Fireheart | Raven Reyes [O.H.]

17 | hanging cloud

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chapter seventeen!
HANGING CLOUD
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ARES' SLEEP IS not kind. It seems fitting for the eventful two days he'd been awake. Instead of being so tired he'd have a dreamless, peaceful slumber, he is plagued with nightmares that he can't drag himself out of, trapped in an inescapable hell formed by his own – apparently guilty – conscience that haunts him at every turn.

Dream Ares is in the forest surrounding the camp. It's not dark, which somehow makes it worse; if it hadn't been for the events in the nightmare, the warm sunlight spilling over the woods and warming his skin may have seemed benign. It also makes it so much easier to see the blood. It's everywhere, on the dirt and caked onto his boots, smeared onto the trees and dripping from the leaves. Blood of his own. Blood of his enemies. And the blood of his friends.

He hadn't started off alone. He'd been with Nate, the two of them on a hunting trip organized by Clarke. But when Ares had stepped forward to approach an unsuspecting deer, Nate's body had dropped dead next to his, an arrow embedded in his spine. Ares had whirled around and shot the Grounder in the face before he could think twice. And before the panic could settle in, before he could take the time to mourn his friend, the war began.

Each time, a person he knows calls out his name, and each time, he's a second too late to save them. He watches their bodies go down until there are so many corpses he's practically tripping over them with every step. He shoots the Grounders in retaliation, but by that point, the action is futile. The delinquents are already dead.

Ares doesn't know when he'd started crying, but his face is so slick that he can't tell what's from blood and what's from tears anymore, the forest conflating into a sea of chaos and crimson that makes him want to hurl his guts up. The stench of death is near-paralyzing. A distant part of him knows that this must be a dream because he has too many bullets. He should have run out by now. But he hasn't, so he keeps going, keeps killing, keeps soaking himself in blood.

He steps around Raven's body and nearly stumbles on top of Oliver's. Kiernan's sky-blue eyes stare up at nothing from his twisted frame. He can see the tangle of Clarke's blonde hair, the Grounder that had killed her lying motionless to her right. Ares uses his boot to nudge another warrior off of a body, revealing Blake and the gruesome slash across his neck.

"Ares," a voice pleads from behind him. He squeezes his eyes shut, internally begging, Not again. Please, not again, before finding the strength to turn around.

Instead, he finds his own rifle aimed at his forehead.

"Your turn," says his voice, though he can't tell if the words had come from his mouth or some sort of clone before the bullet rips through his brain.