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DEEP WOUNDS
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THERE WAS ASH IN HER LUNGS as she stirred to consciousness, choking on air before crying out in pain. Blood was everywhere, coating her hands and staining her clothes. Her blood. Dripping from her lips and fingertips, the wounds that had re-opened again from the trauma. At this rate, they would never heal. She could hear the distant wails from the villagers above her, screaming agony into the wasteful abandon of the furious night. Her breaths came out shallow, harsh, heaving desperately for life. Hands grabbed hold of her shoulders and Raulf's face swam in front of her eyes, a gash on his head running crimson down his temple.
"Jinny!" His voice yelled over the ringing in her ears. "Jinny, stay with me!"
A piercing pain shot through her side as he attempted to move her and her hand gripped onto the end of the bar that was impaled through her flesh. She screamed in anguish, a tear starting to leak down her cheek, trailing a deep groove through the dust plastered against her skin. There was only one thought running through her mind; she was going to die. Panic tore through her chest, exacerbating the gaping wound in her body, but she couldn't hold it in.
"Oh, my God. Oh, my God, I'm gonna die!"
"Jinny? Jinny." She heard her father's voice call out to her hoarsely and fingers gripped tightly around her own. "You're going to be fine. It's just a flesh wound, there's no internal bleeding."
"I'm still gonna bleed out," she rasped between gasps.
"The bar is stopping the wound from bleeding out," he told her. "And... listen."
She took deep breaths to stop the convulsing breaths from escaping her lips. There was a loud twanging of steel against steel resonating loudly from somewhere behind them, through the cracks in the debris. Somebody else was trapped down there, there were other survivors. Jinny finally managed to calm herself, leaning her head back against a slab of rock.
"Yu ste yuj, Jini," Raulf said, tearing strips from his shirt to bandage her wounds. "I will not abandon you, my friend."
"That was a missile attack," Shumway said, looking around the cramped space that they were trapped in. "The Mountain Men."
"Yes," Raulf responded. "According to legend, the last time they used a missile, it left a hole in the woods that you could not see across. We're lucky to be alive right now."
Jinny winced as he tied off another bandage around the large wound on her midriff, from when Indra had dragged her blade through her skin. She could feel the bitterness creep up her throat once more, turning her eyes into jagged obsidians as her lips curled into a scowl. Her teeth grounded against each other with deep-seated hatred.
"They knew, didn't they?" she bit out.
"What are you talking about?" Shumway asked. "Who knew?"
"Clarke and Lexa," she told him before directing her gaze back to Raulf. "They were willing to let us die and escape themselves."
"This is war," he told her quietly, but she could tell from the twitch in his jaw that he didn't approve of it either. "Sometimes, sacrifices must be made."
"Haven't we sacrificed enough?" she hissed.
"Life will never stop giving you new obstacles to overcome," he said, and there was something of Lexa reflected in his words. "It will never stop testing you until there is no more of you to give." He paused for a moment. "Once, my sister loved another dearly. Costia was the brightest of us all, a true believer and visionary of peace. She always saw the light, even in the darkest of places. Azgeda took her from us, delivered her head to Lexa's bed. But she left her legacy with us, and now we have the Coalition."
Jinny averted her gaze to the ground. "And have you sacrificed anything?"
"I killed my own father when I was fifteen," he confided. "For my people. He would have led us to our deaths... I had to stop it. So I slit his throat with the knife he gave me." When he was finally done binding her wounds, he sat on the ground with his legs bent in front of him. "Octavia told Lincoln that she spent her entire life hidden underneath the floor. That if she was ever found, her mother would be 'floated'."
"Aurora Blake," Shumway said, and Jinny felt a flare of anger. "I remember her."
"Of course you would," she spat. "You floated her. You sent Octavia into the Sky Box. You kicked Bellamy out of the Guard."
"He got you arrested," he told her almost angrily. "If things had turned out differently, you wouldn't even be here. You'd have been floated too."
"Just like how you floated mum?" She looked at him with derision.
His expression softened, pinching with self-loathing. "You know I never wanted to do that."
There was a loud creaking from above them, trickles of loose dirt falling onto Jinny's face. She craned her neck to look upwards, finding the blocks above them starting to shift from their places. "It's collapsing again, everybody get down!!" she shouted.
The rocks broke around them once more with a heavy rumble that thundered in her ears. Raulf was forced to move further away as the debris fell on the place he'd just been occupying.
"Jinny, look out!" Shumway called, lunging forwards to move her body away as debris continued to crash around them.
She closed her eyes as she tucked herself into a tight ball. The bar in her side shifted, and her hand flew up to grip it to minimise the displacement. She felt new scraps on her face from where the sharp edges of stone fell on her. When everything stopped, Jinny finally opened her eyes and inhaled sharply when she found her father lying by her feet with a large cement block pinning down his left arm.
"D-dad?" she called weakly. "Hey. Open your eyes."
"Jinny!" She heard Raulf call from beyond the rubble to her right. He'd been separated from them. "Are you and your father okay?"
Shumway stirred and she managed to breathe a little easier. "Yeah!" she shouted back. "We're fine!"
"I think there's a way out through here!" he told her. "I see light. Dawn must be nearing."
"That's great, Raulf!" she yelled back before turning to Shumway. "Dad, are you okay? Say something."
He let out a groan of pain, wincing as he finally opened his eyes to peer at her. "I'm fine," he grunted out. "Are you?"
"Yeah," she breathed out. "What were you thinking?"
"My daughter," he answered. "What else?"
Jinny swallowed and leaned her head to the side. All she could taste in her mouth was bitter ash. "It's not gonna change a thing."
"I know," he said. "But let an old man dream, will you?"
She let out a breath of disbelief and rolled her eyes mildly. The only reason she protected him was because he was her father, the only flesh and blood relative that she still had. Her mother loved him so much that she died for him, abandoning all that she had ever built for herself and her only daughter. She resented him deeply, but a part of her knew that her father never wished for any of it. That if he could have predicted the future, he would never had shaken hands with that witch.
"I found your mother's box underneath a floorboard in our room," he told her quietly. "It was the day after you were arrested. I put it in your locker, even though I knew you might never come back. I wanted to give you the key myself, but I gave it to Bellamy when I sent him down to Earth with you."
"Mum died because of you," she said with a sigh. "She gave Rikkin the sedative but you were the one who finished the job. She took the blame for you."
"Diana threatened to send you to the Skybox," he told her. "You were only fifteen. I had to do it. We were protecting you."
Jinny sneered. "They locked me up anyway."
She almost didn't hear him when he said, "I know. I should've done better."
They fell into a deep silence, the only sound being their laboured breaths and the creak of metal underneath the weight of the stone rubble. Jinny counted every aching beat of her heart, waiting for Raulf to return or for someone to dig them out of that hell hole. Her father had gone back to his usual reticence, a trait that she had adopted herself from being in contact with him all her life. He had always been the polar opposite of her mother; she was warm and caring. People said that she always had so much love to give to everyone around her, and Jinny had taken that trait too. It manifested in her attachment to her friends and in particular, Bellamy.
She was so tired; her eyelids fluttered shut in the darkness like a flame diminishing in the night.
Her breathing slowed and she lost count of her heart somewhere around five hundred and twenty-three. Yet, time still dragged on.
The ache in her body faded away, the pain melted into the dregs of the stone and steel.
And just before she lost herself completely, light broke through from a crack in the debris to their side with the rising of a golden dawn. She could feel the air shift, the scent of petrichor and smoke on the breeze. The rocks fell away to reveal Octavia's face as she crawled through the narrow shaft to her, face paint smeared with dirt and sweat. She grinned widely when she saw her, yelling over her shoulder that she'd found them.
"Jin," she breathed, inching further down the passageway towards her. "I'm going to get you out of here, okay? Just hold on."
She looked at the wound in Jinny's side, then to Raulf who had arrived behind her. They nodded, positioning their hands on the woman's arms. In one swift motion, they pulled her free from the metal bar wedged into her side and she let out a cry of pain as the ridges tore past her raw flesh. Raulf and Octavia pressed their hands against the exit and entry wounds to staunch the bleeding, carefully dragging her back down the shaft.
"Someone else help me with Shumway!" Octavia called once they reached the opening.
Jinny felt droplets of rain kiss her cheeks softly as she was brought back up to the ground, taking in a deep breath of the cool morning air. Raulf set her down on a stretcher where Jackson immediately came to treat her injuries. She blinked up at him in surprise, noticing Sinclair was also there with a bunch of others from Camp Jaha. They must have seen the missile blast and came to help.
"Can you sit up?" Jackson asked her and she nodded, pushing herself up on her elbows gingerly. He then helped, allowing her to lean against a slab of cement behind her. He cleaned and dressed the deep wounds in her side, wrapping a roll of bandage tightly around her waist. Once he was done, she hauled herself up to her feet. "Hey, you're badly injured!" he exclaimed. "Jinny, you need to rest."
"I can't," she told him, wincing as she placed one foot in front of the other.
Clarke came running up to her then, concern present in her bright blue eyes. "Jinny, I'm so glad you're alive!"
"Are you, Clarke?" she spat lowly. "That's a surprise."
The girl frowned as she was taken aback, following her as she limped towards Indra who was slowly strapping her armour on. "You're injured, you should lie down."
"You done?" Jinny stopped and turned her hard eyes on Clarke. "Are we leaving or not?"
"I've arranged for a caravan to take the wounded back to Camp Jaha," she told her.
"That's nice. When are we leaving?"
"N-now... but Jinny, you're not fit—"
Jinny raised her hand and struck Clarke across the cheek with a resounding slap. Everyone around them stopped to look in surprise at what had just occurred. Clarke let out a sharp gasp before slowly turning to look at her with an expression of hurt on her face. Jinny gritted her teeth as she lowered her hand to her side.
"I'm fine, Clarke," she said with a sharp edge to her voice. "Are you?"
The girl blinked, her eyes finally softening to realisation, and then pleading for understanding. Jinny turned on her heel and marched off with a hand pressed hard against her side, searching for a member of the Guard to fetch her equipment. All she wanted to do was to leave.
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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © KAYE CEE
DO NOT STEAL, COPY OR TAKE ANY PART OF THIS WORK.
[ author's note ]
i'm sorry clarke... but you let a fucking missile kill 250 people lol.
this chapter felt so rushed but eh idk i'm so tired rn my brain is probly only 43% operational.