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Octavia paced her office, cheeks stained with blood and tears. After that fight, which she knew wouldn’t be the last, she knew but desperately didn’t want it to be true, all Octavia had wanted to do was go to her room, take a long shower to wash off all the blood - her people’s blood - and curl up in bed with Niylah.
Only now she’d have to do that last part by herself.
Niylah hadn’t even talked to her after the fight. When it was all over, Octavia had looked up, searching for Niylah, searching for her light in this darkness. But Niylah had looked at her with such an expression of disappointment, and merely shook her head, walking away, and Octavia felt her heart break as the other girl disappeared from sight.
But now a knock sounded on the door.
Octavia looked at the door warily. She wasn’t in the mood to talk to her people. And her advisors would just walk in without an invitation.
Another knock. “Octavia? It’s Nate.”
Well, out of all the possibilities, Miller certainly wasn’t the worst. She took a quick look in the mirror to check that her tears weren’t too visible in all of the blood, and opened the door.
She certainly didn’t expect to see him with eyes rubbed red as well, breathing heavily as if he’d run all the way there.
“Miller? What are you doing here?”
He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. “I… Eric and I had a fight. And I saw Niylah in the bunk room, and since I hadn’t seen her sleep there in a month… I thought maybe you could use someone to talk to. I didn’t want to be alone.”
Octavia stepped aside, letting Miller in, closing the door firmly behind him. What last fight or nervous energy she had went out of her, and she sagged back against the door, sliding to the floor. Miller knelt in front of her, resting a hand on her shoulder.
“Hey. Octavia. You can talk to me.”
Octavia nodded vaguely. “I know. I just - I don’t talk. Especially about feelings.”
Miller sat down next to her. “Yeah. I know what you mean. We’re warriors, right? Emotions are weakness and all that. But they’re still there even if you don’t talk about them.”
“Maybe it’s for the best that Niylah walked away.” Octavia said, voice flat. “I’m bad news. Anyone who gets close to me - something bad happens to them. Atom. Lincoln. Ilian. Jasper, Monty, my brother…” Octavia couldn’t stop a tear from rolling down her face, though she tried to swipe it away.
“Hey. Your brother and Monty went to space, right? They’re fine.”
Octavia looked at Miller. “Are they? Who was it then, pounding on the door this morning? It could only be Clarke. She tried the Nightblood. There are no other Nightbloods, let alone Nightbloods who know we’re here. My brother wouldn’t have left her behind.”
“Maybe he did. Not because he wanted to, but because Clarke told him to. You know what she can be like.”
“It should be her down here, running this place. Not me. Look what I did today.”
“What, saved more than eleven hundred people from starvation? You’re right, that was terrible.”
Octavia smiled in spite of herself, hearing the teasing edge to Miller’s voice. But as she remembered what it had cost them to have all of these people in the bunker, the smile dropped off her face.
“How can you even stand to be near me, Miller?” Octavia whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you were safe in here. All of Skaikru. Well, except for me and Kane. And then Bellamy opened the door and - and three quarters of Skaikru were left out to die. Including your father.”
Miller rested his head back against the wall. “Right. That.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I am too. But it was his choice. That’s what Kane told me. My dad would have had a spot and I wouldn’t have, but he gave it up for me. I’ll always be grateful to him for that.”
“But if my brother hadn’t opened the door, you would have both been safe.”
“Maybe we would have. And I know I tried to stop Bellamy from doing it. In that moment, it felt right. But Jaha and Clarke broke the rules of the game. You were out there, fighting for them, fighting for all of us, and they abandoned you to die. That was wrong.”
“I also broke the rules by allowing every clan into the bunker.”
“Yeah, but if this is the last of the human race, saving as many people as you could was the right call. If Skaikru had twelve hundred people, maybe I would have been angry about it. But we didn’t. Leaving people out to die when we could save more would have been wrong.”
“But twelve hundred was too high of a number, as we know now. If we don’t get out of here in five years, we could all be dead.” Octavia dropped her head onto her knees. “I just wanted to save everyone, but I may have doomed them instead.”
“Hey. No.” Miller squeezed her shoulder. “Leaving them outside would have doomed them. In here, we still have a chance.”
“Even with the fighting pits? That’s why Niylah walked away from me.”
“Even with them. That’s what Eric and I argued about too.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Again, not your fault. We just… there’s some things we see in different ways, I guess.” Miller looked at her. “That’s why I knew I could talk to you.”
“Why’s that?”
“You’re a fighter. Like me. Eric and Niylah - they’re healers. And we can love that about them, but they don’t always understand us. When we have to make the hard choices.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“I told him I loved him. Right before the fight. I told him I loved him, and then after we went back to the bunk room and he was just - he didn’t get it. Why it had to happen.”
“Wasn’t he one of the strictest rule followers on the Ark?”
“Yeah, and now he’s shacking up with a criminal like me. I mean, he gets it to a point. He understands why there needs to be population control like on the Ark. But he didn’t think it needed to be that bloody.”
“Well, we don’t have an airlock to push people out of. And there’s more than just Skaikru here.”
“Yeah. This is Wonkru, not Skaikru. For what it’s worth, I do think your method was the best compromise between Skaikru and Grounder methods. Plus, it gives people a chance. A choice. Choices are all we’ve really got in life.”
“I’m sorry for what my choices have done to you.”
“Eric will come around. He’ll just need some time. As for my dad, he’d want me to live. To survive. And it won’t always be easy. Hell, from today we already know it won’t be. There’s a lot of lingering hatred and so many different ways things could go wrong. Death lurks around every corner.”
“You’re very inspiring. You could put that on one of the posters in the cafeteria - Death Lurks Around Every Corner.”
Miller chuckled. “My point is, you need an ally. Not someone whispering in your ear to do this or that or the other thing, like Kane and Indra like to do. But someone you can count on no matter what. If you want me, you’ve got me.”
“This isn’t because my brother made you promise to protect me or something, is it?”
“I promised him that a long time ago, but no, this isn’t for him. This is for you. I know today isn’t going to be the only time that you face tough choices as a leader, Octavia. And there will be plenty of people who will question you on them. I promise I won’t do that.”
Octavia considered what Miller was saying. She nodded. “Okay. But promise me we take care of each other. We look out for each other. I won’t have this be one-sided.”
“Deal.”
Octavia rested her head on Miller’s shoulder. He rested his head on hers.
Yeah, an ally didn’t sound bad.
Six years later, when it comes out that Bellamy was the one who poisoned Octavia, but she still wanted him to live, this promise was the only thing that stopped Miller from putting a bullet in Bellamy’s brain himself.
Because one thing Miller didn't do was break his promises.