Taming Chaos // J.M // The 100

Chapter 11

They spend hours getting the rockets into place, moving fuel, parts, power and scrap metal from the pod to the open field, following every order from a quick-fire Raven.

Their only gap is coming to a close.

Barely scraping by with minutes left on the counter, Raven fires the rockets into the sky.

They hold their breath.

All three are a success, lighting up the clouds in shades of pink and blue with the hope of the Ark's return and the safety of their people following.

Ethan cheers along with his fellow delinquents.

"Think they can see it from up there?" Bellamy asks, standing beside Clarke.

Ethan shrugs.

Clarke follows the blue hues into the stars, "I hope so." Then, "Can you wish upon this kind of shooting star?"

Bellamy turns his head and sends her a lifted brow, his arms crossed.

Ethan mimics the action, standing on the other side of her. "Why would you wish upon something burning up in the atmos-"

"Forget it." Clarke sighs.

She'd almost said the exact same thing when Finn told her to make a wish those few days ago. Now he's back with his old girlfriend. And Clarke's alone again.

"I wouldn't even know what to wish for." Bellamy sniffs, glancing back up into the light. "What about you?"

Clarke silently sends a forlorn look in Finn's direction.

"I guess the usual answer would be world peace." Ethan begins, dropping his hands into his pockets when he looks at Bellamy, "But that's boring. So I'd wish for a cat. I mean, have you seen them in pictures? So fucking cute -"

Ethan rambles until the crowd starts to split.

They won't know for sure when or if the Ark's seen the flares, so it's a long waiting game. And sometimes waiting is the hardest part.

"Can I?" Ethan points at Clarke's hands, upon seeing her re-tie her hair for the third time.

They've been attempting - keyword attempting - to get a few hours of sleep in before morning. It doesn't help sharing a tent with at least three other people. 

He himself has spent the last thirty minutes distractedly fixing a rip in the knee of his pants, experimenting with his knowledge of tailoring by reusing unfixable articles of fabric. For example, Atom's singed and torn-up shirt, which Ethan had taken one look at and refused to use.

Clarke pulls her head up, lackey band hanging from the clutches of her front teeth. She drops her hands, retrieves the hair tie and sighs. Giving up, she nods.

Smiling at the go-ahead, Ethan brushes down his fixed cargo pants and pulls himself to his feet, the numerous buckles clanking against each other on the way up.

He moves around behind her, a jolt of understanding hitting him by the way she tenses. After the things they've been through, almost two weeks on the ground, he can't blame her.

He accepts the hairband and rolls it onto his wrist for later, gently raking his fingers across her scalp to catch the tangles after a long day of work and stress. Instead of twisting and gathering, he plaits her fringe into two and pulls it to the back like she usually has it.

Clarke sucks in a deep breath and slowly lets it out, the tension unwinding from her shoulders.

They soar right back up to her ears when Bellamy frightens the whole tent, yanking the flap to the side with no warning. He eyes the two of them, brow cocked.

Ethan finishes tying Clarke's hair, "What?" He asks, short and sharp.

"Octavia's missing."

Jolting into a stand, his eyes widen. He ducks under the tent's entrance, standing with Bellamy. "How long?" Because he knows fure sure he'd seen her that morning, and he begs it isn't the last time she's been accounted for.

"Nobody knows." Bellamy breathes out, watching Clarke exit the tent as well.

Ethan worries his lip between his teeth and glances around camp before turning back around, "I think I was the last person to see her."

"What?" Bellamy barks, grabbing his shoulders. "Where?"

Knocking him back, Ethan lowers his voice, "She was on her way back to camp because you were being, quote on quote, an ass." He tilts his head, "We talked, went our separate ways. That was the end of it."

Bellamy narrows his eyes. "You should have gone back with her."

The corner of Ethan's lips lifts into a sarcastic smirk. "Says the one that made her leave in the first place." He takes a confident step, if only because Clarke is still here. "Man, if you hadn't tried silencing me I could have made it back in time so who's fault is this really?"

Clarke moves to interrupt the square-off between two boys steadily moving into each other's faces, but an echoed gasp does it for her.

Simultaneously they agree on pulling apart and following Clarke, pushing through the masses to get to the front and decipher what the alarm is about.

The stars? No, these things are moving, and they're moving fast. A meteor shower?

The picture is enough to leave Ethan in awe, clutching at the closest person's jacket. Clarke's, to be specific, and her eyes are just as wide as his.

It's captivating.

But also wrong.

He understands when Raven steps forward, her lips parted,

"They didn't see the flares."

"What?" His eyes widen, following through with every innocent body burning up in the atmosphere. "No, no, no-"

Three hundred people.

"A meteor shower tells you that?" Bellamy has the audacity to look annoyed.

Clarke swallows harshly, shuffling in place. "It's not a meteor shower. It's a funeral." She tears her gaze away, glare landing on Bellamy. "Hundreds of bodies being returned to Earth from The Ark. This is what it looks like from the other side."

She looks around the crowd, "They didn't get our message."

Raven snaps.

She shoves past Ethan to yell at Bellamy, "This is all your fault!"

Clarke and Finn pull her back, having to grab an arm each just to keep her rage at bay. And still, they struggle, breathing just as hard as Raven is.

"Hey, I helped you find the radio,"

Ethan scoffs, "You mean I told them where you threw it and you stood by and waited while we searched."

Nodding hard, Raven jerks a finger towards Bellamy, "Only after you crashed my pod and jacked it."

"Yeah, he knows." Clarke steps in front of her.

Then looks at Bellamy.

"And now he has to live with it."