✿ TWENTY-SEVEN ✿
"I wasn't looking where I was going;
I fell into your eyes"
___
She hadn't been able to sleep the whole night, except for perhaps a short twenty minutes of intense twisting, turning and crying, from which Octavia had woken her up because she'd smacked the girl in her face, twice. After that, she'd grabbed a blanket, waited till Octavia and Nate were both asleep again and moved out of the tent, finding a sweet spot near one of the still smouldering fires. It didn't give off a lot of warmth, but for that she had Panther.
She stayed seated like that until the stars slowly faded away, the moon made place for the sun, the darkness for the morningred. With little interest, she watched a searching party assemble near the gates of Camp which consisted of Bellamy, Clarke, Raven and Finn amongst others, none of whom she felt the need to be near. Though Clarke's mom must also have been on that Exodusship, she was sure handling it a lot better, but looks could be deceiving.
She observed the way Bellamy was commanding the group, handing out guns to several individuals, until his eyes fell unto her. He appeared to excuse himself, quickly making walking to her, which earned him a questioning look from at least Clarke.
"We're going out to expect the landing site," Bellamy informed her. "Do you want to come?"
"No thanks," Katherine replied shortly, both not having the energy or the mood to make some snappy or sarcastic remark. She looked away from him, not being able to look into his eyes without tears feeling well up, focusing her eyes on the smouldering wood in front of her instead. "Good luck, though."
She imagined he must have nodded, because no words left his mouth, but she did hear his footsteps disappear into the direction of the gate, and through it not much later. When she looked up again, the whole searching party had left and the rest of camp was slowly waking up. Not feeling the particular need to be surrounded by people, in fact, feeling an intense longing for her isolated cell, she found a quiet place in the Dropship where she'd stocked all of her medkits, medicine and herbs. It was at the highest level, which meant that all of the substances were locked away safely from sticky hands.
Half of the day she spent organising all of the medicine, restocking and processing raw materials, the other half she spent in Raven's tent, working on the duds and the gunpowder. Both left her with plenty of space and time to overthink things, but she didn't particularly mind. At least her mind had opened itself up to some happy memories, which left her chuckling every now and then, followed by such an endless stream of tears almost immediately afterwards she had to step away from the table or else she'd blow the whole tent accidentally.
It must have been late in the evening when she finally came out of the tent, since once again the stars were shining bright in the sky and the full moon was glowing. Quitely and trying to avoid as many people as she could, she found her way to Monty and Octavia, who were sitting near the gates, listening to Jaspers boasting.
"Hey Erin," Monty greeted her softly. He neither apologised nor sent her a piteous smile, for which she was grateful.
"Evening, Monty," she greeted back, taking a seat on one of the logs. She let out a loud sigh, sticking her hands in her pockets and resting her legs over Panther's body. "What are we doing?"
"Listening to Jaspers twisted version of the truth," Octavia said bitterly. An obvious expression of agitation was plastered on her face and she too had stuck her hands in her pockets, though appearing way more aggressive due to it. "Homeboy's really trying to score with the ladies."
"I saw the Grounders in the trees," Jasper said, trying and failing to look humble. "It was like nothing I ever felt. You know, pure animal instinct took over. One pull of the trigger, two Grounders dead."
"Excuse me," Katherine said to the two persons in front of her, shaking her head in disbelief. "Last time I checked I warned everybody about the Grounders in the trees."
"'Pure animal instinct'? More like pure pant's-wetting panic," Octavia added, rolling her eyes.
"Just let us have this," Monty defended his buddy. "They even gave us a bigger tent."
Katherine let out a scoff and rolled her eyes. "Just wait till he decides you'll have to spend the night elsewhere," she said, shaking her head as more and more lies and bluff rolled over Jasper's lips. He was sure laying it on thick. She turned to Monty with a sugary sweet smile. "But I'm sure we still have a spot for you in our tent. It's going to be cosy, though, Octavia's moved in as well."
Just as Monty was about to reply, the ringing sound of cans and glass hitting each other was audible loud and clear through Camp. Octavia and Katherine shared a look, as the two boys who were standing guard tried to clear the area.
"I think we got him," one of them said.
Not waiting for a moment, Katherine grabbed one of the flaming torches and moved out of the gates, followed by Octavia and the boys who'd guard duty. Carefully, she made her way to the place she saw a body lying, making sure not to trip on anything. As she held the light in front of her, her first thought was that she was met with yet another dead body, but as soon as she touched the person's shoulder, it became clear he was anything but dead.
His entire body was bruised and bloody, his face had taken the worst portion, but she recognized that nose and those eyes anywhere. "Frog-face?" she asked in awe. Quickly, she handed Octavia the torch, so that she could kneel next to the boy more easily.
He flinched away from her, nothing leftover from the way he'd carried himself around before. She tried to calm him by talking softly, while assessing the damage he'd gotten himself, probably at the hands of Grounders. After a minute or so, she signalled to the two boys that they should carry Murphy to the Dropship, which they did without questioning her authority.
"What are you doing?" Octavia asked, grabbing her by the arm and forcing her to turn around. "You know what Bellamy said would happen if he showed his face again."
"Yeah, well Bellamy is not here now," Katherine replied casually, earning herself a soft smile from Octavia. "And till he gets back, I'll spend my time patching up Murphy."
"I thought you hated him?" Octavia asked. The girl raised her eyebrows in question.
Katherine shrugged. "I do," she confirmed. "What they did to him is inhumane, though."
She didn't want to waste any more time on irrelevant small-talk and so she hurried to the Dropship. As soon as she'd entered, she noticed the crowd which had gathered to watch Murphy like he was some interesting circus attraction. The latter was seated against the wall, curled up and hardly recognizable.
"Alright, everybody, show's over," Katherine said, clapping her hands loudly. She was met with a lot of unsatisfied muttering and bickering, but she couldn't find it in herself to be worried about the public opinion of her. "Get out, everybody. Connor, can you fetch me some water please?"
"Right on to it," Connor replied, leaving the Dropship with the rest of the group.
"Alright," Katherine muttered, more to herself than to Murphy. She knelt down next to the boy, carefully pushing his hair back to better observe the battering he'd received. Though she was sure Murphy couldn't have inflicted all of this harm to himself, she still checked for obvious signs of torture. She gently grabbed his hands, flexing his fingers to observe the torn-off nails.
"I was running from the Grounders," Murphy said, his voice sounding hoarse, like he hadn't spoken in a long time, or had screamed for an even longer period. It was likely the latter option. "Please don't send me back to those beasts."
"I don't really care how you ended up here," Katherine said, just as Connor entered the Dropship again, a couple of clothes and a bowl with fresh water in hand. She took all of it gratefully, stalling it out neatly next to her. She wetted a cloth. "And we both know I don't have the power to either send you away or to let you stay."
Softly, she started to clean the cuts on his hands. She avoided the beds of his nails, but still, she knew it must hurt like a sucker. Without a single hiss or groan, he sat through all of it, which left Katherine with two ideas, either the torture by the Grounders was more painful than the cleaning of the results, or he was too far away to actually notice the pain.
As she turned around to clean the bloody cloth, she noticed Connor was still standing behind her, his eyes glued on Murphy's helpless form. Katherine cleared her throat, which gained the attention of the boy. "You can leave, Connor, I got this."
"Are you sure?" Connor asked.
Though Murphy might have been a danger once, one look at his trembling and helpless body told her that one, hard punch might be enough for him to end up in the next life. She looked back at Connor, nodding to both herself and him. "Yeah, positive," she said. "Though if it makes you feel any better, you can stay."
Just as she was about to clean his other hand, three pair of footsteps entered the Dropship, telling her the search party had finally arrived back at Camp.
"Katherine," Bellamy immediately called out to her, his voice stern and business-like. "Step away from him."
With a loud splash and a loud sigh, she let the cloth fall into the already foul water of the bowl, knowing this wasn't going to end on a happy note. She got to her feet and turned around, immediately noticing the rifle Bellamy had pointed at her. Obviously, the bullet was meant for Murphy, but at that moment, she was the only one that prevented the two from meeting.
"Bellamy, what on Earth do you think you're doing?" she asked, scoffing. Her voice was thick with disbelief and she raised her eyebrows daringly.
"We made a very clear agreement of what would happen if he ever showed his face back at camp," Bellamy replied. His eyes met hers, but all the sweetness and kindness they'd held right before she'd given him her first kiss was gone completely. "I intend to fulfil that agreement."
Finn pushed the gun down, sharing a look with Clarke. The last person Katherine wanted to be in one room with, was Finn, but she knew he would back her up. Not because he liked her, he obviously still thought he was right about the whole Grounder-meeting, but because he appeared to think he had to put up some holier-than-thou act, perhaps to compensate the horrible blunder he'd made with Raven and Clarke.
"Great that you're a man of your word," Katherine said in the snappy tone she always reserved for an argument with Bellamy. She crossed her arms, not intending on moving out of the way. "Now let's do some strategic thinking. We all have eyes, so we can all conclude that Murphy was tortured, and unless there are some really cruel animals out there who have overcome their natural instincts by opting for maiming instead of killing, we can argue that it was thanks to the Grounders, who were obviously forced in this horrible, heart-breaking situation."
"No need to get sarcastic," Finn muttered under his breath, sticking his hands in his pockets.
"Just showing you with whom you wanted to make a peace treaty," Katherine said, shrugging casually. She didn't only think Finn's idealism and optimism naive, but quite disturbing as well. "So, anyway, Murphy spent some time with our big friends, which means that he just might have some valuable information."
"My ass," Bellamy replied, not missing a single beat. Once again he raised the gun and again to no effect. "We hanged him, we banished him and now we're going to kill him."
"No," Clarke said, finally joining the conversation as well. "Katherine's right. He might be able to help us."
"You really think so?" Bellamy asked, more in Katherine's direction than Clarke's. She gave him a curt nod, not liking the sarcastic tone in his voice. "Think about Charlotte, though."
She had expected the words to hurt, like a sharp knife struck the centre of her head, but as she thought about the girl she'd briefly considered to be a little sister, she only felt a dull ache. She let out a loud scoff and chuckled in disdain. "Don't you even dare to bring Charlotte in all of this."
"Quit it, you two," Clarke said. She pushed Bellamy's gun down, the second time this evening and switched her gaze from Katherine to Bellamy, like she was trying to figure something out but couldn't. "Once he's better, we find out what he knows, and then he's out of here, okay?"
Katherine broke eye-contact with Bellamy, looking at Clarke instead. She gave the young woman a nod and as she turned around, she was overwhelmed with a sudden wave of nausea and dizziness. She put her hand on the Dropship to support herself, hating herself for not getting enough rest last night.
"Katherine, are you okay?" Clarke asked, sounding worried.
She turned around, forcing a smile and a seemingly careless expression on her face. "Yeah, I'm fine," she replied. "Go on, I'll patch him up."
Even though she looked anything but convinced, Clarke still nodded and took off, Finn and Bellamy following her. It was only then, when she was alone with Connor and Murphy, she dared to cough in her hand. She noticed her hand getting unusually wet and when she looked at it, it was splattered with blood. Exactly at the same time, Connor started coughing up blood as well, whereas Murphy took it upon him to retch almost his entire blood volume out on the floor of the Dropship.
"Oh no," she muttered, almost breaking down in tears spontaneously. She knelt down next to Murphy, while signalling for Connor to get Clare. "Murphy, I know I said I wasn't interested in how you got here, but now I need you to tell me exactly how you got here."
"I don't know," Murphy said, as he retched again, a fresh dish of blood splattering on the floor of the Dropship. "I woke up and they'd forgotten to lock up my cage. I saw nobody, so I took off."
"Fuck," Katherine hissed, biting on the inside of her cheek. She pushed herself to her feet, feeling incredibly stupid and careless. She felt the curve of her upper lip getting wet, probably from a nosebleed. She grabbed one of the clothes, pressing it to her mouth and nose, just as Clarke entered the Dropship.
"Biological warfare," Katherine said, noticing the red tears that were rolling down Clarke's cheeks. The latter only gave a nod. "We need to set up a medbay and quarantine immediately, try to separate the sick from the healthy now it hasn't spread too much yet."
Exactly at that moment, Bellamy came storming inside the Dropship. As if she was a little magnet, his eyes landed on her. There was no mistaking in the worried expression that his face twisted in and if the situation hadn't been messed up, she might have actually laughed about it. Bellamy worried about her state of being.
"What's happening, Katherine?" he asked, walking towards her. "Did he do this to you?"
"Stay back, Bellamy," she said, bending over as another coughing fit took over. Grasping for air, she tried to seek the right words. "It's biological warfare. Murphy is our very own Trojan Horse and they didn't even bother to dress him up nicely. This is the retaliation you were waiting for."
Bellamy nodded, looking both incredibly horrified and angry. "Is this your revenge, helping the Grounders kill us?"
"I didn't know about this," Murphy said, shaking his head. More and more he was starting to look like a death person alive. "I swear I didn't."
"Just quit lying!" Bellamy snapped, obviously having lost his patience. "When are they coming? Did you hear anything?"
"Bellamy," she said sharply, earning his attention. She shook her head, trying to tell him it was no use without wasting all of her precious air. "You need to stay back, it spreads through contact. There is no time for this wishy-washy smalltalk. You need to round up Derek and all the people who came into contact with Murphy and all of the people who came into contact with them."
"Clarke," Finn's voice called out. Clarke looked up frantically, letting out a loud sigh of obvious distress. "I heard you were sick. What's going on?"
"It's some hemorrhagic fever," Clarke said. "We need to do what Katherine's said, start quarantining people immediately."
Katherine felt like she could faint any minute now. Her skin was glowing, radiating heat like nobody's business and she was coughing up blood, just like the rest of them, but she appeared to be the only one that was short of breath. She felt like her airpipes had narrowed down to at least halve it normal size, as if she was having some kind of allergic reaction as well and as if that wasn't bad enough, Derek, one of the boys who'd dragged Murphy into the Dropship, was having a seizure.
She turned around and moved quickly to his side. Too quickly, because her brain had not calculated the possibility of her moving that fast in such a state, with the result that her legs gave out from underneath her, causing her to make a rough landing on her knees. At least it was right next to Derek, who was starting to choke on his own puke.
Clarke hurried to her side, but as if something was holding her back, she only stood and watched. Somehow, Katherine found the strength to push the boy on his side, opening his mouth wide so that all the blood could walk out. For a moment it appeared to work, his seizing stopped and he wasn't choking anymore, but then his body just gave out.
She placed her bloody fingers in his neck, but she found no pulse. She turned back, her breath wheezing. "He's dead."
"Alright, we start quarantine now," Clarke said. She poured alcohol over Finn's hands, who'd made the mistake of touching her. "Katherine, who were the first ones there?"
Katherine, who'd find a spot against the wall of the Dropship, looked up. She'd pushed her cheek to the metal wall of the Ship, enjoying the cooling sensation. "Derek," she said, not daring to look at the dead body next to her. Her glance shifted from Clarke to Bellamy. "Octavia."