse for cutting me out of your life?"Her voice cracks.

"No." Althea smiles sadly, but she does not cry. Her exterior has hardened to steel.

"Then why?" Clarke's eyes are watering, brimming with tears for the answers she had waited so long to hear. Seeing how unwilling Althea was to grant her these answers just made the blow even worse.

"You don't get it? Everything I said that day everyone began calling me crazy came true. I bet your angelic mother didn't tell you that either." Althea's voice rises too, her fingers curling into fists at her sides and her nails dig into her palms.

"You're too naïve to be hearing this, Clarke. The only mental illness you know is the crap you read in the old romance novels back on the Ark. This isn't a romance novel; this is me. I could list off every single thing wrong with me and all you'd ask me is if that's my excuse. No, it's not my excuse. I just couldn't look at you after I kept on seeing your mum letting my dad die in my head, that's my excuse!"

"Althea, I-"

"We should keep going," Althea says firmly, halting any advances of apologies. She didn't want any apologies, especially not from Clarke. They were meaningless. Merely words and spells of false hope, begging the conscience of a being for a better future when in reality all that would come from the loosely strung sentence was the inevitable pain of that apology becoming void.

Above, the cawing of the crows reigns. They wear their crowns and their jewels, but Althea walks below with a weight lifted from her shoulders. Now, she could look at Clarke and know that, when Clarke looked back, she knew exactly why the events occurred in their peculiar pattern.

Longing to shoot the crows from the sky. To see them tumbling to the ground in a fury of nightly feathers and blood. To see it dead on the ground. They mocked her day in day out and today was the day that she felt herself coming to the end of her time in which she would allow herself to be beaten back by their taunts.

Today, new determination set in. Today, Althea Barnes was filled with a new sense of purpose, of life as gardens blossomed within her lungs.

-

dedicated to liv for our five months of friendship!