in which a girl with a heavy burden tries to find her way through the trials and torments of the earth they've come home to.
OR
in which she must rebuild.
EMBERS
JOHN MURPHY
DEATHLIES 2016
DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN T...
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T H I R T Y T H R E E
"Clarke! Where's Clarke?" Jasper shouts as they hurry back into camp, Bellamy carrying Finn in his arms. "Get Clarke now!"
Like a miracle, Clarke appears with her angelic blonde hair and alert blue eyes. "Hey. I'm here. What's up?" She asks, not realising the severity of the situation until her eyes land on Finn. "Finn. Finn? Oh my god. Oh." She hurries over. "Oh, my god."
The panic alerted Raven. "Oh, my god!" Raven cries out as she too hurries over to his side. Althea watches her eyes flooding with panic as she looks down at the one she loves with a blade in his chest.
Clarke presses her fingers against his neck, checking for a pulse. "He's alive," She confirms and Althea sees the relief in both of their faces.
"Bellamy wouldn't let me take the knife out," Jasper tells them, his brow clad with sweat and his heart pumping with worry.
"No, that was a good call. Get him in the drop ship now. Go!" Clarke commands them, fulfilling her role at the leader too many of them saw her as.
But the crown was made of glass. One wrong move could sent it plummeting to the ground where it would shatter, meeting its demise and its tragic end, never to be repaired only replaced by a forgery of its kind. A falsehood which all would know the truth of and would never trust again.
Clarke was playing with fire, but that's what she did best.
Althea could see the crown slipping. She just wondered if there would be anyone alive who cared enough to catch it when it finally fell.
-
The storm was a vicious one. It painted the sky everyone had dreamed of since birth a dark and miserable grey. It couldn't have been darker. The rain pours heavily. Combined with the wind, it batters the drop ship and clatters into it with everything it has as if it too was trying to get in to shelter from itself.
A group of delinquents hold up tarp, blocking out the rain. They scream commands at one another, trying to be heard over the wails of the storm.
"Hold it back!"
More shouting follows, but Althea doesn't look up from watching over Finn once. Clarke stands at the side, looking out into the storm and Raven sits at the radio, continuing to try her best to make contact with the Ark, with Abby, to save Finn's life.
Althea brushes some of his hair off his face. He was pale. If she didn't have so much faith in him, so much care for him, she would have dismissed his survival chances by now. But she believed in him, perhaps too much to do good.
Finally, a strangers voice comes through the radio, catching Althea's attention and striking hope into their hearts. "This is a restricted station. Who is this? Please identify yourself."
"This is Raven Reyes. I- I'm from Mecha station. I'm transmitting from the ground. The hundred are alive. Please, you need to get Doctor Abby Griffin now!" She says into the radio clearly, her voice barely faltering.
Althea's lip twitches up into a slight smile at the little success. She tucks her hair behind her ear and looks down to Finn. "That girl would die for you," She whispers to him and, to her, it's such a tragic thing to say to him simply because Finn was not so in love with her in the way she wanted to be loved. Althea could see that, but she didn't know if Finn could. She hoped he would soon, when he woke up.
Althea stands when Clarke and Raven rush over. "I'll give you the space you need to save him, Clarke," She says, nodding her head slightly before slinking away into the crowd to try to find a place to sit and just be quiet, to listen to her own thoughts and to connect with her mother for the first time in a long time. The storm would not hinder that connection, nothing would.
-
Althea sits with her eyes softly closed and her back pressed against the metal of the drop ship, it's cold material soothing to her skin.
But she was not at peace. Something was wrong. No longer could she sit and do nothing. It was then that she came to the conclusion that staying out of the way wasn't the best way to handle this. So she stood, walked to the ladder and clambered up.
What she saw was not what she ever expected. Her stomach churns and her knuckles turn white from trying to hold herself up from tumbling down. Swallowing, she pulls herself up the rest of the way.
Both of the grounder's eyes lock onto her. The male's were more intimidating, but the female was nothing to be comfortable around.
"Why did you bring them here, Bellamy?" Althea asks, her voice low. She does not look at him, only at the grounders. "Do you want us all to die?" She snaps and now her eyes were on him and oh did they burn deep, right to the bone.
"They have answers," Bellamy replies simply.
"For what? You got your sister back. Isn't that all you care about?" Althea folds her arms across her chest. Her tongue darts out along her lips as she waits for his answer, but it never comes. "No. You want revenge, don't you?"
"No," Bellamy says, breathing in and walking towards her in an attempt to threaten her. Althea does not shrink before him. "We brought them here for intel."
"Then I'm here to listen to it, if you can even get it from them," Althea challenges, brushing past him and sitting down at the side of the room. Her hands in her lap and her eyes staring straight ahead at the grounder male with his bruised and bloody face. He does not look back. But the female does. She looks right at her with the blood dripping from her nose and the intensity of her dark brown eyes that, if Althea had looked closer, would have reminded her of the forest in all its glory.
Bellamy looks at her too and wonders where this all came from. Only days ago she was weak and fragile in his arms, but now she was willing to do so much more to survive. She was changing, adapting to live on Earth and he wasn't sure if it was for the better.
Suddenly her eyes shift to him and it's as if she knows every thought running through his head as she says, "I'm not the girl you think I am, Bellamy Blake."
