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DARKNESS BETWEEN STARS
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[ tw: self-harm (ish? i think it counts),
suicide (ish?),
basically an insight into Lira's mind because,
as previously stated,
sis very much is mentally unstable ]
ONCE UPON A TIME, in a spaceship far, far away. . . there lived a girl who, more often than not, feels like a universe of exploding stars.
She can see the stars now.
They twinkle coldly, fragments of violent violets, the soupy onyx shadows of the night only letting them burn brighter. Clouds have drifted, fading into dust, and the crescent moon gleams legions away from the dusty Earth. Trees tower over Lyra gloomily, but she is unafraid. Eyes seem to seethe in the darkness, the obsidian feels as if it has claws and teeth so sharp that it could kill, but still Lyra is unafraid.
There are fates worse than death.
Murphy in particular comes to mind when she thinks this. He'd walked through an embodiment of someone's bloodiest dream and waking nightmare; he'd been hung and he survived, only to be banished hours later. A milder death sentence. Clarke hadn't had the strength to outright murder him, not when the torment was still blazing in his pale eyes, and so cowardly she'd sentenced him to a long and drawn out pain. It'll only end one way. Whether it's the Grounders or his untreated wounds or starvation or something, he will die. That is, after all, why he was banished.
Atom, too. Flayed by toxic air until his skin was in ribbons. Ravaged by pain and despair and desperation after a night spent burning alive. Limbs brittle, eyes swollen and stained violet as they protruded grotesquely; as if he were a grape crushed between someone's forefinger and thumb. His lips had been so smashed he could hardly speak, and when he did it was nothing but a rasp.
But Lyra heard him all the same: Kill... me... Jupiter... please...
Voices, voices, voices. Lyra hears so many voices.
Each one belongs to its own story.
The midnight walk through the forest feels like an eternity. Lyra traipses quietly, aimlessly. Alone.
So many stories and yet just one at the same time.
Each of them belong to their own narrative, but all across the galaxies, stories bleed together. Stars form constellations without ever meeting each other. They are part of something much greater than themselves. A star alone is just a star, but together they form something beautiful. Alone it could not hope to dent the darkness, but together they swallow it whole. Blazing and cracking and seething in harmonic defiance.
(But they burn and fade and die out, too.)
Emerging from the thicket of woods, Lyra finds herself at the edge of a lake.
Where to begin, where to begin?
Stories don't seem to have a beginning. Five hundred and seventy seven days in the Skybox will teach you that. Certainly her own doesn't. The day she was born doesn't quite suffice, though it feels natural to start there. Only it ignores the plethora of prologues, epigraphs, summaries, descriptions, and footnotes galore that assess everything that's ever happened at all because really, in the end, things connect more often than you realise. . .
You could start with her mother, Valeria Franko, whose untimely death was a bittersweet ending to her own tale. Perhaps it was a depressing act in her husband's. But it was just a chapter in Lyra's. A brief mentioning in Chancellor Jaha's. Perhaps a footnote in Mr. Pike's. And though her story ended, theirs all move forward.
Then there's everyone around her. The guards. The people on the Ark. The one hundred and Bellamy Blake. Millions of new possibilities spiral, each just as compelling a start as the next, and then you have to realise that stories never really have just one beginning ━━ really there is never a good place to start or end. Just an easy one. And then the honest question becomes this: Where does one story end and where does the next begin?
And which are worth telling?
So here Lyra hits a conundrum in the plot.
Is her own arc really more important than Atom's? Than the two boys who died on the dropship? Trina and Pascal? Charlotte's? She doesn't think so.
And now, as she walks across the pebbled shore, listening to the hymn of gentle waves lapping softly against grainy sands, she cannot answer all her questions. Honestly she's not even sure if they make sense. It's all in her head.
It's all in your head, Miss. Jupiter!
"It's all in my head," she agrees softly. "But that doesn't make it any less real."
Tilting her head up, she looks to the stars. One of them twinkles brighter than the rest; the Ark. Three thousand people. Her dad.
Then her wrist starts to burn.
It feels hellfire itself is scorching against her skin. The wristband is like molten lava and she lets out a shriek of pain as tears sting at her eyes. The pain is practically unbearable, like thousands of boiling hot blades sticking into her sensitive flesh all at once, twisting and seething and ━━
And then it ends.
The wristband unclasps.
It's. . . it's broken.
Lyra stares at it for a moment. The whole thing is fried. Spokes fizzling, a wispy plume of smoke drifting. A crackling noise, then the faint blue glow fades out. It's dead.
Oh, no. . .
Monty must be trying to patch into the Ark's mainframe. It's likely all the wristbands are interconnected as they use to same software and probably deliver data all to the same server ━━ if Monty somehow screwed up and fried Clarke's wristband, it would have fried them all. It's the only explanation Lyra can think of right now, not that it really matters, anyway.
All that's important is this: The Ark thinks that they're dead.
Which isn't great. It'd be mildly OK if all that happened was the Ark grieving for a little bit ━━ Lyra imagines a few parents would cry. Doctor Griffin, Chancellor Jaha. Maybe her dad, but also maybe not. Who knows, maybe losing your wife and then realising your daughter is absolutely batshit crazy is enough to numb you to that kind of pain. Only it's a little different when you remember that the Ark is dying and their last hope is the one hundred they sent to the ground, whose survival is supposed to determine the lives of three thousand other people.
We all have great expectations for you, Miss. Jupiter.
Well. She's certainly fucked that up, hasn't she?
Charlotte, haunted by demons, held up a knife right in front of Lyra that night in the cave and she did nothing about it. She just let it happen. Atom died, she couldn't save him from the acid fog. Trina and Pascal. And the two boys who died the very first day, who never even got the chance to touch the Earth. . . Oh, God ━━ Lyra never even bothered to learn their names.
And now three thousand more people will die.
No more voices.
She looks to the water. It seems cool and inviting.
Deep waters reflect millions of stars. They're dazzling. Diamonds that blaze against the surface, stalwart and true, unwavering.
Oh, how Lyra misses the stars.
Enchanted, she quietly pads down the pebbles. Slowly, with great intentions, she unlaces her converse and lines them up neatly just out of the waters reach. Then, with all the time in the world, Lyra dips one toe into the water. It's cold and she bites back a gasp. Then she feels stupid. Nobody can hear her here. Her feet brush against the smooth stones that lay across the bed of the river and she keeps going until she's up to her torso. Her teeth chatter fervently, but she doesn't stop.
Control, I. . . I'm not coming back.
We started Lyra's tale when she was freed from her cell the first and last time. But we could have begun before that. We could have started the day she first saw the stars, when she first met Wells and Clarke, even that random boy when she was seven who tapped her on the shoulder and said she dropped her stuffed bunny. If you'd like to be more recent, the day she was locked up could suffice.
We're made out of stardust, kid.
Lyra doesn't like to think about that day.
She doesn't like to think about how it was the last time she'd truly been among the stars, nor how it was the last time she ever saw her mother. The rubber of her spacesuit had made it hard to breathe and it's nearly impossible to control your limbs in space. Lyra had floated on the edge of the tether, helplessly, uselessly. Not a single noise bloomed on the edge of her wordless, worthless lips.
Sinclair had called her back in. Her oxygen had already run out and she couldn't breathe until she was torn from the airlock by guards. They'd ripped her helmet off of her and placed her under arrest.
I'm just going home.
Those memories claw their way back inside of her now. Lyra can just see her mom's wobbling smile through the glassy and reflective material that covered her face. Her tether was coming undone, breaking, breaking, broken.
Lyra - take my hand!
Someone was screaming in the comms. Someone. . . Sinclair? Maybe. Lyra can't quite remember who. They were buzzing incessantly, but she could barely hear them.
"Control, I. . . I'm not coming back," her mom whispered.
Reaching, reaching. . . but Lyra could never quite reach her mom's hand. And then she was slipping away from her. Drifting, drifting, drifting.
"We're made out of stardust, kid. I'm just going home."
"Stop," Lyra moans, smashing her hands over her ears, as if that will somehow stop it. "Stop - please - "
But it's all in her head.
It doesn't stop.
It never will.
She doesn't ever thing she'll forget the look on her dads face when he'd found her. It's seared into her memory. Torturous agony maimed him as he'd crumpled to his knees, face in his hands, his chest heaving erratically. Features so contorted with sorrow that it looked like storms had manifested in his very marrow as he sobbed. Shivering violently. Pupils blown and glistening with hopelessness. Everything Lyra could do or say felt so wrong ━━ and really, what was there for her to do, anyways? The love of his life had died and his only daughter was getting arrested.
She didn't know what to do, so she'd laughed harder.
What happened to happily ever after? Lyra wonders vaguely now.
Happily ever after was never meant for her.
It's all just a fantasy!
The glacial water is up to her neck now. Her skin is anesthetized; Lyra cannot even feel it.
Hmm. . . where was she, again?
Oh. Right!
Tonight. Tonight was full of monsters and demons and dying gods. No villains, though. At least, no concrete ones. You can argue that what Charlotte did was unforgivable, but, like all stories, hers doesn't start or end with that. You can blame Chancellor Jaha for murdering her parents and then helping her cope with it by locking her up. If you want, you can go further back and blame the laws of the Ark for getting her parents floated. Or the guards that helped lock her up. Even Bellamy Blake, who gave her the inspiration she needed to fulfil her dark, twisted little fantasy. Maybe Murphy for hunting her down, or the guards that pushed him to the edge when he'd committed arson and lost a great deal of his humanity. Or ━━
No, no. A story has no good place to start. Lira needs to remember this.
This is no ones fault but her own.
(You cannot create a monster and then blame it. Hate its twisted words, condemn its blistering actions. When she thinks of Charlotte, she does not see her. She sees all the people who made her.)
And Lyra did something monstrous first.
No more voices.
Lyra thought you can't get rid of what's inside your head, but Charlotte did, didn't she? Certainly the voices, the memories, the ghosts can't haunt you when you're. . . when you're dead. . . can they?
Probably not. Right? She's thought a lot about death before, it's always fascinated her. There's just so many different ideas. That's how religions started, with people looking to feel comfort and safety that there is something after life because the one thing that all people can agree on is that death is scary.
Most people, anyway.
Taking a deep breath, Lyra fully plunges beneath the water.
Her mind gets quiet.
Quiet. She feels consumed by the feeling. For once in her torturous life, Lyra's head is wonderfully, fantastically quiet. Peaceful, even.
She is utterly weightless.
Stars glimmer legions above her in the sky and as she sinks beneath the black waters, hair floating around her like a halo, Lyra reaches one hand out to them. Reaching, reaching. She is so, so, so close to them now. Surely she will reach them this time. Not doomed to drift aimlessly along the darkness between the stars; she will join them.
Lyra is floating now, a part of her soaring into the cosmos. A shred of her soul. She doesn't want to come back down. She'll go up and up and up and she won't ever come down, floating ━━
A shooting star streaks across the inky sky.
There was an old Earthen belief about shooting stars being able to grant wishes. Lyra knows now how silly that is, how could a dying star grant you whatever your heart desires? It's only a rock burning through the atmosphere But when she was small and honey hearted, when her mom used to sing little songs to her and her stuffed rabbit as she tucked Lyra into bed, her lilting voice would soothe Lyra's thoughts as she murmured, "When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are. Anything your heart desires will come to you," and her voice had been so sweet and true, Lyra believed her. She believed her for a long time.
She believed in the magic of the universe.
But Lyra doesn't feel like that silly little girl dragging around a stuffed rabbit anymore. She knows better than to solely rely on textbooks and friendships and fairytales. She's seen death and she's seen it over and over again. She knows all about ghosts now.
Still, the little girl in her has not smouldered to stardust yet. As the world starts to fade, Lyra finds herself putting one last dream on the bolt of blue.
It gets closer and closer and closer, hurtling towards the Earth at breakneck speeds.
Wait. That's not a shooting star.
It's an escape pod from the Ark.
Before she can stop herself, Lyra is kicking to the surface of the water. Her head breaks through the waves and she shivers from the cold, gasping for air.
A parachute erupts from the back of the pod and Lyra is forced to tread water as she watches it scorch towards the tree lines. Lucky she spent so long in zero g training, swimming really isn't much different. The pod lands in the distance, disappearing into the silhouettes of the forest, and there's a loud crashing noise as it does.
At once, Lyra is splashing back to the shore.
Her thoughts revolve and blaze.
Who could it be?
She's practically humming with excitement as she slips her converse back onto her soggy feet. It was clearly to small to be anything other than a two person escape pod. That means no medical team or guard. Someone from the council, maybe? Marcus Kane is unlikely, the asshole is the one who sentenced them all the death by Skybox and Lira doesn't think he'd risk his own ass to come down. Maybe it's Doctor Griffin. Clarke's mom is a good candidate. Mr. Pike, maybe, even though he was just the Earth Skills teacher. Chancellor Jaha himself even, though it's unlikely.
She isn't sure whose in it, but she is sure of this ━━ she needs to get to that pod.
(Maybe the magic of the universe is still at work. Maybe this is the act of a divine hand. Maybe wishes on shooting stars do come true.)
Starlight illuminating her path, Lyra's adventure begins.
Ignoring the enormity of what she just did, Lyra traipses through the trees with a new adrenaline. She's soaking wet from head to toe and her teeth knock violently against each other, but she can hardly feel it. Her stomach slams into her spine with hunger and her fingers feel like ice cubes, but she pays it all no need. There is no time to waste.
We have great expectations for you, Miss. Jupiter.
She's not sure how long it takes her to get there. Sunlight breaks through the canopy at some point during her journey, the emerald world around her humming to life as bark becomes bronzed with light. White-winged fowl trills overhead, filling the air with Earth's song of life. A squirrel darts across her path, chittering loudly at her, before scuttling up a tree and frolicking in the leaves. There's a rather large, light sort of stone and Lyra starts to kick it as she moves along, as if she's playing soccer. About ten minutes of this go by and she then loses it in the thicket and sighs.
Eventually, through, she becomes very tired. Exhaustion billows over her and she can feel her shoulder slump as she yawns.
Then, in the distance, glowing pink as dawn breaks, she can see it. The escape pod.
"Oh my God," she breathes, her eyes lighting up. "Oh my God - yes!"
She breaks out into a run.
Bursting into the clearing that the pods landed in, she sprints even faster. It's drizzling again, raindrops sprinkling across her, but she's already soaked to the core and so she doesn't mind. The sparse sunlight that the weak dawn provides warms her skin to its core, golden rays glittering along her skin and in her hair. A laugh bubbles from her lips as she practically bounces towards the spacecraft.
It's breathtaking. Entirely ancient; the Ark's only aircrafts were built before launch, thus meaning at the very least this pod is ninety-seven years old, though it's more likely somewhere in the hundreds. Honestly, it's incredible that it even made the landing, Lyra decides, as she springs closer to examine it.
Grime coats the metal and when Lyra reaches out a hand to wipe some away ━━ and instantly jerks back because fuck, it is hot ━━ there's a few old Cyrillic letters blazed into it. It must be from the former Russian station. Maybe it's even Soviet made. Skipping in excitement now, she hurries to the back to examine the thrusters. Thick plumes of smoke pour out from the exhaust, foul fumes of gasoline staining the fresh air, but Lyra hardly minds. She's missed technology.
Then she remembers that someone is actually supposed to be inside the escape pod.
The door is half rusted shut, crusted over with grease that's been haphazardly cleaned every here and there. Whoever is inside must have had to do the job themselves. It's very impressive, and Lyra can feel her anticipation mounting when the front glass panels end up being too dusty and muddied to properly see whoever is sitting inside.
Drawing a deep breath and mustering every ounce of strength she has left, Lyra heaves the door open.
Inside is a singular person wearing a spacesuit.
You're not my dad, is Lyra's first deflated thought as her lips pucker. For half a second, the spacesuit's small frame makes her think mom!, but that's entirely impossible.
"Um... hello!" Lyra says brightly. "Welcome to Earth!"
The spacewalker doesn't move.
Uh-oh. Lyra's face falls. Are they dead?
"Pod One, Pod One."
A radio! Crackling faintly, a voice spews from the the small black box that hangs only by a few red, blue, and green wires, dangling from a half-broken control panel. Lyra is about to jam her finger onto the button to record a response, but then she hears something that makes her freeze:
"This is Noah Jupiter reporting from Ark Station Medical. If you are receiving this, please respond."
Lyra's jaw drops.
What the hell is her dad doing on Ark Station Medical?
He's guard ━━ and one that hasn't worked in a long, long time as far as she can remember. In fact, that same night she'd gotten arrested, he'd been lying in a pool of his own vomit when she and her mom had slipped out of their room past curfew.
Well. Whatever the reason, he's there all the same. She's going to have to deal with that.
Here Lyra balks. Is she really ready for this?
Rolling back and forth on the balls of her feet, she grits her teeth. She has to be ready for this. Over three thousand people are depending on her.
She rolls back her shoulders and then confidently goes to respond.
A twig snaps somewhere behind her.
"Uh-oh," Lyra mumbles, dropping her arm.
She goes to turn around, but bronze hands have already grabbed her from behind and wrapped around her, holding her so tightly that she can't even thrash due to her assailants brute strength.
"I'm sorry" says a distinctly familiar male voice.
Lyra's about to ask what he's talking about when something strikes her hard upside the skull. A gasp bursts from her lip. A kaleidoscope of dead stars explode before her eyes and her vision is starting to blur as her legs weaken and then buckle completely. She's falling, falling, falling. . .
When she opens her eyes again, someone is setting her down in the grass. Stars dance round and round, her vision blurred with dark spots, thoughts hazy like a heatwave, but Lyra can see Blake gazing down sorrowfully at her as he stuffs something squishy underneath her head like a pillow.
"I really am sorry about this, angel," he tells her.
Opening her mouth to respond, Lyra feels like her limbs have been stolen and replaced with honey. She can't seem to move. Blake lurches in and out of her vision before moving away completely.
Stars swim in her eyes and then the universe goes dark.
͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙ ✩ *̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙ ✩ *̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙
here's to hoping literally any of this chapter made sense!!
it was low-key inspired by the Euphoria special edition episodes, the one w/ Rue in the diner and Jules at therapy, because Lira was doing her own thing for so long. Her mind is a jumbled up mess even to her, so you're not supposed to completely get it.
originally i had Bellamy coming in and pulling her out of the lake, but I've got a better idea to progress their relationship. I really didn't like the idea that having Bellamy save her could be seen as romanticising suicide or mental health issues, because there is absolutely NOTHING okay about romanticising any of those things. Their scene will technically be snatching a Bellarke moment, but I think I'm going to change it up enough so that it works for Bellyra instead. And I'll also be sprinkling in a lot more of them together once I get past it.
But for now Bellamy is a bully. Mainly because he just knocked her unconscious.
Also can we talk abt how funny the end of the episode is. Like Charlotte's just committed un-alive. Bellamy is having a threesome. Raven is hurtling towards a radioactive planet at hundreds of miles per hour in ninety-seven year old dropship, meanwhile her boyfriend is getting jiggy with Clarke Griffin right after the wristbands are fried and all hope at contacting the Ark is gone.
And I've literally added Lyra almost committing un-alive.
Everyone just is doing something wildly different at the end and it makes me laugh a little when I rewatch it.
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