Chapter Text
Charlotte awoke with a start. The pain-filled cries had seeped into her dreams, taking her back to the most terrible moment of her life. Her father had tried to fight; he didn’t want to leave his daughter an orphan. Her mother had sobbed quietly while the guards attacked her father, beating him and electrocuting him with their shock batons. This person dying now was younger than her father had been, his voice different, but she heard him moan in pain and all she saw was her father, prone on the ground.
“It’s okay,” a blond girl was telling her. “It’s just a dream. You’re Charlotte, right? I’m Clarke.”
Charlotte nodded mutely, mind still trapped in the past. She woke slowly, remembering where she was, and why. Her parents were dead, and she was on Earth. Tears still in her eyes, Charlotte wrapped her arms around her knees, trying to make herself as small as possible.
“It’s okay to be scared,” Clarke said as she sat beside her. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“It’s my parents,” Charlotte said shakily, looking away. “They were floated, and I see it in my dreams, and I just--”
“I understand,” Clarke said. “My dad was floated too.”
Charlotte met eyes with the older girl, and an unspoken knowledge passed between them. The knowledge of how it felt, losing a parent so violently, for an unjustifiable reason.
“So how did you end up here?” Clarke asked.
Charlotte took a deep breath. “Well, we were taking my parents’ things to the redistribution center and I kind of lost it. They said I assaulted a guard.”
“I can’t say I blame you.”
Charlotte wiped away some of the snot that was dripping from her nose. Clarke turned towards the sky.
“See that bright star up there? That’s the Ark orbiting above us. I think whatever happened up there, you know, the pain… maybe we can move past that now. Maybe being on the ground is our second chance.”
“Do you really believe that?” Charlotte asked, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks.
Clarke smiled, almost bitterly. “I’m trying to.”
The older girl pulled Charlotte into her, and in someone else’s arms, Charlotte was able to sleep more peacefully than she had in a long time.
The screaming had gotten worse. Clarke was gone, so Charlotte couldn’t talk to her, and she was starting to go crazy from the noise.
“Make it stop,” she muttered. Charlotte covered her ears, walking around in circles. “Make it stop,” she repeated, louder.
Charlotte started running. She didn’t know where she was going, she just needed to escape. She crashed through bushes and over fallen branches, creating a huge racket.
She stumbled into a clearing, cracking a twig underfoot, and suddenly an axe was spinning towards her. Charlotte winced, the axe burying itself into the tree next to her. A wild boar ran from the clearing, and several teenagers raced after it.
An older, dark-haired boy approached her slowly. “Who the hell are you?”
“Charlotte,” she replied, shoulders at her ears.
“I almost killed you,” the boy said, ripping his axe (for he was the one who’d thrown it) from the tree. “Why aren’t you back at camp?”
“Well, what with that guy who was dying, I just… I couldn’t listen anymore.”
“There’s grounders out here. It’s too dangerous for a little girl,” said a different dark-haired boy.
“I’m not little,” Charlotte insisted. She flashed back to the rare moments when she had encountered other prisoners on the Ark. They thought they could pick on her because she was small. She’d tried her best to stand up for herself, when she wasn’t drowning in grief.
“Okay then,” the first boy said, smiling slightly. “But you can’t hunt without a weapon.”
He handed her a small, handmade knife, made out of scrap materials from the dropship. Charlotte turned the knife over in her hands, staring at the boy in wonder. This was not what she’d been expecting.
“Ever killed something before?” he asked.
She shook her head. The guard had survived. She had only blacked out like that a couple of times in her life, but she’d never killed anyone. And did fighting count if she wasn’t truly conscious for it?
“Who knows?” the boy said. “Maybe you’re good at it.”
Smiling slightly, Charlotte followed the older boys deeper into the forest.
“Come one, there are caves this way!”
Horns blowing, the yellow fog swept over them. The older boy, Bellamy, pushed Charlotte into a narrow opening between two rocks. Charlotte crawled into a deep cave, with twists and turns that the fog couldn’t follow. Bellamy followed her, and they decided to camp out until the fog had passed. The other boy, Atom, hadn’t made it inside, but Charlotte tried not to think about that.
She managed to fall asleep. She’d had so many nightmares lately, sleeping so fitfully, that it seemed like she could sleep anywhere and everywhere. Unfortunately for Charlotte, the same old nightmare came back: her father screaming, her mother crying in silence. She screamed, waking herself and Bellamy.
“Charlotte, wake up!”
“I’m sorry…” she said. She didn’t want to disturb him, or seem weak, and here she was, doing both. The lighting in the cave was an eerie blue color, making Charlotte almost feel like she was still inside a dream.
“Does that happen often?”
She sighed, looking away. She didn’t want to talk about it.
“What are you scared of?” Bellamy asked.
Charlotte looked down, unable to meet his eyes or to form words. It had been one thing, telling Clarke. But this boy, this boy who thought she could be capable and strong… She felt like she was letting him down. She wanted to be strong, and she hated herself for failing to do so.
“You know what, it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is what you do about it.”
Charlotte met his eyes then, in confusion. “But… I’m asleep.”
“Fears are fears,” Bellamy shrugged. “Slay your demons when you’re awake, they won’t be there to get you when you sleep.”
Charlotte considered this. “Yeah, but… how?”
“You can’t afford to be weak. Down here, weakness is death. Fear is death.”
Charlotte stared at Bellamy, the wheels in her mind turning. He was right; of course he was right. He had to have almost 10 years of experience on her. Of course he would know what he was talking about. All that remained was to figure out how…
“Let me see that knife I gave you.”
Charlotte handed it over, hanging on Bellamy’s every word.
“Now, when you feel afraid, you hold tight to that knife and you say, ‘Screw you, I’m not afraid.’”
He handed the knife back to her. “Screw you, I’m not afraid,” she said, somewhat weakly. “Screw you, I’m not afraid,” she repeated, stronger.
“Slay your demons, kid. Then you’ll be able to sleep.”
When the fog cleared, Charlotte and Bellamy emerged from the cave.
“It’s all clear,” Bellamy said, looking back at her as she blinked, eyes adjusting to the sunlight.
“Anybody out here?” he yelled to the seemingly empty forest. Charlotte didn’t want to voice her fears aloud- that the rest of their hunting party were goners. “Jones!”
“We’re here!” a voice replied.
Bellamy followed in the direction of the voice, Charlotte following silently. She wasn’t going to cause any more trouble for Bellamy if she could help it.
“Lost you in the stew,” he was saying to three other teenagers. “Where’d you go?”
“Made it to a cave down there,” Jones said. “The hell was that?”
“I don’t know,” Bellamy said, glancing at each face. “Where’s Atom?”
Jones stared at Bellamy blankly. Their eyes grew wide. Realization jolted Charlotte. He was dead. He’d died, the other boy. It wasn’t safe out there, even for the older kids.
She bolted, heading back in the direction she thought the dropship was in. If she could just get back there, even running alone, then she might be safe. But a sight a few feet in front of her stopped her short. For what felt like the millionth time since landing on Earth, Charlotte screamed.
The body was hideous, covered in blood and white, pus-filled blisters. The boy was convulsing as he tried to breathe, his jaw clenching in pain. Bellamy ran up behind her, resting a hand on her shoulder. Charlotte tried to hold her screams in.
“Son of a bitch,” Bellamy breathed, his face falling. “Atom!”
Bellamy ran to the other boy, kneeling next to him. He leaned over, looking into Atom’s eyes, but Charlotte could tell that the other boy had been blinded. Is this what the fog did? She shuddered.
After all her running that day, Charlotte suddenly felt her feet planted in the ground. Part of her wanted to flee, but a stronger part was morbidly curious about what was happening. Atom was dying. She’d never seen a person die without being floated.
Charlotte slowly approached the body, where she heard a faint whisper.
“Kill me,” said Atom.
This was her moment! If she could just learn how to kill... Maybe she could slay her demons. She watched Atom struggle to breathe as the rest of the hunting party drew up behind her.
Charlotte walked even closer, standing beside Bellamy. He was standing again, physically separating himself from what he had to do. She could read the expression on his face, but hadn’t expected it from this grown, capable man.
While Atom gasped for breath in vain, Charlotte handed Bellamy the knife he’d given her not too long ago. “Don’t be afraid,” she said softly, so the others couldn’t hear.
Bellamy clenched his jaw, looking at the hunting party. “Go back to camp,” he ordered. The other three took off without another word, but when Charlotte remained at his side, Bellamy turned to her. “Charlotte, you too.”
Rather than argue, Charlotte backed away slowly and found a tree far enough away that she could hide behind. There was no way she was missing this.
Bellamy knelt by Atom again, uselessly holding the knife as the boy begged for death. Behind him, Charlotte saw the girl who had comforted her. Clarke. She hurried to Atom’s other side, as if to comfort the dying boy.
Clarke assessed his injuries, explaining, “I heard screams.”
“Charlotte found him. I sent her back to camp,” Bellamy said.
Clarke looked down at Atom, then back at Bellamy, shaking her head. Bellamy clenched his jaw again, nodding slightly.
Taking a deep breath, Clarke smiled down at Atom. “Okay. I’m gonna help you, all right?”
Clarke stroked the boy’s hair, humming a lullaby Charlotte remembered her mother singing to her. She took the knife from Bellamy, and with hardly any hesitation at all, she plunged it into Atom’s neck. She remained there, humming, as the boy died and Bellamy stared at Clarke with something akin to shock and awe. She had clearly just done something he hadn’t thought her capable of.
Charlotte felt a ringing in her ears. The neck. Would that work? Her knife was gone. What could she do? She thought back to earlier that morning, when she’d seen a group of older boys practicing knife-throwing. With any luck, she’d find a spare.
Plan solidified, Charlotte raced back to camp.
When she got back, knife in hand, a long-haired boy and the chancellor’s son were talking excitedly to an Asian boy about the tea they were going to make. Jasper was still screaming. Fighting the urge to run away from the sound, she slipped into the dropship while everyone else was distracted.
She kept the knife in the pocket of her hoodie. In the third level of the dropship was a single girl, who glanced over sharply at Charlotte when she lifted the hatch. The girl visibly relaxed.
“I thought you were M- someone else,” she sighed.
Charlotte thought back. She’d seen this girl with the dead boy. Quickly, she thought of a plan. “You were friends with Atom, right?”
“Was,” the girl said bitterly. “Until my brother scared him away.”
“He’s… He died. In the acid fog,” Charlotte said, letting herself get choked up. “They’re bringing his body back.”
The girl’s eyes widened in horror, and she ran down the hatch, almost flinging Charlotte out of the way in her haste. Jasper made another terrible noise but the girl ignored it, aside from a whispered, "Make it stop."
Charlotte slowly approached the writhing boy. She raised her knife to his neck when a sudden clarity washed over her. It would be suspicious if he had a cut in his neck. It wasn’t covered in blood the way Atom’s was. There was blood, however, pooling around a bandage on his chest.
Slowly, carefully, Charlotte pulled the bandage off. Jasper continued to make pain-filled moans, but he seemed to be in too much pain to be aware of what was happening. There was a hideous wound--it looked like it had been burnt. Wincing only slightly (this wound still wasn’t as bad as the ones she’d seen on Atom), she slid the knife into his chest, right on top of the part that was already bleeding.
Clarke had the courage to end Atom’s life. Charlotte didn’t know what she was waiting for with Jasper, but it was only a matter of time before Jasper died too, and she was going crazy from waiting. She couldn’t listen to him anymore, so she did what no one else had been able to.
Charlotte hummed a lullaby to herself. It was out of mercy, really. At least now he wouldn’t be in pain. And reminding the entire camp of it. Carefully, softly, she replaced the bandage as his moans weakened and grew softer.
She heard something that sounded like footsteps, and panicking, stashed the knife in a toolbox and scampered down the ladder. There was no one there. She’d give herself away if she wasn’t careful.
Taking a deep breath, Charlotte climbed down from the second level to the ground, forcing a calm expression onto her face. Others in the camp were working on building a wall to keep out the grounders. Charlotte put herself to work.
Aside from her own humming, the air was blessedly silent.