✿ SIX ✿
"Why do these eyes of mine cry?
Don't they know it's the end of the world?"
___
They had been walking only for a couple of minutes, but a nasty gut feeling was already engulfing Katherine. She knew why Monty had to stay behind, but it felt wrong to be surrounded by people she hardly knew or trusted. Wells, she had spent the day with, but now his priorities lied elsewhere. The fact that Bellamy and Frog-Face were walking behind them also didn't do much to comfort Katherine.
Sure enough, Bellamy soon took out his gun and started waving with it like nobody's business. Katherine cringed away, knowing exactly what damage those things and other weapons could do, and she couldn't help but wonder if Bellamy just happened to pull the trigger while the gun was wielded her way, he could pass it off as an accident.
"What's the rush?" he asked theatrically, showing off the gun even more. "You don't survive a spear to the heart."
"Put the gun away, Bellamy," Wells warned, taking a step forward only to be pushed back aggressively by Murphy.
"Well, why don't you do something about it, huh?" Murphy threatened, forcing Wells to step back.
Katherine rolled her eyes, someone was dying and all Murphy could do was pick a fight. "Ever the loyal lapdog, Frog-Face, are you not?"
"You shut up, wicked witch," Murphy snapped back, giving the girl a hateful stare.
"Jasper screamed when they moved him," Clarke said, staring at Bellamy as if she couldn't believe him. Katherine knew for sure she couldn't believe both Bellamy and Murphy any time any word left their mouths. Just watching them breathe had her on the edge. "If the spear struck his heart, he'd have died instantly. It doesn't mean we have time to waste."
Just as Clarke wanted to turn around to walk further, Bellamy grabbed for her wrist, forcing her to turn back around. He looked at her like she was some sort of prey, grinning like a maniac. "As soon as you take this wristband off, we can go."
Katherine resisted the urge to kick her heel in the dirt and to let out a loud groan. They were wasting time, precious time, in which she could save her best friend's friend. It made her jumpy, because she knew they had a long way to go and with each passing second Jasper, who was balancing on the edge of death, was coming closer and closer to the downfall.
Roughly, Clarke pulled her wrist back. She looked at Bellamy intensively, as if she dared him to look away. "The only way the Ark is gonna think I'm dead is if I'm dead. Got it?"
"Brave princess," Bellamy mocked her, rocking from one foot to the other.
"Hey, why don't you find your own nickname?" someone interrupted their petty discussion. Katherine looked up, only to see Finn walking briskly past Bellamy to join Clarke's side. She had learned via Monty that he was a tracker. "You call this a rescue party? Got to split up, cover more ground. Clarke, come with me."
"Great," Katherine muttered, realising that after Clarke had taken off with Finn, she was left with the dumb people. She didn't think she had many brain cells left before she really started to become dysfunctional. It amazed her that she still had enough functioning cells left to be able to breathe.
"Don't sulk like that, witch," Murphy laughed, joining her by her side. He even had the guts to bump her with his shoulder. Involuntarily she cringed away. "Don't you just love our companionship?"
"I'd love for you to shut your mouth," Katherine snapped back. She just couldn't stand Murphy, or Bellamy for that matter. She tried increasing her pace while keeping the blonde hair of Clarke in sight, but Murphy seemed determined to annoy her endlessly.
Just as she was about to ask Bellamy if he couldn't leash Murphy and hold him close, her eyes to fell something that made her very excited. She let out a small squeal, one that would make her feel humiliated later, as she ran forward to the white and yellow flowers. She couldn't believe that she had found yet another plant that would perhaps make her life so much easier. "This place is just amazing," she muttered softly.
"Uhm, what exactly are you doing?" Murphy asked confused, as he looked how the girl ran forward to some plants. He looked behind to Bellamy, who only shrugged, looking at the girl curiously.
"She's from Agro," Katherine heard Wells say. "She probably needs those plants."
Katherine nodded to herself, and as she took a glance over her shoulder, she noticed Bellamy staring at her oddly, as if something had all of sudden come to his mind. Katherine ignored it and turned back to carefully plucking the feverfew by the roots. From the pockets of her oversized jacket, she managed to find an empty sheet of fabric, on which she laid the plants so that they wouldn't be damaged while she carried them around.
Hearing an obvious sigh, she looked from the corners of her eye to see Bellamy walking towards her. She subtly rolled her eyes, so that the rest of them wouldn't see her doing it, and chose to act as if she hadn't seen Bellamy approach her. When he had his petty fight with Clarke he wasted time, now she was actually collecting things that might not only help Jasper, but everybody else on camp as well.
"Here, use this, it will go quicker," Bellamy mumbled, holding out a knife to her. He didn't want to appear to be fascinated or helpful, so he just gave her a bored glance before staring off into the distance.
As soon as Katherine saw the reflection of the knife by the sun, the rough edges and the sharp ending pointing towards her, she felt her throat tighten up. Stress tingles quickly spreading throughout her body as she stared at the knife like a deer caught in headlights. Breaking out of her shock, she smacked Bellamy's hand so hard that it sent the knife flying a couple of feet away. It was only then that she could breathe normally again.
"Jeez, what was that for?" Bellamy asked offended. He went to retrieve the knife, all the way looking at Katherine like she was a madwoman. "I wasn't going to stab you or anything."
"Whatever," she muttered in reply, not feeling the need to explain herself. Quickly she bundled the plants she had managed to pluck before Bellamy decided to offer her a knife, sticking them into her jacket and walking away quickly.
"Well someone has a slight phobia of knives," Murphy said nonchalantly.
"Shut your cakehole, Frog-Face."
✿
They had been walking for the greater part of the day, mostly in silence apart from some nasty comments from Murphy on Katherine's eyes and from her side on his face in general. They made quick stops on the way so that Katherine could pluck some flowers or vines, without interference from Bellamy. After a while, Finn and Clarke had called for them because they found a very recent track from Jasper and as of now, they were walking on some pebbles. Katherine just observed the nature surrounding her, Murphy appeared to do the same only with a bored, seemingly permanent expression plastered on his face. Clarke and Finn were leading the way, Bellamy staring after them critically, while Wells looked after Clarke longingly.
"Hey, how do we know we're actually going the right way?" Murphy asked curiously, not bothering with keeping his voice down.
"We don't," Bellamy answered with just a hint of sarcasm. "Spacewalker here thinks he's a tracker."
"It's called 'cutting sign'," Wells answered. The Chancellor's son looked around him, probably trying to find another part of the trail. "Fourth-year earth skills. He's good."
"Sad," Katherine muttered softly to herself. She got locked up before she could join in on the more exciting and in-depth lessons of earth skills. She would have loved to learn how to follow tracks.
"You want to keep it down or should I paint a target on your backs?" Finn asked sarcastically in a hushed tone. He stopped in front of a shrub, and curiously Katherine looked over his shoulder to what he was doing. He seemed to be observing a branch, but then knelt down to find a pebble stone covered in fresh blood.
It didn't happen often that people could impress Katherine, but she had to give it to Finn. She wanted to be able to do that too. As she noticed how Clarke and Finn started intently at each other, she looked away, resisting the urge to let out a sigh. She didn't know what was up with all these kids. Perhaps it was the fact that she had been locked up in isolation for four years that she actually didn't like the sudden commotion around her. It had to be.
Just as she was about to ask Finn if he could also read the blood or that they should just move on, a loud moan could be heard. It made all the hairs on Katherine's neck stand upright, her whole body freezing up for a split second.
"What the hell was that?" Murphy asked, looking at Clarke and Finn.
"Now would be a good time to take out the gun," Clarke said gravely.
Clarke and Finn took the lead, Katherine and the rest following close behind. They ended up in a clearing just as another loud, bloodcurdling moan could be heard. Observing the clearing, Katherine was slowly being engulfed by an eerie feeling. Seeing Jasper, bloody and delirious, strung up in the middle of the clearing to an old looking tree made her nauseous, but the layout of the clearing made her nervous as well.
The trees surrounding the clearing were growing in a dense way, so that you couldn't look further than a foot or two, and the grass and shrubs seemed to be tall enough to hide all kinds of traps. The fact that there were several wooden poles sticking up from the ground didn't make it any better.
"Oh my God," Clarke said out loud. She moved forward, her eyes trained on Jasper and not on the ground underneath her.
The others seemed to follow her lead, though Katherine was more cautious, stepping on every patch of grass twice before trusting it enough to take a real step. She had read about so many traps and downfalls like these in books about war strategies. She looked up, not believing that the others rushed forward so carelessly. "Clarke, do watch your step."
Katherine watched in horror as Clarke took a step forward, only to disappear a second later. She also saw the way Bellamy was the closest person to Clake and the way she desperately tried to grasp his wrist. Sure, Bellamy caught her, but his facial expression wasn't promising. He could easily let her slip so that she would be killed by whatever was down there without being blamed, but he didn't and when Finn and the other boys came to hoist Clarke back up, he seemed to help them.
Katherine let out a soft sigh of relief, and having found the real trap made her more confident in joining the rest of the group. Clarke looked at her strangely, but didn't say a word.
"We need to get him down," Clarke panted. She was still shaken up from her near-death experience, both her voice and body trembling.
"I'll climb up there and cut the vines," Finn said, looking up at the tree in the middle of the trap.
"Yeah, yeah," Wells agreed, moving with Finn to find a way on the plateau. "I'm with you."
"No, stay with Clarke, watch him" Finn replied, shaking his head towards Bellamy. Katherine came to the conclusion she hadn't been the only one seeing the hesitation in Bellamy's eyes. Finn looked at Murphy. "You. Let's go."
While Murphy went to join Finn, Katherine looked at Jasper curiously. On his chest there seemed to be a poultice, causing a shiver to travel down Katherine's spine. "Oh no."
"Medicine," Wells concluded. He looked from Clarke and Katherine back to Jasper. "Why would they save his life just to string him up as live bait?"
"Maybe what they're trying to catch likes its dinner to be breathing," Bellamy answered.
"Maybe what they're trying to catch is us," Finn joined in, looking at Bellamy from the plateau.
Katherine rolled her eyes, it didn't really matter what they were trying to catch, just as long as they would be gone by the time it arrived. She turned around to scan the place of any other possible traps, but when she actually moved to walk away, she felt someone grab her by the wrist. Immediately Katherine's eyes snapped to those endless brown ones of Bellamy.
"Would you mind letting go of me?" Katherine askes, the tone of her voice not friendly, but not particularly mean either. She pulled back her wrist, ignoring once again the familiar feeling that engulfed her. She needed to figure out why it seemed as if she had known Bellamy before all this, and she needed to do it fast.
"What are you going to do? Walk into another one of their traps?" Bellamy asked sarcastically.
"Like you care," she scoffed, shaking her head. She turned around, walking away carefully. She used the method she had used before, tapping the grass twice before she actually took a step. It was an odd way of walking and not very fast, but it was not as if watching Finn and Murphy cut down Jasper was so much better.
After walking a couple of circles around the plateau, each circle further away from the tree in the middle, Katherine came to the conclusion that there were no other traps. She ignored the bickering between Finn and Murphy and the moans Jasper let out, but instead, she counted the steps she took to calm her mind. She hadn't seen any useful plants yet, so that was a bummer.
All of a sudden a distant kind of growling could be heard, causing everybody to look up. Katherine looked across the field to Clarke and Bellamy, of course, she just had to be on the opposite side. She shook her head at her own idiocy, people who wandered off the group always ended up dead first.
Her train of thoughts was interrupted by snarling right behind her, causing her to turn around quickly. Through some small clearing she saw some big and black cat-like figure stalking towards her, only the tip of its tail visible in the high grass. From the top of her mind, Katherine figured it had to be a panther, even though the fur, or rather the lack thereof, didn't really add up.
"Oh shit," Katherine muttered as she saw the panther running towards her at full speed. She knew that in these kinds of situations people always had a fight, flight or freeze reaction. She had always thought herself to be either a fight or flight person, but as the big cat was nearing her closer and closer, the only thing she seemed to be able to do was stare at it, a look of absolute horror crossing her face.
"Bellamy, gun!" Katherine heard Clarke scream over the sound of rushing blood in her ears.
It must have been a split second before the cat would have buried his claws deep into her chest and his teeth into her jugular, that Katherine threw herself to the side. Instead of her chest and jugular, the panther buried his claws into her thigh, his teeth just missing her calf. Katherine didn't feel any pain, she even managed to ignore the sight of her torn flesh as she grabbed a big log of wood, hitting the cat hard on his head with it.
Looking into the dark eyes of the panther, much like looking in a bottomless pit was, Katherine, realised she stared death in the eyes. And radiation, because God knew that a panther hadn't looked like a hairless, earless almost werewolf-like creature before the Nuclear Apocolypse. The panther, letting out a fierce snarl, gave Katherine a last pat with his claws on her already bloody thigh, before he went to hide in the tall grass again.
Letting out a loud grunt, Katherine dropped the log of wood, the weight suddenly ten times as heavy as the adrenaline started to work out. She knew she had to stay awake, because as she took a quick look at her mauled thigh, she knew she wouldn't last long if she gave herself to the darkness.
"Oh god," she muttered in stress as she tried to put her hands on the large claw marks. Biting hard on her lip, she managed to put a little pressure on it. She could hear gunshots ringing through the air, but she could hardly focus on it. She just hoped that whoever had the gun, most likely Bellamy, would get a nice shot at that asshole of a creature.
Realising she still had some fabric in her jacket, she tried to get it out with her bloody hands. The adrenaline was definitely wearing of, because her hands started to shake like she was having a seizure. She thought she would never say it, but as she saw Bellamy running towards her, Clarke close on his heels, she let out a sigh of relief.
She wondered what he was doing as she saw that he was taking his belt off, and she let the strip of fabric fall next to her. Her vision was starting to get blurry, and she could barely manage to sit up straight, but when Bellamy's hands touched her thigh, she flinched away. She tried to muster a glare as if to say that he shouldn't dare to touch her again.
"Don't be stubborn," Bellamy muttered under his breath, not up for Katherine's childlike behaviour. Again he tried to move his belt underneath her leg, wanting to make a tourniquet so that the bleeding would hopefully stop, but Katherine wouldn't let him. He could see her glassy eyes, and the way she was almost falling on her back and yet she managed to crawl away.
"Move," Clarke said. She quickly took Bellamy's place, taking his belt and wrapping it around Katherine's thigh without a single problem. Noticing she was dozing off, Clarke quickly tightened the belt, causing Katherine to let out a loud scream. Clarke looked at the girl sympathetically, then at the mess her leg had become with a more grave expression.
Perhaps Clarke had thought that Katherine couldn't see her facial expression, but she was well aware of the fact that it didn't look too good. Slowly, but surely she felt herself drifting off, landing hard with head in the grass. The green blades of the grass tickled her face, causing her to smack them away weakly. She felt Clarke tying another strip of fabric around her leg, but Katherine couldn't even gather up the energy to let out another grunt. It surprised her that she hadn't lost her consciousness yet.
"Okay, that must do it until we are back," Clarke muttered, standing up and looking at Katherine gravely. It didn't look too good. Someone had to carry the panther, another two people Jasper and Katherine was in no shape to walk either. She looked around the group. "Someone has to carry her."
"I can walk just perfectly fine," Katherine muttered, not liking the way Clarke talked about her like she wasn't even there. With a loud grunt, Katherine rolled on her back, seeing two Bellamy's and Clarke's. She let out a loud sigh. "I just need... need a short break."
"Yeah, well no time for that sweetheart," Bellamy replied, kneeling down next to the girl. She looked very uncomfortable again, but Bellamy just decided to ignore it. The first time he had seen her, he felt as if he had seen her before, but seeing the way she acted, that couldn't be.
"Don't touch me, you Blake," Katherine muttered, trying to squirm away from the older guy. She didn't like people other than Monty touching her, especially not smug guys who had invited her to join them. "I just need ten minutes."
"To bleed completely out yes," Bellamy retorted, rolling her eyes in annoyance. After a split second of hesitation, he gently shoved one arm underneath her shoulders and the other underneath her knees. Carefully he cradled her to her chest, ignoring the way she stared at him as if he had just crossed some big boundary. Secretly he was glad she didn't seem to have the energy to make snappy remarks, or else the trip back would have been a torturous one. He looked at the rest of the group, noticing the way they were staring at him. His face hardened, daring anyone to stare any longer. "Well, let's get back, guys."