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HAPPY REUNIONS
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BELLAMY'S LIPS MOVED WORDLESSLY as Jinny sunk to her knees, shellshocked. Another life gone in less than four hours. She shouldn't have taken it for granted that the rope would have held, or that Sterling was able to secure a knot properly. They'd all been so damn confident that he would have made it back up with Mel.
"Oh, God, no, Sterling," Monroe gasped out, throwing her arms over her head as she paced about in dismay. Jinny felt badly for her; she'd always been close to Sterling at their delinquent camp and the pair of them had made a great team.
Bellamy managed to compose himself and leaned forwards while yelling, "Mel, hold on! Focus on me, you can do this!"
"I can't!" she screamed back.
"Yes, you can! You're strong!" he told her insistently.
"I'm not strong!" she continued to sob. "Stubborn, maybe."
"So be stubborn a little longer," he said. "We're not gonna let you die, you hear me?"
She whimpered loudly and nodded her head, the action just barely visible to them. Jinny stood up with trembling legs as Finn confronted Bellamy. "We're out of rope," he said lowly.
"So we make a new one," Bellamy told him.
"If anything happens to our friends, when we could have—"
"We don't even know if we can save our friends!" Bellamy yelled at him and Finn stopped short. "For all we know, they could be dead already. We've all thought it. But what we do know is that we could save this one girl."
Finn still didn't look convinced. "I am not leaving her for dead," Jinny hissed vehemently.
"Sterling was one of us," Monroe said. "She was his friend. I'm in."
"So how do we do it?" Murphy asked right away.
"We make new rope from the wreckage," Bellamy told them. "Go find wires, seatbelts, anything."
Murphy nodded, turning around and placing a hand on Monroe's arm to urge her forwards. "Come on," he said, and they headed towards the wreckage trail behind them.
"I hope you're right about this," Finn said before darting away to scavenge as well.
Bellamy looked to Jinny. "So do I."
She gave him a nod before separating to join the hunt for materials. Jinny scrounged around some of the larger debris, scanning the ground for brightly coloured seatbelts and wires. She rounded the edge of a chunk of wall and almost retched when she found a corpse that had been cut in half at the waist, blackened innards spilling out onto the grass. She stumbled away, clasping a hand against her mouth and bent over, heaving dryly. That was the worst thing she had ever laid eyes on and the smell of rot was worse. Quickly picking herself up, she ran away from the scene towards Bellamy. It didn't take them very long to gather enough seatbelts and wires to hook them together into a rope that was long enough.
Jinny volunteered to go down, but Bellamy refused to let her despite him weighing twice as much as she did, taking one end of the belt chain and tying it around his waist. She sighed and tied the other end to the base of the tree stump that Sterling had used earlier, making sure that it was definitely secured with a triple knot. Learning from his mistake, they decided to err on the side of caution and carefully lowered Bellamy down the cliff side together. Jinny was in front of the line and she inched forwards to the edge once they had ran out of rope allowance.
"Hang on! I'm almost there!" Bellamy called. "I got you, Mel. Just put your arms around me, okay?"
Jinny strained her muscles as the rope dipped slightly from their combined weight, threatening to pull her that much further down the steep incline. Sweat dotted her upper lip and slid down her forehead in beads, tendrils of stray dark hair sticking to the sides of her face and neck. She breathed heavily, pulling as much oxygen into her lungs as both biceps and triceps burned with continual effort.
"I got her! Pull us up!" Bellamy eventually shouted.
"Don't you worry, Bellamy, I won't drop ya!" Murphy said somewhere behind her.
"You better count on it," Jinny grunted, digging her heel into the rocky terrain and tugging with all her strength. Their combined endeavour was working, and they'd almost gotten halfway back to the tree stump when Jinny suddenly felt her stomach lurch as she slid uncontrollably towards the precipice. Her feet shot off the edge and her hands gripped hold of the rope tightly as half her body dangled over the cliff. One of the seatbelts had snapped, and Murphy was hanging onto both sides, his arms stretched taut between them to offer a new link.
"A little help!" he yelled, the veins in his neck sticking out as he let go of the end tied to the stump so he could put his weight on the one holding Bellamy and Mel suspended. Finn and Monroe quickly came to his aid, throwing their body weight onto the rope to keep it from slipping further down.
"Jin!!" Bellamy shouted from below her and she quickly scrambled to get her legs back up to level ground. She heaved breathlessly as she crawled away from the edge, her palms scratched raw, heart hammering wildly against her chest. As she was about to grab the rope again, an arrow shot through the air and sunk into the dirt next to her hand.
"Grounders!!" Monroe bellowed just as a rain of bolts fell from the sky.
"Jinny!" Finn shouted, throwing her rifle towards her with one hand.
She lunged forwards to grab it and looked into the scope, unable to find a single target through the thick canopy that shrouded their enemies. Without much choice, she opened fire at wherever she saw the spears and arrows emerge from. They were too vulnerable in their current situation, and there were far too many Grounders. A yell of pain resounded as a spear tore through Monroe's jacket, leaving a deep gash against her skin. Then a searing hot sensation pierced through Jinny's thigh and she cried out, finding a long shaft embedded there too. With gritted teeth, she took aim and filled the air with more relentless gunshots.
The sound of a horn reverberating through the trees made her freeze in place. Acid fog. Her mind went back to Atom, blistered skin filled with pus and unseeing eyes begging her for mercy to end his life. She hadn't realised that the Grounders had fled until Murphy was calling her name.
"Jinny, back on the rope!" Finn yelled and she regained clarity of her surroundings. Ignoring the excruciating burn in her leg, she snapped the arrow shaft in half before scrambling to find an available section of the chain to tug on. Their limbs were all over one another, kicking and struggling to haul the two upwards. Jinny tugged, squeezing her eyes closed as her feet pushed hard against the ground, drawing herself further along the rocky terrain.
Finally, Bellamy and Mel appeared over the precipice and climbed up the rocky incline to safety. "Thank you, thank you," the girl gasped as she accidentally landed on top of Finn.
Jinny looked at Bellamy who was trying to catch his breath, then turned to Murphy who was doing the same. It was lucky that the boy had managed to catch hold of the seatbelt in time or else Bellamy, Mel and herself would have been pancakes. She patted his shin and he frowned at her in confusion.
"Good on you, Murphy," she said. "Good on you."
"We need to take cover from the acid fog," Finn said.
"Bellamy! Jinny!" A familiar voice called off to the side, a voice that the both of them had recognised instantly.
Jinny turned sharply, her body already scrambling to a stand before she was even aware of it. The moment she placed her entire body weight on her left leg, she cried out in pain and fell forwards. Octavia caught her just before she struck the ground, supporting the older woman as they wrapped their arms around each other. Lincoln's fog horn was clutched in her hand, indicating that it had been her trying to save them from the Grounders. Bellamy joined them a second later, his burly arms completely engulfing both females in a tight embrace.
Finally, they were all back home.
After a while, Bellamy finally pulled away to help Jinny towards the tree stump to sit on. Octavia bent down to examine the arrow wound, their roles seemingly reversed from the last time they saw each other. Jinny let out a grunt and gritted her teeth from the pain when the arrowhead shifted inside her flesh. Then she took off her belt and held it out to Octavia. "Pull it out," she instructed. "Strong, quick, clean."
"Hey, maybe, I should—" Bellamy started.
"No," Octavia said. "I can do it." She looked back up to Jinny. "Ready? One..." She ripped the arrow out and immediately pressed down on the wound with a strip of cloth.
"Ughh," Jinny groaned, doubling over, her voice tight, "Where did you learn to do that, huh?"
The girl merely smiled back. "The arrow could be poisoned though," she said. Seeing as Jinny was being taken care of by his sister, Bellamy went to tend to Mel and Monroe. Finn was preoccupying himself by driving himself even more insane as he poured over their map again on a plastic crate.
"Thank God you came when you did," Monroe said to Octavia.
"I was going back to camp when I heard shots," she responded.
Murphy wandered over to them. "Nice fog horn," he commended. "What happened to your boyfriend?" He bent down to pick up the ivory instrument.
Octavia grabbed it back from him, her voice biting when she said, "He's gone."
"O..." Jinny murmured as Bellamy came over.
He placed a comforting hand on the girl's shoulder. "I'm so sorry."
She nodded, securing the belt over Jinny's thigh as a tourniquet before grabbing her rucksack and standing up. "The Grounders will be back so we have to go now!" she said loudly, turning towards Finn.
"Yes, we do," he replied, gathering his stuff to stand up.
Bellamy walked over to him. "Octavia says the arrow could be poisoned, I have to take them home."
Finn nodded. "I know," he said, handing a piece of the map to Bellamy.
"I'll meet you as soon as I can," the man as he examined the rough drawings.
"I know," Finn repeated, slinging his backpack over his shoulders and hurrying off.
Murphy went after him, waving his arms to the side as he passed by Bellamy. "Parting, such sweet sorrow, right?"
"Where the hell do you think you're going?" Bellamy asked sternly, and Finn stopped to turn around in the distance.
"Come on, Bellamy," Murphy said. "You know if I go with you, they'll just lock me up again."
"He has a point," Jinny called.
Bellamy picked up the rifle on top of the crate and tossed it towards him. Murphy caught it, glancing down at the firearm before looking back at them in astonishment.
"Really?" Octavia asked in disbelief.
"How do you like your new toy, Murphy?" Jinny shouted.
The boy cocked the charging handle and smirked widely. "Feels great, Commander!"
"Watch his back," Bellamy told him, and Murphy threw a two finger salute their way before running off after Finn. He then turned around to Octavia. "I can't get them home without you."
"Of course you can't," she replied smugly.
"Hello, injured here." Jinny waved a hand at them.
The siblings turned around and made their way towards her. Bellamy bent over and scooped her up into his arms in one fluid motion, catching her by surprise. She blinked her dark eyes at him as he grinned back roguishly.
"Yeah, I wanna see you carry me all the way for fifty clicks, you do it, Blake, I'm rootin' for you," she told him, trying and failing to stifle her own laughs, as she wrapped her arms around his neck.
"Sure, you're as light as a feather," he told her.
"And I'm going to hurl," Octavia said, rolling her eyes as she walked ahead of them.
"Me too," Monroe said, trailing along behind her.
"Me three," Mel giggled at their side.
Jinny beamed and planted a kiss on Bellamy's lips when their backs were turned. He leaned forwards, bumping their noses together, and maybe things weren't as bad as she thought they were after all.
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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © KAYE CEE
DO NOT STEAL, COPY OR TAKE ANY PART OF THIS WORK.
[ author's note ]
that textpost is so relevant i can't
at first i wanted jinny to go down, but that meant she wouldn't get hurt. and if she didn't get hurt, she'd follow finn. if she followed finn, she'd probably one punch knock him out when he started getting crazy eyed which would mean that there wouldn't be a massacre. and he wouldn't die. and he kinda needs to die damn.
i went back to edit jinny getting shot in the shoulder instead but then realised that she'd still be able to walk and i wanted bellamy to carry her welp.