Ground Down

Chapter 19

She had busted her head crashing against the wall two floors down where she had been pacing because Raven had sent her away and every time she dragged on the pieces of rubble, she saw flashing stars and spinning lights. She was pretty sure the blisters on her hands had burst, too. Not that it mattered. Nothing fucking mattered until she had turned every stone and every tiny grain of debris. Clarke sat back on her heels, soles burning from the strain, panting. The air tasted of charred dust. 

Her knee slipped, a sharp piece of stone or furniture dug into her thigh, she cursed, pulled herself back up and grabbed the next piece in reach to toss it to the side. Wood. Shards below the other splintered half of whatever it had been before the ceiling had given in. She was going to cry. Every time she looked up from the pieces right in front of her and took in what was left of the hallway, where the walls had come down and allowed a gaping look into a bedroom with the corner of the bed taken out, the nightstand a crater of splinters, what had once been a dining room on the other side gone except for one lonely chair by the window. 

"Clarke, fucking dig!" Octavia snapped at her and she didn't blame her. She just followed suit. 

The younger girl had, despite Indra and the dark-skinned man repeatedly having pulled her back and told her off, climbed onto the pile of stone and plaster and broken pieces of what had once been beautifully decorated rooms that had to put considerable weight onto the floor below it. If that floor hadn't already cracked. Clarke dug. 

By her side, the Commander kept shifting chunk after chunk from the pile to the side, rhythmic like a well-oiled machine, the muscles in her arms thrumming from the strain. She had taken her sash and vest off some uncounted time ago and, sheathed in the wet glow of sweat underlining her determinedly gritted teeth, Clarke could see the resemblance to Octavia. And the years Lexa had on her, Octavia worked with the same determination, but her rubble went everywhere. 

"O! O, hez yu op [ ? ? ? ] !" The dark-skinned man lunged forwards to grab her arm and she yanked it back with such force both of them fell over. 

"Jok of [ ? ? ] !" 

Indra hurled a particularly weighty piece of stone towards the wall with a growl that would not have been necessary had she not pushed the guard who had moved to give her a hand away. Clarke dug her fingers between a piece of wood and a dusty piece of something she could not yet identify. Probably because she was fucking crying like a baby. 

The man and TV demon had come together, when she had rushed up the stairs and bumped into the Commander who had taken cover against the wall on the mezzanine, her guards crowding her, and they had taken the last flight of stairs together to burst into a plume of settling dust and debris still shifting. Indra had appeared with a small army of guards. Closely followed by that man and Octavia rushing down the stairs, her buttoning her shirt, him barefoot. If it had not been for the explosion, Indra would've probably killed one or both of them. The fucking piece was not moving. Clarke braced her leg against it. 

"Let me." The Commander pushed herself up to reach for the crack she was establishing between the wood and what looked like a piece of wall. 

God knew Octavia may be shifting the pieces and crushing somebody's ribcage. They had pulled out one guard, his foot had been sticking out from under the debris and his shattered armour out of his chest. He had gasped out two, maybe three gurgling breaths, and then he had died. His blood still stuck to her hands, the Commander had dragged her off him and ruined any chance at reanimation. 

"This is the fucking fifth time somebody has tried to assassinate you," she bit out through her teeth. 

"They failed."