Chapter Text
Abby was asleep, though whether that fact had more to do with natural exhaustion or the cocktail of drugs being fed into her arm from the bag hanging next to the medical bed, Marcus wasn’t sure. He also wasn’t sure how much medicine they even had left in their supplies after coming to the ground, or how much was currently being used on those injured from Mount Weather, but possibly that wasn’t important right now. A problem for tomorrow. Today they were alive.
Abby was alive.
The sparse, wheeled medical bed was certainly an improvement on being strapped to Mount Weather’s metal table, but it was still strange to see a tube running out of her arm, and even knowing the good it was doing Marcus found he had to fight the irrational urge to tear it out of her. His mind felt slightly foggy around the edges – the fatigue of the last few days finally catching up with him – and he knew there were probably other places he needed to be, but somehow it seemed very important right now that he be right here.
She was the Chancellor, after all. Someone should be watching over her, and Jackson was busy with half a dozen other people. They desperately needed more doctors for a camp of this size, and Marcus made a mental note to bring it up with Abby when she woke. There was so much that needed to be done...
His train of thought was cut short by the arrival of Bellamy Blake, who entered quietly through the door and stopped short at the sight of Abby. Many of his friends were in medical in the next room, and Marcus instinctively knew that Bellamy had been there first to check on them; he could recognise someone who was clearly doing the rounds. The boy would have made a good Guard. Another thought for tomorrow.
Bellamy gestured to Abby. “Is she...?”
“Asleep,” said Marcus. “Jackson says she’ll be fine. Weak for a few days maybe. Raven too.”
Bellamy nodded. He said nothing for a few moments, but just stood there, staring at empty space. He didn’t look like someone who had finally come home victorious after a long battle. He didn’t look like someone who had just helped save his people from torture and death. He didn’t look like someone who finally had a chance to relax, to breathe after weeks of uncertainty and fear. Instead he looked...
Marcus felt his heart sink. Bellamy looked for all the world like someone steeling himself to deliver bad news. His fears were confirmed when the boy took a deep breath and faced him, his posture tense.
“Clarke’s gone,” he said baldly.
Marcus stared at him, the words taking a few seconds to sink in. “What?” he said. “Have you looked—”
“I don’t mean she’s missing,” said Bellamy, cutting him off. “I mean she left.”
“Where to?”
There was a long silence in which Bellamy just looked at him.
“I see,” said Marcus. He glanced briefly at the sleeping form of Abby, thankful to see that she was showing no signs of stirring. “I take it she’s not planning on coming back any time soon, either?”
Bellamy shook his head.
“And you let her go?”
“I didn’t let her do anything,” said Bellamy, a hard edge to his voice. “It was her choice.”
Marcus bit back his response. Being angry at Bellamy wouldn’t change anything, and it wasn’t his fault that this had happened. After everything the boy had just been through with her, Clarke leaving would probably hurt him more than anyone.
Almost anyone.
“Alright,” Marcus said heavily. “We don’t have to do this now. Thank you for telling me. Let the sentries know so they can be on the lookout in case she...” In case she’s injured out there, in case she’s attacked, in case she has to come crawling back to camp starved and bleeding. “...In case she decides to come back.”
“Already done,” said Bellamy.
“And try to get some sleep,” said Marcus. Seeing the wry look of disbelief that crossed Bellamy’s face, he almost smiled. “Clarke will be okay,” he said. “She’s strong and she’s a survivor. And if we don’t find her then she knows where to find us. We’ll be here for her when she does.”
It occurred to Marcus that he was trying the words out, seeing how convincing they sounded even to his own ears. Wondering how convincing they’d sound when he had to go through it again. He looked down at Abby again and felt his stomach lurch with the prospect of the conversation to come.
Bellamy had followed his gaze, and after a moment’s hesitation spoke with a slightly gentler tone: “If you let me know when she wakes up, I can—”
“No.” Marcus said immediately. “No, I’ll tell her.” He pulled a chair to the side of Abby’s bed and sat down on it, trying not to make too much noise. Not that it mattered – she looked like she would be out for a while.
He tried to give Bellamy the approximation of a smile. “I meant it about getting some sleep. You’ve done enough already.”
“Yeah,” said Bellamy, a horrible bitterness in his voice. “Yeah, I have.”
He gave a brief nod, turned and walked out before Marcus could think of a reply. But then what could he say that hadn’t already been said? That Clarke and Bellamy had done the right thing? That in killing hundreds they had potentially saved hundreds more, including their own people and the Grounders who had been paying the price of Mount Weather’s existence for decades? That any of them would have done the same in that position? That they had no choice?
What could anyone possibly say that would make it easier to live with a decision like that? What could anyone possibly say to Clarke that would make her able to come home again?
Marcus sighed. He should get some sleep too, he knew, and Abby would give him hell for that when she found out. But her daughter was gone, and there was no way he was going to let her wake up to an empty room. So he settled down to wait, watching the steady rise and fall of her chest, each soft exhalation a reassurance that she was still here with him. That whatever happened now, neither of them would have to face it alone.
Marcus had known Abby Griffin for his whole life, one way or another.
He remembered her as a girl, headstrong and gregarious, her thick plait of hair swinging against her back as she ran along the corridors, sticking her nose into everyone’s business. Of course he hadn’t really known her back then, except in the sense that everyone knew everyone on the Ark, at least by sight. A few years later he started hearing her name more often as she grew from a gangly adolescent into a very pretty young woman, kind-hearted and stubborn and smart as a whip, acing every class and always surrounded by friends and admirers. Even so they didn’t have much contact – there were a few years between them in age, and one quiet, serious boy with a religious fanatic for a mother probably didn’t even register on Abby’s radar.
It wasn’t until many years later that he really met her. She was the Chief Medical Officer on the Ark by then, and the youngest appointed Council member in some time, a post she would occupy on and off for the coming years. She had also married Jake Griffin; a man who was calm and measured where she was bold and impulsive, a man with an easy smile and a thoughtful, intelligent mind. A fellow idealist. It was a good match.
Meanwhile Marcus had been slowly working his way up through the Guard. In spite of what people said about him – and he knew what people said about him, heard the mutters that followed wherever he went – he had never thought of himself as a particularly ambitious person. He wasn’t interested in having power over other people, or even the idea of getting ahead for its own sake. He just did his job, and he did it well. He enforced the law and protected the people of the Ark, and he gave his best day after day, because he owed his people nothing less. Perhaps Marcus did take after his mother after all, because just as she believed in her preachings, he truly believed in what he did as well.
He was promoted, and promoted again. He gained a reputation for fairness, which somewhere along the line seemed to turn into a reputation for ruthlessness. It didn’t matter; he wasn’t interested in reputations either. What mattered was what a person did, and he did what had to be done, whether people liked it or not.
He did his job.
Three days since their return to Arkadia, and Abby was standing outside watching the dawn over the mountains.
The ground was hard as a rock and crunched with frost beneath his boots as Marcus walked over to her, a slender figure silhouetted against the cold morning light. Frost was something difficult to get used to...along with rain, mud, falling leaves, flying insects and a hundred other little things that were so commonplace here and hadn’t even crossed his mind on the Ark. He imagined snow would be even worse if they got any, and right now it seemed more than likely, as cold as it was.
He didn’t know for sure though. Marcus had never done particularly well in Earth Skills as a kid, preferring to focus on more practical things. An unfortunate irony now, of course.
He followed Abby’s gaze as he approached, and saw there was a flock of birds in the distance, a cloud of tiny black dots against the sky, drifting over the mountains. Heading south for the winter, perhaps? He had heard of that happening, although it seemed too late in the year for it now.
This early there was no-one else in sight around the camp except for the distant guards at the perimeter, but still Abby made no sign to acknowledge his presence as he came to a stop beside her.
“You shouldn’t be out of bed,” he said by way of greeting.
“Well you know what they say,” said Abby. “Doctors make the worst patients.”
There was something distant in her voice, as if her mind were miles away across the mountains as well. She wasn’t wearing a coat, he noticed, and her arms were crossed tightly around herself, perhaps an instinctive way of keeping in body heat. It was a vulnerable gesture, making her look even smaller against the vast backdrop of the world.
“Come back inside,” Marcus said. “It’s too cold to be out here alone.”
“Yes is it,” said Abby bleakly, not looking at him.
Marcus winced internally as he realised what he’d just said. Images flashed across his mind of Clarke out there somewhere in the woods, with only the clothes she’s been wearing when she left and the few supplies she’d had in her pack. Three days. If she hadn’t yet found food she would have run out by now. He glanced down at the ground beneath his feet, still hard and glittering with frost.
He looked back up at the woman standing next to him, her face pale and eyes blank, and tried to speak as gently as possible. “Abby—”
“I was thinking about the world before,” she interrupted him, still staring into the distance. “You know, according to Lincoln his people believe this whole area was once a huge city? All those thousands and thousands of people living together...”
She sighed, the little gust of warm breath creating a puff of cloud in the icy air.
“I can’t imagine it,” she said. “Even though I’ve seen pictures, I still can’t believe it was ever like that. The idea that people could just wake up in the morning and go outside and live their lives not having to worry about the air running out, or the water being poisoned, or getting a spear thrown into their chest. I can’t imagine....it must have been so peaceful.”
“Right up until the point where they bombed each other into oblivion,” said Marcus. He’d meant it only as an observation, but the remark came out sounding more bitter than he’d intended. The truth was that it was hard not to resent those who had lived before. Their ancestors who had forced them into space, crammed into a crumbling metal coffin to live and die in quiet desperation as their true home spun slowly on hundreds of miles below, tantalisingly out of reach.
There was a long silence. “Maybe that’s just how it goes,” said Abby quietly. “Maybe people just can’t live together for that long without it turning into ‘them or us’ and everything falling apart. And then whoever loses is destroyed...and whoever wins has to live with knowing that it’ll happen all over again, and next time it will probably be their turn.”
“I don’t believe that,” said Marcus. He reached out and touched her lightly on the shoulder, just enough to make her turn to look at him. There was a hopelessness in her eyes that he had never seen before, something that sent a sharp pang through his chest.
“It doesn’t always have to be kill or be killed,” he said, a little unsure whether he was trying to reassure her or himself. “We don’t have to repeat history. Not anymore.”
“We already have,” said Abby.
Marcus frowned. “Clarke did what she had to do at Mount Weather, but she won’t ever have to do it again. None of us will.” Abby flinched at Clarke’s name but he continued: “We have a chance to find a better way, and your daughter gave us that. We survived and we can learn from what happened so that it never has to happen again.”
Abby closed her eyes briefly and nodded. When she opened them again he could see they were bright with unshed tears. She looked away, drawing back a little from him, an unconscious movement.
“I just wish I could tell her that it wasn’t her fault,” she said. “That it’s this place, this world...” Her voice cracked and she took a long shaky breath, visibly pulling herself together. “I just wish I could talk to her.”
“I know,” said Marcus.
He saw a tremor run through her frame – from cold or emotion he wasn’t sure – and fought the sudden impulse to put his arm around her. Even now, after everything they’d been through, he wasn’t entirely sure the gesture would be welcome. But it surprised him how much it hurt not to be able to do it, to offer her some comfort beyond empty reassurances. It was the second time in a handful of days that he had seen her in terrible pain and been helpless to do anything about it.
His arms hung uselessly by his sides.
“Come back inside,” he said finally. “Jackson will be worried if he finds you gone.”