✿ EIGHT ✿
"Oh, and I found love where it wasn't supposed to be,
Right in front of me"
___
Katherine woke up three days later, feeling surprisingly well. During the procedure of Clarke taking more than an hour to stitch everything back together, Katherine had mostly been passed out. The times that she wasn't had been hell, her screams could probably have been heard on the Ark.
For the past few days, she had mostly been out as well. Apparently, Monty had learned somebody how the get as much milk of the poppy from the couple of poppy plants that Katherine had left, and they had been giving it to her every couple of hours, as well as water and food at certain intervals.
Curiously, Katherine took away the sheet of fabric that functioned as a thin blanket, only to see that her leg had been bandaged up. Looking next to her, she noticed clean bandages and a bundle of goldenseal, a natural antiseptic. She also remarked that Clarke had probably used a lot of goldenseal for Jasper.
Taking everything at an extremely slow pace, Katherine unwrapped the bandage from her leg, biting down hard on her lip as she felt the wounds sting. Looking at the uncovered stitches, Katherine nodded in approval. Clarke had done a neat job, making her look a lot less gruesome than it had yesterday.
After Katherine had refreshed her own bandages, she noticed a pole laying next to her. She chuckled softly, that had undoubtedly been the work of her best friend Monty. Using the wall to support her, she slowly scrambled to her feet. Grabbing the walking stick, Katherine softly set her good foot in front of her, putting all her weight on her bad leg and the stick. She hissed in pain, though it surprised her how easily she could do it. She took another step, every step getting easier after the next. Before she knew it, she was out of the damned Dropship and walking in camp.
"Katherine!" she heard someone scream. "You should be resting!"
Curiously, Katherine turned around, seeing Octavia run towards her in an accelerated phase, coming from Bellamy's tent. The younger Blake looked at her in fascination, wondering how she was able to hide her pain so well. Katherine looked at the girl her age unimpressed, shrugging her shoulders. "Very princess-like thing to do, that's true enough."
Octavia rolled her eyes, her expression changing from a determined to an apologetic one. "I shouldn't have said that, it was unfair."
"Yeah, it was," Katherine agreed, turning her back to the girl. She noticed several different groups of people assembling, Bellamy and Murphy's sidekick included. At the same time, Jasper let out a bloodcurdling scream, causing a shiver to travel down Katherine's spine. She turned back to Octavia, looks of horror on both the girl's faces.
"Dropship," Octavia quickly said as she saw her brother approaching the metal structure as well. She took off running, but seeing Katherine couldn't keep up the pace, she turned back and wrapped an arm around the girl's waist, basically dragging her along.
"Oh god," Katherine muttered, trying to keep up while not ripping all of her stitches simultaneously. Even though she didn't particularly like the girl, she still put her arm around her shoulders, leaning on her and her walking stick.
They reached the Dropship first, but that wasn't the end of it. They had brought Jasper to the upper level, and getting there was quite the quest for Katherine. She went first, hopping awkwardly with her good leg while letting her bad leg dangle to the side as if it was a paralysed limb. If she would rip her stitches now not only Clarke would hate her, she would hate herself as well.
As soon as she reached the upper level, covered in a thin layer of sweat, she quickly made room for Octavia by shuffling away on her bottom. The screams leaving Jasper's mouth sounded more awful here than in camp, and Katherine quickly scrambled up, to carefully walk into a faraway corner. She wasn't used to this much sound.
"Stop it! You're killing him!" Octavia cried out, moving closer to the make-shift table they had laid Jasper on.
Katherine observed the red glowing knife and the movements Clarke made with it. She looked at Jasper next, whose eyes rolled so far that only the whites of his eyes could be seen. His ashy looking skin, caused Katherine to take a step forward, wanting to help. "Octavia, it's okay, she's cutting away the infected flesh," Katherine tried to soothe the stressed girl. "She's trying to save his life."
"Well, she can't," Bellamy all of a sudden joined in.
"Well hello to you too, sunshine," Katherine muttered, rolling her eyes. She gained unwanted attention from basically everybody in the room, except Jasper, who appeared to be out again. She noticed Clarke looking at her in frustration, Bellamy just shaking his head.
"We didn't drag him through miles of woods just to let him die," Clarke defended Jasper, looking at Bellamy in disbelief.
"Kid's a goner," Bellamy said harshly. He made Katherine sincerely hope that Jasper really was out cold. "If you can't see that, you're deluded. He's making people crazy."
"You're the one making people crazy," Katherine scoffed, softly enough for it to go unnoticed. She moved forwards, walking like an old woman with a broken hip, but forwards anyway. She took a seat next to Jasper's head, gently brushing through his sweaty hair. She suddenly felt guilty that she hadn't come up earlier, even though she had been out most of the time as well.
"Sorry if Jasper's an inconvenience to you, but this isn't the Ark," Clarke snapped back irritably. She looked at Bellamy, daring him to deny it. "Down here, every life matters."
"Take a look at him," Bellamy scoffed as if he had just heard the biggest joke ever. "He's a lost cause."
"Well, you didn't say that when it was Katherine who was bleeding out," Finn all of a sudden joined in, causing Katherine's head to snap up instantly. Finn hadn't really said it a rude way towards her, but Katherine didn't like it anyway. The way it made Bellamy look at her made her feel very small all of a sudden.
"If only I had known she would have at least been grateful and trying to take it slow," Bellamy snapped back, more towards Katherine than Finn really. Katherine looked up at the older Blake sibling, giving him a nasty glare. She was grateful, but she also realised she owed him. She wondered if he remembered the fact that they had met earlier and that perhaps was the reason that he was so spiteful towards her.
Katherine just bit her lip, looking at the way Octavia all of a sudden seemed defeated. As she let go of the wet cloth, Katherine grabbed it to dab Jasper's neck softly. She felt how he was burning up and she really hoped Clarke had stopped him from becoming septic on time. If she had not, it really would be the end of him.
"Octavia, I've spent my whole life watching my mother heal people," Clarke said softly, gaining the younger girl's attention. So had Katherine, but she wondered if she had ever seen a case so grave as Jasper's. "If I say there's hope, there's hope."
"This isn't about hope, it's about guts. You don't have the guts to make the hard choices. I do," Bellamy said, cutting off any forms of hope effectively. "He's been like this for three days. If he's not better by tomorrow, I'll kill him myself."
Katherine doubted it, but she wished he could just leave already. When he moved for the ladder, he gave her one cross look, and then called out for his sister.
"I'm staying here," Octavia said, getting another cloth to cool Jasper down. She didn't even bother to look at her brother.
"Power-hungry, self-serving jackass. He doesn't care about anyone but himself," Monty muttered, shaking his head in annoyance. He looked at Octavia apologetically. "No offence."
Octavia just shook her head, as if to say none taken. Katherine observed the girl subtly, noticing she did really seem to care for Jasper. Why that was, Katherine didn't know, nor did she care.
"Yeah. Bellamy is all that," Finn agreed. He looked around at the group, the big 'but' hanging in the air. "But he also happens to be right."
Katherine chuckled darkly, looking at Finn in distaste. She still admired his tracking skills, she even envied them, but using her against Bellamy had been a big no-no, and he didn't score any points by making such a comment either. Katherine realised that if she continued to show her spite for everybody, she would make quite a lot of friends quite fast. So, she just turned to Clarke. "I take it the goldenseal didn't work as good as it did for me."
"No, the infection had already been there," Clarke answered. She looked at Jasper like she was missing something. "And before you ask, we didn't give him any milk of the poppy because he was too weak, though we might have to try it anyway."
"Alright," Katherine agreed, taking the silent hint. She offered Octavia the damp cloth, making, or rather shuffling, her way to the ladder. "I'm on my way."
The climb down the ladder hadn't been half as hard as it had been going up, but it wasn't particularly pleasant either. The fact that her walking stick, which she had disregarded when she had to climb up, had disappeared all of a sudden didn't make life any easier. Grumpily, she stumbled out of the Dropship, only taking a moment to observe everything that was going on.
It didn't surprise her at all, that she saw Murphy in the middle of the clearing poking some poor boy with her walking stick. Determinedly, doing her best to keep a nice pace, while simultaneously hiding her pain, she approached Murphy. She noted he hadn't seen her yet, so without a moment of doubt, she grabbed her walking stick out of Murphy's hands. She smacked him in the back of his knees with it, hard enough to let him fall onto his knees, but not hard enough to actually hurt him. They looked at each other the same way: hateful. "If it isn't yours, don't take it, Frog-Face."
"Oh, just piss off, Wicked-Witch," Murphy hissed back, scrambling to his feet.
Letting out a small huff, Katherine observed how a group was gathering at the beginning of the woods. Bellamy was speaking to the girls and boys in the group and for a short second Katherine wondered if he was preaching now too, but then she saw the weapons that were being distributed to everybody.
She spotted Nathan and with a friendly smile covering her face, she walked towards him. He took a quick look at her leg before he returned her smile. Katherine noticed the sympathy hidden within it, and she put in extra effort to walk as normally as possible. "You going out hunting?"
Nathan nodded in confirmation, causing a smile to grow on Katherine's face. "Great, I'm joining you."
Nathan looked at her as if she had just told him something very funny. "My father did tell me you had a funny sense of humour," he chuckled. When she kept on staring at him and he realised that she was being serious, his face fell. "I'm not going to hold you back, but you should ask Bellamy."
Letting out a loud sigh, Katherine nodded in understatement. "I'll join you in a bit," Katherine muttered. As soon as Nathan was out of sight, or hearing distance at least, she moved towards Bellamy who looked at her expectedly.
"I'm going to join you," Katherine stated seriously. She tried to lean as less as possible on her walking stick.
Bellamy lasted all in all for five seconds, before bursting out in laughter. "You're funny, sweetheart," he mocked her. He looked around, realising that most of the group had already dispersed into the woods. "But I do need to leave now."
"Why does everyone think I'm joking," Katherine grumbled under her breath. She quickly followed Bellamy, taking cautious steps. If she would really tumble over some twig that shouldn't be on that place on the ground anyway, she could forget about joining the hunting party. "I'm serious, Bellamy."
Letting out an annoyed sigh, Bellamy turned around, looking Katherine straight into her blue eyes. "Besides the fact that you will never keep up," Bellamy started. He talked to her as if she was some small child needing explanation in something very obvious. "The last time I offered you a knife you had half a mental break down."
Katherine scoffed, giving Bellamy a hard glare. She hated people for pointing out her weaknesses and fears, especially if it were people like Bellamy. "I just managed to knock down Murphy, I'm sure I will keep up with you," Katherine argued. "And I will go into the woods anyway, the chances of me getting picked off by a Grounder only increase considerably when I go alone. I need to restock and seeing everybody else can't even tell the difference between a rose and poisonous ivy, I can't send other people out."
"Whatever," Bellamy muttered, being done with arguing with the girl. He realised he probably couldn't win either. Moving towards the rest of the group in a pace he knew she couldn't keep up with, he looked over his shoulder. "Just know that I won't save your ungrateful ass a second time."
"I wasn't counting on it," Katherine grumbled underneath her breath, using Bellamy's black mop of hair as a moving guide.
✿
They had been walking in the woods for quite some time now. Katherine strayed from the group every now and then to investigate some plants, deciding if they were worth taking, but she always stayed close enough for her to hear them conversate in hushed voices. Fortunately for her, they were taking the route next to her and Wells's stream and this time she didn't bother to keep in mind that there might be people who would try to steal her unpure morphine. She had stolen one of Clarke's back and as of now, it was stuffed halfway with poppy plants.
When she went to join the group again, she noticed a small girl had joined them as well, a knife in her hand. The sight of it sent a shiver down Katherine's spine and quickly she found Nathan, ignoring the pain had been spreading increasingly throughout the day through her leg. "What is that?" she asked him in a hushed voice.
Nathan looked over his shoulder, towards Katherine had been nodding. "We almost had a boar, when she snapped some twig, causing Bellamy to almost kill her when he threw his axe," Nathan said. He shrugged his shoulders as if it all meant nothing. His facial expression said something else entirely though. "Guess she got a knife from him as well."
"So wrong," Katherine muttered, shaking her head in disbelief. She understood that there were people who needed to hunt and that they needed weapons to do so, but giving a young girl a knife was bound to fire backwards. "He should have sent her back to camp, or told her to gather some nuts."
"Are you really into that traditional stuff, sweetheart?" she heard Bellamy's voice behind her all of a sudden. Shocked, she turned around, giving Bellamy her typical glare for sneaking up on her. Though he had looked at her mockingly at first, his face hardened quickly. "Weakness is something you can't afford here. Better make that clear to the younger ones too."
"Choas neither, asshole," Katherine replied to his back as he walked past her. With the pain getting a steady hold of her, she couldn't afford to waste energy on the likes of Bellamy, yet she couldn't hold her tongue either.
Nathan let out a chuckle, shaking his head with a grin plastered on his face. "My father told me you were the most calculated, calm kid he had ever seen."
"Well, I guess I was," Katherine answered, shrugging. She thought about it for a moment. During her time in isolation, she had been really calculated. She knew every guard and she always knew the exact things to say to set them off, or to coerce them. She had written it all down in her notebook slash diary, next to all the other fascinating things she had read about nature, strategies and myths.
Her notebook.
Probably looking like an idiot, Katherine started to pat down her bottom. She did, in fact, feel the outline of the book and she wondered how on Earth she could have forgotten the fact that she had brought it with her to Earth. Although the urge was hard to resist, she knew he couldn't take it out now, or else it would be taken immediately.
"What are you doing?" Nathan asked curiously, looking like her like she was really an idiot.
"Just making sure I haven't lost half of my plants," Katherine replied, not missing a beat. She smiled convincingly and Nathan nodded understandingly.
It was then that they heard the loud sound of a horn being blown, causing the whole group to halt. On high alert, Katherine watched the trees around her. A horn could mean a couple of things, the first that came to her mind being a war horn, though she scratched that one immediately because it would be stupid for them to announce their presence.
Her second guess was a warning. And when she looked at the ground to see all kinds of animals moving in such a hasty phase that Katherine wondered if she could keep up, and heard birds squawking all around her, her suspicions were confirmed. She took a deep breath. "Follow the animals, something is coming!"
She had expected for the group to turn and to look at her like she was crazy, but she was pleasantly surprised to find that they actually listened to her, taking off in the same direction as the beetles at their feet. She was less pleased with the fact that she could barely walk due to the pain, leave alone run.
"Oh fuck," she muttered as she felt Nathan's arms wrap around her middle. He dragged her along, much like Octavia had done earlier that day. Feeling the adrenaline slowly pushing the pain out of her body, she forced Nathan to let go of her. She didn't want to be too dramatic, so she just smiled. "Don't worry, I can run a couple of metres."
Peering over her shoulder, Katherine noticed an enormous, yellow cloud moving towards them. She concluded that it must be acidic, or else the animals wouldn't have run off the way they had. And if it could hurt them, it could hurt her as well. Letting out a grunt, she didn't even give her body time to opt between fight, flight or freeze. The only thing she could do was focusing on putting on foot in front of the other, and a bit quick at that as well.
"Come on!" Bellamy screamed, only a couple of metres in front of her. "There are caves this way!"
One second Katherine had been running next to Nathan, the next he had disappeared. Katherine wanted to stop, but the yellow cloud was getting really close to her and she was so not planning in finding out what it did. Letting out yet another grunt as a ripple of pain moved through her leg, she tried to keep on moving forward. She was just about to give up, when she felt a small hand moving into hers.
"Come on," the young girl Katherine had noted earlier said, tugging at her hand.
Katherine bit down hard on her lip, trying to admonish herself. If a ten-year-old could keep on running, then so could she. Definitely, if Bellamy was only a couple of metres in front of them, motioning for them to hurry up. Katherine really had expected Bellamy to give her a bit fat middle finger, but when he wrapped his arm around tightly, Katherine couldn't even bother to protest. It was either that or die, and though she might have said that she would rather lose her leg than let Bellamy touch her, that hadn't been entirely true either.
"It's okay, Charlotte, just run that way, I got her," Bellamy said to the young girl. When he turned to Katherine, his voice was less gentle. "You'll be the death of me."
"I'm so sorry," Katherine replied. She didn't even know if she was being sarcastic or not, but she did know that it hurt like an asshole when she had to move up a small hill and down. One arm she had put around Bellamy, but the other cradled her injured leg like a precious baby. So when she saw Charlotte disappear into a cave, she felt happier than ever.
She let go of Bellamy, stumbling quite literally into the cave. She moved more carefully into the dark cave, knowing that she was probably saved from the acidic fog. She let herself sink down, her back against the wall and clenching her eyes shut from the pain. Her whole body ached from using muscles she had never used so intensively before and though her lungs burned, her leg throbbed as if it was actually on fire.
Shaking her head, she decided that she would first take a deep breath, calm down and then she could do a full damage assessment. The only thing that left her really bitter, though, was that she had once again depended on Bellamy to make it to safety.