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[gidge]

PICK YOUR POISON
PIC PROMPTS / TFLN / RANDOM SCENARIO
HAN SOLO velocities	BETTY MCRAE bombsheller	RIVER TAM subsulcus	RIVER TAM (AU) comprehender
SIMON TAM vest	BRIA THAREN exulted	NADINE CROSS bridaled	GU JUN-PYO toddler
available on special request: veronica sawyer, benjamin linus, imani, maria deluca, mushu, poseidon, niccolò machiavelli, malik al-sayf, chloe

Comments

sorRY

[unburdening]

"No, Octavia," he says, and now he's shouting back. "You don't get to have it both ways! You don't get to cut me out and then tell me what to do!"

He's not allowed a lot of things with her anymore; and to an extent, he did that. But she also can't tell him how much she hates him every chance she gets and then force him to do something he doesn't want to.

He shouldn't, but he goes on, "You want to keep me alive so you can keep punishing me? Is that it? Because I'd rather see Monty live than do that. Harper. Miller. Indra. Take your pick."

wowwwwww

[throudon]

She shoves him, hard. "This isn't about them," and another shove.

Monty. Harper. Miller. Indra. Octavia wants them to live, but she doesn't want to decide it. She's decided enough about who lives and dies, and it's a bearable weight with strangers, with cause. She doesn't want this with them.

Bellamy's weight she can't avoid.

"You don't get to leave me, Bellamy!" Another shove, and her eyes are wet and she continues on like she doesn't notice the blur in her vision. "If I wanted you dead, you would be," another shove, a punctuation and an emphasis. There is force, but no damage, no blood. This isn't the time in the cave.

"You don't get to leave me alone!"

[unburdening]

When she reaches out to shove the last time, he lifts his arms to push hers away, off to the sides. He doesn't say anything about it but the message is clear: Enough.

"Alone?"

There's a level on which he understands that. The terror he always feels for Octavia's safety not just because she's his responsibility, not just because she's sister, but also because if she's gone, he won't have anything left. With their mother gone, he'd be the last of their family. And there are the others here in Skaikru, Clarke, everyone he just named, and more, but they would never ever be able to fill that hole.

"Compared to what you are now? Running away to Polis, avoiding me every chance you get? But that's supposed to be okay because I'm here? Because I'm supposed to wait for you." He takes a step forward, less aggressive now. "People don't wait, O. People aren't going to stay where you left them forever, until you're ready to deal with them."

He's slipped from arguing to teaching, wanting her to learn this lesson: this is what the world is like, Octavia. This is how people act. This is what's going to happen if you do this to everyone.

This is how you live with other people.

"One day you're going to turn around, and they'll be gone. Because that is what happens. And then you really will be alone."

[throudon]

Octavia stills instantly, seething now instead of lashing out, and her cheeks are wet. The tears themselves don't even stop as she carefully schools her face from pained to something smoother, angrier.

This is something she should know. Should have known. Lincoln had changed, too, and she hadn't gone anywhere. They'd shared a bed, a life, and he still put on the guard uniform. He refused to run with her. He had always been steadier than she was, solid and aware, but he was different by the end. Different enough to choose death instead of surviving with her.

She remembers asking him to leave with her, to go to Luna's people. He had said they wouldn't want the attention from his kill order, but maybe that wasn't it.

Fighting is all you know. Death is all you know.

Maybe it was her.

"I was keeping Roan in power, like you wanted," she says through gritted teeth. "Like Kane wanted."

She wants to deny that she was running, but she can't because now she would kill (again and again and again) to be back in Polis listening to Kane moralize at her instead of here, talking like this, knowing she had her name on a list next to Jaha. A list her brother didn't want to be on. A list that meant survival. She doesn't deserve survival.

"You killed him," and she knows he didn't. She knows it was Pike with the gun in his hand, Pike that made the choice. But it was Bellamy, too. And it was her, too. It was Octavia who was there and couldn't get him out. It was her watching from a safe distance when her home, her heart, died in the mud. Maybe neither of them get to survive, maybe neither of them deserve it, but she doesn't want to live with other people.

It's both Blakes or none at all.

"If I'm alone," she says, voice low and dark, "it's because you decided to make me that way."

[unburdening]

They say that if you hear something often enough, you start to believe it.

Bellamy knows that Lincoln's execution was not his call. He knows that he reached out to Miller and Harper, to Octavia, to stop it. He knows he wasn't even near Arkadia the day it happened, had no part in Pike threatening the other Grounders in lockup.

He also knows that he's culpable, that he helped Pike get and keep the position of power that allowed him to do these things. That he didn't argue hard enough against the extreme measures, that he was too willing to let Pike give him a target for his rage and grief. That however sorry he is about it now, he wasn't when it would've mattered most. He argued against killing the wounded, against taking the village, against the executions. But when Pike didn't listen, he did those things anyway. He agreed to help them massacre the army in the first place. He stopped Kane from turning Pike over sooner. He made himself blind to the factions of Grounders. That's the truth. That's on him.

You killed him. You made me this way. He is dead because of you. You're the reason they need saving. Everything that's gone wrong is because of you.

He's run out of defenses. And maybe the's the way it should be. But Kane had a point: it's more important to look forward right now than to look back. The most important thing is to figure out a way for humanity to survive the oncoming death wave. Everything else will have to wait beyond that, assuming any of them survive that long. And in the meantime, they save who they can save today.

No amount of wishing he can save his relationship with his sister is going to make it so. But he tried to save her life, and that's going to have to be good enough for today. Tomorrow might be different, or it might not; but since tomorrow isn't promised for any of them, it can be dealt with then. One thing at a time.

He exhales.

"Yeah," he says at last. "Maybe. But if I have my way, at least one of us is gonna have to live with that."

At least one of us is as much of a concession as she's going to get. Then he goes to pick up those binoculars, abandoned not far away on the ground, to put them back on the shelves; and after that, if she doesn't stop him, he'll leave.