john murphy, WITCH

32 | God Works in Mysterious Ways

Bellamy refused to say anything to Winnie as he and Jasper lead her back downstairs. It helped that she didn't say anything either. It was a shell of the Winnie he had known and it unsettled him.

People talked but she didn't listen. Delinquents shouted at her, whispered about her but she stared straight ahead.

"Can I have some water?" Is the first thing she said to them. Bellamy nodded and they continued to lead her outside to the water container, "Thank you." She told them as they arrived.

Slowly she took a cup but her hands shook so much that she threatened to loose all the liquid before she could drink any. It was Jasper that helped her. Jasper that held the cup to her lips so she could drink. They exchanged nods to each other.

The tenseness in the air was cut by the alert that somebody was approaching the gates. If it had been the Grounders, the camp would have stood no chance with the way they reacted. Yet when Clarke and Finn entered the compound it felt like there fight was already lost.

If Clarke was relieved that Winnie had survived then she didn't show it. Finn however he was astounded.

"You're alive!" Winnie hadn't seen such a genuine smile in so long and about her, well, it made her chest ache again.

Winnie knew she had no right to speak after what she had said to Bellamy so instead she used muscles in her cheeks that were almost rusty with misuse. In response to the smile Finn took over from Jasper. He spoke silently to Winnie, propping her up as she looked like a puppet about to fall at any moment.

Clarke frowned, that wasn't the plan. They needed to leave her now and if Finn wasn't going to help her she would just have to do it by her damn self. She tried not to look at them out of the corner of her eye. Him steading her with her arm around his shoulder. The water pail being too low to support her.

"I like what you've done here," He pointed to her cheek, "Probably my favourite of your scars."

"Yeah? I might be mine too actually." Winnie replied and Finn saw for the first time that when she smiled, truly smiled - Not a smirk - but with her teeth showing and no upper lip, Winnie had an almost invisible dimple right under her new scar.

"Are you okay?" He asked. When she looked away he didn't pull her chin back towards him like Murphy would. She didn't feel the demand to answer like she did with Bellamy or her father. She just heard a person talking to her and yet she still lied.

"Fine."

There was no sarcastic remark, no calling her blatantly for lying. Finn replied in the simplest way possible, "We both know that's not true."

Winnie had never been fine but she had no way to describe this feeling inside of her except she knew when she had felt it before. Crying in her cell. It was the feeling that the whole universe had collapsed around you and you were the last person to notice.

Finally Winnie was able to choose her heart over her head. Finn saw what was coming and without a word he pulled her away from the crowd.

"What are you doing?" She called to him as he broke into the crowd.

"I'm keeping our humanity." He replied.

The delinquents parted for him but most importantly, they all covered their tracks so Winnie had her own privacy in the middle of group. It was then that she began to cry silently into Finn's shoulder. Crying for Murphy, crying for her pain and she cried for her mother, her lost brother and everything that led her down this path and lead to her broken heart.

---

She watched from the Dropship door as most of the delinquents readied themselves to leave.