Responsible for survival

Dying

CLARKE'S POV

I trip over something warm.

Atom.

His eyes are no longer deep ocean blue but are instead snow white, all but a greyed pupil. Boils and blood bubble on his broken skin. He groans something to soft for me to hear. He's dying. I crouch closer. "Kill... me..." he whispers, hoarse voice barely reaching me. I can't. But he won't live to see the night and dying as his insides burn from the acid isn't a way anyone should die. I stroke his dark, sweaty hair and nod. "Shush, shush, I'm here. You're going to be OK." I hum the travellers blessing, gently soothing his hair and smiling, as I stab the knife into his neck.
Shaking, I wipe the knife and stand up, knees suddenly weak, and I hold a low hanging branch tight. "GUYS!" I yell, knowing they can't be far away. Monroe comes first, and trips, head first, over his dead body. She slams her hand over her mouth but I can see the scream burning in her eyes. Monty's shakes, mouthing Miller's name as a new look of pain and fear flits across his face. He swallows. Monroe wraps an arm round him, rubbing his arm with her thumb. "They've got to be near." Murphy says eventually. "They can't have run far." He hurries away, in the direction of a few blood splattered foot prints.
"We can't leave him here." I whisper.
"The grounders will know the fog killed him." Monty whispers back. I shake my head, unable to say the words, lip trembling. I can't admit what I've done.
"I did." I whisper. Monroe lets go of Monty and hugs me tight. My hands shake as they hug her back.

"GUYS!" Murphy screams. I can hear the sobs in his voice. "I.. I... I..." Then a sob shakes the forest. We run. He's crouched on the floor, staring at something shining on the ground. Monroe squeezes his shoulder, staring. A pair of bent silver hair pins.
"They're Charlotte's." Murphy whispers. "From her tenth birthday, last one I was there for... WE'RE TOO LATE!" He breaks down, sobs racking his body. Monroe hugs him, whispering words that don't travel high enough to us.
"The braken's broken there." Monty holds up a shaking hand, pointing at split grasses and bushes. "We can try to track them." I nod, and help Monroe pull Murphy up.
"How do we know this isn't a trap?" Monroe whispers.
"We don't." Murphy whispers, louder than his sobs.

But not loud enough. Something is screaming down through the sky. Whistling, crackling of dying flames. The thud shakes and rattles around the ground. A wisp of smoke curls over the trees. Wordlessly we all begin to run away from the track. We all know where it's from. There's no one else in the sky.

I slam the doors open, and the ship's half empty. A dusty orange space suit, white helmet with blood splattered across the visor. I crawl through, and yank the helmet off the head of the person. A girl, barely older than us, with honey skin and dribbling blood on high cheek bones. "Hello?" I whisper, beginning to dab away the blood. The girl's eyes blink open, and the pupils retract rapidly.
"Who are you?"
"Clarke Griffin. You're from the ark? Who are you?"
"Raven. Raven Reyes." She smiles, then cringes. I dab the blood away, and help her out the ship. Her feet crunch onto the blanket of orange leaves. Her eyes shine like stars and she spins, breathing deeply. A smile explodes on her lips. She spins, and stoops to pick a leaf.
"Sorry to ruin the mo-" Monroe jabs a bony elbow into Murphy's side and he yelps. Raven stops spinning and laughs. "Murphy?" she runs to hug him, and he staggers back a little, before hugging her tightly. "And I thought you were dead." She giggles, letting go. He tilts his head at her, glances at the wristband, still intact, and then back at her.
"What?"
"None of the wristbands are transmitting."
"What?" My stomach drops. "What do you...? We stopped them taking them off after 32." She arches her eyebrows, a splutter of laughter or disappointment falls out of her.
"YOU TOOK THEM OFF?!" she rounds on all of us. Murphy doesn't meet her eye, but Monroe does, tilting onto tiptoes.
"WE didn't." Says Monroe, holding up her wrist. "A power obsessed, ark hating kid did."
"How's the ark?" I ask, subconsciously checking for any signs of oxygen deprivation, but nothing. She's alright. They're alright.
"Alive.. chaos. Everyone saw you leave. We'll need to radio back so they can know you're all alive." All... not all of us exactly... I nod, sharing looks with the others. Murphy motions for me to pull away and Monroe rushes forward to show Raven some of the pretty leaves.
"We've got to take her back to camp. Jaha will be ordering a culling by now." I hiss.
"WE need to go after Charlotte, Bellamy, Miller and Drew." Murphy whispers back.
"But we can't go alone. Two of us won't be able to find them." We need Raven to get back to camp, but she won't get there alone, and Monroe's fighting skills are a lot better than Monty's.
"We can't take her with us! The ark will die without her!" Murphy's whisper isn't a whisper.
"Do my ears deceive me or does John Murphy care about someone other than himself?" a laugh comes across the clearing. Murphy pursues his lips. Raven walks over and smiles at us. "It's fine, I can just wait here 'till you find your friends and then we can go back to camp. I can man the radio from here." Murphy shakes his head, words moving without the sound.
"We're not alone." I say. Her jaw drops, and she blinks rapidly. "Somehow people survived the cataclysm. They nearly got jasper. Now they've got Bellamy, Charlotte-" she splutters, and looks at Murphy.
"YOU let someone touch Charlotte?" she almost starts to laugh, until she sees how he shrinks into his self, and tears glisten.
"I didn't LET." He hisses, venomous, "They TOOK her."
"Oh... Murphy..." she wraps an arm round him. "Good job I brought guns!"

OCTAVIA'S POV:

The moon shines like a distant dream. It's always been that. The first moon I saw killed me. This one just breaks my heart. Strong arms wrap around me and I jump, before softening into their already familiar scent, of charcoal and trees and something I don't know, but love. "I can't let you out yet." He whispers. It's been two days.
"Why?" I ask, "You said you wouldn't kill me..."
"I won't . I promise... but the hunting party might. Where there's acid fog, there's maunon, where there's maunon, there's prisoners who need freeing." I can't tear my eyes away from the moon. He lets go and I finally look away, and at him, his dark eyes glimmering with golden pain. "Stay here... I'll see if the hunting party are nearby. If they're not, I'll bring you home."
"Thank you." I lean onto my tiptoes and kiss his cheek. He flushes red.

FINN'S POV:

Wells's hand is big and clammy. His fingers squeeze mine as I help him over another fallen tree. He drops down next to me, nose brushing my cheek. "Sneaky way to ask for a kiss." I laugh, pulling him in. He kisses, but lets go quickly. "We have to find Octavia." He breathes.
"She can wait five minutes." I murmur against his ear.
"I'd love to space walker, but you'd be kissing a dead man." He smiles, eyes dancing in the moonlight, "Clarke would literally murder me." He pulls me along a little.
"After we find Octavia?" I don't budge, and he smiles and picks me up.
"Obviously space walker." He kisses my neck, nibbling.

Thudding, marching footsteps shatter the silence of the forest. He pulls me into a bush, and peers past it's leaves. He gasps, then pulls our hands to point at something in the valley below us, where the trees have thinned. Men in white suits are marching prisoners. "Bellamy." He whispers, "We've got to get closer." And he's tearing through the forest soundlessly. HE throws out an arm and I slam into it. He's right, it's Bellamy and the hunting party but without Atom. The men in white are rolling out bedding and barbed wire. One sits with his back to us, a small black box in his hand, shouting.
"I DIDN'T LOSE HER ON PURPOSE." Clarke...? Monroe...?
"HOW DO YOU LOSE A TINY GIRL ANYWAY, IDIOT?" The radio laughs. Charlotte.
"Well she was handcuffed next to the oldestr boy one minute, and then the next there's the thud of the handcuffs hitting the ground and no girl." I peer through the darkness, and notice in horror that their hands are tied with thick, black, cuffs, united by a chain. Bellamy's look to tight, and he's shifting his hands uncomfortably. The clinks of metal echo a little through the darkness.
"You can't just go and LOSE prisoners. We NEED the sky people." The voice gets louder and more and more high pitched.
"Chill. I've got Lovejoy to sweep the woods, she won't have got far." The voice on the other end of the radio crackles with cackling laughter.
"Making him feel important eh?"

We stare in horror, unsure of what to do. Wells is desperately patting us both down, trying to find the knife. The radio buzzes again and a new voice echoes across the suddenly silent clearing. "Come in ground crew 3, come in, this is base." It's pinched and nasally. The man on this side wastes no time on pleasantries.
"Lovejoy. Where's the girl?"
"We don't know. There's currently 15 thermal dots in your immediate vicinity." The only answer he gets is the cocking of guns. Wells slams me down to the ground and beckons me to follow him, and he slides along on his tummy, back up the hill. We're far up enough that all we can hear is our own harried breathing. I collapse against him, and he kisses my head, sitting up. "What do we do? How do we tell Clarke?" he whispers, breathless.

The whistling stops him. The thud knocks him over. The feeling of warm, sticky liquid tells me why.
"WELLS!" I scream. Blood pours from a knife in his back.
"Babe... run..." he whispers, head falling to the ground. Tear explode from my eyes.
"No... I'm not leaving you." I stroke his head as breath judders from his body. Light, thudding feet make me yank the knife out of Wells's back. It dribbles his blood down my hands.
"Finn?" a soft, crying, kids voice rings. She stumbles forward, arm bleeding. Charlotte?
"Charlotte, you've got to run...!" I hiss, nodding backwards towards camp "Go, while you still can."
"I can't." She shakes her head. "Bad people have Bellamy."
"And we have you." A woman, bathed tall in the bright moonlight points her sword against the tip of Charlotte's neck. Her gaze slides from Charlotte to me, to Wells's dead body. She smirks, teeth glowing white against muddy lips. She shifts the sword closer under Charlotte's chin, and moonlight shimmers on her shoulder plates, and her comrades come into view. Charlotte's bottom lip quivers, but she holds the lady's gaze with an anger unseen from a 12 year old.