Taming Chaos // J.M // The 100

Chapter 93

He has nothing to say when they look up and see him. The disappointment is a heavy weight he's never known how to handle.

The door opens, and Ethan waits, expecting his hands to be let free.

This means he isn't prepared for a sudden rough shove into lock-up, and he stumbles into the room without confidence, knocking the breath out of him when his shoulder hits the wall. "Bitch." He wheezes out.

Michael scoffs, slamming the door shut, missing his usual snarky reply. Ethan sneers at the guards until they disperse, and eventually pushes away from the wall to collapse on the bench.

Lincoln silently joins him.

Breathing more erratically than he should be, Ethan tries to remember their last conversation as a distraction. Before all this. Something about needing Lincoln to come back safe and sound.

And then it was Ethan that went ahead and did everything he asked Lincoln not do to.

"Moba gon gonout." He apologises, quietly, for his disappearing act.

Lincoln turns his head. "Yu ge bos." He praises him, the words choppy, but understandable. "Where'd you learn?"

"New friend." Ethan supplies. "Emori." He pauses, brows furrowing, "We befriended her on the roads. There were others, too, where Indra found me. Seria and Alessia."

Recognition flashes in Lincoln's eyes, "Trikru?"

"Seria is, yeah. I'm not-" He presses his boot firmly into his other ankle until it hurts enough to continue. "I'm not sure about Alessia. She didn't make it." 

Ethan further ducks his head so he doesn't have to meet Lincoln's eyes, "Pike got most of the information he has now through us." He admits, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

"Nou yu sich," Lincoln says without blinking.

Ethan squints at the floor, piecing the words together. Sich meaning problem - no, sich meaning fault?

Not your fault.

He looks up. The weight of guilt doesn't dissipate, but he smiles at Lincoln.

"I know we didn't talk much but I missed you, you know?" Ethan blows out a lengthy breath, "I missed a lot of people."

Lincoln looks away, hands clasped together on his lap, ". . .what happened?"

Ethan shrugs, jostling his arms, irritated by the pins and needles in his fingers. "Jaha was convinced he needed to find the City of Light. Who knew more about the ground than the adults he brought along? The hundred he sent to die. Thought it reasonable to blackmail me and Murphy into joining him."

His lips curl inwards at the hard part, "We lost a lot of people. Jaha ran off. Then it was just us, locked in a bunker. It got lonely."

He's told the story so many times now that it's gotten easier to cut it short.

Lincoln nods, steely eyes glancing down at him. "Murphy?"

Ethan chews on the inside of his cheek, "Pike's people. . . took me away from him." He looks at the ground, "Don't know where he is. If he's even alive, at this point." 

He clears his throat, trying not to let it get to him. It's not easy now that the thought is there. Just one thing to add to the pile of things pissing him off - the noise, the sand in his boots, the eyes he can feel watching him.

Shifting in his seat, he attempts to distract himself. Fails when his hands rub at the wall the wrong way, tipping over that frail pile of things. Ethan curses, sitting forward -