✿ TWELVE ✿
"I'll use you as a warning sign,
That if you talk enough sense then you'll lose your mind"
___
The next morning, Katherine woke up early. She managed the wriggle herself out of Charlotte's grasp, surprised by the amount of power the little girl seemed to hold. She put on her clothes and boots, grabbed her cane and left the tent on her tippy toes, without waking up Nathan. She still felt tired but was done seeing Atom's foggy eyes every time she closed hers. Even some calming medicine didn't help her, though it turned the pain in a dull ache.
The whole camp still seemed to be asleep as Katherine went to grab some leftover pieces of meat from yesterday in case she got hungry, hiding them in her backpack. Looking up at the slightly reddish sky, Katherine figured that the sun would rise soon and that it wouldn't be long before the camp would come back to life again.
She looked around, to see if she could spot people that were supposed to stand watch, and when she didn't, she opened the gate just wide enough for her to squeeze through. Ever since the discovery of Grounders and the building of the wall, it was forbidden to leave camp after dusk or before dawn. Not that everybody obeyed those rules.
As she walked to her and Wells's stream, she listened to all the animals that were either starting to rise or going to sleep. She heard the complex-sounding love song of a bird and she saw something that appeared to be a squirrel hurrying its way up to a tree when it heard her approach. It caused Katherine the smile and for just a second she forgot about the grave ordeals that seem to come along with Earth.
Now that she didn't have to keep up with a determined Clarke or Bellamy, she wasn't half as out of breath as she usually was, nor did her leg hurt as much. It surprised her how easy she managed to find the stream with its own waterfall and she let out a sigh of relief as she heard the slow-flowing water.
The stream was hidden by a lot of trees and overhanging branches, and because the water didn't appear to be deep enough to hide a monstrous worm-like creature that had bitten Octavia, Katherine quickly got rid of all her clothes except for her black sports bra and shorts. She pulled her hair free from the messy bun she had made of it somewhere in the middle of the night and it came tumbling down in several locks that reached the end of her shorts.
She walked to the edge of the stream and after a moment of hesitation, she stepped into the cool water. A sigh of relief left her mouth, and she quickly went to sit down on the smooth pebbles that covered the bottom of the stream. She hissed in pain as the water touched the stitches that covered her leg. In fascination, she realised the long claw marks had turned into red, still a bit swollen lines. As she gently washed off the blood remains, she wondered how long those stitches would have to sit, and how Clarke would remove them.
After Katherine had tended to her leg, she slowly lowered her head into the streaming water, staring in amazement as her already dark hair turned even darker in the water, forming an enormous halo around her face. Giggling like a child, she moved her hands through her floating her in an attempt to remove the dirt from it.
After trying and probably failing to wash her hair, Katherine closed her eyes, clenched her fists in tension and lowered her head further in the water. As a little girl, Katherine would have the most horrible ear infections and she was convinced it was because her ears would fill themselves with water when she put her head underwater. After that conclusion, bathing time suddenly turned in drama time, with Katherine refusing to lower her head into the water and her mother forcing her to do it away.
This time, as her ears got filled with water, nothing painful happened. Katherine slowly opened her eyes and relaxed her muscles, a sigh of comfort escaping her mouth. It didn't hurt. In fact, the way the water streamed past her ears had her quite ticklish all of a sudden and smiling like an idiot she watched the stars disappear to make place for the rising sun. In amazement she watched the sky turn purple and pink, reddish-orange and yellow and in the end, the soft blue she was used to.
It was only then, when she looked at the way her fingertips and toes were wrinkled like she had aged fifty years, that she realised that she had been in the water for what she assumed to be over an hour. Slowly she rose from the water, her hair sticking to her back in a way she hated, and she made careful steps to the bank of the river. If she would stumble now and hit her head on some pebble, nobody except perhaps Wells would know where to find her and she didn't like that thought very much.
On her tippy toes, she walked to a tree, sitting down against the bark of the tree. The rising sun shone on her slightly shivering body and Katherine noticed the way the wounds on her leg looked a little calmer now. She smiled absentmindedly and slowly but surely she allowed herself to let go of everything that had happened yesterday. Atom's death, her ride down her memory lane, Bellamy's odd behaviour, she imagined the events like the water, slowly flowing away from her.
After a while of sitting in the sun with her eyes closed, just enjoying the sounds around her, Katherine noticed an odd sound. At first, she thought it to be a bird, but then she realised that there was no way that a bird could actually produce such a high-pitched sound. Frowning, Katherine got up from her place against the tree, slapping the dust and ground of her rear and legs, and she put on her clothes.
Katherine followed the sound cautiously, fiercely hoping it wasn't some nasty Grounder trick to lure in. She tried to comfort herself with the thought that if the Grounders wanted to take her, they could have easily done so when she had been sitting defences against the tree, instead of wasting all their time on this trick.
It didn't take long for Katherine to find the source of the sound, but when she did so, she stared at the scene before her with a mix of fear and astonishment. On the ground before her, a panther laid. A real one with a beautifully shining fur and venomous green eyes, nothing like the weird creature that had clawed her leg. The animal's breathing was laboured, though it managed to give her a weak snarl, and Katherine noticed the great antler protruding from its back.
Then she saw the little, cat-sized baby hidden underneath its mother's belly. The high-pitched screams of help Katherine had been hearing had come from this little cub. The fact that the cub had a faintly spotted, smoky grey fur, that its eyes were still a milky blue colour and that it would probably fit inside Katherine's hand told her that the poor creature couldn't have been older than two weeks. She wondered why the mother had brought her cub out of the den, because it was clear that the baby couldn't walk yet.
"Oh lord," Katherine muttered under her breath as she went to sit down, close to the panther, though not close enough for her to end up between its sharp teeth. The mother panther was passed the stage of helping, the way she was breathing and the pool of blood that had formed around the wound told her that, but Katherine couldn't leave the baby to fend for itself. With a loud sigh, she bound her wet hair into a bun on the top of her head, so that it stopped dripping in her pants.
"This shouldn't last long, should it?" Katherine asked herself, feeling slightly guilty as she went on watching the panther die a painful death. After a couple of seconds, Katherine couldn't take it any longer and with a nasty gut feeling, she walked around the cat in a big circle, until she ended up looking at its shoulders where in between the antler was stuck. The panther tried to turn around, snapping at her wildly, but to exhausted to actually do reach her. Katherine felt both sad and glad about that.
"Oke, nice and quick," Katherine said softly to herself, and without giving herself a moment to cower back, she shot forward, getting a grip firm on the antler, and pulling it out of the panther's lungs. The panther made one last move for her, turning his head and thereby its sharp teeth towards her, but Katherine was already laying a couple of feet away, with her bottom on the ground and a great antler in her hands. Looking at the bloody tip of the antler, Katherine let out a string of curse words. She wouldn't have wanted that thing puncturing her lungs either.
Katherine looked at the panter again, only just in time to see the light of life in its majestic green eyes to be dimmed till nothing was left. She forced herself to drop the antler and to walk to the panther again and still a bit shaky, she rubbed her hands on the fur of the mother panther. She tried to ignore the warmth that was still radiating of the body and lifting its belly, Katherine carefully grasped the tiny wonder that hadn't been killed.
As soon as Katherine pressed the cub to her chest, the little animal quit crying and he looked up at her odd blue eyes with its own milky ones. Katherine let out a small, out-of-breath chuckle, staring at the baby in amazement. There was no way in hell that she would leave it to fend for itself, no way.
✿
She didn't know how she had done it, but Katherine managed to hide the little cub in her shirt so that it would stay warm and she had rolled the mother panter into a piece of the parachute so that she could easier drag it behind her. Every now and then she would stop to give her leg a short break and to look touch the soft fur of the little one.
She realised it must have been well into the afternoon hours by the time she got back, and when people opened the gate for her she was met with an angry-looking Bellamy, a curious Clarke and worried Nathan and Charlotte. The last one immediately went to hug her and relieved that she was finally back at camp, she let the parachute drop.
"What were you thinking, Katherine?" Bellamy asked angry, taking a step forward to look the girl down and up. "When I say that no one leaves camp at certain times, it means you can't either."
"Didn't know you're my dad," Katherine replied not very impressed. She let go of Charlotte, making sure to hide to lump on her chest, and she removed the parachute. Instantaneously, people who had been observing the scene unfolding before them let out gasps of surprise, but before anybody could make a move for the majestic beast, Katherine grabbed the antlers and threw them towards Clarke, who stared at them in surprise. "To make needles and stuff."
Now that people were more focussed on the food Katherine had brought with her than her, she tried and failed to make a quick beeline for the Dropship. Bellamy's rough hand held her back by her shoulder, close to where the little cub was positioned so that it let out a loud cry of shock. Katherine coughed over it awkwardly. For some reason, she didn't want Bellamy to find out, not yet at least.
"I'm serious, Katherine," Bellamy said. He looked at her in a mixture of curiosity and earnestness. It made Katherine wonder if perhaps, underneath all his 'sweetheart' and macho act, he cared for her. Or for her knowledge at least. "I was almost going to waste an entire search party on you."
Before Katherine had time to answer, she would rather just turn her back onto him and walk away, but she knew that wasn't going to work either, someone else joined them. It was the person that had her insides cringe and protectively she crossed her arms around the little cub hidden in her jacket. She sure as hell hadn't missed the lack of communication with Murphy.
"Look who showed up all high and mighty," Murphy announced himself. He stood with his hands hidden in his pockets, casual like he had all the rights to be her. The smug glance in his eyes didn't make it any better. "Our very own Wicked-Witch."
"Sweet, Frog-Face," Katherine replied with the fakest smile she could muster. She battered her eyelashes at him and shook her head, keeping on smiling in that awful way. All she wanted was to get out of here. "You should try to come up with some new jokes, though I guess that's hard with only two functioning brain cells."
Murphy scoffed, his demeanour changing from casual to passive-aggressive within a matter of seconds. Katherine decided then and there that she would raise the little cub to maul Murphy's leg every time he dared to look at her the way he did now.
"Guys, come on," Bellamy said in a desperate attempt to keep the situation from escalating any further. He noticed the way people were quickly losing interest in the great panther and forming a circle around Katherine and Murphy as though they were an interesting attraction. Once Bellamy had found it amusing, but that was before he had known what both of them were capable of. "Now is not the time to act like little children."
Katherine and Murphy, however, didn't appear to even hear him as they kept on having their staring contest.
"I will not have my intelligence questioned by a weird creature like you, with your creepy eyes and odd face," Murphy spit towards Katherine. He didn't like to be demeaned, but at the same time, he liked to pick a fight with Katherine because she was probably the only one that wouldn't flinch back from him.
"Oh, Murphy," Katherine laughed as if he had said something very funny. She shook her head. "It's not that I'm questioning your intelligence, I'm just denying its existence."
"Alright, that's enough," Bellamy quickly entered, pushing Murphy back before he got really physical. He looked at the rest of the group with a look that had most of them shrinking or look away uncomfortably. "All of you, get back to work. I want someone to skin the animal and preserve its meat for tonight."
Quickly, the crowd dispersed, leaving only an agitated Katherine and an exasperated Bellamy. He noticed that every time he tried to say something genuine to the girl, ever since that night of the acid fog, she would only give a snappy remark in return as if she didn't know what else to do. So, instead of trying to look approachable, he crossed his arms and stared down at the girl in a belittling way. "Next time you decide to leave before dawn, inform somebody. I don't care if you as a person gets killed by a grounder, but I need the medicine your mind can find and thus I need you alive."
Katherine couldn't believe her ears, and she gave Bellamy the nastiest glare she could manage. Before he had appeared to be trying, but what he was doing now didn't make any sense either. It was not like she would listen to him now that he admitted he needed her for her brain, she sure didn't need him to protect her. She let out a loud scoff, resisting the urge to step on his toes with all her might. "Whatever you say, Captain Asshole."
Katherine turned around to take off towards the Dropship, where she could tell Monty what she had done, but all of a sudden something came to her mind, causing her to turn around and look Bellamy straight into his endless eyes. "Also, I don't care how you distribute the meat, I want the fur."
"Why would you want the fur?" Bellamy asked, scrunching up his eyebrows in confusion. He looked like a lost little puppy, though Katherine quickly pushed that thought away.
"Well, I don't have boys warming my bed every night and I could use the fur," Katherine snapped annoyed. Why did he have to question everything? Was it really that hard to just grant somebody something without having to receive something in return? She guessed it must be for a person like Bellamy. Besides, she could hardly tell the guy that she had sneaked a baby panther into camp, one that was beginning to move restlessly under her arms, and that the smell of the fur might help the little cub to go on living. "So can I get the fur, or can't I, Bellamy?"
Bellamy looked at her a little taken aback. "I will make sure you'll get the fur."
"Thanks," Katherine replied sarcastically. "That must have been really hard for you."
Without waiting for a reply, Katherine took off in the direction of the Dropship, this time for real, all the while shaking her head in disbelief. For a teeny tiny moment, she might have actually believed Bellamy was a decent guy, the way he was taking her past life into account in his way of communicating and the fact that he could not kill Atom, but she guessed that as soon as she strayed from the path of his will he turned into everybody's favourite asshole.
Softly grumbling insults under her breath, she managed to climb her way up the Dropship. Surprisingly, her leg didn't hurt much, though she suspected that might be because of the adrenaline that flowed through her veins. It didn't really matter either, because once she was up, she wouldn't come down for a couple of hours.
"Oh, Monty," Katherine said in a sing-song voice, a bit of annoyance still shimmering through. She went to sit down next to her best friend, who seemed to be focused on some metal wristband. Katherine took a quick peek at Jasper, who appeared to be sleeping with a much healthier colour on his face than a couple of days before. It made Katherine smile. "Guess what I've done today."
"You picked a fight with Murphy or Bellamy," Monty answered, his eyes not looking up once from all the different coloured wires.
"Yeah, both of them actually, though they decided to pick a fight with me," Katherine replied. With a loud sigh, she zipped open her jacket and from her shirt, she got the little cub. Immediately her eyes softened, smiling so big that the corners of her mouth started to hurt. She'd always had a great fascination for big cats and now that she was cradling a little panther wrapped up in fabric like it was a human baby to her chest it seemed like dream come true. She managed to look up at her best friend for a split second, who hadn't noticed the babe in her arms yet before her attention was drawn back to the miracle in her arms. She resisted the urge to make excited noises as the panther opened his milky blue eyes again.
"I also left camp before dawn, bathed under the daybreak for an hour and sat in the sun for another. Then I found a dying panther, a real one, with shiny black fur and poisonous green eyes, and her cub. I managed to drag the dead panther all the way back to camp, all the while hiding the cub in my shirt. It was only when I got back to camp things got really sticky. Murphy had a stick so far up his ass that it surprised me that he wasn't chocking, and Bellamy was the usual," Katherine told. She realised, that if she told it like this, it actually didn't sound half as true as it really was. With a dazzling smile, she looked up at her best friend, who looked at her in shock.
"I thought you were joking," Monty muttered as he finally laid down the wristband to lean back in his chair. He hid his head in hands, letting out a loud sigh before he looked up again with a look of despair. "So much for being the responsible one."
"Things change, Monty," Katherine giggled in pure joy. She laid her pinky on the snout of the little cub and much to her surprise the babe actually started to suck on it, causing an oddly tickling feeling. She felt like she was in love with the tiny miracle in the crook of her elbow, and with a shock, she realised that this might be a sign that she would perhaps end up like a crazy cat lady as she had read in so many novels. She looked up at Monty again, wondering why he didn't seem to share her enthusiasm, and her best friend only managed to look at her with an uncertain smile and a look of disbelief on his face.
"Yeah, that much is clear."