Ground Down

Chapter 36

The hole in her chest could not decide whether it wanted to be a bother or just plain annoying, it didn't really hurt, at least not most of the time, not unless she made some major movements, it mainly just knocked the wind out of her. Without actually doing anything. Octavia slumped herself onto the table, caught her broken wrist and sat back up because ow. Breaking one's dominant hand sucked. She slumped back in her chair and shoved her braced broken hand over the table to steal another piece of orange from Raven's plate who didn't seem to mind as long as she didn't get her hands confused and kept the technology she was holding up for her to mess around with orange juice free. So, Octavia stretched to get another piece. 

"Stop jostling the table!" Raven leaned down to squint at her tinkering. "Just take the damn plate."

"You don't like orange?" She sat up to stretch lengthways over the table without jostling it and earned herself a warning glare. 

"The stupid meds Abby is giving me make me want to puke my soul out."

Maybe that was why she was so moody then. Octavia chewed while she watched her friend get impatient with the screwdriver-like tool she kept ever so slightly wiggling against the plastic and cable thing in between them. Whatever she was doing with it didn't look like she was screwing anything in. Didn't look like it was working either, not judging from how the corner of Raven's mouth kept twitching back into her cheek. The thing she had put together looked a bit like an octopus that had gotten run over. Twice. 

The Floukru ambassador had arrived that morning. She'd been standing guard outside and the weird movement of the usually bustling street down from the plaza becoming eerily quiet had alerted her. And every other guard who'd stood within sight. Sevtion kom Floukru was a weird woman. All Floukru were weird, that was kinda the point of the whole enterprise, but, still. She was old, for a start. Really old. With wrinkly skin and billowing white hair and veiny hands and flowing clothes. She'd come alone, unarmed, and she'd tried to engage with the people until she'd realised the people didn't want to engage with her, then she'd extended one veiny hand for the guards as if they'd clasp it for a greeting, and then Lexa had emerged from the tower looking like she'd just been force-fed a ticking bomb. 

That had been when one of her fellow guards had said the first sensible thing since she'd sadly made his acquaintance by telling her that Floukru had not been summoned. Which had explained why her sister had looked so stuck-up pale when the Floukru ambassador had greeted her all smiles, all polite, all bowing, all calm, because Floukru were fucking weird. Either way, she had been asked into the tower, and then she'd apparently been prioritised over Skaikru, seeing that Bellamy had come storming out of the tower looking left and right so fast he'd missed her before he'd snapped back and come up to her side to clasp his hands behind his back like he was another guard that didn't know how to take up post. 

She'd been happy to see him. Until she'd told him that Lincoln was alive, then they'd fought because he'd lost his lack of mind over why she'd killed his Chancellor then, and she'd told him that she hated him and had kicked him off of the plaza. And then she'd gone to tell Raven as soon as she'd been relieved off duty because by then she'd been regretting telling her brother that she hated him. She didn't. She was just mad. And hurt. And now he was hurt, too. Octavia pushed another piece of orange between her teeth, caused juice to spill down her chin and licked it off because Raven looked tense enough already. The muscles in her neck were all straining out of her skin. Made her sinews cast sharp shadows. 

"What are you making?" Octavia tried to distract herself. 

"Signal blocker." 

Right. Octavia let her head ease forwards with her eyebrows slowly but surely coming up so high they'd give her a headache if she kept pushing, but Raven just kept twisting the screwdriver thing with her lips all tensely pursed. Her hair hung open and greasy down her injured shoulder, but, looking at the sling, she knew better than to tell her that it could use a wash. And a brush.