somewhere | b.blake ✔️

3x05

goya

(n.) the superstition of disbelief that occurs in good storytelling; a story that feels like reality.

*****

Ash quickly realizes during the hours after Pike is officially elected as their chancellor that being angry at someone you love is no easy task.

On one hand, she is worried sick that Bellamy is out there dying as a result of Pike's manipulation. But on the other, she's so very angry at him for not realizing the consequences that his actions will have, the war he is starting.

It causes her to spend a good deal of time pacing the length of the camp, stopping only to punch a few walls and bury her feelings before continuing it again.

She's on her sixth consecutive round when footsteps and chatter come from the outside of the gate. The sounds of it make Ash tense, reminding her of how, because of them, peace will no longer be an option.

The air physically leaves her body and presses against her chest when the gate opens to reveal all ten of the people who just started a war covered head to toe in blood and not at all guilty looking.

Bellamy at the front, leading them, makes her feel sick.

It makes her even sicker when she sees no injuries on any of the warriors. The blood doesn't even belong to them. "Ten of them against 300, how are none of them wounded?" She asks Miller, who seems to be one of the few against the turn of events.

"I—I don't know."

Pike is the last to walk through the gate, his blue shirt under a vest splattered with blood. The triumph that radiates off of him as he turns to the guards on their posts saying, "Lock it up!" makes her sneer.

A few people come out from their various posts, faces full of confusion. Ash notes with horror that some kids stop playing with one another and stare at the soaked in blood group.

"Everybody, listen up," Pike yells to the growing crowd as he stands on a table. Ash wonders who the blood on his shirt belongs to.

Did he or she have a family? Did they have friends?

Were they simply protecting those who could have possibly killed their family because their devotion to the commander was stronger than their need for vengeance?

That, she would never know.

"Twenty-four hours ago, you elected me as your Chancellor," Pike begins, voice full of authority despite his lack of experience. "Every action I've taken since, and every action I will take forward, will be to achieve one sacred goal. The creation of a self-sustaining, prosperous, and safe Arkadia."

Ash fights to hold in her comments that they were safe, self-sustaining, and prosperous before he showed up.

"This morning, on a muddy field, our people paid tribute to those who have been taken from us by sending a message to the Grounders." A pause, one filled with a silence so loud it's sickening. "This land is ours now!"

"I'm going to be sick," Ash declares when the crowd gathered cheers for him, few—Miller, Abby, Kane, Lincoln, and herself—staying silent.

Pike's voice only grows louder as he gains confidence. "Resist and you will be met by force. Fight and you will be greeted by death. Today is a new beginning. Mark it down, remember it just like the Grounders will remember it."

The cheers grow even louder in volume, and Ash finds has to remind herself of the laws to keep from throwing one of the knives hidden in her hood right into Pike's chest.