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Bellamy stood in the ruins of a house in Polis, waiting for Octavia - waiting for his sister, he reminded himself, no matter what she looked like right now - and trying to process the glimpses he’d gotten of the bunker - blood drenching the floor, weapons on the chain-link fences, and his sister standing in the middle of it all.
Octavia strode in, walking straight up to him, the bearing of the queen that they called her. But he could still tell that she was scared, though of what, he wasn’t entirely certain. He knew his sister was there beneath the armor and the war paint, but she still carried herself with an air of formality, as if this wasn’t a meeting of siblings but a meeting of leaders.
Which, he realized almost belatedly, it was. It wasn’t easy for him to think of his sister as a leader, she had never wanted the job in the first place, but but seeing how the people in the bunker had responded to and listened to her, it was clear that she’d made the job her own. They respected her as Blodreina. The Red Queen.
But she was also Octavia, his little sister, and it was her, not Blodreina, who was scared. What was she afraid of? Not the prisoners, surely, she’d been in numerous tense situations and battles before and never flinched. It was almost as if she was afraid of… him? Of what he would say, of his judgment? Was that it?
Whatever it was, he needed to understand it. This didn’t need to be a meeting between leaders. He needed to be there for his sister.
“Help me understand what happened down there, O.” Bellamy said gently.
“You can’t.”
“I want to. Look, I can tell that you’re scared. And I know it isn’t anything about these new people we have to deal with, because you’re the most fearless person I’ve ever met. Which can only mean that you’re scared of me. But what I don’t understand is why.”
“Things have changed. I’ve changed.”
“That much I can tell. And that a third of the people died down there.”
“Don’t you think I know that? That’s a third of my people, Bell. My people.” Octavia’s voice was full of competing emotions, from sorrow to righteousness to anger to fear. “I never wanted any of this. You were more right than you knew with that Prometheus metaphor.” She was quiet for a moment, but Bellamy could tell she wasn’t finished, so he didn’t interrupt her thoughts. “I saved them, and sacrificed myself in the process.” She looked away from him.
“O…” Bellamy didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what had happened. But right now, he knew that wasn’t what mattered. “O… if you need forgiveness, I’ll give that to you. You’re forgiven. Whatever war you had to fight down there to survive, it’s over, okay? You’re on the ground now. You made it. Your people made it.”
“I don’t deserve to be forgiven. Not for the things I’ve done.” Octavia whispered.
“Forgiveness isn’t about what you deserve. It is about what you need.” Bellamy moved closer to her. “O… I know what it’s like to be in a situation where you have no good choices, believe me. There’s nothing you could have done that is worse than what I have.”
“You willing to bet on that?” Octavia turned away from him, clutching the edges of the table in front of her, but he didn’t miss the agonized look on her face as it disappeared from view. “The world we were trapped in… Bell, you can’t understand it.”
“Right, because I don’t know what it’s like to be trapped in an enclosed space with limited resources and no way out. Because that isn’t exactly the same situation we were in on the Ring.”
Octavia whipped back around, eyes now angry. “Being trapped in space with seven of you, compared to being trapped underground with over a thousand people is not the same thing, Bell, and you know it.”
“Not exactly the same, no. But I will bet that any question of survival, any life or death scenario that you had to consider, is something we did too. We had nothing but time to talk about all of the potential scenarios we could find ourselves in.”
“Potential scenarios are very different from reality. My reality. My reality… was hell, and I was the Devil.”
“O, you don’t mean that.”
“I had to be. That’s the only way it worked. It wasn’t my first choice, believe me, I tried other ways, but - you don’t know what we went through. And I don’t know how I could even begin to explain it.”
“You don’t have to do it right now. I want to know, but - I understand, you’re not ready to talk about it yet. But I am here for you. Please believe me. No matter what.”
“I’ll try.” Octavia said, still not meeting his eyes. “It’s just… it’s hard, for me to trust that right now. And it’s not you, I promise it isn’t personal, it’s just -”
“Hey.” Bellamy said softly, reaching out and rubbing Octavia’s shoulder. “Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it. Right now, let’s just focus on getting the rest of your people out and building an easier way in and out, since I’m sure there’s supplies that we’ll want to move out as well. Can I just say, I’m excited to eat something that’s not algae, at least you didn’t have to survive on that stuff for six years -” Bellamy noticed Octavia freeze under his touch. “O? O, what is it?”
Octavia didn’t say anything, she didn’t move a muscle, not even to blink, and Bellamy started to get worried.
“O, what did I say? What’s wrong?” Bellamy tried desperately to figure out what could have gone wrong with what he said, what was making his sister shut down like this, food should have been a lighter topic compared to everything they’d been talking about… oh.
Oh no. Suddenly it all made sense. Octavia’s reluctance to talk about what happened in the bunker. How she didn’t think anyone else could understand. Potential scenarios becoming real, how she had to lead. Hundreds of deaths.
“I’m so sorry, O.” Bellamy whispered, pulling his still-frozen sister into his arms. “I am so sorry that you had to do that. For how long?”
“A year.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Is it still happening now? Did the farm die after five years?”
“No, that wasn’t it. There was a fungus after the second year. But the farm is dying, Bell. If you hadn’t saved us - we’d have been back there again in just a few months.”
Bellamy didn’t say anything, he just kissed the top of her head, feeling her melt into his chest, her shoulders shaking with soft sobs as he held her.
“But - but the… eating… wasn’t even the worst part. What I had to do - she said there had to be full compliance, she said - I had to -”
“Shhhhh.” Bellamy whispered into her hair. “Who? Indra?”
“No. Abby. She said if we didn’t have full compliance - if people were allowed to starve to death - then their deaths would be for nothing since there wouldn’t be enough meat on their bones to feed us. So - so I had to convince them, I had to make them - make them eat. I had to break them, force them to - do you still think I’m worth forgiving?”
“Yes.” Bellamy said with conviction. “Yes. But you need to forgive yourself too. If I can find peace after what I’ve done - you can too.”
“But so many people died.”
“Even more lived.”
Octavia looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “But it wasn’t enough. It should have been more of them, I - I was never enough.”
“I know. That’s the part about being a leader they never tell you about. You never feel like you’re good enough. It sucks. Believe me, I know.”
“How do you bear it, Bell? How do you live with yourself?”
“Here on the ground, I had Clarke. We kept each other grounded. In space, well, I had the others. I had…” Bellamy grimaced. He’d hoped it wouldn’t come up right away, but he knew he couldn’t shy away from it now. The truth was better. “I… please don’t be mad. I… I had Echo.”
Octavia pulled away from him, tears gone, an incredulous look on her face. “Echo. Echo kom Azgeda, who tried to kill me twice and who I banished from the bunker?”
“Yes. And I know, I know, how awful this must sound to you. But it took me three years to forgive her. To learn to trust her. And ultimately, to love her. Don’t think that it happened overnight, because it definitely didn’t. But we kept each other alive up there. That’s got to count for something, right?”
“She saved your life?”
“More times than I can count.”
Octavia nodded slowly. “Okay. I can’t promise I’ll be able to trust her as quickly as you’d like, but - for you, I’ll try.”
“Thank you. Now, we do have other things to talk about. What’s going to happen from here. These other people. You know, leader stuff.” Bellamy gave her a wry smile.
“Yeah. Leader stuff.” Octavia smiled at him, the first smile he’d seen from her since being reunited. “I’m glad you’re here with me, big brother.”
“I’m glad too.”