Chapter Text
She dreams of him often, now.
Vivid, detailed things that explode with light and color and pain.
In some, she watches that hateful version of herself idly standing by as he is nailed to the cross. She screams and cries and tries to reach out, shake herself out of it. Is forced to watch in agony as he writhes and twists in pain at each hammer blow through his wrists.
In others, she inflicts tortures on him that are somehow more terrifying than the reality of it all. In one, she piles dry wood at his feet; watches calmly as the fire licks up his legs, stands back as his flesh blisters and burns and pops. In another, she mechanically drags a slim, serrated edge over and over in long lines across his body. Over and over again until he’s more shredded flesh and blood than man.
In each, he begs and pleads with her to wake up. Rubs his skin raw against his bonds, breaks fingers and opens wounds in increasingly desperate attempts to reach out to her. He asks her over and over again to remember him.
In each, she never does.
Instead, she wakes up shaking and nauseated; the sound of his screams in her ears, the image of him staring at her in anguish and betrayal burned onto the insides of her eyelids.
She dreams of him in other ways, too.
Dreams that leave her breathless and aching and heavy with desire: where she threads her hands through his hair, kisses the slope of his neck and the hollow behind his ear; where she runs her fingernails down the edges of his spine and grins against his lips when he shivers.
Dreams where ALIE never existed at all: where her hands and mouth and tongue never became treacherous, traitorous things; where she arches against him and sighs into his mouth without motive or deception.
Dreams where she can love him without hating herself for it.
She always wakes from these roiling with want and weighted down by guilt. Feels wrung out and twisted in a way that steals sleep from her for the rest of the night.
Wonders how it is that these dreams manage to hurt worse than the ones that are filled with torture and blood and agony.
He has dreams of his own, she knows.
The way back to Arkadia had been a journey measured out in weeks - more meandering and exploration than hard marching. A leisurely pace and carefree attitude that was as foreign as it was pleasurable.
The nights had been warm enough to sleep outside, well away from the fire. She had spent her nights curled up next to Clarke, who’d manage a peaceful sleep that she was both glad for and envious of.
She’d lie down and wait for a quiet in her brain that she knew couldn’t come, would end up getting up an hour later to wander aimlessly around whatever campground they’d erected that day.
One night, she’d heard Marcus cry out in the dark - a sound of misery that had drug its way down her spine and clogged her throat with fear. She broke into a run, always aware of exactly where he laid down every night.
His body had been twisted in pain, face contorted in sweat stained agony.
She’d reached forward to brush back his damp hair and heard him murmuring again and again -
“Abby, please wake up. Abby, please wake up.”
She’d recoiled, then. Felt a burning in her palms and in her wrists that seemed the worst kind of phantom sympathy pain.
She’d choked back a sob, willfully ignored the steady thump of shame from her heart; wanted to press the insides of her hands against his cheeks but couldn’t bear to touch him again with hands that had already been responsible for so much violence.
Instead, she leaned in and forced herself to say his name out loud; watched as he’d jolted out of his dream. He’d looked up at her with fear and frenzy that had quickly melted into grateful relief.
“It was only a dream,” he’d said over and over again, wrapping his arms around her tightly. Words meant to comfort her. Words meant to calm the panic she knew lined the pupils of her eyes.
Words that were an unbearable falsehood.
At night, Arkadia is quiet.
She wanders the halls sometimes, when dreams and half-memories make sleep impossible; thinks of ghosts and haunted places - the eerie stories that she had loved so much as a child.
She brushes them aside as she follows the twists and turns of Arkadia’s walls.
She’s the only ghost haunting these halls.
He lingers by the door of her room one night after walking her from medical.
She looks up to see that a lock of hair has fallen in his face, half covering his eye; he doesn’t seem to notice.
Idly and unbidden, a feeling of longing rises within her. She finds herself missing the feel of his hair tangled in her hands. As though it were something she had always done. As though it’s something that she still deserves.
She wants desperately to reach out and brush the wayward lock back carefully, settle it gracefully into his hair.
She doesn’t, though her fingertips twitch at the thought; flexes her hand instead and rests them on the doorknob behind her.
“Good night, Marcus,” she says, and she’s proud of the way she keeps the longing out of her voice.
“Good night, Abby.”
He doesn’t keep it out of his.
She and Raven are sitting in the cafeteria having a drink when Marcus comes in to talk to one of the guards at the bar. She tracks him with his eyes, can’t help but soften the lines of her posture at the sight of him.
She hears Raven sigh quietly; flicks her eyes away from Marcus and over to her. Finds Raven staring at her intently before she leans back.
“You know, when I first met Clarke, I told her that I’d never seen anyone love someone the way you love her.”
She nods.
Raven tilts her head towards the place where Marcus is standing, then -
“That’s the way that he loves you.”
She starts, resists the urge to look around as though Raven is revealing her darkest secret. Instead, she lowers her eyes and clears her throat.
“You can’t know that.”
She hears, rather than sees the roll of Raven’s eyes.
“Abby, anyone with eyes knows that.”
She sighs. Twists her hands in her lap and looks away from the discerning tilt of Raven’s expression.
“Raven. It’s…it’s complicated.”
Raven shakes her head.
“It’s not.”
Abby looks at her.
“Ok, it’s not simple. But. It wasn’t you.”
She hates that. All these tiresome arguments about who she is and isn’t. What she did and didn’t do.
What she does know is this: it was her voice that ordered him to the cross, her hands that stayed still as they nailed him to it, her head that turned away from his screams of agony. Whether or not it was real is a moot question, in her opinion. The scars on his wrist are real. The ache in his joints is real.
That she was the face that twisted his love into a weapon, turned the kindness in his heart into pain is real. A cold, unflinching truth she can’t escape.
She does not say this to Raven, though. She just sighs and wraps her arms around herself.
“It was me, Raven.”
Raven stares at her, still and focused. Then she rolls up the sleeves of jacket, thrusts her arms in Abby’s direction. Brandishes the raised, ugly lines up her wrists like a battle ax.
“Do you hate me for this?”
She shakes her head at her.
“Of course not. But - .”
“Should I hate myself? For giving into the pain? For letting her use me to get to you?”
“It’s not the same.” She says dully, tears her eyes away from the scars to look Raven in the eye. “She took full control of you. She had to, because you fought her. I should’ve -” She sighs heavily and crosses her arms in front of her. “I should’ve been stronger.”
Raven shakes her head.
“You were strong enough to make sure that bitch was never going to use people the way she used ever again. You helped kill her.” She raises her hands to stave off Abby’s rebuttal. “What happened with us - it’s the same thing, Abby. She used me against you. Then she used you against Kane. The only real difference between us is that she’s still controlling how you live your life. And you’re letting her.”
Her face burns in anger and disbelief and hurt and shame. She finds herself focusing on the lines that crisscross her palms.
Raven’s face softens. She reaches out and squeezes her hand gently.
“Abby. She’s taken so much from all of us, already. Just…don’t let her take this from you, too, ok?”
“Do you love him?”
The question startles her, sets panic loose in her veins even though she’s spent countless hours roleplaying this exact conversation with Clarke in her mind.
She wants to say it’s a difficult question. Wants to say she doesn’t know. Wants to pretend that, for once, sleep has managed to find her in the early hours of the night.
She does none of these things, though; they require a dishonesty that she’s sworn never to inflict on Clarke again.
She’s trying to formulate a response when Clarke breathes out a phrase that robs her of voice for a moment.
“He loves you.”
She doesn’t try to deny it, this time. Only sighs, then speaks the most honest truth that isn’t an answer.
“I’m not sure if I deserve that.”
She feels Clarke shift in the bed to face her, turns her head so that their eyes meet across the pillow.
They don’t say anything for a long while. She finds herself studying Clarke’s face, looking for the child who once reached for her at the end of a bad dream. Realizes that Clarke hasn’t been that child since two wars and 300 irradiated souls ago.
“He floated dad,” Clarke finally says.
She nods.
Clarke takes a deep breath, continues on.
“He kept me in solitary confinement for a year. He took the air out of 300 people’s lungs. He shocklashed you when you got to the ground.”
She finds no rebuttal to her words because there is none. Can only offer words that are neither a defense nor an excuse - just a truth that she knows with every single, wasted part of her:
“He’s a good man, Clarke.”
Clarke nods, sincerity and love glistening in her eyes.
“I know, mom.” She reaches out to brush the hair back from Abby’s face. “There’s blood on all our hands. We all have to live with what we’ve done to ourselves. And to the people that we love.” She wipes a tear as it tracks it way down Abby’s cheek. “But…I think…we don’t have to do it alone.” She inhales and fixes Abby with a resolute stare. “You don’t have to do it alone.”
She closes her eyes and takes in a shuddering breath. Feels Clarke slowly run her hands through her hair, soothing her in a gentle reversal of roles.
“Maybe love isn’t about deserving,” Clarke breathes out, her voice tender and soft. “Maybe that’s the whole point.”
One night, she wanders into the cafeteria to find him staring into a steaming cup of tea. She almost steps back out again, but finds herself walking towards him instead when she sees the exhausted bent to his shoulders, the purpling circles underneath his eyes.
He looks up at her and smiles as she sits across from him.
They’re quiet for a moment, then -
“Nightmare?”
He nods; takes a deep breath and let’s it out again carefully.
“My worst nightmares are always about you.”
There’s nothing malicious in his tone, but she feels swallowed up by grief anyway. She clenches her jaw and nods. Wonders if she manages to keep the anguish clear from the lines of her face.
“I know.”
He tilts his head in confusion. She lays her hands in front of her on the table, twists her fingers together tightly.
“There was a night, once. On the way back to Arkadia.”
“I remember.”
She nods. Finds that she suddenly can’t meet his eyes.
“Before I woke you up. You. You kept pleading with me to wake up.”
Silence settles between them.
“Abby.”
She looks up; finds him gazing at her with an open tenderness that feels wholly undeserved.
“That night. I…” He exhales forcibly. She feels her stomach churn. “I did dream about you. But not…not about what happened. Before, I mean. In Polis.”
She furrows her brows and watches as his face twists into sorrow.
“I dreamed that you…that you were gone. That I couldn’t save you.”
The air grows still between them.
“That’s what my worst nightmares are about,” he finishes quietly. “Losing you.”
He pauses then; swallows back the rest of the sentence.
She sees it anyway. It’s written in every fearful line on his face.
Have I already?
She thinks back to Raven’s admonition, to Clarke’s hushed words. Isn’t quite sure she knows how she’ll forgive herself or feel deserving or how to come back from it all.
She only knows this: he deserves her attempt, at least.
So she swallows forcefully.
Then -
Inches her hand across the table; carefully rests it on top of his.
“You haven’t, Marcus.”