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SHE NEVER CRIED since she was fourteen and she promised her father that she would never do it again. He told her that crying could never undo the past and never will—it was just something people did to comfort themselves in moments of insecurity. Jinny was raised to be a machine, because it was the only way she could survive in their world. She was the prodigal child; perfect and untouchable.
"Hey." A hand popped out from under the flap of her tent to lift it open and Bellamy's face peeked through the gap. She was sitting cross-legged on the opposite side, looking like she had been meditating. Jinny opened her eyes to stare at him unhappily for intruding on her personal space. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay." He invited himself inside.
"Why wouldn't I be okay?" She arched an eyebrow with a deadpan expression across her features.
He glanced at her before taking a seat on the ground amongst the insulation fabric that she had hijacked from the dropship. Bellamy regarded her with a piercing gaze that tried to penetrate the multitude of barriers she held. He had always never been able to get very far.
"A lot has happened," he replied quietly.
"Rule Three, Bellamy," she said impassively. "Never show weakness."
"You cannot seriously still be upholding that?" His voice was laced with disbelief.
"Aren't you?" she looked at him pointedly.
Bellamy averted his gaze with a shrug and Jinny shut her eyes once more. She heard him shuffle in front of her before feeling his body draw closer to hers, prompting the woman to lift her eyelids. Her gaze instantly fell onto his hand which held up a leather strap that dangled between his fingertips. A multitude of different emotions that she would never be able to decipher flooded her system as her throat sucked in a sharp breath of air. She raised her hands towards it and he dropped the bracelet onto her palms.
Disbelief escaped her lips as she examined the golden bar that stored the external hard disk of the fruits of her labour. The piece of jewellery looked exactly the same as she had remembered it, maybe even better. He'd been taking care of it and making sure it didn't rust or get worn out. Her brown eyes, made almost translucent by the filtering sunlight, looked into his.
"How?" she started, shaking her head in astonishment. "Jaha confiscated it when I was arrested."
"One good thing about being a janitor," he told her with a small smile. "I get to go places."
Jinny laughed breathlessly, slender fingers curling tightly over her mother's keepsake. This was the entire reason she had risked her entire life and wellbeing for, the information that would have set them free from the confines of the space vessel. Though it was too late now; everything she'd worked so tirelessly for had already come to realisation. They were on the ground, and they knew it was habitable. She sighed softly as she lowered her gaze to the dirt floor beneath them.
"In the end, none of it matters," she said. "My mother dying, me getting arrested... we got thrown onto the ground anyway."
"I'm really sorry for what happened," he told her earnestly. "I swear it was an accident, I thought your father should've known so he could rearrange the patrol routes. But Jaha... he overheard everything."
It was the first time that she had heard an explanation for what happened that night in the control room. Her father had always been restricted to speaking to her unless a member of the Council was present. She never saw anyone else other than the guards who came to feed her.
"Jin," he said, touching her hand gently. "Please forgive me. I just want us to go back to the way it was before. I need my best friend back."
She looked back at him, his mahogany eyes imploring her with an undercurrent of longing and despondency. Her heart constricted tightly and she inhaled a deep breath to inflate her lungs with air. Jinny averted her gaze before slowly curling her fingers over his index, redirecting his attention to the hesitant contact. He reciprocated in kind, caressing his digits over her knuckles lightly.
Her voice was soft when she murmured, "I miss my best friend too."
Then he was enveloping her between his arms that it caught her off guard by the spontaneity of the action. Jinny laughed as she hugged him back, burying her face into the crook of his neck as she remembered what it felt like to be this close to him. His wider frame completely engulfing her with the rippling muscles that stretched underneath his warm skin. She breathed out a small sigh before pulling away, her eyes sparkling with playfulness and a smirk adorning her lips.
"Hey, there's still the part where you almost got me floated!" she pointed. "If it wasn't for my quick thinking and extraordinary charm."
He rolled his eyes. "And I will make it up to you for a thousand years."
"Good," she said with a smile that showed she'd forgiven him.
"Oh." He reached around his neck to pull out a necklace. "This is supposed to be yours too so—"
"No." She held a hand out to stop him. "I gave that to you. It's yours."
He looked at her and she could see the silent thanks in his eyes. The charm on his necklace had come from her bracelet but she felt it was right to have it separated. The only person she trusted more than herself at the time was Bellamy, and there was a small part of her that wished it would stay that way.
"Bell, this—" She was interrupted by a shrill scream from outside.
They exchanged quick glances before scrambling to stand. Bellamy pushed the tent flap out of the way and they re-emerged into the camp. A group was already starting to congregate around the west side of the grounds, outside the finished part of their wall. With biting looks on their faces, they started towards the crowd. The teenagers parted to let them pass and Jinny couldn't believe what she saw at the end of the line.
It was Wells.
He was dead.
"Did anyone see anything?!" Jinny shouted, her eyes scanning the entire crowd as she racked her brain for missing faces. Miller and Jones were digging a grave behind her as she stood by the entrance of the gate. Bellamy had gone to inform the princess, and she hadn't wanted to be there when Clarke received the news.
"Must have been Grounders," Murphy said to her right. "Caught him off on his own."
She looked at him, her mind racing with different scenarios and explanations. It made sense for it to be a Grounder attack. It could have been some kind of warning. Jinny turned back to the crowd, their frightened and concerned faces looking up at her.
"Nobody goes off on their own, got it?" she told them. "We're stepping up patrols, with sentry units in each direction. I want traps and alarms all along the perimeter. Nobody wanders off on their own, stay in groups. Is that clear?"
A few people nodded their heads but the majority were still staring at her with vacant gazes. Jinny sighed and took a step forward, her features sharpening into hard stone. "Is that clear?!" she enunciated each word, the syllables flying off her tongue like hot knives.
"Yes!" they finally replied in unison.
"Good." She turned to Murphy. "Check the trees. Make sure we're secure... and hurry up with that damn wall."
He gave her a firm nod before waving for John to join him. Jinny looked over her shoulder to the two boys that were now covering Wells' grave and frowned. A blaze of anger sparked inside her chest when she thought of the boy and how they had found him; a puncture hole on the side of his neck and tips of his fingers missing. He'd been there the entire night and nobody had noticed. The only reason he was there was because he was digging Atom's grave.
"YES!!" A yell suddenly erupted from the dropship, startling everyone within the camp. "I DID IT!! JINNY, I DID IT!!"
She frowned quizzically before starting off towards the direction of Monty's voice. The boy looked up at her when she entered the ship, a wide grin plastered across his face. Clarke and Finn were with him, and Jinny's eyes landed on the wristband that used to be the blonde's. Jinny approached them with quick footsteps, eyes lighting up with excitement.
"You did it?" she asked breathlessly.
"Monty needed a working wristband." Clarke shrugged, looking at Finn smugly.
"And you needed to punish your mother," Finn retorted pointedly. Jinny didn't care about their family drama as she took the wristband from Monty and examined the luminous blue dots on the needles. She almost felt the dawning of hope.
"Look, they're running out of air, and we need their help," Clarke said. "My mother thinking I'm dead is only temporary."
"Not if I can't patch it through the dropship mainframe," Monty told them. "I can do it. We'll be talking to the Ark by nightfall."
Jinny clapped him on the shoulder and bent down to kiss him on the cheek. "You got this, Monty."
His grin grew impossibly wider until he looked like he would burst, nodding his head fervently.
"I got this!" he exclaimed, almost jumping to work on the wires in the central processor.
Jinny chuckled lightly before leaving him to it and stepping out of the dropship again. She scanned the camp where most of the teens were helping to finish the wall on the north side. They were carrying large metal grates from the ship and cutting down beams of wood to reinforce the structure. She went to inspect the fortifications and was about to check on weapons when something caught her eye, making her stop. Her face scrunched up with disgust as Murphy unzipped his pants and started pissing on Connor.
"What the hell is wrong with you, Murphy?!" he yelled angrily but a couple of boys rushed forwards to hold him back.
Murphy sneered and shrugged. "You wanted a water break. Now get back to work!"
Jinny started towards them, clenching her jaw into a straight line, when a hand shot out to grab her arm. She looked up at Bellamy and he shook his head. "No need to make things worse, okay?"
"Make things worse?" she responded, aghast. "They need discipline, and maybe a lash."
He shook his head once more and opened his mouth to argue when someone called their names loudly. They looked around to see Clarke standing next to her tent and beckoning for them to join her urgently. Frowning, Bellamy let go of Jinny's arm and they made their way towards the blonde. When they slipped under the tent flap, they saw Octavia and Jasper were there as well. Everyone had somber looks on their faces, eyes downcast and focused on two things on the makeshift table.
Three severed digits and a knife.
"What the hell is this?" Jinny asked.
"Jasper found them outside the wall," Octavia explained. "Where Wells was killed."
The older woman went forwards immediately and picked the knife up, her eyes flicking back and forth as she examined both artefacts. She turned to Bellamy who had a perplexed frown on his face, seemingly having put two and two together as she had.
"This knife was made of metal from the dropship," Clarke pointed.
"It is..." Jinny swept her gaze across the room at the others. "This is Murphy's knife."
"Murphy killed Wells?" Jasper asked. "Now we have a murderer in the camp?"
"There's more than one murderer in this camp," Bellamy interjected. "This isn't news. We need to keep this quiet."
Clarke started to the entrance of the dropship but Bellamy quickly intercepted her. She looked up at him angrily. "Get out of my way, Bellamy."
"Clarke," his voice was filled with warning. "Be smart about this. Look at what we've achieved; the walls, the patrols... Like it or not, believing the Grounders killed Wells is good for us."
"Oh, good for you, you mean?!" she spat. "What... keep people afraid and they'll work for you? Is that it?"
"Yeah. That's it." Bellamy nodded seriously. "Fear of the Grounders is building that wall, Clarke."
"He's right, princess," Jinny agreed, crossing her arms. "There'll be consequences. Besides we're just making assumptions here, we don't have any real proof."
Clarke went over and swiped the knife from her hand. The blonde held it up in front of her, eyes heated with anger. "This is all the proof I need, Jinny. It wouldn't be the first time this knife had cut Wells."
Before Bellamy could stop her again, she stormed out of the tent. Jinny rolled her eyes, muttering a curse under her breath, before chasing after the girl with the others hot on her heels. They heard Clarke's voice ring shrilly in the air as she approached Murphy and shoved him on the shoulder.
"You son of a bitch!" she shrieked.
"What's your problem?" Murphy looked at her, clearly annoyed.
She held up the knife. "Recognise this?"
The boy frowned in confusion, reaching a hand out for it. "That's mine. Where did you—"
"Where you dropped it after you killed Wells!" she accused, slapping his hand away.
"Where I what?" he scoffed. "The Grounders killed Wells, not me."
"I know what you did and you're gonna pay for it." Clarke leaned into his face threateningly.
"Clarke, that's enough!" Jinny elbowed her way through the gathering crowd to them. "We don't even have any witnesses, statements—"
"He threatened to kill Wells." Clarke pointed at the boy. "We all heard and saw him. He hated Wells."
"Plenty of people hated Wells," Murphy said. "His father was the Chancellor that locked us up."
"Yeah, but you're the only one who got into a knife fight with him!" the blonde continued to argue.
"Yeah, I didn't kill him then either." Murphy crossed his arms and rolled his eyes.
"Tried to kill Jasper too," Octavia supplied, a dirty look on her face as she stared stonily at Murphy.
"What?" Jasper's eyes widened with horror.
"Come on, this is ridiculous." Murphy shook his head, his tough exterior wavering slightly. "I don't have to answer to you. I don't have to answer to anyone."
"Come again?" Bellamy challenged.
Jinny looked at Murphy sharply and he visibly shrank away. She felt a thin coil of anger hiss inside her at his arrogant words and resisted the urge to punch him right where he stood. "That's not how it works," she said in a low voice.
"Bellamy, look, I'm telling you." Murphy approached the older man to plead his case. "I didn't do this."
"They found his fingers on the ground with your knife," Bellamy said.
"Is this the kind of society we want? You said there were no rules," Clarke raised her voice so everyone could hear her. "Does that mean we can kill each other without punishment? Without justice?"
"Clarke, stop it." Jinny stepped towards the girl with a quiet voice filled with apprehension.
"Look, I said I didn't kill anyone!" Murphy shouted in frustration.
"I say we float him!" someone suggested.
"Yeah," several people agreed readily. Jinny looked around as the teenagers started to close in like a mob. She thought back to all the things that Murphy had done; bullying the other kids, beating up Wells, taunting Atom, pissing on Connor. There was no doubt in her mind that even if Murphy hadn't actually been the one to kill Wells, the others still wanted his blood anyway. Because he was an asshole.
"Let's float him!" a kid yelled from the back.
"Wait," Clarke faltered. "That's not what I'm saying."
"Why not?" Connor asked. "It's justice."
"Revenge isn't justice!" she cried in outrage.
"It is justice! Float him! Float him!" he started to chant and the rest of the kids picked it up quickly.
Murphy started forwards but someone tripped him and the boy fell sharply to the ground. The crowd immediately swarmed around him, finding opportunities to kick and punch at his exposed sides. Jinny took a step back as people started to jostle around her and her eyes locked with Clarke's.
"I told you there'd be consequences," she hissed angrily.
The blonde shook her head frantically, fear starting to take root as the delinquents shoved her out of the way to get their hands on Murphy. They grabbed and gagged him with a piece of cloth, bringing him out of the walls into the forest and letting him roll down the slope outside. Jinny exchanged a dark look with Bellamy, following the raucous crowd as they jeered and cheered at the same time.
"No, no, no! Wait! Get off him!" Clarke cried helplessly. She tried to pull people away but there were too many of them and Connor kept holding her back. She slammed into Bellamy, grabbing hold of his shirt desperately. "You can stop this! They'll listen to you!"
He looked up at Jinny who merely stared back impassively. Her cold eyes seemed like distant blackholes, unaffected by the scene that was happening in front of them. Connor had tied a noose and slung it around Murphy's neck. Myles tightened it and the group tugged on the rope, throwing one end over a tree. They hauled the boy up into the air and placed a crate under his feet. Murphy looked down at them desperately, hands bound, cuts and bruises decorating his face once again.
"Bellamy!" Connor called to him. "You should do it! Bel-la-my! Bel-la-my! Bel-la-my!"
"You're not a killer, Bellamy," Clarke continued to beg. "I know you're not. Please don't do this."
"Bellamy, don't..." Murphy shook his head, words muffled against the gag. "Please don't..."
Jinny looked around one more time at the vicious cries and bloodthirsty exuberance that surrounded them. Maybe they did need this—maybe they could find order in chaos. She looked back at Bellamy and slightly tilted her chin upwards. His jaw clenched, muscle twitching, then he whirled around furiously to face Clarke.
"This is on you, princess!" he yelled at her. "We warned you. You should've kept your mouth shut!"
He strode forwards, trembling hands clenched tightly at his sides as Clarke wailed behind him to stop. Murphy shook his head frantically with wide fearful eyes, then Bellamy kicked with a foot, sending the crate flying in the opposite direction. Murphy fell, the noose catching his neck from the sturdy branch above. The woods was filled with applause, punctuated with the chokes emanating from the shuddering boy. Finn had finally found them and pushed his way to the front of the crowd to stop what was happening but Connor pulled out a sharpened bolt on him. The cacophony of voices was suddenly pierced by a shrill childish voice that caught their attention and everyone turned around to look at its source.
"Stop it! Okay?! Murphy didn't kill Wells!" Charlotte shouted as loudly as she could. "I did!"
"Oh, my God," Clarke gasped, hands flying to her mouth as her eyes widened in horror.
"Shit," Jinny muttered when she finally took in what the little girl had said. She ran forwards, pulling her knife from her pocket and slashed at the rope around the tree. Murphy fell to the ground, wheezing and coughing for air, and she searched the crowd for Bellamy. His wide eyes filled with shock, revulsion and utter disbelief mirrored her own.
They screwed up big time.
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