"I'm not with them. I'm not with you either."
☾
I put down the light on the stick and run towards the screams.
The kid kept screaming and I see her with Bellamy, who as soon as he sees me puts Charlotte behind him.
"I'm not with them. I'm not with you either." I tell him.
"Murphy!" She screams and I look at Bellamy telling him to shut her up, but she keeps going.
I push Bellamy away and kneel in from of the kid, covering her mouth with my hand.
"You have a death wish? Shut up or he'll kill us all." I tell her before carefully taking my hand from her mouth.
"I deserve this-"
"Believe me you do. But he doesn't. If he kills you, he can't live with it. So shut up! You did enough." I order and Bellamy grabs her, throwing the girl over his shoulder, afraid that she'll escape.
We walk and soon notice that we are at the end of a cliff and that Murphy and the others are running towards us.
"Damn it," Bellamy mutters noticing the same thing I did.
"We're fucked." I say back and then Murphy shows up.
"Bellamy." He states and then looks at me. "Inanna." He looks away from me and widens his eyes a bit, almost playfully.
"I'm sorry-" I start.
"Don't." he stops me looking back at Bellamy. "You cannot fight all of us. Give her up."
"Maybe not, but I guarantee we'll take a few of you with us." Bellamy talks for me and I look at the grass unable to look at Murphy.
"Bellamy! Stop! This has gone too far. Just calm down." Clark shows up with Finn and I clench my teeth looking at her and her narrative.
Bullshit.
I walk slightly towards him, not wanting the kid to die.
"We can talk about this," I tell him calmly.
He looks between us and suddenly pushes me towards him. My back pushing hard against his chest as he puts a knife against my throat.
"Come here. I'm sick of listening to you talk." He tells against my ear.
"Let her go," Finn argues but Murphy grabs me tighter.
"Back off. I will slit her throat." He argues, his face against mine. This'll sound crazy, but I kinda like it. Those four years really did things to me.
"You couldn't live with it," I tell him, turning my head a bit, causing his knife to draw blood and him to light his grip on me, scared to hurt me.
"You sliced two and seem to be doing just fine."
"Two I didn't care about," I say still looking at him, and his grip becomes tighter again, pushing me so my back is fully pressed against his chest again.
"Stay still!" He orders me, his face against mine again.
"No, please. Please don't hurt her." Charlotte begs, making me close my eyes for a second, cursing silently.
"Don't hurt her? Okay, I'll make you a deal. You come with me right now, I will let her go." Murphy tells her, still grabbing me as close as he can.
"Don't do it Charlotte," Clark says and Murphy chuckles slightly only loud enough for me to hear.
"Fuck you, Clark," I mutter, looking at her.
Charlotte tries to walk towards us but Bellamy stops her.
"Don't do it, Charlotte. Don't do it, Charlotte!" He tells her.
"No, I have to!"
"Stop!" Bellamy stops her. "Murphy, this is not happening."
"I can't let any of you get hurt anymore. Not because of me. Not after what I did." Charlotte says and I notice that something is wrong, making me grab Murphy's wrist, not caring that he has a knife on my neck.
Still, nothing could prepare us for what happened next.
Charlotte jumps off the cliff and everyone screams, even Murphy. Immediately letting me go.
Both Clark and Bellamy run towards the end of the cliff to see if she made it. By the look on their faces, she didn't.
"No, no, no!" Clark cries at the end of the cliff with Bellamy, who looks back at Murphy.
"Bellamy." He mutters trying to calm him down but failing miserably.
I'm still in front of Murphy, but Bellamy doesn't waste any time before pushing me out of the way and jumping on Murphy, pulling him down and starting to punch him.
"Stop!" I tell Bellamy, trying my best to grabbing him.
"Bellamy stop!" Clark screams "You're gonna kill him!"
"Stop it." I try to grab Bellamy but fail, being thrown to the ground.
"You're okay?" Clark comes to ask him.
"Don't help me, help him!" I scream at her.
Finally, Finn grabs Bellamy after a lot of squirming coming from him.
I get up and walk towards Murphy who's laying on the ground with his face looking like a battlefield.
"He deserves to die!" Bellamy screams still trying to push Finn away from him.
"Don't we all?" I scream back, putting myself between the two of them.
"No! We don't decide who lives and dies. Not down here." Clark screams at him.
"So help me God, if you say the people have a right to decide, I'll-"
"No, I was wrong before, okay? You were right. "Sometimes it's dangerous to tell people the truth." Clark looks at Bellamy, sorry that this all happened because of her, I can almost see tears threatening to leave her eyes. "But if we're gonna survive down here, we can't just live by whatever the hell we want. We need rules." She gets herself together again.
"And who makes those rules, huh? You?" Bellamy asks her.
"For now, we make the rules. Okay?" She assures him and he swallows hard, passing his hand through his hair, anxiously and without knowing what to do next.
"So, what, then? We just take him back and pretend like it never happened?"
"Yes," I say as Clark says the exact opposite.
"We banish him." She looks at us.
"I'm sorry? You all go too then. You hang him! What are are we? You gonna start burning witches on stakes too?" I argue with Bellamy, trying to tell him how medieval his ways are.
"He put a knife on your neck!" Bellamy argues.
"Oh, please. We all knew he wouldn't kill me."
"Get out of my way." Bellamy pushes me away. "Get up." He grabs Murphy putting him on the edge of the cliff.
"Stop! What the fuck is wrong with you?!" I scream at him.
"If I ever catch you near camp, we'll be back here. Understand?" He pushes him back to the ground. "As for the five of you, you can come back and follow me, or go off with him to die. Your choice."
"Jesus Christ," I mutter at him.
They all walk away behind Bellamy while I stay there with Murphy.
"Hestia, come on." Clark touches my shoulder but I flip her arm, pushing her close to me.
"Get out of my sight." I push her back and she goes behind Bellamy.
I say there, sitting on the floor, with Murphy's head on my legs.
"Go." He tells me not opening his eyes.
"And leaving you here all fucked up for the grounder to take?" I ask sarcastically. "No. I'm jealous. Plus, everyone hates me, where would I sleep?"
"You'll die if you stay. They won't take you back." He breaths out.
"I'm hard to kill." I joke.
"I know." Murphy chuckles. "About the knife thing, I would apologize but you liked it, so..."
"I didn't," I say, the smile on my face betraying my words.
"Oh, you did." He smirks, even with his face all fucked up. "We should take a look at that, one day." He teases, the smirk never leaving his face.
"Why? You have a knife kink?" I laugh jokingly.
"Maybe... but you definitely do." He laughs back, groaning due to the wounds on his body.
"You're not letting that go, are you?"
"Never."
* * *
We had stayed for a while, when Murphy decided that he was well enough to leave, he got up from my lap.
"You should go," Murphy tells but I nod. "Go."
"I..."
"You'll die out here." He looks at me.
"So will you," I state getting up too. "Look at you. You look like hell."
"Just go. Sleep on my tent."
"I'm not leaving you in the wood, all fucked up, in the middle of the night." I tell him. "That's out of the question."
"Ina," Murphy gets closer to me looking away while taking a deep breath.
"Uhm..." I mutter as he gets even closer, placing his hands on each side of my face and kissing me.
It felt like a goodbye kiss. The only thing I wanted was for him to stay but he couldn't.
"Go." He says when he finally pushes me away.
I swallow hard unaware of what to do next.
"Go." He says again, noticing that I was thinking about it.
"Keep this, at least." I take my ax from my belt but he declines, making me grab his hand placing it on it, and closing his hand. "Take it."
"You're going back, you need-"
"I'm fast, no one will see me. When I get there I'll make a new one." I assure him and he nods. "Search for a cave, find water, learn how to hunt... uhm... if you get lonely go to the where I'm usually at-"
"I know." He assures me slightly grabbing me telling me to calm the fuck down.
"Okay..." I nod looking away. "If your cold, take the skin of an animal and use it as a blanket-"
"I'll be fine." Murphy touches my shoulder and I nod again.
I feel that it's time to say goodbye when he starts to get away from me. When he takes his hand from my shoulder I miss it already. I've met him a week ago and I'm already attached to him.
I notice him walking away.
"John-"
"Go." He doesn't look back when saying it, he just keeps walking away until he's out of my sight.
I nod to myself and walk back to the camp, swallowing the tears fighting to leave my eyes.
After walking for a while, I finally arrive.
"Inanna-" Bellamy comes towards me and I notice his bloody knuckles.
I punch him in the face as hard as I can. Before some come to grab me, I'm able to punch him twice.
"You son of a bitch!" I scream at him as two guys push me away from Bellamy and his now, broken nose. "Get off me!" I push the other away.
I stand there, away from the others, noticing how everyone's now around the fire pretending they didn't hang someone six hours ago.
Clark and Finn are not even here. Wait... Clark and Finn are not even here. That son of a bitch has a girlfriend what the fuck.
This trip to the earth keeps getting better and better.
I enter the dropship and grab a piece of steal and walk towards the fire, sitting alone.
As I'm remaking my weapon, people keep giving me side looks and muttering shit. I don't do an ax this time. I make a blade that could cut through paper and wrap rope and leaves on the middle of it, making me able to grab it. I make two of them, one for each hand.
When I'm done, I go towards Murphy's tent, getting in and laying on my side of the blankets on the ground.
After a while, the silence in the tent is broke by Octvaia's voice.
"Hey..." She opens the tent, getting in.
I get up from my laying position, sitting on the makeshift bed, and look at her, who's sitting on the other side of the tent.
"If you're coming to give me a lecture about broking your brother's nose, save yourself the work." I mutter rubbing my eyes.
"I didn't." She tells me and I nod. "I remember what you said. We should stick together."
"No offense, but I'm a bit traumatized, the last time I got attached to someone, he was hanged and banished. Left outside to die." I say with venom in my voice.
"I'm sorry about Murphy, Inanna." Octavia gets up and comes to sit on my side. "But I mean in. We should stick together. I don't want you going around breaking noses." She chuckles and I smile a bit.
"Yeah... I would say I'm sorry, but I'm not."
"It's fine. He deserved it." Octavia nod at me. "I'll let you sleep now." She gets up and walks out of the tent as I lay back on the blankets.
It was weird to be here without him. It's nothing serious but I care about him. I don't want him dead. I've been thinking about it. At first, I thought it was legit now I'm not sure. I've been alone for years, I need some kind of human contact. No one has ever been as patient with me as he was, but no ever listen to me but him.
Maybe I just needed someone and he was the only one to show up.
I couldn't sleep. As always.
I hear people talking, apparently, someone from the Ark came down to help us. They would go there by the morning. As much as I would love to ruin their plans, I stay in the tent, rolling around turning to the place Murphy was sleeping last night.
I can't sleep. I'm taken away by the light that has formed outside. I don't move. I stay there, afraid that if I see any of them acting normal I snap.
"Hestia." I hear the voice I was done hearing calling, after some time of her calling I get up. "I know you're in there."
"Of course I'm in here. You want me to sleep where? In your tent?" I snap at Clark as I walk out, putting my jacket on.
"We need your help. Someone-"
"I don't want to help you." I look at her shutting her up.
"Her name is Raven. She came down from the ark." She explains and suddenly I'm interested.
"Raven?"
"Yes, you know her?"
"Yeah, she's Finn's girlfriend," I say as I follow her, smirking at her reaction. "I bet you didn't know that when you spent with him last night," I provoke her, smirking even more.
She doesn't respond, instead, she takes me to Raven.
She's ordering people around and I walk towards her, supporting my back on the piece of metal she used to come down.
"Felt from the sky two hours ago and you're already giving orders. You haven't changed a bit." I smile and she looks at me.
"Oh my god!" She laughs before hugging me. "You..."
"Yeah." I nod noticing that she's talking about me not being thirteen anymore.
"I heard about what happened in The Ark. I'm sorry, I'm sure something happened-"
"It's fine. I got over it." I tell her. "What's this?" I ask looking at everyone moving things around.
"I was supposed to tell The Ark you're all alive, but Bellamy threw my radio away." SHe breath out.
"Typical."
"We're trying to send them a message. If we don't they'll kill a lot of people. Oxygen lack." She explains and I swallow hard. Of course, Bellamy fucked everything up. Doesn't he always.
"What can I do?" I ask her.
She gives me a task that I start doing as soon as she tells me to. I learned a lot while I was alone. I read about a book every two days, most of them about shit I've never heard about, so I used to absorb everything I could and eventually would figure it out when I read another thing that Cosmos brought. Do some basic math and I've read about one thousand books, since the first year I was too traumatized to do anything but look at the wall and write shit on a book I stole back on The Ark. Hamlet from Shakespear, the first book Cosmo brought in the first week since I was hadn't said a word since I step foot in there.
I look up from the task Raven told me to do and to an impressed-looking Clark.
"What are you looking at?" I snap at her hoping that she would walk away with her stupid way to look at me.
"I wanted you to know that I didn't mean to hurt you when I sent Murphy away. I didn't know you liked-" She starts saying and I'm already grabbing the screwdriver on my hand with double the force.
"What you and Bellamy did was worst than anything he did. He did nothing. Everything that happened was your fault. You were the one who starts talking about society, the other guy started saying that he should be floated and Bellamy pulled the bench from under his feet." I look at her. "What would have happened if I failed on cutting the rope, Clark?"
She doesn't answer.
"I respected you. I even wanted to be your friend for Christ's sake." I breathe out.
"We can still be friends," she assures me and I scoff.
"Friends?" I laugh sadly at her. "No."
"I'll do my best to make it up to you."
"Don't waste your time, blondie." I look back at the toll in my hand and go back to work, she nods and walks away.