"There must be something in the water
'Cause everyday it's getting colder
And if only I could hold ya
You'd keep my head from going under"
-Bruises, Lewis Capaldi
*****
Clarke stitched up Ash's cut in the few hours between the meeting and the crash, giving her time adjust to the dull pain the wound gives off. It's no where near as painful as the fog, but it's certainly not comfortable.
But she manages.
Now, they all walk through the clearing of what was one of the Exodus ships from the Ark. It came down two days early without warning and crashed violently.
Charred bodies are everywhere, and there's little of the ship left to give anyone intel on why exactly it crashed.
"Clarke shouldn't be out here." Finn speaks into the solemn silence, watching a stone-faced Clarke in worry.
"Her mom was on that ship, Finn. She's looking for answers." Raven replies while rolling her eyes. "Wanna help her? Find Ash and I the Black Box, hard drives, anything to tell us why this ship crashed."
"Stay sharp," Bellamy warns from his spot just right of Ash. "Grounder retaliation for what happened on the bridge is coming, just a matter of when."
Finn doesn't even bother hiding his hostility towards Bellamy when he says, "Can you blame them?"
"No," Bellamy doesn't bother hiding his either, "I blame you."
"Maybe if you didn't bring guns—"
"Both of you, shut up!" Ash snaps. They'd been fighting ever since they all got back to camp, and it's useless and frankly, annoying. "Fighting over why they're coming is pointless, it doesn't change the fact that they are."
"She's right," Bellamy notes somewhat reluctantly, "Why they're coming doesn't matter anymore. It's our job to be ready when they do. We're on our own now."
It's true. With the ship crashing, it's not very likely that more ships from the Ark will come down in time for the inevitable Grounder fight. It terrifies Ash more than she'd like to admit.
"Clarke, stop!" Raven yells, so abrupt and sudden that Ash jumps with a shriek.
They all jog over to where Clarke is standing. One they reach her, Ash understands why Raven yelled so urgently.
"What is it?"
"Hydrazine." Ash tells Clarke. "It's highly explosive. One wrong move and we're all toast."
"We need to clear the area." Raven tells Clarke and Bellamy urgently as more and more of the liquid leeks onto the ground.
Bellamy must hear the urgency as right away they get ready to move back to camp. "Okay then. Move in formation, no straggling, weapons hot. We got to get back before dark."
They move quickly, none of them knowing what, or rather who, waits back at camp for them.
*****
The weather has been slowly getting cooler and cooler over the course of the month they've been on the ground, more and more time spent in the warm drop-ship to avoid freezing at night and during the day.
That's why it's a surprise when everyone in camp waits outside, nervously muttering and glancing between the drop-ship and each other.
Ash immediately gets on high alert. "What's going on?" She shouts to the crowd in confusion.
"Murphy," One kid says bravely, "He's back."
It takes a second for the sentence said to sink in and for Ash to truly understand it. But once she does, she sprints faster than she's ever before into the drop-ship.
There's no right way to describe seeing your believed to be dead best friend sitting huddled up a corner, bruised and bloody beyond compare. It's just something that words can't quite define perfectly.
But he's right there. He's right in front of Ash, shaking with his eyes on the dirty metal floor.
She can't form words to call out to him, her brain short circuiting seeing him right in front of her.
Once her brain catches up, she cautiously and very slowly kneels down in front of him. She doesn't touch him in fear of hurting him, but she does say his name softly.
His face is different. Not just bruised and cut up different, there's a difference in his eyes. In the clenching of his jaw. He looks—much angrier than she remembers.
But Ash doesn't dwell on it. "Hey," She says instead. "Welcome back."
"Did you miss me?" He croaks weakly.
"Yeah, I did."
Bellamy comes in like a herd of elephants with a livid expression plastered on his face. He obviously didn't miss John.
"Where is he?" He demands while stopping forward, a gun in his hands that puts Ash on edge.
"Bellamy." Ash warns with a clenched jaw.
Thankfully, he backs down after a long stare-off, he and Clarke going off to no doubt try to figure out what to do with John. Ash doesn't let her mind wander on that, focusing on cleaning his wounds with a few rags instead.
"What the hell happened to you?" She whispers like a fearful child.
He just barely musters up a dark smile, "A lot."
"I'm so sorry this all happened to you." Ash's eyes begin to fill with tears, horrified that he had to go through all of this alone. She tries her best to stop the tears from escaping, but a few must as John's eyes widen and he recoils away from her in something like fear.
"Ash your eyes—" He begins before beginning to cough violently. She gives him a few seconds to let it out, but he doesn't stop. He keeps coughing until a red liquid comes down his chin and begins to make a pile on the floor.
Ash staggers backwards in surprise. "John?!" She cries out in fear. "Help!" She screams when he still doesn't stop almost a minute later. "Help! Somebody help!"
Clarke comes running in with a trail of red blood coming out of her fear filled eyes and Ash knows she must look similar if the look on Clarke's face says anything. Together, the two help John calm down while others begin to pile in, having heard Ash's scream.
Bellamy is at the front, his eyes darting between Clarke, Ash, and John and back again. "Clarke, what is this."
"I-I don't know, some kind of hemorrangic fever. You were waiting for the retalliation at the bridge, well this is it. Murphy is the wepon. We just need to contain it before—"
More liquid escapes Ash's eyes, and when she reaches up to wipe it away, her hand comes back just as red as the pile of blood right next to John. She must some sort of sound, for Bellamy reaches towards her to console her.
Clarke swats his hands away before he can do so, "Don't touch her. Whatever this is it spreads through contact."
"So what do we do?" Ash asks while holding a rag up to her eyes to try and stop the continuous flow of blood.
"Quarantine. Round up everyone who had contact with Murphy. Bring them here." Clarke declares after a few moments of thoughts.
"And everyone they had contact with?"
"Well, we have to start somewhere. Conner," Clarke asks one of the boys who had gotten sick as well, "Who was with you when you found him? Who carried him in? Think."
"The first one was Octavia." Conner mumbles through a cough.
*****
Over the course of the next thirty minutes, the drop-ship has filled up significantly. Ash has yet to throw up, instead bleeding out of both her nose and eyes, but she's watched multiple other people retch onto the metal ground before passing out and sleeping like the dead. It's not something she looks forward to experiencing soon.
Clarke diagnosed Octavia to be completely healthy somehow, allowing her to be the one to sneak out to Lincoln's cave and see if he knows anything about the virus without Bellamy knowing. If Ash wasn't as weak as she is, she probably would have tried to stop to it.
But the fact of the matter is that three kids have already died from this sickness and if there's a cure to it that will stop that number from rising, Ash is going to take it.
Ash is helping another kid sit down to rest when it happens.
Without warning, her stomach lurches forward painfully and her throat burns. Blood flows from in between her lips, another pile beginning to form on the floor. It burns from her stomach all the way up her throat unlike any other time she's ever thrown up before.
Hands gently grab at her shaking form, carefully holding her against their body as she continues to throw up violently.
Black dots dance across her vision and tears stream down her face before finally the blood stops. She collapses against the body and sobs in a mixture of pain and relief.
"You're okay. You're okay." Someone whispers into her ear as tears continue to stream down her face.
Tiredly, Ash looks up to see Bellamy sitting down behind her with his back against the wall. Her head is against his shoulder and it's certainly comfortable, but Ash darts upright in a frenzy of panic to try to get away from him. "You'll get sick if you stay near me." She warns him in panic.
Bellamy smiles softly and gently lays her down in his lap, playing with her messy hair abstinently, "I don't care. Just get some rest, Ash. Get some rest."
She doesn't have to be told twice.
*****
Ash awakens who knows how many hours later to footsteps pounding on every side of the drop-ship. Her throat is sore and her head pounds, but she certainly feels much stronger than before.
Slowly to get used to sitting upright, she sits up off of Bellamy's lap and goes to the side of him instead.
She didn't mean to wake him up, but his eyes flutter the second she gets herself situated until he too wakes up.
The dried blood around his eyes, nose, and mouth tells her he got sick in the time she was out, but he seems to be feeling much better as well.
"How long have I been out?" Ash asks groggily after a few seconds of observing him.
"A couple of hours." He responds through a yawn, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. "Clarke's rounding everyone up and inside as plan B to the Grounders coming."
The Grounders attacking is news to Ash but she isn't surprised. Getting everyone sick weakens them all, it makes sense to attack when they're sick. "What's plan A?" She decides to ask instead, curious to see what their plan against the attack is.
"Finn and Jasper are planting a bomb on the bridge they need to cross to delay them from coming."
Ash nods in approval, "That's a smart plan. That doesn't explain the plan B part though. Do you not think they'll pull it off?"
Any reply he has is cut off when an explosion from not far away makes the drop-ship shake violently.
Bellamy and Ash share a look before rushing outside and joining the crowd already gathered around, Clarke coming to stand next to them.
A cloud of smoke fills the sky, evidence of yet another thing the hundred had to do alone in order to survive.
"I am become death, destroyer of worlds." Clarke speaks poetically into the silence.
"It's Oppenheimer," She backtracks when Ash and Bellamy look a her with 'what' expressions. "The man who built the first—"
"I know who Oppenheimer is, Clarke." Ash and Bellamy say in sync.
Bellamy smiles down at Ash, his brown eyes shining with the type of affection Ash believed to only exist in books and movies as he wraps his arm around her shoulder and presses himself against her.
They fit together perfectly, and Ash can't help but smile and snuggle closer to him as, together, they watch the smoke disappear in the clouds.
*****
Authors Notes:
And John Murphy returns!
How do you think he'll react to the new dynamic in Ash and Bellamy's relationship?
Ready on to find out!
In the mean time, don't forget to Vote.
Comment,
And share!
<3 you all!
- Emily
11/29/18
Edited