execution
/ˌɛksɪˈkjuːʃ(ə)n/
noun
1. The carrying out of a plan, order, or course of action.
"the execution of the the plan needed to be perfect to get them out."
2. the carrying out of a sentence of death on a condemned person."
"His execution was devastating."
-
Bellamy.
The sun had already risen on a new day, dappled light reaching at us through the tree branches when we found our first real lead.
We hadn't stopped looking all night, which probably wasn't the best move as most of us were exhausted and we needed to be conserving our energy if we're gonna fight again. But no one spoke up, no one suggested we stop and I think that had something to do with the look in Finn's eyes.
It was a scary look.
Luna and Murphy had begrudgingly worked together to track the grounders that could've taken our people and although it was painful, they got us here.
"Everybody down!" Finn hissed and we all dropped to the ground, hidden behind a hillock.
"This is it." Murphy said lowly as we scanned the camp of his description. "I told you I'd find it." He said pointedly to me.
But it wasn't a camp we were looking at, not even close. Looking through the scope of the gun Miller's Dad had given me I cold see that clearly.
But it was Luna who spoke up before I could.
"No, this isn't a camp it's a group of grounders. Scouts most likely." She stated and Murphy scowled.
Finn grabbed the other scoped gun off Stirling and held it up to his eye.
"Our people aren't here." I affirmed and as I pulled my gaze away from the grounders I noticed her shoulders sag. A sweep of her face revealed her despair. She was a part of this just as much as we are and I see it more and more everyday.
"Wait a minute!" Finn whisper-shouted. "They've got stuff from our Dropship!"
I looked again, a sliver of hope rising within me.
"Then maybe they know where our friends are." I stated.
"Yeah or maybe they killed them already." Murphy oh-so-helpfully added. He looked like he as going to say more but Luna silenced him with a feral scowl and a tight grip on one of her knives.
"Son of a bitch!" Finn cursed, pulling me out of my gaze.
"What is it?" I asked quickly.
"The guy with the one eye." Was all Finn said before I had the scope pressed up to my eye and was scanning the scout group once again. I settled on the man, scanning him for anything that might've made Finn alarmed.
"Around his neck." Finn prompted, but I was still in the dark.
"What am I looking at?" I asked, tired of the guessing game.
"He's got Clarke's watch." Finn hissed. "It was her father's."
Dread settled in the pit of my stomach.
"She wouldn't give that up without a fight." I said slowly.
The look in Finn's eyes as unreadable, a look I had never seen before. "Neither will we." He promised.
"Okay." I said, more to myself than anyone else before I launched into action.
"You're with me," I motioned to Finn. "You two," I spoke to Montgomery and Stirling, "stay here out of sight. If this thing goes south, take out the other grounders but don't shoot the grounder with the watch. Copy?"
"Copy." They echoed.
This was easier for me than all the other stuff. The emotions and the waiting were impossible but this? This I could do. It was easy for me to lead, to slip into command once again.
I moved to my feet but before I could take off, a hand reached me first, brushing at my arm.
I turned and fell into Luna's forest eyes.
"What about me?" She asked carefully.
Luna was still as much a mystery to me as she was before the attack and before the arc came down, if not more now.
Even the fact that she's here right now, standing in front of me, eyes full and searching, body tensed and ready to fight for us, I almost can't believe it. I almost can't believe how far we've come since she was dragged into our camp by her hair and forced to her kneel before a bunch of delinquents.
"You're with me." I said back, my voice just as careful.
she nodded, once, quickly but her eyes were warm.
"What about Murphy?" Montgomery pulled my focus.
"Yeah do I get a gun now?" Murphy asked facietiously.
I scowled.
"Something like that." I replied.
That was how Murphy ended up crouched behind a tree a few meters from the group of grounders, tapping rocks together. It would've been funny had my heart not been in my throat.
As our plan worked and the grounder with Clarke's watch around his neck drew closer, I let my focus wander for a couple of seconds.
Luna was crouched beside me, her gaze flicking from Murphy to the trap we knew the grounder would walk right into.
There was something about the dappled sunlight washing over her that felt nostalgic in a way, that gave me de ja vu. Then I remembered why.
The moment edging at my memories seemed like forever ago. When I took her into the woods and for her it was like coming home. When she stopped in her tracks to the river, closed her eyes and tilted her head back to face the sun shining through the trees. When I realised that underneath all of her ferocity, she was so undeniably delicate- like a bird. When I realised how wrong I had been to cage her, to keep her. When I told her to run. When she didn't run.
Why didn't she run?
The hurt we had inflicted on her was unforgivable. It made me tremble just thinking about it so why didn't she run? She should've run. If she had run maybe we wouldn't have fallen. And if we hadn't fallen she wouldn't have killed one of her own to save me on the night of the ring of fire.
When I think about it, that moment was so much more than I could've ever known. It was the catalyst to everything falling apart.
The choice I gave her, to run or not to run, that choice was a cliff and she hurled herself off it. And she fell.
Why didn't she run?
I want answers to too many questions, impossible questions. Where are our friends? Why didn't she run? Will we ever see them again? Why didn't she run? What if they're dead? Why didn't she run?
Impossible.
And then I can't think about it anymore because the grounder has stumbled into our trap and my body moves to take him down except I still feel like I'm pressed into the earth waiting.
I guess I kind of am.
Finn propels towards Clarke's watch like a magnet, ripping it from the now unconscious grounders neck.
"We need to take him somewhere quiet." I state quietly, still hyper aware of the grounders in the distance.
Finn's eyes flicker to Luna's and a strange agreement passes between the two of them.
"I know just the place." He replied and we waste no time in picking up the unconscious grounder and diving back through the woods.
~~~
"We're gonna do this again and this time you're gonna stop screwing with us!" I growled, facing off with the uncooperative grounder.
Finn had taken us to a storm bunker in the woods that Luna had used to hide Charlotte, what feels like a lifetime ago.
"Where did you find this?" I pressed him.
"I told you," the grounder said through gritted teeth, "I found it outside your camp."
"He's lying." Finn spat. "She would never take it off voluntarily.
"I know." I said lowly.
Finn bent down and clutching the watch so tightly his knuckles were white, held it once more up to the grounder's bloodied face. Bloody from a head-wound that I had inflicted to get him here.
"Where is the girl who was wearing this watch!" He yelled, a desperately dangerous edge too his voice.
"I never saw a girl." The grounder replied, no desperation in his voice. If anything he was just throroughly pissed off.
"Another lie." Murphy spoke up from where he sat against the wall of the bunker. "I mean maybe you should stop asking him nicely." Murphy suggested and Luna's low growl in response had my head spinning.
"Shut up Murphy." I snapped, my eyes moving briefly from the grounder in question to the grounder at my side.
Luna's eyes were solemn with understanding but there was a guarded aprehensiveness to them as well. A tremble to her small hands that she hid by crossing them over her chest. And for the second time today a memory tugged at me and nostalgia pulled me into it's arms- although I wouldn't call it nostalgia, that implies that I want to return to this memory and I don't.
This memory of blood and pain and saying keep going when you mean stop, please stop. The strain of Luna's chains as Raven pulled out those live wires. The way Luna looked at me as I tortured Lincoln. I didn't want her to ever look at me that way again. I didn't want to go back to who I was in that moment.
Right now we were dangling dangerously close.
"Where are our friends?" I managed to get out, turning back to the grounder. "You took them, we know you did, just tell us where!" I pleaded.
The sound of a gun slipping from it's holster, sliced through me.
"Murphy's right." Finn breathed and my eyes latched onto the gun in his hand.
"We're wasting time." He seethed and in a flash lunged toward the grounder, smacking the butt of the gun onto his cheek.
I didn't think, I just moved, grabbing for Finn's writhing form, yelling at him to calm down as he yelled at the grounder to tell him where Clarke was.
"Finn stop!" I demanded as he fought against me, "you don't want to do this, trust me." My eyes flickered to Luna who had not moved. In fact it was as if she was frozen in place, her hazel eyes darker than ever as she took in the scene unfolding before her.
"There are some lines you can't uncross." I said, my voice pleading, my eyes never moving from Luna's. The understanding in them that I had seen earlier was gone, replaced with something else entirely. Something that made me want to let go of Finn and go to her, to comfort her, to hold her. To apologise again and again for what I had done to Lincoln as she watched helpless.
Helplessness. That is what I saw in her eyes.
Finn stopped fighting me and relaxed enough for me to slowly let him go.
I shouldn't have let him go.
Not two seconds had passed before he was driving his gun into the Grounder's head, once, twice.
"WHERE IS CLARKE" He howled and when I reached from him again to pull him back, he was ready.
His names had barely left my lips when he shoved me away screaming, "BACK OFF", clicked the safety off the gun and pointed it straight at me.
Luna's sharp intake of breath was loud in the silence of the room.
"Finn." I said slowly, my voice shaking. "Put down the gun."
There was a handful of seconds where I thought he might actually shoot me until instead he whipped the gun away and pressed it to the Grounder's temple.
"You have three seconds." He roared.
When he took his aim off me, I felt a hand flutter against the edge of my shirt, across my back, down my arm and at last took my hand and gripped it tightly. I squeezed just as hard not realizing how much I needed that contact.
"TWO" Finn bellowed.
I could feel my heart pulsing throughout my entire body, I wondered briefly if Luna could feels it too?
"One." Finn spat out and the silence that followed gripped my heart so tightly I thought it would stop, but just as Finn's finger began too squeeze the trigger, the Grounder relented.
"Okay." He choked out, "I'll tell you."
I felt Luna let out a deep breath.
"You're friends are East of here. The village where we take our prisoners of war." He gave us, but it wasn't enough for Finn.
"East where? How do we get to them?" He spoke through gritted teeth.
"I can show you a map." He offered, though it pained him. "But you should hurry, soon they'll outlive their usefulness." He warned.
I didn't think Finn's eyes could get any wilder, but I watched as they did.
"Get him something to draw a map." Was all he said and he finally lowered the gun.
Monroe stalked forward and lay a large sheet of something that resembled paper before him. Murphy finally rose from his uninterested spot on the ground and sauntered past me, drawling in my ear; "and you thought I was the crazy one, huh?"
We all waited in silence as the Grounder drew a map to his village as best as he could. Luna did not move but I was comforted by the warmth of her hand around mine. It was a selfish comfort though, she should not have to console me when only weeks ago I stood where Finn stands and she, the grounder in chains.
When he was finally done I let go of Luna to crouch before him and survey his map. It was basic but it would have to do. I didn't see the way his eyes latched on to Luna, didn't see the look of recognition as it turned it disbelief and then to outrage. I only heard him as he breathed the word,
"Gonaheda."
I only saw Luna as her startled expression melted into sorrow, as she nodded to the warrior before her.
"You are with Skaikru?" he whispered, his defences long forgotten. The rest of the us were left speechless, frozen in this reunion.
"Yes." Luna said, her voice strong.
"The Commander believed you to be dead. There was a memorial..." He trailed off and pain flickered through her eyes.
"I am alive." She said softly.
His eyes hardened.
"But you have chosen a fate worse than death? Betrayal?"
"No." She moved forward, crouched so that she could look him square in the eye.
"I have chosen hope."
My heart swelled in my chest. She stretched to her full height and turned to me, her forest eyes wet.
"Gather up the gear," I said to them all, my eyes still on her, "we're leaving." She nodded.
"Wait, what about him?" The other boy spoke up, his voice wary.
"For now, we leave him. We'll deal with him when we're done." I decided after a moment, Luna's eyes shining in afirmation.
"What if he escapes?" Murphy countered. "He knows exactly where we're going."
"We are not killing him." I growled.
"I'm not really seeing another option here, if we don't care of this now, this is going to blow back on us and you know it." Murphy countered his frown etched permanently into his skin.
"He's unarmed Muprhy." I dismissed his words. I would not kill an unarmed man.
"He's a grounder." Muprhy shot back and quick as a flash Luna was right up in his face.
"Yes. He's a grounder. Raised believing you're the enemy. Raised believing he should always protect his own. We shouldn't kill him for doing everything he was trained to do. We shouldn't kill him because he doesn't know any better than you being the enemy." She fought, her words sharp and vicious and true.
"Oh, I didn't realise you had a say here." Murphy snarled and looked around for support but the others were taking a step back, looking unsure.
"Really? C'mon tell him." Muprhy urged but Monroe was shaking her head.
"I don't know..." she said and Muprhy pounced.
"You don't know what? He's going to tell his people everything. We're as good as dead, our friends too." And he moved to go past me but I held firm.
"We're not doing this. End of discussion. You want him you've gotta go through me." I growled.
"And what exactly happened to you, you're talking like you;ve never killed a grounder before." He sneered at me and his eyes flickered to Luna. "You became a grounder pounder and forgot who you are?"
Luna bared her teeth at him and I had to hold her back, even when I could barely hold myself back.
"That was in battle. This would be an execution."
Execution.
The word had barely left my lips when the gunshot fired, ringing in my ears and shattering my heart. We all flinched, including Murphy and turned just in time to see the Grounder fall to the floor, and the gun still smoking in Finn's hand.
Luna let out a sound that I will never forget.
Finn didn't stop for a second, bending to grab the map that lay in front of the now dead grounder and moving for his pack.
"Let's get moving." Was all he said in a low, scary voice.
That's when I noticed that his eyes were no longer wild. No. Finn, who was devastated when he woke from his wounds to find the antidote been tortured out of Lincoln, who championed for peace even when we were all against him- his eyes were no linger wild.
They were dead. Cold, barren and dead.
~~~
HELLO HI HOW'S IT GOING
you may not recognise since I haven't updated in almost a year since promising to update regularly. I don't really know what to say, I'm a problematic bitch and Uni was hard.
Also I'm a huge supporter for not putting out creative content just for the sake of it. I have written this chapter a dozen times but it didn't feel right. I only want to give you guys shit that I'm proud of.
Please vote (I don't deserve it but please do anyway) and comment because it means the world to me!!!
I hope to see you guys soon :)
*loves*
-J xx